Trading in Murder: The Brendel Family Murders

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
So some things only look perfect. Holland premieres March twenty seventh,
only on Prime Video this week. On Wednesday, March twenty sixth,
at six thirty pm, We're hosting an early screening of
Nicole Kidman's new movie Holland at the Telsher twelfth Theater
in our city of Las Crusis New Mexico. Attendance in

(00:21):
Popcorn are free, so if you're in town, please come
by and meet us and enjoy the movie. In this
wildly unpredictable thriller, Nicole Kidman is the meticulous Nancy Vandergrut,
a teacher and a homemaker whose picture perfect life with
her community pillar husband played by Matthew McFadden and son

(00:42):
played by Jude Hill. In tulip Field Holland, Michigan tumbles
into a twisted tail. Nancy and her friendly colleague Gaiale
Garcia Bernal become suspicious of a secret, only to discover
that nothing in their lives is what it seems. So
I'll put a link to the audio and video trailers
in our show notes, and I hope we'll see some

(01:04):
of you there.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
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 1 (01:34):
Welcome to True Crime Brewery.

Speaker 3 (01:35):
I'm Jill and I'm Dick.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
So when Ernest Brendell, his wife Alice, and their eight
year old daughter Emily disappeared from their Barrington, Rhode Island home,
the FBI and the state police suspected that they were
victims of foul play. So the family of three had
just moved to Barrington from Providence about three years earlier,
and they believed they had found a safe and happy

(01:59):
place for little Emily to grow up. Join us at
the Quiet End for trading in murder. When Ernest Brendell
filed a complaint against commodity trader Chris high Tower, high
Tower's life was in a tailspin. The deadline for responding
to the complaint came and went. High Tower's wife asked
for a divorce, and then he was served with a

(02:22):
court order barring him from contact with his children. So,
exposed as a con man and a thief, high Tower
began stalking the Brendel's and even plotted to kidnap young Emily.
Scary story. Crazy guy, Let's have a beer.

Speaker 3 (02:38):
Okay, We're gonna have Flying Jenny Extra pale Ale from
a Gray Sale brewing in Westerly, Rhode Island. This is
an American pale ale five point three percent alcohol by volume.
The beer's a kind of a dark amber color with
modestly sized off white head, tiny bit of lacing, a
nice aroma, citrus and flowers, some sweet malt. It tasted

(03:02):
better than you could get from the nose, grapefruit flowers,
very strong background, caramel, happy beer, but still pretty malty.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
Yeah, I don't mind a little malt.

Speaker 3 (03:13):
Yeah, I know you just don't like that dank pine stuff.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
But pine is not my favorite. But I am willing
to make that sacrifice because the alcohol's worth it, right, yes, ma'am? Okay,
open it up? All right? Dicky? Do you I know

(03:45):
your voice is better this week, So do you want
to start us out for it? Okay?

Speaker 3 (03:50):
Yeah, I can talk today.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
Awesome.

Speaker 3 (03:53):
Both the Ernest Brendel and Alice Bob were Ivy League
school graduates and had advanced degrees. They had a bright
future ahead of them. He was a Wall Street lawyer
and she was a New York City librarian. Alice was petite.
Ernie was kind of also, wasn't he. He's a little
bit taller and a little bit stockier, a.

Speaker 1 (04:12):
Lot stockier than her, but not that much taller.

Speaker 3 (04:15):
Yeah. Yeah, little people, Okay, And they could have lived
in an exclusive East Side apartment building with a dorman
and own an expensive car parked in a private garage,
but not. For Ernie and Alice, New York was just
a step on their path to the life of their dreams.
Both had graduated from Brown Ernest or Ernie as his

(04:36):
friends called him, had gone on to earn a law
degree from the University of Virginia, and he passed the
New York Bar. Alice earned a master's degree in library
science from Columbia University.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
Yeah. So this couple just puts me to shame. I
just can't believe not just being smart, but so sensible
and organized. Just impressive. It surely is, it really is.

Speaker 2 (04:58):
So.

Speaker 1 (04:58):
Ernie's small apartment was now their idea of where they
wanted to live their lives, though they rented a slightly
larger apartment, but still really wanted a home and eventually children,
So a few years after they were married, they moved
out of the city, and they settled into a house
in North Terrytown, just a short walk from the train station,
and that's where they commuted into the city. Alice worked

(05:21):
at the library and Ernie practiced law in partnership with
another attorney. So Ernie had been born in Jersey City,
New Jersey, to German parents, Jacob and Jolene. As a boy,
Ernie was set on becoming a pitcher for the Boston
Red Sox. And I'd say a lot of kids had
that idea.

Speaker 3 (05:40):
Well, yeah, yeah, you want to be a pro athlete.

Speaker 1 (05:42):
Absolutely, So the family eventually settled in an upper class
section of Convent Station, New Jersey, in a two story
colonial house. His dad, an import export entrepreneur, was away
from home half of each year, leaving the raising of
the three kids to Joe Lean. In high school, Ernie

(06:03):
showed his creativity by writing for the school newspaper. He
did excel at baseball, but his small size kind of
kept him from professional sports, at least that's the way
he thought about it.

Speaker 3 (06:14):
Yeah, well, we've talked about how difficult it is to
get into the professional professional league. Oh yeah, so yeah,
I wanted to be a picture for the Red Sox,
but I couldn't throw the ball.

Speaker 1 (06:27):
Well, that could be a problem too, I guess. Yeah.
So after he realized he's really not going to be
a professional baseball player, his education became a very serious focus.
He entered pre law at Brown, and after he did
begin his career as a lawyer, he married a woman
named joe Ann, but they divorced seven years later and
they didn't have any children together, so he would go

(06:50):
on to marry Alice, of course. Alice Bob was the
youngest of three children. Her parents were Arthur and Arlene Bob.
The family was very intellectual, and Alice picked up her
parents and siblings love of learning. Her dad was an
eye surgeon, and that's a profession that was carried on
by her eldest brother. Her other brother became an attorney. So,

(07:12):
surrounded by books and ideas from a young age, Alice
gave serious consideration to becoming a doctor herself. She dated
often and had a wide circle of friends. The grades
and extracurriculars earned her acceptance at three colleges, the Connecticut
College for Women, Wellesley and Pembroke College, and that was

(07:33):
the women's division of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.
So she had a real sense of adventure and took
advantage of opportunities to travel abroad. She also loved to read,
and after college her apartment in New York was filled
with books. Then, after going to Columbia, she joined New
York's public library system, working in mid Manhattan and at

(07:56):
a smaller branch. She did continue to have a pretty
active social life, though, and one of her boyfriends was
Ernie Brendel, and he was very taken with this pretty
and witty librarian.

Speaker 3 (08:08):
Yes he was so. In nineteen eighty Ernie and Alice
moved from Tarryton to Providence. Their lives changed in June
of nineteen eighty three when their baby girl, Emily, was born.
When she was born, Alice was thirty seven and Ernie
was forty five, so maybe this was going to be
a one.

Speaker 1 (08:26):
And then I don't know, I mean it was getting
kind of late. Yes, she was in her forties by
the time this all happened, So yeah, they were probably
just happy with the one child.

Speaker 3 (08:37):
Well, and despite all his successes, Emily was the best
thing that ever happened to them. Having carefully planned the birth,
both parents doted on their only child, Ernie, who investigated
everything before making a decision search for a new home,
and he found it just a few exits down the
interstate Barrington right.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
So Barrington is a place where money can buy you peace,
quiet and a feeling of safety. Ghost homes are charming
and large, and there on spacious wooded lots. The landmark
of the town is a white steeple of the Barrington
Congressional Church, a classic New England place of worship, and
this church would play an important role in a crime

(09:15):
that would stun the community. So Chris Hightower was the
oldest child of Margaret and James Robert Hightower. He was
called Jamier at home and Jerry by his classmates, and
that was based on his middle name. He had few
friends and was unhappy at home. As he reached his teens,
his home life, which was never ideal, got worse when

(09:36):
he learned that the man he thought was his father
actually was not. His mother had never married his biological father,
and she had given birth to Chris at age seventeen.
His father had abandoned his pregnant girlfriend and then of
course abandoned Chris. So Chris was really filled with shame
over this This new knowledge drove a real wedge between

(09:58):
him and the rest of the family. Efforts by his
strict stepfather to discipline him included beatings with the dog leash.
So when I say not ideal, I mean it apparently.
So the punishment really stoked anger in Chris, but he
did try to be a well behaved child and keep
out of trouble. Still, for the rest of his life,
Chris would rebel against any rules that tried to kind of,

(10:21):
you know, hem in his behaviors. His home life did
make him determined that he would be a success, but
I think it was kind of like an I'll show
them more then a good thing.

Speaker 3 (10:32):
I think that's that's true.

Speaker 1 (10:34):
So in high school, Chris high Tower ran track and
played basketball, but being an athlete didn't make him popular.
When he graduated from Titusville High, he had plans for college,
but really not the greats. In the fall, he joined
the pre med program at Indian River Junior College and
he moved into a dorm, got a part time job
to help pay expenses, and began taking classes. His course

(10:58):
of study allowed him to speak proudly about becoming a physician,
but high Tower discovered that he had the ability to
charm people and really make them believe whatever he wanted.
So that's kind of the beginning of becoming a con man. Yeah,
Niche he kind of did. Loved to argue, persuade, and
even fool people. So he played basketball, but he didn't

(11:20):
make the team and when the final exams came up,
he dropped out. He only had transfer credits for two
of the courses, and that was zoology and freshman Math elective.
Then he took a job working in construction, but boy
did he hate that. Chris wanted to get as far
away from his stepfather as possible, and he wound up
living with a roommate in Arlington, Virginia, both of them

(11:43):
work in construction. He did have some money and for
the first time he did have a pretty busy social
life as an eligible single man. Chris could see Vietnam
in his future, though, but he didn't want to return
to college and he was afraid he would be drafted.
So what he did was he enlisted in the name
and indicated that he wanted to be a doctor. For

(12:03):
sixteen weeks, he endured boot camp in Great Lakes Naval
Training Center in Illinois. The Navy assigned him to another
sixteen weeks of training at Hospital Corman's School, and after
that Chris received his Navy assignment. It was not Vietnam.
He was sent to Bethesda Medical Center in Maryland.

Speaker 3 (12:24):
And at that hospital he worked all over the place
and this was where some of the most serious Navy
and marine casualties of Vietnam were brought in for treatment.
High Tower saw the full spectrum of the war wounds,
and later he became an operating room technician and was
assigned to assist surgeons at the Newport Naval Hospital in
Rhode Island. Now, while he was stationed in Bethesda, he

(12:44):
dated an Asian girl. He bought her a diamond ring
and they did marry, but the relationship ended tragically when
his young wife was believed to have died while on
a solo trip to visit her family in Malaysia for
a reason never explained. Her diamond ring was left behind
in Maryland with high Toower. That is interesting.

Speaker 1 (13:04):
It's interesting, and I've heard from different sources that this
was just had nothing, there was no foul play, had
nothing to do with him. And from others I've heard
that authorities really investigated this disappearance, but regardless, no charges
were ever filed.

Speaker 3 (13:18):
It's just weird strange to me.

Speaker 1 (13:21):
Oh, it was weird yees.

Speaker 3 (13:22):
Traveling alone mm hmmm and leaves her ring behind.

