October 24, 2025 • 44 mins
It’s hardly a revelation that physical attraction can cloud judgment. It’s one of the oldest traps in human nature—that spark of chemistry that overrides caution, turning common sense into background noise. For most people, the fallout is little more than a red face or a broken heart. But every so often, that same impulse leads someone much farther—into danger. Because behind the charm, the warmth, and the allure, there are those who hide something far darker: a heart devoid of empathy, and intentions that are anything but loving. When desire blinds you to the truth, the price can be more than heartbreak — it can be fatal.
Sources:
I'll Take Care of You by Caitlin Rother
ABC News: https://abcnews.go.com/US/convicted-killers-millionaires-love-triangle-murder-case-maintain/story?id=80014616
OC Register: https://www.ocregister.com/2012/05/18/girlfriend-gets-life-in-millionaires-murder-2/ https://www.ocregister.com/2012/01/11/an-ex-tells-of-a-yes-yes-nanette/
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Sources:
I'll Take Care of You by Caitlin Rother
ABC News: https://abcnews.go.com/US/convicted-killers-millionaires-love-triangle-murder-case-maintain/story?id=80014616
OC Register: https://www.ocregister.com/2012/05/18/girlfriend-gets-life-in-millionaires-murder-2/ https://www.ocregister.com/2012/01/11/an-ex-tells-of-a-yes-yes-nanette/
Follow us, campers!
Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfire
https://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/
Facebook: True Crime Campfire
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truecrimecampfire/?hl=en
Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfire
Email: truecrimecampfirepod@gmail.com
MERCH! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.com
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, campers, Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true
crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie and I'm Whitney,
and we're here to tell you a true story that
is way stranger than fiction. Or roasting murderers and marshmallows
around the true crime campfire.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
It's hardly a revelation that physical attraction can cloud judgment.
It's one of the oldest traps in human nature, that
spark of chemistry that overrides caution, turning common sense into
background noise. For most people, the fallout is little more
than a red face or a broken heart. But every
so often that same impulse leads someone much further into danger,
(00:45):
because behind the charm, the warmth, and the allure, there
are those who hide something far darker, a heart devoid
of empathy and intentions that are anything but loving. When
desire blinds you to the truth, the price can be
more than heartbreak. It can be fatal. This is sleeping
with the enemy, the murder of Bill McLoughlin.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
So campers for this one.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
We're in the wealthy coastal city of Newport Beach, California, Thursday,
December fifteenth, nineteen ninety four, a little after nine pm,
all seemed peaceful in Balboa Cove's, a waterside gated community
of multimillion dollar homes. Bill McLaughlin was supposed to be
home alone. His living girlfriend, Nanette, was out at a soccer
(01:40):
game with her two young children and Bill's twenty four
year old son, Kevin, usually went to his AA meetings
on Thursday nights, but for some reason, Kevin skipped the
meeting this time. He and his dad had dinner, then
Kevin went up to his room to listen to some
megadeath on his Walkman, while Bill did some paperwork at
the dining room table. Suddenly, Ken he heard a series
(02:00):
of loud, popping sounds from downstairs. Gunshots six in all,
divided into three quick two shot bursts. Their golden retriever, Goldie,
started barking frantically. Kevin stumbled downstairs as best he could.
A few years before, he'd been hit by a drunk
driver while he was skateboarding, and he suffered a brain
(02:22):
injury that put him in a coma for four months.
He still had significant difficulties with his motor skills and speech.
He'd had a tough recovery that led to some abuse
of alcohol and weed, thus the regular AA meetings. Kevin
found his dad on the kitchen floor in his robe
and slippers, blood and bullet casings beside him on the
(02:43):
white tile floor. Kevin frantically dialed nine one one, and
the call is heartbreaking because Kevin's speech impairment got worse
when he was agitated or upset, and he just could
not clearly communicate to the dispatcher what a serious situation
the was. So she sent a couple of nearby bike
(03:04):
patrol officers to see what was going on because she
just didn't get it, and he was having such a
hard time getting it out, and it just must have
been so frustrating for him. So there was actually some
delay in getting paramedics to Bill McLoughlin's side, but you know,
in the end, it wouldn't have made any difference. One
of the hollow point rounds had torn right through his heart,
a devastating fatal wound. The only evidence the killer left
(03:29):
inside the house were the bullets and shell casings. Bill
had been shot with nine millimeter rounds, but forensics technology
at the time couldn't narrow down what kind of gun
they'd been fired from nine millimeter, was by far the
most commonly used pistol caliber in the US. The shellcasings
didn't have any fingerprints on them. There were no unexpected
(03:49):
fingerprints anywhere in the house. Outside, though, there were clues.
A key was stuck in the front door lock, which
the family knew could be finicky. Another key lay on
the mat by the pedestrian gate into the Balboa Coves community.
The key in the door was freshly cut and stamped
with the ACE hardware logo. The one for the pedestrian
(04:10):
access was an original with do not duplicate stamped on it.
Investigators thought the key on the mat had been dropped
by the shooter as they fled in a panic. The
gunshots were loud and the houses on Balboa Coves were
tight together. Neighbors would be looking to see what was
going on, and the killer had to get out of
their fast.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
The keys were.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Hugely significant because the only people who should have access
to them were the family, their housekeeper, and Nanette. This
had to be an inside job the shooters certainly wasn't.
Kevin Bill had been shot with a careful accuracy that
would be impossible for him with his motor skill difficulties,
and his hands came up clean for gunshot residue. His
(04:54):
two sisters were respectively in Japan and San Diego, and
his mom was in Hawaii. The housekeeper had nothing to
gain from Bill's death, and so that left Nannette. Nanette,
a young, attractive blonde, turned up around ten PM in
Bill's Cadillac convertible and told police she was Bill's fiance
(05:14):
and had been Christmas shopping at the mall. A couple
of detectives sat her in a cruiser to get a
more detailed accounting of her evening. She'd taken her young
son and daughter to Diamond Bar, about thirty miles away,
for the Sun's championship soccer game. The game had been
supposed to start at six, but was delayed until six
thirty and then went into overtime. The game wasn't over
(05:36):
until about eight thirty, late enough that Nannette decided the
kids should stay with their dad, her ex husband, because
both his house and the kid's school were nearby. With
the kids elsewhere, she decided to do some shopping at
the mall in nearby Costa Mesa, and when detectives asked,
she produced a couple of time stamped receipts, which always
(05:56):
makes me prick up my antenna anytime people can just
whip those receipts right out. I mean, maybe you could,
but I find that my receipts disappear instantly, like they
hand them to me and then they go into like
a wormhole in the universe and I never see them again.
So like you have to hold on to them very intentionally,
(06:17):
and that's clearly what is going on here. The earliest
was from Crate and Barrel at nine to twenty nine,
which didn't actually put her in the clear. The mall
was just five miles from Balbo Coves, and if she
had the pedal to the metal all the way, Nanette
could conceivably come back from Diamond Bar shoot Bill and
make it to the mall.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
It didn't seem likely, but the officers went ahead and
swabbed her hands for gunshot residue. The swabs came back negative. Still,
something seemed off about Nenette. People react to shock and
grief in different ways, but Nennette seemed strangely unaffected by
her fiance's death. The closest she got to an outburst
(06:58):
of emotion was saying this is too much to comprehend
in a flat monotone.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
This is too much to comprehend. Well, I gotta go
pick up my dry cleaning.
Speaker 4 (07:11):
According to her story, if the soccer game had started
and finished on time, she and her children would have
been home at the time Bill was shot, but she
never expressed relief at how lucky the kids were not
to have been there, and her keychain was missing the
key for the pedestrian entry. It's fair to say that
investigators were suspicious of her. Immediately after Bill's funeral, those
(07:34):
suspicions ramped up even more. Bill's brother, Patrick and his
sons were chattingtonnette six year old son, Christopher, when the
kid piped up, my mom's boyfriend plays football. He was
not talking about Bill, who'd been fifty five and hadn't
played ball since college. Patrick told the police about this
tidbit as soon as he could. They already had Ninette
(07:55):
under surveillance, and the officers watching her were told to
watch out for any interactions with guy who looked like
a football player. So it was starting to look like,
under the surface, Bill and Net's relationship was a big
old hot mess. Express How did they get there.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
After.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
Growing up on the South side of Chicago, Bill McLaughlin
had a stint in the Marines, then became the first
person in his family to go to college. In nineteen
sixty six, he married his girlfriend, Sue, a flight attendant
and then a substitute teacher. They had two daughters, Kim
and Jenny, and one son, Kevin. After college, Bill got
(08:33):
into the biotech field, which exploded in the eighties. Together
he and a business partner developed the plasma cel sea device,
which efficiently separates blood in plasma. It was groundbreaking technology
at the time and it's still in use today. If
you invent something that's still widely used in hospitals forty
years later, you're probably going to be doing okay financially.
(08:56):
They sold the plasma cel sea technology for a bunch,
and Bill still got quarterly royalty payments of five hundred
thousand dollars, which today would be worth more than double
that amount. He was a very wealthy man, with multiple
properties in Newport Beach, Las Vegas, and Hawaii. Like a
lot of people who had this kind of success, he
(09:18):
could be kind of hard edged and tough in business,
but outside of work he was an easy guy. To
like a warm, friendly guy, gregarious and affectionate with the
people he loved, but he definitely had his weak spots.
