The Killer, The Kitty & The Combine - Maryville, Missouri

Summary

Podcast Summary: Small Town Murder – "The Killer, The Kitty & The Combine – Maryville, Missouri"

Hosts: James Pietragallo & Jimmie Whisman
Date: January 17, 2026
Episode: 666

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Episode Overview

In this especially dark (but still hilarious) episode of Small Town Murder, James and Jimmy dive into an “insane, crazy” true crime tale from Maryville, Missouri. The small town’s quirks and its troubled reputation set the stage, but things turn truly bizarre (and tragic) when a local farmer orchestrates one of the show’s most unusual murders—using a combine harvester, with a dead cat as a prop. The episode is loaded with the hosts’ signature banter, small-town roast, irreverence, and a deep dive into both the crime and the surrounding legal mayhem.

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Table of Contents

• Welcome & Travelogue: Maryville, Missouri
• Background: The Taylors’ Story
• The Crime: What Happened?
• Investigation & Confession
• Trial, Defense, and Verdict
• Notable Quotes & Moments
• Timeline / Timestamps for Key Segments

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Welcome & Travelogue: Maryville, Missouri

[06:44]

• The hosts set the scene in Maryville, NW Missouri—pop. 11,070, “Title Town” (for questionable reasons).
• James and Jimmy roast local history, median income ($39k), and the town’s unique culture—multiple incorporations/disincorporations and a reputation for both corrupt officials and bizarre scandals, including the 2012–13 rape case and Netflix’s Audrie & Daisy documentary.
  • “What a terrible story.” —Jimmy [10:44]
  • “A parade. A baby show. Come out and look at the baby, see if you want one…” —James [13:36]
• Amusing local fare is detailed: checkers tournaments, magic acts (shoutout to Keith Leff, “the magician”), and “first responders eating contests”—ripe for their ridicule.

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Background: The Taylors’ Story

[15:27]

• Bill Taylor: Born 1957, classic farm upbringing, described as a very American man.
• Deborah Jo (Wasson) Taylor: Born 1956, teacher, animal lover, community volunteer—“perfect teacher lady.”
  • “She loves animals and small children. Nice lady. Perfect teacher lady.” —James [20:15]
• Married in 1979, two kids (Laurie b. 1983, Doug b. 1985); run a prosperous family farm just south of Maryville.
• Deborah’s growing depression and anxiety by 1994—possibly connected to work stress and marital difficulties—leads to counseling and a leave of absence.
  • “She’s crushing it, and people telling her not good enough.” —James [22:51]

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The Crime: What Happened?

[27:22]

• November 10, 1994 (~5pm):
  • Bill instructs his children to call for help—he and his wife Deborah have allegedly been run over by a combine harvester (John Deere Model 6620).
• Responders find Deborah dead, her body crushed, right arm extended toward a dead black cat. Bill is also injured.
  • “Her crushed body was found… reaching for a dead black cat. The cat is not a victim of the combine… but it’s just dead.” —James [29:44]

[35:00]

• Initial Story:
  • Bill claims a tragic accident: while backing out the combine, he accidentally ran over Deborah, injuring himself trying to save her.

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Investigation & Confession

Early Suspicions

[36:11]

• Local sheriff, Ben Espy, notes “some things didn’t fit”—evidence on scene doesn’t match Bill’s story.

The Shocking Truth

[37:05]

• Confession to his brother Wayne (and police):
  • Bill admits he killed the cat with a hammer, placed it under the combine, called Deborah out under the guise of saving the animal, and used a length of twine tied to the combine’s controls to run her over by remote.
  • [38:05] “He threw the cat under the combine to lure his wife underneath… yanked the rope, got the twine out, and did this… He told his brother everything.” —James
• Also admits to considering killing his two children as part of the same “clean sweep.”
  • “He talked about killing Laurie and Doug as well as his wife after this and the cat. A clean sweep. Yeah, and one big thing. Let’s kill them all.” —James [44:22]

Forensics

[46:17]

• Autopsy finds Deborah was beaten before being run over—facial wounds, crushed pelvis, broken ribs precede combine injuries.
  • “They find lacerations to her forehead, bruising to her eye—caused by blunt force… The facial injuries were not consistent with combine at all.” —James [47:10]

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Trial, Defense, and Verdict

Pre-Trial & Evidence Drama

• Warrant issues: Key physical evidence (twine, cat, measurements at the scene) threatened by lack of proper search warrant.
  • “Why would you not get a goddamn warrant?” —James [50:48]
• Measures ultimately re-taken after a year—combine had been moved to father’s shed; prosecution scrambles but gets enough key evidence in.

Defense

[67:47]

• Bill's defense claims severe depression, delusional disorder made him believe his wife was cheating and planned to divorce/take the kids. They float insanity.
  • “He could not conform his conduct to the law. He was, in a word, insane.” —defense [69:01]

Prosecution

• Shows premeditation, deliberate setup (cat, twine, remote combine), plus evidence from Deborah’s face—she was attacked before being run over.
  • “He tried to lure her with the cat. She didn’t buy it. So he beat the shit out of her and threw her under the combine and then ran her over.” —James [59:48]

Children’s Testimony

• Both kids testify bravely. Laurie (12) made the emergency call, Doug (10) was involved in trying to cut twine from the machine, and was told by Bill to stage the cat’s body by Deborah’s arm.
  • “He sent the 10-year-old to put the cat closer to this poor child’s dead mother.” [72:35]
  • Both affirm Bill had never hurt them before; this was “an aberration.”

Psychiatric Testimony

• Bill’s psychiatrist claims fluctuating sanity, delusions; state experts counter that depression does not equal legal insanity, and Bill was aware enough to plan and cover up the crime.

Verdict & Sentencing

• Guilty of First-Degree Murder
  • Life without parole.
  • “You, sir, may fuck off. Life without parole. Eat dicks, Bill.” —James [81:50]
• Bill’s statements at sentencing show no true acceptance: “To this day, I don’t know why and how this happened. My wife’s death was a terrible tragedy that shouldn’t have happened.” [81:20]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the bizarre method:
  • “You don’t drive a machine—a knife van, a crop knife tank—without looking at the mirrors!” —Jimmy [35:45]
• On Bill’s confession:
  • “He told his brother everything.” —James [38:05]
  • “He used her love of animals to kill her. That’s fucking wild.” —Jimmy [37:40]
• Reaction to the whole case:
  • “This, by the way—what the fuck? We’ve never had a combine as a murder weapon. Ever.” —James [39:30]
• On the dead cat:
  • “I killed that black cat. I killed it with a hammer and put it under the combine.” —Bill (relayed by James) [37:04]
  • “And now the coroner’s gonna examine the cat. The human coroner.” —James [41:20]

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Timeline / Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |-----------------------------------------------|:-------------:| | Maryville, MO background & town roast | 06:44–14:35 | | Taylor family introduction | 15:27–20:24 | | Deborah’s depression & counseling | 20:24–25:00 | | The crime: combine incident revealed | 27:22–35:06 | | Early investigation; Bill’s confession | 36:47–44:22 | | Trial & defense strategy | 67:47–69:01 | | Children’s testimony | 69:12–73:07 | | Psychiatric debates & verdict | 74:40–81:50 | | Sentencing | 81:20–81:50 |

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Tone, Style, and Takeaways

The hosts blend true crime expertise with biting humor and empathy, especially for the victims and the children in this case. They eviscerate small-town bureaucracy and the killer’s thinking (“Eat dicks, Bill”), but show real care for those left behind. Their sarcastic asides and vivid analogies (“combine—a tank made of knives”) keep the grim story engrossing yet palatable, never flinching from the case’s tragedy or oddity.

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Summary for Listeners

This episode is one of Small Town Murder’s wildest. If you want a chilling story of rural murder (by combine!), family tragedy, and legal screw-ups, told with brilliant comedic timing and surprising humanity, this is the case for you—and one you’ll not soon forget.

Transcript

[James Petregallo]

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[Jimmy Wisman]

And now back to the show. Look at him.

[James Petregallo]

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[Jimmy Wisman]

How's your lunch, man?

[James Petregallo]

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[Jimmy Wisman]

Oh, I'm so happy for you.

[James Petregallo]

Cool, buddy. Weight loss isn't fair.

[Jimmy Wisman]

But Mochi Health is the affordable GLP1.

[James Petregallo]

Source that can fix your frustration with food. So same time next week? No, definitely. And your friends, learn [e-mail] Mochi members have access to licensed physicians and nutritionists. Results may vary. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder Express. Yeah.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Choo choo.

[James Petregallo]

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

[Jimmy Wisman]

I'm Jimmy Wisman.

[James Petregallo]

Thank you, folks so much for joining us today on another insane, crazy edition of Small Town Murder. This is episode 666. Hey. It's gonna be a wild one, as you know.

[Jimmy Wisman]

And this the devil incarnate.

[James Petregallo]

This might be the weirdest story we've ever told. Literally the strangest story. We have a murder weapon that has never been used in 665 episodes of the show, which is saying something, honestly, because we are. We're all murder all the time. So, I mean, you see a lot of 666 weapons. We will. Yeah, well, 665. 666 is the. Is the oddball. We'll get to all that and more. First of all, though, head over to shutupandgivemerder.com get your tickets for live shows. They're all for sale for next year. Some of them are sold out already. So you definitely want to get your tickets starting out November. What am I talking about? February 21st in Nashville. Get your tickets there. Then we're in Durham, in Atlanta, March 6th and 7th. Phoenix is sold out. Salt Lake City, sold out. Buffalo, sold out.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Wow.

