Latest / Murder Files Unsealed / How Snake Breeder Ben Renick Was Really Killed

Transcript

How Snake Breeder Ben Renick Was Really Killed · Murder Files Unsealed

0:00
Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this. We have a massive stack of
0:03
sources today. I mean we're talking hundreds of pages of
0:06
trial transcripts, investigative reports from the Missouri State Highway Patrol,
0:11
crime scene logs, and all those incredibly detailed interviews featured
0:15
on that dateline deep dive unforgettable.
0:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is a huge amount of material to go through,
0:21
it really is.
0:22
Speaker 1: And we are using all of this to reconstruct a
0:26
very specific, honestly a very terrifying scene. So I want
0:30
you to picture this. It's a sweltering day in late June.
0:33
It's twenty seventeen out in the really rural, isolated stretches
0:37
of Montgomery County, Missouri, right, so it's hot, oh exactly.
0:39
The air is thick, humid, the kind of Midwestern heat
0:43
that just hangs on you like a wet wool blanket.
0:45
And emergency dispatchers get a nine to one one call
0:47
and the audio is just absolute chao to cure panic.
0:50
On the line, pure panic. A woman is on the phone, weeping,
0:53
completely frantic. She says she's just walked into a building
0:56
on her family farm and found her husband face down
0:58
in a massive pool of blood.
1:00
Speaker 2: Which is horrific on its own, but then you add
1:02
the context.
1:03
Speaker 1: Right here is the detail that turns this from a
1:07
standard tragic emergency into a setup straight out of a
1:10
horror movie. This building, it's a high security reptile facility.
1:15
It houses over three thousand snakes, and somewhere on the
1:19
property a roughly six hundred pound, twelve foot anaconda had
1:23
mysteriously gotten loose from its enclosure.
1:25
Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is that it is the ultimate nightmare
1:28
scenario for a first responder. I mean, you have local
1:31
deputies arriving on the scene, stepping out of their air
1:33
conditioned cruisers into this oppressive ninety degree heat, and they
1:37
instantly have their weapons drawn too wan to say, right,
1:40
But they aren't scanning the horizon for a person with
1:42
a gun. They are scanning the tall grass, peering into
1:45
the shadows of the concrete floors, just moving through the
1:48
humid air of this facility, expecting to do battle with
1:52
a literal prehistoric monster.
1:54
Speaker 1: A six hundred pound snake, Yeah.
1:56
Speaker 2: A constrictor with enough pure muscle mass to easily crush
2:00
the life out of a human being. So the scene
2:03
smells like blood. It's packed to the ceiling with racks
2:06
and cages of rare, incredibly valuable serpents, and right in
2:10
the middle of it all is the young man who
2:12
built this empire, dead.
2:14
Speaker 1: On the floor. Is the most cinematic, terrifying setup imaginable.
2:18
You hear that and your brain immediately goes to the
2:21
escaped giant snake, like it has to be the snake, right,
2:23
nothing else makes sense in that environment.
2:25
Speaker 2: It's the only logical conclusion when you first step in, exactly.
2:29
Speaker 1: But the mission of our deep dive today is to
2:32
explore how the most exotic, unbelievable crime scene you could
2:36
possibly conjure up was actually masking the oldest, most painfully
2:41
ordinary motives in the.
2:42
Speaker 2: World, which is such a wild contrast.
2:44
Speaker 1: It really is. We're looking at the murder of Ben Rennick,
2:46
and we're going to deconstruct exactly what happened in that human,
2:49
concrete room, and more importantly, the psychology of why it happened.
2:54
Speaker 2: When you look at the crime scene photos and read
2:56
the initial dispatch reports, what really jumps out is the
3:00
power of cognitive misdirection. In psychology, there is a concept
3:05
called inattentional blindness.
3:07
Speaker 1: Okay, what exactly is that It's.
3:09
Speaker 2: Basically what happens when your brain is so overwhelmingly focused
3:12
on one massive stimulus that it completely deletes other pieces
3:16
of information right in front of your eyes.
3:18
Speaker 1: Oh like the invisible guerrilla experiment.
3:20
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly like that. When you walk into a room
3:23
filled with thousands of venomous and constricting predators and you
3:26
see a crushed skull and a massive amount of blood,
3:30
your brain takes a very fast, very dangerous shortcut. It
3:35
builds a narrative based on the most obvious overwhelming threat.
3:38
Speaker 1: In the room, the giant missing anaconda.
3:40
Speaker 2: Right, today's deep dive isn't really about snakes at all,
3:44
despite the unbelievable setting. It is fundamentally about human psychology,
3:47
the cold calculations people make when their backs are against
3:50
the wall, and the heavy burden placed on investigators who
3:53
have to force themselves to look past spectacular, terrifying distractions
3:57
to find a very quiet, cold truth.
3:59
Speaker 1: I want you, you, the person listening right now, to try
4:02
and put yourself in those deputies boots. Imagine walking into
4:06
that humid, blood scented room. The ambient noise is just
4:10
the hum of heat lamps and the rustle of thousands
4:13
of slithering bodies against glass and plastic.
4:16
Speaker 2: It's a sensory overload completely.
4:18
Speaker 1: How do you process that? How do you maintain rigorous,
4:22
textbook investigative protocol when every primal evolutionary instinct in your
4:26
DNA is screaming at you to watch your ankles for
4:30
a six hundred pound snake.
4:31
Speaker 2: You really have to fight your own biology in that moment.
4:34
Speaker 1: Right. It's a masterclass in not letting the loudest, most
4:37
obvious answer blind you to the scientifically accurate one. Because
4:41
to understand why this wasn't an exotic animal tragedy, we
4:45
first have to understand the victim himself, Ben Rennick, and
4:48
the highly unusual, incredibly lucrative world he inhabited.
4:51
Speaker 2: Ben was only twenty nine years old when this happened,
4:53
but he was already considered a titan in a very niche,
4:56
highly specialized field. He was raised right there in rural
4:59
Missouri with his brother Sam.
