MURDERED: Patrick Shunn & Monique Patenaude

When a couple from Oso, Washington, is discovered missing, it doesn’t take long for detectives to develop a prime suspect. But solving the case, finding their bodies and capturing the killer took approximately 100 days, using a combination of old-school investigative methods and modern forensic tools.

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

• 0:00Ashley Flowers?

  Do me a favor. Put all five fingers up. Now, put one down if you have workout saved on Instagram that you haven't gone back to. Put one down if you were gonna go to a workout class this week, but there's just none that the times worked out for. Put one down if you don't like working out at home because you don't know what to do and you need someone to push you. Put two fingers down if you want to stop this game. Babe, we are the same. I don't have a lot of time and honestly, I'm not even someone who likes working out. But Ladder actually changed that. I literally had to waddle into the studio to record this because my butt is so sore. Ladder is quick. I'm not wasting time wandering around or doing reps of something that won't matter. I'm in, I'm out. I have a coach along the way who can help me make 30 minutes with weights feel better than two hours of whatever I was doing before. And it's $1 a day.

• 0:45Ashley Flowers?

  So if price was ever stopping you before, you're officially out of excuses. Remove the guesswork with Ladder and get a real coach in your ear telling you exactly what to do for every workout. No thinking, everything planned for you. If you have an iPhone, head to ladder.fit/crimejunkie and take a quick quiz to find your perfect Ladder plan. Use my link and get a free seven-day trial with no credit card and $10 off your first month if you join. Hi, crime junkies. Britt and I did not make a new episode this week, but don't you dare hit pause because I actually still have an episode that is brand new to you. And that is because I'm gonna give you one of our fan club episodes.

• 1:28Ashley Flowers?

  People ask me all the time, like, oh, is the fan club just ad-free content? Yes, everything is ad-free, but that's not it. Oh, do we just get the episodes early? Yes, you get them early, but that is not just it. Oh, are the bonus episodes, like, short or just behind the scenes? And no, the episodes are exactly like the ones you get here in your feed. And so that is why I wanted to drop this one to show you what you guys are missing if you are not in the fan club. If you're in the club, you will find all of our episodes, tons of bonus episodes, early releases, and it's not just Crime Junkie. It's so many of the audio Chuck shows. So if one episode this week isn't enough for you, maybe you're looking for some extra listens or you're traveling this holiday season,

• 2:13Ashley Flowers?

  the Crime Junkie Fan Club is where you'll want to be. And because today is Cyber Monday, you can join the Crime Junkie Fan Club at a discount today. Just head to crimejunkie.com to learn more and to join. Now, let's get into this special release from the Crime Junkie Fan Club.

• 2:31Ashley Flowers?

  Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And the story I have for you today is my umpteenth reason to stay out of Washington. This twisty and gut-wrenching tale includes a double murder, a historic landslide, a trail of evidence, and a manhunt to Mexico. And I'm going to take you along and explain how investigators combined old-school, boots-on-the-ground investigative methods with modern-day forensic evidence to get the killer captured, all over the course of 100 days. And listen closely, because in this story, there are two central themes. Details matter, and the truth never dies.

• 3:13Ashley Flowers?

  This is the story of Patrick Shun and Monique Patonod.

• 3:49Ashley Flowers?

  Snohomish County Major Crimes Detective Dave Fontenot walks into his office in Everett, Washington on April 13, 2016, with plans to drop his stuff and go home and rest. He and the rest of the homicide squad had just wrapped up about 40 hours of work at a murder scene, and they were beyond tired. But before he can walk out the door, a notice lands in his hands from the patrol unit about a missing couple up in the Oso area. That's about 45 minutes northeast. The notice says it's a missing husband and wife who were last seen the day before. Their cars are missing, no one can get a hold of them, and there is no activity on their socials.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  So is this report just coming in, or is this just like the official handoff to major crimes here?

• 4:33Ashley Flowers?

  That's the latter. So the report actually came in the day before. So day one of this case started April 12th. That's when the first call about the missing couple came into Snohomish County 911 dispatch. And that actually came from the couple's neighbor friends, Mike and his wife Suzanne. Basically, the reason he called, the four of them were supposed to go to an Iron Maiden concert the night of the 11th, but Patrick and Monique were a no-show. Red flag number one. Now, Mike had gone to their house to see what was up, sees their beloved dog Cairo running loose, red flag number two, which is what prompted Mike to call Patrick's work on the 12th. And they told him that Patrick was a no-show at the office.

• 5:10Speaker 01

  Another red flag.

• 5:11Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, that's when he calls police. So patrol deputies had gone up there to do a welfare check. They get Mike's official statement, and they see that the couple's cars are still missing, which I'm sure to a lot of people would give the impression that everything's fine. They'd be like, oh, they're just like went somewhere.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're just not here.

• 5:28Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, but Mike can just like feel whatever this is in his bones. So much so that he told the deputy, he actually grabbed the SD card out of Patrick's trail camera, and he was gonna check it himself to see like when they were last on it, because it's kind of like near the entrance of their long driveway. But he's like, you know what, since police are here, like, here, I'll just give it to you guys. And the conviction in his voice, his actions, like that's being picked up on by patrol deputies who then pass this notice off to Detective Dave Fontenot in Major Crimes. And on day two, the official criminal investigation kicks off. Now, his first move is to put in expedited requests for their cellphone data, which comes back pretty fast. It shows that Patrick and Monique's phones both stopped

• 6:12Ashley Flowers?

  transmitting at 8:32 a.m. on April 12th. But the activity before that is odd.

