Speaker 1: Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence, and is
Speaker 1: not intended for all audiences.
Speaker 2: Listener of discretion is advised.
Speaker 3: First of all, when you told me that he transported
Speaker 3: a dead body, that should be your first clue.
Speaker 1: This is Sword and Scale Season thirteen, episode three, sixty
Speaker 1: four show that reveals that the worst monsters are real.
Speaker 1: It's cute how some of you think that people are
Speaker 1: just these docile little sheet these sweet little babies that
Speaker 1: won't do anything to harm you. It really is kind
Speaker 1: of cute, almost like a thing you have to do
Speaker 1: to make yourself. Okay, it's better than the alternative, I guess.
Speaker 1: In a small pocket of Fleming Island, Florida, there was
Speaker 1: a group of women. They called themselves the British Club.
Speaker 1: This club was a collective of sharp, dry witted ex
Speaker 1: pats who met every week to talk about one thing.
Speaker 1: They all shared their home in the UK. But in
Speaker 1: October of twenty nineteen, one of the members of this
Speaker 1: British Club went missing. She was a sweet old lady,
Speaker 1: a sixty five year old widow named Sue Maldon. One
Speaker 1: of the ladies the club hadn't heard back from Sue
Speaker 1: in two days. Her phone kept going to voicemail, and
Speaker 1: the landline rang and rang, So she sent her husband
Speaker 1: to Sue's house for a welfare check. Inside Sue's clean, quiet, home,
Speaker 1: not a thing was out of place. Her blue cotton
Speaker 1: gardening shorts were laying out waiting to be worn. Her
Speaker 1: car was in the driveway, her purse in the dresser.
Speaker 1: It was as if Sue and her cell phone had
Speaker 1: just vanished without warning. Neighbors confirmed they hadn't seen Sue
Speaker 1: outside in a few days. She was an avid gardener
Speaker 1: and was always outside weeding her yard. Sue's loyal friend
Speaker 1: in the British Club called the police. Something was terribly wrong.
Speaker 4: Oh right, how don't need you.
Speaker 5: Guys know miss Susan since nineteen about ninety nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 5: two thousand and one.
Speaker 4: How long has Susan been here and united?
Speaker 5: She's been here about twenty four years two thousand and one,
Speaker 5: and she was about three or four years before us,
Speaker 5: so twenty four.
Speaker 6: They came from New UK four.
Speaker 5: Her husband passed a worry about we think John nine
Speaker 5: ten years ago, but they both came over together.
Speaker 1: Of course, Sue had been in Florida for almost two decades.
Speaker 1: Her husband had tragically died from throat cancer only a
Speaker 1: few years into their move to the USA. So the
Speaker 1: women at the British Club were like family to Sue.
Speaker 1: She had no children, no relatives close by. Her British
Speaker 1: ladies were everything to her.
Speaker 6: You guys know of any doctors that she visited frequently
Speaker 6: or therapist for her ankle? No, I don't know that
Speaker 6: that's over.
Speaker 1: She wants to get an injection in a show to.
Speaker 5: That Riverside, Yeah, over Riversids maybe Riverside Pain Clinic.
Speaker 6: With her is that she was at the base.
Speaker 3: She went a lot to the base because he was retired.
Speaker 6: So she struggled with quite a lot. That's what she calls.
Speaker 5: You say, I can't lift this or I can't do
Speaker 5: that canyon. So we popped around and do whatever it was.
Speaker 5: And she couldn't start a lawnmore start at four and
Speaker 5: just little things, you know.
Speaker 1: Though Sue was a social woman, her arthritis gave her
Speaker 1: more and more trouble with each passing day. She still
Speaker 1: tended to her flowers, made quilts, and kept up with
Speaker 1: her British girls, but she needed help with little things
Speaker 1: like moving heavy boxes, her revving up her lawnmower, Without
Speaker 1: a husband around, she was on her own to hand
Speaker 1: all those tasks that kept getting harder and harder as
Speaker 1: you age. Since Sue's phone had been switched off, the
Speaker 1: police couldn't ping it. Her place was spotless, not a
Speaker 1: sight of a struggle or a droplet of blood. They
Speaker 1: had to rely on clues from her friends, and they
Speaker 1: were desperately chasing down anything they could.
Speaker 7: I heard somebody told me I can't figure any truth through,
Speaker 7: and so I'm trying to ask you guys. Was there
Speaker 7: a boomer or a taxi lady that she called often
Speaker 7: to use, mainly just through her through drinkive.
Speaker 3: Not that I know.
Speaker 6: Anything, but that I heard.
Speaker 5: They were either arrived with one of the English ladies
Speaker 5: or she would drive herself.
Speaker 7: So it's it's very rare for her to be gone
Speaker 7: from her house in her car.
Speaker 6: Still be there. Well, definitely.
Speaker 1: The ladies told the detective that Sue was a responsible woman.
Speaker 1: She let them know where she was going and what
Speaker 1: she was doing doing. She wasn't on social media, and
Speaker 1: though she tried a dating sider too, nothing had stuck.
Speaker 1: The most eventful thing that had happened in her life
Speaker 1: recently was the loss of her beloved cat. But all
Speaker 1: that meant was that she was now free to travel
Speaker 1: next year. But she was happily planning if.
Speaker 7: We can literally think that anything that we're missing, or
Speaker 7: you know, the smallest thing could end up being important.
Speaker 5: So well, the only thing that we know that the
Speaker 5: guy that was supposed to be during her bathroom.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's the thing. That's the only thing that she
Speaker 6: was having problems with it. She gave him the money
Speaker 6: and then supposedly he.
Speaker 5: Got sick or hurt, never came back, started a job,
Speaker 5: got a bunch of money off of her.
Speaker 6: What did you say, It was about toil grand. That's
Speaker 6: about twelve grand.
Speaker 1: Aside from the death of her cat. Sue was having
Speaker 1: her bathroom remodeled, and apparently she had been having issues
Speaker 1: with her contractor.
Speaker 6: And the stories of him not doing her work so bizarred.
Speaker 6: They were love all that we.
Speaker 8: Almost left with her about what's gonna say now?
Speaker 5: Well, remember well it was just a yeah he was hurt, sorry,
Speaker 5: couldn't work as your therapy.
Speaker 6: Then there was a death in the family.
Speaker 3: Let's go and see a lawyer because he's getting a divorce.
Speaker 1: It turns out that most of the British club had
Speaker 1: heard about Sue's rogue bathroom contractor who was putting her
Speaker 1: through the ringer.
Speaker 3: I really didn't know the whole thing.
Speaker 8: I kind of knew that she was going to have
Speaker 8: some tire work done by this guy because I know
Speaker 8: a house had flooded an insurance paper and he kept
Speaker 8: putting off doing the work. And you know, he said,
Speaker 8: Sue because she gave me my check.
Speaker 6: I don't know if this is helpful or not.
Speaker 8: You know, he said he was out of town, he said,
Speaker 8: I think he said that he had a family member
Speaker 8: sick out of town, and then he came back and
Speaker 8: then he said, oh, my truck broke down. And as
Speaker 8: far as I know, that evening, because I spoke to
Speaker 8: a couple of the girls, she was gonna apparently either
Speaker 8: confront him or she was going to get money from him,
Speaker 8: or he said he would do something. So because I said,
Speaker 8: to have you sorted out, and I'm hoping I'll get
Speaker 8: it sorted out next week. The thing about Sue is
Speaker 8: she seemed to trust everybody you know she handed I mean,
Speaker 8: I don't know about you, but I wouldn't hand a
Speaker 8: man a check or anyone woman do work for me
Speaker 8: before he's done it. But Sue's the kind oh he
Speaker 8: said he would, you know type thing, So she was trusting.
Speaker 8: So I don't know. Has she obviously you've checked if
Speaker 8: she used a passport or anything.
Speaker 4: Yeah, anything that you could probably think of. We're looking
Speaker 4: into it.
Speaker 3: Now. Does she have a phone with her?
Speaker 1: The detectives were suddenly getting fragments of this story. Sue's
Speaker 1: contractor had flaked on her, leaving her twelve grand in
Speaker 1: the hole, and she needed to sort things out.
Speaker 8: And if I could think of it before you come
Speaker 8: get thinking, have I heard anything? And I thought, I
Speaker 8: really haven't, except for the guy that's about it. You know,
Speaker 8: he might be as innocent as you know.
Speaker 5: That's kind of what we're doing, is make sure we're
Speaker 5: going to get television on one thing or anything, any
Speaker 5: whatever we can do that could give us a percentage
Speaker 5: chance letter to find her.
Speaker 4: That's what we're doing.
Speaker 1: It wasn't hard to find Sue's contractor. His real name
Speaker 1: was Corey Bendram. He was a forty four year old
Speaker 1: husband and father of two girls living in Fleming Island, Florida.
Speaker 1: And he looked exactly like that somebody's dad, the kind
Speaker 1: of man who knew drywall better than most picture Tim
Speaker 1: the tool man Taylor basically detectives located him on a
Speaker 1: job site and started chatting. Corey was forthcoming. Yes, he'd
Speaker 1: been working for Sue Malden. In fact, he was at
Speaker 1: her house just a few days ago to get everything
Speaker 1: sorted because he knew she was unhappy with the progress
Speaker 1: of his work.
Speaker 9: He went inside and went over the contract.
Speaker 6: What it was.
Speaker 4: This contract was going on for a very long time.
