May 16, 2025 • 45 mins
There’s a meme I’ve seen a few times. It says “You never know how toxic something is until you breathe fresher air.” I think it’s about how easy it is to get so completely wrapped up in a relationship, or a group dynamic, or a way of thinking that you stop seeing it for what it is. You become less and less tuned in to what’s normal. This happens a lot when you get two close friends together—two people who might not be likely to do any damage if left to themselves, but who become like fire and gunpowder together. Pushing each other further and further, with neither one willing to flinch. This can get even scarier when the two friends in question are teenagers with huge egos and a fascination with all things dark and edgy.
Join Katie and Whitney, plus the hosts of Last Podcast on the Left, Sinisterhood, and Scared to Death, on the very first CRIMEWAVE true crime cruise! Get your fan code now--tickets go on sale February 7: CrimeWaveatSea.com/CAMPFIRE
Sources:
LA Weekly, "Two Against One," Christine Pelisek. January 8, 2004.
Redlands Daily Facts: https://www.redlandsdailyfacts.com/2023/07/19/high-profile-killer-of-redlands-teen-granted-release-from-prison/
CBS News: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/best-friends-held-in-teens-death/
Court transcripts
LA Times Archives: "Teen's Crush Was Fatal," Lance Pugmire, January 2005
LMN's "I Killed My BFF," S3, E5
Investigation Discovery's "Mean Girl Murders," episode "Goth Girl Gone"
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/
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MERCH! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.com
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.
Join Katie and Whitney, plus the hosts of Last Podcast on the Left, Sinisterhood, and Scared to Death, on the very first CRIMEWAVE true crime cruise! Get your fan code now--tickets go on sale February 7: CrimeWaveatSea.com/CAMPFIRE
Sources:
LA Weekly, "Two Against One," Christine Pelisek. January 8, 2004.
Redlands Daily Facts: https://www.redlandsdailyfacts.com/2023/07/19/high-profile-killer-of-redlands-teen-granted-release-from-prison/
CBS News: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/best-friends-held-in-teens-death/
Court transcripts
LA Times Archives: "Teen's Crush Was Fatal," Lance Pugmire, January 2005
LMN's "I Killed My BFF," S3, E5
Investigation Discovery's "Mean Girl Murders," episode "Goth Girl Gone"
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. Wear 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):
There's a meme I've seen a few times. It says
you never know how toxic something is until you breathe
fresher air. I think it's about how easy it is
to get so completely wrapped up in a relationship or
a group dynamic, or a way of thinking that you
stop seeing it for what it is. You become less
and less tuned in to what's normal. This happens a
(00:41):
lot when you get two close friends together, two people
who might not be likely to do any damage if
left to themselves, but who become like fire and gunpowder together,
pushing each other further and further, with neither one willing
to flinch. This can get even scarier when the two
friends in question are teenagers with huge Eva goes in
a fascination with all things dark and gloomy. This is
(01:04):
your latest when nerds attack ensnared the murder of Kelly Bullwinkle,
So campers for this one. We're in Redlands, California, October fourth,
two thousand and three. It was just after noon when
(01:27):
two men came bursting into the police station. They'd been
playing paintball over near the Santi Mateo Creek, they said,
and they were pretty sure they'd found a body. They
hadn't seen it up super close. It was down an
embankment and partially covered by an old, abandoned couch. Now,
police never really know about a thing like this until
they see it for themselves. People's imaginations can run away
(01:49):
with them. It was possible the men had just seen
a weirdly shaped bundle of clothes or something. One time,
a woman had called nine one one in a panic
about a dying bear in her front eard, and it
turned out to be a faux bear skin rug somebody
had thrown out, and not even a very convincing one, apparently.
So until you get there and see for yourself, you
can't really be sure what you're gonna find. But when
(02:12):
investigators arrived at the foot of that embankment, they quickly
realized this was all too real. The woman had been
buried in a shallow grave and covered with a beat
up orange sofa. She was clothed levi's and a camo
jacket and a blue tank top. She had a little
bag of weed tucked into her waistband. The body looked
like it had been there for a few weeks at least.
(02:35):
Littered around the body were a bunch of random things,
some cassette tape, some broken cell phone gloves, the handle
of a shovel, and most disturbing, the casing from a
twenty five caliber bullet. It was a teenage girl, the
medical examiner soon found, and she'd been shot twice. One
of the shots was just a grazing wound, the kind
(02:57):
of thing that would have needed a bandage but didn't
do any serial damage. But the other shot was deadly
close range, right to the back of the head. It
didn't take long for investigators to make an id. They'd
been working a missing person's case for three weeks now,
the disappearance of eighteen year old college student Kelly Bullwinkle.
(03:18):
Kelly had gone missing on September thirteenth after wrapping up
a shift at Baker's Burgher's and as the days went
by without answers, her friends and family had taken to
the TV news to ask the public for info. Kelly's mom, Diana,
thought her daughter must have been abducted. Through the cameras.
She spoke directly to the person whoever it was that
had taken Kelly from her. Please send her home, she said,
(03:42):
don't hurt her. She's a great kid. There had been
searches where Kelly's loved ones joined dozens of volunteers to
comb the area around a mall where Kelly's car had
been found, but there hadn't been many leads until now.
The news of Kelly's murder hit the town like a meteor.
Kelly had been a light in a lot of people's lives,
(04:02):
and it was hard to accept that that light had
gone out. Kelly was one of those kids who really
did march to the beat of her own drummer. A
lot of kids liked to sink there that way, like, ew,
I'm not one of the cheerleaders. I wear black lipstick.
But they're really just conforming to a different esthetic. Line
up a bunch of high school goss kids and tell
me they don't look like they're in uniform, right. But
(04:26):
Kelly Bullwinkle had her own style. She liked to jerry
rig her own clothes. She'd make a skirt out of
bits and pieces of other clothes, for example, or combine
two jackets into one with safety pins. She dyed her
hair bright red to match her favorite singer, Tory Amos.
I was obsessed with Tory Amos in high school, so
that little detail really tugged at my heart when I
(04:46):
was researching this case. Kelly's way of sort of frankensteining
clothes together to make something unique may have had something
to do with the way she grew up. Her mom
was in the Coastguard, so they'd moved around a lot
over the years, meaning Kelly had to change schools a lot.
Just when she'd start to vibe with a new set
of friends, it would be time to move on again,
(05:07):
and for a while it would just be Kelly, her mom,
their cats and dog, and Kelly's show horse banner. That
shit's hard on a kid, but Kelly learned how to
make it work, how to quilt a life together out
of bits and pieces. She could roll with the punches,
jump into a new school with both feet, and find
her people fast. She was sparkly, outgoing, fun to be around.
(05:30):
People were drawn to her. But underneath the fun, quirky
exterior was a girl who was a little insecure and
had a deep need to be accepted and loved. She
could be a little more naive than most, maybe because
she'd never been around any friend long enough for them
to disappoint her or betray her trust.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
But the friends she'd made in Redlands over the past
couple years were a pretty tight little family. She'd found
people who really loved her there, admired her growing writing talent,
showed interest in her eye ideas, appreciated her fizzy personality.
Redlands is a small town, and at least in the
early odds, it had a very Norman Rockwell vibe, So
(06:11):
Kelly and her friends had an experience that a lot
of us weird folks have in high school, standing out
in ways that make people nervous or uncomfortable.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Yeah, I grew up in a small town and I
remember what that was like. And as much as you're
feeling kind of exhilarated to start breaking out of the
norm and exploring your own identity, it's still a little
bit destabilizing to feel like everybody's staring at you and
making assumptions about you.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Right. So when you meet friends who are all so
different in the same way you are, those friendships can
be really intense, even more than teenage friendships usually are
you finally feel like you belong somewhere, you sort of
cling to each other. It didn't take long for the
weird kids at Redlands East Valley High to notice Kelly Bullwinkle,
(06:56):
and they bonded with her pretty much immediately. Her friend
Rachel later told Ellie Weekly that she and Kelly used
to hide under their desks in class just to mess
with the army kids. Sounds fun, kind of like a
teenage version of a blanket for hell Yeah. Before long,
this little circle of friends became Kelly's universe, and although
(07:18):
she got close to several other girls, the one she
had the closest connection with was Kinsey Nordman. Kinsey was
pretty much the undisputed queen of the weird kids. She
was passionate about her beliefs. She was the one who
started a chapter of p Flag Parents, Families and Friends
of Lesbians and Gays at the high school, and she
(07:38):
didn't back down even when a group of kids staged
a protest against it. Very cool, yeah, even more so
in two thousand and two than it would be now,
I think, oh definitely.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Another time, Kinsey decided the school cafeteria shouldn't be serving meat.
Meat was murder and they were condoning it with every
hot dog they dished up. So she got a bunch
of like minded kids together and coordinated a hunger strike
at school.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Hey boy, Okay, I'm all for p Flag, but quite
a bit less stoked about the hunger strike. Just seems
like a bad look for a bunch of privileged kids
who don't have to worry about where lunch is coming from, right,
I mean, it's great to be vegetarian, Kinzy, Honey. I've
been vegetarian for years at a time. I'm not now,
but I've done it off and on my entire life.
(08:24):
I am all for being vegetarian, but you don't get
to demand that everybody else is.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
I'm sure some people found her insufferable. I mean I do,
but a lot of kids admired her for standing up
for what she believed in. For the record, I find
her insufferable for the vegetarian thing, not the p Flag thing.
Of course, like a hunger strike for.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Very much, isn't it?
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Like, let's all let's all relax a little bit settled down.
