Speaker 1: Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence, and is
not intended for all audiences.
Speaker 2: Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 3: He's laying here and I can't even see his head,
and there's blood all over the place.
Speaker 4: There's blood everywhere.
Speaker 1: Yes, this isn't for the faint hearted, those who easily faint.
This is episode three hundred and thirty one of Sword
and Scale show that reveals that the worst monsters are real.
Kennethrees was drained another long shift at the Chrysler plant
in Detroit, another bitter February night in twenty twenty. The
last few years had taken everything from him. First, he
lost his wife to cancer. Now, at sixty something, he
wore the title he never expected to have widower. Weren't
women supposed to outlive their husbands. That's not the way
it worked out for Kenneth. At three am, he pulled
into the driveway of his farmhouse and Prince Michigan. The
car ticked as it cooled. After an hour long trip home,
he couldn't wait to lie down and just go to sleep.
Kenneth climbed the porch steps, heavy with exhaustion, and opened
the front door. The moment he stepped inside, he froze,
part pounding. He yelled for his son upstairs, then grabbed
his phone and called nine one.
Speaker 4: Hello, do you have an emergency?
Speaker 3: Yes, I got an emergency. I just got home from
work and this this person's laying on my floor and
they looked dead.
Speaker 4: Okay, watch the address.
Speaker 1: Kenneth stared at the mess in his living room. His son,
Kenny McBride, had come downstairs from his bedroom. He'd only
been staying with his father for a few weeks. Forty
four year old Kenny was shirtless with plaid pajama pants
and bare feet, but he provided no comfort. Kenny wasn't
the sun, Kenneth wanted beside him in a moment of crisis.
Speaker 4: And is it someone that you know?
Speaker 3: No, I don't know. This is one of my son's buddies.
I can't.
Speaker 4: Can you tell if he's breathing?
Speaker 3: No, I can't. Laying there, he looks dead.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 4: How old is he approximately?
Speaker 3: I don't know. I can't tell. I've got the lights
so often here in the kitchen.
Speaker 4: Okay, are you able to lay him on his back?
And no?
Speaker 3: He's the goods? Did good? I mean it's bad? Okay,
I dropped out here. I just walked in the door.
Speaker 4: Okay, why doesn't he look like he's dead.
Speaker 3: He's laying here and I can't even see his head,
and there's blood all over the place.
Speaker 4: There's blood everywhere.
Speaker 3: Yes, I just I seen it tracking through my house.
I need to we need to get police here or something.
I'm I don't know what you do.
Speaker 4: You think he's being help?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 1: That yes, is chilling, isn't it. The two officers from
the Monroe County Sheriff's Department were dispatched and headed over
to Kenneth's house. Temperance was a small, unincorporated town, the
kind of place that had a few gas stations, some groceries,
mom and pop shops, a doctor's office, everything you would need,
and not much more else.
Speaker 3: Are there we don't want to would tell if it's
a guy, it's a girl. If it's I don't know
where my mother in law is. She's usually laying here
asleep on the couch. That there's blood all over.
Speaker 4: Are you able to tell what part of the body
of blood came from?
Speaker 3: It looks like you're around the head.
Speaker 4: Where's your son?
Speaker 3: My son's standing right here. I just wove him up
when I come in, he was upstairs.
Speaker 4: Does he know who the person is?
Speaker 1: No, the body was unrecognizable. Kenneth didn't know who it
was or why this bloody person was lying in the
middle of his living room, and Kenny, his son, stood
there quietly, acting as dumbfounded as his father. Soon the
police arrived. The officers on the scene were new recruits,
young guys with not much under their belts in this
sleepy town. They'd never encountered anything as gruesome as this before.
Speaker 2: So they were kind of in shock when they got
unseen there. They encountered Kenneth, who was obviously the nine
one one collar, and they also encountered Kenny. They took
a look into the living room, they saw a headless body,
at which point they detained both Kenneth and Kenny.
Speaker 1: This is Detective Sergeant Jeff Hooper from the Monroe County
Sheriff's Office. He took the lead on the investigation. The
officers who first arrived were not only shocked to find
a headless body, but also the state of Kenneth's living
room a.
Speaker 2: Total disarray, and blood probably and everywhere in that room,
on the couch saturated into the floor, on the ceiling
on the railing going upstairs, and there's broken there's broken
glass by the body, cut up pictures.
Speaker 1: In the middle of the carpet lay a headless body.
Next to the corpse was a broken piggybank, some shattered glass,
and a metal baby gate that had been disassembled and
thrown around the room in pieces. With both Kenny and
Kenneth detained, the officers called in for help and took action.
Speaker 2: When they were securing the scene to make sure that
there weren't any perpetrators or other victims. On their outside
clearing a garage, and he happened upon the head in
the driveway.
Speaker 1: It was dark and cold outside, but when that officer
looked down and saw the victim's head, there was no
mistaking exactly what he'd found.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you could tell it was a head, I mean
basically because the hair. The hair was super saturated with
blood and it was actually leaning up against the truck
tire when it was found. It also had one of
the key things that we saw was that it had
frost on it. It was a particularly cold night, there
was a hard frost, and there was frost.
Speaker 1: On the head. It was clear that the victim had
been murdered inside the home earlier that evening, and that
the head had not been carefully placed under that truck fire,
but thrown with force.
Speaker 2: So when the head was thrown out the back door,
it was thrown twenty yards and came to rest up
against the truck tire. And one thing that I can't
ever forget is the head was probably thrown in the
air about fifteen yards in that super saturated hair. It
hit the concrete and left wavy blood impressions in the
concrete as it bounced to where it finally came to rest.
