Gail and George Fulton - Part 2

In October 1999, 48-year-old librarian Gail Fulton was shot and killed outside the Lake Orion, Michigan library where she worked. What initially appeared to be a cold-blooded, random attack soon revealed itself as something far more personal—and far more calculated.

At the center of the case: a crumbling marriage, a secret affair, and a woman named Donna Trapani who refused to be cast aside. The investigation uncovered a disturbing murder-for-hire plot involving a fake pregnancy, a forged suicide note, and three willing accomplices, all wrapped up in obsession, manipulation, and delusion.

The story spans two years of emotional unraveling, culminating in a fatal encounter that shattered a family. This case raises complex questions about accountability, denial, and the consequences of ignoring red flags.

Today's snack: Michigan Awesome Dark Chocolate Cherries and Cinnamon Roasted Almonds (thanks Sarah!)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Rich and I'm Tina.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
And if there's one thing we've learned, and over twenty
years of marriage.

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Some days you'll feel like killing your husband, and.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Some days you'll feel like killing your wife.

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Welcome to love, Mary.

Speaker 3 (00:11):
Kill Hey Tina, Hey Rich.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
How are you?

Speaker 1 (00:29):
I'm good? How are you?

Speaker 2 (00:30):
I'm doing good?

Speaker 1 (00:31):
Normally we record part one and part two very close together,
but this time, pretty much a whole week has gone by.
I know, and you had your first week at your
new job. How was it?

Speaker 2 (00:40):
It was really good. I mean it was a short week,
it was only four days, but everyone is super nice
and everyone everyone. I have not met anyone who wasn't
nice so far. You sure, well, I haven't met everyone yet.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
So you want audition anyone in the office. Now is
the time that few people this podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Now is not the time, and I would I don't
have anything to dish about anyway. But no, it was
very good first week. I really love the company's product.
I think the people are great.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
So you've been in good spirits. That's good to see you.

Speaker 3 (01:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
So in the mornings, you are always up at least
an hour before I am. You get up and you
take a shower, because you have an actual job to
get to where you know, I stay up later working
and we just have kind of different schedules, and usually
I don't see you for a couple of hours when
you're up, and oftentimes we find that we are wearing
not the same outfit, but very similar outfits. It happens

(01:31):
a lot, where just the other day it wasn't it
was just random. It was like we were both wearing
blue sweatshirts with hoods on them, which I wear a
lot of hoodies, so that's not a surprise. But or
it'll be like khaki shorts and a black T shirt
or whatever, like we're wearing similar colors. It happens a lot.
So today after my shower, I knew we were recording
of like, okay, what would Rich be wearing today? And

(01:53):
I was like looking, and I was trying to like,
you don't match my brain with yours, and we are matching.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yeah, you nailed it, black putty, but I wear black.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
Like it's been really chilly and rainy and cloudy here
in Michigan this week. It's so weird that it's going
to be a Memorial weekend. I know. I think it's
like fifty five out, it's really chilly, kind of a bummer,
But yeah, we're both wearing black hoodie.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
It seems to happen.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
And we're both wearing leggings.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
I am not wearing leggings. I am wearing my usual
blue jeans. But yeah, it seems to happen a lot
when we record. For some reason, on recording day, we
seem to wear the same thing a lot.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
Well, it's not just recording days, but sometimes it's easy
to predict what you're going to wear because you wear
the same things a lot. But also, like on game day,
you're going to wear you know, your Michigan's game stuff, and.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
It's harder to predict. During baseball season, there's a game
like almost every.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
Day, right right, and you actually don't wear much Tigers stuff.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
Now it's because it's every day. You can't. I can't
wear a Tigers thing every day. But if it's a
big game, yeah, playoff, playoff time, I'll be wearing a
lot of Tigers gear.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
Well, sometimes on recording days you'll wear a love Mary
He'll sweatshirt.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
True, that's true. Well, before we get to part two
of the Gail and George Fulton case, I have another
super special snack today from one of our listeners. Fellow
Michigander Sarah sent us this snack and it's from a
company called Michigan Awesome, which I had never heard of.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
You don't know that company?

Speaker 2 (03:16):
Yeah, I don't know it either, but a really cute box.
It's the really cute box. And I think you're gonna
like what's inside of it.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
I think I know what's inside of it, do you?

Speaker 3 (03:23):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (03:23):
I might have peaked.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
Oh okay, well I think you're gonna like it.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
An yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
But before we have the snack, I wanted to give
a quick shout out to a fundraiser that Sarah and
her husband help organize. It's called Miles for Miracles. It's
a cancer fundraiser put on by the Mount Pleasant Middle
School staff and students. Sarah and her husband are both
teachers there. One hundred percent of the money goes to
local cancer services. They're actually today holding a school wide

(03:48):
celebration of life, but they're always accepting donations, so we'll
include a link to the charity website in our show notes.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
I think they've raised a ton of money over the
years too. Yeah, Sarah and her husband, and we love
Mary Kill will be making a donation too.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
Yeah, it's a great cause. So what Sarah sent us
from Michigan Awesome are two things, dark chocolate cherries and
cinnamon roasted almonds, which both amazing, really good. Let's try.
What did you think about those Michigan Awesome snacks?

Speaker 1 (04:23):
What's not to like about Michigan Awesome snacks?

Speaker 2 (04:26):
They were both really good.

Speaker 1 (04:27):
Yeah, very good.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
The almonds reminded me of like when you go to
the ballpark and you smell them roasting the cinnamon roasted almonds.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
So good, very good. I love cherries in any form,
but the dark chocolate cherries are a big favorite. Yeah.
And a lot of Michigan towns, like our tourists destinations.
We have Cherry Republic. If you've ever been to a
cherry Republic, they have tons of samples, so it's always
fun to go in there and try the different things
that they have.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
Yeah, for sure. Well, thanks again Sarah for sending those.
That was so nice of you. We really appreciate it. Well,
if you haven't already listened to part one of this case,
you should go back and do that now. But do
you want to give us a quick synopsis before we
dive into part two.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
Well, you were nice enough to write it out Otherwise,
I don't think I could give you a lot of
fine detail. I do remember some crazy things about part one.
Gail Fulton was a devoted wife and mother living in
Lake Orion, Michigan. Her husband, George, had once dreamed of
success and stability, but instead found himself entangled in an
affair with Donna Trapani, his volatile and manipulative boss in Florida.

(05:28):
What began as a secret romance spiraled into a tangled
web of lies, emotional blackmail, and broken promises. Donna claimed
she was pregnant and dying of cancer, and George, torn
between guilt, obligation and desire, tried to have it both ways. Gail,
devastated and spiraling into depression, struggled to hold her family

(05:49):
together while her children tried to care for her. Then
came the July fourth peace summit at a motel, where Donna, Gail,
and George attempted the unthinkable to work things out over
line at Olive Garden. It did not go well. Now,
with George claiming he was done with Donna and promising
to recommit to his family and marriage, the question was

(06:09):
was it really over, and what would Donna do next
to try to manipulate George into staying. I googled a
picture of George and Gail, and they looked like a
really nice couple. Georgees do look like a filandering piece
of garbage.

Speaker 2 (06:23):
It's hard to tell by looking at a picture of
somebody who is a philandering piece of garbage.

Speaker 3 (06:27):
But I know he was.

Speaker 2 (06:28):
But in the picture they look very respectable.

Speaker 1 (06:30):
They looked like a very nice, loving couple. Yeah, remind
me where we left off at the very end of
part one.

Speaker 2 (06:35):
So after the July fourth debacle where they all met
had lunch at Olive Garden, George took Gail home, but
then he said, oh, I have to go back to
the motel to stay with Donna because she is not well.
And so he went back and he actually spent the
night with Donna. But then he came back the next
day and told Gail it's over really with Donna, Like
I'm done with her this time. I mean it.

Speaker 1 (06:57):
I think if you chose to spend one more night,
I would have been like, Nope, well yeah, done with you.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
Right, Yeah, for sure. After the chaos of July fourth,
Gail did something extraordinary. She forgave him. She wanted to
move forward desperately, but George he wasn't exactly falling over
himself to make amends. He refused to apologize. When Gail
told him what Donna had said to her in private,
he didn't believe her.

