Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Rich and I'm Tina.
Speaker 2: If there's one thing we've learned in over twenty years
Speaker 2: of marriage, it's.
Speaker 1: That some days you'll feel like killing your husband, and.
Speaker 2: Some days you'll feel like killing your wife.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Love Mary Kill.
Speaker 2: Hey you, Tina, Hey Rich. How are you today?
Speaker 1: I'm good? How are you?
Speaker 2: I am doing good. I'm happy to be in the
Speaker 2: recording studio here with you for the next two or
Speaker 2: three hours.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it takes longer than people think.
Speaker 2: It's fun, though we could spend quality time together.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen you yet today. You look good. You're
Speaker 1: looking good, you have good color.
Speaker 2: Thanks, you look good.
Speaker 1: At your face. Light blue shirt on.
Speaker 2: Well, I really like your yellow shirt. You're looking very
Speaker 2: bright and spring like, even though it's not that spring
Speaker 2: like outside.
Speaker 1: It's a nice no, it's a lovely spring day. Yeah
Speaker 1: sixty three. Yeah, you're right, yesterday was a little dreary.
Speaker 2: But before we go any further, we've and remiss in
Speaker 2: congratulating the champions of our Love Mary Madness NCAA tournament.
Speaker 2: It was done a while ago. We talked about it.
Speaker 2: It was fun.
Speaker 1: It's May.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, but we should give a shout out to
Speaker 2: our winners. Our women's bracket winner was Jennifer H. Men's
Speaker 2: bracket winner was Zachary M and our overall winner. The
Speaker 2: best overall score for both the men's and women's was
Speaker 2: Philip A. Congratulations.
Speaker 1: Truths that we have some male listeners or were these
Speaker 1: husbands of our email listener? I don't know, I know
Speaker 1: we Well, how about the worst bracket? They deserve a
Speaker 1: call out too, Okay.
Speaker 2: I didn't. I didn't want to embarrass anybody, but the.
Speaker 1: Most anyone has anything to be embarrassed.
Speaker 2: The most disastrous bracket for the women's was Luisa L.
Speaker 2: And the most disastrous bracket for the men's was Brittany H. Congratulations.
Speaker 2: We went on a little adventure yesterday to Irish Hills, Michigan.
Speaker 2: So on the bonus episode that we recorded a few
Speaker 2: days ago, we talked about Irish Hills because the couple
Speaker 2: involved were from there. It's about forty five.
Speaker 1: Minutes from us, exactly forty five minutes from yes.
Speaker 2: Little kind of touristy sort of town. I used to
Speaker 2: go there all the time as a kid, and it
Speaker 2: was a lot of fun. They had like miniature golf
Speaker 2: courses and kind of these cheesy roadside attractions. It's kind
Speaker 2: of become a little bit of a ghost town over
Speaker 2: the last several years. But we talked about the mystery
Speaker 2: spot and how you had never been to a mystery spot.
Speaker 1: And because every time we drive by a mystery spot,
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, we don't need to stop, we need
Speaker 1: to keep we need to keep going.
Speaker 2: Exactly, we've got time to make it to our destination.
Speaker 2: But our dear friend Adrian sent us a note and
Speaker 2: said the mystery Spot in Irish Hills is for sale. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and we were like, well, we got to go, we
Speaker 2: got to go check it out. Maybe we should buy it.
Speaker 1: Right, you were very serious about potentially buying the mystery Spot,
Speaker 1: which is not called the Mystery Spot, it's.
Speaker 2: Called the Mystery Hill. Yeah, there is mystery spot is
Speaker 2: the one up in northern.
Speaker 1: Michigan, but by Mechanos City.
Speaker 2: So we drove out there and it was closed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but we broke in. Yeah, here's a question for you.
Speaker 1: Would you have broken And if I didn't insist we
Speaker 1: broke in, I think.
Speaker 2: I would have because it was pretty like there weren't
Speaker 2: a lot of people around. There was it wasn't hard
Speaker 2: to get out, it was just walking, stepping over a
Speaker 2: you know chain across the gate, you know, of the
Speaker 2: parking lot. And it wasn't like an indoor attraction. It
Speaker 2: was sort of most of it was kind of outdoors.
Speaker 2: So we walked through it, and.
Speaker 1: We did walk through the Mystery Spot, which was really fun.
Speaker 1: I was kind of surprised how fun it was. It
Speaker 1: only it only takes like literally five minutes. But there
Speaker 1: was a museum of curiosities.
Speaker 2: We didn't get to go.
Speaker 1: We didn't. I peeked in and it looked kind of
Speaker 1: like what you see a lot and.
Speaker 2: But the but the house itself was like you know,
Speaker 2: it's like built all like tilted, and it gives you
Speaker 2: this weird sense of like you're you can't stand up straight. Really,
Speaker 2: it was cool.
Speaker 1: I think it's because we're old, but I was. It was.
Speaker 1: We were laughing a lot because we literally could not
Speaker 1: see straight and stand up straight. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't think we're going to buy it.
Speaker 1: I don't think we're going to buy it, sadly, I mean,
Speaker 1: if it was a good investment, it was actually in
Speaker 1: pretty good shape. But yeah, it was a fun little detour. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then we went to the Big Boy for dinner.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we had a dinner at the Big Boy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's about all. I don't We did it.
Speaker 1: It was a fun day. Was glad that we did that.
Speaker 2: I have a snack for you. Would you like my snack? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Of course?
Speaker 2: All right. Well, today where our case is takes place
Speaker 2: in Wenatchi, Washington, which is the apple capital of the world,
Speaker 2: So of course I had to make something with apples
Speaker 2: in it. I found her a little recipe on the
Speaker 2: Pioneer Woman website for basically an apple tart but made
Speaker 2: with a puff pastry. Really, it's super simple.
Speaker 1: Okay, I love It's Reed Drummond, right, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's Pioneer Woman.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love the Pioneer Woman. She's a redhead.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, cool? And so I made that, and I
Speaker 2: made some caramel sauce, some butter milk carme yep, I
Speaker 2: made the one that you make all the time.
Speaker 1: And so that's one of my favorite recipes. So sure
Speaker 1: if you've never made it's like the buttermilk syrup. Is
Speaker 1: that what it is? The exact same recipe.
Speaker 2: We'll post the recipes, Okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I highly recommend you make it.
Speaker 2: All right, should we give this a try. Yeah, how
Speaker 2: did you like the apple tart?
Speaker 1: It was quite tasty. Oh good, I'm glad you kind
Speaker 1: of apples did you use?
Speaker 2: I used the honeycrisp apple for it. Super simple recipe.
Speaker 2: It's just a frozen puff pastry, an apple, some brown sugar,
Speaker 2: and some lemon juice.
Speaker 1: I would probably give it like a seven and a
Speaker 1: half out of ten. It doesn't have a ton of flavor,
Speaker 1: but the caramel syrup I would give a ten out
Speaker 1: of ten. Yeah, that's my favorites. Thank you so much. Sure,
Speaker 1: you're such a good little cook.
Speaker 2: I do my best. Today. We're going to tell the
Speaker 2: story of Mackenzie Cowl. Before I start. This episode contains
Speaker 2: descriptions of violent crime, including graphic details of the murder
Speaker 2: of a minor. Please listen with care and this is
Speaker 2: a recommendation from Sarah from Sioux Falls. Thank you Sarah
Speaker 2: for the recommendation. On the afternoon of Tuesday, February ninth,
Speaker 2: twenty ten, a seventeen year old girl named Mackenzie Cowl
Speaker 2: told her classmates at the Wenatchi Academy of Hair Design
Speaker 2: that she was stepping out for a fifteen minutes. She
Speaker 2: gathered her things, walked out to the parking lot, got
Speaker 2: in her car, and drove away. She never came back.
Speaker 2: What followed was one of the more disturbing cases in
Speaker 2: the recent history of Washington State. A murder that was
Speaker 2: brutal even by the standards of violent crime, an investigation
Speaker 2: full of dead ends and false leads, a mysterious informant
Speaker 2: whose story was almost too strange to believe, and a
Speaker 2: suspect who had been hiding in plain sight for years.
Speaker 2: Mackenzie Cowell was born in April nineteen ninety two, the
Speaker 2: youngest of three children, and by every account, a young
Speaker 2: woman who packed more into a day than most people
Speaker 2: could manage in a week. That year, her schedule would
Speaker 2: have exhausted most adults. High school until noon, cosmetology classes
Speaker 2: until five, dance rehearsals, and workouts squeezed into whatever time
Speaker 2: was left. Her father, Reid, described her as driven, vibrant,
Speaker 2: a strong young woman who was on the verge of
Speaker 2: being a grown up, and then she vanished. I want
Speaker 2: to start by talking about the city of Winatchee, Washington.
Speaker 2: It's a small city, only about thirty two thousand people.
Speaker 2: At the time of Mackenzie's disappearance, but the years before
Speaker 2: Mackenzie's disappearance saw a number of events that led the
Speaker 2: Los Angeles Times to call it the little town of
Speaker 2: Horrors in a nineteen ninety five article, So I thought
Speaker 2: it was worth going down a little bit of a
Speaker 2: rabbit hole. Whenachie sits at the geographical center of Washington State,
Speaker 2: in a valley carved out by the Columbia River, flanked
Speaker 2: on both sides by the Cascade Mountain Range, It's apple country.
Speaker 2: In fact, it's referred to as the apple capital of
Speaker 2: the world, with orchards running up into the hills. Many
Speaker 2: of the same families have farmed the same land for generations.