Speaker 1: The face was just a mess of blood, swelling and
shattered bone, But as Detective Hooper looked closer, the truth
became clear. The victim was a female, Her face had
been used like a punching bag and the beating hadn't
been enough. Whoever did this kept going right up until
her decapitation around the body where a smashed piggybank, broken
pieces of a metal baby gait, and cut up family
photographs that were soaking in the victim's blood.
Speaker 2: So at that point, having a quote unqung quote who
done it? Or you know, possible home invasion or you know,
we have to look at every scenario. So we reached
out to the Michigan State Police crime Lab and had
them come down to process the scene, which we typically
do for larger crime scenes. That lets us the detectives
focus in more on the interviews in a little bit
of a smaller bit of evidence and not so much
that forensic evidence. We as detectives started looking at Kenneth
and Kenny, you know, wanting to talk to them, wanting
to go through their digital evidence, their phones and whatnot,
and that's where we started.
Speaker 1: Three am turned to early morning. The birds were chirping,
the sun was stretching through the clouds, and Prosecutor Leah
Hubbard was on our way to the office.
Speaker 5: I had actually dropped my son off at daycare that morning,
which was located just a couple of buildings down from
where this house was located, on the opposite side of
the road. I saw the crime scene unit from Michigan
State Police there, so I knew right away. We have
very few homicides in Monroe County, not even one a year,
do we average. So when I saw the Michigan State
Police crime scene van there and multiple deputies as I'm
driving to work, I know something horrific happened.
Speaker 1: Lea knew that something earth shattering would be coming across
her desk any minute. Back at the crime scene, Detective
Hooper and his team started their investigation. So Kenneth was cooperative.
His son not so much.
Speaker 2: Oh, Kenny was very quiet, just sitting on the ground,
you know, by the side door. When deputies came in
as they were detaining, you know, there was a basic
question of what's going on here, and Kenny, he said,
I don't believe I should talk, so right off the
git wasn't going to make a statement with the police.
Speaker 1: Kenneth, on the other hand, was full of worry and words.
Mostly he was concerned about his mother in law, ce
Celia Gibson, who also lived in the house with him
and Kenny.
Speaker 5: My mother, I was supposed to be here.
Speaker 3: I don't know where she is. I just come in door.
I just pulled in from work, okay.
Speaker 1: Cecilia Gibson, who everyone called Nicky, was seventy nine years old.
She was Kenneth's mother in law, and she'd been staying
with him to help him and his wife, her daughter,
fight her battle with cancer. The arrangement had stuck passed
her daughter's death. When police first arrived, Kenneth assumed the
body in his living room belonged to one of his
son's friends. But now under the cold light of morning,
with reality pressing, he saw the truth, and so the
detective Hooper.
Speaker 2: So basically, in looking at pictures in the home, we
were able to determine that that was Nicki.
Speaker 1: The headless victim on the floor was seventy nine year
old Nicki Gibson. Kenneth was destroyed. A group of officers
took Kenneth and Kenny down at the station to talk
further while the house was being processed. Kenneth was helpful
and cooperative, while his son's silence started to take a
new shape.
Speaker 5: We'll can shift take care of here? Him in all
right here?
Speaker 3: How you gonna take care of me? How you gonna
take care of me?
Speaker 2: You can't talk to you?
Speaker 3: You can't take care of me.
Speaker 5: Well, somebody'll be in here.
Speaker 6: To talk to you.
Speaker 1: Kenny shifted from silence to irritation quickly. Every word the
officer said only fueled his anger. As the minutes ticked by,
his kurt replies twisted into something darker and much more concerning.
Speaker 2: But he starts chanting and singing and jumping around and dancing,
all all handcuffed in the interview room. It sounded pretty
demonic in the noises he was making.
Speaker 1: Kenny refused to talk sensibly. Instead, he acted out like
someone who was in the middle of a bad acid trip,
and according to prosecutor Leah Hubbard, he kept repeating the
same eerie phrase.
Speaker 5: He repeatedly screamed, its mother fucking payday.
Speaker 1: Aside from his erratic outbursts, the marks on Kenny's body
started pointing towards his guilt in Nikki's murder.
Speaker 5: He had an abrasion that looked like a scratch mark
behind one of his ears. Most significantly, on one of
his hands. There were multiple fresh cuts on the exterior
of his hands with the top part of his hand,
and then when he turned his hand over there were
different sorts of marks and red abrasions. They almost look
like blisters. What we compared it to the most was
if you're doing yard work with a wooden rake and
you're using a repeated motion over and over.
Speaker 1: A repeated motion like having to cut off a person's head.
Speaker 5: Right on the palm of his hand, there were multiple
abrasions that looked like, you know, excessive rubbing or some
sort of blisters forming. He also had an abrasion of
fresh abrasion that looked like a scratch or a fingernail
mark on the top of his head, and then a
large bruise on his forearm.
Speaker 1: As Kenny McBride spun in his jail cell, hurling profanities
and shouting it's motherfucking payday, Detective Hooper and Prosecutor Hubbard
were left to nothing but questions. They had a crime
scene soaked in rage, a headless grandmother, and a suspect
grinning through the madness. They knew how it all ends.
