Erika and BJ Sifrit and the murders of Geney Crutchley and Joshua Ford - Part 2

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, welcome back. Thanks, it's been it's been a it's been a whole four minutes. Yeah, how are you. I'm good. I did a little yoga. The chairs that we sit in are like super uncomfortable. Yeah, horrible, So my back was hurting. Good idea, good thinking, Yeah. Working on my son's salutation.

0:45 Nice, I love son salutation. It's my favorite. Do you want to break into a couple of right now? Yeah? Maybe after? Okay, all right, So if you hear any noise in the background, it might be your daughter singing in the bathroom as she's taking a shower. And I wouldn't that you would be singing in the shower when you knew your parents were recording a podcast. Unless you want, unless you wanted to, right, just don't talk about me. Well, if you're singing, you must want everyone to hear. Do you want to come in and sing? So I just wanted to mention last night, I'm I'm feeling pretty good. But our cat, like he just sometimes just needs to sleep on me. Do you notice that? Not really, I'm usually asleep. Not really, you are a master, Like if he comes into our bed, you're just you just literally roll over us. When we first got them, they used to love to sleep on my legs for some reason. I would be in bed sleeping and they would just lay down on my legs, on between your legs, yeah, And I would push them off and they would come right back on. But somehow I've broken them of that habit, but they maybe they found a more comfortable spot. And it's so pathetic when he has this little mousey he carries around and a lot of times in the morning I wake up the mouse is like on our bedroom floor, and it just makes me sad that he wanted someone to play with him in the middle of the night.

2:07 Sometimes he comes in and he's like wow, and usually I usually I don't play with him. Very demanding if anyone has any suggestions out there for cat toys that your cats love, or more importantly, like self motivated cat toys, because we just don't have enough time to play with our cats. Clover the girl cat, you know she's not as cudly as the boy cat is. And the other night we played with her for it must have been an hour. It took shifts. Each of us would play with her for ten minutes, and then we would trade off because we were curious, like how long can't she go? And she went a whole hour? Yeah, yeah, and she still would have gone longer. I'm sure. Absolutely, she's insane. So as always, being that this is my episode, it's my responsibility to bring a snack. But I did not plan very well. So I brought you in part one, I got the pies, but part two I didn't really have anything planned. Part one was really I mean that that was quite a nice snack. Yeah. So I went into our pantry, though, and I found something I think you'll I love the pantry dive snack.

3:06 Really happy about here. So I brought Chex Mix. So here's the exciting thing though about Chex Mix. The bagel chip is bad. Yes, it's in all caps on the cover. Bagel chip is back. I didn't know it was missing. I didn't either, But I went and did a little research on this and I found that they got rid of it like ten years ago. Ten years ago. Yeah, and there was an outcry. Apparently there have been like petitions and people on social media going crazy for it. And we are never without Chex Mix in our pantry because and our son isn't here, but it's one of his favorite snacks. Our daughter likes it a lot. Everyone loves Chex Mix. I don't love it. I mean I sometimes I, oh, did you bring an apple? I brought an apple to season? Wait, honey, christoph are weird though sometimes it tastes fermented. Yeah, it kind of does, like if they're I don't know how long they sit there before they pick them. But yeah, but I just I do love a crisp cold honey crisp. Yeah. Well, when we take a break for a snack, I have a special treat for you too, because when I was doing my research about the bagel chips being back in the Chex Mix, I found that when they brought it back, they actually had Sir mix a lot. Do you remember Sir mix a lot?

4:18 Vaguely? He did a song for checks mix. So we're gonna take a break, play the song and we'll be right back. I like my snacks and I cannot lie. Look, that's one thing I just lied. It's a bag of snack, that basic tape and it seems like such your waist because you're hungry and it ain't nothing a snack but a mixing stuff. Chex mix ain't no comparing. I'm but I'm down with sharing. I don't pay. You can find me clunching, and it's to your munching. My homeboys tried to warn me because that crunch you got me so hungry. Oh something's missing and you're wondering where it's been. What exkills me? Exkills me? You know I need a mixed to move me now. Checks mix is your sass. I'm telling you I ain't don't ask. We did enough a hit and the membership got to bring back the bagel chip. The black bagel is back. Oh my god, Becky, look at those bagel chips. They look so round and tasty. Bagel is back. The bagel is back.

5:21 The bagel is back, Tina, that's amazing. How do you come up with these wonderful nuggets? My takeaway from that is everyone has a price, you know, not people have great integrity. Yeah, I don't know what, sir. Mix a lot's career has looked like in the past several years. But yeah, his price may be lower than a lot of people. It was good, It was a good little great. Yeah, it's awesome. Well, thank you for bringing in that to us. The checks mixed, little stale, that's okay, person, is it around when the Yeah, I wait to can't like to cantle lot of our snacks into the oxocontainers because I'm a ghirdo but psycho, So yeah, they do get a little stale if you don't get in there. I bet the dots pretzels are getting stale too, because I don't think you've been snacking as much. All right, So here we are Part two. Horrible story, Yeah, horrible story.

6:15 And you know what part two means. I think sometimes our synops ci or is that a word spiss are a little lengthy. So I'm going to try to make it brief. Okay, if you haven't listened to part one, go back and listen to part one. So we have Bjay and Erica. They're about twenty four, married, very young. They married after knowing each other for three weeks. And it is two thousand and two Memorial Day weekend, and they're kind of like this. Bonnie and Clyde couple, and they like to carry guns. They take their snakes everywhere. Erica is very tan, very tam. She likes expensive things. They just burgle. They like to burglarize, oh you places. She likes Hooter's memorabilia, a Hooter's obsession. Who doesn't. She has a lot of anxiety. She's on xanax.