Speaker 2: There's a main street and a diner, and a brick courthouse,
Speaker 2: and a feeling that things don't change much here. In
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety a publication called The Raiding Guide to Life
Speaker 2: in America's Small Cities named Wanatchi the fourth best micropolitan
Speaker 2: area in the entire country. A few years later, it
Speaker 2: was on the cover of USA Weekend magazine as the
Speaker 2: winner of Make a Difference Day. Hundreds of volunteers painting buildings,
Speaker 2: picking up trash along the river, lawyers rolling up their
Speaker 2: sleeves alongside service club members. The Chamber of Commerce printed
Speaker 2: up tourists brochures. The slogan they landed on was Winatchi
Speaker 2: Land of Dreams. Sounds pretty idyllic, right, But then in
Speaker 2: the summer of nineteen ninety four, a series of events
Speaker 2: hit the valley so fast and so hard that the
Speaker 2: local paper eventually ran a headline that said, simply bad
Speaker 2: news beyond imagination. First, a wildfire burned nearly two hundred
Speaker 2: thousand acres of the Wenatchee National Forest and destroyed thirty
Speaker 2: nine homes. Then eleven people were killed in a single
Speaker 2: highway collision two miles north of town. Then two twelve
Speaker 2: year old boys shot and killed a migrant farm worker
Speaker 2: on the banks of the Columbia, firing eighteen rounds into
Speaker 2: his body after he threw a rock at them. Soon
Speaker 2: after that, Rita Huffman and her fifteen year old daughter
Speaker 2: Mandy were brutally stabbed, killed, and mutilated in East Winatchie
Speaker 2: by a man who was obsessed with werewolves.
Speaker 1: Obsessed with werewolves? Does this have anything to do with Twilight.
Speaker 2: Not that I know of. I think it's just a
Speaker 2: sick man who he said he wanted to be the
Speaker 2: world's greatest serial killer. And I think he just killed
Speaker 2: those two people and then he got caught. But he
Speaker 2: saw himself. He said he saw himself as a werewolf
Speaker 2: stalking his prey.
Speaker 1: Well, that is crazy.
Speaker 2: And then in the spring of nineteen ninety five, what
Speaker 2: would become one of the most controversial criminal investigations in
Speaker 2: Washington State history came unraveling into the open. It started
Speaker 2: when a detective named Robert Perez drove his thirteen year
Speaker 2: old foster daughter around town in his patrol car while
Speaker 2: she pointed out houses and buildings where she claimed children
Speaker 2: had been abused. Perez had recently been assigned to investigate
Speaker 2: sex crimes after a brief training course. He had a
Speaker 2: prior performance review noting that he likes having power over people.
Speaker 2: On their drive around town, which locals would eventually call
Speaker 2: the Parade of Homes, Perez's foster daughter identified twenty two
Speaker 2: locations where she said that children had been abused. What
Speaker 2: followed was a catastrophe. Forty three adults were arrested on
Speaker 2: nearly thirty thousand charges involving sixty children. The accused were
Speaker 2: overwhelmingly poor, many with intellectual disabilities. Confessions were later found
Speaker 2: to have been coerced. A pastor who publicly criticized the investigation,
Speaker 2: was arrested five days later, accused of hosting child sex
Speaker 2: orgies in the church basement. He was eventually acquitted, with
Speaker 2: one juror saying it wasn't a difficult decision at all.
Speaker 2: Dona Perez ultimately recanted, saying her foster father had pressured
Speaker 2: her convictions were overturned. The last person imprisoned was finally
Speaker 2: freed in two thousand and the city paid out millions
Speaker 2: in settlements.
Speaker 1: So there was no voracity whatsoever to that claim.
Speaker 2: Apparently not Wow. A forensic psychologist later called it perhaps
Speaker 2: the worst example ever of a state coercing children into
Speaker 2: falsely accusing their parents and neighbors of crimes that they
Speaker 2: didn't commit. So this is crazy, and this town is
Speaker 2: you know, like I said, thirty some thousand people. All
Speaker 2: of these things had happened in the last fifteen years
Speaker 2: before this case. But it just seems like an overwhelming
Speaker 2: amount of tragedy and horrific crimes.
Speaker 1: That reminds me of the McMartin preschool trial that we
Speaker 1: talked about. In the Susan and Felix Polk case, a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago. That's a wild episode first off,
Speaker 1: if you haven't listened to that one. But just the
Speaker 1: preschool trial was insane, one of the longest trials in
Speaker 1: US history, and it went on for years and years.
Speaker 1: But I'm similar to your case.
Speaker 2: Winacchi had been through things before, and with Mackenzie's disappearance
Speaker 2: it would go through things again.
Speaker 1: Mackenzie Nicole Cowell was born in April first, nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 1: the youngest of three children. She grew up splitting her
Speaker 1: time between two homes, her father, Read's place in Rondo,
Speaker 1: a small community just north of Winatchi on the Columbia River,
Speaker 1: and her mother, Wendy's home in Winnatchi itself. That arrangement
Speaker 1: was the result of a difficult divorce when Mackenzie was
Speaker 1: seven years old, contentious enough that her pa parents had
Speaker 1: taken out restraining orders against each other at one point.
Speaker 1: It wasn't an easy childhood dynamic, but by all accounts,
Speaker 1: Mackenzie didn't let it define her. She was a kid
Speaker 1: who threw herself into things. She danced seriously, not just
Speaker 1: as a hobby. She was a member of the Appaulettes,
Speaker 1: the dance team at Winachi high school, and she trained
Speaker 1: on top of that at two independent dance studios. She
Speaker 1: also modeled and worked out regularly at the gym. She
Speaker 1: started dating her boyfriend, Joaquin Vilasano. Do you think that's right?
Speaker 2: Nop?
Speaker 1: When he was fifteen when she was fifteen. Her father Reid,
Speaker 1: described her as driven and vibrant, a strong young woman
Speaker 1: who was at seventeen, just on the verge of figuring
Speaker 1: out who she was going to be. That sense of
Speaker 1: purpose showed up in her schedule too. She had enrolled
Speaker 1: in a voccasional cosmetology program that let her earn high
Speaker 1: school credits through real job training, which is how she
Speaker 1: ended up spending her afternoons at the Weinachi Academy of
Speaker 1: Hair Design. A typical day started with high school classes
Speaker 1: at seven thirty in the morning, running through noon, and
Speaker 1: then continued at the salon until after five. After that
Speaker 1: there was dance, the gym, and everything else she had
Speaker 1: going on. It was a lot, deliberately so. Her home
Speaker 1: life had one significant source of tension. Her mother, Wendy,
Speaker 1: had a boyfriend named Joey Fisher, and Mackenzie couldn't stand him,
Speaker 1: and the feeling was mutual. The night before she disappeared
Speaker 1: February eighth, twenty ten, the two of them got into
Speaker 1: a massive argument. Mackenzie gave her mother an ultimatum it
Speaker 1: was him or her. The next afternoon, she went to
Speaker 1: cosmetology class and never came home. Tuesday, February ninth, twenty ten,
Speaker 1: was a normal afternoon at the Wenatchee Academy of Hair Design.
Speaker 1: Students were at their stations working hard. Mackenzie was there
Speaker 1: doing what she did every weekday, putting in her hours
Speaker 1: towards a cosmetology license. In a future she had already
Speaker 1: started planning out. So she planned to be a hair stylist,
Speaker 1: I believe so. At around three o'clock, she told her
Speaker 1: classmates that she was staidy upping out for fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1: She didn't give any reason. She gathered her things, walked
Speaker 1: out through the front of the building to the parking lot,
Speaker 1: got in her car, and drove away at three oh
Speaker 1: one pm. All of that was captured on surveillance video.
Speaker 1: The only sign of Mackenzie that came after that was
Speaker 1: at three twenty six pm when she sent a text
Speaker 1: to her boyfriend Joaquin. It just said hey, he replied.
Speaker 1: At three forty two with the same and that was
Speaker 1: the last recorded activity on her phone. By early evening,
Speaker 1: a rancher noticed a red Sedan sitting abandoned near his
Speaker 1: driveway in the remote Pitcher Canyon area, several miles outside
Speaker 1: of town. He didn't think too much of it at first,
Speaker 1: but by eight o'clock the rancher called the police. So
Speaker 1: it's February, so by eight pm it's probably quite dark.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: A little before ten, an officer ran the license plate
Speaker 1: and contacted Reid Cowell, who said that his daughter was missing.
Speaker 1: Reid and Joqueen drove out to the scene together. Mackenzie's
Speaker 1: purse was in her car, along with her gym, clothes,
Speaker 1: her keys and cell phone were gone. On investigators noted
Speaker 1: something else at the scene, a single set of footprints
Speaker 1: leading away from the vehicle and heading down Pitcher Canyon
Speaker 1: Road in the direction of town. I should have mentioned
Speaker 1: this earlier, but when you were talking about Joey Fisher,
Speaker 1: that was the name of her mom's boyfriend, right. Was
Speaker 1: Joey ever violent with Mackenzie or Wendy, Not.
Speaker 2: That I read about. I never read about any incidents
Speaker 2: where the police came out or anything like that. From
Speaker 2: what I could gather, it was just that Mackenzie and
Speaker 2: he just hated each other and kind of went at it,
Speaker 2: But I don't think there was any violence.
Speaker 1: For four days, nobody knew where Mackenzie was. Search efforts
Speaker 1: got underway, and Mackenzie's disappearance rippled through Wanatchi the way
Speaker 1: these things do in smaller cities. People talked and they worried.
Speaker 1: Her family was frantic. Read Cowell and Joaquin were out looking,
Speaker 1: and the police were following the few leads they had. Then,
Speaker 1: on the afternoon of February thirteenth, a passerby walking along
Speaker 1: the banks of the Columbia River near Crescent Bar made
Speaker 1: a horrible discovery. Crescent Barr is a small resort community
Speaker 1: near the city of Quincy, about twenty five miles southeast
Speaker 1: of Winatchi. It sits right on the river. The passerby
Speaker 1: spotted a body in the shallow water near the shoreline.
Speaker 1: It was Mackenzie, fully clothed, still wearing her beauty school uniform,
Speaker 1: her feet in the water. Her body was partially submerged
Speaker 1: roughly fifty to seventy five yards from a vacant house
Speaker 1: that was listed for sale. The autopsy told a brutal story.
Speaker 1: Mackenzie had been manually strangled, she had suffered blunt forest
Speaker 1: trauma to the head, and her throat had been slashed.
