Rewind: Barbara and Russell Stager

0:10 War of your lass like the wall from the sun, and this will be a ya took a long time to come. Don't let go of my night. Darkness has gone. This will be allen. Took a long time to come. And I'll all forget the way you held it up when I was done. And I'll all forget the way you said. Love you. You're gonna thank you. I will only just be gone. This will be all gone.

0:52 Hey Tina, Hey Rich, how are you? I'm great? How are you? I'm doing good? I love that song. It's a great song by the album It is their album, Odyssey and Oracle. It is one of my favorite albums of all time. It's just almost a perfect album from like nineteen sixty eight. I think so I yelled at you during our last Patreon episode, and I think you took that to heat you redeemed. You did not like my song selection for the last Patreon episode, but it was appropriate. But this song I thought was appropriate looking forward to twenty twenty six, it's almost the new year, optimistic sort of. Yeah, it's a beautiful song. Do you want to explain what we do on our Patrion episodes really quick? In case anyone's confused.

1:35 Yeah, we usually use a different song, usually something that relates to the case, not always. Sometimes it's just what I'm in the mood for. Yeah, And I think it's our compromise because I don't love our theme song, and I know everyone else is always like, oh, I love your theme song, don't change it. So it's kind of our little compromise that we play thirty seconds of And. It's fun day different, fun to mix it up some. Yeah. It is the day after Christmas when we're recording this, and it is a dark and gloomy and stormy day out. Yeah, very weird weather here in southeast Michigan. Lightning and ice and all kinds of stuff. So good day to stay home and keep warm. Did you enjoy our Christmas Day yesterday? I really did. We opened some presents, we ate way too much food, We watched a movie, we watched The Lion's Self Destruct. It was a really nice day.

2:21 Oh you had to bring up the slut well that. Yeah. Do you think the NFL puts too much pressure on teams that are doing well, like the Chiefs and the Lion. Putting them on on like Christmas Day or Thanksgiving? Yeah, Monday night all the time. They're they're professionals, they get paid a lot of money. I don't think it's like too much pressure to play on Christmas versus a regular Sunday. But I do feel kind of bad for them because they, you know, it's a holiday and they're basically working on that day. Yeah, but I really don't want to talk about the lie. Okay, well it's very sad. Broadcast was super awkward. It was I'm just going to say that, Yeah, it was not the Beast. But what was your favorite gift that you got?

3:02 I liked a lot of the very nice and thoughtful gifts you got me, but one that sort of stands out is you bought me a watercolor kit. It's like a book with some starter ideas for different things you can paint. And want me twenty six. I think we should have more craft nights. I do too. It's good to be creative and try some artistic things. Yeah, you didn't get me a water color book. I'm going to run we share, we can share. How about you? Any gifts that stand out? Do you like the rogue that I got you? You didn't give me a robe? Well, I'm wearing a gift that your sister and her husband got me. Do you want to read what it says? It says if I go missing. I want Keith Morrison to talk about how I light up.

3:45 A room, which is funny to me because one time I asked you, honey, do I light up a room? And you said no, but you make your presence known, which really made me laugh, and I think is quite I don't saying that, but you don't remember saying it. Is funny. Really it sticks with you because I think it's it's true. You do. Well. You do light up every room that I see you in. Oh, you're back pedaling now, I see, all right, fair enough, Well, we hope you all had a very merry Christmas. Last night, before I went to bed, I was scrolling through Reddit, and it was pretty funny because a lot of people did not have a merry Christmas. I think it was just a lot of the sub reddits I follow that like am I the asshole? And ones like that where people were like, my mom was such a mean person to me all day and there was a lot of those kind of posts and I don't know what I did wrong, but my mom didn't die. It was it seems like a lot of people talking about their mom and you know, Christmas can be really.

4:44 Hard when you're the mom, Yeah. Because you work so hard and you feel like you're just disappointing people and maybe you feel a little less appreciated than you know. I'm not saying I felt like that. I'm just saying, you know, I think a lot of women do reach like your your melting point on Christmas. No. Fortunately, well we all do really appreciate all that you do because you do a lot of hard work for Christmas and you need it very nice. Well, I appreciate your appreciation. Would you like a snack? No, I'm actually still full. Okay, Yeah, And I figure what I brought you is you're not going to be super excited about because I brought you to cookies that boy that I worked very hard to take off of the counter. There are cookies that you made, but they're my two favorites.

5:29 Okay, Well, I'm glad that you like the cookies that I made. Yeah, I brought you one of these. These are like sugar cookies with peppermint in them and frosting on them, and they are so amazing. And then I brought one of your chocolate chip cookies, which you also put all the M and ms in. Well, I appreciate that that effort, but I am going to abstain from the snack to because I honestly maxed out my stomach yesterday. Okay, well I'll just eat all right. But they were both really good cookies. I won't ask you what you thought of the cookies because you abstained, but I'm giving them a ton out of.

6:12 Ten that I kept making cook like, we made a lot of things, and we made way too many things. I had the intention of going and bringing some to the neighbors, but I didn't. And now I feel like, you don't really bring your neighbors cookies in December twenty. Sixth, because here's some old cookies. Yeah, obviously we didn't eat them all. So here's some cookies. Yeah. Yeah. Today we are going to revisit the case of Barbara and Russell Steger, the. Very first case that you ever did, the very. First case, and it I went through the script and it was pretty bad. I'm just gonna be blunt about it. We had no idea what we were doing, and so I wrote it in like a different tense, and it just it wasn't great. So I did some work on it. Okay, I didn't like go overboard, but I did do a little bit of work on it.

6:56 Were there any developments to the case since we first recorded it? Not that I could find. In the early morning hours of February first, nineteen eighty eight, in Durham, North Carolina, a thirteen year old boy called nine one one. My father had a gun and it went off, he said. Paramedics arrived to find Russell Staeger, forty years old, lying in bed, blood coming from his nose and mouth, and a bullet hole in the back of his head. He was still alive, but as doctors would soon find out, he was brain dead. He was taken off of life support and died later that day. His wife, Barbara Stager, thirty nine years old, was at the scene, along with her thirteen year old son and Russell's adopted son, the one who called nine one one. While the paramedics were working on her husband, Barbara stood in the bedroom saying things like, I wish he didn't have these guns. I kept telling him about these damn guns. She kept repeating things like that over and over. It was distracting to the paramedics. To the point where once the police showed up, they asked, can you get her the hell out of here?

8:00 Officers took her to the kitchen and asked what happened. She told them that Russell had been hearing sounds outside the house recently and was worried about prowlers. He was going through a stage where he was keeping a gun with him all the time in the car and even under his pillow. Barbara explained that she heard her son Jason get up to use the bathroom around six am, and her first thought was, I hope Russell doesn't think it's a burglar and go for the gun. So just to be safe, she grabbed the gun from under the pillow. As she was pulling the gun out from under Russell's pillow, it went off. She said that she barely touched it. The initial thought by investigators was that Barbara seemed sincere and it was most likely a tragic accident, but that conclusion didn't last long. The very next day, Durham Police detective Rick Buchanan got a call from Russell's ex wife, a woman named joe Lynn Snow. After their divorce, she and Russell eventually became friends and he had confided in her about things, so she called the police, saying I need to talk to you. She came into the police station and met with Detective Buchanan, bringing a letter with her.

