August 9, 2022 • 25 mins
Today’s guests are producers Stephanie Lydecker and Jeff Shane.
When a healthy doctor turns up dead, everyone becomes a suspect. After a twisted investigation the cops circle in on the real killer and it’s the person you'd least expect.
Check us out online! www.instagram.com/KT_Studios
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Falling in love is the best feeling in the world.
You see stars, you feel giddy, But sometimes that makes
you do crazy things, and sometimes that means murder. Just
because the story starts out with once upon a Times
doesn't mean it ends happily ever after. Welcome to Crazy
and Love, a production of Katie Studios and I Heart Radio.
(00:24):
Today's guests our producers Stephanie Lydecker and Jeff Shane. Episode
thirty nine, The Case of the Good Doctor, the Bad Employee,
and the very Toxic Relationship. As a girl in upstate
New York, Mary Yoder was one of eight children. For
(00:45):
most it would be hard to stand out, but that's
exactly what Mary did. Described as darling, upbeaten fun, Mary
was an avid gardener, belly dancer, and musician. In Mary
was atending college when she met Bill. While Mary was
outspoken and sociable, Bill was the opposite. He was introverted
(01:08):
and shy. But Mary didn't care about those things. She
saw a different side to Bill. To her, the young
man was soulful and deep. The pair fell in love.
Bill was also very smart. He became the valedictorian of
his graduating class, and while he knew he wanted to
be a chiropractor. Mary wasn't sure what she wanted to
(01:31):
do with her life, but she was always helping Bill
with his studies and realized she could follow in his footsteps.
So together Mary and Bill both got their PhDs in
The pair got married and were happier than ever. Bill
felt like their relationship got better every day. Upon graduating,
(01:54):
the couple open their chiropractic clinic in Whitesboro, New York.
Here's Stephanie. It wasn't just professionally that Bill and Mary
found success. They also had three children, two girls and
a boy, and the family, by all accounts, was very close.
The clinic also became a bit of a family affair.
(02:14):
The couple's son, Adam, worked at the clinic when he
was a teenager, and then when he went off to college,
his girlfriend Katie took over as an office manager. So
that was the kind of people the Yoders were. They
were very loving and very generous. And you hear about karma,
and perhaps karma was working for them because the Yoder
(02:35):
has had a lot of success professionally and the clinic
was doing very well. And as time went on, Mary
became more of the face of the business working with
patients while Bill handled more of the business side of things,
and by all accounts, Mary was super popular with the patients.
They didn't just see her as a doctor, but also
a friend, and she was described as inspiring positivity in
(02:58):
everyone that she met. Mary and Bill also encouraged others
with their healthy ways. They sort of believed that showing
was the best example, and the couple lived a very
holistic and spiritual life. At sixty years old, Mary was
in the best shape of her life, and she credited
her many vitamins and supplements she took for her healthy
(03:21):
well being. So by all accounts, the Odor family were
kind of living the dream. Bill and Mary worked together,
their son and his girlfriend also worked in the office,
and the business was thriving. They had they had lots
of patients who really adored them. You know, you kind
of hear about your second act, and it seems like
Mary Yoder was really living it, and they were just
(03:41):
looking forward to what the future held. It seems as
though she took very good care of herself and was
very inspiring to anyone who realizes that they're at this
second act in life and their best life is still ahead.
By the summer of Mary and Bill were discussing their
next chapter. They talked about retiring and traveling to Europe.
(04:05):
In mid July, Mary dropped by her sister's house unannounced.
It was something she never did. While it was a
pleasant visit, her sister couldn't help but feel Mary was
hiding something, But before she could press for answers, Mary
left rather quickly. Was she in fact hiding something? One
(04:25):
week later, on July, Mary went to work as usual.
She saw patients in the morning and seemed like her usual,
warm and kind self. But after lunch there was a shift.
Mary seemed off. Her eyes were red and she was quiet.
As the afternoon progressed, her state worsened. She was vomiting
(04:47):
and had diarrhea. Could it be a stomach bug or
food poisoning? All she had eaten that day was a
protein shake at lunch. By the next day, Mary was
not better, but worse. Bill rushed her to the hospital
and she was admitted to the i c U. Her
condition kept slipping and she went into cardiac arrest multiple times.
(05:09):
Even though Mary was intubated, she was still conscious. At
one point she mouthed I love you to her sister.
Mary would pull through they expected. However, the family's hopes
were dashed on July when Mary's heart gave out. She
died in the hospital. Her family was shocked. How could
(05:33):
the healthy, full of life mother, wife, and sister be
so alive one second and gone the next. Here's Jeff.
