This episode may contain content of a graphic nature, including descriptions of physical and
sexual violence against adults, children, and animals. Listener discretion is advised.
Hi everyone, I'm Talia and I'm Tanya, and Together we Are Crimes and
Consequences, a true crime podcast. Welcome back, everybody to this week's episode
of Crimes and Consequences. I am Talia and I'm Tanya, and Together we
Are and Consequences sometimes known as TN T D and T T N T.
And I would like to think True Crime Daily for hosting us, for you,
for all you watching us on True Crime Daily, and then also think
everybody who's listening to us us on whatever their favorite podcast app is. If
you guys can hit the like or subscribe or whatever positive button there is,
that'd be awesome. That would be great. So I have a story I
know you've never heard because I asked you about it. Right. It's the
It's known as the Utah Cabin Murders Utah m hmm, okay, yeah,
I was just there. Yeah, you were, that's right, just there
for a show. It's the Tita family. Do you know about the Tita
family? Never heard it? So let me give you the background in the
Tita family. You have Ralph, not Ralph, Ralph Ralph to call him
Ralph, Yes, I'm wrong. He was born in Germany and he's fifty
one years old. He is married to k and she is forty nine years
old. They met in the mid sixties, fell in love, got married.
They lived in Utah by Salt Lake City, and they really wanted to
have a large family, and they were part of the LDS Church. They
tried for a couple of years they have kids, and they couldn't conceive,
so they ended up adopting a little girl named Lenai. I don't know,
named Lenae, not Lenai. That is what we use as a screen,
that's a patio. I'm so sorry, Linae. They moved from Utah,
where the whole family was, to Texas by Houston, and Ralph ended up
being a salesman. He was very successful at what he did. Then they
three years later adopted a boy. His name was Sean, and they were
very surprised because I believe they thought they were infertile. After the adopted Sean,
two months later, Kate found out she was pregnant and they ended up
with a little girl they called Trisham. They're in Houston or around Houston in
Texas, but they sell to their family in Utah. And they bought this
cabin in Utah in Oakley, so that is north of Salt Lake City.
Let me tell you about this cabin. It is two stories and it's set
higher up so below you could let there's pictures of firewood and stuff. So
you gotta go upstairs to get enter the cabin. And it's not what you're
thinking as far as a little cabin. It's a it's like a house.
It's big. It's big. It is so isolated that they loved it.
It's like out in the mountain. Yes, okay, there's riversful, it's
beautiful in the winter. It takes two miles on a snowmobile to get to
an area where you can have your car part to get to town. Wow.
So that's yeah, that's really isolated, airy very. There are some
other houses, but they're you know, the further part is not like there's
a subdivision there or something. Every year they would go for Christmas to this
cabin and they would host a Christmas party with their family. And like you
said, their whole family is in and around Utah. And this was just
a tradition that they had. So this is December twentieth of nineteen ninety.
K and her daughter I'm sorry, Kay and her son Sean decide to go
up early to the cabin and they brought some stuff and they met Claudia.
Claudia is Kay's sister. They all go park the cars in their little parking
area and they go on snowmobiles two miles and they have packages from everything they
brought for this Christmas. They're unloading the stuff that they brought from Texas.
They have a dinner, and then Claudia decides she's going to stay the night.
The very next day, Ralph brings Tricia, who's sixteen now, and
Lenney to dog cabin. They all meet, They go to town, they
do some shopping. They end up setting up the Christmas tree. It's a
big Christmas tree. They put up all the lights, they wrapped the present,
they put them under the tree, and then they decided to go to
Bath Pott's house. Now Beth Potts is seventy two. She is Kay's mom.
Beth got into a car accident in nineteen eighty three and it caused some
injuries that made her vision not so well and she had a little trouble walking
that night. Sean decides to stay at his aunt Claudia's house, and the
rest of them stay with Grandma. Grandma Pots okay. The next day is
December twenty second. The parties kind of split up. You have Ralph Egos
with Trisha and they do some stuff in town. Then you have Lenney and
Kay and Grandma pots. They decide to go back to the cabin and they
had been to town earlier and got some more stuff, so they park.
They get in the snowmobiles. Lenae didn't have gloves and she's driving. There's
two snowmobiles. She's driving one, and then her mom, Kay and Grandma
pots Or on a second one, and they're driving them two miles. They
pull into wherever they park their snowmobiles and Linae can see a shadow in the
bedroom upstairs. She thinks it might be her cousin David. I think is
the name. Because more family is supposed to come. This is the big
family gets together. Big family get together for Christmas. She tells her mom
and grandma, my hands are really cold. I'm gonna go warm them up
under the water and just sink and then I'll help you bring stuff in.
