May 2, 2025 • 33 mins
Obsession is one of humanity’s greatest boons… and curses. Obsession can fuel a scientist’s entire career in trying to solve a singular problem. An athlete’s obsession can pull them to physics bending heights, a politician’s obsession with a cause can push a world changing bill forward. People can be obsessed over all sorts of great and mundane things: books, trading cards, cars, art without any kind of harm… But when that obsession is about controlling or possessing another person? Things can take a sinister turn. In today’s story, 7 people’s lives are ruined by a single woman’s obsession.
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:
Court papers: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/ct-supreme-court/1131876.html https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/ct-court-of-appeals/1456321.html
Courant.com: https://www.courant.com/1997/07/16/vermont-man-receives-30-year-sentence-for-manslaughter/
https://patch.com/connecticut/middletown-ct/middletown-double-murder-case-be-featured-crime-documentary
Investigation Discovery's "Diabolical," episode "Recording Evil"
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:
Court papers: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/ct-supreme-court/1131876.html https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/ct-court-of-appeals/1456321.html
Courant.com: https://www.courant.com/1997/07/16/vermont-man-receives-30-year-sentence-for-manslaughter/
https://patch.com/connecticut/middletown-ct/middletown-double-murder-case-be-featured-crime-documentary
Investigation Discovery's "Diabolical," episode "Recording Evil"
Follow us, campers!
Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfire
https://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/
Facebook: True Crime Campfire
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truecrimecampfire/?hl=en
Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfire
Email: truecrimecampfirepod@gmail.com
MERCH! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.com
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, campers, Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true
crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie and I'm Whitney,
and we're here to tell you a true story that
is way stranger than fiction or roasting murderers and marshmallows
around the true crime campfire.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Obsession is one of humanity's greatest boons and curses. Obsession
can fuel a scientist's entire career trying to solve a
singular problem. An athlete's obsession can pull them to physics
spending heights. A politician's obsession with the cause can push
a world changing bill forward. People can be obsessed over
all sorts of great and mundane things, books, trading cards, cars,
(00:44):
art without any kind of harm. But when that obsession
is about controlling or possessing another person, things can take
a sinister turn. In today's story, seven people's lives are
ruined by a single woman's obsession. This is you have
one new message. The murders of Len Stellar and Ronnie King,
(01:13):
So campers for this one. We're in Middletown, Connecticut, November one,
nineteen ninety three. Twenty five year old Gina Kochie was
just getting home from her housekeeping shift at the local
ski resort and hotel just after five pm. Immediately she
could tell something was wrong. Her girlfriend, forty three year
old Len Stellar, and their twenty five year old roommate,
(01:35):
Lynn's nephew, Ronnie King, were supposed to be home by then,
but the house was completely dark. She called out in
the darkness, expecting one of them to answer, but there
was no reply. As she felt her way into the
dark house, she kept expecting Lynn or Ronnie to pop
out and greet her, but no one did. Finally, at
the end of the hallway, in the doorway to the kitchen,
(01:56):
she tripped over something soft but solid on the wad.
As she pawed at the wall to turn on the light,
she saw with a shock of horror that the floor
and the walls were covered in blood, and that the
object she'd tripped over was, in fact Lynne's prone body.
Lying next to Lynn was Ronnie. Her first reaction was
(02:17):
that it was the day after Halloween, that surely this
was some sort of unfunny prank pulled on her by
her girlfriend and roommate using discount fake blood or something. Right,
she yelled at him get the hell up. What is
wrong with you people? It took several seconds for her
to realize this wasn't a prank. The silence of the
house was only broken by her breathing. Gina fell to
(02:41):
her knees and gathered Lynn into her arms, begging her
to get up. Gina later said in an interview that
she wasn't sure how long she stayed in the house,
holding on to Lynn, waiting for her to wake up. Eventually,
she tried the telephone, but there was no dial tone,
so Gina had to run to a neighbor's house to
call the police.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
This is a sad little detail. When she initially called
nine one one, she told them that her roommates were
hurt because presumably she didn't want to out herself.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Oh, bless her heart. I bet you're right about that.
And that's so sad that she'd have to think about
that at such an awful time. But yeah. When investigators arrived,
they immediately declared it a double homicide. Detectives Bob Barone
and Kevin Gino were assigned to the case. Barone said
the scene looked like all hell broke loose. There were
(03:30):
signs of an extreme struggle but no signs of forced entry. Notably,
both Ronnie and Lynn had their winter coats on, so
it looked like they'd been ambushed Right as they came
inside the house. Both victims were shot and stabbed and bludgeoned,
one with a mason jar and the other with a
ceramic lamp. They'd been stabbed with several different knives multiple times.
(03:53):
The knives used were from the victim's own kitchen, as
well as the mason jar and lamp. What does that
sound like campers? Perhaps a killer that was not prepared
for their victims to fight back, or maybe had one
target and suddenly had to deal with two. The level
of overkill certainly indicated there was a lot of rage
behind the killing, which probably ruled out a random home
(04:15):
invasion or a stranger. This killer knew one or both
of the victims, and they likely hated them or what
they represented. The medical examiner later found that Ronnie's cause
of death was the combination of the gunshot and stab wounds,
while the gunshots or stab wounds were each sufficient to
have killed Lynn. Crime scene texts quickly noticed a trail
(04:36):
of blood leaving the scene, and tests would later find
that it didn't belong to either Lynn or Ronnie. This
is a common occurrence with stabbings or killings where there's
a lot of struggle. Oftentimes the killer will hurt themselves
in the attack too. Of course, as the person who
found the bodies and the girlfriend of one of the victims,
Gina was immediately the first person the detectives wanted to
talk to. They tested her clothes for gunshot residue and
(04:59):
black They impounded and tested her car for the same,
and they questioned her for hours. Lynn's family suspected her,
but it was really less about actual suspicion and more
about the fact that they were having a hard time
accepting Lynn's new relationship with a woman. Meanwhile, the police
checked Gina's alibi and they ruled her out pretty quick.
(05:21):
Now out from under the suspicious eyes of law enforcement,
Gina was able to leave the state so she could
finally visit somebody to comfort her, Somebody who could understand
how much she was grieving, who knew Gina, possibly better
than she knew herself.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
She drove to Rutland, Vermont, her hometown, and called up
Janet Griffin. Janet Griffin had known Gina Kochi her entire life.
She baby sat Gina as a kid. Gina would later
tell Investigation Discovery that Janet was the mother she never had.
When Gina got to her house, Janet was there waiting
for her and just held her as she sobbed. Janet
(05:58):
told her, why would someone want to do that to you?
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Huh?
Speaker 3 (06:03):
What odd phrasing? Why would someone want to do that
to you? What Gina was too consumed with grief to
notice is that Janet had seen to have injured her hand.
It was wrapped in a bandage. Let's put a pin
in that for a moment, though, and rewind a couple
of years. It was nineteen ninety and Gina was on
(06:24):
her grind. She was working eighty hours a week at
a local ski resort while taking on a full course
load at Saint Joseph's College. She had saved so much
that she was able to buy her own house at
just twenty two years old.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
I know.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
That's when Gina bumped into Janet at the Dunkin Donuts.
