Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Pathway Chili. I'm Robin, I'm Jules.
Speaker 2: And I'm Ashley. Let's dive right into this week's case.
Speaker 3: April sixteenth, two thousand and three, Kendall County, Texas, Fifty
Speaker 3: four year old Colonel Philip Schue, who works as a
Speaker 3: staff psychiatrist for the United States Air Force, leaves his
Speaker 3: residence to drive to work. Two and a half hours later,
Speaker 3: Colonel Shoe's car is seen driving erradically down the interstate
Speaker 3: before it crashes into some trees and Shoe is found
Speaker 3: dead in the ever seed. Even though his death is
Speaker 3: ruled to be a suicide, there are a number of
Speaker 3: suspicious discrepancies, as there's duct tape around his wristen feet,
Speaker 3: a large gash in his chest, and both of his
Speaker 3: nipples have been removed. There's suspicion that Sho's ex wife
Speaker 3: had him tortured and killed in order to cash in
Speaker 3: on some life insurance policies, but even though a judge
Speaker 3: eventually rules that she was the victim of a homicide,
Speaker 3: his official cause of death is never changed.
Speaker 1: After that, the path went chilly, So today we're going
Speaker 1: to be delving into one of the oddest mysteries we've
Speaker 1: ever covered the unexplained two thousand and three death of
Speaker 1: Colonel Philip Schue. We've explored a lot of cases in
Speaker 1: which a victim's death was ruled to be a suicide,
Speaker 1: even though there were a number of suspicious details which
Speaker 1: made their loved ones suspect foul play, But the circumstances
Speaker 1: of this case are so bizarre that it stands out
Speaker 1: from the pack. Colonel Phillips Sheue was a psychiatrist with
Speaker 1: the United States Air Force who was only months away
Speaker 1: from retirement and had future plans with his wife, Tracey.
Speaker 1: But after leaving his home one morning for what should
Speaker 1: have been a routine work day, he was killed in
Speaker 1: a car crash less than three hours later. But this
Speaker 1: was no ordinary car crash because when Scho's body was found,
Speaker 1: he had duct tape wrapped around his wrist and feet
Speaker 1: and a number of unexplained injuries which could not have
Speaker 1: been caused by the accident, as there was a large
Speaker 1: gash in his chest and both his nipples and a
Speaker 1: digit from one of his fingers had been removed and
Speaker 1: could not be found at the scene. And believe it
Speaker 1: or not, the authorities were inclined to believe that Colonel
Speaker 1: Chue inflicted these injuries on himself before intentionally crashing his
Speaker 1: car in a very elaborate suicide. Prior to his death,
Speaker 1: Shue had displayed a lot of paranoid and erratic behavior
Speaker 1: because he was convinced his ex wife was planning to
Speaker 1: kill him in order to cash in on some lucrative
Speaker 1: insurance policies she had taken out on his life as
Speaker 1: part of their divorce settlement. For this reason, some people,
Speaker 1: including Schu's widow, believed that his ex wife abducted and
Speaker 1: tortured him, and when he attempted to make an escape,
Speaker 1: he wound up losing control of his car it was
Speaker 1: killed in a fatal crash. At a civil trial years later,
Speaker 1: a judge publicly expressed his belief that Colonel Shoe was
Speaker 1: the victim of a homicide, but since he did not
Speaker 1: have the legal authority to make that ruling, the authority
Speaker 1: still officially consider Shoe's death to be a suicide. It's
Speaker 1: a pretty baffling case because even though there are a
Speaker 1: lot of odd discrepancies about the suicide ruling, which cannot
Speaker 1: be adequately explained, it's not that easy to come up
Speaker 1: with a scenario involving foul play which makes much sense either.
Speaker 1: So we're going to explore both sides on today's episode.
Speaker 2: So you said, we've talked about some odd cases before.
Speaker 2: This is already one of the more bizarre cases we've
Speaker 2: discussed because of the injuries to Colonel Shoe. When you
Speaker 2: look at the way he left the house and then
Speaker 2: is seen driving erradically down the highway, it does almost
Speaker 2: seem like he's having an altercation with somebody, and when
Speaker 2: you look at his injuries, it would appear so as well.
Speaker 2: But then there's the question if the car crashes, how
Speaker 2: does the person who's attacking him guarantee that they're going
Speaker 2: to get out right or they're going to get away
Speaker 2: And there's no sign of another individual. No one sees
Speaker 2: someone fleeing from the car, but someone had to have
Speaker 2: gotten into a argument with him or injured him, or
Speaker 2: he completed these injuries elsewhere or through his nipples out
Speaker 2: the window. I mean, it seems incredibly bizarre if this
Speaker 2: is a stage suicide because of the way his body's found.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is one of the biggest cases I can
Speaker 1: think of where the timeline is so crucial. Because we
Speaker 1: have a window of nearly three hours where Colonel Shoes
Speaker 1: whereabouts are on accounted for, and to this day they've
Speaker 1: never been able to figure out where he was and
Speaker 1: what happened to him. So, either he was abducted and
Speaker 1: someone was torturing him and he managed to make an
Speaker 1: escape before he crashed his car, or he just drove
Speaker 1: to some remote area and was doing stuff like cutting
Speaker 1: off his own nipples and then just decided to crash
Speaker 1: his intentionally. And it's just so wild that all this
Speaker 1: time has passed and no one has been able to
Speaker 1: find any conclusive evidence of where he was during that
Speaker 1: window of time.
Speaker 3: Was he missing an entire finger or just like a
Speaker 3: partial finger.
Speaker 1: A partial finger, like a digit on one of his fingers,
Speaker 1: like the top part.
Speaker 2: So for me, when you look at this, did his
Speaker 2: wife say that he left and was agitated.
Speaker 1: At that time?
Speaker 4: Or was it a pretty normal morning?
Speaker 2: And does it take three hours to get to work
Speaker 2: or should he have been at work pretty quickly?
Speaker 1: He should have been at work within an hour or so.
Speaker 1: And as far as his wife was concerned, he seemed
Speaker 1: perfectly normal that morning. There was no indication that he
Speaker 1: was having any mental health problems and he didn't arrive
Speaker 1: at work, so it seems apparent that something happened before
Speaker 1: he made it there. But was he abducted or he
Speaker 1: just decided to do this to himself.
Speaker 3: Our story begins in Kendall County, Texas, in two thousand
Speaker 3: and three, and our central figure is fifty four year
Speaker 3: old Philip Michael Schue, who goes by the name Phil.
Speaker 3: Phil lives just outside the town of Bourne with his wife,
Speaker 3: Tracy Shoe, and holds the rank of colonel in the
Speaker 3: United States Air Force. Born in Brooksville, Ohio, Phil joined
Speaker 3: the Air Force in nineteen seventy and served as a
Speaker 3: navigator for four years, but had to cut his career
Speaker 3: short after he was diagnosed with Minier's disease, a disorder
Speaker 3: which was caused by the build up of fluid in
Speaker 3: the chambers of the inner ear. As a result, Phil
Speaker 3: had several episodes in which he experienced a sudden loss
Speaker 3: of consciousness, and of course, this made him too much
Speaker 3: of a liability to be an aviator. After leaving the
Speaker 3: Air Force for ten years, Phil trained to become a
Speaker 3: physician's assistant and completed medical school before he was accepted
Speaker 3: into a four year residency program at the Wright Patterson
Speaker 3: Air Force Medical Center in Dayton, Ohio. Upon completion of
Speaker 3: this program, he was assigned to Eggland Air Force Base
Speaker 3: in Florida and became their chief medical director of impatient
Speaker 3: mental health. It was here where Phil became acquainted with
Speaker 3: his future wife, Tracy, who was assigned there as an
Speaker 3: Air Force forced nurse, and they gradually began a relationship.
Speaker 3: During this time period, Phil was legally separated from his
Speaker 3: first wife, Nancy, whom he had originally married back in
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy. The couple were high school sweethearts, but Phil
Speaker 3: would later say that there was no real love or
Speaker 3: compatibility in their relationship, and he only agreed to marry
Speaker 3: Nancy because she was six months pregnant at the time.
Speaker 3: She soon gave birth to a son named Jeffrey, though
Speaker 3: many people noticed that he did not appear to look
Speaker 3: all that much like Phil. At the time, Nancy had
Speaker 3: supposedly been carrying on an affair with another man, but
Speaker 3: Phil never asked for any paternity testing to confirm that
Speaker 3: he was Jeffrey's biological father, and raised him as if
Speaker 3: he were his own son. Even though Phil and Nancy's
Speaker 3: marriage had completely fallen apart by the end of the
Speaker 3: nineteen eighties. Their divorce was not actually finalized until nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety two, as Phil wanted to complete his service commitment
Speaker 3: and ensure that Nancy, who was unemployed at the time,
Speaker 3: would still be allowed to retain all of his military benefits.
Speaker 3: By this point, Phil was already deeply involved in his
Speaker 3: relationship with Tracy, and they would get married less than
Speaker 3: one year following the divorce. Ten years later, Phil and
Speaker 3: Tracy were living together in Kendall County, Texas, as he
Speaker 3: was assigned to work as a staff psychiatrist aerospace medicine
Speaker 3: physician at the Wilford Hall Medical Center located at Lackland
Speaker 3: Air Force Base in San Antonio. The Shoes had made
Speaker 3: plans for the future, as Phil was finally going to
Speaker 3: retire from the Air Force. During the fall, he was
Speaker 3: accepted into a forensic psychiatry fellowship program at the University
Speaker 3: of Alabama, and the couple had already put a down
Speaker 3: payment on a new lakefront home near Birmingham.
