Can the perfect family facade hide a deadly secret lurking beneath? This episode uncovers the twisted tale of the Yoder family, where chiropractic care blends with covert operations, and an American Dream spirals into a haunting nightmare. Join us as we explore the complex web of relationships that trap the Yoders: Mary and Bill's seemingly ideal life, their children's divergent paths and the shadow cast by Adam's mercurial girlfriend, Katie. With the unexpected illness of Adam and the tragic demise of Mary, we stitch together the chilling events that suggest this was no ordinary family drama.
Grab your Mimosa, but don't let its sweetness fool you—this story has a bitter aftertaste. The plot thickens with a mysterious illness linked to a supplement, an anonymous letter dripping with accusation, and a toxic love that poisons more than just hearts. We wade through the murky waters of a murder investigation, questioning the innocence of those closest to Mary and revealing the unsettling rapid romance between Bill and his sister-in-law. Every clue, from secret emails to lethal toxins, pulls us deeper into a narrative where Taylor Swift's "Haunted" seems less like a song and more like a prophecy. No guest could prepare you for the revelations in store, as we parse the evidence and lay bare the truth of the Yoders' fateful tale.
Check out the other episodes in this collaboration here:
Santa Maybe, a Criminal on Apple Podcasts
Sources:
Kaitlyn Conley seeks to overturn conviction in Mary Yoder killing (uticaod.com)
Kaitlyn Conley Poisons Ex-Boyfriend's Mom Mary Yoder | Crime News (oxygen.com)
Family split on Kaitlyn Conley's conviction of Mary Yoder's poisoning murder | Truecrimedaily.com
FULL EPISODE, Poisoned (nbcnews.com)
Motion for Writ in Liana Hegde v. Janine King| Trellis.Law
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1336304093519465
https://twitter.com/Murder_Mimosas
https://www.instagram.com/murder.mimosas/
murder.mimosas@gmail.com
https://uppbeat.io/t/the-wayward-hearts/a-calm-hellfire
License code: ZJZ99QK39IWFF0FB
Can the perfect family facade hide a deadly secret lurking beneath? This episode uncovers the twisted tale of the Yoder family, where chiropractic care blends with covert operations, and an American Dream spirals into a haunting nightmare. Join us as we explore the complex web of relationships that trap the Yoders: Mary and Bill's seemingly ideal life, their children's divergent paths and the shadow cast by Adam's mercurial girlfriend, Katie. With the unexpected illness of Adam and the tragic demise of Mary, we stitch together the chilling events that suggest this was no ordinary family drama.
Grab your Mimosa, but don't let its sweetness fool you—this story has a bitter aftertaste. The plot thickens with a mysterious illness linked to a supplement, an anonymous letter dripping with accusation, and a toxic love that poisons more than just hearts. We wade through the murky waters of a murder investigation, questioning the innocence of those closest to Mary and revealing the unsettling rapid romance between Bill and his sister-in-law. Every clue, from secret emails to lethal toxins, pulls us deeper into a narrative where Taylor Swift's "Haunted" seems less like a song and more like a prophecy. No guest could prepare you for the revelations in store, as we parse the evidence and lay bare the truth of the Yoders' fateful tale.
Check out the other episodes in this collaboration here:
Santa Maybe, a Criminal on Apple Podcasts
Sources:
Kaitlyn Conley seeks to overturn conviction in Mary Yoder killing (uticaod.com)
Kaitlyn Conley Poisons Ex-Boyfriend's Mom Mary Yoder | Crime News (oxygen.com)
Family split on Kaitlyn Conley's conviction of Mary Yoder's poisoning murder | Truecrimedaily.com
FULL EPISODE, Poisoned (nbcnews.com)
Motion for Writ in Liana Hegde v. Janine King| Trellis.Law
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1336304093519465
https://twitter.com/Murder_Mimosas
https://www.instagram.com/murder.mimosas/
murder.mimosas@gmail.com
https://uppbeat.io/t/the-wayward-hearts/a-calm-hellfire
License code: ZJZ99QK39IWFF0FB
Darkcast Network.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the dark side of podcasting.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Murder and Mimosas, a true crime podcast brought to you by a mother and daughter duo.
Speaker 1:Bringing you murder stories with Mimosas in hand.
Speaker 2:Just a quick disclaimer before we get started. Our show is Murder and Mimosas. It's a true crime podcast. This means that we do discuss crimes, including, but not limited to, disappearances, murder and sexual assault. All our episodes are told with the respect of the victims and the victims' family and mind. We strive to ensure that we provide factual information, with some information that is more verifiable than others. With that, grab your Mimosas and let's dive in.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to Murder and Mimosas. I'm Danica and I'm Shannon. We are honored to do another collaboration with some amazing true crime podcasts. If you're a swifty and should be exercising since she just announced her new album coming out then you will be all in for this collab, because each of these episodes are inspired by a Taylor Swift song and for you OG fans, we picked Haunted that was released in 2010. So let's start with the Yoder family. The matriarch was Mary Yoder. She was like this positive light. She really just held the family together. And then there was the patriarch, william, who was at Bill's that's what we're going to call him, yoder. He was a hardworking man. He truly adored his family and together, in their almost four decades of marriage, they had three children Just a year after their nuptials, they welcomed their first little girl, lanna.
Speaker 2:Two years later, they were blessed with another little girl, tamron, and then, a decade later, they had their last child, a boy, adam.
Speaker 1:Ten years. That sounds like a happy accident.
Speaker 2:I'm sure he was, but the entire family was super happy to welcome him. Mary and Bill both became cabrapractors and they ended up starting a business together and that was like the pinnacle in their community. Both of them were this office that they had where it was. So Mary was way more than just a mother, a wife, a doctor. She was really like super optimistic. She loved everyone she encountered, especially her patients. They talk about her a lot as being like part of the family. She just was super caring and loving. And then Bill was way more than just a father, husband and doctor as well. He was a provider. He was just the rock for the family and people talked about him being very just, strong, stoic type.
Speaker 1:They both sound like amazing people that I have to say. They both sound like those people. That lot of a room.
Speaker 2:Oh Lordy, they both are amazing people and they both do lot of a room, but let's see how that plays out for them. But for a second we're going to kind of talk more about their kids, okay. So there are quite a few dynamics that play a role in this case and we kind of have to dive into all of them to really make sense of everything Getting my board and RedStringCready out now.
Speaker 2:You will probably need it for this one, but let's start back with the three children. So we have the oldest, Lana, like I mentioned before. So she's married with children and she kind of followed in her parents' footsteps to some degree. She became a medical doctor. However, once like starting to have children, she became a stay-at-home mother to care for them. While she is still living in New York, which is where the Yoders, Mary and Bill, live and where she grew up, she moved to Sulfit County, which is about five and a half hours south of her parents, who were in Utica, New York.
Speaker 1:I can't imagine being that far away from my grandbaby, but of course that's just me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, y'all move closer to your grandbaby, but you know everyone's different and they have like a whole business that they've created from the ground up. I can't imagine it's easy to move and you can't help, but if your kids leave, no, but I will stalk you and follow you wherever Good to know.
Speaker 2:The middle child, tamren Yoder. I couldn't find as much information about her. I know that she moved away from home. I couldn't really find anything about if she had any romantic relationships. Doesn't seem like she had any kids and I couldn't find what she did for a living. She was definitely like the epitome of a middle child. As I'm searching for her like there's a lot about the oldest, there's a lot about Adam, there's very little about Tamren. Okay, nobody seemed to be worried about what she was doing. She didn't really know much about what was happening in her parents' daily lives. She was really just kind of disconnected from the rest of the family.
Speaker 2:Yes, it fit. And then we have Adam Yoder. He is the youngest and the only boy and he still lived in Utica. He was going to work, and part-time. He was also working as the office manager at the chiropractic clinic. So Adam had this on-again, off-again relationship with a woman that was like just a few years younger. Her name was Katie Connolly. When Adam's schedule picked up, he started talking to his parents and he ended up convincing them to let Katie split the office hours between the two of them, Since they both were in school. This just worked out really well for both of them and it made sure that the office was being manned and someone was there to check in guests.
Speaker 1:Mixing business and pleasure is never a great idea, especially if it's your parents' business.
Speaker 2:Well, mary and Bill definitely had some reservations about this idea, but Adam just assured them that the couple would keep business and pleasure separate. And with a little persuasion his parents finally came around and they agreed. And Adam already didn't tell his parents much about his personal life, so it wasn't really that hard for him to keep his private life away from his parents and they only talked about work with Katie, so they weren't like crying for information. So it didn't seem like it was really an issue to keep the two separate. And Katie quickly became a fixture at the office, greeting guests, checking them in, handling bookkeeping and scheduling appointments.
Speaker 2:The Yoders had no complaints and Katie was a good worker. She was very timely, she was friendly, she worked really hard. So when Adam wanted to leave the practice to focus more on school and other things, the Yoders agreed to allow Katie to work full-time as the office manager and Adam completely left the practice. Now, while things might have been great on the business side for Katie and Adam, pleasure side was crumbling. Adam and Katie always had like a bit of a tumultuous relationship which you probably figured from the on, again, off, again.
Speaker 2:That's not normally like a good relationship, but at this point they it really started to go downhill and deteriorate. So one of their quote unquote off periods right, katie had sex with a friend of Adam's and this was something that Adam could just not move past. Like he couldn't seem to get over it and told Katie that he was through for good this time.
Speaker 1:So he said we are never, ever getting back together.
Speaker 2:You could say that, but I don't think that he said it just like that, but you know, adam was unable to cut contact with Katie completely, though.
Speaker 1:Wow, I know he worked for or she worked for his parents, but that really has nothing to do with him anymore.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it actually had nothing to do with Katie working at the Yoders clinic, but on during their one of their on periods, katie had made an offer to Adam and offered to loan him some money to help pay for some debt and buy a new car. At the time, even Adam was pretty apprehensive to accept, but with some insistence on Katie's part, like her saying you know I want a life with you and like this is what you do he finally agreed. This debt, though, kept Adam tied to Katie, which I think was really what she was hoping it would do. He still owed her a substantial amount of money, just under $23,000.
Speaker 1:Whoa, where's she? She's just working as an office manager. Where's she getting this kind of money?
Speaker 2:Keep that, we're gonna come back to that, okay there were lots of text exchange between Adam and Katie that showed like their love-hate relationship for one another.
Speaker 2:In reading many of these, only one really stood out and it was during one of their off periods in 2013. Adam was staying the night at his new girlfriend's house and after midnight he gets a call from Katie. And, to add on, this is really odd because Katie doesn't really call anymore and she would text occasionally, but calls were rare and definitely in like this late. So he was concerned that maybe it was like an emergency situation. So he steps out of the room so not to wake his girlfriend and probably for her not to hear him calling his ex back at midnight and calls Katie back but she doesn't answer so he shrugs it off you know, maybe it was a drunk dial type thing goes back to bed and doesn't hear from Katie again until the following evening when he gets a very long, detailed text from her. But why?
Speaker 2:She had called the night before. She said she had drove herself to the hospital because she was pregnant with Adam's child but had a medically induced miscarriage. This truly shook Adam to the core, as the thought of having, like, possibly become a dad really confused him. It left him in this just odd state, in a state of shock. Still, adam knew Katie had obviously been through something really traumatic and he left his girlfriend's house to go comfort Katie.
Speaker 2:That's sweet of him I wonder if his girlfriend thought that, well, the text exchange between the two as he headed her way doesn't seem very sweet, though We've got these written out. So how about this? I'll read Adam. You want to read Katie? Okay, okay.
Speaker 1:God, katie, life isn't fair, I know. That's why we have to make the best of it, do what we want. I'm sorry. We would have come to the same conclusion anyway, if we talked about it or not. We're going through our own things. You expressly told me you didn't want a child. I respected that. Damn it, adam, if you had said otherwise.
Speaker 2:The things I say, don't give you the right to make decisions that involve me by yourself. I'm so torn up and hurt and confused now, and while that was the end of their text, to change about the subject that day, the two of them would continue this back and forth for the following few days Again, if you'll be Katie, I will be Adam.
Speaker 1:I didn't want to do this alone and you didn't want to be there. Two weeks later, you're ready to have kids.
Speaker 2:You wouldn't have been alone. I'm not a piece of shit, you were quite clear.
Speaker 1:I was very alone. What does it change? You don't want to be tied down. That was the life you left me alone.
Speaker 2:That officially cuts us. I want nothing to do with you. You're selfish. While Adam said he wanted nothing to do with her, the two continued for weeks bickering like this and somehow, in a few months, adam had left his girlfriend and went back to Katie.
Speaker 1:This sounds like an all-around toxic relationship.
Speaker 2:Well it was At some point the two break things off again, but they tried to maintain a civil friendship. Tried is the key word there. In mid-April of 2015, the two agreed to meet for lunch. Adam was in a relationship with another new woman, but was still willing to try to maintain a friendship with Katie. At lunch, katie brought Adam a supplement called Alpha Brain to help him focus for finals.
Speaker 2:Adam had taken Adderall in the past so Katie thought that this would be like a healthier option. Adam wasn't really all that interested but to keep from upsetting Katie, he did take the bottle of supplements with him, though he had no intentions of actually taking in any of the Alpha Brain. However, katie urged consistently through text for Adam to just give them a try and finally Adam shook one of the pills out, popped it in his mouth before starting to study, but Adam said that it really didn't do anything. He didn't notice it helping him in any way, and that's also what he told Katie in text when she followed up. Day later, katie is again pushing for Adam to give the Alpha Brain another try.
Speaker 1:So why is she so worried about Adam taking this supplement, though she never?
Speaker 2:says, but we may have some speculative answers later, so we'll circle back to that too. Put a pin in there. Okay, lots of pins in this one. So, within that same week, though, adam comes down with what he thought is like really nasty stomach bug, possibly even the flu. His dad calls his eldest daughter, lena Juana. Whatever her name is, I can't I don't know if I'm even saying it right To ask what they should do for Adam. Why did he call?
Speaker 1:her.
Speaker 2:She's a physician remember.
Speaker 1:Hell, that's right. Well, what advice did she give?
Speaker 2:Well, because Adam had it coming out both ends, if you know what?
Speaker 2:I mean his sister recommended, like their dad, take him to the ER for fluids she's to avoid dehydration and so Bill loads Adam up and takes him in and the fluids helped and he felt a little bit better. But it took Adam like months to actually feel normal again. That must have been some bug I can only imagine. But Katie would syntax just occasionally to like check up on Adam. And that's kind of where we're gonna leave their relationship and we'll come back to them. But now we're gonna go to Mary Yoder. Okay, so we're gonna be focusing specifically on June 20th of 2015, and talk about Mary's day. So that morning it was Mary's Yoder's day at the office. Many days the couple, bill and Mary, would like do split shifts, but on this day it was all Mary, so Bill still woke up early. No alarm clock would be needed.
Speaker 1:I would be annoyed to wake up early if I didn't have to work.
Speaker 2:Me too. But while Bill didn't have to work at the clinic, he did have things to get done. A honey do list probably. Yes, he stayed out of Mary's way as she rushed around the house to get ready by doing his morning workout. Katie was already at the office front desk when Mary came in. And Mary came in as her usual bubbly self. She handled her appointments. She chatted the client, just being super exuberant, which is basically how everyone saw her. So Mary was very into herbal supplements and shakely protein shakes and that's often what she had for lunch on work day, since she was really busy between clients.
Speaker 1:It's shakely, the premade protein shakes or the powder that you add to the liquid and mix it up on your own and shake it.
Speaker 2:It is actually the powder kind that you can add in and you shake it up, probably. What was new shakely? On this day, though, she visited her mother during lunch, but she didn't actually eat at her mother's house, she just went to go see her and then she came back to the office and she mixed herself up one of those shakes. She then began to see more of her patients, but by the time like she got to the last few patients of the day, it was like late afternoon. She wasn't feeling very like herself and feel great, and a long time patient had come in to see Mary right before close and was concerned because Mary was super pale and her demeanor was just off. She wasn't chatty, she was just not herself Not lighten up the room Right, and normally Mary is super attentive with her patients, super friendly. This time, though, she would like leave and step out of the hallway, and she just wasn't lighting the room, yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean she could just be having an off day. We all have those.
Speaker 2:Possible. But as she arrived home she went straight past her husband in the kitchen and into the bathroom. He's obviously startled and concerned because it's not her normal behavior to rush by into the bathroom. So he goes in and he stands outside the bathroom and he can hear that she's like violently sick and of course people are allowed to get sick. You know like it happens, but Mary rarely got sick.
Speaker 2:She was like the poster child for health. So for her to suddenly be sick to this degree, it really worried her husband. However, the two decided that hopefully a night of rest would have Mary quickly on the mend. Mary did decide to stay downstairs on the couch near the restroom and she really just didn't have the stamina and energy to climb up the stairs and at first Bill stayed near her side until Mary was like no, please go to bed, go get some rest, and you know, we'll see how it's going in the morning. Is she feeling better in the morning? No, by morning she was still sick. She had spent pretty much all of the night awake due to having to get up to the bathroom and since they had recently dealt with something similar with Adam, bill decided that he would do the same thing he did for Adam and he took Mary to the hospital for fluids.
Speaker 1:That makes sense. Sounds like she had what he had, and the flits seemed to help Adam.
Speaker 2:Yes. So at 9 am on July 31st they headed the hospital and when they arrived the e-heart got her back in no time, providing your fluids via IV, and it began to help as she was starting to get a little bit of energy back. But the doctors were puzzled as to what made Mary so sick. They gave her medication to help suppress the vomiting diarrhea and her pain, and when the test came back that Mary did not have a stomach bug or the flu, the hospital decided it would be best to keep Mary overnight because she was still very weak and they had no answers.
Speaker 2:So Mary asked for Bill to run home and grab a few things for her, just to be a little bit more comfortable overnight. She wanted her glasses, she wanted a robe because, let's be honest, hospital robes are awful. She wanted her herbal cough drops because her throat had been hurting from having been sick so much, and just a few little other things. Bill obliged and when he returned he let Mary know that he would call and cancel the patients for the next day. We know that Mary's very attentive to her patients. So she was like no, not happening, and she insisted Bill, go home, get some rest and then handle the patients the next day. They were counting on them. Bill tried to talk Mary out of this plan, but with more persistence from Mary, he finally relented. Because you don't want to argue with your wife, he just said yes, ma'am, and do it you can also see how much Mary cares about her patients.
Speaker 2:You can and you know I feel a little bad for Bill, though, because he has to be in a position where he feels very torn.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you want to be with your spouse if they're in the hospital.
Speaker 2:So he heads home for a bit of sleep, and he promises to swing by in the morning before going into the office. He is obviously exhausted. This has been a long day for him too, and so he gets ready for bed as soon as he gets home and he puts his phone on the charger in the spare room.
Speaker 1:Might have a spare room and not his room.
Speaker 2:Apparently, that's where he and Mary charge their phones for less distractions. During the night, however, bill was awakened by someone pounding on the front door. So he bounds down the stairs as quickly as he can and there's a police officer at his front door. He's obviously like instantly concerned like what's happening. He thinks it could be one of his kids or his grandkids, but he is shocked to be told that he needed to call the hospital back, like now. They had called numerous times to get a hold of them and he does as he's instructed and, of course, at the same time he's wondering like what could be wrong. Mary was getting better when he left last night, or at least that's what he thought.
Speaker 1:Okay, but it's also weird to leave your phone there with your boss in the hospital in a spare room downstairs in my opinion.
Speaker 2:Yeah, true, but I guess if you're just habit, you've had a long day. I don't know. But I also couldn't imagine not having my phone out by me. But that's just me. Bill called the hospital to be told that Mary had taken a turn for the worse. She had coded and while they brought her back things were not looking well. So Bill called all of his children, as he had it back to the hospital. By the time all of Bill and Mary's children arrived at the hospital, mary had seven code blues, but continued to come back from each of them. When the family is distraught, right, they keep thinking their mother in this awful state and then, like she loses consciousness or vitals, and they come in and they're having to revive her and that works for a little while and it happens over and over. Plus, the doctors can't provide any answers as to what is causing Mary's condition Like this is obviously gone past a stomach bug, but what happened? And then, on the eighth code blue, it would be the final and Mary would pass at 2 45 pm.
Speaker 1:Even when she died, the doctors had no idea what made her sick so fast and so quickly. That led to her death. I mean, this is crazy.
Speaker 2:It started out like a stomach bug.
Speaker 1:This is scary.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So now the family is totally devastated, compacted by the fact that they have zero answers as to how this happened. The doctor asked Bill about doing an autopsy on Mary, and he is right away on board. He craved answers to what happened to his wife, which makes sense. You want some sort of closure, you want to know what happened.
Speaker 2:Despite not being a couple the only non-family member at the hospital during this time was Katie, and she was actually asked there by the request of Adam. He really needed the comfort of someone familiar, who knew and loved his mother, and she agreed to come and stand by him, be his emotional support during this ordeal. Bill is struggling mentally and emotionally after the loss of Mary. His mind becomes blur, he's grieving, he's crying constantly. So his daughter suggested that he speak with someone else who had lost a spouse. He had a sister-in-law, mary's sister Kathleen, and she had lost her husband the previous year. So Bill's daughter who's extremely concerned about her father, but really, you know she doesn't have an experience with grief for what to do. So she urges him to reach out to Kathleen. In the meantime the autopsy was happening as the family waited with bated breath for what happened to the glue of their family.
Speaker 1:I cannot even imagine what this family's going through Just suddenly lose someone like that and not know why or how it happened.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So during the autopsy, dr Kenneth Clark opens Mary up and finds her organs to be red, green and purple colored, which is not normal. When Leana spoke with the Emmys office, they didn't really know much, but didn't know that it was possibly an exposure to a toxin, and so toxicology was sent out.
Speaker 1:But to the Emmys surprise, it came back negative, so it wasn't a toxin after all, and they're all back to square one now.
Speaker 2:Well, they're not so sure. So they have sent out for another test that looked for what they referred to as more quote exotic toxins. But that came back negative as well, and now they're down to like very little blood, meaning the next test would be the final test that they could do. So Clark is determined and he wants to find answers to what happened. So he's recommended by another Emmy to go to the Poison Control Center and talk to the doctors there, since he thinks that it could be a toxin. They may have some information that could be helpful. So he did just that, taking all of the information about Mary with them, including, like the medical records, to doctor's office, the hospital.
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Speaker 2:So they were able to narrow it down to cultucine. So what is that exactly? It's an anti-inflammatory and it's prescribed for Mediterranean fever and gout. So, with this possibility, they sent out the last sample to test for cultucine and they get a positive result, meaning that Mary died from cultucine toxicity.
Speaker 1:Now the question is how, once we're talking about it on this podcast, I'm going to guess someone poisoned her.
Speaker 2:You would be correct. So let's talk about who the investigators are looking at.
Speaker 1:First, of course, is Bill Right, you always have to look at the spouse.
Speaker 2:Right, and the other is Adam Yoder, which was Mary and Bill's son, so he comes into the picture in a way. That's a little odd. There is an anonymous letter sent to investigators and this letter pointed the finger directly at Adam. It was two pages long, so I'm going to hit the main points. It said that if the toxin was cultucine, then the killer was Adam and he had confessed to the anonymous letter writer. Furthermore, it highlighted the motive with financial reasons, a poor relationship between mother and son, and the major part was that the bottle of cultucine was in a small glass bottle under the driver's seat of Adam's vehicle.
Speaker 1:Okay, this really doesn't look great for Adam.
Speaker 2:I agree, and since the note is anonymous and they cannot corroborate anything, they can't request a warrant for Adam's vehicle. But something about this note doesn't sit right with investigators. So they called Adam in to speak with them and he comes in his vehicle voluntarily and quickly. When asked if they could search his vehicle, he agrees and during the search they find a bottle of cultucine in his truck under the driver's seat.
Speaker 1:This really seems like a setup to me. It does to investigators too.
Speaker 2:Why would he agree to a search with no warrant if he knew that the cultucine was under his seat?
Speaker 1:He didn't, because he did put it there, right, that's what I'm thinking.
Speaker 2:The other thing was that if it was Adam, he would have had to create some sort of time release plan for the cultucine, because he was six hours away at his sister's house the day that his mother got sick. So these two discoveries put the investigators back on the pill, back on the path of Bill. I'm just going to combine that to Bill Back on the path of Bill, especially because one of Mary's sisters is for some reason suspicious of Bill.
Speaker 1:So is there any reason, or just that Bill was married to Mary, which made him the prompt suspect? Well, there is one thing that's odd.
Speaker 2:You remember Kathleen.
Speaker 1:The one of Mary's sisters that had just recently lost her husband.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Well, bill took his daughter's advice and he had reached out to Kathleen just for support, for advice, and then the two started a romantic relationship within the couple of months between Mary's death and the start of the investigation. This raised red flags for the investigators because they're wondering if this relationship maybe began before Mary's death. However, adam added another possible suspect to the list of investigators. You got all your registering. Yes, it's all tied up right now, isn't it? Yes? So Katie Caudley, back to her. You know, on again, off again, girlfriend.
Speaker 2:Adam remembered how the alpha brain she gave him caused similar symptoms to his mother's. He didn't get sick until right after taking that second alpha brain supplement. He gave the supplements to the investigators, letting them know he took two and the second one made him sick. So when they checked out the bottle that should have originally had 30 pills, according to what the bottle said, they found that if Adam had in fact taken the two that he said that the bottle would have had 31 pills in it when given to Adam, so one more than it should have had. This was suspicious. So Katie was added to the list of potential killers. The investigators also had the receipt for the colchicine because it was found with the bottle under Adam's seat. So now they can at least look into who bought the toxin, because they know where it came from. So they reached out to a woman named Rosa at Art Chemicals where the colchicine was ordered. They found the email address that was used to order the toxin and it was from Mr Adam Yoder, 1990 at gmailcom.
Speaker 2:Right, so Adam was an honest, but the problem with this email is that one, it was created at the chiropractic clinic after Adam stopped working there. Two, adam himself never accessed it. And three, the password was Adam is gay. Oh, wow. So these three things combined made the investigator think that whoever sent the anonymous letter also set up the email address.
Speaker 1:Do they know who accessed the email?
Speaker 2:So they know, like I said, that it was set up at the office, at the computer that Katie worked at every day, and it was also accessed again from her cell phone. So they reached out to Rosa again at Art Chemicals and asked if she had spoken to anyone outside of email, and she said she'd only spoken to a woman on the phone when she'd made one phone call and she had exchanged emails with who she thought was Adam. But you know she can't verify that. So then the question is where does Katie get all of this money when she's just working at a receptionist? So I'll just come back to that. Investigators reached out to Bill to ask if any money was missing from the clinic. Well, katie handled the books, and since Bill and Mary trusted her, they didn't really pay much attention. But when investigators checked on it it was very clear that she had been embezzling money.
Speaker 1:Did Mary possibly know? And that was the motive of killing her?
Speaker 2:Well, if Mary knew she didn't tell anyone, including Bill, which was odd because it was their practice together. There was DNA on the Colchicine bottle and wouldn't you know? It was Katie's DNA and, despite being in Adam's Jeep, his DNA was nowhere to be found on that bottle. So June 2016,. Katie is arrested with murder in second degree, a count of forgery in second degree, two counts of falsifying business records in the first degree and two counts of larceny, and the DA focused heavily on like the cyber forensic from Katie's iPhone, but the jury wanted a smoking gun. You also have to remember the time frame of when this is happening. This is happening when making a murder is coming out, where we're seeing a lot of wrongly convicted criminals being set free. So right now, juries want like perfect cases. Before that they will say someone's guilty?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you don't want to have that on your conscience.
Speaker 2:But cyber forensics isn't a smoking gun for them, and cyber forensics is also still very new. This was a you know, a young college student. She'd never been in trouble. She came from a very well respected family in the area. Plus, the question that the DA really hadn't answered was why? Why would Katie Connolly want to kill Mary Yoder?
Speaker 1:This is very true. Motive is always heavy in the jury's mind. Do they even have a speculation?
Speaker 2:The only motive that they really came up with and kind of presented in court was that this was all to her atom, who she felt she was losing, and this is hard to prove, though, and that would show during the court case that they had a hard time really pinning that down as a motive, because it's kind of just a thought and a feeling and that's hard to prove.
Speaker 2:So, may 15th 2017, the jury is deliberating and they notified of the judge that they were unable to come to a UN, an amist decision, but the judge basically was like no, that's not good enough, keep trying. And they did for three more days before coming to the same conclusion on May 18th. So a hung jury in a mistrial Exactly the DA, though they're not going down like that. They're not done with this case and a new court data set for June 2nd 2017. Between the time that the hung jury happened and the new trial, more things start to come to light as investigators think even harder, indicating Also, at the same time, a lot of warrants that they put in for, like Google searches, and things came back as the trial is happening, but they can't put that in now. So why did?
Speaker 1:they rush to trial. I mean. I guess, they didn't have their ducks in a row before they went to trial.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't think they did either personally, but maybe they felt it was strong enough with what they had. So things are coming to light. They're really looking into Katie and they're I mean, they're determined to get this conviction on the second go-around, which has been pushed from June to October. So they decide that they're going to look at the medical records for that supposed miscarriage, which they found nothing, because it apparently never happened. She never went to the hospital so she never had a medically induced miscarriage, meaning that was all fabricated. They also got some backup data from when Adam had backed Katie's phone up on his laptop when he told this to the DA. This helped show that she had planned this for quite a while.
Speaker 1:Seems like a really major oversaw from the previous trial. True.
Speaker 2:But Adam thought he had mentioned it to the DA before, but they are adamant that he did not. But it was like Pandora's box of evidence. It showed her searching for poisons and seemingly settling on co-coachesine by the time they were done. It showed how Katie had lied to everyone and she didn't look as much like that college sweet student that she did. In the first trial, on November 4th of 2017, the jury began a two-day deliberation. They found her not guilty. A second degree murder.
Speaker 1:Wait, she was not guilty.
Speaker 2:On that charge. Yes, but what was found? Guilty of manslaughter in the first degree and she was sent to 23 years. While most of Mary's family is happy with the sentence, two of Mary's sisters still believe Katie's innocent. And this is all Bill's doing. Tell us what you guys think.
Speaker 1:We always recommend more bubbly and less OJ Cheers.
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