This is a very East Coast story. If there's ski lodges,
there's dunkin Donuts. They were reminiscing about the old times
when Janet revealed that she'd been going through some tough things,
specifically that she had been going through a divorce from
her husband and was living in her car. This was
unacceptable to Gina, who had three empty bedrooms. Sheaffered Janet
(07:01):
a room. Their relationship deepened. Janet was so grateful for
Gina's generosity and took care of Gina, making her meals,
doing her housework, stuff that Gina didn't really have time
to do herself. Jina even got Janet a job at
the ski resort because she was the head of the
housekeeping department. Like, this girl was working. I gotta respect Gina.
(07:22):
Holy shit, absolutely there. They made a tight little click
of friends in the housekeeping department, Natalie Jurgen, Janet's daughter, Melody, Jasmine,
and Gordon butch Fruin. Janet and Gina's relationship was weird.
They quickly became closer than roommates, and then their relationship
(07:44):
crossed into romantic territory, which is gross to say the least.
I mean, this woman saw Gina in diapers and then
moved into her house and started a relationship with her.
That's bizarre.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
That is really weird, and I can't imagine looking at
a kid that I babysat and like held in my
arms and thinking, hey babe, it's just I don't know,
So it's weird. There's a mental block against that.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
Yeah, me, like, I want a piece of that. That's disgusting,
I can yeah, yeah, yeah, it's weird. Their relationship ended
in June of nineteen ninety two. Janet was deeply unhappy
about it and begged Gina to take her back, but
Gina refused, like, we couldn't find exactly why the relationship ended,
just had it ended, and Janet was devastated, but they
(08:33):
kept living together and even shared a room, but Gina
later testified that they were no longer intimate at that point.
That's weird as hell.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
I definitely could not have stood for one second to
share an apartment, let alone a freaking bedroom, for God's take,
with any of my exes. I mean, once you're out,
you want to be out, especially if one of you
has really been out of shape about the breakup. So
that's just wild to me.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
It's it's super it's super weird. By January of nineteen
ninety three, Gina was a little sick of living and
sharing a bed with her ex so she told Janet
that she had to move out. I mean they were
still working together, so they were basically around each other
twenty four hours a day. For people with a functional
romantic relationship, that's too much, let alone xes. Janet did
(09:20):
not take it well. She insisted that she was still
in love with Gina and she still wanted to make
it work. Gina was not taking this bullshit, which good
for her, and told her to move out. She wanted
to reign friends, but this was all too much for her.
Janet moved in with her daughter Melody. Then, in April
of nineteen ninety three, Gina met Patricia Linstellar when she
(09:42):
went to visit her aunt, Margaret. Lynn owned an upholstering
company and was re upholstering Gina's aunt's couch. There was
an immediate connection between the two. Gina acknowledged that she
knew their age difference was odd, but it was hard
to meet women her own age. Roland, Vermont is a
small town, so it makes sense that she'd be cautious
(10:04):
with her identity, especially in the early nineties.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
And it's not like Lynn knew her whole life and
babysatter and was like a mom to her before their
romantic relationship in this instance, so I'm not side eyeing
their relationship whatsoever.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Yeah, there's an obvious, like glaring difference between Gina's relationship
with Lynn and Gina's relationship with Janet. One has shades
of grooming and the other is just some age differences.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Right. In fact, it seemed like a sweet relationship. Because
Lynn lived three hours away in Middletown. Their relationship was
long distance, but they both traded weekends visiting each other.
Lynn cared about Gina so much that she decided to
ask Jana to be her date to a family member's wedding.
Lynn's family was certainly not accepting, so this was a
huge step for Lynn. Lynn deserved good things. Her seven
(10:51):
year old son, Howie, had gotten hit by a car
when he was crossing in front of a school thus
and passed away, and Lynn saw it happen. After that,
Lynn began to truly struggle with her identity. Her second son, Matthew,
said that it was always clear to him that his
father and mother were best friends. The only problem was
(11:11):
his mom was gay. They got a divorce, but their
friendship continued. Her nephew, Ronnie was like a third son
to her. Matthew said he looked at Ronnie like an
in house Tom Cruise. He was a little shy, but
in that secretly funny kind of way that always takes
people by surprise. When Lynn got a job at Wesleyan University,
she helped Ronnie get a job there doing maintenance. Ronnie
(11:34):
felt like Lynne understood him. She had a way of
getting through to him that no one else could. When
Lynne found Gina, things finally seemed to settle with her.
She finally found someone she cared for and cared for
her back. There was just one little wrench in those gears,
a wrench called Janet. Gina and Janet were still friends,
(11:55):
and Janet was still around t M and Janet was
not a fan of Lynne. Gina, sweet summer child that
she is, didn't notice, but Lynne did, in the way
only the partner of an oblivious person whose friend is
obviously a jealous psychopath can. Gina takes Lynne and Janet
to bingo into dancing into the movies. As far as
(12:16):
she's concerned, they're besties for the resties. Once Gina graduated
from college in the spring of nineteen ninety three, she
decided it was time to move in with Lynn. In
a last ditch effort to win her back, Janet, who
was still driving with Gina to work, told her she
wanted her back, that they could be together again, that
she didn't want Gina to move away, but most importantly,
(12:36):
that it was all or nothing. She didn't want to
be friends with Gina if she couldn't have a romantic
relationship with her. Gina, whose spine must be made a
titanium and who must have really really loved Lynn, said,
I'm sorry, I choose nothing good for her. Set those boundaries, babe. Later,
Janet would come back to Gina with her tail between
her legs, telling her that she did want to be
(12:57):
friends with her. How selfless of her. When it came
time for Gina to move, Janet threw her a going
away party at work and told her that if she
ever needed to come back, her door would always be open.
It didn't take long for things to take a strange
turn at Lynn and Gina's home. One day, a strange
letter arrived addressed to Gina. It accused Lynn of being
(13:18):
a drug dealer and that things were gonna get real
fucking ugly if Gina didn't get out now. The letter
scared Lynn, but Gina brushed it off. She'd fired a
troubled young woman a few days earlier, and she was
sure that it was this woman that sent the letter.
They had nothing to worry about. Gina and Ronnie got
on like a house on fire. They'd hang out when
(13:40):
Lynn wasn't around and go out and learn country dancing. Meanwhile,
back in Vermont, Janet was calling the Coachy Stellar household
two or three times a day. If Ronnie or Lynn answered,
she'd chat with them for five, ten, even twenty minutes
before asking to be handed over to Gina. To Gina,
it seemed like they were all becoming friends. Wasn't that wonderful?
(14:01):
But in truth, Janet was coming unglued. Gina belonged to her,
and the longer she hung around that woman, the more
and more impatient she was getting Her letter didn't work.
Her threats of ending the friendship hadn't worked, Her begging
hadn't worked. It was time to do something drastic, because
God forbid you move on with your life.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Janet approached her new roomy, Natalie Jurgen, to ask for
a favor. Remember Natalie, Jurgen. She was part of that
little ski lodge friend group. She wanted a ride to Middletown,
Connecticut for a quick shopping trip, and wouldn't you know it,
their old friend Gina Coochie was living there with her
old girlfriend. Shouldn't they stop buying pair a visit? She
confided to Natalie, I want to see where she's living now.
(14:48):
I also want to maybe play a prank. Oh, So
the Terrible two drove on out to Middletown and stopped
by Gina's house. On the way there. Janet had told
Natalie the plan. She was going to He's permanent marker
to write slurs and insults all over Lynn's car. Nice
She slunk out of the car approaching Lynn's vehicle, but
(15:08):
when she got back in Natalie's car, Lyne's vehicle was untouched.
