246: Tinder Serial Killer, Valentine’s Day Murder, Fire Captain Stabbing, Cannibal Released, & Deadly Black Widow

Today’s episode dives into everything happening this week in true crime with @_annieelise. From new cases to updates on existing ones and more. Join our True Crime Club for access to BTS, Bonus Content, Our Private Group Chat, Giveaways and More! Shop Our True Crime Merch Follow the podcast on: IG, Facebook and TikTok For Business Inquiries: [email protected] About Annie Today’s Sponsors: Quince: Visit https://quince.com/ae for FREE shipping and 365-day returns! Episode Sources: People.com NBC News Law and Crime Daily Mail Fox 19 Connecticut News NY Post

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

• 0:00Annie Elise?

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• 0:53Speaker 02

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• 1:24Annie Elise?

  Hey, true crime besties. Welcome back to an all-new episode of Serially.

• 1:47Annie Elise?

  Hey, everybody. Welcome back to an all-new episode of Serially with me, Annie Elise. I hope you guys are all having a good week so far. I have been kind of like recording a lot this week. I had a really special guest in the studio earlier this week, and we were recording an episode for a deep dive that's coming up, and I think we're going to release it on March 10th. Don't quote me on that, but it's a very long episode, and she is just incredible. She firsthand shares her story of something horrific that happened to her and her family, and she survived it. I don't want to tell too much about it. I feel like she should be the one to share her story. You may have seen part of it on her TikTok because it went viral. I think it's over

• 2:30Annie Elise?

  10 million views or something like that, but we brought her into the studio, flew her out from Canada, and spent a lot of time together this week, and it was really emotional, really powerful, and just she is such a remarkable woman, and I just can't even begin to wrap my mind around what this girl went through. And I say girl because she was so young at the time when it happened, and unfortunately, it wasn't even like, I don't know, not this expression, not like a one-hit wonder, but like it wasn't a one-time occurrence because tragedy just kept happening throughout her life. And now she is around about 40 years old, and it's just a very, very powerful case and story. And so I'm looking forward to sharing that with you. And as I said, spent a lot of time with her

• 3:15Annie Elise?

  this week recording. And so it's been a busy one, but it's also been a busy week in the true crime world because there is so much happening. I mean, there are verdicts happening, there are trials happening, there is a verdict that just came in the other day about the boy who killed his twin sister in his sleep. He was claiming sleepwalking. Prosecution was, of course, claiming otherwise, that this was intentional. I think I'm going to do a deep dive on it because when I started looking into it and finding some of the discrepancies in the information, I was like, obviously, there's no question here. Like, what do you mean? Like, it almost seemed as clear-cut as the Colin Griffith

• 3:57Annie Elise?

  case that we talked about a couple of weeks ago, where this kid somehow got found not guilty, this 17-year-old kid not guilty of killing his mom, and he had also killed his daddy a year and a half prior. And he's just, you know, gallivanting around Florida, completely free, and like, not a care in the world. So, I don't know, I'm already starting to go off the rails for this episode. I apologize. I need to reel it in. So, anyway, we have a lot of stuff to talk about today because there are A lot of new cases and some updates. One of the cases we're talking about is an arrest that has finally been made in a cold case from 2017 where a mom and her eight-month-old baby went missing under very suspicious circumstances. So there's a resolution there.

• 4:40Annie Elise?

  Want to talk to you about it. We also are going to talk about a hit-and-run, but not just your average hit-and-run. It was an actual Amazon driver hit-and-run who literally got out of his truck, saw what he had done, jumped back in his blue Amazon truck, or you know, whatever. I'm just saying that, but delivery truck, and then sped off and went away. We also are going to talk about a Valentine's Day massacre. And what I mean by that is like, this guy got so pissed off that his partner didn't respond the way he wanted her to about his gift, that he went into like, overdrive and stabbed her 40 times. And it is just like, sick. We're also going to talk about this case about a Tinder scammer who not only scammed people, but also turned into a serial killer all through using the

• 5:25Annie Elise?

  dating apps. There is also somebody who is known as the Bridgeport Cannibal, who had killed a man back in 2013 and was charged, was arrested, was sentenced. But 2013 is only 12 years ago, right? And get this, he's a cannibal. He's getting released. Getting released. So we need to talk about that whole case, and then the release and what that means. And then we're going to talk about some spouses who killed their spouses. We're going to talk about a 15-year-old who shot someone in self-defense. I mean, there is just, we've got a lot to go over. So I'm going to shut up now. I'm going to stop talking, and I'm going to just kind of like, get right into it, because that's what you want me

• 6:04Annie Elise?

  to do anyway, right? But actually, really, sorry, guys, actually, really quick, I do have a question, and I need your feedback. So whether you're listening to the audio version of this, or you are watching on YouTube, please comment, please let me know. I also set a reminder already in my phone to remind me to put a poll up on Spotify. But I want to know from you, for the sake of organization or clarity,

• 6:31Annie Elise?