Speaker 9: I demoed the back of the guest capital and I
Speaker 9: was supposed to be people started all the guest capital
Speaker 9: and a showered up the side out had take over
Speaker 9: of her toilet up there, and it was She took
Speaker 9: matemath and a half to pet it up with how
Speaker 9: she wanted. She bought and I went and got it
Speaker 9: and delivered it. And then it came time to talk
Speaker 9: about tub and fixtures and all that. She just couldn't
Speaker 9: make a decisions, So gots forward. I would take the
Speaker 9: job there between, and then she was frustrated that I
Speaker 9: couldn't spell over right now and she was ready, and
Speaker 9: so it just got to the point where it was
Speaker 9: just better for both of just refundmenturer money.
Speaker 4: I went about by way she thought something.
Speaker 1: Corey's explanation made sense. He said that on the morning
Speaker 1: he went to Sue's place, she invited him in and
Speaker 1: they went over all the details on the cancelation of
Speaker 1: their contractor client relationship.
Speaker 9: And so we went through the you know, the paperwork,
Speaker 9: and I wrote that check, and I had some stuff
Speaker 9: still there. I had I had a tool bag with
Speaker 9: some plumbing tools. I had been with some plumbing tarts,
Speaker 9: and then there was a trash back still there, so
Speaker 9: I loaded that in my truck. She held the door forward.
Speaker 1: Corey said that he wrote Sue a check for the
Speaker 1: money he owed her. He showed the police the receipt
Speaker 1: from a check just over twelve hundred dollars.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was twelve for the whole.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, I don't take any money for labor.
Speaker 1: Corey said. Sue's friend was mistaken. The amount was twelve
Speaker 1: hundred dollars, not twelve thousand dollars. He didn't take any
Speaker 1: upfront cash for labor. Corey's story made sense. Sue was elderly,
Speaker 1: maybe she'd gotten the number wrong and spread that information
Speaker 1: to all her friends. Corey was cooperative and calm. He
Speaker 1: shook the detective's hand and said he would be there
Speaker 1: if they needed any additional help.
Speaker 6: Well, I appreciate your timing.
Speaker 4: I mean, if there's anything, I don't buy it.
Speaker 10: You know, that's good to know, he said to just
Speaker 10: at this point, you're the last guy that helped.
Speaker 4: Check as.
Speaker 3: Ye give me.
Speaker 4: I mean, she she's very lovely.
Speaker 1: Detectives went back to Sue's house to look around to
Speaker 1: see if there was anything out of order, anything they missed,
Speaker 1: anything to suggest foul play. That's when they spotted it,
Speaker 1: a tiny pinprink of blood on the living room floor.
Speaker 1: How could they have missed us? The detectives brought in
Speaker 1: luminol and suddenly the house lit up blood that had
Speaker 1: been cleaned up in the kitchen and on the lamp
Speaker 1: shades and in the hallway. Now the detective knew this
Speaker 1: wasn't a rogue elderly woman who went missing. Sue had
Speaker 1: died in that house, and they needed to find out how.
Speaker 1: Sixty five year old Sue Malden had mysteriously disappeared from
Speaker 1: her Fleming Island home in the fall of twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: If it hadn't been for her social group, it could
Speaker 1: have been weeks before anyone noticed the widow was gone.
Speaker 1: Sue had an uneventful life, but as police pride, they
Speaker 1: found out that she'd been in a dispute with her contractor,
Speaker 1: Corey Binderham, who she'd hired to remodel two of her bathrooms.
Speaker 1: After talking with Corey, the police secured school bus camera
Speaker 1: footage that showed his truck at her house the morning
Speaker 1: he said he visited her, but Corey assured them that
Speaker 1: he was there to return her money and settle their differences.
Speaker 1: He said she was alive when he left. Then the
Speaker 1: police found blood at Sue's house and Lumanol revealed a
Speaker 1: possible clean up job, but with no trace of Sue.
Speaker 1: These were all just theories. Corey had to be further investigated.
Speaker 1: There was something about corey is too cool demeanor, his
Speaker 1: friendly affect was it Reelder? Was this all a put on?
Speaker 1: There was one woman who knew him, perhaps better than
Speaker 1: his own wife, and her name was Leanne Locklear.
Speaker 11: My name's Leanne. I am a dispatcher and then I
Speaker 11: own an appliant Shirpeer company. I worked a lot of
Speaker 11: jobs always, and one of my jobs was I was
Speaker 11: a bartender. And that's actually how I met.
Speaker 1: Corey Leanne is a single mother who runs her own business,
Speaker 1: but back in twenty nineteen, she was bartending at a
Speaker 1: local spot that Corey liked to frequent after work. They
Speaker 1: became friendly, like bartenders and regulars often do, and after
Speaker 1: he fixed a door in her house that needed replacing,
Speaker 1: she invited him out after work one evening.
Speaker 11: He came into the bar. You know, he just joked,
Speaker 11: He's like, how's your door holding up? You know, He's like,
Speaker 11: oh my god, it's great, it's great. Thanks, it's phenomenal.
Speaker 11: I really owe you big time.
Speaker 12: Thank you.
Speaker 11: He had a few drinks. I got off early, and
Speaker 11: some of our other friends came up there that we
Speaker 11: hadn't mutually in common, and then we all just went
Speaker 11: out for the night. You know, we went out drinking.
Speaker 11: Had to blast. You know, you realize he's a really
Speaker 11: cool guy. He fit in with the group really well.
Speaker 11: And that's really what started our whole friendship. Was he'd
Speaker 11: be like, Hey, what are y'all doing tonight? We're like, well,
Speaker 11: this is what we're doing. Do you want to go?
Speaker 11: And he'd show up or he wouldn't. He wasn't like
Speaker 11: the person. It came around starting problems or I think
Speaker 11: he was just super chill.
Speaker 1: Leanne learned more about Corey and his life as they
Speaker 1: spent nights out drinking together. She knew he ran his
Speaker 1: own business and had a wife at home. It always
Speaker 1: struck her as odd that he was hanging out with
Speaker 1: her and her friends as much as he did, seeing
Speaker 1: how many responsibilities he had in his life.
Speaker 11: And I used to ask him sometimes when we would
Speaker 11: all say out really really late, and I'd be like,
Speaker 11: you don't get in trouble when you go home, like
Speaker 11: you've been out a whole night. He's like, no, she
Speaker 11: doesn't care. He's like, cause as I don't drive drunk,
Speaker 11: and I'd get home right after the bar's clothes. I
Speaker 11: got She's usually okay with this, she doesn't care.
Speaker 1: Leanne and Corey developed a strong friendship, and soon it
Speaker 1: developed into something more.
Speaker 11: Of course, you know, being a single mom, you're always
Speaker 11: looking for extra work. So I was bartending, I was
Speaker 11: an appliance, says, I was doing a little bit of everything.
Speaker 11: I don't even remember how it got brought up. Actually,
Speaker 11: he said something about he's like overloaded at work, and
Speaker 11: I was like, well, if you need some help, you
Speaker 11: know you know, call me, I'll come help you. I
Speaker 11: need to make extra money. Like I'm in totally down,
Speaker 11: and he just randomly, like two days later, hit me
Speaker 11: up and he was like, hey, do you want to
Speaker 11: work tomorrow. I'm like, absolutely, get me out of this house.
Speaker 11: I'm going crazy. So we started working together and then
Speaker 11: he started, you know, my birthday party, he was there,
Speaker 11: and you know, he just started being in everything involved
Speaker 11: that was going on in my life.
Speaker 10: At that time.
Speaker 1: Leanne started working with Corey on his home remodels. She
Speaker 1: was happy to learn a new skill and make some
Speaker 1: extra money and whe her buddy no Less.
Speaker 11: Yeah, working with that was great because you know when
Speaker 11: you're really good friends with somebody and you're gonna hang
Speaker 11: out all day, it's like, oh, it doesn't even feel
Speaker 11: like work. So it was all just home improvement stuff.
Speaker 11: And every customer we worked for really acted like they
Speaker 11: knew him forever. And I guess that was just the
Speaker 11: demeanor he put off with him. We didn't have standard hours.
Speaker 11: It wasn't like eight five. He'd hit me up day
Speaker 11: four and day I don't pick hip this time he'd
Speaker 11: picked me up. I'd work three or four and then
Speaker 11: we were at the bar drinking beer. So it wasn't
Speaker 11: like her job or a very demanding job. Is actually
Speaker 11: probably one of the easiest jobs I had.
Speaker 1: Leanne saw Corey a lot. If they weren't working together
Speaker 1: mudding drywall, she was serving him a beer at her
Speaker 1: bartending job, or they were out till the wee hours
Speaker 1: of the morning partying together. She got to know him really,
Speaker 1: really well and became a confidant in his life. Hey,
Speaker 1: I thought that's what a wife was for.
Speaker 11: But yeah, we were definitely close because there was times
Speaker 11: like him and his wife would have an argument and
Speaker 11: he would just call me he bakely and she's really
Speaker 11: mad at me, and I was like, well, what'd you do?
Speaker 11: You know we would talk about and I'm like, all right,
Speaker 11: we'll just go get flowers and tell your story. I
Speaker 11: just don't do it again. Or he would tell me
Speaker 11: what was going on with the kids. So it was
Speaker 11: definitely like another you know, another brother that you got
Speaker 11: that she got to sit here and go, oh my gosh,
Speaker 11: don't do dumb stuff, you know, be a man and
Speaker 11: fix it. So he was definitely like one of my brothers.