Natalie and Janet repeated these little excursions a few more times,
and as summer drew to a close, their trips changed
in tone. Janet started directing Natalie to drive to Wesleyan University,
where Lynn was working, so they could follow Lynn home.
She'd take pictures of her car, draw maps of possible
(15:29):
routes to and from the University. According to court documents,
Janet told Natalie that she planned to kill Lynn using
all this juicy info they were gathering. Jesus, she was
either going to stab her or pour ether all over
her in her car and light her on fire. Jimney
fucking Christmas, Holy shit. Now I suspect that Natalie thought
(15:52):
she was joking or too much of a coward to
go through with it.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Well, yeah, I mean, she didn't even draw on the car,
for God's sake.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
Very true, But either way, you'd think she would have
called up her old pal Jina Kochie and been like, yo,
your psychoacts is taking a one way train to stalk
her town and I've accidentally been the conductor. But alas no,
Natalie was happy to go on two additional trips with
Jenna after this little confession wow. In the first two
weeks of October. Janet brought along a dark cap, gloves,
(16:21):
and a thirty two caliber handgun in her bag. She
got out of Natalie's car and waited in an intersection
that Lynn would be driving by on her way home
from work. Fortunately, Lynn didn't show up that evening. She
had a doctor's appointment and took a different route home.
(17:01):
This was the turning point. The whole thing got a
little too real for Natalie and she didn't go on
any more reconnissions with Janet. She still didn't call Gina
or the cops. She just kept the whole thing to herself.
I will say that one of our sources insinuated that
Janet threatened Natalie's children, but we didn't find other sources
that mentioned it, so it's hard to really pinpoint her
(17:24):
actual level of culpability here either way. The police absolutely
could have helped protect her and her children.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
And you're not in You're not any safer if somebody
tells you if you say anything, I'll kill your children.
Those children are going to be in danger if you
don't say anything because you can't trust this person. They're
gonna know, you know, so you're a liability for them.
So it's just better a hundred times out of one
hundred to tell yep, yep.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
And and she was allowed to not no longer be
involved after this point, so again she's still in danger
because she was Again Janet let her not be a
driver anymore, which would scare me if I was involved.
And then suddenly I'm like, she's like Okay, you don't
have to drive me anymore. What do you mean? What
(18:14):
do you mean? Not one to be discouraged, though, Janet
decides that she should do. The next logical thing involve
her twenty four year old daughter, Melody. Oh wow yeah.
Lynn was on the phone with Gina when she was
at work when a car with Verbot plate stopped in
their driveway. Lynn was confused for a moment before saying, oh,
it's Janet and Melody. Gina and Lynn's guest policy was
(18:38):
pretty much let yourself in, which is a foreign concept
to me, because if you show up at my house unannounced,
I will pretend I'm not there while making eye contact
with you through a window.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Until you leave, I'll just army crawl through my living room,
you know, just so you can't see me through the
damn window. Yeah, same way.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
But you know, it takes all kinds. Gina was just delighted,
and so was Janet for the record, but for an
entirely different reason. She wanted to see how the house
was laid out.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Uh so creepy. That evening, while chatting over dinner, Gina
told a story that caught Janet's ear. She was laughing
about having forgotten her keys on the counter the other
day and getting home before anybody else. She tried to
squeeze herself through the house's doggy door to get herself inside,
but to no avail. And while she was laughing, Janet's
mind started concocting a plan. Her other friend, Butch Fruan
(19:33):
from work, was a pretty small guy. The dog door
was medium largish, and it seemed like Butch could easily
fit through it. As soon as Janet asked, Butch agreed
to help her kill Lynn Stellar, which is astonishing to me.
It would be no problem, he told her. In fact,
he was the one who lent her his father's gun
she was going to use on the failed attempt on
(19:53):
Lynn's life earlier that same month. Now we've said this
before on this show, but we tend to not believe
in this Bengal type. But what the fuck was happening
in this friend group? What?
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Like, seriously, what kind of hole.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Did Janet have on these people that she could just
say jump and they'd say how high.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
Or in a in a Butcher's case, how short.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
I mean, I'm pretty loyal to my friends, but if
one of them asked me to help them commit murder
because their ex situationship had moved on. I'd probably be
dropping their happy ass off with the nearest police station,
not aiding in a bedding, not trying to virtue signal
over here. But it genuinely seems like both Natalie Jurgen
and Butch Fruan made their lives significantly harder by agreeing
(20:39):
to Janet's little scheme. It's just bizarre. Either they are
the second and third worst people in the world, right
behind Janet, or she's got some serious powers of persuasion,
which we've seen before. We know some people do so
with Butch and tow All Janet needed now was a
getaway driver. Natalie was out, She'd made that much clear.
Who could they count on, Well, Melody was already involved,
(21:02):
right in for a penny, in for a pound, her daughter,
her daughter, She's involving her daughter in this shit. Unreal.
Janet told her that they were just going down to
visit Gina. She asked Melody to drop them off near
the house and then sent her to pick them up
some cigarettes in town. Janet and Butch walked holding hands
(21:23):
to the house and rang the door bell in order
to make sure nobody was home. Once confirming that nobody
was both Janet and Butch crawled through the dog door
and sat waiting. At three thirty p m. Lennon Ronnie
arrived at the house through the garage and entered the kitchen. There,
Janet and Butch were waiting. Janet shot Len and Ronnie
(21:44):
three times each. When the gun was empty, she realized
both victims were still alive and demanded Butch help her.
Butch grabbed a butcher knife from the knife block on
the counter and handed it to Janet, who stabbed wildly
at both Lynn and Ronnie. In the process of the struggle,
the knife severed the foam line and knocked the phone
off the hook. She also used a pairing knife and
(22:06):
a serrated knife to attack the victims, which is a
sign of severe overkill. Ronnie and Lynn were still alive, though,
so Janet told Butch to hander something else. He handed
her a lamp, which she smashed over Lynne's head, then
hit Ronnie with a mason jar. This is what actually
injured her hand when the mason jar shattered and cut her.
(22:27):
Her blood was found on Ronnie's clothing on the wall
in the hallway leading away from the scene. And out
the door. They dumped the gun in a pond as
they drove away. Now whether Melody saw this, we don't know.
So a few days after the murder, how was the
investigation going? Pretty good? Honestly, at least by TCC standards.
(22:49):
Three days after it started, the detectives got an anonymous
phone call telling them that they should look into Janet
in Vermont because she had an injured hand. They didn't
know what Janet looked like or even where she lived,
so they decided to make an appearance at the funeral
to see who showed up with a bandaged hand. Detective
Bob Barone took Gina to a separate room and asked
(23:09):
her if she knew anyone named Janet. She said yeah,
of course, and when he asked if he could speak
to her, Gina freaked out a little. She called him
an asshole and told him he was wasting time chasing
this lead and they needed to go find the real killer.
Bless her heart.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Bob would later tell id that he found this to
be a very authentic reaction. She was defensive over her friend,
and he thought she was just protecting her own mind
from the horrific thought that someone so close to her
could betray her like this absolutely. Despite her initial reaction,
Gina did manage to arrange a meeting between the detectives
and Janet. Though they met at Gina's home in Retland Falls,
(23:48):
Janet was strikingly calm throughout the interview. She told them
that on the day of the murder, she'd been with
Butch in a different town picking something up for her grandson.