  Do you want me to start titling these episodes as headline highlights February week three or whatever we're in? Or do you prefer that I continue doing what I'm doing? Because right now, the way I'm titling them is I'm putting, you know, a couple of words regarding each case or three cases at least in the title. So I would hope that that with then the body of the description saying that it's a headline highlights episode, you guys would be clear on what it is. But I don't know if that's making it more confusing. If you don't want to see a title that has a bunch of case names jumbled up in it. And if you'd rather just be like, oh, headline highlights, week three, like, got it, check. So let me know what you want, because like I always say, I could like to consider myself a podcaster of the people.

• 7:14Annie Elise?

  And I mean that, obviously joking and sarcastic, but in a, in a real sense of whatever you guys want me to talk about and how you want me to package things and organize things and deliver things, I want to make sure I'm doing that because I want to make you happy. So let me know what you prefer for titling, or if you're like, Annie, I honestly don't even give a shit. I don't know why you're even asking us this. It doesn't even matter. Title it whatever the F you want, like whatever your vibe is, let me know. Okay. We're friends. We can all just air it out and be honest. Now let's start with this first case because as I mentioned, there has been an arrest made in a cold case from 2017, which I know wasn't really that long ago, six years, but it has been a cold case ever since. And it's a case of a missing mom and her baby.

• 7:57Annie Elise?

  Now what I'm really excited about is this case is going to start us off on a much brighter and happier note than usual. But on February 17th, a press conference was held regarding a huge announcement from this case that's out of Virginia. The case involves a woman named Kier Johnson, who was just 34 years old at the time in 2017 and her then eight month old daughter Chloe. So Kier and Chloe were heading up to go meet with a friend at Buck Row Beach in Virginia. This was on April 30th, 2017. However, Kier and her daughter never showed up, which was of course immediately a huge red flag and her whole family and all of her friends were really worrying about what had possibly happened because these were plans that were made well ahead of time. And Kier was also apparently never somebody who would just, you know, blow off.

• 8:41Annie Elise?

  So then, after wondering why she didn't show up, her family became even more worried when nobody could get in contact with her. Nobody had seen her, nobody had seen the baby, nobody could get a hold of her, they were starting to panic. So a week after she was first reported missing, her car was then found abandoned, which we know is never a good sign. Yet still, nobody had heard or seen from Kier or her daughter. So an Amber Alert was issued after her car was found. However, even that Amber Alert, it didn't really bring any helpful leads in. So eventually, the case just kind of came to a staggering halt. It was like they both had literally just vanished into thin air. So then, fast forward now to, you know, eight years later, and this press conference was being held. So on Valentine's

• 9:23Annie Elise?

  Day, they announced that 46-year-old Carlos Johnson was arrested after he had been pulled over at a traffic stop. And once he was arrested, he was charged with two counts of first-degree murder. Now, this man Carlos was Kier's ex-boyfriend and also baby Chloe's biological father. Apparently, their relationship was just very toxic, on again, off again, off again, on again. And nobody was really surprised, apparently, when he was finally arrested. Carlos Johnson, who is that, dear?

• 9:53Speaker 03

  That was Chloe's biological father. Yeah. And that's who we've always known to be the alleged suspect, or however you're supposed to say it. That's who we always know, but we just couldn't say. But I'm glad the police finally made an arrest. And they can start the legal process on putting him away.

• 10:18Annie Elise?

  Now, there's still not a whole lot that is known about this case, or even the circumstances of Carlos's arrest. However, it has been reported that just a few months before Kier and Chloe went missing, Carlos had been Googling things. And not normal Googles that you and I may have on our phone, but we always say, the Google history, it will get you every single time, right? And the Google searches that he was making were things like accidental baby death. How much rat poison is needed to kill a human? Pretty specific, pretty coincidental when then a baby vanishes and then another human vanishes. Doesn't seem like just like your standard everyday Google search. And it also is kind of like a tale as old as time, right?

• 11:01Annie Elise?

  I will never understand why these people think that Google search history is private or can be deleted or wiped. Because news flash, or what's that mean? News flash Dakota Fanning in Uptown Girls. To the like, your history is always going to be there. It will always be there. So wake up idiots. Now to this day, Kier and her baby have still not been found. However, they are both sadly assumed to be deceased at this point, which is incredibly sad. A mother with her eight month old child. And I will never honestly understand why people do these things. Because if you don't want to be in a relationship, just don't be. You know how right now that whole let them theory is going viral of like, oh, if they want to like, leave you or if they want to do this to you, if your friends want to treat you like crap, just let them. It's the Mel Robbins theory. Here's my theory.

• 11:46Annie Elise?

  If you don't want to be married, don't be. If you don't want to not cheat and be a scumbag, don't be. If you don't want to have to murder somebody to get out of a relationship, don't be like, it's just crazy to me that people will go to such extremes because you're just too much of a coward to leave the relationship or to do things the right way, right? And if you don't want the kid, if it's not even about the relationship and you don't want the child, then don't be involved. I mean, do your part with child support and I would never say like be a deadbeat parent because I think that's awful. But like, it's better than being a murdering parent, right? Like, just don't be involved. Be the deadbeat, take the heat for that too, from all the judgment you get. But like, it's better than the alternative. It's better than murdering your child, right?

