Serial Killer Desires - Waterford, Connecticut

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That's the realreal.com. Terms apply. This week, in Waterford, Connecticut, when multiple women's bodies are found placed on rural streets and posed in a certain way, detectives are pretty sure that it's the same killer, but finding that killer isn't as easy as it sounds. Welcome to Small Town Murder. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder. Yay! Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed. My name is James Petrigallo. I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wiseman. Thank you, folks, so much for joining us today on another absolutely crazy edition of Small Town Murder. We got some wild insane stuff for you today, man. Not that we usually don't, but it's all, it's every week, but it's, it's, it's, it's so, so hard to say it. I know, but it's true every week when I spend all this time on it. I'm like, you guys don't understand. This is crazy. I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, it was crazy last week, but it's so crazy though. We'll get to all that. First of all, head over to shutupandgivememerter.com, get all your merchandise, get your tickets for live shows starting out with February 21st from Nashville. First day weekend. There you go. Let's go. Kick it off. Let's celebrate Jimmy's birthday right there. Then we're going to be in Durham and Atlanta and March in Phoenix also March 20th and 21st to 20th. The Small Town Murder 21st is a year's stupid opinions live show. Then Salt Lake City sold out to worry about that Denver on May 2nd May 29th Buffalo. And that is selling fast. If you want to go to get your tickets, May 30th Royal Oak September 18th Milwaukee, September 19th Minneapolis, October 3rd Dallas, October 16th San Jose, October 17th Sacramento, November 13th, Terry Town, November 14th Boston, November 15th, my funeral. So that's going to be fucking wild. That's the schedule we got that October to November. Oh boy. Oh, that is going to New York. Yeah. That's going to be a lot. So get your tickets right now. Shut up and give me murder.com. We can't wait for another year of live shows. Those are a blast. So do that. Also, get yourself Patreon. Do yourself a favor. Patreon.com slash crime in sports is where you get all the bonus material. All you have to be is $5 a month or above and you get everything that we have to offer. You're going to get hundreds of bonus episodes you've never heard before immediately upon subscription. Then you get new ones every other week, one crime in sports, one small town murder, and you get it all. Take it all this week, which you're going to get for crime in sports. And this will be fun for anybody because it's just a good time. We're going to talk about the worst weather NFL games in history. We're going to talk about 80 mile an hour winds where you kick the ball and it goes completely to the sideline. Yeah. Literal floods were the ball floated away, things like that. Blizzard's where they're playing in piles of snow. It's going to be so much fun to talk about. Then for small town murder, it's up to you. And this is a, you got to get this in because you have about 24 hours of voting left here. Yeah. Either a mall collapse. It turned into one of the defunct malls. It turns into a flea market. That collapsed or old timey crimes. One or the other is people love those old timey crimes. You guys choose the pull is up on Patreon. Patreon.com slash crime in sports, just like the name of our other show that you should also check out. That said, disclaimer time. Yeah. This is a comedy show everybody. We're comedians. Jokes are going to be made. For sure. Also deaths are going to happen. Obviously it's called small town murder. So that's unavoidable. The thing is you go, how do you do that? How do you make that work? Very easily. We don't make fun of the victims or the victims' families. Why is that James? Because we're assholes. But we're not scumbags. You know, that works. It's really easy to be decently respectful and still make fun of things because there's plenty to make jokes about. We make jokes about small towns that we're in because we're all from somewhere that deserves to be made fun of. Maybe a bumbling police force that lets a murderer freeze to kill more. Or we make fun of the murderer. Why not? Yeah. We have no other recourse against them. That's what we got. We're comedians. We have jokes. And that's what we're going to do. Direct them right at these people. So that said, that sounds good to you. Now, you're going to hear a wild story. If you think Choukrim and Comedy should never ever go together early. We might not be for you, but I'd give it a shot because it might not be what you think it is. That said, I think it's time everybody to sit back. That's all clear the lungs here. And let's all shout. And give me murder. Let's do this everybody. Here we go. Let's go on a trip, shall we? We shall. We shall. Going to Connecticut this week. To Waterford, Connecticut. It's in South Eastern Connecticut over in that end of the whole deal here. About an hour and 50 to Boston. So kind of borderline commutable to Boston. Yeah. If you really want to spend some time in a car. About two and a half hours to New York City, the other direction and about 50 minutes to our last Connecticut episode. That was new Britain, Connecticut episode 613, the sick ripper. That guy was a bad guy. That was a bad guy. And this guy this week is almost as bad. So it's Connecticut. You are producing some bad, bad people here. Let me tell you some. This is a new London County area code 860 and 959. Can't hold this town to one area code. Little bit of history of this town. Formerly known as the West Farms of New London. Oh, that's a very fancy sounding name. Sure, yeah. That sounds like there should be like, you know, lords and ladies wandering about there. The town of Waterford was incorporated in 1801 and became the 109th town in the state of Connecticut. Oh. That's quite the distinction. 1009th town. 1009th until this. That's it. That's the name for its proximity being in between two rivers. So it's water. There's water everywhere. The residents of Waterford until they made houses, they just lived in wigwams here. Really? Yeah, they saw Native Americans do it. They were like, yeah, that looks like that works. What exactly is a wigwam? They've been surviving. They've been surviving. I'm not sure exactly. I think it varies from region to region of what it made out of. It's got to, right? Yeah. Because if you're in the Southwest, you don't have the same things you have in the North East or the plains or, you know what I mean? So I think it's different. It's essentially a hut of some sort of nature, or whatever. Yeah, who knows? So then they ended up digging up plots for 38 houses near the Great Neck area. English colonists first harvested crops here in 1645 at this place, the tribes that were there. Then they got into sheep farming and dairy farming for a long time. That was the big deal here. After World War II though, that's when the development blew up. Whereas kind of everything after World War II, that happened. Yeah. People had a little bit more money. Things were going well. So they added new roads and new buildings. 1957, the first stoplight is added. Here we go. Now we're talking. Now we're doing something. And then a night smoke people down. And then it's really a town in 1960. The first strip mall was built. Now we're talking. There you go. String lights and strip malls. Now we're. Throw up in our bees and we got it all. That's it. So here are some reviews of this town because we've never been there. Here is five stars. That's perfect. Perfect town. Waterford is an amazing town. They say it is very quiet, but I love peace and quiet. So no worries. Yeah. I don't need the nightlife. I think it's a. Yeah. It's yeah, who doesn't like that. I think it's a great area of a great town for those looking to start a family, but not great for those looking for a nightlife. Yeah, this isn't the place. If you're single and you want to go out at night and meet people, this probably isn't the place for you. It's a family town. Here is five stars. The beaches and parks in Waterford, Connecticut are really nice. I also really enjoy the small cafes we have. Yeah. So we're painting a picture of a quaint place at this point. Here is three stars. The area isn't terrible. That's the ultimate three star review. It's terrible. That's not terrible. Okay. Neighbors are okay, though some are harsh. And they're just yelling at you in Northeastern accents. That's fine. You know, you might get a little Boston in there and that's you get that accent. Everything sounds harsh in that accent. You know, someone could be telling you how much they love you and how wonderful you are and you'd be like, dude, fucking relax. Why are you being so harsh? That's harsh. Yeah. It's harsh. Now, here's two stars. There are absolutely no places to get dinner or even a pizza after 10 p.m. in my area. See that's what's tough about the small town. You're sinking it. It's nice. It's quiet. It's all that. But if you're hungry at 11 o'clock and you go and order some pizza, that's not going to happen. That's a problem. No, did they say ever or late late after 10 p.m. Uh huh. After 10, which is tough. Also, no nice places to go out and dance and enjoy your evening, particularly during the winter months. Yeah. The one as a city is what you're looking for where they have late night food and clubs. That's that's called a city. Dancing is rarely in a small town, right? Yeah, unless it's like the dance that we're having in in town. Hey, the dance is Saturday. It's one of those. During the summer months, there are free outdoor concerts. I enjoy, however, they only last two hours. Yeah. How long do you want the concert? How long do you want a free concert? Isn't a concert about two hours? Usually. I would say. How long do you want it to last? It's free. Yeah, what do you need? What do you need? Here's two stars. While crossing the road to get to the bus stop, I was almost hit by multiple times. That's what it says. Almost hit by multiple times. Right. I assume by cars. Yeah. I know a few people that were actually hit by cars. Oh, well, there you go. That sounds like you. All of your friends are idiots and so are you. Maybe you guys don't go on red. Yeah, I don't know, but like I've never almost got hit by a car. I mean, when walking as a kid, yeah, for sure. I don't think I got out of the way. I feel like I got out of the way. That's the idea. I feel like when you get hit by a car, it's because you made a risk. Like, I know kids who got hit by cars since they were doing dumb shit. Yeah. You know what I mean? Sure. I don't know. Maybe I could be wrong. Here are people in this town. 19,558 people. So not huge, not tiny, decent size. More women than men, 52.2% women, which is way out of the average for a town that's got 20,000 people in it. Media and age here, about 46.6, about eight years above the national average here. It is 54% married people. So this is a. Wow. Yeah, it's a small town, not like I said, not really made for the single life or for looking for. Not a lot of dancing. Trol and for chicks. Yeah, no dancing here. It's a town that doesn't dance. We got a lot married with children, low divorce rate, low single with children, all that is low. Race in this town, 83.8% white, 2.9% black, 4% Asian, 6.3% Hispanic. Religious here, 45.2% of the people are religious. It's normally about 50, 50 in the rest of the country. And no surprise here since it's the Northeast. Yeah. 32% of the people here are Catholic. And that's obviously the number one religion. As we know, Catholics are the Baptist of the North. Obviously. So we have that. Let's see, unemployment rate is a bit high here, not too bad, but a little bit above average. Media and household didn't come also well above average though. Oh, rest of the country, it is about 68,000. Here it is 95,880 dollars. That's pretty good. That's not bad at all. But it's Connecticut. That's it's Connecticut. Which, why am I Connecticut? Connecticut's fine. It's nice. No, but it's very expensive to live there. And that's right. That's the thing. It's not that expensive here. Cost of living 100 is normal. Here it's 106. Not that terrible. And the housing is right about average. 316,400 dollars is the median home cost. That's fine. That's for Connecticut. That's what I mean. That's what I mean. That's not. Now, if it was half hour closer to Boston, you could double that. That's the problem there. Now, if we've convinced you, you don't care how close to Boston it is and you don't like to dance. We have for you the Waterford, Connecticut real estate report. Your average two bedroom rental here goes for about $1,670. That's well above the average. Yeah, it's about 400 above the average. So better off buying if you can afford to buy here. House number one, three bedroom, one bath, 1,582 square feet. That's a two story, I'll show you. It's a two story side. Oh, wow. That's a small beetle juice house. Yeah, if you shrunk it down to 1,500 square feet, 0.44 acre lot. So almost half an acre, decent size, $289,000 for that. They just had a $10,000 price cut on that bad boy, too. Built 1900. Next one up here, three bedroom, two bath, 1,764 square foot. Show it to you here. It's that weird shape. Oh, yeah. I don't know what that style is called, but it's a very specific style. That's a, not Swiss, not German kind of that kind of shit. But it's on 0.25 acres, $399,000 for that. Not bad. Looks to be in a little better shape inside. The first one just had a $25,000 price cut, by the way. Oh, yeah. And then finally, yeah, this bad boy. Holy. It's a big one in the woods there. Four bedroom, six bath, tea bowl for each and every beehole. Matter of fact, a couple left over here. 5,000 square feet. It's a big house. That's a big one, yeah. 0.92 acres, almost a whole acre. $1.6 million for that. I mean, yeah. That's what it is. It's a big house. I mean, and it just had a $200,000 price cut. Yeah, it was 1.8 million. It was 1.8 million. Now it's 1.6 million. So there you go. Things are every single one is a price cut. It's crazy. Every week we go through that. Everybody's chopping the real estate prices down. So things to do in this town. Let's find out what these people are up to. Well, let's talk about the aforementioned Waterford Summer Concert series. That man enjoys, but they're only two hours. He loves it. There's a bunch of them. They do them every week. Let's find out what bands they have here. We start out with June 18th, the Mystic Dead. Oh, I don't know. I know Mystic Connecticut. Maybe they're from Mystic Connecticut. It's like June 25th, don't tell Lisa. I will not. I will not. That's your ex-wife's name. So you have a habit of not telling Lisa anything for years now, even through the marriage. Yeah. Now you drop a comedy shows and you'd say, don't tell Lisa. I'm here. That was Jimmy out of band. Are you in this band, Jimmy? I'm sorry, man. I wish everybody knew how funny that is to us because I wish you were there 12, 13 years ago when Jimmy would show up at a comedy show and his wife thought he was at work. That's all I remember. Don't tell me why. Soul Sound Review, July 2nd. Yeah. It sounds like they do covers of old soul songs. I would have said. What July 9th, I petty the fool. Not I pity the fool like Mr. T. Oh, so this is I petty the fool Tom Petty stuff. Yeah, I assume so. July 16th, Braden Sunshine. July 23rd, Fusion. Sure. July 30th, cartels with two Ls. Oh, no Zee though. No, you would think so. Yeah. August 6th, sugar will be there. Yeah. In August 11th, Nick Bosse, B-O-S-S-E, Bosse or Bosse and Northern Roots will be there. And they also claim to always have the best food trucks as well in this place. Oh, that's what says right in the poster quote, always the best food trucks. That's what it is. Right there. When you're advertising your food trucks, that means the music sucks. It's gonna be great. Oh, come on. You don't wanna hear the I petty the fool. No, no. You don't think their version of American girls gonna be blowing your mind. Breakdowns are gonna be great. No, you don't see it, huh? And it also says on here, sponsors needed. So if, oh, and we can't pay these others. By the way, help us financially. There's also the Waterford Pumpkin Fest. Oh, no, you know, mystery time of year, that takes place. So they have everything and they're saying, thank you, they made this Pumpkin Fest memorable and special this year. It was great. There's a parade, there's line dancing. Great. It's organized too. It's like a whole thing, a soapbox derby, a midway with rides and shit, you know, like a fair, a car show, a Halloween decorating contest, and more free live music. This town is full of free live music. We have beggars for hire. We have the echelon. We have the old barn doors will be there. Yeah, yeah. That's all on one night from 5 to 11. This is not gonna get any good. And then also the next night, Maddie and Paul. That doesn't sound like a band. No, buddy. No, no, it sounds like a magician in their assistant. Ryan and friends, we don't even know who their names are. At least we know Maddie and Paul who they are. This is Ryan and I don't know a bunch of other people. Friendship on a stick. That's the name of a band. The Mississippi. I like that. The friendship on a stick. The Mississippi Benz, B-E-N-D-S, and Killin' Time will also be there. And then Katie's crew, Amber and Nolan, who I assume will have a death match with Maddie and Paul to see who comes out on top of that for supremacy. Onion Honey will be there. Oh, that sounds disgusting. There was a band called Mud Honey, wasn't it? Yes, there was gonna say, yeah, this is Onion Honey though. We're gonna make it less appealing. As if Mud Honey's not appealing enough for you. How about Onion Honey? And then Free Live Music from The Tree Line. And then I'll have on top of all of that, line dancing. This is a ticketed event, it says next to it. So this isn't even like tickets are required. Everything else you can just show up to, the line dancing, they're gonna check shit at the door here. Line dance with the Urban Cowboy. I'm sorry. This is dumb. Almost the Atlantic Ocean. This is almost the Atlantic Ocean. You can't get farther away from country, western, urban dancing. You don't need to do this here. This is weird. Okay, crime rate in this town. What we're interested in here, the property crime rate is just below the national average. So decently safe and then violent crime, murder, rape, robbery and of course assault. You know, that's the kicker there. Also just below average. Okay, sounds fine. Great place. Sounds fine. Let's go back and find out when it wasn't such a great place and talk about some murder. Let's do it. Great place, no entertainment. Tourist. No, yeah, no dancing. That's the only thing. John Lithgow will yell at you and tell you not to dance if you come around. Now let's talk about a lady first, okay? All right. One of the most interesting people we've ever covered on this show. Honestly, like, I look into a lot of people and you know, newspapers and go back and find articles and do all of shit. And very few times as someone fleshed out so much in terms of what people had to say about her and just the information that you have on her and just a very interesting person. Let's find out about Renee Pellegrino, P-E-L-L-E-G-R-I-N-O. Pellegrino. Like the sand. Yes, and like the water. Yeah, it's sparkling water. Exactly. That's maybe like that. I didn't know if everybody would have got the sand. Oh, okay, got it. So I was just trying to clarify. I agree. I'm fine, no. I was agreeable with you. That was for that, not you, just in case. So she has her parents are John and Jean here. Now she's born in 1956. Her parents are John and Jean, which is interesting because growing up, I knew a guy named John Pellegrino very well. Really? Absolutely. Yeah, one of my good friends growing up. Yeah, like high school and shit. Yeah, John Pellegrino very well. So it's funny to see a guy named, another guy named John Pellegrino. And then they have a kid too, name John Pellegrino. So I'm like, I wonder if that's my friend's dad. Because my friend. Yeah, that might be the friend. Yeah. So I assume that he came. Because the John is going to be a fuck up. So anyway, parents are John and Jean. They grew up pretty poor. They grew up in Western Lee, Rhode Island. And poor, we don't have food poor. But I'd like a new bike. You can't have a new bike. Not at all for that. Yeah, maybe Christmas, you and your sister can share one. Yeah. And PS, I just spent your bike money on last night's dinner. Exactly, yeah, on the rent. So yeah, not poor paycheck to paycheck. Lower middle class as we both grew up as well. So we understand that. Her father was a World War II veteran. He was in the Navy in World War II. And he was a chef. That's how he made his living outside of the Navy. I worked at several different restaurants or all around Long Island. He had a problem with alcohol. Oh, Johnny Pellegrino. Which a lot of that era guys did. I mean, they told him drink as much as you can in World War II. You could be dead next day. Drink and smoke as much as you can. They're at least to be drunk. They will give you a cart in a week. And we'll give you a, you know, you find booze, go ahead and nail it. And then they come home and they're like, okay, stop doing all that. Now live a life. Now live a life. Yeah. By the way, you're fine. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with you. Yeah, you just beat Hitler, but there's no PTSD for mad at all. He'll be all right. Just a lot of your buddies never came back. But yeah, go back and get to the suburbs and get your wife for not keeping the house clean enough. It's weird. Weird stuff. So he was a cook chef, whatever. Sometimes if he worked at a decent restaurant, he's a chef. If he works at a bar, he's a cook. That kind of thing. But he drank. That is absolutely a thing. And even Jean Mom, Renee's mom said that he found it difficult to be a loving father. He just couldn't really do that. Wasn't good at it. And again, you know, yeah, a lot of those guys back then, they weren't good at it. All right. They weren't good. They were taught, they were raised to have no softness at all. Yeah. And you just tasked him with defeating one of the hardest and most dangerous villains in the history of the world. Yeah. Now go home and be soft. Well, also you grow up, you grow up also during the depression, which is also a thing. Gotta be tough and you gotta do that. And then they go to war. That's that generation. Then they come home and yeah, everybody expects everything to be fine. And nobody helped anybody. So you had a bunch of alcoholics that, you know, were a lot of times violent too. So now according to Renee's sister, Diane, dad was quote, frightfully abusive with his mouth, which could be taken way worse than she means it. Maybe taken really bad. Horrible. That's the one of the worst statements I've ever heard my life. I'm chewing on my ass. It's abusive with his, and that would be the best thing that could happen to you. You're doing it. You're doing it. You're getting chewed out. Wow. So Jean Mom was like a stay at home mom as kind of the 50s dictated in late 40s. And she tried to hold it together in the house. There's a lot of times though they didn't have heat in the winter. Oh, where they talked about huddling against the gas stove for warmth. Oh boy. Which is rough. That is rough times. So you know, with blankets on and all that shit. Yeah, that's a hard, hard life. The Western, Western United States does not understand the heat bill. They don't understand how important the heat bill is. Yeah, they don't understand how you have to drop thousands of dollars over here for just to stay to stay alive. Just to live. To live. To live. To live. I'm a reason in here, but I'm a lot. Yeah, keep your house from fucking falling to the ground from exploded pipes and shit. It's terrifying. So there's four kids all together here. Diane, Renee, John, that's the one boy. And then the youngest is Laurie. So three girls and a boy. Okay. And I believe Renee is second oldest. I think Diane's the oldest. If I'm not mistaken, I could be mistaken about that though. But Renee seemed like the chosen one. Really? Everybody said it. Renee was the chosen one. She seemed like if anyone's going to get out of this and make something of themselves, it's going to be her. She has talents that are just inborn. Oh, I can't be taught. Like what? We'll talk all about that. No worry. Diane said about their financial status. Oh yeah, we were poor. We never went out to dinner. My mother was the greatest economist on the planet. We drove a car that wouldn't start. We had hand me down clothes. We had one pair of shoes for the year. So this is a cast a comment about mom, yes? No, no, I think that she actually made nothing and stretched it to at least we had one pair of shoes for the year. Right. Okay. She made something out of nothing. She took fucking lemons and made lemonade out of it at least is what she's trying to say. Now about Renee gifted in many different ways, many different ways. Mainly musically. She's really gifted kind of socially too, but musically, she's like a little musical genius here. She has a piano. She plays piano clarinet. She plays all these different instruments. She's one of these people that can just pick up an instrument and play it. Really? Yeah, one of those people that we've talked about before that just pissed me off to go in just to know. Just you asshole. My mother and a boyfriend like that back when I was a kid, he picked up. I remember saw him pick up a flute and play it. Never saw a flute before. Just played it. Looked at it a couple, literally took like five seconds. Yeah. And just put it up, put it up. It was playing a song. I'm like, I'm going to kick you in the balls. You can't take it. So he's going to lead a civil war. Yeah. Group and he's fighting the red coats over here. And I'm like, I can't even play heart and soul of the piano. You dick. I can't even put that flute together. No, I don't even know how it works. I don't know which end to blow in. So Diane remembered a piano recital when she was about six and Renee was about four. Renee is four doing a piano recital, first of all, which is pretty impressive. And Diane said, I remember someone saying she's not turning the pages of the music. She's just playing it. Yeah. She said she didn't have to. She could turn her back on the piano and know the music. She was doing a Beethoven piece. I was doing some kind of bumblebee piece. She's saying that. She's playing chopsticks and this is. She's playing fucking Beethoven without looking at the music at four. So that tells you something. She's gifted. She played the flute. She played the clarinet. She played the piano. She performed a Mozart sonata from memory in a piano recital a couple years later. She's impressive. That's just you look at that person. They just have more things than I have going on. You know what I mean? There's more neurons firing in that rarely of the brain, whatever it is. So Renee just didn't she didn't like being poor. Didn't like this upbringing. She wanted out. Well, she learned Beethoven at four. You're destined to get out of here. Yeah, that's a good way to do it. Diane, her sister said that she detested her life by comparison of other people. She just hated it and wanted out. She said other kids like the rest of the siblings. When you're poor, you just adapt to it. You don't know any but like if you were rich and then got poor, you might bitch about it. But if you're born poor and you come up poor and you're just poor, I was just poor. And I was like, I guess we're poor. I don't know. I don't know. Everybody I knew was poor. That's fine. That's a good part about growing up poor. She got a lot of poor friends. So but Renee almost like she had lived another life. You know what I mean? Like, knowing the difference because I don't know how a kid would know the difference other than just seeing what other kids have and you don't have it. But she said that Diane said Renee was ashamed of it. Oh, yeah. She said she wanted her home to be like some of the friends she favored. She saw what other people had and she wanted it. So she saw that young that I don't, you know, and it wasn't just like, well, I guess that's the way it is for her. She was like, I gotta get fixed this shit. And I mean, I had a desire to not be poor, but I know how to do it. I didn't have, I did not play Beethoven. I knew this sucks. Yeah. But outside of that, I really didn't have a lot of real. He wants take on the whole thing other than this. I knew my carpet. I knew my carpet, my bedroom was not the same as everybody else. Yeah. In high school, I knew I drove a $150 car. I knew that. That I had down. I knew that. Yeah. My steering wheel came off of my shifted too hard. Mine stopped. Mine stopped turning. Yeah. That's a burn in the wheel would get stuck. And you start to panic as the turn came up. So this is how I know the steering rack went bad. And I just drove it like that delivered pizzas like that. I could have just ran into a tree for Christ's sake. Or a person. Yeah. The steering rack cost more than the car. So that wasn't happening. So in high school, Renee started, she, she ends up going to a Catholic school, which is about a Catholic school, the Proud School, which is about a half hour bus ride away in Wakefield, Rhode Island. It's better than the local public school. It's kind of academically prestigious as well. And you know, this is kind of almost like a prep school type situation. Like these kids are going to college, most of the kids that are here. Yeah. Now her mother, Jean, believed that education was the way out. And she had been scrimping basically over the years because she knew Renee was going to, she knew that she had academically, she was talented and she knew that they had to do something for her. So she would take a dollar here, a dollar there over the years and scroll it away for Renee's college fund. Wow. So she could actually go to school. She took all the money she had for her college fund and sent her to the Catholic school. That's how she went there. So that was, this was just her college fund. And Renee was super happy there. She enjoyed there as a school. She enjoyed being amongst smarter kids, I think, and stuff like that. It made her feel fancy. It doesn't make it a lot easier when raising your hand and there's other kids raising there. Yeah, you're not the only one. They all know it too. It's not a bunch of people giving you the side eye like, hey, Dickhead, we know it all. Shut up, fucker. I remember those days. So Jean here, mom, said it's where she got more grandiose ideas, meaning the school. She had a friend who had a mansion in Narragansett. The other children accepted their circumstances, meaning the other three children in this family. But Renee was ashamed of it. I think that's why she wanted to be a lawyer. Lawyers drive BMWs, don't they? They do, yeah. Yeah, they shoot lawyers, don't they? So as a teenager and a young woman, she's also a real health nut. She never even like, you know, smokes a joint at a party in high school or anything like that. And it's not because she doesn't want to. That's that'll affect her body and she's into her health and she doesn't want to do that. Doesn't like even going to the doctor for shots hates needles. Doesn't, you know, once in a while, you might see her at a high school party. She might have to take two sips of a beer or something, but not enough to get drunk or anything like that. She's very, very, very kind of honest, straight and narrow and not trying to get off the track here. She had real, long, dark hair that she really loved and she would brush it and get fried in that high school friend of hers. This is a woman named Jacqueline Malagrino, Malagrino instead of Pelagrino. She's from West early. She knew Renee since high school and she said she saw some evidence of some trouble coming in high school. She said she was a very beautiful, fun loving young girl, very naive. She had struggled in her early years at home. She had a difficult early life. Her mother was the mainstay raising four children on a fixed income. I didn't like Renee at first. She had this gorgeous, long mane of hair. She grew up with just the necessities, no frills, nothing more. So do you, do you do, what do you do when you're young and you want things? You steal. Oh, shoplifting was her forte. Yeah. That's what she's into. Yeah. It was her gift and she did it extremely well. She's good at that too. She's really good at Beethoven and shoplifting. Those are the two things that she's naturally gifted at, which is impressive. I am very impressed because I only had one of those talents. And not really even a tallie got caught all the time. It's not even a job. She got away with it. That's the point. You don't have a plan. So she said anywhere, anything, because her girlfriends were in John Meyer clothes or happogalos. Oh, what the fuck is that? I know. I've been introduced probably that way by several bad hosts of comedy show. Yeah, James Papagallo. I don't remember it. But she would take those if she wanted them. So she wanted to close the other kids. She stole them. Yeah. She stole them. Now, one, another one said, Renee was so clever. So bright, such a little manipulator. As a youngster, she wanted to be part of the people who had stuff like clothes and expensive shoes that matched. She would shoplift. Her mom said she was certainly manic. If someone had some kind of designer shirt, not only she not only wanted to have that one, but she wanted it in every color, then she wouldn't wear any of them. She's stealing every color. But then she didn't wear them. That's crazy. She just stole them to have them. That's even crazier. That's a, she wants to acquire things, you know what I mean? Wow. Her friend said she could get away with it. She was funny, witty, attractive, and would flirt with police. That'll do it. That'll do it. She had long black hair to her waist and a figure to die for. Men drooled for her. And she is. She's curvy. She's got boobs and butt and put she small and she's long hair. Yeah. Hot would be the way to put it. Yeah. Here is something about Diane, a story from Diane, her sister, her older sister. She said they were once when they were young, three sisters, meaning Lori too, including Diane and Renee. They went outside of a Dunkin' Donuts in Western Lee. And this was early early in the morning late late at night, four in the morning type of thing. They ordered and returned to their car park in front of the shop's plate glass window. So Diane says quote, there was this little old man on a swivel stool inside. And I guess he was looking at him or something. So Diane said quote, she just took everything off her top and sat on the hood of the car. Took her top off. She just popped her titties on the car. She just grabbed them. Yeah. Dumped them out. The man swiveled around and looked at her and he just swiveled back and put his head down like he wasn't supposed to see. Oh my. Yeah. Oh God. That's the titties out. Those are like 16 year old titties. That's. Yeah. You can't look at those. Yeah. So that's she has balls. I mean, she is. Yeah. She's fearless obviously. But she also knows she's that's that's that's that's interesting too. She's very well aware of what this world is already. Oh, absolutely. And a very young age and psychologically she knows how to yeah, how to get a great warfare and all you had to make an older man feel like a dick and dickhead, which is impressive for young. It takes women usually many, many years to figure that out. If at all, you know, I mean, they're trying to make people like them a lot of time rather than that. So she doesn't give a fuck. Now she wants to go to Smith College. That's what she's fixated on. Okay. Is that a medic? Is that a medic or something? It's in it's one of the seven sister schools. It's in North Hampton, Massachusetts. Yeah. It's one of the one. These are, there's got to care. Remember all of them. But there's a bunch of these schools that are like they used to be all girl schools. I don't think they are now. They used to be all girl schools and they're kind of like kind of like all girls Ivy League schools kind of. Okay. Yeah. Now Diane said, Renee believed if she went there, her whole life would be different and better. Yeah. I mean, if you go to college, yeah, definitely. And especially that time. A fancy college too. But the family can't afford to send her to fucking Smith. No. They can't afford that. That's not crazy. So what she does is she goes to France for a year. Yeah. Obviously. She boards at a Catholic school there. She graduated from honors from Proud, the Catholic school in 1973 and she went to France. She's fluent in French too, by the way. Of course. She speaks perfect French and picks up clarinets and plays them. She's got the mind of like a governmental spy. She was so good at that. Yeah. She could have taken down the Nazis like she could have been cracking codes and shit. So 1973, she goes to France for a while then comes back but doesn't go back to, doesn't go come home and go to college. She instead moves to Los Vegas. Of course. Of course. Yeah. She told Diane essentially her goal in moving to Vegas was to quote get rich. I mean, yeah. I don't know what the plan is. I don't know. There's slot machines going off and stuff seems to be a lot of money. I guess I go there. I don't know. You say Vegas. I hear that ringing in the change. That's a good thing about it. I hear all that. So she ended up with an older man. She's living with an older man. Oh. And he was a car dealer and also a bookmaker. Okay. Yeah. So what year is this? 1973. So he's a bookie car dealer. This is when the Vegas. Early Vegas. Yeah. Vegas is this is all mob Vegas here. This is dangerous. Yeah. The guys that worked at these places, they were called a lot of them were connected. That's why they worked there. It's one of those things. He also, she was 18, 19 at this point. He also with her approval. And Renee doesn't really let people do anything to her. Yeah. Would charge men $200 to have sex with her. Oh. So at this point, she's like a high dollar prostitute at this point, basically high end call girl. So $200 in 1973 is a lot of money. Yeah. That's a good. That's a good one. Yeah. That's a good prostitute. That's high end shit. Yeah. I think in 1973, that's yeah. That's a lot of money. So that's what she was doing. Now, I don't know how enthusiastic she was about this, but she was doing it. One of her, I think this is, oh, this is her mother quote, she did the casino thing, a dealer cocktail waitressing. She used to call me up frequently depressed. She had a kind of breakdown. I said to her, come home. She said she wanted to kill herself. Oh my God. Yeah, come home. How about that? Yeah. Yeah, don't kill yourself. Fuck out of there. There's a photo from the period that shows her leaning against the Las Vegas bar wearing a low cut dress, pop and cleavage and everything. And in this article, they said they called her smart, personable, pretty with a knockout figure. And she knew, yeah, she knew exactly what she had. Her psychologist. Yeah. And her sister later described, this is Diane describing her attitude towards men. This is Renee's attitude. She said she understood what men wanted and she was ready to supply it if it was in her best interests. Okay, yeah, it's a commodity to her. Right. That's how she's looking at it. You could say it was cold, but I think she thought that she was just being honest and the other person was being less honest to her. It was an exchange. It's a business. Yeah. She looked at it very just kind of an intellectual overview, took emotion out of it. Yeah. Which, that's interesting. When Diane asked Renee if the sex trade bothered her, she said, quote, oh, it's just like brushing your teeth. Except so you don't get cavities. I don't know if penis is prevent cavities, but you know, it's something's in your mouth. That's like brushing your teeth. It's certainly an in and out motion, but yeah. And that's a Diane was like, really? I don't think so. Renee also was picked up a couple times on prostitution charges in Vegas. Oh, so she's arrested a couple times now. So that's odd. And she said that Diane, she told Diane that she'd seen other women drawn into relationships with pimps that were not good for them, whether they were into drugs or whether they were just, you know, being used up or whatever. And she eventually came home and said, I can't do Vegas anymore. Diane said when she got back, she was, quote, a complete wreck. She was a mess. She said that there's a photo from this period that she has that where Renee's like curled up in a chair and she looks very small in lost, Diane says, not you're not Renee, you know what I mean, Vegas broker. So all the, yeah, high mileage. Yeah. I spurg slim to couldn't use her anymore. It's tough, man. I mean, that's, that's a fast life to be living. And she thought she could do it. It's not healthy for anybody to be in the crazy life like that. It's also not for an intellectual person. No, it'll drag you down. If you