Killer Cookie Conspiracy - McHenry, Illinois

Summary

Small Town Murder – Killer Cookie Conspiracy: McHenry, Illinois

Podcast: Small Town Murder
Hosts: James Pietragallo & Jimmie Whisman
Episode: Killer Cookie Conspiracy - McHenry, Illinois
Date: September 11, 2025

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Overview

In this gripping (and darkly comedic) episode, James and Jimmie dissect the jaw-dropping true crime story of Charles “Chuck” Albanese, an entitled trophy company exec in McHenry, Illinois, who plotted a bizarre—and ultimately deadly—scheme involving arsenic-laced cookies, donuts, and soup to wipe out his own family for financial gain. The hosts unpack the Albanese family’s dysfunction, highlight the odd small-town backdrop, and walk listeners through the investigation and trial with their signature irreverence, never making fun of the victims but always lampooning the killer’s hubris and stupidity.

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Table of Contents

1. Setting the Scene: McHenry, Illinois (04:57–14:00)
2. Meet the Albanese Family: Dysfunction and Greed (22:22–41:00)
3. The Poisonings Begin: Suspicious Illnesses (51:09–66:31)
4. Clues, Exhumations & Forensic Revelations (66:32–79:17)
5. Killer Cookies: The Plot Exposed (75:01–106:13)
6. Coroners, Cop Interventions, and a Near Miss (90:00–113:16)
7. Trial, Witnesses, and the Spectacle (121:19–144:13)
8. Appeals, Sentencing, and Execution (144:13–172:00)
9. Notable Quotes & Moments
10. Timestamps for Key Segments

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1. Setting the Scene: McHenry, Illinois (04:57–14:00)

• McHenry, IL: Small town, close-knit, described as having a “5 and dime” vibe with an outdoor theater and community festivals. Mix of proud local reviews and odd complaints (not enough entertainment, too far from the ocean).
• Crime & Demographics: Hosts poke fun at town reviews claiming high crime (“petty theft” and “don’t wander into the wrong neighborhoods”)—statistically, McHenry is far below national averages for both property and violent crime.

“The town will go downhill when they dig the pit. I don’t know what the pit is, but I’m terrified of it already.”
– James (10:37)

• McHenry Real Estate & Cost of Living: Median home is about $238K; quirky home listings and descriptions are lampooned.

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<a name="albanese-family"></a>

2. Meet the Albanese Family: Dysfunction and Greed (22:22–41:00)

• Michael Joseph Albanese Sr.: Patriarch, self-made business owner (Allied Die & Casting, specializing in trophies), married to Clara.

• Chuck Albanese (Charles Michael): Spoiled, lazy, always wanting to be "a big shot," repeatedly described as an “ambitious young man who wanted to earn as much money doing as little work as possible” (25:14).

• Family structure: 2 sons (Chuck and Michael Jr.), Chuck has a string of failed marriages, children he soon abandons, and a history of criminal behavior.

• Chuck’s Early Crime: Attempted robbery (posing as detective, home invading a bus driver), five years' probation.

  “Chuck’s born on third and thought he hit a triple.”
  – James (25:30)

• Business & Lifestyle: Despite high earnings (equivalent to $340K–$430K in today’s money), Chuck complains he can’t support his “lifestyle”—fancy vacations, Cadillacs, lavish homes.

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3. The Poisonings Begin: Suspicious Illnesses (51:09–66:31)

• Targeting In-Laws: Chuck’s second marriage is to Virginia, whose elderly mother (Marion) and grandmother (Mary) become frequent houseguests.

• Sudden Illnesses: After eating family meals (Polish sausage and kraut), Mary and Marion develop severe vomiting and diarrhea (52:29).

• Pattern Emerges:

  • Mary (grandmother) dies within days; attributed to “cardiac arrest” (53:54).
  • Marion (mother-in-law) sickens seriously, then dies nearly two weeks later. Both deaths at first accepted as age/medical related.

• Money Trail: Exact amounts of inheritance funds quickly appear to cover Chuck’s child support arrears.

  “These people are dying just in time. Some people just have all the luck.”
  – James (69:32)

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4. Clues, Exhumations & Forensic Revelations (66:32–79:17)

• Mounting Suspicion: Neighbors and other elderly residents push for investigation (water/food testing, environmental review).

• Exhumation results: Both Mary and Marion have 5–8x normal arsenic levels in their bodies; later Mary is discovered to have 370x normal amount (!), indicating repeated and/or massive intentional poisonings (67:11–101:24).

  • Hosts explain small amounts of arsenic are in many foods but not at this level.

• Killer’s Motive: Each death brings significant financial windfalls to Chuck and his wife, solving immediate and looming debts.

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5. Killer Cookies: The Plot Exposed (75:01–106:13)

• Family turns target: After being demoted at work, Chuck begins bringing his father and brother “homemade cookies and donuts,” after which both men experience violent illness and (for the brother) debilitating nerve damage.

• Arsenic-laced lunch: Michael Jr.'s lunches (often left unattended at work) repeatedly make him sick; he becomes nearly paralyzed, must use leg braces.

• Hospital Vigil: Chuck is described as always “hovering” at his father’s hospital bed (129:01).

  "He’s got to get up at 4am—'gotta make the donuts!'—for poisoning his family."
  – Jimmie (115:09)

• Clues left at scene: Cookie jar at Michael Sr.’s desk contains arsenic-laced crumbs and fingerprint evidence (though Sr. had never been fingerprinted in life).

  "Oh, there's no room for a cookie jar in my office!"
  – Chuck’s ridiculous excuse (102:23)

• Physical evidence: Chuck obtained arsenic (for “pest problems”) from a business contact; he even requests it in a baby food jar.

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6. Coroners, Cop Interventions, and a Near Miss (90:00–113:16)

• Breakthrough from… coroners: Two coroners (with outlandish names—Queerhammer & Babcocks) at a convention connect the suspicious deaths across two counties, spurring a larger investigation (91:33–94:06).

• Arrest narrowly prevents further death: Cops fear Chuck is about to kill his own mother on a family trip to Jamaica; they arrest him before he can leave (112:01).

  “Three Bs in Aruba Jammuh! We just gotta get him now!”
  – Jimmie (113:48)

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<a name="trial"></a>

7. Trial, Witnesses and the Spectacle (121:19–144:13)

• Trial: Chuck maintains innocence, even attempting to hire a hitman from jail to kill his brother and the witness who gave him arsenic.

• Spectacle: High school and Girl Scouts attend the trial ("If there's a poison cookie case, the Girl Scouts are gonna be there." – James, 130:07).

• Defense: Chuck tries to implicate his paralyzed brother in the crimes, concocts elaborate (and unsupported) conspiracy theories.

• Outcome: Jury, at first not realizing they alone are responsible for sentencing, finds him guilty and sentences him to death.

  “Chuck still thinks he’s slicker than anybody… Slicker than cum on a gold tooth.”
  – James (134:17)

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8. Appeals, Sentencing, and Execution (144:13–172:00)

• Appeals: Chuck challenges the process at every step, claiming ineffective counsel and confusion over jury instructions.

• Execution: After 14 years on death row (death penalty reinstated in Illinois in 1977), Chuck receives last meal (Outback prime rib, Giordano’s garlic bread, Baskin Robbins ice cream, McDonald’s coffee).

• Last words: In a statement, Chuck maintains he’s an innocent man, blames everyone else, and concludes, “Truth, justice, and the judicial system is an oxymoron” (171:04).

• Family aftermath: His brother Michael Jr.—who only survived thanks to luck—goes on to inherit everything.

  “He thought he was gonna murder his whole family and get away with it.”
  – James (174:18)

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<a name="notable-quotes"></a>

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the motives:
  “That business plan is the whole reason OnlyFans exists.”
  – Jimmie (26:44)

• On Chuck’s spending:
  “What is he spending this money on, outside of a monster coke habit?”
  – James (49:18)

• Poison-logic, explained:
  “Sodium cyanide, zinc cyanide, copper cyanide...it’s a poison buffet over here.”
  – Reichel & Hosts riffing (123:06)

• Regarding exhuming bodies:
  “Think about the poor bastard at the Graveyard who's just got a shovel ready all the time. He's like, back to this one.”
  – James (103:12)

• Killer’s hubris:
  “He showed no mercy to his victims and was a cold-blooded, calculated evil murderer...Sentence this evil man to death!”
  – Prosecutor (135:06)

• Jury confusion:
  “We didn’t know it was up to us to decide that. Whoops.”
  – Juror’s reaction to sudden realization they’re sentencing, not the judge (139:17)

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<a name="timestamps"></a>

Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment | Start | End | |--------------------------------------------|-----------|----------| | McHenry, IL backdrop & banter | 04:57 | 14:00 | | Albanese family history & Chuck’s crimes | 22:22 | 41:00 | | The murders begin (grandma & mother-in-law)| 51:09 | 66:31 | | Forensics, exhumations, arsenic discovery | 66:32 | 79:17 | | Killer cookies and attempted patricide | 75:01 | 106:13 | | Coroners connect case, police intervene | 90:00 | 113:16 | | Chuck’s arrest, trial, and media circus | 121:19 | 144:13 | | Appeals, sentencing, execution | 144:13 | 172:00 |

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Summary & Tone

James and Jimmie balance gruesome real-life crime with sarcasm, dark humor, and thoughtfully pointed jokes about the stupidity of murderers—not the victims. The Albanese saga is presented as both a tragic family annihilation and a cautionary tale about greed, entitlement, and the stupidity of criminal plans. Not only does “Killer Cookie Conspiracy” unpack a relatively obscure arsenic serial killer, but it also skewers the weirdness of small-town America and the sometimes bumbling—but ultimately successful—investigative work of local officials.

For anyone drawn to true crime with comedy that punches up (at fools and villains) and not down (at victims), this is classic Small Town Murder—morbid, hilarious, and deeply researched.

Transcript

[James Petregallo]

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[Jimmy Whisman]

But you know what does?

[James Petregallo]

The simple eating tips from my new nutritionist at Mochi. And after losing over 30 pounds, I can say you're not just another GLP1 source, you're a life source. Thanks, Tara. I'm Mayra Amit, founder of Mochi Health. To find your mochi moment, visit joinmochi.com.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Tara is a mochi member, compensated for.

[James Petregallo]

Her story this week in McHenry, Illinois, multiple healthy people in one extended family begin to randomly become sick and even drop dead of very strange illnesses. But an investigation reveals it's actually a horrifying plot to wipe the whole family off the face of the earth. Welcome to Small Town Murder. Hello everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yay.

[James Petregallo]

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

[Jimmy Whisman]

I'm Jimmy Whisman.

[James Petregallo]

Thank you folks so much for joining us today on another absolutely crazy edition of Small Town Murder. This is a wild episode. Again, I shouldn't even say that anymore. They're all crazy. This is also crazy. Fits right in with what we're doing here. Before we start. Very quickly head over to shutupandgivememurder.com, get your tickets for live shows. Seattle, you are up here. Our next two shows are sold out. Then we have Portland's also sold out. Then Seattle in October. Get your tickets right now. They're selling fast. And then that's it. Pretty much everything else is pretty sold out for the rest of the year. So thank you for doing that. Shut up and give me murder.com is where you get all those tickets and every bit of info and merchandise and everything else you could possibly want here. You also for sure want to get patreon. My goodness. Patreon.com CrimeInSports is where you get all of the bonus episodes. I'm talking everything too. Everybody. $5 a month or above. You're going to get hundreds of back episodes you've never heard before. Bonus stuff immediately upon subscription, then new ones every other week. One Crime and sports. One Small Town Murder and you get it all this week. What you're going to get for crime and sports, you're going to get. We're going to talk about athletes that have made tens of millions of dollars and now don't have anything. So that's a fun one then for Small Town Murder. We are going to talk about part two of Ted Bundy and putting this in quotes, trying to help find the Green River Killer, trying to keep himself alive, but man, is it save his own ass. It is fascinating, though. So fascinating we had to do a second part. So that is for Small Town murder. So that's patreon.com crimeinsports and on top of that, you get everything. All our shows, we make Crime in Sports, your stupid opinions, and both Small Town Murder episodes per week, all ad free with your Patreon as well. Ad free. We'll give you that too. And you get a shout out at the end of the show, too. So it's literally all we have to give. So please sign up for that. And on top of that, we definitely have to do the disclaimer. It's a comedy show, everybody. We are comedians. This is a murder show and people are gonna die. That's one thing that's gonna happen here. Now you might go, how's that funny? It can be very funny. It's a funny thing when someone says, I'll get away with murder. That's a pretty silly thought. And we're gonna make fun of that person for it. There's a lot of crazy things to make fun of around the murder. But what we never do, what we don't do is we don't make fun of the victims or the victim's families.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Why's that, James?

[James Petregallo]

Because we're assholes.

[Jimmy Whisman]

What?

[James Petregallo]

But we're not scumbags. See how that works? That's very simple, very easy to do, and it's gonna. Boy, do you have a crazy episode in front of you. But if you think true crime and comedy should never ever mix, yeah, maybe we're not for you. I don't know, maybe we're not. But I think possibly we are. Either way, no complaining later. That said, I think it's time everybody to sit back. What do you say here? Let's all clear the lungs and let's all shout shut. Give me murder. Let's do this, everybody, shall we? Let's go on a trip here. Okay, let's go. We're going to Illinois this week, and we were in Illinois a few months ago. We're doing it a little sooner than we normally do. But the case is just one of these cases we had to do. It kind of relates to a case that's in the news, that's big right now. But this has nothing to do with that. It's just. You'll see what we're talking about here. Let's go on a trip here. Let's go to McHenry, Illinois. McHenry. Little C. Big H is how that works. This is in northern Illinois, you said? Yeah. Like you were born there. Yeah, yeah. You know McHenry? Yeah, we've all been there. Yeah, we all know McHenry. It's in northern Illinois. It's about an hour outside Chicago.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

So it's still technically out in the burbs there. About an hour and 15 to Milwaukee. So technically, you could go, do I want to work in Chicago or Milwaukee? Really? It's pretty great commute there. It's about five hours to Quincy, Illinois, which is our last illinois episode. Episode 595. More Than a Family Feud.

[Jimmy Whisman]

The.

[James Petregallo]

That was the one with the people who are on Family Feud.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, that's right.

[James Petregallo]

That was wild. That was so crazy. That's down in, like, down by St. Louis down there. This is in McHenry County. Area codes 815 and 779. The motto of this town, the heart of the Fox River.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Very proud of this Fox river over here. A little bit of history here. In the 1830s, settlers started arriving from different areas and created kind of the. Kind of a little settlement where McHenry would be here. Now, a guy named George gage came in 1835, purchased a big plot of land west of the Fox river, and that became Gagetown. And then Gagetown was called West McHenry after that. So that's how that all went. They built a Dam in 1851. Very exciting. In 1860, the. The Count's house was completed.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Like a Temecula.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. It's a big house. A number of owners, but the most notable was Count Oscar Bopp von Oberstadt, who was an Austrian count.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's a hell of a name.

[James Petregallo]

He also was a bat also.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, Chocula. He was a lot of things.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. A count just sounds like somebody rich from Europe who's not actually royalty, but you needed a title. You're so rich, you had to have a title.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, like a baron. But a count feels bad every time.

[James Petregallo]

Well, yeah, we've never heard of someone being a great count. It's either Dracula or Chocula. Those are the only ones we know of. You know, now reviews of this town. We've never been here. We don't know what the hell's going on here. Let's find out. Here's five stars. I like McHenry because it still has that small town feeling.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It does. Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. The streets are not filled with traffic and you can still see farms and farm animals along the road. It has nice neighborhoods and great parks, making it a nice place to raise a family. It still has an outdoor theater, which brings more of that small town feeling. So the nice and small are used a lot in that review. It's nice and it's small.

[Jimmy Whisman]

When they say theater, do they mean like a movie theater?

[James Petregallo]

I think so. Like an outdoor play? I'm not sure actually if it's the theater movie or a regular theater.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I do like. I do like when you drive down the road somewhere and they have that, like, old theater with like the old marquee that comes out over the side.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, yeah, it's great.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Those are. They only have two screens or whatever, but it's so fucking rad.

[James Petregallo]

We love playing, like theater theaters like that. Cool as hell in some of these places. Here's three stars. Okay. A little less enthusiastic. McHenry is a small town, great for families who enjoy the outdoors and attending local events.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

As a kid, I remember going to the farmers markets and fairs. So we're getting a feel. It's got a real. It doesn't feel like, you know, major city Chicago type action here.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, very, very soda shop. 57 Chevy. Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Very five and dime this place is. Yeah. Three stars. It appears to petty this. This review, by the way. I don't know what their. I don't know if English is not their first language or what it is, but it appears to Petty theft incidents in the stores.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It appears.

[James Petregallo]

It appears to. High unemployment gives way to this. Vandalism is relatively high because of the. Because of the lack of entertainment facilities.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Nothing to do. I guess I'll just make something. I'll go ruin something because I'm. There's not a movie I want to see playing Train.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Train.

[James Petregallo]

So bored around here. That's interesting. Two stars. And the. This person makes it sound like there's like a crime wave here. But when we give you the stats on the crime, it's not exactly. Not exactly the way it is here. Here's two stars. The spring and summer are beautiful with the occasional thunderstorm. But winters are bitter. Cold temperatures and snow make winter here horrible.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I mean, pretty well anywhere that doesn't have anyone that has Snow and yeah, it sucks.

[James Petregallo]

Thanks for explaining weather. That's excellent. The spring and summer have occasional thunderstorms, but are beautiful. And then finally two stars. This person has very specific complaints and a lot of them don't make sense. Okay. Two stars doesn't have a White Castle. Okay, that's a bummer. And isn't anywhere near the ocean. Also, you're in the. You're in the Midwest, Sir. That's. Wow.

[Jimmy Whisman]

McHenry in San Diego and LA. Being near the ocean, I get it again every time I go away from it.

[James Petregallo]

I'm like, the ocean's great.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Then you get near it and you're like, oh yeah, this is.

[James Petregallo]

This is fantastic. I see McHenry is about a 19 hour drive to Florida. Okay. Is that bad? How is that. Sorry it's not closer to Florida for you? The neighborhoods are nice. Just don't wander into the wrong ones.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Same as anywhere else.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. And I haven't really lookin doing some research. I haven't really found a lot of bad neighborhoods around here either. The library and skate park are very nice. If you need to fix your car, there's an auto shop every five feet. Okay. The town will go downhill and dig when the dig the. When the dig the pit. I think they mean when they dig the pit. I don't know what the pit is, but I'm terrified of it already. The police are okay, but they pulled me over for being at a stop sign for too.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

You gotta move on, Florida. Let's go.

[Jimmy Whisman]

You can't block a thoroughfare, dipshit. That's anywhere.

[James Petregallo]

Keep rolling. Tallahassee. Let's move it. That's called. That's called a Jacksonville stop. When. When you. When you don't roll through it, you just sit there for 10 seconds.

[Jimmy Whisman]

For a prostitute.

[James Petregallo]

You sit there and do three lines of meth. That's called a Jacksonville stop. People in this town, 27,237. So a decent sized town. That's pretty, pretty, pretty good size. Women are 51.1%. Men are 48.9% of the population. More married people than the usual. It's 55% married. Everybody's like. The married with children rate is like way higher than the national average. Yeah. Very few single with children. It's just very much. You know, we're moving out to the burbs and we're staying together because we have a mortgage, damn it. And we're not. We can't afford to break up race in this town. 82.2% white. 0.3% black, 2.5% Asian, 14.3% Hispanic. The religion here, 54% religious, which is above the national average. And the highest, 35.5% of the people here are Catholic. As we know, Catholics are the Baptists of the north. And that's just because there's a lot of Baptists in the south and a lot of Catholics in the north. So average unemployment here, not this high unemployment rate this person was touting. The median household income here is above the national average too.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, they're doing fine.

