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Murdered For Money · 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories

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  Discretion advised. This is ten minute murder. On the twenty eighth of January
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  nineteen seventy one. Dana Yule was born to two highly successful parents. His
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  father, Daleywle, had become a multi millionaire through aircraft sales after leaving the
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  US Air Force, and the two Yule children grew up surrounded by privilege,
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  although the family preferred not to flaunt their wealth. On Easter weekend nineteen ninety
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  two, twenty one year old Dana was away from the family to visit his
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  girlfriend. On Sunday, the nineteenth of April, his parents and as sister,
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  twenty four year old Tiffany, had just arrived back in Fresno after spending
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  the weekend at a beach house they owned in Paharo Dunes. Tiffany and her
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  mother, Glee Yule had driven back, but Dale decided to fly home in
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  his own plane. On Tuesday, April twenty first, Dana contacted some friends
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  of the family, expressing concern that he had not heard from his parents in
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  two days and that nobody had responded when he tried to reach out At the
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  Yule family home. Police discovered the reason that nobody had heard from Dale Glee,
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  and Tiffany since Sunday. All three of them had been shot to death.
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  On Sunday evening, the homicide detectives assigned to the case, where Chris
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  Curtis and John Susan of the Fresno County Sheriff's Office, and they spent four
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  days at the crime scene. Early into the investigation, the detectives were sure
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  of one thing. The triple homicide had not been a spontaneous act of violence.
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  There was also evidence that it had been meticulously planned by somebody who was
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  determined not to leave anybody in the house alive. The Mules had been shot
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  one by one, and each of the shell casings had been carefully picked up
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  after the gun was fired. The killer had very good aim. While Glee
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  was shot four times, Dale and Tiffany each had only been shot once.
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  Detective Susa had seen many burglary homicides in his time, and despite the Yule
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  family wealth, he came to believe that the motivation for the crimes was not
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  burglary. Even though the house was in disarray, making it appear that somebody
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  had been looking for things to steal, nothing of value had actually been taken.
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  According to Detective Suza. This appeared to be part of the killer's plan,
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  making it look like a burglary gone wrong in order to obscure the real
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  motive for the murders. That left detectives with a key question to answer.
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  If the crime wasn't financially motivated, what was the killer's real motive and why
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  had they tried so hard to hide it. With no clues about the identity
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  of the killer, they investigated the history of each member of the Yule family,
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  searching for anything that might have led to their deaths. During the deep
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  dive into Dale Yule's life, they discovered that his path to success had not
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  been as simple as the Fresno community believed. Two decades ago, shortly after
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  leaving the Air Force, Dale had started out selling airplanes for a man who
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  had later been convicted of drug smuggling. Once his boss was arrested, Dale
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  took over the business, and his airplane selling empire began. However, the
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  detectives did not find any indication that there were any connections between Dale's previous employer
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  and his death. One by one, the detectives eliminated every person who might
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  have a motive for wanting the family dead. In the end, they only
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  had one suspect remaining, twenty one year old Dana Eyule. Even though Dana
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  had been with his girlfriend in San Francisco during the time when his family had
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  been killed, Detective Susa and Detective Curtis were suspicious about his behavior both before
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  and after the crime. Unlike his sister Tiffany, who was down to earth,
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  Dana had always had an unusual fixation on money. He didn't want to
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  be the son of wealthy, successful parents. He wanted other people to perceive
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  him as being wealthy and successful in his own right. When he started studying
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  finance at Santa Clara University, he viewed his college career like a fresh start.
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  He began telling people that he had earned millions as an entrepreneur, taking
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  his own father's story and pretending that he had been the one to earn that
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  money, claiming to be a stock market whiz. Plenty of people believed him.
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  He even had a story printed in the SEU newspaper which described him as
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  a self made millionaire. Eventually, the lies that Dana was telling at college
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  trickled back to his family. In response, Dale Yule decided to change the
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  plan for his estate and decided that he would be cutting Dana off financially after
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  he graduated from college in the summer. Dana had always boasted that he would
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  be a millionaire in his own right by his twenty fifth birthday, but realistically,
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  at the age of twenty one, he was still living at home with
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  his parents, using the family money for everything. After finding out that he
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  was the only surviving member of his immediate family, Dana didn't appear to be
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  stricken by grief. Instead, he was mostly focused on the contents of his
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  parents wills. He had already known that his father would stop paying for his
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  expenses after college. That wasn't a secret. However, Dana didn't know that
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  his parents had also created a trust for him. His expenses would be paid
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  by a trustee throughout his early twenties, and he would receive some dividends during
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  his late twenties, but he would not have immediate access to their estates.
