The Cheat Sheet: The Mafia, Matriculation and Mothers

[00:00:00] Content Warning This episode contains discussion of murder, including the murder of a child. So every week on The Murder Sheet we try to do an episode of The Cheat Sheet where we talk about crimes that are in the news.

[00:00:18] For one reason or the other we feel we cannot cover in an entire episode but are still worth talking about. And we found some interesting cases this week that we wanted to share with you. My name is Ania Kane, I'm a journalist.

[00:00:33] 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, The Mafia, Matriculation and Mothers.

[00:00:52] Let's start out with a story I found in the English edition of Not Sure How to Pronounce It. I'm going to say El Pais will include the link in the show notes. And this is also a good time to say that there is an excellent chance

[00:01:52] that when discussing this particular case, I will mispronounce some names. Apologies in advance. No offense intended. So I think a lot of people who went to college, who are fortunate enough to go to college, might have the experience of sometimes things you do in college having consequences

[00:02:16] or ramifications that you don't quite expect. What are you confessing to? Well with that in mind, I'm going to tell you all about Kattelorimano. This is a man who actually is serving a sentence of murder in Italy.

[00:02:35] He committed some crimes on behalf of the mafia, including killing some political figures. While he has been imprisoned, he has wanted to improve himself and get a college degree. And in fact, some of the people working with him on that say that he's a brilliant student

[00:02:59] and really rave about his academic skills. So he has actually written a university thesis. I was not able to find an actual copy of this thesis online, but I've heard pretty interesting descriptions of it.

[00:03:21] It's all about the allure of crime and trying to figure out what it is about crime that attracts people to it. Do you think that's a worthwhile subject? Certainly, especially coming from a former mobster or a mobster who himself was kind of attracted to that lifestyle.

[00:03:46] Because something like that, it's not just joining a gang to that extent. It's not just a I'm going to rob one bank and then I'm done. It is a lifestyle. It's a way of life. It's a culture.

[00:03:59] And if you can understand what brings people into that culture of violence, maybe you can help people get out of it or stop people from making that choice. Or they very least get a university degree out of it. There you go.

[00:04:14] This is what purports to be the opening of the thesis. My name is Katala Romano. I am 33 years old and I've been in prison for almost half my life, 14 consecutive years. I have committed horrendous crimes that have been convicted of several Komora murders.

[00:04:34] What follows is my criminal history. I'll let the heck of an opening for thesis. I don't think I've ever seen an opening of a thesis that is that graphic. No. So I'm not sure what sort of academic rigor is required of him,

[00:04:50] but I will note the people who read this thesis describe it as being almost like a colorful autobiographical novel with bits of academic stuff woven into it. Wow, it's wild.

[00:05:04] Here's the thing. He was so honest in his thesis about his criminal past that this man actually included details about murders he had committed that he had not been charged with. Oh my God. So what do you think is the ramification of that?

[00:05:26] I'm sure his lawyers aren't super happy. Well, I think, yeah, that sounds like he's putting himself in a pretty vulnerable position. I guess if he's already in there for life, I don't know if he is or not, then maybe he's like whatever, I'll just be honest about it.

[00:05:42] But if he's not in there for life already, then he may be... He's now being investigated for these other crimes and as possible his sentence is going to be extended. Well, I guess good for him for being honest at all costs.

[00:05:53] It seems odd to me to choose this as the vehicle for your honesty. Yeah, maybe to... If you were really tortured by guilt over something like this, wouldn't you have just called in the authorities instead of told your academic advisor about it?

[00:06:12] And what does the academic advisor think of this? He says this guy's a brilliant student. Yeah, but like what are you doing?

[00:06:20] And if I'm not saying that's the case here, I'm not saying this is the case here, but if you have someone who's essentially using their foray into academics to gloat about murders they've gotten away with, is that really something that you should be abetting as an academic?

[00:06:35] Again, I'm not saying that's going on here. Maybe there's some very sincere reasons for doing this, but...

