The Mark

Pay small town for you. It's Yardley. I want to remind you that if you want access to Community Forum and other behind the scenes goodies? Slash superfam and then right hand corner. that says join. And listen to the end of today's episode for a sneak down.

Hey small town fam, it's Yardley. How are you guys? I hope you're all wonderfully well and I hope you're ready for a cracking episode because retired Orange County Homicide DA Matt Murphy is on the microphone today, and he brings us a murder case with a motive as old as time. It's often said that murder is committed for one of three reasons: love, money, or pride.

Of course, there are also people who are just plain evil out there, but this is not one of those crimes. There are no perplexing nuances about the suspect. In this case, it's just unremarkable self-serving greed. Matt, of course, tells this story with the energy and insight he's known for, both on television and in his memoir, The Book of Murder.

And while I would never tell you to sit back and enjoy a story about murder, I won't fault you for cheering on the good guys as they methodically follow the evidence and the crime Come spectacularly into focus. Here is Hi there, I'm Yardley. I'm Dan. I'm Dave. And I'm Paul. And this is Small Town Dix. Dave and I are identical twins and retired detectives from Smalltown USA. And I'm a veteran cold case investigator who helped catch the Golden State Killer using a revolutionary DNA tool.

Between them. three of us we've investigated thousands of crimes from petty theft to sexual assault child abuse to murder each case we cover is told by the detective who investigated it offering a rare personal account of how they solved the crime places and certain details have been changed to protect the privacy of victims and their families.

And although we're aware that some of our listeners may be familiar with these cases, we ask you to please join us in continuing to protect the true identities of those involved out of respect for what they've been through. Thank you. Hound dicks. You guys are lucky because I'm here with the A-Team. I have Detective Dan. Hello there. Hello. Hello you. I'm Detective Dave. Hello team. Uh teammate. And we have the one and only Paul Holes. Hello all. Hello, PH. Um, and small town fam.

This is such a good day. We love having this guy on the podcast. You do too. And he's all over your television. He's on your bookshelf. Today we have returning guests. Fun and fabulous. Retired senior deputy DA for Orange County Homicide Unit. That's a lot of words, Matt Murphy. Fun, fabulous, and spry. Spry. He's ever so spry. Having landed in his uh current location at four o'clock this morning, which was not that many hours ago, my friends.

and yet he is cracking on, as the English say. Matt, we're so happy to see you again. Happy to be back. It's always great. Uh you're an author, you're on twenty twenty as a commentator, pundit, and how fun to be even busier in retirement. Then perhaps you were when you were working for the Orange County DA, it reminds me of the one and only Paul Holes, who's the other busiest retired guy I know. Yeah.

And we are so excited and honored to have you sit down with us again today, Matt. So please tell us how this case came to you.

So this is a really interesting one. So I rotated into the homicide unit of Orange County in uh two thousand two. And the way it works for your listeners is it's a vertical unit, which means you get assigned certain cities. So I had Newport Beach, Costa Mesa, Laguna, and Irvine. So any murders that happen in those cities.

were automatically assigned to me. So when a murder happens that night, you roll out, you work it up with the warrants and you go out with your investigator and you work with the lead detectives. You file the case, you present the case in court, you try it, you do everything on the case. Which is a way better way to do it. But another part of that gig that nobody really talks about is you also get the old cases for that department. So you get to review cold cases.

And eventually they made me one of the two designated coal case deputies for the whole county. But before I did that, I got to meet with my detectives who'd been in the unit for you know, a couple of years and I'd had a bunch of murder convictions under my belt at that point and I don't know if my case would was low or what, but um we went down there and we decided to start looking through dusty old boxes. And the boxes it's like that scene from Indiana Jones, you know, where they

They go into the warehouse at the end and they they file the arc away. It's kinda like that. You get into the evidence room and some of these boxes have not been opened in sometimes decades. So This involved a case with a guy named Bill McLaughlin. And Bill McLaughlin was a really successful businessman who was in the pharmaceutical industry. And he was involved in the development of a new medical technology, new at the time. It was the centrifuge that separates plasma from blood.

And as we've all seen, if you've been to the doctor for a PRP shot, whether cosmetic or for a knee or a shoulder, and I've had both of those, um, that's the technology that he put together with his partner. It was revolutionary, it had huge impact on people being able to give blood and it would remove the plasma, put the actual heme right back in, so it made it a lot more simple, a lot healthier.