9:07 She was nervous and wanted to have everything written out. I won't read the whole letter, but here are a few of the most interesting parts. First, to the point of Russell's attitude towards guns. Russell completed Army basic training in the late nineteen sixties, and I believe he's been in the Army reserves for at least ten years, maybe more. He received the best training this country has to offer in the use and proper storage of the handgun. Russell had a gun during our marriage, but I only saw it on maybe two occasions. It was kept safely in a drawer, unloaded. Russell had a very healthy respect for guns, and I remember his comments about accidental shootings and how they would never happen if people handled their guns with respect.

9:49 He would never have slept with a loaded gun under his pillow. The police would later talk to some of Russell's fellow Army reservists and they had the same thing to say about his training and his caution around guns. Second, Joe Lynn had some things to say about a possible motive. Russe found huge sums of money missing and she could not account for it. He also thought she was having an affair and followed her one weekend morning to a parking lot where she parked her car, got out and got into a man's car and immediately began heavy petting. But then came the most shocking revelation of all. Russell feared for his safety with his wife. Barbara. Russell no longer believed that her first husband's wound was accidental. He too died from a gunshot wound, and Barbara was the only person with him. Russell always said that if anything suspicious happened to him that he would want me to remember his telling me that Russell thought Barbara did not have a firm grasp on reality.

10:46 You said. Initially the police thought that Barbara's story sounded valid, But then when they found out that her first husband also died from a questionable gunshot wound, that must have changed the course of the investigation. Yeah, for sure, I'm sure they would have eventually found that out anyway, but to find it out from Russell's ex wife the next day must have been quite a shock. And knowing that he shared all this information with his first wife, that's a. Little eye opening. Yeah. We will talk more about Jolyn's letter and about Barbara's first husband in a bit, but first let's talk about Barbara's background. Barbara Terry was raised in Durham. Her dad, James, worked for Duke Power Company, and her mom, Marva, was a secretary at Duke Medical Center, where Barbara would also eventually work. By all accounts, the family was hardworking, church going country folk with strong values.

11:39 Countryfolk. Yeah, I think where country folk, ah that maybe we kind of are. A little bit maybe. Barbara was their first child, born in nineteen forty eight. By all accounts, she was shy and obedient, worked hard to get good grades, was noted for good behavior at school, although her eighth grade teacher did note that she was emotionally immature. Family was active at the same Baptist church that her father had grown up in. Barbara attended Sunday school, Sunday services, prayer meetings, Bible school in the summers, very much a traditional Christian upbringing. Just before ninth grade, the family moved to a new home out in the country north of Durham on seven acres.

12:19 She loved kids and wanted to become an elementary school teacher. She didn't drink, she didn't smoke, she didn't curse, didn't talk back, and was always home when she was supposed to be seemingly the model child, especially for her conservative religious parents. She had good SAT scores and got accepted at Appalachian State Teachers College, about two hundred miles from Durham. It was there, during her freshman year that Barbara met Larry Ford, her first real boyfriend. Although Barbara had grown up in this kind of repressed religious environment, she and Larry had sex the first time they were alone together in the instrument closet of the band room at school. Oh Barbara was eager for the relationship to her and serious, while Larry was more reticent and even a bit turned off by the fact that she was pushing him very aggressively.

13:07 During this time, there was a strange incident that happened with Barbara at school. She came back to her dorm room on a Saturday night and seemed sort of off. Barbara's roommate asked her, are you all right? But Barbara just started making weird animal like noises and sat on the edge of her bed, shaking her head and moaning. Her roommate couldn't get anything out of her and finally went to get help from the dorm mother. No one could get a response from her, and so they finally took her to the hospital, where she was sedated and kept overnight for observation. The next day she seemed fine. It was very bizarre behavior. Barbara's roommate felt like this had something to do with her relationship with Larry, that maybe Larry was trying to pull away and this was how Barbara reacted.

13:52 So was she diagnosed with anything, Not that. I'm aware of. It seemed like it was just sort of a one off incident and she seemed fine the next day. So they were like, okay, but it's just a very very odd thing to react that way or to behave that way. A few months into their relationship, Larry told Barbara that he wanted to break but a week or so later, she called him to let him know that she was pregnant. She told him that he didn't have to marry her, but Larry wanted to do what he believed was the right thing. He knew that this would make his goal of finishing college more challenging, but he asked Barbara to marry him. They hastily arranged a wedding in front of a few friends and family members in May nineteen sixty eight. Friends noted that the event seemed subdued and lacking in joy.

14:35 After the wedding, Barbara and Larry both returned to their dorm rooms to wrap up the final week of classes for the semester. It's quite a way to start a marriage, isn't it. Yeah, you would think maybe you would wait till after your finals. It just sounds like it was really You know, this is nineteen sixty eight, and when somebody got pregnant out of wedlock, depending on your family, get married. As soon as possible. When the semester ended, Larry and Barbara drove to his parents' home, as they they hadn't yet met Barbara. They tried to be welcoming to their new daughter in law, but the situation was uncomfortable for everyone, and it got more awkward when Barbara would start passionately kissing Larry in front of them. Larry's mom, Doris, later recalled, I never had seen anything in my life that came close to that. They felt like Barbara had no modesty or sense of proper behavior. The marriage seemed doomed from the beginning. Larry had reservations going into the marriage, causing him to become withdrawn as time went on, and Barbara seemed to have two strong compulsions that would make Larry more and more uncomfortable over time. The first was her strong sexual urges and the second was her compulsion for spending money. But in the early days they tried to make things work. Larry got a job at a manufacturing plant for the summer, and Barbara got a job at a hospital doing administrative work, and they prepared for the coming baby. When fall came, Larry went back to school, where Barbara continued to work and live in the mobile home they had bought. It was not an ideal situation.

16:04 He was back at school living in the dorms while she was working and living an hour and a half away in a mobile home. She was resentful knowing that Larry was living like a single college student. Barbara gave birth to a boy in December nineteen sixty eight, and they named him James Brian, after Barbara's father, but they called him Brian. They settled into this life, with Larry trying to finish school while supporting the family. Barbara eventually working as a bank clerk. While working at the bank, Barbara started flaunting her sexuality, making her female coworkers uncomfortable. She often wore revealing mini skirts to work and would blatantly flirt with male employees and customers. One of her coworkers later said, Barbara could be with a group of women, acting perfectly normal, but if a man came around, she would suddenly become an entirely different person, all aglow. It was really something to see. She developed a reputation around the bank is being loose, and indeed she did have affairs with customers. She had at least three relationships with other men during the course of her marriage to Larry.

