The Murder of Charles Zan - 608
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How are you doing tonight, Aaron? I'm doing just fine. How are you, though? I'm doing okay. We got our CrimeCon events, as usual, coming up. We're going to be in Denver, September 5th through the 7th. And we're going to be in London, June 7th through the 8th.

Use code Gen Y, and we love to see your smiling faces. Yes, if you can make it to one of these, please go. It'd be great to meet with you. And for those of you that are in Albuquerque, New Mexico, you're going to be at the Beyond the Crime Convention, March 15th. Go out to beyondcrimeconvention.com to get your tickets, and I'll see you there. So Aaron, tonight's case is going to be an interesting one. There's a lot going on.

The families out there that have suffered violent attacks have home intruders, but sometimes not everything is always what it seems. So I don't know. I don't want to give any more hints than that. What are we talking about tonight? Tonight we're talking about the October 17th, 2009 murder of Charles Zahn. His wife called 911 to report that her husband had been attacked by an intruder.

So this took place October 17th, 2009, Miamisburg, Ohio. Charles Zahn was born June 8th, 1964, in West Carrollton, Ohio. He graduated high school in 83 and attended Sinclair Community College. And he ended up serving in the Army from 1984 to 1987. He enlisted in the Marines in 1988 and served in the Marines until 92.

And then he went into the army reserves in 2007. I was in the reserves for all the years I was in the army because my job was obsolete. So they made me a reservist, which they

They call a weekend warrior. Charles had been working as a CO for the Warren Correction Institute in Lebanon, Ohio since July of 1994. He married three times, had two sons, Adrian and Charles Ernst. John Ritchie, who was previously married to Charles' ex-wife Darlene, told the Dayton Daily News that Charles had a quick temper, but a good heart. Charles' third wife was Pandora's

And Pandora's Anne is originally from Franklin, Ohio, and worked as an accounting specialist. She had met Charles in 2001 through an online dating site, and Charles was separated from his second wife at the time. Pandora, she had been married before and had three children, Misty, Cody, and Brendan.

This was a marriage that had a lot of issues. Charles and Pandora, over their seven-year marriage, faced foreclosure, bankruptcies, and separation. In 2003 and early 2004, Pandora served time in prison for the armed robbery of a clothing store. She had a website called

pandasbipolarlife.com, which served as a personal blog. This is spelled P-A-N-D-I-S-B-I-P-O-L-A-R-L-I-F-E.com.

On the website, she wrote that her mental health problems were the cause of her marital problems. And she said, I have almost put my husband and parents in an early grave from the stress and worry. My financial responsibilities have caused Chuck and I to lose just about everything. Yeah.

Yeah. She had filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2004. She listed assets of around $9,000 and liabilities of $323,000, including mortgages, medical bills, and other debts. That case was closed in December of that year. So we have well over $300,000 that she's trying to write off here for this bankruptcy.

And then in 2006, she filed for Chapter 13 protection in federal bankruptcy court, reporting assets of around $140,000 and liabilities of $165,000. The case was closed in December of that year.

This is well over half a million in bankruptcies and losses. They lost their home to foreclosure in 2006 and spent the last three years of their marriage living in apartments. They separated a couple times over the years, obviously because of this financial turmoil and probably arguments that arose from that. According to her blog, Charles questioned their future because of her mental health problems.

And Pandora wrote,

And Charles hadn't seen his son in 18 years. Now, a fellow CO, Darren Mustard, and his wife, Josette, helped Charles reconnect with his son. 22 years earlier, Charles married a German woman while he was stationed in Germany with the Marines. And Charles told the Mustards that he tried to get custody of his son and worked with the U.S. Embassy to arrange visitation, but it didn't work out. And Charles Ernst ended up being placed in foster care. And

And so he lost touch. But Darren Mustard asked his wife to do some research because she spoke German. She located the foster care agency who handled Charles Ernst's case and helped reunite the father and son. And this reconnection started with emails through an interpreter. Now, Charles did learn some German so he could speak with his son on the phone. He was saving up to fly to Germany. And he hoped to take his son Adrian with him so they could have a family reunion.

Unfortunately, this wouldn't happen. Let's talk about October 17th, 2009. Pandora called 911 at 6.13 a.m. and Pandora said on this 911 call, someone broke into our apartment. They knocked me to the ground and I kind of blacked out. And when I woke up, he was lying there and there's blood everywhere.

