The Cheat Sheet: Pandering and Pentobarbital

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[00:01:49] So this is actually not our original introduction to the episode. This is a late edition update that we recorded on July 17th. The rest of the episode is a cheat sheet that we pre-recorded.

[00:02:05] It's all very confusing because obviously we're recording on different dates and in addition to that... Also, I think in the episode you were going to hear a bit later, we say, oh, this is coming out on Friday. And obviously as you know, we decided to release it earlier.

[00:02:23] And I think it will soon become apparent why we went to release a bit sooner and we appreciate your patience and tolerance with us on that score. Yes, we wanted to basically discuss something around the recent episodes we released on what

[00:02:40] we called sort of the secret messages of the Delphi Defense's brain trust. This of course involved attorneys, Carol Weineke, who is an appellate lawyer who worked for Richard Allen. Michael Osbrook, who is an attorney for defense attorneys, Andrew Baldwin and Bradley Rosie.

[00:02:56] Bob Mada, who is a YouTuber and attorney who has the Defense Diaries YouTube show. Angela Sidlowski, a YouTuber and social worker. Courtney Parsons, a dog food employee and YouTuber. And Nicole Miller, who is a social media sort of influencer, account holder.

[00:03:15] And this was... they had a group chat. They called themselves the due process gang. And we reported on those group chat messages that we accessed very recently. And we appreciate the outpouring of messages and conversations and discussions around that.

[00:03:35] I feel like we saw some really interesting conversations taking place over that. And that's always really honestly very heartening to see when you release an episode that people are engaging with in that way. We really appreciate that. We generally keep the policy that our episodes speak for themselves.

[00:03:53] And I think that's true in this case. I think a lot of the so-called criticism we got from people who were referred to in the episode, they were responding to things we didn't actually say in the episode. So that was interesting.

[00:04:06] I don't really feel the need to point that out. And if people want to continue to say unflattering things about my appearance or Anya's appearance, that's their right. But things are a little bit different in our minds when people decide to attack our sources,

[00:04:25] especially when they attack a source with an out and out lie. And that's what has happened here today. Yes. And so we felt the need to jump in because again, as Kevin said, you want to mess with us? Fine. I mean, go ahead.

[00:04:38] If you want to mess with one of our sources, no. Our sources mean a lot to us. People trusting us with their stories, whether they're anonymous, whether they are using their names like in this case.

[00:04:51] Either way, we feel that you've put your essentially a story out there with us. And I feel like we are not going to sit back and let somebody be bashed and smeared and lied about in that setting.

[00:05:09] In this particular case, the person who told the lie is Kara Weineke. And she told it to WishTV, who covered this earlier today. Do you want to read the book? Yes. So WishTV covered our reporting about the leaked messages and sort of kind of followed up on that.

[00:05:27] So this is what Kara Weineke told them as part of their report. So quote, recently out of revenge, a person who knew the password of one of my friends accessed her X account and copied all of her private conversations.

[00:05:41] He gave those conversations to Murder Sheet who read some of them aloud on recent episodes. End quote. So again, and I cannot stress this enough, no hedging, no legalese, what Ms. Weineke did there was she lied. She out and out lied.

[00:05:57] And we will discuss how she lied and what she lied about in a second. But I just want to say right here at top where you can't miss it, she lied.

[00:06:06] And I think when people lie in an effort to win an argument, it tells us a couple of things, or rather a few things. One thing is if you have to lie to win an argument, chances are your argument isn't that good

[00:06:20] because a good argument doesn't need a lie in order to support it. Another thing is if you tell a lie, that tells us something about you. It tells us something about your character and who you are.

[00:06:34] And finally, if you tell a lie, it also tells us what you think of other people because you think other people can be lied to, tricked and fooled. And I know Ms. Weineke has a lot of experience being fooled herself because she's never

[00:06:50] met a conspiracy theory she doesn't like. But I think most people are smarter than that and they don't like being lied to. Yes, so where is the lie here? Well, Paul Mannion is and was the legal owner of the Unraveling Twitter channel and the Unraveling YouTube channel.