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  Once Dana was informed that he would not be able to benefit from the bulk
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  of the Eyule family wealth for another ten years, he was unable to hide
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  his anger and shock. From the earliest days of the investigation, Detective Curtis
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  had suspected Dana. He'd been the one responsible for taking Dana through the crime
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  scene for the first time and immediately noticed that Dana's reactions weren't normal. Later,
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  the detective summarized the experience, saying that he'd looked at twenty one year
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  old Dana and thought that kid's dirty. But Dana wasn't the only one that
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  investigators didn't trust. They couldn't deny that he had an air tight alibi and
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  that there was only one way he could have killed his family, getting somebody
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  else to do it for him. As it happened, Dana did have one
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  friend who might have been willing to kill for him, Joel Rodokovich, a
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  college dropout who had a reputation for being obsessed with explosives and firearms. The
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  suspicion about Dana and Joel was fueled by their decision to start living in the
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  Yule Home together less than a month after the murders, there, even using
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  cash to buy themselves helicopter flying lessons. Throughout this time, Dana and Joel
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  made the unusual decision to only communicate with each other by using payphones and pagers,
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  as if they were paranoid that somebody would overhear them talking. For months,
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  investigators watched the pair closely, trying to monitor their communications. One day,
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  an undercover detective recorded one of Joel's payphone conversations with Dana, where he
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  told him, quote, they don't have evidence, they will try to catch
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  you in a lie. Forensics revealed that the firearm used to shoot the Yules
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  was a nine millimeters high end rifle. One of these specialty rifles had been
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  purchased by one of Joel Rodokovich's family friends only a couple of weeks before the
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  Yules were murdered. The friend, Ernest Ponce, admitted to the police that
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  he'd bought the rifle and given it to Joel, but insisted that he had
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  no idea that Joel planned to kill someone with it. On the second of
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  March nineteen ninety five, both Dana and Joel were arrested, and Ernest Ponce
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  was granted immunity as long as he agreed to testify against his friends. Ernest
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  did end up testifying at the eight month long trial, but the jury ultimately
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  decided that he wasn't a reliable witness, and they believed that he had been
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  more involved in the crimes than he was willing to admit to. After almost
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  two weeks of deliberation, the jury found both Dana and and Joel guilty of
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  three counts of murder in the first degree, as well as an aggravating circumstance
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  that meant that they were eligible for a stricter sentence. One of these factors
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  was that the murders had been convicted by a killer who lay in wait for
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  the family to arrive home, showing exactly how premeditated it had been. Both
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  men were sentenced to life in prison without parole. Out of the three victims,
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  Detective Curtis believed that only one of them had caught sight of the killer.
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  Dale and Tiffany had both been killed by a single shot, but Glee
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  had been shot four times, several of the shots at close range while the
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  killer was straddling her. Glee had met Joel several times before when he had
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  come to the house, and knew that he was one of Dana's closest friends.
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  Quote. I'm sure she saw who it was, said one of the
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  prosecutors at the trial. She knew her son was murdering her. O that's
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  ten minute murder for today. Brief and binge able true crime. I'm Joe
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  the host, and thank you so much for taking the time to listen.
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  up on back episodes as well as not miss any of the new episodes.
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  Speaking of new, on the next episode, we're going to jump back into
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  serial killers. We're going to talk about one that you may have heard of,
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  the weepy voiced killer, Paul Michael Stefani. And the reason they called
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  him the weepy voice killer is because he would anonymously report his own crimes and
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  use this weird, weepy sounding voice like he was crying and all of this
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  place in the Minneapolis Saint Paul area. So that's coming up on the next
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  episode of Ten Minute Murder, So make sure you do not miss it.
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  that's it. That's today's episode. Thank you so much for listening to another
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  ten minute murder podcast. I will see you on the next one. By