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The Poisoned Root Beer Float Murder · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So I want you to just imagine for a second
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: writing like this entirely self-published grief manual.
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: And it's all about the, you know, agonizing, soul-crushing loss
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: of your husband.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: A very public display of mourning, basically.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Exactly. You're out there calling him your world. You dedicate
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: hundreds of pages to describing the unbearable weight of survivor's guilt.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: Just packaging your trauma for public consumption.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. You're pitching it as this beacon of hope
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: for other grieving widows. But now imagine that entire carefully
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: constructed facade being completely undone by a late night push
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: notification from your own Ring security camera.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: Oh, it's incredible. It really is. It's insane.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: So today we're doing a deep dive into this massive
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: stack of source material. We've got police interrogation transcripts, hundreds
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: of pages of digital forensic reports, medical examiner files, and
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: even excerpts from that very book.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: A lot of ground to cover. It is.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: And our mission here is to unravel how a seemingly perfect,
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: completely medically undetected murder in rural Indiana was ultimately brought down.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: And the kicker is how it was brought down.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Right. Because it wasn't unraveled by brilliant, cutting-edge forensics, at
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: least not initially. It was unraveled by a petty burglary
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: and a staggering trail of nearly 7,000 arrogant text messages.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: It really is a masterclass in how modern digital footprints
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: intersect with criminal hubris. I mean, the source we're analyzing
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: today paint this picture of perpetrators who genuinely believe they
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: had outsmarted the medical establishment.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: They really thought they were untouchable.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: They did. They pulled off the big crime. Right. But
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: then they tripped over the everyday technology they used without
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: a second thought.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: So to understand the magnitude of what actually happened, we
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: really have to start with the victim first. Let's look
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: at Harold Allen.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: Harold, yeah.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Everyone who knew him called her Peanut.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: Which is such an endearing nickname.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: It really is. It was a nickname from being born
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: premature that just stuck with him for his entire 52
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: years of life. So he lived in Freetown, Indiana, which
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: is this quiet rural pocket in the southern part of
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: the state.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: Very small town vibe. Totally.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And he worked as a controls engineer at a
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: global automotive supply factory in nearby Seymour. By all accounts,
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: from his family and co-workers, he was just this larger-than-life,
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: universally beloved guy.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: And the background material paints a very vibrant picture of
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: his life outside of that factory, too. I mean, he
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: was a man of intense passions.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: Oh, big time. He wrote a Harley Davidson. He spent
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: weeks out of the year deer hunting and fishing with
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: his younger brother, Matthew.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: And he had this massive collection of Star Wars memorabilia.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: Yes. The Star Wars stuff is such a great detail.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: It adds so much character. But he also had this
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: deeply creative side. He was entirely self-taught on the guitar,
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: the mandolin, and the harmonica.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: So he was this imposing, rugged guy with a very
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: gentle undercurrent, you know. But the one thing the sources
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: emphasize over and over is that Harold just wanted a family.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: Right. That was his main drive.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: He was the oldest of three brothers, incredibly close to
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: his siblings, but he'd been divorced twice and never had
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: kids of his own.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: Which brings us to the reunion.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So in 2019, he attends his 30th high school
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: reunion in Austin, Indiana. And that is where he reconnects
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: with Marsha Buckton.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: They had been classmates decades ago, but, you know, they
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: ran in different circles back then.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: At this reunion, though, they really hit it off. And
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: Marsha had also been divorced twice. She had an adult
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: daughter named Ashley.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: And the courtship moved really quickly, right?
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: Oh, incredibly fast. By July of 2021, Harold and Marsha
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: were married.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: And Harold didn't just marry Marsha. He basically inherited this
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: instant multigenerational family.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: Which is exactly what he always wanted.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: Exactly. So the next year, Marsha's adult daughter, Ashley Jones,
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: moves into their Freetown house and she brings along her
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: five-year-old daughter.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: And Ashley's backstory is important here, too.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: Right. Ashley was actually a young widow herself. Her first husband,
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: Ty Jones, had died suddenly three years prior at the
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: age of 33.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: Which we are definitely going to come back to Ty
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: Jones later because that is a terrifying rabbit hole all
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: its own.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: Oh, it completely changes the entire context of the story.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: But for now, you have these three generations living under
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: one roof. And Harold's brother noted that Harold absolutely loved it.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: He adored being called Grandpa by Ashley's little girl.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: And from the outside, the family dynamic appeared incredibly harmonious.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: I mean, the text message archives we're going to examine
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: later show that Marsha and her daughter Ashley were exceptionally close.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: Like almost too close, right?
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: Well, Marsha would text Ashley every single morning, specifically saying,
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: Good morning, baby girl. They presented to the world and
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: to Harold as this tight-knit, super supportive unit.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: But that harmonious picture was a complete illusion because on
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: December 20, 2022, Harold is found dead in his home.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: Just out of nowhere.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: Right. And the initial medical assessment points to a sudden
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: tragic medical event. The coroner cites severe heart issues.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: Which, on the surface, seemed plausible.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and for nine solid months, that is the official story.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: A tragic, natural death. But to understand how that narrative
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: violently collapsed, we really need to look at the months
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: leading up to December and this bizarre physical decline Harold
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: suffered while living inside that house.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the medical records from late 2022... are incredibly troubling
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: when you view them in hindsight.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: They're horrifying.
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: Harold was a bigger guy, and he did manage type
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: 2 diabetes, but his health just takes this sudden, aggressive,
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: baffling nosedive.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: He starts presenting at local emergency rooms with these severe,
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: agonizing gastrointestinal issues.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: Right. And reading through those ER visit summaries, you can
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: tell the doctors were completely stumped.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: They had no idea what was going on. No.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: At one point, they theorized it might be diverticulitis, but
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: none of the standard treatments were working. He was just
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: in constant pain.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: And then there's this chilling incident on Thanksgiving of 2022.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: So Harold is hosting a holiday dinner with his family.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: Right in the middle of dessert.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right in the middle of dessert. Harold's eyes go wide.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: He looks absolutely terrified. And he tells his brother Matthew
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: that the entire left side of his face just went
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: completely numb.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: Which, medically speaking, is a classic presentation for a transient experience.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: ischemic attack, like a mini-stroke, or severe neurological distress.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And Matthew reacts the way literally any normal human
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: being would. He jumps up and says, I'm calling an ambulance,
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: or I'm putting you in my truck and taking you
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: to the hospital right now.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: But Harold refuses.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe out of stubbornness or just sheer panic. But
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: he refuses. He says he just needs a minute to
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: collect himself.
