November 11, 2025 • 36 mins
Following Alex Vogt’s suicide in the Journal Building, things didn’t quiet down. In fact, in the very same room, only five months later, another person died, a young bartender named Glenna Haught. She appears to have drank herself to death, and authorities were shocked to learn that the last person she spoke to, less than an hour before she died, was Brandon Grossheim. Authorities asked Brandon: Why did you leave her alone, when she was so close to death? Why do you have scratches all over your arms? Why was Glenna found nearly naked?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Warning, this episode discusses youth depression and suicide. These topics
may be distressing for some listeners. When I first heard
about the Kirksville suicide cluster, I could hardly believe it.
The fact that four young men killed themselves in such
quick succession was incredibly tragic, and the fact that they
(00:24):
all had a friend in common, Brandon Grossheim, was quite eerie.
But in a way, it was the fifth Kirksville death
that was the most shocking to me. While in some
ways it was completely different than the others, in some
ways it wasn't. You might be wondering why we haven't
discussed the fifth death on this podcast yet. Well, for
(00:48):
one thing, that's because it wasn't a suicide, at least
not a suicide in the way we usually think about suicides.
The victim died of liver failure. It seems she drank
herself to death. And she was an outlier in other
ways too. The first four victims all killed themselves by hanging.
(01:10):
They were all guys, many of them knew each other.
But this fifth victim, this young woman, was an outsider.
She had no connection to the Alpha Kapa Lambda fraternity house.
She was not a high flying Truman State student with
a potentially bright future ahead of her.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Her name was Glenna HoTT.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
She was a twenty nine year old bartender and dog trainer,
a down on her luck, troubled soul who'd come to
Kirksville for a fresh start. And yet, despite having a
different background than the other victims, she still managed to
get caught up in the same toxic milieu. In fact,
(01:52):
Glenna died in the same Kirksville apartment as the third
suicide victim, Alex Vote the exact same room, and it
happened just five months after Alex's death. But to me,
the strangest part was what happened just before her death,
because right before she died, and I'm talking like minutes
(02:14):
before her death, she had a bizarre interaction with one
of the apartment building's tenants.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Guess who, Yep, it was Brandon Grossheim.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
This podcast series tells the story of the most infamous
suicide cluster in American history. It's a production of iHeart
Podcasts and Cool Fire Studios. I'm your host Ben Westoff
along with Ryan Crawl.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
This is the Peacemaker.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
I wanted to try to understand Glenna in her situation
to know how she got caught up.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
With Brandon and these tragedies, and so us.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Ryan and I sat down with her father, known as Skip,
and her stepmother named Gayla, who lived in Saint Louis,
where Glenna grew up. They'd of course been grieving since
her death in twenty seventeen, but had never spoken publicly
about Glenna. When we welcomed Skip into our studio, he
(03:20):
seemed overwhelmed. Perhaps it was all the microphones and equipment,
or perhaps it was the fact that someone was finally
invested in his daughter's story. But soon skipping Gala settled
in and talked to us about Glenna's childhood.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Oh, she loved horseback riding. I used to take her
to a place. There was a big stable and riding
grounds here, and she loved that. She loved working. She
worked for kennels around town. Did she bring home strays?
Speaker 2 (03:56):
I just tell me a little bit about her in
high school? Was what was she like as.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
A I guess a teenager?
Speaker 5 (04:02):
Rahambunctious?
Speaker 3 (04:03):
She was a wild child, not in a bad way,
but you know, and she didn't study well.
Speaker 6 (04:13):
And what was the dynamic like between you and your
Glenna's biological mom.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
Oh between me and her mother h very bad. Her
brother was a very bad brother, and her stepfather they
were both alcoholics to the extreme. I mean we all drank,
but not like them, and I think that really shaped
Glenna's outlook on life to some extent.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Glenna's mother died a little while back, so we can't
get her side of the story, but there was chaos
on both sides of Glenna's family. Glenna eventually moved out
on her own and began tending bar in Saint Louis.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Along the way, she.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Developed increasingly severe alcoholism.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
When I knew she was really deeply an alcoholic because
when she started taking a hip flask to work with
her and instead of you know, pouring a drink and
she going in the bathroom and at the hip flask,
she just I can handle it. I don't know what
I'm doing. Her grandmother on her mother's side even paid
(05:28):
for two weeks of rehab. It's some rehab center here
in Saint Louis.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
But it wasn't just alcohol.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
According to a man who would become her boyfriend named
Terry Yardley, Glenna eventually came to Kirksville to try to
beat a different substance abuse problem.
Speaker 7 (05:50):
Lenna was running away from Saint Louis to get away from.
Speaker 8 (05:53):
An addiction that she had there.
Speaker 7 (05:55):
She's addicted to heroin and she wanted to get sober
from it, but was having a hard time doing that
where it was present. Heroin had made its way here yet,
and her friend that lived here was like, hey, you.
Speaker 8 (06:08):
And your old man, come stay down here.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Glenna's old man was her Saint Louis boyfriend named Andrew
Cody Robin. He went by Cody and was a bit
younger than Glenna. They decided to come to Kirksville so
Glenna could get away from heroin. At some point after
moving there, Cody got a job at the Wooden Nickel,
(06:31):
the bar and restaurant that we visited in the last episode.
Glenna got a job there too. Here's their former coworker,
Connor Templeton.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
She worked at the same time as me for a
little bit. She seemed nice and normal. I feel like na.
She might have a beer after a shift and she'd
walk home at the time. I can't remember his name.
I think she had a boyfriend that worked there for
a little bit. They both worked there at the same time.
As me and broke up.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
After Glenna and Cody broke up, Glenna soon got together
with Terry Yardley, a car body technician from Kirksville who
we've been talking to in this series. As Terry describes it,
it was practically love at first sight.
Speaker 7 (07:13):
Abby, my friend at the time, was like, Hey, I
met this chike.
Speaker 8 (07:17):
Did she stayed with my buddy. I think you guys
would really click. You should come meet her. So I
went over there afterward, picked her and Abbey.
Speaker 7 (07:25):
Up and we just went and cruised around and hit
all the back roads because apparently in Saint Louis you
don't get the scenery that you get here is just
all highways.
Speaker 8 (07:34):
So I took her.
Speaker 7 (07:35):
Out some old backroads, showed her the countryside, and then
we really sparked it off.
Speaker 8 (07:40):
Then from that day there was never a day that
we weren't.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
With each other. Terry is quite the character.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
When I first tried reaching out to him, he avoided
me because.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
He thought I was a bill collector.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
He's got a scraggly beard and looks like a Hell's angel.
He also has the chromed out hog to match. In fact,
he's vice president of his motorcycle club. Called the Imperials
and they call him Smokey.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Yep, that's my road name. Okay, nice, So how'd you
wick the nickname?
Speaker 7 (08:13):
Well, I spoke a lot of pot I vape everywhere,
so anywhere I go there's always smoke present, So that's
where that came from.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Terry's actually a super nice guy, very easy to get
along with. In fact, even after he started dating Glenna,
he somehow became buddies with Glenna's old boyfriend Cody. Cody
and Terry hung out all the time. When Cody moved
into the Journal Building apartments, Terry came over and partied
with him and the other people in the building.
Speaker 7 (08:44):
There was like four apartments there, and everybody that lived
there was all good friends.