Speaker 1 (13:25):
Yes, Oh, I'm with you totally. It's weird. Yes, it
is kind of strange, especially knowing what we do about
him later on. And while he told his family that
he had married this girl, he'd never changed his marital
status in his navy records. So that made you wonder. Now,
when Chris was assigned to work in Newport, Rhode Island,
Ellen Crown, an attractive young woman from New York's Long Island,

(13:49):
earned her nursing degree from a Catholic school in Rhode Island,
and she immediately enlisted in the Navy. She was given
an officer's commission and assigned as an obstetric's nurse at
the Naval Hospital complex at Newport. So the excitement of
her work among the new babies and her role of
being a naval officer really seemed to suit her. Then

(14:09):
she noticed this quiet, well mannered corman who worked in
the operating room. Now, at first she didn't like him,
but his smooth talk and determination would eventually change her
mind and remember that was his strength to talk people
into things. Basically, so, Ellen was fascinated by Chris high
Tower's apparent intelligence and his desire to improve himself. He

(14:32):
convinced Ellen that he planned to become a physician, and
because of his own unhappy childhood, he wanted to be
an exceptional father. Ellen, who was the product of a
loving and supportive family, was in love. Chris was about
six feet tall, trim and athletic and not bad looking.
They began to plan a future together after their military careers.

(14:53):
Things would be good, he promised her. All he needed
was to get out of the service and start a
professional life to support a family for them. So, when
the time of his enlistment was completed, Ellen and Chris
decided to stay in the Navy for another three months
to get one more promotion and to pay increase. When
he was discharged, he had spent over four years in

(15:15):
the Navy, he no longer had to worry about Ellen
being a superior officer. She stayed in the Navy, but
he was a civilian again, so it was not long
before they were sharing an apartment off base with his
gi Bill, Ellen working to support him. His seven transfer
credits from Indian River Junior College and then seventeen educational

(15:37):
credits from Navy schools. High Tower was ready to go
back to college and work toward becoming a doctor, so
he enrolled as a twenty three year old freshman at
the University of Rhode Island, and he chose to major
in zoology. His cumulative grade point average after three quarters
was three point one four, so things were going.

Speaker 3 (15:58):
Okay, that's a nice start.

Speaker 1 (15:59):
Yeah, but he had to study. He had to hold
down part time jobs to bring in money. Andy had
to keep Ellen happy. Wasn't easy for him.

Speaker 3 (16:07):
Well, it's okay, it's not supposed to be easy.

Speaker 1 (16:10):
Sure.

Speaker 3 (16:10):
So Ellen married Chris Hihtower in the base chapel at Newport.
She wore the same diamond ring her husband had once
given to his Malaysian bride, the one who had vanished
years earlier. So he's kind of recycling the ring.

Speaker 1 (16:22):
Yeah, that's another really weird thing.

Speaker 3 (16:26):
It is for Ellen. The diamond showed everyone that she
was not only a naval officer but also the wife
of a medical student. A couple moved into a new apartment,
and high Tower returned to school. Now that he was
in school, and married to a girl from a wealthy family,
and he'saw by the way, two things that were the
biggest goals in his life. He felt tied down by

(16:46):
the academic rules and by Ellen's demands. There is little
spare time, and Ellen noticed that her husband was irritable
and complained more and more about the way she did things.
So despite his outward confidence, he is very aware of
his short comings. As grades began a slide, and then
trying to live on heart salary alone, they gave up
their apartment and moved into navy housing. In the spring semester,

(17:09):
High Tower's grades fell two c's and two d's, not
too good, so that'd be about a two point five GPA.

Speaker 1 (17:16):
Well, yeah, they really fell off, let's be honest. And
that's not going to get him into med school. So
his dream of becoming a doctor was really fading away.
And you know, maybe he really wasn't able to reach
those kind of academic standards. Not everyone is, and that's okay,
but he wasn't going to accept that. And I also
think there was a lack of effort. He wanted things
to be easy, but they stuck it out. High Tower

(17:39):
stayed in school while Ellen continued her nursing job for
the Navy, but his grades did not improve C's d's
and incompletes. At least they were still together, though, and
on December twenty seventh, two days after Christmas, he was
able to graduate with a Bachelor of Science degree in zoology. Now,
I don't know what med schools think of zoology. I

(18:00):
know you can do a lot of different undergraduate degrees,
but if your grades aren't good and your majors zoology,
I don't think your odds of getting into med school
are excellent.

Speaker 3 (18:10):
No, they're pretty poor. Yeah, I just not the major.
I mean, you can major in anything, but the great
point average. That's a very crucial part.

Speaker 1 (18:18):
Yeah, and I don't know if he ever took the MCATs.
I wasn't able to find out about how he did
on that if he did. But getting out of school
at that point should have been a time to relax
and have a little fun, and that was not the case.
By this time, Ellen was pregnant and she was ready
to resign from her job, which meant an end to
her Navy paycheck. So it really was time for the

(18:39):
man she had put through college to support his family.
It was time for Chris to get a job.

Speaker 3 (18:44):
The harsh reality.

Speaker 1 (18:46):
Yeah yeah, So Chris began working as a drug salesman
for Riker Laboratories. Ellen was making the transition from Navy

(19:07):
officer to homemaker, and then their first daughter, Deborah was born.
Being a field rep seemed perfect for High Tower. At first.
He had always looked up to doctors, and in recent
years he told everyone that he would become a physician himself.
So now selling prescription drugs, he was in hospitals, drug stores,
and doctors' offices, and Riker Labs even gave him a

(19:28):
company car. It was a pretty good job, but unfortunately
he really hated the job. And you know why is
because it was like torture for him to scrape and
bow before doctors. He did not like doctors being above
him as far as that goes. And when you're trying
to make sales, of course, the person you're trying to
sell to is the boss, really, uh, especially in a

(19:52):
profession like that. So for two years he made his rounds,
but his efforts just decreased. At home, education was also
a topic because Ellen was entering a program where she
would earn a master's degree, so by nineteen seventy eight,
he was tired of riker laps. Ellen was pregnant again
and she was critical when he quit the sales job,

(20:13):
giving up their medical benefits with another baby on the
way now, so Chris began working at a restaurant, and
that's where he would meet his next wife. Ellen gave
birth to another daughter, Donna, and Chris had a new idea.
He began to send out applications for medical schools as
far away as Poland. He didn't care where, as long
as he could get into medical school. If only he

(20:36):
could get accepted somewhere, then he could prove he could
do the work. And that's even if Ellen was skeptical
about his grades being good enough for any medical school.
So he did get accepted, and that was at American
University of the Caribbean, but he couldn't afford it, and
his father in law refused to loan him money for
the tuition because the plan was to leave the wife

(20:57):
and kids behind and go there, and that was not cool.
So the couple became more and more distant, and that's
when Chris developed an interest in an attractive eighteen year
old Susan slicker at work. So she came from a
family with great wealth, and after seven years of marriage,
Ellen was very aware of her husband's short temper and
his refusal to take his responsibilities seriously. So for her,

(21:21):
Susan was just one issue in the crumbling marriage. Wasn't
the biggest issue, really.

Speaker 3 (21:27):
No, it was an issue.

Speaker 1 (21:29):
Of course. Yes, she was quite young, right out of
high school, so.

Speaker 3 (21:33):
Ellen began to fear for the safety of herself and
the girls. One day when high Tower became violent. So
this quiet man exploded just out of nowhere. The family
had two female dogs, so a neighbor's male dog, which
had impregnated one of his females the previous year, came
sniffing around again. So High Tower erupted in a rage,

(21:53):
grabbed a shovel and attacked the dog, and he beat
it to death with his shovel. Basically, then he stuffed
the corpse of box and threw it away. So that's
pretty gruesome. Ellen wondered if what had happened to the
dog could happen to her.

Speaker 1 (22:07):
Also, Okay, well someone does that to an animal, they
could do it to anyone, in my opinion, and that
would be for sure the day I would be gone. Yeah,
so I think Ellen was pretty much on board with
what I'm saying, and she and Chris divorced, but he
soon remarried Susan Slicker of Barrington. High Tower made plans
to return to school. Then Susan's father, Clyde Slicker, proudly

(22:31):
gave the hand of his then twenty year old daughter
to the thirty two year old High Tower. Barrington was
offering total acceptance to High Tower too, because he'd been
born and raised poor, and they gave him a lot
of credit for moving up. So by becoming part of
the Slicker family, he would be part of the community
of Barrington. But there was one sign that things were

(22:51):
not really as they seemed. After his divorce from Ellen,
High Tower had stolen her wedding ring and had the
diamond reset. Yes, this was the third wife to wear
the same diamond. Now. Less than a year after Susan
and Chris settled into their new home, they became parents
of a son, and they named him John. When Chris

(23:13):
was home, he liked to sit in front of the
TV and do nothing when he wasn't studying or running
out the door to work in a lab. His behavior
was very difficult. It seemed like nothing that Susan did
was right. He found fault with the way the house
was cleaned, the way the baby looked, and the way
she dressed so polite to outsiders. At home, he would
shout at her, accuse her of infidelity, and all kinds

(23:34):
of things. His superiors at school were wondering about the
same thing. He was having trouble keeping up academically. He
showed lapses of judgment, like bringing his baby son into
the lab and putting the infant's carrier on a table
while experiments were being conducted right there. So they began
to doubt that High Tower could meet the requirements to

(23:55):
continue in the program. Then he published his master's thesis,
which was afforded eight page document entitled body Water and
its Distribution in Neonatal Rats. So his name was stamped
in gold on the glossy black cover the data and
the declaration of how his study could be the first
to show that cortico sterone may have biological activity and

(24:17):
fluid volume regulation in twelve day old neonatal rats. Was
really nothing special to the faculty, but still he did
get his master's degree. But now he faced the hard
part oral and written exams to continue in the PhD program.
If he wanted to become doctor Hightower, he had to
pass those exams in the fall, and even he knew

(24:37):
he wasn't up to the challenge. Then one day, Susan,
pregnant with her second child, took Johnny to daycare as
usual and went on to school herself, leaving Chris at
home alone. While she was in class, she was called
to the telephone and a neighbor told her, your house
is on fire. Yeah, so Susan raced across the campus

(24:58):
to find her husband, but he wasn't a in his office,
so she quickly drove away to pick up little Johnny.
When she called from the daycare center, Chris had reached
his office and they went back to the house together.
When they got there, they found clouds of smoke rising
into the sky. Fire Department investigators said the flames had
started in the basement as a result of spontaneous combustion

(25:20):
between a bag of fertilizer and an open can of
motor oil. When Susan and Chris finally entered their house,
they had to walk through several inches of standing water.
The combined damage from the fire, the smoke and the
water had left the place a total shambles, but despite
a few structural problems, the insurance adjuster said that it

(25:41):
all could be repaired, so they still had their home
and they received a check, which was the important thing,
I think to Chris Hightower. High Tower then convinced the
BioMed faculty at the college to postpone his oral exam
and he was given more time to prepare. Also, money
had been extremely scarce around the High Tower household, but
this new insurance money really turned things around. And then

(26:04):
just two weeks later, a fire happened again, this time
causing even more damage. So Arson investigators sifted through the
ashes and they decided that the flames had been deliberately
set at four different places in the cellar. Gasoline cans
with the fingerprints of Chris high Tower were found nearby.
Boxes stacked in the front hallway were stolen as well,

(26:26):
so Susan and Chris were taken to the police station
for questioning. This time and suspicious investigators wanted Chris to
take a lie detector test. He refused, though he said
he'd been asleep in the apartment when the fire started
because after the first fire, they'd gone to stay in
an apartment while it was being repaired. He said his
wife would vouch for him and that was enough to

(26:46):
prove that he had done nothing wrong.

Speaker 3 (26:48):
Were you gotta be suspicious?

Speaker 1 (26:50):
Oh? They very much.

Speaker 3 (26:51):
Were two fires in two weeks.

Speaker 1 (26:53):
I know. Arson investigators considered him a suspect and they
would still question the origin of the fire years later,
But unfortunately they couldn't file any charges, and Allstate wrote
out a bigger check this time. Then his professors began
to wonder about Chris's bad luck. He reported losing all
of his notes, books and research material in the second fire,

(27:16):
and without those, he said, how can I possibly prepare
for the examine the fall? He couldn't.

