This week, in Lebanon, Maine, a wild plot develops, leading to two brutal murders, and a hunt for a kidnapped woman. It's an awful ordeal, as the woman's ex husband, and his new girlfriend take her to a distant motel to try to convince her that both women can be his wives, and she should come back to him. It's a race against time to find the woman, before she ends up with the same fate as the others. Will she be found alive??Along the way, we find out that death metal bands really need to get logos that you can actually read, that some people can be different people behind closed doors, and that when you bring a shotgun, assault rifle, multiple knives, a pipe, duct tape, and rope... you're looking to do more than talk!!New episodes every Thursday!Donate at: patreon.com/crimeinsports or go to paypal.com and use our email: [email protected] to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things Small Town Murder & Crime In Sports!Follow us on...twitter.com/@murdersmallfacebook.com/smalltownpodinstagram.com/smalltownmurderAlso, check out James & Jimmie's other show, Crime In Sports! On Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Wondery, Wondery+, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Hey everybody, just going to take a quick break from the show to tell you a little bit about Shutterfly. If you're like us, you take a lot of pictures because you have a camera right in your hand all the time. How would you not take a lot of pictures? And we're taking all these pictures more than we've ever taken in the history of the world. What are you going to do with them all?
That's the thing. You used to get a solid picture, and then you'd look through them, and you could enjoy them. Now they're, like, back on your camera roll. You can't even find them. You don't want that. That's why the cool thing you need to do, and what I did, and I think it's pretty cool, is create a Shutterfly photo book. Oh.
What I did, and you're going to enjoy this, Jimmy, because I haven't showed this to you yet, but... Took all of our pictures from being on tour this year. All live show pictures, us backstage, us on stage doing all that stuff and like some of the just the venues and things and made a little photo book out of that. Also, they have free 24 hour designer service as well.
With their 24-hour designer service, a professional designer is going to lay out the book for you for free in just a day. Make something that means something with Shutterfly. Enjoy 40% off orders over $29 with promo code SMALLTOWN. See site for promotional details.
And now back to the show.
Hey, everybody. Just going to take a quick break from the show and tell you about Noom. Has Noom helped you? I believe it has. Oh, it's got an app. You can do tracking. It's terrific. It does. Noom builds personal plans that can meet individual needs. That's the thing. Takes into account any dietary restrictions, medical issues, other personal needs. That helps build a plan that works for you.
And, yes, I know that you've had your own personalized program here that you've been working on.
And it's weight loss that... This is weight loss results that last. They stick around because you get yourself into a lifestyle change.
That's what matters. That's mainly it. You can't just say, I'm going to cut that out for a month and then go back. Can't do it. That's not what it is. Bet you don't. So I'm glad it's helping you. That's great. And it really does. I like the psychology and biology-based approach here. Noom weight uses psychology.
That's why they say losing weight starts with your brain, but it also takes into account your body. Unique biological factors, Jimmy. All of your multitude flora and fauna that goes on inside of you there. Stay focused on what's important to you with Noom's psychology and biology-based approach. Sign up for your trial today at Noom.com. Noom.com. N-O-O-M-O-M. dot com here.
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In the depths of an Atlanta forest, a clash between activists and authorities ends in tragedy. I'm Matthew Scher, and on my new podcast, We Came to the Forest, we expose the hidden truths behind a shootout that left one activist dead and countless lives forever changed. Binge all episodes of We Came to the Forest ad-free on Wondery+.
This week in Lebanon, Maine, a dark plan unfolds as a man lures people to their horrifying deaths so he can try to convince his wife to return to him and that everything will be much better now. Welcome to Small Town Murder. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder. Yay! Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed. My name is James Petrigallo. I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wissman.
Thank you, folks, so much for joining us today. We have a crazy show for you, as usual. Just wild stuff going on in this episode. This was one of those, as I'm reading it, I'm shocked at every turn. I'm like, oh, my God, this is insanity. We will get to all of that and more, of course. But first, before we do, head over to ShutUpAndGiveMeMurder.com. Get your tickets for live shows.
The entire 2025 calendar is for sale. Pittsburgh, February 7th. You are up first. Get in there. Columbus is not an option the next night because Columbus is sold out 100%. Get your butts to Pittsburgh and come see us there. And then all the other dates, too. Madison just about sold out. Portland, I think, is sold out. And that's in November.
So Seattle, D.C., Philly, all these places, get your tickets. Chicago, get them now.
Oh, Chicago's almost done, too.
Yeah. get in there, get those tickets. So thank you for everyone that's done that. Shut up and give me murder.com. Also all your merchandise and everything else there.
You should definitely listen to our other two shows, your stupid opinions, which who doesn't want to hear people's dumb opinions and reviews from the internet and then crime and sports as well, which we promise you, you don't have to like sports to like it. It's us making fun of a, of a moron who threw away their entire career. That's, that's good stuff right there. So we will get to that.
Oh,
Patreon.com slash crime in sports is where you get all the bonus material. Anybody $5 a month or above, you get an entire giant back catalog of hundreds of episodes immediately upon subscription. Then you get new ones every other week. One crime in sports, one small town murder. And how much of that do they get? You get every bit. Every damn drop of it.
And this week, what we're going to give you is for crime and sports. We are going to talk about Kobe Bryant's little little problem he had in Colorado. There is the rape accusation and everything that happened afterwards. And we'll get into all that. We have the depositions and the interrogations and everything. And then for small town murder, it is Internet salad time again.
feel like every once in a while we feel like people are getting tense and we're like let's have an internet salad where we're going to talk about everything that doesn't matter basically it'll be just like we do before the show starts and we're looking around going god you see this idiot stuff like that no politics just fun it's going to be a good time patreon.com slash crime in sports and you get a shout out at the end of the show as well for sure where jimmy will mispronounce your name while he'd love to get it correct so that's a lot of fun
Disclaimer time. Names are hard, too. Let's be honest here. Disclaimer time. This is a comedy show. It is. We are comedians. There will be jokes here and there will be dead people here. The stories are 100 percent real. Unfortunately, they are not, you know, embellished for comedic effect or anything silly like that. These are real crazy stories that are just nuts.
And the only way to the only way to tell them properly is to have to sit back and laugh once in a while. Oh, my God. Not at the gross parts. That's the thing. We're not like, oh, my. And then her head got cut off. Hilarious. That's never fun. But when people try to do crazy dismounts and everything else, and I think I can get away with this, that's hilarious, objectively.
But what we don't do is we don't make fun of the victims or the victims' families.
Well, why is that, James?
Because we're assholes. Yes. But we're not scumbags. That's how that works. See how it goes? So that's going to be a good time. If you think true crime and comedy should never, ever go together for any reason whatsoever, I don't know. We disagree. But, hey, you have the right to disagree with that. And no complaining later. Let's just say that.
So that said, I think it's time, everybody, to sit back. Let's all clear the lungs. What do you say here?
And let's all shout. Shut up and give me murder. Let's do this, everybody. Okay.
Let's go on a trip, shall we? Here we go. We are going to Maine this week.
Oh, yeah.
It's a nice place. We love Maine, obviously. This is far west Maine here. This is... the westernmost town in Maine, as a matter of fact.
Is that right?
Absolutely. So as far away from the ocean as you can get here. It is called Lebanon, Maine, just like the Middle Eastern place here, Lebanon. It's about an hour to Portland, Maine, over by the sea there, and it's about an hour to Concord, New Hampshire, in the opposite direction.
It sits right in the middle there, and it's three hours to Old Town, Maine, which is our last Maine episode, the Facebook catfish killer. Oh, yeah. I remember that one. That was a fucking weird one. Whenever social media is involved in murder, it's always strange. So this is in York County, area code 207 here. Little bit of history, just a drop here.
It was first granted this area for a town in 1733, very old, by the General Court of Massachusetts Bay as the township at the head of the Berwick.
That's what they called it.
I guess so. But they said they basically gave this to about 60 families given a charter, but no one came here for like 10 years. So what if you started a town and no one showed up? That's what happened here, apparently. So the first meeting house was built in 1753, and then it kind of went on from there. And then in 1767, it was finally incorporated as Lebanon, and it was Maine's 23rd town.
So this is early, early man stuff here. I guess farming was good here. There's some good level ground in this area with extensive pine plains to the northwest of this area. The chief crop here, hay. Oh, is that right? Just hay. What are we growing? Dried out grass. Okay, great. Let's do it.
I'm shocked.
Yeah, also at the Salmon River Falls and the Little River were water power sites for mills. Lebanon had four saw mills, three grist mills, a shingle mill. It's making shingles, pumping shingles out. A wood carding mill, or wool carding, not wood carding. Wood carding with a D, card. And a tannery, of course, as well. Sure.
And it grew from there, and it hasn't grown very much from there, we'll say. It's still a pretty small place. We've never been here. We like Maine, but never been here. Let's find some reviews of this place and see what we got here. Maybe they'll know more than we do. Let's see. Five stars. I love the town I live in.
Even though all we have is a Dunkin' Donuts, spelled out not like D-O, nuts, like donuts. Dunkin' Donuts. And our local pizza shop, it's the best. I highly doubt that my high school has kids from my town, Berwick and North Berwick. All our towns come together. Towns together create an even bigger community.
Right.
Yeah. We just I mean, we just built one school for all you. And they're trying to put a positive spin. A lot of people complain that if you go to high school in this area, it's a long drive to the high school because that's the closest one because it's small. Here is four stars. Lebanon's a very quiet and cute town.
Everything is pretty far apart, but there's lots of busy towns nearby to go to and do fun things like go into the movies or going shopping. Right. While I'm usually home during the colder season, summer is pretty fun here, and there are lakes in town to go cool off and a few ice cream shops to get a cool treat.
The town is also working on getting more stores in, like the new Dunkin' Donuts and the new shop being built next to it. Apparently that's the pizza place. It just hadn't arrived yet. Oh, okay. Yeah. Overall, it's a nice town for quiet and peaceful place of residence. Sounds like a final resting place, the way they said it. Yeah.
You only get two places. I mean, you get morning and evening food, and then you figure out lunch on your own.
Not a lot there. I guess the pizza place hopefully has something you can get. Two stars. There are several aspects that I would like to see changed for the better in Lebanon, Maine. There's a limited number of resources within the town. It lacks a grocery store, pharmacy, restaurants, coffee shops, etc. You know, shit that makes a town a town.
Things that people need.
Yeah, places people go, the center of the town. We're missing all of that. The roads are poorly taken care of. Another feature that would be a great addition are sidewalks. You know, we could just walk around. That'd be good.
Yeah.
Not asking a lot. Unfortunately, without sidewalks, I do not feel safe running on the road. There's little to none entertainment options or shopping experiences in Lebanon. There is very little to do within the town. On the other hand, an aspect of Lebanon I do enjoy is that the houses are not extremely close together. There you go.
I mean, there's plenty of room.
Plenty of room. Why be crammed in here when there's nothing around you? People in this town, 6,437, which is too many to not have a couple of restaurants and a grocery store.
To just have a pizza joint and a Dunk's.
What are we talking about? That seems really off there. Way more female than male here, which is definitely... It's over 52% female, which is definitely different. I guess people may be retiring. Women live longer. I don't know. I know that much, but... Median age here, though, is just about around the national average. It's only 39, so I don't understand it. About 60% married.
It's 50-50 the rest of the country. So this is like a very kind of family-ish kind of a place here. Race in this town, I mean, it's Maine, 98.4% white, 0.8% Hispanic, 0.8% two or more races. Wow. Yeah, small town Maine. 30% here are religious, which is 50-50 in the rest of the country.
And the highest is, not shockingly, Catholic, of course, because as we know, Catholics are the Baptists of the North. They are definitely going to be the majority wherever they are in the north here. The unemployment rate here is high. It is almost 7%, which is much higher than the rest of the country, which is in the fours here. There's nowhere to work. No, where are the Dunkin' Donuts?
But apparently they found somewhere to work because the median household income here is $92,117 a year, which is... Over 20,000 more. A lot of attractive feet in this place, apparently. Lebanon, Maine, our feet are the nicest. Jerk off to our feet. No hangnails. Yeah. Holy shit, what a weird, that's a weird stat. Cost of living here, 100 is regular, even in the rest of the country.
Here it is a 110. So a little bit high. And the housing is a little bit high as well. The median home cost here is $313,600.
Yeah, so stay the fuck out.
Get the fuck out of here. Stay out. Take your feet. Pick somewhere else. So if we've convinced you, you love pizza and Dunkin' Donuts, and this is just enough for you, we have for you the Lebanon, Maine Real Estate Report. Okay, your average two-bedroom rental here, very much more expensive than the national average. It's $1,690, which is way up there.
Here is a three-bedroom, one-bath, 1,400-square-foot dwelling, we'll call it, because we'll get to what it is. It's on two acres, which is nice. It's a trailer. But it's a trailer that they, like, attach some stuff. It's not just the lattice work around the bottom. It was, like, you know, it looks like you can't just pick it up and take it somewhere. It looks like it's in there pretty good.
It looks kind of shitty from the outside, but it's not that bad from the inside. It's clean. It's livable. It's nice. It's okay. The listing says it's a charming ranch home, which, calm down. It's manufactured. Relax here. This house, $374,000 for that, though. Oh, my. Which, I mean, two acres is nice, but 1,400... You're buying the land. You're buying the land, yeah.
Here's a three-bedroom, two-bath, 1,056 square feet, which is three bedrooms and 1,000 square feet is cramming them in there. 0.75 acres and another, again, it's the same thing, a mobile home, a manufactured home that's been made to look like it belongs there. This house, $399,900. Okay.
for a thousand square foot trailer yeah that is bonkers and then here this next one this isn't really a you know family house or anything like this more of a vacation spot it's a two bedroom one bath 1060 square foot place uh on 0.73 acres it's a little house but it is lakefront you have a dock and everything like it's it's right on the water and it's amazing All wood inside. It's nice.
It's a cabin getaway. The inside that they show in all the pictures, there's like beds everywhere. It's like families of 14 are going to a two-bedroom lake house to sleep. It's insanity. It's crazy. But it's on the waterfront. $635,000 for that bad boy.
Oh my, not even an acre.
They're out of their minds over there. Yeah, that is crazy. Things to do in this town. Well, let's start out with the New England death metal bonanza. Sure, why not? Fucking rock on. Here we go. It's the New England death metal Funtime Bonanza is the full name of this place. Funtime Bonanza. Which makes it hilarious and makes me want to go to it. I'll just read the description.
It is the most extreme outdoor music festival in the New England area. You can hear the... Like a fucking early 90s guitar lick. It's extreme, bro.
It's extreme, yeah.
It's fucking extreme. No fear. It's hosted in Lebanon, Maine. The Bonanza brings artists and vendors from all over New England, as well as bands from all over the country. And they're going to be into it here. This year's festival features 45 bands from all over the U.S., spanning multiple genres, including death, grind, thrash, which are all just different.
And even folk punk, which I don't know what that is, and I don't know how it fits in with this, but okay.
All right.
They said it was carefully curated, this lineup, to deliver equal parts brutality and fun. We'll also be hosting many games. You know, the throw your baby in a pit of acid game is fun.
pin the head on the live chicken yeah that's a good one that's fun uh the poster for this has like all the band's logos so it's really hard oh yeah i love that they do that it's funny their band name impossible to read all right belushi speedball i see is one of them which is obviously uh uh what is i can't read what that is joe buck yourself is another one okay
Maybe my favorite band name ever, Poon Tickler. That's amazing. The Poon Tickler. Okay. Sure, that sounds like something we do on Your Stupid Opinions for a personal item. Here's the Poon Tickler with three stars. On Amazon. On Amazon. Anti-sapien. I guess they don't like people. Dead Alive.
narcotic wasteland um i don't even know deterioration bonginator okay that's kind of right on the nose there i think work harder this is bad dude look at i'm gonna look at the posters this is gonna drive it looks like a bunch of tribal tattoos they don't even look like so painful a mutation barbecue is one of them yeah i see it's so dumb what does that say
jar or tar i have no beats me no clue well if that is also black mass i see that's one of them here okay that's got to be a massachusetts band right i would think yeah maybe black mass mutation barbecue i like nailed shut that's when i can read that's cool yeah nailed shut now i want to see the poon tickler If you get the Poon Tickler in there, maybe they won't be so shut. That's the thing.
You're not getting radio play with your band called Poon Tickler, right?
That was the Poon Ticklers with... Oh, man. They'd stab me harder. Jesus Christ, that'd be so weird. Tar, it looks like. Tar? Or jar?
maybe jar yeah that's possible the tea is really awkward it looks like look at this that doesn't look like they need to work on their fucking j because that doesn't look like a j yeah right it looks like tar i don't know yeah but i'm sure it's jar um everything's got to be like all jagged lettering and it's all the same then you can't even fucking read it if i was a death metal band my logo would be like bubble letters just because it's going to stand out on every poster i'm on that's what everyone's eyes are going to go to
Have it stamped like black flag. You can't miss black. You know what that says.
Yeah, absolutely. Everything. Deterioration. Maul. M-A-U-L. Immortal suffering will be there.
I think I've heard of them, too.
Malignancy looks like one of them.
I've definitely heard of it. Well, I don't know.
Who the fuck knows? Those are all the ones I can read, but there's literally twice as many bands as I've written. And there's no big headliner. Not that I can see. There's shit in big letters, but I can't even read what they are. It looks like, I don't know, maybe the biggest ones like Belushi Speedball will be headlining one night.
I swear I've heard of them.
It sounds familiar, but I mean, we've also heard about a lot of John Belushi doing speedball, so maybe not. Good point, yeah. And if that is too much, let's say that is like a little too extreme for you. There's also the complete opposite of that, which is the Cannabis Church of New England. Oh, really? That's way too much. I'm going to chill out now for a while and smoke some weed.
