While He Was Sleeping?

One January night in 1997, Scott Falater’s next door neighbor looked on in horror as Scott dragged his screaming wife into the family pool and proceeded to hold her head under the water. When the police arrived, they found Yarmila Falater floating in blood filled water with forty-four stab wounds to her body.

Join us at the quiet end for While He Was Sleeping? Scott told the police that he had no memory of hurting his wife, but they didn’t believe him. He was arrested and would go on trial for murder. His defense, that he was sleepwalking when he murdered his wife, was controversial, and prosecutors worked to disprove it with evidence found at the scene.

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Sources

Forgive Me for Killing You by Marci Olsen Blau

His Dad Claimed He Was Sleepwalking When He Killed His Mom-and Now Son is Speaking Out, People.com. Christine Pelisek, 1/29/2021

Scott Falater Today: Where is the Sleepwalking Killer Now? Alyssa Choiniere, Heavy.com, 12/8/2022

Scott Falater: Case of the sleepwalking husband who murdered his wife Yarmila, Daily Crime, Angelica N. Sumter, 1/6/2023

Sleepwalking, Criminal Behavior, and Reliable Scientific Evidence: A Guide for Expert Witnesses, American Psychological Association, M.R. Pressman, 2018.

While He Was Sleeping, 20/20, S43 E11, 1/29/2021

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
I believe the wife. Look the.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
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 3 (00:42):
Welcome to True Crime Brewery. I'm Jill And One January
night in nineteen ninety seven, Scott Flater's next door neighbor
looked on in horror as Scott dragged his screaming wife
into the family pool and then proceeded to hold her
head under the water. When the police arrived, they found
Yarmilla Fhi later floating in blood filled water with forty

(01:06):
four stab wounds to her body. Join us at the
quiet end for while he was sleeping. Scott told the
police that he had no memory of hurting his wife,
but they didn't believe him. He was arrested and would
go on trial for murder. His defense that he was
sleepwalking when he murdered his wife was controversial, and prosecutors
worked to disprove it with lots of evidence found at

(01:29):
the scene.

Speaker 4 (01:29):
So this took place in Arizona. By the way, if
I sound a little weird today, I have some congestion
or allergies or something, so I might be quieter and
worse sounding unusual.

Speaker 3 (01:42):
Okay, good to know.

Speaker 4 (01:43):
So we're going to have a nice Arizona beer. I've
found one called earth To Beer from Arizona Wilderness Brewing
Company in Gilbert, Arizona to New England. Ipa seven and
a half percent alcohol by volume. Beer is a hazy,
pale orange color, small white head, a little bit of
late nice aroma, melan, other fruits, tropical fruits, and the

(02:04):
taste is amazing melan, peach, mango, and then a little
bit of grapefruit later on in the taste mostly a
sweet beer, like most any IPAs are a little bitterness.
I recommend this one if you like those kinds of IPAs.

Speaker 3 (02:18):
Sounds pretty good. Why don't we open it up and
drink some How's that?

Speaker 4 (02:22):
That's what it's here for.

Speaker 3 (02:23):
Okay, all right, Dicky, come on down. I'm going to
start us out because I want to save your voice

(02:45):
a little.

Speaker 4 (02:45):
Bit save my voice.

Speaker 3 (02:46):
So Scott and Yarmilla met at Riverside Brookfield High School
near Chicago, Illinois, back in the nineteen seventies. When Yarmilla
was asked how she and Scott met. Her usual answer
was high school. She didn't have any cute stories of
their courtship that she would share. Both of their pictures
in their yearbooks show attractive, straight laced young people with

(03:08):
smiles on their faces. Jarmilla was a pretty brunette, and
Scott had this boyish, friendly face, kind of nerdy but cute.
They studied, they did well in school, they worked jobs,
and they had solid plans for future careers, marriage and
a family. So very sensible young people. Yarmilla and Scott
were in the same sophomore English class in nineteen seventy one.

(03:31):
Their classroom design was a new setup for that time,
with everyone sitting in a circle and having open discussions.
So the class had read either a book or some
short story where a female character rolled a boat across
a large lake. Now Scott couldn't remember the title of this,
but he said, as the class was discussing the events
in the story, one boy said, well, this is stupid.

(03:54):
No girl could row the boat across the lake by herself.
Some of the class had laughed, but then one girl
had spoken up, and that was Yarmilla. Scott took notice
of this strong willed girl, and he asked her out
later that year. When asked if she had noticed him before,
Yarmilla would say that Scott was the guy who kept
falling asleep in English class. Of course, back then, they

(04:15):
had no idea that Scott's sleeping behavior would become the
focus of a nationally followed murder trial.

Speaker 4 (04:23):
Now, so he's falling asleep in English class, but it's
not that he falls asleep, gets out of his chair,
walks around the room, or it does anything other than
fall asleep while he was listening to a lecture.

Speaker 3 (04:36):
Right right. I think a lot of people do, of course,
but just you know, thinking of what happens later, I
think it's a little bit notable.

Speaker 4 (04:44):
Well, it's notable that people try to find supporting evidence.

Speaker 3 (04:49):
Yes, but maybe he was falling asleep in class because
he wasn't sleeping. Well, maybe he had some sleep disorder
at night. We don't know, no, no, but I thought
it was worth mentioning anyway. Well, sure, so Scott would
describe himself as painfully shy. Back then, he was inexperienced
and insecure. But he must have been doing something right,
because soon he and Yarmilla were in a steady relationship.

(05:12):
Neither one of them, Scott or Yarmilla dated anyone else
after they got together. In fact, Yarmilla was not shy
about telling people that Scott was her one and only boyfriend.

Speaker 4 (05:24):
I would bet that Yarmilla was Scott's only girlfriend.

Speaker 3 (05:27):
Yeah, yeah, that's definitely the image that we get.

Speaker 4 (05:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (05:31):
So, when they were both around sixteen years old, Yarmilla
was working at a dry cleaner across the street from
where Scott worked at a pharmacy. The dates they went
on included picnics, having ice cream at Best and Robin's,
and going to see movies at their local theater. Yarmilla
was a charming mix of traditional and liberated. She was

(05:51):
traditional enough to let Scott pay for their dates, but
also liberated enough to arrange for and pay for some
experiences that he wanted to share with Scott. And this
would include a Carpenter's concert, which they both saw together
and really enjoyed.

Speaker 4 (06:07):
Now.

Speaker 3 (06:07):
When Scott was seventeen, his parents divorced. The three to
four years leading up to this divorce were the most difficult.
Scott's father, Fred, was a binge drinker. He worked hard,
and he could be an attentive parent, but he had
a lot of anger issues. He would rant about the church,
politics and any little thing around the house. Scott's mom

(06:30):
often got the worst of it, not surprisingly. Then Fred's
drinking became worse and he began seeing another woman. Then
he would come home late from work a lot after
the kids went to bed, and Scott's parents would fight.
On many nights, Scott heard his father beating his mother,
so that's pretty shocking. There were times when Scott's mother, Lois,

(06:51):
would actually scream for help, and as the oldest child,
Scott felt like it was his duty to help her.
Sometimes he would find a father straddling Lois and punching
her or even choking her. Sometimes he could separate them,
but the fights would often resume after he went back
to his bed. So there was one night that Scott

(07:11):
would never forget. He said that his dad had been
relentless that night and that he had already intervened several times.
He believed that his dad was trying to rape his
mother that night. There were some behaviors that made him
believe that. One of them that she actually put on
a pair of her son's underwear, like to protect herself,
so that's pretty shocking too. She ended up sleeping on

(07:33):
the floor of Scott in his brother's room, and Scott
ended up getting into a real screaming match with Fred.
Scott did not feel any love for his dad after that,
but he always wanted his approval. He was ashamed of
his home and his family, and he rarely had any friends.

Speaker 4 (07:48):
Over tough situations.

Speaker 3 (07:50):
Very tough.

Speaker 4 (07:51):
Yes, this family sounds like it's in real difficulty.

Speaker 3 (07:55):
Yeah, but I think on the outside they put up
a really good front. And this was the sixties and
seventies when you really didn't say anything.

