Terri: [00:00:55] I was so shocked by what I walked into. She said, “You know they hear us no matter where they are. I know that he can hear what I’m saying, even though he’s dead.”

Yeardley: [00:01:10] When a serious crime is committed in a small town, a handful of detectives are charged with solving the case. I’m Yeardley, and I’m fascinated by these stories. So, I invited my friends, detectives Dan and Dave, to help me gather the best true crime cases from around the country, and have the men and women who investigated them, tell us how it happened.

Dan: [00:01:35] I’m Dan.

Dave: [00:01:36] And I’m Dave.

Dan: [00:01:37] We’re identical twins.

Dave: [00:01:38] And we’re detectives in Small Town USA.

Dan: [00:01:41] Dave investigates sex crimes and child abuse.

Dave: [00:01:43] Dan investigates violent crimes. And together, we’ve worked on hundreds of cases including assaults, robberies, murders, burglaries, sex abuse, and child abuse.

Dan: [00:01:53] Names, places, and certain details, including relationships have been altered to protect the privacy of the victims and their families. Though 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.

Yeardley: [00:02:22] Today on Small Town Dicks, we have the usual suspects. We have Detective Dan.

Dan: [00:02:28] Good afternoon.

Yeardley: [00:02:29] And we have Detective Dave.

Dave: [00:02:31] Great to be here.

Yeardley: [00:02:32] We’re so pleased to have Captain Terri returning with us today.

Terri: [00:02:36] Thanks for having me back.

Yeardley: [00:02:37] We are thrilled. So, Captain Terri, you have a really interesting case for us today. Tell us how this case came to you.

Terri: [00:02:45] So, it was a Sunday, and I was putting on a baby shower that I had been planning for six months, and I was decorating the hall, so it wasn’t even started yet and I got a call from the other captain saying that there was an emergency call in our county and that I needed to come, and it was because of the type of call that he needed assistance. So, I asked him, “What was going on?” And originally, he told me that there was a husband holding a wife hostage. Now, I’m not even sure how we got to there because that has nothing to do with what we really ended up with, but that was what I thought I was going to. So, I left the baby shower.

Yeardley: [00:03:25] Was it your baby shower?

Terri: [00:03:26] No, it was a friend’s baby shower. I was giving her a baby shower. Luckily, there was another person helping me, because I said, “I have to go.” When I got out there, it was something that was totally different by the time I had gotten there. We had gotten five or six 911 calls that hung up. And these calls, the dispatch, we get the call, she’d tried to call back, leave a message, nobody would answer, and that was a kind of answering machine where there was no name, just a phone number. We didn’t have a phone number like that in our system, so we didn’t have anywhere to start. And at some point, she did call back again and she spoke with the child, who said there was an emergency at their house.

[00:04:05] So, part of the issue was that these people were new to our area, but luckily, the child did say their last name and we’re able to find something in our records that showed that these people owned a home in our county, and that’s how we ended up going there.

Yeardley: [00:04:20] How old is the child?

Terri: [00:04:22] Nine.

Yeardley: [00:04:23] Oh.

Terri: [00:04:23] Yes. So, all she said was there’s an emergency at her house. She had been on the phone several times, but she wouldn’t speak with the dispatchers. So, finally, the last call, she did speak with us. When the first arriving officers got there, there were two, one from a small town, even smaller than our county, had come to assist one of my deputies. They entered the house and found three children in the home and the children were saying that their parents were dead upstairs. So, the two officers that were there held the house and held the children in one place, but they didn’t understand. What they said was that their dad and their mom were upstairs and their dad had been shot. And so, for some reason, there was some misunderstanding. They thought that the dad may have still been alive and that we had a situation where there was somebody upstairs that had a gun.

[00:05:14] So, we weren’t really sure. The kids weren’t giving us a lot. Later in the investigation, we found out the reason that was is because the children had been told not to speak with law enforcement. So, they were afraid to talk to us, which is why they kept hanging up on us on the 911 call. The parents do not trust law enforcement. So, they hold the house, and we call the special response team, which is like our swat team, we call it a Special Response Team, and they came in. By the time I had gotten to the scene, the special response team is there, and I’m out on the street, which it’s only like 50ft to 100ft away from the entrance to the house. We needed to move our perimeter back, which we did.

[00:05:51] The special response team then went in and took the children out and then cleared the house. When they cleared the house, that’s when we found out that we had two deceased people on the upstairs level of the home, the father and the mother. They had a two-storey home and the stairs wind around. So, they found the mother on the second stair level and they found the father up at the top of the stairs. The mother had been stabbed to death and the father had been shot twice.

Yeardley: [00:06:18] Oh, my God. Are these three children’ siblings?

Terri: [00:06:22] Yes.

Yeardley: [00:06:23] And how old are they?

Terri: [00:06:24] Nine, seven and two. So now, we bring the children out and we do a small interview right there just to try to figure out what’s going on. At the house, a detective and some of the crime lab were processing the scene, which is where we had found the mother had been stabbed over 30 times and the father had been shot twice. All of this happened on the second level right outside of a room that turns out to be Susan’s bedroom.

[00:06:53] Susan is a 17-year-old girl that is their older sister, and she’s missing. So, at this point, there’s a lot of stuff going on. We’re a small department, so we decided to call in the state crime lab. They are hours away and they told me they weren’t going to come until they had a search warrant. So, that’s what I was working on, was a search warrant. Then I had the children brought back to the department and we had other people looking for Susan. We had found out that Susan had been at a friend’s house down the street. We went there, and talked to them, and then the whole story started to come together.

[00:07:30] One of the other things that we found at the house that was really important was a contract between Susan and her parents, and it said that she would not have contact with anybody outside of the house, that she was going to save money, that she had to have a certain amount of money before she could move out. If she didn’t complete this contract, that she was going to have to join the military. So, there’s a lot of stuff here that is not making any sense at all.

[00:07:56] First of all, the only contact we had with this family was that the father, who was Susan’s stepfather, John, had called the sheriff’s office and said that some bear hunters– I don’t know if you guys know much about bear hunting, but they hunt with dogs. And so, they trained these dogs to chase the bears. Some bear hunter had lost their dog and it ended up in John’s house, and John had locked it in his garage, and they were on his property. He owned a large amount of property, like 40 acres. And so, he called the sheriff’s office and he said, “I want you to make sure that they know that their dogs cannot be on my property and they cannot be on my land.”

