Latest / Murder Files Unsealed / The Thanksgiving Betrayal - The Puppeteer of Schenectady

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The Thanksgiving Betrayal - The Puppeteer of Schenectady · Murder Files Unsealed

0:00
Speaker 1: Picture this for a moment. It is Thanksgiving Day, nineteen
0:03
ninety five. You are in Schenectady, New York, right, and
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you probably know the exact vibe of this kind of morning. Right.
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The air is just freezing, The ovens in every house
0:14
on the block have been on since dawn, and there's
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that very specific quiet anticipation of family gathering around a table.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's supposed to be this ultimate day of gratitude
0:26
and warmth exactly.
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Speaker 1: But for thirty year old Stella Lacey, this Thanksgiving morning
0:31
does not start with putting a turkey in the oven.
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Speaker 2: No it doesn't.
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Speaker 1: It starts with a frantic phone call to the police
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because her husband, Paul Lacey, has vanished.
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Speaker 2: Which I mean on a holiday that is deeply centered
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around family presence, that immediately sets off alarm bells for
0:46
law enforcement. People have routines, you know, they have deeply
0:50
ingrained behavioral patterns, and on Thanksgiving, those routines are practically sacred.
0:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't just skip it.
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Speaker 2: Exactly when someone completely abandons that script, investigators are instantly
1:01
looking at a glaring anomaly. A devoted father doesn't just
1:05
walk away from his family on a major holiday without
1:07
some sort of precipitating event.
1:09
Speaker 1: And the audacity of this crime is really what keeps
1:12
jumping out at me as we go through these case
1:14
files for today's deep dive. It is wild because the
1:17
central tension here is just baffling. I mean, how does
1:20
a devoted family man, someone who literally pulled himself out
1:24
of poverty to provide the quintessential American dream for his family,
1:28
end up murdered by the very people sitting at his
1:30
dinner table.
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Speaker 2: It really defines all logic. It does well, it defies
1:33
logic until you start looking at the psychological vulnerabilities that
1:38
his specific type of success actually created.
1:40
Speaker 1: Okay, unpack that.
1:42
Speaker 2: So to understand the mechanics of this crime, we really
1:44
have to understand the target. Paul Acey was born in
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May nineteen sixty four in Albany, New York, right, and
1:50
his early life was defined by profound absence and struggle.
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He grew up in a large, extended family, heavily relying
1:56
on the welfare system, and crucially, his father was entirely
2:00
absent from his life.
2:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, and according to the sources, that absence wasn't just
2:04
like a background detail, it was the defining engine of
2:07
his personality.
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Speaker 2: Oh. Absolutely.
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Speaker 1: His sister described him as this incredibly happy, loving kid
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who used to hold her hand and walk her to school,
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you know, always protecting her, and that lack of a
2:19
father figure created an intense burning drive in Paul. He
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decided early on that because he knew exactly what it
2:27
felt like to long for a stable home, he was
2:29
going to become the ultimate stand up guy.
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Speaker 2: Right. He essentially wanted to be the antithesis of his
2:34
own childhood experience, and psychologically, this is a very common
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adaptation to early scarcity. Children who grow up without reliable
2:41
provision often become adult who or hyper focused on providing.
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Speaker 1: That makes total sense.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, So Paul enters the workforce in the early nineteen eighties,
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right out of high school. He starts at a local market,
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puts his head down, and quickly rises to become a manager.
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Speaker 1: And this is where he meets his future wife, Stella, right.
2:57
Speaker 2: Exactly, And she came from a somewhat different back ground.
3:00
It was a more stable neighborhood with a hard working
3:02
dad and a stay at home mom.
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Speaker 1: So from the outside looking in, Paul is crafting the
3:07
ultimate success story.
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Speaker 2: He really is.
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Speaker 1: They get married in nineteen eighty six, and Paul just
3:12
goes into absolute overdrive. He transitions to a highly sought after,
3:17
well paying career at Cargill, working at a flour mill
3:21
at the Port of Albany, Right, and later he secures
3:24
a really solid job at a local Coca Cola warehouse.
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I mean, his entire goal system is based on Milestone's provision.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, he's setting up retirement accounts, setting up his children's education.
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Speaker 1: And they have three young kids at this point, right, Yes.
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Speaker 2: Age is nine seven and a sixteen month third baby,
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a boy, and two girls.
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Speaker 1: And he provided everything. The files note that whatever Stella wanted,
3:45
Paul made sure she got it.
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Speaker 2: He bought her cars, he bought a house and had
3:49
a pool put in. He was constructing a physical fortress
3:52
of middle class security.
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Speaker 1: Wow.
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Speaker 2: But when someone's entire identity is wrapped up in being
3:57
the unwavering provider, they can develop a massive blind spot.
4:01
Se Well, if we think about how this plays out
4:03
in everyday life, people often get so focused on building
4:07
the walls and the roof of their lives, you know,
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their careers, their bank accounts, the physical house, right, the
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tangible stuff exactly, and they get so focused on that
4:16
that they don't notice the rot happening inside the relationships
4:20
that actually inhabit that house.
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Speaker 1: Oh man, it's like looking at a perfectly manicured home
4:25
from the street. You know, the lawn is mode, the
4:28
pain is fresh, and you are completely unaware that the
4:31
foundation has been entirely eaten away by termites.
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Speaker 2: That is the perfect analogy to.
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Speaker 1: The outside world. Paul is the ultimate provider, but inside
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he's actually.
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Speaker 2: A target and that termin eaton foundation finally collapses on
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Thanksgiving Day when the patrol officer arrives at the Lacey
4:48
home for the initial missing person's interview.
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Speaker 1: Right, so let's get into that interview.
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Speaker 2: So Stella walks the patrolman through the timeline of the
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previous twenty four hours. She says Paul worked during the
4:57
day on Thanksgiving Eve. Learn from this interview that Paul's
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first cousin, a man named Ron Fulner, is currently living
5:04
in the house, renting a room from them.