[James Petregallo]

They're doing fine. $76,858 a year and cost of living 100 is average. Here it's 102 and the housing is low. Actually, median home cost here, $238,000, which is pretty nice. That's almost 25%.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Somebody needs to get out of their bubble and go see the rest of the world.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, I don't know what it is, but it's seems fine. People seem to be doing okay around here. And since they are, maybe you want to live there. And if you do, we have for you the McHenry Illinois Real Estate Report. The average two bedroom rental here goes for four, $1,550 a month, which is above the national average. A little bit steep, which is funny because the housing is not. It's pretty inexpensive to buy a house, but to rent a place, you're going to pay. Here's a one bedroom, one bath, I guess a T bowl for your 1B hole there. 768 square feet. And it's a house. It's not a trailer, it's not a condo. It's just a 768 square feet. It's a small gray box is the best way to describe it if you'd like to live in it. Looks like if you had a giant hamster, he'd put it in here and put a wheel in there, maybe get it going. Large field and woods behind the home. So it's not that big of a property, but there's just a huge field, a ton of woods behind you. So if you have kids, they have room to roam. Anyway, $240,000 for that. No land either. This is, this is like a third of an acre. This is nothing, nothing, Nothing. Here's a three bedroom, two bath, 1998 square feet. It's on.31 acres. It is a. I'd like to call it a split level vinyl siding wonder. We all know that house. Split level vinyl siding wonder. You know exactly what it is. The Same amount of windows in the front, the basement windows in the bottom. Not the most updated inside. Could use some. Some help in there. It's got some old stuff. 289,900 bucks for that though. Good bones. Not bad. And here's a five bedroom, three bath, 4000 square feet house. And plus a 1700 square foot basement as well.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Nice.

[James Petregallo]

Which means they. They either haven't redone it or they did redo it, but without permits. So they can't count the square footage either one. I'm not sure. It's on an acre of land. It's got a nice in ground pool. Real nice out there. A little too much carpet for my taste, but nice hardwood floors and the rest of it. 769,000 bucks for that though.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, boy.

[James Petregallo]

In Phoenix that would be, you know, 1.6 million, I would say.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's steep. Yeah, yeah. It's a 6,000 square foot house. That's a big deal with that too. That's a lot.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, yeah, it's a lot of. It's a lot of house. It really is. It's nice looking house too. Things to do in this town. Okay, let's find out what they do in here. The McHenry Music Festival. Sure, let's do it. It says, get ready to experience an unforgettable musical journey from September 12th to September 14th.

[Jimmy Whisman]

So three days of this.

[James Petregallo]

It's happening this weekend. It's going on. That's right. As we bring the heat with three days of electrifying performances featuring over 12 national acts that I probably haven't heard of. One of them. Jimmy knows all of them.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I'm gonna take a stab.

[James Petregallo]

Yup. Whether you're a die hard music fan or just looking for a fantastic time with friends and family, the McHenry Music Festival has something. What do you think they have for everyone? That's right, Jimmy. Here we go. Except me. Let's see. Maybe they do.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Maybe so. Here we go.

[James Petregallo]

Friday night's lineup is Sam Hunt.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Okay. Sounds pretty random. Hey, guess what? Get a stage name. That's not a good stage name.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, Sam Hunt. That's a real common two word.

[James Petregallo]

It's real common.

[Jimmy Whisman]

They're all doing that now where it's just like, I can't wait for somebody to just be like Willie Haggard. That's what it is. It's all names of another country star somewhere mashed together.

[James Petregallo]

Hey, and if James Petregallo tells you you need a stage name, you really need a stage name.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Zach Bryan is just Luke Bryan and Zach Brown. It's getting annoying.

[James Petregallo]

See, that's the thing. And I don't know any of these country people, so when I hear that, I think they're all the same person. Everyone named Zach and Brian, and they're all the same guy. I think there's one guy named Zach. Brian Brown. And he does all the country songs. That's in my head. That's all there is out there. I have no idea.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, it's coming. We're almost there. It's good. Merle Cash.

[James Petregallo]

Merle Cash. I like that shit. Merle Cash.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Willie Kristofferson.

[James Petregallo]

I like Conway Robbins, too. He's a good one. He's my favorite. Dustin lynch will be there.

[Jimmy Whisman]

He's terrible. We've talked about him before. He's the fucking worst.

[James Petregallo]

I think I remembered his name. Red Farron. One word. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's something. Ingrid Andrus.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I don't know her.

[James Petregallo]

No, Zach Miller. See, there's a Zach. In a minute. There he is. There's always a Zach Saturday. Slightly stupid.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah. Those guys are great. You know those?

[James Petregallo]

I do.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's actually something that you might like.

[James Petregallo]

How would I know them?

[Jimmy Whisman]

I figure you'd know. I can't think of a song that they sing, but they're.

[James Petregallo]

If I had country music, I doubt.

[Jimmy Whisman]

No, it's not country. It's not country at all. Oh, it's like, kind of like. I can't. It's like escape music when I'm gone. I think there's horns in it. I can't.

[James Petregallo]

Okay. Like Scotch. You're talking.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah. They have a very popular song that you've absolutely heard.

[James Petregallo]

Okay. Dirty Heads. No, the Elo. Elevators. Not elevators. Elevators. The Expendables. So Jean Claude Van Damme and Schwarzenegger will be there. That's nice.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Slice. Stallone's gonna be in.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, it's gonna be great. That would be the ultimate. I want to hear those guys all sing a song in all their accents. Fucking Schwarzenegger with his Van Damme with the Belgian accent. And then, of course, Sly comes in for the chorus. Yeah.

[Jimmy Whisman]

You know. Living on a Prayer.

[James Petregallo]

I'm Living on a Prayer Sunday. Bailey Zimmerman. Jesus. And then I'll save the last one because it's so funny, because it's so many of these. Brian Martin. See? Brian Martin. Zach. Brian Martin. Brian Martin. Zach. Brian Martin. Zachary. It's all the same thing.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's all bro country here. This sucks. I hate this already.

[James Petregallo]

Bella Kane, and then finally, Flo Rida will be there. Of course it's a local festival. He's like, fuck. Nelly and fucking Ludacris are busy. Then I have to be there. That is funny.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Bailey Zimmerman's headlining giant fucking arenas and he's opening for Florida here.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, shit. There's also the McHenry Fiesta is another festival they have there. It's 11 days of fun.

[Jimmy Whisman]

God damn.

[James Petregallo]

Jesus Christ. They have a Cask and Barrel night, a car show, all sorts of bullshit. But performances also. They're going to have Shady, a live tribute band. A live tribute to the music of Eminem.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

So that's what I want to hear. Karaoke. Eminem. That'll be great.

[Jimmy Whisman]

White people singing Eminem.

[James Petregallo]

Wow. Pet Sounds live, which is a Beach Boys tribute. Like Pet Sounds, their album 5184, which is a Van Halen tribute. 5184. 1984 was their one. 5150. And they did Night. So they just combined two other. What else do we have? The next day we have Southern Jack, who plays classic rock Material Girl. I'll give you a. I think that does. That's a Madonna tribute. Of course. Jimmy Nick and Don't Tell Mama will be there and then close it all out with a. With Fearless.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Jimmy Nick are gonna come out in front of the audience.

[James Petregallo]

Jimmy Nick. It's one word. Jimmy Nick.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, is it?

[James Petregallo]

It's not one name. It's not two people. It's Jimmy Nick. That's his name. Jimmy Zach Nick. I think Zach Brian Nick is his name. And then Fearless, a Taylor Swift tribute will be after that. And they also have a Big Wheel race adults on them.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That would be fun.

[James Petregallo]

I hope so. I want to ride a Big Wheel. That sounds great.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Remember, when you just do burnouts in them, those things are so much fun. Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Especially on the carpet. You can really burn a hole in that carpet.

[Jimmy Whisman]

And then when you get that front tire wet, you throw it sideways and fucking slide. So much fun.

[James Petregallo]

No shit. Crime rate in this town, what we are interested in here, property crime is about one third under the national average. So not really stealing much. And then violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, and of course, assault. The Mount Rushmore of crime is also about half the national average. So it's. It's pretty safe. Seems like a pretty safe little kind of small town. Usa.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah. People are making decent money. You can live there. This sounds fine.

[James Petregallo]

Seems fine. So that said, let's talk about a bunch of shitty, horrible murders. Okay, now I have to say, too, some of these murders take place in different towns. So it's A. There's a multiple. There's multiple murders here. So. All right, let's first talk about a man here, an older man, definitely. He's going to be the patriarch of a family that we'll talk about here. Michael Joseph Albanese. And later on he'll be Michael Joseph Albanese Sr. Oh, give himself a junior. Well, at this moment he's a junior and then he'll have another one. And rather than making him the third, he'll make him a junior and he's a senior now, which is kind of a cool trick if you're a junior.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

You can have a kid, right? And then you make him a junior rather than in the third, and now you're not a junior or you're not. Now you're a senior rather than the second or a junior, which is much better. That's an upgrade for him.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Can you do that?

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, obviously he did it. I'm telling you about it right now.

[Jimmy Whisman]

He's still a third whether he says junior or not, isn't he?

[James Petregallo]

I guess. But you can call yourself junior if you're after your dad. We're starting over with me. Nevermind anybody. Everyone before me does not exist. I'm now senior, you're junior. Fuck my dad in here, my grandfather.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I don't think that's how it works.

[James Petregallo]

I think you can call yourself whatever the hell you want.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah. You can do that. Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. So why not? Maybe he just named him Michael Joseph Jr. There, that's his name.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. If you put it back, that's what it is.

[James Petregallo]

It is, yeah. You can name your kid just about anything. I think. So. He's born in 1911, July 24, 1911, in Chicago. So, I mean, Christ, still rebuilding from the fire when he was born, for Christ's sake. This is, I believe, pre Wrigley Field opening. He was born.

[Jimmy Whisman]

No kidding.

[James Petregallo]

So that's back there. He's one of 10 kids.

[Jimmy Whisman]

He's seen it all.

[James Petregallo]

Oh yeah, one of 10 kids. That's old school. You know shit back then.

[Jimmy Whisman]

And he's married some shit.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, for sure. He's like an entrepreneur. He's a. He's a real go getter, this guy. Now he's got a wife named Clara Marion Cola Colis Kolasinski. Wow. She'll be Albanese. She'll change her name. She's about two years younger now. They're going to start out, they're going to raise a family here. They start a company in the 60s as well, called Allied Dye and Casting, which Is they make trophies and things like that. That's kind of their deal. They're gonna have two sons. First, they're gonna have Charles Michael Albanese. This is a weird thing, by the way, they juniored up their second kid rather than the first kid, which is always a weird. I always feel like, what would that first kid feel like? Oh, I. Not me. Huh? You want. You skipped over me for another junior?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Well, maybe they didn't. Didn't expect to do this. And they named him after somebody else in the family.

[James Petregallo]

That's what I think too, is you have like, we're gonn. After my father. We're gonna name him after, you know.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Wouldn'T you rather be named after that guy than me?

[James Petregallo]

And then they just. Then they didn't have any ideas by the second one. They're like, I'm gonna just call them me, me again. So they have Charles Michael Albanese. That's their first son, Chuck. He goes by.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Sure.

[James Petregallo]

Chuck's born June 13, 1937, and he is known by everybody that knows him as a kid. I mean, there's like 10 different quotes that all have pretty much the same words in different order. It's just the same thing. He's called, quote, a spoiled brat who always wanted to be a big shot. The family does well. They have a decent amount of money, and this kid thinks he's the ultimate. Born on third and thought he hit a triple. Guy just really spoiled. Wants to be something he's not. Wants to be his dad, but his dad had to, like, work hard to do that. Yeah, he's just like, just give me your stuff. That's better, right?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Jesus.

[James Petregallo]

So he always wanted to. Basically, he's described as. And this is everybody, I would think, quote, an ambitious young man who wanted to earn as much money doing as little work as possible.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yes, sir.

[James Petregallo]

Yes. Salute, sir. You've just told the story of my life and Jimmy's life and every other comedian who's ever lived. How do I get paid? How do I get paid the most money? With doing as little work, like an hour or less per day work. Can I do that? Is that possible?

[Jimmy Whisman]

I mean, that business plan is the whole reason only fans exists.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, exactly. And a lot of other things.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, God. YouTube. So many things.

[James Petregallo]

Everything. Everything. You name it. I wish podcasting was like that, but unfortunately, it's only you guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If we were just dicking around, just having conversations, that'd be great. But, like, this is like the three hours or whatever we're doing. This show is Like a little tiny tip of an iceberg. And there's a giant block under the water of work and research that goes into it. Yeah. Running into them. Fucking giant. Giant Titanic sized life ships going down. This is Michael Albanese Jr. Is the younger brother.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

So 1958 comes along. Chuck, the first son, gets married. He gets married. So that's pretty young. He's 18, 19 when he gets married, which is normal in the 50s, graduate high school, you marry your high school sweetheart and. Yep. And you do. What they do is they pump out three kids pretty much immediately, right away. Three. Three daughters. In the next five years, he's going to have. Wow, that's. That's something.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Now night dress shopping.

[James Petregallo]

That's a lot. Especially back then you had to have dresses all the time.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, that's all it is, is dresses.

[James Petregallo]

Early 60s. Hey, everybody. Just gonna take a quick break from the show to tell you a better way to shop with stitch fix.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Stitch fix.com.

[James Petregallo]

You know it. Let's be honest here. Shopping is not as fun as it sounds. It really isn't. I just want someone to tell me what to wear. We talk about this all the time. Tell us. Just put clothes on me. I don't know what I'm doing. That's what it is. We have no idea. We're just too busy to shop too. And we need to look decent. We have to go do live shows and all this stuff. That's why Stitch Fix is a lifesaver. And I love Stitch Fix. Your stylist sends you the clothes that fit your vibe and your body and your budget. So shopping without the hassle. Bring it on. Let's do this. I'm telling you right now. Here's how it works. Stitch Fix is great. You take a quick style quiz, share your size, your style, your budget, and get matched with a real human stylist that gets your vibe. Not an AI person, a real human. It is really good and I really like it. I have some cool stuff that they sent me that I've been wearing. Pants that I've completely replaced my whole wardrobe with the pants that they got me from Stitch Fix. They're doing me upright at Stitch Fix and I really like it. It's no risk. All style. You get a personalized fix box straight to your door and try it on, all in the comfort of your own home. Shipping and returns are always free and there's no subscription required. Plus get a free try on for your first fix. You can do it. Get started [e-mail] STM and get 20% off your first order when you buy five or more items. That's stitchfix.com STM now back to the show. Hey everybody. Just going to take a quick break from the show and tell you how to get wines in a better way with Naked Wines.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Nakedwines.com Absolutely.

[James Petregallo]

Sometimes you walk into a store, you look at all the wines, there's a whole aisle of it. You don't know what to get. Yeah, don't waste your time at the grocery store staring at a giant wall of wine and not knowing what you're picking. Some people just like to drink wine. They don't need to be a wine expert. That's why we love our next sponsor here, Naked Wines. This podcast is sponsored by Naked Wines. Naked is a wine club that directly connects you to the world's best independent winemakers so you can get world class wine delivered straight to your door. Use code Small Town Murder for the code and [e-mail] and get six bottles for just $39.99. We did it. I got six lovely Pinot Noirs they sent me from different areas. I got Willament Valley ones. I got all these good Pinot Noirs and I'm almost ready for a new box. I'll tell you that right now because I'm going to. It's really good. I love it. And break it out. Other people have enjoyed it with me and everyone said, where'd you get this wine? Nakedwines.com how do they do it? They bring you amazing wines straight from the winery at up to a 60% discount than what you pay in a store. By cutting out the extra costs, like the middleman markups, winemakers can pass those savings on to you without skimping on any of the quality. They're so good and I love having these wines in my house. Naked Wines has been around for over 15 years and backs over 90 independent winemakers around the world to make the wine you love to drink. Now is the time to join the Naked Wines community. Head to nakedwines.com smalltownmurder Click Enter Voucher and just put in our code Small Town Murder for both the code and password for six bottles of wine for just $39.99 with shipping included. That's $100 off your first six bottles of wine at nakedwines.com Smalltown Murder and use the code and password Small town murder for six bottles of wine for $39.99.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Now back to the show.

[James Petregallo]

1965 Chuck goes to work as a car salesman for Norwood Motors Inc. This is cars. I don't know what kind of cars. Different ones. I don't know if it's used cars. Yeah, yeah. Usually if there's no brand name on it, probably it would be like, you know, Norwood Chevrolet, some shit. Otherwise whatever the fuck. Yeah. So this is out of Morton Grove. He works at. Out of. So he has some troubles though. Apparently the salary and commission structure of a car salesman is not to Chuck's liking.

[Jimmy Whisman]

No, it's a very ebbs and flows. Yeah. Feast or famine thing.

[James Petregallo]

His work to cash ratio is a little off for how he would like it as well. So he decides to make some more money doing something way quicker, which is robbery. He says we could do that. So on February 1, 1965, he and an accomplice posed as detectives and pushed their way into the home of a 61 year old bus driver.

[Jimmy Whisman]

While he's home.

[James Petregallo]

While he's home. Home invaded a bus driver.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh my God.

[James Petregallo]

Emmett Farrell was his name. And they steal $160 from him, which was a decent amount of money in 1965, but I don't think it's worth bum rushing a bus driver over. It's. You know.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

I don't think it's not gonna retire on it or anything.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah. Changing a man's life forever too. That guy's never gonna ever again.

[James Petregallo]

No. Well, it was him and his wife too. So in the newspaper it said that robbery detectives sought the second man implicated in a home invasion robbery. But apparently Charles never gave him up. Chuck never gave up that second guy. And years later, it's Chuck and an unidentified second man.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Fascinating.

[James Petregallo]

Which is very, very interesting, I would say. Now this poor Emmett Farrell here and his wife Florence and their daughter was home as well, who's 30 years old. It's not like she's an 8 year old, but an adult. She should have her own place.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Mental problems. There might be things there that you could fuck her up worse.

[James Petregallo]

Back then 30, they'd just be like, well, old maid. Yeah, yeah. She's just cash in. Learn how to play canasta with your. With your grandmother. That's all. You can hang out together. So Albanese, though Chuck was traced through a partial license plate that a neighbor jotted down.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh.

[James Petregallo]

Who became suspicious when he saw two men run out of the home. He just grabbed a pen and wrote part of a license plate down. They ended up recovering the gun and the car that they used in the.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Robbery, also at gunpoint. Jesus.

[James Petregallo]

Oh yeah. No, they Pretended to be detectives and dead serious. That is interesting. So he's positively identified by Florence, the wife. She positively IDs Chuck. He is indicted by a grand jury for armed robbery and several counts of auto theft as well. He's been stealing from work and other places as well. Now, he had an alias of Charles Romaine for the.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Lettuce, too.

[James Petregallo]

I was gonna say that. Romaine, he knows what's up. It was Charles Caesar salad. It was almost Charles Butterleaf. And he was like, I can't. I'm going to go Romaine on this one. I can't. Just can't do it. Charles Arugula. No, that's not going to work. So he is convicted of these crimes and sentenced to five years probation.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's a pretty light sentence.

[James Petregallo]

It is. But he's a young man that doesn't have a record, and he's got a wife and three kids and all that, so. And he's the breadwinner of the home.

[Jimmy Whisman]

So they said, yeah, drain on society if you put him in jail.

[James Petregallo]

You straighten yourself out, mister. And don't make me talk to you again. So now, 1966, fortuitously for the whole family, Allied die in casting opens the business that Michael Sr. Started. And they manufacture trophies and loving cups, which I heard that and I was like, that sounds gross.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That sounds like the first Fleshlight.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, that sounds like something. Bodily fluids end up in a loving cup. You know what I mean? Some sort of euphemism for like a period supply or some shit. But I really thought that's what it was. I was like, man, back then, they didn't use disposable ones. A chick would just strap a metal hunk onto her and just go from there. So a loving cup is a large cup with two arching handles. It's one of those trophies, a trophy, but with the two handles, it can describe a shared drinking container traditionally used at Christian love feasts as well as at weddings and banquets often made of silver. This is from Wikipedia. Of a loving cup. Loving cups are also given as trophies to winners of games or competitions. I think if you put handles on the Stanley Cup, I think that's what you get pretty much.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's that one that go. I mean, it's the cup that's on top of a trophy, usually.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, it's. That just handles on a trophy is all it is.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Two handles. I've never. I've always wondered that to drink out of.

[James Petregallo]

Because it's Right. It's also ceremonial, like drinking cup.

[Jimmy Whisman]

So you have to it said two people, but it's only one mouth can get on it at a time. You know what I mean?

[James Petregallo]

That's true. That is. That's a good point. Now, following his conviction, his first wife divorces him.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah. She's not going to be married to a criminal.