And they say, we believe in freedom of religion. Our motto is do unto others as you have others do unto you. Well, that's a lot of people's mottos. That's, I believe. Yeah, yeah. Isn't that the golden rule, as a matter of fact, it's called? Yeah.
I'm pretty sure that's in the Bible.
Wow, it's in a lot of shit. Our annual membership meeting is always the third weekend in August at our Live, Laugh, Love Festival.
Oh, no.
Jesus. We also meet annually two Saturdays before Halloween. What a fucking weird... Not the second Saturday of October. Two Saturdays before Halloween. So what if Halloween's on a Saturday? Does that mean that the... It'd be so confusing.
Why are they making weed smoking for basic bitches?
Oh, shit. Why are they making it confusing for people who are stoned also? That also makes you over analytical. So immediately, because I am stoned, I thought, well, what if it's on a Saturday? Then what is it? Is it the last Saturday? Is it two Saturdays or three Saturdays before that? Because that's the thing that fucking blew my mind. I'd never show up for this thing.
People showing up on the wrong Saturday. That is the our hollow harvest fest. And then it says we also gather randomly throughout the year. We are open to and for all by appointment. So you got to call and say you're coming and then you're allowed to go there. So what the fuck is happening? Death metal and weed is happening in this town. Crime rate in this town. What we are interested in here.
Property crime is about one third below the national average. That's good. That's not bad. And then violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, and of course, assault. The Mount Rushmore of crime is about two thirds under the national average. So one third of the national average. That's very safe. Very safe. I mean, not a lot of people here, not a lot of people. And there's nobody out doing anything.
So how the hell are you going to we're going to get in beef with someone at Dunkin Donuts at eight o'clock in the morning? Yeah, that's a that's a weird one. So that said, let's talk about some murder and let's do it. Just one of the weirdest things ever that we've ever had. It's so strange. Let's start out March 29th, 1999. OK, everyone's scared of Y2K for some reason.
And we're all terrified here. This is 1257 a.m. So one in the morning. Yeah. 9-1-1 call comes into the York County Sheriff's Department and it's a report of what they what they believe what they're calling is a domestic dispute. It's a Monday evening, Monday night, you know, whatever. So the person making the call is a 12 year old girl named Whitney Brown.
And she is freaking out saying, I don't know what's going on. My mother got in her car and there's other people out there. And my mother was screaming, he's here, he's here. I heard it from the inside. She was out in the driveway. And from the window, she tells them that she heard he's here, he's here from her mother outside the trailer.
And then from the window, this Whitney, 12-year-old Whitney, looked out and saw two armed figures descend on her mother's car and smash their way inside the vehicle. So she's on the phone.
She doesn't know who he is, but she can see him standing. And two other and somebody else.
It's one in the morning. Yeah, it's one in the morning. So it's just shadows and figures. And, you know, even if lights are on, it's hard. They're not great at one in the morning like that. So and then they were gone. They disappeared. So she tells the police, I think I think it's my father that did this. I think my father just did this to my mother. In the driveway.
All I heard is, he's here, he's here. And then I see two people with guns, armed people, smashing into her car. And then they were taken off with their car. So I don't know what happened. So the police show up, obviously. Everybody's gone from here. And they don't know. They're trying to figure it out and piece this thing together. And they're going to find some surprises out behind the house.
And oh, yeah. And this is going to lead to a crazy fucking unraveling of a wild story here. So let's let's find out who these players here are. Deborah Smarella is her mother. That's her mom, Debbie. She goes by Debbie Smarella. Debbie is born in 1963. And that's like I said, Whitney's mom, the woman who was being who screamed. He's here. He's here.
uh she grew up mostly in kittery maine but then also moved around a lot from you know around maine yeah her mother her stepfather her father was gone from a young age but she had a stepfather so mom and stepfather had to move around a lot but she spent most of her time in kittery i guess they'd end up back in kittery maine a lot and stuff like that not bad at all so um
At age 18, Debbie is going to find someone she describes as a charming bad boy. That's always the right guy, ladies. That usually works out great. That's the guy. Fuck that guy. Then find somebody nice. So I guess this is when she lived in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. And there's a small Navy shipyard there. And that's where she met this guy. His name is Stephen Brown.
Now, Stephen Brown's about her age, born a year later. And Debbie remembered the exact date and time she met Stephen Brown, which means she either really loved him or really hated him. One of the two.
Yeah, it's an extreme circumstance.
Extreme emotions here. It was 10 p.m. on July 17th, 1981 in Prescott Park on the waterfront in Portsmouth.
Hell yeah.
She met him. She said she saw him sitting on a motorcycle. She was smitten from there, buddy.
Yeah.
Yep. She had later on said he asked me if I wanted to go for a ride and we just drove around all night. Really? Yeah. Just want to go for a ride. She was like, sure. He's like, hop on, baby.
On the back of his bike and off they went.
No helmets. I see in this at all. Yeah. Yeah. No.
Well, it's New Hampshire. Live free or die.
Yeah. That's what I mean. Who the hell knows what's going on? And she said from that point on, we were inseparable. All he had to do was go, you want to hop on the back of this bitch? And he was, that's it. Yeah, that's it. She was into it. And at 18, you can pull that off.
Yeah.
At 18, you could be like, what's happening, sexy lady? You want to hop on the back of my bike? And an 18-year-old will go, sure. Yeah. Whereas a 40-year-old will be like, get away from me. Do you have a car also? Yeah.
Got something with seatbelts, you dumb fuck?
Anything? This isn't your only mode of transportation, is it?
Yeah, you've got a car to do, right?
That's what they'll ask. I'm telling you.
Maybe that's the allure of a guy on a motorcycle. It's like, oh, he also has a motorcycle. What if he only has a motorcycle?
That's the problem. Yeah. That's what I see anyway. I see a guy on a motorcycle, and I'm like, he might have no choice.
That guy touches the rain.
Yeah, especially in the rain. I'm like, you made either an active choice, you're either a dummy, or this is the only form of transportation that you have. One of the two. No other option here. So, yeah. Steven... Let's find out about him here. They're going to date all through 1981 and all throughout the fall. And by the end of the fall of 1981, she's already knocked up.
Which I believe you can get knocked up just from riding on the back of a motorcycle, I think. I'm not sure.
The wind will blow that semen right in there.
That's what it is. You got a horny 18-year-old guy driving it, I feel like the osmosis through just holding him around the waist, you're going to get pregnant. Like a mogwai, you just touch him. Kids are going to start flying out.
Especially if it rains, fuck.
Especially if that's his only form of transportation. Then he's very fertile, that means.
I didn't even ever think about that, really. I just got a motorcycle. Really?
Really. I could get a car.
Do you have a car also? That's what I would want.
But as we know, the rule with men are the bigger scumbag you are, the more fertile your sperm is. That's just the way it works.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The more bills that go unpaid, the higher the sperm count.
It fucking really jacks your sperm up here. So Stephen grows up the oldest of three sons. So all three boys in the family. He is the son of Ken and Donna Brown. He grew up in a house built by his parents. So there's no reason for him to be a shithead, this guy, by the way. And he's not just a shithead because he rides a motorcycle. That's not what we're saying. Jimmy has a motorcycle.
My dad and my brother have motorcycles. That's not what we're talking about here. He's an asshole and he has a motorcycle.
It's just both. You don't have to be a good guy to buy anything.
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So he grew up in the woods in Newfield, New York, which is as central as you can get as far as east to west. It's central New York. It's near Ithaca. It's up there. Oh, yeah. Right in the middle. Not a lot going on there. It's 10 miles from Ithaca. It's where Cornell is, by the way.
Yeah.
So it's a town of about 5,000 people. All these college towns up in New York, like there's all the SUNY towns, which are State University of New York. They're all just these little college towns. It's weird.
New York is chock full of those fucking things.
There's so many of those fucking colleges everywhere.
So many colleges.
Every little town in western New York has a SUNY. They all do. It's unbelievable. Otherwise, there wouldn't be a town there probably. Once the mill closed, that was what they had. You know what I mean? So Newfield's an old farming town, and everyone around here knows each other. Families stay here for generations.
Oh, that's the Wilson farm, and that's the so-and-so farm, and everybody knows everybody's shit. It's one of those type of towns here. Now, Stephen, and this is funny because when you grow up in a big city and you're like a ne'er-do-well kid, nobody gives a shit or notices. But when there's a town of 5,000 and you're a shithead kid, everybody knows who you are and that you're a shithead.
That's everybody. There's no way around it. So his mother, his own mother, called Stephen a, quote, problem child.
Oh.
Yeah, redhead, adopted, little asshole. You know how it goes. No, that's not him. Goddamn. Just like the movie. So John Ritter couldn't figure out how to raise him. You know how it works. He had trouble sitting still and taking instruction at school. Now, that's also, you know, ADD and shit like that, ADHD. Nowadays, we'd realize that.
But at the time, they were just like, fucking, he's an asshole.
Yeah.
Won't sit still. Won't sit still and listen to this boring bullshit. Yeah.
Yeah.
Get the ruler. Let's whack him a couple times. But the problem is, too, he was bullying the other kids as well and constantly getting in fights with people, including his brothers.
Insecure.
Beating the shit out of his brothers, who he's the oldest of.
Yeah. Feels inferior because he's got something happening somewhere.
Something here. His mother said today they would have sent him to a psychiatrist and put him on medication. But back then he was just labeled as a bad kid. That was a bad kid. Hyper. So Stephen never gets along with his father. That's a problem over the years. His father keeps trying and keeps trying, but his father is kind of a strict guy and a disciplinarian type of guy.
And his Stephen is having none of that shit whatsoever. Right. So Stephen leaves home at 16, just hops on his hog and fires it up. Rides off into the sunset here.
Aims that headlight toward something better.
Aims that headlight toward Texas is where he aims it.
Oh, is that right?
Yeah.
It was around 1982 ish. Uh, he's assigned.
That's typical thing.
Yeah. He didn't have much else going on and you know, why not? There's no wars going on at the moment. So fuck it.
So that works pretty, pretty chill.
So he was assigned to an infantry assault battalion. Wow. Um, problem is his inability to pay attention and follow orders. Yeah. Isn't just school or his dad. No, it doesn't get fixed in the Marines. Uh,
That's going to carry over into the rest of his life, huh? Crazy.
Back then, they'd be like, you send him to the Marines, they'll straighten him out. But not everybody is straightened out by the Marines. Some people are just fuck-ups, and that's all there is to it.
Sometimes you got to get hit.
Yes, I don't know.
Whether it's by life or whatever.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, not your parents.
Sometimes you've got to get kicked in the mouth to figure it out.
Oh, shit, that was dumb.
Yeah.
So his mother said that he was transferred to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard to work as a security guard before they gave him an early discharge. That's what a pain in the ass this guy was. They were like, let's send him to the Navy and make him stand there by himself from 10 o'clock to 7 o'clock, 10 o'clock at night to 7 o'clock in the morning.
Send a Marine up to a shipyard.
A shipyard. Nothing's happening. No, and they go, stand there for eight hours. Good, great. He can't bother anybody.
It's the equivalent of an eight-year-old being put in the corner.
That's awesome.
That's it. He had tattoos and a motorcycle and tattoos in 1981 were.
That's, yeah, that's really pushing the edges.
Yeah, you were edgy. I mean, a lot of the military guys had them, but that was an edgy thing. That wasn't like, you know, normal for everybody to have a bunch of tattoos.
I remember when my uncle got one, dude, it was like, good Lord, what's wrong with you?
yeah that's that's what you would think back then yeah my mother had a boyfriend who was a navy seal and he had a bunch of yeah like navy seal weird tattoos and i was like wow you got a bunch of them he had a clown making out with a woman so his hands were on her ass it was like dude why would and it's right on his fucking forehead oh that's weird where are you gonna work that's fucked up man what are you gonna work who are you gonna talk to what is that a clown molesting a woman what do you have on your arm it's crazy
This guy had a giant like from his shoulder almost to his elbow, a giant like fucking creepy grim reaper with blood dripping off the sickle.
Where are you going to go, man?
Well, that was his Navy SEALs units tattoo. Really? They had it drawn up and they all got it. Everybody got it. They all got it. So I'm like, yeah. When someone asked him about it, he'd go, yeah, because we had to murder a lot of people. That's what he would say. We had to kill shitloads of people. That's what we did.
We were the reaper.
Yeah.
You better fear the reaper.
That's what it was. So January 11th, 1982, with Debbie four months pregnant, they fucking shuffle on down the aisle and get married. Wow. Steven is not going to, you know, shirk his responsibilities here. He's going to marry this young lady. He'll be a good dad. They're going to hopefully live happily ever after, a 19-year-old and an 18-year-old with a baby. As we all know, that always works out.
Sometimes it does, but sometimes it does not.
My grandparents figured it out.
Yeah, lots of people did. So they had a civil ceremony. Didn't do a church wedding or anything like that. A few days later, apparently... So Steve turns a little bit dark here a few days into this marriage. He told her, tells Debbie that he owns her now, you know, like a motorcycle. And she told people that he also threw her across the room, quote, like a rag doll as well.
He told her this marriage license is my title to you. Oh, boy. Like a motorcycle. She says, I got two things. I got a motorcycle and a woman. These are what I own. No car, though. She should have asked that ahead of time.
Ownership with the marriage license.
That's my title to you. Like, yeah, this is like a car. Yeah, get it notarized. Debbie recalled Steven telling her this as he's throwing her around the room and treating her.
violently basically yeah and this obviously if this happens three days after you're married here's this is the honeymoon phase it's not good so it's not going to probably get a lot better over time i would think and she's fucking pregnant for christ's sake he's throwing her around the room so that's a very little disregard for really anything this will likely deteriorate further
Yeah, she said that he began kicking and punching and shoving her within a week of the marriage. It never happened before, just like that. She said one night he was drinking heavily and doing coke, which is terrific. What a great combo there. When he came home, she was standing in the kitchen. He came home, coked up and drunk, which is a... Real weird combo.
Sometimes you're a little more paranoid. Sometimes you're more drunk. You never know.
Part of the course for a scumbag on a motorcycle.
Yeah, kind of fits. A 1981 scumbag on a motorcycle.
That's the guy.
I've been drinking and doing coke off my bike seat. Doing coke off my bike's gas tank.
Sucking it off the saddleman.
So she said, next thing I knew, I was being picked up and thrown across the room. Okay. Which is fucking horrifying. He just comes home fucked up. She's standing there pregnant. By this time, she's five months pregnant, six months pregnant, and he's tossing her around the room. This is crazy. So they're going to end up having a son. This first child is going to be a son named Stephen.
Let's name it after him, too. Give him a real fighting chance here. And then later on, they're going to have Whitney in about 1987. So they're going to stay together for a few years, but it's a lot of...
rocky it's real rocky and it's a lot of who knows what mood he's in and he's okay for a few months and then out of nowhere he starts being violent for a while and abusive and then he's not again and real strange guy here steven so um after steven is just discharged from the marines in 1982 just just charged from the marines after he's fucking booted from the marines this guy just reminds me of my friend who starts stories with so i was a wall from the navy right that's amazing
In a real Philly accent. He's from Philly. Guinea from Philly. He's like, so I'm AWOL from the Navy, right? Oh, my God. That's a great way to start a story. And I'm like, I got to hear the rest of this. I know this is going to be interesting. Jesus Christ. So after he's discharged, they start moving all around the country. Just no stability. Looking for a place to lay down roots here.
Which, good God, if you have to be in a you're in this horrible, abusive relationship and you're forced to pack your shit up and move around all the time, too, that's never good. They move around different places. They're in Florida for a little while. Virginia for a little while. You know, all around. I guess where there's work, probably, I think is where he's going.
Finally, though, after a while here in the late 1980s, now they have two children and everything like that, they end up settling back in Newfield, New York, where Stephen is from.
Okay, yeah.
Stephen gets a job that he knows he can get because his father gives it to him.
Oh, little neppo baby.
Yep. Well, he's delivering home heating oil, so it's not like he's... Not like he's inheriting a fucking NFL football team or something.
It's the low rung in that Nepo baby.
Not exactly Mark Davis or whatever the Val Davis' kid is, but still. He's delivering home heating. Yeah. That fucking weirdo. Jesus Christ. Yeah. Delivering home heating oil, which we just had a problem with and it was really annoying. Oh, yeah. Never mind. Long story. It just makes me angry at Steven because I'm like, oh, you deliver this shit? Yeah. Let's talk about it. Get over here.
Get over here. So, yeah, they settle in Newfield where Stephen works delivering fuel to the masses apparently here. He works for his father's company, Agway Fuel Company, and they live in a – the family lives in a house owned by his parents, Donna and Kenneth Brown. Okay. Basically, he moves back in and just is taken into the womb of his parents here again. Just here's a house you can have.
Here's a job at my company. You know, that sort of thing. No, no. I mean, if it's a good job and a good house and a nice area, it's fine, I guess. But he's not making his own way.
Right. It's also you've got to be personally invested and willing to fucking evolve and get better. Because if you're given the opportunity, you've got to capitalize.
You just want to go out and ride your bike and fucking do coke off the steering wheel or off the fucking handlebars and everything else.
If the pay raise just means you buy bigger amounts of coke, that's not good.
That's going to be a problem. Yeah, that's not going to be great. He was irresponsible, by the way. He hasn't grown up at all. He's still kind of a jerk off, which is why he keeps moving around the country because he can't hold down a job because he's very irresponsible. He would lie to his father and tell him he was working when he wasn't. Yeah, no, I'm at work. Yeah. Yeah, I know. I'm working.