[James Petregallo]

Sold out. So get your tickets for, let's see, Denver, Royal Oak, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Dallas, San Jose, Jose, Sacramento, Tarrytown, Boston. Those are still wide open tickets right now.

[Jimmy Wisman]

So many.

[James Petregallo]

And Nashville, Durham in Atlanta too. So hurry up there and see us. Shut upandgivemerder.com also special thing here. Huge announcement next week. Huge on the regular show, the Wednesday night show. Huge announcement. Be there for that. Also Patreon. Get yourself patreon. Patreon.com crimeinsports. That is where you get all the bonus material. Anybody $5 a month or above, you're gonna get everything. We put out hundreds of back bonus episodes immediately upon subscription. New ones every other week. One crime and sports, one small town murderer. And you get them all. All of it this week. All of it, Jimmy. This week. What you're gonna get for crime and sports. We're gonna talk about the history of super bowl halftime shows.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Oh yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Which used to be like, you know, 11 year old girls gymnastic team with a high school marching band and. And now it's the biggest shows in the world. And then for small town murder, the Dean Corll saga. John Wayne Gacy's idol. I mean he is a bad, bad man. And then he brought these teenagers in to help him. And the Wayne Henley thing is a. We'll talk about all this. It's a lot and it's crazy. One of the craziest stories that's ever been told. Honestly. It's bonkers. All the different burials and the weird torture. It's a lot. Patreon.com/crime in sports. And you get all the shows we put out. Crime and sports. Your stupid opinions and small town murder all ad free with your Patreon. Oh my God. Oh my God. It's. We keep giving everybody. We're crazy. We're crazy over here. And you get a shout out at the end of the regular show. That said, I think it's time everybody to sit back. What do you say here, let's all clear the lungs and let's all shout. Shut up and give me murder. Let's do this, everybody.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

Let's go on a trip, shall we?

[Jimmy Wisman]

Yeah, we have to.

[James Petregallo]

We have to. We're going to Missouri this week. Here we go. Maryville, Missouri.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Maryville.

[James Petregallo]

Mary, like the name. Ville. Like a place. There it is. Maryville, Missouri, Northwestern Missouri. About an hour and a half to Kansas City. About an hour 50 to Omaha, Nebraska if you want to go someplace way worse. And then actually no, Lincoln's the bad one. Not Omaha, Omaha's fine.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Well, I mean it's.

[James Petregallo]

I mean it's terrible too, but it's.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Very, very easy to not give a shit around.

[James Petregallo]

Compared to Lincoln, it's Fantasy island, though. I mean, forget about it. And it's about 20 minutes to our last Missouri episode, which was in Skidmore. Remember that one? That was episode 625, Murders and Miracles. That is where the stolen baby was taken out of the woman. And then they ended up. Ended up being a. Just a wild story. So this is in Nottoway county, which is the same county Skidmore's in, area code 660. Population 11,070 in this place. And almost. Yeah, exactly. And on this thing, we normally would try not to do the same county twice in a row, but this story is so. It's just so crazy. I couldn't do it. God damn it. Could not do it.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Tickling my ass, James. I can't wait.

[James Petregallo]

Wait till I get to your balls, Jimmy. It's going to be awesome. Median household income here, $39,768, which is, well, life. Well below the national average. About 30,000 less than the national average. Median home cost here, also lower. 201,500 bucks, which is still tough on 40 grand a year. Nickname here. I don't know why, but nickname. Title Town. Yeah, I mean, Green Bay and Pittsburgh might want to talk to you, but we'll see. I don't know if maybe they're in.

[Jimmy Wisman]

New York or fucking anywhere.

[James Petregallo]

You know how I'm sure their high school fucking volleyball team won the title in 64 and now they're still talking about it? The name originates from the town's first postmaster, Amos Graham. You go, well, how the hell does Maryville come from Amos Graham?

[Jimmy Wisman]

His wife.

[James Petregallo]

His wife's name is Mary. It's usually. Usually the daughter they name it after.

[Jimmy Wisman]

But he went with, Amos is a piece of shit. Mary was an angel.

[James Petregallo]

The thing is, Amos got caught diddling around Maryville, I think, and he's like, I gotta make this up to her, guys. Please, just let me name the town Maryville. Please. This is gonna get me, like, out of this doghouse quick. You don't understand. You're mad at me. Well, look at the sign they just put up, Dave.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Your face is on it, too.

[James Petregallo]

Here we go. The city had a bunch of things here. It was incorporated in 1856, then annulled in 1857. I didn't know you could annul a city. I guess they didn't consummate. Yeah, that's how it works. Reincorporated in 1859, then annulled again. During the Civil War.

[Jimmy Wisman]

What the fuck?

[James Petregallo]

Then reincorporated in 1869, then later in 1869, disincorporated again. And then finally in July of 1869, finally incorporated for good. They could not decide. There was a very controversial case here when there was. I'm gonna read right from like the Wikipedia of this just to give it a. Because I don't know the details enough to know who's right and who's wrong here. A controversial case arose in 2012 when a boy, 17 at the time of the incident was arrested for rape and sexual assault of a 14 year old girl. And a 15 year old boy was accused of doing the same thing to the 13 year old girl's friend. And a third boy admitted to recording the first boy's alleged assault on a cell phone.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Oh, what year was this?

[James Petregallo]

2013. And it was a big contra 2012 when it happened. 13 was the controversy because the county prosecutor dropped felony and misdemeanor charges against the first boy who was related to an influential former state representative. And it got into the real whole backwoods good old boy network here type of thing is what everybody is saying about this. So I'm not sure. There was a 2016 Netflix documentary called Audrey and Daisy about it.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Oh, Jesus.

[James Petregallo]

Because the young lady ended up killing herself in 2020.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Oh my God.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, it's awful. It's awful.

[Jimmy Wisman]

What a terrible story.

[James Petregallo]

And then her mother killed herself four months later. Oh, geez. It couldn't be any worse. Our story is not as sad as this. Let's just say it's sad, but nothing.

[Jimmy Wisman]

And that's production of child porn. That's illegal on so many levels.

[James Petregallo]

So many levels.

[Jimmy Wisman]

So fucked.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Reviews of this Town here is five stars. Everyone is so welcoming and like a large family here. I would like to see more community gathering to give newcomers a chance to connect with other people in the town. Better. A gathering for the newcomers. That sounds weird.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Welcome wagon.

[James Petregallo]

The Funny Farm Founders Day Picnic is what that's called.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Did you hear what happened in 2013? I don't think you're getting many visitors.

[James Petregallo]

I don't think so. Here's one star. Absolutely terrible place to raise a family. The cops and government officials will ruin you and your family if you don't like. If they don't like you. By planting evidence, falsifying documents and purposely tearing families apart.

[Jimmy Wisman]

There's some hard allegations.

[James Petregallo]

There's nothing but drug lords, alcoholics and thieves running the businesses and streets.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Drug lords.

[James Petregallo]

Drug lords, alcoholics and thieves. All right. Pirates Whores and thieves. Here's one star. I hate this place is the first line. That's pretty. I don't think Winstar. I think you can pretty much end it right there. That's good. One star. I hate this place. All right, done.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Yeah. Allow me to elaborate.

[James Petregallo]

Allow me to expand. There are like 10 parks, three bars, and a movie theater that's closing. The only good entertainment are the weekly bar fights. This place is hell. Awesome. Jesus Christ. And then finally, things to do here. We got the Nottoway County Fair. Oh, oh, baby. Let's see what's going to happen there. We got a first responders eating contest. Hey, let's keep them slim. How about that? How about let's not have the people that we need in an emergency so fucking gut bombed that they can't get out there to give me cpr. How's that? They need to stand there and wait while the other people in the eating contest need medical assistance.

[Jimmy Wisman]

That's how it works, James. They're so fast. They beat the emergency, they get there before anybody's bleeding. Good Lord, slow them down. A ticket.

[James Petregallo]

And it's also strange that they're hovering over someone trying to revive them while eating a pulled pork sandwich. That seems odd. I feel like.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Yeah, the CPR got barbecue on the floor.

[James Petregallo]

He's covered in blood. No, no, that's barbecue sauce. I was eating while I was saving him. It's not blood. He's fine. No, that's.

[Jimmy Wisman]

That's the sweet Baby Ray's baby.

[James Petregallo]

That's sweet Baby Ray's. That's the. That's the honey barbecue. That's a good one. I like that. Little Mr. And Ms. Contest.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Ah, we gotta stop this.

[James Petregallo]

A parade. A baby show. Hey, everyone, it's a baby show. Come out and look at the baby. See if you want one. A checkers tournament. That's exciting. That is your visual.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Riveting.

[James Petregallo]

Riveting. He just kinged him. Holy shit. I'm gonna cover my pants. He just fucking double jumped him. Checkers tournament stadium seating for that. Holy shit. Standing room only. It sold out. The Cassidy band will be there. Don't know. C, A, S, A D, Y. I don't know. And the community band and Keith Leff. And let me show you Keith Leff. Quick, let's see. Keith Leff. He's saying.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Oh, Keith.