Janet did indeed have a cut her hand. When asked
about it, she told the detectives that on November two,
she'd been changing a light globe at work when it shattered.
She immediately filed an injury report with her boss and
(24:10):
started the process for a workman's com claim. The detectives, though,
were about one hundred and fifty seven steps ahead at
this point, because for narrative purposes, we haven't told you
something like we said. During the murder, Janet's knife cut
the phone line and knocked the phone off the hook,
which activated the answering machine. By some miracle, it recorded
(24:31):
everything that was happening in the room, and the recording
is one of the most chilling things I've ever heard
in my life. Oh Lord, The tape starts with Janet
snapping at Bush, I thought you were gonna help me,
Butch hold her. Oh my god. In the background, Lynn
is begging for her life. No please, no, don't, don't no, don't, don't.
(24:55):
Come on, please, I've got a son. Come on, Janet,
Oh god. Butch struggling tells Janet do it, and Lynne
yells Janet no. As we hear an ineffectual clicking noise,
Janet Hoffson says, oh great, I can't. Then Steller calls
out Ronnie, Ronnie, Ronnie. No, no, Janet no, oh Laura.
(25:18):
There's more struggling, more yelling than Janet orders Bush give
me something, anything, He must hand her the ceramic lamp
because a few moments later there's the sound of glass shattering.
She then says, Butch, here here, he's not done. He's
not done. No, hand me something, and there's more glass breaking.
(25:38):
Then Butch says, let's go. Janet agrees he's done. Let's go.
The tape then records the eerie silence of the house
until the tape runs out. The cops heard the tape
that morning before they interviewed Janet, and naturally, it was
a goddamn bombshell it's as good as a tape confession.
(25:58):
The victim was reaching out from beyond the grave and
sending a message telling the detectives who had done this
to her and her nephew. There was still quite a
bit that the police didn't know. They didn't know who
the man on the tape was, They didn't know if
there was any other accomplices, if anyone knew about this murder.
They needed to put the screws to her in a
more controlled environment, so they asked if she could come
(26:21):
meet them at the Rutland PD the next day for
an interview. She agreed easily. She had told them she
had been with Butch Fruand in town all day on
the day of the murder, so they did pay Butch
a visit to confirm her alibi. Butch a story matched Janets,
but like in a suspicious rehearsed way. They asked him
to visit the police department the next day as well
(26:42):
for a formal interview, and he set up a time.
They talked to Butch first, and when he started in
on the alibi story again, the detective stopped him. We
already know you're lying, they told.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
Him, and then they popped the answering machine tape into
the cassette player, and when he heard what was on it,
Butch folded like an Oregonmi crane. He looked like he'd
seen a ghost, and it was almost like he had.
I can only imagine the panic when he realized what
he was listening to. Butch said he'd gone to Middletown
with Janet, but he had no idea that the murders
(27:16):
were going to happen. He said that Janet held him
at gunpoint and forced him to crawl through the dog
door and let her in the house. Then she made
him wait in the house with her, which he did
without putting up a fight. And when Ronnie and Lynn
came home, he sat back and watched as she violently
put an end to two people's lives. What an interesting story, right,
(27:37):
in my opinion, there's just one gaping hole in it.
Can you guess what that is?
Speaker 1 (27:43):
Do it?
Speaker 3 (27:43):
M M? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (27:46):
While he was restraining Lynn stellar while she was fighting
for her life, Butch Fruin told Janet do it while
she was holding a gun. That doesn't seem very scared
or threatened to me, does it? Well? Anyway, that half
confession was enough to put some pressure on our ice
Queen Janet, who, upon hearing about Butch's confession, in her
(28:08):
first display of real emotion since speaking to investigators, simply
laid her head in her hands. But then she lifted
her head up and made eye contact with the detective
and said, cool as a fridge full of cucumbers. I
couldn't have done this. I couldn't kill anybody. The detective
just shrugged and said, tell you what, Janet's starting to
look like. We might be getting a warrant for your
(28:29):
arrest here in a couple of days, so you sit tight.
Janet told them she would be staying with her daughter
and they could find her there if they needed her.
On November ninth, nineteen ninety three, just a week and
a half after the murders of Lynn Stellar and Ronnie King,
police put the Habeas gravius on Janet Griffin Ginakoche was shaken.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
To her core.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
It was a betrayal. She almost couldn't comprehend. These people
were her friends. She considered them to be the closest
people in her life, and they ripped her world apart
for no real reason at all. Janet fought extradition to
Connecticut for three years, but her trial finally began in
March of nineteen ninety six. She was charged with two
(29:10):
counts of first degree murder. She's found guilty on both
counts and was sentenced to life in prison without the
possibility of parole. Excellent Gina Coochee now says that Janet
ruined her life and that she deserves to die the
way my lover and her nephew did. But we put
that woman behind bars where she belongs, and that's the
best we could do. A year later, Butch went on
(29:32):
trial for manslaughter and was sentenced to thirty years in prison.
Detective Gino acknowledges that Butch may very well have been
frightened of Janet. I mean, Janet's a scary person. She
stalked a woman for having the audacity to say no
to her, and brutally murdered two people over it. It's
clear from the recording that he was the assistant in
(29:52):
the room, not the primary assailant. But at the end
of the day, life is made up of choices. Butch
chose to give Janet his father's gun. He chose to
go with her to Connecticut. He chose to help her
kill two people, and he chose to try and help
her get away with it. The thing I keep coming
back to is the two lines on that audio tape,
Butch telling Janet to do it as he handed her
(30:13):
a knife when the gun ran out of bullets, and
Butch simply saying let's go, as Ronnie King took his
last breast on this earth. Butch's out of prison by now,
and we hope to God he's keeping his nose clean.
Natalie Jurgen was granted immunity for her frankly valuable testimony
about Janet's stalking, an initial attempt on Lynn's life. She
(30:34):
passed away in twenty seventeen. We heard her family and
loved ones find peace. As far as Janet's daughter, Melody,
the police couldn't prove that she knew anything at all
about the murders. It seems like Janet really did keep
her out of it. To Janet, her friends were expendable,
her daughter possibly not. This is just a sad, sad case.
(30:54):
Janet's whole stick is the kick dog esthetic, isn't it.
It's all just kind of pathetic. Feel bad for me.
I'm so down on my luck. I need help. Then
she just blasts a crater in an entire community because
she can't take no for an answer, and you know
it wouldn't have been enough for her, right like the
possession is never enough for this type of person. They
never see the object of their desires as a living,
(31:17):
breathing human being. They see them as a sort of
doll that they can project their fantasies on. You have
a young woman, one who grew up without a mom,
who Janet practically raised. We haven't talked much about grooming
here because there isn't really evidence of that, but it's
certainly worth side eyeing how Janet went from babysitting Gina
as a child to moving herself into her bedroom. Right.
(31:40):
What this case really makes us think about is community.
Lynn and Gina and Ronnie had started building their own
little community in Middletown. Everybody who met him adored them.
They'd been growing roots, bravely putting themselves out there loving
each other. Isn't that what we're here for? To love
each other? And then one sick, obsessive woman decided to
(32:00):
tear all that known for her own selfish purposes. So
campers remember to go out there and love each other.
