Latest / Bless This Mess: A Southern True Crime Podcast / 101. [Florida] Tamara Tucker

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101. [Florida] Tamara Tucker · Bless This Mess: A Southern True Crime Podcast

0:20
Hey, everyone, welcome to bless This mess in the True Rum podcast.
0:23
I'm caring here, what's dousa? Heystu? Right right, So we're back
0:26
this week. We're actually doing a kind of a special episode because we are
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going on if you heard last week, we're talking about we're going on a
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cruise. This is our first cruise, very excited. So we will have
0:39
well, there's gonna be maybe like a we're trying to I'm gonna try to
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put something out next week, but I may just catch up on the little
0:47
less messages that we're behind on because I'm actually going out of town for work,
0:51
so we won't be in the same room to record. So next week
0:56
there may not be a new like one of these types of episodes. But
1:00
so sorry about then are you? Well? We you know we still we
1:07
both work full time. I have to travel for work a lot. We
1:10
have two small children. You know, there's a lot going on. Okay,
1:14
So anyways, but we're trying to justify this to mayor somebody, I
1:18
mean, no to them. Well you're looking at me like I need to
1:22
acknowledge this to the public anyway. So yeah, next week there won't be
1:23
a new episode with me and STU. But I might try to do something
1:26
because I can record something on my own or just catch up on the a
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little less message. So, but we are going on a cruise, We're
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gonna try to because I have to go out to town for work and then
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I'm gonna come back and then we're gonna be leaving. I'll only be home
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like a day or two and then we're gonna leave on the cruise. So
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we're gonna try to record something that evening before we head out to go to
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the cruise. But we are excited if you we're not going to record on
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the cruise. No, we're not going to record. We're not going to
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do that. No, No, I'm not spending my time on the cruise
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recording an episode. Sorry, guys, you're not that I'm not that dedicated
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anyway, So hopefully we don't have a gap of two weeks, but we're
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gonna try just to have a gap of one week. But anyway, so
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this is a special episode because we are going on a cruise. I found
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a whole series on Discovery, like Discovery Network, on the ID channel.
2:15
There's Discovery app about cruise ship killers. So, like I didn't realize there
2:21
were so many people got murdered on cruises. I thought it was like a
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pretty rare event. But they had enough for two seasons, like twenty plus
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episodes per season, and these weren't just like your typical throwing people overboard and
2:34
everything that some people were like murdered in their room. And it's like,
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how do you not think you're gonna get caught stabbing someone in your cap in
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your stateroom. I don't understand that. So anyways, so we're gonna do
2:46
a special one, this one that is a cruise out of Florida, so
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technically it's still in the South. But anyways, let's just do the stuff
2:53
that Stu hates. Patreon dot com, slash BLUs This Mess podcast check that
2:58
out early access and ad free, and we are going to eventually work on
3:02
some additional content. But it's just not we just don't promise some paper stuff.
3:06
We ain't going well, we are, but I'm saying eventually. They
3:08
don't know what eventually could be. Any time it could be. It took
3:14
us five years to get one hundred episodes. Anyways, and then we have
3:16
buy Me at Coffee dot com, slash bless This Mess. I'll like us
3:21
on Instagram and Facebook. I'mna be doing some cruise content. I'm gonna show
3:25
you. I'm gonna show you, guys how I looked at all the different
3:29
tips of packing and everything. So if you're going on a cruise, you
3:31
want to follow me on the Instagram or the Facebook probably, and I'm gonna
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show you all the little cruise packing tips I got. So when we get
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there, I'll show you how I set up our stateroom. Because we have
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two small children. One of them is going to be in a pack and
3:44
play the other ones at Toddler. So I'm gonna show you how I did
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that because I was I was looking up all the tips. So make sure
3:50
and check us out on that and then rate reviews, subscribe and I guess
3:57
that's it, Stu, Yeah, are you still with us? Hi?
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I'm with you all right. So with all of that, let's go ahead
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and get into this week's episode. Tamara Lorraine Tucker was born January seventeen,
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nineteen sixty eight, to William and Wanda Tucker in Rolla, Missouri. I
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guess I'm pronounced that right, r O l A sure, Rolla. I
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don't know how Rolla who knows, who knows what these names are gonna be,
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Like, it's pronounced lalla somewhere. So Tamara would have a son,
4:30
Jonathan Tucker in June of nineteen ninety one. Her passion in life was teaching
4:34
and helping with helping children that were in abusive situations. She served as a
4:41
program director at a at Child Abuse Prevention Association where she led policy change on
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both I cannot read today's store, where she led policy change on both the
4:53
state and national level and advanced child education in supports. So she's like this
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was her main passion in life was helping children, try to help rescue them
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from these abusive situations and then give them the resources to be able to overcome
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this and grow up, and and pass laws to help help prevent and help
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support these kids once because you know, we've seen it lots of times kids
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get pulled out abusive situations, but then they get sent in to the foster
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system and then well, I mean not all not all of them, but
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there are people that just you hear stories all the time about people that get
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the foster kids because they get the money for that fostering kids. I mean,
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we have friends that foster children, and they're they're absolutely wonderful and they
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love the children and everything that. But there are those cases where you hear
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about the foster parents just taking in kids so they can get money and stuff
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like that and have somebody to do their chores. Yeah, I guess,
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or they could be an abusive situation. I've been listening to the Karen Slaughter
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books, the Will Trent series, so I have some Really he was in
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the foster system, and Will Trent was, if anyways, familiar, and
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I've just if anybody's read her books, they're very dark, So I've heard
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horror stories about the foster's system, even though it was fictional in this I'm
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sure it happens based on some of it, probably based on something she's some
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actual events that have happened. So anyway, so's she's working in this child
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abuse Abuse Prevention Association. She's making all these changes, and then starting in
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two thousand and eight, she became a professor for Park University, teaching social
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work. Now her students loved her. She was a favorite teacher on campus.
