Transcript of Mystery Of The Disappearing Man - Belgrade, Montana

This week, in Belgrade, Montana, a man disappears seemingly into thin air, but a friend of his says he doesn't want to be found and ran away to start a new life with a blonde and a small red car. Will some lies and brain matter found in a curtain tell a different story? Welcome to Small Town Murder.

Yay!

Yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed. My name is James Petrik Alo, and I'm here with my co-host.

I'm Jimmy Wistman.

Thank you, folks, so much for joining us today on another crazy, bonkers, as usual, small town. I'll just say, welcome to another Small Town Murder episode.

Yes.

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Pretty much.

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And then on top of that, you get a shout-out at the end of the show too. So we want you to be happy, and this is our way of trying to give you something that might make you happy. So there you go. So get that Patreon for sure. Disclaimer time. This is a comedy show, everybody.

It's a threat show.

This is a comedy show. It's also a murder show. So you go, well, that's kind of weird. How do those things go together?

Wow.

Not as strangely as you'd imagine, actually. It's pretty easy to find things to make fun of.

It's like a slice.

Yeah. There's a lot of stuff to make fun of in a murder story. Think about at some point someone goes, hmm, I'm going to do this. I'm pretty sure I can get away with this. And they have a plan.

Yeah.

And then it goes awry. So I mean, come on. We're going to make fun of that person. Maybe a small town police force didn't see some clues and let this person go free to murder. Well, then guess what? They're going to catch a couple too. And then on top of that, we're all from somewhere that deserves to be made fun of. So there's going to be some town stuff. It's a lot of fun, though. I'll tell you that right now. Here's what we don't do, though, is we never make fun of the victims.

No.

Or the victims' families.

Why, James?

Because we're assholes.

But.

But we're not scumbags. That's how it works. So it's pretty simple. If you think that sounds good to you, you're going to hear a hell of a fucking crazy, funny, wild show. If you think that crime and comedy and all that and murder should never go together.

Wow.

You might not like the show, but you might. That's the thing. I would.

I don't know.

I would stick around maybe and see and make sure. But either way, no complaining later.

Right.

That said, I think it's time, everybody. What do you say? To sit back. Here we go. Clear the lungs here. There we are. Arms to the sky. And let's all shout.

Shut up and give me murder.

Let's do this, everybody.

Okay.

Let's go on a trip, shall we?

Where to?

We're going to Montana. Here we go.

Space wide open.

The bags. Yeah. Big sky, big land, big everything up there. It's just a big open space.

High plains.

High plains. Yes. This is Belgrade, Montana. It is in southwestern Montana. And it's about 20 minutes to Bozeman, about an hour and a half to Helena, which is the capital of Montana.

Capital, yeah.

Six hours to our last Montana episode, Sydney, Montana, which six hours in Montana is nothing.

That's a day's drive.

It's like Texas. You can just keep driving and you'll still be in Montana. That was episode 694 of Mice and Men and Murder. That was a.

And murder.

That was a fun episode. I remember that was a crazy one. This is in Gallatin County, area code 406. Motto: Where the hell am I?

What is this?

There's nothing around here. Where am I going here? History of this town.

Full crown.

Yeah. History of this town. The original town site was established in 1883 when the Northern Pacific Railroad came through here. It's one of those towns. The original town was the whole thing was kind of put together by a guy named Thomas Quaugh, Q-U-A-W. He was a businessman who was from the Midwest in 1891. And he filed with Montana's Gallatin County Courthouse an application for Belgrade, Montana, as a blind railroad siding.

His intentions made clear.

Yeah. He said it was a blind railroad siding, and now they wanted it to be a full-fledged town.

Right.

So he's into this. Now it was named Belgrade after the capital of Serbia.

Okay, yeah.

Because the investors who helped finance this portion of the railroad were Serbian.

They're Serbian.

So we thought we'd throw them a bone here.

Little homage.

Yep. And so then the Quaugh guy and some other guy made Belgrade Grain and Produce Company and marketed Belgrade for people to come here and to farm here as, quote, the princess of the prairies.

It's a real princess.

That's Belgrade.

She's pretty.

Here's some reviews of the town. Let's find out what people have decided about this place, because we've never been there.

Tell us the whole.

The hell do we know? Five stars. Belgrade is a beautiful place with kind people.

Kind people too.

All kind. It's growing too fast for its infrastructure, so traffic can be rough. Since it's a small town, it doesn't bother most people. The traffic, I assume. Yeah. With everything going on in the world, it's nice to have a place to live that's not quite as crazy as a city, but not isolated like a small town.

I'm not with that person is like.

Yeah, no shit.

All the cities, they're all.

Yeah.

Ruthless.

That's, I believe, called a suburb, is what that's called when they do that. Not quite a city, not quite a small town. Yeah, this person's scared everywhere.

Yeah.

Yeah. This person's scared of the teenagers hanging out in the in-and-out parking lot. That's very afraid.

They go to Disney and they're like, can we go back to where there's just traffic?

Exactly. Here's four stars. I've lived my whole life here. Actually, I've lived her my whole life, is what they say.

Her.

Her. I've lived her.

Lived her.

I lived her my whole life since 1992. So not that long.

Well, she's wild.

Yeah. It has grown so, all caps, much, but still has a small town feel. I enjoy the community love of our farmers markets, fall festival, and our new Christmas convoy.

What the fuck is that?

I've seen that. They have that kind of Poughkeepsie there where they just have this convoy of fire trucks and shit decorated.

Oh, like a small town parade.

Not a parade really, isn't it? But it's kind of a parade, I guess. It's just Christmas lights.

It's a fucking parade.

You drive down and beep horns and shit.

Yeah.

But yeah, it's, I don't know. Whatever. I plan to grow old and raise my children here.

Yeah.

Well then. It's quite the plan. And here's.

92 and they're already.

Born in 92.

Born in 92. They're already planning on retiring.

Well, I mean, they're mid-30s, I guess, by now.

Oh yeah, I guess that's true.

It feels younger, but that person's got gray hair.

Fucking hell.

Yeah.

That person's got arthritis.

Yep. Here's four stars. Belgrade is a serene small town. Serene. Oh boy. Well, it is grown. It is grown each year. Every year it comes back up from the earth in the spring.

It's risen.

It's a nice crop here. And the reason is because this area of Montana is beautiful.

Wow.

The town is surrounded by mountains and wildlife. The beauty of Mother Nature is breathtaking. They don't say if that's.

I agree with that sentence.

They don't say if that's here or just in general. Mother Nature.

It's everywhere.

It's a motherfucker. Yeah. Mother Nature is pretty amazing. Yeah. Three stars. There hasn't been any natural disasters for many years.

Well, that's bad.

That's interesting.

That means you're due.

I suppose. I don't know what goes on up there as far as natural disasters go.

That means one's on the fucking clock, man.

The winter gets a little cold and snowy, but nothing like the East Coast. Okay. That sounded spurious to me. So I looked that up.

What is that?

Horse shit. This place gets.

Montana gets dumped on.

This particular town gets on the average like five feet of snow a year. We know where. Find me a place on the East.

This year?

Find me a place on the East Coast that's not Northern Maine that gets five goddamn feet of snow. None of them do. It's not that cold. And it's cold as shit there too. It's cold. It's rough.

Yeah. Oh God. Montana's already gotten snow this year.

That's what I mean. It's wild. Here's two stars. Belgrade was supposed to be a cheap town on the outskirts of Bozeman. It is supposed to be a place the working class can live and enjoy while taking work opportunities from Bozeman.

Right.

A suburb is what he's getting at. It no longer is an affordable town to live in, as the mortgage to live here is almost as much as it is to rent. Okay. So you can still live there. You just.

Yeah.

Yeah. It also has no attractions to come to as everyone just goes to Bozeman for that. Okay.

Yeah, okay. Is rent supposed to be more than a mortgage?

Usually, yeah. That's the advantage of buying a house is when you buy a house, it's cheaper than rent, usually.

Okay.

But if it's, yeah, that's normally how it goes. People in this town, 10,555.

By reading.

Yeah. By reading the reviews, some people make it sound like there's 2,000 people here. Some people make it sound like there's 100,000 people here. So it's really eye of the beholder here.

Very interesting.

10,555. Women, 52.4%. That is way heavy on the women's side. So it's not a good place for the fellas to go hang out. Median age, 33 and a half. So much younger than the national average. A lot of young family types here. 54% married people, which is above the national average. 20% are single with children, also above the national average. Race in this town, 91.6% white.

Pretty black.

0.0% black.

Yeah.

0.0% Asian. 7.2% Hispanic. So.

White people and Mexicans, huh?

That's all that's there. That's it.

Whatever some sort of Latino.

Some something. Yeah. In Montana, I assume. I don't assume a lot of Dominicans are going to Montana, probably.

No.

That's a.

It's probably white people and farriers.

Maybe. Yeah.

Yeah.

33% of the people here are religious. When it goes out west like that, people don't have time for that stuff. They're like.

They're busy.

I'm looking at Mother Nature done this. So this here, it's a lot of it's all mixed up here. Looks like other Christian is the highest one. So there's no.

Wow.

I'm surprised the Mormons haven't really gotten in here.

It's just south there. They're almost there.

Idaho's right next door. You figure they're going to be there. Watch out. They're coming. You're going to hear footsteps pretty soon. Or I should say bike wheels is more accurate.

Probably some bicycles with some playing cards in the spokes.

Yeah, a couple of those. 0.3% Jewish. So that's not enough for the song, but more than I expected, actually, in southern Montana.

Sure.

Unemployment here is low. Median household income here slightly higher than the national average, but not too much. 72,921 a year. So 69,000 in the rest of the country.

They're doing pretty well.

The cost of living, though, is out of control here.

Yeah.

That's the problem.

I wonder if this is where David Letterman goes to, and that's why it's doing that.

I have no idea.

Montana has had a fairly large explosion in population, but since famous people have been saying that they live there.

Yeah, yeah. There's people with big ranches, but I think those are out in the middle of nowhere.

Right.

There's big private airstrips and shit, probably. Yeah, because that's the same thing.

Destiny Fox has one too.

It's the same thing with Wyoming. There's people have these giant Wyoming properties that are insanely expensive in the middle of nowhere. So cost of living here, 100 is average. Here it's 126, which is very high.

Very high.

The housing is the thing that's out of control. Median home cost here, $520,600.

But you get land, right?

No.

There are no.

No?

No.

That's the thing. You don't get land.

Well why?

These aren't huge sprawling ranches. These are, I'll tell you what they are.

$520 and it's a fucking track home?

Yeah, because we have for you the Belgrade Montana Real Estate Report. The average two-bedroom rental here, it says, goes for $1,440, which is much less than the housing.

What?

That's sort of in the realm of the rest of the country. Here is a one-bedroom, one-bath. So technically, T-ball for all your B-holes here, but not really much to speak of.

Less than plural.

Yeah. 822 square feet. Tiny.

Oof.

The lot size is 7,000 square feet. So not a big lot at all. It's a small lot. It is farty as can be on the inside. There's old wallpaper up, and it looks like the inside looks like a cabin that you'd walk into and go, "Oh, no one's been here in 30 years."

And that's not a trailer.

No. This is $364,900 for that.

800 square feet.

No land. Size of a one-bedroom apartment.

Wow.

Yeah. And that's with a $34,000 price cut that just happened like two days ago.

They better keep cutting.

They better keep going to the bone. Here's a three-bedroom, two-bath, 2,239 square foot house. And it is.

That's high. Yeah.

Decent size house. It is in a neighborhood. You're right on top of the house next to you. Same size lot.

No.

It's suburbia.

Track tracks.

Almost track housing. Built in 2023. $609,000 for that.

But it's brand new.

You're out of your goddamn mind. $609,000 for a no. Then finally, here is where Letterman might move or somebody else. Four-bedroom, four-bath, T-ball for each and every B-hole.

Need that.

4,138 square feet. There's multiple dwellings on this property. 180.8 acres. Huge.

Oh man.

Big chunk of Montana leading up to a big mountain thing. It's beautiful.

Yeah.

$7,200,000. So you're going to pay for it, everybody.

You better be on network TV.

You better have, yeah, you better have definitely switched a network and forced a deal and got NBC to try to fire Jay Leno.

I was going to sell a movie.

Yeah, something like that. So things to do here. Belgrade summer nights.

What is that?

Okay. Well, we'll find out right now. The motto here is putting the great in Belgrade.

Oh yeah.

Not great.

Different great, but okay.

Okay. Belgrade is not Belgrade, but.

Yeah.

Summer nights is a fun and family-friendly community event that creates joyful evenings where families can gather and friends can connect in the heart of downtown Belgrade.

Do it.

With five fantastic nights filled with live music, delicious food, trucks, vendors, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Five nights?

Five nights of this horse shit. Okay.

It's a fucking week.

Let's find out what bands are coming here because that's what we need to know about. These are all from 6 o'clock to 8:30 PM these bands play. Savvy the Band.

Sure.

With opener Comeback K.

Oh, they got an opener for their set?

There's only a couple with openers. This one doesn't have an opener here. I guess if you got a two-and-a-half-hour set, probably bring somebody. Unless you're Bruce Springsteen. You're going to fucking play the whole time. July 8th, we got Emma and the Ledge.

Oh, so that's all that's on one day.

It's one band.

That's all.

Yeah.

Got it.

Every night there's a different one. Then The Scurry plays with opener Michael Erhart.

Yeah.

Got me.

