262. The Murder of Michele Neurauter

In this episode, Payton and Garrett dive into the case of Michele Neurauter, a mother found dead in her home. But when the autopsy results come in, it’s clear her death was no accident. Links: NEW MERCH LINK: https://mwmhshop.com Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/themwmh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/murderwithmyhusband/ Watch on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@murderwithmyhusband Listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/into-the-dark/id1662304327 Listen on spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/36SDVKB2MEWpFGVs9kRgQ7?si=f5224c9fd99542a7 Case Sources: AllThatsInteresting.com - https://allthatsinteresting.com/karrie-neurauter-lloyd-neurauter-murder StarGazette.com - https://www.stargazette.com/story/news/public-safety/2018/12/04/killer-corning-woman-gets-life-prison-without-parole/2201167002/ CBSNews.com - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/michele-neurauter-murder-i-had-to-choose-did-a-father-brainwash-his-daughter-to-help-plan-to-kill-her-mother/ The-Leader.com - https://www.the-leader.com/story/news/crime/2018/05/01/neurauter-sister-pleads-not-guilty/12346489007/ People.com - https://people.com/crime/dad-daughter-recorded-planning-murder-mom/ NBCNewYork.com - https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/college-student-father-death-mother-neurauter-arrest/1607208/ SpectrumLocalNews.com - https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/binghamton/crime-safety/2018/03/08/rit-student-pleads-guilty-to-murder-for-mother-s-death WXII12.com - https://www.wxii12.com/article/daughter-says-she-helped-dad-murder-mom-distracted-sister-during-killing/19401886 Oxygen.com - https://www.oxygen.com/mastermind-of-murder/crime-news/lloyd-neurauter-manipulates-daughter-karrie-to-help-in-murder MyTwinTiers.com - https://www.mytwintiers.com/news-cat/top-stories/karrie-neurauter-paroled-from-prison/ Dateline NBC - https://www.peacocktv.com/watch/playback/vod/GMO_00000000375721_01/73146b4c-aa77-3d3f-b6e6-cf55a6c13b46 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Payton Moreland?

  You're listening to an Ono Media Podcast. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder with My Husband. I'm Payton Moreland.

• 0:07Garrett Moreland?

  And I'm Garrett Moreland.

• 0:07Payton Moreland?

  And he's the husband.

• 0:08Garrett Moreland?

  I'm the husband.

• 0:09Payton Moreland?

  So I was reading this statistic the other day that if you are in the percentage that listen to Murder with My Husband, you're statistically more good looking than the rest of the world.

• 0:24Garrett Moreland?

  Where'd you read that?

• 0:26Payton Moreland?

  Online.

• 0:27Garrett Moreland?

  I agree with him.

• 0:29Payton Moreland?

  Oh, it's not like agreeable or non, it's a statistic.

• 0:31Garrett Moreland?

  A fact?

• 0:32Payton Moreland?

  Yeah.

• 0:32Garrett Moreland?

  Okay.

• 0:34Payton Moreland?

  You have your 10 seconds?

• 0:35Garrett Moreland?

  I ate really healthy for like a month and then last week I just haven't been eating the best and I don't know. I went to put my shorts on this morning and they're really tight. I don't think it's because of that. I just. Yeah, it's about it. I don't really have anything.

• 0:52Payton Moreland?

  Give us something.

• 0:53Garrett Moreland?

  That's just kind of what's been going on in my life. My shirts are kind of tight right now.

• 0:56Payton Moreland?

  You're playing pickleball this weekend?

• 0:57Garrett Moreland?

  Oh, yeah. I'm playing pickleball this weekend. I've been getting some heartburn.

• 1:02Garrett Moreland?

  That's basically my life, guys. Some heartburn, playing pickleball, working. That's all. I don't have, I don't have anything new. My hair is growing, getting there for anyone on YouTube who wants to see.

• 1:18Garrett Moreland?

  The front's still not growing a lot yet, but it'll take some time. We'll get there. Peyton and I are driving to St. George right after we record this. We'll be there for a few days and that's why we're gone because I'm playing pickleball there. But mainly because we just wanted to see sunshine for a couple of days. Sorry, that's all I got. I know that probably sounds really boring this week.

• 1:39Payton Moreland?

  It's okay. Some people are really frustrated that you don't know what 10 seconds is. So this one, that one was, this one's for you guys.

• 1:46Garrett Moreland?

  Yeah, it was still kind of long. Here's the crazy thing about podcasts, everybody. If you look on your app, there is a skip button and you can skip forward.

• 1:56Payton Moreland?

  Thirty, thirty, thirty.

• 1:58Garrett Moreland?