5:00
Speaker 1: It's a real local guy, yeah.
5:02
Speaker 2: By all accounts from the family interviews, they had a
5:05
classic country childhood, writing ATVs through the dense wood, spending
5:09
all their time outdoors catching local wildlife, but then developed
5:14
this intense early obsession with snakes.
5:17
Speaker 1: Which a lot of kids do, but they usually outgrow
5:19
it exactly.
5:20
Speaker 2: But rather than outgrowing it, when he went to high
5:22
school or college, he channeled it. He studied their biology
5:25
and then around twenty ten he founded Rennick Reptiles, Incorporated.
5:30
And he wasn't just catching local garter snakes in a bucket.
5:32
He was operating at the absolute pinnacle of the high
5:35
end reptile trade.
5:37
Speaker 1: The trial transcripts and the industry interviews describe him as
5:40
basically a rock star in this community. He specialized in
5:44
what they call designer morphs.
5:45
Speaker 2: Which is a huge market.
5:47
Speaker 1: Huge and for anyone who isn't deep into the exotic
5:49
pet trade, let's break down what that actually means. Think
5:52
of it less like breeding standard pets and more like
5:55
high end art collecting or dealing and bespoke one of
5:58
a kind luxury cars.
5:59
Speaker 2: That's a great comparison, right.
6:02
Speaker 1: These are snakes meticulously bred for highly unique, incredibly rare
6:06
color patterns and genetic combinations. We're talking about recessive genes,
6:11
Mendelian inheritance. It's real science, it really is. You take
6:15
a snake with a specific genetic mutation, say a piebald
6:19
ball python, which looks like it has been painted white
6:21
with erratic patches of normal color, and you selectively breed
6:24
it over generations to create living, breathing, genetically engineered investments.
6:30
Collectors from all over the world, from the United Kingdom
6:33
to Japan, we're paying tens of thousands of dollars just
6:37
to get their hands on a single specimen from Rennick Reptiles.
6:40
Speaker 2: The economics of it are truly staggering, especially for someone
6:43
in his twenties. He build a sprawling, seventy two acre
6:46
property near New Florence specifically to house this operation. That's massive,
6:50
it is, and the infrastructure required to keep over three
6:53
thousand reptiles alive and healthy is immense. You need highly
6:56
regulated climate control systems, specific humidity parameters for different species,
7:01
constant power supplies, and a massive food supply chain because.
7:04
Speaker 1: As the power goes out, your entire inventory could die.
7:07
Speaker 2: Exactly it's high stakes, and right before his death in
7:11
June twenty seventeen, he had just negotiated a massive international
7:16
deal involving some of his most prized pythons and anacondas. Now,
7:21
the exotic reptile breeding industry is known for being incredibly secretive.
7:26
Breeders fiercely protect their genetic lines and their customer lists.
7:30
Speaker 1: I can imagine it's their intellectual property.
7:31
Speaker 2: Basically, right, It can be highly competitive, and yet the
7:35
consensus across the board was that Ben stood out as
7:38
not just successful, but genuinely personable. He was ambitious, sure,
7:42
but well liked. His friends and fellow breeders looked at
7:45
him and saw a man who had his entire financial
7:47
and professional future unfolding beautifully in front of him.
7:50
Speaker 1: But wait, if he's this universally loved, personable guy running
7:54
a highly profitable legal business, violence makes absolutely no sense.
7:59
I mean, is the exotic animal trade hiding a dark
8:02
cartel like underbelly we just don't know about.
8:04
Speaker 2: It's a fair question to ask.
8:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, because you mentioned as secretive and competitive, does that
8:08
secrecy actually translate to physical violence? Because people don't usually
8:12
get murdered over a friendly business rivalry.
8:14
Speaker 2: That is precisely the paradox investigators had to grapple with
8:18
on day one. When someone is at the absolute top
8:21
of a lucrative, specialized market that operates globally, there are
8:25
always going to be rivals. There are always going to
8:27
be disgruntled buyers who feel they were sold in animal
8:29
with a hidden genetic defect, or competitors who might desperately
8:33
want a piece of the market share Ben was dominating.
8:35
Speaker 1: Sure, business disputes happen, but you're right to be skeptical.
8:39
Speaker 2: The transition from a heated business dispute over snake genetics
8:42
to a brutal physical murder in rural Missouri is a
8:46
massive leap. When deputies finally stepped into that snake facility,
8:50
they had to determine exactly what kind of predator they.
8:53
Speaker 1: Were dealing with, whether it was human or animal.
8:55
Speaker 2: Exactly they had to figure out if the killer was
8:57
cold blooded by nature, meaning a literal reptile acting on instinct,
9:02
or cold blooded by choice.
9:03
Speaker 1: Which brings us back to June eighth, twenty seventeen, the
9:07
day of the nine one one call. Let's walk through
9:09
the mechanics of how this discovery played out, because the
9:12
timeline and the sequence of events are absolutely crucial to
9:15
everything that follows.
9:16
Speaker 2: The timeline is everything in this case, it really is so.
9:20
Speaker 1: Linley Rennick, Ben's wife, tells investigators she had been at
9:24
her business, a day spa in Columbia, Missouri, all day long.
9:29
She says she couldn't reach Ben on his phone, which
9:31
was unusual, and then she realized he hadn't picked up
9:33
their kids from.
9:34
Speaker 2: School, which would definitely trigger some alarm bells.
9:36
Speaker 1: Right, So she drives the hour or so out to
9:38
the farm. She walks into the reptap facility, finds his body,
9:43
and the first person she calls for help isn't nine
9:45
to one one. It's Ben's brother, Sam.
9:48
Speaker 2: And Sam lives right there on the adjacent family land.
