That's a Bad Sign

Poison Episode! Brigida Uto and Lana Sue Clayton

April 29, 2021 Emily Winchurch & Liz Mahoney Season 1 Episode 34
That's a Bad Sign
Poison Episode! Brigida Uto and Lana Sue Clayton
Show Notes Transcript

Coincidentally, Liz and Emily both chose POISON stories! 28-year-old Brigida Uto was near death in an emergency room, with only a few hours left to live. With the medical staff baffled, the FBI and local law enforcement were brought in to solve her medical mystery. Then we cover the story of Lana Sue Clayton, who used her charm and some households items to slowly poison her own husband. But was it for his money? Or was she an abused wife looking for a way out?

Sources:
Dateline “The Prussian Blue Mystery” episode
https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/family-of-local-woman-poisoned-by-navy-husband-speaks-to-nbcs-dateline/2496278/
https://www.heraldonline.com/news/local/crime/article247675985.html
https://www.heraldonline.com/news/local/crime/article239308933.html
https://www.wsoctv.com/news/local/lake-wylie-woman-accused-killing-husband-with-eye-drops-appear-court/IBBQWHZ63BARZDAD5Z7GWK5ZIY/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/01/17/eye-drops-manslaughter-husband-wife/
https://heavy.com/news/2018/08/lana-clayton-sue/
https://thefilmypant.com/article/where-is-she-today-is-lana-clayton-dead-or-alive/ 

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Liz: [00:00:00] Hey, Liz. Hey, can we just start with wide? I'm exhausted. Today has been such a day also just looking at us too. But with the festival we have, our hair is like a mess. We're just, the struggle is real. We're 
Emily: [00:00:15] recording on a Tuesday. Wow. It's only Tuesday. We're 
Liz: [00:00:18] already complaining about the week. Oh, I know you just thought it was Wednesday earlier 
Emily: [00:00:22] for people who don't know Liz and I both work.
But 
Liz: [00:00:26] just say work's really tough right now. It's um, not the easiest, but anyway, we power through to give you guys some stories. 
Emily: [00:00:35] So before that, let's start with recommendation 
Liz: [00:00:38] corner. Yes. And we have a good recommendation for you guys this week. I figured it could be a combined one. Yes. I think that's a good idea.
So we. Love this true crime podcast called whose crime is it? Anyway, you guys should all go give them a listen shell and Lisa are the hosts and they are based in Canada. And they're really just 
Emily: [00:00:58] awesome. You know, this is weird because we haven't met them and we DM with them a lot. We don't, we've never talked to them, but I feel like we're also similar.
I think that's why we like them so much. 
Liz: [00:01:08] Yeah. We're kind of the same age, kind of the same mentality. They definitely don't filter themselves. Neither do we, as you guys know, 
Emily: [00:01:15] and yeah, so funny. And I think if you guys are enjoying nice, but you're running out of episodes. Cause everyone like glistens weekly and then you need, you know, something else to listen to definitely go check out their podcasts.
And I've looked at some of their episodes and we really don't overlap that much. So you'll be getting a lot of new stories, 
Liz: [00:01:33] a lot of good ones, especially the Canadian ones. Cause obviously they cover a lot of. That, which we tend to do a lot of Canadian stories, but obviously not as authentic as them. So yeah, it's called whose crime is it?
Anyway, also the title is just LOL genius. Truly genius. Go check them out there on Apple podcast, Spotify, et cetera. 
Emily: [00:01:53] Well, with that recommendation, let's cheers to our 
Liz: [00:01:56] girls. Let's do it.
Um, all right, I'm ready. All right. Let me get comfortable. Let's 
Emily: [00:02:13] get uncomfortable. Remember 
Liz: [00:02:14] when you used to say that? Oh yeah, that was your catchphrase. I lost it somewhere along the way. Bring it back. All right, guys. Let's get on. Good. All right. I'm actually not going to tell you what the story is about.
I'm just going to jump right in. Okay. I'll give you my references at the end. In 2018, Bergida Yuto was a 28 year old woman, happily married to her high school sweetheart named race. And she was a mother of a two year old boy. The family was living in San Diego. Okay. As the months went on in 2018, Bergida started to feel really fatigued.
