The Cheat Sheet: Catfishing and Conspiracies

[00:00:00] Content Warning, this episode contains discussion of murder, suicide and the sexual abuse of children.

[00:00:07] So today we're going to talk about a number of different cases inside and outside of Indiana.

[00:00:12] We'll be talking about the Delphi Murders case as well as a recent Catfishing online predator case

[00:00:20] that happened in Hamilton County, Indiana.

[00:00:25] Along with a domestic violence case turned homicide that happened in the same county,

[00:00:31] then we're going to be heading to California for a series of suicides that have been linked to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department

[00:00:42] and a mass shooting that occurred recently in Maine

[00:00:46] and two cases involving a conspiracy to commit murder out of Florida.

[00:00:51] So we're going all over the place so let's get started.

[00:00:54] My name is Ania Kane, I'm a journalist.

[00:00:57] And I'm Kevin Greenlee, I'm an attorney.

[00:01:00] And this is The Murder Sheet.

[00:01:02] We're a true crime podcast focused on original reporting, interviews and deep dives into murder cases.

[00:01:08] We're The Murder Sheet.

[00:01:10] And this is The Cheat Sheet.

[00:01:13] Catfishing and Conspiracies.

[00:01:17] Let's start with the Delphi case.

[00:02:01] Russ McQuade and the team over at Fox 59 has been all over the story about Judge Gole's health.

[00:02:10] Judge Fran Gole has been hospitalized.

[00:02:12] Yes, obviously she's pretty serious if she's being hospitalized.

[00:02:16] And it's interesting, it's been a bit of an open secret for a while now that she has not been in court for some time.

[00:02:23] Including she's missed drug court.

[00:02:25] Which as you know if you listen to the profile episodes on her that's very important to her.

[00:02:30] And so the fact that she's been gone has been noted by different reporters who are, you know, like Russ McQuade, who are saying how do we figure out what's happening here?

[00:02:40] So he was able to get the scoop on getting Alan County to comment that she has been out and has been hospitalized.

[00:02:48] So obviously this is a pretty serious situation.

[00:02:52] Our thoughts go out to her and her family.

[00:02:55] Hopefully she can be feeling better soon and get back to the courtroom.

[00:03:02] Something like this also tends to reveal something about people and how they respond to it.

[00:03:09] A lot of the people online who have been critical of the way she's handled the case have not been kind in their responses to this.

[00:03:21] Oh, I am so shocked about that. Wow.

[00:03:24] It's really interesting because I think you and I have been pretty critical about elements of ousting the defense and wanting this to be more transparent.

[00:03:32] And wanting other elements of the case to be more transparent.

[00:03:35] But at the end of the day, people are people and if someone is dealing with some sort of illness or medical issue, then that, you know, you don't need to get nasty about something like that.

[00:03:47] And the rhetoric around Delphi has just been so bad for so long.

[00:03:51] It's actually, you wonder where these people are coming from.

[00:03:55] I know that it's so easy to get wrapped up in like a debate or a attitude online and perhaps take it too far.

[00:04:03] I understand how that happens a few times.

[00:04:05] I don't really understand how you basically become a horrible person in service of just some online theory.

[00:04:12] I think there's an element to Delphi where people find these communities, they want to fit in by getting nastier and nastier and it spirals out of control.

[00:04:22] But like everyone's an adult here.

[00:04:24] So I think certain creators and certain people who are very vocal in this case should probably start acting like it.

[00:04:32] And one thing that strikes me is that some of the nastiness seems to be in the surface of something that's more than a little misguided.

[00:04:41] Yeah, I mean when you're rejoicing about somebody's mother and grandmother falling ill, then I think it is fair to qualify that as nasty.

[00:04:49] And I think some of this is, and we've been seeing this for some time actually, there's an element in this case that conflates Richard Allen

[00:05:01] with the old defense team, namely Andrew Baldwin and Bradley Rosie.

[00:05:06] And anything good for them must be good for him.

[00:05:09] Anything bad for them must be bad for him.