• 6:20Ashley Flowers?

  Now, most of the activity from the 11th looks normal. It has Monique kinda out and about running errands. Patrick is placed at work. Monique's phone shows that she arrived home to where their driveway gate was at 11:04 a.m. And then Patrick's phone shows him arriving home at that same spot at 3:07 p.m. Now, their phones don't seem to move for a long time, as if they are home. But remember, the 11th is when they're supposed to go to that concert. And Mike said that he actually went over to the house on the 11th at about 4:30 p.m. Their car's already gone then. So if they both arrived home earlier that day, where are they? The next activity Detective Fontanot sees on the phone data is at 3:26 a.m.

• 7:02Ashley Flowers?

  When both of their phones travel up an old logging road. And then they both stopped transmitting five hours later at 8:32 a.m. Now, the 3:26 a.m. time is strange in and of itself, right? Like, where are you going? Why are you going up this logging road in the middle of the night? It's super weird.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:20Ashley Flowers?

  But where this road is, is like the weirdest part of all. You see, two years before this, Oso, Washington was home to one of the deadliest landslides in American history. I mean, some 40 houses got buried and 43 people died. Patrick and Monique's house was spared, but barely. I mean, the aerial photos of this landslide are bonkers. It took out an entire mountainside along with houses and roads. And so much of it dumped into the North Fork Still of Guamish River that the whole river dammed and caused even more houses to flood. I mean, this was a huge tragic mess that ended up in FEMA but basically having to buy out much of the properties.

• 8:01Ashley Flowers?

  So, all that to say, where their phones were traveling was like even higher up the mountain than where this landslide had been. There is nothing there. Certainly not at 3 o'clock or 3:30 in the morning.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  And were the phones in that same location when they stopped transmitting at like, what, 8:30-ish?

• 8:19Ashley Flowers?

  Same general area.

• 8:21Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 8:21Ashley Flowers?

  Now, another super weird thing about the phone activity is that friends and family are telling detectives that the messages that they've been sending to Patrick and Monique on the 11th, like between the time they got home to them moving up the mountains at 3:30, those were all getting actively read. Like, they can tell from read receipts.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  Right, like someone's opening the phone and seeing the messages.

• 8:42Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah. They just don't think that it's Patrick and Monique because no one's responding. And the read receipts stopped completely that morning at around the same time that the phones just totally stopped transmitting. So it would seem that something happened to them after they got home if they were in fact the ones in possessions of their phone when they got home to begin with. That SD card from the trail camera that Mike took could come in real handy now. Except, when they look at the files, the card was completely full, so it had stopped recording before all of this.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  Ashley.

• 9:16Ashley Flowers?

  It's like, how?

• 9:17Speaker 01

  I had gotten my hopes up. I thought maybe we could like trust trail cams more than like business security cameras.

• 9:23Ashley Flowers?

  I would say, I have no faith in business surveillance, but like...

• 9:26Speaker 01

  But like this, like I felt...

• 9:28Ashley Flowers?

  Even the trail cam.

• 9:29Speaker 01

  Once again, I'm disappointed.

• 9:30Ashley Flowers?

  Upgrade your SD card gigabytes to those trail cam people, like, neither. So yeah, this could have shown if it was them, who they were with, when and where they got home, all of that is stuff they need to know. It's gonna be important. But, first things first, they need to try and find Patrick and Monique. And the best place to start is where the phones were pinging on the morning of the 12th. By day three of the investigation, this is now April 14th, major crimes detectives are pretty sure they're dealing with foul play. And they put eagle-eyed searchers up in a helicopter. And Britt, when I say eagle-eyed, like just you wait, I'm gonna be testing your eyesight in a minute. And while they're up in the air, detectives work to search the wooded area on the ground while they wait for their search warrant on the house to go through that.

• 10:14Ashley Flowers?

  And Britt, this terrain is wild. And I mean that in the literal sense of the word.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  I mean, yeah, I'm picturing Western Washington, like mountains, rivers, woods. Beautiful, but like really vast, really dangerous scenery.

• 10:27Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, it is rugged on the ground. There's like also huge canopies of trees up above from the sky, like hovering all of that.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:35Ashley Flowers?

  Plus, remember, add the whole Oso landslide debris stuff on top of this. I actually have some footage if you wanna take a look at it over here.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  There it is, at like 33 seconds in. I mean, that looks, that looks like a car.

• 10:51Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, so that's their first sighting of Patrick's missing Land Rover. Once the heli folks radio major crimes, they get out there on foot. But it's a struggle just to get down to where the car is because it's a steep, treed hillside and the Land Rover is fully like nose down, 90 degrees, and it's stuck on a stump. It's immediately clear that someone tried to cover the car up with like brush and debris, also a camouflage tarp.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 11:19Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, and guess what else they see below the car? Exactly 268 feet further down is Monique's Jeep laying on its side. So both cars look as though someone pushed them over the upper cliff's edge and just like let them tumble down like a game of Hot Wheels or Domino's or something. But Patrick's car, the Land Rover, that's the one that got stuck on the stump. So interestingly, there is this wooden four by four post weirdly positioned, but it looks like someone was trying to like use it as a jack to get the car unstuck from the stump that it's dangling from.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  Oh my God, I mean, this scene is obviously no good, but I'm, I'm kind of bracing myself for what they're gonna find inside the cars.

