June 11, 2025 • 35 mins
Uncovering an incident in Wisconsin from 2014 sends Jess chasing a new set of questions. But as COVID stretches into the fall of 2020, the official investigation slows to a standstill…until a momentous discovery.
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Ricinus communis is an exotic perennial plant with oversized purplish leaves,
bulbous seed pods, and blooms in various striking colors. It's
a pretty plant, often grown in decorative gardens. The seeds,
called castor beans, which are about the size of a peanut,
can be pressed into castor oil, which has several uses
(00:32):
as a preservative in food and an ingredient in cosmetic products.
But the seeds are probably more famously known for their
lethal nature, as they contain a toxin risin that can
kill even in small amounts. As this poison can be
manufactured at home, it's a popular choice for would be assassins.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Cruise and hazmat suits are seen entering a male facility
near washing after letters sent to President Barack Obama and
a Mississippi senator test positive for risin.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
The FBI is also investigating letters sent to the Pentagon
that tested positive for the deadly poison ricin.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
The details of an arrest at the Canada US border
of a person suspected of sending a letter containing a
deadly poison to Donald Trump's White House.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Despite their potential for deadly use, you can legally buy
Castban's online or in a gardening store, and if you
happen upon them by accident, it's likely you wouldn't recognize
the fatal power they contain.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Investigator Elliot located a small firebox safe in one of
the bedroom closets.
Speaker 5 (01:43):
Corey states she.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Does not have a key for it and it hasn't
been opened in probably ten years.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Detective Weber noted that during one of the searches of
Teleina and Corey's house, the investigator stumbled on a small safe.
Corey insists that the safe can't be opened, but Weber
is not so easily deterred.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
I located several sets of keys hanging in the closet
by the front door. The first key I tried opened
the safe. The findings inside the safe were extremely significant.
Inside the safe, among other things, were three small packages
of bubble wrap. Inside the packages were castor beans and
(02:26):
seeds to grow castor beans, specifically Ricinus communists.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
The police can't take the beans, they aren't included in
the search warrant, but they can take Corey's computers, and
in one of them they find a Microsoft word file
created in twenty twelve titled making Risin from iHeart podcasts.
(03:13):
I'm Melissa Jelson, and this is what happened to Telenazar.
Speaker 6 (03:18):
And I slung open the door and me and Rachel
standing there, and she goes, oh my god, this thing
sounds like bath.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Well, the only reason it has to do with anything
is just because my understanding it was there one day
and now it's not.
Speaker 6 (03:33):
She goes, well, Corey butchered that thing, and I'm like
what she said. Yeah, she ket that horse up in
tiny little pieces and dumped it out for the kayadt.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
He rope was fucking hell, what's going on here? We
thought we thought we had her.
Speaker 7 (03:51):
My husband and I spent every penny we had to
move to his confident and we went through a tough
time where we didn't have much money.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Episode seven, Safe Tell me when you first learned about
what had happened in Wisconsin.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
She had been involved in a robbery. That's how she
got her felony.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Early on in Jess's investigation, she doesn't know much about
Corey's past criminal conviction, just that she had one in
Wisconsin in twenty fourteen, until a woman named Sherry Ziegler
joins the Justice for Teleina Facebook group.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
And then Sherry told me the exact story of what
had happened.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Sherry and her husband Michael lived still live in Middleton, Wisconsin.
It's a suburb of Madison, a friendly place, according to
its motto, the good neighbor City. Cherry said, for the
first twenty years they lived there, they never really locked
their doors, but that all starts to change when the
(04:58):
Zieglers get back from a trip to Florida at the
end of March twenty fourteen. It's then that they experience
a series of strange and unexplained events. First, they come
home to a mess, a bunch of unidentified debris spread
inside their house. In the hallways and in their bedroom,
(05:21):
they find what looks like small pebbles or crumbled sheet rock.
It's also in their bed, under the covers, and inside
Sherry's underwear and sock drawer.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
She said it looked like kitty litter on her bed,
her pillow, all over her dresser. Yeah, she called it
kitty litter.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
The couple are exhausted, and since nothing else appears disturbed,
they've write it off as a weird prank. They unpack,
return their travel money to their safe, sweep the weird
pebbles out of their sheets go to bed. A month
passes without incident, and then one night, Mike goes to
(06:02):
get some items from the safe in their bedroom closet
and finds the safe's not there. Shery tells Jess it
was filled with the usual valuables.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
It was like a thousand dollars worth of cash. The
deed to their house like a bunch of important stuff
that you've keep in a safe.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Right this time, the Zieglers call the police. A deputy
comes by, makes a report, and begins an investigation, but
without any leads or evidence, the case goes stale. And
then a month after that, Cherry gets a credit card
statement in the mail. It's from a card she never activated,
(06:44):
and it's only now she realizes it's missing from where
she left it in a dish on the kitchen counter.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
A credit card bill had come in the mail for
a credit card she knew she had not opened yet,
and that's what led her to check the statement find
out where the money was spent.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
And Sherry calls the credit card company and they tell
her that the card was activated a few weeks earlier
from the landline inside her home. She knows she didn't
activate it, so who did. Looking at the charges on
her statement, she recognizes some of the businesses where the
card was used. Among them is the gas station down
(07:23):
the road. So much like Jess would, I imagine, Cherry
heads over to the quick trip and demands to see
the video footage of the transaction.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Her and her little self, which I can attest to
at this point is maybe one hundred and twenty pounds
of older lady. She's a wonderful human. I really like Sherry,
but she's anybody little thing going down there asking for
receipts and videos. And I mean Biddleton and Verona is
pretty small so and she's lived there a long time,
(07:55):
so she had a couple relationships and wasn't afraid to
go up and say, hey, I want to look at
this video.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
And who does Sherry see using the card issued in
her name? Her neighbor, Corey Shehry told Jess that Corey
and her husband Alec had moved in next door a
few months earlier, and from the beginning it had been
a tense relationship.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
She said it was always just an uncomfortable dynamic, that
her and Corey never really hit it off at all,
but Mike and Corey seem to have some kind of
like neighborly relationship.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Sherry reports her discovery to the police, and later that
day they arrest Corey.
Speaker 8 (08:39):
I began by asking Corey if she was aware that
her neighbor to the direct north had been burglarized, to
which she said yes.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Well, Sherry wasn't able to listen in on the conversation
between Corey and the arresting officers. I was able to
obtain the police report, which goes into detail about this
interaction as well as their full investigation. You're about to
hear re enacted selections of the police report.