[00:05:11] And I think that's understandable, especially when you're in a trial because obviously the defense attorneys are representing their client.

[00:05:19] But in this pretrial chaotic mess, I sort of think that it's possible to buy a theory of Allen's innocence

[00:05:28] and also be pretty skeptical of some of the actions of the old defense.

[00:05:32] It's also possible to buy a theory of Allen's innocence and be concerned about the new defense.

[00:05:39] I don't think we need to necessarily though conflate either support of the new defense or the old defense with support of Richard Allen,

[00:05:46] or even having open-mindedness towards Richard Allen and the theory of his innocence.

[00:05:52] So I think people need to try to separate those.

[00:05:55] I think that is unhelpful when you're basically couching your support or lack thereof of the defendant in this case with one set of attorneys or another.

[00:06:05] Mostly it seems to be happening with the old defense.

[00:06:08] They've cultivated quite a following.

[00:06:09] I mean, we've seen that and that's understandable.

[00:06:12] But I just, I think you can be saying, well, I don't think that what they're doing is good strategically or is necessarily like super ethical.

[00:06:21] You can have criticisms of them and still hold space in your mind for Allen being innocent.

[00:06:27] But one thing that it's possible to do is be critical of attorneys who you don't necessarily feel are representing someone's best interests at a certain point.

[00:06:35] That makes a lot of sense.

[00:06:37] Yeah, we talk a lot about that small portion of the Delphi online community that engages in negative behavior.

[00:06:46] And the vast majority of the members of the online community surrounding the case actually engage in positive behavior.

[00:06:55] They have interesting discussions, constructive dialogues and some of them even go out and do small bits of investigation on their own that are worth noting.

[00:07:05] Yes.

[00:07:06] So this latest comes from Justice Serve Daily.

[00:07:09] She is a YouTuber who foyid or rather filed a records request with Miami County and she obtained the guest.

[00:07:20] Well, to back it up a little bit, we previously got the commissary in store purchases by Kagan Anthony Klein from March 2nd, 2022 to September 2nd, 2022.

[00:07:32] And we also got his guest and visitor logs for that same time period.

[00:07:36] So our friend JST requested more Klein records.

[00:07:40] She wanted them from the visitor records from July 1st, 2022 and March 31st, 2023.

[00:07:48] And she got those.

[00:07:53] And what she found was that and she was kind enough to send them to us.

[00:07:56] She found that there were 97 visits from a woman Kagan Klein identified as his romantic partner, as well as three additional visits.

[00:08:06] Notably, perhaps the most notable thing is that there's nothing in that time period about visits between him and Jerry Anthony or Tony Klein.

[00:08:14] So his father was not visiting him in that time period.

[00:08:19] A few other people were, but it was really 97 of those was mostly just a romantic partner essentially.

[00:08:28] And we just want to commend JST for doing this.

[00:08:32] I think it's so valuable to have creators like her and just everyday citizens requesting records.

[00:08:39] And you know, we don't have to speculate all the time.

[00:08:42] Sometimes we can just figure it out and get that data, get that hard data.

[00:08:46] And I think that's such a wonderful thing and she's just a wonderful person.

[00:08:49] You should absolutely check out her YouTube.

[00:08:52] What's the name of her YouTube?

[00:08:54] It's called Justice Serve Daily.

[00:08:55] I'll link to it in the show notes.

[00:08:57] She's super sweet, super cool, and she does a lot of really good work exposing child sexual abuse materials, issues and protecting kids online.

[00:09:06] So we salute her.

[00:09:08] She's a great person.

[00:09:09] You were actually on her show fairly recently.

[00:09:11] I was.

[00:09:12] You ditched us because you were busy doing, I think, editing for an episode that had like broken five minutes before we were supposed to go on.

[00:09:20] But me and her were there.

[00:09:22] We were talking about you.

[00:09:23] No, I'm just kidding.

[00:09:24] You know, she's great though.

[00:09:26] So just check her out.

[00:09:27] And thanks again to her for giving us that data on Kagan Klein.

[00:09:32] And if you all have any FOIA needs or want to talk about strategies, you know, you can always shoot us an email and let us know.

