Episode 338

Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence, and is not intended for all audiences.

Listener discretion is advised.

A man man should never be count when it comes to a Female's never.

Been a man.

Come take a load off, put your feet up, and listen to some murder. What a stupid thing to say. This is season thirteen, episode three, and thirty eight of Sword and Scales show that reveals it the worst monsters are real. If you're a fan of true crime, I invite you to check out our brand new YouTube channel where you could subscribe and the opposite way you can on our website. See on our website you can subscribe for ten bucks for audio and then add video for

Want one to special shoopini police fire ems.

Oh we just got stabbed more chickensaw as.

I'm sorry, I said, we just got sad?

Who just got that?

The call almost sounded like a hoax. The child calling in was so calm and said she lived on chicken and Saw Avenue. But this was no joke.

What's your address? Where you are?

What? What's the address?

The complete address?

You don't know you're on? What street?

Chickens about?

Are you a yuquid?

No?

Cleveland, Ohio.

You may not have caught it, but the little girl said she was about to pass out. She was trying her hardest to stay alert and get the street names right. In this part of Cleveland, the streets seem to have Native American names.

And you're on Chickasaw Yeah. Do you know another street nearby?

Oh?

No, I'm living Site one Trocky, You're own turkey?

What trophy?

What she was trying to say was Cherokee. No to parents, make sure that your kids know where they live and how to pronounce the street names. That's a small safety tip that rivals all of the can goods and toilet paper you hoard in your Cape cod summer home. Yeah, I know my audience.

Okay, who got stabbed? Honey?

Like by who don't be here?

Okay, I'm gonna get you over to EMS. Okay, yeah, don't hang up. How old are you?

Okay, don't hang up?

Okay, Okay.

The dispatch operator told the EMS responder she had a ten year old who had a knife for me. It was hard to tell if his response was disbelief or mere frustration. I mean, this is Cleveland. Sadly, it's probably not the first time a kid called in about being stabbed. This place truly is a shithole.

Okay are you still.

Yeah?

I'm not to back out.

Okay, Okay, she doesn't.

She says she's on a.

Street claws.

The corner whip.

She is not.

She just says she's on a street cause sugar, she met her and her cousin got that.

Say.

Was her cousin older than her?

By this time, the polite little girl who was stabbed and trying not to pass out was getting frustrated. You can hear her in the background, desperately pleading for help. She was probably wondering when the questions would stop and an ambulance would arrive. The victims were two ten year old cousins who managed to escape outside. They were making their way to a neighbor's house, but all the time

Number one, that's just the st.

It's a brother theater.

What's what's your address?

Address?

One night?

Once you cheared and she really bad, she's coming in my house.

Sole, but.

Cut the door.

Imagine that you're minding your own business, and suddenly you hear little kids crying outside. You're like, what's that? You get up to see two blood soaked girls staggering towards your house? These days? Would you even let them in? I mean, be honest, that's some the shining bullshit right there. Some of you would probably slam the door shut, no doubt.

She knocked on my door and say that she's still the bleeding to death over the clothes full of blood?

Who's bleeding in that?

The two little girls?

Okay?

And then you grow can girly talk?

Yes?

Okay, So let I ask you to my question. Answer that I can tell you what to do these questions.

They're gonna help me help them?

Okay.

How old are okay? You look like they're about moving.

Twelve threele than.

Twelve years old.

I'm as a move. And are they in wait?

Yeah, they're covered in blood?

Okay, and litten careful. I want to tell you how to stop the bleeding. Let'ten careful to make sure we do it correct?

Okay, sounds like a plan, right, But what do you do if you can't tell where the blood's coming from?

So I need you to get a good mood.

All over?

Okay, it's all over? Okay. Is a burger's done there by the one.

I stabbed him?

No?

No, no, I'll paying.

And is there any serious bleeding yet?

That's curious bleeding?

Okay? Are they completely in there? Are they going out of it unconscious?

Yes?

The sea of curd yes, okay, I'm giving this information to the dispatch. Stand in line. Don't hang up? Okay, And you said there is more than one won't correct?

Yes, we're still over.

They got good and they're living in my house in my four year and they're bleeding.

Okay.

Health is on the way.

It always seems to take forever for an ambulance to arrive, and the questions from nine one one operators are never ending. The truth is that the response time varies obviously depending on where you live, but in urban areas the average time is only about five to eight minutes, but those few minutes can feel like forever.