7:12 She likes to Snorter's Annex. They like to drink. They like to have a good time. She's obsessed with her husband. Doesn't like to be apart from him. He went a wall in the Navy. He was a Navy seal. He out of one hundred and sixty people in his class, only eighteen became Navy seals. On the Memorial Day weekend, they murdered poor Joshua Ford and Jeanie Crutchley, who were from Fairfax, Virginia. They were vacationing when we left off their adrenaline junkies. They had dismembered the poor couple and put them in a grocery store. Band used to work for a grocery store. And I can't attest to those fins are always full of lots of weird things and pretty gross. Oh, they were like Erica would be like, my purse is missing, and that's what happened. Like she accused Genie, Genie and Joshua of stealing her purse, and then she she even called nine one one, but nine one one didn't really respond. And where we left off was Melissa and Todd were like another couple that not really a couple, but two people that were in their penthouse and they escaped. Yeah, and they didn't really know that they were escaping like this murderous couple. They were just like, this just doesn't feel cool and rody here. Yeah, they knew there were guns, and they knew there was a bathroom door with bullet holes in it, and they knew that, Yeah, there was something off about this couple. And they luckily got out of there. But it

8:45 was interesting because it was almost the same scenario where Erica was like, my purse is missing, did you guys take it? And they went to have sex. They were like, oh, we need to go have sex, and then that's when they escaped. Ye, And you said they traveled with like three guns. Yeah, Erica kept a gun on her at all times, bj kept a gun on him at all times, and they had won in the console of their jeep that they kept, and they were all loaded all the time, and their snakes, Hitler and HIV were with them. Yeah, which is so weird. Yeah, crazy, And they had crocodiles too, but they didn't I don't think they brought them on vacation, but they brought the snakes. Yeah, they're quite a couple. Yeah they're horrible. Well, good synopsis. Very well, we should have on our previous episode given a content warning, and maybe we'll go back and slip one in there. But is this episode equally disturbing? Not equally disturbing? This part will be a little bit more about the investigation and the aftermath, but certainly still a little disturbing. All right, Well, great synopsis. So, yeah, when we left off, Melissa and Todd had just basically escaped and gotten out. So while Erica and bj were back living it up in Ocean City. The police first got on the case of Joshua and Janie's disappearance on Tuesday, after Janie's colleg had reported her missing. After making a few calls, investigators learned that the couple had come to Ocean City and they had been staying at the Atlantis condominium. They drove out there and they found Genie's Accura all alone in the parking lot, looking like like it hadn't been moved in

10:15 days. So this was after Memorial Day weekend was over, so I imagine it was probably really busy during the weekend, and then by Tuesday or Wednesday it was you know, people had gone back to work, so the parking lot was mostly empty except for her car just sitting there. Well, I don't know if we said this, but bj and Erico were on vacation there for a week. Yeah, they were staying there for the whole week, right. Police got the condo manager to let them into Joshua and Jeanie's room. All their stuff was still there. It looked like they had just gone out and never come back, which is exactly what happened. They found a receipt for groceries which was dated Saturday the twenty fifth. Looking in the fridge and the cupboards, they found all the groceries that were listed on the receipt unopened, which told them that the couple probably disappeared on that Saturday evening.

11:03 They found another receipt for the Green Turtle Sports bar, where Joshua and Jeanie had watched the Celtics game. Investigators stopped by, and the night manager remembered the couple being there by themselves having a good time. They also found some surveillance footage that confirmed this. Police sealed off Joshua and Jeanie's condo as a potential crime scene, and they impounded Jeanie's car, but otherwise they didn't really have a clue. It seemed like the couple had vanished into thin air. On Thursday the thirtieth, the morning after the crazy night with Todd and Melissa, Bjay worked on fixing the bathroom door while Erica worked on her tan. Erica loved her tan. The day proceeded with some more drinking, some more smoking of Joshua's pot, and some napping, followed by a trip to the Green Turtle sports Bar. On the way in, they smiled when they saw a missing person's flyer for Joshua and Jeanie. They smile, Yeah, they smiled. I think there was actually a surveillance footage that showed Erica and Bja walking into the sports bar and seeing the flyer on the wall. So they got those missing posters out pretty quick. Well, this was Thursday, right, They were reported missing by I think on Tuesday. Okay, so yeah, maybe within a day or so. Erica and Bja stayed at the Green Turtle for the evening, drinking, listening to music, and Erica ducking into the bathroom to snort some xanax occasionally. When they left close to midnight, Erica passed out in the passenger seat while Bja drove, but instead of driving

12:35 back to the condo, he drove to Hooters, which was closed by this point, and he backed the jeep up to the gift shop. He picked the lock and then woke Erica up, saying, hey, we're at Hooters. Grab your ski mask. Erica and Bja started loading up the jeep with stuff they grabbed from the gift shop. What they didn't know, though, was that BJ had tripped a silent alarm. The police showed up and they caught them in the act. BJ, who was pretty drunk, thought that he could talk his way out of it. He asked the cop, can't we just put the stuff back? Sorry, Bj, That's not how this thing works. The police cuffed both Erica and BJ, and they found a gun and a knife on BJ's person, and a gun and a knife on Erica as well. Erica started having a panic attack and she told one of the cops she needed her medication that was in her purse in the car.

