00:00:00
This is exactly right. Isn't some far off concept? It's already here. Next starts now.
00:00:33
Hyundai, an official partner of FIFA. Goodbye. When a charming neurosurgeon rode into Frontier Town
00:00:39
selling a persona of confidence and care, patients trusted him. He wore cowboy boots in the operating room
00:00:45
and became sought after by patients. He promised to heal them. Instead, he left a trail of broken bodies.
00:00:51
This is a story of greed, betrayal, and a fight for justice. Listen to Dr. Death the Cowboy wherever you get your podcasts
00:00:58
or binge the entire series right now only with Audible. Goodbye. Pandora Jewelry brings the sparkle to summer, now with even better prices.
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Shop now for up to 50% off select jewelry featuring personalized pieces to must-have summer favorites.
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00:01:18
Terms and conditions apply. See Pandora.net for more details. Goodbye. Hi, guys. We have a couple of really quick, exciting shows to announce in November.
00:01:28
of this year. It's the 22nd in Manchester, the 23rd in Glasgow, the 24th in Dublin, the 27th in
00:01:35
London. We're so excited to see you guys in the UK and beyond. Go to myfavoritemurder.com to find
00:01:41
out the presale codes and tickets and how to get those presale codes and tickets. We can't wait to
00:01:47
see you. Yay. Elvis? Yay? Want a cookie? Good boy. What's up, Milwaukee? Milwaukee!
00:02:19
I totally forgot I had this on for a minute. Okay, check this shit out. Karen in Georgia, on behalf of the state of Wisconsin,
00:02:35
we would like to pronounce you queens of the cheese factory of Athens. Sorry, pretty sure it was princess, but whatever.
00:02:55
That's the best thing I've ever seen. You were the last one. Did she not know that everyone else was sitting down?
00:03:01
Oh, no. She didn't know everybody else sat down. God bless your heart. She was just, yes.
00:03:09
Oh, shit. She was just showing off that she was in the front row. I can't see behind me.
00:03:17
She's like, what? Wait, we're only halfway through the note. This is what I love.
00:03:22
If you don't know what we're talking about, you made it up on episode 139. Yeah, you need to explain our jokes to us when you say them to us.
00:03:31
Yeah, it's important. Because we don't remember half the shit we say. Please wear these cheese tiaras as a symbol of solidarity
00:03:37
for your Wisconsin murderinos, best Jake and Kelsey. I mean. You look good. Thank you.
00:03:49
You look like you're going to sell. You're like a car salesman or something. Thank you?
00:03:54
Yeah. No, thank you. That is good. That's a compliment. Come on down. I'll buy a car from you.
00:03:59
We've got Chevy Chevette's going for $59.99. Oh, my God. Can we leave these on the whole show?
00:04:07
Yes, we can. I love it. No, this is weird. Oh, and I ate a fish fry today, too. Thank you.
00:04:19
It was delicious. One person booed about it. Yeah. Don't ignore the people who are trying to go against the fucking grain.
00:04:28
Fucking vegan. Not tonight. Not tonight, anti-fish fry people. I fucking hate fish.
00:04:34
And I'm all about this fish fry story. Let's hear it. Oh, we went to the market, the Milwaukee Indoor Market.
00:04:42
Oh, my God. Such a good market. So cute. Make sure to say hi to Stephanie at the spice station, girl.
00:04:49
It was so sweet. Who else? What was there? Just a shit ton of spices? Yeah, you got to have those in those markets.
00:04:58
You know. Really? You're like, can I get five ounces of paprika? Yes. For real? Yes.
00:05:03
Oh, you don't do enough high-end indoor market shopping. I guess I don't. I guess I don't.
00:05:09
It's fun. You buy a little of this and a little of that. What'd you get? Truffle salt.
00:05:14
it's kind of my favorite thing is it really yeah wait are you secretly rich no yeah no i just love trump i stole it don't worry oh okay hello stephanie
00:05:30
oh yeah you put that on everything but then we went and got fish fry and it was really good and oysters and crab legs for breakfast
00:05:39
Are you the fucking little mermaid or what's happening? Whole crab. Well, I stayed in my room all day and I didn't know how time was passing and
00:05:55
when the right when the When the poor woman who came to clean the rooms was like hey housekeeping And I was just like I don want you to see what I doing in here
00:06:06
A lot of towels on the floor for no reason. It's so embarrassing. She just goes, want some new towels?
00:06:12
I was like, yeah, this thing. Thank you. But you know what I didn't do? Well, you do know.
00:06:17
I know. I'm going to tell you a story that you're a part of. So last night, and this happens a lot.
00:06:23
So, first of all, we're so thrilled. This is the final weekend of a five-month winter-spring tour.
00:06:32
Thank you. In case you don't know how to count, that's two different seasons of the year that we've been touring.
00:06:41
Yeah, half a year, some would call it, that we've been coming to see everybody. And it's, of course, been amazing, but we also are very excited that this is the last one.
00:06:51
And we're very, very excited to be here for lots of reasons. So as I was saying last night, you know, as that progresses, you get a little bit, I should say,
00:07:02
I get a little bit more fucked up and unwound and like a little crazier where I'm like, look what I brought.
00:07:08
And I look down and it's like, I didn't bring, this time I didn't bring any pajamas.
00:07:11
Yeah. Of any nightwear of any kind. Me neither. But there's like seven choices of jeans, which I never wear.
00:07:20
Like will not wear. But I can if I want to. In the room that I never leave. So I should just bring like a kimono and just get real with myself.
00:07:32
Be up in that bed. Anyway, what I realized last night, thank you, before, right as I was getting into the shower,
00:07:42
is the one toiletry item I forgot to bring was shampoo. And so I was like halfway in and I came back out.
00:07:49
And then I went to get the hotel shampoo because they have it all lined up, right?
00:07:53
There's like four things. And as I look down, it's like body wash, body wash, body lotion, conditioner.
00:07:59
And I'm like, fuck! No! And so, because my hair had been dirty for a full 24, I believe.
00:08:10
Airplane dirty, too. That's not everyday dirty. Airplane dirty is like, burn your pillowcase dirty.
00:08:16
You've got other people's stuff on you. So don't think about it. Don't think about it.
00:08:21
So what I see there, though, is that I have brought a little travel size of that Dr.
00:08:27
Bronner's Castile soap. Oh, really? What are you, some kind of dirty fucking hippie?
00:08:33
Because that shit doesn't work. Hi. I mean, it works great on horses. Yes. And like middle-aged balding men like my dad.
00:08:43
Sure. Or if you're maybe at a reggae festival and you simply don't know what's happening.
00:08:47
But Dr. Bronner, as you know, has written on the package, along with a bunch of other psychotic ramblings, that you can use that Castile soap as shampoo.
00:09:00
So I was like, I'm all set. And I picked that thing up and then proceeded to fill my hair with fucking goop.
00:09:07
And it wouldn't come out and couldn't rinse it out. So I basically had to leave the hotel room.
00:09:16
I saw Georgia when we met in the hallway, and I'm just like, touch this. Touch it.
00:09:22
It's so horrible. I don't really want to. Come on, get in there. And I thought it was still wet.
00:09:28
I thought she hadn't dried it yet. And so did Vince. When we got here, Vince was like, oh, we have a blow dryer.
00:09:32
And it was totally dry. It's dry. Just like somehow looked tangled and dried out and then wet, too.
00:09:40
Yeah. It wasn't great. But then tonight I realized that maybe Georgia lent me half of her
00:09:48
And I'm not even joking Madison Reed shampoo Promo cut murder Listen, I fucking I stick with my word
00:09:59
My word is my shampoo She fucking means it We have article furniture and we use Madison Reed
00:10:05
Oh, Away suitcases We like free shit We really love free shit That's what it is It's a brag and it's also the best.
00:10:14
So I use a little bit of that. Then I realize maybe something's wrong with my hair
00:10:19
because it wasn't much different after the Madison Reed. I don't know what it is.
00:10:23
I think I'm just at the end. I'm just at the end of this tour, basically. My hair's like, we're not doing it anymore.
00:10:29
So you can do whatever you want. You gave up. Yeah, I think you did. Oh, no. Yeah.
