#559 - Be My Baby - Keokuk, Iowa

Summary

Podcast Summary: Small Town Murder – Episode #559: "Be My Baby – Keokuk, Iowa"

Release Date: January 9, 2025
Hosts: James Pietragallo & Jimmie Whisman

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Introduction

In episode #559 of Small Town Murder, hosts James Pietragallo and Jimmie Whisman delve into a perplexing and chilling case from Keokuk, Iowa. Celebrating their extensive repertoire of over a thousand true crime episodes, the duo combines meticulous research with their signature comedic flair to unpack a murder that has left a small community reeling.

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Background on Keokuk, Iowa

Keokuk, Iowa, often dubbed the "Gate City" due to its strategic location by the Mississippi River, boasts a rich history dating back to the early 1800s. Founded by John Jacob Astor of the American Fur Company, the town grew amidst steamboat traffic and fur trading. Notable figures include Orion Clemens, Mark Twain's brother, and the eccentric Howard Hughes, who hails from Keokuk.

Despite its historical charm, Keokuk grapples with modern challenges. With a population of approximately 10,000, the town exhibits a higher-than-average crime rate:

• Property Crime: Nearly double the national average
• Violent Crime: Also almost double the national rate

Economic indicators paint a mixed picture:

• Median Household Income: $44,770 (significantly below the national average)
• Housing Costs: Exceptionally low, with median home prices around $81,800

James humorously critiques the local infrastructure, noting, “[...] when one of the features of your town is the Walmart, that says a lot there.”

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The Disappearance of Teresa Lynn Lund

On August 28, 1996, Teresa Lynn Lund vanished under mysterious circumstances. Last seen dropping her three children off at school at 7:30 AM, Lund failed to return home. Her car was later discovered in a grocery store parking lot; curiously, her purse and checkbook were found inside, but her car seat was missing—a glaring inconsistency given her routine with a newborn.

Teresa’s mother, Velva Green, immediately reported her missing, activating an investigation that initially pointed suspicion toward Teresa’s husband, Terry Bell—a crane operator frequently traveling to Gary, Indiana. Despite an inconclusive polygraph test at [46:05], Terry provided a solid alibi, being confirmed at work during the time of Teresa's disappearance, thereby clearing him of immediate suspicion.

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Introduction to Kimmy Hardy

Enter Kimmy Lynn Hardy, Teresa's acquaintance and the wife of Robert Hardy, Teresa’s baby's biological father. Kimmy's background is marred by deceit:

• Marital History: Five marriages by the age of 36
• Pattern of Faked Pregnancies: Allegedly concealed due to a prior tubal ligation in 1984 aimed at preventing further pregnancies

Kimmy's desperation to have another child seems to stem from an obsessive desire, especially after medical procedures rendered her infertile. Her manipulative tendencies are encapsulated in her interactions, such as convincing friends that her pregnancies were genuine despite her medical history.

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The Investigation

As Terry Bell's alibi solidified, attention shifted to Kimmy Hardy. Police uncovered alarming evidence suggesting Kimmy had lured Teresa to her home:

• Gun Ownership: Kimmy possessed a .380 caliber handgun, later identified as the murder weapon
• Faked Baby Circumstances: Claims of purchasing Teresa's baby from a supposed drug dealer, Anthony Matrana, who was later revealed to be a nonexistent figure outside of loitering in Keokuk

Kimmy's intricate web of lies included:

• Alleged Arrangement: Purchasing the baby for $3,000, later altered to $1,500 plus firearms
• Inconsistent Testimonies: Varying accounts of how she acquired Teresa's baby and disposed of the body

At [122:02], James summarizes the oddity: “She stole a mother to take her child. That’s crazy.”

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The Trial

The trial in Lee County, housed in a historic 1889 courthouse adorned with marble wainscoting, was a dramatic affair:

• Jury Selection: Challenging due to the small-town dynamics, with many jurors personally acquainted with Kimmy
• Prosecution’s Case: Presented overwhelming physical evidence, including:
  • Matching Curtains: Bath and shower curtains linked to the crime scene
  • DNA Evidence: Soil stains matching Teresa’s DNA characteristics
  • Ballistics: The .380 handgun matched the bullets found in Teresa's skull

Kimmy's defense hinged on:

• Insanity Claims: Psychiatric evaluations deemed her sane
• Alleged Conspiracy: Claims that all testimonies against her were fabricated as part of a larger conspiracy involving Anthony Matrana

Noteworthy moment at [147:16]: Prosecutor Bruce McDonald states, “The idea of killing a mother to get the child is something that touches a universal nerve.”

Despite defense efforts to sow doubt, the consistency and weight of the prosecution’s evidence were insurmountable.

---

Verdict and Aftermath

After a grueling six-hour deliberation, the jury found Kimmy Hardy guilty on multiple counts:

• First-Degree Murder
• Second-Degree Kidnapping
• Child Stealing

At [156:59], James captures the gravity: “You couldn’t kill people and steal their babies. That's crazy.”

Sentencing:

• Kimmy Hardy: Life without parole plus 25 years
• Robert Hardy: Pled guilty to related charges, receiving 10 years in prison

The community of Keokuk grappled with the realization that beneath its quaint exterior lurked such heinous acts. The trial drew significant media attention, challenging the town's self-image and impacting local businesses and tourism.

At [162:03], James reflects, “She stole a mother to take her child. That’s crazy.”

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Conclusion

Episode #559 of Small Town Murder masterfully intertwines the unsettling details of Teresa Lund’s disappearance with the tangled, deceptive actions of Kimmy Hardy. Hosts James and Jimmy navigate the complexities of small-town dynamics, legal intricacies, and human psychology, all while injecting moments of levity into an otherwise dark narrative.

For listeners seeking more gripping true crime tales with a comedic twist, this episode stands out as a testament to the often hidden horrors within seemingly peaceful communities.

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If you enjoyed this summary, consider subscribing to Small Town Murder on your favorite podcast platform and support the hosts on Patreon for exclusive bonus content.

Transcript

[James Petregallo]

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[Jimmy Wissman]

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[James Petregallo]

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[Jimmy Wissman]

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[James Petregallo]

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[Jimmy Wissman]

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[Jimmy Wissman]

Yay.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed. My name is James Petregallo. I'm here with my co host.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I'm Jimmy Wissman.

[James Petregallo]

Thank you folks so much for joining us today. We are very excited today if you include, if you add up all the crime and sports is 441 and then today 559th small town murder. What does that add up to? 1000,000 true crime episodes that we've done here. We have somehow mashed true crime and comedy together a thousand times and then way more on Patreon. So we'll get to that. But wow, thank you folks for hanging out with us for the last thousand episodes is what we're trying to say. We really appreciate it. Thousand more coming your way. Don't you worry about that. We got tons more here. Definitely. Before we get started, head over to shut up and give me murder dot com.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Please do.

[James Petregallo]

Tickets to live shows are for sale for 2025. There's only one show that's yet to be and that'll be coming soon. The show's not till September, so don't worry about it. So, but what's next? Pittsburgh, February 7th. Get your asses in there. Pittsburgh, right now. It is at the Carnegie hall in Oakland. Not in Munn hall like we were the last couple times. So it's in Oakland. Different one. Real nice theater. And then we're in Columbus the next night on the 8th, Davidson, which is another really nice place. We're gonna freak out those old ladies who work as ushers again. They're so nice and we just say horrible things and they're really cool about it. So that's excellent. Shut up and give me murder.com, get the rest of the year as well. We're all over the place. Irvine, San Diego, Portland, Seattle. You name it, we're there.

[Jimmy Wissman]

St. Louis, Chicago.

[James Petregallo]

St. Louis, Chicago, DC, Philly. You know it. We're gonna be there. We can't wait. We are jacked. Also, you certainly wanna listen to our other two shows. Crime in Sports, which is 441 episodes of our thousand and then also youo Stupid Opinions, which is only 69 episodes. But God damn it, is it funny? It's funny enough for. Get in there and check that out. You also want patreon. Patreon.com crimeinsports is where you get all your bonus material. You want more, we got it for you. Anybody $5 a month or above, you're going to get hundreds and hundreds of back episodes immediately upon subscription of bonus stuff you've never heard. And then you're going to get new episodes every other week. One crime in sports, one small town murder, and you get it all, everybody. So this week, which you're going to get for crime and sports. And this doesn't really have anything to do with sports, but it's just fun. Personal ads from the newspapers again.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Find out how people met people before the Internet. It'll.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's a soft pitch.

[James Petregallo]

Jesus. Real disturbing.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And sit back and wait.

[James Petregallo]

Sit back and wait for the replies to roll into the mail. You know how that goes.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Or not.

[James Petregallo]

Then for small town murder, we're going to talk about the West Memphis Three, but very specifically, how did they even get to the point, the beginning? How did we get to the point of these three Kids are the ones. Let's get them in the station. It's wild stuff. We'll talk all about that. That is patreon.com crimeinsports that said, Disclaimer time. It's a comedy show, everybody. We're comedians. The show, the story is absolutely real, which makes it horrifying. Yes, that's the thing. Nothing is made up for comedic effect or anything like that. You don't have to. And the stories are so crazy that the comedy is right there. It'd be weird not to point it out. That's the thing. To me, it's less weird to do it with some comedy and try to ease the weirdness of the whole thing than to just act like that's normal and not make a joke about some of the crazy things people do. But what we do is we don't make fun of the victims or the victim's family.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Why, James?

[James Petregallo]

Because we're assholes.

[Jimmy Wissman]

But.

[James Petregallo]

But we're not scumbags. See, it's real easy. That's how it works. So if you're not a scumbag either, you're gonna enjoy this show. And if you think true crime and comedy should never go together, we might not be for you then. But if you want to hear a story told in maybe a different way, in a little more palatable way, I think we might be right there for you. So that said, I think it's time to sit back, everybody. Let's all clear the lungs and let's all shout shut up and give me murder. Let's do this, everybody. Okay, let's go on a trip, shall we? We are going to Iowa this week. Iowa indeed. Keokuk, Iowa, to be specific. K E O K U K. There is three K's in there and that's interesting. So it is in southeast Iowa. They call this, by the way, the a Florida like peninsula of Iowa that comes down. So we're going to call it Panhandle of Iowa, I guess we call it there. It's about three hours to Des Moines, about an hour and a half to Agency Iowa, which was our last Iowa episode. Onion of Lies, which is still one of my favorite titles that I've come up with. I like that one. This is in Lee county, area code 319. Several mottos here. Number one, the gate, city Gate, I assume because it's on the Mississippi.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[James Petregallo]

It makes sense. Power City. I don't know if that's just. We want to make ourselves feel good about ourselves. And then of course, the geode capital of the world.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Which probably isn't true, but hey, you know what? Everybody needs something to put on their billboard, right.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Geodes are real weird.

[James Petregallo]

That's a very strange thing.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I don't know how anybody knows. How do you know that it's one?

[James Petregallo]

I don't know. I think that's why kids are so into them, is because they're like, there's fucking sparkly shit in this rock. That's crazy. Yeah. As an adult you're just used to it. But as a kid you're like, how does this happen? Are rocks in my yard like this?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Makes the center fucking magical.

[James Petregallo]

If I break rocks open, is this what they all look like inside? I remember trying to bash them open like with a hammer. Trying to bash rocks open after going to the Museum of Natural History. So a little bit of history of this town. Steamboat traffic in the 1800s was increasing on the Mississippi river, so people started to settle here a little bit more. And in 1827, John Jacob Astor, one of the famous Astor family here, established a post of his American fur company at the foot of the bluff. So five buildings were built to house workers and the business and the area became known as Rat Row, which is what you want your area to be known as. Yeah, Rat Roe. I wonder if that was it rat fur they were dealing in.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I mean, if you're making fake furs, I guess you can make it out of rat and just tell people it's.

[James Petregallo]

Something nutria or whatever the fuck it is. That's like a big rat. One of the earliest descriptions of Keokuk was by a guy named Caleb Atwater in 1829. So let me set the scene. 1829, Keokuk. Here's what we're dealing with. The village is a small one containing 20 families. Perhaps the American Fur Company have a store here. And there is a tavern. Many Indians were fishing, and their lights on the rapids in a dark night were darting about, appearing and disappearing like so many fireflies. The constant roaring of the waters on the rapids, the occasional Indian yell, the lights of their fires on the shore, and the boisterous mirth of people at the Doggery, which is a dog race track. No, no. A doggery back then is like a shitty tavern. Like, that's the. Oh, that's the scummy bar.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's the dive bar. That's the dive me.

[James Petregallo]

That's. No, no, no, no, no. The Doggery is the place where you find, like, $2 handjobs. That's the Doggery. Yeah. Not. Not a. You like a. You like a dive bar, but not a real dive bar. You like a bar that's got into some. You got a bar that you like, a bar that bought stools from a bar that went out of business so it looks old. Like that's what you like. You don't like any place that's actually dangerous, though. You always say that when you go to, like, nice bars.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I walk into dive bars and I was like, oh, this ain't it.

[James Petregallo]

That's what I mean. Yeah, this is actual dive bar. I don't want to sit in, actually, where people are miserable. To me, a doggery, a real. It's a squalid tavern is what the definition is to me. Like, a real dive bar is a place where people go to be sad, not to be. Not to enjoy. You want to go to a joyous dive bar?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, yeah, I go to a dive bar that, like, at night sometimes. It's happening.

[James Petregallo]

Yes, exactly. Not just. There's more sad. People staring into their drinks and offering.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Someone a drink might remind them that they're doing worse than you.

[James Petregallo]

Exactly. You don't want that. You get stabbed in the parking lot. The boisterous mirth of people at the Doggery attracted my attention occasionally while we were lying there, Fish were caught here in abundance. So there's that. Keokuk was the longtime home of Orion Clemens, who is Mark Twain's brother.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Sure.

[James Petregallo]

And Mark Twain used to visit his brother's home and led him to write of the beauty of Keokuk and southeastern Iowa in the life on the Mississippi story he wrote. At one time here, it was known as the Gate City because of its position at the lower rapids of the Mississippi. I guess Howard Hughes is from here.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Is that right?

[James Petregallo]

Yes. Crazy rich ass Howard Hughes is from here.

[Jimmy Wissman]

So kissing the bottles. Drink the bottles.

[James Petregallo]

That's the guy. Fingernails, giant planes and yeah, yeah, reviews.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That guy died. They make you that movie. They make him out to be like, he died penniless. That man died a billion.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, he had so much money. He just, wow. His brain was mush. It didn't matter.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, right, right.

[James Petregallo]

Reviews of this town. Here's five stars. Keokuk grows on you. Yeah. Like vd.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

I wasn't always fond of this town, but since moving into my own place, I've grown to appreciate this area. You are never lonely because some of your classmates stay behind to go to school or to start fam.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, no, you're never lonely because people.

[James Petregallo]

Can'T get out of this town is what that says to me. Don't worry, no one else can get out either. It's fine.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It sounds like a barnacle. But none of us can leave.

[James Petregallo]

Can't leave. You are close to the great Mississippi river, which has breathtaking views of the bald eagles once winter is over. It's also a low cost of living area, so this would be an ideal place to save money and help build your career with the job opportunities in the area, which are like factories. So I don't know how that works. I'm excited to be able to attend college and get a nursing degree right here in my hometown. So that's someone who grew up there. Now they're in college and. Okay, three stars. Very small community has a Walmart, which is a plus, but not much beyond that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's a plus.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. When one of the features of your town is the Walmart, that says a lot there. Needs some new things and places. It sounds like it does. Yeah. Three stars. I would actually probably not live here again if I never lived here before. Okay, well, yeah, if you didn't live there before, it'd be impossible to live there again again.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Right.

[James Petregallo]

Again requires a first time before.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

So you. Yeah. You just made that rule and figured it out all on your own there. There are better towns and cities to live in that are not eliminating things each year. Eliminating what?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, so it's dying.

[James Petregallo]

It's apparently I've lived, I've just lived here all my life. So it's very hard to just up and leave. Yeah, you're stuck here once you're here.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, it sounds like your roots are there, bud.

[James Petregallo]

This place used to be very kid friendly, but now there isn't much for kids to do. And that's why crime has gotten higher. If I could tell people, I would say go to a bigger, better place. And that's the thing for a small town population 9,977. The crime, the crime rate here when we get to it is outrageous for a 10,000 person to out fucking rageous.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And this person believes that the solution is putting in playground so that there's witnesses.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, I mean if you keep kids busy, they'll do less crime. That's. I mean they figured that out a long time ago.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's true. But I don't know if it's all kids.

[James Petregallo]

That's what I mean. All the crime is kids. Give me a break. So 9977, 53% female, which is way above the national average. And especially for 10,000 people, apparently criminal. Criminal. Women here, median age is 40, which is just a little bit higher than the national average. About 43% married, which is lower than the national average. 25% are single with children. So all of the family, family town stats, it's like the opposite of that race in this town. 87.3% white, 4.7% black, 1.6% Asian and 3.3% Hispanic. Religion? 50, 50 in religion just. It's right at the national average. Yeah, you got your other Christian is high here also. Catholic is high here as well. So there's that 0.0% Jewish there. Unemployment rate here is 5.7, which is above the national average at this point. Median household income, here we go. 44,770. $25,000 a year less than the average national average. That is not good. Household income average under $45,000 a year for everyone in the house average.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Build your, your wealth, build your fortune. What was that person saying?

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, that's what I mean.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It took you so long.

[James Petregallo]

Take you forever to build something up and. Yeah, build a career or whatever the hell she was saying. Cost of living where 100 is regular average here it's 72. And the low one is housing. Housing is a 25 out of 100.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That is incredibly cheap.

[James Petregallo]

Median home cost here, median home cost $81,800. That is less than a new pickup truck.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, I understand.

[James Petregallo]

A Dodge Ram costs more than that. Think about that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

My neighbor just bought a dually for $92,000.

[James Petregallo]

Jaw drop.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And I was like, yeah, I mean that's, yeah, that's what they cost.

[James Petregallo]

You could trade your truck for a house here. That's fucking nuts.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And get change.

[James Petregallo]

If you have a truck you're looking to trade in for an abode. We have for you the Keokuk Iowa real estate average two bedroom rental here. $730 which is why would like half the nets, 500 less than the national average. Here is a four bedroom, one bath, 2055 square foot house.

[Jimmy Wissman]

One bath in there, huh.

[James Petregallo]

It's probably one and a half. I'm sure they one hole. It's a fucking falling apart. The outside, the paint is 90% gone on the outside of the house. So it's rotting. Obviously. Every time it rains, bad things are happening. It's built in 1900.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

Some of the floorboards look like you're gonna fall through them. It looks like it's an abandoned house. That looks like kids would go in and like, you know, fuck around.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It needs a lot of work.