Dave: [00:08:33] That’s the only encounter your police department had with his family?

Terri: [00:08:36] Right. It was this contact about the dogs. We knew then that John had a past criminal history that he had been a felon in another state for sexual assault and some domestic abuse. One of the detectives that was working the case had been the one that actually had contact with John, and he said that he had tried to get into the house and John wouldn’t let him come in. So, he said John was very hostile towards law enforcement, but we had very little information about the family themselves.

[00:09:06] The other thing we noticed when we came into the house on this case was there were guns everywhere. I’ve told you in the past that it’s not unusual to have a gun cabinet in a house. They actually had guns overdoors, like up on shelves, so that they could get to them quickly. We’re talking probably 20 to 25 guns in their house. That brings me to another thing that was somewhat disturbing. When we walked in, there was a set of rules on the side of the refrigerator, and they were very strict rules. Something like, “You will eat what you’re given.” It was very obvious when we walked in there that this family was a family that was very rigid and strict.

[00:09:42] Once we talked to the children more and more, we found out that there were lots of rules. So, it was very bizarre. I was so shocked by what I walked into. The brutality of the scene and the fact that there were these three little children there.

Yeardley: [00:09:57] Do you know if John had been convicted previously of sexually assaulting a minor or who were his victims in the sexual assault?

Terri: [00:10:04] I believe his victims had been other partners, other people in his life, is what we eventually found out.

Dave: [00:10:11] Can I ask what the emotional state of the three children were when you first arrived at the scene?

Terri: [00:10:16] Very calm. Kind of very bizarre for us. So, some of the things that were really hard for us to see, like in the bathroom on the main floor, there were little footprints in blood.

Yeardley: [00:10:27] Like little kids’ footprints?

Terri: [00:10:29] Right. And they had actually been locked in a room that was one of their bedrooms. In the bedroom, it was a tent and all kinds of food, like little animal cookies, and fruit snacks, and soda. There’s a cord on the door. One of the children tells us that Susan locked them in there before she left. For me though, I was happy that the children were alive, because based on the scene, it could have been much worse. And so, that started me thinking, “What is actually going on here?”

[00:11:02] So, I have detectives in the crime lab processing the scene trying to get as much information as they can. One of the things that they did note was that the shotgun that was used to kill the father was jammed and was actually laying inside Susan’s room. So, that to me was, why did we transition to a knife? That was what I was putting together there. Then I was speaking to the children and they were telling me things like there had been an argument earlier in the day and John had left the house. At some point, when he came back, he went up to see Susan, and at that point, the kids and Samantha had been down in the living room.

Yeardley: [00:11:45] Is Samantha, the mother of Susan and the three little kids?

Terri: [00:11:48] Yes. And they heard a loud noise, and then Samantha jumped up and said, “What the heck is that?” And then she ran upstairs. The kids only said they heard one shot, even though we know there was two. And then at some point, Samantha started screaming one of the little girl’s names, and the little girl came up around the corner and saw Susan on top of her mother stabbing her. Susan looked at her and said, “Go in the living room.”

Yeardley: [00:12:17] Oh, so the three little kids heard John, their father get shot and at least one of the siblings saw Susan stabbing Samantha, their mother?

Terri: [00:12:28] Yes.

Yeardley: [00:12:29] Good God.

Terri: [00:12:41] So, that’s what we get from them is that their sister, Susan had killed their parents. So, we know the suspect. If Susan wanted to, she could have killed those children and it would have taken us days. Who knows how long it would have taken us to come out to that house because it’s in the middle of nowhere, and who would have had a reason? These people had no connection to the county. Samantha worked out of the county that we lived in. She drove somewhere else. So, I don’t know how long it would have taken us to find that children. But we find out that Susan is in a vehicle with another person, a 22-year-old boyfriend.

[00:13:17] We know that Susan has some cuts to herself because that is what we’ve been told by the children. They say that Susan came into the living room, she was covered in blood, she put on the television, which they’re not usually allowed to watch TV, and she gave them soda and snacks in the living room and told them to stay in the living room. They’re like, “That’s not allowed, but Susan said we could do it. So, we stayed in the living room.” Susan took a shower, she came back into the living room, checked on them, and then she took a second shower is what they said. So, we go into the bathroom. We find that there’s blood all over the place. We find the bloody knife in the bathroom. So, it’s still there and it appears that Susan has cut herself. It’s pretty obvious that she’s got some kind of wound.

[00:14:05] She had left the house and gone to a neighbor’s house that was about two miles up the road. They said, “Yes, she showed up here to pick up her boyfriend and then they took off.” So, right as we are going to the house, to their house where the emergency is, she’s leaving the neighbor’s house, which is right down the road and driving to the other state.

Dave: [00:14:24] As you guys get there, you’re looking at vehicles that are in the driveway, things like that? Did Susan have her own vehicle or is there a vehicle missing from the parents?

Terri: [00:14:33] There was one vehicle missing. It was Susan’s truck. The other two vehicles were there, and Susan’s truck was missing. That was in the letter too, something about she had to pay the insurance on her truck, and she couldn’t drive the truck unless she had permission. So, you’re right. We did find that there was a vehicle missing and that is how were able to start looking for her. We sent out a teletype. They actually caught her license plate on a licensed reader in another state, and then they ended up catching her and arresting her.

Dave: [00:15:04] Probably, prior to that. In your teletype, your bolo that you sent out, do you have specific instructions for other law enforcement if they do encounter Susan?

Terri: [00:15:12] Right. We do tell them that she could be armed and dangerous, because we don’t know how many guns are in the house. So, we’re like, “We are looking for this female. We believe she’s traveling with this male, and we believe her to be armed and dangerous. She is a suspect in a double homicide.”

Yeardley: [00:15:27] Holy shit. So, law enforcement catches up with her quite quickly. I’m surprised there’s no high-speed chase or anything like that.

Terri: [00:15:34] No. They took her into custody, and they had everything on video. Then I think he said something to the effect of, “Do you know what this is about?” And she said, “It’s about the murder.” So, she did give it up. The other person said, “I have no idea what’s going on.”