Yeah, I'm going in today. And then he wouldn't do anything. So his mother said Steve could be very lax. He only does a good job when he wants to. He is a natural truck driver. He can back between two trees and not hit the mirrors. Unfortunately, the laziness sets in. Right. He's fucking that are enablers. He's fucking lazy. Yep.
And that's and they know that's why he's back here and that's why he hasn't been able to. get anything else going on in the last eight years because he's a fucking lazy asshole. They know it. You know how relieved they probably were when he joined the Marines? They were like, okay, at least he's the government's responsibility. Yeah, not ours anymore.
I've heard they're really tough on him.
Yeah, no shit. So he's being lazy. He's lying to his father. And after a while, he's so bad that his own father has to fire him.
No.
yeah his father does it he does it he fires him yeah yeah at some point if you're not making your fuel deliveries it's fucking cold yeah you're gonna lose customers and then you're not gonna have a business anymore so and you're gonna you're gonna get a lot of phone calls about people that don't have oil it happens trust me we made those phone calls a few times and uh it was fucking great i'll tell a short story here
All right.
Had a delay in the oil delivery, okay? My house has heating oil. And we're waiting and calling them, and they go, oh, well, we thought we had a wrong address. They said it was undeliverable. We're like, no, no, no. We've been here for three years getting fucking oil constantly. Give us our oil, right? So yesterday, the oil guy pulls in. He's going to give oil.
But I didn't see him putting the hose in the oil thing and doing it. So Sarah has been fighting with these people and everything. So I look out the window because she runs out the door. To make sure he's doing it. I look out the window. She is standing on the top step of the door of the truck, holding on to the grab bar thing, talking to the driver in the window.
She climbed the truck?
So I'm like, oh my God, this guy tried to say I'm not delivering the oil and she's on the side of the truck going, fuck you, bro. You're not leaving. I will hang on the side of this truck. She's the kids from Breaking 2. Dude, totally. She's fucking Shabba-Doo.
Climbing on the side of a front end loader.
it's what so i run outside to like try to fucking quell the situation or i got her back i'm like yeah motherfucker you're not going anywhere and then i see her laughing because the guy was just like settling in and he could she couldn't hear him through the window that's why she climbed hilarious i thought i was like i'm gonna have to fight a fucking oil delivery man today that's why this is funny to me hold the back of it and dig your feet it's happening i'll get on the passenger side i guess i gotta get her back you know what i mean
Get on the roof and start breakdancing.
Tell them, you're going to deliver my oil and save the community center, motherfucker. That's right. Bet you can't do this. Put a piece of cardboard down and bust some shit out.
I just watched it recently. That's why.
I know. I remember you. We were texting about it.
Ice Cube's rap is so bad. It's so crazy how bad he is.
Isn't that? Yeah. Well, that was pre-everything. That's probably when he first started. So, oh, my God. Now, while this is all going on here.
Ice-T. Did I say Ice-Q?
You did say Ice-Q. God damn it. And I saw Ice-T in my head when you said Ice-Q. Because I knew he's in it. But I was like, yeah. Yeah. So, well, Ice-T was never the greatest rapper. No. No. And he said that, too. He was like, I'm not a fucking rapper. I just knew how to hustle these people into paying me. Yeah.
Yeah, and he does dress like a good punk rock rapper. He's good at punk rock.
Goddamn. Body count was good shit. So anyway, they get fired, and the couple, or he gets fired, and Steve and Debbie move back to Maine with their children here. So they move to Maine.
What town in Maine?
They're moving around in Maine because they're trying to just figure it out because she just wants to. They don't have, there's no stability with these two.
No. And he just got fired from his dad's joint.
So it's like they're going to go to kiddery first and then end up in other places as well. So bad. While they're doing this, basically, he keeps his abusive nature up and Debbie would take the kids and leave after one of his outbursts. And that happened all the time. She'd take the kids. She'd leave. And this, by the way, wasn't for he didn't freak out over anything big.
You gambled away our mortgage money or anything like that and yell at her. This would be the dishes are dirty in the sink. I didn't like that meal that you made me. So he'll freak out, throw the plate against the wall, say it's shit and she's a loser and, you know, attack her. So it's a lot. It's she's a he's a fucking monster. So now neighbors didn't see any of this, though.
No, their neighbors said they look like a couple that like doing shit together. Yeah. On the outside, they he keeps up the appearance on the outside of everything's great. But behind closed doors, it's not wonderful. Neighbors said they liked fishing together and they'd go motorcycling together. And, you know, yeah, yeah.
Steve, if she's behind him, he can't hit her.
Yeah, just an elbow maybe or something. So he's also known as a big hunter in the area as well. And, yeah, they said that nobody knew about any real problems in the neighborhood, one of the neighbors said. Like, we didn't have any idea. So in 1990, that's when they're going to stay in Kittery for a minute here in Kittery, Maine. He gets a job with the highway department in the town of Kittery.
Right. So, okay, that's a stable job. And in April 1990, though, he transferred over to the sewer department because, you know, he stood on the highway and went, I want to wonder what's under this. That's what I need to know.
What's below our feet? You guys ever think about that?
Where's the poop go when I flush it? That's what I want to know. I'm going to follow it to its source and find out. So he would maintain trucks and clean sewer lines. Which sounds absolutely disgusting. He did that by choice, by the way. He was like, I want to work with poop. That's what I want to work with.
It's probably one of the last choices, but it's still a choice.
During this time, let's go over some problems they're having during this time here. So this is some ugly shit here, everybody. Debbie said that at one point he put a shotgun in her mouth and threatened to kill her.
Oh, my.
Yeah. She said he also abused the children as well. This isn't this isn't just the wife. This is anybody, as we know, kids at school, his younger brothers, anyone who's around him that he feels like he can physically push around. He does. He does pretty much. He would kick and punch the kids. He would call his daughter. We're talking an eight year old. He would call her a whore. OK.
OK.
alrighty. She's sitting there watching Wow Wow Wubbzy and he's like, whore! That's crazy.
She's incapable of being that.
That's insanity. And he'd call his son stupid. So she's a whore and he's a moron. Alright. But I mean, he's like, you know what, 12 or something. He might be stupid by now. We don't know. You don't call him that, but it's possible that he is. I doubt it.
Steve's got some social issues. He's frustrated by a lot of things and It comes out in name-calling and violence.
He's frustrated that he... Am I a completely non-medical psychological opinion here? I think he's upset that he can't get any fucking footing anywhere. He's upset that no one looks at him as great as he thinks of himself. He can't get any footing, so when he goes home, that's when he can have some control.
He has no control over the outside world that doesn't give a shit about him, but this fucking woman and these two little kids... They're stuck here with me. I can fucking knock them around all I want. That's what it feels like.
So frustrating. It's so sad.
It's fucking crazy, man. Now, Debbie's relatives said they didn't know about any of this. They didn't know about this abuse while the couple was living in Maine. She wasn't telling her relatives about it or anything. Her uncle, Terry, said that Debbie left Stephen and moved into a Sanford, Maine shelter for battered women. Right. But he came and apologized and sweet talked her and she moved back.
And this happens all the time with him and her all the time. Donna and Ken Brown. Those are Steve's parents. They only visited them once in Maine and they said they were appalled at the conditions they were living under. Not the way he was acting, the conditions of the house. They said they were it was fucking appalling. They said they looked like they were just living in abject poverty.
Like it was like crazy. The mother said they weren't on welfare, but they looked like they were. It was hard for us to accept. Just. Yeah. Yeah. And they went there like our son is trash. That's what they figured out. Yeah. Our son is white trash. Perfect. So Stephen's parents, after seeing all of this and they have two little kids running around and squalor and everything else. Right.
Rather than going, holy shit, we really made a mistake here with this kid. We fucked up. They said, let's offer him something. Let's get him out of here. Let's get them out of this situation. They tried to save him again.
Wow.
That's how much they give a shit about this kid. And then Ken gives him a job delivering fuel again.
Oh, my.
Delivering oil, even though he fucked up last time. So, wow. His mother here, his mother said Ken gave him a second chance and told him if he didn't make good, he would have to make it on his own. She basically told him, I'm going to set you up for success here. And if you do well in the business, something tells me it's his father's business.
His father's trying to set him up to be able to hand this business off to him. All goes well. When I'm dead, you're living in the house with your kids and you own a fuel business. That's what the goal is. All Stephen has to do is not be a disaster.
Right.
All he has to do is not fuck up. So he seemed to be happy back in his own town, own hometown there in Newfield. He had a lot of friends there still from growing up here. He'd do his job in the early mornings, but then in the afternoon he had free time and he liked going hunting and fishing and golfing.
Who the fuck doesn't?
I mean, yeah, that sounds great. Why not, right? Debbie, though, doesn't have really any friends that much because she didn't grow up here and it's a small town. It's 5,000 people. So if you don't know everybody, it's going to be really hard to make friends. You just have to hope that some of Stephen's friends have wives you don't. Oh, which is brutal.
The worst.
As we all know, we've been put in that situation of you two are the same gender. Talk to each other. And it's not great.
So his wife. So hang out with him.
Hang out with him. Yeah. No, I don't like that at all. Fuck. So they she also would work two and sometimes three jobs at this point. I don't know if that's to get out of the house and to keep herself occupied or what here. She worked at a garden store in Ithaca and a lady named Joyce Fox that worked there for nearly three years said she could tell that Debbie was having some trouble at home.
This woman said she never said anything, but I knew there were problems. She'd come into work in tears and she couldn't concentrate. It got to the point where she was losing a lot of weight as well. Getting too thin here. So this woman said she didn't say anything. She didn't say anything to Debbie and Debbie didn't say anything to her about it.
It was just something she noticed that obviously something was wrong. But, you know, it's a co-worker. You don't know exactly what's wrong in their life. You don't know if their parents are sick or you have no idea. Who knows? So this woman said, though, she was pretty sure that Debbie was being abused by her husband at the time. That's what it seemed like.
She said, if not physical abuse, there was mental abuse. After going through a divorce myself, I told her, you don't have to take that. She eventually recognizes it. She got a friend who's like, hey, listen, that's you know, this isn't cool. What's going on here? Which sometimes you need an outside voice to tell you that. And you go, oh, yeah, what the fuck am I doing?
And it's sometimes it's refreshing as much as it's frightening that somebody sees what's going on, recognizes it and is able to name it.
Yeah.
I mean, without you knowing that you're offering that as something up.
You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. As much as it's embarrassing, at least it's also as some people take it as embarrassing. It's also might feel like you're not alone for a minute here, which is also seen for a sec.
That's.
Yeah, that's pretty good. She worked at Kohler Inc. K.O.L.A.R. Inc. Small manufacturing plant where she assembled machine parts. OK. And Stephen made a point of dropping by the plant nearly every day to have lunch with her.
Why is that?
Because he got off around her lunchtime. Remember, he gets off, he goes early mornings, and then he gets off early, goes and has lunch with her. She's the only woman on a 12-person crew. So wonder why he's there every day. While visiting... Oh, my God. So now she's the only woman that works there and all the guys know about her sex life, which is pretty shitty, honestly.
That's super fucked up.
Yeah. He even bragged one time right in front of her to all these people that one time she had to go to the hospital because we had sex so hard. The hospital. I put her in the hospital. He was bragging. Shit.
jesus christ so anyway 1997 ish around 1997 steven's parents decide that 37 years is long enough in the fuel oil business time to get out time to get out of this game ken's gonna retire and then the parents are gonna move to florida that's how this is working okay doing the northeast thing so basically steven is not Offered the company or anything like that. His dad sells the company.
I mean, yeah. So basically, Steven loses everything here. He loses.
He can't even work for whoever just bought the company.
Not really, unless it's... Well, he can. He was able to get work as a driver, but he got a big pay cut because his dad was paying him what he could live on with the kids. And also, now his boss isn't his father, so he can't fuck up. He's actually got to do his job here. So that's tough here.
Ken and Donna Brown, apparently, his parents, asked Stephen and Debbie at one point during this time period...
To go on a motorcycle ride with them to Elmira which is about 15 miles away it's a scenic journey there so they went to a restaurant and apparently at the restaurant this is in front of his parents by the way you know four of them are sitting there eating he lashed out and yelled at Debbie for taking too long to order. This is Stephen's parents remembering this.
This is so, you know, he said his Stephen's mother said that he was screaming. Can't you make up your mind? That's why I hate taking you. That's what I hate about taking you out. I guess we won't be going out to eat anymore. He's screaming at her at the table.
What the fuck?
Which is insane.
That's such a weird thing to do.
That is crazy. Like, if everyone else is ready to order and it's a half hour later and you're still not ready to go, you start making, like, jokey comments. Like, hey. Why don't you just order one of everything? Or, you know, what don't you want?
Eat at home because we're not waiting for you anymore.
Well, at that point, you start helping the person. Well, what don't you want? What sounds gross? Okay, let's narrow it down to something and let's all help.
You can read, right?
Yeah, you are lettered, aren't you? It's not in Sanskrit, you know. Yeah. Can you make your ex? So this is crazy, though, to do this. Not only in public, but in front of your parents, too, is fucking nuts. So Donna, the mom, said Debbie broke down in tears. And Donna and Ken, the parents, said they just sat there embarrassed as all fuck. Just what do you do here?
She also said we talked to him and said that's no way to treat a person. And then the rest of the meal was uncomfortable. Sounds like it would be. Yeah. And it's more money than you expected, and your whole math is thrown off, and it's awful. Learn more at Chime.com slash Small Town Murder. Chime is great with that stuff.
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But the parents try like they didn't just ignore it. They said, hey, you don't treat people like that. And I think that's probably been his whole life. But he just doesn't listen. I bet the other two sons are upstanding people.
If they're not upstanding, they're probably just guys that they don't worry about.
Normal people, not abusive lunatics. You know what I mean? Because none of that came from his home life or anything. His parents didn't have any kind of relationship like that. So this isn't something he saw at home.
What the hell went on?
I don't know. So fall of 1998, Debbie decided that's about enough of this bullshit. I have had it with this. She's ready to go. getting screamed at in restaurants and it's crazy. So she announced to family members that she and Steven were getting separated. And this is when she starts telling everybody that he's been, he's been abusing me for almost 20 years now.
So I'm fucking done with this shit. Um, yeah. One of her, uh, her friends said that she told me he once held a gun to her head and threatened to kill her. We knew about that. Um, So she has to figure out how to leave him because she's scared of him.
Right.
So she's got to do some Julia Roberts sleeping with the enemy shit here and escape basically. So she left her car at work so she would think so that he would think she was at work.
Okay.
And give her a couple hours of a head start to get out of here. A friend at her job hid her car on her last day of work so Stephen wouldn't know she was there also. So she hid it somewhere else.
Right.
So he thought she wasn't at work. Meanwhile, she was at work on her last day and then she went to where the car was and fucking took off. Okay. So she took the children to a battered women's shelter in Oswego.
Yeah. New York?
In New York, yeah, in this area. So Stephen manages somehow to get in touch with Debra on the phone at the battered women's shelter.
Oh, jeez.
Apparently, call screener isn't a job that's there.
Yeah, what's going on? Why is he able to get in contact?
Yeah, if they can talk to him, I would assume every time the phone rings, you'd just go, well, whose abusive husband is this calling otherwise? Yeah. So, yeah, she got in touch with Debra and arranged for her to talk to his parents, his brother Randy, and his best friend Larry. Okay. Okay.
Stephen told Larry Brown, no relation, by the way, that Debbie had left him because he had videotaped her having sex with a co-worker in a lunchroom and then confronted her with it. That's what he said. He said she just left because she was cheating on me and I caught her on tape and then she got embarrassed and took off. Nothing to do with abuse or anything like that.
I don't know how he would film their lunchroom.
Surveillance on the lunchroom at their work.
Yeah. And usually the lunchroom's the hottest place at work to get it on, too. That's where you really want to get it on.
Where everybody has access to.
Everybody has access. Wide open door all the time. And the room's stinking like a fucking filthy microwave also. That's just terrific.
Something like whatever somebody just microwaved.
Some asshole made microwave popcorn. Somebody else made fish in it 15 minutes ago.
Some leftovers from the night before.
We're all dealing with it now. He also said that his wife had been fired from a job at Ithaca College after she made sexual advances to another woman. So that's what he told his friend. He's like, listen, my wife. You know, skanky. She's fucking everybody. Women, I don't even know, I can't even, not even around the ladies I can trust her. She just doesn't care. She can't get enough.
So much so that she got fired for it in the 90s when you could like, you know, it wasn't quite as strict in terms of.
Yeah, you could sleep your way to the top then.
You could actually ask people out and probably grab them if you wanted to back then. I don't know what the hell's going on. So that's what they, she got fired for that. But he also told his friend he'd do anything to get her back. Because according to him, she sounds like a real prize that you'd want to get back. So Debbie acquiesces and calls Larry Brown, his friend, to talk about the marriage.
So now she's talking to an intermediary who is not a mediator. It's his friend.
Who knows way too much that isn't true and also just knows too much.
No, exactly. It's fucking ridiculous. I know too much. This friend said she said she was scared and needed time away to think. She said she knew she had done wrong and she wanted to get her life back again. That's what Larry Brown says.
Right.
Okay.
So Debbie called Larry again here. They went back and forth a couple of times. Now, while Debbie is in the shelter, Stephen is going to hang out with his brother Randy a lot. And Randy Brown here said that, quote, he was pretty devastated. I helped him buy new appliances for the house and he scrubbed everything. He wanted her to come back and promise that things would be different.
So it's going to be all different now. I scrubbed down the fucking the burners on the stove.
So now, you know, it's spring cleaning in August.
You know, it's going to be different. Randy said that Stephen had a strong personality and wasn't afraid to speak his mind, but he didn't think it was an abusive relationship at all or anything like that. He's just that Stephen's just got a strong mind. He then says, quote, He's not a violent person. Not a violent person at all. He had a temper, but as far as a physical abuser, no.