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Tamara had many interests along with teaching. These included travel, photography,
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gardening, and genealogy, just to name a few she was she had like
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a passion for life, love doing all sorts of things. She had all
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sorts of hobbies. Now, she was described as eclectic as you can imagine,
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even signing all of her emails would namas day Stuart, Oh Lord,
6:57
Yeah, a little hippie type, yeah, a little it. Now.
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She lived a very full life, and when her son had a daughter,
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she embraced her role as grandmother and doated on her granddaughter. Now, at
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some point, Tamara meets Eric Newman. Eric is a heavy equipment operator living
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into Peka, Kansas. Now. The two hit it off and it is
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the start of a long term relationship for Tamara. She calls Eric the love
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of her life, and they seemed very happy together. They were she still
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lived in Missouri and he lived in Topeka, Kansas. I didn't look at
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how far those were. I think maybe an hour away or something like that.
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But anyways, they didn't live together, but they were long. They
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were just kind of more of a I guess, a modern relationship. They
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weren't getting married or anything, but they were. They were together for a
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long time. Doesn't sound like they were together, sounds like they were an
7:43
hour apart. Well, they were together anyways. On January twenty eighth or
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eighteenth, twenty eighteen, Tamara and Eric had to Jacksonville, Florida to embark
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on a four day cruise to the Bahamas. That's a part cruise. Let
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me tell you to do carnival stuff. Well, oh yeah, carn't yeah,
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we'll read what both they were on. But because what I read,
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so we're going on a seven day cruise and we're going on Royal cribbing,
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because what I heard was it's not necessarily it's not necessarily that it's Carnival or
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Royal Caribbean or any of them. It's the length of the cruise you got
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to look at. So like, just because it's Carnival, a seven day
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cruise on a Carnival is going to be a lot more tame than a three
8:24
or four day cruise on a Carnival or Royal Caribbean because it's the group of
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people. You're gonna get young people that maybe can't afford a full seven day
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one or have a short period of time like a weekend, and they're on
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the booze cruise. They're going for it, you know, But the seven
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day one you might get, especially if you get into like ten day or
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fourteen day. They say, it's a bunch of like old people on the
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ship. That's whether these young people have bought the drink package. All you
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can drink, not to mention the drink going to get their money's work.
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Well, but not to mention we learn because of the whole drink package thing.
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They say cruises are it seems like cruises are inexpensive, but they're not
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because then you got to pay for the drink package. Well, you have
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to pay for everybody in your cabin and you have to pay for it every
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single day, even port days. So if you're a younger person that maybe
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he's like in your twenties or whatever, this want to go party, you
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can't afford seven days for a drink package for two people was like eleven or
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twelve hundred dollars. It's like ridiculous. So a short one four days,
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you only have to pay for four days of the of the alcohol package and
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it's usually only one or two parts in there. Yeah, so so they're
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definitely on like the more of the booze cruise party. She is eclectic,
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she has eclectic there's nothing wrong with that either. I mean she's wrong woman,
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go have fun n I guess, but I mean I don't know if
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my lever can. Oh I know at that age. Yeah, she's trying
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to drink her weight. Well, we don't know. We don't know her
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drinking her tolerance. Yeah. Anyways, anyway, I was just going to
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share that what I learned about the cruise lifestyle. Why, thank you?
9:58
Okay, Yes, I did lose my spot. They were on their way
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to celebrate Tamara's fiftieth birthday and this was a gift from Tamara's parents. The
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cruise was the Carnival Elation and the ship hold Carnival who. Ship holds almost
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twenty two hundred guests and nine hundred crew members. It was built in nineteen
10:22
ninety eight, so it's not as large as some of those ones you see
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on Mighty Cruise ship shows that Stu may watch. Yeah, we've been watching
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the Money cruise ship. We're going on the We're going on the Oasis,
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one of the Oasis class ships from Royal Caribbean Sas are the really big ships,
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one of the ones that holds approximately five thousand people. So if we
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go down, we're making the news people far ship goes down. Really,
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I think any cruise ship that sinks from making news. Well, I started
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reading about cruise ships sinking and stuff, and they said that they're so large
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now, these really big ones, that you could evacuate everybody by the time
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and if it did start sinking, like it's not it's going to take so
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long to sink, you could actually evacuate everybody. We will see in case
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it happens to anyway, the Carnival Elation is operating in a day. In
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case you're one of those weirdos that likes to go, it is operating today.
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Yeah, yes, that's what I just said. Oh did I put
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that in there? No, I looked it up right, Okay, well
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I looked it up to it is operating today. I think they're working out
11:24
a floor right now. Well not today, but when I wrote this,
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I wanted to see. I mean, it's just weird that somebody, but
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there's lots of cruise ship that people died on and they're still out there,
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just chugging around. They cost a lot of day of money to build and
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can't just shut one down just because somebody died on it. I know some
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of these were like on our Mighty cruise ship we were watching like a billion
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dollars. Yes, they got operated for quite some time to get their money.
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Okay. Anyway, Tamara is very excited about the cruise because her job
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she deals with heavy things such as child abuse, social work, just all
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the ins and outs. I mean, I can't even imagine. That's kind
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of like first responders. You can get to see all this crap happening there
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in the day. It's just a lot. Yeah, that's a lot of
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stuff going on. I wouldn't I couldn't do that job. Or they say,
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the other really bad job is the one the people that have to do
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the image checks on like Google, that's sit in a room and have anything
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that's flagged have to look at it. And they said that people don't last
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very long in that job. Now you see some messed up stuff, I'm
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sure, because there's people getting murder, people doing things to animals, probably
12:24
a child abuse, all sorts of worn kinds of weird stuff there people are
12:28
trying to put on the Internet. Anyway, Yeah, so based on her
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job, she's excited to go on this cruise them at all. So they
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board the cruise, her and Eric and they check out all the ship passed
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to offer. Now, since it was Tamra's birthday, the ship did make
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sure that her time was very special. They eat dinner that evening, and
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then they head to one of the party areas where they can drink, dance,
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and watch them entertainment not strippers do, Okay, now, there's no
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strippers on these No. And now, after quite a bit of drinking,
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at around eleven thirty pm, Tameri decides that she's tired, so she heads
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up to the room, leaving Eric at the lounge to continue drinking and enjoying
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his evening. That's a red flag. Why is it a red flag?