All right, shut the door, you see Okay?

Rights you okay, you're living? Were talking.

My one is going to take them to give years. They're coming right now, the fire apartment and the paramedics get there on the way.

The excitement was almost too much for this lady. She started having her own issues.

I got asthma.

My bleeding is beauty.

Okay, do you have a haler?

She can take?

Despite her own problems, this woman wasn't going to let two little girls slip into unconsciousness. I mean, if I needed somebody to bring me back, I'd want this lady.

She goes hard, hi way a bright.

As the woman in the house is on the phone with nine one one, her boyfriend comes back. He sees the kids bleeding and crying.

On Hello, get the honey.

Hello, you guys, are we are right?

We own Cherokee one nine six one two Cherokee On when these kids have been stabbed up.

Okay, give me give me that address again, one nine six one two Cherokee.

Who am I speaking to? Mister mn and police?

Hurry up, please, these these girls has been stabbed bad. Come back your babies, I think doesn't find that.

Ain't nobody gonna mess with y'all. Oh my goodness, come on, Oh my goodness, come on, baby, come on.

Can't get up.

The little girls confirmed that it was a cousin who stabbed them, and she's afraid he'll find them that when this guy's around, I mean, would you fuck with them? I wouldn't. Weekly. She tells him she can't get up.

Open that door.

This girl's been stabbed up bad.

Okay, that's the address where they're gonna be. The one nine six twelve. That one took one to dare to hurry up. Oh my fucking goodness.

Okay, you got your front pay? Yeah, but he all said, right there, Oh my fucking goodness, this girl is tabbed a real.

Bad guess you know where to park the way?

Yeah?

They were uness where.

What a person going to tab?

They said, they're looking for him.

Let me do this please, he said.

They were the persons looking for me.

The person job they said they looking for them. Oh boy, these gentlemen seem ready to carry out their own investigation, but police wanted a name. The little girls were scared and going in and out of awareness. It was hard to get the needed information, and confusion was getting in the way.

They don't know you, y'all know staff y'all like that.

Yeah, both of them chat, Yeah you can't somebody. We got people on the way.

I'm trying to get information from you.

So yeah they are. You can kid them stabbed up fat They two little girls.

Oh my puppy, big man, I find this dude.

Who is this guy?

Okay, I got who is this guy? Of sab y'all?

God, I got thirteen year old Chad stop y'all chart young and Plumber.

It was eighteen year old Jalen Plumber, their cousin, who was supposed to be staying with an aunt in a different part of the neighborhood, but decided to go on a killing spread his grandma's house instead, and the grandma was still back at the house.

Man, y'all, please hurry up since somebody kids, he killed your grandmother.

So much was going on as the couple in the house learned more information, the panic escalated. Some people are good in crisis and some aren't.

Don't do what you should?

Do what you say?

Do they know where they live?

Do I know where they live?

Do they know? Then?

As the address they called from Chickasaw Avenue, where their grandmother, Diane Madison lived. The two cousins escaped but left their grandmother behind. Then there was the cousin Jalen, who caused the bloodbath. No one knew his whereabouts yet, but you'd better hope he didn't cross paths with his neighbors.

Come out, man.

Talking to me, Sam, stop calling me, please, I'm not hitting the ship.

I would this mother wood tree, the gass over hes.

Okay, wish he's pulling up their Do you see them out there?

Oh yeah, they're pulling up right now.

And the immortal words of this Ohioan. Oh my fucking goodness. This was Cleveland, But even our seasoned veteran here hadn't seen anything like this before. You could tell this was some fucked up shit that would stick with him. After talking with the two little girls and the couple taking care of them, officers realized they needed to go to the crime scene. As soon as possible while the girls

So this house, yeah, okay, so we you guys have a crime stee long or anything. Yeah, what happened? I was gonn get the address that came over here.

His little brother has like a mental disability.

He came up to that window.

This person right here at those windows, she's laying in the south east corner of the room behind the door faced on.

Justin was terrified and didn't completely understand what was going on. His sister had fled the scene with her cousin. Well more like escape. Justin was trapped in an upstairs bedroom and I didn't even know he was injured. The police were about to wade into a blood soaked house, but first needed to convince her grandson Justin, to unlock the door and come outside.

Come here, open the window. Hey, what's your name?

I'm in.

What's now? Where's your brother? Okay, Hey, I'm the house Hey, I'm going to cover the bat.