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: But what really stands out in the witness statements is
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: Marsha's reaction.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: Or the absolute lack thereof. Right.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: The absolute void of a reaction. Matthew noted that Marsha
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: simply stood there in the dining room. She didn't urge
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: him to go to the hospital. She didn't even reach
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: for her phone.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: Which is insane for a spouse.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: When Matthew pushed the issue, she just deflected and said, oh,
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: I've been telling him the same thing. There was zero urgency.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: It's a huge red flag. It's a profound behavioral anomaly
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: for a supposedly loving wife. whose husband is exhibiting literal
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: stroke symptoms during Thanksgiving dinner.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: It really is. And Harold's condition just continues to deteriorate
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: through December. The doctors can't stabilize him.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: And then on the afternoon of December 20th, Marsha calls 911.
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: The audio of the call is standard for this kind
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: of event. She sounds panicked. She tells the dispatcher her
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: husband is on the bedroom floor. He's unresponsive and not breathing.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: The dispatcher walks her through CPR. First responders arrive and
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: find Harold dead.
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: And this is where the systemic realities of the medical
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: examiner system really come into play.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this part is wild.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: Because Harold had this intensely documented recent history of severe
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: medical distress.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: The diabetes, the multiple ER visits for the GI problem.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: Exactly, and the incident at Thanksgiving. So his death was
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: not treated by first responders as a suspicious event.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: Okay, I really need to stop you there and push
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: back on this because this drives me absolutely crazy when
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: looking at the source material.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: I know where you're going with this.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: How does a trained coroner or medical examiner open up
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: a human body, completely miss that a man was poisoned
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: to death, and just stamp heart failure on the paperwork?
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: It's a very valid question.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: Shouldn't those bizarre ER visits have triggered massive alarm bells?
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: It's deeply frustrating, I agree. But you have to understand
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: the operational constraints of forensic pathology. Medical examiners are trained
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: to look for horses, not zebras.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: Right, the obvious answer.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: Exactly. When a coroner performs an autopsy on a 52-year-old
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: man with a high BMI and a history of diabetes,
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: they are already anticipating cardiovascular disease.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: Like a bias going in.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: Yes. And in Harold's case, the physical autopsy did reveal pericarditis,
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: which is a very real measurable inflammation of the sac
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: surrounding the heart.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: Wait, so the inflammation was genuinely there? It wasn't a misdiagnosis?
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: No, the inflammation was genuinely there. The problem is causality.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: The examiner saw the pericarditis... saw the diabetes, and concluded
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: that a natural cardiac episode caused the death.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: So they just connect the most obvious dots.
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Unless law enforcement at the scene flags the death
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: as overtly suspicious, meaning there are signs of a physical struggle, blood,
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: or obvious trauma, a standard autopsy does not include a
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: full-spectrum toxicological screen for exotic poisons.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: So they just run the absolute basics. Right.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: A standard tox screen looks for common drugs of abuse.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: They check for opioids, amphetamines, cocaine, maybe high levels of
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: alcohol or standard prescription medications.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: They aren't looking for obscure stuff.
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: Exactly. They do not run mass spectrometry panels for obscure
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: botanical toxins or industrial chemicals unless they have a specific
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: documented reason to suspect them.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: Because it's expensive.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: Very expensive. Those tests are highly specialized, incredibly expensive, and
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: they take weeks to process. So on paper, Harold's death
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: fit a natural, albeit tragic, medical narrative. The system accepted it.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: Which means they effectively pulled it off. The case was closed.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: Harold was buried. The life insurance policies paid out.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: They won.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: They won. And this is the point where Marsha decides to, like,
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: fully capitalize on the tragedy.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: His part is so brazen.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: About six months after the funeral... She self-publishes a book
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: on surviving grief.
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: Unbelievable.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: She writes extensively about her survivor's guilt. She's calling Harold
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: her world. And she pitches this book to her community
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: as a guide for finding hope in the darkest of times.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: The audacity is staggering, really. She is actively monetizing a
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: tragedy she orchestrated.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: She's positioning herself as a pillar of resilience while basking
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: in the sympathy of her friends and neighbors.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: It's beyond hypocritical. I mean, think about what's happening here.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: The medical establishment cleared her. The community embraced her. She
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: had the money. She had the house, the freedom.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: She had it all.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: So how does a locked, buried, medically cleared case get
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: blown wide open?
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: Because criminals, especially those operating under the delusion of their
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: own brilliance, they inevitably get sloppy.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: They always trip up.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: They do. They commit the ultimate crime of murder, but
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: they lack the discipline to manage the mundane details of
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: their everyday lives.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: This entire facade wasn't brought down by a brilliant cold
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: case detective re-evaluating the autopsy.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: Not at all.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: It was dismantled by a petty property crime and a
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: fundamental misunderstanding of modern technology.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's jump to September 2023. We are nine months
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: out from Harold's death. Marsha is taking a vacation in Gatlinburg, Tennessee,
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: just enjoying the Smoky Mountains.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: As you do when you've gotten away with murder.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Right. But back home in Indiana, she had recently upgraded
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: her house with a state-of-the-art home security system.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: A security system, we should definitely note, that was likely
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: purchased using the life insurance funds she acquired after Harold's death.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: Oh, the irony is so thick. So it's 4.30 in
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: the morning. Marsha is asleep in her hotel room in Tennessee. Suddenly,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: her smartphone lights up.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: The push notification.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: Exactly. It's a notification from her security app. The motion
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: sensors have detected activity inside her empty house in Indiana,
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: which is 350 miles away.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: And she checks it.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: She opens the app, and she is watching a live
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: high-definition feed of two men actively burglarizing her home.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: And the footage makes it immediately clear that these are
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: not random opportunists.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: No, they are on a mission.