[00:07:13] These are his properties. These are his accounts. He set them up. He owns them. There is no world in which he hacked into what Weineke seems to be suggesting here is that he somehow hacked into Angela Szilowsky's Twitter account

[00:07:31] and then just released these messages as part of some revenge plot. Again, this was his account. He can do whatever the heck he wants with his messages. The Twitter account was associated with the Unraveling channel, which he owned.

[00:07:47] I think a lot of us at different times or maybe even now have had the experience of working in an office and often when you work in an office or even when you work at home, if you're if you're working for a business

[00:07:59] and you're communicating with people electronically, you often have an email address or some sort of media account that you use that's associated with the business. And I can tell you, for instance, Anya used to work for Business Insider, the digital news publication.

[00:08:18] And when she worked there, she had a special business insider account. And she used that account for business purposes. And the owner of the account was not Anya. The owner of the account was Business Insider.

[00:08:34] And so if Business Insider were today to release some of those emails from Anya's account, it wouldn't be a situation where, oh, Business Insider is like a disgruntled friend who's like hacking into her account illegally.

[00:08:48] No, it wouldn't be like that at all because Business Insider owns the account. And however Anya used the emails that was their property. Paul Mannion owned the Unraveling Twitter account. He gave Angela Sledowski access to it.

[00:09:06] If she chose to use that access to communicate with people in a way she now regrets being exposed publicly, that is on her. I think frankly, it's not a terribly smart move to have private and personal

[00:09:19] communications on a business account, especially if it is not a business you own. But that is a decision Ms. Sledowski made. Paul Mannion owns those messages. They are his. He did not hack into anyone's account. He did not copy any messages from anyone's account.

[00:09:38] If it is his own account, Ms. Weineke is lying. So this is a libel because she's saying that he did a crime and it's a crime that damages his reputation. And what's so odious about this to me is that

[00:09:57] essentially by suggesting a whiff of impropriety about the whole thing, she's attempting to change the subject from what I'm sure makes her quite uncomfortable, which is the content of the messages to some fantasy about how they were obtained. They're sourcing their provenance.

[00:10:16] Because if you're out there and you've changed the subject so that when people talk about these messages, they say, no, I heard that they may have been obtained illegally. Then people are not talking about the content of the messages.

[00:10:29] She doesn't want you to talk about the content of the messages because the content of those messages embarrass her. They embarrass her as well they should frankly. And they embarrass her friends. So she's trying to change the subject and she's changing the subject

[00:10:46] by lying and trying to smear someone else. Why would she do that on you? Well, the reason why I think that they're going with this sort of messaging on this is that essentially it's a kind of a veiled threat.

[00:10:59] By smearing Paul as having done something illegal or something wrong, they're saying essentially if anyone else wants to do this, we'll say you did crimes. I mean it's pretty blatant to essentially shoot the messenger in this case,

[00:11:17] smear the whistleblower who exposed things by painting him as if he's some just common criminal who I guess broke in to somebody's Twitter account. That's all. We can disregard him because he did something bad.

[00:11:32] And I think it really speaks to somebody who would rather instead of engaging internally with what these messages indicate, what was said, why perhaps this never should have happened. Instead of doing that and doing maybe looking inward perhaps about

[00:11:51] her own role in this and the role of her friends in this, it's shoot the messenger. Go after Paul. Say he did something illegal, he's bad, he's the bad guy here. Don't worry about, pay no attention to the attorneys behind the curtain.

[00:12:04] I mean to quote Osbrook's apparently favorite movie. I don't know. I find it really troubling when you have people respond to things like this by not only going after the journalists involved, going after the people who are

[00:12:18] actually shining a light on something, but going after the source, going after the whistleblower. I think it's intended to have a chilling effect if anyone else in our ranks has any questions.

[00:12:28] We will say you, we will smear you, we will tell lies about you if you do something. I think that's the intention and that's why we feel we have an obligation to speak out here.

[00:12:39] This is a lie and I just, I don't know, I find it appalling as somebody who has often worked with sources, anonymous sources, sources back when I was on the business beat, you know, when you have someone going after someone who made the difficult decision to shed

[00:12:59] light on a bad situation that they felt was getting out of control. That is an act of bravery. That is an act that we appreciate because it allows us to do our jobs. That is an act that everyone should appreciate whether or not you, whatever side of this

[00:13:13] case that you're on, I think more transparency is almost always better. This is one of those times where we actually got a look behind the curtain and it is because of Paul Mannion and that makes him threatening to them so I guess- So they lie?