Speaker 4 (08:02):
Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 3 (08:03):
So it is extremely dysfunctional but also very secretive. So
as a couple, Scott and Yarmilla had few friends in common,
especially after they went off to different colleges. Scott was
very socially isolated in college, and he thought his father's
alcoholism had destroyed his self confidence. But Yarmilla was his
emotional rock through these years. She listened sympathetically, she accepted him,

(08:27):
and she really earned his loyalty. During their college years,
they only saw each other about once a month. Scott's
mom did not remember Scott ever bringing Yarmilla to visit,
but sometimes Scott would go and visit with Yarmilla's family.
Yarmilla had to accept Scott's insecurities and help him grow emotionally.
He went to school, and he worked a lot, which

(08:49):
left him too tired to go out and do much.
The private university that he attended cost over forty thousand
dollars a year, so he worked sixty to seventy hours
a week in the summer and twenty to thirty hours
a week during the school year to avoid getting too
deeply into debt. His parents' salaries made him ineligible for
financial aid, but they also couldn't afford to pay that tuition.

Speaker 4 (09:13):
Yeah, I know what that's like.

Speaker 5 (09:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (09:15):
Now, he eventually switched majors from biomedical engineering to electrical engineering.
But definitely a smart kid. So one of the most
challenging times for Yarmilla was when Scott converted to the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints so the Mormons.
Before this, they were both Catholic and were physically affectionate

(09:36):
with one another, so I take that to mean they
were sleeping together. But then Scott joined the church and
their physical relationship stopped because he said he wanted to
live by the rules of Mormonism, so These standards of
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints include
that men and women refrained from sexual intimacy before marriage,

(09:58):
and also that they follow these certain diet terry guidelines
called the Word of Wisdom, and this included not drinking
of course.

Speaker 5 (10:06):
Right.

Speaker 4 (10:07):
Do you know anything about what prompted his conversion?

Speaker 3 (10:12):
Not really, No. All that I'd read about it is
he had heard about it. It appealed to him.

Speaker 4 (10:18):
And the other thing, I think Catholicism also does not
encourage premarital.

Speaker 3 (10:24):
Intercourse, probably not now, But I don't think that they
were that strict catholic.

Speaker 4 (10:30):
Obviously it could be not too strict Mormons.

Speaker 3 (10:33):
Well, they could have been, but Scott was very serious
about his Mormonism, more so than his Catholicism for some reason,
maybe because it was more his choice and not what
he grew up with. Yeah, but Yarmilla really projected self
confidence and she wasn't afraid to try new things like
new hairstyles or new fashion. She definitely wanted to be

(10:54):
independent and intended to become a medical technologist, so she
went to two two schools in the Chicago area before
being admitted to her program of study. She was really
worried that her high school grades weren't good enough to
get into the schools that she wanted. She'd chosen a
particularly challenging educational path, but she wanted financial security and

(11:17):
she wanted to be able to live life on her
own terms, which is interesting because she kind of ended
up being a full time mom for quite a while.

Speaker 4 (11:26):
Yeah, she abandoned those dreams.

Speaker 3 (11:29):
Yeah, I think she did, and we're not sure exactly why,
although I certainly can understand. It's difficult to work and
raise children, so it's understandable. So Yarmilla's intelligence was very
attractive to Scott, and when he became a member of
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, he
was pulled into this far right conservatism. Serious about their

(11:51):
future decisions, they both consulted their families about the prospects
of having a happy marriage if they belonged to different religions,
because Yarmillah did not want to be a Mormon. They
did seem to agree on most things, though, and had
no major disagreements, so Scott went ahead and proposed before
Christmas of nineteen seventy five, and they set a wedding

(12:13):
date for the next summer. They were married by Scott's
Bishop of the Westminster Ward of the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter day Saints on June twenty eighth, nineteen
seventy six. Their first child, a daughter, Megan, was born
five years after their wedding and two years after they
graduated from college. Now one year after they were married,

(12:35):
Scott and Yarmilla both had their bachelor's degrees, and during
that year, Yarmilla was a full time student and Scott
worked as a biology lab tech at Argonne National Laboratory.
The job was flexible, so he could work part time
during the school year and full time during the summer.
So in nineteen seventy seven and seventy eight, Yarmilla trained

(12:56):
at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and later worked there as a
medical technologist, and they each earned their master's degrees.

Speaker 4 (13:05):
No, so they're getting ready to live as adults.

Speaker 3 (13:08):
Yeah, they seemed very organized, much more grown up than
I still am. So it's pretty impressive in that way.
But we have to think with what happened, that things
weren't as rosy as they may have seemed from the outside.
So newly married and living in the upstairs apartment of
a property owned by Yarmila's father, Joseph. Scott and Yarmilla

(13:29):
were very busy and very happy. After living there for
about two years, they moved to an apartment in Brookfield
and they lived there until they later moved to Melbourne, Florida.
Yarmilla worked at Holmes Regional Medical Center as a medical
technologist and Scott worked as an engineer at Harris Corporation.
Their daughter, Megan, was born in nineteen eighty one, and

(13:50):
then their son, Michael, was born in nineteen eighty four.
Scott would later talk about the lowest point in their
marriage being the time after they left Florida. Scott made
the decision to move from Florida to Minnesota to pursue
another engineering job. Now Yarmila had given up her medical
career after Michael was born to be a full time parent,

(14:10):
and moving to Minnesota meant she had no friends, no roots,
and she probably felt trapped. She had no support system,
and Scott was working long hours in this new job.
He would later admit that he had become arrogant and
self centered and that Yarmilla was depressed while they were
living in Minnesota. He even described this time as the

(14:31):
lowest point of their marriage, you know, until the murder,
of course.

Speaker 4 (14:36):
Yeah, don't forget to add that part.

Speaker 3 (14:38):
That tiny little detail. So after Minnesota, they mutually decided
that Scott should turn down a higher paying job in
Detroit and move the family to Phoenix. Scott's bishop in
Phoenix helped him see that Yarmilla's unhappiness was really affecting them,
and that was after he had interviewed the couple. He
began to spend more time with Yarmilla and their children. Now,

(15:00):
after that and around nineteen ninety, Yarmilla made friends and
their marriage seemed to improve. Scott would later claim that
their marriage was at its best just before Yarmilla died.
Isn't that interesting?

Speaker 4 (15:14):
Yes?

Speaker 5 (15:15):
It is?

Speaker 3 (15:15):
Yeah, what do you think of that?

Speaker 4 (15:17):
Self serving?

Speaker 3 (15:18):
Okay? So, Yarmilla was not on board with Scott's conversion
to Mormonism for many, many years. According to Scott, learning
about eternal marriage. It is what prompted Yarmilla to learn
about the church. So they traveled through Salt Lake City
as part of a train vacation and they took the
Temple Square tour. Once they were alone, she asked him

(15:41):
if he wanted to be married through eternity, and he said, yes,
of course I do. So this influenced her to learn
more about the church doctrine. Yarmilla then became a baptized member,
and after that she was very active in the church.

Speaker 4 (15:55):
So we have two moments now, yep.

Speaker 3 (15:58):
The whole family of Mormons. Now, a brief time before
Yarmilla's death, Yarmilla and Scott's stated goal was to transition
into teaching. Scott wanted to retire from engineering by the
time he was fifty and teach high school science classes
full time. So the engineering job was more to make money,

(16:18):
but his true passion was teaching.

Speaker 4 (16:21):
So the Arizona job was a means to the end.

Speaker 3 (16:23):
YEP. Now, Yarmilla was already a teacher's they ate at
a private school in Scottsdale, Arizona, and she had plans
to become a teacher by attending Arizona State University and
getting her certification. So, according to Scott, both were really
excited to become teachers and have the time off with
the school breaks, the kids would be on their own

(16:45):
and they could travel and live a very different lifestyle
after that. Now, as far as their retirement plans went,
they had a trip planned to Europe in the summer
of nineteen ninety seven to explore the idea of retiring
in France, where they thought they were money would go farther. Now,
the whole family was going to go on this trip,
not just Yarmilla and Scott, but Megan and Michael. Scott

(17:08):
said he and Yarmilla, who he called yarm wanted to
travel to Europe, France, Egypt, Israel, and Portugal. So they
had big plans as they got older for their retirement.

Speaker 4 (17:19):
It sounds like, yeah, way bigger than my plans.

Speaker 3 (17:22):
You just wanted to stay home and do a podcast.

Speaker 5 (17:24):
That's right, okay with you?

Speaker 2 (17:27):
With me?

