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Susan Monica: The Oregon Farmer Who Fed Men to Pigs · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, so picture this. You've got this 20-acre fortress, right?
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: And it's deep, I mean, deep in the dense, completely
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: undeveloped woodland of Weimer, Oregon.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, way off the beaten path.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And there are these heavy wrought iron gates sealing
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: the whole property off from the outside world. Behind those gates,
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: there's just this eerie silence hanging over a working farm.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: It's only broken by, you know, the sound of livestock
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: and the trees rustling.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: Just completely isolated. Right.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: And wandering through this massive compound is a dog just
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: waiting for a master who hasn't been seen in months.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: So you are stepping into a true story today that, honestly,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: it fundamentally breaks how we think about people living on
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: the margins of society and how easily someone can just
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: engineer their own totally sovereign reality.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: It really does. It's fascinating. Yeah.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: So today we're doing a deep dive into a case.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: detailed in a 2026 All That's Interesting article by Austin Harvey,
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: The Terrifying Reality of Susan Monica. Okay, let's unpack this
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: because it is wild.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: It really is. I mean, we are essentially examining the
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: complete collapse of a constructed world here. Usually, you know,
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: when you look at the architecture of a crime, you
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: look for motive, means, and opportunity.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: The classic trio, right? Exactly.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: But in this case, we actually have to look at
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: the architecture of isolation itself, like This is an exploration
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: of what happens to the human psyche when societal friction
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: is just completely removed. For over two decades.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Wow. 20 years without that friction. Yeah.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: And we're looking at the catastrophic collision that happens when
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: this fiercely guarded, totally analog kingdom is finally breached by,
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: of all things, a single digital footprint.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: I cannot wait to get to that part. But first,
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: I want to dive straight into the mind of the
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: architect behind this fortress. Because... Before she was the proprietor
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: of this remote Oregon farm, Susan Monica was actually born
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: Stephen Buchanan in California back in 1948. She served in
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War, got an honorable discharge,
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: and later transitioned to living as a woman. But the
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: detail that I just can't stop turning over in my
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: head is her professional background.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: Oh, the engineering? Yes.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: After the military, she became this highly successful engineer. I mean,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: we are talking about a profession entirely predicated on systems,
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: structured logic, and like precise control over variables.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: And that engineering background, honestly, it is the skeleton key
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: to understanding everything that follows in this case.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: Really? How so?
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: Well, think about it. An engineer's brain is trained to
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: conceptualize systems where every single component serves a very specific
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: calculated function, right?
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like building a machine where every cog matters. Exactly.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: They build infrastructure intended to behave exactly as dictated by
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: the laws of physics and the blueprints they draft. But
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: the military and corporate engineering sectors, they're also deeply institutional.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: Right. Lots of red tape.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: Lots of red tape, yeah. They demand rigid social conformity,
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: constant peer review. You've got external hierarchies you have to
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: answer to.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: Which makes her pivot in 1991 so incredibly jarring because
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: she takes all of that systemic knowledge and completely just
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: totally abandons the infrastructure of society.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: She just walks away from it all.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: She buys 20 acres of raw, untamed woodland in Oregon.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: And she doesn't just move out to the country to relax.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: She builds a self-sustaining compound from scratch. She's raising pigs
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: and chickens. She builds a barn. And she even starts
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: a business called White Queen Construction.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: The wrought iron business, right?
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she's forging these massive wrought iron gates and fences.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: She essentially builds a physical manifestation of total autonomy. Like,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: she's literally the head of White Queen Construction building wrought
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: iron gates. It's like she was fortifying her own kingdom
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: where her rules were the only laws.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: That analogy is spot on. The transition from a corporate
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: engineer to a solitary off-the-grid farmer, it's really a pursuit
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: of ultimate systemic control.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: Because she didn't have that control in the corporate world.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: Right. Because in an engineering firm, sure, you control the schematic,
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: but you are still subject to the company, the client,
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: society at large. But out on those 20 acres, she
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: removed all external variables. She was the architect, the builder,
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: the executive, and ultimately the law.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: The ultimate authority.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And when you name your company White Queen Construction,
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: I mean, you are signaling an underlying psychology there.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: Oh, like chess?
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah. In chess, the White Queen is the most powerful
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: piece on the board. She's capable of moving in any direction,
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: dominating the space around her. So she was fortifying a
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: kingdom where her rules were the only legislation.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: That is so eerie. Let's push on the mechanics of
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: that isolation a bit, because we romanticize off-the-grid living a lot,
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: you know?
