Episode 340

<v Speaker 1>Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence, and is
<v Speaker 1>not intended for all audiences.
<v Speaker 2>Listener discretion these advice.
<v Speaker 3>Did it seem strange to you that you were taking
<v Speaker 3>human flesh inside into the top.
<v Speaker 4>Yes.
<v Speaker 1>Welcome to Sword and Scale, a show that reveals that
<v Speaker 1>the worst monsters are real. If you like true crime documentaries,
<v Speaker 1>we make them. Let's head on over to our YouTube
<v Speaker 1>channel or website Swordscale dot com for more info on
<v Speaker 1>Sword and Scale television. These are hour long documentaries, cinematic,
<v Speaker 1>really beautiful, beautifully shot documentaries about uh, you know, murder.
<v Speaker 1>On October fourth, twenty twenty one, firefighters rush to three
<v Speaker 1>eighty six Moon Valley Road in Dallas County, Missouri. The
<v Speaker 1>name sounds like it should be printed on a postcard.
<v Speaker 1>Moon Valley makes you think of a serene getaway with
<v Speaker 1>cozy cabins and campfires. In reality, Moon Valley Road is
<v Speaker 1>a boring strip of gravel that cuts through dense ozark woods.
<v Speaker 1>These trees are so thick that they almost block out
<v Speaker 1>the sky when you look up from the ground. The
<v Speaker 1>nights are so dark you can't see your hand in
<v Speaker 1>front of you. There are no street lights, no neighbors
<v Speaker 1>in sight, only the kind of isolation where bad things
<v Speaker 1>happen without anyone noticing. By the time they get there,
<v Speaker 1>the fire is already out of control. Nothing on the
<v Speaker 1>property can be salvaged. Flames shoot out of every building
<v Speaker 1>and don't stop burning until they've destroyed them all. After
<v Speaker 1>the fires are finally out, a Dallas County deputy steps
<v Speaker 1>onto the property. The ground is soft and sooty with
<v Speaker 1>wet ash. The black mud sticks to his boots, and
<v Speaker 1>smoke is seeping from the rubble. The cabin is a
<v Speaker 1>shell now, with the roof collapsed and the windows blown
<v Speaker 1>out out. The outbuildings are mostly gone. In the middle
<v Speaker 1>of the cabin's rubble stands a lone familiar piece of furniture,
<v Speaker 1>a bathtub. The deputy wades through the debris, scanning with
<v Speaker 1>a flashlight. Then his beam catches a wire, stretched tight,
<v Speaker 1>almost invisible, still attached to two scorched posts. He freezes
<v Speaker 1>it's a trip wire. He knows that if he moves
<v Speaker 1>the wrong way he could trigger it and blow them
<v Speaker 1>all to pieces. His eyes follow it carefully, and his
<v Speaker 1>focus is locked on the wire until it leads to
<v Speaker 1>a device buried in the rubble. They call the bomb squad,
<v Speaker 1>who detonates one device on site and removes two more.
<v Speaker 1>These are homemade bombs. The fire marshal will make the
<v Speaker 1>easy call. This was arson.
<v Speaker 5>Scarce but solid details being released on what could have
<v Speaker 5>caused a late night fire on Moon Valley Road hours
<v Speaker 5>before Cassidy Rainwater suspected kidnappers were due in court. A
<v Speaker 5>cabin where James Phelps and Timothy Norton had been living
<v Speaker 5>burned to the ground. A report obtained by Ozarks First
<v Speaker 5>Today shows the Springfield bomb squad discovered not one, but
<v Speaker 5>two explosive devices among the ashes, and while it doesn't
<v Speaker 5>say whether the fire was set intentionally, it does list
<v Speaker 5>what equipment was taken by investigators. The report calls them
<v Speaker 5>incendiary devices made with mortar tubes, balloons, and coiled fuses
<v Speaker 5>with a trip wire attached. A Springfield fire marshal says
<v Speaker 5>one of the explosives was detonated on site, but what
<v Speaker 5>happened to the second device has not yet been released.
<v Speaker 1>The Missouri Ozarks cover more than forty thousand square miles
<v Speaker 1>of rough isolated country, over half the state and twice
<v Speaker 1>the size of Switzerland. The Ozarks aren't a true mountain range,
<v Speaker 1>but a high ancient plateau of limestone carved over millions
<v Speaker 1>of years. These limestone hills fold into deep valleys, Caves
<v Speaker 1>run for miles underground, and rivers disappear into sinkholes without
<v Speaker 1>a trace, and a lot of the roads are narrow
<v Speaker 1>and surrounded by woods. What goes on in the hollows
<v Speaker 1>is anyone's guests. Tourists come here for the fishing, cabins,
<v Speaker 1>float trips, and lake towns, but the Ozarks have another side.
<v Speaker 1>Civil War confederates use these woods to disappear and then
<v Speaker 1>ambush their enemies. Prohibition gangs built stills so far back
<v Speaker 1>in the timber that no one dared to go there.
<v Speaker 1>Math cooks and armed weed growers still guard their territory
<v Speaker 1>like they're at war. And then there are the legends
<v Speaker 1>weird lights moving through the trees with no source, numerous
<v Speaker 1>bigfoot sightings, and whispers of feral people living in the
<v Speaker 1>back country. Out here, it's easy to go missing, and
<v Speaker 1>even easier to stay that way. Thirty three year old
<v Speaker 1>Cassidy rainwater didn't just disappear all at once. It happened
<v Speaker 1>slowly and under the radar, the kind of missing person's
<v Speaker 1>case that didn't start with a nine to one one call,
<v Speaker 1>but with a gap in contact that kept getting longer.
<v Speaker 6>Cassidy was a free spirited girl, loud.
<v Speaker 7>If she walked in a room, everybody knew she was there,
<v Speaker 7>but she.
<v Speaker 8>Had a beautiful soul.
<v Speaker 1>She was born on June ninth, nineteen eighty eight, near Lebanon, Missouri. Officially,
<v Speaker 1>Cassidy's parents were Clifford Welch and Tracy Wawasuck, but she
<v Speaker 1>went by Rainwater, a Native American name tied to someone
<v Speaker 1>in her past, her grandfather, who happened to own land
<v Speaker 1>on Moon Valley Road, near where she was last seen.
<v Speaker 1>Cassidy had her first child with a high school boyfriend
<v Speaker 1>named Ben. The couple tried to make it work for
<v Speaker 1>the sake of their baby, but they chose to put
<v Speaker 1>them up for adoption at some point. Regardless, she and
<v Speaker 1>Ben remained on good terms. Later, she remarried and had
<v Speaker 1>other children with that partner. Reports say that she was
<v Speaker 1>still legally married in twenty twenty one, but living apart.
<v Speaker 1>By the summer of twenty twenty one, Cassidy's life was unsettled.
<v Speaker 1>She'd been moving between places looking for stability. Her first partner, Ben,
<v Speaker 1>remembered being worried about her.
<v Speaker 9>She was in a bad way, like at that time.
<v Speaker 5>I'm pretty sure she was homeless, and she and I
<v Speaker 5>were talking and was just like, you come to Kansas City,
<v Speaker 5>we'll get things figured out.
<v Speaker 1>Searching for a place to stay eventually led her to
<v Speaker 1>a small property on Moon Valley Road, a remote rental
<v Speaker 1>cabin occupied by sixty year old him Phelps and owned
<v Speaker 1>by a man named John. John Nucassidy's grandparents and suggested
<v Speaker 1>she talk with the guy living there. Jim, living in
<v Speaker 1>the cabin, had a soft spot for taking in women
<v Speaker 1>and girls, but none of them ever said anything negative
<v Speaker 1>about him.
<v Speaker 10>Okay, Jim, it's a friend. Once again. He let me
<v Speaker 10>stay with him from time to time when I was
<v Speaker 10>having a hard time.
<v Speaker 3>I have a lot of health problems, so it's.
<v Speaker 10>Hard for me to work, which is why I'm getting
<v Speaker 10>a job to where I work on my own time.
<v Speaker 7>Now. Seems like in the podcast, but.
<v Speaker 10>Jim, he was really kind. He was a sweet guy.
<v Speaker 10>But when I met him, he was a really kind guy.
<v Speaker 11>He was caring, He was really nice.
<v Speaker 10>No sexual relations, not like that out there. I mean,
<v Speaker 10>I've met Jim's family, I've met Tim's family. They know me,
<v Speaker 10>I know them.
<v Speaker 1>Amanda didn't just stumbled into this story. Her paths here
<v Speaker 1>started months earlier when she met fifty six year old
<v Speaker 1>Tim Norton, Jim's best friend. Amanda met Tim through a
<v Speaker 1>friend who was engaged to his nephew and living there.
