209. The Poisonous Blame Game - Mary Yoder
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You're listening to an Ono Media podcast. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Peyton Moreland. And I'm Garrett Moreland. And he's the husband. And I'm the husband. Welcome back. Another week. Another episode. And here we are. Okay.

- Okay, thank you to everyone who got tickets to our upcoming spring tour. We are so freaking excited. I just wanna take just a little bit of a second to say thank you, thank you, thank you for supporting the show. I just don't even know how we got here. - Sorry if there's been some age issues and all that. It is 18 plus at all of them. We are working on maybe later this year, next year. I don't know yet, depending on how all these live shows go and what we're thinking on doing one where

There's no age restrictions at all. Right now, a lot of it's at different comedy clubs and improvs. And they just. It's their rules. It's their rules. They have 21 plus who were able to beat them up a little bit and get them to at least 18 plus. So thanks for supporting us. We're super excited. Not gonna lie, I'm a little nervous, but I'll be there.

All right, Gary, you got your 10 seconds? Yes, I do. I do have my 10 seconds, actually. I'm prepared and I'm ready. So I use Nair on my thighs and on my legs for the first time ever. I was like, you know what? Let's change it up a little bit. I have pretty hairy legs, pretty hairy thighs, and it's been growing for 29 years, as long as I've been alive. And I decided, you know what? I'm going to use some Nair on my legs and we're going to see how this works. It was extremely painful.

It was extremely painful. I put it on and after, I don't know, two minutes, all my legs are burning. So I wash it off. It works. All your legs? All my legs. All six of my legs were burning. Anyways, washed it off. All the hair came off. So it worked. Did its job. But I have a huge chemical burn on the back of my leg. And so I haven't been able to sleep. I know. Poor me. Poor Garrett. But I haven't been able to sleep and I don't think I'm ever going to use Nair again.

And I tried to get him to put diaper cream. I'm not using diaper cream. I told him it will help. So I didn't use diaper cream. If you're wondering why we have diaper cream, we don't have a secret baby. We don't have a baby. I use diaper cream on my face if I get burnt. That's why I'm like chemical burn, facial burn. It's the same thing. Yeah. So I got a bunch of burns on my legs. I'm good now. It's gotten a lot better. If anyone's wondering...

If Nair decides to sponsor us one day, I don't know, man. Sorry. But it burns and be careful out there. Be careful out there, fellow hairy men. Fellow hairy men. All right. Let's get into this. All right. Our sources for this episode are We Thought We Knew You, A Terrifying True Story of Secrets, Betrayal, and Deception by William Phelps, Observer Dispatch, Oxygen.com, True Crime Daily.com, Daily Sentinel, Fox News.com, Daily Mail.co.uk, Syracuse.com, WKTV.com, and Medium.com.

So they say silence is golden, right? We talk about it on this show often. How if one person would have just kept their mouth shut, had not inserted themselves into a case, had denied, denied, denied, and stuck to their guns, they probably would have gotten away with it all.

But there's a reason why so many criminals just can't help themselves. Sometimes it has to do with a personality disorder or at least an unwavering certainty that they can outsmart everyone else in the investigation. But other times it's because they're hell-bent on pinning the blame on someone else. And in some instances, like we'll see in today's case, framing someone is the entire reason for committing the crime in the first place.

So for today's case, we're headed to a little town east of Syracuse called Whitesboro. It's here in 2015 that 60-year-old Mary Yotter and her 68-year-old husband Bill have established their roots. The place where they raised their three now-grown children, Tamarin, Liana, and Adam, where the couple established their joint chiropractic business, which had attracted nearly everyone in town at some point or another.

So it's safe to say Mary and Bill were a community staple in Whitesboro. And they were more than just local care providers. They were kind. They went out of their way to drive a patient home if they weren't feeling well. They were good friends to everyone who stepped into their chiropractic office.

A quick history on Mary and Bill. They met in college in the mid-70s. They started out as roommates, which quickly turned into a romance and had been inseparable ever since. Since the beginning of their relationship, they found a lot of common ground when it came to holistic wellness and ways to achieve happiness. In 2011, Bill had even published a book called The Happy Mind, Seven Principles to Clear Your Head and Lift Your Heart.

Mary, the picture of health, also ran a small vitamin business out of the practice, selling things like natural nutrition, beauty and diet supplements. So for the otters, their practice wasn't just about treating scoliosis. It was about balancing the mind, body and spirit. It was their shared dream together.