And they saved lives. And they also in this process became fabulously wealthy. So Bill McLaughlin, he'd been married for 30 years. He had three beautiful kids. And they lived in this bayside home in a place called Balboa Coves, right next to the Newport Beach Peninsula in Newport Beach, California. Newport Beach is one of the wealthiest and nicest places in the whole world. I mean it's the type of place where you have

multi-million dollar beautiful mansions with its own private boat dock with a yacht next to it. I mean it is really something And I was responsible for all their murder cases. So when we started looking at this case, it got really, really interesting really fast. And essentially what happened was Bill McLaughlin, right before Christmas in nineteen ninety four, somebody came into his house and shot him six times with a nine millimeter handgun.

and it was an automatic handgun, so all the shell casings were expended at the scene and this person got away and Tragically at the time, Bill uh his son had been struck by a drunk driver, his son Kevin. So Kevin was like your quintessential Southern California kid. He's very handsome, he's a water polo player, he was a surfer. and he had this horrific accident where he was skateboarding and he got struck by a drunk driver. Did he live?

He lived, but he had really substantial brain injuries that required round the clock care for a while and then as he recovered, he had a permanent speech impediment and he also had difficulty walking and moving. So he was home when this happened. He wasn't supposed to be, but he was home that night. And so the shooting happens, and by the time Kevin made it downstairs.

The killer was gone, and he made one of the most heartbreaking nine on one calls I've ever heard because you know his speech impediment his speech was slow, he almost sounded drunk and You know, nine one one dispatchers, um, they deal with some really difficult people and some of them get a little jaded. And fortunately, this woman was wonderful. The nine one one dispatcher, she was so patient.

And it sounded like he said, My dog has been shot. Kevin was trying to say, My dad has been shot and finally he articulated it well enough and Newport was on the way there. And they got there so Bill McLaughlin was dead by the time paramedics arrived and they were there very quickly, but he he'd been shot six times. And they had the shell casings, they had the bullets, and They didn't have much of anything else. There was no DNA, there was no video, and the killer had gotten away.

In addition to the expanded shell casings, there were two clues at the scene. There was a freshly cut key to the front door. It was from an ACE hardware store. This is a gated community. There was a pedestrian gate that people could leave the community and walk out onto the bike path and over the bridge to get onto the peninsula. There was a community-issued pedestrian access key that had been dropped on the mat.

So one key is dropped on the on the doormat and the other is in the actual deadbolt for the door. So the killer had keys to the house. Now it turns out Bill at the time was involved in some really contentious litigation with his former business partner. It was over royalties for this device and they'd they'd had a professional falling out and at the end of this very lengthy, very kind of nasty litigation between the two of them.

Um the court had just given what's called an indicated ruling where the court said essentially I'm gonna rule in favor of Bill McLaughlin on this. unless, you know, you guys can talk me out of it in the next hearing or whatever. So essentially that's the moment that everybody is looking for. You get an indicator that you're gonna win. And the court hadn't officially ruled yet, but it was impending.

There were tens of millions of dollars at stake in this litigation and this is in nineteen ninety four and it looked like Bill was gonna win. What's Bill's former business partner's name? His name is Hal Fischel, and I should say right now that Hal Fischel had nothing to do with this murder, but he was initially considered a suspect of great interest.

He instantly provided an absolutely rock solid alibi and that was immediately verified by the police. And as soon as they eliminated him as a suspect, they had nothing else.

Now, Bill had been divorced a couple of years earlier, and he began dating this woman named Nanette Johnston. And she was much younger than he was. Bill was fifty-four. She was in her mid twenties, but they had this relationship and she had a couple of kids of her own. that she moved into the house. Bill's kids, uh Kevin was still living there because of his disability, but Bill's daughters, Jenny and Kim, they're young adults, sort of moved out of the house.

So about an hour after the shooting, as you can imagine, you know, every police car in Newport Beach is outside this very nice home. A woman pulled up who identified herself as Bill's fiancee, and that was Nanette Johnston. So she comes up and she's sitting outside and people deal with grief differently. And I know the guys can attest to this. You never really know how

a loved one is going to react when they find out that somebody close to them has been murdered. But even for experienced police officers, and this was a great bunch of no nonsense, hard hitting detectives. Nanette seemed to be very cold, and she didn't cry, she didn't react. She simply asked if she could get clothes.

to spend the night in a beach house that Bill had purchased on 54th Street in Newport Beach, which is some of the most expensive real estate in the entire world. So he owned a beach house down the road and she wanted to get stuff.

for the beach house. Well to bring her into the house, they would have walked her right by that key in the door and right by the key on the mat because they hadn't moved those yet. They brought her in to get stuff. But before they let her do that, they processed the scene for an hour. So she sat out in her car for an hour and this is back in the car phone days, before we all had cell phones. A big brick. Right. Yeah. Okay, Only rich people had that.

Yeah, only risk people back in the day. I did not have one. But what was interesting later when we looked at the phone records that she sat out there for an hour knowing that Bill was dead, Nanette didn't call anybody. Which was really kinda interesting. And again, people respond to grief differently, but she sat there in the car for an hour and let nobody know that Bill was murdered, which is You know, I think the guys would agree we have a word for that. It's called a clue. Yeah.

