Ouija Board Murders with Two Girls One Ghost

Summary

Crime Scene Podcast – Episode Summary

Episode Title: Ouija Board Murders with Two Girls One Ghost
Release Date: August 6, 2026
Host(s): Jonathan Hirsch, Cooper Maul
Guest: Sabrina (from Two Girls One Ghost)
Podcast Description: Crime Scene is a weekly true crime show featuring deep dives into unforgettable cases, with investigative reporting and unique insights.
Main Theme:
This episode investigates the chilling 2001 Oklahoma murder case in which a grandmother, Carol Sue Elvicker, killed her son-in-law—allegedly at the instruction of a Ouija board she believed was communicating messages from God. The discussion explores the role of paranormal beliefs in true crime, the legal and psychological repercussions, and broader implications for how society grapples with cases at the intersection of mental illness and the supernatural.

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Episode Overview

In this gripping episode, Jonathan Hirsch and Cooper Maul, joined by paranormal expert Sabrina from Two Girls One Ghost, unravel the peculiar case of the "Ouija Board Murder." The story centers on Carol Sue Elvicker, a seemingly ordinary grandmother who, without any prior history of violence, killed her son-in-law after claiming she received a divine directive through a Ouija board. The case prompts critical questions about belief in the supernatural, the boundaries of mental health diagnoses, and the rare legal triumph of the insanity plea.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Scene: The Paranormal and Crime

• Interplay of Death, Grief, and the Supernatural

  • Sabrina reflects on the natural connection between murder and the lingering presence of spirits:

    "There are no ghosts without death, and murder is the most devastating type of death. ...if you believe in ghosts, I feel like after a murder is probably the most unfinished business you could have." (03:36)

• Historic Cases Involving the Supernatural

  • Sabrina cites the "Greenbrier Ghost," where a mother claimed testimony from her deceased daughter helped convict the killer—a rare and controversial precedent for paranormal evidence in court. (04:17)

• Can Paranormal Testimony Aid Justice?

  • The hosts and Sabrina discuss the inherent complications in considering paranormal or psychic testimony in court:

    "It's paranormal because we don't understand it. So there's no way to verify its validity."
    —Sabrina (05:09)

    "Reasonable doubt and paranormal... they’re like synonyms of each other."
    —Jonathan (05:36)

2. The Crime: Relentless Violence and the Role of the Ouija Board

• The Events of February 11, 2001 (07:20–11:17)

  • Carol Sue, her daughter Tammy, and Tammy’s two daughters habitually conducted Ouija sessions, and on this night, Carol Sue claimed the board instructed her to kill her son-in-law, Brian Roach.

  • Carol stabbed Brian once in the chest as he slept; nobody called 911, and he died from his wounds.

  • Carol then attempted to strangle her granddaughter but was stopped. Instead of seeking help, the group fled the home, piling into a car and driving off (11:17–11:41).

    “All of this happened under the cloak of the supernatural.”
    —Jonathan (06:28)

    “She believed that the board was her connection to God himself. And on this night, God had something frightening to tell her. Brian... had to die.”
    —Jonathan (08:08)

• Noteworthy Questions Raised

  • Sabrina wonders whether it was Carol's delusion alone or a collective family experience:

    "Is it just in Carol Sue's head... or are they all watching the board spell it out?" (11:47)

  • The panel muses on the influence of the Ouija board—and whether intention turns a parlor game into a supposed tool for the supernatural:

    "With the paranormal, it’s a little bit about intention. If you really are trying to open yourself up to the other side, you can open yourself up to dark things."
    —Sabrina (13:24)

• The Second Crime Scene (18:04–20:00)

  • Carol Sue deliberately crashes the car in an apparent murder-suicide attempt, then tries to drag her granddaughter into traffic. Tammy intervenes, and Carol flees; authorities apprehend her nearby.

3. Investigation & Legal Proceedings

• Backward Police Investigation (21:49)

  • Authorities reconstruct events after discovering the car accident, learning that the homicide occurred 90 miles away and built the case from the family’s testimonies.
  • The Ouija board’s role was consistent in all accounts and confirmed in Carol’s confession.

• Legal Challenges and Insanity Plea (30:04–36:30)

  • Both Carol and Tammy were charged—Carol with first-degree murder and Tammy as an accessory (for hiding the knife and not seeking help).
  • Carol’s lawyers plead insanity based on Oklahoma’s strict legal standard: did she know right from wrong at the time?
  • Remarkably, both defense and prosecution psychiatrists agreed Carol was legally insane.

    "The state’s own expert examined Carol Sue and reached the same conclusion that the defense experts had... She had no idea what she was doing."
    —Jonathan (34:07)

• Outcome & Ouija Board as Evidence

  • Carol was found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed to psychiatric care.
  • The case is notable for the admission of the actual Ouija board as evidence:

    “It had been reported as one of the only times, and by some accounts, the first time, that a Ouija board was formally admitted as evidence in an American courtroom.”
    —Jonathan (35:19)

  • Tammy’s charges were dropped; the daughters were placed in protective custody.

4. Psychological and Societal Implications

• Was the Family Under a Shared Delusion? (24:28–25:44)

  • Sabrina brings up other "devil made me do it" cases and the possibility of shared psychosis or mass delusion.