Speaker 8 (09:04):
I began to show Corey Adams the still photographs of
the suspect inside the Quick Trip located on West Mineral
Point Road. I asked Corey if she recognized the subject
in the photograph, from which she said, it sure looks
like me, It sure looks like me. I then showed
Corey Adams the photograph of the vehicle buying gas at
the Quick Trip on East Varona Avenue and asked her
if that was the vehicle which was sitting in her driveway,
(09:25):
which she said yes, yes. I again asked Corey Adams
if she knew anything about the crimes committed against her
direct next door neighbor Michael and Sharon Ziegler, and she
again said no, no. As I continued to question Corey Adams,
she said, I'm racking my brain trying to make sense
of this.
Speaker 5 (09:41):
I'm racking my brain trying to make sense of this.
Speaker 8 (09:45):
I informed Corey Adams that the evidence against her at
this point was very incriminating and that if she had
any involvement with this crime, now is the time to
tell me the truth.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Corey continues to say she doesn't know anything about any
crimes committed against her name. Corey is later charged with
four counts of fraudulent use of a credit card. However,
the police are never able to connect Corey to the
missing safe or find proof that she entered the Ziegler's
(10:15):
house illegally. Here's Jess again.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Sherry insists that Corey was in her home, and she's
convinced that she had to come in the house gotten
a letter because it had to be done from her phone.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
In court, Corey ultimately takes a plea bargain, admitting to
one count of fraudulently using a credit card. She denies
stealing it, though instead she claims she simply found the
activated credit card outside on the ground and decided to
use it. Judge William E. Hanrahan is skeptical. Here's a
(10:50):
reenactment of some of his comments in court.
Speaker 9 (10:53):
All right, so somebody else had access, got into the
house and took the time to use that home phone
to activate the credit card, and somehow had access to
the last port digits of the victim's social Security number,
and took all these affirmative steps, but didn't have the
wherewithal to hang on to the card when they left
the house. And your client just happened to pick up
(11:15):
that exact, same, newly activated card and had the lapse
of judgment enough to stick it in her pocket and
go and use it on several occasions. Is that the story?
Speaker 1 (11:27):
The judge doesn't buy Corey's explanation, and neither do the Zieglers.
Even though she pleads guilty, they still have so many questions.
Here's the recreation of parts of Sherry's victim impact statement
that was read in court.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
This defendant is being charged and convicted of the fraudulent
use of my credit card, but the underlying concern is
so much greater than that.
Speaker 5 (11:51):
It is this how did she get my credit card?
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Sherry explains that she spoke with the credit card company
and they were able to pinpoint the exact time and
date that the credit card was activated.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
We left our house at six point thirty that night
and the card was activated at seven o'clock the same night.
The credit card was activated from our home phone, and
the credit card company reported that it was activated by
a woman.
Speaker 5 (12:18):
That woman knew.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
The last four digits of my social security number.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Cherry tells the judge she believes the woman is her
next door neighbor, Corey.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
It seems so very obvious to us all that she
was in our home while she knew we were gone.
She found the new credit card sitting on the kitchen counter,
She used our phone to activate it, and then she
was seen using the credit card Shortly after that, she
is seen on video using my credit card.
Speaker 5 (12:48):
She used it multiple times.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
Judge, I wish there was a way you could compel
Corey to tell you and us how she got my
credit card number. We just want her to admit that
it was her who stole it. At least then we
would know who was in our house that night.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Sherry reminds the judge that this incident was not the
first intrusion into their home.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
When we returned from a trip to Florida in March,
we came home to stuff, kitty litter or broken sheet
rock material scattered throughout our house, especially on my side
of the bed and in my underwear drawer. This was
very personal and I felt particularly scared.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
And then there's the issue of the stolen safe, the
valuables that were never recovered, and no one was held
accountable for all of it. Was taking a toll on
Sherry and Mike. So much for the good neighbor city.
Speaker 5 (13:44):
Do we feel safe living next door to Corey? No?
Speaker 4 (13:48):
Do our neighbors feel safe after our house was broken into? No,
none of us feel safe anymore. We are good, law
abiding people, and we have to live being afraid of
our nigh This is no way to live.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
The judge has some choice words for Corey before she leaves.
Speaker 9 (14:10):
Now, I've been told that you've been punished enough by
a conviction for this crime. I'm not feeling it. Honestly.
I find this to be an aggravated offense. I don't
know why, at age fifty two that this seemed like
a good thing to do in fact, I don't really
know the depth of what you've done. The most troubling
(14:31):
aspect of this whole string of events here is that
it wasn't against a major corporation. It's not against a stranger.
It's against your neighbor. This is of biblical proportions. These
are people who should have been able to trust you.
It strikes at the very heart of an individual's sense
of security, their sense of well being, their sense of belonging.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Corey is sentenced to two years probation in order to
build a privacy fence between their two properties. The judge
goes on to Warren Corey that her life is at
a crossroads and it could easily be headed in the
wrong direction.
Speaker 9 (15:13):
You've got to know that what you've done is extremely wrong.
You've got to know that somehow, somewhere along the way
you slip the tracks. You have to figure out what
went wrong, and you have to fix it.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Five years later, Corey is sitting in a small interview
room in the Wagner County Sheriff's office answering questions about Tealina,
and when Detective Weber asks about Corey's criminal history, she
tells him a very different story. Than she told police
in Wisconsin in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Somebody brought up at some point that you were charged
with something and I don't remember what state.
Speaker 7 (15:56):
Wisconsin or in Wisconsin, Wisconsin. Yes, So what happened in
a nutshell my husband's.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Version, she's the victim. She tells Weber that she had
befriended Mike Ziegler and he had helped her out financially
during a rough patch. Corey says Mike offered her his
wife's credit card to use for essentials like gas and groceries,
and he said she could pay him back whenever she
got the chance.
Speaker 7 (16:26):
Well, the wife was jealous of him and I for
no reason, and she had a canary and she pressed charges.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Weber doesn't take Corey's story at face value. Instead, the
Wagner County Sheriff's office reaches out to authorities in Wisconsin
for context. I imagine Weber got the same police reports.
I have, the ones detailing the missing safe, the multiple
break ins, the strange debris scattered all around the house.