[00:09:40] Because we're happy to help talk people through some of that if we can help.

[00:09:44] Sometimes there's certain caveats to records request that is just, you know, not going to work out.

[00:09:50] Unfortunately, sometimes, especially in Indiana.

[00:09:52] But it's usually worth trying because sometimes you can get surprised and it's interesting how much information you can get from a record's request.

[00:10:03] You may remember a few months ago, Ania and I with the help of Shay Hughes filed a record request in the Delphi case that got 118 documents released.

[00:10:12] Well, that was really that's less of a records request, wasn't it?

[00:10:16] We you filed into the case.

[00:10:18] Yes.

[00:10:19] So you have to be a lawyer to do that, obviously.

[00:10:21] But there's there's certainly there's certainly things you can do that don't rise to that level and that everyday citizens can do.

[00:10:29] Whether you're a journalist or you just somebody who wants to know about something that's going on in your community.

[00:10:34] Speaking of Kagan Klein, there is another offender out there who in some ways reminds me a little bit of Kagan Klein.

[00:10:45] Yeah, there's some Kagan Klein elements to this situation and I'll break down the basics.

[00:10:50] So this is we're talking about a 20 year old man named Benjamin Owen Rolo and he was arrested and charged with the following crimes.

[00:11:01] Child molestation, child exploitation slash child pornography, child solicitation, disseminating of matter harmful to a minor and inappropriate communication with a child.

[00:11:12] This is a man who is alleged to have used the app Snapchat to meet and lure girls, young underage girls.

[00:11:23] So he's 19 and 20 and we're talking about girls that are 131411.

[00:11:34] And it's a pretty upsetting story.

[00:11:37] It's out of Hamilton County, Indiana specifically Westfield.

[00:11:41] And we read the PCA from Detective Leanne Carter there and this investigation began on December 3 2022.

[00:11:51] This all kicked off when a person who the detectives referred to as minor victim number one, a 12 year old, she was punished and her mother took her phone.

[00:12:01] Examining the phone, the mother found messages where her daughter talked about being sexually assaulted.

[00:12:08] This child disclosed rape to other children, other friends.

[00:12:14] And this occurred on July 22 2022.

[00:12:18] Two girls, the victim, victim number one and minor witness number one who is 13 are out of sleepover and they sneak out of her bedroom window to meet with a boy.

[00:12:30] That minor witness number one was talking to on Snapchat.

[00:12:37] He was supposed to be, I believe, younger.

[00:12:41] But it turned out that, you know, he I think he said he was 18 but he later on said he was 23.

[00:12:50] In reality, I believe he was either 19 or 20.

[00:12:53] He took the girls in his car and then had the witness sit outside the car while he sexually assaulted the other girl.

[00:13:03] And they kind of did not say anything.

[00:13:07] The victim actually told, as I mentioned, other children who in some cases urged her to tell her parents or tell the police.

[00:13:15] And she indicated that she did not want to because she was scared she was going to get in trouble for sneaking out.

[00:13:22] And the investigation into this revealed that Rolo was in fact on Snapchat talking with many girls between 11 and 15.

[00:13:33] And he would send them explicit images of himself.

[00:13:37] He would get explicit images of them and videos of them.

[00:13:42] And on November 10 2023, he was arrested.

[00:13:45] He was arrested in actually West Lafayette, Indiana.

[00:13:48] And his laptop iPhone were seized in a subsequent interview he admitted to having sex with at least one victim, a different victim and estimated that he had a thousand images of young girls on his phone.

[00:14:08] So this whole thing is obviously incredibly disturbing and upsetting.

[00:14:13] Rolo seems to be a bit more acting in person if these allegations are true.

[00:14:19] He's going out and meeting girls.

[00:14:21] Kagan Klein was accused of often asking girls where they were, asking for addresses, asking for locations.

[00:14:28] But there's less evidence to indicate that he was going around and actually doing sexual assaults himself.

[00:14:34] That's not something he was ever convicted for.