[James Petregallo]

He's a magician in his thing. He's got a card coming out of his sleeve. So that means he's a magician. Great. Oh, good. A roving magician. That is terrible. That said let's talk about a murder. What do you say?

[Jimmy Wisman]

Oh, God, I love this town already.

[James Petregallo]

It's wild. Okay.

[Jimmy Wisman]

So laughable.

[James Petregallo]

Before we get into this murder, I have to explain to people, just because it comes up in the story, this particular word, and people who don't live in a rural area or live overseas, I don't know if they know what this is. A combine. Now, in America, we kind of know what a combine is. A big thing that goes in a farm and takes things.

[Jimmy Wisman]

It cuts the corn.

[James Petregallo]

I will give you the definition of a combine, though. It combines three harvesting operations into one reaping, which is cutting the crop, threshing, separating the grain from the plant, and winnowing, which is cleaning the grain. So it's a thing with. Does all three. So you see those big wheels that are, like. Look like they're all knives.

[Jimmy Wisman]

It's got a fork in the front. They're so wild. It's such a fascinating tool.

[James Petregallo]

It's like a tank made of knives is what it looks like, essentially. So that's.

[Jimmy Wisman]

And it's half a million dollars. It's a crazy, crazy machine.

[James Petregallo]

Big piece of farm equipment. Now, let's introduce ourselves to a man here. This is William E. Taylor. Goes by Bill. Old Bill Taylor. Good old Bill Taylor. We all know good old bill. Born 1957. Charles is his father. Betty is his mother. He's got brothers named Wayne and James Wayne. James, my God.

[Jimmy Wisman]

This is a very American man.

[James Petregallo]

Those Taylor boys. You know about it. Now, he grows up on a farm here, as we'll talk about. His dad's a farmer and has some land, and he's gonna be a farmer, too. He finds a nice young woman to marry and gets married. On June 2, 1979, he gets married to Deborah Jo Wasson. W A S S O N Now, Deborah Jo, which is funny because our last Missouri episode was Bobby Joe. Bobby Jostanette. And this is Deborah Jo. So every woman that just tells me every woman in Missouri goes by something Joe. Doesn't matter what it is. I got a question.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Is it Jo?

[James Petregallo]

J o. Absolutely. They're all. That's what the other one was, too. Bobby Jo, this is my mother. There you go. See what I mean? She from Arkansas, right? Yeah. Obviously from Missouri.

[Jimmy Wisman]

I mean, clearly she's born around this time, the late 50s, early 60s. That was a.

[James Petregallo]

That was the name if you were like a hillbilly.

[Jimmy Wisman]

If you were.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Farm community.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Joe was. You were getting Joe.

[James Petregallo]

There's so many of those now. She is born in 1956. Her same age. And her parents are Robert and Joanne. So maybe that's where the Joe came from. Okay. Yeah. And she's got a brother named Steve, a sister named Sherry. She really loves animals and really loves. She's a very kind, like, kind of helping woman, as we'll talk about. She's a teacher. She loves animals. You know the lady.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Sure do.

[James Petregallo]

Nice lady. She graduated in 74 from Valley High School in Des Moines, Iowa. Where she's from. She's from Iowa, so she's farming through and through there. She got a degree in elementary education in 1978 from Northwest Missouri State University. Oh, and then received her master's degree as well. So she's ready to teach. We'll say that now. They get married in Des Moines in June of 1979. So a June wedding in Des Moines. It couldn't be more beautiful. You can smell the corn doing whatever the corn does.

[Jimmy Wisman]

There's some bugs in the air.

[James Petregallo]

I don't know what corn smells like.

[Jimmy Wisman]

A little more love than bugs in the air.

[James Petregallo]

That's right.

[Jimmy Wisman]

They're there now.

[James Petregallo]

They're gonna have two kids as well. They're gonna have Laurie in 1983 and then Doug in 1985. So they wait a few years to start. They're very responsible people. William is a. Bill's a farmer and he works his farm, which is just south of Maryville here. And it's a family operation. Big lot of land they both have and everything like that. His father, Charles, has property nearby, less than a mile away. So essentially, they're making kind of a compound of their farms out of buying farms close to each other. And apparently they live very comfortably. They do very well for themselves. Yeah, it's a big operation.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Farmers do pretty well in some areas.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, you can.

[Jimmy Wisman]

You can make a good. Good chunk.

[James Petregallo]

Especially in the 70s and early 80s, too. This is. This is when corporate farm shit was really coming in. And like, then Field of Dreams is the late 80s where they're gonna take your farm. Unless you build a baseball field where dead guys play. You know what I mean? Unless you can have a supernatural baseball game outside every night, then they're taking your farm. Basically. That's how it worked. So they do very well. They live in very nice comfort, you know, comfortable surroundings. They. They're. You know, this isn't a shack on a farm where they go out there with a hoe and try to make a couple of bucks. They. They have. It's not equipment. Right. They do very well. Kidding.

[Jimmy Wisman]

A horse With a hoe.

[James Petregallo]

Exactly. A donkey with a fucking plow attached to it.

[Jimmy Wisman]

The leather strap plow, the one that.

[James Petregallo]

Goes over the kids shoulders like Mikey Corleone and Godfather II in Sicily over there. Now she taught at a Catholic School, St. Gregory in Maryville and that's where a lot of her family went to church as well. She taught junior high at the Catholic school and she also taught the GED program at the C123 district as well. So she does a lot of teaching. She also is active in the Young Farm Wives Club, I guess. Was a Girl Scout troop leader for Troop 323, co leader of Troop 346, a member of the Service Unit 5 service team for Nottaway County. Don't know what that is. And co director of the Girl Scout day camp in the area as well.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Nice.

[James Petregallo]

So she does a lot for kids. She's very into helping kids and she loves animals and small children. Nice lady. Perfect, perfect teacher lady.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Yeah, that's how I want around my kids, nurturing.

[James Petregallo]

Now spring of 1994, Deborah starts having some problems. She's not happy. She's starting to get depressed. She's about 38 years old and just kind of not happy with her life here. And she has anxiety and depression and she ends up taking a leave of absence from the school and also goes to counseling for several weeks in the spring of 1994. Yeah, especially for the 90s, people wouldn't think to go to counseling. So one of the other teachers at the school, a woman that she knows well named Charlotte, said that they were friends for a long time. She described Deborah Jo as high energy, well organized and very professional. She said she began the 9394 school year with a good attitude. She was real upbeat, so she doesn't know how. By the spring at all, the wheels fell off. She said she was looking forward to school that year. She had lots of ideas, creative ideas. She thrived on things like that. She said that she became aware of a change in her outlook somewhere in the mid semester there in the first semester, but didn't know why or anything like that. Just saw that she was acting just a little bit different. Now the counselor she went to see was a guy named Ken Thomas and she went in March. He said that in his quote from his report that she appeared sad, tearful, very anxious about school where she was concerned because she can't meet everyone's expectations. Parents approached the school questioning her abilities as an instructor. Oh, you should have a podcast and see what that's like, go ahead and do that.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Feedback is not easy.

[James Petregallo]

They'll point out every little thing about yourself that you might not have wanted to recognize.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Your audience is 34 at the moment.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Try having hundreds of thousands upon millions and they're kids. You can tell them, shut the fuck up.

[James Petregallo]

Hey, shut up. What do you know? No, but this is. This shows that she actually gives a shit, though.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

I mean, she's not just like, screw you. Everybody says she's such a great teacher, too. That's the thing. Like, everyone on the outside's like, she is like, the best teacher we have. And she is so depressed because she can't meet everyone's expectations. Meanwhile, she's exceeding them. Right. So this is coming from.

[Jimmy Wisman]

She's crushing it. And people telling her, yeah, yeah.

[James Petregallo]

And she gets one parent who kid is probably an asshole and, you know, not getting good grades or something, and then they go to complain and say it's her fault. And then she takes it personally. Who knows?

[Jimmy Wisman]

That's the teacher's equivalent of reading the comments, you know what I mean?

[James Petregallo]

Exactly.

[Jimmy Wisman]

And she's just taking them and she can't take it. She hates it.

[James Petregallo]

Gotta. Gotta put those aside. So he. He said he saw her for, you know, a few weeks, and he said also that she appeared to have some marital problems that included conflicts in the parenting of the two children and a lack of intimacy between the two.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Yeah, that'll.

[James Petregallo]

Married 15 years, two kids, the farm, the jobs, all that. That this is a very normal complaint that, you know, people go to counseling for all the time trying to get some spark back in their life.

[Jimmy Wisman]

She wants to feel hot.

[James Petregallo]

God, yeah. They gotta get, like. She needs like, some nipple CL in a porn movie or something.

[Jimmy Wisman]

They need maybe a light spanking.

[James Petregallo]

You know what I mean? They need to get, like, some fire back in there. I don't know how to scream.

[Jimmy Wisman]

For fuck's sake. At least one night 69.

[James Petregallo]

For Christ's sake, get Bill a gimp mask. See how it goes. Who cares?

[Jimmy Wisman]

Let's strap it on, see if he doesn't squirm.

[James Petregallo]

Hey, you know what? He might fucking shoot it up to the ceiling. We have no idea.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Worst he's gonna do is smack your hand away.

[James Petregallo]

That's all. He won't be offended, This guy. The counselor also said that Bill appeared very supportive of Deborah Jo after she developed problems with anxiety and depression. He said he was there also and he was trying to help her out. So anyway, she had been referred to this Counselor by the school. The school said, maybe you should see somebody if you feel like this. So while on leave, she's still working, actually, but just not as a teacher. She's working as a secretary for a Dr. Canty Havildar. Yeah, there you go. Some foreign guy. Some foreign doctor. Now, November 1994, we get to. And William believes by this point, he's telling people that he believes Deborah Jo wants a divorce.

[Jimmy Wisman]

She's six months into a nervous breakdown. Pretty much it's not getting better.

[James Petregallo]

Sure. Yeah. So we don't know if this is. Sure. We don't know if she did or not, but he says he feels like she does. Even though it hasn't been brought up? I don't think so.

[Jimmy Wisman]

No words, just emotion.

[James Petregallo]

But Bill is depressed, too, by November 94, which. Depression is catching, man. It really is. It's.

[Jimmy Wisman]

My God, Is it contagious?

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, it really is. So. Same way Joy is contagious. Depression is contagious, too.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Yeah. It is fascinating how when you are in a relationship with somebody that is depressed, you either get frustrated or depressed along with us, but either way, it affects you and it agitates your mood also.

[James Petregallo]

You can't not. It's just. We're humans. Everything. Our environments affect us. That's all there is to it. I mean, whether it's, you know, sarin gas floating in the air or someone's sadness, it's still. It's. It. It's all around. And we don't know if he was depressed first and then she got it from him or helped not get it from him. Like it's a disease like that.

[Jimmy Wisman]

I'm just saying she slept in the same bed.

[James Petregallo]

If they're both a little depressed and one person slips further into it, that takes the other person, too. So, anyway, his brother here, James, this is Bill's brother, said that he came and visited for a while here in November, for about 10 days, late October. And then he went back to Colorado, but then he returned on November 11th. Later on, we'll talk about why. But he said his brother was difficult to understand because of halting speech and, quote, intermittent weeping and wailing.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Well, that's depression.

[James Petregallo]

That is depression. Yeah, and from a farm guy, too. You know, normally they're pretty stoic. Generally, you don't want to. Not a lot of tears out of those guys. Yeah, you don't want to spook the cows. You know what I'm saying? So they're generally. They're pretty stoic cats.

[Jimmy Wisman]

They'll lose a finger in barbed Wire. And not a single tear?

[James Petregallo]

No, no. They'll just wrap it up with some burlap and finish up the chores. So this is interesting. He said that Bill told him, I want someone to know what happened before I die. Promise me you'll take care of Doug and Laurie.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Oh my God.

[James Petregallo]

So he's like, I don't know what's up with that? So it's a little bit weird now. November 10, 1994, it's about 5pm so almost, almost supper time on the old farm.

[Jimmy Wisman]

About to hear that dinner bell, about.

[James Petregallo]

To ring, that triangle. So this is when a 911 call comes in or a call from the sheriff to the sheriff's department or something comes in. Whatever their emergency service is, however it's done. It's from 12 year old Laurie. Oh, she's calling. She's. Apparently her brother came home from school that day and they were in the house and their father Bill came in and said, help, call for help right now. Call an ambulance for your mother. Now. He's bleeding too. He's all fucked up too. So they're like, what's going on here? He said, call an ambulance for your mother. And so I guess they called his parents, Charles and Betty, because they lived right down the street is who Laurie called. And I don't know if Lori called 911 after that or if Charles and Betty called 911, but someone ended up calling 911. Now help arrives and William is hurt. He's saying that both he and Deborah were run over by the combine.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Oh my God.

[James Petregallo]

It became sentient by the. Well, it's like the Christine combine. It's very scary. It's the Stephen King combine.

[Jimmy Wisman]

That's crazy. How do you do that?

[James Petregallo]

His particular combine is a John Deere Model 6620. A £21,000 combine. God, it's £21,000 of engine and knives. That's what it's coming at. You think it's a nightmare machine.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Ten and a half tons.

[James Petregallo]

It's like a war. If you put a cannon on top, you could take that thing into battle. It's fucking.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Some of those too have remote control so you don't even have to be in it.

[James Petregallo]

Well, this one doesn't quite have a remote, but okay, a remote was used. That's going to be confusing except for a minute here now. Okay, okay, this is crazy. So where the hell is Deborah? Yeah, they find Deborah outside. They say her crushed body was found on that farm. Her right arm extended toward a dead black cat. Now the cat is not a victim of the combine. The cat has no broken skin, but it's just dead. Yeah, she is dead. Reaching for a cat, it looks like, and has been run over horribly by a combine.

[Jimmy Wisman]

My God.

[James Petregallo]

I mean, she is dead on the spot. Declared dead at the scene. I mean, there was no help in her.

[Jimmy Wisman]

There's nothing to do. Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Hey, everybody. Just gonna take a quick break from the show to tell you a better way to shop with Thrive Market.

[Jimmy Wisman]

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[James Petregallo]

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[Jimmy Wisman]

And now back to the show.

[James Petregallo]

This show, Small Town Murder is sponsored by BetterHelp. BetterHelp.com you know it. It's a new year everybody and people are turning over this a new year's resolution. I'm going to be a whole new me. You don't need to be an entirely new you. How about a a less burdened you?

[Jimmy Wisman]

There it is.

[James Petregallo]

How about a you with some weight off your shoulders? You that just feels a little bit better and a little bit lighter. Therapy is the way to do that. You can identify these things that are holding you back and holding you down and get an unbiased perspective. It's great to talk to your friends or family, but you need a professional here. Get a therapist. That's going to help you better understand your relationships, your motivations, your emotions. We've. That's where all the tools come from is therapy. Jimmy. I mean you're alive today.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Only reason I'm here.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, it's essential. Any adult. I can't even imagine anybody. You need somebody to talk to.

[Jimmy Wisman]

I can't recommend it enough to grown adults.

[James Petregallo]

And BetterHelp is the way to start too. Better Help therapists work according to a strict code of conduct and are fully licensed in the US BetterHelp does the initial matching work for you to hook you up with a therapist so you can focus on your goals. There's a short questionnaire that helps identify your needs and and preferences and their 12 plus years of experience and industry leading match fulfillment rate means they usually get it right the first time. But if you're not happy with your match. And this is huge. You can switch to a different therapist at any time, anytime, for no extra cost. They just want you to get better. That's the thing. They want to help you. And with over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is one of the world's largest online therapy platforms, having served over 5 million people globally. And it really works. With an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 for a live session based on over 1.7 million client reviews. You need to get yourself some therapy. Get better help. We couldn't recommend it enough. Betterhelp makes it easy to get matched online with a qualified therapist. Sign up and get 10% [e-mail] Smalltown Murder that's betterhelp.com Smalltown Murder now back to the show. And Bill was injured by the combine as well. And he's rushed to St. Joseph's heartland east Hospital, where he's gonna be hospitalized with all sorts of wounds. So this looks like a horrible, tragic accident. Terrible. Any farmer's like, oh, Jesus, God, thank God that's not me.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Run over by a combine.

[James Petregallo]

Horrifying. So. And there's an article in the paper. Combine crushes woman.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

She was killed Thursday after being crushed by a combine at her home. Deborah Jo Taylor was crushed when her husband William backed a combine out of the shed, according to a report from the sheriff's department. The report said William was injured when he realized it and got out and tried to attempt to save her, tried to help her. He was injured as well. So that's the story here. She was pronounced dead at the scene. He was taken to the hospital, and he was taken to one hospital first, then transferred to another hospital, some more serious one, where he was listed in guarded condition. So that's not good.

[Jimmy Wisman]

No.

[James Petregallo]

The problem is there's some suspicions with this. With this. The story doesn't all fit together. Right.

[Jimmy Wisman]

It's a crazy story. You don't drive a machine. A knife van, you know, a crop knife tank.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Without looking at the mirrors.

[James Petregallo]

You don't. Yeah.

[Jimmy Wisman]

You got to look in the rear view. If you back it up.

[James Petregallo]

Then again, it's not a real fast moving vehicle and it's gigantic loud. So you would know to get the out of the way if that thing's coming at you. You don't exactly need one of those. Beep, beep, beep. Backup buttons. Get out of the way. Knife tank coming.

[Jimmy Wisman]

It's not a 70 challenger. It doesn't. You don't gotta feather the clutch.

[James Petregallo]

Not at all. Exactly. It's not a 68 Nova.

[Jimmy Wisman]

It's not trying to make sure you don't spin the tires.

[James Petregallo]

Jesus Christ. So the tail. One of the sheriffs here, this is the Nottoway County Sheriff, Ben Espy. He said that. Now, he said the call came from Doug the Son, but it's Laurie, so I don't know. That's weird. But he said some things didn't fit. There was evidence on the scene. Things happened in a certain order. The items and evidence were there. That's some cryptic shit he's saying, right?

[Jimmy Wisman]

Sure enough.

[James Petregallo]

So William is in the hospital and his brother Wayne comes to chat with him. They're having some talks here.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Now Wayne's coming out. James was just here, right?

[James Petregallo]

He was just here. Now we're getting Wayne in here. And he says, I gotta talk to you, Wayne. I gotta tell you something.

