Linda Leedom
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That's D-I-P-S-E-A stories.com slash snapped for 30 free days and 25% off your subscription. Dipsystories.com slash snapped. In a small Mississippi town, these two women were everything to each other. They got a close friendship. If you've seen one of them, you've seen both of them.

In the early hours of one winter morning, their friendship goes up in smoke. We put a firefighter through the window. He found her between the foot of the bed and the wall. Investigators uncover a deadly betrayal that has been smoldering for years. This woman was supposed to be our best friend. She seemed to be looking after her. I don't really think she was doing anything other than watching out for her investment.

And as a sinister plan is revealed, a sighting from beyond the grave cements suspicions. She had seen on the news where she had died. Then she was in Walmart shopping and saw her. As the truth unfolds, this small town may never be the same. Your past doesn't escape you. She didn't know what was coming. When it did come, she was shocked.

Twenty minutes south of Memphis, the town of Horn Lake, Mississippi is generally a quiet place. But on Northwood Cove in the early morning hours of December 19, 1994, the calm is suddenly broken. In the early morning hours, one of the neighbors said they heard an explosion and they reported to the police. As the fire department approached, they found a structure that was fully involved.

Neighbors are gathered outside the home that is now engulfed in flames. When we found out that the occupant of the house, which was Miss Lula Young, they all had said that Miss Lula was at home at the time, and they had not seen her come out. The members of the small-town fire department know exactly who Miss Lula is.

Lula Young, she was an EMT. She was known by a lot of people in Horn Lake. The emergency services people were real familiar with her because she rode the ambulance. A lot of the people that were there and trying to get the fire out knew her personally. It was a bad situation. The firefighters mobilize with one team fighting the blaze and the other trying to locate 47-year-old Lula Young.

Fire was still going pretty good. We knew we was gonna need a hose line and go through a bedroom window in order to try to get Miss Lula out. We put a firefighter through the window with the hose line. He found her between the foot of the bed and the wall. She was unconscious. It appeared that she had gotten up and tried to get out and collapsed. Lula suffered first and second degree burns on her torso.

It didn't appear that she was breathing, and our biggest concern was to get her away from the structure. When Lula was pulled from the fire, she never regained consciousness, and she eventually died of smoke inhalation. They pronounced her dead at that point on the scene. Lula's friends and family are devastated. Everybody that knew Miss Young thought she was a good person. People were really sad that she had died. Good neighbor, Lula Young.

It hurt is the biggest thing you can always say of a loss of a loved one in your life. But lowly was a thing that's hard to really process in your mind. Mike Melton and me that morning, we got up to go deer hunting. And Mike Melton's wife called. He said, hey, Bubba. He said, there's been a fire at your mom's house. And I said, is everything okay? And he looked at me and he shook his head no. That was not what I was anticipating. So you're saying mom's gone? Yeah, she's gone.

Lula Welch grew up in a large, close-knit family in Tunica, Mississippi. My mom was born down in central Mississippi. My grandfather was a farmer. My grandmother was a stay-at-home mom. Lula was born on October the 15th of 1947. She was the second child of what eventually becomes seven. Lula had a heart just big as a wheel, you know. Her biggest hobby was making other folks happy.

After becoming one of the first in her family to graduate high school, Lula married her childhood sweetheart, John Young. When mom was a kid, her and my dad grew up together. They knew each other from back when they were, I'd say, 10 years old. My dad worked construction, so, you know, daddy was, you know, in this town today and that town tomorrow. In 1970, Lula learned she was pregnant.

The birth of their son was followed a few years later by a daughter. Now a family of four, Lula and John settled in the small town of Horn Lake, Mississippi. My mom and dad were the Aussie inherited of the South. I mean, mom stayed at home and took care of the house. Dad went off to work. When dad got home, dinner was on the table.

While John worked hard doing construction to support the family, Lula quickly endeared herself to the small southern community. Lula was a person who never met a stranger. Lula became especially close with her neighbor, Linda Leadham. Linda moved next door in 1978. She had two kids also that was roughly about the same age as Lula's kids when they moved there. So they brought a close friendship.