I mean, I had a kid, huh?

That's it. Different spelling, but yeah, definitely. The Waiting is next. I don't know. Then Neon Rainbow with opener West Dakota Stutter.

West Dakota?

Not a way. It was like, now we're making up fucking new Dakotas here.

That's what they should have called Montana, right?

West Dakota. Yeah. Absolutely. That was the original name for Minnesota. It was East Dakota. It didn't work out. They wanted their own name.

Very funny.

Last year, Savvy the Band played then too.

Oh.

Their opener was Sorry, Man. Sorry, Comma Man. Not Sorry, Man. You are sorry for something.

Sorry, Man.

You're not a Sorry, Man.

Way too long. Yeah.

The Waiting also played then. Little Jane and the Pistol Whips.

Oh, they're not going to work.

Played. And then Neon Rainbow again. So there you go. Now there's a couple Halloween things to do here since it's Halloween time.

That's it?

That's it. That's the festival.

That's all.

That's all we got. That's all I got for you. You can also go to a mystical crafting workshop.

Yeah.

A nighttime craft and magic workshop.

And magic.

Thank you. Yeah. It's a craft and magic workshop. Crafts you can do. Magic isn't real.

Right.

So.

Well, this was going to be a doily, but now magically, it's a pot pad to pick up pots.

Fuck it. I made it too thick. So now, hey, magic. Ta-da.

Yeah.

Hosted at Hammer and Stain Belgrade, featuring DIY witchbell making. I didn't know there was a witchbell. Is that how you get them to come?

Is that how you summon a witch?

I think you got to ring the witch dinner bell and they come flying in. A spell jar creation.

Oh.

And 15-minute tarot card readings.

Oh, bullshit.

Bullshit, all of this stuff. Just total horse shit. Then there's also the Transylvania Dracula Castle Escape Challenge.

Oh, you do a corn maze, but indoors.

I guess. An immersive Gothic-themed mystery and puzzle-solving adventure nearby that pits participants against a ticking clock in a dark candlelit castle setting. It's a castle escape room theme. That's all it is.

Yeah. That sounds fun.

Yeah. For Halloween, they throw some pictures of Dracula on the wall and make it interesting.

I'd do that on a first date.

Yeah. That's some silly shit that you would.

Some dumb shit. Yeah.

Yeah. No, that's a terrible.

Show her that you're a piece that you're you know what I mean? You don't take yourself so seriously.

Yeah. That's the biggest load of shit. I'm not going to lie to you on a first date and pretend.

I'm a loser. I'll do it.

I would never lie to someone on a first date and pretend that I would ever do this again or think this is fun. That's one thing I won't. I've never done that with dates. I'm not going to be like, "Oh, I'm such a I'm not like that." And I'm not going to pretend I am.

Oh, I'm hiking.

And you're not either. Yeah. Can't wait to hike. No, no. Bring all your dogs. It'll be fun. You know what I mean? I'm not doing that.

Yeah. Let's take all your cats for a walk.

Yeah. I look at it as if you like hiking, I don't want to go out with you.

That's it. Yeah. That's a great point too.

If it's a thing you have to do and love to do, great. Good for you. But I'm not going to pretend I do so you like me. I don't like you now. So same thing with this horse shit.

I think that every date that anybody goes on is a lie because we're all so fucking busy. We don't have time to really do anything. Why are we acting like we all like to go hiking?

Every date is just a man trying to prove that we'll do things that we obviously don't want to do.

I'll do anything.

That's all a date is.

You lie.

That's what a date is. Obviously, I don't want to go to an escape room. I'm a guy. This has no interest for me. So I'll go and pretend like I do, and that shows you that I'm magnanimous of some kind. That's what we're trying to display there. Crime rate in this town, property crime is exactly average. Exactly to the number. And then violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, and of course, assault. The Mount Rushmore of crime also exactly average.

Oh.

Very strange. Yeah. Just right on the money, both of them.

How about it?

Now, let's talk about a murder, everybody, because this is some wild stuff here. Okay.

Oh, boy.

Let's talk about Brad Brisbin, first of all. B-R-I-S-B-I-N. Brad. He's 38 years old. Now, Brad here, we'll start on November 9th, 1990. Brad's 38. Brad's married. Brad has a couple of kids. He's got four kids, actually, but two younger kids that we're talking about here that he lives with. And on the evening of November 9th, 1990, Brad is supposed to be helping his friend do something, but instead, his car sits unattended at a truck stop for some reason.

Huh. Nobody around.

Now, his friend, who he's supposed to be helping, a guy named Larry Moore, starts telling people, "Yeah, Brad took off, man." He comes from the truck stop, and he's like, "Yeah, man. He just took off, man. He just took off." He said he was.

Jumped on a trucker's rig and off he's going?

No, he said he was he said Brad said he was fed up and he wanted to start a new life. He said he was drinking. He said he was sick of his wife. He was sick of his life. He was sick of.

Oh my God.

Teaching gym. He's a PE teacher. He's sick of running this restaurant that he runs with his wife. He's sick of it all. And he said that he asked me if he could borrow $500 from me, Larry said. So I gave him $500 because Brad's been a good friend and a reliable guy, he said. And then he climbed into a red sports car on the interstate 90 that was being driven by a blonde woman.

Wow.

And the car may or may not have had Washington license plates.

Huh.

So he gave up, said, "Fuck this." I just picture him like.

Funnily Christie Brinkley and we're going.

Hopping in the convertible. And as they pull away, he throws his work shirt out and goes flaps in the wind and lands on the highway with his fucking shirt from his polo shirt.

Brad. Want a restaurant?

His whistle from gym class, he throws it away as he goes, and he's done.

Yeah.

That's.

Take me home tonight playing real loud.

Yeah, with some chick fucking 15 years younger than him with her hair up and shit with a bonnet around it ready to go.

Is this a Mazda 3 or is it a Dexterous?

We don't know. That's what I mean. We can fantasize either way.

Yeah.

We can fantasize it about being a Honda Del Soul or Christie Brinkley's Ferrari. Which one?

An S2000 even?

What are we talking about? Yeah. What are we getting at? So that's what he said. Man, I was there. He said, "I'm sick of it. Fuck my wife. Forget my life. This goddamn job, this business. I've had it."

Let's go, Christie.

Cultivated Christie Brinkley to come pick me up. And boy, I am done. And they peeled off with a big cloud of Montana dust behind them and took off down into the sunset.

Sports car. It's front-wheel drive. It's a Miata. Light them up.

Come on now. Burn them.

There's dust on the sides of this car.

That's what he says. That's what he tells everybody. Brad's gone, man.

It's a fun scene.

Yeah. Now, the weird part was, though, that Brad had driven 90 miles to give this Larry Moore, who tells the story of Brad leaving, a ride because Moore had supposedly sold his truck. So we'll get into the details of what that was, but Brad was at this truck stop because he was giving Larry a ride. That was the whole point. But according to this Larry Moore, Brad abandoned his own vehicle, rode off with some chick, and then Moore, who then had no ride because he came there with Brad, drove home in his truck that he allegedly sold, which is the reason why Brad was there in the first place.

What a weird thing.

How did you go with him to see this and then get in your truck that you didn't have because you rode with Brad there to go home? None of this makes sense. So he was like, "I don't know." That was his general.

That's what I did.

His general answer was, "I mean, I don't know. That's just how it worked out." So they're like, "It's a very Montana kind of answer." They're just like, "Well, I don't know."

Brad did a favor for a friend and in the middle of the favor gave up on everything.

Gave up on everything and said, "I'm leaving."

You're on your own.

Now, that same night now, this wasn't because of this, but that same night, Larry Moore was inside of his camper. He's got this camper thing that he a little camper that goes on top of a pickup truck, one of those.

Oh, okay. Yeah. Over the cap?

He's inside of that, and an officer was driving by and saw him in there. And Larry Moore looked out at the officer and then shut the light off in the camper. Couldn't be more suspicious of an action. Someone stared at him.

Ah, fuck.

Light goes off.

Turned the light off. That's funny.

That's fucking hilarious. I can see you, and you can't see me now. So that was that night. So the next night, because Brad does not come home on Friday night. This was a Friday night, and he left his wife and just said, "I'm going to go help my friend," and then never came back.

Wow.

And the friend said, "Yeah, he took off with some blonde chick." So.

Uh-oh.

Now, Brad's wife, Renée, he knows where he went. She knows where he went. He went with Brad, or he went with Larry, and Renée knows that Brad went with Larry because Brad told her, "I'm going to help Larry." So she says she doesn't quite believe Larry's story. She's like, "He didn't take off with some woman." And maybe that's wishful thinking. You don't want to think that your husband went and took off with some woman and said he hated you. Well, he said he hated you and the life you've built. I assume your children as well. And he decided that he'd be much happier doing literally anything else.

He said everything that you represent is in his rearview. Well, the rearview of a young blonde.

It's quite literally his rearview of his paramour's car is how it works now. So she says, "I don't think so." She calls the cops and reports him missing. Because obviously, Larry didn't call the cops to report this guy took off with some chick, and that's not illegal.

He just told the wife that?

He told everybody. He got back to wherever he was, and he's like, "Yeah, you wouldn't believe it. You know Brad?"

I just went out there.

Brad. He just said, "Fuck everything." Took off his polo and stripped off his whistle and jumped in the car with some little blonde girl, and he's gone. I don't know.

Nothing but a pair of tight bike shorts.

That's it. And word gets around because this is a small town, especially in 1990. It's blown up quite a bit now, but in 1990, this whole area is pretty small.

And that's a wild fucking story.

It's a wild story. That's the problem. She reports him missing to the police and says even more. She goes a step further, and she goes, "I believe he's dead." She tells the cops, "I think he's dead." And they're like, "You think he's dead because he didn't come home last night?"

Why do you believe that?

She said, "I just have a feeling. I think he's dead." So they're like, "All right, lady. I don't know." The cops don't think he's dead, and they don't think that he ran away with some blonde chick either. Maybe it's somewhere in between. We're not sure.

Both of these people are going real extreme.

Yeah. The wife just told the cops her husband went to Bairs truck stop, B-A-I-R-S, Bairs truck stop to pick up Larry, and then he didn't come home. So that's that. So the cops go, "Well, we'll go check out the truck stop," and they find his vehicle empty, locked, just like you would leave it.

Not running?

Not running at all. No keys in the ignition. Just an empty, locked vehicle like anybody would leave at the truck stop. So they found his vehicle there. It was right where Larry said it would be too. Larry said we left his car at the truck stop, and there was that. There's no signs of anything. It hasn't been broken into. It hasn't been tossed inside. There's no broken windows. There's no blood on it or anything like that.

Just something blood, yeah.

It's not OJ's Bronco or anything. You know what I mean? Where you go, "Oh, there's a spot there. It's just a car sitting in the parking lot like anybody else's, like 20 other cars in the parking lot." So they were like, "Okay. That makes sense. Just a missing man's truck parked at an interstate truck stop. Maybe he took off with some chick. They're thinking, 'We have no idea.'" And they say people leave.

Yeah. There's probably a car sitting at a truck stop right now.

Absolutely. They said not only people leave, truck stops are where people catch rides a lot of times.

Absolutely.

It's a meeting spot. So if he did leave, this would make perfect sense. He brought his car to the truck stop, met a person there, and then got back on the interstate, took off with them.

Oh, here he goes. Yeah.

So that's what it is. And a lot of people in town go, "That sounds reasonable."

Sure.

And they said, "Maybe Brad snapped." I mean, he always seemed like a real nice guy and a family man and everything.

Do it all the time.

People snap all the time. Who knows? Maybe he got hooked up with some chick, and she got in his head, and he's having an early midlife crisis, and this is what happens. We don't know. So we got to find out a little.

Does a storm took its toll on people?

They really did. I'm telling you. It didn't happen yet, but they knew it was coming, everybody. They could sense it coming.

A real stressful time.

It was. So let's talk about Brad a little bit. Maybe we can figure it out, his background. Maybe if this is something that you would imagine he would be capable of doing, just taking off. He is Bradford Clair Brisbin. His middle name is Clair.

Really?

Yeah.

Really?

Yeah. We had an Allison last week. A man named Allison. Now we got a man named Clair.

I've never heard Clair.

C-L-A-R-E.

Yeah. I've never heard that.

I had never heard Allison either. I mean, I think other people have, but I had never heard it. So Brad, he goes by double B, Brad Brisbin. He's born February 13th, 1952. He's from Malta, Montana, like the island. They really like some European names over there. Belgrade, Malta.

Couldn't be more opposite.

Could not be more opposite. This is in Phillips County is where he's born. His parents are this is great. Clifford Leroy Brisbin. Know what his nickname is?

Cowboy? What is it?

Buzz. Everyone calls his dad Buzz Brisbin, which is that's Montana right there. Buzz. You have to be a cowboy or an astronaut. You have no choice if your name is Buzz.

He had two very cowboy names and ran with fucking Buzz.

Clifford Leroy. Yeah, that's good. Those are strong names. He goes by Buzz. And then his mother is Marianne Clair Brisbin. Clair is her maiden name.

Oh, so he got the maiden name as the middle name.

He got the which is common back in the day, back in the day. So he has an older sister named Julianne. His mother's Marianne. That's Julianne. So he grows up in Montana. His family is all from Montana for generations. This is a Montana Western type of family here. That's how it goes.

Weird in the veins.

Oh, absolutely. He went to school, and he got a teaching degree. And he always loved sports, played sports in high school, that kind of thing. Was always into sports.