Yeardley: [00:15:50] Is the other person, her boyfriend?

Terri: [00:15:52] Correct. He’s not naive to police contact. He’s had some contact with us, but we’re talking a full out, high risk traffic stop was performed here, and people were called out at gunpoint. So, I’m sure that he was scared to death about what was happening here.

Yeardley: [00:16:07] And for our listeners, these interview recordings are degraded. So, a lot of the dialogue is quite hard to hear in places. We are going to help it along.

Male Speaker: [00:16:23] I still don’t know what’s going on. I don’t even know how the hell I got brought into it. All I know is I was trying to get it right back home the next day notice. So, let me try over what is [unintelligible [00:16:32] right before. I’ve never been in this situation before. I’m scared shitless. I’m trying to keep my fucking eyes open. What’s going on?

Yeardley: [00:16:42] “I’m trying to keep my fucking eyes open. What is going on?”

Detective: [00:16:46] I’ll tell you what. I don’t blame you for being stressed. It’s all right. But now, we’re done talking here. Hopefully, you’ll have some of that stress relieved, you don’t know some of the things we know and we’ll have a bigger picture of the story.

Yeardley: [00:17:04] So, Susan’s boyfriend sounds like he genuinely has no idea what’s going on. But I want to go back to what Susan said when she was first arrested. She said, “This was about the murders.”

Terri: [00:17:16] The murder.

Yeardley: [00:17:17] Oh, murder. Singular.

Terri: [00:17:19] The murder.

Yeardley: [00:17:20] That seems like an important distinction.

Terri: [00:17:22] Yes. So now, we have an idea. It’s a little clue, because she’s saying, “The murderer.” And so, there’s so much stuff happening at one time and we were trying to get so many things in order. We were working short of manpower, especially, it’s a Sunday. It’s the middle of spring break time, so not everybody’s there. Even in small towns, the media gets information and then it becomes a media storm. So, I’m trying to work on the search warrant, which I have gotten, and I bring that to the crime scene at the house with the detectives and present it to them.

Yeardley: [00:17:56] How long does it take to get a search warrant because it only takes, like, one commercial break on TV?

Terri: [00:18:01] Well, that could be probably four, five, six hours, depending on how long it takes to get to the judge, because we only have a certain amount of judges. We don’t work 24/7, like, in big cities where they have judges all the time. So, we actually have to find the judge wherever he might be. He might be ice fishing in the middle of a lake, and then you have to go find him wherever he is.

Yeardley: [00:18:22] Why do you need a search warrant when clearly two people have been murdered and you’ve taken the children out? Why do you need a search warrant to continue to look through the house?

Terri: [00:18:30] Well, that’s a good question. First of all, the crime lab that we work with requires a search warrant. But the other thing is that there is an adult child, okay? So, one of the things that was important about this case was that Susan was 17 years old. She had just turned 17 years old two days prior to when we were serving this. In our state, she’s an adult. So, she has standing in the house. She would have had standing either way, even as a child. But for us to search in her area, she still had a right for us to get a search warrant, because she lived there and we were collecting evidence of a crime.

[00:19:04] So, the detectives go down to the other state where she’s at, and we continue investigating in our area. When the detective does go down there and talk to Susan, she starts her story by saying that she was protecting herself from her mother. She says that her stepfather was abusing her mother and that her mother had it, and that her mother, Samantha, had actually killed John.

Detective: [00:19:36] It sounds like you had a pretty good relationship with your mom.

Susan: [00:19:38] I’m good.

Detective: [00:19:40] Who was your best friend?

Susan: [00:19:43] She was my best friend.

Detective: [00:19:52] So,what happened that I got you here?

Susan: [00:19:58] They got into a fight again over me. [sobbing] They always fought over me.

Yeardley: [00:20:07] “They got into a fight again over me. They always fought over me.”

Detective: [00:20:11] Okay.

Susan: [00:20:16] I was already planning on leaving. [sobbing] [unintelligible [00:20:23] I already had some stuff out. My mom wanted me out. My stepdad wanted me to stay. They started arguing again. [unintelligible 00:20:42]. [sobbing] And I looked at my mom and I saw that she had a gun and she shot him.

Yeardley: [00:21:02] And I looked at my mom and I saw that she had a gun and she shot him.

Susan: [00:21:12] [sobbing] I got the gun out of her hand, and I was looking at her when she did it. And she told me, “It was my fault.”

Yeardley: [00:21:21] “I got the gun out of her hand, and I was looking at her when she did it. And she told me, it was my fault.”

Susan: [00:21:29] And then she grabbed the knife that was on the shelf and she came after me with it.

Terri: [00:21:38] If this is about self-defense, then maybe you stab your mom once or twice. This is the point where we started to see that there’s more to this case than what we really knew, because she said, “I was just so angry and I was so upset, and it just all came out all of a sudden.” It was so overwhelming how much she talked about things that had happened in her past and that this stabbing just came out. It was so emotional for her. Not just self-defense. It started out as self-defense, and then she just couldn’t stop.

Yeardley: [00:22:12] So, what had happened?

Terri: [00:22:13] She said that her mom had shot John and that she came up the stairs to see what had happened.

Detective: [00:22:23] When you went upstairs, where was your mom?

Susan: [00:22:26] Standing there by the staircase, on the top floor.

Detective: [00:22:31] Okay. So, she was standing on the top of the staircase. Where was your dad?

Susan: [00:22:35] [sobbing] He was laying down, not even a few feet from her.

Detective: [00:22:40] So, he is laying, not even a few feet from her. Was he laying in the hallway? Okay. And then what?

Susan: [00:22:50] First, I tried to take the gun out of her hand, and I did. [unintelligible [00:22:55] I was yelling at her. I asked her, “What did you do?” Next thing, she started yelling and blaming me.

Detective: [00:23:06] What was she saying?

Susan: [00:23:07] That it is my fault. It was my fault they are fighting.

Detective: [00:23:14] It was your fault they’re fighting? You probably heard that before?

Susan: [00:23:17] It’s not the first time, they always said it.

Yeardley: [00:23:20] “It’s not the first time. They always said it.”

Detective: [00:23:23] Okay.

Susan: [00:23:27] [sobbing] All of a sudden, she came after me.

Detective: [00:23:30] Okay. Where did she go after you?