And she sounds pretty hysteric on the phone. This dispatcher is asking Pandora if she saw the intruders. She said no and mentioned that they had used pepper spray. So this 911 dispatcher, she had actually never taken a frantic call like this. This was the first time. And she asked simple questions like,

How did they get into the house? How did they get out of the house? And things like that. And Pandora wasn't able to really answer any of her questions. She just said that she was knocked to the ground and blacked out and woke up and found her husband dead. Beyond that, she wasn't able to give really any usable information. So the Miamisburg police responded to the call. They entered the studio apartment and they found Charles Zahn stabbed to death on the bed.

He had dozens of knife wounds in his upper body and his throat was cut. The murder weapon was embedded in his eye. In total, Charles was stabbed 48 times. They even said that his head was almost decapitated because of the cut throat. There was blood everywhere.

Even to these kind of veteran police officers, they were like, this is one of the most gruesome scenes I had to walk in on. They always say that, but these guys, they were like, yeah, we didn't know what we were walking into on that morning. Pandora told the police that she woke up to two intruders entering her home and was knocked unconscious by them.

And in the police report, there is no sign of forced entry, but the window screen near the front door was cut open top to bottom and left side so they could peel it back. The window was fully open, so it looks like they might have gotten in and out through this window. Two laptops and Charles' gun were missing from the home, and Pandora agreed to multiple interviews and was treated like a victim in this investigation because they're thinking to

Two men got into the home. Now, it is said in some of the earlier reports that she thought the two men were black. She thought that there was at least two of them. She didn't have a lot of ideas of who they could have been, but the police were saying, okay, so it's early in the morning, it's dark.

How did they get in? And then she's like, oh, I think it was the window. But now she knows about the window. And they're like, well, how would you know that they got in through the window because it's dark? And then she's like, oh, well, I turned on a light. And so her story's kind of starting to match the evidence as the investigation rolls forward. Pandora had pretty much given the officers and the investigators a play-by-play of her day before the murder.

Told them about everything she was doing. And they talked to her sons and her son, Cody gives a different story, gives a different account. He says, oh yeah, I met my mom that day at a gas station to borrow some money from her.

And then they go back to her and they're like, you didn't mention that you left the house that day and met your son. You know, you didn't mention in your other statement that you had turned on the light after or before this happened. So the investigators, they're really starting to kind of be like, your story is changing and it's changing enough that now we're kind of suspecting you, but this,

They're treating her like a victim because she seems to be a lot more comfortable speaking when they're not challenging her, they're just questioning her. So she offers several leads and even says a former lover of Charles, who was also a CO, could be a suspect.

Two days after the murder, Pandora and her daughter, Misty Henderson, came to the police station and claimed that Pandora's son, Cody Henderson, was the killer. And Pandora agreed to let the police listen to her calls with her son, who confessed to stabbing Charles a bunch of times. Cody claimed Charles was abusive to Pandora and her adult children. Cody Henderson was arrested in the early morning hours of October 20th, 2009 at the Knights Inn in Miamisburg.

And prosecutors approved charges of aggravated murder while committing aggravated robbery, aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon, felonious assault, and tampering with evidence. And now that they have Cody, the police, they're not done yet because they feel like there is more to this case than just Cody killing Charles Zahn.

I mean, obviously, his mom, Pandora, calls 911, says she's been attacked by two black men. Her story's perpetually changing. And then we have her son coming out and saying, no, I did it. So the investigators are thinking, did your mom make you do it? Is this the two of you planning this? Because we don't think you barged into the home, attacked your mom, and killed your dad.

That doesn't make sense to us. But it's weird because she's the one who turns him in. Yeah. And usually people who work together don't do that. Well, on that phone call where she got him to admit, she's not just saying like, oh, what did you do? She's saying, I had to call you because...

I had to talk to you about this thing. I couldn't call you earlier because there was other people around, like you know. So what happened here? The police are questioning me. How many times did you stab him? So she's implicating herself in that phone call a little bit, like not full on, but she's not behaving as if, I don't know what happened. You tell me. It's, hey, I had to call you when other people weren't around to get you to admit to it. So now the police are like, oh, yeah, you...

totally were in on this. On January 3rd, 2010, Pandora Zan was arrested in the parking lot of a TJ Maxx after she used fake $50 bills. She was charged with misdemeanor petty theft and felonious forgery. And on April 27th of 2010, she was arrested in connection with the murder of Charles Zan.