[James Petregallo]

Finger each other and shit. The listing says here is your chance to make a home exactly what you want.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Does it have acreage?

[James Petregallo]

No, no, not at all. This fixer upper is ready for you. Investor deal and price to sell. That's true. Number one, you'd have to make it what you want because you're not living in it the way it is. And it is priced to sell. $5,000 for this house. Five grand. Five grand for a house.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Let's buy it.

[James Petregallo]

Not a trailer. Let's buy it. It's 2,500 to 2,000 square feet in case we need to stop by there if we're driving through or something.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Incredible.

[James Petregallo]

Wow. And here's a five bedroom, two bath, 2684 square foot house. Yeah, it could be really fucking nice, this house. That's the thing. At one point it was really goddamn nice. You can just tell. But it's been, it's hasn't been fucked with in forever. Since the hasn't been 40s.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Hasn't been taken care of.

[James Petregallo]

But there's nice woodwork and there's like bones of this where you're like, hey, this was a really nice house at one point. Obviously a 2700 square foot house back in the day was like a mansion just reduced by $15,000. Oh, 60 grand for that house.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Maybe we take a loan and buy that one.

[James Petregallo]

That's what I mean. Let's Just get that. And then this house is cool too. Three bedroom, two bath, 2268 square feet. It's stone, which is. It's like two tone stone, which is weird. Like a checkerboard almost.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

It's really fucking weird. It's a nice old house. The fireplaces are insane. Beautiful. Carved.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Plural?

[James Petregallo]

Many, yes.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wow.

[James Petregallo]

Beautiful. Like carved fucking intricate. Shit on there. Really nice woodwork, beautiful staircase. Really cool old house. Lots of dark old wood. $239,900. Wow. Is all I have to say.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Unbelievable.

[James Petregallo]

You couldn't get a shed in south Phoenix for $239,900.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's crazy. The cheapest quote unquote livable home in Arizona. Just. Or in Phoenix, that piece of shit. For like $300,000 or something.

[James Petregallo]

And it was a piece of shit.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

In South Phoenix.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Dump on a corner of like a really bad street.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Oh yeah. Whereas that house is really nice. That third house. It's not bad at all. I live there. It's not bad. Things to do. The Big Dam Street Festival. Big Dam, like a dam.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, got it.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Big Dam Street Festival. They say they Keokuk has a long tradition of providing fares to its citizens. According to local records, the city hosted both state and county fairs before the Civil war in the 1840s. Already doing it. The first Lee County Fair was held there in 1841. And they've also hosted the Iowa State fairs way back as far as 1869. But they say here it is, it's back. The big damn street festival. Bring along, share, bring a friend, bring the kids. All are welcome to come down and enjoy the music, games and food next weekend for memorable times along the scenic muddy Mississippi.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I want to know which person was the badass that decided, you know, let's do. Let's call it the Big Dam.

[James Petregallo]

Let's call it the Big Dam Weekend. You're like, that's a little offensive. They're like, now we're by the dam, man.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's a dam offensive about dam in the river. What's offensive?

[James Petregallo]

What's offensive? What's offensive about our way of life?

[Jimmy Wissman]

What's offensive about year long cropping? What is?

[James Petregallo]

I'll tell you what. So that's what's going on here. The musical lineup. Here we go. Thursday, Big Guitars and G strings plays at 5 at the coveted 5:30pm slot, which is when everyone's going to be watching. Oh yeah, Stump Town will be there. Just a bunch of people with, you know, war wounds, missing limbs. Yeah, just war Injuries and things like that. Civil war survivors, you know, limping in. They play from 8 till 11. That's a long set. Jesus Christ. Three hours of that Friday night. You got six strings down. We'll be playing. All right. The Lee Henry road. Lee Henry road. Okay. Saturday, the spruce elves will be there.

[Jimmy Wissman]

How do they have a big damn fair and they don't have a single big damn.

[James Petregallo]

They don't even have Nelly. This is terrible.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Nothing.

[James Petregallo]

The Spruce ells sound like a Motown group. Like we did. The supremes were better. So we didn't make it really, but, you know, we were the next up on the list. The Sprucells, me and my sisters, Wyatt Ewing and the boys will be playing there.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They play.

[James Petregallo]

I was gonna say the name Wyatt. Really, you can't. There's no. There's not a lot of rappers named Wyatt. You know what I mean?

[Jimmy Wissman]

And the boys. That feels.

[James Petregallo]

And the boys. Every day you're going to have carnival rides, pedal go carts. That's it. No, there's more. There's more. Pumpkin decorating. Bingo. All this type of shit. Thursday, Cowboys vs Giants football game on the big screen in the beer garden.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They literally heard advertising. NFL.

[James Petregallo]

You're going to watch Thursday. Amazon's Thursday night game here. That's part of what they advertise.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's hysterical.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, like it's a dive bar. Then there's oktoberfest on Saturday in the beer area. Include games and clogging. Dancers from the Ray Ann school of dance, German cuisine of bratz krautz and potato salad. Or bratz kraut and potato salad. So everybody will be good and farty for the live music shows, a beer tasting, all this type of shit. Is there food vendors? There'll be rib eyes in the beer garden. Sweet Sally's will have smash burgers and ice cream.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Sure.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, boy. I'll tell you what. The bun buster will have variety food.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

There's also an event called rolling on the river.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Of course. Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Which is called Iowa's best festival by a damn site. That's that they call themselves.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay. There's no Tina Turner cover.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, God, no. No, you're not rolling on shit. Proud Mary ain't going nowher.

[Jimmy Wissman]

All right?

[James Petregallo]

It's not keeping on turning or burning or nothing. Rolling on the river has presented some of the finest blues music. Everyone from A to Z, Anson Funderberg to Buckwheat Zideko. Everyone.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Don't know him.

[James Petregallo]

You know.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You know everybody that you don't know.

[James Petregallo]

It's like up in smoke. You know everything from like El Chicano to like Santana, you know, everything. Yeah, you know, everything's in there. You'll be rocking and rolling on the riverfront, okay? That's what it says. It promises us that we will rock and roll on the riverfront. But I'm not. I'm not sure how much rocking and rolling we're going to be doing on that riverfront. Whatever crime rate in this town, what we're interested in here.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Here we go.

[James Petregallo]

Property crime, almost double the national average.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, I'd fucking light shit on fire too if they told me there was a big damn festival and I didn't recognize a single person.

[James Petregallo]

But there's 10,000 people here. That's crazy. Almost double violent crime. Murder, rape, robbery, and of course, assault. The Mount Rushmore of crime is double the goddamn national average.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What is going on?

[James Petregallo]

I don't know what's happening in this town, but they have got to fucking chill out, man, because this is a lot. So that said, let's talk about some murder. Wow. I have to preface this by saying this is one of the most head shaken stories I've ever fucking put together for this show. It is goddamn weird. And I'm GLAD it's episode 1000 of our whole thing because it needed to be something weird. And this is fucking weird.

[Jimmy Wissman]

So let's get the first one of a new year.

[James Petregallo]

First one of a new year. Yeah, we're starting out a new year fresh on a thousand. So let's talk about some people first. Let's talk about Teresa Lynn Lund, first of all. All right. Teresa. Born in 1962. She is. She's born in Iowa City, Iowa.

[Jimmy Wissman]

All right.

[James Petregallo]

Which I would assume is where the most Iowa you can get comes from.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, I've heard of it. Only because my substitute teacher was an Indian lady, like from India.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Wissman]

The way she would say Iowa City College cracked me up. That's the only time stuck in your head I was. Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

So her parents are William and Velva. Velva, like Aqua? Yeah, like that's how she was. Someone named her after cheap cologne or.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Cheap Colonel Vagina mixed together.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Velva is the oddest name I've ever heard of. I've never. I've literally never heard that name before.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Never. No.

[James Petregallo]

Maybe it's a family name. Maybe it's short for something. I don't know. So she grows up. Teresa grows up with three brothers. So if you're the only girl with three brothers, there's two ways to go. You can either be like those boys are Gross. And be like extra girly, princess, princessy. Or you can fucking figure out how to swing a bat and go out and play with. Be a tomboy with the boys. Because there's. Otherwise you're just going to be real bored in your house.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

So she has three brothers and chooses the tomboy route here where she's outside playing and fishing and, you know, playing ball and shit like that. Yeah, Cool stuff for her. She ends up getting married very young.

[Jimmy Wissman]

How young?

[James Petregallo]

And this is 18 and this is 1980. This isn't 1950. So that's no reason to get married at 18. But she got married at 18. Apparently she was in love and got married. She's going to get divorced pretty soon.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Relatively fast.

[James Petregallo]

Relatively fast. She's going to have a daughter from this relationship in 1981 and then have another daughter in 1986 from a different relationship. Here, I believe that's a guy named Randy that she married, has a daughter with him. Things don't go well with Randy, her second husband.

[Jimmy Wissman]

No.

[James Petregallo]

So she gets a divorce from Randy as well. And then she meets a guy named Terry Bell. And Terry Bell is the one for her. She decides here. And she gets that. Marries Terry Bell in 1990. So she got married first in 1980 and then in the last 10 years she's been married twice. She has two kids and now she's married again. So making a go of it here. And she's not even 30 yet. This is 28 years old. That's a lot of life to live.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's hard living.

[James Petregallo]

There's not a lot of people now who are 28 years old and twice divorced and getting married again and have two children. It doesn't happen that often nowadays.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, well, in fact, my mom was 24 when she did exactly this.

[James Petregallo]

That's. Yeah. Back in the day it was normal.

[Jimmy Wissman]

When I say it like, people are shocked. Yeah. What?

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, my parents were 24 and divorced. It was the same shit not twice but once. But your dad was on like his fourth wife by then, bro.

[Jimmy Wissman]

The man's been married nine times.

[James Petregallo]

He's cruising. So they have a daughter named Tressa born in 1991. And Tressa has very fond memories of the early 90s with her mom. She said that she was very much a hands on mom. She would play with us, help us with things. She shared her love of music with us. She describes her mom as just being always there for the kids and very much present and very much. She's not sitting off on her own going, I don't know, I'll get with you later. She's actually diving in, getting on the floor, doing shit with the kids, which is nice.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Building blocks. Let's do it.

[James Petregallo]

So on July 16, 1996, she has three girls now, by the way.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Really?

[James Petregallo]

So far, yeah, she's had three girls now. Her and Terry Bell have a son finally in 1996. This is her fourth kid, obviously, and first son. His name is Paul Eugene. That's what they name him, Paul Eugene. So now as this is going on, it's a very. It's a hard time for them. It's a happy time. But it's also very hard for Teresa because he works as a crane operator, Terry Bell, which is a good job. And there's a lot of travel involved too, in it. Different parts of the state to do different jobs and things like that. So his job transfers him to Gary, Indiana, at this point.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, no.

[James Petregallo]

And they just had a baby and, you know, moving with a newborn and figuring all that out, that's a new city. That's all a lot.

[Jimmy Wissman]

There's three other kids, too, and.

[James Petregallo]

Exactly, there's three other kids to deal with too. This show, Small Town Murder, is sponsored by BetterHelp. Every January, it's a whole new slate, clean. You bet it is. Blank pages all the way around.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Absolutely.

[James Petregallo]

Maybe you're ready for a new something in your life here, a little plot twist in your story that you've been wanting to revise a little bit. But life isn't about resolutions that are gonna fade away by February, by the, you know, right after New Year's. Think of therapy as an editorial partner. There you go. That's a good way to put it. Helping you write new chapters and creating the story of your life that you should have, that you wanna have. That's what it's all about.

[Jimmy Wissman]

The one you deserve.

[James Petregallo]

The one you deserve. And we can't say enough about therapy. We all have problems and we all have issues and none of us the.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Right answer all the time. Sometimes you need a little coaching. Sometimes you need an extra tool in the toolbox to cope and deal with the day.

[James Petregallo]

Write your story with better help. Visit betterhelp.com smalltownmurder today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp h e l p.com small town murder.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Now back to the show.

[James Petregallo]

Hey, everybody, just gonna take a quick break from the show to tell you a little bit about one of our favorites, SimpliSafe.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, simplysafe.com s I m p l I safe dot com.

[James Petregallo]

That's absolutely correct. And if you're anything like us, most important thing for you is probably protecting your family from harm, right? I mean, nothing else matters if people are coming into your house and murdering your whole family and robbing your house, what's the difference? That's why us here at Small Town Murder, along with millions of other Americans we trust simply safe with our home security. It's great. Our both our studios, our homes, everything that we have is protected with Simplisafe because it is the best security you're going to get. You can install it incredibly easy on your own. Even I can do it. And I can't put Ikea furniture together. It's so good. I'm telling you, start the year out with greater peace of mind. Visit simplisafe.comsmall to claim 50% off a new system with a professional monitoring plan and your first month free. That's simplisafe.com/s I m p l I safe.com small there's no safe like Simplisafe.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Now back to the show.

[James Petregallo]

So what happens is Terry kind of moves ahead.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, he starts, Gary, you come behind.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, kind of. I'll set it up. And they're just trying to figure out. They're spinning plates basically and trying to figure out, keep them all, keep all the plates spinning. So Terry moves ahead of the family and so he spends large amounts of time away from the family. But Teresa and the kids are going to join him soon. And Gary, that's how it works. And this is the thing too. Back then, this is 1996, pre cell phones. So we're talking the only way for them to communicate while one's in Keokuk and one's in Gary is long distance phone calls, which are still very expensive back then. Crazy 96 is even before the big rush. Remember the late 90s, early 2000s, all those like, call this number and it's only 10 cents a minute. Yeah, 10, 10, 2, 20 and all that bullshit. The one that had 20 minutes for like two dollars, that was great because my father would harass my grandmother with that because she was so cheap. She would call him and as 20 minutes would come, she'd start to panic. And so she'd hear, okay, well, she'd start going crazy, my cheap racist nan. And then my father would like at that point be like, oh, I forgot to tell you about, and start a long story. Just because he knew in the next 30 seconds she would panic. Oh, she'll hang up on you. I have to Go now. Bye. Click. 1955. Click. Done. She had a goddamn timer next to her to not pay an extra dollar. She was so cheap. So, yeah, so that was the time back then. So that's 96. When he's in Gary. They only talk like every other night on the phone.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

It's hard and it's a short call and. Okay, let me talk to the kid. Okay, good. Good night. Goodbye. That's it. Like fuck.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Sure.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. No texting, no emailing, no any of that shit. So at this point, you know, that's. That's how they're doing it. So that's difficult.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah. You know, Jesus, they gotta be clamoring for email.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, my God. Yeah. And it's. In 1996. There was email, but not everybody was on the Internet in 1996. Just like kids our age were on the Internet and they were like on aol, fucking trying to find a chat room. Dicking off with each other. Exactly. In chat rooms and shit. Yeah, nobody was. Yeah, nobody was doing anything productive on the Internet at that point. So everything is going well, though. That's July over the next month, like we said, he's going to Gary. He comes back, though, sometimes on the weekend. Every once in a while she'll go there for the weekend and, you know, with the kids and it's a.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Sure.

[James Petregallo]

You know, the next month and a half are just a hard time, but they're making it work, you know What I mean? August 28th, 1996. Okay. Terry is. Or Teresa. I'm sorry? Teresa. She could be Terry too. So.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, she could be Terry Lynch.

[James Petregallo]

Terry and Terry. Yeah, they could easily be Terry and Terry, which is very weird.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's amazing.

[James Petregallo]

So Theresa's mom doesn't know where she is. She can't find her one. Morning. Grandma, Grandma, this is Velva. We're talking Aqua. Aqua can't find her. And a friend of hers can't find her either. So a friend of hers talks to Velva and they're talking over. Have you seen Theresa? I don't know where Theresa is. She doesn't really. If you have that many kids and a newborn, people know where you are every minute. She's very.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah. Very predictable, your movements.

[James Petregallo]

You don't just decide to go do something for five hours because you have a newborn. So, you know, if you're going to do something that would require, you know, long times, you would probably get someone to sit or be a sitter for your kids. So. So it's. It's a weird thing. She's last seen that morning on August 28th. Dropping her kids off at school at 7:30. So that's when she's seen. And then nobody can find her. She's not at home. Everybody expects her to be home after that because that's what her routine is. And she's not home. So Velva goes out and looks for her. It's a small town, so you could actually go look for someone, you know.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, yeah.

[James Petregallo]

She ends up finding her car in a grocery store parking lot.

[Jimmy Wissman]

At the grocery store. Okay.

[James Petregallo]

But Theresa's not in the grocery store.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And she's not in her car.

[James Petregallo]

And she's not in her car, but her car is there. So what she does, Velva has a spare key to the car. So she opens it up to see if anything's amiss, awry, whatever. She opens it up and the first thing she finds, which is not a good sign, is Theresa's purse and checkbook are under the front seat.

[Jimmy Wissman]

If you went into the store, you would need those.

[James Petregallo]

You'd need. If you go anywhere, you need your purse. So that's strange. Right away, she's not in the car, but her person checkbook is weird.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah. But my point is, if everything's above board and innocent when she parks, that's the instant that it goes awry because her person and checkbooker there. And if she went into the store, she would take that with her.

[James Petregallo]

Absolutely. She would need to pay for food, I tell you.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Paid for shit. That's so bizarre.

[James Petregallo]

So she then looks in the back seat and notices the car seat isn't in the car. She's got a newborn and she always has the car seat in the car, obviously for the newborn. And the car seat isn't in the car. So she's saying now. So she drove to a grocery store and left the newborn where?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Where?

[James Petregallo]

Not with me. I'm the one who would watch the newborn. So where the fuck is the kid? And why would she. This makes no sense that that would be in there. And the purse, none of it makes any sense. So she's very freaked out by this and she calls 911. Right away, they call 911 and she says, yeah, my daughter and her infant son, I don't know where they are.

[Jimmy Wissman]

But you know, if not to have them take the report on the daughter, for sure, they take it on the.

[James Petregallo]

Infant on the end. Yeah, absolutely. There's an infant and her mother missing. That's an infant and his mother missing. So she's last seen dropping the children off at School. At 7:30. And Velva tells the story, went looking for her, found her car, opened it up, checkbook, pocketbook, car seat missing, blah, blah, blah. So the police, the first person they want to talk to is Terry, the husband. Because Velva tells the police, because they say, what's. What's her life like? Who is she? You know what I mean? And she says, well, she's married to this guy. They've been married for six years. They have two kids. And she has two kids before that goes over the whole thing. And she tells police, Terry hasn't been the best husband. No, Their relationship is kind of strained at the moment. So the police are like, okay, missing woman, guy going different places for work, strained relationship, strain of a newborn on the marriage. I think we're looking in the right spot here. They're thinking, you know what I mean?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Fleeing to Gary, Indiana.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, he's gonna. His alibi is, I was in Gary. Give me a break. No one's in Gary voluntarily. But nobody goes to Gary. No one's going there, Chief. So the police try to reach Terry and they call him and can't get a hold of him. Yeah, that's the other thing. They call him, they can't get a hold of him. They can't get a hold of him. They keep trying to call him and no one can find him.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Land, don't go up to the crane, babe.

