#571 - Murder Martini - Pewaukee, Wisconsin

Summary

Podcast Summary: Small Town Murder - Episode #571: "Murder Martini - Pewaukee, Wisconsin"

Release Date: February 20, 2025
Hosts: James Pietragallo & Jimmy Whisman

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1. Introduction

In Episode #571, titled "Murder Martini - Pewaukee, Wisconsin," hosts James Pietragallo and Jimmy Whisman delve into a perplexing murder case set in the tranquil town of Pewaukee. Combining in-depth research with their signature comedic flair, the duo unravels the intricate web surrounding the tragic death of Lynn Hernan.

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2. Background of Pewaukee, Wisconsin

Pewaukee is portrayed as a serene suburban community outside Milwaukee, known for its picturesque lake and family-friendly atmosphere.

• Historical Context:
  "The city of Pewaukee wasn't actually incorporated until 1999, but there's been people here forever. It was originally a farming community with a significant ice delivery industry." ([08:10])

• Demographics & Lifestyle:
  "Median household income is high at $110,269, and the town is predominantly married with a median age of 44." ([12:35])
  "Residents enjoy lake activities, community events like the Lake Country Fall Fest, and have a low crime rate, one-third of the national average." ([24:13])

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3. Profile of Lynn Hernan

Lynn Hernan is introduced as a dedicated hairstylist passionate about vintage aesthetics and the classic film "The Wizard of Oz."

• Personal Background:
  "Born June 26, 1956, Lynn graduated high school in 1974 with aspirations of owning her salon. She remained unmarried, had no children, and was deeply involved in her community." ([25:52])

• Personality Traits:
  "Lynn was described as beautiful inside and out, with a penchant for keeping amicable relationships even after breakups." ([29:02])

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4. Relationship with Jesse Kurzewski

Jesse Kurzewski, Lynn's close friend and eventual caretaker, becomes a central figure in the unfolding mystery.

• Initiation of Relationship:
  "They met at a music festival in 1983. Jesse admired Lynn, who despite her own reservations, formed a deep bond with her." ([29:25])

• Caretaking Role:
  "By 2016, as Lynn's health deteriorated due to undiagnosed conditions, Jesse became her full-time caretaker, handling groceries, bills, and daily necessities." ([40:39])
  "In 2018, concerns arose when Anthony Potza, a close family friend, noticed suspicious financial activities and Lynn's dwindling bank account." ([50:21])

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5. Health Decline and Financial Issues

Lynn's unexplained health problems and subsequent financial decline set the stage for the mystery.

• Medical Challenges:
  "Lynn suffered from lung disease, high blood pressure, and severe gastrointestinal issues that baffled her doctors." ([42:02])

• Financial Deterioration:
  "Despite her inheritance of $250,000 in 2014, by the time of her death, Lynn's accounts were nearly depleted, raising red flags about unauthorized transactions." ([37:54])

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6. Suspicious Activities and Investigation

The investigation reveals a trail of financial misconduct and potential foul play.

• Unauthorized Financial Transactions:
  "Jesse issued 20 out of 22 checks from Lynn's accounts directly to herself between January 2016 and October 2018, totaling over $144,000." ([72:18])

• Attempted Fraud and Fabrication:
  "Jesse attempted to fabricate evidence by creating fraudulent documents and recordings to exonerate herself, as evidenced by a 37-page letter instructing others on creating fake notary stamps and voice recordings." ([125:00])

• Discovery of Over-the-Counter Poison:
  "Lynn's cause of death was determined to be tetrahydrozoline poisoning, an uncommon substance not found in her system, suggesting external administration." ([79:06])
  "Crushed medication was found on her chest, but toxicology reports did not detect these substances, indicating potential staging of the scene." ([54:39])

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7. Trial and Charges

The courtroom drama unfolds with mounting evidence against Jesse.

• Prosecution's Case:
  "The prosecution argues that monetary gain was Jesse's sole motive, presenting evidence of significant financial theft and the creation of fraudulent evidence." ([120:03])

• Defense's Argument:
  "The defense contends that Lynn's death was a suicide influenced by her medical and psychiatric conditions, asserting that Jesse was acting out of a desire to help." ([128:00])

• Notable Quotes:

  • James Pietragallo: "If you think true crime and comedy should never ever go together, I don't know, we might not be for you, but we might be for you." ([06:25])
  • Jesse Kurzewski (via recording): "I didn't commit murder. I didn't poison Lynn." ([82:38])

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8. Verdict and Aftermath

After prolonged deliberations, the jury finds Jesse guilty.

• Conviction:
  "Jesse Kurzewski is convicted of first-degree murder and two counts of felony theft, resulting in a life sentence with the possibility of parole after 40 years." ([175:09])

• Restitution:
  "Jesse is ordered to pay $380,000 in restitution, alongside an additional $16,000 for court-related expenses." ([177:16])

• Final Statements:

  • Prosecutor: "Believe this is suicide, you would have to believe that the most cosmic intervention in the entire world happened at the exact point Jesse maximized her financial gain."
  • Judge Darrow: "I believe Lynn's death was premeditated... Were you poisoning Lynn Hernan all along?" ([210:...)

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9. Conclusion

"Murder Martini - Pewaukee, Wisconsin" presents a compelling narrative of deception, financial manipulation, and tragedy in a seemingly peaceful town. Hosts James and Jimmy skillfully weave the story, highlighting the complexities of human relationships and the dark undercurrents that can exist beneath a community's facade.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• James Pietragallo:

  • "[06:25] 'We don't make fun of the victims or the victims' families...'"
  • "[07:17] 'We are going to Pewaukee, Wisconsin...'"
  • "[175:09] 'That is Pewaukee, Wisconsin. Holy shit. Wow, that is fucking bonkers.'"

• Jimmy Whisman:

  • "[05:51] 'Okay?'"
  • "[29:02] 'She's living a life.'"
  • "[82:38] 'Are you serious?'"

• Jesse Kurzewski (Recorded):

  • "[86:58] 'This is your opportunity to address the court...'"
  • "[89:07] 'I had a gun to my head...'"
  • "[152:03] 'I've never done it...'"

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Note: This summary excludes advertisements and non-content sections, focusing solely on the murder case narrative presented in the episode.

Transcript

[James Petragallo]

Hey everybody. Just gonna take a quick break from the show and tell you about noom. Has NOOM helped you? I believe it has.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, it's got an app. You can do tracking. It's terrific.

[James Petragallo]

It does. And NOOM builds personal plans that can meet individual needs. That's the thing. Takes into account any dietary restrictions, medical issues, other personal needs. That helps build a plan that works for you. And yes, so you've. I know that you've had your own personalized program here that you've been working on.

[Jimmy Whisman]

And weight loss, this is weight loss results that last. They stick around because you get yourself into a lifestyle change. That's what matters.

[James Petragallo]

That's mainly. You can't just say I'm going to cut that out for a month and then go back. That's not what it is.

[Jimmy Whisman]

You don't.

[James Petragallo]

So I'm glad it's helping you. That's great. And it really does. I like the psychology and biology based approach here. NOOM weight uses psychology. That's why they say losing weight starts with your brain but it also takes into account your unique biological factors. Jimmy. All of all of your all different multitude flora and fauna that goes on inside of you there. Stay focused on what's important to you with noom's psychology and biology based approach. Sign up for your trial [e-mail], noom.com n o o m.com here based on 3.5 year study of actively engaged Noom users with minimum starting BMI of 25. Individual results may vary. Visit our website for more information. Hey everybody. Just gonna take a quick break from the show to tell you a little bit more about Rocket Money. It's the start of a new year. It's the perfect time to get organized, set your goals, prioritize what matters most. And for me, top priority is getting myself together here. Financial wellness, doing that which that feels important, you know, just feels like adult stuff that you have to do. And thanks to Rocket Money, my goals feel achievable. Now they show me all my subscriptions in one place, help me easily cancel ones I forgot that I'd been paying for. Which happened to me. Absolutely happened to me. I had for years I was paying for something. I was like what is going on here? Rocket Money found it and saved me lots of money since then. Cause it's been a while. So they did a great job here. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings Rocket Money has over 5 million users and has saved a total of 500 million in canceled subscriptions, saving members up to $740 a year. When using all the app's premium features, cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to RocketMoney.com SmallTown Murder today that's RocketMoney.com SmallTown Murder RocketMoney.com SmallTownMurder now back to the show. In the depths of an Atlanta forest, a clash between activists and authorities ends in tragedy. I'm Matthew Scher, and on my new podcast, We Came to the Forest, we exposed the hidden truths behind a shootout that left one activist dead and countless lives forever changed. Binge all episodes of We Came to the Forest ad free on Wondery this week in Pewaukee, Wisconsin. What appears to be a tragic tale of a person giving up on life is actually a most diabolical plot to murder an innocent person with a very unique weapon and get everything they had. Welcome to Small Town Murder. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder. Yay. Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed. My name is James Petragallo. I'm here with my co host, Jimmy.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I'm Jimmy Whisman.

[James Petragallo]

Thank you folks so much for joining us on another crazy edition of Small Town Murder. We have a really wild one today, a murderer who just. You don't know what is going on in this person's head and it is insane. So we will get to all that and more. First of all, head over to shut upandgivemerder.com get your tickets for live shows. If you want them, get them right now. Our next batch here is in May. We have St. Louis at the pageant. We have Chicago at the Riviera. St. Louis is almost sold out. I mean, few tickets left to that. And Chicago is getting close too. So get your tickets right now. San Diego, just about sold out. Madison, Grand Rapids, Portland, these are all later on in the year. So D.C. seattle, Philly, all these shows. Philly's almost sold out, too. Get your tickets right now. If you want to go to a Small Town Murder live show is what we're saying. Shut up and givememurder.com can't wait to see you out there. We loved Pittsburgh and Columbus. Thank you so much for coming out. We had a great time and the crowds were awesome and just so much fun. Midwest, as cold and nasty and crappy and gray as it was, it was still a good time and we didn't mind it at all. So windy in Columbus. Also listen to our other two shows, Crime in Sports, which we're doing a special series on Evel Knievel right now. You want to hear the craziest story you've ever heard? Check that out. Also your stupid opinions for the funniest reviews out there. And if you listen to all that, you want more Patreon, we have for you. Patreon.com CrimeInSports is where you get all the bonus material. Anybody $5 a month or above. You get everything, a whole immediately upon subscription, hundreds of back episodes of bonus stuff you've never heard before. New ones every other week, including this week. You get one crime in sports, one small town murder, and you get it all. For crime and sports this week it's disaster potpourri. Yes, we've done ballooning disasters, amusement park disasters, industrial disasters. We're going to mix it all up this week and have a disaster potpourri. Then for small town murder, we're going to talk about psychics that actually succeeded.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Okay?

[James Petragallo]

We're always talking about psychics doing terrible jobs and sometimes they found bodies and stuff. And we'll find out if it was, you know, really a psychic thing or whatever. We'll look into it and we'll figure out psychics that actually succeeded. Patreon.com crimeinsports and you get a shout out at the end of the show too. Jimmy will mess your name all up, even though he would love to read it correctly. Disclaimer time. This is a comedy show. We're comedians. Also, there's gonna be murder. That's how this works. See, here's how we do it. We don't make fun of the victims or the victims families.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Why's that, James?

[James Petragallo]

Because we're assholes, but we're not scumbags. That's how that goes here. It's very easy. We think it's actually a little more tasteful to try to put some humor in around it. Nothing funny about the actual murder. But we've had, you know, usually I think I can get away with this is right away a pretty funny thought for regular people for the most part, who can't get away with it. So that's how that goes here. So if you think true crime and comedy should never ever go together, I don't know, we might not be for you, but we might be for you. You might want to check it out and make sure. So either way, no complaining later. But for the rest of you that want to hear a crazy story, we have this for you. And I think it's time. Let's all sit back, let's all clear the lungs, arms to the sky 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?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Here we go.

[James Petragallo]

We are going to Pewaukee, Wisconsin. And that's how it's said. It's PE and then walkie, like Milwaukee. W A U K E E. Pee Walkie. It's not Pawaukee, it's Pee Walkie. I don't know why, why they had to turn their town name into a strange sexual act, but they've done it. It's strange. It is just outside Milwaukee to the west of Milwaukee. It's about 20 minutes to Milwaukee, if you want to do that. About an hour and 40 down to Chicago. And 2 hours and 20 minutes to our last Wisconsin episode in Tomah, Wisconsin, which was dark Swamp death. I remember that one. There was death in the swamp. It was nasty. This is in Waukesha county, area code 262. Now, a little bit of history of this town. The city of Pewaukee wasn't actually incorporated until 1999.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Really.

[James Petragallo]

But there's been people here forever here. It basically they used to have a village of Pewaukee and they had other shit and they established it there. The town originally the village was I guess approved in 1840 or something. And it grew and settlers started to come and I guess it was a good farming community. And there's a big lake here too, Pewaukee Lake. So this is considered like a different lifestyle than Milwaukee completely. This is like the burbs and there's a lake and it's like, you know, much more like an outdoor kind of a. Not even a suburban. It's even more than that. It's interesting here. There's a clear spring lake there, which will make things nice. And that's ideal for all sorts of shit they used for commercial use. They got ice out of it back in the day.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Okay. So one of these ice towns that like delivered the ice, like they would.

[James Petragallo]

Ship it was one of the major industries of Pewaukee was icing, getting ice. They had ice houses and, you know, they had like the Armor Meat Company also had ice houses, so they'd have that. And it became one of the major suppliers of ice to southeastern Wisconsin. It was a big deal. Couple reviews of this town here. Five stars. Here's one. I believe that Pewaukee is a very family friendly area with lots of activities. I believe that she made it sound like it was something you have to.

[Jimmy Whisman]

They've convinced me.

[James Petragallo]

I have faith in that. That's the thing. You can just look. One of the big attractions to Pewaukee is the downtown area that has some cute shops, is on the water, and hosts a variety of events throughout the year. And then in parentheses, ski shows, etc. Ski shows. Ski shows. Watch other people ski. Not you. Three stars. I live in an apartment complex in Pewaukee. I've lived there for two years and have enjoyed my time in the area. It's a good place to live where everything I need is a small drive away. It gives me the ability to be able to get to my job in a short amount of time, but also the distance where I can retreat to home.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah. Get away from all of it.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Forget.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. Who the hell. People that like live across the street from their job is crazy to me. You just look out and see it all the time.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That'd be looming and daunting.

[James Petragallo]

That's horrifying. The area and people have treated me kindly. And then finally, two stars. Pewaukee is just okay. There's not much to do, in my opinion. You must not like lake activities.

[Jimmy Whisman]

He doesn't. He doesn't believe it.

[James Petragallo]

Not a big laker here. I ended up finding myself just hanging around Walmart or that's like. I think a food store.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah. It's a Meyer's. Like a.

[James Petragallo]

Or everything. Yeah. I think it's another like a Target Midwest.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. With friends as something to do. Yeah. That's. You know, you're in a boring place when you're like, I guess we'll just walk around Walmart. That's.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Let's go. Yeah. Let's go through the Walmart and in the weed whacker section.

[James Petragallo]

See if they get any new lures in the fishing section. Like, what else do you do? People in Pewaukee are also very judgmental about situations and don't accommodate. Accommodate. Well for lower class citizens. They don't like the poor and they're very judgmental.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Lower class.

[James Petragallo]

Lower class people in this town, 15,589 people. So pretty small to be that close to Milwaukee. I mean, it's 20 minutes outside of Milwaukee. More females and males. Median age is slightly above the average. It's 44. That's 38 in the rest of the country. But that most of that is because this is like, it's an expensive place. It's not a place you move when you're, you know, 23 and get a starter house. This is like, you know, you have two kids and you've been saving up or whatever, and then you move out to the burbs here. 69% of the people here are married, which is. Oh, boy, it's 50, 50 in the rest of the country. That is wild. Way out of whack here. The single with children here, 6.9%, which is about as low as we've ever seen in a town that has more than 200 people in it. So super, super low. Race of this town, 87.9% white, 0.8% black, 3.4% Asian, and what is it, 4.7% Hispanic. 61% of the people here are religious. A lot of religious religion here. And the highest one, oddly enough, is Catholic.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Really?

[James Petragallo]

And it's 30% Catholic here, which in the Midwest. Yeah, some of those in Wisconsin, some of those pockets, and then 15% Lutheran after that. The unemployment rate is low here. A lot of employment opportunities, apparently. So that's low. I mean, Milwaukee's right there too. So drive 20 minutes, go somewhere. Median household income is high in this area.

[Jimmy Whisman]

How so?

[James Petragallo]

It is median household income. The rest of the country, it's about $69,000. Here it is $110,269. Thriving, doing great out here in the burbs of Milwaukee, that's not bad at all. And the cost of living, 100 is regular here. It's 107. So it's not that out of whack.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

The highest thing is the home costs. This, this is a place that. Where they're building houses as fast as people are moving into them.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Is that right?

[James Petragallo]

So, like, there's hardly anything for sale. And what is for sale is new construction for the most part, because. Oh, it is just people are coming and it was a very small town before this, so we'll talk about that. Median home costs. Yeah, median home cost is $405,500.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Fucking geez.

[James Petragallo]

Which seems excessive for suburban Milwaukee, I guess. The lake is, I don't know, an attraction, I guess. Either way, if we've convinced you to move from wherever you are to suburban Milwaukee, we have for you the Pewaukee, Wisconsin real estate report. The average two bedroom rental here goes for about $1,320, which is above the national average, but not that far above the national average. And there are apartment complexes here.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Really?

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, yeah. That one person lived in an apartment complex for two years. In the review here's. I found it, there's like 10 things for sale in the entire Town. By the way, I found a 0.4 acre lot. Nothing special, just a cleared lot in what looks like it's going to be a future neighborhood here. Nothing special. $183,990 for half an acre.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's almost 200 grand.

[James Petragallo]

Patch of grass with nothing, I mean nothing on it. It's just grass. Here's a three bedroom, three bath, T bowl for all your B holes, I guess. 1886 square foot condo. This is a condo. It is a big house with doors on opposite sides that you split the house with somebody else. This place is full of carpeting. I mean, it's. It hasn't been redone in a long time. Nobody, nobody does wall to wall carpets really anymore.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's pretty rare.

[James Petragallo]

When you see that, you go, oh, this was in a while. This has been in a while. Probably a lot of carpets.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's not been a. That's not been a selling point, a sale selling feature that turned anybody on for quite some time.

[James Petragallo]

No. Now it's like, oh, I got to rip that carpeting up because I don't want wall to wall to live on.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Other people's job in this house.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, I don't want to live on other people's. Disgusting.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's gross funky shit.

[James Petragallo]

No, rip that up. At least you can, you know, scour a carpet, I guess, or a floor. This house is $390,000.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Golly.

[James Petragallo]

It's not even a house. You know what I mean? Have your own property. And then here's. Here's a new house. This is brand new construction. There's no lawn in or anything yet. It's all dirt. Five bedrooms, six bath. So T bowl for all your b holes.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Surplus.

[James Petragallo]

4,489 square feet on point. 63 acres, two story. So nice house. It's clean, obviously. It's brand new. It's clean. It looks good. It's fine. It's not a mansion. I mean, it's a big, big giant house, but it doesn't. Yeah, it's not like you look at it and go, oh, man, you are killing it. Person who's living there is really doing great. It's just like a nice big house. $1,314,900 for that? They're out. $1.3 million out of their fucking minds. I'm gonna say that right now.

[Jimmy Whisman]

20 minutes outside of Milwaukee to have.

[James Petragallo]

To live in a town with the word pee in it. I don't think so. So, things to do. Oh, people from here, by the way, J.J. watt is from here. This is his hometown.

[Jimmy Whisman]

And TJ then, right?

[James Petragallo]

Maybe. Unless they sent him away when he was. When he was younger. I don't know.