It wasn't just Mary's family that was perplexed by all this,
but also the doctor's healthy six year old don't just
die and initial tests didn't really help them find anything
that happened, and so the doctors continued to run more
(05:55):
tests and brought in more specialists to figure out what
was going on. And when they finally did the autopsy
on Mary, it was revealed that her organs looked in
incredibly bad shape, like someone who had just been through
a round of chemotherapy, and this led the medical examiner
to consider poisoning as a cause of death, and after
the usual suspects like sign and arsenic were ruled out,
(06:17):
the medical examiner figured out that Mary had been poisoned
with something called culture scene. Culture scene is a drug
that is used to treat doubt, and Mary's body had
lethal levels in it. There was just one issue. Mary
did not have doubt and had no reason to be
taking culture scene. Despite this weird fact, even stranger was
(06:38):
the idea that Bill didn't call the police. It would
actually take three months for them to get involved when
one of Mary's sisters called them to inform them of
the situation, and like Mary's sister, detectas believed foul play
was possible and started investigating that exact same day. Now,
apparently the medical Examiner's office should have notified the police
(07:01):
about the possible poisoning, but there was some strange laps
in communication, and Mary's sisters would wonder, despite that mistake,
why did Bill not contact police himself. Mary was a
very beloved member of the community. She was active, she
attended charity events frequently. There was nobody that seemingly would
(07:22):
ever want to hurt her. So again, why would he
not get police involved? And once police started taking a
closer look, police looked immediately at the most obvious suspect,
her husband, Bill. With Bill at the top of the
police's list, they started looking at his behavior when Mary
got sick and immediately after her death, and there was
(07:42):
definitely some suspicious things around that. And what they found
was that while Mary was dying in the hospital, Bill
allegedly disappeared, according to Mary's sister, over a period of
several hours when she was in the I c U.
The hospital was urgently trying to reach him, and Bill
was not answering phone calls or calling them act And
at one point, when Mary was actually conscious, she herself
(08:04):
tried to call Bill and he didn't even answer her
phone calls or ever call her back. The hospital ended
up having to send state troopers to his house to
get him, and he didn't even come to the door
when they knocked. They ended up having to pound it
down basically till he answered. And it also should be
noted that he's not hard of hearing, so it wasn't
like he could be inside and not hear this ferocious knocking.
(08:27):
And when the state troopers told in the situation that
Mary was getting worse and he should get back to
the hospital, he didn't show up for nearly an hour.
It wasn't just that Bill apparently had Mary's body cremated
within days of her death without even informing her sisters
or her mother. The funeral parlor director later told officials
(08:47):
that Bill and his son Adam came in and that
they were all business. It took just thirty minutes to
plan what most people's been hours doing. I think it's
interesting stuff because obviously, when someone is murdered, the most
obvious suspect is always the spouse. You know, you hear
the line the husband did it, And in this case,
Bill is kind of looking like a potential suspect. I
(09:09):
mean the things he was doing when she's in the
hospital and right after. You know, it's hard to say
what's how someone acts when they're in this situation and
how they should act, But I would think if you're
that concerned about your wife, you're not disappearing for hours
on end, and you're not acting aloof at the crematorium,
you obviously call the police when tragedy happened. Yeah, let's
(09:34):
go back to that. Why do you think he wouldn't
call the police when the doctors tell him that she
has this doubt medication and she doesn't have doubt. Well,
Mary's husband, Bill was shaping up to be a worthy suspect.
Everything changed a month into the investigation, November, police received
an anonymous letter. The letter pointed detectives in a different direction.
(09:58):
In fact, it pointed to Mary, his twenty four year
old son Adam in it. The letter said that Adam
had bought a bottle of the Culture Scene off the
Internet and put the toxin in Mary's vitamins. It was
this that killed her. The letters set the pill bottle
could be found under the front passenger seat of Adam's
cheap The note concluded by saying Adam killed his mother
(10:21):
in hopes of financial gain. Remember, as we get into this,
that Adam actually worked at the clinic before passing the
job to his girlfriend Katie. So we look at this letter.
It's pretty damning, but Adam had no criminal history. Plus
police were wondering why would he want to hurt his mom.
By all accounts, they were pretty close. However, Katie's parents
(10:41):
told a different story. They said that when Adam and
Katie were dating, there was always something off about him.
He seemed attached and wouldn't make eye contact. Katie had
grown tired of his weird behavior and broke up with
him before Mary's death. She continued to work at the
office and remain close with Mary, but the relationship with
Adam allegedly was over. The police were wondering could he
(11:02):
have been so angry and depressed over this? Breakup that
he decided to kill his mom, or maybe he was
just depressed about the breakup and then more depressed because
of the death of his mom. You know. Soon after,
detectives called Adam in and they showed him this letter,
and according to them, he seemed genuinely shocked. They asked
(11:23):
to look in his jeep and he immediately obliged and
said yes, and sure enough, in the car, exactly where
the letter said it would be, was the pill bottle.
Also in the car was a receipt for the drug
with Adam's name and what appeared to be his email address,
Mr Adam Yoder at gmail dot com. And the billing
(11:45):
and chipping address was also the clinic. This is very damning,
and suddenly police are given this information and sure enough
it's paying off. Adam was really quick to deny all this.
He very quickly said that someone must have planted the
pill bottle and the receipt. He also told the cops
that he had an ALBI for the day of Mary's death.
