Transcript of The Widow & The Deer Hunter - Belfast, Maine

This week in Belfast, Maine, a twisted story emerges from a cold-blooded murder in a family driveway leading to the unraveling of strange relationships and a look into the underworld of a small town. Welcome to Small Town Murder.

Hello everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder.

Yay!

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

I'm Jimmy Wissman.

Thank you, folks, so much for joining us today on another absolutely wild, crazy edition of Small Town Murder. As usual, we have crazy stuff for you, so buckle up for that. Before we get to all of that, definitely head over to shutupandgivememurder.com. Number one, first of all, all the merchandise you could want, but tickets for the live shows. We have.

Oh, yeah.

Two more live shows left this year, November the 13th in Tarrytown. I don't even know if there's any tickets left for that. There was only a few kind of scattered ones. You can check on it, I'm not sure. There's that. And then the next night, though, in Medford, Massachusetts, outside of Boston at the Chevalier Theater, we are going to be there on November 14th. Tickets left for that, so get those right now. 2027 schedule comes out pretty soon here in the next couple weeks, and then they'll go on sale in December. So get ready for that. shutupandgivememurder.com.

There's a ton of it. Anybody $5 a month or above, you get everything we put out. Soon as you subscribe, you're going to get almost 400 back bonus episodes you've never heard before immediately upon subscription. Then you get new ones every other week, one Crime and Sports, one Small Town Murder, and you get it all, my friend. So it's a good deal. This week, what you're going to get for Crime and Sports, we're going to do just not a lot of crime here, but just very interesting. The history of the Harlem Globetrotters. Very cool.

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Ad-free. And you get a shout-out at the end of the show too. So can't beat the deal. That said, I think it's time for the disclaimer. This is a comedy show, everybody. We're comedians. People are going to die. It's called Small Town Murder, so that should be no surprise to you when that happens. And you might go, well, how do you mix those? How do you make that funny? Pretty easily, actually. Be surprised. First of all, we're all from some kind of town that deserves to be made fun of.

From somewhere, yeah.

Who cares? Yeah, we make fun of that. We make fun of some bumbling police force that can't catch a murderer, so they go kill more people, which kind of sort of happened in this case. And then on top of that, we make fun of murderers because.

Oh, yeah.

Mock them. What do we care? What are we going to do? We have no other recourse against a murderer. We can't go in there and take their honey buns away. All we can do is mock them from a distance. So that said, you're going to hear a wild story. And if you think true crime and comedy should never, ever go together, this might not be for you.

Bye!

Bye. But we think it might be, actually. Give it a shot. Either way, no complaining later. That's the point here. No bitching about it. So that said, I think it's time to sit back, everybody. What do you say here? Clear the lungs. Arms to the sky. Let's all shout.

Shut up and give me murder!

Let's do this, everybody.

Okay.

Let's go on a trip, shall we?

Yeah.

Let's go here. We're going to Maine this week, a place.

What a lovely place.

Both Jimmy and I adore. We just like the ocean and. Without the heat. That's what it is.

There's some questionable spots, but for the most part, down there near the coast is pretty legit.

I just like a rocky beach that's not hot. I like a hoodie beach.

Those black pebbles are pretty incredible.

Good stuff here. Belfast, Maine. It's coastal Maine, kind of down in the southeast part of the Maine area there. It's about an hour and 45 minutes to Portland, Maine. About three hours to Boston. And about an hour 25 to Fayette, Maine, which was our last Maine episode, episode 696, A Strangely Murderous Grudge. I remember that one. This is in Waldo County. We found it. Here it is. Find Waldo.

Found Waldo.

Here, boom. One county over here.

Dressed very appropriately.

Yeah, he looks like he's going to the beach on a fall day in Maine, doesn't he?

He looks like he's going lobster hunting.

Yeah. The scarf and everything. Area code 207. A little bit of history here. In about 1720, General Samuel Waldo of Boston here bought the Muscongus patent, which had evolved into ownership of this land, which was then known as the Waldo patent. Now Waldo died in 1759, and all of his heirs sold the plantation that he had to 35 Scottish and Irish people from Londonderry, New Hampshire.

Londonderry?

Londonderry, yeah. Then it was renamed after Belfast, which a lot of the Irish immigrants who bought the land were from Belfast. So that's how it worked there. Apparently, this is another coin-toss town. The name was decided on a coin toss between Belfast and Londonderry. They were going to call it Londonderry still.

Why would they do that?

They said, do we call it the place we just came from or the place we came from originally? And they were like, flip a coin and Belfast will.

Londonderry is literally less than an hour from here.

There's tons of those places with the same name. So it's very weird here. Now the village was pretty much abandoned during the Revolutionary War because British forces occupied right by here. The British military burned Belfast in 1779, then held it for five days during the war of 1812. So the British really had it in for this fucking joint. They hate the Irish, that we know. Northern Irish. Shoe manufacturing became a huge business, which in New Hampshire it was big too.

Holy shit.

Shitload of birds. And they have a.

How do you do that? That's a million a week.

I don't know how you do that. That's a lot of birds. Poultry, that's why they're raised shittily, because you cram them in there. So the poultry business collapsed, though, in the mid-'70s during the recession and kind of really devastated these towns, and they've been trying to build back since then. Here's some reviews of this place. Okay.

Here we go.

Five stars. Belfast is a beautiful, welcoming, cozy town on the ocean. It's extremely safe for my family, never locks our car or our home.

For my family.

How hard is, yeah, for my family, how hard is this?

Yeah.

How hard is it? I'm thinking if you're listening to audio.

Doors, click.

It's a little with the door. You just do that. You don't have to really muscle it or anything. You just take two fingers. A baby could do it.

You don't have to do that anymore. It's one button locks all of them.

I'm talking in your house. Just a deadbolt.

Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah.

Just one of those.

Nah. I mean, if someone breaks in and slaughters us all, at least I didn't have to do that with my hand. I didn't have to turn it 40 degrees, and that would have been a huge pain in the ass if I had to do that. So, okay. Almost every person you walk by will recognize you in some way. And even if they don't, they will smile and give you a warm nod or hello.

Oh. Okay. The architecture is beautifully traditional. There's a lot of old buildings here. Additionally, there's a great variety of local stores ranging from the oldest shoe store in America to a local organic grocery store to an eclectic bookshop. You know, small town shit. Northeast small town shit.

Oldest shoe store in the country, huh?

I guess so. I mean, I wonder how many shoe stores claim that. Who knows? Here's three stars. Belfast offers a medium quality of life.

Medium?

That's three stars, I guess. That's accurate.

It's like room temperature.

It's all right, yeah. Medium quality. Cultural diversity is scarce, no public transportation, and employment opportunity are restricted to local economy. Gorgeous nature and surroundings.

That is true.

That's true. All right, and finally, one star. People in this town are some of the rudest people I've ever met.

Really?

How dare you nod at me? God damn.

Those little fucking smiles.

Wow. Yes, they put on a fake show for the tourists, but now it's fucking Funny Farm. Cue the deer. All get together. But when someone who actually moves and chooses to work in this area come in, they treat these people like crap. Don't move to this area unless you want to deal with people who act like there isn't a whole country or even world out there and want to be treated terrible daily.

Oh, wait.

Wow. Yes, there are a few good apples in between, but most of them live in a shallow bubble, especially the senior citizens.

Oh.

Thank God they'll be dead soon. That's what it sounds like. You can't do anything right in this town, let alone this entire state if you weren't born here.

Okay.

Rudest people I've ever met.

I'm shocked. I'd love to know the experience.

Wow. Yeah, what are you doing exactly? Who are you? I'd like to know who you are.

What's the rude part? I just don't understand.

I don't get it. How do you expect me? I don't care how people are generally. I just don't care.

Did they force-feed you lobster rolls? What happened?

Yeah, get over here. Come on. Let's go. Open up your yap. Let's go.

Put this in your gob.

It's lightly mayo. You're going to love it. Come on, let's go.

Chew, chew, chew.

Come on. Swallow. Swallow your bastard swallow.

You have the worst accent in the country.

It's tough. I don't know about that.

It's pretty aggressive.

And Northern Wisconsin is, whew.

Yeah. I watched The Departed the other day.

Buffalo? Yikes.

Watching actresses and actors that you know don't talk like that do it, it's fucking off-putting.

It is. It's like an English accent after a while. Yeah. Or even a New York accent. It's the same thing. When I see someone who doesn't have a good one, I'm like, come on, Johnny Depp and Donnie Brasco. I get you're a good actor, but no one said, hey, Johnny, do a better New York fucking accent, please. Could you please do that for us? I mean, we get that you're famous and you're going to sell the movie based on your name, but.

Do a better, not just New York, but the New York Italian he's doing. It's like real, real fucking off-putting.

That's the problem. They can do a New York, but the New York Italian's a different accent.

But he does British real fucking well for a dude from Kentucky. How the fuck does he pull that off?

A movie I made, we had a guy and we had to teach him that accent.

Yeah.

And this guy who was directing it, quote unquote, he's like, I'll talk to him. And I was like, you're from Indiana and you're Irish. You're not doing this. It was me and my cousin, Jesse, and we're like, we are teaching this guy how to do this accent. This is all of our uncles. What are you talking about?

I don't even know what Johnny Depp is, but I know he's from the hills of Kentucky.

He's from Kentucky, yeah.

Why is he doing this?

It's so weird. People in this town, 6,890. So not a huge town, not a tiny, tiny town, just a middle to the road town. This is a wild thing. There's a lot of old people here. The median age is 60.1. So that's median age. There's 56% women, 44% men.

Wow.

So this is, they have.

Southern Maine's a lot of retirees.

Yeah, and when they get old, obviously, the men die first and you're left with 56% women here. Family here, it is 54% married. So it's above the national average. It's very marry type of thing here. Race in this town, 96.9% white. Pretty white. 0.7% black, 0.0% Asian, 1.7% Hispanic. It's white. That's it. Religion, 13.9% are religious in this town. That's awesome. That's one of the lowest numbers we've ever seen.

What?

Right now, I'm looking up, I'm going to open a window for Zillow right now.

Zillow, Belfast, Maine.

And the number one thing is, with a bullet, Catholic, 2.3% is the number one.

Wow, I'm surprised it's not 11.

That's it. Because as we know, Catholics are the Baptists of the North. That's it. 0.0% Jewish. Unemployment here is about average. Median household income here is actually low.

Yeah, it's fixed income people, right?

Yeah, it's almost 70,000 in the rest of the country. Here, it's 55,900. So that's pretty low.

It's got to be fixed income folk.

Cost of living also a little bit lower. 100 is regular. Here, it's 89. And the housing.

I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this part. Shut up. Stop telling people. They're all going to move there.

I have to even show them houses. We have to do it. It's our duty, Jimmy. 321,700 is the median home cost, which is lower than the national average.

Is that that?

And if you've decided, damn it, you're going to the coast, you don't care if people nod at you or not, we have for you the Belfast, Maine Real Estate Report. All right, your average two-bedroom rental goes for 1,440, which is about the national average now for that.

Is it not 17?

It might be up to like 16 something. So it's around there. Now this first house looks like a murder shack. It looks like where a person would live in the woods and kidnap women and take them here to torture them for about a month and a half before finally murdering them and placing them in a cemetery that he made outside. That's what it looks like.

This is where a lot of people have little getaway cabins for the weekend. So that's probably what this is.

Oh, this is, if they're getting away here, I don't know what they're getting away from, but it's got to be terrifying. Because this fucking thing is boarded up. Their ceilings are falling in inside. It's not good. Two-bedroom.

It's probably used to be.

Used to be, I'm sure. Two-bedroom, one bath, 935 square feet on 0.3 acres, $99,900.

Oh, boy.

So that is a complete knock it down. You're just buying the land.

Needs some work.

Here's a three-bedroom, one bath, 1,512 square foot house on 29.78 acres.

Oh, boy.

A bunch of acreages. It's been built recently. The inside is beautiful and brand new. The outside, it looks like, what are those houses that look like a barn almost? Like the roof comes all the way down to the sides.

It's a barn.

It looks like a barn.

It's a barn dominium is what it's called.

But it's 1,500 square feet and very nice and in the woods. 325,000 bucks for that. Almost 30 acres.

That's amazing.

And it's very nice.

This is why I didn't want to do this.

Just had a $24,000 price cut too.

And getting cheaper.

Getting cheaper by the day. And then finally, damn it, your shoe factory just made you so much money.

It's doing great.

We have a six-bedroom, six-bath, T-ball for each and every B-hole.

The floor shine castle.

4,605 square feet on 2.17 acres right on the water.

Yes.

Right on the bay. Beautiful. $2,950,000. But it's silly. It looks like one of these places that like a romantic comedy goes for a destination wedding. My mom lives on the ocean. We'll just get married by her house. It's beautiful.

They probably run it.

It is.

They probably run it out on weekends as a wedding venue.

That's part of it too, is it says it's got a history of rental and it's that kind of joint. Things to do here. Yeah, because it's one of those.

That area is so picture beautiful.

Yeah. Pretty.

Like porkie pig.

Pretty.

Hibbit, hibbit, hibbit. It's great.

Hibbit, hibbit, hibbit. It's nice.

They're really a feeling.

It's really nice though. It's right on, I mean, like the rocky ocean, there's stairs down to the water. It's fucking.

