The Cheat: Parades and Poisonings

[00:00:00] Content Warning. This episode contains discussion of the murder of children. Hello everybody. I just want to say, I think we've been getting sappier and sappier as we get nearer to 2024, but I want to thank you all again for listening. I want to shout out this episode

[00:00:17] of The Cheat Sheet in particular because this is the first year that we unrolled the Cheat Sheet concept, an opportunity for us to talk about arranged different cases in a shorter format at the end of every week. This is the year we rolled it out, right Kevin? Yes.

[00:00:30] Or am I losing my mind completely? It's been a long year, ladies and gentlemen. Kevin's like, Anja, we've been doing the Cheat Sheet since the beginning. Don't you remember? So this is our last Cheat Sheet of 2023 and we're just so glad you've been enjoying it

[00:00:47] and let's get to it. In this episode, we're going to be discussing two cases out of Texas, a case that we've covered before out of Indiana, as well as a new case out of Australia and a case out of Florida. So it sounds like quite a full plate?

[00:01:04] Yes. And all of the cases I believe that we're talking about other than the one from Indiana that we've covered before have been requested by listeners. So love to see everyone engaging with this and asking us to cover different cases. So thank you. We appreciate you all.

[00:01:19] My name is Anja Kane. I'm a journalist. And I'm Kevin Greenlee. I'm an attorney. And this is the Murder Sheet. We're a true crime podcast focused on original reporting, interviews and deep dives into murder cases. We're the Murder Sheet. And this is the Cheat Sheet, parades and poisonings.

[00:02:22] To start out with, this is just a quick bulletin on a case that we've covered before and this of course is the unsolved murder of Romley Ratliff. This is a young woman who was murdered in Warsville, Indiana.

[00:02:33] The scene was set on fire. She still does not have justice. Her aunt Kim Sink is still continuously searching for justice. We had Kim on the show. She talked about her advocacy for her niece. And we can include a link to that episode in the show notes.

[00:02:49] Absolutely. So Kim is actually currently raising money to hire a private investigator in the case. She wants fresh eyes to come in and look at what's been done and perhaps contribute some more. She's looking to raise $5,100. And so we'll include a link to the GoFundMe.

[00:03:09] But just know that that case is not solved and people are still looking for answers. And we certainly wish Kim the best in terms of trying to get justice for her niece. They were very close. This is a very sad case. Absolutely.

[00:03:25] Now let's go to Texas for our next situation. The city of Edna in Texas, like many places throughout the United States, has its own little Christmas traditions. So on December 5th, 2023, this past year, they were having a Christmas parade starting at 6 p.m.

[00:03:44] And I mean, we've seen those, right, Kevin? That's a common thing in different places to have some sort of festivities to celebrate the holidays, right? Most every town does something similar to this, if not this exactly.

[00:03:56] Yes. And the local cheerleading squad was supposed to be there to participate in the festivities. But unfortunately, one face was missing from that squad. And that was that of 16-year-old Lisbeth Medina. This is a young girl. She and her mother previously lived in Nebraska, moved to Edna.

[00:04:16] By all accounts, just a really bright light, just a wonderful person, very sweet kid. And just beloved by her friends, family, and people in her community. But she was not at the Christmas parade. And that set off alarm bells.

[00:04:34] So ultimately, she was found stabbed to death in her bathtub in her family's apartment. Who discovered her? A lot of the news reports indicated that her mother found her. And I mean, just horrifying. Absolutely horrifying. And we've been kind of following that case in the background.

[00:04:57] Just such a heinous thing to happen to one so young. And in addition to that, there's been some interesting elements to it. Lisbeth's mother was in the press talking about how their apartment had been burglarized or broken into rather a few weeks prior.

[00:05:13] So could someone have come back? You know, why kill a 16-year-old? Over a burglary? Well, there has been an arrest. After four days of investigation, police ended up, you know, as part of the investigation, they released surveillance photos of a suspect.

[00:05:30] They noted he was driving a silver-colored Fort tourist. So this guy was picked up on camera. And fortunately, there has been an arrest. A 23-year-old was arrested in Shulinburg, Texas, which is about like an hour away from Edna. And his name is Rafael Govea Romero, and he is 23.