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely. The whole escape the rat race, live off
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: the land dream.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: Right, the cabin in the woods fantasy. But building and
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: maintaining a 20-acre wrought iron compound alone for 22 years,
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: that requires just An immense amount of physical and psychological endurance.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: It does. And that extreme endurance, it comes at a
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: severe cognitive cost. Like, psychologists often talk about the echo
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: chamber effect of isolation.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: Okay, what does that look like in this context?
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: Well, in our daily lives, our moral and behavioral baselines
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: are constantly being calibrated by societal friction.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: Like getting called out if you do something weird.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: Exactly. A weird comment is met with a strange look, or...
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: A selfish action gets pushback from your friends or co-workers.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: We course correct based on the presence of others. But
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: when you remove that friction entirely for 22 years, your
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: internal compass doesn't just drift. The magnetic poles completely reverse.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: Because there's no one there to say, hey, you're going
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: too far.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: Right. Without society to challenge her, whatever she deemed correct
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: became absolute truth. The line between Eccentric independence and pathological
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: omnipotence just blurred completely behind those heavy gates.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: But, I mean, a kingdom still needs resources, right? Maintaining
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: a 20-acre farm is economically and physically draining. You eventually
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: run out of capital or manpower, which inevitably forces a
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: breach in your own walls.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: You have to let the outside world in eventually.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she needed cheap labor. And that economic necessity is
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: exactly what drew Robert Haney into this web in 2013.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: Right, the handyman. Right.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: He was looking for an escape himself, answered her Craigslist ad,
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: and the deal was pretty simple. Park cash, live in
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: a trailer on the property, and build a house from
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: the ground up.
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: And that dynamic, it's a textbook transactional relationship that preys
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: on a very specific vulnerability.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: Because he was looking to disappear a bit. Exactly.
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: Haney wasn't looking for a corporate job with W-2s and oversight.
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: He wanted the peace of a simple analog life. He
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: just wanted to work with his hands and be left alone.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: Which makes him the perfect target.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: Totally. For someone operating a secluded fortress, individuals who are
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: seeking to live off the grid are the perfect labor source.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: They come voluntarily. They exist on the margins of the
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: digital economy. And because they're already somewhat disconnected from mainstream society,
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: their presence, and more importantly, their potential absence, doesn't immediately
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: trigger alarms. Right.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: Nobody's expecting them to clock into an office every day.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: But this isolation works perfectly for 22 years. Right up
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: until New Year's Day, 2014.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: When the outside world finally comes looking.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Haney's children haven't heard from him in months. And
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: they decide to just drive out to the property. This
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: is the first real stress test of Monica's constructed reality.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: She has to explain the disappearance of a man to
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: his own family.
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: And the story she tells them is just incredibly elaborate.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: It's so convoluted. She claims Haney got a call about
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: a family member being assaulted, spiraled into heavy drinking, started
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: acting erratically, and eventually just walked away from the farm,
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: explicitly asking her to watch his dog.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: This is where we see the engineering mindset attempt, and
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: completely fail, to manage a human crisis.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: It's like she over-engineered the lie.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: That's exactly it. In forensic psychology, this is known as over-reporting.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: When someone is caught in a deception, particularly someone who
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: believes they are vastly more intelligent than their audience, they
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: often construct overly complex narratives.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: Throwing in all these dramatic details to distract them.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: Right. They weave in these emotional elements like a fabricated
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: assault on a family member and the sudden dramatic battle
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: with alcoholism to create the smokescreen of human tragedy.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: So they're hoping the family gets so caught up in
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: the emotional story that they don't look at the facts.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The goal is to make the story so emotionally
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: dense that that the listener is distracted from the structural
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: flaws of the lie itself.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: But I'm struggling to reconcile this, though, because we have
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: an incredibly smart engineer who builds physical systems for a living, right?
