Lynlee and Ben Renick - Part 1

0:00 Hi, I'm Rich and I'm Tina. And 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 or Tina. Hi Rich coms savah, No, thank you. That's ok. I've exhausted my entire fresh vocabulary, so I go back to English.

0:40 Now, Okay, how was your trip? It was good. Long. I'm a little tired, so listeners, he will probably fall asleep in the midst of this podcast. I'm not sure how you're awake right now. I'm kind of running on fumes. So I flew home yesterday from France after being there for a week. And I did not really sleep a whole lot while I was there. And I can you say why? Well, yeah, it was well a the hotel I was in didn't have air conditioning, and it was like ninety five degrees, which was unseasonably warm, right, very hot, which is like thirty five for you if you're in the Celsius countries. And yeah, no air conditioning, and it was just super loud like outside of my hotel, and like I just yeah, I didn't sleep a whole lot, and you like your sleep, Rich likes he likes eight hours. I am an eight hour of sleep kind of guy. And then yeah, and then I flew home, you know, eight hour flight yesterday, So it was a long day. Went to bed pretty early, like nine o'clock. I stayed up as long as I could. That's crazy that you did that. But then I woke up at two thirty this morning.

1:44 So there was a Michigan game on last It was a yeah night game. I couldn't even watch the whole game. But then you woke up and you had some good news, right, Yes, yes, things you were a little you got a little nervous. First half did not go well, but the second half apparently went much better. But yeah, I woke up at two thirds. I tried to get back to sleep, and finally I gave up at like five and Bananas got up and I made a breakfast sandwich using one of the croissants that I brought home from Paris. Yeah, it's very good. Okay, I'm going to offend the Parisian listeners. I'm sure if you were there in Paris, because when I you brought several you got a lot of nice things home. That was very yummy. But the croissant, I was like, Costco is pretty good, So way to go Costco.

2:25 Yeah, because I really was like, if I had to choose right now, I would say the Costco. Well, to be fair, I know what you're saying, But to be fair, I did have to like cram that into my laptop bag and it was a day old by the time we got it, so it wasn't the ideal situation to eat a croissant. But but yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah, but the macarons were very good. Yeah they were good or delicious. Yeah. Well I've got a couple of snacks that I brought home too that I haven't shared with you yet. Okay, well let's get business and stuff first. Yeah, a couple of things we wanted to get to. So we wanted to talk about ads. So, as we talked about last week, we are starting to run ads. Unfortunately, we don't always have like control exactly where the ads are, and you know, sometimes it can be kind of jarring, it might interrupt you. We're doing our best to try to make the ads appear in a logical place, like at a break and things like that. But I apologize and appreciate people sticking with us even through you know, maybe some annoying ads. They're a little abrupt. Sometimes I have listened to podcasts that are much bigger than us that have the same issue too, Like, once you agree to have ads, sometimes you don't have a ton of control.

3:37 So we apologize for that. It's a challenge which is working on it his best. But yeah, we're going to try to like make like natural breaks and say Okay, we're gonna take a break now, and then hopefully an AD will appear there if it's going to appear. But we also do have our Patreon that we started, so if you are really annoyed by ads and you'd rather listen AD free, we would love it if you would you have an extra five dollars a month, but if you don't, we still of you just the same. Patreon dot com slash love Mary Kill. We have one episode available right now on our Patreon about the disappearance of Brittany Drexel, And this week we're going to have a little We're trying something new, an episode called Cookies and Crime or Crumbs. We're not sure where we're going with it yet, but it's just going to be probably like a fifteen to twenty minutes, and I am going to every at least once a month, I will make a new cookie for rich and you will. I love this idea.

4:30 I love this idea because they're probably like, oh great, we don't get a cookie. But yeah, I'll try. I'll try some new recipes because I really do need to get out of my comfort zone because I have like ten recipes that I make all the time. But I'm going to try some new things. Maybe I am excited about that. Yeah. Do you see what I'm wearing today? I do. It's a very cool necklace. My friend, our friend Francie is an artist and she creates these amazingly beautiful pieces. She finds all these really cool stones, like these yellow earrings that I'm wearing with this pretty yellow stone and the necklace is, uh, it's too cool for me because it's it's just it's just it's a snake and you said that it goes. Yeah, but please go check out Francis. She has an Etsy site. Her shop is called Peach Mountain Designs and it's just really cool, interesting stuff that you're not going to see anywhere else. The holidays are coming and I think any lady would be happy to get something from Francy shop. It's really cool, unique and one of a kind. And I talked to Francy and she is willing to give everyone a ten percent discount on her shop. JOSSI said it was this week until through October. Through the end of October of twenty twenty three, she is offering a ten percent discount, So use the code kill ten kill ten kill ten. Yeah, please go check out her shop because your stuff is it's really cool and really unique and I'm we're lucky to call her a friend and two of our she

6:04 made some drawings for us. Oh yeah, they're so I mean, she's super talent. I don't think she's drawing as much as she used to by focusing on the jewelry now pretty much. But yeah, she gets like these really cool stones and she just makes really cool things out of them. But uh, yeah, these drawings, I treasure them. They're really special. Yeah. Yeah, so Peach Mountain Designs on Etsy. Yeah, this is not sponsored. This is just a friend of me. I just think you guys would really like her stuff because it's really cool, awesome. All right, So I do have a couple of snacks for you from Paris. But before we get to that, I thought I would share with you my observations about Paris. Well, you brought me more snacks because he literally brought like cookies, he would you brought a ton of Yeah, these are more like off the shelf kind of things you'll see in a minute. But I thought I would share, Like, when I was there, there were some things that I really liked about France and some things that kind of annoyed me, and I thought I would share those. Okay, France, these are the big things, Like everybody knows that the museums and the culture and the wine and all that stuff is amazing, So these are more just my own little thing. So first of all, things I like. One is that almost all the toilets have two buttons, a big button and a little button, which I think is very cool. So the little button is you know, yeah, some toilets here have that. Some do, but they're almost every toilet does. Okay, so you can feel good about like pressing the little button and you feel like you're more efficient all right too, But so they're not this is not in order, okay, Okay. Two is lunches in Paris, so when you take a lunch at work, but this is still