Speaker 1: The official cause of death was determined to be a
Speaker 1: combination of manual strangulation and the deep stab wound to
Speaker 1: her neck. And if that wasn't bad enough, whoever killed
Speaker 1: her had attempted to amputate one of her arms after
Speaker 1: she was dead, an effort that was unsuccessful. The murder weapon,
Speaker 1: a kitchen knife, was found lodged in her shoulder. The
Speaker 1: autopsy confirmed that she had not been sexually assaulted and
Speaker 1: that there were no drugs or alcohol in her system.
Speaker 1: Near her body, Investigators collected several items, including a piece
Speaker 1: of duct tape containing blood matching Mackenzie's, as well as
Speaker 1: an unidentified male DNA profile and a second kitchen knife,
Speaker 1: part of a limited cutlery set sold at a store
Speaker 1: in Whanatchi called stans Mary mart. Police quietly held the
Speaker 1: murder weapon information back from the public, keeping it in
Speaker 1: reserve to help weed out false confessions. There was also
Speaker 1: a plastic bag that ultimately yielded nothing useful. Mackenzie's keys,
Speaker 1: cell phone, and debit card were never found. That is
Speaker 1: such a brutal, heartbreaking crime. And to take place in
Speaker 1: the city where it sounds like it was like where
Speaker 1: we live, a nice, quiet town, and I can't imagine
Speaker 1: how devastated the community must have been.
Speaker 2: Absolutely and just you know, a young girl seventeen, I
Speaker 2: think she was close to being eighteen, and just you know,
Speaker 2: on the verge of adulthood and starting out her life
Speaker 2: just so so tragic.
Speaker 1: It sounds like Mackenzie had a really good head on
Speaker 1: her shoulders and she knew what she wanted out of
Speaker 1: life and was willing to work hard to get it.
Speaker 1: We'll be bad after a break.
Speaker 2: The investigations started close to home. That's just statistics. The
Speaker 2: people most likely to have harmed her are the people
Speaker 2: already in her life. So in the days and weeks
Speaker 2: after Mackenzie's body was found, police turned their attention to
Speaker 2: the men closest to her. The first was Joaquin Villisano,
Speaker 2: her boyfriend of nearly two years. He was interviewed and
Speaker 2: at some point he was polygraphed twice. In fact, he
Speaker 2: failed one specific question on the second test, whether he
Speaker 2: knew who had killed Mackenzie or knew what had happened
Speaker 2: to her. That's not a small thing, and investigators took
Speaker 2: it seriously. But when they dug into his alibi, it
Speaker 2: held up completely. Joaquin had been at work all day
Speaker 2: on February ninth. His coworkers confirmed it, and so did
Speaker 2: his phone records. Police cleared him one hundred percent. I
Speaker 2: wasn't able to learn a lot about Joaquin and his
Speaker 2: relationship with Mackenzie. All I know is they were dating
Speaker 2: for about two years, going back to when they were
Speaker 2: like fifteen or sixteen. He was in the forty eight
Speaker 2: Hours episode that I watched for the show, and he
Speaker 2: seemed like a very nice young man. He seemed like
Speaker 2: he really was worried about her when this happened, and
Speaker 2: was really doing everything he could to try to find her.
Speaker 2: The failed polygraph question is kind of interesting. We do
Speaker 2: know that live detectors aren't one hundred percent accurate, so
Speaker 2: it's possible that he was just nervous.
Speaker 1: You said he had to take it twice, but you
Speaker 1: only mentioned a failed question on this second test, So
Speaker 1: why did he have to take it twice?
Speaker 2: You know, I would imagine they still had doubts and
Speaker 2: that he, you know, he was the closest person to her,
Speaker 2: so I'm sure they were very suspicious of him in
Speaker 2: the beginning, or.
Speaker 1: Maybe the first test was inconclusive.
Speaker 2: That could be as well. Yeah. The next person on
Speaker 2: the list was Joey Fisher, the boyfriend of Mackenzie's mother,
Speaker 2: the man that Mackenzie had told her mother she couldn't
Speaker 2: stand the argument the night before her disappearance. Made him
Speaker 2: an obvious early candidate, and he did have a minor
Speaker 2: criminal history, which didn't help his case. The police searched
Speaker 2: his home in Winatchi and took some items in for testing,
Speaker 2: but Fisher, like Joaquin, had a verified alibi. He had
Speaker 2: been at work miles away on the day that Mackenzie
Speaker 2: was murdered. There was no physical evidence connecting him to
Speaker 2: the crime, and three independent witnesses had reported seeing a thin,
Speaker 2: dark haired man walking away from the area where Mackenzie's
Speaker 2: car was abandoned that afternoon. Fisher was light complexed with
Speaker 2: blonde or reddish gray hair, he didn't come close to
Speaker 2: matching that description. Mackenzie's other family members, her parents, her brothers,
Speaker 2: were looked at briefly and ruled out just as quickly.
Speaker 2: Their whereabouts confirmed by alibis, phone records, and witness statements.
Speaker 2: By the time Spring arrived, the people closest to Mackenzie
Speaker 2: had all been cleared. Investigators had a body, a brutal
Speaker 2: crime scene, and no real suspect. They were going to
Speaker 2: need something else, and that something else arrived in the
Speaker 2: form of a woman named Liz Reid, identified in court
Speaker 2: documents as confidential Informant One's zero zero two. Reid was
Speaker 2: a college student, a self described former drug dealer and
Speaker 2: prescription pill user, and notably a police informant with a
Speaker 2: track record. She had previously helped the DEA take down
Speaker 2: four narcotics traffickers in the Seattle area. When she came
Speaker 2: forward with information about Mackenzie Cowle's murder, investigators had reason
Speaker 2: to take her seriously. Her story was detailed and specific.
Speaker 2: She claimed that two local drug dealers, Emmanuel Buddha Seros
Speaker 2: and Sam Kuavs, had killed Mackenzie in a case of
Speaker 2: mistaken identity. According to Reed, the men believed that Mackenzie
Speaker 2: was a police informant from the drug world and had
Speaker 2: decided to silence her. She described the attack in granular detail,
Speaker 2: four men overpowering Mackenzie, getting into her car driving away
Speaker 2: while others followed in a green jeep Cherokee. She said
Speaker 2: they took her to a bluff overlooking Crescent Bar, choked
Speaker 2: her and put her body in the river, and then
Speaker 2: she mentioned the snuff film. Reid claimed the men had
Speaker 2: filmed the murder and that she had personally seen the footage.
Speaker 2: That alone would have been extraordinary, but what really got
Speaker 2: investigator's attention was something else. Reid was able to describe
Speaker 2: the murder weapon before that information had been released to
Speaker 2: the public. She also led police to a secluded bluff
Speaker 2: near Crescent Bar, where she said that she had found
Speaker 2: a silver ring that she claimed had belonged to Mackenzie.
Speaker 2: She said that Saros had sent her to the murder
Speaker 2: site to find the ring.
Speaker 1: So where to believe that four drug dealers killed Mackenzie
Speaker 1: using knives from Stan's marry mart yep.
Speaker 2: That is Liz Reid's story in a nutshell.
Speaker 1: And you said that there was one eyewitness who saw
Speaker 1: a man with dark hair, but only one man with
Speaker 1: dark hair.
Speaker 2: There were three witnesses who saw somebody walking on the
Speaker 2: road like away from where her car had been found.
Speaker 2: We don't know if that person was connected or not,
Speaker 2: but that yes, they saw one person walking away and
Speaker 2: there was one set of footprints coming from her car
Speaker 2: as well. So yeah, the story that Liz told was
Speaker 2: on the surface, a remarkably compelling tip, but it didn't
Speaker 2: hold up. Detective John Cruse said, I personally took that
Speaker 2: ring that she found. I showed it to Read Cowl,
Speaker 2: I showed it to Wendy Cowell. I showed it to
Speaker 2: Mackenzie's boyfriend. None of them recognized that ring at all.
Speaker 2: Testing found no DNA on the ring. Saros and Kuavis
Speaker 2: both produced solid alibis phone records and witness statements, placing
Speaker 2: them at work in Winatchi at the time of the murder.
Speaker 2: Investigators tapped their phones that had Reid call them repeatedly,
Speaker 2: fishing for anything incriminating, but they got nothing, and Reid
Speaker 2: herself began to unravel. She recanted the snuff film story.
Speaker 2: Then she said her story about the murder was true,
Speaker 2: but the film didn't exist. Then she changed her mind
Speaker 2: again and said it did exist. Within a few months
Speaker 2: of coming forward, her credibility was in tatters. There was
Speaker 2: one odd footnote. Investigators collected cigarette button at the bluff
Speaker 2: where Reid had led them, and the DNA on those
Speaker 2: butts did match Sam Quavis. That was never explained, But
Speaker 2: a man smoking at a spot near a river isn't
Speaker 2: evidence of murder. And by the summer of twenty ten,
Speaker 2: the police had moved on. They were back to square one.
Speaker 2: And then six months after Mackenzie's murder, a letter arrived.
Speaker 1: The cigarette butt seems like hard evidence to dismiss.
Speaker 2: I agree, But at the same time, it was not
Speaker 2: at the site of Mackenzie's body. It was on a
Speaker 2: bluff overlooking the river, so it was nearby, but it
Speaker 2: wasn't right at the site. And I'm sure this is
Speaker 2: an area that people would hang out at and smoke cigarettes,
Speaker 2: and Liz led them to that site, saying that, you know,
Speaker 2: it might have had some importance to Liz, like maybe
Speaker 2: she had been there with these guys before or something
Speaker 2: like that. So that's the only thing I can think of.
