May 19, 2020 • 15 mins
Karen speaks with Stacy Replogle’s mother to learn more about her daughter and what life has been like since her brutal murder.
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 (00:00):
So feel well, what she'll go so well? You can
hold hold back, but it doesn't bed how you feel.
(00:23):
This is the fel this is the New Real. This
is Shattered Souls. I'm your host, Karen Smith. This is
a special bonus episode. This is the New Real. Hopefully
(00:44):
you've listened to episodes one and two at this point.
And I got a message from my friend Sabrina Gouch.
She was the victim's advocate on this case and spent
a lot of time with Stacy's family in the aftermath,
and she sat with them in the courtroom for the trial.
I asked Sabrina if she thought that Stacy's mother would
be willing to speak with me and offer some more
(01:05):
candid details about Stacy and her life. Well, she was,
and I had the privilege of speaking with her. And
this is our interview. I'm Susan Addison and I'm Stacy
Repleval's mother. Wow, it's been over fifteen years. It's really
good to talk to you. What can you tell us
(01:26):
about Stacy? She for her complicated person, she was an
incredible child, an incredible baby. She did everything early, very loving,
very very sweet child, the dream child, the one you
have no problems, But it wasn't until her father turned
(01:50):
his back on her when his new wife was pregnant
that she started having problems. And that was about nine
years old. From there it just kind of spiraled. I remarried,
I had a child, I had another child. She was
very doubting on her brother, but she had a lot
of demons. She never felt she was good enough to
(02:10):
be loved, and she acted out quite a bit. She
had a very rough teenage years and young adulthood with
alcohol and drugs, but she was trying to turn herself around.
She she dropped out of high school. The following year
or or two years later, she went back and got
her g e d. And she made it, made a
(02:31):
ninety eight percent on her test. I mean, she's very smart,
but she also was very nine in the respect that
there was no such thing as a stranger. She believes
what she wanted to believe. She figured she could handle anything,
get out of anything, deal with anything. She was a fighter,
(02:56):
very strong will, very very strong will, very patient about
animals and things that she loved. In my household there there,
I have a lot of my kids to have whatever
they wanted pretty much, so I've dealt with bearded dragons,
tarantula of snakes, oh, my Fullican strictors, hamsters, my birds,
(03:22):
fair cat dogs, you name it. I've had every kind
of critter you can imagine, and those were some of
those were hers. Oh yeah, wow. So she really, she
really did have an affinity for animals, which is you know,
that speaks a lot to her heart. I guess the
word I don't know if the word is affinity. But
her identified animals was a turtle, a sea turtle. Well,
(03:47):
if you think about it, a sea turtles, it has
a very soft inside and a very hard outer shell,
and it has those soft diy eyes and a smile,
and they're very gentle creatures. That's what she identified with.
And that's kind of what she was like. I mean,
she had a tough exterior, but inside she was very
(04:12):
sensitive and very soft. Her disappointment in her father, her
lack of self esteem, and some things that she experienced
tormented her horribly, and she just very dim in alcohol.
You know, there's all different kinds of people that drink
to excess, and she didn't start drink until she was
(04:34):
twenty one, and she went straight into it. When Stacy
was you know, hanging out with the NETO. Do you
have any background on how they met or anything like that. Yeah,
a little bit, because she had started using drugs again.
She was living with me temporarily and I made her leave.
I was not gonna be a party to any of that.
(04:57):
And she lived in with a guy she met Nito,
lived in the next building over, and they were like
quad flocks, and he lived in the next unit over.
They struck up a friendship. He would give her rides,
they go to the flea market. She talked to him
about different things, not one of her more notable experiences.
(05:18):
Go play pools, drink beers, can pick up the tabs him,
buy or something. And I costumed her and I told her,
you're setting yourself up. No no, no, no, no, he's
just a friend. No no, no no, no, no he's not
he want no, no no no. As She didn't want
to believe some people who have intelligence or they're smart,
(05:39):
but they don't have that O, they're smart, you know
what I mean? Yeah, I guess it's just reading other people. Maybe. Yeah.
She trusted everybody. Nah, nothing's gonna have and and didn't believe.
I mean, if she had her mindset something was one
way if she thought the sky was blue and it
(05:59):
was a there was no convincing her. You know, you
couldn't tell her that this person hasn't alter your motive.