[James Petregallo]

Mid-60s. That's a big deal. That's when divorce really kind of became a. You could, you could do it because before that you had to go to like Reno and establish residency for six months before you could file for divorce. Yeah. State said, yeah, Reno had. Nevada had laws. And people would go to Reno and do this. Nevada had laws where if you established residency in Nevada for six months, then you could file divorce under Nevada's divorce laws. And then all the other states adopted the no fault divorce, which is. That's the most. Yes. So you can actually leave without a reason and all that shit.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's hilarious. And probably how Nevada planned to populate their shit state.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. People will come. But they had so many people that would go there for six months.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Or six weeks. It wasn't six months.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It was six weeks, I think six weeks residency.

[James Petregallo]

So you go for six weeks, you could file for divorce even if it was from another state. And that's how you could do it. So. So he gets divorced here after six years and his wife takes their three daughters and moves to Wisconsin and he doesn't see them anymore. Really.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Dang.

[James Petregallo]

And that's another thing. Back then when people got divorced, there wasn't a lot of this. Some families, there wasn't this like, oh, dad gets you on the weekends or all that. It was just you go and you start another family and you start a new family. That was it. Once the family broke up, the kids. Yeah, they were broken up. Yeah. Now sometime in the late 60s, Charles gets married again. 68, 69. Somewhere in there then November or some. Sorry. September of 1972. This is fucking crazy. There's a woman named Virginia Muller. M U E L L E R Virginia and Charles apparently start a bit of a romance while Charles is still married. So Charles and Virginia, on labor day weekend of 1972, drive to Las Vegas and get married.

[Jimmy Whisman]

He's already married still.

[James Petregallo]

He's already married. So now you can add being a bigamist to the list of shit that he's doing. The divorce with his second wife was finalized the next year.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Wow.

[James Petregallo]

So, I mean, this guy is impetuous.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Really had to be married.

[James Petregallo]

He needs to be married and he's gonna jump right on that shit. So he Starts working for Charles in the 70s, or. I'm sorry, he starts working for his dad, for Michael, in the family business, the Ally Die Casting. After he gets fired from another job in the mid-70s. So so far he's not caught on anywhere. Everything he does is just kind of spinning his wheels.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah. And then he supplements what he can't make with fucking criminal activity.

[James Petregallo]

Exactly. Well, he did before, so hopefully he'll cut that shit out. But I mean, getting a job with the family helps because that pays him a decent salary and he can afford things. And we'll talk about exactly how much he's making. He's doing pretty well.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Now, Charles second wife in 1977, the one he married Virginia, while he was still married to, files complaint, a complaint against him. And this is for failure to pay $1475 in child support in 1977.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, you gotta pay that.

[James Petregallo]

You do. And that's a. That's a good amount for back then.

[Jimmy Whisman]

So like once or is that like.

[James Petregallo]

No, no, that's a. He hasn't paid in a while and that's what he owes. So that's. He's. He's doing a lot here. Yeah. So he seems happily married to Virginia, though. That seems to be going well. You know, he's. He's working. He's an executive in his dad's company. So the family seems pretty happy at this point. He's making very good money by the late 70s. He's going to be for a while the president of Ally Die Casting. In the late 70s. 77, 78. He was earning $60,000 a year.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's pretty good.

[James Petregallo]

Adjusted for inflation, that's $340,648.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Five times the money. Jesus.

[James Petregallo]

So he's making. You know, if you make 340 grand right now, you should be able to.

[Jimmy Whisman]

He's doing great.

[James Petregallo]

You should be able to live pretty comfortably and not really worry about cash that much. So 1978, due to his exalted new position and wonderful new salary, he decides we're moving on up, baby. Getting out of here. We're moving to a nice house. So he moves his family to Spring Grove, which is kind of an upscale neighborhood here. There's a lot of groves and a lot of. Elk grove. We did, yeah. A lot of groves. They like that over there. They like that. Michigan as townships. There's townships, there's groves, there's all of kinds, things like that.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Jersey loves townships too.

[James Petregallo]

They do a lot of townships. So he earned a reputation amongst his neighbors as A guy who's a show off. That's what everybody says. All of his neighbors say, hey guys, a fucking show off. He just, he likes to flaunt his wealth and, and flaunt his importance and everything like that. Just like he was when he was a kid.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Spoiled brat who, you know, thinks very highly of himself.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Doesn't want to work.

[James Petregallo]

Doesn't want to work, but he wants money. He owned a bunch of different cars, including a brand new Cadillac and all kinds of shit like that. All the status symbols of the late 70s, you know.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

He. They have two daughters. He and his wife now for him in Virginia have made a family of their own. They take vacations every year to Marco island or Jamaica or the Bahamas or something like that. That's what they do.

[Jimmy Whisman]

So he's got three daughters elsewhere and he's just lavish Bahamas with these kids.

[James Petregallo]

Five daughters, all. Yeah, three of them in Wisconsin. Not going anywhere near the Bahamas here. So that's his lifestyle. He's doing his thing. Yeah, I mean, he seems to be happy and also he's living up to his ideal of wanting to make a lot of money and not wanting to do a lot of work. That's the most important thing.

[Jimmy Whisman]

American dream, James.

[James Petregallo]

That's right. So in 1980, that comes along. Charles, for a while here is president of the company and he's married. He lives in a large home. He's got wife and daughters and everybody seems thrilled and all is going well. He's got. They put a swimming pool in a 1980 an in ground baby. Not messing around. They have two Cadillacs at this point leased by the company for his family's use. So that's part of his salary. He gets free Cadillacs.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

That's awesome. And they took all sorts of vacations, like we said. By this time he has, he's. He's very upset though, that he doesn't. He's not getting paid enough.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

By 1980 he's making $110,000 a year.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Holy shit.

[James Petregallo]

$431,253.20 today to make trophies, man. Not even to make them?

[Jimmy Whisman]

No. To tell people to make them.

[James Petregallo]

To order products for other people to make them. Yeah, yeah. Order raw materials for people to make. Shit. He said that he spent everything he earned and wasn't able to even live on that salary. That pittance. $431,000 adjusted for inflation. Pittance. Can't live on that. How are you supposed to survive on that, Jimmy? How can you possibly survive? How can you get by.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's unbelievable.

[James Petregallo]

I mean, you could scrape if you really had to, you know, eat ramen every night. Yeah, it's pretty goddamn good money. So I don't know what he's thinking. He said, though, that he couldn't live on those things. He couldn't live on that little amount of money, quote, unquote, and still, quote, do some of the things I want to do. There's still some. Yeah, I'd love to have a private jet, but I don't have one. Lots of shit I can't afford, too. And you know what you do? You go, oh, well, I can't get that. So that's that. This guy goes, this is bullshit. He's upset about it. Wow. He starts. Him and his wife Virginia, they're really close to Virginia's mom and grandma.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

They lived. Virginia's mom and grandma lived together and they go over all the time to help them out, to have dinner with them. They invite them over for dinner. They're very close to them. These are Marion's. I'm sorry. Virginia's mom is Marion Muller. She's 69 years old in 1980. And then she worked at a bank in Chicago for 30 years. She's retired. And then Virginia's grandma as well, who's. Mary Lambert is her name. She's 89 years old. Wow. And she still works outdoors and does all kinds of shit like that. Yeah, she's a tough old lady. Now they live in a condo at Leisure Village, which is a retirement complex in Fox Lake. And apparently it's like they have guard gates and it's a. It's one of these, like up upper upper crust, upscale retirement communities that, you know, no one's allowed in and. Yeah, and Fox Lake, the town of Fox Lake is where this is.

[Jimmy Whisman]

If these old biddies hang on long enough, they might see Bailey. God damn it. I can't think of his last name now.

[James Petregallo]

They might see him.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

So yeah, they live there. And yeah, they're both healthy. Mom and grandma are both healthy. They both take part in like, the village has a bunch of physical activities that the people do and dancing and whatever the hell, who knows what they're doing, but they both participate in all that shit. Even 89 year old grandma is out there shaking her ass when she needs to. So they. Now, Virginia and Chuck would visit them every week. You know, they're older and getting up there. And Virginia was extremely devoted to her mother and grandmother. And they also regularly would go pick them up and bring them to spring Grove to have dinner over there and take them home and you know, just trying to make sure they stay in the loop. Now Chuck here, he's got kind of ulterior motives also of why he wants to be so kind to these two older ladies here. Mary, the grandmother, he, after some time of working on her, convinces her to change the provisions in her will, leaving her property to Virginia. All to Virginia. Bypassing Virginia's brother Francis. Okay. That's how this works. And Virginia's sister Elizabeth as well. So that they say that you should let Virginia control everything.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

You know, make her him like her, the executive type of thing.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Just trust her to divvy this up the right way.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. And they say because she's. Who's over here taking care of you and who's, you know, who cares about you. It's Virginia. So what are we doing here? You're gonna let these people who don't even come over and see you, you're gonna cut them in equally? That's kind of crazy.

[Jimmy Whisman]

We're here all the time. We're doing our part. Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

And eventually she says, yeah, you're right, actually.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. She is here every, every week, all the time, trying to help us out. So why the hell are we giving this to somebody else? So they decide. Or Mary decides. You're right. I should change the will and just give everything to Virginia.

[Jimmy Whisman]

She can be it.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, she can divvy it if the divvying needs done. So July of 1980, Charles's ex wife, remember her? The bigamy victim there, she files another complaint for non support. Again, I think a guy making 430 grand a year in today's money would be able to pay a little child support.

[Jimmy Whisman]

But he better be careful too, because if these family members die, they'll put a lien on him. He'll have to pay out of inheritance, something.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, that's true actually. So Chuck started having some problems here. He's also behind in his mortgage payment six months.

[Jimmy Whisman]

What is he spending this money on.

[James Petregallo]

Outside of a monster coke habit? I can't imagine how you could even spend that much money.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I'd have to have a boat, several properties.

[James Petregallo]

That's right. Or he's like just goes. I could see if he was like going to like exotic locations by himself to like pick up women or something. He's. This makes no sense.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Does he. Does he have golf outings every day with like.

[James Petregallo]

They have to be, you know what I mean? With PGA rated courses and shit, they'd.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Have to purchasing sexual Favors.

[James Petregallo]

That's what I mean, sexual favors and cocaine is the only way you could spend this much money. It's just crazy. So six months behind and like, you know, a fileable amount of court of child support behind as well. So he's a mess. He also owed $15,000 at the state bank of Richmond, which was due on August 14, 1980 as well. So he's got. He's got six months of mortgage, child support, and a $15,000 loan due all at the same time. Pretty much. So in a. In July of 1980, his ex wife's lawyer filed a petition requiring him to appear in court to show cause and all that kind of thing. Now he doesn't show up.

[Jimmy Whisman]

No.

[James Petregallo]

So he gets a judgment against him on that. So he's not doing great here. This is a lot of pressure on him. And we don't know if Virginia is aware of all of these, of everything that's going on. We are not sure if she knows about the mortgage or the child support. I assume he complained about his ex wife with the child support, but the mortgage he probably kept to himself.

[Jimmy Whisman]

We tend to do that.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. So August 3rd, 1980, Mary and Marion, mom and grandma of Virginia, they're gonna come over to the house in Spring Grove for dinner.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Come over and visit. Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Go see Chuck and Ginny here and see what they got going on. They have a nice Sunday dinner together. Just a family Sunday dinner. They ate Polish sausage and sauerkraut.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yikes.

[James Petregallo]

All family style, big platter. And you take your, you know, take your Polish sausage and your sauerkraut. And Charles will. And everybody says later on, or Charles will say that both Ginny and Mary, or. I'm not. Ginny's the wife. I'm sorry. Both Marion and Mary, neither of them had anything to drink, he said, but they ate Polish sausage and sauerkraut, which. You need to wash that down, it seems like.

[Jimmy Whisman]

But they didn't have anything to drink or any booze to drink.

[James Petregallo]

No, any. Anything. So didn't ingest that.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Dry.

[James Petregallo]

Just dry. Just dry. Swallowed some Polish sausage.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That would better be some wet fucking Kraut to get that down.

[James Petregallo]

You need the Kraut just to get it down. So he insisted too, that it was weird that Mary didn't have any because Mary was 89 years old and had worked in the yard all day. And it was a hot day that day, mid August or early August. And she had been working outside for several hours. So he's like, she should have been thirsty. But nobody ate not even some sweet tea. Nothing. Now, after dinner, Mary gets sick.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh.

[James Petregallo]

Which, I mean, maybe all that kraut on a dehydrated stomach, but she gets diarrhea and begins vomiting after dinner. Okay, Jesus, something's wrong here. And Marion also gets a little bit sick, but not as severely ill as mom does, but she gets. She doesn't feel good either. Here. So now, August 4, 1980. The next day, the very next day, Charles sends his ex wife's lawyer a post dated check for $3,648, which is the exact amount that he is behind in child support. Along with a note that informed the attorney that the check was dated for August 15 because a deposit would be made into his account around August 13th. Charles also sent him a post dated check for $500. I don't know if that's like the next installment or what. But now, August. Hey, this day, take this for yourself, you know what I mean? Or maybe that's next month's child support or who knows? So, August 5, 1980. The third was the dinner. The fourth is post dated check. And August 5. Here, Mary Lambert is admitted to the emergency room at McHenry Hospital with vomiting and diarrhea for the last 48 hours.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Dang, two days of it.

[James Petregallo]

She's not doing well. The next day, August 6, 1980, Mary Lambert dies.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Whoa.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Dies in the hospital.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Died of nausea and diarrhea.

[James Petregallo]

Yes. And now they, they didn't. She is 89 years old. So they look at this as. Also, those are symptoms of heart attacks sometimes. And she's 89 years old. And the fact that she was working all day out in the yard the day she got sick, they think maybe she aggravated her heart. And they, they officially attribute her death to cardiac arrest. Say heart attack. Poor lady had a heart attack. That's. That's terrible. And before that, three days earlier, she was super healthy, doing all sorts of stuff. But I mean, when you're 89, you can go downhill like that. Let's just. Come on.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[James Petregallo]

You just drop dead when you're 89 any day.

[Jimmy Whisman]

My sister, yeah, my sister's uncle at 83, was fishing. Had a heart attack while he was fishing. Didn't know it until he got home. He was out of breath. Went to the hospital and fucking flatlined.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, my Grandmother passed about 85. Used to just sit up terrified all night waiting to die. She didn't want to go to sleep. Yeah, she didn't want to go to sleep because she thought she'd never wake Up. So she never liked to go to sleep. Now that is interesting. Now this. They end up, I guess she leaves everything to Marion in Virginia.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Like we had said, they cut the one out. So it's just Marion the mom and Virginia the daughter. So Virginia closes out grandma's checking account and transfers $3,600 to Virginia and Chuck's bank account. That amount, by the way, is just about exactly what they needed to cover $3,648 in postdated checks. Pretty fortuitous, right? Wow. Came into the exact amount of money they need. August 8, 1980 is the funeral day for Mary. Very sad. Charles. This day is arrested for child support payments not being made yet.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Well, don't worry, guys. It's already mailed.

[James Petregallo]

No, it's already mailed. But you couldn't apparently post date the check. That's not part of it. That was. They didn't have an agreement to post.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That is a weird.

[James Petregallo]

He was ordered to pay, period.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Anytime the words post dated check comes around, it's like, what scam is this? I'm not getting this money, am I?

[James Petregallo]

Might as well slap third party on there in that too. Post dated, third party and uncashable. Yeah, Ridiculous. Hey, everybody. Just gonna take a quick break from the show and tell you a little bit about Live it up.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, let'sliveitup.com you bet.

[James Petregallo]

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[Jimmy Whisman]

Now back to the shop.

[James Petregallo]

Hey everybody. Just gonna take a quick break from the show to tell you about some delicious stuff for your cat, Smalls.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Smalls.com.

[James Petregallo]

That'S right. I love my cat, Lil Brandy. She's a cute little kitty. She likes to get and hang out with me in the bathroom in the morning and wash my face and she saw. She's the best. She's so cool. And she's picky about her food though. That's one thing. Always picky about her food. But one thing she's not picky about is Smalls. She loves everything from Smalls. I'm picky too. I get it. You know what I mean? She wants what she wants. And I'm telling you, the cat loves Smalls. Your cat. Does your cat have digestive issues? They throw up their food at all? Or maybe they need a diet upgrade, just something better. And that's why you gotta get Smalls. It's protein packed recipes made with preservative free ingredients that you'd find in your fridge. You could just eat this stuff. It's good stuff and it's delivered right to your door. That's why cats.com named Smalls their best overall cat food. You can get 60% off your first order plus free shipping. Just head to smalls.com stm for a limited time only. They love the Smalls. They love. She loves the paste stuff the most. Yeah, the food, everything. She loves it. But if you put that paste on anything, oh boy, it's gone. She will eat it. The tuna flavored paste is her absolute favorite. She goes nuts and like runs around my feet. It's hilarious. She likes it way better than the old cat food we used to to feed her. Thought she liked that. But if you put them side by side, she'll dive at the Smalls. The other stuff's garbage here. Since I made the switch to Smalls, the cat seems happier. Less stinky. Litter box, shinier fur coat. Don't feed your cat Kibble. Your cat wants to hunt. Give it something that looked like it was alive at one time. Kibble was never alive. I'll tell you that right now. After switching to smalls, 88% of cat owners say they have a healthier, happier cat and had overall health improvements for a limited time only. Because you're a small town murder listener, you can get 60% off your first smalls order plus free shipping when you head to smalls.com STM that's 60% off when you head to smalls.Com STM plus free shipping.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Again, that's smalls.com now back to the show.

[James Petregallo]

Hey, everybody, Just going to take a quick break from the show to tell you about our SafeST sponsor, SimpliSafe.

[Jimmy Whisman]

SimpliSafe.com S I M P L I Safe.com.

[James Petregallo]

That'S right. We want to talk to you about your home security for just a minute here. I used to think home security was an alarm that goes off after, you know, there's a break in. And the guy would get scared and go, God, people are going to hear this and they run away and maybe they get your neighbor's attention. But that's pretty reactive. I mean, things are already happening by that time. An intruder's in your home, it's too late. You've heard small town murder. You're listening to it right now. It's way too late. If someone's in your home, you're already dead. So we can't have that. That's why real security should stop a crime before it even starts. Right? That's why we trust Simplisafe. Their system is designed to be proactive, not reactive, and really could have made half of our episodes not happen. If people at Simplisafe. It's amazing. I love it. My whole house, my studio. Jimmy's house studio. Everything is covered by Simplisafe. Because it's simple. It's the best. It's simply the best. That's all there is to it. They use AI powered smart cameras to identify threats lurking outside your home. They immediately alert Simplisafe's professional monitoring agents. Boom. There you go. These agents intervene in real time before things even happen. They can talk. They have access to two way audio to confront the purse. Hey, stupid, get out of the yard. It's great. It's amazing. Trigger sirens, spotlights to scare them. They request rapid police dispatch when needed. All helping to stop this intruder while they're still outside your house. That's security. So join the more than 4 million Americans who trust Simplisafe with their home security every day, including Jimmy and myself here. And with a 60 day money back guarantee and no long term contracts, Simplisafe earns your business by keeping you safe and satisfied every single day. Visit simplisafe.comsmall to claim 50% off a new system. That's SimpliSafe S I-M P L I safe.comsmall there's no safe like Simplisafe.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Now back to the show.

[James Petregallo]

So this, he was on the way to the funeral in the suit and a tie and he got pulled over and arrested. Yeah, he was released when it was made clear that he had that the funds were now available and they could actually cash the check now and whatever. So he was finally released from jail when they showed he could pay. August 16, 1980. Eight days later, Marion goes to the hospital. Oh, Virginia's mom, she's experiencing. Been experiencing vomiting and diarrhea. It's contagious since August 3rd.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh my God.

[James Petregallo]

From the. Since the same day. So she's hospitalized at St. Teresa's Hospital in Waukegan. Waukegan.

[Jimmy Whisman]

WauKegan.

[James Petregallo]

Waukegan. On August 16, 1980. Now, August 18, 1980, Marion's getting sicker and sicker.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Dang.

[James Petregallo]

She's getting sicker and sicker. And by the end of the day on August 18, 1980, Marion dies in the hospital too.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh my God. There's a rabid monkey somewhere.

[James Petregallo]

I've seen this movie. This is crazy. Ebola is on the loose here. This is wild.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Call Dustin Hoffman. We're in trouble.

