Latest / True Crime California / TCC #26: Angelina Rodriguez

Transcript

TCC #26: Angelina Rodriguez · True Crime California

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1:01
Speaker 1: Hey everyone, welcome to True Crime California. I'm your host, Cindy,
1:07
and I'm glad you're here. Hey, everybody, welcome back to
1:20
True Crime California. I'm very happy to be here. I
1:23
hope you've all had a great new year. Yeah, we're
1:28
gonna just get into a new case. But before we do,
1:30
I just want to say shit's fucked up in America
1:33
right now. I'm an extremely political person. I try to
1:39
not get too crazy on here because I already have
1:41
like weirdos that like stalk me and post like one
1:43
star reviews everywhere they can because people are fucking crazy.
1:47
And if that's you, go fuck yourself. But I think
1:51
that it's really important to stand up for what you
1:52
believe in, even if it puts you at personal risk,
1:56
especially when that personal risk is a bad review instead
1:58
of like, you know, your life. So I'm just gonna say, like,
2:01
fuck ice and that if you're the type of person
2:04
who thinks that it's okay for us to overthrow a
2:06
government in another country because the government is corrupt, but
2:09
then you also think it's okay to shoot a woman
2:12
in the face as she tries to drive away, you're
2:15
a piece of shit and you deserve whatever happens to you. Unfortunately,
2:20
I don't deserve what happens to all of us as
2:22
a result of your idiocy. So everybody please wake up
2:24
and knock it the fuck off. Okay, now that that's
2:27
out of the way, Sorry, I hit my mic. I'm
2:30
going to do a case that I actually did a
2:32
long time ago for my other podcast that has always
2:35
been really funny to me. It's not funny, it's terrible
2:37
and it's sad. But the woman is such a fucking
2:39
idiot that it makes it kind of funny. So we're
2:44
gonna we're gonna get into that again. Happy New Year,
2:47
despite how unhappy it kind of actually is. I hope
2:51
everybody is doing the best they can given the circumstances,
2:54
that everybody is staying safe, and you know, vivela revolucion.
2:58
All right, let's get into it. So I'm going to
3:01
be covering the case of Angelina Rodriguez, otherwise known at
3:05
least to me as the dumbest black widow in California,
3:09
which is interesting as her IQ is apparently around one twelve,
3:12
so she's actually pretty intelligent, or has the capacity to be.
3:16
So I'll just say that greed is a hell of
3:18
a drug, and everything I'm saying will make sense soon,
3:21
I promise. But first, let's talk about Angelina Rodriguez's young life,
3:26
which is definitely one of those cases where you feel
3:28
terrible for her as a child, but you still have
3:31
to hold the adult accountable for their actions. So anyway,
3:35
here we go. Angelina Rodriguez was born May thirty first,
3:39
So yeah, another Gemini murderer. There's so many of them.
3:42
May thirty first, nineteen sixty eight in Long Island, New York,
3:46
to parents whose names I couldn't find, which is fitting
3:49
when you hear more about her childhood. I also actually
3:53
can't find her maiden name, which is frustrating, but in
3:56
the end, I guess it doesn't really matter anyway. She
3:58
was the younger of two sisters, and always the more
4:00
feisty of the two. That being said, her entire life,
4:04
people referred to her as calm and sweet and easily bullied.
4:10
She was also apparently deeply religious and wore her heart
4:14
on her sleeve. When she was only two years old,
4:18
her grandfather, who babysat her and her sister very often,
4:22
began molesting her, and unfortunately, this continued on through high
4:27
school and even resulted in a fucking abortion, which is
4:31
just I don't even know what to say about that,
4:34
but for this to be happening, basically, from the time
4:38
that you can have any sort of memory, that's got
4:42
to do something to a person, you know, it's got
4:45
to do a lot of really fucking bad things to
4:47
a person. And it did, and it led to Angelina
4:50
creating multiple personalities as a way of disassociating from the
4:54
extreme abuse that she was subjected. To for her entire
4:57
young life. Now, Angelina, despite being sweet and easily bullied,
5:02
did tell her family about the abuse, but nobody did
5:05
a single thing about it. In fact, this is so crazy.
5:10
Later on, her sister made some really concerning comments about
5:13
the abuse, which I'll quote below just to give you
5:15
an idea of how fucked up this family was and is,
5:19
and how Angelina never really stood a chance despite the
5:22
fact that she made very bad choices in a very
5:24
specific way. I think she was kind of doomed from
5:27
the start. So here's a sister's quote. Quote. She allowed
5:31
it to happen. She was always looking to be accepted
5:36
and looking to be daddy's little girl. She's talking about
5:41
a girl who was abused from the time that she
5:45
was two years old. And who knows, but maybe this
5:48
sister was also being abused. I don't know. Here's another
5:52
quote from this gem of a family member. The grandfather
5:56
abused the other girls in the family, but we kind
5:58
of stopped it when it was suppose to be stopped.
6:01
Like when exactly is that kind of abuse supposed to
6:03
be stopped other than before it ever happens, Like, what
6:06
is the mentality here? This is? This is fucked up,
6:09
and this poor little girl, you know, being blamed for it.
6:14
She wanted it, bitch, she was too the fuck is
6:16
wrong with you? So that gives you an idea of
6:19
just how twisted this family is. And they, you know,
6:22
they completely normalize this abuse to the point where it's
6:24
pretty much expected and absolutely considered to be the fault
6:28
of the victim, even though it started before she could
6:30
even speak full sentences. So very very very fucked up. Now,
6:37
like I said, nothing good was gonna come of this situation.
6:41
And by the time she was eight years old, Angelina
6:44
had already attempted suicide, and she attempted again when she
6:48
was sixteen, with the second attempt landing her in the hospital.
6:51
So there are records of these attempts. It's not just
6:55
her like, you know, creating this narrative later on to
6:57
make people feel bad for her. This is this is true.