13:24 The officers started digging through her purse and what do you know, he finds Joshua and Genie's IDs. Oh boy. They also found another loaded gun. In the console of the jeep. They found BJ's lock picking supplies, some zip tie handcuffs, some gloves, and the keys to Joshua and Genie's condo. So imagine you're the cop here, it must have been like, holy shit, these people are yeah nuts, I know exactly, especially like the handcuff thing blew my mind. Like they had these zip Ti handcuffs in their car too, Like what were they? I guess, I don't know zip Ti handcuffs are They're just you know, they're just they're just like plastic handcuffs that you can so they look like handcuffs. They don't look just like zip ties. Yeah, they're like in a circle like and you can just pull them tight. But yeah, like, why why would they have this stuff in the car and ski masks and gloves and guns and yeah, I guess so and and yeah, and the police you know, they saw they found Joshua and Jeanie's IDs and this had been you know, all over It's you know, a small police department in Ocean City, I'm sure, so they were very aware that this couple had been missing, so definitely eye opening.

14:35 They immediately called in for reinforcements. Can you talk a second about this side side note, but xanax and what the effect of snorting xanax does. Well, I am not a medical doctor, but I know that xanax is about like helping you calm down and like making you relaxed more and kind of you know, calming down your your brain like it's going too fast or if you're panicking or something like that. So I imagine snorting it just makes that happen faster, just gets into your bloodstream faster. So it's not making you high or disoriented, I don't think so. I think it's kind of the opposite of that in some ways. Yeah, Okay, quick Google told me that people may not as xanax affects the mind. It can cause a temporary loss of memory, feelings of hostility and irritability, and disturbing or vivid dreams, and you should not use xanax and alcohol at the same time, because it could result in coma or death in some instances. I know that her account, Erica's account is the only one that we have, so the xanax could have affected her memory and her retelling of the story. Yeah, that's a really good point. And she was taking it so often too. I'm not sure what the effect is of, you know, taking it just all the time, which it seems like she was doing. So the officer called for reinforcements right away after they found the IDs in Erica's purse. One question, Erica would just say she had no idea who Joshua Ford and Genie Crutchley were.

16:00 If their ideas were in her purse, it must have been because BJ found them somewhere. Oh okay. The officer in charge immediately sent a team over to the Rainbow, where Erica and BJ were staying. They thought it was possible that Joshua and Jeanie were being held captive. They were able to enter the premises without a search warrant because of that possibility. In a quick search, they didn't find any living people there, but they did find two spent bullets in the kitchenet area that appeared to have bits of flesh and blood on them, and they found photos of Joshua and Genie with Erica and BJ that gave them probable cause to get a search warrant to do a more thorough search and bring a forensics team in. Once the crime scene technicians got access to the suite, it was pretty easy to understand at a basic level, at least what took place. Even though BJ had done his best to clean up the bathroom, there were still signs of blood everywhere. It had seeped into the corners by the baseboards and in the grout between floor tiles, out the vanity, and there was a channel of blood still tacky and wet along the floorboard. The stopper in the sink was bloody, and there was a piece of scalp with some hair attached stuck in the drain. So it was obvious that the bathroom had been the scene of a horrific murder. Now they needed to figure out exactly what happened, who did what, and what happened to the bodies, And really the only way to get those answers seemed to be to get Erica and or BJ to talk. All right, let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. Military training teaches that when you're

17:40 captured by the enemy, you just provide your name, rank, and serial number. Spoiler alert. We had to positive record that because I had no idea what you were talking about. I thought that was pretty common though. No, no, no, you're right, but I in that context, I just, yeah, it took you by surprise me on this spot, but things for letting me. True to his training, BJ wouldn't say a thing after his arrest. All he would say was, if you want to know what happened to them, you need to ask my wife, and then he asked for his lawyer. We wouldn't get to hear his version of events until his trial ten months later. Erica was another story. She immediately started angling to cut a deal. She told detectives that she wanted the burglary charges dropped in exchange for information about where Joshua and Jeanie's bodies were. Detectives were floored that she seemed so concerned with the burglary charges when murder charges seemed a little more serious and a little more likely. But I think it's possible that she just assumed that BJ would be charged with the murders and not her, So she might have thought that she didn't have to worry about that. But really, the more the investigation evolved, the more certain the police were that Erica was a willing participant in the murders. Okay, remind me, did she shot off some shots too? Didn't she? No? I don't think so. But again, we don't know exactly what happened that night. But what I believe happened is that BJ did the shooting. She did stab Genie

19:11 with a knife, we do know that, but we don't know if Jeanie was dead already when she did that or not. And BJ did the dismembering. Yes. During Erica's early interrogations, she seemed more concerned with whether detectives liked her and thought she was pretty than she was with the trouble that she was in. Oh boy. She kept asking them, do you like me? Am I pretty? Am I a bad person? Yeah? You are? You're horrible? Yeah? And you're ugly. Even if you're not ugly, you're ugly. She's ugly inside for sure. Once they knew that that was Erica's top concern, they were able to use that to gradually get more and more information from her about what happened. She told them that bj had dismembered Joshua and Jeanie's bodies. They did agree to drop the burglary charges if she could lead them to the bodies. She took them around to some dumpsters, but they weren't the right ones. She said she was pretty out of it at the time that they got rid of the body parts, so she wasn't exactly sure, but the police thought she was being cage Okay, so by this time is it Friday? I think it was around Yeah. They arrested them, I think on Thursday night, and the murders happened on Saturday before, so the dumpsters would have been emptied. Yeah, yep. When Erica's mom and dad found out about the arrest, they immediately booked a private plane to get to Ocean City, and they hired a top notch have a plane. They were pretty wealthy. They hired a top notch Maryland lawyer, a guy named Archie Tuminelli. His real name was I think it was arch Angelo, but they called him Archie. Mitch and Cookie were sure that whatever