Speaker 2: Here's what's so interesting with Colonel Shoe is that he
Speaker 2: is a psychiatrist and he's head of the mental health
Speaker 2: facility at a military base, he's pursuing even more education
Speaker 2: and forensic psychiatry following his retirement. And so if you're
Speaker 2: talking about mental health episode and something that would cause
Speaker 2: you to stage just suicide so elaborate, you would think
Speaker 2: that Phil alone would actually be able to say, Hey,
Speaker 2: I'm struggling right, I'm showing signs of X, Y and
Speaker 2: Z diagnoses and I need help. And even if he
Speaker 2: wasn't going outside of his practice to seek professional help,
Speaker 2: he and his wife should have had many discussions where
Speaker 2: he was talking about his own mental health. And if
Speaker 2: I don't know, I just don't think that someone that
Speaker 2: was a psychiatrist could be pursuing so many big things
Speaker 2: and have such a significant break so quickly. Yes, he
Speaker 2: was paranoid about his ex wife, as you alluded to
Speaker 2: in the intro, but you would think there was a
Speaker 2: rapid decline or you would see signs pointing to this
Speaker 2: mental health episode, and that Phil himself would likely have
Speaker 2: noticed it as well, wouldn't you.
Speaker 1: Oh Yeah, And as we're going to talk about, Phil
Speaker 1: was seeing a psychiatrist on his own because he did
Speaker 1: have a few issues with depression and anxiety, but it
Speaker 1: didn't really sound like he was depressed enough that he
Speaker 1: appeared to be suicidal, and not nearly at the point
Speaker 1: where he would commit an elaborate suicide by doing stuff
Speaker 1: like cutting off his own nipples and a piece of
Speaker 1: his finger. And like we just said, they had plans
Speaker 1: for the future, they were planning to do a They
Speaker 1: just did a down payment on a new home in Alabama.
Speaker 1: So even though you can never really predict if someone
Speaker 1: is going to be suicidal, there just aren't signs here
Speaker 1: that he would be capable of doing what they accused
Speaker 1: him of.
Speaker 2: And also, don't you normally see that people who are
Speaker 2: in mental health professions, they actually are encouraged to seek
Speaker 2: help because you're dealing with other patients who have often
Speaker 2: heavy trauma and all kinds of issues that they're coming
Speaker 2: to you for. And so often I've heard that therapist counselors, psychiatrists, psychologists,
Speaker 2: that a lot of them is kind of routine to
Speaker 2: go ahead and see another specialist because you're dealing with
Speaker 2: that mental health crisis all the time in your professional life.
Speaker 3: That is definitely true. But if either of you heard
Speaker 3: of case Hughes, do you know who he is?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 1: I don't think so.
Speaker 3: No, he's a neuroscientist. He's got a bunch of degrees.
Speaker 3: He trains all the three letter agencies military on like
Speaker 3: behavioral profiling, and that's his area of expertise. He's thought
Speaker 3: to be like the top profiler in the world. And
Speaker 3: he was having episodes for three years where he didn't
Speaker 3: even realize what was happening. He was just experiencing just
Speaker 3: this mental decline. But he went back and watched all
Speaker 3: these videos where he was guesting on other people's youtubes.
Speaker 3: He's got a really popular they've got like a million
Speaker 3: subscribers on YouTube's called the Behavioral Panel. They read body
Speaker 3: language and they do statement analysis and that type of
Speaker 3: a thing, and it's really good if anyone's interested. But
Speaker 3: he would go on these YouTube videos and he would
Speaker 3: like gray out. He wouldn't realize that he was having
Speaker 3: these moments where he was having a seizure. Essentially, they'd
Speaker 3: be like not like a grand Mall seizure, they're like
Speaker 3: these little seizures. But it got to the point where
Speaker 3: he just didn't see it in himself. But when he
Speaker 3: looked back in retrospect after getting this diagnosis, he realized, like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, this is something that's been happening for years,
Speaker 3: and people that are close to me might have noticed
Speaker 3: little things, but they just thought he's the top of
Speaker 3: his field, this is what he studies. He is going
Speaker 3: to recognize this in himself, and like nobody said anything
Speaker 3: to him.
Speaker 1: Was he having any seizures on live streams during his video?
Speaker 3: Yeah, they like obvious though, right, it would just like
Speaker 3: he would space out. And it got to the point
Speaker 3: at the worst part of it where he was taking
Speaker 3: his wife where she was going to give birth and
Speaker 3: he didn't know who she was. Oh well, he thought like,
Speaker 3: if I just keep going along with this, I'm hopefully
Speaker 3: going to get the answer. And he's luckily he did
Speaker 3: all of these different protocols and managed to make I think,
Speaker 3: like pretty much a full recovery, but which is rather
Speaker 3: miraculous given to his diagnosis and what the long term
Speaker 3: the prognosis was really negative.
Speaker 4: His story is.
Speaker 3: A really interesting one. So I think that you're likely
Speaker 3: right ash that somebody would notice those things within himselfs
Speaker 3: and it would seem like he would probably be talking
Speaker 3: to somebody. But there is always that possibility that people
Speaker 3: may notice things and just not pointed out because they're like, well,
Speaker 3: he's got a hold of this like he knows what
Speaker 3: he's doing well.
Speaker 1: At around five forty five am on the morning of
Speaker 1: April the sixteenth, after saying goodbye to his wife, Phil
Speaker 1: left his home at his nineteen ninety five Mercury Tracer
Speaker 1: in order to drive to Lachland Air Force Base, which
Speaker 1: was located about thirty miles away. This was about an
Speaker 1: hour earlier than when Phil usually left for work, but
Speaker 1: he said he needed to catch up on some paperwork
Speaker 1: that morning. But over the course the next two and
Speaker 1: a half hours, a bizarre series of events would take
Speaker 1: place which have never been adequately explained. Sometime between eight
Speaker 1: and eight fifteen am, a pair of motorists would report
Speaker 1: seeing Phil's Mercury Tracer erradically swerving while driving westbound off
Speaker 1: Interstate ten. This location was relatively close to San Antonio,
Speaker 1: but he was traveling in the opposite direction of the
Speaker 1: air Force base. The tracer would drive onto the Interstate
Speaker 1: Center Medium and travel several hundred yards negotiating between two
Speaker 1: light poles before it struck an object. This caused the
Speaker 1: vehicle to briefly go airborne, but after it came back
Speaker 1: down on all four wheels, it returned to the interstate
Speaker 1: and continued traveling westbound. The two motorists behind the tracers
Speaker 1: said that it drove between sixty to sixty five miles
Speaker 1: per hour for the next few minutes, but after it
Speaker 1: passed the exit for John's Road, it veered off the
Speaker 1: right shoulder. It then crossed the side medium and the
Speaker 1: access rode for about forty three feet before it clipped
Speaker 1: a tree and spun sharply in a clockwise direction until
Speaker 1: it crashed into a second free with great force. When
Speaker 1: emergency workers arrived at the scene, they discovered Colonel Shoe's
Speaker 1: body in the driver's seat as the impact of the crash.
Speaker 1: It caused a driver's side to cave in, and he
Speaker 1: was killed instantly after suffering fatal head trauma. However, it
Speaker 1: soon became apparent that this was not a normal accident,
Speaker 1: as Shoe had duct tape wrapped around each of his
Speaker 1: wrists as well as the top of each of his boots.
Speaker 1: The loose end of each piece of tape was dangling
Speaker 1: about four to five inches from his wrists, and since
Speaker 1: no roll of duct tape could be found at the scene,
Speaker 1: it almost appeared that she had been bound at some
Speaker 1: point before he managed to break free. The colonel also
Speaker 1: had a number of strange injuries on his body which
Speaker 1: had clearly not been caused by the crash. The T
Speaker 1: shirt beneath his Air Force uniform was ripped open from
Speaker 1: the chest to the navel, and he had a six
Speaker 1: inch vertical gash in his chest. The distal joint from
Speaker 1: the pinky finger on Shoe's left hand had been removed,
Speaker 1: and most disturbingly, both of Shoe's nipples were cut off.
Speaker 1: The missing digit and the nipples could not be found
Speaker 1: inside the vehicle or anywhere near the accident scene, even
Speaker 1: though she was carrying forty seven dollars in his pants pocket.
Speaker 1: His wallets and military dog tags couldnot be found either
Speaker 1: and were never recovered. Since no one could place the
Speaker 1: colonel at the Wilford Hall Medical Center that morning, it
Speaker 1: seemed apparent that he never arrived at work and something
Speaker 1: very odd happened to him during the two and a
Speaker 1: half hour window after he left his home.
Speaker 2: Okay, so we can establish likely that this wasn't a
Speaker 2: staged car accident. That's what I was initially kind of thinking.
Speaker 4: But it's more.
Speaker 2: Likely that you would have an attacker in the car
Speaker 2: with him. Maybe that the attack was supposed to happen
Speaker 2: with the car parked and Colonel Shoe was able to
Speaker 2: drive away, or maybe things were fine and he had
Speaker 2: been subdued and was then able to start attacking his
Speaker 2: attacker while they're driving. But you see these people watching
Speaker 2: him veer off, hit an object, go air Morne. Does
Speaker 2: anyone see the actual crash and have eyes on the
Speaker 2: vehicle the entire time before emergency responders get there?