But by the summer of 2015, with 28 years of success under their belts, both Mary and Bill were ready for a change. Mary had begun thinking about what retirement would look like after taking a strong interest in pottery and gardening over the years. Bill, a few years older, had already taken a step back, focusing more on the bookkeeping side than seeing patients.

He now only went to the office on Tuesdays and Thursdays, while Mary took Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. But on her off days, Mary was known to drive out to Amish country to provide care there as a sort of community service.

So yeah, Mary was taking on more of the physical demands of the job, but she never seemed to complain. According to people who knew the couple, the business never seemed to create any problems at home, which is so interesting because we get asked all the time how we're able to work together and Mary and Bill were also able to work together. And this works for some people and some people don't. It just works. Still alive. We're still married. The Yodders were professional enough to keep those two things separate and

But they also kept the practice pretty insular. Over the last year or so, their 24-year-old son Adam worked as their office manager. But when he decided to go back to school full-time in 2014, he asked his parents if they'd consider hiring his girlfriend, 21-year-old Katie Conley, to split the duties.

So come the summer of 2015, however, Katie was working as the sole office manager full-time. Okay. The son's working for the parents. He's like, hey, I'm going to go back to school, hire my girlfriend, Katie. And Katie is now working for them full-time. Bill and Mary had only met Katie a handful of times before she took the job, but they quickly grew to trust and love her as she worked for the family company. After all, she'd come from a well-respected family in the area and she seemed to make their son, Adam, happy.

at least until they called it quits earlier that year. So despite the fact that Adam and Katie were no longer together by the summer of 2015, Katie actually remained the hardworking professional they'd hired. I was going to ask that. That's probably a little awkward.

Well, it's like one of those things where you're like, mom, dad, pick a side. Yeah, exactly. Like, I'm your son. And it's like, well, she's a good office manager. Yeah, we like her. What do you want me to do? And I think they were also like finding someone new at this stage just seemed a bit unnecessary when the only reason they wouldn't have her is because they broke up. This is also because Mary and Bill were looking to sell the practice and just fully retire themselves. So they knew it wouldn't be easy. Money would certainly be tight without the constant influx from the practice. But they were also like,

But the couple was just ready to slow down. They're, you know, in their 60s, getting to their 70s, maybe spend less time with their patients and more time together. They'd even planned a month-long vacation for that September, something they hadn't done in the 28 years since the practice had opened. So while challenges certainly laid ahead for this couple, their number one focus seemed to be their future together. There's a vision that came toppling down on the afternoon of July 20th,

2015. So the Yotters woke up that Monday morning to another beautiful summer day. Bill was up and Adam by 630 a.m. as always ready to hit the workout room while Mary showered and got ready for the office. He gave Mary a kiss goodbye as he did every morning before she made the 15 minute drive to work.

And like most days, Mary was eager to get through her patient list quickly and get home by early afternoon to tend to her garden. Patients who saw her that morning, as well as Katie, said Mary seemed like her usual self. She was upbeat and ready to go, at least for the first half of the day.

When Mary's lunch hour hit, she told Katie she was going to visit her 93-year-old mother at her sister's house and that she'd be back for her afternoon appointments. So on her lunch, she's going to go visit her 93-year-old mother at her own sister's house. But shortly after returning to the office, Mary had lost much of the color in her face.

She was running to the bathroom in between clients and seemed like she may be coming down with something. So Mary's first instinct is what she told people was food poisoning. However, she ate the same thing almost every single day for lunch, especially when she was running around. A protein powder that she mixed into a shake along with a bit of almond milk. But as the afternoon went on, Mary couldn't suffer through her patients any longer. She

She asked Katie to cancel the rest of her day and she called Bill to tell him she was coming home early. So, yeah, I mean, you usually don't get food poisoning from a drink mix and some almond milk. Right. So by the time Mary got home, she was in bad shape.

Ruling out the possibility of food poisoning, Bill wondered if Mary might have caught some sort of stomach bug. As I mentioned, Mary was pretty much the picture of health in this family. She worked out. She took good care of herself. It was unusual for her to get this sick like ever. At around 9.30 p.m. that night, Mary told Bill to go upstairs and leave her on the couch. She was going to sleep it off and believed she'd feel better by the morning.

