Horror at Great Wolf Lodge | Mother Accused of Killing Husband and 3-Year-Old Son

Police in Pennsylvania were called to Great Wolf Lodge just after 3 p.m. on a Monday after 27-year-old Metallica Harrison reported that her husband, Charles, and their 3-year-old son, T. H., had been stabbed. Unfortunately they were both found deceased, and Metallica has since been charged with two counts of homicide. Investigators are still looking into a motive.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:13Derrick Levasseur?

  Hey everyone. Welcome back to Crime Weekly News. I'm Derrick Levasseur.

• 0:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  And I'm Stephanie Harlow.

• 0:18Derrick Levasseur?

  And we're going to get right into it because we have a sad one today. On a Monday afternoon in October, at about quarter after three, a dispatcher at the Monroe County Control Center in Pennsylvania picked up a 911 call. The caller was a woman. She was calm enough to talk and what she said was chilling. According to the criminal complaint, she told the dispatcher she needed, quote, "help dying." She said she had been trying to stab her own neck, but she was, quote, "too weak." The knives, she said, were, quote, "not working." The dispatcher asked if she was alone in the room, and she allegedly said her husband and son were, quote, "already gone in the bed." She didn't ask for help for them. She only asked for help for herself. And the help she wanted was help to die.

• 1:02Derrick Levasseur?

  The call came from Room 2030 of the Great Wolf Lodge in Scott Run, Pennsylvania. It's a family resort in the Pocono Mountains, the kind of place built entirely around kids. It has an indoor water park, an arcade, and story time in the lobby. I've definitely been there. I believe, Stephanie, you've been to Great Wolf as well?

• 1:21Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yep.

• 1:21Derrick Levasseur?

  It's a great place for kids. It really is. And the family in Room 2030 had been staying there for three weeks. When police got into that room, they found 36-year-old Charles Harrison and his three-year-old son dead from stab wounds. The woman who made the call was his wife and the little boy's mother, 27-year-old Metallica Rose Harrison. She's now charged with two counts of criminal homicide. The Monroe County District Attorney called it a, quote, "violent domestic tragedy." He also said the motive is, quote, "one of the most perplexing questions in the case." Today, we're talking through everything we know so far. That means the timeline from the resort's own surveillance cameras, what police say they found inside the room, and what Metallica allegedly said in the hours after.

• 2:05Derrick Levasseur?

  It also means walking through what the investigators took from the family home and the questions that we still don't have the answers to. Overall, this is a horrific case. And as I said, I've been to Great Wolf Lodge numerous times. When you go there, it's supposed to be a memory for you and your family. And I've, I've, I've captured a lot of memories while at the Great Wolf Lodge. They're all over the country. I'm sure many people listening or watching right now have been to the Great Wolf Lodge as well, but you just never know what people are going through, and it can happen anywhere.

• 2:37Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, I mean, we don't, it's, it's very perplexing what happened here. So let's talk about who these people were. The Harrisons lived in Towanda, Pennsylvania. It's a small borough in Bradford County, so up in the northern part of the state, near the New York border. It's about two hours northwest of the Poconos. Charles Harrison went by CHAZ. He was 36 years old. His wife, Metallica Rose Harrison, is 27. And based on their social media, the two had been married for about three years. Together, they had a little boy. In court documents, he's only identified by his initials, T H. He was three years old. We don't really know much about the family yet.

• 3:19Stephanie Harlowe?

  Public reporting hasn't covered what Charles or Metallica did for work. It hasn't covered any history with police or any involvement with Child Protective Services. We will tell you and update you if any of that comes out.

• 3:30Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, I also want to know Metallica's background, too. Was she, was she seeing anybody for mental health or anything like that? All that stuff is going to be revealed.

• 3:39Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yes, I agree. It's all going to be important, especially in a case like this one. But what we do have is the picture that this family showed the world. According to the New York Post, the couple's social media was full of happy family photos. Some did show them at indoor water parks, so maybe they'd been to Great Wolf Lodge before. But Metallica had recently posted photos of the three of them at the Great Wolf Lodge water park itself. Charles's sister, Melissa Rivera, has spoken publicly. She described his death as sudden. She said her brother was devoted to his wife and his son. She has since set up an online fundraiser to cover funeral costs. So from the outside, this looks like a young family on what may have been a dream vacation,

• 4:24Stephanie Harlowe?

  three weeks at Great Wolf Lodge. I mean, keep that picture in mind, though, because the picture that comes out of the court documents is very different.