• 12:29Annie Elise?

  So I don't know, it just, I will never understand. It blows my mind. It really feels to me like such a simple thing to do. But right now Carlos's preliminary hearing is scheduled for the end of June. So I will definitely be keeping an eye out for any updates that come with this case. But I am just glad that Kier and Khloe can finally and hopefully get the justice that they deserve after a whole eight years of it being a cold case. And I'm hopeful that this guy Carlos, now that he's been arrested, maybe he will actually provide some answers as to where their remains are so that their families can grieve properly. So that they can lay them to rest and there can be. Not closure, but peace within it, if that makes sense. So now, let's move into this Amazon guy, because this story,

• 13:15Annie Elise?

  it's unbelievable in the sense that how people think they're gonna get away with things, it just never ceases to amaze me. Even high-speed chases, or carjackings, or hit-and-runs, sometimes there's wiggle room to think, okay, maybe they're optimistically like, thinking that they're gonna have a chance at getting away with this. But this guy is like, such a moron. And let me just talk to you about what went down. So as I said, it was a hit-and-run. But what's so unique about this situation too, is that it was an Amazon delivery van, and it was someone driving who was still on the clock. So on Tuesday, February 18th, a 29-year-old woman, who has still been unnamed, was walking across the street in a pedestrian crosswalk in a neighborhood in Baltimore. Now, this neighborhood, it was also full of shops, full of businesses.

• 14:00Annie Elise?

  So there were literally cameras everywhere. And what happened next, it was caught all on camera. So as the woman was crossing the street, an Amazon delivery van was not seen just hitting her, but also completely running over her with its front wheel. The van then slowed down, clearly realizing that they had hit something, or, in this case, someone. And then, the woman was run over by the back wheels of the van, making her quite literally run over, not once, but twice. And I know I went through that kind of fast, but just thinking, if you're picturing the van driving right now, and like, going over almost like a speed bump, okay, where the front wheels go over. It wasn't a speed bump, though, it was a person. And they start slowing down, like, oh, what'd I just run over?

• 14:41Annie Elise?

  But instead of stopping, they continued driving at like, a somewhat slow of a pace, to where the back wheels then go over that same speed bump slash person, again. And even if this person thought, okay, I ran over a speed bump, or I ran over a lid, or a piece of garbage, that's not what happened. The driver knew exactly what happened. And they knew it wasn't just garbage, or a lid, or something like that, which, how do I know that, you're asking? Because the driver is seen on this camera footage, getting out of the vehicle, standing right next to this poor woman, who he just ran over, who was barely moving her- herself and then he gets back into the van and he flees the scene. Now thankfully, it wasn't too late at night. It was only around 9:30 PM.

• 15:24Annie Elise?

  So there were plenty of witnesses and other people around who immediately called for help. The victim was rushed to a local hospital where she was treated for her injuries. And thankfully, none of them were life threatening, which is so crazy to imagine. I don't even know how you survive being ran over twice by a van. But even more crazy is that the authorities know exactly who this driver is. He's a man, as I mentioned, though we don't know his name. It has yet to be released. But he also has yet to be arrested. So a spokesperson for Amazon did release a statement regarding this entire incident in which they said, "We were made aware of this terrible incident. The driver in question has been suspended from delivering on our behalf, and we're working with his employer and with law enforcement as they investigate."

• 16:06Annie Elise?

  Now, at first, that quote confused me a little bit because I'm like, wait, you're Amazon. He was driving an Amazon delivery van. What do you mean you have to check with his employer or you're cooperating? And what do you mean that he's been suspended from delivering on your behalf? But it made a lot of sense once I actually like turned my brain on. Because I don't know if you know this, but Amazon and a lot of delivery companies, they do have their own drivers who are employed underneath Amazon. But they also hire third-party companies to do their deliveries for them. Because as you know, Amazon is such a massive company with Prime Delivery. It's like, how could you possibly sustain that in-house? So what I gather from this is that, okay, it was one of these third-party drivers.

• 16:47Annie Elise?

  They had the van. They, he's been suspended from delivering on Amazon's behalf. But maybe he still is working for this third-party delivery vendor and delivering on other people's behalf. But then it says, "We're working with his employer and with law enforcement." So, you know, that's how, what I gather from it. But then again, I'm not a genius. So, or maybe I am. I don't know. Now, I would imagine that hopefully by the time this episode comes out, there will have hopefully been some kind of arrest made, especially since they know who was responsible. But I'm just super glad to hear that this woman is okay. And who knows, maybe Amazon will throw her a nice little payout or a nice little settlement as well. Not that that makes up for it, but they certainly have plenty of money to do so. Now let's talk about this Valentine's Day date gone wrong because we talked about something.

• 17:32Annie Elise?

