Speaker 1: Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence, and is
Speaker 1: not intended for all audiences.
Speaker 2: Listener discretion these advice.
Speaker 3: Did it seem strange to you that you were taking
Speaker 3: human flesh inside into the top.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Sword and Scale, a show that reveals that
Speaker 1: the worst monsters are real. If you like true crime documentaries,
Speaker 1: we make them. Let's head on over to our YouTube
Speaker 1: channel or website Swordscale dot com for more info on
Speaker 1: Sword and Scale television. These are hour long documentaries, cinematic,
Speaker 1: really beautiful, beautifully shot documentaries about uh, you know, murder.
Speaker 1: On October fourth, twenty twenty one, firefighters rush to three
Speaker 1: eighty six Moon Valley Road in Dallas County, Missouri. The
Speaker 1: name sounds like it should be printed on a postcard.
Speaker 1: Moon Valley makes you think of a serene getaway with
Speaker 1: cozy cabins and campfires. In reality, Moon Valley Road is
Speaker 1: a boring strip of gravel that cuts through dense ozark woods.
Speaker 1: These trees are so thick that they almost block out
Speaker 1: the sky when you look up from the ground. The
Speaker 1: nights are so dark you can't see your hand in
Speaker 1: front of you. There are no street lights, no neighbors
Speaker 1: in sight, only the kind of isolation where bad things
Speaker 1: happen without anyone noticing. By the time they get there,
Speaker 1: the fire is already out of control. Nothing on the
Speaker 1: property can be salvaged. Flames shoot out of every building
Speaker 1: and don't stop burning until they've destroyed them all. After
Speaker 1: the fires are finally out, a Dallas County deputy steps
Speaker 1: onto the property. The ground is soft and sooty with
Speaker 1: wet ash. The black mud sticks to his boots, and
Speaker 1: smoke is seeping from the rubble. The cabin is a
Speaker 1: shell now, with the roof collapsed and the windows blown
Speaker 1: out out. The outbuildings are mostly gone. In the middle
Speaker 1: of the cabin's rubble stands a lone familiar piece of furniture,
Speaker 1: a bathtub. The deputy wades through the debris, scanning with
Speaker 1: a flashlight. Then his beam catches a wire, stretched tight,
Speaker 1: almost invisible, still attached to two scorched posts. He freezes
Speaker 1: it's a trip wire. He knows that if he moves
Speaker 1: the wrong way he could trigger it and blow them
Speaker 1: all to pieces. His eyes follow it carefully, and his
Speaker 1: focus is locked on the wire until it leads to
Speaker 1: a device buried in the rubble. They call the bomb squad,
Speaker 1: who detonates one device on site and removes two more.
Speaker 1: These are homemade bombs. The fire marshal will make the
Speaker 1: easy call. This was arson.
Speaker 5: Scarce but solid details being released on what could have
Speaker 5: caused a late night fire on Moon Valley Road hours
Speaker 5: before Cassidy Rainwater suspected kidnappers were due in court. A
Speaker 5: cabin where James Phelps and Timothy Norton had been living
Speaker 5: burned to the ground. A report obtained by Ozarks First
Speaker 5: Today shows the Springfield bomb squad discovered not one, but
Speaker 5: two explosive devices among the ashes, and while it doesn't
Speaker 5: say whether the fire was set intentionally, it does list
Speaker 5: what equipment was taken by investigators. The report calls them
Speaker 5: incendiary devices made with mortar tubes, balloons, and coiled fuses
Speaker 5: with a trip wire attached. A Springfield fire marshal says
Speaker 5: one of the explosives was detonated on site, but what
Speaker 5: happened to the second device has not yet been released.
Speaker 1: The Missouri Ozarks cover more than forty thousand square miles
Speaker 1: of rough isolated country, over half the state and twice
Speaker 1: the size of Switzerland. The Ozarks aren't a true mountain range,
Speaker 1: but a high ancient plateau of limestone carved over millions
Speaker 1: of years. These limestone hills fold into deep valleys, Caves
Speaker 1: run for miles underground, and rivers disappear into sinkholes without
Speaker 1: a trace, and a lot of the roads are narrow
Speaker 1: and surrounded by woods. What goes on in the hollows
Speaker 1: is anyone's guests. Tourists come here for the fishing, cabins,
Speaker 1: float trips, and lake towns, but the Ozarks have another side.
Speaker 1: Civil War confederates use these woods to disappear and then
Speaker 1: ambush their enemies. Prohibition gangs built stills so far back
Speaker 1: in the timber that no one dared to go there.
Speaker 1: Math cooks and armed weed growers still guard their territory
Speaker 1: like they're at war. And then there are the legends
Speaker 1: weird lights moving through the trees with no source, numerous
Speaker 1: bigfoot sightings, and whispers of feral people living in the
Speaker 1: back country. Out here, it's easy to go missing, and
Speaker 1: even easier to stay that way. Thirty three year old
Speaker 1: Cassidy rainwater didn't just disappear all at once. It happened
Speaker 1: slowly and under the radar, the kind of missing person's
Speaker 1: case that didn't start with a nine to one one call,
Speaker 1: but with a gap in contact that kept getting longer.
Speaker 6: Cassidy was a free spirited girl, loud.
Speaker 7: If she walked in a room, everybody knew she was there,
Speaker 7: but she.
Speaker 8: Had a beautiful soul.
Speaker 1: She was born on June ninth, nineteen eighty eight, near Lebanon, Missouri. Officially,
Speaker 1: Cassidy's parents were Clifford Welch and Tracy Wawasuck, but she
Speaker 1: went by Rainwater, a Native American name tied to someone
Speaker 1: in her past, her grandfather, who happened to own land
Speaker 1: on Moon Valley Road, near where she was last seen.
Speaker 1: Cassidy had her first child with a high school boyfriend
Speaker 1: named Ben. The couple tried to make it work for
Speaker 1: the sake of their baby, but they chose to put
Speaker 1: them up for adoption at some point. Regardless, she and
Speaker 1: Ben remained on good terms. Later, she remarried and had
Speaker 1: other children with that partner. Reports say that she was
Speaker 1: still legally married in twenty twenty one, but living apart.
Speaker 1: By the summer of twenty twenty one, Cassidy's life was unsettled.
Speaker 1: She'd been moving between places looking for stability. Her first partner, Ben,
Speaker 1: remembered being worried about her.
Speaker 9: She was in a bad way, like at that time.
Speaker 5: I'm pretty sure she was homeless, and she and I
Speaker 5: were talking and was just like, you come to Kansas City,
Speaker 5: we'll get things figured out.
Speaker 1: Searching for a place to stay eventually led her to
Speaker 1: a small property on Moon Valley Road, a remote rental
Speaker 1: cabin occupied by sixty year old him Phelps and owned
Speaker 1: by a man named John. John Nucassidy's grandparents and suggested
Speaker 1: she talk with the guy living there. Jim, living in
Speaker 1: the cabin, had a soft spot for taking in women
Speaker 1: and girls, but none of them ever said anything negative
Speaker 1: about him.
Speaker 10: Okay, Jim, it's a friend. Once again. He let me
Speaker 10: stay with him from time to time when I was
Speaker 10: having a hard time.
Speaker 3: I have a lot of health problems, so it's.
Speaker 10: Hard for me to work, which is why I'm getting
Speaker 10: a job to where I work on my own time.
Speaker 7: Now. Seems like in the podcast, but.
Speaker 10: Jim, he was really kind. He was a sweet guy.
Speaker 10: But when I met him, he was a really kind guy.
Speaker 11: He was caring, He was really nice.
Speaker 10: No sexual relations, not like that out there. I mean,
Speaker 10: I've met Jim's family, I've met Tim's family. They know me,
Speaker 10: I know them.