9:50
He rushes over and when he enters that building and
9:53
sees his brother, the visual is horrific. Ben has suffered
9:57
massive crushing trauma to his head. Man, yeah, there is
10:01
blood everywhere. Sam's immediate instinctive thought mirrors exactly what the
10:05
deputies thought when they heard the dispatch. The snakes did this.
10:08
He knows they have a massive six hundred pound an
10:11
a conda on the property. He knows it's unaccounted for.
10:14
That's terrifying, and initially the County Corner, a man named
10:17
Dave Colbert walks onto this chaotic, terrifying scene, looks at
10:22
the crushing trauma to the skull, and he agrees. The
10:25
working theory among the seasoned professionals standing in that room
10:29
is that they are dealing with a catastrophic fatal animal handling.
10:33
Speaker 1: Accident, And if you're standing there, it makes complete sense.
10:36
You have a massive constrictor missing, a victim with a
10:39
crushed skull, lying in a pool of blood, and a
10:42
building designed to house giant reptiles. It's an open and
10:46
shut case of an exotic pet turning on its owner.
10:49
Speaker 2: Right up until the pivot.
10:50
Speaker 1: Yes, the pivot, and this is the moment the entire
10:53
trajectory of the case changes. Coroner Dave Colbert is carefully
10:57
walking the scene. He's looking at the blood spatter, he's
10:59
looking at the position of the body, fighting every urge
11:01
to look over his shoulder for a snake, and he
11:03
spot something completely incongruous.
11:05
Speaker 2: Just one tiny detail.
11:07
Speaker 1: A stent shell casing, a tiny brass bullet casing, resting
11:10
on a shelf right above Ben's head.
11:12
Speaker 2: When you look at the forensic implications of that moment,
11:14
it is a profound display of professional awareness. We talked
11:18
about inattentional blindness earlier. Crime scenes speak to investigators, but
11:23
they speak in a language of anomalies. Things that simply do.
11:26
Speaker 1: Not belong in the environment, things that stand out right in.
11:29
Speaker 2: A reptile breeding facility. You expect to find shed snake skins,
11:33
shattered heat lamps, feeding pongs, maybe specialized cleaning chemicals. You
11:37
absolutely do not expect to find a spent nine millimeter casing,
11:42
Not at all. The moment Colbert saw the glint of
11:45
that brass on the shelf, the entire reality of the
11:48
room shifted on its axis. He later stated, he said,
11:52
when I saw that shell casing on the shelf just
11:54
above his head, I knew this was not from a snake.
11:57
This was something much more heinous.
11:58
Speaker 1: The autopsy completely shatters whatever was left to the snake
12:01
attack theory. Ben Rennick hadn't just been hit once. He
12:05
hadn't been bludgeoned or crushed. He had been shot eight times,
12:08
eight time, mostly in the back, with at least one
12:11
close rain shot directly to the head. The giant anaconda,
12:15
the six hundred pound monster that had everyone terrified and
12:18
second guessing every shadow in that room was a giant,
12:22
literal red herring.
12:23
Speaker 2: It's almost hard to believe.
12:25
Speaker 1: I just cannot get over the sheer juxtaposition here. The
12:28
killer walked into a sweltering ninety degree room, surrounded by
12:32
thousands of venomous and constricting reptiles navigated through this terrifying
12:36
gauntlet of glass and scales just to shoot a man
12:39
in the back.
12:40
Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture, it requires
12:43
an incredible amount of focus and nerve, or perhaps just
12:46
a singular blinding intent to kill that overrides any environmental fear.
12:51
Speaker 1: You'd have to be so focused completely.
12:52
Speaker 2: It completely rules out a random robbery or a crime
12:55
of opportunity. You don't accidentally stumble into an internationally renowned
12:59
reptile breeding facility out in the Missouri woods to commit
13:02
a quick burglary.
13:03
Speaker 1: No, absolutely not.
13:04
Speaker 2: And for you listening, I want you to really think
13:06
about how easily a less observant corner might have missed
13:09
that single tiny shell casing in the absolute chaos of
13:13
a snake filled room.
13:14
Speaker 1: It could have been kicked under a shell for something easily.
13:17
Speaker 2: Imagine if Colbert had just signed off on the animal
13:19
attack theory, which everyone else was ready to believe, the
13:23
body would have been buried, the case closed as an accident.
13:26
It emphasizes why rigorous, uncompromising methodology and crime scene processing
13:31
is so vital. You cannot let your assumptions, no matter
13:35
how perfectly logical they seem in the moment dictate the evidence.
13:39
The evidence always has to dictate the narrative.
13:41
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting. Once the snake is
13:44
officially ruled out and the autopsy confirms the barrage gunshots,
13:48
the police know they have a premeditated, calculated execution on
13:52
their hands. Yeah, and when you have a murder, you
13:54
don't start by looking for international reptile smugglers in Japan,
13:57
you start with the inner circle.
13:59
Speaker 2: Always, destigative protocol dictates that you look at proximity, both
14:02
physical and emotional. Who had the access and who had
14:05
the emotion. Investigators immediately initiate the standard protocols for a homicide.
14:10
They administer gunshot residue tests to the two people closest
14:13
to the scene, Linley, the wife who found the body,
14:16
and Sam, the brother who rushed to the scene.
14:19
Speaker 1: I need to stop you there for a second, because
14:20
we hear about GSR all the time on procedural TV shows.
14:25
But what exactly is gunshot residue? Like, if I fire
14:28
a gun, what is physically landing on my hands? And
14:31
how do they test for it hours later?
14:33
Speaker 2: It's a great question because TV gets it wrong all
14:36
the time.
14:36
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm sure it does.
14:37
Speaker 2: When you pull the trigger of a firearm, the firing
14:40
pin strikes the primer at the base of the cartridge.
14:43
That primer ignites, which ignites the gunpowder, creating rapidly expanding
14:47
gases that push the bullet down the barrel. But that
14:50
ignition also creates a microscopic cloud of vaporized heavy metals,
14:55
specifically lead, barium and antimony.