Speaker 2: But you're right, it is a little bit pausible. The
Speaker 2: letter that gave police a break in the case came
Speaker 2: from Oregon. It came from a man named Theodor Keys
Speaker 2: THEO to the people who knew him. He was serving
Speaker 2: time in an organ prison when he decided to write
Speaker 2: to investigators working the Cowl case. He had a former
Speaker 2: friend that he thought they should know about. That friend
Speaker 2: was Christopher Scott Wilson. Keyes had several things to tell them. Wilson,
Speaker 2: he wrote, had been attending the Winatchee Academy of Hair
Speaker 2: Design at the same time as Mackenzie. He had a deep,
Speaker 2: consuming fascination with death, dead bodies, and serial killers. Not
Speaker 2: the casual, morbid curiosity that a lot of people have,
Speaker 2: but something more intense and more deliberate than that. And
Speaker 2: then there was something that had happened at a party
Speaker 2: a few weeks before Mackenzie disappeared. Wilson had, without warning
Speaker 2: or apparent reason, grabbed a female friend by the throat
Speaker 2: and choked her. Then he let her go and acted
Speaker 2: as if nothing had happened. Investigators took the letter seriously,
Speaker 2: in part because the choking incident could be verified. They
Speaker 2: tracked down the woman who confirmed the story. That corroboration mattered.
Speaker 2: It meant that Keyes wasn't just spinning a tail. When
Speaker 2: they went back through their files, they found something else.
Speaker 2: Earlier in the investigation, an anonymous tip had come in
Speaker 2: from an employee at the beauty school. That tipster had
Speaker 2: told police that Wilson once said he had enjoyed working
Speaker 2: at a funeral home because, and this is a direct quote,
Speaker 2: he got to cut people up. At that time it
Speaker 2: hadn't risen to the top of the pile, but now
Speaker 2: read alongside Key's letter, it landed differently. In August twenty ten,
Speaker 2: investigators brought Wilson and a number of other beauty school
Speaker 2: students in for interviews. They said it was routine. They
Speaker 2: were just talking again with everyone who may have known Mackenzie.
Speaker 2: Wilson was cooperative. He sat down with detectives and, at
Speaker 2: their request, provided a voluntary DNA swab. The swab went
Speaker 2: to the state crime Lab, and when the results came back,
Speaker 2: they found that Wilson's DNA profile was consistent with the
Speaker 2: unidentified male DNA that had been recovered from the duct
Speaker 2: tape found near Mackenzie's body. Six months after McKenzie was
Speaker 2: found in the Columbia River, investigators finally had a suspect.
Speaker 1: Was this Wilson guy at the beauty school on the
Speaker 1: day of Mackenzie's disappearance. He sure was, But did he
Speaker 1: leave when Mackenzie left?
Speaker 2: We will talk about that inn just a minute.
Speaker 1: Christopher Scott Wilson was twenty nine years old at the
Speaker 1: time of Mackenzie's murder. He had grown up in the
Speaker 1: Seattle suburbs, the son of a single mother named Kathleen Zornz,
Speaker 1: who worked as a flight attendant, a business owner, and
Speaker 1: a hairstylist. His biological father was never in the picture.
Speaker 1: When Chris was young, his mother married a man named
Speaker 1: Rick Wilson, who adopted him. By all accounts, it was
Speaker 1: a stable, loving arrangement. Then, when Chris was around sixteen,
Speaker 1: Rick died in an accident. Kathleen would later say that
Speaker 1: it was seeing his stepfather's body that first sparked Chris's
Speaker 1: interest in the funeral industry. Whether that's the whole explanation
Speaker 1: or just part of it, something seemed to shift in
Speaker 1: him around that time. He spent his teenage years in Shellan, Washington,
Speaker 1: a small town on the lake of the same name,
Speaker 1: about thirty miles from Wenatchee. His mother owned a local
Speaker 1: skate and bike shop, and Chris was deep in the
Speaker 1: skateboarding scene. In his early twenties, he joined the military,
Speaker 1: but received a medical discharge not long after. A period
Speaker 1: of his life that he didn't talk about warmly. He
Speaker 1: drifted through jobs, spent time working at funeral homes in
Speaker 1: the Wenatchee area, and by his own admission, didn't really
Speaker 1: know what he wanted to do with himself. He dreamed
Speaker 1: somewhat vaguely of being in a band. His colleagues at
Speaker 1: the funeral homes remembered him as unsettling. At least one
Speaker 1: employer let him go for what he described as inappropriate
Speaker 1: behavior that made people uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: I should say that this funeral director said that Wilson
Speaker 2: didn't do anything explicitly really bad, but obviously he made
Speaker 2: him uncomfortable enough that he let him go.
Speaker 1: Is there any implication there that it had something to
Speaker 1: do with the bodies?
Speaker 2: Yes, I believe so.
Speaker 1: Then there was an anonymous tip that had come into
Speaker 1: police early in the investigation that Wilson had told a
Speaker 1: coworker he enjoyed the funeral homework because he got to
Speaker 1: cut people off. Whether he said it as a joke
Speaker 1: or meant it seriously, it wasn't the kind of thing
Speaker 1: that was easy to forget. His interest outside of work
Speaker 1: ran in a consistent direction. He spent significant time on
Speaker 1: Internet forums dedicated to serial killers. He loved dark art,
Speaker 1: and horror films, and was devoted to the television show Dexter,
Speaker 1: a show about a forensic blood spatter analyst who moonlights
Speaker 1: as a serial killer. Chris also had a tattoo of
Speaker 1: a fictional serial killer, Hannibal Lecter on his forearm. What
Speaker 1: is a disturbing set of facts, isn't it?
Speaker 2: It is? I think his family In the episode of
Speaker 2: forty eight Hours I watched, they tried to portray him
Speaker 2: as just, you know, someone who didn't fit in with
Speaker 2: kind of the small town someone who's a little more
Speaker 2: like Emo maybe, and just you know, he was just
Speaker 2: kind of an odd guy that didn't fit in. But
Speaker 2: a lot of these things are pretty seen when you.
Speaker 1: Grab them all together. But sure, there's plenty of people
Speaker 1: who have Sure, I was going to say tattoo of
Speaker 1: Hannibal Lectu, that's.
Speaker 2: Probably that's a choice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we watched Dexter and we liked it. There were
Speaker 1: two incidents involving mannequins that people who knew him tended
Speaker 1: to remember. While working at a good will store in Ellensburg,
Speaker 1: he retrieved a discarded mannequin from a dumpster, took it home,
Speaker 1: dismembered it, painted it to look like a murdered body,
Speaker 1: and posted photographs of it online. Some friends offered a
Speaker 1: different version of events. They said he had found it
Speaker 1: already in that condition and called the police. Bought the
Speaker 1: story stuck to him regardless. Why would he call the
Speaker 1: police if he found a mannequin?
Speaker 2: I don't know, you know, I hadn't thought of that.
Speaker 2: That's a really good question.
Speaker 1: The second incident happened at the Academy of Hair Design
Speaker 1: during a Halloween styling contest. While other students decorated their
Speaker 1: mannequin heads with creative hair and makeup, Wilson used a
Speaker 1: straight razor to peel the skin off his mannequin's face.
Speaker 1: A classmate who witnessed it said it deeply disturbed her.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what the mannequins that you use in
Speaker 1: hairstyling school what they really look like. If it feels
Speaker 1: like real skin, I'm picturing my Barbie head that I had, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, back in like third grade. But do you
Speaker 1: think it must be kind of like real skin if you.
Speaker 2: I really don't know. It must have some sort of
Speaker 2: layer on it that could be peeled off. But whatever
Speaker 2: it was, it was disturbing to his classmates. Understandably.
Speaker 1: So. Yeah. By his late twenties, his mother had bought
Speaker 1: a hair salon in Wanatchi, and Wilson had enrolled at
Speaker 1: the Academy of Hair Design, one of only three male
Speaker 1: students in the program. That was how he ended up
Speaker 1: in the same classroom as seventeen year old Mackenzie Cowell.
Speaker 1: His interest, as you've described them, seem like he's more
Speaker 1: interested on like the funeral side of things and working
Speaker 1: in a funeral parlor. Was his interest in doing hair
Speaker 1: to do them of the deceased?
Speaker 2: You know, it's a good question. It could be, but
Speaker 2: it sounds to me more like his mom bought a
Speaker 2: hair salon, and so it sounded to me like he
Speaker 2: had been a little bit lost and sort of drifting
Speaker 2: without direction. So this maybe he saw this as an opportunity, like, Hey,
Speaker 2: my mom's got this hair salon. If I graduate and
Speaker 2: become a hairstylist, I could work at her. Swan So
Speaker 2: that would be my guest, But it's a good point.
Speaker 2: He may have envisioned that for himself as well.
Speaker 1: When Christopher Wilson sat down with investigators in August twenty
Speaker 1: ten and handed over a voluntary DNA swab, he was calm, cooperative,
Speaker 1: even there was nothing in his demeanor to suggest that
Speaker 1: he was particularly worried about what that swab might show.
Speaker 1: In September twenty third, twenty ten, the State Crime Lab
Speaker 1: delivered its findings. Wilson's DNA profile was consistent with the
Speaker 1: unidentified male genetic material recovered from the duct tape found
Speaker 1: near Mackenzie's body at Crescent Bar. It wasn't a definitive match,
Speaker 1: as the profile was partial, but it was pretty close.
Speaker 1: One out of every one forty seven Caucasian men possessed
Speaker 1: the profile that was found. Christopher Wilson was now the
Speaker 1: prime suspect in the murder of Mackenzie Cowell.
Speaker 2: So there's one out of every thousand or so men
Speaker 2: Caucasian men in a city of thirty thousand, So that
Speaker 2: means there were at most thirty people that could have
Speaker 2: matched that profile in that town. Obviously could have been
Speaker 2: somebody from outside, but that gives you an idea of
Speaker 2: the odds.
Speaker 1: Untill there were thirty people that could have matched that
Speaker 1: DNA profile, Investigators went back and looked at everything they
Speaker 1: knew about his movements. On the afternoon of February ninth,
Speaker 1: with fresh eyes. What they found was troubling. Wilson had
Speaker 1: been at the Academy of Hair Design that afternoon. Surveillance
Speaker 1: footage showed him leaving the building at three o two pm,
Speaker 1: just seventy two seconds after Mackenzie had walked out to
Speaker 1: the car. He had exited through a different door, which
Speaker 1: is why it hadn't initially raised any flags. A traffic
Speaker 1: camera had captured Mackenzie's car heading west on Kitta Tasks
Speaker 1: towards Wilson's apartment. After three o two. Wilson never returned
Speaker 1: to class. His whereabouts for the rest of the afternoon
Speaker 1: were entirely unaccounted for. His mother tried to fill in
Speaker 1: part of the gap. She told investigators that Chris had
Speaker 1: swung by her house that afternoon to pick up a
Speaker 1: plate of cupcakes, But that was over six months ago,
Speaker 1: and it accounted for all only a few minutes at most.
