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He thought I've shot gunshots in this house. This is a city neighborhood. Houses are all close to each other. And I think his words, it's along the lines of, I don't know what the fuck happened, but nobody called the cops. How could nobody fucking call the cops? I'm Yardley. And I'm Zibby, and we're fast. So we invited our friends, Detectives Dan and Dave, to sit down with us and share their most interesting case.

I'm Dan. And I'm Dave. We're identical twins and we're detectives in small town USA. Dave investigates sex crimes and child abuse. Dan investigates violent crimes, and together we've worked on hundreds of cases, including assaults, robberies, murders, burglaries, sex

abuse and child abuse. Names, locations, and certain details of these cases have been altered to protect the privacy of the victims and their In the early summer of twenty fifteen, our subject, James, a man in his mid-thirties, split from his wife of twelve years and left their home and two children in another state. He went to live with his retired parents, Catherine and Roger, in their single level home. Street in small town USA. James was well educated.

He had played football and made the all state team in high school. According to family members, his future held great promise. However, at some point as an adult, he became addicted to heroin and his promising life became a desperate downward spiral. James's parents, Catherine and Roger, were close to their extended family and spoke to them weekly. They were also active in their church, and Catherine especially was well liked by their neighbors.

However, as soon as James moved into the house, their quiet life was completely disrupted. Roger and James fought regularly and often violently. It was common knowledge in the neighborhood that Roger considered his son a slacker for not having a job, and was unsympathetic to his drug habit. He wanted his son out. Catherine did her best to keep the peace, but Roger's temper was intimidating, and she felt helpless every time her husband and son went toe to toe.

One June afternoon, police received a call from Catherine's cousin who lived in another state. He was concerned that, despite making multiple attempts to reach her, he hadn't heard back from her in two weeks. This wasn't normal for them, as they talked regularly. On june fifteenth, police were dispatched to check on Catherine and Roger at their home. There they found a typed note on the front door which read

Catherine and Roger are away on vacation and will be back on June 16th. Their son James is house sitting. Officers knocked on the door in an attempt to contact James, but they were unsuccessful. Six days later, police went back to Catherine and Rogers home because the cousins still hadn't heard from her. This time, a different typed note was on the front door. It read, Catherine and Roger had to leave again due to a family emergency. If no answer, please leave a note at the door.

The officers went to the neighbors' house and asked them to please contact police if they saw anyone coming and going from Roger and Catherine's home. Less than an hour later, the neighbors actually did call the police and said they just saw James leave and come back to the house. An officer was dispatched to the residence once again and knocked on the door but got no answer.

As he walked around the house, he noticed that there was a lock on the outside gate that hadn't been there before, and the blinds were moving as though someone was peering through them. The officer said he got a creepy feeling. He called for additional units and started backing away from the house. At the same time, nine one one dispatchers were receiving a call from the occupant inside the residence asking for a hostage negotiator. Yeah, we wonder what's the address of the emergency.

Well, what I'd like you guys to do is stop being in on the house and I'll give you the information that you need. Okay. If you have a hostage negotiator I can speak to please. I mean this could go um this could go real easy or it could go real bad. Okay, I just want it. I just want it to go real easy and I think I think we can make it out of this and I think it'll be okay. Do you understand? I don't I understand. I d I don't want people to be hurt.

You don't want anyone to get hurt. Okay, we don't want anyone to get hurt either. Are you able to tell me what address we're talking about? Not right now, but I mean you're gonna figure it out in a second anyway, but I don't have much how how am I gonna figure it out? Can you help me? Radio to all the police officers area that are

um banging on people's houses and telling'em to just back off for a while. You know, just give me just give me just give me you know, five minutes to figure this out. Okay. What's your name? Um What would you like to call me? What w what do you what is your given name? What do you go by? Well Thank you. I can tell you right now I do not feel so good. You don't feel so good? No, I don't feel so good. I I know that was close. You you think death is close? Is it gonna be closed by you? Yeah. But um

Now, that doesn't mean anybody else has to hear how it I understand. Okay, and that's great. We don't want anyone else to get hurt. I I'm glad. I'm really glad that you know anybody else get hurt. Can you tell me a little bit more about how we got to where you are today? Are di are you there? Did I lose ya? Hello?