And they really love their dad. These are two of the nicest people I've ever met. They're just wonderful human beings. And they love their dad. And as they start trying to untangle The financial situation and money had been set aside for Kevin's care, they discover that there's no money.

in Bill's accounts. Now he got paid royalties, but a lot of those were on hold because of this lawsuit. So when Kim and Jenny get into Bill's bank accounts, They expected to find, you know, a couple of million dollars liquid and instead they find almost no money. And what they do discover is they find that there are A bunch of checks.

that were written by Nanette against a joint checking account. So there was his main account that the royalties for this business would come into. And there was also a joint checking account that Nanette had convinced Bill to open up. So what she was doing is she was transferring money from Bill's main account where all the money was.

into a joint checking account held by Bill McLaughlin. So basically like if you write a check for a whole bunch of money, the bank may take notice. But if you're just transferring money in between your accounts That's not the type of thing in the banking world that necessarily sets off red flags. And she had access to the joint checking account. So as the two daughters are looking through this, this is Weeks after the murder, they see that Nanette had been taking

Tens of thousands of dollars from the main account, all culminating in a two hundred and fifty thousand dollar check that was dated December fourteenth, the day before the murder. So this is all kind of stacking up evidence. When I was on the job, I spent years running on bad coffee and not much else. But now I've noticed that when my energy is off or I can't focus, it isn't a lack of sleep. It's hydration. That's why I'm glad I found Drip Drop.

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The police put in a net under surveillance. They're watching the beach house, and as they're watching the beach house, some dude pulls up in a black Nissan Pathfinder and he's a big guy. He looks like Santa with this s like sack of presents, Christmas presents, slung over his shoulder. And he walks into the beach house with all these Present.

So they write down the license plate number and it comes back to a guy named Eric Naposky. Eric Naposky played outside linebacker for the New England Patriots. And then he was a journeyman going through the NFL. He played for a time for the Dallas Cowboys and he kind of bounced around. Um, he injured his groin and they say the NFL stands for not for long and he was one of those guys and he

just couldn't quite make it in the NFL, but he was a physical specimen. He was about six three, two hundred and fifty pounds, not an ounce of fat on his body. So they see that he has an outstanding warrant because he FTA'd or failed to appear on some minor traffic violation. So they pull him over and they talk to him. Okay. So back then in 1994, the shell casings could be traced back to one of 17 different kinds of handguns.

The nine millimeter Lugar round is one of the most ubiquitous ammunition or bullets that's manufactured in the world. And um there were seventeen possible guns that could have expended the shell casings back in nineteen ninety-four technology. In this interview with Naposki, he says, and this is a little complicated here, so stick with me, listeners, um, they ask him if he has any connection to firearms.

And he originally says no. And then about half an hour later in the interview they say, so just to be clear, no connection to guns, you've never owned a gun and he goes, No, no, no. I I had a three eighty that I bought when I was playing for Dallas. in Texas, but I gave that to my dad who got mugged in New York. So I sent that out to him. So he's got that gun.

So then like forty-five minutes later, they're like, Okay, so just the 380. And at that point he's like, Well, there was this nine millimeter that I had. Okay, now nobody knows that the nine millimeter is used in the murder. And so my very good detectives were like, well, dude, why didn't you tell us that an hour ago? And what's the story with your gun? And he goes, Well, what happened was I do security. He's basically working as a personal trainer and basically a bouncer at the time.

And he said in that interview, first he said that he and Nanette were friends and by the end of the interview, it turns out that they were boyfriend, girlfriend, which is also interesting that he didn't want to reveal that at the beginning. So going back to the guns, he goes, Yeah, I did a security job where I hired my friend Joe David Jimenez was the guy's name. Joe David Jimenez worked a security job for me and I gave him the nine millimeter to use and he got it stolen out of his car.

So I don't have the nine millimeter anymore and the three eighty is with my dad in New York. Unreported stolen also. Right. Nothing's reported stolen. Right. Yeah. Nothing's reported stolen.

So my detectives do what detectives do, and they make a beeline for Joe David Jimenez, who's a real guy. And this is where it gets really interesting. So Jimenez says, Yes, it's true I did work a security job for Eric Naposky. Yes, it's true he gave me a gun, and yes, it's true I told him that the gun got stolen out of my car.

Eric didn't pay me for the job. He stiffed me. So what I actually did is I sold the gun he gave me. And the gun he gave me wasn't a Nice Beretta nine millimeter like he explained, which for the listener, that's a high quality firearm. He gave me a piece of crap Jennings three eighty, which is the gun that Naposki said he gave to his dad. He gave me this three eighty, oh, and I can get it back if you guys want it.

