DRIFTING INTO DARKNESS-Mark I. Pinsky

So sign up now at chumbuck Casino dot com to claim you're free.

to rural windswept Wyoming. On Thanksgiving weekend in two thousand and four, philanthroists Charlotte and Brent Springford Senior, a wealthy, socially prominent Montgomery couple, were brutally beaten to death with an axe handle echoing the infamous case of Lizzie Borden. Suspicion quickly fell on the Springford's gifted but troubled son, Brent Junior, who would be tried and sentenced to life

without parole. But a mystery remained. Who was the mysterious, elusive woman who claimed to be a Native American shaman that investigators believe manipulated Brent into this murder. Journalists solving murders as a time tested trope in movies, mysteries, and on television, but cops and cop reporters know that rarely

happens in real life, except when it does. Veteran crime reporter mark I Pinsky, who covered the sensational cases of serial killer Ted Bundy and Green Beret doctor Jeffrey MacDonald, broke the cardinal rule of journalism by involving himself in the story. Pinsky's extensive research prompted investigators to invite him

to join their dogged pursuit of justice. His access to unique and heartbreaking behind the scenes material enables him to take readers with him into the troubled, tortured minds of the case's main players. The book that we're featuring this evening is drifting into darkness murders, madness, suicide, and a death under suspicious circumstances with my special guest, journalist and author mark I Pinsky. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for this interview. Mark I Pinsky, Dan,

thank you very much for inviting me. I'm glad to be here. Thank you so much. This is an incredible tale, and we talked about your incredible access makes this true crime essential reading. Let's get right to the Springfords in this garden district as you write of Montgomery, Alabama, and you take us immediately to Thanksgiving two thousand and four. November twenty sixth and a subcontractor, Michael Shelton and his

workers pull up to this address, this affluent home. What to Sheldon and his crew discover they have had access to this home and they've been working and they know the family.

the actual house was not working. It appeared that a bolt had been thrown from inside, so they went through the garage and found an entrance in there, and they walked into the kitchen area where they were doing some tiling work, and they shouted to let people know that they were there, let Brent and Charlotte know that they were there. They got no answer. They were able to reach through a window pane which was removable, un throw

the bolt, and walk into the kitchen again. They shouted that they were here, just that people wouldn't be surprised. They weren't sure whether the Springsburghs would be at home or not, but as they walked through the first floor

of the house, they noticed things were in disarray. They first noticed that when they went through the garage that Brent Senior's office appeared to be somewhat in disarray, and he was known as a very neat person, so they were somewhat concerned, but it was a holiday weekends, so they didn't get too concerned. They went into the kitchen, saw no one and walked through the first floor and

saw papers strewn throughout the place. There was some foreboding because there were still no answer when they called upstairs to let them know they were there, and so with that sense of foreboding, the lead contractor walked up the backstairs and when he reached the landing, he stopped suddenly because the carpet at the top of the stairs was saturated with blood, and not just a little blood, a lot of blood, and he knew something very wrong had happened.

He went back down the stairs and told his workers not to go upstairs. He then called Brent Senior on the cell phone he had his number because the contractor also worked for Brent Senior for a time at their soft drink bottling company. There was no answer, the more concern When there was no answer, the contractor then called the Montgomery Police Department and said they thought something very

wrong had happened. At first they thought maybe it was a burglary, an armed robbery, a home invasion robbery that'd gone wrong, but there were nothing else that they could see, and so the police said, leave the premises, wait out front.