• 4:31Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, well, isn't that always the case, though, Stephanie? And we, it's not just applied to what we're talking about today. It's just in general, right? Like, the depiction of whether it's a, a person or a family that's online is very often not accurate. It's what they want you to see. And that goes for everybody, not just something this extreme. You see it all the time. We see it as well. Like, we have ups and downs, and you're not posting your, your downs. You're not posting the valleys.

• 4:59Stephanie Harlowe?

  I try not to, yeah.

• 5:00Derrick Levasseur?

  You're only posting this very specific image or video because it has a deliberate purpose, and that may be to create this illusion that your life is grander than everyone else's. But, you know, you can never take social media too serious because you know, behind that screen, behind that camera, behind that phone, behind that computer, they're real people, just like every one of us. That goes from just regular people posting on Facebook to the celebrities posting online on a daily basis. There's a whole team behind that.

• 5:28Stephanie Harlowe?

  They got stuff going on. They have bad days. They have good days.

• 5:31Derrick Levasseur?

  Of course.

• 5:31Stephanie Harlowe?

  They have, you know, the, the best relationship online. Of course, they're still fighting. They have their differences. So, you know.

• 5:38Derrick Levasseur?

  How often do we hear, but see a couple that's like posting every day, and then the next week they're getting divorced? And you're like, wait, they were just in Acapulco together? Like, why, what happened? Like, that was three days ago.

• 5:48Stephanie Harlowe?

  I have many cases that we covered where on social media, everything's perfect and peachy, and they are-

• 5:52Derrick Levasseur?

  They're doing it right now.

• 5:53Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, totally in love.

• 5:54Derrick Levasseur?

  They're doing it right now. If you were to follow Ashley and Caleb's page, you would have said, "Ah, they're on good terms. Things are great."

• 6:01Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, these people really, yeah, they, they have a great marriage, right? So the first thing that jumps out about this case is how long the family had been at the resort. And when, yeah, when we were kind of going through the details, even you, you were like, "three weeks at Great Wolf Lodge." Not only is that a long-ass time to be at Great Wolf Lodge. I like Great Wolf Lodge, but-

• 6:17Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, can I, can I be, well-

• 6:18Stephanie Harlowe?

  I'm not trying to be there for three weeks, okay? Three days is good for me.

• 6:22Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, listen, Great Wolf is a great place, but I agree, that sounds awful. Three weeks with the kids in, in Great Wolf, they would be driving me nuts, but even more-

• 6:30Stephanie Harlowe?

  It's expensive, too.

• 6:32Derrick Levasseur?

  That's what I was gonna say. I mean, listen, you know, we're not, you know, we're not doing bad for ourselves, but I gotta tell you, a weekend at Great Wolf Lodge-

• 6:39Stephanie Harlowe?

  It will break you.

• 6:41Derrick Levasseur?

  Very expensive. So when you said three weeks, I'm like, my first question was like, what do these people do for a living? Because that's some serious bank unless you're throwing it on the credit card.

• 6:51Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, it doesn't seem like that was their original intention. So according to the criminal complaint, the Harrisons checked into the Great Wolf Lodge on September 21st. That was a Monday. Then on October 5th, they extended their reservation. Their new checkout date was Tuesday, October 13th. So that's more than three weeks at a resort hotel.

• 7:10Derrick Levasseur?

  Crazy.

• 7:11Stephanie Harlowe?

  Some outlets report rooms at that location run more than 600, 800 a night, depending on the room. And at that rate, obviously, it's gonna add up quick.

• 7:19Derrick Levasseur?

  And the weekends are more expensive, usually.

• 7:21Stephanie Harlowe?

  Different times of the week, weekends, yeah, just-

• 7:24Derrick Levasseur?

  Peak hours, that's-

• 7:26Stephanie Harlowe?

  It's tens of thousands of dollars. Like, let's, yeah.

• 7:29Derrick Levasseur?

  Easily. And that's without buying any food, yeah, arcade, all that stuff.

• 7:34Stephanie Harlowe?

  All the, the Magi quest. You gotta buy the wands, and yeah, it's, yeah. It's a lot. So Great Wolf Lodge was asked about this. A spokesperson told Fox News, "A stay that long is, quote, 'uncommon, but not completely unusual.'"

• 7:48Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, people are doing better than us, apparently. Just stay at Great Wolf Lodge for a month.

• 7:52Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, I mean, they, they, they love Great Wolf a lot more than we do. They said some families stay for extended periods while their homes are being renovated or repaired. Like, what happened to the Holiday Inn? You know, they got a pool.

• 8:05Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, man, that's-

• 8:06Stephanie Harlowe?

  The company says they didn't know how the Harrisons paid. They did refer those questions to law enforcement, and I want to be careful here. A stay that long isn't evidence of anything on its own. There could be perfectly ordinary reasons for it. But investigators do clearly think it matters because in the search warrant application for the family's home, which we're going to get to later, police specifically say they want to know why the family left home and stayed at the resort for about three weeks.