Susan: [00:23:34] What do you mean?

Detective: [00:23:35] Well, where were you when she went after you?

Susan: [00:23:37] I was on the staircase.

Detective: [00:23:40] Okay. So, maybe I was thinking you’re upstairs.

Susan: [00:23:44] I’m upstairs, indeed.

Detective: [00:23:47] You got the gun away from her, right?

Susan: [00:23:48] Yes.

Detective: [00:23:48] When she came after you, where were you?

Susan: [00:23:54] The second landing on the staircase. Does that make sense?

Detective: [00:23:58] Yeah, the middle land.

Susan: [00:23:58] Yeah.

Detective: [00:23:59] Okay. So, where was the gun when she was going after you?

Susan: [00:24:03] I think I put it– she went upstairs all the way. I grabbed the gun from her. I set it down somewhere. I don’t remember.

Detective: [00:24:18] And then when she came after you, what happened?

Susan: [00:24:22] She stabbed me in the leg.

Yeardley: [00:24:25] “She stabs me in the leg.”

Susan: [00:24:28] And start back down, I tried to grab the knife from her. That’s when I cut my hand, and I finally got it back, and that’s when I stabbed her with it because she was trying to get the knife from me again.

Yeardley: [00:24:44] “I tried to grab the knife from her. That’s when I cut my hand, and I finally got it back, and that’s when I stabbed her because she was trying to grab the knife from me again.”

Detective: [00:24:55] And how did you stab her? I don’t know what you mean. Where did you stab her?

Susan: [00:24:59] I don’t know. I just started stabbing and fighting with my life. I was so scared. [sobbing]

Detective: [00:25:07] Do you have any idea how– where on her body you stabbed her?

Susan: [00:25:15] [sobbing] I don’t.

Detective: [00:25:16] Do you know anything like how you are holding the knife? Let’s say this pen. I mean, if this is a handle and this is the point, just like the point, can you show me how you held the knife, like what position? Because there’s a lot of different ways.

Susan: [00:25:41] [sobs] I don’t know.

Detective: [00:25:42] Okay. It’s like that? So, it was like this, not like that because it tells a little bit about people. Okay. So, it looks like you got cut three times, twice?

Susan: [00:26:06] [sniffles] More than three.

Detective: [00:26:08] Okay.

Susan: [00:26:09] [crosstalk]

Detective: [00:26:12] Okay. How many times do you think your mom got cut?

Susan: [00:26:15] I don’t know. [sobs]

Detective: [00:26:19] If you had to guess.

Susan: [00:26:21] I don’t know.

Detective: [00:26:22] But something happened because your mom was stabbed a lot and that only tells me that you were hurting and you’re very angry.

Susan: [00:26:34] I just don’t know. I stabbed her back.

Detective: [00:26:37] I know, she just killed your stepdad. But you were closer to your mom than you were to your stepdad.

Susan: [00:26:47] [sobbing] She was the one that wanted me out.

Yeardley: [00:26:50] “She was the one that wanted me out.”

Detective: [00:26:53] She wanted you out but–

Susan: [00:26:55] I know we were close.

Detective: [00:26:59] But something happened there to make you so mad that you stabbed her a lot.

Susan: [00:27:05] I don’t– [sobs]

Detective: [00:27:08] What?

Susan: [00:27:16] I didn’t even know I stabbed her a lot.

Detective: [00:27:18] You stabbed her a lot. So, when you had the knife and let’s say you stabbed her once, how can you then just leave?

Susan: [00:27:29] She fought me.

Detective: [00:27:32] Fought you [unintelligible [00:27:33] you had the knife and you got it from her. So, why didn’t you leave?

Susan: [00:27:45] She grabbed me.

Detective: [00:27:47] Okay. This is what I know. [stabbing sounds] 52 times. 52 times. How come you didn’t run? 52 times. [screams] Why? [pause] 52 times. You didn’t have to do that. She had no chance. And you kept going on and on and on for 52 times. Two would have been enough. You could have got away. Why 52?

Susan: [00:29:00] I don’t know.

Yeardley: [00:29:01] “I don’t know.” That’s an incredible interview.

Terri: So, here is the story that she tells us. Susan tells us that she has been dating a 22-year-old that her parents knew nothing about. And that at some point during the day on Saturday, we found the bodies on Sunday. Susan’s birthday had been on Friday. On Saturday, she had gone town. She says that she was planning on moving out, because she had just turned 17, she was going to move out with a friend. She says while she’s in town that her parents look at her Facebook messaging and see that she’s been talking to this 22-year-old. And that when she gets home, her parents have created this letter that I told you about and that she has to sign this letter.

[00:29:52] Susan then starts to talk about how her stepfather has been abusing her mother and her stepsisters that he’s very abusive, he abuses the girls. He has not abused Susan, but he abuses the girls and her mother all the time, physically. She even talks about he killed a dog. They had gotten two puppies, and one of the puppies was not doing well potty training, and he was very abusive to the puppy in front of the children. So, Susan said that this is the kind of world that she was living in and she was trying to escape. So, she tells us all about this 22-year-old boy and that the mom and the dad go upstairs and are having an altercation. She says the mom is upset because the dad is mad about Susan having this relationship, and he’s abusing her. He’s abusing the mother.

[00:30:45] So, Samantha finally snaps and kills John. At this point, Susan comes up the stairs, and Samantha turns around at Susan and she says, “It’s all your fault. You did this. It’s all your fault. If you would have just done what you were supposed to do, we would be safe and this wouldn’t have happened.” At that point, she starts to come at Susan, and Susan feels like she has to protect herself, so she grabs the knife and she stabs her mom. And then she said, “All of it just came out,” the years of abuse.

[00:31:15] She told the investigator at that point that she had been sexually assaulted when she was nine years old by one of her mother’s other boyfriends and that he had gone to prison, and she said, Samantha picked another person that wasn’t great, like her mother keeps having these relationships with people that abused them, and then she had this relationship with John. She said, “It’s like my mom always picked them over me, and she never protected me, and it just all came out that day when I had that knife.” Susan kept saying, “It’s not my fault. It’s my mom’s fault and I just couldn’t stop. I just couldn’t stop until I was just so tired and I was bleeding.”

