Cheers

Cameron Kirk was a sad, depressed middle-aged man who found himself living back at home with his mother, Paula Kirk. Things had never been good between the two, but as her drinking increased, so did his resentments and it would all end in a gruesome murder. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Teresa Bryant was sitting at home one day in Middleburg, Florida,
when her friend Paula Kirk popped into her head. The
two women had been friends for a while, and Paula
was the kind of reliable, fun loving friend who would
always pick up the phone to chat. Teresa hadn't seen
Paula since the beginning of March and thought she should

(00:30):
reach out. What was she doing? Maybe they'd both been
so busy that time had slipped away. Teresa had been
busy too, as she grabbed her cell phone and began
scrolling down to Paula's name in her contacts. She nestled
down into a chair at her kitchen table. She typed
out a message something like, Hey, Paula, how are you.

(00:54):
It's been a while. Are you doing okay? Then she
put her phone down and headed towards it's a sink
to tackle a few stray coffee cups and spoons from breakfast.
She turned on the water and let her finger run
under it, feeling the stream go from icy to warm.
She stared at the sunlight cascading onto the flower garden

(01:16):
out her kitchen window. Suddenly, she heard a pin from
her cellphone Teresa left the tap running and reached for
her phone, flipping it over. It was a text from Paula.
She smiled at her friend's name on the screen next
to the little green square I'm on vacation. It read

(01:38):
leave me the fuck alone. Theresa was stunned. Paula never
spoke like that. She wouldn't say the word fuck, let
alone type it out and aim it with such vitriol
at her best friend. Teresa tried calling Paula's phone, but
she didn't pick up. She tried again, nothing. She got

(02:03):
that sick feeling you get in the pit of your
stomach when you just know something's wrong but you don't
know what it is. Something was wrong, she called one
last time. Teresa thought maybe she was overreacting, maybe she
actually sent that text. Her next call was to nine
point one to report a wellness check on her friend.

(02:27):
She gave the operator Paula's address and asked that they
call her back with any news. Then she nervously washed
the coffee cups in the sink and waited. When police
arrived at Paula's small bungalow, the smell of decomposition was
so strong it could be detected from the driveway, The
rotting stink of flesh seeped under the garage and into

(02:52):
the muggy air. Police knocked on the door. The man
answered he was a thick neck forty one year old
white guy in cargo shorts and black tube socks pulled
up just under his knees. His face looked tired and
rough under his thick glasses and mutton chops. He had

(03:16):
faded tattoos on his hairy arms and legs. He said
he was Paula's son, as he cautiously invited the cops
inside the house. Welcome to sword and scale Nightmares, True

(03:50):
crime for bedtime or nightmare begin his now. Paula Kirk
had lived in Florida most of her life. She had

(04:13):
a few children, but the child she was always worried
about was her son, Cameron. Cameron had been a problem
since he was small. After Paula divorced her kid's father,
Cameron was often shipped off to live with him when
she could no longer deal with his overwhelming emotions and
disrespect for her authority. Cameron's father was in the military,

(04:37):
so he traveled around a lot, often overseas. Cameron spent
a huge chunk of his youth in Japan with his dad.
The exotic lights, the cuisine and culture enamored young Cameron,
and he soaked up every minute he was there. But

(04:57):
then he returned home to the United States dates he
was sent to live with Paula. You see, even Cameron's
father couldn't handle him. Cameron was about fifteen at the time.
His hormones were in full swing, and he was tired
of being tossed back and forth between his two parents
like a hot potato. So Cameron reluctantly settled back into

(05:21):
Paula's place in Florida and enrolled in high school. Things
were going just fine until her new boyfriend moved into
the house. One night, Cameron exploded on Paula's boyfriend and
he resorted to throwing a bunch of Cameron's belongings into
the fireplace. After that, Cameron was shipped off yet again

(05:44):
to live with his dad, but this time the military
had him settled in Virginia, and so the cycle went
on for Cameron being passed back and forth between parents
like a pet that no one wanted to deal with,
but they just couldn't put down. Over his teenage years,

(06:05):
Cameron developed major anger issues and resentments towards his parents,
especially his mother. He returned to Florida in the early
aughts and got a job working for UPS for a
while until he enrolled in college in Fort Lauderdale for
graphic design. Finally he was living away from his parents

(06:25):
and starting to make a life of his own. But
when Cameron graduated college, the economy slowed down. As things
headed into two thousand and seven, jobs were scarce, and
he found himself floating aimlessly with college debt and a
degree that he couldn't seem to make much out of.

(06:47):
He reconnected with an old girlfriend from high school, and
soon the two fell in love and got married. Once
two thousand and eight hit and America dove headfirst into
recession and a housing cr isis, Cameron felt the pressure
to provide for his new wife, so he followed in
his father's footsteps and decided to join the army. But

(07:11):
Cameron wasn't suited to serve as country. First off, his
heart wasn't in it, and secondly, he was slightly out
of shape and had a strong disdain for authority. He
spent five years in the infantry, but didn't even make
it through boot camp before he left on his own volition,

(07:35):
he started drinking a lot and using drugs occasionally, and
the fights with his wife escalated as she grew sick
of his lack of ambition and apathy. One evening, their
entire marriage shattered when Cameron woke up from a drunken
slumber to find his wife straddled on top of him.

(07:56):
He opened his eyes as he felt the warmth of
her small hands grasping his neck like little claws. Her
nails were piercing his skin. She was seething, her teeth
clenched together as she spat out obscenities at him. He
could feel specks of spit hitting his cheeks. Cameron became enraged.

(08:19):
With one swift motion, he tossed his wife off his
belly and onto the bed. Then he towered over her
small frame. Her face went from menacing to meek as
Cameron raised his thick fist and punched her once, then
twice in the face. She winced and screamed, but he

(08:42):
ignored her. Blinded by his anger, he punched her again
and again until the flesh under his eyes became red
and puffy. He punched her until her screams became so
raw and desperate that he snapped out of it and
realized what he'd done to this woman he claimed to love.

(09:05):
After his divorce, Cameron found himself back at his mother's house.
He was thirty one years old and back at home
like a loser. May I've been there, You really do
feel like you're a loser. Cameron had never felt so
pathetic in his entire life. He became depressed and angry.

(09:28):
Every night he slept in his childhood bedroom, hating himself
even more than the day before. As the months and
years passed, Cameron and Paula lived together in an awkward
and angry household. Paula needed her son to contribute to
the household income, but times were tough and as easily
as Cameron would find a job, he would get fired again.

(09:51):
Couldn't seem to hold it together. He spent his nights
set the bar, getting drunk, and whenever he had too
much liquor, getting in the fight. Height with whoever looked
at him the wrong way was kind of what he did.
Cameron was a big guy, but over the years of
living back at home, he gained weight, He grew longer

(10:12):
facial hair, he covered himself in dark tattoos. Everything he
did was an attempt to mask himself from the world.
He'd fallen into a depressive pit of despair, and his
mother was the punching bag for his misery. Palla drank
just as often as Cameron did, so the two of
them swirled in this alcoholic vacuum. They sucked one another

(10:37):
and bringing up old resentments every time one of them
had too much to drink and the other just happened
to be in airshot. It was a house brewing with ancient,
unresolved issues and trauma, and as miserable as it felt,
things were about to get a lot worse. In twenty eighteen,

(11:16):
Cameron pulled up his bootstraps, swallowed his pride, and took
a job at Walmart. He was happy to have steady employment,
even though he thought he was too good for the job.
He wasn't, by the way. Meanwhile, Paula had retired and
her drinking had become a severe nightly problem. Paula was

(11:37):
just as sad as her son. After divorcing Cameron's father,
Paula acted like she'd moved on with her life, but
she hadn't. She was the kind of woman who always
had to be in a relationship to feel secure, even
if that relationship was no good for her. Paula had
many long term boyfriends over the years, even a few

(11:58):
men who wanted to marry her, but she could never
get over Cameron's father. This prevented her from pulling the
trigger on any other man who came into her life.
It also didn't help that Cameron often acted as a
wedge between her and some of her more serious relationships,
like the guy who threw Cameron's stuff into the fire.

(12:20):
In early twenty twenty, Paula's drinking it hit rock bottom,
and the only one who saw how horrible things truly
were was Cameron. They were still living together, and though
we spent a lot of time at Walmart or out
with his friends, he was there to experience Paula's misery.
She wasn't a happy drunk, let's put it that way.