have too much smarts and you think about this situation, forget about it. It's going to beat you. Absolutely. Now her mom took her to a psychiatrist because she was depressed. Now this is the mid 70s. So I'm pretty impressed with mom. Yeah. Mom really tries to hold everything together. She really does. Like I mean, between the saving a dollar here and a dollar there to send her to school and to, you know, figuring out that she might need to see a psychiatrist. Someone back then it was much easier to just ignore it because psychiatrists were for crazy people and that meant your family was bad. You shouldn't send anybody there. And there was only like seven down. Yeah. There wasn't as many. You really dig to find them. But 70s is when it started taking off. And then the 80s is when it really, I mean, forget about it. Every goddamn sitcom, everyone's going to a shrink in the 80s. That was the joke. So her mother takes her there and her mother said he suggested lithium for her, but that required blood tests and she wouldn't go for the test because she doesn't like needles. Remember? So they want to, they want a drug or not just talk about it. No, they want to give her lithium for Christ. Yeah. Which is strong. I mean, that's, and usually for bipolar also. So that's interesting. She certainly, yeah. It's an interesting drug. So her mother said she never took medicine. She never ended up doing it. 1976, she will meet a man named Paul Vincent. And he will be her on again, off again, boyfriend for the next 17 years. My word. He's going to be sticking around for a while. I guess this was, she's going to enroll in Rhode Island College and Providence and that's where he meets him. Okay. And yeah, so he does like construction and stuff like that. So she is like a, you know, world class pianist and does all this stuff and she, yeah, she meets a construction worker guy, which is fine, but I'm just, yeah, she opposite the track, you know what I mean? I guess in this situation, then later on, she's going to enroll in Connecticut College, where she'll do very well. We'll talk all about that. So at Rhode Island, she renews a relationship with Paul Vincent, who she had known before. He had a small contracting business in the area at the time and she started commuting to Rhode Island College. Oh, from Connecticut. So in the spring of 1977 is when she transferred to Connecticut College, she tried living in a dormant first, didn't like that. It's hard to live, if you're, if you're smart, it's hard to live among people your age or idiots. It's just difficult. I think so. She moved off campus and Diane said she paid her tuition with a combination of help from mom, financial aid, loans. And possibly whatever she does on the side for a couple extra bucks. She took several semesters off and we know only from police records what she was doing in that time. She took semesters off. We know she was in Vegas for a while again, because she's arrested a few more times in Vegas, while during this period. So she's doing great. She's in a relationship. She's doing great in school. Everything's fine and then she'll be just disappear for two semesters. No to Vegas can arrest it for prostitution, do stuff like that and then come back. It's really odd. Well, it is fast. You think there are, obviously there's reasons people do the prostitution thing because they're job because it's the monetarily it can be lucrative. Yeah. And if it is for a little bit and then you leave it and then you struggle a little bit and you're like, I'm just going to go make a few easy dollars and come back. But that lifestyle is sucking in too. Yeah, it's hard. It's not easy. It's not easy. Vegas, that's the whole thing. So now in school though, all of her professors really liked her. And we'll talk about this gene. Talking about three specific faculty members that Renee really liked. Three of her favorite professors here. One here, Francis Boudreau, who was a sociology professor, said she was a very bright young woman, a very bright young woman. If you met her, my impression of her is she'd be somebody you'd like to be friends with. She said that Boudreau said she was surprised when Renee proposed a term paper based in part on her Las Vegas experience. Oh, she's going to write about it. Boudreau said, actually, I'm not shocked by much. Probably that's one of the reasons Renee and I got along so well. The class she said was about deviant behavior, social control, which was a subject that Renee was kind of interested in here. The teacher said it applies to illegal activities and also to activities that violate significant social norms. She talked about pimps and their relationship to prostitution. She said she left Vegas because she refused to be associated with anyone who controlled her behavior. Okay. That is going to be something that comes up a lot with Renee. She will not be controlled and it's she won't be contraven if you pay her to do whatever. Well, it's on her terms. She's very strong like that, which is good for her, especially if you're going to be in this type of world. You better have serious sense of yourself. She said that Boudreau went on to say when I talked with her, there was always the feeling that this was in her past. She was a feminist through and through. She said women could make choices and do with their bodies what they wish that they could conduct prostitution as a business and that it's not really exploitative if they were, you know, on board with it and wanting. Okay. So yeah, you can't if I want to do something, you can't tell me someone's exploiting me because I said I want to do it. So it's more about personal domain over your own shit. It seems like for Renee. She said we could argue that point. We probably did argue that point. She said bitter is too strong a word. Disillusion does not strong enough of a word to describe Renee. So somewhere between bitter and disillusioned, so I put cynical in the middle there. Certainly. Yeah. You know, which is healthy, especially if you're going to be doing the things she's doing. A professor of history in a Marion Doro thought to write Renee's mother letters about her. They were corresponding about her daughter. She said that she was not only one of her best students, but one of the nicest as well. She said I wanted her to know that somebody believed in her daughter. I don't want the good parts to get lost in anything. That's what she said. She said that Renee would drop by my office. I remember I enjoyed having conversations with her. Her interests were wide. I found her to be more mature than most of her classmates. I enjoyed reading her term papers. It's a pleasure to deal with a student who has a mind of her own. Yeah, a lot of the kids, they just want to get it done and they probably are half, you know, copying off of something else or, you know, just whatever. So she said this teacher said of Renee, there has to be two people there. She said that she only saw one of the people and she could not fathom how Renee did other things she did because she didn't see that at all. She said, I can't, you know, I just didn't get it. So she said that, you know, she did, she hoped that she wouldn't get like out of basically out of reach. Yeah. Yeah. She said that she has a personality that's wanting something and not getting it basically. Another anthropology professor now, June Maclin, she said Renee's mind was such that she thought of her as a junior colleague. Yeah. She talked about literature all the time. She said, but she sensed a conflict within Renee. She thought Renee might have been more comfortable at Harvard or the University of Chicago, schools where intellectual competition is stressed. She needed that. She said, she said, I think this was a young woman who really got excited about ideas but thought it wouldn't have been cool to show it. So this is, this college in Harvard, it's cool to be enthused. It's cool to raise your hand. Sure. She seems like she's describing it as like high school of ass trays essentially. You know, like basically back then, she, she said she seemed, always seemed out of her element. She didn't fit in it, Connecticut and didn't necessarily want to fit in. So think she doesn't want to be one of them. Even, she said that she detected a trait in her that her family also saw here. This is, she said she had such an ambivalence about pretentious people. She really punctured allusions, which is funny. So she, if you were acting all high in mighty, she would try to knock your fucking legs out from under you and cut you down a side of the bed. You're back to reality. Exactly. Which is a cool thing to do. She said, I did think she had a very cynical take on human beings, including herself. Okay. It's hard to be, it's hard to have half decent brain power and not be cynical about human beings. People who aren't cynical about human beings. Number one, they're probably, we'd be better off if we had all of them. Yeah. If the whole world was those people, we'd probably have a better world, but I don't understand. Yeah. Are you blind? Are you not? Are you just wanting it to be good? So you pretended it is like I, I, I wonder people that are like that. I got a question. There are people that inherently just see good and people and don't understand that there's also a lot of really fucking awful. But if you're like 30 years old, the, to me, the, the difference between dumb people and smart people is the ability to take in information and use it to your advantage. Yeah. And if you see what's going on in the world until you're 30 and you don't go, wow, there's a reason to be a little cynical. I have to think you're probably not that bright or, or you're, you have a something in you, some kind of spirit that I just don't know about. You know what I mean? I mean, I'm sure that's possible too, because I'm not, I'm an idiot. So how do I know? Who do I know about people? So she incogned it. She, she flourished here. She did really well. Her like I said, her professors liked her. 1978 dad dies. John Pellagino. Yeah. John Pellagino is dead. Okay. He was killed. This sounds like he was drunk. Oh, shit. This sounds like he was drunk as I described this. It's a call back to earlier too. He walked at night along a road in Warwick, Rhode Island and got hit by a car. Oh my God. That sounds like you're drunk and you're walking home and you got hit by a car. So that's rough. He was only 53 years old. Yes. But this was kind of from what I understand was kind of almost a relief for the fact. So she graduates from Connecticut here in 1981. She graduates Phi Beta Kappa. Or she's in Phi Beta Kappa. She graduates does all this stuff. You know, she's, she's doing everything. Her buddhru, the one professor, talked about her turn paper and said that she was a feminist through and through. She said women can make choices with their bodies as they wish. They conduct prostitution as a business. And yeah, she also said this. This is her professor. She said her writer friend once told me you should never unmask another person. If you do, you've got to know the price you're going to pay. What it makes you do. If you can see through them, then you're also going to see through yourself. I have a feeling she was like that. Oh, it's as if she had given up all illusions. And when when one does that, life almost becomes unbearable. If you, if you deal with reality completely on reality's terms, it's depressing. It is certainly. Yeah. It is that whatever thing that makes you go everything will be all right. Even, you know, against all circumstances and logic is what keeps human being sane. Yeah. And from eating your own brain. Her mother said she thought the world was a terrible place. Yeah. Yeah, it is. Yeah. And she's seen the terrible side of it. So yeah, she said it was this red tooth and claw idea. Oh, yes, she had almost cruel, a cruel perception about her. She said she would find anybody's Achilles heel. If somebody had a weak spot, she would expose it. If she thought you thought you were better than anyone else, she'd take you down a peg or two. Yes, she was brilliant at it. Yeah. She sounds fun, honestly, sounds pretty cool. So one time, yeah, so it's a lot here. Now graduate school, she applied to Columbia University's graduate business school, which is in New York City, and that's Ivy League, and she's rejected from that. Wow. So she decided instead of going to graduate business school, she's going to go to law school instead. Wow. The University of Connecticut law school in Hartford, she's going to go to. So in 1984 here, it's going to take her a while in law school, as we'll talk about. She's going to have some breaks. In September 1984, she wrote a letter to Diane, and she's talking about a professor that she has set sites on here. Oh, okay. He's 45-ish, thin hair, huge gray black beard. In short, he's ugly. Take it easy, Lane. You see, Jimmy, he's just got his heart out looking around. The fuck, man. Okay, what did I do to you? Yeah. She was going to take us down a peg. She wasn't lying. Yeah, Jesus. She said in short, at least he didn't call him short. She said in short. No, Jimmy's, Jimmy's fine. He's not this guy. No, you're fine. You're alright. So he said, but he's very kind and a veritable genius. Okay, stuff. See, I told you she's not talking about you. No, I'm just kidding. She got the crime part. I'm pretty nice, usually. Yeah. Sometimes. I can't be. You can be very nice. And you can be a total dick, which is why we're friends. And why we've always been friends, because that cracks me up. That cracks me up. I think when we were introduced to each other, our friends said, you two are the biggest assholes I know. And the best comedians in the town. So you should be friends. We're like, oh, we're like, oh, we're like, alright, and we did. She said he looks like the school janitor, but has written a few books. Right now I'm trying to decide whether coming to school, looking like a hippie would score any points. Yeah. Put away the silk, pull out the burlap. So she's going to get into character to try to be in this guy's favorite, which is really fucking funny. And on the law school letterhead next to the official seal, she wrote big deal, which that was on the letter was unlocked law school fucking whatever. In 1984, then something tragic happens. And this is tragic for anybody. The youngest sister, Laurie. I don't know if she's the youngest or John's the youngest. Haven't figured that out. The youngest sister is killed in a car accident accident in Rhode Island. Oh my God, when she lost control of the car, and she can't be more than in her early 20s at this point. So that's that's brutal. Obviously, do we know what time of year was it the ice? Probably the ice, right? Not sure. It's just 84 is all we know. So not positive, but she'd been studying nursing at the University of Rhode Island. Yeah. And she was driving Renee's car. Okay. Oh, that'll hurt. So Renee felt insanely guilty. Yeah, yeah, which I mean, not her fault. Obviously she didn't mean to let somebody her car. It's a nice gesture. Right, right, right. You know, but Jean, which who's her mom said, Renee took it very hard because it was her car. She kept saying, oh, if I only had a better car like a Volvo. Oh, she's ready to she's ready for the national Volvo ad campaign. Just people sobbing over their relatives corpse is going, why did they buy a Volvo? They have a safety cage and a 28 point breaking system. God damn it. It's very interesting. It's a second. Right? Yeah. If only I had a Volvo. I've never thought that in my entire life. I don't think any human said, why didn't I buy a Volvo? Yeah. That's never happened. I mean, there were times that I seen a Volvo when I was driving a piece of shit going, I mean, I'd take that for that Volvo. Yeah. Said that. Wow. Sure. Now, Jean also said that her daughter's use of drugs started really ramping up. It was just a one once in a while recreational thing. Once Lori was killed and Renee felt guilty because Renee loaned her the car and she also had introduced Lori to the man that she was driving to go visit that night. So she said, oh for two. If it wasn't for me, she would have been going out that night and she would have maybe been in a Volvo. And none of this would have happened. Yeah. So that's brutal, man. She really never gives up on shoplifting, by the way, which usually most people get out of by their teen years. Yeah. You're not really embarrassed as a teen to get caught, but most adults don't want to get caught stealing things. That's embarrassing. That's embarrassing. So Diane said that she also was a shoplifter. Diane, she said. Yeah. Diane said that was the addiction they shared was they were compulsive shoplifters. Yeah. And Diane said she managed to quit and stop shoplifting but Renee never quit. I'm off the socks. Yeah. Should I grew out of it like normal? Yeah. Right. But she said no. She said she had this big tote bag that she would take and that's what she would steal shit and that was her jam. Renee. She said Renee viewed shoplifting as like a daredevil game. She thought it was like a fun thing. Right. She said she'd take 15 CDs and go back for 15 more and then want to go back to get the last three. It was absolutely an addiction. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. No, you have enough. Stop. Yeah. So she curtailed her shoplifting a little bit but not quite while she was in law school. Yeah. There's a letter to Diane dated September 21st 1984 and Renee said that she was broke and that she was only stealing to help a friend's mother at this point. Yeah. The letter, she also said that the other guy here, she talked that was the letter where she talked about that professor and everything like that. She also said law school is a bunch of shit. Yeah. A bunch of shit. Not especially hard, just time consuming. So yeah, it's just annoying. Yeah. They also have like things that you have to turn in on a certain cycle. So it's like, yeah. And you can't just turn everything in and be like, I'm a lawyer. Well, it's a lot of just precedence and remembering cases and stuff like that and then knowing that to, you know, how that applies to the law. And honestly, it's a lot to remember but it's not that hard to look at stuff. People will say to me like, oh, you know, lawyers will be like, oh, you know all this stuff. I mean, it's not that hard. I just read the document and it explained that this means that and this means that. You just have to read a lot. Right. There's a lot of like citations in between and the words and annoying, but it's not that difficult. I wouldn't want to do it. It's a lot. So, but they said that Renee wasn't really depressed at the time. She was just going to do her thing. Then Diane got a phone call from Renee around this time. She said, Renee called me one day on the phone and told me, I have some friends and we took some Coke. You should try it. Oh, boy. You said it took all the pain away. Yeah. Coke did. Yeah. I mean, it'll do that and then it'll bring different pain. That's the problem. I said, over and a please, I had read such horrible things about it. I told her they can't stop. They can't stop doing it. It's an addictions. You shouldn't do it. She said, I know what I'm doing. It's recreational. Right. This is 1984, 85. This is when Coke was like the cool people were doing Coke. Right. They were doing Coke. The smart people were doing Coke. That's who was doing Coke. This is right in the beginning of crack. This was, Coke was still considered like a classy drug at this point. Sure. You do it. Go into a room with someone and be, oh, fancy and you do some Coke. She, I guess depression kind of runs in the family too. Jean suffered from some depression. Diane suffered from depression. Corey's death triggered Renee's depression. Cocaine is not good for your mental status. It just doesn't. No, no, no, no, no. It's great while you're on it. But soon as you come down and in between, you're not feeling good at all. It's just going to make shit worse. A high school friend to hers said, I lost touch with her for a few years and reconnected after I married and had a family. She was in law school. She started using cocaine with a girl in mystic, just for fun, just dabbling. This girl is in the kind of society that Renee wanted to measure up with. Renee started hanging with her after she started snorting. She started doing it a lot. Then she started getting hooked up with street people, drinking and drugging on a regular basis. She was just consumed by that lifestyle. The crack cocaine ruined her. She's gone from fucking Beethoven by memory at four. To crack on the street. Crack. Crack. Not in crack. Which was never