We'll get there as soon as we can. And it was a holiday weekend, so there were some people who were actually officers detectives who were at home, and so they were called in and it took about thirty or forty minutes for the police to arrive, both uniforms and detectives. They went in. They went through through the kitchen door, they went upstairs, they saw the huge area of blood. They knew something terrible was wrong, and so they began They called back to the precinct and said, we need

some homicide detectives. We think that there's a murder of some sort. Their first thought was it was a murder suicide. It might have been the simplest explanation for the physical evidence that they first saw. In the next hour or so, they then ventured along the hallway in the second floor, and the first thing they saw was the body of Brent Springford Senior. He had been beaten to death. They

didn't know with what at the time. It later turned out to be a pickaxe handle, but also his throat was cut almost to the point of decapitation, and he

was surrounded by blood in this area. They've ventured further down the hall to the master bedroom, where they found the body of Charlotte Sprinford would also have been beaten to death, who also was stabbed multiple times, including in the throat, and in this case, however, they were defensive wounds on her arms that they could recognize right away. Unlike Brent, there were no defensive wounds on him. He

apparently was set upon in a furious attack. But this time Charlotte Springford either saw something happening or knew something was happening, and she tried to defend herself. There was physical evidence that after she was beaten to the ground and stabbed, she still tried to drag herself in the direction of the telephone, but she didn't make it.

had spent the Thanksgiving dinner. And at the same time they were making these calls, neighbors seeing the police vehicles and then the yellow tape that went up, began congregating on the lawn and on the front in the street in front of them, and so other detectives began to chat with the neighbors to see if they had any leads, and among them were some close friends of the Springfords who said, take a close look at their son, Brent Junior.

He's been estranged from the family living out in Colorado. So that went into the factors of the initial discussions, and they, as the investigators called family members. The family members also pointed toward Brent Junior. But the problem for the police is that as far as they knew, Brent was two thousand miles away in the area of Boulder, Colorado, so they began making phone calls. They were also concerned.

The family was concerned that Brent Junior not only had killed those his parents, but he might have in mind to kill his sister and other family members. So the family members on their own went into hiding in case that Brent Junior was still around and might be after them. So the police immediately to protect live They sent squad cars to protect Lois Trust's house and other places in thought that maybe he would come there, that it was Brent Junior and that he would come there. The family

owned the Lake House. They went out to the Lake House, but at the same time they were making calls out to Colorado, where they knew that Brent had a home, and they were asking local sheriff's deputies to go out and see if he was there, and so all this was happening, there was a lot of I won't say confusion, but these were the victims were really wealthy, prominent people, so a lot was at stake for the police department to This is a horrible thing, you know, people in

a neighborhood like the Garden District being murdered in their homes at a very high screw up.

he was estranged from the family. So the estrangement really when speaking to the people who are around the table. That estrangement at least sort of hung over the whole event. So Robin again was convinced that only one person could have done this. It wasn't a random act, it wasn't a home invasion, it was it was her. It was

her brother who did it. She'd know how it happened or where it happened, but she was convinced that it was her brother who was responsible, and also Robin was also concerned, to concern she gave to the police that initially Robin and Greg were supposed to come back to the Springford's home in Montgomery with her parents to go off together, but at the last minute, Robin and her husband decided not to go with him, and Robin was very much concerned that if she had, if she and

her husband had gone back with her parents, that she and her husband would have been murdered as well.

to Brent, but they couldn't find Brent. And they questioned Caroline Scouts two three adult children, two adults in one adolescent who were living in the house, and they all reaffirmed that, in fact, Brent had been there all week. So the police were first puzzled. And then another young man who was living at the house a border actually took one of the police aside and said, you should call me at my work. I'll be able to speak

more freely. And when they did that, he said, I haven't seen Brent for a week, and so police became concerned. They still weren't ready to make a move. The Montgomery police were not ready to get on a plane quite yet until the jaguar was discovered in outside of Tulsa, Oklahoma, which kind of began to connect the docks for the

investigators in Montgomery. There was the missing jaguar that had been in the garage in Montgomery, and after the murder, it shows up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which is pretty much two thirds the way back to Colorado. They thought they were kind of closing in.

when they traveled. They were very progressive. Now this is two thousand and four, but earlier Montgomery can be a very conservative place and was a very conservative place between regarding racial equality, but both Brent Senior and Charlotte were known as being very progressive people on race, very open to various people in town. When the Southern Poverty Law Center located in Montgomery, a lot of the establishment people kind of shunned them, but Brent and Charlotte did not.