Speaker 1: It didn't come close to constituting an alibi for the
Speaker 1: hours that followed. Between three h two and three thirty
Speaker 1: three that afternoon, Wilson had sent four text messages to
Speaker 1: his on again, off again girlfriend, Tessa Shyloman, and from
Speaker 1: three thirty three to three point fifty his phone went unanswered.
Speaker 2: It's unclear who was actually trying to call him during
Speaker 2: this time, but the articles I read said that, you know,
Speaker 2: people had tried to call him and he didn't answer
Speaker 2: during that time.
Speaker 1: Shortly before four o'clock, he called a friend to ask
Speaker 1: if he could borrow their car starting at four pm,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that he had his own vehicle. The
Speaker 1: friend said that he could borrow his car until five,
Speaker 1: but Chris said he needed it longer than that. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: it's not clear whether he actually borrowed the car or not.
Speaker 1: None of that proved anything on its own, but taken together,
Speaker 1: it painted a picture of a man who had left
Speaker 1: the same building as Mackenzie within seventy two seconds of
Speaker 1: her departure. He had no alibi for the hours that followed,
Speaker 1: and had behaved in ways that were difficult to explain innocently.
Speaker 1: On October sixth, twenty ten, police to ask Wilson to
Speaker 1: come in for another interview. They asked him a direct question,
Speaker 1: had he ever been to Crescent Bar. He said no.
Speaker 1: They arrested him on the spot. Detective John Cruz noted
Speaker 1: that Wilson showed no emotion when the cuffs went on.
Speaker 1: He stared blankly and said quietly that he needed a lawyer.
Speaker 1: He was charged with second degree murder and held on
Speaker 1: one million dollars bail. Why second degree murder and not
Speaker 1: first I.
Speaker 2: Don't know for sure, but I think in a lot
Speaker 2: of cases that police start with a lower charge because
Speaker 2: you only need probable cause to make an arrest, whereas
Speaker 2: you need reasonable doubt to have a conviction. So they
Speaker 2: might have started with just second degree murder while they
Speaker 2: continued to investigate to see if they had enough evidence
Speaker 2: to really raise it to a more serious charge.
Speaker 1: Gotcha, we'll be back. After a break.
Speaker 2: With Wilson in custody, investigation turned their attention to the
Speaker 2: people around him, and the person who kept coming up
Speaker 2: was Tessa Shyloman, is on again, off again girlfriend twenty
Speaker 2: two years old, who had been woven into the events
Speaker 2: of February ninth in ways that were hard to ignore.
Speaker 2: The phone records alone were striking between three h two
Speaker 2: and six pm on the afternoon Mackenzie vanished. Tessa and
Speaker 2: Wilson had been in contact eight separate times, calls and
Speaker 2: texts back and forth during the precise window when Mackenzie
Speaker 2: had disappeared and Wilson's whereabouts were unaccounted for. That evening,
Speaker 2: at around nine ten pm, Tessa called her current boyfriend,
Speaker 2: not Wilson. She was seeing someone else at the time,
Speaker 2: a man who lived in Quincy, not far from the
Speaker 2: Crescent Bar, and she called him. She was in a panic.
Speaker 2: Something really, really bad has happened. She told him, please
Speaker 2: pray for me. In the days that followed, people who
Speaker 2: saw Tessa noticed something off about her. She briefly visited
Speaker 2: an ex boyfriend's home to pick up some belongings, and
Speaker 2: he described her as agitated and fidgety. She left after
Speaker 2: twenty minutes without actually taking anything. When investigators later interviewed
Speaker 2: her about all of this, Tessa told them she had
Speaker 2: no memory whatsoever of anything that had happened between February
Speaker 2: ninth and February thirteenth. But the most disturbing evidence involving
Speaker 2: Tessa didn't come from interviews or phone records. It came
Speaker 2: from Wilson's computer. When investigators examined the hard drive, they
Speaker 2: found photographs and videos that stopped them cold. There was
Speaker 2: a photo of Tessa lying on the floor of Wilson's apartment,
Speaker 2: posed as if she were dead, positioned right next to
Speaker 2: a brownish stain on the carpet. When asked about it,
Speaker 2: she gave two different explanations at different times, once saying
Speaker 2: she had passed out drunk, another time saying that Wilson
Speaker 2: had simply asked her to lie there for the picture.
Speaker 2: Then there were the videos recorded in late June twenty ten,
Speaker 2: several months after mackenzie's murder, around the time that Wilson
Speaker 2: was moving out of his apartment. The footage showed Tessa
Speaker 2: and Wilson walking through the empty space together, the camera
Speaker 2: periodically zooming in on the stain on the carpet. At
Speaker 2: one point, Wilson asked if the room looked clean. Tessa's response,
Speaker 2: caught clearly on the recording, was clean for considering what's happening, Yes,
Speaker 2: I think it's clean. In December twenty ten, Tessa Shilman
Speaker 2: was arrested in Tumwater, Washington, and charged with misdemeanor criminal assistance,
Speaker 2: making false statements, and obstructing a public officer. However, the
Speaker 2: charges weren't related to McKenzie's case. It was a completely
Speaker 2: separate case in neighboring Grant County. When she came in
Speaker 2: for her initial police interviews, she arrived, accompanied oddly by
Speaker 2: Wilson's grandfather. I wasn't able to find details about this
Speaker 2: other case, but whatever was going on in Tessa's life,
Speaker 2: this was apparently not her first time being on the
Speaker 2: wrong side of the law.
Speaker 1: Was she a suspect in Mackenzie's murder.
Speaker 2: They believed that she at least had a part in
Speaker 2: cut it up, but they didn't really have enough evidence
Speaker 2: to prove anything, which is I think why they arrested
Speaker 2: her on this other charge, which again I don't have
Speaker 2: the details of, but I think they had enough to
Speaker 2: at least bring her in so that they could question her.
Speaker 2: Gotcha with Wilson arrested and Tessa arrested on an unrelated case,
Speaker 2: investigators needed to build their case. The partial DNA match
Speaker 2: on the duct tape was significant, but it wasn't airtight.
Speaker 2: They needed more, and they believed that Moore was sitting
Speaker 2: in Wilson's former apartment at the Burkhill Complex, the studio
Speaker 2: he'd been living in at the time of the murder,
Speaker 2: and that he had quietly vacated in June twenty ten,
Speaker 2: right around the time he and Tessa were filming those videos.
Speaker 2: There was a problem, though, When investigators first executed a
Speaker 2: search warrant after Wilson's arrest, they went to the wrong address.
Speaker 2: Wilson had since moved into the basement of his mother's salon,
Speaker 2: and that's where they searched first. They found blood in
Speaker 2: a stairwell, which briefly raised hopes until testing reveal that
Speaker 2: it belonged to a painter who had cut his hand
Speaker 2: on the job. It had nothing to do with Mackenzie.
Speaker 2: They realized their mistake, regrouped, got a new warrant, and
Speaker 2: went to the Burke Hill apartment. When forensic investigators sprayed
Speaker 2: the carpet with luminol, the stain lit up the same
Speaker 2: brownish patch that had appeared in the background of Tessa's photographs.
Speaker 2: The same stain the camera had slowly zoomed in on
Speaker 2: in those June videos was glowing under the light. Investigators
Speaker 2: cut out a section of the carpet and the pad
Speaker 2: beneath it, and sent both to the state crime lab.
Speaker 2: The results came back conclusive. The blood in the carpet
Speaker 2: of Christopher Wilson's former apartment belonged to Mackenzie Cowl. It
Speaker 2: was a significant development. Mackenzie had bled in that room
Speaker 2: whatever had happened to her, whatever the first terrible thing
Speaker 2: that had been done to her, some part of it
Speaker 2: had happened there. The blood evidence was enough to bring
Speaker 2: Tessa back into focus too, but despite the photographs, the videos,
Speaker 2: the panicked phone, and the convenient amnesia, investigators ultimately couldn't
Speaker 2: place her at the scene of Mackenzie's murder in any
Speaker 2: provable way. She was ruled out as a contributor to
Speaker 2: any of the DNA found near Mackenzie's body, and a
Speaker 2: thorough search of her car came up empty. Without physical
Speaker 2: evidence tying her directly to the crime, the DA decided
Speaker 2: not to pursue charges against her. Tessa walked, and as
Speaker 2: soon as Wilson's case was resolved, she legally changed both
Speaker 2: her first and last name and left the area Entirely
Speaker 2: where she went, nobody said publicly. In April twenty eleven,
Speaker 2: prosecutors upgraded the charge against Christopher Wilson from second degree
Speaker 2: murder to first degree murder. The argument was premeditation at
Speaker 2: the seventy two seconds, the borrowed car, the phone, behavior,
Speaker 2: the duct tape, all of it pointed to a man
Speaker 2: who had planned what he was going to do. Wilson's
Speaker 2: defense was led by John Henry Brown, a high profile
Speaker 2: Seattle attorney with a reputation for takeeking on difficult cases.
Speaker 2: Brown had defended Ted Bundy and other high profile defendants
Speaker 2: like Colton Harris Moore, better known as the Barefoot Bandit.
Speaker 2: Brown was not someone who shied away from a fight,
Speaker 2: and he came in with an aggressive strategy. The centerpiece
Speaker 2: of that strategy was planted evidence. Brown intended to argue
Speaker 2: that local law enforcement couldn't be trusted, that the small
Speaker 2: amount of blood found in Wilson's apartment was inconsistent with
Speaker 2: the sheer brutality of Mackenzie's murder, and that someone had
Speaker 2: put it there. He pointed to the local police force's history,
Speaker 2: including the false child abuse arrests in the late nineties.
