544 - Everything Is Worth It

Valveline.

Instant oil change presents wisdom from the road.

Summer means wide open spaces in a whole lot of extra miles. Last place you want your engine to give out is halfway to nowhere. Out here, vote oil or a week battery is just an ambush way to happen.

“That's why every oil change at Valveline is the loyal change that glutes at 18 point”

in check. These decks are trained to help spot issues early and give you a ride and easy. Valveline, instant oil change wisely. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the burden of guild season 3 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous situation that destroyed two families. It's a scorched earth war that shows just how far someone will go to get what they want.

Cindy said I had to choose between the truth and my family and I had to choose the truth. Listen to season 3 of burden of guilds on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. The trail weekly is back with brand new stories from threatening text messages disturbing a small Midwestern town.

It was from an unknown number, who else is getting these messages? Why did it start with us to long cons and stolen identities? Who lies about being this sick? This was the last time I ever believed to work she said. Listen to betrayal weekly on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get

your podcasts. Hello and welcome my favorite murder. That's George Hardster. That's Karen Kilcaref and this is what we like to call a 10 year plan. It's almost been 11 years now.

We're going to have to stop saying 10. I know. That's pretty great. It's pretty crazy. I feel like the luckiest person in the world.

Same. But it is very surreal to be sitting in my house trying to figure out what to watch on TV and this podcast comes up on Netflix. It's so strange. So hopefully the people at home understand, we're just pretending like this is normal and

that we do it all the time.

“Can I tell you something speaking of Netflix and this cute off of it I'm wearing?”

Did you know that when we were on break, I had Molly and Tess make a chart of all the outfits I've worn, so I don't repeat the outfit, it's almost yet. I can't repeat an outfit, it's an old trauma wound of getting made fun of for wearing hand me down. These pools.

Wow. Isn't it amazing? So thank you Molly and Tess for indulging my trauma and vanity, I think those two things are. Looks like you repeated that Steve Martin shirt a couple times.

So those are those are mini-sodes and it repeats because it's the same day. Yeah. It's a top point of view. It's a top point of view. Why don't you get your ass up out of the chair and change outfits on the day?

I would do that. It's like you hadn't been okay, like, into it. And so if we get you like a curtain that spins around you and when you spin back out you have a different outfit.

It's such a relief from the first time when I was like, do you want to change outfits?

And you're like, fuck no. I don't like it. Really? Great. And now I need to like, put down all this and make some cut of her basing.

Literally when I was leaving my house today, I was like, I had to put on a shirt. I was like, I have to cover my arms. I was saying all these things to myself and I was like, I don't have to do shit. Don't. Really, it's not like that anymore.

No. Well, Netflix has changed it for me a little bit. It's like up the game a little. Well, there's the exposure aspect that we already had, but we weren't really thinking about. Right.

But here's my thing. And if you're here for the glamour, don't look on the side of the table. I have the side. I'm wearing a fucking Jamb Brady outfit. Sure, Jan.

But my thing was like, I'm trying to provide the Kim Deal Patricia Highsmith angle of we're busy and we're not doing that thing. I like that. And we represent those girls. I have those days.

You can see in the binder. I don't see that. I've lived that binder. I know. She has those hangovers and that PMS, despite not having her fucking uterus.

She still has those. All those hormones are in there. She puts on Steve Martin T-shirt vintage. But she puts it on. She puts it on.

You were going to tell me a story. Last week, and we went to Dollywood. Shut up. Yep. Laura and Nora and my cousin Stevie and Kim and their daughters because Anna is the biggest

fan of Dolly and she basically has been talking about, would you go with me if I went to Dollywood

and we're all like, hell, yes, we'll go and we finally did it.

“Is it like a not-spary farm or is it more like a Disneyland?”

I would say it's like right in between the two. Okay. So I was so funny to ask that because I was anticipating not-spary farm and maybe down.

But like mom and pop the amusement park.

“So think of it as like your local amusement park, which is like charming and cute, but a”

little janky. Right. Well, it's like, 'cause it's farm-based. Yeah. And it's like a state fair.