Speaker 1: Uh? Pretty much? Yeah, Like it's a certainty to me
Speaker 1: that if he did have an attacker, that person was
Speaker 1: not in the car with him when it crashed, and
Speaker 1: that if there was an outside third party involved, it
Speaker 1: had to have taken place at another location, and Shoe
Speaker 1: was just driving away as fast as he can for
Speaker 1: dear life, and if there are any other cars fallowing
Speaker 1: him that could have been driven by his attack, or
Speaker 1: it does not sound like any of the motorists noticed.
Speaker 2: It, Okay, So there's the likelihood that he was being
Speaker 2: abused and attacked, and then he gets in his vehicle
Speaker 2: and flees and possibly like a loss of blood and
Speaker 2: trauma and shock all that's making it where he's erratically
Speaker 2: driving and then crashes the car pretty much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like it was established that the accident was what
Speaker 1: killed him, but it's just a matter was someone torturing
Speaker 1: him and trying to kill him before this happened.
Speaker 2: That's wild because I was wondering, how did someone have
Speaker 2: eyes on the vehicle and no one else gets out?
Speaker 2: But then that makes perfect sense. He actually fled the
Speaker 2: scene of the attack alone, and then because of the
Speaker 2: medical repercussions of that abuse, it's.
Speaker 4: Likely that he wasn't able to keep control of the car.
Speaker 1: Pretty much.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if that was done to you, can you imagine
Speaker 3: how terrified you would be, Like you would not be
Speaker 3: in your right state of mind. Your adrenaline would be
Speaker 3: pumping like a million miles a minute, and you're just
Speaker 3: trying to get away from this horrific scene where somebody's
Speaker 3: been torturing you. I just have a hard time believing
Speaker 3: somebody who seemed to be exhibiting no signs of mental distress,
Speaker 3: somebody who's a psychiatrist who's very educated on these things,
Speaker 3: would then remove his nipples. I mean, did they say
Speaker 3: that the nipples were removed with any kind of like
Speaker 3: surgical certainty or anything, Robin.
Speaker 1: Not really, No, like they think it was done by
Speaker 1: a cutting tool of some sort, but there wasn't a
Speaker 1: cutting tool inside the car, So if he did it
Speaker 1: to himself, he left the nipples and the cutting tool
Speaker 1: at another location.
Speaker 3: And if he did it to himself, he couldn't have
Speaker 3: done it in the car, most likely because there would
Speaker 3: be a lot of blood present, right exactly.
Speaker 1: They didn't find any blood in there to indicate that
Speaker 1: they had been removed inside the vehicle. For some reason,
Speaker 1: Tracy Chu did not learn about her husband's fatal crash
Speaker 1: for several hours, as the Kendall County Sheriff's Office showed
Speaker 1: up at her residence to a former about what happened
Speaker 1: at around three pm. According to Tracy, even though they
Speaker 1: did not mention that tape had been wrapped around Phil's
Speaker 1: wrists and ankles, she was not told about the strange
Speaker 1: injuries and mutilation to her husband's body until a San
Speaker 1: Antonio newspaper reporter phoned her up and asked for comment
Speaker 1: about it about a month and a half later. On
Speaker 1: the surface, it almost appeared that at some point during
Speaker 1: his commute to work, Phil had been abducted and tortured
Speaker 1: at an unknown location, but managed to escape. He made
Speaker 1: it back to his own car and attempted to flee,
Speaker 1: but lost control of the vehicle and was killed before
Speaker 1: he managed to get help. But believe it or not,
Speaker 1: after a lengthy investigation which involved several agencies, including the
Speaker 1: local and state police and the Air Force Office of
Speaker 1: Special Investigations, they all reached the conclusion that Colonel Schue
Speaker 1: had suffered some sort of psychological breakdown and his death
Speaker 1: was an elaborate suicide. Shoe's autopsy was performed at the
Speaker 1: office of doctor Vincent Demyo, Medical Examiner of Bear County, Texas.
Speaker 1: Doctor Demyo was also considered to be one of the
Speaker 1: top forensic pathologists in the country, and he concurred with
Speaker 1: the suicide ruling. According to the two motorists who would
Speaker 1: follow behind Shoe's Mercury Tracer on Interstate ten, the brake
Speaker 1: lights never went on when the vehicle veered off the road,
Speaker 1: and since no skid marks could be found at the scene,
Speaker 1: it appeared that she made no attempt to stop himself
Speaker 1: from crashing into the tree. There were no defensive wounds
Speaker 1: found on Shoe's body to indicate any struggle had taken place,
Speaker 1: and the autopsy uncovered scratch abrasions near the gash in
Speaker 1: his chest, which appeared to be consistent with hesitation marks,
Speaker 1: almost as if he had been working himself up to
Speaker 1: self inflict those wounds. She also had two point four
Speaker 1: milligrams per leader of an anesthetic called letocane in his system,
Speaker 1: and it wouldn't have made much sense for a third
Speaker 1: party to inject him with a pain killer if they
Speaker 1: were planning to torture him. This made doctor Demiyo suspect
Speaker 1: that she injected the litocane into himself in order to
Speaker 1: dull the pain while he slashed his own chest and
Speaker 1: cut off his own nipples and fingertip. Demayo did not
Speaker 1: buy the theory that she was in the midst of
Speaker 1: attempting to escape from his captors, because he did not
Speaker 1: make any apparent attempt to seek help. Right before he
Speaker 1: crashed his car, Shoe drove past several businesses as well
Speaker 1: as three exits which would have taken him back to
Speaker 1: his hometown of Born. In addition, he passed by a
Speaker 1: patrol car from the Born Police Department, which had pulled
Speaker 1: over by the side of the interstate to assist a
Speaker 1: motorists and was easily visible because of its flashing lights.
Speaker 1: Shoe's cell phone was also found inside his vehicle, but
Speaker 1: records would show that no calls were made from the
Speaker 1: phone that morning.
Speaker 2: Okay, so now my brain is spinning because the light
Speaker 2: of cane. Addition, when you look at the injuries and
Speaker 2: they say that there's quote hesitation marks, quite interesting, and
Speaker 2: the fact that there's an anesthetic in his body to
Speaker 2: numb the area that he's cutting, or that someone's cutting.
Speaker 2: Like you said, it makes no sense that someone who
Speaker 2: wants to actually hurt you is going.
Speaker 4: To do such a thing.
Speaker 2: But when you look at the idea of the tape
Speaker 2: and the just huge gas down the center of his chest,
Speaker 2: it's bizarre. Where was his wallet? Where were some of
Speaker 2: these other things? And I think that you can explain
Speaker 2: no break lights with him losing consciousness. If he was
Speaker 2: passing out because of a loss of blood or the
Speaker 2: pain or shock is wearing off and he just loses consciousness,
Speaker 2: he wouldn't hit the brakes. He would fly off the
Speaker 2: road and have no break lights going, or the kind
Speaker 2: of skid marks that come.
Speaker 4: The final thing.
Speaker 2: No one told his poor wife any of these details.
Speaker 2: She learns from a newspaper article. I'm just very perplexed
Speaker 2: about all of this. But the light A Kane completely
Speaker 2: adds that layer of what the heck happened? Did he
Speaker 2: do this to himself? That's the one thing, not really
Speaker 2: hesitation marks, not really all the other things, but the LIGHTO.
Speaker 2: Kane is the one thing that puts me in the
Speaker 2: camp of maybe he did do it to himself.
Speaker 3: Okay, so he's a doctor. He knows that if he's
Speaker 3: trying to stage a suicide, they're going to do a
Speaker 3: talk screen on him, They're going to check for all
Speaker 3: types of drugs, especially due to the mysterious nature of it.
Speaker 3: So to use an anesthetic would be counterintuitive, like, yeah,
Speaker 3: it would help you at the time, but it's not
Speaker 3: going to help sell your murder theory or if you're
Speaker 3: trying to frame your ex wife or something like that,
Speaker 3: or obviously add some kind of mysterious element to what
Speaker 3: you're doing. There seems to be some kind of plan,
Speaker 3: whether it be by his ex wife or by Philip.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure. I just I also think it's possible
Speaker 3: that an outside party could if they were trying to
Speaker 3: make it look like some kind of strange suicide. Maybe
Speaker 3: there could be the inclusion of LTA Kane. It seems
Speaker 3: far fetched, but anything is possible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in a few moments we're going to share a potential, alternate,
Speaker 1: innocent explanation for why he had that lidocane in his system,
Speaker 1: which had nothing to do with torture. But a lot
Speaker 1: of these points they bring up about why he did
Speaker 1: pull over and try to seek out from the police, Well,
Speaker 1: Jules just talk about that a few moments ago, about
Speaker 1: how he must have been terrified and not thinking rationally,
Speaker 1: so I could give him a pass, Like even though
Speaker 1: he passed by a police car, if he was in
Speaker 1: such a panic and it had such an adrenaline rush
Speaker 1: going on right now, he may not have even noticed it.
Speaker 1: And that's why he's driving so fast, because he's terrified
Speaker 1: and fleeing for his life, and unfortunately he wound up
Speaker 1: crashing his car.