    “Were they all kind of under this shared delusion for a moment?”
    —Sabrina (25:08)

• Where’s the Line Between the Paranormal and Mental Illness? (25:47–27:08)

  • The hosts reflect on the overlap between beliefs in the supernatural and psychiatric illness, referencing personal and famous cases where violence was driven by perceived external voices.

    “The only way we can justify it or ground it within our legal system… is insanity. ...It’s enticing to explain motive in this way; it shifts the blame off of the human realm into the otherworldly.”
    —Jonathan (27:08)

5. Broader Impact and Unanswered Questions

• Perception of Occult Practices (39:19–40:05)

  • Sabrina brings up the negative effects on the reputation of esoteric or occult practices due to cases like this.

    “A couple groups... made it seem more violent and it created a panic.”
    —Sabrina (39:46) (referencing the Satanic Panic)

• The Puzzling Lack of Warning Signs (40:05–41:06)

  • The group debates whether late-onset mental illness, missed signals, or an unfortunate convergence of belief and psychosis led to tragedy.

• Lingering Mysteries for Justice (41:27–41:45)

  • Sabrina highlights unanswered questions about the family’s prior Ouija sessions:

    “What were these communications? What did the daughter and the granddaughters know?”
    —Sabrina (41:27)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the supernatural and legal doubt:

  “Reasonable doubt and paranormal… they’re like synonyms of each other.”
  —Jonathan Hirsch (05:36)

• On intention and danger with Ouija boards:

  “With the paranormal, it’s a little bit about intention. If you really are trying to open yourself up to the other side, you can open yourself up to dark things.”
  —Sabrina (13:24)

• On the rare legal status of the board itself:

  “It had been reported as one of the only times, and by some accounts, the first time, that a Ouija board was formally admitted as evidence in an American courtroom.”
  —Jonathan Hirsch (35:19)

• Closing reflection on the potential of the Ouija board to inspire violence:

  “Do you think a Ouija board could inspire somebody to kill?”
  —Cooper Maul (42:21)
  “I don’t want to believe that, but… can’t rule it out.”
  —Sabrina (42:25)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• 02:26 – Introduction of guest Sabrina; debate on the paranormal’s impact in crime
• 04:18 – Greenbrier Ghost: rare case of supernatural evidence used in court
• 07:20–11:17 – Full breakdown of the Elvicker murder and aftermath
• 13:24 – Discussion on intention and the actual ‘power’ of Ouija boards
• 18:04 – The second crime scene: attempted murder-suicide van crash
• 21:49–24:28 – Investigation and challenges in reconstructing the crime
• 30:04–36:30 – Legal wrangling, insanity plea, and historical use of evidence
• 39:19–40:05 – Societal impacts (Satanic Panic, “bad apples” effect)
• 41:27–42:25 – Lingering questions, Ouija board’s role, and broad uncertainty

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Tone & Style

The discussion is candid, questioning, and often somber, with the hosts and guest blending skepticism and open-mindedness. Sabrina’s presence brings a unique paranormal insight but also a critical lens on the intersection of belief, psychology, and violence.

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Summary Takeaway

This episode of Crime Scene offers a rare examination of a true crime case shaped by the supernatural and the legal system’s attempts to grapple with the unexplainable. With thoughtful analysis from both journalistic and paranormal perspectives, the hosts and guest dissect a tragedy where mental illness, family dynamics, superstition, and law collide—leaving listeners with more questions than answers about what really drives people to the unthinkable.

Transcript

[Host 1 (Ad Read)]

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[Jonathan Hirsch]

Put a Ouija board A parlor game that you can buy at any toy store compel you to kill On a winter night in 2001 in a small Oklahoma farm town, a grandmother sat her daughter and her two granddaughters down on the living room floor and reached for a Ouija board. By the time the sun came up, one person in that family would be dead. Welcome to Crime Scene, the show where we tell the stories behind the world's most unforgettable crimes. This week on the show, the story of Carol Sue Elvicker, a grandmother who said she wasn't talking to the dead, she was talking to God. A family gathered around a parlor game and a single night in Minco, Oklahoma that no one has ever been able to fully explain from Sony podcasts and the binge. This is a story we're calling the Ouija Board Murder.

[Cooper Maul]

Hey y'.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

All, welcome to Crime Scene. My name's Jonathan Hirsch and each week, over three acts, we dive into the most shocking and complex true crime stories of our era. And each week, I'm joined by my friend and fellow documentarian, Cooper Maul. Hi, Cooper.

[Cooper Maul]

Hey, Jonathan.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

And this week, we are not doing it alone. When a murder case that we were covering hinges on a Ouija board, we needed to have somebody in the room who actually knows about this object. And so we are very excited to bring in our guest, Sabrina. She is one half of the paranormal podcast Two Girls, One Ghost, and the new show from Pave Crimes of Reddit. Sabrina, we are so excited to have you on Crime Scene.

[Justine Van der Lune]

Welcome.

[Sabrina (Paranormal Expert)]

I am so excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Okay, so before we dig into this case, I feel like we just need to do some table setting about the paranormal and crimes. The idea that there is some unseen force outside of our perception that can be informing a criminal investigation and in some cases, even contributing to a crime is hard for a lot of people to imagine. But I'm curious if this is something that you've encountered.

