Breaking Badder - Mason City, Iowa

This week, in Mason City, Iowa, a smart young man has a very illegal idea to make some money, but all of this spins out of control leading to the cold-blooded murders of five people and a game of finger-pointing that can only be sorted out by secret recordings and midnight confessions. 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 Petrogallo. I'm here with my co-host. I am Jimmy Wissman. Thank you folks so much for joining us today on another absolutely crazy edition of Small Town Murder. We have a wild one for you today, just a real web of horrible people and things and it's creepy stuff. We will get to that before we do, though. Get your tickets at shutupandgivememurder.com. I think there's a couple left for Philly still, if you want to go to Philly in December, and you can still get your tickets for the virtual live show, happened last week, but you can still do it. Oh, it's such a fun show. So do it wherever in the world that you have internet. You can get this show. We dressed up in costumes and it was a great story, really wild and a lot of fun and very funny too. So get your tickets there. Shut up and give me murder.com. Also listen to our other two shows, Crime in Sports and Your Stupid Opinions, which are very funny shows. You should listen to those. Then get yourself Patreon. You want Patreon. Patreon.com slash Crime in Sports. This is where you get all of the bonus material. Anybody $5 a month or above, you're going to get everything we put out. First of all, hundreds of back episodes you've never heard before. All bonus episodes you'll get immediately upon subscription. Binge away on those. Then you get new ones every other week. One Crime in Sports, one small-town murder, and you get it all. This week we're going to talk about, for Crime in Sports, we're going to talk about when teams relocate and the drama that that causes. It's really funny how very upset people get about this. And teams sometimes sneak out. It's like ending a marriage. It's horrible. You have to sneak out in the middle of the night and you haul. It's nuts. So we'll talk about all that. Then for Small Town Murder, we're going to talk about the top haunted place in every state. Oh. And see which ones sound ridiculous and see which ones might actually sound a little bit spooky. So we'll check all that out. And more, that is Patreon.com slash Crime in Sports. In addition to all of that, all those episodes, you also get all the shows, Crime in Sports, Your Stupid Opinions, and Small Town Murder all ad-free with Patreon. Ad-free. And you get a shout out at the end of the show as well. So I just don't give you everything we have there. So do that. That's all we can give you. That's everything. You want a kid? I'll bake you a pie. I don't know what else to do. Patreon.com slash Crime in Sports is where you get all of that. And more, Disclaimer Time. This is a comedy show, everybody. But the murders are insanely real. There is nothing made up about these stories, nothing that is embellished for comedic effect or anything ridiculous like that. This is insanely researched and also going to be some jokes there. That's how we do it. But what we do make it nice is we never make fun of the victims or the victims' families. Why is that, James? Because we're assholes. But. But we're not scumbags. See how that works? It's real simple there. So if you think the true crime in comedy should never ever go together, this might not be the place for you. But it might be. Maybe give it a shot. It's possible. Give it a shot. Because the stories are so crazily, they're good. So tell them and we'll tell them to you and you make your own minds. But either way, no complaining later. No complaining. No complaining later. That said, I think it's time everybody to sit back. What do you say here? Clear the lungs. And let's all shout. Shout out. Shout out. And give me. Shout out. And give me. Murder. Let's do this, everybody. Okay. Let's go on a trip, shall we? We are going to Iowa this week. Let's do it. Mason City, Iowa. Oh, yeah. Mason City. You're forgettable. Yeah. This is in North Central Iowa. In the middle of nowhere, it looks like. It's about two hours to Des Moines. About two hours and 15 minutes to Cedar Rapids. So it's two hours from anywhere, really. It's about the same to like Sioux Falls over in the other direction. About three hours and 10 minutes to Bellevue, Iowa, which was our last Iowa episode, that was Death of the Dog Lady. I remember that one. Remember she had the dog grooming place and. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that was a crazy episode. Wow, it's been a minute. Yes. This is in, I believe it's, I'm going to pronounce it the way it should be pronounced. Who knows how they pronounce it in Idaho, but Cerro Gordo County. Did I say Idaho? I do that every time. Iowa. It's your favorite thing to mix up. It is. I'll throw Ohio in there. I'm sure at some point too. Cerro G-O-R-D-O. Cerro Gordo, correct? Yeah. Yeah, we're going with that. I know that, I know it's probably something different there, but. It's a native word and it's very difficult to do. We don't know. Area code 641, nickname here River City. Even though in the eastern part of the state, there's like actual big rivers, but they're going to go with River City here because I believe it's the, what is it, the Winnebago River or something goes by here. Yes. The Winnebago River and the Kalmas Creek converge here. All right. So obviously a little bit of history here for Mason City. It is known for its musical and masonry heritage. Oh, really? And big as far as there's a huge collection of a certain type of building here and architecture, the prairie school style of architecture. Do you know what that is? I'm a big fan of architecture, so I read up on this stuff between Mosaic. This is what prairie school looks like. Yeah. I mean, that's very obvious. It's just a lot of overhangs. What is that? It looks like a fucking beach umbrella. It kind of looks like one of those Japanese buildings that have like a roof on top of a roof. A lot of roofs and a lot of overhangs and things like that. That's, yeah, they describe it thusly here. Marked by horizontal lines, flat or hip roofs with broad overhanging eaves, windows grouped in horizontal bands, integration with the landscape and solid construction and craftsmanship. It reflects discipline in the use of ornament, which is often inspired by organic growth and scene carved into wood stenciled on plaster, colored in glass, vane marble, prints, paintings with a general prevalence of earthly, autumnal colors. I mean, you just said sounds like historical Japanese to me. It's a lot of roofs, but that way, that's all it really is. The town here, the first settlement in this area was around 1853 at the confluence of the Winnebago River and the Kalamaz Creek. The town had several free Masonic influence names, Shibboleth, Masonic Grove and Masonville until finally Mason City was adopted in 1855 in honor of a founder son, Mason Long. It was just the guy's name. First name. It wasn't, he had nothing to do with Mason shit. Reviews of this town here, because we've never been there. First of all, on niche, it has ranked the number 31 best places to retire in Iowa. So not 31st. There's 30 better places in Iowa? Is it? Not 31st in the country and not 31st best place in Iowa, best place to retire in Iowa. It's number 31. It's the 467th best place to retire in the United States. In the United States. Yeah. That is crazy that they like tout that as a thing. We're the number 31 place to retire in Iowa. In Iowa. Any more specific you want to beat? Wow. So here's some reviews. Here's five stars. I live there my whole life and everyone is a little dramatic when it comes to the flaws of the town. A little dramatic here. Every place has flaws. I think Mason is the perfect combination of big city but still local. It is not a big city, by the way. I've never heard of it. Yes, exactly. They think here they literally call it the city here. It's crazy. It has events for all ages going on all year long but especially in the summer when it's not freezing out. There isn't much crime and most people are nice. That's one idea of it. Some people say it's like 1920's Chicago with Al Capone gunning people down in the str... Oh, it's crazy here. You have no idea. It's Alfred Dohenger. He's just around the corner. It's basically like South Africa here. It was a Cape Town where you get robbed, step it out of the hotel, places like that. Three stars. Mason City is a small town that's always been small. That's better. It's the other person. It's got the big city. Who knows? Small town that's always been small. It wasn't once a sprawling metropolis. One time it was huge. Basically it used to be Chicago then they changed up. The local government seems to want to keep it that way. Do they? Okay. I don't think they're the ones keeping people out of Mason City, Iowa. I think it's just they don't know it exists unless they're retiring and they've gone through 30 other places and they end up here. There's been numerous companies that have tried to locate to this town but have been shut out. You guys are keeping progress from happening? Is that what you're saying? That's what the accusation is. There are plenty of jobs for the unskilled worker. The selection of restaurants is fabulous. However, the array of shopping choices is nearly nil. Oh, you got no shopping but all the food. That's three stars, I guess. Three stars here. That's a mall just a food court. No shopping. No shopping. Yeah, they shut down all the stores and let the food court open. Three stars. Been living here since I was born. Two now. Okay. Born and raised, motherfucker. You could have just lived here my whole life. Up to now. Up to now. I was born, I'm still here. As a teenager, Mason City is a good place for old people to come and drive around and do nothing. There's almost nothing here for me or others to do. Maybe go to one of the 55 churches or try the art museum. Downtown is nice looking but that's about it. Everywhere else are rundown looking houses and untrimmed lawns. Schools are good, I guess. I just wish there was more businesses and other recreational things to do for everyone so that I would like to go outside. You'd be better off going to some other town. You just described a small town in Iowa to me. Yeah, that a teenager lives in. That's why teenagers go, I can't wait to get out of this town. I hate it here. There's nothing to fucking do. That's why you leave and you'll come back later when you have three kids. You'll go, let's go back to that nice quiet town I have so my kids can be bored like I was. How many times can you do glow in the dark bowling? Yeah, it's boring. Two stars, a lot of crime in this town. Hopefully it gets better but the killing is really close. The killing. Oh! The killing. The killing fields of Iowa. That's what I mean. They make it sound like it's in Cambodia over here. This is insane. This is crazy. Come here, Rouge is happening. Then this is my favorite review of all time. This person hates this place and it's so much vitriol that it makes me like the place because it's ridiculous. The title of it is Hell Would Be Nicer. Oh shit. With three exclamation points, Hell Would Be Nicer. Hellfire and the Devil. That's what I'm looking for. This is a wild review. Where to begin? You just let it fly and he does here. Murder, arson, abductions, bestiality, gang killings, meth labs, panty thieves. High utility bills, no jobs, corrupt police, evil judges, minus 40 below wind chill, 90 degrees plus in high humidity all summer, vandalism, slum lords, religious freaks, backstabbing busybodies, horrible bland tasteless food, stay away! And the panty thieving. Panty thieving. Well, you know, it's 90 plus degrees out. You start to lose your mind and steal panties apparently. Or maybe with it that hot, your mom just misplaced them. Yeah, Eric is a bad fucking, he hates it here. My god. Not happy. He just named off all the bad things. Okay, people in this town, 27,385. Okay, so it's very small. Not a big city. Yeah, it's just a small city. It's a nice little, nice little size city. More women than men, about 51.2 percent. Women here, which is pretty high for a good size city. Women age is a little bit higher than the national average. It's 42 and a half. Family here, 50-50 is the usual for married. Here it's about 52 percent. You know, a lot of people with kids, it's that kind of place. You know, a lot of come here and do that and have kids and raise a family and hopefully nobody steals their panties. That's the, you know, you never know though. So crazy. That's the first time that's ever been mentioned. We've never seen that in a review. When we do this show, we do your stupid opinions, which is a show about reviews. Never heard that one before. Panty-fieving. Race in this town, 89.5 percent white, 2.1 percent black, 1.2 percent Asian, 5.6 percent Hispanic. Religion in this town, 67.6 percent religious. Wow. 50-50 is the norm. So very religious. And the top religion here is Lutheran. Yeah, that's the best. I would have guessed that. Yeah, there's a mild Lutherans over there. Yeah, got some Methodists. Even Kiehl. Yeah, got some Methodists, Presbyterian or two over here. You know, only a few Baptists, that kind of thing. There you go. Unemployment here is just below the national average. So there's jobs to be had. I don't know if they're good, but they're there. There's something. Median household income in the rest of the country, it's about $69,000 here. It is $56,009. So not terrible. Don't want to write. Right. The place, and we'll find out if it's maybe the cost of living here is also a little bit, it's lower than other places. So that helps a lot here. And if we've convinced you that the only place to be for you is Mason City, Iowa, we have for you the Mason City, Iowa real estate report. The average two bedroom rental here goes for $840. So that's very affordable. Yeah, 400 less than the national average. Here's a house here. Two bedroom, one bath, 668 square feet. Jeez. Small house built in 1940. I'll show you a picture here. Kind of looks like it's falling apart. Oh, it looks like a weekend getaway. Yeah. I don't think you want to spend your weekends at 908 6th Street, Southwest and Mason City, Iowa. I don't think that's your big hotspot. Southwest. And there is no pictures of the inside. So you know, it's nice in there. Oh, it's yeah. They want to keep it a secret to keep the people so that from bum rushing it, you know what I mean? Getting in there and causing a bidding war. All the allure you're getting out of this place. The listing says some of the demo has already occurred. And now you can put your, it's falling apart is what that means. And now you can put your own touches on this one. Do a roof, bring your tools and make this home a gem again. Bring your tools. 50,000 bucks for that. $50,000 and 10 grand in tools. That's it. Here is a three bedroom, one bath, 1200 square feet built in 1921. It's a nice, you know, it's adorable. It's a nice little house. Decent 1200 square feet. Not terrible. Not a big yard. It's only 6500 square foot lot. Not terrible. Not 24,500 bucks for that. And then finally, you've been doing well for yourself here. We have a five bedroom, three bath, 5,004 square foot. Big ol' house. Rich. Yeah. 1.91 acres on a lot. So not bad. The house, if you look at the picture, it looks like it's three quarters garage. Yeah, it is three cars, right? Three car garage. Is that the biggest one? That's a three car garage and then the house, which is like the same width, but it's a big place. The house looks like it has ears. What's that? I don't know. There are two chimneys. Oh, okay. Fireplaces. Right above the door too. It looks like it has. Yeah. A very different room. I don't know. Or maybe they have them like you walk in the door, you're surrounded by fireplaces on both sides. Not sure. 605,000 bucks for that though. Holy shit. Which in anywhere else, that's a very expensive house for 5,000 square feet and it's brick too. And two acres too. That's a lot. Yeah, two acres. Yeah, it says it offers spectacular lake views and a lifestyle designed for entertaining and relaxing. Yes, sir. Not bad. Yeah. I'm into it. Things to do here. Okay. We have the North Iowa Band Fest. Oh boy. Yeah. This one's not going to have Ludacris and Nellie at it though. This is for local bands, unfortunately. The Ludacris tried to get in this one and they wouldn't let them. They're like, listen man, county fair only for you. This is local event. We can't have you in here. The theme for the 86th North Iowa Band Festival is the sounds of Iowa. No. Celebrating the heart and soul of our great state. A lot of heart and soul in Iowa. Mason City's signature summer event, the North Iowa Band Festival, celebrated its 86th weekend hosting the largest free marching band competition in the Midwest. Oh boy. That sounds like a nightmare. One fucking band can... They go, next one comes up. It's playing Louis Louis all day. Over and over, same shit with that tuba. Is it free marching band or they're just free marching? It's free to attend. Okay. That's what the frame is. Yeah. They have the John Adams Middle School Band. We'll kick off the event. That's what I want to see. A bunch of 12 year olds playing a band. Followed by who aren't my kids especially. Followed by the Mason City Municipal Band, the whole city's band. Then the quote, the talented Mason City High School Orchestra will perform. Oh boy. Great. The Mason City High School Jazz Band will be there. On the main stage will be Will Barnett and company. And headlining the night will be Trophy Dads at 8 p.m. Oh. They don't sound like a school band. On Saturday you have a lot going on too. You got an award ceremony. Noah Harris will get the music started on the main stage by three followed by of Old Magic at 4 p.m. B.Y.O. Brass will make their band a festival debut. Bring your own brass everybody. And not quite brothers will take the stage at 8 p.m. to close out the evening. Four step brothers? Four step brothers or four white guys. Either one who aren't related. They also have the festival King and Queen. Which is gotta have that. There the perennial marching band powerhouse, Lake Mills High School. Oh yeah. Claimed the Meredith Wilson Grand Champion Award. Which is awarded to the high school marching band with the highest overall score. Fucking powerhouses man. Wow. And apparently if you get invited to this they reimburse all your travel and all this type of thing. Your whole band can come for free basically here. Wow. NSB Bank took home first place for the quote Mr. Toot Award. Mr. What? Mr. Toot Award. Which I believe you won that just for your gas output one year didn't you? It wasn't that a...that's on your shelf I believe. I showed up with a case of eggs and I was like I'm crushing all of you. And they were like it's just cocaine man. Leveled brother. Mr. Toot Award. Which is presented to the entry with the most originality, artistic quality and well crafted design. Okay. Okay. Crime rate. What we're interested in. Now remember. Panty thieves, gangs, beasties. It's so bad. You can't let your kid outside. He'll be gone in three seconds and be... Dangerous. Hung upside down skinned in a tree before you know whether Panty's missing. Before you even know it. Crime rate in this town. The property crime is a little bit high. Oh. It's about one quarter above the national average. So there's some property crime. That's Panty Thief. Now violent crime, murder, rape, robbery and of course assault. Murders are getting close if you remember. About half the national average. Oh. That's incredibly safe. It's very safe here. You guys are out of your mind. Except for your Victoria's Secret. That's gone. Yep. The problem they have here mainly is drugs because it's the Midwest and small towns. That's cold. Remember that teenager talking? Yeah. What do you think he's going to do to try to find something to do? He's either going to get out of here or do drugs. One of the two. So that said, let's talk about some murder here. Here we go. We have a wild one here. We have to go back in time first of all to Sunday, July 25th, 1993. Okay. It is 3 p.m. on a nice Iowa summer day. It's not a real, real hot day. But it's cloudy on and off. Might rain. Never know. Now, by the way, July 25th, 1993. What do you think the number one song on the Billboard charts is that day, Jimmy? Was it Voice to Men? No, it wasn't. 93? It wasn't. Was it, uh, there it is? No, no, no. That was later. That was like 96. Was that, that was later? This is Can't Help Falling in Love by UB40. Oh, wow. God damn it. Remember them? Yeah. I know all their songs and then they did them again. Never mind. I think, by the way, I think that's what Diddy's idea. He saw UB40 and he was like, okay, if a bunch of white dudes with red hair can do remakes of reggae songs and do it into reggae, I can do anything. I can remake a Led Zeppelin song and make money off of it, whatever the fuck I want. Sting coming for you. I think he figured it out. It's all remakes. It's all remakes. Jamaican swing with their accent too, right? They're like the house band at some bar in the Florida Keys. That's what they are. Yeah. A bunch of non-threatening red-haired dudes playing steel drums and fucking pretending to be reggae. I can't help