Zibby:  Previously on Family Business Part 1.

[Small Town Dicks theme]

Carl:  These two guys come in, start demanding money, hit Toby in the head with a gun. He goes to the ground, and then they shoot him and run away.

Dave:  It was really an execution, not a robbery.

Carl:  Four other people were inside the residence when this home invasion robbery happened.

Yeardley:  They shoot him in front of the family?

Carl:  Yes.

Yeardley:  [gasps]

Carl:  They’ve had their own independent marijuana farms. A bunch of people lived there and helped take care of the marijuana farm. One of them was a gal named Michelle. Her boyfriend is a big-time con Aryan Nation kind of guy.

Zibby:  And what is Michelle’s boyfriend’s name?

Carl:  Bobby. They just split town. We have informants down there who are saying, they’re running because of this murder. And so, we actually come up with this plan where we’re going to extradite Michelle from the other state.

Erik:  We felt very strongly that we had the goods on her for the mushroom robberies.

Carl:  It didn’t take very long until her attorney reached out and said, “Hey, we want to play ball. We want to cooperate.

Erik:  The lawyer comes back and says, “My client can take you to the gun.”

Yeardley:  I’m Yeardley.

Zibby:  And I’m Zibby. And we’re fascinated by true crime.

Yeardley:  So, we invited our friends, Detectives Dan and Dave.

Zibby:  To sit down with us and share their most interesting cases.

Dan:  I’m Dan.

Dave:  And I’m Dave.

Dan:  We’re identical twins.

Dave:  And we’re detectives in Small Town, USA.

Dan:  Dave investigates sex crimes and child abuse.

Dave:  Dan investigates violent crimes. And together, we’ve worked on hundreds of cases, including assaults, robberies, murders, burglaries, sex abuse and child abuse.

Dan:  Names, locations and certain details of these cases have been altered to protect the privacy of the victims and their families.

Dave:  While we realize that some of our listeners may be familiar with these cases, we hope you’ll join us in continuing to protect the true identities of those involved out of respect for what they’ve been through. Thank you.

[music]

Yeardley:  Erik, you mentioned that the process of recovering this gun was an unusual one. Tell us about that.

Erik:  Over two-decade prosecutor, and I go out with them a lot, but I don’t often bring defense attorneys along with us. And this one came with his client in a little caravan.

Zibby:  It’s like a scene from a movie.

Erik:  Yeah, it really was.

Carl: : Well, another nice piece of information that we developed up to that point too, is the crime lab was able to say, “Well, based on that casing you guys found and the bullet we pulled from Toby, that’s a 32. And it’s one of these three brands of guns. It’s either a Caltech, it’s a Smith or a Walter.” Is that what it was?

Erik:  It may have been.

Carl:  But Caltech is definitely one of the options. He said, “Yup, they came from one of these guns.” So, we did this caravan, and she directs us down to this rural area, past the crime scene, to the next road on the right and then up into the mountains.

Zibby:  That sounds like a very tense drive. What was that like? Weren’t you afraid this was maybe a setup?

Carl:  I don’t really think it was a setup, because I didn’t think she had the ability to set me up. My thought maybe was going towards she’s going to act like she’s being cooperative, but not.

Erik:  Right. We’re winding up into the forest and the mountains, and we’re thinking, this happened at night.

Carl:  She’s kind of sketchy like, “Ah, I think it’s here. No, no, no, no, not here. I think it’s here. No, no, no, no, not here.” And then, she finally is like, “Oh, no, here we are.” We’re stopped. And I’m like, “Hmm, how are we going to find this?” She says, “Oh, it’s over in the brush off the side of the road. I didn’t see exactly where he put it, but he put it somewhere over there.”

 We start walking, spreading out. There’s four or five of us detective wise, with Erik, the defense attorney and Michelle. I shit you not, the defense attorney’s like, “I found it. I found it. I found it. It’s right here.”

Zibby:  You make it sound like he was really excited about the fact that he was the one to discover it.

Erik:  Yeah, I think that was a novelty for him. He doesn’t usually get to go out with the police looking for evidence against his client.