Speaker 3: Two years after Colonel Shoe was killed, the Lachland Detachment
Speaker 3: of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations produced a
Speaker 3: twenty page document called the Psychological Autopsy, which also concluded
Speaker 3: that his death was a suicide. The report represented the
Speaker 3: position of two boards certified forensic psychiatrists from the Armed
Speaker 3: Forces Institute of Pathology. Lieutenant Commander Gerald Donovan and Colonel
Speaker 3: Elsbeth Cameron Ritchie, who believed that Choo's mental state made
Speaker 3: him depressed, anxious, and paranoid. In the months before he
Speaker 3: was killed, she had been receiving treatment from Lieutenant Colonel
Speaker 3: Douglas Dion, a staff psychiatrist to the Brooks Army Medicals,
Speaker 3: and six months before he died, she reportedly told Dion
Speaker 3: that he'd experienced a dark and disturbing associated episode in
Speaker 3: which he imagined his cargoing out of control on his
Speaker 3: way to work while great violence was done to him.
Speaker 3: If true, this seemed to support the idea that she
Speaker 3: would stage the fatal car crash on his own accord well.
Speaker 3: Needless to say, Tracy Chu did not believe her husband
Speaker 3: would have taken his own life, as she and philid
Speaker 3: made plans for the future, and he actually put a
Speaker 3: deposit down on the house they purchased in Alabama the
Speaker 3: day before he died. Tracy's original plan was to have
Speaker 3: Phil's body cremated and his remains interred at Arlington National
Speaker 3: Cemetery in Virginia, but the suicide ruling changed all that,
Speaker 3: and she ordered the funeral home to store her husband's
Speaker 3: body in a refrigerated crypt.
Speaker 2: He predicted this exact scenario happening to him.
Speaker 1: Well, as we're going to go up talk about later
Speaker 1: on in the episode. That psychiatrist has disputed this, claiming
Speaker 1: that Phil never actually said that. But if he did
Speaker 1: predict it, though, then that does give credence to the
Speaker 1: idea that he could have staged the whole thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's really bizarre.
Speaker 2: It's interesting because when you look at this, like she said,
Speaker 2: he put it down payment on our house. We had
Speaker 2: these big plans. Now, could he have put it down
Speaker 2: payment on the home so that Tracy's one step closer
Speaker 2: to getting her dream home and this house she wants,
Speaker 2: and then he still takes his own life. Sure, but
Speaker 2: again it's very bizarre. I think the fact that he
Speaker 2: was depressed and anxious and paranoid, if you have that
Speaker 2: going on. One, he's getting help, which I think is incredible.
Speaker 2: Two he has these issues with his ex wife I
Speaker 2: believe you guys alluded to. That's really stressful. He's retiring,
Speaker 2: changing jobs, moving, starting a new career, and a fellowship
Speaker 2: for a new medical adventure. So there's a lot of
Speaker 2: pressure on his shoulders. It doesn't make you suicidal to
Speaker 2: be anxious and depressed and worried about things. So I mean, yes,
Speaker 2: that alludes to it, But everyone who's anxious and depressed
Speaker 2: is not suicidal, is what I meant. So when you
Speaker 2: look at this, I just unless he really did predict this,
Speaker 2: which again would be a tally over in the suicide category,
Speaker 2: it just seems like, yeah, he was struggling, he's getting help,
Speaker 2: and he's making plans with his wife. I'm with Tracy
Speaker 2: where she says, why would he do this? I don't
Speaker 2: think he would do this? And I think it's incredibly
Speaker 2: bold that she says, you're not going to get rid
Speaker 2: of my husband's body yet, I'm not cremating him. You're
Speaker 2: actually going to keep him in the refrigerated crypt. How
Speaker 2: long does he stay there?
Speaker 1: He's been there for a couple of years, and he
Speaker 1: never did get cremated. He finally did get buried. But
Speaker 1: it sounded like she was on the verge of having
Speaker 1: him cremated until she got that phone call from the
Speaker 1: reporter or asking about these details she never knew about,
Speaker 1: like the removed nipples, and then she just suddenly says, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is not a standard suicide. We're gonna look closer
Speaker 1: into this, so I am not going to cremate my husband.
Speaker 1: Tracy eventually hired the services of another famous forensic pathologist,
Speaker 1: doctor Cyril Weckt, who performed his own autopsy. He expressed
Speaker 1: his disagreement with doctor Demio's original conclusion, as he believed
Speaker 1: that another person was likely involved in Shoe's death. Even
Speaker 1: though Demyo believed that she had injected himself with lydocane
Speaker 1: in order to dull the pain while inflicting wounds on himself,
Speaker 1: Wack could not find any injection marks on Phil's body
Speaker 1: and did not believe there was enough lytocane in his
Speaker 1: system to have caused much pain relief. Tracy confirmed that
Speaker 1: on the night before he was killed, Phil was complaining
Speaker 1: about itchiness since he had chaved his chest in order
Speaker 1: to take a cardiac exam. Since Phil had recently self
Speaker 1: prescribed e MLA cream to himself, doctor Wex's theory was
Speaker 1: that he may have applied it to his chest in
Speaker 1: order to combat the itchiness, as e MLA cream has
Speaker 1: lydocane as one of its ingredients, and a small amount
Speaker 1: of it could have slipped into Phil's bloodstream after his
Speaker 1: chest was sliced open. However, the counter argument to this
Speaker 1: theory is that the cream also contained an anesthetic called prilocane,
Speaker 1: but no trace of it was detected in Shoe's system.
Speaker 1: Another troubling discrepancy Weckt found was that no fingerprints belonging
Speaker 1: to Shoe or a third party could be found on
Speaker 1: the duct tape on his wrists and boots, which seemed
Speaker 1: to go against the idea that Shoe applied the tape himself.
Speaker 1: Even if Shoe used gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints, none
Speaker 1: could be found at the scene, and while a late
Speaker 1: text glove was visible in the original crime photos, it
Speaker 1: looked like it had never been used or worn. So
Speaker 1: if Colonel Shoe was responsible for inflicting the injuries on
Speaker 1: himself and staging his own suicide, he would have needed
Speaker 1: to leave a cutting instrument, both of his nipples, the
Speaker 1: distal joint from his left pinky finger, his wallet, his
Speaker 1: dog tags, and possibly some gloves at a location where
Speaker 1: they were never found, before driving several miles and intentionally
Speaker 1: crashing his car.
Speaker 2: So bizarre, the fact that his wallet and his dog
Speaker 2: tags are mistakes are really interesting to me, especially how
Speaker 2: important dog tags are to a military member. It allows
Speaker 2: you to be identified. It is a way to kind
Speaker 2: of honor your service to the military. And the fact
Speaker 2: that they were gone off his body while he's on
Speaker 2: his way to work on a seemingly normal day is
Speaker 2: really odd. Even if he was going to complete suicide,
Speaker 2: I feel like he would have his dog tags on
Speaker 2: because Tracy needs to know it's him, And again, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's something that's also symbolically important. So I'm wondering what
Speaker 2: he really take it off when his whole life had
Speaker 2: been dedicated to the military.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it really doesn't make any sense for him to
Speaker 1: take them off on his own. I mean, I suppose
Speaker 1: if he's had some sort of mental breakdown and he's
Speaker 1: just not thinking rationally, he would make a decision like that.
Speaker 1: But it almost seems like if this was a planned murder,
Speaker 1: that perhaps someone decided to take his dog tags as
Speaker 1: some sort of memento or souvenir.
Speaker 3: It also doesn't seem rational to remove your own nipples
Speaker 3: and fingers. That too, if we're looking through the lens
Speaker 3: of somebody who's truly had a mental break then his
Speaker 3: actions just might not make sense to us.
Speaker 4: That's very true, very very true.
Speaker 3: One of doctor Demeyo's biggest arguments for Phil having staged
Speaker 3: the scene is that he never attempted to use his
Speaker 3: cell phone to call for help. But according to Tracy,
Speaker 3: one of their neighbors retrieved the phone from the accident
Speaker 3: scene after getting permission to take it from the authorities.
Speaker 3: The cell was a clamshell style flip phone model, and
Speaker 3: the neighbors said when they opened it they noticed a
Speaker 3: large amount of blood on the inside, though there was
Speaker 3: very little blood on the outside. However, since the phone
Speaker 3: was never taken into evidence and examined, this detail about
Speaker 3: the blood could not be corroborated. The psychiatrist Phil had
Speaker 3: been seeing, Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Dion, also believed that he'd
Speaker 3: been responding well to treatment and did not appear to
Speaker 3: be suicidal. There's also been some about the story that
Speaker 3: Phil supposedly shared with him six months prior to his death,
Speaker 3: where he described an associative episode about his car careening
Speaker 3: out of control while traveling to work. Even though this
Speaker 3: information was included in psychological autopsy report, Dion supposedly maintained
Speaker 3: that he never shared this story with anyone from the
Speaker 3: Air Force's Office of Special investigations, and there was no
Speaker 3: documentation about it in any of Dion's notes. Tracy managed
Speaker 3: to exert enough pressure on Kendall County's district Attorney Bruce
Speaker 3: Curry that he agreed to convene an investigative grand jury
Speaker 3: to examine her husband's case, but they ultimately concluded that
Speaker 3: there was no evidence of homicide and the initial suicide
Speaker 3: ruling was correct. When Tracy testified at the grand jury proceedings,
Speaker 3: she mentioned that she had not cremated Phil as originally planned,
Speaker 3: and instead brought in doctor Wet to perform a second autopsy.
Speaker 3: This revelation caused Curry to become enraged to confront Tracy
Speaker 3: in the stairwell, where he stated, quote, since you liked
Speaker 3: to testify so much, perhaps I should accuse you of
Speaker 3: the crime and have you end up in the defendant
Speaker 3: seat end quote.
Speaker 2: Wow, all right, well, District Attorney Bruce Curry's a jerk, yeap.