I'm sure she got slapped a few times, but it wasn't a daily thing.
He just... Ha ha ha!
That was in 1999. So I'm sure she got slapped a few times. Yes, that's called abuse. You can't slap your fucking partner. That's called violence, Larry. Yeah, that is not okay. But it wasn't a daily thing. Oh, well, then it's fine then. Yeah. I mean, I take a slap every once in a while. Yeah. Christ. Every once in a while. Dinner's not what I wanted. Of course, I'm going to get smacked.
What are you crazy? Jesus, that's insane. He said, I'm not saying that it was right, but I've known him all my life and he wasn't a violent person. If he smacks his wife, he's a violent person. I have never. I've been married. I was married for 15 years to someone I didn't even get along with. Never fucking laid a hand on her ever. You know what I mean? Like, that's not an option. Sorry.
A few times, he said.
I'm sure she got slapped around like that is.
Around.
A few times. She got slapped a few times. It wasn't a daily thing.
Wow.
Wow. Debbie also talked to her mother-in-law, who she kind of trusted, I guess. Donna said, quote, she said he was being extremely abusive. She told me he gave her a black eye last winter. At the time, they had said Steve hit her with a snowball and I believed her.
Yeah. Well, Larry said it's not violent.
It's not violent. I slap around once in a while. That was Randy, the brother that said that. Oh, yeah. The other brown. So she said she goes on to say we talked to Debbie and said they should try to give it one more chance. Oh, this is. Yeah. His mom, Donna. We said, you have a family and you can't just throw it away. We didn't know how bad it really was. If we did, I would never have done that.
At least the mom knows. I wouldn't have convinced her to go back if I knew there was abuse. We just thought they weren't trying hard enough. Like a lot of people don't today. This is this is why you mind your own fucking business and don't worry about whether people are effort.
They put in a relationship.
Yeah.
Returns home. Stephen called Larry Brown and asked if they could come to church with his family. Hey, can I piggyback on you guys and go to church? They had never done that before, apparently. This was a new thing. So Larry Brown saw this as, wow, they're really turning over a new leaf of the relationship. He said... Multiple friends said they looked like high school lovers at the time.
They were just all over each other and arms around each other walking and everything was hunky dory, man. Everything was great.
What did he say that made black eyes? Okay.
He didn't beat her up for a couple of weeks and clean the house.
Yeah.
But the problem is that shit isn't going to last forever. And it lasts about two weeks.
It lasts until there's frustration.
Yeah. Yeah. If this guy could control himself, he wouldn't have been hitting you for the last 20 years. So obviously he can't control himself. So I would be even madder like, oh, so you can control it, but you just chose not to for 20 years. Well, fuck you then. I'd be even madder at that. So December 21st, 1998, Donna here came home from one day from the fuel company, I guess, the mom.
They were still there before they went to Florida. Okay. And she sees Donald Wood Jr., Debbie's brother, helping Debbie move out of the house. That's what she comes home to. So Donna Brown said she was crying. I said, oh, no, is it bad again? And she said, yes. She told me he tried to strangle her.
Oh, my God.
Yeah.
Is it bad again?
Is it bad again? Should I not have convinced you to do this? Right. No, Donna. So apparently this wasn't the first one, too, since she's been back. She said that Stephen choked her and ripped out her belly button ring.
Oh, Lord.
Which would hurt. And then Debbie took the kids and said, fuck off and moved to Maine. Yeah. Here. Her brother, Woody, and that's what they call him. And that's Donald Wood Jr. Since they're both Donalds, they go by, give him Woody. And her father, Donald Wood Sr., drove to New York to pick them up.
And they moved into Donald Wood Jr., her brother's mobile home on Lower Middle Road in Lebanon, Maine. Okay. Yeah. So, um, Debbie said that he's going to try to find me like it's going to happen. So this is going to be a thing. Um, she said that he quote, he grabbed my ears and said, this is a promise, not a threat. If you leave me again with my kids, I'll kill you and the entire family.
Oh my.
I will kill everybody. So, you know, she believed him. Yeah. It was taking him at face value on that.
Sure.
And Steven believed, ah, she'll be back.
Oh.
This has happened before. I sweet talker. She comes back. No worries. This is bullshit. He even to the extent this happened, by the way, she left on December 21st. She takes off.
Yeah.
He goes out and buys Christmas gifts for the kids. Put it under a tree that he put up. He puts up a tree, decorates the house, puts lights up all this shit thinking they'll all be back by Christmas. Ain't no thing. It's Christmas. She's not going to stay gone the whole time. But then Christmas comes, he can't get a hold of her anywhere, no one will tell him where she is, and she ain't coming back.
So he's sitting there with a Christmas tree. That's a sad Christmas for this asshole. A deservedly sad Christmas.
Yeah, he's earned it.
No shit. So Stephen tried to turn to Debbie's relatives to find her. Her uncle Ed said, he called me, my wife, other family members too. Now Edward Strong, who he called, her uncle is... a police chief in the area as well. Um, he said that Steven had threatened to commit suicide. He was just a time bomb waiting to happen. So basically she moves in with her brother.
It's a Brown double wide trailer in Lebanon. That's where they live. And this is with her brother, um, Woody Donald jr. And her brother, his brothers are her brother's longtime girlfriend, Linda Malcom Malcom, uh, And also living there was a friend of his brother's named Christopher Brouillard. So there's three people in the double wide already.
It's a full house.
Yeah. Let's bring one more in. Let's bring one more in with two kids and everything. But, you know, that's your sister. Obviously, you'd want her to come there.
It's just a full house. It's crowded.
It's tough. It's at 61 Lower Middle Road. It's a mobile home. It's on a wooded road about a half mile off Route 202. Yeah.
so um she also filed for a protective order and a divorce right away too oh she's fucking serious this time yeah and so she's settling in you know living here um now donna brown um steven's mom here lived next door to them for a long time but she said after hearing from other people what's been going on she said she was shocked How bad? She couldn't believe it.
Yeah, she couldn't believe it because when she files for divorce and goes for a protective order, she goes to court and Donna hears what's been happening here. And Donna said, my eyes were opened that day. It was disgusting. I never knew. I really didn't know that kind of thing was going on. If we had known he was hitting her, I would have turned him in even if he is my own son.
She said he tried to choke me.
Yeah, I guess she thought that was semi. I don't understand it.
Thought it was hyperbole? I mean, rose-colored glasses? What are you doing?
I guess. But the parents seem to, they don't take a shit. That's one of the things. Like, they're not big on, you know, oh, just forgive him. It's okay.
Right.
When they know what's going on. So it's very strange for him to come out of this relationship and out of that family.
Yeah.
So Debbie started working as a maid, and she starts dating Chris Brouillard as well. Yeah, yeah. Who's a 30 year old guy. He is described as a mud racing buddy of her brothers who lives there as well. They love to go mudding. That's their thing. Going out mudding. They built their own trucks for it. They build help. They build other people's trucks for it. Yeah, that's what they do.
And Chris Brouillard, Debbie told family, Chris said, I'm not going to let anybody hurt you. So, yep, I guess they said that Whitney, the daughter, said that this new life and her mom's new relationship and everything being chill in the trailer was a huge weight off my shoulders at 10, 11 years old like that. Kids feel the stress. You know what I mean? It's on them.
So this she said, oh, we were actually like living a normal life, not in fear. We weren't wondering what's going to happen when the door opens. Is dad going to come in and be pissed off? So, yeah, this is going on. Neighbors around say everybody that lives in the trailer is friendly, sometimes a bit rowdy.
Yeah.
They get partying a bit over here. I mean, they are mud racing trailer dwellers, so there's going to be a party once in a while. Let's be honest here.
There might be a little booze fun from weekend to weekend.
It's more than that. One neighbor said they would sometimes go out and shoot at one or two in the morning.
Okay.
Which is just rude at that point.
And you're not doing that sober. No, no, no.
Jesus. I'm going to go out and get the guns and go do some target practice at two in the morning is definitely a drunk thing.
Everybody just wake up sober like me at midnight. Let's go shoot.
Let's go shooting. This is drunk shooting in the dark. Yeah. He said, as long as they didn't shoot in my direction, I didn't mind. That's what the neighbor said. I guess he goes to bed late, too. So fuck it. Yeah. Now, Debbie said she felt safe in Lebanon. She's working at York Cleaning Company as a maid, so she's getting a little life going on here.
Stephen also, I guess, sort of moves on, but not really. How so? Well, he finds a girlfriend, but continues to tell her how he's going to go get his wife and kids back, which is very weird, I would say, right? That's not normal. That's not moving on. That's not moving on at all. And what's wrong with this lady who's like, okay.
Oh, you are? Okay.
All right. Well, I'll just be riding on the back of your motorcycle until you do. Like, no one's doing that.
Can we take another spin around the block?
All right. Jesus.
Who the fuck would stick around with that?
Well, who the fuck is Patricia Teeter?
Okay.
T-E-E-T-E-R, which sounds like an affectionate name for a small pair of boobs. You got some nice little teeters on you there. Look at that. All right. I like them small. I don't mind. Yeah, nice teeters.
Yeah, she's a good girl. How's she stacked? Well, she's got teeters.
There's some teeters on her, but they're nice, though. Nice little teeters on her. So she's 39 years old. She's a divorcee as well and raising two teenage daughters. So great. Three women to put Steven in the middle of is perfect. Um, yeah, she had been through a difficult divorce apparently. So a mutual friend of theirs said, well, your wife left you and you're having a hard time with it.
And she went through a difficult divorce. So you guys might be perfect for each other and hooks them up. Um, other friends said, went to Teeter and we're like, don't go out with that fucking lunatic. That guy's a lunatic. Like this one mutual friends, the only person that said this is a good matchup. Everyone else was like, no, no, no. I guess Teeter worked at W.H.C.U.A.M.
radio and a newscaster there who worked there. Teeter was a receptionist there. She wasn't on air talent or anything like that, said that she told him about Stephen and the strange things he was saying. She said that Stephen had been threatening his wife in front of her, like, I'll do this, I'll do that, saying, quote, she's going to get it if she wins custody of these children in court.
She's going to get it. Man, so she's at work. Oh, my new boyfriend says his ex-wife's going to get it if he doesn't get the kids. He's just a wonderful guy. So this guy at work said, quote, I told her to back off. You have your own life. You don't need to get involved with this guy.
And another talk show host from the radio station said that Patricia Teeter told him that Steve had threatened to kill himself. And so this guy said both of those things. I'm going to kill her. I'm going to kill myself. These are all red flags you should be looking at in a new boyfriend.
This guy, the talk show host guy, said whenever there's a suicide threat, you need to consider them at risk of committing homicide as well. A majority of times when there's a suicide, there's also a homicide at the same time.
Murder, suicide.
I don't know if that's the majority of times people commit suicide, but it happens.
I wonder.
I don't think so. I think a lot of people just kill themselves. Yeah.
Yeah, it's rare that people take people with them.
Murder-suicide is much more rare than regular suicide. It's got to be, right? Anecdotally, off the top of my head, yeah.
Who'd Robin Williams kill?
Exactly, yeah. I don't remember. Did Phil Hartman's wife kill herself? Yeah. Did she? She did, right? She did, yeah. She did. There's a murder-suicide.
There you go. Did Aaron Hernandez, I mean, apart from the ones that got him in prison...
Oh, shit. Well, yeah, I guess those are going to be really long.
Is that prolonged?
Late stage murder-suicide, that would be.
Do you call that murder-suicide?
I don't think so at that point. I don't think you can. So February 1999 here. Debbie visits the Office of Colonial Homes. That's a company that builds homes in Lebanon, in Lebanon, Maine, to speak to a saleswoman about buying a mobile home. She was ready to settle down. Then she returned a week later to fill out an application as well.
The woman who was working with her said she said her divorce would soon be over and she was looking to purchase a home soon. So filling out an application. Now, March 22nd, 23rd, somewhere in here, 1999. A New York court grants Debbie Brown custody of both children who are at this point 16 and 11. So that day she also gets the court to do a restraining order against him as well.
Yeah.
So Randy Brown, Stephen's brother, said that Stephen was fucking furious because Debbie showed up at court with her new boyfriend, Chris Bruglia.
Oh, no.
Pissed him off good. Yeah. He had Patricia there as well, but she's not allowed to do that. He was also infuriated even more when he came home after the hearing and found out that his wife's relatives had taken everything that belonged to Debbie and the children out of his house. All the children, shit, everything. Yeah. While he was at court, they went in and cleaned the fucking place out.
Oh, and then what? Gave it to her? What happened?
Yeah, yeah, just to take with her all the kid shit and all her shit. Not his shit. They left his shit, but the kid shit and her shit. So anyway, he was infuriated anyway, and then he walked in the door and found that out and was like, you can imagine the choking that he would be doing if there was someone to choke.
Yeah. He lost control of her, then lost control of the kids, then lost control of anything to affect her with it because he's restrained by it. Now he lost all of their shit, so he can't even control that.
I mean, there's nothing. You can't even say you can't have your stuff then. There's nothing to control.
They just disarmed the shit out of this man.
Yep. So, yeah. Now, at this point, apparently, somehow the money, I guess he's supposed to pay child support. He's supposed to do all this stuff. He can't afford his truck anymore. He's got a brand new 99 Ford Expedition, which he probably shouldn't have bought. Yeah.
That's a very expensive car.
At the time, that was a $50,000 truck, $55,000 truck, which now it's a $100,000 truck. But I mean, that was at the time a very expensive truck. So, yeah. And Randy, the brother, said that, quote, it really sank in when he found out Debbie had a boyfriend. Then the judge said he lost his family, lost his kids, and he was starting to lose his material possessions.
Things happened, and he didn't have control over them anymore.
Tailspin, babe.
Yep, and we know Stephen does not like not having control. No. So the next day, the day after the hearing, Patricia Teeter tells her boss at the radio station she needs a few days off to go up to Maine with her boyfriend. She said she'd return in time to chaperone her 12-year-old daughter's class trip to Washington, D.C. later in the week, but she's got to run up there for a few days. Okay. Yeah.
Now, Debbie, meanwhile, she goes back to Maine and has a nice week. Nice week. She does things with the kids, her brother and Chris. They went mud racing. They hung out. They went fishing. And, you know, they did family things, they said. We just hung out and did family things. Yeah, Maine summer, not summer, but spring family living here. So March 28th, 1999.
That's a Sunday, as we know, as Monday morning is 1257 a.m. So, anyway, one of the friends said, I sensed something was wrong that day. Now, that afternoon, Debbie and Chris Brouillard took the kids to the Holiday Inn in Portsmouth to swim in the pool. Oh, the Holiday Inn pool.
Is that a thing that we do?
I don't know. And it's maybe it's a heated pool because it's March 28th in Maine.
That is not swimming weather at all. It's probably an indoor indoor.
Oh, boy.
She said then she saw the man because he was outside. They were inside. Then she saw the man get into a car. So she went out and looked and the car had New Hampshire license plates.
Oh, shit.
And she got really nervous and they took the kids home. They were like, let's get out of here. Let's get out of here. I think that's Stephen.
Sorry about it.
So Chris told her not to worry about it. Look, I'm here with you. Don't sweat it. I'm not going to let this guy do anything to you. Now, as they went to bed that night, Debbie noticed that the motion lights behind the house kept turning on and off. No, but they live in the woods. So believe me, as someone who has motion lights and lives in the woods, it's a deer. It's a fucking skunk.
It's a raccoon. It's a fox.
The wind blew a tree. It's a cat.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's tons of animals, wind, everything else. So they were doing that. And Chris told her it's an animal. So we have tons. Don't worry about it. Just go to sleep. No one's stalking you. You're good. Then at 1257 a.m., we get a domestic violence call from Whitney.
Right.
Now you go, where's Chris? What's going on? Where is everybody? Well, let's find out here. Okay. This is what happened, according to Whitney. In, you know, 1230 in the morning here, a woman frantically knocks on their door. Okay. OK, of the trailer. She said she was having car trouble. So her this is Debbie's brother, Donald Wood Jr. He's a mechanic. He says, well, come out here and help you.
No problem. I mean, it's a small town. Someone knocks on your door, says they have car trouble. You help them. That's all there is to it.
Your car was running and it stopped running. There's a reason for that. I'm sure I can diagnose it.
Let's let's give it a shot here. Let's go. So he walks outside and goes to help. OK, half hour later. Another knock at the door. Now, he is nowhere to be seen, Donald Wood Jr. It's this woman again, same woman.
Yeah.
Now, Whitney answers the door, and it's the same woman again. She said that, yeah, the guy that came out, Donald, there, he's working on my car right now, but he told me to come back and ask if you could get Chris. I don't know who that is. He just said tell whoever's in there to tell Chris to come help him. He needs help from Chris. Okay. So, you know, I don't know. Whatever. So they said, OK.
Whitney went and told Chris and Chris said, well, I mean, if he needs help out there in the dark, I'm not going to tell him to fuck off. So Chris gets up and heads out, follows the woman down into the dark, basically out into the street and to the car. So within 15 minutes, more knock on the door.
Oh, my God.
It's this woman again.
Uh huh.
Okay, now she knocks on the door and asks for Donald's girlfriend, Linda, and says, I've been told to tell Linda to come and to bring her Chevy Blazer as well. Not just to walk out with me, but to get in the Chevy Blazer and come there because they need it. They need it. Now, by now, Debbie Brown is awake and hearing stuff going on in the living room. She's hearing her daughter's voice talking.
She's like, what the fuck? What the fuck is going on out there? So she was thinking that something's not right here. And I guess one of the things she thought and she told her daughter is why would they keep sending the woman back? We don't even know. Wouldn't one of our people come back and say this shit? Like why would they send her back?