Speaker 1: Amanda didn't just stumbled into this story. Her paths here
Speaker 1: started months earlier when she met fifty six year old
Speaker 1: Tim Norton, Jim's best friend. Amanda met Tim through a
Speaker 1: friend who was engaged to his nephew and living there.
Speaker 1: At the time. Amanda was between homes, so she moved
Speaker 1: into Tim's trailer, which, by all accounts was a disgusting
Speaker 1: pig pen. Tim was a long haul trucker and Amanda
Speaker 1: sometimes went along for the ride. Other times she acted
Speaker 1: like his personal dispatcher or helped with his finances. People
Speaker 1: assumed they were a couple. Amanda says, that's ridiculous. He
Speaker 1: was too old for her. According to Amanda, she was
Speaker 1: just helping him in exchange for a place to live.
Speaker 1: I mean, he was fifty six and she was nineteen.
Speaker 1: Nothing to see here. Right months later, Amanda's living situation
Speaker 1: shifted again. The chaos of everyone living in the trailer
Speaker 1: wore her down. Tim suggested she go and stay at
Speaker 1: his buddy, Jim's cabin for a while, so she did.
Speaker 1: On paper, it sounded like a quiet escape, a rural
Speaker 1: place with a name that could pass for a weekend getaway,
Speaker 1: but this was no campground. The cabin sat isolated, hidden
Speaker 1: from the road, with sheds of outbuildings scattered across the property.
Speaker 1: Amanda says her time there was temporary, but her connections
Speaker 1: with Jim and Tim were already cemented and they were
Speaker 1: about to become a lot more than casual acquaintances. Let's
Speaker 1: circle back to Cassidy Rainwater. Amanda knew who she was
Speaker 1: because their time at Jim's cabin overlapped. Amanda remembered meeting her.
Speaker 3: I met her once.
Speaker 10: Me and Jim went over there because I had some
Speaker 10: mail to hook up, because that's when I melt Millan
Speaker 10: addresses right.
Speaker 11: Know, and her didn't really talk.
Speaker 12: She didn't She was kind of.
Speaker 10: Quiet, which I get a new person.
Speaker 11: I'm quiet too with new people, But.
Speaker 10: She didn't really talk. She kind of stayed to herself,
Speaker 10: and whenever I went to go do something in my car,
Speaker 10: and when I came back in, she had told Jim
Speaker 10: that she wanted to leave, that she wasn't comfortable those
Speaker 10: two many people. Jim didn't tell her that people were coming.
Speaker 3: Over and she wasn't comfortable with this.
Speaker 10: It was just me, Jim, Tim and her.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it wasn't exactly a warm welcome. Cassidy, like Amanda,
Speaker 1: wasn't looking for new friends. You could say both women
Speaker 1: had retreated to the cabin for the same reason, to
Speaker 1: escape drama and conflict and piece themselves back together. The
Speaker 1: problem was that the place was starting to feel less
Speaker 1: like an isolated hideout and more like the worst kind
Speaker 1: of Airbnb, the kind where the host keeps allowing more
Speaker 1: guests to book the place without telling you. According to Amanda,
Speaker 1: the two tried to stay out of each other's way.
Speaker 1: This was around mid July twenty twenty one. By the
Speaker 1: time Cassidy went missing in late August, Amanda had already
Speaker 1: moved out.
Speaker 10: I didn't really I tried not to get involved in
Speaker 10: too much because I just I can't pay you bees.
Speaker 10: Just I was like, I looked at him and I said, so,
Speaker 10: how is Cassady doing? Because I was just kind of
Speaker 10: curious because I know she's been struggling with some stuff
Speaker 10: and I was in He was like, I don't know.
Speaker 10: She left in the middle of night. I like, oh,
Speaker 10: And then later I found out this she's missing. How
Speaker 10: you know? God until I read the article and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 10: this suff happened, and then I said it. In the
Speaker 10: back of my mind, it was like that could have
Speaker 10: been me.
Speaker 1: In August, a friend noticed that it had been about
Speaker 1: six weeks since anyone had seen Cassidy. She was reported missing.
Speaker 1: The last person to admit seeing her was Jim. It
Speaker 1: wasn't the police who made the first big move in
Speaker 1: the case. It was the FBI, after someone sent them
Speaker 1: an email with photographs labeled Cassidy. The first one showed
Speaker 1: a topless woman in a cage, and whoever sent it
Speaker 1: made sure the FBI knew exactly where to find her,
Speaker 1: or at least what was left of her. In the
Speaker 1: summer of twenty twenty one, Jim Phelps was living in
Speaker 1: a small cabin on Moon Valley Road, a patch of
Speaker 1: rural Missouri surrounded by dense ozark woods. He was a quiet,
Speaker 1: reclusive person who spent most of his time at the cabin.
Speaker 1: His closest friend, Tim Norton, was a long haul trucker,
Speaker 1: also with a habit of keeping to himself, and yet somehow,
Speaker 1: women kept finding their way to that cabin. One was
Speaker 1: a nineteen year old woman named Amanda. She also stayed
Speaker 1: at the cabin for a few weeks after life became
Speaker 1: too crowded at Tim's place, Cassidy Rainwater, whose life was unraveling,
Speaker 1: had come to the cabin searching for solitude and some
Speaker 1: kind of sanctuary. Like Amanda, she was private, guarded, not
Speaker 1: quick to share her world. Their paths only crossed briefly
Speaker 1: before Amanda moved out. A few weeks later, Cassidy was
Speaker 1: gone too, but unlike Amanda, she didn't choose her next destination.
Speaker 1: She simply disappeared. After six weeks with no sign of her,
Speaker 1: she was reported missing by a family member. The last
Speaker 1: person to have seen her was Jim Phelps. One night,
Speaker 1: deputies drove out to Moon Valley Road. The cabin was
Speaker 1: lit only by a porch bulb and their headlights. Otherwise
Speaker 1: it was an opaque kind of darkness. They knocked, asking
Speaker 1: Jim where Cassidy was.
Speaker 8: Haii Sheriff's office?
Speaker 10: How howdye?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 8: Is a Cassidy here?
Speaker 7: No?
Speaker 1: No, I was seen her in Wait?
Speaker 8: Really, well, I'm trying to check on her.
Speaker 7: You know her?
Speaker 8: You know Cassidy?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I know, Well, I've been trying to check on her.
Speaker 1: Jim Phelps over six feet tall, bald, with glasses and
Speaker 1: a white Beard came to the cabin door, wearing only
Speaker 1: jeans and a dog tag around his neck. He looked
Speaker 1: relatively harmless, at least for OZARKI and Missouri.
Speaker 8: Do you have a phone number for her? Nope? Okay,
Speaker 8: do you want to look at Oh? No, she's not here.
Speaker 8: She's not here. She's not in any trouble. They're just
Speaker 8: worried about her. Do you know maybe where she's at?
Speaker 7: Last I heard she was going to Colorado?
Speaker 8: Going to Colorado? Yeah, Oh, do you know what's over there?
Speaker 8: She never told you?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 10: How long?
Speaker 3: How long ago?
Speaker 13: Was that?
Speaker 7: All right?
Speaker 8: Well, if she comes back, or if she comes and busys,
Speaker 8: shed appreciate if you'd call us so we can tell,
Speaker 8: you know, tell her family that she's okay. So all right, Well,
Speaker 8: I guess.
Speaker 10: I'll be out of here.
Speaker 1: You mean to tell me that. In the whole time
Speaker 1: Cassidy was staying there under his roof, he didn't even
Speaker 1: have her phone number. Come on. Just a few weeks later,
Speaker 1: on September sixteenth, twenty twenty one, an anonymous email lands
Speaker 1: in the FBI's tip line inbox. Attached are pictures, all
Speaker 1: labeled with the same name Cassidy. The first picture stops
Speaker 1: the FBI agent cold. It's a woman in a cage,
Speaker 1: blonde hair bear from the waist up, crouched in the
Speaker 1: cage with her knees pulled tightly against her chest. She
Speaker 1: has a vacant stare in between and the steel bars.