(12:07):
He was around three undred miles away visiting one of
his sisters. That seemed relevant, but to counter that it
was a poisoning death and so in theory he still
could have murdered his mom and then drove off three
hundred miles away. It wasn't like he had to be
there to administer the poison in the moment of her death.
All of this combined, though, was not enough to charge him,
and so the police had to let him go. The
(12:28):
cops also started looking at some of the people in
Adam's life, and they started with his cousin and his roommate,
a man named David King. And David King said that
after Mary died, Adam was super depressed. He started missing
class and was drinking too much. And Adam apparently even
(12:48):
told Dave that he felt suicidal. And again, was this
pure grief or was this guilt showing its ugly face.
It's interesting because, on the one hand, this letter points
the finger very clearly at Adam and kind of gives
a play by play of exactly what he did and
how to catch him for it. And if you're Adam
(13:10):
and you did do it, why would you voluntarily drive
to the police station, answer their questions and then show
them the car where you know the pill bottle? Is
that to me seems for even the dumbest criminal, very
stupid behavior, right, there literally getting a roadmap to how
this murder was committed. We're going to take a break.
(13:31):
We'll be back in just a moment. There was another
Yoder family insider that the police wanted to talk to
(13:53):
Adam's ex girlfriend and Mary's former employee, two year old
Katie Connley. Katie was a to full brunette who loved
horse back riding. At the office, she was well liked
and kept things in tiptop shape. Despite it not working
out with Adam romantically, Katie remained close to his mother.
(14:13):
Katie looked up to Mary and even considered following in
her footsteps and becoming a chiropractor. When detectives met with Katie,
they asked her point blank if she wrote the anonymous letter.
She said yes. Here's some of her conversations with police. Okay,
(14:36):
I understand that he regretted that you were an Adams.
Get right. He told you that he put the culture
scene under your sheet, under her seat, under your sheet.
He told you that this again. I kicked. We can proteach.
(15:01):
You can't protect you from what Adam if you're saying Adam,
because if he knows, it's like he knows that he
need you. When you hear that, Katie, You can hear
the fear in her voice. She seems really afraid of
her ex Adam. Also in the interview, she told detectives
(15:22):
that Adam actually threatened to frame her for the murder
if she told on him. You can literally hear the
fear in her voice. It was really smart. She could
make some strange comments, though, have a listen to this poison.
(15:46):
What she says is they always say poison is a
lady's weapon, Like no men kill someone with poison. So
the cops now had three suspects, Bill, Adam, and Katie.
The police got warrants to look at all three of
their phones again uters and what they found was pretty interesting.
Remember that email on the receipt in adams car Mr
Adam Yodor gmail dot com. Well, it turned out that
(16:09):
despite it very much looking like Adam's email, he never
logged into it from his computer or his phone. But
guess who had his ex girlfriend, Katie? She had logged
into that email from both her home and office computers.
The cops also found that Katie had searched for culture
scene on her phone. This all looks pretty bad for her,
(16:29):
but the big question is why would she want to
harm Mary. At this point, detectives need to know more
and they immediately bring her back and press her for information,
and in an interrogation that would last for six hours,
Katie did a lot of talking, done a lot of work,
and we know that your your phone is huge, quite
(16:50):
a lot for items in this case. Okay, you're the
one that purchase help me. I didn't. You're never going
to me. Nobody also believe, but you did. That's the
only thing we need at this point is why you
need to tell me whether you wanted to hurt her
(17:12):
or did you want her to get sick or what
we mean? No, I wasn't trying to hurt You wouldn't
hurt Mary Georgy to do this isn't adam? Are you
goodn't forever? It's a pretty astounding interrogation. Over those six hours,
(17:38):
she never once admits to anything, and she really holds
her ground that she had nothing to do with this murder.
And she's obviously emotional, but it's adamant that she did
not harm her boss and friend Mary. Four months after
her interrogation, Katie was charged with first degree murder in
June of surprisingly, three of Mary's sisters sat behind Katie
(18:01):
and court. They were adamant that Katie was innocent and
had been framed by Mary's husband Bill. As the child started,
the prosecutor wanted to make it clear that Bill was
a grieving husband and not a murder suspect. Here's a
portion of Bill on the stand in court. So, immediately
after your wife passed away, what did you do? Remember
(18:24):
walking out of them the hospital door into the sunlight.
And the next re member I have after that was
I was sitting on my bed in the dark, crying
and crying and it hurt so much. Following Bill's tearful testimony,
(18:45):
the prosecutor laid out a very specific case against Katie.