Speaker 8 (08:49):
So it would always alternate whose room the party was in.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
It would be like.
Speaker 8 (08:56):
Sup decent, just making sure you got clothes on?
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Is that your nack?
Speaker 1 (09:03):
The Journal Building, where Glenna's ex boyfriend Cody lived, is
the seemingly cursed apartment building across the street from the
Wooden Nickel. It's where Brandon Grosheim and so many other
characters from our story lived and where two of the
deaths took place. I first saw it after producer Ryan
(09:24):
and I stumbled out of the Wooden Nickel one night.
I had heard that the apartment building was kind of
a shithole, so I was surprised to see that it's
actually really beautiful on the outside anyway. It's got columns, cornices,
it's listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Of all things.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Still inside the Journal building, it was basically party central,
lot of liquor.
Speaker 7 (09:51):
Every now and then, cocaine, bongs, bowls, joints, blunts.
Speaker 8 (09:57):
It's just whatever we felt like that day. We had
it all.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
So it was in this environment where Terry Yardley met
Brandon Grosheim.
Speaker 7 (10:07):
When Cody, the one that Glenna moved here with, was
living in the Journal Building in those apartments, and I
think him and Brandon worked together, maybe at the Wooden Nickel.
And that's when I met Brandon, because him and Cody
were work buddies, and he came over and would hang out.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
And I asked Terry for his impressions of Brandon.
Speaker 7 (10:32):
I wasn't super crazy about him. I didn't get good
vibes from him. He just seemed kind of shady. I
couldn't really pinpoint what it was about him. I didn't
like or I didn't even know why. I just had
that gut feeling from the first time I met him,
because we didn't really have that many conversations with each other.
(10:55):
It was like we were hanging out at the same place.
He just didn't put up the greatest vibes.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
After Brandon was kicked out of the Alpha Kappa Lambda House,
it was kind of like he moved into the off
campus version of the frat house because just like at
the AKL House, the Journal building offered similar NonStop debauchery.
Here's Dalton McVeigh talking about it. Remember he was Brandon's
(11:22):
friend and former roommate.
Speaker 9 (11:24):
Yeah, most of the people who lived there at the
time were familiar with each other in all being you know,
young twenty somethings. There was a lot of loud music
and drinking and smoking going on.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
What kind of music were people blasted?
Speaker 9 (11:41):
Like hip hop, trap music, a lot of like Kevin Gates.
Speaker 10 (11:46):
Ge Z.
Speaker 8 (11:49):
Khalead was big at the time.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Adding to the mayhem, Kirksville's bar scene was right across
the street with watering holes like the Wooden Nickel and
Tpe's office. This is Terry Yardley.
Speaker 7 (12:03):
We'd party and then even when we weren't their party,
and there was non stop parties going on there because
all the bars are right there by it, Everybody's like.
Speaker 8 (12:12):
Oh dude, my buddies live up here, let's go party.
It's way cheaper to get drunk up here than it
is over there at the bar. So this was just
a good hotspot for everybody.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Inside the Journal building, Terry and the crew would often party.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
In alex votes room.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Alex got really close with the whole crew, Terry, Cody, Brandon, Grossheim,
and others, which is why when Alex died by suicide
in January of twenty seventeen, it hit everyone hard, but
his room didn't stay empty for long. In fact, soon afterwards,
(12:50):
Cody moved in. Now Cody, remember is Glenna Hott's ex boyfriend.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Cody was already.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Living in a different apartment in the in a building,
but after Alex Vote died, he took over Alex's spot.
Speaker 7 (13:06):
After Alex passed, which I don't know how he gets
Stullach doing it, Cody moved into Alex's old room after
Cody had walked in there and seen his best friend hanging.
Speaker 8 (13:17):
Wow, that is crazy.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
I didn't know that he moved into that place.
Speaker 7 (13:21):
Yeah, he moved from down the hall to Alex's old
room because Alex hadd there was more room and it
was a cool little room because.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
There was like an upstairs loft.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
We tried reaching out to Cody to talk to him
about this time, but he never got back to us
in any case. Around this time, Glenna HoTT and her
new boyfriend Terry Yardley were living out in the country
in a small town west of Kirksville called Greencastle.
Speaker 8 (13:49):
We had her dog she just adored like. Its name
was Chile because Glenna was a dog trainer.
Speaker 7 (13:55):
There was quiet, a bit of animals like lived out
down on old gravel road in the middle of nowhere. Yeah,
she loved getting in the car and cruising down the
gravel road and just going sitting on bridges and reading
her books. She loved to read, and she loved to
do it in nature where nobody could bug her.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
I'm sure it was pretty out there, but man, they
were really isolated. Glenna didn't even have a phone at
this point, and simultaneously her problems with alcohol intensified.
Speaker 7 (14:28):
She was talking about wanting to quit drinking, but she
was such a heavy alcoholic that she could not detox
unless she was in a hospital because she would have hallucinations.
So the hospital we went to was the DePaul Hospital
in Saint Louis because they were nonprofit. She ended up
staying there for like a week or two weeks something
(14:49):
like that, and whenever I went to get her, the
doctors pulled me to the side and the like, if
she drinks again, because she's got pancreatitis from this, her
liver's shutting down. We've got her on mids to bypass
her livers so it has time to heal.
Speaker 8 (15:05):
If she drinks again, she will die.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Terry took this warning very seriously. He did everything he
could to try to get Glenna to stop drinking because
he really loved her. He cared for her. He didn't
want her to die. But only about two weeks later,
July third, twenty seventeen, Glenna fell off the wagon.
Speaker 7 (15:31):
I caught her relapsing, tried to nip it in the
butt right then and there, before she actually could consume.
Speaker 8 (15:37):
Enough to kill herself.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
We got mad.
Speaker 8 (15:40):
We got an argument.
Speaker 7 (15:41):
She's like, we're just going to break up, but I'm
going to move back to Saint Louis. This is too
hard on you, you can't do with it.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Terry wasn't going to condone her drinking herself to death,
and so all he could do was agreed to let
her leave. Around noon on July fifth, Terry's dad came
to pick Lena up so she could cool off. He
took her to the apartment of her ex boyfriend Cody,
who is basically the only other person she knew in
(16:10):
the area. But Terry says she didn't completely close the
door on their relationship.
Speaker 7 (16:16):
She called me off my dad's phone because she didn't
have a phone when he dropped her off. She's like,
come see me when you get off work so we
can try to talk this out.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Are like, okay, love you, love you too.
Speaker 8 (16:27):
By five o'clock, hits, I get there.
Speaker 7 (16:31):
Cop cars all around the property, Like that's weird.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
What happened in the four plus hours between when Terry's
dad dropped Glenna off and when she was found dead
is a matter of dispute. We don't know much about
this period right before she died, except for one thing.
Brandon Grosheim was the last person to see her alive.