[00:06:42] Well, I'm going to say I don't know this for a fact, but I'm going to assume that his academic advisor either made the decision or was part of the decision to share this thesis with law enforcement because certainly in my academic career,

[00:07:00] I don't know if this is true in your academic career, Anya, I wrote a number of papers for different classes. Almost never were those shared with police. A few troubling incidents, but other than that it was pretty rare. Yeah, no, it seems really bizarre.

[00:07:16] Maybe the academic system is different in Italy where maybe... I mean, I don't know if he was submitting his work to journals or something, maybe somebody passed it on there.

[00:07:27] Do we know that the academic advisor definitely was the one who's like dropped this off at the police station? I don't know that. I'm just guessing that because obviously the police... If they monitor or if they monitor communications, they may have gotten it that way.

[00:07:41] Just a thought. That's just the whole thing is so bizarre. The whole thing is bizarre. This man wrote in his thesis that it wasn't his role to ask questions. He just had to follow orders and this is another quote.

[00:07:57] When one speaks the truth, one should not regret having said it. He is said to talk about the liberating power of the truth. While quoting a famous Italian murder victim, the former prime minister. That's wild. Aldo Mora. That is crazy. So it's a strange story that's really common.

[00:08:20] We don't often do stories from other countries. We might be missing a lot of context. I certainly feel like we're missing some context here because we're not familiar necessarily with the Italian prison system or academic system.

[00:08:34] I understand why you picked this one because it's hard to pass up somebody's master's thesis actually landing them in hot water illegally. I mean, we've seen, I mean, Brian Coburger in the Idaho murder case.

[00:08:48] He was a PhD student but he didn't write out a confession in anything he was working on. So yeah, it's an interesting concept. Well, it's like you want to support rehabilitation when possible and getting an education, getting an advanced education

[00:09:10] and maybe working with people who are drawn to crime could be a way to maybe make up for the horrible things one has done. But I also kind of think rehabilitation requires honesty and that means admitting to all of the crimes you have done. Perhaps in a thesis.

[00:09:27] Perhaps in a thesis or otherwise. You know, I don't feel like you can say you're rehabilitated if you're a convicted rapist and you admitted to five of the rapes but not three more because you don't want to get in trouble. It's like you have to come clean.

[00:09:41] And so if this guy, I don't know, maybe he sees it as part of that or I don't know. I would be curious if he expected the thesis to become he may have been like, well, here you go.

[00:09:53] Because again, I would write different things in school and I would not necessarily expect it to be on the front page of a newspaper the next day. You always get to write stuff expecting it to be on the front page of the newspaper.

[00:10:07] That's what that's what I was taught. You know, so never write never write confessions to crimes because maybe the newspaper gets it and then maybe you have to go back to jail.

[00:10:17] Well now let's go to North Carolina for a story involving Rhett Michael Barlow who is a soldier with the National Guard.

[00:10:27] I first saw this case mentioned in a story in People magazine and the story about Mr. Barlow actually has its roots in events that happened all the way back in 2016. It was in that year that his mother Michelle was actually the victim in a car accident.

[00:10:55] She was killed in this accident. She was struck by a dump truck that rear ended her minivan. That is awful. It's terrible and certainly something that seems to have had quite an impact understandably on Mr. Barlow.

[00:11:16] This car or rather this dump truck was driven by a man named Donald Calder Jr. After this accident, he I guess he got what most people would characterize is a slap on the wrist. Not much of a real sentence or penalty at all.

[00:11:38] And is all of us who follow true crime know we're empathetic and we can imagine what it is like to lose someone close to you and not see the person who is responsible for that paid much of a price.

[00:11:56] Yes. I mean even in this situation where I think you know it's a motor accident and we imagine that the driver who killed this woman was not necessarily looking to kill somebody that day but the fact that the evidence indicates that he wasn't trying to swerve or break seems to indicate a level of recklessness.

[00:12:14] And that must be incredibly upsetting and frustrating to see there'd be still little consequences. I think that would be a hard thing to get out of your mind. I think it's something that could potentially eat away at you, but that is really no excuse for what happened next.

[00:12:33] Mr Barlow seems to have become quite interested in Mr. Calder. He actually requested a transfer from the National Guard so he could move closer to Mr. Calder's location.