• 8:31Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, well, I think you brought it up the best there because, as you're saying about this representative, if someone has something going on at the home, whether there was an issue, construction, a renovation, then you could say, "Okay, you know what? That's crazy amount of money, but I get it. They wanted to stay somewhere nice, and they have stuff going on." However, if law enforcement got a search warrant for their house, and there's no obvious signs as to why they would have needed to stay at the Great Wolf Lodge for three weeks, that's, that's why they're saying this now. Like, hey, we got some questions because everything at the house seems fine.

• 9:02Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, the, the police did go into their homes, so-

• 9:04Derrick Levasseur?

  Of course.

• 9:05Stephanie Harlowe?

  They wanted to figure that out. They also wanted to look at the family's finances. Now, Metallica's stepmother, April Thetka, spoke to the New York Post. She says that Metallica and Charles used Charles's 401K, his retirement savings, to pay for the Great Wolf Lodge stay, as well as a kitchen renovation at home and other expenses. And I want to be precise about what she actually said. According to Daily Voice, April Thetka wasn't sure whether the money was withdrawn outright or borrowed against the account. So you'll see some headlines saying Metallica drained the 401K. That is a stronger claim than April, the stepmother, herself made.

• 9:46Stephanie Harlowe?

  No dollar amount has been reported. Penn Live estimated the stay alone could have cost more than six grand.

• 9:53Derrick Levasseur?

  Easily.

• 9:54Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, easily, easily. According to the IB Times UK, Metallica told family that the money was for the kitchen remodel. They say they didn't know it was also paying for weeks at a resort. There's one more financial detail being reported. Daily Voice says a gas shut-off notice for $29.05 was posted at the family's Towanda home on October 5th, with service set to be cut off October 8th. So October 5th is the same day the family extended their reservation. Daily Voice also doesn't say where that detail came from, so we'll kind of put a pin in it and put it as one of those things that's possible.

• 10:30Derrick Levasseur?

  You can kind of read between the lines, though. It doesn't seem like they were, like, rolling in the money?

• 10:35Stephanie Harlowe?

  No, they didn't. This wasn't something they'd saved for specifically. Like, hey, in a few years, we'll spend three weeks at Great Wolf Lodge.

• 10:41Derrick Levasseur?

  No, it's, it sounds a little bit like, near the end there, it was kind of like, eh, I don't care anymore. I don't care anymore. I'm not gonna, because the gas bill, by the way, that's not gonna go off after not paying for one month.

• 10:55Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, it was scheduled for shut-off October 5th.

• 10:57Derrick Levasseur?

  So unless, if it was scheduled for shut-off due to lack of payment, then that tells you that they were probably two or three months behind.

• 11:04Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah.

• 11:04Derrick Levasseur?

  If they're shutting it off, because they won't shut it off if you're just tardy. I've been there. I'm sure you have too, as, as well, Stephanie, where you forget to pay the bill, and they're calling you or texting you or emailing you saying, "Hey, you didn't pay last month," but they're not coming out.

• 11:15Stephanie Harlowe?

  Or you switch your credit card, and then you, you forget it was on auto pay, and yeah.

• 11:20Derrick Levasseur?

  But they're not coming out to shut off your gas bill in October. With no notice. So

• 11:25Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, some people might say, well, the bill was only for 2905. Now that could have been what the gas company was saying, hey, you have to pay this to get it back on. It's not all they owed, or they could have had a payment agreement.

• 11:35Derrick Levasseur?

  Maybe.

• 11:36Stephanie Harlowe?

  Something like that, but either way, it's a detail we need to think about. So.

• 11:40Derrick Levasseur?

  Absolutely. And I think it all plays into it, right? Like the lack of attention to bills, the fact that you're taking out 401ks, the fact that you're just blowing that money on something. Yeah, you're going to make some memories, but it just seems like an awful long time. I mean, I'm doing the math on it, even if it's $500 a night for 20 days. That's 10 Gs right there without any food.

• 12:00Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, I'm not, I'm, you're going to make some memories of you going crazy on each other because you've been there way too long and you're like, I don't even want to see these people anymore. And if I, and one more kid runs by me in this water park and splashes me unnecessarily, I'm trying to read my book, I'm going to absolutely kind of like snap and we gotta go. So this is not, it's like, was there renovations being done on the kitchen? And maybe this is why they were staying there. It doesn't seem like that's the kind of renovations that were being done. But either way, let us take our first break and then we're going to come back and talk about what the actual hotel surveillance tells us, what story that tells us.