  When was it? It was a couple of weeks ago, I think, about the woman who like met a stranger on the bus and plotted to kill her partner because she was going for a job interview and the partner was basically like, uh, you're not qualified. You're not going to get the job. I don't believe in you. And she's like, oh, I need to plot and kill you because you don't believe in me. And that's kind of like loosely how this case feels as well. Now, for some people, I feel like Valentine's Day can be full of romance, heartwarming gestures, lovey dovey, all of those things. For others, it's just another day. But this specific case is pretty insane because it did start off as a seemingly normal, just average couple trying to participate in the whole day of love, day of luv, like lovey dovey hearts and candy and all of the things.

• 18:15Annie Elise?

  But then 34-year-old Taylor Meyer was arrested and he was charged with brutally murdering his 36-year-old wife, Deborah Meyer. He murdered her on Valentine's Day night. Now, apparently their marriage was a bit on the rocks. So because of that, Taylor decided he was going to take advantage of Valentine's Day and try to repair what was apparently so badly broken in their marriage. He really wanted to woo her. He wanted to bring the spark back. So he had planned a themed night for Deborah and he called it Bringing Paris to You. He decorated their house going all out. He even had their three children draw pictures of the Eiffel Tower that could just like give it this like cozy Paris type of feel, like really trying to make this romantic gesture. And it sounds beautiful, right? It sounds like

• 18:59Annie Elise?

  a really nice way to spend the night. You see drawings from your children. It's like the music, the food, whatever else he did to decorate the house. But their night was anything from a fairy tale. Because I guess Deborah didn't like fall back head over heels in love with him after this whole display. It didn't repair whatever the rift was within their marriage and whatever the separation or, you know, disconnect had been. But in Taylor's exact words to the police, he said, "She just didn't give a shit." That's what he said. So the couple ended up getting into a pretty heated argument and it stemmed mainly about Taylor confronting Deborah for allegedly having an affair with her coworker. The fight

• 19:40Annie Elise?

  then escalated. It went from loud to then physical and we actually know the details of everything because Taylor later confessed to all of it. He claimed that at one point she punched him and at another point he was choking her. And it was a whole messy thing, just back and forth, but apparently what really set him off was when Deborah apparently said to him, "What are you gonna do? Kill me? You're going to hurt me and leave our kids with no parents?" And I guess that Taylor was so mad that she questioned him this way and that this question to him seemed more of a challenge than anything else because that's exactly what he did. It like just pissed him off so much that he's like, "Yeah, that is what I'm gonna do."

• 20:21Annie Elise?

  So he claimed to have gone into the kitchen where he then got what he described as being, quote, "A big ass kitchen knife." Then he went back into the room where Deborah was, he pinned her down and he started stabbing her over and over again. But get this, right before he began stabbing her, he grabbed her phone and he called the man that he believed that she was cheating on him with. And this other guy, of course, answered because she was calling him and he heard this entire thing go down, the whole murder. Taylor apparently yelled to him, "You know, it's your fucking fault. You wanna ruin my marriage? You wanna tear my family apart? This is your fault." And all this other guy could hear was Deborah screaming, Deborah begging for help.

• 21:06Annie Elise?

  Just very, very intense. Taylor ended up stabbing his wife at least forty times, which seems just so awful and just unbelievable and incomprehensible. I can't even begin to wrap my head around it. That is true overkill. And you're probably gonna wanna punch me right now for saying this, but because I've said it before and I think I say it and reference it anytime we talk about stabbing cases. But forty times really is like eighty times because it's eighty motions. And I want you to just think about that for a moment and the amount of strength that it would take. If you had a pillow in front of you right now and if you raised your arm up and put it down forty times, so eighty moves with your arm.

• 21:50Annie Elise?

  I'm doing, I'm doing about ten right now if you're watching on YouTube and my arm's already tired. And the force that you would have to go through a human body. It is, it takes not only an incredible amount of strength, but in my opinion, in situations like this, it's like adrenaline kicks in and takes over. And it's, that's why a lot of the time these cases are described as crimes of passion, overkill, because you're just going, going, going, you're so mad, the adrenaline's taking over. It's like, you're not even realizing what's happening. Like, they're probably long dead, a couple stab wounds in. There's no need to do 40, but it's almost like you have tunnel vision in that moment. So, it's just, it's hard to wrap your mind around it. Now even worse is that this entire time, the three kids were upstairs asleep in their beds.

• 22:34Annie Elise?

  They had no idea that they were going to wake up and essentially lose both of their parents. Now even though he admitted to everything and basically gave a full confession, he's of course now pleading not guilty, which I can't really be too surprised with that. That is a tactic and I understand. But this kind of goes back and I'm gonna have to rename it, but like to my version of the let them theory of the don't be. Like, if she wants to cheat, okay, I guess that is let them, let them. Don't kill someone to where now your three children have lost both of their parents. For what? You could have probably just as easily, I get it, it was a jab to your ego. You set up this beautiful night, you're probably heartbroken that she allegedly cheated on you, that she is leaving you maybe, I don't know.

• 23:17Annie Elise?