7:01
An eight year old little girl tried to kill herself
7:02
because she was being abused by her grandfather and her
7:05
family did not care. Now, at age nineteen, Angelina married
7:10
and quickly divorced a neighborhood boy named Hector, and from
7:13
there she finally got away from her family by joining
7:16
the Air Force, So I think she probably married this
7:20
young neighborhood boy to get away from her family, like, fuck,
7:22
I'm old enough, I'm gonna get married and move in
7:24
with him and get the fuck away. And when that
7:26
didn't really pan out, she joined the Air Force because
7:29
anything was better than being at home. She moved all
7:34
the way to Florida to do this, and while training
7:36
in Colorado, met and fell in love with a man
7:38
named Tom Fuller. The two married and at first things
7:42
were great. They moved to southern California for Tom's work,
7:46
and Angelina stayed at home to be a mom. They
7:49
had a daughter autumn around nineteen ninety and according to Tom,
7:52
Angelina became even more religious than she already was, which
7:56
was kind of crazy because she was pretty religious. And
7:58
then she also became pre occupied with the afterlife, which
8:02
is a little concerning now. The couple had a second daughter, Alicia,
8:06
in nineteen ninety two, and unfortunately, Alicia had a lot
8:10
of health issues, including being born prematurely. This may have
8:15
either led or contributed to Angelina's sort of preoccupation with
8:21
like the afterlife and just her general worries, but it's
8:24
really hard to say. She made sure that the girls
8:27
were christened quote in case anything happened. Now, by this time,
8:31
I'll just call out that Angelina had already done a
8:34
few questionable things in her life surrounding lawsuits. Now, at
8:39
one point, she had sued her former employer, a fast
8:42
food restaurant, citing sexual harassment. She also sued Target after
8:47
she quote slipped and fell in one of their dressing rooms.
8:50
So the slip and fall cases are very, very common
8:53
and usually bullshit. So she was into litigation, we'll say
8:56
that was kind of her thing, right. And one day
9:00
she and her husband Tom were at a restaurant with
9:02
their two daughters, including the infant Alicia. A waitress saw
9:06
Alicia sucking on a Gerber pacifier and told the couple
9:09
to be careful as some of those pacifiers had been
9:12
recalled due to the pulling apart from the shield. So
9:18
to clarify for anybody who doesn't have a kid or
9:20
hasn't seen a pacifier, or like at least an old
9:22
school pacifiers, they have sort of like a front, like
9:26
a flat front area that keeps it from going entirely
9:29
into the baby's mouth, and there is something like a
9:33
nipple attached to the shield, and in fact, nowadays most
9:36
pacifiers are just one piece, so the shield and the
9:38
nipple are all together, so there's no way for it
9:40
to come apart. But back then and you can still
9:42
find these today, but back then we were still learning
9:45
about safety, and in this case, the nipple and the
9:47
shield were two pieces, so you know, they could come
9:51
apart with sucking. It's just interesting to have something like
9:54
that that could come apart with pulling when it's literally
9:56
something that's being pulled on by an infant's mouth, so
10:00
not super smart. So anyway, the couple left and that
10:04
was kind of it for a while with that, you know,
10:06
after that conversation. So this was sometime I think in
10:09
the summer of nineteen ninety three, when Alicia was like
10:12
a little over a year old, and things went on
10:15
for a little while after that just fine. Then came
10:19
September eighteenth, nineteen ninety three. This was a day in
10:23
which Tom was away on business and Angelina was home
10:26
alone with three year old Autumn and eighteen month old Alicia.
10:30
Eighteen months old, I can tell you as a mother
10:33
that's that baby is not a baby, that's a toddler,
10:37
and that's a whole last person. They've got a personality,
10:39
they've got feelings, I mean they always do, but like
10:41
they can actually communicate them with you. This is not
10:44
a tiny infant. Now. At some point during the day
10:48
on September eighteenth, police received a frantic call from Angelina
10:54
saying her infant was in her crib, not breathing. When
10:58
they arrived, Angelina said she found found in the crib
11:01
already dead, with a broken pacifier shield on the ground.
11:06
It was found that Alicia had choked to death on
11:09
the nipple part of the pacifier, which, if you ask me,
11:12
is extremely fucking suspicious, especially since Alicia had had a
11:18
lot of health issues, which was a burden for Angelina,
11:21
and especially because Tom later found out that Angelina had
11:25
taken out a fifty thousand dollars life insurance policy for
11:28
Alicia without his knowledge or involvement at all. Now, this
11:34
could have been because Angelina knew that Alicia was in
11:37
poor health. But let's be real here. I think we
11:40
can all no, we can all say we know what happened.
11:43
And I'm not going to say it out loud because
11:45
she's never actually been convicted for this, but this is
11:47
definitely a big part of the story. I think that
11:50
she murdered her own fucking child, So I guess I
11:52
did say it out loud. I just had to say
11:54
that I think that, and then you'll never believe what
11:58
she did. She sued Gerba, and she won a seven
12:02
hundred and fifty thousand dollars settlement, which in this day
12:06
and age is like multiple, multiple millions of dollars. This
12:10
woman is absolutely fucking evil. Anyway, shortly after this, as
12:16
you can imagine, the marriage fell apart entirely, which is
12:20
fair and common, even without Tom really knowing what happened.
12:23
You know, I think couples, when they lose a child,
12:25
it's pretty easy for them to fall apart. And I
12:28
don't think is anybody's fault in this case. I'll say
12:31
it's Angelina's, but just generally speaking, I think it's very
12:33
common and you can't really blame anybody. It's just part
12:37
of the grief. So anyway, after you know, they break up,
12:40
Angelina becomes a version of herself that her family had
12:42
seen before but not since before she had married Tom.
12:47
Angelina became a victim of misfortune over and over and
12:51
over again. She told her family she was pregnant with twins,
12:55
even though they all knew that she'd had a hysterectomy.
12:58
When the babies never materialized, of course, she told them
13:01
that she fell down a flight of stairs and lost
13:04
them as a result, which is a really weird set
13:08
of stories to make up just for no fucking reason.
13:10
It's just very, very strange.
13:12
Speaker 2: Now.
