Death In The Family - Williamsburg, Indiana

Summary

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Small Town Murder — "Death In The Family: Williamsburg, Indiana"

Podcast: Small Town Murder
Hosts: James Pietragallo, Jimmie Whisman
Date: December 6, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this darkly hilarious true-crime deep dive, James and Jimmie bring their trademark comedic lens to a grisly double murder in the tiny rural town of Williamsburg, Indiana. They trace a story of addiction, deception, and family implosion, examining what can go terribly wrong when drugs, dysfunctional relationships, and small-town secrecy collide. The case follows the unraveling of Scott Hartman, a once "golden child," whose addiction leads to the shocking murder of both his parents—prompting the hosts' unique blend of gallows humor and sharp social observation.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Setting the Scene: Williamsburg, Indiana

• Population of only 473, nestled in Wayne County, with an "inception-like" Russian doll structure of tiny towns within townships ([05:10]).
• Median household income is surprisingly high ($76,083), but housing is cheap ($182,000) ([06:26]).
• Hosts riff on the area’s lackluster activities, poking fun at community days, antique tractor displays, and a "world famous" pork chop cook-off:

  "If part of the way your town gets down and parties is setting up a table in your driveway and selling your grandma’s lamp ... come up with better shit to do." – James ([08:44])

The Hartman Family Backstory

• Patriarch Brian Hartman: contractor, farmer, workaholic; stern but not abusive disciplinarian ([13:15]).
• Matriarch Sherry Hartman: doting, over-protective mother, later beset by severe health issues—cancer, emphysema, COPD, lumbar stenosis ([14:41]).
• Only child Scott: the "golden child", spoiled, never told no, torn between parents' conflicting styles—strict father, coddling mother ([15:48]).

Scott’s Downward Spiral

• Joins the Army to escape town and his father ([17:09]).
• Marries Angel; becomes a father young (daughter Carolyn) ([19:03]), quickly grows strict, shows troubling behavior—mood swings and pill addiction begin ([19:31]).
• Addiction escalates to painkillers, mainly OxyContin, with a taste for anything he can get:

  “Why are you holding? That would be his answer. What you got?” – James ([20:46])

• Marriage dissolves due to drugs and violence; Angel leaves, but Scott later wins full custody of both children—raising doubts about both parents' stability ([24:24]).

Addiction & Dysfunction on the Family Farm

• Scott moves into a pole-barn-converted home on his parents’ rural property ([26:03]).
• Scott steals his ailing mother's painkillers regularly, even swapping them out with Tylenol or Advil ([33:19]):

  “Think about what a scumbag you have to be ... stealing medication from your cancerous mother.” – James ([34:06])

• First legal trouble: caught forging prescriptions for painkillers ([34:45]); fails all court-mandated rehab.

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The Murders

Death of Sherry Hartman (Mother)

• February 12, 2010: Scott calls 911 claiming his mother is unresponsive and foaming at the mouth. She is pronounced dead at the hospital; cause of death listed as respiratory failure linked to her many maladies—no one in the family is surprised ([36:19]).
• Scott insists to relatives that Brian (his father) left town suddenly, leaving checkbook and funeral planning to him ([38:58]). Stories of Brian’s departure change repeatedly—red truck, white car, taxi ([40:24]).

Death of Brian Hartman (Father)

• Brian is missing during Sherry’s funeral; Scott and the kids do not attend either ([42:31]).
• Scott is caught breaking into a neighbor’s house, high and looking for drugs, during the funeral ([43:44]).

Body Discovered

• After family pressure for a welfare check and their own search of the property, Brian’s body is eventually found folded inside a large plastic toolbox in the garage, shot in the back of the head at close range while he slept ([49:36]):

  “He went to the garage ... he didn’t leave at all.” – James ([49:39]) “He died of a significant head wound created by a shotgun blast. Likely fired within inches of the back of his skull.” – James ([49:55])

• Bloodstains, drag marks, and a clean-up attempt reveal the violence of the act; murder weapon found as described by Scott ([48:53]).

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Scott’s Confession

• Under Miranda, Scott confesses:
  • He "assisted" his mother’s death by giving her a fatal overdose of meds she was allergic to ([51:48]);
  • He shot his sleeping father "according to a family pact" that both parents supposedly requested ([54:25]):

    “It was a pact ... agreed that when it was Sherry’s time to go, Scott would assist her in doing that, and Brian had said ... I don’t want to live without my wife—kill me too.” – Paraphrased ([54:45])

  • Motivation: allegedly a mercy killing/suicide pact. However, Sherry was in remission from cancer at the time, contradicting Scott’s claims ([57:01]).

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Criminal Proceedings and Legal Complexity

Original Charges & Motion to Suppress

• Initially charged with murder (father) and assisting suicide (mother).
• Scott’s confession is ruled inadmissible over Miranda rights violations; prosecution responds by upgrading charges to double homicide ([67:59])—defense protests, claims “vindictive prosecution.”
• Appellate and Indiana Supreme Court rulings mostly uphold the convictions.

Trial & Verdict

• Scott’s stories fall apart: contradictory tales of his father’s disappearance, witnesses to his pill addiction and theft, direct evidence of his role in both deaths.
• Prosecution:

  “We have two people that are dead and one person [...] living in their home, no explanation.” – Jimmie ([69:18])

• Jury deliberates only 45 minutes, finds him guilty on two counts of murder ([71:52]).
• Sentenced to 120 years (60 each, consecutive), with earliest possible release in 2070, at age 94 ([72:14]).

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On Williamsburg’s leisure options:

  “Explore the Levi and Catherine Coffin State Historic Site. OK. Go to the Warm Glow Candle Outlet. This is why AI is terrible.”
  – James, mocking AI-generated suggestions ([11:01])

• On Scott’s pill-seeking burglary:

  “He was trying to break into their house to steal their pills. This is three days after he refilled a 90-day supply of OxyContin.” – James ([44:17])

• On the spousal ‘pact’ defense:

  “How many people fight cancer, get in remission, and go, ‘I’ll kill myself now, I’ve had enough’?” – James ([57:11])

• On the ineptitude of Scott’s cover-up:

  “Imagine—‘I’ll put that there, do some drugs and deal with that later.’ That’s hardcore addict shit.” – James, on storing the body ([50:10])

• On the impact of drugs:

  “He just messed up his mind on them drugs and it made him a monster.” – Scott’s son, Brian ([74:25])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Williamsburg overview and town riffing: [05:10 – 12:03]
• Hartman family history & dynamics: [13:15 – 17:11]
• Scott’s addiction, criminal start: [20:43 – 24:37]
• Scott living on property, stealing meds: [26:03 – 34:16]
• Legal/forgery issues, escalating drug use: [34:45 – 35:49]
• Events leading to the deaths: [36:19 – 39:10]
• Contradictory stories about Brian’s disappearance: [40:24 – 41:40]
• Discovery of the crimes and police involvement: [48:03 – 49:40]
• Murder details & confession: [51:46 – 54:45]
• Discussion of the mercy killing defense: [57:01]
• Trial and sentencing outcome: [71:52 – 72:22]
• Aftermath and family reactions: [74:02 – 74:29]

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Tone, Style & Noteworthy Aspects

• The hosts deftly blend irreverent humor with serious analysis, especially when discussing small-town culture ("loitering for three days" at community days) and the devastating effects of unchecked addiction.
• The case’s disturbing detail is offset by conversational tangents and comedic asides, keeping things engaging without trivializing the real victims.
• Multiple quotable moments, the hosts leaning into their signature "dark, but empathetic" banter.

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Closing Thought

In classic Small Town Murder style, the episode uses caustic wit to highlight both the unique quirks and darker tragedies found in rural America. The story of Scott Hartman’s catastrophic descent provides a sharp critique of the destructive power of addiction and the deadly consequences of enabling family dysfunction—reminding listeners that, beneath the bucolic veneer of places like Williamsburg, darkness can lurk.

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Transcript

[A]

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[B]

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Hello everybody and welcome back to small town Murder Express. Yay.

[B]

And choo choo.

[A]

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

[B]

I'm Jimmy Whisman.