Speaker 2: That is incredibly horrific. You have a wife who's begging
Speaker 2: you to look at her husband's death, and she's convinced
Speaker 2: that it's a homicide. If nothing else, you have a
Speaker 2: little compassion for a woman who's lost her spouse even
Speaker 2: if you're deeply convicted that this is a suicide. And
Speaker 2: when she threatens to have a expert come in on
Speaker 2: the case to explore her husband's death, what skin off
Speaker 2: your nose?
Speaker 4: Is it right?
Speaker 2: She's paying for it. She wants to have it done.
Speaker 2: You have someone who's grieving and in a state of
Speaker 2: trauma and her husband either completed suicide and she has
Speaker 2: to deal with that and or was hurt, and needless
Speaker 2: to say, she knows the details of his bodily injuries.
Speaker 2: She knows that for her he left normal that day.
Speaker 2: Why wouldn't you simply have compassion for her and say, look,
Speaker 2: if you can get more evident, it's more power to you.
Speaker 2: It's almost bizarre when you look at the fact that
Speaker 2: this psychiatrist says, I never told anyone about this supposed
Speaker 2: disassociative episode where he's predicting his death in the same way.
Speaker 2: But it is in the military documents. Could someone within
Speaker 2: the military have a reason why they want it to
Speaker 2: look like this was a suicide. Is there a reason
Speaker 2: why that could have been added in there to justify
Speaker 2: the suicide ruling and not have it be opened into
Speaker 2: a possible homicide.
Speaker 1: Well, that's what's so weird about it because in a
Speaker 1: few moments we're going to talk about Phil's ex wife,
Speaker 1: who was also married to someone in the military, but
Speaker 1: he was stationed in another state outside of Texas. So
Speaker 1: if you believe that his ex wife was responsible, then
Speaker 1: you could wonder if there was a military cover up,
Speaker 1: But why would Texas be covering up for someone who
Speaker 1: was stationed in Florida. But then again, if the ex
Speaker 1: wife wasn't involved and Phil was murdered by someone completely
Speaker 1: different associated with the military, than perhaps they would have
Speaker 1: reasons to fabricate all this evidence and hope that it
Speaker 1: got ruled as a suicide. So right from the outset,
Speaker 1: Tracy believed that the person who seemed like the most
Speaker 1: likely suspect to have murdered her husband was his estranged
Speaker 1: ex wife, Nancy Chu Timpson. By this point, Nancy had
Speaker 1: gotten remarried to Lieutenant Colonel Donald Timpson, who was an
Speaker 1: active duty pilot in the Air Force Special Forces Unit,
Speaker 1: and they were both living in Florida. While Phil was
Speaker 1: with Nancy, she became the beneficiary on a pair of
Speaker 1: life insurance policies totaling one million dollars, and as part
Speaker 1: of their divorce settlement, Nancy retained the right to hold
Speaker 1: on to these policies even though they were no longer married.
Speaker 1: Over the years, Phil frequently asked Nancy to cancel the policies,
Speaker 1: but she refused, claiming she could not afford to the
Speaker 1: Suspicion about Nancy began in May of nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 1: nearly four years before Phil's death, when he received an anonymous,
Speaker 1: typewritten letter which read quote, please read this letter. You
Speaker 1: may be in danger. I'm writing because I remember you
Speaker 1: as such a kind and caring doctor, and I can't
Speaker 1: just sit by and not help you by telling you
Speaker 1: what I know. End quote. The writer then went on
Speaker 1: to say that a friend of theirs worked with Nancy's husband, Donald,
Speaker 1: and had heard them say they wished Phil was dead
Speaker 1: so they could collect his life insurance. The friend apparently
Speaker 1: thought that the couple may have been planning something, so
Speaker 1: the writer said they felt the need to type up
Speaker 1: a letter and send it to Phil in order to
Speaker 1: warn him. It's been reported that Phil received a second cryptic,
Speaker 1: anonymous note at a later time, which read quote the
Speaker 1: plan is now delayed, but not canceled. Be careful. I
Speaker 1: can't identify myself because they may find out and stop
Speaker 1: letting information slip end quote. Phil's response to these letters
Speaker 1: was to write to Nancy and confront her, and he
Speaker 1: once again demanded that she dropped the life insurance policy
Speaker 1: she had on him, stating, quote, I feel helpless to
Speaker 1: prevent my eventual murder if you hire good assassins and quote.
Speaker 1: Nancy wrote Phil back and denied their conversation with Donald
Speaker 1: about wishing him dead ever took place, and she expressed
Speaker 1: her belief that someone was playing a sick joke on
Speaker 1: him and refused to cancel the policies. When Phil tried
Speaker 1: to lobby the two insurance companies holding the policies US
Speaker 1: Double A and Northwest Mutual to cancel them on his behalf,
Speaker 1: they refused. The companies told Phil they were not authorized
Speaker 1: to cancel the policies since Nancy owned them and kept
Speaker 1: paying the premiums. He responded by sending them a letter
Speaker 1: which read quote thoroughly examined my death for evidence of
Speaker 1: foul play, even if on the surface the cause would
Speaker 1: appear natural or accidental end quote.
Speaker 2: Well, no wonder the guys getting help for anxiety and
Speaker 2: depression if he really did receive these two notes. That's horrifying.
Speaker 2: And you do have someone saying, hey, there is a
Speaker 2: plan in motion to kill you. I would have quite
Speaker 2: a bit of anxiety depression in paranoia as well, and
Speaker 2: think God fills out there getting help. It's really interesting
Speaker 2: when he does reach out to her, he's pretty desperate,
Speaker 2: demanding that she dropped these life insurance policies, and he
Speaker 2: even mentions eventually, if you hire good assassins, right, how
Speaker 2: would I avoid getting murdered? Really sad and the way
Speaker 2: that everything's kind of dissolving in regards to his feeling
Speaker 2: of safety because of his ex wife. But once you
Speaker 2: receive a written letter, knowing that he's on to you,
Speaker 2: and knowing that there's been this conversation with life insurance
Speaker 2: policies and things like that, don't you think you need
Speaker 2: to kind of do it about face and leave the
Speaker 2: plan because he's on to you. Right, He's already called
Speaker 2: you out for planning his murder in writing. Wouldn't you
Speaker 2: stop at that point and be like, oh gosh, we
Speaker 2: got to do something different.
Speaker 3: Think about who you deal with, ash.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yes, right, that's true.
Speaker 2: I deal with some dark people in my own life.
Speaker 4: That you got a battle.
Speaker 2: But that's true, and when they're pretty determined to cause
Speaker 2: a problem, they stick with a plan.
Speaker 4: That's very true.
Speaker 1: But it's worth noting that Phil received the original letter
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety nine and started confronting Nancy about it,
Speaker 1: and did not actually wind up dead until four years later,
Speaker 1: So it could be a case where they really were
Speaker 1: planning it back then but then realized, oh, Phil's on
Speaker 1: to us, we'd better cool down for a while, but
Speaker 1: then decided to do it again after enough time it passed.
Speaker 3: How long were these policies in effect for did they
Speaker 3: have an expiration Robin?
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I think they were on him
Speaker 1: until he died. I mean they divorced. I think it
Speaker 1: was a nineteen ninety two and they stayed on him
Speaker 1: for over ten years, so I don't think there was
Speaker 1: an expiration date.
Speaker 3: Interesting that her husband was in the Special Forces too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like not just the Air Force, but Special Forces.
Speaker 3: According to Tracy, Phil's paranoia about Nancy is what caused
Speaker 3: him to start showing symptoms of depression and anxiety and
Speaker 3: seek psychiatric treatment. Well, Tracy thought the anonymous letter was
Speaker 3: a piece of evidence which supported the idea that her
Speaker 3: husband was the victim of foul play. Investigators suspected that
Speaker 3: Phil had actually typed up the letter himself and fabricated
Speaker 3: the entire threat from his ex wife. They found it
Speaker 3: odd that Phil never made any attempt to bring the
Speaker 3: letter to the police, but Tracy maintained that because Phil
Speaker 3: held a top secret security clearance, he had to follow
Speaker 3: a specific chain of command and notify his own superiors
Speaker 3: about what was happening before he involved any outside agencies.
Speaker 3: Tracy claimed that Phil did show the letter to his superiors,
Speaker 3: but they seemed to dismiss the idea that it represented
Speaker 3: a real threat against him. No conclusive evidence was ever
Speaker 3: found to prove that Phil was the author of the letter,
Speaker 3: and unfortunately, it was never tested for DNA or fingerprints.
Speaker 3: When questioned, Nancy claimed that both she and Donald had alibis,
Speaker 3: which proved they were at work in Florida on the
Speaker 3: date that Phil was killed. Nancy also turned down the
Speaker 3: police's request to take a polygraph, and since Donald held
Speaker 3: a top secret security clearance, he would not have been
Speaker 3: allowed to take a police polygraph even if he wanted.
Speaker 3: At one point, Nazi's lawyers stated that he believed Phil's
Speaker 3: death was a result of attempting to fake an abduction
Speaker 3: in order to make it look like his ex wife
Speaker 3: had harmed him.
Speaker 2: I do believe that Phil would have had to go
Speaker 2: through his own chain of command. That's a really important
Speaker 2: thing in the military. They get really upset when you
Speaker 2: jump over a person in your chain of command. Right,
Speaker 2: you take an issue to your supervising officer, and then
Speaker 2: they handle it. If they can't handle it, they go
Speaker 2: above them.