This person is not a good No, I'm telling you,
this person is not a good person. No, I've got
a candle. No you don't. She really was looking for affection,
(06:22):
I guess, and that just the wrong places. Yeah. Right
after Christmas in um December of o four, I was
at a birthday party for a friend of mine and
mine and we were sell righting on birthday. And that
was the weekend of January three, and she called me
and she said, I'm done. I'm gonna quit. I'm going
(06:44):
to get my job back at the restaurant. I'm going
to go back to school. What did she want to study?
What was her interest? She had this thing about the animals,
she had talked about veterinarian school. She had an interest
in criminology. I think she was just trying to figure
it out deep down, past all of that superficial stuff
(07:06):
and things that were out of her control. It sounds
like she was really really trying hard to turn it around,
and she wanted to make a new start. She did.
She did. She was really trying and she used to
get the chance. She had a big heart. She was
(07:30):
that child that broke all the rules. When she was
an infant, came home from the hospital weighing nine pounds
four ounces, two long beating every four hours, not every
two into it. Within two months it was every six hours.
She had the best personality. She walked around a year.
(07:51):
It didn't take her long to put prensses together. She's
very smart, very very smart. She probably got the trusting
thing for me because I'm too trusting. And her dad
would get her every couple of weeks or every every
month until he was married and had she was expecting
a child, and basically said she couldn't come back to visits.
(08:12):
He was a very unkind person. Basically, you're in your
own kiddo. So it wasn't so much tough love as
just see you later. I didn't care in his attitude
with her. She while she can go be a hippie
and live in the woods. He actually said that that
she could just go be a hippie and live in
the woods. Yeah. When I got additional child support, he
(08:34):
wrote a letter to her telling her he'd no longer
send her Christmas and birthday presents because I was getting
a tremendous amount of child support and I could pay
for him. Now that's heartbreaking for you, for her, for
your whole family. Yeah, it was. It was tough. I
just I can't fathom how he could sit there and
(08:56):
say that she did it to him. Yeah, what went
through your mind when he testified at trial? Can you
talk about that? But it was a joke. He spoke
English well enough to communicate with her. She she knew
absolutely no Spanish, So for him to have to have
the interpreter, that was all a sham. In my opinion.
(09:21):
He knew he'd been in this country long enough, he knew.
I don't buy that he couldn't understand anything. And to
say that she carried a knife and she cut him
is ludicrous because that's not who she That's not the
kind of person she was. She she would have fought
with him if he was attacking her, or she would
(09:43):
have been trying to get away. I know that, and
I know she was attempting to call nine one one.
He killed her because of that. He didn't want to
get caught, and she was hurt from hitting the lenchield.
I don't believe she got out of the car willingly.
I've lead, he grabbed, he pulled her out. I have
relived her experience a thousand times, and I believe that
(10:08):
after the car accident, the truck accident, he got her
out and they're in that not the intersection, but off
to the side. He got her off to the side,
and she tried to call They were arguing. I believe
she tried to call nine. Whether or not you know,
they started arguing or fussing or fighting or what, but
(10:29):
I know she started she started running, and she couldn't
run well, real well because of her leg from having
had the car accident. I didn't don't have a little
issue that that actually switches a lot of my um
not just my reconstruction of the case, but my my
thoughts about it. That she could not run very very
well off her hip had been fractured. I didn't know that. Yeah,
(10:50):
her pelvic was fractured in three places, and her leg
was broken in a spiral from the ankle up to
the knee. So she never really regained her strength really
well in that leg, even though she bartended in waitress
and it was still kind of runs funny. Yeah, I'm
sure it was. It was quite painful, you know, just
(11:13):
not balanced going back and thinking about it and reliving it.
She ran therefore, that's why the cuts her on her back,
and she must have fallen, I mean, ran into that
berm and fell down, and he chased her down there
because at the foot of the berm, at the tree,
that's where she died. Yes, I went there. You went
(11:39):
to the scene that weekend, Yes, Detective sullen for actually
met us. I planted plants there, had a memorial there.