• 11:59Ashley Flowers?

  It would detectives are bracing themselves too. But what they find is not what they or you probably expected.

• 12:09Ashley Flowers?

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• 12:52Ashley Flowers?

  Visit sofi.com/crimejunkie to see how much you can save. That's sofi.com/crimejunkie and start making smarter money moves with SoFi. SoFi student loans are originated by SoFi Bank, N.A., member FDIC. Additional terms and conditions apply, NMLS 696891.

• 13:12Speaker 01

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• 14:18Ashley Flowers?

  Detectives run out of daylight, so the cars don't get processed until the next day, on day four of the investigation. Detectives on the ground are expecting that when they open the doors of the Land Rover, that they're going to find the bodies of Patrick and Monique. But they don't. Instead, they just find loads of suspicious items that just adds to the mystery of what could have happened to them. I mean, in Patrick's car, there's rope, plastic sheeting, tarp, some towels, and blood in the back of the Rover. And falling out near Monique's Jeep, they find her wallet with her driver's license, a bag of dog food, a bag of chicken feed, a roll of unopened paper towels, some black plastic gloves,

• 15:02Ashley Flowers?

  cables, a McDonald's receipt dated for April 11th at 10:41 a.m. They also find some spent shell casings and a shopping list that's covered in blood. Now, all of that stuff that fell out of her car actually matches the shopping list and her phone activity. Because one of the errands that she was gonna run was to a co-op grocery store, where she bought all that food for her animals. And the McDonald's receipt lines up too.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  Which, all that stuff still being in her car means, like, she likely never made it back inside her house after arriving, like, on, back on the property at home.

• 15:36Ashley Flowers?

  Right. But to be triple sure, they even send someone out to the McDonald's just to check the security footage, to make sure that it actually was her who was there. Make sure that she was alone. And when they look, sure enough, it's her in the drive-thru with her dog Cairo in the passenger seat, at the same exact time and date as the receipt, and matching what the cellphone data shows. So, with all of this evidence, especially the blood in the shell casings, detectives are now certain that whatever happened to Patrick and Monique, they probably didn't make it out alive. As the car scenes are being processed, neighbor and family interviews are also happening, and this theme begins to emerge.

• 16:17Ashley Flowers?

  There is one name that almost everyone mentions when asked the age-old question. Can you think of anyone who would want to hurt Patrick and Monique? John Reed.

• 16:28Speaker 01

  Who?

• 16:29Ashley Flowers?

  John is Patrick and Monique's neighbor, and there is a nasty dispute going on between them. Patrick and Monique had accused John of trespassing, and essentially being a bad steward of the land. And, again, the theme of this episode is landslide. So, John's property is one parcel closer to where the landslide destruction was. His house was barely missed, but the mudslide actually took out part of his driveway. So, he had been using a road easement that was more or less Patrick and Monique's driveway. But here's the thing. John actually took a massive payout from FEMA to allow authorities to seize his house and property. And part of that deal meant that John had to move out, and he wasn't allowed to access that property anymore

• 17:13Ashley Flowers?

  without a government official present. But he was still, like, coming and going as if he still lived there, basically squatting on a property that was no longer his. And Patrick and Monique accused him of illegally cutting down trees, and like, all of this other stuff that they didn't like. The dispute had even escalated to each party calling the cops on each other in the past. So this little neighbor spat had gotten pretty ugly.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  And has their relationship with John like been rocky the whole time they've been neighbors?

• 17:41Ashley Flowers?

  I mean, like off and on for like a few years, but Patrick's niece Erin told us that there was a time after the landslide when Patrick felt like sorry for John. I mean, he like, I lost his property. And he showed Patrick, showed him a lot of compassion, giving him permission to use their driveway gate, all of that. But then it reached a point where he felt as if John was abusing their kindness. And Patrick and Monique ended up putting locks on their gate. And then that's why they actually put up the trail camera. Because by that time, they were like, this is it. We need evidence of him trespassing so we can sue this guy. So, I mean, leading up to this, things had hit a boiling point. And when I say boiling point, I want to make it clear, none of Patrick and Monique's relatives are like,

• 18:22Ashley Flowers?

  oh, John definitely murdered them. It's more like, you know, they had zero enemies except for this one neighbor.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  There was this one guy.

• 18:28Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, this one guy who seemed to hate their guts. But everything is now like starting to click into place for detectives. All the stories are merging into one. Because remember neighbor Mike who reported them missing?

• 18:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:40Ashley Flowers?

  So his wife Suzanne told detectives that on April 13th, so this is going on two days with no sightings of their friends. She had gone over there to check on things and as she's approaching the gate, she sees John Reed in his red pickup truck exiting the gate. And John's brother Tony is with him. Now Suzanne doesn't know Tony, but he's wearing a hoodie with the hood like pulled up. He's like wearing sunglasses, like let's just say the vibes were off. And Suzanne stops to talk to John and she glances in the back of his truck and she sees in the back are some cables and a four by four wooden post. And based on Suzanne's description of these things, they are a perfect match for the items found by the vehicles up on the mountain.