(12:41):
She would wallow, she would cry. It was obvious that
she was in extreme emotional pain, and Cameron wasn't exactly
the person to deal with that. He was becoming increasingly
irritable with his mother's drunken outbursts. Then, at one point,
she had herself Baker acted. Some nights, he'd come home

(13:06):
from a long day at Walmart and see his mother
slumped in the living room on the sofa, her eyes
half open as a glass hung lazily in her frail hand.
She was half a person. Well. Little empathy he had
for his mother slowly turned into resentment. Then everything came
to a head the first week of March. Cameron was

(13:29):
already in a foul mood when Paula started telling him
what a loser he was. He had been sitting in
his room reading a book about Ted Bundy for some
reason when she pushed herself into the doorway and muttered
something under her breath about him. Cameron narrowed his focus
on the book and tried to ignore her, but she

(13:50):
kept going. Paula was incoherent and slurring her words. She
told him she was going to go for a drive somewhere,
maybe just ended all. Cameron got up and slammed the
book down on his bed. He followed his mother down
the hallway into the living room. Paula's house was so
dated the same carpet and wood paneling that had been

(14:13):
installed in the eighties remained intact but worn and stained.
Cameron yelled after Paula as she swayed and fumbled her
way through the house. She was looking for her car keys.
Paula bumped into the kitchen counter and flung herself forward,
practically clunking her face into her purse on the countertop.

(14:36):
Cameron had it. He was so sick of this. He
lunged forward and snatched her keys from her purse. Then
he took her debit card and held them both above
his head so she couldn't reach him. He was sick
of his mother and her pathetic, drunken stupors. He was
sick of himself, of this life he'd been living. He

(14:58):
felt the anger bubbling up inside him. It started small
in the pit of his stomach, but as he watched
his mother struggle to get the keys from him, his
anger rose and rose. That's when it happened. Cameron puffed
his chest and lift his chin as he wound up

(15:19):
and swung his fist into her face. His chubby fingers,
red and tense, connected with the soft skin of her
cheek like a Christmas cracker breaking open. Paula flew backwards,
falling onto the old nasty carpet. Cameron lunged towards her

(15:41):
kneeling as he winded up his arm again and punched
her over and over, just as he'd done with his
ex wife, But this time he couldn't stop. The blood
sprung from Paula's face, and she protested to drunk to
fight back, but Cameron punched her one last time for

(16:05):
a good measure, and then he stood up, shaking off
his hands as adrenaline pulsed through his arms. Suddenly, a
shock of what he'd done sunk in, like a million pinpricks,
all at once, into the middle of his soul. He'd

(16:26):
beaten up his own mother. His heart stopped as he
looked down at her, writhing in pain on the floor,
like a dead deer on the side of the road.
Now she was a wounded animal. Unwanted. Cameron didn't know

(16:47):
what to do. He could go to prison, he knew
that for sure. He backed up and thundered towards his
bedroom and pulled down the shotgun from the closet. The
gun as he marched back towards his mother, his socks
flapping on the floor with every step of purpose, he

(17:09):
aimed the rifle at her head, looked away, and fired.
The sound was deafening Paula was dead. Cameron lowered the gun.
It was only then that he noticed his hands were shaking.

(17:30):
He looked at his mother. Her head was a mess
of blood and brains all over the floor of the house,
the house that she'd always let him return to when
he didn't have a place to go. It was then
that Cameron remembered he had to go to work in
half an hour. He dragged her into the other room

(17:54):
and covered her with a blanket. He'd deal with that later.
For now, he has to get himself over to Walmart.

(18:32):
For days, Paula's body lay in the same position on
the carpet where Cameron had left her for a shift
at Walmart. He just couldn't bring himself to do anything
about that just yet. It had been a few days.
She wasn't decomposing. By the end of the week, Cameron
summoned the courage to move her into the garage. He

(18:56):
stood in the kitchen, taking nervous angry pulls off his
as he gathered the strength to do what he knew
he had to do. How is he going to get
rid of the body? What was he going to do?
He took another chug of his beer and walked over
to his mother's dead corpse. She was stiff and cold.

(19:18):
He made sure not to touch her skin with his
or put his hands on the blanket as he pulled
her into the garage. It was cold and dark among
the clutter and mess. Cameron felt a sigh of relief
as he rested her body on the floor. At least
she was out of the house. He stared at her,

(19:40):
His poor stupid mother. He hated himself. Cameron walked back
inside and tackled his cleanup job. He used bleach and
other chemicals to attempt to scrub the blood out of
the carpet. He grunted and moaned. It felt like he
was just pushing her blood from further into the fibers.