Speaker 11: And yeah, I definitely think that we were very close
Speaker 11: at that time.
Speaker 1: Corey and Leanne were busy, and she knew that there
Speaker 1: were jobs he was going out on alone. After all,
Speaker 1: she had her bartending job and several other side hustles.
Speaker 1: On one job, Corey and Leanne were using a jackhammer
Speaker 1: all day, and the next morning she woke up unable
Speaker 1: to move.
Speaker 11: I tore my rotator cuffs, so I called out of work.
Speaker 11: I don't remember if it's Wednesday or Thursday. I told
Speaker 11: him myself, I can't work. I'm gonna go to the
Speaker 11: hospital and get this thing checked because I've definitely tore something.
Speaker 1: Leanne went home and rested, but called Corey the next
Speaker 1: day ready to get back at it.
Speaker 11: Well, then the next day when I'm like, okay, I'm
Speaker 11: at the hospital. I can work.
Speaker 3: I just can't.
Speaker 11: I can't do the jack hammy Moore. I gotta do
Speaker 11: light stuff, He's like, all right, I'm going to pick
Speaker 11: up in the morning. At this time, but you could
Speaker 11: tell you it was very frazzled, like kind of like
Speaker 11: when my anxiety gets high, like I'm all over the
Speaker 11: place and very spastic, and you could tell he was
Speaker 11: the same way, like very spastic. He's like, I'm picking
Speaker 11: up tomorrow. This time, and I was like, okay, So
Speaker 11: he didn't show up, and you know, I'm blowing his
Speaker 11: phone up and I'm like, bro, where are you at?
Speaker 11: Are we not working today? If or not, I'm going
Speaker 11: back to bed, but I don't want to go back
Speaker 11: to bend. And then you'd be like, oh, where are
Speaker 11: you at? Are we working or not? And he's like, yeah,
Speaker 11: I'm howm and I just got on some errands.
Speaker 1: Corey arrived late, and when Leanne got in the car,
Speaker 1: she wasn't greeted by the same old Corey. This guy
Speaker 1: was distracted and distant. But aside from that, there was
Speaker 1: something even more glaring. Corey's truck, which was normally filled
Speaker 1: with trash and tools, was spotless.
Speaker 11: Because I was like, hey, you got the truck cleaned?
Speaker 11: I says about time. I said this thing was disgusting,
Speaker 11: and he's like, yeah, I ain't got it all cleaned yesterday,
Speaker 11: and you know, like nothing's wrong, but you could tell
Speaker 11: his mind was not. Like he's driving and he's just
Speaker 11: staring at the road instead of our casual let's talk
Speaker 11: shit and have conversation. He's just so focused on the road.
Speaker 11: His hands are still around. He's just very focused like,
Speaker 11: do you tell someone's bothering him? So I was like, well,
Speaker 11: maybe he got himself in trouble with the wife again,
Speaker 11: or you know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Leanne and Corey worked all day, but
Speaker 1: there was no fun banter, no laughing, no inside jokes.
Speaker 1: Corey was focused with his head down and his mind elsewhere.
Speaker 11: And then he took me home. That was it. We
Speaker 11: didn't have a long day righty day. We didn't go
Speaker 11: to the bar and have drinks. We didn't go somewhere
Speaker 11: cool and eat lunch and talk to Mack. You know,
Speaker 11: we didn't do any of that. It was like, I
Speaker 11: gotta go.
Speaker 1: This all happened the week Sue went missing, but Leanne
Speaker 1: didn't know that. In fact, she'd never worked at Sue's house.
Speaker 1: That job was one of the ones that Corey handled alone.
Speaker 1: At that point. No one was connecting the dots, not
Speaker 1: yet anyway. The detectives didn't want to get tunnel vision.
Speaker 1: As they put it, Corey wasn't an obvious suspect. He
Speaker 1: was a business owner with a family. His daughters were successful,
Speaker 1: with one away at college. He'd been married for decades.
Speaker 1: On the surface, it looked solid and stable, the kind
Speaker 1: of life that didn't raise alarms. But then they met
Speaker 1: with Sue's close friend who wasn't in the British Club,
Speaker 1: and she gave them a list Sue her off had written.
Speaker 1: It was a detailed diary of notes about the months
Speaker 1: long back and forth between her and Corey, and this
Speaker 1: list from Sue changed everything.
Speaker 4: Other than here, What all has she told you about
Speaker 4: that contractor.
Speaker 3: Everything that's there? I mean at all. I can't even
Speaker 3: remember exactly when this job was supposed to have started,
Speaker 3: but I know it's been going on for months. Okay.
Speaker 3: So I like Sue and I met every generally every
Speaker 3: Wednesday at her house. Okay, she was retired. So I
Speaker 3: leave from here and go down to her house every
Speaker 3: Wednesday at noon around anywhere between eleven thirty to one
Speaker 3: thirty somewhere in that time, for an hour, and every
Speaker 3: week she gave an update on I called him Jack Rabbit. Okay,
Speaker 3: she came in update on him, and then we talked
Speaker 3: several times through the week. Okay. So, and I kept
Speaker 3: warning Sue that there's an issue.
Speaker 1: According to his friend, Corey had lied. He told police
Speaker 1: he never took money upfront for labor, but she confirmed
Speaker 1: he'd taken far more than twelve hundred dollars from Sue.
Speaker 1: Then he gutted her bathroom down to the studs and
Speaker 1: just stopped. When Sue asked when he'd return, there was
Speaker 1: always an excuse, a sick relative, a looming divorce, even
Speaker 1: a bizarre story about having to transport a friend's deceased
Speaker 1: family member for a funeral.
Speaker 3: I said, Sue, first of all, when you told me
Speaker 3: that he transported a dead body, that should be your
Speaker 3: first clue that that would be an issue. Nobody takes
Speaker 3: a dead body unless they're in that business. So when
Speaker 3: he said he had to go get a family slash
Speaker 3: friend's body and transport him from one state to another state,
Speaker 3: the reason for him not showing up for a while
Speaker 3: with you, there should be in your clue that somebody
Speaker 3: else needs to be involved. I said, I've never heard
Speaker 3: of that in my life where you could take a
Speaker 3: dead body unless they die in your car and you're
Speaker 3: taking them to the hospital.
Speaker 1: As Corey's excuses became more and more alarming, she realized
Speaker 1: she may need to find someone else to finish the
Speaker 1: work he had started.
Speaker 3: Sue was very strong willed and confrontational. If you got
Speaker 3: in her face. She can be that way, okay. So
Speaker 3: she said, well, feel you know, he's the best at it.
Speaker 3: And he came and showed me all the pictures of
Speaker 3: what he can do. And he actually showed me that,
Speaker 3: and he gave me the contract where I had to
Speaker 3: give him the whole total job was supposed to be
Speaker 3: nineteen thousand dollars okay, and he needs twelve granted that
Speaker 3: up front, and within three to four weeks or two
Speaker 3: to three weeks whatever, I think, he could have my
Speaker 3: jobs done. The bob was to be a guest bathroom
Speaker 3: in the hallway and her master bedroom a bathroom in
Speaker 3: the master Both of them were to be redone completely. Okay.
Speaker 1: Corey did have credentials, and he had worked at Sue's
Speaker 1: house before. The whole reason she'd hired him was because
Speaker 1: he was a subcontractor on her kitchen remodel. She already
Speaker 1: knew him. Sue may have been strong willed, but she
Speaker 1: was a trusting and fair woman. Even though her friends
Speaker 1: all warned her something wasn't right, something was a little
Speaker 1: you know, off about this guy. She wanted to give
Speaker 1: Corey a chance to finish what he started.
Speaker 3: So then he came in one day. Every time he's
Speaker 3: supposed to show up on oh sorry, every time he's
Speaker 3: supposed to show up on Monday, he always text her,
Speaker 3: you know, back and forth they text okay, he'd always
Speaker 3: text her with a new excuse, so he never really
Speaker 3: could show up. But one day, just a few weeks back,
Speaker 3: he shows up and he goes in her house and
Speaker 3: he tells her how good she looks that day? Okay?
Speaker 3: And how old are you, Sue? And she said, I'm
Speaker 3: sixty five, just turned sixty five, are going to turn
Speaker 3: sixty five? And he said, man, you look good. Are
Speaker 3: you widowed? And she said, yes, I am. And he said, well,
Speaker 3: he said, man, you're looking good. He said, one could
Speaker 3: I get alone? She said, I alone? Corey? You got
Speaker 3: twelve grand of my money. I have no money to
Speaker 3: give you. You've done nothing for me. Now, this is
Speaker 3: her story to me.
Speaker 1: That was the final straw. Sue firmly told Corey no,
Speaker 1: she'd already given him more than half of the cost
Speaker 1: of the entire job up front, and he wasn't getting
Speaker 1: another penny.
Speaker 3: No. Oh. He just told her, I'll go to the
Speaker 3: bank and get alone. That was his attitude after he
Speaker 3: kind of turned the other direction and left her. So
Speaker 3: that's what happened at that point. So then she told
Speaker 3: me that week, sometime during that week, I feel I'm
Speaker 3: really uncomfortable with him now, I said, Sue, I told you,
Speaker 3: I think there's an issue here.