• 19:25Ashley Flowers?

  And not even knowing any of that at the time that Suzanne is like talking to them and seeing this, she is already so suspicious of John that she actually rolled some video on her phone during this interaction just in case something went down.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  That is such a crime junkie move.

• 19:40Ashley Flowers?

  I know. Like props to the girlies out there who are basically citizen detectives. So this is enough for Detective Fontenot to do some John Reed homework. He runs a background check on John and sees that he actually is a convicted felon, but not for anything violent, for an old felony marijuana conviction. But Brother Tony, also a convicted felon, and his past is violent. So this is when police roll over to John's house.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  John's house that he doesn't technically own anymore, where he's not really supposed to be.

• 20:12Ashley Flowers?

  Correct. And at least in that moment, he is following the rules. He and Tony are nowhere to be found.

• 20:17Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 20:18Ashley Flowers?

  So while they figure out how to track them down, they start knocking on doors of other neighbors to ask if anyone had any information or security footage, and oh, boy, does this pay off. Police obtained video from two different houses that are on the road that goes above the landslide, and one of them shows Patrick's Land Rover, followed by Monique's Jeep, driving up the road, one right after the other on April 12 at 3:31 a.m. It is the exact route and timestamps as the cellphone data. Now, the other video shows John Reed's red truck taking the same route nearly six hours later at 9:21 a.m., and sticking out of the back of his truck is that four-by-four wooden post.

• 21:03Ashley Flowers?

  Detective Fontenot told our reporter Emily Muir that, at least for him, these videos were the evidence that changed everything. I mean, in his words, "From that moment forward, the hunt for John and Tony Reed was, quote, 'on like Donkey Kong,'" is what he told her. Now they have enough to serve search warrants at John's house, or his former property, and even more physical evidence is found there. Shell casings, plastic sheeting, a camo tarp, guns, more four-by-four posts, zip ties in the closet, I mean, there's blood in the bathtub, and that's just evidence that was collected from inside. By his garage, they find a trash barrel that is full of clothes, not burnt, just soaking in diesel fuel.

• 21:48Ashley Flowers?

  And they find not one, but two secret underground bunkers.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  Um, I think the only thing worse than finding one secret underground bunker.

• 21:59Ashley Flowers?

  Is the second one?

• 21:59Speaker 01

  Is finding two secret underground bunkers.

• 22:03Ashley Flowers?

  And listen, he said that like each time they were like stumbling across these because like they weren't expecting to find them.

• 22:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:10Ashley Flowers?

  They're literally thinking like, oh my God, we're gonna find Patrick and Monique either like tied up and bleeding and injured or worse. But just like the cars, both of the bunkers are empty. Basically Detective Fontenot told us he thinks that those were actually just former grow rooms for John's marijuana operations. But anyways, they collect everything, they send it off to the crime lab, and bolos are officially issued for John and Tony Reed. The US Marshal Service also sticks some agents on John and Tony's parents' house in Ellensburg, Washington to do surveillance just in case they showed up there.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  And do they find anything suspicious inside Patrick and Monique's house?

• 22:49Ashley Flowers?

  No, not really. So their house is like kinda immaculate, there's no signs of a struggle. And detectives even had relatives come look around to see if anything looked out of place or were missing or whatever. And interestingly, there were only two things that they could note. One, they said Patrick's computer was missing. And like, the other one is so small, they said that the wrong cat bowl was out.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  What, what exactly does that mean, the, the wrong cat bowl?

• 23:15Ashley Flowers?

  Um, they said that there was like a certain cat bowl that Patrick and Monique used for like their cat with like food or whatever, and like the one that was sitting out.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  Was not it.

• 23:22Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, I mean, it must have been so distinct that all of them knew or whatever.

• 23:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:26Ashley Flowers?

  And it's so interesting because this is one of the things that Detective Fontenot admitted to us, he's like, I kinda just dismissed this as nothing at the time, but it becomes a learning moment for him later on because that different cat bowl, it was a clue.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  The details matter.

• 23:41Ashley Flowers?

  The details matter. Now, it's not until day five, April 16th, that detectives get word from those agents who are on the stakeout at John and Tony's parents' house. But on day five, they've spotted John's red truck in the garage. Snohomish County detectives drop everything. They drive the three hours away to Ellensburg to serve search warrants on the parents' house and on John's truck. But they didn't get there quick enough to intercept John or Tony. Like, they are already gone by then. And their parents, Clyde and Fay, are pretty unhelpful. They're basically like, "Yep, our sons were here, but we're not going to tell you where they went."

• 24:19Speaker 01

  Oh, cool. Great, yeah, not at all concerning.

• 24:24Ashley Flowers?

  So, in the garage, they find more tarps, more plastic sheeting that match everything found at the crime scene. And inside John's truck, detectives find a small spot of what looks like blood near the passenger side door. Now, this is tiny compared to the blood that they found in Patrick's Land Rover, but it still gets swapped anyways. And they also find some recent US bank receipts for, like, big cash outs, and a 7-Eleven receipt from Arlington, Washington, dated on April 11th, just before midnight. And that, just before midnight, that's like square in the missing timeframe we have for Monique and Patrick, right? So detectives decide to take this. They go to the 7-Eleven, and sure enough, on surveillance video, that was working, praise be.