But the question that gripped temperance that morning, the one
no one could let go of, was why, and that
answer would be the hardest to find. Sixty five year
old widower Kenneth Reese had come home from his late
night shift to find his elderly mother in law decapitated
in the middle of his living room. Seventy nine year
old Nikki Gibson had been savagely murdered. Her face was
battered beyond recognition. Around her broken body lay the shattered
remains of a ceramic piggy bank and a metal baby
Git covered in blood. Her head was sowed off and
thrown twenty yards down the back driveway. Kenneth's son, Kenny McBride,
was their number one suspect. He had been home with
Nicky all night. Why Kenny would turn on the feeble
seventy nine year old woman with such fury it made
no sense. So if he did murder and decapitate her,
that made it all the more terrifying. When police interviewed
Kenneth the father, he explained what happened. After he found
Nicky's decapitated corpse in his living room, he called out
for his son, Kenny. Moments later, Kenny came downstairs. He
was acting strange, just completely off. Kenneth had never seen
him like this, but he knew his son had a
history of meth abuse. Immediately, he suspected that he'd relapsed.
He kept pressing him what happened, but Kenny stayed blank, emotionless.
He claimed he had no idea, said he'd been upstairs
for hours. As they waited for police, a patrol car
sped past the house, missing the address. Kenny turned to
his father, his voice low and eerie, and he said
they'll be back by the time Kenny hit the jail cell,
he was gone. Mental detachment had turned into full blown madness.
Officers tried to talk to him, but he didn't listen,
or couldn't listen. He just stared wide eyed and twitchy.
Then he erupted into streams of gibberish and nonsense.
Speaker 2: We thought that he was under the influence of some
mine altering drug, whether that be bath salts. You know,
because it as investigator, we've seen the basic heroin or
math or you know this, that this had risen to
the level that something we hadn't seen. So that's why
we took that extra step, sending the blood out for
the exotic things like bath salts or K two or
any of those other designer drugs.
Speaker 1: As Detective Hooper waited for the toxicology reports to come back,
they got to work figuring out what had happened that day.
Speaker 2: Kenneth had, I believe a little bit of running to
do before work, you know, run to the gas station
just down the road. It's probably only half a mile,
quarter or three quarters a mile down the road. Right
across the streets a Dollar General and then the post
office right there. So they're all right there down the road,
I know. They Kenneth dropped off Kenny at the dollar
store Dollar General, where he ended up getting a one
hundred dollars Green Dot card.
Speaker 1: A Green Dot card is a prepaid debit card. Kenny
purchased one and for what. Detective Hooper doesn't know, you know, he's.
Speaker 2: There for a few minutes. Kenneth does his running, picks
them back up, and takes them back home, and shortly thereafter,
Kenneth ends up leaving for work.
Speaker 1: Kenneth told the police that when he and Kenny return home,
Nicky wasn't there. She had left with her son to
run an errand you.
Speaker 2: Know, and investigating a case like this, a timeline is crucial,
and so in talking with the family members, we had
learned that she was with her son, Billy, you know,
dropping off a mattress at a storage place. So we
go to the storage place, we'd get the video footage
confirm all of that.
Speaker 1: Nicki's son then drove the two of them back to
Kenneth's house, where Kenny was the only one there. Nicki's
son walked her inside because she'd been having trouble with
the stairs lately. Kenny was in the kitchen When they
arrived inside, Nicki noticed that a case of water she'd
purchased that morning was missing, so she asked Kenny if
he knew where it was. That's when Nicki's son said
that Kenny's whole demeanor changed. He became defensive and irritated.
It got to the point where Nicki's son suggested that
Nicky stay the evening at his house, but she refused.
Speaker 2: I know that when investigators talked with Billy the son,
he was truly broken up because he wanted her to
come with them, you know, not stay there, and so
he was really really upset about that.
Speaker 1: So Nicki's son left around two thirty pm that afternoon
with a bad feeling in his stomach. But what was
he going to do? His mother was an adult, She
could make her own decisions, and she wanted to stay there.
What happened in those next twelve hours was a mystery,
and as much as Kenny had tried to cover his tracks,
he also had left physical clues that solidified as guilt.
Speaker 2: In investigating the bathroom, they found a bloody I believe
it was home print that matched Kenny's and it was
in Nicky's blood.
Speaker 5: In the bathroom where that bloody palm print was located
was a pair of genes. They were in a crumpled pile.
Kenneth Reas advised that they were not his genes and
that he believed they were Kenny McBride's jeans. Those genes
had blood kind of smeared on the front. If you
could imagine your hands are covered in blood and you
kind of wipe them on your size on the front
of your gens to kind of get rid of the blood.
We found some blood present on the front of the genes.
There was also some blood spatter located on the backside
of the genes. DNA analysis was done on those genes
and it was determined that the blood flocated on the
genes belonged to ce Celia Gibson.
Speaker 1: Then they tested the waistband of those genes for traces
of DNA.
Speaker 5: The inside of the waistband did determine that there was
a mixture of DNA that included Kenny McBride's DNA.
Speaker 1: Kenny's DNA was also found on a bloody sweater as
well as that metal baby gate that was found broken
next to Nicky's body. Remember, Kenny used various objects to
kill Nicky, namely a piggy bank and a metal baby gate.
Speaker 5: The baby gate had been a fix to that wall
for years. The baby gate was a very strong, sturdy
metal object. It was so carefully placed on the wall
that actually left a mark on the wall when it
was pulled off the wall by Kenny McBride, So that
would have taken some force and some time to remove
that baby gate.
Speaker 1: Whatever happened between Nicky and Kenny that evening had escalated
to the point where Kenny was so out of his
that he ripped a metal baby git off the wall
that had been screwed on there for years. That takes
a lot of force to do that. The drywall screws
were pretty substantial. It's not only a test of how
physically strong Kenny was, but the amount of psychotic adrenaline
rushing through him.
Speaker 5: The medical examiner testified that there were at least nineteen
separate blows with multiple objects. The medical examiner testified that
the two black eyes that she sustained were likely due
to fists. Obviously the baby gate was used, you also
had the piggybank being used.