  But, the alternative would be, okay, you get divorced, it sucks, it's heartbreaking. Eventually, I would imagine you would probably move on, maybe it would take a few years, I don't know. But you'd still have your children, they would still have you. But now because you allowed the anger to come in, the resentment, the hostility, your children are left without either parent. And who wins in that situation? Certainly not you, right? I don't know, and I get it, it's hard to be rational when you're feeling that way and you're in the moment, but... There's gotta be something. There's gotta be something that can like, some sort of checks and balances. I don't know. Now, let's talk about this other case, about this convicted cannibal who has been granted conditional release.

• 23:58Annie Elise?

  Because this didn't happen very long ago, and cannibals freak me the heck out, okay? Whether it's Armie Hammer, Hamner, and like, what's really happening with there, if he is a cannibal or not, I don't know. Or like Hannibal Lecter, or these other cases that I've actually talked about on here where people are eating human things. And I'm not gonna like, try to fear monger for a second, but I'm gonna just tell you, there is like, this whole black market dark web for this. People are obsessed with the idea of eating other people, consuming somebody else. And it freaks me out, and it honestly, it makes me wanna vom. It is so disgusting. So, I'm gonna talk to you about this case, and it might piss you off as much as it pisses me off. Because one of the biggest questions I think I have when I heard about this is like, why? Why?

• 24:43Annie Elise?

  So, last Friday, a man by the name of Tyree Smith, who has been dubbed "The Bridgeport Cannibal Killer", was granted conditional release. And firstly, I just wanna go over quickly who this guy is before we get into exactly what this release means. Because people do have a lot of thoughts on it. But Tyree Smith, who was just 34 years old when this case first happened back in 2011, he had some serious issues, and as wild as this case was, the way that it happened was pretty quick and pretty straight to the point. So, in 2011, Tyree's cousin saw him coming home one evening, and he was carrying a bloody axe with him and chopsticks. And he had blood smeared all over his clothes, which sounds like a horror movie, right?

• 25:25Annie Elise?

  Like, you're watching your cousin come up to you with chopsticks and axe and covered in blood, like disgusting. Now, in most cases, I'd be saying, okay, they tried to play it cool, or they tried to hide the bloody axe, and they tried to play it off like it was nothing. But that is not what happened here. Because when Tyree's cousin asked what had happened, what the heck was going on, he told the truth. He simply put it that he had killed a man with his axe, he had ate his brain and his eyeball, and then he went and drank sake in the local cemetery to celebrate. Like, this was all just for fun, I guess. The victim's name was- Angel Gonzalez, and he was only 35 years old. At the time, Angel was homeless, and I'm not really sure if that had a direct correlation

• 26:07Annie Elise?

  with why Tyree chose him, but I would imagine that it very well could have been. He had a family who loved him very, very much, and his family has also spoken out to this day about just how great he was and how special he was to them. Now, we still don't know the motives. Apparently, it was just for fun, but he approached Angel and killed him with the axe, then ate his brain, ate one of his eyeballs, and then he like just drank sake just to celebrate. Now, due to the nature of the whole thing, Tyree was found not guilty by reason of insanity, which, I gotta say, that tracks because you gotta be, in my opinion, insane to do something like this. But initially, he was given what was described as a temporary leave status, but I guess that that was later changed after this conditional release.

• 26:50Annie Elise?

  So now, Tyree will be discharged from this hospital that he's been residing at. Yet, apparently, even though he'll be released, he still has to follow some pretty strict supervision rules, and he still has to go to all of his different mental health appointments, you know, that kind of thing, like check-ins and make sure that you're still on the straight and narrow. But it's kind of similar in a way, too, to the Slender Man Stabber that we had talked about probably a month ago now, and I know even more when we did the deep dive into the case. But they were also granted a conditional release. So it's not like these people are just set free, they can go roam the streets, they can go on and about their day and do whatever they want, yet they are still a lot more free than some would say that they deserve. I mean, arguably, they don't deserve to be free, in my opinion.

• 27:34Annie Elise?

  You took the life of somebody else. You also desecrated their corpse, in my opinion, and did some truly foul and heinous things. Whether you were insane or not at the time, I don't agree with conditional release. I agree you're still probably a danger, and it should be punishment, not even like reform or are you a threat to society, but you should be punished for what you have done. And again, that, I guess, could open up like a whole can of worms on here about the legal system, what's just, what's not, but if this were my family member, I would not be happy with this outcome at all. Now, a forensic psychiatrist even spoke at his hearing, saying the following about him. Quote, "He has maintained clinical stability. He adhered to the medications and continued to engage in group and substance abuse treatment."

• 28:17Annie Elise?

  He also denied visual hallucinations and a desire to harm others or himself. To quote the director there at the hospital, "He is a joy. He is considered a support to the other people there. Once he was stable, he was a really calming presence for other patients." Which, okay, like, great, but he still killed someone and ate them? That's not very calming to me. Now, Angel's family, understandably, not only have they been heartbroken from the very moment that he was taken from them, but they are not at all happy with how Angel's case has been handled, pretty much from the start, too. I can imagine that none of it really feels like any justice has ever been served.

• 28:55Speaker 04

  We call them toon toon. That man was well-loved by friends and family. He wasn't just a homeless person. He had people that cared about him. He had friends. He didn't deserve what was done to him. Nobody deserves that. They didn't take in consideration how we would feel.