[James Petregallo]

And that's the other thing. There's no cell phone. So if he's not home, where the fuck is he? Who knows? He could be out to dinner, but, you know, you can't get a hold of him. So he. Apparently they finally do get a hold of him and they get him to drive back to Gary or they get him to drive back to talk to them. Right. So he says he last saw Teresa two days before she went missing. She went missing on a Tuesday.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He saw her on the weekend.

[James Petregallo]

He saw her on Sunday. Was the last time. He said that Teresa had been in Gary with the kids. She came to Gary, I guess he picked her up, brought her to Gary and they went. Then they went back to Iowa. He drove them back to Iowa Sunday, and then he drove back to Gary on Sunday.

[Jimmy Wissman]

How long a ride?

[James Petregallo]

That's all. That's a lot of fucking driving if it's three hours to Des Moines. Yeah, but I guess that would be up.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That would be on the west side. Right. So it's probably hours of Gary.

[James Petregallo]

It's hours. It's a couple hours at least. It's a few hours. So, yeah, they went back to Iowa, then he drove back to Gary and he said, that's the last time I saw her was on Sunday when I drove back to Gary. And they said, well, when did you. Have you spoken to her? And he said, I didn't speak to her that morning that she went missing again. There's no morning text or anything like that. Yeah, they. Every other night there was a phone call and otherwise you just assume the person was fine. Yeah.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And in the morning when he gets up for work, it's probably 4am you're not going to wake the house up to say good morning.

[James Petregallo]

Start waking fucking babies up at 4am after she's probably been up half the night feeding this goddamn kid.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Trainer operators are on site at like.

[James Petregallo]

5:00Am oh, yeah, that's an early day for that, motherfuckers. So August 29th, they really start a missing person investigation now because this is fucking crazy. They go into the house. Terry allows them access to the house. Nothing is missing from the home. No forced entry, no. Nothing amiss. No. You know, her jewelry is flung about or anything like that? No. Like quick packing. There's no like, you know, clothes that were drugged out of the suitcase or anything. Yeah, like you could tell somebody packed as much as they could and fit. And fit it in with suitcase and left everything else on the bed. Like none of that shit is there.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Take off before the kids get a school. Kids at school. Come on.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, that's taking off while that's what I mean. And she's a very involved mom with four kids. That's just not her style. It's just not, period. So there's nothing missing from the home? There's no anything like that. They check banking activity on her accounts. There's been no activity there either. No ATMs are hit up? No. Hasn't gotten any cash, hasn't done anything, hasn't written any checks. So. And that's, you know, now it's much easier. Back then you could still just kind of live on cash. So if someone was gone for a day then and there was no banking activity, that wasn't a big deal. Whereas now they'd be like, what, did they fucking go to Mars? Where'd they go?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Some places don't even take cash. It's like, this is American money. What are you talking about?

[James Petregallo]

They have to take cash actually too. That's the fucked up part.

[Jimmy Wissman]

There's cashless places.

[James Petregallo]

I know. They're actually legally not allowed to do that, which is funny. You really pushed it. They have to take the cash, you.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Have to do it.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Look on the bill. It says for all debts, public and private. That means that you have to take that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You have to take this.

[James Petregallo]

If you owe a debt and I try to give this to you, this counts. Whether you want it to or not. It counts.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, I'm not.

[James Petregallo]

So they could say 20 bucks. No, we don't take cash. You can put cash on the counter. They can't call the cops on you. You gave them cash. So it's one of those, go ahead, motherfucker, call the cops. They didn't give us our preferred method of payment. Okay, take the cash. Do you have $20? You fucking idiots. We're to the point in the world where we don't even know what to do here. Yeah, we don't even know what to do with it. Well, I wouldn't know what to do with it. There's no slot in a register and I can't put. Okay, well, fucking A then. Never mind.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They can't make change. What are you talking about?

[James Petregallo]

Can't do it. So August 29, 2006, 1996, not 2006. Like I said, nothing missing, nothing off the banking, nothing like that. So they can document her whereabouts until about 8:30am that is about how far they can get to. They get from school to somewhere else she went. And then they don't know. After that, it kind of disappears.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Then it's over.

[James Petregallo]

Now Terry says. They talk to Terry, obviously, and they're saying, what's the story with your relationship? He says, oh, it's great. It's a dream marriage. Now Velva says, no, it's a little bit strained. And a couple of her friends say the same thing, that it's strained. Yeah. And marriage hasn't been that great. And, you know, there's been fighting and there's been this and that. So now if Terry would have just said, I don't know. I mean, we have our normal problems. It would have been less suspicious than saying everything's great when other people are going, that's not what she says.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You just say things like, I don't know, man. We're married.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Or he could just say, like, I don't know. I fucking live in Gary, Indiana. So to me, it's great. I don't even really pay attention that much. He's so busy with his crane, he doesn't even realize his marriage is strained. I feel like I've got our feet.

[Jimmy Wissman]

In the air, man. It's crazy.

[James Petregallo]

What do I know? I'm all alone it's pretty peaceful up there. Anyway, I don't know. So they asked Terry. All right, Terry, we want to rule you either in or out here. We gotta. I mean, you're the husband. You're the first person, obviously, that's a suspect. So we have to talk to you. Will you take a polygraph test and just. Let's just clear this off. And he said, no problem.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, okay.

[James Petregallo]

Okay. So they sit him down, do the polygraph test. It's inconclusive.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I mean, that's neither here nor there.

[James Petregallo]

On the relevant questions. It's an inconclusive result. So they can't rule him out at this point. They're like, well, we don't. Like. They didn't like his answers on the polygraph, and they made the cops very, very suspicious of him. So they really go into working on going to Gary and figuring out if he has an alibi, and eventually they find that he has an airtight work alibi. Yeah, air fucking tight. That morning he was at work.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, yeah. If that crane's moving, he's there.

[James Petregallo]

Well, it's after 7:30. If after 7:30, he's in the air, yeah, that's it. There's no way he could have done it. He's sitting in a fucking crane up in the air. There's no way he could have been hundreds of miles away murdering somebody, so. Or kidnapping or doing anything. So they say Terry's out. Even though they were very suspicious of him. And he looked like there was. You know, the cops are like, he's the fucking guy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He did this.

[James Petregallo]

That's our fucking guy. Where'd he put his wife? Where's he keeping her? Yeah, but no, they rule him out based on the alibi. So people are starting to lose hope here. After a few days, this is insane that she doesn't show up. So, yeah, police say after a little bit of time goes by here, you know, a week or two, cops start saying they're losing hope here, that they're ever going to find them alive.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Where the fuck are the other three kids? Are they just Grandma?

[James Petregallo]

They're with their fathers at this point. One is with Terry and two are with the other fathers. They go with their fathers now at this point. So I guess that, yeah, the captain had visited Therese's mother and told her that this is crazy to go to a victim. Disappeared victims, a disappearing victim's parent, a.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Missing woman just said what?

[James Petregallo]

Says that you should maybe start thinking about. Starting to let go. Tells them, like, start giving up hope, basically. Look, that's there's not a lot of positive outcomes that can come from this at this point, so you should just probably. You might as well, like, put it to a memorial now. I'm sure she's dead somewhere, so, you.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Know, vigil at best. I don't know, something.

[James Petregallo]

I don't know, maybe a Ouija board. I'm not positive, but do whatever you got to do, figure it out.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Mark the date and next year, really throw a party or something.

[James Petregallo]

Do something.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I don't know.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Something somber possibly. I'm not sure. So, yeah, Started talking about. And also he started talking about her and so did the mother. Started talking about Teresa in a past tense.

[Jimmy Wissman]

God damn.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, they have her killed off in two weeks. She's dead. Gone. Floated down the Mississippi. Fucking. She could be in the Gulf of Mexico by now. We have no goddamn idea. Flowing.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She's probably a skeleton now.

[James Petregallo]

I can imagine. Skeletonized.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What are we doing?

[James Petregallo]

So let's talk about another pregnant lady.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

Another baby lady here. Pregnant lady was pregnant at the same time as Theresa and knew Theresa based on their mutual pregnancy. Pregnant women make pregnant friends. It's weird. They don't want to do that shit alone. They like having someone else to go. Do you have to pee? So do I. Oh, my God.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He doesn't understand shit. Neither does he.

[James Petregallo]

I got a foot on my bladder right now. I have to pee.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He stubs his toe and says he understands this.

[James Petregallo]

He gets it. This is Kimmy. K I, M, M I. That is her legal name, by the way. Kimmy Lynn. Another Lynn middle name. Kimmy Lynn Hardy. Her name is. Okay, she is born in 1960, so around the same age.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Sure, yeah.

[James Petregallo]

They're pregnant at the same time. She's got kids and all that kind of thing. Now, a little bit about Kimmy, aside from her husband, who we'll talk about kind of a new. A new marriage. She really doesn't know too many people in Keokuk. Not really her. Doesn't have a lot of friends. Neighbors say that the couple kind of keeps to themselves, her and her husband and even her in laws say they don't know shit about Kimmy. Not a fucking thing. They don't know anything about this broad.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's just what's going on with Kimmy.

[James Petregallo]

Well, Kimmy, this is her. Robert is her new husband. Robert Hardy. Bob, he goes by now, Bob's sister said Robert just showed up three or four months ago at a family reunion and said, this is my new wife and we're gonna have a baby in a Few months. We weren't even invited to the wedding.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What the hell happened here?

[James Petregallo]

Nevermind. Invited to it. They didn't even tell you what happened afterwards? They didn't even say. Just got back from that. Nothing. He showed up. He just showed up. And we're like, here's my pregnant wife. Nice to see everybody. And they were like, who? What the fuck?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Here's a lady who I clearly fuck.

[James Petregallo]

I mean obviously I'd have to. So this is Kim. Robert is Kimmy's fifth husband, by the way. Five. She's 36. Who? The five husbands. 36. That's a lot. She is competing with your, with your father for most marriages in a lifetime. I was gonna say she's, she's honestly got the lead out of the fucking.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Gate here, but she's beating him at this point.

[James Petregallo]

Five by 36. She's gonna have nine by 65, no problem. She's got that covered. Wow. So they got married recently, her and Bob, they moved into a brown one story house at 212 N. 6th St. Which still exists. And I found it. It was built in 1981. It's not very old house.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Pretty new place.

[James Petregallo]

Three bedroom, two bath, 1300 square feet. So yeah, a little family house. It's fine. It sold in 2023 for $115,000. Yeah, not, not real expensive around here. Wow. So apparently, yeah, Kimmy was pregnant and you know, telling all the neighbors about it. Can't wait to have this baby with my new husband and you know, maternity clothes and what should I name the baby and all that stuff and trying to make pregnant friends. Is this her first kid? No, no. Are you kidding me? Five husbands, no kids.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, somebody got her.

[James Petregallo]

If you've been married five times you, five kids, why would you get divorced four times if there's no kids involved? There's not that much stress involved otherwise.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's true.

[James Petregallo]

You figure you just stick with one because you're too lazy to do paperwork to get a divorce if there was no kids. So Kimmy already had three children when she married Robert. She had two sons ages 15 and 12, who were living with their father and had an 18 year old daughter as well. So three kids, 18, 15, 12. And so she started having them young. At 18. She started having them.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She's got none of them in the house?

[James Petregallo]

No, no, none of them in the house. And then she's pregnant now in 2000 or 1996 again. So apparently her and Kimmy were described or Kimmy and Theresa were described as acquaintances by people apparently that Velvet said that Kimmy had been friends with her daughter for the past few months, like over their both pregnancies here. She gave her daughter. She gave Theresa baby clothes. And, you know, I have old clothes. You might want that sort of thing, which is what people do. And, you know, was trying to be friends with her. Suggested they should do things together. We can go to the, you know, thing over here. We'll get lunch. We can. I don't know, fucking pregnancy yoga. I don't know what the hell people are doing.

[Jimmy Wissman]

So salads in the middle of the day.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Yeah. So that's how. That's so they knew each other while they were pregnant. Now, apparently, she's about a month and a half. Kimmy's about a month and a half behind Teresa in the pregnancy. They didn't get pregnant at the exact same time. So on August 28, 1996, here Bob Hardy, her husband, is at work. He's an industrial laborer. When his foreman told him, hey, your wife just called. Kimmy just called and said, tell Bob the baby was born and he should come home. I would say, yeah, that was. Huh.

[Jimmy Wissman]

How about, I'm having the baby and meet me at the hospital.

[James Petregallo]

Meet me somewhere. Or she said, I know you're busy. Yeah, I know it's a long day. So I just. I had the baby. And, you know, you just. You should come home now. I didn't want to interrupt you. I don't have to do anything.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I didn't want to bother you.

[James Petregallo]

That's wild.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I did this. So come home and see this.

[James Petregallo]

And didn't even say, I need to talk to him. Told the foreman, hey, let him know the baby's born, he should come home. That's wild.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Let him know he's a father.

[James Petregallo]

Wild. That is crazy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

And he's 36 years old as well, Bob. And he described himself as just a happiest man in the world that day. Sure.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

He couldn't get to the car to go home fast enough to see his new baby. And they're not at the hospital, by the way. Yeah.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Did she do this at home?

[James Petregallo]

They had hired a midwife a while back, so he assumes that the midwife delivered the baby. And he said, he got home and she said, yeah. He walked in the door, she was rocking the baby in the living room. And she said, yeah, I gave birth in the bathtub today.

[Jimmy Wissman]

God damn.

[James Petregallo]

Spit this kid out. So, you know, here it is.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I've had. I've had a.

[James Petregallo]

That's a rug. Pretty good at this That's a rugged bitch right there. Boy, I'll tell you something, that is. Wow. Is there any other way to put that? Ladies, if your friend said, yeah, you're wide birth canal. If you called your friend, you're like, what you up to today? You texted her and she's like, I just spit a kid out in the bathtub today. You'd be like, you're a rugged bitch. Damn. You kidding me?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Took a couple of Advil and delivered a baby.

[James Petregallo]

Wow. And he was like, okay, that sounds good. Like, yeah, why not? That's what people do. All right. Yeah, duh. He said he spent the rest of the day in bed with his wife and the baby. His new son here, his wife, his new son. They named the baby Dusty Eugene. Let me give him two terrible names. Not just one. Two awful names.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Mom's vagina Dusty.

[James Petregallo]

And also his last. His name. His name is. No, she's been married five times, and it's not Dusty. One thing it's not is Dusty. There's no cobwebs on that bad boy at all. Dusty Hardy. Sounds like a sex move. I gave her a Dusty Hardy. Let me tell you something. Yeah. I don't know what exactly it. What it entails, but it's gross. The old Dusty Eugene, I gave her. You know how that works?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Dusty Jeans.

[James Petregallo]

The old Dusty Eugene, that's who. They have a new baby. They're the happiest couple in the world. So this is the same day that Teresa disappears. So bad day for Teresa's family. Good day for Kimmy's family. They're having the baby. So a couple weeks later here, mid September, early to mid ish September, Kimmy throws a baby shower for herself, which. I thought you threw a baby shower beforehand. Apparently, in Iowa, you wait till the baby's there.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Well, you gotta. I don't know, maybe she. If she's delivering this thing in the tub. She didn't know if it was a.

[James Petregallo]

Boy or a girl at the time. Well, at the time, yeah, she did.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Just want a bunch of yellow shit. Right?

[James Petregallo]

That's the other thing, too. Yeah, she was. So she's having it there. Good point. She's having it, a baby shower here. And that's nice. I guess one of the baby shower participants here, one of her friends said, okay, she was there. Go to the baby shower. She hears, I delivered this baby in the bathtub on August 28th. So Kimberly Steele is one of her friends that's at the baby shower. And she had heard news accounts that this Theresa. Because it's big news that this Theresa Lund and her baby's missing. This is a fucking small town. This doesn't happen all the time. Despite the insane crime rate, still I don't think there's many like newborn baby and their moms being disappearing out of nowhere.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Right.

[James Petregallo]

It's probably not part of it. So Kimberly from was aware that Theresa was missing and she said to her friend, quote, this is to Kimmy, quote, I told her to get a footprint of the baby and to prove to everybody that it was hers. Just so they didn't think because she didn't have it in the hospital, she had it at home. So make sure you know that you have like proof this is your baby. And the friend said she just stared at me for a while like she was stunned. Then she says, they're insane. They're not going to touch my baby. Like fucking. I don't care what people say. Think I stole a baby. That's crazy. You fucking nuts.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Right.

[James Petregallo]

Then there's another lady at the party named Teresa Manis. Everybody's named Theresa Erlynne in the story.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah. Or Kim.

[James Petregallo]

Or Kim. She noticed a little bit of something peculiar about old, the old Dusty Eugene here. She said she was really concentrating on this boy's dick apparently. And she noticed that the boy's circumcision was nearly healed already.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, he's already been circumcised.

[James Petregallo]

Already been circumcised and healed up everything. And then also that his umbilical cord had already fallen off. They say that a Circumcision takes about 7 to 10 days to heal and then an umbilical cord takes 7 to 20 days to fall off. So it's in the realm of possibility.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

This is all. If she had, she didn't do this.

[Jimmy Wissman]

In the same day.

[James Petregallo]

That's. I mean this is two weeks after the baby's born. So it could very easily be like maybe the kid's just ahead. He's a quick. He's a quick healer.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

That's all.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He's a fucking. He's got constitution of a bull.

[James Petregallo]

He's got good clotting time. Don't worry about it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Strong little bastard.

[James Petregallo]

Strong. So it's interesting here. So Steel also says that she used to live with Kimmy, used to live with Steele's two brothers, Rod and Jeff, separately for a time, although she didn't know which years. She said that at the time, Kimmy had a one year relationship with her brother Jeff and had faked a pregnancy, telling him that she had delivered a Stillborn at the hospital. She came home, was like, I had the baby. It was a stillborn. Don't worry about it. What do you want for dinner?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Like broccoli or asparagus?