20:44 had happened must have been all Bjay's fault and that their little girl Erica must have been under his control. Arkie's top priority was to get the death penalty taken off the table. He was able to cut a deal where there would be no death penalty if Erica would lead them to the real locate where they had put the body parts. She did lead them to the actual dumpsters this time, she was sure of it, but they had been emptied. By this time, investigators were able to pinpoint which landfill the dumpsters had been taken to and which section of the landfill had been used the day that they were emptied. Fifty five law enforcement officers were sent out to the landfill for the search. Those guys, I know, it was hot and humid, so it was miserable, smelly work. They did eventually find some of the body parts. They found Joshua's torso, both his arms, and one of Janie's legs. What did you say. The bodies were put in bins. They were wrapped in garbage bags, and I think I think bj may have had some other bags or something that he put them in, and he put them in two separate dumpsters, so he kind of kept them separate a little bit.

21:51 I know. A year into doing the podcast, I should be less shocked, But the dismembering of a body, the murdering of a body is horrible, but the membering of the body, it's just the ultimate act of horror and disrespect. Disrespect. Yeah, yeah, it's just disgusting. It is completely disgusting. And I think Bjay, you know, with his training as a medic, I think he was a little bit used to kind of gore and stuff like that because he was he worked on an EMT squad in New York City and they also dissected cadavers and stuff like that. But I just can't even imagine how you could do something like that. It's just it's just horrible. I think about this a lot because I'm kind of shocked how frequently that happens in these cases. And I always wonder, like, how how you move on if I wouldn't be able to do it. Obviously, I think you have to be a psychopath to be able to dismember a body.

22:47 But does it you know, does it give you nightmares? Does it stick with you? I wouldn't think you'd ever be able to forget the feeling and the sounds and the Yeah, I think for most most people who have you know, announce of empathy in them, it would be impossible to again, obviously, this guy's a psychopath. Yeah, So, sadly they did not find the rest of their bodies. All they found was Joshua's torso, his arms, and one of Jeanie's legs. The rest of the body parts were never found. Archie's next priority was to cut a deal for Erica where she would get immunity for testifying against BJ. Erica wanted to paint a picture where BJ was the instigator of everything. She was under his control and lived in fear of him, so she went along with things. But you know, she just wanted to paint this picture of her as being completely innocent and just being afraid of BJ. So she investigators were skeptical of this because in many ways they actually had more evidence against Erica than they had against BJ.

23:45 It was her gun that fired the bullets that they had found. The ideas and the bullet casings were in her purse. It was her knife that had blood on it. Also, all the pictures that Erica had taken after the murders showed a smiling, happy couple, and in some of those pictures she was wearing a necklace that appeared to have Joshua's dragon ring on it. Also by that crazy yeah. So Also, by this time, Melissa Ceiling had gotten back from her vacation in Hawaii and she heard about the arrest of BJ and Erica. She must have been so freaked out, can you imagine? So she came forward to tell her story of her experience with the couple just four days after the murders. It was almost the exact same scenario, with Erica freaking out about her lost purse, which made the police think that maybe this was some type of deadly game that BJ and Erica liked to play with people. Ultimately, though, prosecutors did agree to give Erica immunity in exchange for her testimony against BJ. But but there was one very important condition.

24:49 She had to pass a lie detector test. As we know, lie detector tests aren't admissible in court, but at least if she passed a polygraph that showed she was a an active participant in the murders, then the prosecutors would feel better about giving her a deal and they would have a more solid case against BJ. I would like to someday do a deep dive on light detector test. It's fascinating to me. Yeah, me too. I was just thinking about this yesterday, wondering if AI technology, if there's going to be a way to enhance a light detector test and make them more reliable. Probably. Yeah, that's a really good point. Yeah. So they agreed to this deal, but she would still face charges for illegally disposing of bodies and illegal possession of a firearm, but the sentence for those would likely be time served and she could actually be free very soon. What I don't like it, Well, it didn't turn out this way. So the day the polygraph it finally came, Arkie coached his client to be completely honest and to be sure that there wasn't anything that she was hiding. If things didn't turn out well in the polygraph, there would be no chance at any kind of a deal. At that point, Erica assured him she was not hiding anything.

26:03 But we know that Erica has anxiety because she pops the xanax like their you know, grapes. Right, it just seems likely that she would fail the light detect her test just because of her general anxiety. Yeah. I even think I don't know how. Again, I don't know enough about polygraph tests to know, but I think you know, they try to put you at ease and they try to like ask you some questions beforehand, But in any case, it's gonna end up being irrelevant. In this case because when they do a polygraph, they first do a pre polygraph interview with the subject. The purpose of that pre polygraph interview is to put someone who is innocent at ease, or in the case of someone who is guilty, it's really meant to heighten their anxiety. During the pre interview, Erica rambles a lot.

26:44 She talked about all the places she and BJ had burglarized in the last couple of years. She also talked about the night of the killings, how Joshua and Jeanie were locked in the bathroom and BJ asked her what they should do now. Erica says that she told Bjay just fuck do it. The polygraphic examiner asked what she meant by that, and she said, I meant just kill them. They asked her multiple times to be sure that they heard what they thought they had heard. Every time she answered the same, just kill them. I know he wanted to. She gave them more details about what happened basically what I walked through earlier, including the fact that she had stabbed Genie, not knowing if she was already dead or not. She also told them about a snake tattoo that she had gotten two or three days after the killings. She had chosen the location on the side of her lower torso because it was the same place she had cut Genie, so it was kind of like a souvenir to her. Yeah, so all of this stuff. It's not clear why Erica shared so much in her pre interview. I think she may have been under the impression that anything she shared would be kept confidential, and this was true of the actual polygraph test, but not the pre polygraph interview. In the end, the pre interview, which is something that usually takes twenty to thirty minutes, lasted four hours and investigators didn't even do the polygraph. So based on everything that Erica had admitted to in the pre interview, the deal was off and they would charge Erica with first degree murdered.