Linda grew up just a few hours from Horn Lake in the small town of Selmer, Tennessee, and eventually moved to Memphis during her high school years. They had a lot of property and money that way, and Linda got to doing taxes. She did everybody's taxes, you know. Linda worked from home and cared for her children, Melanie and Jennifer, while her husband, Gary, worked as a truck driver. Linda was somebody that Mom confided in.

London and Lula was two people. If you seen one of them, you seen both of them. When Lula's 15-year marriage to John came to an end, the two friends became even closer. Mom came down and she just broke the news. You know, dad was home one day and he was gone the next. Her and my dad divorced. That was it. As Lula settled into her new life as a single mom, Linda stuck by her friend's side.

It was a wake-up call, you know. I mean, when Mom having to put money back to pay the light bill at the end of the month. With Linda's support, Lula came up with a plan to get back on her feet. Linda had been taking courses to become a nurse. She told Mom that she could make good money being a nurse. And so Mom was working as a LPN nurse.

She got a raise to go work as a medical transcriber and she was happy with that. In 1988, Lula also began volunteering with the Horn Lake Fire Department. When I turned 18, I was able to join the fire department. We needed somebody to do the book work and she joined the fire department to be the bookkeeper and accounting firm for the fire department.

And later, my mom went and she got her EMT license. But in the late 1980s, 40-year-old Lula was dealt a major setback. Mom was diagnosed with cancer in either '87 or '88. She had developed breast cancer and then she had to take a series of chemo and radiation treatments. When Lula did find out she had the cancer, it really got her down mentally for a while.

But then again, she had the idea, I could beat this. I was devastated because of the fact that my mom was everything to me. Now she's having to put her life in other people's hands. She would just, you know, be sick. It was just terrible. I couldn't fathom having to go through that. Linda immediately stepped in to help. Nobody had looked after her the way her friend Linda Leadham had looked after her.

Linda would go buy groceries for her, bring them to the house to her. Linda was a super friend to her. Lula endured grueling treatment. But after six years, she came out the other side cancer-free. She found out she was in remission. It was a real uplift to her because she felt like she had beat it. She said all the time, I can beat it, and she felt like she had it.

I asked her one time, "Yes, did you regret anything?" She said, "Nothing." I mean, she lived every day like it was the last one she had. Tragically, Lula's second chance didn't last long. On December 19, 1994, her hopes and dreams go up in smoke. We worked on the fire probably a good 25 to 30 minutes before we were able to bring it under control and knock it down.

As fire investigators inspect the remains of the house, questions begin to arise. When firefighters entered the home on December 19th, they observed a heater close to the front door. Near the heater, investigators find another unusual object among the ashes. There was a propane bottle inside the home. Not many people store propane bottles inside their home.

When investigators take a closer look at the propane tank, their suspicions grow. The valve had been turned and left cracked. That means your gas is coming out. So that put a key indicator right there. There is something strange going on. They thought it might be said intentionally, but there was only one person in the home. That was Lily Young. In my opinion, it wasn't just an accidental fire.

Coming up, a witness claims to have seen a ghost. She said the person that she knew as Mr. Lola Young was walking in the store. And points the investigation in a new direction. He said Lola had asked her to do this. December 19th, 1994.

A house fire in Horn Lake, Mississippi, has taken the life of cancer survivor and beloved community member, 47-year-old Lula Young. Now, investigators with the fire department have reason to believe the blaze was no accident. Propane bottles like you use for your gas grill are not normally kept inside the home. There was also an electric heater that was in close proximity to that tank.

There was just several things that didn't add up. All of this, in my mind at that point in time, pointed that it wasn't just an accidental fire. For the time being, investigators decide to keep their suspicions to themselves. I like to keep a lot of this hidden from the public in the very beginning of it because you never know who's listening.

There is one thing they can't keep under wraps, the news of Lula's death. One of the persons that had come up on the scene was Ms. Linda Leland. She openly said that she was the best friend of Ms. Young and how devastating this was. Linda tells investigators that she was home with her family when she heard about the fire.

She said her neighbor had called. Ms. Leland told her about the fire because she was her best friend. Lula's family struggles to accept the news. We got the phone call that morning at breakfast that Lula had passed away. It was downhearted for all of us. Of course, we all had a lot of questions. The term that we got was that the house had literally exploded. So I was trying to figure out how the house could blow up.

