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The Feny Family Murders · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: It is. It's Monday morning, February twenty seventh, nineteen ninety five,
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: in Springfield, Missouri, and I want you to picture yourself
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: just walking up the driveway of this quiet, utterly normal
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: suburban home.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Right, just an everyday neighborhood exactly.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: But a frantic phone call has just prompted a welfare
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: check on the Fienie family. And as you step onto
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: the front porch, the first thing that really hits you
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: is the absolute eerie.
• 0:24
  Speaker 3: Quiet, like dead silent, dead silent.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: But then your eyes adjust and you notice something just
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: deeply unsettling. The glass pane on the front door has
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: been haphazardly painted over from the inside. Oh wow, Yeah,
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: this thick beige paint is completely blocking out the light.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: So you reach your handle, bracing yourself, and with this
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: terrifyingly loud click, the unlocked door swings open, and.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: Stepping through that door, I mean, you are stepping into
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: one of the most baffling, theatrically staged true crime mystery
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: is of American history.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: It really is.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: For this deep dive, our mission is to peel back
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: the layers of this meticulously crafted crime scene. We're going
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: to examine the bizarre twists of an investigation that honestly
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: seemingly fell apart at the seams.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: It totally unraveled, right, and we need.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: To try and figure out how a killer managed to
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: just well vanish into the night.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: So to do that, we are pulling from a massive
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: stack of sources. Today. We've got original cold case files,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: thousands of pages of trial transcripts, and some recent investigative
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: deep dives into the case.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: Because this isn't just a story about a crime, no,
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: not at all.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: It's a puzzle that outright defies logic. I mean, we
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: are looking at a landscape filled with forensic contradictions, a
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: secret life hidden behind the polished veneer of a teacher
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: of the year.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the classic perfect.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Facade exactly, and an investigation that will genuinely make you
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: question how the justice system operates when the pressure is
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: really on.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: Precisely, and to truly understand what happened to Cheryl Feeney
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: and her two young children, Tyler and Jennifer, you really
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: have to understand the chaotic, chilling atmosphere.
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: Of that house.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: When the first responding officer crossed that threshold, what he
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: found wasn't just a murder scene it was, well, it
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: was a production.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's walk through that threshold together. If you look around,
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: the house is completely ransacked, but in a way that
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: feels utterly.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: Unnatural, like someone trying to fake a robbery exactly.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: For instance, you look into the open garage and someone
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: has popped the hood of Cheryl's car and randomly piled
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: just a bunch of stuff.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: On top of it, including like a heavy television set.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: Right, a whole CRT television, And inside in a kitchen,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: the cabinets are flung wide open, but the only things
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: exposed are like dishwashing and cleaning supplies.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: Which a burglar obviously doesn't care about.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: Right. Meanwhile, you walk into the primary bedroom and there
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: is forty dollars in cash just sitting in an open dresser.
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: Drawer, completely untouched, completely untouched.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: It's the illusion of a burglary without the actual execution
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: of one. I mean, a real burglar is looking for
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: high value, easily pawnable items, you know, cash, jewelry, small electronics.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: They aren't hauling a heavy TV onto a.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: Car hood, no, and they definitely aren't leaving crisp bills
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: in a drawer. But the detail that truly makes this
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: scene of forensic anomaly is found right there on the
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: living room carpet. Oh man, the footprints size eleven men's
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: shoeprints stamped in that exact same beige paint from the
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: front door.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this right here, because this is where
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: my brain broke reading the case files. These footprints literally
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: defy the laws of physics.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: They really do.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: If you step in a puddle of wet paint and
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: walk across a carpet, your first step is going to
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: be heavy, right, Ah, But carpet fibers act like a sponge.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: They aggressively pull the liquid off the sole of your
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: shoe exactly.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so by step two or three, the print should
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: fade into just this faint outline. But not these prints.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: No, They're equally saturated from the garage all the way
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: through the living room, leading directly to the primary bedroom,
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: and then they completely stop.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: There is no return path, which, wait, how is that
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: physically possible? Do they have like a paint reservoir in
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: their shoes?
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: I mean close? It tells forensic investigators that those footprints
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: were actively continuously applied. Oh wow, yeah, whoever made them
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: wasn't just walking. They were literally holding a paint brush
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: or a tray and painting the bottom of those shoes every.
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: Step or two.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: That is wild.