[Sabrina (Paranormal Expert)]

I mean, for nine years, we've been talking about the paranormal, and I would say there are no ghosts without death, and murder is the most devastating type of death. Right. So it's inevitable that there's a lot of emotion, and probably if you're a spirit, who's gonna linger. If you believe in ghosts, I feel like after a murder is probably the most unfinished business you could have.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Right. So if there was ever a time where somebody was actually gonna intervene from outside of the realm of the living,

[Sabrina (Paranormal Expert)]

it would be in a murder case.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

It would be in that scenario.

[Sabrina (Paranormal Expert)]

There's actually one case that we covered many years ago. It's the murder of Zona Heaster. She's called the Greenbrier Ghost.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Okay.

[Sabrina (Paranormal Expert)]

And it's the one time in legal history that a ghost's testimony helped solve a case. She came back from the dead and told her mother, like, what happened to her, and they use her testimony in court and found her murderer guilty.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

That is insane.

[Sabrina (Paranormal Expert)]

Yeah, I know.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Do you think this is something that can inform criminal cases? Like, where do you fall on the spectrum, Cooper?

[Cooper Maul]

I think I'm more inclined to. You know, I think about something like how psychics are brought in a lot to criminal investigations. I feel like my mind may be able to give that a little bit more legitimacy. Right. And, you know, my own personal beliefs in the paranormal aside, I'm not too sure how I feel about being able to enter paranormal testimony into evidence. Right.

[Sabrina (Paranormal Expert)]

It's fair because, I mean, it's paranormal because we don't understand it. So there's no way to verify its validity. And that makes it complicated.

[Cooper Maul]

Yeah, that's exactly where my mind goes. It's like, how do you verify this? How?

[Jonathan Hirsch]

By definition, it isn't empirical.

[Sabrina (Paranormal Expert)]

Exactly.

[Cooper Maul]

Yeah. To me, I think of, I mean, just the amount of reasonable doubt that is, that is implied by having paranormal testimony. Right.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

They're like synonyms of each other. Reasonable doubt and paranormal.

[Sabrina (Paranormal Expert)]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Yes, in a strange way. But I will say even, and this might be surprising to some people who know the work that I do, but I would say that in almost every criminal case that I've covered, there has been a moment, and I'm sure a lot of people will relate to this, in which when discussing a crime, particularly with a member of the families impacted by those events, there's a sense from everybody that that person is somehow there or somehow watching or in some way beyond the grasp of our own. Sort of like physical recognition of their form are present with us. And I do believe that that's a possibility. I mean, to say that it's not, is to say is. Is to make claims about something that I can't even see.

[Host 1 (Ad Read)]

Right.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

So it could be.

[Sabrina (Paranormal Expert)]

Anything's possible.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Anything's possible. So what gets me about the story we're going to get into today is that we've covered many, many killers who planned for months and killers who snapped in a second. But this story, the story of Carol Sue Elvicker is neither of those things. She's a 53 year old grandmother with no criminal record, no history of mental illness and no history of violence, nothing. And then in the space of one night, she resorts to an unspeakable degree of violence. And all of this happened under the cloak of the supernatural. Which is of course why, Sabrina, we needed to have you here today to

[Host 1 (Ad Read)]

talk about this case.

[Cooper Maul]

Let's get into it.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

It's Sunday night, February 11, 2001, in Minco, Oklahoma, a farming town of about 1400 people in Grady county, roughly 30 miles southwest of Oklahoma City. It's the kind of place where everybody knows everybody. Inside of one of these homes, four people are gathered on the living room floor. Carol Sue Elvicker, 53 years old, a grandmother, with her daughter there, Tammy Sue Roach, 34 and Tammy's two girls, aged 15 and 10. Between them on the floor, a Ouija board, that flat board printed with the Alphabet, the numbers 0 through 9 and the words yes, no and goodbye. Everyone at the table rests their fingers on a little heart shaped Pointer called a planchette, and it drifts from letter to letter to spell out the answers, supposedly from the spirits. And this wasn't the first time. In the weeks before this night, Carol sue had become consumed with this board, sitting her daughter and her granddaughters down for session after session, their fingertips resting together on the little pointy planchette while it slid across the letters. There's someone else in the house tonight. Down the hall, asleep in a bedroom, is Tammy's husband, Brian Roach. He's 34 years old and in Minco. Brian was a little bit famous back in 1986. He was only 18 or 19 years old and he had run for mayor of the town and he won by only eight votes. He was one of the youngest mayors in the country, governing a town while in junior college and working a part time job. He would go on to serve Minkow as a ward councilman into the early 90s. In his first year in office, the young mayor had pushed for one thing in particular. He wanted Minco to have more police officers. He wanted the town to be better protected. He couldn't have known that night of the seance in 2001 he would need someone to be looking out for him. And he didn't get that kind of help that night. His mother in law, Carol sue, wasn't trying to reach the dead. She wasn't talking to ghosts or spirits. She believed that the board was her connection to God himself. And on this night, God had something frightening to tell her. Brian, father of those two girls sitting there on the floor, he had to die. Carol sue stood up. She walked into the kitchen and took a knife. She carried it down the hall into the bedroom where Brian was sleeping, and she stabbed him a single time in the chest. Then she stopped. One deliberate thrust into a sleeping man because a Ouija board had spelled out that he was evil. Brian woke up. Obviously he was bleeding, he was frightened. And once he realized it wasn't an intruder who had attacked him, he begged for help. But here's where things get really kind of bizarre. Nobody called 911. Not his wife, neither did his daughter. Not one of them picked up the phone. He could have survived that stabbing. That's at least what investigators would later say, if someone had actually gotten him to the hospital on time. But nobody did. It's unclear if these women were in shock, paralyzed with fear. But Brian Roach bled to death in his own home, calling out, while the people he loved stayed on the other side of the door. We don't know for sure, but maybe it's because they were just preoccupied. Because it turned out Carol sue wasn't finished. She turned on her 10 year old granddaughter. Next, she decided the girl also had to die. And according to the court affidavit, Carol sue tried to break her neck. This is when Tammy the mother, finally reacted. She wrenched the knife away from her own mother, but she didn't run for the phone and she didn't run to a neighbor. She hid the knife somewhere in the house. Then, with Brian dying or already dead down the hall, the four of them, grandmother, mother and the two little girls, walked out, climbed into Tammy's car and drove off into the dark. Okay, Cooper, Sabrina, this is so bizarre.