17:10 Larry first got wind of Barbara's deceptions when she told Larry she was spending the weekend with some girlfriends at her parents' beach cottage. After she left, Larry got a late night phone call. It was a woman's voice and she just said, do you know where your wife is? It's interesting. In a number of cases we've covered, people find out about their spouse being unfaithful through an anonymous phone call or an anonymous letter or something like that. It must be very jarring to get that phone call. I'm so grateful I have never received such a message. It would be really upsetting. Yes, so Larry at this point is very suspicious, and he tried to track Barbara down. There was no phone at the beach house, so he called the police in the area, asking them to check on the house. They reported back that the house was empty.

17:55 There was no one staying there that weekend. What do you think he said to them. I don't know. I guess he just called and said, I'm worried about my wife. Worried my wife is cheating on me. Could you go check the house please. Larry never found out where Barbara was that weekend, but he knew that she was lying to him. Still, the couple bought a house together, and Barbara worked hard to furnish the house perfectly. She was, in fact, obsessed with perfection, no matter the cost. This is where Barbara's spending first became an issue for the couple. Whatever she bought for the house had to be the best. While Larry was still in school and the couple's income limited, They soon sank into debt so deep that Larry couldn't imagine how they could ever get their heads above water again. They had a second child, Jason, in nineteen seventy four. When he was three months old, Barbara and Larry separated. While initially in the relationship, Larry had been the reluctant one, now he was the one pushing to reconcile. At the same time his family was telling him, maybe you should just move on. Larry and Barbara did end up reconciling in nineteen seventy five, but nothing really changed. Barbara had more affairs and went on more spending spreeze, so as far as you know, Larry didn't have any retaliatory affairs, not that I know of. Fast forward to nineteen seventy eight, Barbara called the minister at their church and told him that she was worried that someone was following her home from work at night. She wanted to buy a gun for protection and needed a character reference to get a

19:26 gun permit. She bought a twenty five caliber pistol and had a friend teach her how to use it. I found it interesting that she had to get a character reference to buy a gun. I've never heard of that, and this was, you know, early seventies or mid seventies, but I think gun laws have probably changed a little bit. Yeah, That same night, after Barbara purchased and learned how to use her new gun, Larry came home from his taekwondo class and wound up dead, shot in the chest. He was just twenty nine years old. We'll be back after a break.

20:10 The call came in at twelve thirty six am on March twenty second, nineteen seventy eight. When police arrived, Barbara met them at the door, saying, my husband's been shot. He's upstairs. I think he's dead. The first responders found Larry lying on his back in bed. When they raised his pajama top, the cause of death was apparent a bullet hole in his chest. Near his left hip was a loaded clip for a semi automatic pistol. The gun itself was lying on the carpet beside the bed, as if it had fallen from his right hand. Barbara told investigators she had gone downstairs to sleep on the couch that night because Larry had been tossing and turning due to getting kicked in the groin during his taekwondo class.

20:51 While she was down on the couch, she heard a gun shot and went up to find Larry bleeding and gasping for breath. Okay, I'm sorry. I have never been kicked in the grid, So is that a pain that you would continue to have? I thought it was like really really severe pain for a few minutes and then it passed. I think it could make you uncomfortable for a while afterwards. The police believed Barbara's story. They figured that Larry probably wanted to look at the gun because it was new, took the clip out, figuring that would make it safe, but didn't realize that around was still in the chamber. You hear about that happening a lot, so it did sound feasible. You do hear about that kind of thing happening a lot where you take the clip out of the gun and you think, oh, I've just taken the bullets out of the gun, But if there's still a bullet in the chamber, the gun can go off when you fire it.

21:38 Okay, I did not realize that. The police went ahead and had the body sent to the morgue, which is not standard procedure if there's any suspicion at all that a crime has been committed, so apparently the police on the scene didn't have any doubts as to Barbara's story. Also, no autopsy was done. Larry's death was treated as an accidental death, even though the police an VIC concluded that it was an accident. Barbara's behavior after Larry's death made Larry's family suspicious. She didn't show any emotion and she acted cold toward Larry's family. During the viewing at the funeral home, Larry's brother saw Barbara standing by the coffin with her mother, and according to him, she was crying and saying what have I done?

22:20 Over and over until her mother hushed her. She was also acting extremely social at the funeral home, flitting around and talking to everyone, and right after the funeral she started giving away all of Larry's stuff to people who were there. All of these things, along with the fact that Larry had grown up around guns and learned how to handle them when he was a boy and then again later in the Marines, made Larry's family suspicious that Barbara may have killed him. This is kind of a strange aside, but fifteen days after Larry was killed, Barbara's former boss, a woman named Kay Pugh and her friend Brenda Wilmoth were both shot by Brenda's husband, a guy named Tommy Wilmoth. Kay died in that shooting. When he was arrested, Tommy told police that he believed that Kay, Brenda, and Barbara were involved in some sort of lesbian love triangle and they all planned to kill their husbands. It's a little convoluted, I know, but this was basically Barbara's boss and a friend of hers that were shot by this other guy, And basically they were prompted because Barbara's husband died, and he believed in his mind that these three women were all going to kill their husbands.

23:34 Do you know where they were shot? I think they were in a car together. I'm not sure exactly, but I don't think there was any evidence to support his like his theory that there was this lesbian love triangle between these three women. I think it was all kind of in his mind. Do you think it was opportunistic because Larry had already been killed for this other guy to use that as an excuse, like, Oh, I was scared for my life. I thought my wife was going to try to kill me. Could have been potentially, but the fact that he actually shot and killed not he shot his wife, she did not die, but he shot and killed this other woman as well, seemed like he wouldn't have done that. It seems like he genuinely had something maybe wrong in his mind.

24:14 So this shooting by Tommy Wilmoth actually caused the police to take another look at Larry's death, even though they had decided it was a tragic accident, but this made them think maybe there actually was more to it than that. During their investigation, there were a couple of things that raised suspicions. In her first police interview, the detectives found Barbara cagey and unwilling to give much information. They asked if she would be willing to take a lie detector test. She said that she would consider it, but then her lawyer called back a few days later and said no, she wouldn't be doing that. Second, detectives did a swab on Larry's hands while his body was at the morgue, and the forensics analyst didn't find any trace of gunpowder residue.

24:56 In his opinion, Larry hadn't fired the gun that killed him. The only way it could have killed him by accident, is if he had dropped it, which was very unlikely based on where he was shot and the angle of the bullet and so forth. At this point, the detectives decided to have Larry's body exuomed to do an actual autopsy. Their analysis showed that Larry was shot at close range, maybe even with the muzzle touching his chest, but they couldn't know that for certain because the body had been cleaned at the funeral home. They reclassified the death as a homicide, but they didn't have any solid evidence against Barbara. They also couldn't rule out that an intruder may have shot Larry. Eventually, the investigation ran out of steam and no one was ever charged.