[00:14:37] And so it's different, but it's still you're seeing a young man, a predator who is very knowledgeable about how social media works, manipulating young girls and young children to do what he wants using social media.

[00:14:56] And I guess we've talked to people who are experts in dealing with these issues.

[00:15:02] And one thing that often is said is that, you know, parents are at a disadvantage because technology is constantly changing.

[00:15:12] It's hard to keep up with even if you're even if you're trying to keep up with it.

[00:15:16] And the best thing you can do is establish a relationship with your teenager or preteen where they feel like they can talk to you about this stuff.

[00:15:27] And if somebody is being creepy with them, they feel like they can tell you and they're not going to be punished.

[00:15:34] So it might be tempting if an 11 year old says to you, oh my, I was on Snapchat and this, you know, 20 year old man was creeping on me.

[00:15:43] It might be tempting for you to be like, OK, no more phones, no more internet.

[00:15:48] But if you're doing that, that's punishing your child when the person who is the perpetrator is the one to be punished.

[00:15:55] And if you're if you're basically punishing your child in that situation, it might make them less likely to come forward.

[00:16:02] So like letting them know if someone's doing something creepy, you can talk to me about it.

[00:16:06] You can be open with me about it.

[00:16:07] You're not going to be in trouble, but we're going to try to deal with this person before he hurt somebody else.

[00:16:13] I just think that openness because unfortunately with the advent of the internet and cell phones and social media,

[00:16:20] these predators could get to any child who has a phone.

[00:16:24] And that's a really scary thought for parents.

[00:16:26] But I think the I mean, what do you think in terms of like how to deal with that?

[00:16:32] Yeah, that makes sense as a way for parents to try to foster those kind of relationships with their kids.

[00:16:38] I'm also interested in how the legal system can deal with this.

[00:16:42] It was encouraging that in the Kagan Klein case, the prosecutors down in Peru, Indiana, Miami County, Indiana,

[00:16:52] were able to prepare arguments like in the Kiefer brief, which were able to get Kagan Klein, frankly,

[00:17:01] a much longer sentence than many expected.

[00:17:04] Often these sorts of offenders get a little more than a slap on the wrist.

[00:17:11] Yes.

[00:17:12] It's I think it's really important for there to be stringent sentences associated with these kinds of crimes because,

[00:17:20] you know, the predatory praying on these young children.

[00:17:24] It's just I think most people in society would agree that that's pretty horrifying and that should be taken seriously.

[00:17:30] And that should come with severe consequences if a person is convicted.

[00:17:36] Let's stay in Hamilton County and talk about a case that we covered not so long ago.

[00:17:44] This is the case of Kayla Farmer.

[00:17:46] She is a woman, a mother who was murdered by her ex-husband at a gas station in Fishers.

[00:17:56] Fishers is a city to the north of Indianapolis.

[00:18:00] And the perpetrator was Joshua Farmer.

[00:18:04] He had a history of domestic violence against her.

[00:18:07] And this could be a death penalty case, is our understanding, because she was going to be a witness against him in some of the domestic abuse.

[00:18:16] He had previously put a gun to her head in front of their children.

[00:18:19] He'd hit his kids that he shared with her, hit her, and he killed her before she could hold him accountable by testifying against him.

[00:18:28] So the update is we have a trial date in this case.

[00:18:31] When is that trial date?

[00:18:32] It's been pushed back to October 7th, 2024.

[00:18:35] Why is it being pushed back so far?

[00:18:36] Well, this is the defendant Joshua Farmer's request.

[00:18:40] He wants a longer than normal continuance of the trial date because there is so much discovery for him and his team to unpack.

[00:18:47] So they basically said, hey, can we push it back a lot?

[00:18:51] And the judge was like, sure, no worries.

[00:18:53] So that's the update there.

[00:18:55] Nothing big, but we are kind of continuing to monitor that a bit.

[00:19:00] Another interesting story out there is a situation going on out in Los Angeles.

[00:19:08] Yeah, we're going to the West now.

[00:19:10] Where there were four suicides of current and former personnel in the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department.

[00:19:19] Yes.