Yeardley: [00:31:56] We’ve learned that often if you stab somebody, the blood is so slippery, you often end up cutting yourself on the same blade.

Terri: [00:32:03] She was so angry that the knife blade went through the skull.

Yeardley: [00:32:07] Her mother’s skull. Oh, God.

Dan: [00:32:21] I’m trying to figure out the timing of this. When you finally catch up to her in the other state, and your detective, I’m assuming, he has to drive hours to meet up.

Terri: [00:32:30] Correct.

Dan: [00:32:30] Meanwhile, you’re back at the crime scene at the house, and you’re looking at this from a forensic point of view. It was a shotgun, correct?

Terri: [00:32:37] Right.

Dan: [00:32:38] Pump action.

Terri: [00:32:39] Right.

Dan: [00:32:39] We talking birdshot or double op buck?

Terri: [00:32:41] We’re talking slugs.

Dan: [00:32:43] Oh, slugs. So, a slug member first season pumpkin balls?

Terri: [00:32:48] Yes.

Dan: [00:32:48] So, that is a slug. It is a lead slug, the same diameter as the shotgun shell coming down that barrel. It’ll blow a hole through a wall.

Terri: [00:32:58] Correct, and it did. It did. The scene was horrible. It was massive head wound. But we also had a wound in the neck. So, he was shot once. It sounds like, first here in the neck, and there was blood everywhere, and then he was shot in the head. And the gun is right inside of Susan’s bedroom sitting up against the wall.

Dan: [00:33:20] Placed there.

Terri: [00:33:20] Placed there. Remember, I told you that once we looked at the gun, it was jammed. It took an armor to get it apart.

Dan: [00:33:27] Catastrophic malfunction.

Terri: [00:33:28] Exactly. I don’t know how it got jammed like that. I’ve not seen something like that.

Dan: [00:33:33] Earlier when you were describing this house and that there are shelves above doorways and things like that, I’m looking that from a law enforcement perspective of that is someone who is completely prepared for law enforcement entering their house and them defending their property. Let’s remember that this guy’s a convicted felon. He can’t even have guns in the house.

Terri: [00:33:51] Right. He’s not supposed to.

Dave: [00:33:52] Of course. That would be why the stepdad didn’t want to let the police into the house.

Terri: [00:33:56] The other thing we found was a little pink gun, a pink BB gun. So, the girls, the younger girls are learning how to shoot too. So, she says that then she loses it. She continues in the interview with the detective to say that she killed her mom but not her stepdad. But we know that that’s not the case.

Yeardley: [00:34:16] Because the little kids have said that?

Terri: [00:34:18] Correct. Because the other witnesses in the house have given us a statement of hearing the shot go off, hearing the fight.

Detective: [00:34:28] Your sister still love you and they still look up to you.

Yeardley: [00:34:33] “And your sisters still love you and they still look up to you.”

Detective: [00:34:37] She told me, she said, “She said she didn’t kill mom and dad, but I know she did.” She said that you killed mom and dad. I want them to understand and I want to believe you, but you’re not sure. And I understand if you’re scared. [unintelligible [00:35:04] It’s always going live in here, in your mind, in her mind.

Yeardley: [00:35:13] “It’s always going live in here, in your mind, in her mind.”

Detective: [00:35:18] She took care of your two sisters. She hadn’t told the police, “I’m busy right now. I need to go take care of my sisters,” because there’s nobody else to do it. You ran away and you left them home to die, if that’s what happened.

Yeardley: [00:35:44] “You ran away and left them home to die, if that’s what happened.”

Detective: [00:35:48] Because nobody was there to save them.

Susan: [00:35:52] I didn’t killed him.

Detective: [00:35:53] That’s–[crosstalk]

Susan: [00:35:53] I wanted him dead, but I did not kill him.

Detective: [00:35:57] What?

Susan: [00:35:57] I wanted him dead, but I did not kill him.

Yeardley: [00:36:00] “I didn’t kill him. I wanted him dead, but I did not kill him.”

Terri: [00:36:09] So, when she leaves the house, she locks her siblings in one of the bedrooms, and she puts snacks and drinks and things like that into the room, and she takes a cord from a phone charger and tries to tie them into the room.

Yeardley: [00:36:26] Like tie the door shut?

Terri: [00:36:27] Correct. To the stair banister. We know though from speaking with the children that they got out within an hour and walked up the stairs and saw everything.

Yeardley: [00:36:37] Their mother stabbed dozens of times and their father shot in the head.

Terri: [00:36:41] Yes, because they were able to give us descriptions about what their dad’s head looked like. That’s why they could tell us that Susan killed their parents.

Dave: [00:36:51] Originally, Samantha was downstairs and ran upstairs when she heard the loud bang.

Terri: [00:36:56] Right. That’s what the witnesses are saying.

Dave: [00:36:58] So, that’s how you know that Susan is the one that pulled the trigger, not Samantha.

Terri: [00:37:02] Correct. Because Susan wasn’t even up there.

Yeardley: [00:37:04] Are the three younger children, the biological children of John and Samantha, or are they all steps to John?

Terri: [00:37:12] They are his children.

Yeardley: [00:37:15] With Samantha?

Terri: [00:37:16] With Samantha.

Yeardley: [00:37:17] I see. So, Susan is the only stepchild of that particular couple.

Terri: [00:37:22] Correct.

Yeardley: [00:37:23] So, you know Susan’s story about the murders doesn’t add up based on the crime scene and the witness accounts of the children. Does that make it harder to believe her stories about the abuse too?

Terri: [00:37:35] The children were telling us about the abuse too. They actually told us a puppy story. And they told us about some other things that had happened within the house that were really concerning. So, we knew that abuse was true. The detective did confront her and say to her that the other witnesses in the house are saying that she did it and that day she would not change her statement.

Detective: [00:38:04] It might have been an accident. Maybe you were just scared and maybe you don’t know enough about guns and maybe you were just trying to scare and it went off. I don’t know why, but I know that the bullet ended up in your clothes, and you didn’t do it. You didn’t pick it up and you can’t take it with you. You didn’t physically pick it cleaning up, but you ended up it– [crosstalk]

Susan: [00:38:32] Yeah, I didn’t do it on purpose.

Detective: [00:38:34] I understand that. I understand you didn’t do it on purpose. Sometimes shit happens.