[Jimmy Wisman]

What's that?

[James Petregallo]

He said at the scene, there was Deborah Jo and there was a black cat that she was reaching for. And he said that. Here's what happened. I killed that black cat. He said, I killed it with a hammer.

[Jimmy Wisman]

He smacked the cat.

[James Petregallo]

And then I put it under the combine. And I called for Deborah to come get the cat out from under the combine and save it.

[Jimmy Wisman]

You diabolical son of a bitch.

[James Petregallo]

That is using her love of come save the cat. It's under the combine. I don't want to kill it.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Oh, my God. And it was already dead.

[James Petregallo]

He said he told. This is another thing he told Wayne. Yeah. Come get the dead cat. Yeah. He told Wayne that he used a string to pull the hydrostat lever back, starting the combine in a rearward. Rearward motion. Wow. He tied a fucking long piece of twine to it so he could do it from back there to crush her.

[Jimmy Wisman]

What the fuck?

[James Petregallo]

That's what he tells his brother. He said he threw the cat under the combine to lure his wife underneath. And he got this. Yanked a rope, he got this twine out and did this. He told his brother everything.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Oh, my word.

[James Petregallo]

His brother, who clearly isn't Italian, goes right to the sheriff's department with this information. That's just wild.

[Jimmy Wisman]

He goes, I gotta tell you, he killed a cat, y'.

[James Petregallo]

All. Yeah. That's crazy. I mean, I'm not a big fan of Deborah Jo, but he killed a cat, y'. All. Now I feel horrible for these kids at this point, too. You got a 12 year old and a 10 year old and.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Unbelievable. And your dad's operating the combine with ropes to kill mom and the cat and your cat and smacking cats in the head with a hammer.

[James Petregallo]

That's crazy. I feel terrible for these kids.

[Jimmy Wisman]

That's just a. Every step was on purpose. That's so bad.

[James Petregallo]

So, yeah, it's awful. So the sheriff shows up to talk to Bill about this and they go, bill, yeah.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Hey, Wayne just came up.

[James Petregallo]

We heard some things.

[Jimmy Wisman]

He told us some crazy shit.

[James Petregallo]

And Bill went, yep, I killed her. Oh, that was a good interrogation now, Bill. I heard a couple of things. Well, you're right. I did it. Okay, well.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Hey, Bill, did you tell your brother something? He told us he did. Damn him. Yeah, I did it.

[James Petregallo]

He's right. He said he'd been depressed.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Uh huh.

[James Petregallo]

So, you know, you make a diabolical plan to kill your wife with a combine. This, by the way, what the fuck? We've never had a combine as a murder weapon ever. No, it's crazy, I guess.

[Jimmy Wisman]

I mean, I mean, I imagine. I don't know for sure. I imagine you're hit with a combine. It's quick, man. It's gotta be like a wood chipper, right? That's what it is. It's a. It's a wood chipper with four wheels.

[James Petregallo]

This kind of gets worse though.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Oh, no.

[James Petregallo]

Think it would be quick. But anyway, no, yeah, he. He said this is his quote that he tells the sheriff, quote. I decided maybe she was. I was just so upset. I never anticipated it before. I had no idea. I found out from some rumors that before maybe she was running around on me off and on for the last couple years. But I wanted to put it out of my mind and not believe it. And they said, so I backed over with a John Deere fucking 21,000 pound combine.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Wow.

[James Petregallo]

Because I thought maybe she was running around on me a couple years ago, on and off maybe.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Heard tell of it.

[James Petregallo]

Oh my God. I came home and she was blowing a guy on the couch. That would be something. Still not don't do this. But at least you'd go, well, yeah, maybe he snapped or something. This is.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Imagining it is way worse than seeing it.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, but you still have to know it's true before you start making murders.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Because if you imagine.

[James Petregallo]

What the fuck is wrong with you?

[Jimmy Wisman]

If you imagine it, you think she's enjoying it more than you Know what I mean?

[James Petregallo]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Yeah, but if you actually see it and you go, oh, he's not even fucking her good. Yeah, that would be. It'd be so much easier to be like, oh, gross. They fuck terribly. But in your head you see her really loving it and that'll drive you crazy.

[James Petregallo]

Fucking crazy. So he said, I took a hammer and I killed the cat.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Oh, my God.

[James Petregallo]

Now the coroner. This is crazy too. The coroner is gonna examine the cat. The human coroner is gonna have a. Yeah, that's fun as well.

[Jimmy Wisman]

What's the. What's the liver way, Doc?

[James Petregallo]

We'll find out. But the cat's skin was unbroken. Had no lacerations or wounds consistent with farm machinery. So he wasn't there. Killed by a hammer, blow to the head. That's it. They found bruising on its neck. Evidence of blunt force trauma from a rounded object.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Being held.

[James Petregallo]

Yep, Being held. So. Which pisses me off, obviously.

[Jimmy Wisman]

That's fucked up.

[James Petregallo]

I really like that.

[Jimmy Wisman]

And that's a terrible way to kill a cat too.

[James Petregallo]

It's awful and I love it.

[Jimmy Wisman]

It didn't. That's not overrandicated, right?

[James Petregallo]

I have no idea.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Imagine it rides.

[James Petregallo]

And she's never taken a cat to a hammer to a cat before. I have no idea how long it would take a cat. Thank God.

[Jimmy Wisman]

I imagine you hit in the head. It has death convulsions.

[James Petregallo]

I would think so.

[Jimmy Wisman]

I don't want to see that. That's fucked up.

[James Petregallo]

So he said he knew his wife loved animals. And he knew if she believed the cat was trapped under the combine, she would try to rescue it. So he just threw the dead cat's body under the combine. And that's that. He said when Deborah just. He said, hey, Deborah. Joe, come help me. She did exactly what he knew. She tried to save the cat, crawled under the combine to retrieve this animal, and that was that. So he. He said, quote. This is the quote to the sheriff. He said that he ran over both of them and continued in a circle until it. The combine ran over both of them, meaning him too. That's how he got injured too. He couldn't get out of the way of it and continued in a circle until it backed into the shed. This thing has a mind of its own. It's sentient. Then William Taylor moved the combine back to a location near Deborah and put the string in a hog lot next to the lane. So took that twine he used and went and threw it in a hog lot over next to him there. Over yonder, apparently so. Yeah, that's what he said. He said, grab that hydrostat, push it forward, and the combine moves forward. Pull it back, it moves backward. All he had to do was yank it back.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Yank a cord. This is crazy.

[James Petregallo]

That's what he said.

[Jimmy Wisman]

This is so much.

[James Petregallo]

Yep. He said it rolled over his wife. He told investigators that he panicked when he saw his wife crawl under the combine. He said he didn't attempt to pull the lever to stop the machine. He instead tried to grab his wife before being run over himself. That's his story. But we're gonna find out. That's not exactly the truth either.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Really? He regrets it.

[James Petregallo]

As if this isn't bad enough.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Yeah, you're in so much trouble. Just be honest.

[James Petregallo]

It's worse than that.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Oh, what?

[James Petregallo]

It's fucking worse than that.

[Jimmy Wisman]

How?

[James Petregallo]

You'd wonder. Right. So the authorities believe that Bill had discussed, also because he brought this up somehow with the sheriffs or with his brother, that he also had talked about possibly killing the two children as well.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Get the fuck out.

[James Petregallo]

Yes, he talked about killing Laurie and Doug as well as his wife after this and the cat. Clean sweep. Yeah, and one big thing. Let's kill them all.

[Jimmy Wisman]

He's gonna run them all over with the combine.

[James Petregallo]

Not sure. Burn the house down. I have no idea. But that's what the hell man talking about. That is. That's wild. Here. Now, the kids, where the hell are they? Obviously? Well, they are with Robert and Joanne, the mom and dad of Debbie here. They're in Iowa holding onto the kids at the moment. So after that, the cops go back and search the Taylor farm. They take pictures, they take measurements, including measurements of the combine, where it was, where she was, how it would have backed, etcetera, you know, trajectory of turning and radius and all that shit. They found the piece of twine near where Deborah's body had been lying the previous evening. They said the coroner wrote that authorities had recovered from a hog lot a 10 foot 7 inch long piece of synthetic twine, which was placed into evidence. They also found what appeared to be the source of the twine, which was a spool in a garage a few hundred feet from where the body was found. They seized the cat's corpse. They had no idea to even look for a dead cat the day before or to take. They wouldn't think, take a dead cat, it's a farm, maybe a cat died, who knows? So now they go back and they know they need to take this cat because they had done it. And they found, like we said, consistent with a hammer blow, inconsistent with combine machinery. Then the coroner disposed of the cat's corpse. Didn't keep it in evidence or anything. Oh, because it's a. What? Where the hell does the corner.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Yeah. Where are you gonna put that? Yeah, stick that in the freezer this whole time.

[James Petregallo]

That's what I mean. It's so weird. I mean nowadays, I guess you'd keep it, freeze it, I don't know.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Yeah, you gotta have it in a freezer somewhere. But that's the corners gotta now have a fucking freezer for animals.

[James Petregallo]

And this is over 30 years ago in rural Missouri. So I mean you're gonna tell the some coroner here. Yeah. Hang on to that cat. There might be forensic things.

[Jimmy Wisman]

I threw that out the minute I was done with it.