falling in love with you. Yeah, they said, with you. Yeah, like he's a... Same thing around. Yeah, it's all reggae shit. Yeah, why did they do that? That's not how you sing. Nope. And so around this time also you had Janet Jackson, SWV and Mariah Carey all that number one hits too. In the theaters, I just find this interesting, in the theaters, number one movie that week was In the Line of Fire. What was it? In the Line of Fire. Wow, Harrison Ford. The Clint Eastwood special Secret Service movie. Is that not Harrison Ford? No, I think this is the one where Clint Eastwood's the Secret Service agent, I think. Jurassic Park, number two. Oh yeah, yeah, that's a good one. Cliffhanger, last action hero, Incentive of a Woman in there too. What a time to be alive. Wow, you got Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Al Pacino, Dinosaurs and Clint Eastwood. What a time. That's wild. Now back to the day we're talking about. Jeff Goldblum. July 25th, 1993. Back to now. Nice summer day, like I said. There's a woman named Marge Milbrath. Old Marge here. She's driving to the grocery store and she drives by her daughter's house. As you do. As you do. Her daughter's name is Lori Duncan. She's 31. Lori's a single mom. Got a couple little girls. Got a six year old and a 10 year old. And as she's passing, as Marge is passing by, Lori smiled and waved and said, hi mom. She said hello and went on to the grocery store. Now Lori, we'll talk about her, the daughter here who has two young children. She and her parents are Marge and David. Lori was in the Navy. She's a Navy veteran. Oh. Honorable discharge and all that sort of thing. She's got her two little girls now and she's a single mom just into raising her kids. That's what she likes to do. Just likes to raise her kids and concentrate on her kids. She works and you know, raises her kids and that sort of thing. And she's from Mason city. She's born and raised in Mason city. Well she was born and then stayed here up till now. Well yeah, absolutely. Well yeah, she went in the Navy at first. She's a big fan of Elvis. Loves Elvis. That's her shit. Elvis is her favorite thing in the world and she's known for always finding the good in people. She can always find something good about somebody. Yeah. Which is a nice quality that I wish I had. It's very, very nice. Well you can find it in them but you just don't. That's after I've already buried them in the pad of who they are. You've already murdered them in your head. Yeah, it's not good. She has two daughters. One is Candy with a K and an I by the way. Oh. Not your traditional. Not the traditional candy spelling. She is 10 years old at this point and she's in fourth grade, super in kittens and stuff like that. You know, like a fourth grader. I like kittens and playing outside. You know, easy. She goes to Hoover Elementary School and then there's another little girl she has who's six named Amber and she's known as very outspoken and energetic. Great. She calls her a spitfire. That's the word that keeps coming up. She's railing to ride in her big wheel as we all are. If I had a big wheel I'd be into riding it too. Right now. I'd do it today. Fuck. Today. I'd be in the cars on them. I kind of want to do it. So awesome. That would hurt though. If you're going over three miles an hour, any rock would be like, oh God, my spine. Jesus Christ. Just sit on the ground. I'm going to pinch a nerve every time I ride it. Oh man. I swear any back problems we have now can be attributed to big wheel usage at three years old. Really? Any cycle that I rode up until I was 14. Totally. And now Lori on this day, she has a picnic planned for the kids. Now Amber who's six years old is playing across the street at a friend's house right here. Just right, you know, you can see her right there. It's, you know, small town, little street. And so she's got a picnic planned. Now there's another person who lives in this environment in this house who just moved in. Just moved in this week basically. That is Gregory Nicholson. Is this a love interest? He's 34 years old. Well, it kind of starts out that way. Yeah, where it looks like it's kind of like her boyfriend, but he just moved in not based on the fact that they're, you know, so far in their relationship that he needs to move in. They've actually not known each other very long at all. Well, Lori knew that Greg had dealt drugs before and been had a drug problem before. But he said he's in rehab and he's trying to be clean. He's trying to bleed a better life and all that and he has nowhere to live. So Lori lets him move into the home with her and her baby, which is a questionable decision from Lori. Yeah. I mean, she's a good mom and she wants to find good in people, but you got a guy who has been busted and stuff and does drugs and has dealt drugs and now he says he's in rehab. You don't bring that person in with your two little girls. That's tough. Generally when you're rehabbing, it's more than just weed and it's a pretty serious problem if you've got it. If you need adult help. Well, not only that. Yeah. It's you need a lot of, plus you just don't know how you don't know this person. Yeah. So you don't know what. And it's a severe drug addiction that he needs to be guided through it. Yeah. He needs to be in rehab and it's just, it's a lot. So I mean, it's fine to help people too. Yeah. They're trying to turn their life around. That's great. But I'm just saying if you have two little girls, you might want to say, okay, you rehab out there and when you're clean for a couple of years, then let's talk and we'll talk about it then. But you know, she's trying to help a guy, which is nice. You know, it's a nice thing to do. She's trying. Now, Amber, the six-year-old, she spent a lot of time outside. She plays with a neighbor named Brittany across the street and she's hanging out with her all the time. They play with Barbies and ride the big wheels and do all that kind of thing. So on this particular day, they were splashing on a slip and slide. So you can't get any more small town America. Small town 1993. Little girls on a slip and slide out in the yard in the middle of July where mom has a picnic across the street, waiting like this is so small town. And there's a guy recovering from a meth problem living in the back room. This is small town America, everybody. So about 3 p.m. comes around and Amber runs home across this little alley excited for the picnic. She goes home to mom. She goes to her house, goes in the house and Brittany said, waves goodbye to her and that's that. So that's how this goes. Now the next day, you figure the kids must have had a great night. Nice picnic, nice evening, summer night, nice cool summer evening as the sun goes down. The next day, March, Lori's mom drives by the house again and says that the drapes were drawn, which they're never drawn. So by the hell of the drapes drawn in the middle of the day and the cars near the house were parked as she put it, chaotically. They weren't parked lined up straight, which is very unlike her daughter. Her daughter's a military person. So the beds are made and the cars are lined up correctly. They're always parked correctly. She likes symmetry. You know what I mean? So she said, you know, maybe she was in a rush and came in and was in and out. Who knows what she's doing? So she left it alone. She said later on though, her now Marge and her husband drove by and everything was the same and they're like, okay, now this isn't right. Still chaos? Still chaotic, drapes still drawn. Looks like nothing's moved, which is not the way it happens in this sense. You know, Lori's got stuff to do. Kids have places to go. So now they're convinced something was wrong. So they decide to let themselves in. They have a key. Okay. They go up, they let themselves in, they open the door. Nothing in there. No people. No people. Everything's fine. It's not like, on this show, you expect they open the door and there's an arm swinging around the ceiling fan and there's, you know, somebody's brain is on the kitchen. The place is ransacked. Yeah. No. It's just quiet. There's no, no people are here. No Lori, no Amber, no candy. No kids. No kids. All the stuff is in the house. Nothing's moved. Nothing's been touched. You know, stuff's, remote controls on the coffee table and you know, everything looks fine. So how are we supposed to go? Food in the fridge. She has two small kids and everything's still where it goes. Everything's still where it goes. Yeah. So there's, there's no signs of anything. There's no like, nothing's broken, knocked over. There's no blood. There is a dinner unfinished on the kitchen table. Just one? Just a dinner is set up. Oh, okay. Okay. A dinner. Dinner. Yeah. Not a plate of dinner. An event of dinner is unfinished. Yeah. So we don't know if it's that day's dinner or what. Yeah. If they, you know, left it. They said, you know, it looks like they'll go into Lori's room. It looks like, you know, maybe like a couple of things are gone. Like maybe Lori, it looks like she packed to go for a night maybe or something. That's it. And then there's a note to a neighbor. Okay. And it said, Phyllis had to leave on short notice will be in touch shortly. Love Lori. Okay. Okay. And she was like, why wouldn't she tell us that she's leaving? Why she leaving a note for Phyllis? Why didn't she call her mom? She knew I'd be worried. This is crazy. So she says, oh, I guess they left. I don't know. I guess she'll be back soon. According to her note, it's in Lori's handwriting and everything. So she goes, all right, well, that seems legit. And there's that. The problem is they never come back. Not soon. They never come back. No, the mom, no, the mom, Marge, she ends up putting a missing persons report because they can't just disappeared in the thin air. They left. We'll be back shortly and they never come back. So very strange stuff. Just commercials all day now. Milk cartons everywhere. That's how it works. Now, let's talk about a young man now here. Dustin Lee Honkin. H-O-N-K-E-N. Honkin. That is Honkin. He's Honkin. All right. Now, Dustin's 24 in 1993. He is originally from Brit, Iowa, which is outside the Mason City area. We got in the more rural area there. Pretty small town. He has an interesting background, Dustin. His father, Jim, is a fucking drunken lunatic. And I mean a drunken lunatic who's a criminal and does wild shit. Not even your basic criminal. Like, you know what I mean? He's not like a guy. I got busted with drugs. He robs banks and shit. He's nuts. Oh, wow. Totally different type of deal. He has two sons. He's got Dustin and he's got Jeff. There's another son here. And he's got a sister also named Alice Nelson. That's a sister's name. One more. That's the first name? A-L-Y-S-N-E-L-S-O-N. Alice Nelson. Couldn't decide between Allison and Nelson, so you're Alice Nelson. Wow. Yeah. Real weird. Now, Dustin is the younger brother and he is a fucking nerd. Really? Oh boy, is he a nerd. I mean, he's a little skinny blonde kid with freckles and big glasses and... Loves books. Yeah, he is like the kid who got attacked by fucking bees in that My Girl movie. That's what he looks like. He's a goddamn nerd this kid. He's skinny. He's real skinny too. So he's really just a lanky kid. Everybody says he looks like he is like getting ready to try out for revenge of the nerds into the next generation. Like that's what he looks like. He's like a stereotypical nerd basically. Freckles and big glasses and the whole deal. So he's also very smart too. Which if you're going to look like a nerd, at least get good grades. That's the worst. Yeah, just... Yeah, don't. Those kids who look like nerds and have big glasses and are skinny and goofy and are dumb, they have their... Can't answer. That's not fair, man. God damn thing. I'm cheating on you, you fucker. Figure it out. I saw the glasses. I figured you knew what you were doing. What the hell? I just have bad eyesight. I'm not smart. What's with the Howdy Doody Cosplay? If you're not smart, you son of a bitch. Yeah, just shit together, asshole. So now he's into math and science. He was a pretty good writer too, but math and science are his main deals. When he graduates from high school, he earns a scholarship to the North Iowa Area Community College. That's all. Say that again. That's the North Iowa Area Community College. This is the community of the North Iowa area. That's 1991. There's a lot of towns. There's a lot of stuff there. He dreamed of being a pharmaceutical lawyer, which I didn't know was a job. Is that a job? I guess you'd have to. A lawyer for a pharmaceutical company. How many lawsuits is he... So specific. ...figuring they're getting so specific? I don't know, but it's not like he had Google to look it up and go, ooh, pharmaceutical lawyers, they make a lot of money. He must have pulled that out of his ass. Now the family business is a little different than pharmaceutical lawyering or math or science or anything like that. Well, this is interesting. His father, after Dustin graduates high school, his father convinces him. I don't know if Dustin got a part-time job there, or if he knew somebody and could get around the building and be comfortable, but he convinced Dustin to steal a key to the local bank and copy it. Then his father robbed the bank using the key. Yeah. That's how that works. What the fuck else would he use them for? Well, he just wanted to go in and decorate for Christmas. Just in case you get locked in, son, you can call me and I can get you out. You want to go in and decorate the tree a little better? That's all. He's like, this place, they don't go all out. I'd like them to... I'm going to fill up the Dundas. Put an apahanica thing. Yeah. Put it up, too. Just so everyone feels included. Now, the second bank robbery that happens, because that's the first one. Wow. The second time his dad robs a bank, his dad gets busted and ends up in prison for bank robbery, where his sons would visit him all the time, Jeff and Dustin, and he would tell them, oh, man, he would just give them stories of his criminal exploits, and this is what I'm doing in here, and I got a scam set up over here, and I got a scam set up here. I got something going on the outside. What was it, 1843 on the dusty trail, and you got stories to tell? That's what he does, though. This guy, he brags to his sons about how much of a criminal he is. What the fuck is that? Obviously, it's not like he's saying, do as I say, not as I do. He's having them steal keys for him. Right. And copying them. Initiating them into a life of crime, which is ridiculous. Making them an accomplice. Yeah. If you look up to your dad, and your dad's telling you, this is what I'm doing, and it's great, you go, well, maybe I should be doing that. Now before he starts at the North Iowa Area Community College, he needs money. Yeah. Because his dad's in jail, and he's doing all this. And this shit ain't free. He starts selling a little bit of weed and a little bit of Coke on the side here, which is, I can understand that. Just a little subsistence just to get by, pay the rent. A little bit here, a little bit there, yeah. And he's starting to build a list of customers as he goes, because he's also a nerd, so he's pretty efficient at doing shit like this, which is interesting here. Then he goes to a year of his community college, very into chemistry. That's his main deal. Got an A in chemistry. All about that. And he has an idea. He's like, huh. Suitofed and battery acid. I know chemistry, and I know people who like drugs, and will buy them from them. I should make my own. This is the very first Breaking Bad. I was going to say this story, by the way, I didn't want to give it away, but this story, when you hear the whole thing, you're going to go, so dude just copied this story and made Breaking Bad. That's crazy. Basically, essentially. And put cancer into it instead of this. What's going on? But I mean, it's... Give him a reason to do it. Yeah, to make him a protagonist instead of just a drug dealing asshole. Right, right. You're going to be likeable. Yeah. When you hear the whole story, you're going to go, oh my god, this is Breaking Bad. That's what happened. That's crazy. So, he said, yes, I can do this. He goes, and I can manufacture and distribute. I don't have to buy it for a... No middleman. No middleman, especially by the time the drugs get to Iowa, the price has been jacked up quite a bit. Sure. It's not like you're waiting on the dock for them or something. So, he said, I can do this, and why work for somebody else? I could be my own boss. This is great. Dad always told me, be your own boss. Get out there and be somebody. Don't make somebody else's profit. Don't be frontline, be CEO. Absolutely. So, he's got a friend named Tim Cutcomp. C-U-T-K-O-M-P. Cutcomp. Yeah. That is his best friend since childhood, Dustin's best friend. Now, they decide after a year of college and chemistry, let's move to Arizona to make math, and then we can sell it back here in Iowa and get rich. Yeah, it's very easy to do that out in the desert of Arizona. And that's what they do. They get a place outside Tucson, which if you know anything about Arizona, you can do anything you want out there. No one cares. There's nothing going on. They've been best friends since the first grade, by the way. Now he is, I guess, Dustin as kind of nerdy and he's kind of a temperamental guy as well, Cutcomp looks up to him like with wide-eyed admiration. He thinks that Dustin's like a tough guy and someone who'll always protect him and have his back. Well, how much of a pussy is he? How much of a nerd is he? That's what I mean. This is crazy. So, either way, they're in this endeavor together. They share the profits and everything else, but everybody knows that Dustin is in charge, period. He's the leader of the crew here, no matter what. Kingpin, James. Kingpin. Well, to get started, he borrowed $5,000 from his brother Jeff, Dustin does, and they bought chemicals and equipment and started working and experimenting in his brother Jeff's kitchen on making meth. Holy shit. I mean, imagine you were going to make jarred soup. You'd really have to experiment for a while and try different methods and batches and this one needs more sugar and this one needs more pseudofed. The brewery until you get the recipe perfect. You perfect when you do that in your garage. I mean, you don't just start making meths producing the shit. So within a year, they moved to a secluded house south of Tucson out in the desert somewhere. God dang. South of Tucson. South of Tucson. Shit. I was like, that's Mexico. There's nothing else south of Tucson. Sierra Vista. That's it. Yeah. I guess that's sort of south, but it's also off. It's a mess anyway. So they get together a sophisticated meth cooking setup and they produce several pounds of methamphetamine at a time. Wow. And they sell here, which they would send it back to Northeast Iowa and have it sold there. Sure. They have two mules that do this for them, that take the shit to Iowa and sell it for them, guys they can trust. One is a guy named Terry Deguiz, or Deguiz, D-E-G-U-E-S. So you're Deguiz, whatever it is. He's 32 at the time. He's a heavy equipment operator who works for his father and also runs meth back from Arizona to Iowa, sells it. Probably has a pretty good addiction, yeah? Yep. Sells, sends back the profits. The other is a guy named Greg Nicholson. Now Greg Nicholson is the man that Lori Duncan allowed into her home because he had a pretty good meth problem. He had a meth problem and was in rehab. So that's where he comes in, Greg Nicholson. Now he is the other guy who goes back and forth. Now Dustin is really into this. He looks at this business like he started a real business. Yeah, because he did. He might as well have started like a barber shop or something where he's like, no, no, no, the chairs, we're going to have magazines and then we're going to have screens. We'll have screens in the mirrors built in. You ever been to a hotel room in the bathroom, they got screens in there? That's what we're going to do. It's going to be awesome. That way the guys can watch stuff. Red vinyl in the chairs. Little bit of glitter in the vinyl. You never know. You never know. Just put the red with the glitter. That's how you do it. Just so they know it's fancy, fancy. Yeah, it's got to be like a 50s soda shop. We'll do that. We'll do that. Oh, shave, shave, shave, shave. We've got to do close shave, straight razor, shave. We'll get foamy shit. Foamy, lather. We'll foam the guys up. Hot leather. Hot leather. That's it. Hot leather. That's what he's doing though, because he's also on math. So he's studying chemistry textbooks at the local library, reading science journals. He keeps like very good business records. He could open a real business. That's what's so annoying about this. This is unnecessary. So he keeps really good records. He makes plans to expand his business onto the internet when the internet, because this is the very beginning of the internet. He thinks that there's just going to be math sites? He's right. There is. Is there a math site? Absolutely. The dark web you can buy anything you want on there. He knows that. And especially back then. I thought you meant like math.com. No, no. In chat rooms and shit. Obviously, they can't have a, you know. They can't have a math site. No, like that. But I mean, there was a