00:10:34
Can I tell you a secret? Sure. An embarrassing one? Just to me or everybody? Yeah, don't listen.
00:10:38
Okay. I have a paper cut on my lip that I got backstage. What? Because I was eating beef jerky and I got it stuck in my teeth.
00:10:49
So I went to get it out with my murder. And ripped my lip. Guys, that hurt. It's not the best way to get food out of your teeth, it turns out.
00:11:02
And I carry fucking toothpicks everywhere I go. Instead, I'm like, paper cut. It's fun.
00:11:09
It's fun. You know what else? This is the podcast, My Favorite Murder. This is Karen Kilgaris.
00:11:19
This is Georgia Hartstark. Thank you. We're so excited to be here on our rug with our people.
00:11:29
Yeah. Oh, and with Stephen's headphones. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. From last night. Some lovely person named Nicole, I think, made us a knitted Stephen that complete with
00:11:44
headphones around its shoulders, which Stephen always has. And then they fell off, but they're still here.
00:11:51
How cute is that? Good. Should we sit down? Oh yeah Yeah let do it Okay Fucking These chairs are worthy of our cheese crowns I just want to say
00:12:06
These are... Cheese thrones? Correct me if I'm wrong, because I've never seen a fuckin' episode.
00:12:11
These are Game of Thrones chairs? No. Sorry! These are more Downton Abbey style.
00:12:18
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Early Victorian? It's, yeah, still the same. It's the same era.
00:12:23
heavy is the same historical era um see let's see you're good no it's good it's good how's mine very uh yeah yours is good my bangs are expertly
00:12:38
covering one of the biggest zits i've ever had on my forehead it's kind of like not as it if your
00:12:43
fucking hair covers it it's like i cheated my hormones that's right it's the same as um it's
00:12:49
not a zit if you just put some eyeliner on it and make it into a beauty mark. I highly recommend that one because certain things happen when you have a beauty mark
00:13:00
right on your face that you don't realize could happen when you don't have one. I'm just saying, open up a little.
00:13:07
You know, beauty mark girls, they're fucking slutty. No, I'm just kidding. I don't know.
00:13:12
I don't really know. All I know is every time I've done it, at some point in the evening, I was so drunk
00:13:16
that I smeared my own beauty mark. That poor girl has mascara on her upper lip. That's what an alcoholic she is.
00:13:25
And a zit. She has mascara. Oh, and a zit under it. What's happening? What the fuck?
00:13:32
Is she okay? Oh, you want to tell them about the podcast? Oh, yes. No one needs to know this in here, I'm sure.
00:13:37
But just in case, there's always a few stragglers. There's always a few dazzle-faced husbands that we see after the show
00:13:46
that are just like, I don't know what she's doing and I don't know why she's doing it with you now.
00:13:50
Or bosses that are like, is this, can I fire her for this? Or friends that are like,
00:13:56
I can't stop being friends with her now. So for all of you drag-alongs, that's what we like to call you,
00:14:02
people that got brought here and are sitting in seats that people would have killed for.
00:14:10
You're just sitting there, stunned. this is a true crime comedy podcast and sometimes people hear that combination
00:14:18
they get very sensitive about it and they think it's disrespectful even though they never listen to it
00:14:22
and they think they know who we are even though they don't know what they're talking about
00:14:27
so we just like to tell everybody that George and I have both loved true crime since we were young
00:14:33
we've both been obsessed with it in ways we can't explain most of you understand
00:14:37
and thank you But also at the same time, we've dealt with the horrors of our own lives and reality of the world through humor.
00:14:48
And so it only made sense for us when we started this podcast that when we have these conversations about these horrible cases,
00:14:55
that we would also do the thing that we're used to doing, which is relieving the tension and getting away from how human beings can hurt each other so much through the joy of comedy.
00:15:07
And so essentially what I'm saying is if you don't like it, you can get the fuck out right now.
00:15:17
That was a good one. That was a good one. It was longer than usual. Yeah, but last night was shorter, so you were making up for it.
00:15:25
Yeah, I'm just, I'm really trying to feel it out. I never really want to land on a certain specific monologue until, of course, we start doing this as a musical.
00:15:34
and then it'll be totally different. If fucking Mean Girls can be a musical, then this can be a fucking musical.
00:15:41
We can even make a musical? I mean... Shit. I can't sing. You can play yourself.
00:15:48
I'm going to be the one non-singing person in the musical. You can play the drums
00:15:51
and you can lip sync like a lot of people on Broadway do. Really, I can do both of those things mediocre.
00:15:59
While the world watches the stars at the FIFA World Cup this summer, Hyundai has its eyes on the next generation of talent.
00:16:05
The future soccer stars who are already turning heads at age 14. Making plays that end up on everyone's feed, scoring from angles that don't make sense,
00:16:13
rewriting record books that barely had time to gather dust. Because Next doesn't wait for an invitation, and Hyundai doesn't either.
00:16:19
Hyundai has always moved the future within reach. Hyundai did it by making advanced safety standard on every vehicle.
00:16:25
Hyundai did it by engineering EVs with ultra-fast charging capability. And Hyundai continues doing it every day.
00:16:31
From robotics that change how people live to young athletes changing the game, the future isn't some far-off concept.
00:16:38
It's already here. Next starts now. Hyundai, an official partner of FIFA. Goodbye.
00:16:44
Pandora jewelry brings the sparkle to summer, now with even better prices. Shop now for up to 50% off select jewelry featuring personalized pieces to must-have summer favorites.
00:16:53
Timeless jewelry made to move with you through every moment. Shop in-store or online now through July 5th.
00:16:59
Terms and conditions apply. See pandora.net for more details. Goodbye. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace.
00:17:06
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00:17:55
Goodbye You first tonight I am Okay And because of that I going to do the story of Lori Bambi Ben
00:18:11
What's that? You're going to know what it is when I start telling you. Okay. They know.
00:18:20
They know. They're murmuring about it. This story, first of all, takes place in Milwaukee, which is crazy.
00:18:28
And secondly, I think it was happening. It was happening essentially from when I was 12 to when I was, you know, like a little bit after.
00:18:36
And so when I was paying attention to it, it was always in, well, I guess till present.
00:18:41
But it was always just kind of half paying attention to it because it just was always presented as basically this harlot killed this woman.
00:18:50
and the end. That's how the first cycle of stories about this case went. Then there was the later
00:18:59
cycle of this was actually much different than anybody thinks it is. And to dig into the story
00:19:04
and find out all this stuff, it's fucking crazy. It's crazy. So a lot of the information I got is from
00:19:12
an episode of one of the best produced true crime shows on television, Vanity Fair Confidential.
00:19:18
I don't know if you've seen it. True. We're not kidding. It really is. They're laughing. Why?
00:19:25
And I know that you watch that because you and Jay were accidentally on the thread today.
00:19:30
So we don't know the other's murder and I love surprises. So I get really upset if I find out or you find out about it early.
00:19:36
And then I wake up from a nap to Georgia, don't read any of this. And it was like it was probably a 25 text exchange of me going, what about this picture?
00:19:46
What about that? Do you have this? I just don't understand why you don't like Vanity Fair confidential.
00:19:52
That's the weirdest. It's so odd to me. It's journalism, people. It's good. So on that show, maybe you need to explain to you.
00:20:03
On that show, journalists who work for Vanity Fair and who have had stories published in Vanity Fair
00:20:10
then walk you through the stories that they've reported on. So the two journalists featured in this who originally wrote the Vanity Fair article about this story were named Bob Drury and Marnie Inskip.
00:20:22
And then they're featured prominently in this show. So, OK, so let's get into it.
00:20:28
At about 1215 a.m. on May 28th, 1981, an intruder enters the Milwaukee home of Christine Schultz.
00:20:36
They blindfold her, bind her hands with clothesline, gag her with a blue bandana, and then shoot her in the back with a .38 caliber pistol.
00:20:45
The bullet pierces Christine's heart and kills her. Oh, my God. I don't know this one yet.
00:20:50
Yeah. We're just getting right into it. This is Christine Schultz. Her sons, 11-year-old Sean and 7-year-old Shannon, are at home.
00:21:00
They hear what they think is a firecracker. They get up. They run to their mom's room and find her laying there, bloody.