[James Petregallo]

Are you kidding? That's a hammer blow and threw. Yeah. Jesus. So the cat was evidence. But you know, so what? So I mean, like I said, I'm not saying it's good to throw the cat out. I'm just saying what were they going to do with it at that point? Now the human coroner examines Deborah Jo here and okay. They find in addition to her combine wounds, her obvious combine wounds, they find some wounds that are not consistent with the combine.

[Jimmy Wisman]

What is that?

[James Petregallo]

They find lacerations to her forehead caused by blunt force.

[Jimmy Wisman]

What?

[James Petregallo]

They find bruising to her left eye caused by blunt force. They find contusions on her chest and fractured ribs on her left side and a crushed pelvis.

[Jimmy Wisman]

She got her ass kicked.

[James Petregallo]

Yes, that's the thing. Now the crushed pelvis and the fractured ribs, they think combine. But the facial injuries were not consistent with her being run over by a combine. Whatsoever. Whatsoever. They said her injuries, at least some of them are 100% not combine injuries. They said that a blow to her face was inflicted by something other than the combine. And he. Combine. He said that's what caused her death, was her blow to the face, not the combine.

[Jimmy Wisman]

That hard of a blow.

[James Petregallo]

That it broke her. Yeah, it broke her. It fucking killed her.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Yeah. Broke her skull. Brain trauma, that kind of shit.

[James Petregallo]

Yes. And then the combine wounds were just.

[Jimmy Wisman]

You know, there also probably not superficial, but the injuries.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Say that.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Superfluous. Yeah, that's the word.

[James Petregallo]

So a couple days extra not needed. But there anyway.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Fine.

[James Petregallo]

There you go. I'm gonna join up with vobular vocabulary corner with James and Jimmy. It's fun stuff. Now, November 18th. So this is less than a week after this happened.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

He's let out on bond bill is what. Yes, he $100,000 bond is posted for him. Remember, they're not wealthy, but pretty well off farmers. So they can have money for bonds and lawyers and things like that.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Really gives a shit about its people, huh?

[James Petregallo]

It's a lot. Yeah. That's crazy. So anyway, the police guard and his hotel, or his hotel, his hospital room is removed because of the bond. So he's free to be in the hospital. The bond was secured by property. Now, part of this is that he's not allowed to go near the kids. If they come back to the county to visit relatives, he has to, like, get away from anywhere that they might be. So June 1995 here. Yeah. I believe this is the same time the O.J. trial's going on, by the way.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Six months later.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Otherwise, I feel like combine murderer would have been a bigger story.

[Jimmy Wisman]

That's huge, right?

[James Petregallo]

If it wasn't there. So there is a motion to suppress. This is pretrial. Williams defense attorneys file a motion to suppress some evidence. They're talking about the twine, number one. All of this shit. They're saying that the search that they did the day after the death, where they found. They came and got the cat and they made measurements and got the twine. That should all be thrown out.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

This is based on. This is their argument. The state shall not be permitted to enter into evidence or refer to during the trial any matters seized by the state during a warrantless searches of November 11th and 12th. None of the photos or diagrams may be used. No simulation or testing conducted during these searches may be referred to at the trial. The cat autopsy and evidence related there, too, will be permitted. That's it. The cat autopsy only.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

Will be permitted. None of it but the twine that they found, which is a big deal because that's how he was using it, as a remote control that can't be used. So that's. They grant their motion and suppress all this shit.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Okay?

[James Petregallo]

So they're like, damn it. That's. That's kind of. That's kind of shitty. They said these searches were conducted without a warrant. Why would you not get a goddamn warrant?

[Jimmy Wisman]

What's going on?

[James Petregallo]

Well, I mean, I get that we're in the middle of nowhere in Missouri, but.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Well, he called Lawrence here. So we just looked.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, well, that'd be if. If it was all. Then that'd be fine. But the problem is they came back the next day because at first it just looked like a horrible accident. They took it at face value, save everybody, take this one to the hospital. Then when he.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Wayne says this, and they're like, well, now we gotta search.

[James Petregallo]

Well, and then they went to him and he said, yeah, this is what I did. So they went, cool, let's go back there and find everything. But they didn't get a written consent to search. All they had to do was say, can you sign this? And then we have consent. But you still get even. If they sign for consent, you still get a warrant in a murder case. In a case of murder evidence, you do. They do it all the time. So they said, just in case. Let's get. Just so they don't say we coerced.

[Jimmy Wisman]

You throw all this shit out.

[James Petregallo]

This is important shit.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

So, yeah. Law enforcement quote. Didn't think they needed one, huh?

[Jimmy Wisman]

I didn't know I had to do that.

[James Petregallo]

What's that now? That's like a football coach going, oh, I didn't know we needed plays. I didn't realize that. Oh, shit. Oh, wow. We are really. Oh, boy. Guys, improv it up out there. Really? Yes. And like a motherfucker. I don't know. That is wild. So July 1995. Now they get. Now they get a search warrant to return to the farm in July. In July, which a year later. Great. Good job, guys.

[Jimmy Wisman]

No, it's a year.

[James Petregallo]

Year. Yeah. A little less than a year. So they get. They get. This is to do measurements. They can't have the twine that's already gone. They already blew that. But they can do measurements on the combine to see how it turns far.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

How long this is. So they can, you know, make diagrams for court and shit like that. So they go to do this, they open up the shed. The combine's not there.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Where'd it go?

[James Petregallo]

It's fucking gone. Where's the combine?

[Jimmy Wisman]

That's how he got bond.

[James Petregallo]

They ended up finding it in a shed on a property belonging to his father.

[Jimmy Wisman]

He had his dad take the combine away.

[James Petregallo]

Put away. It was put away. Yeah. Which is, you know, less than a mile away. But they locate the shed where they think they weren't going to search every shed everybody had for it. You can't hide a 21,000 pound combine. What'd you do with it?

[Jimmy Wisman]

Yeah. How many of your family members have big sheds? We're looking at them.

[James Petregallo]

We're looking at all of them. So anyway, they went to Charles Taylor's home, gave him a copy of the warrant, said, can you please unlock that shed? Thank you. Sure thing. They opened it up and oh, look at John Deere. There we go. There's the John Deere. So they move it to a nearby John Deere facility to measure it and photograph it and videotape all of that shit and everything. The evidence, the measurements, photographs and videotape. This is all gonna be crucial at trial because the measurements help establish that Deborah's facial injuries could not have been caused by the combine. That helps prove that. Yeah. At this point they assign a special prosecutor. I think so much has been fucked up so far that they're like, okay, we gotta get somebody half decent in here. We're getting a special prosecutor. So they do this is with the attorney general's office. They come in of the state and they decide that this isn't a second degree murder, this is a first degree murder.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Absolutely.

[James Petregallo]

To do this, it's diabolical. Jesus Christ. The string that's playing and the cat and the string isn't even true as we'll find out.

[Jimmy Wisman]

What?

[James Petregallo]

Oh, it's crazy. So the attorney general said that they changed changing it from second to first degree murder. In review of the facts, we believe there was some deliberation on his part. No shit. We believe that the evidence will show such deliberation. Now at the same time in civil court, there's actions going on as well.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

The children, his children have. I'm sure someone helped them with this. I don't think they went to an attorney themselves. 12 and 10. Listen, we got to file some paperwork.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Yeah, we're here representing ourselves.

[James Petregallo]

Yep. They're seeking unspecified damages and a wrongful death accusation against their father. And an insurance company has named the children and their father in another action seeking to nullify coverage in a policy the family held trying to fuck these kids out of money. Now the company asked the court for a declaratory judgment of non coverage on the policy. And those civil actions were pending here when this case goes to trial. Wow. It's a seven woman, five man jury.

[Jimmy Wisman]

And so ugly, James.

[James Petregallo]

It's ugly. So the defense mounts. Here's their deal here. Here's their multi fucking faceted attack here. They said the judge who issued the warrant had previously disqualified himself from the case. So there was that. They said. So the warrant that they got for July shouldn't count? Oh, well, the judge found that didn't matter. The cops went through the proper procedures and everything is fine. And he is a judge, so it's legal just because he's not on that case. And they also said the evidence would have been discovered anyway through other legal means. It's inevitable discovery. Eventually they would have legally been able to measure a combine. You know what I mean? So they also said the affidavit supporting the search warrant wasn't right. They argued that the warrant relied on information obtained during the illegal November searches. So that shouldn't count either. The court said no. He confessed to using twine to cause the combine to roll over his wife. And that confession would have led investigators to the Combine, no matter what they found, while doing warrantless searches, another inevitable discovery. They also said William Taylor had no standing to challenge the search because the combine was on his father's property, not his. And the prosecution argued that Taylor couldn't claim Fourth Amendment protection for a search conducted on someone else's property. So you don't have standing to do that.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Right. You. You volunteered to have that be away from your property.

[James Petregallo]

That's the thing. Someone took that. And the evidence should have been obtained through discovery rules, not a search warrant. And they said, eh, tomato, tomato. All right, you know what I'm saying? What are we talking about here? This is 21,000. You know, what are we talking about? The court said, get the fuck out of here. Essentially, he can't claim. He's, like, shocked that the prosecution wants to check out the combine, because that's essentially what he's trying to do.

[Jimmy Wisman]

I mean, you told him that that's what killed her, man. They want to look at it.