[00:13:31] Tearing him down with lies is the way to go. In a sane world, Andrew Baldwin and Bradley Rosie would be thanking Paul Mannion right now because he just gave them a roadmap about who doesn't have the prudence to avoid spilling details

[00:13:45] in order to impress random people on the internet. That is what he has done. As long as we've had to come here and start talking about this, which again we were preferred not to do, I think there's a couple of other things I want to mention quickly.

[00:14:01] One comment I've seen a lot of is from people who are disgusted by what this team has been up to and they've said, well we find it though difficult to listen to these episodes because the subject

[00:14:18] matter is distasteful. What these people are doing is so distasteful, it's just unpleasant to expose yourself to it. And we understand. We can understand that, but the fact of the matter is I think it is absolutely crucial

[00:14:34] that we do pay attention and we do watch and learn about this because if we are so disgusted, we turn our heads. We are allowing this sort of thing to flourish and flourish it will. If this is successful in Delphi, other defense attorneys all over the country will

[00:14:56] emulate it and whenever we have another big case in the true crime community, we will see this same sort of thing, the same sort of behavior from internet sleuths dallying with defense attorneys for all sorts of purposes. Yes.

[00:15:11] We need to, even though it may be distasteful, we need to look at this right in the eye and say, this is wrong. This has to stop. Yes. And I want to add and I want to stress that I don't think such a future is good for cases.

[00:15:29] I don't think it's good for people who are interested in true crime. I don't think it is good for defendants in many situations. And I don't think it's right. I don't think people trying to manipulate public opinion in this way is good or helpful.

[00:15:46] I don't want to see this continue and we refuse to look away. The endless character assassinations, all of this stuff, it's horrifying. And one more thing, I did come across, I did see something that one of the members of the

[00:16:04] due process gang, Nicole Miller, posted and it was so frankly, it was so shocking and distasteful even at this late date. It shocked me. And I want to read it to you now. I'm quoting now from Nicole Miller quote, here's the truth about it.

[00:16:24] MS doesn't care it was me or Bob or Courtney or Cara or anybody else. Their only objection, their only objective is for this to reflect on Richard Allen's defense attorneys. They want them to get the boot again.

[00:16:38] This is exactly like the first time exactly what they did when a source gave the messages about the crime scene photo leak. It is a pattern. Last time they did all of this, someone took their own life. So that is really sickening.

[00:16:52] First of all, obvious factual situation is a man did take his own life and he did that days before our episode on the leak aired. So first of all that and second of all, this man who took his own life, he was a human being.

[00:17:10] He was a human being who had a full life. He had people who loved and cherished him and he's not here anymore. And for someone who'd never even met this man to take him and try to use his death

[00:17:26] to score points in an internet argument, it is disgusting. It is despicable. And to me, it made me think of some words of a lawyer named Joseph Welch that he uttered to Joseph McCarthy decades ago. And I'm going to quote them to you now.

[00:17:44] Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gazed your cruelty or your recklessness. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency? These people I'm convinced have no sense of decency. Shame on them. Shame on all of them.

[00:18:01] And with that, I hope you enjoy the rest of the pre-recorded cheat sheet. Content warning, this episode contains discussion of rape, torture and murder. Today on the cheat sheet, we're going to be doing a bunch of cases from some far-flung

[00:18:18] locales including Indiana, Wisconsin, Missouri, New Hampshire and Alaska. And one of the cases is going to involve a high-profile figure from the Delphi murder case. My name is Anya Kane. I'm a journalist. And I'm Kevin Greenlee. I'm an attorney. And this is the murder sheet.

[00:18:37] 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, pandering and pentabarbital.

[00:19:34] So for this first iteration of the cheat sheet, we should just let you know that we're recording this on Tuesday, July 16th. So if some groundbreaking massive shake-ups happen in any of these cases before then, we do apologize. We just don't know about them yet.