Yeardley:  And how many weeks out are you from the murder now?

Carl:  We’re months. We’re into April, and the murder was in January.

Zibby:  I’m surprised someone would just ditch a gun and never come back for it after all that time.

Carl:  Ultimately, we find out why. When I walk over to him, and there’s a rubber glove, and the gun is inside the rubber glove, and I start looking around, and there’s shoes, there’s a jacket, there’s pants.

Zibby:  What?

Yeardley:  No.

Carl:  So, Bobby had ditched the gun, the shoes, the coat he was wearing, the pants he was wearing, all in that area. We now had all of it.

Yeardley:  Wow.

Carl:  The shoes, just looking at them– Because I’ve looked at the sole print on this door a bunch, because we’d sent that sole print to the lab, said, “Hey, can you identify this shoe?” And they’re like, “Yeah, that’s a generic sole that goes on every Kmart brand shoe, every Payless brand shoe.”

Yeardley:  Oh, my God.

Carl:  And so that’s not going to help us. But I pick it up, I’m like, “This is the shoe. [chuckles] This is that sole.”

Zibby:  You just hit the jackpot.

Carl:  We just hit the jackpot and that’s all we get for the night. They’re not going to talk to us. We’re not going to give a statement, “We already showed you. We’re going to cooperate with you.” We drive her back to the jail, and drop her off and we call her tonight. But we have now the gun, which I’m assuming is going to match up to the bullet in the shell casing. The shoes, that I’m assuming is going to match up to that door. And then, the clothing that’s been described by the other victims who didn’t get killed as what the big guy was wearing.

Yeardley:  And Erik, now that you’ve found the weapon and all this bonus material, does it change the plea deal? Is she looking at less than eight years in prison?

Erik:  I wasn’t about to make that concession yet.

Yeardley:  So, now what?

Carl:  So, now, we’re sitting in anticipation. We have put a ton of work into this case. We have now made at least four trips to another state. It’s cost me a vacation. [chuckles] It’s cost me some love time with my wife. We put a lot of work into this case, and now we’re just waiting for her defense attorney to say, “Okay, I’m ready to talk to you.” It seemed like it took forever.

 I think it only was just a few days, but I’m just calling him, “So, have you heard? Have you heard? Can we talk to her yet? Can we talk to her yet? Can we talk to her yet?” And ultimately, she comes in and she gives me a statement. She says, “Okay, Bobby did this and I wasn’t there. Bobby went with somebody else, but he told me about it.”

Yeardley:  So, she’s saying, Bobby and his friend committed the murder. I just happen to know about it.

Carl:  Yeah, but she doesn’t put herself there. She doesn’t give me the other guy. It’s basically, “He left and came back and told me about it and freaked out, and that’s why we left.” So that’s crap. That’s BS.

Dave:  Oddly, she can put you where the murder weapon is though.

Carl:  Yeah, which no way in hell somebody’s going to find. But we don’t get very far in that interview. What I got to say about Michelle is from night one to the end of the case, we start chipping away her rough edges. We have, I believe, five interviews with her.

Yeardley:  Five?

Carl:  Yes.

Zibby:  Jeez.

Carl:  And we go from partial truth to working our way into what is probably the real story.

Yeardley:  Which is what?

Carl:  She talks about the robberies, that Freddie was involved, that he had left, he wasn’t part of the murder. And on the last interview, she basically gives up the other guy, because we still didn’t know who that was. So, you remember Lee, who she had all the phone messages with?

Zibby:  Yes, the guy who Michelle and Bobby wanted to buy drugs from and who they wanted to leave their kids with.

Erik:  Yeah, that guy.

Carl:  Well, it’s Lee. They’re like “The guy we talked to a couple times?”

Zibby:  Casual Lee?

Carl:  Yeah.

Erik:  Right.

Carl:  And I am like, “Holy crap.”

Yeardley:  Had it ever occurred to you it might be Lee when you contacted him?

Carl:  Not at all.

