Erika and BJ Sifrit and the murders of Geney Crutchley and Joshua Ford - Part 1

0:00 Hi. I am Rich and I'm Tina. If there's one thing we've learned in over twenty years of marriage, some days you'll feel like killing your husband, and some days you'll feel like killing your wife. Welcome to love, Mary Kill Hey Tina, Hey Rich, How are you? I'm pretty good today? Yeah, yesterday was a little I wasn't feeling great some fall allergies were seeping in and you took very good care of me. You wouldn't got me a sandwich and a soda and it was very nice. And I feel better today. Good. I'm glad you feel better. Yeah, how are you? Did I ask you that already? I can't remember. I'm afraid people are going to be saying, oh, I don't think Tina cares about Rich at all. She didn't ask how he was. Oh that's not true.

0:50 You care about me a lot. I do you take care of me? Yeah? Well you know what today is? I do know you do. Yeah. It's a or official Tober, first official start of Spooky season and our official potroversary. Yeah, happy potversary, Happy podiversary. I couldn't do it with you. Literally, I couldn't do it you literally you could? You actually could? Like I don't know all the buttons. Theoretically I could, but it wouldn't be the same. It would be interesting. I think people would really like it. They'd be like, Oh, this episode's so quiet and no one's interrupting. It's quite pleasant. We don't need her at all. April Fool's Day, we should do one of those. Maybe you should edit that out. Whatever happened to the blooper reel? I destroyed it. No, I don't really have a blue I have like a bloopers here and there that I've saved, but I don't have really a real and they're ninety nine point nine percent me. Yeah, yeah, I am super excited to announce that we made our first charitable contribution today to the Kim Wall Memorial Fund. You know, Kim Wall touched my heart. Yeah, and we had committed to twenty five percent a minimum of twenty five percent of any pro seats that we make from Patreon and our ads. So it's not a huge amount, but seventy five dollars is going to go to the Kim Wall Memorial Foundation. We couldn't do it without you, our listeners. I'm actually tearing up because you know me, it means a lot to me to be able to do this, and so thank you, thank you, thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Yeah, thank you really touched. And

2:20 we will hopefully continue to grow and our donations will continue to grow. Yeah, and every month we will pick a new charity and let us know if you have some worthwhile causes and we are happy to be able to do that and happy that all of you are there too. So thanks. I know people don't love to hear ads, but know when you hear our ads that they are going for a good cause. And our lovely Patreon members too, your money is going to a good cause too, So yeah, snack, yes please you can see what you picked out for me, and that's one of my favorites. Yeah. Well, I figured it was fall and it just feels like this feels like a fall thing. So I made a quick trip out to the Grand Traverse Pie Company, which is a little establishment.

3:00 I think it's a Michigan I mean, it's obviously it's based in Traverse City. It's definitely I think there might be a couple somewhere else. Yeah, maybe Ohio or Kentucky. Well, they're really good. They have really delicious treats. Like they have good food too, but they're like their pie and their other treats are just really yummy. I don't think I'm going out on a limb saying it's probably the best pie you're ever going to have. Yeah, I think that's And you can order it if you go to Grand Travers Pike Company. I'm not sure what their website is, but you can google it. It's really good pie, and you can you can't order it, and they will ship it to you. You usually get one for Thanksgiving because you can make a pie of it. I mean, really, their pie is I think pretty much perfect. You can get crumble or a pastry topping.

3:44 But you got me a pumpkin a pumpkin bar, which I know you love. And I got myself a slice of blueberry crumble pie, which is really Yeah, and you and I have not been eating sugar like for a little while here. We've been trying to speak of that. Can you can you tell our friends what you what? You You cheated on us, all of us, not just me. You cheated on the whole podcast. A couple of weeks ago, you came to me and said, we're getting ready to go on vacations. In another week from the day we're recording this. And you came to me and said, how about we don't eat sugar until we go on vacation. And I said okay, and we shook hand to ourselves and I cheated once you cheated. The deal was that we shook hands, and I said, if you if you need, you work really hard, and you have a stressful job, and you work really hard, and I understand some days you just need a square of chocolate. And the deal was, I said, if you feel like you really need some chocolate, come to me, rich come to me, and did you know? I did? And it was like it was it was like an FBI in terrogation, but it was like did you cheat? And you were like no, And because I'm a mother, I could tell you're a lie. Yeah, it was a spontaneous thing. I had those chocolates that I brought back from France and I was going to throw them out because I was like, oh, we're not a box of French chocolates. I was, and I was like, I can't throw them out, so I just ate the rest of them, the rest of all. Now you told me you have you are

5:14 a bad man. I know I have a weak spot for sugar, So how many we were left in the box? I know, I don't want to say we all have it. I think we all have like a little secret eating life. I think that's normal, is it? Well? I don't know. All right, Well, what I was gonna say is we haven't eaten sugar in a while. You haven't eaten sugar in a long time, so this is going to taste really good. I think I did have milk DUTs popcorn, But what asked you if you wanted some hmm, Okay, we were watching a movie. We're actually a scary movie, and we milkuts and popcorn cheater too. No, it wasn't cheating because I said, you want people way deeper into our relationship and eating habits, and they need to know. So all right, we'll be right back. Imagine how good that would have been if you wouldn't have cheated on the on the sugar bet, I don't think it would have been any better. It was really really good. Well mine was very good too, Thank you, Thank you very much forgetting that. And Rich has if you've been listening for a while, you probably Rich doesn't like cream cheese at all, So I never get to make a cream cheese dessert. So if we go to a restaurant or whatever and there's an opportunity to get something with cream cheese, I'm like, yep, I'll get that. So the Pumpkin bar it has like cream cheese frosting, right, yes, yeah, Well my blueberry pie that crumble topping so good. Sorry, all right, tell us what we're here for today.