(17:15):
There's much controversy surrounding Glenna Hott's death. On July fifth,
twenty seventeen. But one thing is clear. When Glenna arrived
to her ex boyfriend Cody's apartment that afternoon, Cody wasn't
actually there. See, the night before, he'd been at a
Fourth of July party at a house on Spring Lake,
(17:36):
about eleven miles southwest of Kirksville. A lot of people
were there, including Brandon Grossheim, and they'd set off fireworks
and partied it up. Many of those party guests, including Cody,
decided to spend the night at the house. Glenna even
tried calling Cody to tell him she was coming to
his place, but out there in the country, his phone
(17:58):
didn't get good recept so it appears Cody didn't even
realize that Glenna had arrived at his apartment. But as
for getting inside the apartment without a key, that was
no problem for Glenna. That's because the apartment door didn't
even have a doorknob. According to a police report, it
had been secured with a T shirt stuffed into the
(18:21):
existing hole to be used as a handle.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
So yeah, that's the kind of place.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
The Journal building was pretty on the outside, a mess
on the inside. In any case, once she arrived, no
one knows for sure what Glenna did inside Cody's apartment
over the next few hours. We do know that police
later found in her purse several medication bottles with her
(18:46):
name on them, and a partial bottle of vodka. The
apartment itself had numerous alcohol bottles throughout, and most were
found empty or partly empty, said the report. Now around
this time, Brandon Grosheim was returning to his apartment across
the hall. Unlike Cody, he hadn't stayed over at the
(19:09):
Fourth of July party. Instead, he'd slept at his girlfriend's place.
Her name was Melissa Russell. Here's Brandon describing to police
his timeline of events.
Speaker 6 (19:22):
I woke up around eleven, me Melissa, and I cleaned
up her apartment, went out to get McDonald's, came back,
cleaned up a little bit more at Washington TV, Brooklyn
ninety nine, and after that I told her I want
to go back to my.
Speaker 10 (19:38):
Place clean out.
Speaker 6 (19:39):
I took a bunch of stuff that over her place
back to mine. My apartment's been a wreck. I don't
have an electus right now, and so I wanted to
reorganize my apartment.
Speaker 10 (19:49):
I'm about halfway down with my laundry.
Speaker 6 (19:51):
I hear a huge thump, and only time I've ever
heard like a thump as big as this. This is
one time that Cody was as a part in with
a girl and he fell out a loft. And so
that's immediately it was My first thought was that, so
I felt I just lost and Cody fell was loft.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Brandon heard a loud noise from Cody's apartment across the hall.
He said, it sounded like someone had fallen out of
the lofted bat This was weird, Brandon added, because he
knew Cody wasn't home.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Still, he went to check it out.
Speaker 10 (20:25):
So I went over there check and there was this girl.
Speaker 6 (20:28):
She was lying on the floor next to the couch,
between like the couch and the ladder, and.
Speaker 10 (20:35):
Then she was holding her head.
Speaker 6 (20:40):
Her head was closer to the door, like with the
doorway leading to the hallway, and.
Speaker 10 (20:45):
She was wincing in pain.
Speaker 6 (20:47):
I was asking if she was okay, and I asked
her she fell aloft and.
Speaker 11 (20:51):
All right, asked her she how she seemed more like,
I don't know, upset with herself for like making much noise,
eating shit.
Speaker 10 (21:04):
She said that she tripped and fell in her head.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
Again.
Speaker 10 (21:10):
I started yell, quote up, is there anything I can
do for you? Is there anything I need for you?
And you know, no, no, I'm okay. She try to
tear up, and you know, she said it looked like
she was getting more upset, and she was like, I
promise you I'm fine.
Speaker 5 (21:25):
Just go.
Speaker 6 (21:25):
I was like, okay, if you knew anything would be
right across the way, or if you kN knock my door,
and just okay, thank you, Okay, I appreciate it, and
I walked out the door.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
The officer asked Brandon if Glenna looked intoxicated. Brandon said no.
When a different officer asked why he didn't call nine
one one, Brandon said it was because Glenna said she
was fine. But did Glenna really tell Brandon she was fine?
And if so, why, after all, she was literally on
(21:59):
the brink of death. According to the police report timeline,
she would be dead within the hour. Glenna Haught's body
(22:29):
was soon discovered by her ex boyfriend Cody. He found
her when he arrived home to his apartment around four
point thirty pm. She was lying on the floor when
he walked in, completely naked except for her underwear.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
He covered her with a towel and called nine to
one one.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Glenna Haught's official cause of death was a ruptured liver.
According to her autopsy, severe acute alcohol intoxication may have
contributed to her death as well. When the police got there,
they arrived to a hell of a scene. Cats scattered,
(23:09):
the apartment was a total mess, Booze and pill bottles
were all over the place, and to top it all off,
a nearly nw dead woman was lying on the floor.
Police immediately noticed she had bruises on her right breast
and her waist.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
The detectives soon learned.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
That Brandon Grosheim had been the last person to see
her alive.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
By now, they must have thought they were in the
movie Groundhog Day.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
As you can imagine, they had all sorts of questions
for him about his interaction with Glenna.
Speaker 10 (23:45):
Was she naked because she was clothed?
Speaker 6 (23:48):
I don't really remember what she was wearing. I was
just a little more concerned about iss shes okay.
Speaker 10 (23:55):
She's heard.
Speaker 12 (23:56):
They don't know if she had pants or surve or
anything on.
Speaker 13 (24:00):
Definitely had a shirt on. She definitely had like clothes.
The police officer at the door asked me what she
was wearing Harver. Just question me real quick.
Speaker 10 (24:10):
We briefly. I've asked that she might have been wearing
like pants and sure.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
The detective then noticed that Brandon had scratches on his arms.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Could there have been a struggle?
Speaker 12 (24:22):
Okay?
Speaker 14 (24:24):
Coo, cooler stuff the scratches. I have three cats they
give me all the time. This one's actually burned from work.
But this one to get one there too.
Speaker 10 (24:40):
That was actually Melissa Quick.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Melissa, remember, was Brandon's girlfriend at the time.
Speaker 12 (24:47):
Okay, so.
Speaker 10 (24:49):
Let's see me.
Speaker 12 (24:51):
At Okay, you careful, I take pictures of that stuff
my hands here.
Speaker 10 (25:01):
Here's what I'm gonna say. I'd just like to ask why.
Speaker 12 (25:03):
Here's what we're doing. I don't know anything about what's
going on over there.
Speaker 10 (25:08):
What I was.
Speaker 12 (25:09):
Told was she may be she may have been naked. Okay,
so that leads us to believe that maybe possibly something online.
Speaker 10 (25:17):
Is that?
Speaker 2 (25:18):
So that's kind of.
Speaker 10 (25:19):
The route I'm going down. You have a problem, let
me do that. I mean I don't, yeah, go for it.
Speaker 12 (25:26):
I mean you didn't have any kind of contact with her,
You didn't touch her, nothing like that, nothing whatsoever. Can
I have your hands platform? What I'm gonna do is
I'm gonna take one of all of you and then
I'll just take a couple of your cat scratch ones.
Speaker 10 (25:42):
And your burn.
Speaker 12 (25:45):
Let you kid turn your hands over for me. And
like I said, I don't know everything's going on, you kid,
turn your hand over.
Speaker 10 (25:54):
Don't get that water shore over there.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Brandon consented to let the detective take pictures of his
scratches and burns, but then when the detective asked for
a DNA sample, Brandon drew the line.
Speaker 12 (26:08):
We have a problem giving us as a DNA sample,
just so in case something is found, we can compare
to make sure it wasn't you. That's completely up to you.
Speaker 6 (26:19):
I like, if you guys do find something, I'm more
wing to provide a sample because I know it.