[Jimmy Whisman]

The Watt family. Yeah, that's where they're from.

[James Petragallo]

Peewaukee. Yeah. They made a big deal during one of the Super Bowls. He was in there in Texas. They went to his hometown of Pewaukee. I watched a video.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Really?

[James Petragallo]

Oh, yeah, yeah. To talk about J.J. watt.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Should have told this story.

[James Petragallo]

Shit. So things to do here. The Lake Country Fall Fest. Lake Country Fall Fest or Harvest Fest, depending on which thing you see it in. But it's the same thing. Will be held on the grounds of the Clark House Museum. This year's family friendly event. This is the most boring thing to do we've ever covered. Will continue to emphasize the skills and crafts from years gone by. Old world, Pewaukee.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Antiquated, obsolete bullshit.

[James Petragallo]

Chip ice from the lake. I guess. This event is on the grounds of the Clark House Museum. Features old time crafts and hands on activities. Weaving, a blacksmith, carving, butter churning, corn shelling and much more.

[Jimmy Whisman]

When butter churning is your activity, you really have nothing happening.

[James Petragallo]

Come by for some old timey labor. Like that's what this is.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I saw a video of an old lady butter churning online recently and it essentially just looks like she's giving a really great hand job.

[James Petragallo]

A really. Those butter churning women would be. Those butter churning women would give the most amazing hand jobs ever. Because they would, first of all, iron. They're never going to be like, oh, my arm's getting tired. You've been churning all day. Your arm is like you have a Popeye forearm. Probably from that.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Close your eyes and don't look at who's doing it.

[James Petragallo]

It'll be an old gray lady with a bonnet on. That's why there's also. Genealogist Marilyn Hagerstrand will be there. So what does she do? Helps you find your family tree. That's awful now. So you've been bored shitless over it. You've watched an old lady churn butter and you need to rock a little bit. What you do is you head on over to Summerfest. That's where it's at. Never mind. Harvest Fest. That's bullshit. Summerfest is where it is. They call it like the biggest gathering of bands and all this type of shit. Yeah. In the Midwest. In Wisconsin. Let's see. Let's go down their lineup of who they have. And I missed some of the people. But this is a highlight reel here. Let's see. Hosier Hoser.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Okay.

[James Petragallo]

With a Z. Okay.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's the guy that used to be somebody we used to know.

[James Petragallo]

Oh, okay. Gigi Perez. Tiny habits. Which sounds like I just do a little bit of heroin once in a while, but not all the time. Just a drop.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Coke on Saturday.

[James Petragallo]

I'm a weekender. That's how it is. Lainey Wilson, who looks exactly as she sounds. Blonde lady with a cowboy hat. You know what that's going to be.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I know. I know what she is.

[James Petragallo]

Benson Boone, who again, looks exactly as you'd expect him to look.

[Jimmy Whisman]

You betcha.

[James Petragallo]

The killers will be there. The. The Isley Brothers will be there. What, are all of them alive? How many? How many are left? Guys, let's be honest.

[Jimmy Whisman]

There's got to be two left.

[James Petragallo]

There's got to be Isley cousins mixed in at this point, right?

[Jimmy Whisman]

They got different.

[James Petragallo]

Look, we need to get four. That's the act. All right, so you have a nephew.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Wallace is in there.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, the nephew or somebody we get.

[Jimmy Whisman]

They don't even have an Isley last name anymore. Down the family tree.

[James Petragallo]

Fabulous will be there. Remember, we did his Crime and sports. We talked about his real name and all that, which was hilarious. Gary Clark Jr. Genuine will be there.

[Jimmy Whisman]

What the fuck is this?

[James Petragallo]

Bone Thugs and Harmony will be there. Whoever's left out of that group. Maybe them and the Isley Brothers should combine. So they'd have a whole group.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I just found out that one of their names is literally flesh. And that's his name. Flesh and bone.

[James Petragallo]

Flesh and Bone. Oh, that's hilarious.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's the dumbest fucking thing. How do you have a festival that has Lainie Wilson and Bone Thugs?

[James Petragallo]

And then following Bone Thugs is Fog Hat. So, yeah, none of this makes sense. Bone Thugs will sing first of the month and then Slow Ride will take off. It's fucking ridiculous. Then George Thorogood, of course.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Hell, yeah. I mean, yeah, that's.

[James Petragallo]

He's in there. Then cake. Because that goes with George Thorogood.

[Jimmy Whisman]

The fuck is that?

[James Petragallo]

The Avett or Avett Brothers?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Avett Brothers.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. Brothers who again, look exactly as they. You'd imagine them to Chicago.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Okay.

[James Petragallo]

Why not?

[Jimmy Whisman]

They're just like. Is anybody available to mix music?

[James Petragallo]

Who is available? That's been famous anytime in the last, I don't know, 60 years. Anybody? James Taylor? Yeah, yeah.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's not unusual.

[James Petragallo]

Why not? Tesla. Sure, sure. Jason Mraz. Okay.

[Jimmy Whisman]

What the fuck?

[James Petragallo]

And Def Leppard, of course. Oh, and Megan Thee Stallion, obviously, too. You gotta have her there when you have Def Leppard, obviously. She comes with the project. Unbelievable. Yeah.

[Jimmy Whisman]

This is the craziest thing I've ever heard of.

[James Petragallo]

That's the weirdest festival that's ever happened. I swear to God. Wow. And it's like they pack. There's like, three different days of it. And the lineups. It isn't like an old, like, classic rock day and Hip Hop day all mixed together.

[Jimmy Whisman]

All bets are off.

[James Petragallo]

The Avid Brothers, followed by fucking Avid Brothers, followed by Bone Thugs. It makes no sense whatsoever. Which is a crazy show altogether.

[Jimmy Whisman]

You wouldn't. You wouldn't program a radio station with all those people.

[James Petragallo]

It'd be a crazy radio station. Like, what am I listening to?

[Jimmy Whisman]

You're listening to 99. 3.

[James Petragallo]

All sorts of different 993.

[Jimmy Whisman]

The what? Where every time a song comes on, you go, what?

[James Petragallo]

Welcome to wtffm.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Wtfm.

[James Petragallo]

Where you're always wondering, what the fuck are they playing now?

[Jimmy Whisman]

What the fuck is this?

[James Petragallo]

I just heard? Fabulous. And here comes George Thorogood. I'm confused. Oh, my God.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Ah, this is great.

[James Petragallo]

They also have a 5k road race and a basketball tournament and all that kind of shit and everything like that. And then there's also the Pewaukee summer sizzle as well.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Okay.

[James Petragallo]

Gotta have that. This is a little lower key of an event. It happens right around the same time, too. It really is. Probably overshadowed. This is at Kiwanis Village park. And, yeah, they said enjoy the musical talents of Andrea and the Mods. Yeah, that's not exactly, you know, not exactly genuine American Graffiti Band. And Bad Medicine, which is a Bon Jovi song. I don't know. And American Graffiti is a movie, so I don't know what's going on. A George Lucas movie. And there's a bocce ball tournament and a beer garden. So that's.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I like the other one so much better.

[James Petragallo]

That's what I mean. That's a little, though you can't really compare those. They're going on at the same time.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I guess you got to do the summer sizzle right before the other one to get you really in the mood.

[James Petragallo]

To see music, get you pumped up. That's what it's all about. Crime rate in this town, what we're interested in here, property crime is a little over half the national average, but pretty low, honestly. Very low. And then violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, and, of course, assault. The Mount Rushmore of crime is about one third of the national average, so about two thirds under the national average. So this is a safe place. It's a safe place.

[Jimmy Whisman]

People with Money. Everybody that plays anything comes, they go to their money.

[James Petragallo]

You get to see fog hat. It's really a hard dream. It's a dream. They got a lake and fog hat at the same time. Holy shit. That said, let's talk about some murder. What do you say?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Here we go.

[James Petragallo]

Let's get into some murder because we have a. Just a weird, weird, weird case today with a weird person and it's interesting. Let's talk about a lady first up here. Lynn. Let's talk about Lynn Hernan. H E R N A N. Like that's her nan, you know, not my nan, that's her Nan. Born June 26, 1956. So she's just about my dad's age there. Her parents are Bob and Lorraine Hernan. And now she grows up. Lynn graduated, she lived in Madison. She grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, where we'll have a show that I don't need to advertise because it's sold out. So never mind. I was gonna plug it, but never mind. She grew up in Madison. She graduated in the class of 1974 at La Follette High School. And she had one career goal and one desire. She wanted to be a hairstylist and own her own salon. That's it. That's what she was all about.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's not bad.

[James Petragallo]

It's a gig, Cool life and not bad at all. Hard work, though. It's hard work. And my grandfather owned a barbershop, that is. You're there at 6am, you leave at fucking 7.30pm and it's on your feet the whole day. It's brutal.

[Jimmy Whisman]

And you get your own customer. You know, you got to go get, you got to go market yourself. It's a tough gig. It's like comedy, but a little harder because you got.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, you have to actually work. That's the difference. Yeah, but you can also. It's much easier to get a gig. That's the other part. Anyone will hire you till you fuck up. Yeah, I got that. Yeah, no, I've done it before. So she wants to do that and she ends up doing that. She'll become a hairstylist and eventually own her own salon for a while here. Apparently she really, really, really likes old timey shit. She's super into old time black and white movies, like, you know, romantic movies, things like that. Bette Davis, Big Bette Davis.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, real old timey shit.

[James Petragallo]

Very much, yeah, very much into Bette Davis. And her favorite thing of all time is the wizard of Oz. She has wizard of Oz memorabilia. She Loves the music, the movie.

[Jimmy Whisman]

She knows all the facts.

[James Petragallo]

All the facts.

[Jimmy Whisman]

And Tin man was always sick.

[James Petragallo]

He's a sick. Yeah, yeah. From the. From the paint. Not good there.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I think it killed him.

[James Petragallo]

It made him very, very ill because he kept inhaling shit, too. He had, like, shit in his lungs.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Died, first of all.

[James Petragallo]

But it wasn't for years. I mean, it didn't like. He didn't, like, finish the movie, cough up a silver chunk and then fall dead, which is good, but. No, it wasn't good back then. They used to. It was tough in movies, but she is all about the wizard of Oz and shit like that. So that tells you if a person's favorite movie and kind of their personality is wrapped up around the wizard of Oz. Yeah, it tells you somewhat about what kind of person they are. That's usually like a. Like a upbeat person. Sure. You know what I mean? It's. It's. Wizard of Oz is a story of, you know, I don't know, getting home. And it's not a dark movie. You know what I mean? It has darkness to it. But the people who like it are. Are they, like, cheery people? They're cheery people.

[Jimmy Whisman]

The music of it.

[James Petragallo]

It's a fucking musical. Yeah. There aren't a lot of musicals where he was just like some dark, swarthy person. Like, I love that fucking musical. It's great. I love when they sing about being out of the woods. That's my favorite. So that's how she goes through life here. From the 70s, when she graduates high school in through the 90s. She's hairdressing into the 2000s. She's hairdressing. She never gets married, never has kids.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Is that right?

[James Petragallo]

No marriage, no kids. Which is, hey, good for you. She likes her cats. She has cats and Judy Garland. And she's happy with that.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah. Judy Garland did a terrible death.

[James Petragallo]

She does. She did. She had a tough life. Judy Garland. Lynn here has like a. Like, she is a. How to put this here? She has a lot of boyfriends and things like that and a lot of relationships, but she never wants to settle down and never wants to have kids. She always wants to live kind of her own thing.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's fun. She's living a life.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. She's got her own shit that's going on. Here's an ex boyfriend of hers that becomes her good regular friend after they're done with their relationship. That's another thing that happens a lot with her. She'll have a boyfriend and then they break up and then they're friends for 20 years. She has to be a decent person for people to not, you know, hate her after their relationship ends because she's.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Mastered the art of amicable separation. That's incredible.

[James Petragallo]

How many exes are you friends with? You know what I mean?

[Jimmy Whisman]

One.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. It's rare.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

So this guy's name is Jim Kelleher, and they met at a Music Festival in 1983 when she was 27 years old at that point.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Foghat was headlined in that one, too.

[James Petragallo]

I was gonna say that was. They were there to hear Slow Ride. Who are these Def Leppard idiots? I don't want to hear Rock of Ages play Slow hat again. Or play Fog Hat. Slow Ride. Slow hat. Fog ride.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Fog ride.

[James Petragallo]

Fog Ride. Take it easy. So they. When asked what his first impression of her was, he said that a lady that looked that good wouldn't go out with me. That's what he thought about her. Like, huh? Yeah, she was looking good. She ain't gonna go out with me. And she's, like, cool looking, too. Back in the day, like, all these pictures of her. Like, her hair is always like, all cool and shit because she's a hairstylist and she's fashionable and yeah, she looks like a cool chick, but she ended up liking him. So this guy thought he had no chance, and he ended up having a chance.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Didn't realize she had low standards.

[James Petragallo]

He was like, wow, she's. I thought she'd have a higher fucking idea of herself, but I guess not.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's a great me to hang out with her.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, that's a great thing when you realize that, you know, a woman that you like has lesser standards.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, she doesn't see what everybody else.

[James Petragallo]

She doesn't see that she's wonderful. Great. Okay.

[Jimmy Whisman]

She doesn't know she's hot.

[James Petragallo]

That's great. That's good. So he said they lasted about 10 years, their romantic relationship. So.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Wow, that's terrific.

[James Petragallo]

A lot of long term relationships, too. This happens all the time. Hey, everybody, Just gonna take a quick break from the show to tell you about the safest sponsor ever. Simply safe. Absolutely. These people will keep you saf. Amazing. You know that every 26 seconds of burglary takes place in the United States? According to the FBI, that means that by the time this podcast is over, dozens and dozens of homes will have been targeted, ransacked. God knows what happens here. So protect your home before it's too late. With Simplisafe Proactive Security System. Simplisafe helps stop threats before they even have a chance to break in. Named best home security system by U.S. news & World Report five years in a row. And by us for about the last eight years as well, if you trust us. Believe me, you want SimpliSafe. So visit simplisafe.comsmall to claim 50% off a new system with professional monitoring plan and your first month free. That's simplisafe.com small there's no safe like SimpliSafe.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Now back to the show.

[James Petragallo]

This show, Small Town Murder, is brought to you by BetterHelp. Get yourself some therapy, everybody. Honestly here. We often hear about, you know, red flags that you should avoid. That's a lot of a thing. It's become a real phrase now. Real cliche. But why don't you focus Also you look at like green flags in friends and partners, look for good things as well. And maybe you're not sure what that looks like, though therapy can help you figure that out. What are positive things? What are the green flags? And then you can practice them in your, your relationship. It's absolutely a fact. And so honestly, we absolutely are huge advocates for this. It really, really helps. BetterHelp is fully online, making therapy affordable. It's convenient. They serve over 5 million people worldwide. You can access a diverse network of more than 30,000 credentialed therapists. Wide ranges of specialties there. Here's the coolest part. You're not getting along with your therapist. You're just not feeling it. You can switch at any time, no extra charge. Wow. The thing is, they want you to get help. That's it. And you can do it with better help. Discover your relationship green flags with better help. Visit betterhelp.com smalltown murder today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp. H E L p.com small town murder.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Now back to the show.

[James Petragallo]

And even after it ended, they were close friends right away. So he describes her as a beautiful lady inside and out. Just beautiful. That's what he says. So wonderful. Another friend of hers here is Corrine Potza. And she said that they were best friends for over 35 years, her and Lynn. And I guess she has a son, this Corrine has a son named Anthony. Anthony Potze. Jesus. Poor bastard in Wisconsin. He said he always had a special bond with Lynn since childhood. And that's the thing, too. A lot of her friends that have children, she becomes like their cool aunt, basically. Oh. So that's a constant theme that goes on like, oh, she treated me like a nephew. And bought me things and took me places and, you know, treated me like one of her own type of thing.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Like she didn't have any kids, but she had a whole bunch of them because.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, she doesn't dislike kids. Yeah, she's just not having any of her own. She's like, I like to play with them and buy them stuff and then send them on their way and go home and fuck my boyfriend. That seems like more fun. So he called her Auntie Linny. So there you go. He said he stayed close to her. He would regularly drop by her a condo while he attended college nearby just to say hi and she'd make him something to eat and all that kind of thing. He said, I love doing stuff with her. You know, thrift store shopping. That was a date we would go on is thrift store shopping.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That is. I took my daughter doing that stuff for, like, funsies. Like we. Yeah, buy something stupid. You have $3. Go get something. Yeah, get something that'll impress me that you spent three bucks.

[James Petragallo]

All of this shit is $4. We'll figure this out. Yeah, it's not. It's. It's a cheap day. It's a fun day. My daughter was into that for a while when she was a teenager, too. We just go around.

[Jimmy Whisman]

She found a crazy doll that she would hide in her mom's.

[James Petragallo]

That's fun.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Open the previous.

[James Petragallo]

Open the toilet lid, and there it is. So there's another young lady here who has a similar relationship with Lynn that Anthony has. And that's a young lady named Jesse Curz. Oh, God. Kurzesk. I watched this whole fucking thing, and I don't know how to. Still don't know how to say it. And I've heard people say kurzewski. Kurzewski. I'm gonna say K, U, R, C, Z, E, W, S, K, I. Wow. Yeah. She's born in 1984, and she has a similar relationship because her mother, Jennifer Flower, was a good friend of Lynn's.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Gotcha.

[James Petragallo]

So she had the same type of relationship. Like an aunt relationship. Here, there's a picture of them at Jesse's high school graduation party that Lynn threw for her. And it's like. They're like, you know, she's like, hugging her. And you can see there's like balloons and picnic tables and shit. And, you know, she threw her the party Jessie, by the way, not spelled in any way you'd expect it to be spelled. Okay, you go, Jesse. And she's a young lady. You go, oh, J, E S, S, I, E. No. Okay. J, E, S, S, E, then. No, no.

[Jimmy Whisman]

J, S. Yep.

[James Petragallo]

J, E, S, S, Y is how she spells this name. I've never seen that before.

[Jimmy Whisman]

No.

[James Petragallo]

At all. No. Have you seen that for.

[Jimmy Whisman]

From. Yes, but it's just like chicks named Jessica that just don't want to conform to the normal ways.

[James Petragallo]

Oh, no, her name is Jesse, from what I've seen here.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Really?

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. There is no Jessica. It's just Jesse.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's a cowgirl.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. For Pewaukee. That's an odd. Not name. So now Lynn, she basically, you know, from the time she graduates all the way up to 2014, so a good 40 years of her life here. She. She's always doing hair styling and all that. And I've known there's a lot of people in my family that have been in the hair business. And one thing that is for sure with the hair business is you can make a living off of it.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Sure.

[James Petragallo]

But it's not a good way to. Unless you own a shop with a lot of people making you money or.

[Jimmy Whisman]

You do it for very, very wealthy folks or.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, obviously, if you can do that. But if you're doing it in Pewaukee.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

At the, at the Great Clips or whatever it's going to be, you're not going to kill it off of that. So they said she's always living paycheck to paycheck, basically her whole life until 2014 when her mother died.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh.

[James Petragallo]

And then she. She inherited $250,000.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That'll help.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, that helps a lot. So. And she also. She. It's basically just her. In her townhouse with her cats. And she lives very frugally. She doesn't do crazy stuff. She doesn't use any technology, by the way, she doesn't have a phone in what year? 2014. Not having 2014. 15. She uses cash to pay for most things.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Is that right?

[James Petragallo]

When she used her credit card, it would be. She'd literally go home and have it pay and pay it over the phone. Right. Then like to pay it like she would. Or write a check to pay it. She was right away do that. She hated technology, didn't own a smartphone, didn't have a computer, didn't use the Internet, period.

[Jimmy Whisman]

How.