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They're on a ship. If I left, If y'all was done drinking and
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I left you and I was like I'm tired, and you were like,
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I'm gonna hang out for and have another drink or two, I'll be like,
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okay, why why on this cruise ship with all these weird people that
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you don't know? No, but why I wouldn't think anything of it if
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I was to leave and be like, hasty, I'm tired. I'm gonna
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go up and go to bed, and you're like, hey, yeah,
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I'm gonna finish my drink and I'll meet you up there and be like,
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Okay, well, what are you gonna do by yourself drinking? People?
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Please used to sitting bars all the time and drink by yourself. I didn't
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have no one to be home too, though. Okay, well, I
13:50
appreciate you'd want to go up go to the bed room with me. I
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appreciate your dedication to me. I'm just saying if I was gonna go to
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bed and you're like, yeah, I'm gonna be down here drinking, I'd
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be like, oh, that's fishing. Really, Yeah, okay, you
14:03
end up in one of them rooms with pineapple on the door or something.
14:05
I know. I did read that, like we got like decorations. I
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was gonna surprise the kids and like, I know they're little, but I'd
14:11
just go overboard anyway, so I might. I was inna shut up stu.
14:20
Oh my god, I walked right into that one. Anyways, I
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decorated thing, but everybody was like in the cruise group, I mean,
14:28
was like, don't put pineapples on your door, because apparently it's a real
14:31
thing. The swingers. I told you. I've told you plenty of times.
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Anyways, anyways, don't put pineapples outside your house either. I did
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buy that pineapple light for our other house. I bought that outdoor pineapple light.
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Yeah, there was a bunch of people started knocking on our doorway to
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take it out. Anyways. Anyways, now, sometime past midnight, when
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they were about thirty nineticle miles from Florida, Eric and crew members make a
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horrific discovery. Tamara's lifeless body is found on the eleventh deck and it appeared
15:07
that she had fallen from their fourteenth deck balcony. Medical personnel from the ship
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arrived on scene. They attempt to say Tamara, but it was just too
15:16
late. She was already gone. The medical team pulls Tamara's blood and is
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measured to be at point two two percent, which everybody knows around here the
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legal limit for driving is point zero eight percent, So point two two is
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like she's smash, She's yeah, she's schlitz, which there's nothing wrong with
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that. She's on a in a controlled environment, she's not driving like whatever.
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I'm sure we've all been there. I'm sure you have. Now.
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Experts say that at this point Tamara would have blurred vision. From this most
15:50
people would have This type of reaction is blurred vision and an inability to stand
15:54
on her own. Now blackouts could even occur at this level. Now,
15:58
looking back at the amount of they were served, it came up to twenty
16:02
one drinks between the two of them in a four hour period. I don't
16:04
know who you drank what, but twenty one drinks between two people in four
16:07
hours. That's a lot. That's a lot. Now, due to being
16:14
in international waters, the closest officials were called in and this is the Central
16:18
Detective Unit from Grand Bahama. Now the officials are looking at the options as
16:22
to what could have possibly happened to Tamara. This could have been an accident,
16:26
a suicide, or someone pushing her overboard. Stewart, that's what you're
16:33
going to do to me now, looking you're the one that said that I
16:36
was going overboard. I said you might. You said you were going overboard.
16:38
I said you might. Everybody, if I don't make it back from
16:44
this, do not listen to this podcast with Stewart's new wife that he came
16:48
to my girlfriend fiance, that he continues this. He's like, in loving
16:52
memory of Kara, we're going to continue on by covering her murder. Yes,
16:59
death, ain't This podcast would blow up if one of us got murdered,
17:03
Stu, who wants to take one for the team, Not me,
17:07
I wouldn't be able to enjoy the revenue. Now, looking at Stewart,
17:11
you should really just be generous and I can shove you overboard. Now,
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looking at it from an accident standpoint, while Tamara was highly intoxicated, the
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rellings on cruise ships are designed to prevent people from accidentally falling over them.
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Now, by law, cruise ship railings must be forty two inches tall,
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with a three inch variants allowed, meaning it could be as short as thirty
17:32
nine inches or as tall as forty five inches. Now, Tamara would have
17:36
needed to intentionally climb on top of the railing to fall over. Now investigors
17:40
need to look at it as a possibility. Although falling over a rolling on
17:44
a cruise ship is rare, but it does happen. So they say,
17:49
whenever they had the experts that I've watched do in this, they said,
17:52
it's just very difficult to accidentally follower. You have to really be like climbing
17:56
up on top of the railing. So doing something yeah, stupid. But
18:00
with the point two to alcohol blood alcohol content, people do stupid things all
18:06
the time. Yes, they do. There's a whole industry in Vegas based
18:11
on Yeah, it's called wedding chap Yes. So then they started looking at
18:18
an intentional jump suicide of some sort. So they're looking to Tamara's past to
18:23
see if there were any warning signs or previous suicide attempts. She had never
18:27
tried to commit suicide in the past, and she had never mentioned feeling hopeless
18:32
to friends or family. She had a love poor life and excellent relationships with
18:37
friends, students, and family members. So none of these were any signs
18:41
of pointing to Tamarabian suicidal. Yeah, I mean, it doesn't mean like
18:45
someone's always displays, but usually there's some sort of indication that this would have
18:52
suicidal tendencies or something like that, I have suicidal tendencies because that's a band,
18:57
right, Yes, Okay, the band. Yeah, I got a
19:00
couple other albums. Okay. Anyway, they quickly ruled this out as an
19:06
option as to what happened to Tamara. Now, investigators interview Eric to see
19:11
if he saw something or saw someone following Tamara. He tells the police that
19:15
he left about twenty minutes after Tamara. He then entered the room and looked
19:19
over the railing and saw Tamara lying several decks down. So he goes in,
19:23
can't find her, goes out to the balcony looking and happens to look
19:26
overboard and then he sees her. He then runs down to go to help
19:30
her see if she's still alive. He told investigators he saw no one suspicious
19:34
that evening around Tamara. This is where he made a mistake. You should
19:38
have said, oh, kind of sketchy people. Yeah. Now, there
19:42
is little to no more information to get out of Eric, so they release
19:45
him. Tamara's body undergoes an autopsy. It was determined that she died from
19:49
blunt force trauma due to the fall. Since she was an American citizen,
19:55
the Grand Bahaman Bahaman Bohemian Bohemian Bahaman government turns over the investigation to the FBI.