<v Speaker 1>At the time. Amanda was between homes, so she moved
<v Speaker 1>into Tim's trailer, which, by all accounts was a disgusting
<v Speaker 1>pig pen. Tim was a long haul trucker and Amanda
<v Speaker 1>sometimes went along for the ride. Other times she acted
<v Speaker 1>like his personal dispatcher or helped with his finances. People
<v Speaker 1>assumed they were a couple. Amanda says, that's ridiculous. He
<v Speaker 1>was too old for her. According to Amanda, she was
<v Speaker 1>just helping him in exchange for a place to live.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, he was fifty six and she was nineteen.
<v Speaker 1>Nothing to see here. Right months later, Amanda's living situation
<v Speaker 1>shifted again. The chaos of everyone living in the trailer
<v Speaker 1>wore her down. Tim suggested she go and stay at
<v Speaker 1>his buddy, Jim's cabin for a while, so she did.
<v Speaker 1>On paper, it sounded like a quiet escape, a rural
<v Speaker 1>place with a name that could pass for a weekend getaway,
<v Speaker 1>but this was no campground. The cabin sat isolated, hidden
<v Speaker 1>from the road, with sheds of outbuildings scattered across the property.
<v Speaker 1>Amanda says her time there was temporary, but her connections
<v Speaker 1>with Jim and Tim were already cemented and they were
<v Speaker 1>about to become a lot more than casual acquaintances. Let's
<v Speaker 1>circle back to Cassidy Rainwater. Amanda knew who she was
<v Speaker 1>because their time at Jim's cabin overlapped. Amanda remembered meeting her.
<v Speaker 3>I met her once.
<v Speaker 10>Me and Jim went over there because I had some
<v Speaker 10>mail to hook up, because that's when I melt Millan
<v Speaker 10>addresses right.
<v Speaker 11>Know, and her didn't really talk.
<v Speaker 12>She didn't She was kind of.
<v Speaker 10>Quiet, which I get a new person.
<v Speaker 11>I'm quiet too with new people, But.
<v Speaker 10>She didn't really talk. She kind of stayed to herself,
<v Speaker 10>and whenever I went to go do something in my car,
<v Speaker 10>and when I came back in, she had told Jim
<v Speaker 10>that she wanted to leave, that she wasn't comfortable those
<v Speaker 10>two many people. Jim didn't tell her that people were coming.
<v Speaker 3>Over and she wasn't comfortable with this.
<v Speaker 10>It was just me, Jim, Tim and her.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it wasn't exactly a warm welcome. Cassidy, like Amanda,
<v Speaker 1>wasn't looking for new friends. You could say both women
<v Speaker 1>had retreated to the cabin for the same reason, to
<v Speaker 1>escape drama and conflict and piece themselves back together. The
<v Speaker 1>problem was that the place was starting to feel less
<v Speaker 1>like an isolated hideout and more like the worst kind
<v Speaker 1>of Airbnb, the kind where the host keeps allowing more
<v Speaker 1>guests to book the place without telling you. According to Amanda,
<v Speaker 1>the two tried to stay out of each other's way.
<v Speaker 1>This was around mid July twenty twenty one. By the
<v Speaker 1>time Cassidy went missing in late August, Amanda had already
<v Speaker 1>moved out.
<v Speaker 10>I didn't really I tried not to get involved in
<v Speaker 10>too much because I just I can't pay you bees.
<v Speaker 10>Just I was like, I looked at him and I said, so,
<v Speaker 10>how is Cassady doing? Because I was just kind of
<v Speaker 10>curious because I know she's been struggling with some stuff
<v Speaker 10>and I was in He was like, I don't know.
<v Speaker 10>She left in the middle of night. I like, oh,
<v Speaker 10>And then later I found out this she's missing. How
<v Speaker 10>you know? God until I read the article and I'm like, oh,
<v Speaker 10>this suff happened, and then I said it. In the
<v Speaker 10>back of my mind, it was like that could have
<v Speaker 10>been me.
<v Speaker 1>In August, a friend noticed that it had been about
<v Speaker 1>six weeks since anyone had seen Cassidy. She was reported missing.
<v Speaker 1>The last person to admit seeing her was Jim. It
<v Speaker 1>wasn't the police who made the first big move in
<v Speaker 1>the case. It was the FBI, after someone sent them
<v Speaker 1>an email with photographs labeled Cassidy. The first one showed
<v Speaker 1>a topless woman in a cage, and whoever sent it
<v Speaker 1>made sure the FBI knew exactly where to find her,
<v Speaker 1>or at least what was left of her. In the
<v Speaker 1>summer of twenty twenty one, Jim Phelps was living in
<v Speaker 1>a small cabin on Moon Valley Road, a patch of
<v Speaker 1>rural Missouri surrounded by dense ozark woods. He was a quiet,
<v Speaker 1>reclusive person who spent most of his time at the cabin.
<v Speaker 1>His closest friend, Tim Norton, was a long haul trucker,
<v Speaker 1>also with a habit of keeping to himself, and yet somehow,
<v Speaker 1>women kept finding their way to that cabin. One was
<v Speaker 1>a nineteen year old woman named Amanda. She also stayed
<v Speaker 1>at the cabin for a few weeks after life became
<v Speaker 1>too crowded at Tim's place, Cassidy Rainwater, whose life was unraveling,
<v Speaker 1>had come to the cabin searching for solitude and some
<v Speaker 1>kind of sanctuary. Like Amanda, she was private, guarded, not
<v Speaker 1>quick to share her world. Their paths only crossed briefly
<v Speaker 1>before Amanda moved out. A few weeks later, Cassidy was
<v Speaker 1>gone too, but unlike Amanda, she didn't choose her next destination.
<v Speaker 1>She simply disappeared. After six weeks with no sign of her,
<v Speaker 1>she was reported missing by a family member. The last
<v Speaker 1>person to have seen her was Jim Phelps. One night,
<v Speaker 1>deputies drove out to Moon Valley Road. The cabin was
<v Speaker 1>lit only by a porch bulb and their headlights. Otherwise
<v Speaker 1>it was an opaque kind of darkness. They knocked, asking
<v Speaker 1>Jim where Cassidy was.
<v Speaker 8>Haii Sheriff's office?
<v Speaker 10>How howdye?
<v Speaker 7>Yeah?
<v Speaker 8>Is a Cassidy here?
<v Speaker 7>No?
<v Speaker 1>No, I was seen her in Wait?
<v Speaker 8>Really, well, I'm trying to check on her.
<v Speaker 7>You know her?
<v Speaker 8>You know Cassidy?
<v Speaker 7>Yeah, I know, Well, I've been trying to check on her.
<v Speaker 1>Jim Phelps over six feet tall, bald, with glasses and
<v Speaker 1>a white Beard came to the cabin door, wearing only
<v Speaker 1>jeans and a dog tag around his neck. He looked
<v Speaker 1>relatively harmless, at least for OZARKI and Missouri.
<v Speaker 8>Do you have a phone number for her? Nope? Okay,
<v Speaker 8>do you want to look at Oh? No, she's not here.
<v Speaker 8>She's not here. She's not in any trouble. They're just
<v Speaker 8>worried about her. Do you know maybe where she's at?
<v Speaker 7>Last I heard she was going to Colorado?
<v Speaker 8>Going to Colorado? Yeah, Oh, do you know what's over there?
<v Speaker 8>She never told you?
<v Speaker 7>Yeah?
<v Speaker 10>How long?
<v Speaker 3>How long ago?
<v Speaker 13>Was that?
<v Speaker 7>All right?
<v Speaker 8>Well, if she comes back, or if she comes and busys,
<v Speaker 8>shed appreciate if you'd call us so we can tell,
<v Speaker 8>you know, tell her family that she's okay. So all right, Well,
<v Speaker 8>I guess.
<v Speaker 10>I'll be out of here.
<v Speaker 1>You mean to tell me that. In the whole time
<v Speaker 1>Cassidy was staying there under his roof, he didn't even
<v Speaker 1>have her phone number. Come on. Just a few weeks later,
<v Speaker 1>on September sixteenth, twenty twenty one, an anonymous email lands
<v Speaker 1>in the FBI's tip line inbox. Attached are pictures, all
<v Speaker 1>labeled with the same name Cassidy. The first picture stops
<v Speaker 1>the FBI agent cold. It's a woman in a cage,
<v Speaker 1>blonde hair bear from the waist up, crouched in the
<v Speaker 1>cage with her knees pulled tightly against her chest. She
<v Speaker 1>has a vacant stare in between and the steel bars.