Weird in the veins, man.

Yep. So he's going to go to school for physical education stuff to be he gets a teaching degree, and he wants to be a PE teacher.

Kids chick ball.

There you go. Or dodgeball back then. Remember Prisoner Dodgeball? That was even better.

No. What is that?

Prisoner Dodgeball is a game where you mix the activities of hitting a small child in the face with a large rubber ball bigger than his fucking head. Also with the incarceration factor of it, where if you hit somebody with the dodgeball, then they would have to walk over to your side and stand behind you as you threw shit, and they're a prisoner back there, and the only way to spring them is if someone got a ball all the way to them and they caught it. Then they could go back.

That's how you get back in the game is by catching the ball behind the guy that threw it at you in the face.

Yeah. Well, they try to keep the balls from obviously getting to you.

Right.

So that's fun. So 1973, he marries a woman. Rosalene Kovash is her name. Rosalene, L-E-E-N.

Oh.

Not Rosalene Lynn. Rosalene. Rosalene.

Heard a lot of Leans. I've never heard of Rosalene.

And trust me, when I was looking stuff up, neither has the internet because that has a big red squiggly under that bad boy. Everywhere is like, "Do you mean Rosalene?" Like, "No, I don't." Actually, "Do you mean Roselyn?" "No, I don't." I mean, Rosalene as a matter of fact.

Her mom could have used you guys years ago.

Yeah. Her mom could have used a spell check on this bad boy because.

This is a bullshit name. You're right.

Yeah. Kovash. Maybe they're like from Eastern Europe or something. I don't know.

It's possible.

That's who he marries. From 1974 to 1978, Brad is going to teach physical education at Belgrade High School. That's what he's doing. Mr. Gym teacher. That's the guy. He has two children with Rosalene, Jeremiah and Aaron. So that's kind of during the '70s, early '80s. He's spitting kids out. 1978, he said, "I don't want to be a gym teacher anymore."

Change in careers.

Tired of smelling 12-year-olds' balls. I don't want to do it in this fucking locker room. People, your kids are disgusting. They want no part of you anymore.

Tired of saying, "Can somebody please tell him to use deodorant?"

Please, just somebody. That's how you know he's not a pedophile.

Yeah.

He left a position voluntarily where he had access to half-naked young boys, and he was like, "Nope. No interest. I want to do something else. Fuck this festival."

This is not what I thought it was going to be.

Nope. No fun. He wants to be a cop as a matter of fact.

Oh.

From gym teacher to cop. He becomes a deputy with the Gallatin County Sheriff's Department, her office. So that's his job now from 1978.

Wow.

Now, in the early '80s, Brad and Rosalene got a divorce. He put in the paper under reason for divorce, "I still can't get over how stupid my wife's name is," which not a usual reason for it, but.

Still can't spell it.

Still misspelling the name on all the cards. She gets mad. It's a fight. I decided to give up. So they get a divorce in the early '80s. So they have two kids. They split those up. He sees the kids on weekends or whatever, pays child support, yada yada. Now, 1984, he is involved in a massive, massive manhunt. This is a crazy fucking story of what happened here.

Six years into his career, he's chasing criminals.

He's a canine officer is what he does. Brad becomes a canine officer, which is pretty cool as far as.

That's a fun job.

If you're going to be a cop, you might as well be able to pet a dog all day. That seems fun, I guess.

Yeah. I mean, the only bummer about it is that those don't have the same instincts as people to get away from men with guns.

No, they don't.

So you may lose your buddy real early.

Yeah. No, that's true. That's true. But also, you should stop having him bite people.

Yeah. So they own them, right? They're like go home pal, their partner.

Yeah.

He comes home with them.

They don't buy them. They provide them, but then.

That's what I mean.

They end up taking them home. Yeah.

It's well entrained, and then they're introduced to him, and we become pals at the station, and the boy gets in the truck, and we go home.

Yeah. He's not a car. You just leave him in the lot at the end of your shift.

Right. You can't just check him in, throw him in your locker.

No, that's what I mean.

Throwing a bunch of peace in your badge.

Yeah. Absolutely. So he has a German shepherd named Bear, B-A-A-R, Bear, like a bear. And he and his dog take place in this massive, massive 1984 search. And I was just going to mention this massive search, but then I looked into the case, and I'm like, "Oh, no, we have to talk about this fucking shit for a minute because it's bonkers, okay?" This is a biathlete named Carrie Swenson was kidnapped here.

Now, biathlete, you're talking about running and bicycling?

No, she just likes guys and chicks.

Yeah.

No, I'm kidding. Yeah. Running and biking.

She's a volleyball player that also.

She just goes both ways, and she also plays volleyball. No, she's a, yeah, biathlete. And so she was kidnapped by two, and this is what they call them the whole time, mountain men. Just these literally two dudes that live in the fucking mountains decide, "We should get ourselves a woman, and we're going to go get one."

And they snatched one that's fast?

They just snatched one up. Yeah.

Wow.

Don and Dan Nichols, this was, a father and son team of creepy mountain men. We'll go get a girl, and whoever gets her pregnant first wins. These fucking creeps.

They caught an athlete, though. That's amazing.

I mean, if they had a car, it would have been probably easier.

I suppose, yeah.

Yeah.

There are things faster than a person running.

Especially a biathlete. She's not a world-class sprinter. She does multiple things. So yeah.

She doesn't drag race on foot.

Yeah. No, she just can ride a bike or do whatever. What do biathletes do? I don't even know what they do.

That's what I'm wondering. I wonder if it's running and cycling.

Is that when you ski and then shoot things after you're done cross-country skiing?

That's a biathlete too, right?

No clue. That's what I mean. So she was training.

Swimmer on a rowboat?

I don't know. Maybe, yeah.

She's an athlete.

That's two. You got one and two. That's anything, really. So in July of '84, she was training near Big Sky. It was July 15th, '84. She's abducted by a father and son who live off the land in the mountains because the father had decided that it's time for you to get a wife, boy. Rather than saying, "Go into town and try to meet some women," like they did with Blast from the Past, like, "Go up there and meet a girl and hope she's from Pasadena," instead of Brendan Fraser-ing this fucking person.

Fascinating choice.

She's going to be a forest bride is what they said, and that's.

They're just going to keep her.

They're going to keep her. So this is wild shit here. They chained her to a tree. Imagine being in this poor fucking woman. And then the next day, when searchers ended up finding her, a murder ends up occurring that we'll talk about here. Now, when all this goes down, the Nicholses just disappear into the backcountry, and they can't find them because they're fucking mountain men, and they live up here, and this is their area.

This is their Montana holler.

Exactly. You're not going to know it better than them. Yeah. This is the Montana version of the West Baltimore projects where they would run in and lose the cops because they know the place better than they do. So it's pretty crazy. So I found some articles here that are absolutely bonkers. Here's one. The Mountain Man Case, it's called. And so Swenson was 23. She was a leading member of the US International Biathlon Team. So she was like Olympic level.

By them? By Don and Dan?

By them. Yeah. They shoot the guy, and then the other guy runs for help. And at that point, that's when the father-son team abandon Swenson and take off into the woods for fucking five months.

It is so baffling. How many people do some dastardly gross shit and have zero plan of, "And then what?" And the "And then what" was, "I guess we'll kill a man." And then the other guy runs off, and what do you do? I mean.

You run back up and.

No, we can't kill. He's going to go bring way too many people that we can't kill.

Well, think about their plan. Here's a pretty young girl. We'll just take her. No one will notice.

Nobody will notice.

Right there, your plan is, unless your thing is, "We're going to take her, and then we're going to go to a remote place in Alaska with her where no one can find us," just going up into the hills. They're not going to go.

Enough.

She could be in the hills. We can't look up there. They're not going to do they're going to find you. That's crazy.

She might be in the woods. You guys, it's dark and scary out there.

Yeah. Well, guys, I don't know. There's bears up there, guys. These are wolves. Okay. You hear that? Woo. Hear that in the distance?

I'll bet you there's a moose or two.

Oh, I ain't going in there. So then the guy who ran away leads rescuers back to the campsite where they find Swenson alive, huddled up in a sleeping bag. And then they decide to go after the Nichols, father-son, and they had disappeared into the Spanish Peaks wilderness here, which is where they live and know. And so for days, they search with helicopters and SWAT teams and dogs, including Brad and Bear, are out there searching through the mountains looking for them.

Unbelievable.

That's it. The Nichols tell this guy that Swenson, the girl, was shot by accident, and she survived. She's fine. And I don't know about fine, but she's alive. And the other guy was killed in self-defense. They said that.

They're telling their customers?

Yeah. They're telling their customers that. They said that they were relieved that the girl didn't die, the young lady, as they thought she did. And so this guy waits four days till after his hunting trip and then goes to the authorities and tells on them. But it's not that important.

See if we can get one of those big horn ram for us.

It is ram season. I got tags like, "We came all the way here. The guns are loaded."

It's the only one I'm missing on the wall.

I really need that. Yeah. Then on December 13th, a rancher who was breaking ice in a stock tank in his ranch spots a campfire and alerts the sheriff. The sheriff enters the area on a snowmobile, tracks in the snow on foot, and surprises the Nichols as they're cooking their dinner over a campfire and places someone. He just popped out of the darkness and said, "You two just stay right there. God damn it."

Beans down.

Well, light flickers, and they're like, "Oh, shit," with a can with a fucking spoon up to their mouth. You know that scene.

Spoon of something brown.

Yeah. No, shit. I picture it's David Arquette from Scream doing it. You stay right there, guys. Just stay, okay? Don't move.

Don't move.

Don't move. So Nichols is convicted of kidnapping and misdemeanor assault, but found innocent of murder somehow.

What?

The son is found innocent even though he's right there and in this whole plot. The father's convicted of murder, kidnapping, and aggravated assault.

In Montana, you got to pull the trigger.

You got to. And Dan gets sentenced to 20 years in prison. The father gets sentenced to 85 years in prison.

Oh, shit.

So Dan was probably out by the time he was before he was 30 because he was 19 at the time. Yeah. He goes back up into the mountains. But this search, though, that he participated in, that Brad participated in, is a crazy one. They think that they might already be in Canada. They were trying to go all the way up to the border. They never know. It's crazy. They said 11 men in helicopters were up there. 11 helicopters they had looking for this shit.

What decision?

We're going to kidnap you. And that way.

We're just going to leave for a few days.

Well, basically, it's a blind date, really, more than a kidnapping. It's a blind date. I'm going to go ahead and kidnap you, and you're going to go on this blind date against your will in the woods with me there with my son. Okay?

We want you to know we like hiking.

You like hiking? We like it even more. You think you like hiking?

I'm like hiking you can handle.

Hey, y'all like escape rooms, right? Picture the whole woods as a big escape room. Then your first mission is how do you get them chains off you?

Our first day is going to be three days long. There's going to be hiking and escape rooms.

That's what's going on. Yeah. You like escape rooms. So he says that, yeah, we were going to have a conversation. Then if she decided she didn't want to marry his son in the woods, then they would, of course, have let her go. Obviously, they weren't going to keep her. He says he assured her that she would not be hurt and would be shown a route to civilization if she decided not to remain with them in the mountains. They'd give her some directions on where to go.

All right.

He says, after a while, she knew we were telling the truth because that's what I would think if two mountain men kidnap me. I'm sure they'll let me go if I don't want to be here.

After a while.

After a while. He then said, "I don't know how we'd have gotten Carrie to cooperate if she hadn't or how we would have gotten her to come with us if she hadn't decided to cooperate. The main thing is that we didn't want to shake any girl up real bad."

You told her.

You were going to make a forest bride out of her. That's crazy. You freaked her out, I think. Wow. We wanted a long conversation with the right girl out of sight and hearing from any possible observer.

What?

I mean, yes, that's how I met Sarah, but still, that's not a normal way to meet your wife.

Out of sight.

That's how you met your that's how you met your first wife, right? You guys were.

So I meet every girl that I've ever dated.

You got to kidnap them and have a long conversation with them in the woods out of.

Against their will. Out of sight.

Out of sight of any possible observer, as he put it.

I mean.

What is going on?

Yeah.

So he said, "We knew our intentions. We didn't want a big scary production about it." It's kidnapping. It's always a scary production.

That's the scariest production on the planet.

Yeah. So he claims that Swenson lied about him threatening to strike her, but then admits, "What I said was that we could all make things pleasant during the next couple of days around camp if we'd all work together, but that if she gave us too much trouble during that time, I'd black both her eyes."

I'm so glad he got so long in prison.

But he didn't want it to be scary, though. He just wanted to have a conversation. When you first meet a girl, you should always threaten to black both her eyes. That lets her know you care. What the fuck are you doing?

I'll make a raccoon out of you.

That's crazy. But I'd never sucked a girl in my life, and I didn't intend to start with her. Neither of us ever hit Carrie. But then in the next breath, he says that he recalls striking her when she screamed, but it wasn't like a he didn't beat her. He didn't black both her eyes. He said, "I barely tapped her on the lips. I slapped her three times just with my fingertips and said, 'Shut up,' three times."

In the mouth.

She shut up.

I'm sure she didn't tap.

She shut up. Yeah. You slapped her in the fucking mouth three times.

Three times in a row.

I picture her paintbrushing. "Shut up, shut up, shut up." Yeah. Well, after you've kidnapped her in the woods to marry your boy, of course she's terrified.

Holy shit.