[James Petragallo]

How are you managing in 2014? That is really difficult.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's very impressive. She's able to pull that off and figure that out.

[James Petragallo]

2014. Yeah. She's living like a 1975 life. Cash and no technology.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Is that a stubborn lady that doesn't want to or or somebody that just is like, you guys do it and I don't care.

[James Petragallo]

It seems like she's just kind of set in her ways in terms of that, like, she doesn't. She's not interested. She's like, I am a 70s chick. Rock on.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah. You know, everything she does, she keeps the lifestyle that she still can do it that way.

[James Petragallo]

That's. I mean, she's. She doesn't live outside of that, but, I mean, yeah, you can pull up in your T Top Trans Am and I'll get in, but yeah, I don't want to get on the Internet afterwards. You know, take me. Take me to the Def Leppard show and then drop me off at home with my cat.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Take me to the box office so that I can buy tickets, because I.

[James Petragallo]

Didn'T buy them because I definitely, definitely didn't get them on the Internet when they first came out. So that's how she's going along here. By 2016, she's not feeling well. Her health starts to rapidly decline here.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, no.

[James Petragallo]

Rapidly decline. It's tough. Yeah. She just kind of out of nowhere, she just starts getting more and more ill. Jim, her ex boyfriend, said that despite the fact that she had these growing health problems and she was real frustrated with it and didn't know how to deal with it, she would still visit him and his girlfriend at their home. She'd still stop by and say hi, and he even said she'd bring treats and stuff. She would say she got stomach aches or whatever. And she would always have to leave, though. So she was. Oh, that's how she would get out of there. So she starts having a hard time around the house because of her illnesses. So Jesse here. Jesse decides she's gonna come in and help her out.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Give a hand.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, why not? This lady's been nice to her as a kid. You're supposed to help people out when they get older. So that's what she's doing here. And this is in 2016. She comes to kind of. She doesn't live with her, but she's there all the time. And, you know, she leaves at night and stuff, but she's always hanging out with her, doing stuff. So much so that Lynn had a will drawn up in 2016 naming Jesse as personal representative, which is the equivalent of an ex. An executor in Wisconsin.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Power. Power of attorney.

[James Petragallo]

Exactly. And she and Anthony Pazza, her friend's son, who's like an aunt to him, they are the co. Beneficiaries.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Okay.

[James Petragallo]

50.

[Jimmy Whisman]

50.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. So Jesse's supposed to, you know, be the executor and deal with it, but she's supposed to get the benefits to both of them. So, yeah, they. They. I guess Jesse sent Anthony some paperwork of accounts she was settling and all that later on. So Anthony's involved in the. In the whole will, in the estate process here. Now. How sick is she? We'll talk about here. I guess there were times where she would fall, like, out of nowhere. She'd just have a fall like she was 90, which is hard because she's in her early 60s and doesn't feel like she should be falling. And she spent her life making a living on her feet, too.

[Jimmy Whisman]

So, yeah, she stood a long time.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, you do that. So Jesse would have to go and help her get up. Like, she would come over to the house and help her up and, you know, stay with her a while. And apparently she had a lung disease of some kind. She had high blood pressure and severe gastrointestinal issues, which the doctors were never able to diagnose. This is the thing. She has been for, like, the last, you know, year in 2016, she's been super ill and going to the doctor all the time, even being in the hospital, you know, checked in for days, and they're never.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I don't know, lady.

[James Petragallo]

They can't put a finger on it of what exactly is wrong with her or what's causing it or what she can do to fix it or anything like that. They just keep bringing her back, which is frustrating.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Sound like the Midwest.

[James Petragallo]

It's. It sounds like she's got some. She's been eating west. Sounds like you've been eating some weird shit. And, you know, you live in. Near factories. Probably growing up here, maybe for the lung disease.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Sounds like environmental disease, though. All the things that. Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

What do you say in weight? Let's just say in, like, net weight. How many cheese curds do you eat a day? Just what I'd like to know. That fried. Fried. You like them fried, don't you? Yeah.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Past six months. Would you say a quarter mile of kielbasa? How much.

[James Petragallo]

How much is it? Would you say? How many trucks do you say would be needed to deliver the curds to your house that you've had in the last year? Just, like, end to end.

[Jimmy Whisman]

How many Kurds brought beer? How much? How far?

[James Petragallo]

Like the big trucks, like the one that hit Tracy Morgan, one of those. Like a big giant one. How many. That's what it sounds like. So Jesse was always with Lynn at this point and became Kind of her full time caretaker as it goes. Jesse would do the grocery shopping, pay her bills, all the shit she didn't have enough strength to do. Yeah, it's horrible. It's hard.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's got to be the most frustrating thing on the planet to have an illness that doctors just like. I don't know.

[James Petragallo]

I don't know what that's about. Especially if you've been very active your whole life. She has been real active, yes.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I don't know.

[James Petragallo]

It's tough. And she's lucky to have someone like Jesse around that'll help her out. I mean, that's a lot of people that age, especially if you don't have kids, they might not have anybody to help them out. So it's great that she did. This is. This is a good investment of being nice to a kid at one point. And you get some returns now. So she also has a boyfriend. Jesse does not. Lynn. Jesse's got a boyfriend named Scott Craig. And they got together this same year in 2016. They hooked up here. So Jesse got a boyfriend and a person to take care of in 2016. Now Scott has four kids.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Golly, Scotty.

[James Petragallo]

Scotty boy is fertile. They all love Jesse. Apparently Jesse gets along with the kids. They now as a couple, they like to go out to bars. They go to his kids sporting events. He had a daughter that had all sorts of softball tournaments. So Jesse had to go watch someone else's kid play softball tournaments, which is always fun. They went to casinos a bunch too.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Really?

[James Petragallo]

A lot of gambling. A lot of casinos. The Midwest casinos are a very popular activity.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I mean the small bars, you've got pull tabs and there's all kinds of gambling that they do. Meat, meat auctions. There's all kinds of. All sorts of weird raffle is what it's called. Shit. Where they throw a couple bucks on something and maybe they'll pay off.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, well, in the casinos too. I think a lot of that is the cold weather. It's something to do indoors.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, yeah.

[James Petragallo]

You know what I mean? It's an indoor activity. So that bingo, it's a weird place. Yeah, a lot of bingo and fish fries and that kind of shit. Yeah, so that's what they kind of do here. One of Craig, Scott, Craig's cousins, Daniel, was living with Craig for a little bit of while while Jesse was also living there. So all in the house. Now Jesse said she worked as a dental assistant. But this cousin started to suspect that she didn't have a job. She said she had a job and she would put scrubs on every morning and leave. And then she would return a few hours later like she'd worked a day. But this guy was like, something's off here. So he confronted her about it, which is crazy because it's not even his girlfriend he just confronted. Hey, I've been thinking, like, who cares? First of all, it's none of your business. So, you know, tell your cousin and see if he wants to investigate it. Otherwise, mind your fucking business.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's a very interesting guy that sat around pondering this all day. You know, I don't think she's lying.

[James Petragallo]

I think she's lying. Well, I mean, I'm not with her or anything. It's none of my business, but I'm gonna talk to her about it. So she folded and confided in him that, yes, indeed, she has been out of work for the last six months and hadn't told Craig about it.

[Jimmy Whisman]

She's still getting up, putting on scrubs.

[James Petragallo]

Putting on scrubs and leaving the house. Yes. Like a man in the 50s who's lost his job and is too ashamed to tell anyone and he's gonna sit.

[Jimmy Whisman]

At the bar and drink his ass.

[James Petragallo]

Off before he fucking jumps off a bridge. Yeah, that's. That's a very weird thing. So she. He was like, that is. Why would you do that? And he's like, oh, I just. I didn't want Craig to think less of me, that I didn't have a job and all that kind of thing.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Where the fuck is she going all day?

[James Petragallo]

That's the thing. She goes over to Lynn sometimes, hangs out with her, does stuff like that. Go shopping over there.

[Jimmy Whisman]

And scrubs?

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, that's what she does. Well, I mean, she's sort of nursing, so why not?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, whatever.

[James Petragallo]

So they said that even though she didn't have a job, Jesse still managed to, like, spend a good amount of money. She seemed to have money. That's why Craig never questioned that she had a job, because she'd be buying things. She would give people gifts. She'd give the kids gifts. They'd go to the bar. She'd spring for dinner tabs. Sometimes they'd go out to the casino. She'd be gambling, like he was. They were both gambling and their separate money, her and her boyfriend. And he said she never asked to borrow money or anything like that. So she seemed to be doing fine and being able to pay her bills. And so the cousin, though, said, quote, it seemed like there was no end to the money she had. There was always money A lot of spending at the bar. Drinks for people, food for people. There was just constant spending.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

Which seems odd for an unemployed dental assistant.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's very odd.

[James Petragallo]

Very strange here. She even offers to give people money that you wouldn't expect. One of Scott's ex wife, the mother of his kids, woman named Jacqueline here, they remained on good terms. Everybody in the Midwest is so easy to get along with. All these people have amicable breakups and they hang out afterwards. This is crazy. You people are nice to.

[Jimmy Whisman]

You kind of have to. Because otherwise if you hate somebody, can't be around them. That eliminates a lot of the places.

[James Petragallo]

You, you have to avoid. A whole grocery store, like a whole, you know, section of town, you have to avoid. Find a new Meyer can't go to that bar. So that's, I guess the. I guess they have three kids and then he has another one with somebody else. Now she said this Jacqueline said she was civil with Jesse as well. They met at a fast pitch softball tournament where one of Scott's kids was playing in. And I guess they have an adult daughter. Okay. Scott and this woman have an adult daughter who is in Thailand at the time doing some sort of school, which is an odd place to go for school. But I don't know what you can learn over there that you can't learn over here. I'm not sure. I'm sure there's something Thai. That's one thing. So this lady was saying, oh, man, she teaches English over there.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, okay.

[James Petragallo]

So now the ex wife was saying how, man, I wish I could go see her, but that trip to Thailand's fucking expensive and all that kind of long, long trip. So Jessie offers to pay for her trip to Thailand. She said, I'll buy you a ticket to Thailand. That's expensive. And she's offering that to her boyfriend's ex wife, which is a very odd gesture. I mean, nice, I guess. Now this woman declined. She said, no, no, no, I can't take that. It's the Midwest here. I can't be taking that from me here. She said she was always curious how the hell she had that kind of money to just throw at her.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

Because she didn't seem like, you know, she wasn't a wealthy person, didn't come from a rich family or anything like that. So this goes on through 2016, 2017, where Jesse's taking care of Lynn and, you know, all that kind of thing is going on here. And it doesn't seem like she has a job through this time. So 2018, Lynn has been in and out of the hospital quite a bit.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, no.

[James Petragallo]

She keeps getting sick and being taken to the hospital. They don't know what's wrong with her. They send her home after a few days when she feels a little bit better. Then at the same time, Anthony, the quasi nephew, said that during this time, she'd always talk about her money. Lin Wood. She'd say, it's disappearing. I don't know what's happening to my money. It's just disappearing. I thought I had more, and I look and then I have less money than I thought I had, and I don't know what's going on here. So they said that they asked. Anthony said, well, who's in charge of your money? Are you in charge of everything? And she said, well, you know, I appointed Jesse my power of attorney so she could pay my bills and do stuff like that. So Anthony's like, well, you know, maybe you should look into this, because, yeah, if she's the one doing it, I don't know. So now, In August of 2018, Anthony said that Lyn appeared to be improving in health. In August of 2018, she seemed to be getting stronger. He said, quote. She said she was starting to feel better. And she's like, I'm fine. I'm glad I'm getting out again. And we need to go out more often. It's good for me to get out of the house. So she started to get to the point where she was actually leaving the house again and doing social things. So that's great. Now, September 2018 comes along. Here, Jim, Remember Lyn's ex boyfriend, Jim? They're buddies there. He called one night, him and his girlfriend called Lynn's number, I guess, on speakerphone. And Jim says, quote, well, this girl answered the phone, and she was kind of mouthing off to us, quote, don't use this vault. Don't use this phone. Don't call this number ever again. Don't worry about Lynn. Don't you worry about her. Fuck. Fuck you.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

What are you? Longtime friend. Don't worry about her health, you asshole. So he gets this call of. Or he calls and gets this response. He's like, what the fuck? And he said, you know, at that point, he was telling his girlfriend, I gotta find out what the hell is going on from Lynn here, because I can't even talk to her. So a few days later, he said he got a call from Lynn. He was happy she was in the hospital in September, late September of 2018. And she said that she should Be getting out in a few days and let's get plans to get together. We'll make plans to get together with you and your girlfriend and we'll have a. Whatever. So she's discharged from the hospital on September 29, 2018. Discharged, and Jesse is helping her out, taking her home. Now, we don't know what goes on from September 29 to October 3. Not a lot of info on what is going on with Lynn other than I assume she is recovering at home from being in the hospital is all you can imagine. Then on October 3, 2018, a 911 call goes out from her house, from Lynn's house made by Jesse. Oh, she said she came in and found her friend unconscious and not breathing and she needs, you know, medical assistance. Medical assistance, everybody. Get him over here. She's passed out in her recliner is what she said. So a sheriff's deputy arrives first to find Lynn lying unconscious in a recliner. He called her very pale. She looked very pale, which for Wisconsin, that's saying something. When someone in Wisconsin calls you pale, you have no blood in your face at all.

[Jimmy Whisman]

You are. You're transparent. You are one of those geckos.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. You can see the blood in your veins is what you can see.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That is see your heartbeat.

[James Petragallo]

You are a human swatch at that point. Human swatch. Watch. We all see the interior. So they said also that there was. This is a quote from the police report, quote, a large amount of crushed medication on her chest.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Okay.

[James Petragallo]

And on a plate directly to the left of her, with a large amount of what appeared to be crushed up medication still on the plate right now. There is also just a ring of pill bottles, tons of prescription pill bottles, which she's a sick woman who just got out of the hospital. So there's all sorts of different meds there, but crushing them up on a plate is a different story. Yeah, that's totally different. So the police report said, based on the initial observations, investigators believe this could have been a drug overdose of some kind. She could have just OD'd in her recliner and she's sitting there. So they have a picture of the close up of the bottles and there's a lot. Some have their caps on, some don't have their caps on. Prescription bottle wise. And I guess they photographed multiple of her. Medications were scattered on the carpet as well. There was like pills and bottles and shit all over the carpet, as well as white powder on a plate and on her chest, like we said. So right away they're thinking this could Be either an accidental overdose or even possibly a suicide. Because of the amount of pills and the amount of crushed up pills, this could have been I'm gonna just snort pills till I die type of thing is what they were, they were thinking. So the chief medical examiner says that, you know, she saw the pills and the powder scattered all over. She said there was a thought that maybe there was an ingestion that was possibly a cause for the death. So that's what they were gonna look into. If you find someone dead with all these pills around, first thing you're doing is a bunch of toxicology reports to figure out if this is the reason or if this is a, you know, some sort of COVID up of the reason. So now Jim, the friend, ex boyfriend of Lynn, right. He had never met Jesse, by the way, somehow. Really? Yeah. Even though the last two years Jesse's been there all the time and he's their friends, the only time Jim ever sees Lynn is if Lynn comes over to their house. He never has gone over there, so he doesn't meet Jesse.

[Jimmy Whisman]

What a friend.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. That's interesting.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Make a sick lady come over to you.

[James Petragallo]

She wanted to, she, she didn't want people coming to her house. She wanted to come over to their house all the time. She liked to go out. So Jim says, I get a phone call from Jesse and she says, I have some bad news. Lynn committed suicide. That's what she told Jim and quote, and by the way, we're going to have a dinner for her on the 13th at the Open Flame restaurants. The Open Flame restaurant. He said she said it in one sentence like, oh, I have some bad news. Lynn committed suicide. And by the way, we're gonna have dinner for her on the 13th at the Open Flame restaurant. Okay. Have a good one by clicking. That was like the whole phone call.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Consider this your invitation. Goodbye.

[James Petragallo]

Goodbye. So. Wow. And he was like, oh my God, what the fuck? And Jim says, well, I didn't, I kind of didn't believe her right off the bat. She wasn't crying. So he at first didn't believe that Lynn was actually dead.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh.

[James Petragallo]

Because he's like, she wasn't even crying. Like she was just calling me up. She's like very matter of factly like someone telling you your appointment to have your fucking water softener fucking shit replaced. Like, you know, oh, we moved to Thursday. Oh, okay. No problem. Really weird. And, and Jim said he couldn't believe that Lynn would kill herself. I know she was sick, but she had a spirit. She had a good witch of the north kind of a spirit to her, you know what I mean? Dorothy didn't just quit, she kept plugging on, you know what I mean? You plug on which his name? But yeah, yeah, you're running Linda. Linda the good witch. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You never. So you plug on, maybe you pick up a tin man and a lion here or there and you figure it out. That's what you do. You pick your little dog up and you fucking go forward. Now that she has passed away, obviously terribly and sadly here, Anthony, who is the co beneficiary of her will, said that at that point he found out that most of her assets had been eaten away by debt. They're already gone, he said. I just felt like something was up and I wanted to look at it more closely. I just remember getting a final account with just a bunch of credit card bills. And it was just weird how she had all these debts that just didn't make any sense to me. She had $83 in her account when she died. Wow, $83. So somehow she. That's why they think, oh well, maybe it was a suicide. She spent all her money and she was like, well, I'm broke now. I guess I'll just kill myself.

[Jimmy Whisman]

4150 to Anthony.

[James Petragallo]

That's it. Yeah, you get that? Enjoy it. So the toxicology report here, they wanted to get the test results there and they said they definitely had a bunch of prescription drugs in their system at therapeutic levels though.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Okay.

[James Petragallo]

Not at ultra high levels enough to kill a person. That's what they found. So they were like, maybe there's some interactions with the drugs. If you take this one and this one together, maybe even at therapeutic levels. So the medical examiner said, though, quote, there was a substance that I was. That was unusual, an unusual finding I hadn't seen in a report from their facility before. It was called tetrahydrozoline.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Okay. Tetrahydrozoline.

[James Petragallo]

Okay. Now, so this tetrahydrozoline. Yeah, tetrahydrozoline, probably. So this lady says, I don't even know what this is. What the fuck is that? And she's a medical examiner, but it's never come up in a dead person.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's usually not in a body.

[James Petragallo]

No. So she said, what is it? She found out it is the active ingredient in over the counter eye drops. Lysine. Oh, clear eyes.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Tetrahydrozoline.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, that's that. Okay. She was like, oh, weird. She said, this is a substance that I haven't seen in a toxicology report before. It's not supposed to be in the blood. Yeah, this is the medical examiner of the county. She's never seen this before in a toxicology report. Being in somebody's body. So she thought that was weird. Now other results from the report showed she had at least eight prescription drugs in her system, some of which she was not supposed to be taking at the time because those medications had been stopped by her doctors. But she got him anyway and had them anyway. So they said that in her. The medical examiner said in her determination those medications along with her medical conditions contributed to her death but did not cause her death. Okay, so they were all at therapeutic levels. So they didn't cause her death. None of them was over spiked. None of the. Because they know like if this drug kills you, this is what it does to the organ. So they look through it and to see if that's. That's the case. And they never came up with anything. So they also, the medical examiner starts to believe that her body was staged to make it look like an overdose. Because toxicology reports showed that none of the crushed up medication that was found on her chest, just on her bare chest or on her shirt and on her cleavage and on this plate, none of that stuff was in her system.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Hmm.

[James Petragallo]

Other pills were in her system, but none of the shit that was crushed up. So unless she died before she got to snorting it.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Right.

[James Petragallo]

That's very interesting. Off her own tits. Yeah, I like snorting shit off tits, even if they're my own.

[Jimmy Whisman]

What a interesting. So she's crushed up meds on her chest and she's sucking on a Visine.