And that's when we got called out there. So how do you approach this call? Now it sounds like you may possibly have hostages in the house. If he's saying you I don't want anybody else to get hurt so tell the cops go away. What's the protocol? Get the place contained again, get the SWAT team to start to incrementally get in position with what we can and try to establish contact with him at that time. Do you know he has weapons or

Um we didn't really know that at this point. We we assume that he does, but we didn't know for sure if he did and how many uh How many of you show up to this call? There's a patrol response first. I see. So there's already a handful of guys there from patrol trying to sort through things. And then I'd say initially four or five detectives start showing up and SWAT members

Shortly after that. Yeah, I remember listening to the radio and you can hear what's being relayed to the patrol officer, what he's relaying to the dispatcher, and I mean it just sounds alarming. The nine one one call seems to end really abruptly. Does somebody else get on the phone with him after that? No, it was a quick conversation. the officer or officers that had responded initially to the uh welfare check days prior

were going back and checking. And that day, as things started to just not sound very good on the radio and Neighbors had well I saw this. I saw the sun this morning or yesterday taking the trash out. the car he drives is right there in the driveway. So I headed up to that neighborhood along with other officers and the critical part was when he called.

Clearly he was in the house. When James called. Yeah, when James called. And I don't know why what triggered him. He had been successful in kind of Thwarting our efforts. But now all of a sudden he's waving a big red flag with this phone call to the nine one one dispatcher.

I think you get like the mounting month's worth of paranoia and it builds and builds to the point where you're like, they haven't come for me yet, but they keep knocking on the door. So if James had been thwarting the police for weeks. Presumably the neighbors would have noticed something. I know it was a close knit neighborhood. I know that Catherine and Roger were friendly with their neighbors. What was the intel from them?

The neighbor had seen James outside but had not seen the parents for a long time and the parents' cars were both there and they hadn't been leaving. So When I got out of the scene, the patrol sergeant who was also one of our negotiators was out there and he called me out there originally to kind of assess the thing. And we continued to try to get a hold of James, and I don't think we were ever successful.

And at that point, knowing what we knew from the neighbors and knowing what we knew who was probably there, it started the ball rolling where we needed to intervene somehow and find out who was in the house and what their condition was. You show up as head of SWAT at that point? Well I was actually the detective sergeant then and I think that right after I hear what I hear and I understand that everything that shows that they should be there is their vehicles and everything else.

and trash being taken out. This ended up being kind of a hybrid SWAT. hybrid detective thing. We didn't have the whole team out there for this because it was a really an unknown. And the reason we had SWAT team personnel is'cause if we did have to make an entry in there and go search Um I wanted those I wanted a cohesive unit to do that. So that's So that was your call? Yeah.

So take us through that. So when we exhaust every other form, we actually used a loudhaler, tried to get him to come to the door. A loudhaler. I need one of those. Yeah.

we were getting no response from the house. The house is completely buttoned up, you couldn't see it. There's curtains were all pulled and this is a summer it was a hot day. It was really hot out that day and we get everybody there, we get enough people to gear it up and then that's when I assess w how we're gonna do this and This house was set up to where the front main entrance door was kind of centered in the middle of the house and then there was a

side man door on this uh attached garage. A man door. Like the yeah. A man door. A door only men go through. We had information too that when James was last seen he was coming out that door. I got people covering that door, I had people covering the back of the house.

And myself and another SWAT team member went up to the front door to see if the door was locked in fact or and it was and everything was dark and there was a window on it. You couldn't see anything in there. The house inside was pretty dark still. knocked on the door and then retreated back to the into the alcove to see if anyone actually would come and nobody came. So at that point we're gonna make entry for a community caretaking welfare check to make sure that everyone's okay in there.

and it was my decision to enter the man door on the garage because it started at one end of the house and we could clear the house systematically rather than go in the middle of the house where you have problems on both sides of you instantly. So we forced the door open at that point and Do you do that by kicking it with your foot or is there something we used a one of our door key devices. A ram. A ram. Mm-hmm. A door key. Not really a key at all.