way to do this on the web. And he was thinking about it in 1993 when all people were doing was, you know, chatting in rooms and trying to fuck each other and jerking off to... He's figuring out how to word this properly on Craigslist. Before Craigslist. He's like Dustin's List I need to make. And then I can put ads up for whatever I want here. Yeah. This is that kind of time. So he is making plans to do that. He's even mulling over whether to write a how to book on producing and selling Meth in America. Oh, sir. What are you doing? No. Why would you want other people? Okay. I could see if you could sell 10 million copies of it, then that's your new job. But how many people are like, oh, I'd like to buy and sell Meth in America. How many people are going to buy this book? You know, Apple, uh, and have to wear with all. Show me how to make this iPhone and, uh, and then we don't have to buy him anymore. It makes no sense here. But I mean, what's the market for a how to book on producing and selling Meth? What's the market for that? I don't see anybody wanting that unless they have a methodic and then they don't want to steal it. Yeah. Well, and then they just steal it anyway. They're still going to buy it. No one's going to buy this shit. So a few runs just to Iowa back and forth nets them hundreds of thousands of dollars. Really? They're making big money because the meth is free basically. And then they're taking it to the middle of the country where it's expensive and offloading. And they have tons of buy. They can't make the meth fast enough to sell. This is before the, uh, restraints on cough medicine. Oh yeah. They can make as much of this shit as they want. Plus if you're in Tucson, you can just go to Mexico and get it for half the price, which is why they're in Mexico. Why they're in Tucson so they can get shit cheaper in Mexico too. Smart. So they can do that. Yeah. It's cheaper than having to, you know, go to Iowa. So the problem is he's also super into meth as he gets it going. He starts doing a bunch of meth, which is an issue. And that makes him really obsessive about the whole business. Unreliable. Yeah. Not unreliable, obsessive. Oh. His detail orientated nature becomes. Psychotic. Psychotic and detail oriented. And he's just, everything needs to be perfect. He wants success. And if we're doing it this much, if we did it this much more, we could make even more money. All right. He starts getting obsessed here. And on one of the trips back to Iowa, he meets a woman who shares his entire ambition, love of meth and love of money and also, you know, lack of, lack of compassion for anything else here. This is Angela Johnson. She's 29. So a few years older than, than him. They're going to hook up here. Eventually they're going to have a kid together and everything. Now, a little bit about Angela's background because it is wild. Okay. She's got a mom named Pearl. She's got four siblings. Wendy Holly, Jimmy and Jamie Joe. Jamie Joe. Jamie Joe. They got a Jimmy and a Jamie Joe. Jamie Joe is a, I've never heard that one. Me neither. I feel like they had to add the Joe just so they wouldn't mix up Jimmy and Jamie all the time. Well, they recall. Jamie, get over here. Did you say Jimmy Joe? Maybe. Who knows? Yeah. I don't know if it's a boy or a girl, Jamie Joe. Jamie Joe goes for both, I suppose. That's where it works. Now she's from Forest City. She's a nice looking lady. Has dark hair and big, a lot of hair. She is very attracted to him. I'm not sure if she's attracted to Dustin because he's got just a house full of meth or not, but either way, she was dating DeGaess or DeGaess or whatever his name is. When Dustin meets her, that's her boyfriend. Oh. So, we'll talk about that, but Johnson grew up in a very interesting environment we'll talk about here. Raised single parent by Pearl, who was extremely emotionally unstable, mom was, subjected the kids to fasting practices. That's starvation. That's weird. Young periods of abandonment and physical detachment, occasional physical abuse, and not good basically with the things they do. There's even more, but eventually Angela ends up just having a string of awful men that she goes, every guy she goes out with is worse than the last one. They're abusive, they're on drugs, they're criminals. And she had a terrible mother. Oh, it gets worse. She was psychologically abused the most, more than physical, although she was physically abused. When she was a child, when she was bad, her mother and other adults would sit her down and engage in exorcisms on her. Exorcisms? Torture a child because they said that she's got the devil in her because she's misbehaving. They would cast out spirits and do other weird religious practices to her. She was also molested at one point here. She I guess her family went to spend time with this other family in Kansas when she was nine years old and she was sexually abused and fondled by a guy named Ted Dillo. Ted Dillo. That's what she claims. Her grandparents were even more religious than mom. And they were known to hold her down, wave Bibles over her and speak in tongues as well. Imagine if you were a kid and your grandparents are holding you down, telling you you're possessed by demons and they're speaking in tongues screaming at you. And that's a happy Saturday because at home there's people that are molesting me. Yeah, well, that was one summer. This is all the time. Yeah, that was one visit to Kansas got her molested, but this is a whole other time. Either way, this is horrifying. That's a lot. But now she gets into the whole meth thing here and said at first it was about the money, but unfortunately later it turned into wanting methamphetamine. Oh boy. That's what it is. Now March of 1993, everything's going great for Dustin and his whole, you know, he's got a whole operation. Yeah, yeah. It's going great. The problem is that neither he nor his buddy there who's working for him, neither he or CumCop or whatever his name is, neither of those guys know that there's somebody in their team got busted and has been informing on them. Oh, shit. Which is not good. One of the dealers didn't even take it, take that into account as a possibility. Never thought about it. No, they thought everything's going great. Yeah. One of them had turned on him and wore a wire even to a meetup with them and recorded Dustin making a $3,000 deal for a future meth pickup. So the cops end up going to Dustin's Mason City home, which is at 1104 16th Street, Northeast, which I looked it up. Here's a picture of it. It's one of those houses that looks like it's always having a yard sale. Yeah. Because all of their shits outside doesn't look positive. How much is that? It is a two bedroom, one bath, 832 square foot house for $66,000. And it's, it's what it looks like. And there's way too many cars for how big it is. There's two bedrooms and six cars. It's too much. A lot of shit outside. A lot of shit outside. Furniture and weird stuff like that. Now, so they end up, Dustin and Cut Comp end up getting arrested in March of 1993 on what is at first state drug charges. But it's going to expand to a federal charge when they realize it's not just in Iowa. The police arrested him and in Dustin's pocket, they found a note listing money owed to Dustin. He's keeping his, his tall, his fucking, his tally with him. Yeah. Sorry. Wow. Just on his person all day. And these were individuals referred to as G-Man and T-Man. Which is Terry and Greg Nicholson. Yeah. There's two dealers. What happens when he meets a guy named Todd? That's all, well, Todd doesn't work for him. These are the two pieces. Well, if he hires one, you know what I mean? Well, it's got to be T-O and T-E-Man at that point. What a pain in the ass. A receipt for the purchase of chemicals was found in Cut Comp's pocket as well. Which is not good either. After Dustin was arrested, the brother Jeff disposed of items from Dustin's drug lab that he had kept in one of Jeff's storage sheds. So he had like, you know, backup drug lab shit there. Oh, this is my backup meth lab in case something happens to this one. So Jeff throws all that shit out so he doesn't get arrested too. Now while preparing for trial, this is like the wire. Remember in the wire, I think it's season two when they bust Avon and he's got all that weapons and grenades and shit around him. And fucking McNulty puts the warrant in front of his face and he goes, this is, I'll give you something to think on here. And it says the informant and it says Russell Stringer Bell on there. And he's like, oh shit, that's what he does here basically. They show him the warrant and they go, look at that. And that tickles you a little bit, doesn't it? And they said the prosecution source for all this is Nicholson, his dealer. And Lori's new housemate. Oh fuck. Yes. So Nicholson testifies before a federal grand jury in April and the grand jury indicts Dustin for conspiracy to manufacture methamphetamine and the state charges are dismissed and now they are federal charges. Oh no. Which carry way more time and are a lot worse, a lot easier to get convicted on. Nicholson had agreed to cooperate with law enforcement and told agents that Dustin had supplied him with several pounds of methamphetamine over a period of 10 to 11 months for which he paid Dustin a total of approximately $100,000. Wow. On March 21st, 93, Nicholson met with Dustin to deliver drug proceeds during their conversation which was monitored by police because Nicholson was wired. They discussed past and future deliveries of meth. Just expose the entire operation in one conversation. So that here. Now when he sees this, Dustin sees, oh shit, my main guy ratted me out. He tells the judge that he's going to plead guilty to the drug charges. I'm obviously fucked. You have my whole operation. He's not stupid, Dustin. He knows that he's screwed here. If they have Nicholson testifying, he's done. Yeah. And you've got a lot more than you're going to tell me you have. Yeah. So during June and July of 1993, he's out on bail. So he and Angela Johnson go looking for Nicholson who they can't find him. He is not in any kind of protection or anything. They just can't find him because he has moved in with Laurie Duncan and they don't know Laurie Duncan so they don't know where to find him, which is why he's living there. He's hiding basically. So they're searching for him, often asking Angela Johnson's friend, Christie, to babysit Johnson's daughter while they looked. We're going to drive around. We got to look for a guy who's ratting on the meth empire that we have going on. We're going to go kill him and then we'll deal with our kid here or my kid. On July 7th, 1993, Angela Johnson purchased a nine millimeter handgun about five miles from her house as well. She has no criminal record or anything. Angela. Now, Laurie, back to Laurie Duncan, she had no idea that Nicholson A was still involved in drugs at all or B that he is hiding out in her house after informing on his meth suppliers to the federal authorities. See I was, I felt a little beside myself about Laurie allowing him there because she's got the two kids, but he should feel like a piece of shit for allowing himself to stay there with two children in the house. I don't think morals are really his big deal. He's a meth dealer. Touche. I'll allow it. Hey, I don't want to, I don't want to come down. I don't want your kids to have a bad child, but he's a meth dealer for Christ's sake. He should certainly consider that though, being that these little girls had nothing to fucking do with this and people might be willing to hurt him. He's considering, I'm using people, so I don't, you know what I mean? I'm ratting on my friends and then hiding out here, putting these people in danger. I don't care. I don't give a fuck. It doesn't matter. That's a great point. Yeah. Whatever he doesn't care. It's funny. So Laurie, I had no idea about this. Earlier in 1993, Mason City police found nearly 150 grams of pure meth and $5,000 cash in Nicholson's house. That's how this all started. They busted him. He said, we'll put you back out on the street if you wear a wire for us. He said, no problem. Easy. So he's facing a lengthy prison sentence. That's why he cooperated. Now according to his ex-wife, Greg Nicholson became extremely paranoid. His ex-wife, Leslie, said that he would not let her go outside or even stay too long near the windows. Oh. Because someone might see her or someone might shoot her because they're after him, even though they didn't know he flipped. But he's on meth and paranoid and that's what happens. Now she knew, she said that she knew her husband occasionally used drugs, but she didn't realize that he was selling them and using them every day. That's what she says. She thought that Dustin and Greg were discussing instruments or equipment for her husband's band. They're just going to play in a bed. They're talking about pickups for the guitar and shit like that. What kind of pedals are you using? You get a good, out of that or is it more like an eye pitch? How's it work there? That's what they're talking about. What kind of drum heads do you like? I prefer the zilgen, but a lot of people like the ... Those Evans are real nice. That's what I mean. You never know here. I mean the crash, the ride, you go only zilgen. That's the thing. And you gotta go 18 inch too. 22 if you can get it, honestly. So that's what's going on. She thinks that when standing outside fucking talking to each other all quietly in the driveway that that's about musical instruments, not about meth deals. I don't know if I believe her. Anyway, she said Dustin told him that if he needed to he could have Greg or anybody else taken out for 50 bucks. 50 bucks? 50 bucks is all it would take. Probably ends up meth, I would say. Get him good and methed up and then 50 bucks and more meth. Now this woman breaks up with Greg right after Greg is arrested, Nicholson. So that's why he has nowhere to go, which is why he ends up at Lori's house. Now July 24th, 1993, the day before Lori and the kids disappear, Dustin and Angela Johnson asked the babysitter again to babysit Johnson's daughter and they also borrow this woman's car so that they could go search for Nicholson. This is not a daily thing. You watch the kids and they go out and just drive around and look for Greg Nicholson. He's got to be around here somewhere. Now they would normally return about midnight from these expeditions, but on this occasion they didn't come home till about five in the morning. Wow, that's a long night. Long night of looking, absolutely. That is July 24th. They took them and came back that night. Now July 25th is the night, is the day that Greg, Lori, Amber and Candy all disappear. The next day. A few days later, by the way, this is at the July 30th, this is the day that Dustin is supposed to plead guilty based on the information Greg gave. He shows up at court and says, I don't think I'm going to plead guilty anymore. I think I'm just going to go ahead and fight this. He said, I don't think you have the witnesses. He told his attorney that there was a rumor that Nicholson had taken off and skipped town so he doesn't think he's going to be testifying against him. Then he gives his attorney a VHS tape. Oh, watch this and you'll know why. Yes, on this VHS tape is Barney's greatest hits. He's like, why are you showing me this? He's like, well, it's 1993. I really feel like you should know this. Do you have kids? No. He gives him a VHS tape of UB40's greatest hits. That's what, no. Red, red wine. Red red wines on it and everything else. It's Nicholson, a tape of Nicholson saying Dustin was not guilty of these charges against him and that he had made up everything he said to get himself out of trouble. It's a recanting of all that he'd done before. It's a videotape of Nicholson sitting in his living room giving this, in Laurie Duncan's living room giving this speech. Not guilty. Now the judge has no, after a while here, they has no choice but to, they don't have a case anymore. They have one witness. That's the case. Yeah, it's okay. And they need him to verify everything. You gotta have the witness. So that's kind of in limbo now. Then on November 3rd, 1993, Terry DeGheese or DeGuyce or whatever, their other drug dealer here, he's reported missing on November 5th, 1993. Yeah. So they basically had, the government was still looking into Dustin trying to find avenues to get in without Nicholson as a witness, but now they were turning to DeGuyce and trying to bust him basically and get him to flip. Dustin had told his friend, Cut Comp, that he was worried about DeGuyce testifying against him. Dustin believed DeGuyce had been subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury just like Nicholson was. So on this day of November 5th, DeGuyce drops his 10 year old daughter off at his mother's house and told his mother that he was going to meet his former girlfriend, Angela Johnson. Oh. Yes, DeGuyce said he would return shortly to pick up his daughter and he never came back. But we know that he was supposed to go out and meet Angela Johnson like in the middle of nowhere somewhere. So weird. Okay. Now early 1994. Okay. While cleaning a bedroom closet, Gabbatz is the woman's name. She's the woman who they, that Angela Johnson keeps leaving her kid with and borrowed a car and does all that. Gabbatz. Now she discovers a large black handgun with an attached silencer in a cosmetics bag belonging to Angela Johnson, her makeup bag. Yeah. I was looking for that blue eye shadow. I love so much, but I found this instead. I found my nine millimeter with a suppressor. Why would a silencer, is that legal? They're a campy, right? That's federally legal. Illegal everywhere. I don't know. Who knows? Silencers? Yeah. I don't think silencers are too legal. I doubt it. Not outside of a range probably. Right. Unless you have a tag stamp. Something. I don't know how it works. 93 especially. Oh, it may have been legal. We still had gun laws. Like you still, you couldn't buy a machine gun in 1993. No. No. We had the assault weapons bands back then. Yeah. That's when they put them in. The Brady bill was passed and all that shit. So Gabbatz calls Angela Johnson to say, you got to get this gun out of my house. I want this gun in my house. Johnson said, hey, don't worry about the gun. Dustin will take care of it. Oh, really? Yeah. I want to put him involved in this too. So just so you know. Now that winter, Dustin went to Cut Comp and the two of them destroyed a large black pistol. They used a torch to cut and melt the gun into a number of unrecognizable pieces, which they drove way out to the middle of nowhere and threw pieces in different ditches along county roads, hours away in the middle of Iowa, never to be found again. Just a hunk, a recognizable hunk of metal sitting in a ditch somewhere. No one cares. Fascinating. It's a wild way to do it. March of 1995, the drug charges against Dustin are dismissed because Greg Nicholson cannot be found. And re-killed? Yeah. That's it. Dismissed. So that's against Dustin and Cut Comp are dropped. So they said, awesome, let's rebuild our meth empire. Sure. Let's do it. So they did it. They landed a job packing. This is a crazy thing. It sounds like a joke almost. Sounds like I'm saying they're packing fudge, but they're not. They're packing pudding. They're making pudding cups, I think. That sounds awesome. I want to make pudding cups. Packin' pudding. They're packing some pudding at a local factory. And they would also at night cook meth. They had a garage lab that they set up. Now I guess it was Cut Comp's idea to restart the drug business, according to Dustin. Dustin says this later on, quote, I had a good job and everything. I had kids to think about, which by the way, by now he's got a kid with Angela Johnson. Of course. Of course he does. I had kids to think about. I just didn't want to get back into it. But Tim's sitting there saying I need the money. You know, I need the money back out of this. And I'm his best friend, so I, you know, and I know it was a huge mistake, but I said I'd help him out as much as I could. So Dustin agreed to set up the meth lab in the garage of his home at 1104 16th Street, northeast in Mason City, which is the same place that he had done it before. Yeah. Now, February 7th, 1996, cops execute a search warrant at his home and seize the lab again. They know you're doing it. Stop. It's a small town. Stop cooking meth there in the same house that you cooked it before. They know what you're doing. You fucking idiot. They're on, do ya? Yeah. So how'd they find out about this meth lab? Besides, obviously. Who told them this time? There's a guy named Dan Cobine, C-O-B-E-E-N. And in early 1996, Dan Cobine, they took on as a third partner. Now, they didn't know that at the time Cobine was currently, at the time they took him on, cooperating with the government and its investigation of Dustin and Cutcom. That leads to the raid of the home and everything else. And Cutcom said they both tried to destroy evidence located at the home of Honkin's two different girlfriends as well, of Dustin's girlfriends. Now, Dustin, he says, you know, they didn't know Cobine was a confidential informant. But he said, I didn't want to make that stuff, Dustin said. No? No, it was bad. It's evil, man. I don't want to do that. He said, I can honestly say that. And that's why