  So if you're ever bored of my 10 seconds, press that baby a couple of times. You don't have to hear me until I'm talking about true crime.

• 2:05Payton Moreland?

  You know what, you guys, we love you. Thank you for liking Garrett's 10 seconds or not liking Garrett's 10 seconds. Whether you're here for the true crime or just for the whole show, we love you guys. We are so grateful that you're listening and I think I'm just going to get right into the episode. Our sources for this episode are all that's interesting.com, star gazette.com, CBS news.com, the leader.com, people.com, NBC, New York.com, spectrum, local news.com, oxygen.com, my twin tears.com and Dateline. Okay, so while most of us probably won't admit it out loud, we all have one parent we are, or maybe were closer to than the other, except me. On dad, I love you equal. You're both my favorite parent, just like I'm your favorite child.

• 2:50Payton Moreland?

  You might be a daddy's little girl or a mama's boy, but either way, that bond that you have with that parent is like nothing else in the world. A lot of us would go to the ends of the earth for our parents. We would do whatever we need to impress them, make them proud, make them feel loved and appreciated. But today I want you to ask yourself, what would you do if your parent asked you to help them with the unthinkable? Would you risk their relationship and rat them out if you knew that what they wanted was wrong? Or would you help them in their time of desperation, even if it meant risking your own future? What'd you do?

• 3:28Garrett Moreland?

  Hmm, it is, it depends. There's gotta be a lot more context than that. Know what I'm saying?

• 3:34Payton Moreland?

  Yeah, the correct answer is just no.

• 3:36Garrett Moreland?

  Like.

• 3:37Payton Moreland?

  Eat?

• 3:39Garrett Moreland?

  No, I'm just, okay, for those who don't know that UFC fighter that just got sentenced to prison, for example.

• 3:45Payton Moreland?

  Oh, okay.

• 3:46Garrett Moreland?

  But he chased down and shot someone who supposedly, I guess, had dead come or lusted his daughter. Do you blame them?

• 3:54Garrett Moreland?

  You know what I'm saying? Also, the guy didn't die and he still got five years. There's like a huge thing going on right now about like free him.

• 4:01Payton Moreland?

  Well, I mean, you can't shoot someone.

• 4:03Garrett Moreland?

  You can't shoot someone, but also.

• 4:05Payton Moreland?

  You can't molest someone either.

• 4:08Garrett Moreland?

  Like, I don't know. It's, look, there's consequences to your actions.

• 4:13Payton Moreland?

  On both sides.

• 4:13Garrett Moreland?

  On both sides and.

• 4:15Payton Moreland?

  But the guy knew that. The dad knew that.

• 4:17Garrett Moreland?

  The dad knew that, but also don't molest anybody and you won't get shot. I mean, honestly, end of story.

• 4:24Payton Moreland?

  I'm this speaking as someone who doesn't have a kid because I'm pretty sure if I had a kid, I don't know how parents do it.

• 4:30Garrett Moreland?

  Oh, I'd be chasing him down.

• 4:32Payton Moreland?

  Because like genuinely.

• 4:33Garrett Moreland?

  And then I would tell every single one of my listeners, all of you guys to go to the courthouse. Free Garrett, free Garrett, free. Anyway, sorry, we're off track. Let's get back into it.

• 4:43Payton Moreland?

  Okay. So we are in the year 2017. I always, when it's like 2017, 16, 18, I always want to be like so recently. But it's actually not recently. Okay. But 2017 in upstate New York. It is the charming little city of Corning and that's where Michelle Knight Rider and her ex-husband Lloyd had chosen to raise their family. So Lloyd and Michelle were originally high school sweethearts. They met back in 1989 when Michelle was turning 18 and Lloyd was 16. So after they both graduated high school, they tied the knot two years later in 1991.

• 5:24Payton Moreland?

  Still, they both went to college, but fresh out of those years, Michelle got pregnant with the couple's first daughter. Then they had another little girl two years later and then another girl about five years after that. So now having to support a family of five, Lloyd found work at the glass company the town was named for, Corning Glass, as an engineer. And meanwhile, Michelle worked as an English professor at a nearby college. This was at least in the earlier years because eventually Michelle did quit her job to be a stay at home mom to their three little girls. Still, despite being the primary breadwinner, Lloyd. It seemed to be pretty present in his daughters' lives.

• 6:07Payton Moreland?