[James Petragallo]

And she's got Visine in her system.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Which is strange somehow.

[James Petragallo]

So the funeral there is no service, per Lynn's wishes. She wants interference. Will, she had no service, no funeral.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Nice dinner at the Open Flame.

[James Petragallo]

Just a dinner at the Open Frame and Open Flame. And directs all donations. If you were going to send flowers or something instead of that, send donations to no Kill animal shelters. Because that's what she's into. So she's a nice lady is what I'm saying here. So January 2019, one of her friends goes to the cops. Okay. This is one of her cousins, like a distant cousin, I believe. She contacted the county medical examiner's office with concerns about the circumstances of Lynn's death. And this cousin said he found it unusual that Lynn would have willed her entire estate to Jesse. He said, I don't understand that. So this guy checked records at the state level to see if Jesse Had a criminal record and saw several convictions for forgery and fraud.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, my God.

[James Petragallo]

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[Jimmy Whisman]

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[James Petragallo]

The 17 million members who are already saving. Cashback rates change daily. See rakuten.com for details. That's R a k u t e n. Your cash back really adds up. Escape reality and immerse yourself in a gripping tale of mystery murder and romance with June's journey. Join June as she unravels the truth behind her sister's mysterious death. And use your observation skills to find hidden clues and uncover dark secrets. Plus, you get to explore stunning hidden object scenes from New York parlors to Parisian sidewalks as each chapter reveals captivating mysteries. How sharp are your observation skills? Put them to the test in June's Journey. Download for free today on iOS and Android. So, yeah, the police report said that this person wanted to make sure that the will filed in probate was authentic and wanted to make sure there was nothing suspicious about Lynn's death in the medical examiner's autopsy report. So he's like, listen, I did some digging on my end and I found this. I don't know if you guys got some suspicious shit on your end, but if we put these two things together, who the fuck knows? So they found out that, yes, Jesse has a criminal record. In 2011, she was convicted on charges of identity, identity theft and forgery and was sentenced to eight years in prison because this was not her first arrest for this shit. And she had been released from prison in early 2016, which is when she started spending time with Lynn. And right at the same exact time when Lynn's health deteriorated.

[Jimmy Whisman]

What the fuck is happening?

[James Petragallo]

Like, the day she got out of prison, Lynn's health started being bad. She was fine her whole life before that. Okay, so there's obviously some weird shit going on here. And there are little.

[Jimmy Whisman]

What the hell's going on?

[James Petragallo]

How did she meet her a little sis, Both through her mom. She was friends. She knew her since she was a little kid. She was another one of.

[Jimmy Whisman]

She got out of prison, went right to her.

[James Petragallo]

Yep. She was another one of Lynn's, like, you know, little nieces, basically. Yeah. So a few.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Lynn's kids.

[James Petragallo]

One of Lynn's kids. So a few months go by at this point.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

While they're trying to figure this out and they're putting all these pieces together. And Jesse calls the cops for an update. Oh, yeah. She wants to see what's going on. How is everything, you know, you find anything out yet here? You know, what the fuck? Here. Now she comes in with her mother, and this is on YouTube. This is the whole interview, by the way, and it's her and her mother sitting there. And Jennifer Flower is her mother, which I think is the name of the lady who Bill Clinton had an affair with and made. Jennifer Flowers, I believe, was the hairdresser. She was a hairdresser, too.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

Which is interesting. Yeah. It's all connecting. So she sits down here, and Jesse says, and this is actual. From the interview, from the police interview here. Jesse says, you know, when I talked to the medical examiner last, well, I talked to them numerous times, and they said I had to contact you. Guys, they kind of like, weren't sure. We didn't know if it was a suicide or if it was something medical. And the detective says, so at this point, I mean, they're waiting for their secondary. You know, they're confirming tests is what he said. So she says, yeah. And she says, I just wish I knew. You know, it's more so to. If I could have done something and if I had been there. That's the hardest part, because her story is she was with her. She went out for a few hours to run errands, came, came back to Jesse's house, and here she is. She's like, I left. If I was there, could I have prevented something? So then they went into some of her issues. Um, they also touched on her drug use as well. Now, Jesse says that Lynn abused prescription drugs and frequently mixed it with alcohol as well.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Okay.

[James Petragallo]

Frequently boozing it up as well. She said, quote, she was really big on her Xanax. That was her big one.

[Jimmy Whisman]

She was real big on it.

[James Petragallo]

Real big on it. Her and everybody else. Her and a lot of other people.

[Jimmy Whisman]

So her and anybody that's tried it.

[James Petragallo]

No shit. So she said. They said, well, what's your relationship with her? Never mind all this. Let's talk about, you know, let's just chat. They're just having a chit chat. And Jesse says, she was like an aunt, like a second mom to me. She didn't have kids. So they said, so you've known her your whole life and that's kind of why you were helping her out? And she said, yeah, yeah, she's always been real nice to me. She said that she was about the only person still in Lyn's life at this point. She said she pretty much blew everyone off. Possible. In the end, she'd say, no, I don't want to see anybody. Which is believable because if she's sick, she might not want people to see her in that condition. But, yeah, according to Jesse and her mother here, Lynn was so withdrawn that she didn't even want to talk to her friend Jim when he called.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh.

[James Petragallo]

Which doesn't make sense because then she's calling him from the hospital saying, let's get together when I get out of here. She, Jennifer, Jesse's mother, tells the cops, she said, do not tell him. I don't want him here. I don't want to see him. And Jesse said she didn't like the way she looked, so she didn't want people around. That's what it was about. So that goes on for a little while longer. It's like a 35 minute conversation where they go really nowhere. She just says, I just want to know what happened. And they ask, you know, how do you know her? And then that's it kind of pleasantries and she leaves with her mother. Then the detectives, by the way, while this is going on, are investigating the whole thing. They're going doing like forensic accounting on Lynn's money and shit like that to see what happened here. And they figure out that more than $250,000 has been stolen from Lynn.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's been just drained.

[James Petragallo]

Been drained? Yes, before and after she's. She died, by the way.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh.

[James Petragallo]

So they learned stuff about her accounts. I guess she had a money market account which had around $250,000 in 2016, but after she died, had $87 in it. I'm sorry, I thought it was 83, $87 in it now. Yeah, I would say so. Now some of that was spent by Lynn on some jewelry and a Jeep that she bought, but not $250,000. Jeeps are expensive, but not that expensive. That'd be a crazy fucking Jeep.

[Jimmy Whisman]

What movie was that Jeep in?

[James Petragallo]

Just gonna say that's a. It's got like. It's got the 45 foot lift kit on it. It's a big one.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Robert Downey Jr. Drove it.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, yeah. It flies also. Did I mention that? It flies and it's also amphibious. It's a great jeep. So now everything else outside of the Jeep and some jewelry, including a total of 20 checks, all went to Jesse. Oh, yeah. Between January of 2016 and October 3rd of 2018, Jesse stole over $144,000 from Lynn.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Jesus.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, that is a lot. She was getting checks out of Lynn's account with varying things in the memo notes like IRS payment, car payment, but it was just for her. She was just stealing it. None of the money was going to the places where Lynn was supposed to be sending them. So now she's. Now Lynn has like debts that are trouble. Yeah.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Problem.

[James Petragallo]

Tax, taxes and shit are compounding and stuff like that. It's crazy. So they matched each of the checks to deposits in Jesse's accounts as well to make sure they matched up. Then tracked where Jesse spent that money. And apparently in the two weeks that Lynn was in the hospital before Lynn died there, up till September 29, there was a big spike in spending for Jesse. And during that last hospital stay, money was being transferred from Lynn's account into Jesse's account. And then Jesse was withdrawing that money from ATMs at a local casino.

[Jimmy Whisman]

At the casino where there's so many cameras.

[James Petragallo]

Oh. And they keep track if you win. They keep track of who you are.

[Jimmy Whisman]

And there's, you know, financial things there are very well viewed.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. The least anonymous place you can go is a casino. Every square inch is covered in cameras. And they keep track of all the transactions. So you're fine.

[Jimmy Whisman]

You feel anonymous because nobody knows your name, but your face is very well known.

[James Petragallo]

It's everywhere. Yeah. So they also found out that on the day that Lynn died, the day she died, a JCPenney credit card, which I didn't even know still existed in 2018, I didn't know you could get. Or 16, I didn't know you get a J.C. penney credit card in 2016, the day this happened, a JCPenney credit card was opened in Lynn's name. The day she died. After she was dead already.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, shit.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. Yeah. Now, first of all, she didn't go to fucking JCPenney and open a card. She doesn't have online access. Just days later, a $3,000 purchase of furniture made on another credit card in Lynn's name was delivered to the home of Jesse and Scott Craig.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, Scott got it, too.

[James Petragallo]

And her boyfriend, now the police talked to him and he said that, yeah, me and Jesse had spoken briefly about a new bedroom set for home. And he said the talk ended with me saying, we don't need a new bedroom set. And then he came home a few weeks later and three new bedroom sets had been delivered to the house. Not just one.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Three bedrooms.

[James Petragallo]

Three. Everybody gets new beds.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Wall to wall bedroom sets.

[James Petragallo]

New beds, yeah. No house needs all new bedroom sets like that. You probably don't. It's just one of those things. He said he was unaware of the purchases. Also, Craig says, I don't know where the hell it came from. I don't know which. How she got it. I have no idea. They just. Shit was here. So then they get into some phone stuff as well. Here they get their digital forensic analyst to analyze Jesse's cell phone and they find an app on there that displays a phony phone number and hid the authentic number on cell phone displays.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Like Google phone number.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, like you can disguise your number. That's all. There's a ton of. Ton of apps that do that.

[Jimmy Whisman]

So many. Everything, the Internet, every app, everything we've done has been ways to fucking scheme and connive.

[James Petragallo]

Scheme, connive. It's either that or sex, sea, porn. Yeah. It's either to get Sex scheme or connive to get sex? Probably one of the two.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Scheme, connive to fuck.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. And to make you look way more guilty if you do anything when you look at your phone. Because all of this shit has tracks in some way, shape or form. It's also doomed. So this detective obtained information and coordinates from cell towers that mapped all of the cell use by Jesse. And they also said it was Jesse's voice made on two phone calls made to Lynn's bank as well. They figured out, and he says Jesse was using Lynn's credit cards while on a getaway with her boyfriend. She was like, I'll pick up the tab. And using Lynn's credit cards. Out of 22 checks cut from Lynn's money market account opened in October 2014, 20 of those were to Jesse. This included transactions at bars and casinos. Places that Lynn has never been before, by the way.

[Jimmy Whisman]

She doesn't go there.

[James Petragallo]

These aren't her spots. These are Jesse spots. Jesse's friend said that Jesse told her Lynn died after taking too much medication. Jesse told this young lady that she would pay bills, buy kids furniture and televisions and often go to the casinos with Lynn's money and write herself checks. So she was telling like bragging about her friend, like, oh, this lady lets me do whatever I want with her money.

[Jimmy Whisman]

This is what I do.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. So another cop said that Jesse was a suspect in a fraud case where she admittedly admitted that she was trying to open fraudulent accounts under the her name of her upstairs neighbors. That's one of the things back in the day she went to jail for. So opening accounts in someone else's name is her jam that she does.

[Jimmy Whisman]

She got like their mail and was like, well, fuck it, sent to me.

[James Petragallo]

I mean, why not? I'll steal their identity. And Anthony, the, you know, quasi nephew. Yeah, he brought up Lynn's will after her death. Signed paperwork making Jesse the personal representative of Lynn's estate. And following that, he started receiving the credit card bills and all that kind of shit. And he was like, that's some red flags there. So July 9, 2019. Now this is three years later. Jesse's living at Scott's house doing all sorts of shit. The cops come and raid the house for Jesse for fraud charges because they got her on all these fraud charges. And this is the end of their relationship, by the way. Scott, this is the final straw. They fucking ripped his house apart. Looking for shit, searching it. And he was like, he has kids and shit. He's like, I don't fuck this this is crazy. Which is in a small town murder episode that is as normal an activity as someone could have to go. You made the cops rip my house apart and scare my kids. We're finished.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's over.

[James Petragallo]

It's a very normal thing that usually doesn't happen on this show.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Right.

[James Petragallo]

So the medical examiner at this point also has a conclusion for the cause of death and everything like that. And from the report it says the cause of death I determined was tetrahydro hydrazole. Tetrahydrozoline poisoning.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Hydrozoline.

[James Petragallo]

Hydrozoline. Tetrahydrozoline poisoning.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yep.

[James Petragallo]

And the medical examiner ruled that Lynn probably didn't deliberately drink this much eye drop formula. So she said how this injury occurred is that she was given the tetrahydrosalene by another, which is why I called it a homicide. So it's ruled a homicide.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah. Yeah. Nobody ever thinks I squirt this bottle in my throat.

[James Petragallo]

No, that's never, never happened before. And called eye drops. The crazy part is just last week on On Patrol or Live PD or whatever the fuck it was, we turned it on and there was a situation in a Walgreens where someone was in the bathroom for a long time and they thought they were, you know, out passed out or, you know, junkie or something, and instead this fucking woman in there tried to put eye drops in her eyes and instead put fucking wood glue in her eyes.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, my God.

[James Petragallo]

The bottles were both clear. They didn't look exactly alike, but if you were not paying attention on your phone, she glued her fucking eye shut. She glued her eyes shut and was in the bathroom trying to put water and get the glue out of her eyes. So her eyes were all fucked up and she's like, I'm okay. And then she had warrants and they arrested her. I was like, this fucking lady is having a bad night. They even asked her. They asked her, well, how'd you get here? Do you have a way out? And she said, well, my boyfriend dropped me off. And they go. And then he just left. And she goes, well, he had to drop me off because he's married. And I'm like, this lady's night is a disaster.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Holy shit.

[James Petragallo]

Anyway, sorry, the eye drops.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I've heard of. I've heard of Visine going in drinks to make.

[James Petragallo]

Yes, it's the famous bartender's revenge. That's what it is.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[James Petragallo]

To make people have the shits. Basically. That's all it is.

[Jimmy Whisman]

But I've never heard of being a. A tetrahydrosyline poisoning. That'd be. You'd have to be like, so many eyedrops.

[James Petragallo]

That's the thing. If you. If you put enough in to kill someone in their, like, drink, Drink. They'd be like, I think you made my fucking martini week. This is weird.

[Jimmy Whisman]

This tastes like dry eyes.

[James Petragallo]

It tastes like tears. What's up with that? So detectives bring old Jesse back in to talk to her. She's in cuffs now because she's in jail from the fraud thing. So, yeah, now they say to her, they're. They're trying to look at this as a murder. The cop says to her there. Which I like that they do like somebody else. Not me, obviously. I'm. I'm here on your side. But they.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I'm a fraud guy.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, they're murder guys. That's a trick I use as a process server. I don't know what they want you to do. This is crazy. I. I'm the guy delivering. I don't know about anything.

[Jimmy Whisman]

So they want you to pay child support.

[James Petragallo]

That's crazy. Wow. That. Those lawyers are assholes. That's what you always said. These fucking lawyers are fucking assholes, man. And they're like, yeah, okay. And they take the papers and don't shoot you. That's how it works. That's how you get out of being murdered on someone's fucking front doorstep. So Jesse, after being told they're looking at it as a murder, Jesse says, that's just insane to me. And is this why I'm here? And the detective says, one of the reasons.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

And they said. Jesse said, do you guys think I murdered her?

[Jimmy Whisman]

No, I'm not murder cops.

[James Petragallo]

And the guy goes, did you? Which is a very good question at that point.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Well done.

[James Petragallo]

And she says, I swear to God, I didn't.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Okay.

[James Petragallo]

All right. That's a decent start. No would have been a great thing to say. No, absolutely not. Are you fucking crazy? No.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Standing on it like that is weird.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. So the detective says, typically, would you go there in the morning or the night or. And Jesse says, I didn't have a set. It just depended how she was doing the day before and, you know, that kind of thing. So then they talk to her about the money. Well, if you didn't show up at a certain time or, like, days, how did she pay you? Basically because you got money from these checks. So how does that work? And she said that. Well, she said, I got that money because Lynn's been paying me for helping her. Mace said, okay, do you have, like, an official arrangement like I make $20 an hour, anything like that. You know, whatever she said. No, no, no, there was nothing, no, nothing like that. I mean, there was no, you know, one day. Oh, here's a check. One day. Here's my card. Go get this. One day. I mean, it was no, no set. And then the detective says, no set amount.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

By the way, that was a word salad that she gave out there.

[Jimmy Whisman]

She really tried hard to explain it and got nowhere.

[James Petragallo]

Got nowhere. She got like a bunch of half sentences basically. That does. That's a bad sign to not have a A to B explanation of that. So no set amount. Jesse says no. I mean, she'd help out. She'd tell my mom, oh, this month I'm going to pay your rent or I'm going to pay your car. Who does that, by the way? Hey, I just decided this month I'll pay your car payment. Normal, able bodied adult.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, in exchange for you doing what you're doing. I paid your child. I paid your, your, your car payment directly.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, I called him. I paid your mom's rent for some reason.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's weird.

[James Petragallo]

So strange. Very, very strange. So then they said, listen, it's the autopsy that we're concerned with here.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

Toxicology reports. The guy says there's an anomaly in her toxicology. There's a drug in her system that's not supposed to be there. And Jesse says, and what would that be? Uh, oh, and he says, it's called tetrahydro hydro. Fucking God.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Hydrozoline.

[James Petragallo]

Hydrozoline. They misspelled it on here. So then I was like, there's an L in there somewhere. Where is it? Tetrahydrozoline. And Jess says, what is that? And the detective says, more commonly known as eye drops.

[Jimmy Whisman]

More commonly known as the shit that Ben Stein sells people.

[James Petragallo]

You know, the shit that when you're stoned, you'd put in your eyes as a teenager so your parents wouldn't know. You know that stuff. Yeah, yeah. So Jesse right away says she uses eye drops all the time.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh.

[James Petragallo]

And the guy says, what did she use them for? Which is a good question here. Jesse says she used them for her eyes. She'd put them in her eyes all the time. How much? Gallons. How much of it did she put in her eyes?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Enough to get in her bloodstream.

[James Petragallo]

Leaked into her mouth and through her fucking nasal cavity.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Ignored it.

[James Petragallo]

How did she do it? What she was doing. So the detective says, what killed her is the eye drops. And Jesse says, are you serious? And she's all like, oh, my God. And the detective says, mm. He's just like, yep, don't say a word. Let her try to get out of this. You know what I mean? So at that point, he says, like, the medical examiner thinks someone gave her the eye drops orally in an attempt to kill her. That's what the medical examiner's report says. So Jesse says, do you guys think I murdered her, ma'am? And he says, again, did you? And she says, I swear to God, I didn't. I did not. Uh. Oh, because she took the contraction away.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

So the detective says, seems like you're the one who had the most to gain from this, you know? Cui bono here, bitch. What's going on? And, yeah, the detective said also that they found out through her phones that you know all about tetrahydrozoline, as a matter of fact. Oh, because we saw in text messages with your boyfriend, Scott, that someone had put it in your drink when you were at a bar about three months after Lynn's death, Right? And then the detective reads the. Reads the text message.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, shit.

[James Petragallo]

You. To Scott, Scott, I don't feel good. And, you know, she said she went to the hospital after that. And here are her texts. They said, my blood pressure is really bad. I have traces of tetrahydrosaline in my blood. The doctor said that's the main ingredient in eyedrops. He said, people put it in people's drinks all the time. He said, there's no taste to it, and people don't notice. Okay? She. And then she also says, quote, you can die from that. So she's acting like, what do you mean? When she described this exact fucking thing to her boyfriend? So they're at an impasse. They say, did you kill her? And she says, no. You sure? Yeah. Promise. Scouts honor. And she's like, fucking all. Fuck, I got it all. Swear to God. Never mind. So they go, okay. They send her back to her cell. The next day, she said, I want to talk to you guys again. Hey, guys.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, I got some things to say.