Mr. Cobine came into the picture. I figured he could help Mr. Cutcom take over my part. Tim was upset, meaning Cutcom. I mean, really upset. He didn't trust the guy, but it was the money that made him upset. We were going to go 50-50, and with three guys, it would be a third and a third and a third of a third. So three guys, you get a third. I finally told Tim that Mr. Cobine could have half of my share, so it was going to be 25-25-50, and Tim was going to get his 50% Cutcom. Right. Yeah. So that's the way it works. February 7th, 1996 is the search of the meth lab of Honkens' House there. They seize a methamphetamine laboratory with chemicals and equipment, as well as paper notes and books on manufacturing drugs, and books on how to bind and gag prisoners as well. Oh, weird. Mixed in with the, you know, how to make meth shit and stuff like that, chemistry books. Now, April of 1996 is when they are officially arrested, Cutcom and Dustin Honkin, for meth trafficking. This is from, they said, from 93 to 96, so it's after they arrested them the first time to now, because those charges are all gone because whatever. So this, by the way, the arrest comes on the same day that the White House announces a national strategy to fight meth. So I think this might have been a federal, we're going to do a bunch of stuff today. So they're arrested and charged in federal court. Dustin said he believed that Cobain was not the confidential informant at the time. He was telling Cutcom, it's not him, it's somebody else. He said, I just kept saying, it's not Cobain, it's not Cobain, I'm telling you it's not him, just chill out. He was telling Cutcom. Yeah, somebody else. Yeah. He said, so Cutcom's detention hearing was a couple days before mine, and he comes back and he says, I told you it was Cobain, man, because then they have to reveal the source. He said, I felt awful. I'm the one that brought him in and Tim didn't want it, and now he's the one that's the confidential informants. He felt like I brought the whole. Real Donny Brasco and left it two times. You are fucked, yeah. You're the one sitting there going, oh no. What did I do? I got cancer at a prick. I'm going to leave my mind. He's in the record books. Cancer at a prick. I'm going to leave my rings and shit at home now. I'm going to leave my rings and all my jewelry at home. What am I going to do with that? Donny boy, what are you doing to me, pal? Ah, come on. So they, they, yeah, I'd buy a boat. Yeah, I wouldn't want a boat. Why are you keep talking about the boat? Leave me alone about the boat. You got to kill this guy right now. Forget about the boat. Forget about the boat. So they make bail, but Cutcom, Cutcom is weighing his options. Is he going to be as lucky this time as he was last time? Yeah, can he be? Someone going to fucking just, you know, disappear and then he doesn't have to do this. So he starts worrying that Dustin's going to link him to the missing informants. He's like, Dustin could flip on the whole thing and say it's all me. No, no, no, no, I'm fucked. Yeah. So he was like, huh, and he said, this isn't good. So he turns state's witness and wears a wire while they're out on pretrial release. Oh, and this is the last guy that Dustin suspect. So he doesn't, he's not suspicious at all throughout hours of tape. Dustin would compare the electricity of killing to the excitement before a rivalry football game. Really? How exciting it was. At one point he said, quote, once you go a certain distance, there's no turning back or quote, there ain't no turning back. All right. Sorry. That's what he said. He's out loud about destroying evidence, buying a gun and eliminating and killing the investigators. We have a list of the ones he wants to kill. Also Dan Cobain, a work friend of his and somebody else that he called a rat as well. Yeah, just kill the whole time. He said, quote, I've climbed far bigger hills than that little hill. Even if I'm in prison for 15 years, whatever, when I get out, he's still dead. So it's fine. I can wait. I'm patient, man. It's all good. When Cut Comp expressed concern over killing witnesses, you know, because it's an FBI, he's wired, so he can't be like, yeah, let's do it. He said that Dustin said they had, quote, we'd put ourselves in, or they put themselves in that position, the people we need to kill. Hey, it's not our fault they're rats. He said, quote, they made me choose between my family and them. I'm sorry, but that ain't no choice. You kill them. Yes. Wow. When Cut Comp asked Dustin if that bothered him, he replied, quote, nope, never, never think about it. Never, never dream about it. Never nothing. Thought I'd have nightmares, but never. Don't give a fuck. Yeah, don't come. Yeah. Um, the affidavit of a, of a special agent of the DEA includes analysis of tape conversations between Timothy Cut Comp and Honkin. Um, obviously Cut Comp was cooperating. According to the affidavit, uh, Dustin told Cut Comp that he'd be able to get Cut Comp off and eliminate some of his own charges by killing witnesses or by eliminating evidence. Oh, Dustin said he planned to circumvent electronic monitoring and told Cut Comp he had a, uh, he had a quiet weapon, a quiet weapon that fired 1420 armor piercing rounds of ammunition per minute. That's a lot. That's like the Jesse Ventura predator gun, like those Gatlin guns. Yeah, you gotta have a, you gotta, it's gotta be belt fed to shoot that many. That's what I mean. Belt fed and on a constant, you know, the electronic ones where you go, they spin and then, you know, take down the whole forest. That's just one of those. That's not quiet. No. No, armor pierced. No, that's not quiet. He said it's a quiet. The sources cited, uh, said that it, they alleged that Dustin also made death threats against an informant. Um, I also against a former DEA agent, an Iowa department of narcotics enforcement agent and two government chemists who were working on the case. Oh, basically anybody in his court document that he saw was involved. I threatened to kill. You want to kill all those. They're all dying. Yeah. If you kill all of them, they have to dismiss the charges. In conf and conversations in the affidavit here, cut comp told Dustin that he worried about what happened in 1993 because cut comp helped dispose of a gun. He told an agent with the federal drug enforcement agency that honkin asked him to help destroy a gun in late 1993 after the disappearance of the gate of the geese. They're, they're a friend there. Cut comp drew a picture of the gun, which he said had been purchased in July 1993 by Angela Johnson, which we know happened. The affidavit indicates that the drawing closely resemble the type of gun purchased by the girlfriend. And when the two men were granted a pretrial release, Dustin began trying to destroy evidence that the government had seized in the raid. He believed Dustin believed that seized chemicals were being held at a Bondurant hazardous waste firm. So he's going to break into the police evidence and destroy the evidence against himself. Yeah. That is some. While he's arrested, right? Yeah. He's on pretrial release on bail. Yeah. So he's going to break into an evidence lab and steal all of his shit back. This is meth thinking is what this is. But that's where they keep everything that's against me. So if I get in there, I can just erase. I can just destroy it all and then they'll have no case and everything's fine. If I kill everybody and break into their evidence building and steal all the evidence and they can't like this is childish meth thinking. This is crazy. This is nuts. Yeah. This is insane behavior. So he testified or later on, we'll testify that that's what he wanted to do. Cut comp said that Dustin developed a plan to break into the place and destroy the evidence. He had a plan. But Dustin also believed that the evidence may have also been held in a Chicago warehouse. Oh, sure. So that's going to be even harder. It may not be there, but. So he said, but no, I got a plan for that too. He goes, I can't break into the Chicago warehouse because it's a lot bigger and has better security. There's a way still. Okay. This one I'll just break in at small time. I'll steal my shit. But he said, I'd have to destroy the entire warehouse in Chicago. There's no way to get into it. So he's cut comp said, quote, Dustin said we could make a bomb similar to the Oklahoma City bomb, which had the bombing that just happened the year before or whatever. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. And a Timothy McVeigh bomb we're talking about. A Ryder truck packed with. Yeah. A building up, then all the evidence will be gone. Everything's gone. So based on all these tapes, the court revokes Dustin's pretrial release, obviously, and sticks him in the jail in Sioux City, Iowa, sitting here stupid and fucking stew for a while while incarcerated. Dustin, who's a skinny little nerdy dork, has to tell the other, he has to brag to the other prisoners so they don't think he's a punk. You know what I mean? So he's got a brag. Yeah. He's an idiot. He admits to anybody who will fucking listen to him in there that he kills witnesses to avoid charges. He said that? Tells everybody in jail this. All sorts of people with charges pending that they'd love to get out of. He just gives them shit to say. He went into great detail about murders he's committed to, to kill witnesses. He also began planning in front of people the murders of Cobain and cut comp, telling a fellow inmate to kill cut comp and providing directions to his house because he was getting out soon. So he tried to hire this man. Here's directions. Go kill him. Together with another inmate, Dustin then attempts to escape the jail. Yeah. By breaking a hole in the wall of a cell and arranging for Angela Johnson to deliver a hacksaw and a rope to him. Yeah. Is he going to put a paper mache in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the jailers discover the hole and the whole thing gets, he didn't get it all completed first before it got discovered. He didn't put a picture. No. Who was it? I can't remember the poster. Yeah. It was a movie poster. So the tapes that they have definitely imply that Dustin is involved in the disappearance of Greg Nicholson, Terry DeGie, Laurie Duncan and Candy Amber, everybody. He's also heard discussing how he can beat his surveillance, electronic surveillance methods, uh, and methods to make sure that key witnesses, including go, co-been and government agents wouldn't testify. When asked about the tapes later, Dustin said, quote, pretty damaging stuff. I agree. Ha, doesn't look good for me. Yeah. But he said he was worried that his pretrial release would be yanked if he reported his conversations with CutCom to the authorities. So he's like, yeah, Terry was bringing stuff up. CutCom was bringing stuff up. And, you know, I was just going along with him and, uh, you know, I was worried that, you know, I wasn't the one that was, meanwhile, he's being set up. You're being set up, dummy. Certainly. Yeah. He's trying to say he was just worried and didn't want CutCom to be mad at him. So he's just going along with it. He said, I was real worried that Tim was going to do something to co-been. If you really flip, if he's really flipped out and he goes off and kills someone, I mean, they're going to get both of us. It's my charge too. He said I was just pacifying him until that chemical report came back because I knew our lab was not big time by any means. So, um, at a detention hearing, prosecutors attempt to link Dustin to the disappearance of, uh, of DeGyce earlier to try to establish that he is a danger to society. If you let him out, he's going to try to tie up loose ends here. Now in June, Angela Johnson's home gets searched. Chemicals used to manufacture meth are seized from a storage shed at her house as well. So she's been holding stuff so they can arrest her for that now. June of 1997, Dustin is going to plead guilty to conspiracy to manufacture and distribute methamphetamine. He's got no choice. They got him dead to rights. That's a problem. So 1997 is his federal sentencing and they bring out shitloads of people to testify against him. Um, 12 witnesses called on on, in one day, seven of them are coworkers at craft general foods, you know, where he was packing pudding before and after his 96 arrest and drug raid of his home. A number of the people, uh, employee, a number of these employees said that Dustin attempted to purchase a gun while on electronic monitoring bracelet after his arrest. And they also said that honkin wanted to give the gun or wanted the gun for a girlfriend who was moving to Des Moines. You know, he moved to, he moved to Des Moines. You got to be packing. Obviously. Watch out. It's tough up there in Des Moines. Um, he, uh, one guy said Dustin asked me to buy a pistol for him for his girlfriend. Uh, and he said he bought a pistol and told Dustin he could pick it up, but Dustin never picked it up. This guy said Dan Cobain also is there. This is a lot of, this is a guy who was involved. He's the third partner. He was also a confidential informant the whole time. And he, um, he said quote, this is Cobain. He had heard I was trustworthy and a little on the crazy side. That's, that's, he said why he was approached for the drug business. Cause he said, you know, I thought I could protect him and shit. After questioning though, Cobain admitted that he had only seen a gram total of methamphetamine when he was with Dustin. A gram? That's it. Yeah. I hadn't seen a big pile of methamphetamine in a big giant lab working. It's about a grams all. Yep. And Cobain said that he did not claim $7,000 on his tax income form in 1996, which is what he was making from them. The money was given to Cobain by federal agents who were concerned for his safety after Honkin's arrest and pretrial release. So they just gave him money to go hide basically. And he didn't claim that on his taxes, which he was supposed to. Are you really? Um, I guess, well, you could probably put in expenses also. Maybe you could write off like a hotel bill or something. I don't know how that works. Yeah. Cause I guess it's technically like, like pay for the government at that point. Yeah. Now another prisoner here, um, the judge hears testimony from a prisoner named Dean Donaldson, a man who claimed that Honkin had hired him to kill Cut Comp. Right. And he came to me and said, if he got out, he'd pay my girlfriend twice the money back that his bail was. So Donaldson painted an entirely different scenario in court saying that Dustin wanted him to purchase a night scope for a rifle, go to Cut Comp's house in rural Brit, kill him, then wait for Dustin to get out, uh, to pay him up to $10 million from future drug proceeds. He is real. Yeah. Yeah. And I'll pay you 10 million over time with all the meth I'm going to sell. Really? Valuing his company very high. Yeah. And it seems like he's never been in the meth business for more than six straight months without getting busted. Yeah. So he doesn't know how to do that part of it. Are you going to sell $10 million worth of meth and eat a sandwich over that time? Yeah. This is like breaking dumb is what this is. Yeah. Yeah. Breaking bad ideas. Yeah. That's bad stuff. So Terry testifies to here. Um, he says, uh, I'm sorry, Tim, I say Terry, Jesus Christ. Uh, yeah, he says this, uh, quote, asked how long he'd known Dustin. He said, since the first grade, we were best friends. He told the judge that Cut Comp here that he had joined with the two brothers, Dustin and Jeff in Arizona in 1992, and they began manufacturing and Fetamine. Um, Cut Comp said my role was to, uh, just to manufacture it. Jeff provided the money and Dustin did the selling and the researching of how to make it your early days of their drug operation. They managed to manufacture the drugs out of Cut Comp's residence and Dustin would deliver the drugs to Nicholson and to geese to sell in Northern Iowa. He said for the next four years, honking and Cut Comp were in and out of the drug business because they had legal problems back and forth and all that shit. Uh, Cut Comp said Dustin and Greg Nicholson would have been the key witnesses against us or Dustin said Greg Nicholson would have been the key witness against us in July, Dustin contacted me, asked to get together. He told me that Greg hadn't shown up for his court hearing and was missing. Greg Nicholson for most of the next 45 minutes in court, Cut Comp tells the court how Dustin dropped hints that he had been responsible for the disappearance of Nicholson and the geese, both partners. In the summer of 93, Cut Comp said that Dustin asked him what he thought of a scenario in which people were kidnapped, forced to make a videotape exonerating someone of a crime and then killed. What's your opinion on that? What do you think? I got an idea. And all the times we're like hanging out, driving, doing whatever we're doing. Imagine if I said, I like to know your thoughts on something. Okay. Let's force these people to make videos for us after kidnapping. Yeah. Suppose somebody's got some dirt on us. What do we do? I mean, we would obviously get acting. Yeah. Yeah. Force them to make a statement on videotape. We'd have to make a convincing so someone's going to have to know how to edit a little bit and then, um, yeah, then kill them obviously. Right. We don't have to let them go. What, to go recant what they said, we'll just kill them and then just kill them. It's easy. Word is bond. Word is bond, my friend. They said six months later, CutCom said that, said that Dustin told him he had a tape in which Nicholson said Dustin wasn't involved in the drug business and that he was sorry for turning him in. That's the videotape he gave his lawyer, but CutCom testified that he'd never seen the tape over the next two years. Dustin had asked CutCom questions ranging from how deep did farm equipment dig down into the earth to how much it would cost to rent or buy excavating equipment. He said he wanted to continue the drug manufacturing so he could purchase a backhoe or rent one so that he could take care of loose ends, which is what he told me. Berry shit deep. CutCom also testifies during this that he's serving. This is what CutCom got for his part in all this. This is in for possibly murders, definitely lots of methods, production, all this shit, four and a half years he got. Wow. Sweetheart. And a half years as long as he testifies. He admitted his sentence had been cut by at least 60% because of his cooperation with the government's investigation. Yeah. Now the sentencing options are way different here than it would be for the state. Yeah. The federal process gives a lot of options here. And I just to go through them quickly because this is the type of shit people are curious about here. They said the fact that Dustin's sentencing hearing will last longer than one day is not unusual yet the length of the hearing. Uh, yet the length of the hearing that started Monday is, they said, quote, this is a U S attorney said this federal court is different than state court. He said, uh, this is much different. They're just talking about, he said that judges determine the levels obtained by a man like Dustin when passing a sentence, they have this chart. It was in the newspaper where this chart where you were like, basically like, okay, there's this and that and check this and that. Then you add it all up and see what the sentence is going to be. It's not just out of a whim. Like this guy pissed me off 40 years. It's, it's very specifically. You can find sentencing guidelines and do the math and figure out what it's going to be. Yep. The more levels, the stronger the sentence. Uh, this prosecutor said these levels can be determined by the quantity, uh, obstructing justice, tampering with a witness, the use of a firearm, what role a person took, was he the leader, was he in charge, things like that. It's all in the check. Got it all with the math, uh, formula and you can figure it out. Like, like, just like you're making math, it's a big formula. You put it together and now you're, now you're a scientist. So the, the government's trying to establish the Dustin assumed leadership of a drug manufacturing business that began in 92 and he's involved in not only the, the distribution of drugs, but disappearance of five people, including two key witnesses and two children. Um, in short, they said the attorneys are trying to show that Dustin would do anything to stay out of prison, but Dustin's attorney, um, elicited testimony that appears to discount the government's stand from, uh, witnesses. So basically they always can poke holes in these people's story because everybody testifying against him is a crack head with their own, with their own shit to hide their own deals that were all of these drug things. It's very hard. You can say, yeah, what they're saying is true, but everybody's getting super big deals with decades being cut off their sentences. It's hard to believe somebody at that point that's has so much reason to testify, you know, that they're just doing it out the kindness of their heart is a little bit, you know, hard to think. So Dustin, during this federal sentencing, he has to talk to, got it. Really? Yeah. No choice. He is going to, like I said, plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to manufacture and distribute, distribute methamphetamine, one