(16:57):
Weber also gets a tip a legend that Corey had
not only stolen the Ziegler's credit card, but had actually
tried to poison them. It sounds a little far fetched,
why would she poison her neighbors. But when Wagner police
discover the castor beans and the word document outlining how
(17:19):
to make ricin, they start to wonder, maybe that tip.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
Is true, considering the beans were hidden in a safe
inside of bubble wrap in a closet, and because Corey
lied about having a key to it, and this made
the history in Wisconsin in which she reportedly trying to
poison people much more likely to be true.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
And maybe that strange debris Sherry Ziegler found in her
bed wasn't kitty litter after all. In July, the Wagner
County Sheriff's office reaches out to Sherry, who later told
all of.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
This to Jess. One of the sheriffs said, well, if
you think you still have any of it in your house,
she said, you know, I don't think I do, but
I'll go and look. And it just so happens that
behind her dresser in her room she still had parts
of it. I was kind of shocked, because this happened
in twenty fourteen, and we're talking twenty twenty at this point,
that she still had pieces of it. I was like, Wow,
(18:15):
I don't think i'd have any of that left in
my house. She said she had kept some of the
kitty litter stuff, like in a bag eat, just because
she was always like confused as to what it was.
And they had said, well, can you mail whatever it
is you have down to the Sheriff's office and she
said sure, why not.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Wagner Investigators receive Sherry's package and hands it over to
the FBI for testing. It comes back positive for risin.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
And I was like, wow, she. I'm a huge Breaking
Bad fan, love Breaking Bad. I remember the episode when
Walter made Bryce no to castor beans. So that's where
my head went, like her in a lab somewhere creating
this powder, and really she was doing it in the
shed in the backyard. So that was my Oh shit,
(19:01):
we're in a lot of trouble.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Now Here's what Jess told me happened next, though I
wasn't able to independently verify it.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Every post office that her letter went through had to
be shut down and inspected and tested because of what
the poison ended up being. So I joke with Sherry
all the time in regards to being, you know, one
of those people that sends poison in the mail. I'm like, gosh,
we you know you're a felon at this point, and
we kind of giggle about it, and the poor sheriff,
(19:30):
I'm sure, is beating his head against the wall, thinking
what the heck did I have her do? I can't
imagine any sheriff in the right mind to be like,
go ahead and mail that to us if that's you
know what he actually thought it was.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
The Wagner County Sheriff's office passes the information along to
Wisconsin so they can open their own investigation. But back
in Oklahoma, Toalina's case remains at a standstill. Corey's still
free on bond, Toleina is still missing, and the online
sleuth are suddenly in the dark.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
After Marty had died, we were kind of cut off
from information in Oklahoma quite a bit. He was the
one that police bar I was talking to, so then
he'd feed it back to us, right.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Meanwhile, Corey goes about her business. In late August, she
attempts to scrap to Lena's truck, a two thousand and
seven Dodge Ram. She brings it to Budget Recycling along
with the story that the truck had been given to
her by a relative of a friend, and that it
was kind of busted. The scrapyard says they can only
(20:32):
give her about two hundred bucks, which is far less
than the truck is worth, but she agrees and walks
out with the cash. The scrapyard employees find this whole
interaction strange, especially after they drive the car and it's
running just fine. After doing a bit of googling amateur
sleuths themselves, they work out who Corey is a suspect
(20:56):
in her roommate's disappearance and report the incident to Corey
is arrested once again, this time for felony, fraud, and embezzlement.
But Corey bonds out once again, and this time she
gets out of Wagner. She heads to Wisconsin to stay
with her mom. Jess learns about this and realizes Corey
(21:19):
is now only one stayed away.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
When she moved to Wisconsin to be with her mom,
I got not scared, but more worried because she was closer.
Middleton is four and a half hours for me, so
easy trip if she wanted to make it.
Speaker 7 (21:36):
And there's one goall online that you know, between some
misinformation and some fabrication.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
It's unfortunate with Corey in Wisconsin, all of Jess's spies
on the ground and Wagner are useless.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
So there was nothing, no neighbors to eyeball, Corey, nobody
like nobody.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
For all the frenzy of the early investigation, things now
start to slow way down. Summer turns into fall, turns
into winter with no update on Telena. COVID meanwhile continues
to lay siege to the country. By the end of
twenty twenty, deaths from the virus are still climbing, and
(22:21):
most public schools stay remote amid another COVID search. And
while there's some hope that life will eventually go back
to normal, the continued isolation, the high unemployment rates, the
uncertainty of it all is taking a toll. It's bleak
for Telena's family too. Here's Cheryl.
Speaker 6 (22:43):
Mom and I read were talking. Mom said, she's not
coming back. I just know it. I just know what.
They just have to find her body.
Speaker 10 (22:54):
When she said it, I admitted, that's exactly what I
thought to him, that, you know, we didn't know what
in the world had happened to her, but we just thought, No,
it's bad, it's bad.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
The Wagner police have also lost hope that they'll find
Teleina alive.
Speaker 6 (23:17):
They had been down all the various things and it
was absolutely no trail over and admitted they were pretty
sure they were searching for a body, and they came
and they did collect some DNA.
Speaker 5 (23:30):
Swaps from mom.
Speaker 10 (23:32):
That was hard on her that she did it, of course,
because then it was she wanted her found.
Speaker 5 (23:37):
She didn't want.
Speaker 10 (23:38):
Her laying out someplace. We're in a fallow grave somewhere,
you know. She wanted her found. Good morning, I'm.
Speaker 11 (23:57):
A Sheriff Chris Elliott with a Wager County sheriff office.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
On January twenty second, twenty twenty one, more than nine
months since Telena disappeared, Wagner authorities addressed the public with
a big update.
Speaker 11 (24:11):
This press conference is regarding what originally started out as
a missing person's investigation regarding Tolina Galloway.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Sheriff Chris Elliott starts off with the story about a
woman in a totally different state who observes something unusual
back over the summer.
Speaker 11 (24:31):
On June eighth, the twenty twenty a witness in the
area of Polk County, Arkansas, observed a pickup towing a
small enclosed trailer.
Speaker 5 (24:41):
The truck and trailer.
Speaker 11 (24:42):
Will observed to be driving into a secluded area that
is adjacent to the Quadchital National Force South Amna, Arkansas.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
From inside her house, the woman notices a truck and
U haul trailer turned down Woody Lane, a dead end
logging road next to her property.
Speaker 11 (25:00):
Now, this witness said that it was suspicious to her,
so she went to investigate.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Wondering why a truck with a U haul is creeping
down a private road, the woman, yet another fearless amateur sleuth,
decides to follow it. When she eventually reaches the parked
truck and trailer, they're deserted, no one is around, but
something else catches her nose.