Speaker 3 (17:28):
Of course, yes course, So I guess we better discuss
the night yar Mila was killed, because this is when
it all happened. That's the whole reason we're here. So

(17:49):
it was the evening of January sixteenth, nineteen ninety seven,
and Scott left work at Motorola, where he worked as
an engineer. On his way home, he stopped at the
store and bought some snacks for a seminary class he
was teaching the next day. So they were having some
kind of celebration or competition, and he was going to

(18:10):
set up like a trivia game and have snacks and
things for his students. So, once home, Scott went upstairs
to change out of his work clothes and he put
on a T shirt and jeans. The T shirt he
put on was bright colored and kind of silly. It
had come from his first Motorola product line, which was
a chip for TIMEX watches. Both of his children, Megan

(18:31):
and Michael, remembered the T shirt and they actually had
teased their dad about it. It was white with neon colors,
some electrons, and some TIMEX watches. Megan said her mother
teased her dad about the shirt too, and she'd heard
her mom making some sort of joke about electrons and
their short lifespans. Megan didn't hear all of this joke,

(18:52):
but she thought that the joke had some sort of
sexual innuendo. So I don't know if I care to
even guess about that, but I think that conjecture it
would be. But I also think could it have been
insulting short life spans? You know?

Speaker 4 (19:06):
Maybe well maybe that is enough to trigger you into
killing your wife.

Speaker 3 (19:10):
Oh no, that's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying
maybe things weren't as perfect as everyone seemed to think.
That's all okay, so Yarmilla had dinner waiting. They all
set around the dining table together until just before seven pm.
Scott said he was tired, but the dinner conversation was normal.
Scott was incredibly stressed about a work meeting, and Yarmilla

(19:33):
was concerned because the pool pump wasn't working properly. And
I guess this was something that would drive her to
distraction because if the pool got covered in green slime,
she'd get upset, and I can relate. Nobody likes that.
So after dinner, Yarmila went to watch TV and read
a book. Scott watched TV with her for a little

(19:53):
while and they sat beside each other. The kids were
in bed by nine thirty pm. Yarmilla continued watching her
Thursday night shows, but Scott had to get ready for
the seminary class the next morning, so he went and
did some work on the computer. He made score sheets
for a trivia game about eighty to ninety questions. There
were two computers in the house, one upstairs and one

(20:16):
in the family room, where the TV and the printer were.
Scott remembered Yarmilla was in the family room with the
TV on. At this point, Scott went to the garage
to get tools, and he went out to look at
the pool pump and filter. When he opened up the
pool motor, he saw the o ring was broken, stuck
and not ceiling. So he tried to get it off

(20:37):
and everything, and it wouldn't move, and he finally gave up.
He decided not to fix the pump that night because
he needed more light in order to do it, so
he cleaned up his tools, put them in the garage,
and went back into the house. Scott said he then
washed his hands and went to Yarmilla, who was sitting
up asleep on the couch. The TV show er was

(20:59):
still on. He woke her up and told her he
couldn't fix the pump and he was sorry, but he'd
looked at it tomorrow. He kissed her good night and
went upstairs to bed. So that's a little weird to
me that she stayed downstairs. Why wouldn't he say let's go.

Speaker 5 (21:14):
To bed, yepy.

Speaker 4 (21:16):
He turned the TV off and she didn't turn it
back on and say every I'm going to watch TV
for a little bit longer.

Speaker 3 (21:22):
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, everybody's different, but that's
what he said happened. According to Scott, this was the
last time he would remember seeing his wife at all.
So Gregory Coone's next door neighbor and friend of the family,
was watching the news around ten p m. In the
living room of his house. After about ten to fifteen
minutes of watching the news, he turned everything off and

(21:44):
went to join his girlfriend in bed. After he got
into the bed, his girlfriend told him she'd heard a
woman screaming, and Coon said, well, he hadn't heard anything,
but then he did have poor hearing from a career
he had in construction. After his girlfriend mentioned hearing the
screaming again, Coons got up. He put on some shorts
and walked out to the patio. So The temperature now

(22:06):
was in the thirties, and he heard noise coming from
the other side of the shared fence. He walked to
a support column on his patio and stood there quietly.
The block fence was five or six feet away from him,
and he heard noises coming from the filater side of
the block wall. Coon said he heard a moaning type
of noise and it almost sounded like two people having sex.

(22:29):
Not like someone in distress. At this point, his curiosity
led him back into his house and to the far
end of his garage, where there's a door right next
to the fence. He opened it slowly and stood there,
breathing as quietly as he could. There was no light
and the moaning had stopped, but he heard steps in
the gravel of their backyard. He went over to a

(22:51):
planter in his yard that was against the far back
wall where there were some railroad ties, and he stood
up on the railroad ties so he could see over
the fence. But of course he didn't want to be seen, no,
because he doesn't know if he's just being nosy or what. So,
standing next to a large pine tree, Coon saw person
lying on the ground. Her head was toward the house

(23:13):
and her feet were toward the pool equipment. It was
a woman, but he didn't know it was Yarmilla. She
was rolling on the ground and at first he thought
she must have been drunk. Coons said the lights were
on in the filator's garage and kitchen, and when the
lights came on upstairs in the fulator's bedroom and with
the blinds open, he was able to see Scott walking

(23:36):
through his bedroom. He saw that Scott was wearing a
white T shirt. Coons then saw the bathroom light go on,
but he couldn't see through the frosted glass of that window.
Then the light to the bathroom went out, and he
saw Scott reappear and turn off the bedroom light and
walk out. So the next time he saw Scott was
when he reappeared downstairs through the sliding glass door. He

(23:59):
saw walk into the kitchen toward the sink. Then he
saw Scott walking from the kitchen to the living room.
So it looked to Coon's like he was wringing his
hands like he had just washed them, but he didn't
actually see him wash his hands. Coon said Scott was
wearing a white T shirt and red sweatpants. He then
saw him walk toward the staircase, which was at the

(24:21):
center of the house, and then walked through the family
room toward the sliding glass door. Scott opened the door,
motioned to his dog like he was saying something to
the dog, and then the dog laid down in the patio.
Coon saw Scott step out onto the patio then and
he walked toward the body that was lying on the ground.

(24:41):
He stood two or three feet away from the body,
stopped and just looked down like maybe he was wondering
what to do next. Coon said he saw Scott stand
there for maybe thirty or forty seconds, which doesn't sound
very long, but it's a significant pause. Then he turned
around and walked back toward the sliding glass door, and

(25:02):
the dog stayed put on the patio. So halfway back
to the glass door, Scott acted like he'd heard a
noise or something, and he turned and looked over his shoulder.
Then after five to ten seconds, Scott continued to the
glass door, stepped inside of the house and shut the door.
The next time Kons saw him, Scott was walking out

(25:23):
of the garage door. He walked down between the house
and the fence, and he was putting on a pair
of canvas gloves, like gardener gloves. The light was on
in the garage and Coons could tell the gloves were
light in color, like canvas work gloves. He continued to
watch as Scott stepped over the body, grabbed Yarmilla by
her hands and walked backward, dragging her by her hands

(25:46):
over the top of her head, and he pulled her
to the back of the pool, put her hands down,
walked around to pick up her legs and pulled them
over the edge of the swimming pool. So Coons is
thinking this is just weird. Then saw Scott move the
woman's legs around to the side, kneel down beside her,
and push her into the water. So Coon saw him

(26:08):
grab her head when she was in the water too,
and at first he thought that he was holding her
head out of the water, maybe splashing her because she
was drunk. Then he realized that Scott was actually holding
her head under the water, so he ran to call
the police.

Speaker 5 (26:22):
It was time.

Speaker 3 (26:23):
Huh, Yeah, he waited long enough, I guess huh, that's
for sure.

Speaker 5 (26:27):
Now.

Speaker 3 (26:27):
By the time Greg Kuon's return, Scott was not out
in the yard anymore. Yarmillah's body was in the pool,
face down, floating in the shallow end. Coons called nine
one one again and begged them to please come quickly.
Nine one one kept him on the phone until the
police arrived, which was pretty quickly. Yarmila had fought for

(26:47):
her life. She had twelve stab wounds to her hands
and fingers, Her head and face took two gashes from
a hunting knife that Scott had used. There were eight
gashes on both sides of her neck. Next to her
right clavicle, there was another stab wound, so her torso
had twenty one stab wounds and this made a total

(27:08):
of forty four stab wounds that were suffered by Yarmilla.
On her autopsy, the emmy would identify in sized wounds
of the right and left lungs, heart, spinal cord, and
jugular vein. She had fractures of the ribs and the spine,
a dima of the lungs, and water in her sphenoid sinuses.
At the time of her death, there was no sign

(27:30):
of disease in her body. Her clothing and personal effects
would reveal that Yarmilla was still dressed for her teaching job.
She was wearing a red and white striped shirt under
a navy blue jumper. She had socks on her feet
and one black slip on shoe on her right foot.
On her left wrist, she wore three bracelets. Yarmilla also

(27:51):
wore two sets of earrings and her shoulder length hair
was held with a rubber band, so it certainly didn't
look like she was ready for bed. Yarmillah must have
known that Scott was stabbing her too, because she had
grabbed for the knife. Her ring finger was nearly completely severed.
There was no way to know the order of these wounds.