Speaker 1: The police now knew that Corey had lied to them
Speaker 1: about the money. They were able to track all of
Speaker 1: this with Sue's bank accountant checkbook, so they returned to
Speaker 1: Corey asking him if they can look into his storage
Speaker 1: unit where he kept most of his construction supplies. He
Speaker 1: opened up the door and the police let their canine
Speaker 1: dog roam the small, stuffy space. The dog popped his
Speaker 1: nose in and out of every shelf, every box, every
Speaker 1: random paint can. Then, when he got close to Corey's
Speaker 1: tool bag, the one he had with him at Sue's house,
Speaker 1: the dog started barking freaking out, alerting them of decomposition,
Speaker 1: but the cops didn't tell Corey this. They thanked him
Speaker 1: and they left. A few days later, they showed up
Speaker 1: at his house with a warrant for his truck.
Speaker 13: Here's the dude, Obviously, I talked to you before about
Speaker 13: this whole thing, and we've been following up because we
Speaker 13: still haven't found her, okay, Susan, So we don't know
Speaker 13: where she's at.
Speaker 4: So you're checking boxes, checking boxes.
Speaker 10: That's what I'm doing, going through and making sure what
Speaker 10: can I.
Speaker 4: Do to what do you need?
Speaker 10: So what we need is your truck because your truck
Speaker 10: was the last one at the house.
Speaker 4: Okay, as far as you need, I don't. I don't know. Gosh,
Speaker 4: they want to take my truck.
Speaker 10: Well, let me finish okayish, let me finish off.
Speaker 4: Okay, all right, let me get the keys.
Speaker 10: It's okay, we're going to take a truck. I have
Speaker 10: for it, so coming with us. I'm just trying to
Speaker 10: like to know what Okay, that's fine.
Speaker 1: Corey played it cool. He said he had nothing to hide,
Speaker 1: and his wife repeated that from behind him.
Speaker 10: I know you're in construction. You do all sorts of
Speaker 10: construction stuff, got all sorts of Nixon scratches, all all
Speaker 10: of you. I noticed the other day when I talked
Speaker 10: to you, had one on the inside of your arm
Speaker 10: that looked pretty fresh, right here above your tattoo, right here.
Speaker 10: What's that from?
Speaker 4: I do de worgas from all kinds of stuff?
Speaker 10: Would you be okay if I took a picture of
Speaker 10: it real quick.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, fine, it'll be awesome.
Speaker 3: You got a.
Speaker 4: Cassie.
Speaker 14: Then I want to take pictures with my arms?
Speaker 12: Can I take?
Speaker 8: Hey?
Speaker 3: Are you?
Speaker 10: Are you okay? When you think of picture of you arm?
Speaker 6: You know what you have to do.
Speaker 10: You have to ask your why?
Speaker 4: No, I mean that that doesn't upset me? You consider
Speaker 4: that's fine? Yeah, take all the pictures.
Speaker 10: Take a picture of him purs so we know whose
Speaker 10: arm it is.
Speaker 1: On the front lawn of his suburban neighborhood. More cops
Speaker 1: began showing up with their paperwork, cameras and a police
Speaker 1: tow truck. Corey was slowly becoming the neighborhood spectacle, and
Speaker 1: his easygoing persona started to crack.
Speaker 4: All right, well, while we're.
Speaker 10: At it, so we can eliminate it, and then maybe
Speaker 10: I don't have to talk to you again after this
Speaker 10: in any way, shape or form, since you look like
Speaker 10: you want to cooperate and I want to believe everything,
Speaker 10: you mind if we take a DNA slample and eliminate
Speaker 10: you because you have been in the house, that way
Speaker 10: we can wipe that.
Speaker 4: You're okay with that?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 10: All right?
Speaker 3: Cool?
Speaker 10: So what I'm gonna do is get a tow truck
Speaker 10: to come over here, because I don't want to drive
Speaker 10: your truck.
Speaker 14: I would prefer if you drove it. But now that
Speaker 14: all my neighbors have seen this, I guess it really
Speaker 14: doesn't matter.
Speaker 10: Then I'm gonna get a CST to come over and
Speaker 10: just do a quick slob. That'll be an elimination one,
Speaker 10: and then that'll probably be the end of it. I'll
Speaker 10: get your trip, I'll get your truck back to you,
Speaker 10: and then we'll be done with it.
Speaker 14: Right, my system, my DNA thing prints, everything's already okay, perfect.
Speaker 4: Can you get your keys from me?
Speaker 1: Then Corey kept repeating that his prints were in the system,
Speaker 1: as if he was trying to say the thing the
Speaker 1: cops already knew out loud so that he wouldn't be
Speaker 1: caught lying. Because even though Corey Benderham had been a
Speaker 1: decent citizen for most of his adult life, there was
Speaker 1: something that happened decades ago that he could never escape,
Speaker 1: something that haunted him, something that informed others about his
Speaker 1: character is true character. It haunted his marriage. It really
Speaker 1: affected his life in a way that even though close
Speaker 1: to him, didn't realize. Now the police knew about it too.
Speaker 1: You see, when Corey benderm was just seventeen, he stepped
Speaker 1: into something he should never have. The court records say
Speaker 1: he and a friend met three a Wall Army Ranger
Speaker 1: trainees at a hotel setting up a gun deal. Corey
Speaker 1: wasn't the supplier, he was the middleman. His job was simple,
Speaker 1: pick them up, drive them deep into a remote Florida swamp,
Speaker 1: and lead them to a stash of weapons. They did
Speaker 1: exactly that, quiet pickup, no small talk, then a long
Speaker 1: drive into the dark. The soldiers were ready dressed in wetsuits,
Speaker 1: wading into the murky water to retrieve the package. But
Speaker 1: halfway across everything flipped. Corey opened fire. Bullets tore through
Speaker 1: the swamp as soldiers tried to escape, Trapped and exposed,
Speaker 1: one managed to run and kept going until he reached
Speaker 1: the house and got help. Corey and his friend disappeared
Speaker 1: into the night. Two soldiers nearly died. The only reason
Speaker 1: they didn't was because the third managed to get help.
Speaker 1: It was clear that Corey had intended to murder all
Speaker 1: three of these men whilst pocketing the money for the
Speaker 1: whole shindig. It didn't take long to find Corey young, reckless,
Speaker 1: and now facing real adult charges. He was sentenced to
Speaker 1: seven years in prison and ten years probation for aggravated
Speaker 1: battery with a firearm. Now standing in his front lawn,
Speaker 1: a father, a husband, the business owner, Corey's past was
Speaker 1: staring him in the face. As police prepared to take
Speaker 1: his work truck into evidence. Corey reassured the cops he
Speaker 1: was an innocent man. But what else would a murderer claim?
Speaker 10: Well, I certainly hoped it was twenty seven years ago.
Speaker 10: I certainly listen, Corey, I certainly hope so, I really do.
Speaker 10: And and if it is, I assure you, I promise
Speaker 10: I'll be first one to come back and shake your hand.
Speaker 4: I certainly hope say look I wrong, I will do that.
Speaker 1: Corey didn't look scared. He looked furious. His wife angry
Speaker 1: and being escorted to a police station, his daughter just
Speaker 1: home from college watching it all unfold, and now the
Speaker 1: neighbors were watching too. That's what he felt most, humiliation with.
Speaker 4: The flame that you guys put on. Yes, sir, this
Speaker 4: is unfair. I didn't do what you think I did,
Speaker 4: and this is absolutely not fair.
Speaker 10: Can you tell me what happened to her? I don't know.
Speaker 4: I don't have any clue, and he shook hands. I left.
Speaker 4: That's it. That's the last I know it. I don't
Speaker 4: have an explanation. I don't have anything.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I mean, I got, I got.
Speaker 4: I mean the guy was moaning up the yard and
Speaker 4: mowing the lot across the streets. She shook my hand
Speaker 4: in the doorway, and she clearly did not want to
Speaker 4: talk to you anymore.
Speaker 10: She was done with She had an extensive, extensive, meticulous,
Speaker 10: detailed list of things and why she did not want
Speaker 10: to talk to you and why she was done with you.
Speaker 4: I didn't know that. I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: Corey thought the tension between him and this seemingly familyless
Speaker 1: widow would stay just that between the two of them.
Speaker 1: He didn't count on her having a circle of retired, watchful,
Speaker 1: fiercely protective friends, tracking every detail and being uber curious
Speaker 1: about her remodel. Her best friend, the one who handed
Speaker 1: over the diary, told police everything she knew old lady
Speaker 1: gossip was now becoming evidence.
Speaker 3: Then she was beating herself up for giving him that.
Speaker 3: In bat she said, well, I'm going to get my
Speaker 3: money back. I've been talking to Lynn to the lady
Speaker 3: next door's daughter, Lynn, and she's going to help me
Speaker 3: get an attorney, and I'm going to get the police
Speaker 3: and them involved, and I'm going to see if i
Speaker 3: can get my twelve grand back because he's done anything.
Speaker 3: You think I should pay him a little something for
Speaker 3: ripping out the bathroom, what he's done, I said, give
Speaker 3: him nothing. The man's cost you nothing but grief, Sue.
Speaker 1: Sue had found help getting a lawyer and was making
Speaker 1: plans to get the authorities involved. Still, she wanted to
Speaker 1: do this the right way without lawyers. She gave Corey
Speaker 1: one last chance, and he promised he would bring her
Speaker 1: her money back.
Speaker 3: So he shows up with a business check, okay, she
Speaker 3: told me, he said. Here, she said, I'm not taking
Speaker 3: that business check. You've been lying to me. I will
Speaker 3: accept nothing more than a cashier's check. He told her.