In nineteen ninety, Sue filed for divorce. Bill had had
several affairs, and according to Sue, he'd been kind of
(09:39):
a controlling penny pincher, not a great trait in any spouse,
especially not one who's a millionaire. As part of the
divorce settlement, Sue got their Hawaii house and decided to
move there. So now Bill was in his fifties and
newly single. He was a driven, energetic business guy, and
he wasn't the type to gracefully excpt up the inevitable
(10:00):
passage of time. Bill worked out, ran tooled around in
a shiny new Cadillac convertible, and before you could say
midlife crisis, he was dating again younger pretty women.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Nanette would later say she and Bill had been introduced
by mutual friends while she'd been rollerblading on the boardwalk.
Which mutual friends She couldn't remember who they were. Don't
you just hate it when you forget your friends' names?
Happens to me all the time. In fact, Bill had
responded to a personal ad and Nennette had placed in
(10:33):
Singles Connection, a local dating circular with a vibe that
definitely leaned more toward bed mates than soulmates. Nanette was
mostly forthright in her ad, which, as we'll see later on,
was pretty rare for her. The title of her ad
below a sexy black and white boudoir shot and a
teddy and feather boa was for wealthy men only. Single
(10:55):
white female twenty five five five one hundred pounds, classy,
well educated, adventurous, fun and knows how to take care
of her man looking for an older man thirty plus
who knows how to treat a woman. You take care
of me and I'll take care of you. That was
(11:16):
my hot singles in your area? Want to talk to
you boys? Because that was the vibe. What wasn't it
of her personal ad? You can see why Bill and
Nannette didn't exactly go blab into their friends and family
about how they actually met.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
It's not a meet cute per se.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Right, there was clearly a transactional element to their relationship
from the get go. Now, obviously, wealthy older man an
attractive younger woman is not a novel arrangement by any means,
But this wasn't quite a sugar daddy thing. Bill wanted
someone he could connect with who shared his interests, and
he also just wanted that person.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
To be young and cute.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
And when he responded to Nennette's ad and told her
what he was looking for, her own response made sure
to check every box. Bill had sometimes complained that his
ex wife, Sue, never showed much interest in his business dealings,
which honestly, I kind of understand because it sounds duller
in a damp pile laundry. But you know, I'm sure
some people find that stuff fascinating. But hey, it's okay
(12:18):
if your other half isn't into all the same things
you are. Nannette said she wrote business plans for a living.
Bill wanted someone educated. Nannette said she had several advanced degrees.
Bill wrote that he generally preferred blondes, and Nannette said
she was blondish. Bill liked to work out, and so
(12:39):
did Nnette, and that last nugget was the only one
that was true. When she met Bill, Nannette was actually
working as a sales rep for a carpet cleaning company,
perfectly respectable job. She just evidently decided it wasn't up
to scratch if she was trying to land a big fish.
Nannette said she graduated early from high school in Phoenix
(13:00):
at sixteen years old, as the class valedictorian. I mean
she did leave school at sixteen, as in she dropped out,
had to get her ged later on. She said she
got a basketball scholarship to ASU, which seemed highly unlikely
to anybody who saw her play, and graduated at nineteen
before going on to get an MBA and other advanced degrees.
(13:23):
According to ASU, Nennette did make an undergraduate application, but
never enrolled or had any classes there. She did spend
a lot of time on campus, though, pretending to be
a student and picking up guys who does this?
Speaker 3 (13:40):
Who does this?
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Her actual education was at the Bobby Ball Academy, which
taught acting, modeling, and stunt work to both children and adults.
Bill surely knew that Nennette's educational history was blowney, I mean,
his daughters certainly figured it out. They were both teachers.
Jenny taught high school science and Kim taught's second grade
at an international school in Tokyo. They knew how education worked,
(14:06):
and unless you're Tony Stark, you're not getting multiple advanced
degrees by age twenty five. They had to struggle to
keep from laughing when Annette told them her ELSAT score,
which is the test you take to get into law school.
That ELSAT only goes up to one to eighty, but
Nanette said she scored like a thousand. That is so cringe.
(14:28):
And as for blondish, Nanette's dad was from India and
her mom was a Chicago redhead. She was about as
blonde as Cleopatra. But that one at least was easy.
If Bill wanted blonde, she would be blonde. Nanette Maneckshaw
had been born in Chicago in nineteen sixty five, but
her family soon moved to Maryland when her engineer father
(14:49):
got a job at the Pentagon. When her parents divorced,
Nanette moved with her mom and siblings to Arizona. When
she was seventeen, Nanette met Kevin Ross Johnson, who everybody
called k Ross. They both worked at a health spa,
Nennette as an aerobics instructor and ki Ros in sales,
which Nnette soon moved into. They dated for a couple
(15:11):
of years and then got married. Nannette in those days
was almost unrecognizable from her California form, with short, dark
hair and a tomboy style of shorts and T shirts
that was a million miles from her later sort of
Real Housewives chic. They had two kids, Michelle and Christopher,
but they never made much money, and that quickly became
(15:32):
a bone of contention. Nnette wanted money, she wanted stuff,
She wanted things. She also wanted more attention from men.
The hair got longer, the skirts and shorts got shorter,
and she started having lots of evening business meetings at
her new sales job.
Speaker 4 (15:49):
Ki Ros first realized what was up when he was
out walking and saw one of Nnette's business cards tucked
under the wiper on a windshield of flashy car. On
the back of the card was written, you caught my
eye while driving down Scottsdale Road. You are married. I'd
love to meet you. I'll be at What's your Beef
tonight looking for you, Nanette.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Oh my god, what is this? Letters to Penthouse like this?
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Yeah? Who does this stuff? It's just like the Personal Land.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Oh my god, that's so insane.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
It's it's so creepy and cringe. I can't I can't even.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
Stay So first.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
I had no idea what What's Your Beef was in
Tempe in the eighties, But I looked it up and
apparently it was a very kind of classy restaurant despite
the name, and they would like you would tell them okay,
they would go, okay, what kind of what kind of
cut of meat do you want? You go philet mignon,
and then they would like tell you, okay, how big
of a piece do you want? Because their menu, their
(16:48):
menu was entirely like priced by the by the ounce,
so like you could like cut up on filet mignon,
which you're not supposed to do, just get the file
at Anyway, I looked it up, and I couldn't believe
that there was a restaurant called What's Your Beef that
was like a nice like dining establishment. This clearly wasn't
(17:10):
the first time Nannette had strayed that business card trick
is not a rookie move, and she'd quickly moved on
from picking up college guys at ASU to aiming for
high rollers. If she cared at all about being found out,
it didn't change her actions one bet. At Thanksgiving, she
drove up in a new BMW and said some guy
named Ted had given it to her.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Y'all, is it a bad sign for your marriage when
guys you've never heard of or given your wife sports cars?
Speaker 3 (17:40):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
It's certainly not a good sign.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
It's not a good sign.
Speaker 4 (17:45):
But as soon as Ted found out that his married
girlfriend was cheating on him with a third guy, Doug,
he had the car repode. Nanette and k Ross's marriage
was clearly over. In nineteen eighty nine, just short of
their five year anniversary, she moved out, He filed for
divorce and won full custody of the kids in family court.
(18:09):
Before the end of the year, Kairos and the kids
moved to California. He was hoping for a fresh start,
but no such luck. Before long, Ninette got in touch
and said she wanted to try and fix their relationship.
KaiOS flew back to Arizona, helped her pack up a
U haul and drove it in her back home to California.
I know this is going to shock you, but Nnette
(18:31):
was actually running away from some check fraud trouble. Plus
she wanted to ghost her latest boyfriend. She and Kairos
were back together again for less than a month before
he found out she'd been taking out singles, ads and
Nanette Splitan God. Her love life quickly developed two distinct strands.
(18:52):
She picked up guys at the gym for casual flings,
which was a lot healthier than her other route that
was to Glamanta guys thought had money, basically move herself
into their apartments by sheer force of will and mooch
and steal from them until they got wise and kicked
her out. And when her four wealthy men only personal
(19:12):
ad landed her a genuine big fish in Bill McLaughlin,
her behavior didn't change. It was just that he was
so rich it took a lot longer for her light
fingers to be noticed. They were together for four years
before his death. Nanette wanted a permanent connection to Bill
and Bill's bank account. He'd had a vasectomy and she
(19:34):
nagged him to have it undone so they could have
a kid together, but he wouldn't. She pressured him to
get married, and Bill's last year she was telling everyone
they were engaged. Bill told his friends he'd bought her
a companion's ring, which to me sounds like, uh, now,
will you shut the fuck up about this ring?
Speaker 3 (19:54):
That is what it is?
Speaker 4 (19:56):
Yeah, she got to believe it. It was a wedding ring.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
But no, no, no, that's a shut up ring. Yeah,
panions ring.
Speaker 4 (20:05):
I gotta hand it to Bill. He never lied to her.