God damn it.

It's gorgeous. And it's, yeah, if you were going to show up somewhere to take pictures, this is where you go. It's really fucking nice.

You're pulling fresh lobster, James, every day.

Oh, lobster, crabs out of their clams out of the right there.

Awesome.

It's beautiful. Things to do here, the All Roads Music Festival.

Yeah?

And they say.

Where the hell is that?

It's here. The Weekender, a multi-day music festival, and artist showcase held annually in downtown Belfast. Building on the spirits of All Roads Music Fest, the Weekender celebrates the depth and diversity of Maine's independent music community while showcasing the city's vibrant arts culture and longstanding commitment to local creative talent. A lot of songs about lobsters and pulling them from the ocean.

Sailing is an old song to talk.

Sailing. Yeah. I got to say, I liked Widow's Bay a lot, but I'm really tired of shows where there's like 12 shows on right now that take place in small Northeast fishing villages that basically all have some weird mystery thing that's forced. And it's a lot of people just staring into the ocean while staring into the distance while wearing a hat. That's just all that is on TV right now. It's fucking crazy.

It's awesome.

It's too much. I like Widow's Bay, but the other ones I can't watch.

It's what we're all doing anyway. So maybe they'll do it for the ocean.

It's so silly. Just staring off into the distance everywhere.

It's all just staring going, what?

What happened? All these towns are like 30 years behind in technology and all these shows. I don't get what's happening.

Still got phones on the wall.

Yeah, everybody's got rotary phones and shit. You're like, this isn't correct. So this festival here, let's see, Friday, the big acts are Leaf, just Leaf, Katherine Perkins, and Isaac Raven.

Okay, those are local.

Sounds like it. Then we got a whole schedule here. The Bumbling Wu Haas will be there.

That sounds hot.

Wow.

Let's see what they got.

There's five different stages. The Cold Creeps, the Kate Fiano will be there, Maine Songwriter's Circle, yikes.

Uh-oh.

Sari Safari.

It's tanking, James.

Yikes. Mediocre Men. Is it all alliteration bands? Sari Safari, Mediocre Men, Cold Creeps.

Yeah.

XO, 13 Scotland Road. It's just somebody's address here in town. Joel Thetford.

Uh-oh.

Okay, this is really getting bad. Vices Inc.

Suddenly isn't getting good.

Boy Scout, Small Pond. I guess they're in a small pond. Stephanie Ryan with two N's.

Oh, boy.

The Wolf Sisters with two F's.

Oh, nothing spelled correctly.

Nothing spelled right here. General Farewell.

Yeah, with a J.

General Farewell with three L's. Intricate Mousework, okay. Talons of Spring, City Planners. People expect a show and they get up there and just a guy gets out blueprints and a.

This is the city planning department. They all learned an instrument.

A fucking T square. He gets it out and he's like, this is what we're going to do here. Cryin' Caleb Allen. Cryin' Caleb will be there, everybody. The Sunburn Sharks, which would be a terrible thing for happening to a shark because they can't get out of the sun.

Depends on the kind of shark.

Midwestern Medicine. And then finally at the Opera House, this is like the big one. Alice Limogies. And then from 4:45 to 5:30, Plague Dad will be there.

Plague Dad.

Plague Dad. What the fuck is Plague Dad?

You can't have a band and they be called, that's just one dude, right?

Plague Dad, hi. I learned how to play guitar during COVID. How you doing? I'm Plague Dad. My kids hate this. I should be at their little league game right now, but instead I'm here. Anyway, here's a little tune about being stuck in the house. Fuck, man. Crime rate in this town.

That's it. There was no headliner, James.

That is the headliner. I think it's Plague. No, the headliners are the ones we said at first. Katherine Perkins, Isaac Raven, and Leaf, I believe.

Is it Leaf with like Erickson or like?

L-E-F.

Oh, boy.

And then Saturday's headliners are the Wolf Sisters and Stephanie Ryan. They're in the biggest letters.

That's so bad.

I don't know what's going on there. Crime rate here, property crime, right about average for the rest of the country, which you wouldn't expect, but it's a tourist town, so that's when you get people pissing and throwing garbage away and things.

Labor Day is a mess around here.

It's a mess. And then violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, and of course assault, the Mount Rushmore of crime, less than half or under half the average.

It's very safe.

Not even half. That's why those people don't lock their doors. They get shit stolen constantly, but nobody killed them yet.

Look, yeah, May to September, this place sucks, but outside of that, it's pretty great.

So that said, let's talk about some murder, shall we? Let's do this. Okay. Friday, December 16th, 1983.

Yeah.

That's right. We're all fucking, girls just want to have fun right now and whatever the hell El Cindy Lauper was doing and shit around then.

A week before Christmas?

Week before Christmas. Well, yeah, nine days before Christmas. This is between 7:30 and 8:30 PM. And in Maine in that time of year, it's been dark for.

Very cold.

Three and a half hours already. It gets dark at 4:30 at that point. It's after dinner. And in this house, this is the Grotton House, G-O-R-T-T-O-N, that's the family. There's 16-year-old Michael Grotton, who's the son of the family. He's playing guitar with a friend in his room, dicking around, trying to work shit out.

Noodle one.

Yeah, noodle in a bit here. Now his mother, Norma, is also in the house. She is on the phone with her oldest daughter and Michael's older sister, Rosalyn. They're on the phone talking. Now this is a Friday night. On Friday night, every night, every Friday night, the same thing happens and that's dad comes home. As we'll find out, dad is in the Navy and works four hours away and spends the whole week somewhere else, as we'll find out, and comes home every Friday night to spend the weekend with the family and then go back to work.

In the Navy?

He's in the Navy, yeah. He's in the Navy.

That's tough.

No, he's in Rhode Island, I think. We'll get to it later though. So they're getting ready here. It's a four and a half hour drive. Yeah, Newport, Rhode Island. Every week he'd come in, back the truck in, get out, walk up to the front door. It's his regular thing that he does here. So now on the phone, Rosalyn can hear loud bangs in the background at one point. One, two, and then a third one. Okay, so Rosalyn hears something and thought it sounded like a vehicle backfiring and said, what was that?

Oh, shit.

So that's where we are right now to start out. 911 is called, obviously, first responders come and we'll get to that. Now this family, let's talk about who's in this house and who is this family. Now dad is Mervin Laforest Grotton Jr., G-O-R-G-R-O-T-T-O-N. He goes by Sonny. Everyone calls him Sonny.

Oh.

I guess because he's junior.

Right.

So it's easier to call him Sonny. Yeah. He's born November 15th, 1937. He's from Belfast, Maine, born and raised his whole life. His parents are Mervin Senior, obviously, and Margaret. Now he dropped out of high school early.

Oh.

So he's a high school dropout, but he ended up joining the Navy and making a career out of it, which you can do. And he's a real into tech shit is what he's into.

In the 50s.

In the 50s. Real into gadgets, anything that's technical, anything like that, he's super into. He works as he's a machinist mate chief petty officer, an MMC they call it here in the Navy after 25 years. His daughters describe him as having the biggest heart in the world here. He was in the Navy through Vietnam.

Oh.

I mean, he joined in the late 50s. So he's in there for Vietnam. He works his way up to being an instructor at the Naval Education and Training Center in Newport, Rhode Island, which is where he goes all week. So basically what his job was before that as a machinist mate is to keep the engines and mechanical systems going, pumps, boilers, all the shit.

A boat?

Yeah, all the shit in the bowels of the ship that looks very complicated. It's his job to make sure all that shit works right here.

Wow.

Basically, he was described as the guy who when something's broken and nobody understands why, he's the guy that they go get.

He fixed it.

And he comes in and figures it out.

He comes in with the owner's manual and shows you what's what.

Figures it out, yeah. Because he might have set up that particular system, so he might know exactly what's going on here. Now he gets married in 1957 to Norma Small, and she'll become Norma Grotton. She's born in 1939, two years younger than Mervin here, than Sonny. Now they have three kids, and you're going to notice that you don't hear Michael and you don't hear Rosalyn because that's another story. That's later.

Oh.

Okay. Now when they get married, Norma already has a child from a previous marriage, which in the 50s was a massively big deal.

On her?

Yeah, like two.

It's not good.

She's looking.

Why aren't you with him?

Well, yeah, well, why are you with nobody? That's the thing. So she is looking for back then, if you were a woman and you got divorced, you had to find another husband ASAP if you had a kid so you could make a family for that kid, basically. And back then too, it wasn't like now where we were divorced and we have our kids on alternate this or we share them. Back then it was like the mother took the kids and the father went and started another family and like the last one never happened. That's literally what people did back then.

Yeah. And sometimes he would cheat on that wife, knock a woman up and be like, well, I'm married. Go figure it out.

Yeah, that's another thing. Yeah, especially my fucking family has done that.

My favorite uncle was that. His mom saw the man walking down the street and he didn't even look at them.

Yeah, it's crazy.

So fucked up.

My grandfather just never was around anymore. Like they got divorced, she married somebody else and that was that.

He just went and made another family.

He went and made another family. And I met him when I was 12 and then he died two months later. That was that. It was lovely.

Wow.

So yeah, there's a lot more to that story, but we'll get into that another time. So there's Russell. He was born in May of 1954, May 8th, 1954. So that's the child she brings into the marriage, but he takes Sonny's last name. So he's Russell Grotton after that because, like I said, dad's gone, that's it. Now we're moving on, new family. They have two more kids, Betty Ann, who's born September 29th, 1957.

The third.

The third, who's born October 12th, 1958. So they fuck at a certain time because those are only a couple weeks apart.

That's somebody's birthday. What's his birthday?

She's got a fertile time, I feel like here. His birthday is in November, so that doesn't quite work out, but.

No. Somebody's birthday.

It's somebody something here. Hers is, I don't know her exact birthday, but it's 1939. So this is the family here. They have three very little kids. On May 26th, 1959, a fire breaks out in the house.

Oh.

So this is the one kid's five, Russell's five, Betty Ann is two, not even two actually, and Mervin is about eight months old.

Brand new.

Brand new babies.

And their house is on fire.

House is on fire. Now I'll read this from the newspaper articles I found at the time, 1959. Fire Chief Henry Chaples of Belfast said the fire started under stairs leading to the second floor of the two-story wooden framed dwelling where the three children were trapped by smoke and flames.

Oh, fuck.

They were Russell, four, Betty, one, and Mervin, the third, seven months. Their mother discovered the fire while she was downstairs, and when she attempted to go up and reach the children, she was driven back by a wall of flame and smoke.

Oh, no.

The father was at work, Sonny, at Belfast Clothing Factory when the fire broke out shortly before 8:00 AM.

Fuck.

Mrs. Grotton raced next door to the home of Mrs. Edgar Moore at 100 Lower Congress Street, who notified the fire department and rushed back with the frantic mother to the burning home where they were joined by Dale Palmer, another neighbor.

Holy shit.

The trio pushed a ladder up against the rear second floor bedroom, and Palmer climbed in, smashed a window, but was driven back by the heavy smoke.

Oh, no.

Okay. Meanwhile, Mrs. Grotton spotted her oldest son standing at another upstairs window screaming for help. This is horrifying. Imagine.

She's about to lose two kids.

Seeing that, unable to enter either the rear or front door because of the flames, Mrs. Grotton grabbed a long-handled iron rake and tried to smash in the upstairs storm window so the child could jump to safety. Her efforts were fruitless when the heavy glass of the windows failed to break.

Oh my God.

When firemen arrived on the scene, the entire house was ablaze inside, and it was nearly 20 minutes before firemen were able to reach the bodies of the youngsters.

Oh, no.

So she watched this kid scream for help out a window, and then he burned to death in there.

All three of her kids?

All three.

Wow.

That's fucked. And she does not have a fucking scratch on her. Listen, guys, I get it, fire's scary. If my kids are on the other side of the wall of flames, I'm going to be burned. If I survive it, it's because I went in there, got super burned and came out because I was on fire. I'm not just going to go, ooh, that's hot and run away.

Did she hit with like a wire rake that has no rigidity to it?

1959, who the fuck knows what it is.

It was like metal flexible rakes. You hit with the back end, mama.

Long-handled iron rake. It seems like.

Yeah, that shit broke. That's a damn fine window.

It's a good window, I guess in Maine you'd want some good storm windows. Insulation isn't what it is now. And they didn't have like the dual panes and all that shit. Chief Staples said the heavy aluminum type storm windows hampered rescue efforts and prevented any possibility of the younger boy breaking a window and jumping. He said that type of window is fine for heating and insulation, but they're terrible handicap in fighting fires. Mrs. Grotton collapsed on the scene and was taken to the home of a neighbor where she was treated by a doctor. The bodies of the children were removed to a local funeral parlor.

Oh, dear Christ.

Damage to the home was estimated at over $4,000.

The whole house.

Mrs. Grotton, who was on the first floor, they said she tried, but a wall of fire stopped her. Three small children who suffocated when the fire swept through their home Tuesday morning will be buried together at Grove Cemetery Friday. That is a.

Jesus.

Imagine you're at work and this happens too. Like, holy shit. As the bereaved young parents, Mr. and Mrs. Mervin L. Grotton Jr., completed plans for the funeral of their only children, fire officials searched the smoldering ruins of their home on Lower Congress Street, hoping to find some clue to the cause of the fire that ended in tragedy. Never found out. I looked through every newspaper. Never came out what the source was, what the fuck happened.

Oh my God.

All we know is three children burned to death and she got out perfectly unscathed and dad was at work. And that's all we know.

Shit.

There's a picture in the newspaper, and I'll post it as one of the social media pictures of the two investigators standing over the completely burned-out crib that the baby was in.

Oh, boy.

And underneath it, this is why we do those old-timey articles on Patreon, because they're so blunt and crazy back then. It just says, where baby was found, Fire Chief Henry Chaples of Belfast views the charred crib in which seven-month-old Mervin Grotton III was found dead from the fumes and heat of a downstairs fire at the home of his father Tuesday. The fateful fire trapped and claimed the lives of his older brother and sister as well.

Wow. It's shocking. It doesn't say fire investigators look on where a baby was forever wearing the onesie that melted to his body.

No shit. Well, they didn't melt back then. They would burst in the flames.

Yeah.

That's before fire retardant things.

Covered in fire.

You get a thing and it would say extra flammable on it. And you'd be like, ooh, this one must be really good quality. It's fuzzy, it's extra flammable. Don't light a match near this bitch.

Those fleece ones had a zipper from the foot to the chest.

Yeah. This is the time period. I actually saw a thing on this. This is the time period in America where from like the mid-50s, early-50s to the 1980s, early, early, like '81, '82 were the peak fires that we've ever had in this country. And remember when we were little, people were terrified of houses catching on fire and we had all the stickers on everything. And now you don't see this amount of house fires that you used to see.

A lot of it, yeah, go ahead, sorry.

Oh, no, no, if you know.

A lot of it consisted of the electrical wiring.

That's what it was.

Because the electrical wiring was aluminum. And that aluminum wiring, you run an electric current through it, it expands, then you turn it off, it now doesn't have the current, so it shrinks. And over time, it creates a space between the conductors. Now you have an arc. And that shit just catches on fire. And then all the insulation was just that flammable shit.

Yeah, that pink shit. Well, that's part of it and why there was fires even before that. But in the '50s is when all sorts of new gadgets came out. Post-war is when we had, before that, you only had like a light. That's the only really electric, maybe an ice box. Now all of a sudden there's all of these things, all of these appliances, dishwashers.

And the plug was only two prongs.

Yeah, it wasn't ground.

It didn't have that ground prong. That's a problem too.

What they would do is they did not have all their shit updated for all this stuff. So people would put a penny in the fucking thing so it wouldn't break. And people just rigged it up themselves because they didn't have the money to have an electrician come in and completely rewire the house so they could have a dishwasher now and a washing machine and all this crazy.

So just suck out the windows.

Air conditioners.

And the house can't handle it.

Boom. So it would just burst into it. And they would do it themselves. I mean, they would put it so the circuit breaker would override and then it would catch on fire. So it was like a big problem.

How many times did you, back when you were a kid, see friends' houses that had like wild shit happening electrically?

Oh, yeah. There's all sorts of crazy shit.

You ever put a switch and get shocked?

Yeah.

At friends' houses that.

You saw where I grew up in the village. Do you think those people are updating their electrical panels? Jesus Christ.

The switches in my friends' houses, in their bedroom, I'd flip and go, what the fuck, man? Like, oh, yeah, that one'll bite you.

Yeah.

Bite?

Yeah, you got to wear a glove. You got to wear a glove when you turn that one on. Oh, okay. I didn't realize. Sorry.

It's crazy. Don't do it when you get out of the shower.

No. So they make three new kids to replace the three old kids.

What?

Like we need three new kids. This is crazy. So they have three more kids. After that, they start completely over. A lot of people would have like either been.

Never having them again.

Sitting there staring at the wall for the next 40 years, or they would have got a divorce over that because it's like we can't handle the tragedy or whatever.

Find an Adirondack and stare at the ocean in a hat for the rest of your life.

Yeah, that's it. That's what we're doing. And wait for the squid or the force or whatever the fuck is here for some reason to take us all.

Yeah, or the sea lady for some reason.

Yeah, the sea hag. So they have three new kids. They have Rosalind, who we'll talk a lot, we'll hear a lot from her, Nina, who's the middle daughter, and then Michael, who was born in 1967, and he's the one who's a teenager and still living at home when we started this story.

Wow, they didn't do another Mervin, huh?

No more. Well, what are you going to have, Mervin IV now?

It'd go the third again, wouldn't it?

I don't think so. We've already had a third. I don't think you can just erase him from history and go, well, that one didn't work out. Never mind, starting over.

But a second can't have a fourth, can it?

If there was already a third, yeah, why not?

The third has to have the fourth.

Well, those thirds and fourths, though, don't even have to be from a spot.

They don't have to be sequential?

Your uncle could be the third, and then you named after him, so now you're the fourth. So that could be, yeah, that's how people do those thirds and fourths and seconds and shit sometimes.

They stick it. That should be illegal.

There's a difference between junior and second. When we were talking about this on Crime and Sports, somebody sent us a whole thing about it.

But it's got to be in succession. Otherwise, you can't do that.

I mean, it doesn't, though you can name people whatever you want. I mean, you could name your kid Jimmy Whisper the Ninth. It doesn't fucking matter. It's legal. You can name him whatever you feel like naming him. I don't think anyone's going to go back and count at the, what did you name him? Hold on. We're going to look into your ancestry.com right now and make sure that this is actually the fourth.

You're not allowed to do that. We said no. There should be an approval committee. Like you get a license plate on your car, people have to approve that.

A lot of countries have more shit you're not allowed to name your kid. We have like a few things you're not allowed to name your kid, and it's state by state.

Right.

Most of it's Adolf Hitler. You can't name your kid like Adolf Hitler Wissmann. You can't.

Really?

Yeah, which is probably for the best.

I mean, morally, you probably shouldn't do that anyway.

Even if you are a Nazi, now your kid has to be Adolf Hitler Wissmann? This is ridiculous.

You should certainly be arrested for that.

Yeah. So their routine was, this is the hard thing about for Sonny is that it's a four and a half hour drive from Newport to Belfast. So this is not a drive you could do every day. You can't commute four and a half hours. It's impossible. So he would live and work in Rhode Island during the week because it's all he could do, and then drive back on the weekends. And that's what he would do. He'd return to the home the same time every Friday, every Sunday, leave at the same time, very scheduled, very regimented.

Yeah, transfer of knowledge.

Yeah. So yeah, classes. So now what kind of people are we dealing with? Who is this family? His son, Michael, described him as very geeky.

Yeah. I mean, he loves tech.

Very geeky. That's what he said. He loves gadgets. He's very intelligent. And he said that if you wanted to be good at something, you had to work hard at it. Like he was always a part of that. His son called him morally focused is a good way to put it, he said. His daughter said he had the biggest heart and was so giving and so honest and so hardworking and so loving.

So everything.

So, so, so, so.

So dad.

So dad. And he is always helping people too. Like he's the guy where if something's broken, he'll come over to your house and fix it. Like neighbors and shit.

Wow.

Yeah. He's got like, oh, well, Saturday I got to go help somebody fix his boiler and then I'm going over to help this guy do that. He's got a lot going on like that. Rosalind said, my dad was such a nice person that he would be helping everyone else in every spare moment he had. And it would piss my mother off to no end.

Oh.

Which is funny because the first thing I thought of is, oh, boy, his wife's going to be fucking pissed.

He's going to hate this shit.

You're home and now you're going over here. What makes you a good person to the rest of the world doesn't always endear you to a spouse. That goes for any gender. It doesn't matter. It's just that's the way it is. You know you could.

It's true.

Wow, all that stuff you're doing. That's amazing. Meanwhile, there's a spouse going, when's the last time we went out to dinner together? We were on a vacation considering your.

The flapper on the toilet doesn't work. But they're over here fixing theirs.

That's great that those kids with palsy or, you know, have a couple extra bucks and everything, but Jesus Christ, the toilet's been running for three weeks. That's kind of how it goes, unfortunately. Rosalind says because she was a selfish person and he was a giving person.

Yeah. I mean, they usually attract though, so.

She said they were brought up two totally different ways. Yeah, a lot of times you get people who one's a giver and one's a taker, and that's how they end up together.

That's great. She likes to cook. I like to eat. That kind of thing.

Yeah, that usually doesn't work out though, because after a while, the one person feels put upon and then the other.

And he gets exhausted.

It doesn't work. Yeah. At first, it seems great, but that's all unhealthy relationships. Whatever that thing in your head that's unhealthy that that's triggering, that's why they seem great. That's why someone who grew up with an alcoholic dad loves a guy, even though he drinks a little too much. You know what I mean? They know intellectually this is bad, but they're attracted to it.

If all dysfunction was and red flags weren't attractive at a second for a moment, the relationship wouldn't have happened anyway.

Yeah, yeah. All of your psychosis, for lack of a better term, whatever's going on in your head is going into your attractions. And most of it's very unhealthy. That's the thing. Most of the time, you'd be better off with like sitting down on paper and working it out rather than being like, I feel this way.

Do the math problem before you date.

Yeah. Rosalind says she was kind of like, well, it's an awful thing to say, but it's true. Kind of like a Jekyll and Hyde type of person. She could be fine one minute, then the next minute you want to duck because something's going to go flying and you're going to get hit.

Oh, really?

So mom's unpredictable, which is, that's tough. Now, also, that could be, you know, traumatic. She could have some, okay, if I was me, I would need.

She's born in the '30s.

I can't imagine the amount of therapy you'd need from watching your son scream for help and then burn to death because you couldn't get in there. Now, whatever.

And worse off, there was a baby in there that wouldn't get up.

Oh, there's a baby. There's a baby. It's horrifying. So they said, though, that one of her accounts, she said that her mother was always running a con. And Michael said she was always unfaithful to their father as well.

Oh, what the fuck?

He said that Rosalind said, my father never yelled. That just wasn't what he was. It wasn't who he was. She said, I couldn't understand why because dad was always such a nice person. He never raised his voice. He never raised a hand. It's not like he was abusive or being mean. Anything she wanted, anything she got it. So she's like, I don't understand why she would cheat on him because he's a good husband, basically.

Well.

Because she's fucked up. Who knows where family of origin.

Yeah. Right. There's no challenges. I have to create a challenge.

Well, chaos is the thing. Some people need chaos. You in the past have been attracted to chaos. Like you're the person where you tell me some crazy shit a woman's that you're dating is doing, and I go, yeah, Jimmy, because you love chaos. That's why. And you go, fuck, you're right. Yeah. Every time you're like, why didn't I see that? You look for chaos. It's bad.

Well, I like to help. I'm a helper. So anytime there's like.

What's that called? What's that called, Jimmy? You've been to therapy.

Yeah, I understand what codependency is.

Yes, exactly. You shouldn't help your person in your relationship. You guys should have a mutual something. It shouldn't be a helping relationship.

It's nice.

Yeah. It's chaos.

I can't help it. Fucked up chicks fuck great.

Yeah. That's crazy. It's funny because we had very similar upbringings.

Yeah.

But you are attracted to the chaos, and I see that chaos and I get like, I went the opposite. I'm like, I'm the woman who dad was a drunk, so if you have had one drink in your life, I'm never dating you. Like I'm that guy. Like I go for the most stable people. Like I need that.

Yeah. Trauma bonding carries a relationship too sometimes.

No.

No, no.

It's not healthy bonding.

Until it doesn't.

Until it, yeah. That'll attract you. But then after a while, yeah. And I'm not saying what happened to me or the way I did it was healthy. Neither of them are healthy. They're both reactions to something that happened rather than something else. So I'm not saying you're doing it.

There's certainly a way to accept and reject a healthy portion of it. But it's those boundaries, man. And the boundaries are so fucking difficult to find.

It's tough.

And there's only so much that you should be taking, but I take all of it.

It's all. So Norma left Sonny multiple times.

Really?

She always ended up coming back and he would always take her back. Rosalind remembered the time that she was cast as the lead in the sixth grade production of Cinderella. Big deal in a young girl's life. She's like 11.

She gets to be Cinderella.

Yeah. She said in the sixth grade, I had the lead in Cinderella. I was so excited. I mean, who wouldn't be excited about being Cinderella, right?

Right.

Yeah. She said then a station wagon pulled up. She said, well, my mother pulls up in this, pulls in with a station wagon and she says, come on, get in. Let's go. We're leaving. We're going to California.

I can't go.

And she had left dad again.

Bluebirds are going to put a dress on me. I can't leave.

I'm going to ride in a pumpkin in like two minutes. This is fucking crazy. No.

There's three mice. One of them is a fat cute one. I got to stay for guts.

I always wanted to see if a glass slipper was actually comfortable. Please, damn it.

I want to see if it gets blisters.

Yeah. So she didn't have a choice. She was 11. So she got in.

That sucks.

And she said they didn't stay long. They didn't stay away long. They never did. They ended up back home, but she, of course, missed Cinderella. So that understudy was shitting in her little pantaloons that day, boy. What?

Thrill.

So that's what happened. Everybody used to run away to California back then. That was a big thing. You could just run. My grandmother did that in the '60s.

She went to California?