Speaker 12 (26:26):
Won't be well, okay, And I understand what you're saying.
What I'm saying is if we get the sample, it'll
only be sent in if something's found. It's not like
we'll send.
Speaker 10 (26:36):
It in and then you'll be in the system or
anything like that.
Speaker 12 (26:39):
That makes sense, gotcha, So it will only be used
if something is found. I mean, it's up to you
if you want us to come find you after the
fact and do it that's fine. I don't have a
problem doing that, but I don't want you to thinking
that we're gonna get your sample now and automatically put
you in some some kind of system.
Speaker 10 (26:56):
I got you.
Speaker 6 (26:58):
If all just self preference would be able to find
me when I've guessed her, I'll promise see you on
my full cooperation with it.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
One wonders why Brandon didn't ask for a lawyer, but
the detective ultimately didn't force him to submit a DNA sample.
If you're wondering why Brandon was so reluctant to give
a DNA sample, here's what he told the New Yorker.
I was an underage, alcoholic pothead. I was afraid they
(27:28):
would figure it out. Maybe you find this believable, maybe
you don't. But in either case, it's worth reiterating here
that Brandon was never charged with a crime in Glenna
Hott's death or anyone else's. Out of all of this, though,
there was one detail I found particularly strange. The detail
(27:51):
was this Brandon said he didn't know who Glenna HoTT was.
He claimed not.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
To know her. Bizarre, huh.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
I assume that since they ran in the same circles
and knew many of the same people that they had
to know each other, but he claims they didn't. During
his interview with a Kirksville police detective. This was the
detective who was sometimes confused. At the beginning of their interview,
which took place right after Glenna died, he had no
(28:21):
idea what her name was, so he asked Brandon.
Speaker 12 (28:26):
So, who's the girl that's at the apartment, the.
Speaker 6 (28:30):
One that was found. I want to say her name
is Kara. I'm not really sure if she looks familiar.
I know she's hunted with Cody before, and I didn't
even ask her name or anything. I just knew she
looks familiar. I figured she was one of Cody's friends.
I don't want to be embarrassed, and maybe I gotta
who were you again? And you don't know her, not personally.
Speaker 10 (28:52):
I don't know if like again, I don't know what
her relationship is to Cody. I ad reason watched. I
guess it was Kara. It was because of the fact that.
Speaker 15 (29:05):
Kara is a friend of his who has I want
to see dark skin in druk hair, and I making
he had talked to there last night over the phone,
or at least tried to call her and left her voicemail.
Speaker 10 (29:17):
Of course I might be thinking this, stepsister, I don't
know cos.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
I was this really true that Brandon didn't know Glenna.
Glenna's boyfriend Terry Yardley says no, that Glenna and Brandon
actually did know each other.
Speaker 7 (29:37):
It doesn't make sense that he wouldn't know her name
because we were around there so often, like me and him.
Me and Cody became friends at the same time that
me and Glenna did, so we knew each other for
the same amount of time, and me and her going
over there to hang out whenever he would show up.
There's no way he didn't know who she was, because
(29:57):
if he didn't know who she was, wouldn't he had
back to the a little bit different when he walked
into Cody's apartment and saw somebody he didn't know. Yeah,
there's no way that Brandon didn't know who Glenna was.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
If that's true, then the question becomes why would Brandon lie.
Was it because he thought that if the cops knew
he knew her, this would make him more of a
suspect in her death? Or was it because that after
being close with the four previous suicide victims. Having a
relationship with a fifth person who died would seem beyond
(30:31):
the pale. There's another weird wrinkle here. If Brandon's story
is to be believed, this would be breaking with his pattern,
because with so many other people, Brandon had been acting
like a kind of amateur crisis counselor the peacemaker he
called himself. People said he wouldn't leave them alone when
(30:53):
it came to the subject of their depression. But with Glenna,
he claims not to have inserted himself into the situation.
He asked if she needed help, she said no, and
so he said no worries and just left.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
That's his story.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
That doesn't sound like the guy who claimed he was
a superhero who could help people in bad situations. Glenna
Hott's case leaves many unanswered questions, say Glenna's father and stepmother,
and many of them involved Brandon Grosheim.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
I would like to find out that if she was
alive when the guy supposedly left, and I'd like to
know if that's the case, if he's telling the truth,
why didn't he called nine one. One that has always
(31:52):
boggled my mind.
Speaker 5 (31:54):
If I came across somebody that was obviously that intoxicated
and had taken a bad fall. I don't think I
would just leave, even if they said, don't call what
nine one one, it's you know, I think I would.
Why would you come and check on somebody across the
hall unless it's somebody that you knew, And why when
(32:18):
you found someone in that condition, why would you just
turn around and leave?
Speaker 1 (32:24):
I feel awful for Glenna's family and also for her boyfriend,
Terry Yardley. Glenna had all but told him she didn't
care if she drank herself to death, and there was
nothing he could do about it. Here's some heartbreaking audio
from Terry's police interview right after they broke the news
of her death to him.
Speaker 16 (32:46):
And she had a drinking problem, and I kept trying
to help her get better. And I caught her drinking
again after they told her she was gonna die if
she didn't.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
When did you catch her drinking?
Speaker 10 (32:59):
Yesterday?
Speaker 7 (33:00):
All right?
Speaker 16 (33:00):
Called her on Hyundai and we've been having problems since then.
But last night we called Breake.
Speaker 8 (33:09):
No.
Speaker 16 (33:09):
I was just heading over there just now to figure
out whether we were still together or not.
Speaker 10 (33:17):
I guess uh.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
He remains bitter about the investigation into Glenna's death. He
says initially police wouldn't give him any information about it.
They acted at first like he was the guilty party,
And when I talked to him, he reserved particular animosity
for Brandon Grossheim.
Speaker 7 (33:41):
I better hope I never run into him ever again,
because I have a lot of questions that he'd answered,
But I don't know if I'll let him get to
the point to talk. What would be like some of
the questions you would have for him if you saw
what the fuck happened?
Speaker 8 (33:57):
That would be.
Speaker 7 (33:58):
My and an only question, really, like why didn't you.
Speaker 8 (34:03):
Do more like go back in and check on her again? Maybe?
Like was she in the Where was she at when
you went in there? Was she in the floor?
Speaker 7 (34:12):
Was she standing? Was she upright? Where was she when
you seen her? Like you heard a thud? What state
was she in when you went over there? Like if
she was on the floor, you should have done something
other than my, oh, yep, she said She's good.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
Like Terry Yardley and like Glenna Hawk's family. I wasn't
really satisfied with the investigation of her death. Again, just
too many unanswered questions. It seemed particularly strange to me
that She died in the exact same apartment building where
Alex Vote hung himself, and at both times Brandon Grosheim
(34:50):
was living right across the hallway. I wanted to see
this apartment where the deaths happened to try to get
some answers. Producer Ryan and I contemplated how.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
We might do this.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
We came up with a few different schemes before ultimately
just deciding to go over there and knock on the
door kind.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Of a Hail Mary.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
To our surprise, someone answered and invited us in. That's
next time on the Peacemaker. The Peacemaker is a production
of Cool Fire Studios.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
And iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
It's hosted by me Ben Westoff and Ryan kraull Our.
Executive producers are Jeff Keene, David Johnson, and Steve Lubert.