So he recovers the three eighty. And another thing that'll be interesting to the guys here, the ammunition. Remember they recovered the bullets at the scene. The ammunition was federal hydroshock ammunition. And for those who don't know, that is a vicious round. It vi it violates the Geneva Convention. It's as if somebody with a really diabolical mind decided to make the most vicious bullet imaginable. And what it is is it is a

It's a round that has a metal post in the middle, and it's designed to mushroom. So what happens is the copper jacket on the side of the bullet is designed to expand into a star shape. But the center punch, this post in the middle of the bullet, will keep penetrating human flesh. So it expands and it is designed to cause as much damage as possible. It's not cheap ammunition.

And it's a very particular type. And when they recover the gun, the three eighty from Joe David Jimenez, it is also loaded with Federal Hydro Shock Ammunition. So Matt Jimenez's story about the gun. which Eric loaned him, checks out, and that proves that Eric was lying about giving the three eighty to his dad. And since Jimenace has no connection to the victim bill, he basically drops off the suspect list and Eric

stays at the top. Yep. And what happened to the gun you think Eric actually used to kill Bill? Maybe Eric threw the gun over the bridge. So we searched that friggin' channel. We had the Navy search the channel. We searched that channel probably a dozen times. So I I would think the same thing. He threw it over the bridge and maybe maybe it's still there.

So also as we looked into Nanette and Eric, their relationship, they met at a place called the Sporting Club Irvine, which is a fancy gym close to Newport Beach. And they met there sometime in like nineteen ninety-three, probably. They'd been having an affair for about a year. And she was getting increasingly brazen with him. Like she started bringing him to her son's baseball games in Newport Beach, you know, and kind of getting increasingly cocky about her relationship. And when you overlay

her theft from Bill's bank account with her public appearances with Naposky and she's took him on trips and they went to New York to visit his family and like It was almost like as the relationship progressed, the thefts got more and more, the dollar amounts got higher, they got more frequent.

When you overlap it, it's like, oh, and then she went to New York with Naposky and we had pictures of that. And oh, then she took Naposky to her sister's wedding and oh there's a seventeen thousand dollar check before that you really see the progression. of these two things happening. So it's almost like one of those algebra problems from when we're in school, right? With the two trains. One train leaves Albuquerque

At four o'clock the other leaves Chicago, which one gets to Oklahoma first? You know, and I by the way I could never figure out the answer to that question, um,'cause that's why I went to law school'cause I suck at math. But um But it's like the same thing. Like, what is Bill McLaughlin gonna figure out first? That this woman is stealing from him or that she's cheating on him? And either way, he's a good-looking guy with.

More money than God in Newport Beach. So she's gonna be out the door as soon as he figures either one of those things out. Unless of course he dies. Right? Unless of course something happens where he dies.

So this is all known at the time back in nineteen ninety four and in nineteen ninety five. So my predecessors in the office. look at it and they say, Okay, well, Nanette stole from Bill McLaughlin, so we can prosecute her for fraud and forgery and Naposky clearly lied about his gun. But is that enough to charge him for this murder? And the decision back in the day was no.

So Nanette wound up doing about six months for the fraud and the forgery. And Nanette and Eric remained together as a couple for about a year. She got about a million dollars. From the life insurance for Bill McLaughlin. She had a provision in his will, I think for another one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. She inherited this convertible Lexus that he bought for her and she had the right to live in the beach house rent free for one year.

all pursuant to his death. So she's got all this money and then while she's in custody, she also filed a lawsuit against his family. It's called a palomony suit because they've been together for a few years at this point, demanding half of his entire estate. Which included the money that had been set aside for Kevin's care. Remember Kevin with his brain damage. So that was the state of the case when we opened up those dusty boxes because it had been fifteen years.

And just to give you an idea of Jenny and Kim McLaughlin and what kind of people they were, Newport is an absolutely outstanding police agency. It really is. And in fact, one of the detectives I work with is named Joe Cartwright. He's the current chief.

of the Newport Beach Police Department. So all this time goes by and what they would do every year on the anniversary of their dad's murder is they would send cookies to the Newport Beach Police Department. Uh-huh. That was their way of reminding them, don't forget about my dad. And so I bring in my investigator is a guy named Larry Montgomery who Josh Mankowitz on Dateline. Love Josh! I love Josh too. Josh dubbed him the evidence whisperer because Larry it's like

Some people were put on like there's a surfer named Kelly Slater who was and he was made by God to be a surfer, you know, or like Tiger Woods was made to be a golfer. Larry Montgomery was made to be a cold case detective. Do you know him, Paul? I do, actually. Larry and I crossed pass because of a Golden State killer. But at the time we crossed pass, it was known as East Area Rapist.