Speaker 1 (07:22):
What did Donna say?

Speaker 2 (07:24):
I think she said something to the effect of, you've
had him for twenty five years, it's my turn now, bitch.
That's really nice. Emily, their daughter, who had just graduated
high school, was furious. She urged her mother to kick
him out and to move on. She supported Gail, but
deep down, she also pitied her. She couldn't understand why
her mother was letting this man walk all over her.

(07:45):
But George insisted this time he was serious. He was
done with Donna. He began making real efforts. He went
back to church with Gail. He agreed to counseling with
their parish priest. They even started talking about vacations together,
and for the first time in a long time, Gail
seemed happy. But Donna was not going to go quietly.
She continued calling the house, pretending the calls were work related.

(08:08):
If Gail or Emily answered, she would launch into cruel tirades.
She emailed George, constantly flipping between seductive messages and vicious
guilt trips. She warned him that the stress that he
had caused was putting her pregnancy at risk, and that
if she miscarried, it would be his fault. Her emails
trashed Gail, calling her cold, hateful, evil. Donna painted herself

(08:29):
as the victim, alone, dying carrying his child. She begged
George to return to Florida, just for a little while,
just to be there for her in her final days.
Donna even called Gail's mother, Dora. She told her with
eerie confidence that George was coming back to Florida, leaving
Gail for good, and that Dora should go to Michigan
to support her daughter through the inevitable. And Yet, even

(08:52):
through Donna's campaign of harassment, George still didn't cut her
off completely. He continued helping her with business matters, even
sent her flowers before an upcoming financial audit. In one note,
he wrote, I still love.

Speaker 1 (09:05):
You, George.

Speaker 2 (09:07):
He's still he wanted to have it both ways. In
late September, George told Donna that he was coming to
Florida one final time to collect the rest of his things,
but this time he planned to bring Gail with him.
That for Donna was the final betrayal. She left George
a voicemail, and I'm going to ask you to read
this voicemail. This is asking a lot. I know you

(09:29):
are a really good actress and you're going to do
a great job here. But I think it's a long voicemail.
But I think it's important to get into the mind
of Donna Trapani.

Speaker 1 (09:39):
So I'm not sure if you're giving me a backhanded
compliment or not, like you think that I can play
a sociopathic liar, or.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
I think you are an excellent actor. That was my
compliment to you, is that I think you have a
wide range that you can do.

Speaker 1 (09:53):
All right, Let's see what I can do here, all right.

Speaker 2 (09:56):
So the voicemail just started here because when she started,
her voice was very calm. She told George that bringing
Gail to Florida would be quote one of the lowest
class things you could do. And then she continued on
from there and here's well, or I'll have you take over.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
Well or I dive in full disclosure. I am already
wrinkled about something else.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
Personal.

Speaker 1 (10:17):
So why would you flaunt something like that in front
of me, knowing how much I am already hurting, know
how much pain and anguish I am going through. How
could you do something so cruel? You know, I know
that she's cold and she's cruel, but Gail is turning
you into being someone just like her, one cold and cruel,
heartless person. I cannot believe you would have the audacity

(10:39):
to want to bring her down here and flaunt her
in front of me and make my pain worse. Don't
you know how difficult it was going to be to
see you anyway and not be able to spend any
time with you. But I was willing to do that,
and I was willing to give it a try and
see if I could stay away from you. But then
for you to bring her down here, that's just slow class,
it's evil, it's cruel. It's very low and bastardly of

(11:02):
you to do that, and I hope that God punishes
you for what you're doing. It's bad enough I had
to listen to you talk mean and hateful to me
this morning, make up a bunch of damn lies and
everything else, and all that cruelty, and you want to
bring her down here and you want me to be
in my bedroom and know that your ass is out
there with this damn bitch making love to her, being

(11:23):
in the hot tub with her, swimming with her, eating
with her, in my own city, my own town, and
I'm here by myself and all alone. That is so
damn evil and low class of you. You are not
the man I thought you were, and I don't know
how you can be so cruel. This is just like
taking a gun and sticking it in my brain and
my stomach and blowing my brains out. I was willing

(11:46):
for you to come down and you to do your job,
and I was trying to stay apart. I was willing
to try. I was not going to touch you. I
was not going to kiss you or hold you. I
was not going to do nothing to you because you've
done just told me, didn't love me. And if you
didn't want I mean the night didn't want you. But
you won't even give it a try. You won't go
ahead and bring that damn bitch down here. Well, that
bitch is not wanted in the city. She could stay.

(12:08):
Her ass are in Michigan where she belongs, because she
damn sure don't belong here.

Speaker 3 (12:14):
In my city.

Speaker 1 (12:15):
That is her city there and this one is mine
down here, and that's the way it needs to stay.

Speaker 2 (12:21):
I don't think Donna was laughing when she said all this.

Speaker 1 (12:25):
I'm sorry I broke there at the end, bad grammar
is really hard for me.

Speaker 2 (12:29):
That was hard. You did a really really good job
up until the time that you broke a cold read.
Yes it was very good. But yeah, that was the
message that Donna left for George.

Speaker 1 (12:39):
Yikes. Sybil Paget was thirty four years old, a single
mom with two kids, a drug habit, and not much
direction in her life. She had known Donna for years
and worked for her at HHCs. Donna liked having Sybil
around because Sybil was loyal. She didn't ask questions, She
did what she was told, and for that, Donna paid
her well In return. Sibyl was indebted to her, But

(13:02):
Sybil wasn't exactly reliable. One day, a supervisor at HHCs
made some routine calls to check in on patients Sybil
was supposed to be visiting one after another. The reports
came in. Sybil had never shown up, not once, and
yet she had submitted paperwork and notes claiming that she
had the supervisor fired her on the spot.

Speaker 2 (13:23):
Can believed that, like she was, this is a home
healthcare business where they're taking care of elderly people, very
sick people, very ill people, and Sybil just didn't show up.
That's horrible, really horrible.

Speaker 1 (13:36):
But Donna overruled the firing and she said, no, we
have to give her another chance. That was Sibyl's value
to Donna, loyalty, not competence. So when Donna decided that
Gail Fulton, the woman standing between her and George, needed
to be removed, she turned to Sibyl. Sibil, in turn,
had a nineteen year old boyfriend named Patrick Alexander. Patrick

(13:57):
had no job, no direction, and no real future. He
was fifteen years younger than Sibyl and mostly interested in sex.
He also had a record hair and possession and a
prior conviction for assaulting a woman. At some point, Sibil's mother, Helen,
overheard the couple talking about a job that Donna wanted done.
It sounded dangerous, but they said it would be easy money.

(14:19):
Helen didn't know the details, but she begged Sibyl to
stay out of it. At the end of September, Sybil
told her mom that she and Patrick were going out
of town for a few days. Helen needed to watch
the kids. Then Sibil and Patrick hit the road, driving
north to Michigan. They weren't flying blind. Donna had given
them a road map of Metro Detroit. On it were
drawn circles, one around Gail Fulton's house, another around the

(14:42):
Orion Township Library where she worked. At first, Donna wanted
them to kidnap Gail and bring her back to Florida.
That way Donna could deal with her personally, but she
eventually decided that was too risky. Plan B kill Gail,
but make it look more like a suicide. After all,
Gail had talked about suicide before. Donna even drafted a

(15:02):
fake suicide note to leave with the body. But ultimately
Donna landed on a third option, the simplest in her mind,
Kill Gail and make it look like a random act
of violence, a robbery gone wrong, a drive by, anything
that wouldn't lead back to her. We are both familiar
with late Gorean and that's really not a place where
drive by has happened.

Speaker 2 (15:22):
No, not at all, very safe community.

Speaker 1 (15:24):
Once in Michigan, Sybil and Patrick began tracking Gaile's movements.
They followed her, took notes, learned her routine, but seeing
her in real life changed everything. They saw Gail's kids
coming and going from the house. They saw her as
a person, not a target, and they couldn't go through
with it. They drove back to Florida. When they returned,
the job not done, Donna was livid. She stormed around

(15:47):
the house, slamming dishes into the sink. I sent y'all
to do one simple job for me, she fumed. And
y'all couldn't even do that. I don't know where that
accent just came from.

Speaker 2 (15:56):
I know it was brilliant.