[00:05:50] Is there any connection that we know of between him and the victim prior to this tragedy? So police have not said that there is. And ABC 13, one of the local stations, talked to Lisbeth's family, and they say they don't recognize Romero at all.

[00:06:06] I suppose it's possible that there's some connection that no one knew about. But at this time, that's not being reported. But at this time, that's not being reported. So I think the door is open for that or this to be some sort of stranger thing.

[00:06:19] And also we don't know the cause. We don't know much more about her death other than that this was a stabbing. So that leaves the door open to me, unfortunately, for some sort of burglary gone wrong, but also, you know, some sort of more sexually motivated situation.

[00:06:37] It just, your mind doesn't automatically assume that a person would randomly rob a house an hour away from where they live. Right. But if he'd been there before potentially, maybe there's some sort of correlation there. I don't know. It's very...

[00:06:57] Also it kind of makes a bit of sense to not rob things in your exact area, although Romero, it turns out, did just that. So we look through his records on October 6, 2022. He was arrested by Schulenberg police and he was charged with a second degree felony,

[00:07:16] which was burglary of habitation. So he's burglarizing a residence in that situation. And that was referred to the La Grange County Prosecutor. Now this ended up being deferred on April 5, 2023 when he pleaded no contest. So basically what that means when something is deferred in this context,

[00:07:37] in the criminal court context, it's a way for a person to potentially avoid getting a criminal conviction placed on their record. So it's kind of a deal and arrangement where you go ahead and plead no contest

[00:07:56] or guilty and you pay the fine, but the conviction may not show up on your record as long as you fulfill certain requirements. Okay, well it's very unfortunate obviously that that happened in this situation given that he went on to

[00:08:16] you know allegedly do something even more heinous than a simple burglary. Yes. Because you know it's been reported that he was an undocumented immigrant. I can't really find if that is true although again I will say that that has been widely

[00:08:32] reported. It seems odd that if you know he was arrested for burglary, that didn't come up at all. So I wonder if there's more nuance there is something we've kind of heard as part of a tip.

[00:08:49] But at the very least the arrest record does note that he was originally from Mexico. He's not an American citizen at the very least. So it's the whole thing is just absolutely tragic for the Medina family and you know going into the

[00:09:06] holidays especially losing a child like that. It's just I don't know my heart goes out to them. Yeah, my heart goes out to them and also to her friends on the cheer squad and elsewhere.

[00:09:19] That's something that's pretty tough for anybody to handle but especially at that age to have someone you know come to such a tragic end must be very difficult for them all. And regardless what the motive is whether it's a burglary gone wrong to eliminate witnesses or

[00:09:36] something sexual to prioritize one's needs to that extent over the life of a child is pretty shocking. It's sickening. Okay another case out of Texas, another tragic case out of Texas.

[00:09:53] This is now in San Antonio. So 18 year old Savannah Soto was pregnant and expecting and sort of do any day and unfortunately her family learned of her disappearance when she failed to show up at the

[00:10:09] hospital to be induced. So obviously anyone who's been pregnant or has known a pregnant person like that's a pretty important moment to go have the baby and if somebody is not showing up then

[00:10:21] that's a pretty clear sign that something is very wrong. And Savannah was not the only one missing so her 22 year old boyfriend a man named Matthew Guerra was also MIA. So where are they? Well

[00:10:36] unfortunately the story does not have a happy ending. They were found both dead in Guerra's car which was a Kia Optima at the 5900 block of Danny K is what the local news is reporting.

[00:10:54] Both were shot, they were both dead so was the unborn child and police estimated that they'd been there for three to four days. So it's a very very horrific scene. Police are making statements specifically San Antonio Police Department Chief William

[00:11:11] McManus. He told the news that the scene was perplexing they've really emphasized how bizarre the scene was. I don't that can mean any number of things but there is some important clue that does exist. There's video footage isn't there? Yes there's video footage of the silver Kia

[00:11:34] pulling together with a dark pickup truck in this kind of like place behind almost like I think it's an apartment complex or something. And somebody gets out of the truck and someone also

