Murder Of The Queen - Madisonville, Kentucky

Summary

Small Town Murder: "Murder of the Queen – Madisonville, Kentucky"

Date: December 11, 2025
Hosts: James Pietragallo & Jimmie Whisman

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Overview

In this episode, James and Jimmie take listeners to Madisonville, Kentucky—self-dubbed “The Best Town on Earth”—to dive into the brutal and bizarre murder of beloved local businesswoman Anna May “Ann” Branson, known as the “Dairy Queen.” Through their signature mix of exhaustive research and sharp comedy, the hosts peel back the deceptively plain layers of small-town life to uncover a dark family betrayal involving greed, gambling, and a savage murder that shocked 20+ years of small-town tranquility.

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Key Discussion Points

1. Madisonville: Small Town Personality

• Geography and Demographics:
  • Western Kentucky, population of ~19,500, median age 36.5, mostly working-class.
  • Mottos: “Best Town on Earth” and “Where Small Town Warmth Meets Infinite Possibilities.” (07:00)
• Economy & Culture:
  • Historically a coal and tobacco hub, now faded.
  • Not much to do: “If you want a bar, the only options are Tumbleweed or Applebee’s.” (11:35, James)
  • “One of the most corrupt places I’ve ever been.”—One-star town review, which the hosts hilariously dissect. (11:44)
• Crime Rate:
  • Very low murder rate—no murders in 20 years before Ann’s case.

2. Victim Profile: The Iconic Dairy Queen

• Anna May Branson (Ann): Born 1917, local legend, Depression survivor, self-made Dairy Queen franchise owner (since 1950s), real estate mogul, family benefactress, flamboyant, adored.
  • “There’s always money in the Dairy Queen,” quips Jimmie. (33:46)
  • Known for fur coats with the animal’s head still attached, high heels into her 80s, signature purple-ink ledger, and extreme generosity.
  • She had no children, was the glue and piggybank for her sprawling extended family, but was also known to be a shrewd businesswoman who tracked every debt to the penny.

3. The Murder

• Discovery & Crime Scene (Jan 13, 2003):
  • Dr. Bob (her fiancé) and Ann’s brother Earl find her facedown in the basement—initially thought to be a fall, quickly revealed as a “slaughterhouse.” (45:04-46:41)
  • Detective: "Her face was unrecognizable from blunt force that caved her skull..." (51:43; Mary Kinney Branson, victim’s niece and author)
  • 97 stab wounds, severe blunt force trauma; described as an act of extreme rage.
    • “This person was so enraged they just kept stabbing and stabbing.” (53:47, James; quoting medical examiner)
  • No weapon found; no forced entry; rings and cash untouched; suggests personal, not robbery.

4. Initial Investigation & Suspects

• Family and friends: Dr. Bob, brother Earl, and cancer-stricken sister Grace—a parade of unlikely and mostly quickly ruled-out suspects, each explored for both alibi and comic effect.
• Town landlord/handyman Wayne Shelton and unstable tenant “Robert Prince/Joseph K.”: Both investigated due to opportunity and motive (rent/eviction), but each clears via alibi or polygraph.
  • “He would actually call her in the middle of the night and say that he had ghosts up in his attic. And would she please get rid of the ghosts?” (72:17, James)
• Town and family worry the killer might be a random maniac due to lack of leads.

5. Break in the Case: The Nephew

• Russell Winstead: Ann’s nephew, race-car driver turned mining-equipment salesman, deacon, Little League coach, all-American family man…with a devastating gambling addiction and $97,000 debt to Ann, all tracked in her purple-inked ledger. (88:49-90:49)
  • “He visited casinos in the previous year of 2002…236 times…lost hundreds of thousands of dollars.” (97:59-98:11, James)
  • Russell had written a bad $1,200 check as a token payment before immediately gambling and losing the latest $9,700 loan from Ann.
• Timeline & Confrontation:
  • Placed with Ann near time of murder; wife Tammy’s alibi falls apart under questioning—“He told me to say 7:25.” (119:14, Tammy’s confession)
  • Polygraph results: “100% probability of deception on the question about stabbing, 99% about hitting her on the head.” (127:24)
• Search & Discovery:
  • Burner phones for secret casino affair; custom hunting knife consistent with murder weapon under his mattress; cash/valuables untouched at the crime scene.
  • Russell flees to Costa Rica (prompted by convenient U.S. laws and high-stakes casinos; Costa Rica offers no extradition for potential death penalty cases).

6. The International Manhunt and Capture

• Flight and Support:
  • Russell supported by his father Earl (Ann’s brother), who wires him stolen inheritance money via a middleman.
    • “She is still paying for this asshole to gamble now”—James (142:31)
  • Sting operation catches Earl, who receives probation and house arrest. (144:04)
• America’s Most Wanted tip: American tourist recognizes Russell at Costa Rica casino from a rerun, leading to his arrest in 2005: “How did you find me?” asks an exhausted Russell. (151:09)

7. Trial & Aftermath

• Prosecution: Built around circumstantial evidence, financial motive, polygraphs, witness contradictions, and Russell’s flight as “consciousness of guilt.”
• Defense: Points to lack of forensic evidence, mismatched timeline (some expert debate on exact time of death), and attempts to cast doubt on ex-wife’s credibility.
• Intriguing Twist: Accused murderer and cellmate Fred Roulette confesses—later revealed to be a ruse/paid confession by Russell (157:52). Fred returns to recant after learning he could face the death penalty.
• Verdict: After 6 hours, the jury convicts Russell Winstead: Life without parole for 25 years plus 20 for robbery (concurrent after appeal).
• Aftermath:
  • Russell is currently serving his sentence, eligible in 2032.
  • Ann's legacy is still felt in Madisonville; Dr. Bob visited her grave weekly until his death.
  • Book “Murder in Mayberry” by Mary Kinney Branson covers the case in detail.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Madisonville’s quirks:
  “Their law enforcement set people up. The task force and all. They are all awful.” (12:57, James reading local review)
• On Ann’s style:
  “She wears mink coats with the head still on. I have a picture...from the 60s...I saw eyes.” (34:26, James)
• On small-town generosity:
  “She’s the family’s bank...She’s always very well put together—high heels even into her 80s.” (35:10, James)
• On the murder’s brutality:
  “97 stab wounds! Do that 97 times, and your arm is sore—like you can’t...” (53:02, James)
• On Russell’s gambling addiction:
  “236 trips to the casino in one year—that’s every two days!” (98:11, James)
• Confronting Tammy’s alibi:
  “He told me to say 7:25.” (119:14, Tammy’s confession)
• Russell’s doomed flight:
  “She is still paying for this asshole to gamble now—on another continent.” (142:31, James)
• Russell’s arrest in Costa Rica:
  “How did you find me?” (151:09, Russell)
• On defense arguments:
  “The prosecution wants you to convict based on debt and suspicion. That’s not how justice works in America.” (161:09, Defense Attorney)
• On Ann’s generosity and impact:
  “Every Christmas morning I would walk over to her house. We just looked forward to seeing her at Christmas time. I miss her smile perhaps more than anything.” (153:42, Tom Branson [nephew])

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Important Timestamps

• 05:42 – Introduction to Madisonville, Kentucky (“Best Town on Earth”)
• 24:41 – Ann’s early life & rise to business owner
• 33:38 – Ann’s personality and reputation (“money in the Dairy Queen”)
• 40:48 – Ann’s new romance with Dr. Bob, even in her 80s
• 45:04 – Discovery of murder; crime scene description
• 53:02 – Medical examiner details 97 stab wounds, skull fragmentation
• 72:17 – “Attic ghosts” tenant as suspect
• 88:32 – Ledger found, showing Russell’s staggering debt
• 97:59 – Russell’s 236 casino trips in one year
• 119:14 – Tammy reveals her husband asked her to lie
• 127:24 – Polygraph reveals near-100% probability of deception
• 142:31 – Earl wiring inherited money to fugitive Russell in Costa Rica
• 151:09 – Russell arrested, “How did you find me?”
• 157:52 – Fake confession by fellow inmate Fred Roulette
• 174:36 – Verdict: guilty on all charges, life sentence
• 180:06 – Dr. Bob’s devotion & Ann’s legacy

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Tone & Style

The hosts blend deep research and respect for the victim with rolling, riff-heavy comedy. They skewer everything from town slogans (“infinite possibilities!”), to the absurdity of small-town drama and police mishaps, to the killer’s delusional double life, keeping the story fast-paced, darkly hilarious, and yet genuinely empathetic to its tragic heart.

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Final Thoughts

The murder of Ann Branson shattered Madisonville’s self-image as “The Best Town on Earth.” Amid a festival of bad debts, family secrets, compulsive gambling, and some truly Kentucky-specific quirks (like a church dinner followed by homicide), the episode unravels the sad unraveling of a family—reminding listeners that, in the words of Mary Kinney Branson, in Madisonville, “blood matters.”

Transcript

[James Petregallo]

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[Jimmy Wissman]

Guys, thanks for helping me carry my Christmas tree.

[James Petregallo]

Zoe, this thing weighs a ton.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Drew Ski, lift with your legs, man.

[James Petregallo]

Santa.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Santa, did you get my letter?

[James Petregallo]

He's talking to you, Bridges. I'm not. Of course he did.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Right, Santa, you know my elf Drew Ski here. He handles the nice list. And elf.

[James Petregallo]

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[Jimmy Wissman]

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[James Petregallo]

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[Jimmy Wissman]

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[James Petregallo]

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[Jimmy Wissman]

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[James Petregallo]

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Hello everybody and welcome back to Small Town Murder.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yay.

[James Petregallo]

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

[Jimmy Wissman]

I'm Jimmy Wissman.

[James Petregallo]

Thank you folks so much for joining us. Today we have an absolutely crazy edition of Small Town Murder. As usual, I'll just say it's not a surprise. It's not like. Well, it's kind of real boring today. Nothing much happens. No, no, we'll find the crazy and we will give it to you. Before we give you that though, definitely head over to shutupandgivememurder.com Tickets for live shows, the two in this week in Philly and D.C. are sold out. But next year, full slate on sale right now. And I'm going to give you the dates real quick here. February 21, Nashville, March 6, Durham, North Carolina, March 7, Atlanta, Phoenix, Arizona on 20 March. 21 March is your stupid opinions. Live show in Phoenix. We have May 1st in Salt Lake City, May 2nd in Denver, May May 29th in Buffalo, May 30th in Royal Oak. That's in Michigan. If you're there, you probably know that. September 18th, Milwaukee. September 19th, Minneapolis. October 3rd, Dallas. October 16th, San Jose. October 17th, Sacramento. November 13th, Tarrytown, New York. And finally closing it out with November 14th in Boston, everybody. So a couple new ones on there. Get your tickets right now. They are available. Salt Lake City's about sold out though, I think. I don't think there's any tickets left for that. So get your tickets quick if you want them. So do that. They make great gifts for this holiday season. Do that. Shut up and give me murder.com also get yourself Patreon or get somebody else Patreon if you want to give a nice gift. Patreon.com crimeinsports all you need to be is $5 a month or above. And you get so much. You're getting so much. Hundreds of back bonus episodes you've never heard before immediately upon subscript. New ones every other week as well. This week we're gonna finish up Charles Starkweather for Small Town Murder and you get all the crime and sports, all the small town murder. Hundreds of those. New ones every other week. Then you get everything that we put out regularly. Crime and sports, your stupid opinions and both episodes of Small Town Murder all ad free with your Patreon ad free ad free. And you get a shout out at the end of the show too. So it's all we can give you. Patreon.com crimeinsports get in there and do that now. That said, disclaimer time.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Here we go.

[James Petregallo]

This is a comedy show, everybody. This is a comedy show. That doesn't mean that the facts are not 100,000% real. Everything is real. Nothing is embellished for comedic effect or any garbage like that. You don't have to. That's the thing. You don't have to. There's plenty to make fun of without doing that. We make fun of a small town because we're all from somewhere that deserves to be made fun of. That's just fun. We, we make fun of maybe a Bumbling police force that lets a murderer go free to kill again. That's all easy. We make fun of murderers because what else are we gonna do? But what we don't do is we don't make fun of the victims or the victim's families.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Why is that, James?

[James Petregallo]

Because we're assholes. But. But we're not scumbags.

[Jimmy Wissman]

There you have it.

[James Petregallo]

And that's how it works. And that's how we think it should work. So if you think that that sounds good to you, you're gonna hear a great show. If you think true crime and comedy should never, ever go together, maybe this show's not for you.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Maybe.

[James Petregallo]

Maybe it is, though. Give it a shot. Yeah. Either way, we warned you. No complaining later. That said, I think it's time everybody to sit back. Here we go. Let's all clear the lungs and let's all shout.

Give me murder. Let's do this, everybody. Yes. Let's go on a trip, shall we? We are going to Kentucky this week. All right, here we go. We are going to Madisonville, Kentucky. It is in western Kentucky.

Probably. James, you trailed off there.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, I was waiting on you to finish it.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, we'll get into it. It's in western Kentucky. It's about an hour and 40 to Nashville, which, by the way, February 21st, we will be in Nashville.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I'll see you there.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, yeah, get your tickets. Two hours and 15 minutes to Louisville, Kentucky, and about 55 minutes to Cadiz. Cadiz? How did we say that? I don't remember.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I think it was Cadiz.

[James Petregallo]

Was it Cadiz? I think. Yeah, that's episode 610, our last Kentucky episode. Murder Soup, that was called. Yeah, quite a mess. I remember that. So this is in Hopkins county, area code 270. They also have 364. That's not good enough for you. And here are the mottos. Here they have a couple of them, kind of a nickname and a motto. Yeah, Here is their, I guess, nickname. And they use this everywhere. Best town on Earth. On earth. Not in the county. Not in the state. On earth.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Not in the country.

[James Petregallo]

No. There could be somewhere, a tiny village in Samoa. We're better than them.

I don't care if it's a tiny village in Norway. Up in we're better. So also, where small town warmth meets infinite possibilities.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Infinite.

[James Petregallo]

Infinite possibilities are here. So, I mean, can't go wrong with infinite. So the history of this town, Madisonville, was founded in 1807 and named for James Madison, Secretary of State at the time. Was he not even president? Yeah. Secretary of State.

[Jimmy Wissman]

How late he was.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, that's 1807. Yeah. Cause Thomas Jefferson was president.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, okay. 1807.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, that makes sense. During, like, Lewis and Clark and all that going on.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He was like fifth or sixth president or some shit, right?

[James Petregallo]

One, two, three. Yeah, something fourth. Fifth. So it was named the seat of Hopkins county in 1808 and incorporated in 1810. So it's the county seat here. Hopkins county. And even the town of Madisonville. Best town on earth or not divided by the Civil War. Kentucky was a border state.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, no. Was it?

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, there was no. It wasn't all or one. All or the other.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Really?

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, this was one of these ones where there'd be people that lived in the same house that were fighting on different sides.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wow.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, it was one of those kind of a joint there.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I had no idea.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Union supporters joined a regiment, recruited by a guy named James Shackelford. And then a guy named Al Fowler recruited Confederate troops from the town. So, okay.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And this town itself was divided.

[James Petregallo]

Yes, that's what I mean.

All the way to. The houses were divided. You literally have brothers fighting on different sides of the line.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Very familiar.

[James Petregallo]

That's wild shit, man. So farming was the major deal here for most of the 1800s. Tobacco was the crop that they were mostly doing here. They did find coal in 1837.

[Jimmy Wissman]

There you go.

[James Petregallo]

And opened up a coal mine in 1869. But mining wasn't a major industry till the railroad came in. So that's how it works here.

From 1892 to 1912, the Hustler, which was originally called the Madisonville Hustler, which both of those sound. What is that?

[Jimmy Wissman]

The newspaper?

[James Petregallo]

Those are the newspapers. Those sound like LA Weeklies. Like, you'd get weird ads for a third in there and shit. That's where you find Hustler. In the Hustler.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Not the Hustler.

[James Petregallo]

I know, that's what I mean. That was the newspaper, though, serving Madisonville back then. Now 1960s manufacturing and service industries came and kind of changed everything a little bit here now. On November 15, 2005, a tornado tore through the city, of course, and destroyed a bunch of it, including the home of the former Boston Celtics star Frank Ramsey, which was destroyed there as well.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Did the Hustlers survive?

[James Petregallo]

The Hustlers has not been around since 1912.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, that makes sense.

[James Petregallo]

It slowly died of syphilis. It was very sad. It was.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It was a newspaper that died before the newspaper industry.

[James Petregallo]

No shit. Yeah. Died when it was booming, actually. Real progressive. So here are some Reviews of this town because we've never been there. Here is five stars. Madisonville is a very productive, active small town. We have all sorts of events that happen, such as Return to Bethlehem and Oktoberfest.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, boy.

[James Petregallo]

Return to Bethlehem. I really love that. Madisonville is excellent at supporting small businesses. We have so many that are thriving. My favorite thing is the community of people.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Is that right?

[James Petregallo]

Favorite thing? Here's five stars. I love the peace of the small town Madisonville. Everyone is friendly and it's nothing like the. It's nothing like the. Where there is too much going on. I don't know. I don't know. You guys can try to figure that out and translate that from Madisonville, Kentucky to English and we'll figure it out. Here's two stars. There is nothing to do in Madisonville and it's a very small town in the middle of nowhere. To be able to do anything, you have to drive at least an hour away. There's not many options of places to eat. Now here's two stars. And they're going to tell us what those restaurants are. Here we go. We have two McDonald's, two Burger Kings, Wendy's, two Sonic's, a few other fast food restaurants. If you want a bar, the only options are Tumbleweed or Applebee's. Only the Tumbleweed. Oh, yeah, Applebee's bar sounds depressing.

You don't wanna be there. And then finally, one star. Oh, my goodness, this person is angry. One of the most corrupt places I've ever been.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, come on. How many places have you been?

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, what are we talking about? Are you really a world trial? Yes, corrupt.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Come on.

[James Petregallo]

School board is run by crooks that are friends with all the judges. Cross the wrong teacher with the right last name and you could lose your kids or spend months in court. Did you send your kids?

[Jimmy Wissman]

What did you do to your kids?

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, how bruised were your kids? What long sleeves and fucking June bullshit were you trying to pull?

[Jimmy Wissman]

You're gonna blame the teachers for you beating the shit out of your kids?

[James Petregallo]

Jesus Christ. Your kid came to school with a pocket full of fentanyl and now you're complaining to these people? If you don't belong to the 1% of Hopkins county, you will be treated as lower class while your children will be assaulted in schools and teachers covered up.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, well now.

[James Petregallo]

Wow, this is getting deep.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Now, now I got questions.

[James Petregallo]

Stay away. Maybe this should be our story for the week. Stay away. Do not bring your families here. Well, unless you got the money to buy the football team some New uniforms. Then you will be fine. There's some real specific shit going on there. I tell you what. And then one more. We gotta do one star. Madisonville is a corrupt and twisted town.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Twisted now.

[James Petregallo]

Twisted. Their law enforcement set people up. The task force and all. They are all. Task force and all. They are all awful. All right. I don't know what's going on here. People of this town, 19,533 people at the mercy of these powerful teachers.