[A]

Thank you folks so much for joining us today on another crazy edition of small Town Murder Express. All aboard the murder train leaving the station. We got a wild one for you today as usual, of course, very quickly here at the top of the show. Want to say head over to shutupandgivememurder.com get your tickets for 2026. They are on sale right now. All the shows are on sale. I have a full list here of all the cities and dates which I will read at the end of the show. I don't want to bore people in the beginning of the show Here we'll give you the murder and then if you're like, wow, that's great. I want to see that live at the end of the show. You can find out all the dates, the full slate for the year. So do that. Get your tickets right now. I'll tell you one thing, if you live in Salt Lake City.

After a day they were 90% sold out. So if you want to go to that show.

[B]

That's unbelievable.

[A]

I don't understand it. But Salt Lake City ins are wild. I think they're like, it's. Someone's going to be cursing and drinking. We have to go there. Can't take all this Mormonism anymore. It's so.

[B]

Is it the repression? What's going on?

[A]

It is, it is. So thank you so much for buying tickets and get in there and get your tickets and come hang out with us.

[B]

But that's not the first time, by the way. Last time I was saying it was over in a blink.

[A]

In a day too. It's the same thing.

[B]

If you want tickets, hurry up.

[A]

Yeah, definitely do that. So hang out with us there. Also, get yourself some patreon. Patreon.com crimeinsports that's P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com crimeinsports which is the name of a show that we do that you should listen to because it's hilarious. Now what you get there? Anybody? $5 a month or above. Oh, God. You get everything. You get hundreds of back episodes of stuff you've never heard before. All back bonus episodes, hundreds immediately upon subscription. Then you get new ones every other week. One crime and sports, one small town murder. And you get it all this week, which you're gonna get for crime and sports. We're gonna talk about how cycling is the most dangerous sport that's ever existed. There's just piles of bodies. You can think, you know, NASCAR people crash, do that. You could jump out of planes for a living and it would be not as dangerous as riding a bicycle. It's crazy stuff. Then for small town murder, we're gonna talk about Charles Starkweather, which I think is kind of one of the most uniquely American stories that you can have.

[B]

It's pretty wild.

[A]

He kills 11 people and blames a 13 year old girl for most of it. It's pretty amusing. We'll talk about all of that and more.

[B]

Attracted to 13 year olds.

[A]

Oh, definitely. Patreon.com CrimeInSports he was attracted to 13 year olds and wasn't even good at music. How dare he?

[B]

It's unbelievable.

[A]

Yeah, you had to play the piano back in the 50s to marry your 12 year old cousin. Gonna get a baby Jerry Lee Lewis, the situation. So do that. You also get all our shows that we put out. Crime in sports, your stupid opinions, and both Small town murder episodes all ad free with your Patreon. And you get a shout out at the end of the regular show as well. We can't stop giving. That's the thing. We're just. We're standing outside with free pies, everybody. We don't know. We don't know what we're doing. That said, I think it's time to sit back, everybody. What do you say? Let's all clear the lungs here and let's all shout.

Shut up and give me murder. Let's do this, everybody.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Let's go on a trip, shall we?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

We're going to Indiana this week.

[B]

What a place.

[A]

It's not on the tour schedule, I'll say that. Nope. Let's see here. We're going to Williamsburg, Indiana. Now this is a small town inside of another small town. So it's all very small and very rural out here.

[B]

It's a Russian doll of towns.

[A]

It definitely is. We come across this a lot. It's a town, it's inside of a township that has other towns. It's in eastern Indiana, way over there. It's about an hour and 15 minutes to Indianapolis if you want to go somewhere slightly less boring. About an hour 40 to Cincinnati, if you'd like to love the smell of sulfur. You can't get that out of your nose. Then about 2 hours and 45 minutes to Jeffersonville, Indiana. Our last Indiana episode, which was making a Murder meal, which was a really crazy episode that you should go back and revisit if you remember that.

[B]

Jeffersonville. What is this one called?

[A]

This is Williamsburg.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

They just name it after a guy every town. This is Bob's town. This is. Jesus Christ. It's so stupid. So this is in Wayne county. Area code 7, 6, 5.

[B]

Another guy.

[A]

Another guy. Which I thought is hilarious. Population of this town is 473. And so very small town. And the township it's inside of only has 1222 people. So it's a dinky. But it's almost half of the township of this town. Median household income here is higher than the national average. It's $76,083. And then median home cost here is much lower than the national average. It is $182,000. So they make more than the average. And the homes are half the price of the average.

[B]

Nothing.

[A]

Yeah, not bad. Now, a little bit of history here. Like I said, it's inside of another town. It's inside of Green Township. So I was like, maybe we'll do Green Township as the town. But then when you look up Green Township, Indiana, there's like 11 of them. No, there's like 11 Green Township Indianas. So you have to sift through which county it's in. And I'm like, I'm not doing this. It's Jefferson, it's Williamsburg. That's it. I don't care. So Green Township is one of fifteen townships in Wayne county here. The Green Township was organized in 1821. It was named after a guy named John Green. Sure, There you go. The earliest settlers here arrived from North Carolina in 1810, which was before Indiana was even a state. Here the town was laid out and platted in 1830. Named after its founder, William Johnson. Great William. There's his burg. There's been a post office there since about 1830. There is no reviews of this town. Nothing really. I cannot find a damn thing on reviews. Nope. Nobody wants to make their opinions known about this town. It's all big secret. But there are things to do. They're not great, but there's things to do. We have the Williamsburg community days.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Oh, that sounds. You know, that's going to be great.

[B]

Community days.

[A]

That's basically everyone come downtown and stand around on the street.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

There's food trucks and vendors. It's a three day affair. So. Jesus. I mean, come on.

[B]

Loitering for three. Three days.

[A]

Three days. Part of this loitering is also getting rid of all your crap to your neighbors here.

[B]

Community yard sale.

[A]

Community wide Garage sales are planned for Friday and Saturday. If part of the way your town gets down and parties is setting up a table in your driveway and selling your grandma's lamp, that is. You gotta come up with some better shit to do. This is crazy.

[B]

If you do a community one, it is crazy how many people turn out.

[A]

Oh, my God, everyone's got their shit. Basements are empty throughout the world. Eastern Indiana. Load of shit.

[B]

With the idea that you might get something amazing.

[A]

I might get something for a dollar cheaper. Wow. So admission and parking are free? I would hope so. Imagine them charging parking for this. Let's see. There will be a charge for pork chops, breakfast and ice cream items. Pork chops, apparently, quote, world famous pork chops, quote unquote, what makes it. And it's all capitalized too. Like it's an official title. Like they were Given this by the World Pork Chop Council. They won.

[B]

Fuck, I love a pork chop.

[A]

Who doesn't love a pork chop? They're great. They're so good. Haven't they.

[B]

I thought I hated them till I got them.

[A]

Till I got dried out, shaken, baked. Yeah, exactly. When we were kids, that was the way you cooked pork chops. To death. To death. And then Sometime in the 90s, they said, hey, pork can be eaten at medium. You're good. And then it changed the game, man.

[B]

You don't have to cook it till it's the same density as the bone.

[A]

Till it's. Yeah, it was just. It was like pork gum. It was.

You just chew it like cud. It was fucking horrible. When we were kids. Pork chops, they're so good. So good. So they'll be available each day starting at 11:00am Also at 11:00am an antique tractor display. Yeah, KI CKS Kicks 96 radio will be broadcasting live from 3 to 5. And the Gil Puckett band will be there from 6 to 9. Everybody, it's Gary Puckett's little brother, Gil.

[B]

Is it the shit kicker music?

[A]

I think I would assume so. I doubt that it's the hip hop station.

[B]

That's a joke.

[A]

So there's a pancake breakfast and all this bullshit. Also live bluegrass music by the Silver Town Band.

[B]

I'll bet they're decent.

[A]

It's bluegrass, so yeah, they got little banjos.

[B]

Probably better than fucking everything else there.

[A]

It's probably better than Gil Puckett. I assume so. It's funny when you look up things to do here, like, you know, AI on Google will give you its little thing. So here's what AI says there is to do In Williamsburg, Indiana. You can explore the Levi and Catherine Coffin State Historic Site. Okay. Go to the Warm Glow Candle Outlet. This is why AI is terrible. Everyone's saying AI is taking over the world. If this is taking over the world.