00:21:06
Oh, my God. Horrible. So Sean calls a family friend and says somebody broke into our house because he actually saw the person in the hallway
00:21:15
and says that the person was wearing a green jogging suit, was about six feet tall,
00:21:20
was wearing a wig that was maybe red or maybe blonde. And then, of course, the police are called.
00:21:27
So 30-year-old Christine is a single mother. She'd just been divorced six months earlier, and her ex-husband, Fred Schultz, was a detective with the Milwaukee Police Department.
00:21:37
Oh, shit. Yeah. Okay. So, he and his partner, Michael Durfee, are the first responders at the scene.
00:21:46
What? Yes. They get there first. Yeah. Guys, don't tell me what happens. Okay. So, of course, Fred goes straight to his sons and is comforting them and taking care of them.
00:22:00
and then the other cops show up. But when the detectives start investigating the scene,
00:22:06
the other detectives, they immediately think that something is fishy because this is, of course, not a normal robbery
00:22:12
with somebody being bound and gagged. So Fred Schultz is questioned, of course. He's the ex-husband.
00:22:18
He tells detectives he and his partner were at a robbery call at the time of the murder.
00:22:23
But when the investigators look into it, it turns out that Fred and his partner were actually at a bar drinking at the time.
00:22:32
Not supposed to do that, I don't think. Not on duty. Not on duty. Just fucking wait until you clock off.
00:22:40
So that's not good that he was lying. It kind of freaks everybody out immediately.
00:22:45
Then they take both his service weapon and his off-duty weapon, and they send them both to the crime lab for testing.
00:22:56
And so, oh wait, I have a picture of the gun. Ooh, that's a big one. That's some 1980s shit right there.
00:23:08
Right? It's pretty dirty, Harry. So the investigators drive Fred out to the crime lab to show him the results of the gun testing.
00:23:22
They don't do that if it's good news. No, I don't think so. No. No. and it basically shows that his off-duty revolver was the gun used in the murder.
00:23:34
On the way back from the crime lab, Fred tries to jump out of the moving car that's going 60 miles an hour.
00:23:41
So I would call that strike two. I keep looking at you guys as if I'm like, no, you didn't.
00:23:49
You guys did that? That's not a thing. But here's the thing. Fred Schultz swears he did not kill his wife,
00:23:55
and there's a bunch of people that were at the bar drinking when he was there that can confirm his alibi.
00:24:02
And there was only one other person who had access to his gun, which was in a gym bag in his bedroom closet.
00:24:10
And that was Fred's brand new wife, 22-year-old, Lorencia. Yes, that's right. You were just doing a little marriage math there, weren't you?
00:24:20
They'd been divorced six months before, and he was remarried four months after that divorce.
00:24:26
And then subtract their age difference. Ten years? And add, she's 22, and you get...
00:24:32
A bummer story. Yeah. That's right. Once again. That's right. So the only other person that was anywhere, had that gun available to them,
00:24:42
was his new wife, 22-year-old, Lorencia Lori Bembenek. And this is her. Let me see her.
00:24:50
Oh, my God. So I think, as we all know, people who follow true crime, When you have a stand, I won't call it standard, but when you have a case of a wife being shot and a husband being looked at, that's pretty standard.
00:25:05
Until you have somebody that looks like this in the mix. And that's when the media shits a brick.
00:25:12
Yeah. And goes fucking insane. Sure. And so, and this was the 80s. So it was kind of the early, this was pre the CNN 24 hour news cycle.
00:25:21
This was right at the beginning of this kind of tabloid-style news, crime coverage.
00:25:30
And of course, everybody loves to hate a pretty lady. So they begin looking into the new Mrs. Schultz.
00:25:40
And Lori was supposedly home alone in their apartment when Christine was murdered.
00:25:44
So she has no actual alibi. and she had access to the off-duty revolver and she also had access to Christine's house keys
00:25:54
because Fred had taken them. He had taken his older son Sean's key and copied it
00:26:00
and so he had a key to Christine's house, which was his old house. Which he wasn't supposed to.
00:26:05
Well, I mean, I don't think Christine knew it. Right. Yeah, because he had moved out of the house.
00:26:10
So the police look into the couple and this is when they start, witnesses come forward and say that they have overheard Lori
00:26:20
talking at dinner parties about how she thinks that she wants Christine dead. Oh, that's not dinner party conversation.
00:26:28
It really isn't. It's really not. You know what that is? You go into the kitchen and you say it under your breath to your sister.
00:26:35
Yeah. And this is coming from people who talk about murder at dinner parties. Yes.
00:26:40
Fucking. Don't talk about that. That kind of shit of like, I'm going to wait until 20 people gather around, throw back some white wine, and then start talking about how I want my husband's ex-wife dead.
00:26:53
Yeah. It doesn't make sense. So they said that she had said she wished Christine were dead and that someone ought to, quote, take her out.
00:26:59
What the fuck? Right. The cops then theorize that Lori took her new husband's service revolver, jogged over to Christine's house.
00:27:07
Get that exercise in. In disguise. You've got to multitask, right? You've got to.
00:27:12
Get your shit done. 22-year-olds. 22. Jogged over to Christine's house in disguise, let herself in with a copied key, bound, gagged, and then shot Lori and then jogged home.
00:27:26
Fuck. Or walked at a leisurely pace. We don't know. Okay, so with all this circumstantial evidence pointing to Lori, on June 24, 1981, police go to Marquette University, where she's an on-duty.
00:27:42
the fighting leotards. Can you imagine? They just get so angry at each other. They come alive with sweat.
00:27:58
It's like two thin boa constrictors. I don't want that game to die. I just don't want it to.
00:28:09
Okay, she is on duty there as a public safety officer, and she had been a police officer in the Milwaukee Police Department for a couple months,
00:28:22
and then she got fired because she went to a concert, and according to her, her friend started smoking pot, and they got caught,
00:28:30
and then she got busted for it, and because of that, she was fired. She claims that she was not smoking pot, but they didn't care.
00:28:38
So basically then she had a job as a security officer, and this is her when she was arrested.
00:28:45
That's a child. I know, 22? That is a child. Okay. Oops. So Lori's released on bail while she awaits trial.
00:28:55
In November 1981, while she's out on bail, she and Fred marry for a second time because they had been informed that you can't get married if you've just been divorced.
00:29:09
Like, you can't get remarried within six months. What? So that's... It's Wisconsin law.
00:29:16
Yeah. Yeah, we know. I mean, can't a person fall in love in four months? I'm here to talk about divorce law.
00:29:29
Oh my god, I hope they talk about it. It's my area of expertise. Jesus. So anyway, their marriage is declared annulled.
00:29:45
Okay. And then they have to get remarried right after the six-month mark. What a bummer.
00:29:51
Yeah, right? Okay, so here, oh, this is them together. Oh no. Look at that shirt Okay so it jay actually okay so just stop yelling so uh let go back
00:30:10
to how the two of them met so fred and laurie they met at a bar called the tracks which is so
00:30:16
hilarious there's a there's a tracks bar in petaluma where my sister will be like
00:30:23
do you want to go out? And then Adrian will be like, yeah, let's go to Trax. And then Laura's like, well, then that's like not going
00:30:30
out, so let's fucking not go out. It's like every town has one. So apparently in Milwaukee, Trax is like a
00:30:36
cop bar and a party bar. It wasn't a sobriety bar at all. So they meet at Trax. Lori is, and I'm sure you can tell,
00:30:48
but she was very beautiful, tall, thin. She did some modeling in her time. She'd also been a waitress at the Playboy Club.
00:30:56
So she was a beautiful lady. And Fred was known as a ladies' man and a party guy.
00:31:02
And his nickname was Disco. That's right. What's up, Disco? Who's the first one who called him that?
00:31:10
Some really hilarious cop. If you're not a drug dealer and your nickname is Disco,
00:31:15
you need to get right with the Lord. You need to assess. So, Lori and Disco fall deeply in love.
00:31:27
They fall in deep, deep cocaine love. And are married within two months of meeting each other.
00:31:35
That's how you know it's real. So, the authorities believe that Lori's motive for murder is that she hated the fact that half of her husband's paycheck was going to his ex-wife.