6:44 All right, we're gonna hear the story of Joshua Ford and Martha Crutchley. Memorial Day weekend twenty twenty two, Joshua Ford and his girlfriend Martha Crutchley, better known as Genie, decided to head to Ocean City, Maryland, for the long weekend. Ocean City I didn't really know much about it, but it's a very popular resort town. It's on this really narrow strip of land, like a barrier island, with the Atlantic Ocean on one side, and then there's a water like a couple of bays on the other side. It's like a ten mile strip of land and it's lined with beaches, a boardwalk, carnival rides, condos and resorts, and a lot more cool stuff to do. I've heard of it, but I know, it's supposed to be a really fun place to go, but I've never been there. It looks like it looks like it might be kind of one of those places like during spring break weekend you would want to stay as far away as possible, but other weekends it seems like it'd be a lot of fun. Joshua and Jeanie they made the three hour drive from their home in Fairfax, Virginia, looking forward to a fun weekend of partying, hanging out at the beach, and enjoying some great seafood. Unfortunately for them, on their first night in Ocean City, they had a fatal encounter with a married couple, Bija and Erica Siffrett, who are, to me among the most evil, monstrous couples I've ever read about. To me, there like boy, that's sayings because we've covered some monstrous people. Yeah, they're on like a power with Paul Bernardo and Carla Homolka that you can marbie killers. Yeah, I think they're just they're horrible, horrible people, so great be prepared for that. Unfortunately, in this story, the victims have largely been overlooked and the focus has been

8:18 completely on Erica and bj. So I wasn't able to find a lot of information about the victims, but here's what I do know about Joshua Ford and Genie Crutchley. Joshua was thirty two at the time that this case takes place. He was described by family members as intelligent, full of life, always ready for the next adventure, and someone who could do anything. He grew up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, but moved to Boston after high school. He served eight years in the Army, married his high school sweetheart, had a son, Zachary, who was eight at the time that our case takes place. He and his wife divorced, but they remained friendly and his world revolved around his son. He worked as a mortgage broker, and he met Jeanie in nineteen ninety nine at a Christmas party in Boston. Martha or Janie Crutchley was fifty one years old in two thousand and two. She was an executive accountant at a at an insurance firm in Virginia and had also been married once before. She was on a business trip to Boston when she met Joshua at the Christmas party. Although she was nineteen years older than him, the two hit it off immediately, they started dating long distance, and eventually Joshua moved to Virginia to live with Genie in April of two thousand and one.

9:31 So in two thousand and two, a twenty year age gap between a man and a woman, with a woman being older, Yes, that's very kind of significant. Yeah, it wasn't as common then, yeah, for sure. But they seemed like they were super happy couple. The only other thing I really know about Genie is that she was very punctual. In fact, that's why Joshua and Jeanie were reported missing when they were because Jeanie had a staff meeting scheduled for ten am Tuesday morning after Memorial Day weekend, and she didn't show up for it. Her friend and employee was alarmed because in the five years that they had worked together, Genie had never missed that meeting, She'd never even been late to it, and so her colleague, who knew that Genie and Joshua had gone to Ocean City that weekend, ended up contacting the police, which subsequently started the search for the missing couple. In a sad coincidence, tragedy had struck Joshua's family less than a year before he and Jeanie's fateful trip to Ocean City. In August of two thousand and one, Joshua's twenty three year old niece, Kelly, the daughter of his brother, went missing after leaving a rehab center in Massachusetts. Her headless body was found over two months later, buried in a shallow grave on a Cape Cod beach, the victim of an apparent serial killer. Really yeah, her murder was still unsolved at the time that Joshua and Genie disappeared, which actually led the police initially to wonder whether there was some connection, like maybe Joshua had something to do with his niece's disappearance, maybe he was responsible for, you know, he and Genie disappearing or something. But in the end it turned out

11:03 it was just a horrible coincidence. They did eventually the killer of Joshua's niece. They believe it was this man named Eugene McCollum. He was arrested for killing two other women in a very similar type fashion. I don't know that he ever got convicted of Joshua's nieces killing, but it sounds like it was the same area, kind of the same circumstances around the death and things like that, So I think they did eventually catch that person. Wow, that's horrible, it really is. Yeah, so many families are impacted by multiple tragedies like that in it. I know, it's very sad and very strange how that seems to happen. Another early possibility that investigators considered was whether maybe there was some conflict between the couple between Joshua and Genie, maybe it resulted in a murder, suicide or something along those lines. But when they spoke with friends and relatives of the couple, everyone said that they were very much in love and devoted to one another, and so they really didn't think that that was an issue. It was Thursday, May thirtieth before investigators got the break that led them to Erica and Bj Siffrett. So, looking at their backgrounds, Erica and Bj would seem like a really unlikely couple to be involved in a brutal and pointless murder. Erica Grace was an only child, born in nineteen seventy eight and growing up in an upper class home with parents who adored her. Her dad, Mitch, had his own business as a contractor,

12:33 while her mom, Cookie was a stay at home mom. I love that name. Cook. I don't know if that's her real name or not, but change my name, but he should. Erica grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania, about two hours east of Pittsburgh. At some point she showed a talent for basketball, and her dad did everything he could to nurture her interest in the sport. He even built a house with an indoor basketball court. He hired a private coach to work with her, and Mitch himself coached Eric's Erica's basketball team. She was a talented point guard. Her high school coach said quote, I believe she was one of the best three point shooters in the country. The only thing that kept her from going to a Division I school was her size. Erica was small, but she was able to get a partial basketball scholarship to attend the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia. She got excellent grades both in high school and college.