And when I was trying to pursue a lead I was given back in nineteen ninety seven, that the East Area rapists may have gone down south and started killing. Ultimately, I landed on the desk phone of Larry Montgomery, who is handling the two Irvine cases, Manuela Whitun and Janelle Cruz. And Larry was the one who actually pointed me to the Orange County Sheriff's Crime Lab who had DNA evidence.

from the Orange County cases. And in two thousand and one that's how I was able to link the Contra Costa DNA From the rapes of the East Air rapists to the unsolved homicides of the original night stalker down south. So Larry Montgomery was critical in that process.

Wow. Yeah. So Larry Montgomery, he's a legend. So he starts going to work with Joe, and we worked the case up for almost two years as we're putting them all together. And this I think will be interesting to everybody. Um You know, first thing we did of course is we want DNA, right? Like all this technology, all this modern forensics, all that.

So we submit the casings for DNA and the crime I've laughed at me. And I didn't know this and of course we all know this now. All DNA burns off an expenditure casing'cause it's just too hot, right? And then it's like, well Maybe fingerprints? And of course there are no fingerprints on'em, so we got nothing there. So I'm hoping, you know, like drum roll for this brass key that was stuck in the door.

But another thing is bronze or brass, it interacts biologically. Like silver does the same thing. It kills bacteria, it kills biological material. So, DNA will not typically remain on certain metals, including the metal that the keys were made out of. So we struck out again no DNA on the keys. But we resubmitted the casings to the crime lab. Now that 17 guns that it could have been back in 1994 comes back to one gun, and that's a Beretta 92F, which was the exact same gun that Eric lied about.

So now I'm looking at this thinking I'm in the hunt because he's got a gun he lied about and I've got an expert who will say that model was the gun that was used in the murder. And the only problem is is that the Beretta ninety two F was also known as the M nine. It was adopted by the U.S. military as the sidearm for their officers for a couple of decades.

And that is one of the most widely manufactured guns in the world. So we've got kind of rarish ammo, but I have a gun that is very, very popular But we we learned some more things. We learned that Eric Naposky, two weeks before our murder, got a job at a place called the Thunderbird Nightclub on the Newport Beach Peninsula, which was about a hundred and thirty yards away from our murder scene.

on the night of the murder. A hundred and thirty yards is literally right across the channel, right on the peninsula. And he was working that night and he took that job two weeks before the killing. So again, not enough to file maybe right then and there, but the pieces start coming together. And then Larry comes into my office one day and he sits down and he's like

We've got her, referring to Nanette. We've got her. And there was a report written during the surveillance of Nanette Johnston back in nineteen ninety-four. Okay, and what it was was it was My friend Dave Byington, who wound up being the lead on the Tom and Jackie Hawks murder case, which we've talked about.

And he was the CAP of the Crimes Against Persons sergeant in Newport. He's just a wonderful detective and a wonderful guy. But he was an undercover narcotics officer. He was young back in nineteen ninety-four. And he was assigned to watch the beach house. with Nanette in it.

So there's like a half page report that was in the middle of all these documents that Larry walked into my office with. And I'd read it before, but it just didn't mean anything. And it's basically like it was the night before the funeral. And Nanette had brought her children to Newport the night before the funeral, even though the father of her kids lived nearby in Southern California. She brought the kids and they spent the night in the beach house.

And it was Christmas time and it was I observed suspect Nanette decorating the Christmas tree and I could see her two children inside and that was it. It was just basically like a log entry pretty much of the surveillance. And Larry, Larry was a three-dimensional thinker. And he goes, let's think about this. She's a horrible person who had ripped off a bunch of ex-boyfriends. And like she was with one guy when he came home from a trip to Vegas.

She'd moved out and taken all the furniture and everything of value with her. Like she had this very pronounced history of really pissing people off. Nanette had plenty of enemies. So if she was innocent with her background, why would Nanette, as Larry pitched to me, why would she not think the killer might not have been there to get her?

And that bill just got in the way. And Larry, being Larry, goes through all of her checks and found that she didn't change the locks on the beach house for thirty three more days. And by all accounts she was a devoted mother. So with a killer on the loose, with a key to one house

There she is. She brought her kids to the last place in all of Orange County where she's gonna let those children be if there's a killer on the loose that might wanna kill her who might just have a key to the beach house. And she didn't even draw the curtains. And then we start thinking, Well, neither did Eric, Mr. Security Bouncer Guy. His head wasn't on a swivel either when he walked into the same beach house and that's one of those things that

When I ultimately argued the case to the jury and you explain that it's not forensic science, it's not DNA statistics, it's not anything like that. It's good old fashioned common sense where a jury's gonna go, yeah, wait a minute. If she was innocent, why is she gonna be at a beach house where the killer might have access and why would she be exposing her kids to that?