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: Think of it like using an ink pad and a
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: rubber stamp. They were creating a literal beacon pointing straight
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: to the bedroom. It's a neon sign telling investigators exactly
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: where to look, and.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: When they look, they find something even more macabre. Painted
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: on the bedroom wall in that same beige paint are
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: the capitalized letters.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: Bit right above the word die.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, presumably the start of a hateful slur that was
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: just left unfinished. But if you are taking the time
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: to painstakingly stamp perfectly saturated footprints across the.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: Carpet, reapplying paint every two feet.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: Right, and painting cryptic messages on the wall, you aren't
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: a panic burglar got in the act. The whole thing
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: feels entirely staged. It's like someone wearing a cheap Halloween
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: mask to rob a bank. You know, it's too theatrical.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: It is staged, But within that theatricality there is a
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: very real, very dark, psychological truth. Because the most haunting
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: detail of this crime scene isn't the paint. No, it's
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: the photos, every single family portrait, baby picture, and wedding
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: photo in that house have been meticulously taken down from
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: the walls or turned inward.
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: Every single one, every single one.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: Why do that? I mean, I can't imagine the psychological
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: headspace required to brutally bludge in a sleeping mother and
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: child and strangle an eighteen month old baby in her crib.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: Why do the photos matter to someone capable of doing that?
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: Well, it's the concept in forensic psychology known as depersonalization
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: or undoing. Okay, when a stranger commits a home invasion,
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: the victims are just objects to them. They don't care
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: about the photos on the wall. But when a killer
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: takes the time to hide the faces of the victims,
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: it implies deep intimate familiarity and immense guilt or shame.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: Well, so they just couldn't bear the psychological weight of
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: those smiling faces.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: Looking back at them exactly while they destroyed the family.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: Those eyes were too much. That level of personal connection
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: immediately forces investigators to stop looking for a random burglar
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: and start looking closest to home.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to the husband and father John Feeney.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: If the scene is staged by someone who knew the
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: family intimately. He's your day one suspect.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: Of course.
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  Speaker 1: But there's a problem. While this bloody, chaotic scene is
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: being discovered in Springfield, John is two hours away at
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: the pristine Lake of the Ozarks. Right.
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: He's a highly respected high school science teacher.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and he's attending a weekend teachers conference at the
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: Tantara Resort.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: And on paper, his timeline looks completely impenetrable, air tight.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: John claims that on the Saturday night of the murders,
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: he had dinner with a female colleague named Pam. After dinner,
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: he says he was driving his bright red Mustang convertible
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: back to the resort when he got pulled over for
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: speeding at around ten thirty pm.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: And this traffic stop is heavily documented because of this
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: specific local law at the time regarding out of town drivers.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: The officer actually confiscated John's physical driver's license as collateral
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: until he paid.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: The fine, right, which John claims just ruined his night.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah. He says he had a headache, went back to
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: his hotel room, called his wife Cheryl to check in,
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: and went to sleep. The next morning, Sunday, he says
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: he slept in and then played a casual round of
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: golf with colleagues.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: But as the multi agency task forces briefing on the
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: murders in the Springfield, a jaw dropping coincidence occurs.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: This part is crazy.
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: One of the investigators on the task force, a woman
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: named Brita. Here's the name John Feene, and she just freezes.
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: She knows John. Just the previous fall, she had taken
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: a night school chemistry class that John was teaching at
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: a local university, and from.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: The source material, they definitely didn't just talk about the
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: periodic table, not at all. Rita was actively working a
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: high profile local case where a husband had been arrested
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: for murdering his wife, and John was morbidly obsessed with it.
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  Speaker 2: He kept cornering Rita, asking her over and over, what
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: was the husband's fatal misstep? What got him caught? How
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: did you zero in on him?
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: And this is where we have to look at the
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: psychological weight of that interaction. When Rita finally answered him,
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: she said, he talked to the police. No suspects should
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: ever talk to the police, because that's how they wind
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: up in.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: Prison, which is such a chilling thing to say.
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  Speaker 3: In hindsight, right, You have.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: To ask yourself. Was John just a science teacher with
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: a morbid curiosity about true crime or was he a
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: predator actively taking notes.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: Trying to reverse engineer the perfect crime Exactly?
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: Well, the task force certainly starts leaning toward the latter.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: They begin to aggressively scrutinize John's timeline, looking for any cracks.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: Because they know the drive from the resort to Springfield
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: and back is roughly three hours total.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, they need to find a window where John could
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: have slipped away, committed the murders, staged the house with
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: the paint and returned to the resort, And.
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: They find a massive red flag sitting right in plain
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: sight inside.