• 25:09Ashley Flowers?

  They actually see John and Tony buying energy drinks and chips at midnight, wearing, guess what? The clothes that were found at John's in that barrel soaking in diesel fuel.

• 25:21Speaker 01

  So, the evidence is just piling up against these guys.

• 25:24Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, and they just keep collecting more and more. Searchers find Monique's keys and glasses, like, seven miles away from where the cars were dumped. And they now have help of a cadaver dog who finds Patrick's jacket, which is covered in blood. So five days in, they've basically solved their case. And Detective Fontenot and his team go ahead and make their case to the prosecutor to get arrest warrants issued for John and Tony Reed for a no-body homicide. But now, the manhunt begins. A BOLO got put out on their mom's car, which is the only car that was missing from their house when John left his truck, and they get cellphone data for John and Tony. Both investigative avenues are fruitful.

• 26:08Ashley Flowers?

  Not only do they get a hit on Faye's license plate, but cell mapping is showing exactly where the fugitive brothers are when they go looking for them on day five. And it's nowhere near Washington. By April 16th, the Reed brothers have made it all the way to Phoenix, Arizona. That is a solid 20-hour drive. Yeah. But before cops can descend on them down south, their phones just go dark. And they are just completely off the grid. Now, all authorities can do is hope for a sighting, or another license plate catch, or for the brothers' phones to come back online. Or, something even better.

• 26:47Ashley Flowers?

  And something even better happens on day 35. Let's face it, if student loans are slowing down your financial goals, it might be time for a smarter strategy. That's where today's sponsor, SoFi, comes in. SoFi is helping you tackle student debt by refinancing your loans with flexible monthly payments that fit your budget. We're talking about the potential to lower your interest rate, reduce your monthly payment, or even pay off your loan sooner, depending on the term you choose. You can also consolidate your student loans into one simple monthly payment, so you could save more each month and work towards achieving your long-term financial ambitions. SoFi offers competitive fixed and variable rates and no origination fees, prepayment fees, or late fees required. It takes just two minutes to check your rate with SoFi, and they have already helped

• 27:32Ashley Flowers?

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• 27:58Ashley Flowers?

  In mid-May, a call comes in from an attorney in Ellensburg, Washington. He says that he's calling on behalf of his client, Tony Reed. And Tony wants to turn himself in on one condition. They must agree to take the death penalty off the table. Now, the thing is, the death penalty hasn't even been discussed. Because back then, there was a moratorium on executions in the state of Washington. And while the Snohomish County prosecutor technically could have called for the death penalty or charge and whatever, or asked for it, they had no plans to bring any capital charges during the moratorium. But like, whatever, detectives just see this as an opportunity. So they're like, "Deal of a century.

• 28:43Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, happy to agree." And they do that so they can arrest and interrogate Tony. So, deal gets done, and on May 16th, again, same day, day 35 of their case, detectives fly down to the Mexico-San Diego border and Tony surrenders to Washington authorities. They get him back to Washington, and by May 22nd, day 40 of this saga, Tony's ready to talk. Now, he says he didn't kill them, his brother did. But he did try to help his brother cover his tracks.

• 29:14Speaker 02

  He said that he shot those people. And he told them it was all defense. He said that he came to the gate with a gun, and that he started wrestling with one of them, and the gun went off.

• 29:28Ashley Flowers?

  Tony says that he's been in Mexico this whole time, but John suggested that he go home and surrender.

• 29:35Speaker 02

  He just wanted to talk me into turning myself in because if something was to happen to me over this, he would not be able to live with himself.

• 29:45Ashley Flowers?

  Detectives asked Tony to walk them through exactly what happened, and he does. Tony says that his brother John killed Patrick and Monique on April 11th, and that John basically called him to help get rid of the cars and the bodies.

• 29:57Speaker 02

  What does he tell you? What's the plan? We're gonna take the cars up and dump them. Okay. Did you stop and look in the cars? At that first time? No. Okay. When's the first time you saw the bodies? When I got in the car. Okay. Which car did you drive? The black and white one. So you drove a Jeep? And where was she at? Or who was in that car? She was. Okay. Describe that for me. Had to be, had to be pretty. There's, there's some sand, yeah. I covered it up with black plastic because I didn't want to look at it.

• 30:33Ashley Flowers?

  As Tony goes on to describe how they tried to cover their tracks, all the little puzzle pieces that detectives had been getting, the ones that made sense and even the ones that didn't, they start coming together. He says that they noticed a trail camera on a tree at the gate, which is right where John killed Patrick and Monique. So I'm sure he was like, oh crap, like my crimes might be on video. So they ended up taking the trail cam, not realizing that the SD card was missing. And Tony says that John goes inside Patrick and Monique's house to take Patrick's computer, thinking that the trail cam footage might like automatically upload straight to it.

• 31:13Ashley Flowers?

  But before John left, after he took the computer, he stopped to feed Patrick and Monique's cat. With the wrong cat bowl. Their cat was apparently like meowing and just seemed very hungry. So Tony says that John stops their murder cover up efforts to feed the victim's cat. And I don't even know what to make of that. Yeah. After that, Tony says they drive the victim's cars up to the Oso landslide road with the bodies in the backs of the cars, and they find a spot for a grave at the base of this uprooted tree.