Speaker 1 (15:57):
After Sibyl and Patrick failed to follow through, Donna needed
someone else, someone who wouldn't hesitate, someone prone to violence
and lacking a conscience. And that's when Kevin Oohlett entered
the picture. Kevin was a six foot two hundred and
thirty five pound brawler who had no problem using his
fists for money. His girlfriend, Stephanie, happened to be Sybil's roommate.

(16:18):
Kevin had been living in Akron, Ohio, but decided to
return to Florida to be with Stephanie. Just two hours
from home, his car broke down Stephanie drove out and
picked him up. Kevin had a job lined up in Florida,
but with no car and no money, there was no
way to make it work. That's when Sybil said the
magic words quote, I know a way to make some
easy money. She told Kevin that a friend of hers

(16:40):
needed someone beaten up. Kevin didn't flinch. He'd done that
kind of work before and was happy to do it
again for the right price. So Sybil, Patrick, Kevin, and
Stephanie all drove to Donna's house. Stephanie stayed in the
living room. Kevin didn't want her involved in whatever this was.
Inside the bedroom, Donna laid it out. She explained that
you've been dating a man who left her for another woman.

(17:03):
She wanted quote this bitch taken care of. But as
she talked, Kevin realized this wasn't about a beating. Donna
wanted the woman dead. Kevin didn't blink, especially when Donna
said she'd pay him five thousand dollars for the job.
He agreed, but on one condition. Sybil and Patrick had
to go with him. They knew the area, they knew
Gail's habits. They would be his guides. Sybil said, The

(17:25):
only predictable time in Gail's week was Monday nights. Gail
worked at the Orion Township Public Library on Joslyn Road
every Monday and clocked out at nine pm sharp. Donna,
ever obsessed with covering her tracks, suggested something chilling. She
wanted everyone who walked out of the library that night
to be shot. That way, it would look like a
random attack, not a targeted hit.

Speaker 2 (17:47):
Isn't that horrible?

Speaker 1 (17:48):
Wow?

Speaker 2 (17:48):
I know, I can't even I can't imagine paying someone
to kill someone else anyway. But then to say, oh,
just kill all the other people there, you know, five
people whatever, that's just that's so, that is horrible, I
do imagine.

Speaker 1 (18:00):
But even Kevin had a line. He flaty refused. I'll
do the job, he said, but I'm not shooting innocent people.
I don't care how much you pay me.

Speaker 2 (18:07):
In his mind, Gail wasn't innocent because the story that
Donna told him was that Gail stole her man away
from her.

Speaker 1 (18:14):
Okay, but still, it's really not a reason to kill someone.

Speaker 2 (18:16):
No, of course not.

Speaker 1 (18:18):
Donna backed off, Fine, she said, just Gail, and that
was that. The plan was said. Donna gave Kevin half
of the money up front, he used it to make
a down payment on something he'd always wanted, a nineteen
seventy four Transam, a muscle car.

Speaker 2 (18:31):
So Kevin was basically willing to kill someone just so
that he could buy an old you scold car.

Speaker 4 (18:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (18:37):
On Sunday, October third, the trio Kevin, Sibil, and Patrick
set off from Michigan in a rental car provided by Donna.
The gun had been supplied by a friend of Sibyl's.
One problem, the car's taillight was busted. Patrick had backed
into a tree the night before at a party. They
patched it up with tape the best they could and
hit the road. They stopped in Akron, Ohio, where Kevin

(18:58):
said he could score some weed. He called up an
old friend and the group partied in their hotel room.
They bought some marijuana and some bullets. The friend didn't
ask what they were really up to. The next morning, Monday,
October fourth, they got back in the car and drove
the final three and a half hours to Lake Orion, Michigan.
The plan was in motion. It's kind of odd to

(19:18):
me that Sibil and Patrick weren't willing to kill Gail,
but they were willing to go along for the ride, right.

Speaker 2 (19:23):
And it's not clear to me whether Donna paid them
any money or whether they just kind of went along
for I don't know, a road trip or something.

Speaker 1 (19:31):
I've got the impression that they saw Gail and they
were like, Oh, she seems like a nice lady. We
don't want to kill her. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (19:37):
I think they had qualms about doing it themselves, but
they didn't have a qualm about somebody else doing it
and being there. So these people are all just horrible people.

Speaker 1 (19:48):
We'll be back after a break.

Speaker 2 (19:57):
During our break, I just want to report that I assaulted.

Speaker 1 (20:01):
I deserved it.

Speaker 2 (20:03):
I tried to take a couple of dark chocolate covered
cherries out of the bag that our listener, Sarah so
kindly sent us, and you Sarah not having.

Speaker 1 (20:12):
Me to have the cherries, she specifically told me Tina,
the cherries are per use. Rich has treats all the time.

Speaker 2 (20:21):
I do know that those are your favorites, so I
appreciate you letting me have a couple more. It was
just after eight pm on Monday, October fourth, nineteen ninety nine,
when Kevin, Sibil, and Patrick pulled into the parking lot
of the Orion Township Public Library. There were still quite
a few cars in the lot. Sybil spotted Gail's maroon
Plymouth Grand Voyager. They got out to check if it

(20:42):
was unlocked. The plan, Plan A was for Kevin to
crouch in the back seat and ambush her. As soon
as she started to drive away, he would shoot her
in the back of the head. But the van was locked.
Good Jet Gail, so they went to Plan B. Kevin
and Sybil slashed one of the tires on her car.
The idea was simple. Once the library closed and everyone
else drove off, Gail would be stuck alone. Patrick walked

(21:05):
into the library to scope things out. When he returned,
he reported that Gail was inside working, along with four
or five others. With time to spare, the three drove
around for about half an hour, then returned to the
lot at eight thirty. They parked near the back where
they had a clear line of sight to the employee
entrance and to Gaile's vehicle. Kevin stepped out and covered
their license plate with a T shirt, just in.

Speaker 1 (21:27):
Case remind us of the year.

Speaker 2 (21:29):
It was nineteen ninety nine. After Kevin covered up the
license plate, he got back in the car, and then
the three waited inside library supervisor Barb, Buttkiss and her
colleagues were shutting down for the night. Barb and another employee, Kathy,
planned to stay a few extra minutes to run a
computer back up. The rest of the employees, including Gail,
said their goodbyes and headed for the door. Out in

(21:50):
the lot in their rental car, Sybil slipped on a
baseball cap, Kevin pulled down a black ski mask. He
sat in the back of the car, gun in hand.
Patrick was in the driver's seat while Sybil rode shotgun.
Their plan worked perfectly. Gaile and the other library aids
exited the building and got into their cars. One by one,
they drove off into the night. Gaile followed until she

(22:12):
noticed that something was wrong just a few yards from
her parking spot. She stopped the van. She got out,
walked around the passenger side, and saw the flat tire.
By then, her co workers were already gone. As Gaile
leaned down to inspect the damage, Patrick pulled out of
their space and drove toward the van. Kevin jumped out
of the back seat. He moved quickly, gun raised. Gaile

(22:33):
turned her eyes met his A man in a ski mask,
walking straight toward her. She didn't even have time to scream.
Kevin fired one shot to her head. Gaile collapsed instantly.
He fired four more rounds into her body as she
lay on the cold pavement. Then he turned and sprinted
back to the car, yelling go, go go. Patrick hit

(22:54):
the gas. It had taken seconds, and just like that,
Gaile Fulton lay dying on the ground. Around nine ten pm,
library supervisor Barb Buckkiss and her coworker Kathy finished the
computer backup and walked toward the employee exit. As they
stepped into the cool night air, they entered the code
to lock the door behind them. That's when Barb noticed

(23:14):
something in the distance. At first, it looked like a
pile of clothes, maybe someone dropped a coat or a bag.
But as she walked closer, her stomach dropped. It was Gail.
She was lying on the ground, motionless near her van.
For a moment, Barb thought she might have fainted, but
then she saw it, the blood near Gail's head. Even then,
the idea that Gail had been shot didn't occur to them.