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: His red mustard.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: Oh the receipt.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: Yes, they discover a McDonald's receipt located near the resort
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: with a very specific timestamp six point five nine am
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: on Sunday morning.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: So his entire story about sleeping in until late Sunday
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: morning is completely destroyed.
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: Loan to pieces, if he was.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: Buying a breakfast sandwich at McDonald's at seven in the morning,
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  Speaker 1: he has a minimum of five and a half hours
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: of completely untracked time overnight.
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: Which is more than enough time to make the ninety
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: minute drive home, stage the scene, and drive back.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: But wait, I have to push back here. In the
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: case files, John is a meticulous record keeper. He maintains
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: a detailed, written mileage log in his car, and when
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: investigators check the odometer on the Mustang against his log,
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: it matches perfectly. There are zero unaccounted four miles. How
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: is that even possible?
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: It's a staggering contradiction, but not an impossible one to engineer.
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: In older cars like a nineties Mustang, you could physically
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: crawl under the vehicle and disconnect the vehicle speed sensor or.
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: The spina a cable at the transmission exactly.
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: The miles simply wouldn't register on the dashboard.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: Okay, but wait, if you are a criminal mastermind meticulous
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: enough to disconnect your transmission cable in the dark to
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: artificially account for the exact distance of your murder road trip, yeah,
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: how on earth do you leave a timestamped fast food
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: receipt sitting in your cup holder. It's a paradox. You
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: are simultaneously a cold blooded mastermind and a sloppy amateur.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: Well, welcome to the reality of criminal investigations. People make
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: incredibly complex plans and then fail at the most basic
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: human levels. True, but the physical evidence, or rather the
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: total lack of it, is what truly confounds the police.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: Here they process John's car in his hotel room. There
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: is no blood. There are no weapons, no beage paint,
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: no beage paint. There are no size eleven shoes anywhere,
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: absolutely nothing tying him to the extreme intimate violence of
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: that scene.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: But then investigator Rita spots something the police dashcam footage
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: from John's ten point three PM traffics.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: Yes, the phantom belt.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: The phantom belt.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: In the video, John is clearly wearing a very specific
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: woven belt. Now fast forward to the crime scene in Springfield,
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: investigators find a belt matching the exact one from the video,
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: inexplicably rolled up and sitting on the kitchen counter amidst
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: all the chaos.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: So if we connect this to the bigger picture, this
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: suggests a horrifying theory.
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: What's that?
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: Well, the reason there is no cast off blood spatter
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: on John or in his car is because the killer
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: stripped completely naked to commit the murders.
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: Ah.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, cast off spatter happens when a weapon like a
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: heavy pipe is swung back, blood flies off and hits
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: whatever is nearby, which is usually the killer's clothing.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: So to avoid that, the killer takes off all their clothes,
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: rolls up their belt, leaves it on the counter in
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: the dark, and simply forgets it when they get redressed
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: in a panic.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: It's a highly compelling theory, and it perfectly explains the
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: lack of forensic transfer. But in a court of law,
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: a belt on a counter is still circumstantial.
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: Exactly, Investigators desperately need a motive. Why would a celebrated teacher,
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: a man with a seemingly perfect marriage and healthy finances,
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: suddenly slaughter his entire family.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: The answer, they believe, comes from a devastating medical mystery
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: uncovered during the six year old boy's autopsy.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: This is the bombshell that changes the entire trajectory of
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: the case.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, during the gross examination of six year old Tyler,
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: the medical examiner discovers severe scarring and inflammation in his liver.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: Which is very unusual.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: Right, So this prompts them to run a full soerroology
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: panel on his blood and it comes back positive for hepatitis.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: B and hepatitis B in a six year old is
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: a massive red flag. This is a blood born pathogen.