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: They didn't kick in a back window and grab the television.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: They walked through the house with absolute purpose. They knew
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: the floor plan.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: They knew where all the good stuff was.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: They knew exactly where the high-value items were kept. Mm-hmm.
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: And most damning of all, they walk straight up to
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: Marsha's heavy-duty home safe and simply typed in the numeric code.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: They didn't try to pry it open or cut it
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: with a torch. They just punched in the numbers.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: They had the code.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: And they pull out an absolute haul. They steal Harold's
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: hunting rifles. They steal his beloved mandolin.
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: The Star Wars collectibles.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they take his Star Wars collectibles. They even grab
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: Marsha's sapphire wedding jewelry. Wow. But here is the absolute kicker.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: As Marsha is watching this live feed in the dark
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: of her hotel room, the camera catches one of the
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: burglar's faces perfectly.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: In high definition.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: And Marsha recognizes him. It's a man named Stephen White.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: And Stephen White is not a stranger to this family.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: Not at all.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: According to the police reports, Marsha knew him well because
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: he was, in her own words, her daughter, Ashley's best friend.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: Her daughter's best friend is robbing her blind while she's
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: out of state. So Marsha immediately calls the Jackson County
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: Sheriff's Department to report the break-in.
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: Naturally.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: Lieutenant Adam Nicholson and his team catch the case. They
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: pull the cloud footage, identify Stephen White, and within hours,
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: they track him down.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: Where was he?
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: He's just hanging out at his mother's house a few
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: towns over.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: At this point, the police think they're dealing with a
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: standard open-and-shut burglary.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: Just a typical property crime.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: Right. They have the suspect on crystal-clear video. They know
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: his identity. They go to the house to conduct an interrogation,
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: fully anticipating the usual defensive posturing.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: And White completely delivers the classic petty criminal routine. The
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: police rid him, as Miranda writes, ask him if he
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: knows why they're standing in his mother's living room. And
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: he just completely plays dumb.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: I love this part.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: He says, you guys got me on camera. I don't
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: know anything about it. He even tries to argue about
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: the outfit the burglar was wearing, saying, I don't even
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: own a house.
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: It's such a standard psychological reflex, you know?
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: Deny, deny, deny.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: Deny the premise entirely until the investigator forces your hand
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: with irrefutable proof.
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: Which Lieutenant Nicholson does almost immediately. He doesn't play games
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: with this guy.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: You have the evidence ready.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he pulls out his smartphone, opens the high-resolution screenshot
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: pulled directly from Marsh's camera, and just shoves it in
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: White's face.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: And you can't argue with that.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: The photo clearly shows White holding the stolen property. Nicholson says,
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: we have five more of these and we have the
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: actual video.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: Yuck, mate.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: And the transcripts show that White is instantly cornered. His
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: entire demeanor shatters. He realizes he is dead to rights
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: on a major felony burglary charge.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: This is where we see the concept of the prisoner's
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: dilemma play out in real time.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, explain that.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: Criminal alliances are inherently fragile because they are built on self-interest,
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: not genuine loyalty.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: The moment Stephen White realizes that his own freedom is evaporating...
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: His allegiance to his best friend, Ashley, just vanishes.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: It's gone in a second.
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: He immediately pivots from denial to self-preservation, desperately scanning for
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: any leverage he can offer the police to minimize his
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: burglary charge.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: He immediately throws Ashley to the wolves. He tells Nicholson, look,
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: Ashley's the one who set this whole thing up.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: He flips on her instantly.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: He claims that Ashley, who had recently moved out of
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: state to Missouri, physically mailed him a key to the
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: house and gave him the code to the safe. He
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: paints her as the complete mastermind.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: Which is probably true.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: But then he realizes that giving up a co-conspirator on
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: a burglary might not be enough to keep him out
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: of prison. So he offers them a much, much bigger prize.
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: The real secret.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: Yes. He tells the police, this woman, Marsha, has hated
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: me for years. But I'm best friends with her daughter.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: He calls Marsha a psychopath. And then he drops the bombshell.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: He says, this woman is a murderer.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: He explicitly accuses Marsha Allen of murdering her husband, Harold,
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: to cash in on a $ 120, 000 life insurance policy.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: Just throws it out there.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: Now, initially, she admits he doesn't have hard physical proof.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: He's only relaying what Ashley confessed to him in secret.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: Right. It's hearsay at this point.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: But it's the specific, granular detail he provides next that
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: makes the detectives stop dead in their tracks.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this detail is wild.
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: He doesn't just say she shot him or suffocated him
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: with a pillow. White tells the police that Marsha poisoned
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: Harold using a root beer float.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: And it's not just a root beer float. He tells
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: the detectives that Marsha went into the kitchen, prepared the float,
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: added whipped cream, put sprinkles on top of the whipped cream,
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: and then poured something out of a small bottle into
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: the glass before serving it to him.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: In forensic behavioral analysis, investigators are trained to look for
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: details that carry a high cognitive load.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: What does that mean?
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: It means details that are too incongruous or idiosyncratic to
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: be fabricated on the spot. If a petty burglar is
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: inventing a murder accusation out of thin air to deflect
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: from a robbery, they usually rely on generic movie tropes.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: Like poison in the coffee.
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: Right. They'll say, she slipped a pill in his coffee,
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: or she put rat poison in his soup. But a
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: root beer float. Specifically garnished with whipped cream and sprinkles.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: It's too weird to be made up.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: Exactly. That is a hyper-specific... mundane domestic detail. It carries
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: the distinct ring of truth because it doesn't sound like
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: a cinematic murder. It sounds like a real flawed human interaction.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: You don't invent sprinkles when you're trying to dodge a
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: felony theft charge.
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: You really don't.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: The police realize instantly that the stakes have just astronomically shifted.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: They are no longer just looking for a stolen mandolin.