• 29:12Annie Elise?

  Now, I know I very quickly skimmed over that case and all that had happened, but I do want to know your honest thoughts about his release and the opinions there. Do you lean more towards feeling like they should have just locked him up in a jail cell somewhere and then thrown away the key? Or do you side with more of the rehabilitation as being the end goal? Can an eyeball and a brain-eating cannibal really ever change, like that psychiatrist claimed? Can they really be a joy and a calming presence for people? I don't know. Even if somebody, and I'm just, I'm gonna go off here for a second, so bear with me. Even if somebody was fully rehabilitated and changed, and I was a part of group therapy, I was participating in it with them, I knew their struggles, and it seemed like they had,

• 29:55Annie Elise?

  you know, they were struggling with mental health, and now they were fine, I don't know that I would ever be calm in the presence of them, knowing what they were capable of, knowing that they had just eaten a human being. I don't know, maybe that's my own hang-up and my own issues I have to sort through, but feels a little weird. Now let's talk about this next case because it takes us to Cincinnati, Ohio. And this next one unfortunately is definitely a bit of a downer. Not that other ones aren't, but it is very, very tough because some just hit you extra hard and you know, make you feel all sorts of different things. And this case, like I said, it's from Cincinnati, Ohio, and it just recently happened on the 20th. So at around 12:45 a.m., a call from a woman whose name has not been released.

• 30:37Annie Elise?

  This call came into 911 and it reported that her 15-year-old son, whose name has also not been released, had shot his stepfather, who also happened to be the father of two of her other children. He had been shot multiple times and he was unresponsive. So in an attempt to keep everybody on the same page here, we're going to call the mom M. and the boy B. So when the first responders arrived, they knew that it was a pretty serious scene because the victim had been shot 12 times. And although he was taken to the local hospital, he ended up dying from his injuries. And even though that description already makes the case seem pretty bad all on its own, the deeper story behind it is much sadder and much darker. The victim's name was Levante Hyde.

• 31:20Annie Elise?

  And like I said, Levante was B.'s stepfather and also the father of B.'s two siblings. So the question was what had led to this horrible murder? Well sadly, B. felt like he had to take things into his own hands and he felt like he had to protect his mom, which I know that that might sound a little bit confusing, but stick with me here. Apparently his stepfather had been not the greatest partner, like at all. And typically I would use allegedly, but it's really not even allegedly at this point because Levante had a more than colorful background with law enforcement when it came to assaulting women. In 2017, he was charged with assault and criminal damage. Another time, he was facing charges for biting a woman and damaging a TV.

• 32:03Annie Elise?

  He also had damaged a wall and a door at her residence, but these charges were later dropped. So that very same day that B. ended up shooting and killing him, Levante had put his hands on his mother. Apparently the stepfather and the mother got into an argument while they were driving to the store and then- And he started calling her a bunch of just really mean unnecessary things, telling her she was a whore, telling her she was a hoe, punching her multiple times in the face with a closed fist. I mean, all while still driving. Now, what's interesting is the authorities had somehow ended up involved in this incident, and a warrant was even put out for his arrest. The court documents noted that the mother was a victim of Levante's,

• 32:44Annie Elise?

  but for whatever reason, he hadn't been arrested yet. So I guess that's why the son decided to take things into his own hands. And we still don't know a lot about the actual attack, but the prosecution is arguing that it was premeditated. They are claiming that after the son discovered what the stepfather had done to his mother, he went and found a gun and he waited for him to come home, knowing all what he was going to do. And like I said, we still don't have a lot of bigger picture detail, so I'm not sure if the gun was already in the home, or if he somehow got it from somewhere else or somebody else, but the story is just really sad all the way around. I mean, of course murder is never okay, so I am not condoning what this boy did at all. I don't want you to take that the wrong way or what I'm saying the wrong way.

• 33:29Annie Elise?

  But I also can't help but feel a little bit sad for him as well, because maybe it's the protective mom in me coming out, I don't know. But he's 15 years old, he saw his mom being attacked earlier, he saw that the stepfather wasn't being arrested, probably assumed another attack, if not something worse, was going to happen, and it's, and he just wanted to protect his mom. And at 15, he shouldn't have ever even known what it was like to see his mom bruised and beaten. He should have had more hope and faith in the system actually protecting his mom and protecting other women like her. He knew that this guy had already been given a slap on the wrist before for assault, so who's to say that this instance wouldn't have been the same? I don't know, this whole case is just really upsetting and that's all there really is to it.

• 34:11Annie Elise?

  We will learn more, but it's really sad, because now this mom has to deal with her son, most likely going away for quite some time. He has his whole life stripped away from him, which again, was his choice. He made the decision to pull that trigger, and it's just sad. It's just really sad, because it shouldn't have even ever been a situation that he or his mom were ever in. And so, it makes me sad. We are going to take a quick break here from today's sponsor, and then we are going to talk about the Tinder scammer turned serial killer and some more stuff.

• 34:47Annie Elise?

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• 35:21Annie Elise?