When the door opened we were instantly in contact with James, who was seated on the floor. He had a rifle across his lap and a pistol next to him. And he was bleeding and he was seemed to be like out of it, totally out of it. We gave him commands to come out, to come out, to come out and he just was pretty unresponsive, he was sitting up still. And finally we reached up and secured the rifle, grabbed him by the feet and jerked him out of the house.

Securitymen handcuffs. He had self inflicted wounds on his wrists. There was drug paraphernalia right where he was. Yeah. Both the guns were loaded, one was a rifle, one was a pistol. There was a gun safe right next to where he was. and also right next to where he was was a large about a six and a half foot freezer sitting there. Why was he unresponsive after threatening to

not wanting anyone else to get hurt inside. I think between the time that he made the threat and the time we entered he had gone and used heroin and other drugs and cut himself and was trying to basically check out. So he was on the nod. He just was pretty unresponsive as far as his physical abilities to pick up anything was pretty bad.

And when we got him out, we instantly asked him, Where's your parents? And he just kept saying, I remember him just saying, I'm sorry, I'm sorry And because of his need for medical attention, we had him cleared with the medics and at that point we're gonna search the house for mom and dad. We called out and called out and nobody came and I remember as soon as we started to search going through the garage slash shop area that we were in.

one of my guys behind me, I hear him say, Sarge and he had lifted up the freezer. and I see a foot sticking out of a sleeping bag and I just said, Okay Shut up, let's clear the house. I looked down and saw it appeared to be just one person in there. In the freezer. In the freezer, yes. And obviously it'd been there for some time. And so at that point we clear the whole house. And clear the house means We go room to room looking for additional victims.

So that's the immediate call to action. As soon as you see a dead body in the freezer, now you're on the hunt for whether there are other victims in the house who may need immediate care. Yeah. Unfortunately there's nothing we can do for the already deceased person. Uh, we don't know without clearing the house if there's another person in a back room who's bleeding out, tied up, et cetera.

where we need to get them out of the house and to the hospital. And was there anybody else? We didn't find anyone else in the house. Because that welfare check was for two people. Correct. It's not till we come back and look again in the freezer that we realize that there's two people stacked on top of each other and there who turned out to be Catherine and Roger. Oh my. What's happening while you're clearing the rest of the house? Are the other officers looking in the freezer? No.

At that point, once we do that, once we realize there's been an obvious homicide, we clear out the house and start writing a search warrant. Oh my. So other than looking for his parents on a caretaking situation where maybe they're still alive and we can save their lives. after we determine that they're dead

We can't search any farther because of his Even though you've seen a foot in the freezer, you can't assume that you can go and see if there's anything else in the freezer. No, as long as it's clear that both people are deceased, then we have to stop. Or we could violate James's rights. Really? Yes. Interesting. Meanwhile, George, where were you in all of this?

So I'd gotten called out by Sergeant Dave and I was part of the entry team that went in through that uh pedestrian door alongside the garage. And I was the first one into that hallway and when we came across him, just like he was described, he was sitting there, bloody needles on the floor, drug paraphernalia next to him, a couple of guns.

conscious but not responding to our orders to show us his hands and step away from the gun. So we drug him out to the driveway area and I went back inside. I'd I'd handcuffed James and then left him with an officer in the driveway.

or short on people really at this point. They didn't have a a full team of people to go through, so I went back in and assisted with clearing the house to ensure that there was nobody else in there that was needing medical attention or help. And then I came back outside It was obvious based on the self inflicted cuts to James's wrist that he needed some medical attention.

I think he made a a genuine effort and he later now when I spoke with him articulated as much. He he had tried to, but I think the heroin effect it it really slowed him down and made him groggy. And when I talked to him later he ended up telling me he tried to shoot himself on the head. And wanted to know if he'd actually did it. And he said, I slipped my wrist, I tried to shoot myself on the head, did I do it? And it's the effects of heroin right there.