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Speaker 1: Got it.
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Speaker 2: Stella says that when Paul got home from work, she
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sent Paul and Ron out to the store to get
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bread for the stuffing.
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Speaker 1: Just totally normal mundane holiday prep exactly.
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Speaker 2: She says. They returned around eleven PM, and she mentions
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a neighbor who lived kitty corner to them, Calvin Smith,
5:25
stop by just to socialize with Paul and Ron Okay.
5:29
Stella claims she went up to bed around eleven thirty PM,
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and she tells the officer that Paul was downstairs rummaging
5:35
around the kitchen for a late night snack.
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Speaker 1: And she explicitly mentions to the police that she saw
5:41
him eating a salami sandwich at eleven thirty. Yes, which
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is I mean, that is a very specific, granular detail
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to offer up completely unprompted.
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Speaker 2: Oh, those fineite details are crucial because they create a
5:53
verifiable timeline, right. Stella tells police she goes to sleep
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and Paul never comes to bed. Now, she notes that
6:00
sleeping on the downstairs couch or the day bed wasn't
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totally unusual, but when he wasn't there the next morning,
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Thanksgiving morning, she started paging his beeper and.
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Speaker 1: There's no response. No response, so she calls the police.
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But during this initial interview, when the patrol officer asks
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for a photo and inquires about any extenuating circumstances, Stella
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immediately starts planting seeds.
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Speaker 2: Yes, she really does.
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Speaker 1: She tells the officer that Paul wasn't a drug user,
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but he was under a massive amount of financial pressure.
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Speaker 2: And this is preemptive narrative building, right. Think about it.
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When a spouse goes missing, the surviving partner's first instinct
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is usually just raw panic, right, yeah, just find them exactly.
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The focus is entirely on the missing persons safety. But
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Stella is actively providing law enforcement with a motive for
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why Paul might have met with foul play by a
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complete stranger.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. She volunteers that they owed a lot of money,
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that he had lost a previous job before the Coca
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Cola gig uh huh, And she specifically points out that
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Paul had rec cashed out as four oh one K
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for about eight thousand dollars, and that he was known
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to carry large amounts of cash on him.
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Speaker 2: It is a textbook misdirection strategy. Seriously, she is painting
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a very deliberate picture of a man walking around with
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a target on his back, someone under extreme financial distress,
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carrying thousands of dollars in cash.
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Speaker 1: She is handing the police a robbery gone wrong theory
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on a silver platter right from the very first interaction. Absolutely,
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I am stuck on the logic of this timeline, though,
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what do you mean, Well, if you are going to
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orchestrate a disappearance, why choose a major holiday? Doesn't that
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guarantee immediate intense attention from family and police. Yes, his
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sister even told investigators that going missing on things giving
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hit the family incredibly hard because Paul's life revolved around them.
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If you want to make someone disappear, why do it
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on the one day of the year everyone expects them
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to be carving a turkey.
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Speaker 2: It suggests calculated arrogance mixed with logistical convenience. Okay, the
8:01
perpetrators might have believed that by acting during the chaotic
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rush of holiday preparations, you know, amids the coming and
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going of family members, they could meddy the timeline.
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Speaker 1: Oh, like people would just assume he was busy or
8:12
stressed out.
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Speaker 2: Yeah right. They might have thought the police would be
8:16
slower to respond on a holiday, maybe assuming the person
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just went on a bender or left after a family argument. Yeah,
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but it is a massive risk that ultimately ensures immediate scrutiny, and.
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Speaker 1: That scrutiny ramps up fast because a vehicle is missing too.
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Paul's nineteen eighty six Volvo yeah, it gets entered into
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the national database. The police are interviewing neighbors, coming up empty.
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The family is in total distress.
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Speaker 2: It's chaotic.
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Speaker 1: But this perfectly manicured facade of the missing, stressed out
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provider completely shatters just forty eight hours later.
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Speaker 2: It does. On November twenty fifth, at about two thirty
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in the afternoon, the Schenectady Police Department receives an anonymous tip. Okay,
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a person calls to report a car park the wrong
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way on a one way street. And this street is
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just two and a half blocks away from the Lacey home.
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Speaker 1: I mean you could practically see the street from their
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neighborhood exactly. So officers respond and they find the nineteen
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eighty six Volvo. They see a man apparently sleeping in
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the backseat. They pound on the glass, They knock on
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the doors, no response. It's freezing outside. They call ems
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open the car and immediately realize the man is not sleeping. No,
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he is dead and his body is nearly frozen from
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the elements, and.
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Speaker 2: The scene inside that car is highly anomalous. They search
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his pockets looking for a wallet. There is no wallet, right,
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but they do find an identification card which confirms this
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is Paul Lacey.
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Speaker 1: So let's look at the signs of staging that the
9:41
sources detail, because Stella's planted narrative of a robbery seemingly
9:46
right there. Yeah, on the surface, his pockets, specifically his
9:50
black jeans are turned inside out. Three rings that he
9:54
always wore gone, the wallet is gone. It visually screams robbery.
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Speaker 2: It definitely mimics a robbery, but the physical evidence at
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the scene violently contradicts that narrative. Once you understand the forensics.
10:06
Speaker 1: Of violent crimes, Okay, walk me through that first.
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Speaker 2: The car keys are just sitting on the front floorboard.
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There's no broken glass anywhere, indicating no forced entry inside
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the vehicle. There's absolutely no blood. There are no gunshot wounds,
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no knife wounds, and most telling of all, Paul's clothes
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are not disheveled in the.
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Speaker 1: Slightest which means there was no struggle exactly. If a
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mugger is robbing you, forcing you into the backseat of
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your own car to kill you, your clothes are going
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to be a mess. You are fighting for your.
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Speaker 2: Life, absolutely, and when the medical examiner conducts the autopsy,
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the cause of death shatters the robbery theory entirely. Yeah,
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Paul Lacey died by strangulation. He had at least two
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distinct ligature marks around his neck.
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Speaker 1: Wow.