7:35 you like, yeah, okay, minimum of an hour for lunch, typically an hour and a half to two hours for lunch, and that's like you just take that time for lunch here, like we work through lunch all the time. But there, no, you don't do that. So that's pretty cool. Is your work day longer then or you still again, I don't know. When you're traveling, your workday is pretty well. Yeah that that whole lunch thing didn't apply last week because we were in meetings all week. But normally you take an hour and a half to two hours, okay, so that's pretty cool. Three is just like everything has character there, like all the people, all the places. There's no like you know, strip malls that all look alike. It's just everything is unique. Everybody is just a character. I mean, it's just really like very cool. And last, but not least, is the people. So I think the people of France get kind of a bad rap, like there's sort of this reputation that they're like snobby and arrogant and not true, not true at all. Maybe I encountered maybe a couple of people that were a little bit like just Kurt, maybe not rude, slightly rude, but most people buying large were super friendly and super fun. And the people I work with really fun, like I'm not going to tell stories. You told me one story that I'm not going to go into that, but they like to have fun. They're a really fun group of people. So do you think that you got any new listeners? Did you talk to people are like, hey, well, they are all fascinated by what we do. I think fascinated because they're like it's

9:09 just so weird to them. But everyone is really intrigued. We do have people in France that are listening, but not as many as like our Denmark friends or Great Britain and Australia. We have a lot of listeners there. Well, we might have some new ones this week, So shout out to all of you in France. All right, the things that I didn't like that kind of annoyed me. Do you think are you asking them to change these things? And maybe a couple of them? Yeah, okay, all right. So one is the streets. Like the layout of the streets, it looks like you know, the game pick Up Sticks. Yeah, it looks like somebody threw down a bunch of pickup sticks and then drew a map based on that. Like it's just getting from one place to another. It's so hard. Well, I think are in Arbor is also kind of hard to get out. It's like it's like a grid, right, It's like, oh, yeah, go two blocks that way and then two blocks that way. Now this is like it's like all triangles and just crazy. It's a crazy layout. Yeah. The air conditioning situation, we talked about it already. Even the places that have air conditioning, it's like not quite.

10:09 I do worry about Europe a little bit with climate change and air conditioning because I've heard it is kind of it's it's a major issue. I felt like I had a layer of sweat on me all week, all week long. So and you're not really a sweater I'm really not, no, all right. The third one is that people are skinny there. And the reason I don't like that is because it made me feel very self conscious. I think here in the States, I feel like I kind of blend in. I'm like, yeah, pretty average, you're just a little chubby, but yeah, but over there, yeah, I just I stood out well you're probably because you're so handsome. You are a handsome devil. Yeah. Yeah's and then the last of one last thing. Some people in France they make a noise with their mouth. It really annoys me. It's like it kind of sounds like a farting noise. It's like it's like, is it like when when I would be like, ah, like that? It's kind of I mean like I don't know or something like that, like like I just don't like that. Okay, well maybe they can work on that point that when I think they could work on all right, without further ado, let me give you your snacks. Okay, oh they're buried underneath. So you know how, I like a good flavor of potato chips that you can't find anywhere else. So I bought two bags of lace potato chips. One is poulet roalti, which translates roughly to roast chicken flavor. Oh okay, and then the other one is cheeseburger, which I believe translates to cheeseburger flavor. Are you sure that might be a stress. Yeah. So I thought it would

11:39 be really interesting to try these. And these were in my suitcase and somehow they got opened during the flight. Oh that's funny. Yeah. So are they kind of smitherines? Uh No, not really. I think they maintain they they're mostly intact. So what chicken potato chip sounds really weird to me. But some kind of chicken and a biscuit you know that cracker? Yeah those are yum. We don't really buy those, but those are yummy. Yeah. Yeah, Okay, we're gonna take a break and try to take a quick break. We'll try them yet. Okay, Well, your reaction to the roast chicken lays was something I've never seen before. I don't I have not had that reaction to the food very often. I'll just describe it.

12:24 You just basically screamed and ran out of the room and said, well, we didn't have any napkins or tissue in the room to spit it out into. It was horrible. I did not care for the roast chicken ones either. Maybe for fun, I could mail them to someone. If someone wants to try to them, I could. I could mail them to Those are pretty gross. It's like you'd have to try it to like because it doesn't have that like bull yanni taste that a chicken and a biscuit does. It's I don't know what. I can't even describe it. Tastes like like rotten chicken or taste horrible cheeseburger. Not bad cheeseburger ones, just kind of taste like catch up and mustard to me. Yeah, but yeah, that was fun. Thank you for bringing those back. It was definitely fun to try some different things. I think we might have had cheeseburger in the US, but I haven't seen them recently. We should if we don't. Wow, all right, well we went through a lot messing around a lot, I know. No, sorry a little bit long here in the opening, but we Yeah, let's get into today's case. If you're ready, I'm ready, all right, Are you ready? Are you okay? Okay, I'm pretty good. Got to be exhausted, okay, go ahead. In the world of snake breeding, Ben Rennick was a rock star known worldwide among the rare, reptile and snake community. He was one of the first people in the world to successfully breed green anacondas in captivity. At one time, he had the only female te positive albino green anaconda in the world. What's t positive mean. It's the presence of an enzyme called tie thairosanase, which

13:54 basically I'm not I am no expert on this at all, but you know, an albino on anacon implies that it doesn't have any pigment, but this enzyme gives it some sort of pigment. So it's a albino. But it's not white. It's like a greenish color type of thing, or a yellowish green color. But stop me if you're going to get into this, I'm curious about how much a snake like that would cost, Like how much get into a lot of that. Yeah, but I will say right now that green anacondas are the largest, heaviest and the second longest snake in the world, like all BoA's. It's a non venomous constrictor and so yeah, really big, big snake, very powerful. Yes, I was going to go into a little bit of this later, but I will say, like in terms of like the size, they're like they can be like two hundred pounds or more, so really heavy. And you asked about the price some of these, like Ben Rennick, the one he had when it was really rare, he was able to sell the babies for up to twenty five thousand dollars a pair. It's a super valuable. His specialty was a species of snake called the ball python. They're a non venomous species that originates from Africa.