That day, Pandora told her probation officer in an unrelated case that she wanted to talk to prosecutors because she was concerned Cody was making statements that implicated her in the murder. So she met with detectives and at first she denied any involvement.

But she then confessed to planning the murder with her son, Cody. So prosecutors are getting all of this information. And on April 29th, 2010, they approved an aggravated murder charge against Pandora and

And, uh, Miamisburg police captain Ron Hess said, we've been looking at her the entire time because again, her story was changing, not adding up. Uh, all they had was that 911 call at first, but as soon as they started talking to her, it just seemed very apparent that she would change her story to match the evidence as they presented it to her.

Charles' brother, Michael, also said that the family suspected Pandora from the beginning. In March 2010, Pandora pleaded guilty to theft and forgery and was sentenced up to five years of community control. Now,

When it comes to the murder, though, May 6, 2010, a grand jury indicted Pandora Zan on three counts of complicity to commit aggravated murder, two counts of complicity to commit aggravated robbery, two counts of tampering with evidence, and one count of obstructing justice.

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That's ShipStation.com, code Gen Y. And her son, just a week later, was indicted on three counts of aggravated murder, each with a death penalty specification. That he committed murder for hire, and that he committed the murder while committing, attempting to commit, or fleeing after committing aggravated robbery. He was also indicted on two counts of aggravated robbery, two counts of felonious assault, and one count of tampering with evidence.

And that's a lot, but you know they can back up all those charges. At least they feel like they can. Between their conflicting statements, the phone call, they have a confession essentially on the phone. So they got all of this on Cody. Now they're going after Pandora and of course...

She's going to file a motion to suppress all the statements she'd made to the police because she's saying, hey, I wasn't being interrogated. I was being questioned about this as a victim. So you can't use that against me, right? Yeah, this must be really frustrating for law enforcement because you have someone who tried to throw her son under the bus.

And implicated herself essentially while doing it, just like you pointed out. And now she's trying to say, I'm going to take all this away from you if I can, which would basically take the case off of their laps. And yeah, we'll see how that goes. Yeah. So there's a hearing and Pandora's defense argued that her statements that she made on October 19th of 2009 should be suppressed because she invoked her right to counsel and

And her statements in April of 2010 were involuntary and made as a result of an interrogation technique recognized as unlawful. The court overruled this motion, though. Well, and that doesn't work. So in September of 2010, Pandora then pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

And this doesn't work either because the psychiatric report is put together, which says that she is sane and competent for trial. So her attorney doing what he, you know, doing what the attorney can do, ask for a second exam, which the judge grants. But they think she's sane. And I think that's obvious that she's just doing this because she realizes that she didn't handle this whole situation well at all.

And she's gotten in too deep. Yeah. And sadly, I do think she has mental health problems. She had a whole blog dedicated to being bipolar. Although I don't know what her actual mental health issues are, because the more you dig into this case, the more you think she's

possibly a sociopath or just a narcissist manipulator. I mean, if you get your own son to kill your husband or ex-husband, I mean, this is messed up. Yeah. I mean, there are definitely issues here, but it doesn't seem like she can't stand trial. If this was really the issue, I think she would have led with it. Instead, she's trying to suppress her statements. And it just seems obvious to me. It's desperation. Yeah.

She has a grasp on reality to the point where she's functioning just fine. This isn't a case where she's so far gone, she's lost a hold on reality. When she was arrested, she had fraudulent $50 bills on her and has declared multiple bankruptcies. She's able to get away with fraud and forgery and all kinds of other stuff.

Pandora Zan's murder trial started March 14, 2011, and the prosecution argued that Pandora participated in planning the murder and moved Charles' gun so he would not have access to it while he was being attacked. The motive was Charles' life insurance money worth $424,000, which obviously that would be very useful to Pandora. They also said that she lied during her 911 call. She said she was knocked unconscious and

But she had no head injuries to suggest that she was. The defense noted that Pandora has bipolar disorder, which causes her to make reckless statements. She also engaged in fantasy talk with her son, Cody, about how things would be better if Charles were dead and her son took her seriously. Ouch.