[00:11:46] gets out of the Kia on the driver's side. Now police are stressing they don't believe the person getting out of the Kia is either Guerra or Soto. The implication is they're already dead in the

[00:11:57] car so they believe that somebody else is driving around this Kia and then getting out and conferring with the person in this truck. So those and I've watched the video it's not great terms of identifying anybody but we'll include a link to the local news coverage of

[00:12:18] this please review it. If the massacre of this family it should not, this needs to be solved and one thing we should know because this is something that came to my mind too

[00:12:33] you know could it have been a murder suicide. Police are saying no at this point they don't think that so these are two people who were should have been able to just have a baby and move on with their

[00:12:46] lives but unfortunately something awful happened so again share this story let's keep talking about this. There's also an interesting case going on way over on I believe the other side of the world

[00:13:01] way over in Australia. Yeah and this one reminded me of a certain book that we read recently by Lisa Perrin and this is the League of Lady Poisoners and actually the listener who wrote

[00:13:18] us about this who's awesome by the way was kind of I think brought it up initially in reference to that story there's what we talked about with Lisa and I'll include the link in the show notes is that there's a very strong perception of poisoning as a feminine

[00:13:34] mode of murder. The data doesn't necessarily support that there's nuances there but I think it's fair to say that at the very least it's a popular cultural perception and there may be some indications that in terms of women serial killers poisoning is something that is

[00:13:54] kind of in that arsenal more so than men a little bit although again it's complicated. So this is the case of Erin Patterson she's a 49 year old woman who is living in the town of Leongafa in Victoria I'm sorry to all the Australians if I said that wrong.

[00:14:19] We do have some Australian listeners they've emailed us but I have Australian cousins and I think they're going to you should know they're going to they're going to get mad at me about this

[00:14:28] what the heck on you know so no disrespect I'm just bad at reading things this is what happens when you don't talk to people and you just spend all your life reading because then you

[00:14:37] just don't know how to say words and you sound ridiculous. So on July 29th of this year Patterson's having a little get together and she's serving beef Wellington with mushrooms on it and a bunch of her guests died specifically her former in-laws Gail and Don Patterson they were

[00:14:57] 70 years old and Gail's sister Heather Wilkinson who was 66 so her ex she's divorced she's separated from her husband but she considers herself still very good friends with her ex-in-laws and has them over entertains them one person who escaped this gathering was Simon Patterson

[00:15:17] that's her ex-husband he had to cancel at the last minute plans changed but then everybody else who's eating this beef Wellington is dying and getting sick and she's been so what was what was your motive here it's not clear but well she's she says that whatever

[00:15:37] happened it was an accident it was not she did not intend to kill anybody she cared about these people well the obvious question then is if I've made food for everybody in my house for a dinner

[00:15:50] and everybody who eats it passes away the question is why haven't why didn't I get sick did I know to avoid the tainted item so police have said the Patterson didn't get sick herself that she

[00:16:05] escaped unscathed from this disastrous lunch she's made statements saying that she was also admitted to the hospital after her beef Wellington situation so at first she's saying I don't know why they would fall ill and it just seems if everybody who eats it passes away except for you

[00:16:35] then you must have known not to eat it or eat only a very small amount of it am I crazy for jumping to that conclusion no that's not crazy I think that's absolutely reasonable because the only

[00:16:51] other survivor was Ian who is the I guess Anton was husband who was very very sick and and you know spent weeks in the hospital he was not he was not okay um she she says again Patterson

[00:17:11] says that she was she did go to the hospital she was in pain and her and and the hospital gave her a liver drug but again I don't know if we can take her word for that at this point frankly

[00:17:23] now one thing that's interesting is that there's been media reports that somebody a 40 somebody was identified as a man was also continuously getting sick after eating with her and people have people believe that to be your ex-husband so there may have been

[00:17:41] poisoning attempts of him over the years before this before it kind of gets really crazy in this situation another question I would have would be what made him cancel out on this dinner

[00:17:56] that's not clear to me at this point but did he have any sort of foreknowledge well if he cancels and then maybe that prompts her to dump in a whole bunch of poison in anger I've seen some

[00:18:10] of the tabloid media reports indicate that she was trying to get him back but I don't know what the truth is in that to be honest but if there's an element of like I'm going to win him back