25:39 Why couldn't they rule out that an intruder may have shot Larry? I mean, I don't think they had any evidence that there was an intruder, but they also couldn't rule it out. They just didn't have anything to tell them that that wasn't a possibility. I guess were there any additional fingerprints on the gun. Not that I read about. After Larry's death, Barbara and her two kids moved in with her parents back in Durham. This was over an hour away from where she and Larry had lived in Durham. No one but her family knew the circumstances of Larry's death, and that suited Barbara. With seventy thousand dollars in life insurance money, Barbara set her sights on buying a new home in Durham, ideally in her parents' neighborhood so they could help with the children. The first house she found was a neat little bungalow just two blocks from her parents. The owner of the house, a man named Russell Stager, and his estranged wife, joe Lynn.

26:29 Barbara liked the house, but Russ wasn't certain he wanted to sell. He decided to take the house off the market and stay. Barbara meanwhile found another house, and it happened to be just across the street from Russ. Russell Stager's real name was Alison Russell Stager the Third, but to avoid confusion with his dad, he went by Rusty or Russ. He was born and raised in Durham. Russ was a natural athlete. He loved football and baseball, especially A back injury in high school took him out of football, but he did play baseball and decided during high school that his dream was to become a high school baseball coach. Russ went to Mount Olive Junior College now called University of Mount Olive, which is about ninety miles southeast of Durham.

27:14 During college, he would regularly travel home or to other nearby towns to attend Durham High School baseball, football, and basketball games. It was at one of these games in Raleigh that he met Joe Lynn Ellen, who would eventually become his first wife. Russ was struggling a bit in college and thought about dropping out, but with the Vietnam War going on, he decided a better choice was to join the Army reserves. The Army sent him to South Carolina for six months of training, and after that he transferred to Campbell University, where he majored in physical education. He graduated in nineteen seventy two, did a student teaching stint in Carrie, North Carolina, and then applied to the Durham City School District, where he got a job as a phized teacher and assistant coach at the Junie High School.

28:01 By all accounts, Russ was born to coach. He was a natural leader, and he acted not just as a coach, but as a mentor to the kids he coached. His door was always open, his players not only respected him, but really loved him. He used his own money and also organized raffles and bake sales to help buy equipment for kids who couldn't afford it. After getting settled into his job, he and joe Lynn got married in nineteen seventy four, and soon after they bought a small house in Durham. The honeymoon was over pretty quickly, though, Only a year or so after they got married, joe Lynn heard rumors that Russ might be involved with a student and saw him holding hands with a teenage girl late one night. They fought. Russ made lame excuses. He said he was trying to help a troubled student, and they patched things up. However, that was the beginning of the end.

28:51 Joe Lynn realized that Russ was still basically trapped in high school from a maturity standpoint. His whole life revolved around sports, and she didn't really care at all about sports. They didn't like each other's friends, and ultimately they realized they just didn't have much in common. So four years after they married. They separated. Not long after this. Russ met Barbara when she came to look at the house that he had up for sale after joe Linn moved out is mentioned earlier. She didn't buy his house, but ended up moving in just across the street. Russ and Barbara didn't end up getting together right away. In fact, Russ was actually seeing a former student of his. This was a secret because she was only seventeen when they started seeing each other. Russ was thirty.

29:36 Very inappropriate. I think it goes to the point of what joe Linn was saying that Russ was he was kind of trapped in high school, like his maturity level was sort of still a high school student. Yeah, this is highly disturbing. Did joe Lynn go to the authorities at all or tell someone in this school district? I don't think so. Were they openly dating? Not until after she got done with high school. During the summer after she graduated high school, Russ told her that he loved her and wanted to go public with her relationship. He said he wanted to marry her and build a life together. She thought that she was in love with Russ, but she also wanted to live up to her parents' expectations and go to college. So the young girl did go off to college in another state, but Russ continued seeing her on weekends. She came home for a couple of weekends and went to see Russ at Durham High School football games that he was coaching.

30:28 After one of these games, she was introduced to Barbara, a new friend of Russ's. Russ told his young girlfriend that Barbara was just a friend who had recently lost her husband, but it was clear to those around them that Barbara was hot and heavy for Russ. She was after him. There could be no doubt about how old is Barbara at this time. I think she was right around Russ's age, so she would have been I think twenty nine he was thirty. Russ pressured his girlfriend to marry him, but she ultimately decided that she couldn't. She loved Russ, but she knew her parents would never accept it. Also, she was in college and living her life. She wanted to be young, date, have fun, and enjoy her college years. Good for her, Russ was crushed, but he wasn't alone for long. Barbara saw her opportunity, and within weeks they were dating, even attending church together on Sunday mornings. Things moved fast, and the couple married in March nineteen seventy nine, just a few days after his divorce to Joe Linn was final, and just five days before the first anniversary of Larry Ford's death. Barbara's children were eleven and five at this point.

31:34 Russ who loved kids, adopted the boys and by all accounts, was completely devoted to them. Barbara's money troubles didn't end with Larry's death and the insurance payout. Early on in her relationship with Russell, Barbara was still working at the bank and her cash strawer kept winding up short. One hundred dollars here, three hundred and fifty seven dollars there, and five hundred dollars missing from a coworker's store that Barbara had access to. That was all followed by a cash advance that she didn't repay, and house payment checks were bouncing. Her managers were looking into all of these things, asking her questions, while she made excuses and generally tried to avoid them. At one point during all of this, she said she was going to be out for some minor surgery. Her supervisor suspected that she was lying and called the hospital where she was supposedly having the surgery.

32:24 They told him Nope, no surgery was scheduled for Barbara. When she got back to work, they called her in and told her that the jig was up. No more excuses, but they offered her a deal. If she would resign, they wouldn't press charges, and she agreed. After that, Barbara got a job at a radio station to sell ad space, but she never sold anything. She kept making excuses, saying that she was just about to close some big account and then something would always happen. Turns out they were basically paying her to go out and goof around. Her boss, a guy named Harry, didn't want to fire her because he was a friend of both hers and Russ's. Ultimately, she quit the job because she said she had a new source of income. And that new source of income, as Barbara told her friends, was a book. Yes, Barbara was writing a novel called Untimely Death, a fictionalized account of her first husband's death. We have had several cases where this has happened.

33:22 And it's I think people like killers. They can't get it out of their mind and they just want to write it down. They want to confess without confessing. I think I think. In a lot of the cases they think that their criminal masterminds. Yes, that too. So Barbara told her friends about it, but wouldn't show anyone her draft. But she sent it to Doubleday Publishing company, who loved it so much they offered her a deal. They gave her a whopping four hundred thousand dollars advance. That's about one point eight million dollars in today's true. Not only that, but they told her that there was interest in a movie deal from a major studio. It's amazing. First time author sends in a draft, and.

34:02 That's very impressive. Although I know this can't be true. She took the letter from Doubleday on their letterhead to the bank and uses to secure a big loan, which she then used to join a swinky country club. You may not be surprised to hear that she soon defaulted on the loan, because these are things that you could get away with in the nineteen seventies that you can't get away with today. The loan officer was suspicious and called Doubleday, sharing with them that the letter that Barbara had used to secure the loan. The people at Doubleday told him they had no idea about this letter and the person who signed it didn't exist. It turns out that Barbara actually got a rejection letter from Doubleday. Undeterred, she cut and pasted the letterhead physically. This was before microsoftward and created the forgery herself. It gets even crazier because her friends, including Harry from the radio station and his wife, who were good friends with both Russ and Barbara, started to think that Barbara had made this whole thing up about the book. No one including Russell, had read it, yet she was claiming all of this stuff. Her friends even went so far as to tell her they were planning a big publication party for her, but she couldn't tell them an actual date of publishing. Coincidentally, Harry actually knew someone that worked for a Double Day, so he called her up. She checked into it and told Harry, Nope, we're not working on anything with anyone called Barbara Stager.