This week for Ronnie and for Lynn. So that was
wild one, right, campers. You know we'll have another one
for you next week, but for now, lock your doors,
light your lights, and stay safe until we get together
again around the True Crime Campfire. And if you haven't
(32:22):
booked your spot on the Crime Wave True Crime Cruise
from November third through November seventh, again on it, y'all
join Katie and Me plus last podcast on the Left,
Scared to Death and Sinisterhood for a rock and good
time at sea. You can pay all at once or
set up a payment plan, but you 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
(32:44):
out to a few of our lovely patrons. Thank you
so much to Sam Gillian, Sammy the book Goblin I
love It and Stephanie Stephanie with an F. We appreciate
y'all to the moon and back. And if you're not
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(33:06):
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true Crime campfire
Hello, campers, Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true
crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie and I'm Whitney,
and we're here to tell you a true story that
is way stranger than fiction or roasting murderers and marshmallows
around the true crime campfire.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Obsession is one of humanity's greatest boons and curses. Obsession
can fuel a scientist's entire career trying to solve a
singular problem. An athlete's obsession can pull them to physics
spending heights. A politician's obsession with the cause can push
a world changing bill forward. People can be obsessed over
all sorts of great and mundane things, books, trading cards, cars,
(00:44):
art without any kind of harm. But when that obsession
is about controlling or possessing another person, things can take
a sinister turn. In today's story, seven people's lives are
ruined by a single woman's obsession. This is you have
one new message. The murders of Len Stellar and Ronnie King,
(01:13):
So campers for this one. We're in Middletown, Connecticut, November one,
nineteen ninety three. Twenty five year old Gina Kochie was
just getting home from her housekeeping shift at the local
ski resort and hotel just after five pm. Immediately she
could tell something was wrong. Her girlfriend, forty three year
old Len Stellar, and their twenty five year old roommate,
(01:35):
Lynn's nephew, Ronnie King, were supposed to be home by then,
but the house was completely dark. She called out in
the darkness, expecting one of them to answer, but there
was no reply. As she felt her way into the
dark house, she kept expecting Lynn or Ronnie to pop
out and greet her, but no one did. Finally, at
the end of the hallway, in the doorway to the kitchen,
(01:56):
she tripped over something soft but solid on the wad.
As she pawed at the wall to turn on the light,
she saw with a shock of horror that the floor
and the walls were covered in blood, and that the
object she'd tripped over was, in fact Lynne's prone body.
Lying next to Lynn was Ronnie. Her first reaction was
(02:17):
that it was the day after Halloween, that surely this
was some sort of unfunny prank pulled on her by
her girlfriend and roommate using discount fake blood or something. Right,
she yelled at him get the hell up. What is
wrong with you people? It took several seconds for her
to realize this wasn't a prank. The silence of the
house was only broken by her breathing. Gina fell to
(02:41):
her knees and gathered Lynn into her arms, begging her
to get up. Gina later said in an interview that
she wasn't sure how long she stayed in the house,
holding on to Lynn, waiting for her to wake up. Eventually,
she tried the telephone, but there was no dial tone,
so Gina had to run to a neighbor's house to
call the police.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
This is a sad little detail. When she initially called
nine one one, she told them that her roommates were
hurt because presumably she didn't want to out herself.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Oh, bless her heart. I bet you're right about that.
And that's so sad that she'd have to think about
that at such an awful time. But yeah. When investigators arrived,
they immediately declared it a double homicide. Detectives Bob Barone
and Kevin Gino were assigned to the case. Barone said
the scene looked like all hell broke loose. There were
(03:30):
signs of an extreme struggle but no signs of forced entry. Notably,
both Ronnie and Lynn had their winter coats on, so
it looked like they'd been ambushed Right as they came
inside the house. Both victims were shot and stabbed and bludgeoned,
one with a mason jar and the other with a
ceramic lamp. They'd been stabbed with several different knives multiple times.
(03:53):
The knives used were from the victim's own kitchen, as
well as the mason jar and lamp. What does that
sound like campers? Perhaps a killer that was not prepared
for their victims to fight back, or maybe had one
target and suddenly had to deal with two. The level
of overkill certainly indicated there was a lot of rage
behind the killing, which probably ruled out a random home
(04:15):
invasion or a stranger. This killer knew one or both
of the victims, and they likely hated them or what
they represented. The medical examiner later found that Ronnie's cause
of death was the combination of the gunshot and stab wounds,
while the gunshots or stab wounds were each sufficient to
have killed Lynn. Crime scene texts quickly noticed a trail
(04:36):
of blood leaving the scene, and tests would later find
that it didn't belong to either Lynn or Ronnie. This
is a common occurrence with stabbings or killings where there's
a lot of struggle. Oftentimes the killer will hurt themselves
in the attack too. Of course, as the person who
found the bodies and the girlfriend of one of the victims,
Gina was immediately the first person the detectives wanted to
talk to. They tested her clothes for gunshot residue and
(04:59):
black They impounded and tested her car for the same,
and they questioned her for hours. Lynn's family suspected her,
but it was really less about actual suspicion and more
about the fact that they were having a hard time
accepting Lynn's new relationship with a woman. Meanwhile, the police
checked Gina's alibi and they ruled her out pretty quick.
(05:21):
Now out from under the suspicious eyes of law enforcement,
Gina was able to leave the state so she could
finally visit somebody to comfort her, Somebody who could understand
how much she was grieving, who knew Gina, possibly better
than she knew herself.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
She drove to Rutland, Vermont, her hometown, and called up
Janet Griffin. Janet Griffin had known Gina Kochi her entire life.
She baby sat Gina as a kid. Gina would later
tell Investigation Discovery that Janet was the mother she never had.
When Gina got to her house, Janet was there waiting
for her and just held her as she sobbed. Janet
(05:58):
told her, why would someone want to do that to you?
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Huh?
Speaker 3 (06:03):
What odd phrasing? Why would someone want to do that
to you? What Gina was too consumed with grief to
notice is that Janet had seen to have injured her hand.
It was wrapped in a bandage. Let's put a pin
in that for a moment, though, and rewind a couple
of years. It was nineteen ninety and Gina was on
(06:24):
her grind. She was working eighty hours a week at
a local ski resort while taking on a full course
load at Saint Joseph's College. She had saved so much
that she was able to buy her own house at
just twenty two years old.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
I know.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
That's when Gina bumped into Janet at the Dunkin Donuts.
This is a very East Coast story. If there's ski lodges,
there's dunkin Donuts. They were reminiscing about the old times
when Janet revealed that she'd been going through some tough things,
specifically that she had been going through a divorce from
her husband and was living in her car. This was
unacceptable to Gina, who had three empty bedrooms. Sheaffered Janet
(07:01):
a room. Their relationship deepened. Janet was so grateful for
Gina's generosity and took care of Gina, making her meals,
doing her housework, stuff that Gina didn't really have time
to do herself. Jina even got Janet a job at
the ski resort because she was the head of the
housekeeping department. Like, this girl was working. I gotta respect Gina.
(07:22):
Holy shit, absolutely there. They made a tight little click
of friends in the housekeeping department, Natalie Jurgen, Janet's daughter, Melody, Jasmine,
and Gordon butch Fruin. Janet and Gina's relationship was weird.
They quickly became closer than roommates, and then their relationship
(07:44):
crossed into romantic territory, which is gross to say the least.
I mean, this woman saw Gina in diapers and then
moved into her house and started a relationship with her.