Music and audio engineering by Brent Johnson. Executive producers for
iHeart Podcasts are.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
Katrina Norvell and Nicki Etour.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
If you are someone you know is having suicidal thoughts,
there are resources available to you. Please call this Suicide
and Crisis Lifeline nine eight eight
Warning, this episode discusses youth depression and suicide. These topics
may be distressing for some listeners. When I first heard
about the Kirksville suicide cluster, I could hardly believe it.
The fact that four young men killed themselves in such
quick succession was incredibly tragic, and the fact that they
(00:24):
all had a friend in common, Brandon Grossheim, was quite eerie.
But in a way, it was the fifth Kirksville death
that was the most shocking to me. While in some
ways it was completely different than the others, in some
ways it wasn't. You might be wondering why we haven't
discussed the fifth death on this podcast yet. Well, for
(00:48):
one thing, that's because it wasn't a suicide, at least
not a suicide in the way we usually think about suicides.
The victim died of liver failure. It seems she drank
herself to death. And she was an outlier in other
ways too. The first four victims all killed themselves by hanging.
(01:10):
They were all guys, many of them knew each other.
But this fifth victim, this young woman, was an outsider.
She had no connection to the Alpha Kapa Lambda fraternity house.
She was not a high flying Truman State student with
a potentially bright future ahead of her.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Her name was Glenna HoTT.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
She was a twenty nine year old bartender and dog trainer,
a down on her luck, troubled soul who'd come to
Kirksville for a fresh start. And yet, despite having a
different background than the other victims, she still managed to
get caught up in the same toxic milieu. In fact,
(01:52):
Glenna died in the same Kirksville apartment as the third
suicide victim, Alex Vote the exact same room, and it
happened just five months after Alex's death. But to me,
the strangest part was what happened just before her death,
because right before she died, and I'm talking like minutes
(02:14):
before her death, she had a bizarre interaction with one
of the apartment building's tenants.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Guess who, Yep, it was Brandon Grossheim.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
This podcast series tells the story of the most infamous
suicide cluster in American history. It's a production of iHeart
Podcasts and Cool Fire Studios. I'm your host Ben Westoff
along with Ryan Crawl.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
This is the Peacemaker.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
I wanted to try to understand Glenna in her situation
to know how she got caught up.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
With Brandon and these tragedies, and so us.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Ryan and I sat down with her father, known as Skip,
and her stepmother named Gayla, who lived in Saint Louis,
where Glenna grew up. They'd of course been grieving since
her death in twenty seventeen, but had never spoken publicly
about Glenna. When we welcomed Skip into our studio, he
(03:20):
seemed overwhelmed. Perhaps it was all the microphones and equipment,
or perhaps it was the fact that someone was finally
invested in his daughter's story. But soon skipping Gala settled
in and talked to us about Glenna's childhood.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Oh, she loved horseback riding. I used to take her
to a place. There was a big stable and riding
grounds here, and she loved that. She loved working. She
worked for kennels around town. Did she bring home strays?
Speaker 2 (03:56):
I just tell me a little bit about her in
high school? Was what was she like as.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
A I guess a teenager?
Speaker 5 (04:02):
Rahambunctious?
Speaker 3 (04:03):
She was a wild child, not in a bad way,
but you know, and she didn't study well.
Speaker 6 (04:13):
And what was the dynamic like between you and your
Glenna's biological mom.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
Oh between me and her mother h very bad. Her
brother was a very bad brother, and her stepfather they
were both alcoholics to the extreme. I mean we all drank,
but not like them, and I think that really shaped
Glenna's outlook on life to some extent.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Glenna's mother died a little while back, so we can't
get her side of the story, but there was chaos
on both sides of Glenna's family. Glenna eventually moved out
on her own and began tending bar in Saint Louis.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Along the way, she.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Developed increasingly severe alcoholism.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
When I knew she was really deeply an alcoholic because
when she started taking a hip flask to work with
her and instead of you know, pouring a drink and
she going in the bathroom and at the hip flask,
she just I can handle it. I don't know what
I'm doing. Her grandmother on her mother's side even paid
(05:28):
for two weeks of rehab. It's some rehab center here
in Saint Louis.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
But it wasn't just alcohol.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
According to a man who would become her boyfriend named
Terry Yardley, Glenna eventually came to Kirksville to try to
beat a different substance abuse problem.
Speaker 7 (05:50):
Lenna was running away from Saint Louis to get away from.
Speaker 8 (05:53):
An addiction that she had there.
Speaker 7 (05:55):
She's addicted to heroin and she wanted to get sober
from it, but was having a hard time doing that
where it was present. Heroin had made its way here yet,
and her friend that lived here was like, hey, you.
Speaker 8 (06:08):
And your old man, come stay down here.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Glenna's old man was her Saint Louis boyfriend named Andrew
Cody Robin. He went by Cody and was a bit
younger than Glenna. They decided to come to Kirksville so
Glenna could get away from heroin. At some point after
moving there, Cody got a job at the Wooden Nickel,
(06:31):
the bar and restaurant that we visited in the last episode.
Glenna got a job there too. Here's their former coworker,
Connor Templeton.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
She worked at the same time as me for a
little bit. She seemed nice and normal. I feel like na.
She might have a beer after a shift and she'd
walk home at the time. I can't remember his name.
I think she had a boyfriend that worked there for
a little bit. They both worked there at the same time.
As me and broke up.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
After Glenna and Cody broke up, Glenna soon got together
with Terry Yardley, a car body technician from Kirksville who
we've been talking to in this series. As Terry describes it,
it was practically love at first sight.
Speaker 7 (07:13):
Abby, my friend at the time, was like, Hey, I
met this chike.
Speaker 8 (07:17):
Did she stayed with my buddy. I think you guys
would really click. You should come meet her. So I
went over there afterward, picked her and Abbey.
Speaker 7 (07:25):
Up and we just went and cruised around and hit
all the back roads because apparently in Saint Louis you
don't get the scenery that you get here is just
all highways.
Speaker 8 (07:34):
So I took her.
Speaker 7 (07:35):
Out some old backroads, showed her the countryside, and then
we really sparked it off.
Speaker 8 (07:40):
Then from that day there was never a day that
we weren't.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
With each other. Terry is quite the character.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
When I first tried reaching out to him, he avoided
me because.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
He thought I was a bill collector.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
He's got a scraggly beard and looks like a Hell's angel.
He also has the chromed out hog to match. In fact,
he's vice president of his motorcycle club. Called the Imperials
and they call him Smokey.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Yep, that's my road name. Okay, nice, So how'd you
wick the nickname?
Speaker 7 (08:13):
Well, I spoke a lot of pot I vape everywhere,
so anywhere I go there's always smoke present, So that's
where that came from.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Terry's actually a super nice guy, very easy to get
along with. In fact, even after he started dating Glenna,
he somehow became buddies with Glenna's old boyfriend Cody. Cody
and Terry hung out all the time. When Cody moved
into the Journal Building apartments, Terry came over and partied
with him and the other people in the building.
Speaker 7 (08:44):
There was like four apartments there, and everybody that lived
there was all good friends.
Speaker 8 (08:49):
So it would always alternate whose room the party was in.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
It would be like.
Speaker 8 (08:56):
Sup decent, just making sure you got clothes on?
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Is that your nack?