Speaker 1: He sees the room behind. This is a large animal cage,
Speaker 1: but it's inside a room. It's inside someone's house. He
Speaker 1: clicks to the next frame, and the scenery is outside
Speaker 1: old weather sheds, piles of scrap, and a tall metal frame.
Speaker 1: To most people it's nothing, but he's seen enough hunting
Speaker 1: setups to know what this is. A deer gantry. The
Speaker 1: details fall into place in his head, the wood grain
Speaker 1: on the walls, the layout of the yard and all
Speaker 1: of its clutter. Whoever sent him this email wasn't trying
Speaker 1: to hide anything. They wanted him to know exactly where
Speaker 1: this was. And as he stares at the screen, one
Speaker 1: thought is very clear. Whatever is happening out there on
Speaker 1: Moon Valley Road, it's probably already too late to stop it.
Speaker 1: On the same day, Dallas County detectives get a warrant
Speaker 1: and show up in broad daylight. They want to compare
Speaker 1: the scenery to the photos this time, the officer stops
Speaker 1: the car halfway up the gravel lane when he sees
Speaker 1: Jim's dog on a long leash, and then spots Jim
Speaker 1: walking slowly across the yard. Now he's fully clothed, but
Speaker 1: still is nonchalant as last time. Nope, I haven't seen her.
Speaker 12: Hello, how you doing okay? Yeah, uh well, I was
Speaker 12: just following up with you on Cassidy and it's been once.
Speaker 3: It been a couple of weeks since we've been here, and.
Speaker 12: We haven't heard a peep out over you know, So
Speaker 12: I'm just gonna see maybe you'd heard anything out of
Speaker 12: her or anything extra. You can send us to do
Speaker 12: follow ups arm some We're coming up pretty.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 12: He doesn't like it, does he?
Speaker 1: Actually, he wants you to play with him. Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 12: The the last time I was here, I was walking
Speaker 12: by him and.
Speaker 7: He grabbed hold of me.
Speaker 12: I didn't know if he was trying to play or.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 1: The dog looks well cared for. So does Jim actually,
Speaker 1: but as unbothered as he seems, his posture says a lot.
Speaker 1: While his voice is easy, his words are compliant. He
Speaker 1: almost immediately folds his arms tightly across his chest. They
Speaker 1: call that a defensive posture.
Speaker 7: Jim.
Speaker 12: The last time I was here, let me get a
Speaker 12: piece of paper. I uh, I got to do a
Speaker 12: big report on it and stuff, and I have, Jim felt,
Speaker 12: but I won't have any room for it.
Speaker 1: I just wonder if I get that from you? Okay,
Speaker 1: Jim Phelps?
Speaker 7: Is it Jim James Eliot Man.
Speaker 1: James Philps.
Speaker 7: What's your data? Birth January thirteen sixty three.
Speaker 1: If you pay close attention, Jim is getting increasingly anxious.
Speaker 1: Listen for his nervous laugh.
Speaker 7: I guess you know your social.
Speaker 14: Media thirteen years in military? Yeah, I know, Yeah, you
Speaker 14: remember those things after that, long after the.
Speaker 1: First day or so.
Speaker 14: Yeah, remember you remember it.
Speaker 1: You don't want to have to go back there dig
Speaker 1: it out?
Speaker 3: What's that number again?
Speaker 14: I remember going to go through MEPs.
Speaker 3: It was like, because I didn't know mine, I had
Speaker 3: my car. It's like every time I turned around, I
Speaker 3: was digging it out.
Speaker 5: By the end of that day.
Speaker 12: I had it by the end of the first day,
Speaker 12: rattled it off without a problem.
Speaker 1: And you still can't today.
Speaker 14: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah.
Speaker 12: There was a picture that I had come across of
Speaker 12: Cassidy and I was wondering if it was done here,
Speaker 12: would you mind if I looked at your backyard? In
Speaker 12: my backyard, Yeah, there's a picture taken over with a
Speaker 12: stump in the background. Do you have anything like that in.
Speaker 4: The back yard.
Speaker 7: I don't have a stump.
Speaker 4: Stump.
Speaker 12: You might have to take a look recruiting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, back, here's my boy.
Speaker 1: Jim tries to brush it off, saying the only thing
Speaker 1: back there is this hoist. But once they step into
Speaker 1: the yard, it's like walking right into the pictures themselves
Speaker 1: three D now, not just images on a page. The hoist,
Speaker 1: the clutter, the leaning sheds, every detail of the image
Speaker 1: lines up.
Speaker 12: Get up against that truck right now. Get your hands
Speaker 12: on that truck. Do not fuck with me. Get up
Speaker 12: there on that truck, on the truck, hands behind your back.
Speaker 4: What's going on?
Speaker 7: Kay?
Speaker 12: Going on, mister Phelps? Yeah, the right to remain silent.
Speaker 12: Anything you say cannon willbeasies against you in a court
Speaker 12: of law.
Speaker 1: You know how the rest of that goes. In fact,
Speaker 1: you probably have it memorized.
Speaker 12: You understand your rights. Yeah, Okay, what's going on right now?
Speaker 12: You're under arrest for the homicide of Cassidy Rainwater.
Speaker 3: What's the app of my dog.
Speaker 7: We'll talk about that in just a little bit.
Speaker 1: To understand who Jim Phelps was, you have to hear
Speaker 1: from John Warren. He's the man who actually owned the
Speaker 1: cabin on Moon Valley Road. He wasn't just a landlord.
Speaker 1: He was family. He was Jim Phelps's brother in law
Speaker 1: and rented property to Jim for a mere two hundred
Speaker 1: dollars a month plus utilities. Keep in mind the place
Speaker 1: was no mansion. This guy also knew Cassidy because her grandfather,
Speaker 1: Bill Rainwater, used to be his neighbor.
Speaker 3: So that's when you met Cassie. When she's a kid.
Speaker 4: She was just who came out of the film one day.
Speaker 2: I kind of find out about two years later her
Speaker 2: mother disappeared, and about twenty years later who had done it?
Speaker 4: Him? When how it happened that her boyfriend meet her
Speaker 4: death and put her in.
Speaker 2: A box and to grew out in a very in
Speaker 2: shallow gray on the intro. Found that out twenty years later.
Speaker 4: Where was that over Lukely again?
Speaker 3: Who was your boyfriend?
Speaker 4: I don't know. Bill told me about it.
Speaker 1: In other words, John Warren wasn't just Jim Phelps landlord
Speaker 1: and brother in law. He was linked to all of them.
Speaker 1: He tied Jim to the property, and he tied Cassidy
Speaker 1: to a family history already marked by violence. Her mother's murder,
Speaker 1: hidden for twenty years, had only come to light a
Speaker 1: few years before Cassidy herself would disappear. John said Cassidy
Speaker 1: was going through a hard time. Finding out her mother
Speaker 1: was murdered was probably part of that, and so he
Speaker 1: and his wife were trying to help her.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, robbing head and that you go to sut
Speaker 2: because now you get.
Speaker 7: It.
Speaker 1: Seemed like John Warren was kind of a grandfather to Cassidy.
Speaker 1: He tried to help her, but she stole from his wife,
Speaker 1: and he continued trying to help a recovering addict. He
Speaker 1: told Jim Phelps that to use his property there was
Speaker 1: a zero tolerance policy for drugs. He told Cassidy the
Speaker 1: same thing before he allowed her to stay on the
Speaker 1: property with Jim. By the time Cassidy was staying there,
Speaker 1: Amanda had already been in and out of the cabin.
Speaker 1: Their time overlapped, and Amanda remembered Cassidy as quiet and uneasy,
Speaker 1: not comfortable with strangers coming around. Apparently, John, the property
Speaker 1: owner felt the same way. Yet another friend of Tim's
Speaker 1: was making herself at home without getting permission and this little.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I was.