[James Petregallo]

No shit. This is terrible. So everybody put on your hazmat suits now.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Rubber suits.

[James Petregallo]

You need them. So she had many of the same symptoms as her mom. Now, no one suspects any foul play here. Instead, the residents of Leisure Village, they think it's really unusual that both of these healthy women that they've been seeing out doing activities and everything died within 12 days of each other. But 169 and 189 people die. Yeah, it happens. But they urge the officials to check local restaurants for botulism. Yeah, they're like, what if it's something like that? They also have the community's water supply tested.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Wow.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, they have all of that. And now Charles, Chuck, and Virginia request that they investigate even further. They say, do more. They said, you know, he said, my wife just lost her mother and her grandmother in two weeks. There's something going on in here. Like, you know, are you built on an fucking ancient Indian burial ground or something? What are we doing?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Also, we're still here. So whatever got them gets us.

[James Petregallo]

What about all the other fine old folks in this community? So, yeah, he eventually, though, he said he was satisfied that it just happened to be a horrible coincidence. And, you know, after all these tests come. I mean, they tested everything in the neighborhood. The air quality, the soil. They were testing anything to see what was going on, and they couldn't find anything. So what are you gonna do? August 20th, 1980. Now, two days later, money held in a joint account with Virginia and Marion, her and her mom is now transferred. Because Marion's dead now is now transferred to the joint account of Chuck and Virginia. So they're stacking some cash out of this. Anyway, under the terms of the will, her property passes to Virginia. And basically. So Mary's stuff passed to her daughter Marian, and then Marion's stuff all goes to Virginia.

[Jimmy Whisman]

And Mary's stuff.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, and Mary's stuff. So, yeah, this combined in cash or whatever is about $150,000. Not on property. Not on property. Because after they died, they quickly sell the Leisure Village home for way less than its market value for cash. I guess so. So there was 150 grand and then 95,000 from the sale of the home as well.

[Jimmy Whisman]

My word.

[James Petregallo]

So about 250 grand they come into here. So that was August 20th. Now they decide, by the way, on August 14th, the week before this happened, the State bank of Richmond granted Charles Albanese two extensions on that money he was needed to pay back in full.

[Jimmy Whisman]

14 grand.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, yeah, because he told the bank that he had some real estate he was trying to sell and give him a month, basically. So they did. Now they end up deciding to exhume the ladies to see if they can figure out Mary and Marion to figure out what the hell's going on here.

[Jimmy Whisman]

See what viruses in the.

[James Petregallo]

There. Yeah. It turns out that Mary has approximately eight times the normal amount of arsenic in her body than she should.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, no.

[James Petregallo]

Everybody keeps some amount of arsenic just in low levels in their bloodstream. Everything has arsenic in it. All sorts of foods you eat have arsenic, but they're very, very, very low levels that your body is used to and can tolerate.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Really?

[James Petregallo]

Absolutely. But the. This, she has eight times the normal amount, which they're even unsure if that's enough to kill her or not, but it's more than there should be. So they decide, well, let's exhume Marion and see what's up with her.

[Jimmy Whisman]

See how many arsenic she has.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, she has five times the normal concentration of arsenic again.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, a lot.

[James Petregallo]

Crazy high, but not crazy high. Not high enough. So they think that's odd, but a forensic chemist still says that he thinks they died of arsenic, period. That's way more than you should have. And you're not going to run into that much arsenic unless there's a lot of arsenic around. Yeah, by accident. So it's really, really strange here. So they find the traces of the poisons and they're trying to figure out what the hell's going on. They suspect they were killed by repeated arsenic poisonings, by the way. They think these are built up over time.

[Jimmy Whisman]

So they've been coming in contact with it a lot.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, they said they'd been given fatal doses at different times. So that's an interesting thing there. So this is the deaths of two very active women. So it's very, very odd here. They thought it was, like I said, botulism at first and then everything else, but no, they end up here. They said an analysis of the drinking water, the community's sewage disposal system, all thoroughly checked out. They checked the food supply, examined kitchens and all the area restaurants. Everything came back negative. They don't know where the hell this arsenic came from. They can't tell. They have no idea. Now, there's also life insurance. Virginia receives $6,000 in life insurance proceeds and pension fund proceeds from Marion Mueller's death. And the money was used to make delinquent payments, payments on the mortgage. So, I mean, these people are dying just in time.

[Jimmy Whisman]

My word. Thank. I mean, sometimes, you know, they say everything happens for a reason.

[James Petregallo]

You know, you're poof. Just the luck of some people.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah. And, you know, if you're behind in child support, don't worry, a family member's going to die and save you, they're going to rescue. Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Tell me there's no God. Come on. That's my. Come on now, tell me there's no God. What are we talking about here?

[Jimmy Whisman]

What's your crowd breath?

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. I ate the same Polish sausage they did and I got nothing. I'm fine. So October of 1980, that is when everything goes through with the condo sale and everything like that. $20,000 of the condo sale was deposited into the joint account of Charles and Virginia. And that was used to pay the $15,000 note from the bank that he had to pay off. Now the company back to this, back to his other life here. Allied Die and Casting is owned by three stockholders. It is owned by Chuck, Michael, Charles dad. And Michael Charles brother, Michael Jr. They made up the board of directors and each had an executive office. Charles here, Chuck, is president of the corporation. Michael Jr. Is vice president. And Michael Sr. Is secretary, treasurer. And so basically, I'm going to let my sons run it. I'll keep an eye on the purse strings.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Is what he's doing here. So, yeah, I'll make sure they're not fucking this up monetarily. So the shareholder agreement approved by the board of directors gave special powers to dad. Because he started the whole thing. He has absolute power to control and manage the company. Including the power to veto or negate the decision of the other two. So the sons can decide anything they want and he can go? I don't think so. And completely. Yeah, poo poo. The whole thing. So I guess that's kind of how he started the business. It's his business. So.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Now, Chuck does not have a great relationship with his brother Michael. That is one thing. They say that he has a decent relationship with his dad. But him and his brother fight a lot. Chuck seems like the type of guy who can't share that sort of thing.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, he's. He wants to be the boss. And as soon as dad dies, we're gonna fight about it and I'm probably gonna win.

[James Petregallo]

That's what I mean. He probably fought his little brother as kids a lot. He probably just run up and go, you stole my mommy. And start punching him. You know what I mean? He's that kind of guy, you know. They have to pay attention to you too now. Bullshit. So September 4th, 1980. A Donald Fishbean. Okay, a Donald Fishbean's an attorney for Allied Dying Casting. He says he attended a corporate meeting that day. And this had Fishbean, Michael, Chuck, Michael Sr. And Clara, who is Michael Sr's wife. And Chuck and Mike's mom. Okay, now, the purpose of this meeting was to terminate the employment of Chuck. We're gonna fire Chuck now.

[Jimmy Whisman]

He is being removed.

[James Petregallo]

He's being fired. Chuck would later say that that didn't happen at all. But the lawyer and everybody else said it did. So it definitely happened in this meeting. Michael Sr. Was made president. Michael Jr. Was made secretary and vice president. And Chuck, I guess, saved his own job. No, he was made treasurer.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh.

[James Petregallo]

Which is the. They kind of flipped the structure, basically, and made him treasurer. And Clara. Mom was to become a stockholder and given equal stock to have equal ownership with the three of them. So now it's four people equally own it.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's not good.

[James Petregallo]

That's interesting here. September 8th, 1980. Because that was September 4th. Okay, September 8th, 1980. Michael Jr eats his lunch at work. He had brought in a sandwich from home, you know, as you do sometimes. And he left his sandwich in his office. And, you know, he went about his business and did everything. Then he ate his sandwich. And about an hour after lunch, he started vomiting. Started vomiting. Actually had to go to the hospital that day and stay there for five days. Violent vomiting, violent vomiting, retching, cramps, terrible, terrible sickness. Then on November, then he recovers throughout September. Then on November 14, 1980. So, you know, two months later, he gets sick again.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, no.

[James Petregallo]

Vomiting, diarrhea. Two hours after eating lunch at work. And he sought medical attention. He was not hospitalized. But basically, his daughter said. Or his daughter, his doctor said, you have an ulcer. Oh, you're an executive. You got a lot of stress with your family. You got all this shit going on. You have an ulcer, you gotta chill out.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Stop drinking Coke, man.

[James Petregallo]

That's. Yeah, we said he put him on a bland diet. You have to eat rice, chicken, rice, no coffee, nothing crazy. Exactly. So his wife, Michael Junior's wife, started making his lunches at home for him to take into work that conformed with his diet and all that kind of thing. So it became a big deal. He said that he would get sick after he had eaten or had coffee at work all the time.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, that coffee will do it, man.

[James Petregallo]

That'll tear your stomach up. So they said, yeah, stop drinking coffee. Stop doing that. Which, you know, makes sense. So some time goes by here and late 1980 into February of 81. Chuck started trying to. It seems like trying to get in better with his father and brother. Trying to be a family guy here. He starts always taking his coffee break with them at least so they could all talk together. Yeah, that's what he does so. And he even often was nice enough to bring homemade cookies and donuts from home. Especially donuts. Love bringing in homemade donuts. And who doesn't want a. That sounds great. I'd love a homemade donut. Never had a homemade donut, but I bet it's delicious because I love any donut. So.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, most of it's made in oil, though. And you gotta fucking heat oil. That's crazy.

[James Petregallo]

People fry everything else at home, I think. Yeah, a little deep fryer, but I mean, that sounds lovely.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Did you just have a deep fryer when you were a kid? We had one and I accidentally put the plastic inside it.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, my God.

[Jimmy Whisman]

My mom was livid.

[James Petregallo]

Just melted to shit. That's the end of that.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Deep fried the lid.

[James Petregallo]

Was it delicious? Was it crunchy afterwards? Nice coating on it. Real nice.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It stunk so bad in that house for like three weeks.

[James Petregallo]

You could smell burnt plastic, I bet. Jesus Christ. That's disgusting. Now, I never had a deep fryer when I was a kid, but later.

[Jimmy Whisman]

On, they're dangerous as fuck to have in the house, especially in 1987. 1. Come on. It was not good.

[James Petregallo]

No. Like, Grandma would. She'd fry things, but it would just be a big pot of oil. Just a big pot of oil she'd put shit in and that was it. There was no, like, open flame. Yeah. There was no special device for it. It was just, here's a bunch of oil. I'm gonna fry some shit. So he would bring these homemade cookies and donuts, which again, who doesn't want homemade desserts of any kind? So now, after one of these coffee breaks, both Mike Sr. And Jr. Became violently ill. Oh, no.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Dad, too.

[James Petregallo]

Dad. He's got ulcers too. Now, Michael Sr. Recovered pretty quickly and was released from the hospital. But he said, you know, every time he would try to eat some snacks at work, he would always get sick and end up back in the hospital, which is pretty goddamn interesting. Real weird. And Michael Junior kept getting ill as well. February 21, 1981. Okay. Michael's Junior's wife heated a can of pea soup and placed it in a thermos for him to take to her. These are executives. He makes hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Why are you making him a can of pea soup?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, Post.

[James Petregallo]

The fuck are you doing?

[Jimmy Whisman]

What's the movie where they spit? Where it spits. Peace soup. Post that movie.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Nobody wants.

[James Petregallo]

But this is like. This is like a can. A can of. What are you, a hobo? What are you doing? Is you get that out of your bindle and heat it up on the side of the train tracks. What the hell are you talking about?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Why are we living so frugal? We're doing fine.

[James Petregallo]

I've been in that position many times. But I wasn't the president of a company making over 100 grand a year. Like he should have food that normal.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I was taking sleeves of lentils with me.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I've been in those days before. So she put it in a thermos and told him to take it to work with him. So he went to his doctor's appointment and came back and then returned around lunchtime back to the office. Where Dr. Miller had told him that his ulcer was now under control.

[Jimmy Whisman]

He's doing it.

[James Petregallo]

He could stop the bland diet and start eating normally again.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Hell, yeah. Have yourself a burrito.

[James Petregallo]

So what did he do? Had himself a can of pea soup. He didn't celebrate by going, fuck that, we're going to Chili's or something. He said, I'm going to drink. Well, I still have my pea soup for lunch, so I obviously need that. So he began eating his pea soup that day while dad, Michael Sr. Was talking to him. Now, Chuck was urging his father, leave Michael alone until he stops eating his pea soup. You gotta break his balls with business stuff. The guy can't eat even at a can of pea soup in peace. For Christ's sake, dad. Jesus, leave him alone.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Let him eat his hobo lunch, for Christ's sake.

[James Petregallo]

Let him eat it. He's got a can of beans he's gonna put on next. What are we doing here? Let's see how far he goes with this.

[Jimmy Whisman]

He's got a hot plate at his desk, for Christ's sake.

[James Petregallo]

Jesus Christ. So now, Michael Jr. Ate about half the soup, though. Because he said it tasted funny. You know, it's canned pea soup.

[Jimmy Whisman]

So I can taste the aluminum.

[James Petregallo]

I can taste metal in it, and it's not great. So he said it tasted kind of funny. And he was like. And then he went into the computer room and started working. Because people didn't have computers at their desks in 1981.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Computer room.

[James Petregallo]

The room with the computer. Yeah, Just like houses in the 90s.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Up the entire room.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, like a house in 1997. That's the computer room. You can use our Earthlink account. Go ahead. So he started working. In a little while, though, he's in there a little bit, and he starts throwing up again.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Fucking pea soup.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, Jesus. Exorcist style.

[James Petregallo]

He's exercising. I was gonna say, he's exercising the pea soup from his system.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Wow.

[James Petregallo]

And he became so ill, he had to leave the office.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah. Head spinning and everything.

[James Petregallo]

Well, that was a problem. He tried to drive home and he said, Jesus Christ. It's hard to keep your direction when your head's spinning.

[Jimmy Whisman]

He's two lane in it.

[James Petregallo]

He had to stop his car on the side of the road in order to vomit several times before he got home. Poor Bass. It's a bad day. A real bad day. He went to bed, but kept having vomiting and diarrhea and just couldn't keep it together. So he called his doctor again, Dr. Miller. He goes into the doctor's office. He was just there that morning getting told he's fine. And now he's like, I ate pea soup and I can't keep it down.

[Jimmy Whisman]

The alkalinity is crazy.

[James Petregallo]

It's wild. So he does a bunch of tests and they order him to be hospitalized to figure out what the hell's going on with him. So March 13th. That was February 21st, mind you, March 13th is when Michael's finally discharged from the hospital.

[Jimmy Whisman]

He's in the hospital for three weeks.

[James Petregallo]

Three weeks of hospital? That's insane. His condition was still not great either. He was still not doing well. He had gastrointestinal difficulties. That. And in addition to that, he began experiencing numbness in his hands and feet.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Shit. Nerve damage.

[James Petregallo]

Nerve damage. So it's. So they're thinking, jesus, does he have, like a tumor that's leaning on something? Or he's. This is like a serious illness.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Something's wrong.

[James Petregallo]

The nerve damage was so bad, he was unable to walk or dress himself.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Whoa.

[James Petregallo]

He couldn't, like, do a button. He couldn't do anything. He had to.

[Jimmy Whisman]

No more James.

[James Petregallo]

Nope. They rented a wheelchair for him because there's nothing else he could do. He couldn't sleep at night because he was in intense pain. He's just horrifying now. They didn't know what's going on here. Then Michael Sr. He starts having problems in March of 81. Now, he kept a cookie jar on his desk at work. Michael Senior. And he often ate cookies while he worked at his desk, which sounds great. Who doesn't want cookies while you eat? In March of 81, he started vomiting and experiencing severe diarrhea as well. At work, the symptoms were so similar to Michael Jr. That Michael Jr. S doctor suspected that Michael Sr. Wasn't even actually sick. He sat Michael Sr. Down and said, look, I think this is what's going on here you're under a lot of stress, right, from work and everything else. He said, I think this is a psychosomatic thing caused by the illness of your son and the stress that that's putting on you too, because that's also putting more work stress on you because Michael can't work right now.

[Jimmy Whisman]

So he said, I think crazy doc.

[James Petregallo]

He said, I think this is a psych. Well, I mean, half of the shit, not half, but a lot of things that people go to the doctor for are psychosomatic. They're not real, you know what I mean? But that happens all the time.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That means vomiting and diarrhea, right? That's a, that's a very. I mean, that's really presenting. You're expelling things from your body in a crazy way.

[James Petregallo]

But that also is symptoms of severe stress as well, though.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Sure, yeah.

[James Petregallo]

So that's what they're saying. So I think your, your, your brain is just taking you on a fucking ride, man. Like it's really taking you on a trip. You got to calm down.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Just pureeing your food and shooting it out of you in liquid form.

[James Petregallo]

Here's some Valium, you know what I mean? Shit. Now tests come back and they reveal that Michael Jr. Did not have an ulcer.

[Jimmy Whisman]

What did he have?

[James Petregallo]

He had received sub lethal doses. So not quite deadly, but doses of arsenic over a period of several months.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Him too.

[James Petregallo]

Him too. And they say this, that the arsenic poisoning is what caused the nerve damage.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, really?

[James Petregallo]

The nerve damage is why they're looking into this so severely because stomach problems happen all the time and it's almost like a back problem. Sometimes they don't really have an exact diagnosis. It's just, you know, one of those.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Very hard to nail down because, yeah, a lot of things will give you diarrhea and heartburn and vomiting, all that shit.

[James Petregallo]

But the nerve damage is such a specific symptom that they needed to really figure out the cause of it.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's your body dying quickly.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. So Michael's condition slowly improves and he's actually able to return to work as long as he uses leg braces to walk. This poor guy has to gump his way into the building every day.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's like he's got polio.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, pretty much. So April 21, 1981. It's been an eventful year so far. Michael Senior is so ill he has to be taken to the emergency room and he's hospitalized.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

He was released after a few days, but his condition never improved.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Really.

[James Petregallo]

So, yeah, they just Released him. Anyway, he complained of numbness in his hands and feet and was referred to a neurologist for tests which demonstrated some sensory nerve deficit. Okay, so he's having some problems. And he's an older guy too, so they're like, you know, who knows if he's got like a disc fucked up or something?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Degenerative disc, sure.

[James Petregallo]

May 9, 1981. Dad is back in the hospital. Michael Senior complaining of vomiting, pain, more numbness in his hands and feet than he's had ever. And he said he's just gradually falling apart.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

While he's in the hospital, both, both Charles and Virginia both visit him. Michael Sr. Frequently in the hospital. The doctor who says, quote, the one I remember most being there, always hovering every day, was Charles. Charles was there for his dad every day. Now he just has to kind of sit there. He can't really eat much. Michael sr. All he has is a glass of skim milk, always by his bedside, which is there just to alleviate dehydration and get some other forms of something into him. Skim, skim. So it won't make him sick, but it'll get some kind of vitamins in him other than just drinking water. So that's what he's got by his bed all the time. He by this point is delirious and suffering body spasms as well.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Whoa.

[James Petregallo]

He gets so ill he has to be strapped down. Wow. Because his body is so spasmatic and everything else. So Michael Jr says he was strapped down. I'm not sure if he knew who I was at that point.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Dang.

[James Petregallo]

That's horrible. Now Michael Jr. So sick he, like I said, he had to rent a wheelchair just to visit his dad in jail and watch him. Watch him dying basically in hospital. In the hospital, not jail. Yeah, hospital. Why the hell would he be in jail? Hey, you sick old fucking jail with you. We don't have time for this shit. No time.

[Jimmy Whisman]

You're a criminal.

[James Petregallo]

This is crazy. Want your kids to take care of you? Fuck off.

[Jimmy Whisman]

You're so sick it ought to be Illegal, man.

[James Petregallo]

So May 15, 1981. Chuck calls the lawyer, the guy Fish Bean. The guy from Allied's lawyer.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Hey, whatever.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, yeah, a something. Fish Bean calls him at home at like 4 o' clock in the morning.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

He tells Fishbean that the doctors don't expect Michael Sr. To live for very long and that Fishbean should prepare an amendment to the Allied Die Casting Corporation agreement as soon as possible and bring it to the hospital. Okay, now this is crazy. The doctor by the way, said he is completely mystified by Michael Sr. S deterioration.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Can't believe it.