Justin was risking his life letting the officers in because the killer was still there. In the bathroom, the water was running. Jalen Plumber was fully clothed, standing under the shower. The blood from his own knife wounds swirled into the drain stereo moment.

You're okay, you're okod what's it? You can get my clothes to me?

I can't?

Are you okay? Yeah?

Wait?

My letter, my.

Dish?

Okay, you're fine, you're fine. Man told you though? Yees, I mean my my mom would not my mom and not at that? Where's your mom? At shit work? Yes?

This was a mad house. When asked for his mother's name, he was able to give it to the officer, but he couldn't spell it, saying that she never told him.

How, okay, we'll call her. Okay, you're okay though, you're not hurt, right, you're not bleeding at all?

Oh?

You you got stabbed? Huh? I got that?

Yeah?

You got you got some Look what I got lucky?

Yeah?

I thought the knife in there?

You did?

Where do you think the niset? And I tell you this and I cleaned it up? Did you clean it up. Yeah, okay, it didn't a thing.

It is a thing.

It is a thing right now.

It's in the sink. He's saying, the noise in the sink. This guy, this victim, Yeah, he's got a little laceration of.

The back right now.

The discovery of the murder weapon was good news and bad news. Good news that this unlikely and lucky victim found it, but possibly bad news that he cleaned it up.

What's gonna happened to me?

Now?

You're you're gonna get checked up by ums because you're you got stabbed. I'm gonna try to getting hold of your mouth.

For your Justin naturally had a lot of questions about himself, his grandma, Diane, and his brother, who had been led away in handcuffs.

Why did you make butt and out? We got him. He's not gonna hurt. Anyone's gonna be okay. Yeah, they're working on it right now. They're hoping her. Okay, not that you saw a little dog a little dog.

I did not.

I did not go in the house. I saw you outside. I came and grabbed you.

What Justin didn't know was that his grandmother died almost immediately after being stabbed. By his brother. In her bedroom, they found Diane Madison dead of multiple stab wounds, including one that completely severed her carottid artery, and the little dog he was referring to was sitting on the bed in the same spot where he'd been sleeping peacefully next to his owner, now with a look of bewilderment. The dog wasn't alone. Almost everyone who knew Jalen Plumber was bewildered.

Was a loving, kind person, and I think sometimes that gets lost. Almost all of us who worked with her remained friends with her afterwards. That's the kind of person she was.

She was the kind of person others felt comfortable with because they knew she'd been through it. They knew she was the first to sympathize. She was always open to hearing about everybody's hard times because God knows, she'd had enough of her own.

And I just want them to remember her smile and remember how much laughter and joy she brought to people's lives.

She was someone who was compassionate, who cared about her family, who cared about her grandkids, who cared a her kids even when they couldn't reciprocate.

Maybe Diane Madison wasn't just a grandmother. She was a mother of one of the most notorious killers in Cleveland's history. Her son, Michael Madison, grew up in that same house on Chickasaw Avenue. As an adult, he returned to raise a family there with his girlfriend, Tania Plummer. They had

Conversation recorded on July nineteenth, two thousand and thirteenth, at eight fifty.

Four religious specificatis.

So just need to see you all the tents somebody over here. We can just goe to row. So what's going on?

You wanna sell?

Because that we can't get a garage thor open bus. It's a smell. I know when the dead animals smelled. I know what gopic snails, but apply coming out of the wall from the one side of the garage. I mean, the smell so freaking calls you could throw up. I mean, we just want to make sure ain't nobody in the other side or something. I mean, it's so bad enough, man, you will throw up the card even take the smell.

So what's the address?

Thirteen ninety five hate, So what's the name?

My straight.

I say, Chile.

Number to eight seven zero eighty nine fifty six. Okay, yeah we are. I'm out here now, so we're waiting. Nobody ain't come up. Yeah, we can't call. That's crazy, okay saying you all right?

That smell in the garage if you've never had the pleasure, it's a mixture of rotting fish, dead animal, skunk and ross sewage. How's that lunch treating you? You're welcome. This call came in six years before Diane's murder, and it wasn't just the first sign of something horrific. It was the past catching up.

It was a call to police from a cable company worker in this building that eventually led to the arrest of Michael Madison on murder charges. He lived there in an apartment and one employee saw flies swarming in a nearby garage.

So I went in there and when I smelled the smell, I was like, oh my god, we need to call the police.