[B]

It'S got a lot of work.

[A]

You have to be dumber than this for it to take what you're doing. Shop for antiques at places like the Centerville Antique Mall. Or enjoy the outdoors at the Cardinal Greenway Williamsburg Trailhead or Middle Fork Reservoir Park. Do a hike, I guess. Other options include Abbott's Candy Shop, Fountain Acres Foods, which I think is a grocery store. That's what they put. And the barn at Helm Experience. I don't get it.

[B]

You could go buy an apple.

[A]

There's apples. We got apples. That said, let's talk about a wild ass case of some murder happening here. Okay? We're gonna start in 2010 and just kind of go back and tell you a story here. Now, let's start out with a man and wife here, a married couple. Been together a long time. First Brian ellis Hart in 2010. He's 53 years old. He was born on June 24, 1956. He's from Covington, Kentucky, and his parents are Leonard and Sue. And he graduated from Union High School in Covington, Kentucky in 1974 and started doing construction work and ended up having his own kind of contracting firm basically. Not big. Not a big, rich, wealthy man or anything like that, but a successful enough company where he builds his own house and can provide for his family and all that kind of thing. And he also is a farmer. He does farming on his house. So when he gets home from work, he can go out in the yard and do some work. That sounds great. Jesus.

[B]

This poor man doesn't sleep.

[A]

No, no. He's got a wife named Sherri Ann C H E R I like Cheri Oteri there. Sherry, she's born May 14, 1957 here. So year younger than him, but same deal. Now they're gonna grow. They're gonna have a child here and everything like that.

What's gonna happen is we're gonna get the fact that Brian is a real stern disciplinarian. Oh, real kind of do as I say type of thing. Get out on the farm, which is kind of back in the day kind of how farms worked, you know.

[B]

But small towns are still like that.

[A]

Yeah, I hope. I don't know. I hope not. People aren't beating the shit out of their kids. Strictness is good. Yeah. But this.

[B]

Is he physical?

[A]

Well, I don't know. Not to the extent where it's an issue. Problem. Yeah, yeah. Not like, you know, savage beatings. He's not an alcoholic or anything like.

[B]

That, which helps, I'm sure, corporal punishment or some shit.

[A]

Who knows? Who knows? And back then, who knows even more. So he works his whole life, works hard. Him and Sherry both work hard. Sherry's gonna have some health problems later on in life here, as we'll talk about. By 2010, she's got COPD, emphysema, lumbar stenosis and cancer.

[B]

Oh, boy.

[A]

Overloaded with problems by 2010. But her whole life, though, she's a very overprotective mother who super, super dotes on their son like crazy. Their son is Brian Scott Hartman. And Brian Scott Hartman is. He goes by Scott, by the way. No one calls him Brian. That's just. I think for ease. Because his dad's name is Brian. So, yeah, at some point Sherry said, I'm not saying Brian. And then having. Not doing it. You're Scott. Shut up. Yeah. No, the other one. No. So Brian Scott Hartman in 2010. He is 33 years old here. So.

He'S born in 77. And so they must have been, I mean, pretty 20 years old. Yeah. In their 20s, early 20s, when they had him. So Scott here.

He'S had some issues. Scott. But he started out great. Started out great. Like everyone in the family said he was. And everyone uses the same phrase. He was the golden child.

[B]

Oh, boy.

[A]

They doted on him. And I mean, forget about it. He was everything. One of his aunts, who is, I believe, his mom's or his dad's sister, said Scott was the center of Brian and Sherry's world. So that was just. I mean, but she didn't say, by the way, she didn't say that with.

Like, reverence. She said it like, rolling her eyes like the kid couldn't do any wrong. Yeah, she said it was. She said that he was basically. Never heard the word no. He's spoiled. Mom takes care of him. So it doesn't sound like dad was beating the shit out of him much if mom is this protective of him and everything. But. Yeah. Now Brian, the dad, he's kind of the disciplinarian here. He comes home from work with his tool belt and says, damn it, there's consequences. But Sherry is different. She's the. No, no, he'll get it.

[B]

He'll be fine.

[A]

Don't yell at the boy. And he didn't want to see, basically, Scott ever be sad. So if Scott said she feels like she's fucking up now. But Brian really tries to stay on him, though. So for a kid, that's a weird dichotomy because you're always kind of going to the soft parent, dad saying, we.

[B]

Don'T fail, and mom saying, but it's okay if you.

[A]

But it's okay if you fail. And meanwhile, somewhere in between is probably the best approach to a kid. The extremes are probably terrible on all sides. So Scott ends up joining the Army. Well, which. Yeah. And part of it was to get away from his dad was tired of his dad being on his ass. And part of it was he's from a tiny town in fucking eastern Indiana. So a lot of people, the only.

[B]

Options he's got there is leave or do what dad does.

[A]

Yeah. Either that or too, a lot of people just, I'll get out of here. Somewhere to go. The army will send me somewhere, so it's not here. Sounds great. So that's right.

[B]

But my point is just, even if you. The options are leave or do what dad does, leave can be very expensive and hard. But if. If somebody will pay your way to leave, then do that.

[A]

And we don't know what his grades were like, if he's a great student or anything like that. And so, you know, I don't know if college was an option for him or, you know, any kind of something. But so by summer. By summer of 96 now, he's been in the army for a minute here two years or so. He meets a woman. Scott does. He meets a woman named Angel. Isn't that nice? So he marries Angel. Now, I don't know how he managed to do this, but he left the Army. I don't understand. I don't know if he got kicked out. He figured out a way to get himself out of the army, essentially, because at this point, angel is knocked up.

[B]

Oh.

[A]

So he.

[B]

I don't think the military gives a fuck about that.

[A]

No, As a matter of fact, I would imagine that that's actually. You would think that he would stay in the army so they would pay for all that shit, right?

[B]

They pay more for that now.

[A]

You're on your own with the medical bills otherwise. So he and angel, now pregnant, move back to Indiana.

I guess to be close to family, to get help and things of that nature. But March 26, 1998, they have a daughter named Carolyn. So. Yeah, There we go. 1998, he's about 21 years old. He's got a wife and daughter, and somehow extricated himself from the army, living a full life now. Things go on okay for a minute here, but then angel starts to notice some things that are kind of.

[B]

Scott's not doing great.

[A]

Well, some things that bother her, basically. Apparently, Scott was a very strict disciplinarian with, like, a very young toddler girl child, which is real weird for a dad, I'm gonna be honest with you.

[B]

Yeah. You generally coddle that.

[A]

Yeah. As a dad. And I know you had a daughter. You have a daughter, too. And I, you know, thinking about my daughter at that age, like, super young, you're like, it's. I wasn't disciplined her. She could do anything she wanted. You know what I mean? Like, yeah. Like, I was like, I don't. Don't yell at me.

[B]

Negative noise. I'd wonder what was wrong. What can I help with my son? I was like, figure it out. Fucker yeah.

[A]

Hey, listen, the world's tough. The girl, it was like, everything's okay.

[B]

How do you think I feel?

[A]

Yeah. So he would get this temper, these flashes of temper and his mood swings. And then even his daughter, at some point, when she was old enough to be lucid about it, said he wasn't the same person at some point turned into a different person. And part of that is drugs. He starts doing all sorts of drugs, really. Pills are his main jam. Loves pills.

[B]

What ones do we know? Is it whatever he can get his hands on?

[A]

I mean, oxies are obvious. White ones.

Ones you can snort, obviously. Oxys are his main deal, but he'll take whatever. I mean, why are you holding? That would be his answer. What you got? That would be his answer. Why you got something if you asked him what he was into? So apparently she said it just made his personality completely change and he turned into a different person at that point. Obviously, his wife, Angel's got some concerns here about her baby. All of a sudden, this guy that was this normal guy is now doing drugs and we got a baby and all this stuff. So they're. Their marriage isn't doing great. So if you have a husband who's not doing great and you're a couple and one of the people in this couple is doing drugs and having a hard time and over disciplining a baby and stuff like that. You want to have another kid, stop it.

[B]

They want another.