[James Petragallo]

I got some things to say here. So this is after spending her first night in jail, because that was when they arrested her, was that one. Now she's got a different story. Okay? Now, at first she said, yeah, she used eyedrops all the time in her eyes. Now she says, quote, I was up all night trying to think of everything and anything. I was thinking of the visines.

[Jimmy Whisman]

She boofs. Visine?

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, the visines. And that's on purpose, too. That's not just like her talking weird here. She says, quote, she was drinking vodka and Visine. The worst mixer ever. The worst mixer.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Vodka Visine.

[James Petragallo]

Vodka Visine. A V and V, please. Thank you. I Vodka Red Bull is disgusting, but this is another level, you know what I mean? This is the worst mixer ever. Fuck a Tom Collins mix. Fuck a grapefruit juice and orange juice and this and that. This is the most disgusting mixer. Let me get a void out.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Visine. We got clear eyes. That'll do.

[James Petragallo]

Fuck it, I guess. Viva and Visine, clear eyes. Okay, I guess that is awful. I guess if all you have is, well, fine.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's fine. As long as it's got Gray Goose.

[James Petragallo]

That OPCON A shit is. That's the top shelf. That's like a Johnnie Walker Blue, you know what I mean? A shot of that's going to cost you.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Vodka Visine. Who the fuck says that?

[James Petragallo]

She said she was drinking vodka and Visine.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Who the. What class is gonna be like, oh, that explains it. Thank you for clearing that up.

[James Petragallo]

Thank you. All right, send her back to her cell. Give her good food tonight, too. Extra. We're gonna order her a pizza in her cell.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Lady, that just made it so much weirder.

[James Petragallo]

Thank you. So the detective here says, how do you know she mixed Visine with her vodka?

[Jimmy Whisman]

You said for real she had been making it?

[James Petragallo]

She says, because that's what she did.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's what she did.

[James Petragallo]

And the detective asked the question, I think every single of the hundreds of thousands of people listening right now, why?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Who the fuck would do that?

[James Petragallo]

That's a great. Huh? Why? And Jesse says she's done it about three times. And the detective says, why? Number one. Then he says, and another why? Why didn't you tell us about this yesterday when we brought it up?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

And she says, quote, because I didn't want to tell you guys because you guys are making it sound like it happened the day of. And that's not when she was doing that. Oh, okay. But that makes no sense of why you didn't tell us this shit. So the detective says, did you ever put the vodka in the Visine? Did you ever put the vodka or the Visine into the vodka?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Right. Did you mix this? Was it on the rocks or knees?

[James Petragallo]

Are you the bartender here? Is it shaken? How does this work? Is it a martini form? How many olives does she like? Or does she prefer pearl onion? Yeah. Jesse says, never, swear to God. She loves to swear to God, this one. So the detective said. So she put the Visine in Her vodka?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, she did it.

[James Petragallo]

And Jesse says, yep. Then she said, there's a pause, like, her. Them staring at her like she's got seven fucking heads. Obviously, like, you're gonna have to elaborate, lady. We don't get it further, she says, quote, she was looking for a way out.

[Jimmy Whisman]

You just slept on this. And this is what you came back to us with?

[James Petragallo]

That. So you had a long night in jail to sit and think about this shit. And your first night in jail, you probably didn't sleep very well. So, yeah. So they go, but you. She's looking for a way out. But you didn't help her with that way out, did you? Did you do that? And she said, quote, I never mixed it. I swear to God, I bought it for her. I knew she was mixing it. She put it into her water once in a while and in her vodka once in a while. This makes no fucking sense, by the way.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Up to Walgreens and get me my mixers.

[James Petragallo]

And she says later, she, like, buys, like, six bottles of it at a time of Visine, which is enough to make a whole drink. So they kept going back to, why wouldn't you tell us this information yesterday? What's the deal? How could you not tell us that when we told you? And you acted like, oh, weird. I don't know. Like, that's fucking crazy. We've talked to you twice, and in none of those times, even though you've done research because you were poisoned to know that it's poisonous and it could kill you, you still didn't bring that up, knowing that she drinks the shit literally as a mixer with vodka.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Wow. Shot chaser or mixer? She doesn't really. She. She said. She did say she's mixing it, right?

[James Petragallo]

Mixing it with Visine? Yeah.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Crazy.

[James Petragallo]

Jesse then says that one time that once Lynn started having so much Visine at the house just laying around, that that's when Jesse researched it, too. That's why I looked it up then, because I was like, why does she have all this Visine? Then Jesse said that Lynn tried pills twice, but it didn't work. So then she said that Lynn had dumped Visine into a bottle of vodka for days prior to her death. She was, like, drinking off this Visine and vodka bottle that she had mixed together. She claims that Lyn became very ill twice before her death from drinking Visine and was, quote, shitting all over. Ah, this poor woman. This poor fucking woman. And she can have no dignity in death, even. It's like, I don't know. She's just drinking Visine and shitting all over the place. Wow. She said then Lynn made her give me your phone because, you know, Lynn doesn't have a smartphone.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

So she said that Lynn made her give her her phone so that she could research suicide methods. Oh, let me see your phone. I want to do a little research on suicide methods. She said that Lynn bought a gun with which she intended to kill herself and had fat. In fact, that Jesse had saved Lynn from killing herself on at least two occasions. After the first time happened, she walked in and found Lynn with a gun in her hand, and she talked her out of it. And then two other occasions, she talked her down from a suicidal ledge, basically.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Wow.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. And they're glowing tail. She's shitting all over the place. She's covered in shit, and I'm saving her. Anyway.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Knocking guns out of her hand when.

[James Petragallo]

You mixed shit and weird cocktails and all sorts. This is a strange story.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

So that's. That's. They're at an impasse again, where they keep saying that she's going, I don't know, man. She just likes Visine. And they went back and forth and they were like, anything else? And she's like, nope. Just wanted to tell you that she likes Visine and she mixes it with her vodka. And she's like, I'll be going back to my cell now. And then the next day, guess what she does? What? Hey, guys, can I talk to you one more time? They're getting tired of her by now. Like, I can't.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Look, it's called a talking murder suspension.

[James Petragallo]

Just a talky murder suspect. You really are.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I need to have some suspense on this story.

[James Petragallo]

Holy shit. Third time in three days.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

And she says this quote. She said she lost, like, feeling of her body. It made her feel good. And I honestly. And I honestly. She was doing it for so long that I didn't think she was going to die. Far from it. I really didn't. I thought, okay, she was getting some sleep from it. That's it. She was doing it for two months. At least.

[Jimmy Whisman]

She's getting sleep from Visine.

[James Petragallo]

Yes, Visine. I think the vodka would be the active ingredient. Sleepiness, I would imagine. Because when I drink vodka, I get sleepy.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's the depressant. Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

No Visine in it at all. We had those martinis, came back, you said, I'm gonna go to the bathroom. I'll see you in a minute. And we both passed out. That's what happened. In our separate corners.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah. You have too Much Visine last night?

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, man. I didn't realize. I just put too many drops in my eyes. That was the problem.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Nothing to do with the vodka at all.

[James Petragallo]

Nothing. Wow. And it made her feel good. She was doing it for two months. And the detective said, doing what? And she said, the Visine, of course.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah. Doing the Visine, she said.

[James Petragallo]

Now, she says that Lynn actually did drink Visine the day she died. Remember before? She said her whole reason for showing up yesterday was because they thought she was drinking it the day she died, when she wasn't. And she needed to tell them that.

[Jimmy Whisman]

She'S been doing it for a long time.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. Now she claims, whole new story, that when she visited Lynn that morning, that Jesse knew that Lynn had poured six bottles of Visine. A sixer. She did a whole six pack.

[Jimmy Whisman]

A whole six pack of Visine.

[James Petragallo]

That's crazy. Into her own water bottle. And Jesse said, that bottle of water right there had six. Six.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Nobody's ever described the measurement of Visine.

[James Petragallo]

As how many bottles. Visine is a drop thing. Two drops in each eye. It doesn't say anything about how many bottles you use for anything.

[Jimmy Whisman]

If you get, like a piece of dust or something in your eye, you will squirt that shit in there. But you're not.

[James Petragallo]

It's like five drops then, and it's all over your face, and you're like, oh, Jesus Christ.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Got more in my ear than in my eye.

[James Petragallo]

You're trying not to get it in your mouth because you don't want to be shitting yourself later. So you're like, ah, doing that shit. Wiping it all off with your shoulder. Fucking shirt.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Six Visines.

[James Petragallo]

Six Visines. She threw a sixer down, man. She was raging that night, having a rager.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's the craziest thing that we've ever said.

[James Petragallo]

That's what I mean. This is the story is bonkers, dude. It's fucking bonkers. Visine, I think she had six.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's way too much to drive.

[James Petragallo]

I know. She had a 40 and she just. Was just hitting it, man. Too bad they don't make it in kegs. So Jess says. Jesse says, I didn't put it in there. I gave her a bottle of water.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Okay.

[James Petragallo]

You know what she does with her. Yeah. What she does with her own water. It's. I figured it was like those flavor drops people put in. I don't know, one of those things. So the detective said, which is the one, you know, has six bottles of Visine in it? And she says, yep, okay. And they Said, because she told you and you give it to her? Is that it? And Jesse says, well, we argued about it. She said that they spent 10 minutes going back and forth trying. She was trying to stop her from, you know, this fatal Visine dose that said, please put the Visine down. That's all I ask of you is not something that you here very often. And she said. Jesse said, quote, she said, no, I want that bottle of water. It'll put me to sleep.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Okay.

[James Petragallo]

Or just drink vodka. And the detective says, and then you gave in. And Jesse says, yep, yep. It's her choice and what she wanted. And they said, and then you left? And she says, yep. So they said, well, what about, you know, what about the JCPenney credit card that you opened in her name and went grocery shopping? And what about that you were so sad you bought, you know, you got a nearly defunct store's credit card and then went grocery shopping. Did you stop at Sears afterwards, too? Anywhere else? Fucking Circuit City, Montgomery Ward. Yeah. What's happening? So Jesse, after all those questions, says, quote, I didn't do it to her, though. I didn't. And starts crying and sobbing. I didn't do it to her.

[Jimmy Whisman]

You've given us three different stories. And then open credit cards after a woman vising herself to death in your way.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. Then they find. They ask her about. Well, there's deleted files from your phone for searches for various poisonings. This is both before and after her death. One of them was, quote, cyanide PDF. Just what cyanide pd. A PDF form about all you need to know about cyanide. Which is hilarious. That's one of the things she had on her phone, a file she downloaded. I'm sure you could find it at. Probably a scientific or a medical thing that describes the cyanide. How much you know, she probably googled cyanide.

[Jimmy Whisman]

And then. Yeah, and then click the document and download it.

[James Petragallo]

Downloaded it.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Didn't realize she downloaded.

[James Petragallo]

No, didn't realize. When that little thing jumped in her phone, I was like, oh, that's a download lady. That little bouncing file thingy. That means you own that.

[Jimmy Whisman]

She probably clicked. She clicked and it didn't happen. And then clicked some other stuff to get to. And didn't realize that she downloaded it.

[James Petragallo]

Possibly. Possibly. Or I think maybe when you click on something, I guess it's on your phone, it might technically be a download that will save the cache. Possibly. I'm not sure how that works. And we're not fucking don't.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I'm not going to Cyanide PDF?

[James Petragallo]

No, that's the other thing. I've never been on that one before. And oddly enough, I'm one of the few people who have reason to look for that kind of shit that would somehow be not suspicious on my computer compared to everything else I look for. So then she maintained that Lynn would use her phone to look up ways to kill herself and that Jesse says she didn't remember searching for poisons a month before she was taken into custody either. She also claims she gave Lynn the water bottle filled with the eye drops the day she died. Because she always gives in to what Lynn wants. You know, I just can't help it. She said, quote, I know that I'm probably going to prison for the rest of my life for helping her with what she wanted. And then she keeps crying. She loves. She's a big crier, this one too.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Really?

[James Petragallo]

Oh, she's always crying. Yeah, always crying. So then she is in custody and she makes a call to her boyfriend, Scott. Okay. Who's not her boyfriend anymore after the arrest.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, he broke up, huh?

[James Petragallo]

He's not. He's done with her because the cops raided her his house and fucked the place up. So he accepted calls from her though, while she was in custody for some reason. That's an easy click. Nope. Do you accept charge? Fuck. No click, no done.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I'm still paying for the shit that she got broken by the cops.

[James Petragallo]

Yep. And now obviously this is being recorded by the cops here. And he says on the recording, quote, you just kept making up more and more lies. You're diabolical. That's just crazy.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

Which is the most normal reaction you could get? Scott's a real fucking normal guy. Like I watched him testify in court. He's just like this dorky gray haired normal guy. Just like real run of the mill. And he's like, you know. Yeah. Once father of four, for Christ's sake. He said, once cops come into my house and disrupt all this stuff with my kids. I can't be with a person like that anymore. And I'm like, oh my God, someone who's not trash. This is great. So he said later on that, you know, the kids, she was like, she was like, like a mother. Or that Lynn was like a mother to Jesse even though he never met Lynn Lynn. Jesse kept Lynn and Craig separated even.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Is that right?

[James Petragallo]

Which is. Yeah. Who's Craig or Scott? Craig is his name. Scott, Craig, Scott, Scott, Scott, Craig.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's right.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. That's why he said his last name there. So that's very interesting. He also thought that. He said I never met her because I thought she was in a coma. Because that's what Jesse told me.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[James Petragallo]

He said that Jesse told me that she was in a coma for months prior to her death. So that's what I thought. And by the way, Lynn was never in a coma. That never happened. She made it up.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Maybe a Visine one, but no coma.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. Who? She's in a vodka coma. So on this recorded phone call, he says, why'd you tell me she was in a fucking coma? Why'd you lie to me about all that shit? And Jesse says, quote, I told you that to protect you for a reason.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, I was trying to. Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

So? And Craig just says, quote, that's pretty disgusting. That's a disgusting thing to lie about, Scott. Craig says so, yeah. And then they talk about how she spent months without a job and pretended to go to work. And that even while you're unemployed, you're giving my fucking kids gifts. You're offering to send my ex wife to Thailand because you're stealing this fucking sick lady's money. You're fucked up. You're real fucked up. He levels her, man. It's fucking awesome. Then they find texts between Scott and Jesse indicating that Jesse, that's the Visine text when she was in the hospital and all that kind of thing. By the way, she was able to spell tetrahydrozoline correctly. She knows how to spell it. Knew it, could put. She's looked it up, that's why. Yeah. Wow. That's like. Yeah. When someone like, you know, talks up, says something on social media about us and they spell my last name right without tagging me and having it filled in. That's always impressive. I'm like, oh, you must be a fan of the fucking show.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

That means if she knows how to spell that, she was looking at it. So then they talk about her deleted files, about cyanide and poisoning and suicide and all of that. And they said also Jesse had, quote, Jesse sent detectives on a wild goose chase regarding the location of Lynn's safety deposit box, as well as gun parts and Visine bottles sealed in plastic bags that they never found. She was telling them, oh, you can find these here and this here. None of this stuff actually existed. She was just like wasting time. So she is finally charged with murder in 2021.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That took a while.

[James Petragallo]

A long fucking time. Three years. They had her in there because of the fraud anyway, so they had time to just put the case Together and have the charges be whatever. Now, if she makes bail, the conditions set by the court are no employment as a caregiver, no contact with any casinos, and no use or possession of over the counter eye drops. I don't give a shit how red your eyes are. Absolutely not. You're not allowed to have Visine. That is contraband, ma'am. I bet you a judge said that. That's incredible.

[Jimmy Whisman]

She's the only person in history to be banned from eye.

[James Petragallo]

Banned from Clear Eyes. Completely. Your eyes shan't be clear, young lady. Yeah, that is some shit. So her trial comes up and by the way, the craziest part of this hasn't even happened yet. I know that sounds nuts, but the craziest shit she's ever done hasn't even happened yet. That is coming up after the trial and it is unbelievable.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I can't wait.

[James Petragallo]

Amazing. It's the fucking most guilty thing anybody's ever done. Okay, so in the openings of the trial here, the prosecutor says that during the second day of interviews with detectives, the jury, you will hear Jesse tell them that Lynn did drink Visine, But Jesse says that she never gave Lynn any Visine. And. But Jesse does go into detail about how Lynn wanted to kill herself and that Lynn was using the eyedrops to help her die by suicide. She also Jesse tells detectives that Lynn would get a buzz off drinking Visine. Okay, impossible. The DA also says there's certainly a factual bare bones timeline of theft, murder and more theft, they said. But there's. There's this almost overlaid timeline of all the defendants. Lies and deceit. Yeah, she's all fucking liar to everybody. They accuse her of stealing almost $300,000 in total, including money from her estate. Later on, everything. Then they said she finally gave that water bottle, knowing it had, in the defendant's estimation, six bottles of Visine to Lynn Hernan, knowing it could kill her, and walks out of that condo unit, closes the door and goes shopping on Lyn's dimension. Wow. Sounds cold as fuck, doesn't it? Oh, man. Especially such a nice lady too. Lynn's a real nice lady. Like there's. Man. So the defense comes up now. Now what? How do you defend this? Well, she is gonna have a Sarah Boone level of amount of attorneys to try to figure it out.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, really?

[James Petragallo]

By the end of this, she'll have gone through eight attorneys that withdrew from her case. Not that she fired that. They said, fuck this lady. I'm not working with her.

[Jimmy Whisman]

She can't do it. She wants us to Mount a defense that is just illogical and unethical.

[James Petragallo]

I can't say that in front of people.

[Jimmy Whisman]

No.

[James Petragallo]

They have cameras. This shit is on the Internet now. It's law and crime or whatever has. They did. The whole trial's on fucking YouTube right now.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Going to tell a jury of 12 of my peers that something is addictive that is not addictive.

[James Petragallo]

All the other lawyers are gonna make fun of me. Do you understand? Later on at the lawyer meeting, they're all gonna pick on me. I can't take it. It's too much.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I gotta go sit down with these people in the future. I don't go to jail when you do.

[James Petragallo]

No. I'm gonna get wedgies because of this. They're gonna totally pick on me. Noogies and wedgies, and I won't have it.

[Jimmy Whisman]

They saying things like Visine withdrawals at me.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, God damn it. I can't do that in front of people. So the defense says, quote, if Lynn Hernan was there today, she would say, are you crazy? Prosecution, that's my daughter you have sitting in that desk over there. That's my daughter. She said she had a boatload of prescription medication in her system. And they're saying Visine killed her, not the other pills she had in her system along with alcohol.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Okay.

[James Petragallo]

And he says along, this guy also says that Lyn knew that Jesse was spending her money and that Lynn was depressed and coping with alcohol and prescription medication. And he said that Lynn wanted to die and didn't like life. He says, but she introduced people to Jesse. This is my daughter. And that's who Jesse is to Lynn. Her daughter? Yeah. Jennifer, meaning her mom. That's Jesse's mom. Jennifer's like her best best friend. And Jesse became her best best friend. Oh, boy. He then says Jesse was the only person she trusted. Then the defense tells the jury that Lynn's health further deteriorated. She became despondent. And she said. And you saw the way she was done up with her hair and nails and jewelry. She didn't look like that anymore. She didn't want any more visitors because she didn't look in her mind the same. Creating really great retail experiences is tough, especially with multiple stores, teams of staff, fulfillment centers, separate workflows. It's a lot. But with Shopify Point of Sale, you can do it all without complexity. And let's face it, acquiring new customers is expensive. With Shopify pos, you can keep shoppers coming back with personalized experiences and first party data that give marketing teams a competitive edge. In fact, it's proven based on a report from EY businesses on Shopify POS see real results like 22% better total cost of ownership and benefits equivalent to an 8.9% uplift in sales on average relative to the market set surveyed. Want more? Check [e-mail] wondery all lowercase and learn how to create the best retail experiences without complexity. Shopify.com wonder calling all dog owners.