You know, no, I don't want to have your kid,
and I don't want to be married to you. They
certainly didn't have an engagement party or set a date
or anything, although Bill did get her the present she
wanted a boob job.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
As an investment. Bill had bought a beach house within
walking distance of the Balboa Coves home. Nanette certainly didn't
see any reason to give up her gym boyfriends and
brought him back to the beach house. When Bill was
out of town working, which happened a couple of days
every week. Nanette would bring her boyfriends back to Balboa Coves,
but keep them downstairs because Kevin sometimes Nanette's kids were
(20:45):
sleeping upstairs. Classy After Bill's death, when her affairs were
quickly uncovered, Nanette would say that she and Bill had
an unspoken agreement that she could date younger men on
the side, which is a phrase. The word unspoken is
doing a lot of heavy lifting. If the agreement is
(21:06):
you banging Jim rats in the beach house. I feel
like that probably has to be spoken. You know, that's
something that needs to be clearly articulated.
Speaker 4 (21:15):
Articulated, written down, notorized. Like I feel like any and
all extramarital boning needs to be verbalized.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Yeah, We've actually seen this more than a few times,
where a partner's cheating is revealed after someone's death and
they claim the relationship was open, and it's hard to
disprove because it's something.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
Most people would keep secret.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Bill McLaughlin wasn't gonna tell his friends he let his
girlfriend screw around because he couldn't satisfy her. But it's
also equally hard to prove. No one who knew Bill
thought he'd go for an arrangement like that. Bill did
(22:19):
his best to make Nenette happy, that's for sure. There
were endless expensive gifts, luxury vacations, a high dollar monthly allowance.
Bill had maybe learned a painful lesson from trying to
keep a tight hold on sue his ex wife. Nannette
got whatever she wanted. At one point, Bill's daughter told him, Dad,
it is quite obvious she's using you for money.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
I know that.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Bill said he knew it, and he was apparently comfortable
with it for the moment. Anyway, there were reasons Bill
wasn't jumping into marriage or having a kid with Nannette.
She clearly was not his idea of an ever after partner,
but he had no idea that Nanette was by now
looking for an even quicker end to their relationship. Nannette
(23:06):
initially stated the beach house after Bill's death, and soon
after the funeral, the police surveillance team saw an suv
pull up and a big, hugely muscled dude come out.
Nannette's kids greeted him like he was a favorite uncle,
and Nanette, with her supposed fiance still warm in the grave,
basically frenched him out there in front of the house.
(23:29):
His name was Eric Neapowski, and conveniently for the police,
he hadn't bothered to appear in court over a three
hundred and forty three dollars traffic violation, so he had
an outstanding warrant Bang Bang ban who. It was such
a low wattage offense that in the normal run of
things only an extremely bored cop would run it down,
(23:50):
but it meant they could arrest him and interview him.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
True crime books are written around low stakes offenses being
turned into our That is why you only commit one
crime at a time.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
Campers don't get greedy.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
The investigators would have gotten around to Eric anyway. They
interviewed k Ross, Nannette's ex husband, who had also been
at the soccer game on the night of Bill's death,
and he said Nannette had been there with her boyfriend,
a big guy named Eric, not long after Bill died.
Nanette told k Ross, don't tell police that Eric was
with me, because Eric had.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
Nothing to do with this. Not suspicious at all.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Right. K Ross did, of course, tell police everything he
knew as soon as they asked. It's maybe a little unkind,
but not inaccurate to say that Eric Neposki was a big,
dumb idiot, but he did definitely have some talents. He
had a stint in the NFL as a backup linebacker.
(24:51):
But there's a reason people say that NFL stands for
not for long. Eric started getting hurt his ankle, his hand,
and a recurring groin injury. His NFL career spanned five
games off the bench. He then played four injury interrupted
years for the Barcelona Dragons of the World League of
American Football, which is not nothing, but it wasn't the NFL,
(25:14):
and it certainly didn't pay NFL money. Eric had gotten
married when he was at college sophomore after his girlfriend
got pregnant. That's not usually the strongest foundation for a marriage,
and in nineteen ninety one his wife filed for divorce.
Eric showed next to zero interests in the lives of
his two young daughters and had even less interests in
(25:34):
paying child support. He ran away to California in nineteen
ninety three to try and escape more than twenty thousand
dollars in unpaid child support, and found work as a
nightclub bouncer. In January of nineteen ninety four, less than
a year before Bill McLoughlin's death, he started dating a
woman he knew from the gym, Nanette Johnston. Eric could
(25:57):
still afford gym membership and nice clubs and a nice car,
just not child support.
Speaker 4 (26:04):
Isn't that the way? He was working the door at
the Thunderbird nightclub when police arrested him on that traffic warrant.
He'd also been working there the night Bill had been shot,
but that was the opposite of an alibi. The Thunderbird
was just across the Bridge from Balboa Coves. You could
walk there from Bill McLaughlin's front door in less than
(26:27):
a minute. When they searched Eric's car, investigators found a
notebook he used as a journal and planner. My dude
was clearly stressing about his bank account. He wrote, once
you get your ass out of this financial disaster, do
not extend yourself anymore. He also wrote, look into work
(26:48):
positions in Lido. That was the name of the mall
where the Thunderbird nightclub was. Eric had deliberately been looking
for employment close to Bill McLoughlin's house.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
Oh that's creepy.
Speaker 4 (27:00):
He was clearly serious about Nannette writing, get Nnette a ring.
Twenty five hundred dollars so far, And as if Eric
didn't already look suspicious enough, he'd scribbled down the license
plate of Bill's white Mercedes. Eric was one of those
suspects who treat the right to remain silent as a challenge.
(27:21):
He was a talker, a bullshitter, and he clearly had
no clue the police had gone through his car. Nannette,
he said, was just a pretty good friend. Then later
in the interview, he obviously forgot about that and said
he hoped they'd get married soon.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
Bro buddy, Hell, Oh.
Speaker 4 (27:43):
She's the best kind of friend. I guess. He'd never
met Bill McLaughlin never been to Balboa Coves. He'd only
been to the beach house once when he and Annette
first met. Police, in fact, had surveilled him there earlier
that same day. He said that, as far as he knew,
Bill and Annette were just business partners. You know how
(28:04):
businessmen invite their hot younger partners and their two young
kids to live with them in a purely professional capacity, right,
happens every day. Sure, it was kind of a mentor
almost a father daughter type thing. Eric said, you you know,
kind of like a I don't know what you'd call it,
(28:26):
apprentice or someone you know like that or higher stature.
Asked if he owned a gun, Eric said no, and
then later on remember that he'd bought a three eighty
that he mailed to his dad back in New York,
but that was all. Except later, still completely unprompted, he
said he'd bought a nine millimeter Bretta four or five
(28:49):
months ago, but it had been stolen after he'd loaned
it to a friend. Eric hadn't reported the theft because
he'd been hoping the gun would show up. Bretta's are
basically like the animals, and homeward bound Bill find their
way home. Eventually, after this complete train wreck of an interview,
Eric was released, but not before the police had put
(29:11):
a tracking device on his car to help their continued surveillance.
Eric thought it had gone great. He said later that
he'd mind fucked the detectives.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
Eric is like the dog and the meme, sitting at
the table while the room is just in flames around.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
This is fine. Bless his heart.
Speaker 4 (29:33):
Yeah, they were certainly mind fucked with how stupid he was.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (29:39):
Meanwhile, Bill's daughters were kicking Nanette out of the Balboa
Cove's home. They'd never liked her, which I guess is
kind of inevitable when your dad starts dating someone your
own age. But it wasn't just that Nanette was cold
and weird and now she was a suspect in Bill's death,
and it's not like they were throwing her into the street.
Bill's will expressly said she could live rent free in
(30:02):
the beach House for one year after his death, so
she had a fancy place to.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
Go, And that's main contribution to the decorps in Balboa
Coves was a bunch of sexy photos of herself in
skimpy clothes.
Speaker 4 (30:14):
Remember how her personal ad said she was classy. I
am not judging ladies who take badour photos. I'm saying
that having them hung around when guests come over for
tea is maybe not the classiest.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
And like not just one, even like just one would
be kind of cool. Yeah, everywhere huge pictures of Nanette.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
This is wild.
Speaker 4 (30:38):
Just ass everywhere, ass and tits everywhere.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
Yeah, min How could she.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Sit there at like the kitchen table and look her
in the eyes when just to your lift and just
in the periphery of your vision is her giant tits
like right in your face.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
On a poster on the wall.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
No, she took these with her to the beach house,
but she left behind the pictures of her and Bill together.
She also took as much office equipment as she could
cram into the Cadillac, which she helped herself to despite
the will only granting her the much less flashy infinity
in Bill's closet so obviously displayed that it seems clear
(31:17):
she meant for his daughters to find them. She'd left
a pair of red high heels, a red teddy and
a vibrator.
Speaker 4 (31:25):
Oh my god, was this woman written by Larry Flint?
Speaker 3 (31:29):
Yeah? That's like, yeah, letters of Penthouse. She is. She's
a character from.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Like a bad eighties, like kind of soft core porn,
muddy lifetime movie or something. Nanette set up home in
the beach house, where she felt sufficiently liberated to add
some full news to the photo portraits on the walls.
Her kids were living there half the time. Imagine if
(31:56):
they wanted to bring their friends over like the pork.
Investigators soon learned that not long before Bill's death, Nanette
and Eric had been looking at million dollar homes together.