14:58
Speaker 1: Okay, so a tiny metal cloud right.
15:00
Speaker 2: This rapracloud bursts out of the weapon, usually from the
15:03
ejection port or the gaps and a revolver, and instantly
15:06
cools in a microscopic particles that settle on the shooter's hands, arms,
15:10
and clothing. Law enforcement uses a small sticky stub to
15:14
dab the hands of a suspect, and then they run
15:16
that stub through a scanning electron microscope.
15:19
Speaker 1: Wow, so it's really high tech.
15:20
Speaker 2: Very If they find particles containing that specific triad of lead,
15:25
barium and antimony fuse together, it is a near certainty
15:29
that the person either fired a weapon, handled a recently
15:32
fired weapon, or was standing immediately next to a weapon
15:35
when it was fired.
15:36
Speaker 1: Okay, so they swab Linley and Sam and both of
15:40
those GSR tests come back completely negative. They start collecting
15:44
their cell phones, confiscating the clothing they were wearing that day,
15:48
and meticulously verifying their alibis.
15:50
Speaker 2: And meanwhile, the rumor mill in this highly niche reptile
15:54
community is just churning at full speed.
15:56
Speaker 1: Oh, I bet the Facebook groups were going crazy.
15:58
Speaker 2: Exactly foul are wispering on forums about disgruntled high end customers,
16:03
rival breeders who desperately wanted Ben's genetic lines to breed
16:06
their own piebald pythons, you name it. But the police
16:09
focus lands squarely on one person first, the brother, Sam Rennick.
16:13
Speaker 1: Why the brother, I mean, they just found out a
16:15
snake didn't do it. Why jump straight to the guy
16:17
who ran over to help.
16:18
Speaker 2: It's a very natural investigative pivot based on historical data.
16:22
Whenever you have a family run business situated on family
16:25
owned land, you almost invariably have severe friction. Family farms
16:30
are notoriously complex legal entities.
16:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes sense.
16:34
Speaker 2: They are often land rich but cash poor, and the
16:37
lines between personal assets and business assets get incredibly blurry.
16:42
During the initial interviews, it became clear there were known
16:45
documented disagreements between Ben and Sam regarding the ownership structure
16:49
and the future direction of the family farm.
16:52
Speaker 1: So there was actual tension there there was land.
16:55
Speaker 2: Disputes between siblings are one of the oldest, most primal
16:59
motives in the book. And furthermore, Linley herself explicitly points
17:03
investigators in Sam's direction. She sits down with the police
17:07
and actively tells them to look at the brother, citing
17:09
these very financial and property disagreements.
17:12
Speaker 1: Sam is in a living nightmare here. Think about what
17:15
this guy's psychology must be in this moment. He just
17:17
lost his brother in a horrific way. Initially he thought nature,
17:21
the very animals they dedicated their lives to it killed him,
17:23
which is traumatizing enough, right Then he finds out his
17:26
brother was essentially executed. Then the police turned their sights
17:30
on him, making him the prime suspect. And to top
17:33
it all off, his sister in law is sitting in
17:36
an interrogation room actively pointing the finger at him. How
17:41
does a person react to that? A lot of people
17:42
would lawyer up and shut down absolutely, but Sam does
17:46
the exact opposite. He cooperates entirely.
17:48
Speaker 2: And his total transparency is exactly what saves him from
17:51
a wrongful accusation, Sam hands over his phone without demanding
17:55
a warrant, He voluntarily strips and gives him his clothes
17:59
for forensic time testing. He provides a rock solid, verifiable
18:03
alibi for his exact whereabouts during the window of the murder.
18:07
He even voluntarily submits to a polygraph examination.
18:10
Speaker 1: Wait. I know polygraphs are controversial and usually inadmissible in court,
18:14
but how do they actually work in an investigation like this?
18:17
How does a machine know if Sam is lying about
18:19
shooting his brother.
18:20
Speaker 2: Well, a polygraph doesn't actually detect lies. It detects physiological arousal.
18:24
It measures changes in your sympathetic nervous system, the fight
18:28
or flight response. Okay, they strap sensors to your chest
18:31
to measure respiration rate, a cuff on your arm to
18:33
measure blood pressure and heart rate, and electrodes on your
18:36
fingers to measure galvanic skin response, which is essentially how
18:40
much you are sweating.
18:41
Speaker 1: So they're looking for a stress reaction exactly.
18:45
Speaker 2: The theory is that when a person engages in deception,
18:48
especially about something as high stakes as murder, it triggers
18:51
an involuntary stress response. Your heart rate spikes, your breathing changes,
18:56
you sweat microscopically, A trained examiner asks control questions to
19:01
establish a baseline, and then hits you with the relevant questions,
19:04
like did you shoot Ben?
19:06
Speaker 1: And Sam passed.
19:07
Speaker 2: Sam passed this test without showing signs of deception. Devin Faust,
19:11
an investigator with the Missouri State Highway Patrol, admitted later
19:14
that Sam was a heavy suspect early on. The property
19:18
disputes made for a compelling initial theory, but the evidence,
19:21
the digital footprint from his phone, the timeline, the negative GSR,
19:25
the polygraph completely cleared him.
19:27
Speaker 1: Which is such a textbook example of misdirection. Right. First,
19:32
the physical crime scene misdirects the cops with the giant snake,
19:35
Then the grieving widow tries to misdirect the cops with
19:38
the brother. Exactly with the business rivals cleared and Sam
19:41
officially cleared, investigators realized the person pointing the finger is
19:46
the one they need to look at most closely. They
19:48
have to stop looking at the farm and start looking
19:51
at the marriage.
19:51
Speaker 2: And when they finally peel back the polished public facade
19:55
of that marriage, what they find is a deeply disturbing reality.