East Cleveland police found the decomposing body of a female victim on Friday. The ideed Madison as a suspect, arrested him at his mother's home and began questioning.

The garage wasn't behind Diane's house. It was on Haydene, near a small upstairs apartment Michael had been renting just a few miles away. Because by twenty thirteen, he wasn't living under his mother's roof anymore, and he wasn't the same cute, cuddly little boy she'd raised. He had turned cold. Michael Madison, Diane's son, was no stranger to trouble. He

He had anger issues.

Sometime. I would see him upset, yelling, and I just told him to calm down.

And he was okay, And you know, he spoke to everybody.

When the garage door finally opened and the truth finally came spilling out, literally, it wasn't just the neighborhood that changed. It was the entire Madison household, especially his step son Jalen. The man he had once called stepdad would now be called something else, entirely a killer. Michael wasn't exactly a copycat, but his crimes bore chilling similarities to those of another Cleveland serial killer he reportedly admired, Anthony Sowell, infamously known

The coroner in Cleveland, Ohio, says six bodies found in the home of a convicted rapist were female. All were homicide victims. Police arrested fifty year old Anthony Sowell Saturday.

Thank you Jesus, Thank you Heavy Father.

I am so glad they got him, because I wasn't gonna risk you know, until they did.

Before. I had to put my frize against the door and locked myself in before I could even go to sleep.

Just two years after the Cleveland Strangler was put away, Michael Madison emerged onto the crime scene. Michael was born in East Cleveland in nineteen seventy seven. Former classmates barely remembered him because he had no real friends. He was, I guess what you would call forgettable. He didn't graduate from high school, but he was far from stupid. He had a lot going on in his head, but no one ever bothered to ask what that was, and he never saw a therapist. But he needed one because he

Sirelda's my angel. Well, everybody called her Sirella. I called her heaven. That's good, I called I called my kids. According how to act, I mean, that's my heaven. So to me, he took mine. She's a praise dancer, she's she's a holy person. She's heavy into the church, and she's she's my reader, my bookworm.

It didn't take long for Michael to be arrested and brought in for questioning, but it came after a standoff at his mother's house. DNA and circumstantial evidence were strong, but during questioning, Detective Hope to get some answers as to why Michael had the spotlight.

For once.

He talked a lot, but not about what mattered, and he wasn't a loud, bragging type. Instead, he gave metaphors, quietly, parables, detached theories about the human condition. It was as if the man accused of stuffing women into trash bags thought he was there to give a philosophical lecture. And while detectives paused for timelines and names, Michael offered riddles and speculations.

You know, it's my first time realized just how different Walsh life are land.

He said, on the west side, and we say included.

We go to school on the west side, the West High School.

Rabbite you know, Warge his wife and that's pretty good minister that move here.

And it was going pretty much you know, back in my life, I've always you know, I told him myself. I told myself, I would like to stay up in the country. He was on cent grade four or a couple of cows. And see, you know what I'm saying for Ram so go, I would like to see the Rams like you did. I think they had like the most epot wrong the King Adam.

The Ram thing you were going at it one time, Mike banging lingon gooding up in the million.

Now like.

Like the Ram swagger?

Yeah, he really did just say, I like the Ram swagger. The conversation shifted for a minute to the day police picked him up. It was a sweltering day when police moved to arrest him on July nineteenth, twenty thirteen. He happened to be at his mom's house on Chickasaw and barricaded himself side for hours. Swat was called, and the standoff ended only when officers used tear gas and broke the door down to force him out. They asked him

Not really just running into my head. That's been really happy and pretty much this way out the wheel and from a a cause, I've got to know it's my looking wheel from me.

This guy's maybe the chillest killer they've ever interviewed. He went on to say that while police car sirens blared and lights flashed while voices boomed over the megaphone yelling for him to come out, he was listening to his mother's wind chimes, smoking cigarette butts from the ash tray and thinking about his childhood.

Always friends, family, no, finally every one who has done me gone worse than mom. Like you know, like thinking hart it Man, Like do you think if I really, like if I really just just all out guide of you my mother and her opinion.

And how she could feel. But you think I really came out the door before that, you know what I'm saying, before that door got hit like that kept up that door up.

Yeah, I'm saying like, and I'm not saying I that that's the reason that I didn't come out with like I said, and the family and her friends would do the worst.