chic. It was never like a cool society. It's never been to do it. It's never been, oh my god. Do you know that guy? He does crack. He does crack. That's amazing. Once a flame and some baking powder and shit got mixed up in the mix and baby laxative and shit. It was all went, people, hey, that's different. I don't want any of that shit. That coke wasn't stepped on too, but it's different. So her mom said, quote, she also had been dabbling with cocaine. She kept saying it was recreational. She did it again and again. By the time she graduated from law school in 1986, she was hooked. From the do it all, lick the world person she was, she became quiet, more easily angered and aggressive. She became less generous. She was quick to find fault. Mm-hmm. Yeah. If you have someone who's cynical and a servant in their nature, you add a coke house. Yeah, but into that holy shit is that an unsufferable asshole. Wow. Yeah. You're going to be so much more cynical and so much more a servant totally. Yeah. Or an unsufferable asshole, either one. People on coke are hard to deal with. I can't do it. Oh boy. Yeah. I can't do it. You can see it. And it's the worst is when they try to act like they're not on coke. Yeah. I was just talking about this with my cousin last week, a friend of ours that used to do tons of coke. I heard my cousin's house jaw fucking moving. Yeah. And he'd be like, Jesus Christ, man. And he'd be like, no, no, no, I'm just, yeah, I don't know. I'm just, I'm not on anything. I'm not on anything. Yeah. Clamby and sweaty in a snow storm. Yeah. You have a job moving in a skin as gross. He'd be like, no, no, no, no, no, I don't have anything. I hurt my jaw. So I'm just working it out. He's like, dude, come on. Who are you talking to? You know what I mean? Give me a fucking break. So 1987 is when she graduates early, 87 and gets a job in Western. She passes the bar exam. She takes the bar exams in Connecticut and New York. Wow. Yeah. Diane said that she only really took it in New York because she heard that JFK Jr. Not, yeah. I was going to put Jr. Had failed the bar twice in New York, which is a famous thing. And Renee wanted to prove she could do what a Kennedy couldn't do. Yeah, because they're fancy. Yeah. I mean, he did it the third time, right? I don't know. I imagine. I don't know. He was a lawyer. The bus started a magazine and plummeted into the sea. Is all I know. I know that. We're just going over to Massachusetts. We're probably a little easier for it. Possibly. Yeah. So when she applied to take the Rhode Island bar exam, they did a judicial background check on her and found some shit that she'd been hiding of the prostitution stuff, which is 14 arrests. Whoa. She's been arrested 14 times. Mostly for shoplifting. Wow. She's got caught a lot too. Yeah. She didn't think about it out of the thousands of times. She still gets it. She's really good at it. It still gets caught a bunch of times. Yeah. So yeah, that's what's crazy. That's insane. So July 1st, 1988 is when they sit her down and talked over here. This is the committee on character and fitness. Oh. To see if she's fit to be a lawyer, a lawyer, a white up in the bar of Rhode Island. She's forced to explain herself here. That's what they did. First she was evasive, but gradually they would talk about basically in her third year of law school, why did you steal a $40 power tool that you had the money to buy? And probably didn't even need. That's what I mean. Well, if you had the money to buy it, then you know what I mean? So they're like, that shows that that's not stealing something because you need it. That shows you liked your dishonest is what they're trying to say. You like that guy from the jinx that stole a sandwich when he had like fucking five grand in his pocket? Yes. That's a big. It's such a weird thing. We'll do that. It's like fucking Marla with the lollipop on the wire. Yeah. Because he can. Stop. Yeah. Why? Why? Isn't that cool that I'm not as glad of this? Right. Yeah. That feels good to me. I don't know. So anyway, she explained that she began shoplifting in junior high. And for fun. And she says that children of alcoholics tend to be obsessive-compulsive. Sure. That's her. She also says quote, it's a thing that you do in order to be in control. In other words, when I'm in school, I overstudy. I escape into studying. I think I was 20th in my class out of 400. I think it all stems from feeling like you're no good and inferior. And you need to be better in order to be just good enough. So that's what she said. Now at the end of the hearing, she said, you can see I'm not a bad person, right? You know, I'm really normal. I'm really okay. I can. Just never don't listen to my lying arrest record. Yeah. Rhode Island rejected her. Oh, really? And then based on that, Connecticut withdrew its initial approval. Oh my God. And then renewed it on the condition that she gets psychiatric counseling. She said, we will admit you to the bar in Connecticut, but you have to get counseling. Yeah. Okay. So she met with a recommended psychiatrist and made a proposal to him or her. I don't know. She said, you're going to want to see me for 10 sessions, right? How about I pay you for 10 sessions and you give me the note. Yeah. And we just call it a fucking day here. Yeah. Yeah. Which a psychiatrist would see flashing lights and red flags or someone said that. Then when the psychiatrist said, no, Renee criticized the psychiatrist grammar. You have to. Jesus. Diane said she remembered. I guess her point was, how is she going to help me? She can't even. She doesn't even know. Yeah. Fucking Tenses. She doesn't know how to help me. Fuck this lady. So it's weird. Diane also said Renee had developed a contempt for all counselors. She even told the Rhode Island examiner. She'd quit the counselors in the past because she didn't think they helped because she didn't like them. Diane said Renee would argue with psychiatrists and delight in poking holes in their theories. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you go to therapy to argue, shit, you're not there. You're not. It's not going to work. So Diane recalled that Renee met at least once with the young psychiatrist. Remember that from this and you know, talked about the proposal and. But Diane said Renee had begun to use drugs more heavily by this point and could not go through all the months of counseling. Just couldn't. It wasn't capable. Diane said it was a crushing blow. I think it was like, well, fuck it. If they won't let me be a lawyer, I'll be a drug addict, basically. So she also became, according to Diane, more vulnerable to men. She said, this is Diane. She straight off into these desperate relationships with abusive alcoholic men. She'd call me and say, what am I going to do if they don't call me back? I'd spend two or three hours on the phone with her almost every night. It was becoming like a recording. Right. She, who else, who in her fit, what could have made her attracted to abusive alcohol like that? What could that have been? Yeah. I wonder. And it's crazy that she's going to therapy, but like not even confronting the demons and the reasons. Somebody tell her, you're doing great. She just wants to be right. Yeah. So in therapy, she'll just argue until she's right because it's an intellectual exercise in therapy. Everything to her seems like an intellectual exercise. Can I outsmart this therapist? Can I go around them? Can I go over them? Can I fucking poke holes in them or her or whatever the fuck, you know? So that's what it seems like. And this, obviously, these abusive alcoholic men are her father's and abusive alcoholic. This is why you need therapy to deprogram yourself from this. Sure. You can't help it. That's what your brain does. It looks for that shit. Now, they said she did complete a 14 day program in 1991. Yeah. Then in 1993, Renee was in for two days for cocaine detox, but was discharged because she was contentious. She wouldn't do anything with you to ask her to do. Yeah. She was going to combative. She was in for five days later on in 1996 and discharged for the same reason. So we're seeing a pattern here. Yeah. Renee is almost too smart for her own good. And she's stubborn as fuck. Yeah. That's being smart doesn't mean you're happy or, you know, fulfilled, you know, a lot of times torture yourself like this. So it's a lot. One of the her counselor said in February, I had a long talk with her, imploring her to take more responsibility. Her response was sarcastic and hostile. And she's usually, this is the thing about Renee. She's always been able to avoid trouble. Side step it, see it coming, you know, feel it, know it, you know what I mean? She's always been able to, yeah. I mean, that's what it is. And out of it with a brain. Those people are very capable of shoplifting because they have, they have emotions and they feel when it's not safe to take this. Yes. That's true. They're very intuitive and that usually helps on the street too because you can feel that thing, you know, I mean that thing bubbling up. What was that? It was on the wire where they were talking about you know when to get the fuck out of there. You got to know when to get out. You'll feel it. You'll feel it. Yeah, you know, I get out of there. Maybe I can't remember. It was a movie where a woman was talking to another woman about turning tricks and saying you got to know, you got to have it. You got to know it's there. Fuck what movie was that? Damn it. That's annoying. Anyway, pretty woman. No, definitely master. Rattle. Yeah. Yeah, there's no, no. It was in a larger context of another movie. It wasn't about that. So Renee has always been able to evade jail though. That's the thing because she's smart. 14 arrests, no jail. Yeah. And she would get them dismissed. She'd get it reduced. Okay. And judges would always note her education, her background. You shouldn't be here. I'm going to give you another chance and you know, your ability, basically your potential to do well. Yeah. And let you out. What can you do but go back to the street? You have a fucking law degree. You can do a lot of stuff. Sure. So that's what they would do. Now, after all of this, so mid-90s is coming around here. She is full blown. Drugs, shoplifting. Oh. And now prostitution is now her career. It's it. Yeah. It's not just a little on the side. She ended her long-term relationship that she had with Paul Vincent. Eventually she begins shooting up. The drugs rather than smoking crack. Now she's shooting. A girl with aspirations of being a lawyer is sitting on a street corner shooting crack. Shooting up with a law degree. Yeah. With a fucking law degree and passing three states different, three different states bars. It's a lot like she starts basically her arms are all fucked up with new track marks. And at one point she had to shave her head because her hair got so matted and fucked up. She's not taking care of herself apparently. She's shaving dreadlocks. That's fucking horrible man. Yeah. It's it's bad. Now there's little nobody really remembers her working much at this point. Her mother mentioned having brief brief little forays as an aide at the Western hospital and as at a nursing home in Western. Just a waste. Other friends talked about her always getting fired at waitressing. Oh, she would have waitressing jobs and a fire because she'd probably mouth off to customers. Yeah. She'd get help it. Or the cook or somebody. Yeah, sure. So, and again, her father, her father, a cook, maybe she was drawn to that. I'm going to be abused and argued with this cook who's probably an alcoholic dose. So her lawyer, a lawyer who represented her in a couple of civil suits, at least one involving a car accident and several shoplifting cases said that also she had criminal stuff with drugs, too. Now she's starting to get arrested for drugs. Yeah. A superior court judge said that she had seen Renee before, had Renee in their courtroom said she probably appeared before me a half dozen times. I had the impression sometimes she'd start off with a chip on her shoulder, hoping I'd knock it off, but she was always cordial. It was too bad we couldn't have done something for her at that point. It was such a waste with all of her accomplishments, but we tried and after a while we felt we weren't getting anywhere. Right. And yeah, they said, oh, she just needs to get her shit together, but she just won't. That's the thing. Renee also likes to like, she likes to manipulate her sister says this, not me. Her sister said that Renee kind of likes to manipulate with sex. Yeah. She said Renee seemed to view sex as some kind of performance as the way they put it. Oh, Diane said that Renee dated male professors at Connecticut and at the Yukon Law School and later on she would date most of the bosses she had as well. She's looking for either a powered dynamic boost up or to try to fix the father thing too. Sure. You know, someone in authority and all that kind of shit. I wonder how many of them were alcoholics too. So when she began to get arrested in the New London, West early area, she told Diane she was angling for a judge. Who's going to fuck her way out of trouble is what Diane said, which is wow, two male law school professors and a male attorney whom Renee once listed as references didn't respond to this newspaper article asking for comment. You know, they said that that doesn't mean they slept with her, but they were just kind of doing that. Renee's mother said her daughter's view of humanity went from bleak to bleaker. Oh, yeah. She said that she had an almost cruel perception about her, which is very interesting. And she said, did she care what people thought, not at all? Did she think prostitutes she worked with could be noble? Yes she did. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, yeah, you could be a decent person. Be down on your luck and have to do that. Yeah, it doesn't mean you're son of moral judgment, you know. So 1994, she's incarcerated at the York Correctional Center in Niantic, Connecticut. This is ridiculous. This sucks. While she's there, she discovers that she is pregnant. Yeah. A pregnancy test given when she was first jailed registered negative. Oh, so that says one of two things either she was pregnant inside either she had just gotten pregnant when she got arrested or she got pregnant inside. Which based on what she says and what her sister says, it seems like she might get, yeah. But at the time she realized it was pregnant, it was too late to get an abortion too. So she was like, fuck, and her mom said the last thing she wanted to do was bring a child into this place. She hates the world. She doesn't want to bring a children there. January 14, 1995, she has a daughter named Lindsay. The baby test positive for cocaine. So it has taken away from her and placed with foster parents, which is obviously fucking heartbreaking here. Her friend, member of Meligrino, from back in the day, she cared for the infant for the first 10 days and then it was taken away in put in foster care. Wow. The state was aware that she was pregnant while she was in jail and took the baby on the grounds that she was an unfit mother. And the baby, Lindsay will end up being adopted later on. Oh. By somebody else, but Brunei is going to try to fight to keep her. Summer of 1995, she's going to try to get her shit together. She's going to move in with mom and live with her mother and try to just go with the program, get off of everything. So she lived with Brunei. Jean and Brunei lived together in Western with Jean trying to help her get clean. Jean said, I was believing that brown rice and tofu and salads and beef vitamins and a jog in the park would cure her over drug addiction. Oh, unfortunately that is not how it works. A jog in the park? That's not it. In the mid-90s, you'd say you just need to get out of it and be in a better environment. You won't want to do drugs. Yeah. And that can't help for an hour, but then you still have it there. You're still empty. So Brunei started taking prosack at this point, which her mom thought to be actually a positive step because she's at least, she's taking someone's advice. That's good. I've got a lot of... feelings about antidepressants, but that particular one is really fucking wild, man. It can... Yeah. You should obviously... It's also a safe, like, hundreds of thousands of people. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hundreds of thousands, but that one's a very aggressive one. It's like anything like cars or fire or anything, you know, does well sometimes it hurts. You know, I'm saying we need it and it also will burn your house down. Prozack and fire both well either save your life or fuck you up. Yeah, antidepressants are great for some people, not great for other people. But that one is a very aggressive one. And I don't have much of an opinion on it because I'm not a doctor. So I'm also an anecdotal shit. I'm not going to be one of those dipshits on a podcast casting a lot of spurs. Stay away from that shit. Like, you know, like I do any stupid stuff to yourself. No. It's all bad. Not me. So we don't know. You know, she or I mean, I have my opinions, but yeah, worthless. And basically so anyway, she earned weak and visits with Lindsey at this point with her new great. Gina remembered one day when Renee was sitting on a swing with her baby and Renee said, Oh, look at her laugh. She makes my heart so happy. And you know, she said, Oh, that's great. She said, I'm glad I'm home. You know what I mean? She was just happy. Child welfare authorities promised Renee she could have Lindsey back in September if she kept her shit together. That's good. So a summer of being clean. So and we have a timeline and a goal and achievements to make to make our life better. Exactly. And Jean mom said that, you know, this, the baby might be great motivation for her to be able to do this. You never had motivation before. Now she does. Yeah. So she said that, yeah, that's a big deal. She said that when she, when Renee said she was so happy, she said she hadn't heard Renee say anything like that for 20 years. So it was a big deal. She said things were going well. Renee had energy. I had her jogging. I was giving her good nutritional food. She was painting the apartments. She was going to counseling. But I had a deadline to go back to work. Yeah. She took the summer off of work to, wow, stay with her daughter and help her. And then she had to go back to work. So she had to leave kind of Renee on her own at this point. So Jean said she started missing her counseling sessions. I learned she was taking drugs again. And in the final days before she had to stay clean and everything to get her daughter back, she flunks a drug test. Oh, good God, man. Yeah. I mean, that's, you know, that has to be. Almost to the finish line and ruined it all. That sucks, man. It's really difficult. By the way, her mom's a postal clerk at Connecticut College. And that's why she had to go back. And yeah, she said it was brutal. She said, I gave up and accepted she was who she was. If that dear baby couldn't save Renee, nothing could. A mom and a baby who made her happy couldn't get Renee off of drugs. Her mother and her baby. She said she loved that baby, but she still needed the drugs. So 95, 96, this is from the newspaper. I will just read with how they describe her quote. She's known as a drug addict and prostitute about five foot five full figured with dark hair gone gray, a charmer manipulator, a street smart hustler, a shoplifter. That's how they describe it. That's pretty apt. It's bleak. It's bleak and yeah. And her mother said she was obsessed with death as well and susceptible to depression sometimes to the point of suicidality. And they said her life just was fucked at this point with the drugs. It's all drugs. She said that she also said that her daughter turned to prostitution because shoplifting couldn't support her addiction. She said, once you get to be such a drug addict, it sucks a lot out of you physically. To be a good shoplifter, you have to have style. And that's the truth. Yes. You can't go in looking scragally or they give an eye on you. If you go in looking fantastic, everybody looks twice at you. Right. Just like this person shopping. Shoplifting. Exactly. She said, so you have to have style. You can't look like a drug addict. She was, this is a great one. She was snorting crack. That's how innocent Jean is. She was snorting crack, which would hurt. When the rocks get lodged in your nostrils, that would hurt. I suppose you can. There's ways to do it. I'm sure. But I don't think that's very wrong. You have to break it up again. You have to break it down to