<v Speaker 1>He sees the room behind. This is a large animal cage,
<v Speaker 1>but it's inside a room. It's inside someone's house. He
<v Speaker 1>clicks to the next frame, and the scenery is outside
<v Speaker 1>old weather sheds, piles of scrap, and a tall metal frame.
<v Speaker 1>To most people it's nothing, but he's seen enough hunting
<v Speaker 1>setups to know what this is. A deer gantry. The
<v Speaker 1>details fall into place in his head, the wood grain
<v Speaker 1>on the walls, the layout of the yard and all
<v Speaker 1>of its clutter. Whoever sent him this email wasn't trying
<v Speaker 1>to hide anything. They wanted him to know exactly where
<v Speaker 1>this was. And as he stares at the screen, one
<v Speaker 1>thought is very clear. Whatever is happening out there on
<v Speaker 1>Moon Valley Road, it's probably already too late to stop it.
<v Speaker 1>On the same day, Dallas County detectives get a warrant
<v Speaker 1>and show up in broad daylight. They want to compare
<v Speaker 1>the scenery to the photos this time, the officer stops
<v Speaker 1>the car halfway up the gravel lane when he sees
<v Speaker 1>Jim's dog on a long leash, and then spots Jim
<v Speaker 1>walking slowly across the yard. Now he's fully clothed, but
<v Speaker 1>still is nonchalant as last time. Nope, I haven't seen her.
<v Speaker 12>Hello, how you doing okay? Yeah, uh well, I was
<v Speaker 12>just following up with you on Cassidy and it's been once.
<v Speaker 3>It been a couple of weeks since we've been here, and.
<v Speaker 12>We haven't heard a peep out over you know, So
<v Speaker 12>I'm just gonna see maybe you'd heard anything out of
<v Speaker 12>her or anything extra. You can send us to do
<v Speaker 12>follow ups arm some We're coming up pretty.
<v Speaker 3>Well.
<v Speaker 12>He doesn't like it, does he?
<v Speaker 1>Actually, he wants you to play with him. Oh yeah, yeah.
<v Speaker 12>The the last time I was here, I was walking
<v Speaker 12>by him and.
<v Speaker 7>He grabbed hold of me.
<v Speaker 12>I didn't know if he was trying to play or.
<v Speaker 4>So.
<v Speaker 1>The dog looks well cared for. So does Jim actually,
<v Speaker 1>but as unbothered as he seems, his posture says a lot.
<v Speaker 1>While his voice is easy, his words are compliant. He
<v Speaker 1>almost immediately folds his arms tightly across his chest. They
<v Speaker 1>call that a defensive posture.
<v Speaker 7>Jim.
<v Speaker 12>The last time I was here, let me get a
<v Speaker 12>piece of paper. I uh, I got to do a
<v Speaker 12>big report on it and stuff, and I have, Jim felt,
<v Speaker 12>but I won't have any room for it.
<v Speaker 1>I just wonder if I get that from you? Okay,
<v Speaker 1>Jim Phelps?
<v Speaker 7>Is it Jim James Eliot Man.
<v Speaker 1>James Philps.
<v Speaker 7>What's your data? Birth January thirteen sixty three.
<v Speaker 1>If you pay close attention, Jim is getting increasingly anxious.
<v Speaker 1>Listen for his nervous laugh.
<v Speaker 7>I guess you know your social.
<v Speaker 14>Media thirteen years in military? Yeah, I know, Yeah, you
<v Speaker 14>remember those things after that, long after the.
<v Speaker 1>First day or so.
<v Speaker 14>Yeah, remember you remember it.
<v Speaker 1>You don't want to have to go back there dig
<v Speaker 1>it out?
<v Speaker 3>What's that number again?
<v Speaker 14>I remember going to go through MEPs.
<v Speaker 3>It was like, because I didn't know mine, I had
<v Speaker 3>my car. It's like every time I turned around, I
<v Speaker 3>was digging it out.
<v Speaker 5>By the end of that day.
<v Speaker 12>I had it by the end of the first day,
<v Speaker 12>rattled it off without a problem.
<v Speaker 1>And you still can't today.
<v Speaker 14>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Oh yeah.
<v Speaker 12>There was a picture that I had come across of
<v Speaker 12>Cassidy and I was wondering if it was done here,
<v Speaker 12>would you mind if I looked at your backyard? In
<v Speaker 12>my backyard, Yeah, there's a picture taken over with a
<v Speaker 12>stump in the background. Do you have anything like that in.
<v Speaker 4>The back yard.
<v Speaker 7>I don't have a stump.
<v Speaker 4>Stump.
<v Speaker 12>You might have to take a look recruiting.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, back, here's my boy.
<v Speaker 1>Jim tries to brush it off, saying the only thing
<v Speaker 1>back there is this hoist. But once they step into
<v Speaker 1>the yard, it's like walking right into the pictures themselves
<v Speaker 1>three D now, not just images on a page. The hoist,
<v Speaker 1>the clutter, the leaning sheds, every detail of the image
<v Speaker 1>lines up.
<v Speaker 12>Get up against that truck right now. Get your hands
<v Speaker 12>on that truck. Do not fuck with me. Get up
<v Speaker 12>there on that truck, on the truck, hands behind your back.
<v Speaker 4>What's going on?
<v Speaker 7>Kay?
<v Speaker 12>Going on, mister Phelps? Yeah, the right to remain silent.
<v Speaker 12>Anything you say cannon willbeasies against you in a court
<v Speaker 12>of law.
<v Speaker 1>You know how the rest of that goes. In fact,
<v Speaker 1>you probably have it memorized.
<v Speaker 12>You understand your rights. Yeah, Okay, what's going on right now?
<v Speaker 12>You're under arrest for the homicide of Cassidy Rainwater.
<v Speaker 3>What's the app of my dog.
<v Speaker 7>We'll talk about that in just a little bit.
<v Speaker 1>To understand who Jim Phelps was, you have to hear
<v Speaker 1>from John Warren. He's the man who actually owned the
<v Speaker 1>cabin on Moon Valley Road. He wasn't just a landlord.
<v Speaker 1>He was family. He was Jim Phelps's brother in law
<v Speaker 1>and rented property to Jim for a mere two hundred
<v Speaker 1>dollars a month plus utilities. Keep in mind the place
<v Speaker 1>was no mansion. This guy also knew Cassidy because her grandfather,
<v Speaker 1>Bill Rainwater, used to be his neighbor.
<v Speaker 3>So that's when you met Cassie. When she's a kid.
<v Speaker 4>She was just who came out of the film one day.
<v Speaker 2>I kind of find out about two years later her
<v Speaker 2>mother disappeared, and about twenty years later who had done it?
<v Speaker 4>Him? When how it happened that her boyfriend meet her
<v Speaker 4>death and put her in.
<v Speaker 2>A box and to grew out in a very in
<v Speaker 2>shallow gray on the intro. Found that out twenty years later.
<v Speaker 4>Where was that over Lukely again?
<v Speaker 3>Who was your boyfriend?
<v Speaker 4>I don't know. Bill told me about it.
<v Speaker 1>In other words, John Warren wasn't just Jim Phelps landlord
<v Speaker 1>and brother in law. He was linked to all of them.
<v Speaker 1>He tied Jim to the property, and he tied Cassidy
<v Speaker 1>to a family history already marked by violence. Her mother's murder,
<v Speaker 1>hidden for twenty years, had only come to light a
<v Speaker 1>few years before Cassidy herself would disappear. John said Cassidy
<v Speaker 1>was going through a hard time. Finding out her mother
<v Speaker 1>was murdered was probably part of that, and so he
<v Speaker 1>and his wife were trying to help her.
<v Speaker 2>I'm sorry, robbing head and that you go to sut
<v Speaker 2>because now you get.
<v Speaker 7>It.
<v Speaker 1>Seemed like John Warren was kind of a grandfather to Cassidy.
<v Speaker 1>He tried to help her, but she stole from his wife,
<v Speaker 1>and he continued trying to help a recovering addict. He
<v Speaker 1>told Jim Phelps that to use his property there was
<v Speaker 1>a zero tolerance policy for drugs. He told Cassidy the
<v Speaker 1>same thing before he allowed her to stay on the
<v Speaker 1>property with Jim. By the time Cassidy was staying there,
<v Speaker 1>Amanda had already been in and out of the cabin.
