Secrets Of Murder Pond - Nettie, West Virginia

Summary

Small Town Murder — Secrets Of Murder Pond: Nettie, West Virginia

Hosts: James Pietragallo & Jimmie Whisman
Episode Date: March 26, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this gripping episode, James and Jimmie set their comedic sights on the tiny, isolated community of Nettie, West Virginia, unraveling a web of secrets, deception, and tragedy behind an unbelievable “accident.” What at first glance seems like a horrible stroke of fate—a woman crushed and drowned beneath a fallen tree—quickly morphs into a tale of infidelity, domestic violence, and cold-blooded murder, all set against the backdrop of rural hardship, meth, and small-town dysfunction. Through in-depth research, wit, and their irreverent banter, the hosts explore the social fabric of West Virginia, the character of their players, the flaws in the investigation, and the outrageous determination of a victim's family to secure justice.

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Setting the Scene: Nettie, West Virginia

Town Profile & Color (04:51–19:46)

• Nettie is a minuscule crossroads in Nicholas County; think “three churches and a Dollar General,” secluded, surrounded by forest, with 322 people (100% white, median income ~$23k/yr).
• Adjacent to Summersville, a slightly larger neighbor boasting West Virginia’s “largest speed trap,” a massive man-made lake (hiding a submerged 19th c. village called “hillbilly Atlantis”), and the annual Potato Festival (“Do they grow potatoes, or do they just love them?” – Jimmie, 19:48).
• Economic hardship, aging population (“It's a town for old religious people that don’t mind winter.” – James, 13:27), real estate values far below national average, rampant unemployment, and a community where “there’s more deer per capita than people.”
• Crime is almost non-existent, but when it occurs, “it’s wild.”

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Main Players

Teresa Lucente Rollins (25:01–37:00)

• Raised in a large, well-connected Italian family, small-town West Virginian by way of Clarksburg.
• Outgoing, devout, trusting (“she prefers to see the good in people,” 34:01), community fixture, owner of a beauty salon “Teresa’s Total Look.”
• “Naive” but warm; her trusting nature becomes her undoing.

Gary Lee Rollins (37:00–43:34)

• Florida transplant, labeled “a Jekyll and Hyde,” with a criminal background (meth manufacture, drug sales).
• EMT certification, but otherwise a layabout when he blows into town “like a tumbleweed.”
• Quick to charm Teresa; quickly becomes her husband and business partner on a small vegetable farm.

April Bales (53:26+)

• Young, poor, single mother hired to work on the farm, later taken in by the Rollins as a border.
• Vulnerable—soon becomes Gary’s mistress, subject to manipulation.

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The Farm & The Fatal "Accident" (46:03–75:46)

Life on the Farm

• Gary and Teresa settle into roles as vegetable farmers (“The amount of tomatoes you’ve gotta sell to make a mortgage!” – James, 50:13).
• Following a meth bust, their labor force consists mostly of struggling local women, most notably April, whom Teresa shelters in the farmhouse.

The Affair & Seeds of Murder

• Gary begins a sexual relationship with April, continues his abuse of Teresa (documented with bruises and secret photos), but Teresa remains, possibly out of faith or economic necessity.
• Gary openly dreams of a life with April, plotting to “get rid of Teresa.”

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The Day of the Death — October 5, 2009 (60:15–76:31)

Timeline of Events

• Gary leaves early, claiming to be clearing a deer hunting path. Teresa is last seen preparing Halloween decorations, alone.
• At lunchtime, workers discover Teresa missing. Gary feigns ignorance, initiates a performative search (notably remaining dry the whole time).
• After a dramatic run up the hill screaming for help, Gary “discovers” Teresa face-down in the farm pond beneath a massive fallen tree, pinned under water.
• 911 call: April, from 85 yards away and unable to see the pond, tells dispatch Teresa is “pinned under a tree and isn’t breathing”—showing suspicious pre-knowledge.

Investigation & Initial Ruling

• Deputies and medics respond; Teresa is dead, but notably, her body shows no bone fractures or major trauma expected from a 1,000-lb tree.
• Initial autopsy rules cause “pending,” then “accidental drowning complicated by compression asphyxia." Town shrugs; only Teresa’s family is suspicious.

Notable Quotes:

• “Nobody killed my wife.” – Gary, interrogated & fumbling, 84:58
• “She was slow as far as thinking goes. No numbers, no spelling, no nothing…” – Gary, blaming the victim, 87:05
• “He was real loose with it, huh?” – Jimmie, on Gary minimizing the year-long affair, 81:11

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The Family Refuses to Let Go (91:51–101:53)

The Sisters’ Crusade

• Four Italian sisters—armed with crime show knowledge and dogged determination—push authorities for a second look.
• They unearth evidence, including Teresa’s own secret photos showing bruising, and neighbor-witness documentation of Gary’s abuse.
• With the help of prominent forensic pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht (“JFK, Marilyn Monroe, Michael Jackson... and now Nettie, WV,” 98:32), and political pressure reaching Governor Joe Manchin, the state reopens the case.

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Breaking Down the Evidence (102:46–135:57)

“It Does Not Add Up.”

• New investigation spotlights glaring inconsistencies:
  • Tree had likely fallen days earlier, not that morning (supported by wind data).
  • Teresa’s glasses showed no water traces, indicating they never entered the pond—contradicting Gary’s story.
  • Gary’s dry clothing, despite claiming a frantic rescue.
  • Multiple new, large life insurance policies (totaling $1 million) with accidental death riders, taken out mere weeks before Teresa’s death.
  • Neighbor-witnessed physical abuse; corroborated by Teresa’s photos.

April’s 911 Call

• “How’d you know?”—Investigators catch April in the lie about not being able to see the accident from her call location. Pressured, April cracks in jail, admits Gary told her what to say: he murdered Teresa, staged the scene, and threatened her and her daughter.

Second Autopsy

• Dr. Wecht finds forensic evidence of forcible drowning—bruising and abrasions inconsistent with a fallen tree; marks on the neck suggest strangulation or being forcibly held under.

“The Only Science I Need to Know Is Making Meth” – James, mocking Gary’s idiocy, 136:16

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Trial & Aftermath (136:00–158:25)

Trial (August 2012)

• Prosecution constructs a compelling circumstantial case: murder for insurance, abetted by an affair, covered up with clumsy staging.
• April testifies to Gary’s confession; workers testify to his dry clothes and erratic behavior; science wins over jury.
• Defense leans on political conspiracy (“Driven by the governor’s office and ‘a group of guineas’!”– James channeling WV defense, 140:20), plausibility of accident, and claims of bias.

Memorable Quotes

• “They put a thousand-pound tree on you in a pond worth of evidence.” – James, 156:12
• “We never liked that man.” – Jimmie, on the fury of four Italian sisters, 154:02

Verdict & Sentencing

• Jury convicts quickly (“One hour and ten minutes!” – 153:12). Judge imposes life without parole (“No mercy!” – 153:41).

Family’s Poise

• Instead of rage, the sisters thank April afterward: “Thank you for telling the truth... Without you, we’d be fucked.” (157:42)

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Appeals & Legal Drama (158:25–178:50)

Appealing on Technicalities

• Defense claims “Brady” violation: prosecution misled jury, failing to disclose a secret plea deal with April in exchange for testimony.
• Further claims: family member on jury, familiarity among participants, improper evidence of abuse.
• After much wrangling—including revelations of oral immunity deals, family-linked jurors, and prosecutor “playing fast and loose with the truth” (176:28)—the Supreme Court of Appeals upholds the conviction.

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Reflection/Analysis

• The hosts highlight how the system almost failed: a lazy investigation, legal technicalities brushed aside, and “just wild” local dynamics that could easily have let a murderer walk.
• The true heroes? “Three young ladies who wanted answers on their sister's death... Otherwise he could do it again.” – Jimmie, 156:30
• “I want it done right so he doesn't get out. Not so he'll go free.” – James, 179:24

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Notable Timestamps

• Town Background & Colorful Anecdotes: 04:51–19:46
• Teresa’s Background: 25:01–37:00
• Gary Rollins’ Criminal History: 37:00–43:34
• April Bales, Affair, and the Lodger: 53:26
• Timeline of Murder: 60:15–76:31
• Family’s Fight for Justice, Dr. Wecht’s Role: 91:51–101:53
• Evidence Re-examined, Second Autopsy: 102:46–135:57
• Trial & Jury Reaction: 136:00–158:25
• Appeals, Legal Wrangling, and Final Thoughts: 158:25–end

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Podcast Tone & Highlights

• Dark Humor & Banter: Hosts infuse even the bleakest moments with asides, pop culture references (DJ Qualls, Mystery Science Theater), and irreverent commentary: “You can’t cuff an oak!” (91:46)
• Empathy for Victims: Never at the victim’s expense; always critical of the abuser and earnest about injustice.
• Community Observations: The bleak hilarity of small-town events (Potato Festival), the insularity, and the way tragedy stretches across a place “where everybody knows everybody.”
• Memorable Guest Quotes: “She was slow as far as thinking goes...” – Gary, blaming Teresa (87:05)
• “I just knew.” – April, trying to explain away knowing details before seeing the scene (126:32)

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Closing Thoughts

A textbook Small Town Murder episode: astoundingly thorough, equal parts funny and infuriating, a showcase of dogged family justice, and an anatomy of a near-perfect crime undone by persistence, luck, and forensic expertise. The hosts underscore the importance of getting justice right—not just for the victim, but for the integrity of the system.

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Listen for:

• The hosts’ colorful roasting of every misstep (“Gravity will make you roll out of bed.” – Jimmie, on the $39k trailer, 18:00)
• The inspiring Italian sisters’ relentless push for the truth.
• One of true crime’s wildest “accidents”—and how it was (almost) covered up.

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For full details, including every twist, colorful flourish, and local burnt-potato anecdote, stream the full episode.

Transcript

[James Petregallo]

This week in Nettie, West Virginia, a frantic caller to 911 says that a woman has been killed in a tragic and unlikely way. But detectives uncover a whole web of lies, including a wild affair, a huge effort to cover it up, and an absolutely brutal and terrible murder. Welcome to Small Town Murder. 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 on another wild, crazy adventure known as Small Town Murder. We have a just a crazy one again for you today as usual. And we're back in West Virginia this week. So you know it's gonna be extra crazy and it absolutely is. So we'll get into all of that and more. First though, definitely head over to shutupandgivememurder.com get everything. There's new merchandise up. There's all sorts of stuff up, but especially get your tickets to live shows. Live shows, Live shows, they're the best. The live shows you gotta come there for.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They're live.

[James Petregallo]

You say they're live. We're there actually on a stage and you're in a seat and we're gonna tell you a murder story. More importantly, though, it is a huge comedy show and it's so fun with a crazy murder story and you get to see all the pictures and everything like that. We're taking April off the road, but we are back in May. May 1, Salt Lake City, sold out. May 2, Denver, get your tickets. May 29, Buffalo, that's also sold out, but Detroit or Royal oak actually on May 30th, tickets available for that. So get them right now. Shut up and give me murder.com. you should also check, check out our other two shows, crime in Sports and you'd stupid opinions which are hilarious. So you should listen to those. You should get yourself Patreon.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, yes.

[James Petregallo]

Do yourself a favor. You deserve it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Do yourself a favor.

[James Petregallo]

That's right. Patreon.com CrimeInSports is where you get all the bonus material. Anybody $5 a month or above. You get everything that we put out. As soon as you subscribe, you get hundreds of back bonus episodes you've never heard before. Then you get new ones every other week. One crime in sports, one small town murder and you get it all, baby.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You get it all.

[James Petregallo]

You say you get it all. That's right. This week for crime and sports we're going to do just because we've come across these and collected them over the years. The craziest names in sports history from the 19th century on. We're going to talk about the. I'm going to give little bios and it's going to be a fun time then for small town murder. Stockholm syndrome. We've all heard of it. It's where you start identifying with your captors if you're kidnapped and that sort of thing. But we're going to talk about where it came from, the incident that coined the phrase because it's the craziest thing I've ever heard in my life and I didn't know it until now. So it's gonna be awesome. Check that out. Patreon.com crimeinsports and on top of all of that, you get everything. We put out all three shows all ad free. Ad free. You said ad free. That's right. Dammit, you know it all ad free. And then as well you also get a shout out at the end of the show where Jimmy will mess your name all up even though he'd love to get it correct.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Sorry about it.

[James Petregallo]

That's right. Pamela. You say Pamela. Yeah, that's. You did. So that said, disclaimer time. This is a comedy show. We are definitely comedians and these definitely murder is going to happen and it would be kind of false advertisement if it didn't because that's the name of the show. So those things happen at the same time and they go together. You might go, how does that work? Well, very easily. We never make fun of the victims or the victims families.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Why is that, James?

[James Petregallo]

Because we're assholes, but we're not scumbags. That's right. So if you think that that sounds good to you, you're gonna hear a crazy story. If you think true crime and comedy should never ever, ever go together. I don't know what to tell you. I mean this is what we're doing and it's gonna happen and we think it's a little more tasteful, honestly. I think to make it a little more digestible than just sit here and be morbid about. And then their head was removed from their body.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yikes.

[James Petregallo]

That's almost like. That's creepier. Yeah, we are uncomfortable with it. So we're doing this to make ourselves more comfortable and hopefully you more comfortable with it too. So if that sounds good to you, let's do this. I think it's time to sit back everybody. Let's all clear the lungs here. Arms to the sky. Let's all shout. Shut up and Give me murder. Let's do this, everybody. Let's go on a trip, shall we? Yeah, let's do it. We're going to West Virginia this week. Oh, boy. One of we've had.

[Jimmy Wissman]

There's coal in those hills.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, boy. There's a lot in those hills. There's some. Some other stuff. There's some murder in their hills. Because this might be, I think, our most covered state. Because is it. They have a. The most murders, it seems like, for a small state, too. And just the craziest shit that I've ever seen goes on in West Virginia. It's wild. We've had some crazy ones.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I'd like to. I mean, there's some obvious psychology that plays into that, but there's something happening up there, though. It makes people desperate.

[James Petregallo]

Go back and listen to Leyland, West Virginia. That's like 160 something, the episode. But it's one of these episodes that they've had. The only person here that we've actually rooted for the murderer before, because the person being murdered was so bad. We were like, you know what good this is? Yay. He was like hitting grandma with a frying pan, kicking kids across the room. It was wild. And you're like, okay, shoot. Somebody shoot this guy. That's how crazy West Virginia is.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Put him down.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, this is in Nettie, West Virginia. Ne tie, West Virginia. Now, some of the info we're going to give you is for another small town nearby, but one that's the county seat called Summersville. Because Nettie is so small and kind of in the middle of nowhere that there really isn't any. It's like three. It's like three churches and a Dollar General. That's pretty much what goes on there. That's all they have. Now, this is in central West Virginia, kind of right dead in the middle of the whole thing. So you got a lot of time to get out of there. You're in West Virginia here, no doubt. Right.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Center of the chicken.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, that's right. About an hour to Beckley, about three hours to Pittsburgh. So that's the closest big city. And about an hour and a half to Lashmeet, West Virginia, which is our last West Virginia episode, Deadly Dark Delusions. And that one was Lash meat. Lashmeet, Lash meat. M E E T Like a meeting. I don't remember. Yeah, I'm meeting at the Lash. This is in Nicholas county. Area code 304 and 681. Somehow they can't. Tiny town. They can't make that one. Area code but okay, now the nickname is for Summersville, which is known as the world's largest speed trap, quote unquote. That's their nickname.

[Jimmy Wissman]

There are a lot of people in Utah that would argue.

[James Petregallo]

I was gonna say they've never been to Texas, obviously. Cause that's a hu. All a speed trap. So anyone in Texas is nodding right now?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah. Texas, Utah, New Mexico. Boy, do they love a speed trap.

[James Petregallo]

Drive from Dallas to Houston without getting a ticket. I dare you. I dare you. From Houston to Dallas. Enjoy. Yeah, that's not gonna happen. So Summersville, a little bit of history there. Cause it goes a lot. It's a small town right next door that was laid out in 1824, named for Lewis Summers, who was a local judge. Not shocking. There it was home to. Summersville was home to both Union and Confederate encamp during the Civil War.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They were able to get along well.

[James Petregallo]

West Virginia was one of those states where it was both. So no, they weren't. They just stayed on opposite sides of the town and waited. The town was mostly burnt to the ground by a Confederate spy named Nancy Hart Douglas during the war. Then they rebuilt it in 1884. Just. Why not? Seemed like it worked. Now the reason why it's a speed trap is because they made us 19. The highway that goes through Summersville and it goes from a two lane highway to a four lane highway there. And basically that's it. People that. They say that northern travelers going south take a shortcut through there and they just get tickets. That's the way it works.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And they drop the speed limit. That's what they do.

[James Petregallo]

Yes. And they say that literally is like a lot of their economy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah. So 35 mile an hour zone.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. So that's what they're doing out there. They. The Summersville dam they built. Okay. It's a 2,790 acre lake that holds the dam, holds the lake in, basically. And it's huge around here, this lake. People come from all around. It's a huge lake. It's really nice. It's West Virginia's largest lake.

[Jimmy Wissman]

2700 acres. Doesn't sound that big, does it?

[James Petregallo]

It doesn't. No, it doesn't. For a giant lake. No, but it's what's under it that's very interesting. From the 1800s to 1960s, there was a farming village named Gad G that existed where the Summersville lake is now. But Gad was sold to build the dam. And all the residents, they sold their town. All the residents had to leave. It was sold and then Flooded it and then made it. Just flooded it. So underneath this lake is like an Atlantis, basically. Wow. You know, a redneck Atlantis. Hillbilly Atlantis is under this lake.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Atlantis nobody wants to see.

[James Petregallo]

I'm picturing like, someone like, you know, like. Like half man, half seahorse. Like, you see, I'm picturing people like that, but just like, with those, like, red flannel hunting hats on, meth pipe in one hand, bubbles coming out.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Pickaxe and a shovel.

[James Petregallo]

They put the meth pipe up and bubbles come out. Nice. It's very weird. So the officials, they were going to call it the Gad Dam and they said, we can't do that. So they called it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Why the fuck not?

[James Petregallo]

Literally, because they were like, nope, too close. So they called blasphemous Summersville dam instead. On June 23, 2016, here's some revenge of the GAD. Huge flood in Summersville. Take that, asshole. See how you like it. What do you think? Ah. This resulted in the middle school being demolished and relocated to trailers for a while until they fixed everything. Summersville and the surrounding locations, like Nettie, are featured in the 2018 game Fallout 76. So that's what we're talking about.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Fallout. Like fallout nuclear.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, like shit has gone bad. That's what we're talking about. That's the town these people live in in the area. Notable people. Only one. And he's got the greatest name ever. Buzz Nutter. N U T T E R Buzz Nutter is his name.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Who the hell is that?

[James Petregallo]

An NFL center and linebacker back when they played both ways, 58 and 59. He was an NFL champion, so he must have played for the Browns, I think. And he was in the Virginia Tech hall of Fame as well. Buzz Nutter.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Whoa.

[James Petregallo]

Reviews of this town. Okay, this is for Summersville. There's nothing for Nettie, but it's all the same, so it doesn't matter. 3.8 stars on Niche, which is not bad, actually, when you're talking about a West Virginia town in the middle of nowhere. Here. Here's five stars. Okay. Very friendly and caring people in Summersville. Multiple restaurants to choose from. You may have more than one restaurant. That's excellent. Several summer activities with Summersville Lake. Hiking, biking, swimming and camping. Those are all the activities. Those are all one activity. And they're all one activity.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's five activities that you can do

[James Petregallo]

in a weekend, but it's all one. Yeah, you take the bike to go camping by the lake and then you

[Jimmy Wissman]

skip when you're there.

[James Petregallo]

It's A lake day. Very good school board. We've never heard that in a review before.

[Jimmy Wissman]

The school board.

[James Petregallo]

We've heard school's good.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Pretty huge community. I don't know who's on the school board.

[James Petregallo]

Who knows. Yeah. Unless they're doing something crazy like banning books or some weird shit. You don't know any of these people. With well maintained grade school, middle school and high school. They must have rebuilt it. That's good. Private school is also an option with new life Christian Academy. I am a current resident of Summersville and this is where I grew up. And I plan to stay here and raise my family.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Good for you.

[James Petregallo]

I was born here and dagnabbit, I'm gonna die here. Go blazing saddles on this thing here. Through four stars. Summersville, West Virginia is best known for its lake. It is said that there's a small town under the lake. No, not that it's said. It is.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's historically accurate.