where you got it to begin with. I know somebody who ate crack once. They were all fucked up and drunk and they went to try to buy coke on the street in New York City and ended up with crack. And they were like, what the fuck? We thought we were buying coke. They had crack so they didn't know how to smoke crack because they're not crack. They don't have crack pipes running like that. So they were so drunk. They started eating it. Just chewing it up and eating crack. God, chill. Don't chill. Jesus Christ. That story ended with this person waking up the next day in their bedroom in an apartment in New York City with all the windows open. Naked with porn going on the computer and a Ruben Haffey and Ruben sandwich in their hand. That's how eating crack will lend you night up. They woke up and said, what the fuck was I trying to jerk off while I was eating a Ruben? What did I do to myself? And I got real hot in here. You got real hot. No, no, blinds open. Not a chair. It's just letting everybody see it. So everyone could just see your shoes like, it's bad. Anyone in any of the buildings around me could absolutely see this mess I was in. So this is bad. She said that she was snorting crack and shooting crack. Only two things you can't do with cracker shoot it and snort it. Neither of those. Yeah, that's not what you should be doing. That's for sure. No, she was fucking, she was shooting. Yeah. Yeah, she was shooting coke. You can do that. She to be, you can't shoot crack. Once you turn into crack, that's for smoking. She told me it was okay with the prostitution. She got more money for it. Okay. She said she was down on green and tilly streets. She was favored because of her ways by certain clientele. They would meet her and like her so well, they wanted to take her home and save her. She wouldn't do it. Yeah. Several of these guys said, you're too smart to be out here. Yeah. Whatever. Now, this is her mom. Jean said, I said to her, just go with one of them, Renee. So her mom is advising her, just go with one of the, just go with some John that picks you up and let him take care of you. Just for the home and the money, she would tell her daughter. Just at least you're not out on the streets. She would say to me, every form of refuge has its price. I'd have to do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted it. I'd be more of a prostitute than I am now. Wow. So she's not going to be beholden to somebody. For more than it takes to get their money out of them at one time. So otherwise she wants to be independent. Yeah. Now, here is an author, quote unquote, big quotes on author. Name Mark Browstein, Bronstine, sorry. He is a Connecticut College art librarian who's also a paraplegic. He also does nature photography. He's an animal rights activist, a published vegetarian philosopher. I don't know what the fuck that means. And a marijuana advocate, at least I know what that is. And I guess they said that he was trying to write a book about street women in this area called, called Good Girls on Bad Drugs. That's the book you wanted to write. Oh, I guess it's an interesting stance. Yeah, I can't wait to read it. Especially if you find, I can't wait to stutter my way through it. If you find women that shouldn't be in this position, that makes a lot of sense. Or you know, traditionally not seem like they're going to be in this position. People say he used his paraplegia as a sword and shield to get people to trust him for interviews. People in wheelchair seem trustworthy. Yeah, they don't seem like they're going to fuck you over. Unless you don't believe they're actually need the wheelchair. That'd be the only way. Like, are you faking this? Yeah, so I'll move it all. Yeah, I'll read some shit here from an article about this guy. The first night, Mark Brownstein met, our picked Renee Pelagrino off a new London street. He got an earful of abuse from her and a fistful of blocks of rocks, the real kind from a crack dealer. Pelagrino had sex for sale, but that wasn't what Brownstein was buying. When she stepped out of his car to score her rock of crack, Brownstein watched it all from his side view car mirror. Rocks began to fly after Pelagrino and the dealer wound up in an argument. Okay. Okay, for this evening out in late May 1996, Brownstein paid Pelagrino $20. For a year's time about a dozen more would follow. He considered them a deal. So they say paralyzed from the waist down by a 1990 swimming accident. Brownstein is what he calls his neutered state, he says, and he said he would call that. He'd be real frank and she was the same way. So they got along here. She said that sell sex smoke crack. That was all there was to it. That's what she told him. She said sell sex smoke crack. That's what I'm doing. Yeah, that's it. That on your belly. Yeah. That's over. That's over. The old, some old comedian would go right joke, tell joke. That's what I do. There it is. Yeah. That's the same thing. Sell sex smoke crack. So they, he said that's all there was to it. She told him and he said he'd been picking up these women for about two years and paying them to tell their stories so he can turn them into a book. He's paying them for their time, not for their actions. So he said I think of all, I think all of the streetwalkers like to talk about themselves, Bronstein said, he says, I don't own a TV, but I can hop in a car and drive a half mile into downtown New London. And it's like a free real life TV show. It's like the Kensington YouTube feed and Philly that we talked about. All the other johns out there are just interested in a blow job. When I say, tell me the story of your life, they do. That's a break. They're paid for it still. He said that Bernay Pellegrino is the most interesting because it's the most unbelievable. He said that was just, you know, even believe why she was even here. He said that she enjoyed debating the finer points of liability such as the difference between stealing and not repaying alone. She's made to be a lawyer. Yeah. She wants to debate. She's so good at this. She could sit up there and go, that depends on what the definition of the word is is. And you'd go, whoa. Tell me what you're saying. I mean, yeah. What are you running for? Yeah. Yeah. So she said, you know, that was a big deal. Bronstein said her big thing she would tell me is she's not like everyone else. Okay. To prove it, she wants borrowed $10 from him and promised to repay $20 that night. Bronstein made the loan, he says, and then she didn't give him the $20 back. But she was trying, she was trying to prove that she was different and could be trusted. She said of all the streetwalkers who read parts of his manuscript, Bernay was the most critical. Yeah. Yeah. She's going after a psychiatrist grammar in her session. What do you think she's going to do to you? She said, she says that she called it soft morric and accused him of romanticizing her colleagues. He said, she's the only one I didn't like speaking with. He said he was attracted to her though because of her education for one and her obnoxiousness for another. Something about that's attractive for a guy. I don't know what it is. That's what it is. He said, the first day I met her, she started making ethnic slurs against Jews knowing I'm Jewish. That's just her. She's going to see where you're fucking, where you're soft. Yeah. Find her comfort level. Yeah. Yep. And she said that Pelagrino called him every day during one of her stints in prison, then stuck him with the phone bill. She had promised to repay. She, uh, Braunstein says that he saw Pelagrino one night when she flagged him down in New London and she was walking her usual turf, uh, Washington, Tilly and Huntington streets. He said she had almost waist, length, brown hair, but tried to look like a tomboy. And so to see a lot, she wears like a lot of like short jean shorts and a hat. She always wears a hat a lot of times. So the pictures I've seen, there's a few of them with a hat. So there's, uh, there's that. So there's a one of her wearing a, there's a picture that's out there while she's in his car. He took a picture of her. She's wearing a cap from the New London Fire Department. And Braunstein said she got that hat at the fire station. They gave it to her. She just went in and there. Can I have a hat? Which is if you're a hard chicken, go in and ask for a hat and I'll just give you one. And that's, I mean, that's a, that's a better way of stealing just like wandering in being hot and manipulative and then just getting the shit and being like, thanks. See you. Walk into a fire station and go, can I get a hat? Take a, get the fuck out of here. Get out of here, loser. Presley, the, the, the, the fire department near me is the peoria one, obviously. And because it has a pee on it, I want to, Presley wants me to wear shit with, anyway, I asked them for one and they're like, no, you can't. Presley's his daughter by the way. You cannot have a fire department. I've asked them for that. Do you not want to give them away? You don't want to give you our uniform. No, no, no, I don't at all. I'm not talking to helmet either. No, no, no, no, just the baseball hat. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So for the prop in the photo, Braunstein gave her a newspaper essay. He'd written touting the benefits of marijuana for people with spinal injuries, such as his, as for Pellegrino, he says crack cocaine was her drug of choice. I don't know. Braunstein says Pellegrino told him she'd been treated for manic depression and obsessive compulsive disorder and quote all those legal drugs never took away the pain like crack. The fucking crack mother fucking crack, as Clint said and love after lock up. He said twice she knocked on his door early in the morning. He said, Renee knew my driveway. Before she knew him, he said it's a long secluded path off Benham Avenue near the railroad tracks. And he said streetwalkers have been bringing their tricks there for years. I'm the one who's always picking up the used condoms. That's a lovely task. Oh, Jesus Christ. I'd leave a sign at least pick up your condoms, please. They're piling up again. I can't get out of here. Clean them up. At the end of the driveway is a house where Braunstein rents the first floor on a Sunday morning in March of this year. Braunstein said he told Pellegrino she could sleep it off on his couch. He said quote, she stunk her body, her clothes, particularly her shoes. While she slept, he put her clothes through the washing machine. He said with back my bare hands, I washed her shoes. When she woke up two hours later, all she did was curse him out because her shoes were still wet. Oh my God. So also she on the street, she wants people to think she's crazy. She is smart enough to realize that's what you need to do. I keep safety. Yeah. Yeah. She's in prison smearing her own shit all over herself. I'm crazy. That's not literally, but that's the, you know, pretty much figuratively. The one woman, a 21 year old street walker, that's what she calls herself, calling herself melody, said that she tried to wean herself from the streets. Is she's trying to wean herself off the streets at this point? She said, Pellegrino only wanted people to think she was crazy, but she really wasn't crazy. Melody is also a subject of in this book, by the way, a bronze team's book. He says that Pellegrino or she says, Pellegrino would twirl her hair in a funny way, make clients suspect that she was a police officer and curl up in a ball for privacy. These are the weird things. With dealers, she'd say, don't buy that stuff. It's garbage right in front of them. She was gutsy. Which, wow, while brownstein thinks that Pellegrino did all this to provoke, she like, he says she has a death wish. And that's what she's doing. Melody thinks she did it for protection, which probably, and Melody would know, Melody would know about her because she's in the same position. So I believe Melody, she said everyone thought Renee was crazy, but she was smart as hell. Melody says Pellegrino treated her like a daughter and once harassed a cop to keep him busy while she escaped his custody. Yeah. So she got, she got her out there. She said, that's what Renee loved to do. Beat the law. Yeah. She should have got damn it. She'd have been such a good lawyer, man. Yeah. And it's fucked because there's in the 80s, so many lawyers had coke problems. It's not even funny. So she did it just been a normal lawyer. Right in. Yeah. That's what I mean. She would have been, fuck, man. She's Melody said Renee had a lot of fun out there. She was not an unhappy person at all. No, that's what she had to show on the street, but we know that that, that behind closed doors. That wasn't there. So June 24th, 1997. Okay. Renee on June 9th was incarcerated at the York Correctional Institution on a prostitution charge. She remained in York all the way through June 25th here. So for weeks, she tried to get her mother to bail her out. Now someone bailed her out, but we don't know who. Not mom though. Mom said, she called me and I said, you're safe where you are. She said, I'd gotten her out any number of times for thousands of dollars. This time I said, Renee, I'm not getting you out. You're safer where you are. She got someone else to do it. So that's, that's tough. She said, you're at least you're out on the streets and you can't get cracking there. So this is good. Apparently some guy who was sort of an on and off boyfriend bailed her out. So brother John, by the way, is also a fuck up, which I could say. John Pellegrino's a fuck up. He was at the time. He could be great now. He could be doing, she's got to be dead by now though. Jesus, he was a mess. Anyway, he's crazy. Good guy though. Anyway, well, good guy liked him. The only, he's the only son he had his troubles with drugs too. Oh, he was released from Osborne correctional institution in summers where he served a one year sentence for third degree burglary. Then he was arrested again by Western Lee police where he was soliciting money outside the annual summer pops concert. Remember that? Yeah. He was charged with obtaining money under false pretenses. Was he like an assent to costume? Bring a bell. The didn't. Maybe that's what he was. I got I got line dance and take it. It's free, man. It's a free answer. Oh, man. And was sent to the Rhode Island prison in Cranston. So yeah, sister Diane, the one she used to be her shoplifting partner is not a fuck up at all. No, no. She's a graphic designer at this point in the 90s in Mystic. She studied at the Parsons School of Design in New York. She married an attorney in New London. Oh, doing fine. Yeah. Diane struggled with depression and obsessive compulsive disorder too, but she sought treatment and got treatment. Yeah. And felt better and had a normal life. Yeah. June 25th, 1997. Here we go. Waterford Parkway South. It's a rural road. It runs parallel to Interstate 95, which if you know the East Coast goes all the way to fucking Florida. And it used to connect to the Waterford Airport, which no longer exists. Oh, it ends in a cul-de-sac. So it's, you don't go here unless you're going here. There's only on purpose. There's reasons to be there. Yeah. When you're a teenager, this is where you'd go hotbox in your car. The cul-de-sac is clearly where people go to nefarious shit. Yeah, you go roll up the windows and smoke three blunts in there and then open it up and laugh as the smoke pours. Yeah, that's that type of shit. They said basically unless you're looking for it, you don't know it's there. I'll never find it. Now there's a patrolman named Steve Whitehead who started his shift that morning. And he, this is part of his beat as he goes down these roads to look for people doing just that. Sure. He sees what he thinks is some kind of debris in the road. So he stops and gets out and it's not debris. It is the naked body of a white adult female. And the body is clearly posed. Oh, it's not a natural way to fall. These are bent feet together. Arms completely outstretched to the side like crucifixion style. Eyes closed head turn to the side. Yep. It's a clear pose. Obviously. So they're like, that's not good. They said the arms and legs were very thin. Look like a heavy drug user based on the wasting away. Sure. Fat and also track marks and things like that. No clothing found anywhere near this body. No jewelry. Nothing. Only thing on her was a single pink hair tie wrapped around her wrist. Oh, that's it. So now an officer, previous night had patrolled that section of road at the midnight shift and not seen this at all. So this had to happen. She said that it rained that morning during her lunch break between five and five thirty a.m. Which will become important. A detective arrives at the scene about nine a.m. And notes that the body appeared to have been placed at the scene during the rainstorm. So that means it had to be in that time period. There was water underneath the body pulled in a silhouette shape and water in her belly button and her hair was wet and matted. So she was rained on. Yeah. And it stayed to the testing. It's Renee's body. Oh, damn it. It's Renee's body. So this is not good. She had sand and road dirt on the bottom of her feet and in her genital area around her neck, ligature marks. Look like a rope or a cord used to strangle her. The medical examiner and this is very big here. He came to the scene and determined the cause of death to be asphyxia by neck compression. Now the big deal about this, I mean, that happens all the time. The big deal is there was evidence of both manual and ligature strangulation at the same time. Yeah. Which is extremely rare. How extremely rare to choke in somebody with or choke in somebody while you're pulling on something just trying to make it go faster. Now the deputy chief medical examiner who performed the autopsy would say that in his entire career, he's done over 6,000 autopsy's. He can only recall three cases that had both involve both manual and ligature strangulation. It's very rare. Which for investigators is actually a good thing because easier to find. They said that she also had occipital trauma, a blow to the back of her head. And also when they go through everything, she's 17 weeks pregnant. Oh no. Yeah. Four months. That's a four month pregnant. And she tested positive for cocaine and her blood. The one thing that we wasn't a surprise. Now they do a vaginal swab to see if possibly this is part of a rate murder. It contains DNA from an unknown male. All right. Okay. And this is the 90s. So they're going to just go ahead and put that in the cabinet. It's not a big list. Not much you can do with that. So she is identified as Renee. They have a funeral for her, obviously, about 40 people show up and gather at her funeral. You know, she's, she's buried a nice spot under a maple tree. Yeah. With, uh, within view of the graves of her sister and father. Oh, that's nice. Childhood friend showed up. Other street walker girl showed up. Yeah. She was popular. You know, people liked her. Um, one, the deputy chief of the New London police department also showed up. He had known her for years. Uh, she was close to one of his cousins. Oh, so like the, the groups that are showing up at this funeral are vastly disparate here. Um, so that's how it goes. She, um, you know, it's rough. I mean, Diane said she accompanied her mother to the funeral. Um, they each dressed in blue jeans for the funeral. Okay. She said it was an honor of Renee. She said that that was Renee's uniform. She wore jeans in a sweatshirt. She could have worn anything she wanted. She could have gotten anything she wanted. Jeans, a sweatshirt and a baseball cap on backwards. That's what she wore. So that's what I put her in. Wow. So that's what they buried her in. Um, Paul Vincent, remember him? Yeah. Construction work in boyfriend. He was one of the Paul bearers. Off and on. Yeah. Ex boyfriend. Yeah. They were 17 years. I guess, you know, you'll go, you'll do what you do here. Um, he wouldn't be interviewed for by the newspaper. Um, it's brutal, man. Um, they, they've lived together before. By the way, they have one point Renee and Paul Vincent co-owned a five apartment apartment building in Westerly. Oh. So one point she had business going and stuff like that. Which is strange. Job happening. So yeah. Now the investigation comes, she had been released from jail the day before. Oh, she was released the evening of June 24th and found on June 25th in the morning. Wow. So they said, obviously she'd gone straight back to the streets from jail. Um, she was last seen in the very early morning hours, climbing into someone's car in the area of Green Street in New London. Um, so people talk about her. There's a deacon at the first congregational church of New London named Peter Roberts, who remembered meeting Renee. He said he was cleaning his pickup truck and listening to opera when she approached him wanting to bomb a cigarette. She walked up and said, what an eclectic guy. A pickup truck in opera. Yeah. He asked her, where'd you learn the word eclectic? Right. Not a lot of prostitutes walk up and call you eclectic usually. They call you dickhead or something like that. Right. So he said he was sad to hear about her death. He said she chose a life that most of us would not choose, but it doesn't take away from her humanity. She had so many gifts. That's true. Now what about the author? What does he think? Bronstein. Yeah. He said, quote, she wanted to die pardon? What? But she was too cowardly to kill herself. He said instead she courted death by provoking clients and drug dealers. Hmm. Wow. That's a weird take. He said she cooperated with police on a lot of things and she and and advertised it. She'd say things like I have to go meet a cop at 10 p.m. She was so blatant. Wow. My feeling is that whoever picked Renee up, if she's like bubbles, basically. Yeah. Whoever picked Renee up a few nights ago, she probably insulted him. And that's why the only weapon he had was strangulation. He said, but it might have also been vengeance because of her snitching. So who knows? So the investigation goes cold. Pretty much here. Goes cold. Yeah, goes cold. They have nothing going. And that's June 25th, 97. Nothing to do here. So they're pretty much fucked. Almost a year goes by. Wow. They still have that swab. But that's it. Yeah. Okay. This is now May 1st, 1998 at 826 p.m. Yeah. New park avenue in Franklin, Connecticut, which is close to the Norwich line. Near the Norwich industrial park by Dodd Stadium, which is a minor league baseball stadium. Basically, this is a road that you don't go to by accident. You're going to go somewhere off of this road. A man is driving with his two daughters. Their names are Tara and Amy. Their age is 10 and 6. They're going to the Ramada in to go swimming. That's why they're driving. They see something in the road. It is a naked white female. Yeah. Knees bent feet together. Arms outstretched head to the side. Same way. She's still warm. Oh boy. Now Tara, the 10 year old said that she remembered seeing a truck leaving away from the body. Okay. She said she was 75% certain that she saw the body fall from the truck as it sped away, which I don't think is correct because it was posed. Right. Exactly. Couldn't have fallen in that pose. So the six year old at the time said we were driving to the Ramada in to go swimming. My father stopped. He wouldn't let us get out. I just remember the woman lying there. She was nude. It's not something you'll ever forget. How many are six? No, you're going to go. There's a couple years of therapy waiting for you on that one. Another witness stopped as well, seeing the family's car in the road thinking they must have hit a deer. They stopped. When he saw it was a body, he felt for a pulse. No pulse, but still warm, covered her with a jacket from his car and somebody went to call the cops, obviously. Now they find out this is Michelle Kamau, C-O-M-E-A-U. Come on. Kamau, Kamau like the boss. I don't know. So Michelle Kamau, whatever, November 26, 1968, she was born, or November 16, 1968. She's 29 years old. That's who this is. They find out doing a little background check on her. They find out that she is a local prostitute who has bipolar disorder, a history of group home placements and mental institutions and is a crack addict in addition to that. She was institutionalized as a young, at a young age and put in the care of the state. Then when she got out on her own, she began a history of getting arrested all the time and a lot of drug problems, really. It's a Michelle story set. She's like Renee. She's the same profession and same predilection for the crack and everything like that. She also had recently been released from jail. Cause of death here is asphyxia by neck compression. They do the autopsy. She has evidence of both manual and ligature strangulation. Okay. Very rare. So this is M.O. is set. We have posed bodies, same pose, same, the victims of very same pro, similar profile. And you have the same, same way of killing them. This is an M.O. at this point now. So it's interesting. So now she had also in addition to ligature marks on her neck. She also had marks on her wrists and ankles as if she'd be found as well. She has occipital trauma as well, hidden the back of the head. It's the exact same thing. Cocaine in her blood, no jewelry or clothing found anywhere nearby. Now a local beat cop from around there said he had been on a foot patrol in 1998. Since said that he had seen Michelle walking along Franklin street on the day her body was discovered. So he'd seen her earlier. He said he'd arrested her several times for prostitution and drug possession. He said she was someone I saw regularly on my beat. Michelle was kind of a sad individual. She admitted she had medical problems by polar manic depression, Tourette's. Oh, she does have Tourette's and she'll have these outbursts of the Tourette's that makes it difficult. She's also got, we'll talk about it. But her her background a little bit here. She was last seen alive shortly after seven PM. So just live after seven by eight, twenty six. She's dead in the road. This was in the area of Troy's cleaners at Franklin and Chestnut streets in Norwich. Investigators also learned she'd been living at 220 Franklin street, staying with a man named Dickie Anderson senior. Oh, it was in his 50s. We'll talk about Dickie in a little while here. But let's find out who she is first. Okay. Michelle, let's find out March 4th, 1987. She's 18 years old and she is having a lot of problems. This newspaper article from the day newspaper, by the way, the day, remember that newspaper, because that'll come up in the story. Okay. They say, quote, Michelle spent the last 15 years in hospitals, foster care and group homes. She spent the last five nights in jail. According to her lawyer and the judge on the bench, when she appeared Tuesday in New London, Superior Court, her case illustrates a larger problem. For lack of a better place, she has been kept behind bars since last Friday, first at the police station and after her arrangement at the prison. Michelle was charged with this orderly conduct after police responded to a call for help from her mother, Christine of Huntington street. They had been there earlier in the day. Michelle said, or no, that's her mother, Christine said, because her daughter was uncontrollable, also called to the apartment that day was a psychiatric emergency response team from Norwich, which tried unsuccessfully to talk Michelle into going for temporary treatment. He said, there's no question we're going to have to find places for people who we know as street people who are not mentally ill or so ill that they need hospitalization. It's got to be something in between for that. Her mom said in court, I couldn't handle her. She physically abused me. She gets very violent when she gets going. She was arrested after her mother told police that she had been punched her hair pulled in her head slammed against the door. She, the mom signed the complaint, but said she didn't want her daughter taken into custody, only given help. Now, she is jailed less than 24. I'll read this article from the day, less than 24 hours after she left jail and turned down an offer of shelter from Norwich treatment center in New London. A woman is arrested again. So that's more six, 87 again, she spends the night in the police police station charged with breach of peace following a domestic disturbance with her mother again. She was arrested for disorderly conduct last Friday after she assaulted her mother allegedly. She spent three nights at the police department lock up awaiting her arrangement. Her plight prompted comments from her lawyer and a judge concerning the lack of homes and treatment programs for people like her. She had spent nearly 15 years of her life in the care of the state department of children and youth services. But after the department reportedly arranged an initial meeting with her natural mother, that's not her mother, Christine or actual mother, it's her adopted mother. She chose to remain in New London, rather than return to the group in which she had been living. Her mother said that, or this is her mother, but it wasn't sorry. Christine is her mother. But not who raised, she was raising all these homes and fostered her birth mother. Exactly. Got it. So she had met her birth mother and decided to stay and hang out with her birth mother instead of going back to this group home. Her mother said that this week that Michelle suffers from a condition that makes her prone to violent outbursts. And there are times when she can't control her. So she thought that outside help from the police and psychiatric emergency response team might fix that. Sure. The her public defender criticized the system and accused the department of quote, dumping the teenager on her mother because she was 18. Based just too old for the youth services. So you take care of her. A DC YS spokeswoman said that because Michelle is 18, the decision to remain with her mother is hers. We can't tell her where to go. She's fucking 18. Now her mom said her daughter was only four when she was taken away. Michelle was four. She said she tried unsuccessfully in the intervening years to locate her, but only learned of her whereabouts last November when the Department of Children and Youth Services got in touch with her. She says she wants Michelle to stay with her eventually. This is in the eighties. In the meantime, she'd like her daughter to be placed in the nearby place. Wherever they put her, she said, I want her close by where we can keep contact. I don't want to lose her again now. Now March 19, 1987, there's more articles about Michelle in the day. I'll read this. This is not a flattering quote. A mentally retarded and mentally ill new London woman is scheduled to return to the Bridgeport group home. She left in December after spending much of the last three weeks in jail, while efforts were made to find her shelter and help the need and help the help she needs. So she's got a lot of ingrained and born problems this poor woman. Society, she's not going to be able to function well. It's difficult for her. It's going to be very difficult on her own. Exactly. Yeah, they said this is her, I guess her lawyer acted on the recommendation of a doctor. From the chief, the chief of forensic psychiatric, at Norwich Hospital, who examined Michelle for competency and testified. She suffers from complex problems associated with mental retardation and neurological condition and a neurological condition that makes her prone to outbursts of profanity and violent behavior. He's talking about Tourette's at that point. He said, I feel that in this case, the Department of Mental Retardation has already worked with her. And therefore she should not be committed to them, committed to them because social services are already making appropriate arrangements for her placement. So they didn't know anyone knew what to do with this poor girl. Right. No one knew what to do with her. You know, they said that 90% of the, that department said 90% of the cases we deal with there socially are really social instead of criminal. They're charged with crimes, but they're usually minor things like breach of peace or disorderly conduct. And they said, these are people who are caught in the middle and the courts ask where they're more meant, whether they're more mentally ill or not. And it's all not always hard to tell, not always easy to tell what the problem is when there's multiple problems, any put drugs in the mixed in and stuff like that. Who knows? So she's, she's got it. This is bad. It's not good. She's got it hard is what I mean, she's got an uphill fight. So April 1st, 1987, they say that, here's another article about her. She's been arrested three times within a month, prompting state agencies to consider how to provide proper services for people with similar problems. So she actually opened up a bigger question and made these people actually investigated and tried to change their policies. They said the, they've made different agreements and everything else. They said, here's a client who's not really mentally ill, who's not really mentally retarded, who's not abused or homeless, but clearly a client who needs something. So they said, we need to do something not just for Michelle, but for any of the Michelle's who come along. Absolutely. So they said her latest arrest was third degree assault was for allegedly assaulting a staff member at the J C House on Broad Street, which is a group where they put her basically where she was placed. She had come to New London just to visit her mother in December and decided to move in with her after a 14 year separation. So that's how that goes. Now November 10th, 1990, she was arrested again and charged with two counts of failure to appear in court. Yeah. And I kind of lose her trail as far as her arrest record goes. But by 97, she's on the streets. Yeah. And with a terrible drug, a terrible drug addiction and she's now dead in the road. So this is awful. Now the police are obviously wondering, are these two connected? Right. Maybe two women. So yeah, 10 months apart in the time they're found 15 miles apart in difference. The bodies are found. So it's the area. You know, they're both crack addicted street walker women. So they're both recently released from jail, both strangled manually and with a ligature combination. Both bodies found naked on rural, rural roads, posed in the exact same way. No clothing, no jewelry, head trauma, cocaine in their systems. I mean, it doesn't get any more of the same. So the state argues that's a signature. That's an MO. That's a calling card. That's how you can tell. They compile a list of 29 similarities between the two murders. Wow. That's a lot. 29, the prosecutor does that. And but they have all these similarities and they're pretty sure they're the same person. But who is this person? Who is it? They don't fucking know. Yeah. The investigations, both of them go cold. Can't find it. There's a missing poster for Renee. $10,000 for information leading to the arrest of a conviction of whoever. It's a big half a fucking newspaper page. It's not a little tiny thing. Half a newspaper page, you know, call the Waterford Police Department or the state's attorney. Renee's mom said, quote, I lost a child and a grandchild. Yeah. She said that Renee's mom said she had to go to the doctor to find out what Renee's final moments were like. She had to die. She said, I pleaded with them to tell me how long it would take to die from that. Yeah. They said up to five minutes. Ah, Jesus. I'm tortured by this concept of her being terrified. So she said that she has regularly spoken with detective, uh, detective lieutenant, Donald McCarthy of the Waterford Police Department, who's in charge of the investigation. She said, I used to call at first every day and then two times a week and then once a week. And if I don't call now, he calls to reassure me they're still working on it. And McCarthy said the detective bureau is working on the case daily and then he's confident that an arrest will be made. He said we've developed a number of suspects and conducted intensive interviews. And it's just a matter of time before something cracks. Somebody gives it up. Somebody tells, yeah. So the police at this point are so confident that they're going to find this killer that they're begging for tips in the newspaper. Begging just anything. Um, one says I, this is a, the cops say quote, I know there's one person out there who has that fear or suspicion of that person who will still contact us, uh, meaning fear of the murder. Yeah. And they'll contact us. We hope they come forward for the reward or out of fear. If someone's living with this man, they should be afraid. Yeah. So basically if this is your boyfriend, turn his ass in, he's going to strangle you, leave you in the street. So they get a tip here. A police end up arresting a man for leading investigators, a stray in the murder case of Renee. Yeah. Yeah. Arthur D. McFarland was charged with falsely reporting an incident and interfering with a police officer acting on a July 3rd phone tip from McFarland who called the police station from a bar and spoke with the dispatcher. Three officers spent several days conducting a background check on another man here. McFarland attributed a comment about the murder to the man and supplied police with the man's license plate number. And they found out later on that the man who, he, the man who the police won't identify, adamantly denied any involvement in the murder and any involvement in a conversation with nothing basically. Yeah. Now McCarthy, the guy who called it in said it's, I'm sorry, the police officer said, McFarland calling this in, quote, seemed like a grudge thing. He didn't like a guy and called the cops and said, I, he told me killed that girl. Feels like that's a murderer. Yeah. So the cops fucking the cops go spend four days of resources and time wasting their time on purpose. So yeah, the, the detective lieutenant said it's my opinion that the man who's involved as a killer, a murderer in the true sense of the word. He's a bad man. That's what they are. Yeah. It's an understatement. He's a bad man. Wow. He said if he feels you are a threat to him, he will kill you in a heartbeat. I feel very strongly that he wouldn't hesitate to do it again. Now 1999, the reward is up. Okay. It's up now. It was 10,000. Now it's 50,000. Oh, more than opt. That's a lot. Yeah. They said the task force believes that the public may have some pertinent information concerning Pelagrinos death that for some unknown reason is yet to be provided to task force personnel. As investigators continue to piece together this scenario, all information becomes invaluable. Therefore, the task force is once again requesting you have information, fucking tell us and 50 grants a little more of a motivator. They said that those involved in the investigation also, the police said, took exception to an article that ran in the day and other publications announcing the increased reward. The announcement, they said characterized Pelagrino as a drug addicted prostitute and all these things. And they said they made it basically less likely that people will want to do that. But you have to put that because they have to know, you know what I mean? Sure. Yeah. You have to know where and when the circumstances are. Because if you said, oh, yeah, I know that girl. She was that lady was, she worked with me at the thing. No, it's not her. You know what I mean? You have to know you saw her on the street. That's probably where you'd see her. But either way, they thought it was a little shitty the way they did it anyway, which probably was. Now the case is called Anne Renee's mom is upset. Yes. She said she can't stand that her daughter's killer is free to go about his daily business. Which that would that would be infuriating. She said, if you murder somebody, you shouldn't be able to just go wander around. She's right. No, she said whoever did this is having their day. He's probably having his coffee and his scrambled eggs smoking a cigarette. I'd like to see the maximum prison sentence for this man so that he can be unfree to think about this as we are forever unfree. Unfree. Fun word. Yeah. It is. It's like the uncola. Yeah. The cops here, they've reviewed similar killings in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Washington, Nevada, Utah, and New York. And police have also had input from the FBI's behavioral science unit, trying to get a profile here. They said that quote, this message for the killer, we're not giving up. You're going to be unfree. You're going to be unfree someday. So time goes by 2002 comes along. Oh my God. When in Mohican Park in Norwich, a young lady named Hope Becker, another young prostitute is found strangle to death. Yeah. They found her dead naked body on a street at the foot of the Mohican Park near the intersection of John Edwards drive and wilderness road. She had been strangled. Wow. They said a woman from the street with a nickname of double D. Wonder where she got that. Said I think she was going out there and ended up with the wrong trick. She said that was a close friend of hers, Hope. She said one of those men who were crazy and maybe wanted more than she and she wouldn't give it to them. She was so fragile and skinny, it wouldn't take that many hits to knock her out. A double D said she knew this hope Becker for more than a year and she thinks Becker was about 33 or 34 years old. She said she last saw Becker 930 PM on the Saturday night when Becker told her she was going out to make some money. So double D and another guy, Mr. Brown, who's another friend of Becker, who asked not to be identified only by a nickname. Said that Becker was well liked and always offering to help people in times of need. He said you'd help she'd help you find a job in apartment. She was a cool person. She took me in her house until I got another place to live. So she was found dumped in the park, wearing only socks and a hair tie again. Oh, she also had ligature marks on her neck and wrists, but not manual and ligature on the neck. So just tied up just the ligature marks on the neck too. Now this, the police are comparing this to the to Michelle and Renee's murders, but they end up arresting a man named Clifford Gilliland, who has nothing to do with Renee and Michelle's murders. They say but killed Hope Becker. Now when interviewed about Pellegrino, he adamantly denies any involvement in that and everything like that. So 2008. Now let's go to it has been 10 and 11 years. Yeah, between Michelle and Renee's murders respectively. So New London, Connecticut. There's a man named Dickey Anderson Jr. Dickey's Dickey's is that's you remember senior. Oh, this is junior. This is junior now. Junior's born March 27, 1970. So Dickey Jr. here. He is a newspaper mailroom worker works for the day newspaper and New London just started that job earlier that year. Christmas of 2007, some shit like that. Our April, 1970 started working as a mailroom clerk for the day newspaper. He's got a long time girlfriend named Tony Wilson, who he has two kids with. And he also has a third child as well. He has been arrested all fuckload of times, including for domestic violence, specifically for strangling his girlfriend. Yeah, likes to choke. Here's his illustrious record. And this is just a tip of the iceberg of what I could find going through newspapers and shit. He has five prior assault convictions. Whoa, has a conviction for third degree strangulation and as a documented pattern of violence against women. I found 1990, 20 years old, arrested for breach of the peace. I found that April 25, 1992. Two men charged after chase and accident. Police charged Dickie Anderson, Jr. with first degree larceny, reckless endangerment and interfering with a police officer. Police said they saw him speeding in a trans am across the Gold Star bridge in New London about 230 AM. He was accompanied by Sean Carter, not that one I don't think, but maybe who is that? Jay Z. Oh yeah. Was saw as Jay Z was he born in 1970? Maybe he could have been 22 in 1992. It was real likely. He's not a rapper. He's a fucking 80s, right? Yeah, he was rapping in the 80s. With he was part of that. Oh shit. Now they said when police signaled to Anderson to pull over, he tried to elude them by driving into the New London shopping center, but lost control of the car and struck the troopers cruiser head on. What? Then hit two more cars. I don't know how you go from chased to go into opposite directions, but that happens. Pit, pitman, there's a lot of ways, but to hit a, I guess, I mean, it starts with being chased by the police. You're supposed to sense you should just stop. Then he hit two more cars. Police say Anderson and Carter fled on foot, but Anderson was apprehended after a brief pursuit. Carter jumped into the water for reservoir off the I 95, right? A fucking rap song about that. But a state trooper in a canine tracked him locating him in an apartment on Laurel Avenue in New London. 1990, that is April 25th, 1992, October 25th, 1992. Dickie is going to be a charge of second degree, Larson, he is substituted for a charge of first degree, Larson, he and was not prosecuted against Dickie Anderson. That's for another thing in 2002, a New London prostitute claimed that Dickie picked her up and became violent with her while smoking crack. She managed to escape by slipping out a car door, but Anderson got out of the car and tackled her. Witnesses saw him slam the woman to the ground and kick and beat her until police arrived. A captain hitting her until the he wasn't done. Wow. They could have gone on indefinitely. He only stopped because the cops showed up. Right. Former girlfriend said that he is rough during sex, quote unquote. One said Anderson threatened her and told her that he has already, quote, gotten away with killing somebody. Oh boy. She said he described fighting with a prostitute who kept asking for money. He said he hit and killed the girl in baits woods in New London. Police also interviewed a girlfriend who broke up with him in the year 2000. She recalled twice that Dickie choked her so hard he left red marks on her neck. She turned over photos to the police pictures of her injuries that a friend had taken. Now 2002 October 14th, Dickie is arrested for third degree assault or driving an unregistered motor vehicle, driving without insurance and driving with a suspended license. Pretty bad guy, but I mean, he's minimal, but it's still a, he's just a fuck up. It all piles up. Yeah. May 25th, 2003, especially when it's every year, he is charged with third degree assault, second degree failure to appear in court, failure to renew motor vehicle registration, operating a motor vehicle under suspension and failure to have insurance. So just as a car with nothing attached to it, right. And he's going out there to second and third degree assault people and his unregistered, uninsured car with no license. OK. Then November 2nd, 2004, Dickie, Jr. again here charged with two counts of risk of injury to a minor, second degree criminal trespass and breach of peace. Sure. September 10th, 2005, Dickie is charged with first and second degree failure to appear in court. October 13th, 2006, Dickie again, disorderly conduct and third degree assault. He's arrested for. Are we sensing a pattern here with this fucking guy? He likes to. Yeah. And these are only the ones I found in the newspaper. Right. So there's more. God knows how many more there are. Another former girlfriend whom Anderson was convicted of strangling in 2008 said that the two had argued about her getting a job and that Anderson threw her to the floor and began choking her. She said if the police did not break into the apartment and physically remove Anderson from her person, she thinks she would have died. So this is twice now. He has physically attacked a woman until police literally pull him off of her. That's bad. He doesn't even like hear a siren and be like, oh, shit, I better. They have to fucking pull him off. Physically, he's lucky and get shot for Christ sake. Another former girlfriend, the one he was convicted of strangling said that during that argument, he threw her to the floor and began choking her. She told police officers the same thing if you didn't save me, whatever. Another girlfriend recalled that Anderson choked her twice during their relationship. So it's not good. 2007 though, he does have time between all these arrests. To write to the editorial page of the bulletin newspaper under the what voters want and upcoming elections section. What? He said, quote, I'd like to see them do more for retired veterans. The social security increases aren't nearly enough. Thanks, Dickie. Thanks for your right. From you, that means now I don't want them to have that because you want them to have that. I want them to have that, but not you. Yeah. He sounds like he wants it. It just sounds like he cares about people when he doesn't. Yeah. So Michelle, the reason why we're talking about him, Michelle was living with his dad, Dickie senior during this time she was found dead. She was living with Dickie senior. Dickie senior extensive record dwarfs his son. I just a few highlights that I found on the newspaper and I stopped picking them out because a lot of them were breach of peace disorderly conducts it like that. He's just a manus. Yeah. 10, 1989, December 23rd charged with fourth degree sexual assault and risk of injury to a minor. Oh, boy. Yeah, not good. Then 92 disorderly conduct and threatening. 1994 possession of crack cocaine possession of drug paraphernalia. So 1995, nor which drug bust yield several arrests, including him. This is search warrants executed. They seized crack cocaine with an estimated street value of $500, which is two grams of it or whatever. And marijuana valued at $200. Oh, an ounce of dirt weed back then. But they still they were charged with possession of cocaine within 1500 feet of a school. Yeah. That's the fucking problem. This is several people, including Dickie Anderson here, who is charged with possession of cocaine within 1500 feet of a school possession of cocaine possession of drug paraphernalia within 1500 feet of a school. October 23rd, 1998, Dickie Anderson, second degree assault possession of crack cocaine possession of drug paraphernalia. 2000, Dickie senior disorderly conduct. 2004, Dickie senior possession of an oakman container in public. And there's more drug bust and disorderly conducts and everything else. So now why the fuck are we talking about Dickie junior? Because he got arrested for domestic violence, strangling his girlfriend. Okay, he got convicted of that under Connecticut law. Luckily, that's a felony strangulation. Take the D.O.A. D DNA felon. Yeah, they take your D.O.A. Yeah, take your D.O.I. is off. Funny. Take it off. Felons are required to provide samples to the state database. So they form the southeastern Connecticut cold case unit, by the way, around this time. Yeah. They end up matching Dickie juniors DNA as the unknown male DNA from Renee, Pelagrinos. Yeah. Rachel Swam. Okay. So the police would love to have a chitchat with this guy. Uh oh. They bring him in. They sit him down. There's multiple people in there. By the way, local and state police Anderson was in prison, serving the sentence for attempted strangulation. And on a lawful restraint and his girlfriend. So they go to talk to several retired detective sergeant and other detective sergeant detectives. A lot of heavy hitters here. So they record this interview without his knowledge, because he's in prison. He has no rights. You know how many rights in prison? Basically they can record you whatever they want. So first they show him a photo of Renee, Pelagrino, which was a mug shot from when she'd been arrested and said, do you know her? And he said, no, nine or lower. Can't say that. He signed a statement saying, I don't know who she is. So they said later on, one of the detectives said we knew he was lying because of the DNA hit. We said, we know you're lying. Yeah. They didn't tell them about the DNA yet. Right. They just said, we know you're lying. We know you said DNA. He's clamming up. He's fucking slamming shot. So they said, we know you're lying. And then his story changed. Now he said, all right, all right. Yeah, I'd seen her before. I know, Pelagrino. He said, I worked a split shift at the day newspapers mail room on June 24th, 1997 from five to nine PM, then back from 12 a.m. to three a.m. That is a horrible work that sure is what a shit split shift. No, that's crazy. After the first shift, he said he had a beer with a coworker at Ernie's cafe, met up with a friend and started walking toward his sister's home on Fern Street in New London. On Washington Street, he said they saw Pelagrino arguing with a man in a blue station wagon. He said that she walked back with them and then left. Now the detectives them, meaning walk back. Person. Yeah. These people. So he said they left a huge part out though. He didn't mention how his DNA was with Renee. Right. How does he have to? Not just DNA. You're just man. Yeah, they go listen. You know, I meet a lot of women. My DNA is an inside the vagina. I'm really that happy to meet someone exactly. Even if I am, they're less happy to meet me. So he admitted, okay, fine. I had sex with Renee Pelagrino that right. So he goes from I've never seen her before. Do I had sex with her the night she died? Yeah. Which is a big belief in shit. He said I gave her $20. He said he used a condom. They said that now the fuck did we find DNA evidence? And he said, okay, no condom. So he then added another detail. He said when he went back to work and when he returned to his sister's apartment around 345 AM, Pelagrino was back with a man named Darrell. He had sex with her again in his sister's basement. He said, so there you go. Um, he then claimed that she left with Darrell. Now, police never found anyone named Darrell. Right. They found in one of his janitorial jobs, there was a guy that worked their name Darrell, but they didn't know each other really. I mean, they never spent time together. So he was like a 66 year old Jewish man or something. Yeah. I don't know what you're talking about. I don't hang out with that guy. So they showed Anderson photo arrays. He could never pick out Darrell, never find poor Darrell in the station wagon. But based on the timeline of Pelagrino's activity and the condition of her body, they estimated she was dumped between 4 and 6 AM here. So that's how it goes. Now he does deny he killed her though. Really? Yeah. So here's the timeline that they have set five to nine. He's working for the first shift at the mail room after nine. He has a beer with a coworker. Late evening, he claims to see Pelagrino on Washington, arguing with the man in a blue station wagon and midst having sex with her, giving her $20. Then works to 12 to 3 AM shift. Yeah. Quite the intermission there. Shit. 345 returns to his sister's apartment on Fern Street claims Pelagrino arrived to the man named Darrell and midst having sex with Renee again in the basement. 4 to 6 AM based on body conditions and timelines. That's when they believed her body was dumped on Parkway, South and Waterford during the rain storm. That's 5 AM to 5 30 AM. That's when that officer took her lunch break and noted the thunderstorm during that period. Now the Renee connection or I'm sorry, the Michelle Camo connection. Yeah. They said, do you know her? And he said, never heard of her. Don't know shit about her. But witnesses tell a much different tale. Yeah. Multiple people said they'd seen Dickie with Michelle at Dickie's father's apartment on Boswell, having to ignore which because she was staying there. Yeah. And they said that was a, this witness to our multiple witnesses described the residents as being frequented by prostitutes and drug users. In a March 2008 interview here, he or I'm sorry 2009, he finally changed his story and said, that was my friend, Michelle. That's what it was. She was just my friend. All right. He admitted meeting Michelle at his father's apartment. He admitted that on the day of her death, he had quote, exposed his penis to her in the bathroom. Nice word. Very classy at his father's house, but he denied ever having sex with her. And he denied killing her. He described himself to police in a way that they're going to bring up in court a lot later. He called himself quote, a trick artist. What is that? Is someone who, according to him, someone who traded crack cocaine for sex with prostitutes, a trick artist. Okay. Rather than cash. Yeah. Well, yeah. So they call his girlfriend. They talked to his girlfriend, Tony Wilson, long time girlfriend, mother of his two children, and strangulation victim, I believe. I'm not mistaken. She said that around the time of Pelag, after Pelagrinos death, but around the time of Michelle's death, Dickie had come to her in a very emotional state and confessed to killing a woman. Oh, according to her, Dickie said he'd quote, hooked up with a woman. After they'd had sex, she demanded payment. He didn't want to pay. They fought. He killed her. So yeah, by the way, she ends this relationship with Dickie here. Dickie sister, Tony Anderson here also implicates him. She said that after Michelle's murder, Dickie came to her and told her that a girl he was intimate with, that quote, he had, he had met at his father's apartment, had been found on the road dead. So she also said that he couldn't, she couldn't recall exactly when his car accident happened, which affected whether he would have had access to a vehicle to transport Renee's body. So that's a thing. Now 2009, investigators needed something to crack. So they place an inmate named Arthur Moore in his cell at the correctional facility. Here we go. He's 45 years old. He spent pretty much his whole life in prison. His rap sheet has 11 felony convictions, drugs, weapons, suit pieces. Yeah. Superbays jail is where he's most comfortable. He said, we got comfortable because I knew somebody in his family talking about Dickie. He said, then Dickie started talking. He said that he had caught a body. He said that something happened where he killed a female said he was tricking with her for $5, but she wanted more money. According to Moore, Anderson told him, quote, he put his hands around her neck and shook her to try to get her to shut up. The woman was sleeping, Anderson said. So he called a friend who helped him take the woman to waterford where she was from and pushed her out of the car. All right. So that would be, wow, that would be Renee. She also said that Anderson made a statement that would that quote, he would never have done it if he had known she was pregnant. So we know it's Renee. Regarding Michelle, Anderson told Moore that she had overdosed on drugs while they were having sex and that he just dropped her off over there by Franklin. And then she strangled herself to death day, or obvious and tied herself up to that's the other thing that they do. When you, oh, do you tend to just tie your hands and ankles together? You get real hot. You got to strip down. So investigators recall a plant that a recording device in the cell, it recorded 12 and a half hours of conversation between them, no explicit confessions, but all those little things. So finally they go, I think we have enough here with the DNA and what people see in them to gather DNA is a big deal. That's a big deal. So finally, two years after they get a DNA hit, yeah, June 1st, 2010, they arrest him for the murder of Renee, Pellegrino. Bond said it 2.5 million. He's arraigned and he says nothing. This is according to the newspaper, but turns and stairs coldly at the media cameras as he was led away in shackles. I don't know if it's coldly. He's a, he makes goofy faces in court. Really? Oh, yeah, posted on social media, goofy shit. September 1st, 2010 is when he's arrested for the murder of Michelle. His bond is increased to $3.5 million now. Yeah. Couldn't make two. He's not making three and a half. No, for sure. 2010, and this is crazy, Monica Linskins saw Michelle saw a picture of Michelle in September, 2010. Monica is Michelle's biological daughter. Oh, oh, and she's, she doesn't know her. She never met her before. Oh, she was taken away immediately. So she doesn't know her. She said it was far from a flattering photo. And she remembers the shock she experienced when she saw it and read the accompanying newspaper article about a decade old case of a drug-addicted prostitute whose naked body was found dumped on her own side. She said, for some reason, I had always pictured a beautiful skinny blonde. I realize she was not the Cinderella I imagined. If your parents gave you up, you imagine there are these amazing people that are doing all this crazy stuff because they don't have time for you. So they must be like, you know, traveling the world and going to balls. And things. Yeah. She already knew her biological mother was dead. She said she was nine when her foster father sat her down and told her that she was adopted and her mother's dead. Oh, damn it. Two things. Good news. Bad news, bad news. Hey, your dad works. Yeah, ready? Yeah. So the news had excited her until her. She was told that her mother was dead. So her foster father promised to bring her news clippings. So she said she needed answers. So it led to the first meeting with one of her two biological brothers to try to fill in some blanks. So this Michelle had a bunch of kids. And she said that my foster parents told me what they could. Other people who had something to say about Michelle didn't have good things to say. So she said about her mom. She said mom, mom obviously had problems. Michelle had the same problems, meaning I guess the mom she was with. She was taken away like, oh, her mom, Michelle's mom had problems. She said she was taken away like I was. Sounds