Erik:  Yeah. And so, what’s important to know too is we were not feeding her and her attorney any information about the homicide. We did not want to give them one report on that. We had her on the robbery. We had to give those reports to the attorney for him to evaluate with his client, “Yeah, it looks like they’ve got the goods on you on that and they’re willing to make a deal if you cooperate on the homicide and those robberies.

 And so, she didn’t have any of the information. We weren’t giving her information about the homicide. But yet in this last interview, when she names Lee as the other suspect, she also says, “You know, he had called me that night after the murder happens.” She says, “I’d been directed by Bobby to scrub the car, just basically take cleaning solutions, bleach, scrub out the involved car based on if any physical evidence perhaps got on them from the burglary and the homicide.” And she says, “He called me up freaking out asking me if I’d found his knife in the car.”

Zibby:  Oh, my God.

Erik:  “And I told him I didn’t find his knife in the car.” And he said, “I can’t find my knife anywhere.”

Yeardley:  Because it’s in the driveway.

Erik:  When she tells us that that he’s calling up freaking out about losing a folding knife, we’re like,-

Zibby:  Bingo.

Erik:  “Bingo.”

Yeardley:  So, now you know who it was, Bobby and Lee. What do you do?

Carl:  I actually, immediately went out and found Lee. So, Lee lives in another part of the county, that’s also very rural. And we get up there–

Yeardley:  Sorry to interrupt. Was Lee Aryan Nation too?

Carl:  No. Lee is the opposite of Aryan. He’s this burnout biker type guy. I go up there, and I start talking to him and I tell him, “Hey, need you to come down the office. We really need to talk.” He’s like, “I’m not doing that. Screw you.” “Okay, you’re under arrest.” And he’s like, “For what?” And if you talk to the other detectives with me, I got very dramatic at this point and I was like, “The murder.”

[laughter]

 So, apparently, that’s how that went though that’s not my memory of it. But we drag him down the office, and it’s a very quiet 45 minutes, hour ride to my office. We get down, and me and another detective start talking to him. He’s really cagey. He doesn’t think we have the goods on him. Ultimately, we take that picture of the knife and we sit on the table.

Carl:  We don’t get to this point without knowing what’s up, okay? I’m not going to screw around. We’ve been investigating this for five straight months. And the good part about that is that means that we’ve got our lab stuff done. And like I told you already, everybody talks. Blood sticker and water on this one. The thing you got going for you is we think that you got the shitty end of the stick here.

 The fact that I don’t think you knew really what was going on, and you were hid deep into a shit sandwich before you knew it. The reality of it is we know that the other people involved in this are way worse off. We know that you got ties to the people in this, and you didn’t think what happened was what was going to happen and you didn’t think the people that were there were going to be there. We know he’s the bad apple. I’m going to say right now, right up front, I’m sorry you got involved with them. You know what I mean? I’m sorry that this happened to you, but the reality is, if we don’t get something from you, there’s nothing that we can give you.

 I’m not making any promises. I can’t make you deal or anything like this, but I can tell, “You know, who knows about this, and I’ll tell you. We’ve talked to him.” I’m not lying to you about that, because yes, that’s the little proof right there. We’ve got it. We’ve got all the evidence in the world. I don’t think this was you.

Erik:  Do you know I’ve talked to you a couple times. I think you told me half the truth. I don’t think you’d flat out lied, but obviously, we proved some of the things. Just not being the full truth.

Lee:  Yeah.

Carl:  Like I said, the good part about this is, because it’s been such a long investigation at this point now, because we’ve been able to really sort out a lot of this stuff. So, we know what we know. We know what happened. We know who was there. And based on that, I think that I can even say that I know who did exactly what. Think there’s a bigger dog here. And only you can give us the mitigating factors on it. You follow me?

Lee:  Right. So, tell me this.

Carl: . I’ll tell you whatever I can tell you.

Lee:  Okay. All right. We’re sitting here being all recorded, probably videotaped. Probably got somebody behind that piece of glass observing. Okay. And you’re trying to tell me you can work with me and whatever, all this stuff, if I know something.

Carl:  No, I know you know something. We’re beyond that.