[00:19:52] So to start off, let's look at a story from WTHR that's a local news station here in Indianapolis, the Great Station. And we have a lot of really great stations here. So whenever we kind of cite one of these articles, feel free to go back and check

[00:20:07] the original reporting from the journalists and give them their support that they need to kind of keep going. It's really important to us to support local news whenever we sort of cite their reporting. So shout out to them.

[00:20:21] And let's talk about a story that we've actually previously covered a bit in our profile episode of Judge Francis Gull. So this story goes back to 1997. That was when a young man named Joseph Corcoran was living in the Fort Wayne area

[00:20:37] with his brother James, his sister Kelly, Kelly's fiancee Robert Turner. And that particular day, July 26, 1997, Timothy Bricker and Doug Stillwell, two friends came over to hang out. Now Joseph Corcoran apparently said that he heard some of this group talking about him, teasing him, saying negative things.

[00:21:01] So he responded by loading a semi-automatic rifle and gunning them all down. Now these four men were all killed and Corcoran's sister Kelly came home that day to find Corcoran sitting on the porch and she confronted him angrily seeing how many, you know,

[00:21:17] how her fiancee, her brother and these two friends were all murdered. So one interesting detail about this that will become more important later is that Corcoran did leave at least one person alive in the house. That was his young niece who he hid away upstairs before the shooting.

[00:21:32] So Corcoran was brought to trial. Interestingly, this was not the first time he was accused of killing someone close to him. Previously when he was only 16, he was charged with killing his parents, Jack and Catherine, Corcoran. There were no witnesses to the crime.

[00:21:50] And even though Corcoran had previously been trying to bribe his friends to kill his parents, he got acquitted. So unfortunately, it would seem like that was probably, you know, a bad foreshadowing because it seems likely that he killed his parents.

[00:22:07] It's possible that there just wasn't enough evidence there to acquit him, but either way, unfortunately, other members of his family would have to suffer because of this. So this is a high-profile case. Judge Gull was overseeing it.

[00:22:20] This was her first ever death penalty case where death penalty was on the table. She brought in a jury at a Porter County and of course, barred mention of the Corcoran parents' murder from the trial. Obviously that would be highly prejudicial.

[00:22:35] So you would not want people talking about that because it should be focused on the four people killed in this iteration. You can't just bring in every bad act that a person or a defendant has done in order to kind of make them look worse before the jury.

[00:22:49] But in the end, it really didn't matter because the jury only had to deliberate for 35 minutes before finding him guilty and recommending the death penalty with Judge Gull. A judge Gull ended up accepting, sentencing him to death.

[00:23:03] And then oddly enough, shortly after she had to reason with Corcoran because he stopped cooperating with his own lawyers, refused to sign papers for an appeal, and she eventually got him to do so. He ultimately appealed on the grounds that he was improperly sentenced.

[00:23:18] This led to years of legal wrangling. I believe in 2000, Gull had to sort of rewrite her decision to clarify some things. In 2015 though, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ultimately decided against Corcoran's appeal, finding that he didn't prove there were errors in how Judge Gull sentenced him.

[00:23:37] So he landed on death row at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, Indiana. And he's one of only eight men on our state's death row. So that, and of course, that does not count the federal prisoners in Terre Haute, Indiana. We're talking about the state folks.

[00:23:54] So for years he's been there and for years kind of this hasn't really come up because Indiana has not executed anyone since 2009. There's a very specific reason for that. Pharmaceutical manufacturers don't want to supply death penalty states with the different components required for lethal injections.

[00:24:15] You can imagine a death penalty is very politically controversial and it just is kind of a hot button topic that people don't want to deal with. But recently Indiana got its hands on some pentabarbital that is a sedative, and that

[00:24:31] was apparently according to reports after years of efforts. And Corcoran happens to be the first person on the list slated to be executed in the event that executions get going again. So what do his attorneys have to say now that this may become a reality?

[00:24:46] Well, they're noting that Corcoran has been diagnosed with schizophrenia. There's a talk about how other states including Ohio have laws against applying the death penalty in cases where the defendant has a diagnosis for a severe mental illness and they list both schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder as examples.