00:31:48
and it was keeping her from living the high life like she wanted to live, being rich or whatever.
00:31:56
So basically I just told that story that Laurie's father had been a police officer
00:32:03
and that's why she wanted to be a police officer herself. So when that thing happened with getting fired because of the pot,
00:32:08
she was super fucking pissed and she wanted to fight it and they were just basically like, no, you're out entirely.
00:32:15
So then arises this picnic party scandal at the Trax Bar. Picnic party scandal. It's a picnic party scandal.
00:32:23
Get ready. Hold your asses. So. That sounds like a 1960s beach movie. Picnic party scandal.
00:32:36
You know it's the end of the tour when I just can't even make up the dumbest lyrics.
00:32:44
I just can't even do my usual terrible lyrics. Okay. So here's the picnic party scandal.
00:32:51
Somebody gets Christine. I'm sorry. Somebody gets Lori. These pictures of this picnic party where there's, it's basically just like a, it's like an office party for the police.
00:33:04
But there are pictures of naked police officers standing on these picnic benches, like posing and shit.
00:33:11
And there's not just one, but like five of them. And then there's a couple women get naked.
00:33:18
And then there's, you know, she hears that there's cocaine at this party. Someone fucking opened the evidence locker room.
00:33:24
Yeah, for real. Picnic party. Look at this suitcase filled with medical grade coke.
00:33:31
So the picnic party got crazy. Someone got Lori the pictures from the picnic party.
00:33:38
And she fucking went to internal affairs and said, I would like to file a report because I got fired for allegedly smoking pot.
00:33:48
So what are you going to do to these guys? Shit. Kind of. Your heart is in the right place.
00:34:01
Well, the fight was in the right place. but I don't know how much you want to go up against an entire police department.
00:34:09
Like, I don't know. Especially a naked one. Especially a naked one. Addicted to coke in 1981 as a 22-year-old woman.
00:34:17
Not easy. Of course, the Milwaukee police takes no official action, but the Justice Department gets wind of this, and they open a file.
00:34:27
And there's actually then an accusation that what really happened behind Lori's firing was that the Milwaukee Police Department was taking money to hire women and minorities, and then they would just hire them, take the money, and immediately fire them.
00:34:43
That was the accusation. It was never proven. Dead rats begin appearing on the windshield of Lori's car, and the car also starts getting keyed all the time.
00:34:55
Which one's worse? Dead rats. But dead rats aren't permanent. You can just turn on those windshield lights and peel out.
00:35:13
But the thing is, this entire case goes away when Lori Bimbenek is arrested for Christine's murder.
00:35:21
Okay. A coincidence? I don't think so. But I don't know, actually. So once she's arrested and then the reporters and the media find out that she used to be a Playboy club waitress and a model, they go crazy.
00:35:41
And that's when she is given the nickname Bambi. This entire fucking time, I thought her real name was Bambi.
00:35:48
Yeah. This entire time. Bambi and disco. Right. Boom. All right. Okay Oh this is the picture When she appears in court her appearance is what takes center stage It all anybody talks about And it actually turns this case into an international news sensation
00:36:07
So, you know, she's a tall model blonde sitting there going, I didn't kill my husband's ex-wife.
00:36:14
It's what they dream of in newspapers. That's her actually holding the gun. Yeah.
00:36:19
Yeah. All right. I might get that haircut. Okay. So the modeling and the playboy waitressing element only fuels the prosecution's argument that Lori is a notoriously, quote-unquote, loose woman with financial problems who is, quote, addicted to expensive living.
00:36:38
And that she wanted Christine out of the picture so that Fred wouldn't have to pay her any more alimony.
00:36:43
And the investigators claim to find two hairs at the crime scene that match Lori's.
00:36:48
And that's their strongest piece of evidence. and that plus access to the murder weapon, which has blood on it.
00:36:56
So the prosecution also introduces witnesses to testify about Lori talking about wanting Christine dead at dinner parties on multiple occasions.
00:37:06
One witness even came forward to say that Lori offered to pay him as her hitman to do the job, but he declined.
00:37:13
And then on top of all that, the investigators find a wig in the plumbing system in Lori's apartment.
00:37:19
and it's made of fibers that match the fibers, the wig fibers found at the crime scene.
00:37:26
She tried to flush a wig down the toilet? Yeah. Girl. Right? What the fuck? Burn your wigs, everybody.
00:37:36
If you walk away with anything tonight, burn your crime wig. You guys didn't have straws banned here, did you, for the turtles?
00:37:53
Oh. No. We, in California, they banned straws, like, immediately because they're, like,
00:37:57
they're getting stuck in turtles' noses, and immediately you're just like, wait, can I have a straw with this?
00:38:02
And they were banned. And then they were, like, paper straws. And I'm like, those are mushy.
00:38:05
Yeah. But I love turtles. What do I do? I just like the idea that in this, you flush a wig, it goes out into the ocean,
00:38:11
and that turtle's like, what the fuck? Oh, wait a second. Heads on. Maybe. Maybe I don't hate it so much after all.
00:38:21
Yeah. Then they evolve to have long, beautiful, flowing hair. But it's like purple and blue and like fucking disco style.
00:38:30
Okay. Okay. There it is. Okay. They also bring in a local boutique worker as a witness who says that Lori came into the shop to purchase a wig shortly before the murder.
00:38:48
So despite all this evidence, Christine's son, Sean, the 11-year-old, who called the friend, the older son,
00:38:55
he states he does not believe the intruder is Lori. Wow. And when I read that, I was just like, oh, that's so sad and weird.
00:39:03
Until. What no one knows is that at the time, the reason Christine Schultz had filed for divorce against Fred
00:39:11
is because she had to call the cops on him several times for battery. And there are police reports that back this up.
00:39:20
And once the marriage had ended, she then started dating a different police officer.
00:39:26
So he was super pissed and everybody knew it, that Christine was still living in the house that he had built,
00:39:32
that she was getting half of his money, and now she was dating a co-worker. And in this episode of Vanity Fair Confidential, Marnie Inskip, who's the other journalist,
00:39:43
actually says, quote, the title of our piece was Bambi framed, and there was no doubt
00:39:50
in my mind that she was. What? Yes. So, on March 9th, 1982, after four days of deliberation, the jury finds
00:39:58
now 23-year-old Bambi Bambanek, Lori Bambanek, sorry, that's her actual name, guilty of murder. She's sentenced
00:40:06
to life in prison and is sent to the... to Cheetah? Really? Wow. I thought I almost lost my crown.
00:40:20
See, I highlighted it because I was going to ask someone how to pronounce it. Then I just did a bunch of makeup for a while.
00:40:30
When she gets to jail, she gets a note from Fred, and all it says is, Goodbye, good luck.
00:40:39
In prison. In pres. Night one. Oh, here's my husband wrote me a letter. I'm going to feel so much.
00:40:47
Put that under my pillow and night night. Good night. Good luck. What does that mean?
00:40:55
So creepy. So creepy. Good luck in jail. And about a year later, he sends her another letter saying that he's moving to Florida
00:41:04
allegedly to live with a 19 year old girl. So they're granted their divorce on June 19th, 1984.
00:41:13
and this is around the same time that Fred, who in the beginning, right after her arrest,
00:41:20
was saying there's no way she could have done it. A year later, he's telling everyone that Lori is guilty as sin.
00:41:26
What? Because fucking Disco Freddy betrays all. Oh, shit. So in jail, Lori starts to put together that maybe Fred has somehow framed her for Christine's murder
00:41:40
and that she basically took the fall for his own plan. He was the one who hired Lori's lawyer, and she feels that maybe he willfully neglected
00:41:54
any evidence that tied Fred to the scene or to the crime She also learns that Judy Zess who is one of the people who testified against Lori saying
00:42:05
oh, I heard her say at a dinner party that she wanted Christine killed. Judy Zess had recanted her statement saying that it was made under duress.
00:42:15
And yeah, and Lori doesn't find out about that until she's in jail. Then she also realizes that that wig that's found in her sewer system, fucking Judy Zess had come over the day before and used the bathroom.
00:42:33
And she was the last person, like the last other person in the house besides herself before that murder took place.