And the jury heard that Pandora and Charles had a turbulent marriage involving adultery and some violence. Pandora had contemplated suicide because she didn't see a way out of this marriage. She made up the story about the intruders because she felt caught in an impossible position because her son killed her husband. So now she's going with, it was a bad marriage, he was cheating, he was violent, whatever.

I was stuck. But again, we didn't start with that. And it's changed over time. And now are we getting the final truth here or is this something else she's made up? It's hard to tell. And there's a whole blog where she could have spilled her guts about this stuff, but she seems to point to herself as being the cause of the issues. Upstairs neighbor, Ralph Van Gundy testified that he heard a loud scream on the night of the murder.

He said he heard the first scream at 5.50 in the morning. He was sure of the time because he looked at his clock when he woke up. He said it was a man's scream and he heard a male voice say, help. Now, his assumption was that his neighbors, the Zans, were having a domestic dispute or that Charles was having a night terror. And 10 minutes later, he heard the same voice call for help, but it was more subdued. So Van Gundy got out of bed, grabbed his phone, and he went to the window.

He said he looked out and he saw Pandora standing by a tree in front of the building. And he said she seemed calm. He thought she had things under control. So he just went back to bed. But he did have that question of should he have been more involved in what was going on? Should he have tried to look into it more? And he said at 6.15, he heard Pandora scream and sob and heard her say, I'm mad at you, daddy.

Van Gundy testified that he did not see anyone flee the building when he looked out the window. That's a much different scenario than what happened on that 911 call, obviously. Sergeant Jeffrey S. Munch testified that Pandora changed her story during her third interview on October 19th, 2009. During that interview, she said, It wasn't supposed to be like this. It wasn't supposed to be that messy. The jury listened to and watched Pandora's interviews after the murder.

During the first two interviews, she maintained that intruders entered the apartment, knocked her unconscious, and then killed Charles. At the end of her second interview, she said she and Charles had problems, but she loved him and would never hurt him. In her third interview, after implicating Cody, her son, in the murder, she agreed to call her son and warned the police that he would not turn himself in, saying, he has told me he will go down in a blaze of glory.

During that call, Pandora asked Cody how many times he stabbed Charles. He said, a bunch. Why? I told you, didn't I? Pandora told him she thought she was going to be arrested and Cody said, I'm not going to let you go to jail, Mom. Cody said he would call the police and confess, but they would have to catch him.

Pandora asked Cody if he got rid of evidence from the scene. Cody said he had gotten rid of everything but the wallet and gun. Now, right there, obviously, that's implicating all kinds of things. And it's stunning to me that somehow Pandora thought that by having this call and getting her son to confess that she would be let go. And then on top of that, she...

She's saying he'll go down in a blaze of glory, meaning you'll have to kill him. I see so many things to unpack here, Aaron. It's really frightening. No, it's very true. And if you already have cops who are on edge because they have to arrest someone who just murdered somebody, and then you're being told they're probably going to go down in a blaze of glory, I could see why they'd be on edge and how this could go south. And this would all be Pandora's doing.

So luckily the, the cops, the police in this case, they handled this professionally. Now this jury also watched Pandora's fourth interview from April 27th, where she admitted that she and Cody planned the attack. She claimed Charles was physically and emotionally abusive and talked about how she had contemplated taking her own life. She also admitted to moving Charles gun. So he wouldn't be able to defend himself during the attack.

Now, in this confession, she also talked about how she and her son, Cody, discussed the different ways that they could kill Charles, and they decided on using a knife. And she admitted that her earlier statement, it wasn't supposed to be that messy, meant she wanted the death to be quick, but Charles fought for his life.

And she told detectives she regretted that decision, but it was too late. And she wanted to protect her son, which is an interesting statement given that she was telling the cops what she told them about how he's going to go down in a blaze of glory. It's all manipulation here.

Two of Cody's close friends, including his former fiance, testified that they waited in his rental car while he killed Charles. Nicholas Howard testified that hours after the murder, he agreed to help Pandora sell two laptops that Cody had stolen from the home.