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Speaker 2: And this is where the pathology becomes crucial. A medical
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examiner can tell the difference between post mortem staging and
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a mark made while the victim was alive. Oh really, Yes,
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When someone is strangled while the heart is still pumping,
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it causes deep bruising and potechual.
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Speaker 1: Hemorrhaging, pateechial hemorrhaging.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, they are tiny burst blood vessels in the eyes
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and face due to the sudden spike and pressure. The
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marks on Paul's neck showed vital.
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Speaker 1: Reaction, meaning he was alive when it happened.
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Speaker 2: Exactly, meaning the strangulation was the cause of death, not
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something done after the fact to throw off police.
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Speaker 1: Just thinking about the logistics of this in a nineteen
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eighty six vulvus aed ann is absurd. It is the
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back seat of that car is incredibly cramped. You cannot
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get a fully grown adult male into the tiny back
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seat of a Volvo, get a ligature around his neck,
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and strangle him to death without leaving a single sign
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of a struggle, without a single drop of blood or
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even wrinkling the guy's shirt.
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Speaker 2: It's impossible. Strangulation is an incredibly intimate, violent, and physically
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demanding way to kill someone. Yeah, it requires a massive
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power disparity, a prolonged period of time, or the element
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of total surprise.
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Speaker 1: So what did the ex experts conclude?
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Speaker 2: The experts looking at this scene immediately concluded two things.
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Whoever killed Paul had to be a person of considerable
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size and strength, And the murder did not happen in
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that car.
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Speaker 1: So the car is just a display case, a dumping
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ground exactly.
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Speaker 2: The lack of a struggle in that cramp space proves
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Paul's dead weight was transported and staged in the vulvule. Furthermore,
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strangulation is almost never the modus operandi of a random
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street robbery.
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Speaker 1: Really, why is that people who.
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Speaker 2: Strangle other people usually have a personal relationship with the victim.
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It requires a proximity and sustained physical contact that street
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robbers who generally prefer firearms or knives for quick compliance
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just avoid.
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Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense, and the autopsy delivers
12:44
one more massive blow to Stella's timeline. Right it does,
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the medical examiner checks Paul's stomach contents, and this goes
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back to that salami sandwich Stella specifically said she saw
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him eating at eleven thirty pm.
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Speaker 2: Yes, the stomach was entirely empty.
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Speaker 1: Which is physically impossible if you.
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Speaker 2: Ate a sandwich, completely impossible. Gastric emptying is a standard
13:04
forensic metric. Depending on the food, it takes several hours
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for a meal to move completely from the stomach into
13:09
the small intestine. Right if Paul had eaten the salami
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sandwich at eleven thirty pm and was murdered shortly after,
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there would absolutely be undigested or partially digested food in
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his stomach.
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Speaker 1: So an empty stomach scientifically proves he had not eaten
13:22
a late night snack exactly.
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Speaker 2: That finite detail Stella offered to ground her timeline was
13:28
a demonstrable lie.
13:30
Speaker 1: This instantly casts suspicion back onto the house. It does,
13:34
But I have a logistical pushback here. Sure, if you
13:37
are a killer and you have gone through the incredibly difficult,
13:41
physically taxing task of moving a dead body into a car,
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and you've gone out of your way to stage a
13:46
fake robbery by turning the pockets inside out, why park
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the car literally two and a half blocks away. Yeah,
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why not drive it to another city? Parking it the
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wrong way on a one way street right down the
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road from the victim's house seems daggeringly incompetent.
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Speaker 2: Well, it speaks volumes about the perpetrator's psychological state at
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the time of the disposal. How So, in geographic profiling,
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we often look at dump sites to understand the offender.
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On one hand, you have the cold calculation to stage
14:14
the pockets and remove the rings. On the other, you
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have a geographical laziness or sheer panic that leaves the
14:20
body practically on the victim's doorstep.
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Speaker 1: They just couldn't handle it anymore exactly.
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Speaker 2: This happens frequently when amateurs attempt to execute a complex plan.
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Adrenaline takes over. The intense fear of being pulled over
14:33
by a cop while driving a car with a corpse
14:35
in the back kicks in, and the primary goal shifts
14:39
from hide the body perfectly to just get it out
14:42
of the house right now.
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Speaker 1: So they likely drove just far enough away that the
14:47
car wasn't sitting in their own.
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Speaker 2: Driveway, panicked, parked it poorly, and fled on foot back
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to the safety of the house.
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Speaker 1: And that proximity is exactly what damns them absolutely, because
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the physical evidence in the car proves the murder happened elsewhere,
15:01
and because they parked it so close, investigators logically deduced
15:05
they have to look incredibly close to home to find
15:08
the primary crime scene.
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Speaker 2: Right, the focus sharply pivots back to the Lacey residents.
15:13
Speaker 1: That they don't get there immediately, do they.
15:15
Speaker 2: No, investigators have to sift through some incredibly distracting red
15:19
herrings before they can definitively prove what happened inside those walls. Right.
15:22
Speaker 1: The first major red herring is Paul's older cousin, David Walmack. Earlier,
15:27
we talked about Paul's generosity, how he always wanted to
15:30
provide for his family. David Walmack was a beneficiary of that.
15:34
Speaker 2: He was he needed a place to stay. The rest
15:36
of the family actually warned Paul against it, but Paul
15:39
took him in any way and let him live with
15:40
them for a few months.
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Speaker 1: But the arrangement deteriorated quickly, Right, very quickly.
15:44
Speaker 2: Yeah. Stella tells police that David had severe anger issues.
15:48
He was prone to rage, filled.
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Speaker 1: Arguments, and crucially he was known to keep guns around,
15:53
which heavily contrasted with Paul's nonviolent, peaceful nature.
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Speaker 2: Right, Paul was not a physical fighter. He avoided confrontation.
16:00
Speaker 1: And this all comes to a head on November three,
16:02
exactly three weeks before Paul's body is found. Paul hits
16:06
his limit. He kicks his older cousin out of the house.