As she gets into the house, you have to walk upstairs set of stairs
because as I said, there's it's it's two stories, but you've got to
go up the stairs to get to the first the first level. She gets
there, she gets inside and she sees this shadowy figure by refrigerator and thinks,
okay, some family member. To her surprise, this man with very
frizzy hair wearing the sweatshirt comes out with a gun and he puts it by
her head. She's flip and oh, terrified. I'm sure like she's flipping
out. And she knows that Grandma Pots and Mom right right outside. She
is, she's there, she's she's not screaming, kay, and helps Grandma
Pots up the stairs. As they enter the house, casees her daughter with
a gun to her head. And then another guy hops out. The second
guy, and he has these very thick glasses to who are the guys?
I'm gonna tell you right now. The guy with the frizzy hair. His
name is Von Taylor. He was on parole for aggravated burglary robbery. He
had gotten out early and got released to a halfway house where he met this
very lovely person named Edward Deli. Edward was in prison for arson and because
of your good behavior they got to go to the halfway house. They were
able to be released on December fourteenth, So this is one week earlier to
look for jobs. Well, guess what, they're not looking for jobs?
Then come back. Oh yeah, they're casing there. They just yes,
well i'll spoiler alert. Yeah, they end up hitchhiking and Von Taylor,
twenty five, knew the area because his dad had a cabin out that way.
So they hitchhike out to Oakley and again that's north of Salt Lake City.
They're out there, it's twenty degrees by the way. Yeah, how
they're surviving, I don't really know, except they're breaking into other cabins.
And ironically, Kay, when she first arrived there with Leney and they had
parked in that parking area I told you about, she saw Von Taylor.
He was wearing jeans kind of shoes and what was described as a spring jacket,
and she thought he's never gonna survive jacket. And she asked if he
needed any help, and you just scurried away. So that is who they
are. That's about all I know about them is they met there, they
had they had disconded from the halfway house somehow they'd been surviving for over a
week and freezing fucking cold negative twenty. Yeah, that's insane. Kay walks
in. She's helping her mom up the stairs. She sees her daughter with
a gun to her head. This guy comes out and it's actually Ed Delly
who puts a gun to her hut. He's the guy I think of him
as having the coke bottle glass case. Says, whatever you want, take
it, whatever you money, anything, take it, and then immediately Von
Taylor shoots her. Oh my god, shoots K. Shoots K with a
forty four. Oh my god. She ended up being shot five time.
Oh my god, in front of twenty year old Linnet. Now there's Grandma
Pots. They go and shoot Grandma Pots. Oh no, Grandma Pots tries
to get up, They shoot her again, Oh my god. And Von
Taylor says, the bitch won't die and he shot her again. Poor.
Yeah, that's I can only imagine the thoughts going through her head, especially
since the rest of her family it's going to be there soon. Yes,
they were behind so Sean still was at his aunt Bodias, but Tricia and
Ralph were just doing some errands in town and they were going to meet.
They were maybe an hour or two behind running errands. The two killers take
the body of Grandma Pots and Kay and they move them out to this deck
because they had his deck, and they cover them with snow. They have
Linnae go into a bedroom where they like they gagged her, and for some
reason ed Deli decides to comfort her by bringing in the family. Dob what
m and So she's there and she knows that her dad and her sister are
gonna be there sometime soon. Eventually she hears a snowmobile approach. I can't
imagine how terrified. I mean, you're not only terrified for yourself, but
you have no way to stop let me to stop it. You've just seen
your mom and your grandmother killed in front of you, and you know your
other family members coming. I mean I would be so terrified, and I'd
be paralyzed with fear. What do you do? There's nothing you can you
can do, There's nothing you can do. Eventually, her dad walks in
with Trisha, sixteen year old Jrsha, and he sees them. He sees
Linney. She's brought out for some reason. She's not in the bedroom now,
and he can just see by the look in her eyes there was something
in him that said he just knew his wife and his mother in law were
dead. That's how it was described. There was a look in his face.
He says to these intruders, do you want my money? And I'll
give you my money, and they're basically like yes. So he ends up
turning over one hundred and five dollars. Then Von Taylor orders ed Delhi to
shoot Ralph, and Von Deli or sorry Von Deli at Deli he's holding the
gun and he's shaking and he can't do it. So Von Taylor it's like,
fuck this, and he takes a gun and he holds it to Ralph's
head and he shoots and it's just click. Oh god, Oh my god,
how terrifying. Oh my god. I don't know what kind of gun
was, yeah, right some point, well, I do know it was
a bird shot gun, but I don't know how it works. I don't
I don't know. Click doesn't work again, Oh my god. Third time,
right in the face. He gets shot and he falls down, while
falls down and he's just laying there, Trisha's hysterical screaming, Renai's screaming.