[Jimmy Whisman]

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[James Petragallo]

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[Jimmy Whisman]

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[James Petragallo]

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[Jimmy Whisman]

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[James Petragallo]

They said she was tired of being sick and she decided to take her own life. They said when police arrived on the scene they found a lot of empty prescription bottles and they can't see that as a suicide. And then points to Jesse and says she's innocent. You find her not guilty. They said, look at all the powder she had spilled on herself. She said, Jesse told you it was common for Lynn to crush up medications because of her problems swallowing pills.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, so she's got a narrow, narrow throat.

[James Petragallo]

She got a narrow throat. So she just snorts at all because.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That'S normal or just does it in liquid form, something.

[James Petragallo]

But none of the crushed up shit was in her system. So that's a hard argument to make. So the medical evidence, they said the belief that the prosecution says this, the belief that Lynn Hernan was givenazoline by another shows that she was giving this unsuspectingly. She didn't know that she was ingesting this substance when she did it. And the defense said to the medical examiner, these are all the drugs that were found in her system? Right. And they had a list. And the medical examiner says, correct, and they were all in her blood, which means they'd already been ingested and made it into the bloodstream. The doctor says, true. They said, your conclusion was that she died from tetrahydrozoline. Right? And she said that, yes. And the defense asked how the medical examiner could be so certain that she didn't ingest the eye drops on her own. And they said, you don't know as you sit here today whether she voluntarily ingested that. And the doctor says, it was my opinion she didn't. But knowledge of her action, no, obviously I wasn't there. But then on redirect, they asked about the powder found on and near her body. And they said that wasn't in her system. Right.

[Jimmy Whisman]

What's up with that?

[James Petragallo]

They said, no. And the prosecution says, what do you think happened? And the doctor said, I think that they may have been deposited there. Someone put them there. Basically, hey, I'm no crack on it. Now it's drug crime. Yeah, yeah. From fucking killing them. Softly. So Jim Kelleher is also going to testify. The friend, Lynn's friend. They ask him, did you ever hear Lynn say anything to you about killing herself or thinking about killing herself? Jim said, no, I did not. She never. Never gave me the indication of being suicidal. Never.

[Jimmy Whisman]

The woman's trying her best to get healthy, for Christ's sake.

[James Petragallo]

She's trying, dammit. Yeah, she was talking about hanging out and let's, you know, get together. The defense presents their case. Jesse's mother's friend testifies. Gary Verdon, who's a friend of the mom there, testified that he'd been in Lynn's condo twice. The second time about a year before her death. But he said his memory was very clear. He said, quote, I always saw her sitting in this chair. A chair. Did you have to search for the word chair.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Sometimes? Look, man, some dummies like me, this.

[James Petragallo]

Stutter to try to pull. Yeah, I get. There's words, plenty of words where I'm struggling because I'm trying to think of the next thing and the last thing. And I'm following, you know, all my.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Notes, trying to find a chair. Interesting word, you know, in like fucking Lazy Boy or recliner or fucking.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, something. I don't know what he was doing, but chair, whatever, fuck it. Chair. I gave up. Wow. With a table next to her, she had a white Slurpee cup straw coming out of it. She had a bottle of vodka next to it. She had an ashtray, her cigarettes, and a bottle of Visine. Ooh, that's a fun night she's got in front of her. She's a heavy smoker, too, by the way. Lynn as a 70s and 80s hairdresser, kind of has to be by law. I feel like they said, are you sure it's Visine? And this guy said, yes, absolutely.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

He said on another occasion, he heard Lynn on speakerphone when he visited Jesse's mother, Jennifer Flower. This Gary said, Lynn just started rambling off, and she was either sleepy or tired or whatever, but she was rattling off about the will. Then she started talking about how she wanted to kill herself. Okay. That's normal conversation people have on speakerphone. My will, my will, my will. By the way, I really. This is important because I'm gonna kill myself. Did I mention that right? Oh, my God. Then the defense called a nurse practitioner who began treating Lynn for back pain in 2017, despite prescribing several pain medications for her. She said Lynn did not improve. And so they asked her in 2018, January. She continues to complain about back pain. And the nurse says yes. And they said, the pain being worsening, and she says yes. Then they bring in the forensic pathologist. And this person says, this doctor says, I would say her past medical history was very significant. She had a long list of medical conditions and also had quite a few psychiatric disorders. Depression, anxiety, agoraphobia, which is fear of public places, chronic insomnia. Those were the ones that were listed in her medical records, in her chart.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Those are all she has.

[James Petragallo]

Those. She's been going to doctors for a long time and had these problems here, but she's always tried to get help for it, too. She's. Yeah, you know, she realizes she has problems and tries to fix them, so. Or at least, you know, mitigate them a bit. So this doctor also said she agreed with the state's conclusion that Lynn's medical problems contributed to her death. She did not agree with the state's finding that Lynn died from tetrahydrozoline poisoning. Oh, the prosecutor says the forensic pathologist that the defense brought up said that Lynn's cause of death was undetermined, but she believed it was a mixed drug toxicity. And so that means she thought it was a combination of all the drugs found in the system there. So they say, would you say there's strong evidence here that Lynn Hernan's death was a suicide? And the defense pathologist Says, I would say that's a good way to start. I would say there's strong evidence that it certainly could have been a suicide. Yes. So that's. The defense is saying, see, suicide. And the prosecution's going, obviously fucking not. Jesus Christ. Yeah, this woman's just super lucky. Happens to get a benefactor who can't wait to kill herself and give you all of her money. That's ridiculous. So will Jesse testify?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Will she?

[James Petragallo]

That's the big question. And Jesse says, quote, it was very hard for me to decide, but ultimately I will not be testifying. She tells the judge. So prosecution, here's the closings. Prosecution DA says that there's one motive here. Money. That's it. Jesse's clear, her intent is clear, it was to kill. And the motive is her own personal benefit. This is someone who has profited over $144,000 before the death and over $80,000 after. After the death.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, shit.

[James Petragallo]

So pretty cut and dried here. So the defense though says, no, no, no, it's obvious she took her own life. That's what's obvious here. We're looking for obvious shit. The defense says the state has not proven a first degree intentional homicide. Jesse knew that Lynn would take Visine and drink it, but she doesn't know how. She decided how she died that day looked like a suicide with pills from a person that was unhappy. As for the allegations of theft, the defense says she didn't steal that money. She was given that money. She gave. Said she was giving away her money because she knew she was going to kill herself. That's like when people give away their possessions. It happens. She said Lynn gave Jesse money all the time because she wanted to. She wanted Jesse to have it. She knows she's going. She knows she's going out. And Lynn made a decision. She made a decision that she was going to exit and. And she did that on October 3rd, once Jesse had left the home. In the prosecutor rebuttal, they say to believe this is a suicide, you would have to believe that the most cosmic intervention in the entire world. And it happened at the exact point in time when Jesse maximized the amount of money that she made on this whole ordeal. She saw she had no more money left in her money market. And eventually she's gonna see that and probably blame her. And then this is a. She was still on like probation from her last prison stint for fraud.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Get caught for fraud and she's going to go back for a while.

[James Petragallo]

She's going away for 10 years. She just did six years for this. She's going back for 10 now, easy. So that's not great at all. So the verdict comes in. Ten and a half hours of deliberation.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Is that long?

[James Petragallo]

That's a long fucking time.

[Jimmy Whisman]

More than I would need.

[James Petragallo]

That's a. That's what I mean. It's not long in general, but for this case it seems like a while.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Like nine and a half hours. Way too long.

[James Petragallo]

Do you like. Are we just gonna vote guilty now or after we eat lunch? When are we doing this? Because obviously this is crazy, huh?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Okay, we're gonna argue this out over a vodka and Visine.

[James Petragallo]

Who wants some V and Vs on me, baby. At the corner bar. So they find her guilty of first degree murder. She of course broke down crying, as she does multiple times in court. She's also convicted on two counts of felony theft as well. Anthony, the quasi nephew said, I was just overcome with emotion. It makes you reflect on the last five years with the lies and deceit. Now, now's when it gets weird, okay? Really, if you haven't. You may think it's weird so far. Well, you ain't seen shit yet. All right. From this point, she's now awaiting sentencing. And that takes a while, right? There's a couple of months until sentencing. They have to get their. Both sides have to prepare their case for sentencing and all the pre sentencing reports and all that kind of shit. So during this time, an envelope containing 37 pages of handwritten letters and documents was received by a friend of Jesse's who turned it over to the sheriff's department. Okay, this is fucking crazy. Now Jesse claims this is not. She did not write these letters. The problem is the letters are written on the back of her own court notes from court. No one has possession of these court notes except for her. They're the notes she writes to her lawyers and stuff like that. And her lawyers write a little something back on it. You see people scribbling in court all the time. That's what they're doing. She. Because that's the only paper she had in the holding cell in the jail. She would take those back and then flip them over and write this letter on it.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Nobody will look at the back of these.

[James Petragallo]

No. And she claims this isn't her, even though it's her shit. So it's wild. The prosecutor said the letter requests a friend of Jesse to fake evidence, create a voice recording pretending to be Lynn Hernan, to send all of this to the judge in the case, to the local media, even to the governor to Try to prove Jesse's innocence. This letter is fucking insane. I have the whole thing. We're gonna read it.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's awesome.

[James Petragallo]

So the prosecutor said the documents were written by Jesse on the back of her trial notes, giving directions to her friend on how to impersonate Hernan and fabricate materials and submit them to the court. This is crazy. She said that when you make the audio tape, make sure to know that Lynn has an older, raspy female voice.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's an old gal.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, you know, like that kind of.

[Jimmy Whisman]

You know, make it sound like you smoke for 40 years.

[James Petragallo]

That's exactly what she says. She says to her she's a heavy smoker. Make for forever. Make it sound like it.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah. Make it sound like one of the Simpsons sisters.

[James Petragallo]

Make it sound like Selma. Yeah. Patty or Selma. She says she directed her friend to say exactly what to say on the tape. Quote, I can't go on anymore. I cannot go on anymore. Which makes it more dramatic. I chose to drink Visine and end my life. Yeah. Okay. This is fucking amazing. Now, the letter here, they give it to the judge and it says enclosed there is a packet of 37 pages that are dated November 22 and were received by the Waukesha County Sheriff's department on November 26, 20, 20. 23. The packet of papers is comprised of Jesse's initial letter to the recipient, followed by many pages of instructions whereby she asks and instructs the recipient on how to create fraudulent documents along with a fraudulent cassette recording. The recipient received this packet of papers at her home and was disturbed by what was being asked of her. And ultimately the recipient decided to turn them over to law enforcement. The state wishes to point out the original paperwork was double sided, which is important to note as your honor reads through the papers. Because her substantive instructions were written on the back of her own trial note pages from her recent trial, for example, pages 17 and 18 of this packet are the same, but for the exception of the post it note that she utilized as a means of showing the recipient where the recipient should place a fraudulent copy of a notary stamp on that document. She's even teaching her how to fraudulently notarize things. Page 19 is then a reverse side of that same sheet of paper and contains her notes taken during the trial. The same is true of pages 20 and 21 being the same, but for the instructions on where to place the notary stamp. Okay, they said this is important because she's now written new fraudulent letters purporting to be from Lynn Hernand, dated back in 2016. And 17 on the back of her paperwork from trial, which obviously occurred in 2023. Okay. Here's the letter here, by the way. It's written in absolute.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, for fuck's sake.

[James Petragallo]

That's a woman Girl cursive. Yeah, There's. This is every chick you sat next to in sixth grade did this. And then their I dot the I with a circle, but she doesn't do that. She falls short of that. Okay. Now, if I struggle for a minute, it's gonna be to read her cursive on this copied paper. But I'll go try to go through this pretty smoothly. Dear Jessica, this poor Jessica. Oh, boy. I wanted to thank you for being a friend. Travel down the road and back again. Your heart is true. You're a pal and a confidant. And if you threw a party, Invited everyone you knew.

[Jimmy Whisman]

The card on the gift you would.

[James Petragallo]

See the biggest gift would be from me. And the card attached would say, thank you for being a friend. That's literally her first line, is, thank you for being a friend. That's so funny. It's hilarious.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Thanks for being a pal about. Thank you.

[James Petragallo]

Just literally thank you for being a friend through this crap. I mean, that this. She could. This is crap. Now. Some days I feel so alone. And now more so. Yeah, I feel very selfish lately. And I hope. I hope I told you I am sorry for your loss of your brother. I haven't asked either how you're doing or your kiddo. I hope all is well. Okay, that's her. Look, I'm not a bad person. And now I'm considering your family. Now here's some shit that is highly illegal and will get you put in prison. Help a murderer fucking get out of the way. As long as you're well, only if you're up. If you're not feeling great, I'd suggest a V and V. You'll sleep well tonight.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Now, considering you have a child. Now let me put you in. Maybe make that child grow up without a mom.

[James Petragallo]

Horrifying legal danger. Let's do that. Let's put you in awful legal peril. Now, how's that sound?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Considering your child may have to visit you through glass for a while.

[James Petragallo]

At least it won't make your brother sad anymore since we know he's dead. Wow. I appreciate you coming for court and both you and your friends. Please tell them, too. I don't know, Jess. This is just insane to me. I sit here day in and day out, reeling or replaying and replaying everything I Cannot spend the rest of my life locked away for something I didn't do. Then she says, this isn't right. I wish I had the jury's names. I was. I so want to reach out. I'm losing my mind about this. Yeah. That's why they don't give you their name. So you can't harass. Not allowed. The jurors who convicted you of murder. Like, that's crazy.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I wish I had their names and their family and their addresses.

[James Petragallo]

You know, their addresses and maybe just what their weaknesses are. You know, with their kids. School schedules and, you know, activity schedules, possibly.

[Jimmy Whisman]

And access to their drinks, pictures of.

[James Petragallo]

Their spouses, and possibly access to Fyzine materials. Oh, shit. Then she goes on to say, if I'm honest, this is such a butter. You have no idea that you're going to be asked to do such horrible shit. From the first part of this, if I'm honest, I don't know how much more I can take. I've wanted. I've wasted four and a half years for this to be made right. Or I've waited four and a half years for this to be made right, and it got 10 times worse, not better. I don't want to be here anymore. I don't want to be convicted of murder anymore. It was fun for a while, but.

[Jimmy Whisman]

First, you know, the processing wasn't so bad. The fingerprinting.

[James Petragallo]

Then they.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I don't see anybody anymore.

[James Petragallo]

And they're not letting me out either. It's weird. Like, I asked to go to the store. No one's doing. I said, when the guards leave, I said, hey, can you pick me up something? Bring it back. No, they don't do it. It's weird.

[Jimmy Whisman]

They don't even talk to me.

[James Petragallo]

It's fucked up, man. That is amazing. I don't want to be here anymore. I'm so strong in my faith, but right now, I can't even open my Bible. I don't understand. I can't go a day without breaking down at my new reality. Staring at these walls, I keep thinking of all the things I want to even do or have. The hardest one is not being able to see my grandparents before they pass and not being able to have kids. Well, you had all the opportunity to have kids. And if your grandparents want to visit you, they're welcome to.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, they're allowed in.

[James Petragallo]

They're fine. They probably won't because you're an asshole and they're embarrassed by you. You're in trouble, and you're in a lot of Trouble. I'm glad I relied on the family. You're really an embarrassment. You're all that anyone talks about when we go places. It's not great. I'm glad I don't with all of this, but by far, that's one I get super emotional about. It's what I always wanted. Then there's my mom I worry about. She's got nobody left. She would have to be. She would have taken her life long ago. But I needed her. I'm the only thing keeping my mom alive. She would have taken her life long ago. Why? Why is everyone so suicidal up here? What's happening in Pewaukee? You guys are tripping, man. Holy shit. The brewers will win eventually. It's fine. Just calm the fuck down. Jesus Christ. I needed her. She's struggling with all of this and blaming herself because she couldn't deal with the. With Lynn anymore. Okay, then. And she went and dealt with her. So I stepped up to help Lynn daily when she stopped. And because she couldn't testify, we had a pact. If things went wrong like this, we. We were both checking out. If we were who? Her and her mom. If we were convicted of murder, we're both. What the fuck are you talking about? I'm trying to fight and hang on, but it's so hard. I feel like I'm fighting a lost cause. This county is so crooked, it's not even funny.

[Jimmy Whisman]

The county.

[James Petragallo]

County's crooked. Waukesha, you're fucked up. You should see just what I've uncovered in discovery since the trial ended that they lied about on the stand. It's so wrong. So I talked with one of my attorneys about stuff in person. And I got a biggie for you. I got a biggie for you to ask of. You took her two pages to ask this favor? First of all, this is big. That you know something bad's coming up. I got a big favor to ask. Okay. Ask away.

[Jimmy Whisman]

First of all.

[James Petragallo]

First of all, this is big. Oh, boy. Never mind.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I'm very well aware of how big this is.

[James Petragallo]

This is big. I trust you. And whether you help or not, there's something I need you to take. This is something I need you to take to your grave. Even this envelope didn't go through the jail mail. My attorney took it. This is one of my. This one of my attorneys. This is one of my attorney's ideas, and clearly they aren't going to tell anyone. I would never tell a soul. You can tell someone if it's to ask for help, but if you trust Them and I. And if you can't and if you aren't comfortable, I'm going to give you another person's address and send it to them with directions. And please, so if you won't do it, give it to this person and see if they'll do it. Either way, do not talk about it on the phone or visit. And that's underlines. Do not talk and phone and visit are underlined. You cannot or you can say if you got your letter. If you can do it, just say yes. I want you to send me a something form when you get to somewhere and if not then say you need that address for my friend and I'll figure out who plan B is and give you a name and address to forward it to. I know that all sounds cryptic because it is. Yeah, I know this sounds highly illegal and like I'm real secretive because it's super illegal and I'm very secretive.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Probably sounds like I'm beating around the bush and I am. But it's because you need to do some thinking about how this has to unfold and be done.

[James Petragallo]

It's a lot. Then she says lol, which is hilarious that she put lol in here cuz it is lol. No LOLs in your jail letters to your friends to try to get them to help you beat a murder charge. No LOLs. We are trying to make a stir, a big stir to show just how wrong things are. But I need help because there's only so much I can do in here. First you need to know I did not kill Lynn. You should have said that in the first line.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's first.

[James Petragallo]

First. Nor did I assist, nor did I even steal a dime from her ever. My something charges are that old dumb or my old charges are that old dumb and young. Okay. Love you Jesse. And then I thank you for everything under that. And now the directions start. It says I'll show you directions on top.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh God.

[James Petragallo]

This is what I need. Okay. Do you remember hearing about the. What is this? Oh, the picnic or the park? The Whitehall park where I buried things. Okay, that was 100% true. The difference is six months later or so I regularly went to on a walk there daily. That area was prone to flooding and the bag was sticking out one day. So I dig it out and ended up throwing it away. Only one person know that. My attorney. Everyone else believes it's in the park or never was in the park. So it's either still there or never was there. It was part of the gun. Visine bottles. Lynn had dated from Lynn. Had dated from my mom. From her mom's death. I never told anyone that she dated her Visine bottles. I don't know why you would do that. Lynn did. Yeah. These are my.

[Jimmy Whisman]

They expire and. I don't know.

[James Petragallo]

Notarized papers of hers and a cassette tape. Old school voice reading of Lynn. All something stuff that I kept hidden. All. I can't read that. All something stuff that I kept hidden and quiet. But she spells it quite. She kept it hidden in quite.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That word really fucks murderers.