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, it's weird. So after Jeff and Kimmy split up, Rod and Kimmy lived together for about a month. And at that point, this woman said that Hardy again said she was pregnant now with the other brother's kid. I've been knocked up by both brothers. And she said she got a little pooch around her stomach. And she said though, that when Rod moved out, this woman said that Kimmy's stomach wasn't as big anymore. She said, I thought you were pregnant now. You look thinner. And she said, what happened? And Kimmy told her she had an abortion. That's what happened. Got rid of it. We weren't working out. Yeah, that's it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Keep his fucking.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. So the one lady who's talking about the umbilical cord and the circumcision scars, she calls the police, really? And says, I don't know if it's not for nothing, but there's a lady that has a kid that looks way too fucking old to be two weeks old. This kid does not look two weeks old. Circumcision's healed umbilical cords off and just looks like an older kid. Newborns are all. They're just little skin.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I don't even want to touch it.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, just. They're weird. After two months, they start to look like people after that. You know what I mean? They start to.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They got color for Christmas.

[James Petregallo]

They got color. Their face isn't all weird and smashed up like a puppy. They're, you know. Hey, everybody, just gonna take a quick break from the show to tell you a little bit more from our wonderfully fashionable friends over at Quint's. The holidays are here. Winter's here. I like it. I like being cozy. I like the fire. I like blankets. It's wonderful. When it comes to winter, it's like survival of the fittest. And I'm willing to do or buy whatever I can do to stay cozy. I'm gonna be cozy whether you like it or not out there. Everybody telling you for the ultimate cold weather necessities made from premium materials. You gotta check out Quint's. We like Quint's. I love the stuff I got from quints. I got a really cool jacket that I'm wearing happily during this wintertime. Jimmy got his fleece pants. Keeping cool right now. Doing well out there in Arizona.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Keep me warm and I to next to an electric fireplace.

[James Petregallo]

That's what I'm talking about. Luxuriate in coziness without the luxury price tag. Go to quince.com smalltown murder for 365 day returns plus free shipping on your order. That's Quince Q U I n c e.com Small Town Murder to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quints.com SmallTownMurder now back to the show. Hey everybody, just going to take a quick break from the show to tell you a little bit about Thrive Market. Absolutely. Get yourself some delicious healthy food. And that's what we're post holidays. We're trying to get ourselves back together. So Thrive Market makes it so easy to find these better options without all this hassle. One of the favorite features that I like on here is the Healthy Swap scanner in the Thrive Market app. It's simple, real, easy to use. You can scan any item and it'll suggest a cleaner, healthier alternative for it for groceries and everything gets delivered right to your door and you get savings on every offer. Also, I like the smart cart thing. That's pretty cool. Yeah, it takes, this is, it takes a little bit of stress out of the junk through food replacement program here.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

You create an account Thrive Market asks the right questions and automatically builds a grocery cart tailored to your needs filled with healthier alternatives for your favorite brands. So then you can just adjust it, add or remove items before checking out. So many cool stuff, so many cool items in there and stuff that I didn't know you could even make. Delicious. And they make it delicious and it's really good. Ready for a junk free start to 2025. Head to thrivemarket.com Smalltown Murder and get 30% off your first order plus a free sixty dollar gift. That's thrive t h r I v e market.com Smalltownmurder thrivemarket.com Smalltownmurder you don't believe in ghosts. I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons and more. Join me every week on my podcast Haunted Canada as we journey through terrifying and bone chilling stories of the unexplained search for Haunted Canada on Apple podcast, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts, they get to be normal. So this kid just looks fucking too old man to be. Just check it out, check it out. So September 17, 1996, the cops knock on the door. Imagine this Kimmy's house.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

And they go, hey, just, you know, there's a missing woman and, you know, all of this stuff and everything like that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Can we see your baby?

[James Petregallo]

Could we maybe check your baby out? And she was like, oh, yeah, this is my baby. Absolutely. And I love, love my baby. Everything's fine. Yeah, she said she had her. You know, she's. This is my fucking baby. I don't know what you're talking about. So, yeah, she said, at that point, they said, okay, but that baby is older than you're saying it is. And she said, no, no, no, no, no. Well, we're going to run the footprints on this baby and we're going to see what's going on here. And they run the footprints and they find out it's. It's the lund baby.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's 100% him.

[James Petregallo]

She's got Paul Lund in her arms.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wow.

[James Petregallo]

So they said, where'd you get this fucking baby?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

And she said, teresa Lund sold me the child and took off. Skip town. Sold it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Got two stories.

[James Petregallo]

They said, how much?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

She said, three grand.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Is that the going? Right?

[James Petregallo]

I think that's way cheap for a healthy newborn baby boy. Probably 100%. I think that's probably too cheap. So she said, yeah, she sold me the baby and took off.3 grand. You get this baby? I said it was mine because I didn't want to get her in trouble. I don't think you're allowed to sell your baby and leave now.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Explain this to your husband. This is a fun dinner conversation.

[James Petregallo]

So then Aqua Velva Green said, this poor woman said that she. I'm not making fun of her, but that name is wild. She said, my daughter wouldn't sell a baby and run away, leaving her three other children behind at school. At school. She didn't just. She didn't sell all of them, right? So she said, my daughter's not like that. Her children are her life. And also, that would be just crazy for anyone, even if she hated her kids.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Who would do that?

[James Petregallo]

Who sells? One leaves. The others at school and leaves. That's crazy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Even Andrea Yates probably thought of that.

[James Petregallo]

That's nuts. That's nuts, right? Can't do that. Holy shit. Now, while this is going on, once the officers start saying they're gonna take the baby from her. Bob Hardy starts trying to attack them with a piece of steel. He starts trying to hold them off with a rebar.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He doesn't believe it.

[James Petregallo]

Don't you come near my wife and baby. Yeah. So they have to, like, fucking wrestle him to the ground with his rebar. And he's gonna be charged. Yep. He's gonna be charged with brandishing a steel pipe at. Police officers can't do that. So they get them down to the police station. There's a lot to sort through here, like, what the fuck is happening? So at this point, they talk to a bunch of other people. And one of their friends said that Hardy had once admitted Kimmy once said, I love my husband more than life itself. This is at the police station. She says this. I never meant to get him involved in all of this. I just wanted to give him the son he always wanted.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay?

[James Petregallo]

That's what she said. Now, this woman that she says this to is a police department employee who was asked to sit with her in between interrogations and make sure she doesn't, like, start banging her head on the walls or anything. So apparently, this woman said that Kimmy cried for hours and hours, saying things like, no one will forgive me for what I've done, and I never meant to ruin so many lives.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Make sure she doesn't do anything kooky. She's doing the kookiest shit I've ever heard.

[James Petregallo]

All sorts of shit. And if you hear that, no one will forgive me for what I've done. I never meant to ruin so many lives. You're like, what did you do?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

What have you done?

[Jimmy Wissman]

You can tell me everything. Somebody press record.

[James Petregallo]

Then she said, I have done something so wrong that I can never be forgiven for it, and I'm going to have to pay for it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, boy.

[James Petregallo]

Wow. Then another I'm sorry. The same woman who was sitting with her at the police station said, holy shit. Oh, this is a different employee said. She said the same thing. I know I did something wrong. I could never be forgiven for it. Then afterwards, after a pause, she said, I know it was wrong, but not that wrong.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, my God. What did you do?

[James Petregallo]

You have a baby that's not yours. And where the fuck is the mom of that baby?

[Jimmy Wissman]

And you lied to a man for months.

[James Petregallo]

Not that wrong.

[Jimmy Wissman]

No, I was trying to give him what he wanted.

[James Petregallo]

They said, okay, you paid three grand for this baby. Your husband's a laborer. You guys don't have a lot of Money. Where'd you get three grand from? How's that? She said selling fake drugs to people at local bars.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I've been selling a lot of oregano.

[James Petregallo]

That's what I do. She said I flour, cocaine. She says flour and baking soda. She makes coke, fake coke. And sells that to people.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Crazy.

[James Petregallo]

And made $3,000 off of that, which is somehow the sanest thing she said she's done in this entire thing so far. I don't know how that works.

[Jimmy Wissman]

People snort arm and hammer and fucking flour, man.

[James Petregallo]

And we are at the tip of the crazy iceberg. I'm talking. This is about to blow up into the craziest shit you've ever heard.

[Jimmy Wissman]

All right, first things, though, you got to give those police the most credit for actually going to her house and being like, let me get a look at that baby.

[James Petregallo]

Well, what else are they going to do?

[Jimmy Wissman]

I don't know.

[James Petregallo]

They're punched in anything. They're all punched in. Might as well go do your fucking job. It's like saying, I got to give that McDonald's employee so much credit, he took the fries out, put them in a cardboard thing and handed them to me.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Is that their job, though, to, like.

[James Petregallo]

Go look at somebody's baby in a missing person baby? Yeah, to make sure that baby is not the one you're looking for. It's exactly their job, like, 100%.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I just don't know that. I just don't know who would be like, let's go look.

[James Petregallo]

Well, if they got a tip saying this baby is suspicious, it's older than it should be, and she knew the victim. I think it's really. It would be a glaring error if they didn't go take a look at that baby.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Like, fireable offense, small town police force going. This lady says that she thinks that this baby's, like, stolen or something, and somebody else, you know. Yeah, that bitch probably just wants her own baby.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, she's probably just barren. She barren, that's all. Barren and jealous, inhospitable womb. That's what happened. So he. Now they got Bob in there, too.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He's got to be just so.

[James Petregallo]

He's beside himself. He is. He's fucked. He doesn't know what to do. He said he came home, you know, he said he came home. He hung out with them that day with the baby. He said the next night. The next day he came home, and both sets of their parents were there. He went to work the next day, came home, and her parents and his parents were both there. Everybody was there. So he was like, oh, okay, that's nice. He said, but as they're in the house and he's standing around, he said he noticed a foul odor. Oh, he's like, babies stink, don't they?

[Jimmy Wissman]

I've always heard they.

[James Petregallo]

This newborn is nasty. This newborn's funky, dude, it's you. Nasty kid, I'm telling you. So he said, at first I thought the sewer had backed up again because this has happened before.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It smelled like shit.

[James Petregallo]

The sewers backed up into the basement before and had shit smell. Then while their guests were still there, his wife pulled him aside and said, I have to tell you something. And he said, well, what's that? She said, there's a corpse in our basement. That's what smells. You know that smell. There's a dead person downstairs causing that smell. He goes, get the fuck out of here. What are you talking about? Who's. Who could be dead in our basement? We just had a baby. Aren't you busy? What's going on? So he said that he had. Now he had to sit there for the rest of the time with both sets of parents going, oh, yeah, this is great. And bouncing the kid on the knee with that in his head.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Then after everybody left, he went downstairs and he said that he removed a large board that was covering a crawl space in the laundry room. And that's when he saw a red sweatsuit with like a leg in it. And he said he became very ill at that point because he saw it was a dead woman in his crawl space dressed in a red sweatsuit. Yeah, he said he became ill, but quote, I grabbed the body by the ankles and pulled it out. Okay? He said the body left a trail of blood on the laundry room floor and that he saw what he assumed to be two gunshot wounds to the head of this woman that he found. So he. Now you. It's been a wild week, okay? Bob goes to work one day on a Tuesday. He goes to work, gets a call, you gotta go home. Your wife had the baby. You go home. Your wife says she had a baby in a bathtub and she's sitting there with it. That's a weird day. Right away, okay?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Your wife gave birth to a month old baby.

[James Petregallo]

A month and a half old baby, but so exciting that you might overlook the weird parts of it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, sure, sure.

[James Petregallo]

And the next day you come home. Oh, Jesus. Oh, I gotta. The in laws are here, my parents are here. Everybody's here. We gotta do this. What is that smell? Now there's a. Now you're Literally, yesterday morning, you went to work, Everything's normal now. You've had. In the last day and a half, you've had fucking babies born. Weird shit happening. And now you're dragging a corpse through your laundry room by its ankles. What a weird week for Bob with.

[Jimmy Wissman]

The blood leaking out of it.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, yeah. So he does. Rather than going, this is crazy, he goes, well, we got to get rid of this body, I guess, right? I mean, I got a wife and a baby here. I got to protect my family. So he wraps the body in plastic and an old comforter. Then he said he dragged it up the stairs and put it in the bed of his Ford pickup.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, my.

[James Petregallo]

Which is worth more than his house.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, it's a badass truck.

[James Petregallo]

He then drove to Alexandria, Missouri, and crossed state lines. Crossed state lines and dumped the body near a set of railroad tracks. Just dumped it near the tracks. He later then dumped the plastic and the comforter in one place. He took it out of there, Dumped her body out. Unwrapped the Christmas tree, unwrapped it, took the wrapping with him because that could be connected to him. I guess he was being half smart and dumped that somewhere else and then threw the gun into a pond.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He's done this before.

[James Petregallo]

This sounds like he's.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He's a dangerous man.

[James Petregallo]

This guy has. This is before constant true crime shows. Like, I don't know where he would get how to do this, but he did it. Wow. He said he became sick the whole time. And after dumping the body, he said that they returned home and that his wife Kimmy cleaned the basement with a gallon of bleach.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And then he attacked cops like he.

[James Petregallo]

Like it was crazy, right?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Like it's crazy to take, like, it was there from him.

[James Petregallo]

Like it was their bad, right?

[Jimmy Wissman]

You guys made a mistake. Bob, what have you just. Where have you been?

[James Petregallo]

He. He also said he never connected the missing woman and her baby with the body in the basement. And his new son never connected all those.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He's the dumbest, smartest man alive.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, he's a fucking moron. Wait, even his father says he's an idiot. It's fucking hilarious. He said, quote, I believed the baby was mine. I had no reason to believe otherwise, except that it was hours. And when you came home, it's supposed to be three hours old, and the fucking baby's a month and a half old. It's saying, mama already. What the fuck are you doing? It's trying to take its first step, and you're like, oh, wow, this just Came out of your pussy. What, are you joking?

[Jimmy Wissman]

It knows where her nipple is. It opened her shirt, for Christ's sake.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, it knows. It undid her bra, for fuck's sake. One handed. He needed three fingers to pop that bra strap. You know, this motherfucker's experienced. He's felt girls up before.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And then you buried a body, man. Jesus.

[James Petregallo]

Holy shit. So that's what he said he did. He said he never. The body, by the way, was Theresa. Obviously, if she didn't kill another lady and tap Theresa's baby, that would be.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, shit, there's more people.

[James Petregallo]

It would be even wilder. But the cops, at this point, they don't know if this is. The couple did this together, this was a plan, or if this guy is genuinely the biggest idiot they've ever met.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Just does whatever his wife says, who.

[James Petregallo]

Has no idea what to do and just really doesn't want to argue. Talk about not wanting to argue. Like, I get trying to avoid an argument with the significant other. I totally understand that. But this is above and beyond not.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wanting to get across town, not to argue before. In terms of avoiding. Oh, man. Avoiding confrontation with the. With a living. It's.

[James Petregallo]

Fuck.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You'll go leaps and bounds around your.

[James Petregallo]

Path, I would say. But this shit's going to come up, though.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Putting a body away.

[James Petregallo]

No, that shit's going to come up here. So. Wow. Then they talk to him. Once they get him kind of figured out that this is what's going on, he ends up offering to lead them to the body. I'll take you to the body. I'll take you where I put the covering. And I'll take you where I threw the gun away, too. So he does. He takes her. He takes them to the body, by the way. They find the gun in a pond. And it is a gun that is registered to Kimmy. It's not even a. Like a. It's literally a legal gun. It is their fucking gun. It was found on a. The body was found on a remote stretch of railroad tracks near Alexandria, Missouri. It was nowhere. It was out of the middle of fucking nowhere.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Nobody was ever going to find this.

[James Petregallo]

Nope. Two gunshot wounds to the head for Teresa, just like it was. Now. Velva said, strange as it sounds, I'm at peace that she's been found. I can't imagine the horror of those parents whose children are missing for years and years. So she's actually relieved. She's been told, give up hope. So she stopped hoping at this point, and she's just happy to know. Have A resolution to the thing. Now she can bury a body.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Even if she didn't give up hope, at least now she's got a reason to.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, exactly.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That other part of, like, give up hope. And they're like, but I don't have a body. I can't give up hope. That's fucked up.

[James Petregallo]

Totally. And she said from the beginning she knew that she didn't run away. She knew this was. That's why I think also she was resigned to this. She said her daughter would not leave that baby. She said, I know my daughter. She would do anything for those children.

[Jimmy Wissman]

100%.

[James Petregallo]

So, yeah, this must have been a wild interrogation of these two, by the way. Bob and fucking Kimmy in separate rooms. He. Like I said, the tracks, by the way, where the body is, is just south of the Iowa border. So he just crossed over to where it would be in another state. And maybe they wouldn't put two and two together. Basically, a missing Iowa woman found. Yeah. So they also. They find the bathroom window curtain from the Hardee's upstairs bathroom. That is part of what he wrapped her in.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Really?

[James Petregallo]

It matched in color and pattern. The shower curtain determined to have been wrapped around the dead body of Lund, yet not the curtain itself. They did the shower curtain, which was a set with a curtain and a.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Shower curtain and a liner. Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

So they said the shower curtain that you threw her out in matches your bathroom curtains. So they're from your bathroom, stupid. The doctor who did the autopsy said every organ except parts of her liver and intestines were gone. Eaten away by decay, animal or insects. And when he turned her head to examine it, it fell off of her body. Yeah. She's been out there a while. Decomposing, just decomposing. And it's in there in late August and September. It's humid. Animals, insects, all that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

So many bugs. Golly.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Shot twice in the head, they're looking at. Which is wild here now. Yeah. Teresa's mom said that, you know, she said that it was horrible. She said her kids were alive and in the end it cost her her life. That's true. Yeah. So here's the questions. Number one, how did Teresa's car get to the county market grocery store parking lot right where it was found? That's number one. How did Kimmy Lund. How did Kimmy Hardy get Teresa to go to their home? Right. To go to their. To Kimmy's home? How did that happen? They don't understand. So the one detective said, we're pushing every lead to try to answer These two basic questions of. Because that's a big part of it here. They're also trying.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Does she take the car seat, too?

[James Petregallo]

Yes, she took the. Well, she took the baby.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Needs a car seat.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She took this kid around.

[James Petregallo]

She has no baby, so her youngest kid is 12. She needs a car seat. Yeah.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's gross.

[James Petregallo]

That is horrifying, isn't it? So the cop in charge of the investigation said, we're pursuing every lead to try to answer these two basic questions because they're really important. They're trying to reconstruct the events of the day. They can document Teresa up until about 8:30, where they think she's been killed. Now, neighbors of Kimmy and her husband say they have seen Teresa's car parked near Kimmy's home several times during the past few months. So they find out. Okay, that's good to know. At least it's not abnormal for her to go over there. She could have lured her there. But they said they're not sure about that day. The police said they were acquaintances. That's all we know. They're not sure about how much of a connection they have. So the bail, initially, first, she was charged with kidnapping for having the baby. That was a $250,000 bail. When they find the body, bail is raised to $2 million. Oh, now, this is the weird part. The baby's placed in foster care and the fucking actual father.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Has to, like, apply for custody of this baby. How about give me my fucking baby back? What are you talking about?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, foster. It's got a dad.