They were clearly expecting to come into a lot of
money soon, But how Eric was at the tail end
of a minor athletic career and had huge debts and
(32:20):
negligible income. Nannette had almost no money solely of her own,
but Bill McLoughlin had a million dollar life insurance policy
with Nanette as the beneficiary. Investigators thought they had the
simple outline of what had happened. Nannette had talked Eric
into killing Bill so the two of them could live
the high life together. A brighter bulb than Eric. Neposki
(32:43):
might have realized that Nanette herself would get rich from
Bill's death and Eric would get nothing but whatever she
wanted to share with them, And sure enough they had
a few.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
Weeks of shopping sprees and.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
Partying, and then Nannette was done with them, just bibe
bibie by. They broke up and Eric scuttled off back
to Connecticut. Before then, though, Eric made a dumb mistake
that would ultimately help put both him and Nanette behind bars.
I know what you're thinking. Wait, Eric till get out
(33:15):
of town. In the summer of nineteen ninety four, Eric
met a good looking blonde at the pool of his
apartment complex. Her name was Suzanne Kogar. Two smoke shows
in swimwear.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
There was a.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
Little spark there, but it was a spark that was
snuffed out on Suzanne's side pretty much as soon as
they started talking. She liked guys who you know, had
a brain in their head, and if Eric nodded too fast,
you could hear the rocks crashing around in there. Still, though,
they became friendly. In November, a month before Bill's death,
Eric came over to Suzanne's apartment to talk. He said
(33:51):
he was getting serious about Nanette and was furious because Bill,
her older, wealthy business partner, had come into Nannette's room
one night and tried to make her have sex with him.
She's living with the guy, Suzanne said, surprised when Eric
explained Ninnette's living arrangements. It was obvious to Suzanne, who
did not have rocks in her head, that Bill and
(34:13):
Nnette were not just living together as business partners. Bill
was the main guy, Eric was the side piece. She
thought this story about Bill trying to force himself on
Nannette might have just been a way to make Eric
feel jealous and protective. What it did was make him angry.
Bill had a pilot's license and his own plane, which
(34:35):
he usually flew every week when he went to Las Vegas.
I'm gonna have him killed, Eric told Suzanne blown away,
I'm gonna have his plane blown up. Suzanne was out
of town visiting family for the holidays when Bill was killed.
When she came back in January, she saw that Eric
had moved out.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
Still oh.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
He came by a couple weeks later to talk to her.
Have you seen any cops around here?
Speaker 3 (34:58):
He said.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
Su Zan had not well if you see any just
don't talk to them. Don't tell him that you know me.
Did you hear that man is dead?
Speaker 3 (35:07):
What man?
Speaker 2 (35:08):
Suzanne said, Bill McLoughlin, the guy that Nanette was living with.
Somebody shot him and he's dead. Suzanne immediately remembered what
Eric had said about blowing up Bill's plane, because you know,
you tend to remember stuff like that. I don't even
want to know if you did it, she said. Eric smirked,
(35:28):
I didn't do it, but I might have had somebody
do it. Suzanne was scared now. She said again, I
don't even want to know. With that same smirk, Eric said,
maybe I did, maybe I didn't. Then he told her
that police had tracked down the freshly cut key stuck
in the front door at balbo Cove's. It had been
made at the Ace Hardware just down the street from
(35:49):
Suzanne's apartment complex. Eric also said the gun that was
used was the same kind of gun that I own,
but they're not going to find it on me because
I don't have it anymore. Scared and creeped out, Suzanne
pretended to agree not to talk to detectives, then just
suddenly got Eric out of there as fast as she could.
Speaker 4 (36:07):
We can't overstate how physically intimidating Eric Neposki was. I mean,
you've seen linebackers. They're the size of refrigerators. And if
he'd killed one person, he could kill Suzanne. She was
too scared to go to the police right away, not
until Eric and Annette broke up and he left town.
But the cops kind of gave her the run around
(36:29):
and didn't take her seriously. She wouldn't make a full
statement until three years later, because why would the cops
want to make it easy on themselves. Most likely Eric
had remembered he'd told Suzanne he wanted Bill dead and
had come over to try to scare her into keeping
her mouth shut. But can also kind of see it
(36:50):
as him trying to impress her with his big macho machonis. Yeah,
like he'd strongly imply he killed the guy and Suzanne
would just go, that's so hot and start tearing her
clothes off. The way Suzanne was treated by authorities is
kind of indicative of the investigation as a whole. It
(37:11):
was a half assed mess, with the Newport Beach PD
and the DA's office getting all snippy with each other
about their respective authority.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Oh my god, I hate it when they do this.
Why aren't you just pissing the corners? Guys, just mark
your territory and be done with it. God Almighty.
Speaker 4 (37:27):
Both the cops and the prosecutors later said they thought
at the time there was enough to charge Nannette and
Eric with murder, and yet somehow no murder charges were filed. Nanette, though,
was tried and convicted of stealing about half a million
dollars from Bill before his death. She got a one
year sentence and had to pay back the money to
Bill's kids because no murder charges had dropped. She'd received
(37:52):
Bill's million dollar life insurance payment, but after legal fees
and restitution, she only had about two hundred thousand dollars left,
which God forbid.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
Right PRIMEI a river.
Speaker 4 (38:05):
That was no problem. She would just go on repeating
the same game until Southern California ran out of rich
horny suckers. Four months out of jail and using the
impenetrable alias a net, she answered a singles ad by
a wealthy real estate developer, John Packard. They got married
ten months later and soon had a daughter together. Nenette's
(38:28):
life with Packard was even more luxurious than with Bill.
She later estimated that basic monthly expenses for her and
her children during this time were thirty seven thousand dollars.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
Sheeez, Louise, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
Just a net, My god, both of the bad guys
in this story are just absolute cabbages.
Speaker 3 (38:50):
A net from Nannette.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
Yeah, that's an uncrackable code.
Speaker 4 (38:57):
Of course, she cheated on this guy too, most notably
with Billy McNeil, who was six years younger than her
and a financial analyst for PepsiCo. He was also married,
but separated from his wife one month after meeting Nannette.
They were soon divorced, and once he found out about
the affair, so were Nannette and John Packard. Nanette and
(39:18):
Billy got engaged in two thousand and five. He bought
her a three carrot diamond ring, but that wasn't enough
for Nannette. Sorry, Annette, She made him buy a few
diamond studded bands to wear on either side of the ring. Now,
that is what they call a red flag Billy.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
When Nannette took Billy home to meet her family, her
siblings had some fun by showing him pictures of Nannette
and her teens in early twenties, when she was short
haired and flat chested. She was very much not flat
chested now, but when Billy asked her if she'd had
enhancement surgery, Nannette intensely insisted, they're real. They're real, They're real.
(40:00):
I apparently wanted to convince herself too. For some reason.
In her closet in whatever house she lived in, Nannette
always kept up a little sparkly poster that said, yes,
they're real, which might be the dweebiest thing I've literally
ever heard of my life.
Speaker 4 (40:18):
God, it's straight out of are you there, God, it's
me Margaret.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
Ye.
Speaker 4 (40:24):
We must, we must, we must increase our bust.
Speaker 3 (40:29):
Like no shade whatsoever forgetting implants.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
Most of the women I've known who've gone him are
proud as hell of look you want to tell you,
you know, like they're proud of those things becose they
cost good money. But Nanette just man, if you, if
you like, insinuated that they were fakes.
Speaker 3 (40:43):
She would get pissed by the way.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
Billy told this story to author Caitlin Rother, whose book
I'll Take Care Of You was our main source for
this episode. Billy and Nannette had a son, Anton. At
the end of two thousand and eight, before he was
six months old, Nanette had been arrested and charged finally
with murder. Eric Naposki was arrested on the same day.
(41:08):
Back in Connecticut, He'd picked up where he left off,
as in, he got married again, had two daughters again,
got divorced again, and didn't pay child support again.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
What a flip and loser.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
A new deputy district attorney, Matt Murphy, had been convinced
that the Bill McLaughlin case could be solved. He had
an investigator look at the case again from top to
bottom and have the evidence all re examined. This included
testing the bullets from the crime scene. Modern forensics were
now able to identify the model of gun. The bullets
had been fired from a Boretta ninety two F. This
(41:44):
was exactly the type of gun Eric Neposki had bought
a few months before the murder, then claimed to have
lost through theft. Suzanne Kogar and other witnesses were re interviewed.
Murphy felt like he had a solid case, a largely
circumstantial case that was very light on physical evidence. But
as we've said many times before, circumstantial does not mean weak.
(42:07):
If you looked at everything together, there was really only
one story that made sense. Nannette and Eric conspired to
murder Bill McLaughlin. Eric Neapowski's trial for first degree murder
started in May twenty twelve. He was convicted and sentenced
to life with no possibility of parole. Nannette's trial started
in September of twenty twelve, by which time Billy McNeil
(42:30):
had become convinced of her guilt and divorced her, being
granted full custody of their son. Nennette was found guilty
of first degree murder and conspiracy, and also sentenced to
life without parole. They're both still loudly declaring their innocence,
with friends and families still believing or pretending to believe them.
(42:50):
It seems to me like just about every relationship in
Annette's life was transactional. Her primary criterion for a partner
was he's rich and he's well, and to spend it
all on me, pretty empty way to live your life.