• 12:37Stephanie Harlowe?

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• 15:00Stephanie Harlowe?

  All right, we're back. So investigators pulled the resort surveillance footage and it gives us a pretty tight timeline of Sunday, October 11th. That's the day before the 911 call and two days before the family was supposed to check out. At about 7:00 PM, cameras show all three of them, Charles, Metallica and their son going into room 2030 together. At about 8:15 PM, Metallica leaves the room alone. According to the complaint, she goes to the vending area to use the microwave and then she goes back. Then at about 10:45 PM, Metallica and Charles leave the room together and they go to the resort's arcade. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer's reading of the complaint, it did not look like their son went with them. They were gone for about 35 to 40 minutes.

• 15:45Stephanie Harlowe?

  They came back around 11:20 PM and according to police, that's the last time anyone is seen entering or leaving that room. So think about that from about 11:20 Sunday night until officers arrived at about 3:15 Monday afternoon, no one goes in or out on camera. That's roughly 16 hours and that raises a lot of questions. Was the little boy alone in the room while his parents were at the arcade? Was he asleep? Was he even still alive? We don't know yet. The complaint doesn't say. We also don't know when Charles and his son died. It could have been late Sunday night or sometime Monday morning. Officials haven't released a time of death. The autopsies were expected this week, so that's something we'll be watching for and we'll update you on.

• 16:30Stephanie Harlowe?

  Okay. So we actually do have some more information. Following an autopsy on Thursday, which was October 15th, the Monroe County Coroner's Office says that the three-year-old boy sustained multiple stab wounds to the chest and Charles Harrison suffered a single stab wound to the chest. And this apparently was a little bit different than what the police were saying and what the, basically the DA's office and the police were saying, because the district attorney, Mike Mancuso, told LehighValleyLive.com that the police were reporting their initial observations. And their initial observations were that Chaz, Charles, died from multiple stab wounds

• 17:14Stephanie Harlowe?

  and the three-year-old boy had died from a single stab wound. But now, given the autopsy, that's different than what police were initially reporting. It looks like the little boy had multiple stab wounds and Charles had only one.

• 17:27Derrick Levasseur?

  Absolutely terrible. And we, I don't want to speculate too much, but it sounds like that would obviously be a lethal stab wound more than likely to the throat or, or the heart directly to make, to ensure the maximum amount of damage. Why the need to stab that little boy three times? There's nothing rational that I can take from that. All I can say, and it doesn't excuse it, we're going to see how this all plays out. But this is clearly someone who is significantly disturbed and going through something in order to do that. Because from a logistical perspective, there would be no need to do it to a three-year-old little child, right? So what, it's completely unnecessary in all capacity.

• 18:10Derrick Levasseur?

  But if you're going to do it, the fact that he was stabbed multiple times makes no sense. And so there's, there's definitely more to this story. Even the call that she made after the fact, you can tell this is someone who's, um, who's in a bad place.

• 18:23Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, that brings us back to Monday, October 12th, at around 3:13 PM, when Metallica Harrison called 911. According to the complaint and multiple outlets that reviewed it, here's what she allegedly said. She told the dispatchers she needed help dying. She said she was unable to find the vein in her neck. She said she was, quote, "too weak to stab my neck." She said she had knives, but they were not working. She said, "I don't want to be here anymore and I need police." When the dispatcher asked whether she was alone, she said her husband and son were already gone. According to one report, she apologized, but again, at no point on that call did Metallica ask for help for Charles or for her son. So Pocono Township Police were sent to room 2030 for a suicidal female.

• 19:07Stephanie Harlowe?

  At about 3:15 PM, when officers got there, they found Metallica at the door of the room. She was injured and bleeding. She told them she wanted to be with her husband and son. Inside, officers found Charles Harrison dead on a mattress on the floor. Their three-year-old son was found dead on a nearby mattress. So here's what else police documented in the room. A large butcher knife was on the bathroom floor. A smaller knife was in the sink. Both of those knives had teal-green handles. Resort staff told police that neither knife is a kind that the lodge keeps. So they were brought in from somewhere else. There were several bottles of medications found throughout the room. A garbage can in the bathroom held a brownish-red liquid that police believe is blood.

• 19:49Stephanie Harlowe?

  And Metallica's own injuries, she had bleeding cuts on her left wrist, what the complaint calls superficial punctures on her neck. Detectives also note that they found no defensive wounds or bruising on her beyond those self-inflicted injuries. And that detail matters. Investigators are telling you there's no sign she was in a struggle or defending herself from anyone. Put together those two knives that didn't come from the resort and that room with two people dead inside of it and a woman on the phone asking for help to die. A gap of more than 15 hours since anyone was last seen going in or out. That's what the investigators walked into.