It is more women than men. 50.6% women, 49.4% men. Average age, median age here, I mean, is actually lower than the national average by about a year. It is 36 and a half. We have. It's about 50. 50 married, just like the rest of the country. But a lot more people are single with children. Oh, that's a thing. It's about double that here. Race in this town, 80.4% white, 11.1% black, 0.9% Asian and 3.4% Hispanic. Religion in this town, plenty of that. 50. 50 is the average here. 58% religious. And no surprise here, the vast majority are Baptists. 31.9% of the people here are Baptist. As we know, Baptists are the Catholics of the South. They're going to be everywhere. Not a lot of Catholics. 1.7% of those. So 0.0% Jewish. Unemployment is average. Median household income is low. The rest of the country, it is 69,000 and change. Here it is $46,816. That's low. That's not great. You really want it to be super cheap. Luckily here, as we look at the cost of living, 100 is regular. Average here at 72 for cost of living, that's not bad. But the housing is the low thing. Median home cost here, $132,800.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's wonderful.

[James Petregallo]

That is very low. Yeah, that's extremely low.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I like it.

[James Petregallo]

That is wonderful. Unless it's here. That's the problem now. So let's find out. You have to go here. Damn it. You are the 1%. You have got to do it. New uniform money. All set and ready. We have for you the Madisonville, Kentucky real estate report.

The average two bedroom rental here goes for about $810 a month, which is about a third less than the national average. That's pretty cheap here. House number one just reduced 500 bucks. They reduced it $500.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What's the point?

[James Petregallo]

It's a house.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Plus it was $600.

[James Petregallo]

That's what I mean. It's a four bedroom, one bath, 1040 square feet. I don't know how you fit four bedrooms into a thousand square feet.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I mean, the living room and the kitchen are both bedrooms.

[James Petregallo]

And it's. I'll show. It's just this little house. It's like.

[Jimmy Wissman]

There's no fucking way there's four bedrooms.

[James Petregallo]

It's like wedged in these trees too. Like. It looks like the trees.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It might fit four beds in the house.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, they just have four cots in the living room. This house? Yeah. No land or anything. $48,000. And like I said, just reduced yesterday, as a matter of fact.

[Jimmy Wissman]

500 bucks.

[James Petregallo]

500. And here's a nice little brick house. Nice little. It's a three bedroom, one bath.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's cute.

[James Petregallo]

1644 square foot house. It's a nice little brick house, little front porch, detached garage. 0.33 acres. So not really neighbors are kind of on top of you. But that's okay. It was built in 1953. Inside it looks clean. I see fireplaces, hardwood floors.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

Nice little joint. 129,900 bucks for that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's not bad.

[James Petregallo]

No, that was just reduced $10,000 as well. Oh, now you get it. It's on sale, everybody. Yeah. And then finally here we got this big house. Five bedrooms, eight bathrooms, tea bowl for each and every B hole.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wow.

[James Petregallo]

6,244 square feet.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Holy shit.

[James Petregallo]

It is a monster. Look at this joint. It doesn't look like much from the outside, but it's deep.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yes, it does. Look at that curved drive. Yeah, that's a fucking road. That's your driveway.

[James Petregallo]

That's awesome. That's wild. Problem is, it's built in 1987. Doesn't look like it's been updated since 1987 is the issue. 4.6 acre lot as well. Big lot, lots of woods, 695,900 bucks. Whoa. For all that house and almost five acres of land.

[Jimmy Wissman]

In Kentucky, though.

[James Petregallo]

In Kentucky? Well, yeah, that house needs a lot of work. I mean, just the tiles themselves. You're like, holy shit, those are old.

[Jimmy Wissman]

But if you put 100 or 200 grand into that house, you've got a great place.

[James Petregallo]

You can do a lot with that. Now, things to do here. Let's find out what we got for things to do. What do we have? We have the free concert. It's praise fest, everybody. Oh, boy. The city of Madisonville is proud to announce the fourth fest and Praise in the park lineup at Madisonville City Park. What the hell does the 4th of July have to do with religion?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Nothing. But make it.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Have it on Easter, right? Or whatever.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Jesus lived through 32 of them.

[James Petregallo]

J. So.

Jesus likes lighting off bottle rockets? That's what it is. The annual event is the largest three day outdoor music festival in the region. That's very specific. Largest 3 day outdoor music event in the region. In the region.

[Jimmy Wissman]

How big is the region?

[James Petregallo]

In the western Kentucky hill east of. Not. Not all the way to Louisville now. Not all the way up to there. All the way down to Nashville.

[Jimmy Wissman]

The mountain.

[James Petregallo]

If you go east of Louisville and then south of us about 20, that's the region. Just in that. It's the biggest three day outdoor. There's a four day. That's much bigger, but we can't compete with that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

South, Indy, West.

[James Petregallo]

Very specific. It's like Steve Martin and the jerk. Between this eraser.

This. Right. Anywhere in this little tiny region. Anywhere. Anywhere in here. In this.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Divider.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, anywhere between the erasers and the. What was it? The army men maybe? Army men, I don't remember. It's free to attend.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Basically. You're getting fucking Tootsie Rolls.

[James Petregallo]

That's it? That's it? That's all you got?

[Jimmy Wissman]

And you can have one.

[James Petregallo]

That's all. And it's anywhere in there. Free to attend. Will feature world class concerts, food trucks, various vendors, a beer garden and fun for the entire family. Okay, I'll give you the last year's lineup and this year's lineup.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, great.

[James Petregallo]

Last year's lineup. Tracy Lawrence. That's great. Country person. He's terrific.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, you don't know him. Paint Me in Birmingham, he's terrific.

[James Petregallo]

I love how you asked me that in a surprised way. Oh, you don't know him? No, I don't.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He's great.

[James Petregallo]

As a matter of fact, how many Al Martino songs do you know? There you go.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Does he sing Time Marches Out?

[James Petregallo]

Exactly.

So we got Tracy Lawrence, Tretch of Naughty By Nature. Tretch is gonna be there.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, shit. How are those two doing? The same.

[James Petregallo]

What is happening? It gets weirder. Don't worry. So Tretch without fucking.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Without the rest of them.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, without. What's his name? What's the little guy? Vinnie. Vinnie something.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, Vinny, Vinny.

[James Petregallo]

I don't remember. It doesn't matter. Digital Digital Underground will be there.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Minus the one that matters.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And the guy with the nose, he's dead too.

[James Petregallo]

Shock cheese. Dead.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I'm positive. Shocked.

[James Petregallo]

I don't think so. I think he's.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Fucking dead. Right? Come on. Yeah. 20, 21. Who the hell Is dancing.

[James Petregallo]

He's the only person. Tupac didn't even rap when he was with them. It was just him rapping. Okay.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Chuck G's gone, though.

[James Petregallo]

Then Cain C A I N. That is all caps.

[Jimmy Wissman]

If that not Big Daddy.

[James Petregallo]

Not Big Daddy. Kane. Then Consumed by Fire. Which sounds religious, I think, from Kane on down.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's not good.

[James Petregallo]

That's not good. Then this year's lineup was Morris Day in the time.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Get out of here. How are they getting these people?

[James Petregallo]

Awesome. Ruben stuttered from American Idol.

[Jimmy Wissman]

From American Idol, yep.

[James Petregallo]

Chris Jansen.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, he's a country singer.

[James Petregallo]

Chase Matthew, that's a country guy. I'll tell you that right now. Just by his name.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They're not good.

[James Petregallo]

They're good. What is it with the two first names of all these country guys?

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's not for James. Just like comedians, they take their first and middle name.

[James Petregallo]

They take. They just dropped the chat. They all do that. Stop doing that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I know.

[James Petregallo]

It's stupid. Brian Martin. It's so annoying. Torin Wells. I don't know. And Josiah Queen. Okay, those are gonna be local guys, I think so. The mayor, Kevin Cotton, said with three nights of diverse music, including country, hip hop, praise and worship, there's something for everyone to enjoy. In other words, no one will enjoy this show completely. Everyone will enjoy one small part of the show.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And then after leaving, we got everything from praise to worship, praise to worship.

[James Petregallo]

And everything from these erasers to this praise right here. Everything in there from the worship to the praise. Right. Anything inside the praise.

[Jimmy Wissman]

But also, how did Mayor Cotton.

[James Petregallo]

We were doing that, I don't know, but he nailed it. Mayor Cotton set us up lovely. Thank you, Mayor Cotton.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Nice job, Mayor Cotton.

[James Petregallo]

Thank you, Mayor Kevin Cotton. And then finally, crime rate. Well, we're interested in this town here. Property crime slightly below average. Almost there. But slightly below now. Violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, and of course, assault. The Mount Rushmore of crime is about half the national average. So that's good. That's good.

[Jimmy Wissman]

All the praise and worship music, that's all it is.

[James Petregallo]

I think it's the remaining members of Digital Underground that are keeping it safe.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's keeping them confused. Going. That's not Digital Underground. It's doing that for 365 days.

[James Petregallo]

Sing about the Burger King bathroom, can you? No shit. What songs do you do?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Is everybody from the Time still in there, too? With Morris Day?

[James Petregallo]

I don't know. I hope Morris Day is still alive. Otherwise it's just the time and it said Morris Day and the time that said, let's talk about this murder. Let's. This is a wild case here.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That festival's got me.

[James Petregallo]

It's wild. It's a crazy time. Let's talk about a lady first here. All right. Anna May Winstead we're going to talk about here. She goes by Ann and she is born November 30, 1917.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh my.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, she is going to be a. She perseveres. We'll just say that incredibly.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Tough lady. She was. She's from this area, the Madisonville, Hopkins county area. Her parents are William and Lily Winstead.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And we won't even talk about them.

[James Petregallo]

No, they're fighting fathers. That's what I mean. They're. They're back before Social Security numbers here, as is Anna. As Ann, she had to get one issued because that didn't come until the 30s. Now she's got a large family locally. She's one of several siblings, including a brother here that we'll talk about named Earl Winstead. He'll come up quite a bit in this. Now these people grew up in the depression. So I mean she was 12 when the stock market crashed. So they shit was rough when they were teenagers. Real rough. They had nothing. I mean this is people now. I mean people are poor now and it's terrible. But compared to depression poor.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Poor now is like depression poor people. They didn't even have food. They didn't have. Yeah.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Depression poor was.

[James Petregallo]

They were making their clothes out of flour sacks. Literally. That's not good. They had dirt floors and we're totally different. Like I said, not taking anything away from modern day poverty. This is another level of poverty. They bathed in a wash pot, in a bin. Yes.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They had a bowl of water that.

[James Petregallo]

They heated up on the stove and.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Somebody got to use that last.

[James Petregallo]

Yes.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And that's why they said don't throw the baby out with the bath water.

[James Petregallo]

Because that happened because you can't see them in there.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Right. And that happened.

[James Petregallo]

So this is a whole other era, man. So she ends up like a lot of people did. And it makes sense back then too. She marries her high school sweetheart in 1935. And that is just to get to be off of your parents payroll, basically. Now that's one less mouth to feed. So that was like doing your family a favor was going and getting married. Now you're an adult and someone else's responsibility. She marries a guy named Carol Gooch Branson. The Gooch love it. Poor little Gary Coleman running from him. Different strokes. Joe the Gooch. So Carol here they're married in 1935, they're gonna be married for 59 years.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah. That's incredible.

[James Petregallo]

No biological children they'll ever have.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What?

[James Petregallo]

Don't know if someone can't have kids because this is pre birth control and stuff. If you could have kids and you fucked at all, you were having kids back then. That's just the way it went. And no, she has fucked for 50 something years. 59. Yeah, there are probably 59. I hope, I hope, I hope they were. I hope not. I hope they were.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I hope they fuck till the day somebody filed for divorce.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, well, no, no, they don't file for divorce. Carol eventually dies.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay, well, yeah, I hope they fucked that day. I hope she fucked him to death.

[James Petregallo]

This is blood in, blood out, this marriage. There's no getting out. You got. You die out of this marriage, man. So she has a lot of nieces and nephews and is very kind to all of them. She's that cool aunt that never had kids that like gives you money when you're a kid. I had an aunt and uncle like that who were a great aunt and uncle who never had kids. And so they had money, you know, because they never had kids to spend it on. Yeah, just when I was little, every time you go there, like, my uncle would like give you like 10 bucks and he'd be like, yeah, here you go. You know what I mean? Like, that was the best. So that's cool as shit. She does even more than that, though. She goes above and beyond. Now, during their early years of their marriage, this is still the Great Depression and they are two young kids, so it's not like they have great educations or great job prospects. So they were so poor for years, they were eating beans four nights a week. Beans. Just beans.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Probably not even cans. They probably had to boil water for those.

[James Petregallo]

That's what I mean, I assume. Yeah. They probably got dried beans from the store and did it because they were cheaper. So, I mean, that's how you get some protein, I guess, some beans in you. Now, During World War II, Ann jumps right into the workforce as far as she is. Ann the Riveter. I mean, that's what she's all about. Her nephew, Jack Branson, who we'll talk plenty about in this story, said Ann was a Rosie the Riveter During World War II, working on fighter planes. After that, she liked business and she stayed in the business world.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Nice.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. She was like, I like working. I'm gonna stay doing this in 1950. Here we go. All hail The Dairy Queen, everybody. She buys a.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She opened one.

[James Petregallo]

She opens a Dairy Queen franchise.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Brilliant slang, those cheeseburgers.

[James Petregallo]

Get it out there. The first one In Madisonville in 1950 is when the whole kind of drive in burger in a shake culture is exploding. I mean, this is so all through the 50s, every teenager in town is hanging out at the Dairy Queen. It's the first one in town.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Money hand over fist.

[James Petregallo]

Hand over fist. He just making so much money.

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[Jimmy Wissman]

Now back to the show.

[James Petregallo]

Hey everybody. Just gonna take a quick break from the show to tell you how to feel all sorts of good this holiday season with soul.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Getsol.com oh, absolutely.

[James Petregallo]

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[Jimmy Wissman]

Now back to the show.

[James Petregallo]

They said this is another relative of hers, Mary Branson. I think this is Jack's wife. Mary said the center of town was the Dairy Queen and everyone went there for date night. Ms. Ann, as a boss, was a demanding person, but she also made you Feel like you were part of the family there. Yeah. So that's kind of how it works now. She takes all this money that she's making in ice cream and burgers, and she ends up later on investing that in real estate. She becomes an investor. She flips some houses, and she also has a bunch of rental properties that she has. So she's, like, building an empire while her and Carol together here.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's a damn shame they don't have kids to help with the family business and then pass it on to, but.

[James Petregallo]

Instead, they just get to sit, save tons and tons of money is what they do. They build an empire and they become millionaires.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Really?

[James Petregallo]

Absolutely. They become millionaires and they do great doing real estate in Kentucky Queen. Yep. There is money in. There's always money in the Dairy Queen. Not the banana stand at the Dairy Queen.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Not always money in Kentucky, but sometimes.

[James Petregallo]

At the Dairy Queen. Yeah, if you do it right, they're there. Yeah, that's where all the money's going from Kentucky. So now she is described as. She's, like, really flamboyant. She wears mink coats with the head still on, and she has jewelry. She's really glamorous for Kentucky, we'll put it that way. She is like, I am rich.

[Jimmy Wissman]

With the head on.

[James Petregallo]

With the head on. I have a picture. I'll post it on social media of her from the 60s with a thing. With a. It's got a fucking head. I saw eyes. I was like, this is crazy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I've seen a cena.

Coat, but those eyes out, homie. Yeah, just lop the head off, for Christ's sake. I realize there's more skin and fur there, but I don't want it to resemble the animal.

[James Petregallo]

That's a statement you're making. Yeah, it still has a head on.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, it's a statement, all right.

[James Petregallo]

So she's also extremely generous. Extremely generous. I mean, lends money to everybody. She is the family's bank, essentially.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Football helmets and shit.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, forget about it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

The whole team.

[James Petregallo]

The whole team. She's the family's bank, though. Anybody's in trouble, they go right to her and she'll lend them money. That's the way it works. She's always very well put together. She's got bright red hair that she's been dying for years and years and years. Her nails done, clothes are immaculate. High heels even into her 80s.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Is that right?

[James Petregallo]

High heels, hair done. Makeup, elaborate piece. Jewelry covering her. Everything to go out of the house. She's known, by the way, all of her loans for people. No interest on these loans. Just pay me back.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Just pay me back when you can.

[James Petregallo]

Yep. It's crazy. So 1994, her husband dies.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, Carol.

[James Petregallo]

So poor Carol dies. And she, though, is still full of life.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

She's in her 70s and she's not ready to rest yet.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She's got millions.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. She lives on a large brick home as well. She's doing very nicely for herself. She is flipping houses and kind of carrying her family, basically. She's. Everybody kind of knows they can depend on her, which is wild if you're depending on someone who's in their 80s.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

That is a. That's a rickety bridge that you're trying to cross.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Get your shit together.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, that's. Don't depend on someone who could be dead any second.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Any second.

[James Petregallo]

Any second. I won't give out her address. We had somebody. Hey, the one thing. If there's an address that we give out for, like, a murder scene, don't drive by the house a million times. We had somebody message us that we had mentioned an address, and it's because it was in every newspaper article. It was very public record is the only reason why we put it in. And they said they live in the house now, and there's tons of people driving by their house all the time. We're like, hey, that's not cool. I mean. I mean, it was out there. It was out there publicly. It wasn't like it was. And I mean, it'll go away in a week, but it still searched it. Yeah. Be cool. You know what I mean? The house. If you see a murdered house, that was 30 years ago. You're not gonna see any blood or body parts or, like, crime scenes.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's all over. It's done.

[James Petregallo]

It's just people living in there. So, you know, don't worry about it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

There's one three blocks from me. There's one three blocks from you.

[James Petregallo]

Leave it alone. Yeah, yeah, it's fine. So now she's flipping houses, by the way. She gets herself really into real estate. I think she sells the Dairy Queen franchise at some point and really just makes real estate her business. She buys shitty houses, flips them, and rents them out as a flip. She fixes them up and then rents them out and then eventually sells them if they're. If the prices are. Oh, so she's got a big portfolio. She's making millions of dollars. She's doing amazing. Jack, her nephew, said everyone knew that they could borrow money from Ann, but that they would have to pay it back. Yeah, she will get on you. She kept a ledger. She kept a spiral notebook that she wrote everything in her purple gel pen that she liked.

Pen she liked to write.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I know what it is, absolutely clear one and it's so good.

[James Petregallo]

But she likes that purple pen. It's more her personality. Little doodles in the margins of her thing. But she keeps track of everybody's loans. She keeps meticulous records of loans, of payments, of missed payments, everything. Mary Branson said Ann was so much of a businesswoman that she kept a ledger with information about people that owed her money. And she also, she doesn't like throwing people out. She owns all these properties, which means she has dozens of renters which you're going to get everybody. You know, some people pay on time, some people are late, some people don't pay at all. One of her relatives said Ann knew people sometimes had it rough and couldn't pay their rent. It was not unusual for her to let the rent ride for two or three months. Some she purposely carried longer. It was very difficult for her to put someone out on the street, which is tough. If you're in that business, you kind of have to be ruthless, I guess to make money.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And that's to make any. But she has millions of making money anyway on it. It's just to help her family and friends.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, if you're making tons and tons of mo. This is just renters. These aren't even family and friends. These are just people who are strangers renting her places from her.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's just she's putting loans out on that.

[James Petregallo]

Not loans. She's letting their rent ride for a couple months, you know. Okay, I understand things are tough. That's a lot, man.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Eventually you gotta get those people the fuck out. That's your income.