count of attempting to manufacture the, uh, the substance on June 2nd, 1997 is when he pleads. He said he's willing to do the time for those crimes, but only those crimes. Yeah. He said, quote, I did not lead the operation, nor do I consider it major. My conduct wasn't right. And I agree that, and I regret that. I regret it terribly, but all I'm saying is I should pay for the crimes I committed. And that's all. Oh, he said, I have no, nothing to do with the disappearance of the five people that have been brought up. He said, I never talked to any of them after March of 1993. Well, yeah, cause they were three of them were dead. Gone. Yeah. Dead for four of them. He said, look at both those guys. Look, both those guys had a lot of reason to run, meaning Nicholson and the geese when talking about the Duncan girls, Laurie and candy and Amber, he, they said his voice rose and was filled with emotion. He said, quote, I'm not a killer. I don't want my kids to ever think that their daddy would do something like that. I did not kill those people. I did not have anything to do with their disappearance. Yep. Mm hmm. Yep. Um, he said, I pleaded guilty and I decided to plead guilty because I'm tired of fighting and I'm determined, even though I could have gotten, given the government a difficult fight at trial, that it was time for me to accept the responsibility for my actions and get on with my life. Yeah. That's right. Um, so that's what he's talking about. He also said, uh, I was just naive when I got here and meaning that what about all the people in jail that you told you killed everybody and doing all that. And he said, I was just naive when I got here and people just took advantage of that naivete, you know, meth dealing murderers are very naive. You got to hold the hand walking through shit. Yeah. They, you could scam them real easy. I told people what I was accused of and they just ran with it. Yeah. Right. You weren't trying to act tough in jail. He said, I mean, think about it. He said, who in their right mind is going to kill someone, not get paid for years. And then think he's going to get 10 million way down the road after I supposedly set up a drug lab again. Come on. No one's that gullible. No, the point is you thought they work as you're on tape saying it. I mean, you're fucking idiot. Um, he was just as adamant that he never planned an escape even though he was caught with a hole in his cell and a full plan of escape. He said, I have two children and the fact is if you escape to make it work, I would never be able to see them. He said, yeah, I'll do life before I leave my children. That's what he said. They go, well, maybe not life, but we got something else for you. You sir, may fuck off 24 years in federal prison. Oh, later extended to 27 years in federal prison. Really? Yeah. Due to his cooperation, cut comp got four and a half years. Okay. Now that's just for the drug distribution though. Okay. Then what? There's more. Now in prison, wow. Um, Jesus Christ, when he goes to prison, he said, you know what I'd like to do? Cause there's an article on him in the paper. He said, I'd like to continue my education. You know, in prison. Really? He said, he said, I don't know if you know this, but I was on the deans list at North Iowa area community college. So I'm pretty, he literally said, they have a dean. A dean. It's just a guy. He's not, that's not his title. It's just a guy named Dean. Yeah. And the students call him Dean. They don't even call him like Mr. So-and-so he's a, yo Dean. And he's like skateboarding by and he's like, what up man? Kegger tonight. And they're like, right on Dean. They give him devil horns and everybody. He has six or seven favorite guys. And I was on that list. You know, he said that, uh, he said, although his career goals have changed, he said at the time he thought he was going to be an attorney back in the day. And now he said, quote, I think I've had enough of law. Ha, ha, ha. Okay. F***ing idiot. But he didn't laugh when asked about his children. The basis of the only conditions he had on granting the interview was whatever. He agreed to the interview on the condition that his children's names and pictures would not be published. He said that the mothers of his three year old daughter and four year old son bring them to Sioux City as often as possible for visits, but that prisoners are only allowed 40 minutes of visitation per week. He said, it's tough. My kids come and it's just like it is today. I sit here, they sit there and there's this window between us. I can't even give my kids a hug. Oh gee, that's awfully sorry for you. That's what happens when you go to prison usually. Now, speaking of people who can't, kids who can't get a hug, um, there's still missing posters and people looking for Greg and Laurie and Amber and Candy. Yeah. So people are still looking for them and there's people who still think they're, hope they're alive, um, which is crazy. Um, the Laurie's grandmother, uh, I'm sorry, the kid's grandmother, I think the father's mother said she kept their bedrooms and their dolls and dresses just like they left them in case they come back. Yeah. Meanwhile, it's been years now and they'd be like old enough to whatever, but still just keep it all there. They can do what they want to do. Um, investigators are very sure that Dustin is involved. There's too many coincidences, but there's no, they can't find anything or they don't know anything. So September 11th, 1997, based on a tip, they excavate a property in Hancock County looking for people. They dig up this whole fucking property, man. It's like a farm. Cause he was looking for how deep can you dig with? Yeah. Yeah. They destroy this place. They find nothing. Nothing. Not a goddamn thing. Then summer of 2000. Okay. Angela Johnson, we remember her. She's in some trouble. Um, they, the cops hear that Johnson feels knows that the law is closing in on her. So she's about to skip town. So the cops indict her with charges of aiding and abetting in the murders of Nicholson Duncan, Candy, Amber, and Terry Deguise, her ex-boyfriend. They said they had enough evidence to believe she had something to do with the murders, but they don't think she obviously was the trigger man or anything, but she must have been, had something to do. Um, but they at least needed the bodies. This is a, right now it's no body, no crime. Yeah. Because they don't even, they're not positive. They're dead. So. Yeah. And they're not in this. I mean, the girls in, and the mom are, are pretty well, uh, reliable, but I'm a flighty method, uh, you know, two flighty methods, who knows where they are. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's the problem. And you might be able to convince a jury that maybe the, this woman and her two children ran off with this guy that has her all smitten and he needed to get out of town. And she said, well, come with you. They could be in Mexico right now. You never know. So it's, you can't really charge it. It's too hard. Guy alone, uh, looks suspicious sometimes. Yeah. But you got a gal and two girls. That's, uh, that's a family is what that makes. That's a whole, yeah, maybe they're down there or just having, drinking milk with dinner, going to church on Sunday. So just taking a trip down to Cabo right now. That's it. So October 2000. Okay. Now Angela Johnson has no criminal history and doesn't know shit about jail. And now she's in jail. Okay. So she really could use a friend to help her with the finer points of prison and what to do. Luckily for her. Now I don't know what kind of jail this is. I know it's a federal facility, but they apparently have men and women housed in the same cell blocks next to each other. Really? Which seems really like a bad idea. Right. 2025 that's happening or I guess. 2000. Yeah. 2000 is going on. That's too, that's too late for that. There's a guy in the cell next to her named Robert Jean McNeese, Bobby McNeese, which is, uh, that's the rejected song title of, uh, Janice Joplin. Bobby McNeese. No, that doesn't sound very good. Does it? No, we'll fix it. I'll fix it later. I don't know. Let's tentatively me and Bobby McNeese. We'll figure the rest out later. So she needed, uh, they, I guess, um, they, uh, she said, you know, you know, what can I, what can I do to get through all this and everything? And he said, Oh, I'll help you. Sure. No problem. Now he's a career criminal doing a life sentence. That's who she talked to. Yeah. Attempting to import $5 million worth of heroin and morphine. Oh, this was, he got busted doing this while he was already in prison. Yeah. On bank robbery charges. International smuggling, um, and bank robbery. Yeah. All right. He's in prison. He's like, Hmm, I could use a legal fund. Here's what we do. I'll bet you he makes a kick ass, uh, Doritos, uh, pizza in prison. Oh, so well, so good. He knows how to fucking, he knows how to make a water knows how to make a hot plate out of some wires coming out of the wall. He's got it all. Now the thing is that was, he gets busted for those two. Then after he gets sentenced for that, apparently he has friends in the New York mafia who, wow, um, they wanted to run a something taking drugs from New York to Cedar Rapids and have a big drug thing. So they contacted this guy for help and he gets busted for that too. Holy shit. My Christ. So well, do anything and get away with it. Apparently not, not from jail. It's really hard to do shit from jail and get away with it. They monitor all of your shit. So he couldn't get away with it out as a free man. Fuck no, he gets caught for everything. This guy. So jail officials catch on and they're like, dude, we're going to put you under the jail. Like, what are you doing? So he decides to cooperate. Yes. Now he's going to cooperate. Okay. So apparently he shouted said through the shell cell wall, Hey, how you doing? I'm so and so what's your name? You know, we're in here together. We might as well talk and they would pass notes through the food slot in his door, him and Angela striking up a friendship. They talked about just being locked up and stories of their child who just getting to know each other real casual. He wasn't asking her like, so how many people do you kill to get in here? Small talk and small talk. Now at first Angela was reluctant to talk about her crimes, but when she got closer and closer to McNeese here, knowing that he's a lifer, you know, he's, he's got nothing to gain from this, whatever. So she's like, huh, that's interesting. It's interesting. Um, so he said, okay, uh, also he offers her something. He says, listen, I'm in the drug business and I did all this. I'm in here for life without, I'm fucked. I'm going nowhere. Yeah. I'm going nowhere. Um, why don't you tell me what you did and I'll take the rap for it. Oh, you tell me what you did and I'll go to the cops and say, I had people do that. I did that. It's crazy that you, yeah, you need to tell me all the details though. So I can tell them what I did. Oh yeah. And transfer those details to other people that way you'll get out of here and what are they going to do to me? Right. Nothing. I'm already here forever. I'm already fucked. So she said, that sounds great. Let me tell you all the bad things I did. You dumb bitch. You fucking dummy. And this is through like stuff. So he's like writing down notes as she's talking. Cause he needs to have it to memorize it. To in his mind, he's like, I need to memorize this stuff. So I can tell the cops. I got to write it down. Uh, there's also recorded conversations where she details everything details how all five people were killed, what they were wearing and where they were killed. Um, okay. She said in the summer of 93 that Dustin had borrowed a friend's car to drive around to look for Nicholson, who was the, you know, turned informant guy. They found him in July. They said they knew where he was in July. They knew he was at Lori Duncan's house. They were just trying to get him alone. So after a few attempts to get him alone and, uh, with the hearing coming up in five days that he would have had to plead guilty at Dustin, he said, we had to do it. So Johnson posed as a lost Avon lady. Yeah. She had a big cosmetics bag with her dressed up real nice, knocked on the door and said, God, it's a Lori Duncan answered. God, I'm just, I'm just lost. Gosh darn it. Can't find my client. She's waiting on some rouge and I'm lost. This is terrible. Poor lady. Yeah. She knocked on the door and said, do you mind if I take a look at your phone book? So I could look up this lady's address to make sure that it's right. Um, make sure maybe I have the wrong address. I'm going to take it down wrong over the phone. And she's carrying a demonstration bag with the cosmetics and all that. And really seems like an Avon lady. And she said, I have an appointment to give it a demonstration. I'm uncertain in the address. I don't want to blow this client off. And Lori said, of course, come on in. You can come in my house. She comes in right behind her, hiding off to the side. Dustin burst into. Yes. Okay. Now once the door is open, they say that both of them now dropping the ruse Angela also springs in action and they start taking over this house. Um, the plan was to force Greg Nicholson to make a videotape statement exonerating Dustin, which they did as we know, cause she gave gave it to his goddamn lawyer there. But apparently Johnson helped bind the two adults gagged them with a pair of the girl's small green socks. The detail she gave. Then this is sick. This is fucking sick. This fucking asshole lady, this Angela Johnson, took the two girls upstairs. You could have taken them upstairs and said, mommy said, you guys have to play up here for a while and then left and left them there. You could have done that. Yeah. You have to watch the new Disney movie on, on tape. Yeah. Yeah. You need to, you got a little mermaid in there. Perfect. Is it, did fucking Aladdin come out yet? 93 is just about to come out. If it did pretty close. Yeah. Lion King is that arrow. It's all that time. So the watch in the line of fire, it just came out here. Just sit down and watch. Clint Eastwood, he plays a grizzled secret service agent. I think you're going to like. Enjoy cliffhanger. It's the worst movie that he's ever been in, but just sit still. Oh, he's hanging off a mountain. It's going to be great. And a helicopter. She takes the two kids upstairs and tells them, hey kids, we have so much fun. We're going on a surprise trip with mommy and everything. So pack some stuff. And the kids are like, oh, yay. And they're packing clothes and bring your swimsuit. Don't forget they're bringing the swim. This is going to be so much fun. We're going away. We're going on a surprise trip so that she actually made these girls pack some shit. And then everybody got out. Everyone's forced at gunpoint into the car. Angela and Dustin drove the 10 minutes from Laurie's house to a wooded area outside of Mason City, Jesus Christ. So they're bound and gagged at this point. I would think Laurie is just thinking, how do I get them to let my kids go? Probably. What else? And why am I even? What's going on? There's also the other thing. I don't even know the fuck these people are. What happened? Yeah. Yeah. How did this happen? So this is fucking crazy. Apparently it's just Dustin and Johnson and these four people. So apparently Dustin gets mom and, mom, Laurie and Greg Nicholson out of the car first, leaves Angela with the kids in the car. And Dustin walks the two adults into the woods. Yeah. And Johnson hears gunshots. And then this is what Johnson said, quote, then he came back and got the children and walked them away and she heard more shots. By the way, there was an already dug grave out there. How big? Big enough for all four of them. All of them are Jesus. They bury all four of them together. And onto one on top of another. But this is how much this was planned. They went out, dug a fucking grave, then went to their house with a cosmetics bag dressed up in a fucking, you know, business suit and all that shit. This is insane. This is the most premeditated, sickest and with two little kids that know nothing about anything. Over nothing. Nothing. The kids knew shit and wouldn't know shit. And they're not even reliable witnesses. You could have easily had them go in a fucking room and shut up. Even if you wanted to be me, stay in here. Laurie didn't know shit either. She didn't even know that Greg wasn't telling her the truth. Greg wasn't telling her the truth. She wouldn't let her stay there. Wouldn't let him stay there. She's a good mom. She's not going to let the fucking guy stay there. This is meth shit. Yeah. Maybe Greg is a decent method is probably just like I'm not telling her anything. That'll just endanger her. Yeah. Yeah. Which he should have not gone near anybody. Probably should have let her know. By the way, I'm endangering the fuck out of your children just by being here. Yeah. If you're Steve Martin and the jerk and the cans are exploding all around you, you don't say to someone, Hey, come stand next to me. Like that's bad. You know, bring your kids over here. Bring your kids. So I'm standing in front of the oil cans. So that's disgusting. So they are all shot and fell right in the grave. Like, like the like the fucking Chinese army disposing of dissidents. Like it's hideously disgusting. So a few weeks later, Angela Johnson, Lord, the guys, who's her ex boyfriend. Yeah. Out to a country club saying she wanted to get back together with him. What's her fucking deal, man? Dude, she is. She's just as evil as he is. Yeah. He found the perfect fucking accomplice. Someone, someone who doesn't look dangerous, who can put an Avon bag in her shoulder and get into somebody's house. Someone who seemingly enjoys this shit. She, if she doesn't, she's really has a weird way of showing it because she keeps doing it. Yeah. So she, I guess, met him at a country club and said she wanted to get back together. Then they drove to an abandoned house where she said they were going to go, wanted to go have sex there. Oh, Jesus. And guess who's at the house waiting for them? Who's there? It's Dustin. Yeah. Where he beat, tortured and shot the guys and buried him. Wow. They said, she said, this is the informant in the next cell said, she said she had helped him kill these people and she always helped him get whatever he needed done. Why? What does this guy have on you? Yeah. Other people have math. Yeah. What's he getting? Is that all it is? Is he getting her math? That's gotta be the whole thing, right? At first it was math, but like after a while. It's been years. What are we doing? Yeah. Hmm. Hmm. Now it's sex and accomplice and she's, she's gotta be having fun at this. She feels dangerous. She does. Also, I don't know if she feels, one thing Dustin seems to know is how to manipulate people. Yeah. So I wonder if he can tell what her background is. Yeah. And exactly how to manipulate her. Yeah, she's easy to see. You just, you always act like you're going to protect her and she'll do anything in the fucking world for you. Pull these strings, babe. Yeah. Protect me. Make sure nobody tries to do an exorcism on me and I'm yours forever. Right. She did go through all that. So that's what I feel like, especially if she was, you know, abused sexually and everything like that. All he has to go is I'll protect you. Nobody's ever heard you again. No one's ever going to hurt you again. Now while I'm around. Right. And I think that's what she gets into. I mean, I'm not a doctor, so maybe not. She might just really love math. This is, uh, yeah. He might wear just the right amount of Dracar noir in the nineties that makes her fucking, makes her fucking drip down her pant legs. CK alone is the closest. Yeah. Right. I don't know. I just know I'm thinking nineties cologne. So Dracar or Paco or one of those fucking things. So now cut comp here after Dustin Honkin's arrest, um, cut comp talks about, first of all, in the court documents, they know that, you know, they were discussing killing Cobain, killing law enforcement agents, killing everybody. Cut comp also tells the court that Dustin was reluctant to involve Angela Johnson in any efforts to kill Cobain because she was quote, a hot head and just wanted to go, just wanted to go do it. Just do it. Yeah. She's apparently, Angela's the one wanting to kill everybody. According to, and this is like said behind the scenes, not for the, you know, cops or anything like that. He told his friend, Jesus, I don't even want to involve her. She gets too crazy. She loves this. She's fucking blood thirsty. Calm down. Let me buddy. She, yeah, that's what they are. They're beginning a fucking pulp fiction. So anyway, it's crazy shit. Now the authorities now, by the way, there's maps drawn based on what they're told they draw maps. The guy, basically the guy in the jail cell has Angela Johnson draw maps so he can, he can't confess to it unless he knows exactly where the bodies are. They're not going to believe him. So now he has a hand drawn maps that she drew to the bodies. Couldn't have more evidence against these people. Now searching for the bodies here, cops use sonar technology and dogs, obviously, to dredge the area that is indicated on the map, but it's such a big area. It still took them three days to find anything. Wow. And they finally found, um, they