Speaker 3: At that point, I really don't have that twelve grand,
Speaker 3: but I'm going to have from now till next week
Speaker 3: to get it because I'm returning the bathtub and the
Speaker 3: shower stuff he bought. Sue said to me, he said,
Speaker 3: he's returning the bathtub, and I said to him, it's
Speaker 3: only nine hundred dollars, Corey, we're talking twelve grand.
Speaker 1: When Sue refused the business check, Corey admitted he didn't
Speaker 1: have the funds in his account to pay her in full,
Speaker 1: but he'd return some supplies and he'd get her the money.
Speaker 1: He said he was desperate to get this woman off
Speaker 1: his back.
Speaker 3: The next Wednesday morning, which is the twenty third, that
Speaker 3: I went to her house. I said to her she
Speaker 3: was supposed to show up that day. She had told
Speaker 3: me over the phone, you know, hey, he's coming Wednesday
Speaker 3: morning between eight and eight thirty. I said, well, Sue
Speaker 3: is going to have your cashiers check. Yes, he is,
Speaker 3: because he knows better. Said okay. So when I got
Speaker 3: there at twelve thirty that day, when I get there
Speaker 3: for our launching, I said, Sue, did Jack Rabbit show
Speaker 3: up today? She said no? But he called me, she said,
Speaker 3: and I told him, what's your excuse for whatever? He said, Sue,
Speaker 3: I'm going to be there with your twelve grand. I'm
Speaker 3: going to bring it in cashier's check or whatever I need.
Speaker 3: Tell tonight between six and six thirty to get it
Speaker 3: thirty you. I'm in Sant Augustine court, something to do
Speaker 3: with his divorce.
Speaker 1: But Corey wasn't getting divorced. He was piling lies upon
Speaker 1: lies to everyone in his life, and the facade was cracking.
Speaker 1: To sue, he had one set of excuses for his
Speaker 1: inadequacies and to his wife another. He was burning the
Speaker 1: candle at both ends, juggling jobs, staying up all night,
Speaker 1: drinking at the bar, passing off one debt to cover another.
Speaker 1: A contractor Ponzi scheme happens more often than you think.
Speaker 1: He was drowning in a circus act. And at the
Speaker 1: center of it all, the problem he couldn't solve was
Speaker 1: a stubborn sixty five year old widow who was now
Speaker 1: putting her foot down and putting it down hard.
Speaker 10: So, like I said, you know you lied to me
Speaker 10: right when we talked on Tuesday.
Speaker 4: About what you said.
Speaker 10: All you owed her was twelve hundred and ninety four
Speaker 10: dollars and fifty four cents. And that's the carbon checkmen.
Speaker 10: You showed me data for ten twenty four.
Speaker 4: That's the check that I wrote her to Rambose.
Speaker 10: You owed her twelve thousand dollars. And I have all
Speaker 10: the checks that she wrote out to you.
Speaker 4: With along with her there's three of them, along.
Speaker 10: With her meticulous detailed list of the money that she
Speaker 10: gave me. Why would you lie about that?
Speaker 1: Corey had no idea that the police detected human decomposition
Speaker 1: in his storage. They kept that card close to their chest.
Speaker 1: They had also secured security footage from home depot showing
Speaker 1: Corey buying numerous bags of concrete after he was at
Speaker 1: Sue's place.
Speaker 10: You truly protest in your innocence and truly go on
Speaker 10: trying to, you know, comply and go a long way
Speaker 10: to show that you didn't have anything to do it.
Speaker 10: But I'm just telling you, without throwing all this stuff
Speaker 10: in here, there is a lot that says you do
Speaker 10: know more than what you're telling Not necessarily that you
Speaker 10: did anything to her, but you know more than what
Speaker 10: you're telling me.
Speaker 14: I can tell you whatout some confident I have nothing
Speaker 14: to do with her being missing.
Speaker 4: Oh that's that's what I am very confident in.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I certainly hope, so, I really do.
Speaker 1: Detectives didn't have enough on Corey to arrest him right
Speaker 1: then and there, so they took his truck, shook his hand,
Speaker 1: and left him to sweat it out alone on his
Speaker 1: front lawn. That's when police got in touch with LeeAnne.
Speaker 1: They took her down to the station and started asking
Speaker 1: her about Corey, but she had zero clue what was
Speaker 1: going on.
Speaker 11: They didn't even tell me really why was there. They
Speaker 11: just kept asking me like all these questions like how
Speaker 11: long have you known him? What were you doing on
Speaker 11: this day? What was he doing on this day? And like, Okay,
Speaker 11: where are we going with this? Like what's going on?
Speaker 11: It literally took like hours into this for me to
Speaker 11: figure out what they were actually looking for. And then
Speaker 11: at that point I'm like, no, not possible. There's no
Speaker 11: way that's not possible.
Speaker 1: From the outside, Corey was not suspicious. He was a
Speaker 1: loving father, a businessman, the fun guy who would fut
Speaker 1: the bill for beers and treat his employees like gold.
Speaker 1: But something dark had entered Corey's life again, and only
Speaker 1: lee Anne was privy to it. Corey had started doing cocaine.
Speaker 11: When he first started using like that house party he
Speaker 11: went to, you know, he was doing cocaine. There was
Speaker 11: more of like a party thing, like I want to
Speaker 11: be up all night. I'm not really good to bed.
Speaker 11: It wasn't like an every day I have to have
Speaker 11: a thing. It was I'm gonna go party. The night
Speaker 11: away and then go to work tomorrow and do my
Speaker 11: normal job. And it was like every once in a while.
Speaker 11: It probably once a week, twice a week. It wasn't
Speaker 11: an everyday thing for him.
Speaker 1: But like all addictions, it did progress. Corey may have
Speaker 1: been able to manage his business, his family, his wife
Speaker 1: who he kept disappointing, and his late night partying with friends,
Speaker 1: but once cocaine entered the picture, things became a lot
Speaker 1: less manageable. And what Leanne didn't know was that Corey
Speaker 1: had been to rehab for cocaine addiction before. Years back.
Speaker 1: He had snorted away his family's finances. His wife found out,
Speaker 1: sent him to rehab, and he promised to never touch
Speaker 1: the stuff again. They were still building back the trust
Speaker 1: that had been lost all those years ago when Corey
Speaker 1: started partying again in secret.
Speaker 11: But it did progress. Dressed heavily, and then I did
Speaker 11: see a difference in him, like he would get irritated faster.
Speaker 11: You could kind of see it in his face that
Speaker 11: he was really tired. He's just really drained. He had
Speaker 11: a very short temper, not with me and not with
Speaker 11: anybody else that I saw, but just like when we're working,
Speaker 11: if he'd drops something, he'd be cussing, like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 11: damn it. Where before I don't feel like he'd drops something,
Speaker 11: he'd laugh it off and keep going.
Speaker 1: Leanne says Corey was not an angry man. She only
Speaker 1: saw him explode one time when they were out drinking
Speaker 1: and a miscommunication left him stranded at a house party
Speaker 1: with strangers. I don't know about you, but I'd rather
Speaker 1: be around someone that shows real emotion, whether good or bad,
Speaker 1: all of the time, then someone who holds it all in,
Speaker 1: bottles it all up and it's all just optics until
Speaker 1: one day they explode.
Speaker 11: He's screaming in the phone, you need to fucking come
Speaker 11: get me right, fucking like just screaming, and me and
Speaker 11: my sister and everybody, because we all rode together, We're like,
Speaker 11: what is going on? He's going off, like off the rails.
Speaker 11: So he's saying something about these girls invited him over,
Speaker 11: and then a whole bunch of dudes showed up. I
Speaker 11: don't know what happened at that house party. He wasn't
Speaker 11: there very long, but he ended up calling his wife,
Speaker 11: because the next day he told me he called his
Speaker 11: wife and his wife picked him up. Then you know,
Speaker 11: you kind of think like, was there just alcohol involved
Speaker 11: with the guy's maybe rude? Do you even hurt his feelings?
Speaker 11: Because he was very soft hearted, so it was like
Speaker 11: maybe somebody just hurt his feelings. He took things very
Speaker 11: personal and I think that's why he made sure stay
Speaker 11: in shape and things like that. Maybe he was felt
Speaker 11: bullied a lot, so you could tell like that was
Speaker 11: just his demeanor. He didn't he needed to feel like
Speaker 11: he was included in places.
Speaker 1: It was hard for Leanne to grasp that Corey could
Speaker 1: have murdered someone. I mean, think about it. Imagine someone
Speaker 1: you know, someone that you're close to, Now imagine that
Speaker 1: they killed someone, like for real, how do you reconcile that?
Speaker 1: But as the hours ticked by and police he slowly
Speaker 1: revealed more information to her, Leanne realized that maybe her sweet,
Speaker 1: chilled buddy Corey could have something to do with this.
Speaker 1: Though she'd only seen that one outburst, she had seen
Speaker 1: it the genie was out of the bottle. She knew
Speaker 1: he was using drugs and something had changed in them.
Speaker 1: The day that Leanne called in sick because of her
Speaker 1: torn rotator cuff was the day that Sue went missing.
Speaker 1: The next day on the job, Corey was distant, strange,
Speaker 1: and completely detached. Leanne remembered that day because she'd never
Speaker 1: seen Corey like that. It was all starting to click together,
Speaker 1: and she didn't like that feeling.