Speaker 4: Not got anything on wast uh.
Speaker 2: And I said you might want to us mom on
Speaker 2: hood if are you And she told me.
Speaker 4: Well, I'm Tim's friend.
Speaker 2: Well, Tams friends, you need to use your ass down
Speaker 2: here and get your.
Speaker 4: Stuff back your lean because does not are the deal orderstand.
Speaker 2: He's a caplace, he's working there.
Speaker 15: All week and she's staying there. Desn't try to find out?
Speaker 15: Uh recent that they called me Jim was in the.
Speaker 4: Hospital and just person was in the.
Speaker 2: Camps getting you out of there as as she walked
Speaker 2: out door locked on the door because of MS in
Speaker 2: my hospital and kill as the other key.
Speaker 3: Jim's at the hospital and you kt Tim's friend out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a friend out and uh that was an amazing thing.
Speaker 2: Kim was able to come down and pick her up.
Speaker 2: And he was supposed to be there until two or
Speaker 2: three days m h. And imagine that he actually was
Speaker 2: able to show up a couple of hours later.
Speaker 1: None of this was sitting well with John. He made
Speaker 1: it clear he didn't like Tim hanging around the property.
Speaker 1: Tim always seemed to be lurking around the corner, quick
Speaker 1: to show up, always in Jim's shadow. John said he
Speaker 1: never wanted him out there in the first place. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: on September sixteenth, Jim was already in custody. Deputies sit
Speaker 1: him down and ask about Cassidy. He doesn't give them much.
Speaker 1: He sticks to his story. She talked about going to Colorado.
Speaker 1: She left in the middle of the night, someone picked
Speaker 1: her up, and he hadn't seen her since. When they press,
Speaker 1: he deflects, even whining about his dog, and then he
Speaker 1: shuts up completely. He wants a lawyer, he says. Investigators
Speaker 1: still have an angle. Though his friend Tim Norton, it
Speaker 1: seems pretty clear he's a big player in whatever happened
Speaker 1: to Cassidy, and if he isn't an active participant, he
Speaker 1: at least knows stuff, a lot of stuff. Detectives bring
Speaker 1: him into another room. Compared to Jim, he is easier prey.
Speaker 1: Where Jim had clammed up, Tim talked so much that
Speaker 1: he couldn't hold his story straight for more than five minutes.
Speaker 1: At first, he flat out to nies knowing anything about
Speaker 1: Cassidy's disappearance. He says he didn't see her, doesn't know
Speaker 1: what happened and doesn't have a clue. But when asked
Speaker 1: about her relationship with Jim, he's got a lot to say.
Speaker 3: Were they in a sexual relationship?
Speaker 9: Not that I know him. I know he talked about that.
Speaker 9: She said she was going to do certain things, well,
Speaker 9: that she would spend night and you'll sleep with him
Speaker 9: and stuff. I'm lord, I know nothing ever happened, because
Speaker 9: he always he was always aggravated after she left because
Speaker 9: she didn't knew she said she was going to do that.
Speaker 3: Okay. So so it's your understanding that Jim thought that
Speaker 3: the two of them may at some point we have
Speaker 3: a romantic or sexual relationship, Okay, but you don't think
Speaker 3: it ever happened based on non Okay.
Speaker 1: Both Jim and Tim were annoyed with Cassidy for different reasons,
Speaker 1: but the property owner kept sticking up for her.
Speaker 3: I didn't like her, Okay. What about Jim?
Speaker 9: He do he tolerated because of John.
Speaker 3: He tolerated her because of John and John again being
Speaker 3: the person who owns the property.
Speaker 9: Jim tried to keep her eye on the property for
Speaker 9: a while. After a while after she's thrown the rings, Okay,
Speaker 9: but she would go to John and get John. Okay, ever,
Speaker 9: come out there and stay into Kevin. Jim hands her tighten.
Speaker 1: They believe John when he said she had stolen jewelry
Speaker 1: from his wife, but John was willing to forgive her.
Speaker 1: But later a collection of Tim's knives went missing from
Speaker 1: the cabin, and Tim blamed Cassidy. Tim and Jim's plan
Speaker 1: escalated quickly. What started as talk of confronting her turned
Speaker 1: into restraining her and ended with killing her. By that point,
Speaker 1: Cassidy had already spent time locked inside a dog cage.
Speaker 3: How did that progress?
Speaker 7: That one?
Speaker 3: I do believe.
Speaker 9: Progressed with him saying he wanted her dead?
Speaker 3: Okay, I was about.
Speaker 9: To tell you that she was accusing me and or
Speaker 9: mister Fellows of kidnapping her or killing her, or I'm
Speaker 9: not sure exactly what she was.
Speaker 1: Cassidy accused them outright of kidnapping her and planning to
Speaker 1: kill her, and that, according to Tim, pissed Jim off
Speaker 1: even more.
Speaker 3: And so during that planning process between you and mister Phelps,
Speaker 3: was anyone else ever a part of that?
Speaker 9: Yes, there was one version, one time, maybe two times.
Speaker 14: M No was there.
Speaker 3: Her name was Amanda.
Speaker 1: Golly, don't let Amanda's small baby voice fool you into
Speaker 1: thinking she was innocent. She insisted she wasn't his girlfriend.
Speaker 1: He was too old for her, she had her age limits,
Speaker 1: no X, nothing to see here. But she was much
Speaker 1: more involved than she said.
Speaker 3: Fellows Kidd, neithers have ever talked about folks.
Speaker 10: They talked about, you know, like hunting stuff like that,
Speaker 10: like deer and stuff, fish, fishing and stuff like that,
Speaker 10: but never killing anyone.
Speaker 4: How about yea.
Speaker 10: They made jokes, They're like, oh, she's pretty, I'll take
Speaker 10: her home. They kind of stopped, but you know, I
Speaker 10: never thought anything of it, because, like I said, when
Speaker 10: I'm a beast human they were sweet men. They were
Speaker 10: really nice. They were carried.
Speaker 1: But their jokes may not have been jokes at all.
Speaker 1: I mean, who jokes about that. Detectives were already onto
Speaker 1: the fact that they weren't joking. They had text messages
Speaker 1: and Facebook dialogue between the two of them. If there
Speaker 1: was any doubt about how dark Jim and Tim's conversations got,
Speaker 1: the messages they sent each other erased it. Jim told
Speaker 1: Tim flat out, you.
Speaker 7: Need to bring me a woman. I don't care where
Speaker 7: you get her.
Speaker 1: Tim didn't push back. He asked, where do you want
Speaker 1: me to get her? Jim's answer was as casual as
Speaker 1: it was chilling.
Speaker 7: Parking lots are good. Big lots is a good place
Speaker 7: to people watch. I can watch women all day.
Speaker 1: And it didn't stop there. Jim bragged, I've.
Speaker 7: Been watching the girls in town. One day, I'm going
Speaker 7: to have one tied up out here.
Speaker 1: Then came the line that made investigator's stomachs turn.
Speaker 7: I want fresh meat, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: We hear at Sorinscale, did a little digging and found
Speaker 1: someone who almost got caught up and Tim Norton's web
Speaker 1: This is red.
Speaker 16: So my name is Lauren. I at the time was
Speaker 16: in college in twenty twenty one. I believe I can't
Speaker 16: remember what month he got arrested, but I do remember
Speaker 16: that it was about two weeks after I had met him.
Speaker 16: After I had met Timothy, I was working at a
Speaker 16: Buffalo Wild Wings in like middle of nowhere college town,
Speaker 16: South Georgia. But whenever I was there, I had the
Speaker 16: patio section in the morning, which was typically nobody was
Speaker 16: really out there, and so I was just trying to
Speaker 16: make conversations see if I could get a tip, and
Speaker 16: he didn't really want anything from me, but he wanted
Speaker 16: to talk more than I think most people want to
Speaker 16: talk to their waitress. And when he had come through,
Speaker 16: he had said something about being a truck driver from Missouri.