15:03 The name ball python comes from the animal's tendency to curl into a ball when it's stressed or frightened. Ben was able to produce many ball pythons and other snakes that were incredibly rare and one of a kind. By twenty seventeen, Ben was twenty nine years old and had a collection of somewhere between twenty five hundred and three thousand ball pythons, valued at a total of somewhere between one and two million dollars. But on June eighth, twenty seventeen, Ben was murdered in the building where he kept most of his snakes. It wasn't a snake that killed Ben, as the police and paramedics who showed up at the scene first thought, But it must have been someone incredibly cold blooded who shot him eight times, including the final two shots in the back of his head as he lay on the concrete floor. So the question is was it a business deal gone wrong, a conflict with his brother over their inheritance, or maybe a wife killing her husband for money, or possibly an animal rights activist who was opposed to Ben keeping all those snakes in captivity. I actually watched an episode of forty eight Hours, I believe on Thish. Oh yeah, did you see that? Yes? I did? Okay, yeah, So I am slightly familiar with the case. You said, inheritance from the from his parents or yes, okay, I'll get into all that. Okay, let's talk about Ben's background. So, Ben and his older brother Sam grew up on a seventy two acre farm in Montgomery, Montgomery County, Missouri, about seventy five miles west of Saint Louis and fifty miles east of Columbia,

16:36 Missouri. Sam and Ben were close growing up, not surprising given their rural upbringing and not having many nearby neighbors. They spent a lot of time outside, playing, fishing, hiking, catching snakes, which is where Ben's love of snakes got its start. In many ways, it was an idyllic upbringing, but it was also marred by sadness. When Sam was six and Ben was four, their mother was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer. I'm not sure how you have this conversation with four and your six year old kids. But Frank sat them down and essentially told them that their mother was going to die. But Kim Rennick was a fighter. She battled her cancer for the next fifteen years, going through several rounds of heavy chemotherapy and other procedures, at one point spending an entire year at the Mayo Clinic while the boys stayed at a friend's house. She finally passed away at home in two thousand and eight. Frank was devoted to Kim. He had put his heart and soul into taking care of her, and he was really broken when she finally died.

17:38 Frank ran a natural and organic pet food and snack company, but in June of twenty twelve, he was indicted on allegations of defrauding investors of over seven million dollars. Facing ten or more years in prison and the prospect of losing the family farm, Frank instead chose to end his life on Father's Day in twenty twelve. Here's what I talked to Ben's brother Sam, and here's what he had to say about their dad's suicide. And we were to lose our everything he had. He killed himself as a sacrifice to my brother Andy, and if he hadn't, we would have lost everything. So the farm was really special to them, right, It was just this huge farm they grew up on, and so it's super sad that he did that, but he did it so that he could save the farm for his kids. So Sam now is alone because his brother died and both his parents. Well that's sad, yeah, really very sad. At the time of Frank's suicide, Ben was twenty four years old and Sam was twenty six. The two brothers loved each other, but in many ways they were opposites. While Sam was social, outgoing and fun, Ben was more quiet, serious and introverted, focused and driven. Ben had turned his hobby of collecting snakes and other reptiles into a valuable business. The terms of their father's will were a bit complicated, but what essentially ended up happening was an arrangement where Ben took ownership of the property while Sam took control of most of the money and the mortgage,

19:14 and so the brothers had to work together to keep the farm going. The farm was a little bit of a money pit, and while Ben's snakes were valuable, there wasn't a lot of money coming in at this point, and so Sam had to pump a lot of money over three hundred thousand dollars by his estimation into maintenance and upkeep of the property. How big was the farm fifty four acres, I believe so this arrangement, coupled with the fact that the two brothers are so different in so many ways, definitely caused conflicts between them, and I believe there were periods of time when they didn't really hang out or talk much, even though they both lived in separate houses on the same farm. In addition to being an expert snake breeder, Ben was also a talented drummer. He played in a local heavy metal band while he was in his early twenties. Another member of the band had a girlfriend, Lindley Gallatin, who would sometimes hang out during the band's rehearsals. Ben and Lindley got to know each other a little bit at that time, although nothing romantic developed until years later. What do you think of Ben so far? And he sounds like a young guy trying to figure out things, and it's just interesting. He had this passion for snakes, and he asked how did he get the exotic snakes? Do you know I don't really know for sure.

20:30 I think a lot of them they had to be imported originally because they that type of snake comes from just specific countries in Africa. But then he reread them after that, so I assume he just kind of kept reading them. Maybe I'll get into this. I'm curious how the snakes are cared for and like if you have one of them, like where do you keep it? And because they're so large, and yeah, I'll talk about that a little bit. It's a little bit. Yeah, it's interesting, but let's for now, let's talk about Lindley. So. Lindley Gallatin grew up in the small town of Wellsville, Missouri, about fifteen miles north of the Rennicks Farm. Her dad, Lyndall, was an electrician and her mom, Brenda, was a nurse and social worker, and she had an older sister, April.