<v Speaker 1>Their time overlapped, and Amanda remembered Cassidy as quiet and uneasy,
<v Speaker 1>not comfortable with strangers coming around. Apparently, John, the property
<v Speaker 1>owner felt the same way. Yet another friend of Tim's
<v Speaker 1>was making herself at home without getting permission and this little.
<v Speaker 11>Yeah, I was.
<v Speaker 4>Not got anything on wast uh.
<v Speaker 2>And I said you might want to us mom on
<v Speaker 2>hood if are you And she told me.
<v Speaker 4>Well, I'm Tim's friend.
<v Speaker 2>Well, Tams friends, you need to use your ass down
<v Speaker 2>here and get your.
<v Speaker 4>Stuff back your lean because does not are the deal orderstand.
<v Speaker 2>He's a caplace, he's working there.
<v Speaker 15>All week and she's staying there. Desn't try to find out?
<v Speaker 15>Uh recent that they called me Jim was in the.
<v Speaker 4>Hospital and just person was in the.
<v Speaker 2>Camps getting you out of there as as she walked
<v Speaker 2>out door locked on the door because of MS in
<v Speaker 2>my hospital and kill as the other key.
<v Speaker 3>Jim's at the hospital and you kt Tim's friend out.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, a friend out and uh that was an amazing thing.
<v Speaker 2>Kim was able to come down and pick her up.
<v Speaker 2>And he was supposed to be there until two or
<v Speaker 2>three days m h. And imagine that he actually was
<v Speaker 2>able to show up a couple of hours later.
<v Speaker 1>None of this was sitting well with John. He made
<v Speaker 1>it clear he didn't like Tim hanging around the property.
<v Speaker 1>Tim always seemed to be lurking around the corner, quick
<v Speaker 1>to show up, always in Jim's shadow. John said he
<v Speaker 1>never wanted him out there in the first place. Meanwhile,
<v Speaker 1>on September sixteenth, Jim was already in custody. Deputies sit
<v Speaker 1>him down and ask about Cassidy. He doesn't give them much.
<v Speaker 1>He sticks to his story. She talked about going to Colorado.
<v Speaker 1>She left in the middle of the night, someone picked
<v Speaker 1>her up, and he hadn't seen her since. When they press,
<v Speaker 1>he deflects, even whining about his dog, and then he
<v Speaker 1>shuts up completely. He wants a lawyer, he says. Investigators
<v Speaker 1>still have an angle. Though his friend Tim Norton, it
<v Speaker 1>seems pretty clear he's a big player in whatever happened
<v Speaker 1>to Cassidy, and if he isn't an active participant, he
<v Speaker 1>at least knows stuff, a lot of stuff. Detectives bring
<v Speaker 1>him into another room. Compared to Jim, he is easier prey.
<v Speaker 1>Where Jim had clammed up, Tim talked so much that
<v Speaker 1>he couldn't hold his story straight for more than five minutes.
<v Speaker 1>At first, he flat out to nies knowing anything about
<v Speaker 1>Cassidy's disappearance. He says he didn't see her, doesn't know
<v Speaker 1>what happened and doesn't have a clue. But when asked
<v Speaker 1>about her relationship with Jim, he's got a lot to say.
<v Speaker 3>Were they in a sexual relationship?
<v Speaker 9>Not that I know him. I know he talked about that.
<v Speaker 9>She said she was going to do certain things, well,
<v Speaker 9>that she would spend night and you'll sleep with him
<v Speaker 9>and stuff. I'm lord, I know nothing ever happened, because
<v Speaker 9>he always he was always aggravated after she left because
<v Speaker 9>she didn't knew she said she was going to do that.
<v Speaker 3>Okay. So so it's your understanding that Jim thought that
<v Speaker 3>the two of them may at some point we have
<v Speaker 3>a romantic or sexual relationship, Okay, but you don't think
<v Speaker 3>it ever happened based on non Okay.
<v Speaker 1>Both Jim and Tim were annoyed with Cassidy for different reasons,
<v Speaker 1>but the property owner kept sticking up for her.
<v Speaker 3>I didn't like her, Okay. What about Jim?
<v Speaker 9>He do he tolerated because of John.
<v Speaker 3>He tolerated her because of John and John again being
<v Speaker 3>the person who owns the property.
<v Speaker 9>Jim tried to keep her eye on the property for
<v Speaker 9>a while. After a while after she's thrown the rings, Okay,
<v Speaker 9>but she would go to John and get John. Okay, ever,
<v Speaker 9>come out there and stay into Kevin. Jim hands her tighten.
<v Speaker 1>They believe John when he said she had stolen jewelry
<v Speaker 1>from his wife, but John was willing to forgive her.
<v Speaker 1>But later a collection of Tim's knives went missing from
<v Speaker 1>the cabin, and Tim blamed Cassidy. Tim and Jim's plan
<v Speaker 1>escalated quickly. What started as talk of confronting her turned
<v Speaker 1>into restraining her and ended with killing her. By that point,
<v Speaker 1>Cassidy had already spent time locked inside a dog cage.
<v Speaker 3>How did that progress?
<v Speaker 7>That one?
<v Speaker 3>I do believe.
<v Speaker 9>Progressed with him saying he wanted her dead?
<v Speaker 3>Okay, I was about.
<v Speaker 9>To tell you that she was accusing me and or
<v Speaker 9>mister Fellows of kidnapping her or killing her, or I'm
<v Speaker 9>not sure exactly what she was.
<v Speaker 1>Cassidy accused them outright of kidnapping her and planning to
<v Speaker 1>kill her, and that, according to Tim, pissed Jim off
<v Speaker 1>even more.
<v Speaker 3>And so during that planning process between you and mister Phelps,
<v Speaker 3>was anyone else ever a part of that?
<v Speaker 9>Yes, there was one version, one time, maybe two times.
<v Speaker 14>M No was there.
<v Speaker 3>Her name was Amanda.
<v Speaker 1>Golly, don't let Amanda's small baby voice fool you into
<v Speaker 1>thinking she was innocent. She insisted she wasn't his girlfriend.
<v Speaker 1>He was too old for her, she had her age limits,
<v Speaker 1>no X, nothing to see here. But she was much
<v Speaker 1>more involved than she said.
<v Speaker 3>Fellows Kidd, neithers have ever talked about folks.
<v Speaker 10>They talked about, you know, like hunting stuff like that,
<v Speaker 10>like deer and stuff, fish, fishing and stuff like that,
<v Speaker 10>but never killing anyone.
<v Speaker 4>How about yea.
<v Speaker 10>They made jokes, They're like, oh, she's pretty, I'll take
<v Speaker 10>her home. They kind of stopped, but you know, I
<v Speaker 10>never thought anything of it, because, like I said, when
<v Speaker 10>I'm a beast human they were sweet men. They were
<v Speaker 10>really nice. They were carried.
<v Speaker 1>But their jokes may not have been jokes at all.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, who jokes about that. Detectives were already onto
<v Speaker 1>the fact that they weren't joking. They had text messages
<v Speaker 1>and Facebook dialogue between the two of them. If there
<v Speaker 1>was any doubt about how dark Jim and Tim's conversations got,
<v Speaker 1>the messages they sent each other erased it. Jim told
<v Speaker 1>Tim flat out, you.
<v Speaker 7>Need to bring me a woman. I don't care where
<v Speaker 7>you get her.
<v Speaker 1>Tim didn't push back. He asked, where do you want
<v Speaker 1>me to get her? Jim's answer was as casual as
<v Speaker 1>it was chilling.
<v Speaker 7>Parking lots are good. Big lots is a good place
<v Speaker 7>to people watch. I can watch women all day.
<v Speaker 1>And it didn't stop there. Jim bragged, I've.
<v Speaker 7>Been watching the girls in town. One day, I'm going
<v Speaker 7>to have one tied up out here.
<v Speaker 1>Then came the line that made investigator's stomachs turn.
<v Speaker 7>I want fresh meat, you know what I mean?
<v Speaker 1>We hear at Sorinscale, did a little digging and found
<v Speaker 1>someone who almost got caught up and Tim Norton's web
<v Speaker 1>This is red.
<v Speaker 16>So my name is Lauren. I at the time was
<v Speaker 16>in college in twenty twenty one. I believe I can't
<v Speaker 16>remember what month he got arrested, but I do remember
<v Speaker 16>that it was about two weeks after I had met him.
<v Speaker 16>After I had met Timothy, I was working at a
<v Speaker 16>Buffalo Wild Wings in like middle of nowhere college town,
<v Speaker 16>South Georgia. But whenever I was there, I had the
<v Speaker 16>patio section in the morning, which was typically nobody was
<v Speaker 16>really out there, and so I was just trying to
<v Speaker 16>make conversations see if I could get a tip, and
<v Speaker 16>he didn't really want anything from me, but he wanted
<v Speaker 16>to talk more than I think most people want to
<v Speaker 16>talk to their waitress. And when he had come through,
<v Speaker 16>he had said something about being a truck driver from Missouri.
<v Speaker 1>Ren described Tim as looking much older than his fifties
<v Speaker 1>and having what she described as a strangely flat face.
<v Speaker 1>The conversation started somewhat normally.
<v Speaker 16>He started off asking if I like my job, and
<v Speaker 16>I said, not really, but it pays the bills. He
<v Speaker 16>had told me I should get a rich boyfriend so
<v Speaker 16>I don't have to work this job anymore, and he
<v Speaker 16>wouldn't let a woman work like that, And that's when
<v Speaker 16>it started getting kind of weird. But it got creepy
<v Speaker 16>when he started asking me if we had any cameras
<v Speaker 16>in the parking lots and what time I got off work.
<v Speaker 1>The text messages alone suggested that Tim and Jim were
<v Speaker 1>a team, just as they'd always been. There's not a
<v Speaker 1>lot of information out there about who they were, but
<v Speaker 1>they described each other as brothers. Within the team, it
<v Speaker 1>seemed Tim was the scout, or maybe more like a
<v Speaker 1>predatory lion, hunting during the day and bringing the kill
<v Speaker 1>back to share.
<v Speaker 16>He had ended up telling me that he was a
<v Speaker 16>truck driver from Missouri, and he knew I seventy five
<v Speaker 16>like the back of his hand. And like when I
<v Speaker 16>say that it sounded like a threat. Sometimes people don't
<v Speaker 16>understand what I mean. But the way that he looked
<v Speaker 16>at me and the tone that he said it was like,
<v Speaker 16>I know where I'm going. I don't need to leave
<v Speaker 16>a trail to tell you I was there.
<v Speaker 3>It was just it was weird.
<v Speaker 16>And the way that he looked at me and also
<v Speaker 16>at a lot of the other girls that were working there,
<v Speaker 16>just seemed very predatory.
<v Speaker 1>We haven't even scratched the surface here. Back at the investigation,
<v Speaker 1>detectives had a broad idea of what actually went on
<v Speaker 1>the day that Tim and Jim decided to make Cassidy
<v Speaker 1>go away. Still, they had no idea how many details
<v Speaker 1>Tim would give them, and it all corroborated what Amanda
<v Speaker 1>was finally revealing, however minimized, she presented herself.
<v Speaker 6>I tell you, he didn't tell me he killed her, No,
<v Speaker 6>but I know that they were jokes made.
<v Speaker 10>The jokes that were made was that if they were
<v Speaker 10>to kill someone, they would cut them up in the little.
<v Speaker 1>Pisis that I'm in the Woods. Good joke, right.
<v Speaker 11>He never told me he killed her as far as
<v Speaker 11>I came, but he never told me. Yes, we need
<v Speaker 11>to trying to remember that conversation.
<v Speaker 3>If we had a conversation.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know about you, but if someone told me
<v Speaker 1>they wanted to get rid of somebody and then joked
<v Speaker 1>about how if they did it, they'd cut them into
<v Speaker 1>little pieces. I kind of remember that. But oh wait,
<v Speaker 1>just kidding. She did remember, Oh my god, I did.
<v Speaker 10>She was talking about how she had stolen something from
<v Speaker 10>him and that he had he had helped restrain her
<v Speaker 10>and die him and Jim like Apparently Jim looked at her,
<v Speaker 10>and Cassie looked at him and said why.
<v Speaker 11>He said, because you said that.
<v Speaker 10>I wouldn't that I've done it before. I didn't think
<v Speaker 10>anything of that.
<v Speaker 11>Oh my god, I thought.
<v Speaker 17>He was joking.
<v Speaker 7>I seriously did.
<v Speaker 10>Did me thinking it was a joke?
<v Speaker 7>Is? Yes?
<v Speaker 11>Uh, she's getting here.
<v Speaker 1>I guess it was all too easy for Amanda to
<v Speaker 1>play dumb when the story lined up exactly with what
<v Speaker 1>Tim admitted to telling her. Unlike Amanda, Tim didn't have
<v Speaker 1>the luxury of hiding behind just joking. When detectives pushed
<v Speaker 1>the thin wall denial cracked first to slip, then a fragment,
<v Speaker 1>and then a flood. What he finally confessed, piece by
<v Speaker 1>piece is the kind of thing you can't unhear.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, eight o'clock in the morning on in the in
<v Speaker 3>late July. So the sun is up, sun, okay, bright
<v Speaker 3>up in there with that, okay, so you can see,
<v Speaker 3>you think you can see clearly, okay. And and the
<v Speaker 3>person whose legs that you grabbed, it was cassidy ing water. Okay,
<v Speaker 3>all right, So you you had you were holding your legs.
<v Speaker 3>You you already described how you knelt down and were
<v Speaker 3>holding her knees I think is what you said.
<v Speaker 9>Yeah, right out of the right under her knee area.
<v Speaker 3>Okay.
<v Speaker 9>So he did mootibilized all of her leg I mean,
<v Speaker 9>I've got enough training and stuff and I don't know
<v Speaker 9>how to do that.
<v Speaker 3>And then and then what did Jim do?
<v Speaker 9>Well there again because I had my head down, but
<v Speaker 9>I really didn't see what he originally started doing. I
<v Speaker 9>did look up, and he was trying to get the
<v Speaker 9>bag of her head. Not not this way, just this way.
<v Speaker 4>And she was.
<v Speaker 9>I mean say she was yelling, but she was talking
<v Speaker 9>a little louder than normal, okay, asking why? Why? Why?
<v Speaker 9>And that's when I looked at him to see what
<v Speaker 9>he was gonna say, and I seen his eyes and
<v Speaker 9>at that point, I told you, at that point, I
<v Speaker 9>wasn't sure about my life.
<v Speaker 1>At first, Tim said he just held her legs well.
<v Speaker 1>Jim used a bag and then his hands. But as
<v Speaker 1>the questions kept coming, the details got darker. He finally
<v Speaker 1>admitted he joined in his own hands, tightening around her
<v Speaker 1>throat until she stopped struggling. All in all, it took
<v Speaker 1>thirty minutes to strangle the life out of her. Afterwards,
<v Speaker 1>they left her body lying there before dragging it outside
<v Speaker 1>toward the gantry. This was the same gantry that would
<v Speaker 1>later show up in those photographs. The gantry stood in
<v Speaker 1>the Ozark woods, where it held captive numerous corpses of deer, cattle, pork,
<v Speaker 1>and who knows what else has the blood drained from them,
<v Speaker 1>Only this time that would be a human. It would
<v Speaker 1>be a mother.
<v Speaker 14>At least.
<v Speaker 1>This is the only time the detectives knew about that night.
<v Speaker 1>The two men worked methodically knives, buckets, plastic wrap. Tim
<v Speaker 1>told the officers how they cut her legs apart, piece
<v Speaker 1>by piece. He described it flatly, as if they were
<v Speaker 1>reading instructions off a page. Tim acted like he had
<v Speaker 1>no vested interest in doing this, but he was lying.
<v Speaker 1>He thought she was a liar and a thief, and
<v Speaker 1>in his words, he didn't deal with people like that.
<v Speaker 9>And then he walked over to the crank crank, he
<v Speaker 9>cranked it up, raising her up like you know, he
<v Speaker 9>referred her to like them, and there's no better way
<v Speaker 9>to put it to her head off first, wash Mason,
<v Speaker 9>how country find you are to me? To big around,
<v Speaker 9>which would be not unusual. It was processing a deer
<v Speaker 9>or whatever. He took over her head, put it in there,
<v Speaker 9>and then he started cutting, rode down the centers, so
<v Speaker 9>all I'm running the guts.
<v Speaker 3>Everything went down.
<v Speaker 1>There, piece by piece. Cassidy's body was carved apart, dropped
<v Speaker 1>into buckets like waste at a slaughterhouse.
<v Speaker 3>And so he handed you the camera and asked you
<v Speaker 3>to take a picture. Yeah, and what did you take
<v Speaker 3>a picture of?
<v Speaker 9>Standing there? To her?
<v Speaker 3>Okay, somebody, it's not coming in.
<v Speaker 9>I think he reached out a.
<v Speaker 3>Red for head and pulled it up like posing on
<v Speaker 3>the body.
<v Speaker 9>Yeah, I mean he was standing up almost straight.
<v Speaker 1>Jim even had Tim take a picture he was posing
<v Speaker 1>with Cassidy's head like a trophy buck. Tim claims he
<v Speaker 1>was emotionless and just following Jim's orders. Hand me this
<v Speaker 1>take away that like a butcher's assistant.
<v Speaker 9>He started cutting one off. And after he split her
<v Speaker 9>down the middle, you're not just gutting or the splitting,
<v Speaker 9>and he went to the corner parts there again, knowing
<v Speaker 9>what we did with regular carcasses, he just begin natural
<v Speaker 9>to do it.
<v Speaker 1>We know you love true crime, but if you ever
<v Speaker 1>find yourself saying it feels natural to cut a human
<v Speaker 1>into pieces, I'm sorry, but there's no help for you. You're fucked.
<v Speaker 1>Jim wasn't finished. What he did next crossed the line
<v Speaker 1>from killing to desecration, the kind of act that makes
<v Speaker 1>investigators question whether this was about murder at all or
<v Speaker 1>something far more primal.
<v Speaker 9>He cut off from moves. Okay, answer, you don't tell you,
<v Speaker 9>I'll tell you. He put in the bowl, Okay, the
<v Speaker 9>moves he's doing the book.
<v Speaker 3>When you say you're talking about the bucket.
<v Speaker 9>And the scrub washman of the washman, all the guts and.
<v Speaker 1>Everything, Jim was all about trophies. Apparently they got rid
<v Speaker 1>of her like she was nothing more than a carcass
<v Speaker 1>According to Tim, Jim had him dig a hole and
<v Speaker 1>barrier head the visceral remains. The guts were carried off
<v Speaker 1>in buckets and dumped in the woods. Let the animals
<v Speaker 1>do their jobs. In Tim's words, the rest was butchered, quartered,
<v Speaker 1>and handled peace by piece. When investigators later served a warrant,
<v Speaker 1>they opened a freezer on the property. Inside they found
<v Speaker 1>packages of meat. Some were labeled deer, some coon, and
<v Speaker 1>every other form of wildlife you could imagine. But they
<v Speaker 1>also found neatly wrapped packs labeled simply seven twenty four,
<v Speaker 1>the day they murdered and processed Cassidy. This raised a
<v Speaker 1>question darker than anything investigators were prepared for. Was this
<v Speaker 1>murder for murder's sake? Or had Cassidy Rainwater been killed,
<v Speaker 1>butchered and prepared for something else? And then the biggest
<v Speaker 1>mystery of all, why would anyone, whether it was Tim,
<v Speaker 1>Jim or another accomplice, send those pictures straight to the FBI.
<v Speaker 1>It could only have been for some kind of sick
<v Speaker 1>bragging or proof that more people were involved, and there
<v Speaker 1>may have been more victims.
<v Speaker 18>Now there are more questions than answers in the disappearance
<v Speaker 18>of a thirty three year old Missouri woman, Cassidy Rainwater,
<v Speaker 18>hasn't been seen or heard from since at least July
<v Speaker 18>twenty fifth, With Rainwater still missing, two men, Timothy Norton
<v Speaker 18>and James Helps, are in custody in charge with kidnapping
<v Speaker 18>and connection to the case.
<v Speaker 3>They're accused of.
<v Speaker 18>Locking her up in a cage inside this small cabin
<v Speaker 18>near Lebanon, Missouri. Adding to the mystery, just hours before
<v Speaker 18>both men were scheduled to make their first appearance in court,
<v Speaker 18>that same cabin burned to the ground. The Dallas County
<v Speaker 18>Sheriff's office has been tight lipped about the case, and
<v Speaker 18>a lengthy post online the sheriff condemned rumors about the case,
<v Speaker 18>adding quote, no, you are not entitled to a play
<v Speaker 18>by play of an ongoing investigation. If you want to
<v Speaker 18>be in the know, we are hiring, along with every
<v Speaker 18>other law enforcement agency in the country.
<v Speaker 1>The property was burned to the ground just days before
<v Speaker 1>their first court appearance. To this day, by the way,
<v Speaker 1>no one has been charged officially. Investigators said it was
<v Speaker 1>a propane tank explosion, but for a community already buzzing
<v Speaker 1>with rumors of cages, body parts, and cannibalism. It only
<v Speaker 1>deepened the paranoia. The Sheriff's department was frustrated and issued
<v Speaker 1>a harsh statement to the public. But here's the problem.
<v Speaker 1>The stories weren't all wrong. The cage was real, the
<v Speaker 1>pictures were real. The meat in the freezer was real.
<v Speaker 1>It wasn't hard to put two and two together. If
<v Speaker 1>cassidy was packaged like venison, where exactly was this meat
<v Speaker 1>going to end up? The Ozarks are creepy. Put it
<v Speaker 1>that way. You've seen the TV show I hope. It's
<v Speaker 1>a great show, by the way, and the characters in
<v Speaker 1>it are pretty spot on. Those hill people are weird, man,
<v Speaker 1>There's no other way to put it. By late summer
<v Speaker 1>of twenty twenty one, Dallas County, Missouri was giving the
<v Speaker 1>best example of what is dark and creepy about the Ozarks.
<v Speaker 1>A lonely cabin on Moon Valley Roads, surrounded by thick
<v Speaker 1>Ozark woods seem like just another rundown property, hidden from
<v Speaker 1>view like so many others in the back country. Jim
<v Speaker 1>Phelps lived there, a reclusive man with interests in BDSM.
<v Speaker 1>His closest friend was Tim Norton, a truck driver who
<v Speaker 1>hovered around Jim's orbit, more follower than leader, At least
<v Speaker 1>that's how he described their relationship. Both men had reputations
<v Speaker 1>for keeping to themselves, but also for letting strangers, especially
<v Speaker 1>young women, drift into their lives. Cassidy Rainwater was one
<v Speaker 1>of them. She was a thirty three year old mother
<v Speaker 1>trying to put her life back together after years of setbacks.
<v Speaker 1>By August, she was staying at the cabin because the
<v Speaker 1>property owner told her she could. Within weeks, she had disappeared.
<v Speaker 1>What happened next was no mystery of the woods. Jim
<v Speaker 1>and Tim got tired of her existence and strangled her
<v Speaker 1>to death. They cortered her body on a gaantry like
<v Speaker 1>game and left investigators with photographs that looked more like
<v Speaker 1>hunting trophies than evidence of a crime. They say she
<v Speaker 1>stayed willingly, that she climbed into a dog cage willingly
<v Speaker 1>and stole from them freely. But these allegations weren't true.
<v Speaker 1>She had no idea what she was getting herself into,
<v Speaker 1>and before she knew it, she was a captive. If
<v Speaker 1>this could happen to her, who else could it? Or
<v Speaker 1>did it happen? To Text messages between Tim and Jim
<v Speaker 1>suggested they were constantly on the prowl looking for women
<v Speaker 1>worse yet probably underage girls. They even suggested that Tim
<v Speaker 1>may have been bringing women or girls back after being
<v Speaker 1>on the road as a trucker. The messages were always
<v Speaker 1>cryptic and coded. Wren, the young woman you heard from before,
<v Speaker 1>remembers her first hand experience.
<v Speaker 3>One of the.
<v Speaker 16>First things that I thought after he left was, there's
<v Speaker 16>no way that man doesn't have like people in his basement.
<v Speaker 16>He's weird.
<v Speaker 1>What Wren didn't know was that Tim Norton was worse
<v Speaker 1>than weird. He was, in fact a predator of young women.
<v Speaker 16>I thought that he was like a little too old
<v Speaker 16>to be doing all this, and especially too old to
<v Speaker 16>be hitting on women who were God, I was probably
<v Speaker 16>twenty two at the time.
<v Speaker 18>Like he was.
<v Speaker 16>The conversation that I had with him, I've never had
<v Speaker 16>anybody speak to me that way, so I remembered him.
<v Speaker 16>But when that mugshot came up, I remember being in
<v Speaker 16>my college apartment and it had come across like CNN
<v Speaker 16>or some like big. It was a mainstream thing, and
<v Speaker 16>I saw it and immediately I texted my friend that
<v Speaker 16>I worked with, and I said, do you remember that
<v Speaker 16>creepy guy that I was telling you about, Like, I
<v Speaker 16>swear to God, this is him. And then I read
<v Speaker 16>kind of more about who he was and what he did,
<v Speaker 16>and when I saw trucker from Missouri, I was like,
<v Speaker 16>oh my god, that's that's him.
<v Speaker 1>Fortunately, Wren had enough life experience and confidence to keep
<v Speaker 1>Tim at a distance, and she immediately reported what had happened.
<v Speaker 16>I had talked to my general manager and I said,
<v Speaker 16>this guy is weird and he's asking me all these
<v Speaker 16>weird questions. I need you to, like let the other
<v Speaker 16>girls know that they need to have somebody walk them
<v Speaker 16>to their cars tonight. I don't know how long he's
<v Speaker 16>going to be here, but he doesn't seem like he
<v Speaker 16>has a lot going on, and he kind of blew
<v Speaker 16>me off. And then, you know, one or two ish
<v Speaker 16>weeks later, I came back in with the mugshot pulled
<v Speaker 16>up and I said, you know, this is the guy
<v Speaker 16>that I was telling you about, Like, I'm serious, we
<v Speaker 16>need more cameras.
<v Speaker 1>Right before Tim left the restaurant after staying way too
<v Speaker 1>long without ordering food, Wren remembered the feeling she got
<v Speaker 1>from him.
<v Speaker 16>I noticed that he looked sort of satisfied that I
<v Speaker 16>was on comfortable, like he really enjoyed that what he
<v Speaker 16>was saying was kind of making me squirm, Like I
<v Speaker 16>really obviously didn't want to speak to him, and he
<v Speaker 16>knew that, and I think that that was kind of
<v Speaker 16>part of the game for him.
<v Speaker 1>Wren's experience offered a glimpse of how Tim would operate
<v Speaker 1>in public, unsettling, inappropriate, and just weird. But in his
<v Speaker 1>own words, he gave investigators an even darker view of
<v Speaker 1>what was happening back at the cabin where he and
<v Speaker 1>Jim hung out. During his interview, Tim admitted that both
<v Speaker 1>he and Jim were into BDSM, but Jim took it
<v Speaker 1>even further. He interacted online with all kinds of women,
<v Speaker 1>including minors, in his sick fantasy world. According to Tim,
<v Speaker 1>Jim was more to blame. He maintained he had only
<v Speaker 1>stumbled across the content on Jim's hard drive. He described
<v Speaker 1>it almost casually, like it was just another hobby.
<v Speaker 13>He ever talked to you about those sarems, Yeah, you
<v Speaker 13>mentioned that they were repellent stuff, and like, what's still
<v Speaker 13>kind of chaverrages, you know.
<v Speaker 4>Some of them were more of.
<v Speaker 13>The darker BDSM and that type of lifestyles.
<v Speaker 4>And some of my lifestyle, so you know, I mean
<v Speaker 4>I know a little bit about it.
<v Speaker 9>Most of them known from him, you know, as far
<v Speaker 9>as what it is.
<v Speaker 4>And I'm a little hot, isn't it?
<v Speaker 3>What he didn't dobots maybe, but that you continue to
<v Speaker 3>stay with it and.
<v Speaker 7>What like that.
<v Speaker 13>I didn think in particular that I don't know if
<v Speaker 13>he got into it or not. I mean, he talked
<v Speaker 13>to you, do he had to introduce with him, you know.
<v Speaker 3>Like well some of the weirdest stuff that you would
<v Speaker 3>talk about in there.
<v Speaker 13>I don't know what he talks about in the cabins,
<v Speaker 13>but he told you about some makes you went. I
<v Speaker 13>mean you mentioned, you know, this person from Sweden or
<v Speaker 13>this person from this country and some other.
<v Speaker 17>Guns he was talting to do about it.
<v Speaker 4>And that was about it.
<v Speaker 1>But that wasn't all of it. Tim downplayed everything what
<v Speaker 1>they thought about, what they talked about, and what they
<v Speaker 1>actually did. But investigators compared his story against the phone
<v Speaker 1>records and Facebook messages, and the reality looked far worse
<v Speaker 1>than what Tim admitted. Jim's collection of bondage pictures and messages,
<v Speaker 1>all contained in labeled folders, included women hanging on crosses,
<v Speaker 1>and women in cages. There was even a folder named milking.
<v Speaker 1>This contained sick images of women tied up with their
<v Speaker 1>breasts connected to cow milking devices. There were other folders
<v Speaker 1>labeled kids in cages and nude babies, no description needed.
<v Speaker 4>He had never.
<v Speaker 13>Mentioned that she might be into it, whether you know
<v Speaker 13>he'd be Will's trial. I mean, I know he has
<v Speaker 13>some medius and sons, like what you have a harness,
<v Speaker 13>it's some pankos, angel shackles, hearing how much sort of
<v Speaker 13>stuff like that, you know, adult enjoyables, And that's what
<v Speaker 13>I can play it.
<v Speaker 4>And then there's a tail in there and whips.
<v Speaker 1>And other things to each his own right, live and
<v Speaker 1>let live, right, all that shit. But there's a big
<v Speaker 1>difference between consensual role play and being a predator, an
<v Speaker 1>older man waiting for vulnerable women to be delivered to
<v Speaker 1>him or to stumble into his trap like a fly
<v Speaker 1>in the grips of a venus fly trap, like Cassidy did,
<v Speaker 1>for example. And it's an entirely different matter for someone
<v Speaker 1>to end up the way Cassidy did in a freezer.
<v Speaker 1>You've heard the phrase where there's smoke, oh there's fire. Well,
<v Speaker 1>where there's a freezer full of human meat fill in
<v Speaker 1>the blank. Tim had even written a macabre story on
<v Speaker 1>the topic. Not only that, it's clear he did some
<v Speaker 1>intense research on the subject of cannibalism.
<v Speaker 9>It's like, no, I do, and I don't want to
<v Speaker 9>know why you're doing this, okay, because that made me
<v Speaker 9>rethink of the story he had read when I was
<v Speaker 9>kind of stupid and it was hard to have looking
<v Speaker 9>for movies or so, and I seen it was what's this?
<v Speaker 9>I don't read it. It's like, no, I don't want
<v Speaker 9>to know if he's that's what he's finally doing because
<v Speaker 9>I don't know.
<v Speaker 3>Okay.
<v Speaker 9>You know, if you've remember correctly when you said something
<v Speaker 9>about cannibalism when you first interviewed me, I said, if
<v Speaker 9>you can take my bunk shot, tell me if I am,
<v Speaker 9>because I desire myselbject who I had if.
<v Speaker 1>I had hard to hear. But that was Tim telling
<v Speaker 1>the detectives that they might want to analyze his blood
<v Speaker 1>for human DNA like someone else's, if that's possible, because
<v Speaker 1>if he had partaken in Jim's sick cannibal fantasy, he
<v Speaker 1>didn't know about it. Yeah, sure, he's been to a
<v Speaker 1>few barbecues at Jim since the murderer. But who was
<v Speaker 1>to say, do.
<v Speaker 3>You know if his intention was to consume to eat
<v Speaker 3>some of that flesh.
<v Speaker 9>At a time? Honestly no?
<v Speaker 3>But since then maybe okay?
<v Speaker 9>Why maybe because he cuts the genitalia out and he
<v Speaker 9>kept it.
<v Speaker 3>And do you know what he did with the genitalium?
<v Speaker 16>No?
<v Speaker 9>I did not.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, as far as I know, thinks in a way.
<v Speaker 3>I don't know. Have you told someone else something different?
<v Speaker 9>No, I've had several people, and it's running Joe the odds.
<v Speaker 9>Then I was a cannibal, and then he used it
<v Speaker 9>to make a sandwich with and several things like that.
<v Speaker 9>He said, it's a Ronning joke, you know, And I've
<v Speaker 9>done my best form of everybody. I didn't need it,
<v Speaker 9>and I have no idea what you're talking about. Yeah,
<v Speaker 9>they still make a joke out of it, and sometimes
<v Speaker 9>I make jokes with other people. I own just find
<v Speaker 9>alone with the cannibal situation. But I didn't need any
<v Speaker 9>of it. I didn't touch it. I don't know what
<v Speaker 9>he did with it.
<v Speaker 18>You know.
<v Speaker 9>I know what I've heard, I know what what I've
<v Speaker 9>seen on the Newson that I don't know anything else.
<v Speaker 1>Here's a good example of the way Tim would minimize.
<v Speaker 1>He pretended that he only went along with the jokes
<v Speaker 1>about cannibalism in jail because he didn't want any trouble,
<v Speaker 1>but he later admitted to signing autographs for money under
<v Speaker 1>the name Hannibal the Annibal. While Jim stayed silent through
<v Speaker 1>the days following Cassidy's murder, all of Tim's minimizing and
<v Speaker 1>Amanda's beliefs that it was all a joke couldn't change
<v Speaker 1>the overwhelming evidence that both Jim and Tim had viciously
<v Speaker 1>murdered Cassidy and Amanda knew about it. Eventually, the courtroom
<v Speaker 1>knew about it too.
<v Speaker 5>Appearing in person for the first time since being charged
<v Speaker 5>in mid September, James Phelps was escorted into a Dallas
<v Speaker 5>County courtroom and asked if his defense was aware of
<v Speaker 5>the new first degree murder charge filed against him. The
<v Speaker 5>judge quickly took up his attorney's motion to set a bond,
<v Speaker 5>with phelps public defender, arguing Phelps is not a flight risk,
<v Speaker 5>having spent most of his life in the area, ties to.
<v Speaker 17>The community using white ball residence of the area, with
<v Speaker 17>the exception of a brief set in the military.
<v Speaker 3>In Saint Louis for about three years.
<v Speaker 5>Attorney Sam Gearhart's as Phelps had only face charges of
<v Speaker 5>writing bad checks and illegal hunting in the past, but
<v Speaker 5>prosecutors argue Phelps poses a danger to the community, especially
<v Speaker 5>those that are caring for Cassidy Rainwaters children.
<v Speaker 17>Saints position is he probably needs to be held a lot.
<v Speaker 4>For the community.
<v Speaker 5>City prosecuting attorney Jonathan Barker tells the court Phelps co
<v Speaker 5>defendant Timothy Norton confessed to deputies he and Phelps would
<v Speaker 5>search for potential victims online and at a local Walmart.
<v Speaker 9>This case that this particular is.
<v Speaker 17>That online is talking with the potential victors, even having
<v Speaker 17>Jewish to appear at his location.
<v Speaker 7>The word.
<v Speaker 17>Itselfware code defensives to be brought back his location, where
<v Speaker 17>he discusses with that that he really.
<v Speaker 4>Fast harm or kield them.
<v Speaker 5>And prosecutors also said tonight they are weighing all options
<v Speaker 5>in phelps case, including possibly seeking the death penal.
<v Speaker 1>By twenty twenty three, the courts had delivered their verdict.
<v Speaker 1>In April, Jim Phelps centered an Alford plea to first
<v Speaker 1>degree murder, meaning he knew that prosecutors had enough evidence
<v Speaker 1>to convict him, but he still maintained his innocence. The
<v Speaker 1>judge senced him to life in prison with the possibility
<v Speaker 1>of parole. In June, Timothy Norton pleaded guilty to the
<v Speaker 1>same charge and received an identical sentence, life without parole.
<v Speaker 1>As part of his plea agreement, charges of kidnapping and
<v Speaker 1>abandonment of a corpse were dropped. Cassidy's son, Aiden, has
<v Speaker 1>spoken about his mother, saying that even though his parents
<v Speaker 1>gave him up for adoption at the age of four,
<v Speaker 1>he loves her and no she did her best. He
<v Speaker 1>admits that adoption was probably the best thing for him.
<v Speaker 1>He's had a good life. Aiden has grown up to
<v Speaker 1>be a very intelligent and talented young man who plays
<v Speaker 1>thirty five different instruments and loves theater. This is what
<v Speaker 1>he said at his mom's funeral.
<v Speaker 3>Think about the memories and.
<v Speaker 1>Just how great they were.
<v Speaker 3>She always loves the river.
<v Speaker 9>It was her favorite place, and I remember her always
<v Speaker 9>singing to me as a baby.
<v Speaker 4>She was a great person.
<v Speaker 8>She was the hardest working mom I've ever known, and
<v Speaker 8>I'm so proud of it, and I wish she should
<v Speaker 8>know that sin here.
<v Speaker 1>Cassidy Rainwater died in the most horrible of circumstances, and
<v Speaker 1>what they did to her body after was beyond despicable.
<v Speaker 1>She may have fallen through the cracks at the time
<v Speaker 1>she landed on Jim's doorstep, but she was a mother,
<v Speaker 1>a daughter, and a friend. She just happened to be
<v Speaker 1>a who trusted the wrong people. But the question that
<v Speaker 1>lingers is bigger than Cassidy. Jim and Tim weren't just
<v Speaker 1>two isolated monsters who snapped one day. They were predators,
<v Speaker 1>and like all predators, they hunted where they knew the
<v Speaker 1>vulnerable lived. For them, it was mostly women on the margins, alone, struggling,
<v Speaker 1>sometimes with no place to go. But this was changing.
<v Speaker 1>They started stalking in parking lots and restaurants. That's where
<v Speaker 1>Ren's insight becomes so important. It could have been her.
<v Speaker 1>She crossed paths with Tim before he was caught and
<v Speaker 1>put away, and her story shows how monsters like Jim
<v Speaker 1>and Tim operated not just with violence, but with patience,
<v Speaker 1>with manipulation. They looked for weakness, tested boundaries, and moved
<v Speaker 1>in slowly until it was too late. Fortunately for Ren,
<v Speaker 1>she knew what to look for. She works as an EMT.
<v Speaker 16>I don't think I've ever ran into another murderer, but
<v Speaker 16>I have, you know, worked cases where people are being trafficked,
<v Speaker 16>and like on the side of the road, we're getting
<v Speaker 16>people out of cars who are being taken against their will,
<v Speaker 16>and it's a lot of the same behavior. It's a
<v Speaker 16>lot of that, like I'm out to make you uncomfortable,
<v Speaker 16>and I'm betting that you're not going to say anything
<v Speaker 16>about it. They look for people who kind of don't
<v Speaker 16>hold themselves high, who kind of you shrink your shoulders,
<v Speaker 16>you make yourself small, you stay out of the way,
<v Speaker 16>and a lot of people think that like being out
<v Speaker 16>of sight in a way makes them a little safer,
<v Speaker 16>and it just makes it easier for the people who
<v Speaker 16>don't want to do horrible things to you to not
<v Speaker 16>notice you, to not see you when you need help.
<v Speaker 16>And like a lot of I've read a lot of
<v Speaker 16>studies about serial killers, and you know, the way that
<v Speaker 16>they picked their victims is who's the smallest person in
<v Speaker 16>the room that doesn't look very sure of themselves.
<v Speaker 1>Cassidy may have been vulnerable, but she was strong willed
<v Speaker 1>and stubborn. According to everyone in your that is but see,
<v Speaker 1>Jim and Tim didn't seek her out. She landed there
<v Speaker 1>and she became a problem for them because she didn't
<v Speaker 1>want to give in to their demands. She didn't want
<v Speaker 1>a sexual relationship with Jim. Even Tim acknowledged that, and
<v Speaker 1>she paid for with her life.
<v Speaker 16>Another thing that I wanted to touch on is like
<v Speaker 16>the packaged meat of it all, the cannibalism was the
<v Speaker 16>craziest part of it for me to read, because it
<v Speaker 16>was one of those things, especially like again, as the
<v Speaker 16>information is coming out, you see it and it's so
<v Speaker 16>out there and weird and wrong that you kind of
<v Speaker 16>don't want to believe it. But then again, like and
<v Speaker 16>especially getting in the line of work that I'm in now,
<v Speaker 16>there are definitely people that, like beyond your worst imagination,
<v Speaker 16>will do things like that or kind of surround themselves
<v Speaker 16>with people that are cool with stuff like that. I
<v Speaker 16>don't know. I don't know if society as a whole
<v Speaker 16>just wants to push all the ugly stuff under the
<v Speaker 16>rug and don't think about it, and that happens far
<v Speaker 16>away and you know, it'll never be my problem. And
<v Speaker 16>a lot of this stuff is happening like in these
<v Speaker 16>tiny middle of nowhere unincorporated towns and like counties that
<v Speaker 16>have just woods forever. It's hiding kind of in plain sight.
<v Speaker 1>Dallas County Police didn't find evidence that the human meat
<v Speaker 1>in Jim's freezer was ever shared or sold, but absence
<v Speaker 1>of evidence isn't evidence of absence bone appetite. That's gonna
<v Speaker 1>do it for another one. If you're new here, head
<v Speaker 1>on over to Swordinscale dot com for more until next week.
<v Speaker 1>Stay safe.
<v Speaker 16>M M.
<v Speaker 14>Mike, you are so funny.
<v Speaker 15>You crack me up.
<v Speaker 2>Dude. Keep doing what you're doing.
<v Speaker 3>You're making so many.
<v Speaker 2>People laugh at but we don't sneak out, you know
<v Speaker 2>what I mean, So all you hear is the negative
<v Speaker 2>from the nagaie.
<v Speaker 13>You know, negatives, negatives.
<v Speaker 2>Take care, Mike, and thank you. Don't believe they hate
<v Speaker 2>us