13:12
Speaker 1: I think it's probably common for people who were victims
13:14
of such severe abuse in childhood to create fantasies as
13:17
a way of disconnecting from the reality, you know, of
13:20
their trauma, which is really really sad. And if that's
13:24
all that she did, that would have been fine, But
13:26
clearly that's not all she did, so like fuck her,
13:29
you know. So Anyway, after the divorce, Angelina bought a
13:33
house in Paso Robles, which is a very rich community
13:36
in southern central California, sort of like northern part of
13:39
southern California. It's a very rich area with mansions in
13:42
the hills, and it's not far from the ocean. It's
13:44
not like known for like being an ocean community, but
13:46
it's close. It's kind of close to the mountains, close
13:48
to the ocean. It's a really really nice place, great weather,
13:52
lots of rich people. It's actually not super far from
13:54
San Luis Obispo, which is where Kristen Smart went missing,
13:57
so just to sort of give an idea of where
13:59
she was at this point. So she also moved on romantically.
14:02
Of course, she actually had I think one more marriage
14:05
that didn't last very long. And from there, the single
14:08
mother of one daughter met yet another man, Francisco Frank Rodriguez.
14:14
Now that's how we get her last name. Now, before
14:16
I talk to you much about Frank, I want to
14:18
talk about a friend Angelina made before she met this man.
14:21
And there's actually a couple of friends that factor into
14:23
this story, but I just kind of want to touch
14:25
on this one because she's sort of there for the
14:26
inception of their relationship. This friend, a woman named Betty Haley,
14:31
actually bought Angelina's Paso Roblis home from her when she
14:36
decided to make yet another life change. Angelina, who her
14:39
family described as flighty, chose to sell her home, possibly
14:43
because she didn't have money to support her lifestyle. But
14:46
I don't know, because she still lived in Paso Roblz
14:49
after she sold her house, so I'm not really sure
14:50
what the deal is. But she sold it and became
14:52
friends with Betty. Betty later said that she was always
14:56
in awe of Angelina, who drove an expensive car and
14:59
would buy it whatever she wanted, just on a whim.
15:02
She also took Betty on a vacation to Mexico and
15:05
lavished her with gifts, and these ladies just became friends
15:09
because of the house. Betty later said that while she
15:11
loved Angelina, she never really trusted her entirely and wouldn't
15:15
like allow her to be alone with her husband, for instance,
15:17
which is pretty wild. Angelina was very pretty, but she
15:21
was also obviously pretty shady, and it's interesting that Betty
15:24
recognized this but still spent time with this woman, kind
15:28
of knowing what she was about. Anyway, So Angelina has
15:32
bought and sold a house in passel Robles, she married
15:35
and divorced again, and at this point she's not really
15:38
doing anything. She's not working, so she enlists in the
15:41
National Guard because remember she had already been like in
15:44
the service, so this is something that she could easily do.
15:47
And you know, she decided, I guess this was the
15:50
next thing she was going to do to make a
15:51
little money and kind of find find something to do
15:54
with herself right. So Betty and Angelina met in nineteen
15:57
ninety seven, and Angelina was single from this point until
16:00
the year two thousand when she met Frank. The two
16:04
met in February of two thousand at angel Camp, a
16:08
sort of boot camp for wayward youth in the area. Now,
16:11
Frank was a great guy, but he had quite a
16:13
journey to this point in his life. He had actually
16:16
also come from a very chaotic family, just like Angelina,
16:20
and had sort of been the parent to his five
16:23
younger siblings. He married young, I think it was like
16:26
a high school sweetheart situation, joined the Navy and became
16:30
a teacher. Now, sadly, his first marriage ended in divorce,
16:34
which devastated Frank both emotionally and financially. So from here,
16:39
looking for love and support, he joined a Pentecostal church
16:42
and became a counselor for wayward youth. From there, he
16:46
started working at angel Camp and briefly dated a woman
16:49
before meeting Angelina. So I'd say it's pretty clear that
16:53
Frank was looking, you know, for love and stability, something
16:56
he had likely been chasing his entire life, as he
16:59
wasn't raised with that whatsoever, and then lost it with
17:02
his divorce as well. Now, Frank was a devout Christian,
17:06
obviously because he joined that church and refused, even though
17:09
he really liked Angelina, refused to have sex with her
17:13
until they married. At one point, Angelina told Betty that
17:18
she wasn't in love, but that Frank was a good
17:20
man with a good job, and he loved her daughter Autumn,
17:23
so she felt it was the right thing to do
17:26
to marry him, which is an interesting take, and we'll
17:30
see where that goes. So, as I said, the two
17:33
met in February two thousand and were married by April
17:37
of that same year, with Frank's sister refusing to come
17:41
to the wedding as she felt it was too soon,
17:44
which means up to the point of this story, she
17:47
had never met Angelina. Now, within days of marrying, and
17:52
I mean like within days, the couple moved all the
17:54
way down to South LA to the city of Montebello,
17:59
which is actually where my dad was born and raised,
18:02
and Frank got a job as a teacher while Angelina
18:05
once again stayed home. Now, the one thing I haven't
18:09
mentioned until now is that Angelina always said the same
18:12
thing about her former husbands. They became too possessive of
18:15
her and too strict with Autumn. It was sort of
18:19
like her lie each time, or her situation whatever, they
18:22
were too possessive to mean, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
18:25
And meanwhile, besides her saying this, there's no record of
18:29
it whatsoever, no record with police. Friends never saw it,
18:33
family never saw it. It was just basically her way
18:36
of having an excuse to end a relationship for whatever reason.
18:41
And that's what Angelina started to say about Frank within
18:44
a month of marrying him. Within a month. They'd only
18:48
know each other for like three and she's already unhappy now.
18:51
Despite this, she kept up appearances with Frank, not letting
18:54
on that anything was wrong because it probably really wasn't.