21:11 Linley had a number of health issues growing up. She struggled with migraines, eating disorders, and situational depression, but she still managed to stay active as a cheerleader, making the All American team one year and getting to travel to Florida for nationals. She was tiny, barely over five feet tall and around one hundred pounds A couple weeks after she graduated from high school in two thousand and six, she moved to Jefferson City, Missouri, a little over an hour away, to live with her sister, and there she started attending school to become a massage therapist. She liked the idea of being a massage therapist because she was very social. She liked being around people, and she liked helping and taking care of people, similar to her mother, who was a nurse. Around the end of two thousand and six, she started dating a guy named Josh Hake. In mar Arch of two thousand seven, right after she turned nineteen, and the day before she was scheduled to take her massage board exam, she found out she was pregnant. Josh, who was living a couple hours away in Saint Louis at the time, was excited, but a couple months later, he was involved in a serious car accident while he was vacationing at Lake of Ozark's with some friends. Josh had been drinking and there were people seriously injured in the accident, and he ended up getting sentenced to about ten years in prison. So Linley quickly lost touch with him, and she became a single mother when her baby boy, Matthew, was born in January of two thousand and eight. Shortly after she had Matthew, she started dating a guy named Michael Humphrey. She had met Michael a couple

22:44 of years earlier. After posting pictures of her baby, she and Michael started messaging online and soon started dating. It wasn't a healthy relationship though. Humphrey had problems with drugs, both doing them and selling them, and Linley ended up getting a dick did to prescription painkillers. It was a toxic relationship that was on again off again for about a year. One day in fall of twenty ten, Linley went to work at the spa that she was working at in Columbia, Missouri, and she suddenly realized that she had no memory of dropping her son off at daycare and no memory of driving into work. It freaked her out and she realized that she had to get off the painkillers and to get out of her relationship with Michael, who she was living with at this point. She called her dad that day and she told him everything, and after work, she grabbed what she could from her in Michael's apartment and she and Matthew or Mattie as she often called him, moved in with her dad. She quit the Painkiller's Cold Turkey starting that day. During that time, Ben Rennick, who remember she had met while she was in high school dating a bandmate of Ben's, messaged her on Facebook and the two started chatting, catching up on things since they'd last seen each other, and they hit it off. Lindley liked that Ben was the oppid of Michael. He was driven, motivated, and seemed to have his act together. He was also respectful, kind and compassionate, and he was great with her son, Matthew.

24:11 Lindley and Ben both liked weird movies, like horror movies, and they had similar taste in music. They both liked to read, and so they had some things in common as well. After just a couple months of dating, Lindley was considering a move to Saint Louis to live with a friend, and Ben said, why don't you move in with me. They decided to have a sleepover one night at the farm with Matthew there as sort of a trial. Ben had made up the spare room in the house as a bedroom for Matthew, and he made himself part of Matthew's bedtime routine, which I think really helped win Linley over, and so she and Maddie ended up moving in soon afterwards. They had only been dating for two or three months at that point, and then it was only another month or so after Lindley moved in that they found out that she was expecting. In twenty twelve, Lindley gave birth to a daughter, Amelia, also known as Emma. So twenty twelve started out good, but then Ben's dad, Frank, got indicted and subsequently killed himself as I talked about earlier, and then Lindley's mother, who had she had been very close to, also passed away that year. At the time that Frank died, Ben was into the reptile breeding, but it was still more of a hobby than a business. At that point, he and Sam were both working for their dad's pet food business as a source of income. With Frank gone and the company gone, Ben had to figure out what was next for him. He didn't really know what he wanted to do with his life other than reptile breeding. He had already made some money at it, and so he decided to scale it up as a real business and

25:42 turn it into a full time thing. All right, So I do have some more facts about the reptile business that I'll share with you now. So I am not a fan of snakes, Like snakes are horrifying to me. I am not a big fan of some people are like I'm not as scared of inside and spiders as I am of snakes. If I had to choose between a snake and a big like spider tarantula type of thing, I would go for the snake. But I don't like either of the snake. Yes, if I had to hold one or the other, I would like if you were in fear factor, yeah, if I had a choice, But but I yeah, given a choice, I wouldn't do. I guess if if anyone remembers fear factor, like you'd have to be in like this big tank and then they would put like a thousand spiders on you. Guess if I had to choose between a thousand spiders and one one ball python, I would choose the one ball python. But so Ben didn't do anything to defang any of the snakes they were No, I mean, these are not the type of snakes they had were constrictors. So they weren't like the kind of like they weren't poisonous or anything like that. So they're the kind of snakes they kill you by squeezing you to death, not by biting you. But still, you know, two hundred pounds snake. That's kind could be a little scary. Absolutely so snake. It was at the time a very niche industry, but Ben made a name for himself really early on. He was able to acquire some snakes that were relatively rare, and then he used genetics to create some truly first of their kind snakes. Did you really Yeah,

27:15 I mean he was really on the forefront of, like, you know, breeding these snakes. It's pretty pretty amazing. I don't know where he learned it. I was going to ask, did you go to school for that? I don't think so. I don't really know how he learned all this, but not know how you would go about engineering a snake. Yeah. So his business grew pretty quickly to the point where he needed help. He had a friend who helped him part time, but that friend eventually left to join the military. He hired someone else, but they only lasted a couple of days. Since Lindley by this point had gotten comfortable handling the snakes, Ben asked her if she if she would help out, and she agreed. Eventually, she quit her job as a massage therapist and worked with Ben full time. Her responsibilities gradually increased, and the couple developed a division of labor where Lindley took on more of the public facing responsibilities, like she would manage their participation at reptile shows. She would interact with the public at these shows while Ben met with the more serious potential business partners and buyers. Linley also handled media relations that she played a key role in establishing the online presence of the business by helping to create YouTube videos and a website. So now I thought i was going to talk about it earlier, but now I'm really going to talk about the snake breeding industry. I don't have more recent numbers, but in two thousand and nine, shortly before Ben turned Runneck Reptiles into a full time business, the US reptile industry, including businesses that sell, provide services for, and manufacture products for reptiles, accounted for annual revenues of between

28:47 one and one point four billion dollars. The vast majority of reptile businesses were small, family run businesses. In the nineteen nineties and two thousands, the US reptile industry experienced us significant shift toward domestic captive breeding. According to a report by the economic consulting firm Georgetown Economic Services, quote, breeders have transformed snake husbandry from a hobby to a viable profession through their successful cultivation of uniquely colored snakes called morphs. So this was what Ben really specialized in. Not everyone is a big fan of the reptile industry, though. A couple of years ago, a group called World Animal Protection released a documentary that claims the global reptile trade is a ticking time bomb for infectious and deadly diseases. Ninety nine percent of all ball python global imports originate from three West African countries, Togo, Benin, and Ghana. The group also claims that conditions provided by breeders don't meet minimum recommended care standards. In captivity, ball pythons are kept in spaces much smaller than their natural habitats allow. They're basically kept in small, all plastic drawers. So I've seen pictures of Ben's facility that he kept the snakes in and we'll post a picture online. But it's basically like row after row of shelving with plastic drawers containing the snakes. So these two hundred pounds snakes are just kept in a little drawer. I think the bigger ones maybe are kept in a different place, but the kind of the regular sized