I put a Christmas tree there that year. I had
a stone turtle and a stone cross there, and somebody
stole across and a few years later that land sold
(12:00):
in that area got bulldozed. Before I knew it. I
put a cross up as close to where I could
remember at the sidewalk where that was. I think I
ended up being a little bit further down. It was
hard to remember exactly where it was. Somebody don't know who,
well how many people. But in the beginning there were
(12:23):
rosaries hung on that cross, and there must be fifteen
twenty rosaries hanging on that cross. You have no idea
how to put them there. No, there's a new new
construction building there there's an apartment complex, and when they
were working on the area, I went down and I
asked them tell them about the cross. And I asked myself,
(12:45):
if y'all are going to get rid of it, let
me know. Because the construction site put the fence around
the cross instead of removing it. When they put up
the landscape. Sensing that whole area is landscaped so there
are plants around it, they left my cross. I went
not long ago and got her name on on the
(13:06):
cross and cleaned up around the area, and I go,
you know, from time to time and put flowers. Not
having a grave sight, we I didn't bury her. She
was cremated and on her birthday that following that year,
we all my family went to Cumberland Islands and had
(13:29):
a picnic and we spread her ashes in the ocean.
He took a ferry over to Cumberland Island and we
all went to the uh to the beach half we
had our picnic and spread her ashes, set a prayer together,
and my brother had and his wife had brought a
box of rose petals, and so we spread the rose
(13:50):
petals along with the ashes. She looks over, watches over Ashley,
his her daughter, and my son Chris. I know she
watches over them. I know she watches over everyone. I
just wish I could see her or talked to her. Well,
(14:13):
if there's one thought that you could leave everyone about Stacy,
what would it be? She has so much potential and
she just didn't have the chance. But then, on the
other hand, I think God saw her as such a
hurting soul that he took her home. And that's how
I have some Does that help you cope with it? Oh? Definitely, definitely.
(14:37):
I know she's not hurting anymore, she's not in pain,
and her soulless is healed. This is and thank you
so much for taking the time to talk to me.
Do you have any parting thoughts for everyone? Give your
loved ones a hug, the tell them you love them.
You never know. It's been fifty in a half years
(15:01):
since Stacy left this earth, and this was the first
time I got to speak with Susan. I didn't get
to speak with her at trial or in the intervening years,
and I regret that if susan strength is any indication
of Stacy's in her strength, well, I can just imagine
what she could have become so here's my request to you.
(15:22):
When you see a sea turtle anywhere photographs in the ocean,
in a video, I think of Stacy and remember her name.
Thanks for listening.
So feel well, what she'll go so well? You can
hold hold back, but it doesn't bed how you feel.
(00:23):
This is the fel this is the New Real. This
is Shattered Souls. I'm your host, Karen Smith. This is
a special bonus episode. This is the New Real. Hopefully
(00:44):
you've listened to episodes one and two at this point.
And I got a message from my friend Sabrina Gouch.
She was the victim's advocate on this case and spent
a lot of time with Stacy's family in the aftermath,
and she sat with them in the courtroom for the trial.
I asked Sabrina if she thought that Stacy's mother would
be willing to speak with me and offer some more
(01:05):
candid details about Stacy and her life. Well, she was,
and I had the privilege of speaking with her. And
this is our interview. I'm Susan Addison and I'm Stacy
Repleval's mother. Wow, it's been over fifteen years. It's really
good to talk to you. What can you tell us
(01:26):
about Stacy? She for her complicated person, she was an
incredible child, an incredible baby. She did everything early, very loving,
very very sweet child, the dream child, the one you
have no problems, But it wasn't until her father turned
(01:50):
his back on her when his new wife was pregnant
that she started having problems. And that was about nine
years old. From there it just kind of spiraled. I remarried,
I had a child, I had another child. She was
very doubting on her brother, but she had a lot
of demons. She never felt she was good enough to
(02:10):
be loved, and she acted out quite a bit. She
had a very rough teenage years and young adulthood with
alcohol and drugs, but she was trying to turn herself around.
She she dropped out of high school. The following year
or or two years later, she went back and got
her g e d. And she made it, made a
(02:31):
ninety eight percent on her test. I mean, she's very smart,
but she also was very nine in the respect that
there was no such thing as a stranger. She believes
what she wanted to believe. She figured she could handle anything,
get out of anything, deal with anything. She was a fighter,
(02:56):
very strong will, very very strong will, very patient about
animals and things that she loved. In my household there there,
I have a lot of my kids to have whatever
they wanted pretty much, so I've dealt with bearded dragons,
tarantula of snakes, oh, my Fullican strictors, hamsters, my birds,
(03:22):
fair cat dogs, you name it. I've had every kind
of critter you can imagine, and those were some of
those were hers. Oh yeah, wow. So she really, she
really did have an affinity for animals, which is you know,
that speaks a lot to her heart. I guess the
word I don't know if the word is affinity. But
her identified animals was a turtle, a sea turtle. Well,
(03:47):
if you think about it, a sea turtles, it has
a very soft inside and a very hard outer shell,
and it has those soft diy eyes and a smile,
and they're very gentle creatures. That's what she identified with.