16:09
Speaker 2: And the reaction is explosive. David allegedly slashes the tires
16:13
on Paul's cars in a fit of race.
16:15
Speaker 1: Wait, he slashes his tires.
16:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, And for law enforcement, an escalation of violence like
16:20
that is a glowing neon sign. I bet you have
16:23
a known suspect with a demonstrated history of rage, access
16:27
to weapons, a very recent and severe grievance.
16:30
Speaker 1: Against the victim, and a retaliatory act of property damage.
16:34
Speaker 2: Exactly. Investigators will always look at the most recent interpersonal
16:37
conflict first, of course, So they track Womack down for
16:41
an interview, and.
16:42
Speaker 1: He denies having anything to do with the disappearance or
16:44
the murder.
16:45
Speaker 2: He does. He claims he hadn't seen Paul in weeks. Yeah,
16:48
And he definitively states he didn't see him on Thanksgiving Eve.
16:52
Speaker 1: And he provides an alibi.
16:54
Speaker 2: Yes, he claims he went hunting with his sons on
16:56
Thanksgiving Day. Wow Okay, And this alibi is stensively corroborated
17:01
by multiple friends and family members. As suspicious as the
17:04
tire slashing incident made him look on paper, the timeline
17:08
simply doesn't support him being the physical killer.
17:10
Speaker 1: So the police are forced to clear him of the
17:12
actual act of murder. They are with Womec's sideline. The
17:16
detectives are back to looking at the house. They need
17:18
to get inside, but getting a search warrant based purely
17:22
on the empty stumming discrepancy and the geographic proximity of
17:25
the car is a heavy legal lift and it takes time.
17:28
Speaker 2: It does, so they ask.
17:31
Speaker 1: They just ask.
17:31
Speaker 2: Yep, They ask Stella and Ron Folner, the other cousin
17:36
who is currently renting a room there, for consent to
17:39
search the home.
17:39
Speaker 1: And they both say yes.
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Speaker 2: Consenting to a search is a frequent tactic used by
17:43
guilty parties to feign.
17:44
Speaker 1: Innocence, really like a reverse psychology thing exactly.
17:49
Speaker 2: The logic is a bit desperate. They think if I
17:51
say no, I look guilty and they'll just come back
17:54
with a warrant. Anyway, if I let them in, maybe
17:56
they won't find anything and they'll trust me more.
17:59
Speaker 1: Got it. So investigators swarm the house. They are upstairs, downstairs,
18:04
checking bedrooms, looking for any sign of a struggle, cleaning chemicals,
18:08
or the murder weapon.
18:09
Speaker 2: And during this intense police search, one of the most
18:12
surreal encounters occurs.
18:13
Speaker 1: Oh man, this part is wild.
18:15
Speaker 2: An investigator is standing in the kitchen, the back door
18:18
opens and a man casually walks in without knocking.
18:22
Speaker 1: The investigator assumes it's a family member.
18:24
Speaker 2: Right yeah, But as Calvin Smith, the neighbor who lives
18:26
kitty corner to the Laceys, the.
18:28
Speaker 1: Same neighbor Stella mentioned, had stopped by to socialize on
18:32
Thanksgiving Eve. And what Calvin does next is truly mind boggling.
18:36
He walks right up to the kitchen counter, grabs the
18:39
fully cooked Thanksgiving turkey, rips one of the legs off
18:43
with his bare hands, and just starts eating it right
18:46
there in front of the detective.
18:47
Speaker 2: We really have to analyze the profound cognitive disconnect required
18:51
for this action.
18:52
Speaker 1: Seriously. I mean, a homicide investigation is underway in the
18:56
home of your murdered neighbor, right the atmosphere is inherently tense,
19:01
grief stricken and highly controlled by law.
19:03
Speaker 2: Enforcement, and walking in uninvited and casually eating the victim's
19:07
holiday meal is an act of bizarre transgression.
19:10
Speaker 1: Yeah. The investigator asks who he is, and Calvin introduces himself.
19:13
He says, yeah, this is really sad about what happened.
19:15
Speaker 2: To Paul, and the investigator replies, yeah, but we'll get
19:18
to the bottom of this.
19:19
Speaker 1: And Kelvin, while chewing on the turkey leg, points a
19:23
finger directly at the kitchen floor and says, the bottom
19:26
starts right here.
19:27
Speaker 2: It's unbelievable.
19:28
Speaker 1: I struggle to understand the mechanics of his psychology. Here
19:31
is he subconsciously confessing.
19:34
Speaker 2: It's a phenomenon known as psychological leakage, which is driven
19:37
by cognitive dissonance. Psychological leakage, Yeah, when someone is carrying
19:42
an immense guilty secret, the psychological pressure built up, they
19:47
often feel an overwhelming, almost subconscious urge to hint at their.
19:52
Speaker 1: Knowledge like they want to be caught.
19:54
Speaker 2: It's more of an urge to assert control or superiority
19:57
in a chaotic environment by showing they know something the
20:00
authorities don't. Oh wow, by pointing the floor and cryptically
20:06
hinting that the bottom starts here. Calvin is feeding his
20:09
own ego while completely failing to realize that to a
20:13
trained investigator, this anomalous behavior makes him the prime suspect.
20:17
Speaker 1: So what does the detective do.
20:19
Speaker 2: The detective doesn't press him immediately, he doesn't want to
20:21
spook him, but Calvin is instantly flagged.
20:25
Speaker 1: I mean, as if Calvin's kitchen performance wasn't enough. Investigators
20:28
get another piece of the puzzle that completely shatters the
20:31
staged car scene.
20:32
Speaker 2: They do.
20:32
Speaker 1: An anonymous caller tips off the police with a mundane
20:35
yet critical piece of medical information. Paul Lacey had terrible eyesight.
20:40
He needed to wear his glasses all.
20:41
Speaker 2: The time, and this is exactly why investigators canvas so
20:44
heavily for mundane details. If Paul relied on his glasses
20:48
just to see properly, he would never have driven his
20:51
car without them, especially at night.