Speaker 4: So they help escalate the issue.
Speaker 2: So here, I don't think it's crazy if Phil said, Hey,
Speaker 2: I'm going to go to my commanding officer and show him.
Speaker 4: That this is what I received.
Speaker 2: Right, But then when you look at this idea that
Speaker 2: he would have written up the letters himself, I don't know,
Speaker 2: that's pretty crazy. Yes, there's a lot of trauma dealing
Speaker 2: with a volatile ex wife, and I can see where
Speaker 2: he might feel desperate, like I need to do something
Speaker 2: to get away from her and maybe get her to
Speaker 2: drop these life insurance policies.
Speaker 4: But overall, it just doesn't seem.
Speaker 2: Like someone who's so I don't know, so stable in
Speaker 2: his career and continuing his education all these things that
Speaker 2: he's going to keep slipping in these major ways, that's
Speaker 2: pretty elaborate to go after your ex wife by faking
Speaker 2: death threats to yourself.
Speaker 1: And let's also remember I'm reiterating again, the letters originally
Speaker 1: appeared in nineteen ninety nine, and Phil didn't die until
Speaker 1: two thousand and three. So is he really like typing
Speaker 1: up all these letters and faking this for over four
Speaker 1: years before he decided to end his own life well.
Speaker 1: Two months after the accidents, Tracy filed a civil lawsuit
Speaker 1: in hopes of preventing Nancy from collecting on Phil's one
Speaker 1: million dollar life insurance policies. Nancy was named as a
Speaker 1: defendant in addition to the two insurance companies US Double
Speaker 1: A and Northwest Mutual, as Tracy believed they had a
Speaker 1: legal obligation to cancel the policies after being informed the
Speaker 1: threat to Phil's life. Phil and Nancy's son, Jeffreyschue, was
Speaker 1: named as a third party defendant in the lawsuit, as
Speaker 1: Phil had removed Jeffrey as the secondary beneficiary from his
Speaker 1: will only five days before his death and replaced him
Speaker 1: with Tracy's sister. According to Tracy, Phil was concerned about
Speaker 1: Jeffrey's ability to manage money, as he had gone through
Speaker 1: a bankruptcy the previous year, which was partially brought on
Speaker 1: by gambling debts. Jeffrey was also in the midst of
Speaker 1: his second marriage, which Phil did not believe have much stability,
Speaker 1: and he feared that any inheritance his son received could
Speaker 1: be squandered in a divorce settlement. When Nancy was given
Speaker 1: a videotaped deposition as part of the lawsuit and asked
Speaker 1: about her re ex husband's death, she pleaded the Fifth
Speaker 1: Amendment on over twenty questions in order to avoid self incrimination.
Speaker 1: It was never established if Jeffrey found out he had
Speaker 1: been removed from his father's will prior to his death,
Speaker 1: as he filed an affid David invoking his Fifth Amendent
Speaker 1: privilege and declined to speak with law enforcements and military investigators.
Speaker 1: In June of two thousand and eight, Tracy civil lawsuit
Speaker 1: was ready to go to trial in Kendall County Court
Speaker 1: of Law, but by this point Nancy, Jeffrey, and Northwestern
Speaker 1: Mutual have been dropped as defendants as one million dollar
Speaker 1: settlement agreement have been made between them. US double A
Speaker 1: was the only remaining defendant and they were still facing
Speaker 1: potential liability issues for refusing to cancel their life insurance
Speaker 1: policy on phil. Halfway through the trial, Judge Bill Palmer
Speaker 1: suddenly dismissed the jury after announcing that the two parties
Speaker 1: had reached an agreement and he could make a ruling
Speaker 1: about the case on his own. In the end, Judge
Speaker 1: Palmer ruled that US double A had done nothing wrong
Speaker 1: by refusing to cancel Colonel Shoe's insurance policy and were
Speaker 1: not liable for damages. But he also surprised everyone by stating, quote,
Speaker 1: the evidence considered by the court substantiates of finding that
Speaker 1: Colonel Philip Schue was murdered. The Court therefore finds that
Speaker 1: the April sixteenth, two thousand and three death of Colonel
Speaker 1: Philip Schue was a hobbs hide end quote My goodness.
Speaker 2: Okay, So here's what's really interesting. Tracy and Phil changed
Speaker 2: life insurance policies to have the beneficiary be her sister
Speaker 2: in the event that Tracy also is deceased and not
Speaker 2: his son. I can see where Jeffrey being removed is
Speaker 2: not wild, because he's showing these signs of just being
Speaker 2: not stable really in this midst of trauma and turmoil himself,
Speaker 2: and I can see where Dad would take him out.
Speaker 2: But you know, I don't blame Nancy and her husband
Speaker 2: for not wanting to take a polygraph or for really
Speaker 2: pleading the fifth either. She doesn't have anything to gain
Speaker 2: or to lose in this whole element because she didn't
Speaker 2: do anything wrong on paper, she paid a premium, the
Speaker 2: man who is the deceased is dead, and now she
Speaker 2: gets to collect the life insurance policy. It's pretty darn
Speaker 2: simple happens. I did what I was supposed to do
Speaker 2: by paying it, he died, I get the money. Anything
Speaker 2: she says does not work in her favor. She doesn't
Speaker 2: supposedly know anything about it. So on the surface, as
Speaker 2: dysfunctional as their divorce was and continued relationship was, what
Speaker 2: does she gain by saying anything in that deposition. Worst
Speaker 2: thing that happens is they have to prove that she
Speaker 2: likely killed her husband before they take her money away.
Speaker 2: Otherwise she's sitting pretty just keeping her mouth shut.
Speaker 3: It just looks so sketchy that she's pleading the fifth
Speaker 3: on this, and then when you add her son is
Speaker 3: also pleading the fifth. I know that you have a
Speaker 3: right in the American court not to incriminate yourself but
Speaker 3: what would you be incriminated on? And I get your point,
Speaker 3: ash for sure that like opening your mouth, you know,
Speaker 3: you could open a door to any number of things,
Speaker 3: and a good attorney can cut into your words that
Speaker 3: you're saying and pick them apart and maybe weed out
Speaker 3: some deception in there or weed out some things that
Speaker 3: don't look good. So it's better to just say nothing
Speaker 3: at all. But it just it always looks sketchy when
Speaker 3: people do it.
Speaker 1: And obviously one of the most infamous examples was Mark
Speaker 1: Furman and the OJH. Simpson trial, where he planed the
Speaker 1: fifth on every question, even the question did you plan
Speaker 1: any evidence or plant the bloody glove against OJ Simpson?
Speaker 1: And because he didn't answer, a lot of the jury
Speaker 1: members thought that the whole evidence planting thing was true.
Speaker 3: Don't they pretty much like if they're going to plead
Speaker 3: the fifth at all, don't they pretty much do and
Speaker 3: across the board plead the fifth?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I think normally a defense attorney or
Speaker 2: an attorney would.
Speaker 4: Tell you.
Speaker 2: Need to just plead the fifth and if you're gonna
Speaker 2: do that, you do it for everything so that it
Speaker 2: doesn't look suspicious when that one question you plead the
Speaker 2: fifth on but you've been open and transparent about everything else,
Speaker 2: because then it does have that indication of guild. If
Speaker 2: you simply say basically, I'm not engaging, which is what
Speaker 2: Nancy did here. If you're just not going to engage,
Speaker 2: then you just weren't interested in engaging, right, And again
Speaker 2: you're keeping your mouth shut so that nothing.
Speaker 4: Could be used against you.
Speaker 2: So I think it's pretty consistent you either start that
Speaker 2: way and say I'm not going to answer anything, or
Speaker 2: if you're going to invoke that on one.
Speaker 4: Question, it would look quite bizarre.
Speaker 3: Well, Judge Palmer requested that Shoe's death certificate officially be
Speaker 3: changed from suicide to homicide. Kendall County officials refused to
Speaker 3: do so, and they did not believe that Palmer had
Speaker 3: the authority to make that determination. Months later, the Texas
Speaker 3: Attorney General ruled that Shoe's death certificate would not have
Speaker 3: to be changed, so his cause of death is still
Speaker 3: officially listed as a suicide to this day. In March
Speaker 3: two thousand and nine, the story would receive national exposure
Speaker 3: when the TV show forty eight Hours aired an episode
Speaker 3: titled The Curious Case of Colonel Shoe. Shortly Thereafter, Tracy
Speaker 3: was contacted by a witness who'd watched the show and
Speaker 3: thought they might have an important piece of new information.
Speaker 3: On the morning Colonel's shoe was killed. This witness said
Speaker 3: that they'd been driving on a rural road leading to
Speaker 3: Interstate ten, which Phil normally would have taken on his
Speaker 3: route to work. They remembered seeing Phil's mercury tracer off
Speaker 3: the side of the road, and a blue van with
Speaker 3: tinted windows was parked directly behind it. What was particularly
Speaker 3: interesting about this location is that the ground had a
Speaker 3: natural deposit of calichet, a sedimentary rock which produces a
Speaker 3: white clay substance. According to the autopsy report, at the
Speaker 3: time Phil was found, the bottom of his boots were
Speaker 3: caked with mud and a white powdery substance, but investigators
Speaker 3: never bothered to analyze it. The forty eight Hours episode
Speaker 3: contained interviews with Lieutenant Roger Anderson of the Kendall County
Speaker 3: Shriff's Office, who'd been the top ranking official at the
Speaker 3: crash scene that morning and became an advocate for Tracy Schue.