[James Petregallo]

And he did not expect him to die. That's the thing Michael, Chuck said, the doc says he's going to die. The doctor does not expect him to die. So seems like Michael or Chuck has some medical knowledge. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, the Chuck and Michael Jr. Visited that day to Michael Sr. And the three men signed an amendment to the shareholder agreement that day. This agreement promoted Chuck to vice president. And so this, you know, filling his spot because he was vice president after that or before that. Now, Michael Sr. Was in serious pain. He's strapped down. Michael's in a wheelchair. He needs his wife's assistance to sign the agreement. She has to help him move his hand to sign his name for this agreement. Now, May 16th, the next day, 1981, Michael Sr. Dies early morning hours of that day. Now, the family business is estimated to be worth more than $1.5 million, provided that the stock holdings revert to the firm. His holdings now revert to the firm, and they're spread out among the next shareholders. So in addition to their shares in the business, the father and the brother also carry $200,000 life insurance policies, as you do when you own a business. And Clara, Mom, Michael Sr. S wife, she ended up collecting that, the life insurance. So she's got 200 grand in life insurance and cash in there too. Michael Jr. S wife said that her husband was unable to dress or feed himself or walk unaided at the time. Like I said, she had to hold the pen while he signed the papers and everything else. So this is a mess. Now, right around this time, like a week later, there's a coroner's convention. That's a party, huh?

[Jimmy Whisman]

I bet you it's actually fun.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, no, those guys are the best sense of humor. There's probably a great sense of humor. You mix them with, like, proctologists. You got a party right there. Maybe a urologist or two. Oh, yeah, yeah. Urologist and also a butcher. Butchers are also big. I've always heard this, too. Like meat guys. Butchers are always funny. And fish guys are never funny. People who sell fish, never funny. But meat guys are always funny.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Fish guy.

[James Petregallo]

Okay.

[Jimmy Whisman]

A butcher sounds like a job, but a fish guy doesn't sound like a job.

[James Petregallo]

I said a meat guy and a fish guy. I know.

[Jimmy Whisman]

You know what I mean?

[James Petregallo]

Okay.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I've never heard of a fish guy. So fish guy just sounds.

[James Petregallo]

It'll be a fishmonger, technically, actually.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Is that what they're called?

[James Petregallo]

Yes.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Wow.

[James Petregallo]

I thought Guy sounded better than monger.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, Fishmonger sounds awful.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, that sounds like you're. You have, like, a pile of rotted carcasses on the shore.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That doesn't sound good at all.

[James Petregallo]

And you don't sell them. You just throw them at people as they go by and go, hey, son of a bitch, get the fuck out of here. You throw a rotted fish carcass at him.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Fish Guy just sounds so fun.

[James Petregallo]

Throw a rotted mahi mahi at him as they fucking drive by.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Grumps. What a word.

[James Petregallo]

Yes. That's why I said guy. But he's a meat guy. Fish guy. They always say fish guy. Not funny. Meat guy. Funny. So there's a coroner's convention, and at this convention. Oh, my God, I'm. I don't know if I'm. I'm mature enough for this man's name, and I don't think you are either.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, boy. You know, I'm. I just laughed at Fish Guy.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. I still don't know why, though. I can't. That has nothing to do with maturity. I just think you got drunk before the show.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It just sounds silly.

[James Petregallo]

Okay, sure. So this is Lake county coroner Robert Mickey Babcocks. That's number one, old Mickey Babcock, which sounds very old timey. He's chopping it up, talking to. I guess I shouldn't really use the words. That's a bad phrase to use for coroners. They were chopping it up. That could have been a corpse.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Why did they do it?

[James Petregallo]

A former McHenry county coroner named Alvin Queerhammer.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, boy.

[James Petregallo]

I saw. I said, no, his name isn't Queer Hammer, and it's. Queer Hammer.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's an amazing gay porn name.

[James Petregallo]

That is Alvin Queer Hammer. That is the best gay porn name of all time. And so Queer Hammer and Babcocks are gonna go over this whole thing. That sounds like a terrible 70s sitcom. Did you talk to Queer Hammer? So they're talking about all this, and they're like, this is really weird. They're saying this. What the hell's going on? They said Queer Hammer said, quote, I've got a funny one for you. I just got a call from a doctor at McHenry Hospital. He said there's some evidence of arsenic poisoning in the blood serum of one of his patients. They're still trying to check it out. But the strange thing is, this guy's father, Mike Albanese, just died in the same hospital.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh.

[James Petregallo]

So they're talking about Michael Jr. And they're saying his dad died too. So Babcock said, Albanese. Do I know him? And Queerhammer said the guy who died was Michael Sr. 69 years old. And the one in the hospital with arsenic poisoning is Michael Jr. He said the old man founded the Allied Casting and Dye Company. He made trophies and crap like that. His kids more or less run the place now. So they said, this is very weird. Then he said, there's another son, Chuck. Queer Hammer said. So Babcock said, that's where I heard the name. We had a Mueller woman, meaning mom. Yeah. Mary was Lambert. So this is mom. We had a Mueller woman die in my county last year. There was some question about it at the time. She was somehow related to an Albanese family. Is this the same family? This is not homicide detectives. This is two coroners.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Over a fucking scotch on the rocks. Yeah. Having a 7 and 7 at a weird party that probably smelled like formaldehyde.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Kicking around jobs they've just recently had.

[James Petregallo]

Real weird. So they said. And there was Mrs. Muller's elderly mother. The two died less than two weeks apart. And nobody could figure it out because they seem so damn healthy. Now you've got a father and son with ties to the same family. One dead and the other full of arsenic.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

So Queerhammer said, the old man hasn't been buried yet. I think I'll have the doc take some fingernail scrapings and hair samples. Routine procedure. So they do all of this. And when they get everybody in here, they think Mary Lambert appeared to have succumbed to a single massive dose of poison, while Michael Sr. Ingested small amounts over a period of months. They think. So Babcock tells Queerhammer about this after he's done laughing every time he calls him. He said, and after the two coroners presented it to the task force, that's when the cops said, I guess we'll look at it now.

[Jimmy Whisman]

We'll look at it.

[James Petregallo]

They literally had to. They went to the cops and they went, ah, get the hell out of here. They had to present all these reports and do a whole thing and test and all this shit to bring it to them and go see. Look at all this. Which is crazy. So they said they were notified. They notified the police on May 18th about all this. Now, Queer Hammer, his first thought was industrial poisoning. They both work in this plant that makes dye casting stuff. Who knows what kind of chemicals that go into the metals that they make and pour and cast and all that kind of shit. So he said that's possible. So he decided to look into it. And based on the information he found, he got samples from the deceased and they were sent to a lab for examination. He said it was originally believed the two women both died of cardiac arrests. But they were exhumed and autopsies were performed and they revealed. How'd you like to do an autopsy on an 80 year old lady who's been dead for a year?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh boy.

[James Petregallo]

Well, there's a lot of 89 year old lady, right? Not a lot. No dust probably. So that's horrifying. The autopsies revealed all three people had died from ingestion of fatal amounts of arsenic. So the detective said that. I'll just read the quote from the paper. Pazanelli, who's the detective, noted queer Hammer was looked at with a jaundiced eye.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh.

[James Petregallo]

When originally suspecting arsenic because that sounds too fantastical. It just does. They've been poisoned by arsenic. That's a Agatha Christie story. That's silly.

[Jimmy Whisman]

1980 something.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, that's a stupid TV show. That's not real. You know what I mean? So he's like get the fuck out of here. Two old ladies died. You're telling me that you know. Give me a break. Yeah, calm down chief. Calm down. Queer Hammer, relax. So he the. So queer Hammer said, at first we thought it was industrial poisoning. Then we thought it was a homicide. But you know, they get all the samples and everything else and it doesn't look good. So now the detective Pazanelli ordered a background check on every person known to have contact with Albanese. With the Albanese, Lambert and Mueller families, all of them. Among them is Chuck, who they learned moved with his family into their big house in August of 1978. They had just added a swimming pool in the summer of 81, a year after the deaths of the ladies. And we're planning to enclose it with a dome for year round. Use a fucking domed in not a room in their house. A pool dome. I've never heard of that before, have you? I mean that's crazy.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I've certainly heard of enclosed pools and outdoor. But a dome? No, like where it's all glass on the outside.

[James Petregallo]

They're usually attached to the house. Those indoor pools, they're like, you know what I mean? They're not like out and separate with a glass, with an enclosure over. I never heard of that before. It's wild. So anyway, he said, yeah, they're planning to do that. Chuck had several cars, two Cadillacs, one of which had belonged to his late father. They look at all of his vacationing and everything like that. And they're like. They even bring the babysitter to on vacation with them.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Really?

[James Petregallo]

Yes, so they can party. So, I mean, that's an extra person you have to pay for. So, yeah, they do all the fingernail tests, the hair and everything. And they conclude. And all three people were killed by arsenic poisoning for sure. Now, the doctors here. There was multiple doctors because the women had a different doctor than the men did. So they talk about that. And they got together and said that the symptoms were also consistent with other types of poisoning. And none of the doctors said they were the one who diagnosed arsenic poisoning. When talked to the cops, they were like, we never found shit. So I don't know about that. One of them is Dr. Frank Charles Carter, who treated Chuck or. I'm sorry, who treated Michael Jr. He said he'd been puzzled for months about the reason that Michael was suffering severe nerve problems and having trouble walking. He said he didn't find out Michael had been poisoned until after the telephone call from Queer Hammer, who told him, your boy's been poisoned. So the first thing they're looking at is an industrial accident. They said it's gotta be some kind of industrial shit. They said maybe they came in contact with that sort of thing. And that makes perfect sense. However, they found out through going over everything in the company that arsenic was never used in that building in the manufacturing process. Okay, so there's no arsenic around. Chuck thinks he knows what happened.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Chuck's got a theory.

[James Petregallo]

He says, and this is an obvious one, it's octopus, clearly.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, we were. We were all eating puss.

[James Petregallo]

Duh. Jesus. Yeah. He said that Michael Sr. May have received arson poisoning from an octopus meal consumed shortly after or shortly before entering the hospital. The package of octopus was received and lab tests revealed that arsenic in the octopus was within normal levels, though. So it wasn't the octopus. It's crazy that it has arsenic at all in it, but in normal levels.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I didn't know that they do that.

[James Petregallo]

Isn't that wild? Yeah, well, yeah. Nobody puts it in. It's just there.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Chemical, right?

[James Petregallo]

No, no, it's.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's naturally occurring.

[James Petregallo]

I think you can make it probably.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It definitely is made.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Not originally.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, because that's what they pull it out. Rat poison. Right. That's what. That's what rats are poisoned with.

[James Petregallo]

And we'll find out about that in a minute. Oh. So they said, though. Traces of arsenic is found in many food items and also every person you test will have some arsenic in their System, Everybody, everybody. It all is in there. They said, though no concrete connections made between the deaths, though they can't figure it out. They questioned Virginia and Chuck, and that was that. They got no answers. So Charles takes over the running of the business. His brother's in a wheelchair and can barely sign anything. The police receive because Virginia had given permission for the exhumation of mom and Grandma and everything like that. When they test them again here, they found that 370 times the normal level was in Grandma.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's a lot.

[James Petregallo]

That's a lot.

[Jimmy Whisman]

So much. 8 times 370.

[James Petregallo]

370. They also go in and test the cookie jar on Michael Sr. S desk. There is arsenic in the cookie crumbs in the jar, in the bottom.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Cookie arsenic. Yeah.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

So now they talked to Chuck about that. And Chuck said, I always ate cookies out of that cookie jar. Oh, shit, that's crazy. He said, even after dad died, I kept eating his cookies.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Really?

[James Petregallo]

He ate a dead man's cookies, man. He said he wasn't. He doesn't know how he escaped the arsenic that killed his father. But. And he said also, they said, well, why'd you leave the cookie jar in his. In his office? He said, I don't know. I just go in there. Every time I was walking around, I'd get a hankering for a cookie. I'd go in and grab one. And they said, why didn't you just bring the jar into your office? Your dad's dead.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah. He's not there.

[James Petregallo]

Anyway, his answer is the greatest thing ever. He goes, oh, there's no room for a cookie jar in my office.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I don't have room.

[James Petregallo]

No room for a jar with some cookies in it? Yeah, he's in a broom closet, this guy. I don't even have a desk. I mean, Jesus, I sit on the floor and that's it. I don't know what I'm doing.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I'm in the handicap. I only got enough room for the. For the telephone.

[James Petregallo]

And honestly, if my brother comes in, I can't even use that saw. I got to switch to a regular, you know. So three different fingerprints were detected on the cookie jar. Michael Jr's, Chuck's, and a third that could not be identified. And the reason that is is because Michael Sr. In his entire life, was never fingerprinted for anything. So they don't have his fingerprints. It was impossible to conclusively establish the third fingerprint, so they exhumed him again.

[Jimmy Whisman]

This poor man cannot rest.

[James Petregallo]

Dude, think about the poor bastard at the Graveyard who's just got a shovel ready all the time. He's like, back to this one. Great, good. I kept the dirt nice and loose just in case. So his fingers were too decomposed to obtain prints though.

[Jimmy Whisman]

So we still can't get him.

[James Petregallo]

They just pulled him up and put him back. No reason. So I mean, we can assume they're his. It's in his office. He ate the cookies. But they don't know. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. So Chuck carries on the business. He's in sole control. His finances are still fucked up though. Somehow, even though he's had all this giant influx of money, it was just a little bit here and there. The big life insurance policies went to mom and everything like that. So he started to sell scrap metal from the company on the side for his own pocket. He sold scrap metal and zinc, which were both property of the corporation, to J.W. reichel & Sons and to the Clearing Smelting corporation. He sold 88,000 pounds of zinc. That's a lot. And $9,300 worth of scrap metal in those transactions. He insisted that the checks be made out to him personally or to cash, which that's not shady at all.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Just make it out to cash.

[James Petregallo]

He would not accept checks made out to Ally die in Casting. And he was selling them for like 60 cents on the dollar of what it was actually worth, selling it way discounted. He received nearly $40,000 for these transactions. Now in November of 81, when the police are investigating all these deaths and everything, Chuck called Ed Cohen at Clearing Smelting and told him if anybody calls regarding any of our transactions, you don't know nothing about it.

[Jimmy Whisman]

You don't know nothing.

[James Petregallo]

You don't know shit. Okay? So police were unable to discover the presence of arsenic and hair and fingernail samples of other employees at Allied Die Casting or the presence of any kind of poison at the Leisure Village complex. So they ruled out all these outside forces of where the poison could have came from. So now the nurses and doctors who had attended to Mary and Marion. Mary and Marion in the hospital were questioned not only for their participation, but what did they see? Several nurses remembered that Chuck and Virginia had visited the two women on a regular basis. They were real stalwarts for them. Real close. They also recalled they're so sweet. They even always brought cookies and donuts.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Cookies and donuts for the family.

[James Petregallo]

Cookies and donuts. Isn't that sweet? Bringing cookies and donuts. So, wow. All the suppliers of Allied Dye were canvassed in an attempt to learn if arsenic in any shape or form had found its way into the company's hands. Did they recently buy arsenic? They learned that Allied. That's when they learned that Allied sold scrap zinc to a metal plating firm. That's the Reichel guy. Now, Joe Reichel told police that he had a conversation with Charles concerning arsenic. Yeah, they said, really?

[Jimmy Whisman]

We talked about arsenic. You talked about arsenic in our zinc scrap conversations.

[James Petregallo]

Interesting. Yeah. Reichel said Chuck told him that he was having trouble with insects around his home and wanted advice on how to get rid of them. Joe Reichel suggested, how about arsenic?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

And he gave Charles two pounds of arsenic.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Two pounds? That's a crazy.

[James Petregallo]

Which. It's a lot of arsenic.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

But apparently this guy Reichel, that firm used arsenic in the manufacturing product of what they did. So they had a shitload of. They had barrels of the shit sitting around. So he literally, like, dipped a cup in and gave him some arsenic. Now, Joe Reichel, a little bit more about him. He is the Vice President of J.W. reichel & Sons in Elkhorn, Wisconsin. And he said in the autumn of 1979 is when he started talking to Chuck about arsenic.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Really? Ten years ago.

[James Petregallo]

Long time ago. Two years before. Yeah, before all that stuff. So Reichel said that Charles told him he needed to get rid of some pests around the house. And he said that his company had a small quantity of arsenic, which was used for the plating process. So Reichel brought Chuck a small Tupperware container of arsenic a few weeks later. Then Chuck requested more arsenic a couple weeks later. You got more of that shit? I've been sorting it.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Really eating them up.

[James Petregallo]

They love that shit. Boy, they're getting huge. It makes them bigger. Reichel brought Charles a small baby food jar full of arsenic. Oh, my God.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Baby food.

[James Petregallo]

Hey, if we can not use one specific container for arsenic, let's make that like the strained peas. Can we not.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Put it in baby food? Don't put it in baby bottles. Don't.

[James Petregallo]

None of that. Yeah, there was an old formula container I figured I'd put it in that won't get messed up.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Probably a white powder, right?

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, it's a silvery white, like off.

[Jimmy Whisman]

White powder in anything that looks like it could be fed to A children.

[James Petregallo]

Definitely not. In a baby food jar.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Do you have a poison jar or like an old. Like an old can of something that's.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Poisonous that has crossbones behind that Gerber baby's head? Because I can't.

[James Petregallo]

Please just color him out with crossbones. He's the skull of the skull. And crossbones just put them across the baby's face. So, yeah, he said I needed him for recurrent pest problems. So he said that he put the arsenic out at night near the garbage container because the pests had been getting in there at night. And he would find garbage strewn all over the lawn. Goddamn raccoons and everything else poison these raccoons, which is interesting. So, yeah, he said that I gave him about two pounds of it. He asked me if I had anything that he could use to get rid of some pests. I suggested arsenic. He asked me how to use it. Now, Chuck did not. When the cops talk to him, he doesn't really have an explanation of why he would put shitloads of lethal poison out where not only the. The. The animals can get, but like household cats from around the neighborhood. Kids could reach it just on the ground or on the. Yeah, they said, well, rather than doing that, why didn't you just, you know, get garbage cans that had lids?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

And he went, oh, I don't know. This seemed easier. Yeah, just get a lid, dummy.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I'm thirsty for raccoon.

[James Petregallo]

I was gonna. Just wanted raccoon blood. Yeah. It was gonna be like that Sebastian Maniscalco bit when I came out with the.

[Jimmy Whisman]

What did he do?

[James Petregallo]

The antifreeze. His dad fucking poisoning everything with antifreeze because it was eaten in the garden. That's the old. Italians will do that. You dare eat their. Fuck with their garden. They'll go out there and poison everything.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Antifreeze their whole garden.

[James Petregallo]

He said he put antifreeze in a sandwich. Made an antifreeze sandwich and put it out for the raccoons, he said. He comes out the next morning, goes, fucking birds, cats, pigeons, raccoons, you name it. Everything was dead out there. He killed everything. It's not a good thing to do to just put poison out there. Anything can get that. So one of Chuck's neighbors, Pat Marshall, said that there had been problems with vermin and animals in the area. But the problems didn't start until the spring of 1980. So why the hell was he looking for arsenic in 79?

[Jimmy Whisman]

He's getting it early.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. She also said that the Albanese's garbage was strewn all over the lawn in the spring of 1980. So that was true. And Chuck obtained the arsenic at least four months before the garbage and pest problem described by all the other neighbors.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Premonition, babe.

[James Petregallo]

He knew it was coming. See, that's how you're good at business. You have.

[Jimmy Whisman]

You gotta be able to.

[James Petregallo]

Feelings.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Forecast the market.

[James Petregallo]

You have to. What else are you gonna do? November 18, 1981. He is at work. Chuck doing his thing. He is set to leave the next day to go on a vacation with his wife and his mother, Clara. Oh, just. Just him and Ginny. And Clara, by the way, hasn't been. Hasn't been getting along great with Clara lately.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Clara's being a little pain in the ass, huh?

[James Petregallo]

A little bit of a pain in the ass. Now at work, the police come and arrest Chuck.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

They arrest him for murder of everybody.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

And they said that they weren't ready to arrest him yet, but they had to because they found out the police planning a trip to Jamaica with his wife and mother. They were convinced he intended to murder his mother.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Wow. She was next.

[James Petregallo]

Then everything would have went to him and Michael. They could have split it. And then he would have just had to work on Michael. Christ, he could have just pushed him down the stairs. He's still in a wheelchair.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Yep. So they said that we had to get to him before they got on that plane. They said he planned to leave. And they said that we couldn't give them meaning, the women, the proper protection. In Jamaica.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Right.