28:14 Oh wow. Yeah, I think Erica was her own worst enemy in many ways during the investigation and interrogation and all that. Well, yes, that's great. Yeah, I mean it worked out the way it should have worked out. So Bjay's trial was first starting on April first, two thousand and three. His conviction was by no means a slam dunk. He was smart after his arrest, right, he lawyered up right away. He never said a word to the police. And remember it was Erica's gun that had fired the bullets that were recovered. It was her knife that had the blood on it, and the ideas of the victims were in her purse. So he didn't take a light detector test. Nope, he didn't take a life so random to me, like sometimes a light detector test is it administered and sometimes it's not. Well, I don't don't know if they wanted him to, but he you know, you don't have to, So if they did, I'm sure he would have declined it, or his lawyer would have declined it.

29:07 Right. Bj took the stand in his own defense so we would finally get to hear his story of what happened in his account. After the couples left the Secrets nightclub, Erica, Joshua, and Jeanie went back to Joshua and Jeanie's condo to get their swimsuits and the marijuana BJ said that he would just meet them back at the penthouse. He says that he got back to the Rainbow, but then realized he didn't have the keys to the apartment, and so he went and laid down in the jeep and passed out. He was awoken by Erica pounding frantically on the jeep's window, saying, we have to leave. They went up to the penthouse suite together, and there BJ found Joshua and Jeanie on the bathroom floor. So in his story, it was all Erica, she shot and killed them both. He wasn't even there.

29:53 He did admit that he made the difficult decision to help his wife cover up the murders by dismembering the body and taking them to the dumpsters, but he was just doing that to protect his wife. Were his fingerprints on the gun? I do not know that it's a good question, but remember it was like five days afterwards that they were arrested, so yeah, I don't know if they fingerprinted the guns. Even without that though, there were some kind of major problems with BJ's story. First of all, BJ was an expert lock picker. When he found out that he didn't have the keys to the condo. Couldn't he have just picked the lock? And if he didn't have the condo keys, did he still have the keys to the jeep?

30:36 Like wouldn't those keys probably have been together and there was no way that the jeep was left unlocked because they had a gun in there and other items of value. Second, Melissa Ceiling testified about her experience with BJ and Erica four days after the murders. Based on her account, it was clear that Erica and BJ were playing some twisted game together. Also, she testified about b saying that he would do the same to her and Todd as he did to those other people, and how he was ridding the world of bad people. Third, and maybe most significantly, someone kicked the bathroom door in with a great deal of force, and it sure wasn't Erica, who was tiny For some reason, though the prosecution never brought this up as a counter to Bjay's story. The jury deliberated for fourteen hours before coming back with a verdict that, frankly, didn't make a lot of sense. BJ was found guilty of second degree murder for Jeanie's death, but he was found not guilty of Joshua's death. The jury apparently believed that Erica killed Joshua, then ran downstairs to get BJ and the jeep while Jeanie was cowering in fear in the bathroom, and then BJ came up and killed Jeanie. It didn't make any sense, but that was the verdict. He was also convicted of being an accessory after the fact for his role in dismembering and discarding the bodies. So the sentencing for Bjay was actually delayed until after Erica's trial would take place. Her trial was set to begin on June third, two thousand and three. On May

32:09 twenty second, less than two weeks before the trial was set to begin, the Baltimore Sun ran an article that you would have to see to believe. It was a front page feature story that took up two and a half full pages of the newspaper. Like and you know, think about a newspaper, right, it's a really big piece of newsprint. This article was like two and a half pages and the headline was life Interrupted. The headline on the continuation page read lives on hold for only child, and it featured this big picture of Erica's parents, Mitch and Cookie, looking sad and distraught and all these pictures of Erica playing basketball and another picture of her from high school, and it was all about how hard this whole ordeal had been for her parents.

32:53 Well, I'm sure it was. But Mitch must have had some friends in the newspaper business. Yeah exactly. I think, you know, Mitch was a fairly wealthy business man. I think he knew a lot of people. It also, it's disgusting. I would imagine the readers would be disgusted by that. Yeah exactly. They interviewed like a number of Erica's high school friends and teachers, and they painted this picture of this, you know, all American girl who just got mixed up with the wrong guy. There was one small picture of the victims on the third page of the article at the bottom. So yeah, I'm not sure like who at the Baltimore Sun thought it was a good idea, but I thought I was just like blown away. I actually had to go get a subscription to a newspaper service to go look up back issues. I'll post a picture of the article itself. But it was just sort of like, yeah, it just kind of blew my mind when I think you said this in the previous episode. But the victims have been lost. Yeah. Yeah, there's very little information about the victims in this case altogether, which is really unfortunate and sad that. Yeah, they really weren't remembered at all. I think the media has done a better job recently focusing more on victims unless on the perpetrators of the crime. Yeah, I think you're right. When this article came out, the prosecutors were worried that this would make it hard to find an impartial jury, and so they actually made a motion for a change of venue. That motion was granted, and so the trial took place in Frederick, Maryland, about fifty miles from Baltimore and one hundred and eighty miles from the scene of the crime.