[00:19:20] We're not going to read any of their names, although some of them are out there.

[00:19:24] But I think a lot of people understandably were like, is this connected somehow?

[00:19:29] We're not seeing any indication that that is the case yet.

[00:19:32] But I think that seems like an extraordinarily high number for a small short timespan.

[00:19:41] Is it unusual for law enforcement personnel to commit suicide?

[00:19:45] Well, unfortunately, we were like, I was looking into this about what this says in a wider context.

[00:19:53] Law enforcement officials and personnel tend to be far more susceptible to suicide than the rest of the population.

[00:20:02] As much as you want to look at something like this and see, oh my gosh, there must be some conspiracy or they were all in on something together or, you know, there was, they're not suicides.

[00:20:14] This is a cover up.

[00:20:16] I think it probably ends up speaking more to just general trends with this kind of thing.

[00:20:23] That's important to be aware of and is also, again, very concerning.

[00:20:28] Is it a, do they know why there's such an elevated risk?

[00:20:32] Is it something to do with the combination of the stress of the job combined with access to weapons?

[00:20:42] I don't know.

[00:20:43] And that's such a good question.

[00:20:44] I think I know that there's been more efforts to in suicide prevention.

[00:20:49] You know, what the interesting thing is what the Boston University findings were, what they kind of compiled a lot of existing research is that it's far worse at smaller departments.

[00:20:58] It's actually way worse the smaller the department is in terms of the rate of suicide.

[00:21:05] So actually Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, because it's large, it's not one of the ones that you would have thought would be more at risk in the context of wider departments.

[00:21:17] So I think that may speak to more resources are available at the larger departments.

[00:21:24] And that may not be existing at the smaller department level.

[00:21:31] And yeah, I think there's probably a very a myriad of reasons why this is the case.

[00:21:38] But I'm not I'm not aware of that.

[00:21:40] I'd be interested if anyone out there is like research this or can speak to it or has worked in the suicide prevention side of things with law enforcement.

[00:21:48] That would be I think a great interview to have to kind of explore that issue a little more.

[00:21:53] Yeah, I'm very interested in this topic.

[00:21:55] Now though, Anya the travel agent has us going all the way from California to the Eastern Seaboard in Maine.

[00:22:03] You know, actually a listener requested us talk about the situation in Los Angeles County and a listener requested us to talk about that we talk about this case which is an awful awful shooting that occurred in Lewiston, Maine on October 25 2023.

[00:22:18] And the perpetrator was a 40 year old man named Robert Card.

[00:22:22] He targeted two businesses just in time recreation bowling alley and Chimengu's bar and grow restaurant and 18 people died in this shooting.

[00:22:35] And one thing that differentiated this situation from a lot of other cases is that the in most mass shootings are at least a lot of the high profile ones.

[00:22:47] You know, the shooter dies by suicide immediately or is shot by the police immediately or surrenders immediately.

[00:22:56] But in this case there was a multi day manhunt because he fled the scenes and was able to get away for some time.

[00:23:02] He was later found dead by suicide in a kind of truck trailer situation at a recycling plant where he previously worked.

[00:23:13] Another notable thing about this is that he was with the third battalion 304th Infantry Regiment.

[00:23:20] And that was an important aspect of this because his superiors and fellow members of that regiment were becoming increasingly concerned with his behavior.

[00:23:30] What were they seeing?

[00:23:32] He his family also took steps and reported this his ex-wife and his son were concerned.

[00:23:39] So a lot of different people were sounding the alarm on his mental health.

[00:23:43] He had recently gotten some sort of like hearing aids and was suspecting that people, specifically people at the businesses where he shot, you know, where he killed people were broadcasting rumors about him being a pedophile.

[00:24:00] So obviously like not a rational person, not somebody who's of sound mind because that doesn't make any sense.

[00:24:08] But he was talking about shooting people.

[00:24:11] He was talking about shooting up places and he punched somebody who asked him to stop talking about that.

[00:24:18] He was somebody who is in the regiment with him.