Speaker 11 (25:27):
She went to the area to where she thought the
truck was located the truck, walked up to the truck
and denoted the tag number on the truck and then
denoted that there was a foul odor came from the trailer,
and then observed a foul smelling thick lake wood pooled
in the floor of the trailer.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
The woman quickly memorizes the licensed plate number of the
truck and runs back to her house where she jots
it down. Then she calls local police to report what
she saw. A little while later, she spots the truck
and the trailer leave. Inside, she sees a driver and
a passenger. She waits all day for the police to
(26:12):
show up, but she never sees them. Six months pass
it's the day before Christmas. The weather is nice, and
the woman decides to stretch her legs. She goes walking
in the same area down Woody Lane where she saw
the suspicious truck and trailer. Back then, at the height
(26:33):
of summer, the trees had been full and the forest
thick with brush. But now in winter, the trees have
shed their leaves and she can see much further into
the bare forest. Peering into the distance, she spots a large, white,
almost square object.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
She walks over to it.
Speaker 11 (26:56):
The same witness was walking in the woods and came
upon a wide box top fraser with a lid type shit.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
The freezer is wrapped in duct tape. The woman doesn't
open it. Instead, she goes home and tells her husband
what she found, but it's Christmas Eve, so they wait
to call the police until after the new year. Eventually,
(27:26):
in the middle of January, a deputy comes out to
take a look. The woman accompanies him down Woody Lane
and into the forest. They approach the white freezer. The
deputy throws back the lid. A face a human skull
(27:49):
stares back at him.
Speaker 11 (27:54):
They discovered what they believed at that time to be
human remains inside the fraser. The Arkansas State Medical Examiner
accepted jurisdiction of the remains and took possession of the
fraser and conducted an autopsy. On January nineteenth, twenty twenty one,
Wider County Sheriff's Office received a tent over report of
(28:16):
identification from the Arkansas State Medical Examiner, identifying there were
human remains as Toulena Galloway and classified the manner of
death as homicide.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
It was my son's birthday and we went out to
dinner at Fish Jale. You're sitting at that round table
in the center, and my phone kept going off off,
and I was like, damn it bro out to dinner, LA.
So I look at it and see this text and
Nicole said they found her, and I was like, oh
my god. So I kind of was like, I'm going
to go outside quick, I'll be right back, and she
(28:50):
was a master, was bawling, and then I started crying
because I was like, how did they find her? And
she said, we were right, She's in the freezer. She
cut her up and I was like, no fucking way,
and it was we just we we all just kind
of cried. My ex husband and his wife were there,
(29:14):
my husband, our kids, and I come back and crying
and everybody's like, what happened, Like something happened to grandma,
Like what's wrong? And I said, we found Teleina. It
just rooin the whole night, ruin the whole week. And
from there it was kind of a grieving I felt
like I went through a little bit of a grieving
process for Tulina.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
At the press conference, police explained that Teleina's body had
been methodically cut into pieces before being placed in the freezer.
For Teleina's friends and family, finding out that she was
gone and discarded in such a horrific way was especially
hard to bear. Here's Nicole.
Speaker 12 (29:56):
When I got the phone call telling me that they
had found the body and how they found the body,
that I really did have a meltdown. I was getting
ready to go into a zoom call. At the time,
I was working for a nonprofit and I called and
I said, I can't do it. I can't do it.
(30:17):
I just I just found out, and it really did
hit me differently, especially because I knew in my heart
that she was gone. I knew for a long time,
but then after that it was really hard to know
how she went and what she went through. And then
(30:37):
what gets me through it is just to know that
I'm so lucky to have been loved by her for
the little time that I was, to be her friend,
and to have her in my life.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Here's Cheryl Tolina's sister.
Speaker 6 (30:54):
We all kind of knew in our gut something bad
had happened, and.
Speaker 5 (31:03):
Deep down.
Speaker 10 (31:05):
We thought it'll be a body.
Speaker 12 (31:08):
But where the.
Speaker 5 (31:09):
How it was agonizing.
Speaker 6 (31:13):
They did call us first, notified the family and went
through every grouply detail and told us everything they found,
what they saw on stuff. And the reason, of course,
was because the following day it was going to be
made public and they did not want us to be
at all surprised or you know, shocked or traumatized by
(31:36):
what came out publicly. They wanted to make sure we
knew it first so that we were prepared. Now, I
will give you this one part.
Speaker 5 (31:46):
That we got that wasn't necessarily public.
Speaker 13 (31:49):
The coroner who did the autopsy and all he had
given a note specifically to the family that she had
died by blunt force trauma to the skull or to
the head.
Speaker 6 (32:06):
There was so much dammage to the skull. He was
very certain she had died instantly, and he believed that
she was laying down when she was struck and probably sleeping.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Knowing Telena likely died instantly while she was sleeping was
a relief of sorts, but it didn't take away the
pain of knowing what someone did to her body.
Speaker 10 (32:34):
The circumstances were far more gruesome than we could have
ever imagined.
Speaker 6 (32:39):
And I didn't expect it to be easy at all
under any other circumstances that I did not expect something
like that.
Speaker 5 (32:50):
And I think it was just, oh my god.
Speaker 10 (32:58):
This just certainly can't possibly be what happened, and it was.
Speaker 6 (33:06):
It haunted me.
Speaker 10 (33:08):
It haunted me.
Speaker 12 (33:08):
What was she'll haunt me.
Speaker 10 (33:11):
It is painful, horrifically painful, and I will cry, but
I want she to know I am okay.
Speaker 6 (33:20):
Even if I cry, I am okay.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
Next time. On what happened to Tolenazar Corey is arrested
for not one but two crimes in two states.
Speaker 11 (33:40):
Corey Bondeley was arrested yesterday afternoon in Dane County, Wisconsin,
and is currently in the Dane County Jail waiting transport
back to Wager County, where she will face charges of
murder in the first degree desecration of a human.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
Course and Jess and the Internet sleuths can finally hang
up their hats if they're willing to.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
I don't think this is ever going to be over
for me. It's so you're not going to put it down.
I don't think I can.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
What Happened to Tealinazar is a production of iHeart Podcasts.
It's written, reported, and hosted by me Melissa Jelson, with
writing and story editing by Lauren Hansen. Our executive producer
is Ryan Murdoch. For iHeart Podcasts, executive producers are Jason
English and Carl Catele. Fact checking by Maya Shukri. Zoe
(34:42):
Denkla is our associate producer. Jeremy Thal is our editor.
Original music by Aaron Kaufman, with additional music by Jeremy
Thal and Gideon Crevishe additional sound design by Marita speH.
Episodes are mixed and mastered by Karl Catle. Voice acting
by Lizzie Gore, Chris Ferry, Stephanie Frame, Pete Monica and
(35:04):
Molly Maslin. Our logo is designed by Edo Moore. Thanks
so much for listening.