• 31:47Speaker 02

  Did you guys have to dig a hole? Yeah. Did you bring shovels with you? Yeah.

• 31:52Ashley Flowers?

  They dispose of the bodies, cover them, and then push the cars over the cliff's edge and watch them just tumble down. The only issue was that the Land Rover got caught on that stump and was kind of like out in the open. So they decided to come back later and try to pry it loose or to cover it better. Tony says that he and John then walked a trail back down to John's garage and along the way, Patrick and Monique's phones were just like blowing up with messages from their friends and family. And Tony is reading them, trying to gauge if anyone had called police yet. The read receipts. Mm-hmm. But down the trail, Tony decides to toss the phones into a spring along with Patrick's wallet.

• 32:33Ashley Flowers?

  Now, he's telling them in this interview, cut to one of the detectives stepping out of the interview to tell search and rescue to go out to this trail, see if they can recover the phones from the mud. They're probably not going to need a whole lot more evidence, but like, anything to corroborate this confession is going to be helpful. And sure enough, they are right where Tony described, soaked in mud, right next to Patrick's wallet. Now, back in the interview room, Tony is still yapping away. He says they destroyed and tossed Patrick's computer and trail camera out in the woods, which searchers later find as well. And after, he says, they get back down to John's garage and toss their blood-soaked clothes in a burn barrel and just like douse them in fuel. Why? Because they were supposed to burn them, but they forgot.

• 33:19Ashley Flowers?

  Whoops. Stay stupid criminals. Stay stupid. So they drive back up to the cars the next day. They tried to like use that four by four as a jack to get the rover off that stump. But the reason that they just leave it in there before they actually do is because they start seeing helicopters circling above. So that's when they like give up, they're like putting branches in the tarp over it because they're like, we gotta get out of here. Yeah. And they know that they've got to make a run for it. So they head to mom and dad's house in Ellensburg to switch cars, get some cash, and off to Phoenix they go. Tony says that in Phoenix, they meet up with a buddy to switch cars again, and that's when they headed to Mexico in that car.

• 33:59Ashley Flowers?

  Now, when asked about the murder weapon, he says they took it to Mexico and he thinks John still has it.

• 34:06Speaker 02

  You got right across the border with the gun. I don't trust you going to Mexico, man. The only one that cares about anything is America. Yeah, so you're going to be able to come back with it.

• 34:16Ashley Flowers?

  The one thing that Tony won't give the cops is his brother's location. But Tony does agree to take law enforcement to Patrick and Monique's bodies on day 41. Tony gets booked and charged for first degree murder and investigators start the two day process of recovering Patrick and Monique from the hole that they were left in about a mile from the cars under this uprooted tree. And detectives said that this was like very emotional for them. I mean, they had been going nonstop for six weeks and along the way, they felt like they'd really gotten to know Patrick and Monique through their loved ones. And Brett, they sounded like legit the coolest couple. They met at Burning Man.

• 34:57Ashley Flowers?

  They loved their little slice of paradise on the river where they had a hobby farm and just like worshipped their animals. And I know I mentioned Monique was like buying chicken feed. So they had chickens and roosters. They're not for butchering or eating. Those were Monique's pets. They also loved fly fishing and hiking and camping. And they were just like this very calm and steady presence within their families. Now, when investigators find Patrick and Monique, they're in the same grave, wearing the same clothes that they were last seen in. And both family members that we interviewed for this episode, that was Monique's foster sister Vi and Patrick's niece Erin, they said the same thing, that after they saw

• 35:39Ashley Flowers?

  the crime scene photos, that it looked like they were cuddling when they were found. And while they can never unsee that image, they said it actually brought them some peace to know that they were together till the very end. Now, word about what they were finding spreads faster than you can dig up two bodies. So while this painstaking work was happening, news choppers were circling. And Brett, if you look at the aerial news footage from the scene at this time, it's so interesting. And this is like my favorite behind the scenes moment of this case. All of the cameras of like the footage that they, they're all focused on this big blue tarp with a bunch of huge branches like laid out in order, smallest to biggest. And what's that have to do with anything? Absolutely nothing.

• 36:26Ashley Flowers?

  This was a tactic that Detective Dave Bill you used to make the news camera focus on something besides the bodies.

• 36:33Speaker 01

  Oh, that is really like, it looks important because they're all in order.

• 36:37Ashley Flowers?

  Right. You're immediately like, as a crime junkie, I'd be like, what does it mean? It was like.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  You gotta decode it.

• 36:41Ashley Flowers?

  These sticks are important. They were used in like the.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  And they're coming out and like in the order and they're all lined up like.

• 36:47Ashley Flowers?

  I mean, it was, it was brilliant and it worked. I mean, there's a King five news story where the close ups are all of this tarpon sticks.

• 36:57Speaker 01

  So do you think the news stations know that they got duped or are we going to be the bearer of bad news here?

• 37:02Ashley Flowers?

  Oh, I actually don't. I, I bet they're finding out for the first time.

• 37:07Ashley Flowers?