20:03
Now this isn't a requirement, but they said, I read in like
20:07
the cruise ship situations like this most of the time. The other ones are
20:11
just like hearing FBI. We don't want to do this, Okay, take
20:15
it now. Tamara's body is sent back to the United States. Her family
20:19
and Eric are grieving the loss of Tamara. Eric starts posting many times on
20:25
his social media about losing love his life, starts a whole Facebook page dedicated
20:29
to Sarah's Sarah, Jesus Christ, what is wrong with you? Sarah?
20:33
I told you I've been reading the Will Trent books. That's Sarah Linton.
20:37
I mean I've been in these books due it him. That's all I've I've
20:42
been listening to the audiobooks. That's all I've listened to the last like how
20:45
many ever days, I've foregone any podcast or anything, and I've just been
20:49
like listened to him. So Sarah Tamara at least it rhymes so's. He
20:56
creates a Facebook page dedicated to Tamara's life, So people are going on there,
21:00
and he's interacting with people all the time. Like he's really into this
21:03
like social media persona of himself as the Great. I don't know, he's
21:11
just like really really into like posting about how upset he is about Tamera and
21:15
everything that, interacting with strangers. Because obviously someone dies on a cruise ship,
21:18
it's going to make the news. So then there's always people that are
21:22
going to be have like this, you know, people that want to reach
21:25
out and be like I'm so sorry, and he's like, he's like in
21:27
it Stan, same people that write to prisoners and all that other stuff.
21:33
Yeah, well, I don't know if it's the same people. But not
21:34
the same people, but the same type of mentality. Yeah, or like
21:38
people want to like celebrities that like, I'm going to write this letter to
21:41
the so and so and maybe they'll see it and we'll live happily up or
21:45
after. No, I don't know. That's not even remotely closed. Just
21:48
some people feel fun people. Some people feel very empathetic to other people.
21:52
I'm not I have a hard time with that, but but they have empathy
21:57
and they want to reach out to somebody, tell them how sorry they are
22:00
that they lost a loved one and everything like that. So the same it's
22:06
not the same people that are writ into prisoners. Well after this, Cerise,
22:10
y'all do not have to write to me when I'm dead or missing.
22:15
Wait on't them. You haven't discided how you're gonna how that's gonna play out.
22:19
I mean, I don't know what can happen in Okay. Tamara's family
22:25
continue to wait for results from the investigation the FBI was conducting. A medical
22:30
examiner in the US completed in another optop so you to look for any signs
22:33
of foul play, and the results, according to them, were eye opening
22:37
because Tamara had signs of being strangled prior to fall into our death. I
22:44
think this is why they release these some of these smaller islands. I mean,
22:48
obviously they're not going to have as many resources as say the FBI or
22:52
a larger country does in terms of investigations. So it's a good thing that
22:56
they do say, you know what, we might not be able to handle
22:59
this the best, and they handed over to the FBI, who was able
23:03
to figure this out, because otherwise it would have just been she fell and
23:07
that's it. You know, there was no other evidence than anything bad happened.
23:10
Plus, why would you want to spend your country's resources and money on
23:14
investigations when you can hand it off to the hotel. Oh yeah, and
23:17
there's no point where like, we're trying to like live our lives in paradise,
23:21
we're trying to make money, and we don't want to be spending it
23:22
on investigating Yeah, citizens, Yeah, how about you with that? Yeah.
23:29
So basically what this means is her death was no accident. So the
23:33
family isn't shocked. Police believe Eric is responsible, but they only knew the
23:38
couple as being very happy. He had been in constant contact with Tamara's family
23:45
after her death, telling them that he missed her so much and that she
23:48
was the love of his life. Yeah again, they said they were just
23:52
he was just caught like still like they had been together a you know,
23:55
a decade, so he was still reaching out to the family saying, oh
23:59
my god, how am I supposed to go on without her? She's lived
24:02
my life and he's doing all this Facebook stuff, social media stuff, saying
24:06
how much he loved her. I mean, yeah, doth protests too much?
24:11
Does it? Yes? What happens if you don't protest at all?
24:15
Oh well that sucks. I gotta go to work. Yeah, well you
24:18
can't. You gotta look at the happy medium otherwise you look guilty. You're
24:23
gonna look guilty regardless. Yeah. Cool. I don't think there is a
24:26
happy medium, because somebody's always going to be like because the husband always did
24:30
it. Just think quiet enough. The husband always did it, did he?
24:33
Yes? What if it was the boyfriend? The boyfriend always did it?
24:37
Shut ups? Do Jesus? Now? Based on the evidence, they
24:41
collected the night of the murder. Eric is the only one who could have
24:45
had access to Tamara and a motive to harmor. On September twenty eighteen,
24:52
they arrest him and charge him with second degree murder. He denies the allegations,
24:56
but they get him anyway, and he posts fifty thousand dollars bond and
25:03
gets out of jail to go back to his social media social media post now,
25:11
due to the murder occurring offshore, the case is taken by federal prosecutors
25:15
who begin building the case against Eric now and looking into his past. There
25:18
are several red flags that he is a violent man. Now. In total,
25:23
they find four misdemeanor convictions from Kansas from two thousand to twenty thirteen.