Ricinus communis is an exotic perennial plant with oversized purplish leaves,
bulbous seed pods, and blooms in various striking colors. It's
a pretty plant, often grown in decorative gardens. The seeds,
called castor beans, which are about the size of a peanut,
can be pressed into castor oil, which has several uses
(00:32):
as a preservative in food and an ingredient in cosmetic products.
But the seeds are probably more famously known for their
lethal nature, as they contain a toxin risin that can
kill even in small amounts. As this poison can be
manufactured at home, it's a popular choice for would be assassins.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Cruise and hazmat suits are seen entering a male facility
near washing after letters sent to President Barack Obama and
a Mississippi senator test positive for risin.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
The FBI is also investigating letters sent to the Pentagon
that tested positive for the deadly poison ricin.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
The details of an arrest at the Canada US border
of a person suspected of sending a letter containing a
deadly poison to Donald Trump's White House.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Despite their potential for deadly use, you can legally buy
Castban's online or in a gardening store, and if you
happen upon them by accident, it's likely you wouldn't recognize
the fatal power they contain.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Investigator Elliot located a small firebox safe in one of
the bedroom closets.
Speaker 5 (01:43):
Corey states she.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Does not have a key for it and it hasn't
been opened in probably ten years.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Detective Weber noted that during one of the searches of
Teleina and Corey's house, the investigator stumbled on a small safe.
Corey insists that the safe can't be opened, but Weber
is not so easily deterred.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
I located several sets of keys hanging in the closet
by the front door. The first key I tried opened
the safe. The findings inside the safe were extremely significant.
Inside the safe, among other things, were three small packages
of bubble wrap. Inside the packages were castor beans and
(02:26):
seeds to grow castor beans, specifically Ricinus communists.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
The police can't take the beans, they aren't included in
the search warrant, but they can take Corey's computers, and
in one of them they find a Microsoft word file
created in twenty twelve titled making Risin from iHeart podcasts.
(03:13):
I'm Melissa Jelson, and this is what happened to Telenazar.
Speaker 6 (03:18):
And I slung open the door and me and Rachel
standing there, and she goes, oh my god, this thing
sounds like bath.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Well, the only reason it has to do with anything
is just because my understanding it was there one day
and now it's not.
Speaker 6 (03:33):
She goes, well, Corey butchered that thing, and I'm like
what she said. Yeah, she ket that horse up in
tiny little pieces and dumped it out for the kayadt.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
He rope was fucking hell, what's going on here? We
thought we thought we had her.
Speaker 7 (03:51):
My husband and I spent every penny we had to
move to his confident and we went through a tough
time where we didn't have much money.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Episode seven, Safe Tell me when you first learned about
what had happened in Wisconsin.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
She had been involved in a robbery. That's how she
got her felony.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Early on in Jess's investigation, she doesn't know much about
Corey's past criminal conviction, just that she had one in
Wisconsin in twenty fourteen, until a woman named Sherry Ziegler
joins the Justice for Teleina Facebook group.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
And then Sherry told me the exact story of what
had happened.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Sherry and her husband Michael lived still live in Middleton, Wisconsin.
It's a suburb of Madison, a friendly place, according to
its motto, the good neighbor City. Cherry said, for the
first twenty years they lived there, they never really locked
their doors, but that all starts to change when the
(04:58):
Zieglers get back from a trip to Florida at the
end of March twenty fourteen. It's then that they experience
a series of strange and unexplained events. First, they come
home to a mess, a bunch of unidentified debris spread
inside their house. In the hallways and in their bedroom,
(05:21):
they find what looks like small pebbles or crumbled sheet rock.
It's also in their bed, under the covers, and inside
Sherry's underwear and sock drawer.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
She said it looked like kitty litter on her bed,
her pillow, all over her dresser. Yeah, she called it
kitty litter.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
The couple are exhausted, and since nothing else appears disturbed,
they've write it off as a weird prank. They unpack,
return their travel money to their safe, sweep the weird
pebbles out of their sheets go to bed. A month
passes without incident, and then one night, Mike goes to
(06:02):
get some items from the safe in their bedroom closet
and finds the safe's not there. Shery tells Jess it
was filled with the usual valuables.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
It was like a thousand dollars worth of cash. The
deed to their house like a bunch of important stuff
that you've keep in a safe.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Right this time, the Zieglers call the police. A deputy
comes by, makes a report, and begins an investigation, but
without any leads or evidence, the case goes stale. And
then a month after that, Cherry gets a credit card
statement in the mail. It's from a card she never activated,
(06:44):
and it's only now she realizes it's missing from where
she left it in a dish on the kitchen counter.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
A credit card bill had come in the mail for
a credit card she knew she had not opened yet,
and that's what led her to check the statement find
out where the money was spent.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
And Sherry calls the credit card company and they tell
her that the card was activated a few weeks earlier
from the landline inside her home. She knows she didn't
activate it, so who did. Looking at the charges on
her statement, she recognizes some of the businesses where the
card was used. Among them is the gas station down
(07:23):
the road. So much like Jess would, I imagine, Cherry
heads over to the quick trip and demands to see
the video footage of the transaction.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Her and her little self, which I can attest to
at this point is maybe one hundred and twenty pounds
of older lady. She's a wonderful human. I really like Sherry,
but she's anybody little thing going down there asking for
receipts and videos. And I mean Biddleton and Verona is
pretty small so and she's lived there a long time,
(07:55):
so she had a couple relationships and wasn't afraid to
go up and say, hey, I want to look at
this video.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
And who does Sherry see using the card issued in
her name? Her neighbor, Corey Shehry told Jess that Corey
and her husband Alec had moved in next door a
few months earlier, and from the beginning it had been
a tense relationship.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
She said it was always just an uncomfortable dynamic, that
her and Corey never really hit it off at all,
but Mike and Corey seem to have some kind of
like neighborly relationship.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Sherry reports her discovery to the police, and later that
day they arrest Corey.
Speaker 8 (08:39):
I began by asking Corey if she was aware that
her neighbor to the direct north had been burglarized, to
which she said yes.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Well, Sherry wasn't able to listen in on the conversation
between Corey and the arresting officers. I was able to
obtain the police report, which goes into detail about this
interaction as well as their full investigation. You're about to
hear re enacted selections of the police report.