At this point, Linay has witnessed three members of for family shot. The
men decide they're ready to go. What they really wanted, Tanya was they
wanted a car, So they wanted the girls to get on a snowmobile and
bring them to the Lincoln town car that was parked. But before they left
the house, they decided to take gasoline because there was a lot of gasoline
there with snowmobiles, and they poured it around the house and they poured some
on roll. Oh, they didn't light him on fire, but they started
some fires other places in the house. And they made the girls get on
the snowmobiles, each girl with a different guy, and drive to the parking
area two miles. While the girls are driving, when they get to the
parking area, they come across their uncle, Randy. Oh no, Randy
sees them with two guys younger twenty five, twenty one. He doesn't really
know what's going on, but he's like hey, waving hey. And these
girls were really smart. They pretended they didn't know Randy because they were afraid
if Von Taylor and ed Delly knew that that was their uncle, he would
kill Randy, right, I would have thought that. Wait, so,
like they ignore Randy as they're not at this point, they're not actually at
the parking They get to the parking lot and then they see Uncle Randy again.
Uncle Randy's like, hey, come on, Uncle Randy, get a
clue. Hey, girls, Well he did get a clue because again they
acted like they didn't know who Uncle Randy was. And the guys, the
murderers, ask them, who is this guy? Like he's waving you and
they're both, we don't know, we don't know. But Uncle Randy realized
right then and there, okay, something this is off. I get teens
ignoring uncol Uncle Randy. Yeah, but this but this is ridiculous. Didn't
know what to do. So he's still at the parking area in his snowmobile
and he's getting ready to leave. The girls ended up getting into the Lincoln
hound car with the perpetrators. They take off in about less than one minute
later. Another man shows up and like, you gotta go down a mountain
on the snowmobile to get to this parking area. The man shows up.
Randy season this man is not dressed appropriately. He's not wearing winter clothes.
He's got blood sickles. What it's negative twenty degrees and his eyes are almost
swollen shut because he's covered with blood. And it's ralf Oh are you kidding?
I'm not kidding. Oh my god, he survived. Holy shit.
I was not expecting that. I know. I wasn't either when I researched
the story. Wow. Wow, Ralph had been shot with the bird,
shot in the face. And something I didn't say before is they had poured
gasoline on him. He played dead. They came back and shot him one
more time in the back of the Oh my god, and he still played
dad. That is amazing. Then the house is on fire. He gets
up and he catches on fire his snowmobile outfit, his snowmbile suit. He
goes into the shower, takes it off, part of the snowmobile suit melted
on his skin. Then he runs to the snowmobile, can barely see,
goes down two miles down a mountain. Oh my god, and bumps into
his brother. Yeah, holy shit, all to save his girls. Oh
wow. That crazy. It is crazy. Is that just goes to show
you the will to live like it's incredible. We've heard some crazy stories about
you survive stuff and oh my god, I got goose bumps. And bird
shots are little pellets. Yeah, but face they can kill they can kill
you. Yes, and he had them in his face and in the back
of his head. My god, wow. But the adrenaline, Yeah,
that's true. It's the adrenaline. Ralph sees his brother, realizes something is
all crazy going on. Ralph tells Randy the girls they they've been kidnapped.
Ralph takes sorry, Randy takes Ralph and he has to carry him into his
car because he has a car at the parking area. And they had some
sort of archaic cell phone and I'm thinking it's one of those like big giant
ones, the big giant ones like in the case nineteen ninety. Yeah,
it had to have been. Well, they're in the mountains, so the
service there's no you can't even get serviced at my house today today. Yeah,
there's probably three satellites for all the cells cell phones. But I mean,
I'm joking, but yeah. Ralph ends up trying and does get a
hold of nine one one explains what's going on and says, I need a
helicopter for my brother a SAP. And there's this Lincoln town car that you
need to find. As he's describing all this, the phone goes dead.
Oh no, no, Ralph has to drive to the nearest gas station.
I mean, I'm sorry, I keep saying it. First of all,
is that Ralph? No, it's Randy. To begin with this, Ralph
like Rudolph. Yes, I knew I would do that. I always I
do this. Randy's driving, He drives to the nearest gas station. He
uses a payphone, follows them and tells them what's going on. The police
are now on the lookout for this town car and Ralph is critical condition.