Speaker 1: Ren described Tim as looking much older than his fifties
Speaker 1: and having what she described as a strangely flat face.
Speaker 1: The conversation started somewhat normally.
Speaker 16: He started off asking if I like my job, and
Speaker 16: I said, not really, but it pays the bills. He
Speaker 16: had told me I should get a rich boyfriend so
Speaker 16: I don't have to work this job anymore, and he
Speaker 16: wouldn't let a woman work like that, And that's when
Speaker 16: it started getting kind of weird. But it got creepy
Speaker 16: when he started asking me if we had any cameras
Speaker 16: in the parking lots and what time I got off work.
Speaker 1: The text messages alone suggested that Tim and Jim were
Speaker 1: a team, just as they'd always been. There's not a
Speaker 1: lot of information out there about who they were, but
Speaker 1: they described each other as brothers. Within the team, it
Speaker 1: seemed Tim was the scout, or maybe more like a
Speaker 1: predatory lion, hunting during the day and bringing the kill
Speaker 1: back to share.
Speaker 16: He had ended up telling me that he was a
Speaker 16: truck driver from Missouri, and he knew I seventy five
Speaker 16: like the back of his hand. And like when I
Speaker 16: say that it sounded like a threat. Sometimes people don't
Speaker 16: understand what I mean. But the way that he looked
Speaker 16: at me and the tone that he said it was like,
Speaker 16: I know where I'm going. I don't need to leave
Speaker 16: a trail to tell you I was there.
Speaker 3: It was just it was weird.
Speaker 16: And the way that he looked at me and also
Speaker 16: at a lot of the other girls that were working there,
Speaker 16: just seemed very predatory.
Speaker 1: We haven't even scratched the surface here. Back at the investigation,
Speaker 1: detectives had a broad idea of what actually went on
Speaker 1: the day that Tim and Jim decided to make Cassidy
Speaker 1: go away. Still, they had no idea how many details
Speaker 1: Tim would give them, and it all corroborated what Amanda
Speaker 1: was finally revealing, however minimized, she presented herself.
Speaker 6: I tell you, he didn't tell me he killed her, No,
Speaker 6: but I know that they were jokes made.
Speaker 10: The jokes that were made was that if they were
Speaker 10: to kill someone, they would cut them up in the little.
Speaker 1: Pisis that I'm in the Woods. Good joke, right.
Speaker 11: He never told me he killed her as far as
Speaker 11: I came, but he never told me. Yes, we need
Speaker 11: to trying to remember that conversation.
Speaker 3: If we had a conversation.
Speaker 1: I don't know about you, but if someone told me
Speaker 1: they wanted to get rid of somebody and then joked
Speaker 1: about how if they did it, they'd cut them into
Speaker 1: little pieces. I kind of remember that. But oh wait,
Speaker 1: just kidding. She did remember, Oh my god, I did.
Speaker 10: She was talking about how she had stolen something from
Speaker 10: him and that he had he had helped restrain her
Speaker 10: and die him and Jim like Apparently Jim looked at her,
Speaker 10: and Cassie looked at him and said why.
Speaker 11: He said, because you said that.
Speaker 10: I wouldn't that I've done it before. I didn't think
Speaker 10: anything of that.
Speaker 11: Oh my god, I thought.
Speaker 17: He was joking.
Speaker 7: I seriously did.
Speaker 10: Did me thinking it was a joke?
Speaker 7: Is? Yes?
Speaker 11: Uh, she's getting here.
Speaker 1: I guess it was all too easy for Amanda to
Speaker 1: play dumb when the story lined up exactly with what
Speaker 1: Tim admitted to telling her. Unlike Amanda, Tim didn't have
Speaker 1: the luxury of hiding behind just joking. When detectives pushed
Speaker 1: the thin wall denial cracked first to slip, then a fragment,
Speaker 1: and then a flood. What he finally confessed, piece by
Speaker 1: piece is the kind of thing you can't unhear.
Speaker 3: Okay, eight o'clock in the morning on in the in
Speaker 3: late July. So the sun is up, sun, okay, bright
Speaker 3: up in there with that, okay, so you can see,
Speaker 3: you think you can see clearly, okay. And and the
Speaker 3: person whose legs that you grabbed, it was cassidy ing water. Okay,
Speaker 3: all right, So you you had you were holding your legs.
Speaker 3: You you already described how you knelt down and were
Speaker 3: holding her knees I think is what you said.
Speaker 9: Yeah, right out of the right under her knee area.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 9: So he did mootibilized all of her leg I mean,
Speaker 9: I've got enough training and stuff and I don't know
Speaker 9: how to do that.
Speaker 3: And then and then what did Jim do?
Speaker 9: Well there again because I had my head down, but
Speaker 9: I really didn't see what he originally started doing. I
Speaker 9: did look up, and he was trying to get the
Speaker 9: bag of her head. Not not this way, just this way.
Speaker 4: And she was.
Speaker 9: I mean say she was yelling, but she was talking
Speaker 9: a little louder than normal, okay, asking why? Why? Why?
Speaker 9: And that's when I looked at him to see what
Speaker 9: he was gonna say, and I seen his eyes and
Speaker 9: at that point, I told you, at that point, I
Speaker 9: wasn't sure about my life.
Speaker 1: At first, Tim said he just held her legs well.
Speaker 1: Jim used a bag and then his hands. But as
Speaker 1: the questions kept coming, the details got darker. He finally
Speaker 1: admitted he joined in his own hands, tightening around her
Speaker 1: throat until she stopped struggling. All in all, it took
Speaker 1: thirty minutes to strangle the life out of her. Afterwards,
Speaker 1: they left her body lying there before dragging it outside
Speaker 1: toward the gantry. This was the same gantry that would
Speaker 1: later show up in those photographs. The gantry stood in
Speaker 1: the Ozark woods, where it held captive numerous corpses of deer, cattle, pork,
Speaker 1: and who knows what else has the blood drained from them,
Speaker 1: Only this time that would be a human. It would
Speaker 1: be a mother.
Speaker 14: At least.
Speaker 1: This is the only time the detectives knew about that night.
Speaker 1: The two men worked methodically knives, buckets, plastic wrap. Tim
Speaker 1: told the officers how they cut her legs apart, piece
Speaker 1: by piece. He described it flatly, as if they were
Speaker 1: reading instructions off a page. Tim acted like he had
Speaker 1: no vested interest in doing this, but he was lying.
Speaker 1: He thought she was a liar and a thief, and
Speaker 1: in his words, he didn't deal with people like that.
Speaker 9: And then he walked over to the crank crank, he
Speaker 9: cranked it up, raising her up like you know, he
Speaker 9: referred her to like them, and there's no better way
Speaker 9: to put it to her head off first, wash Mason,
Speaker 9: how country find you are to me? To big around,
Speaker 9: which would be not unusual. It was processing a deer
Speaker 9: or whatever. He took over her head, put it in there,
Speaker 9: and then he started cutting, rode down the centers, so
Speaker 9: all I'm running the guts.
Speaker 3: Everything went down.
Speaker 1: There, piece by piece. Cassidy's body was carved apart, dropped
Speaker 1: into buckets like waste at a slaughterhouse.
Speaker 3: And so he handed you the camera and asked you
Speaker 3: to take a picture. Yeah, and what did you take
Speaker 3: a picture of?
Speaker 9: Standing there? To her?
Speaker 3: Okay, somebody, it's not coming in.
Speaker 9: I think he reached out a.
Speaker 3: Red for head and pulled it up like posing on
Speaker 3: the body.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean he was standing up almost straight.
Speaker 1: Jim even had Tim take a picture he was posing
Speaker 1: with Cassidy's head like a trophy buck. Tim claims he
Speaker 1: was emotionless and just following Jim's orders. Hand me this
Speaker 1: take away that like a butcher's assistant.