Speaker 1 (09:03):
The Journal Building, where Glenna's ex boyfriend Cody lived, is
the seemingly cursed apartment building across the street from the
Wooden Nickel. It's where Brandon Grosheim and so many other
characters from our story lived and where two of the
deaths took place. I first saw it after producer Ryan
(09:24):
and I stumbled out of the Wooden Nickel one night.
I had heard that the apartment building was kind of
a shithole, so I was surprised to see that it's
actually really beautiful on the outside anyway. It's got columns, cornices,
it's listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Of all things.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Still inside the Journal building, it was basically party central,
lot of liquor.
Speaker 7 (09:51):
Every now and then, cocaine, bongs, bowls, joints, blunts.
Speaker 8 (09:57):
It's just whatever we felt like that day. We had
it all.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
So it was in this environment where Terry Yardley met
Brandon Grosheim.
Speaker 7 (10:07):
When Cody, the one that Glenna moved here with, was
living in the Journal Building in those apartments, and I
think him and Brandon worked together, maybe at the Wooden Nickel.
And that's when I met Brandon, because him and Cody
were work buddies, and he came over and would hang out.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
And I asked Terry for his impressions of Brandon.
Speaker 7 (10:32):
I wasn't super crazy about him. I didn't get good
vibes from him. He just seemed kind of shady. I
couldn't really pinpoint what it was about him. I didn't
like or I didn't even know why. I just had
that gut feeling from the first time I met him,
because we didn't really have that many conversations with each other.
(10:55):
It was like we were hanging out at the same place.
He just didn't put up the greatest vibes.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
After Brandon was kicked out of the Alpha Kappa Lambda House,
it was kind of like he moved into the off
campus version of the frat house because just like at
the AKL House, the Journal building offered similar NonStop debauchery.
Here's Dalton McVeigh talking about it. Remember he was Brandon's
(11:22):
friend and former roommate.
Speaker 9 (11:24):
Yeah, most of the people who lived there at the
time were familiar with each other in all being you know,
young twenty somethings. There was a lot of loud music
and drinking and smoking going on.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
What kind of music were people blasted?
Speaker 9 (11:41):
Like hip hop, trap music, a lot of like Kevin Gates.
Speaker 10 (11:46):
Ge Z.
Speaker 8 (11:49):
Khalead was big at the time.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Adding to the mayhem, Kirksville's bar scene was right across
the street with watering holes like the Wooden Nickel and
Tpe's office. This is Terry Yardley.
Speaker 7 (12:03):
We'd party and then even when we weren't their party,
and there was non stop parties going on there because
all the bars are right there by it, Everybody's like.
Speaker 8 (12:12):
Oh dude, my buddies live up here, let's go party.
It's way cheaper to get drunk up here than it
is over there at the bar. So this was just
a good hotspot for everybody.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Inside the Journal building, Terry and the crew would often party.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
In alex votes room.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Alex got really close with the whole crew, Terry, Cody, Brandon, Grossheim,
and others, which is why when Alex died by suicide
in January of twenty seventeen, it hit everyone hard, but
his room didn't stay empty for long. In fact, soon afterwards,
(12:50):
Cody moved in. Now Cody, remember is Glenna Hott's ex boyfriend.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Cody was already.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Living in a different apartment in the in a building,
but after Alex Vote died, he took over Alex's spot.
Speaker 7 (13:06):
After Alex passed, which I don't know how he gets
Stullach doing it, Cody moved into Alex's old room after
Cody had walked in there and seen his best friend hanging.
Speaker 8 (13:17):
Wow, that is crazy.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
I didn't know that he moved into that place.
Speaker 7 (13:21):
Yeah, he moved from down the hall to Alex's old
room because Alex hadd there was more room and it
was a cool little room because.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
There was like an upstairs loft.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
We tried reaching out to Cody to talk to him
about this time, but he never got back to us
in any case. Around this time, Glenna HoTT and her
new boyfriend Terry Yardley were living out in the country
in a small town west of Kirksville called Greencastle.
Speaker 8 (13:49):
We had her dog she just adored like. Its name
was Chile because Glenna was a dog trainer.
Speaker 7 (13:55):
There was quiet, a bit of animals like lived out
down on old gravel road in the middle of nowhere. Yeah,
she loved getting in the car and cruising down the
gravel road and just going sitting on bridges and reading
her books. She loved to read, and she loved to
do it in nature where nobody could bug her.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
I'm sure it was pretty out there, but man, they
were really isolated. Glenna didn't even have a phone at
this point, and simultaneously her problems with alcohol intensified.
Speaker 7 (14:28):
She was talking about wanting to quit drinking, but she
was such a heavy alcoholic that she could not detox
unless she was in a hospital because she would have hallucinations.
So the hospital we went to was the DePaul Hospital
in Saint Louis because they were nonprofit. She ended up
staying there for like a week or two weeks something
(14:49):
like that, and whenever I went to get her, the
doctors pulled me to the side and the like, if
she drinks again, because she's got pancreatitis from this, her
liver's shutting down. We've got her on mids to bypass
her livers so it has time to heal.
Speaker 8 (15:05):
If she drinks again, she will die.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Terry took this warning very seriously. He did everything he
could to try to get Glenna to stop drinking because
he really loved her. He cared for her. He didn't
want her to die. But only about two weeks later,
July third, twenty seventeen, Glenna fell off the wagon.
Speaker 7 (15:31):
I caught her relapsing, tried to nip it in the
butt right then and there, before she actually could consume.
Speaker 8 (15:37):
Enough to kill herself.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
We got mad.
Speaker 8 (15:40):
We got an argument.
Speaker 7 (15:41):
She's like, we're just going to break up, but I'm
going to move back to Saint Louis. This is too
hard on you, you can't do with it.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Terry wasn't going to condone her drinking herself to death,
and so all he could do was agreed to let
her leave. Around noon on July fifth, Terry's dad came
to pick Lena up so she could cool off. He
took her to the apartment of her ex boyfriend Cody,
who is basically the only other person she knew in
(16:10):
the area. But Terry says she didn't completely close the
door on their relationship.
Speaker 7 (16:16):
She called me off my dad's phone because she didn't
have a phone when he dropped her off. She's like,
come see me when you get off work so we
can try to talk this out.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Are like, okay, love you, love you too.
Speaker 8 (16:27):
By five o'clock, hits, I get there.
Speaker 7 (16:31):
Cop cars all around the property, Like that's weird.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
What happened in the four plus hours between when Terry's
dad dropped Glenna off and when she was found dead
is a matter of dispute. We don't know much about
this period right before she died, except for one thing.
Brandon Grosheim was the last person to see her alive.