35:28 So Harry felt obliged to tell his friend Russ about this. He sat him down and said, Russ, I hate to tell you this, but there is no book Russ just sat there in silence for a second and said, well, I guess we're lucky she's got the job at the radio station. He didn't even know that Barbara had quit her job. Harry told him, buddy, she hasn't worked there for months. Russ started crying because she had been telling him every day she was off to work. He had no idea how she was spending her days. Really takes a lot of gol to do a lie that big. I just, man, it stresses me out. I just can't even imagine like, yeah, going to work every day and no, I'm really not going to work every day, and I've got a four hundred thousand dollars cash advance.

36:12 No, did she have some money from the bank or not. Well, she got the loan from the bank from because she told them she had this, you know, advance coming, and it. Was four hundred thousand dollars the loan. I don't think the loan was for that amount. I think the four hundred thousands of what she said the advance was going to be, so she used that as security. But I don't know the exact amount of the loan. So you might be wondering if there was a book at all, And actually Barbara had started writing a book. She had an outline and a first chapter. As we mentioned before, the book is a fictional account of her first husband's death, but really it was focused on her own trials and tribulations losing her husband and father of her children, and also being suspected of murder.

36:57 I wish I could have found a draft of the book, because I really would have loved to have read it, but I did not. I do know that, by all accounts, it was very amateurish and pretty cringey. Barbara's lies about the book and her job at the radio station were only the beginning. Finance wasn't Russ's strong suit, so once he and Barb married, he turned over management of the family finances to her. He got his paycheck every two weeks and turned it over to Barbara. But she didn't care how much money was coming in. She was spending like there was no tomorrow. Her credit cards were pushed to their limits and beyond. She got loans to pay off other loans. She took out a second mortgage on their house. Russ was unaware of how deeply in debt they were until one night after barbar had gone to bed. He happened upon a cardboard box talked away behind a chair in the family room. The box was crammed with unpaid bills, some of which he knew about, others that he thought had been paid long ago. It slowly started to dawn on him that their finances were in dire strait. It wasn't just the money that Barbara was lying about. She was also back to her old ways, cheating on Russ. She had gotten a job as a secretary at a company called Brame Specialty Company. There, she took up with a twenty seven year old salesman. He later said that Barbara was voracious in her sexual appetites and seemed to feel no guilt about it. Russell learned about this affair when he happened to spot Barbara's car in an empty parking lot. He pulled in, confirmed the car was hers, and looked around. Why had Barb left

38:30 her car in this big, empty parking lot. Suspicious, he pulled into a lot across the street and surreptitiously kept an eye on the car while he waited for her to return. Sure Enough, a car soon pulled up next to Barb's car, Russ could see that a man was driving with Barb in the passenger seat. He watched as they started to kiss passionately. The couple was startled when Russ pulled his car up next to theirs. The man sped away quickly after Barb exited his car. A couple of days later, Barbara told her boyfriend that she had smoothed things over with her husband and there was no reason for them to break off their affair. Imagine the panic of her twenty seven year old boyfriend when he saw Russ pull up next to his car.

39:14 Oh, yeah, I can only imagine. I think he was married. Also nice, Yeah, we'll be back after a break. After learning about Barbara's affairs and her other lies, Russ turned to his ex wife, Jolyn. The two had lost touch with each other for a few years after Jolyn remarried and moved to Chicago, but late in nineteen eighty two, after learning about some of Barbara's deceptions, Russ reached out to Joeln. They chatted amiably a few times, and then when Jolyn and her husband moved back to North Carolina, Russ showed up one day at her apartment. She could tell that he was troubled and invited him in. Soon he poured out everything, the lies about Barbara's book, deal, their financial troubles, the affair. He told joln that he had thought about leaving, but didn't want to because of the boys. He loved them deeply and didn't want them to lose another father. He also told joln what he knew about Barbara's first husband. He said he was beginning to wonder if it really was an accident. Then he left her with a chilling request. I know it sounds crazy, he said, but if anything ever happens to me, I want you to look into it. But just like Russ preached to the players he coached to never give up, he resolved to work on his marriage. He was determined.

40:40 He convinced barb to rededicate themselves to God, the church and each other. They began teaching Sunday school together and got deeply involved in all of the church's activities. It seemed to help. Their relationship improved, and they started thinking about the future. They decided to buy a new house together, despite Russell's concerns about their finances. It was Russ faithful during his marriage to Barbara. As far as I know, I didn't read anything about him being unfaithful, but his past, you know, dating young girls, makes me a little bit concerned that maybe he right. I'm having a hard time reconciling what kind of a person, yeah, Russ really was.

41:20 Ye. Barbara got a promotion at her work, one that gave her flexibility to go back to college sixteen years after she had dropped out to have her first child. At the same time, Russ went back to school to work on his master's degree. Russ finished his master's degree in physical education in the spring of nineteen eighty seven, while Barb got another promotion at work at the same time, she was doing well in her classes, maintaining a three point seven grade point average. It seemed like things were going well, but as nineteen eighty seven progressed, the couple once again started finding themselves underwater financially. They refinanced their home and Barb once again started taking out loans to pay off other loans. She was writing checks that bounced, and soon the unpaid overdraft charges began to mount. As nineteen eighty seven transitioned to nineteen eighty eight, people noticed that Russe's mood had changed. He seemed quiet and withdrawn, not himself. That brings us back to February first, nineteen eighty eight, the morning of Russell's death. We've already covered the circumstances of Russ's shooting, but let's do a quick recap of Barbara's story. She said that Russell had been worried about prowlers after hearing noises, and had started keeping a gun with him at all times, even sleeping with a loaded gun under his pillow. When she heard her son get up to use the bathroom around six am, she was worried that Russell would think it was a burglar, so she reached under his pillow and pulled the gun out. Inexplicably,

42:50 the gun fired, hitting Russ in the back of the head. Kevin Wilson, who was one of the lead EMTs at the scene and coincidentally knew Russell and Barbara pretty well. They went to the same church, had socialized together, and so on. He asked if he could do anything for Barbara. He knew Russ's parents, so he asked, do you want me to go get them or get the minister from their church. Barbara answered sharply, no, don't call anybody. I don't want you to do anything. Wilson was kind of shocked by how abrupt her reaction was, but he just said, okay, sorry, just trying to help. While investigators initially bought her account, the next day when joe Linn came forward, they knew that they needed to take a deeper look.

