#575 - Lady In The Water - Arcadia Township, Michigan

Summary

Small Town Murder Podcast: Episode #575 - "Lady In The Water - Arcadia Township, Michigan"

Hosts: James Pietragallo & Jimmy Whisman
Release Date: March 6, 2025

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I. Introduction to the Case

In Episode #575 of Small Town Murder, hosts James Pietragallo and Jimmy Whisman delve into a perplexing and tragic case from Arcadia Township, Michigan. This episode, titled "Lady In The Water," explores the mysterious death of Florence Stern, affectionately known as Flo, and the subsequent accusation against her husband, Mark Unger. The hosts blend in-depth research with their trademark comedic spin to unravel the complexities of this small-town murder.

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II. Background of Mark Unger and Florence Stern

Florence Stern (Flo) was a vibrant 37-year-old woman from Huntington Woods, Michigan. Born in 1966, Flo was known for her friendly demeanor, artistic talents, and strong connection with her community. She met Mark Unger, born in 1960, during their college years at the University of Michigan, where both pursued their interests—Flo in fine arts and Mark in advertising.

Their relationship blossomed post-graduation, leading to marriage and the birth of two sons, Max (born 1993) and Tyler (born 1996). Despite appearing to have a stable family life, underlying issues brewed, particularly Mark's struggles with addiction and burgeoning gambling habits following a severe back injury in 1998.

James Pietragallo: "[...] Flo was beautiful, charming, and a great lady. Mark loved her dearly, calling her an awesome mother and partner." [26:56]

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III. Events Leading to the Murder

Mark Unger's life took a downward spiral after his back injury forced him to confront chronic pain and dependency on prescription painkillers, notably Vicodin. His addictions extended beyond medication to alcohol and gambling, creating significant strain on his marriage.

By August 2003, the marriage between Mark and Flo was in turmoil. Flo had been contemplating divorce for years, citing a lack of common interests and an erosion of trust within their relationship. The situation intensified when Mark's addiction led to erratic behavior, causing Flo to seek separation to safeguard their children and her own well-being.

Jimmy Whisman: "I've been thinking about divorcing you for six or seven years now. There's a lot of lies in this marriage." [46:14]

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IV. The Night of the Murder: October 21, 2003

In an attempt to salvage their relationship, Mark and Flo embarked on their annual tradition: a trip to the Watervale Inn in Arcadia Township. However, tensions were palpable as Flo expressed reluctance and fear about spending another night in the secluded, dark environment of the lakefront inn.

At approximately 9:30 PM, after spending time with their sons, Mark and Flo retreated to the boat deck to discuss their marriage. Their encounter with a fisherman named Fred O'Flyn further complicated the evening. Fred noticed their somber mood and engaged them in conversation, during which Flo reiterated her fear of the dark and reluctance to stay at the inn.

James Pietragallo: "Mark and Flo were sitting on the boat deck, having an adult conversation while their kids watched movies in the cottage." [62:00]

Shortly after, Florence was discovered floating face down in Lower Herring Lake, her body displaying signs of severe trauma, including a fractured skull and broken hip. The initial examination raised suspicions of foul play rather than an accidental fall or suicide.

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V. Police Investigation and Growing Suspicion

Deputy Troy Packard was the first responder to the scene. Upon arrival, he immediately sensed irregularities—such as the broken railing and the presence of blood on the concrete platform—which contradicted the possibility of an accidental fall. Additionally, Mark's behavior during the investigation—marked by evasiveness and emotional fluctuations—heightened suspicions.

James Pietragallo: "Mark jumped into the water right where Flo was found, making it appear as though he might have known exactly where to find her." [73:00]

Further complicating the case was the revelation of Flo's affair with Mark's best friend, Glenn Stark, adding a potential motive rooted in jealousy and betrayal. However, Mark maintained that he was unaware of the affair, suggesting that Flo had kept it hidden from him.

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VI. The Trial: Prosecution vs. Defense

Prosecution's Case

Prosecutor Donna Pendergrast, a seasoned Michigan prosecutor with an impressive track record, presented a circumstantial case against Mark Unger. The prosecution's key points included:

1. Opportunity and Motive: Mark Unger's financial gains from life insurance and the desire to prevent divorce-induced loss of assets provided a strong motive.
2. Physical Evidence: The white paint smear on Mark's shoes matched the broken railing at the inn, suggesting physical engagement during the incident.
3. Medical Testimony:
   • Dr. Stephen Cole: Identified head injuries as the cause of death but couldn't rule out drowning.
   • Dr. Dragovich: Asserted that the manner of death was undoubtedly homicide, citing neurogenic pulmonary edema as evidence that Flo was alive when she entered the water.

James Pietragallo: "Dr. Dragovich stated clearly that Flo hadn't drowned on her own; she must have been incapacitated before being placed in the water." [90:05]

4. Behavioral Evidence: Mark's eagerness to leave the scene and his contradictory statements heightened suspicions.

Jimmy Whisman: "Mark was ready to leave home immediately after the body was found; that alone sounds suspicious." [130:21]

Defense's Argument

Mark Unger's defense, led by experienced attorney Bob Harrison, countered the prosecution's claims with alternative explanations:

1. Accidental Fall Theory: The defense posited that Flo accidentally tripped over the faulty railing, leading to her severe injuries and subsequent drowning.
2. Damaged Railing: Dr. David Ruby, an engineer, testified that the inn's deck was structurally unsound, making accidents plausible.
3. Mock Reconstructions: The defense presented computer-animated scenarios depicting how Flo could have fallen and entered the water unintentionally.
4. Questioning Medical Testimony: They challenged the credibility and consistency of the medical experts, suggesting that their conflicting testimonies cast reasonable doubt on the prosecution's claims.

James Pietragallo: "The defense used computer animations to show that Flo could have accidentally fallen into the water, disputing the prosecution's narrative of foul play." [106:27]

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VII. Verdict and Jury Deliberation

After an extensive nine-week trial characterized by highly emotional testimonies and conflicting expert opinions, the jury deliberated for four days and 25 hours before reaching a verdict. The jurors were swayed by the medical evidence suggesting that Flo was incapacitated before her death and Mark's suspicious behavior following the incident.

Verdict: Guilty of first-degree murder.

James Pietragallo: "With the medical evidence and circumstantial links pointing to him, the jury found Mark guilty." [135:21]

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VIII. Appeals and Current Status

Mark Unger appealed his conviction multiple times, contesting claims of ineffective assistance of counsel and the admissibility of certain testimonies. However, both federal and state appellate courts upheld the original verdict, citing the overwhelming circumstantial evidence against him.

Current Status: Mark Unger is serving a life sentence at the Chippewa Correctional Facility in Michigan. His attempts to regain custody of his sons have been thwarted by the conviction, leaving Max and Tyler in the care of their maternal grandparents.

Jimmy Whisman: "Mark's appeals have been unsuccessful, cementing his fate behind bars." [176:58]

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IX. Conclusion and Reflections

The "Lady In The Water" case serves as a stark reminder of how personal turmoil, addictions, and hidden affairs can culminate in tragic outcomes. James and Jimmy encourage listeners to ponder the evidence and motives, highlighting the challenges jurors face in cases lacking direct evidence but rich in circumstantial indicators.

James Pietragallo: "Even without DNA or fingerprints, the convergence of motive, opportunity, and behavior painted a compelling picture for the jury." [165:00]

The episode underscores the delicate balance between legal interpretations and human emotions, leaving listeners to grapple with the justice served in small-town settings.

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Notable Quotes:

• Jimmy Whisman: "If you think true crime and comedy should never ever go together, we might not be for you, but give it a shot." [07:10]

• James Pietragallo: "There's nothing funny about an actual murder. That's not. There's no joke when someone's head's being cut off." [07:10]

• James Pietragallo: "Flo's father, Harold, said that she has been afraid of the dark for as long as he could remember." [68:25]

• Jimmy Whisman: "Mark was ready to leave home immediately after the body was found; that alone sounds suspicious." [130:21]

• James Pietragallo: "If you look at it logically, I doubt that Fred in the motorboat came back and killed her for no reason." [175:00]

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This episode of Small Town Murder not only unravels a complex murder case but also humanizes the individuals involved, exploring themes of love, addiction, betrayal, and the pursuit of justice in the quiet corners of America.

Transcript

[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]

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 and tell you about something awesome. Fast Growing Trees. Did you know Fast Growing Trees is the biggest online nursery in the US with thousands of different plants and over 2 million happy customers. They have all the plants your yard needs like fruit trees, privacy trees, flowering trees, shrubs, and so much more. Fast Growing trees makes it easy to get your dream yard order online and get your plants delivered directly to your door in just a few days without leaving home. This is awesome. This is very awesome. I love putting trees in the yard. You know that and I know you have planted a bunch in your yard and I've done so much with my trees in my yard.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's fun to watch them actually thrive.

[James Petragallo]

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[Jimmy Whisman]

Now back to the show.

[James Petragallo]

This week in Arcadia Township, Michigan. When a woman is found floating face down in a lake, it makes everybody wonder, was this just a tragic accident, a sad suicide or one of the coldest murders you could possibly commit? 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 Whisman]

I'm Jimmy Whisman.

[James Petragallo]

Thank you folks so much for joining us today on another crazy edition of Small Town Murder. We've had a lot of crazy lately. Last week, the main, the main episode was Haddon Clark who was a one of the most insane serial killers with all of his drawings.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Terrible person.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, it's been crazy lately. Definitely. Before we get started, head over to shutupandgivemerder.com first of all, merchandise is there, but second, tickets to shows are there. Get those right now. Get your 420 tickets for the virtual live show. Anywhere in the world that you are with an Internet connection you can watch a live show. It'll be just like a regular live show except we're going to be wearing costumes. And since It'll be a 420 show takes place on the 19th of April and there's two weeks you can get it after that. But since it's on 420, I'll have crazy smoking apparatus for Jimmy to be terrified of and a crazy story and all the pictures and everything like that. Can't wait. And you should get tickets for regular live shows while you're there as well. Next up in May, we have St. Louis and Chicago. Think St. Louis is about gone. Everybody but Chicago. Still tickets left for Chicago. Get them right now before they're gone and for the rest of the year too because we have a bunch of shows that are sold out already. So get in there right now. Even in December. Philly, D.C. get them right now because they're almost gone. So do that. Shut up and give me murder.com. also, listen to Crime in Sports if you haven't, because this week you definitely don't have to like sports. We have been doing a series on Evel Knievel, who's just one of the craziest guys. And that's just, that's more of a cultural icon type thing. It has nothing to do with sports. Check it out. It's a crazy series. And also listen to your stupid opinions, which is the funniest show on the Internet. So check all those out. And then also subscribe to Patreon while you're at it. Patreon.com CrimeInSports is where you get all the bonus material. Anybody $5 a month or above, you're going to get it all. You're going to get hundreds of back episodes you've never heard before immediately upon subscription. Then new ones every other week. One Crime in Sports, one Small Town Murderer, and you're going to get them all. That's right, all of it. This week for Crime and Sports, we're going to Talk about the 2012 Miami Dolphins bullying scandal and some new stuff that's come up about that lately. You know, in retrospect, people have different opinions now, so that's interesting. And then for Small Town Murder, we're gonna talk about the Amazon review Killer who killed people, held women hostage, did all this stuff. And then the tools of that trade, he left truthful Amazon reviews about, about, you know, how this was helpful in killing people. It's bonkers. We'll talk all about that. That is patreon.com crimeinsports and you get a shout out at the end of the show as well. Jimmy will mess your name all up. That said, disclaimer time. It's a comedy show, everybody. That's one thing. Unfortunately, the facts are as real as they could be. Honestly, we wish we could just tell you fictional stories and that would be fine, but these are real stories. The details are super real, meticulously researched and everything like that. So there's also gonna be jokes. We're comedians. That's how we do this thing. So what we've decided, and we figured out a long time ago, that it's really easy. Separate the two. That's it. There's nothing funny about an actual murder. That's not. There's no joke when someone's head's being cut off. That's not funny. What's funny is where do I put the head? Now that's a funny thought right there, huh? Maybe I'll put it in the freezer and nobody will notice it. That's crazy. And that's funny. So that's where it comes from. What we don't do, what we never do, is we never make fun of the victims or the victims families.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Why is that, James?

[James Petragallo]

Because we're assholes.

[Jimmy Whisman]

But.

[James Petragallo]

But we're not scumbags. See, real simple. That's how that goes. So if you think that sounds good to you, you're gonna hear a wild story. If you think true crime and comedy should never ever go together, we might not be for you, but give it a shot. I think maybe we are for you. So either way, no complaining later. That said, I think it's time to sit back, everybody. Let's all clear the lungs here. Let's arms to the sky. Let's all shout. Shut up and give me murder. Let's do this, everybody.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Okay.

[James Petragallo]

Let's go on a trip, shall we? Let's do it. We're going to Michigan this week.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, yeah.

[James Petragallo]

Where we will be this year in Grand Rapids. But I think that's already sold out. Or damn close to it, so.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Pretty close.

[James Petragallo]

Not really plugging it at this point. This is Arcadia Township, Michigan.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Now, is that the up?

[James Petragallo]

No, it's not. It's northern Michigan, but not the up. It's on the. Oh, it's right on the lake up in northwestern Michigan. Yeah, but it's in the regular part and it's not the other. Arcadia Township, Michigan. Listen, we're supposed to have one town name per state. You can't have two Smithtowns in the same state. They have two Arcadia townships in the same goddamn state, which is A. One's in Lapeer County, I guess, down in kind of Central South. L A P E E R. La Pierre. No, not La Pierre. I would have gotten Pierre. I know Pierre. I could have pronounced that. But Lapeer County, I guess. I don't know. Lapeer, whatever the hell it is. This is 2 hours and 15 minutes to Grand Rapids, where we will be in September. Two hours to our last Michigan episode, Crockery Township, Michigan, which was the Battle of the Neighbors, which was wild stuff. I love those for some reason. I love the ones where it's two neighbors fighting for years and then there's a show. For some reason, those really interest me. I don't know why.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Because you don't want to talk to. It's validation for you.

[James Petragallo]

Yes, this is.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, this is why.

[James Petragallo]

This is why. Just mind your business.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I don't want to barbecue with them, God damn it.

[James Petragallo]

Stick to yourself. Next thing you know, we'll be having a golf gunfight in the yard. We'll be dueling in the yard in front of the fucking ribs. So this is in Manistee county, area code 231. And there is no motto, but I'm gonna give you what it says on the website about this place. This is kind of what their. Their whole deal here. Since the 1900s, the climate, tempered by the cool waters of Lake Michigan, has made Arcadia a refuge for those seeking relief from the pressures and confinement of the metropolitan areas of Southern Michigan and neighboring states. So they're telling you, can't take it anymore. Come here for a weekend. That's what it is. It's just all like a little resort lake town. It's. There's no. I feel like no sticking around. No.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Come by for a bit and get the fuck out of town.

[James Petragallo]

This is where they played pool in the great outdoors and stuck that pool cue between the chick's legs and she flung it across the. Yeah, that's. That's where we are here. Except poor girl. Michigan. And that was boyfriend.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Longer than a week.

[James Petragallo]

Never a week, because they leave, damn it. But Buck's gonna be different. So even though he's not, he's leaving, too. It's stupid. So. So dumb. Little bit.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's a funny scene, too, when they're sitting in that boat and she's like. And you're leaving in two days. And he's like, yeah, but.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, this is the whole reason I didn't want to go out with you. That was the point. She's trying to tell him, and he's like, yeah, but I can finger you now. It's like, no, you're not getting it.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, but show me your tits.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, that's all he's asking for. It's real weird. So, history of this town. They organized a Township in 1870 and then founded the village of Arcadia in 1880. There's Arcadia Township then within that is Arcadia, which is inside of Arcadia Township. Ridiculous. So the early history, they say, is dominated by Henry Stark, who was a Milwaukee and who established a lumber mill and made a shitload of money. Also established a church and all that kind of shit here. It was a big lumber town through the early 1900s. In 1906, that guy's lumber town. Lumber mill, Henry Stark. It burned to the ground, of course. And as everything did.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Save the planet lumberman.

[James Petragallo]

And Mr. Stark, you know what else? Lumber is Flammable. That's the problem. Very flammable.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Iron man figured it out. That shit doesn't burn.

[James Petragallo]

It doesn't burn quite as easy. So it was replaced by the Arcadia furniture factory. Now, there are no reviews of the town proper because it's a small town, but there are reviews of the place that we're going to talk about, where this murder took place this week or, you know, where the death happened here, which is the Water Vale Inn. It's right on the lake. It's like the most famous inn around here. It's built in, you know, the 1920s or something. It's very old, and so they say it features 14 cottages, which are suites of rooms. So they have cottages separate. Then they have a main building with suites inside of that. It's pretty cool. And the historic inn where breakfast and dinner are served daily. It is situated on two lakes, this inn. So it's a very, very good vacation spot, essentially. And they have, like a big boat dock where people can go out and a big deck where they go out and drink wine and look at the lake.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Water town.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, it's really nice. This place has 4.8 stars on Google as well.

[Jimmy Whisman]

So that's fantastic.

[James Petragallo]

It's really good. Out of 85 reviews, here is one from Mary Jean. Five stars. Love this place. Old school, cool at its finest. Charming cottages, beautiful setting. Be sure to do the Mount Baldy hike and walk back along the water. The way you get to run down the dunes. That's a long way. It's a long walk on the beach. Be prepared. Okay? That's what.

[Jimmy Whisman]

You want to know what Mount Baldy means, because there's like 3,000.

[James Petragallo]

There's a lot of them out west. There's a bunch of them, too. Yeah.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

I think Idaho has one. I want to say Utah or somewhere has one. There's a lot of them.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Arizona has like six.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, it's ridiculous. Maybe it's just they had. There's nothing on top of it, so they called it Mountain Bald. I don't know. Or there's a guy named Baldy who was climbing all the mountains but had no hair. He had no hair, but he had. Was great at mountain climbing.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

So that's fine.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Shitload of North Face gear, this guy.

[James Petragallo]

Tons. Patagonia possessed. It's all over the place. And then finally, one star from Rick. The owners are not friendly, that's all.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Well, that's because Rick wanted to walk around without a shirt on. They were like, maybe inside. Put one on.

[James Petragallo]

It's the pants, I think. Was that were the problem? The shirt? They didn't mind, but they were like, rick, you gotta have something on, please. It's wind. It's windy up here. You're just going flopping all around.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Just in his. This isn't as Fruit of the Looms, just any white. Can I just take some pancakes to my room? You can go to your room until you have clothes on, Rick.

[James Petragallo]

You can eat all your meals in your room, Rick. Tell you what, we'll just leave a tray outside of it and you come out and get it. So the owners, by the way, are in this murder story. They don't. It's not. They're not like murderers or murdered, but they're involved in this. So this is pretty funny when you hear their quotes. Always just think the owners are not friendly. It's funny. People in this town. 524 is the permanent residency. Oh, boy. Just enough to work all the places and stores and ice cream shops and shit. More males than females here, which is odd, really. Over 51% male. But it's very strange because the median age is 60. So when people are older, usually the males start to die off and you get more females. So this is a very strange stat there. 60% married, which is higher than the national average. Single, with children, 0.0%.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Hell yeah.

[James Petragallo]

None. We're all old, don't care.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Married and have kids.

[James Petragallo]

That's it. Race in this town, 94.6% white, 4% black, 1.1% Hispanic. Religion, 40.4% religious. And it's spread around pretty good. There's some Lutherans and Episcopalian or two, a Presbyterian here or there. Most of them are Catholic, though, 20% Catholic. So Catholics are the Baptists of the northern midwestern area of the Great Lakes. Catholics of the Baptists of the Great Lakes. Unemployment rate is 7.6% here, which is much higher than the national average. And that's because there's a limited amount here. I mean, there's just. You either work at the store that sells the little melted snow globey things or, you know, it's a tourist town.

[Jimmy Whisman]

So the fish.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. Not a lot of industry here that you can really crank onto. Median household income here, though, is high. It's $74,167 a year, which is higher than 69,000. It's. The average cost of living here is 78 out of 100, which is pretty low. Housing is. The median home cost here is $249,500.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Wow.

[James Petragallo]

Which sounds good.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Lake Town. That sounds great.

[James Petragallo]

Sounds great till you get into the housing market. That includes, when you add, that includes like just a lot that has no houses on it. You know what I mean? So that could be $100,000. And they average that out with a house that weighs, that's half a million dollars. And you have a lower average. So in case you want to find out a little more about it, maybe you're looking for a nice place to spend the summer night in the lake. Here we have for you the Arcadia Township, Michigan real estate report. The average two bedroom rental here goes for $940 a month, which sounds low, honestly, in this area. That doesn't sound bad.

[Jimmy Whisman]

1200 or so.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, it's around 12. Here's a three bedroom, two bath, 1100 square foot condo. This is not a private home and there's a condo. So there's another house attached to you. It says in the listing, just steps to your own private 30 foot dock and slip on Arcadia Lake.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Awesome.