(28:12):
The deepest wound was through a long inter spleen and
it was at the depth of the knife blade. So
in the medical examiner's opinion, Yarmillah died from blood loss
and may have lived anywhere from five to even thirty
minutes after the first stab. The trajectory of the wounds
were consistent with a taller defendant and someone who had

(28:34):
approached her from behind, reaching around and stabbing her in
the chest. The official medical examiner report states multiple stab
wounds and drowning as the cause of her death. So
what is not known is what led up to Yarmillah
being attacked by Scott. We do not know how they
interacted with each other after their kids went to bed.

(28:56):
Yarmilah was stabbed and killed very close to the pool pump,
so did that have something to do with it? I
don't know. There's been suggestions that he was sleepwalking and
trying to fix the pool in his sleep and she
had confronted him and he just attacked her. We don't know,
Or maybe she was yelling at to him about it
or something. I don't know now. Phoenix police officer Joseph

(29:18):
Allen Jones was on duty and got the call at
ten point fifty seven pm. He arrived at about eleven
pm and saw two police cars already at the scene.
Police pulled Yarmilla's body from the pool and later on
the edge. There was no pulse and there was a
lot of blood in the pool. Actually, this officer compared
it to what you might see if there was a

(29:39):
shark attack.

Speaker 6 (29:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (29:55):
Officer Jones saw an officer pulling the victim out of
the pool, and he had toward the house through the
sliding glass door, but he saw Scott from the outside
walking upstairs in his house. The sliding glass door was
partially opened, so the police stepped inside and Scott was
now at the top of the stairs wearing a very
clean white T shirt and red checked pajama pants. So

(30:19):
when Scott saw the police, he stopped. Jones ordered him
to get down on the ground and he hesitated. They
ordered him again with their guns drawn. At that time,
Scott laid out prone on the floor and Jones put
him in handcuffs. After a search of the house, they
moved Scott to a seat by the fireplace. Then the
fire department was called, and when they arrived, Scott was

(30:42):
still sitting there. When asked if there was anyone else
in the house, Scott said there were four people in
the house, himself, his wife, and the two children. Saw
a check of the house found Megan and Michael upstairs
asleep and the TV was still on. Scott looked confused
and asked what was happening. So it's been by some
that the fact that Scott said there were four people

(31:03):
in the house included his wife and those people. He
didn't know she was out in the pool, but that
could have been fake. Who knows?

Speaker 4 (31:10):
Yeah, I mean also just saying who's here in the house,
he'll say.

Speaker 3 (31:14):
His wife, well yeah, But it's been suggested if he
knew she was dead in the pool, he wouldn't say that.

Speaker 4 (31:20):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (31:21):
I don't know either. So Scott kept asking the police
what was going on. They had to wake up the
children and told them that their parents had gotten into
an argument and that their mother had been hurt. The
police led the children out the front door. Then a
policeman later told them that their mom had died. After
Scott was arrested. He was taken to the station and interviewed.

(31:42):
Scott seemed not to know what had happened to his
wife or that he was the person responsible. Homicide Detective
John Norman talked to Scott and told him that Yarmila
was dead. Scott would say he didn't understand why the
police thought he killed his wife, and Norman told him
while the neighbor had seen you doing it. So Scott
was sitting in the corner of the interrogation room in

(32:04):
his T shirt and pajama bottoms. He appeared meek and
calm and seemed to accept that he had murdered his wife,
but he kept saying he didn't remember. Scott was not
looking at the detective when they were talking, and to
the detective this seemed evasive. So this detective Norman was
having none of it. He thought this was complete bullshit.

(32:24):
He was not even entertaining any kind of sleepwalking scenario
at all. But Scott said he loved his wife, that
they'd been married all of their adult life, and she
certainly did not deserve to die. She'd been a great
wife and mother. But strangely, there was no blood on
Scott's white t shirt or pajama bottoms, but detective Norman
did see blood on Scott's neck. He pointed it out,

(32:47):
and Scott said he didn't know that there was any
blood on him. Scott also had a cut on his
right hand. It had been cleaned up and there was
a band aid on it, but Scott said he did
not remember putting the band aid on. Detective Norman did
not believe that Scott did not remember. He had a
nigh witness who had watched him drown his wife. It
was suspicious that there was no blood on Scott's T

(33:09):
shirt or pants too. Norman believed he'd showered but had
missed some blood on his neck and some behind one
of his ears, so of course that blood was tested
to make sure it was yarmillus, and it was. Now
Scott was either disoriented or confused or this was all
in act, but it was an open and shut case
that he had killed his wife. After this interrogation, Scott

(33:32):
said he believed his wife had drowned and he wasn't
aware that she'd been stabbed to death prior to being
held under the water. So it was one fifty three
a m. When the detective John Norman had first introduced
himself to Scott, who was sitting in the corner of
the small room with his back literally against the wall.
Scott was barefoot and his hands were folded on his

(33:54):
lap and his shoulders were slumped over. You okay, you cold,
the detective asked him, but Scott ignored the question. I'm afraid.
He said that this means my wife is dead, and
Norman briefly said yep, yep. Scott swayed and leaned his
head against the wall. He looked up sobbing quietly, then
covered his face with his hands. The detective read Scott

(34:17):
his MIRANDA warning and Scott said he understood his rights,
and then he waved them. So what brought this on?
The detective asked him, you tell me what happened. I
don't know. Scott answered flatly, from what the neighbors say.
You guys have never fought before. Norman said, well, I
loved her. Scott said, so what set this thing off?
What got it going? And Scott said, obviously you think

(34:39):
I did it. I don't know what makes you think that,
And Norman said, well, it's not whether you did it
or not. That's not my concern. I want to know
why you did it? And all Scott said was I'm sorry,
I don't remember doing it. So the detective did ask
what he did recall about the previous evening. Well, Scott said,
I remember I was in bed. I heard the dog

(35:00):
going crazy, and I heard all these voices, so I
came down. So I came down, and you guys were
all over me. God, you remember more than that, Norman said,
not believing it. No, she stayed in bed, Scott said,
I mean she stayed on the couch downstairs watching er
and I went to bed. So what did you guys
argue over Scott? Scott said nothing, nothing, And he asked

(35:22):
how she died, so Norman told him the neighbor says,
you stabbed her and dragged her over to the pool
and held her head under the water in the pool,
and he watched you do it. From what people are
telling me about you guys, you spend a lot of
time in church, a real quiet family, and this is
really out of character. I want to know what went on,
what would lead you to do something like this? What

(35:42):
set you off like that? What did she do to
set you off like that? And Scott just said nothing
and shook his head. He just said, I'm sorry, I
don't know. Well, Norman said, help me out with this.
It's hard for me to understand. But Scott denied any
memory of the killing or anything that led up to
the killing. Oh that's all they got out of him.
And at least this one detective was not buying it

(36:04):
at all. Thought it was all in act.

Speaker 4 (36:06):
Yes, we know in the outcompany. It looks like Scott's
already working on his defense.

Speaker 3 (36:12):
Yeah. Yeah, if you're not buying the sleepwalking thing, then
that's definitely what.

Speaker 5 (36:16):
It looks like.

Speaker 3 (36:17):
So Scott would await trial in jail. His defense team
began to put together a sleepwalking defense. Apparently he did
have some history as a child of sleepwalking. But as
I'm sure you know, it's much more common for children
to sleepwalk than adults.

Speaker 5 (36:32):
They usually outgrow it, yes, they do.

Speaker 3 (36:34):
So in nineteen ninety nine, he did an interview with
Connie Chung while he was in jail. The news people
with Connie Chung were allowed to be there for a
visit that he had with his two children, Megan and Michael.
So when Yarmila was killed, Megan was fifteen and Michael
was twelve. So now during this interview. They're seventeen and fourteen,
so they had to talk to their father through glass

(36:56):
and they just kind of talked about school and stuff
like that. Then Connie Chung interviewed them. So his children
supported him and believed him to be innocent due to sleepwalking.
They said they'd never seen their father being violent or
even losing his temper. So is this one of these
people that just kind of holds it in and holds
it in and then goes crazy one night? Possible? Right?

Speaker 5 (37:18):
Possible?

Speaker 3 (37:19):
Detective Norman was correct about Yarmilah's murder investigation being about
why and not if Scott had done it. It was
difficult to understand why a mild mannered, teetotaling, financially stable,
devoted husband and father stabbed his screaming wife forty four
times by the lighted swimming pool as their teenage children

(37:40):
were sleeping upstairs, and why, as a neighbor looked on
just minutes later, he would roll his mortally wounded wife
into the pool and hold her head underwater. So those
are the cases central questions, because we don't just have
him losing his mind and stabbing her in his sleep.
He actually went inside and did things and we're going

(38:00):
to find out more about this, But he did quite
a few things that seemed too complex for someone who
was asleep.