13:26 She wasn't super social. She had some boyfriends during high school, but nothing serious. She didn't really drink or party too much. She seemed very serious and levelheaded, always trying to do the right thing and live up to her parents' expectations. Maybe the only warning signs early on was that she was very hard on herself and maybe felt a lot of pressure to be perfect at everything. Benjamin Siffritt, known by everyone as BJA, was born in nineteen seventy seven, about three months before Erica, and spent time growing up in Iowa, Minnesota, and Houston, Tewchexis, moving around because of his dad's job. He was the oldest of two children, and like Erica, he was an overachiever and also an athlete. His sport was swimming. During high school, he worked various jobs as a lifeguard, swimming instructor, grocery store clerk, and at one point he worked for a locksmith, where he became highly skilled at picking locks. M After high school, he decided he wanted to serve in the military. He got high scores on his recruiting test and qualified to train as a Navy seal. After doing his basic training near Chicago, he was sent to Coronado, California for the seal training. So the seal qualification training program. You've probably heard a little bit about this, but when he said he was a swimmer, yeah, that's probably a really beneficial if you want to go be a Navy seal. Yeah, for sure. It's an intensive program. It's a twenty six week training program considered to be one of the most rigorous and demanding training programs in the world. It's intensely demanding

14:58 both physically and mentally, withou a high risk of injury and a high dropout rate. It's designed to build discipline, focus, and mental and physical toughness. Out of the one hundred and sixty candidates enrolled in Bjay's training class, only eighteen graduated. Holy moly, I know that it was huge, but that's that's enormous. Yeah. And not only that, but BJA was named the honor man of his class, basically meaning that he finished the training at the top of his class. He was known for his discipline and his toughness. Some of his fellow seals said that BJ could spend all night drinking at the bar, get back to the base at three am, sleep for two hours, then get up and run ten miles as part of his training, and still finish ahead of everyone else in the class. I think Navy seals are made of different stuff than I am. For sure. Yeah. Same.

15:48 So BJ graduated from his seal training in August of ninety seven. And then he shipped to Virginia and then in nineteen ninety eight he did another twenty six week intensive training CORPS in North Carolina. This one was the Special Operations Combat medic Course, which provides training in managing trauma patients on the battlefield. As part of his training, he had to serve with an EMT ambulance unit in New York City, so he saw a lot of trauma. You know. It was another just intense training session where he was you know, put through the put through the paces. Three years into his military service, BJ seemed to be excelling at everything he did. It looked like he was going to make a career out of it. But then he met Erica and everything changed so so far. To me, like, when I read the backgrounds of BJ and Erica, they seem like kind of all American kids that had it all right. They grew up in very compatible both very high achievers, yep, both very smart. They both came from good homes. They were both talented athletically. We'll talk about what they did, but I think one of the most interesting aspects of this case is how people like that can turn out so so horrible when they have like every advantage in life. I don't know, what do you how do you think that happens to people? I just it just boggles my mind. Something that's the nugget that we have tried to unwrap, and a lot of these cases that we've talked about, like and I think about it all the time, like what transpires and it goes back to nature versus nurture, And it just makes you wonder, Yeah,

17:22 like why our kids aren't murderers? And yeah, I mean, it really just seems it's just such a strange thing. So Erica and bj met at a bar in the spring of nineteen ninety nine. They were introduced by a friend of a friend. They talked, but nothing came of it until they ran into each other again in July of nineteen ninety nine at a Navy seal party. By this, I have to google their picture. Okay, you are googling and she's That was like the versing that I saw. They look like a nice couple. He looks a little like Zach Brath maybe, uh are I would see her eyes like a little she looks a little dead in the eyes. Yeah, that could that could very well be. And she was very tanned she was a little bit obsessive about tanning, which I'll talk about in a bit. They look like an uh and I'll they do kind of American couple kind of. Yeah, So Erica did start showing signs of some serious obsessive compulsive disorder and also a serious inability to handle rejection. She had a boyfriend prior to meeting BJ, and apparently he ended up dumping her because she was both obsessive and possessive of him. She couldn't accept the breakup though, and when he dumped her, she began ramming her forehead into a brick wall outside of the bar where they had been, until she started bleeding profusely and the police actually had to be called to help her, Like calm down. Things like that just shreaked me out. I see someone doing something like that, I know, it's really disturbing. There's a lot of things about Erica. I think she had some serious, you know, emotional problems.

18:56 Undiagnosed. No, I think she was actually diagnosed. Talk about that a little bit, but yeah, I think she definitely had issues. Let me just talk about how it's really hard to date when you're that young too, Like a lot of things happen when you're you know, eighteen to probably twenty two, that you're just not emotionally stable enough to handle the serious relationship. Yeah, I think that's fair personal experience of same. Same So when she met BJ, he initially wasn't interested because he was focused on his military career. And the same scene actually played out again where Erica started banging her head against the wall until she was bleeding, and the police were called again and they even I think they even thought that BJ might have been beating her, but then they realized that that wasn't the case, that she was actually doing this to herself. And I'm not sure if BJ was like attracted by this behavior or what, but the two ended up getting serious almost immediately.