They actually had a sales representative from the company that
the poison was bought from, and she said that she
did speak to somebody that sounded like Katie who purchased
the culture scene. The prosecution also pointed to the fact
that Katie had admitted to buying a prepaid credit card
(19:08):
to purchase the Culture Scene. Plus, an expert testified that
Adam's DNA wasn't even on the pill bottle, which would
be pretty impossible, and that get this Katie's of course was,
but again, what was the motive? Well stuff. The prosecution
argued that Katie killed Mary in a bid to win
Adam back, and seemingly, for a while it worked. Right
(19:31):
When Mary died, Adam was grieving, as we know, and
he immediately turned to Katie. They started to hook up again,
but eventually he grew tired of her and broke up
with her for good. According to the prosecution, it was
at this point that Katie was so enraged that she
decided to frame Adam as some sort of sick revenge.
Listen to the prosecution spell it all out. Let's stop
(19:53):
here for another break. So the defense counted all this
with the fact that Katie had no motive. The person
they say did have a motive was Mary's husband, Bill.
(20:16):
It turned out that Bill had started dating one of
Mary's a strange sisters, Kathy. Kathy testified at the trial
that the relationship didn't start until September, two months after
Mary dot but her neighbor testified that she had seen
Kathy and Bill kissing two weeks before Mary's death. Yeah.
The defense also pointed to the fact that Bill never
(20:37):
went to the police about Mary's death, which at the
bare minimum was odd. Katie's defense also argued that Bill
had relied on Mary for money for years. She was
a better doctor after all. But before Mary's death, Bill
had inherited four hundred thousand dollars from his father's estate,
so the money really wasn't needed for Mary any longer,
(21:00):
and he ad allegedly said that the inheritance was only
enough for one person himself. Katie's lawyers also pointed out
that Bill had access to Katie's work computer and easily
could have framed her as to why the DNA was
on the pill bottle. She was the office manager, she
handled everything in the office. It should also be noted
(21:21):
that because Bill testified for the grand jury, he had
full immunity from prosecution for life, meaning he could never
be charged for the death of his wife. So all
this finger pointing that Katie's lawyers were doing was not
in the hopes of getting charges brought against him, but
really just to take the heat off of Katie. So
back in the courtroom, the defense brought up the phone searches,
(21:41):
specifically the one for culture Scene. What's interesting, though, is
no one knew when Katie Google did so. Her lawyers
said that it could have been after Mary's death when
she was trying to research what happened to her beloved boss.
As the defense closed their arguments, there was one question
they couldn't answer, and that was, if Katie hadn't done it,
why did she write that letter implicating Adam? Because ladies
(22:03):
and gentlemen, hell half no fury like a woman scorned vengeance.
Thy name is Caitlin Connolly. After four days of deliberation,
the jury was deadlocked. A mistriald was declared in May
of the district attorney wasted no time filing new charges,
(22:27):
and a second trial started October the same year. At
the second trial, the prosecution laid out basically the exact
same case. The defense, however, took a much different approach.
Instead of pointing the finger at Bill, they were now
saying that Mary's son, Adam was the killer. They described
Adam as an unstable hacker capable of getting into Kata's
(22:49):
computer either remotely or in person. His cousin and former roommate,
David King, testified for the defense, saying that Adam was
a liar. David said that Adam had access to both
the office and Katie's personal computer and easily could have
ordered the poison himself. The defense also was now bringing
up rape allegations Katie had brought against Adam a year
(23:09):
before Mary's death. Adam had denied all of that, and
the allegations were eventually dropped, but perhaps the fear she
had shown during her interrogation was real. You can't from Adam. Yeah,
if you're saying Adams responsib because if he knows, it's
(23:30):
like he knows that he knew. This time, the defense
closed by saying that Katie loved Mary and would never
harm her. On the stand, Adam denies absolutely everything, and
like his father, he too had full immunity. However, the
prosecution got another smoking gun right before the second trial.
They got a backup of Katie's phone and discovered that
(23:52):
at some point she had also googled other poisons, including
arsenic and cyanide. After hearing all of the evidence and testimony,
the judge actually allowed the jury to not only consider
the original charge of second degree murder, but also a
lesser charge of manslaughter, meaning that Katie only meant to
harm Mary, not kill her. Despite this new option, it
(24:15):
looked like history might be repeating itself, as by day
two of deliberations, the jury was completely deadlocked. When they
told the judge this, he urged them to keep trying,
and just two hours later they came back with a verdict.
In November, Katie Connolly was found not guilty of second
green murder, but guilty of first degree manslaughter. Katie was
(24:37):
sentenced to twenty three years in prison despite the evidence
against her. Mary's sisters never stopped believing in Katie's innocence.
To this day, they help her fight to appeal the conviction.
As we look back on this case, one thing sticks out.
In a rather now prophetic Facebook post, Katie wrote, just
one day after Mary died, bat if love could have
(25:01):
saved you, you would have lived forever shameless plug. If
you're enjoying Crazy and Love, leave us a review and
listen to season three of our hit series The Piked
and Massacre. New episodes there every Wednesday wherever you get
your podcasts, and don't forget to follow us on Instagram
(25:24):
at Katie Underscore Studios. Crazy in Love is produced by
Stephanie Lydecker, Jeff Shane, Chris Graves and me Courtney Armstrong.