Speaker 5 (38:06):
Definitely, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (38:08):
Just nineteen days before Yarmila's murder, the family went on
a trip to Sedona with some friends, and by all accounts,
they had a good time. Then in the weeks leading
up to the murder, Scott was very busy and stressed
with work. I think there was a new model of
a Motorola phone that was being canceled because it had problems,
so he was really stressed out. His attorneys would claim

(38:30):
that the stress and lack of rest had worsened his
propensity to sleepwalk and kill his wife in his sleep.
So there is research that says that stress and lack
of sleep makes it more likely that you might sleepwalk. Now,
the only thing I can compare this to personally is
a couple times when I tried ambient and I did
get up and do things that I honestly have no

(38:52):
recollection of, and it's really scary. It's a scary thing.
But with the things Scott did, it really doesn't seem
likely that he could have been asleep. Plus, he didn't
take any medication, but there was evidence that indicated Scott
had been aware of his actions, so that was important.
Sleepwalkers are known to be dangerous if woken suddenly, but

(39:13):
Scott took several actions before and after his wife's death
that would likely require him to be awake. Sleepwalking experts
say that sleepwalkers do not recognize faces and they do
not plan to hurt anybody. But Scott used a hunting
knife to stab his wife numerous times, and was walking
in and out of the house and changed his clothing.

(39:35):
And I don't know why he had this hunting knife
because there's no indication that he was a hunter. Yeah,
so I'm not sure where the knife even came from.
So after the police got a search warrant, they began
searching the garage. In one of the vehicles, they found
evidence that had been hidden in a tub aware container.
So they looked in Scott's Volvo station wagon and saw

(39:56):
a piece of a T shirt sticking out from a compartment.
In that compartment they found a black plastic trash bag
and a large tupperware container that had articles of clothing
in it. The clothes were the jeans and shirt that
Scott had been wearing, and they were covered in Yarmilla's blood.
They also found a large hunting knife with Yarmilla's blood

(40:18):
on it. So finding these items was a strong point
for the prosecutors because a sleepwalker would not have had
any need to hide evidence. But a sleepwalking expert would
testify that Scott's behaviors were contradictory, which was expected with sleepwalking,
because he had hidden the murder weapon and his bloody clothing,

(40:39):
but he had left Yarmilla's body floating in the pool.
So the lack of logic was pointed out by this
expert as evidence that Scott actually was asleep when he
killed his wife. So over these years of talking about
murder cases and learning about murder cases, I've learned that
logic is not something you should count on being there

(40:59):
at all. Yeah, I mean, many people do very stupid
crimes and try and get away with them. There's no logic,
There is no So whether it was awake or not,
I would not expect logic to be a big part
of it. At trial, the prosecutor would go over what
a busy night Scott had had for someone who was
supposed to be sleeping. He had walked in and out

(41:21):
of the house, changed clothing two or three times, cleaned
himself up, put on a band aid, and hidden several
items that were connected with this crime. The prosecutor was
able to get a defense witness who was a sleep expert,
to admit that these facts did give him some pause,
and this expert said that Scott changing his clothing and

(41:41):
putting items into the trunk was unusual behavior for a sleepwalker.

Speaker 5 (41:46):
I would say so, yeah, So that was.

Speaker 3 (41:48):
A big victory for the prosecutor. Yeah, Scott had put
the clothing into a container and then into a vehicle.
So this involved some complex and detailed action. Getting the
sleep expert to admit to his doubts was really important
to get a conviction. The prosecution called their own sleep
expert to the stand, and this was doctor Mark Pressman.

(42:10):
Pressman would later publish an article for the American Psychological
Association about testifying as an expert witness in these cases. So,
on the stand, Pressman dismissed outright that Scott could have
murdered his wife and done all the other things while
he was asleep, and he was very concrete about this.
He said that all of Scott's behavior indicated that he

(42:32):
was awake and his behavior was far too complicated to
be carried out by a sleepwalker. So Pressman broke down
the at least forty five minutes that were involved in
the murder, and he found sixty four separate behaviors from
the beginning to the end of this time period. He
said that sleepwalkers may misplace things, but they never hide things,

(42:55):
and the items that he hid were just hidden. They
were packaged neatly and out of sight. So one of
the most concerning time periods with the murder happened after
Yarmilla was stabbed, because he left her body and then
he returned to it and dragged her into the pool.
So the only known way for a sleepwalker to be

(43:15):
dangerous is if they are physically confronted, like if someone
gets in their way, but that was impossible in the
second episode of violence that was done by Scott. No,
because Yarmila had been unconscious and near death when the
second attack was done by Scott, and sleepwalkers do not
go out seeking someone to attack. They don't plan things

(43:37):
out like that.

Speaker 4 (43:38):
No, they don't.

Speaker 3 (43:39):
So in the prosecution's opinion, Scott had stabbed his wife
forty four times and left her lying in the backyard.
He then left, entered the house and exited the garage
wearing work gloves. He then dragged her to the pool,
pushed her in, and held her head underwater. And remember
a lot of this was witnessed by the neighbor.

Speaker 4 (43:56):
Yeah, that's a pretty strong eyewitness.

Speaker 3 (43:58):
It is. Now, he didn't see this, but he saw
the body lying there, and he saw Scott doing a
lot of walking around and doing things right, even going
through the garage and putting on gloves. But the defense
insisted that Scott had done everything in a sleepwalking state
and that he had no memory of his actions. According
to his defense team and their three expert witnesses, he

(44:22):
had no criminal intent, so this was actually more comparable
to an accidental death, and of course the prosecution strongly
disagreed with this. Scott was put through a sleep study
for four nights before his trial, and the defense said
that it showed a propensity for sleepwalking. The prosecution argued
that it did not, So really, we didn't get anything

(44:44):
from that sleep study. Yeah, the prosecutor had an extraordinarily
strong case because they had the weapon, the bloody clothing,
and even an eyewitness. But the one thing the prosecution
did not have was a motive. They didn't find any
fin aancial issues, no life insurance, no infidelity. And they
really did expect that they would find something like that.

(45:07):
They thought he'd have a girlfriend, or he'd have a
lot of debt, you know, they thought there'd be something
there usually is right, right, But they didn't find anything.
But then two of Scott's cellmates would testify for the
defense and say that they had seen Scott appear to
be walking in his sleep. I don't know if this
held any kind of power in the trial. I don't

(45:29):
think that anyone takes cellmates that seriously with no evidence,
and to just say that he appeared to be sleepwalking
because they tried to talk to him and he hadn't responded,
I mean, so what really?

Speaker 5 (45:42):
Yeah, it's not very useful, No, not at all.

Speaker 3 (45:44):
But I think the defense needed as much as they
could get because, like I said, very strong case for
the prosecution.

Speaker 4 (45:50):
Did defense didn't have much.

Speaker 3 (45:53):
No, and you don't have to prove a motive, that's
just not necessary. So Scott and Yarmila's kids did take
the stand defense of their father, and they both testified
that their parents loved each other and there never been
any violence in the marriage, so they didn't blame Scott,
and they still loved him and defended him, even though
they definitely had loved their mother. So Scott took the

(46:14):
stand in his own defense. He said it had taken
him a long time to even admit to himself that
he had killed his wife. He said he had no
memory of it and he had no motive to even
want her dead. So that went pretty well until it
was time for the cross examination. The prosecutor reminded Scott
that a coworker had testified that Scott had called Yarmilla

(46:36):
dumpy or overweight. Now Scott denied this. Then the prosecutor
made a really big thing out of a comment Scott
had made to a psychologist about an unforgivable sin done
by Yarmilla. But Scott said that he had meant that
perhaps he had committed an unforgivable sin by killing his wife.
So in the closing arguments, the question was did Scott

(46:58):
kill his wife while sleepwalk or did he kill her
knowingly and willingly. The trial lasted for six weeks, so
that's a pretty long trial. Still, it only took the
jury eight hours of deliberations before they came back with
a guilty verdict, So some of the jurors spoke out
with Connie Chang on camera to discuss how they came
to their verdict. They said their first vote was eight

(47:21):
to four for guilty, but many of them believed Scott
when he testified, he really did come across as sympathetic
and honest. The prosecution never was able to establish a motive,
but the second vote by the jury was ten to
two in favor of guilty because although many could believe
he was sleepwalking when the initial attack happened, the second

(47:42):
act of violence in drowning was just not believable to
have been done by a sleepwalking person. So they did
find Scott guilty of first degree murder. So they didn't
just reject the sleepwalking defense. They believed that Scott had
planned this murder and done it with premeditation. Scott was
eligible for the death penalty. Six months after his verdict,

(48:04):
he had a sentencing hearing the judge would decide his punishment.
So friends and family testified, including his children, asking the
judge to spare his life. You know, his life before
this had been really.