19:52 In fact, they flew to Las Vegas and they got married only about three weeks after that. So long had they been dating by then? Three weeks? Oh okay, oh okay, yeah, literally three weeks, Like they met once and then they didn't see each other again, but then they met again and started dating, and then three weeks later they were married in August of nineteen ninety nine. Not a great idea, no, not at all. In between Bjay's Navy seal duties. The couple partied it up during their first year of marriage. Erica later said that they did cocaine and ecstasy five days a week. People were surprised by Erica's choice and a husband, as she hadn't previously been into kind of rugged type guys, But she was obsessed with Bj to the point where people thought she was losing her mind. Already a small person, she lost weight, and she just seemed like stressed and tired all the time. She couldn't stand to be away from Bj, which was a problem because being in the Navy, he frequently got deployed to different locations. She would often have panic attacks when he was gone. Once he got sent to Alaska for a three week stint, she couldn't take it, and so she hopped on a flight to Alaska. He snuck her into his room, which was a big no no wow, and he got caught, which earned him a reprimand. At some point, BJ decided that he needed to get out of his military service so that he didn't have to be away from Erica. He came up with a plan to basically break the rules and disobey orders until he got kicked out. At one point he just left the base when he wasn't supposed to, essentially going a wall. When he was

21:25 confronted about it later, he yelled fuck you to his superior officer, which I'm pretty sure is a bad thing to do. The bad behavior continued, and he ended up getting court martialed. He got convicted of two charges of going a wall, three charges of insubordination, one charge of drunken or reckless driving, and one charge of wearing unauthorized insignia. He went to I don't know the story behind that one. You're not supposed to wear unauthorized insignia, like insignia that shows what your rank is in the military, and so if you wear something that makes it look like you're a higher rank than you are. Think he was wearing under armor or something and they were like, oh, you can't wear that logo. Was wearing a Nike shirt. So BJ went to military jail for ninety days and he got kicked out of the service with a bad conduct discharge. Oh wow's truly like just horrible, and like, I mean, obviously the downhill slide of this couple started, you know, so that's their peak. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, I mean their peak of goodness, right, Yeah, yeah, for sure, getting kicked out of the military like that, it's just it's just horrible because you lose like your benefits, you lose any pay that you would have gotten after that. So it's just really a bad idea, the whole decision.

22:40 Yeah. But now that the two were free to be together all the time, Erica talked to her mom and dad into putting up the money so that she and BJ could start their own business, a scrap booking store in the mall in Altoona, Pennsylvania, not far from Erica's hometown. Remember when scrap booking was all the rage. Oh, I sure do still have a box full of crap that I've never really done much with it. Yes, Well, apparently Erica was super into scrapbooking, and I think this was probably right around when scrap booking was at its peak, right, and there were stores everywhere that sold scrap bookings. Yeah, it was a little cold dish a little bit. Yeah. The store was called Memory Lane, with Lane spelled Lai n E, which was a play on Erica's middle name, Elane and her nickname, which was Laney. Over the next couple of years, of marriage, Erica and bj developed some what I would think of as strange kind of hobbies, collections, and maybe obsessions that got increasingly dark. Erica bought a gun at Bjay's suggestion, a Smith and Wesson three point fifty seven magnum, which she carried with her everywhere, either in her purse or in a holster on her ankle or waist. Erica became fanatical about jewelry and diamonds, which she kept in her coach handbag. She also became obsessed with collecting Hooter's memorabilia, which is very strange, but she had somewhere between one hundred and two hundred articles of Hooters branded clothing. Yes, she loved She loved the

24:10 Hooters stuff. I mean, who doesn't. Oh, I refused to ever, I've never been in a Hooters. No, I've been in a couple of times, have you. Yeah, we have good wings. If you could see the look on his face right now, Well, my sister was a big Hooters fan, and I have I have had their wings, and I don't think they're any better than any other wings store. I'm just gonna put that out there right. So, Erica was also obsessed with tanning. As you noted when you saw her picture, she would go to the tanning salon almost daily. In some of the pictures I've seen of Erica, I mean, she's she looks kind of like an umpa lumpa Like she just looks ridiculous. I'm not going to say she looked ridiculous, but that was literally the first thing I noticed is the difference in their skin tones. Yeah, which, I mean, the difference in our skin tones is pretty striking.

25:02 But it's just I'll show you. I'll show you a different picture later that'll make you laugh. It just it's so she just looks like she had tannarexic. Maybe maybe The couple also kept snakes and crocodiles. The crocodiles were named Clarence and Alabama, after characters in Erica's favorite movie, True Romance. They had pythons named Bonnie and Clyde, a cobra that they named Hitler, and another snake that they named HIV. Do they all wear like little hooter shirts? Who pet crocodile? I don't know. Two pet crocodiles too. I don't know how big they were or anything like that. But did they have a swamp in their backyard. I really don't know much more about that, but it is a very strange kind of pet to keep. I see some red flags, do you, and naming their snakes Hitler and HIV, which is just bizarre, but I guess BJ he really admired Hitler, and I think Erica did as well. BJ actually even had a large swastika tattooed on his chest, so what a guy. Erica started taking Xanax and valium for her anxiety and her panic attacks. Like I mentioned, I think it was diagnosed. She went to a doctor, she got on medications, but soon she became hooked on them. She started snorting xanax regularly because the pills didn't work fast enough. At one point, she and BJ took a trip to South America and they smuggled a large quantity of Xanax and valium back home.

26:34 And then, yeah, they brought back a huge amount of pills and smuggled them in. So they're living I don't remember the movie True Romance vividly, but they're kind of living that. Yeah, that life. Yeah, I think the fact that their favorite movie was True Romance they named it their you know, two of their snakes Bonnie and Clyde, you know, they had They seem to have this vision of themselves as this sort of outlaw couple who were, you know, just breaking the law and doing whatever they wanted to do. And it gets even worse because then there were the burglaries. BJ and Erica started getting thrills from burglarizing stores. BJ would use his lock picking skills to break into places and the two would steal whatever they could. Hooters was one of their favorite places to burglarize so that Erica could add to her collection. They even kept ski masks and gloves in the car at all times, just to be ready in case the opportunity would arise. The burglaries became kind of a fetish, with Bja apparently getting a sexual thrill from it.