Her one time girlfriend and classmate, Heather Hill told Ellie Weekly,
Kinsey was the leader. She always had something interesting to say.
People looked up to her and respected her. Kinsey was
her parents golden girl. They'd adopted her when she was
(09:11):
four days old and she was their only child. Every
year they celebrated her Gotcha Day in addition to her birthday,
and they let her know she was adopted when she
was still really young. They wanted her to know she
was special. They'd chosen her, and they were devoted parents.
Kinsey had pretty much anything and everything she could want,
and for the most part, she was really close with
(09:32):
her mom and dad.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
It wasn't all peaches and cream and Kinsey's family, though
they'd had a few rocky patches over the years. When
Kinsey was a sophomore, she was dating this senior guy
named Marco, and Marco was bad news. Years later, dude
ended up in jail for statutory rape. That kind of
bad news, and one night Kinsey's mom, Deborah, picked up
the phone to make a call and realized Kinsey was
(09:56):
on the phone with Marco. Instead of hanging up the phone,
Deborah decided to give in to the motherly urge to
be nosy and listen in on the call. She very
quickly wished she hadn't. Hey, wouldn't it be cool if
your mom got cancer? Marco said, then we could take
away her medication and she could die.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Oh my god, yeah, so.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Her jaw probably on the floor. Deborah waited for her
daughter to tell Marco to go straight to hell on
the big slide, but instead Kenzie said, yeah, that would
be cool, And it got worse as Marco went on,
wouldn't it be cool if your dad killed himself? He said, yeah,
said Kenzi. Deborah slowly hung up the phone, probably feeling
(10:38):
like she'd been kicked in the stomach. That had to
have been an awkward family dinner that night. But of course,
Kensey was a sophomore in high school at the time
dating an older bad boy type, so it would probably
be pretty tempting for her to play along with whatever
Marco said just to seem cool. And this was definitely
a wrong note in Kenzy's otherwise cool personality. It wasn't
(10:59):
just that she fought for social justice, she was also
the kind of person who would go out of her
way to befriend people who didn't fit in with the crowd.
She cared her friend, Cheryl later told Investigation Discovery she
wanted to make a difference. She met new girl Kelly
Bullwinkle at the p Flag table in the school lobby,
and she liked her right away. Kelly had a big personality,
(11:20):
and she was pretty much an open book to her friends.
If she was in a bad mood, she'd come to
school in all black. If she was happy, she'd be
in rainbow colors and makeup. Kelly was by like Kinzy,
so they bonded over that, and over their taste and
clothes and music, their mutual writing talent and general creativity,
their love of horseback riding and books. That first day,
(11:42):
Kinsey brought Kelly to sit with the other p Flag
kids at lunch, and everybody thought she was great, open
and warm and definitely not boring like most of the
losers at their school. Before long, Kelly considered Kenzie her
best friend, and wherever you found Kinsey, you were also
gonna find the guy she considered her number one bestie
(12:03):
and soulmate, the guy who would soon become the center
of Kelly's world. Damian Guerrero. Yeah, Damien, I know, if
it was a movie, you'd say it was too on
the nose, Like his creepy little namesake in the movie
The Omen, and like many a dork we've covered on
this show before him, Damien very much presented himself as
(12:25):
one of the children of the night. Every single high
school has some version of this kid, the goth slash
punk slash emo guy with the brooding eyes and the
notebook full of terrible poetry, and the clothes, cigarettes and
the floppy hair probably a little bit of music snobbery
thrown in there, lots of cynical commentary about a world
(12:46):
that he's barely dipped his big toe into. Yet if
he ever cracks a smile, it'll be all ry and sarcastic.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
One.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
We all know this guy, and we all know that,
especially if he's easy on the eyes like Damien was,
he tends to be catnip to a certain type of
high school girl. And I was that type of high
school girl. So don't come at me for saying that
little seventeen year old Whitney would have been all over him,
one hundred percent certain. So what else can I tell
(13:16):
you about Damien? He liked to wear white contacts like
Marilyn Manson O spooky. He collected knives and swords, of
course he did. His favorite movie was Natural Born Killers,
because of course it was. He was also a big
Tarantino fan. Music Wise, he liked nine inch nails and tool.
(13:39):
He was a tool. For his yearbook quote one year
in high school, he quoted Samuel Johnson, he who makes
a beast of himself loses the pain of being a man,
and as so many world weary teenagers do. He lived
a comfortable life with his mom and stepdad in a
(14:00):
well to do area of town, and unsurprisingly, Damien was
the undisputed king of the alternative slash goth kids in Redlands.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
Yeah, I can see why. He's almost got the whole
bingo card filled out. The only thing he's missing is
an obsession with vampires and blood letting. And you know,
I don't know that he wasn't in the Vampires. I
just don't know that he was. I wouldn't be surprised
if he took an occasional nip from one of his
(14:32):
little hangers on, just like our boy Rod Farrell.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
I feel like he must have at least tried it.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
You know, yeah, or at least like said he did.
I think he probably carry like some knives. I mean
he had to look at him. He's got he's got
he listen. I mean, Trent Resnor's right there. Bless him.
I love nine inch Nails. I hate to be in
the be in the vicinity. But god, well that's.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
What always galls me about these people because they remind
me so much of myself in school.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
Like I would have totally.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Hung out with these kids, you know, and now I
just realized, like, oh you little doorklings.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
But the but the thing is like when I was
into like nine inch Nails, I wasn't like, you know,
I think Trent Reznor's being very serious right now with
these songs.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
Well, and you probably didn't use lyrics as your book.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
Quoting, no no. I just I just feel like there
are people that are like appreciating the artistry, and there
are people that are like this is real life and
I'm gonna make this my entire personality, right and that
are like I need to buy weapons right now and
figure out how to use them. Like there's there's a
(15:54):
there's a line. It's a thin line, but there's a line,
you know, I.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Feel like it's a thick line to be vers. I
feel like it's a bright neon.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
And this is this is why, Like every time, every
time something happens, they're like, did video games do this? No?
I know, did did Ramstein make fucking you know the
Columbine Killers do this? No, there's something wrong in their brains.
They don't understand metaphors. Okay, so Damien definitely had those
(16:30):
teenage cult leader vibes. He knew how to hold yeah,
he knew how to hold back just enough to stay
dark and mysterious. And the goth kids all fluttered around
him like moths around a light bulb, especially the girls.
Kinsey loved Natural Born Killers just as much as Damien did.
(16:52):
For Christmas, she gave him a replica of the snake
Rings Spree Killers Mickey and Mallory Knox wore in the movie,
one for herself too, so they'd match. And she named
her pets a parrot in a rabbit Mickey and Mallory.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Oh my god, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, little guys.
You deserve so much better than that. What a dork.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
The real question, The real question is is if she
liked Natural Born Killers before or after she knew. Yes,
Damien did, and I can promise you. I promise you.
She did not. I promise you because this is not
a good movie. It's just not. We can argue about
it in the comments campers, but it's not a good movie.
(17:38):
For her yearbook quote one year, she picked the lyrics
from the nine inch nail song the Becoming the me
that you know he had some second thoughts. He's covered
with scabs, he's broken and sore, the me you know,
he doesn't come around much. That part of me isn't
here anymore.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
You know, this bitch reminds me of especially like you're
saying that, you bet she didn't like that movie before
she met Damian. Like, I think you're totally right, and
I just realized who she reminds me of. Freakin' Laura Hall.
Remember her from the Colton Potoniac case, the guy we
called the gosh Father. Laura followed her bad boy crushed
Colton around like a smitten little puppy while he treated
(18:17):
her like a smear of dead cockroach guts on the
bottom of his shoe and basically used her as a
sex doll slash errant girl.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
You are so right.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
Kinsey swore up and down she was not in love
with Damien, that they were just best friends and soulmates.
And I mean again, I guess we have no way
of knowing for sure. They were both dating other people
during all this, several other people in Kenzy's case. But
I gotta say, y'all, I'm calling bullshit on that.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Oh me too. I absolutely think she was in love
with him, or at the very least really possessive of him.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
Damien had a big influence on Kensey since they started
hanging out. When they graduated in two thousand and two,
the kids voted Kinsey most changed. One of her classmates
later said she went from a surfer chick to a goth.
She wore conga shells and was going out with a
guy in track a few months later. She looked like
(19:14):
something out of the crow. I love that comment.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
That is such a like a subtle little burn. I
just love it.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
They don't do superlatives anymore, and I can see why,
because that is not a very nice thing to say.
Most changed is so mean. She also liked to mess
with people, like if she knew you were scheved out
by bugs, she shoved one in your face and laugh.
Oh hell, she liked playing pranks to some of her friends.
(19:47):
It seemed like she craved attention and she didn't really
give a shit if it was good attention or bad.
If the spotlight wasn't on her, she'd always do something
to swing it back her way. And once she started
hang out with Damien, her rebellious streak ramped up. She
started fighting with her parents a lot. Sometimes it seemed
like she and Damien were competing to see who was
(20:10):
the edgiest edge lord in all of edge Selvania and
Kinsey seemed proud of the fact that Damien saw her
as one of the guys.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Oh pick me, pick me, careful, babe, you're gonna pull something.
Reach him for that male validation.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
They spent a lot of time together, despite Damien having
a girlfriend, Elidi. Supposedly, Elidie didn't care that her boyfriend
was spending a metric shit ton of time with another girl,
a girl that Damien had described as his hetero lifemate.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Whatever the hell that means.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
Oh, wouldn't ELDI be your hetero lifemate? Since yeah, you're
in a hetero presenting relationship. It's so weird. I don't know.