[James Petragallo]

They do it all the time. They can't get quiet. Right. And it's not a spell check. It's a fucking. It's cursive handwriting. I don't know if I ever told you about Lynn's mom or if you heard when Dana or Donna tried to bring it up in court and the judge shot down the state requested her mom's something re. Some records. Records. There we go. But never turned them over while I was in prison. In 2013, Lynn's mom died. She gave her Visine in her tea when she cut her out of her will. When she found out her mom. She was stealing her money. Her mom died. She got dizzy and fell downstairs. No autopsy was done. So she's saying Lynn killed her mom with Visine is what she's saying.

[Jimmy Whisman]

So Lynn's a murderer.

[James Petragallo]

Lynn's a murderer.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Marked herself too with Vising.

[James Petragallo]

That's her. That's her thing here. Yeah, but she was always afraid. I didn't know this until after Lynn's passing. That's why she gave money away. It haunted her. That's her excuse. It haunted her.

[Jimmy Whisman]

So she felt bad about killing her mom. So she gave away money to perfect strangers to heal her own heart.

[James Petragallo]

Yes. That makes her feel better about the whole.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Give away all of her worldly possessions because she's down to 80 bucks.

[James Petragallo]

And it was, by the way, the whole point of killing her mom was to get this money.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Right? Right.

[James Petragallo]

That's why she did it.

[Jimmy Whisman]

And then she gave it all away.

[James Petragallo]

Then she gave it all down to.

[Jimmy Whisman]

80 bucks and was like, well, I got nothing left. So it's time to.

[James Petragallo]

Time to go to the big Visine bottle in the sky. Let's do this time. Holy shit. It haunted her also how and why she started drinking it first was to die. But it didn't happen. She'd been drinking it for months. I didn't know till the end in parentheses, but numbed her pain and helped her sleep. That's not what Visine does. She Was an insurance or no, an insomniac. And Xanax wasn't helping her to sleep anymore. Wow, Weak Xanax. Okay. Sorry. It's complicated. Yes, and I'm to blame because I didn't save the stuff. But at the time, what did I need it for? And I didn't want anyone knowing what I found out. So here's what I'm trying to do. Yeah. Get to that. Recreate that stuff. Just trying to recreate evidence that will clear quote, recreate it. In other words, make up this evidence and make it happen. That is crazy. I did what I could. I wrote up the letters, Will, et cetera. And I signed all names, dates, et cetera. I need someone to look online for a notary stamp, not to buy. There are places that will show you a finished product. You input name on what it should say and you can copy and paste. You may need to. You may need to cook a few. I don't know. May need to cook a few. But they have. When you. When you can new sample, then you take the pages I wrote, copy them a few times, make them a little lighter. Then line up for notary and print more notary around, angle, turn, so forth so it's not lined up perfectly. Make it look good, like someone casually did it. Yes, I used to make documents for people. Sounds crazy, but true. I was good at it. Yeah, that's why you're in prison the first time.

[Jimmy Whisman]

You weren't good at it at all.

[James Petragallo]

You got caught a bunch of times. Those bank ones were something doing. I didn't make those mistakes. Okay. Anyway, sorry. Then when done, copy the whole page again so it's a full copy, not original. So nobody knows the notary seal wasn't a real stamp because it's got crimping on it. All I need is two different names for notary. One on page one and the other on three and one on three pages. These are real people who worked at her bank years ago, who actually notarized papers on these dates. And I have those other papers here with the signatures, dates and all that I did. So take these legitimate signatures and notary things and put them on an illegitimate document. I just need the notary and copies, please. Then it says explained with the pages. Now, there's one more part I'm trying to get with with that. I can't do anything on the Visine bottles because those bottles are way too old and. And none in stores would match the. Would match that. And the gun piece. They know she had bought it, so it doesn't matter. It's the cassette tape. I need to see if someone would make a voice tape. I know this is crazy. This whole letter is called I know this is crazy. I know this is crazy. But I got to try. It's. It's something. It's something. I don't know what that is. It. Cause my life. I could. I. If I could, I would. They would suspect my mom. That's why I can't have her. Nobody has her on voice recording. She has an older, raspy smoker's cough and was a sick female voice. Always, Always coughing and smoking.

[Jimmy Whisman]

And action.

[James Petragallo]

And go.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I need you to do this like everybody does. Christopher Walken, how are your impressions?

[James Petragallo]

How are your impressions of old smoking lit? Can you cough a little bit? Not just as good. Put that in there every once in.

[Jimmy Whisman]

A while and then say, hold on, I need to light one of these Benson and edges.

[James Petragallo]

And then just every once in a while, go. Just do that right into the mic if you can do that.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Where are my Virginia slip?

[James Petragallo]

Oh, that's. Oh, that is satisfying smoke right there. Oh, boy. That really satisfies. Let me tell you something.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, Christ. I feel so much better now that I have a cigarette.

[James Petragallo]

Oh, boy. Marlboro country is somewhere I never want to leave.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's so crazy.

[James Petragallo]

This is crazy. She says, I feel like there's programs online to change voices. There's so much technology these days. Is that a setting? Old smokey broad. Is that a setting you can find somewhere? Ha.

[Jimmy Whisman]

This is the greatest thing that's ever happened.

[James Petragallo]

Amazing. She was sick and did it two days before her death. Nobody's going to know if it's her or not. It's been five years since she's been recorded, and I have the wording for that recording, honestly. You could even just have a movie or music on in the background to help distract. You know, she's telling you how to be a fucking. A scammer. A full of shit scammer.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I can set you up with some background noise and. And your.

[James Petragallo]

This is great because. Like this. That'll distract from the exact. You won't be able to.

[Jimmy Whisman]

From that.

[James Petragallo]

It's not exactly her voice. Yeah, she said she always had one on and loud. I would be cautious that the music. I would be cautious that it's. It's music. And then in parentheses, she loved Gaga or a mood Lady Gaga or a movie from before her death. If you do that so it doesn't raise a red. You don't put a movie that just came Out.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Don't put any new releases.

[James Petragallo]

No. Wicked. Oh, my God. Nothing from past 2016, though. That'll be a real red flag. Super big red flag.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Wedding Crashers or Shanghai Night.

[James Petragallo]

This is some shit. That's. Yeah, Evergreen. Go, Evergreen. Put a Seinfeld rerun on in the background or something.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Hilarious, that. She's like, just listen. It can't be too new.

[James Petragallo]

Then she gives examples. I love this. She is helpful. If you're going to do this, don't.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Have tonight's news on.

[James Petragallo]

That's bad. Yeah, keep that off. No, like, you know, the football game from Monday night? None of that shit.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Welcome to Super Bowl 59.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, that's gonna be bad. She says, put on, like, Pretty Woman, Mrs. Doubtfire, wizard of Oz. That would be ideal. Her favorite. Yeah, because that's always on. Then she says, now, what do you think? Question mark. Hold on. Think about it, please. Then she puts over.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Gives time for pause.

[James Petragallo]

No, she has an arrow, actually, that.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Says, turn over, think and then turn over.

[James Petragallo]

Things you'll need. She's got a supplies list. Computer, paper, envelope, stamps, address, labels, cassette, Old school. Cheap ones, able to record voice. Gloves, underlined. And then it says, must, and it says, and then a star. If you help, you know, you don't need gloves. If you're not gonna help, then don't bother.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Don't buy those.

[James Petragallo]

If you're not eating, make sure you wear gloves, because you are not getting in trouble. You're helping me. When it's done. Well, we'll see what happens.

[Jimmy Whisman]

What?

[James Petragallo]

I don't want you to end up in here next to me. She just said, make sure you work. Don't be as bad at crime as I am. Please. If you're gonna do it. No.

[Jimmy Whisman]

You understand. Yeah, I was robbing. I wasn't robbing the bank. I was helping that person.

[James Petragallo]

You know, I wasn't. I was just like. They told me to hold this gun and point it at that person. I was like, oh, I'll hold it while you're doing. While you're shoveling that money into a sack with a fucking dollar sign on it. No problem.

[Jimmy Whisman]

You're helping.

[James Petragallo]

That's why you need the. Whoa. That is crazy.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

When it's done, which I need ASAP. Before December 7th sentencing. The. That's the sentencing. The sooner the better. If there is an easy way. And if possible, I'd like copies of the tape. But if it's too much on hand, one is just fine. Anything you buy, do it at a store, not in Waukesha. And with cash at like Walmart self checkout. That's. That's me being extra cautious.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Careful where they have a camera right in your fucking face showing your face.

[James Petragallo]

Not to mention. I'm just teaching you that I really thought about how to do criminal shit.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

This is the finished goal is to get finished letters and tape mailed to Judge Darrow. If there's more. If there's more to others too. If not just a basic letter to others. And then 11 people total with judge. She puts. And that is attorney Donna Kutchler, attorney Pablo Galvez. Those are her attorneys. Waukesha DA's office, TMJ News 4. The sorest jaw in all of Wisconsin. CBS News 58. ABC News 12. Wisconsin Attorney General Josh something I can't see. Court TV, Fox 6 News, Tony Evers. I think the governor. Then it says for everyone and judge to whom it may concern. And then she wrote sample on it. Like, obviously, don't use this. Make your own. But. But something like that. Don't say who you are. Just a concerned citizen. Re Jesse Kozerski, Visine trial in parentheses. That's what you do. And this is what you say in this letter, by the way. I wrote it out for you. Jesus, this is amazing. I have watched this trial from the beginning and I've never met this girl. And I'll.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Just so you know, I don't know her.

[James Petragallo]

Jesus Christ. This is like, oh, man, this is somebody, like, writing a review for their own restaurant. I've been in here once. Charming little place. Never even noticed it before.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I've heard the manager slash owner is a great guy.

[James Petragallo]

Terry's wonderful. The food just looks clean. You know, all the servers, no open source. It's tremendous.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Never gotten diarrhea here ever.

[James Petragallo]

Nope. I never met this girl, Jesse Kurzynski. But what I can tell you is this story is crazy. That we know. Lady, anybody who has a brain can tell you this girl didn't do it. And what those jurors didn't hear or what the judge didn't allow makes no sense. You're talking about this girl's whole life because Lynne took her own, by the way. There's a lot of, like, spelling errors and grammar errors, like, no apostrophe, where it belongs. And in her other letters that are not like that. And we'll talk about that too at the end of this. What the judge didn't allow this girl's whole life because Lynn took her old life, her own life. How is that murder? This was a total setup. If I ever saw one by Waukesha County. Well. Well, I spent three days in the park. Whitehall Park. Why? The detectives never took her to the park. They yelled at her repeatedly about not understanding why she wouldn't tell them if she had evidence. So she does. And they don't even take her. They don't even take her with them again. Are you serious? I can't even fathom how a jury conducted or convicted her. On what? Lies. Really? That doesn't make sense. That doesn't make you a murderer. Point being, after digging around for three days, I found her evidence and sent the tape cassette plus papers to the judge in this case. Darrow. The bottles of Visine and a piece of gum have. No. No something, so I can't read what that is. No barring, no baning, no something so I didn't include. But this girl is to be sentenced to life for a crime that never happened. That she didn't do. I enclosed a copy of letters for you, but what I want to know is what are you going to do about this? Then under that, Jesse writes with an asterisk next to it. Burn. Destroy all papers. When done, do not talk about on phone or visit. Make only one tape for Daro, the judge. If you can copy others. If you can copy the other pages for everyone and her too. Send letters and letter to. And then the full list again of these people. Wear gloves for all, exclamation point. Make sure she's. This is. This is a crime tutorial.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah. Make sure you're just helping.

[James Petragallo]

She said, this is my fight and chance to stir the pot. Will you help me? I will never say a word. And I will give you a chunk of my money if. When I get out, because it's a big favor and if not, I understand. Really. Okay. And she says this is what you want to say on the tape recording. Here we go. This is in your raspiest old smoke a voice. Jesse, I am sorry to leave you like this. And I'm assuming you'll be the one to find me after all you've done for me, all the times you saved my life. I know if it wasn't for you, I would have been dead months ago. And you have been my rock. You're stronger than anyone I know. She's about to say you're also very pretty. Your breasts are supple and perky. You're the smartest person I've ever met.

[Jimmy Whisman]

This is like when you lift your arms, you have no bingo wings.

[James Petragallo]

None of that shit at all. My God. I wish I had an ass like yours. She said, I know if it wasn't for you, I would have been dead months ago. You've been my rock. You're stronger than anyone I know. And now I need you to take care of your mom for. I know your dad, your dad all. You could keep me alive as long as you could. I no longer recognize myself. I'm sick of being sick, complaining about being sick and just sick of it all. I want to be free from the pain and this is my time. I love you and your mom very much. Take care of each other. I'm following the yellow brick road to see my dad. See? Put a Wizard of Oz reference in there. Jesse stops. Stop listening to this tape and put it somewhere safe and hidden like she's talking to Jesse because she's in the room.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Jesse, put this away. There's no place like home.

[James Petragallo]

Then she says she clicked her heels together three times and she says, lynn Hernan, being of sound mind and body, want to state I'm recording the statement Today on Sunday, October 1, 2018. I've been sick long enough, seen doctors to know that I will never be the same. And I no longer want to live my life as it is. I've done things I cannot take back. I took a life that I had no right to do. They have her confessing to murdering her mother in this, just. This is so fucked up.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Framing a dead person for murder.

[James Petragallo]

Wow. Two murders. One of her own, too. Herself and her mom. I'm choosing on my own free will and on my own time frame to take my own life. I've tried more options than most, from purchasing a gun, overuse of medications, to poisons. I assumed poisons would be the fastest and easiest. Little did I know it would be just as hard. Visine is the one I stumbled across prior and have tried without success, but ended up using it for almost three months. Or whatever. She should just put. Or whatever Jesse says I did. Pretty much the way it makes me feel is something indescribable. My body is. It sounds like you're on mushrooms. No, this is Visine. If that were true, kids would be taking so much Visine as tea. They'd be sucking on bottles.

[Jimmy Whisman]

The marijuana market would be bottomed out. Visine's so cheap.

[James Petragallo]

All the drugs, no more psychedelics. This would be amazing. My body is numb. I feel no pain from my contact. Constant pain. And it makes me tired. Where I kind of sleep I haven't experienced in years. I became quite fond of it and it was A new medication to me, it's not a medication. I enjoy my medications and now Visine is one of them. At first I was drinking a bottle almost daily mixed with my water or vodka. Then I increased over time, was purchasing Visine on my own for a month until I could no longer drive or shop. I did stock up on it and had my caretaker, Jessie. She did not know what I was doing until recently. Jesse is the one person who knows everything I have went through, in and out, except my mother's death. Seen all the good and bad. She's been there when I fell in the middle of the night, shit on myself or Unbelievable. Dude, this is ridiculous.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Admit to murder, admit to suicide and.

[James Petragallo]

Then strip her of dignity and tell everybody oh my God. Or puked and came to oh my God. Or puked and came to clean and came to clean it up. She has caught me in the act of trying to take my own life. She's seen me at my worst and there regardless. I owe her everything for all she's done. Her mother's my best friend and Jessie is my only family left and mean more to me than I know. I did the unthinkable to Jesse and it ruined her for months. I lied to her and I made her lie to everyone in the process and it destroyed her. She knew I was suicidal, but I told her I was sick and dying from colon cancer. I didn't want to see people or talk to them. So I had Jesse lie to everyone and didn't want anyone, anyone to know. The truth was I wasn't sick with colon cancer or dying. One afternoon, Jesse came to check on me as her usual and caught me with unexpectedly while I had a gun to my head. She screamed at me, crying that when I came clean with her about not having cancer and lying. I lied to her because she was concerned about being me. Me being suicidal and saying I was sick was easier to do. I never something hurt. I've never seen her so hurt. So lied. So I lied to everyone. She knew I didn't know what to do now. She told me I was either going to get help and go to the hospital or she was calling the cops. I let her take me to Aurora Waukesha Hospital the next morning where they admitted me and I stayed for weeks. I wanted to get better for her, but the deep down decision was made long ago and I cannot go on anymore. My mom's death haunts me daily, you know, because I killed her and all. Yeah, I tried to take my life twice while in the hospital. And had a camera put in my room. After arriving home from the hospital, Jesse stayed the weekend and per my discharge, I was to get home care that week. I had planned in different ideas, but Jesse didn't let me be alone. Ending. Ending. The weekend came and went. And now it's today. Sunday morning. Took my remaining Visine bottles and put them into my last water bottles. I have stashed Visine for months and been emptying it over time into water bottles and now have three bottles full with only Visine. Over 30 bottles. That takes 30 bottles of Visine, in case you're wondering. And we'll start. Because I think it's a half ounce in there or something. It's a little drop.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's like 0.8ml because you use a.

[James Petragallo]

Drop two drops at a time. And we'll start drinking those tomorrow along with my medications. I'm hoping by drinking an extreme amount this will work as planned. I'm choosing this on my own terms and how I see fit. No one played any part in this decision or acted on it. I chose to drink Visine and end my life. Look into my mom's death to better understand. I came into this world fighting like hell and have and lived a good life. And I'm going out of the world on my own terms and will see my dad again. I would like it known that Jesse and Jenny are in charge of my final wishes as they know where the paperwork is and what to do. I want to make sure it is known. And then there's. She's got an arrow pointing up and an asterisk saying just end it like it was still recording or like she screwed up. Like there's more, like there's more, but that's all we need. So she said just like end it mid sentence. Like something happened to the tape or she, you know, fell over.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Thank God, because we got everything.

[James Petragallo]

We got everything. So then she goes on to give instructions of. Then find a notary company that will allow sample or void with wording in the background. Look around you will find. Look around you will find. Once you do copy and paste and change paper and printer. And it's the thing of how to make it look. How to make a dot. Forge a fucking document.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Sure.

[James Petragallo]

And she then goes on to have a whole letter here. And then she says there's a lot of misspellings and grammar errors. It's okay for it to be like that. She has a letter that she wrote too saying that here it is. Okay. Lynn Hernan, loving DAUGHTER of Bob and Lorraine Hernan. Like she wrote her own fucking. Her own. Her own thing here. Her own obituary. Yeah, and she goes on to that. She wrote the obituary. She. She said, make that. Then she says, this is a Lynn writing this letter. I need to get something off my shoulders. The guilt has been weighing heavy on me. On Saturday, November 30, 2013, my mom, Lorraine Marie whatever that L. Herndon passed away just shy of her 86th birthday at St. Mary's Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin. Prior to her desk death, her health was declining with her memory. It was no secret we had a very toxic relationship. We had been through thick and thin and everything in between. She forgot everything, but found out that I had been quote, helping myself to her money and changed her will to cut me out. And she was leaving everything to her best friend and neighbor, Bonnie. I took matters into my own hands. Something her. Oh. Spiking her tea with Visine bottles as seen on tv. I understand I had no right and it haunts me possibly more than I realize as I'm sort of starting to worry. I stopped after a night of partying too hard. And I told Kevin. I've paid secretly for his silence ever since. I'm too afraid of spending my life in prison. I will never forget how bad it was. I cannot, will not, no matter what, ever go back. I'm so, so sorry, Mom. Forgive me. Sign Lynn Herndon now. Herndon now. Look at how she writes this letter. She changed.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, wow.

[James Petragallo]

She changed her handwriting fucking completely.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's fucked up.

[James Petragallo]

Look at that. Dude, she is just look at that. That's another. Look, here's another one of her handwriting.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's psychotic.

[James Petragallo]

Dude. That shit is like completely different people.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, that's like the inside of a psychopath's mind. That face.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, the whole thing.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Scribbles and side notes and corrections. Jesus. Fuck.