The sisters and meanwhile are stuck with these guys. And they tell the sisters
they're going to take them to New York then they'll release them. What from
you to talk to New York? Right, We're gonna drive to New York.
There. These sisters know this is face No, these sisters know this
is this is not gonna and wow, it can't. There's nothing they can
do, but they keep trying to think of a plan. But what do
you do? You're in the car. I don't know. We're too crazy,
right, and you're in shock. They ended up just complying. While
they're in the car, Von Taylor takes out a knife and he says to
them, don't worry. I'm just as good with a knife as I am
with a gun. And Trisha smirks and says, you sure you are sixteen?
She's like fuck you? Yeah right? Oh man. She can't help
but talk bag, I'd be on fire. Yeah. So they're gonna go
to New York. And then they were told once we get to New York,
we will give you tickets to fly back. Well, Linay says,
I don't have a home. Now. You've taken everything away and everybody away,
and the house has been put on fire. Yeah, where's she going
to go? She thinks her parents are dead, right, she thinks her
grandmother's dead. And the cabin, yeah, the cas there's a bolo out
beyond the lookout for this car. Eventually, a police officer about forty mile
I believe it was about forty miles away sees it. They're driving. She's
driving past the car and he does a U turn and the guys realize,
oh shit, they're on to us. So there's a high speed chase.
There's a the police end up doing a barrier on the road. They go
right through it. Wow. Then there's a bit of a shootout and the
police end up shooting one of the tires in the car goes down. At
the embankment, there's these girls. When they actually like peek up out the
window, they see I don't know how many dozens of police officer's pointing the
gun with them and at Von Taylor and at at Deli. Von Taylor's like,
we're gonna die, and I think he was getting ready for a massive
shootout, and Ed Deli is, no, I'm not. He doesn't want
to die. I'm not. I'm not going to die. I'm not prepared
to do this just yet. And basically they surrendered. The girls get taken
to safety. They get to see their dad in the hospital. You said
to have multiple surgeries. The police go to the cabin. When they enter
the cabin, it hadn't burned to the ground. They described it as looking
like a war zone. There was blood on the stairway from when Grandma Hots
and Kay had been shot. There were bullets that had kindetrated through the stairs.
Bullets is the spring all over and they they said it smelt like burnt
hair. But this is what's really interesting. Those two men, Deli and
Taylor. They'd been inside that cabin for a while. Remember I had said
that the Titas had been gone overnight. Oh, that's right. When the
police got there, they realized that Von Taylor and ed Delli had helped themselves
to food. Had some pops opened up the Christmas presents they did with trying
to see if there's anything good. Probably, Oh, there's a video.
We're going to play that video right now. I don't know. Okay,
I don't think I got all of this. How come you like last time
to remember that? I don't know like that? Now? Am I supposed
to find out for instructions in leamt What hats? Oh? Wow? What
is it? Baseball card? Okay, let's see a couple of'em home
the football and backball? How'em this way? Show'em this way?
Okay, excurge. As you see in the video, they are smiling,
opening up presents, saying, oh it's for I can't believe they they taped
it on the family's video camera. What why? I think they thought that
if they burn the house down, it would be destroyed. So why videotape.
It if you're not gonna ever be seen, you know, just sticking
around? What why video it? It was they were having fun. They
had been in that house for nobody knows how long, helping themselves in the
food, opening the Christmas presents. Eventually, obviously, they get arrested.
Bon Taylor gets charged with two counts of murder, one kund of attempted murderounts
of kidnapping Arson. He's facing the death penalty, so he takes He takes
a plea in the plea are you ready for this? Oh? No,
am I gonna be pissed? No? Okay, No, you're no,
You're not You're gonna like this? Okay. He agrees to plead guilty to
two counts of premeditated murder as long as the rest of the charges are dropped.
Seriously, he goes for sentencing. Guess what he gets the death penalty.
You got the dumb ass. Why would you plead guilty? Plead guilty
to first degree murder? Two? Yeah? Two? Not very bright?
I'm guessing he is not very bright? Like, okay, as long as
you get rid of the minor as opposed to murder. Not that Arson's minor,
but when you look at it in comparison to a first degree murder charge,
it's my right. If you're gonna plead guilty, can make it life
or trade, trade the death penalty for something. What a dumb ass.
Well, I'm happy he did that, Okay. Ed Dully chose to go
before a jury because in the end, he remember he couldn't pull the trigger
on Rolf and he didn't kill k in Beth. We already have somebody who
pleaded guilty to it. But right, you know, so he took a
risk. He got convicted of second degree murder. He ended up getting life
with a chance of parole. I believe after fifty two years. Don't quote
me on that. Oh damn, it was a lot of years. It
was only twenty one, yeah, in two thousand and one. So this
happened in nineteen ninety. In two in one he wrote Leney a letter.