[James Petregallo]

So the combine evidence is allowed in. The measurements and videotape are admitted at trial, and there's that. Now there is evidence that is not allowed. There's an agreement between the prosecution and defense to exclude certain topics from the proceedings. And this is stipulated between both of them. At the start of the trial, both sides agreed they will not mention Deborah Taylor's relationship with her mother. For some reason, we don't know why that is. I mean, we could speculate till the cows come back to this farm and that cat comes back to life, but who knows?

[Jimmy Wisman]

The obvious one is that there was conversations had, right?

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. I don't know if a bad relationship, a good rel. We're not gonna. Who knows? And number two, just quote, an abortion. Oh, so we don't know who had the abortion. Scandalous. Yeah. Her mother and an abortion. This is good. I've never wanted to know more information that is suppressed and not allowed in this trial.

[Jimmy Wisman]

This is ridiculous. That's the only story I want now.

[James Petregallo]

That's it, right? Totally. So there was topics. These are topics related to Deborah's psychological treatment. And her psychologist had apparently had information about these issues from the therapy sessions. And they're gonna allow the psychologist and his notes, but not those two things. Can't talk about those two things. No lawyers can bring it up. And if it is brought up, it has to be shut down. Got it. So during cross examination later on, the defense started asking about. About Deborah Jo's relationships with, quote, other family members. And the prosecution said, didn't we agree to this?

[Jimmy Wisman]

Right. What are we doing?

[James Petregallo]

What the hell, man? And the judge said the court interprets the same stipulation applies not only while with. Not only the case in chief, but the rebuttal or sir rebuttal or whatever. So can't do it. Essentially, the trial judge does not allow the evidence, obviously from the search warrants that never happened, the twine and all that. The prosecution's case is presented thusly. They have evidence supporting a theory that Deborah have struggled with her husband before her death. So they're saying from her facial wounds. He didn't. Killing the cat, putting it under there, lowering her would have been bad enough.

[Jimmy Wisman]

The fight and then placed and then run over.

[James Petregallo]

He tried to lower her with the cat. He killed the cat, tried to lower her. They're saying she didn't buy it. So he beat the shit out of her and threw her under the combine and then rolled her.

[Jimmy Wisman]

That's. That's.

[James Petregallo]

That's way worse. Some say. When I said it's worse and you go, wow, how the fuck is it worse? This is worse, right?

[Jimmy Wisman]

The order is so fucked.

[James Petregallo]

It's fucked. Well, that trick so bad. I'll just beat her senseless and throw her under there.

[Jimmy Wisman]

I merked a cat and that wasn't enough.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, dude. It's fucking crazy. So there's that. The prosecution says the combine's dimensions were inconsistent with causing the facial injuries sustained. It's basically mathematically impossible for the combine to have caused the facial injuries. And they said if Deborah was conscious when she crawled under the combine, she would have tried to escape when the combine started moving. So even if she did crawl under and then escape it, that's probably when the physical confrontation happened. So either she wouldn't go under there, or she did and then said, hey, you're trying to run me over.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Either way, he had to beat her and throw her under there. Beat her to death, essentially, and throw her under there.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Right. So the.

[James Petregallo]

The.

[Jimmy Wisman]

The injury that killed her was the beating. Therefore it was po. Like it's a. He didn't know that she wasn't dead or that she was already dead. But that's a postmortem run over with.

[James Petregallo]

A combine combine, essentially.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Damn.

[James Petregallo]

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[Jimmy Wisman]

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[James Petregallo]

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[Jimmy Wisman]

And now back to the show.

[James Petregallo]

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[Jimmy Wisman]

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[James Petregallo]

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[Jimmy Wisman]

Don't want that.

[James Petregallo]

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[Jimmy Wisman]

Now back to the show.

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[James Petregallo]

Plan went awry and they said quote that Debbie Jo Taylor was not run over while going for the cat. He said there was a struggle before Debbie Taylor was killed. And and they the obviously the medical examiner talks about the she had a black eye laceration and other injuries to her face apparently unrelated to being run over. Now the defense tries to undermine this by presenting medical testimony that rebuts the struggle thing of the fight. Yeah, but it doesn't matter because the pathologist and the measurements both say whatever happened to her face wasn't caused by the combine. So unless Doug and Laurie jumped her in the house and then she came outside, which we highly doubt, then you know, whatever. So the defense doesn't challenge the scenario at all because he admitted to it and it's, I mean he's got long report of his confession.

[Jimmy Wisman]

That's not good.

[James Petregallo]

They instead try to establish a case for mental disease or defect by depression, focusing on what they call his delusions. They say he's got delusions.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Oh, what are these?

[James Petregallo]

They said with the injuries to her face the state contends were a result of the struggle and they say, well.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Who knows if these delusions aren't this was gonna cure her depression, then I don't give a fuck because it's murder either way.

[James Petregallo]

It's fucking murder. So the defense opening, they have a forensic psychiatrist that they're gonna talk to a whole bunch. And they said that basically in the opening that the psychologist will back this up. That Bill progressively lost his grip on reality over the 1994 to the point of mistakenly coming to believe that his wife was involved with other men and planned to divorce him. So that wasn't even the case, they're saying. But he believed it because he was delusional. The defense lawyer said in his mind he saw things that were not true and things that were just not there. And once he had those beliefs, he. And this is the legal language that you got to have. He could not conform his conduct to the law. He was, in a word, insane. Yeah, that's right.

[Jimmy Wisman]

You could not conform his. Wow, that's a.

[James Petregallo]

It's right to the letter of the law there.

[Jimmy Wisman]

I get it.

[James Petregallo]

Yep. Now the prosecution's first witnesses.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Who do you think they are? They're the kids. Poor kids.

[Jimmy Wisman]

That's so fucked up.

[James Petregallo]

It's. I. I always feel bad for kids in this situation. But imagine your mom is dead and you have to go into. Imagine being 12, 13, 11 and 13 and having to go into a courtroom, which would be terrifying at that age. Go up on the witness stand with all these grown ups staring at you and then tell horrible things that I can't imagine.

[Jimmy Wisman]

The stereotypical black robe guy sitting right holy. Elevated above you.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. All things terrifying. They're telling. Can you speak into the microphone better? Oh, I'm sorry. I'm not used to this.

[Jimmy Wisman]

I'm 11 with my high voice. I don't.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah.

[Jimmy Wisman]

This isn't even me. I'm gonna be a completely different person in three years.

[James Petregallo]

Good God. So they described Laurie as a slender blonde in a simple striped dress. Took the stand with a multicolored cast or splint on her right leg. She's hurt herself now too, doing normal kid shit. Hopefully not run over by a combine. She told the jury that her and her brother had come home from school. They were in the house. Her father asked for help. She called the ambulance. She called his parents. That's that so. Yeah, that's. Could you imagine having to do that?

[Jimmy Wisman]

So they were there at the house. They were there in their bedrooms doing homework or whatever.

[James Petregallo]

The. In the kitchen watching tv, doing whatever.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Doing after school shit.

[James Petregallo]

Watching Ricky Lake. I have no idea. Yeah. 94.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Richard Bay. Maybe I don't know.

[James Petregallo]

So they're not supposed to watch that? I'm sure not supposed to.

[Jimmy Wisman]

That was the best fucking crazy. It was insane. Everything was like the most horrible parts of society.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, it was every. Yeah, it was the trashy underbelly of society.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Yeah. With a sound effects guy in the booth making fun of them.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, yeah. It was like morning radio, but with white trash. So then Doug takes the stand. He's not even 11 yet. I don't think here he's a 10.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Jesus.

[James Petregallo]

He takes the stand and I can't imagine how scary. Wow, Doug, hats off for the bravery on that. Laurie too. I'm just saying Doug's younger, that's all I'm saying. So he tells. He's the star witness. He has to go in there and he's the kid who's gonna bury his father and he has to. And I feel so bad for him. He said that his father had given him a pocket knife to remove some string from the combine, but he couldn't find the string. He involved his 10 year old son to try to cover up his fucking murder plot. This piece of shit.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Oh, James, I don't know that that's what he was doing.

[James Petregallo]

What the string, was it running? I get. No, he was supposed to go in the combine to cut the string off. Off of the, off of the thing. So.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Oh, on the lever.

[James Petregallo]

He was hurt in there.

[Jimmy Wisman]

I thought you're talking about like, hey.

[James Petregallo]

There'S a cat out here. Come look at. No, he wasn't doing that.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Underneath the combine in the cutters, there's some twine. Get in there with my knife and cut it out. I won't start it, I promise.

[James Petregallo]

It gets worse. He returned to the house because his father was in the house the whole time. He returned to the house and he said his father sent him back out to place a dead cat near the arms of his mother. What? He sent the 10 year old out to put the cat closer to this poor child's dead mother.

[Jimmy Wisman]

He had to your mom out there, put this cat by her, make it.

[James Petregallo]

Look like she's reaching for the cat.

[Jimmy Wisman]

That's now where we put all the dead things.

[James Petregallo]

Dude. You know what I mean? This poor kid on every level.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Why did he do that?

[James Petregallo]

So both kids were asked separately if their father had ever hurt them or they had seen him hurt their mother. He also asked if their family life had been a happy one. Both said the family had been good and that Bill had never hurt them and that they'd never seen him hurt Their mother. This is a aberration. When he finished.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Yeah, they're doing that to frame the part where he doesn't know right from wrong. Well, if you're putting a dead cat out there next to her, why'd you do that? You don't know that this is wrong.