Editing and sound design by Jeff Ta. Crazy in Love
is a production of I heart Radio and Katie Studios.
For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
(25:48):
your favorite shows. Stay safe, lovers,
Falling in love is the best feeling in the world.
You see stars, you feel giddy, But sometimes that makes
you do crazy things, and sometimes that means murder. Just
because the story starts out with once upon a Times
doesn't mean it ends happily ever after. Welcome to Crazy
and Love, a production of Katie Studios and I Heart Radio.
(00:24):
Today's guests our producers Stephanie Lydecker and Jeff Shane. Episode
thirty nine, The Case of the Good Doctor, the Bad Employee,
and the very Toxic Relationship. As a girl in upstate
New York, Mary Yoder was one of eight children. For
(00:45):
most it would be hard to stand out, but that's
exactly what Mary did. Described as darling, upbeaten fun, Mary
was an avid gardener, belly dancer, and musician. In Mary
was atending college when she met Bill. While Mary was
outspoken and sociable, Bill was the opposite. He was introverted
(01:08):
and shy. But Mary didn't care about those things. She
saw a different side to Bill. To her, the young
man was soulful and deep. The pair fell in love.
Bill was also very smart. He became the valedictorian of
his graduating class, and while he knew he wanted to
be a chiropractor. Mary wasn't sure what she wanted to
(01:31):
do with her life, but she was always helping Bill
with his studies and realized she could follow in his footsteps.
So together Mary and Bill both got their PhDs in
The pair got married and were happier than ever. Bill
felt like their relationship got better every day. Upon graduating,
(01:54):
the couple open their chiropractic clinic in Whitesboro, New York.
Here's Stephanie. It wasn't just professionally that Bill and Mary
found success. They also had three children, two girls and
a boy, and the family, by all accounts, was very close.
The clinic also became a bit of a family affair.
(02:14):
The couple's son, Adam, worked at the clinic when he
was a teenager, and then when he went off to college,
his girlfriend Katie took over as an office manager. So
that was the kind of people the Yoders were. They
were very loving and very generous. And you hear about karma,
and perhaps karma was working for them because the Yoder
(02:35):
has had a lot of success professionally and the clinic
was doing very well. And as time went on, Mary
became more of the face of the business working with
patients while Bill handled more of the business side of things,
and by all accounts, Mary was super popular with the patients.
They didn't just see her as a doctor, but also
a friend, and she was described as inspiring positivity in
(02:58):
everyone that she met. Mary and Bill also encouraged others
with their healthy ways. They sort of believed that showing
was the best example, and the couple lived a very
holistic and spiritual life. At sixty years old, Mary was
in the best shape of her life, and she credited
her many vitamins and supplements she took for her healthy
(03:21):
well being. So by all accounts, the Odor family were
kind of living the dream. Bill and Mary worked together,
their son and his girlfriend also worked in the office,
and the business was thriving. They had they had lots
of patients who really adored them. You know, you kind
of hear about your second act, and it seems like
Mary Yoder was really living it, and they were just
(03:41):
looking forward to what the future held. It seems as
though she took very good care of herself and was
very inspiring to anyone who realizes that they're at this
second act in life and their best life is still ahead.
By the summer of Mary and Bill were discussing their
next chapter. They talked about retiring and traveling to Europe.
(04:05):
In mid July, Mary dropped by her sister's house unannounced.
It was something she never did. While it was a
pleasant visit, her sister couldn't help but feel Mary was
hiding something, But before she could press for answers, Mary
left rather quickly. Was she in fact hiding something? One
(04:25):
week later, on July, Mary went to work as usual.
She saw patients in the morning and seemed like her usual,
warm and kind self. But after lunch there was a shift.
Mary seemed off. Her eyes were red and she was quiet.
As the afternoon progressed, her state worsened. She was vomiting
(04:47):
and had diarrhea. Could it be a stomach bug or
food poisoning? All she had eaten that day was a
protein shake at lunch. By the next day, Mary was
not better, but worse. Bill rushed her to the hospital
and she was admitted to the i c U. Her
condition kept slipping and she went into cardiac arrest multiple times.
(05:09):
Even though Mary was intubated, she was still conscious. At
one point she mouthed I love you to her sister.
Mary would pull through they expected. However, the family's hopes
were dashed on July when Mary's heart gave out. She
died in the hospital. Her family was shocked. How could
(05:33):
the healthy, full of life mother, wife, and sister be
so alive one second and gone the next. Here's Jeff.