They made them welcome, and so they were beloved for their gifts. They were beloved for their civic involvement. And the great tragedy, as their close friends knew, was a long term estrangement from their oldest son, Brent Junior, and they had done everything their friends knew to support him as he was growing up. He was not a spoiled kid. He was an outruistic kid. He took in strays in terms of newcomers to his school, He invited people to

they had parties at the home. But when he went away to school, he went to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Very good school, but in those first couple of years he became gradually alienated from his parents. And his parents didn't cut him off. They didn't. He was what's known in this country, and it was tough love. They tried to understand what was happening to him. They were very sympathetic. They offered counseling. He was always welcome back home, even

when he became more and more alienated to them. When he decided to drop out of Vanderbilt after his second year, where he was a very good student, he went on projects in Latin America to help people. His professors loved him, but he became interested in New Age beliefs, but also a serious study of Eastern religions, Buddhism and Hinduism, and

his parents weren't sure what the source of this alienation was. Sociologically, at least in North America, when young men reached their early twenties, they're sometimes vulnerable to incipient mental illness, particularly bipolar, and Brent Junior's parents weren't sure if that's what it was, because there was a family history of bipolar disorder in Charlotte's family, and they were petrified that that's what was happening to them. But they did everything they could to

support him. He wanted to drop out of Vanderbilt for the second year. They didn't like it, but they accepted it. He wanted to study Buddhism and Hinduism in retreats around the country and in Mexico, and they supported him in that so they basically did everything they could. But as time passed, he began, as the title of the book says, he began to drift into darkness, and the alienation was greater and greater when he would come back for family visits,

sometimes sometimes for big family occasions. The spring Shirt had a black tie dinner at Christmas every year for more than one hundred people at their home, and he showed up one year in a monk's row with his head shaves, and his parents were, of course mortified, but they were saying their explanation was Brent's just trying to find himself.

But you know, all for all of Brent's adult life he was searching for enlightenment through New Age seeking, through Buddhism and Hinduism, but in the end it just got darker and darker. He really wanted to find a guru, a spiritual god, and he went to visit the home of his roommate. His roommate at Nouopa's parents lived in Boulder.

They had a kind of an intellectual salon, a New Age salon, at their home, and he went there one day and he crossed paths with a woman named Caroline Scouts who claimed to be a Native American shaman, and the instant he saw her, he was struck. And he got down on his knees and touched his head to the floor three times and said, I've found my spiritual guide. And that was a faithful meeting for Brent. He thought this search that he'd been on for several years was

finally satisfied. He found someone who he could follow and learn about and study. He was still at Naropa, so as he was getting to know her, taking some breathing.

them again with his state of mind. So they felt this was a good idea. But they again, they were very caring parents, very careful parents, and so they flew out to Boulder to meet this woman, and they were initially impressed with her. They felt she was a very spiritual person. Many people who met her felt she was a very spiritual person. And they left fairly confident that

this was going to be a good arrangement. And so to cement that, they began sending Caroline Scout money, ostensibly to take care of Brent, but it was really more money than she would have needed, and so that relationship was sort of christened and approved of by Brent's parents. They were hopeful, they weren't sure, but they were hopeful that this might bring him back to them in some way through her, And in fact, she did begin to

get him to see a series of psychiatrists. He was uncertain of it himself, but because she said he should do it, he began to do it.

generations at least, had been plagued with bipolar disorder. They were in her family suicides, institutionalizing alcoholism, various things which she had decided not to tell her son about for fear that he would see that as something that couldn't be avoided for him, and so she didn't want it to be an inevitable problem that he should worry about, among the other things that he had in his life

to worry about. So she recognized that that was probably the case, and she did what psychiatrists don't really like to do. She began corresponding with his psychiatrists. Most of them, because of the ethics, would not respond to her because he was not a minor, so she had no standing

to his psychiatric care. But she was pretty clear that the psychiatrists were onto something, and they prescribed medication, and, as often happens with bipolar disorder, the medication, once they get the sort of mix or the cocktail right, results in improvement. But sometimes the improvement the patient says, well, I'm feeling fine, I don't need the drugs anymore. So then they stopped taking the drugs, and the psychle repeats.

