Behind the Veil: Diane Newton King

On a quiet morning in rural Michigan, a beloved television personality was gunned down in her own driveway. At first, it seemed like a stalker’s obsession had finally turned deadly. But as investigators dug deeper, the truth was much more sinister. The man she trusted most—the man she had vowed to love forever—was hiding his true character behind a mask of lies. Diane Newton King—mother, wife, and rising tv news personality—never made it to the inside of her home that day. Her children never had another moment with their mother.

Join us for Behind the Veil: Diane Newton King. Behind the wedding vows, the smiles, and the years of building and sustaining a family, there lurked a dark truth which threatened to destroy everything. This is not just a story about murder—it’s a story about trust shattered, love twisted, and the frightening question: How well do we really know the person we share our life with?

Sources

The Diane King Case, Suburban Secrets, S2, E2

Eye of the Beholder by Lowell Cauffiel

Killer Relationship, Oxygen Network, S3, E12

MI v Bradford King, Court TV, https://www.courttv.com/?s=bradford+King

News at 11, Forensic Files, S9, E5

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-brewery--4126935/support.

Record your voicemail at tiegrabber.com for our feedback segment or send us an email to [e-mail]

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
Right had retired from the Pontiac Police Department. He was
a fellow police officer. Why would someone want to attack
this family, you know, attack his wife. He was very forthcoming.
Asked if there was any guns or anything.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
That he had, he stated the only gun was a
shotgun in the laundry room and it was broken down.
During the search, we found the twenty two caliber shell
in the barn. We didn't find the twenty two caliber rifle,
but yet we found twenty two caliber shells in a
wood case made for twenty two rifle with the cleaning rods,

(00:44):
and it kind of odd that he would have those
not have the rifle. Greg King advised that he had
went for a long walk back on the property and
when he returned, he found Diane laying on the driveway
next to the vehicle.

Speaker 3 (01:04):
True Crime Brewery contains disturbing content related to real life crimes.
Medical information is opinion based on facts of a crime
and should not be interpreted as medical advice or treatment.
Listener discretion is advised.

Speaker 4 (01:22):
Welcome to True Crime Brewery.

Speaker 5 (01:24):
I'm Jill I Dick.

Speaker 4 (01:27):
It was a quiet morning in rural Michigan. A beloved
television personality was gunned down in her own driveway. So
at first it seemed like a stalker's obsession had finally
turned deadly. But as investigators dug deeper, the truth was
actually much more sinister. The man she trusted most, the

(01:48):
man she had vowed to love forever, was hiding his
true character behind a mask of lies. Diane Newton King's mother, wife,
and rising TV newspersonsonality never made it to the inside
of her home that day. Her children never had another
moment with their mother. Join us for behind the veil

(02:10):
the murder of Diane Newton King, behind the wedding vows,
the smiles, and the years of building and sustaining a family,
there lurked a dark truth which really threatened to destroy everything.
So this is not just a story about murder. It's
a story about trust shattered, love twisted, and the frightening
question how well do we really know the person we

(02:32):
share our life with.

Speaker 6 (02:34):
Dickie, you know everything about me.

Speaker 4 (02:37):
You're an open book.

Speaker 5 (02:38):
I am, all right.

Speaker 4 (02:39):
So what beer do you have in your book this morning?

Speaker 6 (02:42):
We've got a beer that I just recently had, called Juni.
It's brewed by transient artists and ales in bridgemand Michigan.
Now this is a very very nice American Imperial stout,
a little bit heavy at eleven point five percent alcohol
by volume. So we will zipped this one, dark brown,

(03:02):
tiny tiny head, great aroma. I got some caramel chocolate
and some sweet fruit that I could identify just on
the aroma. Taste told me that it was cherries. Also caramel, milk, chocolate,
maybe a hint of coffee. I wasn't sure. This is
a wonderful stout, nice probably nice dessert stout. Again, sip

(03:23):
it and enjoy it.

Speaker 4 (03:25):
It really sounds good. What was that beer we had
that tasted like cheesecake with cherries on top? But that
was my favorite beer. It was mckller. This one came
in a little sniffer people were eating oysters, which of
course we weren't, and it was the most incredible thing
I've ever drank. It must have been cherry because it
tasted exactly like you were eating a piece of cherry cheesecake.

(03:46):
But I'm just saying that was incredible. So let's open
it and try it. See it's got that nice, sweet,

(04:06):
kind of fruity chocolate aroma. I don't smell the coffee
but I do smell a lot of chocolate and cherry.

Speaker 6 (04:13):
Yeah, it tastes like one of those chocolate covered cherries.

Speaker 4 (04:18):
Chocolate covered cherry, absolutely, and it's almost the same color,
so incredible, perfect for this chilly time of year. So
I am going to enjoy this one as we talk
about this case, which I learned about a few years back.
I actually watched the trial a while back because it
was televised on Court TV, and it was really fascinating.
Quite a shame. This was a really nice woman, nice family,

(04:42):
and the husband turned out to be just kind of
a shipball, which is always disappointing. Yeah it is okay, Well,
come on down to the quiet end, bring that beer
if you.

Speaker 6 (04:51):
Don't mind, of course.

Speaker 4 (04:53):
Okay, So let's go to July twenty first, nineteen eighty four,
Diane Newton married Bradford in the First Unitarian Church of Denver.
Diane wore a white blouse, a white satin skirt, and
a silk jacket. Brad wore a white dinner jacket and
dark pants. His tie and cumberbund were lavender to match

(05:14):
Diane's bouquet of lavender orchids. They'd written out their own bows.
He said today and always, I choose you to be
the one I stand beside in life. You are the
one I will love, support and serve as we grow
and expand in our liveness. So I think that sounds
kind of like bullshit a liveness. Really think he stole that? Yes,

(05:37):
I don't think he was very poetic.

Speaker 6 (05:39):
Sounded to me like you was just kind of trying
to boast about how good a speaker he was.