(23:36):
Barb and Kathy could only assume that she had fallen
and hit her head. Kathy ran back inside and called
nine one one. Barb knelt down beside Gail. She was breathing,
but barely. An officer from the Oakland County Sheriff's Department
arrived just a few minutes later at nine fifteen pm.
He approached Barb and gently asked her to remove the
cloth that she was using to apply pressure to Gail's head. Look,

(24:00):
and he knew it was a gunshot wound. Paramedics arrived
soon after. They tried to save her, but it was
too late. Gail Fulton died that night in the parking
lot of the library she loved, at just forty eight
years old. Poor Gail, that's so horrible, I know, it
really is so sad.

Speaker 1 (24:17):
And her poor friends who were trying to save her life,
kneeling down and applying pressure to the woad down her head.
It's just so heartbreaking. I don't think you would ever
recover from, you know, seeing that and seeing your friend,
who I'm sure they adored, dying in front of you
is really tragic.

Speaker 2 (24:33):
Yeah, it really is. Police quickly cordoned off the scene
and issued an alert, knowing that the shooters couldn't have
gone far. Bob mentioned that the library had security cameras
facing the parking lot. A maintenance worker was called in
to help retrieve the footage. Time was critical, so investigators
reviewed the footage right there on site. Woh, the images
were grainy, but they captured the attack. Three people appeared

(24:56):
to be in the vehicle, and one crucial detail stood out.
The cow had a broken tail light. It wasn't much,
but it was something. Meanwhile, Barb placed a call to
Gaile's home At that very moment. George was on the
phone with Donna, still speaking on his business line, but
it was Andrew who answered the home phone. He got
his father and handed him the phone. Barb's voice was shaky.

(25:18):
Something had happened to Gail. George and Andrew rushed to
the library, arriving around nine point thirty.

Speaker 1 (25:23):
How old is Andrew?

Speaker 2 (25:24):
He was like sixteen.

Speaker 1 (25:26):
I think that so horrible for him to see that.

Speaker 2 (25:29):
When George and Andrew arrived at the library, they weren't
allowed to see the scene. Police escorted them to the
police station instead. That's where they told George Gail had
been killed. His response was odd, no tears, no questions,
no visible grief. He didn't ask who had done it
or why the officers noticed.

Speaker 1 (25:48):
But remember we're not supposed to judge people on their reaction.

Speaker 2 (25:52):
Yeah, we really can't, especially in George's case, because I
think George was just a difficult person. He was just
his manner was always a little bit stiff and odd,
and I think that was just how he reacted as
they questioned him. George's tone was kurt dismissive. He gave short,
clipped answers. He seemed irritated more than shocked. It wasn't

(26:13):
the reaction of a man who had just lost his
wife in a brutal shooting, and the police took note.

Speaker 1 (26:18):
After the shooting, Patrick Sibil and Kevin sped out of
the library parking lot just a few blocks away. They
pulled over briefly so Kevin could remove the t shirt
covering the license plate. Then they were back on the road,
heading south fast. They didn't stop until they crossed the
Ohio border. At a truck stop, Kevin went inside to
buy a bottle of liquor. He needed something to calm

(26:39):
his nerves. They kept driving through the night, eventually stopping
at a motel in Kentucky to get a few hours
of sleep. The next day, while crossing a bridge in Tennessee,
Kevin decided it was time to ditch the weapon. He
rolled down the window and tossed the gun toward the
water below, so they didn't even stop the vehicle. He
just tossed it out the window, but instead of splashing
into the river, it the guard rail and bounced right

(27:02):
back onto the roadway behind them. They didn't turn around
to retrieve it. There was too much traffic. They kept going.

Speaker 2 (27:09):
I never heard whether anyone actually found the gun or not.
I'm sure somebody found it, but whoever found it maybe
didn't turn it into the police and just said, oh,
free gun.

Speaker 3 (27:17):
On the road.

Speaker 1 (27:18):
When they returned to Florida, finally, their first stop was
Donna's house. She owed Kevin the remaining twenty five hundred
dollars for the hit, but she only gave him one
thousand dollars. I'm waiting on a check to clear, she said.
No one pushed back. From there, the group headed to
a nearby waffle house. They ordered breakfast and sat around
the table, eating, laughing and congratulating themselves on a job

(27:41):
well done. Just hours after murdering Gail Fulton in cold Blood,
police began their investigation by interviewing the Fulton family, George, Emily,
and Andrew. Although George's behavior struck investigators as suspicious, his
alibi was solid. Andrew, just two months shy of his
eighteenth birthday, old police. He had come home around eight

(28:01):
thirty that evening. You just said he was sixteen.

Speaker 2 (28:04):
I know, Sorry, my mistake.

Speaker 1 (28:06):
He heard his dad working downstairs in his home office,
then sat in the den to watch TV. He was
there the whole time until the phone rang at nine
twenty pm, when it was barbed from the library. There
was no way, he said that his father could have
left the house without him noticing. Andrew talked about his
parents strained marriage and how his father had carried on
an affair with his boss. He believed it started sometime

(28:28):
in late nineteen ninety eight. He didn't know it had
actually begun a full year earlier, on Halloween night in
nineteen ninety seven. But more recently, he said things had
seemed better. The affair was over and his parents were
trying to rebuild their relationship. Emily had been out that
night at a pampered chef party. She returned home around
eleven pm to find police inside the house. An officer

(28:51):
gently pulled her inside and said there had been an
incident involving her mother. Emily didn't wait for any more details.
She snapped, quote, that bitch, That bitch killed my mom. Then,
as if reading the room, she added quote, you're going
to blame my father, but I need to tell you
what happened. It's not my father. She did it with
other people. Wow. Emily would later claim she had sent

(29:14):
something all day, an unshakable psychic feeling. In her words,
she had quote seen what happened.

Speaker 2 (29:20):
I think in part one we talked about Emily going
to visit Donna at the motel she was at because
she thought she could read her aura's right and tell
if she was pregnant or not. And Emily in the
book that I read for this case by em William Phelps,
he talks a lot about that Emily had a lot
of psychic premonitions, visions, things like that. That and she

(29:42):
had a bad feeling all day, and she didn't want
to go home because she had that bad feeling. So
she was at this pampered chef party and she stayed
there instead of going home because she was kind of
dreading going back to find out what happened to her mom.

Speaker 1 (29:55):
Because we have so many international listeners when we say
things like a pampered chef party, always curious if people
know really what we're talking about. Pampered chef party? Well,
do you even know?

Speaker 2 (30:04):
I'm not really? I mean I can, I can kind
of imagine they.

Speaker 1 (30:07):
Used to be bigger. I haven't gone to one in years,
but it would. It's like kitchen stuff, you know, like
I think I had a greater from there, and just
you know a lot of fun kitchen gadgets and things
like that.

Speaker 2 (30:17):
Like they used to have tupperware parties way back in
the day, and then pampered chef parties became popular.

Speaker 1 (30:22):
I just think it's funny that you know so much
about the parties that ladies go to. The police brought
George back in for a more formal interview. The first
conversation hadn't gone well, and this one wasn't much better.
They asked if he and Gail had been having marital problems.
George's answer was affirm almost aggressive no. They asked about
the affair. George admitted to it, but insisted that it

(30:45):
was over and that he and Gail were reconciling. Then
came the big question, did he think Donna Trapani could
have had anything to do with Gail's murder? Again, he
was emphatic no, she could never do something like that.
He added that he had spoken to Donna four or
five times that day, calls, he claimed, we're strictly business,
including he said, exactly at nine pm, the time of

(31:08):
the murder. I don't know why that makes me so mad.

Speaker 2 (31:11):
I know, yeah, it's almost like she called him knowing
that it was going to happen, and partly maybe to
establish an alibi, but obviously she was in Florida.

Speaker 1 (31:19):
Just like, so just so sad that Gail is dying
at the end.

Speaker 2 (31:24):
Right, and it's like Donna just wanted to be on
the phone with George right at that time. Just yeah,
she's horrible, horrible.

Speaker 1 (31:31):
When asked if he would take a polygraph, George refused, quote,
I don't believe in polygraphs. He said that added, and
you know what, I'm all done talking with you. I
need to leave, and just like that the interview was over.
George saying that he doesn't believe in polygraphs is so
funny to me, George, it doesn't matter if you believe
it's really what the police believe.

Speaker 2 (31:50):
It's really not something that is a matter of belief
or not.