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: In young children. If they haven't had a blood transfusion,
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: the vectors for transmission shrink dramatically.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: Typically, it's passed from an infected mother during childbirth.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: Right, but medical records show Cheryl didn't have it. Because
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: of this, the police immediately assume the darkest statistical possibility.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: That John was sexually abusing his own son, Tyler, contracted
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: the disease, and John murdered the family to silence them
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: before Cheryl could find out and expose him.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: It provides the why it makes the brutal overkill nature
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: of the crime makes sense, but there is a massive
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: DNA twist the tests. Yeah. When investigators finally forced John
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: and Cheryl's family to be tested for hepatitis B, the
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: results come back negative. Neither parent has ever had the disease,
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: and that.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: Completely shatters the prosecution's working theory.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: Of the crime completely. Furthermore, crime scene investigators found unidentified
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: a reddish brown hair on Cheryl's nightgown, and.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: There was unidentified gray hairs stuck directly into the wet
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: paint on the paint brush used by the killer. Right.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: Yes, and DNA testing confirms Neither of those hairs matched
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: anyone in the Fiene family, So.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: The physical evidence is actively pointing away from John. But
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: as police dig deeper into his background, the shining facade
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: of the Teacher of the Year completely crumbled.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: Oh. Absolutely, John had a very dark secret life, to.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: Say the least.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: It turns out John's weekend teachers conferences were essentially his
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: per hunting grounds. He was a chronic philanderer. He had
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: an affair with a colleague named Pam, the very woman
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: he had dinner with the night of.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: The murders right, and another woman came forward claiming John
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: us mind control on her during a bizarre, racy encounter
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: on a boat with two other men.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: It's so disturbing, And it gets worse. He had a
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: pattern of gross boundary testing with his students.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the source of show. He openly joked about his
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: sexual attractions in class. He was caught buying alcohol for
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: underage students at a local bar, and.
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: Most disturbingly, he slept with an eighteen year old former
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: student during a postgraduation camping trip where he was acting
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: as a chaperone.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: Just a massive abuse of power. Oh and on top
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: of all of that, investigators discovered John recently forged Cheryl's
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: signature on a new two hundred fifty thousand dollars life
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: insurance policy.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: Right, the prosecution looks at this mountain of character evidence
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: and sees a predatory man who wanted a clean slate.
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: They argue he wanted to escape the conservative constraints of
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: his family life, cash in a quarter of a million dollars,
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: and live his secret life out.
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: In the open.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean for the trial? Because
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: if you're sitting on a jury, you have to ask yourself.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: Does a trail of infidelities, gross abuses of power, and
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: insurance fraud automatically equal bludgeoning your own sleeping children to
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: death with a metal pipe.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: It's a huge leap.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: Being a terrible husband doesn't necessarily make you a family annihilator.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: And that is exactly the chasm the prosecution had to bridge.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: To make matters worse. They were forced to try and
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: bridge it quickly.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: The speedy trial.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: Yes, John's defense attorneys brilliantly invoked his constitutional right to
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: a speedy trial, throwing the prosecution into an absolute scramble.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: They marched into court with a crumbling, entirely circumstantial case, and.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: When we say crumbling, we mean collapsing in real time.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: Their star eyewitness was a gas station attendant who suddenly
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: remembered seeing John buying gas in the wee hours of
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: Sunday more, which.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: Would have been the smoking gun for the timeline.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: Right, But the defense team got a hold of the
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: gas station's punch clock time cards and prove the attendant
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: wasn't even working that night. The witness was completely discredited
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: on the stand.
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: It was a disaster. Then the prosecution tried to introduce
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: testimony from Cheryl's friends, who were prepared to say Cheryl
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: was terrified of John and had recently stated she wanted
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: a divorce.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: But the judge blocked it entirely, citing hearsay laws. Can
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: you explain the mechanics of that. Why wouldn't a jury
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: be allowed to hear that a victim was terrified of
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: her husband right before she was murdered.
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: Well, it comes down to the confrontation clause of the
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: sixth Amendment. You have the constitutional right to face your
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: accuser and cross examine them.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: Think of hearsay like a high stakes game of telephone.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: The friend is saying, Cheryl told me she was scared,
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: But Cheryl isn't there to be questioned by the defense
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: about why she was scared or if she was you know, exaggerated.
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: Oh okay, because the defense can't cross examine a deceased
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: person's state of mind. The judge ruled the testimony too
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: prejudicial and threw it out. And the bitter irony the
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: specific if the case law the judge used to block
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: that testimony stemmed from the very same murder case. John
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: had been obsessively asking investigator Rita about in chemistry class.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: That is wild. He literally studied the legal loopholes of
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: local murder cases before his wife was murdered.
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: He really did so.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: With their timeline shattered, their star witness discredited, and their
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: motive blocked, the prosecution throws an absolute hail Mary, and
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: this brings us to the satanic panic.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: Oh boy.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: They stand up in front of a jury and argue
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: that John, a man with no history of physical violence,
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: was able to slaughter his family because he pretended he
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: was playing the role playing game Vampires of the Masquerade.