like she was always reaching out for somebody to help. I don't think she ever got that help. She said the good thing, only good thing about this is she got to meet her brother Pedro. And that was it. So they've been posting things on the internet looking for their younger brothers because they have more. Her brother, her brother that she found that guy's girlfriend messaged her on Facebook and they met. And they cried as they hung out at the mall in Waterford. She said she's still seeking her older brother out as well. She said that her older brother had remained a ward of the state till he was 18. He was never adopted but took the name of his foster father, which who he's living with now. She said now this the brother Aeson is his name, 20. He's 20 years old. He said he met his mother on several occasions as a child and has met Dickie Anderson, Jr. Really? Knows him. Yeah, he said that I've met that fucking guy that they arrested. He said that he feels his mom quote never got a fair shot. So that's what they said. The daughter said the whole case, I guess I look at it from the outside. She's my biological mother but she was really never my mom. But I'm mad he took away my only chance to ever meet her. If she was completely drugged, that chance was taken away from me. For me, the hardest thing is knowing I will never get a chance to talk to her or to hear her voice. So they're going for a trial delay, the defense. Really? They're saying, yeah, first of all, they try to get the defense once the case is severed. And the prosecution says no together and they end up they're going to be tried together. But they want to delay, they're asking the judge to delay the start of the trial because of a witness statement. They claim points to a different suspect. Oh, they say that there's a redacted police report that speaks for itself. It said it indicates that police spoke with a witness on February 23, 2012, or as information that an individual other than the defendant is responsible for the murder of Renee Pelagrino. The interviewees never I did in all of the paperwork so they don't know. They said the witness according to the report recalled that his father told him other prostitutes that worked in New London area had stated that redacted killed Renee because she was pregnant with his baby. Okay. So that's the deal. Now, it doesn't get delayed that much. March, 2012 is the trial in the gallery. And this is fucking crazy. These people are mature and good people, I would say they had Renee Pelagrino's mother, Jean and her sister Diane were all there. And they had Dickie's mom, my lean and his sister, Tanya. And they like talked to each other all the time. They like they spent time together, which is really interesting. They were right close to each other in the courtroom. And they would hold doors open for each other. Have read conversations. Hope you're doing okay. Hope you're doing okay. Prostitutions case is pretty simple. DNA pattern of inconsistent statements saying he first knew the victims. And he didn't then in making sexual contact. The jailhouse confession, his girlfriend's testimony about her, his confession to her, two signature similarities between the murders with the ligature and the string manual strangulation marks and his documented history of violence against women, including two prior strangulation convictions. Yeah. The medical examiner. Yeah. And the medical examiner said 6,000 cases, only three were these and Michelle and Renee were two of them. Okay. So I'm looking at him for third, basically. So he said, now while the jury is out of the courtroom, the lawyers argue about entering photos of a vehicle that was investigated early on from a possible suspect suspect enough that they actually got a search warrant. The jury doesn't hear it, but they said that there was a rope that was the same size that was used as a ligature was found in that truck that they searched. That's not good. They did not say who the vehicle belonged to though in court. Now the defense argued that Anderson's DNA only proved he had sex with Renee, not killed her. They pointed out that there was another unidentified DNA profile found on her body as well. Then they challenged the jailhouse informants credibility. They also tried to point to the possible suspect Clifford Gilliland who had been convicted of killing Hope Baker. Right. The other person is like, well, why not her or becker, I'm sorry. So the jailhouse informant testifies and this is a funny, I would love to have seen this back and forth. Steven Carney, the prosecutor had to keep interrupting him to translate jailhouse slang and street slang. He doesn't know. Moore said he said he caught a body and the prosecutor said, what does that mean? What does that? Yeah. And he said he was tricking her for five, but you want him more money and the prosecutor was just clueless about all this. So as he told the story, to the jury, the prosecutor interrupted him frequently like we said and you know, he said that he admitted to having sex with, he gave the story I already told you about the sleeping strangled or called a sack, all that stuff. So they said that Michelle's body, they talked about him and they have, you know, all this recorded conversation. Pretty much admitting, but not admitting it. Under cross examination, though, Moore admits that he testified at a previous murder trial and that he had later recanted a statement. Oh, that's not good. Now he's a professional snitch. That's all he's doing. He said, I recanted my statement because my son was kidnapped. My son was kidnapped by a rival gang member that I saw kill somebody. That's too much drama. Now it goes to the jury here. Renee's mom Jean said she has mixed feelings about this because she's come to know and like Anderson's mother, I lean while they watch the trial. She said me and I lean our mothers and we certainly didn't want this to happen to our children, but life happens and you have to deal with the fallout. Wow, she said Renee is lost no matter what happens because he lied so much and tried to get out of it and so get out of it so much and confessed to his longtime girlfriend that he killed somebody. You know, he said, I believe that he probably did it is what she said. Seven days of deliberations. Here we go. Seven days, 12 jury, 12 panel jury obviously. They find him first of all, because it's two separate cases. They find him guilty of murdering Renee Pelagrino. Okay. And then it comes in for Michelle Camo and they find him nothing. Hung jury mistrial. That one. They have. Hung jury. It's a, if he killed one and the other, then they guess they, I don't know if they bring in prior man. I suppose the same trial. So that would know it's, it's, it's concurrent bad. Yeah. It's parallel bad acts and on top of that, she fucking was at his dad's house all the time. Like if he killed one and did it in that way, he definitely killed the other one. Yeah. If he had no connection to her, I could see if they were only saying we think he killed her because of the M.O. was the same. I know. Okay. Maybe somebody else got if he's convicted. Well, the M.O. is the same. It's got to be him, right? And he knows her. Right. And she was living at his, at her fucking, at his dad's house for Christ's sake. Right. So they find that mistrial. There is one lone holdout. Oh, during sentencing, Dickie's wearing a tan prison jumpsuit. His mother, I lean and his sister, Tony are there. His two sons are there. Before the proceedings began, Dickie turned to his children and said, whatever you do, behave yourselves. So that's that Renee's sister gave her victim impact statement. As a Christian, I'm called to show kindness to those who would do harm to me. When you come to mind, I pray that God softens your hardened heart and your darkest hours. I pray you are haunted by the things you have done and turned to Jesus. She called Renee a complex soul and, you know, all that kind of thing. Mom, Jean said, we miss her terribly. I missed the way our life was before this happened. Not only is my family going through life with this sorrow, but Renee was carrying a baby that would have been my grandson who I wanted to get to know and love. It's just been a lifetime of sadness. Yeah. For sure. That is a good way to describe. Yeah. That's whole affair. Dickie speaks for himself. Yeah. He said, I maintain my innocence. I want to continue on and thank the Pellegrino family for their words, meaning caring about his family. Yeah. The judge has a different way of putting things to him. The judge said the victim here suffered beyond my ability to comprehend before her passing. She was virtually tortured as evidenced by her strangulation, both manually and with a ligature. My job today is to see to it that you are separated from society for as long as possible. You've had an unbroken string of criminal conduct. You, sir, may fuck off 60 years in prison, which is a maximum day. That's the max. Unfree for 60 years. Unfree. Dickie's mom said, justice is not blind. It's blind folded. He's not the perfect person, but I know he didn't kill these people. We know he's not guilty. Really? But then Gene came out and she said, we'll keep you in your prayer. We'll keep you in our prayers about so they're getting along still. The prosecutor said, I'm just glad it's over. I think justice has been served. Yeah. I don't talk about it. So in the jury room, there's a woman named Juanita Zamora, who's one of the jurors, not the one that held out. She was saying that she's disappointed with the outcome, but felt the jury members were thorough in their analysis. She said, I was very impressed how everybody worked together. She said they were all emotionally drained from the trial, from viewing crime scene and autopsy photos of naked body, naked pictures of these women. It was rough. She said that behind the scenes and the deliberations, most of the jurors saw the similarities between the murders. She said early on in deliberations, the jurors set up an easel in a poster board charting the case and filling the room with post it notes of information. She said there were sticky notes everywhere, everywhere we turned. Everybody expressed how they felt. At first, a lot of people were uncertain. We started looking at each other. We started looking at each report asking where everything fell into place. We started putting them together like a puzzle. We took so long because we wanted to make sure we were on the same page. We broke the case up again and again. With the Pellegrino case, we voted four or five times. Everybody was unanimous. They didn't need to be killed and displayed in such a humiliating manner. Both were caught and trapped in one of Lice deceiving webs as many others are. She said that one of the key things, why she convicted on one and not the other was because they they were seen together on the night of Pellegrino's murder. They were seen together. She said everything fell into place, whereas Michelle's murder was different. She said we had limited evidence, but we went over it again and again. The positions of the body were not exactly identical and the markings were not exactly identical, but they were basically in the same place. In the end, most of the jurors agreed he was guilty. She said everyone was tired, then. We tried to convince her the holdout, have the person see what we were seeing, but she wouldn't bunch. December 12, 2012, another trial, are they going to try? What do they got again? The senior state's attorney Paul Narducci requests a no, basically a non-presenter, saying the state will not retry that case. We'll figure it out later if he gets out on the other one. 2015, he appeals the judgment of conviction, claiming that the trial court abused its discretion and consolidating the cases for trial because the state had failed to meet its burden of establishing either that the evidence was cross admissible or that the defendant would not be substantially prejudiced by the jointer, which I think the fact that he was not convicted of one of the means that he wasn't substantially prejudiced right there. Sure. Because they're saying they're obviously going to victim of both unless if he gets convicted of one and the facts are he didn't get convicted of both. So your argument holds no water at all. You're holding your arms in a big oh going that'll hold water and it just flows right down on the ground. It doesn't make any sense. And it's denied obviously too. 2016 last little bit here. A hearing was held before a judge to determine who if anyone should receive the $50,000 reward money. Oh, anyone? If anyone, two people applied. Tony Wilson, Anderson's longtime girlfriend and Strangle victim, and Arthur Moore, the jailhouse informant that those applied for it. Well, you recanted, sir. Go the fuck. No, no, he recanted a different trial. Oh, okay. All right. Yeah. He's just a professional witness. Now Wilson said she hadn't known about the reward when she first spoke to investigators. Her attorney sent her level of cooperation would not have changed regardless of the reward. But Wilson also shared this that her oldest son now blames her for his father's incarceration. Really? Yeah. Because that was part of it. Was that he'd gotten trouble for strangling her. Gee, sorry. I don't let him just people strangle me left the right. Kick that kids ass. So Moore's application ran into trouble immediately. Under questioning, he admitted he would not have testified at Anderson's trial. Had he not been offered a reward. That's called quid pro quo. That's not how you testify. He also admitted that he testified a previous murder trials and later recanted a statement claiming a son had been kidnapped by the gang member. The state's attorney general also says he owes $48,000 and unpaid child support and asked that if he does get the reward that the reward be used to pay his debt. Tony Wilson would later apply for the portion of it. And apparently from what I understand, Tony Wilson got some of the $50,000 and she's the only one who got anything out of it. All right. Now he remains in jail and will remain there for a long fucking time. Yeah. I think what is it? Maybe want to say he's eligible for parole at some point, but it's in the future. It's down. It's down the fucking road. So there you go, everybody. There's water for Connecticut and a goddamn, just a weird case, tragic. I feel terrible for these two. Couldn't have been more different kind of women ended up in the same spot. It's probably did worse, right? He probably did way more than of these. Yeah. Who the fuck strangles and kills two prostitutes and then stops and then quits. Yeah. And then quits. If you do it once, you might stop and go, that was horrible. If you do it twice, you like it once and that's the way you get over on them and it tells people you don't tell people after your first murder. No, no, that's what I mean. I'm sorry. This guy, there's more. That's what I'm saying. In that area of the country is a riddled with drug issues and people, and Kays and everything else. There's a lot of places these people can be and people that can disappear real easy. Absolutely. Yeah. People have left their families and wherever and came to New York and ended up on the streets somewhere. So it happens. So anyway, there you go, everybody. 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Worst NFL weather games balls floating away. People fucking get lost and snow. It's crazy shit. Then for small town murder, an old mall that turned into a flea market that fucking collapsed on a lot of people. It's crazy shit or old timey crimes, which is very popular in our Patreon. The poll is up at Patreon right now so you can go there and make get your vote cast and tell us what you want there and sign up so you can vote. Do that and keep coming and seeing us. Also, you get everything we put out with that. Not only do you get the episode, you also get everything we do. Crime in sports. You're stupid opinion, small town murder. All add free with that as well. And you get a shout out at the end of the show. It's right now Jimmy hit me with the names of the people who would never, ever strangle us. Unmercifully and leave us for dead in a road. Hit me with him right now. This week's executive producer Gary Howard and West Mellvis. Oh, watch out, Gary. Yeah. Don't get don't end up in the woods. Stay in the truck. Atlanta, Zammel, Atlanta, Zammel, Alaina, Zammel, uh, Destiny, Sassman and Larry Butterfas. Happy birthday Larry. Thank you so much. You're the best. Other producers this week are happy hour. Check it in Conroe on behalf of first responders and truck drivers and anyone that didn't go home for Christmas. That's great. Thank you. I'm sorry. Um, uh, Scarlett Horby's the third Thomas Smith Bailey. Constance. Stoss. Uh, Chris. Drawlope. Drawlope. Drawlue. Mark. Mark. No, that's Jim Marcus. Molly Redmond. Kristen with no last name. Cory Frankenhouser. No one with no last name. Nor first name. Alan Eckert. Joe Lugano. Mark with no last name. Ashley Houd. Rachel Lysack. Uh, Cynthia Olson. Macy McKenzie. Uh, Regan Reagan. Reagan Reagan. Peele. Regan Peele. That might be one of them. I'm out of you want that up. I don't know if I typed that right. One of the two. What are the two Patrice S Jacob Bickmore Ashley Peck. Dennis Perkins. Curtis with no last name Susan Summa. Joanne Robinson. Chris with no last name. Barbie Bayer. Sean Thompson. Richard. No last name. Danielle Turner. Anna. Oh, that's Ann Elmquest. Kate with no last name. Jody Kimball. Nick with no last name. Melissa Sirgot. Sir Go. Perhaps. Anne Marie Reynolds. LaDog 86 Brooke Gabriel Gabriel. Gabriel. Gabriel Samantha Savory. Uh, what is it? Sophie Millard. Crystal Parker and Laura Kumani L L Pittner L Pittner. Uh, Jackie Suel. Diane Knight. Joe's Jose. Jose Ochoa. Jackie O Carmen. Wimpy. CRT 509. Jackie. Oh, that's a person. Hey, Michael Rappaport. Probably not, right? I could see that. I don't know why he's giving us money. He better hang on to that. Sir Alex. No last name. Uh, cat with no last name. Christina Leonard. Aaron Maloney. Abby Grimes. Josh Davis. Tamara Tamera. Muring. Sducis. Zousis. Zeder. Amanda Schwartz. Nope. It's just Schwartz. Samantha F. Angie Bamboo. Mike with no last name. Angela Sonseca. Seneaks. Uh, uh, uh, open with no last name. Anika Anika Hankel. Chris Clinton. Rachel Norland. Brian Maddox. Belinda Hine. Liz McCoy. Chris LeBurg. Matt with no last name. Susan Maser. Renee with no last name. Paige Schnuppel. Uh, Darius Thompson. Taylor with no last name. Peyton Riddle. Aaron Langen. Camp. Uh, Chris with no last name. Kelly Tuesday. Oh, Trouse Dale. Mark. Chapadelaine. Avery Ann Jess. Uh, Megan Harper. Jeffrey Han. Uh, Robert Green. Charmaine Pena Grass. Paragraph. Uh, Paura Sherry Lynn. Will Randolph. Give a Ashley DeMarco Jeff, uh, Bayber, Babar, Babber. Uh, right. Gene or Gent, Gene, Gene Hummel. Uh, Ian with no last name. Jody with no last name. Casey T Jennifer Nye. April West Benjamin Paul. Laurie Brecken. Scott Durand. Dublin D. A. M. The letters E and M. Stacey Miller. Emily Bueller. Bray, uh, uh, uh, uh, Bracey Ellington. Bracey Una with no last name. Uh, Janice, Gene Ice, uh, Nale Nally and Mike N. Wright Snoop Dogg. Probably Snoop. Snoop Dogg. Very funny. Little different Rick Barton, Sean Barry, mechanic Boller, Kyle Gineckon, Geneckon, Jinnie Ken, Alison Cheshire. Cameron with no last name. Linda Dunham. Is that right? Quinn with no last name. Ryan Taylor, Renee, Rihanna, Ray Anna Williams. Tyler Hoff or ho is like, Rihanna, good. We can ask her about Matt Barnes. That whole mess. Listen to the crime and sports. If you're listening to the moon, I'll tell her last name. Tasha with no last name. Rebecca Eyweye, uh, John Schuller. Yep. Jay Smith. Beth Donahue, NB said when, hey, would you blow me? No, a kids Sarah Van Houten. Oh, is that right? Van Houten? Is that like Mill Houses or the lady that helped murder or what did it to Amanda Compton, creepy carters, Jameson Wagner, Sean Thorn, rough hands daily, Matthew Stanley, KC Sean Starner, Morgan Rizzo Rizzo, Stella with no last name. Shara Curley, Andy Kebs, Curbs, Exeter, Exeter, Stevens, Laurie Roach, Kara Gabriel, Michelle Cristiano, Stokes with no last name. Kristy Richardson and Spud Shriver, Ginger Noble, Sean Stevens, Rebecca Saunders, and every person in the patrons of show. Thank you. Thank you so much, everybody. You're fantastic week. Yeah. Thank you enough for all that you do for us. Keep coming, keep hanging out with us. Go to the shut up and give me murder.com if you want to follow us on social media. It's all there to find. So keep coming back and seeing us. And until next week, everybody, it's been our pleasure. Bye.