34:24 The state's theory in this case was that Erica and BJ liked to play a sick game with couples that they met, accusing them of stealing their stuff. They got off on it together, and it was the loss of Erica's purse that would set the game into motion. Did any other couples come forward, No, No other couples came forward, So yeah, I'm not sure if this was something that they just started doing in this trip to Ocean City or if maybe they had done it before, but no one else came forward. They tried to head off any notion that Erica was controlled or living in fear of bj by showing photos of the couple together after the murders, smiling, playing mini golf, eating crab legs, Erica getting her tattoo. In all the photos, which were taken with Erica's camera to document their week together in a scrap book, the couple was smiling and looking like they were having the time of their life. The prosecution called the bouncer at Secrets nightclub who testified about Erica waving her gun around when he tried to get her to leave.

35:22 This again showed that Erica was not the meek wife being controlled by or in fear of her husband. The judge had ruled that Erica's statements in the pre polygraph interview where she said she told Bjay just fucking do it and that she meant just kill them, were inadmissible. That was fortunate for Erica, but it also meant that her attorneys didn't want her to testify in her own defense because if she did, it was likely that those statements would end up getting admitted into evidence, and so she wasn't able to tell her story or to explain to the jury the reason why she didn't take the stand. On June tenth, the jury came back with their verdict guilty of second degree murder in the case of Genie and first degree murder in the case of Joshua. Okay, yeah, so that seemed a little more of a reasonable verdict to me than Bjay's verdict. What do you think, I don't know what to think.

36:20 There's we just don't know what happened, So that's really frustrating. But what are there I guess I'm curious to hear what their sentences are. Yeah, we'll talk about that in just a minute. But I think, you know, one of the things that I think is most interesting and that we'll never know for sure, is really in this case, how much Erica is responsible and how much Bja is responsible. It seems like they fed off each other. Right. It seems like each of them on their own, you know, probably wouldn't have done something like this, but together they seem to like they seem to get a thrill out of it. Do you think they were trying to impress each other? Maybe maybe I don't know. I'm not sure what drives couples like that to do the things that they do, but it just seems like, yeah, it was like a thrill for them.

37:02 There are a lot of murderous couples out there. It's very bizarre. Here's what Scott Bernal, who is he was the lead detective on the case. Here's what he had to say. Now, what I was saying all along is we may not be able to positively prove who killed who, but I had a pretty good theory and it was corroborating. It just couldn't be proven. But they were both as culpable as each other. One hand is as dirty as the other. One's a principle, the other is a principal. I think is a pretty good point. And here's actually another comment that he made about how Erica's defense tried to portray her. In Erica's case, they portrayed Erica as this frail young girl that couldn't hurt a fly, And you look over and you actually, if you didn't know her, or you had no idea why you were there, and she was amongst the crowd, you certainly wouldn't pick her up as the first one that that's the devian. That's the animal, that's the murderer. That's how they wanted to portray her.

38:16 It was based on what I had and the state's attorney had, and our unit had to show them differently, and that was our job, and we did it very well. I believe she had two at least two lawyers with a bunch of them behind the scenes working to make sure that the jury heard that BJ did all the killings, and Erica was just there. She was the one afraid for her life if she didn't follow the orders of BJ. But what she wasn't thinking was she's as every part of these murders as he was. You know, if she'd have told BJ when he said, well, they're naked, they don't have the ring, what do you want me to do now, she could have said let him go, and they might have I don't know. It's interesting because she obviously she came from a family of wealth, so she was able to pay for a better defense. Yeah, and she ended up with a worse outcome than well, we'll talk about the sentencing, which I guess is the ultimate outcome. But yeah, she was found guilty of both murders, and at the end of the day BJ was just found guilty of one and second degree BJ's sentencing hearing took place on July seventh. The judge was constrained by sentencing guidelines, but he made it clear that he was not happy about that. Here's what he said, quote, this was nothing more than a thrill killing that you and your wife committed.

39:31 This is one of the few instances in my twenty years in which I have disagreed with the jury's verdict in a case. Then he looked at BJ and he said, you're a butcher. A butcher, you cut these people up for no reason. If not for the masterful job by your defense team, you would probably be facing a life sentence. Can't disague them. Absolutely should have been. It would be a hard thing about being a judge. And like if you you know, you don't have control over sentencing and you know that someone deserves but sometimes you do. Yeah, very strange, Yeah it is, but in this case he was constrained. He gave BJ the max that he could, which was thirty eight years, which meant that BJ would be eligible for parole in nineteen years. The judge said that if he meaning the judge, was still alive when BJ's parole hearing rolled around that he wanted to be notified so that he could show up and argue against his parole.

40:22 O nice, that makes me. Yeah. A month later, Erica had her sentencing hearing. Thanks to the deal that her lawyer initially made in exchange for her help in locating the bodies, the death sentence was off the table, as was life without parole, but the judge gave her life plus twenty years. Oh okay, so still eligible for parole at some point. But yeah, her sentence was life. But also bullshit that his charge was his sentence was so light. Yeah, I mean, it really makes no sense at all if you look at the two sentences compared to each other. I mean, if anything, they were either equally responsible or he was maybe a little bit more responsible than she was. But they both deserve to be put away forever. Absolutely. I wonder why they weren't tried together. I think because of the fact it's a good question. I don't know for sure, but I think because of the fact that they were both pointing the finger at each other, you know that maybe it didn't make sense to try them together. But again, the whole legal world of how they make these decisions and how they're going to try somebody and sentencing and all that stuff. Is, Yeah, you need to go get your law degree, as we've talked about one hundred percent. Someone recently, a friend recently gave me a gift subscription to Masterclass. It was just like a free two week trial you get a law degree. It was one of the things there was like, I really need to not get a law degree, but just listen to some lectures on law. And it expired and I didn't get a chance to use it,