Speaker 1 (31:54):
Later that night, around one am, investigators called Jhona Trapani
at her home in Florida. She answered, sounding groggy but alert.
The officer asked her about her relationship with George, the affair,
and her company. When was the last time they spoke,
When had their sexual relationship ended? Do you think Donna
was surprised that they called her so quickly?

Speaker 2 (32:13):
No, I don't think she was at all surprised.

Speaker 1 (32:15):
Donna was calm, open, cooperative. She answered everything without hesitation,
But something struck the officer at the end of the call.
Not once had Donna asked why they were calling her
at one am to ask questions about George Fulton. It
was almost as if she already knew.

Speaker 2 (32:33):
As investigators dug deeper into Donna Trapani, the red flags
kept piling up. They listened to the voicemails, rage filled, erratic,
emotionally manipulative messages that she had left for George and
even for Gail's mother, Dora. The more they heard, the
more convinced they became that Donna was behind this. She
had an airtight alibi she had been one thousand miles away,

(32:53):
but it didn't matter. The tone of the messages, the obsession,
the threat laced language. They all pointed to someone who
was capable of orchestrating murder. If Donna didn't pull the trigger,
she almost certainly hired someone who did. And when it
comes to murder for hire, there are two things that
nearly always bring the whole plan crashing down a money
trail and loose lipped co conspirators. Investigators knew it was

(33:16):
only a matter of time. George, meanwhile, remained a person
of interest, but something had shifted. After consulting with a lawyer,
he returned to the police, this time with a new attitude, cooperative, open,
willing to talk. He even agreed to take a polygraph.
At one point, Seemingly aware that the investigations still had
him in its sights. George told detectives quote, if there

(33:37):
comes a time when you have to arrest me, I
hope you don't do it at the airport or in
front of my children. I'll come in here any time
you want me to.

Speaker 1 (33:44):
Why not the air.

Speaker 2 (33:47):
I think just public places. Maybe it was what he
was kind of getting at. His statement raised eyebrows, it
sounded more like a man bracing for something than one
who felt truly cleared. At Gayle's funeral, held in her hometown,
of course, Orpis Christy George flew in to say goodbye,
but not everyone was comforted by his presence. Many of
the mourners watched him with cold eyes, convinced he was

(34:09):
merely playing the part of the grieving widower.

Speaker 1 (34:11):
You know, I feel really bad. I have not asked
about Donna's pregnancy, how is she feeling, how is that going?
And her cancer treatment.

Speaker 2 (34:19):
I know Donna's got a lot going on.

Speaker 1 (34:21):
No is she doing okay with all the extra added stress?

Speaker 2 (34:25):
Just hold titan, we'll find out. A few days after
Gail's murder, Donna showed up at Sibyl's house. She'd brought
more cash for Kevin, but once again, it wasn't the
full amount that she owed him. That didn't sit well.
Kevin was growing increasingly irritated with her broken promises.

Speaker 1 (34:41):
There's one thing I've learned doing true crime. You pay
your hitman the full amount.

Speaker 2 (34:45):
Yeah. Absolutely. And I don't know if you remember from
part one, but Donna's business was going under. It was
like she was completely underwater, about to go bankrupt, about
to close the doors of the business, so she was
not in a good place financially. Donna also brought something
else with her to Sibyls that day, a folder stuffed
with newspaper clippings about the murder. She pointed out that

(35:06):
the headlines were calling it a professional hit. It was
meant as a compliment. She told Kevin he had done
a great job, but there was one detail that dampened
their self congratulations. The crew hadn't realized that the library
had security cameras. The story made it clear Gail's murder
had been caught on video. Donna and Kevin both knew
the police were starting to connect the dots, so Donna

(35:28):
came up with what she considered a brilliant plan. She
wanted Kevin to go back to Michigan, find a random
drug addict down the street, kill him, and leave a
note on the body. The note would say that the
wrong person had been killed in the library shooting, that
it had been a botched job. Her hope was to
throw off the police and make it look like Gail's
murder was just a tragic mistake. So I'll just say

(35:50):
I am not sure, I fully understand what Donna's big
plan was here, Like, I think she was trying to
say that, oh, we'll kill this person and then make
it look like that person was supposed to kill someone else,
but killed the wrong person.

Speaker 1 (36:04):
So they killed themselves because they were no.

Speaker 2 (36:07):
So somebody else killed them for I don't know. It's
such a convoluted, crazy plan. It makes no sense, but
that was I think Donna's mind was just trying to
be freaking out. Yeah, I imagine.

Speaker 1 (36:20):
Business is going under. She's pregnant, she has cancer. You're
not going to tell me those things are false, are you?

Speaker 2 (36:25):
Well, I guess we'll have to find out. So for
Donna's new master plan, she offered Kevin another five thousand
dollars for this follow up job. Kevin said sure, he
would do it, but he actually had no intention of
going through with it. He just wanted the money. He
told Donna he needed the cash up front. His plan
was to take the money and disappear, but when the
time came to meet up and collect, Donna never showed.

(36:48):
Kevin was furious, but instead of pushing it, he decided
he was done. He took a job as a cross
country trucker and hit the road, leaving Florida behind. With
Gail out of the way, Donna seemed to believe it
was finally time to reclaim her man. She and George
resumed contact not long after the murder, mostly to discuss business.
George was frustrated Donna owed him money for consulting work

(37:12):
he had done, and with her company circling the drain,
she had fallen behind by more than thirteen thousand dollars. Still,
Donna saw opportunity. On Halloween, four weeks after Gail's death
and two years to the day since she and George
had first met, Donna sent him a card. It was
filled with memories of their first night together, their connection,

(37:32):
her longing for his voice, his laugh. The card had
I Love you printed on the inside. Donna added the
word in her handwriting. Still, she also sent a dozen
red roses. George didn't bring them home. He took them
to his church and left them there. By then, he
had started to consider the unthinkable that Donna might have
had Gail killed.

Speaker 1 (37:53):
I don't think that's unthinkable.

Speaker 2 (37:55):
It shouldn't be unthinkable that George was just so slow
and clueless. It's just it boggles the mind. But George
wanted nothing of her in his home. But Donna didn't stop.
Throughout November, she kept emailing him. When she didn't get
the response she wanted, she tried a new tactic. On
November twenty ninth, George's fax machine word to life, out

(38:15):
came an anonymous letter eighteen pages, single spaced as a
supposedly anonymous letter to George on his fax machine that
Donna used all the time.

Speaker 4 (38:27):
Right.

Speaker 2 (38:27):
The supposed author claimed to be a friend of Gail's.
According to the letter, Gail had once told this friend
a shocking secret. She had given George a homemade herbal
truth serum one night while he was asleep. Under its influence,
George had confessed how much he loved Donna and how
miserable he was at home. This is the most ridiculous

(38:48):
thing I've ever heard, I think, in all the cases
we've ever done. So Donna sends, well, we know it
was Donna.

Speaker 1 (38:55):
Right.

Speaker 2 (38:55):
She sends this anonymous letter, supposedly from a friend of Gail's, saying, Oh,
Gail gave you truth serum one night, and you told
Gail how much you loved Donna. The letter went on
to describe Donna as being really smart and special. It
said that George should go back to her, his true love,
if he ever hoped to be happy. It was totally absurd,

(39:17):
and it was obvious who had written it. It was
a desperate, last ditch effort from Donna Trapani to win
George back.

Speaker 1 (39:24):
Donna is not well, is she?

Speaker 4 (39:25):
No?

Speaker 2 (39:25):
She is not well. It didn't work, but at that
point it didn't matter because Donna was about to have
bigger problems. The walls were closing in. We'll be back
after a break.

Speaker 1 (39:42):
The case broke wide open in mid November. Investigators had
been working to identify the car captured in the grainy
library surveillance footage. From the video, they determined it was
a Chevy Malibu with a busted tail light. They started
calling car rental agencies hoping to find a map, and
they got one. A wrential agency in Florida told detectives

(40:04):
that a woman named Donna Trapani had been a regular
customer and that she always requested Malibu's. One of those
cars had been rented on September tenth and still hadn't
been returned. The agency said they'd repeatedly tried to reach
Donna She owed them money and had claimed that she
was dealing with a family emergency, but now she wasn't
answering calls at all. Then came another break. An old

(40:27):
friend and sometime lover of Civil Paget came forward. He
told police that one night, while they were lying in bed,
Sybil casually mentioned that her friend Donna was looking for
someone to kill a woman. He assumed that she was joking,
but later she brought it up again and this time
introduced him to Donna. She made it clear that she
wasn't joking. She was looking to have someone in Michigan killed.