Susan: [00:38:39] I’m talking about the bullet. I didn’t shoot him.

Detective: [00:38:42] What did you do?

Susan: [00:38:43] I did not shoot him.

Detective: [00:38:44] I know you didn’t mean to.

Susan: [00:38:46] I didn’t shoot him.

Detective: [00:38:48] But you want him dead.

Susan: [00:38:50] I didn’t shoot him. [sobs]

Detective: [00:38:51] [unintelligible [00:38:51] She wasn’t in there.

Susan: [00:38:54] But she was.

Detective: [00:38:56] I’m sorry, it happened this way. We need to trust you.

Susan: [00:39:05] [unintelligible [00:39:05]

Terri: [00:39:13] It wasn’t until we got further through the case that then she finally does give us the story about how it happened, where she talks about the fight, and him coming up to her door, and banging on the door, and she was going to kill herself, but she was so afraid when he was at the door that she opens the door and shoots him. And then the mother comes up the stairs and says, “What are you doing and what have you done?” And at some point, Susan gets a hold of the knife, and then she has this emotional where she just breaks and stabs her mother to death.

Yeardley: [00:39:45] What is the catalyst that makes her change her story?

Terri: [00:39:50] It actually doesn’t come until later in the case. So, this case is also different in the way that it’s handled. As soon as Susan is taken into custody, a public defender is appointed. I almost think that he may have volunteered. He reaches out to the district attorney. The district attorney and him agree that it’s a difficult case. In that, A, she just turned 17 years old. She would have been 16, if it had happened two days before. And B, there was prior abuse there and that’s what the defense attorney is talking about. So, he reaches out to the district attorney right away, and we actually take him into the crime scene and show him the scene.

[00:40:33] It’s the first time I’ve ever worked a case like that where I worked so openly with the defense attorney. He was aware of all of the information that we had, and he was working to come to some kind of resolution for Susan, because he knew that there was no way that she was going to be able to say that this was self-defense. So, as part of our investigation, we did things like look at Facebook messaging and especially, since the 22-year-old told us that he had been Facebook messaged by somebody claiming to be her stepfather. So, the day of the homicide, her parents had found his messaging to her and it was somewhat sexual– It was very sexual, actually. They sent him a Facebook message saying, “Do you understand that our daughter is only 17 years old?” He was 22. And he said, “No, she’s 18 years old.” And they said, “No, she’s 17 years old. You need to stay away from her.”

[00:41:28] So, looking back on those Facebook messages back between the two of them on Susan’s birthday, which happened to be Friday, she started talking to him about the fact that she had woken up to Samantha and John fighting. And she said, “I can’t take it anymore. I just wish that he would die. I should just take a shotgun and shoot him.” So, that became part of the problem now, because supposedly, this wasn’t a premeditated thing, but a day before this actually happened, she had sent a Facebook message to her boyfriend saying, “I wish this would happen, take a shotgun and blow his head off,” which is exactly what happened. So, more reasons for the defense attorney to say, “There’s no way this is self-defense. You’ve said that you’re going to do it, you did it. No matter what the story is. It’s not going to be good for us.”

[00:42:17] Plus, part of the stuff I haven’t told you yet is that Susan is a very gifted writer and artist. That became part of the issue, because when we went into Susan’s bedroom, not only did we find the gun there, all kinds of drawings on her walls. Some really dark drawings of anime. She’s really gifted at it. The other thing is, she’s a writer. So, she writes stories and journals, and stuff that we could look through. And she had written a lot of dark things, stories about stabbings and things like that. She had written a story about a little boy that begins by stabbing his teddy bear, and then he stabs his dog, and then it just progresses. It was a school assignment and she handed it in to a teacher.

Dave: [00:43:08] That should be the sort of thing that would pique teacher’s interest to maybe start asking some questions.

Terri: [00:43:13] Correct. I went to that teacher and I said, “What did you think?” And she said, “Well, I thought that she was writing like–“

Yeardley: [00:43:20] Graphic novel.

Terri: [00:43:21] Right. Like the vampire stuff. I said, “Don’t you realize, if you would have reached out to the school resource officer and let them talk to her, that maybe two days before this, we might have been able to reach out to her?” Because she was an A student. She was not a problem child. She was quiet, she dressed all in black. I mean, she was pretty goth or whatever they call it now, but she was very obedient and she was not a problem. And that’s what the teacher said. She said, “I didn’t think anything of it, because she was so quiet and she was so obedient.” But she said, “I did know that there was problems at home, because she asked them to write a story about their family,” and Susan asked not to have to do that. And I said, “These are all red flags. These are all clues.”

Dave: [00:44:09] Right. And I understand it’s in hindsight, but these are definite clues that indicate that that student’s got something going on with them.

Terri: [00:44:16] And she just said, “There’s lots of kids that have problems and I just didn’t think it was anything.”

Dave: [00:44:22] But here’s what we know about teenagers. They’re complicated, brains still developing even into their 20s, they’re hormonal, and they don’t rationalize the way an adult would. They don’t rationalize the way they would, even if they’re a few years older. Large classroom sizes in public schools and all the other complications facing teens nowadays, it wouldn’t surprise me if a teacher missed some red flags.

Terri: [00:44:44] So true. I mean, I can’t say, “Oh, that teacher was so wrong, or anything like that.” But just it’s frustrating to me because I’m like, “If I could have met this child two or three days earlier, could something have been different? Could we have talked to her? Could we have helped her mom in some way?” Susan said that her mother was trying to save money to leave. That’s what she’s saying is that her mother was trying to make a plan to get out. There’s so many resources, even in a rural town like ours that if we would have known that something was going on that maybe we could have done something to stop this.

Yeardley: [00:45:20] Do you think that story that she handed in about little boys started stabbing his teddy bear and then progressed was actually some sort of cry for help?

Terri: [00:45:28] That’s what I wondered too. It wasn’t the only story that she actually wrote that was like that. She wrote a lot of dark, dark stuff, and I read some of the stories, some of it was about sexual assault, and she had been a victim herself.

Yeardley: [00:45:44] At the hands of John?