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: Yes, they literally argued, he imagined himself as a vampire
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: to mentally detach himself from the extreme violence.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry I have to inject a little reality. Here,
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: are we in a capital murder trial or a dark
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: comic book convention. How does a prosecutor stand in front
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: of a judge and deliver a vampire role playing theory
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: with a straight face. It feels so desperate.
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: It was incredibly desperate. I mean, it was a narrative
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: built on nineteen nineties cultural fear rather than tangible evidence,
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: and the defense capitalized on it brilliantly. They methodically ripped
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: the police investigation to shreds. They pointed to the unidentified reddish,
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: brown and gray hairs. They highlighted shocking police incompetence, like
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: what well. For instance, investigators never even bothered to dust
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: the baby's crib or the little boy's headboard for fingerprints.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: The most intimate points of contact in the crime scene
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: were just completely ignored, and they.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: Hammered home the medical mystery of Tyler's.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: Hepatitis b exactly this reason is an incredibly important question
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: about how confirmation bias can destroy an investigation.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: Because they stopped looking right.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: The moment the police realized John didn't have hepatitis be,
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: they completely stopped looking for how little Tyler contracted it.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: The County tracked infectious diseases, they cross reference to a
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: list of local names, and when nothing immediately popped up,
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: they just abandoned the thread entirely.
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: Like putting on blinders totally.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: They stopped investigating the very thing that likely triggered the
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: murders in the first place.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: Because it didn't point to the husband. They were so
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: blinded by John's arrogance and his affairs that they ignored
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: the glaring alternative that someone else might have been in
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: that house.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: And the jury saw right through the prosecution's weak case.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: Given the untested cribs, the mystery hairs, and the lack
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: of a murder weapon, there is just too much reasonable doubt.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they took less than five hours to return a
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: verdict of not guilty.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: Which brings us to the eerie aftermath of this tragedy.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: Following his acquittal, John Feeney didn't leave town in disgrace
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: to hide from the public eye. No, in a move
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: that shocked the Springfield community, he moved back into the
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: very house where his family was slaughtered.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: That is just I can't even fathom that he lived there.
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: For a time. Eventually sued for and collected the quarter
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: of a million dollar life insurance money, moved to Ecuador,
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: and started an entirely new family.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: It is a chilling PostScript, but the true narrative, gut
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: punch of this entire story, the detail that makes you
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: want to scream at the justice system, didn't arrive until
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: decades later. Right recently, new information surface from a woman
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: who was a ten year old neighbor of the Feenies
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: at the time of the murders. She finally shared her
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: story publicly.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah. She revealed that on the night of the murders,
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: she woke up with a bad stomach ache. It was
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: between two point zero and four i am, the exact
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: time of the murder exactly. Her parents told her to
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: go back to bed, but as she walked past her window,
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: she looked out and saw John Feeney's bright red Mustang
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: parked right there in his driveway.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: The missing piece of the timeline, the exact window of
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: untracked time between the speeding ticket and the six five
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: nine am McDonald's.
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: Receipt exactly, and the most devastating part of this revelation.
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: She told her father a few days later, and her
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: father made sure she told the police. Oh the task
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: force had the tip. They had the eyewitness putting John's
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: car at the house during the exact window of the murders,
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: but somehow, in the overwhelming chaos of a multi agency investigation,
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: the tip was placed. It was completely lost in the paperwork.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: And if you're wondering why they don't just arrest him
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: now that the tip is public, it all comes down
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: to the laws of double jeopardy in.
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: The United States right a Fifth Amendment.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: It ensures that you cannot be tried for the exact
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: same crime twice once a jury has equitted you. So
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: even with a direct eyewitness placing him at the scene
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: during the murders, John Feeney is protected forever.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: Which leaves us with a haunting reality. If John cannot
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: be touched and the police officially stopped investigating this case
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: three decades ago, the ultimate question remains unanswered.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, think about this for a second. Who was the
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: phantom carrier of hepatitis B. If we are to believe
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: the defense's theory that someone else abused Tyler, infected him,
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: and then slaughtered the family to cover their tracks, then
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: there is a second predator out there.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: A phantom who walked away totally clean, exactly.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: Leaving behind only unidentified hairs in a staged house, all
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: because the police were entirely consumed by the husband's hubris.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: Hmm.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: We started this deep dive talking about a house with
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: the front door windows painted over, meant to block the
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: outside world from seeing the horrors within. Yeah, it seems
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: that same thick beige paint managed to blind the investigators too.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: The truth remains buried in the Ozarks, hidden just behind
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: the glass.