30:21 snakes, Yeah, they're kept in like a drawer. It doesn't seem like how big the drawer is. I mean they're not that big. They're probably yeah, a couple couple feet wide, maybe in a foot or two deep. And do they ever get to Yeah, I think that's it. I think they just live in those Oh. I don't love that. I know it seems a little cruel kind of Yeah. Yeah. How many households in the US do you think own pet reptiles? Have no idea like two percent? Oh, I don't have a percent. I just have a number somewhere between four point five and four point seven million households in the US owned are crazy? They maybe all right, that's probably a good time to take a quick break. I can wash my mouth out from that. I was gonna say, you could have some more of those chips, all right, We'll be right back. So apparently Our daughter really liked the roast chicken potato chips.

31:26 She is an interesting palette. She's weird. To leave it at that, she's weird. She can hear you. She's right, I know, all right. Well, back to the story. So we were talking about the reptile industry. Ben had, you know, grown this over time from a hobby into an actual viable business. Lindley had started working full time on the business. Over time, Rennick Reptiles essentially became Ben and Lindley's life. In the morning, Lindley would get the kids ready for daycare or school. Then Ben and Lindley would work with the snakes or on the business side of things. They'd take a break to have lunch together. In the afternoon, Linley would go pick up the kids. The family would have dinner together, and then it was back to work after that. A few months after Amelia was born, the couple decided it would be good to have a weekly date night, and so they found a regular babysitter and set aside one night a week to check out from the snake business. That was good, but over time tensions started growing between the couple. After being together for three or four years, they finally got married, but Linley felt like Ben was starting to treat her more like an employee than a spouse. She also Linley out she was kidding, you're lovely. She also felt like Ben didn't think that she was contributing to the family financially, and so she ended up getting her massage therapy license again after it had lapsed, and she went to work for her old boss at a spa called River Song. She quickly built up her client base and after about six months, she and Ben talked about the possibility of

32:58 her opening her own spa. It had been a dream of hers, and so Ben told her that she should write up a business plan and they would take it to their financial advisor. If their advisor felt like it was a solid plan, they would go forward with it. So Linley put together a business plan. They met with their financial advisor, who said it was a good plan except for some of the financial projections being off. But Linley was super excited because she got the go ahead. But then she later claimed that in the car returning from that meeting, Ben said to her, well, if I had known that Chuck the financial advisor would say yes, I would never have encouraged you to do this in the first place. So Linley said that she was hurt thinking that Ben had been in support, but now she believed he was only encouraging her to come up with a plan because he didn't believe that she could really do it. Keep in mind, this is all Linley. You know her story after the fact. So well, Linley, at this time, she's like twenty five ish, I think around there, Okay, yeah, maybe a little younger. Even so, she did move forward and they opened the spa called Essensia. It opened shortly after Mother's Day of twenty sixteen in Columbia in a trendy village called Cherry Hill. Linley was more comfortable with the people side of things, but less so on the business and the operations side of things, and so she hired a woman named Ashley Shaw as the office manager of Essensia. Lindley and Ashley had met they had worked together at the River Song Spa. Ashley would handle the front desk duties.

34:30 She would take payments, order supplies, do inventory, help with the finances. Linley claimed that she was in demand as a masseuse by many regular clients, which may be the case, but I think that It's also true that Ashley had a more dominant personality than Lindley, and Lindley was happy to let Ashley take control of most aspects of the business. Unfortunately, the SPA was underwater financially from the beginning. Construction costs had run over by thirty thousand dollars, which took away any buffer they might have had while getting the business off the ground. They got behind on bills and Ben would have to pump more money into the SPA business using the proceeds from selling snakes. By twenty seventeen, the stress in Ben and Lindley's marriage was growing along with the financial troubles at the SPA. In March, they exchanged messages, with Ben saying quote, we need to really put our heads together and figure everything out, because we both know what's going to happen if we don't make a few drastic changes. Linley replied, quote, should we call it quits with the SPA.

35:34 I'm not angry or being sarcastic. I am legitimately asking. I understand very much the reality of this and honestly want to know what we need to do. Ben responded, the reality is right now, your spa can't keep at the path. It's going right now. We've had the talk, and going into April we are still losing one thousand dollars a week to keep it open. The overall financial picture for the couple started looking up in twenty seventeen as Ben entered into an agreement to sell his entire ball python collection around twenty five hundred or three thousand snakes altogether, to an NHL goalie named Robin Lenner who played for the Buffalo Sabers. Although Ben had valued the collection at one point nine million dollars, the negotiated price that he and Lennar agreed on was one point two million. Lennar made a down payment of it was either one hundred thousand dollars or it might have been two hundred thousand dollars. I've read.

36:28 I've read two different accounts there. But he put it down payment down and then the promise was that he would pay two hundred thousand dollars every quarter every three months, while Ben continued to keep the snakes at the facility and breed them on behalf of Lennard. Why did he want all those snakes? I have no idea. The goalie, he sounds like a little bit of a character he later had. He had he had some issues we'll talk about in a little bit, but I guess he just loved snakes. What it seems like if Ben were to sell them individually, he would have probably been able to make a lot more money. Yeah, but you know, if somebody comes and offers you like one point two million dollars for everything, you know, that's pretty got to be pretty tempting, especially if you're having some financial challenges. It's not clear to me whether Ben was thinking about getting out of the business by selling his entire collection or if he was just planning to get a big payout and then kind of start over. In any case, though Leonard he turned out to be kind of flaky. He didn't make the payments as promised. On the day that Ben was murdered, he sent a message to Lindley saying, quote, Robin is a lot of talk and not a lot of showing me anything unquote. About a year after Ben's death, Leonard actually declared bankruptcy, saying that he had liabilities of over fifty million dollars, and then he went into rehab to address substance abuse issues as well.