[00:25:07] Now Indiana does not have that law so it's unclear that that would apply here, but you have a lot of debate about mental illness and the death penalty. Should we be executing people who perhaps are suffering from an underlying mental illness that

[00:25:24] kind of causes some doubts about their complicity in a terrible action like this? I mean four people were brutally gunned down for no reason. At the same time, is it right to execute someone in response to that who may not be

[00:25:40] able to help themselves? And it's a confusing issue. I will say this. One thing that really hurt Corcoran was the fact that he spared his niece. He hid her away upstairs and the thing about that is it shows that he was aware what he was doing.

[00:25:57] He realized he was going to kill these people and he wanted to hide her away so she wouldn't get killed. So that doesn't really speak to somebody who's necessarily insane at the

[00:26:07] time of the crime and why is it important that someone be insane at the time of a crime when you're talking about an insanity defense Kevin? Well, you want to make sure that they understand they're doing something wrong. You don't want to punish someone for committing

[00:26:21] something that if they don't even understand that they don't have the capacity to understand that what they're doing is wrong. And I believe there were some issues, some factual details in his crime which suggested that he did indeed understand what he was doing and he was able to

[00:26:39] at least control it to a degree. You could get into issues of competency, competency to stand trial but obviously he already stood trial and that has more to do with can you help defend yourself? Can you help your defense essentially work to get you acquitted

[00:26:54] or work out a good deal? And so this stuff is often a lot more nuanced and confusing than cut and dry. And I think it's going to be interesting to see how it plays out. I know a lot of people

[00:27:08] have a lot of strong opinions on things like the death penalty and without even really getting into our opinions on it or talking about how we feel about it, it's just safe to say that

[00:27:18] something like this is going to bring out a lot of I think passion on both sides of people who think he should be held accountable for his actions through the death penalty or people who

[00:27:28] feel like this is not an appropriate application of it in this specific case or people who feel that it's never appropriate to put someone to death. So I'll be curious to see how it plays out

[00:27:37] but it's an important reminder that this was Judge Gull's case, this was a high profile case she worked on before the Delphi murders and so it's just interesting to see some of those names come up again. Let's move over to Milwaukee, I guess up to Milwaukee. Milwaukee

[00:27:56] is in Wisconsin which of course is north of Indiana. This is a story that I read about NBCNews.com and this involves a situation. I always find it interesting when people get charged with murder or face the possibility of getting charged with murder

[00:28:14] when they didn't wake up in the morning and decide to do something which causes the death of someone and this is a case involving a group of workers at a high-regency in downtown Milwaukee. This

[00:28:30] happened on June 30th of this year, a man named Devonte Mitchell, an African-American man went inside this high-regency even though he was not apparently a guest there. He had, I suppose you

[00:28:51] would call it a mental health episode. It's not clear what exactly he did but there were four employees of the hotel I guess acting in the capacity security personnel who subdued him.

[00:29:07] They're on a tape that captures at least some of their interaction and at one point in the tapes they make comments suggesting that perhaps Mitchell had tried to get into a bathroom or something particularly he tried to get into the ladies room. Mitchell on this recording is

[00:29:33] like yelling for help saying please help I'm sorry he was subdued by these four individuals in a pretty aggressive manner and Mitchell ended up dying and the hotel subsequently fired the four saying they had not acted in accordance with hotel policies and now the state of Wisconsin

[00:29:59] is investigating and contemplating the possibility of filing some sort of murder charges here. What do you make of all of this on? You want to be able to protect people, innocent people, but you don't want to use excessive force that kills someone when they don't seem to be

[00:30:22] posing a life or death threat. Yeah it's hard to know exactly what exactly went on here but it's certainly very troubling and as you said you don't basically someone causing a nuisance doesn't necessarily necessitate, you know certainly doesn't necessitate lethal force.