(17:15):
There's much controversy surrounding Glenna Hott's death. On July fifth,
twenty seventeen. But one thing is clear. When Glenna arrived
to her ex boyfriend Cody's apartment that afternoon, Cody wasn't
actually there. See, the night before, he'd been at a
Fourth of July party at a house on Spring Lake,
(17:36):
about eleven miles southwest of Kirksville. A lot of people
were there, including Brandon Grossheim, and they'd set off fireworks
and partied it up. Many of those party guests, including Cody,
decided to spend the night at the house. Glenna even
tried calling Cody to tell him she was coming to
his place, but out there in the country, his phone
(17:58):
didn't get good recept so it appears Cody didn't even
realize that Glenna had arrived at his apartment. But as
for getting inside the apartment without a key, that was
no problem for Glenna. That's because the apartment door didn't
even have a doorknob. According to a police report, it
had been secured with a T shirt stuffed into the
(18:21):
existing hole to be used as a handle.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
So yeah, that's the kind of place.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
The Journal building was pretty on the outside, a mess
on the inside. In any case, once she arrived, no
one knows for sure what Glenna did inside Cody's apartment
over the next few hours. We do know that police
later found in her purse several medication bottles with her
(18:46):
name on them, and a partial bottle of vodka. The
apartment itself had numerous alcohol bottles throughout, and most were
found empty or partly empty, said the report. Now around
this time, Brandon Grosheim was returning to his apartment across
the hall. Unlike Cody, he hadn't stayed over at the
(19:09):
Fourth of July party. Instead, he'd slept at his girlfriend's place.
Her name was Melissa Russell. Here's Brandon describing to police
his timeline of events.
Speaker 6 (19:22):
I woke up around eleven, me Melissa, and I cleaned
up her apartment, went out to get McDonald's, came back,
cleaned up a little bit more at Washington TV, Brooklyn
ninety nine, and after that I told her I want
to go back to my.
Speaker 10 (19:38):
Place clean out.
Speaker 6 (19:39):
I took a bunch of stuff that over her place
back to mine. My apartment's been a wreck. I don't
have an electus right now, and so I wanted to
reorganize my apartment.
Speaker 10 (19:49):
I'm about halfway down with my laundry.
Speaker 6 (19:51):
I hear a huge thump, and only time I've ever
heard like a thump as big as this. This is
one time that Cody was as a part in with
a girl and he fell out a loft. And so
that's immediately it was My first thought was that, so
I felt I just lost and Cody fell was loft.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Brandon heard a loud noise from Cody's apartment across the hall.
He said, it sounded like someone had fallen out of
the lofted bat This was weird, Brandon added, because he
knew Cody wasn't home.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Still, he went to check it out.
Speaker 10 (20:25):
So I went over there check and there was this girl.
Speaker 6 (20:28):
She was lying on the floor next to the couch,
between like the couch and the ladder, and.
Speaker 10 (20:35):
Then she was holding her head.
Speaker 6 (20:40):
Her head was closer to the door, like with the
doorway leading to the hallway, and.
Speaker 10 (20:45):
She was wincing in pain.
Speaker 6 (20:47):
I was asking if she was okay, and I asked
her she fell aloft and.
Speaker 11 (20:51):
All right, asked her she how she seemed more like,
I don't know, upset with herself for like making much noise,
eating shit.
Speaker 10 (21:04):
She said that she tripped and fell in her head.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
Again.
Speaker 10 (21:10):
I started yell, quote up, is there anything I can
do for you? Is there anything I need for you?
And you know, no, no, I'm okay. She try to
tear up, and you know, she said it looked like
she was getting more upset, and she was like, I
promise you I'm fine.
Speaker 5 (21:25):
Just go.
Speaker 6 (21:25):
I was like, okay, if you knew anything would be
right across the way, or if you kN knock my door,
and just okay, thank you, Okay, I appreciate it, and
I walked out the door.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
The officer asked Brandon if Glenna looked intoxicated. Brandon said no.
When a different officer asked why he didn't call nine
one one, Brandon said it was because Glenna said she
was fine. But did Glenna really tell Brandon she was fine?
And if so, why, after all, she was literally on
(21:59):
the brink of death. According to the police report timeline,
she would be dead within the hour. Glenna Haught's body
(22:29):
was soon discovered by her ex boyfriend Cody. He found
her when he arrived home to his apartment around four
point thirty pm. She was lying on the floor when
he walked in, completely naked except for her underwear.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
He covered her with a towel and called nine to
one one.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Glenna Haught's official cause of death was a ruptured liver.
According to her autopsy, severe acute alcohol intoxication may have
contributed to her death as well. When the police got there,
they arrived to a hell of a scene. Cats scattered,
(23:09):
the apartment was a total mess, Booze and pill bottles
were all over the place, and to top it all off,
a nearly nw dead woman was lying on the floor.
Police immediately noticed she had bruises on her right breast
and her waist.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
The detectives soon learned.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
That Brandon Grosheim had been the last person to see
her alive.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
By now, they must have thought they were in the
movie Groundhog Day.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
As you can imagine, they had all sorts of questions
for him about his interaction with Glenna.
Speaker 10 (23:45):
Was she naked because she was clothed?
Speaker 6 (23:48):
I don't really remember what she was wearing. I was
just a little more concerned about iss shes okay.
Speaker 10 (23:55):
She's heard.
Speaker 12 (23:56):
They don't know if she had pants or surve or
anything on.
Speaker 13 (24:00):
Definitely had a shirt on. She definitely had like clothes.
The police officer at the door asked me what she
was wearing Harver. Just question me real quick.
Speaker 10 (24:10):
We briefly. I've asked that she might have been wearing
like pants and sure.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
The detective then noticed that Brandon had scratches on his arms.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Could there have been a struggle?
Speaker 12 (24:22):
Okay?
Speaker 14 (24:24):
Coo, cooler stuff the scratches. I have three cats they
give me all the time. This one's actually burned from work.
But this one to get one there too.
Speaker 10 (24:40):
That was actually Melissa Quick.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Melissa, remember, was Brandon's girlfriend at the time.
Speaker 12 (24:47):
Okay, so.
Speaker 10 (24:49):
Let's see me.
Speaker 12 (24:51):
At Okay, you careful, I take pictures of that stuff
my hands here.
Speaker 10 (25:01):
Here's what I'm gonna say. I'd just like to ask why.
Speaker 12 (25:03):
Here's what we're doing. I don't know anything about what's
going on over there.
Speaker 10 (25:08):
What I was.
Speaker 12 (25:09):
Told was she may be she may have been naked. Okay,
so that leads us to believe that maybe possibly something online.
Speaker 10 (25:17):
Is that?
Speaker 2 (25:18):
So that's kind of.
Speaker 10 (25:19):
The route I'm going down. You have a problem, let
me do that. I mean I don't, yeah, go for it.
Speaker 12 (25:26):
I mean you didn't have any kind of contact with her,
You didn't touch her, nothing like that, nothing whatsoever. Can
I have your hands platform? What I'm gonna do is
I'm gonna take one of all of you and then
I'll just take a couple of your cat scratch ones.
Speaker 10 (25:42):
And your burn.
Speaker 12 (25:45):
Let you kid turn your hands over for me. And
like I said, I don't know everything's going on, you kid,
turn your hand over.
Speaker 10 (25:54):
Don't get that water shore over there.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Brandon consented to let the detective take pictures of his
scratches and burns, but then when the detective asked for
a DNA sample, Brandon drew the line.
Speaker 12 (26:08):
We have a problem giving us as a DNA sample,
just so in case something is found, we can compare
to make sure it wasn't you. That's completely up to you.
Speaker 6 (26:19):
I like, if you guys do find something, I'm more
wing to provide a sample because I know it.
Speaker 12 (26:26):
Won't be well, okay, And I understand what you're saying.
What I'm saying is if we get the sample, it'll
only be sent in if something's found. It's not like
we'll send.
Speaker 10 (26:36):
It in and then you'll be in the system or
anything like that.