Speaker 9: He started cutting one off. And after he split her
Speaker 9: down the middle, you're not just gutting or the splitting,
Speaker 9: and he went to the corner parts there again, knowing
Speaker 9: what we did with regular carcasses, he just begin natural
Speaker 9: to do it.
Speaker 1: We know you love true crime, but if you ever
Speaker 1: find yourself saying it feels natural to cut a human
Speaker 1: into pieces, I'm sorry, but there's no help for you. You're fucked.
Speaker 1: Jim wasn't finished. What he did next crossed the line
Speaker 1: from killing to desecration, the kind of act that makes
Speaker 1: investigators question whether this was about murder at all or
Speaker 1: something far more primal.
Speaker 9: He cut off from moves. Okay, answer, you don't tell you,
Speaker 9: I'll tell you. He put in the bowl, Okay, the
Speaker 9: moves he's doing the book.
Speaker 3: When you say you're talking about the bucket.
Speaker 9: And the scrub washman of the washman, all the guts and.
Speaker 1: Everything, Jim was all about trophies. Apparently they got rid
Speaker 1: of her like she was nothing more than a carcass
Speaker 1: According to Tim, Jim had him dig a hole and
Speaker 1: barrier head the visceral remains. The guts were carried off
Speaker 1: in buckets and dumped in the woods. Let the animals
Speaker 1: do their jobs. In Tim's words, the rest was butchered, quartered,
Speaker 1: and handled peace by piece. When investigators later served a warrant,
Speaker 1: they opened a freezer on the property. Inside they found
Speaker 1: packages of meat. Some were labeled deer, some coon, and
Speaker 1: every other form of wildlife you could imagine. But they
Speaker 1: also found neatly wrapped packs labeled simply seven twenty four,
Speaker 1: the day they murdered and processed Cassidy. This raised a
Speaker 1: question darker than anything investigators were prepared for. Was this
Speaker 1: murder for murder's sake? Or had Cassidy Rainwater been killed,
Speaker 1: butchered and prepared for something else? And then the biggest
Speaker 1: mystery of all, why would anyone, whether it was Tim,
Speaker 1: Jim or another accomplice, send those pictures straight to the FBI.
Speaker 1: It could only have been for some kind of sick
Speaker 1: bragging or proof that more people were involved, and there
Speaker 1: may have been more victims.
Speaker 18: Now there are more questions than answers in the disappearance
Speaker 18: of a thirty three year old Missouri woman, Cassidy Rainwater,
Speaker 18: hasn't been seen or heard from since at least July
Speaker 18: twenty fifth, With Rainwater still missing, two men, Timothy Norton
Speaker 18: and James Helps, are in custody in charge with kidnapping
Speaker 18: and connection to the case.
Speaker 3: They're accused of.
Speaker 18: Locking her up in a cage inside this small cabin
Speaker 18: near Lebanon, Missouri. Adding to the mystery, just hours before
Speaker 18: both men were scheduled to make their first appearance in court,
Speaker 18: that same cabin burned to the ground. The Dallas County
Speaker 18: Sheriff's office has been tight lipped about the case, and
Speaker 18: a lengthy post online the sheriff condemned rumors about the case,
Speaker 18: adding quote, no, you are not entitled to a play
Speaker 18: by play of an ongoing investigation. If you want to
Speaker 18: be in the know, we are hiring, along with every
Speaker 18: other law enforcement agency in the country.
Speaker 1: The property was burned to the ground just days before
Speaker 1: their first court appearance. To this day, by the way,
Speaker 1: no one has been charged officially. Investigators said it was
Speaker 1: a propane tank explosion, but for a community already buzzing
Speaker 1: with rumors of cages, body parts, and cannibalism. It only
Speaker 1: deepened the paranoia. The Sheriff's department was frustrated and issued
Speaker 1: a harsh statement to the public. But here's the problem.
Speaker 1: The stories weren't all wrong. The cage was real, the
Speaker 1: pictures were real. The meat in the freezer was real.
Speaker 1: It wasn't hard to put two and two together. If
Speaker 1: cassidy was packaged like venison, where exactly was this meat
Speaker 1: going to end up? The Ozarks are creepy. Put it
Speaker 1: that way. You've seen the TV show I hope. It's
Speaker 1: a great show, by the way, and the characters in
Speaker 1: it are pretty spot on. Those hill people are weird, man,
Speaker 1: There's no other way to put it. By late summer
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty one, Dallas County, Missouri was giving the
Speaker 1: best example of what is dark and creepy about the Ozarks.
Speaker 1: A lonely cabin on Moon Valley Roads, surrounded by thick
Speaker 1: Ozark woods seem like just another rundown property, hidden from
Speaker 1: view like so many others in the back country. Jim
Speaker 1: Phelps lived there, a reclusive man with interests in BDSM.
Speaker 1: His closest friend was Tim Norton, a truck driver who
Speaker 1: hovered around Jim's orbit, more follower than leader, At least
Speaker 1: that's how he described their relationship. Both men had reputations
Speaker 1: for keeping to themselves, but also for letting strangers, especially
Speaker 1: young women, drift into their lives. Cassidy Rainwater was one
Speaker 1: of them. She was a thirty three year old mother
Speaker 1: trying to put her life back together after years of setbacks.
Speaker 1: By August, she was staying at the cabin because the
Speaker 1: property owner told her she could. Within weeks, she had disappeared.
Speaker 1: What happened next was no mystery of the woods. Jim
Speaker 1: and Tim got tired of her existence and strangled her
Speaker 1: to death. They cortered her body on a gaantry like
Speaker 1: game and left investigators with photographs that looked more like
Speaker 1: hunting trophies than evidence of a crime. They say she
Speaker 1: stayed willingly, that she climbed into a dog cage willingly
Speaker 1: and stole from them freely. But these allegations weren't true.
Speaker 1: She had no idea what she was getting herself into,
Speaker 1: and before she knew it, she was a captive. If
Speaker 1: this could happen to her, who else could it? Or
Speaker 1: did it happen? To Text messages between Tim and Jim
Speaker 1: suggested they were constantly on the prowl looking for women
Speaker 1: worse yet probably underage girls. They even suggested that Tim
Speaker 1: may have been bringing women or girls back after being
Speaker 1: on the road as a trucker. The messages were always
Speaker 1: cryptic and coded. Wren, the young woman you heard from before,
Speaker 1: remembers her first hand experience.
Speaker 3: One of the.
Speaker 16: First things that I thought after he left was, there's
Speaker 16: no way that man doesn't have like people in his basement.
Speaker 16: He's weird.
Speaker 1: What Wren didn't know was that Tim Norton was worse
Speaker 1: than weird. He was, in fact a predator of young women.
Speaker 16: I thought that he was like a little too old
Speaker 16: to be doing all this, and especially too old to
Speaker 16: be hitting on women who were God, I was probably
Speaker 16: twenty two at the time.
Speaker 18: Like he was.
Speaker 16: The conversation that I had with him, I've never had
Speaker 16: anybody speak to me that way, so I remembered him.
Speaker 16: But when that mugshot came up, I remember being in
Speaker 16: my college apartment and it had come across like CNN
Speaker 16: or some like big. It was a mainstream thing, and
Speaker 16: I saw it and immediately I texted my friend that
Speaker 16: I worked with, and I said, do you remember that
Speaker 16: creepy guy that I was telling you about, Like, I
Speaker 16: swear to God, this is him. And then I read
Speaker 16: kind of more about who he was and what he did,
Speaker 16: and when I saw trucker from Missouri, I was like,
Speaker 16: oh my god, that's that's him.
Speaker 1: Fortunately, Wren had enough life experience and confidence to keep
Speaker 1: Tim at a distance, and she immediately reported what had happened.