That's bizarre.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
That is really weird, and I can't imagine looking at
a kid that I babysat and like held in my
arms and thinking, hey babe, it's just I don't know,
So it's weird. There's a mental block against that.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
Yeah, me, like, I want a piece of that. That's disgusting,
I can yeah, yeah, yeah, it's weird. Their relationship ended
in June of nineteen ninety two. Janet was deeply unhappy
about it and begged Gina to take her back, but
Gina refused, like, we couldn't find exactly why the relationship ended,
just had it ended, and Janet was devastated, but they
(08:33):
kept living together and even shared a room, but Gina
later testified that they were no longer intimate at that point.
That's weird as hell.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
I definitely could not have stood for one second to
share an apartment, let alone a freaking bedroom, for God's take,
with any of my exes. I mean, once you're out,
you want to be out, especially if one of you
has really been out of shape about the breakup. So
that's just wild to me.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
It's it's super it's super weird. By January of nineteen
ninety three, Gina was a little sick of living and
sharing a bed with her ex so she told Janet
that she had to move out. I mean they were
still working together, so they were basically around each other
twenty four hours a day. For people with a functional
romantic relationship, that's too much, let alone xes. Janet did
(09:20):
not take it well. She insisted that she was still
in love with Gina and she still wanted to make
it work. Gina was not taking this bullshit, which good
for her, and told her to move out. She wanted
to reign friends, but this was all too much for her.
Janet moved in with her daughter Melody. Then, in April
of nineteen ninety three, Gina met Patricia Linstellar when she
(09:42):
went to visit her aunt, Margaret. Lynn owned an upholstering
company and was re upholstering Gina's aunt's couch. There was
an immediate connection between the two. Gina acknowledged that she
knew their age difference was odd, but it was hard
to meet women her own age. Roland, Vermont is a
small town, so it makes sense that she'd be cautious
(10:04):
with her identity, especially in the early nineties.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
And it's not like Lynn knew her whole life and
babysatter and was like a mom to her before their
romantic relationship in this instance, so I'm not side eyeing
their relationship whatsoever.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Yeah, there's an obvious, like glaring difference between Gina's relationship
with Lynn and Gina's relationship with Janet. One has shades
of grooming and the other is just some age differences.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Right. In fact, it seemed like a sweet relationship. Because
Lynn lived three hours away in Middletown. Their relationship was
long distance, but they both traded weekends visiting each other.
Lynn cared about Gina so much that she decided to
ask Jana to be her date to a family member's wedding.
Lynn's family was certainly not accepting, so this was a
huge step for Lynn. Lynn deserved good things. Her seven
(10:51):
year old son, Howie, had gotten hit by a car
when he was crossing in front of a school thus
and passed away, and Lynn saw it happen. After that,
Lynn began to truly struggle with her identity. Her second son, Matthew,
said that it was always clear to him that his
father and mother were best friends. The only problem was
(11:11):
his mom was gay. They got a divorce, but their
friendship continued. Her nephew, Ronnie was like a third son
to her. Matthew said he looked at Ronnie like an
in house Tom Cruise. He was a little shy, but
in that secretly funny kind of way that always takes
people by surprise. When Lynn got a job at Wesleyan University,
she helped Ronnie get a job there doing maintenance. Ronnie
(11:34):
felt like Lynne understood him. She had a way of
getting through to him that no one else could. When
Lynne found Gina, things finally seemed to settle with her.
She finally found someone she cared for and cared for
her back. There was just one little wrench in those gears,
a wrench called Janet. Gina and Janet were still friends,
(11:55):
and Janet was still around t M and Janet was
not a fan of Lynne. Gina, sweet summer child that
she is, didn't notice, but Lynne did, in the way
only the partner of an oblivious person whose friend is
obviously a jealous psychopath can. Gina takes Lynne and Janet
to bingo into dancing into the movies. As far as
(12:16):
she's concerned, they're besties for the resties. Once Gina graduated
from college in the spring of nineteen ninety three, she
decided it was time to move in with Lynn. In
a last ditch effort to win her back, Janet, who
was still driving with Gina to work, told her she
wanted her back, that they could be together again, that
she didn't want Gina to move away, but most importantly,
(12:36):
that it was all or nothing. She didn't want to
be friends with Gina if she couldn't have a romantic
relationship with her. Gina, whose spine must be made a
titanium and who must have really really loved Lynn, said,
I'm sorry, I choose nothing good for her. Set those boundaries, babe. Later,
Janet would come back to Gina with her tail between
her legs, telling her that she did want to be
(12:57):
friends with her. How selfless of her. When it came
time for Gina to move, Janet threw her a going
away party at work and told her that if she
ever needed to come back, her door would always be open.
It didn't take long for things to take a strange
turn at Lynn and Gina's home. One day, a strange
letter arrived addressed to Gina. It accused Lynn of being
(13:18):
a drug dealer and that things were gonna get real
fucking ugly if Gina didn't get out now. The letter
scared Lynn, but Gina brushed it off. She'd fired a
troubled young woman a few days earlier, and she was
sure that it was this woman that sent the letter.
They had nothing to worry about. Gina and Ronnie got
on like a house on fire. They'd hang out when
(13:40):
Lynn wasn't around and go out and learn country dancing. Meanwhile,
back in Vermont, Janet was calling the Coachy Stellar household
two or three times a day. If Ronnie or Lynn answered,
she'd chat with them for five, ten, even twenty minutes
before asking to be handed over to Gina. To Gina,
it seemed like they were all becoming friends. Wasn't that wonderful?
(14:01):
But in truth, Janet was coming unglued. Gina belonged to her,
and the longer she hung around that woman, the more
and more impatient she was getting Her letter didn't work.
Her threats of ending the friendship hadn't worked, Her begging
hadn't worked. It was time to do something drastic, because
God forbid you move on with your life.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Janet approached her new roomy, Natalie Jurgen, to ask for
a favor. Remember Natalie, Jurgen. She was part of that
little ski lodge friend group. She wanted a ride to Middletown,
Connecticut for a quick shopping trip, and wouldn't you know it,
their old friend Gina Coochie was living there with her
old girlfriend. Shouldn't they stop buying pair a visit? She
confided to Natalie, I want to see where she's living now.
(14:48):
I also want to maybe play a prank. Oh, So
the Terrible two drove on out to Middletown and stopped
by Gina's house. On the way there. Janet had told
Natalie the plan. She was going to He's permanent marker
to write slurs and insults all over Lynn's car. Nice
She slunk out of the car approaching Lynn's vehicle, but
(15:08):
when she got back in Natalie's car, Lyne's vehicle was untouched.
Natalie and Janet repeated these little excursions a few more times,
and as summer drew to a close, their trips changed
in tone. Janet started directing Natalie to drive to Wesleyan University,
where Lynn was working, so they could follow Lynn home.
She'd take pictures of her car, draw maps of possible
(15:29):
routes to and from the University. According to court documents,
Janet told Natalie that she planned to kill Lynn using
all this juicy info they were gathering. Jesus, she was
either going to stab her or pour ether all over
her in her car and light her on fire. Jimney
fucking Christmas, Holy shit. Now I suspect that Natalie thought
(15:52):
she was joking or too much of a coward to
go through with it.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Well, yeah, I mean, she didn't even draw on the car,
for God's sake.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
Very true, But either way, you'd think she would have
called up her old pal Jina Kochie and been like, yo,
your psychoacts is taking a one way train to stalk
her town and I've accidentally been the conductor. But alas no,
Natalie was happy to go on two additional trips with
Jenna after this little confession wow. In the first two
weeks of October. Janet brought along a dark cap, gloves,
(16:21):
and a thirty two caliber handgun in her bag. She
got out of Natalie's car and waited in an intersection
that Lynn would be driving by on her way home
from work. Fortunately, Lynn didn't show up that evening. She
had a doctor's appointment and took a different route home.