Speaker 11: They kept saying all this stuff. But when they told
Speaker 11: me about the glass and things like that, and how
Speaker 11: they had pinged his phone the day of there, and
Speaker 11: I knew that was the day I was off work,
Speaker 11: I started thinking, wait a minute.
Speaker 1: Aside from the bus footage and the smell of decomposition
Speaker 1: detected and Corey storage unit detectives uncovered two things far
Speaker 1: more deliberate. One was some shards of glass and Sue's
Speaker 1: driveway and they needed Leanne to confirm where this glass
Speaker 1: came from.
Speaker 11: Then I guess the guy's house we were working on
Speaker 11: at that time. We were working on a few people's houses,
Speaker 11: but this one guy in particular. When we took the
Speaker 11: glass door out of the shower down to the truck,
Speaker 11: it slipped out my hand and it shattered. It shattered
Speaker 11: everywhere like in a million pieces. And supposedly that was
Speaker 11: one of the things they said, is they found that
Speaker 11: glass in her driveway and they had asked me, did
Speaker 11: we do anything glass, and I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 11: we had a doorberrery, but we cleaned it up. But
Speaker 11: I guess that's what got left in her driveway the
Speaker 11: day that he was late picking me up.
Speaker 1: Secondly, the detectives had surveillance from home depot showing Corey
Speaker 1: there the very morning he went to Sue's house buying
Speaker 1: bags of concrete, not tools, not tons of materials for
Speaker 1: a visible build, just concrete and a few random items
Speaker 1: that looked like a clear cover up. He told police
Speaker 1: it was for a job, but leanne knew his jobs,
Speaker 1: his materials, his patterns, and this wasn't part of that.
Speaker 1: There was no project that called for concrete, so detectives
Speaker 1: had leanne kall Corey on a recorded line and ask
Speaker 1: him about the concrete casually, like it didn't matter. But
Speaker 1: by then it mattered more than anything else because they
Speaker 1: still had no body.
Speaker 3: They're gone, Okay, it wasn't was it was exhausting. It
Speaker 3: was exhausting.
Speaker 15: You did not kill that woman, did you. No, I'm
Speaker 15: start calling. I highly doubt that even they even asked me.
Speaker 15: They wanted to know exactly what materials we were using on.
Speaker 16: The job site, and they kept asking me over and
Speaker 16: over about concrete.
Speaker 11: So I asked him, I said, what is this about
Speaker 11: you buying concrete? And he said, yeah, I bought concrete.
Speaker 11: I said, what'd you buy concrete for? He said, remember,
Speaker 11: we're building a step at that last customer. We were
Speaker 11: at a different customer and I said, Corey, no, we're not.
Speaker 11: I said, we've never used concrete. What are you talking about.
Speaker 11: He's like, you don't remember the step we're building. I'm
Speaker 11: like no, And then he turned out. He's like, oh,
Speaker 11: I forgot. You weren't there that day that they requested
Speaker 11: that to be done.
Speaker 10: And I was like, oh, yeah.
Speaker 11: Because I've never We've never bought concrete. We've never dealt
Speaker 11: with concrete, So I don't know nothing about no concrete.
Speaker 16: Are I don't know, but I bet that's why they're asking.
Speaker 16: And I they must think that I knew about the concrete,
Speaker 16: because they literally kept asking me, and then they would
Speaker 16: look at me funny when I say no, we don't
Speaker 16: use concrete, and they just kept looking to be funny.
Speaker 9: They are, Yeah, by a poor bag of go leveler,
Speaker 9: Will Walter.
Speaker 10: And.
Speaker 3: That's why you can.
Speaker 6: The concrete.
Speaker 3: You should see nothing.
Speaker 6: I've been nowhere near the river.
Speaker 11: But at that point, I'm getting a little tearful, like
Speaker 11: why are you pushing this so hard? Wait a minute.
Speaker 11: Then it started kind of hitting me, like why are
Speaker 11: you lying? If you're lying, there's there's a reason you're lying.
Speaker 11: Why you lie.
Speaker 1: Before the police were done with Leanne, she divulged one
Speaker 1: thing that made them stop dead in their tracks. It
Speaker 1: was a thing that would change the entire course of
Speaker 1: their chase with Jack Rabbit, I mean Corey. She told
Speaker 1: him that one time they were at the dump getting
Speaker 1: rid of construction materials, and Corey joked that the dump
Speaker 1: would be a perfect place to hide a body. What
Speaker 1: a strange thing to say. The light bulb went off.
Speaker 1: The detectives had access to Life three sixty Data, which
Speaker 1: is an app that Corey's wife made him keep on
Speaker 1: his phone so she could keep track of where he
Speaker 1: was at all times. It was a deal they had
Speaker 1: struck after he got out of rehab and promised to
Speaker 1: change his ways, So Corey had the app on all
Speaker 1: morning the day Sue went missing, except for one hour
Speaker 1: after she disappeared, That is when he went to the
Speaker 1: Rosemary landfill and detectives knew what they had to do
Speaker 1: but then the unthinkable happened. Corey skipped down, but not
Speaker 1: before cashing a check he had secretly stolen from another
Speaker 1: client about a week prior. Like I said, contractor Ponzi scheme,
Speaker 1: it happens all the time, and it happened to me.
Speaker 1: A contract named Justin Jones promised to do some work
Speaker 1: for me, took seventeen grand and disappeared. I had to
Speaker 1: sue him, and when I did, I found out he
Speaker 1: owed over a million dollars to various other victims. At
Speaker 1: the end of the day, I was just out seventeen
Speaker 1: grand because even though I did sue him and won,
Speaker 1: he had no assets of any kind under his name,
Speaker 1: no credit, no nothing. What a piece of shit. Anyway,
Speaker 1: watch out for these contractors. They can really take you
Speaker 1: for a ride and never turn your back.
Speaker 11: On the guy's house that we were working on where
Speaker 11: I tore my arm using the Jackhamer one of the
Speaker 11: days we were there, I guess the last day we
Speaker 11: were there after all this happened, he went in that
Speaker 11: man's office and stole a check out of his check book,
Speaker 11: and that was his money to get him out of
Speaker 11: town on the run. That's how they called him he
Speaker 11: was in the bank cash and at check he wrote
Speaker 11: to himself and he hauled ass with that. That's how
Speaker 11: he was getting out of town.
Speaker 1: Corey had been playing it cool with the cops, his employees,
Speaker 1: his family, but inside he was panicking. The detectives were
Speaker 1: trying to hunt Corey down. His wife and children were helping,
Speaker 1: giving the cops tips every time Corey called them to
Speaker 1: check in from another random burner. Phone footage from the
Speaker 1: Rosemary landfill showed Corey showing up that morning. He took
Speaker 1: in a load that was about three hundred pounds and
Speaker 1: dumped it. When the cashier weighed his truck on the
Speaker 1: way out for the dump, he shed all that weight.
Speaker 1: But when he spoke to Leanne, he told her he
Speaker 1: had one hundred and twenty pounds of concrete to dispose him.
Speaker 11: So when they looked at the amount of concrete he
Speaker 11: bought and the weight of her body and added them together.
Speaker 11: That's exactly what he took to the dump. The exact
Speaker 11: amount that went in to the dump, because they weigh
Speaker 11: it when you go in.
Speaker 1: But finding Sue in a landfill wouldn't be so simple.
Speaker 1: The construction rubbish had been transported to a new site
Speaker 1: in Georgia called the Chessar Island Rode Landfill, about an
Speaker 1: hour away. When the detective spoke with someone at the landfill,
Speaker 1: they said that the dumpload was fresh, nothing else had
Speaker 1: been put on top of it. If Sue's body came
Speaker 1: from the Rosemary landfill, she'd be in that pile. So
Speaker 1: over the next week and tandem with the FBI, ninety
Speaker 1: employees searched an area of the landfill about the size
Speaker 1: of a baseball field. They turned over every piece of trash,
Speaker 1: desperately trying to find any trace of Sue. Individuals in
Speaker 1: white hazmat suits poked and prodded at every little piece
Speaker 1: of garbage while excavators ripped through the mess. The media
Speaker 1: was there, capturing each painful, hopeless second of what was
Speaker 1: akin to looking for a needle in a haystack. Then,
Speaker 1: on the ninth day, after sifting through seventy three hundred
Speaker 1: tons of waste, someone found a piece of what appeared
Speaker 1: to be a human jaw. Then more pieces emerged in
Speaker 1: the rubble, all tangled up in a shredded concrete bag.
Speaker 1: Amongst them were women's clothing, two fingernails, and a tarp
Speaker 1: Dunnell records soon confirmed it was in fact Sue Malden.
Speaker 1: The serial number on the concrete bags was intact and
Speaker 1: it was an exact match to the receipt of Corey's purchases.
Speaker 1: The police got in touch with the client, who Corey
Speaker 1: said he bought the concrete four and she knew nothing
Speaker 1: about a concrete step being built in her home.
Speaker 17: So the detective asked me about that, and I told
Speaker 17: him that the thing here that required any concrete work.
Speaker 1: The client also confirmed that Corey never finished the job
Speaker 1: he began at her place, giving her similar excuses like
Speaker 1: he had to Sue he.
Speaker 17: Had to go to Mayo clinic and he had to
Speaker 17: go to the doctor for this, or you know, or something.
Speaker 17: There was always an excuse, and then at the end
Speaker 17: he just vanished and my work was never completed.