  So anyways, like it was again, behind the scenes a little bit, it was so interesting to me. This works. They're able to get the bodies out of there. Do the autopsies where it's confirmed that gunshot wounds are the causes of death. Now Patrick's single wound to the head was fatal and had to have been a surprise close range ambush from behind. Now, the medical examiner can't say in what order Monique's shots came. She had multiple, three actually, her arm, neck and head. But the speculation is that she rolled up to the gate that morning after running errands with her groceries, her dog in the car. She came upon John Reed where there was some sort of confrontation and then John snapped. Detective Fontenot believes Monique was in her car when John first pulled out his gun

• 37:50Ashley Flowers?

  and that maybe she like put up her arm in defense when the first shot landed, but he kills her. And then he thinks that John like paced around for a few hours just waiting for Patrick to get home and then he shot him in the same spot. Now, since they had locks on the gate, you had to actually like stop your car, put it in park, get out before you could drive through. So John must have known that he'd have the perfect opportunity to sneak up on Patrick, either as he approached the gate on foot or as he stopped his car at the gate.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  And was there blood outside by the gate or just in the cars?

• 38:24Ashley Flowers?

  Just in the cars. I mean, at the gate, there was one lone shell casing left behind. So investigators think that John was like laying in wait and then shot Patrick the moment that he pulled up and just stopped there. Or he shot him as he approached the gate on foot. But again, there wasn't enough blood to like see an obvious, like anything obvious in the dirt. But what I will say is that most of Patrick's blood was found soaked into that jacket that they found in the woods and inside the Land Rover. Now in late May, after the autopsies, all they're still missing for this investigation to be wrapped up is John Reed. They know he's likely still in Mexico, so they are constantly bugging international and federal authorities to be on the lookout for him, or the guy's car that they took from Phoenix to Mexico.

• 39:09Ashley Flowers?

  They also put up wanted flyers with his photo in areas that they think he might be hiding. And as they wait, they continue just building their case against both Reed brothers. By June, they analyzed Tony and John's cellphone data, which actually shows Tony was in Ellensburg when Patrick and Monique likely died. So they dropped the murder charges against Tony, and they just charged him with assisting in the crime. They also arrest and charge the Reed parents, Clyde and Fay, for rendering criminal assistance, because further follow-up revealed that the elderly couple actually went to the bank and got additional cash for their fugitive sons, essentially helping in their escape, as if like giving them the getaway car wasn't enough. And about a month later, in July, the final breakthrough comes,

• 39:54Ashley Flowers?

  when international authorities call Detective Fontenot and say, "We have found John Reed."

• 40:02Ashley Flowers?

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• 40:45Ashley Flowers?

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• 41:06Ashley Flowers?

  Detective Fontenot said he was skeptical. He says like, "Send me a picture of him." And sure enough, this is the guy that Snohomish County cops have been chasing for, count them, 100 days now. The authorities in Mexico say they spotted John's getaway car outside a barber shop in Puerto Penasco, about 62 miles south of the Arizona border. They'd gone to this apartment above the barber shop where they thought he lived. John wasn't there, so they leave. And what do you know? Who is walking right towards them on the sidewalk outside?

• 41:41Speaker 01

  Stop it. Like, all this time, he's been like, two days ahead, a couple steps up, like, just out of their reach, running on like, what seems like pure luck.

• 41:49Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah.

• 41:50Speaker 01

  And he's just there.

• 41:51Ashley Flowers?

  And he doesn't try to run. Luck is now on Detective's sides. He is arrested, he's taken back to the US, back to Washington. But unlike his brother Tony, John's lips are sealed.

• 42:02Speaker 01

  Does he know his brother confessed and is like, already arrested and charged and everything?

• 42:07Ashley Flowers?

  Unclear. We asked Detective Fontenot, and he said that, again, like, John just refused to talk, so it's hard to say what he did or didn't know at the time. But if what Tony said was true, it was John who suggested that he turn himself in. So who knows? But detectives had a mountain of evidence against him. So John still gets charged, put behind bars, and though he's not talking to them, word gets out that his defense is gonna be self-defense.

• 42:34Speaker 01

  Okay. How?

• 42:37Ashley Flowers?

  I know.

• 42:37Speaker 01

  What?

• 42:38Ashley Flowers?

  The prosecution knows that all they have to do, all they have to do, I say it like it's easy, all they have to do is prove that Monique and Patrick got home and died at different times.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 42:49Ashley Flowers?

  And if they can do that, it's gonna be so hard for John to claim that they pulled guns on him first.

• 42:55Speaker 01

  Right, because then it would have, had to have happened like, two separate times.

• 42:58Ashley Flowers?

  Right. Snohomish County Digital Forensics detectives, James Hedrick and Tyler Quick, they take another look at John Reed's cell data. And it confirms John was in Oso on the day of the murders from at least 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. He then drives to Ellensburg to pick up his brother Tony and they arrive back in Oso at around 3:30 a.m.

• 43:22Speaker 01

  Okay, so, so far, all of that matches up with the other evidence.

• 43:26Ashley Flowers?

  Right. They also analyzed the health app data on Monique and Patrick's phones, which essentially confirms their last movements alive in a few different ways. They can see on Monique's phone that the last time the power or like that home button was pressed was at 11:07 a.m. Patrick's phone, same deal. Last time those buttons were used was on April 11th at 3:07 p.m. Then there is no health app activity again until their phones start moving up that old logging road toward the landslide just before 3:30 a.m. The health apps also confirmed the moment that their phones stopped working after Tony Reed tossed them into that spring at 8:30 a.m. on the 12th.