[James Petregallo]

We had a baby. You stole it. Give it back. Now, if it was a car, it wouldn't be put in fucking some sort of, you know, Hawk. Some sort of weird fucking.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Some impound.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. I don't get it. Some strange in between fucking nebulous afterworld. It's very strange. Give the baby back to who it belongs to 100%. Just like you would a car. Just doesn't make sense. So that's how that goes. Now, the Associated Press apparently originally reported that Bob Hardy told police his wife shot Theresa Lund. But apparently he never told authorities that. He said, I found this dead woman who's been shot and I threw the gun away. That belongs to my wife and she had her baby. But I never said my wife shot her. Okay, now they start. They have to talk to everybody to try to figure this out. Neighbors, would you see this person at this time? Neighbors disagree on whether she was pregnant or not. Kimmy. Now. Oh, now we know she wasn't pregnant, but they disagree on it. One neighbor, this is a guy named Rick Korshkin. He said if she wasn't pregnant, she did one heck of a job of faking it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay?

[James Petregallo]

He said he lived across the street, he saw Kimmy Hardy nearly every day. And, yeah, he said that that's how it went. Some of the neighbors, though, said she looked a little too thin. A little too thin to be pregnant. Okay. One neighbor here, Constance Garcia, said she was always skinny. And then lo and behold, she pulled up one day in a truck and pulled out a baby seat and brought it into the house through the back door. Skinny, skinny, skinny home with a baby.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

She goes on to say she never looked pregnant to me. It seemed awful strange to me, you nosy bitch. Mind your own business. Now, Tammy, who I believe is Rick's wife here, this is Tammy Korshkin, lived across the street from Hardy and says she was always skeptical about her claim of being pregnant. She said, I know what a pregnant woman looks like. I've had four children myself.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That in a pregnant woman.

[James Petregallo]

She said, I knew what this is, right from the newspaper. Quote, I knew she was supposed to be pregnant. And this is, quote, she said, smoking a cigarette from her front steps across the street from the Hardee's house. That's how she's described Tammy. I knew she was supposed to be pregnant. You can just see her. You see Tammy, don't you? She said, but I saw her out in the yard, and this was in July in shorts and a halter top, and she didn't look pregnant to me. How the hell does she get pregnant and don't get big? And don't get big. Most women show. Even if they're built like toothpicks, most women show. At least I did on every single one of mine.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I got fat as shit.

[James Petregallo]

I got fat as shit. That's why I smoke three packs a day. I had to take that weight off. So, yeah, friends, mothers, friends who had kids themselves had touched her, her extended, hard, bare abdomen to feel the baby kick. And a lot of them said she appeared pregnant in every physical aspect. So we have people seeing her at the same time saying completely the opposite things.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Interesting.

[James Petregallo]

One time she's in a fucking belly shirt, you know, ready to. Ready to perform at the strip club, right? And then at the same time, she's.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Got a distended hard belly.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. With a baby kicking. So apparently, yeah. She must have lured Teresa to her home that day and shot her in the head twice. Now, the sad part is Bob really believed her. He believed her. He said, she told me she delivered a baby in the bathtub. He told the cops that, quote, he's not educated and has never had kids before. So he thought that seemed okay. Not educated? You don't know where babies come from, motherfucker. What are you talking about? So she then told Robert she gave birth in the bathtub while she was alone. And he said, that's my baby. I thought it was my baby until I discovered a body in the cubby hole in the laundry room. And that. That kind of took it away from him. From it. He said that he told authorities he found the body the same day that the parents were there. He said that he was scared that no one would believe that he had nothing to do with the murder. That's why he helped dispose of the body. Yeah, he said, what am I going to do? Go to the cops? They're going to be like, yeah, right, you didn't do this. So, yeah, he said that he didn't want to tell anybody about it. He. He said he loved at the time. By then it was a day. He already loved the child as if it were his own. He even helped choose the name Dusty Eugene. That's a dumb name. That came from me, obviously. I'm a fucking dummy. Who do you think came up with that stupid shit? Me.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I'm a big fan of Son of a Preacher Man. Dusty. Just such a cool name.

[James Petregallo]

It's just cool, dude. So he said, I dumped the body near the line and I was going to raise my child as my own. And that's what I did for close to a month till you guys came and just raised the baby as my own. That's all.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Then they're talking. They're in jail for 10 days and holy shit. 10 days after he led police to a decomposed body on a remote stretch of railroad near the Iowa Missouri border. This is from the Des Moines Register newspaper. Robert Hardy and his new wife Kimmy sit in separate cells at the Lee County Jail. They aren't allowed to visit or even call each other. But he's not blaming his wife and he's not angry.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Jesus Christ, Bob.

[James Petregallo]

Those bars couldn't be strong enough to hold me from fucking going into the women's side and strangling this lady. Are you kidding me?

[Jimmy Wissman]

She's ruined your life, Bob.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, my God. I would fucking be paying women cigarettes to kick her in the fucking ass. Are you joking? I'd be so angry at where I am right now. Jesus Christ. He said he still loves the woman he married just four months ago. They're only married for four months.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What? It's so new. If. Holy shit.

[James Petregallo]

That's why they're three month marriage.

[Jimmy Wissman]

If you're three months, 90 days you've been married and she says there's a body in the fucking basement. We are so annulled. I can't get out of here fast enough.

[James Petregallo]

Especially cuz they got married because she was pregnant, right? Allegedly. So she told him she was pregnant, they got married, and then she's like, well, I gotta produce a baby. Holy fucking shit. He says he wants to make his marriage work, even if it's from separate prison cells. That's what he said.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He's right. He is not educated. He is a fucking.

[James Petregallo]

Wow. He's a fuck. Two cells, one heart. That's very nice. That's very. Isn't that. Hey, you know what, everybody? If you can't make it work, I don't know what the fuck to tell you. Because Bob's willing. Bob is willing to forgive and forget.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's 1996. He's already got her name tattooed on his neck.

[James Petregallo]

Oh my God, second day in jail, he's like, can someone tattoo Kimmy on my neck?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Two M's, two I's.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, so Robert's dad here. Okay, Tom, Robert's dad. Oh, no, that's his attorney's name. I'm sorry. Robert's dad said or. No, this is his attorney. His attorney said basically he's sick. Sick about everything that's happened. Of course he's disappointed in her. He trusted her, but he still loves her and he still cares. His lawyer said that he's a moron. Robert's father, Ralph said, it's a really hard thing. He's a really likable guy, not a big bad guy like he's being described. He waited for 36 years to find the right woman and he thought he had found her.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He's willing to do anything.

[James Petregallo]

Anything. Including dumb bodies here. He then his father said, I think he just got into something over his head. My son's a big easygoing guy, but not that bright. He's a big dummy is what he just said.

[Jimmy Wissman]

My son to have a beer.

[James Petregallo]

Dummy. You watch a fucking race with him or something. He's great, but don't ask him to do your taxes. Let's just say that you will be in prison, idiot. To wow. And also they said Robert never told his family that he suspected anything was awry with his wife. And also they said they never suspected that Kimmy wasn't pregnant. Robert's family, they said she seemed pregnant to me. Robert's father said it never crossed our minds. I never once suspected anything was strange about her.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She was eating onions like apples. It was crazy. Who does that for pregnant women?

[James Petregallo]

Just dipping them in fucking butter. Pecan ice cream. It was weird, strange. So Robert's sister Kim here said that Kimmy, Robert's wife, persuaded Robert to marry her about three months ago by saying she was pregnant with his child. And the sister said, you'd have to know my brother to realize how trusting and naive he is. He's a fucking mortal.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's called gullible.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. He's so dumb. I think that the cops believe he's just dumb. That's how dumb he is. They go, he is just a fucking idiot. He didn't know anything about this. They actually believe him at some point here. So now the lawyer here, Robert's lawyer, will not say how Robert will plead to any charges or whether he'll. How he's gonna do this. He did say there's been some negotiations already floated from the prosecutor's office toward Robert about getting him to testify against his wife. Here.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Here's a deal. Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Also, the U.S. attorney's office has become involved because the couple might be facing federal kidnapping charges as well.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Sure. Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

So anyway, Robert just sits alone in his cell. And his sister said it has to be terrible for him there, realizing he was married to a woman he never really knew.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Who gives an absolute.

[James Petregallo]

Who cares? He still wants to be with her. That's how dumb he is. Holy shit. So around town, obviously, people are like, whoa, this is the craziest thing fucking ever.

[Jimmy Wissman]

This is unbelievable.

[James Petregallo]

And they're like, the one question is that everyone keeps going and saying is, why would a woman who already had three children. It's not like she's 36 and she's never had a child, and all she's ever wanted was a child. And she has three kids. Why would she do this? Why? Well, Bob Hardy's attorney says, I've asked to see her medical records. From what I gather, for some reason, Kimmy Hardy could not have any more children.

[Jimmy Wissman]

There it is.

[James Petregallo]

And we'll find out exactly why in a minute, too. It's gonna make it even fucking easier. Okay, check this out. Now, that's not the other, the only weird shit about Kimmy. Here's some more weird factoids about Kimmy. And these aren't even the weirdest. I'm saving the best one here for last okay. Apparently, she attempted to befriend another young, pregnant Keokuk woman in identical ways to how she befriended Teresa.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, my God.

[James Petregallo]

So she was, like, trying to figure out whose baby she wanted to take. Basically, she was shopping. She's shopping. Who's gonna have the cutest? Well, someone's gotta have a boy, number one, because she wants to give the guy a son. So that's. First of all, she's gotta have a boy. Also that in addition to the gun she used to kill Teresa, she also owned three other handguns, which was an interesting fact. She signed a note a few months earlier. I'm sorry. Several years ago, before this happened, Kimmy had signed a notarized contract with a teenage mother giving Hardy the custody of the woman's infant son. So she tried to. She took a bit, and they had to end up making her give it back. Basically, it's not legal, so you can't do that. And there's adoption and there's all these different things. Now, the other thing is that they found out that Kimmy had undergone. She got her tubes tied in 1984. What is she doing 1984, after her last child.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She's 12 years ago. She's like, maybe it didn't take.

[James Petregallo]

Heard of that. Her then husband pressured her into it because they had no money, the family, and they were having more kids. So according to what he said, she later became obsessed with having the procedure reversed, but was informed by doctors that especially back then, it wasn't really a procedure that works very well. It's much easier to restore the male side of that than the female side of that. So anyway, her best friend, Kim Steele, who was at the party there at the baby shower, the one that raised the flags. Yeah. She tells them about different times that she faked pregnancies with both of my brothers.

[Jimmy Wissman]

So faking the pregnancies, making it so much better.

[James Petregallo]

This is what I mean. At the time that was going on, her tubes were already tied.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She couldn't have kids. And she's telling these guys she's pregnant. Wow.

[James Petregallo]

She's telling them she had an abortion and a stillborn.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Out of that, possible both ways.

[James Petregallo]

Steele said that she didn't doubt her friend. Her friend here, she said that over the course of the month, she pretended to be pregnant. Her abdomen grew large. Oh, she said that, you know, she saw Kimmy nearly every day and never doubted the pregnancy and felt Hardy's abdomen one day because the baby had supposedly kicked. So she was like, oh, let me feel. Oh, I can't feel it now. She said she had a big stomach. That part wasn't fake. She's sure a fat fuck. That part's real. She definitely ate a bunch of Arby's, but outside of that, I don't know anything. So this lady Steele said she went with Kimmy to buy the gun used to kill Theresa.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, my God.

[James Petregallo]

She said Kimmy claimed she was going to take her son. Her older son, not her baby. Target shooting. Steele said that several days after the gun purchase, she saw Hardy trying to file the serial numbers off the gun just for target practice. She's just using, like, her nail. Little nail file. She's like, this thing does not work. They say to file it off, but.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Man, all the sand just keeps coming off these things.

[James Petregallo]

Wow. You gotta get yourself a, you know, a grinder. A fucking grinder. Or like a. Like a. Like a fucking. Hit it with a bar. Like you're like a. You know, like a chisel. Chisel. That's a chipper is all I could come up with. Chisel is the word I'm looking for.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Get a metal chipper.

[James Petregallo]

Get a chisel and some vice grips and a big fucking mallet. I don't know what else to say here.

[Jimmy Wissman]

God damn.

[James Petregallo]

Holy shit. Imagine walking in on somebody trying to do that. Whatcha doing? Days later, the steel.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Cleaning my gun. Yeah, well, you're cleaning it, all right.

[James Petregallo]

Days later, the steal said that she called Hardy and was told, come on over. I just had the baby.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

All right. She said, Hardy, Kimmy was sitting in jeans and a T shirt holding the.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Infant as they often do for ladies that just gave birth.

[James Petregallo]

You're ready to stick your jeans on and get back into it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Tuck everything into some jeans.

[James Petregallo]

Wow. She said that Kimmy had told her that she had given birth hours earlier in the bathtub.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She's got face of makeup and hair done.

[James Petregallo]

She said that the baby didn't seem pink and wrinkled like newborns did.

[Jimmy Wissman]

But she said, but toe head and shit.

[James Petregallo]

I guess she said, I don't know. I mean, whatever, you know, what are you gonna. I guess that's what it is. I guess that's how it came out. So I don't know. So she had heard. That's when she had heard of the disappearance of Lund and her baby a few days later and started putting two and two together and said, is this baby Teresa Lund's? Some people think so. So get his footprints checked and prove they're wrong like we said earlier. And that's when she said, they're insane. No one's touching my baby.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

But this lady never reported her to the police. Someone else at the party reported her to the police. Several members of Teresa's family. Testifies later that a woman meeting Kimmy's description had spent months befriending Teresa. Stopping by in a gray pickup truck and, you know, giving her things and trying to hang out with her. Also hung around the hospital. We found out a local woman who gave birth after Teresa and was in the same hospital wing as Theresa said that Kimmy offered her baby clothes, asked her to lunch, and invited her over after the woman's baby was born in the hospital. Yeah, why don't you come by? I'll give you lunch and baby clothes and shit. Come to my house.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, sure.

[James Petregallo]

This woman said that she, quote, ran into, but thought maybe it was more than ran into Kimmy. Several other places around town, too. She was always around. She was stalking her ass. Yeah, she stalked several women with newborns. It seemed like holy. The woman's name, Sheena Schwab is her name. She said that when she failed to respond to Hardy's friendship advances, Hardy would drive past her home giving her a dirty look. She said it was almost like she hated me for something.

[Jimmy Wissman]

For not being her friend, for not.

[James Petregallo]

Falling for her bullshit. These con people get mad when you don't fall for their bullshit. Some of them do. Some of them are like, well, move on to the next person. Some of them get very fucking angry when you reject them. Then we find out, obviously, her other fake pregnancies. Her ex husband came forward, telling police that Kimmy had faked at least three pregnancies during their marriage.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wow.

[James Petregallo]

She had claimed one of those pregnancies ended up with a stillbirth at University Hospital and that she arranged a funeral attended by dozens of friends. It's not real.

[Jimmy Wissman]

With, like, a shoebox with nothing in it.

[James Petregallo]

We'll talk about it. We'll talk about this here, I guess. This is Wendell Smith, her old husband. Went with his wife to an Iowa city Hospital in 1993 after she told him she was pregnant. He said 45 minutes later, a call came from Mr. Smith in the waiting room. The female caller. Okay. On the phone. Phone in the waiting room for you. The female caller advised him that his wife had just delivered a baby boy, but the boy had died and then hung up on him. Gotta go. Your wife had the baby. It died. Click. Huh?

[Jimmy Wissman]

What Had a baby? It's a dead.

[James Petregallo]

It's a dead. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wow.

[James Petregallo]

So the. They say that the papers don't say who made the phone call. They couldn't figure it out. Who made the phone call? I think we know. And they said your guess is as good as ours. Who knows?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

So after Wendell says, yeah, we buried a stillborn October 19, 1996, they dig up a baby's grave.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, my God.

[James Petregallo]

Let's exhume a baby.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, boy. What's in?

[James Petregallo]

That's what everybody wants to do when they leave the house in the morning. What would you like to do? I'm gonna dig up the grave of a baby. That sounds perfect. I think today. So this Wendell Smith. Wendell Smith consents to the opening of the grave at Keokux National Cemetery. This is in the yard where there's a headstone that reads, zachary W. Smith, born October 15, 1993. Died October 15, 1993. Son of Wendell Smith. That's what the headstone.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What do you bet that W in Zachary's middle name is Wendell?

[James Petregallo]

Wendell.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She named a nothing after what's in the grave.

[James Petregallo]

James, I'm gonna read from the Des Moines Register.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, my God.

[James Petregallo]

In Friday's frigid early morning wind. Oh, God. This is awesome.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's cold and miserable.

[James Petregallo]

Police here opened the grave of a baby that never existed, marking the most bizarre twist yet in a southern Iowa case of alleged murder and faked pregnancy. The digging was part of an effort to establish a pattern of fake pregnancies by Kimmy Hardy, who's charged with luring a woman to her home and killing her. The grave dug up Friday supposedly contained the cremated remains of a boy that Hardy had claimed was stillborn in 1993. Investigators believe that she faked that pregnancy just before 8am Authorities wrested the simple white tombstone from the ground they dug first by shovel, then backhoe, then shovel again. More than two and a half hours later, someone else yelled up to stop the backhoe. Hold up. We've got it standing in the neck deep hole. Two cemetery workers lifted a tattered cardboard box. It was a cardboard coffin. Inside the box, police found only a dirty pink teddy bear. She buried a fucking teddy bear named.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Zachary and had a tombstone erected.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, my God.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Diabolical bitch.

[James Petregallo]

That is some.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wow.

[James Petregallo]

Shit. Wow.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's unbelievable.

[James Petregallo]

She's supposed to be burying ashes. Buried a fucking teddy bear.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She stopped it like a cvs. Wow. And buried the bear. She named it. She named the nothing pink teddy bear Zachary Wendell.

[James Petregallo]

She named that month's period, is what she named. That's what it is. Because she did not have a baby. Oh, no, maybe not.

[Jimmy Wissman]

This bitch Is crazy, man.

[James Petregallo]

So the police chief of Keokuk said there was absolutely no evidence of human remains in there. This is definitely substantiates a pattern of behavior on the defendant's part. It establishes that she's capable of faking a pregnancy and deceiving people up to.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And including buying a goddamn headstone that.

[James Petregallo]

A headstone. Dude that had it engraved and everything and probably cried and didn't. Went through the whole thing. Investigators said the exhumation strengthens their charges against Kimmy. I would say so, they said.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Is it an idea?