[James Petregallo]

This is not a whisper in the forest. This is not. I hear tell of Bigfoot in the area. There's definitely a town they fucking flooded and buried over there. It's a beautiful little town with many friendly people. Here's three stars. Okay. I've lived in Somerville for over 20 years and I wouldn't recommend moving here. The job market is stagnant, the mindset is 50 plus years outdated, the economy isn't anything to write home about and most of the people are closed minded and rude. It's a town for old religious people that don't mind winter. What a weird sentence. You didn't think it was going there, did you? Who don't you would have said don't like these people or that don't mind winter. I would have never expected that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Like coats.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. If I said fill that ellipses in that don't take a while but don't they? Yeah, you'd never get to mind winter. There's virtually nothing to do, nothing for kids to do. And anything there is to do is too expensive for anyone that lives here to be able to afford. The only good thing is there's almost no crime. Summersville is a sleepy little central West Virginia town and you can tell there's one stoplight in town. Basically nothing to do in the downtown area. And our groceries and healthcare are pretty costly compared to most other places. The population is declining and there's good reason. Yeah, you're not recommending anyone anyone do this. I wouldn't recommend anyone moving here that has any intention of having any kind of life other than working and sitting at home as there's nothing else to do.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I don't know. That sounds pretty decent.

[James Petregallo]

I was going to say that's pretty much what I do. Pretty much. It's not bad. Kind of like it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's not so bad.

[James Petregallo]

Not at all. This guy's too ambitious is his problem.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What are your expectations, motherfucker?

[James Petregallo]

Chill. Chill. Everybody calm down. Two stars. It's horrible for anyone trying to experience any kind of progress or growth. This place is not a sustainable environment.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, and it's not sustainable?

[James Petregallo]

Apparently. Yeah. It's probably gonna fall in from the coal. I'm not sure. Coal being extracted. People here in Nettie. 50 or. I'm sorry, 322 people, very small. Wow. And this is on farms and there's no central area. So this is a tiny, tiny, tiny place. 322 more men than women. 51.7% men, which is pretty high. But for a small town, the stats get all out of whack. Median age here is 44, which is higher than the national average. And the stats here show you what a small town it is too. Just based on. They're not outside the norms a lot. 77.4% married. That's a lot. It's usually 50. 50. Only 12.8 people are single with children. Race in this town, 100% white. White. Religion? 33% religious. Oh, I don't know. Maybe they were. There ain't no God in the mines, you know. That's all I can think of it. I don't know. And the highest one is Baptist, as we know. Baptists are the Catholics of the Hill Country, I guess. I don't know of the Appalachians. Unemployment higher than average, which is West Virginia in a nutshell. Median household income of this place here, this is for Summersville. Couldn't get one for Nettie. No, this is for nettie. I'm sorry. $23,485 a year household. Median household income. It's 69,000 in the rest of the country. 23,485.

[Jimmy Wissman]

These people are in trouble.

[James Petregallo]

They're in trouble. And the cost of living. 100 is regular in the rest of the country. Here it's 74, which is low. Low enough, but not that low. Yeah. Median home cost. Here we go. Now we're cooking. $56,300. I don't even know if these places have roofs or doors or what.

[Jimmy Wissman]

But I mean, that's essentially two years salary for the house. But everywhere else it's about five times the Salary, I guess. I guess pretty decent in terms of. But it's gonna be pieces of shit.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, they're not gonna be for that kind of money. They're not gonna be great. They're gonna be old. And these people haven't afforded to renovate them like crazy or get them up to date or anything like that. So if we've convinced you West Virginia is your future, we have for you the Nettie West Virginia real estate report. Now, all these houses are actually from Somerville. There's nothing in Nettie for sale, really. Here is a three bedroom, two bath, 980 square foot. Very exciting trailer. It's got, like siding on it, you know, so they tried to make it look like a house. And the. You know how they have that corrugated shit on the bottom so you don't see under the trailer that's like all messed up and broken down.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Half up and down. It looks like it's sliding. It doesn't look like it's sitting flush with anything. It's not level. It's not level. It's built in 1985. You get an acre of land with this. 39,000 bucks for that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Gravity will make you roll out of bed.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. And it also says the trailer is in need of extension. Extensive floor repair. So this thing is a disaster.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It needs a new trailer for sure.

[James Petregallo]

Here's a three bedroom, two bath.

[Jimmy Wissman]

How much was that?

[James Petregallo]

Oh, I'm sorry. That is $39,000.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's a bit steep.

[James Petregallo]

Bit steep for that. Here's a three bedroom, two bath, 1689 square foot place. It's built in 1955. It's a nice little brick house. It's not bad. Inside is okay. It's got some features from different eras that. You know those like frosted glass blocks that were going on. Oh, yeah, yeah. From the 80s. It's got that going on in the living room, which is kind of weird. Not terrible, though. Half an acre. $298,000 for that though. Median income is 23 grand a year.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Who are you aiming that at?

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Then finally, 17 acres of land.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

A house. Four bedroom, three bath, 5,676 square foot house. Gigantic. Built in 1975. Pretty nicely, like, updated on the inside. Everything's been redone. The big giant living room looks like a big lodge, like a main lodge area. $1,150,000. Which.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Who can afford that?

[James Petregallo]

Everyone that lives here together, they couldn't afford the mortgage on this place. I'm not trying to be insulting to them. That's a joke, obviously, but holy shit. It's got a barn, a separate brick guest house, a separate one bedroom bunkhouse, a stocked pond and a basketball court.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's the best deal of a property I've ever heard of.

[James Petregallo]

17 acres. It's crazy. Yeah, that's if you're looking for a million dollar house that's cheap. Things to do here. Well, we got the Nicholas County Potato Festival, everybody.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Do they grow potatoes?

[James Petregallo]

That beats the shit out of me. I have no idea.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Or do they just love them?

[James Petregallo]

You pull a potato out, it's all black with coal dust. You're like, what happened? Pull it out of the ground. They have amusement rides, craft vendors, a tractor show, a pet pageant, parades, potato decorating contests.

[Jimmy Wissman]

How do you.

[James Petregallo]

I don't know. A sack race, a potato display.

[Jimmy Wissman]

How do you decorate your potato, James? I do it with sour little eyeballs on it and bacon.

[James Petregallo]

Little eyeballs? Little feet on the bottom. Try to find them.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Decorate mine with butter and cheese.

[James Petregallo]

That's the best way to do it. There's a car show, a cornhole tournament, a queen's reception, a spud hunt, the potato idol contest. I don't know. Fireworks. There's the 20. I gotta show you the 20. 25 Potato Festival. Queen winners were Mia Bailey. And then the teen queen was Tallulah Hoover. So congratulations to you potato queens. Let's see, a lot of different events here. The potato decorating contest. You drop off decorated potatoes for the contests at the city building, whatever that is. Oh, no, I have no clue.

[Jimmy Wissman]

One of them, or there's only one.

[James Petregallo]

The city building. The Janet Williams Memorial Pet Pageant. We got that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What the fuck, I don't know.

[James Petregallo]

You named it for a dead woman. It makes no sense, man. There's a mashed potato eating contest on Main street, which sounds fine. I didn't involve myself in that. There's a tater tot sundae eating contest. Tater tot sundae.

[Jimmy Wissman]

How do you do?

[James Petregallo]

I guess. Stack of tots. I hope you don't put like you don't put ice cream on that. Syrup and cherry sauce.

[Jimmy Wissman]

There's hot fudge on the taters.

[James Petregallo]

There's definitely meat. That's an issue. Cornhole competition. Let's see, we got some high school bands, a hot wing eating contest. Potato idol. Potato idol contest. Shows by Cricket, who's a guy. It says DC's top banana. I don't know, but he's got. The picture of. The guy is he's in a dress shirt with red suspenders and a red bow tie. And he's doing this here, see this thing? He's doing that, whatever that is.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's the top banana.

[James Petregallo]

Top banana. There's that. That's amazing. Then finally, your big headliners for this show. Because the cricket's not the headliner, even though he's the.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He's the top banana.

[James Petregallo]

He's DC's top banana. They need a top potato for this thing. And the top banana's not gonna cut it here. The top bananas here actually will be Saturday night entertainment at the City Pavilion stage. Opening will be Jack Blocker.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Sure.

[James Petregallo]

I don't know. He's in a denim shirt. That should tell you all you need to know. And then after that headlining, it says a guy in a trucker hat named Kelsey Hart.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's a guy?

[James Petregallo]

It's a guy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Beard and trucker hat and everything. I don't know. Kelsey Hart.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Kelsey Hart.

[James Petregallo]

And then that's downtown Summersville fireworks finale. Immediately after Kelsey fucking strums that last note, the fireworks are gonna start going off. Amazing fireworks.

[Jimmy Wissman]

After Mamie White sings Coal Miner's Daughter.

[James Petregallo]

Went be coal miner's daughter Holler. You have to see the wild and wonderful whites of West Virginia. If you haven't seen it, because that's Mamie. That's a pretty, pretty smart, pretty dead impression. It's pretty good. Honestly. I gotta be. I'm impressed with myself there. That wasn't bad.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's his best impression.

[James Petregallo]

It's not bad. I'm pretty good with Mamie. I can do her. Here is crime rate in this town, property crime about half of the national average. Wow. So, I mean, you're on a farm. I don't know what.

[Jimmy Wissman]

There's only 322 people.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Who are you robbing?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Do you think there's any crime?

[James Petregallo]

That's what I mean. Violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, and of course, assault. The Mount Rushmore of crime, it's about one third beneath the national average as well.

[Jimmy Wissman]

But it's two thirds of it.

[James Petregallo]

Two thirds of it, yeah.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Jesus.

[James Petregallo]

Who knows? Here, that said, let's talk about some murder, everybody.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Here we go.

[James Petregallo]

Okay. Now, this whole county, by the way, Nicholas county, there's more deer per capita than people.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, they like to say that about upstate New York, about cows and shit. But this is for real.

[James Petregallo]

This is for real. More deer per capita than people. There's not a lot. A lot of land, a lot of woods. Not a lot of people. Now, Nettie is just really a small community. Windy roads, hardwood forests, it's that kind of thing. It's not a big community. You got to know where you're going to get around in this type of area. Let's talk about a woman who knows how to get around this area and knows what she's doing. That's right, Teresa. We're going to talk about Teresa Lucente Rollins. Well, she'll be Rollins later on. At one point she's Teresa Capozzi also, which I believe is her first married name. Now, Teresa here, she's raised in Clarksburg, West Virginia, and she is now, if you might have noticed by her name is pretty Italian.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Now we've talked about this before because in case you're not aware of the name James Petragallo, I'm pretty Italian too. So I. It's strange when I discovered that there was Italians in West Virginia years ago when we were doing this show, because if you grow up in New York, you just think we're all right here. Maybe some in Philly, a few in Boston and that's it. That's the only places we are, really. Chicago. Yeah. Pittsburgh, we got a couple over there. That's about it. But then we discovered anywhere where there was a mine that they could slide our greasy asses down. We were there because when we came to this country, that was work. You could get needed work.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Get you right down those damn minds. So that's why there tends to be a lot of Italian people in West Virginia and in Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania, places like that. Now, she comes from a very large Italian family, like real large Italian family. All sorts of cousins and uncles and. Yeah, an Italian family. I'll just say, you know, I don't really have to say. It's a large one. It's an average for Italian family.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Did she grow up here in Nellie?

[James Petregallo]

Clarksburg is where she was born and raised, as we'll talk about. And her family's also has pretty well known. They have a lot of connections and things like that. They don't seem like wealthy people, but they are well connected people.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They're doing okay.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, they know what they're doing.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Easy with that work.

[James Petregallo]

But yeah, yeah, that's true. You never know. Well, it's West Virginia. What are they going to be connected to, the mining syndicate? No, this is all you could really be connected to there.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Big coal. Mobile.

[James Petregallo]

Big. Yeah, they're really shilling for big coal is what they're doing down there.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Well, they're doing. They got an opening in the front and opening in the back and the coal just goes right the fuck through right there.

[James Petregallo]

Her Mother's name is Velma. Her dad's name is Joe. And she's got four sisters, five girls, all girls, which, again, I feel very close to this because my mother is one of four sisters with no brother.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, shit.

[James Petregallo]

And so I grew up around all four of the sisters all the time. So when I read this, at first I'm like, oh, I know this situation. I know exactly how this goes. So there is, of course, Teresa. There's Maria, Joanne, Valerie, and Regina. These are the sisters.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Not a single Marie.

[James Petregallo]

No, Marie's. Well, there's a Maria.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, that's close.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, close enough. You can't name one Maria and the other Marie. That's too close there. That's rough. So now she graduated from Notre Dame High School in Clarksburg. So that's her kind of. Her whole growing up time is in Clarksburg. And she ends up. She's married and then divorced, and she ends up here for about 20 years or so because she's born. Teresa's born October 1954. So you figure she comes up by, what, 72, she's graduating high school. Then by the late 80s, she ends up opening up her own beauty salon. That's what she does. It's called Teresa's Total Look. Not bad. Yeah, Head to toe. Yeah, it's a salon, and she put it right across from Notre Dame High School where she graduated. So she's got that going for her. Hey, everybody. Just gonna take a quick break from the show and tell you how to make yourself a better morning routine with

[Jimmy Wissman]

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[James Petregallo]

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[Jimmy Wissman]

Not always.

[James Petregallo]

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[Jimmy Wissman]

Now back to the show.

[James Petregallo]

Hey everybody. Just going to take a quick break from the show to tell you how to get better plants and trees with fast growing trees.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Fastgrowingtrees.com you know it.

[James Petregallo]

Did you know that Fast Growing Trees is America's largest and most trusted online nursery with thousands of trees and plants and over 2 million happy customers? Yeah we know. Now they have everything. They have all the plants your yard or your home needs including fruit trees, privacy trees, flowering trees, shrubs and houseplants. All grown with care and guaranteed to arrive healthy. It's like your local nursery, but anywhere you live with more plants than you'll find anywhere else. Whatever you're looking for, Fast Growing Trees helps you find options that actually work for your climate, space and lifestyle. Other places will let you order anything but you don't know if it works. They'll help you find what works. It's really great. Fast growing trees makes it easier easy to get your dream yard. Just click order and grow. It's super easy. And get healthy thriving plants delivered to your door. Their alive and Thrive guarantee promises that your plants arrive happy and healthy. No green thumb required. Just quality plants you can count on. Plus, get ongoing support from trained plant experts who can help you plan your landscape, choose the right plants and learn how to care for them, which is insanely important. You want to keep them alive for long time every step of the way. I love fast growing trees. We have tons of trees from there. I got a bunch of fruit trees from my yard. We got shrubs for the front. It's awesome. They all came in excellent shape and they're all still alive except the one the deer ate. But that's not fast growing tree's fault. It was just too much, maybe too

[Jimmy Wissman]

nice of a tree.

[James Petregallo]

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[Jimmy Wissman]

Now back to the show and she

[James Petregallo]

becomes really enmeshed in people's lives because a beauty salon can be like a central gathering place for people and also a lot of people who do hair. You spend two hours with somebody, you get to know the people and you get to be friends with them. And that's kind of how things go.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And prom season there has to be outrageous.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, it's wild. You know that you have upwards of a dozen girls are going to the prom. So it's how far?

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's two days work.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, Clarksburg's a little bit bigger, but she made a ton of friends here. She's described as a very outgoing, affable person who was deeply religious and had no enemies, which she's running a beauty salon who's gonna fuck up a Lady's hair, you can fix it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You fuck somebody's hair up, they hate

[James Petregallo]

you forever until you fix it. Yeah. There's probably nowhere else to go to fix it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

So they hate you for upwards of six months.

[James Petregallo]

Upwards of six months. Her sisters all say she's very trusting. That's her thing. She prefers to see the good in people type of person. Prefers to look at that side of them and think that that's what they have. She's very trusting, which can be a great quality, but also very dangerous if you don't have some kind of red flag mechanism that goes off. One of her sisters said Teresa was wide eyed open to anything in the world. She's loving and honest. So she expected others to be as honest and genuine as she was with them.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Right.

[James Petregallo]

Which is tough. That's tough. I mean that's. You just described the word naive, you know what I mean? Which is tough. Which is.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You can expect it, but it's for.

[James Petregallo]

Those are the best people.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

They're actually nice people. They're not cynical shitheads like us. You know what I mean? They actually expect the best. If everyone was that, the world would be a wonderful place.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I mean, we all are. And then we turn seven.

[James Petregallo]

That's the thing, if. That's what I mean. I'm talking about adults. To be an adult at this point, you know, and, and, and to have that. If, if everybody who was an adult felt like that, that would be. World would be easy, you know, Nobody'd be trying to fuck you over.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah. I mean, if, if you've been in a place where people don't do that ever. Yeah, I guess it's fairly easy. Until, until you turn seven in a big city. Then you're like, oh, fucking, there's shitheads out here.

[James Petregallo]

Well, you would think after a divorce that would be all over with. I mean, that's the ultimate a. This is the fairy tale. And then once that fairy tale comes crumbling down in like ashes and molten lava, you would think that you'd go hoof. All right, I'm not gonna be like that. But she's gonna.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Even if it's amicable, it's still fucked.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, that's what I mean. She apparently has enough spirit to put that behind her and keep going, which is a nice quality to have.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Good for her.

[James Petregallo]

But it's tough if there's people looking to fuck her over. That's the only thing. So she's also big in the Italian Heritage Festival in Harrison County. She deals with that too, because her

[Jimmy Wissman]

family owns her own San Gennaro, huh?

[James Petregallo]

Oh, own little San Gennaro. That's gotta be an interesting one there. I wonder how your sausage and peppers are in West Virginia. We'll find out. She's big into outdoors. She likes the mountains, which is good because you're in West Virginia.

[Jimmy Wissman]

There's a lot.

[James Petregallo]

She's real into animals and nature and shit like that. She makes baskets and blankets and does needlepoint as well. Crafts. Every holiday she'd put up a big display for all sorts of whatever the holiday is in her beauty shop and everybody be happy because she'd make things and all that kind of shit. Apparently when she likes a guy, she likes a guy. She falls and falls hard, which the naive among us often do that because they're not. You're not reserved and holding something back and stuff like that. Which again, if everybody was like that, great, go.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Great.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, it's tough. So in 1999, a man walks into her salon.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Really?

[James Petregallo]

Strolls on into the salon. What's he want into her life? A haircut.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

Wants a haircut. Yeah. Gary Lee Rollins is his name. And we always know to trust people with the middle name Lee, based on this show. Never goes wrong if their middle name is Lee.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Any guy that we know is middle name. That's not good.

[James Petregallo]

That's bad. That's bad. He's born January 1958. About three years younger than her. Comes into the shop for a haircut. By the way, do not confuse this Gary Lee Rollins with a. Gary Lee Rollins, Seattle based guitarist, singer and composer known for jazz, fusion, folk and original compositions. Shockingly, they're not the same guy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's who I thought it was.

[James Petregallo]

I saw that look on your face like that sounds real familiar. I know that guy. The jazz fusion guy. I know him.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Composer. God damn.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Jesus. He released albums such as Love U and From Orange county with Love. And he's been featured in such magazines, such publications as Agenda, which we all know, and Reverb Nation. Love View.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, nice.

[James Petregallo]

And from Orange. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And from Orange county with Love.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Nice work.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. From Disneyland with Love.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And also Orange county of Washington.

[James Petregallo]

Who the fuck knows? New York, Florida, Goddamn California, I have no idea. Also not Gary Rollins, the billionaire and CEO of Rollins Inc. Not that guy either. Shocking. Now, this Gary Rollins is originally from Florida. Here he comes to Clarksburg, Virginia, sometime in the 1990s. He shows up, he has no job, no address, he just rolls into town like a tumbleweed needing a haircut. Like a drifter. Yeah, Just a nice smile. And he's charming. And he's talking about, yeah, I'm in the area, I'm new, I'm living with family around here. You know how it is. It's fine. Now, he's got some prior issues that we'll talk about. Some prior legal issues that nobody knows about. And he's also a certified EMT as well. Oh. Which is just. He's a real odd bird man, just to have these different backgrounds that he has with being an emt. He's going to end up working on a farm and eventually being a vegetable farmer here in town. That's what's happening. People who know him say that he's a kind of a Jekyll and Hyde type. Shocking in public. He's real clean cut and just a real. Knows how to be like that. Down to earth, salt of the earth. I'm a farmer. Just a regular old cuss kind of guy. Like that's how he comes across. Real charming.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Do we know why he left Florida?