Nothing in the house was gas. So how could the house explode? Investigators have yet to reveal they found a propane tank in Lula's house. Investigators are usually pretty close to the chest on information they share, so when they do get a suspect, they can evaluate the evidence or the statement based on what's being said. Those who knew Lula are shocked that the trained first responder would have any fire hazards inside her home. She was scared of fire.

That was her biggest fear. Everybody said, well, she was pretty careful. She wouldn't do something dumb. That wasn't Miss Young. Later that same day, investigators get the results of Lula's autopsy report. Lula's cause of death was carbon monoxide poisoning. Basically, she died of smoke inhalation. I knew the coroner very well, and he had ruled this as an accidental death.

However, there is one detail from the autopsy that gives investigators pause. They found some sleeping pills in her blood. Based on the pills found in the autopsy, one has to wonder, did Lily take these herself and actually set the fire herself? Or did someone give them to her?

The amount of medication was not fatal, but investigators must consider if the pills were meant to keep Lula asleep and unable to escape the raging fire. Lula Young had been in Horn Lake for a while. It's a fairly close-knit community. Talking with her neighbors and people that knew her, that she's now in remission, absolutely no way that suicide would ever have been a factor.

She wasn't depressed at all. There was a lady that was looking forward to life the next day. At this point, investigators aren't sure about the sleeping pills or even if this is arson, but there are enough red flags to keep the investigation open. Investigators continue speaking to neighbors but make little headway until just a few days later when they receive a call from an insurance agent, Brenda Driver.

The agent explains that she'd sold Lula a policy just four months earlier. She had seen on the news where Lula had died in the fire. But that's not why Brenda's calling. She says that not long after the fire, she had the shock of a lifetime while grocery shopping.

Within two weeks after the fire, Brenda Driver was in Walmart shopping and saw who she thought to be Lola Young, the person she sold the policy to. She said she went home and told her husband she'd seen a dead woman walking because she had these papers saying this lady's dead and I'm looking at her in the face, you know.

Brenda Driver attempts to contact Lola Young at the number she has for Lola Young. Linda Latim answers the phone, identifies herself as Linda Latim and Lola's sister, and confirms she's dead. Investigators immediately bring Brenda in for an interview. Ms. Driver reported the fact that she had been to Ms. Lola's house and sold the policy to Ms. Lola for insurance, and that it also named

Ms. Linda Lidum asked the beneficiary to that claim. Ms. Lula Young had told Brenda Driver that they basically were sisters, and that's the reason that Linda Lidum was given the beneficiary part of it. The total amount of policies were approximately $700,000. Policies were so big that they required a physical...

With their suspicions raised, investigators wonder, is it possible that Linda Leadham could have posed as Lula? They showed her a picture of Linda Leadham and when the driver said, yes, that is the lady, law enforcement also found a nurse that actually performed the physical. Showing photographs of Linda Leadham to the nurse who conducted the exam.

Investigators were able to determine that Linda Leadham was the one that actually posed as Lulu Young and took the medical exams. Instead of pulling Linda in for an interview, investigators opt to build their case by talking to those who know her best. We were building up with the case that we had. You talk to friends, you talk to family members.

That's the easiest way that you find out information on somebody. Investigators quickly learned that Linda's insurance scam wasn't exactly a secret. However, Linda claimed that Lula was in on it. Linda says to people, Lula had asked her to do this and asked her to take the medical exams because she had cancer and she knew she could not complete those exams and obtain those policies for that value.

Linda was supposed to be taking care of the kids. That was Lula's wishes. But Lula's family isn't buying it. Lula never said anything about an insurance policy that she'd taken out for anybody. The DA sent it to the Feds to let them handle the insurance fraud, the mail fraud, so that there would be no chance of double jeopardy in state court if he was ever able to prove that Linda was involved.

While federal authorities take over the fraud case, investigators refocus their attention on Lula's death. At this point in time, I do believe Linda Leland was involved. We found that Ms. Leland had an alibi on the fact that she was at home at the time of the fire. We knew it was arson, but trying to prove arson in a lot of camps is hard to do because it's hard to get to the person that actually set the fire. Coming up...