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. She buried a fucking. A made up. She buried a lie. That's what it was, they said. The prosecutor said, is our case solid at this point? Absolutely. I would say, yeah, it looks bad. Then he said, this case has more twists than Highway 1. So they said that this case cemented the whole thing of what she is basically. The stillbirth reportedly happened during a visit to university hospitals in Iowa City. The phone call is even crazier. He said that she came out of the room delivered to stillborn. They drove home and on the drive back, she had told her, Wendell Smith, the husband, that the baby's organs were being donated and that the hospital would send the cremated remains to them for burial.

[Jimmy Wissman]

The organs?

[James Petregallo]

No, baby organs. Newborn organs. And that the. And they're gonna, I guess, cremate the baby right there at the hospital?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, they can do it right there and then send.

[James Petregallo]

Then just. They're gonna mail him to us like, wow.

[Jimmy Wissman]

The size of an ashtray.

[James Petregallo]

The husband there, the ex husband, Wendell, said she bawled and carried on about the lost baby the whole drive home. I didn't doubt for a minute that she was telling the truth. He said a box was mailed to them several days later and his wife said it contained the baby's ashes. So along with friends and family, they buried the box at the national cemetery in Kiko. Then this idiot. This is how she looks for a very specific type of man. Because this guy says now he, quote, feels sorry for her because she's obviously sick.

[Jimmy Wissman]

No, I want to know what the fuck happened to this woman.

[James Petregallo]

That's the fucking problem. He said that he was completely fooled by her at the time. He said her belly got big. It really did.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

I thought she was pregnant, but apparently she couldn't have been pregnant because she had tubal ligation years before marrying him, which left her unable to have more children than the three she already had. Her ex said, I think she was just obsessed with having children. She's sick. But one Thing I will say is she was always an excellent mother to her other three children. They lived with us and they were her life. She got them into the best schools, made them dinners, helped them with their homework, everything. Well, that's great, but you can't steal people to do that. They said it's really only after the tubal ligations that she. Ligation surgery that she started manufacturing pregnancies. Yeah. When she couldn't get pregnant anymore, started making them up. One guy said here, I do think there was some change in her psychologically. She wanted another child, but she couldn't be pregnant is what really tipped her over the edge. She's deceiving, she's manipulating, and ultimately she murders somebody.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Indeed.

[James Petregallo]

Wow, that's crazy. So, yeah, I mean, she goddamn fucking lured a nice woman to her house with her baby, shot her in the fucking head and dragged her down basement steps, stuffed her in a cubbyhole for a day and a half before telling her husband. And she only told her husband because the smell was getting bad, she was.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Going to get caught.

[James Petregallo]

That's crazy. The one guy goes on to say, she maintained that the charade, this charade that she was pregnant for months. I think she had this idea in her head that would be the ultimate joy would be to produce a son for Bob. At some point, she begins looking for a baby. Then she finds this person. He was hip hop's biggest mogul. The man who redefined fame, fortune and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Combs. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party. So yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three count indictment charging Sean Combs with racketeering, conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was up and I hit rock bottom.

[Jimmy Wissman]

But I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry. Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real.

[James Petregallo]

From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace from law and crime, this is the rise and fall of Diddy. Listen to the rise and fall of Diddy. Exclusively with Wondery.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection.

[James Petregallo]

Claudine Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And there's much more to come. This is the Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's on the Media. To listen, subscribe to OnTheMedia, wherever you get your podcasts.

[James Petregallo]

Now Kimmy's sitting in jail and she tries to commit suicide in jail after a month or so.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Incredibly sick.

[James Petregallo]

She's all fucked up. After stockpiling her prescription medication that she receives twice a day. An inmate, another inmate saw her take the medication and she was rushed to a hospital and saved. Then she also starts faking illnesses in prison as well. Yeah, they said they're pissed off, the jailers at the county jail. Sheriff Dave Ireland says, in my opinion, she feigns some illness and we have to go through all the medical hoops to have the medical community say there's nothing wrong. She's a thespian, and she's a very good thespian.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She's an actress.

[James Petregallo]

She's an actress. That's what it is. It's an art form. That's the ticket. So she said that. They said, also, Will, is she gonna plead insanity? Yeah, they said, I don't know. One lawyer says the downside of any insanity defense is the months of planning and premeditation that went into this. The coldness and calculation involved. Insanity has some real drawbacks.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Sure does.

[James Petregallo]

Because insanity, you have to go, look at all the awful shit I did. Isn't it? Don't you have to be crazy to do that? It's awful, right? Like, that's not good if they don't believe you're crazy. Now she's also described somehow as stoic. In jail, faking illnesses and trying to kill yourself is not stoic. It's the opposite of stoic. But the one jailer said, I guess I would be stoic too, knowing that with a conviction on first degree murder, it could be life in prison.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's not stoic. That bitch is thinking she's plotting.

[James Petregallo]

I think she's plotting. Yeah, she's trying to figure out how to say some bullshit that'll make these people believe her. By the way, there is another absolutely crazy fucking twist coming up in this case.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, my God.

[James Petregallo]

She testifies and it's crazy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Stop it.

[James Petregallo]

She's got a story and it is wild. She still says she didn't do. Didn't kill Teresa. Really didn't kill. There stole her baby and her corpse was in my basement. But I didn't kill her.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I bought it.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, it's the truth, man. She does it. Now the prosecutors Said that there's Kimmy Hardy certainly left a clear trail of evidence linking her to this crime. An excellent evidence trail, in fact. Absolutely. She's seen everywhere with her. Yeah.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You can't come. The real hole in her story is that second bullet hole. That's the bad.

[James Petregallo]

That's the problem. Those are the holes?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah. Committed suicide twice. What?

[James Petregallo]

Twice in the back of the head. And she said that. They also said that Kimmy started shopping for a.38 caliber handgun a month before this. A month before this.38.38. At one gun shop, she's quoted as asking the gun dealer, quote, is this gun capable of killing someone? And if so, at what range all of them are. I was just gonna say, which one of your guns are capable of killing people? They're guns, you fucking idiot.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Look at the wall. They're all.

[James Petregallo]

I got a pellet gun that could probably do the trick if you really hit someone, right? What are you talking about? These are real guns.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's a goddamn gun, lady.

[James Petregallo]

The documents also quote Kimmy as telling a friend, I did something really bad that I could never be forgiven for. So bad that I had to get Bob involved. And the county attorney said the idea of killing a mother to get the child is something that touches a universal nerve. It's every family's nightmare. So Robert here, his lawyer, expresses optimism about the case. Bob, really? Yeah. Kimmy's husband, he says. Yeah, he said. It's hit the tabloids around the world. And the residents of Keokuk are bracing their self for a possible media circus, complete with Court TV and hard copy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wow.

[James Petregallo]

And this is 96. So this is right after OJ. So this is when Court TV was like the biggest thing in the fucking world after OJ And Hard Copy was still in existence, too.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And he's looking forward to his chance.

[James Petregallo]

He's looking forward. Velva here. Mom says crimes like this aren't supposed to happen in a place like this. Not in a place like this.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Well, look at the murder rates, Velvet.

[James Petregallo]

Small town murder. Yeah, that's. That's why we do this show. Valve. So. Yeah, she said that, you know, she's going over the events in her mind. They say Keokuk, people say, used to be a place where you left your front door unlocked and the car running while you ran into the grocery store for a gallon of milk. Parking meters don't exist. And the triple feature movie theater has one of those old fashioned marquee signs. When you went in to pay for your gas, you left the kids strapped in the Car seat, triple feature.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I've never even heard of it.

[James Petregallo]

Triple feature, guy. All day. You're gonna be here all fucking day three. We need a meal in there somewhere. Yeah.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's five fucking hours of movies, man.

[James Petregallo]

So they talk about Kimmy's other three children who were living with her at the time of the killing, who are now on the prosecutor's witness list. Prosecution also has expert witnesses who will likely testify that Kimmy was not insane at all. Fine. Just a little, you know, loopy. Yeah, they said. The prosecutor said he's not convinced that her attorneys are going to go for the insanity defense.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Really?

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, he said, I've received nothing from them at this time that indicates they're going to go ahead with that. And I would have expected that to happen by this point if they were going to use that angle. What's the defense's plan here? Well, Defense attorney Carl McMurray says he doesn't want to divulge his game plan just yet. You know, he said that would be like walking into a movie at the end of it, it just ruins everything. Yeah. If the movie made no sense and the person. And it wasn't actually a movie. You went in there and it was actually just a guy kicks you in the balls and puts a sack over your head. That's. That's the equivalent. Dude.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's a wild movie.

[James Petregallo]

It's a wild movie. He did say that Kimmy Hardy was optimistic about her trial.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She's looking forward to it, too.

[James Petregallo]

And he said that she has every reason to be.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

Alrighty. One of the biggest tasks facing the jury, or facing McMurray, is to convince the jury that the gun purchase and the testimony about all of her fake pregnancies don't equal premeditation, which is critical for first degree murder. McMurray doesn't seem concerned. Okay. He said, quote, I've got a lot of money in my pocket, but if it's all pennies, that doesn't make me a rich man, now, does it? So you could have a lot of evidence, but if it's all shitty evidence, it doesn't matter. That doesn't make you rich if it's all this evidence. It's very good evidence is the problem.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And if we're playing big bank, little bank, and I've got all these pennies and you have nothing, then I win.

[James Petregallo]

That's exactly. That's what I'm saying. And they said McMurray also seemed unfazed by expected testimony that Kimmy told a friend that she had done Something bad, which could imply she was, you know, sound enough mind to distinguish right from wrong. He said, I think I said something like that when I was a five year old kid and had run away from home. That doesn't make me guilty of murder.

[Jimmy Wissman]

No, it makes you a runaway.

[James Petregallo]

Makes you a five year old runaway.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Is there a murder involved? What are you talking about, man?

[James Petregallo]

So this guy's analogies are terrible, really bad. He's like, I'll just put some folksy analogies out there and get the public on my side. And they're like, what the fuck are you talking about, Bob? So change of venue is what they want. They really want. Defense attorney Carl McMurray filed a motion to move the case out of the county because of what he says was prejudicial news coverage. Just obvious covering the facts of the case, he said. But the judge said if eligible jurors can't be found after two jury panels, then he would consider moving the trial. But for now, happening right here in. Right here in Lee county, baby, we need the.

[Jimmy Wissman]

We need the media staying in, hotel room revenue.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Here, get the diner. Getting some fucking turnover on those tables. So Kimmy's trial comes around, and in the more than six hours it took to select a jury, lawyers from both sides found out to the extent of which people in small towns keep track of each other's bullshit. Yeah, yeah. Because this is a small town, you have to find out, do you know this person? And stuff like that so you get to hear. Yeah, they said. Lee county attorney Bruce McDonald asked 32 prospective jurors and four alternates. Has anyone here not read or heard anything about the case? Not one hand went up. Everyone has heard about the case.

[Jimmy Wissman]

We all know.

[James Petregallo]

Within the first hour of jury selection, nine people had been dismissed, six of whom said they could not keep an open mind about the highly publicized case. Next, they asked if anyone personally knew Kimmy. Because it's a small town, that's possible. A hand in the middle row shot up. Quote, she's my sister in law. It's fucking Bob's brother or Bob's sister.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Why would she even be there?

[James Petregallo]

Her brother. I'm sorry, Bob's brother is on the jury panel? Yeah. You think he'd just go, my brother's the other, you know. Yeah, no, he's there. Which is fucking amazing. Bob is charged with seven felonies, by the way, in a separate trial. Yeah. Including child stealing, not kidnapping. Child stealing.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's what they should call it.

[James Petregallo]

I think so. That's better. Assault While participating in a felony and aiding in abetting kidnapping. His brother was dismissed as a juror. Obviously. Several other people also said they knew Kimmy. Two women said they had gone to high school with her. One man said he socialized with her about eight years ago. One of the alternates had been Kimmy's neighbor for several years. This is. Out of 32 people. This many people know her. I mean, it's any little. Wow. All these people said they could be fair and unbiased and were allowed to stay in the jury pool.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Is that right?

[James Petregallo]

Wow, that's fucking crazy. They said not only it's such a small town that they said, if you don't know her, these jurors know one of the witnesses. Yeah, they know somebody. They're going to be connected. It's impossible to have a trial. Move the fucking trial. Why are we insisting on having it here?

[Jimmy Wissman]

The appeal process is going to ruin this.

[James Petregallo]

I really hate when they do this because it really doesn't make any fucking sense, man. One potential juror had dated a defense witness about 20 years ago. Several went to church with each other and some of the other witnesses. One potential juror said he played softball with a key defense witness. The lawyer asked, was he any good? And the guy said, not really. At softball, that is. After the prosecution had questioned the jury, Hardy's attorney individually examined each potential juror in the judge's chambers. Once out of the PAC courtroom, several of the people admitted they believed Kimmy had murdered Theresa and would not be able to think of her as innocent until proven guilty in open court. They said they could. Once it got behind closed doors, they were like, okay, never mind. So they ended up choosing 12 jurors and two alternates were settled upon just before court shut down for the day. Opening arguments are tomorrow. So after dismissing 21 potentially biased jurors, including her brother in law, they're ready to rock and roll. It's a jury of seven of seven women and five men. You want 12 men because who's believed her so far? Yeah, only men.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's all dudes that want to fuck. That's it.

[James Petregallo]

Who, who's suspicious of her? Every woman. Even her best friend.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Her best friend was like, yo, you've got a baby. You better. You better go make sure that they don't find you suspicious.

[James Petregallo]

Fuck, yeah. So, by the way, not as much media as they expected. Hard Copy and Court TV do not send reporters as expected. Only extra covered the story. Extra, extra that shit. Remember that crap.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Now it's just fucking the dude from Saved by the Bell, isn't it? Is he the extra guy? Now?

[James Petregallo]

Now it's. That's just. All of social media is extra. Why would you watch extra? Yeah, yeah, I think you're right.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Pat O'Brien got in trouble.

[James Petregallo]

Well, yeah, I was gonna say. Is he on that or does he only do every hotel fucking when you.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He does that?

[James Petregallo]

Turn the TV on. Go away. I don't want to look at you. Mario. I have to turn it on immediately. Mute the TV so I don't have.

[Jimmy Wissman]

To tell me you don't age.

[James Petregallo]

Fuck. Jesus, man. So also another person there is a freelance writer, Sylvia DeWitt, who plans to write a true crime book about the case, which I never found. So I don't know if she was just using that as an excuse for a write off or what, but she.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Just wanted to visit this town, I guess.

[James Petregallo]

They said, at least I've always wanted to go to Keokuk. They said at least a dozen print, radio and TV journalists are at the courthouse though. It's a cool courthouse, by the way. It's a real historic joint built in 1889. Marble wainscoting it has. That's fancy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wow.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. The community promoter like, community promoters, like store owners and shit like that. They're called for. Community promoters are trying to put a good face on this one person here. The director of the Keokuk convention and Tourism bureau said, I've had a couple of tourism friends who called me and said it's hard to market a community when this is going on. You don't go there for vacation when people will steal your baby.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

She said the best they can hope for is that the memory of the trial details will fade. But the town name is memorable. It's going to stick in people's minds. But they did say on the bright side, media people are helping fill the motels that are often vacant.

[Jimmy Wissman]

There it is. Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Because it's happening in January. So yeah. Greg Andrews, the chamber of commerce director, also bemoans the publicity's impact. He says, most of us, we just as soon not be in the spotlight. It's too bad all this attention has to be for a negative event when we have so many good things going on. Have you heard about our dam festival? It's very nice.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You haven't heard of a single person there.

[James Petregallo]

No, but it's so much fun. You'll love it. Wow. He said the good things. He's like, we have a multimillion dollar industrial expansion with new jobs. We have all this stuff. We're gonna have a celebration of. We have annual civil war reenactments in April. We also have a new motel and two new fast food franchises. And they're acting like murders. The only thing that happens in this fucking town.

[Jimmy Wissman]

We got a Popeyes.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, my God. Their newly elected mayor, Gary Filuo. He's a historic preservationist who owns a bait shop and is also the mayor. Any other mad libs you want to throw in? What this guy does, he says it's definitely not indicative of our community. When something happens like this, it's devastating to the morale. No one likes the stigma. I guess not. So they said. Yeah. 25 to 30 media members are there following the trial. They. I'm gonna describe this courtroom from the newspaper here. From 25 to 30 people have been following the trial in the majestic second floor courtroom, which is decorated with marble wainscoting, two marble fireplaces, and elaborately carved golden oak and cherry oak woodwork.

[Jimmy Wissman]

So they take your tax dollars and make them 1889. Okay. All right.

[James Petregallo]

Well, there's a new town, so they wanted to go look at our good town to get people to move here.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Marble wainscoting. You got it. Fuck, man. That's not easy to do.

[James Petregallo]

Well, people used to have pride. That's why.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's a great point.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, it's pretty. Look at every municipal building now. It looks like. It looks like a fucking manufactured home. It's a piece of shit. It's the cheapest thing they could get. Yeah, because people have no fucking pride. Nobody. People like, I don't want to pay a dollar extra in taxes, even if my town looks like a fucking prairie shithole. Rather than put a fucking nice courthouse up that represents your town. Well, what are you doing?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Looks like Glen Harbor Homes decorated.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, I don't want to invest in it, but I want people to come here. Well, no, you don't. Then.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Even if it looks like it's temporary.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Fucking ridiculous. Yeah. Even if we look like a shanty town, it's fine.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Bring a truck in here and move every building.

[James Petregallo]

God damn it. Yeah. Look at the buildings that companies used to build with fucking gargoyles on them and things carved in it. Now what is it? It's fucking garbage.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's all square.

[James Petregallo]

This is as cheap as we could get it. That's what it is now. Fucking ridiculous. So anyway, they said they. McCready. Who is this? Oh, Diana McCready. There we go. Diana McCready whose family runs the Grand Ann bed and breakfast in an 1897 Victoria home said she moved to Keokuk from San Francisco with her family four and a half years ago for a slower pace of life. She said this bizarre crime stuff was normal in California, but not in Iowa. She said Normal. She said that's why it's a shocking thing to happen in a town this size. People just want it to go away. So will she say she's insane? Let's find out. Kimmy was examined by psychiatric experts for both the defense and the state. Her trial attorney contacted the state public defender's office for suggestions for psychiatrists who might want. Who might make an evaluation favorable to her. Defense counsel discussed the case with three or four people whose names were provided before choosing Dr. Lauren Olson. Olson evaluated Hardy for the defense. Told the trial attorney that while Hardy was, quote. This is the understatement of the millennium. While Hardy was, quote, a little bit different. Yeah, okay. That is. Wow, you are selling some short shit there. She did not meet the standards for insanity or diminished responsibility. She could have said she's crazy, but not insane. That would have been normal. Hardy also.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I don't like her.