(17:01):
This was the turning point. The whole thing got a
little too real for Natalie and she didn't go on
any more reconnissions with Janet. She still didn't call Gina
or the cops. She just kept the whole thing to herself.
I will say that one of our sources insinuated that
Janet threatened Natalie's children, but we didn't find other sources
that mentioned it, so it's hard to really pinpoint her
(17:24):
actual level of culpability here either way. The police absolutely
could have helped protect her and her children.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
And you're not in You're not any safer if somebody
tells you if you say anything, I'll kill your children.
Those children are going to be in danger if you
don't say anything because you can't trust this person. They're
gonna know, you know, so you're a liability for them.
So it's just better a hundred times out of one
hundred to tell yep, yep.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
And and she was allowed to not no longer be
involved after this point, so again she's still in danger
because she was Again Janet let her not be a
driver anymore, which would scare me if I was involved.
And then suddenly I'm like, she's like Okay, you don't
have to drive me anymore. What do you mean? What
(18:14):
do you mean? Not one to be discouraged, though, Janet
decides that she should do. The next logical thing involve
her twenty four year old daughter, Melody. Oh wow yeah.
Lynn was on the phone with Gina when she was
at work when a car with Verbot plate stopped in
their driveway. Lynn was confused for a moment before saying, oh,
it's Janet and Melody. Gina and Lynn's guest policy was
(18:38):
pretty much let yourself in, which is a foreign concept
to me, because if you show up at my house unannounced,
I will pretend I'm not there while making eye contact
with you through a window.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Until you leave, I'll just army crawl through my living room,
you know, just so you can't see me through the
damn window. Yeah, same way.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
But you know, it takes all kinds. Gina was just delighted,
and so was Janet for the record, but for an
entirely different reason. She wanted to see how the house
was laid out.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Uh so creepy. That evening, while chatting over dinner, Gina
told a story that caught Janet's ear. She was laughing
about having forgotten her keys on the counter the other
day and getting home before anybody else. She tried to
squeeze herself through the house's doggy door to get herself inside,
but to no avail. And while she was laughing, Janet's
mind started concocting a plan. Her other friend, Butch Fruan
(19:33):
from work, was a pretty small guy. The dog door
was medium largish, and it seemed like Butch could easily
fit through it. As soon as Janet asked, Butch agreed
to help her kill Lynn Stellar, which is astonishing to me.
It would be no problem, he told her. In fact,
he was the one who lent her his father's gun
she was going to use on the failed attempt on
(19:53):
Lynn's life earlier that same month. Now we've said this
before on this show, but we tend to not believe
in this Bengal type. But what the fuck was happening
in this friend group? What?
Speaker 3 (20:05):
Like, seriously, what kind of hole.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Did Janet have on these people that she could just
say jump and they'd say how high.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
Or in a in a Butcher's case, how short.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
I mean, I'm pretty loyal to my friends, but if
one of them asked me to help them commit murder
because their ex situationship had moved on. I'd probably be
dropping their happy ass off with the nearest police station,
not aiding in a bedding, not trying to virtue signal
over here. But it genuinely seems like both Natalie Jurgen
and Butch Fruan made their lives significantly harder by agreeing
(20:39):
to Janet's little scheme. It's just bizarre. Either they are
the second and third worst people in the world, right
behind Janet, or she's got some serious powers of persuasion,
which we've seen before. We know some people do so
with Butch and tow All Janet needed now was a
getaway driver. Natalie was out, She'd made that much clear.
Who could they count on, Well, Melody was already involved,
(21:02):
right in for a penny, in for a pound, her daughter,
her daughter, She's involving her daughter in this shit. Unreal.
Janet told her that they were just going down to
visit Gina. She asked Melody to drop them off near
the house and then sent her to pick them up
some cigarettes in town. Janet and Butch walked holding hands
(21:23):
to the house and rang the door bell in order
to make sure nobody was home. Once confirming that nobody
was both Janet and Butch crawled through the dog door
and sat waiting. At three thirty p m. Lennon Ronnie
arrived at the house through the garage and entered the kitchen. There,
Janet and Butch were waiting. Janet shot Len and Ronnie
(21:44):
three times each. When the gun was empty, she realized
both victims were still alive and demanded Butch help her.
Butch grabbed a butcher knife from the knife block on
the counter and handed it to Janet, who stabbed wildly
at both Lynn and Ronnie. In the process of the struggle,
the knife severed the foam line and knocked the phone
off the hook. She also used a pairing knife and
(22:06):
a serrated knife to attack the victims, which is a
sign of severe overkill. Ronnie and Lynn were still alive, though,
so Janet told Butch to hander something else. He handed
her a lamp, which she smashed over Lynne's head, then
hit Ronnie with a mason jar. This is what actually
injured her hand when the mason jar shattered and cut her.
(22:27):
Her blood was found on Ronnie's clothing on the wall
in the hallway leading away from the scene. And out
the door. They dumped the gun in a pond as
they drove away. Now whether Melody saw this, we don't know.
So a few days after the murder, how was the
investigation going? Pretty good? Honestly, at least by TCC standards.
(22:49):
Three days after it started, the detectives got an anonymous
phone call telling them that they should look into Janet
in Vermont because she had an injured hand. They didn't
know what Janet looked like or even where she lived,
so they decided to make an appearance at the funeral
to see who showed up with a bandaged hand. Detective
Bob Barone took Gina to a separate room and asked
(23:09):
her if she knew anyone named Janet. She said yeah,
of course, and when he asked if he could speak
to her, Gina freaked out a little. She called him
an asshole and told him he was wasting time chasing
this lead and they needed to go find the real killer.
Bless her heart.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Bob would later tell id that he found this to
be a very authentic reaction. She was defensive over her friend,
and he thought she was just protecting her own mind
from the horrific thought that someone so close to her
could betray her like this absolutely. Despite her initial reaction,
Gina did manage to arrange a meeting between the detectives
and Janet. Though they met at Gina's home in Retland Falls,
(23:48):
Janet was strikingly calm throughout the interview. She told them
that on the day of the murder, she'd been with
Butch in a different town picking something up for her grandson.
Janet did indeed have a cut her hand. When asked
about it, she told the detectives that on November two,
she'd been changing a light globe at work when it shattered.
She immediately filed an injury report with her boss and
(24:10):
started the process for a workman's com claim. The detectives, though,
were about one hundred and fifty seven steps ahead at
this point, because for narrative purposes, we haven't told you
something like we said. During the murder, Janet's knife cut
the phone line and knocked the phone off the hook,
which activated the answering machine. By some miracle, it recorded
(24:31):
everything that was happening in the room, and the recording
is one of the most chilling things I've ever heard
in my life. Oh Lord, The tape starts with Janet
snapping at Bush, I thought you were gonna help me,
Butch hold her. Oh my god. In the background, Lynn
is begging for her life. No please, no, don't, don't no, don't, don't.
(24:55):
Come on, please, I've got a son. Come on, Janet,
Oh god. Butch struggling tells Janet do it, and Lynne
yells Janet no. As we hear an ineffectual clicking noise,
Janet Hoffson says, oh great, I can't. Then Steller calls
out Ronnie, Ronnie, Ronnie. No, no, Janet no, oh Laura.
(25:18):
There's more struggling, more yelling than Janet orders Bush give
me something, anything, He must hand her the ceramic lamp
because a few moments later there's the sound of glass shattering.
She then says, Butch, here here, he's not done. He's
not done. No, hand me something, and there's more glass breaking.
(25:38):
Then Butch says, let's go. Janet agrees he's done. Let's go.
The tape then records the eerie silence of the house
until the tape runs out. The cops heard the tape
that morning before they interviewed Janet, and naturally, it was
a goddamn bombshell it's as good as a tape confession.
(25:58):
The victim was reaching out from beyond the grave and
sending a message telling the detectives who had done this
to her and her nephew. There was still quite a
bit that the police didn't know. They didn't know who
the man on the tape was, They didn't know if
there was any other accomplices, if anyone knew about this murder.
They needed to put the screws to her in a
more controlled environment, so they asked if she could come
(26:21):
meet them at the Rutland PD the next day for
an interview. She agreed easily. She had told them she
had been with Butch Fruand in town all day on
the day of the murder, so they did pay Butch
a visit to confirm her alibi. Butch a story matched Janets,
but like in a suspicious rehearsed way. They asked him
to visit the police department the next day as well
(26:42):
for a formal interview, and he set up a time.
They talked to Butch first, and when he started in
on the alibi story again, the detective stopped him. We
already know you're lying, they told.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
Him, and then they popped the answering machine tape into
the cassette player, and when he heard what was on it,
Butch folded like an Oregonmi crane. He looked like he'd
seen a ghost, and it was almost like he had.
I can only imagine the panic when he realized what
he was listening to. Butch said he'd gone to Middletown
with Janet, but he had no idea that the murders
(27:16):
were going to happen. He said that Janet held him
at gunpoint and forced him to crawl through the dog
door and let her in the house. Then she made
him wait in the house with her, which he did
without putting up a fight. And when Ronnie and Lynn
came home, he sat back and watched as she violently
put an end to two people's lives. What an interesting story, right,
(27:37):
in my opinion, there's just one gaping hole in it.
Can you guess what that is?
Speaker 1 (27:43):
Do it?
Speaker 3 (27:43):
M M? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (27:46):
While he was restraining Lynn stellar while she was fighting
for her life, Butch Fruin told Janet do it while
she was holding a gun. That doesn't seem very scared
or threatened to me, does it? Well? Anyway, that half
confession was enough to put some pressure on our ice
Queen Janet, who, upon hearing about Butch's confession, in her
(28:08):
first display of real emotion since speaking to investigators, simply
laid her head in her hands. But then she lifted
her head up and made eye contact with the detective
and said, cool as a fridge full of cucumbers. I
couldn't have done this. I couldn't kill anybody. The detective
just shrugged and said, tell you what, Janet's starting to
look like. We might be getting a warrant for your
(28:29):
arrest here in a couple of days, so you sit tight.
Janet told them she would be staying with her daughter
and they could find her there if they needed her.
On November ninth, nineteen ninety three, just a week and
a half after the murders of Lynn Stellar and Ronnie King,
police put the Habeas gravius on Janet Griffin Ginakoche was shaken.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
To her core.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
It was a betrayal. She almost couldn't comprehend. These people
were her friends. She considered them to be the closest
people in her life, and they ripped her world apart
for no real reason at all. Janet fought extradition to
Connecticut for three years, but her trial finally began in
March of nineteen ninety six. She was charged with two
(29:10):
counts of first degree murder. She's found guilty on both
counts and was sentenced to life in prison without the
possibility of parole. Excellent Gina Coochee now says that Janet
ruined her life and that she deserves to die the
way my lover and her nephew did. But we put
that woman behind bars where she belongs, and that's the
best we could do. A year later, Butch went on
(29:32):
trial for manslaughter and was sentenced to thirty years in prison.
Detective Gino acknowledges that Butch may very well have been
frightened of Janet. I mean, Janet's a scary person. She
stalked a woman for having the audacity to say no
to her, and brutally murdered two people over it. It's
clear from the recording that he was the assistant in
(29:52):
the room, not the primary assailant. But at the end
of the day, life is made up of choices. Butch
chose to give Janet his father's gun. He chose to
go with her to Connecticut. He chose to help her
kill two people, and he chose to try and help
her get away with it. The thing I keep coming
back to is the two lines on that audio tape,
Butch telling Janet to do it as he handed her
(30:13):
a knife when the gun ran out of bullets, and
Butch simply saying let's go, as Ronnie King took his
last breast on this earth. Butch's out of prison by now,
and we hope to God he's keeping his nose clean.
Natalie Jurgen was granted immunity for her frankly valuable testimony
about Janet's stalking, an initial attempt on Lynn's life. She
(30:34):
passed away in twenty seventeen. We heard her family and
loved ones find peace. As far as Janet's daughter, Melody,
the police couldn't prove that she knew anything at all
about the murders. It seems like Janet really did keep
her out of it. To Janet, her friends were expendable,
her daughter possibly not. This is just a sad, sad case.
(30:54):
Janet's whole stick is the kick dog esthetic, isn't it.
It's all just kind of pathetic. Feel bad for me.
I'm so down on my luck. I need help. Then
she just blasts a crater in an entire community because
she can't take no for an answer, and you know
it wouldn't have been enough for her, right like the
possession is never enough for this type of person. They
never see the object of their desires as a living,
(31:17):
breathing human being. They see them as a sort of
doll that they can project their fantasies on. You have
a young woman, one who grew up without a mom,
who Janet practically raised. We haven't talked much about grooming
here because there isn't really evidence of that, but it's
certainly worth side eyeing how Janet went from babysitting Gina
as a child to moving herself into her bedroom. Right.
(31:40):
What this case really makes us think about is community.
Lynn and Gina and Ronnie had started building their own
little community in Middletown. Everybody who met him adored them.
They'd been growing roots, bravely putting themselves out there loving
each other. Isn't that what we're here for? To love
each other? And then one sick, obsessive woman decided to
(32:00):
tear all that known for her own selfish purposes. So
campers remember to go out there and love each other.
This week for Ronnie and for Lynn. So that was
wild one, right, campers. You know we'll have another one
for you next week, but for now, lock your doors,
light your lights, and stay safe until we get together
again around the True Crime Campfire. And if you haven't
(32:22):
booked your spot on the Crime Wave True Crime Cruise
from November third through November seventh, again on it, y'all
join Katie and Me plus last podcast on the Left,
Scared to Death and Sinisterhood for a rock and good
time at sea. You can pay all at once or
set up a payment plan, but you 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
(32:44):
out to a few of our lovely patrons. Thank you
so much to Sam Gillian, Sammy the book Goblin I
love It and Stephanie Stephanie with an F. We appreciate
y'all to the moon and back. And if you're not
yet a patron, you're missing out. Patrons of our show
get every episode ad free, at least a day early,
sometimes even two plus tons of extra content like patrons
(33:06):
only episodes and hilarious post show discussions. And once you
hit the five dollars and up categories, you get me
more cool stuff, a free sticker at five dollars, a
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you can, come join us at patreon dot com Slash
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