• 44:06Ashley Flowers?

  And listen, you are never guaranteed a slam dunk case, but man, like, when the investigation is done right, it is good to see.

• 44:15Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 44:16Ashley Flowers?

  Everything is buttoned up come the spring of 2018 when Snohomish County presents 43 witnesses and about 750 exhibits. And as expected, John claims self-defense and even takes the stand.

• 44:31Speaker 03

  As soon as I looked away, she came running at me and she tried to punch me in the face.

• 44:38Ashley Flowers?

  John must not have known about the state's evidence showing Monique and Patrick getting home separately, because his story was that they both got home and they both came at him and they pulled guns on him first.

• 44:49Speaker 03

  Soon as I could, I screwed off like three shots.

• 44:54Ashley Flowers?

  John testified that he shot them both and considered calling 911, but says he panicked. He even said if he had to do it over again, he would call police. He got destroyed on cross-examination. And ultimately, he was found guilty of aggravated first-degree murder for Patrick and second-degree murder for Monique. He remains in prison in Washington. And we did send him a letter back in September to try and give him plenty of time to do an interview or to provide us a statement, but we never heard back.

• 45:27Speaker 01

  So John's locked up, but what about the brother? Like, did he or the parents go to prison too?

• 45:32Ashley Flowers?

  They did do some time in the county jail, but all three are out now. And we tried reaching them too, but we didn't hear back from any of them either.

• 45:40Speaker 01

  This story is so bonkers, but like, at the end of the day, I don't really, I don't really get it. Like, what made John resort to killing Patrick and Monique? Like, I feel like neighbor disputes are just common. Like, they end up, worst case, it's like civil court, or maybe like neighbors taking sides, some over the fence smack talk, whatever.

• 46:00Ashley Flowers?

  What's the difference between your unhinged neighbor who might yell at you and your unhinged neighbor who might kill you?

• 46:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, how do you know? Or like, what made this time the time that it escalated to double homicide?

• 46:12Ashley Flowers?

  Well, I mean, that was something that I kind of wondered about too. And when we talked to Detective Fontenot, he told us, basically, he thinks this whole thing came down to like who John Reed was, like his personality. And that basically, he got overwhelmed and just snapped. He says that because of how the homicides played out, which he calls disorganized. Now, they have zero evidence that John was under the influence when he killed Patrick and Monique, which is another interesting factor, because Detective Fontenot also told us, he's like, "Listen, typically homicides boil down to three things: sex, drugs, money." So he called this case atypical. I mean, sure, there were high emotions, there was animosity between the households, but what did John gain by killing them?

• 46:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, that's what I'm trying to think of. Like, the hope of not being sued, maybe, like, making the civil law, like...

• 47:01Ashley Flowers?

  Or were you just so angry, like?

• 47:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, it just seems like extreme choices to avoid kind of small things like civil lawsuits.

• 47:10Ashley Flowers?

  But you could have avoided the civil lawsuits by just like not doing the thing too, right?

• 47:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, just like not being in that sort of like elevated conflict in the first place.

• 47:16Ashley Flowers?

  He seems like an angry man. Like, I get like things had happened to him, like, you know, he lost his property, but you got paid for the property. Like, I don't know, like, I just can't, it's hard to like distill and boil down. And I, like, it's motive for me that's always so interesting, because so many of our cases, I'm like trying to figure out, what's the why? How do you, what's, like, how do you protect yourself? What do you look for? And like, it's hard to pinpoint that here. Now for Patrick and Monique's families, seeing John convicted and sent to prison was a form of justice. But like, also, it doesn't bring them back. Nothing brings them back. Losing them was extremely difficult, and nothing has replaced the hole that their absence has created. Vi told us that Monique used to cuddle her chickens and her roosters.

• 47:57Ashley Flowers?

  And when they got sheep, she raised the babies inside their house, which like, as a farm girlie, I saw so many animals in your home.

• 48:05Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 48:06Ashley Flowers?

  And Patrick's niece Erin said that her uncle was like a father figure to her. He stepped in to make sure that she had school clothes when she was little, and he was a huge jokester. She said he once put potatoes in her stockings on Christmas morning just to make her laugh. After all was said and done, Vi got a rooster tattoo in honor of Monique, and Erin got "The Truth Never Dies" tattooed on her collarbone. She said that throughout the investigation, Detective Fontenot kept telling her that, and it stuck with her. And it's a reminder that even in a whirlwind 100-day investigation, it pays to never give up, and the tiniest of details that you gather along the way might be what puts the killer behind bars.

• 49:03Ashley Flowers?

  You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkie.com.

• 49:07Speaker 01

  And you can follow us on Instagram, at Crime Junkie Podcast.

• 49:11Ashley Flowers?

  We'll be back next week with a brand new episode.

• 49:51Ashley Flowers?

  Crime Junkie is an AudioChuck production. I think Chuck would approve.

• 49:59Speaker 04

  When the nights grow longer, the shadows start to stir. And that can only mean one thing. Full Body Chills is back. This season, step inside original tales where every doorway leads somewhere darker, every stranger carries a secret, and nothing is ever quite what it seems. Each story takes you somewhere new, but be careful. You never know what might follow you home. So gather round, listen close, and stream Full Body Chills wherever you get your podcasts.