I don't miss two thousand and two.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
I puzzled over that for like ten minutes. I kept thinking,
did I.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Did I read that one?
Speaker 2 (21:07):
No, Federal life, mate, I do not understand. What the
hell are you talking about? Hey? Anyway, Once new girl
Kelly Bullwinkle started hanging around with Kinzie and the rest
of the Goth kids, it was pretty much inevitable that
she'd get close to Damien too. Before long they were
the three little Goth Musketeers. It was kind of a chain.
(21:29):
Kinsey idolized Damien and Kelly idolized Kinzie, or at least
she respected her a lot and saw her as a
role model. Kensy and Damien were older than Kelly, by
(22:04):
the way. Kinsey was two years older and Damien was
one year older. But they were a tight little unit
for a while, the three of them. They played around
in the cemetery, which I think is actually required by
law for kids with piercings who like Marilyn Manson and
whose wardrobes consist of at least seventy percent black check
your city ordinances, but I'm pretty sure that's a law.
(22:25):
They went for nature walks in the woods. They watched
movies like Reservoir Dogs and pulp fiction, and of course
their favorite natural Born Killers. They hung out at the
coffee shop and after a while something started sparking between
Damien and Kelly. This was messy. Damien's girlfriend, Elidy was
one of the Goth friend group. She was somebody Kelly
(22:47):
thought of as a friend, but Damien was just too
tempting to resist. Their classmate. Kirsten later told Investigation Discovery
Damien was kind of a spider laying in wait, looking
for a specific type of mule. Kelly knew it was
a dumb idea to get involved with him. She knew
it might throw a gigantic wrench into the well oiled
(23:08):
machinery of their friend group, and she knew it would
probably piss Kenzie off. But she just couldn't resist Damien.
So behind Eledy's back, Kelly and the dark lord of
the lunch room started a torrid affair. Actually, some sources
say Kelly thought Damien and Eldi were on a break
when it started, so as possible she didn't know he
(23:28):
was cheating at first, but either way, this was when
the tide started to turn for the Goth Musketeers. Kinsey
didn't approve of what Kelly and Damien were doing behind
Elledy's back. None of the friends did, and Damien, of
course was the worst. Instead of being honest with Eldy,
Damien took the chicken shit option, fooling around with Kelly
(23:49):
behind her back, whispering all kinds of sweet little nothings
in both girls ears when they were alone, and then
treating Kelly like garbage whenever they were all hanging out together.
I guess he thought if he made fun of Kelly
all the time, it would help hide their little affair
from his real girlfriend, which I don't think would work,
because if I were Eledi, I'd be more suspicious for
(24:10):
him to start constantly teasing this other girl. Why are
you suddenly picking on this girl? I would totally suspect something.
But anyway, I think that's what he thought. And what
made this bullying even worse was that Kinsey started joining in. Kinsey,
who was supposed to be Kelly's best friend in the world,
and at first it wasn't too bad. They just tease
(24:31):
her little barbs that made Kelly feel small, but still
gave Kenzy and Damien plausible deniability if she called him out.
On it. For Kelly, it must have been such a
mind fuck, because when they were alone, Damien could be
so loving and kind. He'd confide in her, tell her
she was beautiful. But then they'd get back around their
friends and he'd turn into a totally different person. Teenage
(24:54):
infatuation can be pretty intense, and soon Kelly was borderline
obsessed with Damien. Not all of her friends knew, at
least not at first. Kelly knew. Most of her friends
weren't fans of Damien. They thought he was a sarcastic
asshole whose ego was way too big for him, and
they'd seen him be intentionally cruel to people. Kelly was
(25:14):
so sweet it seemed like a bad match to them.
The actual relationship between Kelly and Damien only lasted a
few months. Eventually, Damien told her he wanted to focus
on Eledy. Kelly wasn't ready to let go. Her friend
Rachel's take was that Kelly had kind of an obsessive personality.
(25:35):
When she was into something, she gave it her full attention.
She'd get into a movie or a TV show and
want to collect all the merch she could get her
hands on.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
That kind of thing and She brought that same kind
of energy to her infatuation with Damien, calling and emailing
and taking every chance to spend time with him. Damien
treated her like an annoying little mosquito a lot of
the time, but the friend group still hanging out together.
The relationship between Kelly, Kinsey and Damien was getting poisonous
(26:06):
and confusing. When Damien was around, Kinsey would join in
on the bullying, but in private, she still acted like
Kelly's bestie, as all goth kids are contractually obligated to do.
The Redlands crew like to hang out at Denny's at
all hours. Yep yeah, And at one point that spring,
(26:26):
a huge screaming fight broke out between Kelly and Eldy.
Damien dragged Kelly outside and pretty much Redder to filth. Look,
I'm back with Eldie. It's over. Do not fuck this
up for me. Kelly ended up leaving upset. For Kelly's
eighteenth birthday, she and her friend Amy put together a
party with a fun kid's birthday party theme. Paper hats,
(26:49):
party games, cake, and ice cream. Sounds like an absolute blasphemy,
but apparently not to Kinsey and Damien, who showed up
and stood together in one corner of the room the
whole time, rolling their eyes and.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Whispering Happy birthday, Kelly.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
Right, what fucking loser is too cool to enjoy a
birthday party? Good job, guys. It's like there's like teenagers
that just like they're too cool to just enjoy basic things,
Like they're just too cool to enjoy ice cream. That's
literally what it comes down to.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Definitely, like some part of their brain is like, get
some ice cream. What are you doing?
Speaker 3 (27:28):
Like the ice cream? The ice cream will clash with
my Jenco pants.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
Ice cream is ice cream is a tool of the bourgeoisie.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
It's like, man, just has some ice cream. There's no
ethical consumption under capitalism. Just get some fucking just get
some fucking cake.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Man.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
It's fine, play some pin the tail on the donkey.
It's gonna be okay. And shortly before Kelly's graduation in
two thousand and three, things got tense. Kinsey and Damien
had graduated the year before and were now in community college,
but they both went to prom anyway, Damien with Eliti
(28:08):
and Kinsy with Kelly. Eldi was pissed at Kelly and Kinsey,
allegedly because the two girls were trying to talk Damien
into using some cocaine with them, something they'd allegedly been
getting more and more into lately, and she confronted Kelly,
calling her a poser and making fun of her for
copying her style getting her clothes at hot topic like
Eliti always had. Kelly called Eliti a bitch.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Damn in a crowd like that, poser is freaking nuclear.
That's about as bad a burn as you can get.
At least it wasn't my day.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
Yeah, no, it's mine too. I remember that when you're
a sixteen year old goth, someone calling you your commitment
into question feels like the world ending, and I'm like,
I have a job, Please leave me alone and put
the fries in the bag. Also, like Kelly is like
the furthest thing from a poser, she was making her clothes.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Yeah, she was early the one among them who was
the most original and the most truly herself. I think, yeah,
that's the ironic part.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
Yeah. But despite all this barely concealed cruelty from Damien
and Kinsey, Kelly just couldn't bear to give up her
connection to either of them. She kept coming around, and
I think that made little Timu, Bonnie and Clyde feel bolder.
They could put her through pretty much anything and get
away with it. Ooh fun, Let's see how far we
(29:27):
can push her. This is even more bizarre when you
consider that at some point in the midst of all this,
Damien and Kelly started hooking up again, I assume because
he initiated it. Yeah, and interestingly he kept at a
secret from everybody, including had her life mate Kinsey. Our
(29:50):
boy was apparently a very smooth liar, but despite the
fact that he was dating Kelly again, Damien didn't let
up on the bullying when the friends were all out together.
It was worse when Kenzie was there. They seemed to
bring out the meanness in each other. One evening, Damien, Kinsey, Kelly,
and their friend Amy were in Damien's car heading for
(30:12):
the movies when the bullying started again. They were making
fun of Kelly for the movie she wanted to see,
and then they took it to the next level. Kinsey
and Damien started grabbing Kelly's hands and bending her fingers
back as if trying to break them. Kelly yelled out
in pain, but it didn't stop them.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Finally, Damien stopped the car, and he and Kenzy kicked
Kelly and Amy out on the sidewalk and just left
them there, and Amy was just gobsmacked. She looked at
Kelly and said, that is it. I can't do this anymore.
I can't spend any more time with these two, and
Kelly just kind of looked sad and apologetic. She told
Amy she knew it was getting bad, but she felt
(30:52):
like she had to be there, had to keep holding on,
And I mean, like a lot of people in toxic relationships,
Kelly was weighing the good in the bad. They weren't
always like this. Sometimes they still had a lot of
fun together. When they were alone, Damien told her he
wanted to be with her, and the bottom line was
she was still in love with them. But things started
(31:12):
to go south again as Damien and Kinsey egged each
other on to increasing levels of assholary whenever Kelly was around.
That finger bending incident was the beginning of the end
for Kelly. She was getting fed up with Damien's jeckal
and hide bullshit, and she finally decided to do something
about it, as most kids did. In two thousand and three,
the friends spent a lot of time chatting online through
(31:35):
AOL chat remember aw nostalgia. One of Damien's AOL screen
names was necromaniac.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
By the way, a fucking course, it was Dorcass will
Lose her.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Kelly's was stage Pony, which I think is really pretty.
And in August two thousand and three, Kelly took the
gloves off. She logged into her AOL instant messager and
told Eldy about her and Damien in specific detail. I
think Elidy probably suspected before this, but now Kelly just
(32:10):
came out and told her over AOL instant message. I
know you like Damien, Elidi wrote, I know you want
us to break up, but it's not gonna happen. This
stops now. I'd hate to see anything happen to you.