And after bleeding him as dry as he'd letter, she
repaid Bill McLoughlin's generosity and blood. So that was a
(43:12):
wild one right, campers, you know we'll have another one
for you next week, but for now, lock your doors,
light your lights, and stay safe until we get together
again around the True Crime Campfire. And as always, we
want to send a grateful shout out to a few
of our lovely patrons. Thank you so much to Dale Vielit,
I love that name, Christy and Jordan. We appreciate y'all
(43:34):
to the moon and back. And if you're not yet
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(43:55):
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com slash True Crime Campfire
Hello, campers, Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true
crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie and I'm Whitney,
and we're here to tell you a true story that
is way stranger than fiction. Or roasting murderers and marshmallows
around the true crime campfire.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
It's hardly a revelation that physical attraction can cloud judgment.
It's one of the oldest traps in human nature, that
spark of chemistry that overrides caution, turning common sense into
background noise. For most people, the fallout is little more
than a red face or a broken heart. But every
so often that same impulse leads someone much further into danger,
(00:45):
because behind the charm, the warmth, and the allure, there
are those who hide something far darker, a heart devoid
of empathy and intentions that are anything but loving. When
desire blinds you to the truth, the price can be
more than heartbreak. It can be fatal. This is sleeping
with the enemy, the murder of Bill McLoughlin.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
So campers for this one.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
We're in the wealthy coastal city of Newport Beach, California, Thursday,
December fifteenth, nineteen ninety four, a little after nine pm,
all seemed peaceful in Balboa Cove's, a waterside gated community
of multimillion dollar homes. Bill McLaughlin was supposed to be
home alone. His living girlfriend, Nanette, was out at a soccer
(01:40):
game with her two young children and Bill's twenty four
year old son, Kevin, usually went to his AA meetings
on Thursday nights, but for some reason, Kevin skipped the
meeting this time. He and his dad had dinner, then
Kevin went up to his room to listen to some
megadeath on his Walkman, while Bill did some paperwork at
the dining room table. Suddenly, Ken he heard a series
(02:00):
of loud, popping sounds from downstairs. Gunshots six in all,
divided into three quick two shot bursts. Their golden retriever, Goldie,
started barking frantically. Kevin stumbled downstairs as best he could.
A few years before, he'd been hit by a drunk
driver while he was skateboarding, and he suffered a brain
(02:22):
injury that put him in a coma for four months.
He still had significant difficulties with his motor skills and speech.
He'd had a tough recovery that led to some abuse
of alcohol and weed, thus the regular AA meetings. Kevin
found his dad on the kitchen floor in his robe
and slippers, blood and bullet casings beside him on the
(02:43):
white tile floor. Kevin frantically dialed nine one one, and
the call is heartbreaking because Kevin's speech impairment got worse
when he was agitated or upset, and he just could
not clearly communicate to the dispatcher what a serious situation
the was. So she sent a couple of nearby bike
(03:04):
patrol officers to see what was going on because she
just didn't get it, and he was having such a
hard time getting it out, and it just must have
been so frustrating for him. So there was actually some
delay in getting paramedics to Bill McLoughlin's side, but you know,
in the end, it wouldn't have made any difference. One
of the hollow point rounds had torn right through his heart,
a devastating fatal wound. The only evidence the killer left
(03:29):
inside the house were the bullets and shell casings. Bill
had been shot with nine millimeter rounds, but forensics technology
at the time couldn't narrow down what kind of gun
they'd been fired from nine millimeter, was by far the
most commonly used pistol caliber in the US. The shellcasings
didn't have any fingerprints on them. There were no unexpected
(03:49):
fingerprints anywhere in the house. Outside, though, there were clues.
A key was stuck in the front door lock, which
the family knew could be finicky. Another key lay on
the mat by the pedestrian gate into the Balboa Coves community.
The key in the door was freshly cut and stamped
with the ACE hardware logo. The one for the pedestrian
(04:10):
access was an original with do not duplicate stamped on it.
Investigators thought the key on the mat had been dropped
by the shooter as they fled in a panic. The
gunshots were loud and the houses on Balboa Coves were
tight together. Neighbors would be looking to see what was
going on, and the killer had to get out of
their fast.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
The keys were.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Hugely significant because the only people who should have access
to them were the family, their housekeeper, and Nanette. This
had to be an inside job the shooters certainly wasn't.
Kevin Bill had been shot with a careful accuracy that
would be impossible for him with his motor skill difficulties,
and his hands came up clean for gunshot residue. His
(04:54):
two sisters were respectively in Japan and San Diego, and
his mom was in Hawaii. The housekeeper had nothing to
gain from Bill's death, and so that left Nannette. Nanette,
a young, attractive blonde, turned up around ten PM in
Bill's Cadillac convertible and told police she was Bill's fiance
(05:14):
and had been Christmas shopping at the mall. A couple
of detectives sat her in a cruiser to get a
more detailed accounting of her evening. She'd taken her young
son and daughter to Diamond Bar, about thirty miles away,
for the Sun's championship soccer game. The game had been
supposed to start at six, but was delayed until six
thirty and then went into overtime. The game wasn't over
(05:36):
until about eight thirty, late enough that Nannette decided the
kids should stay with their dad, her ex husband, because
both his house and the kid's school were nearby. With
the kids elsewhere, she decided to do some shopping at
the mall in nearby Costa Mesa, and when detectives asked,
she produced a couple of time stamped receipts, which always
(05:56):
makes me prick up my antenna anytime people can just
whip those receipts right out. I mean, maybe you could,
but I find that my receipts disappear instantly, like they
hand them to me and then they go into like
a wormhole in the universe and I never see them again.
So like you have to hold on to them very intentionally,
(06:17):
and that's clearly what is going on here. The earliest
was from Crate and Barrel at nine to twenty nine,
which didn't actually put her in the clear. The mall
was just five miles from Balbo Coves, and if she
had the pedal to the metal all the way, Nanette
could conceivably come back from Diamond Bar shoot Bill and
make it to the mall.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
It didn't seem likely, but the officers went ahead and
swabbed her hands for gunshot residue. The swabs came back negative. Still,
something seemed off about Nenette. People react to shock and
grief in different ways, but Nennette seemed strangely unaffected by
her fiance's death. The closest she got to an outburst
(06:58):
of emotion was saying this is too much to comprehend
in a flat monotone.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
This is too much to comprehend. Well, I gotta go
pick up my dry cleaning.
Speaker 4 (07:11):
According to her story, if the soccer game had started
and finished on time, she and her children would have
been home at the time Bill was shot, but she
never expressed relief at how lucky the kids were not
to have been there, and her keychain was missing the
key for the pedestrian entry. It's fair to say that
investigators were suspicious of her. Immediately after Bill's funeral, those
(07:34):
suspicions ramped up even more. Bill's brother, Patrick and his
sons were chattingtonnette six year old son, Christopher, when the
kid piped up, my mom's boyfriend plays football. He was
not talking about Bill, who'd been fifty five and hadn't
played ball since college. Patrick told the police about this
tidbit as soon as he could. They already had Ninette
(07:55):
under surveillance, and the officers watching her were told to
watch out for any interactions with guy who looked like
a football player. So it was starting to look like,
under the surface, Bill and Net's relationship was a big
old hot mess. Express How did they get there.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
After.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
Growing up on the South side of Chicago, Bill McLaughlin
had a stint in the Marines, then became the first
person in his family to go to college. In nineteen
sixty six, he married his girlfriend, Sue, a flight attendant
and then a substitute teacher. They had two daughters, Kim
and Jenny, and one son, Kevin. After college, Bill got
(08:33):
into the biotech field, which exploded in the eighties. Together
he and a business partner developed the plasma cel sea device,
which efficiently separates blood in plasma. It was groundbreaking technology
at the time and it's still in use today. If
you invent something that's still widely used in hospitals forty
years later, you're probably going to be doing okay financially.
(08:56):
They sold the plasma cel sea technology for a bunch,
and Bill still got quarterly royalty payments of five hundred
thousand dollars, which today would be worth more than double
that amount. He was a very wealthy man, with multiple
properties in Newport Beach, Las Vegas, and Hawaii. Like a
lot of people who had this kind of success, he
(09:18):
could be kind of hard edged and tough in business,
but outside of work he was an easy guy. To
like a warm, friendly guy, gregarious and affectionate with the
people he loved, but he definitely had his weak spots.
In nineteen ninety, Sue filed for divorce. Bill had had
several affairs, and according to Sue, he'd been kind of
(09:39):
a controlling penny pincher, not a great trait in any spouse,
especially not one who's a millionaire. As part of the
divorce settlement, Sue got their Hawaii house and decided to
move there. So now Bill was in his fifties and
newly single. He was a driven, energetic business guy, and
he wasn't the type to gracefully excpt up the inevitable
(10:00):
passage of time. Bill worked out, ran tooled around in
a shiny new Cadillac convertible, and before you could say
midlife crisis, he was dating again younger pretty women.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Nanette would later say she and Bill had been introduced
by mutual friends while she'd been rollerblading on the boardwalk.
Which mutual friends She couldn't remember who they were. Don't
you just hate it when you forget your friends' names?
Happens to me all the time. In fact, Bill had
responded to a personal ad and Nennette had placed in
(10:33):
Singles Connection, a local dating circular with a vibe that
definitely leaned more toward bed mates than soulmates. Nanette was
mostly forthright in her ad, which, as we'll see later on,
was pretty rare for her. The title of her ad
below a sexy black and white boudoir shot and a
teddy and feather boa was for wealthy men only. Single
(10:55):
white female twenty five five five one hundred pounds, classy,
well educated, adventurous, fun and knows how to take care
of her man looking for an older man thirty plus
who knows how to treat a woman. You take care
of me and I'll take care of you. That was
(11:16):
my hot singles in your area? Want to talk to
you boys? Because that was the vibe. What wasn't it
of her personal ad? You can see why Bill and
Nannette didn't exactly go blab into their friends and family
about how they actually met.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
It's not a meet cute per se.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Right, there was clearly a transactional element to their relationship
from the get go. Now, obviously, wealthy older man an
attractive younger woman is not a novel arrangement by any means,
But this wasn't quite a sugar daddy thing. Bill wanted
someone he could connect with who shared his interests, and
he also just wanted that person.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
To be young and cute.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
And when he responded to Nennette's ad and told her
what he was looking for, her own response made sure
to check every box. Bill had sometimes complained that his
ex wife, Sue, never showed much interest in his business dealings,
which honestly, I kind of understand because it sounds duller
in a damp pile laundry. But you know, I'm sure
some people find that stuff fascinating. But hey, it's okay
(12:18):
if your other half isn't into all the same things
you are. Nannette said she wrote business plans for a living.
Bill wanted someone educated. Nannette said she had several advanced degrees.
Bill wrote that he generally preferred blondes, and Nannette said
she was blondish. Bill liked to work out, and so
(12:39):
did Nnette, and that last nugget was the only one
that was true. When she met Bill, Nannette was actually
working as a sales rep for a carpet cleaning company,
perfectly respectable job. She just evidently decided it wasn't up
to scratch if she was trying to land a big fish.
Nannette said she graduated early from high school in Phoenix
(13:00):
at sixteen years old, as the class valedictorian. I mean
she did leave school at sixteen, as in she dropped out,
had to get her ged later on. She said she
got a basketball scholarship to ASU, which seemed highly unlikely
to anybody who saw her play, and graduated at nineteen
before going on to get an MBA and other advanced degrees.
(13:23):
According to ASU, Nennette did make an undergraduate application, but
never enrolled or had any classes there. She did spend
a lot of time on campus, though, pretending to be
a student and picking up guys who does this?
Speaker 3 (13:40):
Who does this?
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Her actual education was at the Bobby Ball Academy, which
taught acting, modeling, and stunt work to both children and adults.
Bill surely knew that Nennette's educational history was blowney, I mean,
his daughters certainly figured it out. They were both teachers.
Jenny taught high school science and Kim taught's second grade
at an international school in Tokyo. They knew how education worked,
(14:06):
and unless you're Tony Stark, you're not getting multiple advanced
degrees by age twenty five. They had to struggle to
keep from laughing when Annette told them her ELSAT score,
which is the test you take to get into law school.
That ELSAT only goes up to one to eighty, but
Nanette said she scored like a thousand. That is so cringe.
(14:28):
And as for blondish, Nanette's dad was from India and
her mom was a Chicago redhead. She was about as
blonde as Cleopatra. But that one at least was easy.
If Bill wanted blonde, she would be blonde. Nanette Maneckshaw
had been born in Chicago in nineteen sixty five, but
her family soon moved to Maryland when her engineer father
(14:49):
got a job at the Pentagon. When her parents divorced,
Nanette moved with her mom and siblings to Arizona. When
she was seventeen, Nanette met Kevin Ross Johnson, who everybody
called k Ross. They both worked at a health spa,
Nennette as an aerobics instructor and ki Ros in sales,
which Nnette soon moved into. They dated for a couple
(15:11):
of years and then got married. Nannette in those days
was almost unrecognizable from her California form, with short, dark
hair and a tomboy style of shorts and T shirts
that was a million miles from her later sort of
Real Housewives chic. They had two kids, Michelle and Christopher,
but they never made much money, and that quickly became
(15:32):
a bone of contention. Nnette wanted money, she wanted stuff,
She wanted things. She also wanted more attention from men.
The hair got longer, the skirts and shorts got shorter,
and she started having lots of evening business meetings at
her new sales job.
Speaker 4 (15:49):
Ki Ros first realized what was up when he was
out walking and saw one of Nnette's business cards tucked
under the wiper on a windshield of flashy car. On
the back of the card was written, you caught my
eye while driving down Scottsdale Road. You are married. I'd
love to meet you. I'll be at What's your Beef
tonight looking for you, Nanette.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Oh my god, what is this? Letters to Penthouse like this?
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Yeah? Who does this stuff? It's just like the Personal Land.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Oh my god, that's so insane.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
It's it's so creepy and cringe. I can't I can't even.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
Stay So first.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
I had no idea what What's Your Beef was in
Tempe in the eighties, But I looked it up and
apparently it was a very kind of classy restaurant despite
the name, and they would like you would tell them okay,
they would go, okay, what kind of what kind of
cut of meat do you want? You go philet mignon,
and then they would like tell you, okay, how big
of a piece do you want? Because their menu, their
(16:48):
menu was entirely like priced by the by the ounce,
so like you could like cut up on filet mignon,
which you're not supposed to do, just get the file
at Anyway, I looked it up, and I couldn't believe
that there was a restaurant called What's Your Beef that
was like a nice like dining establishment. This clearly wasn't
(17:10):
the first time Nannette had strayed that business card trick
is not a rookie move, and she'd quickly moved on
from picking up college guys at ASU to aiming for
high rollers. If she cared at all about being found out,
it didn't change her actions one bet. At Thanksgiving, she
drove up in a new BMW and said some guy
named Ted had given it to her.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Y'all, is it a bad sign for your marriage when
guys you've never heard of or given your wife sports cars?
Speaker 3 (17:40):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
It's certainly not a good sign.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
It's not a good sign.
Speaker 4 (17:45):
But as soon as Ted found out that his married
girlfriend was cheating on him with a third guy, Doug,
he had the car repode. Nanette and k Ross's marriage
was clearly over. In nineteen eighty nine, just short of
their five year anniversary, she moved out, He filed for
divorce and won full custody of the kids in family court.
(18:09):
Before the end of the year, Kairos and the kids
moved to California. He was hoping for a fresh start,
but no such luck. Before long, Ninette got in touch
and said she wanted to try and fix their relationship.
KaiOS flew back to Arizona, helped her pack up a
U haul and drove it in her back home to California.
I know this is going to shock you, but Nnette
(18:31):
was actually running away from some check fraud trouble. Plus
she wanted to ghost her latest boyfriend. She and Kairos
were back together again for less than a month before
he found out she'd been taking out singles, ads and
Nanette Splitan God. Her love life quickly developed two distinct strands.
(18:52):
She picked up guys at the gym for casual flings,
which was a lot healthier than her other route that
was to Glamanta guys thought had money, basically move herself
into their apartments by sheer force of will and mooch
and steal from them until they got wise and kicked
her out. And when her four wealthy men only personal
(19:12):
ad landed her a genuine big fish in Bill McLaughlin,
her behavior didn't change. It was just that he was
so rich it took a lot longer for her light
fingers to be noticed. They were together for four years
before his death. Nanette wanted a permanent connection to Bill
and Bill's bank account. He'd had a vasectomy and she
(19:34):
nagged him to have it undone so they could have
a kid together, but he wouldn't. She pressured him to
get married, and Bill's last year she was telling everyone
they were engaged. Bill told his friends he'd bought her
a companion's ring, which to me sounds like, uh, now,
will you shut the fuck up about this ring?
Speaker 3 (19:54):
That is what it is?
Speaker 4 (19:56):
Yeah, she got to believe it. It was a wedding ring.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
But no, no, no, that's a shut up ring. Yeah,
panions ring.
Speaker 4 (20:05):
I gotta hand it to Bill. He never lied to her.
You know, no, I don't want to have your kid,
and I don't want to be married to you. They
certainly didn't have an engagement party or set a date
or anything, although Bill did get her the present she
wanted a boob job.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
As an investment. Bill had bought a beach house within
walking distance of the Balboa Coves home. Nanette certainly didn't
see any reason to give up her gym boyfriends and
brought him back to the beach house. When Bill was
out of town working, which happened a couple of days
every week. Nanette would bring her boyfriends back to Balboa Coves,
but keep them downstairs because Kevin sometimes Nanette's kids were
(20:45):
sleeping upstairs. Classy After Bill's death, when her affairs were
quickly uncovered, Nanette would say that she and Bill had
an unspoken agreement that she could date younger men on
the side, which is a phrase. The word unspoken is
doing a lot of heavy lifting. If the agreement is
(21:06):
you banging Jim rats in the beach house. I feel
like that probably has to be spoken. You know, that's
something that needs to be clearly articulated.