Speaker 5 (48:16):
Kind of sterling, pretty benign.

Speaker 3 (48:18):
Yeah, volunteered hard worker, family man. He really had no
shady past. The state's aggravating factor was the brutality of
this murder. Scott again took the stand and he accepted
responsibility for killing his wife, and he pleaded for lenience.
So Scott was given a sentence of life in prison

(48:40):
without parole, and while serving his sentence in a hume
of prison, he spoke over zoom with ABC News. He
said that his daughter has not talked to him in
a long time, and he rarely speaks to his son,
but they still love each other. He said he'll never
be able to forgive himself for killing his wife. He
was excommunicated from the LDS church after his conviction, and

(49:04):
he said he still does not remember that night, but
he does take full responsibility for his actions. Well, yeah,
I could say he takes full responsibility, but he's not
admitting that he knew he did it. So if you
don't believe he was asleep, you really can't believe that
he's taking full responsibility.

Speaker 5 (49:20):
Right.

Speaker 3 (49:21):
So, in twenty twenty one, just four years ago, Michael
Fulater Yarmilin, Scott's son, who's now an attorney with a
family of his own, agreed to speak to his father
on camera, so their conversation was recorded on the show
twenty twenty. In the prison, Scott has tutored young people
and done a lot of volunteer work. He has exhausted

(49:44):
all of his appeals and his only chance for release
would be to be awarded clemency. He and his son
seem to have a nice talk. His son believes him
and supports him, but you can't say that they're close
or really spend any time talking to him. To Scott,
his daughter Megan just said it makes her really sad
to see him in prison. But if you really think

(50:05):
he's innocent, I don't know. That's not the greatest right.
If you really think a loved one is in prison
and they shouldn't be, you think you'd be a little
more attentive than that.

Speaker 5 (50:14):
I think so.

Speaker 3 (50:15):
So it's a little weird to me. So let's talk
a little bit about sleepwalking and the criminal aspects here.

Speaker 5 (50:34):
Yeah, tell me about this.

Speaker 3 (50:36):
So sleepwalking is of course a very uncommon defense for
murder and even other crimes, but we know that it
has been used successfully as a defense. In a nineteen
ninety two case in Ontario, a Canadian man was acquitted
of the murder of his mother in law an attempted
murder of his father in law based on that defense

(50:56):
that he'd been sleepwalking, So the front page coverage of
this case may have encouraged defense attorneys to consider whether
the sleepwalking defense might be effective. Sleepwalking defenses have since
been presented with varying success for defendants who face murder,
attempted murder, assault, sexual assault, even vehicular homicide and DUI charges.

(51:20):
I don't know how that works, because if you're drunk
and you kill someone, you're going to say, what, I
was asleep and I got up and drank. I didn't
know I was drinking. Is that what they're getting at.

Speaker 4 (51:29):
Well, it's hard to ignore a blood alcohol level.

Speaker 3 (51:32):
Yeah, but if you were asleep and didn't know you
were drinking, you know, are you really drunk driving?

Speaker 4 (51:37):
So you're putting two steps in there. Yeah, Yeah, it
doesn't work.

Speaker 3 (51:41):
No, Well, I mean there is a similarity though, if
you're drunk or if you're sleeping, you could say either
way you didn't know what you were doing. And we
don't let people use I'm drunk as an excuse for
their behaviors, so should we let them use I was
sleeping as an excuse, just putting that out there, not
giving an opinion either way. What do you think.

Speaker 4 (52:01):
I think it's a stretch.

Speaker 3 (52:02):
Yeah, but there is a comparison there, don't you think
if your drug or on drugs and do something and
you're out of your mind, yeah, it's similar to if
you were sleepwalking and didn't know what you were doing.
I guess the difference is that you decided to take
the drug or get drunk, and if you're sleepwalking, that
may have been out of your control.

Speaker 4 (52:20):
Well okay, but if that was the case, if it
was more widely accepted as a defense sleepwalking, you'd have
a lot of people claiming it, yes, or just even
claiming temporary insanity when they killed somebody.

Speaker 6 (52:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:35):
Well right, so, but you really can't let that happen because,
like I was thinking, Okay, so if his defense worked,
would I want to sleep in the same house with
this guy. No? And maybe he did do it in
his sleep, but still it doesn't mean he's safe to
be around.

Speaker 5 (52:51):
Oh and he did it.

Speaker 3 (52:53):
He absolutely did.

Speaker 4 (52:54):
I mean, there's absolutely no question that he's someone who
killed his wife.

Speaker 3 (52:58):
Oh absolutely, I mean he says, ah right, Yeah, So
Scott's case was far from straightforward. It really represented a
complex example of battling experts, and it really touched on
a lot of issues like law, scientific evidence, and of
course sleep science. So how is it that two or
more experts with similar education and experience, even with identical

(53:20):
board certifications and with access to the same case materials,
can arrive at totally different conclusions. Well, it happens all.

Speaker 5 (53:28):
The time, Oh it does. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (53:30):
Now. In the later case, five sleep experts were qualified
by the court and testified, two for the prosecution and
three for the defense. Four of these experts, three psychologists
and an MD, held the identical board certification in sleep medicine.
The fifth expert, although not board certified, had influenced modern

(53:51):
scientific views of sleepwalking. So these experts presented to the
jury sometimes some starkly different testimony. The Cusian experts mostly
relied on the descriptions of Scott's behaviors as being inconsistent
with current scientific knowledge of sleepwalking, and that was mostly
just because he did so many different things that people

(54:14):
in their sleep just usually aren't capable of doing.

Speaker 5 (54:16):
I would think exactly so.

Speaker 3 (54:19):
Sleepwalkers and other people who have parasomnias or involuntary behaviors
they act out while sleeping usually are pretty harmless, but
parasomnias occasionally do lead to reckless actions, self injury, and
even violence against other people. So this is where the
sleepwalking defense as a legal argument has come in. In

(54:43):
this defense, a criminal defendant isn't culpable because he or
she acted while in a sleep like state, without consciousness
or intent to commit a crime. Now, I think it's
interesting that none of the cases I've found was a woman. Now,
we know women kill far less frequently and commit violent
crimes far less frequently than men, so it may just

(55:05):
be that, but there really aren't any women who have
claimed they killed while sleepwalking, at least not that I
could find.

Speaker 5 (55:11):
Oh, we've done in a case of that of a woman.

Speaker 3 (55:14):
No, no, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, I'm going to
talk about the one we did because that one was
just unbelievable. I'll never forget that one. But we did
find seven historic criminal cases in which the sleepwalking defense
was used, sometimes successfully and sometimes not.

Speaker 1 (55:30):
So.

Speaker 3 (55:30):
First, there's this case Scott for Later he said he
had a history of sleepwalking, that he was sleep deprived,
and that he was unconscious at the time of the attack,
but we know he tried to conceal evidence. We know
police found the knife and bloody clothes stuffed in a
tupperware container hidden in his car. Also, between the stabbing
and the drowning, the neighbor witnessed him motion for his

(55:52):
dog to lie down, which is a possible sign of consciousness.
And we know that sleepwalking was not a successful defense
for Scott. So another case, Massachusetts versus Terrell, comes from
Back in eighteen forty six, Robert Terrell was acquitted in
the murder of a prostitute in Boston. Terrell slit the
woman's throat, almost decapitating her. He also set fire to

(56:16):
the brothel, then fled to New Orleans, where he was arrested.
So this is really unbelievable.

Speaker 4 (56:22):
Huh, Yes it is.

Speaker 3 (56:23):
His lawyer stated that Terrell was a chronic sleepwalker and
committed the crime while asleep, and the jury agreed and
found him not guilty, although many contemporaries did not buy
his version of events. So the Terrell case is thought
to be the first US legal case in which sleepwalking
was used as a defense and was successful. And I

(56:44):
just have to say here, if she wasn't a prostitute,
I think we may have seen a different outcome.

Speaker 5 (56:50):
I was going to say, yeah, I.

Speaker 3 (56:51):
Would think, especially way back then, women in the sex
industry were thought of very poorly.