Bye bye. Whoof sounds like a threat to me, right,
But when Kelly told Damien about it, he took Ellidy's side.
(32:31):
You need to stop being in love with me for
the good of everyone, wrote the necromaniac, and that was it.
Damien broke it off with Kelly for good.
Speaker 3 (32:41):
He was furious at her.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Kelly's friend Amy told La Weekly she was upset, but
after a while she was saying who cares about Damien.
He didn't treat her well, and that's one of the
most heart wrenching things to me about this case. Kelly
was almost out. She just to make a new life
for herself without Damien and Kenzie. She'd learned something from
(33:05):
the past year or so, and she'd found the strength
within herself to stand up to her bullies and say
this is toxic. I'm done with this, which takes a
lot of balls. I mean, it really does. She wanted
to concentrate on college, which she was planning on starting
in the fall, and she wanted to focus on her
real friends, but Kenzy and Damien weren't gonna let her
get away. Mickey and Mallory had come to a decision.
(33:29):
Kelly had forgotten her place in their pecking order. She'd
had the nerve to tell on Damien, how dare she
Kelly was gonna die? Kinsey and Damien planned the murder
for several days. They found an isolated orange grove that
they figured would be the perfect place for it, and
they spent a couple hours pre digging a shallow grave
(33:51):
just deal with the creepiness of that, and Damien already
had a gun a present from his brother. It was
a twenty five caliber Raven Arms Model P twenty five.
They knew where they were going to kill Kelly, and
they knew how. Now it was time to set their
plan in motion. Kenzy messaged Kelly like, Hey, I feel
(34:12):
really bad about the way things have been between us lately.
Can we go for a hike and talk about it?
And you know, Kelly still cared about Kenzie. They'd been
best friends until all the Damien stuff started, so maybe
a little bit reluctantly she said sure. They set a
date and time, September thirteenth, and agreed to meet up
(34:33):
at the Orange Grove. When the day came, Kelly pulled
up in her little Mazda and greeted Kenzie as she
got out of the car. I imagine she was smiling
at her friend, happy to be getting together to talk
things out, But then she heard another car approaching. She
turned around to see Damien driving up. Damien was not
supposed to be there. Did her heart drop when she
(34:56):
saw him? Was she scared right away? Or did she hope?
All three of us them we're going to reconcile. We
have no way to know.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
What we know is that Damien fired first, grazing the
side of Kelly's head and sending her falling to the ground,
and the killing shot that was Kinsey's doing. She took
the gun from Damien, walked up to her former best friend,
and fired a single fatal shot. Then she and Damien
(35:24):
dragged Kelly into the shallow grave they'd already dug days earlier.
They covered her as best they could with dirt and leaves,
then pulled in an old, abandoned couch on top of
the makeshift grave. They dumped Kelly's car off at the mall,
and then they went out to dinner in a movie.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
Jesus, Mrri, just imagine being hungry after that and like
wanting to go see a show. I just can't even
imagine how scared Kelly was and how sick she felt
that the weight of that betrayal is just unimaginable.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
These aren't people fit for society. They killed a girl
over MySpace to here drama.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
When Kelly didn't show up for two shifts in a
row at work, and when her friend Amy went to
her house to try and find her and found the
pets all alone, and then cared for everybody knew something
was badly wrong. Kelly wasn't the tight to do a
no call, no show at work, and she would never
leave her animals with no food or water. Her mom, Diana,
was out with a coastguard at the time, but she
(36:21):
came rushing back as soon as she'd learned that her
daughter was missing, and she was missing for three weeks,
during which time people posted missing posters all over town,
gave interviews to the TV news stations, cried and prayed
and worried Diana especially, and all the while, Kinsey stuck
close to Kelly's mom, consoling her, helping her put up
(36:44):
the flyers, telling her it was going to be okay.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
I hate this girl so much. She also painted some
Tory Amos lyrics on poster board and helped set up
a memorial at the Orange Grove where they killed Kelly
after her body was found in Everyone but he knew
it was a homicide.
Speaker 3 (37:02):
But as billy badasses Damien and Kinsey thought they were,
they did not handle being murderers very well. The stress
was getting to both of them. At one point, Damien
got into a big argument with Led at her house,
and he flipped out right in front of her mom
sobbing and screaming and punching their garage door.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
Oh you all right there, buddy, could possibly be the matter.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
And I know this is going to shock you because
we thought their soul materie would be eternal. But Damien
Kinsey were starting to get on each other's herves. Damien
Damien seemed to be avoiding Kinsey, and Kinsey was pissed
about it. She was having noticeable mood swings in front
of her friends. As you might imagine, it didn't take
(37:47):
long for police to zero in on led Kinsey and
Damien as possible suspects and the murder. All their friends
had plenty to tell the cops about the drama that
had been unfolding between them for the past.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
Year or so.
Speaker 3 (37:59):
They they were able to rule Eledy out pretty quickly,
and that just left the other two. They found out
that Kenzy and Damien had been together on the day
of the murder. This raised their eyebrows, and they rose
even higher when they took a look at their instant
messages and realized that Kelly and Kinsey had plans to
meet up that evening for a hike guess where.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
So they hauled KINSI in for questioning, and I know
you're going to be stunned to hear this from such
a cool criminal mastermind. Kenzy cracked like an egg at
the first sign of pressure. We did it, she said,
But it was an accident. It was just supposed to
be a practical joke. We were just going to take
out the gun and scare her. But then Damien accidentally
shot her and she was writhing around in pain, and
(38:44):
I just shot her to put her out of her misery. Now,
obviously the detectives did not buy this bullshit. Why would
you predig a grave just to play a practical joke?
In that a bit much? And if you just accidentally
shot one of your best friends, wouldn't you like nine
one one or something. Wouldn't you at least be too
upset to go straight to the mall for a snack.
(39:07):
Now that they had a confession sort of, they needed
to go lean on Damien too, And you will love this.
When they knocked on his parents' door to question him
and told him Kenzie had just confessed, he said, I
do not want to answer any questions, and I am
going to get up and walk into the house and
take a nap like a little Roman emperor waving them away.
(39:30):
Good luck with that, Bubba. They arrested him a few
days later at the movies. He was watching Matrix Revolutions.
I know it's so appropriate, isn't it. I'm sure he
thinks he's the one as well, just like Neo. Kinzi
went on trial in two thousand and five, and the
(39:50):
jury didn't buy her it was supposed to be a
joke defense. She was convicted of first degree murder and
sentenced to forty five years to life in prison, with
no no consideration for parole until she'd served forty four
of those years. At her sentencing, Kinsey reiterated her claim
that the murder was just an accident, a prank on sideways,
(40:11):
and said she'd never meant to hurt Kelly. She called
the murder a bad decision. Yeah. Damien unfortunately got much luckier,
with his first jury deadlocking on the first degree murder charge.
The deadlock was eleven to one in favor of conviction,
which just ah kills me and I can't imagine how
(40:32):
it deadlocked in the first place. Like, in addition to
everything else, they found bullet casings in Damien's backyard where
he liked to do target practice that perfectly matched the
casings at the crime scene. I mean, what do you want?
That is nice heart evidence? But whatever. To avoid a retrial,
Damien took a plea deal second degree murder in exchange
(40:52):
for a sentence of fifteen to life, not even close
to enough, in my opinion. I can imagine that really
hurt Kelly's loved ones, as if they hadn't been hurt
enough already. This case is a little more complicated than
it's been made out to be. I think the prevailing
theory is that Kenzy and Damien killed Kelly because she
told Eldi her boyfriend was cheating on her. And I'm
(41:14):
sure that's partly true, but I feel equally sure that
this murder wasn't just about that. I think these two
had been pushing each other's limits for months now, enjoying
taking their abuse of Kelly to the next level, and
the next level and the next. I think this was
part revenge, part thrill kill, and for Kenzy, I think
(41:34):
killing Kelly was a way of cementing her bond with
soulmate Damien. Forever Eldi and Kelly might get to sleep
with them, but now she'd have this huge secret connection
with them for the rest of their lives. Mickey and
Mallory Knox soul mates. Girl, Please, what soul you talking about?
I also think she was jealous of Kelly, jealous that
(41:55):
she had a secret with Damien, Like, how dare he
keep a secret like this from her? They were supposed
to be best friends. One of Kelly's friends, Rachel Schneider,
has been on a couple of TV shows about the case.
On one, she said, I think this story is about
kids who don't know how to handle their emotions and
their circumstances and get carried away in some sort of
(42:15):
fantasy world. From the outside, it was really easy to
see that there was something not completely right, But from
the inside it was hard to see that there was
something off about it, which is really a great way
to describe an abusive relationship. Rachel got a tattoo to
memorialize her friends so she would never forget Kelly or
the lessons her murder has to teach us. And one
(42:38):
final ps to this story. Damian Guerrero was released from
prison on parole in twenty twenty three, much to the
dismay of the prosecutors and to Kelly's friends and family.
They argued that he'd never taken real responsibility for the murder,
instead trying to blame the goth scene, violent movies, lack
of parental attention, pretty much anything but Damien. And when
(43:01):
I searched his name to see if there was any
info on what he's up to now, I found a
TikTok from a user who calls herself Latin Barb. Her
TikTok account is dedicated to warning people about scary people
on dating apps, like if a bunch of women have
a scary experience with the same guy, she'll tell you
about him and advise you to keep away from him.