[James Petregallo]

Right. That's what I mean. So put it closer to your mom. Put this dead cat closer out there. So Doug, when he's done testifying, broke into tears and was let out of the courtroom by a relative. This is horrifying. Now, the defense witnesses. I don't know how good these are for him, but his brother James, who said that he was crying, talking about his wife having an affair and all that. They're trying to show that his mental state wasn't good because he's saying he had halting speech and was weeping and all this type of shit. Wailing, James. Wailing. Then they bring in the shrink, Dr. Logan. This is forensic psychiatrist William Logan. And he said that William was doing a quote, on again, off again, dance with sanity in the hours before the slaying of his wife. He was sort of saying sort of not. Yeah, he said he's suffering from a delusionary disorder and severe depression. He said he was depressed over the contents of his delusions. So his delusions made him depressed. They said his wife. They thought his wife was cheating on him, planning to take the two children away, get a divorce. In cross examination, though, they challenged the diagnosis of delusionary disorder by questioning the psychiatrist's assumptions that his client's deceased wife had indeed been happy with her husband. So the state suggestion was saying maybe it wasn't delusional. Maybe she wasn't happy and he was just pissed off about it. Which is, you're not crazy. You're just sad because your wife's leaving you because you're an asshole.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Right. And part of the 90s is to not admit that you've got broken heart.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, no. Yeah, you got that.

[Jimmy Wisman]

So you do a sanity wall, sanity foxtrot. I don't know if it's upbeat or not, but one way or another, you're too. You're barely.

[James Petregallo]

Is it upbeat? The tango? Actually, it's romantic, sexy.

[Jimmy Wisman]

But the point is, like, you. You can't admit that you. So. So you kind of go back and forth between, this is my life and this is my sad reality, and then this is my life and this is my sad reality.

[James Petregallo]

That's right. They said also, maybe he wasn't being delusional after all and was concerned about the financial impact of alimony and child support payments.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Maybe it was that simple speculating shit. God damn it.

[James Petregallo]

So the assistant Attorney General produced a workbook of Debra's that contained references to divorce or separation and child support. And they said, is this the thing you would like to have seen before you got on the stand? They asked the doctor, would you have liked to seen that? And he said, I would like to have seen the whole notebook later under a second direct examination, because they redirect and recross and do all this a few times because he's the main cog here, if the jury believes him. They said that the material in the notebook would not have affected his diagnosis. Now, in his notes, they talk about interviews with Bill that this doctor had where he had been considering killing his wife with the combine since the day before her death, which is premeditation. The testimony also revealed that earlier in the day of her death, he had considered deliberately wrecking the family car during a trip to St. Joseph and killing everybody.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Just yanking it into a bridge.

[James Petregallo]

That's it. He considered it after noticing his wife had dozed off and wasn't wearing a seatbelt. He was wearing a seatbelt. So he said, I could shoot her right through the windshield right now if I wanted to. Which we've actually had a case like that. Exactly like that. But we've never had a combine.

[Jimmy Wisman]

God damn it. Just talk. You guys have conversations with people and this shit goes away.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Jesus Christ. So they talk about that. They said, to the visible irritation of the doctor, the prosecutor at one point referred to the defense's theory of Bill Taylor's fluctuating sanity as the, quote, light switch theory of delusion. As he was reading a definition of delusionary disorder from an industry text, the prosecutor took the view that the term variable in the text meant varying in nature from one person to another. And he shared that note with Dr. Logan. Dr. Logan shouted, no, it also fluctuates within the individual. So now they're arguing over the meaning of this word in this sentence. It depends on what the definition of is. Is is what we're doing now on the stand. So they said, the doctor and the prosecutor. The doctor said, the prosecutor oversimplified the definition of the disorder and its nature by reading only a small portion of the defining text. They said that he would. The prosecutor said, well, I'll defer to the jury's interpretation of what it meant. They can decide which one of us is right, because that's how it is. Them and their PhD, them and their fucking MDs. He's a psychiatrist. So it was during a critical series of insane moments on the day of the slaying with. The doctor testified that he rigged the combine so he could activate it by remote string and do all that shit. He also said in another point that his mental disorder was fluctuating back and forth within seconds while he was in the process of slaying his wife. Within seconds. He said during a rational moment, he tried to save his wife from the combine's wheels, but injured himself in the process. In response to one of the questions, Dr. Logan told the jury his client had improved in therapy and he's good now.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Oh, is that right?

[James Petregallo]

You could let him walk right out the door and he'll be cool. He'd go, he's no longer a threat to society.

[Jimmy Wisman]

I'm an amazing therapist.

[James Petregallo]

I am so good at this. Several shrinks for the state completely disagree with all of this shit. They say, hell, no. He may have been depressed and he may have had an adjustment disorder, but that's not. I don't know the difference between right and wrong. Killing my wife is fine by the. By the law, delusional. That's crazy. One guy here, doctor, Dr. Daniel Birmingham, he said, I believe he was genuinely distressed. He said, I don't believe divorce or separation justifies homicide, though. Right. There you go. He said, also, no one will ever know for sure whether she was about to leave her husband. But his account of her behavior was consistent with that possibility. He was not seeing things that were not there. He was seeing.

[Jimmy Wisman]

There's a valley between distressed and disturbed.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. If you're just sad because your wife's leaving, you can't kill her. You're not crazy.

[Jimmy Wisman]

You can't shoot her through the passenger window.

[James Petregallo]

If she was like, oh, our relationship's never been better. And he's like, she's gonna divorce me. I have to kill her, then maybe you're delusional. They also bar a newspaper for taking photographs. There was, like, no photographs of this fucking man or anything about this. Because they had ordered no photographs be taken and barred a newspaper. Who took a photograph so that no one else got any. I have one grainy newspaper picture of him being led into court in handcuffs. That's it. The verdict comes in. There's a separate instruction for the jury when it receives the. When it receives the case will deal with the defense's effort to prove the mental illness. Basically, you can find first degree murder, you can find second degree murder under diminished mental capacity, or you can find just crazy they find him guilty of first degree murder. First, of course, first degree murder. He was taken into custody. The judge told him, I'm sorry, but that's the way things are. Because he said, I want to continue my bond. And they're like, Nope, you're going. Mrs. Deborah Jo's mom said, justice was served. The children will suffer all their lives, but we'll take care of them. Yeah, the poor kids, man. I mean they're in their 30s now. Presentencing comes around and they're talking about, they're trying to figure out. They basically, they said the defense, the defendant was prejudiced by the court's admission of evidence, especially the videotape. So they're, before sentencing, they're trying to get shit thrown out or basically trying to say we should have an acquittal, a judge acquittal, a bench acquittal because of this evidence that shouldn't have been allowed in. In sentencing, Bill speaks. He says, the results of the trial were not understandable to me. I've tried to be a decent person. To this day, I don't know why and how this happened. He said, my wife's death was a terrible tragedy that shouldn't have happened. And the judge actually said, I think everyone in the courtroom would agree with that.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Bill, what are you doing?

[James Petregallo]

Then he condemned the media for, quote, distorted coverage of him.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Uh huh.

[James Petregallo]

And said he would appeal this conviction. He said that they said, have your attorneys represented him well? And he said, not really. He said, I wanted them to enter Christmas gifts that I bought for Deborah before her death to show how much we loved each other. The judge said, well, that wouldn't have mattered. You, sir, may fuck off. Life without parole. Wow. Eat dicks, Bill.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Yeah, forever.

[James Petregallo]

Also, there's a land transfer under scrutiny here. There was, I guess an attorney saying that's recently come to our attention that Bill Taylor has seen fit to attempt to transfer all of his real estate, which he holds record title. So he's trying to transfer it. Yeah, they don't take it to Charles and Betty, his parents there. So he appeals on the. Thinks the combine should have been suppressed. The coroner's testimony about the cat limited. Cross examination of Deborah's psychologist. Not talking about, about her mom or the quote, abortion doesn't matter. Conviction affirmed. Eat dicks. Keep going. Bill's still in prison, I think. I can't find Bill. I looked through the Missouri inmates. I couldn't find a guy with that date of birth. A lot of William Taylor's. There's like, oh, I'm sure but none of them are him. So I don't know which one is which, but there you go. Very quickly here, we gotta bust through the end. Shut up and give me. Murder.com is where you get the tickets for live shows. Nashville, February 21, you're up first. A bunch of them are selling out. Get your tickets right now. Patreon.com CrimeInSports all the bonus material that you can fucking handle. Hundreds of bonus episodes upon subscription. Anybody $5 a month or above. New ones every other week. One crime in sports, one small town murder. You get them all this week. Super bowl history of super bowl halftime shows for crime and sports. Dean corll, who is John Wayne gacy's idol, we think here he learned the handcuff trick from that whole thing that he is for small town murder, you get everything. You get all the ad free. You get a shout out at the end of the show. Do that. Shut up and givememurder.com follow on Instagram, smalltown murder, Facebook, small town pod. Do that. Keep coming back and seeing us until next week, everybody. It's been our pleasure.

[Jimmy Wisman]

Bye.

[James Petregallo]

Sa.