It wasn't just Mary's family that was perplexed by all this,
but also the doctor's healthy six year old don't just
die and initial tests didn't really help them find anything
that happened, and so the doctors continued to run more
(05:55):
tests and brought in more specialists to figure out what
was going on. And when they finally did the autopsy
on Mary, it was revealed that her organs looked in
incredibly bad shape, like someone who had just been through
a round of chemotherapy, and this led the medical examiner
to consider poisoning as a cause of death, and after
the usual suspects like sign and arsenic were ruled out,
(06:17):
the medical examiner figured out that Mary had been poisoned
with something called culture scene. Culture scene is a drug
that is used to treat doubt, and Mary's body had
lethal levels in it. There was just one issue. Mary
did not have doubt and had no reason to be
taking culture scene. Despite this weird fact, even stranger was
(06:38):
the idea that Bill didn't call the police. It would
actually take three months for them to get involved when
one of Mary's sisters called them to inform them of
the situation, and like Mary's sister, detectas believed foul play
was possible and started investigating that exact same day. Now,
apparently the medical Examiner's office should have notified the police
(07:01):
about the possible poisoning, but there was some strange laps
in communication, and Mary's sisters would wonder, despite that mistake,
why did Bill not contact police himself. Mary was a
very beloved member of the community. She was active, she
attended charity events frequently. There was nobody that seemingly would
(07:22):
ever want to hurt her. So again, why would he
not get police involved? And once police started taking a
closer look, police looked immediately at the most obvious suspect,
her husband, Bill. With Bill at the top of the
police's list, they started looking at his behavior when Mary
got sick and immediately after her death, and there was
(07:42):
definitely some suspicious things around that. And what they found
was that while Mary was dying in the hospital, Bill
allegedly disappeared, according to Mary's sister, over a period of
several hours when she was in the I c U.
The hospital was urgently trying to reach him, and Bill
was not answering phone calls or calling them act And
at one point, when Mary was actually conscious, she herself
(08:04):
tried to call Bill and he didn't even answer her
phone calls or ever call her back. The hospital ended
up having to send state troopers to his house to
get him, and he didn't even come to the door
when they knocked. They ended up having to pound it
down basically till he answered. And it also should be
noted that he's not hard of hearing, so it wasn't
like he could be inside and not hear this ferocious knocking.
(08:27):
And when the state troopers told in the situation that
Mary was getting worse and he should get back to
the hospital, he didn't show up for nearly an hour.
It wasn't just that Bill apparently had Mary's body cremated
within days of her death without even informing her sisters
or her mother. The funeral parlor director later told officials
(08:47):
that Bill and his son Adam came in and that
they were all business. It took just thirty minutes to
plan what most people's been hours doing. I think it's
interesting stuff because obviously, when someone is murdered, the most
obvious suspect is always the spouse. You know, you hear
the line the husband did it, And in this case,
Bill is kind of looking like a potential suspect. I
(09:09):
mean the things he was doing when she's in the
hospital and right after. You know, it's hard to say
what's how someone acts when they're in this situation and
how they should act, But I would think if you're
that concerned about your wife, you're not disappearing for hours
on end, and you're not acting aloof at the crematorium,
you obviously call the police when tragedy happened. Yeah, let's
(09:34):
go back to that. Why do you think he wouldn't
call the police when the doctors tell him that she
has this doubt medication and she doesn't have doubt. Well,
Mary's husband, Bill was shaping up to be a worthy suspect.
Everything changed a month into the investigation, November, police received
an anonymous letter. The letter pointed detectives in a different direction.
(09:58):
In fact, it pointed to Mary, his twenty four year
old son Adam in it. The letter said that Adam
had bought a bottle of the Culture Scene off the
Internet and put the toxin in Mary's vitamins. It was
this that killed her. The letters set the pill bottle
could be found under the front passenger seat of Adam's
cheap The note concluded by saying Adam killed his mother
(10:21):
in hopes of financial gain. Remember, as we get into this,
that Adam actually worked at the clinic before passing the
job to his girlfriend Katie. So we look at this letter.
It's pretty damning, but Adam had no criminal history. Plus
police were wondering why would he want to hurt his mom.
By all accounts, they were pretty close. However, Katie's parents
(10:41):
told a different story. They said that when Adam and
Katie were dating, there was always something off about him.
He seemed attached and wouldn't make eye contact. Katie had
grown tired of his weird behavior and broke up with
him before Mary's death. She continued to work at the
office and remain close with Mary, but the relationship with
Adam allegedly was over. The police were wondering could he
(11:02):
have been so angry and depressed over this? Breakup that
he decided to kill his mom, or maybe he was
just depressed about the breakup and then more depressed because
of the death of his mom. You know. Soon after,
detectives called Adam in and they showed him this letter,
and according to them, he seemed genuinely shocked. They asked
(11:23):
to look in his jeep and he immediately obliged and
said yes, and sure enough, in the car, exactly where
the letter said it would be, was the pill bottle.
Also in the car was a receipt for the drug
with Adam's name and what appeared to be his email address,
Mr Adam Yoder at gmail dot com. And the billing
(11:45):
and chipping address was also the clinic. This is very damning,
and suddenly police are given this information and sure enough
it's paying off. Adam was really quick to deny all this.
He very quickly said that someone must have planted the
pill bottle and the receipt. He also told the cops
that he had an ALBI for the day of Mary's death.