Speaker 1: He stormed through the house, zeroing in on a specific piggybank,
one that had belonged to Nicky's late daughter, Kenneth's beloved wife,
and he smashed it over Nicky's head.
Speaker 5: So that had significant value to both Kenneth Reese and
societ or Nicki Gibson. So we believe that was an
item potentially selected on purpose because of the significant value
it had to the family.
Speaker 1: According to the medical examiner, this was no fight, It
was a slaughter. Nicki barely defended herself. The few defensive
wounds she had made that heartbreakingly clear. But how could
she defend herself. Kenny stood five to ten, nearly two
hundred pounds, hardened by years of prison workouts. Nicki was
seventy nine, frail and defenseless the moment he attacked, the
outcome was inevitable. Just imagine or terror, knowing there was
no escape, no hope. Like a fragile bird caught in
the jaws of a bobcat, she never stood a chance.
This wasn't just premeditated, It was deeply personal, and in
the end the beheading set at all It was Kenny's loudest,
cruelest message.
Speaker 5: We also proved that he went to the kitchen and
grabbed three knives that were inside drawers. To complete some
of the acts of a.
Speaker 1: Saw, Kenny grabbed three knives from the kitchen, including an
Appalachian bread saw. Any sourdough ladies out there, yeah, you
know what this knife is, but for the rest of you,
it's a serrated knife with a wooden bowed handle that
makes it easy to cut slices of freshly baked bread.
Speaker 5: It would have taken a significant amount of force in time,
I mean, to the point where he actually broke a knife,
broke one of the knives trying to decapitate the victim.
He had callouses on his hand, which presumably are from
the repeated sambers.
Speaker 1: Kenny sat there sawing at Nicky's neck until the bread
knife broke, then he moved on to the other weapons.
It took hours to get through her thick flesh, the muscle,
the tenons, and the bone.
Speaker 5: This would have taken a lot of work to accomplish
the completely heading and then to kind of toss it
out the door to the point where it bounced on
concrete and just laid there. It's unfathomable. I think it's
very difficult for most of us to wrap our head
around why someone would do this to another person, a
vulnerable elderly woman.
Speaker 1: The answer had to be drugs. Detective Hooper just needed
to know exactly what. Then the toxicology report came back.
Speaker 2: We did draws blood, send it off to the crime lab,
and we sent it off to a secondary lab for
those exotic drugs that the main lab doesn't test. And
we came back with negative results.
Speaker 1: No drugs, no alcohol, not an iota of any substance
in his system.
Speaker 5: And getting those test results in seeing that he was
perfectly sober.
Speaker 4: You know, it.
Speaker 5: Kind of blows your mind.
Speaker 2: And so that only left us to believe that it
was strictly rage.
Speaker 1: Rage But for what what could this sweet, loving grandmother
have possibly done to Kenny? Surely it wasn't over the
water bottles. Nicky was adored by her family, her community,
and everyone who knew her. She had fifteen grandchildren and
over twenty great grandchildren. They all loved her. She spent
her days knitting, beating, cross stitching, and even building furniture.
Her work was a hit at local craft shows. Even
in her later years, she stayed busy helping out at
a senior center, running errands and pitching in wherever she could.
Speaker 5: Everyone described her as extremely loving. She was very close
with her grandchildren, sounded like she showered them with gifts,
very very close with her family at least said a
bad word about her. Throughout the whole.
Speaker 1: Case, people spoke of Nikki with warmth, always with love,
never an ounce of malice. So what the hell happened?
Speaker 2: I only can go off of the theory that we
always had that he just snapped and beat her to
death for some small, small reason, that he believed that
she did him wrong, she wronged him in some way,
that he snapped.
Speaker 1: There were only two people in the house that night,
One was dead and the other was in jail having
a mental breakdown. The police had to use witnesses from
the family and the mess of clues at the scene.
The puzzle was incomplete, but Detective Hooper and Prosecutor Hubbard
knew that the truth was hidden somewhere in that house.
The answer didn't jump out at first, but when it did,
it was obvious. Beneath Nicky's lifeless body, buried in blood,
lay one last clue. Six photographs, innocent faces of children,
all but one ripped to shreds. And these weren't just
any children. They were Nicky's grandkids and they were also
connected to Kenny. To understand why, you have to know
the tangled story behind this family. You see, Nicky's daughter,
Deborah Reyes, had been Kenneth's second wife, which meant that
Nicky wasn't Kenny McBride's blood relative, but she had been
on the periphery of his life for a long time.
Though they were not close, she was technically his step grandmother.
Speaker 5: Kenny McBride was a product of Kenneth Rees and another
woman They had separated, Honey McBride primarily as best weekends.
How lived with his mother, didn't have a super close
relationship with his father, Kenneth.
Speaker 1: Kenneth married a second wife, Deborah, in nineteen eighty five,
when Kenny was about ten years old. Kenny was left
alone to be raised by his single mother while his
father started a new family. Kenneth and Deborah had three
children together and remained deeply in love until the day
Deborah died of cancer in twenty nineteen. Kenny had never
been a true part of their family. He was the outcast,
the black sheep, the stained reminder of Kenneth's first failed marriage.
By the time he became an adult, he was getting
in trouble a lot.
Speaker 5: From nineteen ninety two on, we started seeing a history
of criminality on the part of Kenny McBride, assault of history,
history of felonious assault, which in Michigan means assault with
a dangerous weapon. So he was in and out of trouble,
you know. I remember him.
Speaker 2: I worked in the jail for approximately six years, him
coming in and out for various domestic issues, drug charges, this,
that and the other, and him going to prison. So
I think that drug use in you know, going to
prison probably put that strain on that relationship to where
it was separated.