00:42:40
Shit. Yes. Okay, here we go. Yeah. Things are turning. I'm getting it. Then the medical examiner who conducted Christine's autopsy refutes the hair analyst's claim that the hairs found on Christine's body match Lori's hair taken from Lori's hairbrush.
00:42:59
He says that he could find that nothing he found could possibly match Lori's hair as the hairs weren't even the proper color.
00:43:07
The hairs that were found were brown and Lori's was obviously blonde. That's some basic fucking evidence.
00:43:13
That's colors, man. And that's first grade colors. Get a first grader on the stand?
00:43:19
No. Be like, sorry, that one's blonde. Lori tries filing three different appeals on the grounds that police mishandled evidence.
00:43:27
They're all denied. Hey, hey. Yes. Then there's an investigator that starts helping her and working for her because he also believes that this is basically a conspiracy.
00:43:38
and so he finds out about a man named Frederick Hornberger who was a career criminal who also dated Judy Zess.
00:43:47
And he knew Fred Schultz through Judy because they all partied at Trax. Come on, everybody.
00:43:55
So it turns out that a few weeks after Christine's murder, Hornberger had been arrested for robbing and beating Judy Zess.
00:44:04
And the crime, he was convicted for this crime. And the similarities between the M.O. in that attack and Christine Schultz's murder are undeniable.
00:44:14
Both victims had been bound. The guns had been held directly against the body. And the intruder wore a green tracksuit and a blondish reddish wig.
00:44:23
Holy shit. Yes. It goes all the way to that. That's denial. So while Hornberger's in jail for his crimes against Judy,
00:44:35
he allegedly bragged to inmates that he was the one who actually killed Christine Schultz.
00:44:41
But in November of 1991, he commits suicide in jail. So it can never be confirmed or proven.
00:44:49
All right. Now, back to Lori. She's in jail still. Okay, so she meets her cellmate's brother.
00:44:57
His name is Dominic Gugliotto. Sorry. I love Italians, I swear Gugliato sounds like he has crazy eyes
00:45:11
oh, let's see if he does oh, shit that's her and Fred so in court, she and Fred were like the dream team
00:45:22
and the second she's convicted, he's like, goodbye good luck there's Dominic Gugliato
00:45:30
the gooks, we like to call him Is he a bartender at Tracks? Everything takes place at Tracks, by the way.
00:45:38
All right. I see it. And there's the ghost of Ed Gein back there. Good one. Thanks, thanks.
00:45:53
I love riffing. Okay. So Lori falls in love with her cellmate's brother, Dominic.
00:46:00
So, on July 15, 1990, one night after bed check, Lori gets down to the prison laundry room and she crawls out the window.
00:46:11
Wait a second. There's a fucking prison escape? Yeah, there is a prison escape. I was already in deep.
00:46:18
What, you guys? This story has it all. So, she climbs out the laundry room window.
00:46:25
She hops into Guglietti's truck. and they drive off. He actually, in that episode,
00:46:33
he describes watching her basically throw a leather belt around one arm and haul herself over the fucking razor wire
00:46:43
on top of the thing. And he's like, I love her. I fucking love, look how, first of all, she's crazy hot and tall
00:46:50
and then she doesn't give a fuck about razor wire. It's like the perfect woman. Future wife.
00:46:57
She jumps into Guglera's truck, and they abandon that truck in a Target parking lot,
00:47:03
and then they flee to Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. Oh. So, meanwhile, back in the States, once they figure out she's escaped from jail,
00:47:15
everybody goes fucking nuts. And this is when they start making Run Bambi Run t-shirts.
00:47:22
No way. Holy shit. Bumper stickers. And it's actually kind of interesting because, and especially in Milwaukee,
00:47:32
there now become a vocal group of people who think that she has been framed, that she has been set up, that she did not get a fair trial, that the whole thing is crooked.
00:47:42
And, of course, those people are featured in this episode. If you want to go see some of your fellow citizens in 1983,
00:47:49
just being like, I'm not getting it, I don't think she got a fair trial. I don't know what that accent is.
00:47:53
The one lady they let talk, it was like she was made of marbles. Barbarolites. It was awesome.
00:48:02
Fucking love her. From her throat up through her hair, she was just like, I don't think she got a fair trial.
00:48:14
Okay. So. Love it. It's so good. Also, this was back to when people didn't, no one thought about it.
00:48:25
You know what I mean? It was just like, people were just like, oh yeah, she ran.
00:48:27
Make some bumper stickers. like let's just get in on this shit and then you scotch tape
00:48:33
it's not even real it's not even a bumper sticker well here's the thing that's a fucking murderino
00:48:38
because they're like oh they're going to catch her pretty soon we need to take that off
00:48:41
I'm not fucking up my station wagon back window that's the equivalent of like taking down an Instagram post
00:48:49
never happened yep goodbye or someone's like that's really tasteless oh you're right
00:48:56
sorry I just was having fun. Someone was selling it in front of the courthouse. Okay.
00:49:04
So they make it to Canada, as I say. They're hiding up there. Lori gets a job as a waitress and a fitness instructor.
00:49:10
Hey, lay low. I know. No one can. Yeah. She starts telling everybody her name is Jennifer Gazana.
00:49:18
Okay. That's fun. And they successfully dodge authorities for three months. Oh, that's it.
00:49:24
But, of course, back here, she's this folk hero that everyone's talking about, and they do an America's Most Wanted on the whole case.
00:49:33
Yes. You're fucked. Right? So an American tourist is up in Thunder Bay to watch the thunder,
00:49:43
and some good times. They recognize Lori as she's waitressing, and October 17, 1990, Lori and Dominic are both caught and arrested.
00:49:54
So there's her being arrested in Canada. But I have bouncy brown hair now. Oh, man.
00:50:02
She's like, if I just wear beige, no one will see me again. Try to be less tall, Lori.
00:50:11
Okay. So a month after they're arrested, Dominic is deported back to the United States.
00:50:19
But Lori seeks to remain in Canada as a refugee telling Canadian authorities that she's the victim of a conspiracy between Milwaukee police and the judicial system of Wisconsin.
00:50:31
And they are sympathetic to her story once they look at all these facts. And Canada refuses to extradite her.
00:50:41
Right? Unless, unless Wisconsin authorities grant her a judicial review of her case.
00:50:50
Canadians are so nice. They're so nice. I know. And they're really soft-spoken, but they love justice.
00:51:01
So, so the American authorities end up agreeing to the terms and Lori ends up getting a retrial.
00:51:08
Amazing. Yes. Okay. So on April 22, 1991, Lori voluntarily goes back to the United States.
00:51:15
Her trial is held December 9, 1992. She pleads no contest to a second-degree murder conviction,
00:51:22
and the first-degree murder conviction is vacated. And she gets a 20-year sentence, which is commuted to time served,
00:51:30
and she's released three hours after her sentencing, having already served 10 years in prison.
00:51:35
What the fuck? Yeah. Oh, here's her after she's released. Oh. Love the hair. Okay.
00:51:47
You know what? She's a spring. She's a winter. She's a fall. She can have any color hair she wants.
00:51:53
She's one of the lucky ones. So, okay. You keep going. Here we go. All right. Now free, Lori writes a book about her saga called Woman on Trial.
00:52:07
there's a quote, I saw a picture of the book, and there's a quote from Diane Sawyer on the cover calling it, quote,
00:52:14
the most glamorous murder case of the century. Guys. Diane, that's tasteless. Diane, how dare you.
00:52:21
And that's coming from us. There was a TV movie called Woman on the Run starring Tatum O'Neill.
00:52:30
Yes. And it's very sympathetic to Lori's side, portraying her as the victim of a mishandled case.
00:52:37
In 1996, Lori moves to Washington State to be near her ailing parents. Her father has cancer, and she wants to be near the family.
00:52:46
She does remarry. She tries to move on with her life. But she, of course, has a hard time.
00:52:53
She has a drinking problem, and so she runs into a bunch of problems with that. In 2003, she agrees to appear on Dr. Phil.
00:53:04
So basically, the show comes to her and says, we'll give you $20,000 to pay for DNA testing on any case evidence that they still have
00:53:14
if you agree to stay down here and whatever the results of the test are, you come on to the show.