She ran away to California. She had to because it's different if you're Italian or from that neighborhood and all that. Literally, you remember Godfather II when Frankie Pantangeli was testifying in front of Congress? So they brought his brother in just to sit there and stare at him from Italy. That's a thing that's real. They tried to bring, when my grandmother was leaving my grandfather, they tried to bring her brothers from Italy to come and tell her to go home. So she ran away to California so nobody could find them, basically. So it's crazy. That's what people used to do.

Go start over on the other side of the country.

Yeah. And it was cheap back then and it was sunny and why not? You know what I mean? And there's a lot of men. That's the problem. And they said that they were, the kids would always have to be introduced to these guys because, you know, Norma had left. So this is a new life she's starting. So this is your new stepfather or whatever the fuck you are. Rosalind said there was always a man involved. There were several. I mean, we were supposed to call them Uncle Whoever, and they didn't, or they didn't have a name. I couldn't recall. I couldn't recall exactly how many.

Oh, Jesus God.

That's a lot.

Uncle.

That's so confusing. Yeah. Why is Uncle fucking mom? That's weird.

Yeah. Why did Uncle Terry kiss you, ma?

That's so weird.

That's weird.

And every time she'd end up coming back when she realized this isn't working because Sonny is immensely stable and all that kind of thing. When she realized that this excitement isn't quite working out, she'd go back and Sonny would always forgive her and take her back.

Sonny.

That's how it went. Now, summer of 1982 comes around. And there's a young man named Boyd Smith. Okay. Now, Boyd Smith, I guess, was Rosalind's boyfriend.

Okay.

Okay. Now, it's very interesting. So he ends up moving into the house.

Okay.

With that.

Into Junior's house.

Into Sonny's house. The Grotten House here. Sonny and Norma's house. It's real interesting. He's a big guy, a tall guy. Not a bad kid or anything. He's 16 years old at the time. He's just some goofy kid that's dating his daughter. Probably with a terrible 1983 haircut. He might have had a flock of seagulls. We have no idea, Jimmy. It could be anything.

This could be nuts.

A hard mullet, a flock of seagulls. I mean, there's really a feather job.

Crazy shiny leather jacket.

You never know, man. So by the fall of 1983 here, Sonny is tired of this shit. He's tired of Norma. He's tired of the constant bullshit over the decades of her leaving and coming back and different guys and not being able to trust his wife and all that kind of thing. So in November 1983, this is a quote from Rosalind, quote, "He's like, I can't do this anymore." And he'd had enough.

Kiss me?

How dare you kiss me goodbye?

Yeah.

Yeah. She hates him, which is very odd at that point. And then other things, there's another person that she talked to that she basically said the same thing to, like he's never going to touch me again or kiss me again.

Okay.

I don't know if that's because maybe he told her that he was wanting out of the marriage and we're not sure about that. So Friday, December 16th, '83, between 7:30 and 8:00 p.m. is where we started. Okay. Here we are, like I said, after dinner, Michael's playing guitar. We hear the backfiring truck or whatever the fuck it was. She says, "I got to go." Michael and his friend run to the living room window. Now, there's already a neighbor dialing 911 and now Norma's dialing 911 as well.

Sure.

Now, first responders arrive and they find Sonny in the driveway bleeding.

Yeah.

He's alive.

Oh.

But they're asking him questions. He can only make gurgling sounds.

He can't talk.

Can't say who did this or can't say what happened. He can't say anything. So that's tough. So now the calls went out to an emergency dispatch. Like I said, a neighbor reported the sound of gunshots coming from next door. The other was from Norma, obviously. And a third call went out that night as well. I guess they said that it was her grandmother called Rosalind. And Rosalind said it wasn't very long after that, after she hung up with Norma, that my grandmother called me hysterical on the phone and said, "Rosie, you've got to come over.

Oh boy.

So he's rushed to the Waldo County General Hospital where he's pronounced dead at 8:36 p.m.

Oh, no.

Dead. 46 years old, dead in the driveway.

Didn't talk.

Didn't, couldn't get a word out.

Oh, shit.

The whole time. Did not last long either. They got him.

An hour, though, of struggling for your life with not being able to communicate is fucked.

45 minutes to, yeah, something like a half, yeah, it's a lot. So 8:45 p.m., Trooper Mark Nickerson of the state police comes to the house. And he said Norma was inside and I secured the house while waiting for the detectives to arrive. It was a definite setup in my opinion.

Oh.

He said, "I don't, yeah, this had to be on purpose." He didn't get in an argument with somebody at night in the driveway and then they shot him. This has to be on purpose. He's not robbed also.

Yeah.

This is a weird robbery too. Let's wait for a guy to get out of his car. You don't know if he has anything on him. You don't know what you're robbing. So it's very, very interesting here. Now, the bullets, as we'll talk about here are, they're rough here. The three shots here, the first hit him in the left hip.

Oh, wait.

Took him down. The second tore through his left upper arm and passed through his torso and came out of his back.

What kind of, yeah.

And then the third shot, they said, came from an exceptionally close range. So shot in the hip.

On purpose, yeah.

Oh God. Shot in the chest. He falls and then someone came up and just final shot right in the head. Fucking an obvious kill shot. Like this is on purpose, clearly.

What kind of weapon was used?

A rifle, as we'll talk about. I think it was a .30-30.

Jesus.

Like a hunting rifle.

Yeah.

He was the point here. So it's a lot. So yeah, 8:45, this trooper's there and they describe it as gunshot wounds to the face and trunk region.

Yeah.

The last shot right to the face, point blank, boom, which is fucked up. So they're looking through it and trying to figure out how this happened, basically, based on where he is, the angles and everything. So they're like, it's been dark out for hours. He came up the street in his truck. The yard is cold. There's wood piles stacked on the side of the house because everybody's got a fireplace and they're burning wood fires up there. He said every yard has wood piles this time of year. This is when you've probably just gotten a big batch of wood for the year.

How many cords do you get? One or two?

We usually end up doing three for the season. We end up burning three.

For the time you go through it. Do you get it all at once or do you do cord to cord?

Usually get two is what usually fits in our woodshed and then we'll have him bring another cord.

Cord of wood is a lot of fucking wood.

It's a bunch, but you burn it quick, man. You got wood stoves at like, because we use that as a lot of our heat just because we like the heat from it. It's a nice heat. So anyway, this guy reconstructs it and figures out. Sonny backed in the truck. He gets out.

Yeah.

This guy said he didn't even make it to his home and was shot in the walkway. He's like, the rifle was fired, they figure out from blood spatter and everything else, from the direction of the backyard wood piles.

Oh, somebody may have been hiding behind it.

Using it for cover. This one cop here later on, an NCIS agent, which is hilarious because.

Already.

We've talked about the NCIS show. Number one, how terrible it is. It's just an awful show for old people, but that's a whole separate thing.

Who's that redhead?

Mark Harmon on that one? Or no, David Caruso. That's CSI.

Oh.

That's CSI.

Isn't he on NCIS?

I don't fucking know.

He might be on CSI. You might be right.

I have no idea. I didn't watch either of those shows.

I haven't seen it since Grissom was on there and that handsome ass black guy with the blue eyes or green eyes. I don't know. He was so handsome.

Is that why you watched it? Jimmy's just like, "I'm going to watch the show with the handsome guy."

I watched it from Mark Elgenberger. I had a big crush on her.

Oh boy. So yeah, she must have a lot of chaos going on.

You might be right because in Bad Boys, she was such a bitch. I was like, "God, I want to."

I think that's what it is.

You're like, "Oh, she'd be terrible for me. Awesome." Oh, she would ruin my fucking life. She could destroy five years. She'll ruin my forties. Perfect.

Fuck, I want to give her a house. I want to buy her things and take her places.

I love her.

What a mess. Oh God. So yeah, we make fun of NCIS because my whole thing was it's a naval police.

Yeah.

But like on the show, the two seconds clips I've seen here and there, they're like whipping out the NCIS and people are like, "Oh, no one's like, what the fuck is that?" Like if you're not in the Navy and someone said, "NCIS freeze," you'd go, "I don't know what that is. Are you like an, are you like a housing inspector? Like what does that mean? I don't know. Can you explain?"

Did you say NSA? What are you?

What is this? NHS? What health services from England? What are we talking about?

Why are there four letters? There's only supposed to be three.

Let me look at the, bring that badge closer if you could. Like that would be, how many interactions would you have to have before you went? This job sucks, man. No one respects us because even if I have my gun out, they go, "Huh? Who are you?" But this.

Freeze. PLXLJJ3.

Yeah.

What? Why are there so many letters?

Freeze. T1000. What? So these people, I guess when someone in the actual Navy is killed, then they have jurisdiction and they actually are part of the whole shit, which is amazing.

Tippy Top jurisdiction.

I guess so. They're working with state police and everything. So I think they're all kind of working together here. And he put it together and he said, you know, he fell from the second shot. They think the first shot in the hip didn't put him down, actually. He said it was the second shot that went through his arm and torso that put him down. Now, Rosalind said it sounded like a car or a truck backfiring in the background. And I asked her, "What was that?" And she just said, "I got to go." So she hung up really quick. And that was that.

Yeah.

Now, Michael and his friend were playing like guitar with an amp and shit. And they heard it over the guitar.

Yeah. It's a lot of noise.

So it's loud. And Michael looked out and sees his father in the walkway bleeding heavily. So they said at that point, they thought the wood piles was the place. So they began searching around in the dark around the wood piles. And they said investigators discovered two spent .30-30 rifle casings between two wood piles located in the backyard.

Third one's still in the rifle.

Probably. The casings were found approximately 30 to 40 feet from the spot where Sonny fell after being shot. Yeah, because the two were from there and then the third one was from right up close. The investigators did not find any other physical evidence that evening, though. That's the problem. They have two casings. They don't have a rifle. They don't have footprints. They don't have fingerprints. No eyewitnesses that saw someone running away from the scene, anything, nothing. All they have is two fucking shell casings.

No snow yet. It's December?

December 16th. It's not snowy, apparently. So three bullets hit him and that's that. They never found the third. So they said also, a .30-30 lever action deer rifle is probably the most common weapon in the state of Maine.

Yeah, but it's also a, it's not usually used as a murder weapon because they can.

No, it's a deer rifle.

Yeah. The lever action itself, it's cumbersome and not used to like defend yourself.

Ask Oswald, you know what I mean? I know that wasn't a .30-30, but lever action.

That was a bolt action, wasn't it?

Bolt action, which is easier than the lever, honestly.

Right. Yeah. That lever action, you got to pick the whole rifle up.

Yeah.

It's weird.

Yeah. But they said it's every house in Maine has a .30-30 deer rifle. It's just every house in Maine, New Hampshire, like it's just, that's the most common deer rifle at the time. So they're like, basically that doesn't narrow it down at all.

Nothing.

It's not like, well, this type of weapon, only a certain number of these are made. It's everywhere. Yeah. They sell this at the hardware store. I mean, it's just everywhere.

It's a very cheap rifle too.

Cheap, common, your basic hunting rifle. So they said that the one thing they did notice from the scene is whoever did this knew what was happening. This isn't random. They knew Sonny's routine. They were waiting for him. They knew the time. It's cold out and it's dark out. No one's just sitting behind a wood pile for five hours going, "Well, I hope he comes home soon." They know when he's coming. They know what he's going to do. They know he's going to back up into the driveway. They know where he's going to be. They said this is an inside job, basically.

20 degrees.

And it's cold. And they knew where to stand. So the wood piles were hid from the street and the house also, everything. So it makes sense. It has to be someone who was either told what he did or had watched him and stalked him. You never know. But then why'd they kill him? What's Sonny up to? And we'll talk about that. Maybe he's into some shit. So Trooper Nickerson here, the guy who got there first, he said that when he arrived and was doing the crime scene, Norma was inside and he said he watched her.

Right.

And he thought by the time they're done doing this crime scene, Norma's leaving this fucking house in custody. It's going to be her. He said, "I was confident when our detective showed up within a half hour, they were going to be lugging her out in handcuffs. And when it didn't happen, I was shocked."

What the hell?

They're like going, he's like, "She's good?" They're like, "We're leaving." He's like, "Okay. It seems pretty."

More info? What are we doing?

I guess so. So they look into it. Does anyone hate him? Does he have enemies? He's not even around enough to have enemies. He's hardly here.

He's got to be somewhere a lot of time, right?

Yeah. Maybe he has a whole second life in Rhode Island where he's got banging some guy's wife and this guy's pissed and he's going to come stalk him and kill him and she knows what time he goes home, something like that. But they looked into it. They found nothing. They found no secret life, no affairs, no drugs, no booze, no debts, no enemies. He's boring as fuck. This guy literally goes to work, goes home, goes back to work. He does nothing exciting at all.

Interesting.

He does not like chaos.

It's interesting how uninteresting he is. Yeah.

Yeah. He's a very dull guy. I mean, steady guy. So investigators here, they're looking at everything and they're looking at Norma. And one of the NCIS agents who comes on much later says, "When Sonny was away in Newport working for the Navy, his wife Norma had sort of taken on a different lifestyle. Taken advantage of the freedom she had. We started to pick up information that she may have been involved in extramarital affairs and that she was involved in drug use and some drug sales."

What?

This is how far away she has gotten from Sonny.

In 1983, she has become a drug kingpin in Belfast, Maine.

She's hooking up with guys who do drug stuff and she does some drug use and she's around for deals and she's basically just becoming like trash of the town, which is weird. They said, "And living a life that was much different than the one that Sonny may have known about her." Because she had all week to do whatever she wanted.

Right.

So they figured out too in this area, the sheriff of the county, John Ford, called this era of the early '80s a crazy era for them in terms of drugs. He said there were so many fucking drugs here. It was crazy.

Yeah.

He said cocaine had arrived. It was there. It took a little bit of time to get there from New York and Boston, but it got there. And people at the bars, the guys who worked in the mills liked it.

Yeah.

Keeps you going and everything else. Now we'll talk a little bit later, but a large state police sting would end up getting like 40 people in the area, all these people. And it's interesting. Now, one of the people they were most interested in is a guy named Joel Fuller. Okay. Now he's in his late 20s. He is described as a poacher, a painter, and an outlaw.

Yeah.

He's a butcher, a baker, and a candlestick maker.

Candlestick maker.

Got it all.

Oh, he does all three.

A poacher, a painter, and an outlaw. He calls himself the deer hunter. That's his nickname that he gave himself that everyone else calls him too. A Maine sheriff, I think it's John Ford actually, calls him a highly talented, smart individual with no scruples. Dangerous is what that is. It's the only way to describe that. Dangerous.

Brilliant and doesn't give a fuck. That's scary.

Just don't give a fuck. Now, back to Norma, they said she definitely sold some drugs. Not a big dealer, but she would hook people up. She used drugs. She had boyfriends. They found a big trail of cocaine and semen in her life path, basically.

A lot of white in her background.

A lot of white. Is that dried semen or cocaine? I can't tell.

Can't tell.

So she had, you know, her husband would show up every Friday and want to be a husband. So she'd have like the weekends. It's kind of like some guy who goes out drinking all week and then gets his kids on the weekend and like goes to the fucking park and stuff and acts all like whatever, drops him off Sunday, goes home and gets shit hammered because it's been two days. That's kind of what she does. Another detective said she had also told people that she dreaded when Sonny came home and was kind of happy when he left for the week.

Oh.

Okay. Now back to Joel Fuller, the deer hunter here. He's described by Down East Magazine as a small guy with a rough beard and a piercing stare. Someone who'd do anything for a buck. And the Bangor Daily News said he was, quote, "legendary Waldo County bad man."

That does not describe shit.

That describes nothing.

I can't see the guy at all. I mean, I picture lots of black and red checkered shirts, but.

Oh, well, for sure. Flaps over the ears. Absolutely.

But I can't, what the fuck does that mean?

What does it mean? He's human Elmer Fudd, but has no scruples. What are we talking about here?

Is he unkempt? Is he just completely wild? Does he look like he has ticks?

Yeah. What's the deal? Well, they said, "I really, this is the John Ford guy. He met him when he was Maine's game warden." The sheriff guy. He said, "I really got to know Joel Fuller back when I was game warden because he was one of the lawbreakers. He killed shitloads of deer." From what he told Ford, the sheriff, that he killed more than 50 deer a year.

Okay.

But he wouldn't do it during deer season and have tags and shit. He did it out of season and at night with a light, which is not cool.

He's just ambushing these things.

Yeah. It's illegal. It's called jack lighting. And it's illegal. And it's kind of like one of the main things the game wardens are trying to crack down on is people doing this because it's not fair.

It's cheating. Right.

You already have a goddamn rifle. Is that not an advantage enough for you?

It's got a rifle and attracts them.

Yeah. I don't get it. I could see if you were surrounded by lions and you had to hunt them to get away from them or something. But you're just going into these deer.

You're getting something that's very docile just fast.

I like deer. They're awesome. They're in my yard. I love them. So I'm like, "Why are you doing that?" He's a really good painter.

Really?

Yeah. It's the wild part. And he would send the game warden slash sheriff his paintings sometimes and he would get in trouble.

Oh.

The sheriff said the talent that he's got from his paintings is just unbelievable. He tells about how he shot over 50 deer a year. And Jean Boy, I hope you like this painting. Yeah, that's me with the light. And it looks like him. It's because he sent this guy a painting of him committing the crime.

Like.

And it even looked like him. And then a note saying, "Hey, that's me. And this is what I do." Isn't it cool?

Yeah. Here's a picture of me raping and murdering. Love, Ted Bundy.

Isn't that nice? Yeah, with like a head sitting over here.

Does he revisit a skeleton?

He mailed it to the ward. He mailed it to him as a gift.

Wow.

That's kind of fun and classy as a criminal, though, at that point. It's like, that's a fun thing.

I mean, he's not convicted of it. So it's just him like rubbing his nose in it. You got to catch me.

Oh, he's gotten caught for it before. But it's not like a big enough, it's not like he's going to go to prison for it. It's a fine offense and it's one of those things. So he doesn't care. They developed what they called an unusual friendship over this. Like he had respect for this guy's criminality. And this guy had sort of respect for him because he treated him like a human being. So it kind of went back and forth. He said, quote, "He called himself the deer hunter and he called me the other side."

Okay.

The other side of the law. Yeah. Fuller would sign his letters to Ford. He would write them all the time. He would write the sheriff and call and say, quote, "A friend from the other side." That's how he would sign his letters. The sheriff said, "People look at it and they say, 'Well, you know, you're in law enforcement. Why have you got this relationship?'" I guess my philosophy is that I've learned a lot about him. I've learned a lot about what his lifestyle was like. He said, "Joel Fuller was a highly talented, smart individual with no scruples. That's what I learned."

Yeah.

It's why McNulty went and sat with Bodie and had a fucking NHC lake trout.

You got to know what you're hunting. Yeah.

You have to, what are we talking about? And it's also like, we don't hate each other.

Right.

We don't, you know.

We just have different goals.

We're the coyote and the fucking, you know, the road runner. At the end of the day, we punch out and then we go, "See you tomorrow." And we go home and fucking.

Road runners just looking for bird feed and the coyotes looking to eat a road runner, evidently.

That's it. End of the day, they're like, "Well, that's that." And they go home. That's how it is. So December 1983, still the same month, detectives interview Norma because they're very interested in clearing her or.

Yeah, what's going on, Norma?

So they ask her, "Tell you what," and this is standard operating procedure with this type of thing, "Take a polygraph and let's clear you. And then we can move on, basically. We can't clear you until we can clear you."

Lie or don't into this machine. It's completely unusable in court, but it'll give us reason to keep investigating you if you fuck it up.

Yeah. Well, that's what they do is that's how they clear people to wipe them off as a suspect and move on to the next guy. So she says no.

I won't take it.

I won't take it. And Rosalyn is like, "What the fuck, mom? What are you talking about? You won't take it." She said, "I'll go with you and just take the stupid lie detector test because you didn't do anything wrong. So what are you afraid of?" And the detective said she wouldn't take the polygraph. So that's kind of a red flag.

Yeah.

It is. Expect to be asked, if your spouse is murdered, they are going to ask you to take a polygraph and you better fucking take it and pass.

They do a lot of things.

You're going to be the suspect otherwise.

They're going to see how long or short your penis is. They're going to find out a lot of things.

They're going to know a lot. Well, I could see like if you're, you know, if it was some like drug crime or something, you killed a guy and all that, and I'm not taking the polygraph, that's fine because it's like, "Hey, you're going to try to pin this on me and blah, blah, blah." You might not be the main suspect, but if you're the spouse, you are the suspect until you're cleared. So that's what's fucking crazy. They said before Sonny's death, for example, some of Norma's friends overheard her state that she would, quote, that she would be, quote, "better off if Sonny was dead than alive and that Sonny is worth more dead than alive."

Jesus.

Because they branch out. They're talking to all her friends and all her friends are like, "Let me tell you what she said."

She's talking about life insurance and shit.

Yeah. So they said that she would receive insurance money.

Military pension.

Well, death benefit from the Navy, full ownership of the real estate she held with Sonny.

Oh, yeah.

She'd just have everything. And also a monthly check from the VA that would keep coming for years.

Yep.

They ran the numbers. They said it was a death benefit from the Navy. She received the real estate she owned with Sonny and she received a monthly payment from the VA that over 15 or 17 years amounted to $100,000.

Just that VA benefit.

Just the VA benefit and the real estate and everything else. So is it Norma, though? I mean, it makes sense. There's always anybody that dies, you can look at their spouse and go, "Well, obviously they had a reason to kill them because."

They're going to benefit. Yeah.

Everybody does. Yeah. But is it actually her? Well, the polygraph didn't help. She didn't contradict herself in any major way. And they kept interviewing her and she kept her story straight. She didn't say, "Well, maybe you should talk to this person or have like some other idea." Wasn't trying to.

Same story over and over and over again.

Put them on. Her whole thing is, "I don't know."

Yeah.

Wasn't trying to, "Well, you should look at this person because they're really, you know, trying to, didn't try to like put them on another direction."

Yeah.

Investigators, though, can't place a weapon in her hands or a gunman that could have possibly done this. They said they got to a certain point in the case, but just sufficient evidence didn't exist to charge anybody responsible in this case. They just didn't have anything. They had Norma stonewalling and they literally had zero leads outside of that.

Wow.

So they could charge her and have no evidence and not be able to go to court. So they just basically say that we wait for more evidence now. So it keeps going. By December 1984.

God damn.

You still have nothing. So that's when a guy named Norman Grainer has an interesting evening in Swanville nearby. He's a cocaine dealer, Norman Grainer, who shot to death with buckshot from a 12-gauge shotgun while he's watching TV.

Fuck.

Now, remember Joel Fuller, the brilliant scrupulous man?

Yeah.

He's charged with the murder.

A 12-gauge, huh?

12-gauge. He evades police for an extended period of time before finally surrendering. And then they release him on bail.

Why?

He was a fugitive from a murder charge. They finally get him and they're like, "Well, we can let him out again. I'm sure he'll come back."

We trust you'll be back in court.

Yeah. Then January 10th, 1985 is when the state police uncovered the cocaine ring here. And there's a lead investigator who uses an informant and they have a big raid on a Congress Street apartment in Belfast. More than 40 people end up being arrested with drug trafficking.

God damn.

And one of them's a guy named Scott Lacombe. Remember that name for later.

Yeah.

Okay. Then May of 1985, a guy named Lloyd Bryant is fishing with his brothers in a river near the Route 173 intersection. Okay.

What'd they catch?

Well, he caught a damaged lever action rifle.

Nice. Fucking. What lure catch is that?

It's a good one. You got the Winchester one. It's a spinner bait. Chartreuse spinner bait, I believe, is how you can catch that.

It's something stinky. I'm sure that stink bait catches the Winchester.

Only rubber worms. It's all you can do. You got to go to the bottom. So this guy, rather than just go, "Ah, god damn it, that's not a fish," and throw it in the woods, he turns it over to the state police.

That's what you're supposed to. Good boy. Well done.

Are you? I would never do that.

You'd never turn over a gun that you caught in the water?

No. Fuck no. It's none of my business.

I don't even want to unhook it from my line. I want to call somebody to come take it.

Clip. I clip the line and go, "That never happened." None of my fucking business.

Tie a new one.

None. Couldn't be less of my fucking business than that.

Lace up another hook.

If I find a body, I'll call someone. Outside of that, none of my fucking business and I am not getting involved.

Yeah.

No.

Any gun from a body of water also has bodies on it.

Yeah. Which is why I'm not getting involved.

Yeah.

I'm not doing it.

The only count. I'm not touching it.

Because I just said Lloyd Bryant is, I don't want James Petrigallos fishing with his brother and he found a fucking, I don't want that in the, I don't want to know about that.

Damaged love connection. How damaged is it? Just water damage?

The firearms examiner test fires it and compares it with the casings from this case. And he can't, it's inconclusive.

Okay.

Inconclusive. So now Scott Lacombe, a guy who got arrested in that bust, he's a young kid, 22 years old.

Yeah.

He's arrested and he agrees to cooperate with the state. He's a young kid who got busted on coke charges and that's what they do.

Get his warrant out of him. Yeah.

So July 2nd, 1985, that was. He was due to plead guilty on July 3rd. But on July 2nd, he's due to plead guilty, then cooperate and testify against the shipload of the case.

30/30 with his eye?

Well, July 2nd, he shot with a 12-gauge shotgun outside his home in North Park.

Oh boy.

And his fiance said she found him face down on the ground.

Dead?

Dead.

Oh, fuck.

He's murdered too. So this is like, this town has some shit going on.

It sounds like this is, yeah.

This is Brownsville.

This is bad.

That's why the guy said it was a crazy era, I think, during this time. We had drug killings and shit. So 1993 comes around. We are 10 years out.

Yeah.

Joel Fuller, if we remember him, the brilliant artist guy with no scruples.

I'm a single one.

He's convicted of killing Scott Lacombe in 1993.

Right. In the car, in the house.

With the shotgun murder. The outside of his house, the last guy, the informant.

Okay.

Prosecutors say he was hired by Linwood Jackson, who worked at a mill, but was the cocaine boss of the town. That's how he distributed cocaine through the mill.

Really?

Yeah. They said, but Lacombe was cooperating with authorities. That's why this happened. They said the price for this hit that Joel Fuller did was $20,000 and two sports cars.

Wow.

Two.

That's a hit, man.

Yeah, that's especially back then.

Yeah.

Between, this is crazy. Between the Grainer and Lacombe killings, two shotgun killings that they're pretty sure he did the Grainer killing too, Fuller drove a car with a bumper sticker that said "Kill a Rat" on it.

Oh man.

Why did, no scruples.

Scruples.

No scruples.

Why would you?

And no brains either. What are you doing? Don't announce what you're doing.

No.

Kill a rat. So Fuller is convicted in the Grainer murder, so not the Lacombe murder, the Grainer murder and sentenced to 50 years.

Shit.

Then he's convicted in the Lacombe murder as well and sentenced to life in prison. You, sir, may fuck off life in prison. So in between killing two informants, he put a bumper sticker on his car that said "Kill a Rat." It was like, that's perfect.

Wow.

And that came up in court, if you don't think it did.

Hell yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So he's serving these. He's never getting out of jail, basically. And for the Lacombe murder, the judge said, "All evidence points to Mr. Fuller's guilt. Killing someone for hire is abhorrent to all the values of a civilized society."

Right.

So 1984 to 2000, nothing happens.

Nothing.

Essentially, nothing.

15 years.

Cold. Cold for 16 years. Everybody just thinks it's over. Then there's a guy named Larry Phillips here.

Yeah.

Larry Phillips remembers a day in the winter of 1984. This is sometime between '84 and 2000. For some reason, the exact date isn't known. We don't know if it's early '90s or what, but I'm going to say it's probably between '93 and 2000 because that is when Fuller was in prison. He was put away. So now it's safe to talk about him, basically. Larry Phillips here is best friends with Joel Fuller in the winter of '84.

Oh.

They're drinking and driving through Waldo County. Just driving around drinking, having a good time.

What a time to be alive.

What a crazy time. Headed toward Rockland.

Yeah.

All right. As they approach the intersection of Back Belfast Road and Route 173, you remember that intersection we just talked about?

Right.

Fuller tells Phillips, "There's a 30/30 rifle in the brook on the right-hand side."

Oh.

So Phillips, who's a gun collector, said, "Shit, I'm going to go look for it."

Pull over.

Yeah, where'd you see that? And Fuller says, "Don't bother. I smashed it against a telephone pole." So it's all fucked up. Don't worry about it.

Shit.

But he pointed that out, said there was a rifle. Later that day, Fuller told him why it was smashed because he said, "Why'd you smash a rifle? I would have taken the fucking rifle." He said he'd been paid to shoot some guy on White Street, which is where the Grottons live, a serviceman, guy in the military.

Military man. Yeah.

He said, "I waited behind a wood pile and shot him in the back as he reached for his door."

Oh.

That's what he tells this guy.

Yeah.

Okay. Phillips. So also he says that basically that he went on further and said the guy was pleading for his life when he came up and shot him in the face.

God damn, man.

And basically he had a hand over his face when he shot him. He was trying to block it. So that's crazy. So yeah, this guy said he shot the man in the back, then he shot the victim in the head as he attempted to cover his face with his hand. At some point, Phillips went to the police. Now in the report, we don't know exactly when it happened, but we do know that he took a polygraph over this and passed.

Yeah.

This Phillips guy passed the polygraph. So yeah, the cops said Joel proceeded to tell Larry that he used the rifle to kill Sonny. He did take a polygraph test and he did pass. So we felt pretty comfortable that Larry was telling the truth at this point.

That's good.

And they got, you know, this guy who's got a story and passed a lie detector test, and then they got a wife who refused a lie detector test. So like, huh, what are we doing here? It's interesting. Now, by the way, that's hearsay and we'll talk all about that later. They said shots coming from the wood pile and shot from behind as he reached for the door, they said that was information that nobody should know except the shooter. That was not publicly released.

Yeah.

So they just basically put this story away in a file with the rifle and nothing happens.

Okay.

That's just part of the case file. But they didn't immediately go and do anything because they go to Fuller and he goes, "I don't know what the fuck you're talking about." That's the end of that lead. It's over.

Yeah.

He's not going to cooperate. So.

This guy said this. Okay, cool.

Great.

Well, fuck him. He's a liar. I'm in here for life. Anything else? That would have been it. And they know that he needs to.

Yeah, I got life without. I don't care about any of this. Goodbye.

Yeah, eat dicks.

So anyway, in the early 2000, by then Norma's been interviewed 11 times. They've talked to her a lot. 11 times and basically that they never get anything new out of her. It's always the same story. She admits nothing. She, by the way, reverted to her maiden name, Norma Small, pretty quickly after the death, which is an interesting thing. I mean, I get that people do that, but it just seemed like, well, good, got rid of that name.

Fashionable development. I mean, my sister's been divorced from her last husband for 10 years. She still has his last name.

Yeah. My ex-wife still has my last name.

Yeah.

Because it was easier than changing a bunch of shit.

Yeah.

Yeah. So it's just whatever. Who cares? You know, I'm like, I don't care.

Who cares?

Enjoy it. Enjoy having everyone mispronounce it and never spell it right.

Some of them just like it because it's much easier at the school. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, also you got to do a bunch of paperwork and shit. It's paying the ass. I get it. I wouldn't want to do that either. Who cares what your name is? It's a difference. I don't, I'm too lazy. I don't want to do that. So the main state police detective, Dean Jackson, in early 2000 said, "We just needed to look at this case again." They said, "We were kind of wondering, trying to work things into a case here, but it was just so old. There was just no, just all the same info."

Nothing to do.

Yeah. Nothing was ever connected. But the thing they were looking at, trying to connect to is the fire. They're looking at her and they're going, "Norma killed her fucking kids." They think she did it on purpose. They look back at the police reports and the fire reports from back in '59.

She just stayed, there's three kids dead. She clearly wanted to start over.

By 2000, though, there was like most of the people involved, the fire people, they were all dead by then. So they couldn't go back and talk to them. All they had was the reports from the time. So they were like, "We wanted to connect it, but it was so fucking old. We couldn't." But we felt like, they said, "We felt like what parents walking out without a burn on them when their three kids are burning to death? You would be."

I'm going to be cut up in my 50s from that goddamn glass that I'm going through.

The glass I'm going through, I'm going to put a wet fucking thing on. I'm going in there. I'm getting at least some of these kids out. At least.

I'm going to get those bodies out before the fire department does.

I'm trying for sure. So they said, "We just never trusted that here." She collected all of her Navy death benefits, the monthly VA checks. Eventually, she moved to Kansas in the late '90s.

Oh no.

In the tiny town of Gass, Kansas.

Like.

G-A-S.

G-A-S?

Gass, Kansas.

I mean, the first couple of syllables are gas can. That's crazy.

Gass, Kansas. Yeah. Near Iola. By 2001, basically, I think her benefits had run out by then. And she was cleaning motel rooms in small town Kansas.

In Gass, Kansas.

So life has not been good to Norma. And they said that if she said, "If I didn't, I would have nothing to live on. I tried working. That took too much out of me." She was talking about that earlier of why she, whatever. So they figured out that she applied for and received $88,270 from the VA.

Pretty good money.

Now, Sonny was getting near retirement. He had 20 plus years in and he was a chief petty officer with a pension.

So.

They talked about that too. They said when the homicide occurred, it was clear that it was because Sonny was getting ready to retire from the Navy and was going to be moving back home to Maine and would be there all the time. And that lifestyle that she had developed, whether it was running around or the involvement in drugs or the social life she seemed to like.

She's thrown away.

Wasn't going to happen anymore. So we thought she had him killed.

That makes sense.

It's just inconvenient for her.

She dreads that he comes home on the weekends. Well, every day is about to be the weekend.

Yep. And if they get a divorce, if he had told her that I'm leaving you, then she's not going to have any more benefit, you know, any more tie-in. She's going to get half of whatever and that's it. That's over.

Yeah.

So, I mean, there's always divorce. One of the NCIS agents said, "What you and I would normally deal with through divorce, a breakup, she dealt with through murder," they said.

Okay. That's at least the story that they're creating.

That's what they think anyway at this point. So NCIS in 2000, they have a newly formed NCIS cold case squad.

Oh.

That takes up the murder alongside a Maine state police detective, Dean Jackson, that we talked about. They put this as their top priority, this case at this point. They have. So one of the cops said, "For us, cold cases present an investigator challenge. They haven't been solved before. We may have a little bit of competitiveness and a desire to see the case resolved. No murder should go unresolved."

Right.

And he also said that, you know, we had 11 prior interviews with Norma, so they decided right away, because they're deciding, how do we go about this? What's the strategy? They said a 12th interview with Norma would be fucking pointless.

Right.

It's fruitless. They used the word fruitless, actually. He said, "I really came to the conclusion that interviewing Norma again without any new information would probably be fruitless. We had to develop some direct evidence against those that we believed could be involved."

Great points.

Which makes perfect sense.

Yeah.

So they came up with a plan. They're like, "Talking to her is pointless."

Yeah, fruitless.

So fruitless. Let's come up with something different. So they sat around and brainstormed of how they can approach this, which this seems like fun because you have so much time and you can really kind of, you know, like when someone dies, like you kind of just go with the investigation where it leads you first and there's not a real lot of time to sit back and go, "Let's get a strategy."

Yeah.

You know?

They call it leads for a reason. It leads you places.

It leads you.

Now there's no leads.

Well, they said, okay, they said one of the guys said, "We came up with what we came up with is, what if Joel Fuller had a buddy in prison that he served time with, but this guy was now out and was able to make contact with Norma and ask her some questions. What if we did that?"

Okay. So like that way you can sort of thing.

Yeah. Try to get her talking here.

Yeah.

So they said, "Okay, who do we have?" So they have this guy, there's a guy, an undercover guy who looks like an ex-con.

Looks like a piece of shit.

He's an undercover guy. I mean, that's what they do. They look like whatever scumbags they're fitting in with, you know?

Yeah.

We were talking about the Jay Dobbins ATF guy with, he got himself sleeved out and he had to make himself look like a fucking biker.

Shaved his fucking head and grew a handlebar goatee. Just a crazy looking thing.

Yeah.

Cork screw thing.

So one of the cops said, "I figured out who to send." He said, "I learned about Dave Truesdale's undercover work and realized he was pretty good at it. He worked with ex-cons. He knows what they think. He knows what they act. Knows what they act." He said he knows what they act, which is a weird.

He said it corrected.

I read it and I'm like, that can't be right. And it is right. I thought it was me. He can talk like that. Now, Dave Truesdale, the undercover, grew up in a military family. He's all tatted out. He's got a black belt in some form of martial arts. He's, you know, one of those guys. And he said, "Anytime I see a military member hurt by somebody, it does push me to resolve that incident." Because he grew up in a military family. He said that undercover operations can be very dangerous. Best case scenario, you blow your line.

Right.

Yeah. And he said, "I kind of developed a particular personality when I was undercover. I'm sort of a tough guy, but I like to play a tough guy. When you're undercover, the tattoos are very helpful because most people don't associate heavily tattooed people with law enforcement." This is 25 years ago.

Right.

Now, the guy with the most neck tattoos, I assume, is a fucking cop. Just assume he's a cop now.

And he just got out of the academy.

Yeah. Especially if I see certain ones, if you know which ones I'm talking about, I definitely assume it's a cop. So it was different, he said. His usual targets were dangerous dudes. This is literally a grandmother in her 60s who cleans motel rooms. So he's like, "I wasn't real."

Master.

Yeah, because I didn't go in with the same like, "Hey, don't fuck up, man." One false move and you could be dead. Like, probably not. Was she going to do spray pledge in your eyes? Like, there's not a lot she can do to you here. He said, "This was a very unique role I had to play. I took from my past all the other roles that I played as kind of a tough guy and went up against someone who at the time could have been my mother." So he's like, "It was real weird." He's used to dudes his age that are dangerous. So he had to pick a name. He picked Tony.

Let's go.

So let's do it. So he approaches Norma outside the motel room where she works. He walks up to her.

Gass, Kansas.

Yeah. And there's a picture of this too, which is funny because she's like going to her car and he's standing on the other side of the car. It's from their surveillance. And it's an undercover video with audio and everything. And he comes up to her and think about it, 60-something-year-old lady.

Yeah.

Cleaning motel rooms, 1,500 miles from this. This was almost 20 years ago. She is not thinking anyone's walking up to her.

So separated. Yeah.

So separated. He comes up and says, "Hey, my name's Tony. I'm a friend of Joel Fuller. He sent me here to talk with you. Listen, the police have come back from talking to Joel and he's scared."

Yeah.

He said, "And he wanted me to come out here. I owe Joel some favors in the penitentiary and he's heard that somebody's cooperating in this case." That's what he says to her.

So I'm here from Maine.

So didn't say where. Just said, "I came here to talk to you because I owe him some favors." Which again, makes Joel look powerful.

Right.

Like he can send some thug guy out here to talk to you and shit. So that, they're trying to scare him.

And I owe him a favor. Doesn't imply go have a conversation.

Yes, I owe him a favor. I got to find out who's cooperating in this case. So she says, and this shows the big disconnect between, I bet he's never, when first talking to a suspect, been given this answer, quote, "Sure ain't me, honey. No, sir." I don't think any guy in the past has ever said that to him probably. "Sure ain't me, honey. No, sir." And she says, and he says, "Now, Joel didn't really think it was you, I guess, who was cooperating." And she said, "No, no way.

Oh.

Who could be what? What are we talking about? Rather than, "I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know him." That's not what she said.

Also.

She obviously knows him.

I don't know who it could be. There was only me and him involved in it is what that sounds like.

It's interesting. So he said, "Obviously, I'm not here to hurt you because I'm here talking to you."

Right.

So obviously, I didn't come here to fuck you up or anything. She says.

If you were sick then, I wouldn't have heard nothing.

She said, "Yeah, exactly. You would have just been in your room. I would have got you in one of the motel rooms. It would have been easy." He said, "And I don't want to hurt her." She said, "This is Norma. I don't want to hurt Joel or anyone else, but I ain't talking to nobody. I ain't pulling the plug on nobody and I expect the same."

Boy, is she talking gangster talk.

Well, she's a drug dealer. She knows what she's doing. She said, "They tried to tell me that he was implicating me. What they're doing is they're lying to get some info, but didn't work." And so Tony says, quote, "You didn't do nothing?" And she says, "No, sir." So rather than saying, "Who's Joel Fuller? I don't know who you're talking about. I don't know anything you're talking about." She knows exactly what they're talking about very quickly and is up to speed in this conversation.

Impressive.

That's interesting. So basically, she told this guy to tell Fuller to fucking sit tight and relax. Nothing's happening.

Don't worry about it. Yeah.

So this agent Truesdale, Tony said, "Right then we knew that we were on to something. We suspected that she was involved from the very beginning, but we knew now."

Right.

Now you know. Yeah. Okay. So over the course of this, because he stays in contact with her, he's like, "Well, I'll be getting back to you."

Yeah.

And he stays in contact and keeps kind of mining her.

Want to build a library of conversations. Yeah.

Basically, who could it be that's snitching if it's not you? Who could it be? And then finally, she says, "There is somebody that it could be."

Yeah.

She says, "A big tall fellow. What's his name?"

Huh.

Boyd. Boyd Smith, she says.

No.

He was a friend of the family. He was the only other one that knew.

What did he know?

The girlfriend's daughter's boyfriend.

This 15-year-old boy that was staying in their house.

Yep. So Tony says, "Find a pen. I need that boy's name. What's his name?" And they want it in her handwriting, obviously.

Yeah, yeah.

So she says, "Boyd Smith. He was a friend of the family." And Tony says, "What did you tell him?" Now this is what they're waiting for.

Here we go.

She says, "I was going to hire him. That's what I thought the plan was. Okay?" And so Tony says, "What's the deal with Boyd?" And she says, "He was the one that was supposed to do the thing."

What?

This is crazy. She's like a fucking mob boss. She's a 65-year-old lady.

Daughter's boyfriend?

This is real weird. So Tony says, "Did he get cold feet? Is he a chicken shit? What happened?"

Yeah.

And Norma says, "Yeah, kind of, I guess. I don't know what his problem was. I don't know why you couldn't just murder this nice man who fucking puts him up in his house. I don't know what his problem was, pussy."

What is happening?

Holy shit. So the agents who are listening to this conversation said, almost simultaneously, we look at each other when she said Boyd Smith's name, and we kind of, with a puzzled look on our face, said, "Who is that?"

Yeah.

They never heard of this fucking guy before. It's been 17 years. They have never fucking heard Boyd Smith's name mentioned once.

This kid is 35 years old now.

Completely different, right? So no one ever mentioned him and Norma gave it up. And it's a funny thing. She told on him to a guy she thought was a criminal so she wouldn't be considered a rat by Joel Fuller. So she ratted this guy. And Truesdale, Tony said he didn't hear of him either. He said, "I had no idea who Boyd Smith was." So then suddenly I had to start rolling on Boyd Smith and trying to dig up what the relationship was.

That's what it says, yeah.

So spring 2001, they track down Boyd Smith. He is.

Where's he at?

Just outside Belfast, Maine still. Not hard to find.

Has not left.

He lives in a house in the woods.

Oh, yeah?

He's just been a recluse, I guess, sort of thing here. And at this point, he's 42 years old and they find him in the woods near Belfast. They said, quote, "Boyd Smith lived in a house in the woods near Belfast, Maine. We went to his house. He completely disavowed any knowledge of the homicide."

Huh.

We went back and forth, back and forth. Ultimately, he admitted that Norma came to him and asked him several times to kill her husband. She was trying to get the 16-year-old that lived in the house and banged her daughter or whatever to fucking do this, probably.

So he just says, "I don't know anything about the murder. All I know is that that woman tried to get me to hire or hired me to kill him."

And I was interested in banging her daughter while come feel the noise played in the background.

Right.

In 1983. That's what I was interested in.

So.

Oh, yeah. Metal health. Yeah, good shit, man. So that's what happens. So then they set a second meeting with Boyd, because that's the first meeting with Boyd. They badger him into that. Then the second meeting with Boyd here. Now this is Tony doing this, by the way. This isn't the cops. This is the undercover pretending to be a fucking whatever, pretending to be a thug and a prisoner. So a second meeting is set and they said, "You pick wherever you want where you're comfortable."

Right.

Because he said, "I don't know. I'm worried about cops being around. I'm worried about this." They said, "Well, you pick the place." And he said, "A cemetery in Camden on my lunch break for work." Because you can see.

Jesus Christ.

It's hard to mike a cemetery. And you can see things coming from mob guys would meet at cemeteries because it's wide open. You can see anything coming. No one can hide. None of that shit. Taking pictures.

Breakers.

You can see them. Yeah. So that's why. Tony said, when they get to the cemetery, this is the recording from the cemetery, Tony said, "This is a good place because we were looking around trying to make sure there was no cops here."

Yeah.

Because that was my big concern that you were going to run to the cops last night and then come and we were going to get whacked today.

Oh.

So he said, "Yeah, I was concerned that you were going to puss out on me here."

Yeah.

So he then says, "What was the actual agreement with you and Norma? How did all that come about? What happened?" So Boyd says, "Norma wanted her husband gone and that was the bottom line. She was always bitching, rah-rah-rahing." Rah-rah-rahing. That's gassing something up, not bitching about it.

Cheering it on.

Yeah. If someone was saying they love something constantly, you'd be like, "Always rah-rah-rah with this shit," you'd say probably. You wouldn't say it about this, but that's what he said. He lives in the woods. What do you want?

The chaos.

Yeah. He said about this and that. And she asked me if I would do it. Actually, she asked me several times. And then she said, "Can you put me in contact with? Can you arrange something?"

Yeah.

And the Tony said, "And then you put her in contact with Joel Fuller?"

Right.

And he says, "Mm-hmm."

Oh.

And that's all they need for him is, "Mm-hmm." That means he.

He did it.

Yeah.

He conspired.

He facilitated a murder conspiracy at that point. Knowing what was going to happen and everything.

Yeah.

So they grab Boyd and pick his ass up and bring him into the police station and sit him down in an interrogation room. And it's Detective Dean Jackson and Agent Morrow from the NCIS. And he tells a totally different story than he told Tony.

Oh.

Okay. He says, "He didn't connect Norma and Joel Fuller. That wasn't me."

Oh.

He said, "No, no, no." So Detective Jackson says, "Norma's version of this is, she, of course, she's trying to wash her hands of it. She says, 'I got Boyd to do it and he got Joel.'"

Yeah.

Okay. So Boyd says, "Well, she's lying because I didn't tell her that I got Joel. I may have suggested, well, okay, try to get a hold of Joel Fuller."

I know a guy with no scruples.

I didn't pick her up and bring her and drop her off at the guy and say, "Hey, you two should be friends with each other."

Yeah.

He said that, "I didn't know Joel back then. I did not put Norma and Joel in touch with each other. That is the truth." Which probably is true because he was 16. How would he know a 29-year-old underworld guy at 16?

Yeah.

So I can't imagine he'd be friends with him.

No.

He's more than 10 years older than him. He might have known of this badass guy in the town named Joel Fuller who's a criminal.

Yeah.

That I could see. So that's kind of believable.

A lot of deer heads on his wall.

Tons of deer heads on his wall. So they said him, "She said you made the arrangements. You told her you made the arrangements." And he said, "She's lying."

Okay.

And they said, "Well, what's your story then?"

Yeah.

"Let's get that on record." And he said, "I told you my story." And they said, "That doesn't work. That's not going to work." And then hours go by, they're sitting in there. At one point, Jackson puts a hand on Boyd's shoulder.

Yeah.

Because he's here with you. I feel you.

Fatherly figure. Yeah.

He said, "Boyd, come here. Listen to me. You listen to me right now. This is important." He said, "This is your time to tell the truth. You're going down the drain right now, buddy."

You're swirling.

You're swirling. And the other guy said, "That's it. You're done, man. We have 'Mm-hmm' on there. That's all we need."

We heard 'Mm-hmm'.

And Jackson said, "This is almost looking like if your story's true, this is almost looking like you're the guy that pulled the trigger."

Right.

So now they're saying, "We're going to put it on you if you don't put it on somebody else, essentially." Which is a pressure move that they do.

You basically just told them each other, "Congratulations. You both met a cool person."

That's it. So they said, "At this point, you're looking like the trigger man. So that's worse." And the guy said, "It's all right. Come on. Just tell us. Get this off your chest. Come on. Come on, Boyd." They're rah-rah-rahing him.

They are.

They're getting him up for it. So he takes a long poise and he said, "I met Joel at Rally's," which is a bar.

Rally's.

It's a bar. "I met Joel at Rally's. Told him I knew somebody that was looking for somebody dead." So he did go up.

When he was 16?

16. I gave him Norma's address and Norma's name and said, "Talk to her."

Yeah.

Now his thing was, "That gets me out of this."

Now it's.

Now I connected those two.

Couldn't be more of a conspiracy, right?

Absolutely. But in his mind, at that point, he was just, "This will make Norma leave him alone. She won't ask anymore. And I'm out of this now. So that's fine." So later, though, they really did want her. And we find out the details, because now he gives the details of exactly what led up to this. And basically, they said, "Shortly after Smith moved into the house, Norma began telling Boyd Smith that she wanted somebody to kill her husband." So it was like immediately.

Right. Yeah.

So whatever.

It took the astronauts a long time to get there.

It took a while. So she said, "I'd like to see him dead."

I thought she was just yanking my chain, he says.

So the detective said, "Well, when did you realize that she wasn't just yanking your chain?" And he said, "When she offered me money." That's when I knew it was serious now. This is an actual offer. And they said there was a lot of conversations about this. Talks became an actual money offer. Norma offers him $10,000 to kill Sonny.

Wow.

Which for a kid is a lot of money.

A lot of money.

So yeah. Later on, which is fucking hilarious, they go to talk to Norma, by the way. And this is very funny. I'll put this in this part and then we'll go back. But basically, they talked to her and they said, "And what were you offering Boyd to do that?" Because she starts admitting about Joel. And she says, "Do I have to tell you that too?" And they say, "Ah, it's part of the truth." And she said, "You know already.

Yeah.

$10,000. And that's in '83 too. So that's.

That's good money.

It's real good fucking money then. So it's a lot. And I guess he wasn't 16, by the way. He was 21, Boyd. I don't know why he said he was 16, because the daughter was around that age.

All right.

But Boyd said Norma wanted him gone. And that was the bottom line. So he kept asking. Boyd said he thought about it at first and they did a dry run, actually.

What?

Yeah. He said, "Now I thought about it and thought about it and thought about it. And I told her, 'I says I got cold feet.' Said, 'No way. Can't do it.' Says, 'I says I got cold feet.'."

I says, I says. Yeah. So he hid somewhere with a gun and was like, "I can't do this."

"I can't do. Yeah, I'm not going to be able to do this. This is crazy." But before he said no, that's when he rehearsed it. And they said that later on, the court said, "Smith considered the proposition and decided to conduct a dry run of the execution to determine if the murder was possible." One night in February '83, so this is 10 months beforehand.

Almost a year before.

Yeah. He said one night in February '83, he hid behind the house and watched Sonny return from work. They said he just couldn't do it. He said he got out, he watched him pull in and he watched him go up. And they said Boyd said he waited at the corner of the house and he tried to imagine shooting Sonny or killing him and got physically sick and started vomiting and realized that he couldn't do this.

Realized he's not a killer.

He's not a killer. He was vomiting without even having a gun in his hand. Just the thought of doing it. So imagine if he actually had a gun. The guy would be they'd have found two shell casings and four puddles of puke with corn and chicken and nuggets in it.

Puke piss and shit.

All over the place. Yeah. I'm like, "My God, someone exploded over here. Are we sure this person's alive too?" Because everything came out of them.

Is that for a procession here all day?

Is that semen too? Is that cocaine? There's dried something. We can't tell the difference.

Yeah.

So yeah. And he said that he walked inside. Sonny walked in and he never knew what was going on out there. And he was like, "Wow." So yeah. He says, "I thought I had cold feet. I couldn't do it." And so that was that. And he said so he went to her and said, "I can't do this." And she got mad.

Really?

And said, repeatedly demanded, "Well, if you can't do it, you find somebody else to do it." I'd be like, "I'm moving out of your house. How's that? I'm going to get an apartment so I don't have to shoot people. This is crazy." So the Jeff Morrow NCIS guy said he chickened out. He couldn't kill him. She was angry and she insisted that he find somebody else. So there we go. Boyd, he said a few weeks after the dry run, he finally gave in. And he said that he said, "I'll find. I'll help find you a killer here."