  Okay guys, so this next case, it's ongoing. It's happening right now and I'm gonna be saying allegedly a lot because of that, but I don't know if it's bad luck or if it's just plain evil, because both spouses of this woman have now ended up murdered. So as I said, it's happening right now, so I definitely think that we will be getting some more details and updates in the coming weeks. But it's about a woman who potentially could be a spouse killer, like a black widow. Allegedly, of course. So just bear with me. So basically, back in 2000, a woman named Yolanda Marodi, who went by a different last name at the time, brutally stabbed her husband in the chest and ended up killing him. The same day that she stabbed him, she ended up turning herself in.

• 36:04Annie Elise?

  She also had a few knife wounds on her arms, like maybe she was going to try and cover the whole thing up and just ended up confessing, I don't really know. But she pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter, and there are some conflicting statements on exactly how long she was sentenced. But spoiler alert, it wasn't very long at all, and she ended up getting out on parole in 2013. So after serving her time, she apparently went back to life as normal. Yolanda even ended up falling in love again and even got married, this time to a woman named Rebecca. And Rebecca was somebody who was well-known, who was loved, and she was just very respected by a lot of different people. She worked as a firefighter captain and she even recently helped with the devastating Eaton fires here in LA.

• 36:46Annie Elise?

  However, on February 17th, Rebecca was found dead in her home. And get this, she was found dead with multiple stab wounds on her body. The San Diego Sheriff's Office announced on the 21st that Yolanda was the prime suspect in Rebecca's murder, yet they had no idea where she was. They were currently still searching for her. Now, just days earlier, Yolanda had posted a picture of Rebecca on Valentine's Day, clearly out of, you know, a romantic Valentine's Day gesture or something like that, saying, "Happy Valentine's Day to my amazing wife. She is an angel to so many." Yet, days later, she would end up allegedly stabbing her to death. Now, since Rebecca's death, her friends and family members have come forward, sharing that the relationship between these two women, it just wasn't healthy. And I don't know,

• 37:31Annie Elise?

  even knowing that, if anybody could have predicted what was to actually come, or maybe they did, given Yolanda's background, but take a listen.

• 37:39Speaker 05

  It was a typical toxic relationship. Yolanda was very jealous, my understanding. She was very jealous and did not want to have Becky maintaining her friendships that she'd had for years with other women. This is solely a case of a toxic relationship gone very, very bad. And, and that domestic violence is, you know, touches so many more people than we even realize.

• 38:14Annie Elise?

  Both of Yolanda's marriages ending in her spouses being stabbed to death is already a huge red flag, right? But the fact that as of this recording, she's also nowhere to be found, that's even more damning. I mean, who conveniently just disappears after their wife was just brutally murdered in their home? She's not at home grieving, she's not planning a funeral, she basically has guilty written all over her forehead. She's like on the lam, in my opinion, right? So like I said, this is all that we know at the time that I'm recording this, which I honestly hope that by the time this goes live, they have found her, they've arrested her, because I want answers. Starting with why she allegedly feels the need to stab her partners when she's mad at them. And also, did she really think that she was going to get away with this? I mean, that's not something that's

• 38:57Annie Elise?

  easily just going to be explained away. Too many red flags, too many coincidences, right? So, we'll see where this goes. Now, let's talk about this Tinder scammer turned serial killer, because we hear a lot about social media scams, online dating scams. Very rarely do they end in a serial killing.

• 39:16Annie Elise?

  But even recently, there was a scam. What was it? It was like with deep fakes and AI, which is getting out of hand. But I don't know if you saw that woman was scammed out of like, it's either like 250 grand or 500 grand because she had been talking back and forth with who she thought was Brad Pitt because they deep faked his image in videos or something. And she like, thought she was helping him with some sort of medical emergency. And look, not her fault, not her fault, but I'm just gonna say to you guys right now, if Brad Pitt or a Nigerian prince starts DMing you, asking for money, saying that they can't tell anybody else that they're only relying on you, that you're the one to save them, they're in love with you, but they can't FaceTime you, you can't visit them, they can't call you. Chances are Brad Pitt's probably not in love with

• 40:01Annie Elise?

  you. And especially if you're also seeing that simultaneously while he's in the hospital, getting transplants or whatever he had said, whoever this fake person said, that he's also walking the red carpet places, but probably not real. He's probably not doing that. He's like, well, yeah, I had to. I just had to save. It just makes no sense. Okay. So don't send money to people. Just don't do it. So like I said, this next case is filled to the brim with like secrecy, with scams, but it doesn't end just there. It really does take scamming to a whole new level. So on February 21st, the US Attorney's Office in Nevada announced during a press conference that a nearly two-year investigation into a Las Vegas woman who was drugging and scamming all of these elderly men was finally coming to a close. Now, there's a whole backstory

• 40:45Annie Elise?

  to this case, so I'm gonna just jump right into it. But from July 2021 to December 2022, 43-year-old Aurora Phelps allegedly concocted this like master plan where she was swindling countless elderly men on dating apps, making them believe that they were actually exploring their relationship together, building on love with each other. But then, once they actually got together, she would drug them and she would steal from them. And she had countless different accounts on all of the major dating platforms, Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, I mean, you name it. Now, of course, she never actually used her real name. She had at least 10 different known aliases that she used. So I guess she wasn't Complete amateur in this. It was pretty well crafted.