Cody told him he lost control of the knife during the attack and Pandora gave him another one, which she did not deny during that conversation because Cody had his own knife that he was using and it slipped out of his hand. And then Pandora went and just grabbed like a kitchen knife for him so he could finish him off.

Howard pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of failure to report a crime. He also pleaded guilty to a felony count of evidence tampering and was awaiting sentencing. Cody's former fiancee, Brittany Michelle Taylor, also pleaded guilty to failure to report a crime, and she was given probation. Britt

Brittany and Cody had a two-year-old together. She testified that Cody discussed buying house with Charles's insurance money, but she didn't take that plot seriously because she didn't think Cody actually meant it.

Both Howard and Taylor testified that Cody drove them to the apartment complex in a rental car on the morning of the murder. Nicholas thought Cody was just going to rob the apartment, but when he returned, he was covered in blood and holding a bag with laptops inside. He said he killed Charles and he seemed afraid and disoriented.

And all three of them went to another person's home to sell one of the laptops and were also present when Cody tried to burn his bloody clothes in a wooded area. Police officers had taken dogs out to that wooded area and found remnants of his clothing. So all of this is adding up. Two of Pandora Zan's former cellmates testified that she admitted to participating in the murder and showed no remorse.

To one cellmate, Pandora allegedly admitted that she and Cody planned to kill Charles for $400,000 of insurance money, but Cody couldn't keep his mouth shut. She planned to use the money to start a new life with her boyfriend. She admitted to these cellmates that she let Cody into the apartment and waited outside. That would explain, you know, the testimony from Van Gundy who said he saw her waiting patiently outside.

She shared similar details with a second cellmate. She said Charles was still making noises when she entered the bedroom after Cody fled and she waited until he was quiet before calling 911. She knew she would have to turn Cody in after she saw how much evidence he had left behind. She also claimed Charles abused both her and Cody.

Pandora's defense argued that Cody acted on his own because he knew Pandora was unhappy in her marriage. Pandora's daughter, Misty Henderson, testified that Charles physically abused Pandora, Cody, and herself.

As for Pandora, she testified that she did not participate in the plot to kill Charles. She did speak to Cody several days earlier about how her life would be better if Charles were dead. But this was just fantasy talk, and she wished she was a stronger person so she could have stopped Cody. And Pandora denied taking any action to further the murder, but the prosecutor pointed out that she said she rented a car for Cody and moved the gun.

Now, right there, Justin, this prosecutor has all the power, it seems like, because they're able to point out how no matter what she says, she has actively participated in the murder. And so denying...

participation just doesn't make sense. This feels like a checkmate situation. Like anything she says, they have a counter move. And that rental car, moving the gun, all of these things, helping him find another murder weapon to finish the crime. Like, come on, she's involved. Yeah. And it really seems to me like we're dealing with someone here who

is attempting to navigate choppy waters and can't do it. She's trying. Pandora is trying to come up with answers to deflect and to remove herself from the situation, but it's not working.

In closing arguments, the defense conceded that Pandora committed two lesser crimes, obstructing justice by lying to the police and tampering with evidence by wiping down bloody prints at the crime scene. And they described Pandora as passive, weak-willed, and suffering from bipolar disorder, which caused her to blurt out statements that she didn't mean, but Cody was the one who killed Charles. So again, Pandora, she's got issues. She's bipolar.

But her son's the reason this murder occurred. And so leave Pandora out of this. She's not really at fault here. It's her son. And anything else she had done is because she didn't want her son hurt. When I think about all of the things in her past between the bankruptcies, the money issues, all of that, I can think, yeah, if you're really depressed, if you're having manic episodes, that fits.

But when it comes to planning this whole murder, when it comes to trying to pass fake bills, things like that, that takes it to another level for me. I don't think that's just...

That's not bipolar to me. That's you have a serious plan here to get rid of somebody in a state of, I don't know if it's just desperation or what, but it's a big con. Her whole life just seems to be this big con of trying to get one over on other people, even her own son.

March 25th, 2011, Pandora Zan was convicted of all counts against her. We've been through these counts, but again, there are three counts of complicity to commit murder, two counts of complicity to commit aggravated robbery, two counts of tampering with evidence, and one count of obstructing justice. And on April 21st of that year, Pandora Zan was sentenced to life without parole for complicity to commit aggravated murder and 25 years for the other charges.