And you know I love her mother, but you know she's when I her got to a point where I was, you know, really pretty much didn't care to see her again. But you know, during a certain times when life, she was there for me. You know what I'm saying. You know the whole thing was done for sex, appearance and or before it. Don't hold it on it this donna hold on to day.

You know we talking.

I put it all of that behind me.

But if I really at several points throughout the more than eight hours of interrogation, Michael alluded to a loveless childhood of neglect. According to him, his mother prioritized appearance and money over him. As much as detectives wanted to make him comfortable and hear about his past. They still had a job to do, and it wasn't to be a therapist for a killer.

We start at the beginning, when I was born, Start at the beginning. Whenever you want to start this is this is your opportunity kill me.

Okay, what is good? Came got before? Yeah? Well, when I called a saying that they wanted the body in the garage, a play.

On so on.

Hey mm hmm.

People have called me to say they know me to be around here, and that where you live.

Aft.

Let's answer that, yes, that's it. That's where Michael lived. But all of a sudden it was not really his place. His baby mama's name was on the lease, and people just sort of came and went all helping pay the bills together somehow in some sort of weird collective. You know, anybody could have been there, anybody could have had access to that garage.

Michael, I don't know if you had conversation with the commander about I was the last the last sha. However, has I been over in your spot with an organization called BCA. I don't know you know what BCA has done. You never watch any of the CSI shows.

Whatever something happens, you leave intentionally or and intentionally, you leave stuff behind, whether it be DNA evidence, fingerprints, blood.

We'll give you the opportunity to tell you said the story.

Man, Okay, but please don't don't sit here.

And sell me. All right.

I've been spend the least seven hours process in your apartment.

I know the evidence in your apartment. I know the evidence in your garage. I mean, please, please, please juve me the courtesy of.

Listen.

I understand that people make mistakes. I told you before.

I'm not here to judge you.

Well, please give me the courtesy of being an honest man.

All know me, though, but that you like you all know me.

I know my.

Rides my mind is because it's running to you know. Everybody says that you've lived there, and.

The repute over the information is report because we got people that saw you.

In the apartment.

Man, He argued that he was in and out of the apartment and been in the garage for weeks. The body was put in the garage less than a week before. All the detectives wanted was for him to fess up and tell them what he did, and they weren't getting anywhere. It was time to bring God into it.

For you.

With God very an little did they know that they had just made a massive overreach. This was the perfect opportunity for the suspect to.

Preach all I want, That's all I got for you, That's all I ever had a guy. So then you believe in an annoyed and role right, and I also believe in the chest gang here on earth where you met at Dublin and you have died, Hill is right here on earth like you, like you, no.

Marrier who was a reverend, a past or, a deacon like you are not without seeing like you saying he's and like no one, whether it be police, pastor, no one can tell me that without saying no one can tell me that they have never committed a sin, never broken the law, whether they be misdemeanor.

Or suddenly somebody, like everybody had a frown type of skeleton they call cause.

And whether it be.

Pastor or chief of police, like you know, throw a name.

On me skeletons.

Skeletons can be as big as the name, like chief of police and his skeletons can be just as big as say Anthony so.

Will, all the way down to the little girls just leaving their care like.

No one like, yeah, no, it's to God, and I know you know what I'm saying.

It's I know it's good and I know it's bad.

They just let them keep talking. They let them draft through the vague philosophies and half baked sermons in his little cabasa. According to him, no one wanted to hear his story, the real story, quote unquote again, you'll never convince a retard. They're not a genius. He was fine talking about literally everything except the murders.

Good, listen to your story. The bingo dingo, we're here. I don't want to hear this.

And we're the ones there ammunications.

Here that's doing your job job. They all disagree with you, like man, I you know, hate to seem like.

I'm litening to town or anything, but you know this is like like I told you earlier, I might have to begin in line.

Of so sick that you don't want to go through you don't want to go through and probably you'll probably wouldn't wish on y'all worst enemy and I.

Have just starting line up.

It's not like.

It's not like we're giving you one of the if you are going to make it any.

Easier for you know what I want to do. I want to do the hardest thing that the police officer ever has to do.

Do you know what that is?

Go to work?

No, that's easy, going out there when people are doing bad things and catching them, chasing on them, playing with them, whatever, tas.

That's easy.

I want to do the hardest job when I have to go to somebody and say I'm sorry to tell you this with your loved oness no longer with us, they're dead.