Speaker 2: Brown also planned to point the finger at Emmanuel Saros
Speaker 2: and Sam Kuavas, the drug dealers that Liz Reid had
Speaker 2: accused early in the investigation. The judge ruled that the
Speaker 2: defense would be permitted to present evidence implicating those men
Speaker 2: at the trial. The judge handed the defense another victory
Speaker 2: that was arguably even more significant. All of the evidence
Speaker 2: relating to Wilson's macabre interests. The funeral home history, the
Speaker 2: hannibal lector tattoo, the serial killer forums, the mannequin incidents.
Speaker 2: They were all ruled too prejudicial to be admitted. The
Speaker 2: jury would never hear any of it on paper. At least,
Speaker 2: Wilson was going to trial as a regular person who
Speaker 2: happened to have his DNA on a piece of duct
Speaker 2: tape and the victim's blood in his carpet. The most
Speaker 2: damning portrait of who he was would never be painted
Speaker 2: for the jury.
Speaker 1: I don't like where this is headed.
Speaker 2: It looked going into the spring of twenty twelve like
Speaker 2: Wilson might actually have a fighting chance. Then jury selection began.
Speaker 2: As prospective jurors filled out their written questionnaires, Wilson and
Speaker 2: his lawyer read through them carefully. What they found was stark.
Speaker 2: Somewhere between eighty and eighty five percent of the jury
Speaker 2: pool either already believed that Wilson was guilty or had
Speaker 2: been exposed to the very evidence the judge had ordered suppressed.
Speaker 2: The prejudicial material had got out through press coverage and
Speaker 2: word of mouth, the way that these things travel in
Speaker 2: a community the size of winatche Chris's lawyer Brown ran
Speaker 2: the numbers. If they went to trial with a jury
Speaker 2: pool like that, Wilson was looking at a near certain
Speaker 2: conviction and a sentence of at least twenty years. Wilson
Speaker 2: had previously rejected a plea deal. Prosecutors had offered roughly
Speaker 2: six and a half years for first degree manslaughter, and
Speaker 2: he had turned it down, saying he wanted to go
Speaker 2: to trial so that the truth could come out. But
Speaker 2: the truth, as he now saw it, was that he
Speaker 2: wasn't going to get a fair hearing. On May twenty third,
Speaker 2: twenty twelve, just before opening statements were set to begin,
Speaker 2: he accepted a new deal. He pleaded guilty to first
Speaker 2: degree manslaughter, first degree robbery for taking Mackenzie's cell phone,
Speaker 2: and second degree assault for the unrelated choking incident at
Speaker 2: the party weeks before the murder. Shelan County Superior Court
Speaker 2: Judge John Bridges sentenced him to fourteen years and three
Speaker 2: months in prison. When the media asked District Attorney Gary
Speaker 2: Reason why he had offered what some saw as a
Speaker 2: lenient deal for such a brutal crime, Reason was candid.
Speaker 2: The case had weaknesses. There was no clear motive, and
Speaker 2: while Mackenzie's blood was in Wilson's apartment, and his DNA
Speaker 2: was on the duct tape near her body. His DNA
Speaker 2: had not been found on the murder weapon itself. It
Speaker 2: wasn't the ironclad case that it might have appeared to
Speaker 2: be from the outside. Wilson maintained his innocence even as
Speaker 2: he entered the plea. He later said from prison that
Speaker 2: during the hearing he had wanted to look Red and
Speaker 2: Wendy Cowell in the eye and tell them directly that
Speaker 2: he hadn't done it. But the moment passed and then
Speaker 2: it was over. Almost immediately after arriving at the Clllam
Speaker 2: Correctional Facility, he filed a motion to withdraw his guilty plea,
Speaker 2: arguing that he wouldn't have been able to get a
Speaker 2: fair trial. A judge denied the motion in June twenty thirteen.
Speaker 2: He had made his choice. Now he had to live
Speaker 2: with it.
Speaker 1: He must have regretted that because he was originally offered
Speaker 1: six years, which is ridiculous. Yeah, and then I mean
Speaker 1: fourteen years is still ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Christopher Scott Wilson was freed from the Monroe Correctional Center
Speaker 2: on December eleventh, twenty twenty three, after serving just over
Speaker 2: eleven years of his sentence. He was released on parole
Speaker 2: with three years of reporting requirements to a community custody officer.
Speaker 2: Beyond that, there's very little on the public record about
Speaker 2: where he went or what he did next.
Speaker 1: To look on your head, my jaw is like on
Speaker 1: the desk here. But yeah, crazy to me that you
Speaker 1: let him out early. I know, yeah, he has a
Speaker 1: pittance of a sentence and then you let him out early.
Speaker 2: And such a horrible crime that, Yeah, it just doesn't
Speaker 2: it's not justice for McKenzie. When Acchi Washington was back
Speaker 2: in the national news just a year ago for another
Speaker 2: horrible crime, we talked about this yesterday, So I think
Speaker 2: you know that I'm referring to the murders of Peyton,
Speaker 2: Evelyn and Olivia Decker, ages nine, eight to five, by
Speaker 2: their father, Travis Decker, whose remains were later found. We
Speaker 2: talked about that case last summer when it was going on. Yeah,
Speaker 2: really heartbreaking case. Several days after Mackenzie's body was found,
Speaker 2: on February twenty fifth, twenty ten, eighteen hundred people gathered
Speaker 2: at the Town Toyota Center in Wenatchi for a memorial
Speaker 2: service in her honor. Eighteen hundred people in a city
Speaker 2: of thirty thousand. It was a remarkable turnout, a community
Speaker 2: showing up to support Mackenzie's family, to grieve and to
Speaker 2: process an unimaginable loss. Reid Cowell believed that the right
Speaker 2: person had been convicted, even if his sentence wasn't what
Speaker 2: it should have been. He told the press that Mackenzie
Speaker 2: was the kind of person who would never have gone
Speaker 2: anywhere with someone she didn't trust, which meant he believed
Speaker 2: that Wilson must have found a way to earn that
Speaker 2: trust before he used it against her. It's hard to
Speaker 2: say that justice was done in this case, though, A
Speaker 2: plea deal for manslaughter, not murder of fourteen years a
Speaker 2: man who walked out of prison in twenty twenty three
Speaker 2: and went on with his life. For a family that
Speaker 2: lost a seventeen year old girl in one of the
Speaker 2: most violent ways imaginable, it's not easy to make peace
Speaker 2: with that. Mackenzie Nicole Cowell would have turned thirty four
Speaker 2: years old last month. She was, by every account, someone
Speaker 2: who was just hitting her stride. A dancer, a student,
Speaker 2: an athlete, a young woman with a packed schedule and
Speaker 2: a clear sense of where she was headed. Her father
Speaker 2: called her driven, vibrant, on the verge of growing up.
Speaker 2: Sadly she never got that chance. Rest in peace, Mackenzie.
Speaker 2: So we already talked about it, but clearly justice not
Speaker 2: done in this case, and it's so frustrating. It does
Speaker 2: seem like they were willing to make a deal because
Speaker 2: the case wasn't ironclad. But it doesn't seem like it
Speaker 2: was a bad case either. I mean, they had her
Speaker 2: blood in his apartment. They had his DNA, even though
Speaker 2: it wasn't one hundred percent match, but they had his
Speaker 2: DNA at the I'm seeing, it seems like even just
Speaker 2: with those things, that was probably enough to get a conviction.
Speaker 2: But I don't know, what do you think? Do you
Speaker 2: think it made sense for the prosecution to make a deal.
Speaker 1: Well, a lot of the evidence sounded like it was
Speaker 1: going to be excluded, like his character and the things
Speaker 1: that you know, showed that he was maybe obsessed with
Speaker 1: death right, you know, I don't know. I feel like
Speaker 1: fourteen years or eleven years, it is just really sad
Speaker 1: because Mackenzie's life was worth more than that sentence, and.
Speaker 2: He's still relatively young, and he is, you know, free
Speaker 2: and free to live the rest of his life.
Speaker 1: Chilling to know that a person like that is out
Speaker 1: on the streets, and the likelihood that he could kill again, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure is pretty big.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the fact that the judge excluded those things,
Speaker 2: to me doesn't make sense because assuming he did this crime,
Speaker 2: which I believe he did, his motive was that he
Speaker 2: was obsessed with death, and so all of those elements
Speaker 2: to his character all seem very relevant to me, because
Speaker 2: that really is what his motive was is to you know,
Speaker 2: he wanted to experience killing someone.
Speaker 1: Well, I think you said seventy two seconds after she
Speaker 1: walked out, he walked out after her. Right, It's just
Speaker 1: really I mean, bad planning on his part because you know,
Speaker 1: he was going to be a prime suspect no matter
Speaker 1: what happened. So it kind of shows that he was
Speaker 1: that obsessed with with killing someone. It was like, you know,
Speaker 1: on his brain that he made that, you know, it
Speaker 1: kind of stupid decision. Right, What do they think happened?
Speaker 2: You know, it's a good question actually, because I think
Speaker 2: I don't know how he lured her to his apartment, Like, I.
Speaker 1: Don't know, so they think that she was killed in
Speaker 1: his apartment.
Speaker 2: It sort of seems that way. But even that is
Speaker 2: a little bit questionable because there wasn't a lot of blood, right, But.
Speaker 1: You said he was obsessed with Dexter, so maybe he
Speaker 1: had like Ezechtor style like saran wrap.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, invest scares were speculating that that could have
Speaker 2: been a possibility that he had learned from watching Dexter
Speaker 2: how to kill someone without you know, a lot of blood.
Speaker 2: But we'll never know, unfortunately what actually happened, but it
Speaker 2: is Yeah, it does make you wonder how how did
Speaker 2: he actually you know, pull this off?
Speaker 1: Did he just think it was a crime of opportunity?
Speaker 1: Were they friends?
Speaker 2: That's what I don't know. I don't know if they
Speaker 2: were or not. You know, I wasn't able to find
Speaker 2: any information about whether they had any kind of relation.
Speaker 2: And obviously they went to the same hair academy, but
Speaker 2: I don't know beyond that if they had a friendship.
Speaker 2: But it seems like there must have been something there
Speaker 2: that caused her to go to his apartment without you know,
Speaker 2: questioning it.