27:34 They would sell many of the goods that they stole on eBay, sometimes netting twenty five hundred dollars or more a week. Holy, Holy Holy, So they were adrenaline junkies. They didn't necessarily need the money. I'm I don't think so. I mean, I think they could have always gotten money from Erica's dad if they needed it. So yeah, I don't think they needed the money. I think it was just a thrill, while BJ and Erica were both increasingly becoming horrible people. BJ in particular, could be very cruel. According to Erica, At one point he told her that they should have kids. She was pleasantly surprised because he had previously been opposed to the idea. She got pregnant quickly, but then one night in her third month, he came home drunk with some of his buddies and told her he didn't want kids, and he could. She could either go take care of it, or he could go get a coat hanger and take care of it right then for her, so she actually went. The next day, he drove her to the clinic she got an abortion. He apparently later told her that he never wanted a kid, He just wanted to see how far Erica would be willing to go for him. Oh that's just that's I know. Well, it gets worse too again. And this is according to Erica, who might not always be the most reliable person. But BJ suggested at one point after that happen, that they have a baby, take out a million dollar life insurance policy on the baby, and then BJ would kill it so that they could collect the insurance. What a guy. Huh, I'm speechless. That's horrible. Yeah, all right, serious, I don't know. And again,

29:08 this was, you know, something that Erica said. As you'll see later, Erica and BJ kind of will turn against each other at some point. So it may be that she was saying that, you know, just to paint a bad picture of him. But either way, he's a horrible person. Yes, all right, let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. All right. We left off talking about how BJ and Erica were becoming horrible, horrible people as time went on, and that brings us up to Saturday, May twenty fifth, two thousand and two. So Joshua and Jeanie the victims in this case. After they got settled into the condo that they were renting in Ocean City, which was a place called the Atlantis, they went to a sports bar called the Green Turtle for some food and drinks and to watch the Celtics play in Game three of the Conference Finals.

30:03 After the game, they went back to the condo, where Joshua called his brother Mark while Jeanie was getting ready to go out for the evening. Joshua and his brother were both big Celtics fans, and they were excited because the Celtics had not only won the game, but it was the biggest comeback in NBA playoff history at that time. It was a brief call, though, since Mark was beat after finishing up a twelve hour shift at his work. Once Jeanie was ready to go, the pair headed out to catch the bus that transported people up and down the Ocean City Strip. They were planning on doing some drinking, so better to leave the car at the condo and take the bus. Meanwhile, Erica and bj Siffret, who were both twenty four years old by this time, had driven to Ocean City that afternoon from their home in Altoona, Pennsylvania, close to a six hour drive. They stopped about halfway to pick up a twelve pack of bud Light, which they started drinking on the way. Erica also popped a couple of Xanas when they got to the Ocean mixture Xanax with yeah for Sure. Right when they got to Ocean City, they checked into the penthouse suite at the Rainbow Condominium, which they had booked for the next week. Erica's dad's firm had done some of the construction work on the condo, and was friends with the owner, so he was able to book them the penthouse suite on the eleventh floor whenever they wanted. They unpacked, Erica snorted some more Xanax and then she told BJ she wanted to go to Hooters, where they had some wings and a couple of pictures of beer. Pictures of beer, a couple of them. Yeah,

31:34 Erica is like, she's tiny, right, Yeah, she's tiny. I think she was more into the Xanax than the drinking. I think BJ was maybe more the drinker of the two. But yeah, they like to party it up. Actually, I was gonna say, when I was working on this case, I had the song Life in the fast Lane from the Eagles in my head all the time, because it just it just seems like they were like living life in the fast Lane. At Hooters, they asked the waitress where the hottest nightclub was in Ocean City, and she told them Secrets was the place to be. Secrets spelled Sea crets, clever play on words. So they drove back to the Rainbow and then, already being a bit wasted by this time, decided to hop on the bus to head to Secrets. So the bus is where BJ and Erica met Joshua and Genie.

32:24 BJ didn't have exact change, which the bus driver said was a requirement, and Joshua, being a nice guy, offered to pay BJ and Erica's fare. The couple sat near each other, striking up a conversation, and BJ promised to buy Joshua and Genie a drink when they got to Secrets as a thanks for paying their fare. They had to wait in line for about an hour to get into Secrets, during which time Erica ducked around the corner to snort some more Xanax. Goodness, Yeah, she loved her x Annax. Once they got in, the couples partied it up together along with a third couple, with Erica ordering vodka shots for everyone to keep the party going.

33:04 When it got near to closing time, Erica and BJA invited Joshua and Genie back to their penthouse suite, where they had a hot tub. Joshua mentioned that he had some really good pot, which peaud Bjay's interests, so it was decided they would swing by Joshua and Janie's condo to pick up swimsuits and pot, and then head back to Erica and Bjay's luxury suite to keep the party going. The story of what happened next is not one hundred percent known. Joshua and Jeanie didn't live to tell the story. Erica's account of what happened would evolve over time, and Bjay's account of what happened, which we wouldn't get to hear until a year later, was very different from Erica's. So I'm going to share what I think is the most likely story of what happened, and then we'll talk about Erica's and Bjay's stories later on. The two couples ended up back at the penthouse suite. By this time it was around two thirty AM. Joshua and BJ sat down and smoked some pot while Erica took Genie upstairs to the main bathroom where the hot tub was, so that she could change into her swimsuit. After they got back downstairs, Erica said something about her coach purse, which had her expensive diamonds, cash, credit cards, and pills being missing with her OCD. This is the type of thing that made Erica's anxiety rise to the point of panic. The two couples started looking for her purse, and at some point BJ and Erica started insinuating that Joshua and Genie must have stolen it. Erica actually called nine one one at three oh one am, and here is a brief clip from that.