Only that wasn't the case. When Bill came down to check on her early on the morning of the 21st, Mary told him she hadn't left the bathroom all night. All right, time to go to a hospital. So that's when Bill called their daughter, Liana, who happened to be a medical doctor in Long Island.

Liana's advice was this. Go to the hospital and at the very least get mom some fluids. She's probably dehydrated if nothing else. So that's exactly what Bill did. By 9 a.m. they were on their way out the door and making the short drive over to St. Luke's Hospital.

When they get there, they run all sorts of tests on Mary, but they can't figure out what's causing her sudden illness. By that evening, doctors tell Bill, look, there is this weird GI bug going around. We're going to keep Mary overnight and monitor her, but she'll likely be fine to go home by tomorrow. They even suggest that Bill go home himself, get some sleep in his own bed that night. So that's exactly what I'm nervous, man. I do not know what's coming next. All right. But the

But the following morning at around 5.30 a.m., Bill wakes up to the sound of banging on his front door. And standing there are two people you never want to see on your doorstep.

state troopers, who told Bill the hospital has been trying to get a hold of him. Mary had taken a turn for the worst overnight. She was now in the ICU. What the freak? So when Bill gets to the hospital, he realizes it's time. He's got to get his kids up here.

Adam, who lives in the Whitesboro area, had actually been visiting his sister, Liana, down in Long Island. So he tells Bill they're going to rush up as soon as possible. Same with their eldest daughter, Tamarin. But over the course of that day, things just didn't turn around for Mary. She coded about eight separate times.

By 2 p.m., she'd gone into full cardiac arrest. Oh my gosh, man. Luckily, by that point, the entire family was by her side. Unfortunately, though, it was time to say their final goodbyes. And at 2.54 p.m. on July 22, 2015, Mary Otter was officially pronounced dead. It's so scary how...

36 hours before you can be perfectly fine and nothing's wrong and just like a flip of a switch. Now, doctors were just as confused by the situation as the family was. Mary's only symptoms had been nausea and diarrhea, followed by a rapid succession of cardiac events. What started out sounding like a stomach bug didn't really sound like one any longer. There's no way it's a stomach bug. And when an unexplained death like Mary's occurs, it's not just a stomach bug.

it means that an autopsy is imminent, at least nowadays. So by the morning of July 23rd, her body was already in the medical examiner's office ready to undergo the procedure. And at first, the ME suspected that Mary must have an infection in her colon that may have leaked into her bloodstream. But the more they examine her, the stranger the evidence gets. She, I'm just going to say what I think happened before we keep going. See, maybe I'm correct. I think she was poisoned.

Okay. I mean, I feel like that seems pretty obvious at this point. So the medical examiner noticed the fact that several of Mary's organs had failed prior to her death, including her lungs. 100%. Which was odd.

The medical examiner also noticed that all of Mary's organs appeared to be an unusual reddish-greenish, like purple color, something he'd never seen in the entirety of his career. And on top of that, they never found any evidence of bacteria, but instead signs of cell death, which indicated toxic exposure. Yep. A.K.A. it appeared as if Mary had consumed poison.

So over the next few weeks, they run tests for the obvious ones, things like cyanide, arsenic, and they all come back negative. Meanwhile, Mary's family is racking their brains for anything she might have accidentally ingested that could have caused this. They know Mary always takes vitamins and supplements. Plus, she was always out in her garden working with harsh chemicals. Could it maybe have come from one of those?

Well, none of these avenues provide the many answers until October of 2015, when the medical examiner speaks to a poison control expert who says, Mary's symptoms sound a lot like colchicine poisoning. What the, what is that?

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But the doses need to be very small and controlled. Okay. I'm curious to see. I'm just trying to figure out in my head who did it or who I think did it. And I don't know because she went to visit her grandma and all of a sudden she comes back and is sick. So if you take too much, it can be extremely lethal. Now, interestingly enough, colchicine is also a chemical used in crop growth.

So the question becomes, did Mary accidentally ingest this after working in her garden? But the answer is absolutely no way because Mary had 15 times the lethal amount in her system. So this means someone poisoned Mary intentionally. 15 times. How?

Like, how does it even happen without noticing? That's insane. Now, it's October 2015 when Mary's sister, Sharon Mills, calls the Oneida County Sheriff's Office to see if anyone opened up an investigation into her sister's death. And the man who takes her call is a detective named Mark Vanamey, and

And he admits this is the first time he's heard about the case. So they do all these tests and they're like, okay, she's poisoned. She did have 15 times legal amount, but they don't really open up an investigation into what really happened until the family starts asking questions. Okay. Which that's a little strange, right?