Speaker 1: It had been almost four months since Sue's friends at
Speaker 1: the British Club had reported her missing, and now finally
Speaker 1: they had her body. Corey had accused the police of
Speaker 1: tunnel vision from the jump, but they were right all long.
Speaker 1: They soon captured Corey. His attempts to run were futile,
Speaker 1: especially since he tried to cash the check he stole
Speaker 1: and wrote to himself. Now Corey would have to face
Speaker 1: the police again, but not from his front lawn as
Speaker 1: a free man. It would be in handcuffs at the station,
Speaker 1: and there was evidence that he could not refute. Mister
Speaker 1: too cool Cory Binderham had painted himself into a corner
Speaker 1: that he would never escape. Local contractor Corey Benderham seemed
Speaker 1: like your typical dad next door, but underneath his friendly,
Speaker 1: chill exterior was a former criminal, relapsing cocaine adding, and
Speaker 1: shoddy businessman whose life was crumbling beneath him. At the
Speaker 1: center of all of his problems was a sixty five
Speaker 1: year old widow named Sue Maldon, who refused to let
Speaker 1: Corey off the hook for the twelve thousand dollars Yoda
Speaker 1: and bathroom remodeling work. Corey had been accused from the
Speaker 1: very beginning, but with no body and no witnesses, the
Speaker 1: detectives had little to work on, but got feelings and
Speaker 1: circumstantial evidence. As things heated up, Corey skipped down with
Speaker 1: a stolen check. Meanwhile, a massive investigation team combed the
Speaker 1: landfell and discovered Cho's body and other evidence proving Corey
Speaker 1: was the killer. All of Corey's confident defenses fell, and
Speaker 1: on January thirty first, twenty twenty, Corey was brought into
Speaker 1: the station in handcuffs after being arrested for cashing that
Speaker 1: stolen check.
Speaker 6: Spinner.
Speaker 12: Maybe I'm all right, as he is saying, but I'm
Speaker 12: sure it's not like closet. I wanted to come touch base,
Speaker 12: would you. I would just give you an update when
Speaker 12: we go. Sure, so we got one, and uh cut
Speaker 12: right to the chase. When we talked about before, you
Speaker 12: indicate that I had tunnel vision. I didn't have tunnel vision.
Speaker 12: We know what she did. We located Susan, we're bringing
Speaker 12: her home, and you're gonna be charged with murder and
Speaker 12: tempering evidence to begin with. I know that's a lot
Speaker 12: to hit you in one second, but obviously you've known
Speaker 12: this whole time and just kind of in waiting on it.
Speaker 6: I'm sure not at all.
Speaker 12: M I did reach out to Cassidy give her heads
Speaker 12: up because I know obviously your daughters now, I don't
Speaker 12: want them to get bombarded with stuff that they'll need
Speaker 12: to Okay, I did that for Cassidy, not for you. Sure, alright,
Speaker 12: and you you.
Speaker 10: I'm sure you're familiar with this process, how it goes
Speaker 10: from here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm gonna tell you. I'm not gonna say anything.
Speaker 2: You gotta get upset again.
Speaker 3: No, I'm not a hey, hey we won, we got
Speaker 3: our body.
Speaker 6: You're being charged. I'm not upset.
Speaker 2: You were not necessarily unfortunate that that I didn't have
Speaker 2: anything to do with it.
Speaker 12: So what we can prove, brother was and I get that,
Speaker 12: and you can you can maintain that all you want.
Speaker 6: I understand that. I'm just here to tell you that.
Speaker 12: I don't need you to say anything at all ever,
Speaker 12: because the evidence is there, The physical evidence is there,
Speaker 12: the whole thing he's laid.
Speaker 7: Out, and just so there's no misunderstanding, you do realize
Speaker 7: we found susan model, and we puzzily he was in
Speaker 7: about her.
Speaker 4: We found her in the chestaro and landfill.
Speaker 6: Okay, so you understand, Yeah, I understand.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: Corey sat in his orange jumpsuit, lips pressed thin. He'd
Speaker 1: been here before, but that was when he was seventeen,
Speaker 1: when recklessness could pass for ignorance and excuses came easy.
Speaker 1: Now he was a grown ass man, a husband, a father,
Speaker 1: someone who had been given a second chance and burned
Speaker 1: straight through it. Whatever he wants hid behind me was gone.
Speaker 1: What remained was simple and brutal. A grown ass man
Speaker 1: who murdered a defenseless widow, someone so physically frail she
Speaker 1: needed help starting a lawnmower. There was no chaos, no confusion,
Speaker 1: no youth to blame, just his own selfish choice, and
Speaker 1: it was pathetic.
Speaker 12: What my mind goes to is, I want to know why.
Speaker 12: I'm not asking you to tell me anything. Obviously you already invoked,
Speaker 12: but that's the real reason for me. That's what keeps
Speaker 12: me up at night. I just want to know why.
Speaker 12: So maybe at some point down the road we can
Speaker 12: have a conversation and just find out why, because at
Speaker 12: this point we're passed. If you did it, that's a luck.
Speaker 10: What is important now is why.
Speaker 1: Corey wasn't going to answer that question. The detective knew
Speaker 1: it from the moment he asked it, but it had
Speaker 1: to be said out loud because this question hung over
Speaker 1: the case, over every interview, every piece of evidence. It
Speaker 1: settled into the lives Sue left behind, while it seeped
Speaker 1: into Corey's own home, into his wife and daughters, into
Speaker 1: his coworkers. Forced to carry the weight of what he'd
Speaker 1: done the why haunting Leanne.
Speaker 11: I guess he tried to be calm with her, like, hey, okay,
Speaker 11: just give me a chance to fix this, and she
Speaker 11: blatantly said, you know, I'm going to call the police department.
Speaker 11: And I don't know if that triggered something in him
Speaker 11: where he'd already been to prison. Instead of going, okay,
Speaker 11: I'm just going to get us, you know, have to
Speaker 11: pay the money back, I think his mind went to
Speaker 11: I'm going to go back to jail. So then they
Speaker 11: she pretty much he kept trying to talk to her
Speaker 11: and say, hey, just can you work with me, can
Speaker 11: you help me? You know, we'll work this out. She
Speaker 11: was very adamant about no, I've had enough. I've tried
Speaker 11: for months. I want my money. I want my money now,
Speaker 11: or I'm calling cops. And then supposedly he had his
Speaker 11: tool bag in the house, and mind you, I was
Speaker 11: not there. This is just what I took from it.
Speaker 11: And she had blunt force trauma to the back of
Speaker 11: her head. And he, you know, always has hammers in
Speaker 11: his bag and that's where that came from. Is what
Speaker 11: I gathered, is that he struck her in the back
Speaker 11: of the head with one of the tools, and I
Speaker 11: almost feel like, you know, I could see now just
Speaker 11: pacing around, like how do I figure this out? And
Speaker 11: it's just sad that, you know, she wasn't really aware
Speaker 11: of her surrounding at that point to say let me
Speaker 11: keep him in my vision, because somehow he got behind her.
Speaker 11: I don't know if she was sitting on the couch
Speaker 11: or what, but she didn't keep him in her eyesight
Speaker 11: for him to pit her in the.
Speaker 10: Back of the head like that.
Speaker 1: An autopsy later revealed that Corey had struck Sue in
Speaker 1: the back of the head, then he strangled her until
Speaker 1: she died. Detectives theorized that Corey then cleaned up the
Speaker 1: house as best he could, apparently doing more work than
Speaker 1: the REMA would have taken. He grabbed the tool bag
Speaker 1: that Sue had been holding hostage and took her body
Speaker 1: to his store.
Speaker 4: It's unit.
Speaker 11: But they never say anything about chopping things up. They
Speaker 11: just said that he put her in this rubber maid thing,
Speaker 11: put it in concrete, went to the dump, dropped it
Speaker 11: at the dump.
Speaker 1: As Corey's arrest and arraiment spread through the local news,
Speaker 1: Leanne grappled with what had happened that day. In October,
Speaker 1: her torn rotator cuff, Corey's strange behavior in the truck,
Speaker 1: the stolen check, it had all happened within her presence,
Speaker 1: and she had no clue.
Speaker 11: So it was terrifying for me that I was sitting
Speaker 11: right in the truck with a man who just killed
Speaker 11: a lady, and I'm sitting in that same truck right
Speaker 11: after he dumps her body at the dump, I get
Speaker 11: in that same vehicle. Oh and then in the vehicle
Speaker 11: there was a gold ring in the door, and I
Speaker 11: asked him about it. I said, who's is this? He
Speaker 11: said it was one of the girls, one of his daughters.
Speaker 11: But the police department told me that he said it
Speaker 11: was mine. And I don't even wear jewelry. When I do,
Speaker 11: it's not gold, So I was like, that is not
Speaker 11: my ring. They showed it to me and I guess
Speaker 11: that was supposedly herring. So it's really creepy. You know,
Speaker 11: I'm sitting in this car, a dead lady's ring is
Speaker 11: right next to me, and it doesn't it's so real,
Speaker 11: Like it doesn't feel real. It feels like this is
Speaker 11: a movie. This is not actually happening.
Speaker 1: Leanne thinks that Corey lived under the crushing weight of
Speaker 1: his own lives, especially when it came to the lack
Speaker 1: of trust with his wife.