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: This is a homicide investigation now.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: They arrest White But because he's now cooperating, he tells
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: them exactly where all the stolen goods are stashed. The
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: police recover everything, including arresting the second burglar, who was
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: literally wearing Harold's stolen sapphire jewelry when they found him.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: Unbelievable.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: Everything White told them about the burglary checked out perfectly,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: which means his murder accusation has to be treated as
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: highly credible intelligence.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: And this creates an incredibly tense tactical situation for the
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: Jackson County Sheriff's Department.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: Right, because Marsha is on her way back.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: Marsha is cutting her Gatlinburg vacation short and driving back
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: to Indiana to speak with detectives about her stolen property.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: She thinks she's just the victim here.
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: The police know she is the legitimate victim of a burglary,
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: but they now have actionable intelligence suggesting she is also
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: a cold-blooded killer.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: So Marsha arrives at the sheriff's department. She is placed
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: in an interview room with Detective Clint Burcham.
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: And Burcham plays this brilliantly.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: He really does.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: For the first half of the interview, he plays it
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: entirely straight. They are just a detective and a victim
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: discussing a property crime.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: Just going over the stolen items.
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: Marsha is looking at photographs of the recovered jewelry, confirming
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: what's hers, talking about the missing Star Wars figures. Bertram
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: casually brings up the fact that the burglars knew the
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: safe code and asks if Ashley could be involved.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: And Marsha takes the bait.
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: She aggressively defends her daughter, insisting she would never give
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: that code out, which inadvertently concerns to the detective that
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: Ashley was the only other person on Earth who knew
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: the combination.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: Bertram is utilizing a classic information gatherer technique here, isn't he?
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. He isn't confronting her yet. He is establishing a
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: behavioral baseline.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: Watching how she acts when she's comfortable.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: He wants to see how her body language, her speech patterns,
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: and her eye contact look when she feels she is
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: completely in control of the narrative. He is lulling her
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: into a false sense of security.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: And then he flips it.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: Once he has that baseline firmly established, he springs the trap.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: It's a massive pivot. Without even changing his tone of voice,
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: Burcham transitions from the recovered jewelry to Stephen White's interrogation.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: Just seamless.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: He looks at Marsha and says, Stephen White made an
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: accusation against you. He accused you of murdering your husband.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: He said you poisoned his drink.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: And Marsha's reaction is the defining moment of the interview.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: It's chilling.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: Think about how a genuinely innocent grieving widow, a woman
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: who just wrote a book about her undying love for
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: her late husband, would react to being accused of his
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: murder by a petty thief.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: You would expect outrage.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: You would expect tears, confusion, maybe even righteous anger aimed
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: at the detective for entertaining such a horrific lie.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: But Marsha shows absolutely zero emotional variance.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: None.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: She goes completely flat. She just stares at him and
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: defiantly says, I did not murder my husband. And she
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: immediately falls back on the medical paperwork.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: The autopsy report?
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: Yes. She starts citing the autopsy results. She talks about
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: the pericarditis. She clearly believes that the medical examiner's report
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: is an impenetrable shield.
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: She thinks she's won.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: She thinks she has permanently outsmarted the system.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: But she fundamentally underestimates the detective. Burcham isn't relying on
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: the autopsy report. He's relying on White's tip, which included
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: a warning that Marcia and Ashley frequently communicated about the crime...
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: via text message.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: Right, they left a digital trail.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: So Bertram makes a very calculated, high-risk move. He calmly
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: asks Marsha if she would be willing to consent to
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: a forensic download of her cell phone to help, you know,
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: clear things up.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: And Marsha actually agrees.
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: Which is astounding.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: But here is where her arrogance completely blinds her. Bertram
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: tells her he needs to go down the hall to
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: print out the physical consent forms for her to sign.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: He leaves the interrogation room.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: He leaves her alone.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: And crucially... He leaves Marsha completely alone with her smartphone.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: The moment the door clicks shut, the hidden cameras in
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: the room capture Marsha frantically scrolling through her phone, rapidly
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: deleting text messages and entire conversation threads.
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: In a police station.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: She is sitting inside a police interrogation room, actively attempting
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: to destroy evidence.
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: It is a staggering display of digital hubris. It highlights
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: a massive blind spot that so many criminals have regarding
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: modern technology.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: They just don't get how it works.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: They operate under this persistent illusion of digital privacy, fundamentally
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: misunderstanding the architecture of the devices they use every single day.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: Think about your own phone right now. Every location you've
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: navigated to, every misspelled text you've backspaced over, every photo
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: you've sent to the trash folder. Marsha actually believed that
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: pressing the little trash can icon... meant those messages evaporated
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: into the ether.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: It's totally flawed logic.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: It's like taking a book out of the library, ripping
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: out the index page, and assuming the entire book no
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: longer exists.
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: That's a perfect analogy, actually. Let's break down the science
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: of what really happens when you delete a text message
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: on a modern smartphone.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, please explain this because people need to know.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: The operating system doesn't immediately wipe the physical data from
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: the phone's NAND flash memory. Why not? Because that would
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: require too much processing power and drain the battery unnecessarily. Instead,
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: the phone's file system simply deletes the pointer to that data.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: The index page.
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It marks that specific block of storage space as
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: unallocated and available to be overwritten in the future.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: Okay, I follow.
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: But until you download a new app or take a
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: new 4K video that physically writes over those specific memory blocks,
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: the original text message, along with all its metadata, timestamps,
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: and geolocation tags, is still sitting right there in the
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: CELA database, just waiting in the dark.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: And law enforcement extraction tools like Celebrate, they don't care
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: about the index page.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: Not at all.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: They bypass the operating system entirely and read the raw
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: physical memory of the phone. So when Bertram comes back in,
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: gets her signature, and plugs that phone into the forensic software,
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: they don't just find a few suspicious texts.
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: They get everything.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: They extract the entire deleted database. They uncover an absolute
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: treasure trove of nearly 7,000 text messages between Marcia and Ashley. 7,000.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: Spanning the three critical months leading up to Harold's death.
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: Those 7,000 messages provided the detectives with something entirely unprecedented. Basically,
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: a complete, unfiltered, time-stamped, real-time transcript of a murder plot.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: It's unheard of.
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: It wasn't just proof that a crime occurred. It was
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: a horrifying window into the deep psychological pathology of these perpetrators.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: OK, let's dive deep into what those messages actually contain,
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: because it is difficult to comprehend the level of casual
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: cruelty here.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: It really is sickening.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: First, the text established the motive with crystal clarity. It
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: wasn't a prime of passion. It wasn't about escaping domestic abuse.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: It was pure, unadulterated financial greed.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: They wanted the payout.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: They talked constantly about Harold's $ 120, 000 life insurance policy. They
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: inventoried his guns, his guitars, his retirement assets. They simply
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: wanted the money and they wanted him gone so they
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: could spend it.
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: But what is truly disturbing is the methodology they employed. Yes.
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: This wasn't a single impulsive act. It was a sustained,
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: calculated trial and error campaign of medical torture.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: Over months.
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: The text messages revealed that they essentially used Harold as
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: a human guinea pig. testing a catalog of exotic botanical
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: poisons and chemical agents over the course of several weeks.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: It started with botany, actually. The digital forensics showed Ashley
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: using her phone to order something called pong pong seeds
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: off a vendor on eBay.
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: Yes, the pong pong seeds.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: What exactly are those?
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: These come from the Cerbera adalum tree, which is native
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: to coastal salt swamps in Southeast Asia and India. It
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: is notoriously referred to in toxicological circles as the suicide tree.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: Why specifically this treat? Like, if you're going to poison someone,
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: why order something so obscure from halfway across the world?
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: Because it is incredibly effective and notoriously difficult to detect. Really?
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: The seeds contain a potent cardiac glycoside called cerberin. When ingested,
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: cerberin aggressively binds to the sodium-potassium pumps in the heart
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: muscle cells.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: It completely disrupts the electrical signaling that causes the heart
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: to beat, leading to severe irregular heart rhythms and eventually
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: cardiac arrest.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: So it mimics a heart attack.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: Precisely. And crucially, because it is so rare in the
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: Western Hemisphere, it does not show up on any standard
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: toxicology screen.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: So the coroner would never see it?
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: Never. A medical examiner would have to know exactly what
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: they were looking for and request a highly specialized liquid
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: chromatography test to find it.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: The fact that Ashley and Marsha researched and sourced this
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: specific exotic plant demonstrates an intense level of premeditation. They
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: were actively designing a crime to evade medical detection.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: And they were so horrifyingly casual about it in the texts.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: The messages show them discussing exactly how to administer these
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: deadly seeds around the Thanksgiving holiday.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: The Thanksgiving incident we talked about earlier.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: Yes. They researched recipes and decided to grind the seeds
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: into a fine powder and bake them into a batch
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: of chocolate brownies.
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: They put so much thought into it.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: They even sent texts discussing adding extra walnuts to the recipe.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: specifically to provide a crunchy texture that would mask the
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: bitter taste of the Cerberin poison.
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: And their testual banter while executing this plan is just chilling.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: You are reading a transcript of two women actively discussing
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: taking a man's life, and their language is entirely devoid
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: of empathy, hesitation, or gravity.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: At one point, Ashley complains about Harold being in the house,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: texting her mother that he's a waste of space.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: Calling a human being a waste of space.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: When the eBay shipment of the pom-pom seeds is tracking
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: for delivery, Ashley sends a text saying, I'm ready for
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: that to arrive, followed by a literal smiley face emoji.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: A smiley face?
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: Marsha immediately replies, me too. And on the night they
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: serve him the poisoned brownies, Ashley texts from her bedroom,
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: how's it going, followed by an LOL.
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: Just treating it like a joke?
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: Marsha replies with a photograph of a half-eaten brownie on
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: a plate. Ashley texts back, ooh, let me know when
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: it's gone, again with an LOL. They are using Internet
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: slang and emojis while actively attempting to murder a family
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: member who is sitting in the next room.
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: It is a textbook manifestation of a phenomenon known in
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: psychiatric literature as folio do, or a shared psychotic disorder.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: Folio do, yeah.
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: In this dynamic, you have two individuals, often in an
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: insular relationship like a mother and daughter, who validate and
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: amplify each other's darkest, most antisocial traits. They create a
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: closed moral feedback loop.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: Like an echo chamber of depravity.
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The psychological burden of committing murder is immense. But
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: in a fully adieu, the burden is distributed.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you share the guilt.
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: Right. Ashley's flippant use of emojis validates Marsha's actions, making
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: it seem like a game rather than homicide. And Marsha's
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: willingness to physically bake the poison and serve it to
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: her husband validates Ashley's malice.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: They egg each other on?
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: They do. Entirely insulated from the moral reality of what
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: they are doing. The deindividuation allows them to act with
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: a level of cruelty neither might be capable of entirely
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: on their own.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: But the wild thing is, the Pong Kong seeds don't
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: actually kill him.
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: No, they don't.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: They make him horribly, violently sick. I mean, this is
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: what caused those mysterious gastrointestinal issues and the frantic ER
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: visits in November. But Harold's body is incredibly resilient and
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: he fights off the Cerberin toxicity.
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: He survives the suicide tree.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: So undeterred, they pivot. The texts show they next order
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: a plant called water hemlock.
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: Which is often considered the most toxic plant growing in
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: North America.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: How does that one work?
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: It contains CQ toxin, a powerful central nervous system stimulant
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: that acts as a GABA receptor antagonist. It basically removes
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: the brakes from the brain's electrical activity, causing violent, uncontrollable seizures.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: But again, Harold survives it.
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: He was incredibly tough.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: When the botanical poisons fail to deliver the killing blow,
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: they escalate. They start tainting his food and drinks on
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: a nightly basis throughout early December.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: Night after night.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: The text messages show them openly admitting to putting unknown
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: toxins into his bowl of chili... into his Sprite, and
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: into the margaritas he drank after work.
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: They were systematically destroying his internal organs over a period
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: of weeks.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: That's torture.
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: And as Harold miraculously survived these repeated attempts, you can
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: see their mood in the text messages, shifting from gleeful
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: anticipation to intense, frustrated irritation.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: The cruelty just compounds. Marsha texts Ashley in mid-December complaining,
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: I am irritated and can't sleep peacefully anymore. He's not
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: dying fast enough.
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: Not dying fast enough.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: At another point, Harold is actually attending a funeral for
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: a family member, and Ashley texts Marsha saying he just
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: needs to go and drop in the hole too.
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: It is sheer depravity.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: It really is. Eventually, their frustration with the plants leads
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: them to abandon botany entirely. They sheep to a widely
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: available industrial chemical, ethylene glycol.
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: Which is the primary active ingredient in automotive antifreeze. Right.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: But why antifreeze? Why switch from these untraceable exotic seeds...
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: To something you buy at a gas station.
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: Because ethylene glycol operates as a molecular Trojan horse.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: A Trojan horse?
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: Yes. It is a clear, odorless liquid, and crucially, it
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: has a distinctly sweet taste. When a person ingests it,
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: the chemical itself isn't immediately lethal. The danger is how
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: the body processes it.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: How so?
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: The enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase in the liver begins metabolizing the
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: ethylene glycol into glycoldehyde, then into glycolic acid, which causes
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: severe metabolic acidosis. That sounds awful. But the final stage
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: is the real killer. The body breaks it down into
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: oxalic acid.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: And what does oxalic acid do?
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: It aggressively binds with the calcium in your bloodstream to
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: form calcium oxalate crystals.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: Crystals in your blood?
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: Yes. These microscopic needle-like crystals flood the kidneys, physically shredding
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: the renal tissue and causing acute irreversible kidney failure. It
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: attacks the central nervous system, the heart, and the kidneys simultaneously.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: Oh my God.
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: It is an excruciating, agonizing way to die.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: And because it tastes sweet, they needed a delivery mechanism
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: that would mask both the texture and the underlying chemical
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: flavor so they could deliver a massive fatal dose all
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: at once.
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: The root beer float.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: That is the origin of the root beer float. The
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: text messages confirm what Stephen White told the police. They
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: knew Harold loved root beer floats. They planned it out meticulously.
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: Down to the last detail.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: The texts even show a logistical disagreement over the supply.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: Marsha sends a photo from the grocery store showing small
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: cans of root beer. Ashley immediately reprimands her via text,
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: telling her to put the cans back and buy the
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: large two-liter bottles to ensure they have enough liquid volume
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: to completely mask the chemical.
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: The premeditation is staggering here. They weaponized his favorite dessert,
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: utilizing the intense sweetness of the vanilla ice cream, and
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: the strong, distinct flavor of the root beer to bypass
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: his body's natural, bitter rejection reflex.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: They delivered the fatal root beer float on the night
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: of December 19, 2022.
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: And it worked.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: The next afternoon, Harold's heart finally gave out. He was dead.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: And for nine months, they believed they had committed the
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: perfect crime.
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: They thought they were in the clear.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: But now, sitting in that interrogation room, the police have
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: a 7,000-page digital confession mapping out every single poisoned brownie
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: every glass of Sprite, and the final root beer float.
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: Walls are finally closing in.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: But as is almost universally the case when long-standing criminal
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: conspiracies are suddenly exposed to the light of day, the
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: story takes a series of wild, incredibly destructive turns as
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: the perpetrators realize the trap has sprung.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: The panic sets in.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: On October 16, 2023, the police finally make their move.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: They execute a pre-dawn, no-knock search warrant at Marsh's house
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: in Freetown.
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: They go in hard.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: She's brought back to the station for a grueling four
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: and a half hour interview. And despite the fact that
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: the police now possess all of her deleted text messages,
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: Marsha sits in that chair and claims total, absolute ignorance.
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: Denying everything.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: She denies knowing anything about ethylene glycol. She denies serving
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: him a root beer full.
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: She is desperately clinging to her original medical defense.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: During the interview, she repeatedly asks the detectives if there
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: is any biological reason ethylene glycol will be found in
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: Harold's body naturally.
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: Like she's trying to find a loophole.
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: Exactly. She is leaning entirely on the fact that the
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: original autopsy missed it. She assumes that because Harold is buried,
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: the physical evidence of her crime is gone forever.
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: But then the detectives deliver the absolute checkmate. They inform
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: her of a massive piece of forensic luck.
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: This is incredible.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: It turns out the local coroner's office had a standard
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: operating policy of retaining blood samples from all autopsies in
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: a refrigerated locker for exactly one year.
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: Which is a standard best practice in many well-funded jurisdictions
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: for exactly this scenario, though it's not universally applied across
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: the country due to severe storage and budgetary constraints in
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: smaller morgues.
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: Right. Small towns usually don't have this space.
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The fact that they still had his blood was
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: a forensic miracle.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: It's incredible. So the police tell Marsha, we found out
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: they still have his blood, we placed a legal hold
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: on it, and we are sending it out to a
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: specialized lab to be explicitly tested for ethylene glycol.
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: And based on your text messages, we have a very
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: strong feeling it's going to be a positive match.
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: In that singular moment, you can imagine the psychological collapse
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: Marsha experiences.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: She realizes it's over.
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: She realizes that the impregnable wall she thought she had built,
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: the medical examiner's initial finding, has completely evaporated.
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: The texts were bad enough.
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: The digital evidence was damning, sure. But a defense attorney
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: might try to argue away text messages as dark fantasies
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: or jokes. But the physical blood test.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: You can't argue with that.
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: That would be the undeniable, irrefutable, empirical proof of murder.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: But shockingly, the police don't arrest her on the spot.
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: Because they are legally required to wait for those definitive
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: lab results to return to secure a murder warrant, they
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: have to allow Marsha to walk out of the station
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: and go home.
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: They had to let her go.
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: Hours go by. Marsha's elderly parents try calling her house,
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: but she doesn't answer. They get worried, drive over, knock
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: on the door and see her car in the driveway,
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: but there's no response.
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: Something is very wrong.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: They call the police for a welfare check. The same
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: officers arrive, force entry into the home and find Marsha
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: dead on her bed.
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: She took the coward's way out.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: Faced with the inevitable, she had ingested an unknown substance
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: and died by suicide.
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: Confronted with the absolute certainty of spending the rest of
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: her natural life in a concrete cell and the public
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: unmasking of her facade as a grieving author, She chose
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: to end her own life rather than face the legal
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: and social consequences of her actions.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: But she couldn't just leave quietly. She left a handwritten
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: suicide note on the nightstand. And the note is infuriating.
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: What does it say?
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: It's simply read, I did not kill my husband, you win, Ashley!
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: With an exclamation point. I have to ask you about
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: this because this note drives me crazy.
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about it.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: Was this a genuine, final delusion of innocence? Did she
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: actually convince her own brain that she didn't pour the poison?
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: Or was this just A last, spiteful, calculated attempt to
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: frame her daughter and drag her down.
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: If we analyze this through the lens of her behavioral profile,
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: it reads as the ultimate act of narcissistic preservation.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: Narcissism, yeah.
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: People with deeply ingrained pathological traits, the kind of traits
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: required to slowly torture a spouse over weeks, rarely experience
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: sudden moments of profound self-awareness or genuine contrition, even in
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: their final moments.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: So she knew she was lying.
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: The suicide note wasn't about the truth. It was about
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: controlling the narrative until the bitter end. It was a final,
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: desperate attempt to position herself as the victim of a
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: conspiracy and to cast Ashley as the sole villain of
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: the story.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: And speaking of Ashley, her downfall is happening simultaneously.
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: On the same day.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: On the exact same day Marsha's being interrogated in Indiana,
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: law enforcement is physically extraditing Ashley from Missouri back to Indiana...
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: on the original burglary charges involving Stephen White.
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: The burglary that started it all.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: The morning after Marsha's suicide, Ashley sits down in an
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: interrogation room, fully expecting to negotiate a plea deal regarding
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: some stolen guitars and jewelry.
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: But the investigators pull a brilliant tactical bait-and-switch.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: Ah, they play her perfectly.
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: The moment she sits down, they bypass the burglary entirely.
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: They tell her, we aren't here to talk about stolen property.
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: We are here to talk about ethylene glycol and your
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: text messages.
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: And the transcripts show that Ashley flips instantaneously. The moment
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: the pressure is applied, that mother-daughter loyalty completely evaporates.
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: It's gone.
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: She throws Marsha straight to the wolves. She claims Marsha
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: didn't want the hassle of a divorce. She wanted to
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: be free of Harold entirely and wanted his money.
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: Pointing the finger right back at the mother.
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: Ashley admits to using her phone to help purchase the
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: exotic poisons online, but her defense is essentially, I just
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: do what my mother asks. I've been an obedient daughter
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: since I was a child.
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: It's a profoundly pathetic attempt to minimize her own agency.
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: It really is.
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: We have to remember, Ashley was an adult woman. She
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: was a mother herself. She was the one actively researching
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: botanical toxins, executing the purchases, and tracking the shipping updates
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: with smiley face emojis.
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: She wasn't a victim here.
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: She was not some brainwashed, helpless child. She was an active,
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: enthusiastic co-conspirator. As we discussed with the fully edger dynamic,
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: that shared delusion requires the physical and digital presence of
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: the other person to sustain it. Right. The moment they
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: are separated and the conspiracy faces overwhelming outside pressure from
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: law enforcement, the echo chamber shatters. Mother and daughter instantly
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: turned on one another, exactly the same way Stephen White
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: turned on Ashley.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: During the interview, a sergeant walks into the room and
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: informs Ashley that her mother was found dead by suicide
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: the night before.
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: And her reaction.
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: Ashley shows little to no emotion. A day later, the
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: forensic lab results on the blood come back positive for
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: ethylene glycol, and they officially charge Ashley with the murder
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: of Harold Allen.
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: The physical proof.
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: Facing an absolutely impossible defense, I mean, her own digital
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: footprint was essentially a step-by-step diary of the homicide, Ashley
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: is forced to take a plea deal.
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: She had no choice.
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: In August, she pleads guilty to attempted murder and conspiracy
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: to commit murder. The judge sentences her to 50 years
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: in an Indiana state prison, explicitly stating on the record
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: that her actions were evil and noting her complete lack
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: of visible remorse.
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: And it was during these final legal proceedings that the
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: true motive for the initial burglary finally came to light.
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: This part is unbelievable.
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: It is the piece of information that ties this entire absurd,
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: tragic narrative together. Yes.
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: It turns out, after Harold's death, Marsha had been paying
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: Ashley $ 1, 000 a month out of Harold's life insurance payout.
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: A monthly stipend.
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: It was essentially her cut for helping coordinate the murder.
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: But in July 2023, Marsha abruptly stopped making those monthly payments.
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: Just cut her off.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: Ashley was absolutely furious. She felt she was being robbed
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: of her blood money. So just two months later, Ashley
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: mails a key to her best friend, Stephen White, and
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: orchestrates a robbery of her mother's house. To steal the guns,
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: the jewelry, and the valuables that Ashley felt she was
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: rightfully owed.
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: It is a breathtaking display of petty greed triggering catastrophic consequences.
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: That's the butterfly effect of crime.
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: Let's trace the causality here. Marsha cuts off the hush money.
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: So Ashley orchestrates a robbery. That robbery gets captured on
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: Marsha's newly installed security camera. Marsha reports it, which leads
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: the police to Stephen White. White gives up the murder
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: plot to avoid a massive burglary sentence.
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: The dominoes keep falling.
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: That tip leads the police to download Marsh's phone, recovering
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: the deleted text messages. Those texts result in Marsh's suicide
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: and Ashley's 50-year prison sentence.
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: You would think the story ends right there, with Ashley
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: locked in a concrete cell for the next five decades.
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: But it doesn't.
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: But as digital forensic investigators were meticulously combing through those 7,000
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: text messages, mapping out Harold's murder... a terrifying ghost from
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: Ashley's past emerged from the unallocated space on that hard drive.
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: Yes. The digital extraction didn't just solve Harold's murder. It
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: cast a massive, deeply suspicious shadow over a death that
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: occurred three years earlier.
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: We have to talk about Ty Jones. Ty was Ashley's
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: first husband.
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: The young widow.
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: Right. He died suddenly three years prior to Harold, at
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: the incredibly young age of 33. When you look at
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: the original medical paperwork for Ty... the autopsy cited heart
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: issues as the cause of death.
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: I'm familiar.
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: Extremely. But here is the critical difference. Ty was cremated
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: almost immediately after his death at Ashley's direct, insistent request
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: without any extended toxicological screening.
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: Which is devastating for an investigation.
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: Why is cremation so bad for this?
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: From a forensic pathology standpoint, cremation is the ultimate destroyer
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: of physical evidence. When a body is incinerated at 1,400
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: degrees Fahrenheit... All organic compounds simply vaporize.
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: They're just gone.
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: While you might find trace slag of heavy metals like
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: arsenic if you sifted the ashes, volatile organic poisons like cerberin, cicutoxin,
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: or ethylene glycol are utterly obliterated.
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: So you can't text for it later.
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: It completely eliminates any possibility of a future exhumation to
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: test for foul play.
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: In Ty's family, specifically his uncle William Jones and his
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: cousin Aretha Stiver, had suspected foul play from the very beginning.
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: They knew something was wrong.
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: They went on the record stating there were massive behavioral
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: red flags surrounding Ty's death. According to his family, Ty
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: was a perfectly healthy 33-year-old man. Then he suddenly drops dead.
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: With no prior history.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: At his funeral, the family notes that Ashley didn't shed
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: a single tear. She was completely stoic. And the very
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: next day, after burying her young husband, she physically shows
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: up at Ty's workplace, demanding his life insurance check from
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: his employer.
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: Which establishes a chillingly consistent behavioral pattern.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: It's the exact same playbook.
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: We see the immediate aggressive pursuit of a financial payout
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: following the sudden, unexpected death of a spouse. And the
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: family suspected a very specific financial motive in Ty's case
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: as well.
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: The inheritance.
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: Right. Ty had reportedly just received a significant inheritance, including
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: some real estate property, from his great-grandfather. As his wife,
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: Ashley stood to inherit all of it upon his death.
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: Ty's family felt in their bones that something was terribly wrong,
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: but they had absolutely no physical proof because of the cremation.
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: They were stuck.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: They were forced to live with their suspicions for years
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: until the digital forensics in Harold's case were uncovered.
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: The text messages.
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: During the weeks where Marsha and Ashley were trying and
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: failing to kill Harold with the bonbon seeds, Ashley sends
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: a text to Marsha completely out of nowhere. She is
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: complaining to her mother about how physically resilient Harold's body
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: is to the toxin.
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: And she types, And previously, Ty was only 120, followed
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: by an LOL.
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: That specific text message is a flashing neon sign for investigators.
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: It's a confession.
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: She is explicitly comparing the lethal dosage required for Harold,
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: who is a much larger man, to the dosage required
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: for her previous husband, who weighed only 120 pounds.
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: And she ends the comparison with laugh out loud. It
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: is sickening.
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: It truly is.
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: Based on the staggering methodological similarities between the two cases,
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: the financial motives... and that specific newly recovered text message,
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: the Indiana State Police have officially opened a formal active
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: investigation into the death of Ty Jones.
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: This development really forces us to examine the psychology of
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: the Black Widow profile.
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, how does someone get to this point?
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: When an individual commits a profound, intimate crime, like the
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: murder of a spouse for financial gain, and they get
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: away with it completely, the medical examiner clears it, the
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: life insurance pays out, Society offers its condolences and moves
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: on the... It fundamentally alters their internal psychology.
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: They think they're invincible.
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: It removes the fear of consequence. They become emboldened. They
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: begin to view themselves as inherently smarter than the system.
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: And that arrogance inevitably leads to the exact kind of
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: sloppiness we saw here.
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: The texting.
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: If Ashley did indeed have a hand in Ty's death,
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: her total success in that endeavor likely gave her the
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: twisted confidence... to suggest and execute the exact same playbook
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: with her mother regarding Harold.
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: But this time, the playbook failed, they got sloppy, they
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: left a digital trail a mile wide. The terrifying realization
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: here is that Harold Allen might not have been a bizarre,
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: isolated incident.
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: He was a sequel.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: He might have been victim number two. And while the
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: tragedy of the cremation successfully destroyed the physical evidence of
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: Ty's death, the digital evidence, you know, the archived text messages,
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: the deep internet search history... The geolocation metadata that investigators
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: are undoubtedly scouring through right now that might finally bring
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: Ty's case into the light.
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: It could finally provide some answers.
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: It means that Ty's family, after years of whispers, doubts,
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: and suspicions, finally has validation for their absolute worst fears.
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: It is a profound tragedy for both the Allen and
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: the Jones families.
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: It really is.
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: But the poetic justice here is that the digital hubris
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: that doomed Marsha and Ashley may be the very mechanism
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: that eventually provides justice for Ty as well.
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to the profound, almost Shakespearean irony of
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: this entire deep dive. Think about the chain of events.
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: It's a perfect circle.
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: Marsha Allen murdered her husband to gain his wealth. She
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: then used some of that blood money to install a modern,
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: high-definition home security camera system Specifically to protect those ill-gotten gains.
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: To protect the loot.
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: And that very camera captured a burglary orchestrated by her
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: own co-conspirator daughter in a petty dispute over the murder money,
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: which directly led law enforcement straight to the discovery of
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: their plot.
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: They brought themselves down.
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: Two women who genuinely believed they were criminal masterminds, who
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: thought they were smarter than the forensic pathologists and the detectives,
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: were ultimately undone by a push notification from an app
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: and their own insatiable greed.
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: It leaves us with a fascinating and somewhat unsettling reality
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: to consider about how we live today.
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely.
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: We navigate our modern lives, leaving a massive, indelible digital
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: footprint behind us in the unallocated space of our devices.
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: Everything is recorded.
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: Every text message we send, every internet search we query,
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: every time our phone pings the local cell tower, we
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: are writing a permanent, recoverable record of our actions and
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: our intent.
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: It's permanent.
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: In a world where our devices quietly remember everything we say...
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: do and attempt to delete, we really have to ask ourselves,
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: is the concept of a perfect crime actually dead forever?
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: Or are we simply relying on the eventual inevitable hubris
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: of criminals to ultimately press send?
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: It is a chilling thought. Just remember, the next time
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: you hit the trash can icon on your phone, it's
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: never really gone. Thank you for joining us on this
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: deep dive, and we encourage you to always question the
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: footprints you leave behind.