She was nauseous. Just really not feeling well at all. Okay. She had been to a bunch of doctors and nobody could figure out what was wrong with her. And she had been tested for cancer for auto immune diseases for everything. And no one could figure out why she was so sick. Her symptoms would sometimes come on violently and out of the blue.
So she had to call out work a lot. Um, because this was just sudden, she also thought that maybe stress was making her sick. She did have a two year old that she was tasting around. Her husband was in the Navy, but he was looking for a new job and she herself had just started a new job as a special ed teacher.
So, I mean, she had a lot going on, Oh 
Emily: [00:03:32] my God, where's this going? 
Liz: [00:03:34] Doctors eventually put her on medication for depression to see if that would help, but she just continued to get sicker. She ended up losing a lot of weight. She was kind of wasting away in front of her family's eyes and it was really scary.
But she was so tired of going to doctors and not getting any answers from them. Like she was just frustrated. And why go, if they're not going to figure anything out? Yeah. She was kind of ready to give up, but at this point she couldn't even walk well and she was just so fatigued and her hair actually started falling out.
So in March of 2018 at Brigetta called her mother and said she needed to go to the emergency room because she was having a hard time breathing and her legs hurt so badly that she had trouble even getting into the car. Oh, she was so weak that she could barely hold herself up and she was starting to lose her vision.
And she said to her mom just dropped me off as close as possible to the entrance of the hospital because I can barely move. Now. They went to a Navy hospital. I'm not sure if they lived on a Navy base or not, but it was closest, I guess, than anything else. The Navy doctors could not figure out what was wrong with her.
So her husband ended up taking her back to their normal family doctor. That doctor immediately called an ambulance as soon as they came into his office because she looked so awful. So they ended up taking her to someplace called Kaiser hospital in San Diego. One of the ER, doctors at this hospital evaluated Bergida and he knew something wasn't right.
So he called an, a team of specialists. So Dr. LaPointe came on board and he's a board certified. Medical toxicologist. Okay. Which is kind of, they describe as a sort of detective doctor. Very cool. I know it was so cool. I was like, maybe I should have done this in life. So he was tasked with figuring out what was wrong with her.
Why was her hair falling out? Why was she losing her vision? Why was she so weak? Originally doctors thought it was an autoimmune disease because of the symptoms, but. Dr. LaPointe just, wasn't so sure about that. But he did know that he had to figure out whatever was wrong really quickly because it Brigetta was rapidly deteriorating.
And she did not have a lot of time left. Dr. LaPointe thought that her symptoms that she was showing may have, what is the sentence that I wrote Dr. LaPointe that her symptoms showed she may have? Oh, that actually has. I just can't read. I had one of those earlier. I'll tell you what. Dr. LaPointe thought that her symptoms showed that she may have been exposed to a toxic chemical.
No shit, sure luck. So he's actually worried about her family too, if this is the case, because they've all been living in the same house. So he has her husband and her son admitted to another hospital so that they can also have some tests done. He also stops allowing visitors into Bergey's room because they don't really know what's going on with her.
If anything's contagious. Yeah. As Dr. LaPointe is looking through all of her symptoms. One really stuck out to him. And that was the sudden hair loss immediately when he thinks of this thallium comes to mind. And Saleem's a heavy metal that was discovered in the late 18 hundreds that began being used medically in the early 19 hundreds.
And what I mean, when I say medically is give this, I don't know what you want to call it. It's like an element. They would give value to kids if they had lice and they wanted their hair to fall out. Oh, that was short-lived. Uh, because there were a lot of negative health effects that came with it. Um, and just shave your head.
Yeah, I know. And just to tell you how toxic it is, this was also an ingredient in rat poison, and that was even outlawed in the 1970s because it's so highly toxic. Now, even though Dr. LaPointe had. You know a theory about this. There's no quick way to test for it because no hospital ever sees this. Like there's no reason for anyone to have Valium poisoning.
Yeah. So he has to take a sample and send it out to a lab. And that would take two to three days in order to get the results back. But he's thinking  might not even have two or three days. So as soon as he sends the sample out, his next thought is, okay, how do we get the antidote to me? The story seems like almost made up.
Okay. Oh, I'm freaking out. So the antidote is something called Prussian blue and it has been used as a pigment since the 17 hundreds. I mean, as in literally dying, like paint blue, But in 1965 scientists discovered that it could also be used as an antidote because it helps speed up elimination of certain poisons in the body such as thallium.