And then the guy he killed, he blames Goldstein, the victim, for his own demise.

Because he ran up on him?

That's his fault. You don't do that in the mountains. He said the shooting began because Goldstein "had come upon our camp and was coming on in like we were having a public fish fry."

Look, you just went.

What was that?

The fuck is that? What is that metaphor? What's that simile?

That's what I always say when something's a crowded it's like a public fish fry in here. Traffic.

What's traffic?

Everyone going to the fish fry? What's happening? Okay.

He's coming in like it's a public fish fry. What the fuck does that mean?

Like he's trying to find a kidnapped woman or something. You know what I mean?

So he came in politely? Is that what you're saying? So you shot the man?

He said, "I looked around, and Goldstein had a pistol pointed at the group of us. Braced against the tree, he was behind. I walked back, got my rifle, the same as I'd done many times in the mountains when trouble threatened." He's like, "That's what you do. When someone points a gun at you, you do that." So after the guy, the Schwalbe guy, the guy who got away, implored him and Goldstein not to use guns like, "Hey, let's not we don't need to shoot each other." Nichols said he told Goldstein to put down his pistol.

You know.

The heart.

The game.

The game over.

Jesus Christ.

I aimed center mass. You know how that goes. Right up, but real high up. Toward the heart is what I'm going for. I don't want to.

Right between between the lungs.

Yeah. I don't want to just gut-shot him. He'll lay there dying for two days. That don't do him any good.

God damn.

So he said at that point, he pointed at the middle of his chest and pulled the trigger and knew that one of us would be dead in the next second or two. He said, "I shot to kill Goldstein. Not to have done son, not to have done so would have been like trying to merely wound a grizzly."

Wow.

So you comment the king, you best not miss is what he just said.

I guess.

He said, "When I shot him, I thought I was acting in defense of everyone."

Oh.

I didn't know he was there to rescue a kidnapped girl. I just assumed he was robbing us in the woods. There's a mugging, I figured.

Rob us of our Carrie in the woods.

Yes. I didn't know. Maybe he was looking for a wife. Said, "We already found this one. Get your own."

We've already said dearly beloved. Get lost.

Get lost now. God damn it. Everything's all set up. Hey, there's a flower girl coming through any minute now. You get on out of the aisle. Come on. Is she going to drop petals? Let's go.

This ain't a fish fry.

This ain't no public fish fry. Understand?

Evidently, you have to go up in a public fish fry with a gun drawn. That's how he's describing it.

Apparently, that's welcome in a public fish fry. You just walk on in there with the gun drawn. Everyone goes, "Oh, well, it's a fish fry. Obviously, he brought his gun home."

I didn't know.

I didn't know. He said, "I could see no alternative. My mind went out to no man's land, and the moment decided itself."

Wow.

Okay. He also recalls hiding from helicopters a few times but maintains that, "We did not even remotely feel like fugitives desperately hiding from the law."

No.

So we weren't hiding. He said, "We knew we had broken the law in some manner, of course."

Oh, my gosh.

Understatement of the year. You kidnapped an Olympian and then intentionally murdered a man in the fucking woods who was trying to rescue her. And he said, "We knew we had broken some laws in some manner, of course."

There was a law or two. We figured we bent.

I mean, I knew I shot a deer without having the proper tag for it, but I was but technically, it's poaching.

Yeah. I didn't have the human being stamp this year.

Hold on. Let me check. No, damn it. I missed my human being. They got them at Walmart.

I'm drawn for people.

You can get that in a Walmart, right? A wife stamp. You get the wife stamp, and you can come do it.

The wife stamp and the murder-grown man stamp.

It's the forest bride stamp, I believe, is what they give you over at the old Walmart there in the back. So he says, "But that doesn't mean that he and his son did anything wrong in their eyes. It's the law and what we think are different." He said he lived his life according to, "The law of the mountains."

No. Jesus fucking Christ.

This isn't the murder story. That's how crazy the story is.

It's not.

"The law of the mountains," he said.

And this is the man that they've tasked XPE teacher Brad and Bear to go find.

To find him. Yeah.

Nice.

He said he rejected what he's perceived as society's stifling rules. He said, "Danny and I knew that with the tyranny and fascism sweeping the land, if we had an address anywhere, there'd be no getting away from it all. We'd have to pay taxes."

Did the.

And that's what he's talking about. We'd have to live like normal people. Those who have addresses who let their whereabouts be known will eventually be either intimidated or destroyed by the state in one way or another.

I'm doing okay. Are you doing okay?

I'm fine right now. I mean, I don't know. Unless a mountain man comes and kidnaps my wife, I should be fine. Nichols' most hated symbol of society is the governor who prosecuted the case as the assistant attorney general. He called him a, "Totally corrupt piece of garbage."

Garbage. Yeah.

He said, "If the people of Montana elect him, there's no hope for them as human beings. I hope he ends his days sleeping in the gutter where he belongs."

God damn, man. This guy's dangerous.

Well, we knew that, but yeah, he's fucking dangerous. So that's crazy. So anyway, that's what Brad is doing in July of 1984.

And he couldn't find him.

No, no. Goldstein, which is probably lucky because he would have got shot.

Or Bear. One of the two.

One of the two. So yeah, that's what's going on. And then on August 19th, 1984, so when all this shit had been the mountain men were still missing. So he's still searching for mountain men, apparently, because he's one of the deputies that when they called off the national people, he's still one of the deputies. Apparently, he gets married in the middle of all this.

No.

He's like, "I got to take Tamara off looking for the kidnapped and murdered mountain men because I got a marriage I got to hit up."

Maybe he just got married in the woods like he's supposed to.

She's also a forest bride.

He took his forest bride.

He took his own forest bride. He found her out there. She was like that fucking Jodie Foster movie. She's just found her in a tree chanting at a group of berries. Maureen Brisbane here, Maureen. No one calls her Maureen, though. Everyone calls her Renee.

Oh, yeah, because he doesn't like ladies with the last part of their name, Ine, anymore.

No, no, not at all.

We don't do that.

Yeah, we already got Rosaline. Renee is what everyone calls her. And Brad and Renee have two more children, Parker and Mariah.

Oh.

And yeah.

Parker, Mariah, Jeremy, Jeremiah, and Aaron, was it?

Parker, Mariah. I don't remember. Yeah, Aaron is one of them I remember. So they have these kids. So she's got kind of two kids with one, two kids with another. Eventually, he leaves the force, leaves the police force. I think he was just there to get a free dog. Once the dog got retired, he's like, "Well, we'll both retire, I think, right?" Yeah, me and Bear are going to go walk off into the sunset together.

I think they only give those dogs like six, eight years on the force.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You can't have a 15-year-old German Shepherd.

With his bag going out and chasing people, dragging his ass end around.

Fucking teeth missing and shit. That's not going to work. So he leaves the force.

Try finding me, you gummy fuck.

Son's of bitches.

So he and Renee moved to West Yellowstone, which is a town where they owned and ran the Silver Spur Cafe, which is a restaurant. This is what they're going to own.

Silver Spur is a very popular name for cafes. God damn.

Every Western town has a Silver Spur restaurant. Every single one. We've eaten there in Sedona. There's a Silver Spur.

There's one in Flagstaff. There's one in Sedona.

There's one in Flagstaff.

None of them are related to each other.

No.

There's one in Prescott now.

The one in Sedona, it's just the room inside one of the other restaurants is called the Silver Spur Room. And you go in there, and it's got this cowboy guy who's too young to be doing this cowboy shtick that he does as a waiter.

22.

And he's like, "Hey, I'll doing it not now. The appetizers are going to be delicious rattlesnakes."

Rattlesnake tails, and it's just as far as.

And he makes these faces like he's real squints his eyes.

Yeah.

He is waiting.

Suns in him.

For 45-year-old women to slide hotel keys across the table to him like this guy. It's very funny.

We're indoors, man. Open your eyes.

Yeah. Oh, that's the Silver Saddle. Never mind. That's not the Silver Spur Room.

Oh, there's a Silver Spur in Prescott. I've eaten there. There's a Silver Spur in Flagstaff for sure'ses. I've eaten there. It might be closed by now.

How many Silver Spurs? Let's get Jimmy a punch card for all the Silver Spurs in the country. So as we visit different places.

They're all over Arizona. I know that.

So Brad also goes back to teaching part-time at high school to make ends meet here because when you open a restaurant, hey, not a real lucrative thing right off the bat. As a matter of fact, sucks money from you for at least a year or two.

And probably for the bulk of the time that you own it, it's probably not near as lucrative as people think.

No, it takes a while to turn a profit because you have to really invest a lot going into it. So he also coaches the boys' basketball team as well.

Oh, yeah.

That's something to do. 1989, Buzz dies.

Oh, god damn.

We didn't think it was possible, but somehow.

Oh, his dad. Yeah.

The earth took Buzz.

Yeah.

Yeah, not Brad. Buzz. So fall of 1990, Brad applies for the undersheriff job in Gallatin County.

What exactly is an undersheriff?

I don't know. Not quite a deputy, but above a deputy, below the sheriff, I'm thinking.

Oh, or is it below a deputy, but.

It sounds like.

Or above the dispatch girl.

Sounds like middle management to me, undersheriff.

Yeah, it might. It might be.

I'm not sure, though. It doesn't matter. Either way.

Unelected position? Yeah.

Yeah, he applies for this job. So he's trying to get also back into law enforcement because if he's going to have a part-time job, we all know he doesn't feel like teaching. Those kids are paying right in his ass, so.

Nightmare.

He doesn't want to do that. Now, he also has a buddy here, the guy he was helping when he disappeared, Larry Moore. They met at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. That's how they met. They're both AA guys. Larry Moore big.

He's got a problem, huh?

Yes. Now, Brad, this didn't really come up in his personal life as far as this goes, but he obviously at some point had some kind of drinking problem. And we don't know if that's why he switches careers. He might have quit the force because he said, "That makes me drink too much."

Or he left that high school because.

Or he left the high school. Exactly.

Yeah.

Who knows? You know what I mean? So either way, I'm not really going to speculate on it, but at some point, I guess he decided he had a problem, and he went to AA.

For sure. Yeah.

And then this Larry Moore was also in AA, and they became friends through that, and they also would be they'd hunt together, and they became social friends outside of AA. Now, Larry Moore is Larry Thurman Moore. He was born in 1946, so a few years older than Brad. He went to high school in Placerville, California.

Wow.

There, out in the trash lands there. He was described as popular in high school and a very outgoing, friendly guy. Everybody likes Larry.

Yeah.

Yeah. He became a businessman somewhere in here. Somehow, he moved from California to Western Montana and became a businessman. We're not quite sure how that.

There's a lot of business up there.

There has to be. Well, he owned a refuse disposal company and an excavation company.

Oh, he's doing that shit. That's hard work, man.

Yeah, but that's where money is. People always think when they want to open a business, they're like, "Oh, open a cupcake shop or open up something that's so interesting."

Not that.

Find a place to shovel dirt from and put it somewhere else. Huge money. Smooth shit. Smooth some pavement.

Pest control. Cash.

Fucking refuse disposal. All these unsexy things. That's where the money is, I would assume. We're too dumb to start businesses like that because I wouldn't know what to buy or where to go, but.

Oh, and now I'm in too much fucking pain. I'm too awful.

Oh, yeah. Well, we're not starting the business doesn't mean going out and doing it yourself. I don't think either.

I think starting it, you have to, right? You can't just hire people out of the gate.

It depends on what kind of business you're starting, how much of a loan you're getting.

You're a capital investor.

Are you undercapitalized, Jimmy? Is that the problem here? We're going to be out there. Jimmy and James excavation isn't going to work very well because it's two complaining 40-something-year-old dudes with sore backs in the backyard going, "This fucking sucks, man."

With shovels going, "When can we afford a backup?"

This sucks, dude. Jesus Christ. Fucking taking smoke breaks every 20 minutes.

How many of these holes do you think we got to dig before we can get some machines?

Do you want to get lunch? We just had lunch. Let's get more lunch. I want lunch.

How do you think those machines work? Do you think they run on diesel or gas? I can't wait to find out.

I say we try regular first because it's cheaper. And if that fucks it up, then we'll get diesel from there. But right, let's start with regular on lettuce. Let's start with some 87, and then we'll go from there. What do you say? How is that about? So he owns this company. It's called I can't remember what it's called here. Okay.

The refuse company?

Yeah, I have it somewhere, but I don't know. So he had also a construction shop. He had employees, trucks, backhoes. He had all sorts of shit. He had a big operation.

It wasn't day one. He was in.

No, no. He was doing this. This is his business.

Wow.

I guess he's well-known in the community. He's known as a guy who pays his taxes and does his things and as a stand-up guy. Not on the fringes or anything like that.

He was a businessman.

Yeah, he was a father of four. He was married to a woman named Michelle Moore, who goes by Shelly. And she says he's smart, articulate, persuasive. He's an excellent catch, this Larry Moore, especially when he's sober, apparently. Now, his wife, Shelly, coached the girls' basketball team at the high school in West Yellowstone while Brad coached the boys. So Brad and Larry know each other from AA. He knows Larry's wife from basketball.

They're betrothed now. They're married.

Immediately. Yeah. And that's what it is. They both coach basketball teams, and they know each other, and their families know each other, and the men husbands hunt together, and they go to the same AA meetings and all that thing. I bet something's going on. So there was like.

Broke back mountain stuff?

No, no, no. Between Brad and Shelly because they, yeah, yeah. I mean, maybe Brad and Larry too.

Who knows?

Maybe Brad just nails that whole family with something sometimes in the woods, in the locker room. All sorts of weird porn settings. So Brad and Larry are doing all this now. Both marriages are not in the best of shape at this point. One person said people who knew them even casually knew they were having trouble in their marriages and in their friendship. Everyone tried to reach out to them to help them.

They were two alcoholics that weren't very good at keeping social things together?

No, their marriages were kind of faltering, and people said a lot of it was because everybody was saying that there was rumors going on. And then Larry would hear the rumors and be like, "Are you fucking Brad?" And she's like, "I'm not fucking Brad." And Brad's like, "I'm not fucking your wife." And he's like, "I think they're fucking." And then Larry will go tell Renee, "I think your husband's fucking my wife." And she's like, "I don't think so."

So the rumors made their friendship fall apart because.

Mistrust, yeah. Jealousy and.

Wow.

Yeah. Yeah.

All right.

So there's a lot going on there.

Small town living is hard.

It's rough, man. Yeah.

They move out there for the easy life.

So they can know everybody's business and really grind it in. So summer of 1990, Larry Moore buys a camper from a man named Dave Barsted. It was a slide-in unit that sits in the bed of a pickup truck and pops up. And you know how that goes. So basically, the space you have is essentially the back of a pickup truck. That's pretty much the space.

And a little bit over the bed rails and over the cab. That's it.

Yeah. But that's not a floor because that's lifted up. So that's.

It's small. Yeah.

Yeah, it's a small little thing. Now, Dave Barsted remembers that the floor was covered in brown carpet when he sold it. That'll come up later, okay? So one of Larry's employees installed the camper into the truck, and he said he also remembered a brown carpet in there when he installed it. So the camper had a door at the back, a step that folded down, curtains on the little windows, even had wood paneling on the interior walls.

Dang.

Yeah. They tried to make it look like a basement.

Very nice one. Yeah.

Not bad. It was small, though. It's tiny. It's like four and a half inches.

My grandfather had one of these in his truck. I had to sleep in it at Christmas in Colorado. As a kid, it's pretty big.

Oh, well, if it's private, it's awesome as a kid. You'd sleep in a hole in a tree if nobody would bother you when you were a kid, if you could fucking whack off in there and not be.

As a child, it's a huge clubhouse. As a grown adult, I don't know how people sleep in those.

I don't either. It seems not like a great idea. That's not a fun activity. Hey, let's go out in the woods, and then we'll sleep in the back of our pickup truck on some old brown carpeting. I don't want to do that.

There's like a dinette table, and there's a.

A dinette table.

Stove. And then there's a little pisser in there too.

What is the room for that? How is the.

That's what I mean. It's small.

Wow. So by the fall of 1990, he's got his camper, and Larry is now convinced that Brad is banging his wife.

Really?

Brad and Shelly are up to something, I know it. He has no evidence of this. He hasn't seen anything. He hasn't even really heard anything other than, "Oh, those two know each other." Nothing. He confronted everybody. He confronted Shelly. She denies it. He confronts Renee, even. She denies it. Brad doesn't know what he's like, "What are you talking about?" He just thinks it's crazy. And it's basically just because they were both at the school sort of at the same time doing their teens.

Okay. So yeah.

Larry lost his shit, essentially. We'll call it that. That's as scientifically.

He lost his grip on reality. Didn't know who to trust anymore. It was just a mess.

That's as scientifically accurate as nervous breakdown. Lost his shit. He just went fucking blah, blah, blah. There we go.

What year was that that they called it that? '90?

1990. Yeah. That's nervous breakdown times. Everybody's mom had a friend who had a nervous breakdown and had to go in some sort of facility.

Isn't every I'm going to have a nervous breakdown.

A nervous breakdown. Yeah. I was threatened with hundreds of nervous breakdowns as a child by frustrated adults that I was apparently giving them one. So that happened all the time. So October 1990 here. Yeah, he had been hospitalized with a nervous breakdown over his belief that his wife and Brad were having an affair. That's what this is all based on.

And how am I going to live up to the cock that Brad throws? How could I ever?

He's swinging it. He's like a hammer. He swings it. You got to be careful.

He gets along with dogs.

He gets along with dogs. I mean, we don't know how he's throwing it, but the dogs don't seem to mind being around him, so that's nice.

And those things throw it all the time. They're usually threatened by that.

Awesome. So around the same time, Shelly decides it's a good idea to get a restraining order against her husband.

Oh, it's hilarious.

She's done with Larry because he's going kind of nuts. She said the reason is the thing that pushed her over the edge is that he tried to strangle her. So she said, "Okay."

During the nervous breakdown or?

Yeah, before he went into the hospital. And she was like, "I don't trust him now when he snaps. And he's telling me I'm having an affair, and I'm not, and he doesn't believe me, so fuck that."

He's violent about things that aren't happening.

That aren't even true. So she said this whole period of October into November is just a steady slide for Larry.

Insanity.

More paranoid, more violent. She said just more weird in general. Scary, it got to be. So much so that in mid-October, Larry Moore stopped a sergeant, a police sergeant who knew Brad as well. Everybody knows each other, and they're both cops. And he asked this police sergeant whether you're a friend of Brad's. You know Brad?

You know Brad? Yeah.

And he said, "Yeah, of course I know Brad." And he said, "Yeah, you know him?" He said, "Yeah." He goes, "Let me ask you something. You think he's screwing around with my wife?" Those are his exact words. He's like, "The fuck should I? I don't know what he does with his dick all the time, but I know I'm going to say hi to him. I've had coffee with him once." So he then went on to say Larry said, "I'm obsessed with that woman. I don't know what I would do if they got together." So the cop was like, "Again, don't know."

Cool.

Awesome.

Yeah. Great story.

I don't know, man. So November 7th, 1990, Larry and Shelly kind of officially separate here. Okay? She said it was his paranoia and his violence. She said there was no affair, everything like that. And she said, "I truly believe he thought we were having an affair." She said he really thought it. He wasn't just throwing it out there. In his mind, it was driving him crazy because it was happening and no one would tell him, essentially. So November 9th, 1990, Brad leaves his home.

Yeah.

And you pick me up, and then I'll go back.

I sold the camper and the truck.

Not knocking do. Then he says something really weird. He asked Brad not to tell anyone where he's going or that he's meeting with him.

I don't want everybody to know that I'm flush with cash now.

Don't want everybody to know my business. So he said, "Don't tell anyone you're giving me a ride home." Okay? That's all he's doing is giving him a ride home.

Don't tell them I sold the wildwood. Don't tell them you're helping.

He just said, "Just don't tell anybody you're meeting me." That's it. So yeah, the camper's not the point. He just said, "Don't come get him."

He doesn't want anybody to know that he's going.

So Brad immediately turns to his wife and says, "He doesn't want me to tell you this, but I'm going to meet " this is when he's off the phone. He goes, "I'm going to meet Larry and help him, and for some reason, he doesn't want me to tell anybody about it. So I'm definitely going to tell you about it. So I'll be a.

I didn't know. Everybody told this.

I'll be at Bear's truck stop if you need me, basically. So that day, he goes to the high school where he teaches part-time, and he tells the principal that he needs the rest of the day off. He said, "I need the rest of the day off. So if you get a summer cover me."

I'm going to help my friend. I'll be at Bear's.

What he says is, and this is an exact quote, "He needs the day off to, quote, 'deal with a screwed-up friend.'"

Oh.

He says, "I got this crazy friend, and he's a screwed-up friend, and I got to go help him and deal with him." Basically, try to chill this guy out, essentially. And later on, a colleague passes him in the hallway and describes Brad having his jacket on, being on the way out, and saying he was going to help a friend, and he'd see everybody for dinner tonight because there was some event or something. A substitute covers his classes. November 9th, that same day, two witnesses say they saw Brad driving north up Gallatin Canyon that morning, I guess heading toward that area.

The interstate. Yeah.

Yeah. It would later become a Flying J. So it's that big. It's one of those. Larry Moore is there with his pickup, and he's got his slide-in camper. Now, shortly before 1:00 PM now, okay? That was late morning. Shortly before 1:00 PM, Larry Moore is driving the pickup in the camper, which, by the way, he was telling everyone he was selling that day.

He sold it. Yeah.

He calls his construction shop, okay? And one of his employees, a guy named Jerry Hiller, picks up the phone, and he says, "Listen, I need you to do me a favor, Jerry. Go out and warm up the backhoe." That's what he says. "Get it cooking and ready for me because when I get there, I'm going to need it right away." Okay? Now, according to this, from 1 o'clock to 5 o'clock, a little after 1:00, he arrives at the shop. About 1:30, he leaves the shop with the now-warmed-up backhoe. At 3:00 PM, the employee says he saw the backhoe parked back in the construction yard, so it was back.

Where he thought.

We don't know where he is either. But at some point in there, he stopped back at the shop and dropped the backhoe off. That we know. Now, by the evening, no one's heard from Brad, like we said. And Larry Moore starts telling people what happened to Brad. He starts saying, "Shit, he fucking fed up. Wife, life." He said, "Unhappy wife, unhappy life." And his life is unhappy, and he's out of here. That was it.

Turns out he was not banging my wife. He was banging a young blonde in a red sports car.

Who's got egg on their face now?

We all missed.

It's me. It's me. I'm wrong. I'm sorry.

We all missed so hard, and I was willing to throw my whole life away about it.

Didn't matter. So he said that he was drinking too, which they're AA people, so that's a big deal. He snapped. He said, "I don't need none of these constraints."

All right.

He said, "Sick of everything. He's sick of the restaurant, sick of all this shit and his wife and all this work." And he borrowed 500 bucks. Red sports car, blonde chick, possible Washington license plates, and down the interstate, woohoo, let's go. All right.

500 bucks is all I need.

It's all I need to make a new life for myself. Just 500. So Moore ended up, like I said, driving his truck home here. And then also that night, a cop saw him in his camper, and he did a little click-click, turned the lights off while the guy was looking at him. So November 10th, the next day, that's when Renee says, "Fucking, I know where he is. I know where he went. He wasn't supposed to tell anybody, but he told me he went with fucking Larry."

To Bear's. Yeah.

To Bear's. So she was convinced right away he's dead, which also is kind of like a wife going, "He's not running away with some woman on me. He must be dead. This pussy is right. He's dead, if anything."

He better be dead.

No man walks away from this. You understand? You have to be carried out away from this on a cart, on a stretcher.

On a gurney in a bag with a zipper.

That's it. You get zippered up out of here. So yeah, her first report was missing person's report, and she said that he went to the truck stop to pick up Larry Moore, never came home. They said, "Oh, shit, his car is there. No broken glass, no foul play, no blood."

Like he walked away?

Like he just walked away and started a new life. And they all said too, like, "Well, we got a witness that says they saw him do this, and this is not uncommon here."

He's done it before.

Oh, that's not him. But not uncommon for people in Montana to just leave sometimes and also leave from a truck stop. If we didn't have a witness, then whatever. But we have a witness that says he saw this, and that's common. And then we have a wife that says, "I just know he's dead," which makes no sense. So they're like.

Also, not for nothing, but we see him being flighty from careers.

That's the other thing. Who knows? Now, they all said he's a real steady cat.

Out of it. Yeah.

Yeah. They all said he's a real steady guy and everything, but who knows? People lose it. They do, and they'll leave, especially if you're pushing fucking 40 and you have a little midlife crisis, you might snap.

Start thinking about this chick coming on to me, and when's the next time I'm going to bang a chick in her 20s? I'm leaving.

When's that ever going to happen again? Yeah. So Shelly, now Larry's wife, is telling people that she's afraid that Larry may have done something to Brad. That's what she's telling her friends and stuff. She goes, "I don't mean I don't want to say it, but I'm just."

Feels like. Yeah.

I'm afraid of that. It's just I got a feeling. So at this point, everyone in town knows everything about this. They know that Larry thought that his wife was banging Brad. They know that Brad disappeared. They know that Larry says he hopped in a car with a blonde chick. They know the wife doesn't believe that, and the wife thinks he's dead. Everybody knows all of this, and especially because they run the restaurant too, which is another reason why everybody knows everybody here. So anyway, basically, the town is 50/50.

What?

Hitchhiking down the road, some.

Some out there thumbing the wind.

Other people said, "I mean, yeah, if he ran away with a young girl, that makes sense." Other people said, "If I know him, he would have never abandoned his family. He must be dead."

Must be. Yeah.

Either knee-deep in young coos or dead. Those are the only options for him. There's no middle ground here.

Or passenger seat of a truck running down the 18 wheels, humming down the interstate.

He's about to tell someone large marge sent him. We don't know. So then Larry claims he gets a phone call. Okay? This is November 10th, the day after the disappearance here. Larry calls the same sergeant who he asked, "Do you think Brad's banging my wife?" Calls him, and he says, "Hey, come over to my house. I need you." Okay? This guy arrives, and Larry Moore says that, "Look, I got a call from a woman.

Okay.

I don't know what that means or anything, but I got a call, woman's voice. That's what she said.

Well, I'm glad you called because that is the key words for call-off manhunt.

Hold on. Let me radio everybody. Yeah, if we could just he's fine. Brad's no more looking. Yeah, he's good.

He got the phone call. You know the one.

It's the yeah. No, he got the pussy call. Yeah, it's on there.

He got the secret one.

Yep. So a couple days later, officers come back to talk to Larry again because he's the last one who's seen Brad. And he's working on his camper, which is still mounted on his pickup, parked out in front of his machine shop. He is applying a tar-like substance all over the walls of this fucking camper.

On the inside?

I think on the outside and the inside.

Oh.

And they said, "What you doing?" And he said, "Patching water leaks," was his answer. Now, it's November, and it's cold, and this isn't the time you would apply something like this at all. And also, rainy season's over, so that also doesn't make sense. So they're like, "That's weird." So he continues to tell people different stories. Some people said Larry tells different people different stories. He tells some people that he thought that he thought it was Brad getting into the car.

Give me a day's time head start.

Give me three steps is what he said. So one witness, a guy named Terry Albertson here, he said that Larry Moore told him a similar story in a bar on November 11th, but that Larry Moore claimed that he last saw Brad near an airport, not the interstate. So now he's getting on a plane and not a car.

Oh, no.

It's a whole different thing.

Now he could be anywhere.

Anywhere in the world. He said a car, man. I think that's what Larry was thinking too because if you were lying about the car, you'd be like, "A car can only get so far."

On a day?

In a certain amount of time. Now, a plane, he could be in the Philippines right now. It could be anywhere. It could be in New Zealand. So he said that Moore talked in a loud voice while he told him about this too, quote, "As if he wanted everyone in earshot to hear the story, to overhear him." Wow. Now, he said also that another person, he told a lieutenant that he saw Brad get into a car on an interstate 90 after they'd stopped at the truck stop.

Well, he's skipping the check. Yeah.

Yeah. This police lieutenant said, "Larry told me that Brad basically would like to get away for a while and that he thought that he definitely thought it was a planned disappearance." This seems like a coordinated thing. So neighbors see a bunch of times Larry Moore steam cleaning the inside of his camper at this point. And they were like, "He's got a pressure washer in freezing temperatures inside a camper," which you don't pressure wash when it's freezing out, generally.

A camper usually just takes a bit of Lysol wipes.

Doesn't it say, "Psh, psh, psh"?

Yeah.

409. Yeah. You don't pressure wash out the inside of.

No.

It's like your house.

You don't have to put water in there.

Would you pressure wash your house on the inside?

Right.

Greater than driving home.

Pressure wash your living room?

Would you do that? Get the ceiling fan. There's all dust up. You're breaking the fucking things off of that thing. And they were like, "That's real weird." They said using a power washer to clean the interior of a camper in freezing weather is not something you normally see people do.

That's weird. Yeah.

Yeah. At one point too, there's a 12-volt car battery inside the camper with the caps off, and acid has been spilled on the floor.

Oh, what?

It's battery acid here.

Why would the battery be in there spillable?

That's the crazy part. Now, lab analysis later from the camper floor comes back consistent with sulfuric acid, which is the acid in the car battery, and we'll get to that now. So the camper, when the cops see the camper here, when they go to look around in here, the brown carpet is gone, number one. I don't know if the pressure washer took it right off the floor or what, but it's gone. As we know, people definitely remembered there being a brown carpet, and now there is no brown carpet. The cop during the search also said he noticed the camper, quote, "Smelled of cleaning fluids, and he found a large amount of tar under the carpet," which is interesting, under the carpet that's there now.

Horizontal wood.

Yeah, you can really tell when that shit doesn't match. An officer then found three bullet holes in the camper covered with tar located under the interior step. So then he went under the floor, and he found a bullet.

Oh, what?

He found a bullet under the floor.

It's in there still.

Yep. It had a reddish substance on it, as it's bad times when bullets have reddish substances on them, later identified as blood, that substance. Now, a ballistics expert would later examine the fragment and describe soft damage, the kind of deformation that a bullet picks up after passing through tissue, which slows it down, not passing through like a tree or something, tissue. They also find blood stains just all over the camper, which apparently is not uncommon for a hunting camper.

Probably.

There's animal blood.

If you hit something, yeah, there's going to be blood all over the place.

And you got knives out. People cut themselves.

Yeah, that's what I mean. Yeah.

Yeah, it happens. It's not like OJ playing golf. Like, "Yeah, man, I cut myself." I mean, I play golf, so I cut myself all the time.

Blood is blood in this car.

Round club, round ball.

This is a bleeding truck.

Yeah. There's nothing pointy in a golf. A tee, not very tee's that point is really not real pointy, unfortunately for him.

It punctures sod, and that's it.

That's about it. Yeah. And also, the brown carpet's gone, and the interior paneling is missing. Then one investigator notices something. Remember how it's got little curtains, little windows, little curtains, those little tiny curtains they close there? Well, on a curtain, he notices something that doesn't look right.

No.

It's small, about the size of a quarter, and it looks like a bit of yellowish fat.

What?

Some sort of viscera of some kind, some chunk of flesh.

Tissue.

He said it was kind of like chicken fat. So who knows what it is, but they take the whole curtain just in case here. The crime lab examines the material and determines it is human tissue. And under magnification, its striations are identified as muscle.

What?

A piece of human muscle is on the curtain.

He got it. Wow.

And they said that's not proof someone's dead. That could happen.

But the size of a quarter?

They said it's definitely a piece that it wouldn't kill somebody to lose this piece of tissue. You could poke yourself on something.

Poke, poke, eyes up. Yeah.

Yeah, a nail on the wall. Who knows? It seems to have.

It's going to hurt like a motherfucker, though.

For sure. And they said, "Well, this matches also Brad's blood type. What's up with that?" So Larry says, "Well, yeah, we've been hunting a ton of times, and I'm sure at some point, Brad cut himself as we were removing a deer that we had killed on a hunting trip. But I can imagine that." He goes, "I don't see how that wouldn't happen." No other witnesses have said that Larry put a deer on his trailer and not in the camper either too. They were like, "Oh, I'm sorry.

Right. You don't.

Because that's where you're living. You wouldn't put the animal in there to bleed out. That makes no sense whatsoever. I know it's already bled out, but to continue to ooze.

Yeah, you don't field dress it on the dinette.

No, just right by that little toilet thing, the little chemical toilet.

Right by the small hold-your-shit-inside toilet.

Yeah. Now, the interior step board had been removed from the camper and taken to the crime lab. While examining the blood stains on its underside, scientists found another small piece of tissue on the step that they were examining, lodged around one of the holes in the step. So they sent it to a neuropathologist in Ohio. And under a microscope, he saw granular cells and oh, Purkinje cells, P-U-R-K-I-N-J-E.

Yeah.

Okay. A distinctive kind of large neuron. And they said it's a mammal, and it's a piece of the cerebellum. It's a piece of brain.

That's brain.

It's a brain that's in there.

That's on his steps.

A chunk of brain is on his step. Yeah.

Oh, boy.

Cerebellum's at the base of your brain, back of the head, beneath the skull. You can't just.

You can't just pull it out.

You can't scratch and go, "Oh, shit, I got some cerebellum on me." That's not what happens. You can't really lose a piece of it and then just wander off. That's not really how it goes.

You don't get cut, and a piece just falls somewhere.

No, it doesn't happen. So then they do some, not really spatter shit, but some angle shit. They take lasers and shoot them through different angles, they say. You could use a long fucking like a pointer for a chalkboard. It would work the same. But a laser looks cooler. It makes them feel like they're really doing something. This is why I got into police work, to use lasers and cool shit while I investigate crime scenes. This is awesome.

Somebody put the cat away. I'm going to pull out the laser.

Yeah, yeah. They're going to go nuts. Someone brought out a big stick, and they're like, "What are we fucking, small time? Big stick."

We got county money behind us.

Yeah, everybody gets big sticks. We're the cops. We should have lasers. So they get lasers, and they look at the bullet holes, the location of the muscle tissue on the curtain, and the location of the brain tissue on the step, and run lasers through possible paths of what happened. The angles put the shooter as standing, the bullet holes here. They put the target as low or collapsed on the floor near the door with his head toward the step. That's how brain would have got on it. They could not say whether whoever this was was lying face up or face down.

And come over.

And come over. And the guy who originally, I believe, found the first bit of tar and all that and said, "This isn't right." Okay. He's read his Miranda rights. He signs the waiver. He starts talking. They tell him, "We have a search warrant for your camper, as you knew. And we found some weird stuff. And what do you think about that, basically?" And he says, "I'm done talking to you." As soon as they start talking about that shit, they keep talking to him.

Why?

I don't know.

Why are they doing that?

I can't imagine why.

Well, it's just a kind of we're all sitting here man-to-man. We don't need. We live by the law of the woods.

Miranda was a lady in Arizona. Are you a lady in Arizona? No, you're not. You're a man in Montana. You should just talk to us then. You don't need none of these waivers. Do you sign your life away to a waiver? No, you don't. That's right. Not around these parts.

That's a fella in Arizona who dips shits. You bunch of assholes.

I figured that was what they'd tell her. They'd tell the guy, "He was a little she was a little, little tiny woman out in Arizona."

Cute little white woman.

Cute, cute little white. Oh, actually, Miranda, she might have been.

They cuffed that little girl.

They cuffed her up good. I figured they're going to just lie to him. Who knows? So yeah, anyway.

They just keep talking to him?

They keep talking to him. So then he has a second story that they get out of him. Okay. He says, "Listen, all right, fine. I've shot some rounds off in my camper before. But who hasn't? Damn it, Jesus. That's what you do in a camper." He says, "I used a 357 revolver."

A few times?

"To shoot at, quote, some rats in my camper."

No, you didn't.

I have many questions. First of all, how the fuck did rats get in your camper? Number one, it's sitting on top of your truck there. You ever had rats in your car, anybody? Anybody out there, have you ever had rats in your car?

Inside the camper.

Inside.

Yeah. Under the hood, sure. We get it.

Sure. In the car. Spiders, maybe. You get a spider once in a while. Not rats.

You got a rat in your car. You've got a hole in your car.

You got problems. So this guy says he uses his 357 to buck shots at rats from no more than three feet away because there's no more room than that, and apparently missed them.

Still didn't hit them.

He said, "Your search, you're going to find bullet holes, maybe even fragments of bullets because I buck shots at a rat if it comes in my goddamn camper." And he said, "You're welcome to have the gun I use to shoot at the rats."

Oh.

And so they said, "Okay." So he's saying he's firing. A 357, by the way, is a cannon of a gun to be shooting.

So much gun.

You would not shoot that inside a closed tiny space on purpose if you could help it, basically.

Boy, are they true. They shoot so straight. That's a great gun.

I'm sure it is.

It's a lot of gun.

It's a shitload of gun is the problem. So he tells them all that. And then he says, "I want a lawyer. I told you everything I'm going to tell you."

Send it.

They finally end the interview. Okay. Now, he can't drive himself home because his sheriff's office has seized his pickup truck to search it. So the sheriff asked that sergeant who he had talked to earlier about, "Is this guy fucking my wife?" So the sheriff asked the sergeant who Larry had called and talked to about the affair to take Larry home and pick up his 357 that he shot rats with.

Take him with you. Yeah.

Now, Burns, the sergeant here, who has known Larry Moore for years, says, "Well, they might as well we might as well just take my car, and we'll go. Let's just go on down. I'll give you a ride." So on the way, Burns says some stuff. Larry answers some questions. Doesn't matter if they've known each other for years. One has a badge, and one is a Mirandized suspect, so can't do that. That's interesting.

Mirandized suspect who has said, "I want a lawyer."

Who's already invoked their counsel. So they said that you may the cops said, "You make sure you don't do anything to yourself. Nothing that's bad." That's what the cops said. And Larry said this, which is awful. He said, quote, "If I did something to myself, then we'd never find Brad." Which would make you go, "What's that now? What'd you just say?"

Why would he say that?

And then they stop because Burns remembers that this is not whatever he just said isn't admissible anyway because he's already invoked his right to counsel. So later that night, Moore said he left some property in the patrol car. So he came down to the West Yellowstone Police Station to get it on his own. The sheriff, without repeating the Miranda warnings, which he's been left and come back and been out of police custody, so asked him about the rat story and then had him draw a diagram of the rat incident.

Here's a five-by-six area, 30 square feet, gas.

Here's rats here, a shot.

It's right there.

Yeah, you see where I the only place I could be to shoot those shots is right about there. Now, meanwhile, here, Renee, Brad's wife, would love to know where Brad is. This is all fun and cute. It's been fucking two weeks now. "Where's my husband?" basically is what's going on here. So she knew he had left because he told her. She doesn't believe the red car thing for one second.

Not at all.

She knew better than anyone what's been going on between Brad and Larry because Brad tells her about it. And then Larry calls up and says, "Is your husband fucking my wife?" But the rumor mill is completely the other way. Everyone in town pretty much is like, "He ran away." Because that's a more fun, salacious rumor. I mean, yeah, somebody got out of here. So he's a good-looking guy. He's banging his friend's wife. It all makes sense. A jealous husband, a blonde in a sports car. It's like a music video from 1987.

Brian Adams, whatever it is, is screaming.

He's screaming something about this. It's summer of '69 or some shit. I don't know what's going on, but it's all happening. The alternative is these two guys who we've both liked and trusted for years, we've completely misjudged them. One was fucking the other's wife, and the other's a murderer. Those are the options. Or is it more fun that one guy just snapped and ran off with some hot young blonde? It seems more fun that way for the people that.

Yeah, the other one's just.

Sad.

Yeah, it hurts.

That hurts, yeah. And it makes you the dummy for believing these people for years or believing at least Larry that he's a nice guy. And Renee said so many people because she would talk to people. She's run a restaurant still, and she would talk to people about everything. And she said people would come up and go, "Honey, maybe he did just run off." I mean, people do that. And she'd be like, "No, I know he did." That was the quote she gave that people would say all the time. "Honey, maybe he did run off.

Stop being so proud of yourself."

Yeah. So that's what they're saying. And it's really weird. Meanwhile, she thinks he's dead. So December 1st, Larry Moore comes in for another interview. This time with his attorney. Okay. So this is his second interview and his third story because his first story is, "I don't know." My second story is, "I shot rats." And now he's got a third story on a second interview.

With a lawyer present.

With a lawyer present. On his lawyer's advice, he later said, he admits the rat story was bullshit. Because that's a terrible story, and they don't believe it at all.

Go ahead. Tell him you've never shot a rat indoors ever in your life.

Please do that. With a 357, of course.

Please tell the cops you didn't explode a rat in any indoor situation ever.

I just see exit fucking wounds, exit holes coming out of this camper too, as 357 shells rip through the fucking thin, non-insulated fucking walls.

So dumb.

So he changes his story here, and he says that he was paying the bill for breakfast that he and Brad had. And Brad said he was going to go out to the truck, to Moore's truck. That's how he got outside. He said Brad had been drinking that morning. And he said that, "I paid for breakfast and whatever, and he went out to my truck." And he said, "When I went back out to my truck, I found him in the back of the camper."

Oh.

And he said that he was armed with a pistol and in a suicidal state, waving the gun around, talking about, "I'm going to end it all. I'm going to blow my brains out," and just really talking and waving and scaring poor Larry, basically, here. So Larry said, seeing him in this state, couldn't let him just sit there and let this happen. He jumped into the camper. So now two grown men in a camper. It doesn't fit them. And wrestled him, grabbed his arm, and started wrestling him for the gun.

It went off three times.

Inside this camper. And he said the gun went off, and the bullet grazed Brad's head. But it was superficial, just a flesh wound.

Just a scratch.

A scratch here. Brad was bleeding, though. And he's like, "Oh, shit. I'm bleeding." Then Brad said he made Larry promise not to tell anyone. "Don't tell anyone what happened here, okay? Please don't tell anyone I lost it because I'm applying for that under-sheriff job and everything. So I don't want people to know I'm nuts here." In his mind, that's what he's thinking. So Moore said he then went inside to the truck stop to get some water to clean up the blood. And when he came back, Brad was gone.

Oh.

He said, "I'm pretty " he said, "I looked out. I looked all gave it one of these, looked all around." And he said, "I'm pretty sure I saw on the internet " on the internet, I just said.

In 1990.

On the internet, I saw on the interstate Brad getting he was on the interstate on-ramp getting into a red car of a blonde woman drive. I'm pretty sure I did see that, though. But he just took off, didn't even clean up his wound, just took right off.

357 scratch right there on his head.

With a bleeding, superficial gunshot wound to the head. He just goes for a gunshot.

Pretty blondes and red sports cars oftentimes stop for bloody men.

They go, "Ooh, get on in, sexy bloody man, you." You must be a man if you're bleeding like that. Yeah.

Side of your head matches my car. Get in.

So then he also said that he added some more things. He said that when he got into the camper, he smelled gunpowder as he got into the camper. And that's when he found him sitting on the floor. This is great too, more details. They said, "Well, where was he exactly with the gun?" He said, "Well, he was sitting on the floor. And I heard like I said, I smelled gunpowder, so he must have bucked a shot off already."

Shot one, yeah.

He said he was just sitting on the floor with the gun next to a copy of Outdoor Life magazine, which had an article on how to blow your brains out in a tiny camper, which he was exactly what he was looking for. It was the November fucking '89 edition of the magazine. It's a great article if you want to check it out.

Right next to the new Brown Trout World Record, Cotton Graham Canyon.

Totally. Well, then he said that he smelled gunpowder because Brad admitted he had fired the gun off in the trailer. And he said, "Why'd you do that?" And he said Brad told him that he shot at the picture of a deer on the cover of the Outdoor Life magazine.

Okay.

Okay?

I'm furious. I ain't never shot one.

I never got him. So according to this, Moore said then he, quote, "Jumped on Brad and wrestled with him, and the gun went off, hitting Brad in the forehead now," he says.

Oh.

Now, Larry said he told Brad he's going to call the police. He grazed his forehead, not in the middle of the forehead.

Not sniper punched.

Larry was like, "I got to call the police to let them know that there's been a discharge of a firearm. I mean, they're going to want to know. I'm a law-abiding citizen." And Brad said, "No, absolutely not. No. If you do that, I'll kill myself. I'll do it right here."

I've still got the gun.

Oh, no. So he said, "Okay. Well, let's talk for a while then." So they kept talking. And then Larry went into bears with a coffee pot from the camper to get water to help clean the blood off of Brad and the trailer and the camper itself. And he told the detectives that Brad and a first aid kit. He said, "I came back to the car." He didn't think to go to the first aid kit while he's there. He had to get a pot of water first. But he said, "When I got back, Brad's gone. And tell you what, so is my first aid kit."

Damn it.

He said, "I'll fix this on my own." And that's it.

He took about 11 Band-Aids and some iodine tabs.

That's it.

And jumped in that red car and on down the road.

Had 18 inches of gauze in there. That did it. I'm all set. So he said he then cleaned out the camper because the memories and all. So he said that he told detectives that Brad asked him not to report what would happen, that this had happened. "Please, just don't report this."

Tell them you're doing rat target practice rather than.

This.

Me. You saved my life.

So this just explains a few loose ends. This explains why there's blood, Brad's blood in there.

There's blood.

It explains why there's bullet holes. But it doesn't explain why there's brain.

Brain.

And a quarter-sized chunk of tissue in the curtain, which is very interesting here. And they said, "So why did this all why didn't you tell us this to begin with?" And he said, "Because I'm a man of my word, and I made a promise to a friend. I promised that, man, I would not tell you guys."

Where I come from, that means something.

That means something. Placerville, California. It means something. So they were like, "Oh, yeah, back in Placerville. That's fine. You're under arrest, that shit. Turn around. Let's go with this. Make with the fucking hands behind the back there."

There we go.

So he's charged with murder. He's charged with deliberate homicide and two counts of tampering with or fabricating physical evidence. The town is lukewarm on this. The town around them is like most of them believed him. So they were like, "I don't know about this. I think they're trying to scapegoat this fucking guy."

Do they know what he's they don't know what he said, right?

Not exactly. I mean, there's stuff coming out in the newspaper, but it's not exactly things. But the Reverend MacGram of the First Baptist Church said, "The whole thing doesn't make any sense. People really don't know what to say." One of the DJs on a local radio station said, "Shock is a good word. Everyone is just stunned that this could happen here." All right. Now, I'll back to this.

Now, let's call a man and ask him who tell him he's one roses and ask him who he wants to send him to.

Let's call a man and pretend it's let's pretend that this is on the up and up, and we haven't already talked to him, even though that's the law. All right. Line one. We got Betty coming in. Hey, Betty. How are you today? Waking up in the morning. Cock-a-doodle-doo. Come on, Betty. Fuck, I hate that.

What are the odds that every single person that's ever gotten free flowers sends them to somebody who's not their significant other?

Oh, every time. Oh, really? Well, let me send it to this chick I've been.

How it's going. Another person, really.

Yeah. The worst. Yeah. They said everyone is just stunned that this could happen here. Another woman who edits the Yellowstone Times, the editor of the Yellowstone Times newspaper, Elizabeth Laden, said, "Nobody expects murder. Maybe he did maybe he didn't even do it. A lot of people are holding out."

Wow.

And then another guy, Cal Dunbar, who owns the Food Roundup grocery store. It sounds like that's exactly what he does.

Great place to get a real quality steak.

The old Food Roundup.

The Food Roundup.

He says, "Everybody knows everybody. It's like tossing a pebble in a pond. There's nobody that a wave doesn't touch in one way or another." Small town is what he just said.

Oh, the ripples. Because of the ripples.

The ripples. We live in a small town. So he sits in jail for about 90 days, and then they let him post bail.

What?

He posts bail. Yeah. He's a free man. The problem is they don't have a body. This is no body, no crime. That's what we got going on here. Bob Marley sings it.

But.

Nobody, no crime.

But you've got a man gone. You've got seven stories from the guy that you suspect did it.

But how do you know he's dead? How do you know one of those stories isn't true?

He didn't get grazed, and there were no dead rats.

That's the problem. They got muscle. They got a lying guy, but they don't have a corpse.

Yeah, but you got Brian.

Pre-DNA, you do not convict somebody, basically, without a corpse. How the fuck do you know he's dead? It's hard. So it's weird, man. So no Montana prosecutor, up to that point, had ever won a murder conviction with no body.

Without a body.

So you're going in with literally trying to make precedent because it's never happened in your entire state before.

Wow.

Yeah. So two potential jurors here would later say who were called to do the voir dire said that they straight, quote, "Could not convict anyone of homicide unless the state produces a body of a dead person." They could never do it because there could always be what if the guy's alive.

Well, walk his ass in here then.

Well, that's the thing. I can't remember what movie or TV show it was, but there's a lawyer, a defense lawyer that goes, "I call my next witness," and calls the victim. And everybody looks, and he goes, "Ha, see, so you don't know he's dead. I didn't say there he is." And everybody went, "But he's dead." Everyone looked to the door because you thought maybe there's a chance he is alive. That right there means how can you convict somebody? You thought he was going to walk in, for Christ's sake, which is part of my bullshit.

Well, because you told us he was.

Exactly. It's a stunt, but also.

You son of a bitch.

That can get a dumb person to go, "That's airtight logic, boy. I'll tell you what."

Everyone you were a kid and your friend would go, "Look at that dead bird flying." And everybody looks up.

Exactly.

It's because you pointed, you fucking asshole.

Yep. Dumb people go, "He's got a point." There's a certain logic that smart people would get angry at, but dumb people will go, "Can't escape that. He's right."

When you're right, you're right.

I mean, what's he going to do? So the state needs to prove that the brain and muscle and blood came from Brad and that whoever had lost it could not have survived. Because you can't say.

The brain, I mean, that's pretty.

That's the part. Yeah. That's the thing. The cerebellum. Kind of hard to get cerebellum meat out on your.

That's that big juicy part at the bottom of the brain.

Yeah. It's hard to get your cerebellum meat on a camper step and walk away from that. It's interesting. Now, the other thing is DNA had never been in a Montana courtroom before. So this is all some new shit here. It is at this point that Renee, Brad's wife, and her two children file a wrongful death suit against Larry Moore. They say, "Well, if you guys are going to drag your feet and dick off and let this guy out on bail, I'm going to fucking sue him before he spends all his money."

I mean, I think she's up to trying to get this thing started.

I would say so. Yeah. It accuses it's a wrongful death suit, and it seeks punitive and compensatory damages. And that's that. So okay. Winter here, '90 into '91. Things are moving through the courthouses. But the thing they really would love to find is fucking Brad. They love to find him.

We didn't lose the body.

They start the biggest manhunt in county history looking for Brad, trying to find him here.

And he's got four hours that he's unaccounted for. That's a big radius.

Larry. Huge around. That's what they're thinking, too. But they work the entire area around West Yellowstone, these searchers, including a gravel pit north of town that Larry used to have either part ownership to or access to. They even searched that. They searched everywhere. They don't find Brad. They launched this for months. They search months. This is every day. Then winter closes in, covers everything. The lake freezes over. They're like, "What do we do?" If he's here, he's under two feet of snow at this point.

Just like Boston.

Same thing. Allowed Gallatin County officials one day to resume their search near West Yellowstone for the body of former deputy Brad Brisbane because that's another thing. They're looking at this as a former cop. Arctic cold, which forced a halt to the search in a nearby gravel pit after one day on December 19th, again caused the hunt to be suspended on Friday. The sheriff said, "We'll have to see what the weather does, but it might get called off again for a time due to the weather." And they keep talking about that.

That's a seasonal job.

I would say, where he has access to. They said Moore also had access to a backhoe that can dig a hole up to 18 feet deep.

What?

Yeah. Get down deep.

That's a big fucking backhoe.

That's a big yeah. This guy does huge industrial jobs. This is a big deal. He's not just cleaning yards up. So this also, searchers had to use a caterpillar to scrape a layer of dirt one foot at a time at the bottom of the pit. And after each pass of the machine, a dog trained to sniff out cadavers would go in and sniff more. They clear the dog out, get another foot, send the dog in. They said it was really hard. They said this deputy also said that he knew Brad because he was a deputy for years. And he said that he found it ironic and somewhat emotional to be searching for his body with dogs when Brad would have been the guy searching for a body with a dog.

Union breaks.

They got to go out of town for a while. Yeah. Wife and kids.

They got PTO.

Yeah. So yeah. They looked everywhere. They said that they said, "If the body is in the gravel pit, BC, the canine, will find it. He's the best." They said the search was hampered by zero-degree temperatures and 20-mile-an-hour winds.

Just like Jersey.

Just like fucking Delaware.

Zero degrees and 20-mile-an-hour winds?

It's every day, really. I don't think it's snowed in New York City in like five years, but it's every day it happens. I know it has once in a while, but it doesn't snow there a lot at all. So they said, "As the searchers spent time looking for the body, the windshield temperatures went down to 39 below zero."

Fuck.

Like everywhere else. And wow. That's fucking amazing. So they say the defense attorney says, "Without the body, you're not getting a conviction in this state, period." That's what they keep saying. So they said, "Well, we're going to find a body. God damn it." They said that the state's case is based on statements by Moore and others. If that evidence can't be used because they're trying to get it thrown out because he asked for a lawyer, then also the state would have to agree to a dismissal, the defense says.

Go get them.

Oh, yeah. So they're saying you've got to train them to alert pretty strongly on body parts and decaying tissue, which is what we're always saying with our dogs. You have to train them that way.

If you want to raise them right, you got to raise them right.

You got to raise them right. So that's in December. Problem is, June 5th, there's an article. June 5th, 1993, as that comes up. Three years later, search for murder victim's body still continues.

What?

They don't know. They're still looking. That's years from now. So they don't find it before the trial.

Oh, my God.

They say that, "We're following up anything and everything that might lead us to a body. It's pretty well known throughout the Northwest that we're looking for a body."

Okay.

Yeah. They said, "We will find the body if we get help. Help like if Larry Moore tells us where the body is," the one sheriff said. So that's interesting. They said that they had to empty out a 9,000-gallon propane tank, haul the tank out, and dig down next to the cement pilings to do some shit. I don't know what they were doing, so.

Thinking he was buried next to that?

Yeah. They've really done a lot of shit. It's a lot. They said, "We'll keep looking. We're still willing to investigate any tip and follow up on any lead." So that's post-trial that we're going to talk about, that that all happened. Now, the family's position, like always, still is he's dead. We're suing Larry. Now, 1991, letters start arriving. Typed letters with a signature saying it's Brad.

Oh, Brad's writing.

Oh, yeah. He's writing. They're postmarked nowhere near West Yellowstone. At least one of them came from Spokane, Washington. Washington plates on the red sports car, they all say. So we don't know the full text, but one of them is, "Brad is alive. He's fine. He is in Washington. He just needed to get away. The search can stop. He's fine."

Oh, go ahead and what now?

Yeah. He apologizes for causing, quote, "A real strain on everyone involved." And also, the new sheriff, he congratulates him on his appointment also. So keep up on his.

Congrats on your election victory.

Keep up on my social things, my obligations. So essentially, his wife and four he has four kids and a wife. They don't get any letters, but the sheriff gets a congratulations letter.

Sure.

Yeah. Apologizing for the inconvenience, which seems odd.

And trying to get him to stop looking for him.

Yes. And the letter congratulated the sheriff on being appointed. Meanwhile, in Montana, sheriffs are elected. He was elected, not appointed. So that's a small thing, but it's something where they're like, "Someone who had applied to be an undersheriff and worked for the county.

Should know that.

Yeah. They should probably know how sheriffs are made here. When a man loves a woman, very much.

Yeah. He knows how sheriffs are elected.

A little sheriff comes out at the end there. That's how sheriffs are made. So it's interesting. Moore also said he got a letter delivered to him.

Oh.

Yeah. And they said that Brad is alive in the letter. The letter refers to events that took place in Moore's camper, and it asked that Renee be looked after, his wife. But Renee's name is misspelled.

Oh, my God.

Most people know how to spell their wife's name.

Generally, you would. Yeah.

Yeah. There could be hard ones.

Yeah. Do you leave the H off sometimes?

Yeah. You leave the H off a sour. She'll get upset. She knows. It's not her name.

I tell you, my ex's dad, my father-in-law, never spelled my name right on a single Christmas gift.

Is he a foreigner?

That's how I knew that this was over.

Is he a foreigner?

I mean, the family is they're immigrants, but he's not. He was born and raised in fucking Pittsburgh.

Okay. Because I've gotten some hilarious cards from foreigner relatives. They can't spell shit. People from Italy, and it's awesome.

They can't spell James?

No, no. They can't spell aunt and uncle.

Oh, okay. All right.

Never mind James. James is a fucking way above their pay grade. But my father, he cracks up every time he says it. They got a card from my mother's aunt and uncle, who is Aunt Ciccine is her name. It's a nickname. Aunt Ciccine and Uncle Nick. Okay? In the card, it says, "Enda, Ciccine, and Ogla, Nick."

Ogla.

Because that's how they say it. That's how they say uncle or aunt. It's Enda. Oh, Aunt, Enda, Enda. So Enda, Ciccine, and Ogla, Nick is how they signed it. And that's the funniest fucking thing we've all been laughing about for 45 years. So yeah. I didn't know if they were foreign. But he should probably know how to spell his own wife's name, right?

You'd know your wife's spelling.

That's interesting. So it's odd. Now, Larry walks this into the sheriff's office and said, "Hey, I just got this letter. You all should look at it." You know what I mean? Larry also, he describes a letter signed Doug that was sent from Mexico claiming that he was alive. And not only is he alive from Mexico, but he also says, "By the way, I planted evidence to frame Larry."

Signed Doe.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Signed Larnie. Okay. Perfect. So now Brad is the one scheming to get Larry put away somehow in this letter. So Renee said what's interesting. Number one, they showed Renee, and she said, "Number one, that's not Brad's signature on any of these letters. And number two, my fucking name is misspelled."

He would never misspell his wife's name.

He knows how to spell Renee, which is not that difficult of a goddamn name either. So the letters then go to the lab, and they get prints. Nothing matches Brad on the prints on these. But nothing matches Larry either.

But there's fingerprints on it.

They found some prints, but they don't match anybody. A forensic document examiner looks them over and finds that they are from the same typewriter, all the letters. Some purporting to come from Spokane, some from Mexico, but all from the same typewriter.

So somebody's shipping this typewriter all over to their friends.

Yep. They said that it's cheap paper, the kind of paper used in high schools.

Uh-oh.

They said, like copy paper used in high schools. The typeface has no flaws distinctive enough to trace to a specific machine. They don't think, but we'll find that later. Investigators also locate a greeting card that they know Brad had recently signed because someone got it personally from him. They said his real signature is fast and bold, a mix of printing and capitals. The signature on the letters is full cursive, slow labored, and with a visible tremble.

Oh, I get worried that they're not getting this right.

The capital B is built in three separate strokes. So with a break where a natural writer wouldn't stop. They just keep going.

Especially if you write it all the time.

Yeah. Exactly. And they said so basically, they said the signature is a drawing of a signature. Like if you gave a kid tracing paper and a signature and said, "Come up with that," like a five-year-old, it would look like this, like shaky and different breaks and the thing. So then they decide, "Okay. There's this thing called DNA that's new to be able to work with." Anyway, it's not new. It's been in your body, but they're going to figure out how to work with it. And yeah. So normally, DNA identification compares a crime scene sample to the person they think it came from.

Right. But we don't know.

Yeah. You swab the suspect. You sample the victim. You see if they match. But Brad is nowhere to be sampled at this point, unfortunately. So the labs ran it backwards. Now, each child inherits half their DNA from their mother, half from their father.

Indeed.

So they sample the children, then sample their mothers, and subtract the mother's contribution from each child and see if it's.

Do the math.

Connected. Yeah. So what's left had to come from the father, basically. So they then check whether the tissue in the camper could have been from Brad.

Does it match this half? Yeah.

Add Brad's mother to the mix, and the father's contribution can be confirmed from the other direction.

Bingo.

So that's how they do it. So this cell mark people, they receive blood samples from seven people: Rosaline Kovach, who's Brad's former wife; their children, Jeremiah and Aaron; Renee Brisben, who is his current wife; their children, Parker and Mariah; and Marianne Brisben, Brad's mother. So they need all of that stuff. Now, there's also the muscle in the curtain, the tissue. They cut it into three pieces. One stays in Montana.

I'm not stupid.

Yeah. Well, let's try and just tag it with radioactive probes first. Let's see how that goes. What do you say?

Put it on the nylon.

Trial and error. So the result is an autoradiograph, a column of dark bands that looks like a barcode. That's how you get DNA. So they used five probes at five genetic locations. For each mother, her two children, and the tissue, they lined up the bands. And each child, one band should match the mother, the other should match the tissue. And if the tissue came from the father, you get how that goes. So there was two snags, though, here. On one probe, Mariah's maternal band didn't show at all.

Oh, got it. Yeah.

On another probe here, the tissue's band didn't match either of Marianne Brisbane's bands. So out of nine visible bands across five people, the tissue matched four of Marianne's. And the experts explained the discrepancy as a mutation, noting the high-known mutation rate at those noting the high-known mutation rate at those locations of the DNA. The second piece of curtain tissue went to another place for testing with an older method that examines inherited markers on antibody molecules.

They don't understand how important this is.

No. They had no idea. So now it's just something that we know. Like oxygen and gravity, there's DNA. But back then, they were like, "This sounds like horse shit."

Sounds like.

This sounds like Star Trek.

Boogie shit. We're all unique. Okay.

Yeah. All of us are fucking individuals. I don't know what the hell. So anyway, the sample goes into a buffer with chemical primers, and they do all this type of shit. And I won't get into the process. But anyway, they embed the brain tissue in a paraffin block and send it to a place in New Mexico, a cancer center in New Mexico. They extract the DNA. Then they send the extract to a place in Denver.

Wow.

This is quite the process here. Then they type the Brisbane children, and they said, "Among the four children, there are only two alleles?"

Alleles.

Alleles. That's right. Alleles. Thank you. Found in the he's like, "I know that word." Yeah. You said it. I was like, "I know that word."

I said that goddamn word.

Now, if you see it in front of you, you go, "Ooh, A-L-L-E-L-E-S."

Yeah. It's too many. Yeah.

It should have more E's and less L's. Yeah. Found the four and the three. Since any given person can only have two alleles, the biological father of these individuals had to have a three and a four allele. The evidentiary material, the brain tissue typed as 3, 4, so it cannot be excluded as having come from the biological father. So it's probably his brain. Yeah. It's his brain. So the cost of this at the time was massive.

Astronomical.

This investigation became one of the most expensive in the history of Montana at this point. So the forensic work at estate crime labs, commercial DNA labs back when this shit was really new, a university cancer center, an out-of-state neuropathologist, document examiners, ballistics.

Cutting checks to all these people.

All of them. Molecular biologists, geneticists, statisticians they have to hire too. It's fucking crazy. So March 1991, this is all happening. And the local newspaper figured out that the case was going to turn on DNA. And they have a big article in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle titled, "Invisible Crime Clues," because it's all new. It told readers that DNA fingerprinting has been viewed as virtually foolproof in linking suspects with crime. But they also told them DNA testing is far from perfect.

How about it?

All right. Now, the other thing is about they found out that they think that Larry they get the typewriter back to the typewriter in Brad's West Yellowstone High School office.

What?

They somehow said he went those letters were all typed on his typewriter from school.

On Brad's?

On Brad's own typewriter from school, then signed with his name and sent out, which is crazy, all the letters that went out. They give Larry Moore freedom to travel. He also wants his pickup truck back.

Yeah, I bet.

Well, he's out on bail. And they were like, "What the fuck?" The district attorney was like he said, quote, "The truck is the murder scene. That truck had bullet fragments in it, which Moore readily admitted he destroyed. We're going to give him the truck." So they said, "You can't have the truck, but you can go."

You can go and do whatever you want.

Because for business, he has to travel all over the place. So they let him. They have tons of DNA battles here. Defense lawyers ask the judge to bar the state from using genetic testing results from a private Maryland lab because the results won't meet court deadlines for submitted evidence. So it's all of that kind of thing. The judge said the issue of corpus delicti is not dead in this case. We need something that's going to get to resolving that, meaning you got to prove this fucking guy is dead, essentially.

Show us a body.

Then the defense attorney said one centimeter of muscle tissue doesn't prove death. So that's where we're at. There's a pretrial circus, huge circus here. Number one, over all of his interviews, the November 23rd and the December 1st interviews. And basically, they said the judge was quoted at the time saying that basically that they should definitely not fucking count.

What's the evidence we have?

Then they really have nothing. Then the prosecutor is removed. The lead prosecutor, Marty Lambert, is kicked off the case. And the judge is pissed off at him too. The judge said, quote, "I don't want to see his face in the court regarding the case of Larry Moore. He's out." That's what he said.

Okay.

They said the decision was based influenced on the prosecutor's admission that he had once joked that even if he didn't convict Moore, he would drive him out of business and into bankruptcy.

Wow.

The joke and the dispersing of confidential information indicated a personal vendetta and misuse of power. And the defense attorney said, "Well, let's not only dismiss him, let's dismiss all of this tainted evidence that the guy gathered. Everything you have, essentially."

He did it.

And the judge said, "It's not so fast."

Easy, easy. Take it.

He's gone. Evidence is in.

Yeah.

He said, though, he also yeah. So that's how he goes. He said, "When this kind of attitude exists, there's something wrong in the county attorney's office," the judge said. So anyway, there's all a big deal. Then there's reverses where the Montana Supreme Court reverses the trial court on just about every point. The cleanup of evidence is allowed in now. It showed consciousness of guilt and was part of everything. Shelley Moore would be allowed to testify about everything except confidential marital communications.

How far?

Wherever, just away. They polled 106 county residents, and 85.8% have been exposed to coverage of the case. 30.2% had formed an opinion, 59% hadn't, and 15.1% said, "I don't know."

What? Somebody's dead?

Anything. "I don't know." I said, "Who? What's that now?" So the defense's own survey, they conceded that the survey did not overwhelmingly indicate one way or the other whether he would get a fair trial. So with that being said, it's staying.

Let's do it. Yeah.