But I guess – They're really arms deep. They're holding up – one's holding the transmission up. One's holding the motor.
Who knows?
We need somebody else to –
And they're not saying, like, go get my tool or go get this. They want people and cars and shit, which is like, how many people do you need? And why do you need a Chevy Blazer to fix a car? It doesn't make any sense.
One person by one person by one person. Yeah.
Unless they need a jump. I don't understand it.
Yeah.
So Debbie gets out and gets in her own car. She goes, OK, yeah, I'll go with you. Gets in her own car and is about to pull out of the driveway here. She's pulling out of the driveway. And then out of nowhere, Whitney hears her pull back up the driveway and I mean, laying on the horn and screaming. He's here. He's here. He's here. He's here.
Oh, laying on the fucking horn in the middle of nowhere, you know, in the middle of the night. Now, the neighbors don't mind because they don't mind gunshots. But this is loud. So, wow, that is fucking crazy. Apparently, Debbie had gone out and gotten into the blazer that was requested. Linda's blazer. And she ended up she pulled back in because she saw a rental car parked next to the driveway.
The same one that she saw at the Holiday Inn.
And she knew.
That's why she fucking went back up the driveway. She started yelling for her brother and Chris. She didn't know they were gone because she was sleeping kind of half out of it for the beginning of this. She tried to use her cell phone to call 911 but couldn't get it to work.
Oh, no.
Fucking out of not in service range. Yeah, thanks a lot. Exactly. So she starts screaming and yelling, he's here, he's here, help me, help me, help me. Because she thought the guys were in the house.
Right.
And they could come out and help her. But they didn't. And it's only Whitney in the house. She's the only person in there. Oh, no. And Linda, the girlfriend, she might be still sleeping. Right. So this is from the window. Whitney watches two armed figures descend on her mother's car, smash in the window and climb in the car and take off with her. With her in the car. With Debbie in the car.
Took her with him.
Yes, so this is why she's calling 911 frantically going, I just watched this crazy shit out my window when my mother was gone and all this shit.
Oh, dear Christ.
Stephen Brown, by the way, obviously is the culprit here. Right. When she was backing out of the driveway, Stephen broke the window and climbed into the passenger side of the Blazer with a shotgun in her face.
Holy.
Yes, and ordered her to drive to a nearby parking lot. Um, and, and when they get to the parking lot, he tells her to get out of the car and then Debbie is forced into another car with Patricia Teeter sitting there and him. Okay. And he keeps telling her, if you do as I say, I won't hurt you. If you do as I say, I won't hurt you. Okay. This is fucking nuts.
And Debbie doesn't even know this other woman. She's never met her, saw her before. She doesn't know who the fuck is this lady. That's why she was effective at it as a door knocker. So, yeah, this is wild. And Patricia Teeter is trying to keep telling her to we're not going to hurt you. Just do what we want and we're not going to hurt you. Don't worry about it.
What do they want?
Patricia then tells her this is fucking insane. Tells her, quote, we're all going to live happily ever after. We're both going to be his wife now.
What? What's going on with this lady?
She's fucking wackier than anybody else in the story. No kidding. She is, wow, she is like so abused that she just, that's her role is just secondary person.
She's just okay to be a servant extra wife.
Holy shit, we're all going to live happily ever after. We're both going to be his wife now. It's okay.
We're all wives. We're all wives together.
It's going to be fine. That's what she's telling her. This is going to be great. The guy you're terrified of who you want nothing to do with, now you're going to be in a threesome marriage with him. Isn't that great?
We're a throuple now.
Wow. That is fucking nuts. And they also said, hey, don't worry about your brother and his friend there because we just we tied them up and put them behind the house. So they're back there. So whoever finds them, you know, they're just tied up behind the house. They're all right here now back at the house because the police show up.
Right.
The cops show up. They've been called.
Of course, because you've got a 12-year-old screaming.
Now, all the cars are gone now. Everything is done. But the cops show up, and they immediately start looking around the house with flashlights for clues here of anything. And behind the house, about 50 feet from the house...
they find chris brouillard and donald wood jr partially buried in the woods whoa very dead um they both suffered head trauma and multiple stab wounds what in the hell yeah um that's fucking crazy so whitney tells the cops my mother has been taking but taken by my father period that's what happened Period. So she said, we just had a custody hearing.
He tried to tell the family judge his ex-wife was unstable, and he said that she abused him. All this shit. Now, inside the kidnapping car here, they drive all night, the three in the car. This is Patricia, Steven, and Debbie. And it's fucking nuts. They drive all night. They stop in Hampton, New Hampshire, to pick up Patricia's Oldsmobile Achieva. Which is probably the worst.
There's no achieving in an Achieva. Put it that way. You have Achieva'd nothing if you have an Oldsmobile Achieva.
The Oldsmobile, I mean, of course I'm making it.
Yeah, this was an ugly one.
They don't even make Oldsmobiles anymore.
It was like rounded. It kind of looked like a Taurus-y type thing, I believe, the Achieva. Like a mix between a Taurus and a Lumina is what I remember.
Oh, no.
Not a good car.
I see it looking like – That midsize sedan.
Yeah. 90s, late 90s midsize sedan. Were they four doors? Rounded edges. I don't fucking know. Jesus.
I can't even picture it.
I think so.
I see this. It was a – something – not the Skylark. What is that? I remember one having fins on it. You know what I mean?
Oh, I don't know.
Maybe not like Finn's fins, but like that Finn metal with the brush strokes in it kind of thing. That's what I'm seeing, but I don't know. I can't picture it.
She was a rounded off thing for some reason in the late 90s, but I could be wrong. So Achieva in tow. Yeah. They pick up the Achieva. They're eventually going to drop off the rental car, return it after wiping it down thoroughly of all fingerprints and anything else. So they're heading toward New York. They're heading west toward New York State.
And during the drive, Stephen starts just harassing Debbie with questions, saying, do you love me? Things like that, which clearly not. Oh, my God.
These are the worst questions, like the most uncomfortable ones.
Yeah. And she would say no. And then she'd say maybe. I don't know. And she was essentially trying to get him to not lose his temper at this point and, you know, murder her in the car.
What's the answer that makes you turn back and leave me alone?
Exactly. That's the answer. That's the one here. What doesn't get me killed? So in the early the next morning, Tim Wood, who is Debbie's brother, calls Donna Brown, Stephen's mother, and wakes her up. And he said, where's Steve? Where's Steve? And she said, he's at work. And I guess the brother then, Tim Wood, started crying.
And he said there'd been a double homicide in Maine and Donnie's involved and we don't know what's going on. So Donna Brown said, well, let me go. I'll go make sure he's at work. So she apparently had a broken knee, but she crutched her way out behind her house to look and see if the fuel truck was there or gone.
And she saw Stephen's oil delivery truck parked in the driveway and knew he wasn't at work. And she said, quote, I didn't think I'd be able to make it back to the house. I had this sick sense that there would be something wrong. So even the mother's like, oh, so family said they think it is. It must have been the restraining order that did it.
Debbie's uncle, who is the Kittery police chief, Edward Strong, said that's definitely what set him off. The judge awarded her full custody with no visitation rights for him.
oh shit yeah because of the abuse they said no anything for now it's a complete restraining order against you can't go near your family um yeah and um it's interesting so the um that's fucking crazy so there's a obviously a multi-state manhunt now because they don't even know what goddamn direction they went in and right but they have no fucking clue we know he didn't go east
Yeah, we know that for sure. So they're searching everywhere. They got helicopters searching. They're searching all over the place. They find at STS Construction Company, they find a black Chevy Blazer registered to Linda Malcolm, the girlfriend there, who lived at the home. Now, she was unharmed at home. Yeah. And inside the vehicle, though, there's broken glass and bloodstains in the vehicle.
So they're like, oh, this isn't good. It's a lot. Now, they're also they know Patricia Teeter is missing as well. So they're looking for her. But they released a sketch of her but did not identify her as definitely the woman traveling with Brown. Just a person we like to talk to, basically.
Person of interest.
Person of interest of chit chatting with here. So police are searching for Debbie's 1999 Ford Expedition and a black 1996 Oldsmobile Achieva owned by Teeter. Both have New York plates and the authorities caution people that Stephen may be armed. A spokesman for the Maine police said that the only lead was a possible sighting at about 3 p.m. of the suspect's car with a man and a woman inside.
It was on Route 13 in Leo Minster, Massachusetts. But it wasn't reported until like 5.30, two and a half hours later. So obviously nobody could go look at it. That's not the direction they were going in anyway. It doesn't matter. It wasn't them.
The authorities in Maine said they didn't know that Debbie even had a protection order against her husband, but they did say it does apply even though it's not in the state it was issued in. Right. Now, Teeter's work friend here, he said, I can't believe that Patricia would have gone with Steve if she knew that he planned to kidnap his estranged wife.
I don't think that that was part of the plan to murder people and kidnap her. This person said, quote, She's not a saint. She's no Mother Teresa, but she's a very level headed person. OK, and he worries that Teeter is also going to be murdered here as well. So there's already two murders and possibly going to be two more here.
So they said one of the friends said the only thing we can hope for is that he hasn't done any harm to her. Hopefully he'll come to his senses and release her unharmed. Yeah. One one neighbor said they're optimistic that Debbie's going to be found safe, but they'd also fear the worst. Obviously, what a dumb thing to say.
I mean, you know, I'm optimistic, but she's the this neighbor said that they're all distraught over the deaths of the two guys because they were good guys. One guy said they were just nice people. That's what they did. They help people. And look what happened to them.
This is the reason you don't help people.
This is why you don't help. This is why you mind your own business. So Stephen's mom here, Stephen's friends and family and mom and everybody else are trying to figure out what the fuck is happening. How did we not know this was going to happen? Donna Brown, the mom, wondered if she could have done anything to prevent this. Maybe I could have helped.
But people say that this type of thing, and domestic violence experts, that sort of thing, they say that this is... A lot of times you're not going to see it. So there's no way to know it's behind closed doors and they keep it behind closed doors on purpose.
You know, this is, you know, one of the director of research and criminal justice for the New York State Office of Domestic Violence said very often batterers have a Jekyll and Hyde personality. He may seem like the nicest guy in the world to people on the outside, but behind closed doors, he's a very different person for his wife and family. So where the fuck could they be? Okay.
Well, Teeter gets on the phone with a friend from work. They get a call. And she said that she was on a weekend camping trip with Steve. So she's like, I don't know what the hell any of that's all about. Because they're like, dude, there's a lot of shit going on. And she's like, I don't know. I'm on a camping trip.
And the friend said, dude, your name's on the news in connection with murders and kidnappings. This is not good, bro. Like, you need to fix this shit. Teeter said wouldn't give her location, but she did tell her friend she could see the Albany skyline from the parking lot, which is a sad skyline to look at Albany. Not much going on there. Not much of a skyline. So around 5.45 a.m.
this day, they check into two rooms at the Econo Lodge in East Greenish, New York.
Hell yeah.
It's outside of Albany. There's, I guess...
you know they get in there there's two different rooms one for steven and debbie and one for patricia this is weird as fuck right it's getting real weird um i guess steven pulled the phone out of the wall and went and gave it to teeter like here you keep this in your room with you i need you to be in your own room while i'm in here with my ex-wife that's wild shit okay then we'll all be happy together excellent when and break when do we get to thruffle
Yeah. What is that going on? So Stephen went into the bathroom and scrubbed himself off. He's got blood and all sorts of shit on him. After a while, he came out with his clothes and Patricia took them away to go wash them because they have blood on them and shit. So Debbie was kept in the room. She had no idea that there was even a search to find her.
She has no idea if anybody knows that she's gone. She has no fucking idea. Anything. She doesn't know her brother and her boyfriend are dead. She knows nothing at this point. Just sitting in the room where her daughter is. The two here, Teeter and Steve, were telling her that they were tied up behind the garage and gagged. So that's it. So at one point, Stephen was out of the room.
She tried – Debbie tried to turn on the TV to get the news on maybe and get something. But when she heard him coming back, she had to turn it off quick. So I guess she would – Patricia was asking Debbie – She was telling Debbie the whole time, look, if we get caught, you'll say I wasn't involved in this, right? Like lady to lady, right? You'll be cool about this, right?
You're incredibly involved.
Yeah. So Debbie would tell them, yeah, yeah, no, don't worry about it. Yeah, no, you're good. You're cool. You know, that's fine. Now, during this, Stephen doesn't beat her, but they won't get into exactly what it is. But I think we can guess he does in the court documents sexually assaults her twice over the course of the night. I think we can probably extrapolate from that.
And he kept telling her that all of this is her fault.
Right.
All your fault, Debbie. So Steve told her he'd release her in the morning, but I doubt she believed that. You know what I mean? You know, I don't think so here. I died. I mean, it's going to probably kill Teeter, too. Who the hell knows? So Stephen kept telling her, though, that he loves her. But I love you and I want to be with you, but I'm not going to be taken alive, by the way.
If I get caught, you know, whatever. You know, she's used to this. She's dealt with him before, but now she's trapped in a motel room with a guy with a sawed-off shotgun and an assault rifle laying on the bed in front of her. So this isn't good. He kept saying that he wasn't going to go to jail and that there's going to be bloodshed and all this type of shit. So, wow. 6 a.m.
Somehow, based on her friend telling the cops it's a motel that you can see the Albany skyline from, they check out all the hotels in a circle around Albany, all the motels. Yeah. And they find their car in the motel parking lot.
Yeah.
So they find the fucking Econo Lodge and the SWAT team comes in. Shortly before they surround the area, shortly before 6 a.m., they heard explosions. They did flash grenades and flash bangs and kicked the doors down and everything else. Wow.
they find steven they find debbie she's alive wow he didn't kill her she's in the fucking room so there's obviously they take everybody debbie said next thing you know i'm in a cruiser the officer pulled the handcuffs off of me and said i can't believe we got you out of there alive no shit holy shit like there was we thought no way we're finding this woman alive no fucking way especially you already killed two people why the hell would he leave he was gonna do it today right
He was going to torture her all night and then do something today and then get back home and act like he was home the whole time.
Yep. Act like they were on a camping trip because that was apparently their alibi here. Yeah. So they take everybody to the police station here. Stephen insists to the police that he, quote, didn't want any of this to happen. Well, you know, you kind of did a lot here.
He tells a Maine state police detective that his loss in court and a letter requiring him to pay child support angered him so much that he drove to Maine with a shotgun and assault rifle and a knife and some rope to, quote, talk to his wife.
It's a fascinating interview, kid.
That's what he brings to talk. That's what I do when I want to have a chat with anybody. I was like, well, where's my rope knife and fucking shotgun and assault rifle? So they said, well, how did you even know where she was? How did you know about that place? And you know how he knew? Restraining order.
Oh, it's got the address.
Has to. Has to. You have to tell the person where they have to stay away from. Yeah. So it's a double-edged sword because now that you're- You can't just say, stay away from me.
Well, what's away from me?
Stay away from where? Then you could be in the same place as her and you wouldn't be responsible for it because they didn't tell you where to stay away from. But they said you can't go to 61 Lower Middle Road. And he went, well, that's where she is.
A few miles from the glass spires of midtown Atlanta lies the South River Forest. In 2021 and 2022, the woods became a home to activists from all over the country who gathered to stop the nearby construction of a massive new police training facility nicknamed Cop City.
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It's wild. Debbie said in a written statement, quote, to protect abused women and children, they shouldn't be asked to give their address in court proceedings. But then the court says then it wouldn't be a legal document because you can't tell a person where to stay away from.
So it's specifics.
Yeah, there's nothing good. There's no way to do this here. And also she said that she wants to help battered women after all of this, because, you know, now. Police here are like, oh, so you went to talk with knives, guns, duct tape, rope, that sort of shit, kidnapping shit.
In case we run out of things to talk about, I want to talk about the amount of strands on this rope.
It's pretty good. Yeah, it's made of hemp. It's a good one. I'm telling you. So now Teeter over here is trying to minimize her involvement at first. Right. She said she just thought Stephen wanted to talk to his ex-wife, and that's it.
Oh, boy.
That is fucking wild. By the way, the executive director of a family crisis center said abusers regularly tipped off to their spouses whereabouts through court records. There's no way. And they said that we can't not have them on there. So I have to tell him again.
He said that sometimes that this guy said he sometimes or she sometimes advises people not to seek protection orders if they don't want their spouses to know where they're staying. OK, they'll say, like, do you have a good safe place that no one knows where you are? Just stay there and don't fucking do this, because otherwise he's going to know right where you are.
Yeah.
So it's a situational thing. Yeah. And she said, you can't tell someone to stay away from some place unless you say where that someplace is. Fair enough. So Teeter, after a while, you think Teeter is going to sit in the fucking interrogation box and be hard as nails? No, no. Teeter is going to spill it. And she does.
Yeah.
She told the police that she and Brown left Newfield on March 27th so Stephen could talk to his wife and children about her family's interference. He asked her to bring a shotgun, and when she picked him up, she saw he was carrying a knife and some rope in a camouflage bag. They drove to New Hampshire where they rented a car and approached the mobile home.
She said that shortly before midnight, though, his anger just exploded. It was too much. So she said she lured Wood out of the house, Donald Wood Jr., by saying her car was broken down. When he got outside, Brown, Stephen, jumped out from the bushes and hit him in the back of the head with a pipe that he had picked up off the side of the road.
God damn.
On the way there, at some point, he saw a pipe on the side of the road and picked it up. Pull over. Yeah, pull over. I'm going to grab this pipe quick. So he hits Donald Wood over the head and drags him into the woods. Okay. At this point here, Teeter goes back to the house and said that Donald Wood needs Chris Brouillard's help. Right.