He did, he did, and he said, I'm not the same man
I once was. I've I've changed. I mean, like I said,
see you are all like, No, I'm a hard Yeah, fuck him,
I don't care. You can tell me I've changed. No, No,
I it was only twenty one. I don't care. And now he's
a man in his forties. Yeah, I get it. He wrote her
and said, I'm not the same person I once was. He was very
apologetic. She read it, and she kept it for nine years and read
it, she said, maybe a dozen times, a couple dozen times.
Ten years later she wrote him back and she told him she forgave him.
Wow, I'm always amazed at people who forgive the killers of family members,
or maybe they're victims of you know, rape or something, but I'm always
amazed, Like I'm not. I don't know if I could do that.
I don't know if I'm I don't know's she said it was. It was
a relief off of her chest to accept it. Now, I could go
into von Taylor if you think he wrote some sweet letter. No, no,
no. He appealed and he appealed, and at one point it uh
he actually won or in effective counsel. However, the Supreme Court ended up
after another appeal, reinstating death. And so he's in Utah, but he's
still he's still alive. Ralf ended up making a full recovery. Wow,
he got married, remarried. I believe he married hey close friend, but
you can see how they could bond over that. He did die of pancreatic
cancer in two thousand and eight, and both the girls described him as being
their hero. Oh really, well, yeah, they said he was all.
One of the daughters said, he was always my hero, but now
it's a hero with an exclamation, he's like a superhero. As far as
the cabin, instead of forgetting about it because of the horrible memories, they
remodeled it and it's a place that they the whole family goes to and it
goes bus to. Oh, and they have family gatherings and it's Tita's Tranquility,
that's what they call it. And that's where the family meets. And
they said it's a very peaceful place that they just tried to think of good
things and oh, that's pretty much. Everybody is such a bigger person than
I think I would be, I know, I mean, I don't know.
I'm like, oh, this is just a I mean, that's that's
a lovely ending that you know, they can move on and at least turn,
you know, a place where the horrible things happen, try to celebrate
their family and celebrate the lives that they do have, and you know,
that's nice. I when I was doing this research, I read something that
I thought was really interesting that I just wanted to bring up. During the
Sutton Zen phase for Von Taylor Ralph Ralph not to talk. We did.
Von Taylor didn't know Ralf was alive. He did it? How is it
possible? Why do you not know? I don't know. Wow, maybe
that's part of the ineffective council. I really like you think you'd be like.
I mean, he's being charged with attempted murder, so who did he
think? I don't know. There's multi Apparently he's not very bright, so
I'm not surprised. There were multiple articles. If it was just one,
I would be like. But multiple articles said he was shocked. I bet,
and Rolf said it was very cathartic to be able to testify and have
him see his face and he still had the marks, you know, from
the gun. But again he made a full recovery. Good for him.
Wow, this was a wild rollercoaster of a story. Man so tragic,
but Ralph survived, and wow, that was an amazing part of that story.
I can't how crazy is that? No? I just and you can
like, Okay, he survived, can you imagine what he was thinking too,
like laying there like his daughters are being taken away. Yeah, like
you can't just get up and like grab them and try to stop them.
Like Okay, he's thinking. He's probably like racing thoughts like what am I
gonna do? You know? Crazy? I ended up being that Kay was
shot a total of five times. I believe it was with a forty four
and she it was a wound to her shoulder that ended up killing her.
She'd been shot in the shoulder, the chest, I don't remember, but
I think the one on their shoulder was so close to her heart and that's
the one that they ended that ended up really but she was shot five times.
Wow, Well thanks for that, Juliah. That was just a yeah,
and bless the family. Yeah it could be in better people than you
and I, Oh my god, Yeah, they're way better people than I
would ever be. So anyway, that's it when I think everybody for taking
the time to watch us on True Crime Daily or listen to us on your
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be mean, Like people don't have to be mean. You don't have to,
but people enjoy it. So, I mean, I don't, but
it's a really nice person. Ton is a really nice person. Thank you?
You are you? I'm okay, you're really nice. I'm okay.
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It's a pisser. It's a pisser because we say that a lot about life
these cases. Yeah, these cases are, These cases are sad. Tanya
and I, we talk lighter about it because if when you go and do
this, if you get too deep into it, nobody wants to watch me
cry. No, no, you don't want to watch me cry. So
this is how we cope. You guys can all cope your own way.
This is how we cope. All right, Well, thank you so much,
and until our next episode, don't kill each other. Bye bye