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: Yet this narrative system she designed is so sloppy.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: It's like when you catch a colleague in a minor
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: lie at the office and they offer way too many
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: unprompted details just to fill the silence. Monica scales that
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: everyday psychology up to a literal murder cover-up. But she
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: ignores the most glaring physical variables.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: The things right in front of her.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: Yes. He needs son Jesse. He looks around the farm
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: and immediately spots his dad's leather jacket. He sees all
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: of his expensive tools. And most importantly, the dog is
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: still there. Here's where it gets really interesting. I mean,
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: who leaves their dog, their leather jacket, and their livelihood,
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: their tools, behind if they're just walking away to start
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: a new life? Nobody does.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: And Jesse Haney's reaction is a masterclass in trusting your
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: baseline intuition.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: Trusting your gut. Exactly.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: He knew the behavioral patterns of his father. A craftsman
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: does not abandon the tools that generate his livelihood.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: Let alone his dog.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: Right. A man seeking a quiet life does not abandon
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: his loyal dog to a virtual stranger. The analog physical
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: evidence completely contradicted the elaborate verbal architecture Monica had built.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: She tried to build a story, but the farm itself
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: told the truth.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: She attempted to engineer a narrative of a chaotic departure,
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: but the physical environment she controlled, it told a story
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: of sudden, interrupted permanence.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: Jesse literally said it made the hairs on the back
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: of his neck stand up. But here is the fascinating twist.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: As blaring as those analog red flags were, the jacket,
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: the tools, the dog, they weren't the mechanism that actually
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: brought the Gates down.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: Right. They were just the suspicion.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Monica was defeated by a system she couldn't forge
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: out of iron. It was a digital footprint.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: It's the ultimate irony of this whole case. Yeah.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: So Robert Haney lived a cash-based, off-the-grid lifestyle, which made
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: him difficult to track in traditional ways. But investigators discovered
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: a single glaring anomaly. His electronic benefits transfer card, his EBT,
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: had been swiped at a nearby Walmart in December 2013.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: Which completely blows her timeline out of the water.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: Months after Monica claimed he had wandered off in a
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: drunken spiral.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: It's the ultimate collision of an isolated reality and the
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: modern surveillance state.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: That's a great way to put it. I mean, Monica
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: spent 22 years meticulously controlling every physical aspect of her
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: 20 acres. But she failed to account for the digital
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: tethers of the 21st century.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: You can't just build a wall to keep out data. Exactly.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: An EBT swipe at a local Walmart generates an irrefutable,
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: time-stamped data point. It doesn't matter how elaborate your story
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: about an assaulted family member is, you cannot argue with
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: a centralized digital receipt.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: It's hard evidence.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: That single data point shattered her timeline and provided the
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: exact legal leverage the police needed to get onto that property.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: It's the battering ram. That EBT discrepancy at a local
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: Walmart gave the police the exact leverage they needed to
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: breach the gates of White Queen Construction. So armed with
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: that data, the Jackson County Sheriff's Office executes a search warrant.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: And this is where the narrative shifts from suspicious to deeply,
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: deeply macabre.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: It takes a very dark turn here.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Detective Julie Denny is walking this quiet, rural property.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: And she finds a severed human leg. Not skeletal remains.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: A leg. severed from mid-femur down to the toes.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: And the discovery of that biological evidence forces an immediate
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: psychological pivot for Monica.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: She can't use the drunk story anymore.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: Right. She can no longer rely on the narrative, the
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: wandering drunken handyman. The physical reality of a severed limb
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: demands a new explanation. And this is where we see
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: the profound distortion of her moral compass fully expose itself.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: Because confronted with the leg, The complex story of the
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: assaulted family member just vanishes instantly. She replaces it with
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: something far more twisted.
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: The pig story. Yes.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: She tells investigators that in the fall of 2013, she
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: walked out to her barn and found her pigs in
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: a feeding frenzy. Upon closer inspection, she claims they were
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: eating Robert Haney. And her exact defense here is what
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: we really need to unpack because it's wild.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: It's completely surreal.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: She said Haney was lying there, still alive, with, quote,
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: his guts all over the place. So, she claimed, she
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: shot him to put him out of his misery. She
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: explicitly stated she didn't report it because she knew it
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: was wrong to do to a human, but if she
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: told the police, they would put her pigs down.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is the psychology of cognitive dissonance. It's staggering.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: To protect the pigs over the human.