Speaker 8 (09:04):
I began to show Corey Adams the still photographs of
the suspect inside the Quick Trip located on West Mineral
Point Road. I asked Corey if she recognized the subject
in the photograph, from which she said, it sure looks
like me, It sure looks like me. I then showed
Corey Adams the photograph of the vehicle buying gas at
the Quick Trip on East Varona Avenue and asked her
if that was the vehicle which was sitting in her driveway,
(09:25):
which she said yes, yes. I again asked Corey Adams
if she knew anything about the crimes committed against her
direct next door neighbor Michael and Sharon Ziegler, and she
again said no, no. As I continued to question Corey Adams,
she said, I'm racking my brain trying to make sense
of this.
Speaker 5 (09:41):
I'm racking my brain trying to make sense of this.
Speaker 8 (09:45):
I informed Corey Adams that the evidence against her at
this point was very incriminating and that if she had
any involvement with this crime, now is the time to
tell me the truth.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Corey continues to say she doesn't know anything about any
crimes committed against her name. Corey is later charged with
four counts of fraudulent use of a credit card. However,
the police are never able to connect Corey to the
missing safe or find proof that she entered the Ziegler's
(10:15):
house illegally. Here's Jess again.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Sherry insists that Corey was in her home, and she's
convinced that she had to come in the house gotten
a letter because it had to be done from her phone.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
In court, Corey ultimately takes a plea bargain, admitting to
one count of fraudulently using a credit card. She denies
stealing it, though instead she claims she simply found the
activated credit card outside on the ground and decided to
use it. Judge William E. Hanrahan is skeptical. Here's a
(10:50):
reenactment of some of his comments in court.
Speaker 9 (10:53):
All right, so somebody else had access, got into the
house and took the time to use that home phone
to activate the credit card, and somehow had access to
the last port digits of the victim's social Security number,
and took all these affirmative steps, but didn't have the
wherewithal to hang on to the card when they left
the house. And your client just happened to pick up
(11:15):
that exact, same, newly activated card and had the lapse
of judgment enough to stick it in her pocket and
go and use it on several occasions. Is that the story?
Speaker 1 (11:27):
The judge doesn't buy Corey's explanation, and neither do the Zieglers.
Even though she pleads guilty, they still have so many questions.
Here's the recreation of parts of Sherry's victim impact statement
that was read in court.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
This defendant is being charged and convicted of the fraudulent
use of my credit card, but the underlying concern is
so much greater than that.
Speaker 5 (11:51):
It is this how did she get my credit card?
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Sherry explains that she spoke with the credit card company
and they were able to pinpoint the exact time and
date that the credit card was activated.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
We left our house at six point thirty that night
and the card was activated at seven o'clock the same night.
The credit card was activated from our home phone, and
the credit card company reported that it was activated by
a woman.
Speaker 5 (12:18):
That woman knew.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
The last four digits of my social security number.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Cherry tells the judge she believes the woman is her
next door neighbor, Corey.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
It seems so very obvious to us all that she
was in our home while she knew we were gone.
She found the new credit card sitting on the kitchen counter,
She used our phone to activate it, and then she
was seen using the credit card Shortly after that, she
is seen on video using my credit card.
Speaker 5 (12:48):
She used it multiple times.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
Judge, I wish there was a way you could compel
Corey to tell you and us how she got my
credit card number. We just want her to admit that
it was her who stole it. At least then we
would know who was in our house that night.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Sherry reminds the judge that this incident was not the
first intrusion into their home.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
When we returned from a trip to Florida in March,
we came home to stuff, kitty litter or broken sheet
rock material scattered throughout our house, especially on my side
of the bed and in my underwear drawer. This was
very personal and I felt particularly scared.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
And then there's the issue of the stolen safe, the
valuables that were never recovered, and no one was held
accountable for all of it. Was taking a toll on
Sherry and Mike. So much for the good neighbor city.
Speaker 5 (13:44):
Do we feel safe living next door to Corey? No?
Speaker 4 (13:48):
Do our neighbors feel safe after our house was broken into? No,
none of us feel safe anymore. We are good, law
abiding people, and we have to live being afraid of
our nigh This is no way to live.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
The judge has some choice words for Corey before she leaves.
Speaker 9 (14:10):
Now, I've been told that you've been punished enough by
a conviction for this crime. I'm not feeling it. Honestly.
I find this to be an aggravated offense. I don't
know why, at age fifty two that this seemed like
a good thing to do in fact, I don't really
know the depth of what you've done. The most troubling
(14:31):
aspect of this whole string of events here is that
it wasn't against a major corporation. It's not against a stranger.
It's against your neighbor. This is of biblical proportions. These
are people who should have been able to trust you.
It strikes at the very heart of an individual's sense
of security, their sense of well being, their sense of belonging.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Corey is sentenced to two years probation in order to
build a privacy fence between their two properties. The judge
goes on to Warren Corey that her life is at
a crossroads and it could easily be headed in the
wrong direction.
Speaker 9 (15:13):
You've got to know that what you've done is extremely wrong.
You've got to know that somehow, somewhere along the way
you slip the tracks. You have to figure out what
went wrong, and you have to fix it.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Five years later, Corey is sitting in a small interview
room in the Wagner County Sheriff's office answering questions about Tealina,
and when Detective Weber asks about Corey's criminal history, she
tells him a very different story. Than she told police
in Wisconsin in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Somebody brought up at some point that you were charged
with something and I don't remember what state.
Speaker 7 (15:56):
Wisconsin or in Wisconsin, Wisconsin. Yes, So what happened in
a nutshell my husband's.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Version, she's the victim. She tells Weber that she had
befriended Mike Ziegler and he had helped her out financially
during a rough patch. Corey says Mike offered her his
wife's credit card to use for essentials like gas and groceries,
and he said she could pay him back whenever she
got the chance.
Speaker 7 (16:26):
Well, the wife was jealous of him and I for
no reason, and she had a canary and she pressed charges.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Weber doesn't take Corey's story at face value. Instead, the
Wagner County Sheriff's office reaches out to authorities in Wisconsin
for context. I imagine Weber got the same police reports.
I have, the ones detailing the missing safe, the multiple
break ins, the strange debris scattered all around the house.