  Apparently, he was often seen dropping the girls off at their dance classes in the evening. And many of the mothers found it sweet how good he was with their kids. But inside the Knight Rider home, things weren't exactly perfect. As the girls got older, Lloyd and Michelle grew apart. And in 2008, Lloyd was offered a job down in New Jersey. But Michelle wasn't keen on the idea of uprooting their lives to go with him. So Lloyd went alone and Michelle and the kids stayed back in their life in Corning. And friends of Michelle's said she actually seemed much better for this once her husband moved away. That after Lloyd left, it was as if Michelle was more relaxed, she was happier.

• 6:51Payton Moreland?

  And apparently, the distance made Lloyd happier too, because sometime after that move, Lloyd told Michelle he wanted a divorce. But I do want to mention, although the fact that they're both happier, separate, this divorce wasn't very amicable. In 2013, Michelle moved into a new home with the girls. And while their custody seemed to be split, Lloyd wasn't happy with the arrangement. He wanted sole custody of their daughters, something he fought for for years, even as the girls got older. I mean, their eldest daughter had moved out for college, as did their middle daughter Carrie, who in 2017 was living in Syracuse, New York and attending the Rochester Institute of Technology.

• 7:36Payton Moreland?

  But by this point, when he's fighting for custody, their youngest daughter, 14-year-old Charlotte, was living at home with Michelle, who still had shared custody. Which was why the events of August 28th, 2017 were so surprising and devastating. So that afternoon, a neighbor stopped by the house to pick 14-year-old Charlotte up for a carpool to swim practice. Only Charlotte didn't seem to be home. Instead, when the neighbor rang the doorbell, they saw Michelle, the mother, through the glass paneling at the front door. She was standing on the stairway, but she was completely motionless.

• 8:22Payton Moreland?

  It was as if she didn't hear the door. Yeah. She just was standing there and it actually freaked the neighbor out enough, they called 911. Because they were like, is everything like, what is going on? I can see her. What? So officers were dispatched to the house. And when they get there, they let themselves in and they found 46 year old Michelle on the staircase still like the neighbor had mentioned. Only she's got a rope around her neck.

• 8:52Garrett Moreland?

  Oh.

• 8:53Payton Moreland?

  And she's died by what appears to be a suicide by hanging. So she wasn't actually standing on the stairs. She was hanging.

• 9:02Garrett Moreland?

  Well, that's, yeah.

• 9:03Payton Moreland?

  It is eerie.

• 9:04Garrett Moreland?

  Yeah.

• 9:05Payton Moreland?

  But there's something one of the detectives noticed on Michelle. It's this little U shaped mark on her chin. Sort of looks like the rope maybe got stuck around her face before it went around her neck. She also appeared to have scratch marks on her face, which told the police she maybe had second thoughts and tried to remove the rope. But they can't say for sure. All they know right now is that this is very unsettling. So is the fact that Charlotte, her 14 year old daughter, who was supposed to be picked up that day, is nowhere to be found at this point. And when police try to contact her, they can't get a hold of her. She's not answering her cell phone. No one seems to have seen her.

• 9:49Payton Moreland?

  So police are wondering, was she home during this? Is this some sort of homicide kidnapping? There's just so many things about this scene that are alarming.

• 9:58Garrett Moreland?

  Yeah, because your mind, the detectives and the police, whoever's working on this, their mind is not going to, oh, maybe she was involved. Right? It's going to, oh, has she been kidnapped? What's going on? Where is she? Yada, yada, yada.

• 10:14Payton Moreland?

  Yeah. Then later that day, officers get a call down at their station and it's Michelle's middle daughter, so 19 year old Carrie, who's in college in New York. She says she got a disturbing phone call from one of her friends. They had heard that her mother might have died by suicide in the home earlier. And Carrie was literally calling the police to find out if this was true. Now, unfortunately, police do. Confirm this for Carrie, but they do get a tiny bit of relief when Carrie says that her younger sister Charlotte had been with her for the weekend. Carrie explains that on Saturday, which Michelle was found on that Monday,

• 10:56Payton Moreland?

  Carrie went back to Corning to spend the night with her mom and sister before getting settled into her new apartment and starting her next semester of college. Apparently at that point, Carrie had been back and forth between her mom's house and her dad's house. Though during that weekend, her dad was supposedly at a job interview in California. So Carrie probably didn't want to stay at her dad's house alone, which is why she went to her mom's house. But that Saturday, Carrie said she didn't even make it through the night with her mom. She got into a huge fight with her mom, Michelle, over the same thing they usually fought about. She was taking her dad's side on the divorce, particularly the custody battles. So rather than spend the night there, Carrie told Charlotte, get in the car and leave with me to my apartment.

• 11:38Payton Moreland?