[Sabrina (Paranormal Expert)]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

What do you make of a Ouija board being at the center of a homicide?

[Sabrina (Paranormal Expert)]

It's not the first time I've heard of it. Okay. But I have so many questions, like how many times had they used this Ouija board before? And what were the conversations leading up to this? And is it just in Carol Sue's head that she's being told that Brian is evil or are they all watching the board spell it out?

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Right.

[Sabrina (Paranormal Expert)]

And I guess we'll never really know the answer to that.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

And is that because if somebody just sort of impulsively sits down and starts using a Ouija board, the outcomes would theoretically be different than if somebody was preparing to answer specific questions in a manner?

[Sabrina (Paranormal Expert)]

Yes. And then also, I mean, I think one of the biggest debates with Ouija boards is, is it your subconscious? Is someone controlling? You know, I, I don't know if you've used Ouija boards, but I have in the past and I've seen it move and I know I'm not moving it, but I don't know if someone else around the table is.

[Cooper Maul]

Yeah. And I'm just curious too about even the legitimacy of a Ouija board as a esoteric object. Right. Because seeing as it's a, it's sold in toy stores. Right.

[Sabrina (Paranormal Expert)]

Yes.

[Cooper Maul]

So what, when I think about that, I'm thinking about it's like this mass produced board game.

[Sabrina (Paranormal Expert)]

Yep.

[Cooper Maul]

Does that, does that mass production kind of is suck the powers out of it. Right. Like how, how do you know what Ouija board is, is legit and what Ouija board is? You know, just something out there from Hasbro.

[Sabrina (Paranormal Expert)]

I would like to think most of them are probably just out there from Hasbro and it's like a fun game to play with friends.

[Host 1 (Ad Read)]

Right.

[Sabrina (Paranormal Expert)]

But I do think with the paranormal, it's a little bit about intention. If you really are trying to open yourself up to the other side. You can open yourself up to dark things. You can open yourself up to. Yeah, maybe a message from someone on the other side. But, yeah, this is a tricky one where you're kind of left wondering how premeditated is it? And is she using the Ouija board to then act on something she'd already been thinking about?

[Cooper Maul]

Yeah. I'm curious if it has that kind of, like, Mandela effect thing where it's. This is something that she had already been thinking about and now she's almost looking for a sign or some sort of permission. Right. And she's now seeing that sign everywhere.

[Sabrina (Paranormal Expert)]

Right, right.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

And it's interesting, like, in a way, the existence of this Ouija board inside of a murder case ends up overshadowing the actual case itself because people become preoccupied with it.

[Sabrina (Paranormal Expert)]

Right.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Like the headlines or something.

[Sabrina (Paranormal Expert)]

It's a great headline.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Yeah. The Ouija board murder. But the case itself doesn't get top billing in that scenario. Right. This grandmother who commits a murder becomes a little bit of a footnote, right? Yeah. But before we get into sort of how this case was adjudicated, there's more. A man is now dead in that house, as we know. But that stabbing was only the first act of violence to happen that night. Coming up, a grandmother with no criminal record loads three generations of her own family into a car in the middle of the night. The road ahead is about to become a second crime scene. Here's something kind of alarming. Apparently, three out of four homes in the United States have toxic chemicals in their tap water. And the problem is contaminated water.

[Host 1 (Ad Read)]

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[Jonathan Hirsch]

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[Cooper Maul]

Okay, so when we left it, Carol has stabbed her son in law, Brian Roach in the middle of the night once because a Ouija board has inspired her to do this. But that wasn't kind of the last act of violence that she inflicted in that home because she's also tried to strangle her granddaughter. But then once that attempt fails, they're all piling into the car and driving off into the night, leaving Brian behind to die. Where are they headed?