[00:24:21] He was held at the Keller Army Community Hospital for psychological evaluation and then sent to Four Wind Psychiatric Hospital in Katona, New York.

[00:24:32] But unfortunately none of this helped and he ultimately went on to commit a really heinous.

[00:24:38] And I guess what scares me about this story is that he he shoots up the bowling alley in four minutes.

[00:24:50] Police are there seven people are already dead and four minutes from the first call police are there then at the restaurant police are there within two minutes and there's eight people dead.

[00:25:06] So it's just striking that when you have someone who is motivated has access to weapons and knows how to use them, you know, the devastation can be extremely quick and having law enforcement respond relatively quickly within minutes doesn't matter.

[00:25:22] There's no there's no saving anybody.

[00:25:24] And of course as with many mass shootings, the internet was rife with misinformation in the immediate aftermath.

[00:25:31] I actually remember looking on some social media and videos were going around purporting to be him surrendering and those turned out to be bunk.

[00:25:39] So just as a reminder for all of us, including us, you know, including fellow journalists and creators and whatnot that there are bad actors out there who will just put out nonsense to get clicks.

[00:25:49] And so we should just be aware of that when the situation is ongoing, it's best to wait for the credible news outlets to report something than to assume something based on like, oh, this random guy on Twitter put it out there.

[00:26:04] I think it may be worth now going all the way down the eastern seaboard to Florida.

[00:26:12] And recently there have been developments in the case involving the death of Dan Markle.

[00:26:18] This was a law school professor, respected law school professor who was murdered.

[00:26:24] Yeah, he was very respected.

[00:26:26] He went to Harvard undergrad got his JD at Harvard did white collar criminal defense and was a tenured professor at the Florida State University College of Law.

[00:26:37] He was murdered in his driveway back in 2014.

[00:26:40] And police actually said relatively early on in the process that they believed it was a contract killing.

[00:26:47] And since then they have been working hard at unraveling this and getting all of the parties that are responsible.

[00:26:57] And they've been going at it in a smart way when there's a conspiracy like this, you don't want to go to the inside of the conspiracy right away.

[00:27:09] You want to start at the outside and gradually work your way closer and closer to the center.

[00:27:15] And that's what they've been doing.

[00:27:17] Yeah.

[00:27:18] And is that why murder conspiracy cases sometimes can be quite complicated and take a long time to wrap up?

[00:27:24] Yes.

[00:27:25] Because it's not just one person doing something.

[00:27:28] You have to prove all the links.

[00:27:30] Yes, it's very complicated and very time consuming because you want to make sure you do it absolutely correctly.

[00:27:39] There is double jeopardy considerations.

[00:27:42] You want to make sure that if you're going to go and charge someone that you're ready to go into court with evidence that proves that that person beyond a reasonable doubt is guilty of the offense with which you're charging them.

[00:27:54] Also, if you miss a domino, if it's a series of dominoes like a spiral of dominoes, if you miss a dominoe, then you may not get other people down the line.

[00:28:03] So the stakes are not just we need to kind of get everybody as quickly as possible.

[00:28:09] The stakes are like we need to do this in the correct order so that everything will keep falling in place as the investigation develops.

[00:28:15] Yeah.

[00:28:16] And so you look at a case like this and this man was murdered in 2014.

[00:28:21] And certainly there's a part of you crying out for justice that you want to see the perpetrators arrested immediately.

[00:28:29] And it's a shame that it's taken so long for this process to work its way out.

[00:28:36] But the thing to keep in mind is the process is ongoing.

[00:28:41] No one's given up on the case.

[00:28:44] They're just slowly piecing it together so that when they get the people responsible in the courtroom,

[00:28:50] they will be able to get a just verdict.

[00:28:53] So let's talk about the contract and let's talk about this conspiracy.

[00:28:57] You have Markle murdered in 2014, some context.

[00:29:01] He was in a bitter custody battle with his wife Wendy who is also a lawyer over their sons.

[00:29:12] And they divorced.

[00:29:14] She wanted to move the sons to Miami.

[00:29:16] That's very far away from Tallahassee where he was based and working.