You rode with him in the ambulance, did you not? Yeah, I got in the ambulance with him and we went to the hospital in town and my role at that point was to find out as much as I could about what had happened. Other investigators remained at the scene to secure the residence to prepare for a search. Detective Don was gonna be writing the search warrant so we can properly get in the residence.

It's helpful to have more information, as much information as possible. So I was gonna try to get that information from James and relay that to Detective Don so he can include that in the search warrant. And did you? I did. It took a while. We got to the hospital and James was

Pretty groggy. The heroin effects were were getting to him. They needed to attend to his medical needs. So I sat bedside with him for the next four or five hours at that point. I think about four hours later he began talking some more. I think we just started chatting initially. James, do you know who I am, do you know why we're here, do you know what today is? Trying to make sure he was aware of what's happening.

When you were in the hospital with him, were you able to record your conversation with him? So were you taking notes? Are you even allowed to record him? I'm allowed to. I wasn't prepared to ha I didn't have an audio recorder with me. I had gone to the house with the task of this being a possible SWAT situation and resolving this, prepared to being out there for a long time.

maybe entering the house, rescuing a hostage or two. That was our initial plan. I didn't have any of that equipment with me. I hopped in the ambulance and rode there. So I had a notepad. that wrote notes furiously as he's talking to Was that stressful for you? Like were you thinking, Fuck, I wish I had an audio recording? Yeah. Absolutely I was. Some of the things he said, it would have been very powerful to have

So now I keep my digital recorder in my car. Fair enough. It's one of those lessons you learn of uh who knows. But your written notes would have been considered credible? Yes. And on top of that, nursing staff remained with me in the room the whole time. And I had asked them for permission to talk to him. His medical care needs to come first in that hospital setting. From a legal standpoint, I can't interfere with his medical care.

But throughout the time I was there I think I remained there till the next morning, till six in the morning the next day. And I had asked the nurses say, Hey, listen to what he's saying and I had talked to him and say, Hey, just in case this goes to trial, I'm recording your names and I'd like really like to have you as a witness to these conversations if at all possible.

Or at least be able to testify that you saw me writing down notes furiously as he's talking to me. Or try to remember a few key statements he made and even ask the paramedics on the way over. I mean, just the legal world we live in now. Everything's challenged. Miranda rights. So when I'm in the ambulance, I read'em as Miranda rights, little card I have in my wallet. I read it from the card and I asked two paramedics in the ambulance, do you guys listen to this and be a witness that I did this?

Everything's questioned these days in law, as it should be. People were innocent unless proven guilty. So we gotta protect that. But it helps if we can come in there with overwhelming evidence to show we did it the right way, whether it's taking notes or people listening or watching, we gotta do it the right way. And fortunately everybody was more than willing

I'll be a witness to that or I'll testify if you need me to and they're really helpful. That's the small community aspect of it right there. We see these people, this medical staff on a regular basis. We bring people into the ERs and they get to know us and see us and d yeah, build that relationship with them. It's good.

So you can't administer something like an epi pen shot to knock him out of his heroin days? Well as a matter of fact they later did. Um not immediately. Initially he just started talking and I think the conversation kept him awake for a while. Eventually they gave him some it's Narcan. To counteraffect the heroin.

But they're putting I V fluids in'em, they're making sure everything else is stable with them before they give'em that narcane. They don't want to give it right away if they didn't have to.

So did you get any kind of information from him or can or Yeah, it slowly began to develop. It was just little by little. Because he was groggy or because he didn't remember or he didn't want to tell you.

Honestly, it's probably a little bit of all three. He was groggy initially, but once we began conversing and just establishing a conversation back and forth, making sure he knew what was going on and talking, I think you could see the wheels turning and I think there was some hesitancy about immediately talking about what happened.

So we already get into who's at the house and he basically would say statements like I made a big mistake, I messed up bad and I think the first person he made at a killing was his dad and then later went into how he killed his mom. Tell us. He had been in an argument with his dad, as family members and even neighbors had told us they didn't have a great relationship. He said at one point he and his dad were arguing about immigration and immigration.

Politics. Oh. And I think that was a little bit of a cop out. I think I was, you know, trying to throw an excuse up about why they're arguing. I think they argue about anything and everything. I know there was financial issues.