(16:57):
Weber also gets a tip a legend that Corey had
not only stolen the Ziegler's credit card, but had actually
tried to poison them. It sounds a little far fetched,
why would she poison her neighbors. But when Wagner police
discover the castor beans and the word document outlining how
(17:19):
to make ricin, they start to wonder, maybe that tip.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
Is true, considering the beans were hidden in a safe
inside of bubble wrap in a closet, and because Corey
lied about having a key to it, and this made
the history in Wisconsin in which she reportedly trying to
poison people much more likely to be true.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
And maybe that strange debris Sherry Ziegler found in her
bed wasn't kitty litter after all. In July, the Wagner
County Sheriff's office reaches out to Sherry, who later told
all of.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
This to Jess. One of the sheriffs said, well, if
you think you still have any of it in your house,
she said, you know, I don't think I do, but
I'll go and look. And it just so happens that
behind her dresser in her room she still had parts
of it. I was kind of shocked, because this happened
in twenty fourteen, and we're talking twenty twenty at this point,
that she still had pieces of it. I was like, Wow,
(18:15):
I don't think i'd have any of that left in
my house. She said she had kept some of the
kitty litter stuff, like in a bag eat, just because
she was always like confused as to what it was.
And they had said, well, can you mail whatever it
is you have down to the Sheriff's office and she
said sure, why not.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Wagner Investigators receive Sherry's package and hands it over to
the FBI for testing. It comes back positive for risin.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
And I was like, wow, she. I'm a huge Breaking
Bad fan, love Breaking Bad. I remember the episode when
Walter made Bryce no to castor beans. So that's where
my head went, like her in a lab somewhere creating
this powder, and really she was doing it in the
shed in the backyard. So that was my Oh shit,
(19:01):
we're in a lot of trouble.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Now Here's what Jess told me happened next, though I
wasn't able to independently verify it.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Every post office that her letter went through had to
be shut down and inspected and tested because of what
the poison ended up being. So I joke with Sherry
all the time in regards to being, you know, one
of those people that sends poison in the mail. I'm like, gosh,
we you know you're a felon at this point, and
we kind of giggle about it, and the poor sheriff,
(19:30):
I'm sure, is beating his head against the wall, thinking
what the heck did I have her do? I can't
imagine any sheriff in the right mind to be like,
go ahead and mail that to us if that's you
know what he actually thought it was.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
The Wagner County Sheriff's office passes the information along to
Wisconsin so they can open their own investigation. But back
in Oklahoma, Toalina's case remains at a standstill. Corey's still
free on bond, Toleina is still missing, and the online
sleuth are suddenly in the dark.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
After Marty had died, we were kind of cut off
from information in Oklahoma quite a bit. He was the
one that police bar I was talking to, so then
he'd feed it back to us, right.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Meanwhile, Corey goes about her business. In late August, she
attempts to scrap to Lena's truck, a two thousand and
seven Dodge Ram. She brings it to Budget Recycling along
with the story that the truck had been given to
her by a relative of a friend, and that it
was kind of busted. The scrapyard says they can only
(20:32):
give her about two hundred bucks, which is far less
than the truck is worth, but she agrees and walks
out with the cash. The scrapyard employees find this whole
interaction strange, especially after they drive the car and it's
running just fine. After doing a bit of googling amateur
sleuths themselves, they work out who Corey is a suspect
(20:56):
in her roommate's disappearance and report the incident to Corey
is arrested once again, this time for felony, fraud, and embezzlement.
But Corey bonds out once again, and this time she
gets out of Wagner. She heads to Wisconsin to stay
with her mom. Jess learns about this and realizes Corey
(21:19):
is now only one stayed away.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
When she moved to Wisconsin to be with her mom,
I got not scared, but more worried because she was closer.
Middleton is four and a half hours for me, so
easy trip if she wanted to make it.
Speaker 7 (21:36):
And there's one goall online that you know, between some
misinformation and some fabrication.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
It's unfortunate with Corey in Wisconsin, all of Jess's spies
on the ground and Wagner are useless.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
So there was nothing, no neighbors to eyeball, Corey, nobody
like nobody.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
For all the frenzy of the early investigation, things now
start to slow way down. Summer turns into fall, turns
into winter with no update on Telena. COVID meanwhile continues
to lay siege to the country. By the end of
twenty twenty, deaths from the virus are still climbing, and
(22:21):
most public schools stay remote amid another COVID search. And
while there's some hope that life will eventually go back
to normal, the continued isolation, the high unemployment rates, the
uncertainty of it all is taking a toll. It's bleak
for Telena's family too. Here's Cheryl.
Speaker 6 (22:43):
Mom and I read were talking. Mom said, she's not
coming back. I just know it. I just know what.
They just have to find her body.
Speaker 10 (22:54):
When she said it, I admitted, that's exactly what I
thought to him, that, you know, we didn't know what
in the world had happened to her, but we just thought, No,
it's bad, it's bad.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
The Wagner police have also lost hope that they'll find
Teleina alive.
Speaker 6 (23:17):
They had been down all the various things and it
was absolutely no trail over and admitted they were pretty
sure they were searching for a body, and they came
and they did collect some DNA.
Speaker 5 (23:30):
Swaps from mom.
Speaker 10 (23:32):
That was hard on her that she did it, of course,
because then it was she wanted her found.
Speaker 5 (23:37):
She didn't want.
Speaker 10 (23:38):
Her laying out someplace. We're in a fallow grave somewhere,
you know. She wanted her found. Good morning, I'm.
Speaker 11 (23:57):
A Sheriff Chris Elliott with a Wager County sheriff office.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
On January twenty second, twenty twenty one, more than nine
months since Telena disappeared, Wagner authorities addressed the public with
a big update.
Speaker 11 (24:11):
This press conference is regarding what originally started out as
a missing person's investigation regarding Tolina Galloway.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Sheriff Chris Elliott starts off with the story about a
woman in a totally different state who observes something unusual
back over the summer.
Speaker 11 (24:31):
On June eighth, the twenty twenty a witness in the
area of Polk County, Arkansas, observed a pickup towing a
small enclosed trailer.
Speaker 5 (24:41):
The truck and trailer.
Speaker 11 (24:42):
Will observed to be driving into a secluded area that
is adjacent to the Quadchital National Force South Amna, Arkansas.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
From inside her house, the woman notices a truck and
U haul trailer turned down Woody Lane, a dead end
logging road next to her property.
Speaker 11 (25:00):
Now, this witness said that it was suspicious to her,
so she went to investigate.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Wondering why a truck with a U haul is creeping
down a private road, the woman, yet another fearless amateur sleuth,
decides to follow it. When she eventually reaches the parked
truck and trailer, they're deserted, no one is around, but
something else catches her nose.