he wouldn't go back to school. He began working at various jobs now up there, he did see a psychiatrist, but his mother felt that a psychiatrist in South Dakota was not the kind of psychiatrist that she he needed, so she wanted to get them back to Boulder. But what she didn't know is that that summer, Caroline Scout drove Brent Junior across the border into South Dakota to a town historic count called Deadwood, and they were secretly married. Brent later said he didn't know why she wanted to

get married. It was her idea, not his. He didn't realize it, but he was twenty What he knew he was twenty four. But what he didn't realize is that she was forty eight, twice his age. And she said, we want to keep this a secret, and so it was a secret. And by that time is that this was not a traditional marriage. They say there was no sexual relationship between Caroline and Brent Junior, and he was

apparently quite content with that. When he moved finally from Caroline's ranch in Wyoming to the house that his parents had purchased in Greeley, Colorado, he wasn't even allowed to sleep, not only in her bedroom, he was not allowed to

sleep in the house. He built a little living area in the garage, the adjoining garage, and he was not allowed to come into the house without permission from Caroline, and he needed to call her on her cell phone first to get permission to come into the house, which happened but very rarely, and to her children, Caroline denigrated him that he was basically a screw up, that he was crazy, and that her caretaking was just basically a paid indulgence for her.

There is talk of withholding money as a result. What happens with the living arrangement at the house in Colorado And how is it that he has this kind of information that really paints his parents in a negative light despite their support of him.

cars for Caroline and her adult children. They bought clothes, they paid community college tuition, a whole series of benefits that when the paper trail was finally tracked, it was somewhere between a million and a million and a half dollars.

There are various improvements on the property, and Brent Junior, who was not a gravvy spoiled kid growing up, began to make increasing demands on his parents, never in voice, usually in texts or facts, and the tone of his request, which soon shifted in demands, was very uncharacteristic of Brent Jr. He was basically beginning to treat his parents as an atm, as a cash machine, and they became suspicious naturally over time.

And they had talked amongst themselves as well as with their friends and neighbors and some psychiatrists about when to exercise what's called, as I mentioned before, tough love, when to say you need to do this, if you want me to do this, And the estrangement when they did that became really intense, until finally they decided they were going to cut both Caroline and Brent Junior off around the same time, Robin was supposed to get married in

the big fancy wedding in Alabama, and they decided that Brent had become too unstable to attend. So the Robin had personally invited her brother, her parents got her to disinvite him right around the time that they decided to cut off the money, and they did. He did not attend the wedding. They did cut off the money, and six weeks after the money was cut off, Brent got on a Brent Junior got on a bus from Boulder headed toward Montgomery.

know that there are multiple causes of thinning hair. Neutrifhol is the hair growth supplement that goes beyond genetics to target stress, hormones, nutrition, metabolism, aging, and lifestyle factors that may be impacting your hair. Thinning is different for men and women. Nutrifol has multiple unique formulas for men and women to provide exactly what they need based on their biology and age. Every formula is physician formulated using natural

medical grade ingredients for reliable results without compromises. In clinical studies, seventy two percent of men saw more scalp coverage and eighty six percent of women saw improved hair growth after six months. Neutrifil is also trusted and recommended by more than three thousand top doctors. You can grow thicker, healthier hair and support our show by going to neutrifal dot com and entering promo code shocking to say fifteen dollars

off your first month subscription. This is their best offer anywhere and it's only available to US customers for a limited time, plus free shipping on every order. Get fifteen dollars off at neutrifal dot com spelled nut rafol dot com promo code shocking. Now, investigators Mark have the evidence they need, have the background to explain how this all occurred, and they have their likely suspect. Tell us about the arrest and what happens afterwards.