[James Petregallo]

I have an idea. Couple ideas. A couple ideas here. When we get to his criminal problem, I guess. A couple ideas. Yeah, juicy. People say that in private he is more abusive and controlling to people that he has control over, such as girlfriends, wives, kids if they're around, things like that. As far as I know, neither of these people have kids. Now, they might have kids, but if they did have kids, somehow they're not mentioned in anything in this story. Guarantees. Publications. Yeah. Separately, I mean, or together or anything else. I hear no mention of children ever. Wow. So if Theresa or Gary does have kids out there. Sorry that I don't know you exist, but it wasn't in the public eye, so maybe that's good for you. You probably didn't want that anyway. That's positive. So Gary's past criminal issues. He lived in Cocoa, Florida for a while.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, Cocoa Beach.

[James Petregallo]

And this is just Cocoa. Is it Cocoa Beach. But it's not Coco, it's Cocoa.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah. Okay.

[James Petregallo]

I didn't know that. All right.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's down near Daytona.

[James Petregallo]

Okay. Just trash. Trash. Okay. Yeah. Blonde women with bruises all over the place.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You betcha. You nailed it. You've been there.

[James Petregallo]

Just like Tampa. And just like you've been there. Yeah, this one. And just like, okay, Jacksonville.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You've been there.

[James Petregallo]

Wherever. Yeah. Now he is busted in. This is a light one in January of 1993 for an expired registration that's been expired for more than four months. So making no effort to renew it is what that says.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I'll get it fixed when I get pulled over kind of thing.

[James Petregallo]

That'll work. Yeah. Just whenever I get pulled over. Now he ends up also in July of 1993, still living at the same address in Cocoa, Florida. I see him with a possession of more than 20 grams of cannabis. Sure, that's fine. I'm not upset about that. But also, methamphetamine sale, deliver, manufacture, possession with intent to sell. He got arrested for.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah. And he's probably down to 20 grams of weed because he sold some. It doesn't sound like you may be doing it, too.

[James Petregallo]

That's probably his personal stash.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You think so?

[James Petregallo]

And then he's selling the meth. That's 20, 20 grams. That's not even an ounce. Three quarters of an ounce.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Three quarters. It's quite a bit, I guess.

[James Petregallo]

I don't know. It's not really a lot of weed.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Nah. I mean, I've seen your push cart. Yeah?

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. I got a collapse. I have a bar cart full of weeds. But in 1980, 1993, in Florida, maybe that was a lot. I don't know.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Seems like a lot.

[James Petregallo]

It seems like he got an ounce for himself and he's chipping off. But the sale of meth is a problem.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's a big one. Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Then in 2006, later on, this is after he gets to West Virginia and everything, he's also going to be busted for manufacturing of a controlled substance. So keep that in mind when we go through our timeline. This is a guy who. I only say this, I didn't mean to blow the surprise of the timeline, but 13 years apart, gets busted for meth selling. So that's a.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Probably filling that 13 years with it as well.

[James Petregallo]

Exactly. That's what I mean. He's just been lucky. Been lucky for 13 years. So him and Theresa, I mean, they hit it off right away at the shop. He's real charming. She's a sweetheart. And they get along and they start a relationship pretty quick. I don't know if she knows about his former careers in meth sales or anything like that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She's likely seen it, right?

[James Petregallo]

I would think so. Now, her family doesn't like him.

[Jimmy Wissman]

No, no.

[James Petregallo]

Which, again, I come from a large Italian family. We don't like a lot of people. If you get them together, too, they'll decide that they don't like anybody who's trying to get their way in. It's an uphill climb to get into that. But her family also were also good at, though kind of knowing when someone's a shithead. We're Pretty good at that. Sussing that out. So her family knew that he was a fucking turd. They just knew it. This guy. They could smell the meth on him. And they said it from day one. That guy's a piece of shit. No good.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He's like turpentine.

[James Petregallo]

That's it. But they couldn't prove anything ever. But they just knew. But Teresa, she sees the good in everyone and she thought, I'm gonna give this an honest run. And I'll be honest with him, he'll be honest with me. So they become a couple. Her sister Maria said that Teresa was, quote, smitten with Gary right away. Yeah, all in him. He had a charming personality. And she said that he spoke to her as if she was the only person in the room and made her feel special.

[Jimmy Wissman]

This is how my dad got nine wives.

[James Petregallo]

That's what I mean. This is what charmers do. It's usually leads to bad things. This is, you know, like Ted Bundy was good at this. You know what I mean? Like, this is not good. This is where actually it's. What's his name? Oh, my God. We did a 10, 8 part episode on him

[Jimmy Wissman]

when.

[James Petregallo]

God, I5 killer.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Gary Ridgeway. No, that's the. Jesus, not Gary Ridgeway. It popped out of my mouth.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, I played backers.

[James Petregallo]

Guess.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah. Shit.

[James Petregallo]

Randall Woodfield.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Randall.

[James Petregallo]

Wow. God damn it. I saw all these serial killers floating around in my head and these people and everything else. Randall Woodfield, that's how everyone described him.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

He would like get a girl in a bar and it would be like he'd have this just envelop for a week.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He'll just shower, just. Love bomb. It's a love bomb.

[James Petregallo]

Yes. And that's the ugly. It's very ugly. So they're gonna get married within a year. Pretty quick.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Within a year?

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. That was about like 19, late 90s. Within a year or two, by the year 2000, they are buying a farm together in Nettie.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah. Buy the farm.

[James Petregallo]

They're actually buying the farm. They move into Nettie and buy a farm. It's on Rollins Ridge Lane. Which is interesting because his last name is Rollins. Yeah, I don't know if they named it after him because there's nothing else out there. So whoever lives on the road, they just name it after them. Not sure.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's probably his road. He probably has to maintain it.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, I'm sure they do. Yeah. I don't think they're.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's why they label it. So they know who's responsible for this shithole.

[James Petregallo]

I don't see the salt trucks coming through when it snows around here. Put it that way.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You gotta love the winter, James.

[James Petregallo]

You gotta love the winter. As we found out earlier. So he's working a vegetable farm here. They have a farmhouse, a storage building, fields. They have a cornfield and they have a pond. The pond is used for irrigation for their vegetables. So this is a real old school operation. They're literally irrigating from a pond here.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He's maintaining pumps and shit.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, all sorts of. Yeah, you'd have to. And Teresa loved the pond because she liked to go down to feed the fish and the ducks. Yeah, it's fun to her. She likes all the animals gathered around there. And who the hell doesn't like to go feed fish and ducks? It's fun.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That is a. Why is that so fun?

[James Petregallo]

I don't know. It's very satisfying.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It really is.

[James Petregallo]

Especially a fish. If you throw something in there and a fish eats it, it's like you're communicating with something that lives underwater. It's crazy. That's amazing. I think our minds can't handle that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It understands that this is edible. That's bananas. And all I did was throw it.

[James Petregallo]

And then I throw another and it eats it. So it must have liked it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It keeps doing cool. And then he friends.

[James Petregallo]

Totally. And you can't control birds at all. And you give them food and they hang out by you and you give them more food. That's like, hey, these ducks like me.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Look at this.

[James Petregallo]

They're gonna peck your nuts after you run out of bread. But still. So you know they are. Yeah. So this is a big change for her. She spent her entire professional life in a salon. She's lived in Clarksburg, which is a much bigger place. And now she's in the middle of nowhere on a farm with a guy doing vegetables. And she liked it and they own it. Yeah. One of her sisters said she loved farm life. She loved it. So she. Wherever she goes. Yeah.

[Jimmy Wissman]

The amount of work, it's crazy.

[James Petregallo]

It's a lot. It's the hours too, which. In this one, though, I think the hours are different because it's a vegetable farm.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, you just work when the sun's up.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. You work whenever you want because they're vegetables. You don't have to feed them at 5am they're not going to be pissed off at you if you don't show up with food. That's the great thing about vegetables. They're not on a schedule. They don't get real loud.

[Jimmy Wissman]

When they have.

[James Petregallo]

They don't get loud. They'll just sit there. Which, when I read about this, we'll find out what I'm talking about. But it seems like the workers come to work at like 9am here, which is like, real casual for a farm. And then I thought about it. I was like, on a farm. And then I was like, but there's no animals, so. Yeah, of course you come. Who cares then? And it made me think of the. You've seen Mystery Science Theater shit, right?

[Jimmy Wissman]

A few of them, yeah. Even the new ones.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, the new ones don't count. They're no good. And I love the people involved and everything, but it's not. It needs to be. Those guys, they're doing new ones now with the original cast. Oh, great. Second original cast. The ones that do rift tracks. Anyway, there's one called the Touch of Satan, right? And it's a hilarious movie. It's terrible. It's like a 70s movie. And when they show up at the farm, these people run a walnut farm. And as the guy walks up, there's an old man with, you know those big. Like they use for ice blocks or hay? Like the big.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, the two hooks.

[James Petregallo]

He's got that. And he throws a hook in, and he's got a big bale of hay, huge bale. And he's putting it on something. He's sweaty. And the Mystery Science Theater guys go, those walnuts are tearing through that hay.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They're so hungry.

[James Petregallo]

I'm like, why do you have hay? And that's what I felt like here. I'm like, yeah, you don't need hay. You don't have to feed the walnuts or the vegetables.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's probably for a horse that has to drag the fucking things around. But it's still funny.

[James Petregallo]

It's just funny.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah. See him sprinkling hay to the tree?

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Down to the walnuts. Well, he put it on a big pile. He had so much hay, like, it was like, this is like a ranch full of hay you have here. And it's a walnut farm. What are you doing?

[Jimmy Wissman]

They're just tearing through it.

[James Petregallo]

Walnuts are just tearing through that hay. The way he said it is fucking hilarious, man. So anyway, this is around 2000, and she's doing it. They're growing the vegetables. They pick the vegetables, they harvest them. They take them to farmers markets and sell the vegetables. So it's a full process. Like.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, it's not easy to do.

[James Petregallo]

And it seems to be working for them. Too.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Which is amazing.

[Jimmy Wissman]

The amount of tomatoes you gotta sell to make a mortgage. I can't imagine.

[James Petregallo]

Cucumbers. Imagine how much. Cucumbers are, like, $0.69.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Bundle of big tomatoes at the store for, like, $5, and then they die in my fridge over the next three weeks.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. You're like, I met salad, but it's nothing. Yeah, it seems very cheap. That's how I feel about bananas. I've rented so many bananas.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah. I've smelled a lot.

[James Petregallo]

Smelled. Now I found out I'm allergic to them. But that's.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Are you really?

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, that's why they made my mouth. I always used to tell people, I'm like, I love bananas, but, man, I wish they didn't make your mouth hurt so bad.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, like razor blades and walnuts, too. Like, banana bread is.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, you give me banana bread, I am fucked. The whole thing, everything I'm allergic to, I'm just. My mouth. I won't be able to eat for a week.

[Jimmy Wissman]

If you want to kill James is run up behind him and mash his face.

[James Petregallo]

I'll be going from the walnuts, I'll be wheezing. It's not going to be good, man. Gonna be bad.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Attempted murder with a gift of banana bread.

[James Petregallo]

Here you go. Would you like some banana bread? Oh, God, no. It's got, like, nutmeg and cinnamon and shit in it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

So much shit in it.

[James Petregallo]

The whole thing, I'm allergic to. Yeah, it's bad. A brick that murders you. A murder brick. That's perfect. It's one murder weapon we haven't come across yet in 685 episodes is banana bread. But maybe this will be the winner this week. Who knows?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Fingers crossed.

[James Petregallo]

So over the years, they hire workers. Now in the 2000s, he gets busted for the manufacturing of meth on this farm as well.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, yeah, that's a great place to do it if you got the room.

[James Petregallo]

So I think that is part of the reason why he wants to be a vegetable farmer is that he also wants to be a meth farmer. And West Virginia is not a bad place to sell meth.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, that'll shake the tail. You know what I mean? If you got anybody keeping an eye on you, if you got a vegetable farm, that'll make them go away, right?

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. All they smell is shit anyway.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And that was kind of the point of Copperhead Road, was that they up in the holler, they plant a thing of weed and it hides in the trees.

[James Petregallo]

Absolutely. There was a time in this country where there was a lot of farmers that were real square people with a spot of weed on their land because they needed the fucking money. Especially in the 80s when people were getting foreclosed on and shit, someone would come to them and go, hey, I'll cut you in for this much a month if you just give me a portion of your land. And they do it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Much smaller piece of land that pays mortgages than fucking corn.

[James Petregallo]

Fuck. Yeah. This guy's probably got a shed that pays mortgages, right? Oh boy. Backing up back there. Yeah, yeah. So he's got some local workers they hire over the years. Come late 2000s here, 2007 after the meth bust, we have a crew of. Tanya Wagner is one of them, K. Rudd is another one. Sure. And then in 2008, April bales comes in here.

[Jimmy Wissman]

All gals, huh?

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, that's an odd farm crew. All chicks, the all woman farm crew. Not that they can't do it, but it's just you don't see a lot of that, that's all.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's just a small amount of them that are women run.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, well that are just all women on the farm.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, they're just all women.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, it's strange. So April, she also has April o'. Brien. So she goes by two different last names. Okay, Bales is B I A or B A I L e S and O' Brien is whatever O'. Brien. So she's in her late 20s and she gets hired on and she is described by people as quote, a country girl who didn't have much. Yeah, that's who she is. And she shows up at the farm with a young baby too, to work. So she's got a very under a year old baby. Oh, and she's a country girl who doesn't have much and she shows up to do farm work and she had recently been evicted.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh God. So she's so much help.

[James Petregallo]

So much help. So Theresa Teresa is the kind of. She's the rounder upper of lost puppies and things of that nature. That's kind of what she does.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She's herding.

[James Petregallo]

She herds the ducklings in and make sure they get across the road safe. That's what Theresa does. She's just a nice person. So she sees a young woman with a new baby and nowhere to live and no job and probably who knows if she's. No education, nothing like that. So Teresa says, well we have a spare bedroom in the farmhouse. Stay with us. Yeah, it's crazy. We're not going to have you live on the street. That's Nuts. She said, I have two bedrooms in a brand new home that no one's even using.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Amazing.

[James Petregallo]

So you can stay in there. So April moves in in 2008. So that's nice. That's very sweet of them to do that. Right.

[Jimmy Wissman]

In a time when it's very tumultuous economically.

[James Petregallo]

July 2008. Yeah, things are moving fast. Things that are still selling vegetables and meth. They sell.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You bet.

[James Petregallo]

Always. Yeah. They'll always buy Brussels sprouts and fucking speed. They're into that. Yeah. So they're so friendly to her that in July 2008, Gary gets extra friendly with her and starts banging her.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Really?

[James Petregallo]

Yes. He starts.

[Jimmy Wissman]

How old is she?

[James Petregallo]

In her late 20s. 27.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay. All right.

[James Petregallo]

He's like 27 and he's 52, probably at this point.

[Jimmy Wissman]

All right.

[James Petregallo]

He's pushing it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Shouldn't be doing that for him.

[James Petregallo]

He's looking at it like, hey, look at me. But still married. Yeah, he's also married. And this girl probably thinks if she doesn't do this, maybe she won't have a place to stay anymore. So, you know, it's not really fair what he's doing here at all.

[Jimmy Wissman]

No, it's just sterile.

[James Petregallo]

Teresa apparently finds out about it, or at least hears enough rumors about it that they become credible after a while, which is not good. Exactly. So one family member of hers said. I heard rumors, you know, that he would take April with him somewhere when Teresa was gone, like to the farmer's market. But Teresa still stays, though. She ends up staying.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

So we're not sure exactly to what extent she knew, or maybe she suspected, or maybe she found out. They said, sorry, it'll never happen again, and she forgave them, which is also possible, too, because she's a very sweet person.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Sure. And also maybe, perhaps because of the timing of the economic shit going on, maybe she's so upside down on this farm, she can't.

[James Petregallo]

What are we gonna do? Sell it? And I'm not sure. We don't know what it is exactly, but by 2008, here, late 2008 into 2009, this affair keeps going on.

[Jimmy Wissman]

God damn Gare.

[James Petregallo]

And he's telling her that we're gonna get married and have a family together, me and you, April. He said at some point, he said he needs to get rid of Theresa and then they can be married. Lots of fun. If I can get her off of here, then we'll be married. So this goes all the way into August of 2009. So this affair has been going on for over a year. Now, In August of 2009, Gary and April head over to the old dealership to pick out a new truck.

[Jimmy Wissman]

We're getting a car.

[James Petregallo]

We're getting a new truck here. So that's. Like I said, that's with April, not with his wife. They drove to the dealership together. April picked out the color and then picked out the truck too.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Is that right?

[James Petregallo]

Yes. Now the salesperson. But there's a lot more to this, by the way, that we're going to find out later that happened during this meeting or during this purchase. But the salesperson noticed when Gary came back to sign the paperwork that the next day he came back to sign the paperwork with a different woman with him.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Ah, with the wife.

[James Petregallo]

With Theresa now. Yeah, yeah. And he said that the salesman said he found the whole transaction unusual, bizarre. It's an odd thing to come with your goomar one day and then fucking come back the next day with your wife. You're asking a lot of that dealer too.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, you're asking. Shut the fuck up. It was just me yesterday.

[James Petregallo]

You're asking a lot of that dealer. That's a bad fuck up. He could have said, hey, nice to see you again. She would have went, what are you talking about?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Uh, oh, wait a minute, who are you?

[James Petregallo]

I did that one time waiting tables.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, what'd you say?

[James Petregallo]

I worked at a place in Phoenix that was a, you know, it was an Italian place and dark lighting and, you know, it had a little romantic edge to it. And people come and bring dates and drink wine and all that kind of shit. And this guy who was, God, he had to be in his late 50s, 60s, gray haired guy and all that, he would come in all the time and he'd bring different women all the time. And there was like a one week where he came in twice in the same week with different women. But the women looked fucking identical.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They were very similar looking.

[James Petregallo]

He's got not all the time, but these two this weekend look the same. So I thought it was the same one.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Ah, damn it.

[James Petregallo]

So when he came in, I said, hey, good to see you two again. How. And his face was like. And she murdered you. His face went to. Oh, God, you're fucking this all up. It wasn't like, this is a new girl. It was like, this one's my wife. Don't tell her.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, you're gonna ruin the house.

[James Petregallo]

She looked at her face immediately, and I was like, oh, no, I have made a catastrophic error here. And then I got out of it by Going, oh, Jesus, I'm so sorry. I thought you were Frank. Oh my God, you look like Frank. I go, yeah, no, I know you. Yeah, you guys have been here before. I could have really. That could have gotten ugly. She would have broken a wine bottle over his head. Like, I saw the look on her face was like, I will murder her.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Burn the whole house down when they got home.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. But I was like, oh, I'm so sorry, D. You were Frank. And he was like, oh, yeah, yeah, it was great. But you don't want to do that. No. The truck cost $44,255, by the way.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, that's a nice truck.

[James Petregallo]

Decent truck. Especially 2008.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's a F250.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, that's a good one. So now we go to October 5, 2009. About a month and change later. Month and a week later here, five weeks, 7:30am to start with. Gary leaves the farmhouse and he says he's going to clear a path for deer hunting. That's what he's doing. At 7:30, gonna go make a trail.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Basically take the new truck and drive it through the woods.

[James Petregallo]

That's what we gotta do. Teresa is inside getting ready to set out the Halloween decorations. Cause it's October 5th and she's prepping. And this is what she does. She's preparing them since the week before. So she's really into it. And she wants to get the farm looking festive. That's what she wants to do.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Fall on a farm is amazing.

[James Petregallo]

It's so nice. But also that's kind of just for you. There's nobody around. Who is this for?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Unless she's got a corn maze or some shit set up. You know what I mean?

[James Petregallo]

I think it's. Yeah, I don't think it's anything for profit. It's just. She just wants it to look nice.

[Jimmy Wissman]

All right.

[James Petregallo]

I think she's just into decorating. Sure, sure look festive. Hey everybody. Just gonna take a quick break from the show and tell you a better way to break a habit and get a better one with Fume trifum.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Try F U-M dot com.

[James Petregallo]

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[Jimmy Wissman]

It's delicious.

[James Petregallo]

It's really good too. But it does. It feels good in your hand and it really satisfies that thing. And you can break that craving. It's really, really great. Because cravings aren't just about nicotine. They're about that habit. The hand to mouth motion, the oral fixation, that momentary pause. That's when the loop's broken. And then your cravings will spike. And you use this, and it helps so much. Fume replaces your habit with a flavored air fidget device that gives your hands and mouth something to do. Distracting cravings without nicotine vapor or batteries. Don't just try to quit. Upgrade the habit loop. Reach for fume instead. I'm telling you, I've been sitting there on the couch watching, and you want to go outside and you go, you know what? I'm going to reach for this. And you can just. It's so nice. And it's just flavored air. It's not harmful at all. It's. It's fantastic. You should try it too, especially if you're trying to quit. It's so great. I'm telling you. Really good. They have new flavors now that are also excellent here. They have crisp mint, which is the strongest flavor, best for kind of heavy users. And the raspberry one that's tangy and on the sweeter end, it's delicious. And they have this journey pack. When you grab a journey pack, you'll also get a free gift just for using our code Small Town Murder. Fume has already helped over 700,000 people take steps toward better habits. And now it's your turn. Do it. Use our code smalltownmurder to get a free gift with your journey pack. Head to tryfume.com that's t r y f u-m.com and use the code Smalltown Murder to claim your free gift today.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Now back to the show.

