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The Toxin in the Jeep: The Mary Yodar Case · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Picture this. It's late August twenty fifteen. You are sitting
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: in this sterile, freezing medical complex in Utica, New York.
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: Ugh, I can already picture those harsh florescent lights exactly.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: The lights are buzzing overhead, the air conditioning is humming,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: and there's that practically suffocating smell of industrial antiseptic everywhere.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: And you're sitting next to a woman named Janine who
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: is tightly holding her elderly mother's hand.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: Just waiting right.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: And the grief in this small room is incredibly heavy.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: It's almost physical, because just one month Trier, Jeanine's sixteen
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: year old sister, Mary Yoda, died suddenly and unexpectedly in
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: this exact same building.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's the kind of trauma that makes simply
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: walking through those hospital sliding doors and agonizing experience. They're
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: just there for a routine check up for the mother,
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: but you know, naturally the conversation with the doctor turns
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: to Mary.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because Jeanine and her family have spent the last
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: thirty days trying to make peace with the fact that
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Mary died of this sudden virulent bile duct infection. Up
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: until this very second, that was the story.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: Right, that was the official narrative.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: But as Janine mentions this infection, the doctor stops. He
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: looks like completely taken aback. He actually sets his clipboard down,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: looks Janine dead in the eye, and says, that was
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: never a real diagnosis, that was just a wild guess.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Wow, just pulling the rug right out from under them completely.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: He tells her the medical staff actually has absolutely no
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: idea what killed Mary. Her toxicology reports are still pending,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: So the ground just falls out from under them. Everything
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: they thought they knew about their sister's death was an illusion.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: And then the doctor leans in and asks this question
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: that will haunt Janine for the rest of her life.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: He looks around the quiet room and asks, where is
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: the husband?
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Such a chilling thing to hear from a doctor, and
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: it's a question that instantly shifts a medical tragedy into
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: a hunt for a killer. So welcome to today's deep dive.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: We are stepping directly into the shoes of the detectives today,
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: We really are.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: We're going to look at the exact evidence they saw
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: to figure out how a phantom poison torn entire family
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: and community really totally apart.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and to understand why that doctor's question was so loaded.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: We kind of have to rewind to the harrowing forty
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: eight hours that ends at Maryoder's life.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: Right, because the timeline here is critical to understanding the
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: sheer panic of the medical staff. I mean, this wasn't
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: a slow lingering illness where the body just gradually shuts down. No.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Mary was a vibrant, healthy, deeply beloved chiropractor. She and
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: her husband of nearly forty years, Bill Yoder, they ran
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: a thriving practice together.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, she was strong active. She was an avid gardener
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: who practically vibrated with energy.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: So it's Monday, July twentieth. Mary is at work seeing
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: patients completely normal. But by that afternoon, it is like
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: a switch is flipped inside her.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: Body, a very violent switch exactly.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: She's hit with this violent wave of nausea, intense vomiting,
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: and extreme abdominal pain. She goes home, spends the entire
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: night in absolute agony, and by Tuesday morning Bill drives
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: her to the hospital and.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: The initial response from the er doctors is pretty standard
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: for those symptoms. I mean they admit her, run basic
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: metabolic panels and start four V fluids. They're treating it
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: like a severe gastro intestinal bug or you know, maybe
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: food poisoning.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: Which makes sense, and by Tuesday evening her vitals actually
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: seem to stabilize slightly, so seeing this, Bill decides to
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: go home to get some rest, which, on.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: The surface, maybe that's understandable. If you think your spouse
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: just has a severe stomach bug, you might go home
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: to sleep.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: Sure, But Bill goes home, gets into bed, and deliberately
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: leaves his cell phone charging in a completely different room.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, meaning he essentially isolates himself from any updates. And
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: that becomes a huge problem because around tens or zero PM,
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: barely an hour after Bill leaves the hospital, Mary's condition
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: takes a catastrophic, terrifying dive.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: Right she collapses trying to use the bathroom or her
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: blood pressure completely plummets.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: She's rushed to the ICU, and by the early hours
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: of Wednesday, her major organs are shutting down, her heart
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: is failing. The hospital staff is frantically trying to reach
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: her husband, calling over and over again.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: It gets to the point where the hospital actually dispatches
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: New York State troopers to physically pound on Bill's front
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: door in the middle of the night just to wake
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: them up. Unbelievable, and even then, living only fifteen minutes away,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: it takes Bill a full hour to arrive at the hospital. Meanwhile,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: his wife is actively dying. Mary codes doctor's reviver. She
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: codes again.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: Over the course of that morning, Maryoder's heart stops.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: Seven times, seven times, yes.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: Seven times. They bring her back, injecting adrenaline, performing CPR,
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: until finally her body just gives out. She is pronounced
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: dead at two point five four pm on Wednesday, July
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: twenty second, less.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: Than forty eight hours after feeling perfectly fine at work.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: It's just staggling. And when the medical examiner, doctor Kennis Clark,
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: begins the autopsy, he obviously expects to find something like
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: an aggressive, ruptured appendix, or maybe an undiagnosed aneurysm, right.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: Something structural, But instead he is absolutely horrified. Mary's internal
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: organs were severely discus colored and necrotic. Under a microscope,
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: her tissue showed signs of massive cellular destruction.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: I remember reading this part.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it looked as though her body had literally begun
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: decomposing while she was still alive.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm trying to wrap my head around the
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: medical mechanics of this. The pathology notes described the cellular
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: destruction as looking like the aftermath of a nuclear bomb
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: going off inside her, like mimicking highly aggressive chemotherapy. Right,
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: but Mary didn't have cancer, she didn't have chemo. So
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: how does a toxin actually do that to a human body?
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: And honestly, how do forensic toxicologists even begin to search
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: for something when they have no idea what they're looking for?
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: Well, the how is what makes this particular poison so insidious.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: So the toxin I eventually found works by halting mitosis,
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: which that's the process of cell division.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Okay, cell division?
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: Right, Your body is constantly regenerating cells, especially in the
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: lining of your stomach, you're intestines and your major organs.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: When a chemical stops mitosis, those cells can't replicate, so
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: the lining of the gastrointestinal track literally sluice off.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: Ah, that is gruesome.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: It is the organs cannot sustain their own tissue, so
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: they begin to dissolve and fail simultaneously. It is an
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: excruciatingly painful way to die. And as for how they
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: found it, that requires running the victim's blood through a
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: gas chromatography mass spectrometry machine or a GCMs.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: Which essentially breaks down the chemical compounds in the blood
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: and compares them against a database of known substances.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: Right, exactly, But here's a catch. You usually have to
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: tell the machine what broad category to look for heavy metals, opioids,
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: common pesticides.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: You can't just say fine poison.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: No exactly. Arsenic and cyanide were quickly ruled out. It
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: took the poison Control Center nearly two months of painstaking
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: needle in a haystack testing, just running thousands of comparisons
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: to whole months, Yeah, until finally they found the phantom toxin.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: Mariy Yoder was killed by a massive lethal overdose of.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: Cultisine Cultisine, which is a prescription only medication typically used
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: to treat gout. But Mary did not have gout. Yeah,
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: it was zero medical reason for this drug to be
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: in her system, let alone in a concentration high enough
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: to kill her several times over Right.
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: And because coltisceine isn't something you can just accidentally inhale
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: or absorb through the skin, it requires intimate access. You
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: have to get the victim to physically ingest it, likely
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: masking the bitter taste and heavily flavored food or a drink.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: So this physiological fact forces the investigation to naturally pivot
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: to the person who prepared her meals, shared her home,
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: and had totally unimpeded access to her daily routine, her husband, Bill, which.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: Is pretty standard. The spouse is almost always the first
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: person investigators look at. But Bill's behavior post mortem was
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: doing him absolutely no favors.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: No, it was throwing up massive red flags for Mary's
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: sisters Janine and Sharon. First of all, despite the fact
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: that no one knew what killed Mary. Remember, the Cultisceine
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: wasn't discovered until months later. Bill had Mary cremated almost
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: immediately after the autopsy samples.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: Were taken, which is a move that permanently destroys any
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: remaining physical evidence in the body exactly.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: And furthermore, neither Bill nor the medical examiner notified the
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: police that Mary's death was a homicide once the poison
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: was discovered.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: Which is wild to me.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: Right. It was actually Mary's sister Sharon who took it
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: upon herself to call the Onondaga County Sheriff's office in October.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: She practically had to beg Lieutenant Robert Nelson and investigator
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: Mark van name to open a criminal case, and.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: As those investigators start looking into Bill, the family's creeping
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: dread seems to be validated by this massive bombshell. Just
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: four months after Mary's agonizing death, Bill calls his three
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: adult children together for a major family meeting. Four months
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: four months, he sits them down and announces he is
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: in love again.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, your wife of forty years is brutally poisoned,
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: and you are announcing a new soulmate.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: And the identity of this new woman is the twist
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: that absolutely shattered whatever was left of this family. Bill
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: wasn't just dating someone from the country club. He was
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: in love with Kathleen, Mary's own sister.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: Wait, your own sister. It is literally Greek tragedy level betrayal,
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: it really is now.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: Bill's explanation was that they bonded over mutual grief because
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: Kathleen's husband had also recently passed away, and that it's
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: simply quote turned romantic.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: Sure, but to the detectives and obviously to Mary's other sisters,
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: this looked like a glowing neon sign pointing directly to
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: a motive.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, investigators start operating on the assumption that they're looking
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: at a classic scenario. A husband wants to start a
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: new life with a secret lover but doesn't want the
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: financial ruin or the social stigma of a messy divorce,
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: so they start subpoening his phone records and tracking bank statements.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: But you know, put yourself in the detective shoes for
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: a second here. Usually the classic trope involves a massive
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: life insurance payout. Right, you kill the spouse, collect a
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: million dollars, and run off into the sunset.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: Right, the classic dateline motive exactly.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: But here there was no life insurance policy on maryor However,
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: there is this incredibly chilling conversation between Bill and his
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: daughter Panrin that investigators end up uncovering.
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: Oh, this part is so dark, it really is.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: Bill had recently inherited about half million dollars from his
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: own father's passing, and he casually mentioned to his daughter
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: that the inheritance was quote enough for one person to
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: retire on, but not.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: Too And that staggering detail shifts the psychological profile of
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: the motive entirely. It moves away from standard multimillion dollar
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: greed to something much colder and far more pragmatic. Yeah,
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: it's this calculated clinical decision that shedding a wife of
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: forty years would simply make his retirement math work out better.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: It suggests a chilling level of detachment.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: So the detectives are building a compelling, circumstantial case at
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: this point. Yeah, the motive is taking shape. The timeline
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: of his new romance is highly suspicious, and his behavior
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: at the hospital was appalling. They are preparing to bring
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: this right.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: They're ready to move on him.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: But before they can even draft a warrant, a single
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: piece of mail drops into their laps and completely derails
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: the entire investigation.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, out of nowhere. On November twenty third, twenty fifteen,
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: a typed, anonymous letter arrives at the sheriff's department. And
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: this letter doesn't mention Bill at all. It points the
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: finger directly at Mary's twenty five year old son, Adam Yoder.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: And the letter is uncomfortably specific. It isn't just someone
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: saying I think the son did it. It claims that
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: Adam actually confessed to the writer. It states Adam poisoned
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: his mother's vitamins around Father's Day out of financial resentment,
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: specifically because his parents were cutting him off financially. It
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: claims he bought the cult to scene online.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: And the most jarring part of this letter is that
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: it tells investigators exactly where to find the murder weapon. Yes,
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: it states the vial of poison is hidden under the
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: passenger seat of Adam's nineteen ninety one black jeep Wrangler.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: So armed with this intensely specific intelligence, detectives bring Adam
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: in on December eighth, hit him down in an interrogation
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: room and lay the cards on the table. They tell
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: him about the anonymous letter accusing him of mantracide.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: And Adam is completely floored. His reaction is just genuine shock.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: He denies everything, claims he doesn't even know what culture
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: scene is, and points out a very solid alibi he
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: was out of town in Long Island when his mom
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: suddenly got sick.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: He also agrees to let them search his cheap, which
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: is sitting right out in the station parking lot. And
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: you know, imagine the tension is the investigators walk out
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: to that car. Adam's cheap is a total disaster zone.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: Investigators literally have to wade through fast food wrappers, old clothes,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: and trash just to see the floorboards. But then an
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: investigator reaches under the front passenger seat. His hand brushes
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: against something hard.
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: He pulls it out, and it's a small glass bottle
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: colt to scene, just as a letter promised exactly, and
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: sitting right next to the vial is a printed receipt
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: from January twenty fifteen. It shows the poison was ordered
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: using the email address Adam Miter in nineteen ninety at
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: gmail dot com and shipped directly to the Yoder Chiropractic office.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: Adam's name, Adam's birth here, Adam's car shipped to his
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: parents' business. I mean, if you're a cop looking at this,
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: it's game over, right. You have the weapon, the receipt,
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: and the motive all bundled together under a seat.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: Well for a rookie cop, maybe they call it a
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: silver platter crime scene because the evidence is just handed
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: to you perfect we package tied with a bow. Right,
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: But seasoned investigators like Nelson and Vanda me they study
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: criminal behavior. They know that human beings are sloppy, anxious,
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: and unpredictable. Real life is rarely this tidy.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: Because why on earth would a guilty man keep the
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: literal murder weapon alongside a receipt with his own name
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: on it, rattling around under his car seat for nearly
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: six months exact, and then when the police call him
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: in for questioning about his mother's murder, casually drive that
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: exact car to the police station and hand over the keys.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: It trod way past the line of stupidity into the
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: realm of the theatrical The evidence felt placed, staged. The
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: detectives realize that if Adam is being framed, the person
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: doing the framing is the actual architect of the murder,
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: and if it's a framed job, they have to consider
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: an unimaginably dark possibility. Did Bill Yoder poison his wife
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: and then plant the evidence in his own son's car
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: to take the.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: Fall, framing your own son to get away with murdering
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: his mother. Yeah, it's a level of evil that's just
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: hard to stomach. But the detectives need to verify Adam's alibi,
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: understand the layout of the chiropractic office where the poison
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: was shipped, and dig into the family's internal dynamics, all
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: without tipping off Bill that they suspect a frame up right,
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: They have to be careful, so they need an outsider
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: who knows the inside, and they call in a seemingly
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: innocent witness to help them map out Mary's daily routine.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: Enter Katie Conley. Katie is twenty two years old. She
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: is the office manager at the Yoder Chiropractic Clinic, and crucially,
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: she is Adam Yoder's ex girlfriend.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: Okay, so there's a connection.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: There, a big one. They had a volatile on again,
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: off again relationship. But despite the breakup with Adam, Katie
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: rema aaned incredibly close to Mary. In fact, Mary treated
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: her like a second daughter, really leaning on her to
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: keep the clinic running smoothly.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: So Katie sits down in the interview room. She is
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: sauce spoken, appearing to be deeply in mourning and eager
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: to help the police catch whoever did this to her
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: beloved boss. The detectives ask her to simply walk them
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: through Mary's last normal day at the.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: Office, and Katie tells them Mary came back from lunch,
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: made a protein shake with almond milk from the office fridge,
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: and took her daily vitamins.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: Which is a detail that gives them the exact mechanism
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: of ingestion. The vitamins or the shake could easily mask
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: the bitter culties scene right, But.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: As the interview progresses, Katie's narrative begins to shift. She
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: starts subtly but deliberately steering the conversation to cast a
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: heavy shadow of suspicion over her ex boyfriend Adam Yeah.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: She tells the detectives that Adam had been acting frantic
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: and erratic after his mom's death. She claims she had
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: to accompany him to the office to collect supplements for
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: the poison control testing because she didn't trust him alone
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: with the keys.