getting shakier and shakier. At that point, they were almost ready to make an arrest, but Brent Junior preempted them by checking himself into a local psychiatric institute, from which they could not get him. While they were waiting to find a way to get him from the institution, Surveillis takes was coming in from across from bus stations across the country. They were placing Brent Junior on the way to Montgomery and from Oklahoma where the jaguar was discovered,

back to Boulder. So they were building a case, but they were under great deal of pressure because the only physical evidence they found at the Springford's home in Montgomery where the murders took place, was one fingerprint from Brent on a banister, but it was not in blood, and there's no way to date the fingerprint in the house that he grew up in, So basically they had no

physical evidence to connect Brent Junior to the killing. So they were under great pressure back in Montgomery because the parents were such socially prominent people to come up with a solution quickly, and the only way they.

He was also taking psychotropic drugs, some very powerful. Yet the institute released him to these police officers, and then something a little strange happened, or maybe more than a little strange happened. Instead of taking Brent right to the Boulder County jail he would have been booked, they took him to a small police station in Lewisville, Colorado, which was where the psychiatric institute was, and the two homicide detectives and two local sheriff deputies sat him down and

interrogated them. Now here's a young man, normally troubled psychiatric history, under the influence of psychotropic drugs, drugs pless and they begin to interrogate them. They read him as Miranda rights. But the question later emerged, you know, what was his frame of mind? Did he know what he was being asked? Did he know that he was entitled to a lawyer? Notwithstanding, the two Montgomery police officers who I spoke with later said, well, we knew we were on a little shaky ground, but

this was all we had. So he thought we'd go do this. That there's a problem with a confession. Later, we let the prosecutor deal with that. And so they interrogated him for four hours on tape, at which time he gave an account and admission of how and why he bludgeoned his parents, how and why he beat his parents to death, and so with that, they then took him to the Boulder County Jail and booked him into jail.

But the Boulder jail officials, one of the things they had to sign up a certification that he was not that he was mentally capable of the time, and they said he was. But it became obvious to the jail officials that he wasn't, because they called in some of their psychologists to talk to him, gave him several tests, including a Rorschach test, and then they had the presence of mind to bring in a local public defender to

look out for his rights. But at that time, by that point, you know, the horse was out of the barn as far as the confession goes, and then things were compounded. Brent, while in the jail, well before when he was in the psychiatric institute, he was calling TV stations around Montgomery, denying that he was involved, but calling sort of everybody he thought of, and making disparaging remarks about both the police in Montgomery and the governor of Alabama,

which would later do him no good. Later, when he was in the in the Boulder County jail, he wrote something else which amounted to a confession, which he gave to a jailer. He said, to give to his attorney, to his public defender, the jail person. Those things are privilege, you can't use them. But the jail attendant nonetheless made a copy of it and shared that with the police authorities. In that written document, he also Brent Junior also confessed

to the murder. Although he gave there were certain details about who said, what, what happened, The order of things, and what motivated him were somewhat different, but that later went to the police and that strengthened their hands in their accusations of Brent Junior's involvement in the murders.

Caroline in this regard. And in fact, another thing that you point out was very, very very interesting and would lead police to be very suspicious is that because they were married, she was not would not be forced whatsoever to testify against her husband. And yet she gave crucial information, in incriminating information to police voluntarily, didn't she.

any way in the killing itself. But when when Caroline Scout gave you know, she basically lied to investigators initially about where he was, so that would leave her vulnerable to accessory after the fact, if not accessory as an accessory, and they let her come back with a lawyer and retract the lies that she had told investigators previously. And Brent Junior seemed fixated with the idea that she should not be in any way vulnerable to any kind of prosecution.

He was adamant about that, and he would remain adamant about that for years that followed.

committed what the crime was. And in the US judicial system, in a case like this, the question of mental competence gets down to an issue of dueling shrinks, as we say, So the defense would hire psychiatrists to evaluate, knowing the history of these psychiatrists that they were amenable to finding someone incompetent, whereas the prosecutor would would go and recruit psychiatrists who were known to have a bias against finding incompetence.