Speaker 12 (26:39):
That makes sense, gotcha, So it will only be used
if something is found. I mean, it's up to you
if you want us to come find you after the
fact and do it that's fine. I don't have a
problem doing that, but I don't want you to thinking
that we're gonna get your sample now and automatically put
you in some some kind of system.
Speaker 10 (26:56):
I got you.
Speaker 6 (26:58):
If all just self preference would be able to find
me when I've guessed her, I'll promise see you on
my full cooperation with it.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
One wonders why Brandon didn't ask for a lawyer, but
the detective ultimately didn't force him to submit a DNA sample.
If you're wondering why Brandon was so reluctant to give
a DNA sample, here's what he told the New Yorker.
I was an underage, alcoholic pothead. I was afraid they
(27:28):
would figure it out. Maybe you find this believable, maybe
you don't. But in either case, it's worth reiterating here
that Brandon was never charged with a crime in Glenna
Hott's death or anyone else's. Out of all of this, though,
there was one detail I found particularly strange. The detail
(27:51):
was this Brandon said he didn't know who Glenna HoTT was.
He claimed not.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
To know her. Bizarre, huh.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
I assume that since they ran in the same circles
and knew many of the same people that they had
to know each other, but he claims they didn't. During
his interview with a Kirksville police detective. This was the
detective who was sometimes confused. At the beginning of their interview,
which took place right after Glenna died, he had no
(28:21):
idea what her name was, so he asked Brandon.
Speaker 12 (28:26):
So, who's the girl that's at the apartment, the.
Speaker 6 (28:30):
One that was found. I want to say her name
is Kara. I'm not really sure if she looks familiar.
I know she's hunted with Cody before, and I didn't
even ask her name or anything. I just knew she
looks familiar. I figured she was one of Cody's friends.
I don't want to be embarrassed, and maybe I gotta
who were you again? And you don't know her, not personally.
Speaker 10 (28:52):
I don't know if like again, I don't know what
her relationship is to Cody. I ad reason watched. I
guess it was Kara. It was because of the fact that.
Speaker 15 (29:05):
Kara is a friend of his who has I want
to see dark skin in druk hair, and I making
he had talked to there last night over the phone,
or at least tried to call her and left her voicemail.
Speaker 10 (29:17):
Of course I might be thinking this, stepsister, I don't
know cos.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
I was this really true that Brandon didn't know Glenna.
Glenna's boyfriend Terry Yardley says no, that Glenna and Brandon
actually did know each other.
Speaker 7 (29:37):
It doesn't make sense that he wouldn't know her name
because we were around there so often, like me and him.
Me and Cody became friends at the same time that
me and Glenna did, so we knew each other for
the same amount of time, and me and her going
over there to hang out whenever he would show up.
There's no way he didn't know who she was, because
(29:57):
if he didn't know who she was, wouldn't he had
back to the a little bit different when he walked
into Cody's apartment and saw somebody he didn't know. Yeah,
there's no way that Brandon didn't know who Glenna was.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
If that's true, then the question becomes why would Brandon lie.
Was it because he thought that if the cops knew
he knew her, this would make him more of a
suspect in her death? Or was it because that after
being close with the four previous suicide victims. Having a
relationship with a fifth person who died would seem beyond
(30:31):
the pale. There's another weird wrinkle here. If Brandon's story
is to be believed, this would be breaking with his pattern,
because with so many other people, Brandon had been acting
like a kind of amateur crisis counselor the peacemaker he
called himself. People said he wouldn't leave them alone when
(30:53):
it came to the subject of their depression. But with Glenna,
he claims not to have inserted himself into the situation.
He asked if she needed help, she said no, and
so he said no worries and just left.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
That's his story.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
That doesn't sound like the guy who claimed he was
a superhero who could help people in bad situations. Glenna
Hott's case leaves many unanswered questions, say Glenna's father and stepmother,
and many of them involved Brandon Grosheim.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
I would like to find out that if she was
alive when the guy supposedly left, and I'd like to
know if that's the case, if he's telling the truth,
why didn't he called nine one. One that has always
(31:52):
boggled my mind.
Speaker 5 (31:54):
If I came across somebody that was obviously that intoxicated
and had taken a bad fall. I don't think I
would just leave, even if they said, don't call what
nine one one, it's you know, I think I would.
Why would you come and check on somebody across the
hall unless it's somebody that you knew, And why when
(32:18):
you found someone in that condition, why would you just
turn around and leave?
Speaker 1 (32:24):
I feel awful for Glenna's family and also for her boyfriend,
Terry Yardley. Glenna had all but told him she didn't
care if she drank herself to death, and there was
nothing he could do about it. Here's some heartbreaking audio
from Terry's police interview right after they broke the news
of her death to him.
Speaker 16 (32:46):
And she had a drinking problem, and I kept trying
to help her get better. And I caught her drinking
again after they told her she was gonna die if
she didn't.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
When did you catch her drinking?
Speaker 10 (32:59):
Yesterday?
Speaker 7 (33:00):
All right?
Speaker 16 (33:00):
Called her on Hyundai and we've been having problems since then.
But last night we called Breake.
Speaker 8 (33:09):
No.
Speaker 16 (33:09):
I was just heading over there just now to figure
out whether we were still together or not.
Speaker 10 (33:17):
I guess uh.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
He remains bitter about the investigation into Glenna's death. He
says initially police wouldn't give him any information about it.
They acted at first like he was the guilty party,
And when I talked to him, he reserved particular animosity
for Brandon Grossheim.
Speaker 7 (33:41):
I better hope I never run into him ever again,
because I have a lot of questions that he'd answered,
But I don't know if I'll let him get to
the point to talk. What would be like some of
the questions you would have for him if you saw
what the fuck happened?
Speaker 8 (33:57):
That would be.
Speaker 7 (33:58):
My and an only question, really, like why didn't you.
Speaker 8 (34:03):
Do more like go back in and check on her again? Maybe?
Like was she in the Where was she at when
you went in there? Was she in the floor?
Speaker 7 (34:12):
Was she standing? Was she upright? Where was she when
you seen her? Like you heard a thud? What state
was she in when you went over there? Like if
she was on the floor, you should have done something
other than my, oh, yep, she said She's good.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
Like Terry Yardley and like Glenna Hawk's family. I wasn't
really satisfied with the investigation of her death. Again, just
too many unanswered questions. It seemed particularly strange to me
that She died in the exact same apartment building where
Alex Vote hung himself, and at both times Brandon Grosheim
(34:50):
was living right across the hallway. I wanted to see
this apartment where the deaths happened to try to get
some answers. Producer Ryan and I contemplated how.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
We might do this.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
We came up with a few different schemes before ultimately
just deciding to go over there and knock on the
door kind.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
Of a Hail Mary.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
To our surprise, someone answered and invited us in. That's
next time on the Peacemaker. The Peacemaker is a production
of Cool Fire Studios.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
And iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
It's hosted by me Ben Westoff and Ryan kraull Our.
Executive producers are Jeff Keene, David Johnson, and Steve Lubert.
Music and audio engineering by Brent Johnson. Executive producers for
iHeart Podcasts are.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
Katrina Norvell and Nicki Etour.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
If you are someone you know is having suicidal thoughts,
there are resources available to you. Please call this Suicide
and Crisis Lifeline nine eight eight
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