And that's kind of what she was like. I mean,
she had a tough exterior, but inside she was very
(04:12):
sensitive and very soft. Her disappointment in her father, her
lack of self esteem, and some things that she experienced
tormented her horribly, and she just very dim in alcohol.
You know, there's all different kinds of people that drink
to excess, and she didn't start drink until she was
(04:34):
twenty one, and she went straight into it. When Stacy
was you know, hanging out with the NETO. Do you
have any background on how they met or anything like that. Yeah,
a little bit, because she had started using drugs again.
She was living with me temporarily and I made her leave.
I was not gonna be a party to any of that.
(04:57):
And she lived in with a guy she met Nito,
lived in the next building over, and they were like
quad flocks, and he lived in the next unit over.
They struck up a friendship. He would give her rides,
they go to the flea market. She talked to him
about different things, not one of her more notable experiences.
(05:18):
Go play pools, drink beers, can pick up the tabs him,
buy or something. And I costumed her and I told her,
you're setting yourself up. No no, no, no, no, he's
just a friend. No no, no no, no, no he's not
he want no, no no no. As She didn't want
to believe some people who have intelligence or they're smart,
(05:39):
but they don't have that O, they're smart, you know
what I mean? Yeah, I guess it's just reading other people. Maybe. Yeah.
She trusted everybody. Nah, nothing's gonna have and and didn't believe.
I mean, if she had her mindset something was one
way if she thought the sky was blue and it
(05:59):
was a there was no convincing her. You know, you
couldn't tell her that this person hasn't alter your motive.
This person is not a good No, I'm telling you,
this person is not a good person. No, I've got
a candle. No you don't. She really was looking for affection,
(06:22):
I guess, and that just the wrong places. Yeah. Right
after Christmas in um December of o four, I was
at a birthday party for a friend of mine and
mine and we were sell righting on birthday. And that
was the weekend of January three, and she called me
and she said, I'm done. I'm gonna quit. I'm going
(06:44):
to get my job back at the restaurant. I'm going
to go back to school. What did she want to study?
What was her interest? She had this thing about the animals,
she had talked about veterinarian school. She had an interest
in criminology. I think she was just trying to figure
it out deep down, past all of that superficial stuff
(07:06):
and things that were out of her control. It sounds
like she was really really trying hard to turn it around,
and she wanted to make a new start. She did.
She did. She was really trying and she used to
get the chance. She had a big heart. She was
(07:30):
that child that broke all the rules. When she was
an infant, came home from the hospital weighing nine pounds
four ounces, two long beating every four hours, not every
two into it. Within two months it was every six hours.
She had the best personality. She walked around a year.
(07:51):
It didn't take her long to put prensses together. She's
very smart, very very smart. She probably got the trusting
thing for me because I'm too trusting. And her dad
would get her every couple of weeks or every every
month until he was married and had she was expecting
a child, and basically said she couldn't come back to visits.
(08:12):
He was a very unkind person. Basically, you're in your
own kiddo. So it wasn't so much tough love as
just see you later. I didn't care in his attitude
with her. She while she can go be a hippie
and live in the woods. He actually said that that
she could just go be a hippie and live in
the woods. Yeah. When I got additional child support, he
(08:34):
wrote a letter to her telling her he'd no longer
send her Christmas and birthday presents because I was getting
a tremendous amount of child support and I could pay
for him. Now that's heartbreaking for you, for her, for
your whole family. Yeah, it was. It was tough. I
just I can't fathom how he could sit there and
(08:56):
say that she did it to him. Yeah, what went
through your mind when he testified at trial? Can you
talk about that? But it was a joke. He spoke
English well enough to communicate with her. She she knew
absolutely no Spanish, So for him to have to have
the interpreter, that was all a sham. In my opinion.
(09:21):
He knew he'd been in this country long enough, he knew.