[James Petregallo]

No, I don't like her. She's obviously crazy. Now the trial comes around. This is not over. This trial is fucking nuts. Okay. Opening statement. Lee County Attorney Mike Short told the jury that Kimmy had masterminded an intricately woven murder plot that ended with Teresa's death. He said she told police, if you want something bad enough, you'll do anything to get it. Quote, unquote, holy man. Now the defense decides to forego the opening statement until they start their case.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Case.

[James Petregallo]

Which is an option they have. They can do it in the beginning or later. So now the prosecution ushers 27 witnesses into the court in two days, most of whom agree on the following. Kimmy Hardy has faked an untold number of countless presidencies.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah. Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Has owned at least four handguns, has been obsessed with having children since her sterilization and is a fucking liar. These are all the things we're trying to establish about her, which all of them are true. Now, the physical evidence, they have shown that the bathroom window curtain from the Hardee's upstairs bathroom matched in color pattern and everything else to the shower curtain determined to have been wrapped around the dead body of Teresa Lunn. They showed footprint records showing that six week old Eugene. Six week old child that Hardy had attempted to pass off as Dusty Eugene was actually Paul Eugene Lund. Either way, the middle name is Eugene. What the fuck did she know that? Did she?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Is that common? Is it so common there that they wouldn't notice.

[James Petregallo]

Both moms are named Lynn, middle names, and both kids have a Eugene. I don't know.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's weird.

[James Petregallo]

That's fucking weird. They produced hair and fabric samples from Hardy's basement crawl space, which they will testify belonged to Theresa Lund. The. They already told the jury that blood found in the crawl space has been proven by DNA tests to be Teresa Lund.

[Jimmy Wissman]

God damn.

[James Petregallo]

It's every bit of evidence you could possibly have. She had then had the baby in her arms. The handgun with serial numbers that were not scratched off. Apparently she didn't get rid of them. Matching the forensic tests, matching the ballistics showing it was the murder weapon is licensed in Kimmy's name.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wow.

[James Petregallo]

Fucking wow. Physical evidence is expected to get quite gruesome before the prosecution rests. The jurors have been warned to expect grass graphic photographs of Lund's body during the next few days because by the time they get her to autopsy, she is decomposed badly.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Way too far.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, badly, badly. So that's not good. Now, the dci, agent Paul Bush, told jurors that he examined the crawl space area at the home and found the soil at the entrance was damp and contained a small reddish brown stain. There was no evidence of blood spatters on the box or other items on boxes or other items in the basement. But they said DNA analysis of the stain shown showed that it matched six of seven of Teresa's DNA characteristics. That would mean that one person per 1700 people could have the same markers, which, if you didn't find her corpse, you could go, well, that's two. That's not enough people. But you found her corpse. It's her. Bob testifies.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, boy.

[James Petregallo]

Yep. He's made a deal with the prosecutors to testify.

[Jimmy Wissman]

This is dumb. Dumb.

[James Petregallo]

He said, I was at my job and I got told, you know, my foreman came up and said, baby's born, you should come home. Get on out of here. So he described himself as a happy man. He said, I believe the baby was mine. I had no reason to believe otherwise. He said that he'd been, yes, he did help to dispose of the body. And he'd been told by his wife to lie, saying that she had been pregnant. Just say I was pregnant and that you delivered the baby yourself. We just did it at home, okay? He said that. But after the guests had left, he went downstairs and removed a large board. And he said when he saw the body of a woman in a red suit, he became ill, but grabbed the ankles and pulled her out Anyway, he also testified that after dragging the body out of the basement, he did not connect the disappearance of Teresa and her baby to this body and this strange baby that just showed up. Nope, didn't connect. Didn't put two and two together there. Wow. He's so. He said the. He wrapped the body in plastic in an old comforter, dragged it up the stairs like we said, back of the truck, dumped everything separately. Now, neither the defense nor the prosecution asked him what explanation Kimmy gave him for the body being in the basement. What did she. Because he must have said, there's what now?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, tell me more.

[James Petregallo]

No one asks him, I guess because it would be hearsay. I don't know. But it wouldn't be because it's a direct to him, so it wouldn't be here. So. But no one asked him. What did she tell you? What the fuck? How could you do that? Now, the defense here, Kimmy, with her defense attorney, claims she bought the baby for different amounts. Either 3000 or 1500, we're not sure.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wow.

[James Petregallo]

But did. And also, she didn't kill Teresa, but she did bury the body after discovering it in the crawl space of her house. But she didn't kill her. Now, how do you get to there? Well, she's got quite the tail to weave on the stand. It's one thing to say this to your husband or to whoever, to get on a stand in a courtroom with a fireplace and marble wainscoting and a motherfucker in a robe sitting up there with a gavel and say, some of this shit is some of the biggest balls I've ever heard. She should have been a fucking bank robber or like an Old west gunfighter. Because she's got big, huge balls. Maybe that's why she can't have kids anymore. Just huge, big balls are in the way.

[Jimmy Wissman]

The balls are too big.

[James Petregallo]

They're in the way. Can't do it. Yeah, block them on in there. So her story is that a Florida drug dealer framed her for murder. And that's what's going on. What? And then she said not only that not only this drug dealer frame her, but that dozens of witnesses who've been testifying against her, including local police, FBI agents, and her own stepmother, all lied on the stand as part of this conspiracy. Really, really, really. A little different. A psychiatrist said, quote, unquote. So even though she was sterilized more than a decade ago, a procedure with a 99.7% success rate.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, it works great.

[James Petregallo]

She insisted that she was actually pregnant this whole time.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Is that right?

[James Petregallo]

She said she was six months pregnant in August and lost the baby after slipping in the shower. That's what she insists. Even though she had her tubes tied. Right. They say in a sometimes tearful testimony Wednesday, Kimmy, the Keokuk woman accused of faking a pregnancy, lured a young mother to her home and killing her to pass off the woman's infant son as her own, testified that she did not fake the entire pregnancy, just the last few days of it. Okay, that makes it much better.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Sure does. Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

In desperation and grief, she said that she turned to her former drug boss, who she said was Anthony Matrana. M A T R A N A Anthony Matrana, for help getting the baby her new husband so desperately wanted. She said he wanted this baby, and I lost it. We just got married. So I said, can you get me a baby? Because, you know, people can get drugs. They get babies, too. No problem.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And you do an eight ball and a baby, if you want.

[James Petregallo]

And a baby. What do you want? Eight ball and a baby. No problem. I'll be there in 15 minutes. He, apparently, Kimmy said, he told me that he knew someone, or this is the drug dealer. He knew someone who had a child recently and they didn't want it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

You know, Florida, most of Florida's unwanted children. I think that's the whole point of the place. It seemed like the perfect solution. I wanted the child and someone else did it. Didn't quote, unquote, crying as often as she told a story the prosecution openly called a load of garbage. She testified to the after her miscarriage on October 23rd. So she's saying it was five days before she said she had the baby. Through a mutual friend in Chicago, she left a message for Anthony Matrana to call her. And he did heard of her miscarriage and told her, I could get you kid no problem. Don't you worry about that. So August 28, the same day that Teresa happened to disappear, just coincidentally, two employees of Medtronic came to Hardy's home and asked Kimmy to leave for about a half hour.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, we know how you like to fret. Don't fret.

[James Petregallo]

We work for Anthony. Get out of here for a half hour. And she said, okay. So she went out and drove around Keokuk and then returned home about an hour later. When she did, the two men handed her a baby and said, good luck and left.

[Jimmy Wissman]

There's some trash in the basement you gotta deal with.

[James Petregallo]

That's the thing he told her. She told the jurors that two Mexican men Came to her home. When she returned, she had a baby. And then Metrona called the next day, and she said, I told him the baby was perfect. The most beautiful baby I've ever seen. Then this is no, the baby. The body hasn't been mentioned at all. She then said, anthony Mitrana called back the next day, and this is the best part of all. Telling her to look for a, quote, surprise in her basement. What? A surprise is a good thing. Hey, there's a surprise for you down there in the basement. Like, maybe he bought a couple months worth of diapers for her as, like, a gift or something? A new rattle? Nope, it's the mother's corpse. There's also that to deal with.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Surprise.

[James Petregallo]

Surprise.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, shit.

[James Petregallo]

She said, there she went downstairs looking at the surprise. She was very excited and ready to blow out the candles. She said she found Teresa's body with her, but with Kimmy's own handgun lying next to it. Oh, they used my gun to kill her. So now what do I do? So she said she didn't tell the police about Matrana sooner because she knows what he's capable of and feared that he would hurt her children.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He'll kill my kids with my own gun?

[James Petregallo]

That's right. And I'll put it next to it and blame him. She testified Matrona told her to look in the basement. And she said, I saw a part of a body. I was sick. I was hysterical. So the lawyer said, why didn't you call the police? She said, I didn't want to lose this precious baby. So when the guests were at her home on August 29, she said she pulled Bob off to the side and told him, there's a corpse in the basement.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I got a surprise.

[James Petregallo]

I was going to say, there's a surprise downstairs. Just keep passing it off to different people. Sell the house as is, but with a surprise in the basement. That's what you do as is, plus surprise. So she said, my husband was shocked beyond belief.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Well, he's supposed to be surprised.

[James Petregallo]

He's very surprised and shocked. So this is a surprise. Then she changed her story about the baby's purchase price on the stand, which is one of several inconsistencies throughout her testimony. Instead of paying 3,000 cash, she now said that she paid about 1,500 cash, plus an antique shotgun and a.380 caliber handgun to him.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I mean, around about three grand. It was antique.

[James Petregallo]

They take trade for babies and murders. It's. It's. It's like a. It's like a swap meet, really. Yeah, you can negotiate. You never know what the fuck's going to go on.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She's.

[James Petregallo]

Wow.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Might be legit crazy.

[James Petregallo]

That's what I mean. She's definitely crazy. But legally. And say no, but she's sure crazy as fuck. Wow. She said that none of her previous pregnancies over the course of four husbands and several boyfriends were ever faked, as the state alleges. That's just a bad tubes tie and didn't work. She said that a week before she fell in the shower, lost the baby. She said this was the only time. She said she bled heavily for days. She said, I was very upset. We were all looking forward to this very much. I didn't tell my husband. I didn't want to believe this was happening. So then her lawyer attempted to show that Anthony Matrana had been in Iowa running a drug operation in Iowa and had in 1995, killed a drug competitor in Washington, Iowa. McMurray asked a police officer to read from a clipping from the Washington, Iowa Evening Post. And it said, man killed in house explosion. And the man McMurray showed from the article was Floyd Clifford Groff, a convicted drug dealer in narcotics manufacturer. There's no connection with anything else. Just house blew up. He might have been making drugs and blew his house up.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's possible, yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Narcotics manufacturer tells me probably had some ether in there. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. He's making meth. Iowa is way ahead of the curve in meth making. In 96, they were already cooking that shit during cross examination, which. Good God, could this be any more of a prosecutor's dream? So much fun than to cross examine this lying idiot.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

She admitted that she lied to her husband and family about having hired a midwife to come to her house. But she also denied telling police that she did something so bad that I had to get Bob involved. And she said she never told them that she sold fake drugs at bars.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

Now, the prosecutor, Bruce McDonald, asked why. Hardy, let me ask you this. Basically, you had a miscarriage, so you were very sad. So you turned to a violent drug dealer for comfort.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Right?

[James Petregallo]

That's who you turned to. Trying to see what we're saying here, lady, that doesn't make sense. He said. You're asking this jury to believe that you chose to call a man you were afraid of and thought would hurt your children. This is who you turn to in your hour of need.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Excellent.

[James Petregallo]

And they said with short, sharp questions. He attacked Hardy's story, discounting her tale of a miscarriage at six months of pregnancy. Why has Anthony Mitrana's story changed so many times? He asked her why did she initially tell the police two men dropped off the baby without entering the house, waiting until after Theresa Lunn's blood was found in her basement to say the men came inside? Right. That's what it was. She's molding it to the evidence. Why did she first say that the men asked her to leave for 30 minutes, then later say an hour? Why in some versions does Matrana send two employees, and in other versions, he comes himself? Why did she first say she gave them 3,000 cash for the baby and later say she gave them 1500 cash and two guns? Weapons, including the 380 handgun determined to be the murder weapon?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Her responses all the same. She said she'd always told police the same thing, and all of the police and investigators and FBI agents who testified otherwise were lying.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay? They're lying.

[James Petregallo]

Everyone else is lying except me. I'm the only one telling the truth. Wow. She admitted that she lied to her husband and family, though she admitted that she also denied telling police some other shit. Now here's the big question. Does Anthony Matrana even fucking exist?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Who is he?

[James Petregallo]

Did she make this guy up? Well, McMurray, like we said, attempted to show that he blew up a guy in 1995. And he's a big fucking drug dealer dealer in the area from Florida. Here. The prosecution tried to punch holes in that story. They testify that two FBI databases listing US drug dealers, those who have been arrested or even mentioned by other people arrested for drugs. So someone came in and said, I know a guy named this. They put you on this list. The name Anthony Matrana does not exist in that list at all.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I've never heard it.

[James Petregallo]

Phone records also seem to contradict Kimmy's claim that Anthony Matrana called her one day in the summer of 96, telling her that he would get her a child if she would pay him $3,000 and agree to mule drugs for him, too?

[Jimmy Wissman]

I got some condoms full of heroin. Come here, please.

[James Petregallo]

Come in here. You don't need condoms for anything else, but for heroin you need it for. But Hardy's phone records, the prosecution showed, do not list any incoming calls from a Florida residence during the entire year of 1996.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She's never gotten a phone call from Florida.

[James Petregallo]

Never. The suggestion that Metrona was a true killer came after a morning of emotional and gruesome testimony. Probably the biggest discovery of the day was that the mysterious Anthony Matrana does exist.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, is that right?

[James Petregallo]

Yes. He's just not a drug dealer.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He's just a dude that sells cars in fucking Manchester.

[James Petregallo]

It's even. It's even funnier. It's even fucking funnier. This is fucking amazing. As the defense's only two witnesses, both Kimmy Hardy and her ex husband, Gary Drummond, testified they had lived with Metrana in houma, Louisiana, in 1981. Her first husband and her lived with this guy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, my God.

[James Petregallo]

With their one rebuttal witness, the prosecution showed that Metrana does not live in Florida, as Hardy has contended, but still lives in the same town of Louisiana, Houma. We did it as an episode, remember?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Never left.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, Never left. Though Kimmy Hardy had implicated Medrana in the murder and everything, Hardy has also said she had no address or phone number for him. She did not know how to get in touch with the drug dealer, she said, because that's not the way it's done in the drug business. In the drug business, no one can get ahold of anyone. People have been looking to make a deal, same deal since, like, 72. They just can't get ahold of somebody.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Homing pigeons. And they just. Sometimes they just go away.

[James Petregallo]

Good God. That's the opposite of how it's done in the drug business. Availability is the number one.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She's like the opposite, but the exact same as Casey Anthony she is, but.

[James Petregallo]

Crazier and dumber somehow.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And somehow cares for children a little more.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, yeah. I don't think she would have killed her kid. That's.

[Jimmy Wissman]

No, no.

[James Petregallo]

They said. Until Tuesday, it had never been disclosed that Hardy had lived with Matrana in Louisiana. After that information came out, then the prosecutors found him immediately. He's listed in an AT&T directory. Information. Still living in Houma, Louisiana. He's a baker. He owns a bakery.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Poor bastard. Just trying to make bear claws.

[James Petregallo]

He does live in. He does deal in flour, but he cooks it first before he sells it to anybody. He puts egg in there, too, is the difference. What the fuck is. Horrible bastard. In a conference with police and the prosecution's lawyers, Metrana told them that he has never dealt drugs and his record is completely clean except for a traffic ticket in 1977. For 20 years, this man's done nothing wrong but bake fucking cakes.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Amazing pastries.

[James Petregallo]

This guy's baking napoleons down in Louisiana. He said he's been a Louisiana baker forever, not a Florida drug dealer. He said, I've never heard such crazy stuff in my life. He said, they can check me out. I'm not Scared they ain't got nothing to find. She's gotta be insane to say some of the stuff she said.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Well, don't say that she's crazy.

[James Petregallo]

He said, I'm not a drug dealer. I'm a baker. He said he's shaken up by the brouhaha here. He's very shaken up.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Poor son of a bitch.

[James Petregallo]

He said they had to. He said, number one, he's never even been to Iowa ever.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Really?

[James Petregallo]

The whole state. And they had to jog his memory about Gary and Kimmy. He didn't even. He was like, who are we talking about? And they were like, you know, 1981. He goes, oh, yeah, that's right.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

We were. My roommates from 15 years ago. Okay. Yeah. He said, it took me a while to try and even remember, and that's a long time ago.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

He said he's puzzled that she would even remember his name. He goes, I didn't even remember her fucking name. She remembered my name.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You had to tell me. Put me in there.

[James Petregallo]

Wow. He said her and her husband Gary stayed with him for three, maybe four weeks. Not barely a month, barely even a month when he was living in Bayou Blue, a small community on the outskirts of Houma.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's why she thought they'd never find him. So she dug deep into her mind to find this crazy name. Wow.

[James Petregallo]

That is fucking funny. Her husband worked for him for a little while at a bakery store where he was a supervisor. Oh, my God. Matrana now owns his own shop, Best Bakery. I don't know if it's still around, but if it is, please give this man business.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Go buy a cupcake.

[James Petregallo]

Christ, that was 30 years ago almost, though he could be dead by now or retired. They got the gun dealer, Darwin Todd. It's really funny that his name is Darwin. That really sets it all into. That really sets all of this into fucking focus. A local gun dealer that he had decided not to sell Hardy a gun if she returned to the store because one of the places she shopped at was his place. He said that when she was in the store, she seemed agitated and asked him, if I held this gun point blank range, would it kill someone?

[Jimmy Wissman]

God damn.

[James Petregallo]

Which is not what you ask when you're fucking buying a gun.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You take the gun from her and tell her, please, get lost.

[James Petregallo]

Wow. A second local gun dealer, Lonnie McCoy, testified that the gun determined to be the murder weapon had matching serial numbers to the one he sold. Her defense attorney attacked the testimony of a DCI agent named Robert Harvey, who told jurors that one of the bullets found in the skull came from the.380 caliber handgun. Definitely. He was less positive about the second bullet. His bullets get fucked up. Saying he couldn't rule out that it could have been shot from a different caliber weapon such as a 9 millimeter or.357.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Sure.