Speaker 4 (21:15):
Articulated, written down, notorized. Like I feel like any and
all extramarital boning needs to be verbalized.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Yeah, We've actually seen this more than a few times,
where a partner's cheating is revealed after someone's death and
they claim the relationship was open, and it's hard to
disprove because it's something.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
Most people would keep secret.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Bill McLaughlin wasn't gonna tell his friends he let his
girlfriend screw around because he couldn't satisfy her. But it's
also equally hard to prove. No one who knew Bill
thought he'd go for an arrangement like that. Bill did
(22:19):
his best to make Nenette happy, that's for sure. There
were endless expensive gifts, luxury vacations, a high dollar monthly allowance.
Bill had maybe learned a painful lesson from trying to
keep a tight hold on sue his ex wife. Nannette
got whatever she wanted. At one point, Bill's daughter told him, Dad,
it is quite obvious she's using you for money.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
I know that.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Bill said he knew it, and he was apparently comfortable
with it for the moment. Anyway, there were reasons Bill
wasn't jumping into marriage or having a kid with Nannette.
She clearly was not his idea of an ever after partner,
but he had no idea that Nanette was by now
looking for an even quicker end to their relationship. Nannette
(23:06):
initially stated the beach house after Bill's death, and soon
after the funeral, the police surveillance team saw an suv
pull up and a big, hugely muscled dude come out.
Nannette's kids greeted him like he was a favorite uncle,
and Nanette, with her supposed fiance still warm in the grave,
basically frenched him out there in front of the house.
(23:29):
His name was Eric Neapowski, and conveniently for the police,
he hadn't bothered to appear in court over a three
hundred and forty three dollars traffic violation, so he had
an outstanding warrant Bang Bang ban who. It was such
a low wattage offense that in the normal run of
things only an extremely bored cop would run it down,
(23:50):
but it meant they could arrest him and interview him.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
True crime books are written around low stakes offenses being
turned into our That is why you only commit one
crime at a time.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
Campers don't get greedy.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
The investigators would have gotten around to Eric anyway. They
interviewed k Ross, Nannette's ex husband, who had also been
at the soccer game on the night of Bill's death,
and he said Nannette had been there with her boyfriend,
a big guy named Eric, not long after Bill died.
Nanette told k Ross, don't tell police that Eric was
with me, because Eric had.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
Nothing to do with this. Not suspicious at all.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Right. K Ross did, of course, tell police everything he
knew as soon as they asked. It's maybe a little unkind,
but not inaccurate to say that Eric Neposki was a big,
dumb idiot, but he did definitely have some talents. He
had a stint in the NFL as a backup linebacker.
(24:51):
But there's a reason people say that NFL stands for
not for long. Eric started getting hurt his ankle, his hand,
and a recurring groin injury. His NFL career spanned five
games off the bench. He then played four injury interrupted
years for the Barcelona Dragons of the World League of
American Football, which is not nothing, but it wasn't the NFL,
(25:14):
and it certainly didn't pay NFL money. Eric had gotten
married when he was at college sophomore after his girlfriend
got pregnant. That's not usually the strongest foundation for a marriage,
and in nineteen ninety one his wife filed for divorce.
Eric showed next to zero interests in the lives of
his two young daughters and had even less interests in
(25:34):
paying child support. He ran away to California in nineteen
ninety three to try and escape more than twenty thousand
dollars in unpaid child support, and found work as a
nightclub bouncer. In January of nineteen ninety four, less than
a year before Bill McLoughlin's death, he started dating a
woman he knew from the gym, Nanette Johnston. Eric could
(25:57):
still afford gym membership and nice clubs and a nice car,
just not child support.
Speaker 4 (26:04):
Isn't that the way? He was working the door at
the Thunderbird nightclub when police arrested him on that traffic warrant.
He'd also been working there the night Bill had been shot,
but that was the opposite of an alibi. The Thunderbird
was just across the Bridge from Balboa Coves. You could
walk there from Bill McLaughlin's front door in less than
(26:27):
a minute. When they searched Eric's car, investigators found a
notebook he used as a journal and planner. My dude
was clearly stressing about his bank account. He wrote, once
you get your ass out of this financial disaster, do
not extend yourself anymore. He also wrote, look into work
(26:48):
positions in Lido. That was the name of the mall
where the Thunderbird nightclub was. Eric had deliberately been looking
for employment close to Bill McLoughlin's house.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
Oh that's creepy.
Speaker 4 (27:00):
He was clearly serious about Nannette writing, get Nnette a ring.
Twenty five hundred dollars so far, And as if Eric
didn't already look suspicious enough, he'd scribbled down the license
plate of Bill's white Mercedes. Eric was one of those
suspects who treat the right to remain silent as a challenge.
(27:21):
He was a talker, a bullshitter, and he clearly had
no clue the police had gone through his car. Nannette,
he said, was just a pretty good friend. Then later
in the interview, he obviously forgot about that and said
he hoped they'd get married soon.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
Bro buddy, Hell, Oh.
Speaker 4 (27:43):
She's the best kind of friend. I guess. He'd never
met Bill McLaughlin never been to Balboa Coves. He'd only
been to the beach house once when he and Annette
first met. Police, in fact, had surveilled him there earlier
that same day. He said that, as far as he knew,
Bill and Annette were just business partners. You know how
(28:04):
businessmen invite their hot younger partners and their two young
kids to live with them in a purely professional capacity, right,
happens every day. Sure, it was kind of a mentor
almost a father daughter type thing. Eric said, you you know,
kind of like a I don't know what you'd call it,
(28:26):
apprentice or someone you know like that or higher stature.
Asked if he owned a gun, Eric said no, and
then later on remember that he'd bought a three eighty
that he mailed to his dad back in New York,
but that was all. Except later, still completely unprompted, he
said he'd bought a nine millimeter Bretta four or five
(28:49):
months ago, but it had been stolen after he'd loaned
it to a friend. Eric hadn't reported the theft because
he'd been hoping the gun would show up. Bretta's are
basically like the animals, and homeward bound Bill find their
way home. Eventually, after this complete train wreck of an interview,
Eric was released, but not before the police had put
(29:11):
a tracking device on his car to help their continued surveillance.
Eric thought it had gone great. He said later that
he'd mind fucked the detectives.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
Eric is like the dog and the meme, sitting at
the table while the room is just in flames around.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
This is fine. Bless his heart.
Speaker 4 (29:33):
Yeah, they were certainly mind fucked with how stupid he was.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (29:39):
Meanwhile, Bill's daughters were kicking Nanette out of the Balboa
Cove's home. They'd never liked her, which I guess is
kind of inevitable when your dad starts dating someone your
own age. But it wasn't just that Nanette was cold
and weird and now she was a suspect in Bill's death,
and it's not like they were throwing her into the street.
Bill's will expressly said she could live rent free in
(30:02):
the beach House for one year after his death, so
she had a fancy place to.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
Go, And that's main contribution to the decorps in Balboa
Coves was a bunch of sexy photos of herself in
skimpy clothes.
Speaker 4 (30:14):
Remember how her personal ad said she was classy. I
am not judging ladies who take badour photos. I'm saying
that having them hung around when guests come over for
tea is maybe not the classiest.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
And like not just one, even like just one would
be kind of cool. Yeah, everywhere huge pictures of Nanette.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
This is wild.
Speaker 4 (30:38):
Just ass everywhere, ass and tits everywhere.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
Yeah, min How could she.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Sit there at like the kitchen table and look her
in the eyes when just to your lift and just
in the periphery of your vision is her giant tits
like right in your face.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
On a poster on the wall.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
No, she took these with her to the beach house,
but she left behind the pictures of her and Bill together.
She also took as much office equipment as she could
cram into the Cadillac, which she helped herself to despite
the will only granting her the much less flashy infinity
in Bill's closet so obviously displayed that it seems clear
(31:17):
she meant for his daughters to find them. She'd left
a pair of red high heels, a red teddy and
a vibrator.
Speaker 4 (31:25):
Oh my god, was this woman written by Larry Flint?
Speaker 3 (31:29):
Yeah? That's like, yeah, letters of Penthouse. She is. She's
a character from.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Like a bad eighties, like kind of soft core porn,
muddy lifetime movie or something. Nanette set up home in
the beach house, where she felt sufficiently liberated to add
some full news to the photo portraits on the walls.
Her kids were living there half the time. Imagine if
(31:56):
they wanted to bring their friends over like the pork.
Investigators soon learned that not long before Bill's death, Nanette
and Eric had been looking at million dollar homes together.
They were clearly expecting to come into a lot of
money soon, But how Eric was at the tail end
of a minor athletic career and had huge debts and
(32:20):
negligible income. Nannette had almost no money solely of her own,
but Bill McLoughlin had a million dollar life insurance policy
with Nanette as the beneficiary. Investigators thought they had the
simple outline of what had happened. Nannette had talked Eric
into killing Bill so the two of them could live
the high life together. A brighter bulb than Eric. Neposki
(32:43):
might have realized that Nanette herself would get rich from
Bill's death and Eric would get nothing but whatever she
wanted to share with them, And sure enough they had
a few.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
Weeks of shopping sprees and.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
Partying, and then Nannette was done with them, just bibe
bibie by. They broke up and Eric scuttled off back
to Connecticut. Before then, though, Eric made a dumb mistake
that would ultimately help put both him and Nanette behind bars.
I know what you're thinking. Wait, Eric till get out
(33:15):
of town. In the summer of nineteen ninety four, Eric
met a good looking blonde at the pool of his
apartment complex. Her name was Suzanne Kogar. Two smoke shows
in swimwear.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
There was a.