20:00
Let's look at the actual backstory here. Ben and Lindley
20:03
met when they were young in their hometown, but they
20:05
didn't really reconnect until around twenty eleven. Lindley had a
20:09
child from a previous relationship, and she and Ben eventually
20:12
married in twenty fourteen, blending their family and having another
20:15
child together. To the outside world. On social media and
20:18
in their community, they look like the perfect modern entrepreneurial.
20:21
Speaker 1: Partnership, the ultimate power couple, right.
20:25
Speaker 2: He had his thriving, highly exotic empire on the farm
20:28
with the snakes, and she managed a very chic, modern
20:31
day spa called Essensia in the nearby city of Columbia.
20:35
It looked like a beautifully balanced, successful.
20:38
Speaker 1: Life, but privately it was a total disaster. The trial
20:41
transcripts paint a picture of a relationship that was essentially
20:45
collapsing under the weight of massive secrets and suffocating debt.
20:49
Speaker 2: The finances were a huge factor.
20:51
Speaker 1: Oh. The financial ruin was staggering. Lindley's spa, Essensia, was
20:55
deeply in the red, and for a business like a spa,
20:58
financial collapse is incredibly stressful. Day to day, she was
21:01
struggling to pay her commercial lease. She couldn't meet payroll
21:04
for her massage therapists and es coeticians. The vendor bills
21:07
for products were piling up, and the business taxes were looming.
21:11
Speaker 2: It's a lot to handle.
21:12
Speaker 1: It is, and Ben was getting incredibly frustrated. Investigators uncovered
21:16
reams of texts and Facebook messages between them showing deep,
21:19
venomous distrust. Ben was furious that he was constantly having
21:23
to float loans from the lucrative snake business to cover
21:25
the SPA's failures, and that Linley's staff weren't getting paid.
21:29
Speaker 2: This raises an important question. The financial stress alone creates
21:33
a classic suffocating pressure cooker, but it wasn't just money.
21:38
Around the three year mark of their marriage, text messages
21:40
and witness testimonies revealed that Linley was actively stepping out
21:44
on the marriage. Oh wow, Yeah, she was engaging in
21:46
extramarital affairs. Ben was growing highly suspicious of her movements
21:51
and her phone habits. So you have a marriage characterized
21:54
by financial panic, infidelity, and completely eroding trust. And then
22:00
hovering above all of this is a massive financial incentive,
22:03
a one million dollar life insurance policy on.
22:06
Speaker 1: Ben a million dollars and the timeline here is chilling.
22:10
Within days of her husband being brutally murdered in a
22:13
snake enclosure, while the investigation is entirely unsolved, while the
22:16
police are swarming the property, and while her brother in
22:18
law's a prime suspect, Lindley's already inquiring about the payout
22:22
on that million dollar policy.
22:23
Speaker 2: It's incredibly braisen, and.
22:24
Speaker 1: At the exact same time she starts making aggressive preparations
22:27
to sell off the seventy two acre reptile farm.
22:30
Speaker 2: When you look at that million dollar policy, you have
22:32
to ask yourself, how does a normal mother running a
22:35
day spa cross the mental rubicon into premeditated murder?
22:40
Speaker 1: Right? How do you make that jump?
22:41
Speaker 2: It rarely happens overnight. It's a series of moral compromises.
22:45
The financial walls were closing in on the SPA, which
22:48
represented her independence, her identity, and her social status in Colombia. Furthermore,
22:54
there were likely deep seated fears.
22:55
Speaker 1: About custody because of the affairs.
22:58
Speaker 2: Exactly in Missouri family courts. If Ben were to file
23:02
for divorce, which given the uncovered affairs and the financial
23:06
dissipation of his assets, was a very real threat, Linley
23:09
would be in a terrible legal position.
23:11
Speaker 1: She could lose everything.
23:12
Speaker 2: She was looking at a very immediate future where she
23:14
lost her business or comfortable lifestyle, and potentially primary custody
23:18
of her children to someone trapped in that state of mind,
23:20
the million dollar policy and the liquid value of the
23:23
farms start to look less like marital assets and more
23:26
like a permanent, violent escape patch.
23:28
Speaker 1: And we know it wasn't a sudden crime of passion.
23:31
It wasn't a fight that got out of hand. We
23:34
know this because of what happened weeks before the shooting.
23:38
This is the part of the story that absolutely floored me.
23:40
Speaker 2: The protein shake plot.
23:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, the protein shake plot. Weeks before Ben was shot,
23:45
Linley conspired with their SPA manager, a woman named Ashley Shaw,
23:48
and another SPA employee, Rachel Hunt. They literally sit down
23:51
in the spa and crush up fifteen percocet pills. They
23:55
take this massive dose of narcotics and they mix it
23:58
into Ben's protein shake.
24:00
Speaker 2: Your intention, according to the testimony later given in court,
24:02
was to induce a fatal overdose. They wanted it to
24:05
look like a natural medical event, perhaps a heart attack,
24:08
or at worst, an accidental tragedy.
24:10
Speaker 1: I have to interject, because fifteen percoces is an insane
24:12
amount what exactly is that doing to the human body.
24:15
Speaker 2: Well, percocet is a combination of oxycodone, which is a
24:17
powerful opioid, and acetaminifin, the active ingredient in tilenol fifteen
24:22
pills is a massive, highly toxic dose.
24:25
Speaker 1: It sounds like it would kill you instantly.
24:26
Speaker 2: Pretty close. The oxycodone binds to the receptors in the
24:30
brain and spinal cord, drastically suppressing the central nervous system.
24:35
The primary cause of death in an opioid overdose is
24:37
respiratory depression. You simply start breathing. Meanwhile, that much uncetaminophen
24:42
hitting the liver all at once causes acute catastrophic liver failure.
24:46
It is a lethal cocktail.
24:48
Speaker 1: But he didn't die.
24:49
Speaker 2: No. Ben drank the shake and he became violently, incredibly ill.
24:53
But by some absolute miracle of biology, his body rejected
24:57
it or metabolized it just enough that he survived the poison.