• 20:25Derrick Levasseur?

  Don't quote me on this, but in my visits to Great Wolf Lodge, I For some reason, remember having trouble getting a knife. We were trying to get a knife to the room to cut something. I don't even remember what it was. Maybe it was the bands off their wrists because they require them to wear like those bands that are like impossible to get off. And it was like, oh, we don't really have like a sharp knife where we can come down to the, to the lobby desk. We have scissors here you can use.

• 20:50Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yes, I remember that too. Yeah.

• 20:52Derrick Levasseur?

  So, so the knives were definitely brought from home. What they were originally intended for, who knows? Or was it the plan all along? Right? Was that the plan by her all along to bring these knives for this purpose? The other thing you can take from it is unless the bodies were moved and we'll learn that information as time goes on, more than likely Chaz and, and the little boy were both killed in their sleep. Right? They, they were in the bed, they were on the mattress on the floor. And because there's no defensive wounds, I would imagine that the element of surprise was a big factor here for her, for Metallica to kill Chaz without any type of struggle whatsoever.

• 21:31Stephanie Harlowe?

  Just one stab wound, two, that's what we're hearing.

• 21:33Derrick Levasseur?

  So if he's laying on the bed and he's sleeping, that's not going to be hard.

• 21:38Stephanie Harlowe?

  So do you think when Chaz and Metallica went to the arcade later at night, that the little boy was sleeping and that's why they went? They left a three-year-old alone in the room to go to the arcade? Because some people are saying, was the three-year-old already deceased? And was Chaz like aware of this happening? And I don't know.

• 21:57Derrick Levasseur?

  I get, I get the need to speculate. I get the need to speculate and that's fine because what do I know? But my, my thought would be this was a, a two parents who felt comfortable leaving their boy in the room to sleep while they went out for a little bit because it was normal for him to sleep through the night after that.

• 22:13Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, I think they were gone for less than an hour.

• 22:15Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, they were gone for less than an hour. Would I do that? No. Would I recommend that to anybody else watching or listening to this right now? Absolutely not. I've had times where I've had to go down to the lobby where my kids were with me and I would put my phone on in their room and I would take, you know, another phone and I would FaceTime so I could hear because you never know what's going to happen while they're alone and if they wake up, they're going to be petrified. So personally.

• 22:39Stephanie Harlowe?

  Or somebody goes in, you know, we have Madeline McCann, right?

• 22:42Derrick Levasseur?

  Right. Personally, we would not recommend it. However, even though we wouldn't recommend it and we wouldn't condone it.

• 22:47Stephanie Harlowe?

  We're not going to judge you.

• 22:49Derrick Levasseur?

  It's very possible that they needed an hour to themselves and they decided to leave him in the room, hoping that he was going to sleep the entire time.

• 22:56Stephanie Harlowe?

  So Metallica was taken by ambulance to St. Luke's Hospital Monroe campus in Stroudsburg. A police officer rode along and according to the complaint, she kept talking. She allegedly told the officer she had taken medication to thin her blood. She was frustrated, she said, because her blood kept clotting. She said she just needed the energy and strength. She said she wasn't supposed to still be there. Then came the lines that have been quoted in almost every story about this case. She allegedly said, quote, "I was supposed to have my happy family," end quote. She said her life, quote, "wasn't supposed to end like this," end quote. According to the complaint, she said she had pictured having a happy family ever since she was a child. And then this, she allegedly asked the EMS crew how deep her vein was so she would know

• 23:40Stephanie Harlowe?

  for next time. TMZ also reports she repeatedly said, "I [bleep] up." Now, I will note that that detail hasn't shown up in other mainstream outlets that quoted the complaint, so let's treat it with some caution. It is TMZ after all. At the hospital, detectives read Metallica, her Miranda rights, her response according to the complaint was that she was, quote, "suicidal, not stupid," end quote. And she declined to talk to them. Now, that quote has gotten a lot of attention. I think it's worth sitting with for a second. Here's someone by who the accounts we, we've seen in these documents has just tried to end her own life, yet she's clear-headed enough to understand her legal position and invoke her rights. That's going to matter later, I think, especially if there's any argument about her mental

• 24:25Stephanie Harlowe?

  state, right?

• 24:26Derrick Levasseur?

  We're, we're looking at another Lindsey Clancy-style case here. So we're going to see all of this, all of this will be picked apart.

• 24:33Stephanie Harlowe?

  I think the timing matters too. I was thinking the same thing. When this went down, how the Lindsey Clancy trial sort of went and ended.

• 24:40Derrick Levasseur?