34:34 Cally, Yes, I have an emergency at my apartment, sort of emergen city her. There are people in my house who I don't know, and my purse is suddenly missing in a fight. I'm gonna have robberies here. She sounds a little messed up. Yeah, well, she sounds super calm, like you know, she sounds intoxicated. Yeah, yeah, she definitely sounds wasted. The call didn't go on much longer than that. Erica actually hung up before the operator was able to get any details, and no unit ended up being dispatched. I'm assuming that's because they didn't have an exact location or a room number where the call came from. But I'm not sure why they didn't send someone out, because usually you would think after a nine one one call, somebody would get sent out. Erica later said she hung up because josh Joshua came up the stairs, but the police later theorized that Joshua and Genie were already dead when Erica made that call. Their theory was that she made the call so that she and BJ would have a cover story in case any of their neighbors had heard gunshots and called nine one one themselves.

35:42 Either before or after that nine one one call, BJ most likely grabbed Erica's gun and started waving it around in a threatening way at Joshua and Genie, demanding that they tell him what happened to their stuff. Bja ordered them to take off their clothes, which they did, and Erica started looking through their clothes to see if her stuff was there, which it wasn't. BJ told Joshua and Jeanie to go into the bathroom, but before he had a chance to follow them, they slammed the door shut and locked it again. Exactly what happened next is not completely clear, but it seems that Bja shot through the door and wounded Joshua, and then he kicked the door in and shot Joshua again in the head, killing him, and then he shot Jeanie, who was cowering on the floor under the counter. Erica would later claim that she had gone downstairs to get away from what was happening, but during the investigation, the police noted that Erica's fingerprints were actually found on the outside of the bathroom window. They theorized that she had gone out on the balcony and then leaned over to look into the window so that she could tell Beja where to shoot through the door. Wait, I'm having a hard time visualizing that they had a balcony. Yeah, there's a balcony. I think the balcony was right next to the bathroom window, so you could have leaned over to look into the back and the falcony, so that makes more sense.

37:00 It's also believed that Erica stabbed Jeanie with a knife that she carried with her goodness, and it's not clear if Jeanie was already dead at this point or not when Erica stabbed her. Erica then went to a convenience store to buy garbage bags while bj started the gruesome job of dismembering Joshua's and Jeanie's bodies in the bathroom at the condo. He cut off their heads, their arms, and their legs, and so they they hadn't planned this, It just happened. It seems like it just happened. Yeah, so they're just using the knives that I'm guessing were at the condo. No, they had knives. They carried knives with them. They were kind of like hunting knives. I'm not sure exactly what kind of knives they were, but yeah, they must have been fairly big knives. They carried guns and knives with them almost all the time. Multiple guns. Well, BJ had a gun, Erica had a gun, and they had another gun that they kept in the car.

37:51 So holy, yeah, yeah, they were. They were armed and ready for whatever. So Erica's purse was just like at the nightclub, I'm guessing, and they no, it was there. It was under the bed apparently with everything in it. Yeah, with everything in it. Yeah, there was there was no truth this And as you'll see later, I think that this was like a game that Erica and BJ played like. I think they got off on accusing this couple of stealing something when they knew very well that nothing was stolen. They played it more than once or just they're going to play it again in a few days. Yeah. When BJ was dismembering the victim's bodies, Erica later claimed that he got sexually excited during this process, saying that it had excited him more than anything ever had before, and also that he suggested that they cook and eat some of the flesh. Oh my god, that's disgusting. I should have given you a trigger warding before this.

38:47 I apologize. Erica says she told him no to that request. At the same time, she said that she was sickened by the ordeal and stayed away as much as possible while BJ went about the work. But again, we don't know for sure exactly what's true and what isn't. BJ wrapped the body parts up and brought them down to their jeep in some storage containers. By this time it was about six am. Erica says that she passed out in the jeep, having been awake and drinking and doing drugs for almost twenty four hours. While Bja drove north about an hour into Delaware. He put the body parts into two different dumpsters behind a supermarket. Having worked at a grocery store during high school, he knew that the dumpsters at larger supermarket chains were emptied at least two or three times a week. When they got back, BJ slept for a few hours, got up and smoked some of the pot that Joshua had brought over, and then started to work cleaning the bathroom, which was basically covered in blood. He went to the hardware store and bought cleaning supplies, working on cleaning the scene while Erica laid out on the beach to keep her tan going. Oh my God. On Monday, they went to home depot to buy a new bathroom door and some paint to replace the door that BJ had shot through and kicked in the kando Is it a do people live there or is it more of a timeshare kind of situation.

40:07 I think it's more of a timeshare, Like it's a resort town Ocean city, so I'm assuming it's a rental place or a timeshare type of place. It sounds like the penthouse sweet they were in, sounds like it was really nice. It was actually two stories. The bathroom and the hot tub were up on the second story of the penthouse suite and it was like on the top story of the of the unit, like the eleventh floor. And they had to purchase a new bathroom door because they were gunshots through the right and he had kicked it in, So it was like basically you know, destroyed. Yeah, So BJ and Erica they kept some souvenirs from the kills. They kept Joshua and Genie's IDs, at least one of the bullets that was used in the killings, which BJ dug out from the victims when he dismembered them, and a dragon ring that Joshua had been wearing. Over the next few days, BJ and Erica resumed their vacation as if nothing had happened.