Speaker 2 (33:28):
Little spark there, but it was a spark that was
snuffed out on Suzanne's side pretty much as soon as
they started talking. She liked guys who you know, had
a brain in their head, and if Eric nodded too fast,
you could hear the rocks crashing around in there. Still, though,
they became friendly. In November, a month before Bill's death,
Eric came over to Suzanne's apartment to talk. He said
(33:51):
he was getting serious about Nanette and was furious because Bill,
her older, wealthy business partner, had come into Nannette's room
one night and tried to make her have sex with him.
She's living with the guy, Suzanne said, surprised when Eric
explained Ninnette's living arrangements. It was obvious to Suzanne, who
did not have rocks in her head, that Bill and
(34:13):
Nnette were not just living together as business partners. Bill
was the main guy, Eric was the side piece. She
thought this story about Bill trying to force himself on
Nannette might have just been a way to make Eric
feel jealous and protective. What it did was make him angry.
Bill had a pilot's license and his own plane, which
(34:35):
he usually flew every week when he went to Las Vegas.
I'm gonna have him killed, Eric told Suzanne blown away,
I'm gonna have his plane blown up. Suzanne was out
of town visiting family for the holidays when Bill was killed.
When she came back in January, she saw that Eric
had moved out.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
Still oh.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
He came by a couple weeks later to talk to her.
Have you seen any cops around here?
Speaker 3 (34:58):
He said.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
Su Zan had not well if you see any just
don't talk to them. Don't tell him that you know me.
Did you hear that man is dead?
Speaker 3 (35:07):
What man?
Speaker 2 (35:08):
Suzanne said, Bill McLoughlin, the guy that Nanette was living with.
Somebody shot him and he's dead. Suzanne immediately remembered what
Eric had said about blowing up Bill's plane, because you know,
you tend to remember stuff like that. I don't even
want to know if you did it, she said. Eric smirked,
(35:28):
I didn't do it, but I might have had somebody
do it. Suzanne was scared now. She said again, I
don't even want to know. With that same smirk, Eric said,
maybe I did, maybe I didn't. Then he told her
that police had tracked down the freshly cut key stuck
in the front door at balbo Cove's. It had been
made at the Ace Hardware just down the street from
(35:49):
Suzanne's apartment complex. Eric also said the gun that was
used was the same kind of gun that I own,
but they're not going to find it on me because
I don't have it anymore. Scared and creeped out, Suzanne
pretended to agree not to talk to detectives, then just
suddenly got Eric out of there as fast as she could.
Speaker 4 (36:07):
We can't overstate how physically intimidating Eric Neposki was. I mean,
you've seen linebackers. They're the size of refrigerators. And if
he'd killed one person, he could kill Suzanne. She was
too scared to go to the police right away, not
until Eric and Annette broke up and he left town.
But the cops kind of gave her the run around
(36:29):
and didn't take her seriously. She wouldn't make a full
statement until three years later, because why would the cops
want to make it easy on themselves. Most likely Eric
had remembered he'd told Suzanne he wanted Bill dead and
had come over to try to scare her into keeping
her mouth shut. But can also kind of see it
(36:50):
as him trying to impress her with his big macho machonis. Yeah,
like he'd strongly imply he killed the guy and Suzanne
would just go, that's so hot and start tearing her
clothes off. The way Suzanne was treated by authorities is
kind of indicative of the investigation as a whole. It
(37:11):
was a half assed mess, with the Newport Beach PD
and the DA's office getting all snippy with each other
about their respective authority.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Oh my god, I hate it when they do this.
Why aren't you just pissing the corners? Guys, just mark
your territory and be done with it. God Almighty.
Speaker 4 (37:27):
Both the cops and the prosecutors later said they thought
at the time there was enough to charge Nannette and
Eric with murder, and yet somehow no murder charges were filed. Nanette, though,
was tried and convicted of stealing about half a million
dollars from Bill before his death. She got a one
year sentence and had to pay back the money to
Bill's kids because no murder charges had dropped. She'd received
(37:52):
Bill's million dollar life insurance payment, but after legal fees
and restitution, she only had about two hundred thousand dollars left,
which God forbid.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
Right PRIMEI a river.
Speaker 4 (38:05):
That was no problem. She would just go on repeating
the same game until Southern California ran out of rich
horny suckers. Four months out of jail and using the
impenetrable alias a net, she answered a singles ad by
a wealthy real estate developer, John Packard. They got married
ten months later and soon had a daughter together. Nenette's
(38:28):
life with Packard was even more luxurious than with Bill.
She later estimated that basic monthly expenses for her and
her children during this time were thirty seven thousand dollars.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
Sheeez, Louise, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
Just a net, My god, both of the bad guys
in this story are just absolute cabbages.
Speaker 3 (38:50):
A net from Nannette.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
Yeah, that's an uncrackable code.
Speaker 4 (38:57):
Of course, she cheated on this guy too, most notably
with Billy McNeil, who was six years younger than her
and a financial analyst for PepsiCo. He was also married,
but separated from his wife one month after meeting Nannette.
They were soon divorced, and once he found out about
the affair, so were Nannette and John Packard. Nanette and
(39:18):
Billy got engaged in two thousand and five. He bought
her a three carrot diamond ring, but that wasn't enough
for Nannette. Sorry, Annette, She made him buy a few
diamond studded bands to wear on either side of the ring. Now,
that is what they call a red flag Billy.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
When Nannette took Billy home to meet her family, her
siblings had some fun by showing him pictures of Nannette
and her teens in early twenties, when she was short
haired and flat chested. She was very much not flat
chested now, but when Billy asked her if she'd had
enhancement surgery, Nannette intensely insisted, they're real. They're real, They're real.
(40:00):
I apparently wanted to convince herself too. For some reason.
In her closet in whatever house she lived in, Nannette
always kept up a little sparkly poster that said, yes,
they're real, which might be the dweebiest thing I've literally
ever heard of my life.
Speaker 4 (40:18):
God, it's straight out of are you there, God, it's
me Margaret.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
Ye.
Speaker 4 (40:24):
We must, we must, we must increase our bust.
Speaker 3 (40:29):
Like no shade whatsoever forgetting implants.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
Most of the women I've known who've gone him are
proud as hell of look you want to tell you,
you know, like they're proud of those things becose they
cost good money. But Nanette just man, if you, if
you like, insinuated that they were fakes.
Speaker 3 (40:43):
She would get pissed by the way.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
Billy told this story to author Caitlin Rother, whose book
I'll Take Care Of You was our main source for
this episode. Billy and Nannette had a son, Anton. At
the end of two thousand and eight, before he was
six months old, Nanette had been arrested and charged finally
with murder. Eric Naposki was arrested on the same day.
(41:08):
Back in Connecticut, He'd picked up where he left off,
as in, he got married again, had two daughters again,
got divorced again, and didn't pay child support again.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
What a flip and loser.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
A new deputy district attorney, Matt Murphy, had been convinced
that the Bill McLaughlin case could be solved. He had
an investigator look at the case again from top to
bottom and have the evidence all re examined. This included
testing the bullets from the crime scene. Modern forensics were
now able to identify the model of gun. The bullets
had been fired from a Boretta ninety two F. This
(41:44):
was exactly the type of gun Eric Neposki had bought
a few months before the murder, then claimed to have
lost through theft. Suzanne Kogar and other witnesses were re interviewed.
Murphy felt like he had a solid case, a largely
circumstantial case that was very light on physical evidence. But
as we've said many times before, circumstantial does not mean weak.
(42:07):
If you looked at everything together, there was really only
one story that made sense. Nannette and Eric conspired to
murder Bill McLaughlin. Eric Neapowski's trial for first degree murder
started in May twenty twelve. He was convicted and sentenced
to life with no possibility of parole. Nannette's trial started
in September of twenty twelve, by which time Billy McNeil
(42:30):
had become convinced of her guilt and divorced her, being
granted full custody of their son. Nennette was found guilty
of first degree murder and conspiracy, and also sentenced to
life without parole. They're both still loudly declaring their innocence,
with friends and families still believing or pretending to believe them.
(42:50):
It seems to me like just about every relationship in
Annette's life was transactional. Her primary criterion for a partner
was he's rich and he's well, and to spend it
all on me, pretty empty way to live your life.
And after bleeding him as dry as he'd letter, she
repaid Bill McLoughlin's generosity and blood. So that was a
(43:12):
wild one right, campers, you know we'll have another one
for you next week, but for now, lock your doors,
light your lights, and stay safe until we get together
again around the True Crime Campfire. And as always, we
want to send a grateful shout out to a few
of our lovely patrons. Thank you so much to Dale Vielit,
I love that name, Christy and Jordan. We appreciate y'all
(43:34):
to the moon and back. And if you're not yet
a patron, you are missing out. Patrons of our show
get every episode add free, at least today early sometimes more,
plus tons of extra content like patrons only episodes and
hilarious post show discussions. And once you join the five
dollars and up categories, you get even more cool stuff
a free sticker, a rat enamel pin or fridge magnet,
(43:55):
while supplies last virtual events with Katie and me, and
we're always looking for new stuff to do for you,
so if you can, come join us at patreon dot
com slash True Crime Campfire
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