I don't buy that he couldn't understand anything. And to
say that she carried a knife and she cut him
is ludicrous because that's not who she That's not the
kind of person she was. She she would have fought
with him if he was attacking her, or she would
(09:43):
have been trying to get away. I know that, and
I know she was attempting to call nine one one.
He killed her because of that. He didn't want to
get caught, and she was hurt from hitting the lenchield.
I don't believe she got out of the car willingly.
I've lead, he grabbed, he pulled her out. I have
relived her experience a thousand times, and I believe that
(10:08):
after the car accident, the truck accident, he got her
out and they're in that not the intersection, but off
to the side. He got her off to the side,
and she tried to call They were arguing. I believe
she tried to call nine. Whether or not you know,
they started arguing or fussing or fighting or what, but
(10:29):
I know she started she started running, and she couldn't
run well, real well because of her leg from having
had the car accident. I didn't don't have a little
issue that that actually switches a lot of my um
not just my reconstruction of the case, but my my
thoughts about it. That she could not run very very
well off her hip had been fractured. I didn't know that. Yeah,
(10:50):
her pelvic was fractured in three places, and her leg
was broken in a spiral from the ankle up to
the knee. So she never really regained her strength really
well in that leg, even though she bartended in waitress
and it was still kind of runs funny. Yeah, I'm
sure it was. It was quite painful, you know, just
(11:13):
not balanced going back and thinking about it and reliving it.
She ran therefore, that's why the cuts her on her back,
and she must have fallen, I mean, ran into that
berm and fell down, and he chased her down there
because at the foot of the berm, at the tree,
that's where she died. Yes, I went there. You went
(11:39):
to the scene that weekend, Yes, Detective sullen for actually
met us. I planted plants there, had a memorial there.
I put a Christmas tree there that year. I had
a stone turtle and a stone cross there, and somebody
stole across and a few years later that land sold
(12:00):
in that area got bulldozed. Before I knew it. I
put a cross up as close to where I could
remember at the sidewalk where that was. I think I
ended up being a little bit further down. It was
hard to remember exactly where it was. Somebody don't know who,
well how many people. But in the beginning there were
(12:23):
rosaries hung on that cross, and there must be fifteen
twenty rosaries hanging on that cross. You have no idea
how to put them there. No, there's a new new
construction building there there's an apartment complex, and when they
were working on the area, I went down and I
asked them tell them about the cross. And I asked myself,
(12:45):
if y'all are going to get rid of it, let
me know. Because the construction site put the fence around
the cross instead of removing it. When they put up
the landscape. Sensing that whole area is landscaped so there
are plants around it, they left my cross. I went
not long ago and got her name on on the
(13:06):
cross and cleaned up around the area, and I go,
you know, from time to time and put flowers. Not
having a grave sight, we I didn't bury her. She
was cremated and on her birthday that following that year,
we all my family went to Cumberland Islands and had
(13:29):
a picnic and we spread her ashes in the ocean.
He took a ferry over to Cumberland Island and we
all went to the uh to the beach half we
had our picnic and spread her ashes, set a prayer together,
and my brother had and his wife had brought a
box of rose petals, and so we spread the rose
(13:50):
petals along with the ashes. She looks over, watches over Ashley,
his her daughter, and my son Chris. I know she
watches over them. I know she watches over everyone. I
just wish I could see her or talked to her. Well,
(14:13):
if there's one thought that you could leave everyone about Stacy,
what would it be? She has so much potential and
she just didn't have the chance. But then, on the
other hand, I think God saw her as such a
hurting soul that he took her home. And that's how
I have some Does that help you cope with it? Oh? Definitely, definitely.
(14:37):
I know she's not hurting anymore, she's not in pain,
and her soulless is healed. This is and thank you
so much for taking the time to talk to me.
Do you have any parting thoughts for everyone? Give your
loved ones a hug, the tell them you love them.
You never know. It's been fifty in a half years
(15:01):
since Stacy left this earth, and this was the first
time I got to speak with Susan. I didn't get
to speak with her at trial or in the intervening years,
and I regret that if susan strength is any indication
of Stacy's in her strength, well, I can just imagine
what she could have become so here's my request to you.
(15:22):
When you see a sea turtle anywhere photographs in the ocean,
in a video, I think of Stacy and remember her name.
Thanks for listening.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.