[James Petragallo]

Oh my God. Then she said that she like her will here kind of what she said before. Write this out. You know, I helped care for my mom. That was my downfall. Blah, blah, blah. Then she goes into there are no issues later on. This is her final wishes. Jenny. I helped when Jesse was in prison and out of work. I owed her from years ago. When she helped me. It was the least I could do. I helped her on and off. Rent, bills. She was given a charge, et cetera. On 3, 11, 215, 5000 direct from lockbox. So Jesse money and properly property while in prison. Because I know firsthand and so much after. I helped with deaths rebuild a lot. She also helped me and it went both ways. And then says went both ways was a big one. Long story. There's so much I will be doing for both Jenny and Jesse before I check out. This is fucking amazing. Jim that's her friend was given and also loan money when he lost his grandma's house to foreclosure. He had no job, no place to live. So I help but it was never enough. Linda drank more away. I loaned him money for bail, fines. He got me to that courthouse when I was afraid to step foot in the door. But he needed I helped motels, hotels, bills down payment on his house money toward a pool.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Useless motherfucker.

[James Petragallo]

Useless shit. He to date hasn't made a dent in paying back. It pisses me off and he knows it. And he's well over 25,000 that he got in total to date and then dates with the times and you know, withdrawals and all that. Keith I gave money when he needed but that was between us and was from cash so it didn't go through the bank. Kevin My mistake. Of all mistakes. Who got the most of all? Who got most all to keep him quiet quite though he took everything and even more the best part was his death. But it was too late by then. He got my lockbox. Stash of cash. Stash of cash at the house. Withdrawals of thousands at a time at a time from the bank. Even more cash. All the checks written as to cover Jesse. Long story in parentheses he got jewel. All the checks written to cover were written to Jesse. So Jesse didn't steal the money. It was this guy scamming. But he's gave it to him.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. Wow. He got jewelry. I gave all I had. I will never let anyone take years from me or send me back to that hellhole. So did what I had to over $200,000. The money is running dry as of today, Thursday, February 1, 2018 my money is depleted under 25,000 in all accounts. It will be gone like before the year is over. I will spend it and give it away including my credit cards. I don't want a dime left for creditors medical state to take. I'm going to meet with me. I'm going to meet with Mr. Diaz at BMO bank today on loan and to notarize documents. I will be making changes for final wishes due to my short planned future. I'm changing my living will to say Jesse and Jenny and my last will and testament to Jenny from Anthony and Jesse. Jenny will give Jesse money. I don't want her probation agent to get it for restitution for her last crime.

[Jimmy Whisman]

But don't worry, I'm going to die with nothing. So it's fine.

[James Petragallo]

I'll die with nothing. But I want to make sure that she doesn't get it taken. I want those two, Jenny and Jesse to get everything because they're around the most and they need it. Versus Karine and Anthony. They come from a different world. I will always love them and they are my family. But we aren't as close as we used to be. Things change. People change. That's life. So she's singing multiple songs there. Thank you for being a friend. People change. She's got that shit. Tupac changes and Frank Sinatra. That's life. She got them all mixed up in there.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I'm mad at you.

[James Petragallo]

So she signed all. Yeah, I'm mad at you. She's got her last will and testament here. She's got all of her fucking shit going on. Okay. She gives away her stuff here, too. Gets two antique pictures in hallway for Diana Lange. Mom's great grandma. Keith Lang gets Richland play center. Picture glass. Jim, her friend Jim there in china cabinet. Crazy eight ball and ashtray. Your grandma's champagne glass. Yeah. You owe me tons. Crazy 8 ball, he's giving away everything.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Jim gets my Uno game.

[James Petragallo]

Oh, yeah. He gets what it is. Corrine Potts. A hat, pin, glass, shot glasses, and any clothes or shoes you want. I have my old shoes. They have shit on them, but that's okay. Anthony Potts. I originally said Jesse got the wizard of Oz memorabilia, but it was you who got most of it. So, anyway, you have first pick. Anything of my dad's you'd like. Steven Potza Bubbler. I thought maybe you'd like the old school pinball game. And it goes on from there. Jesse. Marilyn posters. You loved them. Mom's charm bracelet. Jesse's mom gets 2016 Jeep. A purse, sequin reel, swan, ashtrays, stork ashtrays, bird cage looking lamp, gold cross with ashes. That will always be that way. We'll always be swimming together. Okay? Now this letter comes out. Her attorneys said, we're done. Fuck you. They said, we didn't take any letter anywhere. And you're sending this out. Basically you're accusing us of a crime. We're not your attorney anymore. Fuck you. So they want to withdraw due to that. So prosecutors filed an objection to the motions to withdraw. But they said in evaluating both motions to withdraw, the state feels it's necessary to focus on the apparent driving force behind these motions to withdraw and says this was one of my attorney's ideas referenced in the letter. However, the state will argue that these materials were authored by Jesse for purposes of the attorneys to be able to continue representing her. It's important to note that Jesse, in numerous recorded phone calls, has continually denied writing those materials and denied having any idea, you know, what they are, who authored them. Jesse denies she wrote any of this.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Amazing.

[James Petragallo]

Nobody else on earth knew any of those details. All those details.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Nobody knows person.

[James Petragallo]

It's fucking crazy. And also, we'll find out that she definitely did write it too. The state also argues that taking both attorneys off the case would deprive her of legal representation at a key point in the case and would delay sentencing several months.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Sure.

[James Petragallo]

Now Jesse says that the county is setting her up with that letter.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, really?

[James Petragallo]

And she wrote a 26 page letter to the judge explaining that. That we will not read because.

[Jimmy Whisman]

26 pages. Jesus.

[James Petragallo]

26 pages. Okay. That was 37 pages she sent to her friend.

[Jimmy Whisman]

She has got a lot to say.

[James Petragallo]

You're not a lot to do in jail. So she expressed frustration at a motion hearing with her two attorneys for not being in contact with her in the leak week leading up to her sentencing. She made a list of 16 claims and stated she believed she was set up by the county with those letters and will be requesting a mistrial should the job. Yeah, she wrote in this. I figure it's as good a time as any to put out all the issues. And there are a lot. She wrote. The defense was not allowed to bring up Lynn's drinking and time in prison or her mom's death. She claimed that Lynn had written that she spiked her own mother's drink with eyedrops and was haunted by what she did. She also alleges that the defense was not allowed to question Detective Aaron Hope, who allegedly looked into Hernan's mother's death. According to Jesse, he never followed up on retrieving additional medical records. This was an extremely detrimental to my defense. And again, it was. It isn't a small charge. We're talking about a charge that causes a life sentence. So she went on to claim all this shit. They claim that she claims that John Fryat, a cousin of Lynn's, had involvement with the Waukesha county detectives and the medical examiner's office and was told he owes them a favor for framing her. According to this letter, Fryatt had looked her up in Wisconsin Circuit at Court Access and said it was odd that Lynn's heir had a record saying it doesn't pass the smell test. She wrote that Fryat didn't know Lynn or have a relationship with her, but knew she was a drunk. Jesse also wrote that she knew the medical examiner and knew that he and the medical examiner were on the same team as the detectives. And because of this, Jesse claimed she should have a change of venue, although it's unknown where she heard the alleged comments. She also accused the judge herself of bias. Oh. Saying the deputy jail administrator was lying and that she didn't have proper access to security for her documents and evidence. She said, quote, I was not happy with my trial or defense. She wasn't happy with losing is what she wasn't happy with.

[Jimmy Whisman]

You're not happy that you're in prison. That's the thing.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. With all this happening, I strongly believe this county is setting me up. This seems like a big conspiracy. I no longer trust anyone.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Have you guys heard of holy shit. Making a murderer?

[James Petragallo]

That's what they did to me in Wisconsin.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Same thing, same place.

[James Petragallo]

Then the night before her sentencing, she calls the media up and does a thing.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, what?

[James Petragallo]

Night before her sentencing, she said, quote, nobody got to know the Lynn. I knew the Lynn that I was there for and worked for daily. The Lynn that was my family and that I loved and cared for. I could no longer wait. It's time to speak. I cannot be silent. Lynn took her own life because she was troubled by what she did to her mom. Now she's gonna publicly besmirch her. She said that in her own letter. That again, we're in court. The letter that she wrote, by the way, that you wrote. Both of my attorneys are still listed on record. So legally, I cannot speak to any other attorney, nor will they speak to me. I sit in limbo. I need to know my legal rights. Well, next day is sentencing. She's gonna find out a lot.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Find out all your rights.

[James Petragallo]

Oh, yeah. Jim Kelleher says, quote, jesse poisoned Lynn like she was a rodent. The devil awaits you. I hope you rot in hell. Lynn Hernan is an angel in heaven. May you rest in peace, Lynn. You're dearly missed and always will be. I'm so very sorry. So they then show, by the way, the videotape recorded in jail days before the letter was turned over to the authorities. This shows her putting a large bunch of papers into an envelope and leaving it on the bed of another inmate who later takes it somewhere else because it's a person that takes it places. So the judge says to her, this is your opportunity to address the court. Anything you'd like to say she talks for two hours. Wow. Or an hour 45 or some crazy shit. I mean, she never shut the fuck up. She's. I'm innocent. I was her best friend. We'll give a short snip here. Quote. Let's be very clear here. There was no murder. I did not commit murder. I did not poison Lynn, give her pills or anything else. It is a lot to be accused and convicted of murder when I didn't do it. And she starts crying, of course you're holding me responsible for what she did. Those are her decisions, her choices, her actions and no one else's, not even mine. Then she says, I will not stop fighting. And she says she does not have faith in the. In the justice system, but does have a faith in God. She says, as God is my witness, this case is far from over.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, boy.

[James Petragallo]

The judge goes, well, I'm about to bang the gavel, so I'm gonna end it right now. God's gonna watch us end this fucking case. The judge said, I believe Lynn's death was premeditated. The judge said, tetrahydrozoline was not something we expected to find. And I do believe it was something you, Ms. Kurzewski, Kurski, whatever the fuck your name is. Banked on no one testing for. I have to ask out loud. It's in a rhetorical question, but were you poisoning Lynn Hernan all along, following your release from prison? Jesse says, no. She shouts, no. The judge says, I'm not asking for an answer.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I don't need you to talk.

[James Petragallo]

This is my time. That's hilarious. She's gonna tell her kid that later on when she's sitting with a glass of wine. This is Mom's time now. No. So do not interrupt me. You took away future memories. Birthdays, luncheons, phone calls. I think you thought you were a very good thief and can get away with even more. She said, I'm sure everyone has some redeeming qualities, including you. But she also let her opinion be known. She said, I think you're completely diabolical. You have evil in your heart. You, ma'am, may fuck off. Life in prison on the homicide charge, with parole, though, and 10 years for the two theft charges. The soonest she could be paroled would be after 40 years, when she'd be about 80 years old.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, shit.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, she is fucked. And the judge says, I think 30 years is a significant amount of time, but my target is really for you. The judge said. She said, making you eligible for parole close to 80, older than what the victim would be today. And also, by the way, restitution is set at $380,000.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Who's she paying that to?

[James Petragallo]

With an additional 16,000 owed to cover the cost of state witnesses in the trial. Keep on keeping on. And that is Pewaukee, Wisconsin. Holy shit. Wow, that is fucking bonkers. Holy shit. So that's one of the craziest stories we've ever told.

[Jimmy Whisman]

She's close as fuck, so she's gonna write a book some sort.

[James Petragallo]

She keeps talking. There's so much of her. If you watch the trial, she's talk. So I can't believe she didn't testify. I'm honestly shocked because she's. She's like a Sarah Boone that would want to get it out there. But Sarah Boone didn't testify either. So either way, there you go. If you enjoy that, tell the world about it. Get on whatever app you're on. Give us five stars. Say something nice. It helps drive the show up the charts. And obviously that takes a lot to put together, so that helps. It takes two seconds to do. Tell your friends. Post on social media. Also, definitely head over to shutupandgivememurder.com tickets for live shows. May is our next dates here where we have St. Louis and Chicago. St. Louis is just about sold out, so if you want to get in there, do it right this minute. Chicago, get in there too. So get your tickets. Right now we have four shows that are either sold out or almost sold out after that too. There's like eight left. So if you want to get in there, get in there and get your tickets right now. Shut upandgivemerder.com also follow on social media. Smalltown murder on Instagram, Smalltown pod on Facebook. You definitely want to get Patreon. Patreon.com CrimeInSports is where you get all of the bonus material. $5 a month or above will get you immediately hundreds of bonus episodes you've never heard before and then all of it from there on as well. Every other week you get one crime in sports, one small town murder as new ones and you get it all this week. What we're going to talk about for crime and sports, you definitely don't have to like sports for this disasters, hot air balloons, amusement parks, industrial. A disaster potpourri if you will. Heard of it everywhere. Then for small town murder, when psychics actually succeeded. Oh, some lady came in with like, you know, some crazy hat on her head and was like, I think they're buried over Here. And they were. So that happens sometimes. We'll talk all about that. Arrest you right now. You. Let's get your fingerprints and DNA in here. So that is patreon.com crimeinsports and crime in sports. That is, by the way. And you get a shout out which happens right now. Jimmy, Hit me with the names of the most wonderful fucking people who would never ever, ever poison us for years with Visine and try to take everything we own. Hit me with them right fucking now.

[Jimmy Whisman]

This week's executive producers are Gary Howard, Jordan Bennett. Jordan Bennett and Simon. They're on their way back to England.

[James Petragallo]

Yes. Thank you for coming to the show, guys. We appreciate it.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh yeah, very nice. Neil and Blow Me. James. Neil and Blow Me is having a lovely day.

[James Petragallo]

Neil and Blow Me. That's good. Oh, that's. That's very nice. It's very clever.

[Jimmy Whisman]

They think that I didn't want. They for sure know that. I knew that. Right.

[James Petragallo]

I would hope so.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I didn't think they were going to get by.

[James Petragallo]

You've seen an Andrew Dice clay act from 1987, so yeah, you probably have.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Tara Lathan. A little turpentine will do the trick. Trek James. That's cool. A Captain Ron joke.

[James Petragallo]

Yes, I know.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Stephanie Chayton chatting. Maybe Danae Lynn. Thank you, Danae. Good to see you. Other producers this week are a happy hour in Conroe, Texas. Checking in. Good to see you.

[James Petragallo]

Happy hour.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Liz Vasquez, Peyton Meadows, Janice Hill, Tiffany Gonzalez, Satan Morris, Jen with two ends, no last name people.

[James Petragallo]

Good people.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, they're terrific.

[James Petragallo]

Goddamn good people. Sorry.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Mindy Bibert. Boyo Nasty. What? Okay. I don't know.

[James Petragallo]

I don't know.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I don't know. Brielle Heard. Amendola with no last name. Amandla. That is last name, last name Amendola.

[James Petragallo]

Certainly hope it's not a first name.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It might be Amandla. Chandler Jensen, Zachary McAdam. Brandy Compro. Corn Probes. Corn like the band. Probes like the host of Survivor Back. J Matthew Graff. Santa Fe. Michelle. M I S H A E L L E. That is not Michelle. Stop it. Your mom is so mean. Gap 7. John Villa, Amber with no last name. Liam More substance teachers. Michael, Ryan, Anthony, Lagobble, Legobble. Galbo Low. Galbo Anthony. Tough one. Carrie, Kelly, Emily with no last name. Courtney Dashner, Samantha Beechler, Amanda Martinez, Blake Zerbes, Olivia and Aturio Arturio, Carrie Redman, Amy Pearl, Mike on the. Mike on a horse with no last name. Okay. He has no last name.

[James Petragallo]

It's On a horse. Ember. The horse. The horse has no name. Or does he?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Brittany Giner.

[James Petragallo]

Okay.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Son of a bitch.

[James Petragallo]

That's right in the Giner.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I don't like that at all. Sarah with no last name. Peggy Johnson. Amber Jackson. Nathan Couch. Sabrina McCracken. Sarah Drulo. Jeff Moose White. Mackenzie Adams. Jeff Simpson. E. Brooks, 16. Adam with no last name. Eric Linville. Golden Roses. Not all wear capes. Okay. Jim Jam. Marsha Gleason. Nicole Halaiko. Misha Robinson. Louise Meeks. James Bruce. Jay Brooks. Is that Josh Brooks? Perhaps? Maybe just Jay Brooks. Danny with no last name. Keith Wilson. Ch. The letters C and H. Chili. Willie. Josh. Ria Raya. Perhaps Morgan Olson. Jennifer Stringer. K. This show brought to you by the letter K. Karen Bamford. Laura Lavoy. Cheryl Brands. Brandies. Brandez. Paula Ricardo. Adam Schaefer. Justine with no last name. Luis Moorehead. Moirhead. Chris. Drew Carey. I don't believe you. A crooked pinky. A crooked pinky. M with no last name. Joni Jones. Johnny Jones. I don't know. Nikki Marie. Quentin with no last name. Ruben Revaeus Revellis. Sam Ellis. Chris Cazolino. Alexandria. Andrea. Alexandria Wertelka. Wow. G with no last name. Sky with no last name. Sarah T. Monica Horton. Jill Kelly. Best little cat house in Wyobraska. Is Wyoming close to. It is close to Nebraska.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. They're connected.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Is there a cat house there?

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, you can drive across Wyoming and.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Through Nebraska because you get A in in Wyobraska? I don't know.

[James Petragallo]

I think so.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That'd. That's great. Qualifying. Kenry Kenny. Qualifying. Is that a. Okay. All right. Melanie Buckley. Christine Christina Plyler. Billy White. Casey with no last name. Jennifer Cox. Jeff Dabwigny. Dubuine. Jason with no last name. Jason Cecil.

[James Petragallo]

Connected to Nebraska, by the way.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Is it really?

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I wonder if it's legal.

[James Petragallo]

I've driven through there. Yeah, all the way through.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Igor. Holy.

[James Petragallo]

Wow, that's a weird name. With holy is your name. I think that's easier for people. I said go with holy. That was easier for Jimmy to pronounce.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Igor. Igor. It's pronounced Igor. Jessica Vanderbilt. Michaela Hansen. Jacob Gonzalez. James with no last name. A bell will hung, I hope. Is that William? No way. That's the real guy. Beth Silvy. Shannon poole. Electric Diva creations.com Michelle Gulch. Emily Bulkili. Catherine Vogler. Vogler. Vogler. Maybe. Corey with no last name. Chris C. Alexandra Wong. Rachel Gazi. Gaziel Gazil. Karen Ruth Carson. Carson Oster. Oh, Oster. Ouch. Laura Myers Becky Sargent Samantha Hercules Charles Withrow Carolyn with no last name Marisol Jessica Johnson Andrew with no last name K the letter K. Emily Garcia Christine Struzzi Rob Hire John James Webb Sarah with no last name Olivia Christensen Paul Caracato Sabrina M. Sabrina Harvey Peter Reynolds Chris with no last name Alicia Porter Christina Reisenbeck Reisebeck Reisbeck Elisa Eli Elisa Elisa Schram only Zeki Jay Lynn with no last name Rose with no last name Mike, Mike. Mike M E I k e. Is that Meek Mike Jolie Vet. That's a foreign name. Lauro with no last name Amy da Broom. Uh, Shannon Sullivan, Kara Shocks, Libby Kilgore and all of our patrons, thank you so much.

[James Petragallo]

Thank you everybody so much. Wow. You fantastic diabolical bastards who don't have evil in your heart. We love you so much. Thank you for all that you do for us and thanks for keep coming back every week. Tell your friends, keep doing it. You want to follow us on social media drop down [e-mail] we'll take you there. Otherwise until next week everybody. It's been our pleasure. 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 it was late past midnight when they broke into the farmhouse. Never in a million years would you.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Think that you'd see your parents house.

[James Petragallo]

Taped off by that yellow tape.

[Jimmy Whisman]

And they said you remember you end up being killed.

[James Petragallo]

They left behind a wall of blood and the key to a secret.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It was a very brutal crime scene. One of the worst I've ever seen.

[James Petragallo]

Murder in the Moonlight, a new podcast from Dateline. Listen now.