41:00 They were having the time of their lives, living it up. Erica, the scrapbooking queen, took lots of pictures to document everything. Did she take pictures of the victims, Not that I know of. It's possible that she did, but I was not able to find anything out about that for sure. On Wednesday, they went back to the Secrets nightclub and they made a new friend, a guy by the name of Todd Wright. Todd was pretty drunk, as was Erica, and they must have been getting pretty obnoxious because a bouncer asked them to leave sometime before midnight. Erica got belligerent. She took her gun out of her purse and she started threatening the bouncer. The bouncer was about to call the police, but then BJ got Erica calm down and they left voluntarily with their new friend Todd. As they headed back to BJ and Erica's condo. Todd called a friend of his, a woman named Melissa Ceiling, who lived about thirty minutes away in Delaware. He said Melissa should come down and join them at another bar. She could tell that Todd was super drunk, and also she was leaving for a vacation to Hawaii in less than two days, and so she said no thanks, but Todd kept calling her until she finally agreed. She made the drive down and then called to see where they should meet. Todd said that they had gotten a flat tire and they were too drunk to change it, so Melissa met up with them. BJ had apparently driven over a curb and his lip was bloody from hitting the steering wheel. Melissa helped them change the flat tire, and then they went to a bar called Fishtails for a drink a little bit after midnight.

42:31 This just sounds like bananas, Like they're all just gross and drunk and disoriented and had no business being on the road. Yeah, for sure. And Melissa, like, I can just totally empathize with her, Like she gets this call from her friend who's just she can tell is really drunk, and I she sho because she felt like she needed to make sure her friend got home safely. Might have been I think she went because he was very persistent. But yeah, I think at the end of the day she went there and everybody was just wasted, and she was trying to keep some you know, keep some order. On the evening Todd when they got were at the Fishtails bar, Todd was like really sloppy drunk. He spilled his drink and then he drank Melissa's drink. After a short time, she was like, okay, time to go. She was going to give Todd a ride, and she suggested that Erica and bj call a taxi, but Erica begged her to give them a ride back, or at least follow them back, since it was only five miles. Things got weirder when they got back to the condo. Erica showed Melissa her pet cobras. She talked about snorting some xanax, and she invited Melissa to jump in the hot tub with her to quote drive these boys crazy. So she brought her cobras with her. Yeah, she had the two cobras with her for the week. She couldn't bear to be apart from them a boy. At some point, events started playing out very similarly to the way that they had with Joshua and Jeanie four nights earlier. Erica claimed that her purse was missing started to get threatening, pulling his gun out. Melissa started panicking, seeing the door that had been kicked

44:06 in with the bullet holes in it, which was still sitting there waiting to be replaced with the new door that they had bought. BJ said to her, if you're ripping us off, We've had other people try ripping us off. If you've ripped us off as other people who were here, I'll do the same damn thing to you that I did to them. These people were bad people. I'm ridding the earth of bad people. They came into my place and ripped me off. No more will they do that This time, though, instead of escalating to further violence, things somehow seemed to calm down. Seeing that Melissa was nervous around the gun, DJ actually took apart both his and Erica's gone to show her how they worked. Erica snorted some xanax and she sat on BJ's lap. BJ said we need to go have some sex, which Melissa took as a good time to leave. I'm really hoping that Melissa and Todd get the heck out of there. Yes, so Melissa actually did leave at that point. I'm not sure where to Odd exactly was, but she left without him. But then he called her a few minutes after she left and was like, hey, where you left me behind?

45:07 Can you come pick me up? It was around three am by this time, and so Melissa said, okay, but there's no way that I'm going back up in that condo, so you need to meet me out front. So she drove back. He met her out front, and Melissa drove him home, and then she left for her trip to Hawaii a day and a half later, trying to her best to forget about the whole evening. And I think she had no idea at that point how much she and Todd literally dodged a bullet. Oh boy, I'm glad they got out safely. Yeah, exactly. So this is a good point to take a break and end part one of this case. We'll pick it up in part two. Well, thank you for all the horribleness. Yeah, it really is horrible, isn't it. Today being our potiversary, we talked about this a little bit before. One of the most shocking things and doing the podcast, for ye is the amount of people that go missing in our country every year, and we want to start highlighting some of those people in cases and get more attention to some of the cases that don't get as much attention. I do have a case I'm going to tell you about, but I wanted to just maybe spend a couple of minutes talking about some of the statistics around missing persons because of this kind of shocking I think. So these are from twenty twenty two, but over five hundred and forty six thousand people we're reported missing in the US in twenty twenty two. That's huge, I know, it really is.

46:32 Around four four hundred unidentified bodies are recovered each year in the UA. How many four four hundred? And if you look at it by state in the United States, what state do you think has the most per capita? I have no idea Florida. Strangely enough, Alaska has like way way more missing person's cases per capita than any other state, like more than double. What do you add tribute that to. I think they're I think it's because it's just a big area with a lot of wilderness and people get lost or people go there to get away. But well, are the people in Alaska that go missing or indigenous largely? Right? Yes, and I think that is a big reason for it. I think that Indigenous people are much more likely proportionally to go missing or to experience violence or things like that Indigenous women.

47:25 Yeah, right, And then I also pulled some stats about children. So an estimated twenty three hundred children go missing every day in the US. The National Incidents Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway and Thrown Away Children program classifies missing kids into five categories, so be nine reasons, which is basically just a misunderstanding, ran away or thrown away. Thrown away means when a parent or other household adult tells a child to leave the house without giving arranging for alternative care, lost or injured, family abduction, and then stranger abduction is the fifth category. So those were not in any specific order. I would think custodial issues are probably the primary reason that children go missing. Yeah, family abductions or custodial issues account for about two hundred thousand a year of missing children, so that's a huge number. Runaways is actually the biggest, one point five million in nineteen ninety nine, so again runaway or thrown away.