And guess who recently popped up in one of her tiktoks. Yeah,
(43:26):
mister Damian Guerrero, still looking irritatingly handsome and using an alias,
presumably to prevent women from looking him up and finding
out he's a frickin murderer. So be careful out there, ladies,
and look, if you have friends like Kenzy and Damien,
especially if you're a teenager and you have friends like this,
(43:46):
the problem is not you, okay, and you're not going
to get any metals for putting up with their toxic bullshit.
Bullying is a tactic of small, angry little minds. Be
better than that. You are better than that, So get
the hell out of their baby go live your best life.
So that was a wild one, right, campers. You know
(44:08):
we'll have another one for you next week, but for now,
lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until
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Me plus last podcast on the Left, Scared to Death
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(44:30):
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want to send a grateful shout out to a few
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(44:50):
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Hello, campers, Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true
crime campfire. Wear 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):
There's a meme I've seen a few times. It says
you never know how toxic something is until you breathe
fresher air. I think it's about how easy it is
to get so completely wrapped up in a relationship or
a group dynamic, or a way of thinking that you
stop seeing it for what it is. You become less
and less tuned in to what's normal. This happens a
(00:41):
lot when you get two close friends together, two people
who might not be likely to do any damage if
left to themselves, but who become like fire and gunpowder together,
pushing each other further and further, with neither one willing
to flinch. This can get even scarier when the two
friends in question are teenagers with huge Eva goes in
a fascination with all things dark and gloomy. This is
(01:04):
your latest when nerds attack ensnared the murder of Kelly Bullwinkle,
So campers for this one. We're in Redlands, California, October fourth,
two thousand and three. It was just after noon when
(01:27):
two men came bursting into the police station. They'd been
playing paintball over near the Santi Mateo Creek, they said,
and they were pretty sure they'd found a body. They
hadn't seen it up super close. It was down an
embankment and partially covered by an old, abandoned couch. Now,
police never really know about a thing like this until
they see it for themselves. People's imaginations can run away
(01:49):
with them. It was possible the men had just seen
a weirdly shaped bundle of clothes or something. One time,
a woman had called nine one one in a panic
about a dying bear in her front eard, and it
turned out to be a faux bear skin rug somebody
had thrown out, and not even a very convincing one, apparently.
So until you get there and see for yourself, you
can't really be sure what you're gonna find. But when
(02:12):
investigators arrived at the foot of that embankment, they quickly
realized this was all too real. The woman had been
buried in a shallow grave and covered with a beat
up orange sofa. She was clothed levi's and a camo
jacket and a blue tank top. She had a little
bag of weed tucked into her waistband. The body looked
like it had been there for a few weeks at least.
(02:35):
Littered around the body were a bunch of random things,
some cassette tape, some broken cell phone gloves, the handle
of a shovel, and most disturbing, the casing from a
twenty five caliber bullet. It was a teenage girl, the
medical examiner soon found, and she'd been shot twice. One
of the shots was just a grazing wound, the kind
(02:57):
of thing that would have needed a bandage but didn't
do any serial damage. But the other shot was deadly
close range, right to the back of the head. It
didn't take long for investigators to make an id. They'd
been working a missing person's case for three weeks now,
the disappearance of eighteen year old college student Kelly Bullwinkle.
(03:18):
Kelly had gone missing on September thirteenth after wrapping up
a shift at Baker's Burgher's and as the days went
by without answers, her friends and family had taken to
the TV news to ask the public for info. Kelly's mom, Diana,
thought her daughter must have been abducted. Through the cameras.
She spoke directly to the person whoever it was that
had taken Kelly from her. Please send her home, she said,
(03:42):
don't hurt her. She's a great kid. There had been
searches where Kelly's loved ones joined dozens of volunteers to
comb the area around a mall where Kelly's car had
been found, but there hadn't been many leads until now.
The news of Kelly's murder hit the town like a meteor.
Kelly had been a light in a lot of people's lives,
(04:02):
and it was hard to accept that that light had
gone out. Kelly was one of those kids who really
did march to the beat of her own drummer. A
lot of kids liked to sink there that way, like, ew,
I'm not one of the cheerleaders. I wear black lipstick.
But they're really just conforming to a different esthetic. Line
up a bunch of high school goss kids and tell
me they don't look like they're in uniform, right. But
(04:26):
Kelly Bullwinkle had her own style. She liked to jerry
rig her own clothes. She'd make a skirt out of
bits and pieces of other clothes, for example, or combine
two jackets into one with safety pins. She dyed her
hair bright red to match her favorite singer, Tory Amos.
I was obsessed with Tory Amos in high school, so
that little detail really tugged at my heart when I
(04:46):
was researching this case. Kelly's way of sort of frankensteining
clothes together to make something unique may have had something
to do with the way she grew up. Her mom
was in the Coastguard, so they'd moved around a lot
over the years, meaning Kelly had to change schools a lot.
Just when she'd start to vibe with a new set
of friends, it would be time to move on again,
(05:07):
and for a while it would just be Kelly, her mom,
their cats and dog, and Kelly's show horse banner. That
shit's hard on a kid, but Kelly learned how to
make it work, how to quilt a life together out
of bits and pieces. She could roll with the punches,
jump into a new school with both feet, and find
her people fast. She was sparkly, outgoing, fun to be around.
(05:30):
People were drawn to her. But underneath the fun, quirky
exterior was a girl who was a little insecure and
had a deep need to be accepted and loved. She
could be a little more naive than most, maybe because
she'd never been around any friend long enough for them
to disappoint her or betray her trust.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
But the friends she'd made in Redlands over the past
couple years were a pretty tight little family. She'd found
people who really loved her there, admired her growing writing talent,
showed interest in her eye ideas, appreciated her fizzy personality.
Redlands is a small town, and at least in the
early odds, it had a very Norman Rockwell vibe, So
(06:11):
Kelly and her friends had an experience that a lot
of us weird folks have in high school, standing out
in ways that make people nervous or uncomfortable.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Yeah, I grew up in a small town and I
remember what that was like. And as much as you're
feeling kind of exhilarated to start breaking out of the
norm and exploring your own identity, it's still a little
bit destabilizing to feel like everybody's staring at you and
making assumptions about you.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Right. So when you meet friends who are all so
different in the same way you are, those friendships can
be really intense, even more than teenage friendships usually are
you finally feel like you belong somewhere, you sort of
cling to each other. It didn't take long for the
weird kids at Redlands East Valley High to notice Kelly Bullwinkle,
(06:56):
and they bonded with her pretty much immediately. Her friend
Rachel later told Ellie Weekly that she and Kelly used
to hide under their desks in class just to mess
with the army kids. Sounds fun, kind of like a
teenage version of a blanket for hell Yeah. Before long,
this little circle of friends became Kelly's universe, and although
(07:18):
she got close to several other girls, the one she
had the closest connection with was Kinsey Nordman. Kinsey was
pretty much the undisputed queen of the weird kids. She
was passionate about her beliefs. She was the one who
started a chapter of p Flag Parents, Families and Friends
of Lesbians and Gays at the high school, and she
(07:38):
didn't back down even when a group of kids staged
a protest against it. Very cool, yeah, even more so
in two thousand and two than it would be now,
I think, oh definitely.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Another time, Kinsey decided the school cafeteria shouldn't be serving meat.
Meat was murder and they were condoning it with every
hot dog they dished up. So she got a bunch
of like minded kids together and coordinated a hunger strike
at school.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Hey boy, Okay, I'm all for p Flag, but quite
a bit less stoked about the hunger strike. Just seems
like a bad look for a bunch of privileged kids
who don't have to worry about where lunch is coming from, right,
I mean, it's great to be vegetarian, Kinzy, Honey. I've
been vegetarian for years at a time. I'm not now,
but I've done it off and on my entire life.
(08:24):
I am all for being vegetarian, but you don't get
to demand that everybody else is.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
I'm sure some people found her insufferable. I mean I do,
but a lot of kids admired her for standing up
for what she believed in. For the record, I find
her insufferable for the vegetarian thing, not the p Flag thing.
Of course, like a hunger strike for.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Very much, isn't it?
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Like, let's all let's all relax a little bit settled down.
Her one time girlfriend and classmate, Heather Hill told Ellie Weekly,
Kinsey was the leader. She always had something interesting to say.
People looked up to her and respected her. Kinsey was
her parents golden girl. They'd adopted her when she was
(09:11):
four days old and she was their only child. Every
year they celebrated her Gotcha Day in addition to her birthday,
and they let her know she was adopted when she
was still really young. They wanted her to know she
was special. They'd chosen her, and they were devoted parents.
Kinsey had pretty much anything and everything she could want,
and for the most part, she was really close with
(09:32):
her mom and dad.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
It wasn't all peaches and cream and Kinsey's family, though
they'd had a few rocky patches over the years. When
Kinsey was a sophomore, she was dating this senior guy
named Marco, and Marco was bad news. Years later, dude
ended up in jail for statutory rape. That kind of
bad news, and one night Kinsey's mom, Deborah, picked up
the phone to make a call and realized Kinsey was
(09:56):
on the phone with Marco. Instead of hanging up the phone,
Deborah decided to give in to the motherly urge to
be nosy and listen in on the call. She very
quickly wished she hadn't. Hey, wouldn't it be cool if
your mom got cancer? Marco said, then we could take
away her medication and she could die.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Oh my god, yeah, so.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Her jaw probably on the floor. Deborah waited for her
daughter to tell Marco to go straight to hell on
the big slide, but instead Kenzie said, yeah, that would
be cool, And it got worse as Marco went on,
wouldn't it be cool if your dad killed himself? He said, yeah,
said Kenzi. Deborah slowly hung up the phone, probably feeling
(10:38):
like she'd been kicked in the stomach. That had to
have been an awkward family dinner that night. But of course,
Kensey was a sophomore in high school at the time
dating an older bad boy type, so it would probably
be pretty tempting for her to play along with whatever
Marco said just to seem cool. And this was definitely
a wrong note in Kenzy's otherwise cool personality. It wasn't
(10:59):
just that she fought for social justice, she was also
the kind of person who would go out of her
way to befriend people who didn't fit in with the crowd.