This didn't face Michael. He just kept talking until everyone in the room was No. It's a cool parlor trick if you could do it, politicians are great at it. It's a shame though he didn't talk until he was numb, because you would have already been there a long time ago.

I'm no, surely no, surely not, surely. I'm not expecting to be heard. You know some uh what you say, prepared for the worst, hope for the best prepared for the worst, like whatever the worst.

He is, Like, I know, it's still like it's not like I'm about to go to war.

How I'm about to be shooting and shit going to war. I'm about to get in front of him, Jill. It's around other criminals. That's what I'm saying, is man, like, I don't I feel. I feel nothing. I feel. It's not a damn thing, Like I'm sort of heroine.

It's like I said, man, this shit like it's this this this world.

That we live in, like from generals in the army to tennis comaratus, Like how you.

Think some of these wars is one of 'em?

He just send somebody yat on the front line, knowing.

That these dudes ain't gonna come back, ain't even supposed to even come back.

For the record, Michael was never in the military. He was just pulling out all the stops to make his case, even by stealing valor, even though he hadn't admitted to anything yet. He knew they had him, so he would just hint at the motive, which was I was neglected. Nobody ever listened to me. My baby Mama nags me all the time because I don't have a job. Why she makes me feel less than a mad women all want one thing?

Why?

Why?

Why?

Holy shit? What an insufferable asshole.

I hope it serves as a way could be females stop trying them up.

Guys over you know what I'm saying.

That wasnake fuck to go oh, I mean, other than the regular unnecessarily, But it's gonna it's gonna serve at some point.

It's gonna tan. It's gonna be some type of sake of small love.

Just only what is about. I don't know what the about.

I don't know, but you know, good percentage of us see good wives running self for rid.

Then, out of the blue, probably because they were so numb from the talking, the cops flipped the switch and asked him point blank.

First time you were killed?

Anybody hear the parson that wout? I answer your questions?

Why a request.

Kill me?

A couple of bugs? Somebody ain't there? Killed nobody?

But that was a lie. In an obscured part of the interview that's barely audible, unfortunately, he admits to strangling one of the women. He was annoyed that she wouldn't leave and felt like she was trying to take advantage of him in some way. He was drunk, and all he remembered was putting his hand around her neck. He never said she died, but he never said her name. Later he claimed he found a body in a garbage bag and carried it down to the garage, but he

You could be the man right now, let's do it, Mike. I know, I know you've got power. Now, what do you think I mean, Mike?

No, he's never really being clear with you.

You kind of.

You know what we found yesterday?

Right?

Think about what I found today, Mike. What were you talking about here today? He said they're gonna.

Learn, We're to teach.

They deserve it.

I just talk about the start that the learys.

No, I'm Mike, you aren't. And I was sitting there trying to put it all together. And after you, we took you back downstairs yesterday started Ruth and I and started Gardener. We sat down in my office and we talked for a long time and we just were trying to figure out what.

You were tryna tell us.

And the eye in certain Ruth know now which exactly.

What you were saying?

Bro, Mike, I know now we jumped right in like we found it. I found out you're you're the man?

Do you want bullshitting?

You know?

I was h you know for the Englis You're not really telling you what? Mike? What is he saying? I got?

I got, I got another body.

I thought you were kind of blown to smoke up my ass yesterday me and Gardner and Ruth were talking about it, and I thought you were blowing smoke up my ass yesterday.

I said, I don't know.

I said, said, wait, I think I think he's telling me just by his body language, just by a demeanor, some of the things you were saying.

You say, you're talking outside of your mouth. I think that that was that we should want to tell your story. And I'm giving you an opportunity now to do it. And I'm telling you I believe you now. I got a half assed believed you yesterday, and I'm believing you one hundred percent now.

So you ain't. We ain't even how his one body he combo something totally different now.

Whichever one you want to talk about, MIKEE. It ain't one, it ain't two.

Let's do us all away run.

Michael barely flinched. He had admitted to having dates to his apartment and getting so shitfaced that he didn't remember them leaving. He confessed to putting his hands around one of the women's necks and awakening to find a body in a garbage pack. That's bad. But even now, when confronted with more evidence and yet another body, he deflected. The detectives were running out of patience, and now they

Might you get the power? Obviously she disrespected you. Obviously she puts you into a position. Something happened, Bro, she made you have to show her. And now all I want you to do is to show me. We'll talk about whatever you wanna talk about. You wanna talk about the most recent only first, or you wanna talk about no, whatever one you want.