Speaker 3: He openly acknowledged that the investigation was mishandled and that
Speaker 3: he lost control of the scene as there was a
Speaker 3: jurisdictional beef between all different law enforcement agencies who showed
Speaker 3: up there, including the Kendall County Shriff's Office, Warrene Police Department,
Speaker 3: and the Texas State Police. Since Colonel Shoe's death was
Speaker 3: not believed to be a homicide, his vehicle was never
Speaker 3: possessed as a potential murder scene, an important evidence may
Speaker 3: have either been lost or never collected. Tracy has claimed
Speaker 3: that even though Kendall County authorities have asked her to
Speaker 3: pick up her husband's wrecked car from the impound yard
Speaker 3: on several occasions, she always refused to do so because
Speaker 3: she believes the vehicle is a crime scene. After Tracy
Speaker 3: changed her mind about having him cremated, Phil was finally
Speaker 3: buried at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors, But
Speaker 3: in a tragic PostScript to this story, his son Jeffrey,
Speaker 3: unexpectedly passed away in October twenty fifteen at the age
Speaker 3: of forty five following a brief illness. While Colonel Shoe's
Speaker 3: death has never officially been reclassified as a homicide, his
Speaker 3: loved ones are still searching for answers and the official
Speaker 3: circumstances of what happened remained unclear, So.
Speaker 1: I guess you could say the path went chili.
Speaker 2: This is one of those cases where you see exactly
Speaker 2: what we harp on. When you don't investigate properly, you
Speaker 2: get one shot and one shot only. And so when
Speaker 2: they arrived on that scene and they declared this is
Speaker 2: a suicide, and then they're basically telling his wife come
Speaker 2: get the car. We don't need to do any further
Speaker 2: exploration of this crime scene or this scene. You can
Speaker 2: come get all of his things. They blew it, even
Speaker 2: if it really was.
Speaker 4: Ultimately a suicide. We always talk about how you approach.
Speaker 2: The scene as a homicide, especially when you look at
Speaker 2: this case.
Speaker 4: No one would have showed up on that scene and.
Speaker 2: Said this is a usual, typical, expected type of suicide.
Speaker 4: You would say, what the heck happened here? It's bizarre.
Speaker 2: You have missing nipples, a missing digit of a finger,
Speaker 2: his wallet and dog tags are gone, he's driving away
Speaker 2: from his place of work, he never know he has
Speaker 2: a gash in his chest, all these things that seem
Speaker 2: so just like a movie. Why would you ever approach
Speaker 2: as anything? But we need to have a very very
Speaker 2: thorough investigation here and assume it's a homicide, photograph everything,
Speaker 2: test everything, and at the end, if it really does
Speaker 2: appear to be a suicide, it's a suicide. But it's
Speaker 2: like they called it, and they pushed everything out aside,
Speaker 2: and they lost that chance to investigate. And I think
Speaker 2: that's why Tracy was so upset. She got a call
Speaker 2: that her husband had completed suicide and that he was dead,
Speaker 2: and then she gets information later of all these bizarre
Speaker 2: things that occurred, and she said, had I known that,
Speaker 2: I would have questioned the suicide even more from the start,
Speaker 2: Why didn't anybody else? And so I really feel for
Speaker 2: her where she's just refusing to let go of this
Speaker 2: idea of someone look deeper into this because it's so bizarre.
Speaker 2: Why didn't anybody else when they arrived on the scene
Speaker 2: have that same attitude.
Speaker 3: I think it's so tenant telling that Lieutenant Roger Roger Anderson,
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, yeah, as it Yeah, the Lieutenant Roger Anderson,
Speaker 3: who was the highest ranking official on the scene, believes
Speaker 3: that it was mishandled and has been an advocate for Tracy.
Speaker 3: I think that is really really telling. And the fact
Speaker 3: that they were just so quick to assume that this
Speaker 3: was a suicide and not investigate it as a murder
Speaker 3: and then let the evidence lead where it may is
Speaker 3: kind of shocking.
Speaker 1: And you think that at the very least they would say, Hey,
Speaker 1: his wallet and dog tags and his nipples are missing
Speaker 1: and there's no cutting tool, Let's perform a search of
Speaker 1: the area of like the wooded areas, just to see
Speaker 1: if we can find them, and if we do, we
Speaker 1: can conclusively prove if this was a homicide or a suicide.
Speaker 1: But the fact that they didn't even bother to do
Speaker 1: that is pretty frustrating. So, like I mentioned in the intro,
Speaker 1: we've covered a lot of cases in which a victim's
Speaker 1: death was ruled to be a suicide, but their loved
Speaker 1: ones were adamant that foul play had taken place. But
Speaker 1: the circumstances of this one are a bit more complex.
Speaker 1: Regardless of what actually happened to Colonel Phillips Shoe, the
Speaker 1: one indisputable fact about this case is that his exact
Speaker 1: cause of death was a car crash. While the authorities
Speaker 1: believed that Shoe inflicted a bunch of wounds on himself
Speaker 1: before intentionally crashing his vehicle as part of an elaborate suicide.
Speaker 1: His loved ones believed that he was in the midst
Speaker 1: of being tortured by a third party and managed to
Speaker 1: escape and flee the scene, but wound up getting into
Speaker 1: a fatal accident before he could get help. Even if
Speaker 1: conclusive evidence was found to prove that someone held Colonel
Speaker 1: Shoe captive and tortured him that morning, could they be
Speaker 1: charged with murder? I mean, I'm sure they would be
Speaker 1: charged with something, But Shoe's death technically took place while
Speaker 1: he was behind the wheel of his own car, and
Speaker 1: while he was obviously at a diminished capacity because of
Speaker 1: his ordeal. I'm sure this would be a pretty complicated
Speaker 1: legal situation if a suspect was ever brought to trial.
Speaker 1: But while Tracy Chue and everyone who cared about Phil
Speaker 1: want justice for his death, I'm sure one of their
Speaker 1: most important priorities is to clear his name and debunk
Speaker 1: the official cover story that he killed himself. This was
Speaker 1: a particular, regularly horrible tragedy for Phil's parents, Bruce and Miriamshau,
Speaker 1: who both lived until their late nineties and had to
Speaker 1: endure the loss of all four of their sons. In
Speaker 1: addition to losing Phil, they lost an infant son named Stephen,
Speaker 1: back in nineteen forty six, their oldest son, Norman when
Speaker 1: he passed away in nineteen ninety nine at the age
Speaker 1: of sixty four, and their last surviving son, Roger, who
Speaker 1: died of a sudden illness in twenty ten at the
Speaker 1: age of fifty nine. And if that wasn't enough, Phil's
Speaker 1: son Jeffrey, would also unexpectedly pass away due to illness
Speaker 1: at age forty five. And virtually every case like this,
Speaker 1: the victim's loved ones will insist that they were not
Speaker 1: suicidal and had everything to live for. But like we've
Speaker 1: mentioned countless times on this podcast, sometimes people will suddenly
Speaker 1: take their own lives without any warning whatsoever and completely
Speaker 1: surprise everyone. I know that Phil and Tracy had made
Speaker 1: a number of plans for the future, and he was
Speaker 1: only six months away from retiring from the military and
Speaker 1: starting a new chapter of his life, But since he
Speaker 1: had spent the past few years seeking treatment for depression
Speaker 1: and anxiety, I think it's a stretch to say that
Speaker 1: suicide was an absolutely impossible option.
Speaker 2: I would have to agree with you. I think it's
Speaker 2: a possible option for everyone. Right when you think about
Speaker 2: mental health and how there are quick onset mental health breakdowns,
Speaker 2: and there are mental health diseases that affect a lot
Speaker 2: of people, and sometimes they're just unpredictable. You don't know
Speaker 2: what's going to happen inside your brain. So I think
Speaker 2: suicide is something that when you say it could never
Speaker 2: happen to us, she would have never done that. I
Speaker 2: don't think that that's ever a statement that can be
Speaker 2: one hundred percent true, because again, it's not the rational
Speaker 2: person that you know thinking in that moment.
Speaker 4: You know, earlier, I was.
Speaker 2: Trying to explain things away and Jules is like, remember,
Speaker 2: probably irrational in that moment, I thought, oh, yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2: It's not the person you know that's taking their own life.
Speaker 2: It's someone who's been hiding something or had an onset
Speaker 2: of something pretty sudden that has them not in their
Speaker 2: right mind. So yeah, is it possible for sure? Is
Speaker 2: it easy to believe given the lifestyle he has and
Speaker 2: where he's at in his life. No, he's retiring from
Speaker 2: the military. He's gonna have the best package and financial situation.
Speaker 4: He's got a.
Speaker 2: New career he's pursuing in forensic psychiatry at the University
Speaker 2: of Alabama. They're moving to a home they've already put
Speaker 2: a down payment on. He's with his second wife, who's
Speaker 2: his dream girl, and he's you know, getting away from
Speaker 2: a scenario where he's fussing with his ex wife, right,
Speaker 2: he's just at least getting to move and have a
Speaker 2: fresh start somewhere.
Speaker 4: So I just I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's not likely. Is it possible? One thousand percent? It's
Speaker 2: possible for anybody.
Speaker 4: I think.