20:53
Speaker 1: So the police realized they didn't find any glasses in
20:56
that bolvo. They searched the car again, no glasses right,
21:00
which definitively cements the theory Paul Lacey did not drive
21:04
himself to that one away street. He was murdered in
21:07
his home and driven there by someone else exactly.
21:10
Speaker 2: The physical evidence, the empty stomach, the lack of glasses,
21:13
the proximity of the car YEA, combined with the behavioral
21:16
a nomalies of Stella's shifting timeline in Calvin's Turkey incident,
21:21
gives the investigator's total clarity.
21:23
Speaker 1: The murder happened in the house.
21:25
Speaker 2: The murder happened in the house, and the three people
21:27
who are in that house on Thanksgiving Eve are the
21:30
keys to the entire conspiracy.
21:32
Speaker 1: So the police decide it's time to stop asking polite
21:35
questions and start applying pressure.
21:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, they bring Stella, Calvin, and Ron Falner down to
21:39
the station.
21:40
Speaker 1: They aren't under formal arrest yet, but the police employ
21:43
a very specific strategy regarding the physical architecture of the precinct.
21:47
Speaker 2: They utilize a real world adaptation of the prisoner's dilemma.
21:51
Speaker 1: Oh I've heard of this.
21:52
Speaker 2: Yeah. They place all three individuals in adjacent interrogation rooms.
21:56
When you are sitting in a small windowless room, you
22:00
know your suspected co conspirators are in the rooms right
22:02
next to you. The paranoia sets in.
22:05
Speaker 1: Instantly because you can't hear what they're saying.
22:07
Speaker 2: Exactly. Game theory dictates that human beings, when isolated and
22:12
facing severe consequences, will often betray their partners to minimize
22:17
their own punishment.
22:18
Speaker 1: You are left agonizing over who is going to break
22:20
first and point the finger.
22:22
Speaker 2: At you, and the pressure cooker works. They start with Stella.
22:25
The investigator notes her demeanor has completely shifted.
22:28
Speaker 1: She is visibly nervous very under.
22:32
Speaker 2: That pressure, the facade of the perfect marriage she sold
22:35
to the patrol officer completely evaporates.
22:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, she admits the marriage was failing. She brings up
22:40
the financial issues again, but this time with actual context.
22:45
She admits they had filed for Chapter thirteen bankruptcy. Right,
22:48
let's break down Chapter thirteen bankruptcy because it explains the
22:51
extreme financial pressure she was under. Chapter thirteen isn't the
22:54
liquidation where your debts are just wiped out. It's a
22:57
way Journer's plan.
22:59
Speaker 2: Exactly after thirteen bankruptcy, you are reorganizing your debt. The
23:03
court allows you to keep your major assets like the
23:06
house and the cars, but in exchange, you are put
23:09
on a strict court mandated repayment plan that lasts three
23:13
to five years.
23:14
Speaker 1: So they are watching every penny.
23:16
Speaker 2: It means every spare dollar of your income is monitored
23:20
and goes toward paying off creditors. It protects the physical house,
23:24
which Stella desperately wanted to keep, but it creates immense,
23:27
suffocating pressure on day to day cash flow.
23:30
Speaker 1: She also claims Paul was demanding physical intimacy that she
23:33
continually rejected. Right, but the absolute core motive drops when
23:37
she admits to a year long affair, and not just
23:39
with anyone, with Ron Fallner, the cousin living in their house.
23:44
Speaker 2: The layers of betrayal are staggering.
23:45
Speaker 1: It's wild.
23:46
Speaker 2: She tells the police that Ron was a breath of
23:48
fresh air, someone who listened to her, who helped with chores.
23:51
Speaker 1: And the detail that truly underscores the coldness of this
23:57
she admits that Thanksgiving Day, the day she called the
23:59
police to report her husband missing, was actually her in
24:02
Ron's one year anniversary.
24:04
Speaker 2: It really paints a dark picture.
24:06
Speaker 1: Along with the affair, the financial motive comes into full focus.
24:10
The police ask about insurance and Stella admits Paul had
24:13
two life insurance policies totaling fifty thousand dollars. So now
24:18
the police have a love triangle. A woman trapped in
24:21
a chapter thirteen repayment plan, who sees a fifty thousand
24:24
dollars way out and a crumbling alibi.
24:26
Speaker 2: And knowing she's backed into a corner, Stella offers what
24:30
investigators call a partial confession.
24:32
Speaker 1: What does that mean exactly?
24:33
Speaker 2: It's a fascinating psychological defense mechanism. When a suspect realizes
24:37
the outright lie is dead, they will admit to a
24:40
portion of the truth, but strategically frame it to minimize
24:44
their own physical culpability.
24:45
Speaker 1: Oh I see.
24:46
Speaker 2: She tells the police that she and Ron used to
24:48
fantasize about getting rid of Paul, but she insists she
24:51
never thought it was serious.
24:52
Speaker 1: According to her news story, on Thanksgiving Eve, she rejected
24:56
Paul's advances and they were in bed, and then Ron
25:00
yelled up the stairs, claiming Paul had a phone call.
25:04
Speaker 2: Notice the deliberate distancing. Yeah, She places herself upstairs away
25:08
from the action. Paul goes downstairs. A few minutes later,
25:12
Ron comes up and asks her to come down.
25:14
Speaker 1: She claims she walked into Ron's bedroom and saw Paul
25:16
lying face down with a pink blanket over his head,
25:20
and in the room are Ron and Calvin Smith.
25:23
Speaker 2: She claims she stood there staring until it dawned on
25:26
her that Paul was dead.
25:27
Speaker 1: Then she admits to the cleanup. She says she stayed
25:29
behind to clean the house while the men moved the body.