[James Petregallo]

That's tough. I guess she figured she was older and had a lot of money and could, could let. Could stand it, you know what I mean?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Sure.

[James Petregallo]

Now as. As of 2003, she finds herself a new man.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Get out.

[James Petregallo]

She is in her 80s, finds herself a new man, which is pretty awesome.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She's like, he's in his 40s, get 85 years old.

[James Petregallo]

No, no, no. He's an older guy too. He's a retired ophthalmologist from Evansville.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He's got a little bit of cash too.

[James Petregallo]

So a professional guy. Not some, not some poor guy who's.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Scheming 45 year old trying to bang an old lady to death.

[James Petregallo]

Or some old guy who is like surviving on cans of Kidney beans. And now he's gonna hook himself up with some old lady that'll supplement his Social Security payments, hoping he'll outlive her.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And then he gets all his shit.

[James Petregallo]

I don't have to eat cat food anymore. This is great. No, this is Dr. Robert Feniman. Dr. Bob over here, that's what everybody calls him. They met through mutual church circles and got along splendidly. That's funny. One of her relatives, Mary here, said when she and Dr. Bob first started dating, she said, well, I've got a boyfriend like 84 years old. Which is adorable. That is great. I like that. My grandmother was always like looking. I remember we took her to that Chinese buffet we were talking about. Yeah, she got all dressed up too. I mean, she had her makeup on, she was all dressed up. Took her out and at the end of it she's like, this is nice and blah, blah, blah. We were like, what's up? She goes, you know, I think maybe I'll meet a man. She says, I thought maybe I meet a man. But no, I was like, okay, maybe.

[Jimmy Wissman]

We'Ll both reach for an egg roll together and we'll spend the rest of this together.

[James Petregallo]

You're gonna meet another 86 year old guy at the Chinese buffet and you guys are gonna fall in love over a hot plate of chicken and broccoli. What are we talking about?

[Jimmy Wissman]

My 82 year old aunt, over the steam, rode the fucking train from New York to Benson, Arizona. It takes a week, mind you, she rode it with the same guy and.

[James Petregallo]

He wouldn't leave her alone, so they got married.

[Jimmy Wissman]

When they got off the train, he goes, can we keep in touch?

[James Petregallo]

She goes, no, I heard plenty from you.

Plenty of.

[Jimmy Wissman]

The man cried.

[James Petregallo]

Well, seven days is a relationship.

[Jimmy Wissman]

By that point he thought, we're just gonna stay together. She told him he doesn't make enough money.

[James Petregallo]

That's hilarious.

Oh, man. My grandmother looking for somebody who liked sushi, apparently. So.

She gets engaged to Dr. Bob. Yeah, engaged. So they're gonna get married in 2003.

[Jimmy Wissman]

All right.

[James Petregallo]

A couple of people in their 80s gonna get married. That's adorable.

[Jimmy Wissman]

We waited our whole lives for this.

[James Petregallo]

Oh my God. She's not kind of a typical old lady. Her nephew Jack said the very last thing Anna May acted like was an old lady. She gets her hair. Her hair gets done every week. She goes every week to get her hair done. Wow. She wears expensive clothes. She has three carat diamond rings on multiple fingers. Like she is a. She's a show. She's a show man. Yeah. She looks like if you took a showgirl in Vegas and then aged her 65 years, like on the spot, like some machine that just aged her, that's what would happen. Really interesting. One of the people in town said when Ms. Branson dressed up and went out, she was absolutely gorgeous. Her hair was always perfect and her eye makeup and everything. She was one of those that you would expect to see walking off the page of a magazine. Yeah, Elder care weekly. She's 85. What magazine? What 85 year old people are stepping off of magazine covers besides the AARP Monthly.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Is that a magazine?

[James Petregallo]

L. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah. L Dirk E L L E d e r dash Dirk.

So Monday, January 13th at 9am Dr. Bob gives Ann a call. No answer. He calls again and again. Now it's going straight to voicemail. Now no answer. Straight to voicemail. And this is very odd because Ann always answers the phone. She's a businesswoman and there might be a problem with a property. There's. She's always on the phone and she loves it. She loves her business, she loves what she does. She can't wait to get a phone call if we'll solve a problem. So Dr. Bob drives about 50 miles from Evansville to Madisonville, so from another state and knocks on Ann's door. Because you don't just say, ah, maybe they're doing something. When someone's 85, you go, she might be dead. I better check on this. This is.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Or worse, in the process of it.

[James Petregallo]

Who knows? Anything could be possible with this, you know. So he drives all the way there, knocks on the door, nobody answers. So he's like, fuck, okay. He's very worried. So he has Ann's brother Earl's phone number. So he calls up Earl. Earl lives pretty close by. So Earl drives over, they look for the spare key which is hidden under a bush, and they unlock the door and they enter. Now there are, there are different.

Tellings of how this happened. There are some tellings that say they called the cops, the cops got there, then they found the key and they all went in together. Then there's also say, there's also recitations of it.

Where it's the doctor Bob and Earl went in and then called the cops. So we're not sure which. But this is from a detective, Detective Duncan. He says Dr. Bob Feniman was looking around and Earl Winstead, her brother, went down to the basement. When he got to the bottom of the basement steps, he said, oh, I found her. She was laying just lying face down on the concrete floor with her legs out and her arms at her side.

So Earl thinks she fell. Down goes, Ann. Ann. Oh, shit, she fell. No wonder why. She probably broke her goddamn hip. You know what I mean? Been stuck down here. So as he starts to walk over to try to help her up, that's when he sees. It's so weird how your fucking brain processes things that you can be in a room with shit and not see it for a minute. Your brain will focus on one thing in the room, and you don't see other details around the room. You know what I mean? That happens. That's so strange. But that's what happened here. He just saw her and he's like, oh, let me walk over to her and help her up. Then he sees there's blood everywhere. On the walls, on the freezer, pooled under her body. I mean, he was looking at her and didn't see that she was in a pool of blood.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wow.

[James Petregallo]

Till he started walking over to her.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, no.

[James Petregallo]

That's how your mind works. And it's horrifying. So one of the police officers said it appeared at first. First that she could have fallen. But then upon seeing all the injuries to her body and all the blood, it was obvious that Ms. Branson had been murdered.

So Earl screams. Dr. Bob comes around. Neither of these guys are spring chickens. They're both in their goddamn 80s, too. So this could kill these guys.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And now they're fucking up a crime scene.

[James Petregallo]

Well, that's the thing. They go, oh, shit. Dr. Bob comes running. He sees Ann's body. He collapses into the wall. These are two old guys trying to hold each other up. So we don't need, you know, the morgue wagon and an ambulance. So none of these guys fall and break their hip. So Earl calls 911 and says, quote, my sister, she's dead. She's been killed. Oh, my God. They said, where are you located? He gives the address. He says, it's Ann Branson's house. She's. Somebody killed her. The dispatcher says, officers are on the way. Do not touch anything. That's important and stay on the line with me. Well, they didn't touch anything. They just started walking into the basement like, oh, shit. So, I mean, they could have messed something up, but nothing around the body. They didn't touch her body or anything. So the police arrive very quickly. And by the way, this town hasn't had a murder. And this has been a theme lately in our towns. It's been 20 years since the last murder in this town, 20 years seems.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Like way too soon.

[James Petregallo]

But all of these towns lately have had. I haven't had a murder in 20 years. Seems like someone's going, what's it been, 20 years? Well, I guess I gotta do it. If no one else is gonna do it, I guess I gotta do the murders around here. Christ's sake, every 20, we gotta have one.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It is fascinating how sometimes that does line up where in the electric industry. It's every five years there's a fatality and it's fucking clockwork, man. It happens. It's just every five years somebody dies. It's unbelievable.

[James Petregallo]

Every 20, an old lady's gotta be sacrificed. Apparently in this. That's terrible. No, that's awful. Yeah. So when there's an officer walks into the steps, walks into the basement and sees the scene and this officer has to step outside to compose herself because it's. It's bad. Yeah. She said it was unlike anything that we'd ever seen or even heard of before. Yeah.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I don't know that I can walk into a scene of an elderly woman murdered and be like, all right, now let's take this dead serious and investigate like crazy with zero human emotion to this.

[James Petregallo]

No, no, that's. And the cops often say that the. Like you get homicide detectives and they all say, like, even from the David Simon homicide book.

The old people, they don't seem to have a problem with for some reason. I don't know why, I guess because they die all the time anyway. And if you deal in death. Because every death has to be investigated by a homicide detective, even if it's an 85 year old lady in her bed, they have to check it. So they see so many dead old people, I don't think it affects them. They always say it's children that fuck them up because that's less common. And that's something that they all have kids and they're like, holy shit, Jesus, I just saw a five year old.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, compartmentalize. An 85 year old. Well, they had a good run.

[James Petregallo]

They had a good run.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They had terrible.

[James Petregallo]

Even if I approach them, but they look at it as I walk in and find them murdered. If I didn't, I'd have found them in their bed in a month anyway, you know what I mean? That's the way they look at it. Whereas a four year old, they go, holy shit, I have one of those at home shit. Which I'm not saying that's how you should look at it, but I think when you see. So because old People die a lot. Obviously. When you see so many dead old people every day, it's probably. It probably gets a little bit less. You're not that crazy about it as far. Even though it's sad for us walking in off the street, not being homicide detectives, I couldn't deal with this. No.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And it stings to me too, because as you age, you regress into being a toddler again. So it's like seeing an old person to me dead from a goddamn savage beating is the same to me as a two year old. Cause they can't defend themselves.

[James Petregallo]

Also, I always say, I hate it when somebody imagine what this person's been through. They lived through the depression, they lived through World War, the different things. They've done everything. They've been in car accidents only to.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Be beaten with a crowbar.

[James Petregallo]

Surgeries, all this different shit, all for this. You know what I mean?

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's this bullshit that sucks.

[James Petregallo]

It's fucked up. So here is an excerpt from a book that will have excerpts from this book throughout the show here. The book is called Murder in Mayberry. Because they always say this is like the model for Mayberry, this town, basically. And it is by Mary Kinney Branson, who's a relative, obviously. She says when small town police officers come upon a murder scene in which the victim is a prominent millionaire with multiple blows to the head and nearly 100 stab wounds.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What?

[James Petregallo]

Unnecessary. Do you think an 85 year old survived the first 40 stab wounds or no, probably not. You know what I mean? What are we talking about here?

[Jimmy Wissman]

I mean, one stab. Wow. May as well be 12. And that. Yeah, the skin falls apart.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. So it blows to the head of nearly 100 stab wounds. They're in unfamiliar territory. Throw in lies, gossip, greed, international struggles and a conflicted federal agent, and the result is murder in Mayberry. That's what's coming up here. Before you. The basement was a slaughterhouse. Blood spattered on the walls, tools scattered like weapons from a frenzy. Ann lay at the foot of the stairs, her nightgown torn, her face unrecognizable from the blunt force that caved her skull. And that's. A relative wrote that.

So the homicide detectives are obviously called. The Kentucky State Police are called. And since she's super rich, they bring the FBI in also.

[Jimmy Wissman]

May as well.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, might as well. So they bring the FBI in. Like I said, it's. You know, if you just found some regular dude dead, I don't think the FBI is coming in here. So this is. She's rich. I Think is the reason why. So her wounds are 97 stab wounds. 97.

Think about that. We've reenacted before. But think about how long. Make a stabbing motion, like a hard stab that'll go through rib cartilage. Do that 97 times. And how your arm is sore. Like you can't.

[Jimmy Wissman]

This guy. You're gonna feel that in the morning.

[James Petregallo]

Whoever did this had to take fucking Advil in the morning because they were like, man, my shoulders. Oh, yeah, all those stabbings. Yeah, that's right. Stabby stab.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And it's gotta be someone young because an 87 year old can't do that.

[James Petregallo]

Well, they could. It just might take him a minute. I might. They might have to come back for more. Yeah, they might have to. They have to stop. They have to rest. Jeopardy's on, maybe a few episodes of Judge Joe. Yeah, they come back, they watch some Antiques Roadshow. They go back to it.

You know, the medical examiner. Yeah, look at that. The medical examiner said this person was so enraged that they just kept stabbing and kept stabbing and kept stabbing. Most of the wounds are post mortem. So unnecessary. She was way dead. They said she was probably dead in the first 15 or 20 stab wounds. This knife went through. Through her back, through her ribs, through her organs and came out the other side, leaving marks on the concrete floor beneath her. Wow. So think about the rage that is.

[Jimmy Wissman]

To get through a body and into.

[James Petregallo]

Concrete all the way. 97 times. You have got to be. Imagine having to catch your breath after that. Even. So, they said the weapon was not only going through flesh and organs, going through bones, and was coming out on the floor underneath her. That's a quote from the detective. Her skull was mashed. I mean, destroyed. The medical examiner couldn't count or even guess and estimate how many times she'd been hit in the head because the bones had been shattered into fragments.

Think about that. If you put. Yeah, if you put a Christmas ornament in a bag and broke it and just bashed it against the ground and then said, how many times was this thing hit? That's what her skull is. That is horrifying. Wow. So the blood spatter on the freezer was next to her body. The freezer's next to her body. There's blood spatter on it. There is a pattern that's a striking motion like chopping wood, that you can see where the spatter came from. There's another pattern that's different. It's more like a golf swing motion where the weapon was lifted high and brought down with full force. So they have multiple spray patterns from different attacks, basically. So two different attack patterns. And these were just sustained attacks long after she was dead. I mean think about it. A couple of stab wounds or a couple of bashes to the head and this lady is dead.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's over.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. They made dust of her skull and stabbed her 97 times.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She's not even moving. There's no reason to keep doing this.

[James Petregallo]

No. So the detectives work the crime scene, they spend hours in the basement. They find no signs of forced entry. So that's something. At first they think it must be a robbery because she's wealthy, everybody knows she's wealthy and she's an easy target to knock her out and knock her off and take some shit. But they find nothing wrong, nothing missing at all in there. Her fingers are still full of very large diamond rings. So I mean even if the laziest, shittiest robber would have taken the three carat rings off her fingers, you know what I mean? Her purse is in the kitchen, tons of cash in there. So this is not if someone was robbing her. They did a terrible job. Put it that way certainly.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

So they found defensive wounds on her arms, meaning she tried to fight back. Even at 85, she's got spunk to her. The time of death is estimated sometime after 7pm, the day before Sunday. This is a Monday morning, so sometime between seven and possibly eight o' clock on Sunday night. This is based on stomach contents. Oh, that's how they're doing this. Because she had a pork chop dinner that was partially digested.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Still there.

[James Petregallo]

They know from phone calls she made, they know about what time she ate, so they know how long it would take for it to get to that state. Now they don't find any murder weapon, no knife, no blunt object. They don't find anything.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Some took it with them.

[James Petregallo]

Somebody took it with them. They find no foreign DNA or fingerprints, only Ann. So somebody cleaned up pretty well. Yeah. Now the detective on this Duncan said we didn't have any idea who would have committed such a violent act on an 85 year old woman. What kind of animal is this person?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Great question.

[James Petregallo]

That is a very good question. So yeah, first they did suspect robbery, but nothing is missing. They said that she apparently would set off her security alarm all the time by accident, so cops would have to show up at her front door often. So they all knew her basically. And they said though she was so careful and this is very important because there's no forced entry, she was so careful, she Would not open the door for a male police officer. Oh, pulling up in the car. Madisonville. Fucking decal, badge, gun, radio. Don't trust it. Don't trust. Yeah, they knew to send a woman out there or else she wouldn't open the door.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And that's why the woman showed up first to the crime scene.

[James Petregallo]

There you go. Exactly. So they said she had to have let that person inside and had to have known them because she would not let a male stranger inside. It might have been a female, but it could be a woman. That's all they're thinking. But they wouldn't let a guy. She wouldn't let some dude off the street in. No transient's going to knock on the door and go, hey, can I use your phone? She's not doing that shit. So, yeah, so they look at it. Must be somebody she knows who has a motive. Now, after the house is turned back over to the family, they do a whole sweep for the evidence and they process it. And after a few days, they give it back to the family. What are you going to do? You have to. So Earl, her brother, described assisting police in entering the home and finding the body. He said that after the home had been turned back over to the family, money was found in several locations, including bags of old bills and coins in the basement. And money doesn't age well, by the way. You have to really keep it very airtight or else it rots, basically.

[Jimmy Wissman]

But she treats it like milk, and when it's spoilt, she throws it into the basement.

[James Petregallo]

Into the basement? Yeah, like some kind of like an old chair or something that's got new furniture.

[Jimmy Wissman]

This one's been here a while.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, they found her gun there. She's got a gun. They find that Earl said he found also an empty money box was discovered, but he didn't know if there was money in it to begin with or if that's just a box she kept. He said that he called the police after.

What he saw is maybe blood on some bubble wrap being used to protect the picture. Because he called them to say that, like, I also found more blood on this picture. He said, so you might want to look at that, because that could be the perpetrator's blood. You know what I mean? He said the cops never called him back on that one. He called and said, I found more blood. Come check it out. And he said they just never called back.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Never called back?

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, he claims they never called back. So we don't know. So the investigation here, right away. First person they're looking at is who do you think?

[Jimmy Wissman]

New Dr. Bob.

[James Petregallo]

It's Dr. Bob. Yeah. Boyfriend set to get married in two weeks. He's the one who was over there first by himself. Dr. Bob needs to he better watch his ass here.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Absolutely.

[James Petregallo]

Phone records though place him in Evansville making calls from his landline at 7:15, 7:30 and 7:45pm that is the night before, which is the hour that she was killed between 7 and 8. And he is 50 miles away on the phone the whole time. And they said, plus when we interviewed Dr. Bob, he was emotionally distraught, not faking, genuinely destroyed. They said. So Dr. Bob is cleared. He was on the phone for sure? Yeah, for sure. Cleared. So then they go to the next obvious candidate for this. Sure. I mean you can't get more obvious than her 82 year old cancer ridden sister. She did it, you know she did it. Gotta be. Look at her, all jealous and tumorous. Look at her. So her system chemo make you do wild? Oh yeah. Especially make you real violent. You have lots of energy on chemo and you just gotta get it out.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You lose all your hair, drive down your immune system and make you mad, murderous.

[James Petregallo]

Oh dude, totally. Everybody knows that you lose all your weight. Oh yeah, that's what it is. She got down to her fighting weight. That's what it was. She's ready to go. This is horrible. So this is a 82 year old. Oh, I'm sorry. No, she's not. She's in her 60s. I apologize either way. And even when I wrote this, I wrote 23 years her junior. So she's 62. So she's very capable at 62. But she does have cancer. It's terminal cancer.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, she's going through treatment. She is losing weight every day. There's no way she's a murderer.

[James Petregallo]

Right. Well, the problem is all of their relatives said I would look at Grace. Really, she is super. She's really, really angry and she's literally dying. And she has a sister who's 23 years older than her who's in great health as a millionaire. And everybody said that's literally all she talked about was how fuck Mary and how fucking looking. Now I'm super young and now I have to die a young woman and this fucking bitch is doing all that. That's what she was saying. So they were like look into that. But when they go to talk to her because all the family's like, you want to talk to Grace? She's pretty much on her deathbed.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She couldn't do it.

[James Petregallo]

Not capable of stabbing down through the body into the concrete.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Vitriol via words, but not energy.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. I mean, she might have wanted to do it with her mind, but her body was not willing. Yeah, not willing. And she passed away four months after does as well. She was literally dying. I mean, it was sad.