Speaker 3 (27:21):
Oh, no, I guess we're going to have to forget
about it or postpone him again.

Speaker 1 (27:25):
Yeah, like the police, arson investigators and insurance adjusters, the
professors really began to have serious concerns, but it really
didn't matter. In the end, High Tower decided he was
through with the university anyway. He quit their classrooms and
laboratories and put his mind in his charm to work

(27:46):
just making money.

Speaker 3 (27:48):
Susan gave birth to their second side, and they named
him Robert but the marriage wasn't turning out like you
did expect. Chris spent fifteen hundred dollars to go to
Chicago and he intended a get rich quick course in
a business of commodity and futures trading. They returned home
very excited, told Susan if their worries were over, school
was going nowhere. He had a master's degree and didn't

(28:10):
want to waste any more time, so he's going into
business for himself. He picked the risky business of trading
in commodities and futures, and you can't get rich quick,
but you can also lose a whole lot of money.
He would prove this repeatedly with a very shaky financial career.
For High Tower, the attraction was simple. As a successful broker,

(28:30):
he could achieve status in life and never worry about
money again. Instead of being a doctor, he could invest
their money. The heart of such trading is the New
York Mercantile Exchange, the Chicago Board of Trade, and the
Chicago Mercantile Exchange, but the practice has spread out all
over the world. They all set a price today for
something they will buy or sell at a future date.

Speaker 1 (28:52):
Yeah, but super risky. So high Tower put the fires,
his marriage concerns, and his studies behind him and set
out to make serious money. He and Susan and their
two boys moved back into the choice burned house, and
he set up an office there for his business. He
put a satellite dish on the roof and opened the
computer program he had bought during his two day training

(29:14):
course in Chicago. Susan, now the mother of two, finished
her master's degree in psychology. High Tower might have been
a failure at Riker Labs, but he thought of himself
as pretty successful at selling himself to people. He spoke
about the stock market and financial terms, and rather than
look stupid by asking him to slow down or clarify,

(29:35):
people just assumed he knew what he was talking about.
Only later would they find out that he did not
have a clue. Experienced investors shied away from him, but
he kept moving forward. For six months, he printed reports
of inventory and values that contained good news. Everything seemed
to be working out. He stayed busy in his home office,
printing charts and graphs, reading books and magazines, and really

(29:58):
just steeping himself in the the whole commodity's game. With
his phone calls. There were thousands of dollars purchased and
sold in an efficient manner. But there came a day
when an Investment Guild member wanted more than just that paperwork.
He wanted some of his money. High Tower told him
that all liquid funds were invested. So members made a
telephone call to High Tower, who broke the bad news

(30:21):
they had all half expected. Most of their money was gone,
and people were furious. So not only had they lost
their money, but they'd been led on by lying reports.
A group of these people confronted High Tower, who welcomed
them into his modest home and politely listened to his
former friends and clients scream and threaten him. Now, when

(30:41):
all was said and done, nine months after the club's
original investment of one hundred and two thousand dollars, it
had a net worth of only two hundred and thirty
one dollars. So High Tower had skimmed much of it
just for his own living expenses, and he had lost
the rest.

Speaker 3 (30:57):
Well underscores to your comment about how risky this trading is.

Speaker 1 (31:01):
Yeah, plus he didn't really know what he was doing. Yeah, Now,
these were people he met at church or through his wife.
So it was kind of embarrassing for her.

Speaker 3 (31:08):
Yeah, it just compoundes.

Speaker 1 (31:09):
Yeah. So, in reviewing their documents, members found that high
Tower had never invested any of his own money. Although
he had listed himself as being in for twelve thousand dollars,
The money that was in his name had actually come
from his mother's retirement fund, and when the other members
paid in their shares, he withdrew the twelve thousand dollars
and sent it back to her. So that was a

(31:30):
complete setup. So he was playing the market entirely with
other people's money. But really he didn't seem to have
much of a conscience and it was no big deal
to him. Susan was ready to move back to Barrington,
but before moving he filled out the necessary forums and
got a license to be a broker from the National
Futures Association and the Commodity Futures Training Commission. So it

(31:52):
really didn't bother him that much that he'd ripped off
these people. No, there are means to the end exactly.
So Chris reached into Barrington a happy man with his
young wife and his two little boys. He didn't have
a job, but that wasn't important. They would live with
Susan's parents and sister for a while, and he planned
to set up his own business. Pretty soon before the

(32:13):
end of the year, Chris created High Tower Investments and
rented an office in nearby Warwick. There were no clients,
but Clyde Slicker helped pay the bills. When another year
went by without High Tower earning enough money to support
himself and his family, Susan decided to call a family
meeting and everyone agreed that the time for a steady

(32:34):
job and paycheck had come. High Tower then went back
to his investment work, claiming he was close to earning
big money, but it was Susan who had to go
out and find a job. She took over her mother's
old position as secretary at the Barrington Congressional Church and
High Tower hold up in his office, read the Wall
Street Journal and pretty much just played around with his computers.

(32:56):
And he was part of the church, so people had
respected him there, but as far as his business, things
were not going in the right direction, or in any direction.
Ernie Brendell started doing business from his home so he
could be there for his daughter. Using his skills as
a patent and trademark lawyer, he was in demand to
work with a number of companies, so words circulated that

(33:18):
the lawyer could be a hard man with whom to work,
but that he paid the bills on time and he
always accomplished his goals. Ernie eventually had a stable of
companies whose products ranged from arcade games to cosmetics, and
he used much of his time studying his own investments.
He was always eager to check out something new. The

(33:38):
money was good, but then he began to have second
thoughts about working alone, so he sent out resumes to
law firms around New England, and shortly after starting his
business in Barrington, he ran into another entrepreneur. So Ernie's
friend Paul Ryan, who was also an attorney, introduced Ernie
Brendell to Chris Hightower, not a good thing for earn.

Speaker 3 (34:00):
The two men, although they were miles apart ethically, had
a lot in common. Since Ernie had few friends in
the area, they began to socialize. Both loved athletics and
ran their own businesses, doted on their families, and just
loved to talk about money. Ernie welcomed the handyman help
that Chris could offer around his house. The friendship grew
over time and even took their families on a joint

(34:23):
vacation to a home that High Tower's in laws owned
on a lake in New Hampshire. But for the first day,
Ernie was more than a potential friend to Chris high Tower.
He was a potential customer. So Ernie did make a
small investment with High Tower, advancing a few thousand dollars
for High Tower to buy equipment. The investment was a bust,
but Ernie didn't think much of it. When the persistent

(34:45):
High Tower approached him again for an investment, Ernie demanded
to see the trading results first. The print outs to
the High Tower gave him were absolutely amazing, too good
to be true, which they were. High Tower turned a
profit of more than eighty percent in only a few
mon trading commodities. Ernie ended up investing more than eleven
thousand dollars of his own money in May nineteen ninety one,

(35:07):
and he brought some friends along with him, so it
ended up being a total investment of forty thousand dollars.
This time, when the money fell off, Ernie checked with
the people whose accounts High Tower cited in order to
lure Ernie back into investing.

Speaker 1 (35:21):
Yeah, so these former clients said the figures were all lies.
High Tower had lost most of their money, so Ernie
was very angry. He had not only been swindled out
of his hard earned money, but he felt like he'd
been betrayed by a friend, and he had caused other
friends to have financial losses too. Yeah, so he demanded
that High Tower return all the money, and he even

(35:42):
took his complaints to the federal agency overseeing commodity traders.
Ernie got enough from High Tower to pay back his
fellow investors, but he was determined to put a stop
to High Tower scams. He was out over eleven thousand dollars,
and while he might not get any of that money back,
he was determined that High Tower would never con anyone else.

(36:04):
As much as he wanted to present an image of
success to the world, High Tower was still facing disaster.
So now Susan had filed for divorce, he asked that
she make a list of things that were wrong so
that he would know what he needed to do to
correct and save the marriage. She had said she would
think about it now. Losing Susan would be more to

(36:25):
Chris than just parting with his wife of nine years.
It would mean he'd have to leave his children and
the big family house. It would mean a loss of
all the slickers family cars too, so he'd have no family,
no mobility, and no roof over his head.

Speaker 3 (36:39):
Yeah. Probably the last thing in the world he wanted
was to be separated from his wife. Yes, because she's
got the big bucks.

Speaker 1 (36:46):
Right, and his father in law was very good to him.

Speaker 3 (36:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (36:49):
Adding to his problems, his landlords for his office were
getting restless because he was months behind in his rent
and it was impossible to evade them because the only
entrance to his office was by the stairs at the
side of the building, where they would see him every
time he came or went. So when the latest rent
check bounce, the landlords had gone to the Barrington Police

(37:10):
High Tower got a phone call from Sergeant John Lazarro
who said the check had to be made good within
seven days or else. Now the landlords weren't his only
creditors either. Banks, credit card companies, and collection agencies were
all demanding money that he just did not have. A
guy from Financial Securities Information Systems in Florida had come

(37:32):
up to his office and repossessed the computer equipment that
had linked him with the financial world. The loss of
this machinery was a serious setback. Knowledge was critical in
providing clients a trading advantage, and without it, High Tower
could not compete. The hours he spent combing through those
electronic reports were really the happiest part of his work day.

(37:53):
Now he didn't have any clients. Then there was the
complaint from the US Commodities in Futures Trading Commission, and
when the day came there was a deadline for him
to respond to the allegations made against him, and he didn't.
Everything seemed to be falling apart. At the same time,
his old friend Ernie Brendell had turned on him, that's

(38:13):
what he thought. And Ernie had called the fence, claiming
that High Tower had signed him as a client by
using made up numbers, which was true. So Ernie had
been after him for months trying to get his money back,
and High Tower was just frustrated and angry. He felt
like nobody would give him a break.

Speaker 3 (38:30):
Now.

Speaker 1 (38:30):
Ernie knew that futures and commodities were risky, so High
Tower thought that was his own fault.

Speaker 3 (38:49):
High Tower saw the CFTC complaint by Ernie as the
biggest problem he was facing. Ren could be juggled, computer
gear could be replaced, maybe even when back Susan. But
if federal investigators sided it with Ernie, they would revoke
his license as a commodities trader. That would be the
end of his career. He loses a trading ticket, and
that would force him out of the business that he loved.

(39:10):
They needed a plan. Actually, there's one already beginning to
form in the back of.

Speaker 1 (39:15):
His mind, a really crazy one.

Speaker 3 (39:17):
Really crazy.

Speaker 1 (39:18):
So when Susan refused to reconcile with him, High Tower
responded with rage. He had never harmed her once in
their nine years of marriage, but she was afraid of him.
He told her that a human life is worth five
thousand dollars, and that's what he had paid to have
someone kill her if she tried to take the children
away during a divorce. He said he had paid another

(39:38):
thousand to make sure it looked like an accident. So
the situation had gone from a marital conflict into a
threat of execution. And there was more. He said His
ex wife and daughters also would be on his assassination list.
Clyde and Mary lou Slicker and Sue's sister Cathy would
also be turned over to the paid killer if they

(39:59):
tried to take his boys. So in earlier argument, Susan
had held her own, but this was different. Now she
was really afraid. He had this really icy tone, which
was terrifying.

Speaker 3 (40:09):
I'll bet. On September eighteenth, nineteen ninety two, Alice Brendo
was up for her morning jog before the sun came up.
It's a cool, pleasant day. Alice made her way easily
around the neighborhood. One of the beautiful things about living
in such a peaceful suburb was the safety she felt.
When she'd finished her run, she stood on the wide
front Porsche for a few minutes to cool down and

(40:29):
read the headlines of the Providence Journal bulletin that had
been delivered at four am. People get up.

Speaker 1 (40:34):
Early, well, newspaper people do. For sure.