43:32 So joe Linn must have been really upset about this situation. Yeah, Ross had predicted his death to her. Yeah, for sure. To be involved in this level, and she obviously had cared about him a great deal. Yeah, really hard position for her to be in. Yep. The detectives immediately began pursuing several avenues in the investigation. First, could they corroborate Russ's mindset about guns and prowlers to tell other people about hearing noise in the neighborhood. Was he the kind of guy who would sleep with a gun under his pillow? Asking Russell's friends and acquaintances, it became clear that he hadn't talked to anyone about his fear of prowlers. Not only that he knew how to handle a gun. He was in the Army Reserve, had extensive gun training, and everyone who worked with him in the reserves said that Russ treated guns with a healthy respect.

44:25 He knew the proper way to handle and store a gun, and would never sleep with a loaded pistol under his pillow. The second avenue of investigation had to do with motive. Did Barbara have enough reason to want him dead? Marital problems, money, et cetera. Was there any history of violence in the marriage? This too became obvious once the police began asking around. They learned of the couple's money troubles, Barbara's affairs, and her deception. This was all helpful, but it was also circumstantial. They needed to look at the forensics. Did the ev I didn't match Barbara's story. A few things the police looked at here. First was the shell casing where it should have been. It was found just a few inches from Russ's head. When police tested the gun, they found the spent shell casing always ejected between two and six feet to the right and back of the gun, so it should have been somewhere more in the middle or the bottom of the bed. It almost looked like the scene was staged. Second, gunpowder should have been located on the sheets if the gun was fired close to the sheets, as Barbara had claimed. Barbara had washed the sheets the day after the shooting, after the police initially declared it accidental. However, gunpowder residue normally would still show up even after washing, but testing showed no gunpowder residue at all. There was no gunpowder and no cinch marks, which might also be expected on the sheets, blanket, pillowcases, and mattress cover I

45:57 think it's odd that she chose to wash the sheet. If something God forbid happened to you, I would probably throw the whole bed away, like I wouldn't be able to sleep on it. Yeah, I probably would do the same. Third, there were no gunpowder particles around the wound in Russ's head. If he was shot from two feet, which is the way Barbara described it, there would have been signs of powder on his head. Fourth, the trajectory of the bullet was wrong. The autopsy showed that the bullet entered Russ's head at a downward angle, which contradicts what Barbara said about the gun going off as she pulled it away from the pillow. Last, but not least, firearms experts did a trigger pull test on the gun and found that it took four pounds of force to pull the trigger. You know how they say that some guns have a hair trigger, Well, this gun wasn't one of them.

46:48 It would be really hard for the gun to just go off without a concerted effort. I think all of this forensic evidence was really critical because in a situation where somebody is shot and basically you just say it as an accident the gun went off, it's really hard to contradict that. Right. If Barbara says that, you know, it's like, well, what are you going to do to say that she isn't telling the truth. And I think all these details were really key to building a case against her. Right unless dropped, I think it's pretty rare for a gun to just go off on its own. I think some guns do have what's called the hair trigger where it's easier to pull the trigger. But yeah, you're right, without intentionally pulling the trigger, I think it would be hard to imagine.

47:29 Weeks past, as police gathered all this evidence still letting Barbara believe it was all routine. In the meantime, she kept calling and bugging them about getting the final reports so that Russ's life insurance could be paid out. Finally, in April, two and a half months after Russ was killed, they went to a grand jury and got the go ahead on first degree murder charges. Barbara Staker was arrested that day. In April nineteen eighty nine, two weeks before Barbara's trial was set to begin, a brand new piece of evidence was found. If prosecutors thought they had a solid case already, this was just the icing on the cake. This new evidence was an audio tape. A student at Durham High School, where Russ taught and coached baseball, was gathering uniforms out of the dryer and happened to see a cassette tape under one of the bleacher stalls. He was curious, of course, so he took it home, listened to it, and recognized coach Steger's voice. It turned out to be a tape that Russ made three days before he died, talking about his concerns. We don't have the actual audio, but here are some of the interesting parts of the tape. Remember this is Russ speaking the last few nights during sleep, Barbara has woken me up to give me some kind of medication. I've not taken it. Last night she woke me up and gave me what she said was too aspirin.

48:49 But this was like four point thirty in the morning. She stood there to see if I took it. I did not take it. I placed it under the bed. She came back to check and make sure I had taken it, saying she wanted something to drink from what I was drinking this morning. Before I got up, she was over around there on the side, acts like she was looking for what I supposedly took last night. Now this was the night of January twenty eighth, a Thursday night, so she stayed there looking to see if I had taken the stuff. This morning. I got it out of there, although she was very looking, very close to see if I was trying to retrieve it. She made the comment that you didn't take that those aspirins I gave you. I said, yeah, I did. Well. I took the two capsules to Akord's pharmacy at Forest Hills and they said it was sleeping pills. Now, if I was already asleep at four point thirty in the morning, why would someone wake me up to give me two sleeping pills? Seems like a very good question. Russell. Later in the tape, he talked about another incident with pills. Back to Wednesday night, January the twenty seventh. Barbara had given me something that was supposedly for sinuses and some aspirin that supposedly was nuprin, And about five that morning, I woke up and I was feeling terrible. I was hurting real bad around my eyes, under my eyes, my temple, and I really wonder if what she gave me was sinus medication and nuprin. She also I had a real bad case of the cotton mouth.

50:13 Even after all this, when she woke up and saw I was in pain, she tried to give me some more stuff, which I wouldn't take. He goes on in the tape to talk about money stuff and how he's not seeing credit card bills anymore, and how the police showed up to serve some kind of warrant because of a bill that she didn't pay, and how she took money from the radio station but never really showed up for work. He also talked about how he saw Barbara years ago making out with some guy in her car. Then he went on to talk about Barbara's first husband. I don't know what happened, but according to his parents, there was some foul play going on. He supposedly accidentally shot himself in their bedroom with a pistol. Now I have no idea what really went on, what really happened.

50:56 She was there when it happened, and so were the boys. My question is, did to her first husband, Larry Ford, accidentally shoot himself. And then at the end of the tape, he says, I really hope that I'm being paranoid about this stuff that's going on, but I really wonder This is Russ Steger. This is January twenty ninth, nineteen eighty eight, ten minutes of two. My first impression is a student found this tape. Imagine you're in high school and you find this tape of probably a coach she really cared about. Yeah, must have been super upsetting. Yeah, like what do I do with this now? Yeah? Extremely Just for Russ to have made this tape like three days before she shot him, you can only imagine what must have been going through his mind to feel that desperate to put something down in tape to talk through his thoughts about this. It's just wild that the police found this too.

51:50 Well and waking him up in the middle of the night to give him pills. That doesn't make any sense, elf, who would like, under what conditions? Why would she be handing him pills? Yeah, absolutely no sense at all. Yeah, wake up and take some aspirin. Like, why I. Was sleeping unless he was had he been sick? I think he had had some sinus issues and stuff, but it wasn't like he was sleeping soundly in the middle of the night. And why would you wake up your husband? And again he's suspicious enough to take it to the pharmacy and say what is this? Yeah, this happened so many times in cases that we covered that you know, the other spouse is really worried for their own life. And it's so sad that he saw the writing on the wall, but he was not able to get out fast enough.