  If we find out that she's been treated for the last few months or years and wasn't getting the care she needed, be a whole new can of worms, but we'll see.

• 24:49Stephanie Harlowe?

  Well, here's where things stand in court. On Tuesday, October 13th, Pocono Township Police filed a criminal complaint. Metallica Rose Harrison is charged with two counts of criminal homicide. Under Pennsylvania law, that general charge can later be graded to first degree murder, third degree murder, or manslaughter as the case develops. The complaint went to Magisterial District Judge Daniel Kresk. At her arraignment Tuesday, Metallica was denied bail. She's being held in the Monroe County Jail. Her preliminary hearing is scheduled for Wednesday, October 21st. As of now, the court docket does not list a defense attorney. And District Attorney Mike Mancuso called this "a violent domestic tragedy."

• 25:31Stephanie Harlowe?

  Pocono Township Police said it was an isolated incident, there's no threat to the public, and Great Wolf Lodge said it is deeply saddened and heartbroken and is cooperating fully with law enforcement. So while Metallica sat in jail, investigators drove about two hours northwest to the family's home in Towanda. They had a search warrant. The warrant application, I think it tells us what the police were thinking. It says the home, quote, "may reveal valuable evidence relating to the motive." It also says evidence there could link the knife used in the killings to other items. Now, remember those teal green handles of the knives. According to NBC News, police seized nearly a dozen teal-handled knives from the family's house.

• 26:13Stephanie Harlowe?

  Investigators haven't said they're a matching set, but I think that's clearly.

• 26:17Derrick Levasseur?

  If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck.

• 26:20Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, if the knives in room 2030 at Great Wolf Lodge came from the family's own kitchen, obviously that raises a hard question, like were they packed for this trip three weeks earlier? Or like, obviously if they came from the home, they were brought three weeks earlier.

• 26:36Derrick Levasseur?

  And it might've been something where it was presented as, hey, we're going to be there for multiple weeks. We know the lodge doesn't allow you to have sharp knives because there's kids everywhere.

• 26:45Stephanie Harlowe?

  Maybe, yeah.

• 26:46Derrick Levasseur?

  So let's bring a couple of our own. Now, the real intentions behind the knife could have been completely different.

• 26:52Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, we don't know. But if, if she brought them three weeks before, then obviously was this premeditated? And that's the question that police are asking. So police also took a safe from the home, a journal, a financial notebook, a laptop and other items. The application notes that in cases like this, people commonly document homicidal or suicidal thoughts, either in writing or electronically. To be clear, it does not say anything like that was found yet. That's why they wanted the journal and the laptop. We don't know yet what's in them. The warrant application also includes something we haven't heard anywhere else, which is what family members told police. Now, I do also want to be very careful with this part. These are statements from relatives written into a police document to support a search warrant.

• 27:37Stephanie Harlowe?

  They haven't been tested in court. We don't know which relatives said them. And Metallica's side of the family haven't really been heard from at all, besides like her stepmother, April, coming out every so often. With that said, here's what they allegedly told investigators. Family members described Metallica as dominant and controlling. They said she had isolated Charles and their son from them. One relative allegedly said Metallica was resentful toward her son, meaning the three-year-old. According to that relative, she never wanted to get pregnant and she had said the toddler was taking time away from her and Charles. So set that next to the other picture we have. There's water park photos, there's Charles's sister saying he was devoted to his wife

• 28:19Stephanie Harlowe?

  and son, there's Metallica herself in the ambulance allegedly saying all she ever wanted was a happy family. Both of those things can be true at the same time. People can present one thing publicly and live another privately.

• 28:31Derrick Levasseur?

  Worse, we just talked about it with social media.

• 28:32Stephanie Harlowe?

  But right now, these are claims, not findings. It doesn't mean Metallica was controlling, domineering, isolating. This is, could just be the family's perception. We don't know. I don't want to treat them as anything more than that right now. Like I said, Metallica's own stepmother, April Fetka, is speaking out too. In her interview with the New York Post, she said she believes the killings were planned. And the reason she thinks that is because of the knives. She believes the teal-handled knives in that bathroom at Great Wolf Lodge matched the set from the family's home. And she also said this shortly before the killings. While they were at Great Wolf Lodge, Metallica was on a video call with relatives and seemed happy. So nothing about that video call seemed alarming. And I will be clear, once again, the stepmother's view that this was planned is her opinion.

• 29:16Stephanie Harlowe?

  Investigators haven't necessarily said that. What police have said is that the knives didn't come from the resort and that they seized matching teal-handled knives from the house.

• 29:27Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, so put two and two together.

• 29:28Stephanie Harlowe?