[James Petregallo]

Hey, everybody. Just going to take a quick break from the show to tell you how to get better blinds with three day blinds.

[Jimmy Wissman]

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[James Petregallo]

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[Jimmy Wissman]

It's been a minute. Yeah.

[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]

Now back to the show.

[James Petregallo]

So 9am Gary returns to the farmhouse to meet the workers who just arrived. So that's what I'm saying. I think they show up for work at nine on a farm, which isn't bad. So he talks to them, tells them kind of what they need to do and what's going on. And then the group heads out to work in the fields. So doing whatever. So that's, you know, they do that for about two and a half hours. And then 11:30 is lunchtime. So all four of them, we got Theresa Wagner, we got Kay Rudd and we got April Bales here. Three of them and Gary all head to the house for lunch and they eat together.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

Now you notice there's one person not here at the house for lunch and that's Theresa. She's not around. And Kay Rudd asks, where's Theresa? Yeah, she wasn't out there. She's not in here.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Sure.

[James Petregallo]

Where'd she go? So Gary says, that's a good damn question. I don't know where Theresa is. God damn it. He says, I'm going to go look for her. Where is. He starts, hey, Theresa. He starts going around the house there. He checks the storage building. She's not in the storage building. That's weird. He checks the house, all around the house, looking around, different rooms, closets, everything. Then he goes to the cornfield. He said it seems like you could see if someone's in a cornfield in October.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I mean, you can see how they got in there, that's for sure.

[James Petregallo]

You can see for sure. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I don't know and I don't know how. These are eight foot high stalks.

[Jimmy Wissman]

How big are they?

[James Petregallo]

And aren't they harvested by now October?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Not necessarily. And even if you do harvest them, you don't have to cut the stalk down. You can just take the ears off of it.

[James Petregallo]

That's true. Yeah, but is that how they do it or do they do it with a machine? It depends.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It depends on how big it is. Sure. You could do it by hand. I'm sure.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, if you had a small patch. I mean, I don't know how big of a cornfield this is, but either way, she's not in there. He searches around and then he heads toward the pond. You know, where the ducks and the, and the fish are and all that kind of shit. Which also from that MST episode, this is where the fish lives. This weird line. The girl on the farm takes him down to this pond and they're just standing there in silence and she just goes, this is where the fish lives, Is that right? And he goes, okay, not in the barn, you say. Not in there. Really? Not in your room, in your bed. So he says that he is going toward the pond. It's beyond the cornfield from the main farmhouse. Farmhouse, cornfield, pond, beyond that. Sure. If you can all imagine that. And he says there, out of nowhere, he comes running up the hill after a minute, screaming, call an ambulance. Call an ambulance.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Screaming. And then he runs back toward the pond and toward his tractor to go to the pond. Okay. In the pond, he says he saw. There's Teresa in the pond, face down, pinned underwater by a gigantic tree that fell down. A huge tree. Looks like it fell on her and pinned her under the water.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, that's terrible.

[James Petregallo]

Which is horrifying.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's like a nightmare in real life.

[James Petregallo]

Yes.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Especially if the tree doesn't knock you out.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, I've heard plenty of stories, too, of being in the woods. And if you hear some shit, it's like, don't look, just run if you hear shit crackling. Cause it could be a tree falling on you.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And it's my luck, though. I'd run right to where the tree is falling.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Oh, shit. Wrong direction. My hearing is off. Yeah. So he. According to him, she's not breathing, face down in the pond with a giant tree on her. And he says he ran down the pond and tried to pull her free, but he couldn't get the tree off of her. He said it was too heavy. So he said, you know, he's soaking wet. He walked into a pond. He comes back out and then ran up the hill screaming, call an ambulance. Call an ambulance. So April apparently ran to her car to get her phone, took it out and dialed 911. And she's about 85 yards from the pond at this point, which is almost a full football field.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's a good distance.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, good distance. It's not visible also because there's a hill. So the pond isn't visible from where she makes the call.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay, 230.

[James Petregallo]

It's important to know. She tells the 911 operator. And this is like, immediately she's not like, hold on, let me get more info. And relaying it, she gets on the phone and immediately says that Teresa Rollins is here. She is pinned under a tree in the pond, and she's not breathing.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, she just came out of the house and said that.

[James Petregallo]

That's what I mean. She came out of the house to him screaming, call an ambulance. Call an ambulance. And then getting back on his tractor. She hasn't been down to the pond, but knows that she's pinned under the tree, not breathing, which is odd. So that's immediately strange. So help arrives here, emergency responders come, and by the time they get there, one of the other workers, Tanya Wagner and Gary have extricated her. We've already gone by now. Yeah. Apparently, Gary used his tractor to push the tree off her body. Not lift it up, push it off, which would make it roll on her more, which is strange. The tree is 60ft tall and weighs over 1,000 pounds.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, that's a big tree.

[James Petregallo]

It's a big goddamn tree. And Gary pushed the tractor off it. The tree was approximately 35ft from the edge of the pond. The stump of the tree was 35ft from the edge of the pond. Okay, so that's where it fell from. So 60ft tall. 35. Another 25.

[Jimmy Wissman]

30ft of tree in the water.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, 25ft of tree in the water or whatever. And Tanya Wagner had jumped into the pond and dragged Teresa to the bank and tried to give her CPR on the banks of the pond, and it fails. It doesn't work. The first responders try as well. They can't get anything going either. So Therese is pronounced dead here. Wow. She's dead. Which is obviously terrible because she never did anything to anybody. That sucks.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Took a tree and drowned.

[James Petregallo]

Best case scenario, she's just trying to feed some ducks and got crushed by a tree and drowned. That's horrible.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She's impressed that she can talk to the fish.

[James Petregallo]

That's it. This is where the fish lives, everybody. So Gary tells Deputy Kenneth Sayles that he believes that Teresa had gone to fish feed the fish or the ducks or the squirrels or some shit, because she did that all the time. He said, she's probably sitting there, and the tree probably fell on her while she was there. She probably never saw it coming.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, boy.

[James Petregallo]

And the neighbors, they all see the emergency vehicles and begin to gather because there's not much to do around here.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And that will draw a crowd.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, this will draw a crowd anywhere. You could be midtown Manhattan. People be looking at what the hell's going on. People are still nosy, even if they're used to shit. Nosy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Never gonna stop that shit.

[James Petregallo]

Never, never. So Gary's asked what happens? What happened by the neighbors? And he says, a tree fell. Teresa was there, and it pinned her under it. And this is horrible, and it's tragic. And they photograph the scene and do all that, and they accept what he says. And they're like, it looks like an accident to me. I mean, medical examiners gotta go over, but that sounds pretty fucking tragic to me. And on a farm, weirder shit happens than that. People die in weirder ways than that. On a farmer.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, yeah, that's true.

[James Petregallo]

I mean all sorts of shit happens on a farm. Equipment and everything in the head by a mule. There's all kinds. Anything could happen. Yeah, anything could happen on a farm.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh my God.

[James Petregallo]

Bedlam over there.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I had a friend who's. Whose kid was electrocuted because the pump for the irrigation electrified the water because they, whoever did the wiring for the pump.

[James Petregallo]

That's what your friend says anyway.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah. Kids out there playing in the water and got electrocuted.

[James Petregallo]

He got action parked, he got action Park. That had to happen at Action Park.

[Jimmy Wissman]

The water was. The pumps were electrifying the water.

[James Petregallo]

There was a bad connection and a kid fell out of the boat and fucking got.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh my God.

[James Petregallo]

Completely fried in the water.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Horrifying.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, horrifying. Terrible. Yeah, that's, that's why I don't like heated pools. I'm terrified that there's going to be some electrical thing and it's going to explode.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Those are usually gas, but. Yeah, I get what you're saying still,

[James Petregallo]

I just, I'm going to explode. I think it's bad. So here comes the autopsy gas. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, that makes more sense.

[Jimmy Wissman]

The electric ones will maintain the heat, but they can't. It's hard for those to get the water up to it. Doesn't care.

[James Petregallo]

I didn't know. Yeah, so I never had a heated pool or only had a pool once. Anyway. October 6, 2009 is the autopsy. So the next day Dr. Zia Sabat of the West Virginia State Medical Examiner's office performs the autopsy. He notes small scratches on Teresa's face, bruising on her back, and that's it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

No major injuries, no broken bones.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh no, that means she did drown.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. No, but there's a 60,000 foot, thousand pound tree is on her back. How does she have. No, no major injuries. That's the weird part. No hemorrhages or anything. It just seems that. I don't know how that happened.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Hit her with a paperweight and just held her down.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, but gently. It stopped and then gently laid on it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Baptized her.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, there you go. There you go. The cause of death is listed as pending investigation. Now, October 7th, the detectives returned to take more pictures because part of the death of ruling it's not just the body in front of you, they take in all the evidence too. You know what I mean? Like there's stories of plenty of stories of people that it looks like murder or it looks like a suicide or it looks like an accident, but Based on the surrounding stuff, the medical examiner will rule it a homicide if it is. You know what I mean? And so they return to take pictures, just to take more pictures of the scene to give the medical examiner a better idea what happened. So once they get there, the fallen tree has been removed from the pond and it's nowhere to be found. It's gone now. Wow, it's just gone. A thousand pound tree has disappeared.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Not just pulled out, but no, no, no, gone.

[James Petregallo]

Not at the scene.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Very dusted gone.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Taken somewhere else apparently. Okay. I don't know if it's Gary getting his revenge on that tree and just took it and cut it into a million pieces.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, it's your ass.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. So on October 13, 2009, police interview Gary. They're like, we got a couple odds and ends we gotta talk to you about here. Cause of the tree and all that. So he agrees to be video recorded for an interview. The deputy requested that he comes down to the Nicholas county courthouse and all of that. It's a recorded interview. They read him. As Miranda writes, he waives them. The deputy said, from the circumstances of this case, we have changed it to a murder investigation. Possibly said that to him. He said, yeah, we don't know what it is at this point. So he repeats his story. He says, I found her in the pond, I jumped in to save her, I failed, couldn't get the tree off of her. And then they say, what about April Bails? Yeah, how's that going? What's up with that? Yeah, what's up with that? We heard you're having an affair.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Like since last year when you met this girl you've been having. She was very involved.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And you told Teresa.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. She lives in your house, works on your farm. And he described it as it's a fling, you know, that happens. He's not serious. So they said, listen, this is this affair. And then your wife dies in a strange way. We got to look into this. This is our job here. What are you talking about? So the guy says, the deputy says, yeah, the circumstances that came up, that arose since then. And Gary says, okay. And he says, you know, with the affair and everything. The deputy says, and Gary says, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, like, yeah, I know what you're talking about. Yeah, just some guy talk, that's all. Having some guy chit chat here. Yeah, I was banging her and you know how it is. All right, yeah, you know, yeah, but I didn't kill my wife. Right. All right, wink and a nudge and I'll See you down at the bar. I think that he thinks doesn't make me a murderer. That's great. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. So the deputy says, yeah. I mean, and then Gary cuts him off and says, well, you guys call it an affair.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What do you call it?

[James Petregallo]

You know, the Webster's Dictionary calls it an affair.

[Jimmy Wissman]

But by definition, that's what it is.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. He said, that's fine. I mean, yeah, I was kind of seeing a woman. You're banging the lady who lives in your house. That's more than seeing a woman.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He's real loose with it, huh?

[James Petregallo]

Real casual. Well, he's trying to act like it's not a big deal. The deputy says, well, I mean, what else would it be, right? And Gary says, a fling. Oh, a year and a half.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Fling.

[James Petregallo]

Thank you. The deputy says, a fling for over a year.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's serious, man.

[James Petregallo]

And then Gary says, extramarital affair.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Bingo.

[James Petregallo]

There. Yeah, that's what we said, remember? And then you said, no, what are we talking about?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Now you're getting it, Gary.

[James Petregallo]

So they're sitting there just as perplexed as we are with that response. And then Gary volunteers some other information. He says, listen, I understand that everybody sees on tv when there's a death and there's an affair going on, another woman, the first thing they suspect is the spouse. I understand that. I get it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Do you, Gar?

[James Petregallo]

I get why this is suspicious. Look, but he's real casual. Let's just get that right out of the way. Cross it off your list here. And the deputy says, and a jury would absolutely hammer you. Now we're talking about juries. That's like, who? Hey, hold on a minute. Now we're talking about jury in court.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It looks worse, Gary.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. So then he says, wow. Gary says, quote, they would probably be eating it like a piece of candy, looking at me, saying, oh, boy, he had to have done it like a piece of candy. Eat what? They'd be eating it like a piece of candy, looking at me. So the deputy continued the interview by questioning him as to the events of the day and things like that. So after that. And he gives the same story of. Yeah, that day, woke up, saw them, went inside, ate lunch. Hey, Theresa. Where is she? Call an ambulance. Couldn't get the blog offer. Okay, so we do all that. So the deputy then says, all right, well, if Dan, who's another investigating officer, if Dan thinks of something, then he'll give you a call or anything like that. I can't think of anything Else, we've gone over it a few times now. And Gary says, okay, well, I'll tell you the truth.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, you haven't yet.

[James Petregallo]

He's giving you the other guy's card saying, give him a call if you see anything. You're out of this. You're standing up, straightening your pants out, tucking your shirt back in, like, yeah, no, I'm getting ready to leave. I've been sitting for a while. He says, I'll tell you the truth, I think once you guys get all the reports back from the autopsy. And the deputy says, uh huh. That's his exact uh huh. Like a slow one. And it shows there wasn't no toxins in her system. And it shows that she drowned in a pond. And it shows that a tree. That a tree and stuff hit her. A tree and stuff.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Tree and stuff.

[James Petregallo]

Tree and stuff. That a tree and stuff hit her. I think you guys might be a little bit more at ease because, yeah, that's how she died. Nobody killed my wife. And the deputy says exactly what I was just gonna say. Okay. That's exactly what he said. Okay. Is there more, you know, I killed my wife? Let's go over that statement one more time from the topic.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Don't go suspecting much.

[James Petregallo]

No. And she did the autopsy, and it shows there wasn't no toxins in her system or something. When did toxins get brought up? Poison.

[Jimmy Wissman]

We weren't investigating that. Now we might.

[James Petregallo]

Now we might. Yeah, I never even thought to check that. And it shows that she drowned in a pond. And it shows that a tree. That a tree and stuff hit her. I think you guys might be a little more at ease because, yeah, that's how she died. Nobody killed my wife.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Nobody killed her.

[James Petregallo]

Nobody killed her. That's amazing. And the deputy says, okay, yeah. And then Gary says, I mean, nobody. Nobody could. I mean, she might complain, and she might have been hard to get along with sometimes. Gary, what the fuck are you.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I mean, there were reasons, but I don't think anybody did.

[James Petregallo]

People were taking their car keys out of their pocket to leave. Gary, what are you doing? This is terrible. Not good work, Gar.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You suck such a pain in the ass. I'm cheating on her.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. You know, I don't want to. I don't want to bang her no more. She's a pain in my fucking coolons. Yeah. All that kind of shit. But, you know, it doesn't mean I killed her. Even though he's such an idiot.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Here's all the reasons I should be suspicious.

[James Petregallo]

Yes. Here's why I'd be suspicious of me, by the way. Look for toxins. That's another thing, which, if your wife was killed by accident, you'd be like, check for toxins. I want to see if everything's okay. I want to make sure it's all right. You wouldn't be.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, please don't just file it under freak accident. Please look carefully.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, let's look deeply and carefully into this shit. Yeah, that's how a normal person would act. So, yeah, he said that. But she had a heart of gold. And nobody could do something. Nobody. That. Nobody could do that to somebody like that. Meaning no one could have killed her. She's too nice. And then he goes on. There's a pause, and then he continues, although they should just never answer him and just let him go. He'll talk for the rest of the night. He said, I've questioned myself why she didn't hear that and get out of the way or something. Yeah, we've questioned it, too, Gary. That's why you're sitting here, Chief.

[Jimmy Wissman]

We're questioning for the same thing.

[James Petregallo]

The reason why you're sitting in front of us. Then he gets wild after that. He said, and I don't like talking bad about anybody because, you know, I love my wife. Which means, you know there's gonna be some bad shit he's gonna say about her.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Right?

[James Petregallo]

That's the fucking. That's the preface here. He said, she was like. Like I said, just a heart of gold. But she was slow as far as thinking goes. What? Never heard that she ran her own business successfully. I never heard any of this.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Seems to be doing fine.

[James Petregallo]

Seems to be doing great. Other than liking you, I can't see any gaps in her judgment or character or anything else.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Only bit that I might consider slow.

[James Petregallo]

Yep. So he said, because, you know I love my wife. She was like. Like I said, just had a heart of gold. But she was slow as far as thinking. She. No numbers, no spelling, no nothing. What I mean, no numbers. She ran a fucking salon for 20 years.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She can't read or write or arithmetic.

[James Petregallo]

She just took a big thing with crayon and put, you know, drew a picture of a lady's head with her hair all different now off the window.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It had a messy head and then an arrow and then a clean, nice head.

[James Petregallo]

That's all it had. No sign on the outside, no phone number. Because she wouldn't have been able to. Come on, Gary, you get it? Give me a fucking break. Give me a goddamn break here. The Address was the most perplexing. She never could find it. So no numbers, no spelling, no nothing. I mean, when it come to that, she'd always come to me and you'd tell her something. She'd. It was like telling a person a joke. Well, a half hour later she'd start laughing. She'd get it. She was just slow. Took her a half. She was on the way home before she got the joke from the comedy club is with her. Feels like, oh, that closer was hilarious.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Feels like Gary's a bad joke teller.

[James Petregallo]

I think his jokes probably stink. And also he's basically saying if she heard a thousand pound tree falling, she's so stupid, she wouldn't have got out of the way of it. That's a strange thing.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She might look around and then it falls on her face. She's essentially the wet bandits. Yes, the guys,

[James Petregallo]

once they get in there, they're terrible, but they somehow get their way in the house.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She's Marv. Marv would step on all the nails and get stuck to all the tar.

[James Petregallo]

That's what he's saying. Which again, no one else has ever said this about. This is completely ridiculous. Then after he said she was just slow, he says, it's just. And I've always thought, well, if a tree would break and she probably would have turned around and looked and says, oh, a fallen tree. And then she's that type. And then what? He just said she'd turn around and go, oh, a fallen tree. And not realize to get out of the way of it. That's what he just said. She would not live to be 54 years old. She was when she died. She would certainly not be alive 54 years. If seeing a speeding car coming at her, she'd go, oh, pretty color red. It's going so fast. Never. No, this is crazy. He literally was like. She'd be like, oh, a tree. Fallen, duh. And then it would fall anywhere. And we're supposed to buy that

[Jimmy Wissman]

terrible thing to say about a wife that is not that way.

[James Petregallo]

She's only been dead a week and you're already calling her a dummy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, she's pretty dumb.

[James Petregallo]

Pretty bad guy. He's a terrible guy. So then also he says about the affair. They're like, so is the affair over now? And he goes, oh, no, no, no. Now it's even better because now I don't have to worry about Theresa. Basically he said, yeah, no, no. And he's not embarrassed by it at all. He said, I'm not. No, I'm with April Now. Now she's my girlfriend.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Well, now we're probably gonna. Now that I don't have a wife, I need one of those.

[James Petregallo]

What am I gonna do? Yeah, I gotta get a wife. None of the other chicks on the farm will marry me, so here I am. So. October 20, 2009, with all of this, the fallen tree, the lack of broken bones, stuff like that. Gary's incredible. Incredible fucking interrogation. There, the investigation is ruled complete and the Dr. Sabat and the Chief Medical Examiner, Dr. James Kaplan, rule that it's an accidental drowning complicated by compression asphyxia, is that right? The theory that the tree pinned her underwater as she drowned, so it was pushing her and smushing her and she couldn't get breath and she's underwater. So accidental death, case closed. Done. Wow. Thank you so much, everybody. It's been a great episode of Small Town Murder. Catch us next week.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah. No, you can't arrest an oak. That's the thing.

[James Petregallo]

We tried to cuff him, but it's just. He's slippery. Boy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They don't fit.