[00:29:20] So this is getting nasty.

[00:29:22] He shot to death.

[00:29:24] So first investigators take down two men, Sigfredo Garcia and Louise Rivera.

[00:29:31] They determined that they were the ones who drove up from Miami and rented Prius to kill him.

[00:29:38] Cell phone data tied them there.

[00:29:40] Banking data.

[00:29:42] They were trailing this guy and they're convicted.

[00:29:47] Garcia was tied with to a woman named Catherine Magbanowa.

[00:29:52] So she turns out to have been also romantically connected to Charles Adelson.

[00:29:58] Charles or Charlie Adelson was a successful dentist and he was the brother of Wendy Markle's ex-wife.

[00:30:09] Now the recent developments have been Charlie Adelson was convicted of murder.

[00:30:16] Now Donna Adelson, the mother of Charles and Wendy has been charged.

[00:30:23] She was arrested at the Miami airport trying to get to Vietnam which does not have an extradition treaty.

[00:30:32] She was arrested and she has been again charged in this.

[00:30:36] So a lot of people have speculated over time that Donna and Wendy were involved in Markle's homicide.

[00:30:43] The whole family at that point hated him.

[00:30:46] They wanted to move the kids to Miami to be closer to them and the theory is that this spiraled into a murder plot.

[00:30:54] So we'll have to see what happens with Donna's case but the whole thing is obviously very disturbing.

[00:31:02] You know what the whole thing also reminds me of?

[00:31:05] What's that?

[00:31:06] A recent case involving Jared Bridegain and his ex-wife, Shanna Gardner.

[00:31:16] And so I want to talk about some of the weird similarities with those cases for a minute because I think about it a lot.

[00:31:22] So Jared Bridegain was murdered in 2022.

[00:31:30] He had just dropped the twins that he shared with his ex-wife, Shanna off at her home and he was driving back with the child, the two year old he shared with his new wife.

[00:31:44] Someone put a tire in the road.

[00:31:46] He gets out to move it.

[00:31:47] He's shot to death.

[00:31:49] So then from there we're seeing kind of a similar situation to the Markle case.

[00:31:54] A man named Henry Tenon is arrested.

[00:31:57] He has no connection to Bridegain.

[00:32:00] Then a man named Mario Fernandez Saldana is arrested and he's the husband of Bridegain's ex-wife Shanna Gardner Fernandez.

[00:32:10] And then she has recently been arrested.

[00:32:12] So we saw a similar thing.

[00:32:13] It was quicker but it was one after the other.

[00:32:16] People are being arrested increasingly closer to the victim.

[00:32:20] So what do I mean when I see these cases strike me as having some similarities?

[00:32:24] Well, you have the nature of the conspiracy.

[00:32:27] You have people being arrested and getting increasingly close to the victim.

[00:32:32] They both occurred in Florida.

[00:32:34] So Markle was killed in Tallahassee.

[00:32:36] Wendy, his ex-wife wanted him to move the kids to Miami which is like a seven hour drive away.

[00:32:44] Bridegain was killed in Jacksonville Beach.

[00:32:47] Both centered around custody battles over two children.

[00:32:52] The Markle and Wendy Adelson shared two sons.

[00:32:56] Bridegain and Gardner shared twins, a boy and a girl.

[00:33:02] And those custody disputes were getting pretty nasty.

[00:33:06] In addition to that both victims were well liked, very successful, respectable men.

[00:33:14] Again, Markle was a law professor.

[00:33:17] Bridegain was a Microsoft executive so people who seemed to be doing pretty well in life.

[00:33:23] In both instances, in the couple experiencing some sort of custody dispute,

[00:33:30] the wife came from a very close knit family.

[00:33:33] The Adelson, so Wendy Adelson, she was from a family that were successful dentists.

[00:33:38] Her father Harvey Adelson had a lucrative practice in Tamarack, Florida.

[00:33:43] Donna, his wife worked with him.

[00:33:46] Charlie was a very wealthy and periodontist and he was considered successful.