25:32
Speaker 2: But the detail that absolutely haunts me is her admission
25:35
that she went back upstairs, got Paul's shoes, pants, shirt, belt,
25:40
and pager, and the three of them dressed his dead
25:42
body to stage the robbery. That is just wow. The
25:45
physical pragmatism of that act is chilling. Yeah, Dressing a
25:49
deceased human being is incredibly difficult. After death, the body
25:52
quickly becomes dead weight and eventually rigor mortis sets in,
25:55
stiffening the joint.
25:56
Speaker 1: You have to really work at it.
25:57
Speaker 2: Manipulating a lifeless adult's limb to put jeenes in a
26:01
belt on them just to sell a fake narrative to
26:04
the police requires a level of emotional detachment that is
26:07
hard to comprehend.
26:09
Speaker 1: And she also admits she ordered Calvin to flush the
26:12
murder weapon the rope down the toilet. Right, Stella's logic
26:15
here is absurd. Though she admits to fantasizing about the murder,
26:19
she admits to the year long affair she admits to
26:21
the fifty thousand dollars insurance motive yep. And she admits
26:26
to actively participating in dressing the corpse and destroying evidence.
26:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, but she.
26:30
Speaker 1: Wants the police to believe that the actual strangulation was
26:34
just a spontaneous surprise by her boyfriend.
26:36
Speaker 2: That's her story.
26:37
Speaker 1: It's like admitting you drew the blueprints for the bank robbery,
26:40
drove the getaway car, and split the cash, but claiming
26:43
you were absolutely shocked when the vault actually blew open.
26:47
Speaker 2: It doesn't make logical sense, but in her legal calculus,
26:49
it's the difference between being charged as an accessory after
26:53
the fact and being charged with first degree murder.
26:55
Speaker 1: Oh right, because she didn't physically do it.
26:58
Speaker 2: She is trying to insulate her from the physical act
27:01
of violence. She is pointing the fingers squarely at Ron
27:04
and Calvin as the actual killers, which.
27:06
Speaker 1: Means the investigators now have to get Ron and Calvin
27:09
to confirm they committed the murder exactly, and to do
27:13
that they pull off one of the most incredibly creative,
27:16
almost unbelievable bluffs in law enforcement history.
27:19
Speaker 2: It really is. While Stella is spending this partial truth,
27:23
investigators are in the other rooms with the men.
27:25
Speaker 1: And Calvin, true to form, is denying absolutely everything. He
27:28
denies any involvement whatsoever.
27:30
Speaker 2: He does. So an investigator decides to try a different
27:33
tactic with Calvin. He walks in and asks a very
27:36
simple question. He says, did you put your hands on
27:38
the rope?
27:39
Speaker 1: And Kalen says no.
27:40
Speaker 2: The investigator says, Calvin, do you know what a rope
27:42
is made of. It's made of fibers, and if you
27:45
pull a rope hard enough to strangle a man, those
27:47
microscopic fibers become deeply embedded in the skin of your.
27:51
Speaker 1: Hands, which sounds incredibly plausible to a layman.
27:55
Speaker 2: It relies on a pre television version of the CSI effect, right,
27:59
the inherent public belief that police possess magical, infallible forensic technology.
28:05
The investigator tells Calvin that the Schenectady Police Department has
28:08
just purchased a state of the art fiber detection instrument.
28:12
Speaker 1: And remember this is nineteen ninety five. Technology is advancing
28:16
rapidly in the public consciousness exactly. The investigator takes Calvin
28:20
out of the interrogation room and walks him down the
28:22
hall to the administrative office, and sitting there is a
28:26
brand new large office copy machine.
28:29
Speaker 2: A standard everyday photocopsy.
28:31
Speaker 1: Standard photocopier. The investigator lifts the lid of the copier,
28:35
tells Calvin to place his hands on the glass and
28:38
says they are going to hit the detection button to
28:40
scan his skin for rope fibers.
28:42
Speaker 2: It's brilliant.
28:43
Speaker 1: Calvin puts his hands down, the investigator hits the copy button.
28:47
That massive, bright halogen light flashes across the glass, and
28:52
Calvin physically recoils.
28:54
Speaker 2: He pulls his hands away, terrified of what the machine
28:56
just saw.
28:56
Speaker 1: Standing next to a Xerox machine, the psychological weight of
28:59
the deception and collapses. Calvin breaks. He says, all right,
29:02
I did it. I strangled Paul. I am mind blown
29:05
by this. A fake machine with a flashing light and
29:09
it worked flawlessly.
29:11
Speaker 2: How does someone fall for this? Is it just ignorance
29:14
of technology or is there a deeper psychological mechanism at play.
29:18
Speaker 1: It's heavily rooted in cognitive load.
29:21
Speaker 2: Cognitive load, Yes.
29:22
Speaker 1: Maintaining a complex lie during a homicide interrogation requires a
29:26
massive amount of brain power. Your brain is constantly working
29:30
overtime to keep the story straight, anticipate the detective's questions
29:34
and suppress intense guilt or fear.
29:36
Speaker 2: That makes sense, You're just exhausted.
29:38
Speaker 1: If you think about a time you are caught in
29:40
a lie, your brain is racing. When the investigator introduces
29:44
physical scientific proof, the flashing light of the copier, it
29:48
acts as a circuit breaker. Oh wow, Calvin's overloaded brain
29:51
essentially concludes I'm caught. The machine knows there is no
29:55
point in carrying this massive cognitive weight anymore.
29:57
Speaker 2: So it's almost a relief.
29:59
Speaker 1: The relief of conf fashion, even to a horrific crime,
30:02
often outweighs the agonizing stress of maintaining the deception.
30:05
Speaker 2: We need to touch on the legality of this though.
30:07
Can police just lie to you about a magical copy machine?
30:10
Speaker 1: Yes, they can really.
30:12
Speaker 2: Under the legal precedent set by cases like Fraser v.
30:15
Cup In the United States, police are generally allowed to
30:17
use deception during an interrogation. Wow, okay, they can lie
30:21
about having your fingerprints at the scene, having an eyewitness,
30:25
or in this case, a fiber detection machine.
30:26
Speaker 1: Is there any limit to that?