And as I'm explaining that to the jury ultimately, I see one of'em start to nod and then another, and before I know it, I'm stirring at twelve bobbing heads, and it's like, Oh, I got this chick now. After years of working odd hours as a detective, I never built much of a cooking routine. Home Chef has actually helped me fix that. They deliver fresh, pre-portioned ingredients with simple recipes that make it easy to put.

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So we decide that we're gonna charge Nanette and Eric. I'll share this with you guys. So Kim and Jenny have been waiting for fifteen years for there to be justice for their dad. And Kevin, after the murder of his father, he moved to Hawaii where his mom moved after the divorce, and he's living with his mom. and Kevin tragically drowned trying to swim outside of their property in Hawaii. So this is just multi levels of tragedy for these women. And Larry and I called Kim

to tell her that we'd filed charges and this is good news for them. And they've been waiting all this time. And and imagine that too. As soon as they discovered the thefts, these women knew. That Nanette killed their dad for money. They knew that. And by the way, that palomony suit that Nanette filed, they had to settle that to make her go away.

So Nanette got money as a result of this and had gone on with her life. Fifteen years she got married to a guy in Orange County who's also very wealthy. She had a kid with him, and then she got married again and she had a new husband who was completely in the dark. Who knew nothing about that she was ever a suspect or was convicted of fraud. And so meanwhile, these women, the daughters, have been waiting all this time. So we called Kim.

And it was like Hey Kemp, just wanted to let you know that we've filed charges on the case. And there's this pause and she said For what? And I said, Well, for the murder of your dad. And then there's another pause and she said against who? And it's like, Well, Nanette and Eric and she cried and cried and cried and cried. It was one of my most poignant moments as a prosecutor in my entire career. So we sent out two teams. Eric had moved back to Connecticut. So we sent a team out to Eric.

to arrest him in the hopes that he would be willing to stiff a phone call in to Nanette. And still we don't have DNA. We never recovered the weapon. They both denied it. There's no smoking gun, so to speak. It's a collage of evidence against them. So we send this team out to Connecticut. and they arrest Naposky and they take him into this little room and he was very, very angry about the arrest and he was essentially yelling at

Joe Cartwright and Larry Montgomery and they're like, look, we're gonna give you a chance here, do the right thing, call Nanette and, you know, get her to admit what you guys did. He's like, You know I didn't do this. You know I didn't do this just adamant and aggressive and he got so worked up. He had some sort of a medical event and they had to transport him to the emergency room. So then I give the green light at this point. It's like okay, we got nothing out of them.

Orange County team go arrest Nanette. Now there's a three hour time difference. They arrested Eric on his way to the gym very early in the morning. So now there's a knock on the door at Annette's home and it's a beautiful home in a place called La Dara Ranch. She's gone from husband to husband since this murder. Everybody that she's married has tons of dough. So she's been living literally this very privileged life of a stay at home.

Orange County mom with wealthy husbands from Bill McLaughlin forward and she's done very well for herself. And we hit the door at about seven o'clock in the morning before she does the time to put on any makeup or anything, right? Um And so now fast forward our

Junior undercover narcotics detective from fifteen years before is now the great Dave Byington, who's in charge of the homicide unit at the Newport Beach Police Department. And he knocks on the door and he's also another guy who's really funny and he says. Hi Nanette, remember me? And she says, no. And he said, Well, I remember you, and we're here to arrest you. And she says, for what? And he said, for murder. And she said, for which murder? Yeah.

And Tabe says, Well, I don't know how many you committed, but I'm here to arrest you for the murder of Bill McLaughlin. And she tried to close the door on his foot. So she got hooked. And um, so her her mugshot. The one that has gone out widely in the media is Nanette at her seven AM worst. And I can't imagine my officers thought about that before they arrested this incredibly vain woman. I have a question for you, Matt. If Nanette has had several wealthy husbands in this relatively

exclusive, not very big community, don't they talk and go, Oh, you don't want to marry that one. One boyfriend died, she just runs through men like, you know, they're tissue paper. It seems odd to me. It has to be the question that everybody is thinking, right? And the answer is so this murder happened in nineteen ninety-four. So that's pre social media. And also N Johnson was her married name. Um

after living with that case for as many years as I have I can't even remember what her maiden name was, and she would change her name with every husband. So she went from Johnston to Nanette Packard to Nanette O'Neal and she was sentenced To jail for her fraud conviction as Nanette Johnston, and she didn't use that name anymore. But what's interesting, and it's a great question, because

When we arraigned her, she of course was very active in her church, right? And one of my detectives get a word for it, Hippocristian. Right. So she's she's super active in her church and our first hearing there was about fifty people from her church who figured that we got it all wrong. Like they know the real Nanette. And in truth, between Newport Police Department, Larry Montgomery, who Paul, you know, best of the best,

When it comes to cold case stuff. And I mean, we worked it for about two years. I knew everything about that woman. And I knew everything about Naposky. I'd listened to every interview a million times, and so did Larry. My cops were the A team on this. So all these people show up and they're pitching for bail. Now this is a special circumicides, so statutorily the net is not entitled to bail.