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Yeah, Carol Sue's behind the wheel. And why on earth they would let her drive we'll never know at this point. Maybe no one wanted to argue with her. And she steered the car out of Minco and out onto Interstate 44, pointing it northeast towards Tulsa. It was the middle of the night. They didn't have a destination, just a middle aged woman who believed she was carrying out instructions from God and three passengers who had already seen what those instructions can do. They made it about 90 miles up the interstate near the town of Chandler in Lincoln County. And there Carol Sue's purpose became known. She deliberately drove the car straight off the road and into a highway sign. The affidavit would later describe this as a murder suicide attempt. She tried to end all four of the lives in that car at Once, but somehow they survived. Tammy and the girls walked away with minor injuries, and Grandma emerged from the wreck with two broken ankles. Carol sue is gravely injured, but she does not sit still and wait for the troopers. According to the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, she climbed out of that wrecked car, grabbed her 15 year old granddaughter, and tried to drag the girl into oncoming highway traffic. This time, Tammy stopped her. The mother got in between the two of them and pulled her daughter back from the road. With the girl out of her reach, Carol sue gave up and fled on foot, on two shattered ankles, mind you. She stripped off her clothing as she went, climbed over the median barrier and crossed to the far side of the interstate and vanished into a wooded area where police eventually found her hiding in the dark. Carol was arrested in Lincoln county within hours of Brian's death. But it was never clear whether the wrecked car had alerted authorities that something was amiss. After all, it's not every near fatal accident that features a barefoot woman fleeing the scene and hiding. Maybe they started to ask questions at that point and someone spoke up about the dead man 90 miles down the interstate. The other possibility is that someone in Minco found Brian lifeless first and the body set off a search that ended up at the crash site. Either way, the investigation sort of ran backwards in this case, and police were reconstructing the start of the night from the wreckage. At the end, there were two crime scenes instead of one. They were 90 miles apart, as we said, in different counties. The murder happened in Minco in Grady county, and the wreck on I44 in Chandler in Lincoln County. Between them, the case pulled in Minco's small police department, the Lincoln county responders, and then of course, the state agencies that work in smaller states like this, like the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation. And the spokesperson for that state bureau became the public voice of this investigation. So at first, investigators had read the house all wrong. When police first walked in to the home in Minko, they found a man stabbed once in his own bed, the murder weapon hidden somewhere in the house. And then they jumped to the conclusion that this was some kind of domestic violence situation. An aggrieved wife killing her husband. Perhaps, you know, the textbook picture of the spouse did it. But the details started coming in 90 miles down the road at the crime scene where the troopers had three survivors to talk to, and Tammy and the two girls. And soon a fourth account from the hospital bed from Carol Sue. And within roughly a day, all of it turned the whole theory of this case in a completely different direction. I Can only imagine what it must have felt like as investigators to go through that. Tammy hadn't stabbed anyone. The grandmother had. The motive was not a marriage gone bad. It was whatever message she claimed to have received. And the wife's crime, if she had committed one, was not what she did. It was what she failed to do. There's something worth being honest about in how this investigation was pieced together, because the case had almost no independent witnesses. Brian was asleep, then he was dead. Everyone else in the house was either a suspect or a traumatized child. Every one of them was family. And that Ouija board session, the message from God, the begging for help, the knife changing hands, nearly all of it comes from inside that closed family circle, plus what Carol herself told the police. So no one has ever disputed that account because there was nobody else there to dispute it. And the physical evidence fit the crime as they understood it. So if that night was reconstructed almost entirely from the words of the people who lived it, there's no outside independent understanding of what happened. And Carol gave them plenty to go off of as well. After she was captured, she was taken into a hospital in Oklahoma City. And from a hospital bed, she handed investigators what amounted to a confession. The Ouija board, she told them, was her connection to God. The board first sent her the message to kill her son in law, Brian, because he was evil. And as far as like a first degree murder charge goes, that's pretty much a confession. And folded right inside of that was the seat of the defense that would eventually decide this entire case. So investigators had one more thread to pull on, which was it wasn't only Brian who Carol sue had targeted that night. She had tried to take the life of Brian's 10 year old nephew as well. She wanted to kill the boy because the board had told her that he was also evil. And the attempt was stopped only when the boy's mother scared Carol off. If that account is right, the board was not just naming one evil man. It was building a sort of kill list. Okay, Cooper, let's stay in the strangest part, if you could say this entire

[Cooper Maul]

thing, there's which one?

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Strange elements here, but I can't get past the wife.

[Cooper Maul]

Yeah, I mean, the fact that she didn't call 911 the second she saw her mother.

[Host 1 (Ad Read)]

Who does that?

[Cooper Maul]

Husband, who does that? I don't know, but I mean, I think you hit the nail on the head earlier when you were talking about, you know, maybe they were just absolutely terrified of Carol sue and they felt intimidated. Right, Right.

[Sabrina (Paranormal Expert)]

Was she threatening Them. Did she have another weapon? Yeah, I don't know.

[Cooper Maul]

I don't know what I would do in that situation. I'd probably have a freeze response as well.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

We only have the family's account, so whatever they all agreed to say is what we understand as what happened that night, which is wild.

[Sabrina (Paranormal Expert)]

Well, then also, if they're all using the Ouija board and all seeing this message come through of Brian being evil, were they all kind of under this shared delusion for a moment? Arne Cheyenne Johnson, who it's called the Devil Made Me do it case where he said, like, a voice told him to stab his landlord.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

So it's certainly possible that whether or not you believe that these were happening on some outside unseen force or the delusions of the individual, there have been these scenarios where people feel or perceive outside influences compelling them to commit these crimes.

[Sabrina (Paranormal Expert)]

It becomes their reality, whether it's real or not.