(40:50):
At first, he didn't take it seriously, but when Gail's
murder hit the news, everything clicked and his conscience got
the better of him. He called the police. Detectives went
straight to Sybil Paget's house and parked out front was
a Chevy Malibu with a broken tail light. That was
all they needed. When Sybil opened the door and saw
two detectives standing there, she knew the game was up.

(41:11):
She agreed to talk, and then she told them everything.
She was arrested on the spot. Next they picked up
Patrick Alexander. Like Sybil, Patrick didn't put up a fight.
He admitted his role in the murder plot, emphasized that
he was only the getaway driver, but confessed to everything
he knew. His story matched Sibyl's. Then the police asked
where's Kevin Olette. Patrick didn't know exactly, but he thought

(41:35):
Kevin had taken a job as a long haul trucker.
Investigators tracked down the trucking company, who confirmed that Kevin
was on the road headed towards Connecticut. The truck was
GPS equipped, they could see exactly where he was at
all times. Two days later, police arrested Kevin at a
rest stop in Connecticut, and like the others, Kevin knew
it was over. He cooperated. His account matched Sybil and

(41:58):
Patrick's down to the Molli's detail. Now there was only
one person left to arrest, the woman who'd orchestrated it all,
the big fish, Donna Trapani. On December one, nineteen ninety nine,
detectives knocked on her door, no answer. One officer left
a card on the door, and then they parked a
few houses down to watch. A Short time later, the

(42:20):
detective's cell phone rang. It was Donna. She apologized for
missing them and invited them to come back inside. She
was calm, chatty, almost cheerful. She talked freely about her
relationship with George, about the July fourth misunderstanding, and about
her pregnancy. She said that she was due in three weeks,
although her belly barely showed. She also tried to ship

(42:43):
the blame. She told investigators that she had confided in
Sybyl about her heartbreakover George. According to Donna, Sibyl had
become so angry on her behalf that she decided to
seek revenge. It was a clear attempt to set Sybil
up as the mastermind.

Speaker 2 (42:58):
That's quite quite a time by Donna, like, oh yeah,
Sybil was just trying to protect me. She just looked
me so much.

Speaker 1 (43:05):
That's crazy. Then something bizarre happened. Donna's cat jumped up
on the couch and walked across her lap. The detectives
noticed something strange. The paw prints left indentations like the
cat had stepped on a pillow. Donna's pregnant belly wasn't real.

Speaker 2 (43:24):
I like to believe that that cat had it out
for Donna. The cat was probably so sick of Donna,
like I'm going to expose you.

Speaker 1 (43:30):
That's really funny. They decided to confront her emotionally. They
showed her graphic crime scene photos of Gail's body, hoping
to provoke guilt, but Donna wasn't disturbed. She was fascinated.
She leaned in studying the blood soaked images while casually
eating pretzels. At one point, she even asked for a
closer look. Oh, Donna, is she's just something, isn't she Yeah.

(43:51):
For a moment, it seemed that she might confess. She
said quote, I mean, if I did do this, if
I am guilty and I did do this, then why
can't I I just be killed and put under two
If I did it, I need to give my life.
I cannot say what you want me to say. If
I sat here for the rest of my life, I
wouldn't be able to explain it to you. I don't
know how to say it. It's nothing that was supposed

(44:13):
to happen. I got duped, but not by the people
you think. It was never supposed to happen.

Speaker 2 (44:19):
I know that quote by Donna is very confusing, but
it's just a glimpse into her mind. I think she
was just very Her thoughts were not really coherent, Okay.

Speaker 1 (44:28):
But then Donna stopped. She asked to call her lawyer.
Detectives arrested Donna Trapani for murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
During the booking process, they discovered the truth behind her
fake pregnancy. Donna had stuffed several placements down the front
of her pants, trying to make her stomach appear swollen.
The act was over, so she did not even invest

(44:50):
in like a fake pregnancy. Bellies, just know she did
things in her pants.

Speaker 2 (44:53):
I didn't mention it in the script too, but there
was one mention I found that the police officers were
like doing the math of the date when she supposedly
became pregnant. I think she must have told them at
one point and they were like, it's like eleven months
after that. So that didn't really make a lot of sense.

Speaker 1 (45:08):
And did George never do the math or did he
really not believe that she was pregnant?

Speaker 2 (45:13):
I think George never questioned it or didn't really maybe
question it until afterwards, but he just he was so
naive and didn't really question things.

Speaker 1 (45:23):
So Sybil, Kevin, and Patrick had all confessed, but Donna,
she wasn't going down without a fight. Her defense, however,
far fetched was that Sybil Paget, in an act of
twisted loyalty, had taken it upon herself to avenge Donna's
broken heart. According to Donna, the murder had nothing to
do with her. To make the case, Ara Tite prosecutors
wanted all three co conspirators to testify, but they had

(45:46):
limited leverage, especially with Kevin and Sybil. Michigan has no
death penalty and first degree murder carries a mandatory sentence
life in prison without parole, so there were no deals
to be made, no bargaining chips. Kevin and Sibyl were
in too deep to be offered anything in exchange for
their testimony. Patrick, however, was another story. He'd been the

(46:08):
least involved of the three, mostly just the getaway driver.
He was only nineteen at the time of the murder.
The DA offered him a deal plead guilty to second
degree murder in exchange for a sentence of twenty two
to forty years. It wasn't mercy, but it was a
chance at someday rebuilding a life, so he took the
deal and agreed to testify against the others. Kevin was

(46:30):
the first to go on trial in October two thousand,
he was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to
life in prison no possibility of parole, But then, unexpectedly,
he agreed to testify at the trial of Donna Trapani
and Sibyl Paget. The one thing the DA could offer
was a letter of requesting he served his sentence in
a federal prison closer to his home state of Maine.

(46:52):
Donna and Sibyl were tried together beginning in November two thousand.
They had separate juries, but shared the courtroom.

Speaker 2 (46:59):
I've never heard of that before for me either.

Speaker 1 (47:01):
That's interesting.

Speaker 3 (47:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (47:02):
One of the key witnesses was George Fulton. His testimony
revealed a deeply uncomfortable truth. He had unintentionally helped Donna
plan the murder. That map with Gail's home and workplace
circled it had Donna in Sibyl's fingerprints on it, but
also George's. He admitted that he had bought the map
and marked it up. He'd once believed Donna would move

(47:23):
to Michigan to have the baby that she claimed was his,
and he wanted to help her get oriented. It was
a gut punch. On cross examination, George also acknowledged that
after Donna and Sybil's arrest that he sent both women
cards in jail.

Speaker 2 (47:39):
Oh my goodness, guy, I know he's really something.

Speaker 1 (47:41):
He said. It was because he believed that love is
greater than hate, and he wanted to learn to forgive
both himself and the people that killed his wife. He said, quote,
otherwise I cannot heal and get on with my life. Then,
of course, came Donna's turn on the stand. She couldn't resist.
She'd loved being the center of attention, but testifying on
her own behalf was also her only shot. Donna blame

(48:02):
George for everything, her broken business, her ruined life. She
claimed that she had been pregnant but had suffered a miscarriage.
She portrayed herself as a victim, but her testimony quickly
devolved into a circus. The facts were too strong, the
confessions too detailed, the evidence overwhelming. Kevin and Patrick's testimony

(48:23):
sealed it. Donna Trappani and Sivil Paget were both convicted
of first degree murder. Life in prison, no parole, justice
at last.

Speaker 2 (48:32):
Dona Trapani and Sybil Paget are both serving their life
sentences at the Women's here On Valley correctional facility just
a few miles from us in Ipsilante.

Speaker 1 (48:41):
Do you want to go visit them?