Speaker 1: And we don't know why McKenzie left class that day, right,
Speaker 1: And there were no text messages between those two that
Speaker 1: you know of, No.
Speaker 2: No, really nothing One interesting thing about this case is
Speaker 2: this whole Liz Read story. This is the young woman
Speaker 2: who came forward said that she knew the two guys
Speaker 2: that did this, and in fact, that they had filmed
Speaker 2: the murder and that she saw the film. It's just
Speaker 2: such a strange thing because they, you know, they ended
Speaker 2: up not believing her at all, although there was a
Speaker 2: little bit of evidence. Right, So she said that she
Speaker 2: knew the knife that was killed, like she recognized it
Speaker 2: or was able to describe it. And they also found
Speaker 2: a cigarette butt with DNA from one of these guys,
Speaker 2: you know, on a bluff overlooking the river, not far
Speaker 2: from where the body was found. But what do you like,
Speaker 2: what do you make of that whole story. It seems
Speaker 2: pretty clear to me that Christopher Wilson did this. But
Speaker 2: why did this person come forward?
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 2: I don't understand why someone would do that if it
Speaker 2: wasn't there wasn't some truth to it.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was a rumor. Maybe you know, it was
Speaker 1: just something that was floating around town. Because she sounds
Speaker 1: like she had a pretty established relationship with the police.
Speaker 1: They trusted her in these drug cases. Yeah, so maybe
Speaker 1: she did hear a rumor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, It's just so strange that she would come forward
Speaker 2: and say, oh, I saw it. I saw a film
Speaker 2: of this, I saw them.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Maybe she has an addiction problem and maybe she
Speaker 1: thought she saw something.
Speaker 2: Yeah I don't I really could. Yeah. I mean, there's
Speaker 2: no way to know. But it's just an odd sort
Speaker 2: of footnote.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this whole and that's a good point. That did
Speaker 1: distract from the investigation for several months.
Speaker 2: Yeah. What do you think about Tessa Shiloman So? She
Speaker 2: was on again, off again girlfriend of Christopher Wilson. There
Speaker 2: was obviously communication going on between them that afternoon. She
Speaker 2: had called a boyfriend at the time and said, you know,
Speaker 2: it sounded like she was panicked, like something crazy had happened.
Speaker 2: Do you think they should have let her off the
Speaker 2: hook or do you think that there just wasn't enough
Speaker 2: evidence there to do anything.
Speaker 1: I think if there was enough evidence, they would have
Speaker 1: arrested her to right. Well, you said that she changed
Speaker 1: her name and left town.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Do you think that's some sort of admission of guilt there.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure whether it was an admission of guilt,
Speaker 2: but certainly her name was tied to this case. In
Speaker 2: this relatively small town, So I'm sure in her mind
Speaker 2: it was just like, yeah, I can't. I can't stay
Speaker 2: here anymore. I can't be the same person. The last
Speaker 2: thing I wanted to ask you about is we talked
Speaker 2: at the beginning about when ATCHI it's had. It seems
Speaker 2: to me like way more than its fair share of
Speaker 2: really horrific crimes and other events. I'm reading the book
Speaker 2: yet right now by Stephen King. I'm right in the
Speaker 2: middle of it, and it's sort of about a town
Speaker 2: that is kind of cursed, like it has like the
Speaker 2: town itself has sort of evil built.
Speaker 1: In And I don't it take place in Dairy.
Speaker 2: It takes place in Dairy, Maine. But I just you
Speaker 2: hear about stuff like this, and you're like, is this
Speaker 2: city like cursed? Does it have? Is there something about
Speaker 2: it that causes things to happen like this?
Speaker 1: Well you described this as the town, but do they
Speaker 1: have like a math problem right now? Like is it
Speaker 1: a town where you know, like the apple industry is there,
Speaker 1: but the apple industry is shrinking, and you know people
Speaker 1: are having a hard time because a lot of time
Speaker 1: that's what happens. Yeah, when you know a place has
Speaker 1: their economy is going downhill. You know, that's when a
Speaker 1: lot of problems happen. Is that the case in.
Speaker 2: What I I don't get that sense. And I don't
Speaker 2: think like any of the incidents we talked about don't
Speaker 2: seem like any of them were driven by like any
Speaker 2: kind of you know, meth addiction or anything like that.
Speaker 2: So I don't know, maybe just coincidence. But I do
Speaker 2: also feel like in the Pacific Northwest it seems like
Speaker 2: there are a lot of serial killers.
Speaker 1: Talk about this before. I believe it's linked to, you know,
Speaker 1: the lack of the sun and thermware crimes in places
Speaker 1: where it's somewhat dreary.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know what causes that, but it's just
Speaker 2: it's a strange thing that this town of Winacchi has had.
Speaker 1: That said, I think the Pacific Northwest is a beautiful
Speaker 1: We're not implying that, you know, it's not a lovely
Speaker 1: place to live. I just seemed like this, this Winacchi
Speaker 1: has had its unfair percentage of crimes.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So do you think that Christopher's motive was just that
Speaker 1: he wanted to kill someone?
Speaker 2: I believe so, just based on what we know of
Speaker 2: his background, his obsession with death, some of the allegations
Speaker 2: about his funeral home behavior. It sure seems like that
Speaker 2: is the only motive I can I can think would
Speaker 2: make sense.
Speaker 1: I haven't said this in a while, but I believe
Speaker 1: that one of the ways that you can keep your
Speaker 1: family safe is to check the sex offender registered in
Speaker 1: your area every six months, especially if you have young
Speaker 1: kids that might be walking or taking the bus or
Speaker 1: whatever that they're out of your eyesight. But this Christopher
Speaker 1: is we know that he has this fixation on murdering
Speaker 1: and death. There's no registry for like people that have
Speaker 1: committed a first degree or secondargrey murder or even you know,
Speaker 1: assaulting st.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and are now living next door or down the
Speaker 2: road from you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so your neighbor. That's kind of chilling, right, It
Speaker 1: is a little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you would think I would. I would want to
Speaker 2: know if I was living down the street from this guy.
Speaker 1: I mean, people have every right to start their life
Speaker 1: over and you know, yeah, but in this case, I mean,
Speaker 1: he was convicted of a pretty gruesome murder.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty disturbing.
Speaker 1: You talked a little bit about the judge, or not
Speaker 1: the judge, but the jury and how when they were
Speaker 1: polled was it like eighty percent of them or whatever
Speaker 1: had a preconceived notion of Christopher. Yeah, because it's a
Speaker 1: small community and they'd read the newspapers, and you know,
Speaker 1: they they thought that he was already guilty. Do you
Speaker 1: think in that situation, if there was a trial here
Speaker 1: and you were serving as a jur that you would
Speaker 1: be able to separate what you'd heard in the news
Speaker 1: to what you would hear in the trial. I think
Speaker 1: it would be really hard thing to do.
Speaker 2: I think it would be a hard thing to do too,
Speaker 2: if you already have a preconceived notion of somebody before
Speaker 2: you walk in. I mean that's why they moved trials
Speaker 2: to different locations, which I didn't read anything about any
Speaker 2: motion to move the trial or anything like that, But yeah,
Speaker 2: it would be hard as a juror in a small
Speaker 2: town if you already heard about the case.
Speaker 1: In small knit communities, you just feel closer to your
Speaker 1: friends and neighbors, and even if you don't know them,
Speaker 1: you would want justice or Mackenzie.
Speaker 2: Right before we wrap up, I thought we would continue
Speaker 2: our apple theme, and I want to you love a theme.
Speaker 2: I do love a theme, but I wanted to do
Speaker 2: a blind apple taste testy. So I have brought five apples,
Speaker 2: and we're gonna both taste them blindly and try and
Speaker 2: decide which ones we like in order and try to
Speaker 2: figure out which one is which. So I brought a
Speaker 2: Honey Crisp, a Fuji an Envy, a Cosmic Crisp, and
Speaker 2: a pink lady. Okay, all right, are you ready?
Speaker 1: I'm ready.
Speaker 2: All right, we can take a little break and do
Speaker 2: this off air, and then we'll come back and rank them. Okay,
Speaker 2: all right, okay, so you just tried the five apples.
Speaker 1: Okay, So, first of all, I have extreme testing anxiety.
Speaker 1: If you say the words test or quiz, I instantly
Speaker 1: get Well, there's no pressure. I'm pretty sure I got
Speaker 1: none of them.
Speaker 2: Right. Well, it's more about what's your favorite and least favorite.
Speaker 1: But you were just quizzing me because I really wasn't thinking,
Speaker 1: Oh which am I enjoying?
Speaker 2: I am curious.
Speaker 1: I would say, out of the ones I taste, did
Speaker 1: like number three, I was like, oh, this one's really mushy.
Speaker 1: So I'll tell you what. I what I I didn't
Speaker 1: rank them in my preference at all. Okay, Number one,
Speaker 1: I guess, Envy, two, Honey Crisp, three Pink Lady, four
Speaker 1: Cosmic Crisp, and five Fuji. Okay, but here's the thing.
Speaker 1: If you're taking like a taste test of something, a
Speaker 1: lot of times you would use an apple as a
Speaker 1: palette cleanser. Yeah, and I had no palate cleanser, so
Speaker 1: it was just kind of like putting like something that's
Speaker 1: slightly you know, sweet, And it really hard.
Speaker 2: Which one would you say was your favorite? Though?
Speaker 1: If you had one thing, I don't know if I
Speaker 1: could say, because honestly, I was just trying to identify them.
Speaker 1: I mean, honey Crisp is probably my favorite apple, so
Speaker 1: I guess, uh, two and four might have been my preference.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but none of them were I don't know.
Speaker 1: So tell me how they did on the quiz.
Speaker 2: You got the Pink Lady right, that was the one
Speaker 2: you got right. Interesting only when.
Speaker 1: I got right when you got right. So that's that
Speaker 1: is my history with test.
Speaker 2: Interesting that What I found most interesting here is you
Speaker 2: thought the food was a honey crisp. I know you
Speaker 2: love honey crisp, but you're not a big Fuji fan.