How do people figure this stuff out? But I have no idea crazy. Like what scientists are just messing around in their lab labs. 
Emily: [00:08:35] This pain actually can save 
Liz: [00:08:37] you. However, pharmaceutical grade pressure and blue is nearly impossible to find. Dr. LaPointe calls local pharmacies. He calls the Navy days. He calls the CDC and he finally found a storage site in Los Angeles.
Oh my God. Thank God. And it was a confidential storage site because this is also an antidote for radiation poisoning. So the United States has stockpiles of it hidden in case of a nuclear attack. Wow. The request for pressure and blue to be used as an antidote gets flagged by the FBI and their team that works on weapons of mass destruction, because in the past several decades, thallium has been used as an assassination weapon against former spies and people of that nature.
Wait, our government 
Emily: [00:09:27] used it against former. 
Liz: [00:09:29] No, I don't. I don't think that's what they're saying, but I am thinking yes, but. This was all happening. It just so happens. Days before president Trump was scheduled to visit San Diego to talk about the border wall. So the FBI is now on high alert, because this is extremely unusual to be requesting this antidote.
You know, the president's going to visit this area. What is going on here? Yeah. So three long days after Dr. LaPointe sent out the sample, the results came back and. It was positive for thallium. Oh my God. And a lot of it, like off the charts, it was apparently more than 1000 times the acceptable amount to have in your system.
Luckily the son and the husband did not have any thallium in their systems. Do you see I'm going with this? Yeah, I do a hospital employee drove through the night to get the Prussian blue pills for Bermuda to be used as the antidote. And doctor's worried that it wouldn't even be enough because of how much Dahlia was in her system.
So they also put her on dialysis. Her organs are just failing. Oh my God. While this is going on,  is still really sick. But the FBI sends in special agents to come question her because they want to know what's going on here. They ask her, is there any way you can think of that you would have been exposed to thallium and Brigetta gave a few theories.
She said that she had once received holistic medical treatment in Mexico. There was also the school that she worked at. It was an old army base and there could have been rat poison there. Investigators followed up on all these leads, but nothing really panned out. And then a hazmat team searched Bergida to his family house, but they didn't find any thallium there either.
They also had to look at the possibility that Brigetta may be poisoned herself because she was depressed or wanted attention. And while she did go through some, some tough times she and everyone who knew her told investigators that she was absolutely not suicidal. Yeah. So crossing all of these theories out, the only one they have left is that someone was intentionally poisoning her.
Obviously, let me take a sip of my wine. Let me pour some more. Well, you bastards. All right. Where am I? So why would someone choose thallium as a poison? And the answer is because it works as if someone is just in failing health, her symptoms were slow onset and it's, they really appear as if someone who had a chronic illness, I'm going to cry and that makes it easy to get away with.
The next question is how had she been poisoned? And when they. When Dr. LaPointe was examining her, they found thallium in her digestive tract. So they concluded that she had been ingesting it likely with her food. Now I love Dr. The point. He had actually suspected that this was what was going on from the get-go.
So that is part of the reason why he wasn't allowing Bergida to have visitors in the hospital. Smart man, because people had been bringing her gifts and food, et cetera. And he says a lot of times when people are being poisoned, they come to the hospital and they ended up getting worse because visitors who are coming in and bringing food are continuing to poison them.
Emily: [00:12:49] Oh my God. People are so crazy. So was she starting to get better now that this wasn't happening? 
Liz: [00:12:54] Um, well this is like immediately after they gave her the treatment. So she's still really sick, but it's, it's a slow recovery. Got it. So slow. They didn't even know if she was going to survive this honestly.
And a lot of people who are in situations like this, which I can imagine is a lot of people, sometimes they don't ever regained feeling in their legs, in their limbs. And sometimes their hair doesn't grow back. They didn't know if her vision was going to come back. So even if she did survive, it was going to be a rough road ahead.
No, however, she did start to slowly recover. Her vision came back and sh you know, she could see things from across the room. And she was aware of her surroundings because she was so sick that she wasn't really even involved in what was going on with her. She was like tuned out. Of course. Yeah. So now they have to figure out who in the world would be poisoning her.