[A]

You want to have another just to make sure. Maybe it'll fix it. You know what I mean? That's what people think, I guess. I don't know. But they have.

[B]

Well, they probably didn't do that on purpose.

[A]

No, that's the other thing.

[B]

There's probably some. Some like, makeup sex that somebody stayed around too long.

[A]

Somebody. That's one way to put it. Stayed somewhere too long.

So they end up having a second child named Brian. They name after him. And Grandpa. Yeah. Different middle names all around. So apparently angel said that he became more controlling with her as time passed as well, which is supposed to be way more like lackadaisical. If you're a drug addict, wouldn't you think you'd be like, hey, what do you do? I don't know where. I don't even know where you were last night. Doesn't matter. I was passed out with drool coming out of my mouth.

[B]

I got 7 percocet up my ass.

[A]

I don't care. I don't care. I said. I started having fear of him then. So I wanted a divorce. Is what angel said. So she's about done with this whole procedure now. They split up, and Scott moves in with his parents. Uh. Oh, okay. It apparently looks like he has cleaned his life up once they break up. That seems to be. And this happens with people when people are like. People are real bad addicts. A lot of times it takes the people that are close to them abandoning them for them to realize that they're fucking up and they need to stop. Otherwise, then things just go on as normal. But if they go, hey, holy shit, that person is not taking my shit anymore.

[B]

That person's never gonna talk to me again.

[A]

Yeah. What's going on? I need that person.

[B]

But you gotta get them before they. That before that is a helpful thing. You know what I mean?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

If you get them too late, they're like, oh, you don't want to be around. I don't give a shit.

[A]

Absolutely. Yeah. That's how I think you can tell how far gone someone is, still is if it matters to them. You know what I mean? But a lot of times, that's the thing that gets people to snap out of it or get themselves some help, is, holy shit, this person. I thought that was my anchor is gone. I'm floating now. So he cleans up his life, apparently, and starts working for his father's construction company. And he cleans his life up. Now, I don't know what angel is up to, but she must have been doing something wrong, because there's no way otherwise. Scott was awarded full custody of his son and daughter in 2007. So for a father, number one, for the guy to get full custody, red flag as fuck. Red flag as fuck. We get joint custody.

For any judge to be like, you get them full time, the mother has to be a disaster. Pretty much. Or at least the father had to present some kind of case that made the mother look like a disaster. Right.

[B]

The lack of reliability matters tremendously in.

[A]

That the fact that the divorce happened because of his drug use and escalating temper tantrums, that's. What the fuck was angel doing? Did she. I mean, who knows? So anyway, Brian, Scott's father, builds a home, we'll call it for now, adjacent to his own home on their property for Scott and the kids to live in because he's a contractor. So he throws up a structure for him real quick. Apparently the grandkids, grandparents loved him too. Grandpa Brian was all over him. Loved him, you know, doted on him. Loved him a lot. And also.

Scott's aunt said Brian had hoped one Day that Scott would take over the contracting business. So he was trying to groom him to take over. He's in his early 50s at this point. He's got to be checking the watch for.

[B]

Yeah. Considering sitting down for a while.

[A]

Yeah. How much longer? I'm going to be getting up at 4 in the morning and going out and hearing jackhammering.

[B]

65 years old. That doesn't sound appetizing.

[A]

No, it does not. So their house is at 9703 South 425 west in rural Williamsburg. That's where they live out here. And what essentially it is is Brian and Sherry, grandpa and grandma. At this point, they live in the main house on the property. Now Scott lives in. It's a converted pole barn. That's what it is. Oh.

It'S essentially like a lean to made a little better. You know, somebody put another wall up a concrete floor. Shit. No, no. It's a converted pole barn. So this isn't great living conditions. It's not wonderful. You're living like fucking Abe Lincoln when he was a kid. Essentially like say you're living shit.

[B]

You're living like his murderer's retreat.

[A]

Yeah. You're living like John Brown in the barn is what you're living like. We're gonna go into civil war. So as they grow up here and as time goes by, he starts getting back into his old shit. Scott, he starts drugs again and all that kind of thing. His son Brian later said, quote, I seen him a couple times taking drugs.

And he also said his whole attitude changed after he would go snort a pill or, or take one. He seemed more relaxed but really easily irritated at the same time, which is a very strange. I don't know why you'd want to do that drug. That sounds bad.

[B]

Yeah, if you're irritable on it, that's relaxed yet irritable. The idea of drugs is to have a vacation for a minute.

[A]

Yeah, well, his kids said they'd seen him crushing up pills and snorting them through rolled up dollar bills. By this point, in front of your kid. If you do that in front of your kids, you don't give a fuck anymore. You're gone. So 2008, 2009, this is when Sherry is pretty sick. She has a brain tumor.

She gets diagnosed with that in 2008. Plus she has COPD, emphysema, the lumbar stenosis. She has got problems. Problems. So she is on a shitload of prescriptions. Oh, oh, yeah. Hydrocodone, oxycontin, shit like that. That's what she's getting. The hardcore painkillers.

[B]

Yeah, the best ones. Yeah.

[A]

The doctor, she would see her doctor every three months and he would give her 90 day doses of this shit. So she had lots of it on hand too.

[B]

Three months worth of it.

[A]

Three months of all that shit. Wrong with you pills. That's a lot.

[B]

What year? 2008.

[A]

2008.

[B]

Yeah. That's before the crackdown on it all. You could get fuckloads of it.

[A]

Yeah, well, she's the actual person that should be getting that shit.

[B]

Yeah. You want her to have.

[A]

She's actually sick. Yeah, she's not going. Ah, I'm a little. So. Yeah, give me a big bottle of OxyContin. She's got fucking cancer coming out everywhere. She's a mess.

[B]

She's got a medicine cabinet full of fun.

[A]

Oh, man. So if that's your idea of fun, which it's not mine.

[B]

For a drug addict.

[A]

For a drug addict. As you know, what happened when I had my wisdom teeth out and took the codeine? I was doing laps in my driveway at 1:00 clock in the morning. I was going crazy. I was. Oh, I felt so awful.

[B]

I hate this.

[A]

I was like, I hate this so much. I hated it.

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[B]

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[A]

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[B]

Now back to the show.

[A]

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[B]

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[A]

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[B]

Now back to the show.

[A]

So anyway, dad on the other hand, Brian, he, you know, takes care of his wife and he works and he farms and he also likes to play pool with his best friend, Charlie Ogden. That's all he does. Likes to shoot some pool.

[B]

He's got a pool table in the house?

[A]

I don't think so. I think he goes out and plays with his buddy there. Now, as you might imagine, if you have a guy who loves to snort pills on the same property as a woman who has all the pills, who's essentially a CVS drugstore, this is gonna be a symbiotic relationship for Scott.

[B]

Yeah, it's like, it's that trick or treat house with the big bowl in the driveway.

[A]

That's it, big bowl. They just happened to put the big bowl in a medicine cabinet in her bathroom. So she, his daughter, now Scott's daughter would say that she saw him would steal his mother's prescription painkillers and replace them in the bottles with over the counter medication.

[B]

With what, fucking aspirin?

[A]

Yes, that's putting Bayer in there.

[B]

Good lord.

[A]

She said that he often abused his mother's prescriptions and he would take them regularly. He would take out the real pills and put Tylenol or Advil or aspirin in, hoping that she wouldn't notice. Good Lord, think about what a scumbag you have to be.

[B]

That's so fucked.

[A]

Yeah, this woman needs these things. She's in a lot of pain. And he says, I'll steal it from my mother.

[B]

Treat her cancer.

[A]

I will steal medication from my cancerous mother. As a another that's an addict. Like, I'm sorry, you need all the help at that point. You're a disaster, you're in trouble. This is what he would do. Now, June of 2008, he starts, he has a little bit of legal problem and this is his first legal problem. He's arrested in Richmond, which is a bigger town nearby, after he tried to obtain some oxys with a forged prescription at a CVS store.

[B]

Sick.

[A]

So that's not great. So they said the bogus prescription, which was written on a ball Memorial Hospital form, carried the misspelled signature of a dentist.

[B]

Nice.

[A]

He missed. That's how the pharmacists knew, because they said that's not how you spell that guy's name. Yeah, you could get away with that. Maybe in Indianapolis, but not in a small town.

[B]

This guy spelled Michael. Yeah, everybody knows the A's first.

[A]

Oh, my God. He's charged with attempting to obtain a controlled substance by fraud or deceit. That's not great. He pleads guilty to that charge and it's a class D felony and he is placed in. You sir. They fuck off. Probation for 18 months.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

On April 1st of that year, a warrant was issued for his arrest after his probation officer reported that he's mischeduled appointments and not attended his court mandated rehabilitation session or performed court mandated community service.

[B]

Oh, boy.

[A]

So he's done none of the things that he was supposed to do by the court as conditions of his probation. They ordered him to go to drug treatment and complete it. And he didn't even start it.

[B]

Didn't even start.

[A]

Didn't do shit. So Brian or Scott is unraveling right before our eyes. Now, February 13, 2010 comes around. Okay? It's 11:00pm and Scott makes a call to 911.

He says he's freaking out. He said, my mother is having trouble breathing. She's unresponsive and foaming at the mouth. Oh, no. So unless she's had a run in with a raccoon out by the garbage cans recently or something and you know, got passed on some rabies. She's having problems here. Bit by possum perhaps, maybe. So they send. Those badger wounds are nasty.

The EMTs are sent over to the address and they find her no responsive or unresponsive with no pulse. Not good. So they transport her to the hospital where she dies.

She is dead on arrival at the hospital, pretty much. By the way, Scott did not accompany his mother to the hospital. No, he called her, which is odd.

[B]

Called for help. Okay.

[A]

Yeah, he just. He didn't, like, I'll follow you. I'm jumping in the ambulance with you. He just was like, all right, bye. Like, waved at the ambulance so they couldn't revive her. Now, the cause of death here is respiratory failure attributable to her ongoing battle with Cancer, basically. She's been sick for years. She had all these different things and copd emphysema. All those things can cause respiratory complete failure, can affect your heart, and all those things can happen. So it's horrible. But kind of everybody understands all of her diagnoses. And people are not shocked, obviously, that this has happened. Sad, but not shocked. So at this point, all the family members, they're coming over and giving condolences and all that kind of thing. And what people do, one thing they notice is that Brian isn't around. No, no. Where the hell is your dad? They're all asking Scott, where's your dad? Where's your dad? And he said, well, dad got so upset that she was. Because that night, where she ended up going to the hospital and dying, her health was just deteriorating over the course of the day.

[B]

And he just felt terrible and he couldn't watch.

[A]

He got so upset that he abruptly left on a trip. He said, I'm leaving. I can't be here anymore, and took off. And all the family members were like, that's weird. He's been taking care of her, though. That's really strange that he would just run away now. And his sister, this is Scott's aunt, said that sent up some red flags and some concern. Knowing that he didn't venture far from home and the fact that he just up and left. It just didn't make sense. It didn't make sense. But Scott said, listen, dad left. He'll be back. He'll be back for the funeral. He left me with his checkbook to plan mom's funeral.

[B]

Great.

[A]

So he, okay, mom was still alive. Her health is not going well. And he just said, I know she's gonna die. Here's my checkbook. Plan her funeral. I'm going fishing.

[B]

I'll be in Santa Fe.

[A]

Bye. And just took off. Okay, interesting. Now.

I really need some of them. So Scott and his kids meet with a funeral home director and instructs the funeral home director that mom's wishes were to be cremated. That's what she wants.

The funeral director told him that you need the husband's signature. You're the son. But she has a living husband. We need his signature before we can cremate somebody. You know what I mean? You're just a kid here. So he said, well, my father left the area. I don't know when he's coming back. So unless you want to have this corpse rotting in your fucking basement for the next six months, you should probably cremate her, basically. So anyway, the guy said, all right, sign this paper and we'll burn her up for you. So they did. They cremated her the following week. Still no Brian anywhere. So now, throughout this whole week of the cremation and everything else, Scott told multiple people about his dad being gone. One of them being Barbara Baumgartner, who is Brian's sister and Scott's aunt. He told her multiple different stories.

[B]

Really?

[A]

Okay. One was, yeah, dad just got in his red pickup truck and took off. Left me with his checkbook. Another time he said, oh, you know what? No, he didn't leave in his red truck. A friend picked him up in a white car.

So a friend picked him up to whisk him away on a trip. Then he said, you know what? It wasn't a friend, actually. It was a taxi that picked him up, because, you know, friend in a white car. Taxi. They're all the same. Same thing, same thing.

[B]

Red truck.

[A]

And they said, okay, that's super. And he left you with his checkbook. Like, none of this makes sense. And he said he took $10,000 cash with him, too. Is he escaping to Mexico? This is like what OJ did when he ran. Like, what's going on here? Who is he? Scott Peterson. What's happening? So, yeah, he just said that. He said, I'm in daily phone contact. He calls me every day, ask about the funeral and all that kind of thing. But he said, you know, he's not here. What do you want? I'm not this guy. I can't make him come home. That's it. I don't know what's going on. So February 17, 2010. A few days after mom is gone, now he refills his mother's OxyContin prescription.

[B]

Oh. Oh, yeah, she's dead.

[A]

Yeah. The pharmacist doesn't know that, though. Oh, and the fact that he has been helping out with mom and other people pick her prescriptions up all the time because she's so sick, they didn't even think twice. Hey, Scott. How's it going? Here you go. So as far as they knew, they were like, what a nice young man he is. Yeah, What a good dude taking care of his mom. He also checked cashed a $2,000 check on his father's account as well Scott does during this week. So he is just. He is flush with drugs and cash at this moment. Living large. February 20, 2010. This is Sherry's funeral. So we put the errand up there and a picture of her and talk some shit. So her friends show up the extended family shows up. Brian's family shows up. You know who isn't there?

[B]

Brian or Scott?

[A]

Brian's not there. Which he said he'd be back. And also Scott and his two kids aren't at his own mother's funeral. Okay, so none of the nuclear. Yes. And none of the nuclear family is at. Those are the people that you go give condolences to. And none of them are there.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

How do you.

[B]

Who do you give the hug to?

[A]

I don't know what I mean. Who stands up by the coffin? Like, I don't understand it. Like, this is a. This is fucking wild. Like, I've never heard of this before. How do you even have a funeral when the main people aren't there? So where is Scott and Brian? That's the main question. So let's find out now at 2:16pm this is during the funeral. The funeral is active. They're playing. There's organ music happening. And a very. An old man who looks like he has pancake makeup on standing in the back of the room counting the heads to collect the money at the end. All right, so we have this going on. There's neighbors of the Hartmans, Matt Pearson and Sarah Golia. They watch as Scott Hartman, who should be at his mother's funeral, is instead breaking into their home.

So they call the police. Now, when Scott gets caught for this, he's all fucked up, all high on pills. He's a mess. And so they arrest him and they transport him to the Randolph County Jail and he's booked on burglary charges.

Which is crazy. Now they also, the neighbors in question said, yeah, we know Scott very well. He'd been pestering us to give him access to our prescription medication for a long time. What he knows they're on. They have. They have fucking pills in there.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So he's. He was trying to break into their house to steal their pills. So this is three days after he refilled a 90 day supply of OxyContin.

[B]

He's already out.

[A]

Think about that.

[B]

He's doing a month's worth of cancer pills every day.

[A]

Yes. And then breaking into other houses. That's what a mess he is. I mean, this is full blown disaster time.

[B]

Yeah, it's.

[A]

He's in trouble now at the station for the burglary charge, they give Scott a standard questionnaire. It said, list your parents and their status, because it's just a background. He lists both parents, their names and says both parents are deceased.

[B]

Oh.

[A]

So when the detective interviews him and asks him about that. He says, I don't remember writing that. Well, you're high on pills is probably. I don't remember writing that. He said, that's crazy. According to the detective, he didn't really have a good explanation for why he said that, considering only his mom was dead, apparently.

So apparently here they're talking to him and they're trying to ask him, where's your dad? We hear he wasn't at the funeral and all that kind of thing. And he told this detective, look, my dad left on February 11th with a friend, and I haven't seen him since. They said, well, why would he leave home without his keys or wallet or money?

[B]

Great question.

[A]

That's a real good question. And he said, well, he took $10,000 in cash and left me the checkbook and the credit cards for the funeral. Here's all the stuff. Just pay for it. So they said, well, why would he have left money for the funeral on February 11 when she didn't die till February 12?

That doesn't make sense. And Scott thought about it for a moment and said, I'd like an attorney.

[B]

I don't know.

[A]

I don't know is the question. Is the answer to that? That's a really good question you just asked me there. Why would you plan a funeral while someone's alive? Is a very good question.

So that is crazy. Now, February 21st, that Sunday, family members officially report Brian missing. They are not taking any more excuses. He didn't show up at his wife's funeral. Bullshit. They don't buy that for a second. So no one's seen him since February 12. His son keeps telling contradictory stories about where the hell he went. So anyway, Barbara, his sister, you know, Brian's sister, said that she went and contacted the Randolph County Sheriff's Department and requested a welfare check. So the deputies arrive at the property, and they do a search, and they don't find Brian. They don't find anything suspicious either. They just do a quick look around the outside of the property. They go in the living room. Nothing's knocked over. It doesn't look like any. There's not blood on the ceiling, on the couch or anything like that. So they say, we don't find anything. I don't know what to tell you. Adults are allowed to leave. And the cops take off. So the next day, Monday, February 22nd, Barbara says, you know what? Bullshit. No. Me and the rest of the family are coming to the house, and we're going to do a thorough search of the house and look around. Now, when they look in the house, they find Brian's boots, his hat, his watch, his jacket. This is February in Indiana.

[B]

Why would he have all that at home?

[A]

That's the thing. His watch. If you're a guy who wears a watch, you put the watch on every time you wear the watch. Real weird stuff. And then they find Scott's coat. And in Scott's coat, they find Brian's wallet and driver's license he couldn't take.

[B]

You gotta have that.

[A]

Gotta have your driver's license, at least your id.

So he's got the whole wallet. He didn't say, here's my credit cards and my checkbook. He just threw his wallet at him and said, pay for it out of that. Ran out the door. So they're like, I don't get it. So then they go out to the garage. They're looking around in there. They find a large black storage box in the space where Sherry's vehicle is usually parked.

[B]

Okay?

[A]

Next to it there's a cleaning bucket, numerous garbage bags, red streaks on the garage floor. That's not good. Beer boxes. And on top of the gravel as well. Okay, they called the cops. They're like, this looks suspicious. Come on back out here, guys. Your search wasn't very good. So they get a search warrant and they go out there and they discovered red stains throughout the master bedroom.

Headboards, walls, ceiling, mattress. Blood spatter consistent with a close range gunshot wound. Oh, yes. They also follow drag marks that have been attempted to have been cleaned up. They follow drag marks from the bedroom all the way to the garage, past the beer crates, across the gravel, leading directly to a giant black plastic toolbox. Oh, yeah. That's where the blood streaks end. The dragging ends. They pry the box open. And inside the box, in a tarp folded to fit into the dimensions of this container, is Brian Hartman.

[B]

He didn't go anywhere.

[A]

He went. Well, he went to the garage, but.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

He didn't leave at all there. He didn't leave at all. There he is, and he's all folded up, wrapped up in this tarp, stuffed into a big black toolbox. Damn it, that is brutal. They said that he died of a significant head wound created by a shotgun blast.

[B]

Oh, Christ.

[A]

Likely fired within inches from the back of his skull.

Blew his head off. They said it.

[B]

Why did he think this was the caper?

[A]

Cause he's so fucking high. This is drug addict shit.

[B]

Imagine.

[A]

I'll put that there, do some drugs and deal with that later. Yeah, that's hardcore addict shit.

[B]

That's what that Is as far as I'm concerned.

[A]

Yup. They called it massive destruction of the brain. So he was probably missing half his head. That's what that is. So February 24, 2010, they go back to Scott. They're gonna go ahead and charge him with murder here. Yeah, it's about 1am they. They bring him to the intake area of the jail, out of his cell, back into the area to recharge him with those things. They got to do fingerprints separately for that. So at this point, the detective, Douglas Fritz, had already interviewed Scott on February 22, two days earlier. And Scott had said, I want an attorney. Okay, now the questioning must cease, obviously, and you can't interrogate him anymore. But this guy wasn't here to interrogate Scott. He's there to read him the warrants, basically. So you inform, and this is for his property that's been taken. You inform people when their property's been searched. So he reads Scott the warrants and asks it, does he have any questions? Scott asked if the detectives had searched the property yet and quote, have they found anything? What? Okay.

So then Scott says, I want to speak with you. And that's what they said. Do you want to talk to detectives? And he said, I want to speak with you. That's the words he used. So they said, okay. And they pulled him into an interrogation room. They reread him his Miranda rights, He said he indicated, you know, he understood his rights. And then he tells them everything that happened.

[B]

What did he say?

[A]

Well, February 12, 4:15am that's when he started, as he put it, quote, medicating his mother. Uh huh. That's. Yes. He said he kept saying medicated and assisted her. He kept saying he assisted her. He said she wanted to die. So he assisted her in overdosing on prescription meds.

[B]

Ah, Jesus.

[A]

Ones that he knew she was allergic to.

[B]

That's how he did it.

[A]

That's how he did it. He said starting around 4:15am on February 12, he was. He was giving them to her in crazy doses, too. He was crushing them up and putting them in things and giving them crazy doses. So she's a horrible mess. So around 10:30am that same morning, he walked into his father's bedroom. Brian was still sleeping. Okay, so he's sitting there sleeping. He said it was 10:30. Dad was just sleeping. He said he walked in with the shotgun while he slept and just shot him in the back of the head while he was sleeping. Never saw it coming. Never knew what happened. Fragments of the skull and brain matter spattered on the walls and the headboard and the ceiling and the mattress. When luminol is applied, the master bedroom is. You know, it looks like one of those stars fucking. The star things you put on your ceiling. It's like the planetarium over there. So he even tells the cops where they can find the murder weapon, which he's hidden back in the woods. So then he said, the problem was then I had mom and I could get away with what I was doing with mom, obviously, but what do I do with dad and half a head over here in the bedroom? So he dragged his father's body through the house, leaving the blood streaks and all that kind of thing. Stuffed him into the toolbox. Then he was like, shit, I can't get him in there. So that's when he took him out and put him on the tarp and put him in the tarp in a way so he could manipulate him easier, and then stuffed him in the box so he could fit.

[B]

Oh, Jesus.

[A]

Then he went back to, quote, assisting his mother.

[B]

So she was still alive when he shot him.

[A]

Oh, yeah, she was still alive. She was still alive. She was barely. Barely had lost a pulse by 11pm that night when he called 911. So he spent the rest of the day giving her medication.

So they said, why did you do this exactly? Just so you could have your mom's pills, Right? And he said, no, no, no. This was all agreed upon ahead of time.

[B]

Oh, they just asked for it.

[A]

This was a pact. This was a family pact that assisted suicide for her. Yeah. It was agreed that when it was Sherry's time to go, Scott would assist her in doing that. And Brian had said during the planning of this that I don't want to live without my wife, so you have to kill me, too.

[B]

Oh.

[A]

And he said, please kill me before she's dead so I don't have to see her die. Please.

That's what Scott's saying. It was a big pact that we. It's a plan. We've had it for a couple years now, since the cancer diagnosis. Yeah. He said that Scott tells police that he had talked to him of giving her pills when she was ready to die when. But she did not want his father to see her deceased. So mom doesn't want dad to see her die, so kill dad first. He said the plan was for him to shoot his father in his sleep so he wouldn't know it was coming. Also, he said, don't like, you know, I'm in the kitchen, like, frying up some bacon and you come in and just blast me. Like, don't do that. Just do it while I'm sleeping. How? I said, if we're going to execute people, we should do it rather than have this big weird thing where we bring them out and sit them down. That's creepy. If a murderer did that to someone, set up a whole ceremony, we call them extra crazy and weird and we put them in a special part of the prison.

[B]

Dangerous.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. I say just walk into their cell, they don't know. Bang one, there we go. Executed. It's a lot fucking more humane in my opinion. Not that I, I'm not a big death penalty guy anyway, but if you're gonna do it, do it less weird. Like that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So he said, yeah, do it when, I don't know it's coming and then finish your mom off, basically. Which sounds gross in any way. In any context. Yeah, in any context. Go ahead and finish your mom off is not something you want to hear. So he said this was a suicide pact and a mercy killing.

[B]

Oh yeah.

[A]

He said, you should thank me for what I'm doing here. I put two people out of their pain. I was just carrying out my parents final wishes. You're gonna say I'm a dick for that? So he said he removed the bloody sheets and pillows and bedding from the victim's bedroom, then gave his mother a bottle of clonazepam, which is an anti seizure medication which he knows she's allergic to. Wow. He said. And the sheriff afterwards said, quote, he's alleging his mother and him and his father had a conversation that when it was his mother's time to go, he would assist her. And his father didn't want to live without her. So he was going to also go.

They don't believe him. No, the main reason they don't believe him is they talked to Sherry's doctor and she was in remission from her brain cancer.

[B]

What?

[A]

How many people fight cancer, get in remission and then go, I'll kill myself.

[B]

Now, I've had enough?

[A]

Yeah, that's not the time usually. So.

This show, Small Town Murder, is sponsored by BetterHelp. BetterHelp.com Absolutely. You gotta rewire yourself and you have to kind of redo your traditions. Therapy can give you the space to create new meaningful traditions, providing clarity amidst the holiday chaos. Cause it's a lot going on the holidays, a lot of traditions. People may have traditions and their family. While some people might have any, they might not have any, or they might just be starting traditions of their own.

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See some coaching on that on that direction too.

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Absolutely. And therapy during the holidays is kind of essential. You're going to have to deal with family members you might not want to deal with. You might be lonely, you might have memories come up from past stuff through.

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[B]

Simplisafe. Now back to the.

[A]

Show. She was sick, but she wasn't dying. She had a lot of the brain cancer, was in remission. Everything else are chronic conditions people live with for decades. So they're like, this is crazy. She wasn't about to die. She had been to the doctor within a couple of months and she was fine. Everything was fine. So anyway, the prosecutors think that he probably killed his father first and then killed his mother so she wouldn't be a witness, basically. But double homicide. They're going to charge him at first with one count of murder.

For Brian and then count two is assisting.

[B]

Suicide. Oh, so they're.

[A]

Gonna. With Sherry. Don't worry, he'll fuck that up. It's.

[B]

Funny.

So they're gonna take him at his word and they probably can't prove murder at the.

[A]

Moment. Yeah, and that's where it gets interesting. Now, does claiming assisting suicide work? That's a thing? Because we've heard people say this a few.

[B]

Times. It's legal.

[A]

Right? Apparently it's not very often successful. Rarely a success. But people have been doing it since for about 100 years now, people have been doing mercy killings and all that kind of thing. Usually terminally ill victims. But they can't. Like the courts go, you can't kill somebody because they're ill. You should protect them even more at that.

[B]

Point.

[A]

Right. That's the.

[B]

Legal. They're vulnerable. And that's extra cruel when you fuck with a vulnerable.

[A]

Person. Yeah, there's a case from 1921 Roberts, it's called that Established assistance as potential murder, assisting suicide as potential murder. Before that it was a gray area. If the cops came and they go, oh yeah, his mom was real sick, he was just helping her out. Nobody minded. It was fine. And then also Dr. Kevorkian in the 90s was a big deal also, but he got convicted. So now at this point, his ex wife angel wants the kids back. Look, it's one thing when you were just a drug dealer living in a pole barn with my kids, but now you are a drug dealer. Now you're a drug addicted murderer living in a pole barn. We can't possibly.

[B]

Have. I'm a piece of shit, but my ex is an accused.

[A]

Murderer. So I got. That's not good. She filed an emergency petition for modification of custody to take possession of the two kids. Since, you know, I don't know if they were sitting in a pole barn by themselves at this point or what are they. Because they were like 11 and 9. So their whole. It's.

[B]

Crazy. Probably already has them as at the point. You know what I.

[A]

Mean? I would think at first this is just for legal reasons. So before the trial now Scott moves to suppress his confession, claiming it violated his Miranda rights. Okay. The reason is because they say that they violated his fifth amendment rights by reinterrogating him after he had already requested counsel. They said, but we didn't re engage him about that. We reengaged him about telling him about search warrants and that he's probably going to be charged with murder. And we were giving him the notification of search that you do to someone when it's their property. That's what we were doing. He said, I want to talk to you. What are we supposed to.

[B]

Do?

[A]

Right? We re Mirandized him and there we go. So the trial court held a hearing on this and the detective explained his routine practice of informing people when their property is being searched. He read the warrants to Scott. Scott asked questions. Then when he said, would you like to speak to a detective? He read him, reread him as Miranda rights. He waived those rights and said, what he said. So the court denies the motion to suppress. Okay. Scott appeals this. It goes to the Indiana Court of Appeals. They affirm it. So you can't suppress the confession. That's a three judge panel. They said Detective Pullins didn't reintegrate Scott. He simply read him the search warrants and asked if he had questions. That's not interrogation, that's administrative notification. Scott initiated the conversation by asking about the search. Scott then voluntarily said he wanted to speak with a detective. He waived his rights. It's admissible. Now. The problem is the Indiana Supreme Court.

Has a different, different thing here. They rule in his favor and deem the statements inadmissible. Okay, so the prosecutor went, well, okay, fine, if we can't use those statements, because that's basically we were just using exactly what he said in the statement. Murdered my dad, assisted suicide. And my mom. Since we don't have those statements anymore, looks to us just like murder murder. So now you're charged with double murder instead of murder and assisting suicide. So he just fucked himself by upping his charges, by getting the thing thrown out. So that's not good. Now it's first degree murder. You're fucked. So that is interesting. The defense attorney said, no, no, you can't do that. That's crazy. I know we wanted it suppressed, but you can't do that. He said, this is punishment for executing or exercising our constitutional rights by filing pretrial motions. This is something that defense attorneys will talk about a lot, is basically them trying to fuck them over for having favorable rulings in their against them. So he said the state is retaliating by upgrading the charge. The trial court said, no, the state is just going with the evidence. Before, they had a full confession and had evidence of assisting suicide. Now all they have is two dead people and one guy snorting pills off the back of the toilet bowl. That looks like double.

[B]

Murder. We have two people that are dead and one.

[A]

Person. Yeah. Living in their home, no.

[B]

Explanation. Yeah. And getting their drugs for them after they're dead.

[A]

And.

Doing them for them.

[B]

Too. Yeah.

[A]

Right. So the defense sought to sever the charges, the mother's and the father's murders to avoid prejudice. Arguing overwhelming evidence for the father's killing would taint the mother's case, which is a gray area case. They also pushed for a directed verdict on the assisted suicide count.

Which succeeded. That was before that. So evidence of Sherry's suicidal intent was limited without the confession. So now there's even weakening. Now he has nothing. All he has is mom is sick and we know that. But then they have a doctor saying she wasn't that sick. And he's going, well, she wanted me to do it. So the evidence against Scott is the timeline. We Talked about the 911 call. Blood spatter all over the house, drag marks. His body folded into a toolbox. Murder weapon right where he said it.

[B]

Was.

[A]

Yeah. He said, quote, I shot my father. I assisted my mother's suicide. It was a plan. We all agreed to.

All of his lies. The red truck, the white car becoming a taxi. $10,000 cash. His addiction. His daughter's testimony about watching him snort pills, rolled up dollar.

[B]

Bills. He's gonna go through with.

[A]

It. Trial, he's doing. Oh, this is all during the trial. The fact that he filled his dead mother's OxyContin prescription four days after she died. He broke into a neighbor's house during his mother's funeral to steal their drugs. He wrote, both parents were deceased when only his mother was officially dead. The defense tried to argue he only killed his father. I mean, who hasn't wanted to do that? Come on. Come on. So they said there's no sufficient evidence he killed his mother, and they don't want the jury to improperly transfer this certainty to the mother. In the prosecution's closing statement, they said, you know, what the fuck, man? Did you hear all that shit? Did you just listen to this?

This is crazy. The defense closing is. There's not enough evidence to warrant convictions. He said, even if it is likely, probable, even highly probable, that doesn't get you beyond a reasonable doubt.

Highly probable sounds like reason. That sounds like that neighborhood of reasonable doubt, I think, without reasonable doubt. So the verdict comes in. It's about 45 minutes of deliberation, which is, we all think he did this, right? Okay, good, Phil. We order pizza.

[B]

Now. Is this a joke?

[A]

Yeah. He's guilty of two counts of murder. He's found here. During sentencing, the judge calls him the, quote, definition of a cold blooded killer and says, you, sir, may fuck off. 60 years times two. Two murder charges, consecutive. 120 years in.

[B]

Prison.

[A]

Yeah. He's in so much trouble. Yeah. And the minimum was 55 for those and the maximum was 65. So he gave him a middle.

[B]

Ground. Right in the middle.

[A]

Yeah. Projected release date of February 2070, when he'll be 94 years old. Unlikely, I would say with, I don't think it's gonna happen unless those pills are preserving his insides. I'm not sure. Now, quickly, on appeal, he says, the court erred in allowing the prosecution to amend the charge from assisting suicide to murder, he said that was a vindictive prosecution. And the trial court erred in refusing to sever count one from count two. Both the murders and the jury improperly inferred guilt on the mother's death because the evidence was overwhelming of the father's death. The three judge panel wrote thusly, there was no evidence of vindictive prosecution. The state had valid reasons for upgrading the charge after new information came to light. The fact that Scott filed pretrial motions didn't prevent the prosecution from amending charges based on the evidence. He said the severance, he said that they were properly joined. These charges under Indiana law, they both occurred on the same Property within a 24 hour period and were part of the same criminal episode. Sorry. Should have taken your dad out in the woods and shot him. I don't know what to tell you. This is crazy. So the convictions are affirmed, and then they're affirmed again a couple years later. He tries to appeal to the Indiana Supreme Court. They decline to review the case. Oh, and so that's it. His convictions and sentence are final. He is currently incarcerated in the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City. Which sounds.

[B]

Lovely. Yeah, it.

[A]

Does. It's lovely this time of year. And his kids were asked if their father had reached out to them from prison at.

[B]

All. At all.

[A]

Yeah. Written letters, apologized, anything. He never did nothing. No attempts at contacting his.

[B]

Children. Oh, my.

[A]

God. He just.

[B]

Gone. He just said, fuck it, I'm in prison now. All.

[A]

Right. Yep. Scott said his. I'm sorry. Scott's son Brian said he just messed up his mind on them drugs and it made him a.

[B]

Monster. On them.

[A]

Drugs. On them drugs. Them drugs. Brian's. This is dad, Grandpa dead Brian, his sister Lisa said, I never would have in a million years thought that he would have ever done anything like this. He's where he should be because he's a danger to society. Right, There you go. So there he is. He's a danger to society. That is Williamsburg, Indiana. And what a wild.

[B]

Plan. Just say.

[A]

No. Holy.

[B]

Shit. Get off them.

[A]

Drugs. Them drugs is bad for.

[B]

You. Jesus.

[A]

Christ. Think about the thought process. You got to be so fucked up to be like, okay, I'll shoot dad. I'll just go put him in a. In a. In a toolbox in the garage. That's fine. Then Mom. Because he could have got away with killing.

[B]

Mom.

[A]

Yeah. If dad was actually gone, he could have killed mom because her cause of death was. Until they found dad, mom was dead. Because of cancer. Shit. And that was totally fine. He cremated her so they couldn't do any autopsies on her to find this extra drug that she shouldn't have been taking. And there's no reason to in a sick woman. So that's the thing. It's like if an 85 year old man dies in his sleep, they don't let's. We need an autopsy. What killed this guy? Probably a heart attack. He's.

[B]

85. Look at that. Is it stopped? It's like dad took care of mom right through the end. Because if it hadn't been for him dying in the way that he did, it would have just gone.

[A]

Away. That's exactly it. It's just gone away. So that's. That's a good way to put it. So they took care of each other. Good for you. And you're half a.

[B]

Skull. Poor guy you sacrificed and took care of. It's.

[A]

Amazing. It is amazing. So there you go, everybody. That is Williamsburg, Indiana. If you you enjoyed Williamsburg, Indiana, you should head over to whatever app you listen to this on and you should give us five stars. It really helps the show. We don't know why, but it always helps. The show drives you up the charts and more people see the show and it's good for you. Also, you should definitely, definitely head over to shut upandgivemerder.com you should get your tickets for live shows, everybody. And if you're waiting, here is all of the dates. And by the way, you can find these [e-mail] you can go to Instagram, Smalltownmurder or Facebook altown pod and you can find all these listed as well and links to everything. Here we go, everybody. February 21st, we are in Nashville. Big old theater in Nashville. Fill that bad boy up. March 6th, we're in Durham, North Carolina. Go heading back there. We were there a couple years ago. March 7th in Atlanta. March 20th and 21st, we are in Phoenix. One show each night. One show is small town murder. One show is your stupid opinion. So we're excited for that. May 1st, we're in salt Lake City. That might be sold out as we speak. Honestly, it's unbelievable. May 2nd, we're in Denver. We're in a nice place there too. Where? The Paramount, I think or.

[B]

Something. Yeah, it's a big. It's a new.

[A]

Theater. I can't remember which one is a nice place. May 29, our first appearance in Buffalo, everybody. Hey, we're coming to Buffalo. May 30 the next night in Royal Oak, Michigan.

What is that? Outside of Detroit.

[B]

Right? Yeah, Royal.

[A]

Oak. We did that before. September 18th, we are in Milwaukee at the Pabst. We love the Pabst. Good to see Robin again. And the whole staff down there, they're great people. September 19th, Minneapolis. Back at that big theater we were at last time. Great theater. Love that. We are one weekend, we have one show. September 3rd, we're in Dallas. Fill that up. It's another big theater. Get your asses in there. Can't wait. September 16th, San Jose. That's a real nice one too. May 7th or May. What am I talking about? September 17th.

[B]

Sacramento. That's a brand new venue. Evidently that's not.

[A]

So. It's October. October 16th and.

[B]

17Th. It's gonna be.

[A]

Beautiful. I heard it's Great. You're right. November 13th, we are in Tarrytown, New York again at the Tarrytown Theater. That was a nice. The music hall there. And then we are in Boston at the chevalier again on November 14th. So get your tickets right now and come hang out with.

[B]

Us. Great shows, great locations, great cities.

[A]

Great. We can't wait. Well, some of the cities are great, but we'll beat all of them.

[B]

Anyway. We try our best to take care of you guys and put you in great seats. And that's the thing, that's the benefit with.

[A]

These. We want these venues to be nice. We don't want these folding chairs with your feet stuck to the floor type of.

[B]

Joints. I don't want a PVC frame which we've had.

[A]

Before. That's not St. Louis. That was you. But we've gone and now we do nice theaters in St.

[B]

Louis. That place is closed.

[A]

So. Yeah, good for them. Get your tickets right [e-mail] follow the links Everywhere and you can get those tickets and come see us. Thank you so much. Also get yourself patreon. Patreon.com crimeinsports. All the bonus material you could ever possibly want. Anybody, $5 a month or above. You get a huge back catalog of bonus stuff. New stuff every other week. One crime in sports, one small town murderer and you get them all this week. How? Dead cyclists everywhere. Bicycling and cycling and Tour de France. Most harrowing, nasty, dangerous sport there is. Small town murder. Charles Starkweather. Who do you believe? Which teenager do you believe in? An 11 person killing spree? The 13 year old girl or the older teenage boy? Which one are you going to believe? We'll find out all about it. They have different stories and it's a lot of fun. So we'll check that out. That is patreon.com crimeinsports Also, you get a shout out at the end of the show and you get everything we put out ad free. Free as well. With your Patreon, you can't beat it, honestly. So keep coming back and seeing us. You want to follow us on social media, shut up. And givememurder.com has all of the menus and links and everywhere to go. So do that. Keep coming back and seeing us. And until next week, everybody, it's been our pleasure. Bye.

Sam.