00:53:21
Oh, man. Yeah, so basically they were like, we're going to put you up in this apartment here in L.A.
00:53:26
We're going to go get the testing done, and then you have to find out the results basically on the show.
00:53:30
Oh, my God. Yeah, so they put her up in this apartment, and she later claims that she was under 24-hour surveillance.
00:53:40
And she says because of that, it triggered her PTSD from her years of being incarcerated.
00:53:45
So she goes ahead and ties the bedsheets together, throws them out the window, and then tries to climb down out of the window.
00:53:53
She claims that she fell two stories cut an artery in her foot and then later her foot had to be amputated What the fuck Yes How have I never fucking heard any one of these little pieces
00:54:07
I know. I know. Holy shit. Now, just to be fair, on the other side, the producers from Dr. Phil say, they say,
00:54:20
Lori was always allowed to leave that apartment. She could have walked right through the front door.
00:54:25
And also, the apartment was on the first floor. I don't know how to feel yet, though, because if she didn't do it, oh, my God, my heart's breaking.
00:54:34
I know. Did she not? Do we think she didn't? Okay, I'm going to let you keep going.
00:54:37
In the following years, Lori falls on hard times and develops a bad drinking habit.
00:54:43
I said that already. On November 20, 2010, she passes away in Portland, Oregon from liver and kidney failure at 52 years old.
00:54:51
Oh, honey. And at the end of this Vanity Fair confidential, which I love and you for some reason fucking hate, but I think you're wrong.
00:55:00
I think you should try it. At the end of that story, the female journalist. Now I'm going to call her Mamrie, like our friend, but that's not that's not her name.
00:55:13
Inskip. Her last name is Inskip. OK. Marnie. Marnie. Marnie. Marnie. Marnie Inskip.
00:55:18
She. Thank you. Was it really there? Uh huh. It was. She is. Marnie Inskip, who knows this case back and forth and every fact in it,
00:55:27
says she doesn't know what actually happened, she doesn't know who really killed Christine Schultz,
00:55:33
and she's not sure if anyone ever will. And that's how the fucking episode ends.
00:55:40
But I have a personal theory that Fred Schultz had her killed by Hornberger. It seems pretty fucking obvious.
00:55:49
Although, who am I to say? And that is the unsatisfying and awful story of Lori Benbenek and the murder of Christine Schultz.
00:56:01
Holy shit. Isn't that nuts crazy? Nuts. Beyond crazy. So, okay. What happened to him?
00:56:11
Where did he go? What happened? I tried to look it up. And here's the thing. When you look up Fred Schultz's obituary, a bunch of dudes come up.
00:56:18
There's somebody, there's also somebody, I don't think he's dead, but there's somebody who's really made a name for himself in the paintball community that's named Fred Schultz.
00:56:27
Oh, so he dominates the first few pages of Google. He just, I couldn't really suss out whether it was our guy or he went to Florida and then he was like, you know what I love?
00:56:38
Paintball. Shooting. I love shooting things. Yeah. So I don't, I don't know. That was a wild ride.
00:56:45
Yeah. Isn't that crazy? That was amazing. I don't know how I'm supposed to fucking follow that.
00:56:53
Let's just end. Let's just go to tracks. While the world watches the stars at the FIFA World Cup this summer,
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Hyundai has its eyes on the next generation of talent. The future soccer stars who are already turning heads at age 14.
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Hyundai has always moved the future within reach. Hyundai did it by making advanced safety standard on every vehicle.
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From robotics that change how people live to young athletes changing the game, the future isn't some far-off concept. It's already here.
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Quince.com slash MFM. Goodbye. All right. Well, the cases have some similarities, actually.
00:59:24
This is the death of Barb Kenthammer. Ooh. Okay, so this case, when I looked it up on our email to see if anyone had written in about it,
00:59:38
somehow it's debated on whether it's murder or a freak accident. So at the end of it, Karen, officially on the record, is going to...
00:59:46
I get to decide? You get to decide. Wonderful. Wonderful. I promise to be fair and even don do it I got a bunch of info from the La Crosse Tribune and Madison
01:00:08
A bunch of articles. Madison.org, more like. All right. Madison jokes. Okay. Let me tell you guys about a small town called West Salem in Wisconsin.
01:00:25
They're all here tonight. 47-year-old Todd Kendhammer. He works on cars. He's like a generally handy dude, builds houses, this sort of thing.
01:00:36
And he lives in West Salem with his wife of 25 years, 46-year-old Barbara Kendhammer.
01:00:43
She goes by Barb. This is them. Okay. I know. Oh, my God. They look normal. They must be normal.
01:00:50
Right? That's what I'm being led to believe. But I'm not making a judgment yet. I need to hear more facts.
01:00:56
All right. So Barb also works in the lunch program at a local middle school. She's well-liked by the children, everyone at the school, the community.
01:01:05
Everyone loves her. And she's lovely and dedicated to her job. The couple met as teenagers, and they had been married 25 years.
01:01:13
They had two grown children. Then here we are on September 16, 2016. September 16, 2016
01:01:21
911 dispatch from La Crosse County gets a call at 8.06am from Todd and he's frantic, he's inaudible
01:01:30
and he tells the dispatcher that he was driving on a rural highway in the town of Hamilton
01:01:36
with Barbara as a passenger when a pipe came through the windshield a pipe flew off
01:01:42
an oncoming truck and went through the windshield and hit Barbara And she's bleeding out of her nose and mouth.
01:01:52
He's saying she can't feel a heartbeat. Please hurry. And the Generation Y played the 911 call.
01:02:01
I don't like it. Yeah. But yay Generation Y. Yes. Yay to them. Boo to 911 calls.
01:02:10
Okay. What? Well, I was just going to ask. Did it sound authentic to you? I don't know.
01:02:16
this shit. I just had to ask. I'm building a case. Okay. Then, no. Okay. Oh, okay. Okay.
01:02:24
The first paramedic at the scene finds Todd kneeling over his wife. He's been, he had pulled her from the car
01:02:30
and was doing CPR on the phone with the 911 dispatcher. She's unresponsive when medical help arrives. At the scene,
01:02:38
Todd tells the authorities that they were just driving on a straight, flat stretch of highway when the pipe had come
01:02:44
through the window. and bounced off the pavement through the passenger side window, hitting his wife.
01:02:50
But then on the way to the hospital, he's with an investigator, and he adds that when he first saw the pipe coming at them, he didn't know what it was.
01:02:58
He thought maybe it was a bird flying at the windshield, so he punches the windshield,
01:03:02
which is why his knuckles are all bloody and cut up. Uh-uh. Excuse me. Go ahead.
01:03:12
Okay. One time, once, one time, we were driving down the 580 over by Livermore in California.
01:03:24
And it was nighttime. And the truck in front of us had this, I would say, a 10-foot aluminum ladder.
01:03:30
And it bounced off the back of the truck in front of us. And we watched it. This is when I was still married.
01:03:36
And my ex was like, he just reached over and goes, hold on. and we we just had to wait to see if it was going to bounce into the windshield or under and it
01:03:45
fucking thank god went under the car holy and so we just like and then like kept driving and then
01:03:51
of course looked back and we're like watching it hit all the it was so crazy i'm saying that i'm
01:03:57
not going to take that into consideration i will lay that aside yeah and my bias of knowing how
01:04:04
freeway debris can affect your life will not affect my judgment. You would be dismissed from the jury right now.
01:04:12
If I told that story. Yeah. I also, Blank-A-Patch, my old great friend who's the funniest stand-up comic there is,
01:04:19
he one time when we all lived in San Francisco was driving with his girlfriend who was in
01:04:25
the passenger seat and this exact fucking same thing happened except for it was like
01:04:28
a two-by-four off a construction truck. What? And it came into the car and went right by her head.
01:04:34
I will also lay that aside on Blaine's behalf. Ma'am, you've been dismissed. Ma'am, hold on.
01:04:42
I've also seen other things fly through things. Can we get someone to escort her
01:04:53
out of the courtroom, please? You know what? You don't even know about freeway debris.
01:05:03
Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for that. Thank you. So he punched the window is where we were at.
01:05:12
Bullshit. Let me show you a couple of pictures. So this is where the car stopped.