The investigation falls into peril. We had a leak of information being given to a particular person. They were feeding information to her. Investigators make a bold move to uncover the truth. There's state investigators sitting in the other room listening on a body wire.

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Mississippi authorities investigating the fire that took the life of 47-year-old Lula Young have found that her best friend, Linda Leadham, stood to gain over $700,000 in insurance payouts.

Linda was her best friend, and she says Lula Young wanted Linda to take care of her kids. The intention was to defraud the insurance company about the cancer and for Linda to take care of her kids with that money. While federal authorities dig into the insurance fraud, local investigators continue looking for proof that Linda is behind Lula's murder. We knew it was arson. We just didn't know who had set the fire.

Months pass with no new leads. However, they do learn that Linda Leadham has been keeping close tabs on the investigation. Ms. Leadham had two people that was good friends of hers also. One happened to be a dispatcher and they were feeding information to her. Ms. Leadham was getting information about as fast as we were. To stop the leak, investigators take an unusual step.

They released false information to the public about an extension cord being the cause of the fire to try to get the person who did set the fire to relax and not be worried about it. I wanted her to feel like, hey, everything's cool. I ain't got nothing to worry about.

Although no arson or murder charges have been filed, Linda remains under investigation for insurance fraud. Early on, investigators had contacted the insurance companies and advised them not to pay on the policies. One of the policies still paid $275,000 before the investigation stopped payment of the rest of it.

I never saw any of that money. I didn't know anything about the payouts or the money or the reasoning behind all of this. When it was all said and done, Linda used the money to purchase numerous rental houses. While Linda appears to have no intention of making good on her promise to care for Lula's kids, that doesn't prove she's a killer.

For the next two years, investigators continue to question anyone familiar with Lula and Linda until 1997, when they finally get the break they've been waiting for. Confidential informant approached an officer that he had a trusting, real good relationship with and confided in him. He started talking about Ms. Luland and her involvement.

On January 16, 1997, investigators sit down with the informant, Robbie. He was friends with Lola and Linda. He confided that Linda had actually approached him on two different occasions asking him to basically kill Lola as a mercy killing. She had cancer. She was dying. When Robbie declined, Linda asked him for advice.

He was friends with several police officers, so she asked him about how to burn a house down without getting caught. He didn't go to the authorities at that time because he didn't think she was going to really go through with it. I don't think he thought Linda was capable of actually doing it. Robbie's statement comes close to confirming investigators' suspicions about Linda, but they will need more.

Robbie is willing to help. He agrees to wear a wire and meet up with Linda. They began trying to use him to go in and speak to Linda and try to get her to confess. I don't know how many times they sent Robbie in to talk to Linda, you know, trying to get her to say on tape that she had been the one to do it. She didn't confess. They just never got what they wanted.

Investigators fear the case is once again in danger of stalling out. Until a second informant named David Vincent comes forward two weeks after the first tip from Robbie. David Vincent was trying to get a lighter sentence. He was in jail himself. He wanted help on his charges. On February the 3rd, 1997, I went in to talk to the informant in jail.

David tells them that he has information about Lula's death, information he got from his former landscaper, Charles Wayne Dunn. They'd been working together. Dunn had confided in him one day that he had did something and that he regretted. Charles Wayne Dunn told David Vincent that he had killed Lula Young and that Layton and Layton had paid him to do it.

At this point, David reveals a detail investigators have long suspected but never made public. Charles Wayne Dunn told David Vincent that he had to make it look like an accident because if she died from cancer, the policies may not pay. When he was telling the story, what was running through my head is, we got her. I mean, this is the break we've been looking for if he's telling the truth.

The next step for me is to try to substantiate what David Vincent is telling us. And so I did a little research on Dunn and found out that he was on probation. In Charles Wayne Dunn's file, investigators find information connecting him to Linda. Linda Layden was listed as his employer and person to contact in case of emergency. Confident that they are on the right track, investigators set up a sting.