[00:12:50] He even bought an AR-15 rifle and then he went even further and attempted to hire a hitman to kill this man who killed his mother. Oh my gosh. You picked the wild ones.

[00:13:08] You know, I can't help but feel listen. I think if we're all being honest if somebody killed our mothers with a car and was driving recklessly and they received a light sentence, I think there's an understandable rage and maybe a desire to have that person killed.

[00:13:24] But the difference between having that anger and having that in your mind and actually going out and attempting to carry out the plan, that's just going to wreck your own life, which in this case I'm presuming it does.

[00:13:37] People seem to think, oh if I hire a hitman then I'll get away with it. It's very hard to do contract killing correctly. Usually you're going to a cop or the person snitches on you immediately or you get caught immediately, even if the murder aspect even happens.

[00:13:54] It's not a foolproof way of doing things. In fact it's just leaving more open ends, loose ends because you're involving another person who's the kind of person who is willing to kill for money. So not exactly the most trustworthy person in the world, a possible contract killer.

[00:14:13] And I'm not even sure how you would go out and try to find a person to do this sort of work because it seems that if you approach the wrong person, you're going to get in trouble.

[00:14:28] So I'd be pretty sure that the person you're approaching is interested in this sort of work.

[00:14:33] And there's also a situation where if I want to hire somebody to fix my car, I can ask my friends and say, oh who do you think is a good guy? Who's your guy?

[00:14:44] But if I go around asking my buddies for advice on what hitman to hire, I'm basically telling a lot of people about my criminal intentions and I'm getting myself in trouble.

[00:14:54] Yeah, it's just dumb. And in this case again, you're ruining your own life out of anger when I think we can all understand the anger but what does it actually do for your mother and her memory if you're having somebody killed?

[00:15:12] And again, it sounds like it was an accident. It sounded like maybe there should have been or there's an argument to be made that there should have been more of a punishment but it's not like this man went out to hurt the mother that day.

[00:15:25] The best thing this man could have done for his mother's memory is to get some sort of therapy to help himself. Yeah.

[00:15:35] To deal with this instead of trying to move closer to this guy buying rifles, trying to hire hitmen. This obviously is not what his mother would have wanted.

[00:15:44] No, he's racked his own life because of anger. It's sad to see but it's important to remember that something like murder, it's always just going to hurt the perpetrator in the end in a situation like this.

[00:16:00] Look at all those cases. Look at the case of Jared Bridegain. He's murdered. There's an element of a nasty divorce with his ex-wife, Shannon Gardner, Fernandez and her new husband and somebody they hire.

[00:16:14] And the result of this is that the kids that they shared have effectively lost both parents. One's accused of killing the other.

[00:16:24] The one who's been murdered can't come back and the other one is facing murder charges. So, you know, whatever the results which was seemingly a possessive need to control the children and have custody of the children and not share custody just became so all consuming that then choices were made that ultimately hurt the kids, perhaps most of all in all of this.

[00:16:46] And, you know, same goes for things like the Adelson case where you had Dan Markle, a law professor murdered in Florida. His ex-wife was behind. His ex-wife's family rather was behind it and they're all being charged and that was a custody dispute.

[00:17:03] Like you have people doing these contract killings for reasons and inevitably they fall apart and inevitably, you know, the reasons just look stupid to everybody else because it's like you just wrecked your own life instead of just dealing with the situation.

[00:17:15] And I will note that the person that he tried to hire to carry out this crime told the police about it. So this person is not going to be liable for any criminal.

[00:17:26] In a way, I really do feel bad for Barlow. I really do because I think we all love our mothers.

[00:17:33] Yeah, we all love our mothers. We can all understand the rage, anger and hurt we would feel over a situation like this. But it's sad to me that nobody was in his life that could have really pushed him to deal with the anger before it ended up hurting him to such a significant degree.

[00:17:52] Now let's move on to a story out of Berkeley County South Care Alina. I first heard about this story from ABC News 4.com, which I believe is a local affiliate out that way. This is a case that goes all the way back to March of 1989.

[00:18:15] It's a very long time ago. Wow. It involves a then five year old boy named Justin Lee Turner. So in the morning of that day, he leaves his house to go to a neighbor's house to catch the school bus.