Yes. So Sharon gives Mark the rundown, telling him about the new developments from the medical examiner's office. But then she drops a bomb. She mentions Bill's name. Bill is Mary's husband. Remember, this is Mary's sister who's talking. Is he of gout? And says, if he did it, you're never going to catch him.

Because Sharon goes on to tell Mark that Bill is brilliant. And if he did find a way to poison his wife, he certainly found a way to cover it up as well. That is such a strange thing to say to somebody. Right. So naturally, police open the investigation and now have to follow this lead. Plus, it's not that far-fetched to consider Bill, the husband, a person of interest. Also, why wasn't he a person... I mean, no offense to anyone in the family, but if someone in your family dies, especially a poisoning...

The family should be the first people who are POIs. Because it's like...

Who's feeding them? Who's possibly making them a drink, you know? So Mark starts looking into Bill. But here's the thing. There's no life insurance policies to be paid out. There's no real cash he stands to gain from this. So they're narrowing down his motive until they realize Bill's been dating Mary's sister, other sister, Kathy, for at least the last couple of months. So he's been cheating on his wife with his wife's sister? No, no, no. Since her death.

Oh, apologies. Okay, got it. That was kind of confusing. But he's still dating her sister once she died. Yeah. So according to Bill, the two only reconnected after Mary's death. So he's like, no, Mary died. And then we, you know, connected. That's what everyone who has an affair, that's what they always, or sorry, everyone when situations like this happen, because I guess not technically an affair.

I feel like they always say this. Well, he's like, I even have dates. So he says they met up, just the two of them. Of course Bill has dates. For the first time around July 30th. And Bill said they found solace in each other's company. Him having lost his wife, her having lost her sister. And not only had Kathy just lost her sister, she'd actually also lost her husband a few years back. After that July though, Bill and Kathy's relationship blossomed. And by September, the two were in a full-blown romantic relationship and they weren't doing much to hide it.

However, there are some witnesses, including Mary's other sisters, who claimed Kathy and Bill were spotted together well before Mary died. Also, sorry to any of our listeners who are maybe in a similar situation.

But for the kids. That's weird. That's hard. Is that not awkward? If you're listening and you're a kid in that situation, that's got to be a little strange. For sure. It happens. You never watched. This is us. But in this is us. The husband dies and then she ends up marrying his best friend. Yeah. See, I'm just. And it's really hard for the kids in the show. I'm not really about that. Not about that.

Personal opinion here. So the other sisters are like, no, no, no. They they've been together. They've been together before she died. The relationship didn't stem from their shared grief. But instead, Mary's death may have stemmed from his desire to be with Kathy.

Problem was, police had zero evidence of this being the case. And when asked to hand over his phone and computer, Bill did do it willingly. And from that, police discovered that Bill had kept all of the emails and texts between him and Kathy showing that not only was he not trying to hide the relationship, the timeline did seem to correspond with Bill's testimony. I don't believe any of this. So the evidence is saying Bill's telling the truth.

However, on November 23rd, 2015, police received a piece of evidence that would throw them off bills sent for the time being. It was an anonymous letter written to the sheriff's department and it claimed to know exactly who had killed Mary.

It didn't beat around the bush either. The second paragraph of the letter clearly stated that if Colchicine was found in Mary's system, the person to blame was her son, Adam. This is the same son who was dating Katie, the girl who worked for them, and then broke up with Katie.

So it outlined a motive to this anonymous letter to police. I don't think it's Adam, but let's keep going. Outlines a motive saying Adam had been resentful of his mother for not helping him with his recent financial struggles and that he believed he would receive a handsome payout from his mother's death.

When that didn't happen, Adam became outraged. It described how Adam had executed the poisoning, that he'd put it in one of the supplements Mary took at the house. And finally, according to the anonymous letter, Adam had even mentioned where he was hiding the rest of the colchicine under the front passenger seat of his Jeep.

This is really detailed. It's way too specific. This is obviously, Bill obviously wrote this letter trying to blame his son, Adam. That's what I think happened, but let's see. Now, I'm not sure the whole thing just felt a little too convenient to the police, but they had to follow through on the lead.

especially when they confirmed some of this information with Mary's sisters and learned, yeah, Adam and Mary had recently kind of had a falling out when she took a firmer stance on giving him money. So she was kind of helping her son Adam out and then cut back and this hurt Adam's feelings. Plus a company named Art Chemicals had received an order prior to Mary's death for colchicine from a user with the email address

MrAdamYotter1990 at gmail.com. I still don't believe this. So they call Adam to come in for questioning and he's fully cooperative, not sensing that he's now a person of interest by any means. Yeah.