[00:30:43] It can be controversial though because I think for me ultimately we you know instead of being I mean I think the United States has to decide what we want to be

[00:30:56] like do we want to be a place where people who are having a mental health episode are left to be essentially either you know shot by the police or killed by bystanders who feel threatened

[00:31:07] by them. Is that where we want to be as a nation or do we want to provide you know welfare and a social safety net to take care of folks who might be in need like that before it becomes a whole

[00:31:22] incident that kind of spirals out of control, ruins lives, leads to loss of life, leads to devastated families in this case. I feel like we need this is like a bigger picture thing but

[00:31:37] we need to be a place where there can be those resources before this happens. I guess I just feel like we've kind of essentially left a lot of people with mental health issues without a lifeline

[00:31:49] and then things like this happen and it's just a disaster and then I think like underscoring especially with like maybe it sounds like some security guards were involved in this underscoring with them that like how can you neutralize a situation? How can you de-escalate? How can you

[00:32:05] remove someone without endangering their lives or causing them severe injuries? That should be the goal. It should not be doing whatever you know you can to kind of completely dominate them immediately that could turn into a very dangerous situation very quickly. So it sounds like Hayat

[00:32:23] is saying that they had policies that were violated here but I think it's it's worth underscoring in any situation you know basically again someone causing a nuisance, someone causing problems did not necessitate lethal force and you know what could cause lethal force

[00:32:39] and training people accordingly I guess. Yeah it's upsetting obviously if what was said on this recording is true when he burst into the ladies restroom that is a potentially very distressing event for people involved it should never happen it's not a death penalty

[00:32:57] of us. Especially if there's a mental health issue I mean he was running in there to attack people but it sounds like this could have been something where you know there was mental health

[00:33:06] issues involved and you know it's um you know I don't know I just feel like I feel like we're living in a failed state frankly the fact that stuff like this happens constantly and there

[00:33:16] seems to be absolutely no political will to give families and individuals the supports they need before some of this stuff goes wrong because. Yeah there's a mental health crisis. There's

[00:33:27] absolutely a mental health crisis in this country and again this is I mean this is huge but I don't understand where there's any you know I don't understand why there seems to be so little initiative

[00:33:39] from people on the national level and on state levels to again help people before they become a statistic help people before they're put in harm's way you know when you're when you're mentally ill you're you're absolutely at an increased risk of being the victim of violence

[00:33:56] and um I feel like some of these people could be could be saved and could be helped before it even goes this far so that's just my thought and maybe training people on how to deal with

[00:34:08] people who seem mentally ill or in the middle of a mental breakdown of some sort you know training accordingly would be also good whether you're a police officer or someone working in

[00:34:18] some kind of capacity as a security guard. So for our next case this is actually two cases I started looking at one and then it reminded me of another disturbing case and these ones

[00:34:31] are pretty disturbing so just be aware I relied on reporting from ABC News and CBS News. So the first story is out of Missouri this involves 41 year old Timothy M. Haslett and

[00:34:46] he this story first came to the public's attention in 2022 when a woman told police that she escaped from his basement in his house in Excelsior Springs Missouri and she indicated that he kept her in a dungeon there after kidnapping her essentially offering her money to go home with

[00:35:10] them pulling a gun and then making her take drugs and raping her and he held her in this dungeon for days she was raped and tortured and he told her that he had killed other women

[00:35:26] and unfortunately he has since been linked to a murder so this is a 36 year old Jeannie Crosdale her body was found in 2023 by kayakers on the Missouri River in a barrel she had issues with mental illness and drug addiction but you know she her family was

[00:35:43] looking desperately for her she was a talented athlete as a young woman so it's just a very tragic situation but pictures of her were found in Haslett's home so it appears that he killed her

[00:35:55] and he apparently again told the survivor that he had killed two other women in his dungeon he had suffocated them and put them into barrels so prosecutors and police are trying to find out if there is another victim who he killed but either way this is such a

[00:36:11] horrifying story and I my heart goes out to the family of of Jeannie Crosdale but also the survivor who you know fought for her life apparently he was out dropping his kid off at school

[00:36:23] and she broke out of there and she probably saved her own life and other lives by doing that um the thing that this reminded me of a little bit just in terms of somebody having pictures

[00:36:36] of their victims or recording their crimes in some way was a case we've covered before and that's of Brian Stevens Smith he's a man originally from South Africa who became a U.S. citizen and was living up in Alaska recently um his case was brought to everyone's attention

[00:36:55] a woman who had been working as a sex worker stole his phone and found footage of him killing a woman and then turned it over to police and this became a really big deal at trial