41:53 but I really would be curious to learn more about the law. It would definitely be helpful because I would still get used all the time about all the different like what's the difference between an indictment and arranment? And we talk about this all the time amongst ourselves. Yeah, we should probably just take a month off and study up, all right. So, both Erica and BJ filed multiple appeals after their sentencing on a number of different grounds, but they all their appeals were denied fortunately, So I'm assuming they have they had different judges. I think they. I don't know for sure, but I think they must have. Because her trial was moved to a different location. So yeah, I'm sure they had different judges, but I don't know how much leeway the judge in her trial had with her sentencing either, right, because she was convicted of first degree murder, and I'm assuming that that means mandatory life, but I don't know for sure. BJ and Erica actually remained married for another seven years after their convictions. I guess neither one got around to filing for divorce around until twenty ten. Did they have communication? Not that I know of, I don't, don't, I don't. Usually in that case, the judge is like, no communication. Yeah, I would hope so, But yeah, BJ finally filed for divorce in twenty ten and that was granted. BJ actually had his first parole hearing about a year ago in April of twenty twenty two, and parole was denied, but he is eligible for another hearing in twenty twenty four. Either way, even if he doesn't get parole, he is actually due to be released in twenty thirty,

43:25 although it could actually be sooner than that with good behavior. I just I don't think murder people should get time off for good behavior. No, I know, taking someone's life, you shouldn't have a chance of living your own No, but even if even if he doesn't get good behavior twenty thirty, that means he'll be fifty two, I think in twenty thirty. So getting out of jail at fifty two, that's just not cool. It's not justice in this case. Erica's first opportunity for parole will be next year, in twenty twenty four. That it's ridiculous. Yeah. In the book that I read for this case, which was Cruel Death by m. William Phelps, he says that he's gotten many letters from Erica's fellow inmates, claiming that even ten years into her stay, she would regularly brag about the killings and smile when talking about it, like it was her proudest moment. Disgusting, She is so disgusting. The officers who investigated the case have speculated that bj and Erica may have killed other people, but they've been unable to find any definitive connection between them and any other cases. Yeah, they actually wondered too, Like in their trip to South America, they thought that maybe they did some killing down there as well, but they weren't able to get really enough information from the authorities down there to you know, come up with any you know, really viable theories of what happened. So were there missing people in South America. I think they just speculated that that maybe they went down there to

44:58 you know, for a thrill, and maybe that was part of their you know, part of their thing that would get them a thrill. You know. That's yeah, yeah, the whole thing. It's just horrible. And that is all I've got in the case of bj and Erica Siffrett and the killing of Joshua Ford and Genie Crutchley, And again, you know, I know, we didn't have much information about the victims here. I feel really bad about that. I wish that I had more. But at the end of the day, Joshua and Genie seemed like really good people. They seemed like they were very much in love with each other and they were just out trying to have some fun and met up with the wrong couple, and it really is a tragic end for them. Well rest in peace, Joshua and Genie. That's that's horrible, And I hate that these two people have a chance at freedom. Oh God, I know, I hope they never do what happened in Memory Lane, that was the name of the scrapbook store, right, it is the name of the store. I am just going to go out on a limb and say it's probably close. But I know that I do know that Erica's mom and dad kept it running for some time, like I don't know if they thought that she was going to get out of jail and would be back to running it again, but I'm sure it went out of business probably soon after. Do they see her. Do they take private jets to Yes, they do. In fact, I don't know if they take private jets. I think they drive, but at least Erica's dad And this is at the time that William Phelps wrote the book, which is at least ten years ago now, but he would go down every weekend for visiting hours and a lifestyle he never thought, no, he would have Yeah,

46:31 no, I'm sure, And I think to this, you know, to this day, I think her parents think that she is innocent and was just you know, controlled by her husband and really was not responsible for what happened. Well, I think that might be true to a tiny extent, that she might not have killed she hadn't met b J and she was willing to do anything to keep him. It sounds like, right, well, that's a horrible story, but you did a nice job. Do you want to talk about William Phelps for a second. Well, you know, William Phelps is kind of a big He's a big name in the true crime community. He's written quite a few books. I've read a lot of books, a few of them. You know, I don't want to say anything bad about William Phelps because he is big. In this particular case, his book is really the only definitive kind of guide to what actually happened. I mean, there's a lot of newspaper articles and things like that, but nobody else that I've found has written a book on it. There was like a Dateline.

47:27 It wasn't even Dateline, it was like some offshoot of Dateline episode. There was a Forensic Files. But really without William Phelps, there wouldn't this story wouldn't be, you know, out there. I have listened to William phelps podcast Paper Ghost. He has other podcasts as well. He does a pretty good job, and he has a good advocate for victims. And if you're writing five to seven books a year, they're not all going to be Nobel Prize winners. Well, I didn't really say anything negative about his book. But sometimes the books I've read of his, they're a little it feels like they're a little rushed something. Yeah, I have read his books before Cheo, and they definitely seem like the rush. But I think he does a fairly good job. Yeah, and really in this case, I was actually surprised I hadn't heard more about this case and that you would think that this would be a case that there would be a bunch of books on and a bunch of movies and things like that. But I really did not know anything about it before. It's so so weird. I never understand what gets people's attention and what doesn't. Well, this one, you would think, like all American you know, young kids who had everything going in life and then decided to become you know, these horrible, vicious killers. Well I hate I'm not complimenting them, but they're not bad looking people. And he especially, he probably would be called a psychopath, but he's a good looking guy, so I'm imagining he has lots of prison letter tell Yeah. Probably all right, Well, well done as usual, thank you. We thought