(12:07):
He was around three undred miles away visiting one of
his sisters. That seemed relevant, but to counter that it
was a poisoning death and so in theory he still
could have murdered his mom and then drove off three
hundred miles away. It wasn't like he had to be
there to administer the poison in the moment of her death.
All of this combined, though, was not enough to charge him,
and so the police had to let him go. The
(12:28):
cops also started looking at some of the people in
Adam's life, and they started with his cousin and his roommate,
a man named David King. And David King said that
after Mary died, Adam was super depressed. He started missing
class and was drinking too much. And Adam apparently even
(12:48):
told Dave that he felt suicidal. And again, was this
pure grief or was this guilt showing its ugly face.
It's interesting because, on the one hand, this letter points
the finger very clearly at Adam and kind of gives
a play by play of exactly what he did and
how to catch him for it. And if you're Adam
(13:10):
and you did do it, why would you voluntarily drive
to the police station, answer their questions and then show
them the car where you know the pill bottle? Is
that to me seems for even the dumbest criminal, very
stupid behavior, right, there literally getting a roadmap to how
this murder was committed. We're going to take a break.
(13:31):
We'll be back in just a moment. There was another
Yoder family insider that the police wanted to talk to
(13:53):
Adam's ex girlfriend and Mary's former employee, two year old
Katie Connley. Katie was a to full brunette who loved
horse back riding. At the office, she was well liked
and kept things in tiptop shape. Despite it not working
out with Adam romantically, Katie remained close to his mother.
(14:13):
Katie looked up to Mary and even considered following in
her footsteps and becoming a chiropractor. When detectives met with Katie,
they asked her point blank if she wrote the anonymous letter.
She said yes. Here's some of her conversations with police. Okay,
(14:36):
I understand that he regretted that you were an Adams.
Get right. He told you that he put the culture
scene under your sheet, under her seat, under your sheet.
He told you that this again. I kicked. We can proteach.
(15:01):
You can't protect you from what Adam if you're saying Adam,
because if he knows, it's like he knows that he
need you. When you hear that, Katie, You can hear
the fear in her voice. She seems really afraid of
her ex Adam. Also in the interview, she told detectives
(15:22):
that Adam actually threatened to frame her for the murder
if she told on him. You can literally hear the
fear in her voice. It was really smart. She could
make some strange comments, though, have a listen to this poison.
(15:46):
What she says is they always say poison is a
lady's weapon, Like no men kill someone with poison. So
the cops now had three suspects, Bill, Adam, and Katie.
The police got warrants to look at all three of
their phones again uters and what they found was pretty interesting.
Remember that email on the receipt in adams car Mr
Adam Yodor gmail dot com. Well, it turned out that
(16:09):
despite it very much looking like Adam's email, he never
logged into it from his computer or his phone. But
guess who had his ex girlfriend, Katie? She had logged
into that email from both her home and office computers.
The cops also found that Katie had searched for culture
scene on her phone. This all looks pretty bad for her,
(16:29):
but the big question is why would she want to
harm Mary. At this point, detectives need to know more
and they immediately bring her back and press her for information,
and in an interrogation that would last for six hours,
Katie did a lot of talking, done a lot of work,
and we know that your your phone is huge, quite
(16:50):
a lot for items in this case. Okay, you're the
one that purchase help me. I didn't. You're never going
to me. Nobody also believe, but you did. That's the
only thing we need at this point is why you
need to tell me whether you wanted to hurt her
(17:12):
or did you want her to get sick or what
we mean? No, I wasn't trying to hurt You wouldn't
hurt Mary Georgy to do this isn't adam? Are you
goodn't forever? It's a pretty astounding interrogation. Over those six hours,
(17:38):
she never once admits to anything, and she really holds
her ground that she had nothing to do with this murder.
And she's obviously emotional, but it's adamant that she did
not harm her boss and friend Mary. Four months after
her interrogation, Katie was charged with first degree murder in
June of surprisingly, three of Mary's sisters sat behind Katie
(18:01):
and court. They were adamant that Katie was innocent and
had been framed by Mary's husband Bill. As the child started,
the prosecutor wanted to make it clear that Bill was
a grieving husband and not a murder suspect. Here's a
portion of Bill on the stand in court. So, immediately
after your wife passed away, what did you do? Remember
(18:24):
walking out of them the hospital door into the sunlight.
And the next re member I have after that was
I was sitting on my bed in the dark, crying
and crying and it hurt so much. Following Bill's tearful testimony,
(18:45):
the prosecutor laid out a very specific case against Katie.
They actually had a sales representative from the company that
the poison was bought from, and she said that she
did speak to somebody that sounded like Katie who purchased
the culture scene. The prosecution also pointed to the fact
that Katie had admitted to buying a prepaid credit card
(19:08):
to purchase the Culture Scene. Plus, an expert testified that
Adam's DNA wasn't even on the pill bottle, which would
be pretty impossible, and that get this Katie's of course was,
but again, what was the motive? Well stuff. The prosecution
argued that Katie killed Mary in a bid to win
Adam back, and seemingly, for a while it worked. Right
(19:31):
When Mary died, Adam was grieving, as we know, and
he immediately turned to Katie. They started to hook up again,
but eventually he grew tired of her and broke up
with her for good. According to the prosecution, it was
at this point that Katie was so enraged that she
decided to frame Adam as some sort of sick revenge.