[Cooper Maul]

And you know, what I'm curious about in cases like that, Sabrina, is how do you square what is magic? What is the esoteric? What is, you know, people legitimately gifted with, you know, this ability to see beyond the veil? But what is also mental illness, psychosis? That sort of is a big possibility here, too.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Yeah. I should probably mention something else that I just realized relates to this case is when I was in my early 20s, I was assaulted when I was riding a bicycle by a man who believed that he was hearing voices telling him to run over cyclists. So I was living in San Francisco in the Mission District at the time, and there were a number of people who were, like, biking around the town. I was, like, going to a show, and I got hit by a guy in an suv. And I was, like, one of several people. And as that case went through the criminal justice system, ultimately they pled not guilty by reason of insanity and won that plea under the auspice that these voices telling him to do this unimaginable thing to young people who are on their bicycles was some form of insanity, but that those are the critical frameworks that we have within the legal system to understand the voices that people hear, whether they're real or imagined. It's the only way that we can justify it or ground it within our legal system. So it does sort of present a big question mark about a case like this. Right. And also, you know, to be a little cynical here, it's enticing to explain motive in this way. Right. Like, it shifts the blame off of the human realm into the otherworldly. It wasn't me. It was the Voices telling me to do it right. The devil, not God, speaking through that Ouija board, if you will. So back to our case. Everything about what happened that night points to the idea that Carol sue was not well. And all of the experts involved in the case were about to agree. Coming up, the state hires its own psychiatrist to prove this woman knew exactly what she was doing. And instead its expert agrees with the defense.

[Host 1 (Ad Read)]

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[Jonathan Hirsch]

automatic moments pop up.

[Host 1 (Ad Read)]

I genuinely appreciate that. It doesn't feel like a cheap gadget. It's weighted, satisfying to hold, and the kind of thing that you would just catch yourself reaching for to fidget with.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

That's kind of the whole point.

[Host 1 (Ad Read)]

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[Jonathan Hirsch]

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[Jonathan Hirsch]

Did you know Sam's Club isn't a store? It's actually a club with cool finds. And like a whole community, it's a club.

[Justine Van der Lune]

Of course, Jason.

[Sabrina (Paranormal Expert)]

It's in the name Sam's Club.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Oh yeah. Come join us. Sam's Club.

[Cooper Maul]

Okay, so to catch everybody up in a single night, this grandmother, Carol sue has stabbed and killed her son in law.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Yeah.

[Cooper Maul]

Attempted to kill two of her grandchildren and perhaps even a murder suicide. And now she's been caught and told investigators that God via a Ouija board had instructed her to do this. But now the legal system is tasked with figuring out what to do with her. So how does this all unravel?

[Jonathan Hirsch]

So, perhaps unsurprisingly, the charges came pretty fast. There wasn't a lot of police work here to sort of need to file charges. Brian dies on Sunday, February 11, and 24 hours later, Carol sue was charged with first degree murder. She was also charged with child abuse for the attack on the girls. But Carol was not the only one who was about to be charged. On Tuesday, a day after that, prosecutors came for Tammy Sue Roach as well. They charged her as an accessory to murder. And their reasoning was very specific. She had hidden the knife, provided the getaway car, and she had stood by while her husband bled to death without ever calling 911 or the cops. And the only accounts that we have are coming from inside of the family. Tammy was also charged with child abuse and for failing to protect her daughters from the attacks. Both girls were taken into custody. Brett Burns, who was the Grady County Assistant DA at the time of this, had said that Carol sue had, quote, brainwashed her daughter and granddaughters through these Ouija board sessions. And then having charged everyone inside of 48 hours, the case went quiet for almost a year. Because the fast part, the who, what, when, and how, was already solved. Police knew who held the knife by Monday morning. The hardest part was why. The case split into two. The first investigation, the one with the crime scenes and the evidence lockers and interstate mile markers, was essentially finished within days. The second investigation, the one that would actually decide what happened to her, was an inquiry into a single human mind. And it would take the better part of a year. Carol Sue's lawyers entered an insanity plea. And an insanity plea is not the loophole that television makes it look like. Under Oklahoma law, it leans on a very old and very narrow standard, a version that dates back to the English courtroom in 1843. It asks this one question. At the moment of a killing, did the defendant understand what they were doing was wrong? Not whether or not she was disturbed, not whether she was ill, Whether in that instant could she tell right from wrong at all. If a mental illness had taken even that away from her, then under the law, she couldn't be found guilty by reason of insanity. That defense almost never works. Ever since John Hinckley was found not guilty for the Reagan President Reagan shooting in 1981, that plea has been one of the most distrusted in American law. So juries are suspicious of it. Prosecutors fight it. It succeeds in only a fraction of cases, such as this. So the defense lines up two expert witnesses, both prepared to testify that Carol was legally insane at the time of the killing. And the prosecution hired its own psychiatric expert to examine her, expecting that the expert was going to push back. Except that isn't what happened. The state's own expert examined Carol sue and reached the same conclusion that the defense experts had, which was she was insane. She had no idea what she was doing the night that she stabbed her son in law or when she tried to pull her granddaughter into traffic. All three of these experts, the two hired by the defense and the one by the prosecution, agreed with each other. So there's a real argument sitting on the other side, one that has sunk insanity defenses. Before Carol had fled, she'd hidden in the woods. The knife had been concealed inside of the house. A prosecutor could stand up and say, those are not the acts of a person who can tell right from wrong. Those are the acts of someone who knew exactly what she had done and was trying to get away with it. This is a classic counter, and it's the exact argument that helped a Texas jury convict Andrea Yates around the same time. She was the mom who drowned her five children based on these, this religious delusion that she had that was telling her to do it. But in Carol's trial, not one of these three experts was willing to make this argument. So prosecutors almost never see this. It put the assistant da, Brett Burns, in an impossible situation. On the eve of the scheduled trial, he had to have a defendant for his own hired expert that had just called the defendant in this case, Carol sue, insane. And so in early 2002, on the eve of the trial, the court ruled Carol Sue Elvicker not guilty by reason of insanity. And then she was committed to psychiatric care. And to establish her state of mind, the prosecutors did something that was almost unheard of. They entered a Ouija board into the public record. The object that had, in Carol's mind, carried out the order to kill. It had been reported as one of the only times, and by some accounts, the first time, that a Ouija board was formally admitted as evidence in an American courtroom. That claim is hard to pin down, and it deserves this one caveat, which is boards have turned up in other cases, including one in England, where jurors improperly used a board during deliberations and had a conviction thrown out.