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: She says he threatened her, telling her she'd be the
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: one in trouble.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: She even drops this massive character assassination, stating she had
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: filed a sexual assault report against Adam back in twenty fourteen,
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: basically painting him as violent, controlling, and capable of anything.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: And then she delivers what she thinks is the final
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: nail in Adam's coffin. She casually mentions that back in February,
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: months before Mary died, a mysterious package arrived at the
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: clinic address to Adam. She says she didn't know what
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: it was, she just left it on the front counter
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: for him to pick up.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, she is painting an absolute masterpiece of circumstantial
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: evidence against Adam. But here is where the air completely
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: leads the interrogation room. As the detectives are listening to
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: this twenty two year old office manager talk, a chill
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: goes down their spines. Oh yeah, because they aren't just
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: listening to the fact she is providing, they are analyzing
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: the way she is providing them.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: Right. In behavioral analysis, there is a concept known as
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: linguistic fingerprinting. We all have unique speech patterns, syntax, and
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: vocabulary preferences. When people write anonymously, they often fail to
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: disguise their natural cadence.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: They write how they speak exactly.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: The detectives realized that Katie's phrasing her specific timeline regarding
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: the supplements her grievances about Adam's financial situation, and the
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: very specific narrative structure she's building in the room perfectly
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: mirrors the syntax of the anonymous letter.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: And let's just zoom out and break down why that
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: realization completely shatters the case against the husband Bill. If
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: Adam is being framed, it absolutely had to be an
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: inside job. The framer needed to know Adam drove a
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: ninety one wrangler and had access to it to plant
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: the vile. They needed to know his email address structure
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: to create the fake adamat Or nineteen ninety account. They
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: needed to be at the clinic to intercept the physical
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: package of poison when the mail carrier dropped it off,
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: and they needed access to the office fridge and Mary's
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: specific brand of vitamins to administer it on a Monday
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: after and Bill.
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: Had access to the home, but he wasn't managing the
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: clinic's daily mail or monitoring Adam's cummings and goings to
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: plant evidence in his car.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: But Katie, Katie was the gatekeeper of the office.
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: Exactly she sorted the mail, She knew exactly what Mary
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: ate and drank. She had keys to Adam's life, knew
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: his schedule, and knew exactly how messy his jeep was,
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: meaning a small bottle under the seat could go unnoticed
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: for months.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: The investigators realize, with mounting horror that they aren't interviewing
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: a helpful, grieving witness. They are sitting across a small
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: table from the architect of the entire plot.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: Think about the dizzying whiplash of this investigation. It starts
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: with a healthy woman dying a horrific, unexplained medical death.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: Then the suspicion falls on a husband who coldly calculates
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: his retirement math and moves on with his dead wife's sister.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: Right then a types letter points to a greedy, resentful
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: son who seemingly leaves the murder weapon under his own
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: car seat. And now the spotlight swings wildly bypassing all
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: the family members to land directly on the quiet, soft
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: spoken twenty two year old girl sitting at the front desk,
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: just answering the phones.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: It forces a confrontation with the terrifying reality of proximity
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: and hidden pathology. I mean, Katie exhibited traits of the
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: dark triad, specifically machiavellianism and psychopathy masked by a veneer
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: of extreme.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: Helpfulness at false sweetness.
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: Exactly, she leveraged her position of trust to slowly, methodically
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: execute a murder and then orchestrated an elaborate frame job
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: designed to send her ex boyfriend to prison for the
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: rest of his life. We look for monsters in dark alleys,
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: but sometimes the most profound danger is the person making
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: the schedule at your office.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: And that proximity is exactly the thought I want to
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: leave you with today. We mentioned earlier that Katie was
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: incredibly close to Mary. What we didn't mention is what
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: Katie was doing while the culture scene was destroying Mary
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: from the inside out.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this part is haunting.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: On the day Mary Yoda was in the hospital toting
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: seven times her internal organs, failing from a chemical attack,
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: Katie Crowley was right there.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: She didn't hide, She inserted herself directly into the epicenter
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: of the tragedy.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: She was at the hospital, pacing the halls with the family.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: She helped plan the memorial service. She was even explicitly
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: named in Mary's obituary as a loving figure in her life.
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: Unbelievable.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: I want you to consider the profound, bone shilling psychological
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: detachment that requires to secretly log online, purchase a brutal,
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: agonizing poison, to slip it into the food of a
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: woman who loved you and mentored you, and then to
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: go to the hospital, pull up a chair and sit
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: by her bed, holding her hand and comforting her weeping
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: daughters as she dies in agony right in front of you.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: Just zero empathy.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: None. It really makes you question, doesn't it, how well
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: do you truly know the people quietly working in the
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: background of your.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: Life, A terrifying question to carry with you
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: Keep questioning, keep looking closer, and we'll see you next time.