Hey, everybody. Just gonna take a quick break from the show to tell you a little bit more about Chime.

[Jimmy Wissman]

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[James Petregallo]

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[Jimmy Wissman]

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[James Petregallo]

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[Jimmy Wissman]

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[James Petregallo]

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[Jimmy Wissman]

Now back to the show.

[James Petregallo]

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[Jimmy Wissman]

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[James Petregallo]

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[Jimmy Wissman]

Thrive Market.com oh, you know what?

[James Petregallo]

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[Jimmy Wissman]

You don't have to compromise health.

[James Petregallo]

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[Jimmy Wissman]

Now back to the show.

[James Petregallo]

So then they look at brother Earl. His brother Earl came over and found her. And he has access to the house and all that kind of thing. He knows where the key is. But he was with his family, multiple people, the whole night, the night before. Multiple witnesses confirmed, not just his wife or anything like that. He was with a bunch of people. So he's cleared too. Okay, so now there's a tenant that she has. Now they start looking into people that she knows but aren't related to her because they clear kind of her close family, you know what I mean? The people who have the most access to her. So then they go, okay, look at this guy. Now this guy, by the way, I don't know if he's been called two different things and I don't know which one is the pseudonym. So either Robert Prince or Joseph K. Not sure what his name is. It's one of the two.

Either way, this one they like. They're like, this guy looks right. He's a tenant in her place that was behind on rent. With a history of violence, this seems like a good place to start. So he lived in one of her rental properties. He had mental instability and multiple assault charges on him all the time. Oh, yeah. The lead detective said Robert Prince had characteristics of a mentally unstable person. He would actually call her in the middle of the night and say that he had ghosts up in his attic. And would she please get rid of the ghosts?

[Jimmy Wissman]

So what you're saying is he's mentally unstable.

[James Petregallo]

Batshit. I think batshit crazy is the way to put that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's a good one. Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

It's one thing to not be able to sleep because you think there's ghosts. That's fine. It's another thing entirely to call your landlady to say, hey, thanks for fixing the sink last week. Now can you please exorcise the ghosts from my house?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Can you call the pest control? What, are you having trouble with the ghosts?

[James Petregallo]

The Ghosts, I have attic ghosts. I have mice in the basement and ghosts in the attic. If you could get somebody over here to take care of that. So this guy.

Is definitely a suspect. And Anne had been trying to evict him too. She'd been going through the process of trying to evict this guy. So they're like, he could have just snapped and went over here and said, well, fuck it, I got nothing to lose. So detectives go to his house, they search it. They didn't find any murder weapons or ghosts either. They found nothing. No ghosts, nothing. They bring him in for questioning. And turns out, though, he has a very solid alibi. He was in Tennessee, over 200 miles away. And there is convenience store video surveillance footage to verify that he was 200 miles away during the time of the, of the murder. Cause it was like 7 o' clock he was there. So there's no way he's making it 200 miles and committing a murder in less than an hour. Not possible. So not only that, right before the murder took place, he had just had elbow surgery on his dominant hand.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh.

[James Petregallo]

And would have been pretty hard for him to inflict those wounds. Yeah, no good. So they're like, okay, shit, we're running out of suspects here. Who else? Okay, what about Wayne Shelton? He's a handyman that works for her. Because if you have tons of rental properties, you definitely have a couple handymen on your payroll to go around and fix shit. So the police sit him down for questioning and oh boy, doesn't go well for old Wayne Shelton here. He not only owes her money, but he's got some shit in his past too. That's pretty shady. So they are, they are awfully interested in him. So looking into Wayne, I am going to read from the book, the Murder in Mayberry book here. Okay. Wayne Shelton agreed to be interviewed and polygraphed Saturday evening. That you know, A few days after he drove to a nearby motel where our investigators were staying. Shelton, a frail, slightly built man of 48, showed up dressed as if he was checking the motel's electrical wiring instead of proving his guilt or innocence in a high profile murder case. But he was on time, and the three men quickly began a formal interview. How long did you work for Ann? He said, about five years. When I first started working for her, it was kind of off and on, but for a long time now, I'd been working just for her. She had plenty of work with all her rent houses and all.

They said, what kind of work did you do for her? He said, Anything that needed doing, I did. Heating and ac, plumbing and electrical, and some carpentry.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Odd job guy is always disrespect.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, odd job guy. He's got tools laying around. He's got like sheds that he keeps shit in and all sorts of weird stuff. No. So they said, well, when did you hear about Ann's death? And they said. Wayne concentrated carefully on his response again. Weird, he said, about 2:30 on Monday. Then the next day, a woman detective named Kelly Rager talked to me. Then another detective named Scott Troutman, he said, why do you think they talked to you twice? And he said, I can see it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What?

[James Petregallo]

I was there nearly every day. People knew I used to drink a lot. I quit three years ago. But most people don't know that. I sure could have been the one, but I wasn't.

[Jimmy Wissman]

There's a bunch of reasons why I should respect.

[James Petregallo]

Here's a bunch of reasons not to clear me from this list. Wow. Wayne stood and began to pace the small motel room, not with a guilty nervousness, but with the restlessness of someone to whom physical labor was so natural that he couldn't sit still for long without feeling a twinge of guilt. But his pacing was slow and his skin was ashen. He continued talking as he paced the 15 foot room. They told me to come in and take a lie detector test. And I went in like they told me to, but I got a heart problem and I had that balloon surgery and I have poor circulation in my legs because I'm a heavy smoker. The police sent me home. They said they couldn't do a lie detector test on account of my balloon surgery.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's a balloon surgery.

[James Petregallo]

I think that's a stent. A stent? Yeah, to open up an artery, I think is what he had here. So this doesn't sound good.

[Jimmy Wissman]

No.

[James Petregallo]

Well, I'd love to take a lie detector, but, you know, I'm just not real healthy and my legs don't circulate right. So I didn't do it. We're good, right? Okay, Bye. That's not good. They said, when was the last time you saw Anna live? Wayne realized the importance of the question and he stopped walking and looked squarely at the investigators. I saw her Saturday, January 11, about 11 in the morning. Wayne responded, she and this friend of hers were on their way to Evansville to see her boyfriend.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

They said, did you owe Ann any money? And he said, yeah, sometimes she'd give me an advance on my paycheck and I borrowed $1,400 from her two years ago this March.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh.

[James Petregallo]

They said, when did you repay her? And he said, never did. Oh, still in debt, owes her money. He's got bad circulation. None of this is adding up. They said, when's the last time you saw Russell Winstead, which is his nephew. Earl's. Her nephew. I'm sorry, That's Earl, her brother Earl's son.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

And he said, I seen him at Ann's place on Thursday. They said January 9th. And he said, yeah, he came over twice that day. When he left the second time, Ms. Ann was really mad. She said he owed her money and he only came around when he needed more and he wasn't getting none anymore because he owed her too much already. So they said, all right, we're going to. Circulation aside, balloon surgery aside, we're going to go ahead and hook you up to a polygraph there, Wayne. So from the book, they said, as they prepared for the actual polygraph, our investigators asked Wayne to tell them what he did on January 12th. Immediately, Wayne began moving around the room like a caged animal, sensing a weak spot in his confinement. That's a bad sign.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

If you're trying to get away, you're poking a sore. Yeah, you're poking a sore. And they feel it. Finally, he could squeeze through a hole in the fence and escape to freedom. Convinced he had the answers that would open the cage, he began his narrative. Oh, boy. I dropped my daughter off at her mama's. It's in town a little over an hour away. I dropped her off at 6:15. What is in town? What town?

[Jimmy Wissman]

What are we talking about in downtown, in the fucking commerce area?

[James Petregallo]

I guess we don't know what town they town might mean. The city town might mean Nashville or Louisville or Evansville or something. Who the hell knows? So anyway, he said, I dropped her off at 6:15 and I got back to town around 7:30. I went to my mother's house. She fixed me some chili and biscuits. That sounds good. And doesn't that sound good? Dipping the chili? Fuck, that sounds great.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Cornbread is better, but I'll take biscuits.

[James Petregallo]

Biscuits, cornbread.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Fucking Italian bread, French bread, dip in it.

[James Petregallo]

Wonder bread is great dipped in fucking chili. Doesn't matter. And I stayed with her until 8:30 or 9:30. Then I just went home for the rest of the night. So he's got some time unexplained in there pre 7:30 and then after he left his mom's house there, then he was alone home for the rest of the night. Wayne breathed audibly as he finished his alibi speech. Take it or leave it. That was his full story. Our investigators asked him if he was involved in any way in ann's death. He emphatically denied that he was. He said, then here is a retired FBI agent says, look, Wayne, I'm a retired FBI agent, and I was the bureau polygrapher for years. Kentucky has a law that their police officers can't give a polygraph examination to anyone who's had an angioplasty. That's a law?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Really?

[James Petregallo]

Apparently, that's a law. They gotta look into your medical history. No polygraph for you. But that's a Kentucky law that only applies to their law enforcement officers. I'm not a Kentucky law enforcement officer. I'm a retired FBI agent. I can give you the polygraph if you're willing, and then we can do it that way. So Wayne said, fine with me. As long as it's not dangerous or nothing.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. It gives you an electrical shock if you lie. That'll.

[Jimmy Wissman]

We're hooking these electrodes up to your penis.

[James Petregallo]

That's. That's how it is. And you don't want to believe me, son. You don't want to tell a lie.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Don't you lie.

[James Petregallo]

Don't you lie to me. So he said, fine with me, as long as it's not dangerous. I gave them my blood and hair samples. I'm not afraid because I'm telling the truth. Truth. Truth shall set you free. So they asked him, are you having any chest pains or any other heart problems now? Wayne said, nah, not right now. Sometimes when I've been working hard and it's cold outside, I have a little chest pain, but nothing right now. So this guy set up his portable computerized equipment, and he explained the procedure. Said polygraphs have been around since 1924. Yeah. Polygraph combines a number of different reports to give an overall picture of your truthfulness. You know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They're breathing. Heart rate, perspiration rate, all that. So the cop says, the other guy, not the retired FBI agent. The cop, he says, at first, we'll ask you to answer some questions correctly and some incorrectly. This will show us how you respond when you're telling the truth and how you're lying. So get a baseline that makes sense. You are this name. Yes, I am. You're from the planet melmac. No, I'm not. Yes, I am. Okay. So they said, okay, we're gonna answer you those. And he said, well, then we'll ask you two specific questions and we'll ask you to tell the truth on those questions. We'll ask you, did you stab Ann on January 12? And did you hit Ann in the head with anything on January 12th? Wayne nodded and sat straight in the chair by the motel desk. They fastened small metal plates to some of his fingers to record sweat gland activity and blood pressure cuff on his arm to measure heart rate. They fastened rubber tubes around his chest and abdomen to measure the breathing. All the lie detector shit. Everything's connected to a laptop now. They said when the polygraph equipment was operational, the ex FBI agent asked the preliminary questions, saying, answer, you know, answer this truthfully or untruthfully. Basically, they found Wayne to be a capable reactor as he responded to preliminary questions. And so they proceeded. So when they asked him to lie, it showed it. So they said, did you stab Ann on January 12? No. Did you hit Ann in the head with anything on January 12th? No. So they calculated the responses and they said. Everybody said that he showed no signs of deception on the polygraph.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

Okay. So Wayne is cleared pretty much, yeah. Which is. He was the guy. Wayne Shelton.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah. He's got all the reasons and all.

[James Petregallo]

The opportunity everything, so. And also tools, too. They figure he's probably got knives, a box cutter on him. He's got knives. So five days. This is like five days after the murder, once he's cleared, and they have nothing. They've interviewed every suspect they have and gotten shit from it. The town is terrified, shitting themselves, scared. This is. Now they think this is a random act, just some violent. Yeah, it's a very random act because nothing was taken.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

And the police have nothing. They figure if it's someone. And these are, you know, simple, whatever. Yeah, to use the Blazing Saddles. These are. These are simple, simple people, you know, people of the land, you know, morons.

But no, regular people don't know. So they just hear that they've interviewed a bunch of people, all the suspects. They don't have anybody. And nothing was taken. Oh, my God. It's a bloodthirsty killer. He just wants to watch the blood of an elderly woman. Oh, my.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Not even kidding. Because it's a vicious, vicious slaying.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, it's horrifying. So they said everyone in town at this point was a suspect and everyone was scared. That's somebody. A quote. Now here is a conversation. This is from the book. They said that.

The phone into the police would ring periodically with people who were sure they knew who the killer was. Everybody calling all the time. Jack Branson's cousin Brenda called to say she overheard a short man talking about the murder at the Pantry, which is a small grocery store. He was discussing facts about the murder that hadn't been released yet. That Ann was stabbed and that she was wearing her rings. Brenda was Ann's niece by marriage. She and her brothers are related. On Carol's side, her dead husband, her mother, Margaret Branson, stopped by to say that Joseph Knight, the crazy renter, whatever his name is, had come to their house Sunday. The Prince guy is what they're talking about. The Robert Prince. They called him this in the book, about 4pm apparently, this woman, Margaret Branson, that's the Brenda woman's mother, called to say that this guy, the crazy renter, had come to their house that Sunday afternoon of the murder about 4pm Trying to sell a DVD player. Oh, yeah. He said he was leaving town fast and would sell it cheap, which that makes him look incredibly guilty.

He was a friend of Anne's great nephew who'd been in and out of trouble as well. Police get a phone call from a guy named Jeff Hibbs. Yeah, okay. Jeff Hibbs is a local mine worker, and he's friends of some of Mary or some of Anne's family, including a nephew of hers named Russell Winstead, who we mentioned earlier. That's Earl's son, her brother Earl's son. Now, he called, and the lead detective said Jeff Hibbs believed that Russell Winstead had some involvement with the murder of his Aunt Ann. Okay, so this Jeff Hibbs tells detectives about gambling with Russell winstead on Friday, January 10, two days before the murder. And he said Russell told Jeff that he had gotten a loan from his aunt and that he had to repay by Monday morning and that he had $9,700 when he came into this night and had lost every single penny that night. He lost $9,700. Now he can't pay his aunt back. Okay, this guy Jeff also goes on to say that Russell told him that they're all going to know about his gambling addiction because his aunt is going to expose him for borrowing money from her on a regular basis and not paying it back.

Okay? Then Jeff said he was reading the newspaper Monday morning, old lady murdered in Madisonville. He sees in the newspaper and he says, holy shit. So the cop said, Jeff Hibbs reads about this old lady that got murdered in Madisonville. And he's like, oh, my gosh, this is the aunt, and this is the aunt that Russell had to repay by the first of the week. Holy shit. So they go back and search Ann's house again. Okay. The first time they're looking for forensics. Now they're looking for other shit. And this time they look even deeper and they find her ledger. They weren't looking for it the first time.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Now they've got it.

[James Petregallo]

They find her purple inked spiral notebook. And they find page after page of loans to Russell Winstead. Page after page. March 2002, $5,000. June 2002, $8,000.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Thousands upon thousands.

[James Petregallo]

October 2002, $12,000.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh. So we are at 25 grand in three loans.

[James Petregallo]

As of January 11, 2003, his total was $97,386. Russ Russell. That is insane. And you can see here is her actual. Look at that. This is the actual ledger.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Brilliant lady.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Russell Winstead. 6500. Russell Winstead. Looks like it was scratched out. That's paid back. Yeah. This is her whole. Whole thing here. That's Wayne Shelton. Sixteen hundred dollars. Minus 100. Minus 100. Minus100. So you know that he's been paying or she's been taking out of his thing. Next page, it says. So you go over. So she's got everybody's. It's by month. It's like a diary. Yeah. So by 2003, she had loaned out over $200,000 to various family members and friends. This book has 200 grand. She's like a bookie. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, legal.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Most paid her back, some didn't. And Ann really didn't seem to give a shit.

[Jimmy Wissman]

No.

[James Petregallo]

Either way. Seemed like she would keep track and wanted people to pay her back, but if they didn't, it wasn't the end of the world. She didn't need the money, and she didn't really. Wasn't worth fighting over to her, basically, one of those things. But over and over, the name that's in there the most is Russell Winstead. Keeps coming up. So who the shit is Russell Winstead, besides her nephew and brother Earl's son? Okay. He is Russell Eugene Winstead, born in October of 1962. He is married to Tammy Rainwater Winstead. They got married in 1986. They were high school sweethearts. They have three children, or they have two daughters. And he has a son from a previous relationship. I think here now, looking him up and going through everything and going through newspaper archives. He was a race car driver.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Really?

[James Petregallo]

This was. Look at this. That's Russ. That's his. Check this out. And it says, Russell Winstead of Madisonville standing behind the new racing machine. He is Driving on the asphalt this season, Winstead attended the NASCAR driving school over the summer to prepare for the faster circuit.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Nice work.

[James Petregallo]

So, yeah, going into this, it looks like he was like an up and coming race car driver in 10 years earlier. Nine years earlier. The headline in this newspaper article is Russell Winstead takes big steps in racing career. So he said, Russell Winstead feels like he's starting all over again as a race car driver. After two years of racing at area dirt tracks, Winstead has moved up in competition this year and is now behind the wheel of a powerful ASA V8 at some of the fastest asphalt speedways available. It's the latest development in the racing career of the 29 year old Madisonville resident who attended the famed NASCAR driving school in Atlanta this winter to prepare for his step up in the racing world. You know, you're in a small town when the newspaper announces that somebody went to NASCAR school.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Headed off to that Winston cup school.

[James Petregallo]

Wow. So Russell said it's just like starting over all over again. He debuted his new 1993 Pontiac Grand Prix at the super fast Salem Indiana Speedway. By finishing was this 9th out of 28 starters. He said driving on asphalt is so different than dirt. Yeah, you stick to it. He said dirt racing is pretty much a slide around the track from start to finish, but when the rear end gets out of whack on asphalt, there's a wall waiting somewhere. He said, I managed to get it backwards when we first tried to qualify the car the first time, we didn't tear it up too bad. But you can't go sideways like you do on the dirt. It's really a huge difference. So they're talking about, you know, basically his whole career and how he's. They talk about his father. Winstead's father, Earl Winstead, helped put the car together and did the perfect paint job on the sleek black racing machine. The elder Winstead is well known around Hopkins county for the incredible work he does in restoring old cars to their natural beauty.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, he's a restorer too?

[James Petregallo]

Yes. So they said that. By the way, do you think Earl paid for all this or Russell paid for all this?

[Jimmy Wissman]

No way.

[James Petregallo]

He's helping out a lot with Russ.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

And Ann has been helping out a ton with this.