Speaker 1: Kenny had always been on the outside. A lifetime of
bad choices and burned bridges had pushed him far from
his father.
Speaker 2: Kenneth was estrange from Kenny for about fifteen years and
then all of a sudden, like six or seven months prior,
Kenny and Kenneth trying to get that father son relationship going,
so Kenneth allows Kenny to move in with him and
his mother in law, Nicki Gibson.
Speaker 1: So, at age forty four, Kenny found himself under his
father's roof, not as a son coming home, but as
a burden, like some wayward child, forced to tuck himself
into a life that had gone on perfectly well without him.
Speaker 5: After Deborah's death, Kenny McBride is the release from incarceration
he's coming around more frequently. This all occurred during the
COVID pandemic, and at some point in time Kenny McBride
found himself homeless and had convinced Kenneth Reese to allow
him to temporarily reside in the home.
Speaker 1: Kenny and Nicky shared a deep bond forged in grief.
He had lost his wife, she had lost her daughter.
They leaned on one another close through sorrow. Kenny didn't
fit into that he never had. Moving in didn't change anything.
It only magnified how far removed he really was, how
pathetic he must have felt watching from the outside, living
in a house where he was little more than a
tolerated shadow. Because he had been in and out of
prison most of his life, that didn't just affect his
relationship with his own father, but also his relationship as
a father.
Speaker 5: Kenny had two children with the same woman. She was
a lovely lady. The kids were fantastic. They were both
in their early twenties, very successful in college. They both
testified during the trial he had a very strange relationship
with both of those children. Those two children had a
alf sibling, which was their biological mothers along with her
current husband. He was a little bit younger.
Speaker 1: Kenny was your quintessential deadbeat father, in and out of jail,
on and off drugs, and living a generally selfish lifestyle
that put his own needs above the needs of his
innocent children. And miraculously, his children had grown into accomplished
young adults no thanks to him, kudos to their mother.
Speaker 5: By the way, Kenny McBride had virtually no relationship with
his biological children. He would randomly Facebook message both of
his children. His son indicated that he never would respond
or even read those messages. His daughter did indicate that
she would periodically respond. I believe it was in twenty
nineteen that Hennis Reese's wife, Debbie, had passed away. I
believe both the children testified that Kenny McBride came to
the funeral. His son refused to see him and indicated
he actually left the wake and sat in his car
because he didn't want to have any contact with Kenny McBride.
Speaker 1: Kenny's son made it clear with his actions that he
wanted nothing to do with his father, but his daughter
was slightly more receptive to giving him a chance.
Speaker 5: Kenny McBride's daughter agreed to a meeting a reunification shortly
before Debbie's death. She agreed to meet with Kenny McBride
at the hospital back in twenty nineteen, and she had
contact with him again at the wake, and they had
been communicating periodically via Facebook. So Kenny McBride had developed
started developing a relationship with his daughter, whereas his son
refused to have any communication with him.
Speaker 1: All this messy, awkward reunification was unfolding while Deborah was dying.
A long brutal battle with cancer was coming to its
heartbreaking end. For Kenneth and Nicky, the focus was where
it should have been, on Deborah in her final days
and saying goodbye, but not for Kenny. At the worst
possible moment, he came waltzing back in asking for a
place to stay, stirring up all drama, picking fights about
his kids, turning Deborah's funeral into another chapter of his chaos.
It was all just selfish and for Kenneth and Nicki
it was a cruel distraction from the deepest grief of
their lives. But maybe he did this with malice because
Kenny's kids had always maintained a good relationship with Kenneth
and Nicky.
Speaker 2: If Kenny's children were there, she would treat them just
like her own grandchildren. She loved all of her grandchildren.
Speaker 1: There were multiple photographs under Nicky's body. Two of them
were of Kenny's son, the one who refused to have
any contact with them. Those pictures had been torn to shreds,
as if whoever did this was trying to erase that
person from existence. The other photograph, which was still intact,
was of Kenny's daughter, his favorite, the one who actually
responded to his Facebook messages.
Speaker 5: Because of the fact that they're located partially under the body,
near the body, they're covered in blood. The photograph of
Kenny McBride's daughter that was spared was sitting on a
chair and there was droplets of blood on the photograph itself,
so we know they played a key role in whatever
happened that day.
Speaker 1: His kids. Kenny's a wound that would never heal. These
torn photographs weren't random violence. They were deliberate Kenny wasn't
just killing Nicky. He was trying to wipe out everything
she represented, love, family, connection, things he never truly had,
things he never truly understood. Nicky was defenseless, barely able
to walk without help. One punch would have ended it,
but Kenny didn't stop at that. He made her a
target for all of her failures. He used sentimental objects
to try and hurt her, as if tearing apart what
she loved made the attack worse. He punched her eyes
until they bled. He kicked her again and again. He
unleashed years of bitterness and self loathing onto her tiny,
helpless frame, and when that wasn't enough, he cut off
her head.
Speaker 2: The decapitation was an afterthought, and so I don't know
if the decapitation was it was a statement of power
over the body, or if it was something to make
himself look crazier. My running theory is that, you know,
he I think he stepped back and he thought for
a second, Oh no, I just beat this old woman
to death. How can I get out from underneath this?
Because afterwards he had enough thought to take a shower,
clean all the blood off of himself, make sure he
didn't have a bloody clothing on, and even make himself
a sandwich. Yeah, there was a half eaten sandwich in
the kitchen that he had made.