52:32 Yeah. At Barbara's trial, her defense tried to keep both her first husband's death and the audio tape of Russ out of the trial, but the judge allowed them both, along with all of Barbara's financial dealings. It only took the jury forty minutes to come back with a guilty verdict. You know how juris usually start by taking a straw pole. In this case, everyone was on the same Page guilty of first degree murder. She was sentenced to death, but that was later over turned on a technicality and it was changed to life in prison with the possibility of parole. No one has ever been arrested or charged in relation to Larry Ford's death. That really surprises me that after Barbara was convicted that they didn't reopen that investigation, because it just seems very clear that she probably, I mean, it's almost the same identical situation.

53:23 But they had reopened it in the past, remember. Yeah, they did, But it just surprised me that at this. Point they just knew that there was just not enough evidence. But I guess so. But it's sad that, you know, Larry Ford never got justice and Barbara, you know, she's in prison for life, but with the possibility of parole. Barbara is now seventy seven years old. She did have her first chance at parole in two thousand and nine after serving twenty years. However, her parole has been denied each time. She's currently incarcerated at the North Carolina Correctional Institute for Women in Raleigh. Rest in peace Larry Ford and Russ Steger. The judge at Barbara's trial, He allowed in some evidence that I think other judges might not have allowed in, like about her first husband and their financial status and the audio tapes and yeah, so I think this judge should take some of the credit for her getting the conviction.

54:19 Yeah, I think so. Do you think it was wrong that he allowed those in or you just think it's one of those situations where one judge might roll one way and another might rull a different way. No, I feel like she's definitely guilty, Yeah, both of these crimes. So I'm glad that he allowed it in. And all those things seem very relevant as well, So I think it made sense for. Those It is surprising a lot of times that judges don't allow evidence that we feel. Yeah, I know, and you know we're neither of us are lawyers or legal scholars. But sometimes it's just dare you. But sometimes it just doesn't seem to make sense when a judge doesn't. Allow something, or does it seems very arbitrary. Yeah, for sure. So you believe that Barbara killed Russell intentionally, do you believe that she also killed Larry Ford intentionally?

55:01 Or is there a chance that Larry Ford's death was an accident and she just saw that and said, oh, you know, accidents happened, maybe the same thing could happen to us. No, I believe that she intentionally killed both of her husbands. Yeah, she seems like a very cold blooded kind of person. I didn't talk much about her reaction to their deaths, but from everything I read, she you know, she wasn't very, she wasn't emotional. She didn't seem at all upset like her. You know, people act differently people actually we know. But she also didn't seem, you know, especially upset by things. Do you think that she killed both of her husbands? I do, yeah, and I do wish. Like you said, there may not have been enough evidence to make a you know, a rest of her in the Larry Ford case, but it does It makes me sad that Larry Ford, you know, has no justice.

55:49 Absolutely, I think that we should start a new drinking game. Every time you say for sure, the audience has to drink, and every time I say absolutely the audience has to drink. I think you both are guilty of using those words. An awful lie. Could be our New Year's resolution. To say them more or less to say them and I just mean water because people should be more hydrated, so you know, just to take it. We just want people to be hydrated. Russell was very forgiving to Barbara. He wanted to reconcile their marriage, and he forgave the financial crimes, which are pretty great, and he forgave the affair and the whole like the big lies about the book. Yeah, should he have forgiven her No.

56:34 I would have a really hard time getting past you know, even one of those things, but all of them right. Together, those were pretty big lies. And I think when you're telling those big lies to your spouse, who you know, you're supposed to, supposed to be your most trusted person, that you would never lie. And yeah, I think that I understand wanting to save your marriage. Yeah. I can only speculate on the money side of things. Maybe he felt, you know, guilty because he had kind of let her handle all that stuff because he was like, I'm not good with money, so you handle it. Maybe he was like, oh, I should have been more on top of things or something. But but it wasn't like she bought you know, too many clothes or makeup or whatever. It was like these were major financial crimes, like she was, you know, changing the letter head on. I feel like those were pretty big red flags.

57:24 Yeah, they should have been. Well, how do you feel your younger self did on this case? You know, not terribly, But I did rewrite a lot of it. When I look back at the original script, I wrote everything in the present tense for some strange reason, like Russ goes and does this, and then Barb does this, and so it was not very good from that perspective you were. I didn't really change mine because I thought that was kind of one of the fun things about this is going back and making fun of how bad we were that. Well. The other thing that I didn't do in the original I didn't share any background about Russell and Barbara and I and I think we've learned over time. Oh yeah, we really like to get to know the people we can in the case if we can, and learn a little bit about their upbringing, because it really does tell you more about who they became.

58:08 Do you remember why you picked this as your first case, because this isn't a well known case. I really have no idea. I took this as my first case. There was a book about the case that I read. It was called Before He Wakes by Jerry Bledsoe and I do remember it was a very good book, and so if you want to go deeper into the case, definitely recommend that. We hope you enjoyed this rewind episode of Barbara and Russell Steger. Are you talked in the beginning of the episode about the pink frosted cookies? If it was the last pink frosted peppermint cookie that you were going to have, like, I'm probably not going to make them again until next Christmas, and you knew that a cat licked it, would you eat the cookie or would that be enough for you to be like, yeah, I'm not gonna.

59:03 Eat This is purely hypothetical question because it sounds very specific to me. Well, I just want you to answer it. Please. If it was the last one, I'd probably eat it. Cat's tongues are. Cite your sores. If I was desperate, I would eat it, yes, And would you? Uh? Yeah, I would. Okay, I'm glad you think. About it for too long. But Cosmo came in here and jumped up on the table and started licking the cookie and we were talking, so I couldn't stop him. So yeah, he licked the pink cook incorrigible that we could just give it to someone else. Just tell you right, not tell them all right. Maybe if we froze it it would you know, get rid of any cat germs.

59:47 Great good thinking. I think most people I don't know, do you eat or drink after your pet? I'm curious. Normally people would share like their cereal milk with their animal. Yea, Cosmo always sniffs you know this, Well, he always sniffs what I'm eating, but very rarely takes a byte or he gets really. Close to it. He gets like within a couple of centimeters of years. And I that's absolutely my fault. I have made a monster. Yeah, but I know you have a lot of questions for me, and well, I'm nervous because I have the memory of a fruit fly. D I'm not going to be able to remember anything that occurred in twenty twenty five. All you can do is your best. But twenty twenty five is drawing to a close, so I thought it would be a good time to reflect on the past year and maybe look forward to twenty twenty six. So we'll start off easy. Okay, what was the favorite movie or TV show that you watched in twenty twenty five doesn't have to have come out in twenty twenty five, but something that you remember that you enjoyed.