So. Yeah. He went to the NASCAR school where for two days he was instructed by some of racing's best teachers while driving Winston cup cars. He said getting inside one of those Winston cars and driving them around the track at over 160 miles an hour is nothing like you see on Television, you get such a sensation of speed. It was really a lot of help. They spent a lot of time talking about how the car is set up and what do with it. It was quite extensive in what they taught you. He says, you know that they say that you changed something major on a dirt car. You might get a little change, but you make a little change on one of these and it's a major change. Oh boy. So he's got races coming up. He said the longest he's gone is 50 laps. But we ran so bad one day we probably didn't go 10. He said it's very demanding physically and mentally to drive those 200 and 300 lap races. He's going to apparently drive one in Nashville. And he said the 300 lap race in Nashville is the one. Darrell Waltrip and Michael Waltrip racing. I really am looking forward to that. I've even heard of those guys and I don't know shit about nascar. He said of course he's thinking about competing full time on the Winston cup circuit. He said, that's been a dream of mine all my life. We'll just have to wait and see. I'd love to do it. So they're talking about how at that moment in time he also has a wife and they have nine month old twins at that point now they said it's. I've heard he has daughters and this newspaper article says he has nine month old twin boys. They're twins. So I don't know if it's. Either way, they're twins. So he says Tyler loves to go racing already. In fact, racing is really a family thing with us. We really enjoy going together so far. It's been a lot of fun with the new car. Yeah, okay, great. He said, I guess racing's become a major part of our lives. I know it would be hard to live without it for any of us. Nine years later, there's no mention of racing. Literally. Racing is nowhere in his life. He obviously failed out of that, we'll call it crashed out of that. He quit. Yeah, he spun out. He spun into the wall on that fucking deal there. And Ann helped out. Earl described his son's relationship with Ann as very close and said that Ann had supported her nephew's racing car career. He said that Russell Winstead at the time had owed her $35,000 from that. But it wasn't a problem, you know, she didn't mind anyway. Now after racing, Russell apparently is a coal mine equipment salesman.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh really?

[James Petregallo]

Which is a lot different than racing NASCAR exactly. The early 2000s. And he also, I think, sells farm equipment on the side.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay, well, he should switch those.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, that would be better. Now he's living a stable middle class life with wife and kids and all that kind of thing. And he is very known as a very steady guy in town. Russell, he's not some crazy whack job. He's a church deacon at the First Christian Church, which is where Ann goes to church as well. He's a little league coach.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Really? Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

One of the other parents said he's a family man. That's it. Family man. Everyone loved Russell. They said he's the guy that if you needed help with something, you call Russell and he's there in two minutes and he's even brought you a beer. He's a good guy. He fixes your lawnmower for you, helps his neighbors out. He shows up at the church fish fry to help set everything up and then stays late to sweep and mop and shit.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Going above and beyond the fellowship.

[James Petregallo]

He even teaches Sunday school at the First Christian Church. So he does. He's known as a very, extremely upstanding member of the community. Not a guy that is a. You'd expect and you'd say, oh, we should look into him as a murder suspect or anything like that at all. So he's the opposite of the other guys they looked into, but he's in a shitload of debt to her. And when they find this ledger and say owes $96,000 or whatever, that's a $97,000 is motive for anybody.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Sure.

[James Petregallo]

So we gotta look at him, they said. Upon the financial investigation, it was determined that Russell was basically shifting money around to cover the loans from his aunt Ann kept track of every penny. She knew Russell was in a lot of money, but she kept lending him money. She figured eventually he'd get his shit together and pay it back, who knows? So the problem is they also find out that he loves to gamble.

He visited casinos in the previous year of 2002. He had visited 236 times to casinos. Oh, in one year.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's a lot. That's almost every day. That's every two days, right? Every three days.

[James Petregallo]

Absolutely.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Two out of every three days is what?

[James Petregallo]

Two out of every three days he's at the casino 236 times. And he lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. But it doesn't affect his everyday life. He still goes to church, teaches Sunday school. He's real upstanding, all that shit. So yeah, they said that he's shifting Money around. Now, the last ledger entry in Ann's book was Russell, $1,200 check received January 11, 2003. So that was the Friday that the dude saw him over there. $1,200 received. So she got a check from Russell for $1,200 is what they're saying. So the detectives subpoena Russell's bank records, and it shows that the $1,200 check never cleared. Which if she got it on a Friday and was dead by Sunday, she can get to the bank probably to put it in. So that makes perfect sense. The problem also, they find, is that Whether it's the 11th or the 13th or the 14th, Russell never had $1,200 in his bank account to cover this check. That's the thing. He was overdrawn. So they're, you know, they're looking into that now. None of the family thinks they. All the family thinks this is a dry well. They're like, you're going down the wrong path. This guy did not kill her. It's crazy. So he had had some problems the previous year, apparently, Russell, when he worked for the mining company. In April, he had pleaded guilty of violating an emergency protective order. We don't know against who. I assume it's his second wife because they were divorced in June, so I'm assuming her. And he spent jail time, a little bit of jail time, and it was suspended for two years. So here's Jack Branson now. Jack Branson and Mary Kinney Branson. She's the one who wrote Murder in Mayberry, and Jack believe they're married here. So enter Mary Kinney Branson, wife of Ann Branson's other nephew, Jack Branson. So that's her husband's nephew. He was a US treasury special agent at the time. So he's a guy with a badge and a gun.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

So from the book, she says, so in a sense, this is a story about the contrasting lives of these two men, of Russell and Jack. Mary Branson tells the story from some distance because she's not a blood relative. And as she says in Madisonville, Kentucky, quote, blood matters. Well, that's what the reviews said, too.

[Jimmy Wissman]

All over this fucking.

[James Petregallo]

It's everywhere. That's what they're blood spatters is what it is here. So that's what the town. The reviews said, too.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

It matters who you are and what you know, whose vagina you fell out of, basically. So they said. Jack's federal expertise clashed with small town loyalties, turning family ties into a web of suspicion. And heartbreak. Okay, so from the book, this is Mary and Jack here.

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[Jimmy Wissman]

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[James Petregallo]

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[Jimmy Wissman]

Now back to the show.

[James Petregallo]

Driving to Kentucky early the next morning with a snowstorm hours behind us, we spent the six hours going over every possible suspect. So they're coming to town to figure this out too?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

And they're going over the suspect list as they're coming into town. Even though they're not officially on the case. Quote, unquote. They're just relatives with law enforcement experience. So they said. Jack's years as an investigator taught him not to rule anyone out. Earl had told Jack that Ann's security system wasn't activated, so he concentrated first on people Ann knew. If she had known her killer, she would have turned off the security system to let them into her home because it was off at the time. We pieced together what we knew of Ann's last hours. She'd walked across the street to attend the evening worship service at her church. That service ended at 7. Sometime after that, the killer entered Ann's house and murdered her. The next day, Monday, Ann was scheduled to have lunch with her fiance. When she didn't answer the door or her phone, Bob became alarmed. He could see her in the he could see her car in the garage and was concerned that she was inside and hurt. He walked across the street to the church and called the police. Since Ann had told him Earl had a key to her house, Bob suggested they also call Earl. So they're going along, they say. As the miles passed, Jack and I made a mental list of possible suspects. The crazy renter, the night guy or Prince or whatever he is. He could have become enraged if she told him she was evicting him. He said, actually, any renter could be a suspect. She had a lockbox outside where they dropped off their rent. I guess one of them could have forced their way inside. And someone was always behind in their rent.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Uh oh.

[James Petregallo]

As we moved down the mental list of suspects, Jack paused. It's hard to imagine a family member could have done it, but we have to consider the possibility. And Mary said, I can't believe that. And Jack said, one thing I've always learned. Never rule out anyone and the first suspects are always family. So he said. We drove for a while in silence, mentally digesting our conversation thus far. I looked over at Jack's profile. His jaw was set so slightly that only someone who had known and loved him for 35 years could detect the stress. He said.

She'S looking at him. She said, he could be intense but not loud, but he is a fast talker and all that. So. Jack said, speaking of family members, I don't think we can eliminate Grace. That's the cancer ridden sister.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Jesus Christ, they really want her for it.

[James Petregallo]

And Mary said, you're kidding. And Jack said. On Saturday, Anna May said Grace's cancer had spread to her spleen and possibly her brain. She's gotten so hateful no one can stand to be around her for long. She's never gotten past the anger stage of dying. She's angry because she's the youngest sibling and she's dying first.

Yeah, so Jack said. She actually told Anna Mae a couple weeks ago that she should be the one dying, not her. You should be dead, not me. The thought of a family member hurting Ann was more than I was ready to consider. Mary says. Several exits blurred by. I closed my eyes and listened to the hum of the Goodyear tires. Whatever, blah, blah, blah. I could smell Jack's aftershave. Jack didn't trust change, and if something worked, then good enough. He's been wearing Brutes since high school.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You bet.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, boy. So that's funny. They talk about this. Jack's voice interrupted my musings and had two employees, a handyman and a housekeeper. I don't know much about either of them, but they'd have access to the house and she'd have opened the door for them. They said, is there anyone? We're ruling out? Mary said. And Jack said, honestly, only the family members who live out of town and mother everyone else is a possibility. Okay. January 23, 2003. They bring old Russell in for questions since he owes her the most. He sits in the interrogation room. Looks comma shit. Yeah, you'll see if you watch interrogations. Watch enough of them. The ones where they show, like, 20 minutes of the guy just sitting there before the cops come in. Those are great. It seems like it's boring, but it really isn't. There's a lot of tells. What? The difference between what a guilty person does and an innocent person does are very different. The look of stress. The look of everything. He is calm as shit, arms folded, smiling. All right, guys, I understand. You got to talk to everybody. Let's get it over with. So Detective Duncan says, russell, we found your aunt's ledger. He said, okay. They said, she's got you down for almost 100,000 in loans. Is that true? Yeah. And they said. Russell paused and said, I borrowed some money from Ann over the years. I don't know about 100,000.

[Jimmy Wissman]

97.

[James Petregallo]

I mean, you know, maybe 97, but not 100. I'm not crazy, you know. So they said, and you gave her a check for $1,200 on January 11, two days before she died. Russell says, I don't remember writing a check. Oh, but it's in her. They don't find the check in her house either, by the way. Oh, but they find in her ledger that she received a check for 1,200 and they're like, I don't know why she'd write that. So the cop says, your aunt wrote it down in her ledger in her handwriting.

He shrugs and says, yeah, maybe I did. I don't remember. Okay, It's a week later. You don't remember writing a check? I don't know. Look in your checkbook at the carbons.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I mean, back then, too, you wrote a lot of checks.

[James Petregallo]

Well, maybe not. Look at the carbons, though. You can see if you wrote it. Just look through your checkbook. You'll have a copy of it right there for sure. What are we talking about? So they said, you know, he said, maybe I did. I don't remember. They said, were you at her house on Sunday or where were you on Sunday night, January 12? He said, went to church, came home, watched TV with Tammy, went to bed. Okay. They said, what time did you get home? He said, about 7:25. And they said, you're sure about that? He said, yeah, Tammy will tell you. By the way, I think Tammy's his second wife, if I'm not mistaken. I think he was married to someone else who was his high school sweetheart. And Tammy came around later, if I'm not mistaken. Not that this matters, but just to keep track of the tree, if you've drawn one, keep your branches straight. Just to tell you. So they said, Russell, your aunt was murdered between 7 and 7:30. You're telling me you were home at 7:25? They said, that's what I'm telling you. That's what Russell said. That's it. So they go, all right, yeah, we'll check your story out. So they interview Tammy. They said, Tammy said, Russell got home at 7:25. We watched TV together. He went to bed early. Okay. It's exactly what he said. So they're like, okay, but they said, there's just something wrong here. It's 7:25 is just too.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Too specific.

[James Petregallo]

It's too specific for them both to say it. Yeah. You know what I mean? Somebody would have just rounded up to 7:30.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

You know what I'm saying? So there's just. It's so exactly matching that it's suspicious, you know what I'm saying? So they just feel something's off. So they get a search warrant for Russell's house. Now, what they find in there, first of all, is two burner cell phones hidden in Russell's workbench.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, yeah. Russell's got a whole double life he's.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Got going on two burners.

[James Petregallo]

One is a specific Burner for one person. Oh.

It'S like on the wire, like, only I'm gonna call you on this and I'm just gonna ring twice and hang up and you call me back.

One only calls, or I'm sure can call others, but the only person on the call logs are a casino cocktail waitress. He's having an affair with.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What?

[James Petregallo]

Oh, yeah, he's banging some waitress from a casino as well.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Well, I mean, if you go there.

[James Petregallo]

Nine months of 236 times in a.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Year, you're gonna meet somebody.

[James Petregallo]

You're gonna meet somebody. Christ, you might as well get a goddamn job there. You might as well. Give you a vest, for fuck's sake. And a name tag. You're there enough. Anyway, I'll treat people.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Christ's sake.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, say hi. What are you doing? Deal some blackjack. So they look around, they find that they're like, okay, that's very interesting. Then they look under his mattress and find a custom made, heavy blade, serrated edge hunting knife.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wow.

[James Petregallo]

Under. What adult keeps that under their mattress?

I guess for protection.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

How do you get under your mattress when you're trying to protect yourself? That's just hard. So they end up.

Looking into him and they find that all the 236 casino visits, they show that his losses totaled over a million dollars in 2002.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Holy.

[James Petregallo]

And they're like, well, yeah, why is he borrowing so much money? He's not helping some, like, poor South American child get reconstructive surgery after her junkie mom spilled boiling water on her face or something. This is compulsive fucking gambling. Not good. He is gambling like crazy. Oh, by the way, the knife, very consistent with the wounds on body as well. The knife is consistent with the wounds. That lines up perfectly. There's no DNA on it or anything. No blood on it. But it's. It's the knife that would have been used, you know, so they said about him. Gambling. He drives 50 miles to casinos in Evansville, Indiana, and Metro Metropolis, Illinois, which is probably not a metropolis, I'm sure. Ironically enough, multiple times a week. And loses six figures a year. Jeff Hibbs told us that Russell Winstead had an extreme gambling habit.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Detective Duncan, I would fucking well say so. Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

You have like a Charles Barkley level gambling habit. Except he was making a year. Yeah. Any of the income to back that shit up? 236 visits in a year. Imagine going anywhere 236 times in a year. Anywhere.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I can't. Besides your bed or the gas station. If you drive A lot.

[James Petregallo]

Even that?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

236 times two out of three days you're getting gas.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's crazy.

[James Petregallo]

Unless you're like a delivery person or something. I don't know. That's crazy. So his favorite casino was the riverboat. Was a riverboat called the Casino Aztar, which has now been remodeled into a. Jesus Christ in New Orleans. It's a Cheeto themed casino with a giant thing of Chester the Cheeto coming out from the middle of it. I swear to God, I couldn't make that up. A Cheeto themed casino with Chester Cheetah.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Right in the middle.

[James Petregallo]

Chester Poppin. Now, they also found out Russell was having multiple affairs. Multiple affairs all over the place. The one with the cocktail waitress at the casino, that's a long term relationship he's been in. That's not even an affair, really. So his burner phones, his wife knew nothing about them?

Yeah, so they said. We recovered a couple of burner phones that his wife didn't even know existed. The detective said one of the cell phones was used only to contact a waitress at one of the casinos. So they bring Tammy back in and they talk to her, see if they can get something out of her now. And they said, Ms. Winstead, did you know your husband had burner phones?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Do you know what a burner phone is?

[James Petregallo]

That's what I mean. In 2000, she said, what? No. What is the. Yeah, what, what now? They said, did you know that he's been having an affair with a woman at the casino? Oh. She immediately starts crying and says, no, she's telling the truth, obviously.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She just broke that to me.

[James Petregallo]

Yep. They said, did you know Russell went to casinos 236 times last year?

She said, quote, he gambles sometimes, but not that much. Yes.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Then why is he there?

[James Petregallo]

236 times? That's pretty fun. They said, on a bad night, what do you think he loses? Just if we're asking on a bad night. She said, I don't know, maybe 2,000, 3,000. Which. That's way more than a bad night. I would.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's a disgusting evening.

[James Petregallo]

If I lost $3,000 in a night, I would never get over it. Literally. This is why I can't be a gambler. I would. For 20 years, I'd be thinking about, why did I do that? Oh, my God.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I lost 1800 in Vegas one night.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, my. 2003.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I've never gambled again.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. That's horrible. You got it changed everything. You're not a gambling addict. That's why it's because you could have fucking destroyed me.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I cried.

[James Petregallo]

That's what I mean. You could have went the other way. You could have said, I got to get that money back tomorrow. No, that's what a lot of people with that gene do instead or whatever it is.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I was furious.

[James Petregallo]

You went, oh, my God, they robbed me blind. Fuck this place. I'm never doing this again.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And as I lost the final hundred dollars, the.

The guy. Is he a dealer? What is that guy? The guy spins the fucking ball. He spins the ball and goes, bet on black. Bet on black. And then black popped up. I was like, I'm walking away or I'm going to fucking murder that man.

As he just laughed at me and then told me what to bet on.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, my God. I've never lost more than, like, $40. So really, if I lose $20, I'm like, Mike, that's $20 I just threw in the garbage. I can't do that. I'm just. I'm so. No. Oh, God. I'm going to be poor any minute now.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I don't know why I did it. It was my whole paycheck.

[James Petregallo]

Because you thought it was happening. People get that urge. They throw money. Someone takes it. You're like, I'll show you. I'll put even more money down and show you what I'm doing.

[Jimmy Wissman]

As soon as I lost the last hundred, I was like, I deserve this day. But I wanted to die. So I bet who the fuck on roulette. Betting red and black. That's all I bet on.

[James Petregallo]

That's all. You're not even numbering 1800 gone.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What the fuck?

[James Petregallo]

Wow. On a 50. 50 shot, huh?

I guess it'd be a little less because there's the other square.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I mean, there's a little bit of green, but it's 50.

[James Petregallo]

50 for pretty much 50. 50.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Green came up one of the times, and I almost kicked the table.

[James Petregallo]

That's a nightmare. You even picked the one with the worst odds.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. No skill involved.

[Jimmy Wissman]

None.

[James Petregallo]

You could have played blackjack and at least had a chance. You know what I mean? At least you had a chance. You did a slot machine, essentially.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Way worse. Way worse odds. 50, 50 just came on losing. Oh, man.

[James Petregallo]

So they tell her maybe. She says, maybe 2,000. 3,000.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

They say, try 38,000 in one night. One night. One night.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Holy shit.

[James Petregallo]

I would drive my car into a wall.

[Jimmy Wissman]

If I lost $38,000, I would skip the car. I would pay some. I'd tell somebody to keep the car and run me over with it?

[James Petregallo]

Never. Yeah, take this. Run me over and then keep driving. You can have it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's yours.

[James Petregallo]

So Tammy completely breaks. I mean, loses it at that point. I know nothing about who I'm married to. He's fucking people. He's losing our whole. Everything. So they said. She started bawling. The detective said. So the detective said, tammy, I need you to think very carefully. What time did Russell get home on Sunday, January 12, now that you don't want to protect him so bad.

She gives a long pause and then says the most telling answer of all time. Quote, he told me to say 7:25.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, no.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, boy. They said, but what time did he actually get home? Yeah, she said it was later, closer to nine.

Uh oh. Uh oh. So they said, why did you lie?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, what the fuck?

[James Petregallo]

She said, he told me to. Oh, boy. He said if I didn't, I'd lose everything, the house, the kids. He said, I'd be the one going to jail. How would she be the one going to jail? For telling the truth about a murder? So now Russell has no alibi whatsoever and has a completely unaccounted for. Unaccounted for whatever window in the exact time of the murder. Shit. So they give him. Here is. They're gonna offer him a polygraph here. And this is from the book again here.