Speaker 11 (25:27):
She went to the area to where she thought the
truck was located the truck, walked up to the truck
and denoted the tag number on the truck and then
denoted that there was a foul odor came from the trailer,
and then observed a foul smelling thick lake wood pooled
in the floor of the trailer.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
The woman quickly memorizes the licensed plate number of the
truck and runs back to her house where she jots
it down. Then she calls local police to report what
she saw. A little while later, she spots the truck
and the trailer leave. Inside, she sees a driver and
a passenger. She waits all day for the police to
(26:12):
show up, but she never sees them. Six months pass
it's the day before Christmas. The weather is nice, and
the woman decides to stretch her legs. She goes walking
in the same area down Woody Lane where she saw
the suspicious truck and trailer. Back then, at the height
(26:33):
of summer, the trees had been full and the forest
thick with brush. But now in winter, the trees have
shed their leaves and she can see much further into
the bare forest. Peering into the distance, she spots a large, white,
almost square object.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
She walks over to it.
Speaker 11 (26:56):
The same witness was walking in the woods and came
upon a wide box top fraser with a lid type shit.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
The freezer is wrapped in duct tape. The woman doesn't
open it. Instead, she goes home and tells her husband
what she found, but it's Christmas Eve, so they wait
to call the police until after the new year. Eventually,
(27:26):
in the middle of January, a deputy comes out to
take a look. The woman accompanies him down Woody Lane
and into the forest. They approach the white freezer. The
deputy throws back the lid. A face a human skull
(27:49):
stares back at him.
Speaker 11 (27:54):
They discovered what they believed at that time to be
human remains inside the fraser. The Arkansas State Medical Examiner
accepted jurisdiction of the remains and took possession of the
fraser and conducted an autopsy. On January nineteenth, twenty twenty one,
Wider County Sheriff's Office received a tent over report of
(28:16):
identification from the Arkansas State Medical Examiner, identifying there were
human remains as Toulena Galloway and classified the manner of
death as homicide.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
It was my son's birthday and we went out to
dinner at Fish Jale. You're sitting at that round table
in the center, and my phone kept going off off,
and I was like, damn it bro out to dinner, LA.
So I look at it and see this text and
Nicole said they found her, and I was like, oh
my god. So I kind of was like, I'm going
to go outside quick, I'll be right back, and she
(28:50):
was a master, was bawling, and then I started crying
because I was like, how did they find her? And
she said, we were right, She's in the freezer. She
cut her up and I was like, no fucking way,
and it was we just we we all just kind
of cried. My ex husband and his wife were there,
(29:14):
my husband, our kids, and I come back and crying
and everybody's like, what happened, Like something happened to grandma,
Like what's wrong? And I said, we found Teleina. It
just rooin the whole night, ruin the whole week. And
from there it was kind of a grieving I felt
like I went through a little bit of a grieving
process for Tulina.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
At the press conference, police explained that Teleina's body had
been methodically cut into pieces before being placed in the freezer.
For Teleina's friends and family, finding out that she was
gone and discarded in such a horrific way was especially
hard to bear. Here's Nicole.
Speaker 12 (29:56):
When I got the phone call telling me that they
had found the body and how they found the body,
that I really did have a meltdown. I was getting
ready to go into a zoom call. At the time,
I was working for a nonprofit and I called and
I said, I can't do it. I can't do it.
(30:17):
I just I just found out, and it really did
hit me differently, especially because I knew in my heart
that she was gone. I knew for a long time,
but then after that it was really hard to know
how she went and what she went through. And then
(30:37):
what gets me through it is just to know that
I'm so lucky to have been loved by her for
the little time that I was, to be her friend,
and to have her in my life.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Here's Cheryl Tolina's sister.
Speaker 6 (30:54):
We all kind of knew in our gut something bad
had happened, and.
Speaker 5 (31:03):
Deep down.
Speaker 10 (31:05):
We thought it'll be a body.
Speaker 12 (31:08):
But where the.
Speaker 5 (31:09):
How it was agonizing.
Speaker 6 (31:13):
They did call us first, notified the family and went
through every grouply detail and told us everything they found,
what they saw on stuff. And the reason, of course,
was because the following day it was going to be
made public and they did not want us to be
at all surprised or you know, shocked or traumatized by
(31:36):
what came out publicly. They wanted to make sure we
knew it first so that we were prepared. Now, I
will give you this one part.
Speaker 5 (31:46):
That we got that wasn't necessarily public.
Speaker 13 (31:49):
The coroner who did the autopsy and all he had
given a note specifically to the family that she had
died by blunt force trauma to the skull or to
the head.
Speaker 6 (32:06):
There was so much dammage to the skull. He was
very certain she had died instantly, and he believed that
she was laying down when she was struck and probably sleeping.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Knowing Telena likely died instantly while she was sleeping was
a relief of sorts, but it didn't take away the
pain of knowing what someone did to her body.
Speaker 10 (32:34):
The circumstances were far more gruesome than we could have
ever imagined.
Speaker 6 (32:39):
And I didn't expect it to be easy at all
under any other circumstances that I did not expect something
like that.
Speaker 5 (32:50):
And I think it was just, oh my god.
Speaker 10 (32:58):
This just certainly can't possibly be what happened, and it was.
Speaker 6 (33:06):
It haunted me.
Speaker 10 (33:08):
It haunted me.
Speaker 12 (33:08):
What was she'll haunt me.
Speaker 10 (33:11):
It is painful, horrifically painful, and I will cry, but
I want she to know I am okay.
Speaker 6 (33:20):
Even if I cry, I am okay.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
Next time. On what happened to Tolenazar Corey is arrested
for not one but two crimes in two states.
Speaker 11 (33:40):
Corey Bondeley was arrested yesterday afternoon in Dane County, Wisconsin,
and is currently in the Dane County Jail waiting transport
back to Wager County, where she will face charges of
murder in the first degree desecration of a human.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
Course and Jess and the Internet sleuths can finally hang
up their hats if they're willing to.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
I don't think this is ever going to be over
for me. It's so you're not going to put it down.
I don't think I can.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
What Happened to Tealinazar is a production of iHeart Podcasts.
It's written, reported, and hosted by me Melissa Jelson, with
writing and story editing by Lauren Hansen. Our executive producer
is Ryan Murdoch. For iHeart Podcasts, executive producers are Jason
English and Carl Catele. Fact checking by Maya Shukri. Zoe
(34:42):
Denkla is our associate producer. Jeremy Thal is our editor.
Original music by Aaron Kaufman, with additional music by Jeremy
Thal and Gideon Crevishe additional sound design by Marita speH.
Episodes are mixed and mastered by Karl Catle. Voice acting
by Lizzie Gore, Chris Ferry, Stephanie Frame, Pete Monica and
(35:04):
Molly Maslin. Our logo is designed by Edo Moore. Thanks
so much for listening.
Host
Melissa Jeltsen
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