18:56
There probably wasn't actually any problem. And all the while,
19:01
our girl here is plotting her next payout. Now, because
19:07
Angelina wasn't working, she had time to go see her
19:09
friend's way up in passel Roblas, even though it was
19:12
quite a drive from Montabella, and she would go there
19:14
often to hang out, have drinks, just sort of do
19:16
whatever she wanted, while Frank stayed home and worked and
19:20
supported the family by stay home, I mean like stayed
19:22
in Montabello. And around this time she began complaining to
19:26
yet another friend, Palmira Gorham, about Frank and about how
19:29
unhappy she was in the marriage. In fact, a few
19:33
times she joked about killing Frank, saying that since he
19:37
had a life insurance policy, she should just quote get
19:39
it over with and kill him. Palmyra had asked why
19:42
she didn't just divorce him like she did all the others,
19:44
which is funny, and Angelina said she had a life
19:47
insurance policy on him and wanted the money. And to clarify,
19:50
Angelina had in fact basically forced Frank to take out
19:53
a two hundred and fifty thousand dollars life insurance policy
19:57
just a month or so after they married, promising to
19:59
do this herself. At first, Frank protested because he was like,
20:04
I'm super healthy. I've never had a problem in my
20:07
life with my health, Like why do we need to
20:08
do this, But eventually he relented and took the physical,
20:11
after which his policy was approved. Now, weirdly, Angelina never
20:16
showed up for her physical and therefore never completed her
20:20
end of the bargain. Anyway, back to this conversation with
20:23
Palmyra and how weird it was. Palmyra's mother, I guess,
20:26
was present for this particular conversation and told Angelina about
20:30
a woman who used oleander tea to poison her husband
20:33
but ultimately got caught. Now to be clear, at this time,
20:36
neither woman was talking about all right, sorry, I was
20:39
taking these conversations seriously. They were like just kind of chatting, like, oh,
20:42
I saw this on a true crime show, like whatever. Now. Paulmyra,
20:45
who again lived in Paso Roblast, had a neighbor with
20:48
an aggressive dog, and around this time that they were
20:50
having these conversations, the dog actually bet Paulmyra's son. Paulmyra
20:55
and her then boyfriend were super upset about the lack
20:58
of response by the police, and even joked with Angelina
21:01
about taking matters into their own hands by giving the
21:04
dog anti freeze soaked hot dogs, which, by the way,
21:07
is really fucked up to even joke about, because like,
21:09
what the fuck. But anyway, Angelina apparently was confused by
21:13
this conversation, as she didn't realize anti freeze was poisonous,
21:17
nor did she know that it tasted sweet. So this
21:20
was a very important conversation for her, as will see
21:24
where now in July two thousand and Palmyra and Angelina
21:26
have been friends for about ten years at this point,
21:29
and around this time they're spending a lot of time together. Also,
21:32
around this time, Palmyra's nephew, who was actually older than
21:36
she was, got out of prison, and when he got out,
21:39
he came to stay with Palmyra. My apologies. If you
21:42
hear little feet on the ground, it's my dog's jumping
21:45
up and down off the bed because they can't leave
21:46
me alone anyway. So this nephew comes to say with Palmyra.
21:51
And while he'd known Angelina for many years, it wasn't
21:54
until he got out of prison that he really started
21:56
to notice her. I guess we'll say. And Angela and
22:00
this man, mister Lauren Matthew Moranas, who went by Matt
22:04
of course, started a relationship. So now Angelina is cheating
22:08
on Frank, talking about killing him, and spending a ton
22:11
of time way up in Paso Roblis while he's back
22:13
home in Montabello. So things are not good and they're
22:16
about to get a lot worse. And remember this is
22:18
all within like six months of meeting, you know, and
22:21
like a couple of months after getting married, but before
22:24
we get into where this is inevitably going. Let's talk
22:27
about Angel Camp, where Angelina and Frank first met, just
22:30
to lay a little background. Now, as I mentioned, the
22:34
two married and immediately moved to Montabella, where Frank got
22:36
a job. But there's actually a reason for this beyond
22:39
just wanting to settle into their new life together. See, Angelina,
22:43
as we know, is a pathological liar and likes to
22:45
create drama wherever she goes. As such, she did her
22:49
thing while working at Angel Camp by accusing a man
22:52
who worked there of sexual misconduct with a number of
22:55
the children living at the camp. Now this included human trafficking, which, like,
23:00
that's a big accusation to levy against someone. Now, try
23:05
as I might, I couldn't figure out why she was
23:07
singling this man out. But in any case, the man
23:11
that she was levying these accusations against was Charles Chad Halloway,
23:16
and as you can imagine, he was not happy about this.
23:19
And I believe the only person who believed her at
23:23
this camp, like any of her co workers, bosses, et cetera,
23:26
was Frank, while everyone else was team Chad and pretty
23:30
much ended up hating Angelina. So the couple kind of
23:34
had to get out of there because of her behavior.
23:36
She certainly dug her own grave, we'll say, so just
23:39
hold on to that information because it's interesting and it
23:41
comes back later anyway. So now we're in the summer
23:45
of two thousand and Angelina is in this relationship with
23:47
this Matt person, cheating on Frank and talking about poisoning
23:51
him or otherwise killing him. As we move into September
23:54
and the fall of two thousand, it seems that Angelina
23:57
cannot wait any longer to cash in on the life insurance,
24:00
so she tells Matt she's going to break part of
24:03
her dryer in order to kill Frank via a gas
24:05
leak so that it looks like an accident. And in fact,
24:10
the gas company was called by Frank around the time
24:12
that Angelina said this to Matt, after he found a
24:15
leak in the house while home alone. Angelina, of course,
24:19
was in Paso Roblasts. When the gas technician came to
24:24
the house, he put in his report that there did
24:26
not seem to be any way the leak could have
24:29
happened accidentally, but because everyone was fine, there wasn't really
24:34
anything else to say, so he fixed it and kind
24:35
of went on his merry way. Now. Of course, Angelina
24:39
was not happy about this, and of course she kept trying.
24:44
After the gas leak attempt. In early September, Angelina was
24:48
on the phone with Paulmyra, just sort of chatting. When
24:51
Paulmyra heard a loud sound in the background of the call.
24:55
She asked Angelina what it was, and Angelina said she
24:58
was making Frank a special milkshake because he liked them
25:02
when he was sick. Paulmira said, oh, is Frank sick,
25:06
to which Angelina replied not yet. By this time, Angelina
25:10
talked about killing Frank so often that Paulmyra was actually
25:14
like annoyed by the conversation and really didn't take it seriously,
25:18
so said something like, whatever you do, just do it
25:20
and don't tell me about it, sort of brushing it off,
25:23
like yeah, yeah, I keep hearing this, your broken record whatever.