So they're like, Please, Your Honor, let her out and one after another after another. And at the end the judge, who's a really good judge, turned to me and he's like, Mr. Murphy, would you like to respond? And it's like, you know what, Your Honor, all of these people mean well. As soon as they go home today and they start Googling the history of this case and this woman's involvement, my bet is not a single one of them are gonna show up at the next hearing.

That was me inviting them, Hey folks, go do a little research on your girl here. And none of them showed up. Her husband and her daughter were the only people that came to the next hearing. So um we tried Eric first. Eric had a team from New York that came out and it's a a guy named John Papillardo, another guy named Angelo McDonald. Absolutely phenomenal lawyers. I mean, you you can't ask for a better defense team. And we we went at it.

As the judge put it, this was what would be commonly known as a circumstantial evidence case. But the judge commented at the end and he said this is an overwhelmingly compelling circumstantial evidence case against Eric Naposky and the jury convicted him. How long were they out? Four hours, I think. It was very fast. It was very fast. Yep. And he blamed Nanette the whole time, saying, Yeah, Bill McLaughlin was murdered, but it was Nanette that did it. It was Nanette that did it.

Did Eric actually say I had absolutely nothing to do with it? I didn't pull the trigger, I didn't know the plan. Did Eric try to absolve himself entirely? Another great question. You would have been a really good detective. You know that? Um I'm sure that's not the first time you've heard that. Eric wanted to do a post conviction interview with us on that exact point.

Okay, so that's that's a really astute question. So we gather up our everybody and Larry and I go to Theo Lacey jail in Orange County. So this is in between the conviction and the sentencing. And you know, after saying over and over again in his interviews, I had nothing to do with it, and it turned into, okay, okay, okay, would you believe? NANETT DID IT And she introduced me to a hitman and we had lunch where they told me what the plan was and they wanted to use my gun, so I let'em use my gun.

But I had nothing to do with it. Eric essentially was trying to deny he was the shooter. But it's life without possibility of parole anyway, because it was murder for financial gain. And in telling us this new story, he just made himself a co conspirator who supplied the murder weapon, which by the way, is absurd in its own right because How many hitmen need to borrow your effing gun to go and commit a murder? I mean, come on.

Yeah, and I like when the the folks who are doing the hiring are like, Hey, I have a gun that's been in the family for a long time. I'd like to give this to you to use on a crime that's gonna benefit me financially. Right, right. Just happens to be that it's a gunless hitman. Right. So the jury convicted him and Naposki really

It it's funny because so many of the people that the guys have arrested or that I've prosecuted over the years, they almost see you as just like a role player. You're sort of a cog in the wheel. And they don't really personalize it much. Eric Naposky hated me. To this day, he frickin' hates me. You know, as they were leading him away at sentencing, he turned around to me and he said, You fuckin' blew it, Murphy. You fuckin' blew it. And I got to say 拜拜

Yeah. So he's uh he's sentenced to life without possibility of parole. And then we tried Nanette next and her defense lawyer is a guy named Mick Hill, who's a public defender and again, as good a trial lawyer as they come. I mean, this guy was nails. And Eric tried to blame Nanette. and say he was innocent and then Nanette did the same thing and tried to claim that Eric was a jealous boyfriend, but we come full circle to that Christmas tree thing, as well as a bunch of other things. But um

Nanette Johnston murdered her boyfriend. And if you look at it, it's the plot to an old movie with William Hurt and Kathleen Turner called Body Heat. Yep. For any of your viewers that haven't seen it, it's really, really good.

Rich, wealthy guy has young, beautiful girlfriend who on the side manipulates a young man who thinks that he's in love with her, along with a whole bunch of stories about how she's being abused or he's cruel or whatever it is into murdering the rich guy and then the killer, the young man, gets

Stuck holding the bag and the woman makes off with all the money at the end. The only difference between this story and those is that we got her and him. And they're both convicted, they're both sentenced to life without possibility of parole. And Hopefully my fair state of California doesn't ever release that woman. Can I ask you a question about this palomony suit that Nanette brought against McLaughlin or against his estate? So

McLaughlin, Bill McLaughlin didn't actually adopt Nanette's children. They weren't together for, you know, the seven year common law thing in California. Right. they weren't together that long. Is it just because they had this joint bank account that there was this assumption made that they were closer and therefore she deserved more than what she was getting? What's the basis of that ruling?