  So let's take a quick break and we'll be right back.

• 29:34Stephanie Harlowe?

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• 29:48Derrick Levasseur?

  That sounds like an amazing plan to me. I'm a solid evening, as far as I'm concerned.

• 29:54Stephanie Harlowe?

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• 30:35Stephanie Harlowe?

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• 30:57Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, more time to spend with the people you invited over because ideally, you'd like to see them at some point between opening the door and doing the dishes.

• 31:04Stephanie Harlowe?

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• 31:11Derrick Levasseur?

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• 31:28Derrick Levasseur?

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• 31:58Derrick Levasseur?

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• 32:19Derrick Levasseur?

  All right, we're back from break. And yeah, it's what you were saying beforehand. You're kind of just putting one plus one together right now to get to two, and it makes sense. The question will be, was this a premeditated murder? If they, the hard thing is Chaz is no longer with us. He's probably the only other person that would be able to enlighten us regarding why the knives were brought. You know, I can make an argument that you would bring them if you're planning on staying there a long time, and you're gonna have to cut some things up. On the other hand, what do you need a butcher knife for at the Great Wolf Lodge?

• 32:48Stephanie Harlowe?

  I mean, she could have told him, we're bringing these because they don't have knives there, remember? But she could have still intended to use them for this.

• 32:54Derrick Levasseur?

  Right. On the other hand, she may have hidden them in her luggage and not told anybody. And then when they go to sleep, she pulls them out of her own luggage, which he obviously wouldn't go through, and it's just a complete surprise attack. Also very possible.

• 33:10Stephanie Harlowe?

  So there's a few questions that everybody has about this.

• 33:16Derrick Levasseur?

  Can I say one more thing? One of the biggest questions, if it's premeditated, why the Great Wolf Lodge?

• 33:21Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, so that's the first question, right? The, the big one. Was this planned, or did something happen that night? Was it connected to a mental health crisis, or to money issues, or to something going on in the marriage? And why the Great Wolf Lodge? Was this, do you remember that? Was it Timothy Pitzer?

• 33:38Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 33:38Stephanie Harlowe?

  And his mother took him to all these cool places before she killed him. Remember, she brought him on like vacations and all the places? And we don't know for sure that she killed him.

• 33:47Derrick Levasseur?

  We've never found him.

• 33:47Stephanie Harlowe?

  By the way, we've never found him. He's still technically a missing person, but we think that's what happened.

• 33:53Derrick Levasseur?

  It doesn't look good, no.

• 33:55Stephanie Harlowe?

  So it could have been one of those things, I was thinking, because that's immediately what I thought, I thought about Timothy, when, when I was like, also, why the Great Wolf Lodge? You know, you don't have more privacy there. I mean, I don't know. I don't know. Also, another question is, why three weeks, right? Why did the family leave home for a resort and then extend their stay while they were there? Was there something going on at the house? Were they in financial trouble? Metallica's stepmother says the stay was paid for with Charles's 401K. Other outlets say Metallica drained her own 401K. There's that utility shut-off notice back home.

• 34:31Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 34:31Stephanie Harlowe?

  So if records confirm that, like, there's things that the police are gonna have to confirm. Was there financial issues at the house? Were, were they broke? Was Charles or Metallica's 401K actually drained? Was there any mental health issues going on that, that were documented? Was Metallica seeing somebody?

• 34:48Derrick Levasseur?

  Medical attention, yeah.

• 34:49Stephanie Harlowe?

  Now, three, obviously, the knives. I don't think this is a question, even though people keep questioning it. I think the police are saying, without directly saying, the knives came from their house.

• 34:57Derrick Levasseur?

  The knives came from the house, guys. Yeah.

• 34:59Stephanie Harlowe?

  And then the timeline, people, like I said, have a lot of questions. When did Charles die? When did the three-year-old boy die? Did it happen Sunday night after the arcade? Did it happen sometime Monday before the 911 call? What happened during the roughly 16 hours before the last time that door of that room opened and the 911 call? And the, the autopsies should help narrow that down, I think, but.

• 35:20Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah. And, and just real quick, because I know we're talking here, we keep saying the little boy. From what you were telling me, and this was kind of in between, the name of the boy has been released, but you were just gonna choose not to say it? Is that what we're going with?

• 35:31Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, I feel bad. I don't know.

• 35:34Derrick Levasseur?

  Okay, maybe it's six of one, half dozen the other.

• 35:36Stephanie Harlowe?

  I wouldn't want, if it was my kid, I wouldn't want.