Speaker 16: I had talked to my general manager and I said,
Speaker 16: this guy is weird and he's asking me all these
Speaker 16: weird questions. I need you to, like let the other
Speaker 16: girls know that they need to have somebody walk them
Speaker 16: to their cars tonight. I don't know how long he's
Speaker 16: going to be here, but he doesn't seem like he
Speaker 16: has a lot going on, and he kind of blew
Speaker 16: me off. And then, you know, one or two ish
Speaker 16: weeks later, I came back in with the mugshot pulled
Speaker 16: up and I said, you know, this is the guy
Speaker 16: that I was telling you about, Like, I'm serious, we
Speaker 16: need more cameras.
Speaker 1: Right before Tim left the restaurant after staying way too
Speaker 1: long without ordering food, Wren remembered the feeling she got
Speaker 1: from him.
Speaker 16: I noticed that he looked sort of satisfied that I
Speaker 16: was on comfortable, like he really enjoyed that what he
Speaker 16: was saying was kind of making me squirm, Like I
Speaker 16: really obviously didn't want to speak to him, and he
Speaker 16: knew that, and I think that that was kind of
Speaker 16: part of the game for him.
Speaker 1: Wren's experience offered a glimpse of how Tim would operate
Speaker 1: in public, unsettling, inappropriate, and just weird. But in his
Speaker 1: own words, he gave investigators an even darker view of
Speaker 1: what was happening back at the cabin where he and
Speaker 1: Jim hung out. During his interview, Tim admitted that both
Speaker 1: he and Jim were into BDSM, but Jim took it
Speaker 1: even further. He interacted online with all kinds of women,
Speaker 1: including minors, in his sick fantasy world. According to Tim,
Speaker 1: Jim was more to blame. He maintained he had only
Speaker 1: stumbled across the content on Jim's hard drive. He described
Speaker 1: it almost casually, like it was just another hobby.
Speaker 13: He ever talked to you about those sarems, Yeah, you
Speaker 13: mentioned that they were repellent stuff, and like, what's still
Speaker 13: kind of chaverrages, you know.
Speaker 4: Some of them were more of.
Speaker 13: The darker BDSM and that type of lifestyles.
Speaker 4: And some of my lifestyle, so you know, I mean
Speaker 4: I know a little bit about it.
Speaker 9: Most of them known from him, you know, as far
Speaker 9: as what it is.
Speaker 4: And I'm a little hot, isn't it?
Speaker 3: What he didn't dobots maybe, but that you continue to
Speaker 3: stay with it and.
Speaker 7: What like that.
Speaker 13: I didn think in particular that I don't know if
Speaker 13: he got into it or not. I mean, he talked
Speaker 13: to you, do he had to introduce with him, you know.
Speaker 3: Like well some of the weirdest stuff that you would
Speaker 3: talk about in there.
Speaker 13: I don't know what he talks about in the cabins,
Speaker 13: but he told you about some makes you went. I
Speaker 13: mean you mentioned, you know, this person from Sweden or
Speaker 13: this person from this country and some other.
Speaker 17: Guns he was talting to do about it.
Speaker 4: And that was about it.
Speaker 1: But that wasn't all of it. Tim downplayed everything what
Speaker 1: they thought about, what they talked about, and what they
Speaker 1: actually did. But investigators compared his story against the phone
Speaker 1: records and Facebook messages, and the reality looked far worse
Speaker 1: than what Tim admitted. Jim's collection of bondage pictures and messages,
Speaker 1: all contained in labeled folders, included women hanging on crosses,
Speaker 1: and women in cages. There was even a folder named milking.
Speaker 1: This contained sick images of women tied up with their
Speaker 1: breasts connected to cow milking devices. There were other folders
Speaker 1: labeled kids in cages and nude babies, no description needed.
Speaker 4: He had never.
Speaker 13: Mentioned that she might be into it, whether you know
Speaker 13: he'd be Will's trial. I mean, I know he has
Speaker 13: some medius and sons, like what you have a harness,
Speaker 13: it's some pankos, angel shackles, hearing how much sort of
Speaker 13: stuff like that, you know, adult enjoyables, And that's what
Speaker 13: I can play it.
Speaker 4: And then there's a tail in there and whips.
Speaker 1: And other things to each his own right, live and
Speaker 1: let live, right, all that shit. But there's a big
Speaker 1: difference between consensual role play and being a predator, an
Speaker 1: older man waiting for vulnerable women to be delivered to
Speaker 1: him or to stumble into his trap like a fly
Speaker 1: in the grips of a venus fly trap, like Cassidy did,
Speaker 1: for example. And it's an entirely different matter for someone
Speaker 1: to end up the way Cassidy did in a freezer.
Speaker 1: You've heard the phrase where there's smoke, oh there's fire. Well,
Speaker 1: where there's a freezer full of human meat fill in
Speaker 1: the blank. Tim had even written a macabre story on
Speaker 1: the topic. Not only that, it's clear he did some
Speaker 1: intense research on the subject of cannibalism.
Speaker 9: It's like, no, I do, and I don't want to
Speaker 9: know why you're doing this, okay, because that made me
Speaker 9: rethink of the story he had read when I was
Speaker 9: kind of stupid and it was hard to have looking
Speaker 9: for movies or so, and I seen it was what's this?
Speaker 9: I don't read it. It's like, no, I don't want
Speaker 9: to know if he's that's what he's finally doing because
Speaker 9: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 9: You know, if you've remember correctly when you said something
Speaker 9: about cannibalism when you first interviewed me, I said, if
Speaker 9: you can take my bunk shot, tell me if I am,
Speaker 9: because I desire myselbject who I had if.
Speaker 1: I had hard to hear. But that was Tim telling
Speaker 1: the detectives that they might want to analyze his blood
Speaker 1: for human DNA like someone else's, if that's possible, because
Speaker 1: if he had partaken in Jim's sick cannibal fantasy, he
Speaker 1: didn't know about it. Yeah, sure, he's been to a
Speaker 1: few barbecues at Jim since the murderer. But who was
Speaker 1: to say, do.
Speaker 3: You know if his intention was to consume to eat
Speaker 3: some of that flesh.
Speaker 9: At a time? Honestly no?
Speaker 3: But since then maybe okay?
Speaker 9: Why maybe because he cuts the genitalia out and he
Speaker 9: kept it.
Speaker 3: And do you know what he did with the genitalium?
Speaker 16: No?
Speaker 9: I did not.
Speaker 3: Okay, as far as I know, thinks in a way.
Speaker 3: I don't know. Have you told someone else something different?
Speaker 9: No, I've had several people, and it's running Joe the odds.
Speaker 9: Then I was a cannibal, and then he used it
Speaker 9: to make a sandwich with and several things like that.
Speaker 9: He said, it's a Ronning joke, you know, And I've
Speaker 9: done my best form of everybody. I didn't need it,
Speaker 9: and I have no idea what you're talking about. Yeah,
Speaker 9: they still make a joke out of it, and sometimes
Speaker 9: I make jokes with other people. I own just find
Speaker 9: alone with the cannibal situation. But I didn't need any
Speaker 9: of it. I didn't touch it. I don't know what
Speaker 9: he did with it.
Speaker 18: You know.
Speaker 9: I know what I've heard, I know what what I've
Speaker 9: seen on the Newson that I don't know anything else.
Speaker 1: Here's a good example of the way Tim would minimize.
Speaker 1: He pretended that he only went along with the jokes
Speaker 1: about cannibalism in jail because he didn't want any trouble,
Speaker 1: but he later admitted to signing autographs for money under
Speaker 1: the name Hannibal the Annibal. While Jim stayed silent through
Speaker 1: the days following Cassidy's murder, all of Tim's minimizing and
Speaker 1: Amanda's beliefs that it was all a joke couldn't change
Speaker 1: the overwhelming evidence that both Jim and Tim had viciously
Speaker 1: murdered Cassidy and Amanda knew about it. Eventually, the courtroom
Speaker 1: knew about it too.