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: Well, more to preserve her self-concept. She cannot frame herself
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: as a murderer, right? So she has to frame herself
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: as a reluctant savior delivering this tragic grace.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: A mercy killing.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: Exactly. This is a permutation of the mercy killer complex,
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: but twisted through the lens of absolute isolation. She is
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: equating the life of a human being with the life
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: of livestock. And ultimately, she's deciding that the livestock holds
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: higher value.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: Because they're hers.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: Right. In her sovereign kingdom, the pigs were her subjects,
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: her property, her constant companions. Robert Haney was merely an
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: imported resource.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: But let's look at the sheer logistical reality of that lie.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: If this were truly a tragic accident, and she shot
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: him purely as an act of mercy, the secrecy makes
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: zero sense.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: It makes no sense at all.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: The physical labor required to dispose of a human body,
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: especially for a woman in her 60s, is immense and dangerous.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: It is vastly more difficult than just dialing 911 and
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: dealing with animal control.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: Which proves that the fear of losing her pigs was
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: at best a secondary justification.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: Right, an excuse.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: The primary driver was the preservation of her authority. Dialing
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: 911 means inviting the state into her kingdom. It means
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: submitting to an external investigation, external rules, external judgment.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: And she couldn't handle that.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: She couldn't. She didn't report it because in her mind
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: she was the ultimate arbiter of reality on that farm.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: She handled the situation in-house because she genuinely believed her authority...
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: superseded the laws of Oregon.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: But that delusion of supreme authority shatters the moment investigators
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: ask one simple standard question. They look at her, having
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: just heard this insane pig story, and ask, is there
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: anything else we should know?
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: Such a simple administrative question.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a question designed to close out an interview. But
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: it acts as a structural collapse for Susan Monica. She
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: breaks down, she asks for a map of her property,
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: she takes a pen, and she draws an X right
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: in the middle of it. And she tells them, that's
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: where you'll find Steve.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: She is treating the map of her farm like an
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: engineer's blueprint.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: A treasure map with an X.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: Right. Even in the act of confessing, she is attempting
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: to maintain geographical control. She isn't just verbally admitting to
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: a crime. She is providing exact coordinates, reasserting her dominance
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: over the physical space and the bodies buried within it.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean for the investigation? She's
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: treating the map of her farm like a pirate's treasure map.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: But the X marks a grave. And Steve is Stephen D'Alessino,
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: a handyman who worked for her in the summer of 2012,
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: a full year before Robert Haney.
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: So now we have a pattern.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: Exactly. The narrative of a tragic one-off farm accident instantly dissolves.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: Investigators are now looking at a systemic pattern of violence.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: And true to form, Monica's story for D'Alessino shifts rapidly.
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: Because she has to engineer a new defense. Right.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: First, she claims she found two of her missing guns
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: in his belongings. She confronted him, and they wrestled. She
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: says a gun went off accidentally, striking him in the
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: back of the head. But then, she admits she grabbed
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: another rifle, stood over him, and shot him dead.
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: Observe the escalation in her own justifications here.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: It gets worse with each version.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: It does. With Haney, it was a warped narrative of
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: compassionate mercy. With D'Alessino, she starts with the classic defense
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: of accidental discharge during a struggle. but then admits to
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: an execution-style shooting over stolen property.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: Just executing him on her land. Right.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: She is standing over a wounded man and delivering a
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: lethal retributive strike. The veneer of the benevolent farmer is
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: completely stripped away here, revealing a proprietor willing to enact
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: capital punishment for theft within her borders.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: Her kingdom, her laws. And then comes the line that
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: turns a localized true crime case into something straight out
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: of a psychological thriller. Detective Eric Henderson naturally asks if
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: there are any other bodies on the property. Monica looks
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: at him and says that if she told them about
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: the 17 others, she would spend the rest of her
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: life in jail.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: We really have to spend time analyzing this specific claim
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: because the number 17 introduces a massive psychological fork in
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: the road.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: Right, because is it real or is it a brag? Exactly.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: Is this the confession of a prolific, highly organized serial killer?
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: who utilize the isolation of her farm and the anonymity
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: of Craigslist to hunt transients for decades? Or is this
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: just the manifestation of narcissistic collapse?
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: Let's explore that collapse theory.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: Because we see this sometimes when cornered individuals realize their
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: constructed reality is over, right?
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty common in high-profile cases.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: When the facade of the intelligent, untouchable engineer falls apart,
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: they can't bear the thought of being seen as a sloppy,
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: desperate criminal who got caught by a Walmart receipt. So
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: they reach for infamy. They exaggerate their crimes to regain
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: a sense of terrifying power and control over the investigators
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: who just bested them. Exactly.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: The grandiosity of claiming 17 victims forces the police to
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: continue paying attention to her. It makes her the center
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: of a massive speculative universe.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: She wants to be the mastermind.
