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