[James Petregallo]

Okay. Now prosecution, in their closing, they call Kimmy a consummate liar. That's a good way to put it. Who must be convicted of first degree murder. He said this is simply a made up story. Look at what she's telling us. Her version of the story is repeatedly at odds with witness after witness, including her own husband and stepmother, Honestly, who she calls a liar. The defense closing. How do you fuck if you're the defense? How do you.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Wow. He told the. I don't even know what. Where to go with this. If I'm them.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Can we try again?

[James Petregallo]

Is this. This, this didn't work as well as I thought it was. We have a do over on this one. He told the jury. This is multiple lawyers. Tell the jury that to specifically consider one thing. Okay. Kimmy wouldn't have had time to lure Teresa to her home, kill her, clean up the mess, stuff the body in the crawl space and be lying in bed passing the baby off as her own by 10:30am considering we knew that Teresa was around at 8:30 in two hours. That's not enough time for that. They say so that by the time Robert came home from work that day. But she didn't have to clean up the basement that day. She could have done it. She could have done. As long as she got him out of the. Got her out of the living room. She could have dealt with it while Robert was at work the next day.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Absolutely.

[James Petregallo]

And they cleaned it later after they got rid of the body.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Right.

[James Petregallo]

So the other defense attorney said that the prosecutors didn't form the fabric of proof that they promised. She said they've produced something like lace and lace has a lot of holes in it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It does.

[James Petregallo]

What are you talking about?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Somebody was. Somebody's turned on.

[James Petregallo]

Wow. Fuck. Picture her in lace. Then the other defense attorney said that, you know, we're not trying to say she's a model citizen, but she's not a murderer. He says we're not saying she's Snow White or Betty Crocker, which are both fictional characters by the way.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Right. Neither of them exist.

[James Petregallo]

Neither of them even exist as like an actor. They're just a person, just a name. She's not up for Mother of the Year. She's dealt drugs, she's done drugs and she's been promiscuous. But that doesn't make her a murderer. If it does, then we've got a lot of them out on the streets.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay?

[James Petregallo]

Okay. So the jury comes back in. As soon as Kimmy sees the looks on the jurors faces, she motions for them to take her 12 year old out of the courtroom.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She wants to. Yeah, she wants.

[James Petregallo]

This isn't going well at all. This took six hours for the jury to come to a verdict. Here though, we'll find out why they come to a verdict. They find her guilty of first degree murder, second degree kidnapping and child stealing.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

They say at the time they were talking about they can do the sentencing right now or delay. And the defense said, let's fucking do it now.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Really.

[James Petregallo]

Let's get it going. So the judge says, no problem. You ma'am, may fuck off. Life without parole.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Plus 25 years.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You've done it, lady.

[James Petregallo]

You did it all there. You tell your tales and your stories all you want from prison. You can't kill people and steal their babies. That's crazy. She silently nodded her head as the judge sentenced her to forever in prison.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

One of her public defenders, Laura Amundsen, said that Hardy's first words after the verdict were read were, we're filing an appeal. The lawyer said she's taking it very calmly. I'm sure it's a disappointment though. This lawyer said she requested that Hardy be sentenced immediately because I asked her and she said she was ready. Now the Mother Teresa's mother, Velva here, said the outcome brought her no peace. She said it was the right verdict, but that doesn't keep my daughter alive. This doesn't help.

[Jimmy Wissman]

This is awful.

[James Petregallo]

You could sentence her to death, you could draw and caught her in front of the courthouse. It's not gonna bring my fucking person back. That's the thing here. Teresa's family all said they were happy about the the verdict. Velma, or I'm sorry, Velva said she's fine with it because quote, I don't believe in the death penalty. But Teresa's younger brother Gerald said, well, I do. Okay, calm down, Gerald. Standing quietly in the courthouse hallway was Pam Brauschenweig. She wore heart shaped pin with a picture of Teresa Lund in the center. She had been in the second row of the courtroom since jury selection began. She said Teresa was my cousin and my best friend. She said she felt no relief knowing that Kimmy would be spending the rest of her life in prison. She said, frankly, it broke my heart to see her family. They didn't do this and their kids didn't do this, but they're paying for it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Sure.

[James Petregallo]

Next up, what about Terry Bell, the baby's actual father? This poor bastard, he lost his fucking new wife.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Lost everything.

[James Petregallo]

Not his new wife, but his wife, the mother of his children. It's a lot for him. He said that she was convicted and that gave him no satisfaction. He said, I would be much happier if Theresa wasn't staying here. Was staying here like that would be fine. Rather have her back. He says he thinks that Robert should be convicted of first degree murder also.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

She said that. He said, there have been. Should have been no deals cut for nobody is what he said.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He wants vengeance. Jesus.

[James Petregallo]

He wants vengeance, which doesn't. Helpful. They asked the jurors what they had. Why did it take six fucking hours? One juror who asked not to be identified said that Hardy was not credible and made countless inconsistent statements. Meaning to Kimmy. She said from day one she had different stories and told different stories about the events. So the only reason they deliberated for so long was because of the defense's assertion that she would not have had enough time to commit the murder. They actually considered that. Did she have the time to do it?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

And if she did, then great. So. Another juror characterized the deliberations as heated. I would be cracking up. Imagine being in that juror. I'd be laughing. Did you hear what she fucking said? Oh, my God. That's crazy. The dude's a baker. He's a baker. I'd be dying laughing. Holy shit. Wow. This juror said it was a hard day. The whole thing was tough. It was a tough decision, but we felt we made the right decision. How is it tough? I don't get it. Now, Bob Handy, Robert, the husband here, he pleads guilty to charges of interference with official acts and possession of a firearm by a felon. Because he's already a felon. He is originally charged with seven felonies, but he's gone down to that and he is sentenced to. You, sir, may fuck off. Up to 10 years in prison.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Really?

[James Petregallo]

So he'll probably do, you know, five or six years.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Ten years to. Wow.

[James Petregallo]

For dumping a body.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's pretty nuts.

[James Petregallo]

That's. They. He gave. That was it. They had to make that deal. He gave all the testimony.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Helpful. Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

And he. I don't. I think they honestly fucking believed him that he didn't know.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I do too. Yeah. He's just a dummy.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. I Think they put themselves in his shoes and went, wow, imagine that. That'd be fucking nuts. What would you do?

[Jimmy Wissman]

I would hurt. That would hurt so bad.

[James Petregallo]

So she's life without 1998. She wants a new trial.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Why?

[James Petregallo]

The first trial she said was too sensational. Too sensational? She said that her case was too sensational to be tried fairly in her hometown where she was convicted of first degree murder. In turning down her appeal for a new trial, though, the court said that although media reports and comments by officials were at times sensational, they weren't enough to ruin her chances of a fair trial. They said some of the reports carried a sensational tone, however, there were no more sensational than the inherent in the crimes alleged.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Yes. What you did is sensational. It's fucking crazy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

How can you describe what you did without being sensational?

[James Petregallo]

You stole a baby, killed a mother, faked a shitload of pregnancies. You buried a fucking teddy bear.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You buried a lie, lady.

[James Petregallo]

You told. You told everybody that a fucking baker from Houma, Louisiana is a drug dealing international murderer. This is fucking crazy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wow.

[James Petregallo]

They said upon reviewing the record, we find sufficient evidence for the jury to have infer car that Hardy committed first degree murder 2001. She tries again and they say that Robert Hardy's testimony fit her defense. They say that it was a little bit different, but not the. Oh, that was the psychiatrist. They basically say here that ineffective assistance of counsel, and that's because her attorney should have objected to her husband's testimony because they're married and he shouldn't be able to testify against it. But that is if you don't want to testify against it. You can't compel someone to. But if they want to, to stay out of jail for the rest of their life, they're perfectly fucking welcome to.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's the other part.

[James Petregallo]

She also argued that that the lawyer was ineffective because he should have used an insanity defense, not taking into account that their hired psychiatrist for the defense said that she was a little bit different, but not insane. So what are you going to. How are you going to have a defense insanity defense on that? It's fucking ridiculous. They said the marital exception to the testimony is one of several privileged communications that exist to promote, define confidential relationships and encourage candid communications between the parties in those relationships on the premise that society is better protected by the privilege than the value of the testimony. The privilege for marital communications is recognized in Iowa. By statute, neither husband nor wife can be examined in any case as to any communication made by one to the other while married. Nor shall they, after the marriage relation ceases, be permitted to reveal in testimony any such communication made while the marriage subsisted this app. This privilege is not absolute. They're both common law and legislative exceptions. Hardy contends her trial attorney should have objected testimony that Robert learned from her wife. From his wife. A smell in the basement came up and it was the sewer backing up all that kind of shit, saying all of Robert shit, though they said that. The state contends marital privilege does not apply in this case. Though the state first argues without authority, the testimony of Robert at trial did not refer to private communications between the Hardys made in the context of their marriage. We find no reason to accept this part of the state's argument. The state next argues that the decision not to object to the testimony was strategic and the testimony was not prejudicial to Hardy's defense because it corroborated aspects of the case Hardy did not deny. The state further contends that even if the statements were not admissible, they did not adversely. Adversely affect her defense because they were corroborative and communicate cumulative in nature. The state further contends Hardy was not prejudiced because of the strength of the state's case. Okay, so anyway, the statement. The statement that the smell in the basement may not have been sewer gas was not prejudicial and was consistent with her statements indicating she knew the body was there the day after she got the smell baby because she said the people put it down there. The Mexicans put it down there as she put it. And while the statement Hardy told Robert to say that he helped deliver the baby impacted on Hardy's truthfulness, it supports her representation that she was pregnant and delivered her child. She's failed to prove her trial counsel was ineffective or that she was prejudiced by errors. Affirmed. Keep on keeping on, bitch. There you go. Lectures Bruce McDonald, who was the prosecutor there. Yeah, he still does lectures. I found iacra.org has State of Iowa versus Kimmy Lynn Hardy presented by Bruce McDonald. It's an hour and a half presentation of a lecture that he does that's pretty fucking interesting. Here. September 20th of 2023. They feature this case on an episode of Snapped.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Of course they did.

[James Petregallo]

Of course they do. Because it's a woman who killed someone, so they gotta find it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, there's nothing snapped about this.

[James Petregallo]

This is not snapped. This is crazy from the start.

[Jimmy Wissman]

This is consistent.

[James Petregallo]

This is slow. Boiled. It should be called. Yeah, Slow boil.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Consistency.

[James Petregallo]

Consistency. Hey. Consummate liars. As she should have been on. So there you go everybody. There's Teotook, Iowa and what a fuck is that. One of the craziest in a thousand true crime stories. I don't think we've told five crazier ones than that. Right?

[Jimmy Wissman]

She's unbelievable.

[James Petregallo]

She is a fucking nut. So there you go. If you enjoy that story, tell the entire world about it. Get on whatever app you're listening on and tell the world. Give us five stars. It helps a lot. Give a rating of you on there.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I got to know so much more about her. What the fuck happened, dude?

[James Petregallo]

She's a mess and we don't know much more about her. That's the fucked up part. I wish I knew everything about her. Yeah, I want to know. I want like a like a Ken Burns documentary on her. Like an eight parter.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I need her childhood and everything.

[James Petregallo]

She's so head over to shut up and give me murder dot com. Get your tickets for live shows. Also live shows. 2025 are live except for one date which will be, I think we release it on January 14th. What? That date is two weeks from now, but February 7th, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, you're up first. We're in Oakland at the Carnegie Music Call or whatever it is in Oakland, not in Munhall like we were last time. Then the next night we are in Columbus at the Davidson. So get your tickets there. Kick this year off right by selling. We can't wait. So thank you so much for doing that. We will see you there. Shut up andgive me murder.com. you also definitely want to follow us on social media. Smalltown murder on Instagram, Small town pot on Facebook. You Definitely want Patreon patreon.com crimeinsports so P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com crimeinsports Anyway, that is where you get all the bonus material. Anybody $5 a month or above. You're not only going to get a huge back catalog of hundreds of bonus episodes you've never heard before, but you're going to get new ones every other week. One crime in sports, one small town murder and you get it all. So that's this week what you're going to get for crime and sports. We're going to go do personal ads again, go back and dip into the newspaper archives and see how people used to try to get people to fuck them before the Internet. It's great. It's a dark world out there. Then for small town murder we are going to talk about a subject we've been asked about. A million times because it's such small town murder, the way it happened and everything. The West Memphis Three. And we're going to talk about not the whole case because that would take us six weeks to talk about. But we're going to talk about how the fuck did those kids even get it to the point where they were the under suspicion for this. How do we even get there? It's crazy. It's a crazy journey. We'll talk all about that. Patreon.com crimeinsports and you get a shout out at the end of the show which is right fucking now. Jimmy, hit me with the names of the people who would never ever, ever shoot us in the head and steal the baby from our arms. Hit me with him right now.

[Jimmy Wissman]

This executive producers are Liz Vasquez, Peyton Meadows, Gary Howard, Amy Barton, Janice Hill, Ben Cartledge and Marlene Parsons. Yeah, you guys, thank you all for being a part of this for so long.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, thank you so much and really doing it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And Ben Cartledge.

[James Petregallo]

Absolutely.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He's fantastic.

[James Petregallo]

Liz sends us Christmas presents. Thank you so much.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Other producers this week. Chase Scott, Thomas Smith, Meline Shrier, Jason. Fran with no last name. Fran B. Jessica Martin. Anastasia with no last name. Matthew Norris. Shark Loaf. I don't know what that is. Brian Sydney, Elizabeth Gibbon.

[James Petregallo]

Shark.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's just Shark in there. Yeah. Stephie J. Danielle Holt, Lily with no last name. Wesley Duanberry. Abby Fernandez. Mark with no last name. Clarence Griser. Greaser maybe. Mitch with no last name. Joe Hartwell, Claude Musselman. I wrote that and I just got it. That's fantastic.

[James Petregallo]

Found him out in the garden.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Don't dig on this property. Anything in here you dig up, it's yours. We're still looking for the horse.

[James Petregallo]

Still got a horse around here? It hasn't been accounted for.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Very well done. A patron. Jason with no last name. Kyle P. Miranda Randalls. Tiffany Greenwood, Aaron Ziegler, Nathan Burrows. Jason with no last name. J.M. big Brown, Stephen Carson, Kristen. Nope, that's Kirsten Bodhi. Stefanus. Stefanis. Stefanus Lombard. It's not Stephanous. Might be Michaelinski, Vanessa Keyhole, J. Bad Fowler. Flower. That's what that is. Wes Watts, Jessica Allen, Cat Graham. Dustin Lumley, Paula with no last name. Crunky Basil, Candy cane. I'm sure. Jen. Oh boy. Kalski Ki. What the. Katie B. Caitlyn Yancy, Jessica Lupo, Milan Puskus, Jen Walsh, Stephen Moore, Stefan. Maybe Lost my Taco. Brian with no last name. Emmanuel Via Real. Cecilia with no last name. Rory Zakowski. Brandy Shearer. Lachlan McNeil. Denise Rule. Candace. Shahan. Shahan.

[James Petregallo]

Maybe.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Sean Thomas Hall. Benja. Just Benja. All right. No last name. Benya.

[James Petregallo]

Owen.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Fledging. Jesus. Clarissa Miller. Brian Schroyer. Book Lady. Lyle with no last name. Amy Stevens. Bethany Bach. Brian and Faye Todd. Agent Buttery Nipple. All right. Jennifer with no last name. Caroline Carol. Leanne Iron. Irondale. Rory with no last name. David Horn. Richard with no last name. Adam with no last name. Carly Dies. Angie Huggard. Camille Henrik Heinrich. Missy with no last name. Chaz Langston. Jody Prulette Priorit. All right. Lachlan Cole. Matt Cameron. Brandon Murphy. Gabriella Snyder. Kaylee North. Bryn Shiel. Sheely. Maybe Michael Johnstone. Sam Richardson. Melissa Egot. Ergot. Tristan Adams. Joe Hewitt. Will with no last name. Trevor Coulter. Bri Brit Walls. Dan Yammon. Dial. Dill Dozer. Oh, Dill. Gotcha. Dill Dozer. Got it. All right. Courtney Jadali. Megan Lee. Susan Suma. Michelle Michelle Nichols. Michael. Michael with no last name. Chris Clinton. Jenny Harmuth. G.B. brooks. Brandy Hammond Smith. Muriel. Muriel Lavender. Chris Elder. Lisa Odium. Odie. Odlum. Odium. Is that an I? It's an I. Odium. Josh Chalmers. Jesse Alexander. Leslie Ann Lurkey. Lurkey. Lana Moore. Loun Amore.

[James Petregallo]

Sounds like something like a way you'd call some. I don't know. He's okay, but he's a little lurky. A little lurky? Just creeps around the corner on you every once in a while.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Loan or more. Maybe a little more. Emily Gage. Sweener with no last name. Butter crumbs. Buttercrumbs. Doreen B. Mark. Chapa. Chapa Delane. Chap Delaney. Say C.J. frisch. Fritch. Kaylee Steubens. Stubbins. Maybe Robert Green. Amber with no last name. Ducky Gunther. Madeline Pressman. Yes. Pressman. Press man. Selena Coppert. Pressman. 83 Pisces. Melissa. Jesse. Susan Mazer. Christian Newton. Lori Bracken. Pete with no last name. Kevin R. Samantha Savory. Matthew Cosgrove. Robin Robin. A. Bobbin. All right. Mark with no last name. Lee Gamble Dash with no last name. Chandra with no last name. Emily. A. Marissa McNeil. Barbie Bayer. Denise Spivey. Renee Rena. Rena Sheets. Kyle Ganetic and Ganekin. Jen Jinnikin. Ryan Panetta. Petita. Petita. Amy Baxter. Aaron Rail. Tommy Tanya, Tanya May, Carrie Harder. Melissa Peters. Bitchy Grandma. Noah Wilson. Toia. Sophia. Sophia Carlson. True zigzag. Those fake ones, they're the worst. Uh, Stephen Ramirez. Diane. Diane Ringel. Uh, Ringol. Maybe, uh, Keith.

[James Petregallo]

Oh.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Richard Higby. Lesbi Bent. Lesbie. Leslie Benson. Jesus fucking Christ. Jacob Mowry, Dwayne Jeffries, Nelly T ailey. Ally. Ally Billing, Tickle Bitties. Melinda Denton, Megan Martin, Roxanne with no last name. And all of our patrons. You guys are the best. Thank you.

[James Petregallo]

Thank you everybody so much for all that you do for us every goddamn day and every week and every everything and for the last thousand episodes. Thank you for what you do for us and we will hope to be here for a thousand more. You want to follow us on social media individually? Very easy to do that. Shut up and give me. Murder.com has drop down menus and links to every goddamn thing you could want. That said, thank you so much for joining us everybody and until next week it's been our pleasure by if you like Small Town Murder, you can listen early and ad free now by joining Wondery plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts prime members can listen early and ad free on Amazon music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short [e-mail] survey.