37:47 So it sounds like he had a lot of issues and I think he would just like buy stuff, snakes and stuff. Yeah. Yeah, so Ben never relinquished the snakes. No, no, he never. He still had the snakes at the time of his death. Yeah. Linley had grown close to her office manager, Ashley, and she would confide in her and vent to her about the problems in her marriage. Linley also started cheating on Ben with other men. First, it was with someone she had previously had a relationship with. She and this other guy were both married, and she claims that they only hooked up once while she was married to Ben. But then Linley started an ongoing relationship with a guy named Eric Bremer, who was a marketing director at the agency that Linley used to promote the SPA. This affair went on for the first half of twenty seventeen, with the two sometimes having sex at the SPA. It was complicated, though, because they also had a business relationship and Linley felt like Eric was falling short with his marketing duties.

38:49 Linley also signed up for the website Ashley Madison shortly before Ben was killed. Linley did, yeah, I know, we've talked about Ashley Madison a few times lately if you're not aware, it's the website that hooks people up to have affairs. Their motto is life is short, Have an affair. But yeah, I guess Lindley and her friend Ashley Shaw both decided let's do this and you know, spice up our lives a little bit interesting. Yeah, and I think Lindley's friend Ashley also thought that it would be a good distraction from some of the drama that was happening with her other boyfriend with Eric. On Ashley Madison, Lindley met a guy named Brandon Blackwell and started seeing him even though she was still also seeing Eric Bremer and still married to Ben.

39:37 Of course, who didn't know about any of this. How does she do it only twenty four hours in the day. Yeah. Monogamy was apparently very important to Ben, as it is to a lot of married people. Of course, had he found out about the affairs, I think the marriage would surely have ended. So that's the backdrop leading up to Ben's murder on June eight, twenty seventeen. Sounds like a lot of stress between the couple, Yes, definitely. Lindley's spa was losing a thousand dollars a week. She's having multiple affairs with different guys. Ben has a big deal in the works, right with this hockey goalie, but it seems like the buyer might be flaking out. The marriage is obviously struggling, even if none of Ben's family or friends really realized it at the time. All right, let's go through the timeline of the day that Ben was killed. So Lindley is allegedly at the spa all day, which is about a forty five minute drive from the farm. At three forty five, Ben texts Linley asking if she is still good to pick up the kids or if he needs to. Twenty minutes later, at four o six pm, a message comes back from Lindley saying I need you to I'm not going to be able to leave right now.

40:50 There's no reply from Ben. At five thirteen, Lindley is apparently about to leave the spa and head home, and she messages Ben quote, Hey, I'll need to stop and get gas then home. Oh so I'm just gonna stay right there, red flag. Hey love Like that's you know, yeah, that's not really how well we do sometimes, but I'm feeling I'm yeah, okay, just put a pin in that one, and then her text continues, I'll text Katherine, which was their babysitter. It was a date night that they had planned for Ben and Linley and let her know to come at five forty five so you don't have to wait with her and the kids for me. Right after that, at five fifteen, Linley texts the sitter, Katherine, saying that she's running a little late and asking her to come a bit later than originally planned. At five forty five, Linley receives a call from the kids school saying that the kids haven't been picked up yet.

41:45 Right after that, she tries calling Ben, both on his business line and on his cell phone. Not getting an answer, she messages him quote, so I just got a call from the school that Maddie and Emma are still there. Are you on your way? At five, she messages him again, at least call me back, please. I called Catherine and told her to hold off on coming. Another call to Ben's cell phone a minute later, and then another message, if you're on the phone with Robin, call him back and call me. Seven minutes later, at five fifty nine pm, she tried calling Ben again on his business number and his cell number, and then at six zho one pm another message starting to worry a little love, please call me back. At six sixteen pm she tries calling Ben one last time. So all these messages, I'm not sure if she was texting and driving, but it's like a forty five minute drive from the spa and then having to you know, going to pick up the kids as well, So it was probably like all during that hour, you know, from the time she left the spa until she actually got back to the farm. So she did arrive back on the farm after picking up the kids probably around six twenty five pm. Do you know how old the kids are? Yeah?

42:57 I think Matthew was nine at this time and Amelia was five, Okay, so they weren't like in daycare. They were think, yeah, it was some type of school and so yeah, all that all those messages, so basically to sum it up really quick before she gets back to the farm. So Ben messaged her at three forty five. That was the last we've heard from Ben. He basically messaged her saying are you good to pick up the kids? And then all the other messages are really from her to Ben, like you know, where are you? All that kind of thing until the school calls her and says, hey, no one's no one's picked up the kids. So at three forty five, the last text we have from Ben he was he was alive. He was alive, and we don't have any question as to whether that was him that sent the restaurant okay, And the reply back to Ben was twenty minutes later and he never replied to that, so he was alive at three forty five. He got another message at four h six that he didn't reply to all right, So all that to say.

43:54 She arrived at the farm with the kids around six twenty five. She told the kids to wait in car because she later said that she had a bad feeling. After not getting any replies from Ben, she walked into the snake facility and she found Ben lying face down on the floor in a pool of blood. Hysterically, she called Ben's brother, Sam, who also lives in one of the houses on the farm. Sam rushed over and went in while Lindley called nine one one. Sam turned his brother over and could tell right away that he was dead because his head was essentially caved in. Oh Sam's first thought was that it must have been a snake maybe Ben's two hundred pound anaconda had crushed his skull. Oh god. When police arrived, they were freaked out. They were assuming that there was a giant killer snake on the loose somewhere. Here's a short bodycam clip of them talking to Lindley.

44:46 You can hear how hysterical she is as they're trying to get answers about the snake situation. No building an anaconda. I know it's critical right now. We need to make sure nobody else gets hurt. So she's basically saying the anaconda is down in the basement, but there. They are obviously freaked out. They entered the facility with their guns drawn ready to shoot. Here's another short clip from the bodycam footage where you can hear how concerned they are about the snake situation. Well, something got him. Paramedic center is a bike mark blom So if they're just snake los in here, so watch your a.