Listen to the prosecution spell it all out. Let's stop
(19:53):
here for another break. So the defense counted all this
with the fact that Katie had no motive. The person
they say did have a motive was Mary's husband, Bill.
(20:16):
It turned out that Bill had started dating one of
Mary's a strange sisters, Kathy. Kathy testified at the trial
that the relationship didn't start until September, two months after
Mary dot but her neighbor testified that she had seen
Kathy and Bill kissing two weeks before Mary's death. Yeah.
The defense also pointed to the fact that Bill never
(20:37):
went to the police about Mary's death, which at the
bare minimum was odd. Katie's defense also argued that Bill
had relied on Mary for money for years. She was
a better doctor after all. But before Mary's death, Bill
had inherited four hundred thousand dollars from his father's estate,
so the money really wasn't needed for Mary any longer,
(21:00):
and he ad allegedly said that the inheritance was only
enough for one person himself. Katie's lawyers also pointed out
that Bill had access to Katie's work computer and easily
could have framed her as to why the DNA was
on the pill bottle. She was the office manager, she
handled everything in the office. It should also be noted
(21:21):
that because Bill testified for the grand jury, he had
full immunity from prosecution for life, meaning he could never
be charged for the death of his wife. So all
this finger pointing that Katie's lawyers were doing was not
in the hopes of getting charges brought against him, but
really just to take the heat off of Katie. So
back in the courtroom, the defense brought up the phone searches,
(21:41):
specifically the one for culture Scene. What's interesting, though, is
no one knew when Katie Google did so. Her lawyers
said that it could have been after Mary's death when
she was trying to research what happened to her beloved boss.
As the defense closed their arguments, there was one question
they couldn't answer, and that was, if Katie hadn't done it,
why did she write that letter implicating Adam? Because ladies
(22:03):
and gentlemen, hell half no fury like a woman scorned vengeance.
Thy name is Caitlin Connolly. After four days of deliberation,
the jury was deadlocked. A mistriald was declared in May
of the district attorney wasted no time filing new charges,
(22:27):
and a second trial started October the same year. At
the second trial, the prosecution laid out basically the exact
same case. The defense, however, took a much different approach.
Instead of pointing the finger at Bill, they were now
saying that Mary's son, Adam was the killer. They described
Adam as an unstable hacker capable of getting into Kata's
(22:49):
computer either remotely or in person. His cousin and former roommate,
David King, testified for the defense, saying that Adam was
a liar. David said that Adam had access to both
the office and Katie's personal computer and easily could have
ordered the poison himself. The defense also was now bringing
up rape allegations Katie had brought against Adam a year
(23:09):
before Mary's death. Adam had denied all of that, and
the allegations were eventually dropped, but perhaps the fear she
had shown during her interrogation was real. You can't from Adam. Yeah,
if you're saying Adams responsib because if he knows, it's
(23:30):
like he knows that he knew. This time, the defense
closed by saying that Katie loved Mary and would never
harm her. On the stand, Adam denies absolutely everything, and
like his father, he too had full immunity. However, the
prosecution got another smoking gun right before the second trial.
They got a backup of Katie's phone and discovered that
(23:52):
at some point she had also googled other poisons, including
arsenic and cyanide. After hearing all of the evidence and testimony,
the judge actually allowed the jury to not only consider
the original charge of second degree murder, but also a
lesser charge of manslaughter, meaning that Katie only meant to
harm Mary, not kill her. Despite this new option, it
(24:15):
looked like history might be repeating itself, as by day
two of deliberations, the jury was completely deadlocked. When they
told the judge this, he urged them to keep trying,
and just two hours later they came back with a verdict.
In November, Katie Connolly was found not guilty of second
green murder, but guilty of first degree manslaughter. Katie was
(24:37):
sentenced to twenty three years in prison despite the evidence
against her. Mary's sisters never stopped believing in Katie's innocence.
To this day, they help her fight to appeal the conviction.
As we look back on this case, one thing sticks out.
In a rather now prophetic Facebook post, Katie wrote, just
one day after Mary died, bat if love could have
(25:01):
saved you, you would have lived forever shameless plug. If
you're enjoying Crazy and Love, leave us a review and
listen to season three of our hit series The Piked
and Massacre. New episodes there every Wednesday wherever you get
your podcasts, and don't forget to follow us on Instagram
(25:24):
at Katie Underscore Studios. Crazy in Love is produced by
Stephanie Lydecker, Jeff Shane, Chris Graves and me Courtney Armstrong.
Editing and sound design by Jeff Ta. Crazy in Love
is a production of I heart Radio and Katie Studios.
For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
(25:48):
your favorite shows. Stay safe, lovers,
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.