[00:18:18] but he's not coming I'm going to kill his family then that kind of speaks to a bit of a motive about why now and why these people right either way it's it's it's very disturbing and yeah she's

[00:18:31] again protesting her innocence although she's apparently the media report has reported that she's you know when police were questioning her she's wailing loudly there seems to be like a level of like oh poor me playing the victim here that I don't know seems like weaponized

[00:18:51] and I guess I don't understand I don't really know much about poisons and poison mushrooms is this something that plausibly could have happened accidentally is this a situation like people go out in their yard and they pick mushrooms and don't

[00:19:11] realize a particular mushroom is poison well she's claiming that she bought the mushrooms from an Asian grocery store in Melbourne which frankly smacks of like kind of racism to me like oh yeah

[00:19:25] the of course this Asian grocery store would have sold me these like what I I she's not saying anything like I messed up in terms of my mushroom picking expedition

[00:19:36] what if she bought it from uh where was she buys it from where was she claims to buy it from us don't even go into the possible racial elements if there is a store mistakenly selling

[00:19:49] poison mushrooms I would have a hard time believing that they sold the poison mushrooms to only one person and so then I would be curious to see has there been a spate of people in this area

[00:20:03] patrons of this store who have passed away because of eating tanked mushrooms yeah that's a very good point in addition to that so forensic testing has them all dying of eating what are called

[00:20:15] death cap mushrooms so they're pinpointing that and from what I've read in the media reports talking to experts where experts are interviewed about like can that happen in the mushroom industry they indicate that this is a very highly regulated industry like it's very unlikely for like the

[00:20:35] type of mushroom that can kill you to just oops we put it on a kroger aisle you know like that's not that's not really that doesn't happen kroger doesn't make a mistake like that right or whatever the

[00:20:47] Australian kroger is I guess um now some things that are in Patterson's favor police have investigated a food dehydrator that she may have used in some of this preparation no traces

[00:21:01] of death cap mushrooms on there so it's not necessarily you know I'll be curious to see what ends of happening with the forensic evidence here but again I should note that again last year

[00:21:21] Simon the ex-husband he felt so ill that he went into a coma before this like he barely pulled through so there seems to be at the very least a spate of people in Patterson's orbit who

[00:21:38] are mysteriously falling ill falling seriously ill and one has to wonder what's going on there because I think if it's one incident then that's one thing but I don't know I'll be very curious to see how this develops but she was arrested back in November 2nd so

[00:21:58] everything is still ongoing right for our next and last case we'll be talking about a case that happened in Florida so this happened in West Kendall Florida it's um that's a unincorporated community it's within Dade County and of course Dade County is the location of

[00:22:22] Miami so it's Miami Dade County that's what it's known as what happened was a garbage collector with the department of solid waste is on his route it's around 2 p.m he gets out he sees something that concerns him sees a body sticking out of a

[00:22:43] trash bin he gets out of his truck confirms that it's a body and calls in and calls in investigators homicide investigators respond to the scene they're looking into this and the person in the

[00:22:59] trash bin is identified as Armando Benavides he was 54 he was set to turn 55 on Christmas day and it turns out that before he ended up in this garbage bin on on southwest 85th street

[00:23:13] in West Kendall he was wanted because earlier he had shot his estranged wife and wounded her she survived she pulled through but he he did shoot her and what looked like a murder at first

[00:23:30] ends up becoming a case of suicide so investigators determined that he actually likely crawled into the bin himself he had no connection to the homeowners crawls in the bin himself and turns the gun on himself and dies that way so obviously still upsetting and tragic but understandably

[00:23:51] a lot of the neighbors at the time see this and they see like you know oh my gosh like somebody somebody got murdered but it sounds like the evidence at the scene pointed to more of a suicide

[00:24:02] and so we reached out to Miami data authorities and we're going to try to get more information on this but the initial press reports indicate that it was ruled a suicide and it was investigated as

[00:24:12] like it could be either or at first and and that's what they determined so anyways those the cases we wanted to cover in our last cheat sheet of 2023 I suppose Kevin any any previews of