Emily: [00:13:43] Hmm. Who do you think? 
Liz: [00:13:46] Definitely the two year old son. So Bergida tells investigators that she can't think of anyone in her life that would try to poison her, honey. I know. And she's terrified now thinking that someone's trying to hurt her. Investigators focus in on Brigetta inner circle. So her mother, her sister, and of course her husband race, when police question race, they say, you know, he was really helpful and friendly.
They said he cried. And he kept saying that he wished he could do something to help her. However, some of the hospital staff expressed concerns about racist behavior to investigators. They said he really didn't seem concerned about what was happening to his wife and his behavior was just not normal.
What else was he doing? It doesn't really say, but I imagine just being very unsympathetic. Yeah. Bergida thought there was absolutely no way that her husband could have been harming her. And she even got angry at people who suggested it. Remember, this is her high school, sweetheart. That is so sad. So she says, why would he do that?
You know, he was the one who actually brought her to the hospital, so he was trying to help her. And he also had been the one that was caring for her as she was getting more and more sick. But one of the ways he would care for her is bringing her food in bed when she was too weak to get up. Oh my God. As police looked further into race, they discovered that he had a very odd hobby.
He collected the types of plant seeds that are used to make poisons coincidence. I think that 16 days into his hospital stay detectives had enough evidence to search the Yuto home. Finally. Police ask race. You know, if we search your phone, is there anything that's going to come up as odd and your search history?
He says, no, no, no, not at all, but by the way, I just recently erased the search history on all of my electronics, honey. They can get through that. Yeah. Nice track. So they took us electronics, they searched the house and they searched his car in the car. They found a canister of acetone and packets of exotic seeds.
Brigetta sister. Olga says that she had actually seen race, throw out a black trash bag earlier that day, the same day they were searching his house. Oh my God. So she goes, dumpster diving and she finds it this sister. Yeah. I love that. That's what sisters are for. I know the bag had receipts for those exotic seeds in there.
It also had filtering mechanisms and solutions that are used to purify a poison. They also found evidence that race had tried to grind up castor beans to make a poison called Ryson, I guess that didn't work out. So that's why he injured with thallium. Oh my God. On races, electronics, which he thought he had wiped clean, they found two books, one called the Poisoner's handbook and one called criminal poisoning.
I'm sorry, who is making these books? I was thinking the same thing. Unfortunately, they didn't find any traces of thallium. So they actually didn't have enough evidence to arrest him. Like he has a hobby. We obviously know he did it, but we don't have enough actual evidence. It's circumstantial. Yeah. So the detectives went to the hospital and they laid out all the evidence they did have for Brigetta and they told her when, if, and when you get out of the hospital, you can never go back to him.
Imagine how scary that is. That's so sad. But police kept digging and they found out that race had a secret girlfriend. No, this girlfriend thought that his wife was dead. He played this card that he was a Nate, an ex Navy seal, which by the way, he was not, and that his wife had died. Little Scott Peterson there for you.
Exactly. Oh, but then they found out he had another girlfriend and this time he told this woman that he wanted his wife to get hit by a bus so that he could get sole custody of his skin, what a psychopath. But also my question is why would that woman continue seeing someone who just told you they want their wife to die?
Some women are really desperate. It's just, that is the ultimate bad sign. That's tabs. Police eventually brought race in for a polygraph test. And they asked him nine times if he had poisoned his wife and each time he said no. And he was pretty confident that he passed, but when they finished the polygraph technician looks at him and he goes, you failed this and you failed miserably.
I don't believe a word. You said, I love that polygraph 
Emily: [00:18:18] technician. 
Liz: [00:18:19] And he just immediately started confessing. What an idiot. No. Why even lie in the first place, then don't take a polygraph. He told them the first time he fed her thallium was in a sandwich. And then the next time he put it in soup and that he doled out the thallium based on Bermuda's weight.
And this had started back in the summer of 2017, Y Y just so he could, there's really no clear motive. And she had no idea. Nope. So he's also says when he, when she wasn't dying, he upped the dose. So that's why she got so sick. And honestly, the dose that he gave her should have killed her. But luckily it didn't, she's a strong 
Emily: [00:18:58] bad-ass 
Liz: [00:18:58] woman, race pled guilty to three counts of attempted murder.
And he is serving 21 years to life. The family is of course absolutely devastated because he was like a son to forget his parents. He was like a brother to her sister. How in the world, could he do that? And also just the sheer amount of pain that she was in that is not a humane way. It's if you're going to kill someone, that's just torture.
He's a psychopath. Yeah. So Brigetta has made a remarkable recovery. It took a long time and she was using a Walker at first, but now she goes on daily runs. She says she has a really, really hard time trusting people. Of course. 
Emily: [00:19:44] How could you not? 
Liz: [00:19:46] She is a CA a Christian and she never believed in divorce, but now she can't wait to get divorced.
How are they not divorced yet? I'm not sure, but it sounds like they're on their way. Like there are some exceptions for Christians. Isn't that an insane story? It's 
Emily: [00:20:03] so sad. And I figured it was the husband, but just the sheer fact that she didn't think that I thought, Oh, maybe it's, you know, a friend. 
Liz: [00:20:12] Yeah.
And this is why we always say you never really know someone. I was thinking 
Emily: [00:20:16] that the whole time, like, how am I ever going to get married? 
Liz: [00:20:20] How, um, well, I guess step one would be, don't marry someone who has a hobby such as. Collecting poisonous seeds, but 
Emily: [00:20:30] I'm sure he didn't start off that way. And that was her high 
Liz: [00:20:32] school, sweetheart.
Yeah. I mean, it's just really sad, but thank God she survived. Yeah. Unbelievable. 
Emily: [00:20:38] Wow. That was very interesting. That is that Liz, I have to tell you something. What is it? We did not discuss our cases, but my next case is also a poisoning. 
Liz: [00:20:52] No, I don't think we've ever done a poison case before. Have we. I don't think we 
Emily: [00:20:57] ever had, but this is weird because sometimes we choose cases they're are very similar.
Like that time we did the, um, the con artist episode. 
Liz: [00:21:05] Yup. Totally random. We like pretty much never know what stories each other are going to do until we start recording. 
Emily: [00:21:10] So not to give away my story, but I couldn't keep it at. And I had to tell you guys stay tuned. There's another poison story 
Liz: [00:21:18] coming.
Well, the poison episode, you've got to love an accidental theme. Cheers. Here's. Circling back here. That was an episode of Dateline. I didn't get my references. Oh, back back, back. Yeah.
Emily: [00:21:39] all right. So I already spilled the begins. I'm also doing a poison episode. My references include Herald online. W so CTV. The Washington post heavy.com and the filmy pant.com. 
Liz: [00:21:57] That's a 
Emily: [00:21:57] lot of references. I have the weirdest references. Now this is the story of the eye drops 
Liz: [00:22:02] killer. Oh boy, that sounds made up.
Emily: [00:22:07] That was why I picked this because I saw that and I thought that's a comical name to give somebody. 
Liz: [00:22:14] I can't wait to hear it. 
Emily: [00:22:15] So Lana Sue Clayton was a 52 year old nurse who was married to Steve Clayton. And they live together in South Carolina in a million dollar home modeled after Mount Vernon, pause, pop quiz.
Do you know what Mount Vernon is? 
Liz: [00:22:31] You know, it sounds really familiar, but I should know. 
Emily: [00:22:35] Uh, it's actually George Washington's house. Gotcha. Okay. I did not. I know that either, so don't 
Liz: [00:22:41] feel bad. I knew it was something with like colonial times, but that was really, but how interesting 
Emily: [00:22:46] that this couple built a house modeled after Mount 
Liz: [00:22:49] Vernon.
Definitely a really interesting, um, aesthetic. 
Emily: [00:22:53] So the couple was going on married for five years and they were happy. Lana had her job as a nurse and Steven, he was retired, but he was a very successful businessman and he had millions of dollars. Like he, he did really well job wise. What is interesting is that he had six ex-wives.
So Lana was his seventh 
Liz: [00:23:16] that's um, that's quite a few. 
Emily: [00:23:19] Right. I, I hate to throw shade, but that's a lot to is they had no kids. So they were just living there. Mostly retired life. Ilana was still working, but an older couple who had plenty of money in this giant estate, but then on July 21st in 2018, Lana finds her husband at the bottom of the stairs.