Speaker 3 (40:37):
Her morning jog, the newspaper delivery, the fact that she
would go back inside shower before waking Ernie and Emily,
these are all the hallmarks of a family with a routine.
It was the same every weekday. Morning. Later, she and
Ernie bank coffee. They talked about the day's plans. She
would be at work, he would work from home, and
Emily would go to school and then to the YMCA.

(40:59):
Usual day to day's yeah.

Speaker 1 (41:00):
Alice would take the number one hundred RIPTA Express bus
downtown to avoid driving in heavy traffic, so she picked
up her purse, kissed Hernie on the cheek, and set
off down County Road for the small, sheltered bus stop.
At seven fifty six a m. The bus stopped and
Alice settled into a seat. Getting off at the Kennedy
Plaza terminal at eight thirteen, she walked the few blocks

(41:23):
uphill to the Brown University Library. Emily Brendell had turned
eight years old on June twenty seventh. She still loved
going to a red brick school and she rarely missed
a day. Her conversation with her friends that morning would
focus on the class trip planned for Friday, when everyone
would go down to Newport to see the Viking ships.
With her closest friends, Emily would share these scary dreams

(41:46):
she'd been having and the stories that she had written
about them. She called one the dream that would never
go away, and although she knew it was just a
stupid dream, it still upset her. So Ernie walked back
into their big white house got a himself another cup
of coffee, and climbed the steps to his office on
the second floor. He took a short break to hook
up a new combination facts and telephone answering machine. Ernie

(42:09):
was hoping for one specific phone call. He was expecting
Joe Maza of the National Futures Association to give him
an update on whether Chris Hightower had met the NFA
deadline to respond to his complaints.

Speaker 3 (42:22):
Before Chris Hightower got started that morning, while the coffee
was still brewing, telephone rang. Joe Maza from the NFA
asked him about missing the complaint deadline. Chris said the
personal problems had come up, mainly trouble with his wife,
and he had just forgotten about the NFA deadline. He
had no car that morning, Sue had the jeep over
at the White Church, and his mother and father in

(42:44):
law had the other two, so he had to come
up with some cash and quickly. Now Ernie of course
would have a stash of money somewhere around his house,
and maybe he could con Arnie into another loan. He's
going to have to go there anyway. He was trying
to convince Ernie to drop his complaint that he had
made against while at.

Speaker 1 (43:01):
Five o'clock, Ernie Brandell backed his Toyota out of the garage,
driving down the long driveway and onto Middle Highway. Ten
minutes later, he was at the YMCA to get Emily,
signing the pickup sheet. Alice had covered her computer terminal
at the library and reversed her morning route. She got
on the bus across the street from the courthouse at
exactly the same time Ernie was picking up Emily. When

(43:24):
the bus pulled to the side of the road twenty
minutes later, Alice stepped off alone. Ernie had parked the
Toyota in a nearby parking lot, chatting with his daughter
as they waited for the bus. When it did, Emily
jumped out of the car, running to give her mother
a hug, and this was the family routine. During the
high Tower's evening meal, Chris reminded Susan that someone would

(43:46):
have to come home on Thursday night to watch the
kits because he had some private business and might not
return home until Friday morning. So Susan high Tower left
home at eight thirty am, just as if she was
heading for work at the work White Church, but instead
she headed for Providence for her nine a m appointment
with her lawyer. High Tower left the house a short

(44:07):
time later, driving their Chevy station wagon. As he passed
the church, he noticed that the jeep was not there.
He drove to the Seer's store, and using one of
his credit cards, he bought a new pair of black
high top rebuck sneakers. Wearing his new shoes, he drove
to Thompson's sports shop. Inside, high Tower told the salesman

(44:27):
that he was interested in getting a large crossbow. He
was shown a fully assembled bare Devastator crossbow which was huge,
three feet long and painted camouflage. High Tower said he
wasn't ready to buy it then, but he might be
back later, so he thanked the salesman and he left
after Susan finished up her appointment with her divorce attorney.

(44:48):
The judge had allowed the filing of a complaint for divorce,
ordered a constable to serve a domestic abuse complaint against
the husband, and approved emotion for temporary allowances that gave
Sue Susan exclusive custody of the children. The judge had
also approved a restraining order to remove Chris high Tower
from the house. High Tower returned to the White Church

(45:10):
to check on Susan, and then he saw that her
jeep was still not there. He drove through Barrington's small
shopping district, looking in restaurant windows, but no Susan. Passing
the church again just before noon, he saw the jeep
pull into the parking lot and he drove in next
to her. He got out of the car and started
yelling at her, harassing her to let him into her office.

(45:32):
But then Susan's sister showed up, and he finally backed
off and drove away in a rage. That evening, High
Tower received another call from Joe Maza of the National
Futures Association, and he told High Tower that he wanted
to come up to Barrington on Friday, along with his
supervisor and ad at the books at High Tower Investments.

(45:52):
The allegations brought by mister Brendle were serious, Masa said,
and he had missed the deadline for either paying back
the money or answering the complaint. High Tower told Masa
it would not be convenient to see them tomorrow. He
said he'd be busy and he would call him.

Speaker 3 (46:07):
Back around six o'clock. High Tower left home, ran through
the open garage door into the house and saw his
family eating dinner. He picked up the check book and
went back out into the rain. He drove over to
Thompson's and he bought the Devastator crossbow. High Tower also
bought two sets of bolts, three in each set. High
Tower carried the weapon outside and the salesman shoved the

(46:30):
crossbows large box into the back of the station wagon.
Yeah this thing is big, right, It's got like a
three foot wingspan.

Speaker 1 (46:36):
Three foot length. I'm not sure about the wingspan, but yes.
He'd had a smaller one and he decided he needed
this bigger one now. After that, he made two stops
picking up a shovel and a pitchfork, and then he
drove back home. For him, everything was falling apart. This
was a desperate man. Susan was nagging him all the time.
The NFA was demanding an audit, his rent was overdue.

(46:59):
They were pending law, lawsuits, and for some reason, what
bothered him the most was that Ernie Brendell refused to
drop his complaint.

Speaker 3 (47:06):
Sea that's all social status that he's worried about.

Speaker 1 (47:10):
Well, yeah, that's what's important to him.

Speaker 3 (47:12):
Yeah, so he's got a Convincernie to drop the complaint.

Speaker 1 (47:15):
Yeah, which is really not going to happen. No, so,
High Tower had called Ernie to ask him once again
not to press the charges, and Ernie had refused. He
ran back into the house and straight up the stairs
to his room, where he changed into a long sleeved
plaid shirt, jeans, and a heavy coat. On the way out,
he told his father in law, Clyde, that he would

(47:36):
not be home until very late, if at all. Then
he walked off into the dark. He walked, finding the
bike path and following it to Middle Highway. High Tower
was headed toward Ernie Brendel's house to settle things, but
first he had another dirty job to do. He walked
behind Saint Andrew's School and guided by the two steel

(47:57):
posts he had laid down his markers on Tuesday night.
He was hidden from view. His shovel and pitchfork were
lying where he had left them, and he began to
dig for Chris. The rain was both good and bad news.
He was getting drenched, but he couldn't have asked for
better conditions to not be seen. He looked at the
windows all around the Brendell house and they were dark.

(48:19):
He had the big crossbow at his feet. He removed
a short steel prye bar from his coat pocket that
had been in his toolbox and felt for the Brendell's
back door. He placed the sharp prong of the pride
bar beneath the wooden door jam and gave it a push,
so the door sprang inward and was yanked to a
stop by a little chain that locked it to the wall.

(48:40):
But before he could reach inside, he heard the beeping
of an alarm system. So he was startled because he
knew that Ernie had terminated the alarm service, deciding it
was a waste of money. So Ernie was very frugal,
maybe to a fault, Yes, he was high. Tower grabbed
the crossbow, and then he retreated across the backyard to
hide in the trees. Inside the home, Ernie was also

(49:02):
surprised at the alarm sounding. He found the noise was
coming from the little speaker upstairs, but he had to
go all the way down to the main box by
the front door to shut it off. He decided that
it probably had been set off when the wind blew
open the back door. Now, why would you do that?
I'm not victim blaming, but I just feel like if
my door was open, I'd be a little more concerned

(49:24):
than that I would do. So he flipped on the
outside light, saw nothing and turned it off, closed the door,
and went back to bed. Meanwhile, hidden in the woods,
high Tower was soaked. The first part of his plan
had gone well. His secret hole had been dug, but
the alarm had thrown off his timing. Now he knew
he couldn't get into the house that night. He needed

(49:45):
to find a place to rest until the next morning,
when he knew that Ernie would be home alone. So
High Tower got into the Brendel's garage, and he was
familiar with the place. It was where he and Ernie
had stored a shipment of wine that they had bought
from an out of business Boston restaurant. It was musty
and cold, but at least it was a dry place
to sleep, so with the devastator crossbow at his side,

(50:08):
he dozed off.

Speaker 3 (50:10):
The next day was Friday and Alice mister buss. Ernie
had already taken Emily to school, and he drove her
to work before returning home. High Tower heard Ernie's Toyota
leave to take Alice and that wasn't part of the plan.
Ernie was supposed to stay home alone. He wandered through
the garage, which was lit by the dim light coming
through a row of small square windows across the top

(50:33):
of the rolling front door. He picked up the Devastator crossbow,
put his foot into the cocking stirrup, and pulled the
string back into the lock. He wanted to take a
practice shot before Ernie returned, so he loaded an arrow
as long as his forearm into the slot and searched
for a target. There was a big bag of peat
moss against the wall. Howie Tower took aim, squeezed the

(50:56):
trigger with a hard chunk sound. The arrow flashed from
the crossbow penetrated through the garage wall itself. Towers pretty
impressed to this, so he loaded another arrow before laying
the crossbow aside.

Speaker 1 (51:09):
So just that action would tell me that he absolutely
was going to kill Ernie. Yeah, he wasn't just going
to threaten him. So by the time Ernie drove back
into the driveway and tapped the garage door opener above
his visor, high Tower was hidden back into a far corner,
so the rolling wooden door went up and the Toyota
cruised in and stopped. Ernie's first clue that something was

(51:31):
going on was when the door started to roll back
down behind him because he had not touched the button.
The door clattered slowly toward the floor, cutting visibility inside
the garage, so he got out of his car. Then
Ernie saw a shadowy figure come around the car, carrying
something strange in his hands. High Tower stepped out of

(51:52):
the shadows and stopped. He was filthy, but Ernie hardly
noticed that, because, of course, his eyes were focused on
the huge cross that high Tower had pointed at him.
So Chris high Tower told Ernie that he was ruining
him and that he needed to call the NFA and
drop the complaint. But Ernie was angry and stubborn, and

(52:12):
he said he would not be calling anyone. Ernie kept
his hand on the car door, hoping to dive into
the car and lock himself inside of it. Ernie was
worried not only about his own safety, but about what
High Tower might do to Emily and Alice. He decided
to get back into the car, and he jerked the
door handle, but just then High Tower squeezed the trigger

(52:34):
as Ernie turned, and the arrow hurtled from the crossbow,
and its sharp point entered Ernie's left side, just above
his buttocks. Ernie screamed in agony and fell to his knees.
High Tower watched him fall, heard him scream, and reloaded
the devastator so pretty brutal, I guess. Ernie staggered backward

(52:54):
toward the door, away from high Tower, who was now
struggling to cock the crossbow again, and now he was
aiming at at Ernie's head. This time the arrow nicked
the edge of Ernie's left ear and burrowed into the
lower panel of the garage door. Ernie Brendell knew he
was badly wounded, but he refused to surrender. He managed
to snap the metal shaft of the arrow in his side,

(53:16):
leaving a sharp and ragged edge protruding from his body.
High Tower looked up from cocking the crossbow, and he
saw Ernie reaching for the car door, so he shoved
another arrow into place and moved to the open area
of the garage toward Ernie. High Tower brought the crossbow
to his cheek, sighted Ernie's chest, and squeezed the trigger,

(53:37):
so Ernie was slammed backward by the force of the arrow.
It entered his right chest and his lungs. He was
spun around by the impact. Blood gushed from the deep
chest wound. With his last bit of strang, Ernie opened
the passenger door of the Toyota and he scrambled inside,
still trying to survive, but High Tower dropped the devastator
and reached into his pocket. Now grabbing the claw tipped

(54:00):
pry bar, High Tower overtook Ernie with a bear hug
as Ernie tried to struggle away, but Ernie had lost
too much blood and it was spattered around the car.
High Tower hit Ernie over the head several times with
the crowbar until Ernie stopped moving, but then, standing above Ernie,
High Tower put the point of the next arrow just
a few inches from Ernie's heart. The force of the

(54:23):
penetrating bolt made his whole body jump. Then High Tower
staggered away and sat on the concrete floor. But he
knew he couldn't rest because he had a lot more
to finish in his plan.