25:00
And he never even realized what had happened. He just
25:02
thought he had a severe stomach bug.
25:04
Speaker 1: I am just an absolute shock at the psychological escalation here.
25:08
Think of it like a gambler chasing massive losses. She
25:11
placed a quiet, subtle bet with the poison. It was sneaky,
25:14
it left no physical trauma, it looked like an accident,
25:17
and the poison failed to pay out.
25:18
Speaker 2: That's a very good way to frame it.
25:20
Speaker 1: So instead of walking away, she doubles down with the
25:23
most violent, high risk gamble imaginable. She goes from trying
25:27
to quietly overdose her husband to walking into a snake
25:30
facility and blasting him eight times in the back with
25:33
a nine millimeter handgun. It is a massive, terrifying escalation
25:37
in desperation.
25:38
Speaker 2: The gambler metaphor is incredibly apt. It speaks to a frantic,
25:42
unraveling mindset. The poison failed, the financial deadlines for the
25:46
SPA were likely getting tighter by the day. The pressure
25:49
was mounting. When subtle, cowardly methods fail, desperate people often
25:54
resort to blunt, overwhelming force.
25:57
Speaker 1: It's just wild to think about.
25:58
Speaker 2: But even with this knowledge of the poisoning coming to
26:00
light years later, in the immediate aftermath of the murder
26:03
in twenty seventeen, investigators were stuck. Lindley actually failed a
26:07
polygraph test in October of twenty seventeen. The Missouri State
26:11
Highway Patrol told her she sure physiological deception on direct
26:14
questions regarding whether she shot her husband. But a failed
26:17
polygraph isn't enough, right, exactly as we discussed, a failed
26:21
polygraph isn't physical evidence. It is generally inadmissible in court.
26:25
It's not enough to arrest someone. It just tells the
26:27
police where to look, and without a murder weapon, without
26:30
DNA at the scene, without a confession. The trail went
26:34
ice cold.
26:36
Speaker 1: For nearly three years, three years of this case just
26:39
sitting in the cold files of the highway patrol. Well,
26:41
let's talk about what happens during that time, because the
26:43
contrast is wild.
26:44
Speaker 2: A lot changed very quickly.
26:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, the reptile community, which is so tight knit, despout
26:48
the competition, actually rallies together. They raise money for the family.
26:53
But ultimately Ben's life's work, this incredible genetic empire, is
26:57
completely dismantled. He is three thousands are sold off, piece
27:01
by piece to other breeders across the globe. The business vanishes,
27:04
and Linley she moves on remarkably fast, very fast. She
27:08
starts dating a man named Brandon Blackwell. Very shortly after
27:10
the murder. Sam Rennick, the brother who was falsely accused,
27:13
was on the record, saying this was a big red flag.
27:15
Speaker 2: Its highly unusual behavior for a grieving widow whose husband
27:19
was just assassinated, and it certainly kept her firmly on
27:22
law enforcement's radar. But police couldn't arrest her for moving
27:26
on too fast.
27:27
Speaker 1: Right, moving on isn't a crime exactly.
27:29
Speaker 2: They needed a tangible break, and in January of twenty twenty,
27:32
they finally got one. The break didn't come from a
27:35
high tech forensic lab or a brilliant new deduction at
27:38
the crime scene. It came from inside a county jail cell.
27:42
Brandon Blackwell, the man Linley started dating after the murder,
27:46
had ended up incarcerated on unrelated issues, and from his
27:50
jail cell he decides to reach out to the authorities
27:52
and snitch.
27:53
Speaker 1: He tells investigators that Linley fully confessed the murder to
27:56
him while they were together. He lays out the whole
27:58
motive for the police. Ben was planning to ask for
28:02
a divorce and Lindley was terrified of losing custody of
28:05
the kids and losing her lifestyle.
28:06
Speaker 2: He gives them the full picture.
28:08
Speaker 1: He does, and he gives them the exact mechanics of
28:11
the plot. He says Linley reached out to an ex
28:13
boyfriend of hers, a guy named Michael Humphrey, to supply
28:16
the gun and drive out to the farm with her.
28:18
But according to Blackwell's tip, it was Linley who actually
28:21
held the weapon and pulled the trigger. On January sixteenth,
28:24
twenty twenty, based on this information, police arrests both Lynley
28:28
Rennick and Michael Humphrey.
28:30
Speaker 2: The irony is profound here. Lindley had successfully navigated police interrogations,
28:35
she had survived a failed polygraph test, She had weathered
28:39
the initial storm of community suspicion, and lived free for
28:42
almost three years.
28:43
Speaker 1: She thought she got away with it.
28:44
Speaker 2: She definitely did, and she was ultimately undone by her
28:47
own hubris, by the bizarre need to brag about her
28:50
crime to a new boyfriend who eventually traded that secret
28:53
for his own benefit.
28:54
Speaker 1: Which brings up something I always wonder about in these
28:56
true crime cases. How reliable is a jailhouse informant. We
29:00
see this in movies all the time, a guy in
29:02
an orange jumpsuit trading a fabricated story for lighter sentence.
29:05
Why did the police believe Blackwell enough to go swear
29:08
out arrest warrants?
29:09
Speaker 2: It's a very valid concern, and seasoned investigators are naturally
29:13
highly skeptical jailhouse informants because by definition, they always have
29:17
an ulterior motive. They want a deal, right, But what
29:21
elevates a tip from a rumor to actionable intelligence is
29:25
corroborating detail. In the eyes of the law, an informant
29:28
is credible if they provide information they couldn't possibly know
29:31
unless the killer told them. Blackwell wasn't just offering a
29:35
vague rumor that Linley did it specifics. He provided specific
29:38
mechanics of the plot. He provided the full name of
29:41
an accomplice, Michael Humphrey, who police could then independently investigate.
29:45
He provided deeply personal motives regarding the divorce and custody
29:48
that aligned perfectly with the text messages police had already
29:51
uncovered but couldn't completely contextualize.