25:26
Right now, as far as Frank being poisoned a bunch
25:28
of times, it's not one hundred percent clear that that
25:30
was actually happening, So I don't really know what went
25:33
on with like this milkshake, for instance, but it does
25:36
seem as though Angelina had been trying to poison him
25:39
at least a few times, as people said, Frank was
25:41
having stomach issues and looked very thin and sickly. So
25:45
while there aren't any like medical reports of this happening,
25:48
like him going to the doctor, like throughout the months
25:51
he was losing weight, he was generally not feeling as
25:54
well as he used to, and later on people sort
25:58
of mentioned that although I think it was sort of
26:00
mild enough that had he not died, people probably wouldn't
26:05
have ever noticed. So while I can't give any sort
26:08
of definitive answer as to whether or not she actually
26:10
poisoned him that time with that shake, what I can
26:14
tell you is that a few days after that phone call,
26:16
Frank actually got called to go chaperone kids being transported
26:19
to angel Camp on September fifth, two thousand. He didn't
26:23
work there anymore obviously, you know, he's teaching in Montabello,
26:26
but he was still sort of involved and jumped at
26:28
the chance to do something different for the day. Now,
26:30
when he got back, or maybe about a day later,
26:33
he started to feel very very sick, and Angelina was
26:38
home with him at this time and was quote taking
26:41
care of him right so the day after that, so
26:44
he comes home on the fifth on the sixth he's
26:46
feeling really shitty. Then on September seventh, two thousand, Frank
26:51
was so sick that he asked Angelina to take him
26:54
to the hospital. So they get to the hospital and
26:56
he's diagnosed with food poisoning and was sent home with
26:59
specific instructions to drink lots of fluid and especially gatorade.
27:06
So there's her way in right there. Doctor's orders drink
27:10
some sweet liquid. So, like I said, we all know
27:13
where this is going and also kind of where it's been.
27:16
So now he's at home, he's sick, Angeline is taking
27:20
care of him, feeding him lots of gatorade, and Two
27:23
nights later, at three nineteen am on Saturday, September ninth,
27:28
nine to one to one, dispatchers receive a call from
27:31
Angelina and Frank's home from Angelina saying that she found
27:35
Frank face down in their bedroom unresponsive. When police arrived,
27:40
they found Frank dead in the bedroom with a tiny
27:42
amount of blood coming out of his nose. Now, other
27:45
than that, there were no obvious signs of trauma, so
27:48
it wasn't possible at that point to determine what had
27:51
determine what had happened, even so police are kind of
27:54
doing their job, securing the scene, interviewing everybody, and immediately,
27:58
like while they are still there, Frank's body still on
28:01
the ground. One of the officers on site felt that
28:04
Angelina was acting strangely, noting quote, although it was audible
28:09
the crying noise, there was a lack of tears, and
28:12
as soon as I would talk to her ask her
28:14
a question, she would immediately kind of snap out of
28:17
it and answer the questions real quick. And in my experience,
28:21
usually someone who just lost their husband, they're very difficult
28:24
to speak with and communicate to, so already she just
28:29
can't even she's not even a good actress. Frank was
28:33
only forty one years old at the time of his murder,
28:37
and for the next several weeks there was no official
28:40
cause of death determined, which is why even though that
28:45
officer thought Angelina was acting weirdly, they didn't really look
28:48
into it too much, at least not that night, as
28:50
everybody grieves differently, and again there was no signs of
28:53
foul play. However, as time went on, things got really weird,
29:00
and by things, I mean Angelina's behavior because she just
29:04
starts wilden out. Now, first Within hours of Frank's death,
29:09
Angelina called Frank's family and told them the news, with
29:12
each of them noting her complete lack of emotion while
29:15
on the phone. So everybody's noticing she's not very upset,
29:18
not just the police, but Frank's family as well, including
29:21
members of his family who have never met her, because again,
29:24
remember they met, they got married, he died all within
29:27
the span of like what six to eight months, so
29:29
a lot of these family members have only ever maybe
29:32
spoken to her on the phone or just know about her,
29:35
but have never met her. And even these people who
29:37
don't even know her are like, Yo, this seems real
29:40
fucking weird. She's not at all upset. Something is off now.
29:44
From there, after calling his family, her next call, and
29:47
I mean literally seven hours after his death, her next
29:52
call was to her insurance broker who sold her the
29:55
life insurance policy. I mean, the body's not even cold
29:59
yet and she's trying to collect on it now. This broker,
30:02
Mickey Marriccino, also noted a lack of emotion when talking
30:06
to her, and ultimately told Angelina that they would need
30:09
not only a death certificate, but they would also have
30:12
to do their own investigation. Into the death since it
30:15
happened within two years of her buying the policy. Now,
30:18
this posed a huge problem for Angelina because the medical
30:23
examiner could not find a cause of death, and without
30:25
a cause of death, there would be no death certificate,
30:29
which is really interesting, and I wonder how that works
30:31
in general, because there's a ton of families, Like there
30:34
must be a ton of families waiting on a determination
30:37
letter that may never come. So it's like, do they
30:40
just never get their insurance money? Like it seems weird
30:43
that if they can't figure out the cause of death,
30:45
like you can't move on, you can't get money from
30:47
life insurance. And I mean, I'm sure part of that
30:50
is because they're not trying to pay out everybody who
30:51
murders their spouse. But I also just wonder, like, as
30:54
a policy, how many families that screws over who like
30:58
legitimately lost their love one es Anyway, so without specific testing,
31:03
standard blood tests won't find poison, So if nobody's looking
31:07
for it, they're not gonna find it, which to me
31:10
is very fucking scary to know, like somebody has to
31:13
suspect it and that specifically for you to ever ever
31:17
find it. So like I said, when the autopsy came back,
31:21
they left the cause of death as undetermined. And like,
31:24
I don't think Angelina really knew anything about this, about
31:26
like the blood tests and things like. She was really
31:29
just kind of so focused on the murder and getting
31:31
the money that she didn't do her research first. But
31:34
I feel like if she was thinking about this, she
31:37
wouldn't want people to find out that he was poisoned, right,
31:41
so for her, and I think like she was she
31:44
was thinking like, oh, he'll die, I'll get the money.