[00:24:25] coming attractions as we say in our patreon sometimes yes our patreon's always push us to offer some previews of coming attractions what the heck are you people doing next they ask we don't know we say

[00:24:38] well i'll be a bit vague but i know we have a lot of guests coming up that we're very excited to to share with you we take our audience very seriously we often talk to each other we

[00:24:56] think we have a very intelligent great audience and so we want to make sure that we only present guests that are professional and worth your time whether we agree with them or not whether you

[00:25:10] agree with them or not hopefully you will find that they are worth your time and interesting and reputable yeah it's it's actually never a bad opinion i think we'll we'll always go for anybody

[00:25:23] with even maybe with a wild opinion as long as it's professional as long as they're professional as long as they're speaking based on fact we're never going to have someone on who we have to

[00:25:33] be debating over basic facts when you know if they're spreading around nonsense it's always going to be somebody who we are confident about and proud to have on our platform so

[00:25:45] we got a lot of people coming up who who were pretty excited about in terms of that who can speak to a range of things i'm talking authors i'm talking lawyers i'm talking just people with

[00:25:55] a range of experience or people who are authors and lawyers people are the best of the bun like like james braznahan who we had on recently so uh some exciting stuff coming up uh we can't

[00:26:06] wait for you to listen and we just want to thank you again but before we go i'm not letting you get off the hook i'm not letting you off the hook that easy so i want i want to preface this sir

[00:26:18] what are you gonna say occasionally like any couple sometimes will have dreams about each other on it sounds weird it's not weird we're not going to get weird on here not gonna get weird

[00:26:30] but in ania's dreams that i'm in i'm usually a dashing reputable credible person worthy of respect if not admiration and love and that's pretty realistic and in kevin's dreams about me invariably i am doing something highly unreasonable and impractical and frankly irrational but let me give an

[00:26:53] example i'm gonna get snobbish and full of herself well it's not even that it's always insane in one in one famous example he had a dream about me where i got into an argument with our neighbor

[00:27:05] and then challenged the woman and proceeded to carry out this challenge to joust me while we were writing mowing tractors or tractor mowers or whatever the so that that's the kind of energy i'm bringing to kevin's dreams apparently but now explain now the reason i'm making you say

[00:27:21] this on the podcast is because he had a podcast dream where i gave the dumbest suggestion for cheat sheet and i want you all to know about it because this is what i have to deal with in the dream ania

[00:27:32] suggested that on each episode of cheat sheet we wrap things up by sharing a fun fact and i'm like oh what what kind of things do you have in mind and she had one written down that she shared

[00:27:50] with me which is often people refer to their dogs and cats as good boys or good girls but actually animals are amoral that kind of sounds like something you would say i don't think pets are amoral i love

[00:28:12] our dog i love pets in general i i prefer animals in some instances to people so i don't know why i'm going around saying they're amoral and it just makes me sound like one of those like red

[00:28:23] it reply guys who's trying to like you know one about actually animals are amoral so again pretty accurate oh my god it's so embarrassing but anyways i had i had to share that with you because

[00:28:36] we're getting to the point where actually having dreams about really dumb ideas for cheat sheet so just be grateful that that dream ania is not is not dealing with any of these editorial decisions because i think things would go off the rail pretty pretty quickly yes

[00:28:50] but anyways uh wishing you all a happy new year and we'll we'll chat again soon thanks so much thanks thanks so much for listening to the murder sheet if you have a tip concerning one of the cases

[00:29:03] we cover please email us at murder sheet at gmail.com if you have actionable information about an unsolved crime please report it to the appropriate authorities if you're interested

[00:29:20] in joining our patreon that's available at www.patreon.com slash murder sheet if you want to tip us a bit of money for records requests you can do so at www.buymeacoffee.com slash murder sheet

[00:29:39] we very much appreciate any support special thanks to kevin tyler greenlee who composed the music for the murder sheet and who you can find on the web at kevin tg.com if you're looking to talk with other

[00:29:54] listeners about a case we've covered you can join the murder sheet discussion group on facebook we mostly focus our time on research and reporting so we're not on social media much

[00:30:06] we do try to check our email account but we ask for patience as we often receive a lot of messages thanks again for listening