They were trying to help him with money and to a certain extent he wanted more money and they weren't willing to give him all that money. They realized, Hey, you're a grown adult, act like it and we're not gonna support you your whole life. And that was the source of a lot of arguments between him and his dad. He would admit to as much. But he said at one point he got mad and he referred to his gun. He had a Glock nine.

And he got it out and he was gesturing with it and arguing and yelling at mom and dad and in the house there's a if you go down the hallway there's bedrooms on either end, mom's room is on one side, and on the other side was a bedroom that had been kind of turned into a second living room. I wouldn't quite call it a man cave, but a place where dad can go and mom can sit out in the living room, watch something, and dad can go in this other room and

watch his sports or games or whatever he did. James referred to it as Dad's living room and he was yelling at Dad arguing with him and he'd pointed the gun down the hallway. James initially said Mom walked out of her bedroom and he'd pulled the trigger and shot her

in the chest and killed her. Oh my god, just like that. Jeez. He initially tried to really make it sound like that was just an accident. He was just pointing the gun, happened to be pointing the gun down the hallway, and mom just happened to walk out and he shot her. He said this really got Dad's attention and dad yelled out to him, you know, what the hell's going on out there? Something along that line.

And in his mind he said, Well at this point, Dad knows I killed mom. I gotta kill him too. Oh my. So he walked down the hallway and confronted Dad in the bedroom area, nearby the doorway. And Dad was like, What happened? and he pointed his gun at Dad on purpose and shot his father. Wow. Oh my God. And initially I think a statement to me is I blew half his arm off.

And keep in mind I'm at the hospital. I really don't know anything about the scene. You don't even know about the freezer at this point. I knew about the freezer. Oh you did. I knew that a body had been seen in the freezer, but I didn't know how many. didn't know the condition of the house, um, or the injuries at that point. And the autopsy would later give some information that would corroborate what James told me about.

blowing his arm off. So he did blow his arm off. He knocked a good chunk of flesh off his arm and did damage his arm pretty well. Oh. But he said Deb was still alive at that point. I think the sustainment is along the lines of well, now I gotta finish him. I gotta kill him and make sure he's dead now.

and he walked up to his dad and pointed a gun at his head and shot him in the head and his were drank I I blew his head off. So we're trying to piece together when this happened. I'm asking him, Hey, do you know what day it is? When did this happen? And he had a rough estimate about what day it was. It was like the twenty-fifth of the month that we were talking. I said, when did all this happen? He goes, thirty-first. I killed my dad on the thirty first.

So we're talking about twenty six days prior he had committed these murders. So we're going back talking about what happened after you killed mom and dad.

I believe first thing he did was he thought, I've shot gunshots in this house. This is a city neighborhood. Houses are all close to each other. And I think his words, it's along the lines of, yeah, I don't know what the fuck happened, but nobody called the cops. How can nobody fucking call the cops? And he was just shocked that the police weren't called. Because nobody had heard the gunshots, is that what it means? Yeah, because he thought for sure somebody would hear the gunshots.

So in preparation for the police coming, he went around the house and gathered up several guns and all the ammunition he could find. Dad owned a couple of guns, so he gathered those up. Gathered all the ammunition down towards the bedroom and his words he was prepared for a standoff with the police and he was gonna shoot it out with the police. So he admits to not only killing his parents, but then saying my plan was to kill as many police as possible as well. Yes.

And he waited and waited and no police showed up. And a couple of days went by and no police He waited for a couple of days? I don't think he waited for a couple of days. He waited for a while, but I think he was prepared over the next couple of days and finally after a couple of days passed he said I guess the cops aren't coming.

I'm gonna go back to using my heroin and hanging out in the house. And what has happened to the bodies?'Cause it's summer, it seems smelly. That's part of the problem. Yeah, that's exactly what he dealt with next. After them stinking up the house for a while and making a general mess. I don't know. I think it was a wood floor if I remember right.