• 35:39Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, I'm sure other people are saying the name. It's not adding to the story. We still have to figure out why. Maybe at some point, if we do an update, we will say the child's name if that seems appropriate. But just for anybody wondering when we're recording this, which is on Monday, the 19th, we are aware of the name. As we were doing a little bit more on this, at, at the start, we had said they had only released the initials TH. We're learning now that the name is out there, we're gonna still stick with not saying it.

• 36:02Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah, just for now. I feel better about it, but, all right, the medication. What was in the bottles found around the room? Was anything taken by anyone besides Metallica? She told the police, the EMS people, that she had taken blood thinners, and it didn't work. What else was in those medication bottles? And will we find the presence of anything in the blood or the systems of Charles and the three-year-old boy? Toxicology results are obviously gonna be a very important piece here. They usually take weeks. Metallica's mental state, does she have a mental health history?

• 36:34Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, that's gonna be a big one.

• 36:35Stephanie Harlowe?

  I expect this to become a really big, central issue once she has a lawyer. It's also going to be weighed against, once again, her clear-headed answer to detectives at the hospital. This did not seem like somebody who was in the throes of a mental health crisis. And depending on when her husband and son were killed, and when she called 911, we might be looking at a very extended mental health crisis that could be hard to sell to a jury.

• 37:00Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah.

• 37:00Stephanie Harlowe?

  So at this point, the next big date is Wednesday, October 21st. That's Metallica's preliminary hearing. That's where prosecutors have to show there's enough evidence to send the case to trial. It's often also where we might hear some new details, like testimony from the lead detective. And we will likely, at that point, see who's representing Metallica. Hearings like this do get postponed all the time, so we will keep an eye on that as well.

• 37:22Derrick Levasseur?

  More time to do their research and kind of get their ducks in a row, yeah.

• 37:25Stephanie Harlowe?

  Yeah. Maybe she wouldn't have a lawyer in time. So we want to, obviously, make sure that we are reporting accurately. And I just don't know with something like this, there's so much coming out now where people are starting to report on things. People who knew them are starting to talk about things, and it's all kind of muddying the waters, I think, because, I don't know. I think you have to be not in your right mind to kill your own three-year-old child, right?

• 37:54Derrick Levasseur?

  Yeah, we just have to find out what was going on in that moment. If she comes up with a defense, what will it be? I know I mentioned Lindsey Clancy. It's not a, it's by no means a carbon copy.

• 38:04Stephanie Harlowe?

  No, it's kind of just.

• 38:05Derrick Levasseur?

  Her son was, her son was three years old. I don't, I'm not an expert in postpartum depression, but I don't think that it's as strong of a case. Callan was only eight months old, so it's a little bit closer to the time that she had given birth in Lindsey Clancy's case.

• 38:17Stephanie Harlowe?

  It's possible that she could still be having symptoms of that, but if she planned it for weeks, then it's not going to work as an offense.

• 38:24Derrick Levasseur?

  And there may be some search history on her computer, on her phone, all that will come to light. We don't know what's gonna come out of this, and it may change the entire perspective where if it's a, if it's a slam dunk, she may take a plea. We don't know. We will see. We know it's gonna be a conversation, and when there's an update, we will let you guys know, because this is a horrific case, and it impacts a lot of people, not just the, the three people that we're mainly talking about today. And there was one other thing I wanted to mention, because we're getting comments in our, our comment section on our videos, we're also getting it in our DMs, and we're getting it on our social media post. Faith Hedgepath, a case that I covered many years ago on breaking homicide. The trial is currently going on and on trial right now. I want to make sure to get this scumbag's name right.

• 39:09Derrick Levasseur?

  Miguel Enrique Salguero Oliveras. He's on trial, and as, the last time I checked, was only a couple hours ago. The state had rested, and the defense had asked for all charges to be dismissed. So it's been pretty polarizing. I know that the Oliveras was crying in court. I guess we'll see how it plays out. We're following it. Stephanie and I are aware of it. We've been talking about it. We're gonna wait till it's done, and then we'll give an update on it, and I'll definitely have some thoughts, because I will tell you, and I've said it before, Miguel was not someone who was on the list of people that law enforcement or even I was considering. We thought it was much closer to home. We thought it was someone she knew based on the circumstances surrounding her death and, and how they gained access to her apartment.

• 39:50Derrick Levasseur?

  We thought it was someone that had come over voluntarily, who had been asked to come over. So there's a lot to discuss in that one. I don't want you guys to think that we're not following it. We are. And when there's an update in that case, who knows how this is gonna play out? We'll definitely let you guys know. As always, we appreciate you being here. Please, everyone, stay safe out here, and we will see you later this week for part two of the Ashley Flynn case. You guys really liked the first episode. There was a lot to cover, and trust me, we're just getting started. So we'll see you soon.