She cared her friend, Cheryl later told Investigation Discovery she
wanted to make a difference. She met new girl Kelly
Bullwinkle at the p Flag table in the school lobby,
and she liked her right away. Kelly had a big personality,
(11:20):
and she was pretty much an open book to her friends.
If she was in a bad mood, she'd come to
school in all black. If she was happy, she'd be
in rainbow colors and makeup. Kelly was by like Kinzy,
so they bonded over that, and over their taste and
clothes and music, their mutual writing talent and general creativity,
their love of horseback riding and books. That first day,
(11:42):
Kinsey brought Kelly to sit with the other p Flag
kids at lunch, and everybody thought she was great, open
and warm and definitely not boring like most of the
losers at their school. Before long, Kelly considered Kenzie her
best friend, and wherever you found Kinsey, you were also
gonna find the guy she considered her number one bestie
(12:03):
and soulmate, the guy who would soon become the center
of Kelly's world. Damian Guerrero. Yeah, Damien, I know, if
it was a movie, you'd say it was too on
the nose, Like his creepy little namesake in the movie
The Omen, and like many a dork we've covered on
this show before him, Damien very much presented himself as
(12:25):
one of the children of the night. Every single high
school has some version of this kid, the goth slash
punk slash emo guy with the brooding eyes and the
notebook full of terrible poetry, and the clothes, cigarettes and
the floppy hair probably a little bit of music snobbery
thrown in there, lots of cynical commentary about a world
(12:46):
that he's barely dipped his big toe into. Yet if
he ever cracks a smile, it'll be all ry and sarcastic.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
One.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
We all know this guy, and we all know that,
especially if he's easy on the eyes like Damien was,
he tends to be catnip to a certain type of
high school girl. And I was that type of high
school girl. So don't come at me for saying that
little seventeen year old Whitney would have been all over him,
one hundred percent certain. So what else can I tell
(13:16):
you about Damien? He liked to wear white contacts like
Marilyn Manson O spooky. He collected knives and swords, of
course he did. His favorite movie was Natural Born Killers,
because of course it was. He was also a big
Tarantino fan. Music Wise, he liked nine inch nails and tool.
(13:39):
He was a tool. For his yearbook quote one year
in high school, he quoted Samuel Johnson, he who makes
a beast of himself loses the pain of being a man,
and as so many world weary teenagers do. He lived
a comfortable life with his mom and stepdad in a
(14:00):
well to do area of town, and unsurprisingly, Damien was
the undisputed king of the alternative slash goth kids in Redlands.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
Yeah, I can see why. He's almost got the whole
bingo card filled out. The only thing he's missing is
an obsession with vampires and blood letting. And you know,
I don't know that he wasn't in the Vampires. I
just don't know that he was. I wouldn't be surprised
if he took an occasional nip from one of his
(14:32):
little hangers on, just like our boy Rod Farrell.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
I feel like he must have at least tried it.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
You know, yeah, or at least like said he did.
I think he probably carry like some knives. I mean
he had to look at him. He's got he's got
he listen. I mean, Trent Resnor's right there. Bless him.
I love nine inch Nails. I hate to be in
the be in the vicinity. But god, well that's.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
What always galls me about these people because they remind
me so much of myself in school.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
Like I would have totally.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Hung out with these kids, you know, and now I
just realized, like, oh you little doorklings.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
But the but the thing is like when I was
into like nine inch Nails, I wasn't like, you know,
I think Trent Reznor's being very serious right now with
these songs.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
Well, and you probably didn't use lyrics as your book.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
Quoting, no no. I just I just feel like there
are people that are like appreciating the artistry, and there
are people that are like this is real life and
I'm gonna make this my entire personality, right and that
are like I need to buy weapons right now and
figure out how to use them. Like there's there's a
(15:54):
there's a line. It's a thin line, but there's a line,
you know, I.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Feel like it's a thick line to be vers. I
feel like it's a bright neon.
Speaker 3 (16:03):
And this is this is why, Like every time, every
time something happens, they're like, did video games do this? No?
I know, did did Ramstein make fucking you know the
Columbine Killers do this? No, there's something wrong in their brains.
They don't understand metaphors. Okay, so Damien definitely had those
(16:30):
teenage cult leader vibes. He knew how to hold yeah,
he knew how to hold back just enough to stay
dark and mysterious. And the goth kids all fluttered around
him like moths around a light bulb, especially the girls.
Kinsey loved Natural Born Killers just as much as Damien did.
(16:52):
For Christmas, she gave him a replica of the snake
Rings Spree Killers Mickey and Mallory Knox wore in the movie,
one for herself too, so they'd match. And she named
her pets a parrot in a rabbit Mickey and Mallory.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Oh my god, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, little guys.
You deserve so much better than that. What a dork.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
The real question, The real question is is if she
liked Natural Born Killers before or after she knew. Yes,
Damien did, and I can promise you. I promise you.
She did not. I promise you because this is not
a good movie. It's just not. We can argue about
it in the comments campers, but it's not a good movie.
(17:38):
For her yearbook quote one year, she picked the lyrics
from the nine inch nail song the Becoming the me
that you know he had some second thoughts. He's covered
with scabs, he's broken and sore, the me you know,
he doesn't come around much. That part of me isn't
here anymore.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
You know, this bitch reminds me of especially like you're
saying that, you bet she didn't like that movie before
she met Damian. Like, I think you're totally right, and
I just realized who she reminds me of. Freakin' Laura Hall.
Remember her from the Colton Potoniac case, the guy we
called the gosh Father. Laura followed her bad boy crushed
Colton around like a smitten little puppy while he treated
(18:17):
her like a smear of dead cockroach guts on the
bottom of his shoe and basically used her as a
sex doll slash errant girl.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
You are so right.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
Kinsey swore up and down she was not in love
with Damien, that they were just best friends and soulmates.
And I mean again, I guess we have no way
of knowing for sure. They were both dating other people
during all this, several other people in Kenzy's case. But
I gotta say, y'all, I'm calling bullshit on that.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Oh me too. I absolutely think she was in love
with him, or at the very least really possessive of him.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
Damien had a big influence on Kensey since they started
hanging out. When they graduated in two thousand and two,
the kids voted Kinsey most changed. One of her classmates
later said she went from a surfer chick to a goth.
She wore conga shells and was going out with a
guy in track a few months later. She looked like
(19:14):
something out of the crow. I love that comment.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
That is such a like a subtle little burn. I
just love it.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
They don't do superlatives anymore, and I can see why,
because that is not a very nice thing to say.
Most changed is so mean. She also liked to mess
with people, like if she knew you were scheved out
by bugs, she shoved one in your face and laugh.
Oh hell, she liked playing pranks to some of her friends.
(19:47):
It seemed like she craved attention and she didn't really
give a shit if it was good attention or bad.
If the spotlight wasn't on her, she'd always do something
to swing it back her way. And once she started
hang out with Damien, her rebellious streak ramped up. She
started fighting with her parents a lot. Sometimes it seemed
like she and Damien were competing to see who was
(20:10):
the edgiest edge lord in all of edge Selvania and
Kinsey seemed proud of the fact that Damien saw her
as one of the guys.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
Oh pick me, pick me, careful, babe, you're gonna pull something.
Reach him for that male validation.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
They spent a lot of time together, despite Damien having
a girlfriend, Elidi. Supposedly, Elidie didn't care that her boyfriend
was spending a metric shit ton of time with another girl,
a girl that Damien had described as his hetero lifemate.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Whatever the hell that means.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
Oh, wouldn't ELDI be your hetero lifemate? Since yeah, you're
in a hetero presenting relationship. It's so weird. I don't know.
I don't miss two thousand and two.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
I puzzled over that for like ten minutes. I kept thinking,
did I.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Did I read that one?
Speaker 2 (21:07):
No, Federal life, mate, I do not understand. What the
hell are you talking about? Hey? Anyway, Once new girl
Kelly Bullwinkle started hanging around with Kinzie and the rest
of the Goth kids, it was pretty much inevitable that
she'd get close to Damien too. Before long they were
the three little Goth Musketeers. It was kind of a chain.
(21:29):
Kinsey idolized Damien and Kelly idolized Kinzie, or at least
she respected her a lot and saw her as a
role model. Kensy and Damien were older than Kelly, by
(22:04):
the way. Kinsey was two years older and Damien was
one year older. But they were a tight little unit
for a while, the three of them. They played around
in the cemetery, which I think is actually required by
law for kids with piercings who like Marilyn Manson and
whose wardrobes consist of at least seventy percent black check
your city ordinances, but I'm pretty sure that's a law.
(22:25):
They went for nature walks in the woods. They watched
movies like Reservoir Dogs and pulp fiction, and of course
their favorite natural Born Killers. They hung out at the
coffee shop and after a while something started sparking between
Damien and Kelly. This was messy. Damien's girlfriend, Elidy was
one of the Goth friend group. She was somebody Kelly
(22:47):
thought of as a friend, but Damien was just too
tempting to resist. Their classmate. Kirsten later told Investigation Discovery
Damien was kind of a spider laying in wait, looking
for a specific type of mule. Kelly knew it was
a dumb idea to get involved with him. She knew
it might throw a gigantic wrench into the well oiled
(23:08):
machinery of their friend group, and she knew it would
probably piss Kenzie off. But she just couldn't resist Damien.
So behind Eledy's back, Kelly and the dark lord of
the lunch room started a torrid affair. Actually, some sources
say Kelly thought Damien and Eldi were on a break
when it started, so as possible she didn't know he
(23:28):
was cheating at first, but either way, this was when
the tide started to turn for the Goth Musketeers. Kinsey
didn't approve of what Kelly and Damien were doing behind
Elledy's back. None of the friends did, and Damien, of
course was the worst. Instead of being honest with Eldy,
Damien took the chicken shit option, fooling around with Kelly
(23:49):
behind her back, whispering all kinds of sweet little nothings
in both girls ears when they were alone, and then
treating Kelly like garbage whenever they were all hanging out together.
I guess he thought if he made fun of Kelly
all the time, it would help hide their little affair
from his real girlfriend, which I don't think would work,
because if I were Eledi, I'd be more suspicious for
(24:10):
him to start constantly teasing this other girl. Why are
you suddenly picking on this girl? I would totally suspect something.
But anyway, I think that's what he thought. And what
made this bullying even worse was that Kinsey started joining in. Kinsey,
who was supposed to be Kelly's best friend in the world,
and at first it wasn't too bad. They just tease
(24:31):
her little barbs that made Kelly feel small, but still
gave Kenzy and Damien plausible deniability if she called him out.
On it. For Kelly, it must have been such a
mind fuck, because when they were alone, Damien could be
so loving and kind. He'd confide in her, tell her
she was beautiful. But then they'd get back around their
friends and he'd turn into a totally different person. Teenage
(24:54):
infatuation can be pretty intense, and soon Kelly was borderline
obsessed with Damien. Not all of her friends knew, at
least not at first. Kelly knew. Most of her friends
weren't fans of Damien. They thought he was a sarcastic
asshole whose ego was way too big for him, and
they'd seen him be intentionally cruel to people. Kelly was
(25:14):
so sweet it seemed like a bad match to them.
The actual relationship between Kelly and Damien only lasted a
few months. Eventually, Damien told her he wanted to focus
on Eledy. Kelly wasn't ready to let go. Her friend
Rachel's take was that Kelly had kind of an obsessive personality.
(25:35):
When she was into something, she gave it her full attention.
She'd get into a movie or a TV show and
want to collect all the merch she could get her
hands on.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
That kind of thing and She brought that same kind
of energy to her infatuation with Damien, calling and emailing
and taking every chance to spend time with him. Damien
treated her like an annoying little mosquito a lot of
the time, but the friend group still hanging out together.
The relationship between Kelly, Kinsey and Damien was getting poisonous
(26:06):
and confusing. When Damien was around, Kinsey would join in
on the bullying, but in private, she still acted like
Kelly's bestie, as all goth kids are contractually obligated to do.
The Redlands crew like to hang out at Denny's at
all hours. Yep yeah, And at one point that spring,
(26:26):
a huge screaming fight broke out between Kelly and Eldy.
Damien dragged Kelly outside and pretty much Redder to filth. Look,
I'm back with Eldie. It's over. Do not fuck this
up for me. Kelly ended up leaving upset. For Kelly's
eighteenth birthday, she and her friend Amy put together a
party with a fun kid's birthday party theme. Paper hats,
(26:49):
party games, cake, and ice cream. Sounds like an absolute blasphemy,
but apparently not to Kinsey and Damien, who showed up
and stood together in one corner of the room the
whole time, rolling their eyes and.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Whispering Happy birthday, Kelly.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
Right, what fucking loser is too cool to enjoy a
birthday party? Good job, guys. It's like there's like teenagers
that just like they're too cool to just enjoy basic things,
Like they're just too cool to enjoy ice cream. That's
literally what it comes down to.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
Definitely, like some part of their brain is like, get
some ice cream. What are you doing?
Speaker 3 (27:28):
Like the ice cream? The ice cream will clash with
my Jenco pants.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
Ice cream is ice cream is a tool of the bourgeoisie.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
It's like, man, just has some ice cream. There's no
ethical consumption under capitalism. Just get some fucking just get
some fucking cake.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Man.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
It's fine, play some pin the tail on the donkey.
It's gonna be okay. And shortly before Kelly's graduation in
two thousand and three, things got tense. Kinsey and Damien
had graduated the year before and were now in community college,
but they both went to prom anyway, Damien with Eliti
(28:08):
and Kinsy with Kelly. Eldi was pissed at Kelly and Kinsey,
allegedly because the two girls were trying to talk Damien
into using some cocaine with them, something they'd allegedly been
getting more and more into lately, and she confronted Kelly,
calling her a poser and making fun of her for
copying her style getting her clothes at hot topic like
Eliti always had. Kelly called Eliti a bitch.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Damn in a crowd like that, poser is freaking nuclear.
That's about as bad a burn as you can get.
At least it wasn't my day.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
Yeah, no, it's mine too. I remember that when you're
a sixteen year old goth, someone calling you your commitment
into question feels like the world ending, and I'm like,
I have a job, Please leave me alone and put
the fries in the bag. Also, like Kelly is like
the furthest thing from a poser, she was making her clothes.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Yeah, she was early the one among them who was
the most original and the most truly herself. I think, yeah,
that's the ironic part.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
Yeah. But despite all this barely concealed cruelty from Damien
and Kinsey, Kelly just couldn't bear to give up her
connection to either of them. She kept coming around, and
I think that made little Timu, Bonnie and Clyde feel bolder.
They could put her through pretty much anything and get
away with it. Ooh fun, Let's see how far we
(29:27):
can push her. This is even more bizarre when you
consider that at some point in the midst of all this,
Damien and Kelly started hooking up again, I assume because
he initiated it. Yeah, and interestingly he kept at a
secret from everybody, including had her life mate Kinsey. Our
(29:50):
boy was apparently a very smooth liar, but despite the
fact that he was dating Kelly again, Damien didn't let
up on the bullying when the friends were all out together.
It was worse when Kenzie was there. They seemed to
bring out the meanness in each other. One evening, Damien, Kinsey, Kelly,
and their friend Amy were in Damien's car heading for
(30:12):
the movies when the bullying started again. They were making
fun of Kelly for the movie she wanted to see,
and then they took it to the next level. Kinsey
and Damien started grabbing Kelly's hands and bending her fingers
back as if trying to break them. Kelly yelled out
in pain, but it didn't stop them.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Finally, Damien stopped the car, and he and Kenzy kicked
Kelly and Amy out on the sidewalk and just left
them there, and Amy was just gobsmacked. She looked at
Kelly and said, that is it. I can't do this anymore.
I can't spend any more time with these two, and
Kelly just kind of looked sad and apologetic. She told
Amy she knew it was getting bad, but she felt
(30:52):
like she had to be there, had to keep holding on,
And I mean, like a lot of people in toxic relationships,
Kelly was weighing the good in the bad. They weren't
always like this. Sometimes they still had a lot of
fun together. When they were alone, Damien told her he
wanted to be with her, and the bottom line was
she was still in love with them. But things started
(31:12):
to go south again as Damien and Kinsey egged each
other on to increasing levels of assholary whenever Kelly was around.
That finger bending incident was the beginning of the end
for Kelly. She was getting fed up with Damien's jeckal
and hide bullshit, and she finally decided to do something
about it, as most kids did. In two thousand and three,
the friends spent a lot of time chatting online through
(31:35):
AOL chat remember aw nostalgia. One of Damien's AOL screen
names was necromaniac.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
By the way, a fucking course, it was Dorcass will
Lose her.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Kelly's was stage Pony, which I think is really pretty.
And in August two thousand and three, Kelly took the
gloves off. She logged into her AOL instant messager and
told Eldy about her and Damien in specific detail. I
think Elidy probably suspected before this, but now Kelly just
(32:10):
came out and told her over AOL instant message. I
know you like Damien, Elidi wrote, I know you want
us to break up, but it's not gonna happen. This
stops now. I'd hate to see anything happen to you.
Bye bye. Whoof sounds like a threat to me, right,
But when Kelly told Damien about it, he took Ellidy's side.
(32:31):
You need to stop being in love with me for
the good of everyone, wrote the necromaniac, and that was it.
Damien broke it off with Kelly for good.
Speaker 3 (32:41):
He was furious at her.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Kelly's friend Amy told La Weekly she was upset, but
after a while she was saying who cares about Damien.
He didn't treat her well, and that's one of the
most heart wrenching things to me about this case. Kelly
was almost out. She just to make a new life
for herself without Damien and Kenzie. She'd learned something from
(33:05):
the past year or so, and she'd found the strength
within herself to stand up to her bullies and say
this is toxic. I'm done with this, which takes a
lot of balls. I mean, it really does. She wanted
to concentrate on college, which she was planning on starting
in the fall, and she wanted to focus on her
real friends, but Kenzy and Damien weren't gonna let her
get away. Mickey and Mallory had come to a decision.
(33:29):
Kelly had forgotten her place in their pecking order. She'd
had the nerve to tell on Damien, how dare she
Kelly was gonna die? Kinsey and Damien planned the murder
for several days. They found an isolated orange grove that
they figured would be the perfect place for it, and
they spent a couple hours pre digging a shallow grave
(33:51):
just deal with the creepiness of that, and Damien already
had a gun a present from his brother. It was
a twenty five caliber Raven Arms Model P twenty five.
They knew where they were going to kill Kelly, and
they knew how. Now it was time to set their
plan in motion. Kenzy messaged Kelly like, Hey, I feel
(34:12):
really bad about the way things have been between us lately.
Can we go for a hike and talk about it?
And you know, Kelly still cared about Kenzie. They'd been
best friends until all the Damien stuff started, so maybe
a little bit reluctantly she said sure. They set a
date and time, September thirteenth, and agreed to meet up
(34:33):
at the Orange Grove. When the day came, Kelly pulled
up in her little Mazda and greeted Kenzie as she
got out of the car. I imagine she was smiling
at her friend, happy to be getting together to talk
things out, But then she heard another car approaching. She
turned around to see Damien driving up. Damien was not
supposed to be there. Did her heart drop when she
(34:56):
saw him? Was she scared right away? Or did she hope?
All three of us them we're going to reconcile. We
have no way to know.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
What we know is that Damien fired first, grazing the
side of Kelly's head and sending her falling to the ground,
and the killing shot that was Kinsey's doing. She took
the gun from Damien, walked up to her former best friend,
and fired a single fatal shot. Then she and Damien
(35:24):
dragged Kelly into the shallow grave they'd already dug days earlier.
They covered her as best they could with dirt and leaves,
then pulled in an old, abandoned couch on top of
the makeshift grave. They dumped Kelly's car off at the mall,
and then they went out to dinner in a movie.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
Jesus, Mrri, just imagine being hungry after that and like
wanting to go see a show. I just can't even
imagine how scared Kelly was and how sick she felt
that the weight of that betrayal is just unimaginable.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
These aren't people fit for society. They killed a girl
over MySpace to here drama.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
When Kelly didn't show up for two shifts in a
row at work, and when her friend Amy went to
her house to try and find her and found the
pets all alone, and then cared for everybody knew something
was badly wrong. Kelly wasn't the tight to do a
no call, no show at work, and she would never
leave her animals with no food or water. Her mom, Diana,
was out with a coastguard at the time, but she
(36:21):
came rushing back as soon as she'd learned that her
daughter was missing, and she was missing for three weeks,
during which time people posted missing posters all over town,
gave interviews to the TV news stations, cried and prayed
and worried Diana especially, and all the while, Kinsey stuck
close to Kelly's mom, consoling her, helping her put up
(36:44):
the flyers, telling her it was going to be okay.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
I hate this girl so much. She also painted some
Tory Amos lyrics on poster board and helped set up
a memorial at the Orange Grove where they killed Kelly
after her body was found in Everyone but he knew
it was a homicide.
Speaker 3 (37:02):
But as billy badasses Damien and Kinsey thought they were,
they did not handle being murderers very well. The stress
was getting to both of them. At one point, Damien
got into a big argument with Led at her house,
and he flipped out right in front of her mom
sobbing and screaming and punching their garage door.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
Oh you all right there, buddy, could possibly be the matter.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
And I know this is going to shock you because
we thought their soul materie would be eternal. But Damien
Kinsey were starting to get on each other's herves. Damien
Damien seemed to be avoiding Kinsey, and Kinsey was pissed
about it. She was having noticeable mood swings in front
of her friends. As you might imagine, it didn't take
(37:47):
long for police to zero in on led Kinsey and
Damien as possible suspects and the murder. All their friends
had plenty to tell the cops about the drama that
had been unfolding between them for the past.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
Year or so.
Speaker 3 (37:59):
They they were able to rule Eledy out pretty quickly,
and that just left the other two. They found out
that Kenzy and Damien had been together on the day
of the murder. This raised their eyebrows, and they rose
even higher when they took a look at their instant
messages and realized that Kelly and Kinsey had plans to
meet up that evening for a hike guess where.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
So they hauled KINSI in for questioning, and I know
you're going to be stunned to hear this from such
a cool criminal mastermind. Kenzy cracked like an egg at
the first sign of pressure. We did it, she said,
But it was an accident. It was just supposed to
be a practical joke. We were just going to take
out the gun and scare her. But then Damien accidentally
shot her and she was writhing around in pain, and
(38:44):
I just shot her to put her out of her misery. Now,
obviously the detectives did not buy this bullshit. Why would
you predig a grave just to play a practical joke?
In that a bit much? And if you just accidentally
shot one of your best friends, wouldn't you like nine
one one or something. Wouldn't you at least be too
upset to go straight to the mall for a snack.
(39:07):
Now that they had a confession sort of, they needed
to go lean on Damien too, And you will love this.
When they knocked on his parents' door to question him
and told him Kenzie had just confessed, he said, I
do not want to answer any questions, and I am
going to get up and walk into the house and
take a nap like a little Roman emperor waving them away.
(39:30):
Good luck with that, Bubba. They arrested him a few
days later at the movies. He was watching Matrix Revolutions.
I know it's so appropriate, isn't it. I'm sure he
thinks he's the one as well, just like Neo. Kinzi
went on trial in two thousand and five, and the
(39:50):
jury didn't buy her it was supposed to be a
joke defense. She was convicted of first degree murder and
sentenced to forty five years to life in prison, with
no no consideration for parole until she'd served forty four
of those years. At her sentencing, Kinsey reiterated her claim
that the murder was just an accident, a prank on sideways,
(40:11):
and said she'd never meant to hurt Kelly. She called
the murder a bad decision. Yeah. Damien unfortunately got much luckier,
with his first jury deadlocking on the first degree murder charge.
The deadlock was eleven to one in favor of conviction,
which just ah kills me and I can't imagine how
(40:32):
it deadlocked in the first place. Like, in addition to
everything else, they found bullet casings in Damien's backyard where
he liked to do target practice that perfectly matched the
casings at the crime scene. I mean, what do you want?
That is nice heart evidence? But whatever. To avoid a retrial,
Damien took a plea deal second degree murder in exchange
(40:52):
for a sentence of fifteen to life, not even close
to enough, in my opinion. I can imagine that really
hurt Kelly's loved ones, as if they hadn't been hurt
enough already. This case is a little more complicated than
it's been made out to be. I think the prevailing
theory is that Kenzy and Damien killed Kelly because she
told Eldi her boyfriend was cheating on her. And I'm
(41:14):
sure that's partly true, but I feel equally sure that
this murder wasn't just about that. I think these two
had been pushing each other's limits for months now, enjoying
taking their abuse of Kelly to the next level, and
the next level and the next. I think this was
part revenge, part thrill kill, and for Kenzy, I think
(41:34):
killing Kelly was a way of cementing her bond with
soulmate Damien. Forever Eldi and Kelly might get to sleep
with them, but now she'd have this huge secret connection
with them for the rest of their lives. Mickey and
Mallory Knox soul mates. Girl, Please, what soul you talking about?
I also think she was jealous of Kelly, jealous that
(41:55):
she had a secret with Damien, Like, how dare he
keep a secret like this from her? They were supposed
to be best friends. One of Kelly's friends, Rachel Schneider,
has been on a couple of TV shows about the case.
On one, she said, I think this story is about
kids who don't know how to handle their emotions and
their circumstances and get carried away in some sort of
(42:15):
fantasy world. From the outside, it was really easy to
see that there was something not completely right, But from
the inside it was hard to see that there was
something off about it, which is really a great way
to describe an abusive relationship. Rachel got a tattoo to
memorialize her friends so she would never forget Kelly or
the lessons her murder has to teach us. And one
(42:38):
final ps to this story. Damian Guerrero was released from
prison on parole in twenty twenty three, much to the
dismay of the prosecutors and to Kelly's friends and family.
They argued that he'd never taken real responsibility for the murder,
instead trying to blame the goth scene, violent movies, lack
of parental attention, pretty much anything but Damien. And when
(43:01):
I searched his name to see if there was any
info on what he's up to now, I found a
TikTok from a user who calls herself Latin Barb. Her
TikTok account is dedicated to warning people about scary people
on dating apps, like if a bunch of women have
a scary experience with the same guy, she'll tell you
about him and advise you to keep away from him.
And guess who recently popped up in one of her tiktoks. Yeah,
(43:26):
mister Damian Guerrero, still looking irritatingly handsome and using an alias,
presumably to prevent women from looking him up and finding
out he's a frickin murderer. So be careful out there, ladies,
and look, if you have friends like Kenzy and Damien,
especially if you're a teenager and you have friends like this,
(43:46):
the problem is not you, okay, and you're not going
to get any metals for putting up with their toxic bullshit.
Bullying is a tactic of small, angry little minds. Be
better than that. You are better than that, So get
the hell out of their baby go live your best life.
So that was a wild one, right, campers. You know
(44:08):
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. If
you haven't booked your spot on the Crime Wave True
Crime Cruise from November third through November seventh, get on
at y'all, come hang out with us, join Katie and
Me plus last podcast on the Left, Scared to Death
and Sinisterhood for a rocking good time at sea. You
(44:30):
can pay all at once or set up a payment plan,
but you've got to have a fan code to book
a ticket, So go to Crimewave atse dot com, slash
campfire and take it from there. And as always, we
want to send a grateful shout out to a few
of our lovely patrons. Thank you so much to Kathleen, Liberty, Martina,
Tim and Hope. We appreciate y'all to the moon and back.
(44:50):
And if you're not yet a patron, you are missing out.
Patrons of our show get every episode ad free at
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(45:11):
supplies last at ten virtual events with Katie and me.
We're getting ready to start reacting to reality TV soon
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to do for you, so if you can, come join
us at patreon dot com Slash true Crime campfire
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