Bro.

In this tiny blue interrogation room that resembled the prison cell, detectives and Michael sat for hours on end, eating cheeseburgers from McDonald's as the questions came one after another. Well the barred window raised, Michael smoked black and mild cigars. The smoke mixing with the scent of sweat and making its way out the window to the sweltering streets of Cleveland. They were finally coming to understand this killer.

And I guess even before you before here just you know, pretty much all light then at thirty five, with no real background in school and no career, no four oh one.

Kay, kids a.

Big mom as far as even as they come. You know, I'm a real like, I'm a real compassionate do and kind of certain things, what kind of things, just know, people people.

But somewhere along the way, I just lost like I love like, I like, I love female. Nay, but a man, A man's a man's a man's man.

Who should never be compromised when it comes to a female who's never been a man.

It was a simple but disturbing statement. In that one sentence, Michael revealed a cracked mirror of identity, pride, and resentment against women. In twenty twenty five, especially, it's not unusual to hear the voices of frustration from men who feel diminished in relationships in society at large. Still, his words, the rapped in philosophical language, reveal a specific grievance. This was a man whose sense of self had been shaped and maybe shattered by the women around him. Still nothing

June seventh, they tell us, that's when they last saw Angela, and since then, they say they have been frantically searching for her. But this week police confirmed their worst fear that cops had found her body, that thirty eight year olds of body. Investigators right now aren't saying how she died. Cops discovered her remains in a backyard Saturday near Shaw Avenue. Now Knew this morning. A statement from the family quote

In the days after Michael's arrest, neighbors were quick to share their memories, not about him, but about his mother, Diane Madison, and what she'd been through. Everyone spoke highly of her.

I want her to be remembered as someone who cared deeply for her children, someone who cared passionately about her community.

She was just a fine person. I am a better person for having known her.

Michael loved his mother. He admitted this openly, but he also alluded to neglect. What he didn't do in the interrogation was throw her under the bus, but the defense did that for him at the trial. The trial formerly started in April of twenty sixteen. By early May, Madison had been convicted on all counts, three counts of aggravated murder, three counts of kidnapping, three counts of gross abuse of a corpse, three counts of rape, and one count of

They're the sentency. You have the families there, and they're pouring out their hearts and saying how they're going to miss their families and what their families meant to him, And he sent over there smiling, which caused my brother to launch at him. To him, he heard, fucked the door, excuse me, okay, the life of my daughter, the life of my niece, the life of our baby whom we caught heaven.

Okay.

So it was horrible to be that close, to have to breathe his air, to be in the same room with a person that is so horrible and don't even care. He don't care. He was laughing, which he gave him the death penalty.

You heard it at the end of the trial. No mitigating circumstances were going to stand in the way of justice. Michael Madison has now spent nearly a decade on Ohio's death row. He was sentenced on June second, twenty sixteen, and was scheduled to die by lethal injection on May twentieth, twenty twenty one, but an unofficial moratorium on executions installed all lethal injections in Ohio since twenty twenty. Want to know why, Well, they're waiting for an alternative execution method

I am struck by the sheer inhumanity of what one human being could do to that one but three human beings. It is incomprehensible.

You cajoled Lord and deceased Satisha Shieling, Angela Deskins, and child Terry to your apartment for your depraved purposes. You went on to abuse the corpses of these three victims.

You stripped them from the waist down.

You folded them in half, finding them so that their feet were up by their ears. You wrapped them in multiple layers of trash bags, and you discarded them.

This killer didn't just kill out of nowhere. His crimes were monstrous, but they happened after unresolved festering thoughts from a long, entangled legacy of suffering. Then you add the alcohol and possibly drugs, and poof, you get a certain scale episode lucky you. Decades later, in a cramped Cleveland apartment, a young Michael was beaten, locked in closets, humiliated, and allegedly forced to eat feces by the very person who was supposed to protect him, his mother, Diane Madison, a

Now?

Then came Jalen, Diane's grandson, the quiet boy who watched all of this unfold, who once lived under the same roof as Michael. In twenty nineteen, Jalen, just eighteen years old, would creep into Diane Madison's home and stab her to death in her own bed. He didn't just kill her, he nearly decapitated her. He pleaded guilty in twenty twenty one and is serving a life sentence with eligibility for

I promise