[00:33:54] And in the case of the gardeners, so Shanna comes from a family where they're essentially powerful owners

[00:34:02] of a multi-level marketing scheme called Stampin' Up.

[00:34:05] And so her parents are Sterling and Shelley.

[00:34:08] They have five daughters, Sarah, Shanna, Sage, Shaley and Megan.

[00:34:13] And so they were very interconnected and in fact Shanna was at her parent's house when she was arrested.

[00:34:22] So at this point there's some differences.

[00:34:24] There's not really any indication that the Bridegain murder goes beyond Shanna.

[00:34:32] I'm not seeing any indications that other members of her family are going to be implicated.

[00:34:37] But it just shows you that a lot of these conspiracies, the people think that they're being really smart about it.

[00:34:45] And what's striking to me is that both of these seemingly happened over a custody dispute of these children.

[00:34:53] And it's like looking at these kids is more like property than little human beings who need both parents in their lives

[00:35:02] and the arrogance of doing something like this and depriving them of one parent in such a permanent way is just horrifying.

[00:35:11] I agree completely with some really interesting parallels there.

[00:35:15] I believe we're releasing this episode on Thanksgiving.

[00:35:18] I'd like to wish everybody a happy Thanksgiving.

[00:35:21] Everyone who celebrates?

[00:35:22] If you're in Indiana, you may not celebrate Thanksgiving because you may be too busy planning your celebration of Lincoln's birthday.

[00:35:29] Which as we recently learned we actually celebrate in Indiana the Friday after Thanksgiving.

[00:35:37] I know I've gone out and bought my stovepipe hat and my little scroll with the Gettysburg address on it.

[00:35:46] Aw, I could actually see you doing that. That's the thing.

[00:35:49] That's not a joke.

[00:35:52] I'm curious, Ani. You have a history you like to wreck holidays.

[00:35:57] Yeah, I do.

[00:35:58] I mean if you look up like Anya Cain Thanksgiving on Google as I just did,

[00:36:03] like when the first thing that comes up is the real history of Thanksgiving is darker than you learned in school.

[00:36:10] So are you going to figure out a way to wreck everybody's celebration of Lincoln's birthday?

[00:36:15] What's the dark side of that?

[00:36:17] It didn't end so well for him in 1865.

[00:36:21] Here's the thing, I really enjoyed history.

[00:36:24] So when I was at Insider, I used to write these little articles that were kind of like the dark side of different holidays.

[00:36:31] Like Valentine's Day was one I wrecked.

[00:36:33] Wrecked Thanksgiving.

[00:36:35] I don't think I wrecked Christmas.

[00:36:37] I did some weird stuff about Christmas though with different carols.

[00:36:41] I think like anyways, I just enjoyed digging into the history of different events

[00:36:46] and Thanksgiving does have a pretty dark history considering, you know,

[00:36:52] the people often touted as oh that's wonderful.

[00:36:55] The pilgrims and the Native Americans sat down together and had a nice time.

[00:37:00] But like within a generation there was a bloody war between.

[00:37:04] Yes, yes.

[00:37:05] Yeah well, you know, I do, I just find that fascinating.

[00:37:08] I love the history and I always want to share that with people.

[00:37:12] So that was one way of me writing about history for Insider kind of sneaking it in there.

[00:37:18] Also, oddly enough, I looked up on Yacane Thanksgiving.

[00:37:22] There's that her expose of Thanksgiving and you scroll down and the next entry on the list is

[00:37:29] I tried one of the most infamous gas station sandwiches in America.

[00:37:33] So apparently you also spoiled gas station food for people.

[00:37:36] I think that was the Thanksgiving sandwich.

[00:37:42] So yeah, well, I don't think anyone wants to read about me eating a gas station sandwich.

[00:37:48] There's something very sordid sounding about that.

[00:37:51] So on that note, should we wish you all happy holidays and our sincere apologies?

[00:37:57] Thanks a lot, Kevin.

[00:37:59] Thanks so much for listening.

[00:38:01] Thanks, bye.

[00:38:05] Thanks so much for listening to The Murder Shade.

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