Speaker 1: But no one really knew what fueled the horror that night,
Cold calculated evil, or the moment a broken man finally
comes undone. Kenny wasn't giving answers, and he only unraveled
more with every passing day behind bars. But soon he'd
have to face it all on the stand and under
the cold scrutiny of psychological experts. The real story was
going to come out. What they would uncover wouldn't just
explain what happened, It would change everything. Forty four year
old Kenny McBride murdered his stepgrandmother, Nicki Gibson, after an
alleged fight over his estranged children. Beneath Nicky's bludgeoned body,
detectives found torn family photos the only clue as to
what drove Kenny to rage, murder, and decapitation. In jail,
Kenny came undone. Was this a desperate performance, a last
ditch attempt of fake insanity and dodge accountability, or was
it real? Had Kenny truly snapped? Was his mind really fractured?
Beyond repair. Prosecutor Leah Hubbard knew that she was staring
down the barrel of a devastating and very public trial,
nothing like she'd ever experienced before. In this small county
that averaged one homicide a year. The news would be
all over this. Nikki's family wanted justice. She had to
get Kenny the maximum.
Speaker 5: We wanted to prove that this was a premeditated first
degree murder. That charge carries life without the possibility of
parole in the state of Michigan. In the state of Michigan,
there has to be an opportunity for a second look,
just long enough to consider and contemplate your actions.
Speaker 1: They went for the big guns and soon decided to
up the charge and go after Kenny McBride for open murder.
Speaker 5: In the state of Michigan, we are permitted to charge
someone with open murder. Open murder first degree premeditated murder.
It includes first degree felony murder meaning a murder that
happened during the commission of a specific felony, and it
also includes second degree murder, so your typical rageful murder
without evidence of premeditation. It is then up to the
jury to decide where they want to end up.
Speaker 1: This charge was brilliant. It was kind of like throwing
all the murder charges at the wall and seeing what's stuck.
For the jury, Kenny wouldn't stand a chance.
Speaker 5: It's really nice because it gives the jury some options. Now,
we don't always charge murders that way, but this is
the perfect example of a murder that would fit the
open murder category quite well. The jury could determine, based
on our theory that there was sufficient premeditation. If the
jury didn't find premeditation, they still could have convicted him
of second degree murder based on this rageful heat of
the moment crime of passion killing.
Speaker 1: Prosecutors were also able to tack on one more charge
of habitual offender to really nail Kenny's coffin.
Speaker 5: So the habitual offender notice is essentially a three strikes
year out rule for every felony that you commit. If
they're charged as a habitual offender, it can increase both
their minimum sentence and their maximum sentence.
Speaker 1: Kenny had calmed down in jail, and now with a
public defender by his side, he was starting to talk
like a human being. He soon revealed his side of
what happened that night. Kenny's defense was simple. He didn't
do it, basically.
Speaker 2: Saying that, no, somebody can't come over to the house
and I don't know what happened.
Speaker 1: That was his defense. Someone else came to the home,
someone who he owed money to, and killed Nicky. But
Kenny was lucky. He got a solid public defender, and
he made sure to put Kenny's competency and mental state
to the test before the trial started. After all, if
he was deemed insane by the legal system and this
whole trial could go completely side ways.
Speaker 5: The defense attorney requested two types of evaluations, the first
being a competency evaluation. A competency evaluation determines whether or
not you are competent at the time you stand trial,
So are you able to appropriately participate and actively participate
in your defense? Are you able to make decisions mindful
decisions about your case with the assistance of legal counsel.
The second evaluation requested by mister mcdride's attorney was an
evaluation as to criminal responsibility. In Michigan, criminal responsibility is
an evaluation determined did you understand the consequences of your
actions at the time that you committed the crime. Did
you know the difference between right and wrong? So when
you talk about not guilty by legal insanity, you're talking
about a criminal responsibility issue.
Speaker 1: Kenny was put through the psychological ringer, if you will,
endless evaluations to has to sanity, his competence, and whether
he even grasped what he'd done. Early on, Detective Hooper
believed drugs fueled this murder, but the toxicology report shattered
that theory. So if it wasn't drugs, was it madness?
Speaker 5: Both the criminal responsibility and the competency evaluations came back
within normal ranges. It was determined that he was competent
to stand trial and that he, if he committed the crimes,
that he was criminally responsible.
Speaker 1: Kenny wasn't insane, He knew right from wrong. He was competent.
All that made it worse. He wasn't crazy, He was
just evil. He was a man with something so wrong
inside of him that it would take much more than
a competency evaluation to figure him out. Not only was
Kenny deemed competent to stand trial, but he also decided
that he would talk. He was going to testify in
his own defense, him.
Speaker 2: Taking the stand. You know, I don't know if he's
got this elevated sense of self or whatnot, but it
definitely didn't do him any favors.
Speaker 1: In the spring of twenty twenty one, about a year
after this brutal murder, Kenny McBride walked into the Monroe
County courtroom, ready to face a jury of his peers.
His gray hair was thinning, cropped short to match his
patchy beard. Only the prison tattoos snaking up his neck
set him apart from every other forgettable, middle aged white
felon we've covered on this show. Although the prosecutors were
confident that they had enough physical evidence to win, they
struggled with that one missing piece.
Speaker 5: We were worried about a couple things, one being the motive.
We still to this day can't articulate exactly what caused
Kenny McBride to act so ragefully against the innocent, vulnerable adult. So,
you know, we had the family strife, but you know,
the jury wants to hear that. They want to understand
the whole story, and we weren't able to explain in
detail exactly what happened.
Speaker 1: They might not have known every word exchanged between Nicky
and Kenny that night, but they knew enough. Prosecutor Hubbard's
mission was clear. On cross examination, she planned to tear
through the cracks in Kenny's story. So Kenny got up
on the stand and calmly gave his side of the story.