had to, one spot they had to remove tires, tree roots, and a huge, uh, possum burrow underground, a big fucking tunnel under there to get to what they finally find are Nicholson, Duncan, uh, Lori Duncan and Candy and Amber all in the same hole. Um, this is also, there's livestock remains buried nearby. So pretty obvious the livestock remains were to throw off the, yeah, the suit, the dogs and such. Yeah. They start digging like, Oh, there's a cow here. That's why we smell that moving on to the next area. But no, they weren't. Um, they find Nicholson on top and beneath him in the hole were Lori and then the two daughters were at the bottom of the hole. This is horrifying. Put them in first. Put them in first. Um, everyone had been shot at least once at close range execution style back of the head. Amber was still wearing her swimsuit from slip and sliding. No fucking way. Can you fucking believe, and the, the meal on the table was the picnic that mom prepared dirty. She came home all excited from slip and sliding with a fucking little bathing suit on and fucking all happy and you know, hair wet and shit. That is disgusting. She had a T shirt pulled over her face and, um, candy was wearing her sun dress that she loved and so still in the same clothes. The adults had been bound and gagged and shot multiple times. Each, the girls had each been shot once in the back of the head. Imagine that. Imagine who could walk two little kids out to there. First of all, how could you walk them out there? You know, that was enough for me. I couldn't do it. Yeah. Then being like, okay, look over there, kids. And then shooting them. But that's just one of you with one gun. So you shot one and then the other one knew that that happened. Then you had to shoot. That is horrible. It's fucking horrible. The first one didn't. I can't think of worse, but the second one saw in the hole. Yeah. Oh, geez. So they saw their sister get shot and then go, oh no. And then it's coming for me. That's just hard. At least they didn't fucking gag and bind the girls to scare them. At least they probably didn't know it was coming, except for one split second before it happened with one of them. Fucking hell. That's good. At least they didn't torture the girls. That's helpful. But the adults were bound and gagged and dragged out there and poor Lori, what if you're Lori and you're sitting on the edge of a fucking hole and someone's about to shoot you and you're bound and gagged with your crackhead fucking boyfriend. And you know your kids are in the car back there. We think it's going to happen to your kids. You might think maybe they're going to let the kids go. Who knows. But they got the kids second and they were on the bottom of the hole. So those kids saw two dead bodies. They saw two dead bodies. Or maybe he brought them not near the body. Who knows? Because it's easy to move a six year old. So maybe they killed them over here. I'm not sure. Because that would probably freak the kids out. And then you'd end up having to shoot moving targets. And that's going to be difficult. So very small ones. Very small moving targets, which good luck. So, you know, this is disgusting. Then they keep looking and about a half mile away still in this area. They keep going using sonar and all that. They find the guys as well. Oh, he's there too. He's there too. Buried separately. And they said at first quote, he died hard. What is it? Oh, like a beating and then a shot. No, he took his shoes off and lost all of his hair and walked on some glass. He died real hard. And so he, he fucking, he had a lot done to him. Lot done to him. They discovered. Wow. That he's also been shot. And now Nicholson and Duncan were bound gagged shot multiple times, including once in the head, DeGyce, the kids are only shot once each single bullet to the back of the head each. Um, I guess DeGyce was found face down in a shallow hole. He'd been shot more than once. His skull was severely fragmenting, fragmented, requiring significant reconstruction to figure out what the fuck happened to him. He was beaten and tortured and shot. The guys probably saying, what did you tell them to try to get information out of him? I'm sure he was tortured for that. Now Johnson, Angela Johnson, this all comes out that everything you've been telling the guy next door, every details of your crimes is now public fucking knowledge, basically given to the prosecutors. She hears this. She's, she doesn't find out from like police or from the court or from her lawyer. She sees it on TV. Oh. That the kids were found through an informant that fucking talked to Angela in the jail. Oh, that's fucked up. As soon as she sees that, she goes anywhere cell, tears a bed sheet, ties it to a railing and attempts to hang herself. Oh, did not succeed. I'm fucked. Yeah. No, they, they, they find it and they find her trying to hang herself and they untie her and they go, no, no, stupid. We'll take care of that for you. Breathe, breathe all the air. Breathe. We got that. We'll take care of that later. Don't worry. You fucking killed kids for money. This is disgusting. Like you can't be any grosser for money, for profit, for what money? The whole thing is so gross. Yeah. For this like theoretical meth empire that you might build if you didn't get arrested every three days, because that's the problem. You can't, you're idiots. So July 2001 indictments charge both Dustin and Angela Johnson with federal murder charges. This is all in the covering up of a federal drug thing. This is a big deal. Um, Dustin is sent to Florence, Colorado. Oh, big one. That penitentiary where this, because he's already convicted for the drug charges, super max, where he became convinced that he's going to be charged with the murders and he is. It's pretty quickly. Um, he said that he planned to call his associates as witnesses in Sioux City. This is wild. If tried for the murders, he told somebody in jail this, here's my plan. Yeah. This is what I'm going to do. They're going to have to bring me back to Iowa. Right. Yeah. We're going to go to Iowa. I am going to have my lawyer put a bunch of my boys on the witness list. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So they're all going to come to court to be on the witness list and they're subpoenaed, they have to be there. But what we're going to do is I'm going to have them overpower the guards, kill them, and then we'll all escape. Yeah. Totally doable. Right. Totally doable. This has not ever been considered. Come on. Out of ever. No. How many action movies is this guy watch? And he's like, yeah, yeah, that'll work. That could work. I'm going to put all, I'm going to put all 13 of oceans on there and then, uh, and then just have them all come on the same day. And assume that they're also going to be like this perfect ninja fighting force together to kill multiple armed people, many armed, especially with, you know, a federal charge and murder and all that. They're going to have more than one guard there. It's not just going to be some old guy with a big fat belly falling asleep with an old dog next to him in the back of the room. It's guys that are going to be super cool with breaking out with the key on the wall. Yeah. Kidnapping a baby murderer, a meth chef. Yeah. They're going to love me. Yeah. Yeah. Well, those are his boys, he said. They all want me out and, uh, they can't wait for me to get home. I'm so picturing the old West sheriff there with some guy with a broomstick trying to get the king, you know, ring off key ring off the wall. He's while a dog barks at him. Yeah. And you're like, she will have basset hounds on the ground, just a watching you. Holy shit. And they're never going to have a problem with him ever. They're going to love him. No. So yeah, he's going to overpower them after escaping. Then he's going to kill all the murder witnesses, including someone being held in federal custody, the guy that witnessed Angela's shit, kill all the cops. And if that's not all the cops that have investigated this, they have information and just to make sure kill that damn pesky federal prosecutor who's also prosecuting me. Let's kill everybody. Federal agents now. And, and yeah, government employees, we're going to get them all. Dude, John Gotti didn't think to do all this. He'd be like, we can't fucking do that. It's crazy. I think I'm going to die in here. I think maybe we'll just get a juror to fucking, you know, vote not guilty. Right? They're probably easier. I think. That's the easy one. This is fucking crazy. I'm going to break out. And he actually had guys willing to do crazy shit for him. I don't know how many, this guy doesn't have associates willing to murder federal prosecutors for him. That's crazy. No. So to prepare for their escape, because this, this, this wasn't just on a whim. He was actually planning on doing this. This was a real thing he wanted to plan. Dustin and his associates practiced retrieving an officer's weapon. Learning how to remove handcuffs with minimal tools like off of your hand. Like keys and such. And he had these guys train in martial arts scenarios, encountering centered around encounters with armed people. So if you're next to a guy who's walking with you and he has a holster, this is where you want to attack to get away from literally planning how to break. Do this is crazy. Ocean's 11 is a more realistic plot that you could actually pull off compared to this. This is so stupid. This is the dumbest fucking thing in the world here. So, wow, this is oceans IQ 11 is what this is. This is dumb. Now, April 2002, the US judge rules that any evidence found as a result of the informants maps, the maps that that guy made based on what Angela Johnson told him is inadmissible against Angela Johnson. So they can't use the map. Therefore can't use the bodies that were found. They can only use her statements, which that sucks. Now, February 2003, the federal prosecutors are arguing that no, that guy in jail was not a government agent when he obtained the maps. He was just a guy in the fucking cell working on his own to try to get his own shit resolved. Okay, not deputized or anything. We were just allowing him. Yeah, he just came to us. So let us use the maps. Now, also a federal judge that same month denies a request to release the remains of the five victims to the families, saying that they're evidence. Which is horrible. You have been, suppose you're, you're Lori Duncan's mom. You waved at her one day. Then the next day drove to the house and she's gone and you still haven't fucking seen her yet. You still haven't seen your grandkids yet. And then it's 10 years later and they've been taken out of the ground and held by them for years. They've been wanting just to have a funeral for years. They've known they were dead and haven't been able to have a funeral. Horrify. I can't imagine what that family's going through. That's fucking disgusting. But they said they're evidence and we can't release them. We have to be able to do testing and shit. December 2003, a court of appeals, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals rules that prosecutors can use the maps and information from the informant as evidence as well. So now Angela is fucked. Fucked fucked. Double fucked. It's all come. Yeah. Double fucked like a double stuffed Oreo. In deep shit. Thick in the middle. June 2004. The remains are finally released to the families here. Finally released. They had to wait all this time. By the way, Nicholson had children and he had life insurance. These children had to wait till now to collect life insurance on him. Oh, sweet Jesus. Can you tell June of 2004 he's been dead for 11 years. That's fucking crazy. Because with no body found, they said he might not be dead. Obviously. Candy's father, by the way, this is fucking horrible. The kids had two different dads, I guess. Candy's father at the time she was killed was in the hospital in a coma. From what? Doesn't matter. I don't know who cares, but he's in a car accident, something, but he was in a coma. So he went into a coma with a daughter and came out of a coma. And one of the first things they had to say was, no, your daughter's missing and has been missing. And we suspect that something bad has happened to her. How long was I asleep for? What the fuck? You know what I mean? Back under. He said that he'd never get to hug his little girl, never walk her down the aisle. This is horrible, obviously. They ended up having a funeral for Lori and her two daughters. They bury them all. They have one casket for all three. Oh, really? They're burying them all together. They're just bones at this point anyway. So they're just kind of putting them all together because they said because they were putting that hole together, they wanted to keep them together basically. And they thought that Lori would want to have her kids with her, essentially. So this time they're, they're all three are placed in a white casket. There's relatives there. They have a very big, big service at the church and they play Elvis's peace in the valley as they take their bodies out of the church. That was her favorite. And that was what she wanted. At the gravesite, she's a veteran, remember? Right. So then if that wasn't sad enough, now they do the 21 gun salute, the ceremonially folded flag, which is also very sad stuff. They do that. I hated that. That's, I mean, it's nice, but it's always something extra sad. Yeah. I remember my grandfather died, them doing the flag thing for my grandmother and being like, ah, I don't like that. I mean, I like it, but it's sad. It's sad. It's the horn that's the music being played while that flag is, it's fucked up. That is the whole thing. And it's the solemnness of it, the way how quiet they are. They were like, Hey, you got the other red. Hey, flip this. Oh, you fucking idiot. It wouldn't be a sad. And if they folded it like a beach towel or like a fucking, like a big sheet, yeah, efficiently where it's like, I don't like this at all with their white gloves and all that shit. It was, yeah, again, don't like it because it's sad, not because it's not a nice thing to do. Um, it's just sad. They're playing taps for Christ's sake. It's just sad. There's at your heart. Ah, so September 2004, Dustin goes on trial. Yeah. He's facing 17 counts ranging from you name it, witness tampering, murder, everything in between basically. Now there's some strange points to this case here. The judge, because they found out he wanted to like have people come and spring him and kill everybody and go on a murder spree. The judge, US district judge, Mark W. Bennett receives round the clock protection. Oh, he's like a scorted into the court. Uh, also they fear that Dustin might try to escape or harm jurors or their families as well. He'll do anything they said to get out of this. So they enacted other extensive security measures here, including sealing jurors identities and picking them up at a secret location before busting them into the courthouse. So no one knows who they are, where they come from, which is crazy. So there's an anonymous jury. Also, he has to wear a stun and belt, a shock belt under his clothing, like Lori Valo did, same thing. That's very common. Um, it's under your clothes. So it doesn't look like whatever. She's the first one I've heard about with it. That's amazing. Like a fucking invisible fence. Oh, it's great. Yeah. Like a dog, she's going to accept not mean because this is a murder. So yeah, that's cruel. It's a dog. They can't help with their doing. Leave him alone. But this might be comical. Well, what's even more comical is he's also bolted to the floor, which is hilarious. So I'd love to see this guy try to run. Right. He takes one step. The chain goes, he falls. They shock him. He's convulsing on the floor. This would be hilarious. He's just basically got to rig that chair to where it's the remote. And if, and if it, if it gets to zero weight in the chair, it fucking starts shocking, right? There's a guy with a button. Yeah. Okay. There's a guy. There's the button guy. Yeah. I remember the Lori Vallow had a button guy. Yeah. That's awesome. It's like, he's the button guy. So this is all very, this is not normal for trials, all of this stuff going on. You gotta have a real relaxed guy there. Somebody that doesn't drink coffee and doesn't smoke. I would accidentally hit him. Can't have his finger hovering over the son of a bitch. You know what I mean? So they said that shackling a defendant during a trial raises two main constitutional concerns. One, these shackles could impede in the defendant's ability to participate in his case and two, the shackles could suggest to the jury that the defendant's guilty. Yeah. It's the same reason why you, you don't go to your trial in jail clothes. That's right. Why are they going to get him a suit? Well, because otherwise he looks guilty and it's not fair. That's why they have to get him a suit. So they have to go down to Ross and pay $80. Trust me. It's nothing compared to what they have to pay for the rest of this shit. Doesn't, don't they usually have just like a thing in the back room, like a, a, like a closet full of suits and dresses and shit? No, absolutely not. No, no, no. They shun lawyers probably do. I would think maybe as a couple, but normally no, you have to have something bought for you because I remember hearing about the Sarah Boone case. Right. Yeah. They went to Ross and bought her clothes because she didn't have clothes and they bought her the worst outfits possible. She looked like dog shit. Didn't help her. It made her look guilty or somehow it was weird. Yeah. And then they took Casey Anthony over to the murdering whore mother. That's, yes, they do. Well, they walked her down a hallway and they said the dresses are down here and she came to a dead end and they were like, nevermind. Sorry. I guess pantsuits and, uh, and, uh, this way to keep her. How's it feel, Casey? How's it feel to get lied to? They're actually in a hole in a swap is where he puts her clothes. Very plastic. How about that? Pantsuits in a bit. Yeah. Yeah. This is where we keep the pizza boxes that smell really bad. You know, old pizza smells like dead corpses, obviously. So, um, yeah, that's, so they don't want the people to look guilty. Cause if you look at someone and they're in jail clothes shackled, they look like a prisoner who's guilty of something. Whereas if they're not in jail clothes, they look like normal people. So that's the whole point. Um, so they found though that they needed to shackle Dustin arising from his prior escape attempts and threats against witnesses, law enforcement and prosecutors and the judge, um, they said he was head of his drug empire. He was a detail oriented, thoughtful, cool under pressure guy. Yeah. Yeah. Um, his lawyer said he was very involved in the factual analysis of his case. He was perhaps one of the most inquisitive clients that I've ever had. Yeah. He's very smart, but he's dumb as shit. So in this trial, they put up a parade of criminals to testify against him. It is awesome. Uh, hilarious collection of fucking society's dregs here. Um, yeah, a band of prisoners. This is the newspaper. This is the Des Moines register, which by the way, did a lot of great work and a lot of good reporting on this case. You don't see a lot of good investigative reporting anymore. They just take whatever the press release is and print that and that's it. Um, you see, only investigative reporting you see is never in print anymore. It's in videos and shit. Right. They were still doing good print work back then. And, um, they said they described it thusly along with all the information they'd already collected, the state paraded in a band of prisoners, cutthroats and hog thieves whom honking had met a handful at a handful of correctional facilities. Sounds like he's got a crew of pirates that are going to come in and testify against them. Oh my God. They didn't trust the panty thieves to talk. That's no, no panty to hog thieves. They got, um, they stole big panties, the hot thieves. That's what they did. Uh, they each asserted that Dustin made incriminating statements about the murders. One inmate claiming he killed rats and quote, children raised by rats. Oh, okay. That's, you know, Lori's a rat. So her kids would have been rats too. Like the old good fellas thing. Yeah, he would have been a rat. This whole fucking family's rats. It's one of them. Fuck's spider. Fuck's spider. Yeah. A murderer named Fred Tokars, uh, testified that in 1998, Dustin described strangling Lori Duncan and Greg Nicholson. And cause he did that first and killing the children because quote, they could have been witnesses. Yeah. Wow. Uh, an inmate named Ron McIntosh, who this is crazy, whose convictions include quote, air piracy. How do you, that's, that's hijacking, isn't it? Yeah, but piracy means like you came on another, what are you hop on off of your plane onto their wing? How the fuck did you air? Skydiving to another plane. Like, I don't know how that works. Yeah. Well, that is crazy. Um, he said that Dustin told him the kids were murdered, not because they could be witnesses. And this is even more disgusting. It's one thing to say, listen, I'm cold-blooded business and I'm all business. I don't care. He said because quote, they wouldn't be quiet or they wouldn't shut up. Yikes. Gee, maybe because you kidnapped them from their