31:46
She didn't realize they'd need a death certificate, she didn't
31:49
realize they wouldn't be able to find a cause of
31:51
death whatever. She was sort of just like flying by
31:53
the seat of her pants. But in my opinion, like
31:56
she's fucking lucky that they didn't find that he was poisoned, right, right,
32:01
I mean that makes sense right, Well, maybe not at
32:04
least if you're Angelina who started spinning out immediately now. First,
32:09
Mickey Marriccino said he was getting calls from Angelina multiple
32:13
times a week asking if there was anything they could
32:15
do to hasten the process. She also started calling the
32:19
police regularly asking if there was any update on the
32:22
cause of death, and when both police and Mickey told
32:25
her it would just take time, she decided to take
32:28
matters into her own hands because greed over brains, right, like,
32:33
it's all about that money. At Frank's funeral, only a
32:37
couple of weeks after his death, Angelina told his family
32:41
about how she believed he'd been poisoned by his former
32:43
co worker, Chad Holloway, in retaliation for her calling him
32:48
out for abusing children. She went as far as to
32:52
mention it could have been either oleander or maybe even
32:55
anti freeze, so getting very, very specific, because she's a
32:58
fucking genius right now. Prior to this, she had tried
33:02
to tell his family he drank himself to death, which
33:04
they all knew was a lie because Frank didn't drink
33:07
like at all, not even like socially. So she's just
33:10
very dumb and very fucking careless, which ultimately is a
33:13
good thing because it gets her caught. Now, this may
33:16
sound crazy, but even before his funeral, Angelina had already
33:19
spun this poisoning tale to the actual fucking police. So
33:23
I'm telling you that she told his family that just
33:26
a couple of weeks after his death, But before that,
33:28
she had already told the police this, which is absolutely insane.
33:33
In an attempt to get that sweet sweet death certificate,
33:37
she called investigators and told them she thought Frank was
33:39
poisoned by that same ex coworker from the camp. She
33:43
wasn't quite as forthcoming with the kinds of poison that
33:45
may have been used, but she did mention a quote
33:48
plant that grows on the freeway, which is so suspicious
33:52
and so so dumb. Now from the start, police considered her,
33:57
maybe not necessarily a suspect, but they thought that it
34:00
there ever came a time they needed a suspect, she
34:02
was probably going to be one of them. So if
34:04
Frank's death ever became a homicide, she was suspect number one. Now,
34:09
with this new information straight from the horse's mouth, police
34:13
really started to think this was in fact a murder
34:16
and that Angelina was in fact the murderer. Because of this,
34:20
they assigned two investigators to the case, and these guys'
34:23
first order of business was investigating the allegations against Chad,
34:27
because I don't think at any point they thought it
34:30
was him, but I think they needed to check him
34:32
off the list so they could focus back on this dipshit.
34:35
So the investigators went to angel camp and found that,
34:38
despite Angelina's insistence, everybody there still loved and missed Frank,
34:43
even Chad. Almost immediately, Chad was cleared as a suspect
34:47
in the case. But funny enough, he saw a big
34:49
part in the story, which we'll get back to, because
34:52
at one point police knew Angelina is up to something,
34:55
so they decided to tell Angelina that her story had
34:58
checked out and that Chad was in fact a suspect
35:02
in Frank's murder. Now, meanwhile, Angelina is continuing to call
35:06
the insurance agency, telling them she needs money to buy
35:09
a new house Apasso roblist and asking them to send
35:12
proof that she would be paid soon, when in fact,
35:15
the claim wasn't even close to being processed. She's just
35:18
so fucking impatient and so so greedy, which is just
35:22
so gross. Anyway, police have Angelina believing that her story
35:28
is going to work and that she's going to pin
35:29
this on Chad and they're going to get the cause
35:31
of death and she's going to get the money. They
35:34
also have her believing that they believe she's just this
35:37
helpless widow trying to make ends meet and help solve
35:40
the case of her husband's untimely death. Now, police used
35:45
this trust to go into her home and sort of
35:47
look around a bit while trying to get her to
35:49
tell them again about the plant that may have poisoned Frank. Now,
35:53
she was trying to be careful, and she said she
35:55
couldn't remember the name, but that it grew on the
35:57
side of the freeway and had red and white flowers.
36:00
When police went back into her home just a few
36:02
days later, it was empty, as she'd already moved back
36:05
to Paso Robless. But in the backyard they found a
36:09
large oleander bush. So still and possibly intentionally, police were
36:15
moving slowly and Angelina did not like it one bit.
36:19
So they're starting to gather evident thence against her. I'm sorry,
36:23
I'm tripping on my word so much, but I think
36:25
what they realized is that if they moved slowly in
36:27
the case, she would actually help them more. She would
36:30
get impatient and give them more information. So while they
36:33
were definitely like zeroing in on her, I think part
36:38
of their strategy was just let her come to them,
36:40
and boy, did it fucking work. Now we're on October ninth,
36:44
We're in October two thousand and On October ninth, Angelina
36:47
contacted police again, and this time her story got even wilder.
36:53
She told police that an anonymous man had just called
36:56
her to tell her that he had just had a
36:58
call with Chad Hall. Now remember she thinks Chad's a suspect,
37:02
but even so, this is just fucking dumb. She tells
37:06
police that Chad told this anonymous person that he had
37:09
used anti freeze to poison Frank, and that quote, they'll
37:12
never be able to track me. Police immediately asked the
37:15
coroner to look for oleander and anti freeze in Frank's
37:18
system because now they've got both of those from her.
37:21
You know, she's telling them what it is they're seeing
37:23
editor house, and they also got a warrant for Angelina's
37:28
phone records. Shockingly, Frank's toxicology came back with him having
37:33
something like fifteen times the amount of anti freeze necessary
37:36
to kill someone in his system, which is absolutely fucking crazy.