[Sabrina (Paranormal Expert)]

Wow.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

If the jury is deadlocked, I guess you have to find a way to break the tie, right? But in Carol's case, the board did not inspire the crime. It sat in the record as a piece of the crime, which is interesting. Everyone agreed she was legally insane. But the actual clinical diagnosis, the specific illness that the three experts identified was never made a part of the public record. Then there's Tammy. The accessory to murder charges against her. Those were dismissed. Prosecutors ultimately chose not to pursue them. The clearest read on why is essentially, you know, what Burns had said earlier, that she was brainwashed. If the mother's delusion had swallowed the daughter too, it becomes very hard to say that Tammy freely chose to let Brian die. The exact final disposition of her child abuse charge is not cleanly established in the public record. And one secondary account says that she received a probation and psychiatric care. What is clear is that the woman who hid the knife and drove the car did not go to prison for it. Which leaves the two people who had the least say in any of this. The granddaughters, the 10 year old and the 15 year old who had to live with the fact that their grandmother had killed their father. The mother hid the weapon and they survived a car driven into a sign on purpose, all in a single horrible night. Both girls were placed in protective custody after the arrest. They would be adults today, probably in their 30s or 40s. And Carol sue herself. The state took custody over her. By Oklahoma law, she could only be released from psychiatric care if they determined she was no longer a danger to anyone. Those decisions are run through the state forensic board and there's a center, a facility up in Veneta where they were held. So that's likely where she was. And we looked it up. And her last known address, as best we know from the public record, is that she's in a nursing home facility in Oklahoma City. Back to our earlier point, it's not entirely surprising that there's a case like this where the insanity plea works. It involves a Ouija board. So what I'm getting at is some people just don't believe it's rational to communicate with spirits or the unseen.

[Sabrina (Paranormal Expert)]

I also think that a lot of people think it's not really rational to stab your father, your son in law and try to run your car off the road with your, your daughter and granddaughters in the car.

[Host 1 (Ad Read)]

Right.

[Sabrina (Paranormal Expert)]

But yeah, I mean, I do think inevitably there is a, you know, a side eye that is raised to the paranormal or Ouija boards.

[Cooper Maul]

That makes me think about, you know, not everybody who's practicing things like Ouija boards or tarot or these esoteric practices. Right. Are violent people. And I'm curious like what stories like this do for the, you know, Reputations of folks who are using this in non nefarious ways or don't have experiences feeling like they've been, you know, cajoled by something on the other side to murder someone.

[Sabrina (Paranormal Expert)]

I mean, you're looking at the whole era of the satanic panic. Like there were people who were practicing things in a very benign way, and then just a couple groups, you know, maybe made it seem more violent and it created a panic.

[Cooper Maul]

A couple of bad apples is a

[Sabrina (Paranormal Expert)]

couple of bad apples.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

And the other part that's so confounding about this case is that here's somebody with no criminal record, right. No history of mental illness, no family history that investigators could point to for a motive.

[Cooper Maul]

You know, to be fair, some of these mental illnesses, psychiatric illnesses, can have a later onset. But I'm also thinking maybe, and this is just my opinion, maybe there are some signs in Carol Sue's case that were missed along the way. I mean, she's pretty late for a diagnosis, right?

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Yeah. The absence of warning signs is not evidence that she was somehow faking. Right. Like, it might be just an honest sign of how sick she actually was. You know, it's just terribly sad.

[Sabrina (Paranormal Expert)]

So sad.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

So this is one of those rare cases in American law where the insanity plea actually worked, but it doesn't feel like justice. Do you know what I mean? And I keep thinking back to something that you mentioned, Sabrina, when we were first talking about this case, which I hadn't thought about until you brought it up, which is the circumstances in which this board is used needs to be in sharper relief to understand precisely what was going on that night. Yeah.

[Sabrina (Paranormal Expert)]

I feel like going back to feeling like justice is not served. There's so many questions left unanswered in this case. Like, how long were they using this board? What were these communications? What did the daughter and the granddaughters know? What were they privy to leading to the murder?

[Cooper Maul]

I'm curious what our listeners think here, you know, and also if they've had any experiences playing with the Ouija board before. Right, right.

[Sabrina (Paranormal Expert)]

There's lots of, you know, on Two Girls, My Ghosts. We've read so many stories about Ouija boards. And like, I do believe you can use them to communicate with the other side. But then there's some where I'm like, okay, We've also had people be like, I was for sure manipulating it.