[James Petregallo]

So he's arrested and charged with three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder. It's fucking wild. They were like. Because the cops. Just a travel agent called the cops and said, hey, I've been reading and this stuff, and this guy's going to Jamaica. I don't know if that's important. And they were like, holy shit. Thanks for telling us. So with Clara's profit sharing from the company firm. From the company here, her $60,000 salary, and her husband's estate and life insurance benefit amounting amounting to almost a million dollars, they said, he's killing her.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

He's going to get a shitload of money. Yeah. So they were like, fuck that. We got to do this shit. So he would have control over the business. He'd have everything. So the detectives here, they booked seats on the same plane to follow the trip to Jamaica, but they said, we can't fucking do that. We can't. What if they. Yeah, these guys had Hawaiian shirts on. They were all ready to drink fucking Drinks out of a coconut and he's like, oh no, that isn't happening. Because they're like, what if we lose him? Yeah, he's gonna kill this lady.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Three bees and Aruba Jammuh. We just gotta get him now. Let's do it.

[James Petregallo]

Shit. And that's funny because normally I doubt the. The county coroner gets a lot of publicly paid trips to Jamaica. I don't think they were like, God damn it.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I was trying to my ties. Fuck.

[James Petregallo]

Not sure. One of the task force investigators said, we certainly would have had egg on our face if one or both of them had died. Yeah, if you were just following behind, fucking listening to the steel drums while this woman's murdered. Yeah, that would be great.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Drunk on rum soaked pineapple, you fuck.

[James Petregallo]

Drunk on rum soaked pineapple, on taxpayer dollars while a woman's being fucking butchered in a hotel room somewhere.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Woozy, trudging through the sand.

[James Petregallo]

Oh God, that's amazing. Queer Hammer said, quote, we were afraid we might lose one of them, we might lose one of the women down there. Our job is to keep people alive. Babcocks. The other coroner said, in my 20 years as coroner of Lake County, I have never encountered such a cold blooded, calculated, sordid destruction of two families. This is fucking insane, dude. Honestly, like, he had to have charts and. Okay, it's the 21st. I give this one some arsenic here. I got to make donuts.

[Jimmy Whisman]

He's got to figure out that. Yeah, he's got a. Jesus Christ. He's got to get up at 4am every got to make the donuts.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, I got to make cookies and donuts. Jesus Christ, this is so much. Baking at 4am oh, he's up. He's up baking with an apron on. Imagine him. Oh, these look beautiful. Look at those, nice and brown. So Chuck is held in McHenry county jail with a $2.5 million bond set.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Wow. They're pretty sure.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Well, also they know he has control of a bunch of assets, so they don't want him to start selling things and he could sell all his stocks and possibly get out of there. So. Yeah, charged with the attempted murder by poisoning of his brother and three murders. Obviously his brother still has leg braces on at this point from this shit. He's a mess. They said Passanelli, who's the lead investigator, he said that when we started, we hit a brick wall, backed up and hit it again. That's where the professionalism and dedication comes in.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Right.

[James Petregallo]

That's two drunken coroners. Just noticed a coincidence there Was no dedication by you. You just went, I guess they got sick. Old broads die. You know what I mean? Anyway, we hit a brick wall.

[Jimmy Whisman]

The coroner happened to be, thankfully, on the other side of the wall already.

[James Petregallo]

Thankfully. He had a queer hammer and busted through it. Yeah, he got this. So he admits the theft that. He admits, I did steal that shit and sell it and all that, but I didn't kill anybody. That's fucking crazy. What are you nuts? He said that, you know, I don't contest the theft charges from the sale of scrap metal and zinc. He does say that he didn't poison anybody. He accused his brother Michael of poisoning dad. He said fucking Michael poisoned him. And probably got poisoned himself doing it. Oh, that's what happens.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, that's easy.

[James Petregallo]

Poison himself. He said that? Yeah, he poisoned himself. And he said he probably poisoned himself a little bit on purpose. Not enough to kill him, but just enough to point the finger at me so he could get rid of me. And then he has control of the company, see? Fucking Michael Jr's diafucking bolical. Willing to be in a wheelchair to get control. That's some shit right there. Kaiser Soze. He is fucking. Wow. So Chuck was not able to explain how Michael Jr. Could have administered the fatal dose to Michael Sr. On May 15, 1981, when Michael was so crippled he could barely hold a pen.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Great point.

[James Petregallo]

So, well, how do you poison him? And Chuck said, listen, Michael's the architect, by the way. Wasn't me. I did sell all that stuff. But it was all Michael's idea. He just blames Michael Jr. For everything.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, boy.

[James Petregallo]

He said, yeah, he was the architect of the sale of zinc and scrap metal. He said that he paid Michael cash because his brother was so crippled he couldn't sign checks. He goes, that's why. He goes. Things. Well, you got paid in checks. And he goes, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I paid him in cash because he just. He couldn't endorse his own check.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's all.

[James Petregallo]

Couldn't even do it. They said, well, then how did your brother sign his paychecks during the period then? Because he has paychecks that he signed himself. And he said, I have no idea. I can't explain that. Not good. Then he denied being present at work on September 8, 1980, shortly after he was demoted. And the day Michael had his first vomiting attack, he said, yeah, he was. Charles. Chuck was presented with a series of checks and order forms that he had signed on September 8. Because they were like, well, it says you were at Work. Because you signed a whole bunch of shit and ordered a whole bunch of shit. We're talking 20 different documents all dated September 8th. He said, I must have put the wrong date on all.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I post date checks all the time.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, I do that all the time. He was. I thought it was the seventh. I don't know. That's what happened. Don't worry about it.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah. Child support people.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. And they said, well, that's all fine. So you blame Michael because Michael wants to control the business, get rid of dad, get you out of the way. That makes sense. But who the fuck profited from the two women dying?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Michael doesn't get shit for that. And Charles said, I did, and my wife did. I got the money for that. So he's in jail now. While in jail, awaiting trial, he made a friend.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, made a friend.

[James Petregallo]

He made a friend named Marty Nathan. Now, Nathan isn't as close a friend as Charles would like him to be, apparently, because Nathan goes to the cops afterwards and says this, that Charles came to him and asked him if I knew anybody that could take care of some people for him. Perfect.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

And then he said, like, about some money for like, $10,000 on a first payment and like 10 or 20 on the second one. And I took it. And, you know, thinking that he meant to have them killed. So he said, how'd you take that? And he goes, I think he wanted to have them killed. Why the hell else? Gonna pay me 20 grand to go over and mow their lawn and cook dinner for them, take care of them.

[Jimmy Whisman]

He wants me to go over and.

[James Petregallo]

Wipe them out at night, do their laundry. He also said that Charles wanted to have his brother Michael killed. Not only Michael, but Joe Reichel, the guy who testified that he gave him arsenic.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, my God.

[James Petregallo]

Just that guy. So he can't testify against him about the arsenic. That's wild. He said, do all this while I'm in jail because then I can't, you know, I can't be blamed for it. So Nathan never got any money from Chuck, but he agreed to mail some letters for Charles when he was discharged from prison, and he does. So May 1982 is the trial for Michael Sr. And Mary Lambert. Okay, so the two oldest of the group here, Michael Jr. Comes to the trial, still has a hard time with his hands. He has leg braces now, but he has such bad numbness that he can't button his shirt still.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yikes.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Now, Chuck's attorney. This is not a good choice of attorney. His attorney has never tried A capital case. And this is a capital case. He's up for the fucking death penalty.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, of course.

[James Petregallo]

So the prosecutor portrays Chuck as an ingratiating salesman who wrangled extensions on mounting debts while never interrupting his lavish lifestyle. He said he skipped a mortgage payment in June of 1980 and went to Marco Island, Florida. He said he knew where he was going to get the money. Someone was going to die.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Wouldn't matter anyway what I spent.

[James Petregallo]

That's right. So they bring in the Joe Reichel guy, the guy who gave him the poison. And they said, do you recall when this happened? He said, it was a couple years ago. I believe in late 79. I had a phone call from Chuck. He knew we did plating some time back. And he stated to the fact that he had some pests around the house, animals in his garbage and doing some damage around his house. He asked me if I had any chemicals left from plating that he could possibly use to get rid of his pests. Like they don't sell this type of poison in every hardware store in the country in 1979. Every place had that shit.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Do you have any undocumented surplus stock somewhere?

[James Petregallo]

Something you could just give me in like a baby jar maybe?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, I don't want to. I don't want a paper trail of me going to Ace Hardware.

[James Petregallo]

I mean, well, back then you would have paid cash. You could just went to the next town and bought a thing of rat. It says rat poison on the fucking box. It's crazy.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It looks just like Skinny and sweet.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Yeah, perfect. Good for coffee. Makes it much better. He said I had a number of different. I said I had a number of different chemicals in the house. I named off a few. Which one of them was arsenic? They said there were some others. Do you recall, he said we had sodium cyanide, zinc cyanide, copper cyanide. These are very deadly.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Our place is just a regular smorgasbord poison factory. Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, man, it's a poison buffet over here. We have. They were all used in our solutions when we did plating. They said you also named arsenic. He said, and arsenic. I said after this conversation where the defendant and you talked about arsenic. What did he say during this conversation? And the guy said, he asked if he could have some of it. And knowing Chuck for a number of years, I did. I gave it to him. He said, if he could have some of what? And he said, arsenic. And they said, all right. Then what happened? He said, I told him, all right, Gave him the arsenic. Now they Bring in Fish Bean, the lawyer. And he attempts to describe what Michael Sr. Had said at the meeting where Chuck was. Was demoted. And this brings objections and legal fights over all this shit. They have a statement made by the trial judge during the course of a sidebar, and he said, I think you've got a conference here. And I think the state is entitled to at least elicit from Mr. Fishbean the fact that MJ Senior, that's Michael Sr. Was the one who wanted this change. What the change was, without getting into his conversations as to the things in your company, but that. Because basically it's. There's legal stuff he can't really talk about.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

I don't. I don't know if I. Well, I guess once the client's dead, you can talk about it. I think once the client's dead, you can talk about their shit at that point, I believe. I think it's only when they're alive, you're not allowed to. So that's part of it here. So they. They talk to him anyway. They. The attorneys start. Continue to argue, and they reach this compromise. The state's attorney said, your Honor. Your honor. Dick. His name is Dick. Dick, if you don't feel I can get into Michael Sr. S conversation, would you object to me leading Fish Bean and to some extent away from it? And the defense counsel said, no. And the defense counsel said, no, I think he's intelligently. I think he's intelligent enough to know where you're going to go. And the prosecutor said, I'll just ask him. And they. He said, I'll simply ask him who was. Who was there, who instigated the meeting. How did it come about? Michael Sr. Wanted it. Without going into specific conversations, what was the purpose of the meeting? They said a conversation regarding the internal structure. He was unhappy with Chuck. All right. Do you remember the conversation you had with Chuck and what Chuck had to say and all that? We're going to do that, basically. So the judge sustained the objection and rule overruled it concerning everything else, so they could talk to. To the lawyer about all this type of shit. So they say after Michael Sr. Had a rather lengthy presentation to Chuck, Chuck said to Michael Senior, what are you trying to say, dad? At which point the lawyer says, I objected and in effect clarified and somewhat amplified what Michael Sr. Had said. I expected Chuck to. Then, in effect, I explained to Chuck that, in effect, chuck, your dad is telling you that he's very unhappy with the arguing between you and he. And he's very unhappy with your Criticism of him. And he doesn't want you to work in the plant anymore. He doesn't want you to be under the same roof with him. He doesn't want you to be an employee anymore of the corporation. That doesn't mean you can't be a shareholder or a president or a director, because he has no power to do that. But he's taking this action as chairman of the board of directors to terminate your employment and terminate your compensation from the corporation as an executive employee. So he was getting fired.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Michael limps into the courtroom. Michael Jr. And I mean, he's a mess. He's on his leg braces and crutches and everything like that. So they said that he never made eye contact with his brother, wouldn't do it. Kept looking away from him and described being poisoned with arsenic. They described him as shuffling awkwardly with the steel leg braces hidden beneath his gray suit trousers. Jesus Christ, he said, I still bleak. I still suffer numbness in my feet, hands and fingertips. I can't pick up a coin, and keys with locks are difficult. Oh, Jesus Christ. He said, though all of this goes on, talking about when he ate lunch and everything like that. He said he became violently ill on three occasions after eating lunch and in the conference room at Allied Die casting. On all three occasions, he said he had brought his lunch from home but left his office in a spot accessible by his brother as well. So his brother could have got to his sandwiches. Whatever. He said, first time he got ill was, you know, four days after an angry family meeting and a month later and less than. No, less than. Or was also less than a month later after the ladies had died from the arsenic poisoning. So they try to actually kind of, on cross examination, they try to kind of blame Michael a little bit. He got Michael to admit that Charles wasn't at work when he first became ill. Michael said Chuck left work after the September 4th argument and didn't come back until after. Michael was hospitalized with headaches and nausea. So he said, well, he couldn't have been there. He couldn't have done this. So he said in March he was hospitalized with severe nausea. And then his father's troubles got worse the next month. And, yeah, the doctors all testify it's consistent with poisoning. He said his brother had unsuccessfully also sought large bonuses from the family business, which had been refused by their father. Oh, he said that an inventory taken of the company following the arrest of Charles showed a $57,000, $57,620 inventory shortage. So that's in addition to the other shit he sold. He was selling more shit.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah. So.

[James Petregallo]

Wow. That's stuff that wasn't. He wasn't charged with another thing here. They bring the doctor in and said that a doctor that was at the hospital when the brothers were. When the dad was in there. And he said that Chuck was seen hovering at his father's hospital bed. During the week in which he died of arsenic poisoning. He said the one I remember most being there, always hovering, was Charles. Now, there's some people. This is very exciting for this town. This is a really interesting. You know, it's a twisted story. Yeah.

[Jimmy Whisman]

What the fuck's going on? This guy's looting the company and people are dying.

[James Petregallo]

People are. He's killing people. Just do whatever he wants. Just pillage this company, which. It has to end at some point. It's like a pyramid.

[Jimmy Whisman]

At some point, you're out of people and out of money.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. At some point, there's no more people, no more rubes to pull into the bottom layer of your pyramid anymore. So I guess there's all sorts of people here. A high school business law class came to court. Regular court watchers. A group of Girl Scouts came one day.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Gotta learn about the judicial system. It's important.

[James Petregallo]

Well, you gotta learn how not to make cookies. I think is how it is. If there's a poison cookie case, the Girl Scouts are gonna be there.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Don't make them at a party plating factory.

[James Petregallo]

No, Never. Never. So one woman who goes to a bunch of court proceedings all the time. Says it's exciting to sit through the testimony. And guess what? The jury will decide. She said she's been to four or five spectacular cases like this in recent years.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Wait till you hear about Court tv.

[James Petregallo]

Holy shit. Her head's going to explode. Charles testifies.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, you got to.

[James Petregallo]

He has to. He admitted that he wrote a letter in prison. That attempted to implicate Michael in the poisoning deaths. Yeah, all right, fine. I did that. He said, yes, I did. Have Marty Nathan mail copies of this letter to his mother, to my mother, to my wife. To the plant supervisor at Allied Die Casting. And to my Uncle Frank as well. He said, this is what the letter said. Joe Reichel and Charles's brother Mike. Joe Raichel and Charles brother Mike. He used me to kill those people and set up Charles. The containers Joe gave Charles had powdered sugar with little arsenic. Just enough to get rid of the animals. Michael almost took too much by trying to make himself look like a victim. The police followed the clues just as we set them Up Mike, set up the phony theft. Now they tried to double cross me. That was their first and last mistake they ever made. They double crossed me?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Bastards. The first and last mistake they're ever going to make. So, yeah, he's trying to set other people up. He's trying to say that Joe Reichel and his brother were in cahoots. Wow. Yeah. And Joe Reichel didn't say I gave him arsenic in sugar. He just said I gave him a shitload of arsenic and told him how to put it out. Yeah, put it. To put it in sugar to attract the animals. So they also bring in a handwriting expert, gives expert testimony concerning the letter. He said it was 100% written by Charles and that he had tried to disguise his handwriting so it would appear that someone else had written it.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Wow.

[James Petregallo]

That's fucking funny. He didn't explain why he attempted to falsify the letter, but he did admit that he wrote it. Closing arguments here. The prosecutor's description goes like this. He said, Reichel said, I got some chemicals back here. I have some sodium cyanide, potassium cyanide, think I got some arsenic. And the defendant said, I'll take that, I'll take that arsenic.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I'll take all of it.

[James Petregallo]

Now. All of the cyanides, by the way, also great poisons.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

The problem is they are quick. You take cyanide, you're fucking dead.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Now like immediately. So that is not how you would want to plant an illness.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Like that. That's a massive death.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Unless you. Unless you can distance yourself from it entirely and you're. No, that's what the. That's what the Iceman used to do, is hit people with cyanide.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, exactly. They died. So a heart attack. Yeah, in his case. Heart attack. He said if I tell you, the prosecutor says, if I tell you not what the evidence was, certainly disregard it. But if you can't, certainly can recall the evidence. If I should misquote the evidence, I assure you it's not intentional. You recall, think back. The cyanide was passed up. Cyanide acts much more quickly. You know, a couple of minutes and you're down. It also leaves a. The smell of bitter alum. Remember that? Because a doctor had said that so you would notice it, basically. So this is a jury of seven men and five women. And they deliberate for seven hours.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Wow, that's a while.

[James Petregallo]

That's a long time. Very long time. And they find Chuck guilty in seven hours. Yeah, guilty. But you never know with this type of thing. This Is not.

[Jimmy Whisman]

They got it right.

[James Petregallo]

I feel like he did not crack. He didn't do anything. He sat there dead faced while they read it. And a county prosecutor said he still thinks he's slicker than anybody.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Slicker and snot. This one.

[James Petregallo]

Slicker than cum. Slicker than. What's the old. What's the old saying? There's a disgusting old timey saying that I heard one time that I almost threw up. Slicker than cum on a gold tooth. That's what it is. It was the grossest thing I've ever heard in my life. I was like, that's gross. I heard that when I was like 12. And that's the grossest thing I've ever heard.

[Jimmy Whisman]

It's slick.

[James Petregallo]

It's slick. Yeah, yeah. Especially with that is slick. Jesus Christ. That's disgusting. So during sentencing the prosecutor said he denies his guilt. You've seen no repentance. I think repentance is the first step toward rehabilitation. An acknowledgement of guilt. I'm sorry. He denies that. Can this person be rehabilitated? I submit to you? No.

[Jimmy Whisman]

No.

[James Petregallo]

He also says sentence this evil man to death.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, his original crime was to pay child support.

[James Petregallo]

That's it.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's fucking crazy.

[James Petregallo]

This is because he wants to buy in ground covered dome pools and Cadillacs. Wow. Fucking stupid vacations for his nannies. Like what are you doing? He said he showed no mercy to his victims. And was a cold blooded, calculated, evil murderer. He showed no penitence. He also said that because this was true at the time, 62% of American public favors the death penalty. He said that at one time, which the defense objected to and said he can't fucking say. What difference does that make? Who cares? It's what these 12 people think, not other people. So they also brought up. The defense brings up Chuck's pastor. Describing him as a good family man and a regular churchgoer.

[Jimmy Whisman]

My God.

[James Petregallo]

They also countered. So they called him an evil man who deserves to die for greed. The defense also has a says that they call a witness to prove the death penalty was an immoral form of publish of punishment as well. They bring in a criminal justice professor from McHenry County College. They bring in a junior college fucking. What are we doing here, professor? To do this, the defense lawyer asked the jury to consider Chuck's family, his wife and several children. The fact that he has no prior criminal record, which he does actually. He's fucking home invaded somebody. That's horrifying. And that the electric chair is not a painless death. Because that's the method. He said, I only hope that you do the right thing. And then he quoted a Bible commandment saying, thou shalt not kill. All right. He said the death penalty is revenge, not retribution. And by the way, no one had been executed in the state of Illinois since 1962 at this point, because the death penalty had just been restored in Illinois in 1977. So. Wow. He said that they talked a lot about that. 62%.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Fucking figure. They went back and forth. So also, the jurors on this one are going to deliberate for 2 hours and 17 minutes and they get to decide. Interesting thing is, while this is going on, a few minutes before the jury comes back here. This is crazy. A delivery boy walks into out of an elevator onto the fourth floor of the courthouse and hands the chief prosecutor a box of long stem red roses that somebody had sent him. Yeah, the card attached said, for a job well done and appreciated. It was from the Chairman of the McHenry County Board of Supervisors, Ron Morris. So the prosecutor smiled and was all happy. This is his boss, basically, that sent him this. He reached into the box and handed a rose to his top assistant. Then he passed out the roses to his secretary, a court reporter, a student court reporter, two bailiffs. Yeah, this is some big fat guy sitting there holding a rose. Now for the rest of the fucking thing. His chief investigator. All of this while Albanese's defense attorney stood nearby, really pissed off.