Speaker 2: But the Fuji you you identified as a honey crisp.
Speaker 1: Okay, I was actually the Fuji was number two. I
Speaker 1: had a Fuji or Honey Crisp down actually, and then
Speaker 1: I tasted it again. I said, Honey Cris'm a horrible
Speaker 1: test taker. That's all I'm going to say. I hate quizzes.
Speaker 1: Please never make me take another one again, because it
Speaker 1: makes me instantly feel insecure in that I was a
Speaker 1: fine student. I'm not saying like, you know, I, but
Speaker 1: I honest.
Speaker 2: I didn't really, I really really didn't mean to put
Speaker 2: you on the spot. It was more about like which
Speaker 2: ones do you like best and least? But yeah, I
Speaker 2: guess I should have made that a little more clear.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah, I did horrible. That's just that's just.
Speaker 2: That's okay.
Speaker 1: All right. So now you were going to.
Speaker 2: Yes, now you can give me a sample.
Speaker 1: Would have had a heads up, and I would have
Speaker 1: made this trickier in some way.
Speaker 2: Oh that's okay.
Speaker 1: All right, Let's take a piece of bologney in here
Speaker 1: or something.
Speaker 2: Let's take a quick break and I will do a
Speaker 2: blind taste test. Now, I like to eat, eat, eat apple.
Speaker 1: I like to eat.
Speaker 2: As Okay, Well, I had a clear favorite. My favorite
Speaker 2: one was number two, and I think that was the Envy.
Speaker 2: You're correct, Okay, that was really good. I had number
Speaker 2: one down.
Speaker 1: As you know, I think, I like, we're obsessed with apples.
Speaker 1: But a few months ago, it was probably in the fall,
Speaker 1: you made a proclamation that Envy was your new favorite apple.
Speaker 1: So that is interesting that you got that correct.
Speaker 2: And I wasn't sure if I was going to stick
Speaker 2: with that or not, but I really think it was.
Speaker 2: I had number one down as a cosmic Crisp, number
Speaker 2: three as a Fuji, four as a honey Crisp, and
Speaker 2: five as a pink Lady.
Speaker 1: So not surprisingly, out of the two of us, you
Speaker 1: are a much better test taker. Doesn't mean that you're
Speaker 1: more intelligent. I need to point out this test taking
Speaker 1: is a skill, and you got one on the test. Also,
Speaker 1: if you know me, I would be more likely to
Speaker 1: put the apples in alphabetical order. So did you know
Speaker 1: that I put the apples in alphabetical.
Speaker 2: Did not occur to me until you said that.
Speaker 1: But also, I'd like to plan out that that early
Speaker 1: May late April is not the best time to be
Speaker 1: tasting apples.
Speaker 2: I thought of that too, but I was like, well,
Speaker 2: we're doing a case on Winacchi. The apple capital of
Speaker 2: the world. We have to do apples, so I but
Speaker 2: I agree it's not the perfect time.
Speaker 1: And if our voices sound very clear and really good
Speaker 1: right now, it's because a lot of times if you
Speaker 1: read how do I have a better voice for podcasting,
Speaker 1: they will say eat apples or drink apple juice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, usually they say to eat a sour apple, like
Speaker 2: a green apple or something like that. But still either way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so your your favorite was the envy definitely.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 1: Honestly, I just had to I seriously get test anxiety
Speaker 1: because I don't like anything in life that makes me
Speaker 1: feel stupider. I'm not a stupid You're.
Speaker 2: Totally I should have positioned it a different way, because
Speaker 2: really it was more about finding out what your favorite
Speaker 2: apple was.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay, well you're right. That was a fun little detour.
Speaker 2: And I love doing blind taste tests.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think in general blind taste tests are are
Speaker 1: really fun.
Speaker 2: Sometime we're going to do a blind taste test of
Speaker 2: bottled water brands.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, that's all. These are really compelling for listeners.
Speaker 1: People that are listening and you can't see I would
Speaker 1: like to do a taste test with you with like
Speaker 1: diet pepsi. You've seen like people do like, oh, this
Speaker 1: diepe pepsi is from McDonald's and this one is from
Speaker 1: the gas station and blah blah and whatever, because you
Speaker 1: drink a lot of diet pepsi and I.
Speaker 2: Have a very discerning palate when it comes to soda.
Speaker 1: Do you think you would be able to tell the
Speaker 1: difference between I don't think you would be able to
Speaker 1: be like, oh, this one from this from McDonald's or whatever.
Speaker 1: But I think you might be able to say this
Speaker 1: one's from a can, this one's from a bottle, this
Speaker 1: one's from a fountain drink.
Speaker 2: Maybe I feel like I could say this is diet
Speaker 2: pepsi and this is diet coke. Beyond that, yeah, I'm
Speaker 2: not so sure. Oh, by the way, did you get
Speaker 2: the mail yesterday?
Speaker 1: Yeah? We hadn't gotten it a few days. There was
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff in there.
Speaker 2: No, it wasn't for Taylor's. We wasn't. Oh that's disappointing.
Speaker 2: Thought it would come by now.
Speaker 1: So we know that Taylor Swift is listening to our podcast,
Speaker 1: of course, and I think that that would be I
Speaker 1: would be okay with doing a face reveal for Taylor
Speaker 1: Swift's wedding, Like we could go as the hosts of
Speaker 1: Love Mary Kill, Taylor Swift's favorite podcast. So you're listening, Taylor,
Speaker 1: don't feel like you can't invite us because we don't
Speaker 1: want to show our faces. But it's not that we
Speaker 1: are ugly. We just you know, have chosen to keep
Speaker 1: our faces private. And I think that would be a
Speaker 1: great time to think if you.
Speaker 2: Use your wedding as a face reveal for the Love
Speaker 2: Mary Kill host that would really get your wedding on
Speaker 2: the map, Like people would really start to pay attention
Speaker 2: to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but then that would take away from the bride,
Speaker 1: and we don't want to take away from them. Maybe
Speaker 1: that's why we haven't gotten to save the day. Yeah, probably,
Speaker 1: So we're just kidding. I don't think we're going to
Speaker 1: care and invite, but I would go.
Speaker 2: I would totally go. And Taylor, if you are listening,
Speaker 2: we're happy to have you as a listener.
Speaker 1: You never know who's listening, you never know, you never know.
Speaker 2: And maybe wait, what's his name? Her husband from Travis.
Speaker 1: So that's why you're not going to get us invited
Speaker 1: because Travis Kelton. Maybe Travis is a listening he's a
Speaker 1: foot like seriously, yeah, probably, I'm a little ashamed of
Speaker 1: you right now.
Speaker 2: I got I came up with it. It just took
Speaker 2: me a couple of seconds. I get him and his
Speaker 2: brother mixed up. That's why.
Speaker 1: Well, what's his brother's name?
Speaker 2: Jason?
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, I'll give you that. Have you ever
Speaker 1: listened to their podcast?
Speaker 2: Of course, I'm a regular listener.
Speaker 1: You don't listen it. You listen to zero podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure. Tell me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 2: It's rare. Every once in a while. I will listen
Speaker 2: to something, but not very often.
Speaker 1: Usually it's because I force you to. Sometimes we're when
Speaker 1: we're on a road. Might but I listen to a
Speaker 1: lot of podcasts, not really true crime, although I do
Speaker 1: listen to datelines sometimes to go to sleep.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I listen to our own podcast enough that I
Speaker 2: don't have room for other podcasts.
Speaker 1: You have listened to our own podcast. Nothing beats it
Speaker 1: that the.
Speaker 2: Bar is set so high that it would be hard
Speaker 2: for me to really enjoy and appreciate another podcast.
Speaker 1: Speaking of our podcast, it was such an eloquence segue,
Speaker 1: wasn't it, Yes, very much, So I just wanted to
Speaker 1: thank anyone who has commented on Reddit and shouted us out,
Speaker 1: because that really is so kind and generous and it
Speaker 1: really does help new listeners find the show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really does.
Speaker 1: We appreciate you so much. I think you said the
Speaker 1: other day that on the house cleaning subreddit someone shouted
Speaker 1: us out. So it just makes me happy when I
Speaker 1: know that people are listening to us while they're working. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe we're making keeping them entertained.
Speaker 2: And well, there was another one. I think it was
Speaker 2: just yesterday. I didn't tell you about it yet, but
Speaker 2: it was on some subreddit about like relationship advice, and
Speaker 2: someone was talking about how their boyfriend cheated on her
Speaker 2: and then he wanted her back and she didn't know
Speaker 2: what to do. And somebody comment and said, oh girl,
Speaker 2: I've read about that. I've heard too many stories on
Speaker 2: Love Mary Kill that don't end well, so please be careful.
Speaker 2: So it is nice when people.
Speaker 1: That makes me happy, because if there's one mission that
Speaker 1: I personally have during the podcast is making not just
Speaker 1: women but people, you know, more informed about red flags
Speaker 1: and relationships. And totally, I know it's easy to say
Speaker 1: end that relationship, and I know not everyone can walk
Speaker 1: away that easily, and cleanly, but you know, by educating people,
Speaker 1: it just makes me happy if we can even save
Speaker 1: one person from a bad relationship.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you all so much for listening. Please rate, review,
Speaker 2: follow and subscribe, find us on social media, or send
Speaker 2: us an email at Lovemarykill at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: So the other day I made a playlist of all
Speaker 1: of the songs that we have on Patreon. When we
Speaker 1: start our Patreon episodes, we do it a little different
Speaker 1: because I think you were throwing me a bone because
Speaker 1: I don't like our theme song and you do. So
Speaker 1: when we do our Patreon episodes, we just play a song.
Speaker 1: And I made a playlist and it made me realize
Speaker 1: that we have like thirty five episodes full length episodes
Speaker 1: over on Patreon. So please consider supporting us on Patreon.
Speaker 1: Go to patreon dot com slash Love Mary Kill for
Speaker 1: five dollars a month you get early and help me
Speaker 1: out earlier episodes, and a monthly benne a monthly until
Speaker 1: next time. Don't kill your husband and don't kill your wife.
Speaker 2: M