[James Petregallo]

They don't fit.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

So that's it. Now everybody just shrugs and accepts it, except for Theresa's family.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They're not gonna go into the night.

[James Petregallo]

And if they're anything like my family, this has only just begun. You know what I mean? This has only just begun. How dare you write that? Yeah, now they're pissed at the medical examiner, too.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Accidental. We're about to see an accidental.

[James Petregallo]

Accidental, my ass. I'll show you accidental. Tell you what, why don't you park behind my truck and I'll call that. We'll see how much of an accidental death you could have. Just stand right there, would you? So Theresa's family is told this shit and they go, I don't think so.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Right?

[James Petregallo]

I don't think so. And the deputy even told them to, like, hey, relax, you know, to get this thought out of your head that it's this big murder conspiracy. Sometimes trees fall on people. It happens.

[Jimmy Wissman]

If a tree falls in the woods, you know what I mean?

[James Petregallo]

You know what I'm saying? And your sister's under it. You know what I mean? You've heard that statement, right?

[Jimmy Wissman]

If the tree falls in the woods.

[James Petregallo]

Do you have a sister? Yeah. See what I mean? The answer, by the way, is no. In case you didn't know that for

[Jimmy Wissman]

a fact, we found that out from our medical examiner.

[James Petregallo]

So the sisters, though, said, I don't think so. I think we're going to keep. I think we're going to keep looking into This, I don't think we're going to take your word for it. So there's four sisters now and they've all watched crime shows, they watch documentaries. Oh, and it's 2009, 2000, CSI and all this shit.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And they're like, A and E is 24 hours. Is it A and E? What, what is headline?

[James Petregallo]

HLN is 24 hours of investigation, discovery, ID is. Yeah, all that shit. The first 48 is on a and E all day long.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Doesn't stop.

[James Petregallo]

So they said, I've heard of this happening before. And families pushing and let's keep this going. Let's hold their feet to the fire here. So they do all this, they research, they Google stuff, they search as much as you can. In 2008, they find a very prominent pathologist here, a very prominent doctor that they email to try to get him to look at the case. Okay, it's Dr. Cyril Wecht and we'll talk about him a little later.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I've heard of him.

[James Petregallo]

So they put him. Yeah, I'm sure people who follow true crime stuff have heard of him. He's been involved in some very big cases. He's kind of like the Dr. Baden, except I don't think he's. I think he's, in my opinion, much more credible. Yeah, yeah, let's put it that way. Because as we've stated, in my opinion, I have to say that Dr. Baden is completely full of shit. In my opinion, I could be completely wrong, but I think he's a bought and paid for hack.

[Jimmy Wissman]

If you want to. Well, it feels as though when a side asks him to testify for them, he does what they say based on salary. That's what it feels like.

[James Petregallo]

Just based on our observations that are not truth or anything like that. Allegedly. And in our opinion. There you go.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Is that enough?

[James Petregallo]

Eight dicks. I don't know. But I can say go fuck yourself, you fat faced ass. All that I can say. I can't say.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You look like Chef Boyardee. You fuck?

[James Petregallo]

No. Well, you could. That's an opinion. It's a hard opinion. I like it. So 2009. Yeah. All right. After Theresa's death, obviously, okay. Teresa's family goes to the farm to see the scene. They want to see where it happened so it could make sense to them. Obviously you wouldn't just take, oh well, the pond and a tree. So her sister asked Gary if she could borrow Teresa's camera to show their parents. Yeah, because I want to take pictures, the digital camera at the time. And I want to take pictures. I want to show the parents the scene so they'll shut the fuck up. That's probably how they put it. Look, we got to show our parents so they calm down and, you know, whatever. We need to borrow this camera.

[Jimmy Wissman]

People are mad. We need to fix this. Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

So Gary says, sure, sure, borrow the camera. Now. It's not digital too. It's film. They had the film developed at a photo lab because there was already film in the camera with some shots taken. Okay. The pictures came out and here is what one of the sisters said. I was expecting to see the beautiful blue pond. And unfortunately I saw pictures of my sister that nobody would ever want to see. Yeah. Pictures of Teresa with bruises all over her are on this film. Bruises on her chest. A significant bruise on her chest. Bruises all over her body. Not dead, Theresa. Live. She's been covered.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She's been documenting bruising.

[James Petregallo]

Yes. She's been documented the abuse that's been happening to her. There's other pictures too. Selfies. There's ones that other people took and there's selfies that she took in. It's self documentation. She's showing her bruises. It's exactly what it is. And her sister said. My sister Teresa was speaking to us from the grave.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wow.

[James Petregallo]

She had taken documentation of herself, of bruises that were on her body. I knew that was a cry for help.

[Jimmy Wissman]

How about it?

[James Petregallo]

Isn't that incredible At a girl? Incredible from the fucking grave. She's.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And yeah, he would have no fucking idea.

[James Petregallo]

She's way more useless than any of these detectives. Or useful than any of these detectives. I should say. Not useless. Yeah. So. Wow. So they take this evidence and they go to the police who tell them to chill the fuck out and calm down. They get to the police and they're like, we have the evidence. Boom. Put it on the counter. You'd expect they're just going to be like, get the cuffs and let's go talk to Gary.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Basically how they wash this.

[James Petregallo]

Well, this is from Theresa's sister. Quote, he told me I needed to get this crazy thought out of my head because I needed to go mourn for my sister. He said, go give me some evidence, then come back.

[Jimmy Wissman]

No, you.

[James Petregallo]

They told him to fuck off. Not interested.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Go do my job.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, go do my job for me and then come back. I'll be sitting there eating. So now they have looks like abuse, lots of bruising. And they know he had a year long affair. And he said his wife is a fucking dumb dumb who doesn't get a joke. And you know, I like her and everything, but she doesn't do numbers or counting or fucking reading out of the

[Jimmy Wissman]

way of fucking falling tree.

[James Petregallo]

Too dumb to get out of the way from a falling tree. That's what's going on. So the sisters say, no, you want evidence? You want evidence?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, you want evidence?

[James Petregallo]

You say, I get you evidence. So they keep trying to get Dr. Searle involved in this. And he is a forensic pathologist from Pittsburgh. He's been involved in the autopsies of jfk, Marilyn Monroe, Michael Jackson. He does high profile shit.

[Jimmy Wissman]

The same ones that that scummy Ron Jeremy proclaims he was part of.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, yes, exactly, yes. Small dick Ron Jeremy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You mean more scummy Ron Jeremy.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, in our opinion. So he reviewed the records and he said that the case struck him as off from the first second he looked over the paperwork, he said, quote, I was wondering, gee, what caused the tree to fall down? Exactly at that moment, there were a lot of things that were puzzling and quite atypical. So for all those reasons, great question. I felt that it was something I was willing to become involved with. Yeah. At that moment, they should have looked

[Jimmy Wissman]

more at the stump, right?

[James Petregallo]

Yes. Yeah, absolutely. That should have been just. They should have went out and had. I don't know who does tree guys, arborists going out there.

[Jimmy Wissman]

But I've seen a tree break. And that's never.

[James Petregallo]

That's exactly how they break.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I mean, you look at a stump and you go, holy fuck. Yeah, it's all twisted.

[James Petregallo]

All the time. Happens. Yeah, see? All the time. So now that they have this guy willing to be on the team or at least take a look at it, the family then uses their. Whatever connections they have to try to basically get phone numbers up the political ladder. I know a guy who knows a councilman, that councilman might know a guy who knows this. And then this guy knows a state legislator who maybe can bring you to this guy. And eventually they get all the way to the. The governor of West Virginia, who at that time was Joe Manchin, who became a senator who doesn't know what the fuck he believes in. You never know what Joe Manchin. And that's not a political statement. Literally, one day he'll say, I like this, the next day, I don't think I like that. You never know what the fuck Joe Manchin's doing. So anyway, Joe Manchin is the governor. They go to him, they contact his office to insist that Teresa's death was a murder. And he said, yeah, what do I care? Reopen it. I don't give a fuck. You want some family calling you every day? You can either have these four sisters calling you every goddamn day, or you can just tell the state police fucking look into it again. Shut these people up. And I think that's what he did. I don't know if he actually. You never know with a governor if they actually give a shit or not, or if they're just tired of hearing from people, but.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And also it's resources we have allocated. Fucking look, there's 332 people. How fucking busy are you?

[James Petregallo]

You're on the clock. State police. Go take a peek at. Why not? Yeah. And the family. This is what you have to do if you believe in something. And this is what they did. Anyone who. If I get murdered, I really hope my family does this. You know what I mean? This is what you want your family to do for you. So the state police reopened the case. They reinvestigate. Basically just do a start from scratch and do the work groundwork again to make sure it was done correctly. Now they were brought. But the people they brought in were specifically brought in because the original deputy investigation had been inadequate. Cause they really didn't go. Didn't really go to homicide detectives. It was just deputies.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And it was fairly quick, it seems like.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Within two weeks, medical examiner closed the case. They had talked to Gary. He said crazy shit. And they didn't follow up on it. Who knows?

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's almost like they took it to the medical examiner. The medical examiner said. Said what he said. And they were like, great, we don't have to do any more work on this.

[James Petregallo]

Exactly. Well, that solves that then.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Done deal.

[James Petregallo]

Moving on. Yeah, and if you're not a homicide detective too, maybe that's the other thing. You wouldn't push for something because, I don't know, it's easier to not investigate that. I don't know. That's a lot of aspersions we're casting because we have no idea what happened. These two. So a lot of responsibility on a

[Jimmy Wissman]

guy that hasn't been to the scene. Just looking at a body and making a decision.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. And we don't know how poorly trained the local cops are in this. I don't know how well they're trained for death investigation. And it is a ton. So one of these cops said, I was asked by my supervisors as well as the prosecuting attorney to take a look at the case. There were a lot of unanswered questions. We had to start pretty much at ground zero. And Work forward. So they go through everything. The 911 call, the autopsy report, the photographs, the witnesses. And as they're looking into it, they start seeing some pretty clear bird's eye view here. Pretty good. Clear cracks in everything that's happening.

[Jimmy Wissman]

A lot of weird shit.

[James Petregallo]

First of all, the tree. Let's discuss the tree. All right. That's the first thing they looked at here. Gary's story required, obviously, a gigantic tree to have fallen at exactly the right moment to knock Teresa into the pond and pin her face down under the water.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Okay, so thousand pounds, 60 foot tall. And it would have to keep like crush her down into it. Not even like knock her out of the way or anything.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I mean, best case scenario, she sees it, dives under to try to get away from it, and it gets her while she's underwater.

[James Petregallo]

Best case scenario. Yeah. Well, if she didn't just look at it and go, it's a pretty tree, like Gary says, like we're supposed to believe. Yeah. So the tree does not break any of Teresa's bones. And they're a little skeptical about anytime a thousand pound object falls on you, you're probably gonna have a broken bone. Yeah, just the way it works, they said. Also, it didn't leave major hemorrhaging consistent with the impact of a thousand pound object.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Right.

[James Petregallo]

It's a huge thing. It left small facial scratches and some back bruising. So one of the cops says a 2,000 pound tree, it's £1,000. But whatever falls and hits you in the back and knocks you into the pond, this is probably going to knock your glasses off and probably going to break something.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Did she have glasses on?

[James Petregallo]

Let's find out. They found her glasses. Yeah. They were analyzed by the crime lab. They looked for diatoms. Diatoms which are microscopic organisms found in pond water on the glasses, which would confirm they were submerged with her body. Gary claimed he removed her glasses from her in the water. He said she still had her glasses on. He took them off of her m. Popper. Okay. Yeah, the shot, it would fly right off anyway. Yeah, I don't wear glasses, but, you

[Jimmy Wissman]

know, I sit hard enough on the couch and they're gone.

[James Petregallo]

There you go. So now the glasses he says were in the water, he removed them. There was no diatoms on the glasses, which they would have to be there if they were in the pond, in the water. Yeah, yeah, they said just bruising marks consistent with having been struck while someone was wearing them, not with having been in a pond. This show small town murder is sponsored by BetterHelp. BetterHelp.com Absolutely. March includes International Women's Day. Everybody. A moment to celebrate women's strength and progress while also recognizing how much they carry every day. And you know that if you've ever, you know, been around a woman or seen your mother or your. Sure. So anybody like that. There's a lot to do and a lot to carry. And it's true. And a lot of these things between caring for others and managing responsibilities and unseen things, their emotional well being could easily be overlooked. And we want to remind women how much they matter and that therapy offers a space for them to take care of themselves in the way they deserve. You should do that. Get in there. Therapy is great. I'm telling you. You can see things just in a whole new perspective, in a whole new light and get just tools that are amazing to help you deal with life. It's. It's incredible. I don't know anybody where I would say they don't need any therapy. Everybody could use something. You know what I mean? It's just a lot. It really is.

[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]

Great place to start.

[James Petregallo]

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[Jimmy Wissman]

back to the show.

[James Petregallo]

Okay, so they said if these glasses had been in the water, which Gary claimed they were, they would have had some of these diatoms on or about them. They had none. Huh. Okay, so now we got a glasses lie right away. That's not good.

[Jimmy Wissman]

The glasses were never in the water.

[James Petregallo]

Never in the water. But it's a crazy scene. Maybe he got mixed up, who knows? You can't put a guy in jail for, put him on death row for that. His glasses didn't have diatoms on him. Nah, not do that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I don't want to heard about him right now.

[James Petregallo]

That's what I'm saying. The tree, also a meteorologist they brought out said that the wind conditions in the area indicated the tree probably fell several days before October 5th when it was windy. Oh, they said the October 5th was a calm day. Not enough wind to blow a 60 foot tree down at all.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay. And they don't just rot and then in a calm day, just fall. Huh.

[James Petregallo]

Sometimes they do, but more likely to be blown over by some in a strong windstorm. Like my trees are had 100 trees fall down and 80% of them are from wind. Yeah, sometimes they just get rotten and fall.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Back in 2009, we are keeping track of the wind and a log of it so that somebody knows how fast it was blowing the other day in which direction.

[James Petregallo]

Totally. Yeah, absolutely. So that's just the weather service, they can get all that information and they got a meteorologist to do that. Then they look at his clothes. Remember how he said he jumped in and tried to save his life? He said, I almost went under trying to save her. The tree could have taken me too. So that's what he said. Now the farm workers, Tanya Wagner, Kay Rudd and April were all asked whether he was wet when he came running to the house after trying to rescue Teresa. No one had asked them this before, really. And they said no, he was dry. Yeah, yeah. And they said was he like damp, you know? And they said no, just dry. Yeah, just crispy dry.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Has not been in the water.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. They said, quote, he said he almost went under when he jumped in and tried to pull her out from under a tree. But yet when he runs back to the workers and says find a phone, call 911. His clothes are dry. The investigator says no way. No way.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Impossible.

[James Petregallo]

That's physically impossible to do that. They also found that his statements in his first interview were suspicious. No shit. Jesus. Didn't take much to. We have hundreds of thousands of people out there. Did everyone else find those suspicious?

[Jimmy Wissman]

So far, yeah.

[James Petregallo]

So the claim that he jumped into the pond to save her life didn't match any of the witnesses saying he was dry. Based on that, they didn't believe that he was wet enough to support his claim that he jumped into the pond and attempted to pull his wife free. Now, still not a crime. No, I mean, she was dead already, blah, blah, blah. It's shitty, but it's not a. It's not murder to not have your shorts be wet.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah. She has no injuries to speak of that are a murder.

[James Petregallo]

Then they find out that Gary's a certified emt.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, right.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. He should know how to do things.

[Jimmy Wissman]

CPR like a motherfucker.

[James Petregallo]

That's the thing. So they said you watch your wife. Basically, he watched his wife float face down in a pond and made no effective attempt to resuscitate her before just leaving to get a tractor and went

[Jimmy Wissman]

and got the slowest vehicle on earth.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Hold on. Running. People running by you to the scene. Baby, I'll be right there. Just people passing you on foot and you're like, I'm almost there. So they said, I knew Gary, that Gary made no attempt to save Teresa is what an investigator said. Then they find out another thing, and this is really amping it up a bit. They find out that in August And September of 2009, the two months leading up to the October 5th day of the death, Gary purchased two half million dollar life insurance policies on Teresa. Over those course of two months, not one, but two. Not one, but two. Wow. Both specifically included accidental death riders, by the way. He actually sought higher coverage, but adjusted amounts based on her health. He wanted more. He wanted a million dollars or something. He discussed the insurance with the truck salesman that he bought that truck from with April.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Really?

[James Petregallo]

Yes. And we'll find out about that. The salesman says. Now they go talk to the salesman.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

While on the lot looking at cars, but before negotiating a deal on a vehicle, he asked about life insurance options sold by the dealership. Did you know that was. Did you know you could buy life insurance from a car dealership? No, I've never heard of that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What do y' all got in the way of some term life?

[James Petregallo]

I'll take the 2004 Mustang and a term life on a 30 year. What are we talking about? About. I've never heard of that before.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Can you throw in about 80 grand in accidental, some AD&D for my wife who's not here.

[James Petregallo]

What do you say?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wow.

[James Petregallo]

The Salesman said that in his experience, it was uncommon for prospective buyers to discuss insurance options prior to deciding on a vehicle to purchase already.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Before.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, before he's interested in a car, he's interested in insurance.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I'm here for the ad, and, dude, but if by chance you got a lariat, I'll take a peek at it.

[James Petregallo]

I mean, I'll grab an F150 if that's what you're putting out. You got a King Cab. I'm your man right here. So he purchased the truck for $44,255.82, financing the majority of the purchase price. The salesman later said that Gary said that he'd, quote, be paying it off pretty soon. Okay. But that the financing period he selected, 60 months, was not the shortest the dealership offered. Then he also purchased life insurance to cover the cost of his truck up to $50,000. He did buy it from that. I guess you could buy it for your truck. I didn't know that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I was shocked.

[James Petregallo]

The policy covered both his life and the life of his wife. Another representative at the dealership said that because Gary was named on the loan, she appeared a day or two following the sale to sign paperwork, including the life insurance policy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Because she's right.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, because she's trusting. She doesn't think he's gonna fucking do it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She's listed in both, so she has to sign on it.

[James Petregallo]

And she's probably like, that's smart. We should have insurance.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Genius idea. Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Women tend to love it when you go get life insurance. They're like, good job. You're not gonna fucking screw me over here.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's actually a very smart thing to have life insurance if you have a. If you're buying a vehicle at the time. Because then if you die and the vehicle's not paid for, then your family's stuck with this fucking truck, and I gotta deal with the payment.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Yep. It's the truth. So like I said, he wanted a higher coverage, but because of her health, they said he can't have it. So he adjusted. So then, September 4, 2009, Gary made a call to increase his wife's life insurance and increased his coverage by $30,000 or 300,000 DOL. He attempted to increase her coverage by 300,000 as well, for both natural and accidental causes, but was informed by the agent that to cover natural death, she would need a new physical because of her previously disclosed cholesterol issues. So they said, you got to get her in here and get a physical. So he said all right, never mind. Fuck that. Fuck the health portion.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They usually only let you up it each year by like 10% or whatever.

[James Petregallo]

Otherwise it's suspicious and you have motive to murder people.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Looks weird.

[James Petregallo]

Looks weird. So he said when he came back, he said, yeah, I don't want that health portion of the insurance. He said, quote, yeah, because I'm looking for. What I'm looking for is just the accidental. We're not trying to increase life when neither of us is planning a natural death for at least another 30 or 40 years. He's like, neither of us are gonna die natural death anytime soon. So the only thing that could happen would be an accident. So let's. So let's juice that up a bit.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Planning a natural death. We're planning an accidental one.

[James Petregallo]

Planning on getting an accidental death. He said that the reason he wanted to purchase the additional insurance was because we are under the assumption that our mortgage was insured also. So basically that what we're covered in now will just barely pay off our mortgage. Okay. Total coverage for each spouse with respective $300,000 increase is. Was half a million dollars.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

So they said Gary purchased a life insurance policy 32 days prior to Theresa's death. So Gary would have profited from the death. Yep. Now, the domestic abuse, the pictures, they find all sorts of evidence of what the state's gonna call an ongoing theme here of violence, that it's a pattern of violence that ultimately led to a murder. That's important in the court case. There's a guy named Jimmy Thompson here. Jimmy Thompson's a friend and a neighbor of Teresa. He said that he witnessed Gary shake his wife in spring of 2009. Shake his wife? Saw it Like a baby. Shake his.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You saw it?

[James Petregallo]

Who shakes an adult? What are you doing? Unless it's like an old movie and they're hysterical and you go snap out of it, and they go, oh, God, sorry. But not your wife.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You don't do that, putting your hands on somebody aggressively. If you do that in front of people, that's wild.