30:28
Speaker 2: The legal boundary is that the deception cannot be so
30:31
coercive that it would force an innocent person to confess
30:35
to a crime they didn't commit. Right, Tricking Calvin into
30:39
thinking a copier was scanning his hands did not violate
30:42
his due process because an innocent person who had never
30:45
touched a murder weapon wouldn't fear the machine finding rope fibers.
30:49
Speaker 1: That is fascinating. So Calvin breaks and he details the
30:53
brutal reality of the murder he does. Calvin admits that
30:56
Ron called Paul downstairs. Calvin hid behind the bedroom door
31:00
with the rope. As Paul walked in, Calvin threw the
31:04
rope around Paul's neck twice and just pulled as hard
31:06
as he could for a couple of minutes.
31:07
Speaker 2: And the physical reality of this is deeply disturbing. Calvin
31:11
was a big guy, but Paul was fighting for his life.
31:13
So Ron Falner, Paul's own cousin, the man having an
31:17
affair with his wife, physically jumped onto Pole's back to
31:21
add more weight and leverage to the strangulation, forcing him
31:24
to the ground.
31:25
Speaker 1: The detail that truly turns my stomach is what happens
31:28
as Paul is dying.
31:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's awful.
31:31
Speaker 1: According to the confession, as the life is leaving Paul's body.
31:35
Ron leans forward, kisses Paul on the forehead, and says,
31:38
I'm sorry, but everyone can now be at peace.
31:41
Speaker 2: It is a profound narcissistic manipulation of reality.
31:45
Speaker 1: It really is.
31:47
Speaker 2: Ron is violently murdering his cousin to steal his wife
31:50
in his insurance money, yet he frames it in this twisted,
31:53
almost merciful light.
31:55
Speaker 1: Like he's doing him a favor.
31:56
Speaker 2: It highlights the deep justification often present in these intimate consperss.
32:00
They convinced themselves that tall, the man providing the roof
32:04
over their heads, was the obstacle to their happiness.
32:07
Speaker 1: And that killing him was somehow restoring order exactly, and
32:10
Calvin's motivation for participating in this intimate family execution, Stella
32:15
promised him one hundred dollars up front and a cut
32:17
of the fifty thousand dollars life insurance payout one hundred
32:20
dollars one hundred dollars, and he also took the three
32:23
rings off Paul's fingers before they dumped the body, thinking
32:27
he'd score a big payday. He ended up selling them
32:30
for a measly forty dollars.
32:32
Speaker 2: A human life extinguished for pocket change and empty promises
32:36
from a manipulative mastermind. Yeah, Calvin's confession makes clear that
32:40
Stella was not an innocent bystander waiting upstairs. Right. Calvin
32:45
states unequivocally that Stella was the one who promised him
32:48
the money, and Stella was the one who commanded them
32:50
to make it look like a robbery to protect yourself.
32:53
Speaker 1: When they questioned Ron, he confesses too.
32:55
Speaker 2: He does. His motive was entirely wrapped up in his
32:59
love for Stella. He wanted to end what he viewed
33:01
as a toxic marriage so they could be together.
33:04
Speaker 1: So three days after Paul's body is found, Stella, Ron,
33:07
and Calvin are all arrested and charged with murder, tampering
33:10
with evidence, and conspiracy.
33:11
Speaker 2: YEP investigators firmly believe they have unraveled the whole thread.
33:15
Speaker 1: They view Stella as the driving force.
33:17
Speaker 2: The puppet master who manipulated a love sick cousin and
33:20
a greedy neighbor into executing her husband so she could
33:24
collect the insurance and solve her Chapter thirteen bankruptcy issues
33:28
without losing her home.
33:29
Speaker 1: It seems like an open and shutcase. You have full
33:31
confessions from the men, a partial confession from Stella the
33:35
physical evidence, the timeline, but the.
33:38
Speaker 2: Justice system is rarely that simple.
33:40
Speaker 1: Tell me about it.
33:41
Speaker 2: Because of the severity of the crime, both Ron and
33:44
Calvin were initially facing the potential of the death penalty.
33:48
Speaker 1: Wow.
33:48
Speaker 2: To save their own lives, their attorneys advise them to
33:51
take plea deals. Calvin pleads guilty to first degree murder
33:55
and is sentenced to twenty five years to life.
33:58
Speaker 1: Okay.
33:58
Speaker 2: Ron pleads guilty to second degree and receives the same
34:01
sentence twenty five years to life.
34:03
Speaker 1: As part of Calvin's plea agreement, he is required to
34:06
testify against Stella at her trial, right, but prosecutors do
34:09
not require Ron to testify. Why because Ron was still
34:13
so deeply in love with Stella that he outright refused
34:16
to ever harm her on the stand. It's crazy, even
34:18
after she manipulated him into committing murder and going to
34:21
prison for life, he protected her.
34:23
Speaker 2: Which leaves the prosecution relying heavily on Calvin's testimony when
34:27
Stella's trial begins in August of nineteen ninety six.
34:31
Speaker 1: Right.
34:31
Speaker 2: The sources note that Stella's demeanor throughout the trial was
34:34
incredibly cold and stone faced.
34:37
Speaker 1: And her defense team stuck to the narrative she seated
34:41
in her interrogation really.
34:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, that she did not participate in the planning or
34:44
execution of the murder. She only became aware of it
34:47
after the fact and only helped dispose of the body
34:50
out of fear.
34:51
Speaker 1: But Calvin gets on the stand and testifies otherwise. He
34:55
tells the jury that Stella planned it, that she wanted
34:58
it to look like a robbery, and the she wanted
35:00
it done before the holidays.
35:02
Speaker 2: But the prosecution knows they need more than just the
35:05
word of an admitted murderer trying.
35:07
Speaker 1: To save himself, so they bring back a ghost from
35:09
the beginning of the investigation, David Walmack.
35:12
Speaker 2: The older cousin who had his tires slashed and was
35:14
kicked out by Paul three weeks before the murder.