• 41:29Annie Elise?

  But when I say steal, I don't mean she just grabbed twenty dollars from their wallet after she drugged them and then called it a day. She definitely went to the extremes and made her time and efforts worthwhile. Now, exactly what she would do as far as scamming goes, it would really vary from victim to victim. But she carefully curated this, carefully picked them out. And I imagined that she wanted to be one hundred percent sure that they actually had something to take before she like can put her whole full plan in motion. Once they were drugged to unconsciousness, though, she would access things like their bank accounts, social security, even their retirement accounts. Now luckily, her purchases of all sorts of luxury items were pretty easy to trace back to everything.

• 42:10Annie Elise?

  But get this, one time she even sold one of her victims' Apple stock, which was estimated to be worth three point three million dollars. She was hoping to kind of send all of this stock or sell it all to herself, but thankfully she wasn't able to withdraw that money. But this girl was serious. She was big time. She was like the real deal when it came to scamming. She wasn't just taking shoes or jewelry like she was like in the IT of it all. She was doing the admin work and really stealing from these people. So far, there are eleven known victims in total, and four of them have been involved in the whole court process. However, the police have also said that there definitely could be more, which I would believe wholeheartedly because

• 42:50Annie Elise?

  when you start doing things like this, you start to get greedy. You also start to get sloppy a lot of the time. And that could be the reason that she ended up getting caught in the first place. But here's where things went very, very wrong because I'm not sure exactly what she was using to drug these men, or if she was just like throwing whatever it was or Benadryl into somebody's food or drink or whatever she was doing. But when you're just being reckless and careless, it leaves room for a lot of things to go wrong. Especially because we're talking about elderly men and elderly men's bodies aren't like they once were and they probably were on a slew of other medications as well. So three known victims of hers actually ended up dying due to whatever she gave them.

• 43:31Annie Elise?

  Now scamming is bad enough, of course, but now we're talking about Aurora actually technically being a serial killer. So right now she's in custody in Mexico, which is where she apparently had a second residence. And so that's where she was and that's where she was arrested. But there are 21 different counts against her. So I definitely will be curious to keep up with this, especially to see if any more information comes out or if any more victims come forward, anything like that, because this could have been a whole operation that we have only barely dived into, scratched the surface with. Were other women involved? How deep did this go? Who was supplying the drugs? What were the drugs that led to their deaths? What really was happening? How much money in total did she actually steal from these men?

• 44:14Annie Elise?

  It seems very sophisticated to be selling and transferring stocks and doing things like that, accessing retirement accounts, social security accounts. That is sophisticated. Was she doing this as a lone ranger on her own? Or does this go deeper? So I'm going to follow this. I want to know more. Now that's what we've got this week for headline highlights, but I do want to remind you, aside from the Monday episode and headline highlights on Thursday, we also have our bonus episodes every Friday. There's no interruptions, there's no ads, and those episodes are exclusive to either Apple Podcasts or Patreon. Right now, I think we have upwards of 75 episodes in the bank. So if you need more content to binge, you can certainly go and binge a lot of it right now going into your weekend, or if your other podcasters aren't updating their shows, or

• 44:59Annie Elise?

  if you just, you know, have run out of things to listen to, there's so much material on there. Last week, we did a case about the worst serial killer in Thailand. She was a best friend who would poison all of her friends and then steal from them. I mean, it was horrific, but we talked about that last week, so you can go listen to that right now. And then this Friday, we are going all in to the Brian Laundriebital. Could he still be alive? What's really going on? My personal thoughts on whether he's alive or not, what a lot of the conspiracies are right now that are going out there because of the new documentary that has been released about Gabby Petito. So we're talking about all of that on Friday. So a lot of episodes, about 75 right now or more that you can go binge, you can get that access either through Patreon, patreon.com/AnnieElise, or directly on the Apple app.

• 45:44Annie Elise?

  I think right now there's even a discount if you buy a yearly subscription on the Apple app, so check that out. But other than that, I will be back with you first thing Monday morning with a deep dive of a case. And this is a case we've been talking about a lot, guys. I did the deep dive, so you don't have to. After I watched Apple Cider Vinegar, I wanted, and after I watched the new America or the search for Instagram's worst con artist, once I learned about who Belle Gibson was, I wanted to know everything about her. And we went into it way more than what the documentary showed, way more than what the dramatization showed. We are going to talk about all of it. So that is coming up on Monday, and it is a frickin' mind blowing case. So I will be back with you then. Until then, stay safe,

• 46:29Annie Elise?

  be nice, don't kill people, don't be, and I know that makes no sense. That's just gonna be my new let them theory until I come up with a better one. And don't join any cults. Just be good, be good, be good, be good, be good. Maybe that's the new thing. Be good. Alright, guys. Thanks so much. Bye.