Speaker 5 (56:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (56:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (56:58):
Then we have the case of Fain And this is
a case in the eighteen seventies involving a man who
fell asleep in the lobby of a Kentucky hotel. So
when a porter shook him to try and wake him,
this man drew a gun and shot the porter three times.
While the porter was holding him on the floor, the

(57:18):
man repeatedly was yelling hoo e, So he reportedly stood up,
left the room and told a witness that he shot someone.
He was found guilty of manslaughter, but the conviction was
reversed on appeal, So evidence that he had a lifelong
history of sleepwalking and that he'd been sleep deprived before
the attack had been excluded from his first trial, and

(57:40):
that's why he won the appeal. Then we have State
versus Bradley. This was a Texas man Isom Bradley, who
testified in the nineteen twenties that he and his mistress
were preparing for bed when he became worried about an
enemy who had made a threat against him. Fearing a
secret attack, he went to bed with a pistol under
his pillow. Later, woken by a noise, he jumped up

(58:01):
and fired shots. When he came to he lit a
lamp and his girlfriend was dead at the foot of
the bed. So Bradley was convicted of murder, but the
conviction was reversed on appeal. The jury had not been
informed of the possibility that he could have been asleep
and could have fired the gun while in a somnambulistic state.

(58:22):
And that one makes me think of you know what, what,
come on, I don't know what. That case that makes
me think of the runner guy.

Speaker 5 (58:29):
Yeah, pretorious, Oh yeah, Scirper's story.

Speaker 3 (58:32):
Yeah, because he said he thought he heard an intruder
and shot his girlfriend to death in the bathroom, and
I never believed him. Then we have Regina versus Parks,
and this is Kenneth Parks, a young Canadian man who
was acquitted in nineteen eighty seven for the murder of
his mother in law after using the sleepwalking defense. So,
on the night of the death, he got out of bed,

(58:54):
he drove fourteen miles to the house of his in
laws fourteen miles. Think about it. That's a bit of
a drive, this it is, and he was supposed to
be close to these people.

Speaker 5 (59:03):
I guess.

Speaker 3 (59:04):
He strangled his father in law untill he passed out.
Then he bludgeoned his mother in law with a tire iron,
and then he stabbed both of them with a kitchen knife.
So the mother in law died and the father in
law survived. Kenneth Parks then showed up at a police station.
Police said he seemed confused about what had happened, and
he seemed oblivious to the fact that he'd severed tendons

(59:25):
in both of his hands during the attack. So his
obliviousness to pain, along with some other factors, including a
strong family history of parasomnias, led experts to testify that
Parks had been sleepwalking during the attack, not conscious, not responsible,
and found not guilty.

Speaker 5 (59:44):
Huh.

Speaker 3 (59:44):
Well, that's kind of remarkable, I.

Speaker 4 (59:46):
Think so, especially the prior about driving to fourteen miles.

Speaker 3 (59:49):
Yeah, and he didn't just do like one quick attack either,
and he went to the police station. Then we have
Pennsylvania versus Rickskers. This was nineteen ninety four. Michael Riskers
was convicted of the murder of his wife, so he
claimed he had accidentally killed her during a sleepwalking episode,
which defense lawyers argued was provoked by his sleep apnea.

(01:00:11):
Prosecutors presented the explanation that Michael Riskers was upset that
his wife was planning to leave him. Riskers told police
he woke to find a gun in his hand and
his wife bleeding in bed beside him. He said that
he might have dreamed about an intruder breaking in, but
that did not convince the jury and he was sentenced
to life in prison without parole. So that was kind

(01:00:33):
of a weak one. Then California versus Reats. Stephen Reats
killed his lover, Eva Weinfertner, a married woman in her forties,
during what was supposed to be a romantic Catalina Island
getaway in two thousand and one. He smashed her head
with a flower pot, leaving shards in her scalp. He
dislocated her arm, punctured her with a plastic fork, fractured

(01:00:58):
her wrist, ribs, jaw, facial bones, and skull, and with
a pocket knife he left three gaping stab wounds on
the back of her neck. Reats told police that he
had no memory of this attack, though through flashbacks he
recalled believing that he was in a fight with a
mal intruder. Reads, who had worked as a commercial fisherman,

(01:01:19):
told police that the knife wounds on Eva's neck were
nearly identical to those that fishermen used to kill sharks.
At trial, his parents both testified that he had been
a sleepwalker since childhood, but the jurors did not buy it.
They convicted him a first degree murder in two thousand
and four, and their decision was influenced by the defendant's

(01:01:40):
history of violence towards Eva, and that included an incident
where he had broken into her apartment with a knife
and told her that he could gut someone like a fish.
So don't forget a case we covered a year ago
in January twenty twenty four that what I was thinking, right,
this is an episode we did titled Victim on Truck Syle,

(01:02:00):
and this was outrageous. This was the murder of Elena Steinberg,
a supposed Jewish American princess according to her husband, and
she was murdered by her husband. It happened in nineteen
eighty one in Scottsdale, Arizona. Once the husband, Stephen dropped
his initial story that he gave police of a break in.
He claimed he had killed her while sleepwalking, and that

(01:02:23):
he was driven temporarily insane by his wife's constant nagging
him for money. So the husband, Stephen, hired a lawyer
who specialized in the insanity defense. The prosecuting attorney made
a case only for premeditated murder, and with just that choice,
the jury returned a verdict of not guilty. So to me,
it's amazing to think that Stephen Steinberg was acquitted and

(01:02:47):
Scott Fulater was convicted. I definitely am not sure I
could believe Scott's story, but it is far more likely
than Steinberg's story.

Speaker 4 (01:02:56):
Yeah, well you have with Steinberg, you right motive? Yeah,
I don't know why.

Speaker 3 (01:03:04):
Well, if I recall correctly, Steinberg was deeply in debt
and possibly had a girlfriend, Pretty sure he did. He
also had a history of being a fraud and a thief.
He'd committed a lot of insurance fraud and stealing from
her family. So there really is nothing in Scott's past
to show that he had a propensity for violence. All
I can think of there is that his father was violent.

(01:03:25):
That's the only history. Do you think that's significant at all?
I mean, he did have to get up in the
night and fight off his father, so you have to wonder.

Speaker 4 (01:03:34):
Yeah, it's not going to be enough to change my mind.

Speaker 3 (01:03:37):
No, well, I'm not thinking it would change your mind,
but it might give you some indication of why he
could be a violent man, regardless of the whole sleepwalking thing.

Speaker 5 (01:03:46):
Oh sure.

Speaker 3 (01:03:47):
Yeah, Well, like I said, I would worry that if
someone is so violent in a sleepwalking state, how could
you ever feel safe around them?

Speaker 5 (01:03:55):
You'd sleep with one eye opened, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:03:58):
Right, yeah, he would. So it's really sad for the kids.
But I don't really feel sorry for Scott. No, no,
I don't, because this was just so violent and so
much involved, and you know, hiding things in the car.
That's just doesn't make sense to me. If he had
got up in the night and stabbed her a couple
times and then woke up and been sorry and called

(01:04:19):
the police, maybe maybe, But this whole thing is just
way out there, way over the top.

Speaker 4 (01:04:25):
Yeah, he didn't do the right amount of surveying or plotting.

Speaker 3 (01:04:30):
So well, if it was plotted.

Speaker 5 (01:04:32):
Well, first degree murder, yeah, well.

Speaker 3 (01:04:34):
That's what the jury thought, So I guess we should
go with what the jury said. It's just amazing, quite
a story, and he's never getting out of prison.

Speaker 4 (01:04:43):
No, well, maybe there'll be some clemency.

Speaker 3 (01:04:46):
Maybe when he's a really old man.

Speaker 4 (01:04:47):
He's been in prison for how many years?

Speaker 3 (01:04:49):
Oh, gosh, over twenty five right, yeah, twenty five ish? Yeah,
long time.

Speaker 5 (01:04:55):
You never know, You never know.

Speaker 3 (01:04:56):
But I mean he's spent, he's getting into being quite
elderly and alone, and I don't see him having much
of a life left. Yeah, but I guess he's done
a lot in prison, you know, helping people. So I
think that people sometimes do make a life for themselves
in prison. They don't have any other choice, exactly.

Speaker 5 (01:05:14):
You I kind of have to. Yeah, you either got
to make another life or die early.

Speaker 3 (01:05:18):
Yeah, you kind of do.

Speaker 5 (01:05:32):
Well.

Speaker 3 (01:05:32):
Couple reminders before we move on to our feedback today,
just want to remind you of our premium TCB show
where you get early ad free and bonus episodes and
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So if you're interested in that and think you might
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going to ty gribber dot com slash subscribe. It's also

(01:05:56):
a great way to support the show. It's something we appreciate.
We do a bonus show each month and sometimes two.
You get quite a bit more to listen to. It's
a good deal.