  And so according to Carrie, the two sisters drove to Carrie's new apartment to spend the rest of the weekend there and not with their mom. So now police are thinking, okay, if what Carrie is saying is true, then maybe Michelle was so distraught over the fight and both her daughters leaving and just the divorce in general, that she did take her own life that weekend in the house alone. Before she ends the call with police, though, Carrie gives them her father's number, who that weekend was apparently in California. But it seems like they have a pretty hard time trying to get in touch with Lloyd over the next few days. So meanwhile, Michelle's body goes in for an autopsy. And they determined that Michelle did die of asphyxia,

• 12:22Payton Moreland?

  but that she likely died late Saturday night. So this was after Carrie had supposedly left. It was either that

• 12:31Garrett Moreland?

  I see, I see.

• 12:32Payton Moreland?

  That fight or early the following morning.

• 12:35Garrett Moreland?

  Okay.

• 12:35Payton Moreland?

  But the medical examiner also notices the little U mark on her chin and the scratches on her face. And this is why they decide to not list the death as a suicide yet. They mark it as undetermined.

• 12:48Garrett Moreland?

  Okay.

• 12:48Payton Moreland?

  Until more investigation is done. So police are continuing to look into how Michelle died. And they aren't anywhere near closing the book on this one yet. And when they speak with Michelle's mother, Jean, she says with a lot of confidence, she was pretty sure that her daughter was murdered and this death was staged to look like a suicide. Now, look, I want to state just because someone has future plans or seems outwardly happy does not mean they aren't struggling, doesn't mean they wouldn't take their own lives, and sometimes even the people closest to us don't really know how we're feeling. Yeah. But Jean, she encourages police, just keep following the leads because I don't believe this was suicide. She says Michelle was excited about this new chapter of her

• 13:31Payton Moreland?

  life, her kids leaving, her personal interests, her religion, which is why Jean tells them, not only do you need to be looking into this as a murder, you need to look into Lloyd, her husband that she's currently divorcing. Okay. Here's the thing, Lloyd's on the other side of the country at that job interview in California, so he's got a pretty good alibi. And while Lloyd does seem to be dodging their phone calls, that doesn't mean police are closing the book on the murder theory or him as a person of interest. So a couple of weeks pass, there's a little movement in the case. That is, until investigators notice something tiny in one of the crime scene photos as they're re-looking at the evidence. Michelle's bed appears to be slightly askew. And so

• 14:15Payton Moreland?

  they're looking at this photo, zooming in, and behind it, they notice a very faint stain on the wall that they didn't notice originally, and it looks like a blood stain. Okay. So police go back to the county medical examiner and are like, hey, we need a second opinion on that autopsy. And when they look closer, they find the damage to her throat is not consistent with the injuries that are usually seen in self strangulation cases, which tells them this probably means another party was involved in this hanging. They also learn there was another detail about that day that Michelle supposedly died. One Carrie seemingly left out when she told police about the big fight she had had with her mom. See,

• 14:58Payton Moreland?

  that same day that Michelle was found dead, she had just had a major victory in their court case, something to do with the ongoing custody battle she had been engaging in with Lloyd for the youngest daughter. Which is just more confirmation to police that Michelle likely wouldn't have chosen to die by suicide. Not after she had just made huge progress in this custody case. But more importantly, when they learn this, it made them question the 19-year-old daughter Carrie. So they get a copy of Carrie's phone records because they want to corroborate this story she initially told them. She said she wasn't at her mom's house for very long that night, only about 15 minutes

• 15:39Payton Moreland?

  before she took her sister, got in the car and drove to her apartment in Rochester to spend the weekend. But the phone records show Carrie was at her mom's house for a lot longer than she said. More likely two hours in the house before she left.

• 15:54Garrett Moreland?

  Uh oh, here we go.

• 15:56Payton Moreland?

  They're like, well, like that's a pretty obvious lie. You would know 15 minutes versus two hours.

• 16:01Garrett Moreland?

  Oh, 100%.

• 16:01Payton Moreland?

  You might not know an hour and a half versus two hours. So they're like, this is an obvious lie. She obviously lied. And the fact that her mother, according to the autopsy, died that same night or in the early morning.

• 16:14Garrett Moreland?

  Red flags, man. Here we go.

• 16:15Payton Moreland?

  It puts some suspicion on Carrie and her story. So the question for investigators was, would Carrie have done something like this alone? The other sister was there. So this is why the police speak with her again. And this time she tells them, okay, actually, my dad wasn't in California that weekend. She's feeling pressure from police and so she gives up this lie and says, "He was actually back by that point and he was with me in Rochester, helping me move into my new apartment." Which means Lloyd's alibi is sort of scrubbed now considering he was only a two-hour drive from his ex-wife's house on the night that she died, not all the way across the United States.

• 16:58Payton Moreland?