[James Petregallo]

And then he also saw Gary, quote, swat her head in May of 2009.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Hit her in the head.

[James Petregallo]

I don't know if he hit her or took a swipe at her or what. Not sure if he made contact, but just swat at her head. So either way, neither of those things are normal or regular or excusable. So then also this Jimmy Thompson took photographs of the bruising on Teresa's body on three separate occasions. The shit she couldn't get to, she'd get Jimmy to do it. The first was taken in July 2009 and showed a bruise on her chest. The second was also. Wow, still July 2009 and showed a bruise on her nose. And the third was in August 2009 and showed a bruise on her thigh. So Jimmy Thompson said that Teresa told him that Gary had inflicted the bruises upon her and all of that. So this is a lot. So they look at all of that. Not only do they have bruises that could have been documenting when I fell off the tractor, you don't know. Sure. But if there's a guy there, Jimmy

[Jimmy Wissman]

Thompson, who can narrate this shit, that's

[James Petregallo]

helpful and knows what it's from, that's helpful. Also, they're gonna fully investigate this affair, just to make sure. Because he says it's a fling and it ain't a big deal and all that. And they said, no, this is a long term relationship. They're still together. And April had told friends of hers that Gary was going to leave Teresa and it was just gonna be her and Gary on the farm and then they were gonna have a family.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah. Because she's already got a kid, but he'll give her more. Wow.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. They said, she said that one of the friends said to the cop, this cop said that this guy told him that Gary was leaving Teresa and was going to move her in and they were going to have a family together. And Gary also, that wasn't the only affair he had.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Is that right?

[James Petregallo]

He had affairs with other employees. His hiring process is would I bang her in a farmhouse at about five o' clock while the sun's going down? Can I groom her? Yeah. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, maybe. Think she's got something going on that would allow me to fucking play her out? This is fucking bad. So he had multiple affairs with multiple farm workers. None of them as serious as April, though. And April's been his main squeeze for a while now, which, I mean, we shouldn't be surprised. He was also making meth at one point, so. Right, yeah.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And he's from the Daytona area.

[James Petregallo]

Well, obviously that's going to be a problem. Now they also Talk about the 911 call that April had that April placed from.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Not anywhere near the pond.

[James Petregallo]

Yes. And they thought about it. They're like, he's running up the hill shouting for an ambulance. He didn't explain why an ambulance should be called. She made the 911 call after retrieving her phone from her vehicle. The point from which she made the call was approximately 85 yards from where Theresa was in the pond. Yet she told 911 that she was. Teresa was trapped under a tree in the pond and wasn't breathing. So they're like, how could she know all that?

[Jimmy Wissman]

How'd she know?

[James Petregallo]

It's impossible. So they said she couldn't see the scene that she described. She must have known that Teresa was dead prior to placing the call. That's what they think. So January 2010, the medical examiners revisit this stuff. Is that right now they have all this information that they didn't have to begin with. All they had before was, here's a lady we found under a tree. And they were like. Like, I guess the tree fell on her. I don't know. They didn't have anything to counter his narrative of I found her laying under a tree. Now they do. So they hear about the insurance policies, the affair, the dry clothes, the 911 call stuff, and they changed their ruling.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They changed it?

[James Petregallo]

Oh, yeah. Cause of death was revised from accidental drowning complicated by compression asphyxia to asphyxia due to probable strangulation. That's much different.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Where did that come from?

[James Petregallo]

Yep. And the manner of death being undetermined, which. This is huge.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah. Where did they get the strangulation from?

[James Petregallo]

That's obviously some other information. Yeah, yeah. Asphyxia of some kind. It has to be. So that's what they think. But undetermined isn't enough to get an indictment. They got to get it, you know, to be a homicide. They need more evidence. They need Teresa's body.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, no. Diddy.

[James Petregallo]

She's been in the ground a long time, Jimmy. They got to exhume her.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, no. At least we can.

[James Petregallo]

When they end up. Yeah, it's true. When they end up exhuming her, it's two and a half years after she's dead.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What are we gonna find?

[James Petregallo]

Apparently a lot, really. You can find if you have a broken hyoid bone, stuff like that. Yeah. So the doctor, Cyril Wecht said, I talk families out of exhumations more often than I encourage them to. Go ahead. I try very hard to help them understand what's involved financially, psychologically. In this case. I felt in order to understand what transpired, it was necessary to see the body of Teresa Rollins. So they made the decision. The sister said my sister had to be exhumed. To me, it wasn't a choice. Your love for the victim has to conquer all. Which is true. Yeah. So 2010, Gary gets arrested for what? Not for murder.

[Jimmy Wissman]

No, for meth.

[James Petregallo]

Nope. He gets arrested because due to his felonious background, they find out that he'd been hunting and checking in and checking in a deer during hunting season, which is a convicted, convicted felon. He's not even supposed to have a rifle to shoot squirrels with. So he is charged with felony unlawful transport of firearms, transport or possession. Transport. Yeah, I guess that's gonna be a big deal though. Transport might be taking them from your house somewhere else, you know what I mean?

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's even worse. Just owning it at home is crazy, but to take it somewhere. You're an asshole.

[James Petregallo]

So September of 2011, now fast forward. He's gonna be sentenced. It's a federal firearms case.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's a.

[James Petregallo]

So they didn't. Weren't in any rush because he's been in detention here. And they sentence him to, you, sir, may fuck off. Three years and one month in federal prison.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay, but that's prison time.

[James Petregallo]

He's not getting off of that. That's prison. And at the same time, they indict him for murder as well. So let's throw that one on there

[Jimmy Wissman]

because of the association shit, we can get you. Okay.

[James Petregallo]

All right, now they can indict him for murder. So now about April. One of the investigators said that we both knew, myself and Corporal White both knew that April had more involvement and more information than she would tell us in interviews. So she kept seeing him essentially while he was in jail. She kept seeing him really while he was in federal prison or whatever, being held for the gun charges. Even while he's arrested for murder, she still goes and sees him? Oh, she traveled all the way to the Central Regional Jail in Flatwoods to see him there 43 times.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's a lot of times.

[James Petregallo]

Holy shit.

[Jimmy Wissman]

How far is it?

[James Petregallo]

Not sure, but it's a long time. Either way, it's far.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's not in the Nicholas County Jail?

[James Petregallo]

I don't think so, no. And then she also said that she traveled to the jail with the his mother as well and said after having to be refreshed with the jail visitation logs, she brought her three year old daughter along. She was like, oh. They said, did you ever bring your kids? And she said no. And they said, that's funny. And the jail logs was here. And she said, okay, I brought my 3 year old to jail to see this asshole. Yeah, we're gonna go see a murderer. Along with her to participate in visits with him in April 2010, May 2010 and August 2010.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What is that?

[James Petregallo]

She continued her romantic involvement with him Until December of 2010, she accepted. Wow. Accepted phone calls from him four or five times a day. A day.

[Jimmy Wissman]

God damn.

[James Petregallo]

And sent him photographs and letters of her and the baby and all that kind of shit to acted like they were married together 10 years and everything's going great. Yeah. Wow. So October 7, 2011, April's arrested, too. Yeah. Yeah. As an accessory to murder after the fact, which is still a heavy, heavy charge. So the theory is she knew that Theresa was dead before calling 911, and that someone must have told her what to say. It's the only way. So they press her. They said, did you see her in the pond from up there when you called? And she said no. They said you could not see her. Did you go down there first? And she said no. And they said, so how did you know she was under the tree, not breathing right. Which is a great question.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, you just fucked yourself so hard right in front of us.

[James Petregallo]

Her answer, not quite as good. She says, I just knew. I just knew. And then she tries to chalk it up to clairvoyance. She says, I'm a bit psychic sometimes. That's basically what she says.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I'm a real good guesser.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. She said she's got some clairvoyance or something. And the investigators are like, I don't think so. I think you're a dummy, and I don't think this is happening. So the detective said, there's only one way you should have had that information. You either helped put that body there, or someone told you what to say before you called 911. And she said, I just knew. And they said, well, have fun, dummy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Would you get out of the way of a falling tree? Because you're the dumbest fuck I ever met.

[James Petregallo]

No shit. I got a tree I'd like you to sit under outside. So they put her in jail and say, go sit in jail for a while and see how you think about it. Well, that lasts about six days. She must hate jail, because in about six days, she cracks. She asks to give a statement. Oh, now she's crying. She said that Gary had abused her, too, that she was scared of Gary. And the investigators put it this way. April was afraid to tell us, but April knew she was under arrest for accessory after the fact of murder. And she was crying, and she asked for an opportunity to tell the truth. April indicated to us that she was, in fact, scared of Gary, that Gary had also abused her. And ultimately, she finally told the truth. Yeah, here it is. Okay. Now, obviously, they're getting a bigger picture of Gary of a totally different guy behind closed doors than in public. Because this is. It's not even like they've been married for a long time. He's abusing her off the bat.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's just a dick out of the gate.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, he's a dick and a violent asshole. So he says, or April says, on the morning of October 5th, Gary pulled her aside behind the tractor and she was like, oh, it's time. And he was like, no, no, no, no, no, zip up, hold on, I gotta talk to you about this. He said, the way she put it, like he was looking through her. She says, quote, we unloaded the stakes and he had took me by the arm to the other side of the tractor. And he just looked at me like, with this look, like he was looking through me. And he just said, I killed Teresa. And I just looked at him like, you know, like what? And he said it again. He said, I killed Teresa. And he said that I'd be the one to call 911 and tell them about her under the tree and that if I didn't go along with it, that me and my daughter wouldn't be here anymore. Okay, so we don't know if that's a death threat or she's going to kick him off the farm or what. But. But she says also prior to Teresa's death, Gary had talked about when he got rid of Teresa and mentioned marriage. I think once he also threatened her child. She said, and by her own words here, she said that she called 911 and said exactly what Gary told her to say. And she spent the last two years living with that and feeling guilty. She said before the murder, she had talked about getting rid of Teresa, at least very often. It wasn't a one time thing. So Gary, in March of 2012, was taken to county jail for the murder charge from federal prison. May of 2012, Dr. Cyril Wecht comes in with a new autopsy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

This gal sat free for two years, didn't say shit. Six days in the Nicholas Cage.

[James Petregallo]

She couldn't take it in a goddamn county jail. And she said, this is terrible.

[Jimmy Wissman]

How bad must Nicholas County Jail be?

[James Petregallo]

Well, you figure the nicer houses in Nicholas aren't that great. In Nicholas county aren't that great. So what's the jail like? Jesus Christ. May of 2012, here it is, Dr. Cyril Wecht. Two years and seven months after the death of poor Teresa, her body is transported to his office in Pittsburgh. And now they have him. And they have a Dr. Joseph Cohen that's going to be working for Gary's attorney there. Yeah. They're going to be working together. They both participate. He gets to be there too. So when they did the original autopsy, they had not removed the spinal column and spinal cord to look for spinal injuries. They hadn't do that. They didn't do that. So Dr. Wech said that the injuries on the body did not fit the profile of having a thousand pound tree fall on. They were looking for a specific broken vertebrae.

[Jimmy Wissman]

So he's got all of them.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, he pulled it right out. Like Mortal Kombat.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, he's got the whole thing. He can look at every piece.

[James Petregallo]

That's great. Every piece of. Yep. So he said that doesn't fit, that a tree of that size would have produced significant damage. Lacerations, broken bones, deep hemorrhaging in the pattern of the tree's shape.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Right.

[James Petregallo]

Obviously, yeah. So he said that what he found was consistent with forcible drowning. Someone holding Teresa's face underwater. That's what he found. The bruising on her back is consistent with someone pressing her down. Not a tree falling on her. These small injuries on her face. One near the left eye, one by the bridge of the nose, and one just inward from the right eye. He said these injuries were consistent with her face being pushed against rocks or pebbles on the bottom of a pond.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Mushed into the fucking bed.

[James Petregallo]

Mushed. And then the glasses. She wore glasses. She had a bruise on her nose. If you're right handed and you punch someone wearing glasses on the left side of their face, the glasses are driven back into the nose, leaving a bruise.

[Jimmy Wissman]

The pad got her inside the eye.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, right there. Pushes the glasses. He said Ms. Rollins had the same bruise on her nose. There was also evidence as of zipper marks on Teresa's neck consistent with Gary pulling her jacket tight while holding her down and drowning her.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh.

[James Petregallo]

So he says that he is going to reclassify this a forcible drowning homicide.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wow.

[James Petregallo]

He says, I've done about 19,000 autopsies in my career and I've reviewed about 39,000 other autopsies. I've been involved in all kinds of cases. Jfk, Marilyn Monroe, Michael Jackson. I wonder how long it normally takes them to drop those names when you talk to them. So you want the number three with a large coke. Well, I've been involved in cases with jfk, Marilyn Monroe and Michael Jackson. So we're gonna call it medium and let me get the shake. I feel like you can't talk to this guy for 10 minutes.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Sign a barbecue, please.

[James Petregallo]

For sure.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Michael Jackson's doctor's a piece of shit, by the way.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, that's not an opinion, that's just real. He said, aside from the well known controversial cases, the majority of those cases involve regular folks like you and me. Yeah. That work on Marilyn Monroe and Michael Jackson. Murder investigator. Real regular folks. Doctors who work on the president's autopsy. Regular folk.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Just the normal ass. Dallas regular. Dallas resident.

[James Petregallo]

Regular old West Virginia mine folk. That's all he said. These cases cry out for justice, just as do the cases of prominent people. These cases are the same kinds of medical mysteries that must be solved. And often when you think the case is solved, it may prove to only be the beginning. So he did all this. The prosecutor called him our hero.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, yeah. I mean, he's saving the day for sure.

[James Petregallo]

Definitely his theory. This is his reconstruction of how it would have happened. Yeah, she was either at the pond or lured to the pond, which wouldn't have been hard to do. They could have said, oh, there's a bunch of ducks. They're so cute. Come on down here.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Come feed them with me.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, Gary, I'm coming.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I'm on my way.

[James Petregallo]

I'll be right there. Gary. Either ambushed her from behind, striking her on the head. There's a subscalp hemorrhages discovered in the autopsy that are consistent with a blow enough to render her dazed and then push her into the water and hold her down. Or she might have been drowned in the house and transported out to here.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, wow.

[James Petregallo]

Is the other thing he said. My scenario is that Theresa Rollins was at the pond. Whether she went down there to feed the ducks and fish, which I understand she did quite often. And that fit in whether somebody else was with her or somebody snuck up on her. I believe she was then struck on the head, pushed into the water, held down forcibly. That would fit in with the bruising in the back. Pressing down, squeezing on the shoulder areas, fit in with the cause of some little abrasions, maybe even pushing the head down, causing scrapes from rocks or pebbles. I think she was drowned. Then the tree was brought in place on top of her. The zipper marks are a big deal, too, because they say Theresa's jacket had been pulled tight in a way consistent with Gary gripping it from behind to hold her down, which would have created marks, and that's a big deal. And the prosecutor says the victim had zipper marks on her. The medical examiner believes Mr. Rollins pulled her jacket tight while holding her down and drowning her. None of this looks good for Gare.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Gonna plea.

[James Petregallo]

Gare Bear is in Trouble.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, boy. They got you, Gare.

[James Petregallo]

He says he's innocent as a motherfucker.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He's gonna run. Innocent?

[James Petregallo]

This is crazy. Not only guilty crazy. Even though your girlfriend said he told me he killed her.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Quack science. She's a lying whore.

[James Petregallo]

That's it. I don't know what you're talking about. Science. Jesus. The only science I know is if you mix enough battery acid and enough Sudafed and enough other shit together, you get a product that everybody want to buy. That's the only science I need to

[Jimmy Wissman]

know that drives people crazy.

[James Petregallo]

The formula for a good meth batch. That's right. So August 2012 is the trial. Now, the state's theory is either in the house, in the bathtub, the sink, or the toilet. They think now they've come to the conclusion that she was drowned in the house. Okay. And they think it was the night before she was drowned. Oh, they think he did it before anybody got there. Like, while it was still dark outside, he drowned her, then transported the body to the farm and positioned the dead tree over her body and set the scene. Now, the problem is he thought somebody would stumble across it and he'd go, oh, my God. And run over there, but nobody found it, so he had to go find her. He fucked up on that one.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What was that? What was the one? There was. I forget. There was a movie where a man, like, kept. Fight. Oh, never mind. You haven't seen it? It's awful. It's a bad movie.

[James Petregallo]

Is it old?

[Jimmy Wissman]

No, it's like this time, 2006 or whatever. The new guy with DJ quals. I saw that where he kept punching the kid and knocking him out, and then, like, the hallways cleared, and then he's like, fuck. Then he had to, like, pull the fire alarm and get everybody to come out, and then he punched an already unconscious man, and then everybody could see it anyway.

[James Petregallo]

Okay.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I just remember that you said that, and I was like, oh, no, it's a bad movie.

[James Petregallo]

The chips,

[Jimmy Wissman]

like, 11 people saw it. It's a terrible reference.

[James Petregallo]

I saw it in when it came out on, like, HBO or something. I was like, yeah, this sucks. Never seen that again.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I saw it in the theater, and then I bought it on dvd.

[James Petregallo]

Wow. You should see the size of the DJ Qualls poster that Jimmy has at his house. It's remarkable. I do, too. I think he's great. I think he's goddamn great.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I'd watch him in anything. He's so good.

[James Petregallo]

The show he was on with Jim Jeffries.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah. Legit on fx, Legit.

[James Petregallo]

There you go. Where he was in the wheelchair. He was fucking great in that show. He was so good. Just a good actor. It's interesting.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Anyway, his story of when he came out as gay is the great greatest story of all time.

[James Petregallo]

You have to tell it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They were at a Elton John concert and Jim Jackson.

[James Petregallo]

It's a mighty fine place to do it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

One of the.

[James Petregallo]

You want support? Yeah, that's the place.

[Jimmy Wissman]

One of the two of them screamed the F word. And then he was like, now would be a great time to come out

[James Petregallo]

the second F word.

[Jimmy Wissman]

The bad F word. Like the like insult.

[James Petregallo]

Well, it's the F word. Is the F word. That's F word. B. Yeah, the gay F word.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's the other F word.

[James Petregallo]

Yes, there you go.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, the slur. And Jim was like, ah, save my ass now, sir. Tell everybody, tell this entire crowd of Elton John audience how I'm not.

[James Petregallo]

I don't know what this man is talking about. Then they took him away and beat him senseless.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, it's a. I just love DJ Anyway, so yeah, I owned the new guy on dvd, James, because I quals.

[James Petregallo]

You must be very proud.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I watch that bullshit.

[James Petregallo]

Oh man. So that's what their theory is. The defense's theory is what a tragic accident that's gonna be really. This poor woman, she went down to feed the fish because she's sweet heart of gold and a massive tree fell on her. This investigation, not only is it flawed, not only is it bullshit, but it's also politically motivated.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, because Manchin's involved.

[James Petregallo]

This is politics over fact is what this is. They say it's driven by pressure from the governor's office due to the persistent lobbying of these fucking group of guineas that we got in this goddamn courtroom.

[Jimmy Wissman]

This guy wants to be a goddamn senator and he's gonna use me as the scapegoat.

[James Petregallo]

I will not have it. That's what they're saying. Yeah. So he said the state's own medical examiner, the old medical examiner, ruled it an accident. And that ruling was correct. Just cuz the family's putting pressure on doesn't mean that science changes. That's their thing here. So there's the prosecution puts up 20 witnesses.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's a lot.

[James Petregallo]

The defense calls one forensic pathologist, the guy who was doing the autopsy with Dr. Cyril Wecht there. So the prosecution's case here is April's gonna testify to Gary's trailer side confession there tractor side, I should say. And his threats to her and her daughter and his Prior statement about getting rid of Teresa. And she said, he took me behind the thing, tractor. He said I killed Teresa, told me I had to make the 911 call. She did everything that she said she was going to do there. She testified also that she had not received anything from the state in exchange for her testimony. Okay. Because she is charged with accessory after the fact, as we remember. Now, Teresa, or, I'm sorry, Tanya Wagner, who worked there, she testifies that she followed Gary down to the pond, jumped in the water, helped retrieve Teresa's body, and attempted cpr. This poor lady, she didn't know she was trying to help.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She's doing CPR on a very dead body for hours.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, that's. Wow. Also, she testifies Gary was not wet. She said his clothing was dry when he returned to the house and when emergency responders arrived. She also provides the timeline of events from arrival at the farm through the lunch break. The timeline that made Gary's story of discovering Teresa at the pond seem, you know, at that moment, seemed very suspicious and preplanned, as the prosecutor said. Kay Rudd, the other farm worker, she was at lunch when. She's the one who asked, where the hell's Theresa? Which initiated this discovery.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Right.