Speaker 4 (01:06:05):
Absolutely, yeah, it's a great deal.

Speaker 3 (01:06:07):
Okay, all right. Some other ways we ask you to
support the show is we love to get five star
reviews on Apple Podcasts, and we also love to get
emails and voicemails with your feedback, your opinions, your case suggestions.
We just really love that a lot. You can send
us an email at True Crime Brewery at tigrebber dot com.

(01:06:28):
You can record a voicemail right on your device to
us by clicking on the voicemail link in our show
notes or on our website. Our show notes have links
to all of these things for you. So thank you
for spending your time with us. And let's do a
little chatting with listener feedback.

Speaker 5 (01:06:50):
It's time for listener feedback. Okay, we got a couple.

Speaker 3 (01:07:06):
Anyway, So I've let you rest your voice this whole time.
I'm going to let you read one email. If it's
hard for you let me know. But I need a
little break too.

Speaker 4 (01:07:15):
Okay, okay, So we have an email from Michelle and
she says, Hi, I have been listening to your podcast
for a long time now I love your podcast.

Speaker 3 (01:07:25):
Thanks Miche, Thank.

Speaker 4 (01:07:25):
You, Michelle. Though I don't have a beer to recommend,
I'm from Plymouth, Massachusetts, and there's a cold case dating
back forty two years ago, and I wanted to recommend
it for your podcast to at least dig out some
clues for this poor family. And hey, living in Plymouth,
we do have some hometown breweries you can check out,
like Mayflower Brewery Company. Thanks for everything you do. So yeah,

(01:07:46):
I've had a few Mayflower beers, have you.

Speaker 3 (01:07:49):
Yeah, Well, I'd just say that Massachusetts has some wonderful breweries.

Speaker 5 (01:07:54):
Oh they do, Yeah, they really do.

Speaker 4 (01:07:55):
So looking up the cold cases involves young in their
early mid twenties, Barry and Dina Pinto, who were found
shot to death in their Plymouth home on February twenty third,
nineteen eighty three. So here the two parents are dead.
Their infant son was in his playpen completely unharmed. So,

(01:08:16):
like I said, it's been unsolved. There's some evidence that
the couple knew their murderer, and there's some evidence that
drugs were involved, but nothing strong. Yeah, and no one's
ever been charged with these murders. So we can maybe
think about being detective someday in doing this case.

Speaker 3 (01:08:34):
That would be great.

Speaker 4 (01:08:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:08:36):
I always wanted to be a detective. So yeah, I
think if you have two young adults that did use drugs,
which I don't know from what you've told me here,
but if they did, it sounds like the kind of
crime that could happen in that kind of situation, stealing
drugs from their house or money, you know. Yeah, and
just thank goodness they left the baby, because sometimes in

(01:08:57):
these cases they don't. Yeah, an infant or a small child.

Speaker 4 (01:09:01):
I guess he was young enough that they weren't going
to be worried. Did he finger them?

Speaker 3 (01:09:05):
How horrible?

Speaker 4 (01:09:06):
Huh?

Speaker 5 (01:09:07):
There really is.

Speaker 3 (01:09:08):
Yeah, that's a horrible, horrible thing. I don't care if
they were doing drugs. Nobody deserves that. Thank you very much, Michelle.
We are going to look into that, right, Dicky, we
are okay. So we have an email from Tammy, and
Tammy writes, Hello from Idaho. I love your podcast. Thanks Tammy.
Here's a story suggestion that shows how social media played
a big factor. This is a recent case in Idaho

(01:09:30):
falls of Mark Bent, who brutally murdered Nick Byrd over
social media rumors. I would love to see you guys
get to the rest of the story and share it.
A great contact is East Idaho News. Well, we know
Nate from East Idaho News. He did all the day
Bell stuff. That's right, if you recall, they did really
good coverage on Lori day Bell. Lots of great beers.

(01:09:51):
I would try ambitious blonde from Jim Dandy in Pocatello, Idaho.
I wonder if that ambitious blonde is that after Laurie
she was blonde and ambitious, Yes, ambitious to get herself
to have sex with that weirdo and to go to
heaven I guess while everyone else burned in the apocalypse
something like that. Yeah, that's ambitious. And speaking of that,

(01:10:15):
she has her Arizona trial coming up March thirty first,
where she, I guess, is going to represent herself, so
I know that her and her attorneys. Of course, she's
not doing this on her own, you know. I'm sure
the taxpayers are thrilled to be helping her out. But
she and her attorneys are saying they don't want it
streamed on TV. Of course I want it on TV

(01:10:35):
because that's something I'll watch.

Speaker 5 (01:10:37):
I know.

Speaker 3 (01:10:38):
With the other trial, we just had the audio in Idaho,
but that was fascinating to listen to as well. So
anyway that's coming up, that's something we'll probably be talking about.
This is for the murder of her third or fourth
husband that was killed by her brother shot in the
Arizona house. And then there's also the attempted murder of
her niece's estranged husband, Brandon, but that's going to be

(01:11:01):
in a separate trial, So there's that to look forward to,
unless she just drops stead beforehand, which I'd be okay
with that.

Speaker 5 (01:11:08):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:11:08):
This case recommended by Michelle Uh huh. This occurred in
September twenty twenty two. Fairly recent Mark Bent killed Nick
Bird because of rumors posted on social media. They named
Bent as a police informant.

Speaker 5 (01:11:23):
Oh okay.

Speaker 4 (01:11:24):
He he had moved to the town and had joined
a local motorcycle club, okay, and that's that's where the
rumor came from. So he thought that Nick Bird was
the perpetrator of the rumor.

Speaker 3 (01:11:37):
But how does that solve the problem that informant. No,
how does that solve the problem of the rumors by
killing this nick Bird guy?

Speaker 4 (01:11:45):
Well the rumors will stop, they will.

Speaker 5 (01:11:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:11:47):
Okay, Well it didn't work out great for Bent because
he was found guilty of first degree murder and he's
in prison.

Speaker 4 (01:11:53):
Yet for life, forty five years to life.

Speaker 5 (01:11:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:11:56):
Interesting, I know you had some more feedback. Are we
doing that now or is that for the next episode?

Speaker 4 (01:12:02):
One more case if you want to talk about it.

Speaker 5 (01:12:04):
Sure.

Speaker 4 (01:12:05):
This is an email from Patricia and she writes that
she has a niece who's been in the Clark County
Las Vegas jail since July twenty eighteen. She was in
jail for the murder and abuse of her four year
old nonverbal artistic little boy.

Speaker 3 (01:12:22):
Oh so, we don't have any indication from the writer
if she thinks their niece is innocent or guilty.

Speaker 4 (01:12:27):
Well, it looks like she's been convicted of the death.
Oh okay, they haven't done a trial for sentencing that's
coming up.

Speaker 3 (01:12:34):
Oh okay.

Speaker 4 (01:12:35):
So the prosecution has offered this woman a deal if
she could get life without parole and if she doesn't
take the death penalties back on the table.

Speaker 5 (01:12:46):
Wow, so that's what we can look for.

Speaker 4 (01:12:48):
Can maybe keep an eye out and see what the
sentence is.

Speaker 3 (01:12:53):
Yeah, sounds like it could be a horrible like abuse case,
which yeah, we don't want to talk too much about
because that's just so sad.

Speaker 4 (01:13:01):
I try to avoid those.

Speaker 3 (01:13:02):
Yeah, I know, Well it's not fun to talk about,
it's not no, but certainly keep an eye on it
and see what is going on with it, right, because
we really don't know, so we'll find out more about it,
and we always appreciate people writing.

Speaker 5 (01:13:16):
It, so thank you, thanks Patricia, Patricia.

Speaker 3 (01:13:19):
Okay, well that wraps things up. We're headed to Florida tomorrow,
so wish us luck there. Yes, visiting family.

Speaker 5 (01:13:29):
Yeah, it's our annual rounds of visiting family members.

Speaker 1 (01:13:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:13:32):
So we've got in laws, well, Jill's parents, my sister,
and our darter.

Speaker 3 (01:13:40):
Yeah, so that's great. You know, I'm just a homebody
is all. But I'm sure we'll have a good time.
We'll get this episode out and we'll see you all
at the quiet end very.

Speaker 5 (01:13:49):
Soon, pretty quick.

Speaker 3 (01:13:50):
Yeah, see you next time.

Speaker 4 (01:13:51):
Bye guys, Bye bye.

Speaker 7 (01:14:01):
Tot and a dil A