Speaker 3 (54:34):
He's good at least one more.

Speaker 1 (54:36):
So that was really overkill. What do you make of that? Well,
he was angry, very angry. Yeah, this was more about
revenge than trying to talk him into anything. It was brutal, yes,
and he was already dead or dying before he did
the lass bolt. Why do that, It's just a scary guy,
very scary guy.

Speaker 3 (54:55):
Yes. So a little while later, High Tower arrived back
at home, his bike and looking crazed. He parked the
bicycle in a thicket and went in through the backway,
happy to see the Chevy station wagon was still in
the driveway. He planned to clean up, drive the station
wagon back, and hauler on his body away, either to
the grave he had dug or somewhere deep in the

(55:15):
New England woods. So Clyde's Flicker was home alone, working
in his basement workshop. He was shocked by the filthy
state of his son in law, who muttered something about
needing a shower and walked upstairs. So Clyde thought that
Chris looked hungry too, so he went to the kitchen,
poured a glass of orange juice, and put out a
couple of granola bars for him. Clyde was worried that

(55:36):
Chris would find it that his guns were missing. On
the advice of her lawyer, Susan had decided to get
rid of some weapons in the house, so a family
friend took the guns to the police station for safe keep.
It probably a.

Speaker 1 (55:48):
Good idea, yes, But then Clyde saw something he'd never
seen before, probably never thought he would see. Chris Hightower
put his stained and muddy clothes into the washing machine himself.
It was the first time he had ever washed his
own clothes. High Tower was wearing a white T shirt,
jockey shorts, and dark socks. He ate the food. Clyde
told him then that someone from the National Futures Association

(56:11):
phoned that morning and wanted him to call them back.
So Chris acknowledged the message and went back upstairs.

Speaker 3 (56:18):
Yeah, what's he gonna say? I know?

Speaker 1 (56:20):
Yeah, So minutes later, high Tower dialed a number in
New York and sounding quite upbeat, he told Timothy Wigand
of the NFA that all was well. He said Ernie
Brandell had decided to drop the complaint MAZA and Wigan
did not need to come up for an audit after all.

Speaker 4 (56:40):
Wrong.

Speaker 1 (56:40):
Wigan told him they needed that information in writing from
mister Brandell. Until then, the complaint would remain in force,

(57:01):
so Chris Hightower would have to make another adjustment.

Speaker 3 (57:05):
Yeah, but what happened next was totally unexpected. Constable Vincent
DeFalco and three Barrington policemen were at the door. Clyde
opened the door took the men into the den as
Chris came in from the kitchen, But they said nothing
about Ernie Brendall at all, something about a restraining order,
court papers and a judge's decision. That's when Chris realized
that he was just getting divorced, not arrested for murder.

Speaker 1 (57:29):
What a relief, What a relief. So before they escorted
him from his home, Chris glared at his father in law.
Moments before, they'd been washing clothes and fixing his eyeglasses together,
So Chris now realized he'd been set up by Clyde Slicker.
He handed over his keys to the house and cars
before walking out, carrying only a briefcase and a brown

(57:51):
paper grocery bag filled with clothes. The police did not
know a murderer was walking away from them with a
large pistol in his briefcase, but Clyde Slicker had noticed
a large cardboard box in the station wagon, so he
asked the police to take a look. An empty white
cardboard box, partially covered with a dark trash bag, had
the word devastator stamped across the top. Now, meanwhile, Chris

(58:15):
Hightower had no money and was suddenly unhoused. He could
no longer use his in law's station wagon to get
rid of Ernie's body. He could not get the bicycle
he had stashed in the trees behind the house either,
or the police would definitely notice and question that. So
Chris suspected that Ernie kept money around his house, money
that he desperately needed and planned to find. But now

(58:37):
the police had thrown him out of his own home
and he couldn't use the station wagon to transport the body.
So he looked at his watch and saw it was
almost one o'clock, and Emily Brendell became his priority. She
would get out of school at two pm, which gave
him only an hour to get himself together and pick
up the child. She could not be stranded at school

(58:57):
because people would wonder about the absence of reliable Ernie,
so someone might come and look in the garage and
find all the blood. Right, So Chris decided to ask
Suzanne Henderson, who had served on church committees with him,
to give him a ride. She was about to head
out on errands anyway, so she agreed. Five minutes later,
she stopped at the Lutheran church next door to the

(59:19):
Brendell home, and high Tower thanked her for the ride.
Henderson asked if he was all right, and he said yes.
Using Ernie's keys, he let himself into the Brendel house,
went to the telephone and called the Primrose Hills School.
When Secretary Gwen Groves answered, high Tower told her that
he was Ernie and wanted Emily to walk home from school,

(59:41):
but Groves said no dice. She said there's no crossing
guard that would be on duty because Emily and her
class were on a trip down to Newport and they
wouldn't get back until three o'clock, so she said she'd
leave the message with Principal Elizabeth Durfey.

Speaker 3 (59:57):
With the extra time, hi Tower rifled Ernie's dea. He
didn't find any cash, but he came up with two checkbooks.
High Tower called the Rhode Island Hospital Trust Bank to
determine the account's balance. Citing checkbook account numbers for verification,
high Tower wrote out two checks went for twenty seven
hundred dollars and the other for fifteen hundred put them

(01:00:17):
in his wallet, after forging the name of Ernest Brindell,
and when the school bus pulled into the school parking
lot at two forty five pm, Principal Derpy took Emily
into the office to phone her father. After getting no answer,
Emily got on the YMCA bus as planned to join
the after school program. Moments later, high Tower walked across
the same parking lot and introduced himself to one of

(01:00:41):
the teachers who had been on a trip. Now, the
teacher's guard immediately went up because the man she did
not know was asking about one of her kids, so
she directed him to see the principal Colm Polite. The
man said there must be some miscommunication. Heading back toward
the Brendel home. Now he had to kidnap Emily from
the YMCA.

Speaker 1 (01:01:00):
That's so scary, horrible. So he cleaned the blood stained
toyota's windows and sprinkled baking soda on the back seat.
He backed the car out of the garage and drove
to the y. Once there, Pampurier refused to recognize his
authority to take Emily home, so good for her. This
meant going back to the house, getting Ernie's wallet from

(01:01:22):
his pants, getting his license, and calling the YMCA to
again imitate Ernie giving permission, then returned to the y
and finally, at four o'clock convinced the staff he had
the proper credentials to take Emily and unfortunately he would
get away with that. By the time the toyota drove
away with Emily inside, Chris high Tower was exhausted and irrational.

(01:01:45):
Although he'd been irrational, he chatted with Emily, and once
at the house, he sent her upstairs to play, telling
her that Ernie was at an appointment and that her
mother would be home soon, so Emily had no reason
to doubt high Tower. Alice was about to get off
work in proper evidence, and Chris would keep Emily quiet
and inside the house until Alice showed up. Then there

(01:02:06):
was an unexpected knock at the door. High Tower opened
the front door and saw a young, muscular man holding
a large wrap item. The guy was there to deliver
a box spring, but Chris told him that the person
who had ordered it wasn't home, so he told him
to come back another day. Alice's bus arrived at the
East Bay Medical Center stop just before six. She was
shocked not to find her husband and daughter waiting for her.

(01:02:28):
Other people on the bus also noticed that the smiling
child wasn't there to rush up and hug her mother.
Alice walked up the street past the Primrose School and
then one block farther to her home. She let herself
in the front door and called out to Ernie and Emily,
but there was no answer. The car was in the driveway,
but no one was home. She took off her shoes
and laid her raincoat across the back of a chair

(01:02:51):
in the dining room. But when she turned Chris's High
Tower was standing in the doorway. He had a pistol
in one hand and Emily in the other. An angry
High Tower rushed toward the confused Alice with Emily and
went down to the basement. With a thick rope, he
tied them to a vertical beam in the middle of
the room. The seller had only one small window high

(01:03:11):
up on one wall. Any screams would not be heard
by anyone, but High Tower gagged them anyway. Andy was
in a hurry now because the banks would be closing soon.
He wanted to catch those bad checks.

Speaker 3 (01:03:22):
Got to get them, so High Tower left Alice terrified
but trying to keep Emily Calm heard the phone ring upstairs.
The answering machine clipped on where was Ernie. She had
a fear that he was already dead. High Tower hurried
over to the Bank of Barrington, where he cashed the
twenty seven hundred dollar check at six thirteen pm. Eleven
minutes later, he was at the Citizens Bank, where he

(01:03:44):
deposited eight hundred to his personal account, bought an eighteen
hundred dollars treasurer's check in the name of Dennis Murphy
to cover his back rent, and kept one hundred dollars
for spending cash. Not To celebrate the small wind, he
went to Series and bought some clothes using one of
Ernie's credit cards. Back at the house, he returned to
the basement. He no longer thought of Alice and Emily
as anything more than a couple of obstacles.

Speaker 1 (01:04:06):
Did he ever really look at any person as a
human being with the same kind of feelings he had?
Totally narcissistic and sociopathic.

Speaker 3 (01:04:14):
Yeah, I think that's the way I'd be looking at things.

Speaker 4 (01:04:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:04:18):
So now high Tower felt like he had plenty of
time to think about what to do next. He felt
like he was back in control he had money, he
had the rent check. Ernie was dead in the garage,
and the woman and the girl were tied up downstairs.
At ten pm, he lay down on the Brendle's couch
and slept so he was able to sleep. What other
sign do you need that he's a psychopath? So Chris

(01:04:40):
was baffled when he went to the computer on Ernie's desk,
which had a completely different system. To make the NFA
letter seem legitimate, it needed to be written out on
Ernie's computer, so he hauled Alice up from the basement
and forced her to type while he dictated. Alice needed
to cooperate or he would hurt Emily, he threatened. So

(01:05:00):
later police would discover that there was a clue left
by Alice. She had typed the initials c H in
the file. So then High Tower made Alice telephone Jim
Page in New York, who was expecting to meet with Ernie,
knowing Emily's life was at stake. Alice told Page that
Ernie's mother had taken a sudden turn for the worse

(01:05:21):
and he had left to see her. So now it
was Saturday at seven o seven in the morning when
they hung up after that high Tower had no further
use for Emily or Alice Brendel. In the kitchen, he
mixed a cocktail of fruit juice laced with twenty crushed
sleeping pills that he had bought from a drug store downstairs.
Holding his pistol to their heads, high Tower forced them

(01:05:44):
to drink it. Within moments, they slouched almost unconscious at
his feet, one on each side of the basement pillar,
with Alice reaching out to cradle Emily in her arms.
So Alice was first. He tied a long white scarf
around her neck and pushed her against the slipknot. She
couldn't resist, but she was definitely unaware. She was definitely