45:30 Do we have anybody we could call them? Deal with an anaconda. I'm gonna go. We'll see you. Sorry. That's it's horrible, but it is a little bit we could call. I don't blame them one bit. I mean it's pretty scary. Snakes all over the place, Yeah, for sure. So how big is the ball python? The ball pythons are not nearly They're not like the anaconda. They're like six feet maybe in length. Three to five pounds I think is what I read. So they're they're relatively tight compared to the anaconda. And there's only one anaconda as far as I know, he only had the one anaconda. Like I said, he kept it. They kept it in the basement. I don't know what type of enclosure it was in, but yeah, I think they just had the one anaconda. Okay, so I'm dumb and earlier when you were talking about the snakes in the drawers, I was picturing the drawers. My bad, I shouldn't explained that. Yeah. Yeah, the snakes in the drawers were much smaller. Still, it still seems like not the best place to live, if you're right, but it's it's kind of Yes, the drawer would be a little more comfortable, exactly. Yes, So the police there said that he had a bite mark. Yeah, I think that was incorrect.

46:39 I think the EMT. So the EMT actually went in. She was not scared of snakes. She had grown up around snakes like apparently, and she was like, I'll go in, and she went in. I think she told them that he had a bite mark, but I don't think she knew for sure. Okay, So once they finally did get the nerve to go in, it didn't take them long to figure out that Ben hadn't been killed by a snake at all. In fact, he had been shot eight times in the back, eight times mostly in the back and in the back of the head. And I think that's why it appeared like his skull was kind of crushed or his head was crushed a little bit, is because the last at least one, maybe two shots were basically in the back of his head while he was laying on the concrete floor. So you can imagine that would cause a lot of damage to one's skull. Yeah, did they have guns on the premises, I don't know for sure. I never saw any mention of guns or anything like that. I'm guessing living on a farm like that, maybe you do have some firearms, but I'd never saw anything about it.

47:44 So the first person that came under suspicion for Ben's death was his older brother Sam. When Lindley was interviewed by detectives the morning after his death. She pointed the finger at Sam, saying that he had a motive because he and his brother's finances were intertwined and they had conflicts relating to money and ownership of the farm. Well, Linley, I remember you saying, she's like this tiny, one hundred pound girl woman, and the police aren't going to suspect her initially, I'm guessing probably not right. Also, the EMT at the scene, who we talked about a little bit, but this was a woman named Diana Wassman. She told detectives that she thought that Sam may have had something to do with the murder, and also that he had said some questionable things while he was while she was on the scene, for example, that's right, I'm the brother murderer. So the police brought Sam. She told police that Sam had said something like that's right, I'm the brother murderer, like right after his death. Yeah, when she was on the scene and Sam was on the scene, I asked him about that. And I'll talk about that in a minute and play a clip of what he actually said about that. But before we get to that, the police brought Sam in for an interrogation and they asked him flat out whether he killed his brother.

48:59 And here's a short clip from that interrogation. Sam, did you have anything anything? No, I can't, no answered, I'm markable mind around all this stuff. I know you could ask you sort of questions. I know you would have my brother. So Sam was very cooperative with the police. He agreed to get tested for gunpowder residue and to take a lie detector test. He gave detectives his shirt to be tested, his phone, his emails. He was later confirmed to be at work at the time of Ben's murder, and so pretty quickly he was cleared as a serious suspect. But I did when I spoke to Sam, I asked him about the remarks that he supposedly made the night of Ben's murder, because it was kind of weird.

49:52 They talked about it on dateline, like why would he say, oh, yeah, I'm the brother murderer according to him. The em he Wassman. She had a history with the Rennick family, and Sam did not mince words about her. She didn't like my father. She worked with my father in the past. He fired her. She's a piece of Montgomery White trash and she had to be flustered. She suggested something that I made it involved in the murder to not go anywhere, and I made a like a snapback comment like, yeah, I'm the person who murdered reviews sarcastically. I was in a staff shock. I just slipped my brother over in his head was destroyed.

50:35 Okay, that makes more sense. He was just exasperated and that's kind of small town life. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Another thing investigators considered was that maybe Ben's murder was the result of a business deal gone bad. After all, he had over a million dollars worth of snakes in the facility where he was killed, but nothing was stolen, and there were no other signs that supported that theory. On the day of Ben's murder, Lindley had also agreed to a gunpowder residue test, which came up negative as well. Four months later, she agreed to a polygraph test, which she failed, specifically on the question did you shoot Ben. Lindley couldn't explain why she failed, just insisted that she didn't do it. But we all know that polygraph tests aren't admissible, so investigators needed more evidence At that point, after the initial flurry of activity from investigators, the trail seemed to go cold.

51:30 Detectives never labeled it as a cold case. They always claimed that it was still active, but they weren't sharing a lot of details, and there were no arrests for two and a half years following Ben's murder. While there were no arrests for a long time, Lindley's behavior definitely started raising some eyebrows. First of all, she continued seeing Brandon Blackwell, the guy that she had met on Ashley Madison. She told police about her affair with Eric Bremer as well, I guess because she knew that they would find out a way. She also started isolating herself and the kids from Sam and other people that were close to the family, and then, in a shocking blow to Sam, just three months or so after Ben's death, she sold the property that Sam and Ben's parents had bought many years earlier, and she gave Sam thirty days to vacate. Why she was able to do that, Yeah, I mean it was her property now and she could do what she wanted with it, and she sold it like Sam didn't own he had property. Was on no the way that the that their inheritance worked is that Sam got the money and Ben got the property. So it was really it was really a sad situation.

52:39 It's horrible. It is horrible. And here's what Sam. What happened to the spa is a spa still running. It went out of business at some point. Honestly, I don't know exactly when it went out of business, but I assume it was sometime within that two year period. So here's what Sam had to say about Lindley selling the farm. I don't know how she sleeps at night. You know, my father killed himself so we could keep that property, and she do that very well, didn't care. She do the arrangement of did night hat with with my shares of the land, didn't care. So he's obviously pretty bitter about it, which I totally understand. That's horrible. I know it really is horrible, and she I don't.