So they said that they met him at the church auditorium. And they tried to concentrate, they said, but our minds were 350 miles away in a motel room in Madisonville where the son of Jack's favorite uncle was undergoing a polygraph. Apparently, Earl is Jack's favorite uncle to see if he had bludgeoned and stabbed somebody. So this is the deal. Russell had arrived at 9am for his polygraph. His attorney accompanied him, cramped into the tiny motel room. I don't know why they're doing all this in a motel room, by the way. It makes no sense. Sam and Bert, these are the detectives, began their efforts to get to know Russell and put him at ease. They asked Russell some questions about his habits, his behavior and whereabouts. They said our PIs asked Russell when he had last seen Ann alive. He said, I saw her on Friday at 6:15pm he said, I went to her home to borrow $9,700. Okay, they said, what did you do with the money? And Russell was obviously resigned that his gambling habits would soon become public knowledge. He said, the next day, I went to Caesar's palace near Louisville, added $300 of my own money and lost the entire $10,000. That evening.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Holy shit.

[James Petregallo]

Wow. They said.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And grand that night.

[James Petregallo]

Grand that night like nothing. 10 grand of borrowed money. That's not even his money, right? He's in the hole.

[Jimmy Wissman]

10 grand out the window.

[James Petregallo]

So they said Ann didn't keep that much cash around the house. So she would have had to have written a check which Russell would have cashed at a bank or at the casino. Because of Jack's experience with financial crimes, we knew that Russell probably asked her for the unusual amount to avoid filing or filling out a CTR or the casino completing form, which is Form 8300. Both reports of cash transactions of 10,000 or more. There's a law in this country that if you spend 10,000 in cash on anything for any reason, the government knows about it. If you go buy a car with cash they're going to have to fill out a whole separate form and blah blah blah blah blah. Because God for fucking bid, God forbid you buy whatever you want.

[Jimmy Wissman]

But sometimes it works out in these situations.

[James Petregallo]

In these situations it's for drug dealers is how they're trying to do it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's for money laundering. People that are to trying, trying not to report it.

[James Petregallo]

Exactly. So they said Russell spent his Saturday night in Louisville and returned to Madisonville at about 2pm on Sunday. It just annoys me because it's cash. So that means it's for drugs. But you can have fucking stocks and this and that and all sorts of swindles and nobody fucking cares.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Fake money bang us all right in.

[James Petregallo]

The ass no problem.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Fake money that only exists on the Internet and that we don't care about.

[James Petregallo]

But God forbid if you want to spend 10,000 of your own fucking money, you got to fill out a government form. So Russell said he spent Saturday night in Louisville, returned to Madisonville about 2pm on Sunday. Russell said he went to his ex wife's and picked up one of his sons. They went to Russell's house until approximately 5:45. Then he and his family drove to church. He and his son took separate vehicles so he could drop his son off at his ex wife wives while Terry, his second wife got their. I guess that's Tammy got their children ready for bed. They were at church by about 7:10. Russell took his son home at 7:20 or 7:25. He returned to the home no later than 7:40 where he stayed for the rest of the night. That's his story Now Russell said he first learned about ann's death at 3pm Monday, January 13th. They said our investigators questioned Russell about his gambling hack habits. He Admitted owing Ann between 65 and 75,000. He admitted he borrowed money from her on a number of occasions, paid back part of the money, then borrowed more. He said that the money he borrowed was always for gambling. So they talk about where he was. He told the investigators he'd never been barred from any casino. He doesn't owe the money or anything. They said, how many times did you frequent casinos in the past year? He said the police said that between Evansville, Metropolis, and Louisville, I'd frequented casinos 236 times in the past 12 months. That sounds about right. They said, what about the $10,000 you borrowed from Ann to buy a piece of mining equipment? That's what he told her he needed it for. He said, there was no mining equipment. I used the money to gamble. They said, you must be in hock up to your eyeballs. And he said, yep. He said, I am. And they said, you know, you're the prime suspect in Ann's murder. And Russell said, it's because I owed her money, but I didn't kill her. The Madisonville police said that I failed the Kentucky State police polygraph, but it was because they questioned me so hard before I took it. I'm glad to take another polygraph because I'm innocent. Okay, so you say they worked his polygraph a little. So the cops said, yeah. No one knows better than them in their minds that polygraphs produce false negatives and false positives. Happens all the time. Very common. That's why they're not allowed in court.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Sure, yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Critics claim the polygraphs about 70% accurate. And really, it's kind of an art reading polygraphs. It's more of an art than a science. Proponents claim a success rate as high as 92%. Even the higher estimate allows room for error. Bert eliminated a significant degree of inaccuracy by using the Lafayette computerized polygraph. The computerized scores greatly minimized subjective and often biased readings by those administering the tests. Yeah, because they'll say, I can make it however you want it to be, basically. So they said. Bert acknowledged the possibility that the previous polygraph could have been faulty. He said, sometimes if you're emotionally involved with someone, just hearing their name can alter your responses. He explained to Russell. He said, when I administer your polygraph, I won't use Ann's name. That should put you a little more at ease.

[Jimmy Wissman]

So he's just gonna use, like, your aunt or whatever.

[James Petregallo]

They're just gonna say, yeah, her, or something like that. So they said they did everything possible to provide a Safe and comfortable environment for Russell. They began the polygraph with preliminary questions that established that he was a capable reactor. Again, they have to see if when he lies it reacts no physical or psychological problems. They asked him two questions. Did you hit her in the head with anything on January 12th? He said no. They said did you stab her on January 12? He said no.

So anyway, the results of this. This is Mary talking to about Jack here saying when I reached Jack, he put his arm around my shoulder and looked into my eyes. The last time I've seen that look of loss was when he was carrying Ann's coffin. We learned that the following the examination, Bert conducted a numerical evaluation of the polygraph charts and asked Sam to conduct a separate numerical evaluation. The results of the two evaluations on Russell were consistent. In addition to the computerized scoring and all that.

An algorithm which is a poly score they call it. The combination of the scores are two objective for these two objective tests provide significant accuracy. The results of the calculations were three times the threshold score needed to fail the polygraph examination.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Super failed.

[James Petregallo]

He failed miserably.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He failed hard.

[James Petregallo]

The results on the Poly score were 100% probability of deception on the question about 70 stabbing. And. And a 99. 99% probability of deception. And the question about hitting her on the head. Okay, so fucked basically.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Well it. And that. I mean speculative. It feels like he probably was more or less 99% not. He probably wasn't as certain there because he knows that. That hitting her on the head probably didn't kill her but that stabbing 100% killed her. Her.

[James Petregallo]

What did they. They hit her? That. That was the first question was the stat. So the 99% then 100 on the other. So they go on from the book here. Ann's body would be ready for viewing in the afternoon. There was some concern about whether Ann's injuries could be adequately disguised as they're talking about the funeral here.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Fucking poor head.

[James Petregallo]

But the women of the family seemed determined that there would be an open coffin. Maybe they needed to see Ann's body looking normal so they can imagine she died peacefully. Jesus Christ.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I assure you she did not.

[James Petregallo]

No. A wig would cover the gaping holes in her skull, but would have to come down far enough to camouflage the parts of her neck that were missing or concaved.

Jesus Christ. They sorted through Ann's many wigs and found one they thought would work. The ladies and her family communicated throughout the day with the mortician.

So they talked about that and they said the funeral home instructed the ladies to choose a pair of heavy gloves to cover Ann's hand injury, they found black leather gloves. And from Ann's well stocked closet, they chose a gray suit with a mink collar, probably with a head, I assume, to match them. So they said that only a portion of her face would be visible.

Okay. So they said that they never saw her so plain. It was a gray suit. They said normally when she wore a gray suit, she would have had bright pink earrings and. And floral shoes or something like that. She has a lot of oranges and purples and tropical prints and colors. She likes that kind of shit. So they go to arrest Russell, they indict Russell, and they don't arrest him right there. They have to go get an indictment and an arrest warrant. And they arrest Russell. They're going to arrest him. They go to his house, knock on the door, he's fucking gone.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Where'd he go? He just left.

[James Petregallo]

He took off.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wow.

[James Petregallo]

Tammy said he left earlier that morning with a packed bag and his passport.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And a passport.

[James Petregallo]

He's gonna leave the fucking country and he's out. So by the time they scramble and figure out where he went, he is already in Costa Rica. What?

Yup, Very specific. This is from the book. They say as summer approached, the messenger was again our method of discovering news about Russell. That's the newspaper. Locally, we Learned that on June 6, Terry was granted a divorce from Russell. They said that Russell showed up at a Father's Day family picnic and that was the last time anyone had known or seen him, basically. So that was in June. Jack and I drove to California in July, a combination business trip and vacation. On Tuesday, July 15, Penny called my cell phone while Jack and I were at Knott's Berry Farm. She learned that Russell had been indicted. Finally, we celebrated for two days. We were driving on the Interstate 5 north from Long beach to San Francisco when Jack got a call from Captain Randy Hargis. Russell hadn't shown up for his arraignment. His attorney had promised that he would. So police went to Russell's last known address to arrest him and learned he'd left the country. They said that Russell had attended a family gathering in mid June, and the detectives seemed surprised. Jack surmised that that the police had hadn't known where Russell was for a long time. They said, we'll always regret that we allowed the doors closed by the NPD to keep us from calling Hargis. Two months earlier, when we learned Russell was working in Henderson, Jack closed the cell, shook his head and talked through clenched Teeth. He spoke very precisely and slowly and said, I can't believe they didn't keep him under surveillance when they knew he was about to be indicted.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Right.

[James Petregallo]

Why would you do that? So six days later, Jack and I were in Oklahoma and we heard that there was an article that had run in the messenger stating that the insurance company was holding the siblings insurance policy benefits until they were all cleared as suspects.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

We'd received the money from the policy and had for Jack several months ago, but we hadn't realized that the other policies had been held.

So this is crazy. So Jack tells his mother, I'm telling you that you won't have to pay legal fees and someday I'm going to say I told you so. I don't believe I've ever heard Jack say I told you so before. So they're saying, believe me, you're going to get insurance money. It's not going to get held up because I know who did it and it's not you guys. So when we arrived home, Jack called the Commonwealth Attorney, David Massimore to ask for details of Russell's flight. The attorney said that Russell had applied for a passport in Chicago in May.

He is. The FBI has looked into this. He applies for a passport in May knowing he's under investigation for murder and there's no red flags at all.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He was gonna plan on leaving already. And they don't have something set up to where somebody that's under investigation can just get their passport and dip.

[James Petregallo]

Get a passport? Yep. He thought. He's thought to be in Costa Rica. Jack shook his head and hung up the phone and said Costa Rica wasn't a random choice for Russell. It's popular with American tourists. San Jose, is that San Jose. Costa Rica is crowded with casinos and they have the highest table stakes in Central America.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That is going to gamble.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. If you're a high stakes gambler, Costa Rica is where you want to be. Oh, and by the way, Costa Rica doesn't extradite for capital crimes.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Is that right?

[James Petregallo]

Yep. So Russell had planned this perfectly. So Costa Rica, Russell, here he is, he landed in San Jose, checked into the Hotel Del Rey, which is a spot in Central America with a casino on the first floor and the bar doubles as a pickup spot for sex workers. So this is where, if you were an American tourist looking to do some sleazy shit in Costa Rica, this is where you'd go to gamble a bunch and pick up people to fuck.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Does the Del Rey sponsor this show? Because you just did a hell of an ad.

[James Petregallo]

For? It's a good ad. And the rooms upstairs? Rent. They have some rooms that rent by the hour upstairs, too. So this is. If you're looking to party. This is like Tijuana with a plane.

[Jimmy Wissman]

This is wonderful. Beaches. Shit.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. And beaches. So Russell loves it here. Yeah. They said he was living under a pseudonym. The detective said he was still bouncing. Of course he is. From female to female. And he was living the lifestyle that he was trying to live here, except without having to go home and pretend to be a family man and go to church on Sunday and all that. All that. Yeah, that double life stuff. He just cut out the front part and just go right to the back room there every night. Blackjack tables, pounding whiskey, picking up women, doing his thing.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Great time.

[James Petregallo]

Now, how did he get there, you might wonder? Well, he got his passport in May in Chicago, then flew through Nashville, Tennessee, then to Dallas, then to Texas or then to San. San Jose.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah. That is three flights.

[James Petregallo]

Four flights, yes. That's too much that you can get caught on. I don't know if that was his way of, like, washing himself from this or. I mean, he'd have to fly. They didn't have a Nashville to Costa Rica. Direct flight, probably. So they had to get it out of Dallas. I'm not sure. So, laundrous flight logs here. Now, this is what they think happened. After putting all the evidence together and everything, they figured it out. Here.

Russell needed another loan. He was $9,700 short on a payment he owed Ann, and he begged her for another loan. She writes him a check for $9,700. Trying to show good faith, he writes her a check for $1,200 as partial payment of a nearly $100,000 debt. So she writes Russell. Check received, $1,200. January 11, 2003. That's Saturday. That same night, casino surveillance cameras capture him at the high stakes blackjack table in Illinois, losing $10,000 in a session. He's overdrawn and he knows it. He's fucked. That $1,200 check is gonna bounce. And when it bounces, Ann's gonna know what's going on, and she's gonna tell everybody and fucking blow his entire double life. And, you know, next thing you know, his burner phones will be out in the open. So all of this shit. So, Sunday, January 12, 6:30pm First Christian Church in Madisonville. Sunday evening service. Ann attends, as she does every Sunday. She's wearing a blue pantsuit, diamond rings on three fingers, freshly quaffed hair.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She looks Amazing.

[James Petregallo]

Russell's there. He sits three rows behind her. After the service, they chatted in the parking lot briefly. Just a pleasant conversation. Ann had mentioned to him and a couple other people she's making pork chops for dinner. 7pm Ann leaves the church, drives the six minutes to her house on North Main Street. A neighbor sees her pull into the driveway. 7:05pm, Ann arrives home, enters the home. She doesn't lock the door because she has this alarm and won't open the door for people. But apparently there's not a lot of door locking in Madisonville here. She goes to the kitchen, makes the pork chops. She'd prepped them earlier. Now she heats them up. She eats dinner standing at the counter like she does.

Whenever Dr. Bob isn't there. She just eats at the counter. You're by yourself. Who gives a shit? So 7:15, a neighbor sees a man. Oh, this is Mrs. Patricia Henderson. Glances out her window and sees a tall man in a dark jacket walking up Ann's driveway. She doesn't think much of it because Ann has family visiting all the time. There's constantly people coming and going, but later that she'll remember the man later on. Six foot one, dark hair, around £180. Russell is six'1, 180 with dark hair, pretty bad description, not bad, so they think about 7:20ish. Russell arrives at Ann's house, probably knocking. Anne probably lets him in because why not? It's her nephew and he's been there all the time. They go to the basement now, why they would go to the basement, I'm not sure.

He might have had to say something to get down there. As far as there's a weird noise. Let me check your water heater some way because he wouldn't just go, I'm going to talk to you in the basement. We're the only two people here. Whatever you can say, show me. Yeah, let's do that. So they think that in the basement, that's when Russell probably said, listen, I need you to not cash that $1,200 check, okay? And Ann probably says, what are you talking about? And says, I'm not tearing it up. You owe me money and you gave it to me. So they think Russell must have just snapped. He had two choices. He could either get the check from her, everything's fine, or he could do it in a way that, you know has to be done, apparently. So I think he attacked her from behind based on the evidence, with a heavy object later determined to be a mining hammer or similar. Tool. Oh, holy shit.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Like a rockhammer. Like fucking.

[James Petregallo]

Something like that. Like a pickaxe, I guess.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, like Shawshank. I don't know.

[James Petregallo]

Yes, exactly. Strikes her in the back of the head. Ann collapses. She's still conscious because then you have defensive wounds. She tried to fight back. The detective said she had defensive wounds on her forearms. Then she was knocked down. That's when the perpetrator really went to work. So it's the hunting knife they think that he had under his bed there. Stabs her in the back 97 times. All over her. All over her body. I mean, she is. I don't know. I don't know. She must have said something to him. I don't know what she could have said. I'm going to tell your wife or I'm going to tell everybody or, you know, why can't you get your shit together, whatever it is? This isn't just. I'll kill her to get her to not cash this check. This is a fucking. He killed her 20 times over.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's really bad.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, you know, allegedly. Here. So he doesn't panic, he doesn't flee. He cleans up. This is a very big crime scene. The detectives said you think about someone leaving the area dripping blood from their arms and to not find any blood on the door frames or handrails. It was surmisable that this person had taken the time to clean up the crime scene. Oh, we know he's not home till nine. So he spends about an hour cleaning up the crime scene. They think he finds the check because the check is never found in the house. So they think he puts it in himself and leaves. They think he took it himself and leaves. Now, about 7:30, him leaving the house, he drives home. They think he must have disposed of his bloody clothes somewhere along the route, but they're never found his clothes, no.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Idea where they're at.

[James Petregallo]

So it could have been some dumpster or some Dairy Queen dumpster to call it back to Dairy Queen. And he walks into his house at 9:05 Tammy says, where were you? And he said, had to take care of something. I'm tired. I'm going to bed.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

And then he hides the mattress, the knife under his mattress and that's that. So how the hell is he surviving in Costa Rica if he needed that? He's got no money, Kentucky. Well, Earl, Ann's brother, is sending him money. His father, Russell's father, sending him money. Money that he inherited from Ann's estate. She is still paying for this asshole to gamble now on another continent, she's paying for him to fucking gamble. Still.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Jesus.

[James Petregallo]

Still. Because Ann had made Earl co executor of the estate. He had access to all her accounts, and he is just sending wire transfers via Western Union to Russell and Costa Rica.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What the fuck, man?

[James Petregallo]

Yep, they said, the detective said, we had a guy come forward that said Earl was actually paying him to wire money via Western Union to Russell in Costa Rica. He put a middleman in them so it wouldn't go back to Earl. The family's insanely pissed, as you might imagine.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, yeah?

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Jack Branson said, it really struck us all by surprise. What really hurt us deeply was the fact that we knew it was Ann's money that was paying for her murderer. Yeah. So the detectives set up a sting operation. They wire up the Western Union clerk as a confidential informant and they catch Earl red handed two different times, twice, just in case. So he can't say it was a one time thing. So March 2003, he's arrested too. Earl, not March. Later on in 2003, because he was got down there in June, he's arrested. He apparently hired others to covertly wire several thousands and thousands of dollars to his son. They said that. At Winstead's home, Police reported finding $2,800 in cash, a brochure for Costa Rican resorts, maps and receipts for wire transfers. Oh. So, yeah. He is charged with seven counts of hindering apprehension.

Mary Branson, the author, said, I remember Earl being let out in handcuffs. It was devastating. Now, Earl eventually is going to plead guilty. Yeah. And he is going to be given originally he sentenced to, you, sir, may fuck off. One year in prison. With the sentence being conditionally suspended for two years.

And so it's suspended for two years and he's given seven years of probation and some house arrest. Wow. And this is all. It's conditionally suspended for two years, his sentence.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, so he's gotta jump through some hoops for this.

[James Petregallo]

That condition is, if he contacts Russell at any point, he goes right to prison and for anything. Right to prison. Yeah. It doesn't matter if one of Russell's kids dies. Can't contact him and tell him someone else is going to do it. Now, Jack Branson, Ann's nephew and the retired treasury guy, he said, mary and I walked over to Earl's house to see how he was dealing with the grief. And his son Russell took us to see Earl. They're talking about the last time they saw Russell. And they said even then Russell was playing the concerned nephew we'll be glad when we find out who did this, saying all that kind of shit. But yeah, he said for Russell to have fled the country, it was shocking to all of us. An innocent man doesn't flee like that. So Jack, due to his career in federal law enforcement, has connections. And he has connections at America's Most Wanted. And he contacts America's Most Wanted and gets them interested in the story. Okay, you know, someone killed the Dairy Queen. We got to find out who. So February 2005, America's Most Wanted airs an episode on Russell.