He commented there's blood over the floor. He wanted to clean'em up. So he drugged the bodies out to the garage and cleaned up the surface area of the floor where the bodies had been and left the bodies in the garage for at least a few days. Oh my. Some of the wording he used, I remember some of it, is he remembered what mom and dad's bodies looked like with all the gunshot wounds and all the blood coming out, and he said I didn't want'em to look like a Disneyland attraction.

So I cleaned up their wounds. What part of that looks like a Disneyland attraction? I've only been to Disneyland once, I don't remember any attractions looking remotely as grotesque as I could have. How did you interpret that? What what did he mean by that? It was I think just describing a grotesque scene of just bizarrness. Because he he was afraid, you know, those photos would be taken be all over the news and that people would just be able to do it. I think the lasting image for him.

In his mind was that's his that's how he's gonna remember his mom and dad and if anybody else saw them, whether it be the police taking crime scene photos, he didn't want them looking like this grotesque attraction. So he decided he was gonna clean out their wounds. He didn't go into much of a description, and I didn't know at the time what to ask about how he cleaned out the wounds, but he said he cleaned them up.

He ended up shaving their heads and cleaning as much blood up as possible. And then he said the bodies started to stink. The whole house started to stink up. And it couldn't just be contained to the garage, even though he drug them out there thinking that we'd take care of it.

And he needed to do something else. And he had heard that you could put it in a freezer and that'll take care of the smell. So uh Don, you wanna jump in from here? Well, I talked to the salesman that sold him the freezer. The salesman remembered that he wanted a large freezer and he explained to him that chest freezers were the larger models. and he remembered even commenting laughingly that this freezer that he pointed out to him was big enough you could put a body in this freezer. It's so big.

The salesman did? The salesman didn't. Wasn't it marketed as a two body freezer, actually on the sales floor, if I remember right? Yes. No way. Right. And so James is Paranoid already, he hears this guy refer to the refrigerator as a two-body freezer, and he's like offended and appalled. And why would you say something like that?

thinking they're on to me and this guy's like, Oh, it's just marketing thing, like it's big enough to fit two bodies in. Yeah, the salesman was like, Jeeze, I remember now I mentioned that and I had no idea at the time. What he remembers about that particular customer is that he took such offense to the comment. It is a bizarre assessment of how big your freezer is. Although one I'm gonna give him the benefit of the doubt and think he's thinking like deer. Probably.

And George, didn't he prep these bodies in a very specific manner? Well, he just said he used paper towels and duct tape. To clean up the bodies and then wrapped them in duct tape and then put them in the freezer. So I'm assuming that's just what he did to keep the blood from leaking in the freezer. He packed their wounds with paper towels and their orifices. Every orifice?

Both their anuses were packed with paper towels because they were leaking quite a bit. And mom's vagina was also packed with probably about a half roll of paper towels. Oh my. Um and it was bizarre'cause we're doing the autopsy looking for the wounds and the medical examiner seized this paper towel and And it was not unlike a magician pulling handkerchiefs out of his sleeve. When he began pulling the paper towels, I

So it just kept going. It's just it was disgusting, but it kept coming out and coming out and coming out. And there was at least a half roll paper towels in both mom's vagina and anus as well as dad's anus. Wow. And it it was bizarre, say the least. How much time do you think it took him to prepare his parents? A couple of days, I think. I think a good especially after shaving their heads, wiping other blood, packing every orifice possible to make sure they didn't leak their mouths, their noses.

No, not the eyes. Q-tips in the ears, that's what struck me. I was like, man, he really had to jam those down there'cause they were so far down. Everything he could think of. I don't know if he anticipated using that freezer again later after removing the bodies and didn't want bodily fluids in there or what? I really think it had something I think he was planning on getting those bodies out of there.

So we clearly establish he's the one that shot and killed both mom and daddy, put them in the freezer. So I give the information to Detective Don. They process the scene, they recover the bodies from the freezer. The freezer been on. The bodies are very frozen. They've been in there long enough to get through a really deep freeze. So as part of the crime scene processing, I think we were out there for a couple days, two to three days processing it.

In addition to collecting blood, we removed the bodies and they're sent over to the morgue. How long does it take if you're in a deep freeze to thaw out? It ended up taking about six days. Oh. And I didn't know what to expect. So I went to the morgue the next day for the autopsy. In where we work, the officer of detectives go to the autopsy and watch. We don't participate necessarily in doing much at the examination.