But when Adam meets with the investigators, they show him that note implicating him on the crime. So they bring him in there like, look at this note. And one of Adam's first statements is someone's trying to frame me. He happily hands over his phone to the police. And while they don't find anything incriminating there, they do ask Adam if they can search his Jeep without a warrant. And he agrees. He's like, yeah, go search it.

So detectives slap on a pair of rubber gloves and go right to the area the letter mentioned. And while Adam's standing nearby, smoking a cigarette. And what do you think they find when they look under the passenger side of the Jeep? So, of course, they find the poison or the medication, whatever you want to call it. A prescription bottle wrapped in cardboard. Alongside it, a receipt from Art Chemicals, the place Adam, the email, had purchased it from.

But when police turned to Adam to show him what they found, the cigarette nearly falls out of his mouth. He looks at them and goes, I've never seen that bottle before. I have no idea how that got there. Dude, Bill, man, what a freaking douche. He looks at police and he's like,

someone put that there. Yeah. He's like, that was not me. Somebody put that under my seat. I am screaming lawyer so fast right now. Well, and judging by how shocked Adam seemed, the police are like, okay, is he not innocent or did this guy literally deserve an Oscar? Because he was...

like he was adamant and they're like is he really being set up by someone so they take a look at adam's whereabouts during the time of the poisoning now i mentioned earlier that when bill called the kids to come say their goodbyes to mary adam was in long island visiting his sister leona in fact he'd been there over the last several days including july 20th the day mary first started showing symptoms so

So if Adam did plan to poison her while she was away, he would have had to devise a very elaborate plan for her to take the drug on her own while he was gone. It wasn't like he could slip it to her in a protein shake and say goodbye because this agent acted quickly. So whoever slipped the drug to Mary had to have seen her in the hours before she got sick. And we know that couldn't have been Adam. There was one person, however, who wasn't on the best of terms with Adam.

Someone who might have gone out of their way to make it look like it was Adam who did see her. And that was his ex-girlfriend, 22-year-old manager Katie Conley. You're telling me she did it? I thought for sure it was Bill. I'm going to be a little upset if I got that wrong. So... That sucks. That sucks.

Let me back up a bit and give you a little more context around Adam and Katie's relationship. You kind of bamboozled us though because you didn't say anything about her. So that's kind of your fault and not my fault. This is the circle of a true crime case. All right, let's hear it. Keep it going.

So it seems like there were things going on behind the scenes that even Adam's parents didn't know about while these two were dating. Because if they had, they might have not agreed to hire her. So Katie and Adam got together in 2011. And when the relationship began, it was pretty hot and steamy. The two even talked about a future together, getting married, having kids, buying a house. But eventually that honeymoon period wore off and the couple began fighting a lot.

And anytime Adam started to pull away, Katie would come up with a reason to keep him around, piss him off, maybe get him in trouble. For example, on one occasion, Katie hooked up with Adam's friend just to get back at him after a bad argument. On another, she told Adam that she'd recently experienced a miscarriage with Adam's child. And after this, Adam stopped seeing the new woman that he was with and got back together with Katie because she's like, well, I was pregnant with our baby.

But when things turned sour again, Katie reported to police that Adam had sexually assaulted her. Something Adam was like, no, no, no, I never did this. So now you can understand why Adam really wanted nothing more to do with Katie by July 2015. But unfortunately, cutting ties with her completely was out of the question considering she still worked for the family business. But, you know, there's something different between like

a psycho ex-girlfriend and a killer and a mother killer. I mean, is there? No, there is. I know what you're saying. So again, police unravel all of this. Everything I just told you, they unravel this and they wonder, was revenge enough of a reason for Katie to kill her ex-boyfriend's mother? What I just said. It seems like Shakespearean. Like this, just like to get back at him, she's going to murder his mom. And they have to take into consideration the fact that they still haven't completely ruled Bill or even Adam.

himself out as suspects at this point like adam definitely has an alibi but it's still possible he could have done the poisoning so the question ultimately was who was framing who

So police narrow in on Katie. They're like, we know about Bill. We know about Adam. They bring her in for questioning where she admitted she was the one who wrote the anonymous letter. But soon they discovered another important detail about their suspects. Something that happened just months before Mary was murdered. See, back in April of 2015, it turns out Adam had been sick as well.