[00:37:06] and he was recently convicted of killing Kathleen Henry a 30-year-old woman and Veronica Alba Chuck who is was 52 when she was reported missing in 2019 and he received 99 years sentences for both of those killings so that came to a close up in Alaska and it's another case of again

[00:37:28] a man potentially recording his crimes against women vulnerable women and then um you know harming them and torturing them in horrible ways so I just think they're both very disturbing and hopefully we'll learn more about the Haslick cases it goes on. Yeah I'm really interested

[00:37:47] in what happens there are some interesting issues. Julie head into New Hampshire so the interesting story going on in New Hampshire and my source for this was New Hampshire Bolton although this was covered pretty extensively in a variety of statewide outlets in great state of New

[00:38:12] Hampshire and this involves the House candidacy of a man named Mark Edgington he's running for political office 53 year old man 53 is very young of course but Mr Edgington it's Edgington what are you doing it's Edgington just say that Edgington he has a past which was reported

[00:38:38] on by the the media of the great state of New Hampshire namely in 1989 he pled no contest to a second degree murder charge and in that particular instance he is said according to

[00:39:00] affidavits to have actually strangled a gentleman until he was dead and blood came out of the victims ears so a pretty gruesome crime he was sentenced to 25 years it was released it went on to

[00:39:20] enter republican politics and he got a bit of a positive reputation I guess in those quarters and so some chief figures did indeed endorse him but perhaps not surprisingly after it came out that

[00:39:35] he had killed a man a lot of his support seemed to evaporate and I think what interests me about this is that his reaction to this and the reaction of his supporters to this

[00:39:56] seems largely to blame the media shoot the messenger situation and I think this is common I think perhaps we've seen it in other instances even this week when if people have bad things reported about themselves instead of taking responsibility it becomes very easy to blame

[00:40:20] those who share that information yeah I think for some people it's like you talking about my bad acts is just as bad as me doing the bad acts which is completely backwards to be honest and

[00:40:33] completely not the point of journalism and truth and whatnot I'm struck by the shoot the messenger tendency in this story especially basically saying that the New Hampshire press is not responsible for this man choosing to participate in a murder all those years ago

[00:40:54] Edgington said quote I would prefer that the whole world forget about it and I don't know why my biggest mistake in the age of 17 is so very important when so rarely are someone's mistakes at 17 and quote most 17 year olds don't kill people

[00:41:12] yes and I think if you're running for political office you should expect people to take a look at your history and if you've done some if you've grown past that and become a change in

[00:41:24] different person you can explain that to the voters I think that's a key thing I mean when we're talking about people who have been incarcerated for serious crimes I'd like to believe that rehabilitation is possible in some cases and that we should be hoping that people can you

[00:41:42] know if they're released move on from it and work to be a better person I think that's a commendable goal but part of being a better person part of rehabilitation means taking ownership and

[00:41:55] accountability for your actions and if that means accepting that if you run for state office people might not want to vote for you you have to be okay with that and being mad at people

[00:42:05] from bringing it up like oh you ruined everything if only I could just have kept my like literal skeletons in the closet then I I have a hard time seeing that as someone who is rehabilitated

[00:42:17] necessarily because it seems more of like drats you you know we rats you found me out rather than rather than like yes I did that I was you know if you sit down and do an interview where you explain

[00:42:30] I was very into drugs at the time or here's what I was you know here's what I was going through at the time I feel so bad for this man and his family I'm so sorry for being involved

[00:42:39] I don't know why you can't just do something like that rather than just shaking your fist at the local reporter who rightfully reported on something newsworthy oh that awful yeah yeah again

[00:42:51] I think we've seen as I think many listeners are aware pretty close to home sometimes when media reports on something they get attacked for bearing bad news and in this particular instance again

[00:43:06] if if you want to run for office and if you have done something and it's been an it's been something that's caused some maturity or growth then you own it and you deal with it and you accept

[00:43:19] that and you explain it to the voters and you explain how it's changed you and how you're a different person now and if your reaction when it comes out is just to be upset and throw a

[00:43:30] kissy fit fit and say oh I wish the world would just forget that I once killed a man it doesn't really sound to me like you perhaps have the maturity I would like to see