37:40
They later found that he had so much ethylene glyde call,
37:42
which is the poison and anti freeze, in his body,
37:45
that it had begun seeping out of his eyes. And
37:51
in another shocker, they found no such call from no
37:55
anonymous misperson on Angelina's cell phone lom womp. Now. A
38:02
couple of months later, because again they're going slow, police
38:04
again visited Angelina, this time at her brand new Passa
38:08
Robliss home, which I'm sure she wheeled and dealed her
38:10
way into with the promise of money that she was
38:12
getting from this, you know, insurance payout or probably just
38:15
from the money that she used selling Frank's Montabello home
38:18
and there when they visited her, they told her they
38:21
had found anti freeze and Frank's system, but that they
38:24
needed more proof it had been Chad who did this
38:26
horrible thing. Now, at this point, the police straight up
38:30
asked Chad for help catching Angelina, and he actually agrees,
38:35
which I fucking love. I love that He's like, yeah,
38:36
let's get this bitch, like fuck her. She's trying to
38:39
fuck me over. I have a feeling that he just
38:41
he was probably a really cool guy and he just
38:43
wanted to get back at her for like all the
38:44
shit that she was doing, and this was the perfect
38:47
way to do so, because she actually did something so
38:49
horrible that she deserved to be caught. So Chad agrees
38:53
to be on a three way recorded call with Angelina
38:56
to try to get more incriminating information from her. The
39:00
call itself wasn't much, mostly him just asking why she
39:03
was accusing him, and her saying over and over, talk
39:04
to the investigators, talk to the investigators, which like, I
39:07
fucking hate when people do that. It makes my blood boil.
39:10
Like sometimes I'll watch those videos on TikTok where people
39:12
are arguing and the person just won't stop saying the
39:14
same thing over and over, and to me, it just
39:17
it feels like, you're so fucking stupid, and she is,
39:20
so don't worry. Even though this call was very irritating,
39:24
it did exactly what police hoped that it would do. Immediately,
39:29
Like immediately after this call, which was recorded, Angelina contacted
39:34
investigators and told them that Chad had called her and
39:37
said basically that he did it, but they'd never catch him,
39:41
and that she should quote watch her back. And while
39:45
this obviously isn't proof that she did did anything, it
39:49
doesn't look very good for her. So now a month
39:52
or so later, in early two thousand and one, police
39:55
again reached out to Angelina to tell her that they
39:57
also found oleander in Frank's blood, as well as anti
40:01
freeze They said that they needed proof that Chad knew
40:03
Frank was coming to the academy that day and to
40:06
show that he had time to plan the murder. So basically,
40:09
they were like, Chad isn't gonna, you know, poison Frank
40:13
on a whim. He had to know he was coming up,
40:15
but he doesn't work at the camp anymore. So is
40:18
there any way that we can prove that Chad knew
40:20
he was coming? Now, Angelina hear the wheels start churning,
40:25
the hamster's running in the wheel in her brain, and
40:28
she immediately offered up that when she worked there in
40:30
the office, she would get faxes with the names of
40:33
both students and employees that were coming in on the
40:36
buses each day. Now, then, wouldn't you know it? Just
40:41
about a day later, investigators get an anonymous facts with
40:45
a student and faculty list for September fifth, two thousand.
40:50
With the list was a note that said, Sergeant I
40:52
mailed this to you, but maybe you didn't get it.
40:55
Why is Chad Holloway still free?
40:59
Speaker 2: Now?
40:59
Speaker 1: Hilariously, on top of this just being so fucking obviously
41:02
coming from Angelina, as if we needed more proof, she
41:06
went ahead and make sure that we got it. She
41:08
made sure of that because the facts noted where it
41:12
had been sent from, and believe it or not, it
41:14
was not angel Camp. It was in fact, a Staples
41:18
and Passo roblist just about a mile from Angelina's new house.
41:23
This is just so bad. It's like so bad. Like
41:27
every time they tell Angelina they need something, suddenly a
41:29
helpful little anonymous Bernie flies out of the sky to
41:32
give it to them. Like I would almost feel bad
41:35
for her if she wasn't such an awful evil person,
41:37
but she is so fuck her now. Two days later,
41:40
police finally believe they have enough circumstantial evidence against Angelina
41:44
to arrest her for Frank's murder, and they do so,
41:48
and when they do, to really put a cherry on things,
41:51
they find the fucking Staples receipt for the facts in
41:54
her purse, which is it's just unreal to me now.
41:58
From here, police went into evidence and began interviewing everybody
42:02
in Angelina's life. This included Matt Moranas, with whom Angelina
42:06
was corresponding while in prison. Police obtained a warrant for
42:10
those letters, and while they were there getting them, Matt
42:13
told them about the gas leak in the house, which
42:16
they then corroborated with the gas company records showing someone
42:19
had in fact been out to fix a leak the
42:20
exact day that Matt mentioned. They also interviewed her friend Paulmyra,
42:26
who was honest with them about everything, the conversations about
42:30
Oleander and Annie Freeze, how Angelina talked about killing Frank
42:33
so much, so much it actually got annoying, and even
42:36
the milkshake Angelina had made them while they were on
42:38
the phone in early September. Now, shortly after police contacted Palmyra,
42:43
Angelina found out about this, and she also reached out
42:47
to Palmyra to try to convince her to recant her statement. Now,
42:51
Angelina's first angle with Palmyra was that she could be
42:54
seen as an accomplice, having known what was going to
42:57
happen and even knowing about it happening in real time
42:59
with the milk shait and doing nothing about it, which
43:02
like is not a bad argument, but also it's pretty
43:05
clear that Paulmyra thought that she was full of shit
43:07
and lived far enough away from the couple that she
43:09
probably wasn't seeing the day to day life of like
43:12
Frank and how he was sick, So it's very like,
43:16
it's very likely that she honestly, truly didn't believe anything
43:19
that Angelina was saying. Now, when Palmyra said, you know,
43:23
changing my story is going to make me look more guilty,
43:25
Angelina was like, well, not really, Like, just tell them
43:28
that you were mad at me because you found me
43:30
in bed with your son and like, which is like
43:33
such a fucking crazy thing to say. Paulmyra agreed with
43:36
me and declined to do this. And for about the
43:38
next year, Angelina sat in jail waiting for her court date.