Terri: [00:45:45] Not John. She had been a victim at the hands of other people. But she said that nothing ever happened with John and I think that there was some grooming going on. That’s why he didn’t want her to leave. I think he knew he didn’t have control of her yet, and he was trying to work on that. He did have control of Samantha, but he did not have control of Susan yet. And so, I think he was still working on that.

Dan: [00:46:10] So, this defense attorney knew it looked bad for Susan.

Terri: [00:46:12] Right. And he brought in another female attorney who was closer to Susan’s age, and the two of them worked together to help her come to some kind of resolution. He did not want this to be the end of her life. He didn’t think it was fair that this child that had been victimized would be put away forever. At the same time, we’re standing on the other side saying, “Hey, children that are abused cannot kill their parents.” A lot of children are abused. I mean, that’s the sad fact. If all of the kids that were being abused by their parents killed their parents, we would just have an outrageous number of that happening.

[00:46:48] So, he got that part too. He got the part that, “Yes, this was a very violent crime, and I have to come to some resolution for Susan, and we have to figure out what that is. Where does it end up in the middle for her.”

Yeardley: [00:47:01] Was Susan remorseful?

Terri: [00:47:02] She was. So, that was another part that was really hard is that she was concerned about her sisters. She was really concerned about what would have happened to them. She felt like they were being abused and that they would have continued to be abused. So, she was remorseful for killing her mother, but she believed that.

[00:47:57] Her, killing John helped them to have a better life.

Yeardley: [00:48:00] Wow.

Terri: [00:48:01] Yeah. It’s really dark and it’s really hard.

Terri: [00:48:15] I think that Susan was caught in a place where she felt like she couldn’t get out. And this is not the answer, but in her world, it was the only way she thought she could get away.

Yeardley: [00:48:25] So, what was the resolution, so that her life wouldn’t be over after this?

Terri: [00:48:30] So, in our state, they create a report about all the people that are involved and all the victims, and then make a recommendation to the judge. So, it turned out that she ended up getting 17 years in prison and 17 years of probation. Even at that, the defense attorney was not happy with that. So, they are in the process of trying to appeal that.

Yeardley: [00:48:51] Is she still in prison?

Terri: [00:48:52] Oh, yes, she is.

Yeardley: [00:48:53] How is she doing?

Terri: [00:48:54] I’ve talked to her attorney, and it appears that she feels safer in prison than she did living at home. She said, “She feels free.”

Yeardley: [00:49:02] Oh, no.

Terri: [00:49:03] So, she is talking about that. At least now she can make decisions for herself and that this is better than where she was.

Dan: [00:49:11] During the course of this investigation, especially when you were talking to the three younger siblings, forensic interview, I’m guessing.

Terri: [00:49:18] Yes.

Dan: [00:49:19] Okay. I’m sure just based on the history that they had with their father and all these rules that were in place, those are big barriers to break down? Even if you trust your interviewer, how long did that take?

Terri: [00:49:30] It’s interesting that you brought that up, because in our state, we’re trained to be a forensic interviewer, so I am a forensic interviewer as well. So, I did those interviews myself. I could tell as I spoke with one of them that they were very guarded.

Dave: [00:49:45] To hear that, it doesn’t surprise me at all. I think I’ve mentioned it before on this podcast, but kids talk when they’re ready to talk, and usually not before then. They talk when they feel safe.

Terri: [00:49:55] Right. And they made some kind of comment to the effect of, “You know, they hear us no matter where they are. I know that he can hear what I’m saying, even though he’s dead.” And so, I was really trying to tell her, “It’s okay. You need to tell me this. I need to know this, so that I can help you.” And so, finally, breaking through the “I still think I’m being watched even right now.”

Dave: [00:50:19] It’s like indoctrination that this man put these kids through.

Terri: [00:50:22] Correct. The life that they were living was very hard. The two that went to school had to sit on the bus together, and when one day, one of them did not sit with the other one and the father found out about it, they were beat. Those are the kinds of things, you don’t talk to anybody else. You stay together. You don’t talk to law enforcement.

Dave: [00:50:42] So he’s got complete control over these kids and they’re totally isolated.

Terri: [00:50:46] Correct.

Yeardley: [00:50:46] And what happened to those young children?

Terri: [00:50:49] They are doing better their place somewhere outside of our state.

Yeardley: [00:50:53] Have you kept tabs on them?

Terri: [00:50:55] Yes. I do think that they’re in a better place now. I think that they have some anger at their stepsister. They gave me notes to give to her just saying, “It wasn’t right for you to do this or you took our parents.” I think that’s going to be a long road for them though, because remember, these children have seen their parents horribly, horribly murdered and trying to grow through that. Some of the other things we found out was that Samantha had actually been sexually assaulted as a child. She had been abused most of her life. So, she grew up in that kind of abuse and then brought her daughter. We know that people in those kinds of things are cyclical. So, it’s a sad story gone wrong. Why could we not have stepped in a week, two weeks earlier? But we didn’t even know these people were there. And that’s some of the sad part about living in a rural area like that. You just don’t see everybody.

Yeardley: [00:51:52] If they want to keep to themselves, they can.

Terri: [00:51:55] And that’s why they live there. That’s why he moved them there, so they could have a large piece of property and nobody would bother them.

Dave: [00:52:03] And that’s why he doesn’t want people on his property like bear hunters?

Terri: [00:52:05] Correct.

Dave: [00:52:06] He doesn’t want law enforcement coming inside his house.

Dan: [00:52:09] I’m not in any way suggesting that he deserved to die.

Terri: [00:52:13] No.

Dan: [00:52:13] And let’s be clear that this is not the way to handle this. There are other ways, even though you may feel trapped. If you are being abused, if you’re listening and you are being abused, please reach out to somebody.

Terri: [00:52:24] Teachers, school resource officers.

Dave: [00:52:27] Mandatory reporters.

Terri: [00:52:28] Exactly, and that’s the thing. I think if there had been somebody that Susan had talked to that was required to report it to us, maybe things would be different. And also, I would, again, reach out to the mother and say there are people out there that will help you. So, I just encourage people that if they talk to a victim who’s trying to determine what to do to be sure to tell them that there are people out there that will help them, resources out there. Even make a step yourself. If you can help somebody to get out of a situation like that, it really does happen. It really does happen what we’re talking about. It’s hard to put it into your mind that there are people living like that. There are people that live in fear every day in their own homes.