[James Petregallo]

So Gary's like, either someone's gonna stumble upon her, or eventually someone will ask about her, and that's when we'll find her.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wow.

[James Petregallo]

Wow. The deputy and the coroner here all testified that Gary was dry when they arrived. They play the 911 call with the specific knowledge of what happened to Theresa, Even though she's 85 yards away over a hill. They bring up the insurance policies of $500,000 each with high accidental death riders purchased in the weeks before the death. The truck purchase with the salesperson testifying that Gary brought a different woman than his wife to select the vehicle, asked about insurance, and then brought his wife back the next day. Meteorologists testifying about the wind conditions, Talking about the October 5th was a calm day, and the wind would have been insufficient to bring down a dead tree, although there was wind before that. A few days would have taken a tree down just fine. They bring in a friend of the family and the neighbor testifying to Gary physically abusing Teresa in the months before her death. They bring in the original pathologists that provide an autopsy history. And then they bring in Dr. Cyril Wecht. And he's the coup de grace. He's the headwind. Yeah. His courtroom presentation was described as prosecutors as clear and coherent, the kind of scientific testimony that a jury can follow and believe yeah, he is the medical

[Jimmy Wissman]

equivalent of Park Dietz. As psychological.

[James Petregallo]

He's good.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Incredibly believable. And not just believable, but you go, oh, well, I guess. Yeah, that makes all the sense. You're just good at this.

[James Petregallo]

And testifying is 80% of the battle. I mean, you can do all the science you want, but if you can't explain it to the jury in a way that they understand and believe, it doesn't matter what you do. Like if you watch the whole O.J. trial, they bring in Dr. Henry Lee, who's very renowned and his skills are great, but he doesn't speak real good English. That's the problem. So he's very hard to understand. And when you're speaking in broken English, not using connector words and shit, it's very hard to understand a complex scientific thing when you don't even know what that guy just said. So that wasn't going to help any.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And the old trope of broken English means you don't understand what you're saying.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, well, you do. I think that's why he's only using the words he. Yeah, I mean, he speaks fine. Better English than I speak Chinese, I'm sure. But the fact is, I wouldn't want to go to a court in China and testify in Chinese and fucking. That'd be terrifying. You know what I mean? That'd be bad.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Whoever I'm testifying for is not getting anything beneficial out of me.

[James Petregallo]

No, I really hope I'm gonna damage the case, by the way. Yeah, I'm gonna fucking all. I really hope Dr. Lee is Chinese, by the way, or else I just made a real asshole out of myself. He's gotta be.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He's Asian.

[James Petregallo]

I don't know. He's certainly Asian, but Lee sounds Chinese. I don't know. Anyway, moving on. So he gets up there and does this. He lays out the methodology, his findings. His conclusion is that they said it was with the authority of someone who'd stood in front of juries for 50 years and explained exactly how people die. He said the injuries don't fit the tree story. No diatoms on the glasses. Bruising pattern inconsistent with the tree but consistent with forcible submersion. And that's what it is. The prosecutor said Mr. Wecht was one of the final witnesses. He made as clear and coherent a scientific presentation as needed, and that was the type of proof needed to push this case over the top.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Hell, yeah.

[James Petregallo]

What does the defense say, though? They called Dr. Joseph Cohen, who argued that the injuries could be consistent with a tree impact. And they're like, yeah, but you don't know Michael Jackson.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Have you seen the inside of JFK's head?

[James Petregallo]

I don't want to hear, yeah, you've seen Marilyn Monroe in state of, you know, death. That's terrible. So he mounted what evidence supports was a plausible, if untimely, unpersuasive expert counter argument. They said just didn't work here. They said that. Then they also tried to argue that the RE investigation had been politically driven. Again, he argued the state's own original medical examiners ruled it an accident and he hadn't persuaded two doctors to change their minds for nothing. So they were gonna get it right and get this guy convicted. And that's what it is. They argue the case against Gary is wholly circumstantial. No eyewitnesses who placed Gary with Teresa at the time of her death, Medical examiners there. The RE investigations politically motivated the case against him. Circumstantial. April Bales only testified to save her own ass.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Right.

[James Petregallo]

Her testimony came only after her arrest. And they're saying that they have a deal in place with her, whether formal or informal, but it corrupts her credibility. They have a doctor saying that would

[Jimmy Wissman]

mean that she murdered her.

[James Petregallo]

No, no, no. That would mean that she's getting the accessory to murder charge dropped in exchange.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Right, but. Right, but if she's just here testifying to save her own ass, then that makes your fucking client guilty.

[James Petregallo]

That too. That's what I mean. Save her ass. Like if she did something wrong, he must have done something wrong. Exactly. And these aren't not a terrible argument. But the problem is the dry clothes. 911 call, truck glasses, insurance affair, prior abuse, Dr. Cyril Wecht. It's a lot here. They even said with April. The defense said it's a desperate lie. Don't believe a woman who spent two years saying nothing and then says everything once she's arrested. Which is very common, by the way here, I guess. All four of the medical expert witnesses at trial, the state's three witnesses and the defense's one witness agreed that Teresa's body did not present with any large hemorrhages or broken bones. They also agreed that on her wounds, the tree could not have knocked her unconscious and that she was conscious while she was submerged in the water, which is horrible.

[Jimmy Wissman]

So she would have drowned.

[James Petregallo]

Yep. The experts, the prosecution experts and defense experts just disagree on the amount of bruising on the back and their ultimate conclusions here. Closing arguments happen. All right, now the defense. This is Attorney Van Bibber. He says April bail's only testified because the state promised to not prosecute her. He said she knew what they wanted her to say because they'd been trying to get her to say it for two years, and they couldn't do it until they put the cuffs on her. She knew what they wanted. In the end. She gave it to them for her freedom.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

He said she's joined their team. She's gotten on the. On the governor's freight train express. We're all going to railroad Gary Rollins. So now what does she do to get out of it? She's not in jail. She's not been indicted. You heard that. She was arrested. She was taken before a magistrate, but she's not been indicted. You can't get convicted if you're not indicted. And who hands out the indictments? Points to the prosecutor and says, that man right there, that man, he says, P.K. milam, the prosecutor, is he going to indict his star witness, do you think? Is that what's gonna really happen here? After all is said and done, he gets his conviction thanks to her lie. He's gonna repay her by indicting her. You think they thought of that? Or do you think they thought that? Yeah, so the prosecution says. That is insulting. How dare you, sir. Never smacked him with a glove and fucking duel. Challenged him to a duel. Yes. He asserted there was no agreement with her and that he is planning on indicting her for being an accessory to murder soon as this trial's over. He said, we interviewed her again and again and again and gave her every opportunity in the world to help herself, and she didn't, and she got arrested for it, and she charged with accessory after the fact. Now, he wants you to believe that she's getting some kind of consideration out of that. You can bet you're behind that. I'm going to indict her next month. You can bet you're behind, buddy. If she'd told us this from the beginning, two years ago, three years ago now, this case would have been totally different. But she held that information in her pocket for two years and didn't tell anyone until she was in trouble. And she tried to save her own behind. Well, it's too late at this point. She's being prosecuted. He likes behinds. She's being prosecuted as an accessory after the fact in this case.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And he said this on closing statement.

[James Petregallo]

That's right. And then they said. Well, they said, why? He said, if Ms. April O' Brien or Bales, whatever you want, whatever her name, she goes by had been given this information. It could have saved thousands of man hours and tens of thousands of dollars for us. So I tried to indict her, wanted to indict her for the accessory after the fact, because we knew it all along. Well, not all along, but very shortly into the investigation that her. That she knew more than she was letting on. And that was simply because when she made the 911 call where she was at, she couldn't possibly see Theresa's body. So we knew she had more information because she gave an accurate description as to what happened without being able to see it. It. So we knew that she had this information, but she continually denied that she had any information about what was going on before or after the fact. It wasn't until we had spent all this money, all this time in the case that she finally told us what she knew, which was that Gary had told her that he'd killed Teresa. So I personally was upset with her. The state police are also upset with her because all this time of hours that she wasted really could have changed this. This case early about how we performed it. We wouldn't have had to spend all this time if we knew he'd already told somebody. We wouldn't have had to spend all this extra money and time. So my plan was to indict her. She wasn't getting any breaks from me.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I'm real mad.

[James Petregallo]

That's right. He said, she's going down too. Don't you worry. To the jury. So the jury goes in and deliberates. One hour and ten minutes in the room. Deliberate. And when they came out, he probably. He's such a dipshit. He probably went, oh, boy. They must have thought I was really innocent. Awesome.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Run it up.

[James Petregallo]

So innocent. I'll start. You should. You guys start lighting these cuffs up, I'm gonna get myself ready to go. Now. Guilty of first degree murder. Incredibly, you're fucked. Now the sentencing, very simple. It's mercy or no mercy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Death or life.

[James Petregallo]

No, there's no death. It's either life without or life with. Or life with. So that's mercy or no mercy. Theresa's four sisters address the court.

[Jimmy Wissman]

No mercy.

[James Petregallo]

They talk about her compassion. They speak of how she was a lovely woman and a beloved hairdresser and festival organizer. All the farm people loved her. And a woman who couldn't hear about someone in need without trying to help them. They speak of years of knowing Gary was a piece of shit, basically. We've always hated him.

[Jimmy Wissman]

We have never liked that man.

[James Petregallo]

Let Me tell you something. You get a group of Italian sisters together, they will break down everything about that guy. And if they don't like him, he ain't gonna be around very long. Usually, that's how it works. That's how it's always worked in my family.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And if he sticks around and long enough to talk to a judge about it, we're gonna tell you every Christmas that he's ruined.

[James Petregallo]

Every goddamn Christmas. All about it. Yep. So they said that years of telling themselves it wasn't their place to get her to leave him and all that kind of thing. Then mom stands up. Mama, Velma, here she is, Theresa's mother. She walks to within feet of Gary, which I'm sure they were like, oh, there's bailiffs going. Do we need to tackle an old lady right now? Because this is getting dangerous.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Should we stop her or should we just watch?

[James Petregallo]

Should we just let her do it? How bad could she hurt her? She's old.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She's got an apple knife.

[James Petregallo]

I think she's. I think she's 80 at this point or something, or in her 80s. She walks up and says, why did you do this to my daughter? Which is just fucking. Oh, that's great. Good for you, Velma. So Gary then speaks.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What. What's he gonna say to the judge or to them?

[James Petregallo]

It's during sentencing, so it's to whoever he wants to. To the judge, to the people. Well, he turns his attention to Joe and Velma.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, not smart.

[James Petregallo]

Nope. He says that he loved their daughter, he loved Teresa. He didn't commit the crime. He says he wasn't even there when it happened. Oh, boy. Wasn't even there. The judge says, quote, after hearing all the evidence, I have no doubt that Rollins is guilty and that he was motivated by lust, greed and other evil. No mercy. You, sir, may fuck off. Life without parole.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You can't talk to the family and claim your innocence after.

[James Petregallo]

That's wild.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Twelve people just told you you're guilty.

[James Petregallo]

Especially, dude. The evidence was. Come on, man, this isn't obvious. This is obvious. They buried you in evidence. They put a thousand pound tree on you in a pond worth of evidence. They did the same thing to you that you did to her.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They dug this poor woman up three years after the fact and found more evidence. You're in a lot of trouble, man.

[James Petregallo]

And the family had to go through three years of shit before they got this happening. An actual fucking conviction.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Three young ladies that wanted answers on their sister's death are the reason that this kept going. Otherwise, he could do it again.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, he could. As much as he wants.

[Jimmy Wissman]

So much danger.

[James Petregallo]

There'd just be a farm. He'd be threshing people and burying them. Who knows?

[Jimmy Wissman]

And he would own it.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, he would have. Clear. Now, this is how classy the family is, too. The family's attorney said that they were just thrilled to see justice finally done. Then the sisters ran into April in the courthouse hallway because April's free.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, boy.

[James Petregallo]

Now, this could be bad.

[Jimmy Wissman]

This could be three women have to just go to jail.

[James Petregallo]

Four Italian chicks about to beat the shit out of a girl. Oh, there's four.

[Jimmy Wissman]

There's five dogs. There's four.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, there was goddamn four of these chicks.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's your northeast, south, and west. You're in trouble.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, you are in deep shit. And trust me, four sisters, they've done this before. You know what I mean? They know the angles you're going around. She's a good one to hold her mom, good at pulling. I mean, that's what it works out like. I know this for my family, but they're so goddamn classy. They walk up and thank her.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, for that's. Without her, we're in trouble.

[James Petregallo]

They said, if you had kept silent, we'd be fucked. Thank you for telling. I don't care how long it took. Thank you for telling the truth. Which is. I couldn't imagine doing that. I think I'd be like, I'm gonna leave. I'm not gonna talk to her. Fuck her. The prosecutor said there's still some unanswered questions as to how exactly Teresa was killed, but they were some questions answered, too. And they said that the family did a good job with what they did. Really. And he believes that the conviction will stand and the sentence will withhold all appeal challenges. He said the judge gave Gary really, every advantage he could ask for at trial. So they don't really have a lot to appeal. Okay, next up, all the shit he has to appeal.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Because what that says is, I did a perfect job.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, I'm amazing.

[James Petregallo]

Which is. Yeah. So they appeal based on, number one, the April Bails problem. He said, you can bet you're behind. I'm going to indict Ms. Bails next month. He never indicted, ever. Ever. Not the next month, not the next year. Never. Never happened. Just let her go. Which. That's lying to the jury. That's not good. Yeah. So following the trial, the felony accessory after the fact charged just disappeared, eventually was dismissed. Really? The defense attorney had argued all along the state had made A deal with April and that she's getting leniency in exchange for her testimony, which is something the jury needs to know what is inducing your testimony. And they don't have to say that it's not true, but you need to tell them what they're getting. And a lot of times they do that. Fine. They say, this person, I just watched the Corey Richens trial, which is an incredibly interesting trial, and they got the lady who sold her the pills that she allegedly gave to her husband to poison him. And it's very similar type of thing.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What's the problem with saving immunity? Yeah, we've got a case, but it's strengthened by this person's voice. And yeah, we could have indicted her. And we're not gonna. Because she's helping us get a murderer off the street. What's the problem with that?

[James Petregallo]

That's exactly what they do with her. And this is the same situation. This person denied doing this several times before she finally got busted for something. And then they were like, hey, you wann. And she's like, let's talk all about it. And they gave her immunity.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What's the problem with that?

[James Petregallo]

That's what happens. And it was out in court. Everybody knew about it. So, yeah, they said that. The jury convicted Gary partly on the basis that believing April's testimony came at a personal cost to her. But it didn't. No personal cost. This belief became the basis for the main part of the appeal, that the state had withheld evidence of a plea agreement with a key witness. With the key witness, for Christ's sake. Yeah. Which is a Brady violation. They're saying that if you don't know the Brady Deal, it's Brady versus Maryland. Requires the prosecution to disclose evidence favorable to the defense, including secret deals with witnesses. Anything that could help them. You have to tell them.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's called a fair trial for a reason.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. So they go to the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeal. The West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, not the West Virginia court. Court of Supreme Appeals, which would be a very different. Different court. So the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals considers his arguments, including the Brady claim and sufficiency of evidence here, and they affirm his conviction in full in 2014. The court finds no reversible error. Conviction stands. But a dissenting judge has a little bit of different shit to say. Basically, they say that the Brady issue is a big goddamn deal.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Problem. Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

And we'll get his quote in this. There's a habeas proceeding after that, which is the real big deal. Here he follows a state habeas petition, and at that hearing, shit gets interesting. He argued he was prejudiced by a remark made by the prosecutor during closing arguments, which is that, you bet you're behind. I'm gonna indict her. The circuit court erred by refusing to strike a juror. And we'll tell you why. They erred by failing to strike a biased juror upon discovering a previous relationship between the juror and the prosecutor. We'll talk about what that relationship is. Were they fucking the circuit? No. No, they were not fucking. The most innocent thing possible. But they still knew each other. The circuit court erroneously permitted the presentation of evidence of domestic violence, but they said it's an ongoing pattern. The state's presentation of three medical experts was cumulative and prejudicial. Like, if you have three experts and I only have one, they're gonna believe three over one is what they're saying.

[Jimmy Wissman]

20 to one is pretty bad. Yeah, it's a pretty bad ratio.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. They said he was subjected to an unfair surprise when one of these state's medical expert witnesses testified in a manner inconsistent with their original report. And they say the cumulative effect of all of these errors warrant a complete reversal. So they have April's public defender up there. Her name's Cynthia Stanton. She says that April's charges were. She was told in an oral agreement with the prosecutor that April's charges would be dismissed or reduced to a misdemeanor with no jail time in exchange for truthful testimony against Gary.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh.

[James Petregallo]

So she admitted she received a letter from Gary's trial attorney prior to the trial, asking if April and the state had reached a plea agreement. This letter requested that Ms. Stanton reply in writing. The prosecutor also received a copy of this letter. She never replied to the letter. She explained that her failure to reply to the letter was based on her disdain for Gary's lawyer. Hated him. Hates him personal. Doesn't like Gary's lawyer. So she's not going to answer a very legally fucking requisite question because, fuck him. I don't like him. Yeah. She also. Ms. Stanton, the lawyer. The public defender was asked if the prosecutor asked her not to disclose the plea agreement to Gary's trial counsel. She said no. I made that decision.

[Jimmy Wissman]

All right?

[James Petregallo]

Okay. Not yours to make. Following the trial, Ms. Stanton testified that she met with the circuit court judge and prosecutor and informed them that she had an ethical duty to report prosecutor Milam for ethics violations based on his statement at trial that he intended to prosecute April, which was counter to their oral agreement. Either you're lying there or you're lying to me. Either one. It's not ethical.

[Jimmy Wissman]

There's a lie.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, there's a lie. During cross examination, Ms. Stanton, the public defender, agreed that the plea agreement could have changed based on the quality of the trial testimony from April. She said, yeah, if the plea agreement could have changed, it could have changed. If she had not done well on the stand, I believe it could have. She would have had to have plea to a misdemeanor. So Gary's counsel asked Stanton if the prosecutor kept his agreement with you and your client. And she said the charges were dismissed by the circuit court judge, not by the prosecutor. She explained that the judge dismissed the charges after three months of inaction because they didn't fucking do anything.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, so they. They filed the charges and then didn't do anything, and then.

[James Petregallo]

And then let a judge dismiss it. So their fingerprints are on the document.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Nothing was done here.

[James Petregallo]

Dismissed my opinion anyway, they said. When asked if she knew that this thing was going to be the manner in which the case was dealt with, Stanton stated, I suspected that after I went to a judge, I suspected that that would be what would happen. While testifying that the prosecutor upheld her as part of the bargain. She also said the prosecutor wasn't the one that actually dismissed it, but, no, she was not indicted, and that was the plea agreement. But the judge dismissed it. She also said that this was common practice. She explained a motion was filled to waive the time limit of April's preliminary hearing and that the motion included the notation further investigation, and that's how it went. So the county prosecutor, the current county prosecutor, not the one who prosecuted Gary, but the current one, Jonathan Sweeney, at the time this is going on, who was assistant prosecutor at the time of the trial. He testifies and says that he reviewed documents from the magistrate court showing April's preliminary hearing had been repeatedly delayed pending further investigation. He said that's how his office traditionally handled oral plea agreements with cooperative witnesses. He says a sticky note found on the prosecutor's file indicated they were going to hold this in abeyance until after the grand jury so they could keep the pressure on the witness to testify.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

Now, April testifies here and contradicts her trial testimony. Oh, April saying not about the murder, but about this. Yeah. It was her understanding that her attorney had reached an agreement with the prosecutor under which she would not be indicted if she testified. She testified she thought there was a plea agreement and she wouldn't be charged. She couldn't remember who promised her that when asked if the prosecutor agreed not to prosecute her if she testified, she stated, I don't think so. I don't remember how that all came about. However, she acknowledged that she had given a deposition in which she testified that it was the prosecutor who promised her to not prosecute her if she testified. So she also testified that no one, including the prosecutor, told her to keep the plea agreement secret. She never signed a plea agreement. And that her lawyer did not go over the terms of the agreement with her. They left it vague. So on the stand, she could say, there's no deal. Oh, that way. Because if it was all signed, then she would have had to say, otherwise it'd be perjury, that I have a deal in place. And so would the prosecutor. He'd get fucking disbarred, sure. But instead, it's an oral agreement, so technically, there's no deal. She didn't perjure her.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She didn't lie.