48:30 Which is a strange with a lot of missing statistics is people go missing and then they are found and then so the statistics are skewed. Not all the people that go missing are missing forever. It's really hard to get accurate statistics. Yeah, it really is. There's a lot of sites that track this kind of thing, but it's it is difficult. Yeah. And then the other statistic I wanted to talk about is minority missing person. So we talked about indigenous people. But so African American, Asian and Indian account for about forty three percent of missing persons, which is way more proportionally than they make up of the population. So twelve to thirteen percent of the population is black, and yet African Americans make up almost forty percent of children reported missing.

49:21 And as we know, there's a big disparity in media coverage of missing people who are minorities versus those who are white for a number of different reasons. But that's definitely something that needs to change, all right. So the case that I wanted to highlight today is a woman named Kennedy Walton. She is twenty six years old, lives in Saint Louis, Missouri. On March third, twenty twenty two, she was with her mom in Belleville, Illinois, which is about thirty minutes from Saint Louis. She was in town with her mom because she was Her mom was having surgery, and so Kennedy returned home to help care for her young her sisters. Her aunt picked her up on the third around noon because Kennedy's car wasn't working, and then she left her mom's home at ten thirty pm to go meet some friends. She was supposed to return later. She drove her mom's white Chevy Tahoe and she went to a bar called the show Mes Bar and Grill in Saint Charles, Missouri.

50:22 She and her friends were at the bar celebrating a friend's birthday, along with several other people. Her mom texted Kennedy around midnight, and Kennedy responded and told her she would be on her way home in a minute, and when her mom texted her again at two am, she didn't respond. Her roommate. Kennedy's roommate saw her at the bar at one am, and then security camera footage showed that she left the bar at one ten am. The report from The security cam footage said she gets up from her seat at the bar, She exited the business and talked to what appears to be the white Chevy Tahoe parked in the front of the parking lot. It also notes that she did not seem to be followed by any other vehicle. A friend had notified detectives that Kennedy had abruptly left the bar and that they found her in the car crying. She allegedly told her friend that she would be fine, and then soon after the same friend was in their vehicle on the road and pulled up next to Kennedy. However, Kennedy sped away, which caused concern with her friend. The friend then went to Kennedy's home, not her mom's home, but where Kennedy lived, and she saw Kennedy there, but she only got there in time to see Kennedy driving away, and that was reportedly the last time that anyone saw her or had contact with her. So she left the bar and then she went to her yeah, where she lived, and then she left yep, and she was alone, I think so yeah.

51:53 She never returned to her mother's house. The next day, her cell phone was turned off at around noon, and then almost a week later, on March tenth of twenty twenty two, they found the Chevy Tahoe, which belonged to her mother, but they found it abandoned only two blocks from Kennedy's house. So where she again, where she lived? And it was strange because it wasn't there. I think, you know, they did a search immediately after she went missing, the car wasn't there, but then it turned up like a week later, and a neighbor said that she watched a man park it and get out of the car. Oh, so that's about all we know. So again, she's been missing for almost a year and a half now. So Kennedy, just as far as description goes, she is black, somewhere between five ten and five eleven, weighs between two hundred and sixty and two hundred and seventy pounds. If anyone has any information, you should contact the Belleville Police Department. So her cell phone, do you think it ran out of battery or was it turned off? I don't think there's any way to know that cell phone ping data well, I think the ping data showed that it was turned off at noon the day after she disappeared, But I don't know if they know what you know, if it was turned off or if it ran out of battery and the car's data, the Tahoe's data, we don't know, like where it went. No, I don't information. I haven't seen any information on that. Okay, well, we'll

53:25 post a picture of Kennedy on social media and hope that she is found. But yeah, if anybody does have information, the Belleville, Illinois Police Department are the people to call. Well. I hope she's found safely, thoughts to her family. A lot of people think if someone goes missing, you have to wait forty eight hours, and I think it's different in different areas and according to the age of the person that goes missing, but it's worth the shot to call your police department. I hope everyone's having a spooky October and enjoying the cozy season. Last night we watched a movie. Do you want to talk about it a little bit? Yeah, it was called No One Will Save You, and it was it was a very interesting movie, was very different, Like I don't I don't want to give any spoilers away, so I'm struggling a little bit to talk about it. But it was kind of an alien invasion type of thing. Well, say how you found the movie. I found the movie because Stephen King, the great horror author, tweeted about it, saying how it was really great, like really innovative movie. He compared it to some episode of the Twilight Zone, which I didn't remember. But yeah, so we thought, well Stephen, good enough for Stephen King, good enough for us in spooky season, right, Yeah, it's different. I think I would give it a six out of ten.

54:50 What would you rate it? Probably similar? Maybe maybe seven, six or seven. I mean it was I admire them trying something really different and innovative. Well can we I don't want to give it any spoilers either, but I think I think it's okay to tell our listeners. There was no dialogue in the movie, pretty much no dialogue. There was audio, but there was no dialogue. Yeah. And it was definitely an artsier movie. Yep. So yeah, that sounds intriguing to you. You are probably more tolerant of art movies than I am. I mean it was a horror movie for sure, Yeah, but it was one of those movies that kind of leaves your your head scratching your head, like not sure. I know exactly what happened or how to explain what happened. So and I don't want to say more than that, but yeah, if you like, if you don't mind movies that are ambiguous, that you don't necessarily understand everything that happened or the meaning of it. It's pretty much a solo performance for Caitlin Ever who twenty six years old, amazing young actress. I mean she really she does a great job. Yeah, so check it out. If that sounds interesting to you or not, well, thanks everyone again for listening. We truly appreciate each and every one of you. It's been a great year. Thank you so much for hanging out with us. Yeah, follow us on social media Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, wherever you go for your social stuff, and consider Patreon because this is a two parter and if you follow, if you are a Patreon, then you get episode two immediately at patreon dot com.

56:14 Slash Love Mary, Kill Until next time, don't kill your wife, don't forget to flow us