25:29
Three of those involved an ex fiance and an ex wife where he had strangled
25:33
them in some way. So this is like, and this is happening while
25:40
there, This is happening while Tamara and Eric are together. That he's that
25:44
he's convicted of these things. But I'm telling they seem to live, they
25:48
work together, but they live separate lives almost you know that he's an hour
25:52
however, far Tapka was from where she was. They weren't living together in
25:56
this. It wasn't a typical relationship ship where you might be aware of stuff
26:00
like this. It was like a long distance relationship and long distance man they
26:04
can get rid of get away with a lot of shit. You know.
26:07
It sounds like having all friends, fiances and wives and well, I mean
26:11
these were ex fiances and ex wives. I don't think he was with I
26:14
think he like met up with them at this time and attacked him or something
26:17
like that. So now when the family learned about his past, they were
26:21
in disbelief. They had never heard of Eric doing anything violent to Tamara.
26:26
So please are not sure if Eric had appeared where he was not violent and
26:29
snapped, or if Tamara's family was just unaware of his abuse, because they
26:33
did say, you know, while Tamara worked with people that were like children
26:37
that were abused and like things like that, it's not uncommon for someone who
26:41
works in that to advocate for other people. Has it happened to them?
26:45
And they might be ashamed or embarrassed to say anything because they're like, well,
26:49
I'm supposed I'm out of here telling all these women and children and stuff
26:52
what they need to do. If they're in an abusive relationship, and here
26:56
I am in an abusive relationship and not wanting to get out or can't get
27:00
out or whatever it is. And no, there could be I mean,
27:03
they don't know. They're just saying it could have been. He could have
27:06
been violent. They find it odd that he just went from not being violent
27:08
at all with Tamara, but he was still having violent episodes with other people
27:14
during this time that she didn't wasn't on the receiving end at some point of
27:18
this of his behavior. Maybe it wasn't as severe. I don't know,
27:22
but or maybe she was just ashamed to talk about it, or it was
27:23
just verbal and no physical stuff. Yeah, they don't know. Or it
27:26
could have been. He could have been the greatest guy with her. And
27:30
then I mean, look at freaking BTK. His wife said he was great.
27:34
He's out there murdering people left and right, so it could have been
27:37
something like that and she didn't even know. He just gets his frustrations out
27:41
killing other people or smacking them around Tamara. He's just happy and like he
27:47
also had the option of you know, they lived, they didn't live together.
27:48
He could have let you know things like that. Now, with evidence
27:52
stacking up, against him. Eric decides he's going to plead guilty on December
27:57
nineteen, twenty nineteen, to one count of second degree murder. He has
28:02
sent us to twelve years in prison with five years of probation in federal prison.
28:07
I think he saw the writing on the wall, because I do I
28:11
believe there were I thought someone that one of the shows had mentioned there were
28:15
cameras. I couldn't find it. There wasn't a lot of information about this
28:18
besides in the Cruise Ship Killers episodes. So but uh, there would have
28:23
been cameras I believe in on those ships because this is twenty eighteen, and
28:27
they would have showed him as the only person who entered the room. I
28:30
mean, like it was all a question as to that that autopsy is really
28:34
what did he mean? Because before they could there was no proof that he
28:37
pushed her. They just said she's drug and she fell over. They knew
28:41
he was the only one that went in the room. But once they found
28:45
out that they knew he was only one in the room and she was strangled,
28:48
so that I mean like that his lawyers would have been like, yeah,
28:52
that was all they knew. He was the only one that had gone
28:53
in the room. They just didn't know was it an accident that she had
28:56
already fallen or was it him doing that? And thankfully that autopsy revealed dead.
29:02
So he saw his lawyers are probably like, dude, you ain't getting
29:04
away with this. They're gonna play it out. Yeah, because you're going
29:08
to federal prison. This isn't like state prison. This is federal prison.
29:15
I'm sure they all suck. I know they also, but I've heard federal
29:18
prison is worse. Well. I've heard stories about saying Quentin and Angle and
29:22
particularly bad. I wouldn't want to be in those either. I think those
29:26
are particularly bad ones. But I've heard federal prison is work, or maybe
29:29
federal prisons nicer. I don't know anybody who's been in the tube. Could
29:33
you please let us know or not? I don't know if I want what
29:37
you want to know. They might be listening in their GEL sales right now,
29:41
Steve. I've read the Stewart we what were we watching? That said
29:45
that what they had available we were watching something or something. It was all
29:49
about everything they got, like iPads and all sorts of things in prison.
29:52
Now, oh yeah, somebody did have an iPad. Yeah, they were
29:56
it was something, and it was a really terrible person too. It wasn't
29:59
like one of these like drug offense things. It was like a real bad
30:02
person. And he had access to iPads and so yeah, there might be
30:06
some listeners out there in prison. Well they are not contacting, I says
30:11
of yet. So I'm okay. Well we did remember we covered that one
30:14
where the lady was married to the guy and he would write her letters and
30:19
then she would put it out on his blog. Yeah, but knew the
30:29
girl that was in the lily Lid. Okay, anyways, we're going somewhere
30:34
anyway. Okay, So anyway, Eric plat out, but he didn't say
30:40
what happened, so prosecutors were left to speculate as to what happened. And
30:45
so what they're figuring out is they start off, they start off, everything's
30:51
going great. First night on the ship or whatever it is. Second night,
30:55
they're getting drunk, way too many, going down, going down too
30:59
fast, and something inside Eric gets triggered and he follows to Mara back to
31:04
the room shortly after she left the lounge. Maybe he was her wanting to
31:07
leave. You know, you never know what these guys, because a lot
31:10
of guys they say, you know, aren't violent until they get they start
31:14
drinking, then all of a sudden they snap. It could have been her
31:15
and saying I want to go to bed, I'm tired, and him getting
31:18
pissed off about that. It could have been something as simple as that,
31:22
that these guys that are abusive, that just sets them off for no reason.