I devised a plan with his probation officer to have Dunn come into the probation office for a meeting. And they got David Vinson out and wired him and had him report like he had just been put on probation. And I had them sit in the lobby together like they're waiting to see their probation officer. With the wire live, David acts surprised to see his former coworker and friend.

We had him ease into the conversation and then get into what Dunn had told him in the past. David Vincent had said that he was thinking about killing somebody and

That's the way he got the conversation started. Dunn's response when Vincent's asking him about the situation was, "You should think about it. Your past doesn't escape you." The irony of that, his past wasn't escaping. There's state investigators sitting in the other room listening on a body wire. And Vincent just said, "Hey, you remember the time you told me you killed this woman?"

While Dunn didn't come out and say exactly what I hoped he would say, he didn't deny it at all. At this point, I felt like that I was ready to actually talk to Dunn myself. Coming up, face to face with a suspected killer, investigators drill down for the truth. Chris told him, you know why you're here and so do we. And a disturbing picture begins to take shape.

This was not the only time he had set a fire for Linda Layton. Two years after Lula Young is killed in a house fire, Mississippi authorities are eager to talk to Charles Wayne Dunn following incriminating statements made during a wiretap. On February 20th of 1997, Chris Seeley and I went to Wayne Dunn's residence, and when we got there, Wayne goes, "I've been expecting y'all."

Dunn accompanies them back to the DA's office for an interview. I began interviewing Dunn and was going through some preliminary background stuff. He was nervous and uptight and kind of panicky. Chris told him, you know why you're here and so do we. And finally he started his confession. Dunn explains that he met Lula in 1993 when she hired him to do some work around her house. Dunn was a handyman. He went over and did stuff for her.

Charles Wayne Dunn was also friends with Linda. And he says in 1994, Linda came to him with a dangerous proposition. He said, Linda, she confronted him that she would give him $5,000 to kill Lula because Lula was suffering because she had cancer. She told Wayne Dunn that she was going to die anyway, so why not take advantage of it?

Ultimately, Dunn confessed that he was the one that set the fire. We got an arrest warrant that night, and one of us booked him into jail. After Dunn confesses to the things, we, of course, would like to try to substantiate what he's telling us as much as we can by trying to get him to talk to Linda where nobody were. The following day, investigators put their third and hopefully final sting into action.

They wire him up and send him in to talk to Linda under the pretense that he's feeling bad about it. Linda didn't say the things we would like for her to have said, but she didn't say anything that indicated that she was innocent either. And to the contrary, she wound up giving him like $200, I think, to leave town.

After failing to get the confession they need to make an arrest, Dunn returns to investigators who press him for more details of the murder. In Dunn's original confession, he left out the part about the propane tank and so forth. Dunn says on December 18, 1994, he went to Lula's house for a visit. Dunn went over just to act like he was coming by to visit with her because she was familiar with him.

Dunn brought a propane tank Linda had asked Lula to keep for her. Dunn said he'd given her medicine to make her fall asleep so that she wouldn't suffer during the fire. He waited on her to go to sleep before he set the fire. He talked about cracking the valve on the propane and he put newspaper down in front of the propane heater. He turned the heater on and walked out the door and left.

He wants to hear it come on, ignite it, the paper, the gas was already there for the paper to ignite it, and that's when you get the big explosion. He was telling us enough about it that it wasn't public information. He told it in a way that you got the feeling that he's telling you the truth, or he did it himself. Before the interview ends, Charles Wayne Dunn drops one more bombshell.

One that investigators do not see coming. One of the things that Dunn told us about when we were interviewing him was that this was not the only time he had set a fire for Linda Layton. There happened to be a fire that was set on a house that was in South Haven.

and that house belonged to the Ms. Leadham's daughter. It was two years after the initial fire in Ms. Lula's house. They just evidently decided the best thing to do is set it on fire and then get that insurance money also. Investigators are stunned. Linda Leadham has gone from this person that everybody knew and liked to this basically criminal mastermind.

We felt like we had enough after talking with Dunn and doing the body wire with Dunn that we could go to a grand jury to try to move forward with the case. On March 11, 1997, three years after Lula's death, the grand jury indicts Linda Leadham and authorities move forward with an arrest that same day. The initial warrants for Linda Leadham were capital murder, conspiracy to commit capital murder, three counts of forgery.