(20:02):
Cameron had to make a plan. He decided he would
say she left with a guy she met they went
down to Florida for vacation. Yeah, yeah, that'll work, he
thought to himself as he worked away at the stains.
That's that's that's believable. Somebody will buy that. A lot

(20:24):
of dummies in Florida anyway. Cameron continued to go to
work at Walmart. Convenient place for a killer to work. Actually. Meanwhile,
Paula's body stayed in the garage, slowly decomposing and leaking
bodily fluids. Cameron would peek his head in to check
on her, like she was some kind of HouseGuest that

(20:47):
just wouldn't go away. After a while, he noticed a
soupy liquid seeping out from underneath her body. Thinking fast,
he grabbed a bag of cat litter and poured it
all around to soak up the liquid that would tie
him over until he could gather the courage to get
rid of her remains. You know, the job doesn't get

(21:09):
a lot easier the more you wait. Paula had told
her family that she always wanted to be cremated, and
her ashes spread in a specific place. Cameron knew he
had to dismember her. How else was he going to
burn the body? That was the plan. Paula had a
fire pit in her backyard, and Cameron figured that if

(21:32):
he could cut her up and burn her piece by piece,
he would get away with it. Then he could give
her a proper goodbye and scatter the ashes. The thoughtful
sun that he is, Cameron had seen dismembering in movies,
and he'd read enough serial killer books to know what
to do. He had a cheap electric chainsaw that should work.

(21:58):
One night, after a couple of drinks, he trudged into
the garage and decided to start the process. He gathered
as many tarps as he could find around the house
and tape them up around the room. Paula had been
dead for two weeks now, her flesh was rotting and
turning black. Cameron looked at his mother's cold, lifeless feet

(22:23):
and decided he'd start there. He turned on the saw
and pushed the blade down into her ankle. Feeling the
weight of the bones hit the blade, he gagged the
sound of the buzzing blade on her body, the smell
of her flesh, and the fresh plastic of the tarps,

(22:46):
the sickly smell at the back of your throat. Cameron
shook his head and kept going until finally he watched
her foot fall off her ankle. He did it. He
was Neil Armstrong. It was so disgusting, but he kept

(23:08):
going and cut off the other foot. Then the saw broke.
The next day, he went to home depot to get
a gas powered saw that would be more powerful. Then
he could tackle the legs. That night, he got good
and drunk before revving up the new chainsaw and starting

(23:31):
the same sickening procedure on Paula's legs. With every slice,
he told himself what a piece of shit he was.
He wanted to kill himself, but then what Everyone would
find her and him. They'd know what he'd done. He

(23:51):
had to keep going. Over the next few days, Cameron
cut off both her feet and legs and threw all
the pieces into the tra He couldn't bring himself to
burn her limbs in the yard. He spread more catletter
around her body like a mote. He would wait until
she decomposed more to tackle the rest of the remains. Meanwhile,

(24:15):
more texts and calls kept popping up on Paula's phone.
Cameron responded to some and ignored others. He knew it
was only a matter of time. Then one night had
occurred to him he should report her missing. He needed
to call nine one one and say he hadn't heard
from his mother in weeks. So that's exactly what he did.

(24:39):
But it wasn't until Paula's best friend, Theresa Bryant, received
that strange text message from Paula's phone that the police
would show up and find Cameron. He let the officers
into the house and they could smell the body. Believe
you me. Cameron had become so used to the that

(25:01):
it no longer phazed him. When they asked Cameron if
they could go into the garage, he hesitated. They told
him they'd get a search warrant if he wouldn't let them.
He swallowed hard and asked if he was under arrest.
When they said no, he walked out the front door
and didn't look back. After the police located Paula's body,

(25:25):
they picked up Cameron around the street corner. He'd been
living with his mother's dead body for over a month.
At the police station, Cameron confessed to everything. He broke down,
He cried, He hung his head in shame. He asked
the police how he could get the death penalty. I

(25:46):
know it's not up to you, he said, but how
do I get it? They told him he'd have to
wait to talk to the state attorney for that. Cameron
was charged with second degree murder for the death of
his mother Paula. Today, he sits in a prison in Florida,
wishing he had done anything other than what he did. Now,

(26:10):
you will have to live with the memories of her murder,
and the miserable, depressing failure of a life that he
lived right up until the day that he killed his
own mother. If you enjoyed the show, please consider joining
plus at sword and Scale dot com slash plus, But

(26:35):
if you can't, consider leaving us a positive review on
your preferred listening platform. Sweet Dreams and good Night,