They show photos, they show the Hotel Del Rey. They talk about where it is. They show Russell's face for him, too.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Nice.

[James Petregallo]

Yep. So this is from the Murder in Mayberry book, quote, as seen on America's Most Wanted. Even more so was the identity of the killer whose flight from the law made him one of the FBI's most wanted. Winstead fled across borders, leaving a trail of false leads and desperate calls home. The small town cops, overwhelmed, called in federal help. Jack Branson's old contacts lit up the tip lines. Greed had turned neighbor against neighbor. And now the world watched as Madisonville's dark secret unfolded on national tv. So in Costa Rica, he is a mighty comfortable life down there.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Sure.

[James Petregallo]

He started using the name Jeffrey Danfish for a while.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Danfish.

[James Petregallo]

Dan Fish. Now you'd say that's a stupid name. No one's named Jeffrey Danfish. Jeffrey Danfish is actually an American citizen living in Costa Rica that he met.

So it's a real guy? Yeah, they don't know. They don't know if they met or not. But he knew of him, apparently, which is amazing. Apparently the messenger, the newspaper said that the black market for lost or stolen passports is very active and it wouldn't be difficult to get one, especially in Costa Rica. Also, Russell lived in Carrieri, which is a gated community, real nice place. He's also using aliases Russell Smith and Russell Johnson. And he lived in and around San Jose, which is the capital. Spent most nights at the Hotel Del Rey, which is a pink neon lit place down there that we talked about. And it's described as, quote, legendary among American gamblers and sex tourists. Gross.

He's gambled heavily, chasing women. The FBI has a flyer seeking him. They call him a, quote, seasoned gambler who likes to frequent casinos and gaming businesses. They should call him a terrible gambler who's really fucking bad at it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Not a gambler at all, really. Just a donator to casinos.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, a guy who loves to throw money away to People who don't need it. So they said. The police in Kentucky said they don't know when he'll ever be arrested. The one cop said, I do not have a timeline on his arrest. But those of us who have worked on this case have had a stressful and emotional year and were anxiously awaiting that day. Now, while this is happening, his episode of America's Most Wanted is running in repeats. Reruns are going on. So it aired repeatedly and even was picked up by satellite for these cable packages, satellite packages throughout Latin America. And all of this. Now, one night in April or May of 2005, an American tourist is sitting at the bar inside the Hotel Del Rey's casino. He looks up at the screen where America's Most Wanted is playing on mute, and he goes, holy shit. The guy in the segment looked exactly like the guy who was playing blackjack two tables away.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Hey, I know that guy. He's right there, right?

[James Petregallo]

The tall, thin Kentucky accent. He goes, there's not a lot of guys with a Kentucky accent walking around Costa Rica right now. So he goes, it's gotta be him. So the tourists called the tip line the next day. Yeah, he was still going to party that night. But the next day, a Costa Rican judicial investigation organization, it's their version of the FBI, and agents from the US Embassy moved to try to figure this out. They put the Hotel del Rey under surveillance and confirmed through photographs, it's definitely Russell. Now, Costa Rica had already issued a provisional arrest warrant in anticipation, so they didn't need to wait. Now, Thursday, May 5, 2005, 12:30am San Jose, Costa Rica here. Okay, like I said, they've been watching him for a while now, and they said that day he entered the casino earlier in the day, the detective said, during daylight hours, which was unusual for him, he departed the casino and returned later that evening. So they said that they were all, you know, anxiously awaiting his return. They said that he left the casino dressed with a man described only as a North American. Now, there's differing reports of whether he left with a man or a woman at the casino. We're not sure. Either way, that person is let go. It's fucking pointless. Doesn't matter. So he walks out of the casino after a long night at the tables, steps onto the sidewalk, and downtown, downtown San Jose. And plainclothes agents and uniform police surround him. He's slightly drunk.

And here we go. They say, russell Winstead. And he says, yeah, which isn't the best answer. He was handcuffed less than 50 yards from the Casino's entrance. So they said that he didn't resist, offered no struggle. A struggle. He just said, quote, how did you find me? He might as well have said, what took you so long?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Right?

[James Petregallo]

How'd you know it was me? So the Winstead case was thrilling that this is. He's caught. Everyone in Kentucky is thrilled. One of the detectives said there, I know for a fact that he continued gambling almost on a daily basis. He hasn't changed his motive, he just changed his territory. And this cop said that he was identified by fingerprints and photographs and they sent them to Kentucky. And this detective said, he's been so close to this case for so long, he always refers to Winstead by his first name. He said, they sent me a series of photographs. It was almost like seeing a long lost family member. I've grown to almost treat Russell like a family member. I've been so fixated on his capture. I've dreamed to this day. When I looked into his eyes in these photographs, I saw a tired man. He's been running for years, exhausted. And Earl said the same thing when he was told. This cop called Earl to tell him that he was captured. And he said there were some people that felt I deserved to hear it, that I felt. Some people who I felt deserved to hear it from me. The cop said, Earl mentioned that Russell had been tired for a while, so Earl knew exactly where he was and all that shit. People are happy with the situation.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Really?

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. One of the family members says, you may get some small closure, but the trial could take a long time. A state senator said justice delayed is better than no justice at all. The family can feel safe and secure that he'll be brought back here to face charges. This is great news for the family. I'm sure they're delighted. Now, Dr. Bob, when told, said, quote, he's in jail and he was all happy. And he said, I'm just tickled to death to hear that. That's wonderful.

Oh, you wish you were tickled to death instead of what happened to her. He said, I'm in shock, but I'm very delighted with the news. I've had my doubts sometimes if the authorities were doing enough, we'd go for long periods of time without hearing anything. That was just a horrible way for a great woman to die. I was going to marry a great lady. This does bring some closure, but it won't be over until he's been brought to trial. I commend the authorities for sticking with it. Another nephew, Tom Branson, which, if you've Ever seen Downton Abbey? Is the chauffeur who married the youngest daughter, Tom Branson.

Tom Branson's his name? Yeah, which is funny. He said, we're all still numb over the whole matter. I'm not excited he was captured. I feel very, very sorry for him.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Him.

[James Petregallo]

We lived a block away from my aunt and her memory is still very fresh. And he said, I'm sure if he's brought here, the court system will flush out the truth like a turd. He also said that the person who committed the crime has not been brought to justice. So we're all waiting for this process, however long it takes. He said Christmas time was sad because every Christmas morning I would walk over to her house. We just looked forward to seeing her at Christmas time. Time. I miss her smile perhaps more than anything. I know she's with God now and I know she can't be hurt anymore. And that brings comfort.

Glenda Seaton, a 19 year old dairy Queen employee who didn't work directly for Branson, for Ann, but knew her and described her as a good person and said, in some ways it is a happy and sad situation. You may get some small closure, but you never know how long it could take. So extradition, not so goddamn fast.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Not gonna happen, huh?

[James Petregallo]

Costa Rica has a constitutional prohibition on extraditing anyone who might face the death penalty. There's a bunch of countries like this, and they're not crazy. A bunch of normal countries like that, they're like, yeah. So the United States had to formally promise in writing that capital punishment would be taken off the table. One of the detectives said, Costa Rica is a Catholic country and they would not have agreed to make the arrest if we were seeking the death penalty. That's why we ain't got no Catholics down here in Kentucky trying not to kill people. We like to kill them down here. From the messenger, they said, it is our intent to secure Russell Winstead's capture and return to Madisonville. Progress has been made at the federal level, federal level in recent weeks in regard to to official filings needed by international agencies so that they may proceed with their part. So the deal is no death penalty and the maximum sentence can be life with the possibility of parole after 25 years. That's what the countries agree to.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay?

[James Petregallo]

And we have to agree to that and sign off on it. Costa Rica has to agree to it and sign off on it. So February 23, 2006, U.S. marshals finally escort him off a plane in Louisville. Handcuffed, finally. Now he seems insanely Guilty.

[Jimmy Wissman]

No, it certainly isn't. Good.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, let's not rush to judgment so fast. Not so fast. There's a twist. While he's back here, there's a guy named Fred Roulette.

What could be a better name for compulsive gambler to hang out with than a guy named Fred Roulette? Fred Roulette was charged with murdering an elderly woman also.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Is that right?

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Fred Roulette sent a letter to prosecutors that said I killed Ann Branson. Russell's innocent.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Why'd he do that?

[James Petregallo]

He said, this is to. I believe this is a letter to Earl. Mr. He wrote letters to a bunch of people. By the way, look at his handwriting. Look at the way he does his eyes with like the.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, the curlies.

[James Petregallo]

The curlies on the thing. Like, this is good handwriting for a murderer. He has handwriting of a 16 year old girl?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, he sure does.

[James Petregallo]

Of every chick I copied off of in science class in the 10th grade. This is what it would look like. Mr. Winstead, I'm writing you today to ask for forgiveness. I'm the reason you have lost a sister and three years of your son's life. I have no way to replace.

What I've took. Took from you and your family. But I can help make things right by owning up to what I have done. I know by doing this, it's not going to bring her back. But maybe I will give some peace back to your family. I have been living in a complete nightmare. And now it's time I confront this nightmare by letting everyone know that I'm guilty of killing Ann Branson. I hope you believe me when I say that I am deeply sorry for the pain you all have endured. If you have anything to say, please write me. Sincerely, Fred Roulette.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Why? Why would he do that?

[James Petregallo]

Well, yeah, he's. He said, that's it. That's we. We did it. And he had. He had information that only the suspects.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Why did he do that?

[James Petregallo]

He had details of the murder.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I mean, why did he do the murder?

[James Petregallo]

That's, that's what they're trying to find out. They're like, what the fuck? Why would. Why would this guy do that? So the detective said, here comes this guy out of the blue telling us he's the one who committed the murder. I was like, how could we have gotten this. This wrong? Yeah, we fucked up bad. We fucked up bad. Bad. So the prosecutors are like, we gotta look into this. When they dig deeper, they found this out. They found out that Fred Roulette came forward after he and Russell were cellmates for a couple of days, he paid him to make a confession. He paid this guy to do it. Because this guy was going down for his murder anyway. So they said, I'll pay. At least you'll have commissary. So. Wow. Trussell's going to trial now. Good try, Russ. Prosecution's case is obvious. He owed shitloads of money. He went over there, tried to get the check back. She refused, he attacked her. The witnesses lined up how he lied about his, you know, everything, you name it. Lied about his alibi, the physical evidence, the bet. The knife under his bed matches 97 stab wounds. No forced entry suggested, you know, familiarity. The flight, he fled to Costa Rica, which looks guilty as shit. Still gambled and used aliases and used money from the dead woman to gamble. Yeah. And also now Fred Roulette and another guy are both saying that Fred. That Russell tried to coerce them into writing false confessions via letters. So they tell that. Now, the defense case, there's no forensic links. There's no DNA, no fingerprints, no blood on him or the knife.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay?

[James Petregallo]

They found none of Ann's blood anywhere near him or his house, his stuff, his knife. They argued that the evidence was piled high but thin. That's what the defense attorney said, pointing to other suspects, like the handyman or the crazy tenant that was initially investigated. They also challenged the wife, his wife, Tammy's credibility, claiming her recantation was motivated by spite from the divorce. She tried to put him in jail for murder out of spite. Okay, that'd be pretty spiteful. You bet. They moved for a directed verdict of acquittal, arguing no reasonable jury could find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. And the judge was like, get the fuck out of here. Go sit down. Shut up. Denied. Shut up. Yeah. Now, they said the false confessions attempt, false confession attempt as desperate innocence, not guilt. That's how they put it. That's desperate innocence.

The prosecutor in the opening said, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, this is a simple case. A man who owed his elderly aunt $100,000, went to her home and asked her to tear up a $1200 check. She refused. He murdered her, stabbed 97 times, stole the check and fled the country. Pretty simple. Defense attorney Tom Osborne, the longtime coach of the Nebraska Cornhusker football team.

Said, quote, this case is entirely circumstantial. No DNA, no fingerprints, no eyewitnesses. The prosecution wants you to convict based on debt and suspicion. That's not how justice works in America.

Now, during the trial, they bring up Tammy, the ex wife Here, they say, Ms. Winstead, did your husband ask you to lie about his whereabouts? She said yes. What did he tell you to say? He told me to say he got home at 7:25, but that wasn't true. What time did he get home? 9 or 9:05. Why did you lie? He said, if I hadn't, they'd have the kids taken away from me and I'd get in trouble. The defense comes to Ducross. Mrs. Winstead, you've admitted to lying to the police. How can this jury trust anything you say now? She said, because I'm telling the truth now. I was scared then. I'm not scared anymore. First I was afraid, I was petrified.

Now Detective Larry Duncan on the stand, the lead investigator. They said, detective, did you find any DNA? This is on cross examination from the defense attorney. Did you find any DNA evidence linking Russell Winstead to the crime scene? No, Duncan says. Any fingerprints? No. Any eyewitnesses who saw Russell Winstead at Ann Branson's house that night? He said a neighbor saw a tall man fitting Russell's description in the driveway at around 7:15. They said, but she didn't positively identify Russell, did she? And he said, no. Here's Jeff Hibbs, Russell's friend, who call the cops on him. Basically they say, Mr. Hibbs, tell the jury what Russell told you on January 10, 2003. And he said Russell said he owed his aunt a bunch of money and that she was going to expose his gambling problem. He said he had to pay her back by Monday or everyone would know. He said, did Russell seem worried? And he said, yeah, real worried. Desperate even.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, boy. Medical examiner, 97 stab wounds. Multiple stab wounds to the back combined with severe blunt trauma to the skull. They said many of the wounds were inflicted after she was already deceased. So they said. So this person just kept stabbing her after she was dead? They said, correct. They said, in your expert opinion, what does that indicate about the attacker's state of mind? And they said, this person was enraged, this was a crime of passion. Then they bring in his Costa Rican girlfriend. What? Melinda Perez Castrillo comes himself a galaxy. Oh yeah? Oh yeah. She's a Costa Rican high school biology teacher. Costa Rican biology. She teaches.

She is there traveling to testify against her. She had been living with her. With him, by the way.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Really?

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, she said because the defense had talked to him about he's a peaceful man, he's non violent. This isn't him. She described outbursts of bursts of temper in which Winstead the threatened to kill her and her family if she didn't follow or if she followed through on a threat to alert authorities that he was there when they got into a fight. She'd say, well, I'll call a fucking Interpol. I'll call Interpol. And he said, yep. She also said he hit her. She described a stormy relationship in which Russell would disappear for periods at a time. She said that Russell told her he was a suspect in his aunt's murder. She helped him. She picked up money from his father sent through Western Union. She assisted him in obtaining false identification papers. The witness said she searched the Internet for countries he could go in case the police got too close. Places like Brazil and Cuba that wouldn't allow extradition if the death penalty was possible.

She said that he spent her money, too. Gambled that away. He never worked. She said he was, quote, always gambling. She said he was very violent. Always upset and angry. They had an argument, and she said she told him she had written a letter to her family telling them about her just in case something happened to her. Winstead grabbed her by the arm and said, are you fucking crazy? He then hit her, and she demonstrated several rapid punches.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, he punched her.

[James Petregallo]

Beach. Yeah. When she threatened to go to the police, she said that he told her his father would send someone to kill her, she said. Russell, she said, also threatened to burn her house down with her family inside of it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

With you inside it?

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. That's nice. He said to her, quote, if I killed my aunt, why wouldn't I kill you?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, my God.

[James Petregallo]

Jesus Christ. Sometime in 2004, he told her his father would pay her $1 million to. To disappear. Not pay to get her disappeared, but pay her $1 million to disappear. Somewhere under cross examination here, they said she said that he was with a lot of women, and she had learned that he even got married while he was down there living with her.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Holy shit.

[James Petregallo]

Living with her, spending her money. He's also married on the side, this guy. It's like four lives by now.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He just wants to do whatever he wants to do, and we'll have no words about it.

[James Petregallo]

Nothing. No forms of just morality. Not even morality just now. I'm just a really average guy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What the fuck is going on?

[James Petregallo]

Real average guy. I don't get it. Must have some charisma to him or something. So, I mean, I don't know. He's ballsy. He's a race car driver. So that's if you're. Which is the same kind of. I think, the same trigger. Mechanism in your brain that gives you pleasure as gambling does. Probably.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Probably. Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Similar type of thriller. Yeah.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

All or nothing, babe. Either I lose all my money or I win or I drive real fast or I crash and die.

[Jimmy Wissman]

But I'm dead.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Wissman]

There's nothing in between.

[James Petregallo]

That's it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

There's very few guys that have gotten in car accidents in NASCAR and they've just been disabled.

[James Petregallo]

You know what I mean?

[Jimmy Wissman]

They die.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Yeah. They're dead or fine. One of the two. So they questioned her whether this angered her that he had gotten married. She said that she was, quote, tired of everything. I wanted my money back. She admitted she lied to FBI agents during her first interview and said that after that she'd been honest. Though. A neighbor witness, Pierre McNary, or I'm sorry, is Denise Gilmore's the Neighbor. Pierre McNary is his attorney attacked this neighbor on Wednesday saying that she saw Winstead outside the home on the night of the murder. She's the witness that saw him. The defense attorney said that this Gilmore woman told him that the man ran to the side of her car and that she gave him a ride. Oh, this is a different person. Not that other neighbor. This is somebody gave a ride. He also said Gilmore told him that the man she saw was black. McNary said he sometimes drove Gilmore's car for her because she had trouble seeing at night. He called her deceitful. Commonwealth Attorney noted McNary is a convicted felon. Okay, that's not the lawyer. That's the guy. A convicted felon, currently. I got confused there. I got confused with who the lawyers are. I try to remember their names and I thought he was one of them.

Noted that McNary is a convicted felon currently facing drug related charges. Then they said that there's a letter from someone said that he had received from McNary indicating he would not testify in the trial if this other guy would help him with his charges. So he's been trying to play with his testimony, trying to earn something. Fred Roulette is interviewed. He testifies. They said, Mr. Roulette, why did you confess to killing Anne Branson?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Why would you?

[James Petregallo]

That's the million dollar question. Fred said, Russell told me all the details. Said if I confessed, his family would take care of mine, Pay my kids way through college. Oh, they said, so you lied? And he said, yeah, I lied. They said, are you lying now? And he said, no. Russell Winstead killed his aunt. He told me everything. Hell, no. Not lying at all. So they're like, okay. By the way, he had already pleaded Guilty to the murder of Billy Cochran of Dawson Springs. This Roulette guy here, he said Winstead offered to set up trust funds of $20,000 for each of Roulette's sons and provide Roulette funding for his commissary account while in prison. You keep me in ramen noodles and honey buns, and we got a deal. So Winstead made good on part of the promise. Roulette said he bought Roulette a new pair of tennis shoes and gave him money for the jail commissary. Roulette wrote letters to five people, including defense attorney Mark Wells and Hopkins circuit judge James Brantley, claiming he killed Branson. Imagine the absolute tumescence of that defense attorney's cock when he got a letter in the mail from somebody saying, I actually killed her. Your client's innocent. Oh, he must have. So happened.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Great day.