So that was the first line of defense. That took several years, and they went back and forth and back and forth, and finally the defense lost that it became clear that although they knew that Brent Jr. Was crazy or getting crazier from their own dealings with him, and more difficult to defend, the ruling was that he was not incompetent to stand trial. And so there were then two lines of defense that were secondary. One was to get a change of venue from Montgomery, where the case

was huge news day after day. And the second line of that defense was to have the three now this time three confessions by Brent thrown out because he was not properly protected when he gave those gave those confessions. So the first two motions took a long time to adjudicate. The first one was the defense won a change of venue from Montgomery to Birmingham, which was about an hour away.

Now it was a great victory, not so much because he would have a better shot at a trial in Birmingham, But in order to move the trial from Montgomery to Birmingham, it would be an added expense to Montgomery, Montgomery County. It would cost an extra quarter of a million dollars that was not budgeted, and so pressure then was on the prosecutor, do you want to have to go to the county commission asked for another quarter of a million dollars.

Now that's not a yes or no proposition, but it factored into the decision of where the prosecutor wanted to deal away the death penalty. Once the death penalty went off the table, then the trial would probably remain in Montgomery with a pleading. The issue of the confessions, which was also critical, was not adjudicated, so they were sort of hanging out there. But the prosecution knew that if the judge threw out the three confessions, all they had

left was bus station surveillance tape. They had no physical connection, could put Brent in Montgomery in that house, and no other way to prove that Brent Junior committed these murders other than the fact that they could prove that he went from Boulder to Montgomery and then went from on the way back from Tulsa to Bolder, so that those are different factors that the prosecutor had to weigh in

whether to accept a plea. Another issue was the Springford family. Robin, the surviving daughter, and her husband Greg were thought to be really pressing hard for the death penalty. Now the prosecutor didn't need to get their permission, but by practice they consult. So these were all the factors that the prosecutor, Ellen Brooks, was weighing as to whether she would be amenable to a deal they would take the death penalty off the table, but would result in a guilty play.

In Alabama, the prosecutor is an elected position, so she always has to be careful about, you know, what this might mean to her politically, because she had asked for the death penalty before in other cases where the accused were people of color and poor, and it might not look good for her to take the death penalty off the table for a young man who was white and from a wealthy background.

housed in a secure psychiatric prison unit. But up until the time in the courtroom, which was required that the judge accepted the plea, there was really uncertain deal on both the prosecutor and the defense team as the weather Brent, who was getting very very shaky mentally, would be able to accept the deal in a way that the judge could accept, because if he was too, if he was unstable, he would be too unstable to accept the deal and

the whole deal would go down the drain. So on the day of the pleading, everybody was on tenterhooks, the judge, the prosecutor, the defense attorneys, and everybody was hoping that they could get through this. And when they first went through the procedure that they needed to, Brent seemed to watch little bit, and so they asked him to sit down.

There was a conference at the judge's bench with both sides and they tried to work out nearly at hoc a quick wording and strategy that Brent Junior would agree to. They finally did that. The plea was accepted, Brent leaded guilty. He was sent to life in prison without parole, and the judge advise, which is all he could do. The State Department of Corrections to How's Brent in a secure psychiatric prison unit.

come and go from his cell. He get access to books and writing materials, he had access to radio, and because he had become so involved in his spiritual quest that as a Buddhist and a Hindu from both traditions, he felt, well, this is just I'm going to view this as a monk's cell, and I'll just pretend that I'm in a monastery, so it can't be that bit.