And he had a lot of the same symptoms Mary had before she died. I always wonder like how this takes, how this stuff takes so long to come out. Like all of a sudden, oh, like I was sick too or oh this, you know. And maybe it's just because it's day-to-day life and it's not details you think of. I just think police have to learn it through people. And if he didn't tell anyone...

super close to him how would they learn it besides talking to her or you know like yeah it's just it's it's a big game of telephone when police are trying to learn details that aren't told to them directly by the person you know going off topic for one second so you can skip if you want but it kind of makes sense because when i was at the dentist the other day i told him that i had jaws i had surgery on my jaw i didn't tell him last time but i told him this time and they're like why didn't you tell me last time i was like

I don't know. I just didn't think of it. They're like, okay, well, that's pretty important information that you probably should have shared with us. Yeah. It's just one of those things. Yep. So he had nausea, diarrhea, abdominal pain. And as Adam's reflecting on this with the police, so Adam himself tells the police this, he realizes...

Katie had offered him some sort of supplement called Alpha Brain to help him focus on his college exams that spring. Now, at that time, Adam and Katie were obviously not on the best of terms, but they still spoke occasionally, especially because Katie was constantly trying to find ways to insert herself back into Adam's life.

So Adam didn't find the offer weird and he clearly didn't connect it for the fact that a day or so later he was being rushed to urgent care for what doctors believed was just another GI bug. So the police asked Adam, do you still have that bottle of pills lying around somewhere? And he did. He handed it over to them as evidence and told them he only ever took two. Well, the bottle originally had 30 tablets and now 29 remained.

meaning one of the two pills Adam took did not belong in that bottle. But if Katie was the one who planted the poison, then the question was, how did she get her hands on it?

Well, that's when police learned that Katie's scheme began well over a year ago. It was back in December of 2014 when she walked into a supermarket and purchased a prepaid MasterCard. Nine days later, someone signed onto the office computer and logged into a Gmail account under the name Mr. Adam Yoder 1990. People are so dumb. How does she think that...

She's not going to get caught when she made this fake email address. Well, also, if you just need any more of an indicator of the type of person Katie is...

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From that email address, Adam, or rather Katie, masquerading as Adam, sent an email to Art Chemicals claiming to have difficulty with a payment they tried to make online. The order was for one gram of colchicine, enough to kill dozens of people. And eventually a company representative named Rosa replied back saying they would enter the information manually, but that they still needed a letter of intent and a copy of the business license to approve the purchase.

A few days later, that letter, written on company letterhead, arrived at Art Chemicals with an attention to Rosa. It had everything Rosa required, a tax ID number, the intended purpose, which was stated as studying plant life, and a stamped signature from Mary.

a stamp that was conveniently kept at the front desk where Katie worked. Now here's the real kicker. The IP address where the email originated from was tied to Katie's home address. Yeah, open and shut. Rosa also spoke to someone over the phone at one point about the order, and it was a woman. One Rosa claimed sounded a lot like Katie's once she heard her voice. But finally, that bottle that was left under the seat of Adam's car, well, it didn't have a shred of his DNA on it.

But Katie's DNA was all over the packaging. I kind of feel bad for blaming Bill now, I'm not going to lie.

By May of 2016, less than a year after Mary's death, Katie Conley was arrested. She was charged with second-degree murder, one count of forgery, and two counts of falsifying business records. Her trial began in April of 2017. And the prosecution felt they had a pretty strong case against her. Their theory was that Katie had waited for Mary to leave on break that day, then snuck the toxin into her protein drink, knowing that would be her lunch when she returned. The motive?

Katie wanted to win Adam back, and what better way than to make him vulnerable and offer a shoulder for him to cry on? But when that didn't work, Katie felt it was time to throw Adam under the bus. If she couldn't have him, then no one would, especially if he was in jail.