  And so that's when the police take a much closer look at the family's dynamics as a whole because they're like, okay, there's lies going on. We confront her. She doesn't really say, oh yeah, I lied about that night. She said, "What? I lied about my dad and his whereabouts."

• 17:12Garrett Moreland?

  Hanging. That's pretty insane, right? Like, didn't shoot them, didn't stab them, hanging someone.

• 17:19Payton Moreland?

  Well, if you're staging a suicide.

• 17:21Garrett Moreland?

  It's just, that's, I don't know. I mean, it's all brutal, but it's just. Unique. I don't even know what word to use.

• 17:28Payton Moreland?

  So police dig further into this family's dynamics, the people who know them, they began interviewing. And remember how a lot of the dance moms saw Lloyd as the caring, charismatic father who took an interest in his daughter's extracurriculars? Well, it turns out some of the girl's friends saw another side of Lloyd growing up that sort of scared them. Apparently Lloyd was a really strict disciplinarian with the girls, kept them on a short leash. He just seemed controlling at times. I'm talking militant drill sergeant wanting to keep control over them, not like a normal parent control. One friend said, there was a time when she saw Lloyd snap his fingers and yell front and center.

• 18:11Payton Moreland?

  And the girls rushed over to him and knelt in front of him.

• 18:15Garrett Moreland?

  What the?

• 18:17Payton Moreland?

  There was another time when a friend witnessed Lloyd slap the girls across their faces. This is what he was doing with friends at the house, friends in company.

• 18:27Garrett Moreland?

  That's insane.

• 18:28Payton Moreland?

  But this sort of control wasn't reserved for just his children. Apparently he would also do this in public with his wife. Around 2007, he even made her cut ties with her own parents. Michelle's mother, Jean, believed that that was because Lloyd was threatening to take the children away if she didn't stop speaking with them.

• 18:45Garrett Moreland?

  I was actually reading something the other day. I forget, it was some article that talked about one of the number one signs of, I don't know if it was a narcissist, I forget, but was making the other person cut ties with their family.

• 19:00Payton Moreland?

  Yeah.

• 19:00Garrett Moreland?

  Because then they have no one to, you know, reach out to. Yep, exactly.

• 19:05Payton Moreland?

  It's also a number one sign of a cult or a cult-like leader.

• 19:07Garrett Moreland?

  Oh, yeah, that too.

• 19:10Garrett Moreland?

  Maybe that's what it was. Maybe it wasn't a narcissist.

• 19:12Payton Moreland?

  Which also probably have very severe narcissistic tendencies.

• 19:16Garrett Moreland?

  Yeah.

• 19:16Payton Moreland?

  But things only got worse after Lloyd moved to New Jersey and the couple decided to get divorced. That's when Lloyd started turning the girls against Michelle, particularly Carrie, the middle daughter. Now, I don't know all of the nuances of what Lloyd would say to Carrie or her sisters, but over time, I know Carrie truly grew to hate her mother. And a lot of that had to do with the little seeds that Lloyd was planting over the years of this divorce. Now, just to show you how brainwashed Carrie was, and remember that she already would go kneel in front of her dad, she was visibly shaken. There was one incident that happened back in 2015. This was two years before Michelle's death. One afternoon, Michelle was backing her car slowly out of the driveway after another fight with Carrie.

• 20:01Payton Moreland?

  Carrie tried to block her car from leaving, but eventually Michelle made her exit. No one was hurt from what I can tell during this argument, but Lloyd convinced Carrie that Michelle's intentions that day were nefarious and she was actually trying to run Carrie over with her car. So her dad looks at her and says, "Your mom was trying to kill you."

• 20:20Garrett Moreland?

  Freak. That's insane.

• 20:22Payton Moreland?

  It's just very...

• 20:23Garrett Moreland?

  That's weird.

• 20:24Payton Moreland?

  It's just toxic.

• 20:25Garrett Moreland?

  Yeah.

• 20:27Payton Moreland?

  She was so convinced of her father's version of events that she actually filed a police report against Michelle, although the allegations didn't hold up because there's, I mean, obvious reasons. But even with manipulation and psychological warfare aside, Lloyd was also trying to ruin Michelle's life using the court system. I guess after the couple finalized their divorce in 2013, Lloyd filed 26 separate post-divorce filings, which is why this was still ongoing by the time of the murder. He was basically suing Michelle, using false claims to try and get out of things like paying child support. And of course, as we heard earlier, trying to get full custody of their youngest daughter, Charlotte. Now, according to some lawyers who worked on Michelle's case, it's normal to have maybe

• 21:12Payton Moreland?

  two or three post-divorce filings, but 26 is outrageous, which is strange because that many filings sounds pretty expensive. I mean, imagine all those lawyer fees you're paying each time you head to court. And yet Lloyd was extremely broke. By 2017, he was $100,000 in debt at least, which, this debt...