[Jimmy Whisman]

You bet.

[James Petregallo]

And finally he says, the defense attorney says, you know, my tax dollars contributed to those. And the prosecutor said, I'll tell you what, if you don't complain, I'll buy Chuck a funeral wreath. So there you go. They come back in and they say, you, sir, may fuck off. Death in the electric chair.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, he's gonna get it.

[James Petregallo]

He got death in the electric chair.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Wow.

[James Petregallo]

They gave it to him. Now, here's the thing that's weird though. The jurors were confused.

[Jimmy Whisman]

What do you mean?

[James Petregallo]

They had no idea before this started that they were the ones doing sentencing.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, they thought they were just going to say what they were going to say, and then judge gets.

[James Petregallo]

And they're going home. Yeah, that was it. They didn't know that. That was up to them. One woman here, Sharon Arteman, one of the jurors said, we didn't know it was up to us to decide that. Whoops, that's. Yeah, she said she and the other jurors thought the judge imposed a sentence. The jurors said they didn't know what to do. They Said the majority of those interviews said the decision to send him to the electric chair was the hardest one of their lives. The jury foreman said that he got the impression that the judge would say sentence Albanese from reading an outdated jury instruction pamphlet. They gave them all jury instruction pamphlets that didn't have that. The jury decides this. It still had the old thing. So who knows when these were from the 50s. They just keep reprinting the same ones over and over. So a counselor, one of the jurors, who's a counselor and psychologist, said that the decision to sentence him to death was more difficult than the decision to convict him. He said it's one thing to think about the death penalty in an abstraction, another thing in reality, we were making the ultimate decision. He said that he and the other jurors interviewed said they were comfortable with their decision. One said, I was willing to face a tough decision and not waiver. And one said, it was a very tough decision. We tried to do what was right. And one said that I have no regrets, I have no guilty feelings. He didn't show any sympathy for the people he killed.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah. It is just wild that. That they get to choose that. I think that should.

[James Petregallo]

That's so weird, Judge. Right. I don't know. I think. I think you can make an argument both ways for it maybe.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah. I mean, you know, certainly, like, it's certainly society who gets to. Should be able to choose.

[James Petregallo]

I guess the jury can be overwhelmed by emotion is one thing in the sentencing. That's where the judge is going to take the legalities and. And kind of how it weighs into other cases and all that kind of thing.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah. Or she.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. But I guess in the end, though, all they're really deciding is the aggravators and mitigators.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

You know, it's not really up to them to decide other than that. If they decide there's no mitigators, it's death penalty. Yeah, that's. So maybe that's what it is. I don't know. Now, the one juror said that the majority of jurors, about 10, favored the death penalty in the early votes. So you had two non death penalty. She said those originally opposed to the death penalty question whether they had the right to take his life even though they convicted him. They didn't really think that it was okay. So they said that one of them said that the death penalty will assure that Chuck won't have a chance to do anything like that again. One said that he doesn't believe the death penalty is a deterrent to crime, but it is just punishment, they said. Ultimately, each one of us has to accept circumstances of our behavior. Yes, that's the jury foreman. He said the totality of the evidence presented by the prosecution was overwhelming. And also he said that Chuck's testimony was, quote, almost too relaxed, almost too good. He's too full of shit. He's a con man.

[Jimmy Whisman]

He asked for it.

[James Petregallo]

Yep, he's a fucking con man, he said. We concluded Michael Albanese's brother didn't do it, even though he was being blamed for it. And that's how that goes. Now, Chuck's lawyer, super pissed about what he said. I'm going to argue that it's unconstitutional for the judge to automatically impose the death sentence on Wednesday, he said, especially in view that the fact of the pamphlet that the jurors were given to prepare for the case led them to believe that the judge always had the sole discretion to decide the death penalty. I guess under Illinois law, all death penalty sentences are automatically appealed to the state supreme court, obviously. But this guy, the lawyer blasting the judge, saying, this is horseshit. And they said the. The proof that the state presented of his guilt was greatly bolstered by inadmissible evidence and improper arguments. And that's the judge's fault. In addition, the jurors were given an outdated jury handbook and were not aware they were responsible for setting the sentence until the end of the sentencing hearing. When they were like, now you guys go in and decide. They were like, for real.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Maybe that's for the best. Because if they sit there wondering what they're, you know, I mean, just weigh the facts for now. We'll discuss the rest of the shit later.

[James Petregallo]

No shit. The prosecutor said it was not greed alone that made him do it for Charles Albanese. It was simply a matter of desperate necessity. He needed the money. Now, they said that he testified that, you know, and everything. Which is interesting, because when someone testifies, you're looking right at him and going, I don't believe you. Death penalty. It's interesting. And you would think, too, that I think when someone testifies in the death penalty case, you're kind of trying to let the jury get to know you a little bit so they don't want to kill you.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

If you're just some dude sitting in a suit across the room with people saying terrible shit about him for a week, then who cares?

[Jimmy Whisman]

But this gives you the opportunity to garner some sympathy right now.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, you can talk. You can look at them. I'm a human. See, look at me. You shouldn't kill a person. I think that's the way they're. That's the strategy here. Now, during the interim, he's sent to death row, by the way. Now during the interim, though, in between the two trials, because he's going to stand trial for the other murder too, and the attempted murder of Michael Jr. Virginia divorces him. Okay, but it's only for like financial reasons so she can access things. So, yeah. He vows, by the way, that this is bullshit. He's gonna fight it. He's pissed in the newspaper. Super pissed. Super pissed. Yeah. The newspaper says the fast talking former auto huckster is still selling this time himself, even though no one is buying. In a jailhouse interview where he has been held since the beginning of his recent three week murder trial, he conceded that circumstantial evidence against him was overwhelming. But he said, that doesn't mean he's guilty. Instead, quote, it was the perfect setup.

[Jimmy Whisman]

That's what that means.

[James Petregallo]

He said, I go over this in my head night after night. It's so obvious to me that somebody planned this all out. It's the biggest joke in the world.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Somebody planned this out. You man.

[James Petregallo]

And it's weird because for the first few steps of this plan, I was just getting lots of money and paying off my debts. So I thought everything was great, it was working out wonderfully and now I'm here. So the plan really came to fruition. Long game.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Someone was playing and my wife gets it all.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, my God. He said, I'm not depressed about it. I won't die in the electric chair. I'm very sure the convictions will be reversed and the truth will come out.

[Jimmy Whisman]

He's very sure.

[James Petregallo]

Yep. He described himself, by the way, rather than as a con man, as a prosperous businessman.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh.

[James Petregallo]

He said, I didn't need to rob any money. He said that he's a prosperous guy who, quote, could get a Bank loan for 5 or 10,000 just on his signature, because I could. Anybody would give me money. I got a house, I got all this collateral. He said, also, I'm a devoted husband and father. He said, from the day I married Ginny, my family's been my whole life. And he says, I know we got divorced two weeks ago, but we're still in love. He said the divorce was the only way she could get money from my Allied stocks because he wasn't allowed to. It was the only way to support her and our two little girls while I'm fighting this.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Hilarious that he says he's devoted to his Family. While his family is all the ones that have been dying.

[James Petregallo]

He's killing off his family. And three of his daughters have lived in Wisconsin for three years. He hasn't seen them in years. It's wild. He said that. You know, he doesn't dispute testimony which showed that shortly before the deaths of the two women, he persuaded Mary Lambert to leave her property to his wife by bypassing the two other children here, by the way, when. When her mom died. When Virginia's mom died, she got more than $72,000 from her mom.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, boy.

[James Petregallo]

And Chuck said Michael didn't benefit from their deaths. I know just me and Ginny did. But what better way to point to me to make me the common denominator in all these deaths? It's diabolical.

[Jimmy Whisman]

He's so good, they made me look.

[James Petregallo]

So guilty that it has to be a setup. That's all it is, man. And also to use the stuff that no one even knew that I got from a guy crazy. What? Jean Michaels, a fucking evil genius.

[Jimmy Whisman]

This guy's been following me for. Since 79.

[James Petregallo]

And as soon as the trial was over, he. Kaiser, sosayed out of the room. He, like, started walking and his leg braces fell off. And then he was walking normal and he lit a cigarette and got into, like, a long black car and drove away to go, like, just bang. Strippers in Vegas. That was what he did. Just like the end of Usual Suspects there. Wow. So what better way? He also speculates that his brother Michael poisoned their father and himself to appear as a victim as well. Okay, man. He is just diabolical that Michael Jr. Huh?

[Jimmy Whisman]

And he makes those claims with zero evidence.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, yeah. And he also said Michael Jr. Had access to the poison. He said, I kept it in my desk at work. He could have taken some.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Why would you keep it there?

[James Petregallo]

When would you keep a jar of Baby jar of arsenic in your desk at work?

[Jimmy Whisman]

When the. When the vermin are at home.

[James Petregallo]

That makes no sense. Wow. He dismisses as part of the setup. Two notes prosecutors say he dictated to two fellow jail inmates to implicate his brother in the killings. They said that they testified that he offered them up to 20,000 to kill Michael or Michael and his wife. One of the notes read, gail, Michael's wife and I. Meaning it's a letter from Michael, basically, can no longer live with what we've done. We. We, with the help of another, have killed the old ladies. And Dad, I took arsenic myself to make Chuck look guilty. But I overdid it. It's A letter from poor Michael Jr. Obviously. He also said that the jurors didn't look at the final financial evidence or all the holes in the case. They made up their minds before they even went in to deliberate. And then they sat there for seven hours. They deliberated for seven hours. I think they talked about it. He can't explain away the notes or refute his documented financial problems as well. 10-82-is the trial for Marion Mueller. Oh, Virginia's mom.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

So they said, quote, who to the fact show had arsenic? The defendant. Only one other person does any fact show had arsenic, and that was Joe Reichel, the one who gave it to the defendant. Joe Reichel never met Mary Lambert or Marion Mueller. The only one with arsenic that never met them and certainly didn't get anything when they died. Like the defendant got $70,000. Could it be contended that Joe Reichel snuck into Mary Lambert's house and spread a little arsenic in something and then snuck out for no reason? No. And he's the only other one that had any arsenic. Those two women that died and the one in this matter, Marion Muller, lived in a retirement village. They were old for the most part, but they still had a life to live. And they had friends and they had loved ones and they had shopping excursions. And it's not up to anyone to say someone is to die or when that person is to die. Except for me and you guys.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I get to choose it. Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

And you guys there. It's not up to Charles Albanese to say there's no more life left in these people because he has financial problems, because he can't handle his problems. And then otherwise the trial is pretty much a replay of the first one. Joe Reichel. I gave him the arsenic, the whole deal. Verdict comes in here. Unsurprisingly, guilty as balls on that one. And the jury this time, knowing that they are tasked with sentencing, they say, you, sir, may fuck off. Death in the electric chair.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Again.

[James Petregallo]

Again. Times two, baby.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh.

[James Petregallo]

One for each of your balls. Take that. So February of 84, here comes his appeal that he said, don't you worry about me. I got this covered. So he said, number one, he's represented by a trial attorney who never tried a capital case before, so he shouldn't have been qualified. The judge should have told him he couldn't do it. And they said also that he failed to properly investigate or present exculpatory evidence at trial, namely that the state laboratory which carried out the tests which helped convict him, were unreliable, which we hear all the time. And a lot of times it's true. We've had whole labs where pretty much everything in there was compromised before. So also the alleged hearsay statements of the lawyer as well. They argue that the court should order a new trial because damaging hearsay testimony was introduced by the lawyer. And, you know, can't do that. Now to qualify as hearsay, the evidence must be offered for truth of the matter asserted rather than for some other purpose. So they said in this case, whether Michael Sr. Intended to fire Charles or not is of peripheral importance. The important factor is the state of mind of the defendant, which really is a stretch. That's not really true. I'm sorry. They're letting that in. You can say that, but they're letting that in because they want to say they were firing Chuck. Chuck was mad. He wanted control of shit. So he did this.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

So you're getting that in without actually having the balls to say that's what you're doing. They're saying that's peripheral and peripheral importance. But legally it has to go towards state of mind. That's how you get hearsay in. So that's what they have to say legally is what it is, which is not really. That's kind of disingenuous, but whatever. So they said that the fish beans testimony was not offered for truth of the matter asserted, but for non hearsay purpose, which. Come on. If it has also a big truth to it that makes you look terrible, I think that has to outweigh that, probably. They also say that his testimony concerning his own out of court statement constituted reversible error as well. Fish burns out of court or fish beans out of court statements closely paralleled the statements made by Michael Jr that we've held to be admissible. So for state of mind as well. Also cautionary instructions involving the testimony of Marty Nathan, who is the prisoner with the letters who was offered hitman duties here. The defense counsel objected to the testimony of Marty Nathan concerning Charles Albanese desire to take care of Michael Albanese and Joe Reel. The objection was overruled. And this evidentiary ruling has not been contested on appeal. However, the defendant now argues that the trial. Trial judge should have approved a jury instruction stating that the testimony of Marty Nathan should be considered with caution and that failure to do so justifies a new trial. Okay. They say that Marty Nathan was not an accomplice to any of the crimes for which he was being tried. And his relatives were dead long before Nathan encountered him in prison. So don't blame him for it. Basically Expert testimony as well. He talks about how the trial court erred in allowing Rudolph Schaefer, an accountant, to be called as an expert witness for the state to give an opinion concerning the financial condition of Chuck's prior. Of Chuck. Prior to the deaths of his family members. He reviewed mortgage papers, bank deposits slips and canceled checks from 79 to 81. And presented his findings to the jury with the aid of charts. And testified that Charles had been in critical financial condition. That's awesome. That's like a medical term. Critical financial. I mean, shit's beeping quick. Beep, beep, beep. We gotta watch him get the paddles out. Um. So the defense contends that the opinion testimony impermissibly invaded the province of the jury. Because the jury could have evaluated Albanese's financial condition without the assistance of an expert. I disagree. I don't think lay people sitting in a jury. I don't know shit about stuff like that. If you showed me some businessman's financial portfolio with stocks, and I don't have a fucking idea what that means, I would definitely need somebody to explain this to me and tell me what it means. Also the prosecutor statements, they said, given the consequences of a death penalty case, it is crucial that a prosecutor avoid inflammatory. Inflammatory comments or mischaracterization of evidence during closing argument. The defendant maintains the prosecutor's comments constitute reversible error. Because of their prejudicial effect on the jury. Specifically objecting to the prosecutor's description of how Chuck obtained arsenic from Reichel. The prosecutor described the I'll take that. I'll take the arsenic. That.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, yeah.

[James Petregallo]

And the trial judge can sustain the objection. And the prosecutor said the. If I tell you what I tell you, it was not the evidence. Blah, blah, blah. If I misquote something, it's not intentional. That speech from the closing. They said the language used in the prosecutors closed closing Slightly embroidered the conversation between Charles and Reichel. But a comparison of the language used by the prosecutor and the actual testimony reveals the difference was insignificant. They didn't say word for word what he said, but he said the gist, basically. And he didn't say anything that made the guy look more guilty, essentially. So they also said they don't agree with the defendant's assertion that the prosecutor misstated the evidence in rebuttal. Um, and also the juror handbook. That's the big one. He's deprived of fair sentencing because the jurors received a jury handbook that gave them the impression they would not have to render a sentence at the Conclusion of trial. They said the jury must not be concerned with what penalty may be imposed if the defendant is found guilty. The law requires that the judge sentence the defendant. That's a passage from the handbook they were given specifically saying, you're not going to be doing that.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Which is not good. No, that is not good. The handbook was still in the possession of the jurors after the guilty verdict was returned and before the sentence was sentencing phase. The defendant submits the affidavit of the jury four person where she states she was surprised to hear at the end of the sentencing hearing that it would have to render a sentence. They didn't even know while they were watching the sentencing hearing that they needed to pay attention to this. Yeah, you have. Dude. I'm sorry. I get that this is a horrible guy and all this, but if you got 12 people. Yeah. Because if I'm sitting there and I don't think that I have any responsibility. I'm not paying attention.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah. They got to know what to do and what they're doing.

[James Petregallo]

I might. I might be daydreaming. I might be thinking of what I'm doing when I get out of here. I'm definitely not going to pay attention to every little thing because a man's life is in my hands. That's not happening at all. So that's really fucking interesting. They also said each member of the jury was examined in accordance with the law and were apprised of their sentencing responsibility. The confusion was caused by the distribution of the juror handbook has been considered by the court in the past and has found to not be reversible error. One judge says no litigant has a right, constitutional or otherwise, to have his case tried before ignorant jurors to acquit the juror or to acquaint the juror with his duties and responsibilities in a new environment and to increase his understanding of the process is of a trial can hardly be objectionable in itself. There's no way of knowing what misconceptions might exist in the absence of an official explanation. So their thing is the jury's probably confused on a lot of things. Is basically the law here. Wow. Other issues. They say it was error to instruct the jury to consider his potential for rehabilitation when the only sentencing alternatives were death or life in prison. So his ability to rehabilitate himself is really irrelevant.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Doesn't matter.

[James Petregallo]

Yes.

[Jimmy Whisman]

He's getting neither opportunity.

[James Petregallo]

Neither. Yeah, neither. So they said. Also the potential for rehabilitation is constitutionally mandated factor to be considered by the sentencing authority. Though that's what the court says. Such an instruction is designed to give the benefit of the doubt to the defendant, if any possible doubt as to the incorrigible nature of his character, and it was proper for the jury to be given such an instruction. They also say that the death penalty statute in Illinois is unconstitutional because it does not require the sentencing authority to make written findings of aggravating and mitigating circumstances. The statute permits consideration of non statutory aggravating factors, and the sentencing discretion represents an unconstitutional delegation of legislative and judicial authority.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Right.

[James Petregallo]

Wow. It is affirmed his death penalty. One judge agrees with the guilt but disagrees with the sentencing. They dissent on that and says that the United States Supreme Court has recognized that the qualitative difference of death from all other punishments require a correspondingly greater degree of scrutiny of the capital sentencing determination and ensuring that the death penalty is not meted out in an arbitrarily or capriciously way or capricious way. The court court's principal concern has been more with the procedure by which the state imposes the death sentence than with the substantive factors that the state lays before the jury as a basis for imposing death. Any practice that diverts the jury's attention from its principal role in the death sentencing processes undermines the entire system of procedural and substantive protections established by the Constitution. Listen, if I'm on the jury and I think we don't have to do shit, I think we're just watching this shit. And then the judge is gonna tell me what happens.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

And I zone out for 45 minutes or something and I don't pay attention to everything. And then they say, oh, now you have to decide are you gonna be as a juror? Are you gonna go in there and say, hey, listen, guys, I can't do this cuz I didn't fucking pay attention. Or are you just gonna go, okay, these people seem to have a good idea, is that I'll just go along with those people. Your average person is not gonna wanna embarrass themself in front of the entire court by admitting they didn't pay attention. Right.

[Jimmy Whisman]

You can't. You can't say it. You're gonna look like an asshole.

[James Petregallo]

And then it's gonna look an asshole.

[Jimmy Whisman]

All kinds of gates for appeals later.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Especially if you get in there and all the other jurors paid attention and you're like, oh, shit, what am I supposed to. You're just go, yeah. What that guy said. Yeah.

[Jimmy Whisman]

There's no back of the book here to read to get the gist of this?