There was an interesting request here, not surprising. Pandora had requested a contact visit with her son, Cody, and he declined her request. Pandora told the judge, I'm sorry that this happened and I wish it hadn't. Now, before we talk about what happens with Cody in the courts,

She's requesting, Cody's mother's requesting a visit with him. What do you think that is? Because in this whole trial and before it, it seems like she attempted to throw him under the bus, if not get him killed. And now she wants to meet with him. Is this more manipulation, you think, where she thinks, I just have to talk with him. I can fix this.

This is a cat in a hat. She's either trying to manipulate him more, or she's going to say, this is what you need to say during trial, or this is what you need to say to investigate. I don't even know. Who knows? But it just seems to be...

What on earth? Is she going to apologize to him? It's maddening what she's accomplished thus far and all the lives she's destroyed. Yeah, and I would think, and maybe I'm wrong, obviously, but if you've attempted to do something a hundred times and you can't do it, maybe you need to do something else. Because Pandora has tried manipulating and lying to everyone, investigators, her son, her family.

her family, everyone she spoke with, essentially. And this is where she ends up. She's ending up in prison for life. You'd think at some point it would occur to her that she's a terrible liar, that she can't think on the fly. And it's no problem. I mean, a lot of people can't. But seriously, there has to come a time where you just go, it's not worked out for me. Maybe I need to try something else.

But again, it's like she's all in on this and she doesn't know anything else. Her mind is just, I need to counter whatever's happening here. I need to manipulate more. But that's not enough to not make her culpable for this crime. Now with Cody, he was facing capital charges. So this was a really serious case for Cody going into it.

Yeah. And June 3rd, 2011, he made a decision, uh, or probably made it before then, but he pleaded guilty to all the charges, all of them. But I think what he was doing was he was saving his life because with the death penalty on the table, if he goes to trial, I could see the jury saying that you don't deserve life. He left a knife in the eye of Charles Zan.

It was serious. And he almost decapitated him. He stabbed him almost 50 times. This was not a disagreement that ended up with a single gunshot or anything. This was a brutal murder, a personal murder. Yeah. And Charles lived for 10 to 15 minutes. You know, he didn't die immediately. You know, the, the neighbor upstairs died.

Said there was at least 10 minutes between the time where you heard a scream and then somebody pleading for help.

The medical examiner said Charles could have lived for up to 15 minutes with some of these wounds. And I'm just thinking, that's horrifying to have to lay there bleeding out. So yeah, I understood why they thought we could go for the death penalty here. I mean, it was obviously based on other laws in Ohio and being hired to commit murder and all that, but...

There was a lot going on here. So Cody is just trying to save himself. He was 19 at the time of this event. So, you know, it's, he thinks he's going to be put to death, but at the same time, I'm thinking you're going to take a life sentence here and you're 19 years old. Like that's, that's going to be pretty hard to.

Cody Henderson was sentenced to life in prison plus 15 years and forfeited his right to appeal on most issues. He pleaded guilty just a couple of weeks before he was supposed to go to trial. And after Cody signed the plea forms, the prosecution called on a forensic pathologist to testify before a panel of judges about Charles's injuries. Cody told the judges at the hearing, I do feel guilty and I'm sorry for what I have done.

Before we go on with where things are now, I want to ask you, how do you feel about Cody? He pled guilty and he made this statement about how he feels guilty and how he's sorry. How much do you think we can put on Pandora for all this? And where do you think his culpability lies? Obviously, he committed murder, but...

Is this really a situation where he wanted to defend his mother? Or do you think she talked him into it? I realize this is all speculation. I think she talked him into it. I don't think he would have done this on his own. I don't know how much, you know, we weren't there. We didn't see how this relationship went. But going off of her blog, going off of other things, it seems like the allegations that Charles was abusive towards them

came in much later. They didn't lead with those. They didn't say, oh, well, this was because he was abusing us. That came up later, so I don't know how true that is. She's having financial problems, so $400,000 life insurance policy, that's going to set her up for life and set Cody up too because he was planning on buying a house for his family.

So I think she really was the one pushing this forward. Cody got wrapped up in it, although Cody is the one that did the crime. He's the one that murdered Charles. So he's 19 years old, and I know that makes him an adult in today's world and in the U.S. society. But what's the difference between a 17-year-old and a 19-year-old? Not much.