Speaker 5: Appearing in person for the first time since being charged
Speaker 5: in mid September, James Phelps was escorted into a Dallas
Speaker 5: County courtroom and asked if his defense was aware of
Speaker 5: the new first degree murder charge filed against him. The
Speaker 5: judge quickly took up his attorney's motion to set a bond,
Speaker 5: with phelps public defender, arguing Phelps is not a flight risk,
Speaker 5: having spent most of his life in the area, ties to.
Speaker 17: The community using white ball residence of the area, with
Speaker 17: the exception of a brief set in the military.
Speaker 3: In Saint Louis for about three years.
Speaker 5: Attorney Sam Gearhart's as Phelps had only face charges of
Speaker 5: writing bad checks and illegal hunting in the past, but
Speaker 5: prosecutors argue Phelps poses a danger to the community, especially
Speaker 5: those that are caring for Cassidy Rainwaters children.
Speaker 17: Saints position is he probably needs to be held a lot.
Speaker 4: For the community.
Speaker 5: City prosecuting attorney Jonathan Barker tells the court Phelps co
Speaker 5: defendant Timothy Norton confessed to deputies he and Phelps would
Speaker 5: search for potential victims online and at a local Walmart.
Speaker 9: This case that this particular is.
Speaker 17: That online is talking with the potential victors, even having
Speaker 17: Jewish to appear at his location.
Speaker 7: The word.
Speaker 17: Itselfware code defensives to be brought back his location, where
Speaker 17: he discusses with that that he really.
Speaker 4: Fast harm or kield them.
Speaker 5: And prosecutors also said tonight they are weighing all options
Speaker 5: in phelps case, including possibly seeking the death penal.
Speaker 1: By twenty twenty three, the courts had delivered their verdict.
Speaker 1: In April, Jim Phelps centered an Alford plea to first
Speaker 1: degree murder, meaning he knew that prosecutors had enough evidence
Speaker 1: to convict him, but he still maintained his innocence. The
Speaker 1: judge senced him to life in prison with the possibility
Speaker 1: of parole. In June, Timothy Norton pleaded guilty to the
Speaker 1: same charge and received an identical sentence, life without parole.
Speaker 1: As part of his plea agreement, charges of kidnapping and
Speaker 1: abandonment of a corpse were dropped. Cassidy's son, Aiden, has
Speaker 1: spoken about his mother, saying that even though his parents
Speaker 1: gave him up for adoption at the age of four,
Speaker 1: he loves her and no she did her best. He
Speaker 1: admits that adoption was probably the best thing for him.
Speaker 1: He's had a good life. Aiden has grown up to
Speaker 1: be a very intelligent and talented young man who plays
Speaker 1: thirty five different instruments and loves theater. This is what
Speaker 1: he said at his mom's funeral.
Speaker 3: Think about the memories and.
Speaker 1: Just how great they were.
Speaker 3: She always loves the river.
Speaker 9: It was her favorite place, and I remember her always
Speaker 9: singing to me as a baby.
Speaker 4: She was a great person.
Speaker 8: She was the hardest working mom I've ever known, and
Speaker 8: I'm so proud of it, and I wish she should
Speaker 8: know that sin here.
Speaker 1: Cassidy Rainwater died in the most horrible of circumstances, and
Speaker 1: what they did to her body after was beyond despicable.
Speaker 1: She may have fallen through the cracks at the time
Speaker 1: she landed on Jim's doorstep, but she was a mother,
Speaker 1: a daughter, and a friend. She just happened to be
Speaker 1: a who trusted the wrong people. But the question that
Speaker 1: lingers is bigger than Cassidy. Jim and Tim weren't just
Speaker 1: two isolated monsters who snapped one day. They were predators,
Speaker 1: and like all predators, they hunted where they knew the
Speaker 1: vulnerable lived. For them, it was mostly women on the margins, alone, struggling,
Speaker 1: sometimes with no place to go. But this was changing.
Speaker 1: They started stalking in parking lots and restaurants. That's where
Speaker 1: Ren's insight becomes so important. It could have been her.
Speaker 1: She crossed paths with Tim before he was caught and
Speaker 1: put away, and her story shows how monsters like Jim
Speaker 1: and Tim operated not just with violence, but with patience,
Speaker 1: with manipulation. They looked for weakness, tested boundaries, and moved
Speaker 1: in slowly until it was too late. Fortunately for Ren,
Speaker 1: she knew what to look for. She works as an EMT.
Speaker 16: I don't think I've ever ran into another murderer, but
Speaker 16: I have, you know, worked cases where people are being trafficked,
Speaker 16: and like on the side of the road, we're getting
Speaker 16: people out of cars who are being taken against their will,
Speaker 16: and it's a lot of the same behavior. It's a
Speaker 16: lot of that, like I'm out to make you uncomfortable,
Speaker 16: and I'm betting that you're not going to say anything
Speaker 16: about it. They look for people who kind of don't
Speaker 16: hold themselves high, who kind of you shrink your shoulders,
Speaker 16: you make yourself small, you stay out of the way,
Speaker 16: and a lot of people think that like being out
Speaker 16: of sight in a way makes them a little safer,
Speaker 16: and it just makes it easier for the people who
Speaker 16: don't want to do horrible things to you to not
Speaker 16: notice you, to not see you when you need help.
Speaker 16: And like a lot of I've read a lot of
Speaker 16: studies about serial killers, and you know, the way that
Speaker 16: they picked their victims is who's the smallest person in
Speaker 16: the room that doesn't look very sure of themselves.
Speaker 1: Cassidy may have been vulnerable, but she was strong willed
Speaker 1: and stubborn. According to everyone in your that is but see,
Speaker 1: Jim and Tim didn't seek her out. She landed there
Speaker 1: and she became a problem for them because she didn't
Speaker 1: want to give in to their demands. She didn't want
Speaker 1: a sexual relationship with Jim. Even Tim acknowledged that, and
Speaker 1: she paid for with her life.
Speaker 16: Another thing that I wanted to touch on is like
Speaker 16: the packaged meat of it all, the cannibalism was the
Speaker 16: craziest part of it for me to read, because it
Speaker 16: was one of those things, especially like again, as the
Speaker 16: information is coming out, you see it and it's so
Speaker 16: out there and weird and wrong that you kind of
Speaker 16: don't want to believe it. But then again, like and
Speaker 16: especially getting in the line of work that I'm in now,
Speaker 16: there are definitely people that, like beyond your worst imagination,
Speaker 16: will do things like that or kind of surround themselves
Speaker 16: with people that are cool with stuff like that. I
Speaker 16: don't know. I don't know if society as a whole
Speaker 16: just wants to push all the ugly stuff under the
Speaker 16: rug and don't think about it, and that happens far
Speaker 16: away and you know, it'll never be my problem. And
Speaker 16: a lot of this stuff is happening like in these
Speaker 16: tiny middle of nowhere unincorporated towns and like counties that
Speaker 16: have just woods forever. It's hiding kind of in plain sight.
Speaker 1: Dallas County Police didn't find evidence that the human meat
Speaker 1: in Jim's freezer was ever shared or sold, but absence
Speaker 1: of evidence isn't evidence of absence bone appetite. That's gonna
Speaker 1: do it for another one. If you're new here, head
Speaker 1: on over to Swordinscale dot com for more until next week.
Speaker 1: Stay safe.
Speaker 16: M M.
Speaker 14: Mike, you are so funny.
Speaker 15: You crack me up.
Speaker 2: Dude. Keep doing what you're doing.
Speaker 3: You're making so many.
Speaker 2: People laugh at but we don't sneak out, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean, So all you hear is the negative
Speaker 2: from the nagaie.
Speaker 13: You know, negatives, negatives.
Speaker 2: Take care, Mike, and thank you. Don't believe they hate
Speaker 2: us