Holy shit.

And he had one name in mind because everybody in the county knows this guy as the arch-criminal of this county. And that is Joel the Deer Hunter Fuller. That's the guy.

Yeah.

And the guy who knew him that likes him, the Ford guy, the sheriff said, "No question about it. There's probably no other person who's as cold-blooded as he is from shooting deer to shooting people." It's not a big stretch to think Joel may have done this, basically.

Yeah. Joel did two killings for contract. He's a bad guy.

He's a terrible guy.

Yeah.

So Truesdale, their Tony, said, "I've been around some really bad people in my career. Joel is the personification of evil. When you look at him, you get the chills." And I think a lot of others felt like that too.

He's the worst there is.

He's as bad as it gets. And this is an undercover guy. He's dealt with everybody. Now Rosalind, the daughter, is shocked about all this. She said she had no fucking idea that this was going on. No idea that this was going on with her boyfriend. No fucking idea.

Her whole life.

No. Not until now. She found out now. She said, "I couldn't believe that this person I had a relationship with the year before was capable of even thinking about doing something like that." It's crazy. But fucking Fuller is the guy. Fuller was deep in the drug scene. They said he ran with a cocaine dealer named Linwood Jackson, who was the big kind of cocaine kingpin of the area, like we talked about.

That's a famous name. Yeah.

Linwood Jackson.

Wasn't the guy that Manson.

Familiar.

Fought with, wasn't he didn't he have a soft name like that too?

That he fought with?

He shot him.

The guy, oh, the.

The black popular.

Papa something.

Yeah. It's Papa Lot.

Sir Populicious or Pop a Lot? Pops a Lot? Sir Pop a Lot. Yes. He had Baby Got Boobs. It was a different song back then.

Yeah.

Papa Lot, Sir Papa, the guy that, yeah.

Lots of Papa.

Lots of Papa. Thank you. Ah, that's the one. There we go.

They always have a goofy ass name.

Yeah. Lots of Papa sounds like a snack.

It does.

Hey, give me some of those Lots of Papas. All right, fine.

He's got a kangaroo on the box.

Yeah. Don't eat them all, man. Jesus Christ. Those are my Lots of Papas.

It's my favorite Lots of Papas.

My favorite one.

Lots of Papa.

So Lots of Papa. So John Ford here, that sheriff guy, later said that Fuller was hired to take out any of them at any time, meaning people that Linwood Jackson had problems with.

Sure.

Anyone who threatened the operation. Boyd Smith, he still says, "I didn't know the guy. I just knew his reputation as a guy that would do just about anything." He said this is what he said. He said he was cold and he was available. He was in the drug scene and he was a nutcase that would do anything for money. He said everybody in Waldo County has heard about Joel. And that was that. So he said, "I went to him because I heard he was a nutcase and a wild man. He'd do anything for money. So who the fuck else am I going to ask about this?"

Wow.

Rosalind, the daughter, said, "My mother had asked him if he knew anybody else that could do it." And he was like, "Oh yeah, Joel Fuller. He'll do anything for money, including killing someone." So they meet at Rally's, like he said. They sat down. And I guess Boyd went down to Rally's, found Joel Fuller, put him in touch with Norma. And he said that, "I met Joel at Rally's and gave him Norma's name and address, like we said." And he said that Fuller expressed interest in the proposal and took the contact information.

Thanks, kid.

Rather than, "Get the fuck away from me, you fucking idiot. I don't know you and you could be a cop."

Yeah. Thanks for giving me the word, buddy. I appreciate it. Like a landscaper. I know a lady who's got a tree that needs to be trimmed down.

Thanks for the reference. That's great. Yeah.

Is this Rally's like Raleigh, like the city, or Raleigh like fingers?

Raleigh fingers.

Yeah?

Like a guy named Raleigh.

I wonder if it's still open. We should do it on Your Stupid Opinions if it's still open.

That would be fun. I don't know. It was open in 1983, so.

Mine's still the open today.

I mean, and those bars have been never closed.

That's what I mean. There's full of drunks up there. They're going to definitely go.

I bet it's still open.

Summertime keeps them going.

We'll check it out. I'll check for the next Your Stupid Opinions. So I guess Boyd then went back to Norma and said, "This dude's going to contact you directly." And he said at that point, he was done. His hands were washed. He was out. He said, "I connected you to him. That's my job. I'm out."

He thinks they're washed. They are so dirty.

Filth blood all over them.

They are covered in grease, man.

Grease, blood, gunpowder residue, semen, and cocaine.

So much.

All of it.

So much Lots of Papa.

So much. Yeah. He said that he had no further discussions with Norma or Joel Fuller about this. And he said, "I told them I didn't want any more to do with it."

Imagine giving the cops that story and then being like, "So I'll be going home now."

So that's it for me, right? I guess I'll be seeing you.

You fucking asshole.

Now Fuller always denies this, though. He denies this ever happened. So now we enter Karen Reed. Not that Karen Reed. Her name is Karen Reed. We enter Karen Reed into the tale.

Same spelling?

Okay. Probably the same terrible accent. This is R-E-E-D, not R-E-A-D.

Okay. So she's got a big voluptuous ass, probably.

We don't know that. Is she the opposite of Karen Reed? Yeah. Jimmy had a real problem with Karen Reed's ass. So here, the Karen Reed said she was Fuller's cousin and had been an acquaintance of Norma's in the late '70s and early '80s. So she's someone who actually knew both of these people, which was rare. A rare connection here. According to Karen Reed, she said she saw Fuller at Norma's house two or three times in the six months before Sonny's death.

And it's her cousin, so she'd know.

She'd know who he was. And she said he was over there a bunch of times, figuring it out, I suppose. Or maybe having an affair with Norma, for Christ's sake, for all we know. Who knows?

Yeah.

So he was there two or three times. And by the way, they asked the one cop, Jackson, "Did you ever think Boyd was the triggerman?" And he said, "Norma said that Boyd Smith was the only other one who knew. But I think Boyd's personality, I don't think he has the guts to shoot someone in that manner." I mean, that's an up-close and personal thing. It makes more sense that Joel would be capable of something like that. Joel was an avid hunter. He's used to shooting. He's used to killing things.

Right. It's also very interesting, the weapon choice, because it seems as though after that, he learned that a through-and-through rifle shot doesn't one good shotgun blast and it's over.

Well, that's very interesting that you mentioned that because there's going to be something very telling that comes from that. That's perfect that you said that. So now they tell Boyd Smith, "Norma's been arrested. She's on her way in right now." And he says, "Uh-huh." And they said, "They're going to sit down and talk to her just like we're talking to you," to see if he started changing his story because now she's going to have a different story. That was May 9th, 2001, in Iola, Kansas. She's arrested while driving.

Oh, people in Kansas are like, "What?"

They're like, "What are you talking about?" Yeah. One neighbor, the news media came and talked to the neighbors about it. One neighbor said, "You mean the little old lady who lives here by herself? Her?"

Yeah. That's who.

They're like, "What? Fuck."

Yeah.

That's the police.

The people don't realize that time catches up with you.

Yeah. Well, you don't think too. I bet this is from 20 years ago.

Right. Yeah.

You think, "Well, she must have just killed somebody. She doesn't look like that." She looks pretty nice, but it's like that shit was from another life, man. She was doing coke back then.

20 years ago, she didn't think for a second, "I'm going to be an old lady one day."

No, definitely not. So nobody does.

No.

So they sit her down, Detective John Dyer, and the NCIS agent here. And they say, "Hi, Norma. I'm John Dyer. I'm with the Maine State Police." The NCIS agent, this is my favorite thing ever, says, "Hi, I'm with NCIS." And she says, "Whatever that is." See? See what happens? You're in the interrogation room, already arrested. And she's like, "I don't know what the fuck you're talking about." Anyway, back to the guy with a badge. He's a con.

Listen, acronym, man. Shut the fuck up.

I don't know what that is. Because this is before the show, I think, too, back then. So I had never heard of NCIS until that show.

Until the show. Yeah.

That's the first time I ever heard of that. And I was like, "Would they make up a fucking agency for this bullshit?" But she hadn't heard of it either. And she's like, literally, quote, "Whatever that is."

Button it, acronym, man.

That is amazing.

We're talking to the cops.

I'm trying to talk to the police. Can you stop interrupting with your fucking acronyms? He said, "Naval Criminal Investigative Service." And so she was like, "Big deal, whatever."

Yeah.

He then said, "What led up to this? How did it get this bad? Was it just an overreaction to an emotional situation that you later regretted?"

Uh-huh.

Well, they're trying to also make an excuse for it. At least then you're admitting to it. So they're trying to get her to at least, "We already know about that. Let's start at the place where we know you killed him and then we'll find out why," rather than which is what detectives always try to do. Start out, "Listen."

We're going to presume the confession is coming. So just give us why.

Yeah. You hear that if you watch confessions all the time. They'll go, "Look, we know what happened. So let's not even don't even give we know what all I want to know is why. That's all I want to know. Why? Let's get past the you confessed to murder part and all that. Let's pretend you already did that.

We're pretty sure you know that you did.

Yeah. That's what every that's what they all do. That's interrogation 101. Start with that, depending on the person. So he said, "Was it a situation you later regretted?" And she sat there for a second. And this is the moment of truth, whether she goes, "I don't know what you're talking about." She said, quote, "I just got tired of the bullshit."

Oh my God, Norma.

They're like, "Goddamn, this lady's badass. What the fuck just happened?"

That is the coldest sentence I've ever heard.

Yeah, I would say. So the Dyer guy, the agent, not the NCIS guy, the other guy said, "Yeah, what kind of bullshit, though, I guess, is what we're looking at?"

Yeah.

What kind of bullshit, I guess, is what we figured there was fuckery about since there was a dead person. There was some bullshit.

He's in those heaping helping of bullshit.

Ma'am, can you classify the bullshit, please? Can you categorize this bullshit and put it in a box for us?

I understand. There's so much bullshit it won't fit in a box of Lots of Papa, but.

Lots of Papa. Lots of Poopa. So much Lots of Poopa.

Start explaining.

Start explaining.

Yeah.

And she said, "Oh, just picky aggravating things." So she's just giving it up now. She said, "Fuck it."

Oh my God. Just a mountain of sand is what it is. It's little grains.

Yeah.

She's got tired of it.

Finally broke back. The things that most people just get a divorce over. That's why you get a divorce. If you ask divorce people, "What was it?" "I don't know. Just a lot of bullshit." "Well, what things?"

A whole bunch.

A lot of little things. That's exactly what picky aggravating things. That's exactly what most people who haven't had cheating or beating or gambling or some shit. That's what they'd say.

Yeah.

So she just decided it's better this way to do it this way. So the NCIS guy said, "Let's go through what led up to that." She's like, "Who are you again? Who are you with again?" No, she didn't say it.

Did you say you're from MSNBC? Who are you with?

Who is that? NCIS, is that the local radio station here? I don't want to be interviewed on the radio.

Listen, WGN. You button it.

Yeah. So they said, "Well, what led up to that? Who did you approach? What took place? What did you say?" And she said, "Boyd." That's her answer. "Boyd." So they said, "Boyd." And what did you say to Boyd?

Yeah.

Expand on that if you could.

That's happy, babe.

She said, "I asked him if he would." And they said, "But he would do what? Say the thing that we need you to say." And she said, quote, "If he would take care of my husband for me."

Okay.

So now they have to ask, "What's the next question?"

What does take care of mean?

Yeah. Jerk him off, make him dinner, rub his feet at the end of the show. What are we talking about? Take care of?

Put him in a hole.

Do the dry cleaning.

What are you talking about?

Yeah. Exactly. Is he ill?

What's his ass? What's happening?

What? That could work. Yeah. Take care of could be anything. And they say, "And by take care of, what do you mean?"

Yeah.

And she said, "Well, take him out," to put it simply.

Listen, bitch, I'm going to strangle you. Norma, I'm going to jail for murder if you don't say, "Kill my fucking husband."

And they said, quote, "Are you saying kill your husband? Is that what you're saying?" We're all on the same page here with these guys 25 years later.

No, what I mean is I wanted to have him whacked. When you say whacked.

Yeah.

Put him to bed. What does that mean? Norma, I'm going to fuck you up.

Norma, you're driving me crazy, goddamn it, Norma.

I got to get home to my kids. And if you keep giving me one more fucking slang term for murder my fucking husband.

Norma, Norma, Norma, Norma, Norma. We're going to put him in a deep sleep. What does that mean? You're going to give him NyQuil? What happened? So are you saying you're going to kill your husband? Is that it? And she said, "Yeah." Okay, finally.

Yeah.

So then in all this shit, and she never said she was abused. She never said she was afraid of him. She never said any of that. She was just aggravated with him.

Tired of being a wife.

So she didn't even his wife, at least. So she didn't even try to give an excuse of, "Well, I couldn't help it. I had to." She was just like, "Fuck that guy," which is a crazy defense. So then she says, "It's fine," because they start going into the ramifications of this. And she says, "It's fine because God is okay with it with me. So I'm cool with God with this. So I'm all right. You do whatever you got to do."

Oh, boy.

And the NCIS guy goes, "Your creator has given you forgiveness for the death of Mervin. Is that what you're saying?"

Yeah.

And she said, "Uh-huh."