Speaker 3: I'm just struggling with the motivation, Like, what would be
Speaker 3: if you wanted to end his own life? I completely
Speaker 3: understand that, But what would be the motivation to basically
Speaker 3: fake a murder? Are you trying to screw Nancy over
Speaker 3: so badly that you're going to frame her for murder
Speaker 3: when she didn't kill you. It just seems bizarre. And
Speaker 3: if he was irrational at the time, he might be
Speaker 3: making really irrational decisions. But if he did indeed do
Speaker 3: this to himself, he was rational enough to think, I
Speaker 3: will inject myself with Leta Kane before I do these
Speaker 3: grievous injuries to myself like cutting off nipples and finger
Speaker 3: and gashing oneself across the chest. And maybe there was
Speaker 3: those hesitation marks. If that's indeed what it was if
Speaker 3: he did do this. I'm just really really struggling with why.
Speaker 1: I guess you'll turn. An example is that some people
Speaker 1: try to make their suicide look like a homicide because
Speaker 1: they don't want anyone else to know they completed suicide.
Speaker 1: They don't want to go out on those terms, so
Speaker 1: they want to make it look like they were killed
Speaker 1: and that they didn't make a conscious choice to take
Speaker 1: their own life.
Speaker 3: Now, there are doctor umented cases in which victims have
Speaker 3: killed themselves and gone to great lengths to ensure their
Speaker 3: deaths do not look like suicide. Those slicing open your
Speaker 3: chest and cutting off both your nipples and a joint
Speaker 3: from your pinky finger before deliberately crashing your car does
Speaker 3: seem like a pretty horrific way to end your own life.
Speaker 3: The reason that vehicular suicides are so risky is that
Speaker 3: you could end up paralyzed or a vegetable, which would
Speaker 3: be a fate worse than death for a suicidal person.
Speaker 3: One of the big issues with how Colonel Schue died
Speaker 3: is that he didn't crash head on into a tree,
Speaker 3: but instead drove off the road and clipped one tree
Speaker 3: before he spun into his second tree with such force
Speaker 3: that he was killed by the impact. I don't think
Speaker 3: anyone could predict with absolute certainty that a crash like
Speaker 3: that would end their life. But then again, if Shue
Speaker 3: was in a very dark place and suffered a complete
Speaker 3: psychological breakdown, he may not have been in the most
Speaker 3: rational state of mind that morning. And all that being said,
Speaker 3: even though there are a number of details about Sho's
Speaker 3: death which point to the involvement of a outside party,
Speaker 3: it's really hard to come up with a scenario involving
Speaker 3: abduction and torture that makes much sense. We've read the
Speaker 3: psychological autopsy report that was produced by the Air Force
Speaker 3: Office of Special Investigations, and while there are definitely issues
Speaker 3: with some of their conclusions, they do make some valid
Speaker 3: points which seem to blow holes in the foul play theory.
Speaker 3: She left his home and his Mercury tracer that morning
Speaker 3: in order to make the thirty mile commute to work,
Speaker 3: and theoretically there should have been no reason for him
Speaker 3: to stop anywhere and put himself in a position to
Speaker 3: be abducted. You also have to take into account that
Speaker 3: she took a break from his ordinary routine by leaving
Speaker 3: an hour earlier than usual in order to catch up
Speaker 3: on some paperwork at his office. So unless someone was
Speaker 3: watching him when he left, how could they have known
Speaker 3: that she would be out there driving on the road
Speaker 3: at that particular time. The biggest issue with figuring out
Speaker 3: what happened is that we've got zero evidence if shees
Speaker 3: whereabouts during the two and a half hour window between
Speaker 3: when he left his residence at five forty five A
Speaker 3: and his car was seen driving erratically down Interstate ten
Speaker 3: between eight and eight fifteen am. All we really have
Speaker 3: is an eyewitness who came forward six years after the
Speaker 3: fat and recalled seeing the mercury tracer off the side
Speaker 3: of the road with the blue van parked directly behind it.
Speaker 3: This sighting took place on a road Shoe ordinarily would
Speaker 3: have used to drive onto the interstate during his commute
Speaker 3: to work, so I could see someone intercepting and abducting him.
Speaker 3: But if so, where did they take him to be tortured?
Speaker 3: Since the duct tape on Shoe's wrist was torn, this
Speaker 3: suggests that he might have been tied to a chair
Speaker 3: at some point before he broke free. But where was
Speaker 3: this location if she was abductor or abductors forced him
Speaker 3: into the van against his will and traveled elsewhere did
Speaker 3: someone else drive the tracer there? Remember Shoe died while
Speaker 3: driving the tracer, so if he managed to escape, he
Speaker 3: had to wind up back in his own car at
Speaker 3: some point. No matter which side of the fence you're on,
Speaker 3: there are a lot of unexplained gaps about how she
Speaker 3: got from point eight to point B.
Speaker 2: So shue Is had to have either driven his tracer
Speaker 2: towards work or met somebody somewhere, because he is eventually
Speaker 2: found in his own vehicle. But like you just said,
Speaker 2: if he was abducted or he's being tortured somewhere, it
Speaker 2: looks like someone else had to intervene and find him.
Speaker 2: So where was that location? The idea that he would
Speaker 2: have the duct tape is what is really bizarre to me.
Speaker 2: The injuries. Could you self inflict injuries, yes, but they're dramatic.
Speaker 2: They're cutting his chest, they're cutting off the nipples, they're
Speaker 2: cutting off a digit of his finger. All that's incredibly bizarre.
Speaker 2: But what would motivates you to actually do exactly what
Speaker 2: you said? Fake that you were almost tied to a
Speaker 2: chair somewhere and had to break free, which would make
Speaker 2: sense if he had been abducted, that that really occurred.
Speaker 2: So it's all very confusing. You have that maybe someone
Speaker 2: pulled up behind him at some point, which could be
Speaker 2: that second party, but we know nobody was in the car.
Speaker 4: When he crashed.
Speaker 2: I think that he likely was fleeing from something or
Speaker 2: somebody and was in a state of shock and panic
Speaker 2: and losing blood. And that's why you never see tail lights,
Speaker 2: That's why you never see skid marks. He's actually just
Speaker 2: losing consciousness and coming off the road. He seems so
Speaker 2: normal that morning. Could he have completed suicide? Sure, anything's possible.
Speaker 2: Be one of the most bizarre suicides in history, probably,
Speaker 2: but the other being abducted, being tortured, breaking free from
Speaker 2: some cherry or taped to seems very plausible when you
Speaker 2: look at this evidence. I don't think he would have
Speaker 2: pulled over to get help. I think he would have
Speaker 2: been in a state of shock, and then when that's
Speaker 2: wearing off is when he would crash the car.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it definitely does seem to me that him being
Speaker 1: abducted and towards it makes a lot more sense than
Speaker 1: him staging elaborate suicide. But like I said, The big
Speaker 1: issue is that I cannot figure out how things got
Speaker 1: to that point. I mean, we mentioned that his cell
Speaker 1: phone was found and there was no record of him
Speaker 1: having made any calls that morning, so it doesn't sound
Speaker 1: like he made any plans to meet anyone. So it
Speaker 1: could have been just a thing where someone pulled out
Speaker 1: in front of him and got him to pull over
Speaker 1: somehow and that's when he was abducted. But it still
Speaker 1: makes you wonder like where, if he was being tortured,
Speaker 1: where exactly did this occur. Where was there a chair
Speaker 1: to duct tape into? And what happened to these people
Speaker 1: after Shoe tried to flee the scene, And he.
Speaker 3: Did have to drive on some rural roads in order
Speaker 3: to get to work on the interstate, correct that is true?
Speaker 1: Yes, Like he didn't immediately go to the interstate, so
Speaker 1: I could see someone intercepting him and abducting him in
Speaker 1: a rural area without any witnesses around.
Speaker 2: And I'm assuming that Tracy never heard anything that he
Speaker 2: was going to meet up with somebody, or that he
Speaker 2: had a meeting before work or anything like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, he did say that he was leading earlier
Speaker 1: than usual, about an hour earlier. Because he had some
Speaker 1: extra paperwork to do. So theoretically that could have been
Speaker 1: a lie that maybe he had a secret meet up
Speaker 1: with someone and that's why he was leaving early. But
Speaker 1: if so, they never found any phone records or any
Speaker 1: emails or anything to prove that theory.
Speaker 2: I wish they could analyze that cell phone. When you
Speaker 2: look at the idea that there was a lot of
Speaker 2: blood inside the phone but not on top, it's really
Speaker 2: really interesting, and they didn't. They just like the rest
Speaker 2: of the evidence, they said, oh, it's a suicide, no
Speaker 2: need to investigate further.
Speaker 4: And there were.
Speaker 2: Things there that might have given more information to police.
Speaker 1: So now this would be a good time to bring
Speaker 1: an into Part one. Join us next week as we
Speaker 1: present part two of our series about the unexplained death
Speaker 1: of Colonel Philip Shoe.
Speaker 3: Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit
Speaker 3: about the Trail Went Cold Patreon?
Speaker 1: Yes, The Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three
Speaker 1: years now, and we offer these standard bonus features like
Speaker 1: early ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers
Speaker 1: and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs up
Speaker 1: with us on Patreon. If you join our five dollars
Speaker 1: tier Tier two. We also offer monthly bonus episodes in
Speaker 1: which I talk about cases which are not featured on
Speaker 1: The Trail Went Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to
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Speaker 1: the ten dollars Tier. One of the features we offer
Speaker 1: is a audio commentary track over classic episodes of UNSAWD Mysteries,
Speaker 1: where you can download an audio file and then boot
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Speaker 1: YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in
Speaker 1: the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about
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Speaker 1: first episode that I did a commentary track over was
Speaker 1: the episode featuring this case. So if you want to
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Speaker 3: Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy