When Nerds Attack - Hardcore Horror: The Farmville Murders

No is a powerful word. It can stop a naughty dog in its tracks, it can get you out of a night out with friends when you just want to rot in your bed, and most of all, it’s supposed to mean something when you don’t want anything to do with someone romantically. Unfortunately for society, some people can’t handle being told no. It fills them with unfounded rage because how dare anyone deny them something they want. Today, we’re discussing a case where someone handled rejection so pathetically that it resulted in the murder of 4 people and left a mark on three communities that would last a lifetime.

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 on sale now: CrimeWaveatSea.com/CAMPFIRE

Sources:
YouTube channel "Explore With Us" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQTJ48TYnzY
Investigation Discovery's "Web of Lies," episode "Farmville Horror"
https://www.capecodtimes.com/story/news/2009/09/28/singer-slayings-off-limits-to/51852160007/ https://lbhfs.proboards.com/thread/3255/strictly-wicked-2009-festival
https://genius.com/Syko-sam-the-voices-lyrics
https://www.discogs.com/release/8618519-Serial-Killin-Records-Strictly-for-the-Wicked-2009-The-DVD?srsltid=AfmBOoo_o8xxi3EHZ7zsY8LT1e1i3gfXjAkyh3yjjvZLVtttOGKEDkok https://genius.com/Razakel-watch-out-lyrics
https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/horrorcore-syko-sam/
https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2019/june/your-nose-knows-when-it-comes-to-stronger-memories.html

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Episode Transcript

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 (00:21):
No is a powerful word. It can stop a naughty
dog in its tracks, and can get you out of
a night out with your friends when you just want
a rot in your bed. And most of all, it's
supposed to mean something when you don't want anything to
do with someone romantically. Unfortunately for us and for society,
some people can't handle being told no. It fills them

(00:42):
with unfounded rage because how dare anyone deny them something
they want? Today, we're discussing a case where someone handled
rejections so pathetically that it resulted in the murder of
four people and left a mark on three communities that
would last a lifetime. This is when nerds attack hardcore

(01:03):
horror the Farmville murders.

Speaker 3 (01:15):
So campers for this one were in Southgate, Michigan, on
September twelfth, two thousand and nine, at the Modern Exchange.
A small music venue about twenty minutes southwest of Detroit.
The music pumping out of the front doors that day
had a deep pounding bassline and loud, aggressive vocals. The
fans were dressed in dark clothes with leather accessories, heavy boots,

(01:35):
hair dyed black with flashes of bright colors, dreads tangled
throughout piercings glinted in the moonlight. Some of them wore
the trademark clown make up that marked them as Juggalos.
Whoop whoop. Yes, this was a horror core festival, specifically
the strictly for the Wicked festival put on for Serial
Killing Records or SKR. Over twenty five acts would be performing,

(02:00):
including such names as I love this so much, Hellucinate,
I gotta spell it for you so hll USI n
number eight, hell ucin eight, icaras the Morgue, sic Tannic,
and Razikel.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
Detroit is like mecca for horror corners. By the way,
it's where ICP is from and they tend to congregate there.

Speaker 3 (02:27):
Yeah. SKR is from Albuquerque, New Mexico, but they took
their festival all the way to Michigan, which says a lot.
The label was run by an artist called Sick Tannic
and his girlfriend Rozkeel, who were the headliners for the evening.
When Rozkeel finally took the stage, she couldn't help but
search out two young women in the crowd. As she
sang dominating my victims leaving corpses, dismembered, You'll never meet

(02:50):
a bitch so sick, so wicked and vicious like me.
Death is an art, and I'm the artist painting the
gory scene. I'll kill you sensually. I'll take your soul
as you bleed. Dang, she found them. They were both
at the barrier, right up at the stage, screaming along
with her. Roziquel felt a flutter of pride and affection.

(03:15):
Teenagers Emma Nederbrock and Melanie Wells had been og fans
of hers for ages, and it was so cool to
finally see them. Mel had traveled all the way from
West Virginia to Farmville, Virginia to meet Emma and then
to Michigan for the concert. The music had really brought
them together. In the back of her mind, though she
wondered where Emma's boyfriend was. Never mind that, though she

(03:36):
had a show to put on. Two days later, in
West Virginia, Mel's family is starting to get worried. Her brother, Alex,
who was basically her best friend, hadn't heard from her
since she'd gone to sleep after the concert, and he
was starting to feel uneasy. His mom told him not
to worry. She was probably just sleeping in or off
with her friends hanging out. She wasn't due home until

(03:57):
the end of the week, so she was probably just
unplugging a bit. But Alex and Mel rarely went this
long without speaking to each other, and as the day
wore on without a word from Mel, his unease turned
into the sick tang of panic. Mell's mom, Kathleen, finally
broke down and reached out to the band members that
had performed that night to see if they'd heard from
Mel and her friends. It's a little wild to me

(04:18):
to think about my mom reaching out to my favorite
band to see if they'd heard from me, But it's
also kind of cool that Kathleen had that kind of
relationship with her daughter. She Razekl, who by that time
had flown back to Albuquerque and was still sleeping when
she got the call, promised Kathleen that she'd call around
and try to find her daughter. She called mel and
Emma and got the voicemail for both of them. She

(04:41):
left messages that said, Hey, if you don't answer me,
please at least call missus Wells. As the messages racked
up on Mell's phone, the concern for her family grew.
Her mom told Web of Lies that it was very
out of character for her to let them worry like this.
As soon as she realized that they were concerned, she
would have called them back immediately. Razakala kept calling again

(05:04):
and again, and the tone of her messages shifted from
worry to anger, and when they didn't respond to that,
she knew something was seriously wrong.

Speaker 2 (05:13):
Yeah, if my favorite singer called to yell at me,
like to tell me to call my mom, I'd hop
to kid be priority number one. Then the phone stopped
ringing entirely and went straight to voicemail. Either they were
turned off or the batteries had died. But let's put

(05:34):
a pin in that and go back to the beginning. Farmville, Virginia,
despite being named after a video game, I'm assuming is
the kind of town where there's not much to do.
If you're a teenager, there's especially not much to do
if you're the kind of teenager that doesn't quite fit in.
There's a movie theater and a singular bowling alley, and

(05:56):
not the kind of fun bowling alley where there's like
laser tag. I think there's like an arcade in a restaurant,
but that's it. Other than that, it's all sports bars
and restaurants like called the Fish and Pig and the
Virginia Tasting Cellar. There's a university Longwood, you, but there's
a world of difference between a college kid and a teenager.

(06:16):
And weird fact, Amy Lynn Bradley, the woman who went
missing on a cruise, Yeah she went to Longwood, So
that's a wow, weird true crime crossover. The population of
the town is about seventy five hundred, so you know that,
you know, as a teenager, if you wear just a

(06:38):
little too much eye make of the Baptist lady's luncheon
is gonna gossip about it, kind of like if Cheers
was a town and they've all known you since you
were in diapers. And also you live in a surveillance
state and everything will always get back to your parents.

Speaker 3 (06:53):
Yeah, that is the hell. That is a small town
when you're a teenager trying to be sneaky, as all
teenagers try to do. I have been there and done that.

Speaker 2 (07:02):
Emma Niederbrock was different. First of all, her dad, Mark
was a Presbyterian preacher, which comes with a whole slew
of pressures and problems that most kids don't have to
deal with, Like she felt like she had to be
perfect right. He and her mom, Debora, split up when
she was fourteen, and the separation hit her hard. She
became depressed and started getting bullied relentlessly at school. Her

(07:25):
parents decided that the best course of action was to
homeschool her. Her mom was a criminology and sociology professor
at the university, so it's not like she was sitting
home watching TV for homework, but that meant she became
further isolated from her peers, and before long her behavior
took a sharp turn. She became even more defiant. Her

(07:47):
fashion sense changed as well. Before she was like a
T shirt and jeans kind of girl, and now she
was wearing dark clothes and heavy eye makeup and coloring
her hair bubblegum pink. And to top it all off,
Emma became enamored with horrorcore music now. For those that
need a reminder, horror core is a subgenre of hip

(08:08):
hop that focuses on death and violence. Insane Clown Posse
is probably the most famous horror core group out there,
but there are many many acts under the horror core genre.
One of Emma's friends pointed out that her interest in
this type of music was absolutely a result of her isolation.
She said, some of the hurt that goes into that

(08:30):
music and how those people are hurting, that was something
that Emma looked into and was like, oh, you know,
I feel the same way. It's almost as if I'm
going through the same things as them.

Speaker 3 (08:42):
It was actually a really refreshing perspective because it's this sweet,
little blonde girl who clearly loved her friend and accepted her.
Usually you see a lot of pearl clutching on these
shows about any kind of counterculture music or other media
that depicts violence, but this girl had a pretty sharp
observation about how her friend was feeling her and alone.

Speaker 2 (09:02):
At sixteen, Emma, under the screen name Ragdall, joined a
MySpace group that connected horrorcore artists and their fans. It
was there where she met Razkal in Siictanic. She initially
got their attention by filming a room tour for them,
showing off all her merch and posters of them and
artists from their label, where Razekel was so touched that

(09:24):
she reached out and immediately made a connection with Emma.

Speaker 3 (09:27):
She quickly realized that she and Emma had quite a
bit in common. Their musical interests span genres Backstreet Boys
in Sync, Slipknot, and Porcelain and the Tramps. I love
that Razekel listened to the Backstade, I know, that's just delightful.
In fact, she didn't even know this, but both their
dads were Presbyterian preachers. In their conversations, Emma told Razekal

(09:49):
that she felt like such an outcast in Farmville and
she wished she had somebody close by that she could
talk about music with. Razekel thought she knew just the
girl entered eighteen year old Melanie Wells. She lived just
two hundred miles away from Farmville in West Virginia, and
Razikil thought they'd get on like a house on fire.
She was absolutely correct. Melan Emma spoke every day. They

(10:13):
skyped and finally met in person at a concert in
Chicago about four months after they met online. People who
met them thought they'd known each other forever.

Speaker 2 (10:21):
You know, you and I get that a lot too,
Like we no, yeah, we met a Facebook group and
have only met a couple of times in person. And
you know, sometimes you just find your people on the Internet.

Speaker 3 (10:33):
Yeah, when we go on that True Crime cruise, it's
going to be the longest time we've ever spent in
each other's physical prims.

Speaker 2 (10:38):
I know it's gonna be crazy.

Speaker 3 (10:41):
And you know, as a small town girl who grew
up in the eighties and nineties, I have to say
this is y'all don't know how good you have it now. Seriously,
And I sound like an old person saying that. But
when I was in high school, I was one of
the different, weird kids, right, And you didn't have the
Internet to find other people, Like. There wasn't the huge,
like worldwide community where you could reach out and find

(11:03):
tons of other people who are into the same music,
in the same books and stuff. You just had your
school and maybe the other school in town if there
was one, that was it. So I would have just
absolutely loved having the ability to do this back then.
Would have meant the world. So Razakeel uploaded one of
Emma's videos onto her page, which exposed her to a

(11:24):
wider audience, especially boys. She started getting more and more
messages from fellow fans. One in particular caught her fancy.
He went by the screen names Lil Demon Dog and
Psycho Sam spelled because our boy is a rebel Syko.
This is big in the horror core community apparently, just like,

(11:45):
let's see how weirdly we can spell this word. It's
like this, we're edgy.

Speaker 2 (11:50):
I will post the poster of the festival and you
will see how unreadable it is. It is upsetting, like
it's like I don't mind like misspellings, but like hallucinate.
I stared at that.

Speaker 3 (12:05):
I had to say it like five times before I
got what it was, and then I left.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
I stared at that for like a good five minutes
before I got it, and then Icarus.

Speaker 3 (12:15):
You gotta say it out loud, that's what That's how
you get him as you read them out loud chorus.

Speaker 2 (12:20):
The only part of that name that is that it
shares uh a letter with with with the name Icarus
is I and R It's I KK. You are are
you zzy.

Speaker 3 (12:38):
Bizarre? But these are rebels KT, you know, we mustn't
question their methods. I know so. Twenty year old Richard
mccrosskey aka Psycho Sam was a California native who had
big dreams of breaking into the horror core scene. There
are rumors that he got his name from the serial
killer known as the Son of Sam aka David Berkowitz

(13:01):
aka the saddest little manlet who has ever lived.

Speaker 2 (13:05):
Yeah, little advice, do not take your stage name from
someone who has big I splooged my pants energy.

Speaker 3 (13:16):
Or who looks like he smells like earwax and it's
always just a little bit sweaty, Like you can just
tell in every picture. He's always just a little damp.
The most boring serial killer you could be. Yes, I
can't understand the people who get into Berkowitz. It's just
because he used that. They used that cool name. Yeah,
it was Sam. He's the biggest dork on planet Earth.

Speaker 2 (13:37):
He had good he had good marketing, Like he wrote
like a cool letter and it was like.

Speaker 3 (13:44):
Until you heard him open his mouth and saw pictures
of him stuff. So anyway, Stanic told the TV show
Web of Lies he was one of those kids that
didn't get out in the world at all. His life
revolved around being online period. Man, that's a brutal way
is saying that he needed to touch some grass. Yeah,
he was enamored with Emma when he first laid eyes

(14:06):
on her profile, and was disappointed to find out that
she wasn't local to him, but in the time of MySpace,
distance didn't really matter. It was less than a month
before their friendship blossomed into something more romantic. They started
calling each other pet names and posting I love you
more than anything on each other's pages. Richard was troubled,

(14:26):
to say the least. He'd been brutally bullied in high
school due to his red hair and weight, which forced
him to drop out of two different schools and not graduate.
Despite the fact that he never fought back against his bullying,
or maybe because of it, he really had a ton
of rage and hatred. The YouTube channel Explore with Us
suggests that part of that hatred is pointed inward for

(14:49):
not being strong enough to stand up for himself. Richard's
mental image and stage persona was one that would strike
fear in the hearts of the normies that bullied him.
Psychosam was that persona and like, horror core is absolutely
not my genre, okay, but I mean really not. But
I can acknowledge that there are some catchy songs out

(15:11):
there and artists that are clearly masters of the craft.
But Richard, well, let's take the song Murderous Rage from
his album I Kill People for Real. I just can't, Oh,
buck up. Today is not your ordinary day because last
night I was a murderous rage. But now I got

(15:32):
to get rid of the bodies before the corpses start
to get to rotting.

Speaker 2 (15:39):
Yeah, so you know there's that.

Speaker 3 (15:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (15:42):
I think when you're writing poet poetry, there's a thing
called meter.

Speaker 3 (15:47):
Yes, ideally there is. But you know, again, we're working,
we're coloring outside the lines here. He might just be
a genius and we just don't understand.

Speaker 2 (15:55):
You're right, I'm sorry.

Speaker 3 (15:58):
According to his sister, though he wasn't even able to
kill a spider. You know, she's like, he's the kindest
guy you'd ever want to meet. Richard worked as a
graphic designer, building websites and seemed all around like a quiet,
unassuming guy, if a little bit greasy and odd. By
the time Serial killing records announced their festival. Richard wanted

(16:19):
to go. Mel and Emma were super stoked too. They'd
get to see Raz and Sictanic in person and meet
other horror corners.

Speaker 2 (16:27):
Mel's parents were down and they'd help her pay. She
was eighteen, and Kathleen, her mom, thought that getting out
of the town you grew up in is the best
way to experience the world and develop yourself as a person.
Amen to that, the snag would be Emma's parents. She
was sure they'd let her go, but she wanted Richard
to come as well. Emma approached her parents about it,

(16:49):
and Deborah and Mark actually met about it to discuss it.
Every source I saw kind of made it seem like
they did not fuck with each other at all. It
seemed like they did not Yeah, like they only talked
about Emma with each other, and that this meeting was
like super like a super rare occurrence, like the fact

(17:10):
that like Mark and Deborah actually sat down and met.
They for sure did not approve of the music that
their daughter listened to, and they approved even less of
the twenty year old online boyfriend. But not much had
made her happy after their separation, and so they agreed

(17:31):
to a compromise. They would let her go, but both
of her parents would be going with her on the trip.
So when the time came, Mel's dad dropped her off
with the Kneeder Brocks and they all went to pick
Richard up at the airport. It was seven months after
they met, six months after their relationship started, and they

(17:54):
were finally meeting in person. Emma was so excited and
nervous as she stood at the baggage claim and then
when she finally finally got to see her man, womp womp.

Speaker 3 (18:13):
Yeah, we've all been there, right when the reality doesn't
quite match the fantasy.

Speaker 2 (18:18):
The vibes were rancid. He was just off. Emma didn't
know why, but he just made her uncomfortable. Like she
texted Razikl to tell her that, like, something's wrong. I
don't like. He just makes me uncomfortable.

Speaker 3 (18:37):
Man, that's your intuition yelling at you.

Speaker 2 (18:41):
And this was day one of a full week of
being with him.

Speaker 3 (18:46):
Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (18:47):
Her stomach was in knots. The nine hour drive from

(19:17):
the airport to the hotel near the venue was excruciating,
but once they got there, it was all excitement. The
hotel was picked out by the festival, and both the
fans and the artists would be staying there so everyone
could make close connections. Deborah, Emma's mom, shared a room
with the girls, and Richard and Mark had their own rooms.

(19:37):
The day of the concert, Razakel noticed how awkward and
the stand offish Richard was and called him out and
forced him to introduce himself to her, contrasted to how
social and charming Emma was. Satanic reckoned that maybe it
was a case of oil and water. During the show,
Richard was nowhere near the girls at all, and I

(20:00):
thought that the fact that he was an outcast was strange.
He said, it was odd that a reject couldn't fit
in with the rest of us rejects, which is such
a burn, Like yeah oo, I mean he was at
the outcast concert with the outcast and he still couldn't
find a way to jive with them like that.

Speaker 3 (20:21):
That's weird, Yeah, it is.

Speaker 2 (20:24):
Some of Emma's friends later reported that Richard was jealous
when she got a flirty text on her phone from
another guy at the show, and he flounced off. The
festival ended at eleven pm on the twelfth, and they
all drove back to Farmville the next day, arriving back
just before midnight on Sunday. Despite the awkwardness, it seems
like Emma was genuinely willing to let Richard spend the

(20:46):
week at her house and hang out with her. Mel
had posted around three am on Monday that she'd be
home on the sixteenth, but no one had heard from
her since then. That's about where we left off at
the beginning of the episode, with Mel's and Raskell worried
sick about the girls and to some extent Richard.

Speaker 3 (21:04):
It really tells you, like, as much as we might
giggle at the horror core lyrics and stuff like, this
is clearly a very close knit community who genuinely cared
about each other, which I think is sweet, you know.
I mean, this is one of the artists who was
headlining at this show, and she's personally trying to find
these girls. I think that's lovely, honestly. Rozakeel decided to

(21:26):
put up a post on MySpace asking for information on
the whereabouts of the three teenagers, and it wasn't long
before they got a hit. Someone told them to reach
out to Richard's friend Big a Giggy Dog, Go Go,
Big Dog. It like a million g's in there and
see if he could find out what was going on.
Big Dog agreed and said he'd call Raz right back. Meanwhile,

(21:47):
Kathleen Wells tried to call the police, but since Mel
was eighteen, she had a feeling they might not be
much help, and they were not. All they could tell
her was that there were no reports of car accidents
and no one matching Mel's description at the hospital or
in jail. They didn't stop by the Kniederbrock house to check.
When the sixteenth came and went the day that Mel
was supposed to return home, the Wells family just became frantic.

(22:11):
Mel's dad, Jerry, drove down to Farmville and knocked on
the kneder Brock's front door to see if he could
find their daughter. When he got there, no one answered,
and he ended up waiting there for eight hours. Eventually,
a neighbor came up to his car and said that
the girls weren't home, but they had gone to Richmond
it would be back late that night. Jerry shrugged it

(22:32):
off and decided to go home instead of waiting any
longer at the house. What he didn't know was that
that decision probably saved his life. Kathleen and Alex kept
calling the Niederbrock's house phone, hoping to finally reach Mel.
That evening, someone finally picked up.

Speaker 2 (22:48):
It was Richard.

Speaker 3 (22:50):
He told them that Mel, Emma, and Deborah had gone
out for a bite to eat and their car broke down.
Triple A was on the way and they'd be home soon,
so they should call back in like an hour or so,
but when they called back, no one answered. The next morning,
the seventeenth, Kathleen called the police and requested a welfare check,
but when the officers arrived, they didn't see anything suspicious,

(23:12):
so they didn't go into the house. Richard answered the
phone again. No need to worry, he said, the car
is fixed, but this time they're out visiting Mark, Emma's dad.
Kathleen immediately hung up and called Mark. Mark told her
he hadn't heard from any of them since he'd dropped
them off on Sunday. It was now Thursday. He was

(23:32):
immediately concerned and said he was going to head to
the house to check things out. The last time Kathleen
spoke to him, Mark was in the car on the road.
He drove over and let himself in with the key
that he still had. Kathleen, who was waiting by the phones,
started getting angry. Where the hell was he? He said
he was going to call back right away. Kathleen had

(23:55):
had enough. She called the police again. A sergeant went
and visit to the house and spoke with a young
boy who told him that the two young women had
driven to Richmond the day before and their card broken down,
and they were now at the movies. When the dispatcher
relayed all this to Kathleen, she told him that that
was all fine and dandy, but where was Deborah, the

(24:15):
girl's perennial chauffeur, And where was Mark? He'd gone over
there earlier. The response to all those questions okay, like
a bored therapist listening to a patient repeating the same
story for the fifteenth time. This kid doesn't even live
in your town. Aren't you a little bit suspicious? Like

(24:35):
your small town cops. You're supposed to love running outsiders
outside the county lands, right, and don't come back. She
called the house again, and when Richard answered, he simply
told her that the girls couldn't come to the phone.
What the fuck. Kathleen parked herself right by the phone
and decided to make this her full time job. Relief

(24:58):
washed over her when her phone finally When she answered,
though it was not the calm, steady voice of the
preacher on the other end, it was Richard mccrosskey. He
told her that not only had he not seen Mark,
but he'd heard voices coming from the basement and footsteps.
He told her he was scared. She told him to
call the police, which, strangely enough, he did. He told

(25:22):
the dispatcher that it might be one of the two
dogs at the house. He'd put one of them down there,
he put the other one upstairs. He didn't explain why
he did that, but anyone with at least two brain
cells and seen one episode of Criminal Minds can probably
put it together.

Speaker 2 (25:37):
The police arrived and did a perfunctory search at the
Niederbrock basement, and after not finding anything, left without looking
at the house or finding any information about the two
teenagers and the mother that were missing, she calm on,
it's fine though. After all this was over, they investigated
themselves and found that they did nothing wrong.

Speaker 3 (25:58):
Oh excellent, so that's all sorted out then, No, I.

Speaker 2 (26:02):
Just want to take a little break from all this,
so I don't have a rage stroke and talk about
our wonderful olfactory sense. Now, did you know it's the
sense that most connected to memory. Like the other day,
I smelled a perfume that my second grade teacher used
to wear, and I had a vivid memory of her
reading Charlotte's Web to us. Like I didn't even remember

(26:25):
that she wore the perfume, but like I smelled it
and immediately remembered. It was crazy.

Speaker 3 (26:29):
It's amazing. It brings everything just flooding back.

Speaker 2 (26:33):
Yeah, so smells can bring you places, and actually unpleasant
smells can bring back memories more clearly than good smells. Now,
all that to say is that ain't no one forgetting
what a rotting corpse smells like. Okay, for days, people

(26:53):
that lived in Emma's neighborhood had noticed a foul smell
coming from somewhere, but they couldn't pinpoint it specified that
something smelled dead. Now, it stands to reason that police
officers who had now been to the house three times
would have noticed something anything Alas that was not the case.

Speaker 3 (27:17):
Oh, for Pete's sakes.

Speaker 2 (27:19):
The man invited them in the house, which we'll talk
about in a second. Because I don't know why he
did it, but I'm baffled. Richard ended up calling home
around this time and checked in with his family, and
he ended his message with I love you, guys, which
set off alarms for a sister because he was, like,

(27:41):
not the kind of person to say I love you
like he and his sister did not say that to
each other. And Kathleen at the time, decided to check
Mel's phone record. She was a teenager in two thousand
and nine. She was always on that damn phone. Someone
had left her a voicemail at one am on the fifteenth,

(28:01):
but there was nothing after that, Like she was not
on her phone.

Speaker 3 (28:05):
So scary, Kathleen was.

Speaker 2 (28:09):
Quickly becoming a thorn in the Farmville Police department side.
She called again and laid it out like you would
to a toddler. My daughter has been missing for two
and a half days. Her minor friend has been missing
for two and a half days. Her friend's mom has
been missing for two and a half days. Now, her
friend's dad is missing. My husband went down to check

(28:32):
on everything and someone told him they were in Richmond.
I checked the phone records and my daughter has not
been active. What do I need to do to get
you to take me seriously. Apparently being condescended to was
a ticket, because the next day the police finally decided
to check up on the Niederbrock house the.

Speaker 3 (28:54):
Next flippin' day.

Speaker 2 (29:00):
I guess they had to wait for their turn for
the town tractor to get to the scene or something. Yeah,
this time they had no trouble smelling the horrific smell
coming from the house, and it gave them probable cause
to enter. They walked into what they called a slaughterhouse.

Speaker 3 (29:20):
Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (29:22):
In a downstairs bedroom, they found three bodies that had
clearly been dragged there and hidden. They found a fourth
in an upstairs bedroom. The bodies were so horribly brutalized
that they were unrecognizable.

Speaker 3 (29:34):
Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (29:35):
They were later identified as Emma neter Brock, Melanie Wells,
Deborah Kelly, and Mark Nederbrock.

Speaker 3 (29:42):
Oh my god, that poor dad. Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
Evidence of the scene indicated that a wood splitting mall
taken from the victim's own backyard was the murder weapon. Emma, Melanie,
and Deborah had all been attacked while they were sleeping.
Mark had been jumped from behind as he walked into
the house and was beaten so viciously that the hardwood
floor where he fell was torn up and the raw

(30:07):
wood was soaked in blood.

Speaker 3 (30:09):
Oh my god. So their cause of death was blunt
force trauma to the head, and none of them showed
any sign of a struggle. They did not see this coming.
Deborah's body was still in her bed, while Mark and
Melanie's bodies were dragged into Emma's room with her. Now,
the question was, where's the little worm that's been camping

(30:30):
out here all week? And if you thought we were
dealing with Keystone cops before, buckle the fuck up, because
we're about to see incompetence reach heights that you've never
thought possible.

Speaker 2 (30:40):
This part of the story literally makes me nauseous with rage.

Speaker 3 (30:44):
It's bananas. So they realized pretty quickly that Mark's car
was gone, so they put out an APB on it,
only to realize that there was already a report on
a car matching that description and that it had been
in a car accident in the wee hours of the morning.
The officer that responded had issued a citation for driving
without a license and had kindly gotten the driver, a

(31:06):
young male redhead a tow truck and sent him on
his way. The tow truck driver said that Richard had
seemed pleasant enough when asked about the red marks on
his neck. Richard told them they were hickeys and his
girlfriend gave them to him. Then, when he was dropped
off after the tow truck ride, he called a cab.
The taxi then got pulled over for speeding. While the

(31:29):
cob was riding the ticket, Richard just got out and
smoked a cigarette on the side of the road. Now.
I don't know if all of Farmville police are required
to wear noseplugs just in case they got to go
swimming or something, but the tow truck driver said that
Richard stunk like the devil, and that he had to
stick his head out the window so he didn't blow
chunks all over his car. It was that bad, he said.

(31:50):
Richard's car smelled too, like just from him being in it.

Speaker 2 (31:54):
Like maybe the cops all had a nasty sinus infection.

Speaker 3 (31:58):
Yeah, not to mention that if they took any one
of Kathleen Wells's calls seriously, but especially the last few,
they'd have had the APB out on Mars. Carl Ready
and they'd have Richard in cuffs faster than you can
say magnets. There it is. I had to make one
magnet joke. Okay, it's tangentially related. I mean, how do
they work. Ah, the Juggalos will get that one. So

(32:23):
in competence aside, how in the world were they gonna
find Richard now he could be halfway to Canada, unless,
of course, he was even more incompetent than the Farmfield beliefs,
which is like nearly impossible, right right.

Speaker 2 (32:38):
When he wrote a song with the lyrics like Hannibal
a cannibal, I'm definitely not handleable.

Speaker 3 (32:45):
Oh's that is bad? Wooh that's a stinker. So yeah,
you're right, and he was incompetent. This smelly little turnip
decided to write an address down at Emma's house and
he left it there. The Farmville police, who probably finally
felt like they'd met their Moriarty, their real intellectual equal,

(33:06):
decided to go to the address. The location was the airport,
and who did they find snoozing in the baggage claim area. Well,
if it wasn't mister Ode Maggot himself. And remember our
friends in Albuquerque, Roz and Sick trying to track down
one of Richard's friends. Well, they just gift trapped one
of the prosecution's witnesses for them, because apparently Richard told

(33:30):
his buddy, Big Dog Gega Ga Giga that he killed someone,
possibly a bunch of someone's, and Big Dog just liked
the music and so he good for him. Called up
Roz and Sicktannic and let them know what Richard told him,
and they immediately told the cops. H In interviews with
the police, Richard told them that he'd smoked weed, drank alcohol,

(33:52):
and taken prescription painkillers for a migraine prior to the murders.
He said that he chose the weapon that he felt
would result in the least so for his victims. Isn't
that sweet of him? No one knows what he did
in that house for days on end, waiting, watching, answering
the phone, inviting the cops in. It seems strange that

(34:12):
he would invite so much scrutiny, But one of our
sources explore with us uncovered a video that shows some
insight here.

Speaker 2 (34:20):
The video is a selfie, which in two thousand and
nine meant he couldn't see himself. He's holding the camera
about a foot away from his face, had slightly ducked
down in an awe shucks kind of pose. If you
weren't watching his face. His voice sounds meek, resigned, but
his face is striking in its delight. His eyes are glinting,

(34:42):
the corners of his mouth are upturned in a smirk.
He says, all right, so I'm making this video because
or if anybody finds this, I really don't know what
I'm trying to say, and just I'm breath taken at
what I've done, and I apologize. I know I'm gonna
p for my consequences. You know, I wish that I

(35:03):
could have not done this, but I just lost my mind.
I snapped and I did what I did, and I
got to pay for it now, my consequences. I'm like
all shaky and stuff. But like, to anybody that finds this,
tell my parents that I love them and I'm very
sorry for doing this. And there's nothing really else to say.
To everybody that is probably gonna hate me for this,
I'm sorry and I had to do it. My mind

(35:25):
just snapped. I couldn't control anymore. That's it. Fuck you
to the big world, Fuck everybody. In the world. I
can't stand this place. He told the police that after
this video he was planning on taking his own life,
but ended up changing his mind. Virginia has the death penalty,
and instead of leaving that on the table, Richard McCloskey

(35:45):
decided to take the deal. He pled guilty to two
counts of capital murder and two counts of first degree murder,
and received four life sentences to be served consecutively with
no chance of parole. After his sentencing hearing, he was
seen smirking onlookers, despite the fact that his defense attorney
insisted that he feels remorse r In a subsequent interview,

(36:07):
when he's asked why he did it, he told a
reporter Jesus told me to do it. His sister brushed
his response off and said it was just his sense
of humor.

Speaker 3 (36:18):
Ah, he's such a dweem. How could this edge lord
little twat do this much damage. It's just infuriating.

Speaker 2 (36:25):
In reality, I think the simplest explanation is the most likely.
He got jealous of seeing his relationship crumble. He probably
did see a flirty text on his underage girlfriend's phone.
She didn't send it, and it wasn't her fault. He
couldn't control his emotions. Richard decided that he wasn't going
to let himself be the weak guy anymore, and he
proved it by killing four defenseless people.

Speaker 3 (36:49):
It's unbelievable. He made the horror real.

Speaker 2 (36:53):
Ultimately, I think this case is about friendship. How loved
were these girls? Mm Their parents really tried to understand them,
really tried to make them feel known, their favorite artists
loved them so much. She tore the world apart trying
to find them. Kathleen Wells wouldn't give up until someone
at the Farmville Police took her seriously. Alex Wells still

(37:16):
calls his sister his best friend. Deborah Kelly and Mark
Niederbrock came together through their separation to make sure their
daughter was safe and happy. And it was all torn
apart for what? Because I'm sad little loser couldn't handle
being told no. Luckily, he's right where he belongs and
he won't be getting out.

Speaker 3 (37:36):
Dang. So that was a wild one, right, Campirs. 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 it's coming up, folks. If you haven't booked
your spot on the Crime Wave True Crime Cruise yet
from November third through November seventh, you gotta get on it.
Join Katie and Me plus last podcast on the Left,

(37:56):
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(38:18):
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(38:40):
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