Lee:  No This is nota [unintelligible  If I start trying to give some mitigating circumstances, or corroborating or whatever you want to call it, soon as my lips get done flapping, everything else goes out to window. There ain’t no bullshit about no deals. There ain’t no bullshit about nothing.

Carl:  I can guarantee you this–

Lee:  Because it is all over at that point.

Carl:  There won’t be any deals for you down the road, if you don’t help yourself.

Erik:  You’ve already been arrested, right?

Carl:  Yeah.

Lee:  [unintelligible  

Erik:  You’re already arrested, right?

Carl:  We’re not joking around, but [unintelligible

Lee:  Carl, I’m not joking around either. I’m not joking around either. You know what? There’s nothing I’d like to do more than help you, guys, okay? But you also know this ain’t my first rodeo neither,-

Carl:  Right. I know that.

Lee:  -you know?

Carl:  Well, that’s why I said I know you just started to say.

Lee:  I started flapping my frigging jobs, right? You guys walk out that door, I’m still going to the court, to the county jail. Nobody’s going to come and do shit for me, because you’re going to be like, “Huh, got what I want.”

Carl:  You’re not what I want. And you are going to jail today. There’s no question– [crosstalk]

Lee: [ I’m going to jail today, and I’m probably not going to get out for a few years, no matter how it goes down.

Carl:  You’re right about that. How long is a few years though to you, is what I’m trying to get you to understand. We’ve got physical evidence and the lab work to crush you. We’ve got the statements to crush you. Nobody’s getting away with it scot-free on this one. Period. But I’ll tell you this, I don’t think that you were the trigger man. I don’t even think it was your idea. But I don’t know that unless I hear from you.

 You can see him going back and forth. We start dancing this dance. If he’s like, “Well, I need a deal. I’m not talking about a deal.” And I’m like, “I can’t offer you a deal.” He’s very close to asking for an attorney, and I’m trying to say everything I can to avoid that, plus not cross any of the ethical barriers that would shut his statement down. We dance that dance for quite a while, and then he finally just gives it up.

Lee:  Some guy that was supposed to be holding money from, I don’t know, drug deals in jail someplace, supposed to be a partner of theirs.

Erik:  That was the original plan?

Lee:  Which they told me.

Carl:  So, after all three, he got out of the car, what happened?

Lee:  We walked over to the house. Bobby kicked the door open, ran inside, he recognized [beep] and started yelling. It’s like a bad movie.

Carl:  Was [beep] sitting down, or did he get open the door, open or something?

Lee:  I think they were all sitting down to the door open. I know I was so stunned and I knew. I knew it didn’t matter. I could be just his fucking next. Next thing I know, fucking gun goes off.

Zibby:  Wow. He’s not wrong. His description really does sound like a movie.

Yeardley:  It really does.

[Break 1]

Yeardley:  So, do we know why this supposed robbery turned into a murder?

Carl:  We never get a straight answer on that. I think it may have been a mistake. I think it may have been one of those “Oh, shit, I accidentally just shot him” kind of things.

Zibby:  But they kicked in the door with a gun.

Erik:  That’s actually not what Bobby says.

Yeardley:  It’s not?

Erik:  No.

Yeardley:  Was Bobby on drugs at the time?

Erik:  I’d say, probably.

Carl:  Lee had earlier told us that they were smoking marijuana, at least together that day.

Yeardley:  But not meth, which usually makes you do crazy things, at least from what I’ve heard from the other guys.

Carl:  Well, remember when I talked to him, not 12 hours later, he seemed pretty calm, cool and collected.

Yeardley:  That’s true.

Carl:  One of the rumors on the street about Toby was, that Toby was loaded. Toby had lots and lots of money and he bragged about it. The rumor on the street was there was like $250,000 inside his place. Well, we searched the hell out of his place. He didn’t have any money. Find out later that he probably secreted all of his money to his mom.

Zibby:  A murder like that, where you kick in the door, and you shoot one of four other people that are there only and then leave. To me, it sounds like some vengeance.

Erik:  Well, the information that we’d had from the survivors, and then ultimately, I think from Lee’s statement as well, is that they kick in the door, they tell everybody, “This is a robbery.”

Carl:  I think they’re surprised to see everybody there too.

Erik:  There was more people there than expected. From what the survivor said, as well as Lee, Toby started getting up, which could have been interpreted as him resisting the robbery efforts. He gets knocked down by Bobby. He gets pistol whipped to the ground, and then Bobby has his gun leveled at him, a shot’s fired.

Carl:  Depending on who you believe. Some people say that Toby was trying to grab ahold of Bobby at that point as well.

Zibby:  Okay. So, according to Lee, this was an intended robbery, turned into an unintentional murder. Do you have enough to bury these guys?

Carl:  So, everything’s laying up great now. Lee’s corroborating what Michelle says. Michelle’s corroborating what Lee says. We get our forensics work back from the gun. They say, “Yup, that gun caused that bullet, that shell casing.” It’s a Caltech one. In the original weapons, they said it was probably going to be. Everything’s lined up.

 And so, we now have enough to say we’re going to charge Bobby, who’s in another state and we’re going to extradite him back to our state. So, then I fly back down to his area again.

Dave:  What’s his demeanor when you go pick him up?

Carl:  He’s actually chill. I tried to talk to him. He’s like, “I’m not talking. Attorney.” So, then we just BS for a couple hours flight.

Zibby:  Did he get peanuts on the flight? [Yeardley laughs]

Carl:  I didn’t feel like the need to give him everything. No, he got nothing, actually.

Yeardley:  What do you talk about on the flight?

Carl:  He goes on to tell me more of his Aryan Nation stuff.

Yeardley:  Like, philosophy and stuff?

Carl:  Yeah, like his religion. Because remember, he’s part of the Norse religion. Thor is his God, but he’s actually pretty verbose and brags a lot about how he’s not afraid to do somebody, talking about killing somebody and stuff like that. But he’s not putting any specifics. He’s not really admitting anything. We’re basically, at this point now, where everybody’s in custody, everybody’s indicted. We’re just waiting.

Dave:  And then, things go from messed up to super fucked up.

Carl:  Right. So, during the course of this, we get information that the Aryan Nation has put a green light or has authorized a hit on Erik.

Zibby:  What?

Erik:  Why always me?

Yeardley:  Wow.

Zibby:  Wait a minute. How do you get that information?

Yeardley:  Are they eager to share it with you?

Zibby:  Is it like a tweet?

Carl:  It was told to us by a jail informant, corroborated by informants from the gang task force in other areas.

Zibby:  So, how does a jail informant situation like that even work? Someone from jail just voluntarily calls you and says, “Hey, I’ve got some information you’re going to want to hear.”

Carl:  Yup.

Dave:  They send what’s called a kite. It’s a little note that gets sent to whoever they were dealing with. So, there’s occasions where I’ll have in my little inbox a kite from an inmate that says they want to talk to me and they have information about x, y or z. You go over there and you talk to them, and the first thing I always ask is, “What do you have for me?” And the first response from them is, “Well, what can you do for me?”

 There’s occasions where some of them have a conscience, and they just say, “This is a bad dude, and this is the right thing to do. You got to get this guy.” So, there’s a little bit of a criminal code there that will prompt some guys to speak. Others, it’s because they need something for consideration.

Erik:  Or, at least the opportunity. Oftentimes as a prosecutor, I don’t want to promise people. With Michelle in this particular case, it really was a last resort that I was trying to make a deal upfront, not knowing the total picture of her involvement, but we just were running into a roadblock where we had no other solid investigative avenues.

 We knew she knew something. We knew her sister knew something, but we weren’t getting anywhere with them five or six interviews into this. So, it was pretty important in that particular case, we thought. We knew we were giving up something, because ultimately putting the case together, we put a case together against her where she could be facing similar penalties to Lee and Bobby, because she was the driver for all of these events up to and including the murder.

Yeardley:  Does the Aryan Nation, when they put a hit out on you, Erik, are they boastful about this, or are they hoping you don’t find out so it’s successful? Or, if they’re boasting about it, you could be similarly just petrified and that would alter your life.

Erik:  Yeah, it’s hard to tell. We have to take all of those threats seriously. This is not the only one I’ve been involved with Sergeant Carl over the years. Why never you? Why is it always me? [Yeardley laughs] I guess they like me more or something. But it happens occasionally. You don’t know whether somebody’s just running their mouth over in the jail to sound tough and to act like they got the weight and the muscle behind them to get something like that accomplished.

Zibby:  So, Carl, what do you do when you find out there’s a hit out on Erik’s life? Can you do anything to protect him?

Carl:  Well, I went around and figured out who Bobby was associating with currently, who he associated with previously and delivered a very clear message that it’s a really bad idea to screw with a Deputy DA.

Zibby:  When you say you send a very clear message, what does that mean? Like, are you leaving a horse’s head in people’s bed, or what are we talking?

Carl:  I’ll be frank. I told him, “Look, if anything happens to this Deputy DA, I’m going to do everything I can to bury you. Your kids, your kids-kids, your aunt and uncles. Anybody you’ve ever associated with will be my primary focus on life for the next 15 years.”

 It sounds very like I’m trying to be this big badass, but I just wanted to be very clear that this wasn’t acceptable, whether it’s in jest or whether it’s true.

Yeardley:  How legitimate did you think that order was?

Carl:  We didn’t really think he had the pull.

Yeardley:  You mean, Bobby?

Carl:  Yes. We had already found out that even though he had this position of authority within the gang, now that he’s locked up and they knew he was probably done with that his only pull was going to be within the prison aspect of that gang, not the street aspect of that gang, and they weren’t going to send people from out of state to deal with his wants or desires anymore.

Zibby:  What was Bobby’s official sentence?

Erik:  I’d filed a dangerous offender on him. He, again, another guy we thought was a psychopath, just by his axe and callousness, certainly showed no remorse. Within a day after this killing, he’s sitting there watching football, saying, “Hey, search my house. I got no connection to this.

Carl:  Get me a beer.

Erik:  Get me a beer. It was a potential capital case, because it was indicted as an intentional murder during the course of a robbery and it’s a murder with special circumstances that qualifies as potential capital case. And so, there was that. Not that our state is necessarily very good at following through with that, even for people who juries decide that’s the appropriate penalty.

 But the threat of that and what that would mean as far as housing goes compared to what a guy like this, who’s institutionalized, has spent years and years in prison being a badass, for lack of a better term. That’s the life he knew. It’s not one that he was uncomfortable with. And so, Bobby pled guilty to all of the armed robberies of the people involved in the mushroom deals. He got just over 20 years for those.

Yeardley:  That’s a long time.

Erik:  Yeah. And then, we tacked on a consecutive true-life sentence for burglary, robbery, aggravated murder, consecutive to that. Not that it makes much difference. True life is true life, but I wanted to make sure that those were treated differently in case there was an appeal down the line, that the judge’s clear intent was to punish them separately and then in addition to each other.

Zibby:  What about Michelle?

Erik:  She stood pretty steadfastly with us once she got to that final interview and laid it all on the table. It was really the threat of her testifying against these other two men that caused us to be able to convict them for the murder. She claimed, ultimately, that she was the driver, but she had no idea that this was going to turn into a homicide. She thought it was just going to be another lick, like the other ones, that they’d done on the mushroom growers. It was just a slightly different target and a different setting. But the real plan was to go in, hopefully just collect some cash that he had on hand from marijuana receipts.

 And so, we believe that under the circumstances and everything that had been relayed, we had no reason to disbelieve that part of the statement that she had any inkling this was going to end up as a homicide. It was really just her thug boyfriend who had escalated this robbery under the circumstances when he either got resistance or perceived resistance from the victim. She agreed to two years in prison on growing marijuana, which is just unheard of. We don’t send people to prison usually for growing marijuana.

Dan:  If I recall, there was a hit out on Michelle’s life as well. She went to prison, and word got out that she was a snitch.

Yeardley:  Oh, shit.

Zibby:  Oh my God.

Carl:  The information was actually that the rats, Lee and Michelle, were part of this hit, and Erik was part of this hit. So, we actually had to drive up to the prison in another area and meet with her and say, “Hey, I don’t know how much validity there is to this, but I’m going to communicate with the prison. You need to be aware of this. You’re a female, so you’re not really going to be exposed to most of the dudes associated with this gang.” She was pretty cool with it. She wasn’t too concerned about it, actually. She thought it was probably just a lot of talk.

Yeardley:  Michelle being in prison, are there not Aryan Nation women who would take Michelle out?

Erik:  Good question. I don’t know. There are, I’m sure, people who are or have been affiliated with the Aryan Nation in the women’s prison, whether or not there was enough clout to convince them that that would be in their interest or in their duty to do. That’s an unknown question. But that’s exactly why the detectives obviously went up to contact her, to put her on notice.

Zibby:  What about Lee?

Carl:  Lee was scared, because he wasn’t part of their group at all.

Yeardley:  And where was he?

Erik:  Lee was still in the local jail, being held pretrial pending his charges.

Dan:  So, it sounded like there was some debate about whether or not this was an AD, an accidental discharge, or they really meant to kill him. After you interviewed Michelle, Bobby and Lee, did you form an opinion about what actually happened?

Carl:  I think it was an intentional, but I don’t think it was a preplanned event, because according to Lee, he was surprised and it freaked him out. The witnesses agreed that the other guy, even though he had a revolver and went in there, and he was large and in charge with Bobby initially, as soon as that gun went off, he was gone.

Dave:  Right. They’ve done previous robberies, and there’s never been any gunfire. I think in this situation, he’s a hothead, probably. This guy challenges him or comes after him a little bit, and he’s like, “Fuck you. I’m not taking your shit.” Shoots him. The other guy’s like, “I didn’t sign up for that.”

Erik:  Yeah.

Carl:  Yeah. And ultimately, actually, Lee agreed to give me the gun he used during that robbery.

Yeardley:  So, Erik, even though Carl did his best to put the threat on your life to rest, a warning hardly does anything to curb somebody’s impulse control. Were you on edge? Were you worried about your family or–

Erik:  It’s not uncommon for people to spout off under the circumstances where their liberty is at risk. Most of the people that we deal with are not ones that are quick to say, “Oh, it’s all my fault. I get it. I understand.” They’re looking to blame shift. And so, they point at the people that have given information that has led to their capture. They point to the detectives who arrested him, who have a vendetta against him.

 And then, of course, the last person in that process who really is in control of, do I get a really super sweet deal, or is this guy going after my ass like a hammer, is the prosecutor. And so, the prosecutor factors very high in their hate list of people, because we do have a lot of influence on what the outcome of the case is, and whether or not we’re going to give somebody a very good deal or whether we’re going to take them to task.

 And so, I say that to just lay out there that, yes, prosecutors, who handle particularly major crimes are not unaccustomed to having people make threats to their life or their safety. It’s just something that you have to live with.

Zibby:  But are you taking extra measures to protect yourself? What does living with that look like?

Erik:  Really, yes, we’ve got information in this particular case that there was an active threat, but the reality is that can happen any day. You just have to live carefully. You have to be observant. You have to be vigilant.

Yeardley:  Do you tell your wife that there’s an active threat?

Erik:  Yeah, of course. No, of course, I share that with her.

Carl:  So, during this case, during that time period, not to interrupt, I was talking to my wife and family and saying, “You know–

[Break 2]

Carl:  If you see people who don’t look like they belong here, you need to just get on the phone, call 911.

Erik:  But those are lessons– I mean, those are discussions that we’ve had more than once with our wives and with our kids. Again, you just get in a habit of being vigilant and paying attention to your surroundings, because you have to. You don’t know which person is going to take that crazy next step, or which person has enough weight or a family member who’s crazy.

Carl:  I do this, and I’m sure these guys have done this. My wife and I have been married a long time, but we have developed rules of being in public. And so, if somebody comes up to me and starts talking to me and she doesn’t recognize that person, she just continues walking and pretends like we weren’t even together until she figures out whether that’s a safe person or not safe person. I’m sure you guys all have your own theories and systems.

Dave:  Absolutely. I had that discussion with girlfriends in the past. We had little codes like code four. I’m code four. If they walk up and look at you like, “Who is that?” You give them this, they know that.

Zibby:  Code four means I’m okay.

Dave:  Code four means I’m okay. We had a thing where if we put up a three, code three means get the hell out of here. I’ve never had a situation like that, but certainly, we’ve crossed paths with people in this small community that I’ve put handcuffs on and they don’t like me. So, it happens.

Zibby:  When you say you and your wife have an agreement, like if someone comes up to talk to you that she doesn’t recognize, she keeps going. See, I thought you were going to finish that sentence with, “Oh, she was going to come join you.”

Carl:  No. Let’s say we’re walking through the mall or something like that. Somebody starts walking up to me that she doesn’t recognize or that pegs her creep meter, her job at that point then is to just pretend like she’s not even with me and just keep walking along, and then go far enough away that she can just keep an eye on what’s going on versus staying with me.

Zibby:  For fear that you both get hurt.

Carl:  Well, or I don’t want those people to recognize. My face has been in the paper and on the news and stuff, but hers doesn’t need to be associated with that world.

Yeardley  That is a contingency plan that never would have occurred to me.

Zibby:  In the end, did you regret that Michelle didn’t get more prison time?

Carl:  Initially, I felt like we were making a deal with the devil on this one, you know? But I think we did the right thing. I have kept track of her, and she’s, as far as I can tell, living a very normal, legal lifestyle now.

Zibby:  Is she still part of the Aryan Nation, do you know?

Carl:  No. She started getting her tattoos removed that had stuff associated with that. She’s dumped that lifestyle, as far as I can tell.

Erik:  She’s been holding a steady job in our community for some time now. But we really did feel appreciative. And ultimately, she didn’t necessarily want to tell us and play up the fact that she was in a fairly abusive relationship with Bobby. But it was clear from some anecdotal information that we got that he’s a terror. If he told her to do something like, “You need to drive me to this place,” that she was going to do it or face the consequences of that. And as Sergeant Carl said, “He’s a big guy, a pretty imposing guy.” The threat was real.

Yeardley:  What about Freddie? What happened to him?

Erik:  Ended up taking 15 years on the mushroom buyer robberies. I think he took about seven and a half years on each of them consecutive to each other. He had no involvement in the homicide. Those mushroom buyer robberies probably never would have gotten solved, had it not been for the subsequent homicide that had these guys traveling to other states to attract them leads.

Zibby:  Yeah.

Yeardley:  Interesting. Thank you so much, both of you.

Zibby:  Yeah. Thank you.

Erik:  Yeah. Thank you. Our pleasure.

Carl:  Thanks for having us.

Dave:  Well done, gentlemen.

[music]

Yeardley:  Small Town Dicks is produced by Zibby Allen and Yeardley Smith, and co-produced by Detectives Dan and Dave.

Zibby:  This episode was edited by Soren Begin, Yeardley Smith and Zibby Allen.

Yeardley:  Music for the show was composed by John Forrest. Our associate producer is Erin Gaynor, and our books are cooked and cats wrangled by Ben Cornwell.

Zibby:  Ifyou like what you hear and want to stay up to date with the show, head on over to smalltowndicks.com. And become our pal on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, @smalltowndicks. We love hearing from our Small Town Fam. So, hit us up.

Yeardley:  Yeah. And also, we have a YouTube channel where you can see trailers for past and forthcoming episodes. And we’re part of Stitcher Premium now.

Zibby:  That’s right. If you choose to subscribe, you’ll be supporting our podcast. That way, we can keep going to small towns across the country and bringing you the finest in rare true crime cases, told, as always, by the detectives who investigated them. Thanks for listening, Small Town Fam.

Yeardley:  Nobody’s better than you.

[music]

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