(01:06:05):
aware that he was killing her. Alice Brendell died knowing
she was leaving Emily that the mercy of this killer.
The eight year old girl was barely conscious, but she
was probably aware too that something was hurting her mother
and that her father was not there. So high Tower
had used a crossbow and a steel bar to kill Ernie,
and he had slowly strangled Alice with a scarf. For

(01:06:29):
little Emily, he used his bare hands. He wrapped his
fingers around her neck and squeezed, then high Tower peddled
Ernie Brandell's bike down to the Barrington Police station. So
feeling like he really had accomplished some things, he handed
over the eighteen hundred dollar check to Sergeant Rick mc ginnis,
saying it was in settlement of a rent dispute. He

(01:06:49):
still needed more money because the amount he had stolen
from the Brendel's account would not last him very long.
He had nine hundred dollars in cash. He peddled over
to his office and told the landlord that the police
had their check. Then opening his wallet and pulling out
a twenty dollars bill, he asked the landlord to leave
a new set of keys in the mailbox. Then he
rode away on the bike, heading to coach his son's

(01:07:11):
soccer team. So like everything's normal. So at the soccer field,
about thirty five parents were milling about. A fellow coach,
Bob Pearson was very surprised to see Chris high Tower.
Susan had already phoned Pearson to tell him that Chris
would not be at the game because of the divorce action,
but Chris calmly explained that he had every legal right

(01:07:31):
to be there because he was a coach, but then
Susan drove up. She didn't want to talk to Chris,
to see him, or have him anywhere near her children.
While she waited in the car, refusing to let the
boys get out, her friend called for the police. Ten
minutes later, a patrol car showed up and a Barrington
patrolman approached high Tower. By now everyone in the park,

(01:07:54):
of course, realized something's going on. The officer asked Chris
to leave, but he said he had the right to
be there because he was a coach. The policeman then
warned him that he risked arrest if he stayed there,
so he made a brief tour of the clusters. Appearents
he went around, shaking hands and telling them how much
he had enjoyed being a coach, but that he probably

(01:08:14):
would not be able to continue sky something. Yeah, so,
looking like a man who had been wronged, he climbed
onto the bike and pedaled away. He'd been kicked off
the soccer field, but he was still getting away with murder,
so he probably felt okay about that. He returned to
the Brendel house, and using the Brendel's toyota, he set

(01:08:35):
out to run errands until it got dark.

Speaker 3 (01:08:37):
Yeah back in serious. He used Brandell's credit card to
buy two red plastic gasoline cans. Remembering how helpful his
previous arsons had been. Hungry, he went by McDonald's picked
us some food. He then drove to Somerville Lumber in Seacok,
where he bought four one gallon containers of muriatic acid.
Susan Hitower had another surprise as she went to the

(01:08:58):
police station to complain about her husband breaking the restraining order.
She saw her husband's landlord. He showed her the eighteen
hundred dollars check and said Chris had paid off the
overdue rent. And once it got dark, high Tower got
to work in the garage, using the acid and a
scrub brush and a scrub room to clean up blood.
Then he drove the Toyota inside and closed the door.

(01:09:19):
He loaded earned his stiff body into the trunk and
slammed the lid closed, punched the button in the door open.
High Tower backed out, not using the lights. His left
rear fender hit the porch steps, pulled forward, then back
up again. The park on the grass with the car's
trunk facing the back door from the basement, he brought
up Alice's body and shoving it into the back seat.

(01:09:40):
Then he made the trip again for Emily, dumping her
on top of her mother.

Speaker 1 (01:09:45):
Awful. This is a really awful one. It is yeah.
Circling the Saint Andrew's school field, he steered down the
track until he found the hole he had dug earlier.
Picking up his tools, he dug another one three feet
away at an angle to the first. The new hole
had to be deeper, so he went down three feet,
but it was only four and a half feet long

(01:10:05):
and two and a half feet wide. The dead adults
would not fit into these short graves, so high tower
bent them at their knees. Then he shoveled dirt onto
the bodies until the ground was level. Before leaving, he
found two short branches and on the grave containing the
bodies of Alice and Emily, arranged them in the form
of a cross. But he was far from done. He

(01:10:27):
steered the Toyota off the Connecticut Turnpike at exit fifty
eight and got lost. His destination was the home of
Ernie Brendel's sister Christine and her husband Alex, So it
was a sad ride down Interstate ninety five from Rhode
Island in the blood soaked car where Ernie Brendel had died.
But that was okay with Chris, because he counted on

(01:10:49):
the shock of blood to accomplish what he had in mind.
So by the time he reached Connecticut, he had figured
out how to turn the messy car to his advantage.

Speaker 3 (01:10:59):
Chris's planned ended upon his nerve and wit. He felt
confident that he would soon take Ernie's sister for a
lot of money. Violence would not be needed this time,
just a little extortion. With a cash he could settle
a few scores with people who had wronged him, then
disappear now as usual, he overestimated his abilities. He had
thought Ernie Brendel was about as stubborn as a person

(01:11:21):
could be, but he had not yet met Ernie's sister, Christine.

Speaker 1 (01:11:25):
Yeah, so Christine and her husband are a couple of
smart cookies, and he's not going to be able to
fool them one bit. So before leaving Barrington on Sunday afternoon,
he'd returned to Somerville Lumber and paid twelve bucks in
cash for a fifty pound bag of garden line, a
fifty foot garden hose, and a wire brush. So he

(01:11:45):
used these purchases to scrub down the garage, and afterward
he went inside the house. There was a knock at
the back door and two little girls wanted to know
if Emily could come out and play that's heartbreaking wow.
But of course High Tower said no, Emily not home. Later,
he went to the church to use the photocopying machine
in his wife's office when he thought everyone was gone,

(01:12:07):
but associate Pastor Rose Emmadeo came in while he was
running papers through the machine, chatted briefly with him about
the pending divorce, gave him a reassuring hug, and left.
Then Chris left a few minutes later.

Speaker 3 (01:12:20):
At four o'clock. After making sure everything he needed was
in the car, Chris left Rhode Island. Christine had returned
from a weekend visit with her ailing eighty two year
old mother in New York. Four guests were coming over
to her house for dinner, bringing lobsters, and Christine had
to make the salad. When the guest arrived, Christine's husband, Alex,
had not even started to pour the wine and someone

(01:12:41):
else showed up, and that was Chris Hightower.

Speaker 1 (01:12:44):
Yeah, so the guests went into the kitchen while Christine
and Alex met high Tower on the front stoop. He
was a balding man in a short sleeved blue shirt,
blue jeans, and large black high top sneakers. I'm Christopher
high Tower, he said, I'm a friend of Ernie's and
I have to talk to you. In his hand was
a little address card taken from Ernie's rolodux. Christine explained

(01:13:06):
that dinner guests had just arrived, but that they could
give him ten minutes if it was really important. High
Tower said he needed more than ten minutes and that
he would come back later. It's a very important matter.
How long will they be here? But Christine was already
suspicious and she dodged the question. Alex had never heard
of Christopher high Tower, but Christine remembered Ernie mentioning the

(01:13:29):
name a couple of years earlier. High Tower said it
wasn't an urgent matter, and he politely retreated from the house,
allowing Christine and Alex to have their dinner. But Alex
and Christine were worried. Christine phoned Ernie's house, but there
was no answer, and she knew it was unusual for
no one to be home on a Saturday night, so
she really began to feel uneasy about this stranger. But

(01:13:52):
high Tower had some time to waste, so he ate
some hot dogs at a diner, drank a soda at McDonald's,
put gas in the car, and drove around and he
ended up getting lost again. He finally showed up back
at Christine and Alex's house just as the guests were leaving,
so Alex asked him to wait in the library. When
the front door closed and the three of them were alone,

(01:14:14):
high Tower walked from the library back to the hallway,
following the couple into the kitchen, and he began to
tell them one of the most bizarre crime stories ever.
His story had a little bit of everything organized crime figures,
mess kidnapping, ransom demands, armored cars, and long explanations of
his own talent in running investments up to huge profits

(01:14:35):
for his clients. So the couple could barely keep track
of the story as the time passed and they tried
to put together what this guy at their kitchen table
was really saying. Christine a historical consultant with the Museum
of American Political Life at the University of Hartford, and Alex,
a physician had spent their lives dealing with facts, but

(01:14:57):
tonight the facts were hard to come by. Still, the
evidence that high Tower did present was horrifying enough to
lend some credence to some parts of his story.

Speaker 3 (01:15:07):
Yeah, he first showed them Ernie's wallet, brothers, credit cards
and receipts, his driver's license in Alice's wedding rings. He
said that Ernie, Alice, and Emily had been kidnapped by
the mafia, along with his own wife and two little boys,
and that he was acting on instructions given to him
over the phone by the kidnappers. That afternoon, high Tower
had been allowed to speak on the phone with the kids,

(01:15:29):
Alice and even Ernie, who had troubled talking because he
had been badly beaten. Alice said everyone was all right,
except that Ernie had a broken shaw from when he
resisted the kidnappers.

Speaker 1 (01:15:40):
Yeah, High Tower said. The kidnappers told him to come
up with a ransom of three hundred thousand dollars. Evidence
of their actions could be found in the Brendell garage,
and that he should always remember they'd be watching his
every move. He went over to the Brendell house and
in the garage he found the blood spattered toyota. Ernie
told High Tower on the phone. According to High Tower,

(01:16:01):
that he could only raise fifty thousand dollars and that
Chris should go to the house and find Christine in
Alex's address on the rolodex. High Tower said the kidnappers
told him to come up with a ransom of three
hundred thousand dollars. Evidence of their actions could be found
in the Brendell garage, and that he should always remember

(01:16:22):
they'd be watching his every move. So he went over
to the Brendel house and in the garage, he said,
he found the blood spattered toyota. He said that Ernie
told him on the phone that he could only raise
fifty thousand dollars and that Chris should go into the
house and find Christine and Alex's address on the rolodex.

(01:16:43):
They'll know what to do, Ernie had told him, and
they can get the money.

Speaker 3 (01:16:48):
There was no way for Christine and Alex to come
up with such a large amount of money on a weekend.
Not to worry, said High Tower, as he revised his figures.
Immediately he thinks quickly, yeah, I can raise one hundred
and seventy five thousand by putting up my business as collateral.

Speaker 1 (01:17:03):
He said, oh, yeah, his business that was in the hole.

Speaker 3 (01:17:07):
But the kidnappers won seventy five thousand in cash by
Tuesday morning. I'm to rent an unharmored car from the
first Federal National Bank in Boston, and when we deliver
the first payment, they will release some of the hostages.

Speaker 1 (01:17:19):
So is that something you can do is rent an
armored car.

Speaker 3 (01:17:22):
This is just getting in Twilight zone stuff, it really is.

Speaker 1 (01:17:26):
And these are smart people, so they're just thinking what
the hell.

Speaker 3 (01:17:29):
Yeah, they must be listening to this and wondering.

Speaker 1 (01:17:32):
So Christine and Alex wanted to call the police, but
High Tower said no way. The kidnappers said they would
kill everyone if the authorities were notified. He explained the situation,
saying that he had invested substantial funds and made big
profits for some men with connections to organized crime. So
when Ernie had advised him to drop them as clients,

(01:17:53):
they became very angry and kidnapped both families in retribution.
You know, it happens all the time. So Christine asked
organized crime and he said yeah, And she said, well,
those are the worst kind of people. And she explained
that she had a friend who was a criminal lawyer
who dealt with such people on a regular basis, So
that must have really thrown Tower off his toe was there?

(01:18:17):
She said, this guy had contacts and it was her
understanding that the mafia did not kidnap children, and these
people had taken three kids. So the color kind of
drained from Chris high Tower's face. No, he said, the
kidnappers were very insistent that we don't call anyone.

Speaker 3 (01:18:35):
Then he had another surprise when Christine excused herself, went
upstairs and changed into black jeans and a black sweatshirt.
She planned to sneak out of the house, evade the watchers,
and reach another home from where she could call the FBI. Now,
hi Tower quickly talked her out of that. Too much,
too dangerous, he said, thinking that this woman was more
stubborn than her brother. Yeah, high Tower decided the time

(01:18:57):
I come, backed up his stories and proof gret Alex
and Christine after the Toyota in the driveway, it was
too dark, so Alex had high Tower drive it into
their garage. Returned on the light and it was shocking.
High Tower pointed out standing sections of the seats where
blood and caked a backseat covered with a white powdery substance.
The Tower say was baking soda to cover the smell.

(01:19:19):
Blood on the windows, blood inside the door, blood on
the visors and on the seats. He opened the trunk
and a foul odor came out and made Christine turn
away from it.

Speaker 1 (01:19:29):
Well, it was probably the smell of dcom The body
had been sitting for a while, so the doctor part
of Alex's brain told him, you know, this is all wrong.

(01:19:51):
There was so much blood that the person would have
to be dead. So now Christine and Alex are very alarmed.
But Chris high Tower said the old the injury was
Ernie's jaw that had been broken, which didn't make sense.
Christine also was fed up with his ramblings. Too many
of these things, did Netta. The couple knew that something

(01:20:12):
terrible must have happened, and they feared the worst. And
you know, they wondered, who is this guy in what
part did he have in it? So they really just
began to take control from him. Christine went upstairs, moistened
some cotton swabs, tapped them into the blood stains, and
put the soiled swabs into a plastic kitchen bag, and
she wanted more proof. She suggested that high Tower change

(01:20:35):
cars and leave the Toyota with them. He could take
her mother's car, which was just sitting in the garage
on used for the past six weeks. So he did
agree reluctantly. But then that car wouldn't start and they
called the gas station for help. So this is turning
into quite a cluster fund it sure is. The mechanic
wasn't able to get the car started, so while High

(01:20:57):
Tower sat in the living room, Christine went through the
doorway and took a photo of him. So she's pretty swift, right,
She's on top of thanks. About eleven PM, she took
him upstairs to her office and turned on the lamp
on the captain's table. Christine adjusted the pillow on her chair,
sat down at the computer, and told him to start talking.

(01:21:18):
So as he dictated, she typed up everything all about
the kidnappers and the ransom and the mafia, and when
her printer produced two copies, she put one in an
envelope addressed to her husband's office in Branford, Connecticut, and
she told Chris high Tower to drop it in the mail.
She eventually gave him the words he had been waiting
to hear all night, wanting to get this man out

(01:21:41):
of the house. He was pretty creepy. She told him
that they would raise the necessary money as soon as
the banks opened on Monday morning, and that they would
not contact the police.

Speaker 3 (01:21:51):
So then a little after one o'clock on Sunday morning,
high Tower got back into the driver's seat of the
Toyota and headed back to Barrington. He felt satisfied Christina
and Alex would come up with seventy five thousand for me.

Speaker 1 (01:22:03):
So he's kind of out of his mind if he
thinks that. I don't even understand how he thinks this
would work out.

Speaker 3 (01:22:08):
It's such a strange story to begin with, right told
by someone who could his sense that he's not someone
you'd trust. Oh God, well believe God. No, he comes
up with his cock and bull story that had to
be totally disbelieved by it.

Speaker 1 (01:22:22):
But I would be frightened to have this man in
my house with a carpull of blood, and yeah, I
mean I think they're kind of grave because I probably
would have gone out the back door and called the
police somewhere. But high Tower thought he had one last
job to do back at the garage. He reloaded the
big bag of lime into the toyota and drove to
the fresh graves. Then he poured the white stuff into

(01:22:45):
the holes. But in his haste he did forget something.
The torn edge of the lime bag was fluttering in
one of the holes, and he had covered it up
so that missing corner would later point at him as
the man who had purchased the lime. So he was
a bit nervous when he finally lay down to sleep
on the Brendel's sofa. You think he might be. He

(01:23:06):
had the sinking feeling that he could not trust Alex
and Christine. Probably true, he was right, sure enough. Yeah,
Christine had already contacted the FBI. Her phone call to
the FBI at one twenty am on the morning of Monday,
September twenty third set off a man Hut. Special agent
Ralph Defonso was out of bed at two thirty am

(01:23:27):
to make the initial contact. He thought he had heard
just about everything in his twenty two years working with
the FBI, but this story really beat them all. The
mafia had snatched two respectable families in Rhode Island and
wanted a Connecticut relative to pay a three hundred thousand
dollars ransom to be delivered by a rented armored truck

(01:23:47):
in Boston. It was just wacky.

Speaker 3 (01:23:50):
Well when you say it that way.

Speaker 1 (01:23:52):
Yeah, it sounded a little a little unbelievable. So Defonso
stopped by the Guilford Police Department and then he went
to Christian and Alex's house, where he spent two hours.
So to his surprise, they gave him not only a
very complete story, but also cotton swaps with blood samples,
film containing photos of Chris high Tower, a neatly typed

(01:24:15):
copy of a statement that he had allegedly dictated, diagrams
of saints and items in the red Toyota, and a
couple of phone numbers the suspect had written down. So
by the time Defonzo left, he really had a report
that was hard to believe, but a lot of information.

Speaker 3 (01:24:33):
Before dawn, the agent returned to New Haven and began
making phone calls and Barrington patrolman John Alfred, a clean
shaven young cop, was handling the midnight to eighth shift.
A car wreck that sent one person to the hospital
had been the only action until two forty five in
the morning, and that was when he got a call
from police and Guildford notifying him of the possible disappearance

(01:24:54):
of the Barrington family. Driving past the house once he
saw nothing unusual. Quietly, he clostered into the long driveway
at three h five am, turned off his lights and
motor and sat for a moment. He stepped onto the driveway.
The stairs leading to the porch of the big house
seemed askew as if they had been hit. He decided
not to walk around the property or try door knobs

(01:25:15):
to shine his flashlight in any windows. If he stumbled
around the house, he might disturb evidence, such as a footprinter,
something like that. So he got back into his cruiser
and left well.

Speaker 1 (01:25:25):
As the case unfolded, law enforcement officers would be careful
to preserve evidence and to conduct detailed interviews with people
involved in this crime. In a case that would be
constructed on circumstantial evidence, they really had to build a
clear case. By early morning, the parking lot of the
police headquarters beside the Barrington River filled up as law

(01:25:48):
enforcement came together. The crime was at risk of being
overwhelmed by the administrative problem of who was in control.
Would it be the FBI, the Rhode Island State Police,
or would be the Barrington Police Department. It really was
important that they be able to work together. Phones were
constantly ringing. There was an undercurrent of mutual respect, which

(01:26:10):
eventually translated into cooperation, so instead of animosity, there was teamwork.
Warrants were being filed and printed, and without a court's permission,
everything found in a search could be blocked from coming
into evidence in eventual trial, so that was important.

Speaker 3 (01:26:27):
Well they are.

Speaker 1 (01:26:28):
They wrote the warrants, a judge signed them, and the
search began. The big problem was that nobody yet knew what,
if anything, had really happened.

Speaker 3 (01:26:36):
Yeah, got his High Tower with his fantastic story and
the blood and the blood.

Speaker 1 (01:26:43):
So as the morning wre on, teams of patrolmen, detectives
and FBI agents went out to look around the White
Church and High Tower's office, with one team sent to
Susan's parents' house at one Jones Circle to check on
the high Tower family. They quickly learned that there had
been no kidnapping involving this family, as High Tower had

(01:27:04):
told Ernie's sister, one of the boys was in school,
one was at home sick, being watched by a family friend,
and Susan high Tower his wife was at work at
the White Church. Chris high Tower's family had no idea
of the seriousness of this situation. All Susan knew was
that police were looking for Chris and that it had
nothing to do with the divorce or the restraining order.

(01:27:28):
But a cluster of police cars showed up at the
Brendel's White Colonial house at ten point fifteen am. FBI
agents and uniformed Barrington officers surrounded the exterior. A patrolman
went across the street to the fire station and borrowed
some bolt cutters to snap the padlock from the garage door. Now,

(01:27:48):
once they entered the garage, they found a dark Audi
Sedan sedan parked near the rear wall, and there was
a broken window at the left rear of the garage,
and between the Audi and the door, they found a
large damp area, so they decided to go through the
back door of the house. The patrolman gave the wooden
door a swift kick just below the knob and it

(01:28:10):
crashed back against the wall, snapping off the little chain.
Then the team went from room to room, careful not
to disturb anything more than they really had to. It
was necessary all of the phone cords were disconnected or missing,
with some wrapped around the receivers. FBI agents saw all
the belongings of a family, but no people were there,

(01:28:31):
nobody in sight. In the cellar, they found a wooden
beam in the middle of the room that was dirty
and dusty on top, but clean on the bottom half.
That's where Alice and Emily had been tied up. Up
the narrow staircase to the second floor was the bedroom
of a child. Little girl's clothes were scattered about, stuffed
animals sat on the bed, and books lay open on

(01:28:54):
the dresser. There were no bodies and no obvious signs
of violence, but they're really wasn't eerie feeling in that house.

Speaker 3 (01:29:03):
So the hunt for the Brendell family had begun, and
Barrington Detective Sergeant John Lazarro and FBI Special Agent Jack
McGraw were confident that sooner or later the Toyota would
turn up and Christopher high Tower would be arrested. It
just had no idea where he was. At about one
point thirty PM, a patrolman driving near Barrington Plaza passed

(01:29:23):
a red Toyota with plates matching the Brendel's car, and
Chris high Toower was behind the wheel. The bolo warning
came out that the bolo warned that the suspect might
have a sawd off shotgun. So he got on the radio,
started and reported the sighting he had.

Speaker 1 (01:29:38):
Detective Lazarro was nearby, and he drove up beside the
toyota and tapped on his siren. High Tower was feeling
pretty good because he just cashed the forged fifteen hundred
dollars check and had cash in his wallet. But then
he heard the siren so close that it seemed to
be inside his head. So he looked to his left

(01:29:58):
and the driver pointed out and yelled for him to
pull over. He steered into a large parking lot and
Lazarro stopped directly behind the toyota. Then a fleet of
other cars flooded into the lot. Lazarro had told Chris
Hightower a week earlier that he might be arresting him today,
but back then, a bounced check was the question that

(01:30:20):
was it. Now he's facing the most serious crimes that exist.

Speaker 3 (01:30:24):
Just a bit more. Back in an interrogation room, high
Tower stuck with a mafia story when question about the
demands made by the kidnappers high Tower told police they
were holding the Brendel's and wanted two hundred thousand dollars,
which was one hundred thousand dollars less than he had
demanded of Christine and Alex.

Speaker 1 (01:30:43):
Well, you know he's not greedy. He's willing to negotiate
down if.

Speaker 3 (01:30:46):
He has to. I'll take someone. You take some, right.

Speaker 1 (01:30:50):
He also added that he knew his family was safe,
although he had told Christine that his wife and children
had been taken hostage as well. So according to Chris
high Tower, he had known Ernie Brendell for three years,
but they were having difficulty because Brendell had suspected discrepancies
in a fifteen thousand dollars financial account that high Tower

(01:31:11):
managed for him. High Tower claimed that he last saw
the Brendell family late on Friday, when he spent the
night on the couch there. The family was still asleep
when he left the next morning. He claimed it was
really plain from the grizzly discoveries made in the Toyota
and from high Tower's kidnapping story, that something really awful

(01:31:32):
had happened to the Brendel family. He pretended to be
concerned about the family and about their whereabouts, but then
he was arrested. He did maintain his innocence despite his
numerous lies that had been found out. So the police
had their suspect, but no victims. Until Monday, September twenty third,

(01:31:52):
Barrington wasn't even aware. Then over the weekend, a rumor
began that someone had been murdered in Barrington. The truth
came out when police sealed off the Brendell home with
yellow tape, making it a crime scene, but still there
was no evidence of a violent struggle. The detailed search
was just beginning.