• 21:36Payton Moreland?

  was due to the child support and alimony payments that he needed to make. Payments that Lloyd was clearly hell bent on fighting. That was until August of 2017. On that afternoon, Lloyd didn't show up for his court appearance, the one for full custody of Charlotte. He didn't answer the court's emails or phone calls, just no call, no show. So the case was dismissed, meaning Michelle would maintain the custody agreement that they had of Charlotte. Obviously, like I said, that was a major win. She was thrilled about it. She was celebrating. And then she died by hanging later that night. The timing of all this is extremely suspicious to police. Here's a man that was fighting his ex-wife tooth and nail over every little thing.

• 22:19Payton Moreland?

  And on the day she dies, he mysteriously doesn't show up for court. It also doesn't help that Lloyd was very well aware of a life insurance policy Michelle had taken out recently. And if she died, $200,000 was meant to go to 14-year-old Charlotte. Even stranger, one of the first places Lloyd apparently went after he learned about his ex-wife's passing was to family court to turn off his child support and alimony payments because his wife was now dead. So now, not only has Lloyd's alibi that he was in California been thrown out the window, he also seems to have a lot of motive as well.

• 22:58Payton Moreland?

  Not just hatred, not just wanting custody of a child, but also a ton of debt and money. And with police having a hard time getting a hold of him, they figure they're just gonna have to corner him and get him to answer some questions. Where do they find him? At one of his favorite places, of course, a few days later, at the local courthouse settling more business. Now, once police get to talk to him, Lloyd gives pretty much the same story that Carrie last gave. On the afternoon of August 26th, he helped Carrie move into her new apartment near campus, and then he went and stayed at a hotel nearby. He says Carrie came with him that night. They hung out for a little while, and then she left to go stay at her mother's house. So he walked her to her car, said goodbye, and invited her back to have breakfast with him in the morning.

• 23:43Payton Moreland?

  Then he says he spent the night in the hotel. And the following morning, Carrie came to breakfast and met him, but now she had Charlotte. So when police go to corroborate his story, they look into his cell phone location and find that does track. Lloyd's phone never left the hotel that night. But the security cameras in the parking lot tell a very different story. It's good for you, Garrett.

• 24:06Garrett Moreland?

  It's been a while since we've had some good, some good camera footage, I feel like.

• 24:10Payton Moreland?

  That contradicts the story.

• 24:11Garrett Moreland?

  Yeah, I feel like it's been lacking a little bit. I used to, anyways, yeah.

• 24:15Payton Moreland?

  So that evening, when Carrie left to go to her mother's house, Lloyd, her father, got in the passenger seat and drove off with her. But just because his cell phone stayed behind at the hotel, doesn't mean he did. And those cameras don't show Lloyd or Carrie returning to that hotel until 6:30 a.m. the next morning.

• 24:36Garrett Moreland?

  He obviously left his phone there on purpose.

• 24:38Payton Moreland?

  Right.

• 24:39Garrett Moreland?

  I mean, he knew what he was doing.

• 24:41Payton Moreland?

  Okay, even if Carrie's cell phone was there for two hours, which police believe, she doesn't come back with her dad until 6:30 a.m. the next morning, and they are both wearing the clothes that they left in the night before. They never changed into pajamas, which means they probably never slept.

• 24:57Garrett Moreland?

  Dude, I cannot believe that she's involved. That's, I'm curious to see what the jury thinks.

• 25:03Payton Moreland?

  Well, you also have a 14-year-old daughter here.

• 25:05Garrett Moreland?

  What do you mean?

• 25:07Payton Moreland?

  Charlotte's, Charlotte's here during all of this. So the next question is, what was she doing? So, police realized this, and they have a theory. They're like, Carrie and Lloyd went to Michelle's house together to kill her that night, something Lloyd was already banking on pulling off when he failed to appear in court earlier that day. The tricky part now is getting either one of them to confess, especially with how little evidence there was to prove this was a homicide. And again, where was Charlotte? So around September 2017, about a month after Michelle's death, police decide to go ahead and put a wiretap on Carrie and Lloyd's phone, and they start listening in on their conversations. Now, at first, they aren't giving them much to go off

• 25:49Payton Moreland?

  of. The conversations are pretty day-to-day stuff. How's school? How's things going? Nothing for police to get them on. So in November, police decide to sort of up the ante. They do something called tickling the wire.

• 26:04Garrett Moreland?