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: But we cannot entirely dismiss the darker systemic possibility. Transients,
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: day laborers. Individuals seeking cash work and off-the-grid arrangements, they
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: exist in a state of systemic invisibility.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: Which makes them perfect targets.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: They are the perfect targets for someone operating a secluded fortress.
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: If she had been operating this way since 1991, decades
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: before digital footprints became ubiquitous, the possibility of undiscovered victims
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: buried under 20 acres of dense Oregon woodland remains a chilling,
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: unresolved variable.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: It's a terrifying thought. I mean, Is the 20-acre farm
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: essentially a personal graveyard for transients? But regardless of whether
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: the number was 2 or 17, with multiple confessions on
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: the table, the next phase is taking this tangled web
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: of stories into a courtroom. And if Susan Monica believes
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: she could engineer her way out of an interrogation, the
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: courtroom proves to be a system she entirely fails to comprehend.
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: Because a courtroom is an environment where you are completely
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: stripped of your sovereignty, you cannot control the narrative with
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: your own shifting rules.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: There's a judge. There's a jury. There are procedures. Right.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: You are bound by the rigid, unforgiving architecture of forensic
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: science and legal procedure. And the forensic reality was in stark,
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: undeniable contrast to every single story she had engineered.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: The forensics are just brutal. She claimed a mercy killing
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: for Haney and a self-defense struggle for D'Alessino. But medical
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: examiners discovered that the remains of these men had been
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: posthumously dismembered, hacked to pieces with an axe, and scattered
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: across the property in plastic bags.
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: And the mechanics of dismemberment speak volumes about intent.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: How so?
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: You do not spend hours executing the grueling, gruesome physical
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: labor required to hack a body to pieces if you
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: are acting out of compassion or if you are the
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: victim of an accidental struggle. Right.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: It's exhausting work.
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: It is. Dismemberment is an act of profound malice and
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: a desperate, calculated effort to conceal a crime. It entirely
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: nullifies the emotional core of her defense.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: It completely shatters the mercy narrative. And furthermore, the autopsy
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: on Stephen D'Alessino completely dismantled the story of a single
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: accidental discharge followed by a finishing shot. Forensics proved D'Alessino
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: had suffered three to four gunshot wounds to the head.
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: Which triggers yet another desperate narrative pivot.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: She just can't stop changing the story.
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: When the physical evidence cornered her, she simply invented a new,
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: increasingly absurd variable. Faced with the reality of multiple head wounds,
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: she testified in court that Dellicino had repeatedly shot himself
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: in the head.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: Three to four times.
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: Three to four times.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: In the back of the head. By himself. I mean,
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: it's the kind of lie you'd expect from a cornered child,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: not a former corporate engineer.
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: It illustrates the desperate flailing of a mind accustomed to
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: its own perceived brilliance.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: She thought she was the smartest person in the room.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: She had spent decades solving complex engineering problems and dictating
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: reality on her farm. She genuinely believed that if she
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: just kept generating new narrative variables, she could eventually outsmart
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: the forensic science.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: But she didn't engineer an acquittal. She engineered a spectacle.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: This is where the true crime trope of the evil
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: genius falls completely flat. We expect a cold, calculated mastermind,
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: but what we often get is staggering arrogance masked in delusion.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, she showed up to her murder trial wearing
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: a variety of different wigs on different days.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: From a psychological standpoint, wearing different wigs in a high-stakes
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: environment like a murder trial is a masking technique.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: Like she's playing a character.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: Yes, it suggests a fractured presentation of self. Her kingdom
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: had been breached, her authority stripped away, so she was
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: effectively trying on different characters, searching for a role or
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: a persona that might elicit sympathy or confusion from the jury.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: But the mask kept slipping in the most grotesque, inappropriate ways.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: During the trial... A cellmate testified that Monica signed a
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: birthday card for her, and the signature read, quote, from
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: the sweetest murderer in Jackson County.
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: That is just wild.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: Think about the complete detachment from reality required to view
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: your own murder trial as an opportunity for dark, self-aggrandizing
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: humor on a Hallmark card.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: It reveals a profound hubris. Even incarcerated, she's trying to
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: reclaim a dominant, albeit infamous, identity.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: She's bragging about it.