[00:18:35] When the school bus comes back that afternoon, he's not on it. Oh man. And he is reported missing. Now there were some complications to this story. For instance, that I mentioned he's going to a neighbor's house to catch the bus.

[00:18:52] That neighbor said that she had actually been outside that day with her grandson waiting for the bus. She never saw him. She never saw Justin. Oh wow, shock.

[00:19:07] And he, Justin's body is discovered in the cabinet of a camper that is on the property of Justin's family. So this is a terrible case. This poor five year old, it's just horrible to think about.

[00:19:31] Now the local authorities, the sheriff out there is a man named Dwayne Lewis. They take this case extraordinarily seriously just as you would want them to. They don't forget about this five year old child.

[00:19:49] They keep working the case. They put up social media posts, tell us what happened, give us more information. I think when I've described to you the basic facts about the case where it sounds like he never left his property that day, you immediately, your mind starts going to think, well, it must have been the parents.

[00:20:13] 100%. You hesitate to make any accusations like that without, without evidence and certainly that's probably where law enforcement's mind went. You want to hold space in your mind for alternate explanations if the evidence points that way? But yeah, that looks bad.

[00:20:29] That looks very bad. But they were never able to come up with conclusive evidence or evidence good enough to make an arrest and happily that has changed. And Justin's father, Victor Lee Turner and his stepmother, Megan R. Turner, were just recently charged with the murder of this little boy.

[00:20:52] Good. Monstrous. What monstrous behavior? A five year old. Five year olds. It turns out that people overheard the father saying, oh, what would happen if a family member did this? Not long after this murder, they move away. Never call the sheriff's office according to Sheriff Lewis. What?

[00:21:17] Never say what's going on. What's going on? So there's been new forensic technologies, new investigations, new examinations of the evidence and they now feel they have the evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that these two people murdered this five year old who they were blessed to have come into their lives.

[00:21:40] So awful.

[00:21:41] Well, I'm glad. I'm certainly glad. I really hope in other cases like this where maybe people have not been prosecuted yet. These advances in technology just wreck their day every time they hear about them and that they feel constantly that somebody's coming for them because they are.

[00:21:58] And it's just, as you said, to be blessed with a five year old and then betray that child's trust in such a final and fade away is just, I don't know, makes me sick. He deserved so much better.

[00:22:13] And he'd be like a middle aged man now. So it's like a life unlived.

[00:22:17] Yeah. And kudos to this Sheriff Department and Sheriff Dwayne Lewis for not letting this go and continuing to work it and bringing justice for this little boy who's he say would now be about 40 years old. Oh, man.

[00:22:34] And let's move over to Texas. Not long ago in Texas. I should note that this story came to us from WKXAN. And this is something that took place in Williamson County, Texas.

[00:22:53] A retired William County District Judge named Alfred Carnes and his wife, Susan, were found shot to death in their own home. And it turns out that the person who did this and he's admitted to doing it was their son.

[00:23:13] 45 year old man named Seth B. Carnes. And he indicated that it happened because he got into a disagreement with his parents. Apparently his mother was trying to get him to take a sleeping pill and he did not want to take it.

[00:23:34] So he shot her and then he shot his father as well. My goodness. It's really distressing. Obviously there's no good reason for murder. No. But it is distressing to see lives ended and changed forever for such ridiculous and banal reasons as an argument over a sleeping pill.

[00:23:59] What kind of mental health issues or just rage issues, anger issues you have to have to make that calculation, make that call seems hard to understand. So it's a terrible story.

[00:24:12] So much anger out there and just doing that. I don't know. It's hard to imagine and it's hard to...

[00:24:18] I think the hitman murder, I think we can empathize with that a little bit because there's an element of revenge that maybe some of us can understand wanting in that scenario. But in this scenario it's just like a minor disagreement.

[00:24:35] You wonder if that person did not have access to a firearm in that moment. Would the outcome have been different? Yeah, sometimes people feel like a quick burst of anger or frustration and it might pass.