Now, as a as Brown was attacking Chris Brouillard the same in the same fashion, Teeter told police she had to walk away because she didn't want to or need to see what he was doing. OK, but then she returned to lure to lure Linda outside. But Debbie came out and said instead. And she said she saw her husband.
She jumped in the blazer and drove up and down, drove up the road, honking, drove up the driveway and back honking the horn and calling for help. And, you know, Whitney Brown was in there. Teeter said Stephen told his wife that he, quote, could have killed her. But all he wanted to do was talk.
Teeter said that Brown told his wife the other two guys were tied up and put in his father's in her father's camper, which was parked next to the garage. So acting on Stephen's instructions, Teeter says she rented two adjoining rooms, one for herself and one for them. And to prevent Deborah from calling for help, he ripped the phone out and gave it to her.
And during the day, she was Teeter was the one who washed the bloodstained clothes and ran errands for him. And while she was away from the motel, she called a friend who told her that there was murders and that the police are looking for you guys. So basically what happened was he hit Wood over the head and Donald Wood Jr. fights back, as we'll talk about. And then it got ugly from there. Yeah.
So this is what the attorney general is going to present. Although Teeter knew that Brown had threatened violence against Debbie if he lost custody of her offspring, she nonetheless agreed to this excursion. She then watched Brown pack her car with a small arsenal, including an SKS assault rifle, a 20 gauge shotgun, ammunition for the weapons and a pair of knives.
He also stowed duct tape, rope and two handheld radios aboard the vehicle as well.
Oh.
This is a plan. This is crazy.
That is planning to be separated from someone and still needing communication. That's frightening.
That's terrifying. So they departed from New York early the next morning. Once in New Hampshire, they temporarily abandoned the car, Teeter's car, rented another one, went to Lebanon, Maine, located the trailer, and they spent the afternoon and evening spying on Debbie and her brother and the kids, stalking. And formulating a plan of how they were going to do this.
Yep.
Okay. So, fuck, this is crazy. She said they watched them go swimming at the Holiday Inn. They pretended the rental car broke down on the roadside. And what they did was on the way back from around the holiday in time when they were going to the holiday. And I believe it was they pulled over Teeter and Steve pulled over.
He hid in the car and Teeter acted like her car was broken down on the side of the road. But Debbie drove right past them. Oh, they were hoping Debbie would pull over to help. And she didn't.
They just kept driving and help people.
No, not not interested here. So then they watched them swim and do everything like that. So anyway, Stephen Brown picked up a piece of lead pipe by the side of the road, which he added to all of his other weapons. And obviously, we told you Teeter came up to the door.
Brown instructed Teeter to approach the trailer and attempt to lure one of the male occupants outside by claiming she was having car trouble. So Brown told her that if she succeeded, he would incapacitate them and just put them off to the side. So she did. She got Donald Wood. Brown hit him over the head with a pipe as he approached the rental car.
Wood tried to fight back and kicked Stephen in the balls. Oh. Which is great. I want to watch this scene. Clang. Ow. Fuck you, motherfucker. Pow. Oh, my balls. Jesus, get back here. This is in the pitch black in the woods. If he didn't end up dead, this would be hilarious.
He really went deep. That's great.
Yep. And then he again smashed him over the head with a lead pipe. And so badly that the medical examiner would later say that was a fatal blow with this lead pipe. But he still, Stephen still stabs his body several times and buries it under the leaves. In the neck, torso, and head stabs him. So he's angry. That's what that is. Yeah. That's what that is.
The blow to the head, according to Teeter, she said it made an eerie sound. And she said she'd never forget it. Yeah, cracking a fucking skull open is an eerie sound. So she said he then dragged Donald Wood into the woods out of Teeter's sight and stabbed him a couple of times. And obviously that that wasn't even necessary. He was already dead. So then 45 minutes goes by.
That's when she went back for Chris Brouillard. And when he came out, he didn't... Steven was like, I better get a good shot in first. My balls are sore. Yeah. Yeah. It's sore balls right now. Yeah. So he hits Chris in the back of the head with a pipe and does the same thing. Drags him into the woods and all of that. Now, apparently...
As he's hitting him in the head, he's forcing him to the ground, questioning about his relationship with Debbie. You fucking my wife? Shit like that. According to this, he strikes him in the back of the head, drags him into the woods, stabs him in the head, neck, and chest as well. Then that's when Teeter went back to ask for Linda. And then Debbie came out instead.
And Stephen forced her at gunpoint into the rental car, drove away. And Teeter said that the whole time he was saying, you better hope we don't get pulled over because it's going to be a bloodbath if we do.
That is crazy. Their plan was to eliminate everybody one by one. That's fucking disturbing.
One comes out, kill him, stack him up. Another comes out, kill him, stack him up. It's fucking really creepy. Wow. So Debbie said that her husband here, Steve, made her tell him that she loved him and that she wanted to, quote, make love to him.
She said that he made promises that he would, that she would, she made, he made her promise that she would keep in touch with him if he went to prison or to the quote nut house for his crimes.
I need you to keep talking to me forever.
Yeah. And he's like, she's like, absolutely. I'd never leave your side. You know, she's just like, get me the fuck out of this room with the psychopath. So, yeah, she then Debbie gets, you know, she's free now. And she said, holy fuck. She talks to the press about the ordeal. She said it was a shock learning that her brother and her boyfriend were dead. And I had no idea.
And she said they said they'd take care of me and that they'd always protect me and that nothing would happen. And now they're both dead. So she feels guilty also that this is all stemming from her. They were nice enough.
In her mind, her brother was nice enough to bring her into his house and all this, and he's even nice enough to go out at one in the morning and try to fix somebody's car, and he got killed for it.
Offering protection.
She said also she used all of the skills she learned during her abusive marriage to survive the ordeal. She said she knew how to manage him at certain times. Certain times when he's in a rage, there's no managing him, but... After a while, I guess she learned a lot of tricks of how to manage his emotions.
Bounce him off the walls. Yeah.
Yeah. Her uncle, the police chief, said she's a survivor. Abused women like her know how to appease the abuser to get along and wait for the opportunity to escape. And that's what she did.
Right.
Now, Steven at the jail here, he's at the jail, and his family, by the way, is like, they're talking about him like he's dead. Oh. They're talking about Steven like Steven's dead.
Past tense. They're done with him.
Yep. That's what they said. Ken Brown, the dad, said, those families have lost those two boys, and we've lost our son. A lot of lives have been devastated. He's fucked. Yep. Donna Brown said the family will soon visit Stephen at the at the county jail where he's being held, the Cumberland County Jail. They said that that might be the last time they see him. They don't know.
Right.
They said we're grieving terribly over it. He's gone. There's no way to reach out to him. We love him. We just don't know what more to say. We'll always love him. He'll always be our son. He's they say like he's just dead.
So they've Johnny Tyler'd him.
Yeah, he's done.
It's over.
He's out. Yeah, he's just done.
He is a mad cat. Flushed away. He is a crazy man, so I don't blame him. Yeah.
That's what happens. Yeah. So Debbie here, her uncle says that she is eager to return to the trailer that they lived at, her brother's lower middle road trailer here. And she said she's going to move back right in there.
I mean, the threat's been eliminated.
It's gone.
It's as safe as it can be now.
The uncle said she knows that Linda needs her and she needs Linda because both their people have been murdered. So they're just going to stay in this house and be like an 80s sitcom with Kate and Allie with two ladies raising their fucking kids. That's what it is. I don't know. Pulled that sitcom out of my ass from the 80s. That was good.
I don't remember that one.
It was Jane Curtin. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, she's fucking great. National treasure, man. So she's doing that. The uncle said that Debbie spent most of her Wednesday hugging and kissing members of her immediate family. She also visited her dead boyfriend's parents. And the uncle said she's in shock and unable to fathom everything yet. Yeah, I don't even know how you would...
I don't know how, number one, you would unpack and deal with what happened to you. Just the trauma you went through of the middle of the night, going outside, having somebody come, your ex-husband, the guy you're most scared of in the world. This isn't just some stranger. This is the boogeyman for you.
bust through your window with a shotgun yeah all day long she's probably seeing him at the at the uh hotel she probably is like i'm i'm losing my mind he's not here i and having that actually be her suspicions all are true like yes that would be mind-blowingly scary that's what i mean that's the exact thing because when she's told chris that you know chris was like come on
He's not stalking you outside the Holiday Inn when he fucking was. How would he know we're here? She has like a sixth sense for him of like, I know when he's around. I can smell him. I can smell it. He's just all over it. Like I said, I don't know how you'd unpack the fact that I was kidnapped, dragged two states over. Yeah.
kept in a fucking motel against my will raped multiple times by my fucking husband threatened to be murdered yeah guns are pointed at me this is like and then you survive it just that alone would be so much but on top of that they killed your boyfriend and your brother right beforehand because of you in your mind you feel so the guilt the fear i feel terrible for this lady and the trauma of the daughter had to watch it watch the kidnap dude like
That's crazy. It's unbelievable. For a 12-year-old girl to have to watch that is disturbing. And she's already terrified of her father. This is, you know, this is fucked. So Debbie said, though, she and her children will move on and move ahead with their plans for a new life, just like they had before. They're moving back into the mobile home. Her and Linda are going to be roommates.
They're going to build two new bedrooms in the back of the house. And yeah, she said last a few days after this happened, she drove back to New York and took all of their belongings from the Browns house. Anything they had left from the parents house or anything like that. The kids, Debbie said that the kids, quote, trashed their father's things.
Like, I think they just went in fucking his shit up in the house. Yeah. She said they'll tell you they don't have a father anymore. There's died. That's what they're telling people. My dad's dead. That's just what they. Yeah. What's your mom and dad like? Oh, my mom's OK. A little bit of trauma. My dad's dead.
Yeah.
That's that. She said she wants to go back to school to become a certified nurse's assistant and hopes to tell her story of abuse to high school girls in hopes of preventing someone from, you know, same shit going on here. Yeah. Oof, that's a weird fifth period there.
Sure enough.
We're going to bring in Debbie, and she's going to tell you the most harrowing fucking story you've ever heard in your life. Buckle up, ladies. Holy shit.
Yeah.
What the fuck? That's going to be a rough day hearing about that. That's stressful enough. Oh, my God. See, I was worried I wasn't popular. Now I got much bigger fears. Holy shit.
You had to watch all those domestic violence videos, right? I don't know. No?
I don't know. I'm trying to think.
Was it health class? Yeah, I remember one specifically because it was a video of a woman that said she spent $2 on a top at Kmart, like the boyfriend. And the whole class was laughing. This bitch shops at Kmart. I'm like, he's about to beat her ass, you guys.
This is about to not be funny here in the next 10 seconds.
You guys are ridiculing this poor woman for being broke.
Because she's poor. She's an abused woman who only has $2 to spend on a shirt. And you're like, ha ha, you dumb bitch.
what the it was a little shocking moment of my of high school for me like realizing that people don't understand people are huge shit bags like nice nice of you guys to have such rosy lives jesus christ everything's perfect for you guys i guess shadow mountain did this take place at yeah those north phoenix twats
ah upper mid class oh fucking jerks man oh what douchebags like yeah yeah what do you who do you think you are she's wearing like this cute tank top and the guy's like where'd you get that she's like i bought it today do you like it i spent two dollars at kmart and he flew off the handle about the two dollars jesus that is i guess something that people need to hear about i do remember those slightly i remember the syphilis videos more though those were really
I remember those where they were showing, like, actual syphilitic, you know, growths.
I wasn't really worried about showing my penis to anybody, so I didn't care about those videos.
I was terrified of that happening to my dick however it happened. I was like, that was really, oh, God, I don't want that to happen. Jesus Christ, that looks awful. It's rotting off. But, yeah, those were terrible videos.
So awful.
But I guess, I mean, this is a story that you kind of need to hear.
Yeah, you do got to know that it's possible.
Maybe not at 14, but at 16, I think it's, you know, something. So she expects her divorce to become final in May. She's still married to this man. Wow. Because it's, you know, she had filed for divorce. Right. And then she said she and the kids plan to change their last name.
Yeah.
To Brouillard.
Oh, for Chris.
Yes. She said Chris and I did have plans to get married in this way. We can honor his memory.
Wow.
Wow, that is hardcore, man.
That's a very interesting choice.
Oh, shit. Slapping it on the kids, too, is interesting. But I don't know. Whatever, I guess. Now, Steven and Patricia, they end up arriving in Maine. They get extradited from New York to Maine here. A New York State police airplane carrying them arrived at Portland International Jetport with them.
And there's a picture of Patricia with, like, a bottle of water in her hands cuffed, and she looks miserable. Let me tell you something. Yeah. Fucking miserable.
Regretting a bunch of decisions.
Oh, man. Her look on her face is like, oh, I did it. I fucked it all up. And she has two minor children also.
And we were going to be a throuple. Fuck.
Yeah. It was going to be me. Two wives, him and what, the four kids from the two relationships move everybody in together? I don't know what's going on here. But the Maine State Police officers met them at the plane, shackled Brown and Teeter, and took them to separate cruisers. They sat in the front passenger seat with the detectives sitting behind them, which I think is an odd transportation.
Yeah, okay. Odd way to transport. So, yeah, they said that Teeter leaned forward in her seat trying to hide her face. She's embarrassed. Well, Stephen just kind of looked the other direction, but it was like, you know, chin up in the air here. Now, the funerals, they did funerals, joint funerals here for Donald and Chris. And they had a funeral at the mobile home.
Really?
Yeah, where most funerals take place. The guests were asked to dress casually. Yeah. Just act like we're having a barbecue and we'll also bury people.
Main casual.
Main cash flannel will be seen. Yeah. So afterward, dozens of friends of Donald and Chris will form a funeral procession made up of four wheel drive trucks that they.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, that's right.
Coolest funeral ever.
That's pretty goddamn cool. Yeah. Linda said that's the way he would have wanted it. At least they're not just doing it the way they want it. They're trying to send them off right. The parents, Stephen Brown's parents, are attending the funeral.
Really?
Donna and Ken, they don't. Yeah, they they right away tried to contact the families to apologize to them and all that kind of shit. But Terry would. The uncle, Debbie's uncle, said that the family won't accept it. Their apology, not because they're mad at them. Quote, We've not responded to their apology because there's no reason for one. There's no reason for one from them.
We don't hate the Browns. Nobody can control what their children are going to grow up to be. That's super mature. That's very mature. Yeah, it's not their fault.
We're not accepting or rejecting their apology.
It doesn't even need to happen. They don't need to apologize, basically. They can show up at the funeral and no one's going to be like, oh, God, they're here. It's fine. Interesting. Very interesting. So in the woods next to the house, family members erected a small memorial to Donald, who was 43, and Chris, who was 30.
And they had flowered crosses and rose bouquets and a yellow toy monster truck as a tribute to his mudding habit here. His longtime friend Vicki said if Wood had to go, meaning Donald, the brother, if Wood had to go, he wanted to go out helping somebody and he wanted to go out on his own property. He got his wish. Helping somebody, not being lured out there to be murdered.
Yeah, if you went out to help somebody and they were, like, stuck under a giant tree that fell on them and then you got swept off in the rapids, yeah, that would be, like, an honorable way to go. But going out and being murdered is not the way you wanted to go out, I don't think.
That's just a way for somebody to process this horrible event.
And a funeral like this is also a way to process the event because you're trying to make it a celebration rather than let's all be sad. So I get it. Everybody processes different. So they said Debbie walked slowly and unsteadily to the pulpit at the church to pay tribute to her brother. She said, he was my hero. He always treated me with respect.
And yeah, 150 family members and friends attended these services at the church. And then they had that thing at the house after that. Apparently, Debbie became overcome with emotion and had to leave halfway through the whole thing. When these services ended, she made a short statement. She had her uncle, the police chief, next to her.
She said, I want to thank everyone who helped rescue me from my ordeal. We have a long road ahead of us. We must mourn in our own way. We want to leave Chris and Woody in peace. That makes sense. Now, court for these two idiots. man teeter they describe her as hands and shackles quivering and sobbing quietly during her 10 minute hearing I don't think she expected any of this shit
It's really got out of hand fast.
Yeah. She feels like she doesn't see 10 minutes ahead of her. You know what I mean? No.
I don't think she sees 10 minutes behind her either. She's got a memory of a goldfish.
She's just a goldfish. When you hear what a psychiatrist says about her, it's basically the same thing you'd say about a goldfish generally. She comes into court, by the way, with her left eye bruised, which I have the mugshot. I will post on social media as part of this that her left eye was bruised. This was an injury sustained during the police raid. Oh. So, yeah, that's how that goes.
And her defense attorney, who the same defense attorney represents both of them, by the way, Steve and Patricia, he said he doesn't know how they're going to plead. He said, quote, I was just appointed to this last night.
I just got the case.
I don't even know anything about it. He said, so I haven't talked in detail with either client about what went on that night. He's just there to do the preliminary hearing. He has no idea what's going on here. He said that Stephen has no criminal history that he's aware of. I don't know.
He said Teeter has two children, 14 and 15, and has only a one misdemeanor charge on her record from like 10 years ago. So that's... These aren't like he's saying that they don't seem like career criminals to me. So I don't know. Stephen Brown, as the prosecutors give their whole thing, Stephen Brown to the press agrees with their account.
Yeah.
Of how it went down. Yep. Apparently, a state charge of kidnapping is dismissed because a federal kidnapping charge has a heavier penalty. And he took her across state lines. And that's all. Yeah. Yeah. So he's going to be charged with that and so is she.
Now, if he – any crimes he commits in New York, if it's a federal kidnapping charge, doesn't that just all stack together then? Like sexual assault and all that can be charged too?