29:54
Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense.
29:55
Speaker 2: It highlights the fatal flaw of the criminal ego. The
29:58
perfect crime requires per agonizing silence, but human beings are
30:03
inherently social creatures, and the psychological burden of a murder,
30:07
or sometimes the sheer arrogance of believing you outsmart at
30:09
the cops, creates this overwhelming compulsive need to share the secret.
30:14
The most complex, meticulously planned plots are almost always unraveled
30:19
by the most mundane human error talking too much.
30:22
Speaker 1: So arrests are made. Begetting two co conspirators and handcuffs
30:25
is really just the pre show, because once they are
30:28
locked up in separate cells, the real psychological warfare begins,
30:31
and it plays out in.
30:32
Speaker 2: The courtroom exactly. When you have two defendants charged with
30:35
a single murder, you almost inevitably see a classic legal
30:38
and psychological dynamic unfold. It is an applied version of
30:42
the prisoner's dilemma, and they immediately turn on each other.
30:45
It becomes a frantic race to minimize their own culpability
30:48
by maximizing the guilt of the other person.
30:51
Speaker 1: Hold on, I remember the prisoner's dilemma from college economics,
30:54
but can you remind me how that actually works in
30:56
a real legal scenario like this.
30:57
Speaker 2: The prisoner's dilemma is a foundational concept in game theory.
31:01
Imagine you and your accomplice are arrested and put in
31:04
separate interrogation rooms. The prosecutor offers you both the exact
31:09
same deal. Okay, if you both stay silent, they only
31:12
have enough evidence to put you away for one year
31:15
on a lesser charge. If you betray your accomplice and
31:18
testify against them, you go free and they get ten years.
31:21
But if you both betray each other, you both get
31:24
five years.
31:25
Speaker 1: Right, so you have to guess what the other person
31:26
is going to do.
31:27
Speaker 2: Logically, the best outcome for the group is to stay silent,
31:31
But because you cannot trust the other person to stay silent,
31:34
the rational choice for the individual is always to betray
31:37
the partner to save themselves. In the legal system, prosecutors
31:40
use this dynamic intentionally. They isolate co conspirators and wait
31:44
for the paranoia to set in. Whoever breaks first and
31:47
flips on the other gets the better deal, and that.
31:50
Speaker 1: Is exactly what happens here. Michael Humphrey goes to trial
31:53
first in October of twenty twenty one, and he's convicted
31:56
of first degree murder. But after he's convicted, staring down
31:59
the barrel of the rest of his life in a cell,
32:02
he decides to flip on Linley.
32:03
Speaker 2: To save himself from the absolute worst case scenario.
32:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, he helps law enforcement locate what they believe to
32:09
be the murder weapon, and he agrees to take the
32:12
stand and testify against her in her upcoming trial. In
32:15
exchange for this cooperation, the state reduces his conviction to
32:19
second degree murder, which gives him a sentence of life
32:22
with the possibility of parole rather than life without parole.
32:26
Speaker 2: It's a very calculated strategic move by the prosecution. They
32:30
secure a conviction on the accomplice first proving the crime happened,
32:34
and then they use that enormous leverage the reality of
32:36
prison to build an undeniable ladder of evidence against the
32:40
primary target, Linley, who they believe is the mastermind.
32:44
Speaker 1: It's like Checkmate Humphrey.
32:45
Speaker 2: Taking that plea deal cornered Linley completely. She has no
32:48
allies left, and that desperation is exactly what drives her
32:51
to make one of the riskiest gambles in legal history
32:54
when she goes to trial.
32:55
Speaker 1: Because when we get to Lindley's trial in December of
32:57
twenty twenty one, the prosecution just unloads on her. Ashley
33:00
Shaw and Rachel Hunt, the two SPAW employees who helped
33:03
crush up the percocets, are given immunity deals so they
33:06
will testify about the protein shape plot.
33:08
Speaker 2: That's devastating evidence to hear in court.
33:10
Speaker 1: Oh totally. Then Michael Humphrey takes the stand. He tells
33:13
the jury that yes, he went to the farm, he
33:15
supplied the gun, but he claims he thought they were
33:18
just going there for a verbal confrontation about the marriage.
33:21
He says once they were in the snakeroom, he got uncomfortable,
33:25
handed Linley the gun and watched her shoot Ben repeatedly
33:28
in the back.
33:29
Speaker 2: The dueling narratives here are fascinating to watch unfold. Humphrey
33:33
paints himself as an unwitting pawn, a guy who just
33:36
wanted to help an ex girlfriend and gotten way over
33:39
his head. Meanwhile, Lindley's defense has to counter this highly
33:42
coordinated attack from her former best friends and her accomplice.
33:46
Speaker 1: And because she is backed into a corner, Linley does
33:49
something incredibly risky. She waves her right to remain silent
33:53
and takes the stand in her own defense, which is
33:55
so rare. It is she admits to the jury under
33:59
oath that she was part of a cover up. After
34:01
the fact, she admits she lied to police, but she
34:05
absolutely denies pulling the trigger. Her story is that Humphrey
34:08
surprised her, that he just suddenly pulled out the gun
34:11
in that human room and shot Ben himself.
34:13
Speaker 2: She's pointing the finger right back at him.
34:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, and her defense attorneys hammer home the forensic reality
34:19
of the case. There is no DNA, no fingerprints, and
34:22
no gunshot residue tying Linley to the murder weapon or
34:25
the crime scene. They argue that Humphrey, Shaw and Hunt
34:29
are all admitted, documented liars who were just pointing the
34:33
finger at Linley to save their own skins and keep
34:36
their immunity deals.
34:37
Speaker 2: Taking the stand is the ultimate gamble for a defense
34:40
because it opens you up to cross examination by a
34:42
prosecutor whose entire job is to destroy your credibility.
34:45
Speaker 1: It takes a lot of confidence to think you can
34:47
beat that. It does.