[James Petragallo]

That's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. Pretty bland on the inside. This is not a place, I feel like where you live, this is a weekend summer place. Because all those places like Lake George, they have those. All the houses for sale, they're like 700 grand and inside they're from 1981. They're just. There's carpet, they're a mess. So that's what it looks like. It looks like a giant motel room that needs an update. The whole house. 224,900 bucks though. So if you just want to go up and party on the lake or whatever. I mean, if you want to own a lake house. There you go.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's pretty expensive still in it.

[James Petragallo]

It's expensive, yeah, but I mean that's below the average.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, really not that bad.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. I assume if you're going to buy a lake house, you're not like, you know, counting scrimping pennies at that point. You're probably. You're doing all right, you're doing okay for yourself. Here's a four bedroom, three bath, 2364 square foot house on 3.52 acres.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Okay.

[James Petragallo]

It's nice inside. It's very updated, HGTV friendly type of joint. Not bad. Not on the lake, but you have views of Lake Michigan, so it's okay. 799,900 bucks for that though. But it is 2,500 square feet almost and three and a half acres, so. Okay. Little pricey. Here's a three bedroom, two bath. Speaking of pricey, 2033 square foot. So not humongous.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Smaller than the other one.

[James Petragallo]

It's on 4.97 acres.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Hell yeah.

[James Petragallo]

And I'll read the listing. Rare opportunity to own this amazing property. 198ft of private frontage on Lake Michigan. Nearly five acres of land.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Wow.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Whisman]

This is 60 yards of shoreline. That's yours.

[James Petragallo]

That's yours. On Lake Michigan.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Nobody will be there.

[James Petragallo]

It's fucking awesome. It's all woods around your house leading up to Lake beautiful. Built in 1920. Inside it's 1989. That's what it looks like in there. That's when it was updated. Farty as the day is long. But a lot of real wood paneling in the rooms. That looks nice. You know that kind of shit. $1,150,000 though. You're gonna pay for that. You have five acres of lakefront. You're paying for it. That's how that works. Things to do here. Okay. Got a couple of things. First is Arcadia Days. D A Z E. Of course. Every town seems to have one. And it says to the festival's a great local event that celebrates the heritage of Arcadia, Michigan. And that is. This is how they celebrate with a pickleball tournament.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

That's. That tells me about heritage and old timey things.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's old people.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. Fireworks over Lake Michigan. Pulled pork sandwiches with fixins.

[Jimmy Whisman]

With fixins.

[James Petragallo]

With fixins. From 5pm until sold out. It says music by Barefoot. That's the band. And then also no, not barefoot. Not one shoe. Nothing that we have. Free horse carriage rides. Dance to live music by Bent Carrot. Which sounds like a dick euphemism.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Sure does.

[James Petragallo]

Sounds like you got some peyronies and you got a dick euphemism.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Or it sounds like you were throwing a lot of hips. Real fast coordination.

[James Petragallo]

Fucking bent carrot time. Kids fishing tournament. Children's story Fishing for kids. A doubles cornhole tournament. Let's get together and see how much corn we can hold.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Double sided cornhole.

[James Petragallo]

Double sided. Also a ham and German potato salad lunch. That's. You're gonna be farting all day.

[Jimmy Whisman]

German in the type of food. I imagine it's because the mayo in that potato salad is sour.

[James Petragallo]

I think the German one is mustard. That's. I think the German is the yellow one. I think.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Really?

[James Petragallo]

There's maybe mayo too. But it's mainly a mustardy based one. The German one. It has like bacon in it sometimes. It's not bad. It's okay. It's not too terrible. Let me see here. We also have free horse carriage rides. More music by Barefoot. They're playing every Fucking night. Then there's the mini ha ha brewhaha.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Okay. Some native stuff.

[James Petragallo]

That's okay. Now the festival will highlight the talented local bands that call Northwestern Michigan home. That's.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh no.

[James Petragallo]

These are bands from the woods, everybody. Yeah.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Honor the natives with the worst music on the planet.

[James Petragallo]

Oh man. It says from students who are just starting their music careers to the Homestyle Jamboree, bands of music lovers. This sounds awful. The centerpiece stage will be supported by a collection of other homegrown favorites like local food trucks and a tasting sponsored by regional breweries. We believe that local acts deserve a spot in the limelight. They will, once they get good enough for people to see them. There's plenty.

[Jimmy Whisman]

You wait till they get to open for somebody. They'll get their due, I promise.

[James Petragallo]

This isn't the 70s. They're out there on the Internet. If people like them, they'll find them.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's the thing. Now if you're good, you'll get an audience.

[James Petragallo]

Chapel Roan was a nobody a year and a half ago and she had tons of music already made. You know what I mean? Like that. They'll go pick it up, don't worry about it. So they want to do that and encourage the growth of our unique music scene. Now this includes at 11:00am the coveted 11:00am spot that all performers can't wait to do. The Cross Cut Kings will be there and then Jake Allen and TJ Rankin will be there. Next up, I'm going to give you a name of a band and I'm going to ask you to. Well, here, I'll just give you the name. D, G A N G O P F O N I Q E D Jango Phonique. Django Phonic.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

What do you think that band looks like? And I guarantee you, everyone out there listening right now, no matter what you're fucking picturing, you are really wrong. Like dead fucking wrong.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's not like black people doing techno music or something. Oh, who the fuck is this?

[James Petragallo]

It is a group.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Don't do that.

[James Petragallo]

It's. First of all they have a stand up bass which is. There's like an oboe or a clarinet or some shit. A lady who looks like she's wearing a fucking prom dress with full gloves going up her arm above the elbow, man. Three dudes. Four dudes in bow ties. It looks like if you went to a. If you went to a fancy hotel, they'd be quietly playing in the lounge while being.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Django Phonique.

[James Petragallo]

Django Phonique. And then there is after Him. Darren Vandermolen. Who? I hate to do this to you.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, boy.

[James Petragallo]

But I'm just gonna show him to you and you can make your own. He looks just like you. I hate it. I hate that he does, but God damn it, picture. And I'm like, oh, it's Jimmy rocking on the base.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Transplants. Darren, get out of my life.

[James Petragallo]

No, same thing. And he's playing bass with a little kid in front of him there. We also have Nick Veen. Vine Veen. I don't know. V E I N E. I don't know who the fuck that is. He needs to come up with a better name. Either cock euphemism or it's Vine. I don't know. The Mark Lavin Good band. This is awful as the Mark Lavin Bad band. It sounds like I'm not into that Jones and the get down, which at least sounds like a band. Yeah, Sean Kelly, who I assume is gonna just play Irish fucking Irish music the whole time I'm here. Sad music to drink to. All right, all right.

[Jimmy Whisman]

We're playing Rattling Bog for the third time.

[James Petragallo]

The Ride. After that, the Jim Cummins Band.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

And then TC Knuckleheads. Beats the shit out of me. I don't know. Those are local bands, everybody. Crime rate in this town, what we are interested in here, property crime is about one third below the national average. So it's safer than normal. And then violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, and of course, assault. The Mount Rushmore of crime is about half the national average. So, okay, so pretty good. As you would expect that like a sleepy lake town, people aren't just savaging each other in the streets, which is.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Although there are some holiday traveling records that cause some problems.

[James Petragallo]

That's how it is gonna happen. Gonna happen. It goes. You can't. Can't avoid it. Unavoidable. So that said, let's talk about some murder here. Let's get into this. Let's talk about a woman first here. Florence Stern. Okay. S T E R N. Stern goes by Flo because that's a cooler name. Flo sound. Anybody with the name Flo sounds cool.

[Jimmy Whisman]

They're fun.

[James Petragallo]

They sound like they're cool. Hey, Flo. Hey, what's happening? She sounds chill. She's born in 1966. Here she is from Huntington Woods, Michigan, which is a Detroit suburb, apparently. Yeah, they made it sound like it's way far away from Detroit, though. Sure does put woods in there. People think it's totally different. They won't see.

[Jimmy Whisman]

And Huntington sounds like it's so far out. That's where you can shoot a deer from your front porch.

[James Petragallo]

Sounds like fancy woods.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

And then your servant will go retrieve the deer for you that you just shot from your front woods. She's the daughter of Harold and Claire Stern and people. Apparently, Flo, using. By the. She has the name Flo, so she's got to use it. Is very good at making friends and very good at connecting with people. She's very good at that. Very real friendly and that kind of shit. And she's into arts in college. She's a fine arts major, so she does that. Her friend said she brought a sense of beautiful, of the beautiful to everything she did. I don't know. I don't know what that means. That sounds pretentious is what that.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Don't say that about me.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, no. He brought a sense of beautiful to everything he did. Now, I'm more likely to say he looked like Dan Vandermolen or whoever that guy. Darren Van Der Molen or whoever the that was.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I'm never gonna forget that motherfucker's name as long as I live.

[James Petragallo]

Never. Never. You son of a. I hate him so much. Oh, you bastard. So, yeah, she did that sense of the beautiful. I'm not saying she sounds pretentious. Her friend sounds pretentious for saying that. It sounds weird. Now, she knew somebody named Connie here who has a brother named Mark. All right. Connie says she's beautiful, she's charming, she's fun. Flo's a great lady here. Now, Connie's brother, his name is Mark. Mark Unger. Like Felix. U N G R. He is born in 1960, so a few years older than her. Also from the Huntington woods area. Really interesting. So he's got two sisters, Kim and Connie. And Connie's the one who knows who knows this flow. Okay. Now, Unger, when he's a kid, he plays. He's a big sports guy. Always really into sports. Wanted to be like, an athlete, but, you know, like most people. Isn't going to be a professional athlete, so unfortunately, yeah. But still wants to do shit. Involved in sports. That's his deal. Like, he played T ball when he was a kid, like kids do and love sports. He attended the Detroit Country Day School where he was on the tennis team. So number one, Detroit Country Day School. That sounds like a private school. That's very fancy because there's schools here that are like the Rye Country Day School my friend went to because he got a hockey scholarship. And it's very expensive. Country Day School. They were like in the 90s, they were like 20 grand a year to send your kid to high school. It was wild. Yeah, that was back then. So that sounds expensive. And he's on the tennis team, which is also an expensive sport.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Most.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, that's a teenager.

[Jimmy Whisman]

You're good at tennis. You've played a lot of tennis. That's crazy that you have that much access to tennis courts.

[James Petragallo]

I didn't fucking have a. I mean, there was, like, parks with tennis courts, but no one played tennis on them. You know what I mean?

[Jimmy Whisman]

There was a park with tennis courts on it near me, but the. The nets were never on unless they had, like, some league up there. Then they put the nets on. So otherwise in a. In a green blacktop.

[James Petragallo]

Otherwise people just set the nets on fire. That's all.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Cut strings off of it, whatever.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. So he ended up going to the University of Michigan, and so did Float. Okay, so that's where they're gonna meet here now, Connie, couple of Wolverines, Connie here, Big Jim Harbaugh fans. Well, not anymore, I guess. So he's gone now. So Connie and big Bo Schembeckler fans back then, I guess. I don't know. So Connie here describes Mark. That's her describing her own brother as a very gentle teddy bear of a guy. That's all Connie said her brother and Flo met through. And this is weird. Met through Connie's daughter, who was one of Flo's friends. So I assume Connie's got to be much older than her brother because I think he's the youngest of the family here. So she's got to be much older and have had a daughter very young for her to be in the same age bracket as someone six years younger than Mark. So that's interesting. So, yeah, he met Flo through his niece, which is very strange. Very odd here. So Mark ended up, I guess, graduating from Michigan, and that's when they began dating, which makes sense because that's when she was old enough to date at that point, probably because they're six years apart. So the timeline of all of this is skewed. And I don't know how old he was and how old she was when they met, but I'm not liking that.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Into college a little bit late or a little bit early. I don't know. This is interesting.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, I feel like it's good. I feel like it's 22 and 16 is what it is, and that creeps me out. So I'm hoping it's not that. But we don't know, Connie said, went on to say about, about Flo, quote, she was beautiful, she was charming, she's fun. And they seemed very much in love.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

So there you go. They began dating after he graduated and they get married a few years later. Have a big, beautiful wedding in the middle of a big snowstorm. Oh, which, yeah, everybody said it was just beautiful.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I mean, pictures through the window look great.

[James Petragallo]

They look great. And the bride walking out with the white dress with the snow coming down. Must have been white all over us. Freezing her ass off. Unless she had a park on. It's great. You want your wedding pictures to be with a park on. Usually that's how it works. This show, Small Town Murder, is sponsored by BetterHelp. We're huge proponents of therapy because everybody needs it too. And independence is very glorified. It's easy to forget that we're all better when we have a little support system behind us. And therapy can be a great source of support for any area of your life. When it's time to shift the focus here from doing it all on your own to maybe, maybe it's a little better if we ask for some help here or there. It doesn't hurt. And there's nothing wrong with it. And we've benefited greatly from therapy. Just talking to Jimmy about something he wanted to talk to his therapist about this week. So, I mean, if you can't beat it. Makes therapy affordable and convenient, actually, which is a big barrier to a lot of people. Serves over 5 million people worldwide. You access a diverse network of more than 30,000 credentialed therapists with a wide range of specialties. And you can easily switch therapists at any time for no extra cost. Build your support system with better help. Visit betterhelp.comsmalltownmurder today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp. H E L p.comsmalltown murder.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Now back to the show.

[James Petragallo]

Hey, everybody. Just gonna take a quick break from the show to tell you a little bit more about chime. Things are expensive. The world is an expensive place. And it only gets more expensive every day. And the last thing you want is a credit card debt hanging over you. Nobody wants that. It's horrible stuff. What you can do is enter the Chime Credit Builder card. This is a secured credit card with no annual fees. You can build credit with money you set aside and avoid interest or expensive debt. Those terrible, high, awful interest rates that you get on some of those credit cards.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Chasing your tail sometimes.

[James Petragallo]

Oh, it's hard. It's what it is. You'll never get. You'll never get ahead. Plus, you can get access to my pay and get up to $500 of your pay before payday with no mandatory fees. That's excellent. You gotta do it here. You get a Visa credit card. No annual fees, interest or credit check. That's good stuff there. You use it everywhere. Visa cards are accepted, so it's not some special weird card you can't use anywhere. Turn your everyday purchases into steps toward your financial goals with Chime's secure credit card. Get started [e-mail] that's chime.com Smalltown Murder Chime it feels like progress. The Chime Credit Builder Visa card is issued by the Bancorp NA or Stride bank na Spot Me. Eligibility requirements and overdraft limits apply. Out of network ATM withdrawal and OTC advance fees may apply. Late payment may negatively impact your credit score. Results may vary. MyPay eligibility requirements apply. Credit limits range from $20 to $500. Go to Chime.com disclosures for details. So after Mark graduated from U of M here, he spent a year in California at Pepperdine University, studying advertising. And then he returned to live in Detroit or in the suburbs there in Huntington woods and, you know, all that kind of thing. So his passion's always sports. And his mother said he really wanted to be a sportscaster, which is interesting, by the way. His parents got divorced while he was in college. Like, if that's not a signal once, the last kids in college, we would.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Have done it a while ago, dude.

[James Petragallo]

They wanted to get divorced for 25 years is what that means.

[Jimmy Whisman]

We've been sticking it out and faking it. Giving you a fraud of a childhood.

[James Petragallo]

As soon as he got, like, his TV set up in his dorm room, they were fucking drawing up divorce papers. Like, well, that's that. We did it. Raised him up and out. That's time to fucking deal with us.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Everything was a lie.

[James Petragallo]

It's all a lie. And that, I think, has some effect on him, by the way, for some reason, it has some kind of weird effect on him here because you have to know that. Oh, God, they've been sitting here waiting me out for years. That's fucked up. Yeah. So he ends up getting a job as a sportscaster or on the sports radio type show on W. I can't make this up. If I tried wjzzfm. Wjizz. Everybody's got to hear the hits on wjis. Wjis. I'll change it a little from Snoops, but It's fine.

[Jimmy Whisman]

There's the cages in Arizona now.

[James Petragallo]

Oh, I know, but that was jazz. Always, right? It's the jazz station.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, It's. Yeah, obviously jazz. I mean, but no, it's not.

[James Petragallo]

No, it's cages.

[Jimmy Whisman]

They can call it whatever they want.

[James Petragallo]

This isn't even a jazz station. This is a sports stat.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, yeah.

[James Petragallo]

What are you calling themselves dubbed? Jizz. Like, what the fuck, man? I don't get it. So, yeah, it's defunct nowadays anyway, but. Oh, good, he works there. Like the word jizz, half of. Yeah. Wonder how that ended up happening. Yeah, wjzz, the jizz. Let us drip down upon you.

[Jimmy Whisman]

You can call it whatever you want, but we're calling it jizz.

[James Petragallo]

We're calling it the jizz. That's all it's ever going to be now while this is going on, she's working in retail at the time, and Mark loved it. This is his lifelong dream. And because he figures from this lowly local, this is where you start. He can move his way up and eventually he'll be on SportsCenter. You know what I mean? That's the way I mean.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Berman had to start somewhere, right?

[James Petragallo]

Totally. That's the way he's looking at it. So he says, quote, I had the greatest job in the world. This is Mark. I went to every game. I mean, it was amazing. And she worked at places where she could buy clothes and jewelry and stuff. I mean, we were very happy. So, yeah, he kind of dismissed her as like, she just works. She works to buy jewelry.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I was going to every game.

[James Petragallo]

Every game, but every game, every game. So that's a whatever. So they end up having two sons, Max and Tyler. One's born in 93 and one's born in 96. At one point I was like, oh, I won't put their names in there. I was like, they're in their 30s. It's fine. Yeah. Whenever someone's like a minor still, I try to keep them out of it, but I'm like, these people are like, one dude's 32, for Christ's sake. Golly, you know, that's enough. So, I mean, I feel terrible for the mommy. So he said, I knew she'd be an awesome mother, and she was. That's Mark's statement about Flo. So they end up moving back to the Huntington woods area. I guess they were living more near the college for a while. They moved back to the Huntington woods area where they both grew up, because they both said, well, we were such a great place. To be raised and great childhood, great childhood. So let's raise our kids there as well. So they bought a house in the, in the area and it's a pricey area. It's a nice area, Huntington woods, you know. So he ends up, she becomes a stay at home mom taking care of the kids while they're here. And he leaves his job in radio. This is before the station went under and all that. He actually had the job but he got a better job as a mortgage broker making more money which he's fucking miserable by the way, as you can imagine.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Imagine.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, yeah. To go from I go to every game and talk to the athletes, party time, talk about sports for a living to mortgage brokering, which is the most boring fucking thing I can think of.

[Jimmy Whisman]

What are interest rates this morning?

[James Petragallo]

Oh, it's not even real estate agent where at least you can go, oh there's a new. If you're interested in houses or architecture.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Being sold down the street, something.

[James Petragallo]

This is just. Well, you've decided on it. Let's do the paperwork. This is the awful job, man. So he's doing that. Florence is becoming a stay at home mom. But they are making more money now and can afford to live in this suburb and they're going to try to raise the family right here. Now 1998 comes along and Mark suffers a pretty good back injury. Not sure how it happened, 38 years old. But yeah, he's got a pretty good back injury that he gets to where he has to go to the doctor and have a bunch of shit done and everything. So he begins. They gave him Vicodin for it.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

Which in the 90s, in the late 90s is when OxyContin came out and they were aggressively marketing that shit to doctors. Like oh my God, I've seen these documentaries on it and things where they're showing the testimonials from back then saying there is zero percent chance of being addicted to this shit.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Is that right?

[James Petragallo]

Oh absolutely, yeah. Because they Oxy and Oxy.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh my.

[James Petragallo]

They're saying oxy is an addictive. You can prescribe it to anybody. It's great. You can prescribe it to kids, old people. It was wild, dude.

[Jimmy Whisman]

If you've had two weeks of. What do they call that? Experimental dosing of people.

[James Petragallo]

Oh yeah.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's a hundred percent addictive and very obvious.

[James Petragallo]

Well that's where the opioid epidemic came from. It exploded after that, Exploded after that. They were encouraging and doctors to prescribe this to people. And the doctors were going along with It. Because they're making money. So it was all kind of together at the time. Yeah. And they seemed like they were believing what the clinical trial, what their trials from these people said, from the companies, but the companies were lying and so that's what ended up happening. It was hard. So he gets Vicodin for this anyway. And he becomes hooked on them as one does.

[Jimmy Whisman]

He's got concrete shits. Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

Yep. And he hasn't shit in a month. And in. In addition to that, he starts because he can't work, also because his back's all fucked up. So now he's home all the time. And he develops alcohol addictions as well.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Real.

[James Petragallo]

Because I mean a drink and a Vicodin, you're going to feel great.

[Jimmy Whisman]

You're going to better with it.

[James Petragallo]

You're going to feel like fucking soup all day. You're just going to be like, yeah. So I get it. And then he starts getting really heavy into gambling as well. Why would he do this?

[Jimmy Whisman]

38.

[James Petragallo]

This is not good. Yeah. To become, to become a pill addict, alcoholic gambler at 38 is.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's crazy bonkers.

[James Petragallo]

And I get the gambling because he's very into sports. So maybe that's his way of keep. Yeah, yeah. It's just getting worse now because he's bored.

[Jimmy Whisman]

So he's got money.