She immediately calls the police, but by the time they get there, he is pronounced dead. Now Atlanta is an open book with the investigators, so they don't suspect any foul play. And then the doctor's report comes back saying that, yep. He died of heart failure and then he fell down the stairs. So the case is closed, but Stephen's nephews are unsatisfied and they just think a few things are bizarre.
One, they said, Their uncle just had a weird relationship with his wife. And immediately when they heard that he was dead, they 
Liz: [00:24:16] suspected her. I hope that my nieces and nephews would be so concerned about me, that they would investigate also. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. 
Emily: [00:24:22] And also they said, you know what? That's just a feeling we had over the years, but also Lana is demanding that he gets cremated very quickly.
And when they went to her to say, can we see the world to see what he wanted for his funeral? And all of his what's it called? Like funeral next steps plans. Yeah. His funeral plans. She said, Oh no, there is Noel. And his nephews said, you know, he was very successful businessman with who started multiple companies and had millions of dollars.
There was definitely a will. 
Liz: [00:24:55] Yeah, something's very suspicious. 
Emily: [00:24:58] So the nephew is they actually go to a private company and somehow get a post-mortem toxicology check run, and they discover that Steven actually had the presence of eyedrops in his system. Like . 
Liz: [00:25:15] Yeah. Like I'm guessing a large amount, like, is that something that's like crazy that they even test for 
Emily: [00:25:20] that so they don't test for it.
So that's why the original coroner said, yeah, everything looks normal. He just died of old age, but this private company ran tests for hundreds of thousands of different things. And that's why they found this. And they said having a little Mount won't kill you. Cause it. I dropped. They said the ingredient in them are very similar to like a nasal spray, but they said the amount that he had in his system was a lethal, but it's something that never would have come up, had his nephews.
Hadn't gone to a private company and paid out of pocket for this random exam, Solana, his wife hears about the toxicology check and she goes to the police and she says, Hey, I want to let you know, by the way that, um, every morning my husband woke up and he put some Vaizey and in his espresso to help with his 
Liz: [00:26:12] digestive track, cannot say, I've ever heard of that before 
Emily: [00:26:16] and now the police have this toxicology report and they know that it's poison and they have Lon coming up to them and saying, this they're not buying it.
And they bring it to a doctor. And the doctor says no one in their right mind puts advising and their espresso also. Even if they did that, they would only last a few days. Like this isn't something you can do for years or months or even weeks. Like it will kill 
Liz: [00:26:39] you. I imagine it would taste really bad 
Emily: [00:26:41] too.
So I may be, but regardless don't do like people at home, don't do it general rule of thumb. Nobody does that. So please confront her and they say, we're not buying that story. We know you poisoned your husband. Again, let me just say, how crazy is it that we're both doing spouse 
Liz: [00:26:59] stories, a husband and a wife.
Emily: [00:27:02] She finally confesses and she says, you're right. I have been poisoning him. However, I only did it because he was extremely abusive. She said I was dragging him for about three days. And on the third day he got incredibly sick and to come to his illness and then, or sorry, so come to the poison and then fell down the stairs.
But initially I only did it because he was so abusive that when I did this and put  in his coffee, he would get vertigo and just be restricted to bed. And she said, I'm only doing this to keep him away from me. I had no intention of actually killing him. Her quote was yes, I did. Impulsively put Visene and Steve's drank by justice to make him uncomfortable.
I never thought it would kill him. So obviously with a confession like this, it goes to court. But the two sides of the debate are one, was this woman actually being abused. And can we consider this manslaughter? And if so, she'll only get about two years in prison because that's the minimum. Or was this cold blooded murder.
And did she just want to go after his money? And if that's the case, then she'll get 50 years in prison. So there's no debate that it was, he died and that she was on trial, but it was just, how long was she going to go to prison 
Liz: [00:28:17] for? Yeah, it's sort of like, they need to determine the motive. So 
Emily: [00:28:20] I'm going to pause here.
What do you think? 
Liz: [00:28:24] I don't think she was being abused. Okay. Heartache hot dog. I don't know why. I don't know this woman, but for some reason I've got feeling, 
Emily: [00:28:32] we go to court and there's the two sides. Like I said, the defense is saying she was being horribly abused and the prosecution saying, Nope, she was just after as money.