Speaker 4 (05:44):
Yeah, it does sound a little phony that way. Now,
she said, I pledge myself to having this marriage be
magical and fun, inspiring, fulfilling, so that at the end
of my life I can know that because of your
love and support, I went far past my dreams. So
that's a little haunting because we know the end of
her life was not like that at all.

Speaker 6 (06:05):
No, it wasn't.

Speaker 4 (06:06):
We know that the end of her life came far
too soon. So their first child, Marler, was born March sixth,
nineteen eighty eight, and four years after the marriage, in
Grand Junction, Colorado. This was after Diane had established herself
as a local star TV reporter at KJTC TV, So
they'd named their boy after Diane's late father, Herbert George

(06:30):
Marler in case you were wondering, because it is an
unusual name is She also gave herself a new name,
taking the surname of her stepfather, Royal Newton. So Diane
Newton King sounded like a contemporary and authoritative name to her.
She liked it. Both Diane and Brad wrote letters to
their new baby in a memory book. So everything just

(06:52):
seemed great. Starting out great.

Speaker 6 (06:55):
Right, doing well.

Speaker 4 (06:56):
Marler was baptized in a Catholic church, and the man
who was half Mohawk was learning about her Native American roots.
Brad had studied the ways of the Lakota and other
Western tribes. They decided that they would melt native spirituality
into the Catholic ceremony, so they smudged everyone who watched
with burnt offerings of the sacred medicines of cedar and

(07:19):
sweet grass. Then, after the baby had been christened, everyone
circled them. Brad held Marler up, presenting the child to
his elders. So pretty dramatic.

Speaker 6 (07:31):
Huh eh, must have been the show.

Speaker 4 (07:33):
So they named their second child, who was a girl, Katiri.
She was born on November twentieth, nineteen ninety. Diane and
Brad had moved to Michigan, settling in a farmhouse just
outside the Marshall city limits. So Brad was working as
a criminal justice instructor at Western Michigan University. Diane was
the morning anchor at wu HQ Channel forty one, the

(07:57):
only TV station with news located in Battle Creek. So
they planned more blending of Native tradition and Catholic ritual
for Kitteri's christening that was scheduled to be held at
Saint Mary's Catholic Church in Marshall Sunday, February twenty fourth,
nineteen ninety one, at eleven am. But on Saturday, November ninth,

(08:18):
at six forty nine pm, a call came into the
Marshall Police Department on the on recorded line, so that
meant the caller had just styled zero and the operator
had transferred him through. The caller Bradford King, was both
crying and yelling at the same time. The dispatcher on
duty tried to make sense out of the hysteria. The

(08:39):
man was saying something about his wife, that she was
on the ground near her car. He found her there
after coming back from a walk, he said. The operator
dispatched a Marshall firefighter's ambulance unit from the fire hall
just south of town. Deputy Guy Picketts heard the call
from the handheld radio he'd taken with him into his house.

(09:01):
The address peaked his interest as much as the call,
because he knew the address quite well. Pickets sped west,
passed a rescue unit in the first block, and saw
the ambulance in his mirror. The view out the cruiser's
front window changed quickly to small bungalows, an old canning plant,
and light industrial buildings. After the Kalamazoo River Bridge, the

(09:25):
horizon flattened. Pickets raced past a golf course as he
turned west onto Division Drive. Only a dozen houses lined
that mile long road. All but three of the homes
were on the north side, and the king House at
sixteen two forty Division was actually on the south side,
So the deputy turned left into the two hundred foot

(09:45):
long driveway, scanning the yard as he drove up the
slight incline. The Victorian barn was on his left, and
out buildings into cement silo were straight ahead. A tanned
station wagon was parked just beyond the barn. A silver
jeep Wagoneer was parked in the part of the driveway
that turned off toward the house. The wagoneer's grill faced

(10:07):
the side porch entrance. The passenger side faced the deputy,
and Picket saw a body as he passed the jeep
and parked. Diane King was two feet from the wagoneer's
left rear tire. She lay on her back with her
legs folded under her at the knees. Her dark, straight
hair was spread around her head on the gravel. Her

(10:30):
arms extended over her head with her palm's face up.
As he approached the scene, Picket saw and hurt. A
young boy sounded like a preschooler. He was miserable, crying
himself to exhaustion. He was in a child seat in
the back seat of the jeep. This upper body restrained
next to him in a smaller car seat. There was
an infant. She was silent but alive. Pickets fell to

(10:54):
his knees next to the woman. She was in blue
and white running shoes and powder blue lounge pants with
a gray operation desert shield sweatshirt. So Pickets noticed a
smear of frothy blood near one nostril. He put his
fingertips on the carodid airy of her neck. Her skin
was soft and smooth and still warm, but there was

(11:15):
no pulse. Muffled shouting was coming from inside the house.
Pickets got to his feet and walked toward the noise.
About thirty feet away, he saw movement. Then beyond the
porch inside the house itself, in the dining room area.
A second door on the porch, one that led to
the kitchen, was open, so Pickets could see the figure

(11:36):
of a man silhouetted on the porch. Help her. The
man shouted, help my wife. Pickets tried to make some
kind of identification, but it was all happening so fast.
The Marshall rescue unit had pulled to a stop in
the driveway behind him. Pickets turned and pointed out the
body to two emergency medical technicians as they ran from

(11:57):
the ambulance, one carrying a duffel bag of a should
see equipment and the rescue unit later logged its time
of arrival at six point fifty four PM.

Speaker 6 (12:07):
And EMT dropped his stuffel bag as he fell to
his knees at Diane's side. The other EMT started searching
for a pulse but found nothing, but found none. Then
the other EMT tried. Then he thought he heard a breath,
maybe one faint last breath, and EMT ran back to
the ambulance to get an intubation kit and a defibrillator.

(12:29):
The other EMT cut open her sweatshirt, pulled it back
and exposed her white bra and the skin of her
upper chest. Pickets was heading to the porch. Has Brad
stepped out the door and out to the sidewalk. The
EMT called out to Hicketts that his wife had been shot.
Pickets was heading to the porch. Has Brad stepped out
the door and out to the sidewalk. The EMT called

(12:50):
out that she had been shot. Pickets headed back to
the body on the ground and shined his flashlight on
her chest. There was a quarter inch hold just the
right of her stone, and a drop of blood oozed
from the wound. One of the paramedics was intibating her.
The deputy turned around and approached Brad again. He asked,
and Brad identified himself and he also identified the victim

(13:12):
as his wife, Diane. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (13:15):
So Brad stood motionless with his arms hanging at his sides.
He stood on the sidewalk just off the porch about
twenty five feet or so from the body. Pickets would
get a good look at him a little later and
decided that he was an odd looking fellow. He was
wearing boots, green camouflaged pants, and a loose camouflage shirt.
His head was covered with a wide brimmed hat of

(13:37):
red felt and a blue jay feather poked out from
its band.

Speaker 5 (13:41):
So that's quite a picture rather eclectica.

Speaker 4 (13:44):
Yeah, Three County cars and two Michigan State Police cruisers
were headed toward sixteen two forty Division Drive within five
minutes of the first dispatch. Pickets needed a lot of help.
He didn't know if the shooter was still on the property,
and he knew very little about the man near the porch,
so in seconds, a medical emergency had turned into a

(14:07):
crime scene that needed to be secured. A third EMT
parked his truck on the road and ran across the
lawn to the house. He tried to run past Brad King,
who was sitting on the porch steps. The EMT thought
a heart attack victim was inside. Brad King stopped him,
saying you can't go in there. So King pointed to

(14:28):
the wagoneer, which had blocked the EMT's view of the scene.
They were working quickly trying to save Diane's life. When
Pickets heard an EMT say something about transporting the victim
to the local hospital. The deputy ran to his squad
car and then returned with his camera. The deputy took
six photos horizontal and vertical views, taking a few steps

(14:50):
back from the victim's feet. A leather key wallet lay
less than a foot from her legs in the gravel. Nearby,
there was a leather hairband. The deputy's small all flash
reached twenty or so feet into the scene, not deep
enough to show Brad King, who was standing back there
in the dark. One of the EMTs pulled down Diane's waistban,

(15:10):
revealing a small caliber bullet wound a half inch above
the pubic hairline. One shot could have been an accident
from a hunter nearby because there was a lot of
woods around, but two gunshots confirmed that this was a murder.
The shot to the chest was determined to be the
first impact, so it seemed like the killing may have
been quite personal. The killer had fired once from above,

(15:33):
and then moved closer and lower before firing again. The
crime would be recreated by investigators using a laser to
confirm that the barn was where the killer was when
he shot her. The ankle was consistent with her wounds,
so the two state troopers were approaching the porch now
where they found Brad King sitting on the steps, and

(15:54):
he was no longer wearing that snazzy hat. His head
was smooth and shiny, the style of a ball man
who decided it was easier to just shave what he
had left than try and do the comb over. They
noted later in their official report that King's face was
in his hands and that it appeared he was crying.
An officer later recalled first seeing Brad King pacing between

(16:16):
the kitchen door on the porch and the sidewalk just
below the steps.

Speaker 6 (16:20):
King said he had been out walking earlier. When he returned,
he found his wife lying next to the car walking.
Where they asked him, he answered back in the fields.
King then motioned to the acreage south of the barn
in the house. At seven o four pm, a third
County car turned into the driveway. The car that had
been patrolling near the At seven o four pm, a

(16:43):
third County car turned into the driveway. The car that
had been patrolling near the county's border. Back at the body,
one of the paramedics succeeded in the second attempt at intimbation.
A respirator filled Diane's lungs with oxygen, but she failed
to breathe on her own. When paramedic went to the
ambulance to notify the hospital and Marshall at the victim's condition,

(17:05):
they wanted the emergency room ready for her arrival. CPR
continued empts, put a headboard under her, then lifted her
under a stretcher. Now this dyslished your breathing tube, so
she had to be reintubated. And they noticed that they
didn't seem to be that much blood. Considering that she
was a victim of a gunshot wound or wounds, they

(17:26):
would expect more.

Speaker 4 (17:27):
Yeah, although I don't think there was an exit wound
for both of them. The penetration was small caliber, so
they didn't see any exit wounds. Some blood did run
from the corners of her mouth and down her cheeks
and also to the collar of her sweatshirt. It was
coming up her trachea from an internal wound near her lungs. Now, Finally,
paramedics strapped her onto a stretcher and carried her to

(17:50):
the waiting ambulance. Inside, two paramedics continued CPR. So now
it was seven oh eight pm, twenty minutes from the
first police disc fourteen minutes since the ambulance had arrived
at the king House, and Diane's children were still in
her car. Pickets and another officer met near the jeep.

(18:11):
As Diane was being moved to the ambulance. Pickets kept
looking at the big red Victorian barn. The exterior was
well lit by two motion detecting floodlights that were mounted
under the eaves of the house. Below was the main
barn door, which was wide open. There was a closed
double loft door above the entrance, surrounded by three double

(18:32):
hung windows. To the right of the main entrance was
another section the barn stable area that was sheltered by
another roofline. The white stable door on the first level
was closed, But then Pickets looked higher. He pointed out
that the loft door was the sliding kind and it
was trimmed in white, and this door was opened slightly.

(18:54):
Someone would later measure this open space at just seven inches.
The barn was not lit, so they had to use
their flashlights They moved forward slowly and found a tractor,

(19:26):
garden tools and plastic tarps. A black mule plow harness
hung on the wall, and beneath it there was a
young Doberman pincher sleeping in some straw. So that was weird.

Speaker 6 (19:37):
Some watch dug so.

Speaker 4 (19:39):
Upstairs the air smelled old and dusty. The floor was
scattered with straw and dust. Pickets approached the open loft
door and saw a mound of straw in front. He
walked slowly forward, sweeping his flashlight in front of his feet.
Then something shined back at him in the straw. A
spent twenty two caliber casing was poking upwards out of
the strands of raw. So his idea to check the

(20:02):
bar and was right on. And of course we think,
if the dog's not reacting, maybe there was no break
in or something.

Speaker 5 (20:09):
What's going on here that I was familiar with could.

Speaker 4 (20:13):
Have been so. Right after Diane was removed from the driveway,
King approached Officer Harold Badger on the sidewalk off of
the porch. Badger would later recall asking him some questions.
Do you have any weapons on you? King said he
had a shotgun, but it was broken, He gestured toward
the house. King's boots were clean and shiny. The kids

(20:34):
were still in the back of the car. King asked
if he could get them, and the officer told him
to go ahead. So inside the house, King asked to
make a phone call. He wanted to call someone to
care for the children. He wanted to be with his
wife in the hospital, he said, so he called a
couple in Battle Creeks, some friends of the family, and
they said they would be there as fast as they could.

(20:56):
An officer sat on the living room couch with Brad King,
eyeing the interior of the home. The farmhouse was nicely furnished,
patterned rugs across the hardwood floors, and the windows had
colorful balances in Southwestern patterns, distinctly Native American in design.
King explained that he had spent a dozen years as

(21:16):
a cop himself in the Pontiac Police Department just north
of Detroit. At Western Michigan University, he taught criminal justice classes,
so he knew a fair amount about murder investigations. At
eight seventeen PM, the phone rang and King answered it
was Frieda Newton, Diane's mom. She wanted to know if

(21:37):
Diane had made it home from Detroit safe, and Brad
King told her there's been an accident.

Speaker 6 (21:43):
At seven twenty pm, the couple King had called earlier
for help with the children arrived at the farmhouse. Barb
had known Diane King for eight months. Her two children
had played with Marlar. Later, she recalled a scene she
found that night. I walked in the house. There were
two police officers in the dining room area. There was

(22:03):
one on his way out. There was one in the
kitchen with Brad, and the children were sitting on the couch. Now,
the first thing I did was look over. The first
thing I saw was Marlar and Katerry. I heard them
before I even got up to the door. Marlar was
in shock. He was sitting on a couch, just staring.
Brad was preparing a bottle. Katerry looked like she'd been

(22:24):
crying for quite some time. So Barb looked at Brad King,
and the first thing she thought was is he in shock?
The children were by themselves, there was nobody in there
with them. Her first instinct was to go to the children.
King looked at her and that's when he started to cry.
She walked over and said what happened. He just said, oh,
barb barba and her husband then took the two kids

(22:46):
so Brad King could focus on his wife and talk
with the police.

Speaker 4 (22:50):
Well, there'd been an odd complaint from Diane and Brad King.
Just a couple of months before the shooting. Someone had
left a letter in their mailbox. It had not gone
through the post office, so someone had hand delivered it.
And this really scared Diane because she had a stalker,
and now the stoker knew where she lived. This disturbing

(23:11):
note Diane had received was now stored in a police
evidence room. The note had lots of cutout letters going
in many directions, letters of varied sizes and styles and type.
The placement was erratic and scotch tape was holding down
the letters onto the paper. This kind of letter is
mostly a thing that you would see on TV or
in a movie. In actuality, only about one percent of

(23:35):
threatening letters are put together with cutout letters.

Speaker 6 (23:38):
Well, it takes time to do that, and it's.

Speaker 4 (23:40):
Almost kind of silly, so it read something quite simple,
you should have gone to lunch with me. There was
one fingerprint on the corner of the page, but it
was still unidentified as far as investigators knew, one of
the deputies on the road had picked up the note
after Diane had called the police department the night before Halloween.

(24:02):
She told the police that she had found it in
her mailbox. She explained that she had started getting calls
at Channel forty one in the spring from a man
who sounded like he was in his twenties or thirties.
He said his name once, but she never got it
again and forgot what it was. He spoke slowly and deliberately,
like a mental patient on medication. She said. The guy

(24:24):
wanted to know how to get into the business about schools,
training and things like that. She told him to check
out a community college, but he kept calling her, sometimes
as many as three times a week. The receptionist at
the station then started screening her calls, but then at
the end of summer, he somehow got through to her

(24:46):
desk again. He told her he liked the way she looked.
He wanted to go to lunch with her, and that's
when Diane politely just told him, fuck off. I don't
know how you say.

Speaker 5 (24:56):
That politely, but I don't know either, but she.

Speaker 4 (25:00):
Had to do something. He just wasn't getting the hint.
It seems like now. Diane was nine months pregnant when
she got the letter, so she was scared shitless. The
note was not postmarked, so she figured he must have
followed her home. The note was sent over to Battle
Creek City Lab for Leyton Prince, but they weren't able
to connect the letter to Brad or anyone else forensically.

(25:22):
About six weeks later, investigators were back at the King's place.
This time they talked to Diane King's husband, Brad. He
had reported an attempted B and E at the house.

Speaker 5 (25:32):
Earlier that day.

Speaker 4 (25:33):
They sat down and talked for about an hour. King
was home alone, and they traded some stories. King said
he had put in a dozen years himself at the
Pontiac PD, so they had taken some security precautions at
work and at home since that letter was received. They
had a Doberman, and the police seemed to be giving

(25:54):
the complaint the appropriate priority. According to King, they were
working on it, but Diane did not really seemed that
extremely concerned at that point. Of course, she was very
busy with her career in her family, so she did
set aside some of her fears as much as she
could that's the only way she could function.

Speaker 6 (26:12):
At around eight thirty on the night Diane was shot,
she was pronounced dead. She was only thirty four years old,
so this is now a homicide investigation. Diane had been
declared dead on arrival minutes after she was taken into
the emergency room. As police worked on getting a warrant
to search the king home and property, one officer was

(26:33):
tasked was giving the bad news to her husband. I
think he probably had an inkling of that anyway, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (26:40):
He likely did. It may have even been his.

Speaker 6 (26:42):
Goal, Brad. They worked on her real heart out there,
the officer said, I know, Brad. King said he buried
his face in his hands, resting his elbows on his knees.
It took some time to find anyone to come to
King's side, but finally some people from the first Presbyterian
Church in Battle Creek were in their way. King was
motionless on the couch. He was taken to police headquarters

(27:05):
in Marshall for a taped interview.

Speaker 4 (27:08):
So I think it's kind of strange that he didn't
insist on going to the hospital, and when they came,
he wasn't at her side either. So investigators believed that
they had found the spot up in the loft where
somebody had fired around. There was a shell casing in
the barn loft, and the husband, Brad, had told them
that he was on the property out back and he

(27:30):
found the body when he returned. No one had gone
farther than the cement silo about fifty yards south of
the barn to protect the area from contamination, so the
canine department officer was counting on the dog's talent to
track things. When German shepherd Travis and he went over
to the twenty two caliber casing in the straw, figuring

(27:51):
a gun ejected to the right, he pointed his hand
to the left of the casing and gave the dog
the command track. The shepherd's nose when down, and his
ears and tail went up. He pulled the officer out
of the loft and down the stairs. At the bottom
of the stairs, the Doberman in the tack room started barking.
But why hadn't the dog barked earlier if there was

(28:13):
a stranger in the barn shooting at Diane the police
canine units. German shepherd Travis stopped momentarily, then kept going,
pulling out of the barn door. He pulled for seven feet,
then turned straight south, heading down the lane that led
from the barnyard toward the cement silo. When the dog
pulled past the silo, the officer began thinking about the husband.

(28:35):
He wondered if the husband had been in the barn
for some reason, and how far south he had actually walked.
At the silo, somebody in command had called them back. Travis, though,
was still pulling hard. The dog stalked a variety of surfaces,
in shadowed areas or in open ridges. Some snow still
covered the ground, and about two hundred and fifty yards

(28:59):
from the barn, they came to a creek. The stream
was noisy and fast to the point where it had
carved new paths for itself around an old culvert, a
falling utility pole, and a plank worked as a makeshift
bridge across the gap. Travis pulled across the plank on
the utility pole where it met the south bank. The

(29:19):
handler saw a heel impression. Remnants of water, ice and
mud outlined a ripple pattern on the pole's wood. Over
the creek, Travis pulled slightly southeast for ten yards or
so into a marsh to the east, where there was
a small patch of snow. The officer's flashlight picked up
two more footprints, and both appeared to be from a

(29:41):
bright boot. One was facing north and the other south.
The deep heel impression left a horizontal pattern of a
half dozen thick serrated lines. He carefully stepped around the footprints.
The dog pulled due south into an area of saplings
and brush. There were more patches of snow than and
more footprints. The maglight revealed the same heel pattern, but

(30:04):
now they were all headed to the south. Out of
a row of small trees. The snow cleared, Travis pulled
left and headed east. The dog began working on the
edge of the farm's field about one hundred and fifty
yards east. Travis then pulled northeast, following a deer trail
into the marsh itself and just inside the bog there

(30:25):
was another heel impression in one of the soft depressions.
It did look similar to the soul that was seen
earlier on that trail, So about twenty yards ahead, Travis
pulled hard toward the stream. He yet his head down
near the water. Then the dog leaped and landed in
the middle of the stream, which was about eight feet wide.
His tail and his ears were up. He tracked northeast

(30:48):
out of the marsh, then north across a wide open field.
So they came out of the field near a small
Michigan Gas Utilities pipeline station and took a left. When
they approached the driveway to sixteen two ft forty Division,
the dog went straight for the entrance. So once inside
the driveway, the German shepherd's head came up with patrol

(31:08):
cars in the driveway and unmarked units parked a long
division drive. The dog's behavior presented a couple of possibilities.
The person they were tracking could have jumped in a
car at the foot of the driveway, or the area
had simply become too contaminated with other sense, or the
killer had returned to the house after disposing of the gun.

(31:30):
If the killer was not Brad, he would have had
to pass by and seen the killer himself. So how
do we feel about tracking dogs and their accuracy?

Speaker 6 (31:40):
As far as I know, they are very accurate.

Speaker 4 (31:43):
Well, I think a lot of it depends on the handler, right,
because a lot of it is up to your interpretation.

Speaker 6 (31:49):
Right yep.

Speaker 4 (31:51):
But yeah, I think They can do amazing things, for sure,
especially the forensic dogs that find decomposing bodies. It's amazing
that they can find no kidding after huge amounts of
time pass So this dog definitely seemed like he was
onto something. His handler did feel sure of that.

Speaker 6 (32:10):
Yeah, I'm not sure how to interpret what the animal did.

Speaker 4 (32:15):
Well, we have to remember that Brad said he went
out for a walk in the woods. So if we
think that Brad was the shooter from the barn, Brad
probably disposed of things out there. So if the dog
went back around that water and through the woods and
then ended up back at the entrance to the house,
either the killer had to have gone in the house,
which would point to Brad because we don't have any

(32:37):
information about a stranger going inside the house, or Brad
would have had to see the killer. So that was
the really curious part of this. How did Brad get
back to the house from his walk? If the killer
had come back to the house, I see and see nothing,
that's very questionable. So Brad and a detective walked down

(32:57):
to the squad room at the Marshall Police station and
he was going there for his interview as the searching
at the house continued. There was a table and a
couple of chairs, and King hung his head in grief,
rubbing his bald head with his hand. The detectives put
a cassette recorder between them and turned it on, and
then Brad told his story. He had gone out for

(33:19):
a walk. He did not know what time, maybe six
or a little after. He was at home alone. Diane
and the kids were on their way home from Stirling
Heights after visiting Diane's mom. They had left Thursday in
the morning to visit Diane's mom. Diane was expected back
to work on Monday. Her mother called Brad around four

(33:39):
thirty and told him that Diane and the kids were
on their way home. So Brad said he'd been napping
and decided to take a walk to wake himself up.
He said he'd gone out around six and headed back
home as it started to get dark outside. When he
got back, he saw Diane lying beside the car, so
his story is that she was already shot when he returned.

(34:01):
He ran over, grabbed her and yelled at her, but
he said she did not respond. He said he heard
a gunshot minutes earlier, but he'd really thought nothing of
it because there were acres of land there, and it
really wasn't that unusual for people to be out hunting
small animals nearby. King had not heard a car speed
off or anything else unusual, he said. When Diane's family

(34:23):
didn't hear from Brad, they started to put together that
he must have had a role in the shooting. Why
wasn't he communicating with them. They finally called the police station,
where they were handed over to Brad, and that's when
he finally told them that Diane was dead. They'd just
been waiting, so they really questioned Brad's story. They did

(34:44):
not have the greatest opinion of him. Plus, he had
known Diane didn't like coming home to an empty house,
So why would he go off and take a walk
when he knows she'll be there any time. Why wasn't
he there to meet her. She had two little kids
she would have needed help with. They wondered if maybe
he he had actually been Diane's stalker and he had
been the one making the harassing phone calls. For years,

(35:06):
Diane had talked about Brad's best qualities and tried to
minimize his standoffish and cold behavior. Diane, they always suspected
signed his name to any cards and letters sent to
the family. Diane had been his best promoter, but face
to face, Brad's true self could not be hidden. Nobody
really was able to click with him. Maybe some of

(35:27):
them never liked him because he was always right on
Diane's tail, tagging along, nagging her, watching her all the time. Plus,
Diane's family knew that Brad was not a good provider.
They believed he was a sponge who packaged himself as
some kind of modern man who helped around the house.
He let Diane support the family, and he was also

(35:48):
quite a liar, even though he always thought he fooled everybody.

Speaker 6 (35:52):
The family was still trying to make sense of Brad's
disappearing act. A couple of weeks ago, and Diana was
supposed to meet a cam operator from Channel forty one
at the grand opening of an archery shop opened by
rockstar Ted Nugent on a Saturday afternoon. Brad took off
to wash the car a mile up the road, but
he disappeared for two hours. Diane was fuming. He finally called,

(36:16):
saying he had soaked the engine installed the car.

Speaker 4 (36:18):
So is that even a thing?

Speaker 6 (36:20):
Soaking the engine? Yeah?

Speaker 4 (36:21):
I think you can wash an engine with water and
it's fine.

Speaker 6 (36:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (36:25):
Plus, if you're washing the car, why would that.

Speaker 6 (36:26):
Even be a thing, Well, it shouldn't be.

Speaker 4 (36:29):
No, it seems like it was a totally made up story.

Speaker 6 (36:31):
He wants to open the hood and wash the engine.

Speaker 5 (36:34):
Oh, come on, I'm just being stupid.

Speaker 4 (36:37):
Well, he was being ridiculous and nobody was believing his story.

Speaker 6 (36:42):
So after he called and said that he had soaked
the engine, Diane went out to find him, and he
wasn't at the car wash. When he returned, he said
he'd go into a different one, and it didn't seem
to bother him at all that he'd messed up Diane's
work assignment.

Speaker 4 (36:57):
Yeah, and that was a pretty big assignment. I know,
as someone who grew up in Michigan. Ted nugent was
a big deal back then. So the Battle Creek Inquirer
ran a page one headline after the shooting TV anchor
slain under it friends report harassment. A staff writer had
reached Diane King's former boss, KJCTTV station manager Jan Hammer.

(37:21):
He said he had talked to Diane King two weeks earlier.
She told him she was being stocked. She had received
calls and the cutout letter. But Diane's family now suspected
that maybe her husband, Brad, had been behind the whole thing,
maybe he had been plotting this all along. Brad's uncluttered
work schedule had allowed him plenty of free time and

(37:44):
he would socialize outside the marriage, but that arrangement threatened
to come undone because Diane wanted to quit her job
and stay home with her two young children. So Brad
decided on murder and insurance fraud instead of divorce and
starting over, and he believed he could fool investigators. So

(38:04):
this is what the family put together, and it seems
quite accurate the more we learn. Police did search the
King property looking for the weapon that had killed Diane.
They did find a rifle stuck down deep into mud
in a creek, along with some shell casings. It looked
like someone had stepped on the gun to drive it
down into the mud and pushed it in as far

(38:26):
as they could, and of course this would have been
on Brad's walking path that the dog had followed. The
gun was found along the same track that the dog
had followed and the trail Brad King had likely walked.
Brad's family identified the gun as being in their family
and belonging to Brad. His mom was interviewed very reluctantly

(38:47):
and said Brad was the one who had ended up
with that gun. Of course this was circumstantial evidence, but
now they had family members who would testify that they
believed that that gun was left to Brad.

Speaker 5 (38:58):
Pick apart his story absolutely.

Speaker 6 (39:01):
A tip came late in the week of Diane's funeral. Kathy,
an attractive college adh girl, checked into a local motel
the day after the murder, made one phone call, then
abruptly checked out. She told motel staff that she was
a close friend of Brad King's, but wanted no contact
with his family, who were staying in other rooms.

Speaker 4 (39:23):
Yeah, so this was curious. Kathy was only twenty one,
and she was a former criminal justice student of Brad King.
I guess I just went to Marshall on an impulse,
she would tell detectives, adding she had left after finding
out that Brad had plenty of family around. She denied
being his lover, but said that King listened to her

(39:44):
problems and gave her rides home from class when her
car broke down. He had dropped by her apartment to
just chat, she said before class a couple of times.
In fact, she added, King had gone out with her
and two other of his students just on February every seventh,
two days before his wife's murder. They'd gone drinking at
a pub in Kalamazoo until about midnight. Kathy said he

(40:07):
seemed a little down. He said things were a little
more complicated in his life than he wished them to be.
Detectives had to wonder why an instructor would go out
drinking with his students. Seems very inappropriate. Also, he's got
these two little kids and a wife. He should probably
be spending more time with them.

Speaker 6 (40:25):
Probably would be nice.

Speaker 4 (40:26):
King said his wife watch their children at his house
when he taught, and he told Kathy that he and
his wife were separated, which was absolutely not true. So

(40:57):
on February nineteenth, an anonymous caller to the police shared
a similar story. Someone ought to have a chat with
a couple of Western Michigan room mates, the tipster said,
and they seemed to know all about an affair that
Brad King was having with a student. Investigators found one
of the students at home, and she said she knew

(41:17):
all about the affair. Her roommate was best friends with
the student. From what she understood, she had been seeing
King since the fall term. This student, Kelly, had been
dreading hearing from the police for days, but she invited
the detective into the kitchen. He was making her nervous,
but she finally did admit to having sex with Brad

(41:38):
King twice. So Students described King as a big softy
in class. They said he encouraged everyone to call him Brad.
He seemed super easy going. He gave students pets on
the back and hugs. Students brought him small gifts and snacks,
so he had himself a following, mostly young women. A

(41:58):
half dozen females. Students were always following him back to
his office, something that did not go on noticed by
some of the men in class. As his students got
to know him, they learned all about his marital troubles
and his devotion to his son. He talked about wanting
to take his son hunting, but said as a stranged
wife complained that that was no place for a three

(42:20):
year old, I'd have to agree.

Speaker 5 (42:22):
Oh yeah, it's easy, that's crazy.

Speaker 4 (42:24):
So he also liked to hit the bars after class,
and in November, when he told some students that his
estranged wife had given birth to their daughter. They'd asked
to see a picture, but he'd been all thrilled about
his son and seemed indifferent and cold about the new child.
The daughter. The Channel forty one book keeper Nancy Gwynn
knew that she also had to contact the police and

(42:47):
share information with them. She was interviewed on February twenty
first ever since the funeral. Nancy had cried every day
at eight forty am, the time Diane King had always
dropped by her office, taking her break over coffee and
cookies that Nancy would bring, bake and bring in. Nancy
knew she'd become Diane's surrogate mother at the station, and

(43:09):
recent months had brought uncertainty for everyone. The station was
going to be sold in June. Executives were telling them
everyone was considering getting other jobs, but Diane really seemed
to have more troubles in her life than most. She
was having a really tough time making ends meet, and
Brad just did not seem to understand. He just wanted more.

(43:32):
Twice the Irs had started garnishments, and twice Diane had
called them and promised payments to stop it. She told
Nancy she'd given Bread money to pay these installments, but
he'd never sent it in. He just spent it on himself.
So he's just a real charmer. Huh. Quite a guy,
this brat.

Speaker 6 (43:52):
Yeah, he's a hard worker.

Speaker 4 (43:53):
Yeah. So they talked a lot about her marriage. Nancy
had seen Diane the Thursday before her murder, and Diane
had done her fair share of crying in the office
week after week ever since she became pregnant with Katery.
Brad wanted her to abort the baby. Diane told her
he never really wanted Marler either. She added their marriage

(44:15):
seemed to take a turn for the worse after they
had kids. Diane told her recently that Brad was losing
his temper with Marler and slapping him around. He had
lost his temper with Diane too, and she had shown
Nancy bruise marks shaped like fingers on her arms. Bred
had also hit her in the stomach days before Katerri

(44:35):
was born. Diane had told her he would say to her,
I'm going to kill you, I swear to God.

Speaker 6 (44:41):
You hear that, yeah, statements, and you just feel badly
that the woman couldn't extricate herself from that situation.

Speaker 4 (44:50):
Oh yeah, it's a tragic story, and unfortunately it's when
we hear too often we do. Yeah, I mean, she
just had that daughter that's really in a tough spot.
Plus she's going to I lose her job.

Speaker 6 (45:01):
So when Diane returned to work at the station in January,
she told Nancy that she suspected Brad was actually her stalker.
She suspected he had fake to break in at the
house as well. I know it's Brad, He's trying to
scare me, Diane said. The Thursday before the killing. During
her last morning break together, Diane had an especially hard cry.

(45:24):
I just can't do it anymore, Nancy. Diane told her,
I'm done. I've tried everything I could try. I've tried
to talk to him. I've tried to make him understand
that the children are part of our lives. I've tried counseling.
I can't live this way. Diane King told her she
was going to contact an attorney. She wanted to get
a divorce. Although media accounts bury on Brad's job status

(45:47):
around the time of Diane's murder, one source reported that
he was entirely unemployed by the winter of nineteen ninety one.

Speaker 4 (45:54):
Yeah, so he'd really gotten to the point of just
using her and doing whatever he wanted. Real scumbag with
two little kids. So by the end of February, detectives
were wondering what it was going to take to get
an arrest warrant from the prosecutor's office because they felt
sure that Brad had killed his wife. They'd already put
together a strong, circumstantial case for motive. The detectives offered

(46:18):
a couple of possibilities. They had found a company life
insurance policy on Diane at the TV station. The payoff
with double indemnity would have been fifty four thousand dollars. Now,
clearly there was trouble in the king marriage, and after
finding students he had had affairs with, both, detectives thought

(46:39):
the prosecutor would want to make an arrest, But the
prosecutor did not think a jury would consider fifty four
thousand dollars a high enough motivation for murder. I disagree.
This was nineteen ninety one, so fifty four thousand dollars
is a lot of money. Now, back then it was
a great deal of money. You could buy a house,
a decent house in nineteen ninety one.

Speaker 6 (47:00):
For that money, Yeah, well it might not seem like
a princely sum of money, but for some people it
would be.

Speaker 4 (47:07):
Well for someone who's not working, yeah, So the prosecutor
also argued that the students could have just been flings,
and maybe that wouldn't be a motivation because no one
had said they were in love with him or demanding
that he leave Diane, and he hadn't promised any of
these women that he was going to marry them. So,
while investigators were still working on the case, Brad took

(47:28):
his two children and moved to Colorado. He said he
was tired of facing police questioning. Police conducted dozens of interviews.
One young man who mowed the King's lawn told them
that he had seen a twenty two caliber rifle at
the king House that Brad did own.

Speaker 6 (47:45):
One.

Speaker 4 (47:46):
Investigators had the rifle they found in the mud and
the woods tested and it was consistent with the gun
that had killed Diane, but it could not be matched
one hundred percent. The bullets had been damaged from impact
Diane's body. Still, now they felt they had enough that
they could get a conviction. So finally, in early nineteen

(48:08):
ninety two Michigan authorities did arrest Brad. They charged him
with first degree murder and set his bail at seven
hundred and fifty thousand dollars so he would remain in jail.
At the trial, Diane's mother testified that Brad had expected
Diane to be alone in the car when she returned
home on the day of the murder. You see, the

(48:28):
couple had planned to leave kit Terry and Marler with
their grandparents overnight. Brad had given some kind of story
to her like he wanted them to have time alone
to work on things, but one of the kids had
gotten sick, so Diane had ended up bringing them both
home with her. So Brad was surprised to find his
children in the car, so this could have been part

(48:49):
of his downfall. He couldn't leave them in the cold
for very long, so he had to hide the gun
and shells quickly and rush back to the house and
call for help. But in his hurry, they had missed
one shell in the barn, and this at least circumstantially
tied his rifle to the murder. Investigators believed Brad planted
the rifle in the woods to deflect suspicion away from himself,

(49:12):
and they suspected Brad sent the threatening note to Diane
and had used cutout letters because she could have identified
his handwriting. Authorities believed the entire Stocker saga was a
hoax that was staged by Brad. So one of the
things they had to get past for this was to
figure out how he had changed his voice. But there

(49:33):
were such things as voice changers available at that time.
Remember Home Alone two, Kevin had that voice changing toy. Yeah,
you could buy those cheaply at toys rs.

Speaker 6 (49:44):
Oh sure.

Speaker 4 (49:45):
So the defense suggested that a burglar had killed Diane.
There was a broken window at the house, but the
glass fragments were on the wrong side. They were outside
of the house, and thieves, of course break in out,
so his set up there had failed. We've seen that
in a few cases, where they break the window from

(50:07):
the inside.

Speaker 6 (50:07):
Out the wrong way.

Speaker 4 (50:08):
Yeah. Actually, I think they did that in that really
famous Texas case, the Katie Texas case. Yeah, with Kelly
Siegler as the prosecutor.

Speaker 5 (50:17):
I remember that.

Speaker 4 (50:18):
So Brad was forty four years old, and this is
a guy who enjoyed hanging around with college kids at
a fraternity house and liked doing shots of tequila at Waldo's,
a bar where students drank. Two students told police that
they were having affairs with Brad shortly before the murder.
One of these women, Ann Hill, said Brad felt cut

(50:39):
off from the family's finances, and he had told her
that Diane had frozen their checking account. So there's another
motive if she's cutting off his money, right, can't do that. No,
police did learn that Brad had set up a date
with one of his girlfriends the day after the murder.
So I guess he just thought he was smarter than
the investigators and expected to get away with murdering his wife.

(51:02):
But that just seems like you're just tempting fate to
do something like that. Wasn't even really trying to look good.

Speaker 6 (51:10):
It's pretty stupid. But there's other things.

Speaker 4 (51:14):
There's always stupid things, right, Yeah, Now, the prosecution believed
that Brad had set up Diane. He knew that she
was coming home, and he left the lights on in
the house. Then he shot her from the barn with
his rifle. As far as the stalker is concerned, the
prosecution was now totally convinced that Brad King had made
the calls and sent the letter, planning to murder Diane

(51:37):
one day and hoping her murder would just be blamed
on this unknown stalker. So after a six week trial,
Brad King was convicted and he was sentenced to life
in prison. He's still serving his life sentence at the
Gus Harrison Correctional Facility in Adrian, Michigan. So I definitely
think this whole stalker thing, he started the whole thing

(52:01):
with this in mind. Eventually, why else, Oh, you have to.

Speaker 6 (52:05):
Think if he's going to the trouble of stalking her
or agreeing with her there was a stalker.

Speaker 4 (52:10):
Yes, and contacting the police and reporting.

Speaker 6 (52:13):
It, he's got some underhanded business going on.

Speaker 4 (52:17):
Yeah. I think it was definitely a setup. And then
he just ambushed her. He thought she was coming home
without the children and he was in the barn just
ready to kill her. It's very cold blooded, very premeditated.
It's really rotten. Just a real psychopath if you ask me.

Speaker 6 (52:33):
Yeah, he has some issues, doesn't he.

Speaker 4 (52:37):
That's putting it mildly, Yeah, But this just seems like
a personality type we've seen many times in people that
kill their wives. Sometimes also in women who kill their husbands.
But it's almost like this attitude of not wanting to
be an adult, not wanting to be responsible financially or
with the children, just wanting to have a good time,
and then when the spouse gets in the way of that,

(53:00):
they really don't seem to have any qualms about just
killing the spouse. So it's definitely a psychopathic personality and
a narcissistic personality.

Speaker 6 (53:08):
I would think, Oh, yes.

Speaker 4 (53:09):
Yeah, it's just dreadful, dreadful, dreadful. So word on the
street is that you don't have any feedback for me
today you heard correctly, okay, but next week you're going
to have just some really awesome feedback.

Speaker 6 (53:23):
Yeah, well, I need some suggestions from people.

Speaker 4 (53:25):
Oh you need more suggests.

Speaker 6 (53:27):
So okay, all you listeners out there, send an email
or a voice message, or however you can do it
by carry your pigeon. Give me some suggestions so we
can do feedback.

Speaker 4 (53:40):
You really should, because just picture Dick sadly sitting at
his desk. He keeps refreshing the voicemail page and nothing's there, right,
keeps refreshing. He says, I need more feedback so I
can give it to my wife. She's just really given
me a hard time here, Poor Dickie.

Speaker 6 (53:57):
Yeah yeah, poor me, poor Dicky.

Speaker 4 (54:00):
Guys, well, thanks for listening, We appreciate you and we
await your feedback. We'll see you next time at the
quiet end.

Speaker 6 (54:07):
Come mine down plenty your room. Bye bye bye, guys,