[James Petragallo]

Absolutely. And after a while he just stops going to work and that's. He's just home. He's on pills. It's not good. Yeah. Florence has to get a job and take care of the family because otherwise, you know, it's a mess. So Mark said it was not only the Vicodin and the gambling, it was my behavior in general. You know, the selfishness. That's what he said. At one point. They began sleeping in separate bedrooms. The couple, which is never good.

[Jimmy Whisman]

She's grossed out.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, yeah. It's just not. Well, he just doesn't come to bed or he passes out at 7:30 from booze and pills all day. You know, on the couch, wherever he fell asleep kind of. Yeah. I assume there's a chair here that's getting a lot of use. You know what I mean?

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's got a real black spot on it.

[James Petragallo]

Oh, recliner with a real, real ass groove here.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oily recliner.

[James Petragallo]

No shit. So in addition to all this, her father Harold says that she never liked her married name. She never liked to be Flo Unger.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It looks like Flounder.

[James Petragallo]

And it's also. It does look like Flounder. Yeah, Flounder. It looks like you're hello Flounder. But no, no, it's Flo. It's Flo.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, that's a laugh. Okay, I'm so sorry.

[James Petragallo]

But in 98, you were still only about 25 years removed from the Odd Couple, also being like on television. And that's Felix Unger and he's Tony Randall, the real persnickety guy. And you know, has a negative connotation to it. Like people say you're. You're a real Felix Unger. That's not a compliment. You know what I mean?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yikes.

[James Petragallo]

So I think that's part of it. The dad said she always hated the name Unger and intended to change her name back to Stern. Yeah.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I mean, I love this today, thank God women can just fucking choose whether or not to take his name and that. And it's like.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I mean, they always could. Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. People used to freak out. Yeah.

[Jimmy Whisman]

The mother in law used to be like, she won't even take his day.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. Oh, they still people. You don't know how many people have said to that have like made a comment about that to Sarah. It's unbelievable.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Really?

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. And it's like, why would you. Why would you want to change your name from a four letter fucking last name? That's a word everyone can spell to Petra Gallo. Why would you want to do that? She was like, does that hurt your feelings? I was like, fuck no. Are you kidding me? Why the.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I get it. I can't take Hunt.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. I was like, I still want to be a guinea, but you know, that's fine. But why would you want that? You don't want. You don't take that on purpose. That's given to you and you go, I'm going to keep this and call it pride. That's what you do. You don't fucking do that on purpose.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It should. I mean, you should be able to choose whichever one you enjoy as your name. Yeah. Take look at the two. Unless there's like. Unless your last name is piss and you're marrying into the shit family.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Whisman]

At least you don't have one of them's gotta be better, is the point.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, it's. Yeah. You can pick what you want. I don't give a fuck. I mean, some people care, but I don't care. That's between you. Who cares? Figure it out amongst yourselves.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Never matter. Who gives a fuck.

[James Petragallo]

So after he. In September of 2002, he decides. Mark decides to try to get his shit together and go to rehab. Okay. Now he's Going to end up. It's like a five month thing he's in rehab for. This is serious.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I mean, it's supposed to be 28 days, isn't it?

[James Petragallo]

He's in a lot of trouble. This is Vicodin, booze and gambling.

[Jimmy Whisman]

So he's getting 28 days for each.

[James Petragallo]

He's got like a triad and then some more. He's got like a triad of shit he's got to work out here. It's pretty bad.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Wow.

[James Petragallo]

So he's going to be there till 2003 of February of 2003. Florence Flo here, not thrilled with the marriage at this point and is telling people that it's kind of beyond repair. He says at one point, I mean, she was not happy and she wasn't afraid to show it. He said, I was in therapy, a therapy appointment with our marriage counselor. And he said, I don't want to tell you exactly what she said. That's between us, you know, but that's where it happened. And it was painful to hear.

[Jimmy Whisman]

He's embarrassed.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. So he's. She doesn't want anything to do with him at this point anymore. She was also at that point working as a mortgage loan officer at Royal Oak Bank. That's what she was doing. Yeah. She was just like, well, I guess I'll fucking write people's loans then. Whatever. Someone's got to write goddamn mortgages in this house to stay afloat. I'll do it. So people that know Flo know that she has actually been thinking about divorcing him for six or seven years now. Since before the injury, before the Vicodin, before any of that shit.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's been a while.

[James Petragallo]

It's been a while. Her friend said that. She said they had lacked just things in common, common interests. And there's a lot of lies in the marriage. She said, too. And she wouldn't really elaborate, but she would say there's a lot of lies. We'll come up, we'll uncover a few of them here.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Well, we saw three of them.

[James Petragallo]

Some of them are hers too, though. That's the thing we'll talk about. Yeah. So he gets out of rehab in February 2003, and then August 26, 2003, Flo files for divorce. Flo gets her file on here. Now Mark fights against it. He's not just saying, great, let's get divorced. He's saying, I don't want to sign him. No. He says they can reconcile, we can figure it out. He doesn't know the whole story here, though, so she asks for a court order freezing their assets at the time. But friends say Mark kept hoping that he and Flo would stay together. A friend of theirs said, quote, mark told her he was going to get custody of the children, he was going to get the house, she would get no child support and little alimony. So she felt very threatened. And one of her relatives said, she told me that she would live in a box before she let the kids go. And another friend said that she said, I don't want to have to do it, but if he tries to take the kids from me and the house, I'm going to have to get nasty about the divorce.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yikes.

[James Petragallo]

Which, yeah, I'm gonna have to bring up that he's an alcoholic and a gambler and he did this. And there's probably in any marriage that's been together for, you know, over. Was this 13 years or something they've been married. There's plenty of dirt that you could all fling at each other. You know what I mean? Everybody's got mud. Yeah. 13 year relationship of every kind. You can bring up a few occasions where that person did not act in the best. Most fucking either side.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

For every anybody. That's what I mean. Just human being is interacting is how it is. So Tuesday, October 21, 2003. Okay. There is a divorce hearing. So this is one of the initial hearings. As you know, this takes many, many times of going boy, oh boy for a long time.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Each one costs a little bit more.

[James Petragallo]

It's a little more in both money and your soul just chipping away at it all like an ice sculpture making an ice sculpture of an angry person. So Flo insisted she would fight to keep the boys. Mark had begged her not to. She demanded the release of all the records of Mark's gambling debts and drug addictions to be put into the case. And he obviously said, no, I don't want that.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, I object.

[James Petragallo]

Not good. So obviously they still live together. So they're literally driving together to the court to go into court, sit at separate tables and argue and then drive back to the same house together.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Nothing better than your own space to decompress after this shit.

[James Petragallo]

You need this.

[Jimmy Whisman]

You gotta say out loud, can you believe the bitch wants my gambling in this?

[James Petragallo]

This asshole. Yeah, you want that?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

So no, they're still at home. Flo said to a bunch of friends this was like the worst week of her life. Just so stressful, it's horrifying. Her friend Susan said. She said, I don't want to talk about it in detail, but I was very upset. And she also said, quote, I've been crying on the bathroom floor for the past two nights. That's. That's not good. Whoa. That's not good. Her friend said. She said they'd been, you know, warring all week. Then there's a guy named Glenn Stark, just like the guy who started the lumber mill. Stark. Glenn Stark. Now he is Mark's best friend and he's got some more role in this we'll talk about, but he's Mark's best friend. And Glenn said, she said Mark had become increasingly erratic and unpredictable and withdrawn. And Flo also told Glenn Stark that she had spent that whole week locked in the bathroom crying. And Glenn said, she said he was exhibiting Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde behavior.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Okay.

[James Petragallo]

Maybe just you know, at the turn of a switch, he's a different person and he's. Now he's mean.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's. That. This is also tough because you're getting a guy straight out of rehab.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Whisman]

And then springing life changing on him. This might trigger him to go back, which might look like Jekyll and Hyde shit. That, that too, he's using here.

[James Petragallo]

If he's grabbing a fucking bottle here and there, some pills or something to tolerate this shit, you never know. And that's true too. A major life change like that right after getting out of five months of rehab is a.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's crazy.

[James Petragallo]

That's a wild break. Yeah. I think when you get out of rehab, they tell you, don't change anything for a while.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Don't get a divorce.

[James Petragallo]

No, if you smoke cigarettes, keep smoking them. If you fucking eat candy, keep eating it.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Just drink twice as much.

[James Petragallo]

Just don't do drugs. So now Mark described Glenn Stark as his best friend. As a matter of fact, the night before the divorce hearing, Glenn spent the night at their house. He slept over that night. I don't know why adults are sleeping at other adults houses, but that's fine. Now the thing is, Stark has way more involvement in this than just being Mark's best friend. He's also been having a secret affair with Flo for the last two years. Glenn, Glenn, you are scumbag. Mark, you're a tool. But Glenn, you're a fucking scumbag. Yeah, that's not at all.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's really fucked up.

[James Petragallo]

That's.

[Jimmy Whisman]

You can't. You can't fuck your best friend's wife.

[James Petragallo]

Nope. I think that's, that's like rule one, right? Yeah, that's rule one. I think it's a Commandment, for Christ's.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Sake, guess what I will never do? I'll never fuck the girl that you love.

[James Petragallo]

That's one of the few rules that's like a social rule and a commandment all at once. It's all bad.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I think it's so much of a rule, you don't even got to say it.

[James Petragallo]

You don't have to say it. You just go, you scumbag.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Hey, you're my best friend. You're probably not going to fuck my wife, right? Yeah, you're right.

[James Petragallo]

Totally. I'd be the last guy to fuck your wife. Probably. That's what you're supposed to do. Yeah. Your best friend should be trying to get other people to not try to fuck your wife. Even, like, you know, help you.

[Jimmy Whisman]

So, for Glenfell.

[James Petragallo]

Jesus. Yeah. This has been going on for two years.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, my God.

[James Petragallo]

Were they ongoing? Started out with a big email exchange back and forth, and they ended up having sex four or five times over this period. The last time they had sex up till this point was about a few days before the divorce hearing.

[Jimmy Whisman]

While he was in rehab.

[James Petragallo]

While he was still there. No, this was while he was in rehab. That happened, too. But the last time they hooked up was just, like a few days before this divorce hearing, which is six months after he got out of rehab. So, yeah, he used to be their neighbor, and he said they were having what he called a discreet affair, exchanging intimate emails for two years, which is a new thing in the late 90s. You could do have an email affair and, you know, having sex a few times there, four or five times now. We don't think Mark knew about the affair.

[Jimmy Whisman]

No.

[James Petragallo]

Well, the fact that he invited Glenn to stay at his house the night before the divorce proceedings makes me think he probably doesn't know about the affair. Just. You know what I mean? I don't think he knows. I can't imagine he does. So, and they asked Stark later on Glenn about this, and Glenn Stark said, I asked Mark if he was uncomfortable with me being there, I guess, because they were fighting, and if he'd preferred that I stayed somewhere else. And he replied that, no, he wasn't angry with me being there. I wasn't the one who was divorcing him. So I don't think he knows about this affair at all. No clue.

[Jimmy Whisman]

He's certainly helping contribute to it, man.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, but it's also. Mark has no fucking idea this is going on. Wow. So the day after the hearing, this is a Wednesday, October 22nd of 2003, a neighbor found Flo kneeling in her garden, crying, which is sad. This is Ronald Loeb. He said, quote, I said, hi, Flo, how are you? What a dumb question. I'm kneeling in a garden, crying. How do you think I am? Great.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Hi, Flo, how are you?

[James Petragallo]

How are you?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Clearly one of the worst days of my life, you fucking insensitive cunt.

[James Petragallo]

How often do you cry in your yard? Is my response. If I'm her, I'm in public, no.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Tears streaming down my face.

[James Petragallo]

This is wild. Flo, how are you? And she looked up at me and she was crying, and she said, not very well.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Obviously.

[James Petragallo]

I was gonna say, should have followed it up with obviously, dickhead.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Just don't even say a word. Look at a man crying and be like. If he has any sense of anything.

[James Petragallo]

He'Ll be like, oh, are you okay? Can I help? Are you okay? Are you okay? Is all right. Are you okay?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Are you bleeding?

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. Well, is this the beginning, middle, or end of this crying fit? Are you okay? Are you coming down? Yeah. Well, that means, like, are you coming down? Are you gonna be all right? In a minute, you can talk about it. Do you need a minute to just cry it out? Do you have to, like, hug somebody and punch them on the shoulder? Like, what do you got? What do you need?

[Jimmy Whisman]

You're kneeling. Did you twist a knee? An ankle? Do you need a hand? Is this an injury or is this internal or external?

[James Petragallo]

Let me know, please. I have band aids and booze. I don't know which one to give you. So he said, she told me that they were going up north and that she did not want to go and that she was afraid to go up north. Now, what he did is it's October 20th, 24th is a Friday of 2003. He made reservations to go up to the Watervale Inn because they go up every single year, their whole relationship. It's a tradition. They go up there, they stay in the cottages that we talked about. See why people go, why do they put that review in there? Gee, I wonder why. Because I'm telling you, this is why. Now, I don't have to explain Watervale in the middle of a fucking murder investigation or in the middle of the murder story.

[Jimmy Whisman]

So.

[James Petragallo]

So, yeah, they're going up. They stay in one of these cottages. They do it every year. They bring the kids up there. You know, they drink wine, the kids watch movies. It's. It's that kind of deal here. So they're going to head up there on this Friday. Claire Stern, who is Flo's mom said the day before leaving for the resort, her daughter told her that Mark had threatened to take the house and the kids and give her $1,000 a month.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

So that's what she was telling her mom. 19 or 2003.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Pretty weak.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. Well, yeah. Take the house and the kids. Well, I mean, yeah, I don't know. That's, that's obviously they're going back and forth, threatening each other here. So they stay at the Watervale Inn, which is on Herring Lake. And Flo told a few people that she had some issues about going. And even Mark said, I'm sure she had reservations about going. I had reservations about going, you know, but we were dedicated to the kids.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

So that's how it is. He said things seemed fine when they got in the car to drive up there. They listened to music and it's a four hour drive. So if there's a lot of beef, it's going to come out in a four hour drive. But these two, I don't know if I think maybe these two have kind of trained themselves to be in a completely different mode around the kids. Maybe as some people do.

[Jimmy Whisman]

There are, there are oftentimes in couples that one of them is real good at just fucking disconnecting, not giving a shit about it.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Whisman]

While the other one internally stews. So they might be just doing that.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, that could be what's happened. Or like I said, they could be trying to put a good face on it or they could be just, you know, who knows?

[Jimmy Whisman]

So I'm disconnecting. Whenever we're fighting, I'm just like, you know, I mean, if I'm in a relationship and I'm fighting, I'm just, I could just give two. I can ignore that person and act like this house and room is empty.

[James Petragallo]

I'm terrible at that. I can't do that.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I'm not a good fucking ignore you.

[James Petragallo]

Like I'm not a good ignore. We're going to fucking clear this up. We're going to clear this up or not clear it up, but we're not going to let it linger.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think when I'm at that point, my goal is to not clear it up and just hope you disappear.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's very unhealthy, I think is what a therapist would tell you.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I'll be bringing that up to my therapist very shortly.

[James Petragallo]

I think you've probably had that one talked about a couple of times. Probably.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's getting re established real quick here, I promise you.

[James Petragallo]

That so? Yeah, they're in the car. They're doing this. Mark said the colors were pretty to look at on the way up because it's October, driving through the woods in Michigan. So beautiful. He said the kids were having a ball. It couldn't have been better. They went to dinner at a local restaurant called I hope it's Dinghies and not Dingies. I hope it's dingies.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's still gross.

[James Petragallo]

It's still. Yeah, Dinghies sounds disgusting. Then they went back to their cottage after a dinner at Dinghies, which is weird because the inn has dinner.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Right.

[James Petragallo]

So I don't know if they just wanted to have. Maybe it's a. Maybe it's fancier. And the kids, they want to just get them some chicken strips or something.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Dinghies is just like fish and chips and it's.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Real lakefront shit.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. Yeah. Maybe they got that kind of shit.

[Jimmy Whisman]

So beer there rather than wine?

[James Petragallo]

Yes. Yes. Only beer. No wine. Yeah, we got wine. We got white and red. Which one you want? Just a big bottle of each back there.

[Jimmy Whisman]

The red just has food coloring.

[James Petragallo]

That's it. It's just white. Carlo Rossi with food coloring in it. The gallon.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Why is this red? Sparkling? Shut up and drink.

[James Petragallo]

Shut up. It's fine. So what? It's got fucking strawberry Kool Aid in it. Relax.

[Jimmy Whisman]

If you shake it, it stops sparkling.

[James Petragallo]

It's pretty good. So they stay at one of the cottages called the Mary Ellen. That's the cottage. So all the cottages have names.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Like boats.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, like boats. And it's just a few hundred yards from the lake. And it's idyllic. You know, it's idyllic. It's a nice place. And that's. It was a favorite spot for people to go would be to have a glass of wine and watch the evening sunsets on the boat deck, which is also there.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It faces the sunset.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. And by the way, being late October in Michigan, this place does not have as many people as it would be here in mid August.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Water's too cold.

[James Petragallo]

Water's too cold. This is definitely a different type of people. Like, the boat deck isn't crowded with people. At the end of the night, you want to go have a glass of wine.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Jeans on the lake.

[James Petragallo]

That's great. Fucking hoodie on the lake. Shit. Yeah. A hoodie and some wine on the lake. That sounds amazing.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I have no interest in being wet. I want to be dry and cold.

[James Petragallo]

I love it. Dry, chilly, Something nice in my hand to drink and eat. And I'M a happy fucking guy. Smoke a joint out there. I'll be a real. I'm thrilled. So the boys settle in to watch a movie. They put a movie on for the kids in the. Because they're like 10 and 7. So if you have a small little cottage, you can throw a movie on and they'll be all right for a couple hours. They won't kill each other.

[Jimmy Whisman]

3. It's cars.

[James Petragallo]

It's Cars or one of the toy stories. Like two just came out so year before. I think so. So they sit to watch a movie and Mark and Flo went down to the boat deck to have adult talk. So you don't have to sit there with fucking Pixar voices blasting in the background while you're trying to have serious conversation.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Let's be uncomfortable without Dom Engs.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. So we don't need Tim Allen here for this. Okay. We just don't. So Flo and Mark sitting on the boat deck. And the boat deck is attached to the resort proper. There's a big building with the suites inside of it with the shared bathrooms and that. And so that you walk from your cottage up to that to sit on the boat deck. So they're up there. It's, you know, late evening, 8, 9 o'clock, about 9pm A fisherman named Fred O'Flyn OEF is the way his name starts that stuff. Oakland. He landed his boat in. It's dark and he landed it right there at the, you know, at the shore. And he speaks to Florence and Mark and he gets out of the boat and he talks to them for a little while. For some reason. I see a couple enjoying a private moment. Let me row up and talk to them. Let me go bother them. Like the fuck, man. I would leave.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, we see it.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. You see two people in the dark with glasses of wine. You're going to not go up to them, right? I don't know.

[Jimmy Whisman]

If they don't have a boat, I might feel like I just big timed them.

[James Petragallo]

I guess it's just a motor. But it's not even a big boat, though.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, really?

[James Petragallo]

It's just a fucking. Like a motor. Like an outboard. Yeah, like a bass fishing boat, basically. Like one of those.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah. My Evinrude's still more. More expensive than your fucking wine.

[James Petragallo]

So he hung out with them for a little while, Fred, and talked to them and then he left in his motorboat. They did have a conversation with him. He said. It was pitch black outside, Fred says. And he told the Ungers that he was about to take his boat across the lake. And this is the middle of nowhere. It's fucking black as night. Black as night as literally. So I guess he said, quote, she mentioned she wouldn't like to be out on the lake. She said, I'm afraid of the dark.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

I wouldn't go out on that lake this late. I'm afraid of the dark. She said, yeah.

[Jimmy Whisman]

And the water looks black.

[James Petragallo]

It looks black.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's so scary.

[James Petragallo]

If it's choppy too, that's terrifying. So nobody, as Fred said, nobody heard. He didn't hear any arguing amongst the couple of Mark and Flo. He didn't hear anything suspicious, anything like that. Hey, everybody, Just gonna take a quick break from the show and tell you a little bit about our safest sponsors, Simplisafe. And everyone has routines that you go through, make you feel good, make you feel secure, like you have control over the world. And a lot of times you don't, but you do. If you're us and it's on, your routine includes arming your Simplisafe home security system. You know that's gonna do well for you. So when we're heading out, both of us, we both have them in our houses, our studios. You lock up for the night. Yeah. This simple step does more than just protect you. Gives you peace of mind. You're going to feel good about leaving and you're going to know it's going to be the same when you get back. You'll sleep more soundly. I can leave the house with confidence, and it's amazing how a push of a button can give you that kind of confidence. And with Simplisafe, we love it. Like I said, it's in our studios, in our homes, it's really easy to install too. You can get professional installation also. But if we can put it up, you can put it up. Put it that way. Visit simplisafe.comsmall to claim 50% off a new system with a professional monitoring plan and get your first month free. That's simplisafe.com/s I m p l I safe.com small there's no safe like Simplisafe.

[Jimmy Whisman]

And now back to the show.