[James Petregallo]

There's no. Yep. She said that during the trial, Gary's trial, she testified she'd not been promised anything in exchange for her testimony. Testimony. She was then asked by Gary's counsel, as you sit here today, were you promised that you could not be prosecuted in exchange for your testimony? Is that correct? And she said, yes, that's what it is. Now, however, during cross examination, she was asked whether she testified truthfully during the trial, and she said yes. They said, Ms. Bales, in the three times you testified under oath in this matter being the trial, your deposition, and now here today, which time would your memory be better about all these events since it's all different? And she said, at the trial. And they said at the trial back then. And she nodded. They said, did you tell the truth? And she said, yes. The original prosecutor gets in there and he says the state did not have an agreement with April, stated that he never granted immunity to someone in a murder case without putting the agreement in writing. Further, the prosecutor testified he'd intended to indict bails following the trial. However, after researching the potential criminal charge against April, he determined that an employee could not be prosecuted as an accessory after the fact for the criminal acts of her employer. It wasn't in the furtherance of farm work. What are you talking about?

[Jimmy Wissman]

You can't.

[James Petregallo]

Yes, you can. I think they probably do that in the mob a lot.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's only when it's your employer.

[James Petregallo]

That's the weirdest thing I've ever seen. He then says his representation to the jury that he was going to indict her was Truthful. So they said. So you previously testified here that you intended on prosecuting her all the way through the trial. That was not truthful, was it, sir? And he said, yeah, it is. But you didn't. So it's definitely not. Whether your intent was at the time was truthful now that it hasn't happened, it wasn't truthful because it didn't happen.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And there was no intent at that point because he had already made. Made the deal with her. And it was on closing statement that he said that. So there was clear she'd already testified. You had no intention of prosecuting her

[James Petregallo]

ever again during her testimony. She said that during. It's crazy. The second thing that they talk about here is that one of the jurors was April's uncle.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Stop it. I couldn't ask you involved in this.

[James Petregallo]

Couldn't make that up. Nelson Paul Bale.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Why don't you just have Teresa's sisters on the jury?

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, have them on there. They're, I'm sure, unbiased.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Dammit.

[James Petregallo]

Though. The original witness call sheet which was read to the jury during the voir dire was to ensure no connections between jurors and witnesses. It stated April Bales name is April O', Brien, which he didn't recognize. When Ms. Bales was called to testify, she was identified as April Bales. Nelson Bales, the juror, according to this Gary's filing here knew or should have known the familial connection between him and Ms. Bales. After hearing April Bales identify herself as April Bales during the testimony, he should have alerted the court to a potential conflict. Okay. Now the habeas court heard this testimony and said April Bales testified she'd never met Paul Nelson Bales prior to the 2018 hearing in this habeas proceeding. So until right now, she doesn't know this guy even though they're related.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Really?

[James Petregallo]

Which that happens. He said Nelson Paul Bales testified that he never met April Bales prior to the October 18 hearing. 2018 hearing on the proceeding. Based on testimony of Nelson Paul Bales and April Bales, it's clear that the witness April Bales and the juror had no knowledge of each other at the time of the trial in the underlying criminal matter. Didn't know each other.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's fascinating.

[James Petregallo]

Which that happens. He also asserts ineffective assistance of counsel under this assignment of error, saying that his counsel should have noticed that Nelson and April had the same last name.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh God.

[James Petregallo]

He said this should have led to a line of inquiry where the connection between them could have Been uncovered and you could have removed him from the jury.

[Jimmy Wissman]

The last name alone, it's the exact same last name. You can't just go, so, do you know that person? Are you guys related at all?

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, I've seen that before when they're doing jury stuff. I've seen that before when literally, I don't give a fuck. That happens. Yeah, they will ask about that. Next up, another juror problem. Gary insists the circuit court aired by allowing another juror, Juror Chrislip, to remain in the jury despite the discovery after jury selection was complete that this juror was a former client of the prosecutor. Okay? The prosecutor immediately should have said, I know that guy used to be my client. Off the jury. Fucking insane. But nobody said anything. That's a real trick.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I get out of jury duty every time.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, you can't have this. I know him. You can't have this backwoods shit going on where you people. You can't do it. The light of the rest of everyone is shining upon this. And you can't do your normal bullshit. You gotta get it right. Right? Specifically like this. That's what I mean. You got a dead lady horribly fucking murdered, and you're fucking around like this. I get the idea of wanting to get the conviction, but you gotta get it right or else it doesn't stand. So they said you previously filed a motion, this is to the defense attorney, to remove the juror. Do you want to renew that motion since we have an alternate juror? His attorney, though, said, no, sir. So his attorney didn't file to get that, which would have preserved it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They knew.

[James Petregallo]

So they said, you just want Mr. Chris Lip to stay. And he said, well, your honor, I don't want to waive my original objection to him, but I would choose him over the alternate. Oh, okay. Well, the alternate is juror Montgomery, who was biased because the children of the prosecutor and the juror had played sports together. Could we just get 12 fucking people who don't know any of these people from Adam? Can we just get that, please? Too hard, dude. You can't govern yourself then in these towns. You have to go to somewhere else

[Jimmy Wissman]

to where there's 300 people here. They can't do it.

[James Petregallo]

We don't. That's what I mean. You have to go somewhere else where you're not all known to each other. I'm sorry, this is crazy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

If at the town reviews, you guys, lawyers, prosecutors, go to niche. If it says everybody knows each other,

[James Petregallo]

different venue, different venue. Change of venue. Right on. Also, the domestic violence Test testimony. They do that. They talk about that. They say that the only evidence explaining how the bruising occurred was the alleged statements of his now deceased wife as presented through the testimony of Jimmie Thompson. He argues that the statements are not reliable enough to support a finding by a preponderance of the evidence that Gary Rollins caused the bruising through acts of domestic violence, meaning on the pictures, to make it an ongoing thing. In conjunction with this argument, he argues that Mr. Thompson's testimony as to the specifics of his discussion with Ms. Rollins, or inadmissible hearsay, that the photographs which relied on these hearsay statements were not relevant.

[Jimmy Wissman]

All right.

[James Petregallo]

Okay. That's how that goes. So the conclusion here, they say that Nelson Bales and April Bales had never met each other, did not know they were related when the trial occurred. The court held that when a prospective juror is closely related to a prosecuting witness or a witness for the prosecution who has taken an active part in the prosecution or is particularly interested in the result, he should be excluded upon the motion of the adverse party. They said, clearly, the purpose of this rule is to prevent a juror from being biased in favor of a family member's testimony. We disagree with the state's argument that because Nelson Bales and April Bales had never met and didn't know they were related, that there could be no concern that Mr. Bales was prejudiced against Gary in favor of Ms. Bales due to a familial relationship and no concern that Ms. Bales testimony was somehow impacted. That's what that. That's the dissenting one there. They also talk about the deal. They said on the issue of whether a deal existed, the evidence is mixed. This is what the court says. It finds the circuit court's finding that no consummated plea agreement existed was plausible.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

But they say. We emphasize, though Ms. Stanton, the public defender for April, testified that there was a plea agreement that the alleged agreement she said was reached last lacked a number of definite terms. First, it was unclear what relief she'd received for her testimony. She stated that Ms. Bales would, depending on the veracity of her testimony, either have her charges dismissed or she'd have to plead to a misdemeanor with no jail time. They said clearly there could be no Brady violation without a plea agreement. So you could just make an oral agreement. Don't sign anything. Put them up there, have them say, I have no deal. I'm doing this. Just. Just get it off my chest. And the prosecutor can say that, and that's perfectly fucking legal. Come on, man.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I guess so.

[James Petregallo]

That's wild. That's fucking wild. Not everywhere. That's so weird. They said, however, he testified after researching the issue, he determined that an employee could not be prosecuted as an accessory after the fact for the criminal acts of her employer. Finally, without existence of the plea agreement, the petitioner cannot sustain his argument that Ms. Bail's trial testimony was false. Wow. That's ridiculous. The West Virginia Supreme Court majority affirms the dissent is on the Brady law. They said the conviction on first degree murder for his wife, which he was sentenced to life in prison without mercy, was based in large part on the bombshell testimony of his mistress, April Bales. Okay, they go on. Blah, blah, blah. The credibility of Ms. Bales trial testimony hinged upon the prosecutors false statement to the jury that Ms. Bales was not getting some kind of consideration for her testimony and the promise of, quote, you can bet you're behind. I'm going to indict Ms. Bales next month. Yeah. The problem here is that his statement was not actually true. Rather, the substantial evidence of record showed the state had made a deal with Ms. Bales in exchange for her testimony. Exactly what we said. So that's a lot. They said the prosecutor's untruthfulness with respect to Ms. Bales was seemingly without limit. The majority recounts that prosecutor testified that he intended to indict Ms. Bales following the trial. However, he didn't. So also the prosecutor said, quote, I don't believe she committed a crime because I don't believe she willingly, willfully called 911. I think she was under duress. If she testifies what she told us to previously, then I do not believe she committed a crime. And I'll put that in writing as being the state. State's position.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That is interesting.

[James Petregallo]

That's interesting here. Despite making this in open court, he said you can bet you're behind him and indict him, thereby bolstering her credibility. They said the majority, this is the dissenting opinion, had failed to recognize that prosecutor played fast and loose with the truth as it related to Ms. Bales and clearly erred in giving any credence whatsoever to the prosecutor's testimony related to the existence of a plea agreement. So either way, affirmed.

[Jimmy Wissman]

All the way affirmed.

[James Petregallo]

Affirmed. Yeah, There's a dissenting argument, but that's how it works.

[Jimmy Wissman]

But my point is they didn't take it to the US Supreme Court yet.

[James Petregallo]

Not yet. They tried to go federal with another one in 2020. 2024. I think the 20, 24. One that he filed might still be in the works pending.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I mean, I don't like that. But the fact that

[James Petregallo]

I. I hate saying, jesus Christ, that's not fair to the guy because fuck him, because he's a goddamn piece of shit who murdered this nice lady. But at the same time, we got to do this shit right. It's tough. We got to do it right. So he stays there. I want it done right so he doesn't get out. That's the point. Not so he goes free. I want him to fucking not get out.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I do like the statement that she didn't commit a crime because she was instructed to do so under duress. And she's. I mean, they're making it like she's a completely helpless girl.

[James Petregallo]

That's what I mean. If you're in the fucking Mafia. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Normal intelligence. Yeah. If you're. She writes and does numbers, would she

[Jimmy Wissman]

get out of the Mafia?

[James Petregallo]

I think she might. If you're in the Mafia and your boss tells you to do something, they don't go, oh, well, the boss told you and you know you were in trouble if you didn't do it. Yeah, he's a boss. He told me.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He pays me.

[James Petregallo]

Would your family be in danger if a mob boss was mad at you? More than likely. But that doesn't fly, so why does it fly for her? I don't know. There we go. 2016. There is. I guess this is a movie, a TV show. The Body Detective. One hour. So it's gotta be a TV movie. Oh, and it says that it's all about Teresa Rollins, found dead, face down in a pond. It's written. What is it? Stars Tammy Lynn Caliph. I don't know who the fuck that is. I don't know. So, yeah, there's that. Then there's a federal habeas. It doesn't matter. There you go. He still sits in prison. Poor Teresa is still in the ground and hopefully at least her family gets. I hate that they have to keep going back in this. And imagine if you're them, and you'd want to strangle that prosecutor, you dumb fuck.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Why would you say that?

[James Petregallo]

Because it's not like saying, we have a deal in place. Would have made her testimony like. The jury would have went, oh, fuck her then.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Stop it.

[James Petregallo]

He would have still believed he still

[Jimmy Wissman]

did what he did.

[James Petregallo]

Yep, they would have still believed it. That's the way the evidence stacked up. It was unnecessary for them to do that. That's what was so fucking stupid about it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And the jurors. Everything is so fucked.

[James Petregallo]

That's just weird. Yeah. Make sure nobody's fucking related. Make sure you don't know anybody. Come on, man.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Blowing it for no reason.

[James Petregallo]

There you go, everybody. That is Nettie West Virginia, as crazy as any other West Virginia story. So if you like that story and all the other stories we tell, please get on whatever app we are on or you were on, that you listen to. Even if you watch on Netflix, whatever, go on an app somewhere on the audio app and give us five stars and help us climb the charts. It's always great. Gets other people to see the show, which can only help us. Definitely head over to shutupandgivemerder.com not only is there new merchandise up all the time, but you can get tickets for live shows, which are. They're immensely fun. Not doing that again. No, we did that in the beginning, so never mind. On Netflix.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's a great time. These shows are terrific.

[James Petregallo]

Please go.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Great. They're amazing.

[James Petregallo]

They're fun. They're awesome. They're a comedy show, and you're gonna hear a wild murder story. And if you're like, you go, oh, I don't have anybody to go with. Just go. You should see the. There's people that. Groups of people that come up to us and go. We didn't even know each other, and we all met at a show five years ago, and now we meet up and go to show. It's crazy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Going to a comedy show by yourself is maybe the coolest, coolest fucking thing you can do.

[James Petregallo]

It's awesome. Especially with this, because you're not by yourself with this crowd. They're all gonna be like a thousand folks. Whatever. It's great. Yeah, do it up. So come see us. Shut upandgivemerder.com next live show that we have with tickets left, because May 1st is sold out in Salt Lake City, May 2nd in Denver. Then we're in May 29th, we're in Buffalo. But those are sold out, too. You guys bought them fast. Thank you for those, for that. And then May 30th in Royal Oak Mission, Michigan, outside of Detroit there, get your tickets. And then we're going to be in Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Dallas, San Jose, Sacramento, Tarrytown, New York, and Boston. We're going to round out the year. So get in there and do that. Shut upandgivemerder.com Follow us on social media. We are Smalltown Murder on Instagram, Smalltown Pot on Facebook. Get yourself some Patreon and do yourself a favor. You're going to love it. Patreon.com is where you get all of the bonus material. All you have to do is be $5 a month or above and you get every damn thing that we do. You don't do any of this bullshit. Well, if you give us 20 then you get the five bucks. Here is everything. That's it. You're gonna get immediately hundreds and hundreds of episodes. I think it's almost 400 now. We're up to 300 something episodes of back catalog bonus stuff you've never heard before. You get that immediately upon subscription. Then new ones every other week. One crime and sports. One small town murder. You get it all. That's right. This week for crime and Sports we're going to do a light one because we talked about a murder and torture last time when we did a Patreon for that. The craziest names in sports history. There's so many names that we found over the years. We're like, oh my God, on the roster or something. That's a name. So we're going to talk about these guys. Old Tugster. And that's, that's mild. We can go into the Tugs and Dick Pole and Dick this one. There's tons. But we're going to get even crazier. Some of the old timey names. It's so much fun. For small town murder. It's Stockholm syndrome. We've all heard of Stockholm syndrome. It is where you start to identify with your captors and feel bad for them if you're being held hostage or kidnapped. But it comes from a specific incident in Stockholm, Sweden. That's one of the craziest crime stories I've ever heard in my goddamn life. It's so crazy. It's a whole syndrome that we all know now. That's how crazy it is. We'll talk all about that and more. Patreon.com CrimeInSports and in addition to that, you get every damn thing. We put out all your stupid opinions. Crime in Sports. Both small town murders. Ad free every week. God damn it. That's unbelievable. And you're gonna get a shout out which is right goddamn now. Jimmy, hit me with the name of the people. All the names of the people who would never ever, ever claim 1000 tree fell on us when they just drowned us in their own toilet. Please, Jimmy, hit me with that list.

[Jimmy Wissman]

This executive producer Gary Howard in Kakuna, Wisconsin. Is that right?

[James Petregallo]

I don't know.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Happy hours in Splendora, Texas.

[James Petregallo]

Okay.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Janice Hill.

[James Petregallo]

Janice Hill. She rocks.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Love, Janice Hill. Reagan. Hollier or Hollier? Holier. She might be holier. She also might be Holly.

[James Petregallo]

A.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's a birthday. Happy birthday.

[James Petregallo]

Happy birthday.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Other producers this week. Peyton Meadows, Bailey Hessler, Lainey Levers. He's killing it as a new mom.

[James Petregallo]

Yes. Cody Gallupian.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They're doing great.

[James Petregallo]

They are happy for them.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Thomas Palent. Yeah, they're great.

[James Petregallo]

Just great people.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Their lives have. They've forced us to watch their lives. And I like it and it's been wonderful. I love watching it.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Nice thing. Good couple.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Thomas Palant, Micah with no last name. Julianne Rose, Amy S. Kristen Osgood, Ingrid Garfors, Hunter Pirine, Evan Matthews. Megan Muse. Like Jason.

[James Petregallo]

You know?

[Jimmy Wissman]

You know what I mean? Yeah. I think. Jason Enyart. Donna McDougal, Frank Lira, Tori Shy. She. Maybe Quentin Williams, Timothy Shaver, Tanya Waters. Allison Perzalski. Perchowski, better known as Alley Cat Siano. With no last name. No, it's C on E. Maybe it's Shawnee. S, I, A, N, Y. What is that C in New York? I don't know.

[James Petregallo]

S, I, A, N. Yeah, it's Shawnee, I guess.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Maybe E, O, E. Do that. One.

[James Petregallo]

Equal opportunity employer.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's one. Aaron Braidenberger, Donna Harris, Steve Hoftaling, Donna Duncan. April Spratt, Holly Barneson. Sundari with no last name. Jim Doody. All right. Victor Jimenez. Jimenez. Kelly Murphy, Heidi Curtis, Jillian Jelinek, Shannon Penn, Fred with no last name. Jason Kogel. Savannah Jo, Brittany with no last name. Melissa Schmidt, Rachel Palmer, Michelle Cole, Whitney Shields, Aaron Gray, Jane o', Donnell, Elizabeth Mayer. Perhaps Meyer Dominica Balchak. Bialchak.

[James Petregallo]

Bialchak.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's a tough name. Barb Butler. Jamilo. No last name. Bagan girl, no last name. John C. Thomas, Ben Pfeiffer iv. Chuck Castle. Cock. I don't think he. I don't think that's real. Trina. Jenna Young, Ryan Mitchell, Jonathan Weiss. Mary with no last name. JC Or Jackie Sabatini. Damien Marling, Chris Wilson. Bat Chain Masterson. What is that chain? Bat Masterson was a cowboy. What is the chain about?

[James Petregallo]

I don't know.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I don't know.

[James Petregallo]

I don't know.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Damn her. Damaris W. Heather Dupois, Katie Fisher. Wolf McLean. Kimberly Hales Harle, Megan Murphy, Molly Arnett, Jessa Smith, Kristin Taylor, Chris Bransford, Jason Robert Bruno. Nicole with no last name. Jackie Hopkins, Lisa Leiber or Lieber. Mary Meeks, Crystal with no last name. Tony Dodson, Natasha Pryor, Leslie J. Kelly Woodward. Tiffany with no last name. Molly Aravalo, Karen Molnar, Alia. Alia Bentley, Terrence Matthews, Leslie Haley Dixon, Laura F. Tyler Hiker, Emily Sullivan, Cody Stonehaker. Evan. Evan Nichols, Brianna with no last name. Maxandra with no last name. Brett with no last name. Moose with no last name. Max with no last name. Caleb. Kimberly Walker, Brian Allen, Natalie McIntyre, Eric Lemon. And all of our patrons. You're the best. Thank you.

[James Petregallo]

Thank you so much, everybody. You fantastic, wonderful bastards. Shit do we love you. Thank you for everything you do for us. Keep coming back and listening each and every week. Definitely do that. If you'd like to follow us on social media, real easy to do, shut up and give me murder.com drop down menus. Take you anywhere you need to go. So keep coming back and seeing us week after week. And until next week, everybody, it's been our pleasure.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Bye.

[James Petregallo]

Hey everybody. Listening to small town murder out there. Hi. Good to see you out there. I'm here with Jimmy too. And this is an ad. But not an ad for a product. This is an ad for tour dates. Yes. Come see a live show. The 2026 Tour. All the tickets are for sale right now. Starting out with February 21st in Nashville, March 6th in Durham, March 7th in Atlanta. Phoenix is sold out. We do have tickets though to your stupid opinions on 21 March, Salt Lake City sold out. Denver has tickets. Be there on May 2, May 29, Buffalo sold out. Royal Oak, Michigan. May 30 we have September 18, Milwaukee. September 19, Minneapolis. October 3 in Dallas. October 16 in San Jose. October 17 in Sacramento, November 13 in Tarrytown. November 14 in Boston. Come see us. The live shows are spectacular. Come join all of the other STM people. You're going to meet so many people. You're going to have fun, make some informative friends like crazy and make some new friends. Come out and see us. Shut upandgivemerder.com is where you go for those tickets. Get them right now while they're hot.

[Jimmy Wissman]

See you on the road.