Speaker 3 (01:32:11):
Within a few days of the murders, everyone in Barrington
knew that the Brendel family was missing. There were rumors,
but the only person who knew the truth was Chris Hitower.
In the Brendel's car, police found blood, teeth and the crossbow.
It's not good, doesn't sound now.

Speaker 1 (01:32:26):
It doesn't. Then on November seventh, the bodies of fifty
three year old Ernest Brendell, forty six year old Alice Brendell,
and eight year old Emily Brendell were found in shallow
graves about half a mile from their home, so they'd
been missing for seven weeks by that point. Emily had
had her photo taken on her school field trip that Friday,

(01:32:49):
and she was found wearing the same outfit, the same clothing.
Autopsies found that Ernie died of arrow wounds to his
chest and then trauma to his head head Alice had
been strangled. Emily's body showed no signs of trauma, which
eliminated anything other than asphyxiation. There was evidence, though, that
Emily had been drugged with benadryl to make her sleepy,

(01:33:13):
and she may have been buried alive, too drowsy to
really fight, but buried alive and died really horrific, So
once the bodies had been recovered, Chris high Tower would
face justice. He was then charged with three counts of
murder and one count of kidnapping, and his trial began
on March eighteenth, nineteen ninety three. The prosecutor had no

(01:33:37):
direct evidence, like a confession or a witness, but they
did have very strong circumstantial evidence. It was a strong case.
Not only did the man who sold high Tower the
crossbow testify, but the prosecutor called nearly one hundred other witnesses,
and this included people who saw him around town, saw

(01:33:58):
him buying the Marietta Ascid, the delivery man who saw
him answer the Brendel's door, and of course Ernie's sister
and brother in law. So all of these witnesses added
up just some definite guilt.

Speaker 3 (01:34:12):
So high Tower took the stand in his trial and
claimed that he was at Ernie's house when the mafia
arrived and killed the Brendell family.

Speaker 1 (01:34:20):
Yeah, and this was all his idea because his lawyer said,
don't do that.

Speaker 3 (01:34:24):
We got a new story too.

Speaker 1 (01:34:26):
Yes, yes, well, the lawyer didn't think it was believable
and didn't want him to do it.

Speaker 3 (01:34:30):
He said he saw Emily strangled and he was threatened.
He said a pillow case was put over his head,
and he was forced to dig the Brendel's graves under
the threat of his own family being killed. A big
part of tearing apart high Tower's story was to show
that he was a pathological liar. This includes showing proof
that he had fabricated his college grades and committed fraud

(01:34:51):
multiple times. The defense called the psychiatrist to the stand
to testify that high Tower was delusional, but the court
dismissed any insanity.

Speaker 1 (01:35:00):
Yeah, I think he was pretty crazy, but I think
you knew right.

Speaker 3 (01:35:03):
From wrong for sure, as they say, crazy like a fox.

Speaker 1 (01:35:07):
Well yeah, but kind of stupid too.

Speaker 3 (01:35:10):
Yeah, well need too many mistakes?

Speaker 1 (01:35:12):
Well I did even do it though it was pointless.
Well yeah, yeah, the whole thing was just pointless. And
three people died, so really tragic, real tragedy. So we're
going to do a little feedback today. Couple of reminders. First,
we do have a premium option of TCB, so you
can get early, ad free and bonus shows. We also

(01:35:34):
send our new members a gift with some swag and
a thank you note. We appreciate your support, and if
you prefer, you can subscribe at patreon dot com slash
ti grabber for the same benefits. Other ways that you
can support the show are to give us a five
star review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen, send
us an email or a voicemail with your feedback in

(01:35:57):
case suggestions, or just tell your friends to check out
the show. If you do have feedback or case suggestions,
you can send us an email to True Crime Brewery
at Tygrebber dot com, or a voicemail can be recorded
using the link in our show notes or on our website.

Speaker 4 (01:36:20):
It's time for listener feedback.

Speaker 1 (01:36:35):
So first of all, we have an email from Lisa,
and Lisa writes, Dear Dick and Jill, I'm a longtime
listener from South Australia, home of bizarre murders. I was
wondering if you have seen that Casey Anthony is now
on TikTok and setting herself up as an advocate. How
can this woman crawl out from under her rock and

(01:36:56):
think that all is forgiven? Being found not guilty court
of law is not the same as being innocent of
a crime. Every time I think she couldn't stoop any lower,
she exceeds my expectations. Thanks for shining a light on
the victims of these awful crimes.

Speaker 3 (01:37:13):
So why some of what Casey Anthony was doing on TikTok?
And I gotta tell you she's a whack job.

Speaker 1 (01:37:19):
She is a whack job and no conscience whatsoever, Lisa,
So that will explain how she can crawl out from
under her rock. She is talking about being an advocate
and that doesn't even make sense. An advocate for whom
I don't even know what she means. To be honest
with you, I listened to it and I thought it
was pretty crazy. Now while back, she had a special

(01:37:41):
on Hulu. I think it was she was really defending
herself in that as well, and acting like she was
some kind of advocate for justice, which is just ridiculous.

Speaker 3 (01:37:51):
An advocate for justice, right.

Speaker 1 (01:37:54):
Well, remember there was also a special with her parents
a while back where they took b Lie detector tests
and past them. And I can see that George and
Cindy Anthony do have some issues, but as always, my
heart has broken for them. I think that Casey Anthony
is just a bad seed, a horrible human. So I

(01:38:15):
really don't think anything will come of that, Let's hope not.
She seems to think she'll be famous, and I just
don't think anyone can stomach her, like be a couple,
well a couple.

Speaker 3 (01:38:25):
Yeah, But one of her little shows she talked about
how if she says she's guilty, she's going to come
after you, talking about slander and libel and stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:38:36):
Right, yeah, but all people are doing are stating the facts.

Speaker 4 (01:38:40):
Right right.

Speaker 1 (01:38:41):
Craziness is she's not very smart either, right pretty soon
just to her, Yeah, not the brightest. I don't know
what she does with herself. I know she was living
with one of her attorneys way back after her trial,
and I always believed there was some kind of sex
used for of legal services.

Speaker 3 (01:39:01):
Rendered quick propo as you say.

Speaker 1 (01:39:03):
I kind of felt that way. But anyway, just a
slide ball. Let's push her back under the rock and
never speak of her again.

Speaker 3 (01:39:09):
We'll do that.

Speaker 1 (01:39:10):
Okay, what else have you got.

Speaker 3 (01:39:12):
Well, we're looking for some updates, if there were any,
just check you out Lucy let Be and Lorie Vallo.
And there's not that much happening right now, Lucy let Be.
The only thing that I hadn't heard about or I
missed it was that it started a criminal probe at
the hospital and it's going to focus on decisions made

(01:39:33):
by senior staff, hoping to have results of that by
the fall.

Speaker 1 (01:39:37):
Well we know, initially when they did do a review,
there were many experts who said, no, no baby was
murdered at all. But then there is a podcast through
the BBC that talks about it, and they talk about
her as if she's guilty, which you know, makes sense
when someone's convicted and in prison, it's fair to talk
about them as if they're guilty. Oh yeah, But there's

(01:39:59):
just so much going on that makes people doubt her guilt.
It's very interesting and I would love to find out
what they decide on seeing your staff, which I think
they mean charged nurses and physicians. Oh yeah, because it
was primarily a couple of physicians who reported Lucy and
believed she was killing babies. But regardless if you think

(01:40:21):
she's innocent or guilty, I really believe that the hospital,
the Chester Hospital, they have some real male practice going
on there. I know in our series on this, we
did a two part series and there were just incredible
issues in that Niku quite a bit. Yeah, so this
is going to be ongoing. We don't know if she's

(01:40:43):
going to be allowed to appeal. I'm not sure exactly
how criminal justice works in Britain, but from what we've seen,
she was turned down to appeal.

Speaker 3 (01:40:54):
Yes, she's been turned down. So from one viewpoint, she's
run out of appeals. There's nothing more she can do.

Speaker 1 (01:41:02):
I just can't see that standing though, because so many
people believe that it was a bad conviction.

Speaker 3 (01:41:08):
Well, the Criminal Case's You Commission is studying the case
and the hope is that they will refer it back
to the Court of Appeal and can Lucy can have
her or another day in court.

Speaker 1 (01:41:22):
Yeah. Now, one thing I really don't agree with is
the thought that having these reviews and going over everything
is painful for the families of the babies who died.
I have no doubt that it is painful for them,
But I don't think that trying to find the truth
is a disservice to them. I think they probably would
want to know what happened to their children. Yeah, and

(01:41:44):
if Lucy didn't do it on purpose, but if it
was male practiced by the physicians, or because of staffing,
or because of the facility, that's important to know for
future children so that this doesn't happen anymore. I know
there have been changes already, but certainly more review is needed.
Oh absolutely, Yeah, So that's the case. We'll probably be

(01:42:05):
with for a long time, keeping an eye on.

Speaker 3 (01:42:08):
I'm sure we will. Yeah. And then our last little
tidbit was Lori DeBell, Lori Bello DeBell. She had an
interview with Keith Morrison.

Speaker 1 (01:42:17):
Uh huh in Daylight.

Speaker 3 (01:42:18):
Yeah, I got that part. I remember when it was
on a couple of weeks ago.

Speaker 1 (01:42:22):
Yeah, it was two three weeks ago, maybe not even
that long. Yeah, how'd you feel about it? Because I
had a lot of mixed feelings about it, and you
know that Keith's my guy.

Speaker 3 (01:42:32):
Well, I thought it was terrible. I wasn't even an interview. Yeah,
and Keith Morrison himself has said it was not a
very good interview because she had her own agenda, right,
and she wasn't going to answer any questions.

Speaker 1 (01:42:44):
Well, not in a legitimate way anyway, right right. Bothered
me that she got attention because you can tell she
really rebels in attention.

Speaker 3 (01:42:52):
Oh, she loves it.

Speaker 1 (01:42:53):
That's why she's representing herself in Arizona. She was very weird,
very inappropriate, almost flirting with him. I don't think we
needed it. Now. When Keith was asked by another reporter
why he did it, because he did say that he
felt some guilt maybe a little apprehension about giving her
that attention in that time on TV, but that it's

(01:43:17):
something people wanted to know, so he did go along
with it.

Speaker 3 (01:43:21):
Yeah, probably reluctantly.

Speaker 1 (01:43:23):
Probably reluctantly, yes, And just don't think that we need
to give her any more attention. For me, why are
we even doing the Arizona case? I mean, yes, I
can see why the family of Charles Valo deserved to
get justice for his murder, because she certainly was behind that.
But at the same time, that's just giving her more

(01:43:45):
attention because then she's in the courtroom and she's representing
herself and she's got that hair and that weird face,
and just can't stand her, just can't stand her. And
I just don't know how the judge can sit there
and speak with her like she's a normal It's just
these people amaze me that they can stomach people like
this because I can't.

Speaker 3 (01:44:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:44:05):
Yeah, So she's going to have her trial on Charles Valow.
There's no doubt in my mind that she'll be found guilty,
and then she'll have her trial for the attempted murder
of her niece's husband, Brandon, and she'll be found guilty
for that. But I mean, what's the point. She's in
prison for life. Let's just put her under the rock

(01:44:25):
with Casey Anthony and be done with the both of them.
But that said, we probably will have follow up of it,
right because if something happens, we're going to tell our
listeners of course. Yeah, okay, okay, well everyone, thank you
so much for listening. We appreciate you coming to see
us at the quiet end and we'll see you next
time at the quiet end.

Speaker 4 (01:44:46):
Bye guys, bye bye, And of too di contuit, dictly
conti

Speaker 3 (01:45:08):
And ot

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