53:22 We talked about this probably almost every episode. I just don't understand greed. I like money, I like nice things, but I would never hurt someone like that, I know, I know. It's yeah, it just makes me so mad, it does. It makes me mad too. The property that he grew up on and his parents, you know, sacrifice so much something that they could have. It's just really, you got nothing, you got nothing, you got nothing. Wow. Yeah, and the fact that she also just isolated the kids completely, didn't you know after what he told me was that the last time he saw the kids was at Ben's funeral, and then after that she just basically took them and took them away.

54:02 So it's horrible. Yeah, the whole thing is really horrible. So where did she go? Do you know? I don't know where she went. I'm assuming maybe she went to live with her now, but we'll see. Yeah, I don't I don't know where she was living after that. I know she didn't live on the farm. I know she you know, didn't go back after Ben was killed, but I'm guessing she stayed with her dad, but I don't know for sure. So I think that's a good time to break for part one. I should have mentioned it up top, but you probably know by now this is a two part episode, so I didn't know. Yeah. Yeah, Well, how are you doing. I'm a little sleepy, I'm doing good. You're pretty perky. I think I'm more tired than you are. I'm sure I will crash sometime this afternoon. I'm going to watch the Lions football game, and then thank you for clearing clarifying the Lions. I thought you just made he were gonna, you know, watch the Lions in the backyard or on YouTube video ball game. Okay, Yes, I will be watching the football game of the Detroit Lions, and I may fall asleep during that game. We'll see. Hey, we're coming up on our first anniversary. What we are, not our marital anniversary, but yeah, and I was wondering if maybe anyone has any questions or any comments or anything you want us to talk about during our little mini anniversary special.

55:24 What should they do? If they have questions, they should email us at love Mary Kill at gmail dot com or message us. Message us on social media on Instagram or Twitter, Facebook, Twitter, You mean x X. Yes, so I was thinking earlier today. There's a few things that you should know about rich. He really loves a sandwich. He really loves football, I do. I guess that's all. I Those are the only two things. I mean, there's other things. I mean, you're well, no, no, no, you really love music music like yeah I do. Yeah, you have an eclectic taste in music. Yes, So do you think those are like the three of the most pretty three pretty good things. Yeah. Yeah, so a lot, big, big, big football fan you talk about the Lions. I just want you to be able to like point back to this episode and you can say, hey, I told you so. This is their second game of the season. Yes, they won their first game against the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs, and that really did put a pep in your step for a couple of days.

56:29 Yeah, you're pretty happy. So where do you think the Lions are going to go this season? Who are they playing today? First of all, they are playing the Seattle Seahawks. Okay, so the Lions and the Bears, which you know if I am from Chicago and I am a fan of the Chicago Bears, but I'm like kind of a tepid, like, yeah, you know, not quite that passionate about it now. I used to be when I lived in Illinois, but I've been in Michigan for so long, and not that I am a Lion fan, oh no, but I don't really pay attention. And then the whole like brain injury made me love football a little less. But but the Lions have had a hard go of it. If you're familiar with football at all, you would know that the Lions are like they have notoriously been a bad team for many, many, many years. The super Bowl has been around for like fifty seven years and the Lions have never even come close to being in the super Bowl. And the Bears we did have like the I believe it was nineteen eighty seven, just a we've had a lot of heartbreak too. Yeah. Yeah, but the Lions and Bears do play each other twice, yes, so, but not today, not today? Okay, So what do you think is going to happen for the Lions this season? I would like you to be able to I think they're going to make the playoffs. I really, I really feel confident that they are going to make the playoffs. Whether they go far in the playoffs, who knows. I believe you have said, I've said that around the dinner table, that they could go to the super Bowl.

57:51 I think it's I think it's possible. Yeah, you must said very of course it's possible. I mean, they play in the NFL, anyone go to the super Bowl if I okay, if I if you're going to pin me down to make a prediction that we can go back and look at later. My prediction will be that they will make it to the NFC Championship Game, and they will lose the NFC Championship games, so they won't go to the super Bowl, but they'll get close. You realize, like ninety percent of our listeners are females. They already they already turned off this episode, right, Well, hopefully your dreams come true. I hope so too. And I don't really have root for the Lions, but I root for you to be happy. And Michigan is doing pretty well to rank number two.

58:35 If you had to pick between Michigan and Lions, you would probably well, you'd probably want the Lions to do better, just because they've done so badly for so long. It would just mean so much to the city. Are you a bigger Michigan fan or a Lions fan? I don't know, kind of the same. I love them both. Yeah. Yeah. We used to live like right by the stadium in ann Arbor, so that was really Stadium Boulevard, did it was? Yeah? That was a super fun on Saturday team days. I think that's all we have. Sorry about the little football chat, all right, well, thank thank you everybody for listening. Definitely tune back for part two. Yeah, that was that was very interesting. Thank you just reach out delicious nacks. Can't see enough good things about those We'll talk about at the end of part two. But but I'm super appreciative of Sam Rennick talking to me and sharing his insights and all that.

59:29 It was really I felt I'm always hesitant to reach out to someone who is close to the victims because the last thing I want to do is make them relive any trauma or anything like that. But I just I had this sense when I saw him on dateline that he was open to talking, and sure enough he was just like, yeah, ask me anything, open book, you know, whatever you need. That was great. Thank you so much, Sam for doing that, and a great good job to you for reaching out to say. I'm yeah, I'm a little hesitant to do that, but yeah, great job. Thanks. Really it was really good to hear his voice and the audio voice crystal clear like sometimes our audio our clips are not so crystal clear. Yeah. Well, thanks everybody for listening. Come back for part two. Follow us on social media check out our patreon at love Mary Kill. We would certainly appreciate that, and until next time.

1:00:19 Don't eat the chicken chips. Don't eat the chicken chips. The