But after he pleaded guilty, he was sent to the state prison system, where things were a lot more difficult and a lot more stringent, and he had to give up many of his books, he had to give up his radio, and he did not adjust well. He wanted

to sell by himself, which they agreed to. He began seeing a prison a psychiatrist, but the prison psychiatrists communicated with a member of Brent's defense team to say Brent's long term prognosis was not good, that his mental condition was likely to deteriorate, and there's no telling how it would all end. And although Brent Junior's friends and family rallied around him, and they, you know, they ordered him books, They sent money to his commissary account to buy oiltries

and candy, et cetera, and they wrote to him. He continued his mental dissent and he finally he was transferred for various reasons, some his requests, some of the prison's requests, and he wasn't doing well at all, and there was they there was another transfer that he was ordered to do, and he said, if you transfer me again, I'll kill myself. Well, in prisons, you know, people do say those things and they don't always do it. But in Brent's case, he

wasn't posturing. He had a script or a prescription for taylanol for his various ailments, among others, and he simply stored them up and he took them all at once, and he had liver failure in his jail cell and he died.

clinical social worker. And she gravitated to a specialty called death penalty mitigation, which meant that the federal courts have decided, as they've narrowed the window for the death penalty, that if you have a client as a defense attorney who you think is likely to face the prospect of the death penalty at the end of a trial, at the beginning of the trial, you need to hire someone a mitigation specialist, and that specialist job was to create a

profile of the defendant apart from their guilt or innocence that wasn't a factor, but a psychological profile sympathetic that could be presented at the end of the trial to either the prosecutor the judge or a jury if they go to a penalty phase, to say you shouldn't kill this person. They never did anything wrong before they were abused, there was a drug addiction in the family, or they had all these troubles. So that was Susan Wardell's job.

She did it although she's in Atlanta made a she did it mostly in Alabama because there were so many death penalty cases in Alabama and she got very good at it. So when Brent Junior was extradited back to Montgomery and assigned two very capable criminal defense attorneys, they employed Susan Wardell to handle this case. Now, most of the defendants that she worked with, because of the demography of the death penalty in America, were people of color

and indigen in some way. Brent Junior was quite different. He was college educated, he was white, he was upper middle class, if not more, and she developed an affinity for him, and she a real sympathy for him, so she went way beyond what she would normally do for a client because she felt so personally close to him. He was about the age of Wardell's own two children,

and as Wordell did more investigation. The sinister presence of Caroline Scout began to insinuate itself in her theory of the case, but she couldn't get Brent Jr. To cop to that to roll on her. He would not hear of anything negative about Caroline Scalp, which was very frustrating to Susan Wardell. And then when Brent killed himself in prison, Susan Wardell was just incensed. She felt that the person who was really responsible for these murders, Caroline Scalp, had

gotten away scott free. There was no evidence now to connect her, and that she had escaped justice, and that infuriated Wardell.

When I finished her files, I began doing my own research in Montgomery, and I thought I was finished with this case. I was ready to write the book, but I thought, well, I better go to Boulder just in case. I went out to Boulder, did some more research and reporting. I worked at a private investigator would work at the defense team, and then I thought, okay, I did my due diligence. I'm coming back to at that time, Florida, and it couldn't have been more than a few days

later when I heard from a private investigator. He said, we'll never believe what happened. They found another body up on Caroline Scout's ranch in Wyoming, and it's an apparent suicide. I thought, WHOA. So I began to investigate that. He began to investigate that, and I convinced the Wyoming Sheriff's people to begin to investigate that. It turned out that this new victim, Sandy Campbell, had known Brent was from Boulder before he went up there. He had known Brent Junior.

They were friends. He was also psychologically fragile, and then in a more sinister development, two insurance policies popped up on Sandy Campbell's life which named Caroline Scout as the sole beneficiary, even though Campbell had a daughter that he was close to. So the police, at my urging, would not sign a death certificate putting the cause of death at suicide because that would trigger payment of the insurance company on those claims. So that's when the plock thickened

and I got to be friendly for some reason. I still don't know why. With a deputy sheriff out there who listened to me and paid attention to me, which, you know, police homicide people don't like civilians getting themselves involved, particularly they don't like journalists getting involved. But this person, Detective Sergeant Patrick Watsabaw, listened to me and he said, oh, hey, we won't sign the certificate. And then later he said, well, Caroline keeps calling and calling. I want to know why

we won't sign it death certificate. Well, one reason was it was the suicide was a shooting in it. The closer they looked at it, the more hinky it looked. The physical evidence did not really line up with the story that Caroline was telling about what happened, and so Detective Watsa Ball told me. He said, Mark, if you fly out here, you can help us and I'll get you an interview with Caroline Scout. I said, Patrick, how can you do that? He said, I'll take care of it.