01:05:16
He said he tried to turn around on a side road and then accidentally backed up into the fucking weeds or whatever.
01:05:25
And then that's him at the scene. Oh, no. They hate his shirt. I'm sorry, that is a pretty good shirt, though.
01:05:39
It's funny, and it's visual, and it makes you think, and it makes you laugh. And it's covered in blood.
01:05:45
It's covered in your fucking wife's blood. And those are his hands. Punch the windshield.
01:05:52
To, like, whatever's coming through. His argument was he was like trying to stop it from coming through Do we believe it It simply doesn work that way So um blah blah blah blah I tried to punch it away
01:06:05
Yeah. So he says this is why he has injuries to his knuckles, and also that's why he has scratches on his neck and chest.
01:06:14
He says they're from the glass. He says he then pulled the car over to a side road.
01:06:18
He accidentally put it in reverse. He said he got out of the car and removed the pipe from the windshield.
01:06:25
for some reason, pulls Barbara out and tries to give her CPR for three to five minutes before
01:06:30
calling 911. I don't know about you guys, but when I see like a fucking paper cut, I call 911.
01:06:35
Yes. That's why you're on the phone tonight. Oh my God, help me. No, don't only call in an
01:06:42
emergency, but go ahead and call in an emergency. Yeah. You know? Well, also it's just three to five
01:06:48
minutes when in an emergency situation is the equivalent of real time, 18 hours. Exactly.
01:06:53
Like, that's so long. Right. It's a long time. So then he calls 911 at 8.06 a.m.
01:07:00
Sadly, Barb never regains consciousness, and she's declared brain dead at 5.02 p.m. the next day.
01:07:06
It's very sad. When police investigate, they find a shit ton of inconsistencies.
01:07:13
Me too. Yeah. A passerby says that he saw the Camry right before Todd called 911 driving by in that ditch,
01:07:22
and he looked over to see what was wrong with it. He said the windshield was intact.
01:07:26
There was no fucking breakage on the windshield. And that the passenger door was open and there was nobody around.
01:07:31
So he didn't see anyone. Then authorities find the 10-pound, 53-inch galvanized steel pipe
01:07:39
in the weeds behind the passenger side of the car where he said he threw it before trying to save her life.
01:07:45
And this is, to me, like, this tells you everything. they open the trunk and realize that the trunk had to have been opened
01:07:52
because there's grass from the ditch in the closed trunk. You know what I mean? Yeah.
01:07:57
So, like, that's, why would you open the trunk? Because you did it. Okay. Yeah. Also, I just had that moment of, like, I bet as a detective,
01:08:07
when you do something like that and you flick open that thing and then you see it and you're like, I'm so fucking smart.
01:08:14
That's what I would do? Or I'm just like, look at me observing this inconsistency.
01:08:18
And you know what else? I'm not going to touch it, and I'm going to make sure it gets photographed,
01:08:23
because I'm good at my job. Because I'm so good. So good. And emergency responders hadn't found glass on Barbara at all,
01:08:34
so that whole story doesn't make sense. Todd tells investigators that he and Barb, they were like, what happened?
01:08:41
He and Barb left their home in West Salem that morning between 7.30 and 7.45 a.m.,
01:08:45
and they were going to Holman where Todd had said he was going to pick up a car to fix the windshield,
01:08:51
because he did shit like that. And then he was going to drop his wife off at work,
01:08:55
but she was scheduled to work at 8 a.m. at the West Salem Middle School in the opposite direction from where they were going,
01:09:01
and she didn't call to say she'd be late, and that was totally not like her. And then the owner of the truck that he said they were going to pick up was like,
01:09:08
no, that wasn't a plan in my head. That never was a plan. um tighten up your shit dude truly and then gps showed that uh the couple's cell phone that they
01:09:20
had been at a neighbor's house and uh it was just all over the place and a car match so then the
01:09:26
fucking investigators so smart they go like down the road to a business that has um camera yeah to
01:09:33
the road so they see the camry driving by at the time at five seven fifty seven traveling north on
01:09:40
Highway M, and then they keep watching it and keep watching it, and no fucking flatbed
01:09:45
truck ever goes the other way. So it's like, just not, it's not going to happen, bro.
01:09:51
Yeah. So, okay, they try to recreate the crash site, which had to be so much fun, and it just doesn't
01:09:59
add up. There's no way that pipe can fucking straight up, you know, do that thing.
01:10:03
so I'm just thinking like also how if the sorry but they were behind the truck no they were coming
01:10:13
in opposite direction from the truck so the truck's driving and it flies forward from the truck no
01:10:19
wait I would have said no right at the beginning if I had known that that's because you're a good
01:10:24
investigator it's because you're a good detective I wonder if you needed that grass in the truck
01:10:29
Because I would have already known. That's nuts. Yeah. Also, broken glass was found in the Camry's gear shift,
01:10:39
but could have only gotten to where it was if the car had been in park when the fucking window shattered.
01:10:45
That's a good detective horror. Another amazing detective. Another one. And, yeah.
01:10:51
So let's see. The medical examiner reports then comes in that it's fucked up. Barbara suffered extensive blunt impact injuries to her head and neck, inconsistent with her husband's account.
01:11:03
She had cuts on the back of her head and a fracture to the back of her skull. And she had some, you know, broken bones in her face and bleeding in her lips and bruises on her biceps.
01:11:16
So, let's see. And they get DNA out of her fingernails and his DNA is under it. Oh, my God.
01:11:24
Yeah. I mean, you can't argue with that. So, and then there's bloodstains around the passenger side of the seat.
01:11:31
So it looks like he, you know, he had been hitting her in the car. And also there's no glass in the windshield.
01:11:38
I mean, there's no windshield glass in the door pocket, you know, where you put your tissues or whatever.
01:11:43
Yeah. Right? I like to line up empty Starbucks cups down there to see how long I can go.
01:11:51
I like to put tissues over there, so I have to, when I need them, they're too far away for me to grab.
01:11:57
Just so you can suffer a little bit? Yeah, it's really nice. So there's no glass in there, meaning the door was open.
01:12:02
So he probably got out of the car, pulled her out, and then opened the trunk to get the pipe out.
01:12:09
Oh, right. Which is why the trunk had been opened. And then stuck it through the windshield.
01:12:13
And there was no blood on the fucking pipe either. This guy's bad at it. Yeah. He's bad at it.
01:12:19
Yeah. Okay. And now I don't like his shirt. Let's see. So, okay. And then there's also like orange soil and sand on the pipe and in the trunk showing that it had been in there.
01:12:37
And the couple was getting like their plumbing redone and it totally looks just like a plumbing pipe.
01:12:42
Do I have any more photos? Maybe. Nope. I do not. We all just went into the abyss just there.
01:12:50
What? So then he's all weird and it says he's jittery and emotional at the funeral home.
01:12:57
but it's like, well, yeah, it's not that weird. You would be. You just did a terrible crime.
01:13:02
Literally, you did it so terribly. Yeah. At the funeral, he makes arrangements. He wants her cremated.
01:13:11
He's super forceful about it. He doesn't want anyone looking at her in the casket.
01:13:15
And even the funeral director was like to the cops, that's not normal. That was weird.
01:13:20
Look, I've got to say something. And I hate talking. And people. But yeah, you got to think that the funeral director's seen some fucked up shit.
01:13:29
Yeah. They're like this dude over here. Yeah. That's not good. Red flag. Yeah. And then so but this is weird to me, too.
01:13:37
Like the couples, friends and family say they have no problems in the marriage. There's no history, you know, that anyone knows of domestic abuse.
01:13:46
But several of his former colleagues describe him as a, quote, snake in the grass and a, quote, chauvinist pig from hell.
01:13:53
Oh, old school. I'm sorry my mom used to use the phrase chauvinist pig all the time in the 80s
01:14:06
I just remember what a chauvinist pig that was a thing she should have made a shirt
01:14:14
a little pig with a mustache or something we'll figure it out like not opening the door for her
01:14:21
Yeah. Chauvinist pain. It's still alive in Wisconsin, that phrase. Yeah. Good job, guys.
01:14:34
God bless. God bless. So 81 days after Barb's death on December 7th, police arrest Todd for intentional homicide.