But the medical examiner, I think it's a forensic pathologist, describes as he's doing the work what he's evaluating, what he's seeing. We know that detective Dan has an aversion to bone saws. Do you have a particular aversion to something? Well I don't know if aversion's the right word, but it is a horrible noise. And it's when the time comes to actually do the

removal of the skull cap, I step out of the out of the area a little bit and make sure I'm away from that scene. I'm gonna step out while you just get through this part of the story. But the autopsy part itself is kinda interesting in a lot of cases. You learn a little bit about injury, causation of death, w what to expect on certain injuries. In this case

It was about patients. We go back every day to check and see if the bodies were thawed enough to actually perform the autopsy. Kind of like waiting for the Thanksgiving turkey to defrost. Oh my No. That's a horrible analogy. Why do you have to be present For the actual process. Are you taking notes? I mean they talk you through it. Are you recording that? Why do you have to be there? General knowledge. When I write my reports to articulate an actual crime occurred.

There's nothing more powerful when you're on a witness stand than be able to describe first hand what you observed, whether it's the scene itself, the criminal act being performed, or the result of the criminal act.

All the clothes, anything like that. The pathologist writes his own report. Dictates, I should say. He speaks in a recorder and then writes a report later. Once we were unwrapped the duct tape and the cloth away from the bodies. Where was the duct tape? Like all over the bodies? The whole face was covered.

Uh both faces? Both faces were completely wrapped in towels and duct tape. As if I think he couldn't look at their faces anymore. I think it got to him. I recall hearing that amongst all the other ways that he prepared his parents' dead bodies for the freezer He also put their passports or identification cards

with them, packed in with them. Is that correct? Yeah, and I think that's because he had intended on dumping the bodies somewhere rurally, uh down into a river or the wood a wooded area. He wanted them to be identified at some point. Um, not necessarily linked to him, but I think he wanted that and anything to do with them out of the house. And when we searched the house, I wasn't a big part of the search. I think Detective Dan and Detective Dave were

There was everything from documents to bank statements to all kind he had gone through the house and money, checks, last will and testament. Yeah, and he had left post-it note reminders about what he did on certain days. just randomly placed throughout the house in bedrooms. It was an odd scene. One specific note that I remember photographing and it was in what I believe is his bedroom and w we found two handguns and a rifle in in that room.

He had this note, it was like a checklist and I think number two on the checklist was thank firearms instructor for making me a better shot. Like he had this to do list that he had to take care of and one of the things was to thank the guy who taught him how to shoot. Which tells me there's more to the story about how he killed mom.

And the reason I say that, he shot dad at point blank range. We recovered a bullet from dad's skull during the autopsy. I mean, you're not thinking your firearms destructor from shooting somebody at point blank range. Anybody can do that. From a distance, if you're wanting to kill your mom and you're fifteen, twenty feet down the hallway and you do that, that's what you're thanking your instructor for.

One thing I forgot to mention, and you guys learned a little bit of this at the search, we recovered two uh dead animals from the house. Initially, uh a cat was found in a shed out back, and that was transported to the morgue along with mom and dad. So'cause the cat had been executed or he had killed the cat as well. And the pathologist examined the cat for cause of death and

That's another factor in these cases. You know, y you don't minimize the fact that somebody killed an animal. That's I mean, that's the stuff that builds up to serial killers. You hear the stories about Jeffrey Dahmer killing animals when he was a kid. Yes. It's interesting to note that cat that was bundled up and found in the shed out back.

Dan and I were out front just doing scene security in the middle of these two days that we had searched this house. And so I think it was the second day that we're searching this house. And at some point somebody disturbed this cat or opened the plastic bin that this cat was in. Cause we're out in the front yard and there's just a wave of odor that comes over the house and kind of sweeps by us. And we both had the same look on our face. Somebody just found something else that's dead.

And so we walked around back to the back of the house and Detective Allen at the time had gone through this shed and located another item. We didn't know what it was. We could see hair hanging out that was kind of reddish, sandy blonde, and it was packed up in a fleece blanket with duct tape all around it. And so it's just this ball of smelly, hairy mess.