Speaker 2 (48:42):
No, I really don't have anything that I would want
to say to Donna or Sybil Patrick. Alexander is serving
his sentence in Jackson, Michigan, also not far away. He
became eligible for parole in November twenty twenty two, but
so far he's been denied. If he serves his full sentence,
he'll be released no later than twenty forty. As for
Kevin Ulette, I wasn't able to track him down, but

(49:03):
it's likely that he's serving out his life sentence in
a federal prison in Maine, as requested. Although George Fulton
was cleared of any direct involvement in Gail's murder, it's
impossible to ignore the role that he played. He cheated
on his wife, he ignored warning signs, he failed to
recognize that the woman he was involved with was unstable
despite flashing neon signs in every direction, and most of all,

(49:27):
he was selfish, clueless, detached. Soon after Gail's murder, George
told his children, quote, you don't know what suffering is.
I am the one who knows true suffering Okay, George,
he's really like, he really drives me crazy. In this case,
it's always about him, you know. To Emily and Andrew,
it felt like their father hadn't just destroyed their family,

(49:47):
he had also stolen their grief and made their pain
about him. And yet with time George changed. Apparently. Emily
later said quote, he did get help and is a
better person Now. I know my dad's not perfect, but
he a lot better than he was back then. My
dad is actually quite nice to be around.

Speaker 1 (50:04):
Well, that is really good to hear.

Speaker 2 (50:06):
I know. I'm I'm glad to hear it too. He
just he seems so selfish and like such a jerk.
But he's the only parent they have left, so I'm
glad that he at least seems to have turned things around.

Speaker 1 (50:17):
Well. Emily sounds like she has a really good perspective too,
like acknowledging that he's not perfect, but having an imperfect
relationship is better with than no relationship.

Speaker 2 (50:25):
Yeah. George remarried in two thousand and four. At one point,
he was reportedly writing a book about the ordeal, but
it seems that that project never saw the light of day.
Gail's mother, Dora, passed away in twenty twenty one at
the age of eighty nine. As for Gail and George's children,
I haven't been able to find.

Speaker 1 (50:42):
Much because it's really none of our business.

Speaker 2 (50:44):
It really isn't. Emily did earn a degree in finance
from Oakland University.

Speaker 1 (50:48):
My alma mater, Golden Grizzly, that's.

Speaker 2 (50:50):
Right, and later she got an MBA from the University
of Michigan, my other alma mater, Go Blue. Last I
saw she was living in the Chicago area, working as
a life coach and energy healer. She has a family
of her own now, and she looks a lot like
her mother. Andrew, I believe is living in San Diego.
And Melissa, the oldest, who we didn't talk about in
Part two. We've talked about her in Part one. She's

(51:12):
living in Texas. I don't know any more about your lives,
your rights, none of our business, but I hope that
they've found peace.

Speaker 3 (51:18):
Me too.

Speaker 2 (51:19):
Gail Fulton was forty eight years old when her life
was taken. She was a mother, a librarian, a kind
hearted woman who deserved so much more. Rest in peace, scale.

Speaker 1 (51:28):
Rest in peace. She sounded like a really sweet, loving
wife and mother.

Speaker 2 (51:33):
Yeah, she really did.

Speaker 1 (51:34):
She definitely deserved more from her husband.

Speaker 2 (51:37):
Yes, speaking of her husband, we've talked about him a
fair amount, But what do you think how much responsibility
does he bear in his wife's death.

Speaker 1 (51:45):
That's a hard question to answer, because he had an
affair he shouldn't have an affair. The affair obviously was
very damaging to his wife and his children, and I
think sometimes you don't know what a person is capable
of when you become involved with them, and George definitely
seemed a little oblivious.

Speaker 2 (52:02):
He clearly had blinders on, yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:04):
To Donna's level of deception. So I don't think he
was responsible for Gail's death. I think he was responsible
for maybe I getting involved with another woman that he
shouldn't have done. But you know, he definitely didn't want
Gail dead, right, He had no part in planning it,
I don't believe.

Speaker 2 (52:20):
So, No, he didn't have any part in planning it.
He didn't pull the trigger, but he does. It does
frustrate me so much that he just was blind to
all these warning signs. Like you said, he had an
affair that was wrong, but the fact that he just
didn't realize that he was seeing a psycho. I mean,
there should have been enough warning signs for him. So

(52:41):
definitely not responsible.

Speaker 1 (52:43):
Right, and he should have severed things. And the fact
that he still had to work with her, and I
guess he was sending her cards and things like that
like that was.

Speaker 2 (52:51):
Yeah, he sent very mixed messages to her, And yeah,
he should have when he finally made the decision to
break things off, he should have made a clean break.
It just said, this is it. But yeah, unfortunately, hindsight
is twenty twenty. Donna was, for whatever reason, was so
clearly obsessed with George. I think that's what ended up
driving her to really go to any lengths to try

(53:11):
to keep him. What do you think can cause someone
to become that, like just obsessed with some another person,
Like I've never I've been in love, but I've never
been like you know, that obsessed with someone.

Speaker 1 (53:23):
You're obsessed with me?

Speaker 2 (53:24):
But you yes, but I have you so well, I'm.

Speaker 1 (53:26):
Obsessed with you too, because you're the best. I think
the fear of being alone is really scary for a
lot of people, and she didn't want to be abandoned
by George. I wonder if maybe she had some orderline
personality disorder, because that is a big trigger for that. Yeah, disorder.
I don't know, what do you think?

Speaker 2 (53:45):
Yeah, you're probably right. We did talk in part one
that a lot of people speculated that she had bipolar disorder,
which I'm not sure is that related to borderline personality.

Speaker 1 (53:55):
Two different things, but sometimes they do coincide.

Speaker 2 (53:57):
Yeah, I mean, she definitely had some mental issues going on.
But yeah, I don't know what can cause someone to
be that obsessed that they would kill for someone.

Speaker 3 (54:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (54:05):
I don't think it's that George was like the you know,
the biggest fish in the sea, you know that she
was so in love with him. I think it was
more that she wanted to be with somebody, and I
think we lie to ourselves and we convince ourselves that
this is the person, is perfect, and you know, I
need to be with them, and it's just that, you know,
fear of rejection and abandonment. I think that ends up
predicting their behaviors. Yeah. The part of the case when

(54:28):
they were at the library and the library was closing
and the workers were coming up, I was so hoping
that Gail would be saved then, yeah, that the co
workers would you know, someone would lag behind and help
her with her car, and there wouldn't be an opportunity
to share that. So, you know, the butterfly effect, like
what could have happened just slightly differently that would have

(54:49):
saved her life.

Speaker 2 (54:50):
Yeah, I thought that same thing, and I think, you know,
their plan that they put together, they got pretty lucky
that it worked from their point of view, because I
would think in most cases, if your flat, if your
tire was flat, a coworker might see that, oh, they're
having a problem with their car. Might it just so
happened that they must have been a little bit ahead
of her and just not seen.

Speaker 5 (55:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (55:10):
When I used to work late at night, we would
all just you know, go out together, or someone was
always with you to make sure you saw the light
in your car. But I guess in this case, she
didn't know until she started driving on it.

Speaker 3 (55:21):
Right.

Speaker 2 (55:21):
Yeah, it's just it's it's so sad that you're right,
like the butterfly effect, one thing differently could have had
a different outcome, but just not the case. Before we close,
I should mention that the main source that I used
in this case was M. William Phelps book Kiss of
the she Devil. As you know, I have a love
hate relationship with them.

Speaker 3 (55:41):
You do.

Speaker 1 (55:42):
Whenever you tell me what your sources and you're reading
one of his books, I always get a little nervous.
It like, oh, no, he's gonna hate it.

Speaker 2 (55:47):
He does great research, he gets a lot of information,
and he writes quite a few books.

Speaker 1 (55:52):
He's prolific.

Speaker 2 (55:53):
He's very prolific. But I don't know something about his
writing style. I just have a hard time with He
kind of jumps around a lot and repeats things a lot.
But it was it was a good a good book.

Speaker 1 (56:12):
I've been thinking a lot lately about how we've been
doing this for a while and we've enjoyed it a lot,
and we love having discussions with our listeners and sometimes
people disagree with us, and that's okay, Yeah, it's absolutely
fine and great. Actually, if you disagree with us and
you want to have a conversation and you know, reach
out to us by email or social media, because we're

(56:33):
not experts. We're just mom and dad and we're telling
these stories and.