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah. But her need for absolute control reached its peak
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: during cross-examination. Despite having a defense team, she insisted on
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: personally cross-examining Detective Henderson.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: And during that cross-examination, she loudly announced to the jury
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: that she wanted to demonstrate exactly how she shot D'Alessino.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: She asked for 10 seconds, stood up, put her hands
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: in the air, and physically pantomimed the shooting in the
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: middle of the courtroom.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: That is the ultimate catastrophic expression of her need for control.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: Just putting on a show for the jury.
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: Having directed the reality of her isolated farm for two decades,
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: she could not tolerate letting her lawyer speak for her.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: She had to be the director, the center of the narrative,
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: even if it meant physically acting out the very murder
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: she was desperately trying to deny.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: It's mind-boggling.
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: It is a stunning display of self-sabotage driven entirely by
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: narcissistic arrogance.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: And that overwhelming combination of forensic evidence, the dismemberment, the
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: multiple head wounds, and her own courtroom self-sabotage, it inevitably
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: leads to the final judgment. The jury saw right through
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: the wigs, the shifting coordinates, and the bizarre pantomimes. Susan
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: Monica was found guilty of the murders of Robert Haney
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: and Stephen D'Alessino. She was sentenced to life in prison
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: with a minimum of 50 years before the possibility of parole.
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: And during the sentencing phase, Judge Tim Barnack delivered a
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: summary that cuts to the absolute core of the pathology
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: we've been discussing.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: What did he say?
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: He looked at her and stated, I don't know how
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: else I can put it. You valued pigs more than
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: you value people. You are a cold-blooded killer.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: You valued pigs more than you value people. It distills
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: the entire 22-year experiment of her isolation into one sentence.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture, it forces
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: us to look at the fragility of the social contract.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: How so?
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: Society only functions because We collectively agree on the basic
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: tenets of human value. When someone actively removes themselves from
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: that system, barricades themselves behind wrought iron and places themselves
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: as the supreme, unchallenged authority of their domain, the value
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: of human life warps.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: Because there's no one holding them accountable. Exactly.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: She didn't just kill these men. She reduced them to resources,
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: feed for her animals, problems to be engineered, hacked up
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: and distributed in plastic bags.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: So why should you, the listener, care about this? Beyond
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: the grim fascination of a true crime case, I think
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: this story is a stark reminder about the vital importance
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: of trusting your gut instincts, just as Jesse Haney did
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: when the hairs on his neck stood up. He walked
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: into an unfamiliar environment, was presented with an incredibly elaborate,
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: confident narrative by someone in a position of authority, but
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: he trusted the analog data right in front of him.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: He saw the jacket. He saw the dog.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and he listened to the biological alarm bell ringing
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: in his head.
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: It also highlights a systemic tragedy regarding those who seek
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: a simple life. The individuals looking for cash work, trying
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: to escape the hyper-connected modern world, they exist in a
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: highly vulnerable space.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: Because they're already off the radar.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: This case proves how easily people can disappear into the
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: margins when they willingly disconnect from the safety nets of society.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: It really does. To bring this full circle, we've traced
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: the incredible journey of a kingdom built on isolation. from
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: a quiet land purchase in 1991 to a gruesome forensic
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: dismantling in 2014. It is a testament to the power
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: of physical evidence over manipulated narratives.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: The physical truth of the severed remains and the unyielding
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: digital truth of the EBT card cut through decades of
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: carefully engineered deception.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: But I want to leave you with one final, deeply
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: ironic paradox to mull over. Something to explore on your
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: own that builds on everything we've talked about. Susan Monica
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: spent 22 years, vast amounts of physical energy, and all
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: of her resources building a 20-acre analog fortress. She wanted
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: to live entirely off the grid, insulated from the prying eyes, rules,
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: and judgments of modern society. She wanted to be the
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: absolute monarch of a pre-digital kingdom.
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: She succeeded in building the physical infrastructure for that isolation.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: But the infrastructure required maintenance. And the tools she used
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: to maintain that very lifestyle, a modern Craigslist ad broadcast
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: to the digital world to lure in labor, and a
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: digitized Walmart EBT swipe that she failed to account for,
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: were the exact modern tethers that dragged her secrets kicking
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: and screaming into the light. Her intense, driving desire for
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: total analog isolation was ultimately and perfectly destroyed by the
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: very digital age she tried so desperately to escape.