When we unwrapped it. Were you relieved it wasn't a head? I honestly, after seeing Catherine, the way he taped her head, I mean, her head looked too symmetrical. It looked to me, I was like, I hope that's not a ball under there that he just put where the head would be. And that now we found the head in the backyard. Oh I had looked at her photo before and I saw her hair color and I looked at this bundled up taped up blanket and I was like, That's the same hair color as mom.

I hope this isn't her head. It was a cat. Who undid the tape? I think w we both It took a few of us. Yeah. And mind you, we're in the middle of like a heat wave. It's in the ninety degree range in early summer and the odor is just so overwhelming that you're trying not to gag and you're trying to like Do it as quickly it but as precisely as you can and your gag reflex is going you feel like you're gonna vomit while you're doing it.

It's horrible. There was some talk that he was going to throw'em in the water. Yeah, take'em out in the river somewhere out in the woods and dump'em. So I think he wanted to minimize the amount of evidence left behind in the freezer. If he was gonna keep that freezer He sure as heck didn't want mom and dad's blood in there that would link him to a murder.

Did he ever talk more about what happened and why he did it? No, he didn't. Um, you know, he had articulated to me at the hospital, he was trying to kill himself between the heroin, slitting his wrist and trying to shoot himself on the head. He even articulated as much to the hospital staff. So when we brought him to the jail, we told the folks of the jail, Hey, this guy is suicidal. Keep a close eye on him. He's a murder suspect. Killed his parents.

Let's keep a close eye on him. So he was placed on what's called a suicide watch at the jail and he remained in that suicide watch for a couple days. And describe that for us. Essentially there's different levels depending on how active you're trying to kill yourself. If you just make a statement, I want to die, I just want to die.

I want to kill myself. And don't take action. You'll be placed on a watch to where you're in your single cell area at the jail, and every thirty minutes a jail officer or deputy would go by and check on you and not just look in the window and peer in, but make some kind of contact with you every thirty minutes to make sure you're still alive. Make sure you're breathing, talking, no wounds. In this instance he was put on a fifteen minute

I believe, or even a five minute suicide watch at a certain point, because of the actions he had taken, to where he was pretty much under observation all the time. They would constantly check on him. It wasn't an hourly check, it was regular. Well, after a few days he had uh convinced staff of the jail and it's not just police officer or deputy staff, they have mental health people there and they speak with the inmates and

He had convinced them, Hey, I I'm not suicidal anymore, I'm good to go. So they took him off the suicide watch and it's probably at seven days after the murder, I'm eating lunch and I got a call from commander at the jail saying, Hey, that guy you brought in tried to hang himself today. And we found him, he was unresponsive and brought him to the hospital and he's on life support. He successfully hung himself. And it's

It's a common thing to do in jails. People think you need some kind of tall thing to hang from and People get very creative. You can tie to a doorknob or a handle of some sort and lay on the floor if you really are committed to doing that. Sure. So that's what he had done. He remained in the hospital on uh life support for another I maybe another day at the most. And then he ended up dying at the hospital.

We're never able to get some of those questions answered. More motive questions or the shaved head or some of the oddities of that case really answered. And presuming if you're on suicide watch they take things from you that you could you know, hang yourself with And those things had been removed while he was on the suicide watch. If you're that committed they give you no clothes and you have a suicide blanket and it's just really thick

It's probably a two-inch thick blanket that's sewn together that you can't tie into a knot. You can't tie into things. But you are able to stay warm and cover yourself. But once he convinced staff that he's no longer suicidal, I see. He earned things back like his clothes. And that's all it takes for somebody that's committed to killing themselves. Um, pair of pants is all it took.

Small Town Dix is produced by Zibby Allen and Yardley Smith for Paperclip Limited. With editing from Logan Heftel and Yardley and Zibi. Music for the show was composed by John Forrest. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to us on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, or wherever else. And follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at Smalltown Dicks. Also, visit our website smalltowndicks.com for more information and to leave questions and comments for the team.