Dave: [00:53:11] It’s painfully obvious in this case too that even waiting a day can have dire consequences.

Yeardley: [00:53:17] Does Susan have anyone now who comes to visit her in prison? Does she have anyone?

Terri: [00:53:22] No.

Yeardley: [00:53:23] That makes me sad. Before I forget, I remember you said before we started that this house where the murder took place has a connection to another murder that you investigated, in case we profiled last season in an episode called Bitter End.

Terri: [00:53:42] Right. So, ironically, this house was also the home of another person who committed a homicide when they were 14 years old, and this was their home.

Yeardley: [00:53:55] It was the home of the 14-year-old suspect or the victim?

Terri: [00:53:59] The 14-year-old suspect.

Dave: [00:54:00] And what’s his name?

Terri: [00:54:01] His name is Billy. It appears that Susan and Billy had the same bedroom.

Yeardley: [00:54:08] Ah, are they going to tear that house down?

Terri: [00:54:11] No.

Yeardley: [00:54:12] Argh.

Terri: [00:54:12] We thought that somebody would do that, but they did not. Somebody else bought it and they are living there now. So, it sat empty for quite a while, we thought for sure that would happen, but it did not.

Dave: [00:54:23] Do you have disclosure laws in your state?

Terri: [00:54:25] I believe that we do.

Dave: [00:54:26] So, they’re aware of it?

Terri: [00:54:28] The people that bought it are from our area, so they know.

Yeardley: [00:54:30] So, Terri, before we let you go, is there anything else about this case that sticks out for you or anything that you wish we’d asked you?

Terri: [00:54:39] I transported Susan back from wherever she was. In that time that I spent with her, she is just a teenage girl. It was not the same as the other case. It was totally different. It’s just hard to understand how somebody can get so stuck in a situation like that. I mean, that house is just miles from my house, and all that stuff was going on, and I didn’t even know it. It’s hard for me. There’s some places out there where people live in their house in fear from the people that they love. It was just really difficult.

Dave: [00:55:19] You still drive by that house?

Terri: [00:55:20] Yes. Every day, I drive by that– I could not believe that somebody else bought it, but I hope that their life is much happier than the people that lived there before. It was a nice house. It could have been a nice house for a nice family. So, I hope that’s what it turns out to be now.

Yeardley: [00:55:36] I have one more question for you. You talk really eloquently about, and it’s evident how heartbreaking this whole story is, and you speak about how heartbreaking it is for you as a human being to know that people are living in fear in their homes and afraid of people that they love. Is that one of the reasons you got into law enforcement?

Terri: [00:55:59] That is one of the reasons that I got into law enforcement. I think that you will find that many police officers have been in some of the same situations as the victims that they work with and that they bring that into their career. I, myself, was a victim of sexual assault as a child. What that has given me is something pretty amazing that I can talk to kids I taught there. The very first time that I met them, I walk into a room, I introduce myself, I tell them that if they tell me their secrets, I have to investigate them. I have to tell the story for them. It’s the law.

[00:56:39] I’ll tell you the story. The very first day, I was practicing teaching DARE. I was in the DARE school. I was in another city learning how to be a DARE officer and I gave the whole speech about, “I’m a mandated reporter. If you tell me, I have to tell somebody.” Before I left the school, this little girl came up to me and openly told me that she was being abused at home. I was blown away. I mean, this is the very first day I ever taught in a classroom. So, obviously, I make a mandated report to the city that I was in, and I go back to my own town and I start teaching DARE. Within the very first two or three classes, I had another child disclosed to me.

[00:57:19] Sometimes, I talk to them at the end after we get through a case or something, I’ll say, “I understand your feelings. I understand.” When I say that, I understand. I really understand, because I was you. And then we have a connection and it makes it work. So, yes, do I have an understanding beyond some other people’s understandings? I do. I think sometimes that helps me. And in some cases, like this case, it makes me a little too close, and I have to push back a little bit. And so, that’s why when I say, do I feel bad for Susan? At times, I do. But at the same point, she has to be held accountable for her actions, because she did not respond in a way that was appropriate or legal. It’s not how we deal with things. There are lots of other ways to deal with it.

Yeardley: [00:58:04] That’s true. Oh, but it is heartbreaking. Captain Terri, thank you so much for joining us. We love having you. We hope you’ll come back again. What an extraordinary story. Thank you so much for sharing that with us.

Terri: [00:58:19] Thank you.

[music]

Yeardley: [00:58:27] Hey, Small Town Fam. You’ve waited a long time for Season 5. We appreciate your patience. So, we’ve released a special episode. Don’t miss the bonus episode, Disclosure. When a child first reveals they’re a victim of abuse, it’s a process police call disclosure. That’s where Nicole comes in. She is a trained forensic investigator, and she relies on a mix of research and empathy to give the victims a voice and bring criminals to justice. Don’t miss Disclosure on Small Town Dicks. Available Friday, September 13th on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and everywhere you like to listen.

[00:59:23] Small Town Dicks is produced by Gary Scott and Yeardley Smith, and coproduced by Detectives Dan and Dave. This episode was edited by Logan Heftel, Gary Scott, and me, Yeardley Smith. Our associate producers are Erin Gaynor and the Real Nick Smitty. Our music is composed by John Forest. Our editors extraordinaire are Logan Heftel and Soren Begin, and our books are cooked and cats wrangled by Ben Cornwell.

Dan: [00:59:51] If you like what you hear and want to stay up to date with the show, visit us on our website at smalltowndicks.com. And join the Small Town Fam by following us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @smalltowndicks. We love hearing from you.

Dave: [01:00:07] And if you support us on Patreon, your subscription will give you access to exclusive content and merchandise that isn’t available anywhere else. Go to patreon.com/smalltowndickspodcast.

Yeardley: [01:00:19] That’s right. Your subscription also makes it possible for us to keep going to small towns across the country-

Dan: [01:00:25] -in search of the finest-

Dave: [01:00:27] -rare-

Dan: [01:00:27] -true crime cases told as always, by the detectives who investigated them.

Dave: [01:00:32] So, thanks for listening, Small Town Fam.

Yeardley: [01:00:34] Nobody’s better than you.

[Transcript provided by SpeechDocs Podcast Transcription]