31:27
What do you know about that? What you've read? Yes, he's
31:33
kind of like an expert. Oh, well that's maybe I am Stewart,
31:36
Maybe I am Maybe I know it all. Maybe I'm Bethany Frankel and I
31:40
know it all. Oh, she knows it all. You want to know
31:44
any of it? Go to her anyway. Prosecutors speculate that while in the
31:51
room, they get into an argument, he snaps starts strangling to Mara.
31:56
He then pushes her out onto the balcony and then eventually over the balcony.
32:00
He then runs down to the eleventh floor, pretending to be surprised to find
32:05
her because he was supposedly in the lounge. Still he went to the room
32:09
and went back to the room, saw her, and then went back down.
32:13
Yeah, anyway, however you slice that, the story sounds full of
32:16
crap, But anyway, that was the speculation that the prosecutors had asked to
32:22
what actually happened, since Eric was not with anything that happened. Al Tamara's
32:29
family does not want her to be remembered for the way that she died,
32:31
rather for the for the people she spent her life helping. They are pushing
32:36
lawmakers to create a database similar to the sex offender database, but for domestic
32:40
violence offenders, which I think is a good thing. Let's do they Yeah,
32:45
if you have if you're a violent domestic violent person or whatever, so
32:51
you can look him up on the Yeah, you can, just like sex
32:52
offenders. I mean, why wouldn't you want to know that someone has like
32:55
beat his wife or something and you can look him up on a database and
32:59
know that he's been at least there's something What if federal law makes like if
33:04
you got a dating profile, they make they you can just click at their
33:07
length to the Yeah, it should be in the link. The sex offender
33:10
database and the domestic violence database should be in the dating profiles right there,
33:15
automatically required to be linked, so you can see. They see a lot
33:21
of people not on the dating side anymore. So I think it's a great
33:23
thing to be advocating for now. They say that this would have allowed Tamara
33:29
or her family to see Eric's violent pass prior to her starting relationship with him,
33:32
so she might have seen it, or her family could have looked him
33:35
up and seen that Tamara might have been if he was abusive to Tamara during
33:38
the time, they could have seen that who he was and said, you
33:42
know, intervened and tried to get her out of that situation. Now,
33:45
Eric Dwayne Newman is currently serving out his sentence in This is FCI sets Federal
33:52
Corrections Institute Institute. I think would thank so if somebody would research this FCI
33:58
Williamsburg in South Carolina. He is scheduled to be released on September fifteenth,
34:02
twenty thirty, so shortly. Yeah, seven years. He's not been This
34:12
happened in twenty eighteen. He hadn't even been in jail that long. He
34:15
got twelve years. Yeah, he's got seven more knocking him down. Well,
34:21
he'll be what twelve, he'll be sixty two or some somewhere around in
34:24
there. He was like fifty to fifty five I think. Anyways, so
34:29
now because I got interested and since we're going on a cruise, I usually
34:34
get overly interested in things like that, or like if we're gonna go do
34:37
something, So then I start looking up things. I'm sure all of you
34:40
are like that as well. You just like you're like, well, let
34:43
me go down the rabbit hole. So I know how to pack for a
34:45
cruise. Now, we've watched the mighty cruise ships. We watched the one
34:50
to go to Antarctica. That's probably how I ended up going on a cruise.
34:52
We're watching minor cruise ships before then. Anyways, I've been looking at
34:55
all the cruise ships. So I found some creepy facts about cruises STU that
34:59
I was going to share with everybody, just things I found surprising. Now,
35:02
there was a study published in the International Journal of Travel, Medicine and
35:07
Global Health found that there were six hundred and twenty three reported deaths on cruise
35:12
ships between two thousand and twenty nineteen. I find that number high globally.
35:16
I don't think that's that high globally dead, just dead, six hundred twenty
35:22
three deaths. Now. The study concluded that for passengers, falls were the
35:25
most common cause of cruise deaths, followed by cardiac arrests and suicides. Now
35:30
for crew members. Suicide, murder, and falls were the leading cause of
35:34
death. So they had suicides and then cruise just murdering each other were the
35:38
it's globally whatever, you don't find it shocking nineteen years. No, that's
35:44
not that much. I thought one or two people died on a cruise ship.
35:45
It's like people getting killed by a blimp. It's like one a year
35:47
or something. I didn't realize it was six hundred and twenty three. I
35:52
guess there's okay, fine, that whatever, stew Fine, okay, fine,
35:54
let me move on to the next fact I found. Come on,
35:59
this is better. Cruise ships are legally required to carry body bags and maintain
36:02
a morgue. They typically have space for three or four bodies, depending on
36:07
the size of the ship. That's creepy. It's called the walking cooler.
36:12
No, so I sent you. Are you going to do the y'all need
36:15
Jesus that I sent you about cruise ship to go along with this theme about
36:19
a walk in cooler? Could okay? My last one is cruise ships have
36:24
brigs, which is the nautical term for gel on a vessel, including a
36:29
cruise ship. Now I know people know this that have selled at sea.
36:32
It's called a brig but I wanted to tell you where the word came from.
36:37
It came from the word brigantine, which is a type of two masted
36:39
selling ship formally used to house criminals. Bunch of criminals on a ship.
36:45
Yeah, and it was called a brigantine, so that's why they called it
36:49
the brig. I did not know that. Okay, well there you go,
36:52
because I knew you're already starting with your little face about whenever I said
36:54
the brig you're lying. Everybody knows it's called a brig on a ship anyways.
37:01
So we'll get back with the yawnie Jesus that I found that Stu is
37:05
going to tell us about. But I found this one. It is cruise
37:07
ship themed. All right, stew you're ready to go. This one isn't
37:12
Apparently the last one I sent was too dark for him. He didn't like
37:15
appreciate it. I mean it was a little dark. I told you,
37:20
I've didn't listen a box full of genitals, and that's nothing on different torsos.