Conspiracy to commit arson, arson and three counts of fraud. Checked like she was in shock. If I remember correctly, she goes, what's this about? Following her arrest, investigators execute a search warrant at Linda's home. One of the things that we found in the search warrant was several hundred thousand dollars worth of insurance on another individual.

The gentleman's name was Robert Stovall, and we found out that she was trying to make arrangements to whereby they was gonna do him in also, just like they did Miss Young for insurance purposes.

I found all these insurance policies on Robert Stovall with Linda Lidham being the beneficiary. And we discovered Stovall was a individual that Linda Lidham's mother oversaw his financial dealings and so forth. This really brought a red flag to me because in my case,

Against Dunn, I had interviewed his friend who said he had actually been asked to help Dunn kill another individual. And at the time, I didn't give it much stock. Kind of felt like one of those deals where, oh, he's just trying to be important in the case and so forth. But then when I found these insurance policies, a little bell went off in my head and said, this is who he's talking about. She already had talked to somebody to actually take care of Robert.

as far as taking him out. Fortunately, they find that Linda hasn't yet had time to pull off her next plot. They find Robert Stovall alive and well. When Stovall was interviewed, he didn't even know who Linda Layton was. Once she did it with Lola on the insurance stuff, I think she saw that opportunity with the Stovall situation too.

Coming up, Lula's loved ones worry that her killer may escape justice. She was doing what Lula wanted, entertaining those policies fraudulently. She's sitting there listening and totally unloved by this. She probably felt like money will buy me out of this also.

By the spring of 1997, Linda Leadham is in custody awaiting trial, almost three years after the murder of her best friend, Lula Young. While Lula was battling cancer, the woman she thought was her best friend was plotting her death. Linda is planning on killing somebody who's sick to begin with for money.

She seemed to be looking after Miss Young. I don't really think she was doing anything other than watching out for her investment. It was extremely cold, extremely cold. In August 1999, Linda stands trial. Linda, of course, did not plead guilty and went to trial. And we tried her for capital murder.

Prosecutors paid Linda as a greedy woman who plotted Lula's murder for financial gain. The story that we were trying to show was just how manipulative and evil she was. I mean, this woman was supposed to be our best friend.

to buy insurance, wait them to go into effect, go take physicals to do it. I mean, this is not something I decide on Tuesday and I go do it on Wednesday and we take care of it on Thursday. I mean, no. This is a month, month, month long process. The prosecution's star witness bolsters their claims. In Linda's murder trial, Charles Wayne Dunn took the stand and

As the trial unfolds, Linda's lack of emotion stuns the courtroom.

She's sitting there listening and watching what's going down, but totally unmoved by this. In all of her life, if anything ever had went wrong with her, money bought her out of it. And I think in her heart, she probably felt like money will buy me out of this also. After a brief deliberation, the jury returns a verdict. Linda was found guilty on all counts.

When Linda was found guilty at the trial, the judge looked her in the face and the words he told her, you never deserve to walk the streets of Mississippi again. And I see that you don't. He gave her life in prison with no possibility for parole. Though Linda is safely behind bars, the legacy of her cold-hearted plot lingers in Horn Lake. Linda Ledham was the greediest, selfish, cold-heartedest person that I ever met.

Linda Leadham is exactly where she needs to be. She took a lady that was already fighting cancer, a lady that was well known in the community, a volunteer that helped anybody, and to do her that way, all for the one thing, money. It's so cold-hearted. It's just hard to fathom. What I never understood, though, is how you can go from friendship to that. You know, it's just, that's the part I never understood.

My mom looked in the good of everyone. My mom tried to help anyone that she can with whatever she could. Charles Wayne Dunn pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit capital murder and received a life sentence. No one else was charged in Lula's murder. The ocean is vast, beautiful, and lawless. I'm Ian Urbina, back with an all-new season of The Outlaw Ocean. The stories we bring you this season are literally life or death.

We look into the shocking prevalence of forced labor, mind-boggling overfishing, migrants hunted and captured. The Outlaw Ocean takes you where others won't. Available on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.