Speaker 5: Kenny McBride had indicated that he was home that evening,
that he was upstairs in his bedroom, and that he
had the sleep app on, that he was quote unquote sleeping,
and that he didn't really hear anything. However, he had
also speculated that there were certain people that were out
to get him. He didn't really articulate who or why.
In fact, I believe, if I recall correctly, I asked
him who when he refused to answer the question. So
he had articulated that these people were out to get him,
and that he that they must have they must have
hurt Nicki Gibson to get back at him, or maybe
even they thought that Nicki Gibson was him.
Speaker 1: But the story made no sense, and Prosecutor Hubbard and
Detective Hooper were able to prove it. First off the
sleep app he said he didn't hear a violent break
in beating and the capitation due to his zen sleep app.
Speaker 5: So this was wood floors throughout the home. We actually
went out to the crime scene, I the co prosecutor
who handled the case and I, so we had a
good idea of the layout of the home, and the
living room was located really directly underneath where his bedroom
would have been. So with the wood floors and the
echoing in the home, there's just absolutely no way that
someone could have been such a close proximity away from
this brutal, horrific murder involving a smash, piggy bank, a
metal baby gate, you know, nineteen separate blows, and not
hear anything.
Speaker 1: Then there was also the fact that Kenny's bedroom door
was unable to close.
Speaker 5: We also noted in some of the photographs that his
bedroom door had multiple shoelaces and other ties around it,
so it was unable to even close. So the idea
that he's upstairs with a door that's not able to
even close all the way and that he completely doesn't
hear this brutal murder just a couple feet away was ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Kenny claimed that he was using a sleep ap to
rest during the entire time the murder happened, but his
phone said otherwise. In fact, there was no sleep apup
in case you didn't figure that part out, in case
you're maybe a little slow or something. But he was
active on Facebook messenger all night, talking intensely with a
particular woman, except for a short window of time where
his messages went unread.
Speaker 2: There was twenty seven unread and so I mean it
was our theory that around that time between those unread
messages there was no active interaction with his phone. So
either a he was committing to homicide, be cleaning up
the scene, cleaning himself up.
Speaker 1: After that window of unread messages, he resumed his activity
and started messaging another old friend.
Speaker 2: He sent her a weird one later in the evening,
I think, around midnight, like are you alive? And she
res finds, yeah, are you and he typed something. Unfortunately
he deleted it. We don't know what it was. She
didn't know what it was.
Speaker 1: Detective Hooper discovered something else that pointed to Kenny as well,
and not some random person that broke into the house
and did this while Kenny was sleeping. Nicky always wore
a life alert pendant around her neck, one of those
simple devices seniors use so that if you fall the
authorities are alerted when her body was found.
Speaker 2: It was gone two weeks after the homicide all of
a sudden that alerted the alert.
Speaker 1: Pendant was soon found at a plant nursery down the road.
Speaker 2: What had happened was a tree trimming crew had brought
fresh trimmings in for the nursery and dumped it on
top of what we believe was the pendant, which caused
it to activate. It had a very weak GPS signal
that it gave like a sixty three meter hit, which
wasn't really good. And so the pendant, however, when it
has a weak GPS signal, would touch Wi fis in
the area and would you know, to try to boost
the signal. And so we went in the area of
the nursery and went to people's houses and this, that
and the other. And so the pendant had mac addresses
that it connected to, and we went and found the
houses where it was connected to the Wi Fi.
Speaker 1: The pendant made a clear path from Kenneth's house to
the nursery, bouncing off Wi Fi signals along the way.
A random stranger wouldn't have known to take that off
of Nikki, but Kenny knew she wore it and getting
rid of it bottom some time. If he had left
it honor, the police would have arrived the minute she
fell from his first blow. Detective Hooper thinks that Kenny
killed her, then turned it off and ditched it at
the nursery. He never expected it to activate again, So
Leah brought this all up. When Kenny was on the stand,
she looked him dead in the eye and poked holes
in his story like a sadist stuffing salt in an
open wound. Then when that wasn't enough, she hit him
where she knew it would really sting his inadequacy as
a father.
Speaker 5: I asked a lot of questions about his children, and
he did acknowledge that he had a better relationship with
one with the female child over the male child. And
he got a little frustrated at that point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, to everyone's surprise, he kept us cool. No screaming,
no cursing, no wincing. He remained calm. Prosecutor Hubbard wanted
Kenny to get angry. She wanted rage, She wanted you
can't handle the truth moment, you know what I mean.
She tried her best to poke the bear so that
Kenny would slip up for the jury, but he was
as steady as a rock, apparently having rehearsed for this moment.
You see, crazy people can still be manipulative. In fact,
they usually go hand in hand. Anytime Kenny got frustrated,
he reeled it back quickly, like someone or some thing
had tied an invisible string to the normal side of
his brain and tugged on it. Maybe that thing was
the realization that if he didn't act right right now,
he'd go to prison forever. That's enough to scare you
out of your alleged mental illness, isn't it.
Speaker 5: And one of my goals was to get him frustrated
or flustered so we could see the real Kenny McBride,
And I have to give him credit. He did a
great job keeping it under control the most part.
Speaker 1: Even during closing arguments and deliberation, Kenny remained steady. In fact,
he barely flinched when they read the verdict guilty. The
prison life he thought he had escaped was calling him
back for good. Kenny had tried to hold it together
that trial. He kept his temper and check, playing the
part of the calm, rational man, but it was obviously
just an act. Beneath the surface. Rage boiled for that
month before sentencing, he stewed behind bars, resentment building like
pressure in a sealed valve. Then when it came time
to face the judge and hear his fate, Kenny just
couldn't hold it anymore. What entered the courtroom that day
wasn't a misunderstood man. It was exactly who he had
always been. Violent, bitter and consumed by hate.