48:59 it might be fun for us to talk about horror movies for a few minutes. It is the season, the season, so and we were both going to give just some movies that we liked. You are a horror MOVI. You're a big fan of horror movie. I've always been a big fan of horror movies. And I'm a scaredy pants and you like a good horror film. I do, I do, for sure, But I have a lot of rules, a lot of rules. Don't scare you during the horror film or where there's like a forty eight to seventy two hour window where you are not allowed to scare me at all, even a little bit. I'm a really jumpy person, just normally. Yeah. A lot of times around the house, I have my air pods in, I'm cleaning or doing whatever. I scare you unintentionally at least once every day or two. You do.

49:42 Yeah, And I don't know why I have such a fear factor, but I'm just a jumpy person. Yeah. So, do you want to give some of your favorite horror films? Yes, I've got a top five plus an honorable mention. Excited to hear. Most of mine are pretty much classics. I'm definitely more of a classic kind of guy. You are so psych Oh, I think it's like early sixties, maybe nineteen sixty or sixty one. I remember the first time I saw that movie. It just freaked me out. And I know it's old and it's kind of a little bit dated, but man, I always go back to that first time I saw it, like just I turned down the TV at like midnight or something and it was on and I was a kid, and I was like, oh my god, that movie just freaked me the hell out. Fun fact, I've never seen Psycho and refuse to. Yeah, I don't blame you. I have. I'm just afraid too, because I would conjure it every time I was in the shower. Yeah. Yeah, I thought the shower that we have now actually talked about a couple of weeks ago. There's no shower curtains.

50:37 Yeah, it'd be really hard to wall, like a big tile wall. Yeah. And my other classic from kind of the sixties is The Night of the Living Dead. Yeah that movie. Yeah, it just again if you watch it now, it's kind of cheesy. The special effects are horrible, but there are enough moments in that movie that are just, yeah, freak you out, especially if you're young and impressionable. And then you want me to keep going with mine, I keep going, all right. So Rosemary's Baby another classic, Yeah yeah, personal personal connection to that movie that we will not tell you about Alien, which is kind of a horror movie, kind of a sci fi movie, but to me, it's just amazing.

51:20 It's just such a great movie. And then Silence of the Lambs is my fifth one that might be a perfect movie, that is very close to such a perfect movie. Yeah, it's incredible. And then my honorable mention is Midsummer So it's a little bit oh yeah, you know, less of a classic, a newer, newer film, but very like unsettling, creepy, just and again it's it's a beautiful film, beautiful film. It's got like just this moodentous. It's a beautiful, beautiful The sin is here myself, I know. Yeah, to trust me, I know that I am horrible and cringe. All right, what do you got? Okay? And this is just me throwing some together. I'm more of a suspense type of person. I love you know. I thought you were more of a slasher type person. I thought because you like like Halloween and stuff like that, don't you just like Halleen More for the tradition. We don't watch it every year, but we've watched it many times. Okay, I have a movie called Alone that we saw a few years ago. Really just a suspenseful It's just a really good movie. I don't know what year. It was, like a low budget film with like little known. I'm not sure. I think we were just looking for something to watch one night with our kids.

52:30 And I really enjoyed that more than I thought. Mine are more recent. I like things that are a little more recent. Barbarian, which we saw last year, Long Mama, I thought that was a really really good one. This is okay, this is taking it back. This is the single scene from a movie that sticks with me. Sleep Away Camp. It's old, old, but there is a scene with a curling iron. If you've ever seen it, it's so disturbing. It's funny about some scenes like that just stick with you and you can't can't get them out of your head. Yeah, oh, I do have another old the Omen Oh yeah, I mean it's almost on my list. Yeah, I mean it's you know, as a kid, I remember watching it and just being horrified, and I think my mom like she was scared of those things, so a lot of him. She would be like, oh, you can't watch that. And if your mom I can't watch that, totally watch it. I've got to watch it. And it's it's horrifying and like the six sixty six in his scalp. Never forget that. So I think that's yeah, some of the some of the ways that people died in that film too, were just so like crazy and creepy and yeah, probably within the last ten years you and I have watched it. And one of the things I remember is that maye be so slow in the beginning. It took like at least an hour for anything to happen, So be patient. But that's a really good one that like you just don't look at a little kid saying with dark ware. If you see that movie and another more recent movie than I don't know if it's

54:04 a favorite, but if you haven't seen Hereditary, I think it's a really good Yeah right, yeah, really good. So we do on a we love all like a rainy, spooky night to just hang out and watch a scary movie. Good unless so right now, I mean, by the time you listen to this, it'll probably be mid October. But it's October first and it's eighty five here, not feel like October first, No, it does it, but the leaves are starting to turn it. It is quite beautiful. Yeah, October is domestic violence Awareness month, so we will be contributing our ad revenue and our Patreon revenue to a domestic violence cause. I don't know if we have decided yet. Probably by the time you're hearting this, we have decided. So we are very excited to be able to donate to worthy causes. Absolutely, and we really owe that to all of you, our listeners, So thanks so much for listening. Please follow us on social media. We're not going to li did, but just or send us an email at Lovemary Kill at gmail dot com. We'd love to hear from you, and if you would consider supporting us on Patreon, Patreon dot com, slash Love Mary Kill five dollars a month for bonus episodes here and their early access ad free and adfree until next time. Don't kill your husband, Don't kill your wife.