37:24
You should listen to the Karen Slaughter book, Stu. It's nothing on
37:29
that. Okay, that's all fictionalized. This was real ship, though I
37:32
don't know what Karen Slaughter did in a different life. Stewart, Okay,
37:36
well, she might have been the one that put all the genitals in a
37:37
box. She might have chopped. Please don't sue as just saying that.
37:44
Yeah, we said, maybe we're covered legally. I think anyway, I
37:49
would ask you Florida or not Florida. But it's a cruise ship. Oh
37:53
Florida. It could be Texas they sell out of they have those ones we
37:59
were talking about that said, what's cool the fall Foliage ones? Oh yeah,
38:01
and going up the Quebec. Yeah, up in Canada anyway. CBS
38:07
News Miami celebrity cruises improperly store dead body and cruise ships cooler instead of Morgue.
38:15
Lawsuit can claims. Yeah, and everybody acts like Royal Caribbean and Carnival
38:19
or the trashy ones. And then you've got celebrities supposed to be the high
38:22
falutin and they're over here pulling this. Why celebrity half flu I don't know
38:25
what's that celebrity like. I think there are just more expensive celebrity princess the
38:31
MSc nothing, nothing, nothing tops Disney though, that's the most expensive.
38:37
I don't know. I've seen some of them. No kids cruises, they're
38:40
quite expensive. Well, Virgin Atlantic has cruise ships and they're only adults,
38:45
but they're not that. No, the Disney one is just alrighteous three times
38:52
as much as this Royal Caribbean. You've seen their damn park ticket prices.
38:55
Huh, Yeah, it's insane. But I would if I were to.
38:59
I haven't been on a Disney cruise yet. Maybe one day because I really
39:00
want to go on the Halloween won Now. Our daughters like obsessed with Mickey
39:04
Mouse, like, I mean, we're full in it. We're head to
39:07
toe every day Mickey Mouse. But I would never. If I don't have
39:13
to ever go back to Disney World, I'll be okay. But I think
39:15
that the cruise ship might be the better. What if they start sponsoring this
39:19
podcast, well, I mean selling out, Oh well for sure, But
39:24
I think I'd rather spend the money on the cruise because everybody says you actually
39:28
get to meet like your kids get to meet the characters, and it's a
39:30
lot. It's just it's much. I mean, obviously you're not at the
39:34
theme park getting rise, but we went there. It's like two and a
39:36
half hour wait in those lines unless you have a bunch of money to pay
39:40
to jump to the front of the line. Anyways, go on with your
39:45
stories, do are you sure? Yeah? Okay, the story comes to
39:49
us April twenty third, twenty twenty three for Lauderdale, Florida, Florida recent
39:57
Well though, yeah, it's fairly recent at how, and the story is
40:00
very recent. A Florida woman and her family have filed a lawsuit against Celebrity
40:05
Cruises, claiming the cruise line and properly stored her husband's body and the ship's
40:09
cooler as opposed to the morgue after he died on board. Like stew was
40:14
talking about, I said, there's a morgue versus a walk in cooler,
40:17
and this is where we differentiate in it's a lawsuit. Yeah, you know,
40:22
want your bear next to a corpse? Nope. The lawsuit was filed
40:25
in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida on Wednesday. According
40:30
to the complaint, Robert L. Jones died to a cardiac event while on
40:35
the Celebrity Equinox cruise ship in August of twenty twenty two, traveling from Fort
40:42
Lauderdale, to ports in the Eastern Caribbean or Caribbean if you prefer. The
40:47
lawsuit states that after Jones's death, his wife, Marilyn Jones, was told
40:52
that she had two options for what could be done with her husband's body.
40:55
According to the lawsuit, those options were to either have missus mister Jones body
41:00
removed from the ship in San Juan, Puerto Rico, or to have his
41:05
body stored on the ship until it reached port in Fort Lauderdale, Florida,
41:08
approximately six days from the date of his passing. And this people, that
41:15
is why you get travel insurance, so you can be removed in San Juan,
41:20
Puerto Rico and flown repat. Okay, but that was his wife's decision.
41:25
Okay, Yes, she would have had to pay to transport his body
41:29
if she didn't have insurance, or she was like, hey, I just
41:30
paid for this cruise. That's what I'm thinking. I mean, if you
41:35
die from a cardiac arrest, God rest your soul. We paid for this
41:37
cruise to we got to continue to enjoy it. We got excursion the most
41:42
so okay, we got excursions plan. We're gonna go see the monkeys and
41:46
the laws. We got the beach. We'll ride that cruise back. It
41:51
probably was very expensive to transport the body, and they weren't going to pay
41:53
for it, so don't I mean, you can always back when you could
41:55
always just call it, say yeah, transport off, follow clan with the
41:59
insurance company. We're going to continue on. Well that sounds really cold though,
42:02
and which his body was obviously not. Okay, we're terrible people.
42:09
It's it's only a year. Wow. So Jones's body stayed on board the
42:19
ship for approximately six days, according to lawsuit. When the funeral services employee
42:24
and for Lauderdale was brought onto the ship to retrieve mister Jones's body, his
42:30
body was not located in the ship's morgue. The lawsuits said. Instead,
42:35
mister Jones' body had been, at some time not yet known, been moved
42:40
from the ship's morgue to a cooler on a different floor than the ship's more.
42:45
But why we don't know. This story does not even tell us,
42:49
well, this is some weird ship going on. We're gonna have to go
42:51
to court to find out. Wow, I want, let's go to court.
42:53
This has not been gone to court yet, so we'll have to wait.