01:14:44
He's bailed out because his family all thinks that he fucking didn't do it. It was an accident.
01:14:50
His children, you know, of course, don't want to believe it. They can't believe it.
01:14:55
He's put under house arrest and monitored by GPS. And his trial starts a year later in December 2017.
01:15:03
He testifies, offers multiple versions of what they were doing that day, why they were out where they were out.
01:15:09
And it just doesn't really make sense. And then, let's see. But witnesses for the prosecution also debunk his story,
01:15:18
and prosecutors argue the evidence shows that he beat his wife, then took the pipe from the trunk and drove it into the windshield
01:15:25
while she was dying on the ground. There was also looked like he had tried twice
01:15:31
to get the fucking pipe through the windshield. I just don't like him. So, his two children and family members believe he's innocent
01:15:41
and that there's no motive for what happened. Prosecutors think that they just got into a fight that led to Todd killing her.
01:15:49
After nine hours of deliberation a panel of ten women and two men find 47 Todd Kenhammer guilty of first intentional homicide He sentenced to life in prison and eligible for parole in 30 years but he is fucking locked
01:16:07
up, and that's the death of Barb Kenhammer. Wow. Thank you. Some fucking final destination bullshit.
01:16:16
Yeah, really. No way, dude. So, you know, officially, Karen says no. Yeah, oh, right.
01:16:26
You don't deserve to wear such a beautiful shirt, you asshole. Thanks so much. Do we have time for our home show?
01:16:37
Yeah, it's time. Let's do it. Here comes Vince. Here he is. Guys, the Vox are up 16 with about 10 minutes to play.
01:16:58
Okay. Okay. Good news. Nice. That being said, you know where I'll be. Okay. Thank you, Vex.
01:17:07
Thank you. Yeah. Okay. There are rules. Tell them. Okay. We'll do this quick. Please be local.
01:17:18
I mean, you don't have to be local. We proved that last night. You don't have to be from here,
01:17:22
but the story needs to be from here and about here. Milwaukee would be great. Wisconsin is fine.
01:17:28
Do not bring that Kansas bullshit. We don't want it. They'll hate you. And if you're pointing at someone
01:17:35
and you don't know their story, stop pointing at them. Stop it. I will hold you accountable.
01:17:39
Stop it, we'll kill you. You can't be super drunk. It needs to be a good, fast story
01:17:44
with a beginning, a middle, and an end. And that's just not for tonight. Anytime you tell a story, please.
01:17:52
It's important. It's important. Okay. Now Georgia's going to choose. Yeah, with the little, yeah.
01:18:01
Sorry, I hate doing this so much. Maybe you shouldn't have yelled at her so much.
01:18:05
I don't know. Oh, yeah. She's got a jean vest on, and I'm fucking digging it. Go that way to Vince.
01:18:12
Yes. Yes. All right. This is just like the girl last night who brought her purse.
01:18:24
Oh, yeah. I think it might be a Wisconsin thing. Milwaukee, you don't like leaving your purse, even with your friends.
01:18:29
You won't leave your bag back, even if it's all your friends sitting around it. Mm-mm.
01:18:34
I get it. None of your business that's in my bag. We should give her one of these, right?
01:18:41
Yes, for sure. Okay, here she comes, everyone. Come on. Stacy, everyone. Hi, nice to meet you.
01:18:54
It's Stacy, everybody. Stacy. Stacy. Where are you from, Stacy? I live in Mequon.
01:19:03
Okay. And I just want to thank my students are here. What? Who got me interested in a podcast.
01:19:12
Wait, what do you teach? First grade. Now they're here. Because there's a bunch of seven-year-olds up there by themselves.
01:19:22
Yes. Swear more. I teach at UW-Milwaukee in the graduate clinical psych program.
01:19:28
Whoa. Nice. I told them I've been practicing my murder for a couple weeks now. Oh, good.
01:19:37
And wore this blingy vest. Yeah. It didn't work. I was thinking you might see it.
01:19:41
I zeroed in on it. Nice. Okay. Yeah. Oh, my murder. Yeah. They love Miss Stacy. They love you Stacy This is Stacy It Stacy time Yeah First graders Take my you guys Okay they are I can use my nose can I No No you can tell it You been practicing You know it
01:20:00
So this is the murder of Sin Lam Trattner, who was killed by her husband, Stephen Trattner.
01:20:07
So Sin Lam was a native of Hong Kong, and she met Stephen Trattner, who's from Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin.
01:20:18
Sorry, guys. Damn. Yeah. And so Sin Lam was a manager at a big pharmaceutical company, and she was very beloved.
01:20:27
Everyone loved her. She was the nicest, kindest, most generous, you know, never said anything wrong about anybody, was really a great lady.
01:20:35
And Stephen Trattner was voted most likely to succeed in his high school class, also very popular and athletic and blah, blah, blah.
01:20:45
They had two small children and lived in Macklin, Wisconsin, and appeared to be a very happy marriage, but we all know that's not true.
01:20:56
Never. Ever. It's never true ever. There's no such thing. He was very controlling and emotionally abusive,
01:21:07
and she felt that she could never do anything right, and he controlled everything she did and said and, you know, everything like that,
01:21:14
and made her feel like she was a bad mom. And so there was a neighbor, a close friend,
01:21:20
who was trying to help her get up the courage to ask for a divorce. And so then she did.
01:21:28
So this was in 2006, I think. I don't remember. So she came. I was studying at dinner, really.
01:21:38
So she came to him this night and said she wanted a divorce. And he became enraged and pushed her up against the kitchen cabinets.
01:21:48
And she hit him in the chest. and he basically banged her head against the ground,
01:21:56
like threw her up against the kitchen cabinets and then threw her on the ground and banged her head against the ground like ten times
01:22:02
and then strangled her. And then he covered her with a blanket and went to bed. Yes.
01:22:11
And then the next morning he got his two children up ready for school and said, you know, just leave your mother rest there.
01:22:18
Yes, what a crumb. And then he went out to breakfast. Sorry. Yeah. It's true. No, it's true.
01:22:31
He is a fucking crumb. It's true. It's true. Yes. Yeah. Oh, I forgot something. Okay.
01:22:40
He founded the Aaron Hills Golf Course. Yes. Yes, which is important because this was like his life.
01:22:49
You know, he always wanted to like, you know, have a golf course. And it ultimately was the site of the 2017 U.S. Open.
01:22:57
Oh, shit. Yes. Okay. So anyway, so he came home from like lunch and called the police finally.
01:23:04
Wow. So he was pled guilty to reckless homicide, received 35 years in jail, plus 10 supervised something or other because of how vicious the attack was.
01:23:20
And then he tried to appeal after that, like three times, saying, oh, it was self-defense because she hit him.
01:23:29
And they were all denied. And so he ended up watching the U.S. open from his jail cell.
01:23:34
Oh, wow. Amazing Stacy. Oh, thank you. Perfection Stacy amazing Stacy everybody let her know You killed it
01:23:54
You killed it. Yeah. That's how you do a hometown. If you don't think I'm not going to start calling people crumbs, you've got another
01:24:08
thing coming. Crumb, show-nistic pitch. It's our fucking word of the day. There's three of them.
01:24:17
Wow, what a perfect fucking end to this beautiful two-night run. We love doing these old, beautiful theaters that have so much character,
01:24:32
and having you guys here with us, it's so special. Walking out on stage is the most surreal experience I've ever had.
01:24:38
It really is. It's a dream come true. And it's happening because you guys have mobilized and come together and created this community and supported us every step of the way.
01:24:55
And it is such an amazing, beautiful thing to see. Thank you, guys. We can't ever thank you enough, but we can tell you to please stay saved and do God's missions.
01:25:14
Also, after the show, there's a drag show after the show at Dix. At Dix. Did you hear about that?
01:25:25
They're doing a My Favorite Murder-themed drag show at Dix. and we're so obsessed with that yet one more dream come true
01:25:36
yeah um so you should go to that what the fuck is this life i don't know it makes no sense it
01:25:47
doesn't whatever it is we're we're totally in for it uh we're into it and so are you thank you so
01:25:53
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Goodbye. Goodbye. Thank you.