Speaker 11: But I think he was almost like the kid in
Speaker 11: the relationship, like he felt like he had to really
Speaker 11: prove that he was good to her, or he had
Speaker 11: to prove that he was worthy. Like he always had
Speaker 11: this mentality like I don't want her upset with me,
Speaker 11: and I don't want to think I did something wrong,
Speaker 11: kind of like you know your children do. They always
Speaker 11: want their parents to be proud of them. So I
Speaker 11: think he was so terrified that she was gonna find
Speaker 11: out that he screwed up again that I think between
Speaker 11: that and then going back to jail, I think he
Speaker 11: lost it.
Speaker 1: Corey would continue to protest his innocence. As the prosecution
Speaker 1: prepared for trial, many more things were revealed about Corey's
Speaker 1: crumbling life. His drug addiction had escalated from cocaine to
Speaker 1: percocet and steroids. Corey didn't even have enough money in
Speaker 1: his business account to cover the check he had written
Speaker 1: to Sue for two hundred and ninety four dollars. He
Speaker 1: had purchased the concrete an hour before he went to Sue's.
Speaker 1: This was all planned, he knew he was going to
Speaker 1: kill her that day, disguise her in concrete and toss
Speaker 1: her into a dump, and he thought he was slick
Speaker 1: enough to get away with it. That's the perplexing thing
Speaker 1: about Corey. It was like he assumed the cops would
Speaker 1: give up on Sue because she was just an old,
Speaker 1: single lady with no family and no one to really
Speaker 1: care if she was gone. Her life, you know, didn't
Speaker 1: matter enough to dig into. At least that's what he thought.
Speaker 1: It took almost five years for the trial to officially begin,
Speaker 1: between the court closures of COVID, that absurd fiasco, the
Speaker 1: complicated evidence, and the fact that Corey was facing the
Speaker 1: death penalty. This was a standard time lapse, but to
Speaker 1: Sue's friends, it was an eternity. Leanne was also going
Speaker 1: to testify, and she said it wasn't by choice.
Speaker 11: They pretty much threatened me that I was going to
Speaker 11: jail if I did not go in there, like they
Speaker 11: did not give me an option. They were not very
Speaker 11: nice to me at all.
Speaker 1: Leanne skipped the first day of court, she just couldn't
Speaker 1: do it. But she showed up the next day ready
Speaker 1: to give her testimony and terrified to see her old
Speaker 1: friend Corey looked different. His skin was pale, He'd gained
Speaker 1: about thirty pounds. He looked awful, like someone had sucked
Speaker 1: the color out of him and then blown him up
Speaker 1: like a big flag. She Beije balloon gross.
Speaker 11: I definitely had mixed emotions because part of me is, like,
Speaker 11: you know, part of me still wants you to be
Speaker 11: the good person. Part of me wants to say he
Speaker 11: really didn't do it, but the other part of me
Speaker 11: has to go, come on, there's the evidence he did it.
Speaker 3: So it was.
Speaker 11: Hard because you know, they make you point at them
Speaker 11: to say are they in the room, and you gotta
Speaker 11: look at them, you know. And when I looked at him,
Speaker 11: you know, I still saw the Corey I knew, like
Speaker 11: I still saw that nice guy that was my buddy.
Speaker 11: I didn't see this monster that came out that day,
Speaker 11: you know. I just saw poor Corey sitting there feeling
Speaker 11: like a little kid who's in trouble again. And I
Speaker 11: mean it was just sad. I mean, I hate it,
Speaker 11: and I just I know he did it and he
Speaker 11: deserves everything he gets for it everything, But it was
Speaker 11: just hard when you look at someone and I think
Speaker 11: I understand now, why moms who have sons and stuff
Speaker 11: that do this, why they kind of have that mixed
Speaker 11: emotion because you see that person for who you knew
Speaker 11: them to be. You don't see them for what they're being,
Speaker 11: what they really are. So I did, and I answer
Speaker 11: the questions and I hottailed it right out there as
Speaker 11: as I could so the public.
Speaker 1: Corey was a disgusting monster who murdered an elderly woman
Speaker 1: for twelve grand but Leanne saw someone else. She saw
Speaker 1: a situation she could have helped prevent.
Speaker 11: I feel terrible for her that this happened, And I
Speaker 11: also feel terrible like that he, as an adult, could
Speaker 11: not control his own emotions, Like why did you do that?
Speaker 11: Why could you not just say, Okay, that's fine, do
Speaker 11: what you want to do and I'll walk out and
Speaker 11: I'll figure it out tomorrow. Like I feel bad that
Speaker 11: he didn't feel like he had another option, like why
Speaker 11: did you make such a poor choice? It just you're
Speaker 11: an adult. You have to know there's consequences. Why did
Speaker 11: you make And I guess I feel bad because I
Speaker 11: didn't really see it coming either, So maybe part of
Speaker 11: that is me going I wish I would have known
Speaker 11: he had so many issues like money and things like that,
Speaker 11: because then maybe we all could have got together as
Speaker 11: friends and helped each other out. But you know, he
Speaker 11: didn't see anything, so it kind of feels like, you know,
Speaker 11: you're just out hanging out with all these people and
Speaker 11: you don't even know what's going on in their life.
Speaker 1: Imagine hearing this whole story and thinking I should have
Speaker 1: lent him money. Corey's trial was a slam dunk for
Speaker 1: the prosecution. He was given life in prison and not death.
Speaker 1: He was spared death by only one bleeding heart vote
Speaker 1: some juror who had somehow gotten the whole morality thing
Speaker 1: upside down, or maybe they just didn't want to deal
Speaker 1: with it personally, but apparently the jurors in general felt
Speaker 1: bad not for him, but for his two adult daughters,
Speaker 1: who wrote in a desperate plead at the court to
Speaker 1: spare their father's life. The defense clung on to the
Speaker 1: fact that there was another piece of male DNA found
Speaker 1: on one of the fingernails at the dump and blamed
Speaker 1: Corey's diagnosed CTE for his impulse control. There's always some
Speaker 1: kind of condition or psychological trauma that they blame and
Speaker 1: pretend like it's an excuse. In the end, it was
Speaker 1: all fruitless. Corey's tricks and schemes throughout the entire five
Speaker 1: months of the investigation were so obvious and despicable. He
Speaker 1: had put his own life above Sue's. Plain and simple,
Speaker 1: he convinced himself her life was expendable, just another cost
Speaker 1: of untangling the mess he'd made of his own. Corey
Speaker 1: was taken away in handcuffs. Sue's friends rejoiced, but everyone
Speaker 1: who knew and loved Corey was nauseous and broken, because
Speaker 1: Corey did have a lot of people in his life
Speaker 1: who adored him, Leanne included. Even now, she's barely able
Speaker 1: to break through the facade to accept the fact that
Speaker 1: her body is a convicted killer.
Speaker 11: Well, and I think too, when people do something that bad,
Speaker 11: you don't see it in them. So I mean, when
Speaker 11: I look at him, I see Corey, I don't see
Speaker 11: like when you know, when I look at Ted Bundy,
Speaker 11: because that's all I know about him, I see, you know,
Speaker 11: the monster, but I didn't know him. And I guess
Speaker 11: when you know them, you don't see that monster unless that's.
Speaker 3: All you know.
Speaker 1: It's hard to say if Corey was truly a monster.
Speaker 1: He raised two successful, loving children, He ran a business,
Speaker 1: He had friends and family who loved him. But when
Speaker 1: the cocaine crept back into his life, everything started to
Speaker 1: come apart, like a truck losing its wheels at full speed.
Speaker 1: The balance he'd maintained for years wasn't effortless anymore. It
Speaker 1: collapsed suddenly and violently. And the truth is the capacity
Speaker 1: had always been there, just below the surface. As a kid,
Speaker 1: he did a very bad thing and served seven years
Speaker 1: for it, not nearly enough time. Somewhere inside him was
Speaker 1: the instinct to put his needs above everyone else, and
Speaker 1: that never went away, that flash of darkness that led
Speaker 1: him to do something evil, bury it and keep going
Speaker 1: like nothing ever happened. When pressure hit, he didn't stand
Speaker 1: up and face it like a real man. It's hard
Speaker 1: not to see him as a boy who never fully
Speaker 1: became a man. A man takes responsibility, a man makes amends.
Speaker 1: A man faces his problems dead on addiction, money, whatever
Speaker 1: the fuck it might be, especially when he has a family.
Speaker 1: Corey chose what felt good in the moment, and he
Speaker 1: was willing to destroy the people around him for it.
Speaker 1: Sue Malden was an innocent widow, a sweet old lady
Speaker 1: who just wanted her bathroom remodeled. Instead, she was killed
Speaker 1: and discarded in a landfill by this fuck But thanks
Speaker 1: to you, the audience listening to her story, she is
Speaker 1: not forgotten and her memory lives on through her friends,
Speaker 1: especially the British Club, and everyone else in her life
Speaker 1: who loved her and her case, as dark as it is,
Speaker 1: made history the first successful FBI assisted landfill excavation to
Speaker 1: recover human remains in a murder investigation. It's a brutal ending,
Speaker 1: an unsatisfying one if you ask me, but it is
Speaker 1: one that will always be remembered.
Speaker 10: Well.
Speaker 1: If you like that, we have lots more at Swordandscale
Speaker 1: dot com. We have hundreds of hours of plus episodes
Speaker 1: that have never been released publicly, and our visual series
Speaker 1: which is pretty beautiful and amazing, and there's thirty episodes available,
Speaker 1: So go check it out. See you next week. Stay safe,
Speaker 1: st