[James Petregallo]

Holy shit. However, after he learned he could get the death penalty, he recanted. He's like, well, I didn't know you killed her over money. It's a death penalty case, idiot. I don't want to get the death penalty. So after being transferred to Christian county jail, he wrote Winstead a letter at the request of law enforcement officials asking for the money he'd been promised. Winstead did not reply. Instead, Roulette received a letter from Daniel Morseman, Winstead's new cellmate. While the letter made no reference to money, it said, you still have friends here. Be patient. It contained a poem with references that. Help is on the way.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, my God.

[James Petregallo]

What the fuck? So cross on Roulette because he's a murderer, so he's gonna get attacked. Here he is a murderer. The defense attorney, whose name is William Deathridge, by the way. Really, it's Death Rage with an E. Between the Death and Rage.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What the fuck?

[James Petregallo]

I am William Death Rage. Here's my innocent client. He killed no one. He attacked Roulette's credibility. Calling him a pothead, quote, unquote. He's a pothead.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That doesn't matter.

[James Petregallo]

And saying he smoked marijuana since the age of seven. He'd been a habitual drug user and alcohol user. Death Rage. Said that's calling him Death Rage from now on. Said that Roulette stabbed, you know, this woman to death or the woman he killed. He said, you stabbed an old woman to death. Right. She was elderly woman who, like Branson, lived alone. He suggested Roulette fabricated the story in hopes of working out a transfer to the Christian county jail, where he would be allowed to smoke cigarettes and be closer to his wife.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And perhaps he could smuggle in some of that weed.

[James Petregallo]

Maybe some of that weed. Death Rage also laid out a scenario in which Roulette might have killed Branson. Roulette claimed, said that he admitted killing Cochran and will be paying for it for at least the 23 years. He said, but I did not kill Ann Branson. Okay, Sorry. Now, other interesting trial notes. There's other family members. Jack Branson, who's the guy with the wife, with the book. He expressed devastation at the betrayal. There's also a juror misconduct kerfuffle here during the penalty phase deliberation. Some jurors use cell phones for personal calls, like checking on their kids and shit. The defense moved for a mistrial, but the judge questioned the jury collectively. All denied discussing the case and the motion was denied. Like, yeah, I checked and saw if my kid came home from school. I didn't ask if you have any information on this murder case I'm working now, so. The defense also objected to four instances of alleged misstatements from the prosecutor, exaggerating the knife fit, meaning it was a perfect fit for the stab wounds or hair evidence. But the judge's admonitions to the jury cured any prejudice. Also a spousal privilege dispute. Winstead argued that Tammy's testimony violated marital privilege. But the court ruled the alibi coercion wasn't confidential because it's. You're lying. You can't force someone to lie and call it confidential. The Kentucky Supreme Court later will talk about that too. Closing arguments, prosecutors said, ladies and gentlemen, Russell Winstead is a liar, a gambler, a cheat and a murderer. That's something on your headstone that you want, right? He owed his 85 year old aunt $100,000. He wrote her a bad check and when she wouldn't tear it up, he stabbed her 97 times. Then he cleaned up, went home, slept on top of the murder weapon and fled to Costa Rica where he knew we were coming for him. This man is not the church deacon, not the little league coach, not the devoted husband. This man is a killer. And I'm asking you to hold him accountable.

So, yeah, so they're talking about the fact that apparently there's some confusion in the cause of death, where they have another expert that says the cause of death could have been later, like 10 o', clock, whereas he's already home. Which cause of death is the least. There's no. It's the least accurate thing.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Could have been anything.

[James Petregallo]

Yes.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Other than the stab wounds and the blunt force drama.

[James Petregallo]

Anything but that.

So they. They say that evidence of Russell's deal with Roulette, other than tennis shoes and some commissary snacks. The defense had asked Roulette what proof he had of a deal. He said the trust funds weren't set up any more than There was a 56 Chevy in the driveway. He said he concluded his closing arguments by reminding the jury of the Where's Waldo drawings that were popular several years ago. He said Russell said he was with his gambling friend, but his friend was with his honey. Russell said that he was with his wife and their children, but they've testified he wasn't home till 9. So the question you have to answer is, where's Russell?

Tom Osborne, defense attorney, said this case, this case is built on suspicion. Debt doesn't make you a murderer. Gambling doesn't make you a murderer. The prosecution wants you to believe Russell did this, but they can't prove it. No witnesses, DNA, fingerprints. Yes, Russell made mistakes. He gambled. He cheated on his wife, he fled. But fleeing doesn't mean guilt. It means fear.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Fear of being convicted. Right.

[James Petregallo]

But he thinks fear that you're caught for the thing that you just did. Yeah.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He's saying wrongly, though.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, wrongly. Like Scott Peterson and O.J. russell Winstead is not a perfect man. He's not a per. But he's not a murderer. And you can't convict on suspicion. So there is six hours of deliberation. Wow. Seems like a lot. They find him guilty of intentional murder and first degree robbery. Okay, he's fucked. Jack, the cousin there, said when they announced the verdict, relief washed over me like Niagara Falls. Now the jury recommended life imprisonment without parole for 25 years on the murder count and 20 years on the robbery. Here comes the sentencing. You, sir, may fuck off. He does keep those recommendations, but imposes them consecutively.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, boy.

[James Petregallo]

Line them up. Totaling life plus 20 years, effectively life without any hope of parole till at least age 67, which to me is not near old enough. Go in a casino, it's full of old people, they love to gamble.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And all he needs is a little bit of Social Security. He'll keep going.

[James Petregallo]

That's it. He will blow it. The judge told him, quote, you will spend the rest of your life in prison. He showed little emotion and maintained his innocence, too. He said, really done the wrong thing here. Now, in 2008, that's when Jack and Mary Branson there. Mary wrote the book. She's the listed author. Murder in Mayberry, 2008. They still live in Madisonville and are Active in victims rights advocacy now. He's going to appeal a couple of times. We'll go through these extremely fast. The defense attorney wants a new trial. Yes. Based on the fact that. A couple different reasons. They said the sentencing is not what it should be. Also the fact that he must serve 42 years before anything's done. He said that's not what the deal with Costa Rica was. And all that kind of shit they also talk about. He says the court considered evidence and testimony during the hearing on the motion for a new trial, which was not available at the time. The instructions were given to the jury during the penalty basis, the trial. This information, which was subsequently presented to the trial court, was germane to the sentencing issue. And they're also talking about the spousal privilege. They'll argue that testimony given by Terry Rainwater. Now, Rainwater was. Winstead should not be allowed because of spousal privilege. She said, we believe it was confidential. So that's what they're saying. They're saying that once you get rid of that and the other shit, you don't have any case at all. All right, so, yeah, they said that. And also the jurors with their cell phones, they deny his shit.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay, good.

[James Petregallo]

They say no, by the way, that goes to the State Supreme Court, who makes sure to tell him the fuck off. Yeah. 2010, the sentencing laws changed. The Kentucky Supreme Court vacated the consecutive sentencing offer in 2010, ruling that sentences must run concurrently.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They have to.

[James Petregallo]

You can't just line them up, especially if they're from the same. If he killed five people, I think you can line those up consecutively, but you can't line up a bunch of sentences in one act. I believe that's what it is. I'm not sure because I read it. I read. Briefly read the law, but, like, I'm not a lawyer, number one, and number two, I had a lot of other shit to do, so I didn't get into it. Didn't think it mattered. So the effective sentence is life without. With parole eligibility after 25 years. Years.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

Okay. Now, either in 2015 or 18, there's.

Disputed reports. Earl dies.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, Earl. I'm sorry.

[James Petregallo]

Earl's dad. Oh, wait.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Fuck Earl.

[James Petregallo]

Earl's his dad? Yeah, Earl's his dad who was wiring him money. Fuck Earl. Yeah. So the Dixie Chicks were right. God damn it. Goodbye, Earl. Goodbye, Earl. So Tammy here, the ex wife, she's remarried, living in Southern Kentucky, doesn't like to talk about the case. Raised all the kids as a single mother, and she changed her last name to get away from this Dr. Bob. He lived until 2011 when he finally died. He never remarried, never married anyone else. He visited Ann's grave every week until he died.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He died at 91 years old.

[James Petregallo]

Something. We don't know how old he was exactly.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Well, he was her age that you. Nine years later. Fucking guy almost lived to 100.

[James Petregallo]

He's old as shit either way. And he visited her grave every week until his death. So he really loved her. In December of. As of December of 2025, I should say so. As of right now, Russell is in prison. He is inmate number 180379 in the Kentucky State Reformatory at LaGrange serving life with parole. After 25 years, he's eligible for parole in 2032. Wow. Not very long far off here, but six years off of that here now. Ann is buried at the Odd Fellows Cemetery. That's a social club back east thing. I remember our Little League had an oddfellows team, Odd Fellows in Madisonville. So she's there. Her house, which is a nice little house, still sits there, still looks nice. And the zestimate on it is $97,000. There you go. For right now. She was, she was living very. She was just by herself so she didn't need to. She showed off in her appearance rather than that kind of thing. It's a 2,000 square foot house though. It's a nice size house for an older lady. So there you go everybody. That is Madisonville, Kentucky and one goddamn wild, weird, crazy story that is quickly here. Definitely head over to shutupandgivememurder.com actually before that though, go on the app you're listening on and rate and review the show. It helps a lot. Give us five stars. Really drives up the visibility of the show. So thank you for doing that. ShutUpAndGiveMerder.com is where you get the tickets for live shows merchandise too. Tickets for live shows for 2026. The ones in December this year are sold out this weekend. But I'll give you a quick rundown of 2026. Get your tickets. They're available right now at shutupandgivememurder.com we have February 21st in Nashville. Nashville's a drive in too, so people come from everywhere. Get those tickets, they'll sell out. We have March 6 in Durham, March 7 in Atlanta, March 20 in Phoenix. March 21 in Phoenix is your stupid opinions live show. We have May 1st in Salt Lake City, but that's already sold out. So nevermind that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wow. Thank you, guys.

[James Petregallo]

Thank you so much. May 2 in Denver. May 29 in Buffalo. May 30 in Royal Oak, Michigan. September 18 in Milwaukee. September 19 Minneapolis. October 3 Dallas. October 16 San Jose. October 17, Sacramento, San Jose, California, not Costa Rica, by the way. And November 13, Tarrytown, New York, just up from New York City. And on the 14th of November, back in Boston at that theater we were at last.

So that is good stuff. Come see us get your tickets right [e-mail] we're so excited for those. Get yourself Patreon as well, dammit. Patreon.com CrimeInSports is where you get all the bonus materials. Anybody $5 a month or above. First thing you do is you're going to get immediately upon subscription access to hundreds of back bonus episodes you've never heard before. So you got a big binge in front of you there. Then new ones every other week. One crime in sports, one small town murder, and you get them.

This week we're gonna finish up Charles Starkweather Part 2. We're in the middle of his crazy murder spree. It's so interesting. His description and his girlfriend's description of what happens together is so wild. So it's so much fun to do. We can't wait for that. So, yeah, do that. You get on top of all the episodes, you get everything we put out. Crime and sports. Your stupid opinion. Small town murder, all ad free on your Patreon as well. All ad free. And you get a shout out at the end of the show, which, hey, I think we're at the end of the show. Jimmy, please do me a favor and hit me with the names of the people who would never go $100,000 into gambling debt with us and then murder us in our own basements. Hit me with them right now.

[Jimmy Wissman]

This was executive producer Gary Howard in Seminole, Oklahoma. Gary, Jared Martin, Jennifer Sierpiel. Crpo.

[James Petregallo]

Sure.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's not English, it's something else.

Reese Probin. He's down the Cape and he knows a bunch of crazy murders up there.

[James Petregallo]

Right forward.

[Jimmy Wissman]

We'll hear some more about it. Other producers this week, Peyton Meadows, Yukon Cornelius, Kelly Thirsk, Merry Christmas, Yukon, Georgia, Lip Tac, Ryan Bender. Happy hour checking in. And bliss, Idaho. Anything but bliss. It sounds like Janice Hill. S.M. maynard, Jennifer Harmon, Trisha Berridge, Watts Flounder with no last name. Bailey Herndon, Peregrine Ruska. Thank you.

[James Petregallo]

Janice Hill, by the way, here. Janice Hill. Every goddamn week she's been doing this.

[Jimmy Wissman]

For eight years too. Janice Hill.

[James Petregallo]

And all I hear is Rossi 4R. You know, every time.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You're the best.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Thank you so much. Honestly. Sorry to interrupt you.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Aaron. Aaron's son. Megan Cook. Sanaa with no last name. Lauren with no last name. Arlene with no last name. Dan Johnson. Declan Rulay. Stephen Rash. R.R. robin. Nope, that's Rob Klingler. Klingler. Oh, boy. Ho, ho. Juliano. That's Joe. Giuliano Sabab. Skura Subob. Scura. What is that?

[James Petregallo]

Subob. The sexiest of the white family.

[Jimmy Wissman]

The Subob with the titties.

[James Petregallo]

Thank you. Get on that trampoline. Keep yourself in shape now.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Darlene Costello. Corey Moore. Daniel. Danielle. Or it's Danielle. I don't know.

[James Petregallo]

You never know these days.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Curtis Black. Christopher Quinn. Tim with no last name. J. Kaufman. Adina Smith. Melissa Tenorio. Waynewood. Adam Scott. Adam. A T O M. Not. Oh, that other guy.

[James Petregallo]

That's like a genius split. Yeah, yeah.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Samantha Rawlings. April Gordon. AQ Latoya Wendel.

[James Petregallo]

Bobo.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wendell.

[James Petregallo]

Bobo.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wendell Bow. Jarina Silva. Andy Denton. Stuart Everett. Sydney Joseph. Joe. Joseph K. With no last name. The letter K. The guy from Men in Black. K. Oh, nice.

[James Petregallo]

Thank you. James Earl Jones. Not Tommy Legion. They say James Earl Jones.

[Jimmy Wissman]

James Earl Jones. As the Men in black would be.

[James Petregallo]

Those are very obvious.

[Jimmy Wissman]

We would be in a lot of trouble. Slow. Slow man.

[James Petregallo]

Plus, it'd be weird if Darth Vader was in Men in Black.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Hey, he is in black.

[James Petregallo]

That'd be the weirdest thing in the world. So strange.

[Jimmy Wissman]

James Earl Jones does wear black. And so. Wait, is that the one we're talking about?

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. James Earl. I think we got lost.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Which Gerald Jones is it?

[James Petregallo]

It's Tommy Lee Jones.

[Jimmy Wissman]

There he is. Tommy Lee. Not Tommy Earl.

[James Petregallo]

No, Tommy Earl is a totally different guy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Tommy Earl Jones is just in jail in Texas somewhere.

[James Petregallo]

If James Earl Jones fucked Tommy Lee Jones, you'd have Tommy Earl Jones. It's not good.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And he's a bank robber from 1780.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Samuel Beck. Alberta Crowley. Connor Sowickley. Savannah Scafferty. Samantha Cywak. What is this? Maria says size. Size. Samson Moni. Moni. Penny. Really? Chad Little KT Jay with no last name. Joel Rickett. Sharon Robson. Nate Seymour. Dan Bideau. Bidet Boudet. Erica Miller. Stephanie.

It's probably just fall. Robin McGivern. Jeannie Patch. Superfluous P. Yeah, it's an extra P for no goddamn reason. Shannon with no last name. Ben Swanson. Holton with no last name. Kim Stahee. J.K. s. All right. Jeff Carter. J.K. is the first name. S is the last name. Ashley Grosso. Cameron Fogel. Lisa Kurza. Kawa. Lauren Coleman. Jana Boner. Boner what?

[James Petregallo]

Boner what?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Boner fiend. Born Boomer fiend. Is the.

Boner fiend? I don't know. She's a feigned forum. I.

[James Petregallo]

To each his own.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You know, she itches for it. Crystal Tate.

The.

[James Petregallo]

The.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Eric Spulstra. I fucking doubt it. Maybe, but that would be amazing. Jackie with no last name. Hayden Ritter. Heidi Parrott. Sierra Groves.

Courtside. Eric, if you got. If you can handle it. Charissa with no last name. Sierra Groves. I say that. Daniel White guy Ron. Megan. Tague Johnson. Kerry Sampson. San Sum. Oh, boy. Autumn Allen. Jason Laborda. Ray Harris. Roger Lynn. Robin Nuttall. Chris Bedard. Bedard Rob with no last name. Jody Pettingill. Tyler T. Lindsay Vickers. Melissa Snyder. Jacqueline.

Barzinski. David Brighton. Sophia. Sophia. No, it's Sophia with no last name. Sophia. Kim Hart. Audrey Mullies. Alec Lucas. Foster Webb. Brandon Cooper. Alicia Robinson. Heather Stepro Steepro. Possibly Elaine Peppard. Carolyn Peterson. Who is.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Peterson or Peppard. Okay.

[James Petregallo]

I don't know that Norm's kid would be.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, there it is.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Anna Varnell. Brittany Bright. Rug doctor. I'm the rogue doctor. What was that from? Oh, it's from Anchorman.

[James Petregallo]

Okay.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I'm the rug doctor. No, it's not even that. I don't know what it's. But it made no sense.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, okay.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Pasha Hanaway. I can see that. Dick bag. Pharrell. Colin.

[James Petregallo]

No, Will.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Will.

[James Petregallo]

Those are very different people.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Incredible.

[James Petregallo]

Colin Farrell and Will.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I can see Will. Look, these. I'm the rug dog. I don't know why he said. I don't. I don't remember what it's from. He calls somebody the. He says he's the rug doctor or something. Greg Statin. Shannon Macklin. Casey wrath. Bria McCabe. Ed with no last name. Harlop with no last name. Ali Colleen. Pasha Hanaway. I said that. Cyan. CN Angela Thomas. Shannon Macklin. Did I say that? Cnm. See, what's it. What is cyan? What does that mean?

[James Petregallo]

Oh, C. I'm not sure.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I don't know either. Is that Sean?

[James Petregallo]

Cayenne pepper.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That might be Sean in some weird language. Shannon with no last name. Tina Pilkington. O' Neill. Malden. Susan Kilbride. Deepak Chohan. Like Chopra, I guess. Michael U. Adam Vermillion. Carissa Roland. Br is the first name and C is the last name. I don't know. Maria Derivan, George Adam Windell, Courtney Vasquez, Eric Hyde, Erica Hyde. It's a gal. Robert Johnson, Sarah Rogers, Kristen Sullivan, Jamie or Jaime Mack, C and S. Slende, Slendy, Slined, Sarah with no last name. Cast a mom, whoever that is. Sterling Smith. Oh, not the. Is that no. Avi. Ovi. I think Judy Beam, Troy Babs, Eric Schneider, Alex Casale, Casali, Sarah Fish, Stacy Boyd, Valerie Ferrand, Chantel Lopez, Wendy De Leon, and every single person that patrons the show. You're the best. Thank you.

[James Petregallo]

Thank you so much, everybody. God damn it. You're awesome. We appreciate everything you do for us. Thank you, thank you. Thank you for doing Patreon and all that. That is the best way to support the show. It's just right to us. So thank you so much for doing that. Thanks for all that you. Do you want to follow us on social media? Very easy to do that. Head to shutupandgivememurder.com when you're buying those tickets and check out the dropdown menus and we'll take you where you need to go. Keep coming back and seeing us and until next week, everybody, it's been our pleasure.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Bye.

[James Petregallo]

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