So I said okay. I went out to Blunt South Dakota, then drove over into Wyoming, and in fact, through a series of events, Watsa Ball was able to get me face to face with the Caroline Scalt. She wasn't sure the capacity that I was there for, which worked in my favor at least for most of the interview. But I was able to sit face to face with her for two hours and do an interview. She didn't admit anything that I never thought she would, but at least

I had the opportunity to speak with her. When we left the interview, wats the Ball said, we're going to convene on Monday a task force to look into this case and the previous case. Would you be willing to come and join us? And I thought, okay, I mean this never happens. Cops never asked a journalist to sit in and help. So I thought, okay, let's do it. And so that Monday morning, there was assembled in the Sheriff's department in Western County, Wyoming, two coroners, a cornersan investigator,

and Sergeant Watsaball, and we all convened. Everybody brought the documents that they had generated by looking into the case, and I was asked to be the first speaker. And the first thing they asked me about was the Springford merch and how they may be similar, how they might have been similar for the dynamic between Scouts and Brent Junior, how that might replicate or be similar to the dynamic between Caroline Scout Sandy Campbell, the most recent body found

on her property. And so I basically became a central part of this task force looking into this case.

wouldn't do anything about it. So the next route that the Corners took they contracted the Wyoming State Year of Investigation, who had the jurisdiction if they wanted to if they want to assert it, to come in and look into the case. They agreed to look into the case, but

they weren't sure how long that would take. So the coroner's decided, if the prosecutor won't bring a criminal proceeding, we'll bring what's known as a partner's inquest, which is by statute to determine the cause and circumstances of the death.

And they decided they would make a corner's inquest basically a trial of Caroline Campbell, and put forth to a partner's jury all the information that they were able to turn up and all the information that I was able to turn off and all the information that the private investigator in Denver and Boulder was able to turn off

in hopes of using a partner's inquest verdict. The further pressure either the local prosecutor or the state Department of Investigation to bring criminal charges in a criminal court against Caroline Scalp. And even if they couldn't, they wanted to put Caroline Scalp on trial because there was no other way they thought to bring her to justice.

couldn't keep asking her the same question. If you knew that that person was going to assert the Fifth Amendment rights, you couldn't actually put them on the stand. It would be considered prejudicial because the jurors might take the implication that she had something to hide. So she in the final analysis, she showed up in the court room with her attorney, but she was in the back of the room.

Her attorney asserted her right, and she escaped being able being compelled to testify in the corners in question.

of natural causes. So there was no reason for there to be a report from the state police. And so the only record we have, the only decision we had, was from the corner's inquest.

are so frightened for him. The larger question seems to me, is how my friend's parents have distinguished between his neediness and entitlement, his sincere spiritual quest an incipient, possibly hereditary mental illness. Then how soon should they have recognized the venal malign influence of Caroline Scalp, for whom they place so much faith and hope For that I have no answer.

When Susan Wardell first brought the Springford case to my attention in two thousand and nine, they were two dead people Charlotte and Brent Springford Senior, Brent Junior, and Richard Campbell Sandy were still alive. By the time I left Wyoming in twenty sixteen, they were four dead. I wish the outcome could have been otherwise, the Caroline Scalp would have faced the jury for her role in the Springford

and Camal deaths. But nothing more Wordale or various law enforcement officials, and certainly not me could do, was able to change that. However, when I first approached the members of the Springford and Campbell families, as well as defense and law enforcement officials in Alabama, Colorado, and Wyoming, I told them that, regardless of how the judicial process played out, this book would be the murder trial the Caroline Scalp never had.