Speaker 5: I believe we saw the real Kenny McBride at sentencing
when he came in screaming, cursing, you know, expressing just rage.
I think that was the first time we really saw
Kenny McBride.
Speaker 1: The real Kenny came out when he knew he had
nothing more to lose. He sauntered into the courtroom in
his shackles, barking at the judge like they were about
to start a bar fight.
Speaker 5: I believe at one point in time he referred to
the judge as Captain Kangaroo. I know the Joseph had
some difficulty getting him to sit down and appear for sentencing.
He needed to be present of the cork of sentenced him,
so it was it was definitely challenging. It was somewhat
shocking after seeing him so composed during the trial.
Speaker 1: That's the most terrifying thing about someone like Kenny. He
can fake normal, He can sit still, speak calmly and
try to convince you he's just another lost soul. But
beneath that thin layer of control was something much more violent,
waiting for the moment it could break free. Kenny was
sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Today Kenny McBride sits in the Lakewood Correctional Facility. He
will be there until the day he dies. Thank god.
He showed no real remorse, took no responsibility, and wasted
no time flooding the courts with his laughable appeals.
Speaker 5: He cited multiple errors, namely that the jury made a
decision that was against the weight of the evidence, that
the court should have granted his motion to change venue,
and the Court of Appeals to that there was no
merit to any of his arguments. His case has been
the viction has been upheld, and at this point in
time he's exhausted most of his appellate rights.
Speaker 1: Justice may have been served, but it offered little comfort.
Kenny's life sentence couldn't erase what he took Nicki Gibson
was ripped from this world in a brutal and disgusting
act that still defies understanding for those who knew her
and worked on this case. The lack of answers cuts
almost as deep as the loss itself.
Speaker 2: Elderly and children and crimes against them are horrific. But
to be a totally innocent victim that was sticking out
for his children probably most likely and too. You know again,
the one thing that I'll never get out of my head,
like I told you earlier, is at fifteen yards from
the back door, that hair landing on that concrete, with
that hair impression in blood. You know, that's something that
I'd never forget.
Speaker 1: The way Nikki's head was discarded hunts both Detective Hooper
and Prosecutor Hubbard to this day.
Speaker 5: It was the eeriest part of the case, throwing that
head out the door like that. It's just the The
one part of the case is really stuck with all
of us is why and how and where he threw
it was right where Kenneth Reese would have drove his
car home. In fact, it's surprising that Kenneth rees missed
it on his way in but it was dark out,
so it just we'll never be able to understand or
wrap our head around why he did what he did.
Speaker 2: I don't think he's crazy. I think I think he
tried to manipulate the system afterwards to try to believe
that he was crazy.
Speaker 5: You know, I think it's human nature to try try
to want to explain why something happened, and to distinguish
ourselves from this person. Right, they were on drugs, their
mind was altered. They're different than us, you know. You
want to understand why this happened and be able to
wrap your head around why someone would.
Speaker 7: Act this way.
Speaker 5: And it's so easy to just try to blame it
on a substance because we can't understand why someone would
do something like this to another person. If you look
at everything, it is pretty clear that he intended this
rageful murder. The amount of different weapons that were used,
the amount of blows that she sustained, he could have
only had one purpose. She had a She had significant
bruising on her arms. You could see these deep purple
fingerprint marks on one of her arms. I mean, her
face was covered in bruises. The laceration to her one
of the lacerations to her lip area almost completely severed
her lip from her face. This was very intentional and
extremely brutal, and very hard to understand someone having this
amount of rage.
Speaker 1: Kenny McBride was a lifelong criminal. In nineteen ninety one,
under five different aliases, he'd racked up over thirty charges
in the Monroe County court system, not including Nicki Gibson's murder.
This was not the only place he lived. Who knows
how many other arrests he had under his belt in
other counties. Kenny McBride was just a stain on society.
He didn't fall through the cracks. He lived in them,
and that was his own choice. In his final fuck
you to the family he felt had cast him aside,
he did the unthinkable to a defenseless seventy nine year
old woman. But this wasn't really about Nicky. Her murder
was personal, but not in the way it seemed. It
was calculated, a cruel, symbolic act, meant to strike at
those in his family who had pushed Kenny aside, at
least in his own mind. For Kenny, life had always
been about resentment. He walked through it convinced he was
owed love, loyalty and respect, yet he gave nothing in return.
He couldn't hold a job, he couldn't stay sober, he
couldn't show up for his own children. And as the
world moved on, leaving him in the dust, that bitterness
hardened into something else. He didn't seek redemption, even during
moments of sobriety, when the path to change stood open,
he veered away, clinging to his grudges. Kenny wasn't looking
for healing. He was looking for someone else to blame.
And when Nicki Gibson stepped up where he never did,
she became that target. He didn't hesitate when he attacked Nicki.
He destroyed a beautiful, loving grandmother simply because she said
something that made him see what a loser he truly was.
Sometimes we search for brokenness behind brutality. We want to
believe that evil wears a human face, that monsters are made,
not born. It makes things a lot easier that way,
But with Kenny, there is no such comfort. His final
act was not the cry of a lost man. It
was the declaration of one who chose darkness, who chose bitterness,
who chose revenge, and he wanted the world and his
own family to choke on it.
Speaker 6: Hi, Mike, this is Michelle.
Speaker 7: One day I was searching for our podcast to listen
to and came across this one.
Speaker 4: Decided to give it a chance, and.
Speaker 7: Your sarcastic comments totally drug me in. And I've listened
to every season, every episode, and I'm eager for more,
so keep up the work.
Speaker 4: Thanks,