[James Petragallo]

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[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, it's hard to figure out what's good for you and what's not. But Thrive has it all in one convenient spot.

[James Petragallo]

They have everything. They're a no junk online grocery store that bans over 1,000 harmful ingredients and their team of product researchers like, I love a cookie. Okay, yeah, I like a cookie. I like a chocolate chip cookie. I like a almonds may be in it. They have a delicious alternative I found here that is a gluten free almond chocolate cookie and it's delicious. And I'm like a cookie snob too. I usually don't like anything that's off. Oh, I don't know. I want sugar and all that. But no, these are delicious and they're gluten free and they're really good. Try them out. You can find better options way easily with Thrive Market's Healthy Swap scanner. You can scan a product and it instantly recommends cleaner alternatives. That's great. So if you, if you know, you know you like this, but this isn't good for you. Let's find a better alternative. Are you ready to make the switch? Go to thrive market.com smalltown murder for 30% off your first order plus a free $60 gift. That's T H R I V E market.com smalltown murder. Thrivemarket.com small town murder. And here her relatives back her up. Her sister, I believe, said she was afraid of the dark. And another relative said she was very afraid of the dark. I reiterate what they say and add very.

[Jimmy Whisman]

She's actually afraid of the dark, I think.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. Flo's father, Harold, said that she has been afraid of the dark for as long as he could remember. He said when she was a little child, she said, hold me, Daddy, I'm scared of the dark. And now, 30 years later, still scared of the dark. So that's the way it is.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Same way right now.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, it happens.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Take the fucking trash out at night. Outside in the backyard, man on the.

[James Petragallo]

Side, you have lights out there. You have tons of lights out there. It's bright as day out there.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I don't know.

[James Petragallo]

She's like, flick the goddamn light switch on.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's what I told her. Turn the light on. Yeah, but everywhere else is dark. Well, yeah, it's night.

[James Petragallo]

Don't look there. Look where you can see, which is right to the garbage can. Throw it. I'm not asking you to go exploring back there and find a lost civilization.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Just fucking owls or coyotes in the backyard. And that's the only thing that could get you here.

[James Petragallo]

And an owl isn't gonna get you.

[Jimmy Whisman]

No. You're much bigger than one, I promise.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, they're terrifying.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Probably punch it and kill it.

[James Petragallo]

Oh, yeah. It's not gonna want any piece of you.

[Jimmy Whisman]

She's out of her mind.

[James Petragallo]

That's funny. So 9:30pm here, Mark says he walks back to the couple's cottage, which is about 100 yards away, to put Max and Tyler to bed. So there we go. They can't even stay up late on vacation. Rough. No rough. So he said, quote, Flo was very comfortable on that deck. She wasn't ready to come in yet, I guess, so that's why he did it. So he said he spent about 15 minutes with the boys and when he went back to the boat deck, Flo was gone. Really couldn't find her. Now he walked 100 yards, sat 15 minutes, walked 100 yards, and she's gone. So he saw a light on at Maggie and Lynn Duncan's house, who are one of the property owners here, I assume these are the people who aren't nice.

[Jimmy Whisman]

They're not very nice.

[James Petragallo]

Not very nice, that guy said. And she figured, or he said he figured that she was there. So she. Probably because they know these people, because they've gone there a bunch of times.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Maggie's all right. I'm going back in with the boys.

[James Petragallo]

So he's like, all right. She probably went over there, the lights on. That's the only thing that would make sense. So he said he didn't go over there and look. He just figured she was there.

[Jimmy Whisman]

She probably is already saying negative things about me. I don't want to show my face where they already hate me.

[James Petragallo]

He literally said he thought maybe she needed some privacy with them. Maybe she was talking shit about him. So he then said, you know, he said that she must have visited the neighbor. I don't know. And even he said, quote, this is Mark. It wasn't anything earth shattering that made me not go up there to the neighbor's house. I just thought about it and said, oh, she's up there, she's fine. And I went back to the cottage. So he said, he went back to the cottage, put a movie on and fell asleep. So he woke up right about daybreak the next morning and noticed she wasn't there.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Still no flow.

[James Petragallo]

No flow. I got no flow. So he called up Lynn and Maggie Duncan and said, you know, hey, what up with Flo? Did you see her?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, why don't you stay there?

[James Petragallo]

Now, the Duncan said, this is their accounting of that. They said that he said, quote, this is Mark. Flo hasn't come home all night. And they said that he said this through sobs. He was sobbing on the phone.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh.

[James Petragallo]

So Lynn Duncan told Unger he and his wife would look for her. He said, well, we can go out and help you look for her. Duncan said, quote, I thought, why the hell would he be crying and not looking for her himself? Which is a good question and also why people say you're not very nice on a review. Maybe they might. That's a little too direct for some people. You know what I mean?

[Jimmy Whisman]

You're not willing to help out, you.

[James Petragallo]

Rude dicks, I'll help you, but Jesus.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Christ can't find the woman that's going to leave him.

[James Petragallo]

So the guy said, Mark told him, quote, this is the owner talking about Mark. He said he was going to check around the inn to see if she had taken another room. He didn't explain that to us. He had indicated that she might be suicidal. Oh, yeah. So, Lynn, the way she described or the way he described the call, he said it just sounded like somebody in tears saying, this is Mark, and my wife hasn't come home all night. So they're like, all right, well, where the fuck is she? So they look here out the door, Maggie and Lynn. Margaret and Lynn. And they look out the door. They stood in their living room and looked at the deck through the sliding glass doors. And Maggie Duncan noticed that one of the wooden lounge chairs on the deck had been moved from one corner of the deck to another corner of the deck.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, that's obvious.

[James Petragallo]

So they were like. That's interesting. Yeah. So they got dressed and walked out toward the chair to see what was going on there. So they're going to look and they. They go their separate ways. He. Mark says he's going to go look over here. They're going to go look out on the deck and, you know, wherever they're going to look. So they walk out there. This is Lynn Duncan and Maggie Duncan. Maggie gets there first. She peeks over the edge of the deck. Now, the deck here, the way it goes is there's a deck and then there's a concrete landing below the deck, like another sidewalk. And then there's the water. There's the lake right there. So that's the way it goes. She said she peeked over the edge. Maggie did. And she saw Florence. Oh, bobbing in the water. Oh, no, not good. Yeah. So this is. And the concrete's 12ft below the deck. 12ft. 12ft. A drop. Concrete slab, then the water. So she said that her feet were closest to a concrete breaker wall and her head pointed toward the center of the lake. And she is on her face, you know, bobbing up and down, bobbing up and down. And the, you know, like the dead man float. Not good. So Lynn Duncan, the husband here, said that he was not far behind. He said he saw the body in the water and picked up the blue blanket that Flo had had with her that was on the deck.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, no.

[James Petragallo]

And moved it. I guess the blanket was on the cement slab below the deck down there. So he picked it up and moved it. He said when he picked it up, there was a puddle of blood under it. Oh, he's like, oh, shit. What the hell? Yeah. He just saw, I'll pick this garbage up before it blows into the lake. And instead there's a puddle of blood on it. So he ran over to the cottage, the Mary Ellen, where the Ungers are staying here. And about halfway there, he runs into Mark. Yeah, okay. And he said that now Duncan is crying at this point. Yeah, nobody wants to see that. He touched Mark's chest and said, mark, you're not going to like it. She's in the water. And he said that Mark screamed and took off running directly to where the body Was in the lake.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Why? Did he know that?

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, he jumped in the water. Oh no, Mark does. Duncan waded in, followed him. But walking, he said. The two men hugged and cried together at the lake's edge. Just sitting there, you know, having a good cry.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Dignity.

[James Petragallo]

Fuck that. Now the police arrived and the Duncan's leave the resort. After they give their statement, they take off like, I don't really want to be here.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, you guys can have this for now.

[James Petragallo]

I don't want to be here during corpse season. It's not as good, it's not as fun. Muskie's better, man. Lynn Duncan here, the husband said, I looked down there and I could see her in the water. And after, just after a minute or so, I started to cry. My first reaction was suicide.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Really?

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, that's right. And Lynn said, we have memories there that'll never disappear. Never. And Maggie Duncan said, I'll carry that to my grave, finding this poor dead woman here. So Maggie calls 911 and they answer the phone and she says. They say 911. She says, yeah, I'm pretty upset. That's how she leads it.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah. Yes. Can you talk for a minute?

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, I'm pretty upset. Why is that? Well, I got the Final Jeopardy wrong tonight and I was beating my husband until that came up.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Well, there's that and then this other part where my memories of this lake are fucking ruined.

[James Petragallo]

Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. There's a corpse in the water. That's. That's what I was trying to tell you.

[Jimmy Whisman]

She sounds nice as shit. Somebody's an asshole on the reviews.

[James Petragallo]

That's what I'm saying.

[Jimmy Whisman]

She's calling 911 for Christ's sake.

[James Petragallo]

These people are decent, it sounds like. So, yeah, she said, I'm pretty upset. They said, okay, well, what's your name? You know, let's start there. She says, maggie Duncan spells it out. She said, I believe there is a suicide or a drowning or something is what she said. So that's what she says on 91 1. Now here is Mark as he ran into the water. His statement about this. He said, I picked her up and put my arms underneath her and just lifted her up and there was blood just started coming out. And I just freaked. And I just about dropped her or and I just dropped her. I mean, I'm in the water with my wife who's just cold and bloody. And he said, I wasn't thinking. My whole life just ended right then. I wasn't thinking about anything. My whole world had ended right there. So, like we said the blanket. Now, that blue blanket that covered a blood puddle here. Mark tells at least one person in the days following this that he had retrieved the blanket after Duncan had already found the body in order to keep her warm. So he said, I grabbed the blanket to keep her warm, which makes no sense because she's dead. And he didn't find the blanket or touch it, Duncan did. So it makes no sense why he would lie about that. Not sure. So Lyn, the one that called the police, the husband, or as his wife called the police, he ended up, like I said, telling Mark. And they had a good cry on the shoulder there.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, yeah.

[James Petragallo]

Lynn said, my first reaction, you think the best of the worst. But for him to go like that. Well, you start to think other things. I'm not gonna say what I think, but you come up with a conclusion and it's not pleasant. So that is some Midwestern shit right there. Listen, I pretty much thought this guy killed his wife, but, you know, it's not nice to say that. So you get it. So he said that he had. The thing that kept bothering him is he hadn't told Mark where the body was found.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Right?

[James Petragallo]

He said, why would he run there? Lyn said, he jumped in the water right next to her. And at that moment I looked around and said to myself, my God, he did it.

[Jimmy Whisman]

What?

[James Petragallo]

How else would he know? That is wild.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That is a fascinating. Right out of the gate, he's like, my God, that man did it. There's a big ass lake. And he jumped right in the spot.

[James Petragallo]

He knew exactly where in Lake Fucking, you know, whatever the fuck. Yeah, it's crazy. Or Lake Herring or whatever the hell it is. So the police arrive, obviously Deputy Troy Packard responds. And he said, well, all that's reported to me is there's a body in the water. And you're thinking, was it an accident? Was it a suicide? Was it murder? You know, he goes, I don't know what the hell I'm walking into here. He's the first officer. He said he sensed something was off the minute he looked over the boat deck railing. Yeah, he said, I noticed the top railing was broken, fractured out. So like the, you know, the. The railing that keeps you on there wooden on these boat decks. Apparently it was busted out. He said, next, I noticed a rather large pool of blood. And he said that he calls 911. Okay, these cops, I guess they'll call 911 to. I don't know if they have. They don't have radios on them or something. I don't think that. Go back to, like, the police station, maybe.

[Jimmy Whisman]

There's only 500 people here.

[James Petragallo]

That's what I mean. So he calls 911 and said, better call out the troops on this one. And the operator says, oh, yeah. And he said, yeah, I got blood. And the operator says, oh, Jesus. Are you kidding?

[Jimmy Whisman]

No, no, I'm pretty upset.

[James Petragallo]

Cop calling 911 for backup, you fucking idiot. No, I'm not kidding. He said, no, I'm not kidding. There's blood on the cement platform, and now she's in the water. And the operator said, oh, God. I want less of a shocked reaction from my 911 operators, by the way, right? I don't want to ever hear them go, oh, God. Ever. No matter what it is. They go, okay, stay calm. You're the calm one.

[Jimmy Whisman]

All right, I'll put it in the report.

[James Petragallo]

Wow.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, God.

[James Petragallo]

Oh, God. Jesus. That's following. Oh, Jesus. Are you kidding? Which is even worse. So the cop responds, so how did the blood get from the cement platform before she got in the water? You know, that's what he said on the tape. So investigators obviously start with the boathouse, and they comb the whole scene. And it's a pretty. It's a murder investigation. You know, it's one of. Of those things. Or a death investigation, I should say. On the upper. Wooden. On the wooden. Upper deck, a post was broken, and that was how the railing got broken. And then 12ft below that on the platform is a blood stain. Below that, in shallow water, is Flo's body. So think pink bank. The cop also said Mark Unger seemed evasive. He said he just kept on saying, I don't know. And I asked him, well, when was the last time you've seen Florence alive? I don't know. Every question's I don't know. He also watched Mark make a series of cell phone calls. He said he was frequently interrupted by call waiting. And he said he would click over, he would answer it, and then he would start trying to cry and moan, she's gone. I can't believe it. In this great emotion. And then he'd go back to the other person, and he was all calm and fine again because he had already. He already went through all of that with that person. So he said it just didn't seem right for someone to be able to turn that on and off like that is wild. So a few hours. I mean, this is a. You know, it's going on past midnight. They're going into the scene just a Few hours after this discovery of Flo's body, Mark already had the family car packed up and ready to go.

[Jimmy Whisman]

He's ready to go home.

[James Petragallo]

He's ready to go. Well, weekend's about over, huh? Jeez, this dinghy serves a hell of a late night meal, let me tell you something. So he said that Mark just kept repeating, I just want to leave. I just want to leave. I just want to leave. So the deputy said, I found it peculiar because that's all he was saying. He just wanted to leave. And here's Florence still lying face down in the water. You know, like, wouldn't you want to see how this works out at least a little bit?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, but I guess these guys aren't going through a divorce.

[James Petragallo]

I. That's. Yeah, but fucking. That's crazy. So they noticed that he had packed his vehicle and seemed eager to leave. So they obtained a search warrant quickly to search his vehicle and the interior of the cottage that he was in. Um, so they recover among a bunch of things, but the main thing they find that's a little suspicious is they cut. Recover a pair of men's shoes from the vehicle. On one of the shoes is a white paint smear.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

And they said the white paint is. Ends up being tested and is found to be chemically consistent with the white paint on the railing of the boathouse deck. So he got white paint from the boathouse deck on his shoe.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That takes some torque.

[James Petragallo]

That's some. Exactly. That doesn't happen if you just accidentally rub it on there if it's dry.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That doesn't just get on there.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. So that night, by the night, by the next evening, Mark's under a big cloud of suspicion. And the police have given Flo's parents temporary custody of the boys. Yeah, that's where we're at.

[Jimmy Whisman]

His children have been removed from him.

[James Petragallo]

Yes. And that's what he was trying to avoid, I think, which is interesting. So they said that when they questioned Unger, it appeared that he would suddenly try to cry and then change his demeanor even when he was talking to the cops. He does this all the time. The one cop said that Mark told him that he did not think his wife had committed suicide, and then he did not try to lift her out of the water because she was, quote, all bloody interesting. Now enter the hairdresser. Okay, a new character into this thing here. This is Flo's hairdresser for years back in town. Yeah. She said that he had told the police and most of his friends when he returned from all of this because he tells everybody, he calls everybody and says, hey, Flo's dead.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

So they all go, what happened? And he tells them, he tells the hairdresser or he tells most everybody else that he went back like we said. He went back, put the kids to bed, came back 15 minutes later, she's gone. He told the hairdresser though, that he put the children in bed and had returned to the deck and she was there on the deck. And then he told her that Florence was still there, she was fine. So I just went back up to the house and she never came home. So that's very different stories that he's telling people there. And that could be a confusion on the hairdresser's part. Who knows? Hairdresser Tesha Hanks of Palazzo Hair Salon, you know, in Royal Oak over here. Big hair, big hair. Oh, you know it. You fucking know it. Been her hairdresser for 10 years. Knows how to fucking tease your hair out here. So she said that a friend had told her that Florence was dead. So she called Florence's phone to find out if it was true. And Mark answered the phone and gave her an account that wasn't the same account. He told the police. Oh, that's like I said, he told everyone, including the cops. He went back to the boathouse, came back to the cottage, came back, she was gone. Yeah, he told her, I went back, came back, she was there and I said goodnight and walked away and then she was gone. So very different story. So they have a funeral for her, hundreds of people attend. She's very well liked and you know, I guess if you're working like a bank doing mortgage stuff, you probably know a lot of people too.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah. And if you know a lot of people and you're tragically killed, a lot of people show up. It's like, it's really. This is a shitty reason to die. Like a lot of people. Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

And she grew up here too.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Car accident. And you did it.

[James Petragallo]

Maybe your family will be there. A drunk driver and took out an eight year old on a bicycle on the way through.

[Jimmy Whisman]

People showing up for that.

[James Petragallo]

Not many. Not many. So, yeah, this though, and it's her hometown too. And so, I mean, she's grew up there and everything. Now, within days of this death, there's the funeral and then Mark, he hasn't been charged with anything. They've just asked him a couple questions. He hires a big time defense attorney now.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Really?

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, a guy named Bob Harrison who's handled over a hundred murder cases.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Have they said what her injuries are.

[James Petragallo]

We'll get to that in about two seconds here. Yeah, we definitely. Because they're going through all that because they really have to. The medical exam takes a few days on her. A lot to the water fucks things up, too. So it's tough. Bob Harrison, defense attorney, said, quote, I had a client in a world of trouble. And he said, well, whether it's going to be good enough or not, you'll get everything I've got. That's what he sets him as a lawyer. I'll get, Throw it on the table.

[Jimmy Whisman]

For you, give you everything I got.

[James Petragallo]

Now Mark and his lawyer decide to set up a polygraph test. Now, this polygraph test is not set up. It's not at the police station with a police officer doing the polygraph test. Now this is a private polygraph test he's going to take.

[Jimmy Whisman]

This is a controlled environment where you can be very calm.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. The polygrapher, I was going to say. Is that a polygraph?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Polygrapher.

[James Petragallo]

Polygrapher, I guess. Polygrapher. Sounds like he's got five wives, doesn't it? It doesn't sound right.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, sounds like he's got five children. He moles.

[James Petragallo]

Sounds weird. So the polygrapher is a. They call a respected retired policeman. So a random polygrapher in there. So this is a private polygraph test, which means nothing because he could have taken it 20 times. There's no. They don't have to tell the cops that. Oh, here's the results. After 20 times they got it right.

[Jimmy Whisman]

They stop and get him a glass of water. They can do a lot of different things to calm him down.

[James Petragallo]

Totally. So they said he passed that. Passed that lie detector test with flying colors. Absolutely.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Because it was paid by you.

[James Petragallo]

You paid a guy? Yeah, it's. You're not going to cut him a check after he says you're a fucking liar? Well, never mind then. Maybe I won't pay you.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, I don't even want this pizza.

[James Petragallo]

No. I think you need kind of a third party who's not. Doesn't work for either person. Would probably be the best way to do that. So medical opinions here. Here we go. Doctor who performed Flo's autopsy cataloged her many bruises, broken hip, internal injuries, fractured skull. Yeah, they think she pretty much fell on her head off of the dock onto the concrete. Yeah, head, hip. Exactly. Yeah, that's what they think she fell like, kind of on both.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Slumped it. Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

So he says she became unconscious the second she hit the concrete because her skull is fractured here. Now, another medical examiner here An Oakland county medical examiner, after reviewing the case, he concluded Florence died of drowning and classified her death as homicide. Now, the way he puts this, it's weird because they don't know whether it's drowning, whether it's her injuries, what it is. But he said, bodies do not walk into the water and bodies do not bounce. That's what he said. He said there is no possibility for her to take herself into the water. You can't hit the ground, fracture your skull and hip, and then throw yourself off the fucking shore into the water.

[Jimmy Whisman]

So she slumped onto that concrete, and then somebody kicked her ass off into the water unconscious.

[James Petragallo]

So she dropped.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, my God.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. He said that she would have been injured so badly by the impact to her head that she would have been rendered instantaneously unconscious. No way to get into the water from that. So they said, quote, the dead woman had plunged 12ft to a concrete apron, which was stained with blood, yet somehow had moved over a break wall nearly three feet away and wound up in the water.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Holy.

[James Petragallo]

Unlikely, basically. And the one doctor said, I have a hard time understanding how she got in the water and was emphatic that Flo was immobile on the cement where she was placed in the water and drowned.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Okay.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. So there was a prosecutor here that asked, doctor, based on these injuries and based on the physical condition that she would have had as a result of these injuries, would she have been capable of getting into the water on her own? And he said, absolutely not. And he said, the doctor said, she didn't go into the water being unconscious. She could have only been placed into the water. You can't go into the water if you're unconscious. Another doctor here, Paul McKeever of the University of Michigan, looked at the samples of Flo's brain tissue, performed several tests, and said one showed proof of a brain injury that could only have appeared if Flo had been alive on the cement a very long time. So fell on there, and then, you know, the brain was dying or whatever. This doctor said an hour and a half. She would have been alive for an hour and a half.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Okay.

[James Petragallo]

And that's what they're saying. So they said, and if she was not capable of getting into the water on her own power, somebody must have put her into the water. And they had a long time to think about it before they did it. Yeah, they said, it's late October. There's nobody out but them, and it's late, getting late at night, you know. So, yeah, it's one, I think a lot of People here get up early to get out on the lake and shit like that. If they're going to do anything. Medical witnesses said that they did not. The problem is they have different medical examiners who don't agree on the exact cause of her death. That's the problem. What the fuck? They all agree there's no way she could have gotten in the water on her own. If she hit the concrete first. That they agree on. But some people say it was brain injuries and some people say it was drowning.

[Jimmy Whisman]

And it doesn't matter if the drowning thing was the cause or not, because somebody still put her over there. Whether or not she drowned here or there, because she didn't just fall is the thing.

[James Petragallo]

Yep. And that's the district attorney's. His stance here is no matter what the fuck caused it, she didn't do it on her own.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Right.

[James Petragallo]

That would have been impossible. By the way, it's Lower Herring Lake is the lake that she's in. Just to be clear here. So after two days, the preliminary exam was postponed. And the medical examiners said that Florence's death was a homicide, not an accident. But like I said, one said drama, one said drowning. So the now his lawyer is going to ask a judge later on to throw out one of the conclusions, which is the critical evidence that prosecutors need to prove her death was murder, basically. So they want that thrown out. And he'll get it thrown out for a minute too, but then it'll come back in. He said the defense says that the Dragovich, he's the guy who says she drowned, said that his statement was neither generally accepted in the relevant scientific community or forensic pathologists, nor was it based on vetted research. And they told this medical examiner about that. They said, what do you say about this? And he said, no judicial ruling can change the facts. Doesn't matter what you rule. This is what happened.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Doesn't matter. Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

You know, you could make a law that says there's no gravity, but you're still going to stand on the ground.

[Jimmy Whisman]

You're gonna write that sitting at a table.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. Then put a pencil down and it won't float away. There's a reason for that.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

So they said that the Ungers. Now they also find out that the Ungers had a life insurance policies naming each other as beneficiaries, and that Mark stood to collect about 750 grand from this death as well. Wow, that's a good chunk. So months pass, nothing happens. It seems stalled. They don't charge Mark with anything. And at this point, he's fighting to get custody of his sons back. That's what he wants. He's ignoring the other thing. And Flo's parents don't want to give it to him because they think he killed their daughter, so. Makes sense. Claire, Florence's mother, said, this is not about the custody of children. This is about a murder investigation. Finish the murder investigation and then we'll fucking talk about it. The judge refuses to give him custody. He refused because he was suspected in the death. I guess it was a. They called it a. By the way, he. The judge chastised attorneys for both sides for their increasingly contentious and emotional public battle. By the way, that's hilarious. You two are both embarrassing. I just want to let you know.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Tired of your shit.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, I'm tired of all of your shit here. So they were asking the judge to reunite the boys with their father. And until a trial, a debt. A date is set for the neglect trial because they're saying, well, he neglects his kids because he gambles and drinks and does Vicodin and killed their mother. So, you know, all those different things. The defense was critical of prosecution lawyers for filing a document that outlined the prosecution's theory of the case, which he contended was an attempt to poison public opinion against his client. He said, that is a kind of a prejudice. That kind of prejudice is difficult, if not impossible, to overcome public sentiment. So the. The lawyer told the judge that his client was a loving father who made his kids meals, helped them with their homework, and sang to his children at night. The lawyer said, you have everything you need. You know, everything you need to know to place the boys with their father. While his lawyer is saying this in court. Fucking Flo's mom, Claire, is clutching a picture of Flo and shaking her head in disgust, going, no, no, no. Killed my daughter. So the judge turned down a request that would have returned custody to Mark, and instead she agreed to allow Unger some increased visitation time, but not before telling the attorneys, they've acted shittily in their court here. The judge said that verbal shots the two sides were taking at each other were getting back to the boys. And she said she would not stop the attorneys from talking to the media, but suggested they maybe used a little more discretion to not get it back to the kids. They said, this is a. Think about the effect your statement is having on those two little boys. And the prosecutor said, we believe Mr. Unger did kill his wife, and we believe it would have been an injustice to return the boys to their father. So May 2004 comes around. This has been over six months now. Finally, Mark is charged with a crime here. He's going to be charged with murder. And they charge him. Yeah, there's some first. It's first degree. Then they say it's second degree because there's a hearing about it. And then it's returned to first degree later on.

[Jimmy Whisman]

But the only link to that body they have is him jumping face first into the right spot.

[James Petragallo]

That's pretty much it. Yeah. Whoa. And his weird behavior.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Whoa.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. And the fact that unless a stranger came and said, I'll just dump this unconscious woman in the water, which would be a real weird thing to do, thinking there's only one person on that whole property with the motivation to throw this lady in the water.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah. But. Yeah, all they've got are him jumping to the right spot.

[James Petragallo]

That's the thing, though. They don't. That's right. They don't have.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I don't like that.

[James Petragallo]

That's tough. And a smear of a paint smear that. I mean, if you've had a couple of beers, you could scrape your shoe against the deck and get white paint on it.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I don't know if he was a skater when he was a kid. How many friends do you know that, like, jump off rails and shit? I could kick flip this. You know what I mean?

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. Baby's doing that. Who the hell knows?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Maybe I could have kept like.

[James Petragallo]

Or maybe they're sitting there talking and he's nervously kicking his fucking foot against the side of the thing.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Because there was a lot of discomfort in this fucking situation.

[James Petragallo]

Totally. So I tend to kind of get a little jumpy in situations like that. Yeah, big time. So they picked him up as he was pulling away from his house. They got him. He pulled out of his driveway. They said an hour later, his red Ford Expedition remained in the driveway with an open briefcase on the front passenger seat. Left it behind. So they claim Mark and obviously that he pushed her off and that's what happened. And so the prosecutor here, this is Donna Pendergrast. She leads the prosecution. Her dad was a Detroit cop, so she's all about this shit. She has been called Michigan's best prosecutor at the time. This was her 93rd murder case.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Really?

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. And the defense guy has over 100 murder cases.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Where are these people living?

[James Petragallo]

Fucking Michigan. Yeah, Michigan. A lot of murders there. It's a good one. So when she is sitting down with Chris Hansen later on, Chris Hansen said, how many have you won? And she said, all but two. 91 and 2 or 90 or 90 and 2 at this point, I guess. And they said that's a pretty good record. She said, I've been lucky. Yeah. So she also here, she had kind of her work cut out for her here because this isn't the strongest case. Hansen said to her, there's no DNA evidence and she said no. They said there's no fingerprints and she said no. But we had circumstantial evidence and we believed what was admissible as evidence that we could present a pretty clear picture for the jury. So let's give it a shot. This trial is going to be, by the way, it doesn't take place till May of 2006.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Wow.

[James Petragallo]

Actually late April, because it's a nine week trial. Nine weeks, that's over two months.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's a long time.

[James Petragallo]

That is really rare for a trial to be that long. I mean, that's big. You gotta have money to pay lawyers to do all that, present that kind of evidence. He is spending that 750 right now. So the jury is six men, six women. And the trial is. Has mountains of conflicting bullshit on both sides. Pathology reports are the main deal for the prosecution. And a recreation of Mark's walk down to the water that morning. They did a wooden mock up of the deck railing and all that kind of thing here. So it's. It's a big trial. It's taking place in the next county over from this county. They moved change a venue. So it's a huge trial in a tiny county. It's one of those which are always a mess because like they don't have the proper media accommodations. It's tough. So the prosecutors say obviously pushed his wife off a boathouse deck. And we know the rest here. They told the court that Mark Unger could not stand the thought that his wife wanted to divorce him and that she had had an affair with his best friend. Now we don't have any evidence that he knew about that.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah. Like I said, he might have just learned that when you accused him that.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. When discovery he would have learned that when the prosecutor show. Yeah, but that's what's fucking weird is that unless he found out in the three days in between when this guy slept at their house and when they went on this trip, I don't know why she would have told him about that before a divorce. Why would you give.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Unless.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, you wouldn't give her any. You wouldn't give him any ammunition in the divorce. Because an affair. Now it's. Yeah, he's gambling and doing this, but she's having affairs.

[Jimmy Whisman]

The thing is, he's trying to. He's trying to say we can reconcile. She may say, well no, because your best friend's dippity doing to know, but.

[James Petragallo]

That'S not worth throwing your whole divorce case away, I don't think, just to get a shot in because she, she's been want like planning this out for six years and that would just fuck her entire divorce case, I would imagine. I don't think she was planning on bringing up that she was banging dude's best friend during the divorce of why she's such a great lady and he's a piece of shit. So it's fucked. Real fucked. So the prosecutor said, well, in this case it was pretty clear that this woman was not just scared, but terrified of the dark. And the bottom line is if you believed that she's truly afraid of the dark, then she simply would not have stayed out on that deck where it's pitch black. Then his story failed from the get go, they say. They say they'd say a frightened woman, an escalating custody fight, betrayal and tears and all this shit. Prosecutors told the jury that pressure boiled over on the deck and they argued and maybe Mark snapped. Maybe he pushed Flo, maybe he just shoved her and then he went back to the cottage. But they don't know. That's all circumstantial speculation. They said, you know, that's tough. They said the problem is they have to show that she didn't die from an accidental fall, but that he, whether he shoved her off the deck or not, he did put her in the water where she drowned. So that's what they have to prove. Yeah. They said the only way the injury like this can occur is as the result of blunt force looking down on the spinal cord, which we had to cut off to remove the brain. That sounds bad. So the defense lawyer said that the rail around the boathouse was old and rotten and gave way when she leaned against it and she fell. Open and shut case. The railing really is the culprit here. They produced several expert witnesses to disprove the prosecution's theory. All circumstantial, obviously. Here they also, the defense tells the jurors that the police botched the investigation starting when the resort owner called 91 1, she mentioned mentioned suicide. The dispatcher passed it along to the officer at the scene. But they said the officers got caught up looking into suicide and missed the real evidence pointing to an accident. That's what it is. So I mean, obviously they missed it. The defense dismissed the motion that there was anything sinister about Mark running to the spot that Flo lay dead. They said of course, Mark ran right there. The boat deck was the last place he'd seen her. And he just watched Lynn Duncan walk up from the exact spot. But he didn't because it's pitch black out. You don't see him walking up from that spot. That's the thing. It's. You don't. You're not going to see him. I mean, a good distance.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Right. He came to tell you and you didn't see him walking?

[James Petragallo]

No. If you did, then you would have been there when. Yeah. No. So Mark insists that he didn't learn about the affair until months after Flo's death during pretrial hearings when they got discovery, he said, so it couldn't have been a motive if he didn't know about it. So the defense still has to deal with the prosecution's medical case, though. And the blood stain on the cement is a pretty hard piece of evidence. That's hard to. It's impossible to jump into the water.

[Jimmy Whisman]

From the boat deck and not see the blood.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, well, you can't jump over that slab into the water. You'd have to be some kind of super athlete and it would be really hard to leave a puddle of blood behind as you flew over. It also definitely hit it. So the defense just portrays the death as a deck. The deck as a death trap with a dangerously low railing, rotting wood and a slick, mossy surface.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Gross.

[James Petragallo]

God damn it. They're gonna bring up later on, a retired engineering professor is going to present a computer animated group of scenarios that could have happened when they do this at trial. It is so ridiculous and funny. They shouldn't allow these computer mock ups, by the way. That's. I think it's a. It's. It's prejudicial.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It is fun to watch a cartoon of murder.

[James Petragallo]

It's so silly. It's so silly. But I think it's also prejudicial because you don't know. You can't just display a theory and now people are watching it and thinking it's real. I don't like that at all. So anyway, he presented all these scenarios and the prosecutors dismissed this all as cartoons.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Cartoons.

[James Petragallo]

Cartoons.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Guy animating in here. Who are we? Trey and Matt Stone?

[James Petragallo]

What's going on here? Yeah, they just killed Kenny. This is ridiculous. So the prosecutors accused the defense of exaggerating about the deck, saying it had been there for decades without anyone suffering a Fatal fall, so probably isn't that bad. And they'd been there 10 times too, and she never fell off it before. So medical people here, pathologists called as witnesses by both sides, offer completely conflicting testimony to each other, which is tough for a jury. The person who performed the autopsy, Dr. Stephen Cole, listed head injury as the cause of death, but said he couldn't rule out drowning. The other doctor, Dr. Dragovich, said the Oakland county medical examiner, he's another one here, he said that this evidence, such as fluid in Florence's lungs, suggested she drowned. So that's.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That certainly suggests that she was still alive when she went into the water, which she couldn't have done. So therefore that's murder.

[James Petragallo]

That would be. Someone murdered her. That's the thing. This is not an accident. Somebody did this. But who? Well, if you look at it logically, I doubt that Fred in the fucking motorboat came back and killed her for no reason. So there's one guy with any motives. I think that's the whole point here. So now they argue about how Flo is portrayed in court. Apparently the prosecution was arguing that the defense counsel had painted Flo as a, quote, shopping crazed adulteress. So they said that the defense counsel never argued that the victim was a shopping crazed adulteress. It was actually the prosecution that was their way of summing up what they were saying about her. So the judge said, you shouldn't to the defense, you shouldn't be saying that shit. And you shouldn't be saying shopping crazed adulteress. Because they never said that.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's all inflammatory.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, now you're being the inflammatory ones to the person you're trying to keep nice. So doesn't work here. And there's people talking about fake tears of Mark. Donna Pendergrass, the prosecutor, started to build her case by asking witnesses there that day to describe Mark's demeanor. And one person here, they said, so you indicated he had kind of. He had kind of going between crying and being matter of fact. And this guy said, yeah, I'd offer him Kleenexes and he'd take them, but I never saw a tear.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's no good. What do you need that for?

[James Petragallo]

Not great. And another woman who was there named Fran said he got noticeably upset sobbing very loudly, but I never noticed any tears. That's a problem. Tears come out of your head.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah. I don't like when they don't cry.

[James Petragallo]

No. Whenever you see someone fake cry, and I don't mean when they cry and no tears come out. That's not Good.

[Jimmy Whisman]

No, no, no, no.

[James Petragallo]

That is not good. Tears are. It's a physiological thing that happens. You get watery nose runs, you get red. Like there's a bunch of stuff that happens. Just going, it's not crying.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah. Your thoughts and such are what make you cry. Yeah. If you've got no thoughts and sadness, then you don't cry.

[James Petragallo]

You don't cry. That's why when you watch a movie and an actor's crying and they have snot coming out of their nose, you're like, fucking A, you are killing that shit.

[Jimmy Whisman]

You know that person's a psycho.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. Standing there with one tear coming down their eye, you're like, get the fuck out of here. Who put that Visine drop in your eye for that shot?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Fuck off, vodka and drink it.

[James Petragallo]

That ain't real. Yeah. Murder Martini for you. So Lynn Duncan, the one of the couple who owns the place, the husband here, they asked him, had you told or given the defendant any information whatsoever about where Florence's body was? And he said, no, none. Just said, she's in the water. He went a running. Now the cross examination of Lynn Duncan, the defense attorney says. And so after you spoke with Mark, he ran back exactly the way you had come down to the front of the boathouse. And he said, yes, exactly. And they said, exact path you had just traveled. And he said, yes. And the defense was like, see? Must have seen him coming. That's what happened. Now Glenn Stark has to come up and testify.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh.

[James Petragallo]

Oh, man. He is the dick in the ointment jar here. This is not good. Oh. So they asked him to use in.

[Jimmy Whisman]

The ointment for lube.

[James Petragallo]

For lube. That's why he's putting his dick in there. Lube it up. So they asked him, the defense asked him, did you have sex in the Unger home? And Glenn said, no. And they said, did you go somewhere else and have sex? And he said, yes. And they said, do you know where Mark was at the time that you took his wife to have sex with her? And he said, I do not. That sounds terrible here, obviously.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I didn't even think about him, to be honest.

[James Petragallo]

Never even thought of him. Just really was thinking about his wife's sweet, sweet pussy. That's all I was thinking about.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Have you seen.

[James Petragallo]

It's good.

[Jimmy Whisman]

They'll make you forget she has a husband.

[James Petragallo]

Jesus. Who's your best friend now? On a side note here, Mark on Dateline later, talking about the affair. Okay. With him and Chris Hansen. Chris Hansen has to talk to every asshole.

[Jimmy Whisman]

But he's also a pervert.

[James Petragallo]

He's like, tell me more.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I troll for very young women also.

[James Petragallo]

Oh, man. So they said. He says to Mark Glenn Stark, how do you describe him? And Mark says, my best friend was fucking my wife. How else do you describe him? That's how I describe him. The man who was betting my wife. Which is a great answer.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Ah, Jesus Christ.

[James Petragallo]

How else do you describe him? That's how I describe him. Hey, everybody, just gonna take a quick break from the show to tell you about some delicious stuff here. Herobred. Oh, get in there and get this stuff. Because it is delicious. And the Hero bread is great because it's a healthier alternative to all. A healthier bagel and a healthier Hawaiian roll. Which. God, those are so good. They're Hawaiian rolls. Oh, those are good too. The tortillas, the Hawaiian rolls. There's so much. So you don't have to give up goodness and taste just to live a little bit healthier. You can get with Hero and do that. Be a hero. The taste and the texture is everything. I'm a bread guy. I'm an Italian. I love bread. And the taste and the texture is really good in this bread. And that is what makes the difference. They have so many things. That's the other thing. The bagels, the tortillas. Like you were saying, the rolls, the bread, the Hawaiian rolls. It's. There's a full get on Hero brand is offering 10% off your order. Go to Hero Co and use the code. Small town Murder at checkout. That's small town Murder at Hero Co.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Now back to the show.

[James Petragallo]

Hey, everybody, just gonna take a quick break from the show to tell you a little bit about life360. It's a new year. Things are going on. You're juggling your family. You got school, things to do. And I know you're on school.

[Jimmy Whisman]

You got a new driver in the house.

[James Petragallo]

You have a new driver in the house like Jimmy does here. You're juggling all this stuff. You need to get Life360. It's a location sharing app that works whether you're on iPhone, Android doesn't matter. Life 360 makes coordinating your family's daily routines and activities so much smoother. You open up the app, you can see real time locations for everyone in your family. That takes away all the stress of wondering, where are they? Are they gonna be here in 10 minutes? When are they coming?

[Jimmy Whisman]

How fast are they going?

[James Petragallo]

Like you do with your son. You can monitor. That's great. Jimmy's Been monitoring his son because he's a new driver. That's what's awesome. It really does. You can coordinate things, you know, and you. Because, I mean, obviously you could text somebody, but you don't want them texting and driving. So this way you can just look at it. It's really awesome. It's amazing how much more coordinated your family can be. Family Proof your family with Life360. Visit life360.com or download the app today and use Code Small Town murder to get 15% off. That's life360.com code small town murder.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Now back to the show. Chris had that one locked and loaded and couldn't wait to spit it out.

[James Petragallo]

And then there's. Chris says, did you. And he jump. Unger jumps back in and cuts him off. Still has. Having this thought. And he says, the guy who was patting me on the back saying, you can get through this. You can do this. And he was sleeping with my wife.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Patting my back with one hand, fingering my wife with the other, fingering her with.

[James Petragallo]

Patting her ass with the other. And they said, and did you know this before? And Unger said, oh, I had no idea. No idea. Her best friends didn't know about the affair. You know, so what? She's going, what? So. So what? She's going to all of a sudden tell me, no, Flo would have never done that. And I do believe Flo would have never told him.

[Jimmy Whisman]

No, it doesn't seem like it.

[James Petragallo]

Because it would fuck her divorce case up. And that's. That's what she was concentrating on. So another piece of evidence here the prosecution presents is a videotape. This is a reenaction of a recreation of Mark's route down to the water. It goes to show that basically, he could not have seen where Flo's body was, so he couldn't have run right to it unless he knew where the fuck it was. They're showing how dark it is out there and everything else. And they're like, you can't see more hundreds of yards away in the dark. You just can't, you know, the guy isn't a fucking human flashlight. So the last image on it was an inflatable female CPR dummy floating face down in the water. So the defense was pissed off about that. Obviously, they're like, that's crazy. But the prosecution said, that's what we got here. Okay? Now, Chris Hansen said at one point asked the defense attorney later on, was there reasonable doubt in this case?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

And Bob Harrison, the defense attorney Said there was so much reasonable doubt, you could climb on it. What a weird way to put that.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's a mountain.

[James Petragallo]

It's a mountain. He said, you could walk on it, you could throw it. Well, if you could walk on it and climb on it, it sounds pretty heavy to throw. No. He said, if this case didn't contain reasonable doubt, the concept does not exist very definition. So the defense attorney in the defense painted a very different picture of what happened. He said Mark loved Flo, had no reason to kill her. Her death was a horrible, tragic accident. He said Mark just left his wife for a few minutes to be a good father and put his boys to bed. And during that time, she tumbled off the deck. When Mark came back, didn't see her, he assumed she was at the neighbors and he went to bed. The defense lawyer said, at the very beginning of this investigation, a very, very sad thing happened. And that was they accused the wrong guy. So he said, also, they keep saying, she's afraid of the dark. She's afraid of the dark. No, she's not. Bob said, do you have any. Asked one person, did you have any knowledge or awareness that Flo Unger had a fear of the dark? And this guy said, no, I was not aware of any. And a friend of hers said, I don't know. So it wasn't a thing she talked about constantly, but they're acting like she wasn't that scared of the dark. Now, a cousin of Mark's testified that if Flo wasn't afraid of the dark or if she was afraid of the dark, she never showed it at Watervale because they'd been up there with her before, and she walks around in the dark. So they asked, to your knowledge, was Florence Unger ever on the boathouse deck at night when it was dark? And this person said, yes, she was, all the time. That's what we did. So now why did Mark want to leave so quickly? The defense argues that Mark's mood swings while on the phone and packing the car to go home could all be explained as a natural reaction to shock and grief and his overwhelming concern for his two young sons. Now, people do act weird. No, there are no two reactions to tragedy that. That are alike. There just isn't. So that's true. The defense lawyer said, didn't he say, I just want to take my boys, I just want to take my boys and take them home. I want to go home? And the deputy that was first on the scene said, yes, he did say that.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I mean, if I got.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, what else Is he going to.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Say the fuck out of here?

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. But he can't say, I just want to flee this murder scene that I committed. I just want to flee the scene. Gotta get away. Yeah. I gotta get my DNA away from this one. Yeah.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It wasn't distance between me and suspect.

[James Petragallo]

Now, a defense attorney scored some points for Mark when he got the doctor who did the autopsy to admit that the medical evidence didn't necessarily point to murder. But it's very semantic, because, like, that evidence doesn't. Not everyone with those injuries was murdered.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Okay?

[James Petragallo]

It's not a gunshot wound through the head or a cut throat or a knife in the heart.

[Jimmy Whisman]

You could have. You could have a car accident with those two injuries.

[James Petragallo]

That's the thing. But that doesn't explain. How the fuck did she get in the fucking water? From the concrete. That's what that doesn't explain. But they're saying that medically, that's not your job to explain that. So, you know, that's how that goes. So they said, you don't know whether this woman's death was accidental or intentional? And the doctor who did the autopsy said, I don't know for sure. That's correct. So then they attacked the credibility of a neuropathologist who had testimony as well that Flo was pulled into the water where she drowned. And they said. The defense said, would it be fair to say that you like cases that generate a lot of publicity? And this doctor said, no. And they said, you gravitate toward cases where you can get your name in the newspaper. And he said, no, I. And then they said, get your face before the cameras. Is that a fair statement, sir? And he said, no, sir. Every expert there is being paid to be there. That's the ridiculous part. The cops get extra court pay to be there. You know what I'm saying? To testify. The people who work for the state get court pay, which is extra to testify.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Overtime. Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

That's a special thing of court pay. It's different. And then you get. It's a different rate and everything. And then you get fucking. It's just silly. Yeah. Expert witnesses, of course, they're paid to death. What are they gonna come there for free? That's their job.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I'm not doing this because I'm a hero to society and I'm Robin Hood. I just stick around to testify all day.

[James Petragallo]

I had to go to medical school, and this is what I'm doing here.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Professional testimony provider.

[James Petragallo]

That's it. So anyway, I guess this neuropathologist testified a few Months earlier, during a hearing that Flo was on the cement apron for only a few minutes. But at trial he said that she lay there unconscious for more than an hour and a half. Just very different.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

So the defense said. Now which is true, doctor? The evidence you gave in January or the evidence that you gave from that witness stand? Both of them are under oath. Which statement is true? He said, both of them are true.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Huh, okay.

[James Petragallo]

And they said both of them are true as a question. And he said, because of course that's the answer. Of course. I don't know what you're talking about. And I've researched this a lot and I still don't know what the fuck that means, but you can. So they were either she was there for a minute or an hour and a half. And they're both true. I don't get. I guess either could be true is what she. Of course.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, because of course.

[James Petragallo]

Because of course. The attorney said, of course. Are you just making this up as you go along, doctor? And he said, of course. He said, no, sir. They said, there is a man on trial for murder here. Do you understand that, sir? And he said, I perfectly understand that. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Then the defense team has its own dramatic exhibits here. This is a mock up of the boat deck brought to court. They made a little fucking diorama that's nice to show what happened there was linked directly to the condition of the deck itself. And they also have this computer thing, a guy named Dr. Paul, computer graphics that demonstrate to the jury. And this is, you know, 2006 too, so it's way less than even now. That looks like shit. But then it looked terrible. It shows how an accidental fall could have occurred. And it probably looked like Roly Polioli. I bet if the victim lost her balance. However, this doctor admitted that he could not rule out the possibility that the victim was caught. The fall was caused by the criminal agency of another person. She could have been pushed. I didn't say she jumped. Moreover, the absence of a. Of palms down injuries on the victim's body provided evidence from which a rational jury could have concluded that the victim was already unconscious or otherwise incapacitated when she struck the concrete pavement. There's no, like, arm injury where she tried to catch herself. Hands, palms, elbow. When you fall, no matter what the fall off a fucking building, you try to catch yourself. It's just human reaction. And none of that happened. So they're saying she had to have been unconscious when she made the fall.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Okay, Yeah, I could see there's nothing on her knees. Nothing on her elbows. Hands. Yeah, palms of the hands. The heels of the hands are.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, those forearms.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, that was my. My least favorite bicycle injury.

[James Petragallo]

Getting a rock stuck in there. That was great. Yeah.

[Jimmy Whisman]

And it's that way for so long.

[James Petragallo]

Oh, it hurts so bad.

[Jimmy Whisman]

You don't realize how much you use that exact spot in your hand all the time.

[James Petragallo]

Not just for getting rocks in anymore.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

So they said there were some wounds on the victim's hands and arms, but he testified that he didn't believe these injuries were sustained as the result of a palms down, you know, fall position. So the doctor did not believe that the hand and arm injuries were consistent with an attempt by the victim to brace herself upon impact with the concrete. Instead, the testimony regarded and suggested that the possibility that the victims fall from the deck was not accidental. Okay, so the railing. Experts testify the railing was almost a foot too short to meet Michigan building code and that Flo could have lost her balance. Even the owners of the hotel admitted the deck wasn't in great shape. The deck. That could have. We could have. We could have used a redo on that. The defense attorney has Lynn Duncan up there and says, in fact, in your words, the deck had gotten pretty ratty. And they say. There's a long pause and she says, yes or he says, yes. So ratty are and according to engineers, rotting here. Here's a David Ruby, who's an engineer testifying for the defense said, and in the condition that the timber was in, an accident was waiting to happen. Solid is. The defense's team's final witness is Dr. Igor Paul, who's a mechanical engineer from MIT who produced several animations which would show you in silly cartoon terms how Flo could have toppled over and ended up in the water. That's. His videos show how she could have gotten from the concrete to the water, which is amazing.

[Jimmy Whisman]

But did he make her Canadian?

[James Petragallo]

No, unfortunately, her head doesn't open like a. Yeah. So he narrates the video, okay, and says, quote, when she bounces with her head and her shoulder, her pelvis is still above her. So that when she bounces, she actually gets propelled up in this frame. Then she continues rolling because she has rolling energy. Okay.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I am heard of big dick energy.

[James Petragallo]

I'm not a mechanical engineer and I didn't go to mit. Yeah, but falling straight down and splatting it doesn't make you then roll more. There's no hill here. She didn't take a running start and fly off the thing and Land and fucking tumble. So that doesn't make any sense to me. Anyway, as for the blood stain on the cement, he said, quote, when she hits right now, she will be hitting with the right side of her bed, head above her ear essentially, and the blood squirts out of her nose. So that's what happened then. She has rolling energy to get off the thing. Now, in other videos, he had several theories that were ridiculous. Another one that was really ridiculous was she fell, hit her head on the thing, then had seizures into the water.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, boy.

[James Petragallo]

Even though with a broken skull and broken hip, her body was jumping like a fish over there, broken pelvis, whatever. And got over the brake thing and into the water.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

And they're like, if I'm in the john, the jury, even if I was voting not guilty, once I saw that, I go, oh, that's the alternative. That's ridiculous. Guilty, right? You just showed every alternative and they're all stupid. So, no, I don't buy any of this shit. I was gonna vote not guilty, but now I don't know. So that's pretty crazy. And they also said, obviously a weak railing is the cause of all of these problems here. Now, the closing arguments here. The prosecutor in the closing argument. It's a long one, by the way. She gave a three hour closing argument.

[Jimmy Whisman]

What?

[James Petragallo]

That is a lot for a jury to take.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Two movies.

[James Petragallo]

Two movies worth of a closing argument that is.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Damn. A double feature closing argument.

[James Petragallo]

I get that our podcasts are sometimes that long, but you can like walk around, do some gardening, go out to the store, travel, drive. You can do. Yeah, this is in a chair.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Is she talking about the town too?

[James Petragallo]

Yes. Giving reviews of local restaurants, talking about fucking Dan. What the hell's his name?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Darren.

[James Petragallo]

Got Darren.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Darren's bald fucking head.

[James Petragallo]

Darren's the bald bass player.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Guy's slapping the bass.

[James Petragallo]

I don't know what the hell else you could talk about for three hours, but three hours, prosecutors will say, like. And any attorney will say, you don't want to sit a regular person who might not be interested in legal shit in a chair for three hours and make you listen to like a dry recitation of the case. Especially after like a nine week trial.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Which is not a single joke. Huh?

[James Petragallo]

No jokes, no nothing. You should have to have some jokes, right?

[Jimmy Whisman]

You fucking better.

[James Petragallo]

If we did this without it, it'd be miserable. There's shows that do it and I don't understand it at all. I don't get how the hell they do it, and I don't get how they get through it. And I don't know how their audiences get through it.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I don't know, man.

[James Petragallo]

Without just going, this is fucking sad. Or this is fucking boring. Or this is something. We're trying to put a little nice little edge on this thing for you a little bit. So three hours here, she said, the unfortunate truth is that a human life has been ruthlessly and recklessly obliterated. Wow. And there will never be enough justice for that.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Never.

[James Petragallo]

Now, the defense attorney here, he went even longer. He went longer than three hours.

[Jimmy Whisman]

How much longer?

[James Petragallo]

Longer than that. That is wild. So he says, this is Bob Harrison in his closing. He came back and he kissed his sons again after just destroying their mother. Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs couldn't even do that. It's outrageous to suggest that somebody could destroy the life of the mother of these children and act like that. It's outrageous and absurd and it's a lie. Yeah. So the verdict here, four days and 25 hours of deliberation.

[Jimmy Whisman]

What?

[James Petragallo]

Dude, they think less about whether to invade countries than fucking. It takes less time to think about this. Crazy.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Just a shade time. More than that bitch ran her mouth for.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. 25. That is sick. And the pride. Yeah. Equaled about the closings of both. We'll say 25 hours over four days. So what do you think's going to happen here? Let's get opinions here.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I mean, that's a long time to talk because there's no physical evidence. I really think that this man is getting off, man. There's. You can't. You have. No, all you have is he dove in right where she was at. And, I mean, clearly she didn't do this to herself. Somebody gave her a hand. Yeah, you can't say he did unless.

[James Petragallo]

It's tough, man.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Unless. Unless 12 people think him diving in the water at their exact spot is enough. I don't know, man.

[James Petragallo]

It's funny because, like, if it was an hour of deliberations, I would go, God, I don't know. It could go either way. They could go, no evidence, not guilty. Or they could be like, fuck that guy. He dove in the water. Guilty.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I think this is more evidence than Scott Peterson had, though.

[James Petragallo]

Scott Peterson. There was DNA.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Mother's incredibly guilty.

[James Petragallo]

His DNA was in the ties and the boats and the shit that.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I mean, there's a hair, right?

[James Petragallo]

There was also other stuff there. Yeah, he. Yeah, also the he. There was maps that he was there and all that shit. There was a lot more evidence.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Scott Peters and he's okay to say.

[James Petragallo]

That there's no evidence against Scott Peterson. They haven't looked at the case closely because there is. That's a good PR campaign. He's run for 25 years, but there's plenty. It's true. I'm just being honest.

[Jimmy Whisman]

You're not.

[James Petragallo]

We did the opponents up. I saw the evidence. Yeah, there's another, there's a, there's a space of. My point is there's a break of sunlight. Yeah, no, you're right. Yes. There's no pizza slice. You're absolutely right. That's Patreon. Yeah.

[Jimmy Whisman]

If I'm on that. If you were on that jury as the foreman and said, I don't know you guys, that pizza, I'd be like this motherfucker. He's right.

[James Petragallo]

But like Scott Peterson. There's more obvious stuff. Like with Scott Peterson, you go, okay, so you bought this boat that month but didn't tell your wife about it. You started your affair that month. You looked at the tides and the flows of shit right where the body was before you. Like all of that stuff equals a mountain of circumstantial evidence. There is very little circumstantial evidence here other than he must have because no one else had the motive to do it. It's not a real good case.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, but I mean, he didn't, Scott didn't like call and say, go look in this part of the bay. Because I think that, you know, I mean, this guy dove where the body.

[James Petragallo]

He dove where the body was. Yeah, but if you looked at his computer, Scott knew exactly where the body was because he, he mapped it and went there. That's the problem.

[Jimmy Whisman]

The tides to where the body is.

[James Petragallo]

He checked those exact spot, which is real weird. And you know, I don't know, whatever your opinion is, is what it is, but you can't have his opinion.

[Jimmy Whisman]

There's a fact he's convicted.

[James Petragallo]

That's a fact.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Shut up.

[James Petragallo]

But. And if you hear his sister in law tell you why he's innocent, it makes it even more ridiculous because you go, that's what you came up with in 25 years. Even guiltier.

[Jimmy Whisman]

He went to school to do this.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. Some people think he's not guilty and that's fine. But I think there was a lot more evidence in that case than there is here. Here, literally all they have is she couldn't have got in the water by herself. And he's the only one with the motivation to do it.

[Jimmy Whisman]

And I think all the people think he's guilty. I Feel bad for their sex life because that's the only reason they think he's not guilty is because they want to fuck him.

[James Petragallo]

Which is weird because he's a fucking goober.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Because he'll kill you.

[James Petragallo]

And he's a super goober. Also, he's a door. He'll murder you. He does have a boat, though, so, you know, that's something.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Unless it's impounded indefinitely.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, I think it is. So 25 hours of deliberation over four days. Oh, boy. Guilty of first degree murder.

[Jimmy Whisman]

First degree, man, you can't. You can't just go to the body. You can't do it.

[James Petragallo]

That's. Yeah, that's a really. That's a tough one. You add that in with the fact that she had to have been placed in the water, and you go, if she.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Right there.

[James Petragallo]

All he had to say was where? Yeah, this case has. There's no case.

[Jimmy Whisman]

No legs. Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

No where.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Right.

[James Petragallo]

Then you just.

[Jimmy Whisman]

As soon as that guy, he said, we found her, and he ran right to her.

[James Petragallo]

He was like, golly, I think he did it. And he's not a homicide detective. He's the guy who partially owns a fucking. A bed and breakfast, an inn on a lake. No experience. This isn't fucking, you know, Agatha Christie here. This isn't Murder, She Wrote. This is.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That guy's main concern is the cost of fried fish crocking.

[James Petragallo]

What kind of hit will my bottom line take if I fix that falling apart boat deck?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Haven't sold enough vandycamps to fix the dock.

[James Petragallo]

That's it. Yep. How many more filets of fish do I have to sell to do that?

[Jimmy Whisman]

And try to pretend and pass them off as today's catch of the day.

[James Petragallo]

Oh, my God. Now, by the way, Mark's mother sat through the entire trial and sold her house to pay for his defense. Sold her. She has no house. She's homeless. She's. So. I mean, she's staying with somebody, but she sold her house and just used all the money to pay for the defense. That's rough. I mean, great mom, but holy shit.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I mean, lawyers, they deserve money, but that's.

[James Petragallo]

Well, think about how much work goes into nine weeks of trial. That is crazy. That's a crazy amount of work.

[Jimmy Whisman]

You got to feel like a piece of shit when you buy that BMW and go, this is from an old lady's house.

[James Petragallo]

It would have to be. But yeah, it's not just that. You have to pay. You know how many people they have working for them? Researchers. All they have to pay all those people. There's a lot that goes into that shit.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Scumbag. When you go, this was a late. This. I'm writing a check that cost a lady a bathroom.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, but I mean, she also didn't have to fucking do that. That's the other thing. She could have went, Well, I mean, yeah, that's. Nobody forced her to. It all has to come from somewhere. So Mark's mother says, my son is innocent. He would never hurt anyone. And I think the world knows that, except for those people. And refers to the jury, the only.

[Jimmy Whisman]

12 people that matter.

[James Petragallo]

The only 12 that matter. And they come back with, you, sir, may fuck off. Life without parole.

[Jimmy Whisman]

What?

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, life. That's first degree murder in Michigan is life without done. Mandatory. So, yeah. Flo's mother speaks to reporters. Claire here. And she says, I'm sorry. They ask her, what was the first thing that went through your mind when you heard them say guilty? And she said, thank you, God. Justice is served. The defense attorney, Harrison, calls Mark's conviction a horrendous miscarriage of justice. Chris Hansen said, did you take this as a personal defeat? And he said, you always do. You can't help it. You're in a war of sorts with the other side. And it hurts.

[Jimmy Whisman]

What are you gonna do?

[James Petragallo]

What are you gonna do? Anyway, I'm gonna go BMW shopping, so I'll see you later. I got an old lady's house, money burning a fucking hole in my pocket like you wouldn't believe. I gotta go.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's like a reverse mortgage, but I keep it all.

[James Petragallo]

But I keep all of it. So, you know, like a reverse mortgage, the comp. They end up with everything and you get shit in no house, too. So Hanson said is an innocent man now in jail. And Harrison said, absolutely. Really innocent. Now, the kids. What's going on with the kids? They have not seen him since May of 2004.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Right.

[James Petragallo]

It's the last time. Yeah. They were not in the courtroom when the verdict was read. They weren't in the courtroom for any of this shit because they're kids still. They're like 12 and 8 or some. 12 and 9 or some shit. So that's a lot, man. They said that this is. His lawyer said, this is going to be a setback again in terms of Mark's ability to get back with his son. Obviously, this conviction will make that impossible unless we are successful upon appeal because it's very easy to go, well, he can't have any kind of custody because he's a murderer. So Obviously, duh. He's in prison forever. What's he gonna do? So the conviction means that Unger's rights almost certainly will be terminated, meaning parental rights, even if he fights in court. In many cases, however, people convicted of serious crimes voluntarily give up their rights to their children without a hearing, you know, because they can't do anything from in there. So it's crazy. One attorney appointed by the court to represent the Unger children said being convicted of first degree murder. What would be the point? The prosecutor will likely amend the petition to include the conviction. So what the fuck are we talking about here? The Oakland Chief Assistant Prosecutor, Deborah Carley said that that's exactly what prosecutors will do, noting that Unger will be in prison for more than two years, which meets the statutory requirements for termination. If you won't be around your kids for two years and you're gonna abandon them, basically, now we get to hear. We get to go inside the jury room here and hear from the jurors of exactly how they got to this, which is very fucking interesting. This is the shit that we need here. So good job, Chris Hansen getting on this shit. So the jurors said this was brutal on them. 25 hours of deliberation. You gotta be. That's a lot of going back and forth. So Chris Hansen said this was not a smoking gun case. There was no DNA evidence linking him to the crime. No fingerprints, no eyewitness. Did that make it hard for you? There's a bunch of jurors sitting there, and one guy says very. Another one says yes, and the other says yes as well. Five people out of the 12 spoke with Dateline. One's a waitress, one's the owner of a construction company, a nurse, a pharmacy technician, and a factory worker. So that really is a pretty diverse group. Cross section of the world there. On the first day of deliberations, they took a vote. One juror, Tina, said, quote, I was undecided. And Hansen said. And what, Tina, was it that gave you doubt at this point? And what, Tina. May I. May I ask. Tina gave you doubt and what Tina. Yeah, I love that Tina said. It wasn't so much about. It wasn't so much doubt as I just was not ready to commit to anything. I really wanted to go through all of my notes. I wanted to commit, consider everything, which is fair.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Let's go back to the chat.

[James Petragallo]

Let's go back to that. Anyway, Lucy, another juror said, we gave Mark 110%. We really did. Chris Hansen said he's told that Flo Is essentially in the water, but apparently not exactly where yet. He's able to go directly to the location of the body. Was that suspicious? And James. One juror, James said, very. They also thought it was very suspicious of his mood swings on the phone that day were suspicious also. They were like, that's worse.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, sure.

[James Petragallo]

He switches over and he's sobbing with one person, then switches over. He's like, yeah. So anyway, it's almost like he's got.

[Jimmy Whisman]

A range of emotions he knows he has to go through, and he's got to start over. When he calls the next person, he can't be hysterical because he. That's the end of the. That's the end of this movie. I can't start. Yeah, Tino, this phone call.

[James Petragallo]

You got to build it. That's the problem. Yeah, you got a build. You got to build to fucking tears here. Well, although you start out with tears, people are like, oh, God, what's wrong? And now you're right in the middle of it. Now you're into something.

[Jimmy Whisman]

So I can't do that because that's not the. This is art.

[James Petragallo]

At the end of the day, I'm building it. I'm building something. An award. Trying to build something here.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Ward season's coming up. I got the suit picked out.

[James Petragallo]

I could do it. So they said also the fact that he started packing the car to leave and the fact that he didn't pull Flo out of the lake. Yeah.

[Jimmy Whisman]

He said he picked her up and then dropped her.

[James Petragallo]

And then like, ew, gross. Yeah, he went gross and dropped her like, no, it doesn't matter if your wife's bleeding. You take her out of the fucking water. I wouldn't even think about that.

[Jimmy Whisman]

No.

[James Petragallo]

I'd be like, oh, I don't know if she's heavy because of water. Would I be like, help me out. Do whatever. I'm dragging her to the fucking shore and she's getting out of the water. I'm not gonna leave her floating in a fucking lake. What if she floats away now? What? So I'm not doing that. So they said. Hansen said, did it bother you that he left the body in the water? One of the jurors, David, said it did. If it was my wife laying there, I'd be doing everything I could to get her out. Logic. They also believed the theme that the prosecution had. They said, so you believe the fact that she was afraid of the dark? And they all nodded. Yes, they do. Because I guess it was a major thing. Theme with her that she told everybody about one juror said, and I think someone who's not even afraid of the dark wouldn't logically stay out there in the dark. It's just. It's really dark. Even if you don't. Aren't afraid of it. You can't see anything.

[Jimmy Whisman]

So dark.

[James Petragallo]

It's just dark, man. After a while it just gets dark. So another juror said, it just doesn't add up. I don't understand why she wouldn't go with him to put the kids to bed. That doesn't make sense. So they think he did that beforehand, went back to set an alibi with his kids and then came back and to say, oh, no, where is she? Have you seen her? No. Okay. So they said Chris Hansen said. Here. They also said the most convincing was the testimony about her brain injuries. That was the most convincing. That she couldn't have got into the water on her own.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Right. She's already super, super messed up.

[James Petragallo]

Super fucking just. Yeah, mangled. So Chris Hansen said, was there one star witness in your mind? One person who really sewed it up for you? As I really love to know this, One juror said, Dr. McKeever. For me, he had proof, concrete proof that she was alive for some period of time before she was in the water. They were showing him charts of brain activities and this is how long these things take and all that. Once the jurors accepted that Flo had been alive on the pavement for an hour and a half, they said at that point, these computer animations from the defense didn't make any fucking sense at all. In their mind, she laid there for an hour and a half. So if she laid there for an hour and a half, someone would definitely have to throw her in the water because it's not like she was getting better. She wasn't healing. Healing right where she can then throw herself in the water.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

So the one juror said the animated picture showed that hitting the ground, rolled over several times, had a seizure and drowned many things instantly. And there was just too hard to believe. And then Lucy, the jury juror said, bodies don't bounce. I don't care what they say on cement. They don't even.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Even the ones on 911 didn't bounce.

[James Petragallo]

No. You could jump from. I was gonna say that you could jump from the top of a fucking tall building.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It doesn't. You don't bounce. You just.

[James Petragallo]

You don't bounce. Well, the concrete will give a little bit too. If there's enough impact. Yeah, it'll. Fuck. Yeah. Well, yeah, the concrete Will and the.

[Jimmy Whisman]

And the point is, your body is not. It's not rubber, it's just shit comes apart. You can bounce it like 30 miles an hour if you're at a 45 degree angle hitting the ground, but straight the fuck down. You don't bounce.

[James Petragallo]

No even. Remember the guy. This happened, Christ, 15 years ago on the X Games. The guy went up the half pipe, did some crazy shit, fell down on the half pipe, which is plywood. That's meant to be bouncy, by the way. He fell down, hit splat, and his shoes came off because the energy had to go somewhere.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's funny.

[James Petragallo]

It was hilarious. But he didn't bounce. He splatted.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Crumple. That's the word that they always say they crumple into a heap because that's what your body just naturally does.

[James Petragallo]

And that has a little bit of give. The plywood on a half pipe and shit, it's not concrete, which has no giveaway. Concrete has no chill whatsoever as you hit it.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's as chilled as it gets.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. So, yeah, they said that. And Chris Hansen said, if Flo's body had been found on the cement, not in the water, do you think you would have gone with this being an accident? And the one juror said, yes, have to. And the other juror said, I believe so. Yes. So all he had to do was not put her in the water.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah. You know what? I think what I'm. Where I'm leaning at this point is that like. Like she probably hit that ground and was out and made no noise. And whoever did it, because I'll just be nice, walked away. And then an hour and a half or so maybe, heard the. That death gurgle is so loud. And they probably were like, oh my God, somebody's going to hear this. And flopped her into the water. Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

Plus he might have went. He might have, because he's not a fucking doctor. He doesn't know what's wrong with her. So whoever did it might have. Or whoever did it, quote, unquote, might have said, oh, shit, she's still alive.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

I gotta kill her. Even though she's gonna be dead sitting here, she's never gonna regain consciousness. But he doesn't know that. She throws her in the fucking water.

[Jimmy Whisman]

She just looks up and go, you pushed me down.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. She's not gonna point in Bruce Willis face and tell him how fucked up he is. So the one juror, James, said, I didn't wanna make eye contact with the defense, the prosecution, their families. I knew it was gonna be hard. Or. He said, we knew it was going to be hard. So Mark's reaction to the verdict, we need to know also here. Chris Hansen said, how do you. How did you feel as the deliberations went on? Day one, day two, day three? Mark says, I was. It was just hard enough to get through those days. I was. Was I anticipating not guilty? Yes. Was I optimistic about being home that weekend? Absolutely. He's like, I'm going to be home. I'm going to be in McDonald's by fucking.

[Jimmy Whisman]

He's asking himself questions and answer it for you.

[James Petragallo]

Yes. Thanks. Chris is like, well, thank you. I can put my notes down.

[Jimmy Whisman]

So glad I didn't prepare for this or anything.

[James Petragallo]

So he says, Chris Hansen says, how does a guy who's married, two great kids, living in one of the most desirable suburbs of Detroit end up in your situation? How'd you fuck this up, Mark?

[Jimmy Whisman]

You had it all. What'd you do?

[James Petragallo]

What'd you do?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Is he that good?

[James Petragallo]

They must be. Mark Unger said, quote, I wish I knew. It was a shock, a surprise every step of the way. Okay.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Really?

[James Petragallo]

Wow. That is wow. I don't know what to say about that.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Of the most addictive things, and he was doing them all together.

[James Petragallo]

That ruined his life.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Knew he was gonna lose it.

[James Petragallo]

Start there.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

And then the marriage was falling apart because I was doing dumb shit and she was having an affair because rehab.

[Jimmy Whisman]

To fix all of it. And when I got out, that wasn't enough, and I'm gonna lose everything. What's the logical answer for a desperate man? You know what I mean? Keep it together.

[James Petragallo]

And then Chris Hansen would go, so you did do this then, right? You just told me why you did this. Exactly. But Hanson said, did you kill your wife? Flo? His answer, I would never, ever hurt Flo. That's the worst answer you could give so bad. The answer is no, I didn't kill her.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I would never.

[James Petragallo]

I would never. He didn't say no any. He minimized. He didn't say kill. He said, hurt.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Never hurt. Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

Which could be you kicked her in the shin. Different. Hansen said, did you kill her?

[Jimmy Whisman]

I didn't ask you to fucking. Did you give her a splinter? I asked you, did you pinch her? I asked you to kill her.

[James Petragallo]

And what does he say made it even worse, Quote, I would never do anything to hurt her. Gave you a chance to stop the minimizing. Gave you a chance to say, fuck no, I didn't kill her. My answer, fuck, no, I didn't Kill her.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Get me out of here. Chris.

[James Petragallo]

Chris. What the fuck? Help me, bro. Yo, you're on like NBC. Fucking tell people. This is crazy. I'm fucking stuck in here.

[Jimmy Whisman]

People that made the wrong decision.

[James Petragallo]

I don't know. Chris, do you have a house you can sell to help me with this? Because somebody needs to help me.

[Jimmy Whisman]

This is fucking crazy.

[James Petragallo]

I didn't kill anybody. Please. Mom, Are you there? Do you know my mom? Chris Hansen? Please help me. You would.

[Jimmy Whisman]

So does your very young girlfriend that probably still lives with her parents have an extra room?

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, please. So the Unger boys end up going with Flo's parents who are going to adopt them legally. Mark's mother is suing them for more visitation, which she should have visitation. She's a grandma. She didn't kill anybody. Mark said he's heartbroken that the boys have to grow up without him. Hanson said, what are you gonna say to them to explain what has happened here? Oh boy. Mark said, just not having contact with them and you know, saying, you know, you will be able to. That gives me so much hope. I can't even tell you. And I know my boys and I know and they know that I would never hurt their mother again. Not kill. Hurt, hurt, hurt, hurt, hurt. So 2006, same year, right after the trial, he is sued by his sons here. Really? This is just like a legal.

[Jimmy Whisman]

By someone else on their behalf.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, this is a legal half due to get money that they have rightfully coming. This is like I remember. Do you remember a story years ago where they kept calling this woman the worst aunt in the world because she has like a nine year old nephew who like jumped into her arms because she was so excited to see her and fucked up her neck really bad to where she couldn't work anymore and she was all destroyed.

[Jimmy Whisman]

And she sued.

[James Petragallo]

She had. Yeah, she had. She sued not the people. She sued the homeowner's insurance to be able to get the hospital bills paid for with total acceptance of the family too. They got it. It was an accident. And yeah, this is the way we can pay it. But the news just took it as an aunt is suing her nine year old nephew just for being excited. And they literally would call her the worst aunt ever. Was the Chyron over at all times, James?

[Jimmy Whisman]

They call her the worst aunt ever. They also call her aunt from hell.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Whisman]

What? Antichrist James.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, there's a. There's an old John Oliver episode where they're showing. They're showing the clips and there's one where they're describing literally that she had no choice and this was just the thing. But the chiron still says worst aunt ever on the bottom. It's like. It's crazy.

[Jimmy Whisman]

So that's a medical stuff to pay for it back.

[James Petragallo]

That's all it was. And they were totally understood. So they didn't have to pay for it. They were happy to. So he's sued by his sons. And this is. He didn't contest the lawsuit. This was on purpose. And was ordered to pay the money into a fund set up for the couple's children. He's ordered to pay $10 million.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Holy.

[James Petragallo]

Which he does not have, obviously, but that's the order. So that's anything. Yeah, yeah. The figure was based on Florence Unger's projected lifetime earnings as a bank loan officer, plus the personal loss to her survivors as well. So you add all that in and you get this. So the lawyers for the Suns still plan to seek $250,000 in life insurance, Mark Unger's mortgaged and vacant home in Detroit, and about $80,000 in property that belonged to the couple.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Couple.

[James Petragallo]

So the grandparents are trying to get this to put in a trust for them, essentially, is how this works. So, obviously, there's going to be some appeals going on here, clearly.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

You think so? So Mark's lawyers argue the cause of his wife's wife's death was not made clear at the original trial. That's one of the appeal points here. In light of the district courts, they say this is them. In light of the district court's incorrect conclusion regarding the admissibility of Dr. Dragovich's expert testimony. He's the guy who said she drowned. We cannot conclude that this. He's the guy who said. Because, of course, that's that guy. Because, of course, we cannot conclude that. The circuit court abused its discretion by holding a newer supplemental evidentiary hearing on the admissibility of Dr. Dragovich's expert opinions concerning the cause of Florence Unger's death. Nor did the circuit court err by admitting Dr. Dragovich's expert testimony at trial. Even a cursory review of the Michigan appeals reports reveal that Dr. Dragovich has been qualified as an expert witness in the fields of neuropathology and forensic pathology. Many times in the courts of the state, moreover, the evidence presented, meaning his opinion, whether you like it or not, is an expert opinion. Moreover, the evidence presented at the Daubert hearing in circuit court made it clear that Dr. Dragovich's testimony was based on established methods in the field of neuropathology and forensic pathology. And that the doctor applied these methods reliably to the facts of the present case. Although Dr. Dragovich did not perform the autopsy in the case, he testified that he frequently consults and offers expert opinions with remains to. With respect to cases in which he did not personally autopsy the victim. And that is completely common. That's you. When you ask people for second opinions. Who are you going to ask? The guy at 7:11 you ask another medical exam what do you think of this? And you send them the files. And they don't have to. They take pictures and files. You don't have to have your hands physically in the body to see the autopsy. You know what I mean? It's all covered. So they said that he based his opinions in the present case on the autopsy protocol. The autopsy photographs, various microscope slides and numerous anatomical specimens that were sent for his examination. On the basis of all this evidence and his expertise as a board certified neuropathologist which you know, we know me and you know how hard that is to avoid. How long did it take us to get it? It took us so long to get board certified in that it's wild. He said that the doctor concluded that the victim's head injuries could not have caused sufficient brain swelling to result in neurogenic pulmonary edema and that the victim therefore must have died as a result of intervening mechanism of drowning. We note that the doctor's inability to specifically identify any medical or scientific literature to support his conclusions. Conclusions in this case does not necessarily imply that his opinions were unreliable or based on junk science. Indeed, it is obvious that not every particular factual circumstance can be the subject of peer reviewed writing. So they said. It's just There is. Nobody has talked about this before. That's why there's no like something to cite. So that's what they're saying. They said there are necessary novel cases that raise unique facts that have not been previously discussed in the body of medical texts and journals. Makes perfect sense. What if something new comes up? It's not talked about. Yeah. Nor was Dr. Dragovich's testimony rendered inadmissible merely because certain experts disagreed with it. That's why you have experts. They disagree with each other. We readily acknowledge that there was disagreement among the expert witnesses concerning the cause of death. But the circuit court correctly observed defense counsel can cross examine Dr. Dragovich and they can impeach him and the jury can believe him or not. Sure. Sure. They said when there is conflicting opinions on expert witnesses. The law says it is solely for the Jury to determine which expert is more credible. They don't have, like expert and better expert as a classification. Once you're an expert, everybody's the same. And the jury decides who to believe. That's it. It's amazing that they give 12 regular people the ability to believe or disbelieve scientists. They know nothing about this. It's wild.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I mean. Yeah. In the West Memphis. Three shit. They brought a guy that was a scientist. And that's. The job of the other side, is to attack the credibility of this person. But when you bring somebody in as a scientist that got a mail order degree. That's fucked up, man.

[James Petragallo]

That's fucked up. How'd you like to be in prison forever because of that?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Because the guy wrote a letter somewhere and they said, sure did.

[James Petragallo]

A correspondence course. Jesus. Also lack of evidence.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

They argue there's insufficient evidence presented at trial to support the conviction of first degree premeditated murder. They say both the doctors here concluded that the manner of the death was homicide. Both doctors excluded. Excluded the possibility of accidental death because neither believed the victim's body could have gotten into the water of the lake absent the purposeful actions of a second person.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

There's also substantial evidence to suggest that he had motive to kill the victim. Although motive is not an essential element, it's evidence of a motive. In prosecution, murder is always relevant. And they said. The prosecutor even said, you can say, let's. Let's put it on the fucking railing. They said, let's say she's out there leaning on a railing and the railing breaks because it's so rickety. She falls and she's there. Then what? Someone still had to pick her up.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Somebody still moved that body, put her in the water. Alive.

[James Petragallo]

Alive and crumpled and bloody.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Right.

[James Petragallo]

And put it in the water.

[Jimmy Whisman]

So they're like, why would you put it in the water when. When that person's still alive? Because the. The illogical person says, I've got to get this person help.

[James Petragallo]

You would. Holy shit. Call 91 1.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Nobody says scream, hey, help.

[James Petragallo]

Help.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Nobody. Tony Soprano pinches Chris's nose. No, you don't throw them in the water.

[James Petragallo]

You don't do that. So that's the. And here's something that I have that I'm thinking about too. If there's blood from that kind of head injury, there's a bunch of blood. So him throwing her into the water, or whoever threw her into the water should have blood somewhere on him, I would imagine.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Sure. Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

Had to get somewhere on him. But I hear Nothing. I hear paint smear on the shoes, but I heard nothing about a shirt with a blood stain on it.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

Now, we don't know if he was wearing the same shirt before or after. I'd like to know. I'd like to know if he was wearing the same shirt at dinner that he was wearing when.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Right, right.

[James Petragallo]

You know what I mean? Because that's the only time he could have easily come to the room, changed in a more comfortable shirt and went out there. And that would ruin that. And then you'd never know when the shirt came on. But. And then if he did, if he did do it and he got blood on his shirt, where's the fucking shirt?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, what happened?

[James Petragallo]

Where's that?

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's gotta be.

[James Petragallo]

So throw it in a fire pit.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

Bottom of the lake. Did he tie it around? He could have tied around a rock and throw. I don't know.

[Jimmy Whisman]

You can't lift. Somebody would have to lift under the shoulders. And with a bloody ass head like.

[James Petragallo]

That, you're getting it on you on your pants, on your shoes, on your.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Forearms, on your hands.

[James Petragallo]

Well, that you can wash off in the water, I would figure. But on your shirt you can't. That'll stay there. That's gonna stick. So I'm just wondering about that. That to me, I'm like, well, where, how did that happen exactly? Where did that. I'd like to know that. So they said there was a lot of the motive, obviously. They said the victim filed for divorce, the addition of the marital assets, all that kind of shit. The proofs also showed that the defendant had threatened to take sole custody of the children and to take the marital home if the divorce proceeded. Also, the defendant had the opportunity to kill the victim. Evidence of opportunity is logically relevant in a prosecution for murder. The evidence presented at trial established that defendant and the victim were alone on the boathouse deck on the night of the victim's death. So, opportunities. He had all the opportunity in the world. Even the defendant himself admitted to the police that he was probably the last person to see her alive. There's also evidence of a scuffle or struggle that may have taken place on the boathouse deck shortly before the death. The proofs established that the railing surrounding the deck had been damaged sometime on the day of the death. Lynn Duncan had been on the deck the day before and the railing had not been broken at that time. So it must have happened that day. However, the railing was damaged and broken at the time the victim's body was discovered. It is possible the damage could have resulted from the victim accidentally falling or tripping over the railing. However, taken together with the white paint smear on the defendant shoe, which. That's a rough one, too. That's not. That's chemically similar also. That's not. That's not DNA.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

That's the same as saying these fibers are, you know, microscopically similar or these hairs are microscopically similar. Doesn't mean anything. It just means they're similar. Can't count it out. Basically. It's equally likely that the damage to the railing was evident evidence of a struggle on the deck between the defendant and victim. I don't. I don't. That's kind of crazy. That's a stretch for me. Moreover, there was evidence that the victim sustained internal abdominal injuries before her death as well, which they don't think are from the fall. Oh, yeah. They said that the internal abdominal injuries were more likely caused by impact with a blunt, protruding object, you know, like a fist or a foot, rather than impact with concrete pavement. That's flat.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Okay, so she got her ass kicked and then thrown into the concrete.

[James Petragallo]

That's what we're thinking. And they think she might have. That's why she. They think, too, she might have been unconscious when she hit the ground, because there's no.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's why she hit like that.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. So somebody. He. They're saying somebody beat the shit out of her and tossed her over, and he might. And that's the other thing, too. He might have thought he could toss her into the water from there.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Right. And then landing on the concrete, and then there's no movement. He's. Oh, shit, who cares? That's. That's that. And then for an hour and a half, she's laying there and probably started to come to.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. Or, no, she's never going to come to. She had broken skull in, like, eight places, but no.

[Jimmy Whisman]

No movement or motion or talking or anything.

[James Petragallo]

No, no, no. Her brain was on strictly, like, mechanical functions. It had. No. She's never going to regain consciousness with that brain injury. No, she was, but, I mean, you.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Don'T think that there was any, like, moaning or anything or gurgling or anything.

[James Petragallo]

It could have been gurgling. That's. That's just breathing. That's possible. Sure. The shallow breaths and the gurgling. Yeah, but she wasn't. She couldn't consciously say or do or move or do anything.

[Jimmy Whisman]

She was extreme. Help me. Help me.

[James Petragallo]

No, and maybe that's. Maybe that's the other thing. He tossed her down, and maybe he thought somebody would find her or. I don't know. I don't fucking know. So they said, assuming, right, with the.

[Jimmy Whisman]

He expected her to go in the water. And then he was like, oh, my God, it's so hard to throw a body.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, you throw. She just fell. You can't toss that.

[Jimmy Whisman]

As strong as I thought I was.

[James Petragallo]

It's not skipping stones, for Christ's sake. It's an adult woman, you know, I'm such a pussy. He's like, I used to be able to toss a woman farther than this. This is crazy.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Hip tossing was so much easier in my twenties.

[James Petragallo]

So much so they said. Even if the jury believed the testimony of these doctors equally, there's still sufficient evidence of deliberation and premeditation. Assuming the defendant did move the victim's body into the lake, an inference clearly supported by both doctors testimony. The logical inference arises that the defendant was motivated to move the victim precisely because he perceived she was still alive and wished to prevent her possible recovery. It's like I said, she didn't know. He didn't know if she was going to come to out of nowhere and start talking shit. They said. Given the otherwise unexplained relocation of the victim's body into the lake, a rational jury could have reasonably inferred that the defendant moved the victim's body into the water and that the victim was still alive. See, I think you could definitely say that she was moved into the water, but I don't know if you can say 100% that he's the one who did it. That's a hard thing, right?

[Jimmy Whisman]

You got no evidence that he did it. Except for the dive right where the fucking body is. That's it.

[James Petragallo]

That's the one. That's the one. So he also says he was not given. He was denied due process. When the trial court failed to give individual limiting instructions concerning the testimony of seven different witnesses, all of whom testified that the victim had been upset and concerned about his drug and gambling addictions. So they said. After the first of these witnesses testified, the defense counsel requested a limiting instruction regarding the use of the testimony. The trial court gave the following instruction. Members of the jury, you have just heard testimony that Florence Unger was unhappy in her marriage, having marital problems, and she was unhappy. With respect to the defendant Mark Unger's purported drug and gambling problems, this testimony is not admissible to establish that Mark Unger was addicted to drugs or gambling. It is admissible only to show Florence Unger's state of mind and that there was Marital discord. You may consider this testimony only for the list's limited purpose. That is her unhappiness in the marriage relationship and intent to divorce Mark Unger. But you can't separate that in your brain. Let's be honest here. They said with report respect to the defendant's purported addictive problems, there are admissible. Those are admissible not to establish he was in fact addicted, but only to form the basis of the victim's mind for the marital discord. So anyway, they said, we're going to hear from witnesses with respect to the statements that Florence made. And the same instruction will be applicable to their testimony. Here's another thing. They said they were mean to the defense. Mean? Yeah. They said they were impermissibly denigrated. The defense counsel. Defendant specifically challenges several arguments made by the prosecution during closing arguments, including the defect. They said the defense counsel had re victimized Florence Unger during the course of the trial. That the defense counsel had, quote, bought Dr. Paul's testimony by paying him a substantial amount of money. That is Prosecutor 101. Any defense witness, they say, I mean, and he's being paid to be here, obviously, which is stupid. They said the defense had improperly cross examined doctors Cole and McKeever and had attempted to mislead the jury by way of tortured questioning and deliberately loaded questions. And that the defense counsel had attempted to mislead and fool the jury by using red herrings and smoke and mirrors. That the prosecutor said all that about that. And then there's the bodies don't bounce.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Right?

[James Petragallo]

Defendant lastly contests that the prosecution argued facts not in evidence when it stated during rebuttal that, quote, bodies don't bounce. That. That fact is. That's again like saying gravity is not in evidence. So he can't say that we thought that if I dropped something, it would fall on the ground.

[Jimmy Whisman]

And you know, there's a lot of people that will disagree with that because they've seen a friend fall and bounce off the pavement. But you, when you fall from us.

[James Petragallo]

You know, your bike, a moving car.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That you can bounce like that because you've got forward momentum. But like a crumpled body that's out when it hits.

[James Petragallo]

It hits head first on. On concrete. There's no. It doesn't spring out like Don Beebe when he fucking. That the Bill's wide receiver, that highlight. That's because there's a helmet there that helped that. That's why he bounced, because he went. The little cage thing in the helmet, like shot him's body back up. Yeah. So anyway, they go on to say that Paul testified under certain conditions, such a fall from 12ft onto a concrete surface. Bodies can bounce. However, Drs. Cole and Dragovich testified that they did not believe the victim's body could have bounced, rolled, or otherwise moved into the lake in its own volition. So they said, accordingly, we cannot conclude the prosecution act argued facts not in evidence. Moreover, even if this comment had been improper, any prejudicial effect could have been dispelled by a timely objection and a curative instruction. And also they said that they shouldn't have been so mean to their doctor's video shit. The defenses video shit.

[Jimmy Whisman]

But it was a sweet cartoon. You guys could have been called a piece of short. It looked great.

[James Petragallo]

Pretty fucking badass. They said because the computer animation showed the victim moving into the water by way of seizures or convulsions, were based on conjecture and were inconsistent with the medical facts and evidence, they were technically irrelevant to the genuine issues of this case. The trial court did not abuse its discretion by excluding some of the videos from the jury's consideration altogether. Denied and affirmed. Yeah, this is affirmed.

[Jimmy Whisman]

And the bounce that they're saying is like, not like ridiculous. You can hit the ground and just, I mean, a couple, you know, I mean just the motion of coming, get.

[James Petragallo]

On your side, fall over.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah. But you're not going to bounce like a fucking rubber ball and bounce six feet over a. Over a concrete embankment wall.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. That's three feet away. And you'd have to bounce not just straight up in the air, you'd have to bounce forward.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, you'd have forward momentum.

[James Petragallo]

Crazy. You'd have to be shot out of a cannon to have that happen.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Physically. It doesn't happen if you were shot.

[James Petragallo]

Out of a cannon. Yeah, maybe.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, yeah.

[James Petragallo]

You know, forward, momentum, you'd have a lot. You'd have a lot of force behind you forward. And you'd hit and roll maybe at that point, but straight down.

[Jimmy Whisman]

This is crazy.

[James Petragallo]

So 2018, he appeals again. He's been appealing all the way. And in this appeal, he claims his rights were violated because his trial lawyer, who now he labels as ineffective. Before he was a heavyweight hard hitting trial lawyer with a hundred murder cases.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Ineffective. Fuck. Stole my parents house.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah, he stole my parents house. You can't say a guy who's done 100 murder trials is ineffective.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Right. That guy's done a lot of stuff.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah. They said he did not object when the prosecutor made provocative comments in the courtroom. A federal appeals court rejected his claim, calling the evidence against him Overwhelming. And he lost his appeal. That meant that that was likely his last attempt to get a new trial in 2018, 2019. Taking it to the streets. Actually, not to the streets, to the Supreme Court. The opposite of the streets.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Michael McDonald, get after him.

[James Petragallo]

Here we go. The court here, the Unger argued that his rights were violated due to ineffective assistance of counsel. Same shit. Federal appeals court had rejected an overwhelming evidence and the Supreme Court agrees with that overwhelming evidence and tells him to keep on keeping on and get fucked. So unless there's some remarkable new evidence, he is in prison for fucking ever. Unless, like somebody comes forward and says, I killed her, here's the shirt I was wearing and all that. Unless that happens, he's done, it's over. Because the fact that there's so little evidence means there's very little evidence that can come to dispute too. So it works both ways here. Now he is serving his life sentence at the Chippewa Correctional Facility in Upper. It seems in the. Up there. So he is freezing.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Chippewa is up there, huh?

[James Petragallo]

Apparently Chippewa Correctional Facility in Kin. Oh, God. King Kellogg. Oh, Jesus.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Nope.

[James Petragallo]

Ciinchalo. Kinkelo. K K I N C H E L O E Kinchello. Concello, Concello, Conclo. I don't know what the fuck it is, Chloe. That's what I thought. It was so hard for me to not say Conchloe. That's why I was trying to get it out. I couldn't. I just wanted to say that so much. Especially I was watching a murder trial where someone was named Chloe recently and I was like, ah, Christ. It stuck in my head. Now here is somebody. By the way, in crime and sports we always do a fucking mistaken identities thing. Someone with the same name. It's worse than small town murder because at least an athlete, you know that. That's probably not really Mike Tyson, who is a CPA in Columbus, Ohio. That's probably not that one. But this, you never know with shit like this. There is an attorney in California named Mark Steven Unger. Exact same shit. It is not him. Everybody, just so you know, it's certainly not him. His license status is active right now, so it's definitely not him. Don't look.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Bar in California, Michigan.

[James Petragallo]

Give that guy a break is what I'm saying. Don't like Google him and go, oh, he has the same name as a murderer and then not use him. That's fucked up. He had no way of knowing that, you know, he's worked really hard for all. Maybe he could be a terrible lawyer, don't get me wrong. Yeah. So many old ladies houses. I think he is like a finance guy because the website is something fiduciary partners. So that means that sounds like money. Yeah. He's not doing legal shit anyway, so. Or like, you know, criminal shit is what I meant to say. So there you go, everybody. There's Arcadia Township, Michigan and Huntington woods to an extent. And a weird case.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petragallo]

So let us know what you think. This is one of those, right? Sometimes there's two of us sitting here so our brains can only go a.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Certain amount, you know, more than I do.

[James Petragallo]

Well, if you have hundreds of thousands of listeners like we do, a lot of times they'll end up coming up with something that we didn't think of because there's a lot of different brains out there. So if you have anything, any thoughts on this at all, please let us know. Talk about it. Fucking talk about it on the page. Talk about it wherever the send us messages. I don't care because I'm interested in this shit. So, so very, very interesting. Do that and also head over to shutupandgivemerder.com get your tickets for live shows while you're doing that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do that. Also get your. Review the show, whatever app you're listening on. Throw a review. 5 stars. Doesn't matter what you say. Just say James and Jimmy would be bad at bouncing on concrete. That's fine. We'll know what you mean. They don't know shit about bouncing, these guys. I'll show them how to bounce. That's fine.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Bounce with me.

[James Petragallo]

Bounce with me. Bounce. So there's that. Yes. Shut up and give me murder.com tickets for live shows, including the virtual live show. You're not in one of the cities we're going to. We go to like 12 places you could not be there. We got other shit. We got this. The 4:20 virtual live show taking place on Saturday, April 19th. It's available for two weeks. After that to purchase, to watch 100 times. Do whatever you want with. Also, just like a regular live show, except you are in your living room on your porch doing wherever the hell you have Internet and feel like watching us. And we're gonna have costumes on and we're gonna also smoke a shitload of weed out of weird contraptions that will scare the hell out of Jimmy at intermittent times during the show. So that'll be a lot of fun. And get your tickets for regular live shows as well. Chicago in May. You are on deck Baby, get those tickets. Sold out. Chicago, St. Louis, you're doing great. You did it. Don't. Do you want to be, do you want to like, not sell out Chicago and have St. Louis be like, we're better than you? You don't want that, do you? Jesus Christ. The Cardinals already have like 20 World Series and you have like three. You don't want it to be worse, do you? No. So don't let it be worse. You have, you have a basketball team. They don't even have one, right. Do that. Get the tickets. Also for the rest of the year too. A lot of them are selling out. San Diego, Madison, there's a couple others too, are selling out. So even if you want to go at the end of the year and you're like, I got plenty of time, you really don't get your tickets right now. So get in there. Shut upandgivemerder.com youm can also definitely follow us on social media. We are Smalltown Murder on Instagram. We aremalltownpod on Facebook. And you can certainly get our Patreon. Patreon.com crimeinsports it's where you get all the bonus material. And Anybody, if you're $5 a month or above, first of all, you'll be shocked at how many bonus episodes you're going to get immediately upon subscription. It's hundreds. We've been doing these for years. So it is hundreds and hundreds of bonus episodes then. So huge binge thing. Then you're going to get new ones every other week and we keep stacking them. We're going to get one crime in sports and one small town murderer and anybody, five bucks a month or above. Just take it all. Just give it. Take it all.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yes.

[James Petragallo]

We don't even want it. Just take it.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's all for you.

[James Petragallo]

It's all for you. This week, which we're going to do for crime and sports, we're going to talk about. This is very interesting, the 2012 Miami Dolphins bullying scandal. Because you think these are giant football players and stuff, who's bullying anybody and then each other all day? Or it's like, yeah, everyone gets bullied at work or whatever the fuck it is. I don't know. So whatever your opinion is on it, there's some stuff that's come out recently where people's opinions on it at the time. Some of the people who are involved have now changed their opinions. So it's very interesting. And then for small town murder, one of the craziest things ever. The Amazon Review Killer who was like a serial killer who kidnapped these couples and killed them and did all this awful shit. He held women as hostages and did terrible things to them till he got tired of them and killed him. And he would take all of the implements of his crimes, buy them on Amazon, and then review them honestly on Amazon, telling how good or bad they were at killing people or holding hostages or whatever, and people would laugh and say it was hilarious. I found that helpful. And it's like, no talk about that and more. Patreon.com crimeinsports but we want to say thank you right now to everybody who has been a patron. Jimmy, hit me with the names of the people who would never, ever, ever throw us into a lake to drown while our brain. While our brains quietly seeps out of our nose. Hit me with them right fucking now.

[Jimmy Whisman]

This week's executive producer, Christopher Bottomley. Gary Howard. Jessica Bochene. Bo Cheese. Nebo Chesney.

[James Petragallo]

I think it's like an Italian butcher. Isn't he today? I see it.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Rigatoni, please.

[James Petragallo]

I hear it's good to know.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Cody Loversee in Detroit. You're the best. Shelly Roberts, Larry Butterfast, you're terrific, too.

[James Petragallo]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Orange County. Julia Hayes. I think he's in Orange County.

[James Petragallo]

Is he in California? I think he is. Yeah. Yeah. He drove all the way there to see us in Phoenix.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, that's right.

[James Petragallo]

From Orange County. I was our guy.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I always. Because they're. Because they're gray and both rad. I mix him up with the rock and roll scientist in Philly.

[James Petragallo]

Oh, yeah. Rocks, too.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, they're equally awesome dudes.

[James Petragallo]

They're equally. Yes, you're right about that.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Both of them texted me on my birthday and I was like, oh, no.

[James Petragallo]

And somehow I never. I never put that together. That they were similar and they are exactly alike. Yeah, that's awesome.

[Jimmy Whisman]

East and west coast guys. And they're both Julia Hayes. Peter Gozenya, of course. He knows that guy. He's a great guy. Tara L. And there was clearly a concerted effort to donate to PayPal because I had a birthday and I can't thank you guys enough. It was incredibly kind of all of you. Thank you so much. We will use it to buy lots and lots of weed for the 420 show, and we'll celebrate in a couple of months.

[James Petragallo]

Lovely, lovely.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Other producers this week are Peyton Meadows, Jennifer Ward, Alana Zammel, Elena Zammel. Zamel. Isabel Gill. Happy hour in Tallulah, Louisiana. He checked in. Jennifer Ward, Janice Hill, Danielle Garouge. Garouge. Melanie Feelkowski Brian Fingleton Large Marge Joshua Reagan Kira with no last name Jamie Holiday Abby Forsbrook Sierra B Mattis Reiber Les Sniper Janie with no last name Brada with no last name Nicole Frazier Zachary Jensen Emily Walker Chris Gavin Nikki Campbell Casey McGrath Ed Couthane Cool Hayne Keulin Otto know Andrew will be no last name Krista Capps Zachary Burns Kim Great Gravity Gravitter Karee Carey Old Curry Rising back Carrie thank you so much Shannon Hovator Havada Davis Miller that's uh. Yeah, Davis Miller. Two last names for uh name Davis Miller. Yeah Glistopher Craig Yamamoto Glistopher gives no last name Valerie Jensen you don't need Sandlin Randy Howard Haley with no Last name Jason McLean Jeff Solomon Jason Barber Landon Wood Andrea McAllister Susan Roselle Racinette Racing at Raisinette Jenna Wisnoski is a name Colby Robinson Kyle Landrum Jenna Crawford Brian Forbes Jimmy Astley Ass licking Westman. Why would. Why would you want that said? I don't understand is there, is there a joke that we missed? I don't trying to be insulting or supportive.

[James Petragallo]

We don't even know that's how out of it is. We don't even know if you're being insulting or supportive. We don't know whether to say thank you or fuck you. Yeah, if we can't tell her to say thank you or fuck you, it's weird. Sorry, I think you've.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I think you've missed the mark but thanks for money. Renee with no last name this is Sparta Indy with no last name Tim Schwartz Jake Simpson Becky Helms Sherry Tulier Diane Davis Cassandra Bird Carly Harris, Amanda Jedi Empress Amanda S. James. She loves Star wars evidently.

[James Petragallo]

I guess so.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I know that much about Star wars that I know the Jedi's are from there.

[James Petragallo]

I would hope so. They returned in one whole movie.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Monty to doll Tracy Richard Alex Miles Debbie Stevens B Bradley Josh with no last name Nick Messmer Dan Dan Revolution Braden Evans Gregory McGrath Chris Butler Joshua Baker Larry Laura Laura Milner Mellon My milliner ML. That's a possibility.

[James Petragallo]

How do you even pronounce that possibility?

[Jimmy Whisman]

What am I supposed to do? You gotta put a vowel in between there. Jeffrey Boyer, Rita Martinez Molu M. What is this? Josh Tetris Brandon with no last name Michael on Nicole Meyer. Yeah, that's Meyer. Avery Lampka, Lemka Mo Magwai Warbucks James. Oh, it's his father though it seems that's Ms.

[James Petragallo]

I'm just Mogwai. That's Mr. Warbucks is my dad. Really? Call me Mogwai.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Brianna Mitchell. Homebrew. Murder Crew. Wooden Monkey. Donato. Nolfi. Nolfi. April Hansen. Meg Hinton. Buddy Priest. Linda Madison. Alexandra Pankey. Southpaw, 17, Florida 1. I don't know what that is. Is that an NFL game play that we're calling? I don't know. Nolan Southpaw, 17, Florida one.

[James Petragallo]

Let's go on three. On three.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Drew with no last name. Kobe Bryant. Probably not. More than likely not. Kathy Bain. Megan Jackson. Harley Posada. Jenny with no last name. Aaron with no last name. Alex Greenberg. Rachel with no last name. James Vogelsang. Chris with no last name. Jamie T. Hernandez. Hugh Janus.

[James Petragallo]

James. Oh, he's with. That's with what's his name from before. They're together.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Ass licking. Westman.

[James Petragallo]

No, no, the other one. The other one. The first one. We had another one of those tonight or today.

[Jimmy Whisman]

They love these. I don't understand what the.

[James Petragallo]

They love the. Bart Simpson calling Mo's Bar.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Kaylee. And you know, at one point in time, I loved a good pun. Kaylee Panick. Panick. I don't know. Craig. Carl. No, it's Carl Craig. Devin Brown. Kathleen.

[James Petragallo]

First names, that's what you get together with the last name guys and exchange something. You both come away with two fucking normal names.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Crystal Cooper. Patrick Whitmore. What is this? Karen Buckley. David Spear. Money with no last name.

[James Petragallo]

Abby.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Richie. Gillian. Jillian. Jillian Scott. Brian Scott. Oh, the both the Scott brothers Or brother.

[James Petragallo]

Sister Scotts are here.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Misled. Chef with no last name. Pixie with no last name. Jamie. Eric. Eric Win. Eric. Gwynne C. Munker.

[James Petragallo]

What?

[Jimmy Whisman]

What is that? That's got to be a misspelling. I'm so sorry. Seamonker. Christy Wilcox. David Valerio. Waverly. That's a cool name. Bushki. Bushki.

[James Petragallo]

Bush.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Bush. Kelsey Havlick.

[James Petragallo]

Go ahead, say cool name.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Holly Wilmers. Megan with no last name. Joan Gill. Amanda. Bishop Vaught. Jennifer Sawyer. Abe Lincoln. You know what? That's. That's my favorite pun so far. That's pretty good. That's. Maybe that's why I like puns, because. Robin Hood. Men in Titan. There was an Abe Lincoln pun in there. That's fantastic. Hayden Powell. Pervy Reed. Jonathan Hebert. Hebert. I hope it's not pervy. That's tough. Hebert. Hey, Bear. Dakota Landorf V with no last name. Heather King. Tom Winelli. Whannell. That's all Jamie Lynn. Tara Love. I like that.

[James Petragallo]

That's a.

[Jimmy Whisman]

All right. Shane Whitaker. Whitaker. It's probably Whitaker, Eric Kimball, Cassie Gill, Amber Luciani and all of our patrons. I love you guys more than you know. Thank you.

[James Petragallo]

Thank you so much everybody for all that you do for us. Honestly, we cannot thank you enough for everything. Keep hanging out with us. Tell your friends, follow us on social media. You want to do that? Shut up and give me murder.com drop down menu will take you anywhere you want to go. Keep coming back week after week and until next week everybody, it's been our pleasure.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Bye. Foreign.

[James Petragallo]

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 hey everybody, we have some exciting news that we want to share. If you want to go on an adventure with Generation Y, we'd love for you to join us. January 26th through the 30th, 2026, we'll.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Be sailing from Miami to the Bahamas.

[James Petragallo]

On Wondery's first ever True Crime cruise aboard the Norwegian Joy. Aaron and I will be there to chat, hang out, dive into all all things true crime. And we're thrilled to be joined by some familiar voices in the true crime podcasting world. Sirte and Hannah from Red Handed, Sashi and Sarah from Scamfluencers and Carl Miller from Kill List. Super excited to hang out with them too. We got some cool activities, interactive mysteries we can solve, testing our forensic skills with a blood spatter expert, and so much more. So for some sun fun and just the right amount of mystery solving, come join us if you'd like to know more and secure your spot. Visit exhibit ccruise.com for pre sale information.