Not much to me. So I think he was highly manipulated, but it doesn't mean he's not culpable for the crime either. Yeah, I don't know how much they'd be set up for life. I mean, she has a history of burning through money. It doesn't even appear to me as if she would have given her son any of that money. And my prediction would have been if she had gotten away with it, she'd have burned through that money no problem too.

The right person with 400 grand, they can multiply it. Pandora's Dan is not the type to be able to run with that money and turn it into a real nest egg. In her mind, she'd be set. But really, it was just correcting the last financial catastrophe that she'd gotten herself into. Yeah, this is why this case, when I first learned of it, it really felt like a cat in the hat case.

Where you attempt to clean up one thing, you attempt to clean up another, and all you're doing is spreading...

the filth. And I don't know how Pandora got as far as she did. I think people have been too kind to her. I do feel like Cody needs to be in prison for his life. I say that because of the brutality of this crime, the fact that he participated in it. But I also feel just a slight bit of sympathy for him because of who his mother is. And I have a feeling if

he had had a different mother, he wouldn't be in this situation. You know, when you listen to Cody talk and you can watch an interview with him, it really feels like he had it in his mind that he had to help his mother. And if it meant brutally murdering somebody to protect her, he would do it. And I think many people, if you ask them, would you be willing to kill to save someone you love? They wouldn't hesitate. Now,

Saying it and doing it are two different things. But for Cody, I think he took this seriously. That was his mother. If you aren't aware, mothers are critical to families. You know, they give up so much to be the glue that holds everything together and makes everything work. So how can you expect her son not to do something like this? That would be the question I have for you.

I don't think it lets them off the hook. It just explains it. And I think what it means is Pandora, she's the one that should take most of the blame here because she's the one that set it all up. And it's clear she's manipulating everybody. And I also have a little bit of a problem with this. Charles Zan was abusive. I know we have several people saying he was abusive.

But we don't really have any evidence of it, it seems, until it's necessary to hear about it to help Pandora. So it's almost like they're throwing the victim under the bus again. And I don't like it. I don't know that it's fair because now it's out there and it's like, oh, well, maybe the guy was abusive. She's in so deep. People don't realize she's in so deep on this case. You cannot protect her.

And I think Cody showed some real intelligence here by just pleading guilty to everything. He knows that he's responsible and he knows that fighting this in court isn't going to help anybody. It's just salt in the wound for Charles's family, really. And so by pleading guilty, it shows he's taking responsibility. And I think that's something that we can at least say that's positive about Cody here.

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So Pandora tries to appeal this and, uh, the court of appeals rejects that on March of 2013. But there is a show that some of you might watch called snapped. The one that I watched was snapped behind bars where they go and they actually interview Pandora and Cody, give them a chance to quote unquote, tell their side of the story. And, uh,

Yeah, it was an interesting watch, Aaron. I would say that I definitely felt a little bit more sympathy for Cody when I watched those interviews. I did not change my opinion about Pandora at all. Well, it's interesting you say that because Pandora is being interviewed and she says she's participating in the interview because she wants to

take responsibility, be more honest about how she was involved in this whole thing, this murder. But it doesn't really feel like she's actually being honest, right? I mean, because you don't know if anything she's saying is true. She's coming out and saying, I feel bad. I've learned so much. I've helped other women who have been in abusive relationships now. I'm a mentor here in prison.

But she just kind of skates around the...

her own actions, at least in this interview. Maybe it was edited poorly, but she did not come off well. Yeah. And this goes back to what I said. I really don't think she can change her ways. I don't think Pandora can stop manipulating just because she's been found guilty now. I think she continues on. It's just part of who she is. And she talks about that 911 call saying that started the first lie. Somebody broke in. She says she said that because she didn't know what to say.