  Yeah, I don't like that. I don't, they should have made it something else.

• 26:07Payton Moreland?

  That they.

• 26:08Garrett Moreland?

  I did not like that at all.

• 26:10Payton Moreland?

  One of the investigators on Michelle's case calls Carrie to deliberately put her on edge, basically saying like, we need to meet up with you in person soon. We have a few things we need to talk to you about. When can you come down to the station? Carrie's like, oh, sure. I'll be there Monday afternoon. The investigator's like, yep, see ya. Hang up. Seconds later, Carrie calls her father.

• 26:33Garrett Moreland?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 26:34Payton Moreland?

  Takes the bait, hook, line and sinker. And when Lloyd picks up, it's clear that Carrie is panicking. She says, what do I do? Now, at first Lloyd's like, look, it's probably just standard procedure. Don't worry. But halfway through the conversation, he starts to sort of panic. He tells Carrie, actually, just don't go in and speak with them. He even comes up with an excuse for her. Tell them you have to have a counseling appointment back in New Jersey. It's gonna be hard to squeeze it in. Then he asks Carrie something really weird. He says, can you cry? Meaning over the phone, when she calls detectives back, can she fake some tears? And Carrie says, I might, which is just bonkers. Then they talk a bit more about what the investigators might want and Lloyd reassures her.

• 27:19Payton Moreland?

  If they were planning to arrest them, they'd have just stormed in with a warrant, not asked her to come down for a quick conversation. I can tell you one thing, it doesn't seem like Carrie makes it into the police station that Monday. So in January of 2018, police devised one more plan to try and get the two to confess. On the 24th of January, two detectives show up to Lloyd's New Jersey office and they tell them, so the medical examiner has ruled your ex-wife's death a homicide. And we know that you weren't at the hotel that night because of security footage. He basically says, we're on to you guys. How about you come meet us down at the station? Take a polygraph, we'll rule you out. And Lloyd agrees. Meanwhile, police are also showing up at Carrie's door,

• 28:04Payton Moreland?

  confronting her about their suspicions and asking her to take a polygraph as well. But when Carrie gets down to the station, she proves she's not very good at keeping up with the lies because she completely caves under the pressure of this interrogation. And here's what she says. About a week before the murder, her father went to her and unloaded his problems on her. He said that Michelle was bleeding him dry. He could no longer afford to pay for any of the things he owed her. He told Carrie that he felt like there were only two ways out of this mess. Either he killed Michelle, or he killed himself. And he forced Carrie, his daughter, to make the decision for him.

• 28:40Garrett Moreland?

  Rap.

• 28:40Payton Moreland?

  Now Carrie, remember, has been being manipulated by her father for years and she has chosen to side with him. She sees her mother as the evil one. So together they devised a plan for how to get rid of Michelle. They were gonna stage her death as a suicide. Then on the night of August 26th, Lloyd got into Carrie's car and drove with her over to Michelle's house. Carrie let him inside. He snuck up to Michelle's bedroom, confronted her there. I remember I was like, but Charlotte's there. What are they gonna do with Charlotte? What's going on? Carrie's job in this plan was to keep her 14-year-old sister Charlotte distracted

• 29:22Payton Moreland?

  while her father was in another room strangling their mother to death. And when he was finished staging the death to look like a suicide, the three of them would drive off into the night. And apparently Carrie did such a good job distracting Charlotte, she had zero idea her mother had been killed.

• 29:39Garrett Moreland?

  Oh my gosh.

• 29:41Payton Moreland?

  Until that following Monday. Imagine the trauma of being in a house when that happened and finding out later that you were in the house when that happened? And you had no idea what was going on.

• 29:52Garrett Moreland?

  This is, yeah.

• 29:53Payton Moreland?

  But Carrie tells police at this interrogation, she had no physical involvement. She said, I was just, I knew the plan and I was to distract my sister. I also did disconnect the electronics in the home. I imagine this means like cameras. That could give away the fact that her father was even there that night. So hearing this over at the Rochester station, police are ready to put Lloyd in handcuffs the second he enters the New Jersey station for that polygraph. Only he doesn't show up. So instead, police track his phone and find him miles away at a parking structure in Princeton, New Jersey. When they get there.

• 30:28Garrett Moreland?

  Oh, he killed himself.

• 30:29Payton Moreland?

  Lloyd is standing on the roof of the building, threatening to jump.

• 30:33Garrett Moreland?

  Yeah.

• 30:34Payton Moreland?

  For the next two hours, police are trying to literally talk Lloyd off of a ledge. Eventually, when Lloyd lets his guard down for a second, one of the larger state troopers who was there pulls him back to the ground. Within seconds, Lloyd is placed in handcuffs and charged with first degree murder. That same day, Carrie, his daughter, is also arrested. She's charged with second degree murder and tampering with evidence for her involvement in the crime.