[James Petregallo]

No, exactly so. Wow, that is interesting. They do say that the court has approved the concept of the Jurors Handbook, even though the handbook may contain minimal inaccuracies which do not prejudice the defendant. Prior to this case, however, the court has never held it permissible for the state to convey substantively inaccurate information to the jury by such devices. Yeah, there's something that's slightly different, but you're not going to have to decide the person's fate and you are going to have to decide their fate are way fucking different. That's totally different. So this is denied, this appeal. October of 84, the U.S. supreme Court refuses to hear this case as well. 12-3-84, the petition to the U.S. supreme Court for rehearing is also denied. July 28, 1986, Chuck asks the county for a new sentence and trial. That's denied. 9-29-88, Illinois Supreme Court upholds the county's denial of post conviction relief. 8-5-88, petition to the Illinois Supreme Court for rehearing is denied. May 15, 1989, U.S. supreme Court again denies to hear the case. Okay, very quickly. In 88, he appeals his dad's murder in the other trial and says five issues are presented. Whether he was denied effective assistance of counsel, denied effective assistance of counsel at sentencing hearings. Whether recent evidentiary discoveries render scientific evidence admitted during the trials unreliable. But that arsenic isn't poisonous now. Oh, we decided it's fine now. Actually we put it in Oreos and it's great. Whether the Lake County Circuit Court erred in denying the post conviction petition without an evidentiary hearing and whether the Illinois death penalty statute is applied in a racially discriminatory manner and is therefore unconstitutional. He is not a minority of any kind.

[Jimmy Whisman]

So this is all problems for him.

[James Petregallo]

This is big problems. So. 7-3-89, that's by the way, denied. 7-3-89, petition to the Illinois Supreme Court to rehear the case denied. Again. In May of 89, the US Supreme Court refused to hear his last appeal for that. He is inmate N22283 and he's fucked. Only thing for him, they have taken the electric chair out of the equation and we're now into lethal injection territory. May 28, 1993, the U.S. district Court, Northern District Court of Illinois, Eastern Division denies to hear the case. 3-16-94, the U.S. court of Appeals for the 7th District District upholds the U.S. district Court ruling. 5-31-94, Petition to the U.S. court of appeals fucking denied. Execution date is set for September 20th, 1995.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Here we go.

[James Petregallo]

Amnesty International releases a letter, as they do for all the executions for him, and said Charles Albanese was sentenced to death for the alleged poisoning. It's not alleged. We know he did that. Of his father and mother in law and his wife's grandmother. He's reportedly always maintained his innocence. Albanese was represented at trial by an attorney who had never tried a capital case and who, according to former attorney and who represented Albanese in his appeals, failed to properly investigate or present evidence at trial, namely that the state laboratory was unreliable. So the letter from Amnesty International will get you exactly. Who got that? Does Nothing for you. September 20, 1995 is execution day. Yeah, they fly him via helicopter for this.

[Jimmy Whisman]

What?

[James Petregallo]

Helicopter? Where they have to fly him? Helicopter flew Albanese on Tuesday to Stateville Correctional center from death row at Menard State Maximum Security Prison. Hey, how about put the death row where the fucking. Where the chamber is so we don't have to pay for helicopter rides back and forth. How much would you pray that thing crashes on the way there? I would just so pray.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I might just grab the stick.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, fuck it. This is gonna be easier, quicker. And I'm taking people with me. God damn it. Who knows? I don't know if you're a murderer, if that's what you want. So they put him there, and he's waiting in a holding cell just off the execution room for most of the days. In the green room.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

And he requested a clergyman who conducted a brief Roman Catholic mass with no visitors, just him. No family attended, as they could have since they were also his victims. So, I mean, they couldn't come, but they said they. So they could have come because they were allowed to go to the execution. But they said, quote, they have opted not to be here. Okay, so apparently. Apparently Chuck's a big San Francisco 49ers fan.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Really?

[James Petregallo]

Well, yeah, they've been pretty good the last 15 years. And they just won the super bowl that January of that year. I think they beat the Chargers in the Super Bowl. So he spent his last hours talking with prison guards about his life and the NFL. Jesus Christ. That Steve Young's really something for that. Ricky Waters, man, He's a beast. Just forever. At one point, he was even watching a game show on tv. Okay, just take it. I'm not watching a game show. I'm not pissing my time away with that if I'm about to get killed. Not a game show.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, that just sucks. If it's 912 that they're going to kill me. And this just came on at 9. I need closure of this game show.

[James Petregallo]

That's what I mean.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

I need some. Who's winning? What family is going to win this feud? I can't tell.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, you gotta tell me who's going to the Bahamas.

[James Petregallo]

Now, he declined a sedative earlier in the evening.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

But accepted one about three hours before the execution.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah. Now he's getting.

[James Petregallo]

Give me all the drugs you got. Fucking knock me out. His attorney said that he was prepared to die. Nevertheless, he and his client struggled for a new trial. Up until the last minute, he said, we've done everything that I can think of. His attorney said he faxed an appeal to the US Supreme Court prior to the announcement and before the 7th US District Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against him. The US Supreme Court denied to hear the case and refused to postpone the execution. Albanese refused to ask for a change in his sentence. He wanted a new trial to clear his name or death. He didn't want commutation.

[Jimmy Whisman]

All right.

[James Petregallo]

The lawyer said I could. I could probably get you commuted. And he said, new trial or death. Yeah, okay, fuck that. So this attorney said he would offer to be with Albanese for this. He said, but I'm guessing that based on his attitude and the way he's always been, he would just as soon have me in my office or in the Illinois Supreme Court office in case something breaks.

[Jimmy Whisman]

He's ready to go.

[James Petregallo]

He's ready to go now. Last meal.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, what'd he get?

[James Petregallo]

Here it is. It's actually a decent one for once. Cheeseburger, prime rib, baked potato, Coca cola. Garbage or garbage bread? Garlic bread, not garbage bread. Pistachio ice cream. Very good. Now, by the way, we know that's it. Meat, potatoes and ice cream and coffee and Coke and garlic bread. So that's a decent meal. No veggies, though. We find out where it was all from, too. This is all broken down by the Chicago Tribune. The steak, potato and drink was from the Outback.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, he got Outback Steakhouse.

[James Petregallo]

Outback Steakhouse. The garlic bread was from Giordano's and the Coffee was from McDonald's.

[Jimmy Whisman]

He got Giordano's garlic bread, not bad.

[James Petregallo]

And the coffee from McDonald's and the ice cream from Baskin Robbins.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Wow. We got name brand shit.

[James Petregallo]

Got name brand shit. This is what it costs the state of Illinois, by the way, which is not that much. It's just not $22.19 for the steak, 2.99 for the drink, 725 for the garlic bread, 2.99 for ice cream, a dollar for coffee, $36.42.

[Jimmy Whisman]

What the fuck?

[James Petregallo]

We won't do that with people anymore. We go, you get your bag. Southwest Tips. And listen. Even if you want to kill the guy yourself and you don't care and you love the death penalty, it's just a human thing to go. You're a piece of shit. I'm not. Yeah, we're not. We're civilized. And we are going to give you a nice meal before you go and at least act like we have some connection to reality.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Your death is going to involve a doctor to give you an iv. Here, have some. Yeah, have some Outback.

[James Petregallo]

Have some Outback. So last words were, thank you to.

[Jimmy Whisman]

The warden, appreciate the prime rib.

[James Petregallo]

But he also sent a letter here. He sent a letter to be read. He prepared a statement before he was executed, and that was read also. And it said, truth, justice and the judicial system is an oxymoron. Okay, Exclamation point. Not only have you killed an innocent man, you've destroyed my family. He's got some balls saying that. All I have worked for in life and allowed someone to get away with murder.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Right.

[James Petregallo]

You know, not me. So the prison officials announced him dead at 12:24am it took 23 minutes for him to die, to be moved into the execution chamber, fitted for the injection and put it in. He said that this is the corrections director, Odie Washington. Said he was very relaxed and very talkative. He talked about his old neighborhood, his upbringing. He was alert and calm. But he was showing some anxiety on occasions. And he did request on several occasions a sedative and it was given to him. He was the sixth person to die by lethal injection since Illinois reinstated the death penalty. The others executed were Charles Walker, John wayne Gacy in 94, James Free, Hernando Williams and Jervis Davis. So that's it. They said a lot of the people around because the population went way up in the 80s and early 90s. So they said a lot of these people don't even know about this shit. Like local people didn't even know anything about it. Knew a goddamn. Didn't know a goddamn thing. The old police chief said nobody was really overwhelmed by his presence until the news broke, saying he was. Seemed like a model citizen. He seemed fine. So don't know. But, yeah, he's done. One person said, I remember the publicity. It just surprised me that anyone would do that to their parents. He killed his parents. He should pay the price. So There you go. 2002, Mom, Clara dies.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Oh, no. So everything.

[James Petregallo]

No, Michael Jr. Got everything.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Jr. Gets everything.

[James Petregallo]

He's still alive. Michael Jr. I couldn't find any. I couldn't find any notice of him being dead. So Michael Jr's. Yeah, he's like 85 years old, but he's doing great and he's got a.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Lot of money, hopefully recovered by now.

[James Petregallo]

I would hope he's not limping around still. So there you go. There is McHenry, Illinois.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Wow. If he is still living, James, he was closer to death than he has any fucking idea.

[James Petregallo]

Can you imagine how close? I mean, wow. It's. It's shocking that he didn't try to take another shot at him too.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah, that's a tough wild.

[James Petregallo]

I think he was like, okay, I gotta. I gotta let that ride for a while. I'll get rid of him in a little. A little later, you know what I mean? After, you know, because then I gotta kill mom too. I got a list.

[Jimmy Whisman]

And now if I poison him again later, it shows a clear time of deterioration, that perhaps it's just natural.

[James Petregallo]

So there you go. What a crazy fucking story. Just had to switch it up, period.

[Jimmy Whisman]

He thought he was gonna murder his whole family and get away with it.

[James Petregallo]

Thought he could do it and take out all their business and everything else. Because we have a serial killer next week. So I was like, we need a break between horrible serial killers. Even though this is because 3 is technically a serial killer. So he could do it. So anyway, even the cool off times and everything, it all fits. So anyway, hope you liked that. If you did get on whatever app you're listening on, give us five stars. It helps tremendously follow on social media. We are Smalltown Murder on Instagram, Smalltown Pot on Facebook. Head over to shut upandgivememurder.com where it's there you may ask everything merchandise and especially tickets to live shows. Get them right now. Especially everything. The next three are sold out. So Seattle in October is your next live show you can get tickets for. I think there might be a couple left in Philly that you can check out, but I'm not sure. So check on those. Get in there. Shut upandgivemerder.com. you also definitely want Patreon. Oh yeah, patreon.com CrimeInSports is where you get all the bonus material. Anybody $5 a month or above. You're gonna get so much stuff. A whole back catalog of hundreds of episodes you've never heard before. Immediately upon subscription, new ones every other week. One Crime in Sports one, Small Town Murder. How much of that do they get?

[Jimmy Whisman]

All of it.

[James Petregallo]

Every goddamn second of it. That's right. So get in there this week. What you're gonna get for crime and sports athletes who have had millions and millions and tens of millions of dollars and pissed it all away. You don't have to like sports for that. That's just dumb people. Dumb human behavior. Then for Small Town murder it is part two of Ted Bundy attempting to help find the Green River Killer, which is one of the most fascinating things we ever talked about. Him trying to. Psychologically, it's wild.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Crazy.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Trying to save his own ass. It's fascinating.

[James Petregallo]

While trying to save his own ass and say he's actually not a bad guy. So that is patreon.com crimeinsports and you get everything. All of our shows, Your stupid opinions. Crime and sports, which you should be listening to. And Small Town Murder. All add free with that as well. And you get a shout out at the end of the show, which happens to be right now. Jimmy, hit me with the names of the most wonderful goddamn people in the world who you could happily eat a cookie and a donut from because you know it wouldn't be poisoned. Hit me with them right now.

[Jimmy Whisman]

This week's executive producers are. Tiffany Gonzalez. Happy birthday. Birthday. She's the birthday bitch. So happy birthday, Larry. Butterfest. So good to see you, Larry. Larry, what a.

[James Petregallo]

Great to see you in California and great shows in California. Thank you, everybody. San Diego. Irvine, you're the best.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Marcy Collins. Gary Howard. Kimberly Radisky. Maria Jones got married. Congratulations, Maria. I think it's still Jones. It may be a different last name now.

[James Petregallo]

Who knows?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Richard. Richard.

[James Petregallo]

Sakura.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Kim Perry. And Benjamin Brady. Perhaps Brady. It's two D's. I don't know. You don't know. It could be Brady. Other producers this week. Cody Leversy. See you in Grand Rapids, bud. Happy hour. Checking in and have a kid. Texas. Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Life is pictures. It's really coming together. Sawdust Dreams. Janice Hill. Carol Colson. Holly Manning. Isaiah Herrera. Kimberly Boone. Sally Cookman. Jessica Warren. Emily Satori. Shiza Minnelli. Chad Walding. Lisa Stevenson. Jody with no last name. Alexis Jones. Dts. Jared Parley. Cynthia. Balki. Yep. Maybe just Belk. No, it's probably Balky, right? Kyle Sweezer. Tanya Rodriguez. Emma Kepler. Devin Shue. Dagwood with no last name. Madison Payne. Daniel Kissel. Jen Ann. Missy with no last name. Travis with no last name. Travis Step. Perhaps it's the same person. Maybe you got Two. Maybe it's two people named Travis. We don't know.

[James Petregallo]

Jennifer Navarro.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Maria K. Melissa Larson, Josie Yadrick. Shyly, Shyly. Saltz. Sierra with no last name. Sharon Duhan, Ted Holleran, Donovan Chalker, Ben James, Jennifer Spies. I think Spy Space. Chrisann Sanchez, Keenan with no last name. Don Brooks, Matt Regan Reagan. Maybe Rebecca Martin, Melissa Steinrock, Sonia Crockett, Richard Burman, Logan S. Meredith Barf, Bart Bartelt, John Henderson. Staza. Stacia. Stacia Harmon, Marley, Arthur. Is it. What is it? How does that go? Station? I don't know.

[James Petregallo]

I don't know. It could be any of those.

[Jimmy Whisman]

I'm bad at reading. Clifford with no last name. Bobby Hutchinson Hutchison. Mary Ellen Maisti. Maestas. My Maestas. Lori Clemens, Sarah Splitoff, Carol Lee, Kimberly Floyd, Tim Beya, Heath Borden, Valerie Olson, Ashley Brown, Nicholas Meredith, Ed Church, Alex Graves. Antebelli. Antebelli Rosales, Tim H. Jason Comstock. What is this? Eli Schwetzel, Linda Crystal Fields, Ryan Coffinor, Kelly. Kelly Meyer, Tia Keen. Paradoxim. Chris Schomberg, Aaron with no last name. Hallie Haley. Perhaps Pierre, Pier and Dozy. Pier and dozy. Lana McCarthy, Sarah Cruz, Chelsea with no last name. Brittany Lattimore, Wendy and Hunter Stevenson. Rebecca Clouthier, Clemmie Watson, Tara Walker, Katie Theobald, Tristan C. Tom Whitney, Nick Bravo, Jess Warthen, Matt Frank Buff with no last name. Jamie Green. Oh, boy, I love her. Jojo. I love Jojo. I love them, too. Blair Wood, Kelly, Kelly Johnson, Lori Glitch, Gitchell, Renee Sylvester, JC the letters J and C. Christina Trujillon, Polly with no last name. Laura Stefan, Rachel Waldorn, Waldron. Uh, K and L. K, L. Julia Lumio, Dan McGough, McGoo. Darcy with no last name. Wynn with no last name. Mark Youngs, Alexandra. Alexandra Teese, Michael Raspberry, Shelley Mae, Michelle Van Acker, Alexandria Averett, Isabella Briggs, Lauren Elston. Colleen with no last name. Victoria Brady, Brian Blaylock, Barney3862. Michelle Gannon, Darren Darrell, Darrell Bresee Brazzy, Annabelle Moreno, Jen Scraper, Colin Lundgren, Magda with no last name. Marnie Bernardi Courtney with no last name. Anthony Zambrano. MC the letters M and C. Jamie Wilson, Jeb Fernandez, Lynn Guff, Allie with no last name. Sam Bonus, Matthew Lopez, Bruce Hurl, Jolene Christensen. Jolene, obviously. God damn it, Christensen. Angel Salgado, Bobby B, S, K, I, I Bisky. I don't know. John Keaton, Joy Wilson, Kevin Voss, Jason Lesnowski, Michelle with No last name. Bethany Tibbets. Alex. Alexis Sweeney. Becky. Becky Malandrino. Eric Chavara. Yep. Chavera. Veronica Hill. Del Ro. Kobe Willock. Shotleheim. Reichenbach the third. Reinbek.

[James Petregallo]

Get it.

[Jimmy Whisman]

All right. Eric Aaron. Aaron McNeely. Jeremy Hamilton. Debbie Burns. Nikki King. Sierra Hull. Jason Fox. Colby Ron. Yeah. Jackie Mullen. Jenny. Jeannie. Simi. Simi. Terry Pollock. Brianne Spence. Christian Buchanan. Chris with no last name. Gunner with no last name. Holly Straub. Lana. Laura N. Stephanie Ford. Tamara Culver. Out. Abel. Abel. Gabriel. Kiara Kira. Kira Goretti. Gracie Decker. Mylene Turner. Myra with no last name. Chris Pearson. Scuba Steve. 91 1. Jesse. Jess with no last name. Shelby. Elmore. Ann Perry. D. Nicks. Jay Ramos. Morgan Jennings. Snodgrass. Patrick Bailey. Matthew Makes. Maxon Maxon. Olivia Bonesteel. Kate B.B. shannon with no last name. Tanya Britton. Elizabeth Nelson. Ann Culver. Rochelle Schilling. Angela Epspeth. Ann Kowatz. Terry Pollock. Allegra. Allegra. Benjamin. Sarah Delz. Delzell. Jake Cloppen. Clapple Clopple. Hemrick Winston. Dennis. Colleen with no last name. Bennett. Hancock Bennis. It's Benjamin Emmy. Emes. Emiss with no last name. Kay Kirk with no last name. Heather Turk. Torrance. Francis B. What is this? Greg Kavan. Jay with no last name. Katie with no last name. Heather Coon. Anne Gray Beal. Erica with no last name. Tracy Johnson. Donna D. 75. Kara. Karen Altman. Lauren. Lauren Brown. Rachel mark. Edwin Feliz. Mr. Marcus. Not the Triple X guy, I guess. There's a porn guy named Mr. Marcus, I assume. Or just not the guy from Triple X. The movie.

[James Petregallo]

Someone with a large penis.

[Jimmy Whisman]

There it is. Thomas Hurlbut. Hurlbut, hurlbut.

[James Petregallo]

Hurl out your butt.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Andrea McAllister. That is a poop. Ann Postel. Paul Bremner. Rachel Graves. Amber Breathawer. Brethawer. Dan Cole. Mark. Salute. Salute. Alessandro Pildner. Von Strineberg. Tracy with no last name. Michael Barone. Perhaps just Barone. Angela with no last name. Krista McConnell. Jay. Nope. Chris Jazwa, Sam Richardson and all of our patrons. Thank you guys so much.

[James Petregallo]

Thank you, everybody, so much for all that you do for us. God damn it. You guys are the best. You keep coming through for us week after week. Thank you. We hope you're enjoying all the content on Patreon and everything like that. Either way, keep coming back every week. Tell your friends, tell everybody about it. If you want to find us on social media, shut up and give me murder.com is the place to go. Drop down menus take you where you want to go. Keep coming back and seeing us. And until next week, everybody, it's been our pleasure. It's been so long. How have you been?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Hello.

[James Petregallo]

I'm doing well, Dave. Why? Why are you talking that way?

[Jimmy Whisman]

Please say one.

[James Petregallo]

For a compliment?

[Jimmy Whisman]

For a question.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, this is weird. I think I'm gonna go.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Talking with an automated phone tree can feel pretty ridiculous.

[James Petregallo]

That's why when you call Pacific Source Health Plans, you'll get a real person to answer all your important questions. Pacific Source Health Plans.

[Jimmy Whisman]

This is a real person.

[James Petregallo]

How can I help you? Human service, not automated phone trees.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Find a plan at PacificSource members first.com.

[James Petregallo]

Marketing is hard, but I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be. Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now and it's great. You love the host. You seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion. And this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention? You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre produced ad like this one across thousands of shows. To reach your target audience in their favorite podcasts with Libsyn Ads, go to libsynads. Com. That's L, I B S Y N Ads. Com.

[Jimmy Whisman]

Today.