35:16
Speaker 1: Exactly Walmac takes the stand and drops a bombshell. He
35:20
testifies that Stella had approached him prior to the murder
35:23
and offered him ten thousand dollars to kill Paul.
35:25
Speaker 2: Now, this is exactly what the prosecution needs, proof of
35:30
premeditation and mastermind intent by Stella before she ever turned
35:34
to Ron and Calvin.
35:36
Speaker 1: On paper, it's the smoking gun, but.
35:38
Speaker 2: In a courtroom, evidence is only as good as the
35:41
credibility of the witness delivering it.
35:43
Speaker 1: Right, and David Walmack's credibility was completely destroyed on cross examination.
35:47
Speaker 2: Defense attorneys are exceptionally skilled at finding the gaps in
35:52
a witness's timeline.
35:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, they highlighted the fact that Walmack had never reported
35:57
this alleged ten thousand dollars offered to the police during
36:00
his initial interviews when he was being investigated for the
36:03
tire slashing.
36:03
Speaker 2: He only brought it up much later.
36:05
Speaker 1: The defense easily paints it as sour grapes. He was
36:08
kicked out by Paul, he hated the family, and now
36:10
he's making up a story to insert himself and doom
36:13
Stella out of spite.
36:14
Speaker 2: And the jury looks at Womack, looks at his own
36:18
missions and decides he is completely uncredible. They disregard his
36:22
testimony entirely.
36:23
Speaker 1: Which is huge.
36:24
Speaker 2: This illustrates why proving mastermind culpability is so extraordinarily difficult. Yeah,
36:29
explain that under New York law, to convict someone of
36:32
first degree murder as an accomplice, the prosecution has to
36:35
prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant shared the
36:39
exact same.
36:40
Speaker 1: Mensrea mensrea being the mental intent to kill.
36:43
Speaker 2: Right, and that they actively solicited, requested, or commanded the
36:47
act okay. Without Walmack's testimony establishing prior intent, the jury
36:53
is left with a he said, she said between Stella
36:55
and Calvin. There is no physical evidence tying Stella to
37:00
the rope.
37:00
Speaker 1: She didn't pull it, she didn't jump on Paul's back exactly,
37:03
and because of that lingering reasonable doubt regarding her active
37:06
participation in the physical murder, the jury delivers a verdict
37:10
that absolutely devastates Paul's family.
37:13
Speaker 2: It's heart breaking.
37:14
Speaker 1: Stella Lacey is found not guilty of first degree murder.
37:16
Speaker 2: She is convicted only of lesser charges criminally negligent homicide,
37:21
tampering with evidence and hindering prosecution.
37:23
Speaker 1: Criminally negligent homicide.
37:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, which essentially means a jury believe she failed to
37:27
perceive a substantial and unjustifiable risk that death.
37:30
Speaker 1: Would occur, so they bought her story.
37:33
Speaker 2: They essentially believed her narrative that she was negligent in
37:36
allowing the toxic environment to fester and she helped clean
37:39
it up. But the prosecution couldn't definitively prove she ordered the.
37:43
Speaker 1: Hit, and the sentencing reflects this massive downgrade. While Ron
37:48
and Calvin get twenty five years to life, Stella receives
37:51
a sentence of ten to thirty two years in state prison.
37:55
Speaker 2: It's a stark contrast.
37:56
Speaker 1: This feels like penalizing the hit man but letting the
37:59
mob boss plead down to his zoning violation.
38:02
Speaker 2: It is a tragic irony of the legal system. Yeah,
38:04
the justice system is built heavily on physical causality. A shoots, BC, stabs.
38:09
Speaker 1: D right direct action.
38:11
Speaker 2: When you introduce psychological manipulation like E convinces F to
38:15
strangle G, the chain of causality becomes muddy. Juries want certainty,
38:19
and psychological coercion rarely leaves a forensic footprint you can
38:23
put under a microscope. Those who are cold and calculate
38:26
enough to delegate violence often face later consequences than the
38:30
blunt instruments they wielded man.
38:31
Speaker 1: The family felt that failure intimately. Paul's sister said, the
38:35
justice system failed them. They knew Stella was the puppet master,
38:39
the one who orchestrated this betrayal for a fifty thousand
38:42
dollars insurance policy and a house she didn't want to
38:45
lose in a chapter thirteen bankruptcy, and yet she got
38:48
a break.
38:49
Speaker 2: But despite the legal outcome, the family works incredibly hard
38:54
to ensure that Stella does not define Paul's legacy.
38:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, thirty years later, they still talk about his effects,
39:00
xious smile, his unlimited generosity, and the way he made
39:03
everyone around him feel safe.
39:05
Speaker 2: He succeeded in his life's skull. He was the loving,
39:08
stand up guy he set out to be.
39:10
Speaker 1: Which brings us to the end of this deep dive
39:12
and to a final provocative thought that I cannot shake
39:15
after reading these files.
39:17
Speaker 2: What is it?
39:17
Speaker 1: Well, it circles back to the very foundation of this tragedy.
39:20
We spend so much of our lives trying to build security.
39:23
Speaker 2: We do.
39:24
Speaker 1: We buy the house, we put in the pool, we
39:26
meticulously manage our retirement accounts, We lock our doors at night,
39:29
we install alarm systems, and we constantly worry about the
39:32
threat lurking in the dark outside our walls. We are
39:35
so focused on protecting our fortress from the outside world.
39:39
But the terrifying lesson embedded in the murder of Paul
39:42
Lacey is a question of proximity. What happens when the
39:46
greatest threat to your safety, the most lethal danger you
39:49
will ever face, isn't someone breaking a window to get in,
39:53
but the people sitting at your dinner table, the people
39:56
who already have the keys.
39:57
Speaker 2: Yeah.
39:57
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us as we unpack the files
40:00
in this complex, deeply unsettling case. We appreciate you taking
40:03
this journey with us, and we'll be back with another
40:05
deep dive into the sources soon. Take care,