fucking house and tied up their mother and stuffed them in a fucking, I wouldn't shut up either. If I was six, I would have been like, what's going on? This is terrible. Why are you doing this? You're not going to hurt us, are you? Wow. I can kill these kids. They won't stop asking me. Fucking and repp-up-up-up-up-up-up-up-up. Jesus. Shut the fuck up. Jesus Christ. If only they had an iPad, their lives could have been saved back in the day. They would have put fucking blue-ey on and shut up. Yeah. Yeah. This is horrible though. Dennis Putziere, a criminal with a penchant for crack, smoking and swine stealing as the paper puts it. He's one of them. A penchant for... I just picture him just like smoking it up and then going, I got to steal some fucking hogs now. Where are the hogs? I got to steal hogs. And then he's just like, that's when he steals hogs. Only when he's fucking cracked up. I got to crave him for some pig feet. Oh, I shouldn't have done that inhaling thing as fuck my mouth up. Jesus, that's annoying. You're right. You got to supposed to do it. Sorry, everybody. I had fucking... Big surgery. All my wisdom teeth taken out. I had all sorts of shit and it's still healing. It's so hard to talk. There's stitches everywhere in my mouth. And I just did like that crack smoking noise. What you're not supposed to do at all. The position of your jaw. Yeah. Well, you're not supposed to suck through a straw and I just did this whole thing. So I hope I didn't fuck something up there. Anyway, I think it's okay. I'm not spitting out blood at the moment. So that's good. No, you don't look like you're nothing. Nothing's dripping. You're all right. That's good. It's just dripping out of my mouth. Hold on. We'll finish the show. We're almost finished. So the... Speculae lips, son. Oh yeah, there we go. So the crack smoking swine stealer named David Putzie struck up a conversation through Cellblocks with Dustin Honk. In 1996, he said Dustin had bragged that in 1993, some people quote disappeared and that he had drove out to the country and shot them. Jesus. During a cross examination of this parish, the defense attorney asked why a smart man like Dustin would confide all of his crimes, quote, in a couple of crack heads who steal hogs for a living. Crack head with hog thieves. Wow. He wouldn't do that. And then he described to the jury, the lawyer described all this parade of dipshits as quote, they are people who have no future. How can they be believed? Now the defense lawyers focused during the trial on the fact that no forensic evidence tied Dustin to any of the crime scene, no forensic evidence and find his hairs or anything like that. But jurors did hear audio tapes of him plotting to kill other witnesses in a drug case from night when member, when his partner wore the wire back in the day, they hear that shit. So. He's like, we shouldn't have even allowed that. That's ridiculous. Cause you don't have any evidence in this case. You have old evidence from other things, not even to do with these people and fucking, you know, you know, physical evidence. So obviously he's innocent. You should let him go in the closing. They say there's lack of DNA evidence. The defense says, and other physical evidence linking him to the crime scene or the bodies, he countered the state's painting of Dustin as a cold-blooded killer telling jurors he was quote, just a young man infatuated with drug manufacturing basically, basically a nerd. Nerds are harmless. You know that. Imagine being described that just a young man infatuated with drug manufacturing. Like it's just his hobby. That's all it is. Like he's infatuated with girl on girl porn or something. And he's infatuated with titties at the strip club. I'm infatuated with the Charlotte Hornets because that bomber jacket is so he loved it. That fucking teal was the shit. He couldn't help it. Um, basically a nerd. Yeah. So he can't have been a murder. He's a harmless nerd. Nerds don't murder. Nerds don't murder. That's right. He's a nerd. Um, so, wow. Um, the jurors here, um, informed the court that they were ending their deliberations early one day and that they would not be deliberating the next day. We're taking a day off. Yeah. Isn't that nice? Before leaving the building, juror number five, two, three asked a court employee for an excuse from work for the remainder of that day. And the following day because quote, her boss had been making inappropriate comments to her about the trial and she's not supposed to hear anything about the trial. Right. The district court immediately investigated the allegation questioning juror five, 23 that same day. Now this juror informed the court that her boss had made comments as he walked by her desk, such as quote, guilty, guilty, guilty as he walked by. Like I'm hearing shit. You don't know about guilty, guilty, guilty. That's the greatest thing of all time. Guilty, guilty, guilty. He just goes by and keeps going. Hey, there's pizza in the break room. Guilty, guilty, guilty. That's incredible. Guilty, guilty, guilty. And then at times she quote, when are you going to burn him? He's like, he's like Paulie Schoringer. He is. What do you think? That's hilarious. Ah, so fun. At no time did juror five, 23 respond to any of her boss's comments. Okay. Or she never responded. She's just got him put out. Juror five, 23 also told the court that she had the impression that before she was picked for the jury, the company hierarchy wanted her to get out of jury service because her boss told her quote, she should have stood up in court and said to hang him. Tith her eyes, that motherfucker. That's right. And he's mad at her. So she should have tried to get out of jury service because she's not willing to yell in court that he should be hanged before he's even convicted. This is insanity. So the court ever, this is what he sounds like a good time. I'll tell you that much. Not helping her. Is a party. Oh, absolutely. That yearly picnic is. He's going to get fired for something inappropriate coming. No way he's sticking around long enough to retire, but boys, he's no, he figured, he fingered a secretary while she was trying to change the copier toner. Absolutely. Without a doubt. You know, it happened. So the court. Oh yeah. So the court questioned juror 523, focusing on what she may have said to other jurors about her boss's comments. Juror 523 said she had voiced her concerns about the jury's decision not to deliberate that day, saying she wanted to get her life back and explaining how hard it was for her to switch gears and go back to work. Like, can we get this over with? Because I got to get back to work one of these days. She acknowledged telling some other jurors that her boss had said, guilty, guilty, guilty. At the conclusion of questioning, the parties and the court agreed to remove 523 from the juror deliberations and replace her with an alternate, which is fine. They said she didn't poison the whole jury pool enough to yank everybody, but she should probably go, even though I don't think it matters. But the verdict comes in. It's a 10 woman, two man jury. Imagine those women all had to sit and think about what if my kids were in a fucking car while I was being blindfolded and let out to a fucking hole. They all had to think about that. Absolutely awful. Not good for him. He is convicted of all 17 charges relating to five murders and witness tampering and threats and everything else going down here. Now, during sentencing, there's a whole lot of victim impact and deservedly so. One person here, wow, this is just horrible. This is one of the uncles, one of Lori's uncles, I believe, because of Dustin Honkin, there will be no more talks, no more playtime, no more adventures for Candy and Amber. Your selfish act of slaughtering innocence got you a place in hell forever. And the deal you made with the devil is about to be paid for forever. And then said to somebody else, this is DeGyce's sister, death is what they deserve, an eye for an eye, but Dustin won't die five times, he'll only die once. Is that fair? Well, I mean, it's kind of all we have at this point. Yeah, what do you want to do? You want to revive him? He's only one person, that's like it's raining and you're going, this isn't fair, there's more drops than I'd like. Well, how do you fix that? It's not fixable. The another sister of DeGyce said he's in denial. He just wants his mom to think that he didn't do it. Is he saying he didn't do it? Now, Terry DeGyce's father said about this, he's very short and sweet, he talked about Dustin and said he's too smart, he's too smart for his own good, that one, he thought he could get away with everything and that's the problem. Lori Duncan's father believes that he, Dustin should get the death penalty if convicted. He said, we really, really want this case to be resolved in our favor. The death penalty would be in our favor. Anything less just isn't right. Anyone who can harm children deserves it. Children are completely innocent. And it's hard to argue with that. I mean, two little girls, especially Jesus Christ. If it was two little boys, it'd be horrible, but for some reason less horrible in my book. I don't know why that is. Why is that? It's because, I don't know. As a father, there's something about a little girl that's like a made-of-fabricated. It's because when you were a little boy, you feel like you can relate with that and you feel like maybe you could have gotten out of it. You were a ragtag little shit, maybe you could have. You know what I mean? As little girls, especially fucking six and 10, those are defenseless little girls. They're not going to win any fight. True. Also, we both have a boy and a girl as kids. Even if they're equally everything, you just for some reason, you try to protect the girl more physically, emotionally. For some reason, boys are fine. That's not three ninjas home alone. Boys are fine. Boys are fine. Well, there's a lot more. Well, there's a lot more. Well, there's a lot more. Well, there's a lot more. Walk it off. Yeah. And if they can't walk it off, they'll figure it out. Walk it off. Fucking heat up the doorknob. Yeah. You know what I mean? Put a fucking, a fucking feather up there. Set this man's face on fire. What are we talking about here? Get your shit together. Make a man stab his own toes. Line up the matchbox cars, dude. No. Steff on nails. Oh, Christ. Now, Dustin's going to speak as well. He rose to speak. Wow. They said that his statement in the Des Moines Register said, his statement was so articulate and expressive, even the victims' families noticed how eloquent it was. Which, at that point, makes you even madder. Like, oh, you're not even stupid. I really want to strangle you now. Yeah. You're actually very smart. Yeah. You actually could have made just a normal living and not killed anybody. Fuck you. So he turned to his mother first, Dustin does, and apologized. He said, quote, were I as a perennial, I would bloom for you next year so you could smile. Okay. Then he made it clear from this that he would not be apologizing at all. He said, quote, some of you came today hoping to see me squirm, tremble in fear, or beg for mercy. Sorry, but you're wasting your time. Oh, boy. Oh, man. Not good. He knows what he's getting, and he doesn't want to be. Yeah. He acknowledged that the families had suffered a senseless destruction of a human life, but insisted, quote, your vengeance toward me is misguided. Uh-huh. He insisted that he only learned of the killings after the fact, and that no story currently circulating about the murders is true. He said jurors only had a key whole view onto what happened. He acknowledged concealing the evidence, but said he did so to protect Angela. That's why he was doing it, because she was the one who did it. He said also he refused to testify earlier because he did not want to harm her trial. Fell bad. Okay. He said everybody has principles until it costs them something. I'm willing to pay with my life for those that I have, in other words, to save Angela from her bullshit. Even though they have a kid together, maybe saying, you know, I want to save the kid's mother. He said, I was convicted because of passion, not hard evidence. I had committed a passion of the juror wanting to hold someone responsible for dead kids. He said, I've committed wrongs, both known and unknown. He said, but never have I taken another's life. Thought it? Yes. Verbalized it? Yes. Done it? No. Wow. He also praised some of the prosecution team for dealing with him fairly, but referred to half of them as, quote, magicians and tricksters. He ridiculed US district judge Mark Bennett for failing to give him a new trial and urged Bennett to, quote, skip the speech and just pronounce the sentence. It speaks volumes by itself. I don't want to hear your fucking lecturing, which guess what? You don't have a choice. Sorry, bud. If I was the judge, I'd get real comfortable and be like, well, I'd sit back because I got a whole lot to say, motherfucker. I was going to just sentence you, but now I really have to tell you. So the judge says, no problem. You, sir, may fuck off death penalty. Oh. How's that? That's great. So the federal death penalty, dicks, he says to him. Now the federal, the death penalty in Iowa hasn't happened very often. The last federal execution was Victor Harry figure, figure who was a drifter who was hanged at the Iowa state penitentiary on March 15th, 1963 for kidnapping and killing a Dubuque doctor. He was the 41st person legally executed in Iowa and the first person executed under the 1932 federal kidnapping law. So the last federal execution of an Iowa person was in 1963. There's no way it's happening. Wow. And then Congress, the federal law, Congress revived the federal death penalty in 1988 with a narrow law aimed at murderers by drug dealers. In 1994, 40 crimes were declared capital offenses. Uh, still figure was the last to be executed by the federal court system until Timothy McVeigh was put to death on June 11th, 2001 for the Oklahoma city bombing. Now Iowa itself abolished its death penalty in 1965. It is one of 12 states at that time that didn't have any capital punishment, including Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin. We went over this in our history of the death penalty, they had very specific reasons for doing that. They were all listen to that episode. It's very good. So May of 2005, Angela Johnson finally going to go on trial. Okay, great. Okay. Federal authorities described her as a ruthlessly ambitious woman who slept her way to the top of Honkin's meth business, started with Terry DeGeese, pushed him aside and then got with the leader of the whole group. The queen pin trying to get to the top with a queen poon. Jeez, that was terrible. That was a bad pun. I think she's got to use something. This is just, there's no corporate structure here. Yeah, what are you going to do? There's no merit. I want that CEO's golden parachute time that he's going to get. This is ridiculous with my fucking queen poon. I don't like it. So yeah, she's actively slept her way to the top. Prosecutors acknowledged that it was Dustin who pulled the trigger in all five shootings, but simply being the shooter doesn't mean you're more culpable, especially if you're her who fucking did the ruse to get into the house and also went up with the kids and said, pack up, kids are going on a surprise trip. Fuck you. You're just as responsible. So basically it's all the same evidence that they had against Dustin, except against her. They had the shit from that cell, the guy next door, the map she drew and everything else. So the jury deliberates for seven hours before finding her guilty of five counts of conspiracy to commit murder as part of a drug conspiracy and five counts of committing murder while engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise. Okay. The jury here comes out. During her sentencing, she continued to blame Justin and said, I regret I wasn't strong enough. She called Dustin a sociopath who will never admit to what he's done. Um, wow. Now the judge said, quote, I am troubled by the lack of certainty in the record concerning the precise involvement of Angela Johnson in these crimes. However, by federal law, he is bound to the jury's decision and he says, you ma'am, may fuck off death sentence for you too. Oh, what? The jury brought back the death sentence. It's rare. The judge did not agree with it. The judge said, I'm troubled by the fact that he basically set it up so she's going to get off on it on appeal because he said, there's not an, I wouldn't have given the death penalty because I don't see enough precise involvement and evidence of precise involvement to give her the death penalty. But then on appeal, it just goes to recess. Exactly. Yeah. It's still, it would still be guilty. Just that. In 2007, she appeals, uh, the United States court of appeals of the eighth circuit upholds the conviction finding sufficient evidence to conclude that she had participated in the murders. She asserts that the murders could not have been committed in furtherance of a drug conspiracy because the conspiracy had ended in late 1992 when Cut Comp left Arizona and Dustin told his brother he was going to stop producing meth. That assertion is incorrect though, despite what Honkin may have told his brother and despite Cut Comp's, Cut Comp's move to Iowa, I think Cut Comp is a better way to put it. The evidence included the evidence of the events culminating in Honkin's March 93 arrest demonstrates that Honkin and Cut Comp had in fact continued their methamphetamine related activities. Johnson also suggests that the conspiracy terminated no later than March 93 when Honkin and others were arrested and Nicholson began cooperating with the authorities. A conspiracy may persist, however, even if the participants and their activities change over time and even if many participants are unaware of or uninvolved in some of the transactions. She said also there should have been mitigating factors that you guys thought of. Even though she's guilty as an aider and a better, her participation was relatively minor compared to Dustin Honkin. She doesn't have a criminal record. There's a strong maternal bond between Angela Johnson and her daughters, Alyssa and Marvia, that this mother-daughter relationship will continue to survive and flourish if Angela is sentenced to life imprisonment without parole rather than death. They said another person, Dustin, is equally or more culpable in the murders of the whole family. They said that. Two of the victims, Greg and Terry, consented to the conduct methamphetamine manufacturing and distribution and that significantly contributed to the circumstances of their death, like they put themselves in bad positions. If you're in a meth-dealing empire, you are putting yourself in a bad position. She also demonstrated that Angela did that she can lead a productive, worthwhile life in prison through her kindness and helpfulness to other inmates, her interest in Bible study and religion, her artistic endeavors and furtherance of her education by obtaining a GED while incarcerated after having dropped out of school in the ninth grade to begin with. In spite of her problems with drugs, men, and her own depression, Angela has always held a steady job and consistently worked to provide for the care and comfort of her daughters, Alyssa and Marvia. Although she is guilty of these murders, Angela Johnson was pregnant by Dustin with her daughter at the time of the murders and as a result was in a disadvantaged position to resist him, leave him or turn him into the authorities. Okay. She's always been a good mother to her daughters. She communicates with them regularly, stays as active as possible in their life and attempts to pass on the values and beliefs that will help her daughters avoid her fate. There are other factors in Angela Johnson's background or character that mitigate in favor of a life sentence imprisonment without possibility of parole and against the death penalty. They say, tough shit, still death penalty, affirm. He appeals in 2010, raising dozens of objections and arguing that his sentences should be overturned, not just fucking- Not just resettencing. Commuted. Yeah. He argues that the use of a stun gun belt interfered with his right to communicate with counsel and participate in his own defense. In support of his argument, he cites an 11th circuit case which explains although stun belts are not visible to the jury and are therefore unlikely to interfere with the presumption of innocence, the constant anxiety over the possible triggering of the belt interferes with the defendant's ability to follow the proceedings and participate fully in his defense. As long as the guy isn't flipping the remote up and down in his hand and playing with it and shit, you know what I'm saying? Just dicking off with it, standing there. I picture an Atari controller with a joystick and he's just screwing around with it a little bit, flipping it up and down, bored, some shit like that. He also contends because he was shackled and bolted to the floor, he wasn't going anywhere and the use of the stun belt constituted impermissible piling on. District court agreed the use of a stun belt should be subjected to close judicial scrutiny because of its potentially disruptive effect on the rights and fairness. He also contends the district court aired by placing juror 523 with alternate juror 425 during penalty phase deliberations and did not allow a substitution, yada yada, keep getting fucked, you're out. Good. It doesn't matter, affirm. March 2012, Angela Johnson, another appeal, this time saying that her lawyers failed to present evidence about her brain and personality impairments that could have been mitigating factors and the judge orders a new sentencing hearing for Angela. He then vacates the death sentence citing the, a quote, alarmingly dysfunctional defense team. Wow. And because they didn't, they didn't introduce a bunch of mitigating factors that any lawyer would have. So they say to her, you, ma'am, may now fuck off again, life without. Okay. So now she's going life without parole, but no death penalty. Damn it. I was hoping to hear what a gal eats for the last meal. Weird. Yeah. What would they have? I'll just have something small. I'll just have a light sound. I'll just have a little of whatever Dustin's having. I'll have some of his fries. I'll just have a bite. I'll pick off of that. Get your own. It's your own goddamn last meal. So October, 2013, that's amazing. A woman's last meal will be picking off someone else's plate because after they said they didn't want any. I'll see what's left of your salad. It's fine. October, 2013, will his sentence get tossed here? A U S district judge writes that Dustin received a fair trial in 2004 and effective legal counsel at every step of the process. She said she saw no reason to, quote, disturb the jury's determination that the death, that death is the appropriate punishment for this case. So December, 2014, prosecutors drop their pursuit of the death penalty in Angela Johnson's case. They drop their appeals to the appeal, leaving her to be sentenced with life without parole. Her lawyer said she was extremely relieved and grateful upon hearing of the decision and she's resentenced officially as that as part of this agreement. She agrees to drop all of her appeals as well. All right. She's going to take it now. She's going to take it. She's going to take the life without, which is what she wanted the whole time. 2018, Lori's dad, John Duncan, who had been pushing to have Dustin executed for years dies of stomach cancer before he gets a chance to say it. His lawyer said he was very sad when he knew he was passing because he wasn't going to see this happen. We assumed, or we assured him that we would be there for him. Now these have been removed from online, but Dustin was blogging. He was chronicling death row inmates' lives. He wrote that he regretted every single transgression, adding that while he used to, quote, enjoy punishing a rival, now he just wants to be left alone in peace. Well, after they kill you, you'll be very peaceful and alone. When these people finally get around to killing me, he wrote, they'll realize only the shell of me remains. The heart of me died long ago. I don't think anyone cares. You killed kids and they just want to wipe you away. I'm shocked that you had one. Yeah. No shit. So the Justice Department announces that the July of 2019, Justice Department of the United States announces that the Bureau of Prisons has completed a review of capital punishment and issues surrounding lethal injection drugs, allowing the execution of five inmates. And luckily for Dustin, he's one of them. He hit the lottery here to proceed. They're going to let him go through. November 2019, a district judge in DC blocks the execution of Dustin and three other men because of the lethal injection procedure was not authorized by federal law. They got to let legal challenges play out. January 15, 2020, supposed to be execution day in Terre Haute, Indiana, but it's postponed due to a preliminary injunction. By the way, he has his supporters. He stopped talking in public after he was sentenced, but maintains his innocence. Many in the faith community have expressed opposition to executing Dustin, including his spiritual advisor, Cardinal Joseph Tobin, and his current priest, Father Marco Keith, who filed an injunction to delay the proceeding until after COVID's over. He went Catholic, huh? Yeah, he went Catholic in prison. He would be the first Iowa criminal executed since 1963. People also want him dead, though. Here is one relative of a victim said he does deserve what he's getting. I can tell you that. He deserved it a long time ago. This is Lori Duncan's sister-in-law. She said she didn't know, this woman said that Duncan didn't know Nicholson was an informant and she wasn't involved in drugs. She said that she was a very sweet, innocent person and what happened to be put in a bad situation is awful. Now, the judge who actually sentenced him to death said he deserves it. This guy, by the way, Mark Bennett, is on record as being opposed to the death penalty. Oh, really? He's not a death penalty guy, he said, but if anyone deserves to be executed, it's that motherfucker right there. That squirrely little nerd asshole. The fact that he's a nerd makes it worse. Yeah. You fucking nerd, get in that seat so we can stick you, you fucking nerd. Get over here, nerd. Yeah. You just want to accuse him on the way out. I was going to say, give him a fucking wedgie. On the way to the execution room, you stick his head in the toilet and flush it, give him a nice swirly. He's going to be tied down, just piss on his face. It's whatever it is. Tea bag him. That's what they used to do to nerds, right? Get like five guys from his high school football team to come over and tea bag him. They're like 48 now. Their balls are all smelly and dangling. After a whole day of HVAC and shit, they're going to go over there and tea bag him good. Now, this judge says that his crimes were reprehensible and that he had a fair legal process, including talented lawyers who did an outstanding job with virtually nothing to work with. The judge said, I am not going to lose any sleep if he's executed. He said, normally I would, but the evidence was so overwhelming, it's just horrific how they were massacred. Fuck them basically. July 13th, 2020, the U.S. Attorney General directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons to schedule the executions of four men here. That same judge in D.C. issued another injunction blocking the execution of those four men. At 2 a.m. though, that day on July 13th, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that federal executions could resume. So July 17th, 2020 is execution day for him. By the way, there's an article about how much executions cost. It is obscene. The actual event of? The actual event is hundreds of thousands of dollars because they have to fly. They pay for everybody to come in. They pay for, they were talking about what it costs just to have individual bags of chips in the snack room and waters and bus rides and special accommodations for family members and wheelchairs. It costs like $700,000 to execute just for the act of doing it that day. It's really expensive. You could house them forever for the cost of just the execution. Never mind all the appeals. The drugs that were, that are purchased too are very expensive. Very expensive, yes. They're expensive. The equipment, the people they have to hire, the actual tubes and needles and all that shit's expensive. So here it is, execution day. Last meal. His last meal was, what do you think it is, Jimmy? The pasta? Did you get pasta? No, he didn't actually. What would a nurse from Iowa open? A lot of these, a lot of these dicks love, love a steak. Dinner from Pizza Hut. What? Why is that a thing too? I don't know. Pizza Hut. They love Domino's or Pizza Hut. Just bad pizza and steaks. It's one of those things that maybe is nostalgic though. Makes you feel like you're 12 again and innocent. You smell that cheap shitty pizza in the house and you come home and you go, oh it's pizza night. Oh wow, I'm not going to be executed tonight. This is a large pepperoni pizza and a two liter bottle of Coke and a large order of breadsticks. Total cost $33.11. $35 to feed this piece of shit. This is what's kind of silly is what I'm saying here. What we do, a lot of people, because a lot of states have done away with the last meal because they say it's too expensive, but it costs them hundreds of thousands of dollars just to actually do the actual event and execute them. But they don't want to spend $40 on food for somebody that they're going to execute. You know what I'm saying? Even back in the brutal, medieval times, you gave someone a last meal. Yeah. Big turkey. You put a cigarette in their mouth before you fucking shot them from the firing squad. There's certain things that as humans we go, listen, don't care what they did, I'm not a piece of shit. You're not getting out of this. I'm kind of on the hook for doing this to you. We're going to treat you better. It's not a big deal to get somebody fucking pizza after you're going to kill them the next day. Who cares? Anyway, they walk in. This is, by the way, a reporter that was there said, we walked in single file into the small cinder block room and sat facing two four foot windows, each trimmed in dark green. The scene we'd all come to watch would play out from the other side of the windows like a perverse version of picture perfect or per, yeah, picture picture for Mr. Rogers neighborhood. Oh yeah, picture picture. Yeah, I remember that. At four or three PM, the windows curtain raised revealing a small tile covered chamber. That's the weird thing too. It's like a theater like the shows on now raising a curtain. And the movie's starting. It's so weird. Yeah, shut up. Let's go to the lobby. It's too late. Fuck the raisinettes. We're watching this. Honkin lay on a gurney that was part Hannibal Lecter Dolly and part dentist's chair. His arms were in a low V at his side, two thick straps holding down each wrist and a light green blanket covering his body safe for his head. The marshals stood directly in front of us near a black phone, a senior official wearing black gloves by Honkin's head and another senior official off to the side with his priest, Mark O'Keeffe. So he was executed. His final words were a poem. What? Heaven Haven by Gerald Manley Hopkins. I have somebody. Okay. He's going to read somebody else's shit. I have. He's not a poet. He's a nerd. Not a poet. I have desired to go where springs not fail to field where flies no sharp and sided hail and a few lilies blow. And I have asked to be where no storms come, where all the greens swell is in the havens dumb and out of the swing of the sea. And then he said, Hail Mary, Mother of God, pray for me. He had all that time in there. Couldn't write a little poem. And then he had an awful, no that was a poem from somebody. Yeah, that's what I mean. Yeah. He didn't write the poem. You're saying he could have wrote the poem. I don't think he has a talent to write a poem. I think he's a math nerd. Maybe. Math nerds don't write poetry generally. It feels like 30 years in there or 20 years in there. You should be able to get something. Poets are bad at math. I mean, that expresses it perfectly. Either way, this dipshit then had an awful, terrible, like heartburn pizza hut burp afterwards because that shit's brutal, I'm sure. And he was like, definitely execute me. This is never going to go away. Oh, this is going to last 24 hours. So Honkin's lawyer said that his client was redeemed because he had been repented for his crimes. He said there's no reason for the government to kill him in haste or at all. The man they killed today could have spent the rest of his days helping others and further redeeming himself. The Des Moines register quotes it this way. Honkin's brutal tale of meth and murder reads like a made up thriller with a cast of characters drawn together by drugs, money or pure bad luck and a plot too outrageous for real life. There's Honkin either either evil incarnate or a man too smart for his own good, who's rough upbringing started him down a dark path. There's his girlfriend and partner Angela Johnson, either a savagely ambitious woman who slept her way to the top of a meth empire or a drug addicted young mother manipulated by a man who so craved money, power and success, he'd stop at nothing to take down anyone in his way. And there are his victims, some casualties of the life they chose and some others who were innocents, felled by wolves, praying on their young or Iowa nice culture. Is Iowa nice a thing? That's what they say a hundred times in this episode. Iowa nice, that's why Iowa and Minnesota hate each other. Minnesota nice bitch. We got hot dished. You're like, yeah, fuck you. We made corn and casserole, motherfucker. What's up with that? I'm nicer. No, you're nicer. No, I'm nicer. And they fight back and forth. I've met people from both. They're both pretty nice. I've never met anybody that's a dick. Bring up the other though. They don't get, they turn not nice real quick. Oh, that's when they're not nice. They hate it. It's so weird. I think it's just college football, honestly. I think it's just we hate the Hawkeyes and we hate whatever the fuck Minnesota is. So I don't know. There you go, the Screamin' Eagles, Minnesota State of Craig T. Nelson's coach, I believe, is what we're talking about. There is Mason City, Iowa. It's a wild story. It's really fucked up. It's fucked up story. If you enjoyed that story or like the way we tell it, we should say, definitely get on whatever app you're on and give us five stars right now. It helps a lot. It helps drive the show up the charts. So thank you for doing that. Head over to shutupandgivememurder.com. Tickets for live shows are there. There's a couple left for Philly. That's it for live shows. But you can still get, there is still time to get the virtual live show that we did. It is available for whatever two weeks past October 30th as it's available for that. It was a really funny, a great story. We had dumb costumes. Do yourself a favor and get it and relax and laugh because it's a lot of fun. So you can watch it 100 times until it's done and do whatever you want with that. That's shutupandgivememurder.com. Follow on social media. We are at Small Town Murder on Instagram, at Small Town Pod on Facebook. Get yourself Patreon. Please do. Get it. Patreon.com slash Crime in Sports is where you get all of the bonus material. $25 a month or above. Huge back catalog of shit you've never heard before. Immediately upon subscription. New ones every other week. One Crime in Sports, one Small Town Murder. You get it all, baby. This week, which you're going to get, for Crime in Sports, we're going to talk about when teams relocate and it makes everybody really sad and people stay sneak away in the middle of the night. Frank's front's hot. It's a... It really is. People are way too invested. And then for Small Town Murder, we're going to talk about the top haunted place in every state. All right. Let's go back, bullshit, and see which ones sound fun. So we'll talk about all that and more. Patreon.com slash Crime in Sports. And you get all shows, Crime in Sports, Small Town Murder, and your stupid opinions. All add free with your Patreon. Anybody $5 a month or above. You get all that and you get a shout out at the end of the show. Right now, Jimmy, hit me with the name of the people who, god damn it, we can't live without and would never, ever, ever take our kids and shoot them and put them in a hole in the ground. We're going to put them right now. This week's executive producers are Gary Howard and Mona Novada, Victoria Melson, and Janelle Scott. Thank you all so much. Thank you so much. You're amazing. Wonderful people. Other producers this week are Peyton Meadows, Anthony Finnemore, Brittany Finnemore, Brian Bender, Happy Hour in New Mayor, Zona Janice Hill, Ashley Taylor, Chainsaw with no last name. Oh! I don't know if that's a reference to Summer School. Newport Chainsaws? Possibly. It's summer school. It's got to be, right? It's got to be a Frazier reference there. Oh! What is that one? Of the Newport Chainsaws. Oh! All right. Yeah. Clearly. Yeah. Mr. Chainsaw. Laguna, I think. Yeah. Tacos, that party. I don't know what that means. I don't know if they're tacos, the party. I don't know what that means. Tacos, baby. Melinda Jimenez. Tacos are always good. Tacos are rarely, they might be more acceptable than bad pizza. You know what I mean? Oh, for sure. Much easier. Taco Bell makes great tacos. They're not good tacos. They're still very edible. No, worse taco. It's just so fun. Whereas the worst pizza is really bad. It really is. Amanda Shady, Shady perhaps. Rachel Kovalkovol. Jessica Peschenski. Something with a cut. Peschenski. What is that? Peschenski. Trish Oviott. Brondata. Sarah Byer. Laura. All right. Zipco. Fever. Laura Erickson. Vapor. Glyde. Julie Evans. Nicole McCollum. Jeremy Harwell. Margaret Woodruff. Brooke Phillips. Hailey Arada. Ourada. Tony Wolves. Mary with no last name. Crystal Hatfield. Con Seanary. Nice. Not bad. Spots. Spot Show. Jake Helland. Hellland. Thomas Holbert. Jordan McCollum. JB. The letters J and B. James with no last name. Michelle B.D. Jamison with no last name. Melanie Marks. Relative Reality. Reality. All right. Not realty. Pilar Grunig. Rebecca with no last name. C-Web. 13. Jackson Love. Sylvie Ray. Greg Chapman. Russell with no last name. Riley. T. Hofer. Britt Allman. Rick. Kevin. Onifer. Hailey with no last name. Jordan Hammer. Monkey with no last name. Jay Lee. Tina Murphy. B. Ryan. Jeremy. Arnold's grandson. Kingsley. Dwyer. Jay with no last name. Oscar Tyler. Nope. That's Tiger. Euro. Susan Hessen. Mark. Iwanaki. Iwanniki. Samantha Fisher. Heath. Heath Fodor. Allison Webster. Janie Mince. Crystal Corvada Brown. Diana with no last name. C&S Slinde. Slined. Jared Redding. Tracy Currier. Jared with no last name. Cub Band For Life. Kristen Dean. Casey Brunner. Dean Casey Brockel. Brooklyn. Brockle. Germaine Barnes. Arden Galanson. Galinson. Jeremy Fisting. Holy shit. Gavin Lindahl. Take it easy, Jeremy. Try with the fingers. One at a time, Jeremy. Aaron Maywood. Courtney. Not all at once. Courtney with no last name. Kara with no last name. Samantha Engelen. Scott Velazquez. Sherry from Akron. Ashley with no last name. Mothman Farms. Laura Ansel. Harliss with no last name. Josh Staples. Ratham.! Michelle Ormand. What is this? Autumn Sunset. Probably not. Keaton, unless their parents maybe were hippies. It's possible. Keaton Rosenbaum. Kelly Brockman. Lucinda Clark. Elena with no last name. Sophia Trujian. Annabelle Asperow. Espeiro. Robert Burt. Abhug Abogu. One. Abhug. I don't know. Rebecca Deirdorf. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Rebecca Deirdorf. Lil' Punky Deed Preston with no last name. Todd with no last name. Matt Stroop. Jess Cunningham. Amy Martin. Samantha with no last name. Mike Gignac. Gignac. What is that? Gignac? What is that? How do you do it? Gignac. Felicia with no last name. Doug with no last name. Derek Wilson. Richard Flores. Jill Billing. Julie with no last name. Jessica Bogus. Bogus. Daniel Corley. Elizabeth Reed. Tom Trulok. Brian French. Stephanie Henderson. Greg T. Mattias. Mattias. Radic. Radish. Graham. Chase Cook. Ann Twin Beaks. Brett Stasco. Joe Anderson. Tiffany Cook. Sarah Mori. Quentin Lyong. Alan Hudson. Alicia Pander-Froshey. Robert Purdy. Mia Murray. Greg T. Lisa Tyler. Cole Alvarado. Jamie Afaro. Jaime, perhaps. Holly B. Jess... Elizabeth. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Tyler Grimm, Grady from Pittsburgh, Benjamin Horner, fucking poor butt, Tryon, okay, Donovan Nice, Nice, Niese, and all of our patrons. You guys are the best, thank you. Thank you so much everybody for all that you do for us. We really do appreciate it. You keep the show going, you are the lifeblood of this bad boy, so thank you for everything that comes out there. Also we have new tour dates for next year and some other exciting stuff coming out next year that we need to tell you guys all about. Coming up in December, don't worry about it, we'll tell you all about it, but until then, keep coming back and seeing us. Definitely if you want to follow us on social media, shut up and give me murder.com is the place to go to find out how to do that. Keep coming back and seeing us, and until next week everybody, it's been our pleasure. Bye. Hey everybody, listening to Small Town Murder out there. Hi, good to see you out there. I'm here with Jimmy too, and this is an ad, but not an ad for a product. This is the best time. Tour dates, yes, come see a live show, the 2026 tour. All the tickets are for sale right now, starting out with February 21st in Nashville, March 6th in Durham, March 7th in Atlanta. Phoenix is sold out. We do have tickets though to your stupid opinions. On the 21st of March, Salt Lake City sold out. Denver has tickets, be there on May 2nd, May 29th, Buffalo sold out. Royal Oak, Michigan, May 30th, we have September 18th, Milwaukee, September 19th, Minneapolis, October the 3rd in Dallas, October 16th in San Jose, October 17th in Sacramento, November 13th in Territown, November 14th in Boston. Come see us, the live shows are spectacular. Come join all of the other STM people. You're gonna meet so many people, you're gonna have fun. Make some new friends. Like crazy and make some new friends. Come out and see us. Shut up and give me murder.com is where you go for those tickets. Get them right now while they're hot. See you on the road.