Well, the defense argued the motive was a bit ridiculous, saying Katie had built her own bond with Bill and Mary and that she was the one being set up here. But it was a narrative that even Mary's own sisters believed. So this is wild. But three of Mary's sisters believed

were so convinced the officials had the wrong person, that it wasn't Katie, it had to have either been Adam or Bill, that they started a free Caitlin Conley campaign online. No, you're freaking lying. That's insane. They really believed that Bill had done this, something the defense ran with when it came time for Katie's trial. They argued that not only did Bill's relationship start long before Mary's death, that the timing of

the poisoning did not make sense if it was done by Katie. They claimed that Mary started to bounce back in the hospital only to again go on a sharp decline, insisting that Bill had to have dosed her again after she'd been admitted. No way. They also pointed to the fact that police had to bang on his door to get him to come to the hospital the next day and he didn't rush there. They claimed he took his sweet time.

Mary's sisters also said it was odd that while Bill knew Mary had been poisoned, he didn't ever file a police report. Remember, it was Mary's sister who had to say that a crime had been committed. But here was the root of Mary's sister's frustration. Even though fingers were being pointed at Bill, he nor Adam would ever get their own trial because both had been granted immunity for testifying against Katie. What the freak? Is there...

Now you got me thinking, maybe it was Bill, man. Still, all of these factors were taken into consideration when the jury went to deliberate on May 17th, 2017, including the DNA and computer evidence that implied Katie had acted alone. But when the jurors returned to the courtroom, they told the judge they couldn't reach an agreement. Yeah, I figured. It ended in a mistrial. Katie would have to wait another six months to learn her fate. Over

over the next few months the prosecution prepared their case for round two and they went back into katie's iphone records to see if there was anything they may have missed so they're going in for trial two and they're like is there any more evidence we can find that we didn't have a trial one and that's when adam chimed into the conversation to say you know katie accidentally backed her phone up to my laptop right before my mom died could maybe that be helpful and the prosecution's like

Adam, how could you not have told us this before the last trial? You had access to stuff and you didn't tell us? That's what I'm saying. Like, how does that happen? Well, now suddenly they have an entire snapshot of what Katie was doing on her phone prior to Mary's death. Not just text messages, but photos, browser history, everything she may have deleted before she handed her phone over to police.

And what do you know? There's a screenshot of a search engine result for world's most dangerous toxins. Also in that photos folder was a pencil drawing of what appeared to be a mermaid next to a man with a sword in his back. Underneath the image was a caption that read, the breakup.

Katie also had screenshots of a time when she clearly hacked into Adam's Facebook page and blocked certain people. Perhaps most incriminating, Katie had begged Adam repeatedly after the incident to delete the backup from his computer. And eventually Adam told her he did just to satisfy her, not knowing that soon enough this would all become crucial evidence against Katie in court, which again happened in October of 2017. And this time after two days of deliberations, the jury came back with a very clear verdict.

Guilty. Interestingly enough, they found Katie Conley not guilty of second degree murder, but guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter in the first degree. How does that happen? Make it make sense. It should have been first degree murder premeditated. You don't accidentally poison someone. But she had planned the entire thing out. I don't know. What? I don't know.

In January 2018, she was sentenced to 23 years in prison. She's currently serving time at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Westchester County, New York, and won't be eligible for parole until 2037. But you have to wonder, what might have happened had Katie never inserted herself into the investigation? Had she never written that anonymous letter to begin with? Would she have gotten away with her crimes, leaving the family and the community to forever question what happened to Mary? Yeah, so what I think...

I think she wrote that letter because Adam wouldn't have been caught or charged because they never would have found anything in his car. They never would have questioned him. So they just would have blamed it on no one. Or Bill. Or Bill. But she wanted Adam to get in trouble, which is obviously why she wrote the letter. And then it ended up biting her. Backfiring. Yep. So...

If you ask some of Mary's sisters, they might tell you that's exactly what happened anyways, that the wrong person went to prison for this crime. Wow. Because even today, the Free Katie Conley website is up and active. Oh, freaking way, man. Asking visitors to write a letter for her chance at freedom. Wow. And that is the case of Mary. Well, one, I feel bad that I blamed Bill. Unless Bill, if you did it, don't tell me.

Because I'll rat you out. But, I mean, with all the evidence, I don't see how it could be anyone else other than her. It seems pretty black and white that it was her. I'm going to be honest. For me, the strongest evidence is that Adam got sick after taking pills from her with the exact same symptoms. Even went to the hospital for it. So we know it really happened. Yes, we know it's true. And then, you know...

And then you just pack on everything on top of that. That's pretty nuts. Yeah. All right, you guys. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode. And we will see you next time with another one. I love it. I hate it. Goodbye.