43:42
But wait, there's more. As always with Angelina, there's going
43:46
to be more. We're now in May two thousand and two,
43:48
and Angelina is in like a sort of segregated area
43:52
for prisoners who either need to be kept apart for
43:54
their own safety or as a punishment for bad behavior.
43:56
And I'm not really sure why she was there, but
43:58
she was between May eighth and May ninth. So just
44:02
one day there was an inmate next to Angelina and
44:06
the two got to talking via passing notes, which I
44:08
guess was very common in this area of the prison.
44:10
They call it flying kites, which is interesting anyway. So
44:14
this inmate went to the guards on May tenth with
44:16
some really disturbing notes from Angelina. She showed them the
44:20
correspondence wherein Angelina asked her to kill Polmyra Gorham. The
44:25
innate said that Angelina had admitted to killing her husband
44:28
by feeding him anti freeze in gatorade for four or
44:31
five days, then offered her thirty thousand dollars to kill
44:35
Paulmyra and even said that if she did this, she'd
44:38
buy her a house with the insurance money she would
44:40
get once they got out of prison, because the main
44:43
witness would be dead. Which also, she's tripping, it's not
44:47
Paulmyra putting her away, like it's just one more person
44:51
who can point to her. But like they had tons
44:52
of other evidence. On one of the notes was Paulmyra's
44:56
full name, address, and even her phone number. She said
45:00
she just died, making the murder look like a robbery,
45:02
and even said to go ahead and rob the house,
45:04
maybe even bring a U haul because she had so
45:06
much good stuff, because why not, right, this is just
45:09
her friend of like fucking fifteen years now for this,
45:12
Because nothing really happened besides her asking. She was charged
45:15
only with attempting to dissuade a witness, which is kind
45:18
of a crazy small charge, but it was in addition
45:21
to her murder for profit and first degree murder with
45:23
special circumstances charges. So a million is a million here,
45:27
I suppose she's already gonna go to jail forever. Now,
45:30
one of the worst things about this case was something
45:31
that came out during the trial, because she did eventually
45:34
go to trial. Palmyra was not dead. She did testify.
45:39
I believe Matt Maronis did as well. And lastly, someone
45:42
haven't really talked about very much also testified. And this
45:46
is kind of the sad part. This person was Angelina's
45:49
minor daughter, Autumn. Now, Autumn, who I think was about
45:53
thirteen at this time, had seen a lot in her life. Already,
45:57
her younger sister had died, she'd gone through twoads after
46:00
being ripped away from her father by Angelina, And now
46:04
on the stand, she recounted how the night before Frank died,
46:07
Angelina had instructed her to not drink any of his gatorade,
46:11
but to bring it to him along with some soup
46:13
to help him feel better. The weight of possibly having
46:17
helped murder her own stepfather, who she really really liked,
46:22
must have been awful for her. And I feel terrible
46:25
for her, and I will say that I found her
46:29
now and I'm not going to share what I found,
46:30
but I hope that she's having it a happy and
46:32
an easy life. She's a very pretty woman, and I
46:34
just hope that things are good for her. So that
46:37
really sucks. But basically, all of these witnesses, along with
46:41
Angelina's own actions after Frank's death, were more than enough
46:45
for her to be convicted of all charges with only
46:48
circumstantial evidence, which is fucking wild, but also like it
46:52
feels very obvious what happened here and just the way
46:56
that she acted afterwards, it is very not something that
46:59
an innocent That's not how an innocent person acts, right,
47:03
She was convicted quickly, and then she was sentenced to
47:06
death believe it or not in California, And even though
47:09
we don't really do that here anymore, she to this
47:12
day is on death row, one of only I believe
47:15
fifteen women at the time to be on California death
47:18
row when she was sentenced. I think there's eighteen currently.
47:21
So there's kind of been a holding powder, like it's
47:23
gonna if anybody else gets, you know, sentenced to that,
47:28
it's just going to grow the numbers. But the point is, like,
47:30
there's hundreds of men on death row in California, and
47:33
at the time she was convicted and sentenced there, she
47:36
was number fifteen, So that's pretty crazy. To this day,
47:40
she denies killing Frank and has changed her story more
47:43
times than I can count, but never admitting to what
47:46
she did. Most of her family has cut her off,
47:49
but if you still talk to her here and there,
47:52
and it's weird, like her sister will be like, she
47:54
couldn't hurt a fly, she's such a sweet person, but
47:57
also like doesn't talk to her. So I'm not really
47:59
sure where the family sits with this, obviously, if you
48:03
remember at the beginning of the story, like they're pretty
48:05
fucked up people, so hard to say how they would
48:07
react anyway, But you know, she does interviews, she talks
48:12
about it, and she basically gets so close to admitting
48:15
what she did, but she never will because she said,
48:18
like if she admits to it, then she'll lose all hope.
48:21
And it's like, girl, this is some mental gymnastics. Like
48:24
I know that we talked about how she's like been
48:26
diagnosed with multiple personality disorder and like other things, but
48:29
like It's really interesting how people cope with the horrible
48:34
things that they did when like everybody knows they did it,
48:37
but they still can't say.
48:38
Speaker 2: So.
48:39
Speaker 1: Anyway, the very very interesting and sad case. And like,
48:43
fuck her, she is so dumb, Like she is definitely
48:46
like top five dumbest criminals. And I appreciate her for
48:49
that because you know, she may maybe would have never
48:52
been caught. I think if she had just allowed him
48:55
to be dead and sold his house and moved on,
48:59
she would have been fine. But her greed really got
49:01
the best of her. And I mean, she's used to
49:04
killing her family members for money, so I think she
49:07
just thought, hey, one more time, what's it gonna hurt?
49:09
That was her mistake. Anyway, Thanks guys for tuning in.
49:13
Please like rate review. I hope you all enjoyed this story.
49:17
I'll be back with another one shortly and until then,
49:20
everybody stay safe.