• 30:57Garrett Moreland?

  Pretty open shot at this point.

• 30:59Payton Moreland?

  I mean, yes, but there's also not a ton of physical evidence outside of Carrie's confession.

• 31:04Garrett Moreland?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 31:05Payton Moreland?

  So basically, the prosecutor's like, I think the only way we can really get Lloyd, who's pleading not guilty, is if we get Carrie, his daughter, to testify against him.

• 31:13Garrett Moreland?

  And for that, they'd probably have to give her a pretty good plea deal.

• 31:17Payton Moreland?

  She pleads guilty to her crimes and second degree manslaughter.

• 31:20Garrett Moreland?

  What, what does she get for testifying?

• 31:23Payton Moreland?

  She's given only one to three years behind bars.

• 31:26Garrett Moreland?

  Okay.

• 31:27Payton Moreland?

  But that also means she'll be the star witness in Lloyd's trial. Only it doesn't get that far. Soon Lloyd's defense team learns there's not just circumstantial evidence against him. It's not just his word versus his daughter's. There's actually DNA to prove he was at the scene of the crime that night. Forensics had processed some of Michelle's clothing after her death, and when the district attorney's office had them re-examined by the state police, they found Lloyd's DNA on the pajamas Michelle was wearing that night. So just two weeks before Lloyd is set to go to trial, DA goes to Lloyd and says, look, this now, we now have physical evidence. Do you want to plead guilty? And the 48-year-old Lloyd shockingly says, yeah, I'll accept the plea deal, which was 25 years to life with the possibility of parole if he's lucky.

• 32:12Payton Moreland?

  Only, it doesn't go that way. He accepts the plea and the judge still gives him life without the possibility of parole.

• 32:19Garrett Moreland?

  Oh, shit.

• 32:20Payton Moreland?

  Yeah. I mean, a judge can override.

• 32:22Garrett Moreland?

  Yeah, I mean, he killed someone, so I don't, I don't feel bad.

• 32:25Payton Moreland?

  However, on January 16th, 2020, the 22-year-old Carrie was released from prison after serving less than two years of her sentence. Her father remains behind bars in Elmira Correctional Facility in Elmira, New York. Now, whether or not the two have had contact in the time since their imprisonment, I can't say for sure, but I do know this. Michelle's mother, Carrie's grandmother, Jean, knows that Lloyd was really the one to blame. So the grandmother says... He had spent so much time brainwashing Michelle's children. He weaponized his own daughter against his wife.

• 33:00Garrett Moreland?

  Yeah.

• 33:00Payton Moreland?

  And Jean told 48 Hours that despite everything Lloyd said, she felt her job was now to reverse the narrative, to let Michelle's daughters know how much Michelle had loved them and that all she ever wanted was for her girls to be happy. And that is the case of Michelle Ny Rider.

• 33:17Garrett Moreland?

  That's insane. It's just, I know so many layers to it. I'm glad that, I mean, I don't think it makes her any better, but at least the girls like weren't there, like killing them, like, could you imagine being the mom, seeing your daughters also being on the plan of killing you? You know what I'm saying? I don't know. It's just, the whole thing's gross and disgusting. Also, it's interesting how many, like, the parents should not be involving kids in divorces.

• 33:43Payton Moreland?

  Well, I also-

• 33:43Garrett Moreland?

  The divorce is between the parents. Don't involve your kid. Don't start talking crap. Like, I know people are gonna probably ask me, well, I mean, my parents are divorced. I think that's something they did a really good job of.

• 33:55Payton Moreland?

  Mm-hmm.

• 33:56Garrett Moreland?

  And yeah, they just don't involve the kids. That's not their issue. That's not the kid's issue. Has nothing to do with them.

• 34:01Payton Moreland?

  Right. I do credit your parents for really-

• 34:04Garrett Moreland?

  It surprises me how many parents involve their children in divorces and it's so immature. But anyways.

• 34:12Payton Moreland?

  Um, I think like the dynamic between a father and daughter, not only like planning the murder of the mother, but executing it.

• 34:23Garrett Moreland?

  Oh, yeah.

• 34:23Payton Moreland?

  That's pretty like, that's intense.

• 34:26Garrett Moreland?

  It's, yeah, it is.

• 34:27Payton Moreland?

  You know? All right, you guys, that is our case for this week and we will see you next time with another one. I love it.

• 34:34Garrett Moreland?

  And I hate it.

• 34:34Payton Moreland?

  Goodbye.