[00:24:49] But if you have access in that moment to a terrible weapon maybe you make a choice that you'd later regret.

[00:24:56] I would hope you would regret. I mean maybe not. Maybe this is a situation where there's been long-term resentments that simmered to a point where that was a choice that was made.

[00:25:05] And frankly if you have a temper and you have a firearm maybe put it in a place where it would take some mechanism to open it up that would allow you time to deal with the situation.

[00:25:17] Like calm down before you break it out. I don't know. It's like sometimes you're trying to understand where people are coming from and it's just almost impossible because you just can't put yourself in that mindset of being that angry.

[00:25:28] To do that to somebody in your own family or anybody's family frankly. And as I say really there is no good reason and there an author I really like Stephen Vicenzi. He has a line that has occurred to me time and time again which is reasons don't matter.

[00:25:49] I remember a case early on in my legal career for lack of a better word. This involves a man who inherited a large number of horses and these were horses that were thoroughbreds with a great deal of money.

[00:26:13] These were horses he could have sold to other people in that field and made a nice piece of change. For these are horses he could have kept himself and cared for relatively easily because he also owned some property.

[00:26:29] But instead this man chose to starve these horses and a number of them died and he was very cruel to these animals. And at the time I was working with a judge who was overseeing this case and I said like why did he make this choice?

[00:26:50] And the judge looked at me like I was naive or foolish and he said doesn't matter. Is there any reason good enough that would make this make sense to you or make it seem rational?

[00:27:02] And so I've kept that in mind. Reasons don't always matter and a lot of the times when we look for explanations they're just not there. We just have to deal with life as it is.

[00:27:13] We do and sometimes I think like I have the impulse to want to look at is there a mental health issue at play? Because that explains it.

[00:27:20] But then I worry that sometimes when you look too hard for that then you're almost maligning people with mental illness who are not behaving in violent and harmful ways towards others. Like does it have to be mental illness? Can it be rage issues? A personality disorder?

[00:27:37] At the end of the day if there is some extreme mental illness maybe then that does maybe not excuse things but maybe it explains them. But in other cases they're just might not be. You just might be dealing with somebody who's being a bad person.

[00:27:53] And maybe it's just that simple. And I think looking for a reason and trying to understand something it makes you feel better. Yes. And sometimes there's just nothing there. You just have to deal with the uncertainty and the madness that so often characterizes life in 21st century America.

[00:28:15] Some of the people who follow Delphi or the Burger Chef case that we cover will be looking for answers or looking for what would it be motivated by this or that.

[00:28:25] And I often feel like in those cases it's like you look into it so hard that you kind of get to the point of doesn't matter. It doesn't.

[00:28:34] And maybe by trying to read into selfish, heinous, God awful behavior you are just trying to comfort yourself because maybe you'll never really understand it. You're just trying to find answers which is normal which like I've done. That's what we do every week.

[00:28:51] But it's like the more you look into it the more it almost becomes elusive and you do kind of end up feeling like maybe we are fooling ourselves because all of us you're coming to this party with without that.

[00:29:05] Without having done something so awful. So are we going to be able to understand it without hearing from the perpetrators themselves why they did this? If people are out there offering here's why I did this then maybe you can listen to them and maybe learn something psychologically.

[00:29:21] But if you're not getting that then speculating based on minimal evidence it's kind of like you just drive yourself crazy. Well let's just cover one more case here very quickly. This is a case I initially came across on Scripps News.

[00:29:38] It's a case out of Minnesota and this case involves a woman named Betty Bowman who was rather married to Dr. Connor Bowman both worked at the Mayo Clinic out there in Minnesota.

[00:29:56] And the story for her begins back in August mid August she was hospitalized with what she thought was food poisoning. She wondered if she'd had a smoothie or something that made her sick and it turned out to be something far more serious than that.

[00:30:16] Her condition rapidly deteriorated. She started having heart issues and she passed away. Oh my goodness. Subsequent investigation revealed that her husband who happens to be an expert in poisons is believed to have poisoned his wife. Oh my God. And he is now facing charges for that.