42:58
Now, the cooler in which mister Jones body was found by the fuel
43:00
and your employee had drinks placed outside of the cooler so it sounded like a
43:05
drink cooler. They moved the drinks out to put the body in there,
43:08
and it was not at a temperature which was sufficient for proper storing of a
43:14
dead body to prevent decomposition, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit also says
43:20
the body was found in a bag on a pallet on the floor of the
43:24
cooler and that it was in the advanced stage. It's a decomposition. Like
43:29
what, I don't understand what's going on on this ship? When I read
43:31
this story, I was like, what is happening on this ship? How
43:34
are these employers walking around this dead body laying on a pallet next to the
43:38
core's light, Like I mean, how are you fine with me? And
43:40
be like no, you people need to come get this body out of my
43:44
cool cooler take it to the morgue. I'm not working in here. I
43:47
mean, who are these people that are just okay for it to be down
43:50
there? I don't know? And who are these people that put it down
43:52
there, like hey, we're gonna bring this down here? Maybe they had
43:57
some maintenance on the more cooler. They had to have somebody come out and
44:00
they're like, we just need to move it for you know, a couple
44:01
of hours, and then somebody forgot to move the body back. I would
44:04
think you're thinking, I think you remember the only dead body on your entire
44:07
cruise ship. Would be kind of something you'd have like the cruise director be
44:10
like, yeah, let's not forget the dead body. That's not the cruise
44:15
director's problem. I don't think that is not Julie's problem anyway. So Marilyn
44:21
Jones and her family are asking for compensatory damages in the amount of one million
44:25
dollars. I'll let your body wrought on a palette next to some beers for
44:29
one million dollars, and are demanding a trial by a jury. That's what
44:34
we need, a trial by jury because they don't want this. They don't
44:37
want the cruise lines. They're always getting out of this ship, you know,
44:40
except where they did you know who's that? You know that one was
44:43
the one that was real bad when the grandpa dropped the child or whatever,
44:47
and then they tried to lie and say that the family tried to lie and
44:52
sue the cruise ship. It was Royal Caribbean, I think, and I
44:53
have to say the cruise ship was correct. He so you saw the video
44:59
that they had whatever, and he knew the glass wasn't there. He hung
45:01
the child out for over thirty seconds outside of the glass like it was obvious,
45:07
and then they lied about it trying to get a bunch of money from
45:08
Royal crouping. That a whole thing is sketchy to me, Like, I
45:13
don't understand. I got some bad vibes off that family and the grandpa and
45:17
stuff like that, because why would you hang your eighteen month old granddaughter and
45:22
then try to sue the cruise line for a bunch of money. I'm just
45:25
saying, little sketchy, little sketchy. Yeah, it was terrible. I
45:30
can't even think about that. Yeah, because we started panicking. I was
45:32
like, oh my god, are these children gonna acidently fall off this cruise
45:35
ship? And then I looked it up and it's very difficult for a child
45:37
to fall off a cruise ship. It doesn't happen. That's why whenever it
45:40
does happen, it's like in the news. And then this whole thing when
45:44
you first read it and what the family says. Whenever you first is here
45:46
about there, it's like, oh, well there was glass there and it
45:49
just went away, or we didn't know there wasn't glass there, And then
45:52
you actually start looking at makes you feel better, because I mean, it
45:53
makes you feel better about the fact that they can't accidentally fall off a cruise
45:57
ship. She the baby was intentionally put over the window and hung outside for
46:02
a long period of time. This was not like a quick little Michael Jackson
46:07
thing. Yeah, this was and then for them to have to try to
46:10
sue for money is like sketchy to me. But I'm a pessimistic person that
46:17
doesn't see the good in anybody. So now you don't say anyways, still
46:23
alive today though, because of it almost got taken when I was that four
46:29
year old little girl. When I was four. We told the story last
46:34
time about me being scared of the teenagers in the truck. You weren't going
46:37
to be taken. It's not gonna be taken, at least not without a
46:40
fight. You had a special set of scales anyway, So we'll see.
46:44
Maybe this will get some more information because I don't understand how the body was
46:46
in the morgue and got removed from the morgue. They obviously didn't have like
46:51
we had read there's like three to four spots for bodies on these cruise ships.
46:55
There obviously wouldn't I think that would have been mentioned, like there was
46:59
multiple deaths on this so they ran out of room something like that. There's
47:04
something weird going on, and for the employees just to be like very casual
47:07
about it. Figures there was maintenance on that cooling unit for the Morgan it
47:13
was supposed to be a temporary move. Well, what would be my logical
47:16
guests, and then they forgot about it somehow. Well, what they should
47:20
have done if there was maintenance, they should have told a lady there's been
47:22
something going on with the morgue units. We need to work on him.
47:25
So we're gonna have to get him off at the next port and we'll fly
47:29
him. We'll pay to fly him back his return his body to the United
47:31
States. But anyways, all right, so that's our cruise ship themed episode.
47:38
Since we're going going to cruise, we're going out at Galveston. We're
47:42
staying at a haunted hotel. I didn't even know it was haunted. I
47:45
just picked it and then come to find out it's haunted, so we might
47:47
do something on that, maybe kind of like the Crescent Hotel. Yeah,
47:53
that's it. Check out the show notes to support us on Patreon. We
47:58
really appreciate everybody, and check out the instagram if you want to see any
48:02
cruise tips or anything that. I have got some real cool packing tips,
48:07
real cool you posted those. No, I'm going to when when we're on
48:13
the when I unpack everything on the cruise ship so I can show everybody how
48:16
I did it, and like what my little all the tips I found,
48:20
all the little things I found to pack to hopefully make things go better.
48:23
So we shall sing. If it goes to hell, then you're not posting
48:28
I'm not posting it. It will just be like it never happened. To
48:30
pretend this conversation never happens. But all right, I guess we will again.
48:35
Maybe not. There won't be an episode next week, might just be
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catching up on a little less messes and stuff. So I guess we will
48:42
see you next time. By everyone, Say bye Stu by stew It's to
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be super stick shot else Earning and Sacking and its wording by by Cambridge