1:00:47 I don't know what about you. I think, and I think this might be your answer to We saw a movie called Sinners, which we both really really loved, was with Michael B. Jordan. It was like kind of of a horror film. As people know what Sinners is, I think it's it didn't get a lot of it as much as attention as you would have thought when it first came out. But it's so good. It was so we saw it. I think the first weekend it came out, we didn't know anything about it. I think I was kind of like Holy Cow. In the first I think it was literally like forty five minutes. I was like, is Michael Jordan playing both parts? I really couldn't figure that out. Yeah, Yeah, that was really good. It was very creative. There was a TV show that I watched called Adolescence.

1:01:28 I don't think you watched it. Holy Cow. It's very very dark, but that was really well done. I bet a lot of our listeners have already watched that. I've heard that people like that just the other day, just two days ago, I started watching I Love La on HBO, and it's not meant for people my age, which I know is a theme recurring theme for me is watching shows that I have no business watching. But you know, I know, but that was really kind of fresh and funny and I like that, and I am and then give heated rivalry another shout out. Oh I haven't finished that, but yeah, you never watched it. No, I do not recommend that for you or most men in your age group.

1:02:09 Well, I was going to give an honorable mention of movies for Companion. That was another one I really liked. I thought was really creative and inventive. No recollection of that. That was the one with the girl who was the She was like a robot essentially, but she didn't know she was a robot. I'm going to take your word for it. All right. How about least favorite? Do you have a least favorite movie? I do? Actually, do you know what it is? I might because it might be the same as mine. And Naked Gun. Oh no, not the same as I was just looking at Reddit this morning because you had given me these questions beforehand, because you're a true gentleman, and you know that I have the Memory of a What was dor a Tang? But I was looking and read it and a lot of people were saying that that was one of their favorite movies, and I was really disappointed by it, because, like the original ones were so fresh and funny, and I just felt like Leam Neeson love them, but I don't think he delivered. As Frank Junior, I was disappointed in it too. Yeah, it just wasn't It just seems really forced.

1:03:08 Yeah, I agree with you. But my least favorite was Materialists. Do you remember? Oh? Yeah, that was so bad too. You're right, it was comically bad to Coda Johnson. Coda Johnson. Yeah, it was just so bad and Pedro Pascal and the. Plot was just like I want you guys to watch it just because it was so like are you? But again, a lot of people like that movie, if you look at the reviews, because everyone loves Padroll. Yeah. Yes, So all right, let's move on to books. Favorite book that you read this year? Nobody knows you're here. I loved that book. There was a few I read that are really good, but that's the only one that I wrote down. Yeah, how about you? My favorite was a book I read very early in the year called James by Percival Everett. It was basically a retelling of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and it was just really, really well done.

1:03:55 I have not read that. I need to read that so good. I'm looking at my good Reads really quick because I want to give you guys a few books that you could read between Christmas and New Year. Wild Dark Shore if you haven't read that by Charlotte McConaughey. That was excellent. By Broken Country by Claire Leslie Hall. I really liked a lot. A book called The Last Love Note by Emma Gray, and I'm going to give you one more. I said it already, But Nobody Knows You're Here by Brynn Greenwood. Also, if you're in a book club, there is a book I read called Culpability by Bruce Holsinger that I was really an interesting book, and you haven't read that one, so I'm going to give you that one as a homework assignment.

1:04:37 Excellent. There was a book that I really hated called My Friends by Frederick Bachman that a lot of people really loved, but I hated it. Well, every book is not for every person, for sure, let's shift gears and talk about the podcast a little bit. What pod story ours? Oh, this one, what story from the last year is one that has stuck with you. Off the top of my head, Betty Broderick will never leave me. And I am very proud of the work that I did on that one. And I don't say that about every case I work. I do my best on every case, but I feel like I felt like I really knew Betty and that I told her story pretty well. Yeah, And can I speak for you the story about Molly and Jason helped me out with their last Corbett and Corbett. I thought you did an outstanding job on that case.

1:05:26 Oh thank you. That was definitely one that I felt very proud of. But I also like, really like emotionally connected to me. But the one I was going to mention that has stuck with me is a doctor Anthony Pignataro one. Yeah, because something about the idea of a doctor that you trust these people, you know, you just trust them with your life literally, and for someone to be that evil and careless and just you know, bad at what they do is just so scary. Well, enough about twenty twenty five, let's look forward to twenty twenty six. What kind of cases do you want to explore more as we go into next year. We talked about this a little bit before, but we've been doing this for three and a half years, and I want to branch out a little bit and maybe do a few more cases that are love Mary Kill cases, just a few more interesting true crime cases. So if you have a recommendation for a case that's a little different than what we've covered before, let us know.

1:06:21 Yeah. I think it's been really great, you know, doing love Mary Kill type cases that are about relationships because it allows us to talk about relationship dynamics and things like that, but it also does limit a little bit what we can cover. So there's like we feel really comfortable talking about married couples because we are a married couple. And yeah, but it'll be interesting to do some different out a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. What about personally, what are some goals that you have set for yourself for twenty twenty six. I haven't set any goals for. Myself, No, because you're doing. Something every year. We talk about resolutions on the podcast, and every year I've pretty much If I look back, I'm like, yeah, I didn't really didn't really meet my resolutions for this past year, So I don't know, I really have not thought about kind of personal goals for twenty.

1:07:05 Yeah, I have. And this break that we're taking, I'm trying to be more intentional with my time. That's really a huge goal of mine, because life is fast and it goes by and you're gonna miss it if you don't slow down. And I'm just trying to use my time better and not be online as much, not to doom scroll. Twenty twenty five I think for me personally was not my best year. I think my mental health flagged a little bit, and I needed to just take better care of my physical and mental health. So that is my goal for twenty twenty se. It's like a very good goal. Can I just adopt yours then as my own? Also? Well, yeah, I think we could all, you know, be more intentional with our time. I don't know how you especially do it. You do a lot, I know, Okay, I'm not like giving myself too much credit here, but I alleviate some of the stressage by the things that I do, Yeah, a lot of it by cooking and you know, doing all the A lot of the wifely duties, but you also do an awful lot and I hope in twenty twenty six that you and I can spend more meaningful time like we love doing the podcast, but like I said, I really feel like I need to sometimes take a little more downtime, and I know you do too, Yeah, that it might mean taking some breaks from the podcast. We haven't really, We've tried really hard not to do that. But I if there's one thing I would want the listeners to know, it's that there's just two of us doing this and sometimes it does become overwhelming and we sacrifice our personal time to pump out episodes, and.

1:08:35 Yeah, it does, and we do. We do love what we do, but it does get to be a lot with all the other day to day stuff we have going on too. Yeah, and because we can't support ourselves financially by doing the podcast. You know, I just want people to remember sometimes that we're doing our best. But you know, all the aspects that all the balls that we have in the air, sometimes it's hard to keep them all up in the air. So well, we hope that whatever personal goals you've set for yourself in twenty twenty six, thing you meet and surpass beyond your wildest expectations. We hope that you enjoyed our rewind episodes. Next Monday, it's back to normal. We love you guys so much. Thank you so much for hanging out with us. Happy twenty twenty. Six until next time.

1:09:16 Don't care a husband and don't kill your wife. Happen you you. We aday all the world every day subay. You We are. So job big be dome monest way down. The It is Kindled a