34:49
Speaker 2: You are asking the jury to weigh the absolute lack
34:52
of physical evidence against the sworn testimony of multiple co conspirators.
34:56
The defense is banking heavily on the CSI effect, that is,
35:00
the modern jury's expectation, fueled by decades of forensic television
35:04
shows that every crime must be solved with pristine DNA,
35:07
perfect fingerprints, or indisputable forensic science. The defense is betting
35:12
that without that forensic smoking gun, the jury won't convict
35:15
based on the word of snitches.
35:16
Speaker 1: Looking at the mechanics of this trial, I have to
35:18
ask you, is this justice? Is it fair that admitted
35:23
co conspirators, people who literally crushed up deadly poison or
35:26
physically carried a loaded murder weapon to a crime scene
35:29
get immunity or reduced sentences just so the state can
35:32
nail the person they think is the primary target.
35:34
Speaker 2: It's a harsh, ugly reality of the justice system. Prosecutors
35:38
often have to make a very grim calculus. Without the
35:41
testimony of the SPA workers to establish the prior intent
35:45
to kill, and without the accomplice to put the gun
35:47
in her hand. A jury might look at the complete
35:49
lack of physical evidence, the negative GSR, the lack of DNA,
35:53
and a quick Linley entirely.
35:55
Speaker 1: They'd have nothing else to go on.
35:57
Speaker 2: Right, the state decides that letting lesser players walk free
36:00
or serve significantly lighter sentences is an acceptable, necessary price
36:04
to pay to ensure the person who orchestrated the entire
36:07
plot doesn't get away with it. Sam Rennick, the brother
36:10
who suffered so much through this entire ordeal, gave a
36:14
very poignant final assessment of his sister.
36:16
Speaker 1: In law after the trial, what do you say?
36:18
Speaker 2: He described her as a master manipulator who lived a
36:21
complete double life, someone who truly believed, perhaps because of
36:25
her own narcissism, that she could execute a flawless plan,
36:29
eliminate her husband, and just walk away clean into the
36:31
comfortable life she wanted.
36:33
Speaker 1: So what does this all mean? The jury ultimately didn't
36:36
buy Linley's story on the stand. In December twenty twenty one,
36:40
they found her guilty of second degree murder and armed
36:42
criminal action. She was sentenced to a total of sixteen
36:46
years in prison. And I want that listener to really
36:49
sit with that trial dynamic for a second. Think about
36:51
sitting in that jury box. You have no physical evidence
36:55
on the defendant.
36:55
Speaker 2: None at all.
36:56
Speaker 1: The only people telling you she did it are people
36:58
who admit to being part of the plot and are
37:00
getting sweet deals from the state to talk. Would you
37:04
have been able to convict based on the testimony of
37:06
admitted liars. It shows how incredibly compelling the prosecution's narrative
37:11
of the financial desperation, the affairs, and the poison plot
37:14
must have been to overcome that reasonable doubt.
37:17
Speaker 2: The totality of the circumstantial evidence is what ultimately sank her.
37:21
The massive SPA debts, the affairs, the immediate life insurance inquiries,
37:25
the previous poisoning attempt. All of it created a context
37:29
where Humphrey's testimony, despite his own obvious guilt and self preservation,
37:34
became the most logical explanation for the jury.
37:37
Speaker 1: Let's step back and look at the bigger picture here,
37:39
because the tragic aftermath of this case is just sprawling
37:43
Ben Rennick's legacy. Those thousands of carefully bred, genetically unique snakes,
37:49
they are gone.
37:50
Speaker 2: It's all scattered, scattered.
37:52
Speaker 1: Across the country to other breeders. The seventy two acre
37:55
family farm changed hands. The Essensia Spa, the business that
37:59
caused so much of this intense financial panic in the
38:02
first place, is closed. Two people are sitting in state prison,
38:06
and most tragically, children are left to grow up without
38:08
their father.
38:09
Speaker 2: The contrast between the myth and the reality of this
38:11
case is what makes it so enduring in the true
38:13
crime space. The story exploded into the public consciousness because
38:17
of that six hundred pound anaconda.
38:18
Speaker 1: It was a great headline exactly.
38:20
Speaker 2: It provided this incredible cinematic narrative of man versus nature,
38:25
a predator striking in the dark, but the cold reality
38:28
was so much darker and so much more common. It
38:31
was a spouse driven by mounting debt, hidden secrets, and
38:35
the fear of losing a custody battle. This wasn't a
38:37
story about exotic serpents. It was a story about the
38:40
deeply ordinary, terrible calculations that human beings are capable of
38:44
making within the walls of an intimate relationship when the
38:47
money runs out.
38:48
Speaker 1: The giant snake didn't kill Ben. The real danger walked
38:52
into that humid room on two feet, and it leaves
38:55
me with this final really provocative thought to chew on.
38:59
Think about the setting of this crime. You have millions
39:01
of dollars in rare exotic animals surrounding them.
39:04
Speaker 2: Beautiful animals.
39:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, these are creatures to take highly specialized scientific knowledge
39:08
to breed, to house, and to keep alive. They are
39:11
genetically unique, irreplaceable living things. And yet in the minds
39:15
of the people who plotted this murder, they were reduced
39:17
to nothing more than background props. They were just blurry
39:20
scenery for a violent plot driven by a failing day
39:22
spa and a life insurance payout.
39:24
Speaker 2: It is a profound devaluation of life, both Ben's life
39:28
and the remarkable complex ecosystem.
39:30
Speaker 1: He built, exactly and it makes you wonder, in our
39:33
incredibly complex, digitized, highly specialized modern world, where we place
39:37
so much value on unique achievements, how many incredibly unique,
39:40
irreplaceable human lives are destroyed every single day simply because
39:44
someone somewhere couldn't figure out how to balance their most mundane,
39:48
everyday checkbook. We went looking for a monster snake, and
39:51
what we found was just human debt, human desperation, and
39:54
a terrible choice.