There's two separate – he's going to have two separate things. There's going to be a federal and a state deal because murder is a state crime.
Right.
Okay. So the murders are going to be the state trials, and then the kidnapping and all that other shit is going to be federal trials. Okay. Because he's got weapons, fucking kidnapping, this. There's a whole lot of shit that he's stalking. They're really lining it all up for him.
So he pleads innocent to the federal charges, which includes crossing state lines to violate a protection order, stalking, and violations of federal gun laws. Right. Teeter pleads innocent also to state charges of murder, felony murder and kidnapping. Stephen Brown's lawyer said he advised his client not to change his plea from not guilty.
He said there's been no promise of a lesser sentence for cooperating. So I told him that pleading guilty, even though he's admitted he did it, pleading guilty isn't really the best option. We might as well give it a shot here. But he did say that Brown wanted to take responsibility for his crimes and spare his family the stress of a drawn out procedure.
Yeah.
Yep. He said the lawyer said, I don't think there should be any unrealistic expectations. A harsh sentence will be well within the realm of possibility. No shit. I would hope so. So he's sitting in the Cumberland County Jail in August of 1999 when he tries to take the quick way out.
Oh, really? We're going to go with suicide.
Tries to turn it into a murder-suicide, yeah.
Aaron Rodgers way.
Very separate here. Aaron Hernandez way. If only. No. The Aaron Hernandez way. So he takes the disposable razor blades they get for shaving, slashes his neck with it, and then tries to hang himself by tying a sheet around his neck, knotting the other end to a railing, and vaulting over the railing.
Okay.
Which would break your neck probably. Should, yeah. And at least hang you if not. Problem is, I don't think Steven ever was in the Boy Scouts. No.
Bad knots?
Missed knot tying 101, apparently. The knot didn't hold, so as soon as there was any pressure, he was just free-falling from the next tier on down. Oh, damn it. And instead of hanging himself, he hit the ground and broke his ankle. Like a fucking dipshit. Broken left ankle, leg, possible broken right heel.
Yeah, that would have been a spectacle, too, though.
That's what he was going for, yeah.
Holy shit.
He's a drama queen, this Steven. He sure is. He really is. Even the crime is such a drama queen thing to do. I'll kill them, then I'm going to get her in there and talk to her and make her say she loves me. What a drama queen, man.
Question a man as I beat him to death about whether or not he fucked my wife.
Yeah, you fucking my wife. Yeah. Don't say it in front of my girlfriend, though. She gets sensitive.
He's going to hang himself in town square of the prison.
Totally. He tried to fucking jump off the tier.
That's so funny.
By the way, did nobody notice a man with a fucking rolled up sheet trying to tie it around a fucking railing? Who's leaking? Anybody watching in prison at all while his blood squirts from his neck? I mean, anybody paying attention? This is a county jail. This isn't Attica. Like, pay attention.
People in prison have a pretty good sense of humor. They're pretty funny sometimes. Somebody had to say some shit like, oh, no.
Yeah.
Oh, shit. You dummy.
Oh, damn.
Somebody said something hilarious. I guarantee it.
It was the first time the phrase epic fail was uttered ever. You know what? No one ever used that phrase again. Not only because it's annoying, but because no matter what happens, it's not as epic of a fail as this.
Exactly.
This is an epic fail. Slash, slash.
Goodbye, cruel world. Ow, my ankle. Fuck, Jesus Christ.
Somebody said something like, you're no good at this.
Damn, why didn't I learn to tie knots better? And then he's fucking laying there with it tied around his neck with blood everywhere and just a sheet hanging off. Like, what a mess you'd walk up to.
The worst Superman ever. Dude.
If you're one of the fucking CEOs, you just walk up and just shake your head and go, this is a sorry ass scene I'm looking at right now. You sorry motherfucker. Yeah.
Superman turned into Clark Kent midair.
Quickly. Yeah. No shit. It's like, it's not supposed to happen like this.
Nothing super about you, man.
Holy shit. 8 a.m. too. He tried to do it early in the day. They described his neck wounds from the disposable razor as generally superficial. So I think that's why he had to hang himself. He couldn't get deep enough there. So Steven decides that, I mean, they have a lot of evidence. I mean, he was in the room with her and the guns and his girlfriend spilled it and he agreed with the prosecutor.
So he's going to go ahead and plead guilty.
Have to.
I don't know what a trial would be for this.
It would be, you know, it would be painful, man.
Yeah. Just use his statements. It's fine. You know, so he's going to plead guilty to murder and kidnapping at the state level.
OK.
And then multiple federal charges as well in another separate proceeding that we'll discuss here. So sentencing comes around for the state charges. They describe him as sitting impassively, manacled to a wheelchair, a broken ankle and a four inch purple scar below his right ear. The remnants of his September suicide attempt.
So now he looks like a complete dipshit, not just a murderer, a complete moron on top of this. So his lawyer said it was an explosion of rage and not a careful plan. This wasn't some kind of premeditated, sick, fuck, thought out thing. This was just rage that exploded from him.
Said Stephen Brown had suffered a series of crushing disappointments in the months leading up to the murders when a judge in their divorce case ruled that he couldn't contact his wife or children. That was it. He lost control. Couldn't take it anymore.
And he said that the mere fact that he killed the two men with a length of pipe he'd found along the roadside and not the shotgun he brought with him from New York indicated rage and not planning.
Hmm.
To me, that indicates not wanting to wake up anybody. Yeah.
Or alert her.
That's the thing. If the shotgun is for Debbie, that is not for them. If she hears a shotgun blast outside after this, she might call 911 before she comes out and you're not going to get her and then you're fucked. So bad. That's a bad strategy. And then he said, this is amazing. He said he carried the gun just to protect himself.
Oh, because he was scared.
An assault rifle and a shotgun just to protect yourself. And knives, evidently. And knives and ropes and duct tape and fucking pipes and everything. And he said, or at the very least, either to protect himself from others or to kill himself. One of those two, but not for people. That's crazy to think that he was trying to do that, even though he killed people.
He said, or this is the lawyers not helping at this point. So he carried the gun to protect himself. Okay, I don't believe it, but whatever. Or maybe to kill himself with. Okay, calm down, lawyer. Then the next one is, or he might have been trying to engage the police in a shootout that would cause his own death, what we know as death by cop. You're not helping your client, stupid. Shut up.
Stop talking. He's... Wow. His lawyer here said that if there had been a trial, Stephen Brown would have challenged his wife's assertions that she had been abused during their marriage. Even though she's been to multiple battered women's shelters and told people about the abuse for years.
And yeah, he said the order that had culpability and proof evidently to acknowledge it.
Totally, yeah. The lawyer said that the court would be on shaky ground if it passed a strict sentence based on just allegations.
Okay.
Well, I think it's based on murder and kidnapping and raping is what they're really talking about. He then says, quote, I'm not asking the court to find if there was adequate provocation and render a verdict of manslaughter.
Okay, yeah.
Adequate provocation? You drove two states... Hit in the fucking dark and have somebody come out. Yeah, that's a real – I mean that's provocation right there. What are you talking about? You stalked them for a day. That's insanity. He said, but I'm not asking the court that the court blame – I'm not asking the court that blame should be focused anywhere but on Stephen.
But I'm asking the court to consider each event after event after event which put him in this condition. So shortly, this guy, this is how full of shit he knows he is. This seems like if you tried to like, you know, pass a football out of your ass like this is what would happen to you.
Soon as he was done finishing his argument, the lawyer asked for a recess and walked out of the courtroom complaining of nausea and sweating. Within a few minutes, he's in an ambulance being taken to the hospital, to the special care unit and remaining in stable condition. And through the rest of this, he's represented by another lawyer, his other lawyer that does the federal shit.
Having to say that shit caused him deep anxiety that caused him a panic attack.
That's right away. If I'm any, if I'm the judge, I go, well, I don't believe anything he said. If he had a fucking full blown meltdown after saying it. Yeah. A Tony Soprano pass out after he said it. I'm not buying that shit. So the prosecutor described him a little bit more simplistically as a controlling, narcissistic, just plain dangerous lunatic, basically.
He came to Maine with a plan to kill, use the pipe instead of a gun because it was quiet and it wouldn't stir up the other people sleeping in there. He's a Marine Corps veteran. He knows that massive blows he struck to the back of the head would kill them and not just knock them out. Right. Said that his aim was to kidnap his wife and he would have killed others if they had gotten in his way.
However many people came outside, he would have killed until he got to Debbie. Period. That's it. So the lawyer said she did precisely what she was told to do and saved her own life and possibly Patricia Teeters, too. Yeah. So she then said it was wrong to think Stephen Brown lost control when he could have no more contact with his family. The lawyer said this case is not about love.
This is about if I can't have her, nobody will. It's about winning and losing. It's about a guy who does not take an L well at all. His lawyer then said that he doubted that Brown intended to kill Chris and Donald when he left New York, but, you know. whatever. And the judge agrees.
Um, he said, I don't know whether he intended to kill them or not, but at some point he planned it and he planned this attack and it was premeditated. The judge says he was prepared to do what was necessary to initiate contact with Mrs. Brown, including taking forcible type actions, right? Kidnapping. So the impact statements here, victim impact, they come up and, uh,
Friends and family come up and do this. Terry Wood, who is Donald and Debbie's uncle, he said his family has been scarred by Stephen Brown. He said, my poor brother will never recover. My niece will take several years to heal. These two children will never heal knowing that their father is a murderer. And Whitney gets up there at 12 years old. Yeah, she does.
And she says, I am a Christian and I can't hate anyone, but I dislike my father. I can't even stand to look at him.
Wow.
Oh, that has to fucking sting, man. Sure. He deserves that shit.
I dislike my father. And he had to hear that.
I can't even stand to look at him from your 12-year-old daughter.
He's right there.
And then he called her a whore in open court. No, he didn't. But she's had a lot of reason to not like this guy. So then Debbie gets on the stand here.
Oh, boy.
That's the victim impact. She said, please. It's very rare, by the way, to have a murder case where there's also a victim who's still alive to give an impact statement. That's really damaging to a defendant. It really is.
And the target of it. You know what I mean?
And the main target. She said, please, I ask you to put him away so he can do no more harm. I beg you not to be light with him. I'm still in fear of him. Please put him in a prison outside of the state so my kids and I won't have to worry about him no more. So she doesn't even want him in the state. Even if he's in prison in the same state, she's scared.
I don't even want him locked up in the state. Stephen turned down the chance to speak on his own behalf, made no eye contact with anybody around, and no witnesses stepped forward to speak for him. Not even his parents. Nobody. He asked the judge to sentence him to death. That's all he did. He just said, I want the death penalty.
I'm incapable of this. Please do it for me.
Please. The judge said, well, how about this? You, sir, may fuck off two life sentences without parole. How's that instead?
I mean, it's death, but it's going to be ugly.
Much worse and slower. And you're not good at tying knots, so you're going to be there a while. So more sentencing for Stephen now in the federal court here. He's still got a bunch of more crazy charges that have life possibilities attached to them here. Debbie Brown again testifies and her uncle Terry asked the judge to show no leniency.
Debbie said, my biggest fear right now is that he will escape from prison to finish what he started. He's a monster. Death does not bother him. As a matter of fact, it turns him on. Fucking gross. So then Steven. Gets up there. Anything to say for yourself? He goes, I got something to say for myself this time. Now, he could apologize. He could say he doesn't know what happened to him.
I went off the deep end. I'm a horrible person. I feel terrible. I'll never outlive this guilt. There's a lot of things you would say in this situation. The things you would not say in this situation here, by the way, came out, I guess he raped his wife three times that night. And they're all there because that came out later on.
So this fucking asshole instead says this, quote, I've never, ever denied responsibility for what happened. But for the past several months, there's been a lot of things said on TV and in newspapers. Everything's always one sided.
Oh, he wants some defense.
Wow. Yeah. He said, where is my fucking other side news? Where's that? Where's the news that says that fucking guy who admitted he murdered two people and kidnapped and raped his wife actually isn't too bad of a guy? Where's that news?
Where's my no-spin zone?
Wow. So, yeah, he made no excuses. He denied harming his children. He said, I never beat up my children. He then during his please be nice to me, accused Debbie of being unfaithful to him during their marriage.
I mean, they're still married. If she slept with Chris, that's unfaithful.
I mean, that couldn't be more irrelevant at this moment in time. Holy shit. But he used that as that's the excuse.
Okay.
He said, yes, I was enraged. Then he said, I just want to get this done. Okay, so the judge says, no problem, chief, got you covered. You, sir, may fuck off again. How about, what do you got, two without parole? Here's another three. Five life without paroles. Bye-bye. Three federal, two state, so you can appeal here and there. Even if one turns it over, you got either three or two more.
You're fucked, Steve.
Even in cards, you can't have five of a kind. You got it.
man that's you got it brother it's it so teeter here patricia teeter she is going to go to court as well and uh she is going to plead guilty to murder and kidnapping as well as multiple federal charges she does the same thing she pleads here her thing though she has a little bit more leg to stand on on the plea because she can throw herself at the mercy of the court and say he's a monster and i didn't know and he lied to me and all that kind of shit whereas he has nothing to say here
I mean, there is the if you did know that somebody was after that. I mean, she didn't. Let's say she didn't know that the first person was going to die. As soon as she walked her back and he says, now go ask for Chris. Now get more knock on the door and say, call the police. Let me in. Shut the door. Call 911 right now.
Don't come out. Lock the door. Yeah.
Tell Chris for sure. Don't go.
Instead, she came back for the third person.
Yeah.
Yeah. That's nuts. This is nuts. And she's just as fucking – I mean, obviously, I think she's been manipulated and probably whatever, but we'll talk about it. And like I said, the shrink, what he says about her, too, is interesting. She's going to plead to avoid getting a life sentence. Her plea gets her a lighter sentence, basically. She won't get life.
On the federal kidnapping charge, which carries a mandatory life term – will be dropped, as will a more serious state charge of murder, which carries a possible life term. So it'll be like conspiracy and after the fact and all that kind of shit. So the length of the sentence is decided by a judge here.
They said that during her sentencing, she stood at the front of the courtroom with her head bowed. Her voice barely rose above a whisper.
as the judge questioned her about her case when a prosecutor read a description of the deaths of donald wood and christopher bullard teeter reached for a tissue and cried quietly a single mother of two teenage girls teeter did not know any of the victims she had been friendly with stephen brown for just a few months before he asked her to drive him to maine
Teeter went even though she knew that Brown was barred from a court order from seeing his wife or their two children. Teeter also knew that Brown was armed with a knife, two guns, one of which she loaned him. So she definitely knows that the shotgun's hers.
But the assistant attorney general here, the same one that prosecuted Brown, said that it doesn't appear Teeter had any intention of kidnapping or killing anyone. What? What? Then she just doesn't ask questions.
Right.
I go up, get a guy, you kill him. And then you say, go get another one. You go, OK. Like, you don't ask any. Are you going to kill him, too? Like, what the fuck? What are we doing here? She just does it. Wow. The prosecutor said Patricia Teeter appeared to be simply helping a friend. What? I mean, she's an idiot, but no.
She lent him a shotgun and then drove to the place that she knows his fucking wife has a restraining order against him on. I'm sorry.
And a friend? Just a friend?
Just a friend. Yeah. It would appear that she did not come to Maine to participate in killing two men. I believe that. I believe when they left, he didn't say, here's what we're going to do. We're going to kill two people and then kidnap her. I think that happened. But by the second murder, if you're still on board, what the fuck? You know what I mean?
I'm sure he said, we're not going camping. And she knew that, right?
I would fucking hope so. Jesus. She lent him a shotgun. So she said then they said, should she have known? Should she have been brighter? Should she would? Should she have foreseen this? We say yes. The prosecutor says, yeah, been brighter. It's funny. You've been adjudicated a dum-dum now, which is hilarious.
At least dim.
At least slightly dim. Well, wait till you hear what the shrink says, too. It was funny. So her defense lawyer said that his client pleaded guilty to avoid the murder and federal kidnapping charges. He said that Patricia did not know what was happening outside Woods Mobile Home until it was too late. But she described the sound of the skull being smashed and then went to get someone else.
Right.
She was afraid of Stephen Brown, the lawyer said, and did whatever he told her to do. He also said that Teeter had long been a victim of domestic violence in her own marriage, which conditioned her to obey Brown. That sounds correct, probably. She said that he then said her conduct is consistent with her history as a battered woman.
Yes, but you can't just kill strangers if you're a battered woman. That doesn't that doesn't hold up in court. You know what I mean? So. His the Dr. Prudence Baxter, a Cambridge, Massachusetts psychiatrist, examined Teeter and described her as this is great, quote, startlingly naive and a gullible person.
Incredibly startlingly.
If you're if you're shrink uses the word startlingly in any description of you, you're a mess. That's not good. Wow. She also said that Teeter may have been conditioned to intimidation and control by 10 years of domestic abuse during a prior relationship, which sounds very reasonable. Now, Debbie's uncle, though, says horse shit. He gets on the stand.
Terry Wood and says that she's no less responsible for the crimes than Stephen Brown, and she should also spend the rest of her life in fucking prison. He said, quote, she knew when she came to the door the second time that my nephew was dead and Mr. Brown was going to murder Chris. All she had to do was say, dial 9-1-1. She could have put a stop to it, but she didn't. Exactly.
Exactly what we said. So Teeter, during her sentencing here, she has previously expressed remorse and all that kind of thing. She doesn't say much during her sentencing hearing, though. She said she learned during the 10-hour car trip that Brown wanted to talk to his estranged wife alone in violation of a court order, and she said she'd help do it. She said, I was disappointed.