[Cooper Maul]

And.

[Sabrina (Paranormal Expert)]

But then maybe someone else who was using the board with that person believed everything that was said. It's just hard to know. Hard to know.

[Cooper Maul]

Do you think a Ouija board could inspire somebody to kill.

[Sabrina (Paranormal Expert)]

I don't want to believe that, but

[Jonathan Hirsch]

can't rule it out.

[Sabrina (Paranormal Expert)]

Yeah, Yeah, I guess you can't.

[Cooper Maul]

Well, tell us what you guys think. All right, Jonathan, before we go, it's almost August.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

It is.

[Cooper Maul]

Which means a new binge is coming our way. Will you tell us a little bit about it?

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Yeah. It's swelter season here in la and. And the newest season on the binge is called what she Buried. It's an incredible series coming out August 1st on the Binge cases feed. And it's from Justine van der Leyen. She's the host of an incredible podcast called Believe Her. Some of you may have heard that series before. And this all starts with a letter that she received in prison from a woman named Quanetta Harris. And incredibly gifted writer, also a convicted murderer. She's been published in all of these magazines. Teen Vogue, the Boston Globe. And she started talking to Justine about her story and her case. Quinnetta was making an appeal to Justine, saying that she's not the monster that she's been made out to be. And a little bit about this case. It's the story of the murder of a 47 year old air Force vet who kind of goes missing in the early 2000s. And the family hears from him. Occasionally they get text messages like, everything's fine, just need some space. But in the middle of that, they're also getting these messages from both his granddaughter and his landlord. And so people start to get suspicious of what's going on here. And they dig up his backyard. And in the backyard, they find this concrete slab. And underneath the slab, there's a body that's been shot in the back of the head. And what the story unravels as we get into it is the years sort of leading up to it, a decade long relationship that went completely off the rails. Fraud, stolen identities, fake confessions. And all of this seems to bring us back to one person. The woman from those letters, Quanetta Harris. So what we learn in this story is a much darker and deeper version of somebody who, at least to Justine, when she first approached, seemed like a interesting, talented, creative person who might have been in the wrong place at the wrong time or might have been misunderstood. So it's really worth digging into this one. It is an incredible series. What she buried out August 1st on the binge. Wherever you get the binge, you can go to getthebinge.com to learn more.

[Cooper Maul]

Can't wait to listen. And we're gonna have a trailer for you guys right Now,

[Justine Van der Lune]

I first met Quinetta when I started reaching out to women in prison. For years, I felt like I knew her. She was a nurse. She was strikingly beautiful, brilliant, and she really had a way with words.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

She can look you dead in there and lie with the best of them.

[Justine Van der Lune]

I thought I knew why she landed behind bars.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

She'll win people over, and they'd be so enamored with her, it's like they on a high. I tell her, you wrong. You don't need a scam. You don't need to trick people.

[Justine Van der Lune]

I thought I knew why she killed a man.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

I'm going to be honest. He would beat my ass so bad, I would have grabbed the Virgin Mary to help me. But I know that I've been to the point where I was just so scared that I was about to die.

[Justine Van der Lune]

Violence had been her way out of a terrible situation, Right.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

She did some things she shouldn't have did.

[Sabrina (Paranormal Expert)]

She made a big mistake.

[Justine Van der Lune]

But the more I dug in, the more people I talked to, the more I realized that nothing was quite so simple.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

You know, Quanetta used me. I had guns in the kitchen, everywhere. One time, she shot at me.

[Justine Van der Lune]

I kept asking myself, how do you make sense of a person's deepest truths when they are all wrapped up in the thorniest lies?

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Just something kept pulling at me going, quanetta did this. We had her, you know, hitting his accounts. We had her with his car. So we had a suspect before we even had the murder.

[Justine Van der Lune]

But it wasn't until investigators saw the concrete slab in the backyard that they wondered, who are we really up against?

[Jonathan Hirsch]

The minute I see that slab, I think this does not look right.

[Justine Van der Lune]

From Sony Music Entertainment and Campside Media, this is what she buried. I'm Justine Van der Lune. Search for for what she buried. Wherever you get your podcasts coming August 1st to the Binge. Subscribers to the binge can listen to all episodes all at once ad free.

[Jonathan Hirsch]

Hey, y', all, thank you so much for joining us on Crime Scene. Just a reminder here, you can watch or listen to us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. This show is a production of Sony Podcast and the Binge. Thank you to everybody who makes this happen week in and week out. Also, we're journalists. We love journalism. These stories have been deeply reported, the ones that you hear on the show. And you can find an extensive bibliography by going to the show notes of this episode and to every episode to learn more about the reporting that informed all of the great stories you hear on Crime Scene and just One last note. You can get a couple exclusive content from us and the binge over 60 jaw dropping true crime stories bingeable and ad free right now by signing up for our [e-mail] so go to getthebinge.com to get access to our entire catalog of stories, but also to get behind the scenes access to all of the stories that Cooper and I are working on. To join us in the conversation about this these cases, go to getthebinge.com to learn more. Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. Now I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited Premium Wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a [e-mail] Switch upfront payment

[Sabrina (Paranormal Expert)]

of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for a 12 month plan required $15 per month equivalent taxes and fees Extra initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes. Me slow when network is busy.

[Cooper Maul]

See terms.