[00:30:39] But it's interesting this man wanted to have his wife cremated immediately. Oh good yeah. Because the death was natural he said. Yes don't look at it. It's everything's fine. That's not suspicious at all. If you really if you really felt everything was fine you wouldn't care.

[00:30:56] The medical examiners said they did receive a call from someone to indicate there was problems in the marriage and that they were talking about divorce. And they may have also been some financial problems. Oh geez. What was he so he was an expert on poisons. Yeah.

[00:31:17] Well I mean that's pretty dumb to. If he did it. If he did what he's alleged to have done it's pretty dumb to have a specialty in something and then use that exact same method to kill your spouse while you're having marital discord.

[00:31:33] Some of these murders they you know especially in cases like this it's like you're trying to you think you're a Colombo villain but you've never watched Colombo like you get caught immediately when you do this stuff.

[00:31:44] Just be an adult and work out your divorce and move on with your life. Yeah that's the thing. A lot of people have marital issues.

[00:31:52] A lot of people have marriages that for one reason or another cannot or should not be salvaged and we have a system in place to deal with that.

[00:32:03] And listen you might get a divorce get a divorce and maybe maybe you're mad about it and then you probably will get over it and move on like there's like a there's like a category of person that wants to go like Henry the eighth on their ex spouse.

[00:32:18] And then you know what it is it's like you know no they they're divorcing me they can't be alive anymore what's wrong with you how the ego that it takes to do something like that is just again hard to understand.

[00:32:32] It's hard to understand if you had financial problems before I'm guessing they're gonna be a lot worse now because lawyers are expensive.

[00:32:39] But like do these people really think they're going to get away with this I know that some people do get away with murder it's not like it doesn't happen.

[00:32:45] But in situations where there is a messy divorce or an upcoming divorce and you're using the type of murder method that you're publicly associated with on a professional basis. And then you start acting just cremated right away. What do you think is going to happen.

[00:33:04] I don't know maybe maybe there's an alternate explanation. Maybe maybe it'll turn out that there's some good evidence on his side. I don't want to necessarily jump to conclusions. But if this is what it sounds like then yikes do we know what kind of poison he used.

[00:33:20] It looks like the poison used was again to the doctors out there I apologize because I'm going to mispronounce this Colchicine. Okay, I'm not familiar with that at all.

[00:33:32] I'll be curious if that's like untraceable or normally untraceable or you to do special tests for it maybe you thought he was going to get away with it based on that. Although obviously they traced it if they're mentioning it.

[00:33:44] Yeah, and obviously and he also had some pretty interesting Google searches like police track package delivery. Okay, the line read on that from you is great. Just a bumbling sitcom dad.

[00:34:00] And again this is a woman whose life was taken from her by a man who had taken a pledge before the world and perhaps before God if he took it in church to love, honor and respect her.

[00:34:17] And she and her family and all those who loved her deserve a lot better. Yeah, really well said. And as we said, divorces suck.

[00:34:27] But you could just do that and not kill anybody and just maybe move on and maybe maybe you take a financial hit but that you'll survive. Yeah, you have a better chance of getting your finances in order if you're working at a job. And not in prison.

[00:34:41] And not in prison. Yeah, wouldn't you rather just not be in prison. If you're in prison working in the laundry or what have you're not going to make a lot of money. No, I mean God it just yeah just the more we.

[00:34:54] I don't know like doing this work at this point like doing reporting on crime side stories reading about crime stories consuming so much true crime content.

[00:35:02] I know it's an obvious thing but it's just like murders almost like it just never it almost never works out you have to get very lucky for it to work out.

[00:35:11] And especially in this day and age, it's it's difficult to imagine most situations especially if you're killing somebody in your life where you're just going to breeze on.

[00:35:23] Again unless you get very lucky it does happen we've heard the high profile stories but it just surprises me that somebody who's like ostensibly an educated person working at a famous clinic which indicates that you have to be you know some level of skill to I think secure that position would be this dumb.

[00:35:41] Well and that's all the cases I found for this week's episode. Next week, Ania will be back to choosing the cases I'm sure she will find some interesting ones. Yay. Thanks Kevin. Thanks for listening. Thanks. Thanks so much for listening to the murder sheet.

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