I thought it was going to be a nice weekend. It had been a while since anyone had ever treated me. If I ever wanted to do something, I would always have to pay.
she thought she said i was thought we were having a nice date weekend and i was wrong she said then usually yeah and i i'm the one who has to pay like nobody likes me and i thought he liked me that's essentially it which i mean yeah she's a and when you see her too she's kind of like a it's hard to describe her but she looks like a woman who's kind of sad just a person who's not real like um she doesn't go out yeah has not a lot of positive relationships
It seems like it. Yeah. Then Patricia said he said he was going to knock him on the head and tie him up for a brief time. I didn't think it was all right, but I guess I was afraid. Then he told me he could do it without hurting them. So he's like, OK. So he told Teeter to go back a second time despite her protest.
He said she she said he grabbed me by the arms and looked me in the face and said, you have to.
No choice.
No choice. She said, I just thought if I went in and they went out, he could get in and talk to Debbie and it would be done more or less peacefully and nobody would get hurt. The defense attorney said this conduct is very much out of character for her. She's never been in any trouble in her whole life. She's well thought of in her community.
And the judge disagrees with all of this and says, quote, there is absolutely no indication that this defendant acted out of fear, coercion or distress. Mm hmm. The judge dismissed a psychiatric report that said that Teeter was afraid of Brown. He said he believed Teeter's statements to an interviewer were, quote, fabricated in an effort to avoid the likely sentence in this case.
So she was just discounting her own participation. He cited evidence that he said pointed to Teeter's active participation, including her willingness to tap on the wall of their motel room to warn Stephen Brown of any police in the in the area. Oh, my God. So, yep, the judge says that shows, in my view, a fixed determination to pursue it right to the end.
You, ma'am, may fuck off 20 years in state prison, 29 years in federal prison, but to be served concurrently.
Okay.
She was eligible for parole in 2024. We'll talk about it now. Debbie said she was satisfied with the sentence.
Yeah.
I mean, she said, yeah, not I do. She knows that Debbie's not going to get out of that. Patricia Teeter is not going to get out of prison and come Hunter. You know what I mean? It's that. So she doesn't really care. She said that Teeter had plenty of opportunity to escape from the motel, to call the cops, to help out. She ran errands for him all fucking day. She was out and about.
She was making phone calls to friends and shit. Debbie said, she told me I should go back to Steven and not be fearful of him and that he wasn't a bad guy. Now, Steven's going to appeal this sentence. Yeah, this sentence here. He claims he was prejudiced by the lack of fair notice of the charges against him.
Did he not think there'd be serious charges against him when he got arrested for murder and kidnapping? That is fucking wild, I think. Anyway, they said, if true, this would seriously affect the fairness, integrity, and public reputation of a judicial proceeding. Wow.
So, notwithstanding his protestations to the contrary, Brown's claim that he lacked fair notice of the charges against him cannot withstand even the mildest scrutiny, the court says. First, though the kidnapping count did not allege the kidnapping resulted in a death, the conspiracy count explicitly charged Brown with killing Wood and Brouillard.
Right.
Before entertaining Brown's guilty plea, the district court instructed the parties to file briefs on the issue of whether the death of any person resulted of kidnapping is an element of the offense or a sentencing factor.
The court ruled that the statutory provision issue was a sentencing factor that informed and informed Brown that if he pleaded guilty to the kidnapping charge, he would be sentenced to a mandatory life term in prison.
by the statute that's the federal kidnapping charges if the death of any uh if the death of any person results from it during a kidnapping thus brown was aware of the charges against him and of the corresponding penalties before entering his guilty plea keep on keeping on enjoy it yeah enjoy patricia's gonna gonna go ahead and try it too i said fuck it i'll give it a shot i'll appeal i'll throw down um that's wow i can't even believe he tried that so
They said during the changes, his teeters now during the change of plea colloquy, the district court questioned the appellant concerning her overall understanding of an acquiescence in the terms of the plea agreement, but did not direct her attention to the waiver provision.
As we've said, the validity of a waiver of appellate rights depends on whether or not the waiver was knowingly and voluntarily taken. This has to do with a lot of times included in a plea deal is a waiver of all appeals. That's part of it. They'll accept a plea deal, give you a lower sentence, but you're not going to clog the courts up with more shit.
OK, but there's sometimes when there's a waiver, but the the attorney didn't explain it. The judge wasn't explicit about it. So once in a while, that waiver will get thrown aside and you can still appeal anyway. And that's what she's trying to do here. They said that they asked her, do you understand that both you and the government will have a right to appeal any sentence I impose?
They said this unqualified query to which the prosecutor, not the same person who appears as counsel for the government in this court, inexplicably failed to take exception, drew an affirmative response from the appellant. The premise of this question directly contradicted the tenor of the waiver provision.
So given the court's failure to make inquiry to the waiver, it's unfortunate contradiction of the waiver's terms and the lack of any correction. or then or thereafter, we cannot say the, with the requisite assurance that the appellant surrender of her appellant rights was sufficiently informed. They talk about her role in the offense. Yeah.
The court says the facts can be marshaled in a way as to put the appellant in a more sympathetic light. The appellant's able counsel strives valiantly to transform the case into this fashion. He claims the appellant agreed only to spend a romantic weekend holiday away with her boyfriend in Maine, and what happened thereafter was largely out of her control.
The judge says that the judges say this spin does not carry the day, however, because the sentencing court was fully entitled to draw a different, more sinister set of inferences from the largely undisputed facts. So, you know, that's not how it works. And they tell her that it's affirmed. So take your ass back there. Now, 2012.
um stephen brown is in a facility they're in federal facilities by the way they're taken to so stephen brown she goes to she's in danbury for most of her time danbury connecticut there and he's at another facility uh he is in uh no he's in jessup georgia jesus christ yeah way far fucking away he went to jessup for christ sakes that's no good
So he's in a facility which houses about 1900 male inmates since about 2009. So 2012 is about three years. And they said that they couldn't release information about, you know, disciplinary issues and suicide attempts and violence or anything like that. But on this day in 2012, he does somehow figure out how to hang himself. He did it.
Good for you, Stephen. You finally pulled it off. You're finally successful at something, you fucking loser.
Fucking loser. You did it. It took you two tries, but you did it.
Two tries in 35 years? How fucking old is he? God damn it.
Jackass. He's 50 when he dies here.
Oh, fuck. First time he's successful, he's 50.
50. He goes for the same one that he failed on before. That's what bothers me. It's crazy. Anyway, Debbie says she's pissed off at this. She says, I do believe he took the easy way out because he didn't want to suffer behind those walls. She said her life still hasn't begun, still as trying to get back to normal, even though it's been 12 years. She still is, you know, 13 years. It's a disaster.
She says the nice thing is, quote, I don't have to look over my shoulders anymore. I don't have to live in fear. I can actually go out for outside and not be afraid to be out after dark.
And she was going to be like that for the rest of her life, even if he didn't do it, because she doesn't know if he's in that joint still. That's she always. Yeah. Didn't escape. Nobody found out yet.
Yeah.
That's what that's why she said that, you know, at one point I'm pissed off at him for whatever. But at the same time, now I know he's dead. I don't have to fucking worry about him anymore. Breaking out and coming and killing me. So there's been a couple TV shows on this, including Investigation Discoveries series Wicked Attraction called Till Death Do Us Part.
God damn.
how would they not call how did they okay the show's called wicked attraction yeah how did they get unless this is the first episode how did they get to this episode without using till death do us part as a fucking title for a show this is the first one you think that'd be at least in the top three right away well till death do us part i guess i'll bet every series 48 hours dateline all that shit has until death do us part they all do everybody yeah maybe that's what we'll call this one i don't fucking know we haven't used that yet
Maybe. I don't think so. It's kind of hacky, so I wouldn't use it probably. That's the thing. I try to come up with something weird or a reference to the show or something like that or just something that's eye-catching, but till death do us part just sounds boring.
So 2024, Patricia Teeter and her teeters are up for parole from Danbury at this point, and she is released from federal prison on November 11th, 2024. Wow.
Holy shit.
She is on the streets, babe.
Oh, my God. Telling her story.
The teats is on the streets.
We got teats on the streets, people. Watch out. Real dumb ones.
Yeah. One of the provisions should be you're not allowed to date anybody ever. You're too gullible to date. We're sorry.
You're too dumb. You'll do whatever they tell you to do.
Wow.
If there is a trailer, it's back there and it's not even listed as a home. It's listed as a dash bedroom, dash bedroom, bathroom, dash square footage. It's just land. Yep, that's it. They don't even have a Zestimate on it. It's just sitting there.
We don't know because it hasn't been sold in a long time.
No, it's off the market. It's probably been in the same family for 50 years. They don't know what the hell it's worth. So there you go, everybody. That is Lebanon, Maine. Jesus Christ. That's quite the fucking harrowing tale, I would say. That's wild. You're not going to get that all the time from different shows. That's some small-town murder shit right there.
Teeters don't stay in Connecticut, right? She can't afford Connecticut.
No. She's probably back in Newfield, I would imagine, because that's where she lived, somewhere in central New York there. Who knows? But watch out for the Teets, people.
They're out there.
Check that out. They're out there. So definitely, if you like this show, please let the world know about it. Get on whatever app you're listening on. Give us five stars. It helps a ton. Say something nice about us. It takes two seconds, and we can imagine how long it takes to put a story like this together. So help us out. Hook us up there. Do that. Also, shutupandgivememurder.com.
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Yeah, it's going so fast.
Madison, just about sold out. Portland may be sold out at this point, actually. It's possible, yeah. Seattle getting close. We got D.C. and Philly getting close. Chicago getting tickets.
Grand Rapids very close.
grand rapids very close to that might be sold out too it's close if it's not so get your tickets right now if you want to come see the show this year i'm telling you right now get in there and and get those damn tickets st louis too that sells really fast so if you want to see us there get in there shut up and give me murder.com also tons of merch on the site all the phrases you love to to tell people you want to tell people you sir may fuck off on a shirt we got you covered you can put it on your shower curtain we don't give a fuck it's sold
You can. Coffee, mugs, anything you want. So get in there. Do that. Certainly also follow on social media. We are at Small Town Murder on Instagram, at Small Town Pod on Facebook. Definitely get Patreon.
Holy shit.
Listen to Crime and Sports. Listen to your stupid opinions and get Patreon. Patreon.com slash Crime in Sports is where you get all of the bonus episodes. Anybody $5 a month or above, you immediately get hundreds of bonus episodes right to your phone or whatever you're listening on as soon as you subscribe that you haven't heard bonus stuff.
And then you get new ones every other week, one crime and sports, one small-town murder, and God damn it, you get it all. That's right. This week, what you're going to get, we're going to talk about Kobe Bryant's swept under the rug rape case there and see what happened with that. We have I mean, I don't know. I wasn't there. I don't know. But we have police interrogations.
We have depositions from everybody. And then everybody can see what they think. I don't know. Then for Small Town Murder, we are going to do an internet salad episode, which is when we kind of give you a sneak peek behind the curtain and show you what we do before we record, which is sit around, look shit up, see what people are doing today, and make fun of it. And that's what we're going to do.
All sorts of anything from the internet except politics. This is going to be light and easy, and neither of us are going to get into a rage. It's just going to be a lot of fun. Can't wait to do that. It was great last time, and we're jacked for it. People wanted it back, so we said, okay, let's fucking do it. That'll be fun. That is patreon.com slash crime and sports. Oh, one more thing.
You get a shout out, too, if you do that. And when do we do those shout outs? Say right fucking now. Jimmy, hit me with the names of the people who would never kill two members of my family and then kidnap us in a hotel room and make us do horrible things. Hit me with them right fucking now.
This week's executive producers are Jordan Bennett. Happy birthday, Jordan.
Happy birthday, Jordan Bennett.
They are moving back to England. That's bananas.
I heard that.
Good luck with that. Robin Hanaberry, happy birthday as well. Zach Bowles in Philly and Ashton Wilcox, thank you all so much for what you're doing. Thank you. Other producers this week are Peyton Meadows, The Land of Voodoo, Hoodoo, and all kinds of weird shit. What is that from?
Cool. That is, fuck, now I can't even remember. I forget what that's from. All kind of weird shit.
Voodoo, voodoo, and all kind of weird shit.
Maybe a baseball player made a baseball movie?
Yeah, it sounds like a hillbilly. Is it the guy that hates Pedro Serrano?
I don't know. That's what I was thinking at first. Yeah, maybe.
I don't know. Buttered Toast Legion president Jonathan Phipps said hello, James.
Well, hello there.
He said the buttered toast people are going to get mad. Happy Hour checking in in Memphis. Like an Autistic Child IG page. I don't know what that is. Okay. Don't like them too much. I'm not co-signing on it.
Keep your hands to yourself.
I don't know anything about it. Janice Hill. Amanda Potter. Oh, what is this? Octavio. Escamillo, Hotavio, or Octavio? I don't know which that is. Octavio, Octavio. A bad speller. Not so old Martha. What is it? Pierrick? Is that real? Pierrick? Is that a name?
Pierrick? Wow. Someone couldn't decide whether they wanted to be French or an American kid born in the 80s. They couldn't decide.
Nestor Barragan, Kern with no last name, Kali Gianniados. Yeah, that. Geoniadis. Something Greek. Let's just say that. Gareth Schneider. Crystal H. Stephen Mancuso. Anon Omos. You know what I mean. Alice Francis. Seth Tarcelli. Allie Watts. JC. The letters J, N, C. Megan Skeel. Maybe it's Megan. Lisa Press. J and D. The letters J and D. Sam Lowe. Ronikeve. Ronikeve.
That is a first name or a last name. Ronnie Cave. All right. Patrick Dobbins. Jason B. Haley Kruiser. Alexandra. Alexandra. Marie Turley. Turledge. Turley. That's Russian. All right. Charlotte Gervais. Caleb with no last name. Josie Zavala. Jennifer Stark. Stephen C. Kristen Taylor. Paul John. Hannah Barron. Kitcha Halloran. Meredith Hahn. Big Al Fitticale. Chris. Chris. Chris Hayward.
Amber with no last name.
Chris. Eureka.
Jan Valdezales. Valdezales. Saliche. Farm Junkie. Nice Lady. Ben Harden. Amy A. Ruby with no last name. Ken with no last name. Berber Sirsema. Terry Martin Miller. Jason Welcher. Todd with no last name. Jason Willis. Wilson. God damn it. Michelle Thomas. Chris Mosier, Chastity, Chastity. That's only one T. Chastity or Chastity? No, Chastity Smith.
Or maybe it is Chastity with an H in there for no fucking reason at all.
We don't know.
Jen King, Nicole Cochran, Hannah Johnson, Melissa A., Tyler with no last name, Jennifer Pienkowski, Jason Constant, Kim Bayer, Ian Arsenault, Cassie with no last name, Mick Jagger, probably not, Stephanie Witten. If it is, he should have sent me more than five fucking dollars, you cheap bastard, Mick.
He gets bored on the road. He needs more episodes. He's got kids, Jimmy. He's got small children. No, he's got small children now. He's like 90 years old. Yeah, brand new one. He just had a new kid recently. You've got to save that money.
Stephanie Witten, Rachel Santana, Jan Sommer. Oh, it's Jan. Jan Sommer. Stevie Mack, Ryan Sparks, Steve Peterson, Matthew Anderson, Jill Womack, Tima Wilson, Ronald Morton, Jade O'Hare, Karen Sprouse, Wendell Helm Jr., Pete Petticone. Pete Petticone. Carlo Ferraroni. Ferraroni. Delane. Delane. Ferraroni. Delane Ellison. Shady 307. A 320 driver. Annie. Annie. Annie Bailey. The Wolves.
That's the Wolves, you guys. You can't do an F. That's against... English tradition. Moxie Goodwitch, Jenny Michalski, Elizabeth Seavey, Robert Lorenzoni, Megan Good, Heather. Holy fucking shooting.
Heather. Holy fucking shit.
Schoenertaler. Wow. Whiskey smoker, Michelle Bozen. James likes Big Nuts. I'll bet you he doesn't. How about that? Somebody probably just heard. Remember, there was probably a sentence that you said you like Big Nuts. Had to be. Why else would somebody want me to say that to you? Jenny Bates. Claire Calder. Kurt Burkhart. Burkhart. Truck Butters. Adam Stockton. Fake Packers.
Faith Powers, Stephanie Riley, Brittany Hall, Alicia Douglas, David Adams, Egan with no last name, Melissa Burrows, Heath Peters, Maris Ann Carmichael, Mikey Mindy, Mindy Bird, Jess Barup. Jamie McGinnis. This is getting tough. Matthew Ford. Carolyn Green. C. Match. Jerry. Gary, maybe. Tulio. Sandy with no last name. Kayla with no last name. Katie Roach. Shannon Martin. Cass at Bodgarra Mill.
Bodgarra. Beverly Rosan. Katie Chandley. Kate Eiten. Maddie Ruder. Candy Nybert, Rose Logan Surgeon, Charlie Boland, Kelly Sullivan, Erica Copeland, Cheyenne with no last name, Victoria Summer Samar, Michelle with no last name, Tabitha Daly, Matthew Boyer, Don and Brett in Florida, and all of our patrons. You guys are the best. Thank you. Thank you so much, everybody.
You wonderful, fantastic bastards. We cannot thank you enough for what you do for us on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly basis. Thank you for everything. And tell your friends, keep hanging out with us. You want to follow us on social media, shut up at GiveMeMurder.com, drop down menus, take you everywhere you want to go. That said, until next week, everybody, it's been our pleasure.
Bye.
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He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Combs. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about.
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Yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down.
Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment, charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution.
I was f***ed up, and I hit rock bottom, but I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry. Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is The Rise and Fall of Diddy. Listen to The Rise and Fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Plus.