She claimed, and this is great, right? Because she literally killed the only person that could contradict it. She claimed that he'd promised her that. Oh for God's sake. Right. That becomes a tribal issue of fact in the state of California, so that would survive a motion for summary judgment because there was evidence theoretically in the form of her testimony that this was a promise that was made by him. You could say anything though.

Well, the the really disgusting thing about this is she's already been tried and convicted of stealing from him and she's still gonna get palomony. Matt, when you described Nanette getting a public defender for her trial. Yeah. After all of this, she gets a public defender. Yep. Unbelievable. When you're motivated by money and life, it's amazing how fast those people will burn through it too. She bought motorcycles and this house and she burned through that money very, very fast.

Same. Behind the scenes, Bill McLaughlin contributed to the world. He was a good man. His contribution to medical science was immense. He saved the world. thousands and thousands of lives with this technology. And most importantly, he had a family who loved him and he had his daughters who really, really loved their dad. And, you know, this woman entered their life and

murdered him and put this whole plot together. And um yeah, and fortunately, you know, every once in a while the good guys win. And this was one where I had absolutely excellent detectives who put this thing together from Joe Cartwright the whole crew at Newport PD and then the evidence whisperer Larry Montgomery. And all those guys came together and made me look really good um by putting the case together for me. Matt, you mentioned um Bill McLaughlin's daughters and having to sit there for

ten to fifteen years knowing exactly who was involved in the murder of their father, but not ever having the resolution of the case. I imagine it was the same for the folks working the case back. To put someone on surveillance right after a murder kind of gives you an idea of where the detectives where their heads were the night of the murder to go.

We should probably keep an eye on this lady. To have to sit on that kind of knowledge for the detectives and the prosecutors and then the victim's family. That's the stuff that when you had said it. And you mentioned, hey, we're gonna make an arrest on these two people. I got tingles because those are the moments that you take with you after retirement those moments when you're like, I just made a huge difference in their life and it feels good is what I'm saying.

Yeah, and on two different ways, right, Dave? It's like on one hand, you're catching the bad guy and they're not gonna get away with it. And there really is a sense of justice whether there's a family involved or not. But there's an image that you guys can Google or the viewers can Google. It's a photo by the Orange County Register of Kim McLaughlin with her husband, Smokey. He had long hair, he's a surfer and

It's the moment that the jury came back in guilty. It's an image that when I'm down and things are against me and things aren't going well, and you know, I will look that photo up because it is so poignant where you just see this.

look of utter relief and gratitude and Smoky is leaning back like Thank God with this journey and that's what a lot of people really, you know, they They don't understand unless they've gone through it themselves that multi-generational ripple effect of what happens when somebody's murdered. One of my favorite things about doing this podcast, particularly with these cold cases, seeing all the puzzle pieces fit together, I always liken it to you have a thousand piece puzzle

And it either has no picture or they're all turned over so you can't see the picture. So that doesn't help you put any of the pieces together and yet somehow you all figure out how to make it square. It's remarkable.

Yeah, well good detectives, they're the unsung heroes on on these. And and as a prosecutor, you're the guy that gets to stand up with the cameras and the lights and do podcasts years later and like talk about the case. Uh but I had some of the best police officers working for me on this. Thank you so much, Matt, for sitting down with us again. It's always a joy to see you. Matt, great work. Always enjoy having you on. I appreciate that.

Now Matt, you know, I think one thing that stood out as you were telling this case was How close you got to the victim's family. You know, that really tells me that there's an empathy there. And I've always said when it comes to homicide investigators, the best ones, have true empathy. because now they're attached and they won't let go of the case. And to hear a prosecutor But that I think is compelling and it speaks volumes to who you are as a person.

Oh thanks. They send me cookies on my birthday every year. The cookies went from going to Newport to now they're in my kitchen, adding to my waistline. Uh great to see you again. Um again, always great story. And uh we look forward to seeing you soon. Soon. Yeah, always fun guys. I'm a huge fan of the pod and uh yeah, I I can't wait to come back. Now for a sneak peek at today's new bonus episode.

We haven't seen any video of the burglar leaving, and I think that's pretty telling. And I think that the FBI and Pima County Sheriff's Office is keeping that on the down low, if there in fact is footage. Right. I did read a headline today. The sheriff is quoted as saying it could take days, weeks, even years to find who has perpetrated this crime. We'll never stop looking. That wasn't actually great news.

Yeah, there's lots of issues with this case. Timeline wise, you know, my takeaway from this case is I don't trust any of the information that's come out. bonus episode and access hundreds more. Smalltown Dicks was created by Detectives Dan and Dave. The podcast is produced by Jessica Halstedt and me, Yardley Smith. Our senior editor is Soren Bajan, and our editor is Christina Bracamante.

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