Speaker 2 (56:36):
Right, and we do our best to try to, you know,
stick to the facts when we talk about the case.
But then we have discussion outside of the facts that
we speculate or offer our opinions and things like that,
and you're right, it's absolutely fine for people to disagree
with us. We are not former prosecutors, former police officers,
lawyers or anything like that. We're just two people.

Speaker 1 (56:56):
And honestly, there are a lot of really good podcasts
out there. The secutors, they do a good job, and
other podcasts. I think, let's go to court their lawyers.
And there's other people that are like police officers. I
can't think of one off the top of my head.
But we're just kind of like we're hanging out as
friends having a discussion and yeah, and.

Speaker 2 (57:14):
Hopefully that comes through, and I think most people appreciate that.
But yeah, it is worth saying it once in a
while that we are just offering our opinions.

Speaker 1 (57:21):
Here, yeah, and never feel like we are trying to
state our opinion as fact. And it's totally okay to
have a different opinion than we do. You talked a
lot about Emily and how Emily had some sort of
like powers and maybe she was psychic and she could
read auras, right, what do you think about the metaphysical world?
I guess do you think that's possible? I don't you

(57:42):
had any experiences. Not really.

Speaker 2 (57:44):
I have mixed feelings about it. I used to believe
that it was possible for people to have psychic powers,
but I don't know. Over the years, I've kind of
grown less and less inclined to believe that. But I
don't know. I have an open mind. I suppose anything
is possible, but I just not not convinced. What about you,
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (58:03):
There is definitely something to intuition, like especially mother's intuition. Yeah,
because sometimes I can I really just get a sense
or a feeling that something is wrong. That's not always right.
I'm so grateful because a lot of times I'm wrong.
But you know, sometimes there is something there, and you
know it's hard to ignore it.

Speaker 2 (58:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (58:22):
Well, I don't think we're men to ignore it. I
think if you have that feeling, right, well, trust your gut,
even if it's not related to either kids or whatever.
Trust if you get an icky feeling about someone you know,
trust your gut.

Speaker 2 (58:34):
Yeah, definitely that I totally agree with that. And I
was going to say, in doing, like in researching all
the cases we've done over the last you know, two
and a half years or so, there have been a
few cases where that happens where somebody has a bad
feeling right there across the country and right at the
time that their loved one was killed. They get this
feeling and they just knew something was wrong. And there

(58:54):
are I have read some very credible reports like that.
So it does seem like maybe if you're really closely
connected with someone, there is a little bit of a
psychic connection there too. So speaking of people speaking to
us from beyond the grave, I thought I saw a
news report that I thought was interesting. We've talked about
AI a fair amount on this podcast, partly because I'm
kind of fascinated by AI. It's really an interesting time,

(59:17):
I think in our world with the way it can
be very frightening. But this is very a true crime
related AI story. So there was a guy, his name
was Gabriel hork Asidis, who was convicted of manslaughter in
a road rage incident. He had shot and killed this man,
a thirty seven year old named Christopher Pelke, and the
judge allowed Christopher's loved ones to play an AI generated

(59:40):
video of Christopher giving his own victim impact statement. So Christopher,
the man the victim in this case, his sister and
brother in law, both worked with AI and they basically
fed this AI the likeness and the voice of their
of her brother, and they created victim impact statement of

(01:00:01):
him addressing the courtroom, and the judge allowed it, which
was kind of surprising to me. Yeah, but you want
do you want to hear just like a few seconds
of it?

Speaker 1 (01:00:09):
Sure?

Speaker 3 (01:00:10):
Hello.

Speaker 5 (01:00:11):
Just to be clear for everyone seeing this, I am
a version of Chris pelke recreated through AI that uses
my picture and my voice profile. I was able to
be digitally regenerated to share with you today. I would
like to make my own impact statement to Gabriel hork Asidas,
the man who shot me. It is a shame we
encountered each other that day in those circumstances. In another life,

(01:00:32):
we probably could have been friends. I believe in forgiveness
and in God who forgives. I always have and I
still do.

Speaker 2 (01:00:39):
That's pretty wild, Is it is crazy? I know, I
don't know. How do you feel about that?

Speaker 1 (01:00:43):
I don't know. I mean, I know it's not really him,
and I guess it's a little chilling.

Speaker 2 (01:00:49):
Yeah, I don't like it. No, I just I don't
think it's a good idea. First of all, you're putting
words in your loved one's mouth that they you don't
know how he would have felt about that, you know.
And it's almost like the video that they made, he's
almost being very forgiving of the person who killed him.

Speaker 1 (01:01:06):
A sentiment of what he said was a little odd.

Speaker 2 (01:01:08):
Yeah, And I don't think you have the right to
assume that your loved one who was a victim would
be forgiving. I mean, you don't know. So anyway, I
think it's a little creepy and I'm actually very surprised
the judge allowed it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:19):
Maybe the judge didn't know the content of the message.

Speaker 2 (01:01:21):
I'm not sure, but there was. It's interesting too, because
the defense attorney for the person said that the AI
presentation actually creates an issue for appeal because the judge
allowed this, and it could be considered inflammatory to hear
like from the victim in their own voice and their
own likeness, and so it could be a Crowns for

(01:01:42):
appeal of the sentence. Interestingly, though, even though the victim
appeared to be asking for leniency for his killer, the
judge sentenced the killer to the maximum sentence, which was
ten and a half years in prison.

Speaker 1 (01:01:54):
Interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:01:55):
I mean, it'll be yeah, I think AI. We could
talk about it for a long time, but it's just
interesting to see where this goes and how the criminal
justice system uses AI. We did an episode on it
like two years ago, which I did a little research
on it, but yeah, it's a brave new world.

Speaker 1 (01:02:11):
Two years AI is really kind of Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:02:15):
For sure, you're seeing like videos now that look completely
real that aren't real at.

Speaker 1 (01:02:20):
All, not like we're celebrities or anything, but our voice
is out there and it does kind of make me
think that, you know, you could piece together Oh yeah,
and AI could definitely represent us and our voices and
our opinions totally.

Speaker 5 (01:02:34):
Well.

Speaker 2 (01:02:34):
We actually played around with that on an episode a
while ago. I think it was maybe it was one
of our patron episodes. Yeah, but yeah we could. We
can actually reproduce our own voices.

Speaker 1 (01:02:43):
I forgot we did that. Yeah, it was. It was
kind of funny and people were like, are you guys okay?

Speaker 2 (01:02:48):
I actually made of a thing I was going to
play at one point of your voice saying, you know what,
rich you're right, You're always right.

Speaker 1 (01:02:57):
I'm not afraid to admit you're right when you're actually right.
But it's you know, if you far between but listener
recently said, I don't know where it was if it
was on Spotify, But like Tina, you really do compliment
rich a lot. I think someone else said that I
stroked your ego. Yeah, and genuinely, we try so hard

(01:03:20):
to be our authentic selves when we record, and I
really do admire you. I think you're great and I
think you're really smart. And it's not like you need encouragement.
I just think you're doing a great job. You work
really hard, not that I don't, but you're wearing a
lot of hats.

Speaker 2 (01:03:34):
But I read that. I read that comment as the
listener thinking that I needed right, that's what I like
insecure or something like that. But yeah, I think we
try to be ourselves and I think you're great too,
and we both compliment each other absolutely.

Speaker 1 (01:03:48):
But I think maybe I'm more forthcoming sometimes and you
maybe give me more encouragement, like off the air or
when I'm trying to say a sentence forty seven times,
and you never I'm not kidding listeners. He never gets
even a little irritated with me. Is like, it's okay,
just keep going, You're going to get it, and you know, yeah,
I try.

Speaker 2 (01:04:08):
You usually do Thank you all so much for listening.
Please rate, review, follow and subscribe. Find us on social
media and YouTube, or send us an email at Lovemarykill
at gmail dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:04:20):
And please consider supporting us on Patreon dot com slash
Lovemrykill one tier five dollars a month for early ad
free access and a monthly bonus.

Speaker 2 (01:04:30):
Episode until next time.

Speaker 6 (01:04:31):
Don't kill your husband and don't kill your wife.

Speaker 4 (01:05:00):
You know what, rich You're right. You're always right.

Speaker 1 (01:05:23):
I don't know why I ever doubt you