So for the prosecutor is arguing murder. He said, you know what? She was poising him for three days and he was in agony. That's not. Something spur of the moment she did. She was premeditated murder. When you're watching someone suffer for three days, he also said she poisoned him and then she took his phone and threw it in a nearby Lake.
So he couldn't 
Liz: [00:29:05] call anybody. Um, okay. So that's that 
Emily: [00:29:11] also, this isn't proven. But people said she burned the, well, sorry, I'm laughing. 
Liz: [00:29:18] No, it's just outrageous. 
Emily: [00:29:20] And then there's the incident of the crossbow? Apparently back in 2016, she called the police because she accidentally shot her husband in the face with a crossbow when he was sleeping.
Liz: [00:29:33] I'm sorry. I literally cannot even take this seriously. 
Emily: [00:29:39] But the husband agreed. And Steven, when the police got there, I think maybe it was a flesh wound on the side. I don't have details, but he survived. And he said, no, no, no. This is a condition. My wife, she have her sleeping, she can't sleep. And she does crazy things at night.
This, this is totally fine. So 
Liz: [00:29:57] she had him whipped 
Emily: [00:30:00] doesn't your boyfriend just shoot you in the base of the 
Liz: [00:30:02] crossbow. So, 
Emily: [00:30:04] um, So the prosecution brought this up as, this is a clear example of her trying to murder him two years prior and it didn't work. So now she's just finishing the task off by poisoning it 
Liz: [00:30:16] right.
Emily: [00:30:17] But now let's go to the defense aside and said, no, this is just a woman who's been abused. And she finally reacted to her, the man who was abusing harm. And the defense said, you know what? Glad that you brought up the crossbow incident because yes, she did shoot him in the face. When police went to the site, they both said that nothing was wrong, but when police questioned her alone, she admitted that her husband was verbally abusive to her.
Okay. So that's a little confusing. Yeah. Two years prior, she. Did have, you know, the same story. And also that's, that's like all I got for the abuse side, so we don't have that much information on it, but I do want to point out that the prosecution also questioned her. And they said, if you were being abused, then why didn't you just leave?
Which I hate. I hate when 
Liz: [00:31:04] people say that. Yeah. Like, Oh, it's just as easy as that, right? 
Emily: [00:31:08] Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I agree with you. I don't think she was being abused. I do think this was poison, especially that the phone and the will and everything, but I cannot stand when people say, well, if he was abusive, why don't you just, 
Liz: [00:31:20] that's just a sort of version of victim blaming.
At the end 
of 
Emily: [00:31:24] the day, she pled guilty to manslaughter, but the jury found that instead of the 50 years, max, she would get 25 years in prison. She's now serving at her sentence at the ladies only leaf correctional institution and Greenwood County in South Carolina. And she'll be eligible for parole in November 24th, 2013 nine.
Liz: [00:31:44] Wow. 
So 
Emily: [00:31:45] that was kind of a short story. Um, I own a, Y just found this story and I thought was so interesting mostly because it was the  killer. So I'm so glad that we, uh, We crossed 
Liz: [00:31:56] down this theme. We were so in sync, I think the moral here is that you really don't know anyone. And even if you're married to them, they might try to kill you.
And if you poison 
Emily: [00:32:06] your spouse, people 
Liz: [00:32:07] will likely figure it out. Yeah. You're not that smart. She's about to say you're not that smart. Yes, she honestly did almost get away with it though. 
Emily: [00:32:16] You're right. If it wasn't for his nephews that loved him. And also by the time that they got their second toxicology report, it was a month after.
So this woman thought she got away for 
Liz: [00:32:27] a month. Oh, totally. 
Emily: [00:32:29] That's another thing. Yeah. We always say, if you commit murder, get out of the country ASAP. 
Liz: [00:32:33] Yeah. If you've gotten away with it for a few days, that's enough time to get out of the country. Oh yeah. Hot tips from us and we will leave it there. Yeah.
Guys, as always. Please DMS on Instagram. If you have any stories that you want us to cover, we love hearing from you and 
Emily: [00:32:50] make sure to give us a review on Apple podcasts. We bring this up all the time, but we would really 
Liz: [00:32:56] appreciate it. It really would help us out. And we got a few last week and they were awesome.
Liz, most of those were from me. Okay. Maybe two of them were real. So we would appreciate it, please, please tell us your real .