Now, as for Cody, he said, I never got a chance to tell my side of things. I did what I did out of love for my mom, and I'm sorry for anybody that I've hurt. And he explained how his mom gave him money to purchase a hunting knife and picked a date for the murder. And here it is. Pandora goes back to talking about how her son is the one who is responsible because he

She says, after she let him into the apartment, she said, after it was over with, I was like, what am I going to tell people? And Cody was like, I don't know. You better think of something. When I came in, Charles, her husband was almost gone then, but he was still trying to fight. And then he just stopped fighting and then he was gone. So she's trying to say that Cody's responsible for what happened, even though she let him in and bought him the knife.

etc, etc. And then she goes back to saying Charles was abusive, saying the abuse started slowly. I wish I'd been strong enough to leave him and stay gone. If I could go back and change things, I absolutely would. And she goes on to talk about how her children and stepchildren were abused. And that pushed her to the breaking point. But again, this is stuff she just says.

And I realize her daughter, Misty, is saying that Charles was abusive too. You could either believe her or not, but it seems like this doesn't come out until it's necessary to hear something to help Pandora because she's looking at a slew of charges. So of course she's telling Cody, I can't do this anymore. One of two things is going to happen. I'm either going to take my own life or I'm going to have to kill him. But Cody says he'll take care of it.

And here's another contradiction for me. Pandora goes on to say she wished she'd never involved Cody because he didn't get a chance to live out his adulthood. He's going to grow up in prison.

But yet she was prepared to have him killed by police too. I wish I never involved him, but he did this and I didn't know he was planning that. Like, come on, which is it? It's frustrating. Yeah. It's this endless contradiction in her statements.

I know Cody goes on to say, "I felt like she threw me to the wolves to try and save herself. She abandoned me after everything I did for her. She worked with them. I understand why she did it. She didn't want me to hurt myself or get hurt. But at the time, it didn't make it any easier knowing that out of all the people that she was the one that set me up." So, a lot to unpack there.

He's saying she's the one that called the police and told them I did it. She said she didn't want me to get hurt or hurt myself, but she's telling the police Cody's dangerous and he's going to go down in a blaze of glory. I mean, she had this all set up in her mind to have Cody do this and then even have Cody killed by the police so she could get away with it.

Yeah, and he doesn't hold a grudge, apparently, against Pandora. But, you know, that's the love that he has for his mother. She probably could have pushed his face onto a burner on a stove and he'd still be fine with her. Cody says one thing during the interview. He says...

I believe I should be behind bars. I think I should be behind bars for a long, long time. But I should be able to get out someday because I was 19 at the time. And that gave me a little pause there. As much as this whole murder is gruesome and horrifying, I do have a tiny sliver of sympathy of he was 19 at the time.

And he was manipulated by his mom. So when he says that, I'm like, you kind of have a point there, kid, but you did what you did. And now you're going to rot behind bars for the rest of your life. Yeah. I think the way I reacted to that statement, because it caught my attention too, but I feel like if they authorized many years down the road for him to be paroled, I guess I could understand that. But if they don't parole him, I could understand that too.

He's a dangerous person and his mother is still around. So to me, it's almost like he can be programmed to kill. But if they decide after, you know, because he obviously seems like he's coming clean, unlike his mother. So who knows? Maybe he can reform himself in prison.

So it's difficult to say. It's just, I think a big part of this is he's going to have to find a way to separate himself from his mother, at least to where he has full autonomy over himself. And he doesn't feel like he has to do things for her. You know, that's a lot. I don't know if he can do it.

This was a brutal crime. And right now with him having life in prison, I mean, I'm okay with that, but it is tough when you know someone has been set in motion by someone that they feel a strong allegiance to. Now, interestingly, Miamisburg police chief John Sedlak told Snapped, there's indication that Pandora is not only a master manipulator, but she's a pathological liar. There's indications she's lived her whole life that way. There's no indication that will change.

That sounds like what I've been saying. And, you know, we get maybe a couple emails here or there from people who question how we feel about police. Tell you what, the Miamisburg police, to me, they did an A1 job on this case, you know, and they understood who they were dealing with.

And they kept questioning her as a victim because they could tell she's a pathological liar. And the more she talks, the more she's going to talk herself into a corner. So they interviewed her the way they knew that they were going to get her to trip up. Anyway, if this is the first time hearing about this case, or if you know about it, give us feedback. You can reply to our posts on social media, Instagram, Facebook.

Or you can reply to us on our post on our Patreon. We'd like to hear, we'd love to hear what you have to say about this case and the murder of Charles Zahn. Hey, Prime members, you can listen to Generation Y ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the app today.

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