[00:43:39] in someone that I personally would send to the house yeah see this is actually a situation maybe this is controversial but my issue here is actually less than he participated in a murder

[00:43:49] and more his reaction now as an adult all these years later because it almost sounds like he just wanted that covered up so that nobody would know what he did which frankly is someone who

[00:43:58] should not be in office so yeah that is that is astounding and people who are backing a mump on that is astounding because it kind of just shows you some people feel that they are

[00:44:09] entitled to not be scrutinized at all despite their bad acts and that's just not the world we live in when when you're seeking out a high profile position um of power or if you just have a

[00:44:21] or seek a high position in uh media yeah or true crime media that too you're gonna be scrutinized and deservedly so and if you've done something inappropriate or untoward uh don't blame the

[00:44:36] people who call attention to it just take responsibility and learn from it agreed well I guess now I'm going to have to figure out a nice graceful transition to talk about some don't be how it's

[00:44:50] dumb talk about some beautiful shirts that we have for all of you if you want to support the murder sheet uh we we got some shirts and they're they're quite they're quite exquisite

[00:45:00] they're quite gorgeous um just divine shirts from a wonderful printer that did a great job with all the colors they look super cool uh you could take a selfie in them post them in our facebook group

[00:45:12] you can uh purchase them and you'll be supporting us you can take a selfie and do whatever you want with that selfie so you don't see you don't have to just post it in our group you

[00:45:20] can just share it with the whole world put it on a billboard no don't do that uh why not I think that sounds weird I don't want people I think that would make all of us look weird

[00:45:29] put it on a billboard I'm not going to make these people spend thousands of dollars to to promote our shirts I'm not saying they have to but if they want it's not required in other words but if you want to do it that'd be something don't do this

[00:45:45] I'm telling you you can put your money into better use but but you won't put your money better use when it comes to buying the shirts because they're only 30 bucks and if you join our patreon the five dollar level you get free shipping just make sure to like

[00:45:57] you know let us know that you're from the patreon because uh you know otherwise the free shipping doesn't kick in so just you know be careful there but um in other words they're beautiful shirts lovely shirts beautiful shirts people have had job promotions after getting the shirts

[00:46:13] I'm not I'm not claiming making any claims about those things being related but I'm just sending right there seems to be some etiquette of them frankly I wouldn't be surprised if one day

[00:46:23] I walk into the metropolitan museum of art and saw one of these shirts on display yeah they say murder sheet people on them so you know you're that's not something the the metropolitan museum

[00:46:34] would be interested in you're saying you know you're saying that you have really good taste in true crime podcast so it's a great it's a great indicator and it's uh they're available

[00:46:44] murdersheetshop.com and uh we really want to say thank you so much to everyone who's ordered one already you make it possible for us to do this work and we're just very grateful and um you know

[00:46:57] but if you want them just let us know and buy one and we'll we'll get one over to you and I'm going to make an unrelated prediction they say this episode comes out Friday and we're going

[00:47:08] to do something tomorrow that I'm going to make it like a time machine sort of thing this hasn't happened yet but I predict that we will have had a great time Wednesday night at the circus

[00:47:19] and so we want to what circus explain the circus it's not just these circus it's the peruse circus sir we are going to or rather we went to the peruse circus on Wednesday and even though

[00:47:31] we haven't done it yet what a great time those kids were incredible we haven't been there what was your favorite part of it oh my god I'm not I it's gonna be great I'm very excited but I'm not gonna

[00:47:45] I love the high wire ass well I'm excited for it but yeah it will have already happened by the time this releases so that's why I'm talking about it's pretty pretty ineffective commercial

[00:47:58] there I'm talking about it in the past tense and boy did I enjoy the people we ran into there that was great oh my god see I'm making predictions wow you're trying to be like a little fortune

[00:48:11] teller there it's fascinating trying trying yes trying and probably failing but anyways we thank you so much for listening it's been quite a week and it's just Tuesday for us and we appreciate all the support you guys have shown us yeah thank you all so much

[00:48:27] all right have a great one bye thanks so much for listening to the murder sheet if you have a tip concerning one of the cases we cover please email us at murder sheet at gmail.com

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