Exactly. They're doing kind of the home-towny vibe where it's like, this used to be a berry farm. Right. That used to be a little politically incorrect. Maybe.

Yeah. But No. Dollywood is classy. It's home-eating. Amazing.

The food. Everybody should be happy. Oh, my God. Well, every morning we had the breakfast buffet with some of the loveliest, weight staff, the people that were there.

They were going to say loveliest swaffles and I was so beautiful biscuits. I mean, they were there. Everything was cooked perfectly. Yeah. Norah had all kinds of gluten free choices.

Amazing. And the staff were like, of course, 'cause my cousin Stevie was a waiter and ran restaurants and stuff. So he's immediately sassing with the waitresses who are immediately sassing back. Yeah.

That's the most wholesome, like what we kept talking about walking around in the park. Big roller coasters, fun roller coaster. Dolly retrospective where we walk through and spoiler alert if you're going to go and you're going to ruin for you, but through the retrospective, you come around a corner. And I don't know if you've ever heard Dolly Parton song "Code of Many Colors," which is about

her mom making her the most beautiful coat of the world, and she goes to school and they're like, "Yeah, of course." You come around a corner. The fucking coat of many colors is behind glass. But if you grew up in the 70s, Dolly Parton was everywhere all the time.

There was that country music trend that basically happened on AM radio.

And she was everywhere, her and Kenny Rogers and everybody. But the "Code of Many Colors" was like so down deep that it wasn't even like a thing. I didn't even think about it. But we come on this corner. My sister and I are just like, immediately start crying.

Wow. Because my sister turns to go, "It's the coat of many colors." It's actually the little girls coat. It's the little girls coat. I think she's still half that.

That's beautiful. That's the lobby of the resort we stayed at, Heart Song. This smoky mountains, which my sister, I met them, they were there longer than me. My sister said this smoky mountains are some of the most beautiful nature she's ever seen. I want to go.

When the leaves turn. Oh yeah. It's like every single tree. Okay. Can we ask Dolly if we can do a live show at Dollywood?

Do they have an amphitheater? Yes, they do. We say we imagine. Dolly's nieces do a live show, her relatives do a live music review of her music and other hits.

And they were fucking great. It was like a 1 o'clock show and I was like, "Yeah, every song is clapping my ass off because I was like, they're busting their asses." My favorite murder, residency at Dollywood, get out of temp, but we need to go where the coat of many colors is.

I'd wear that. I'd wear that. It would go perfectly with what you have on right now. Do you think I would wear that? But also isn't it beautiful?

It's gorgeous. It's the cutest thing. It doesn't matter because my sister doesn't watch this show, but I was like, I think I'm going to try to sew her a coat of many colors for Christmas. Her?

Do it. We're just like, here, here, you can have your own. Either that or have someone paint it and do a little painting of it. Hey, murdering us. Do you paint?

Oh my god, like a little, little still life of just the coat would be so cute. Coming around a corner and seeing your childhood. And knowing murdering us, like it's the artist who uses cat hair, it's going to make the most beautiful.

“Because that's how talented our fucking listeners are.”

They're going to use something random, like only using diet coat cans. They're going to make it the most beautiful because that's their thing and that's what they do. Now, clippings. Whenever you can come up with, we would love to see it.

Who would? But highly recommend. Okay. Dollywood, every employee was lovely. Amazing.

The experience was just like, we were just like, what a great summer trip. Yeah. I love that. And great merch. Amazing.

What'd you do this weekend? Oh, I'm not drinking. Oh, are you white knuckling over five weeks? Do. The longest I've gone in decade and more.

How you feel? Good. Of course, duh. Yeah. Yeah, turns out.

But do you do an instead reading? I'm just reading. Are you really? Yeah. I mean, I've been going to dinner with me to like, you know, like, this isn't non-hook

like dinner. Let's try it. And I was just like the whole time fucking. This isn't fun without a martini yet. But it will be.

Right. Well, let's just have it. Yeah, totally.

I've never read the book yesterday here.

I told you to read the book. God damn it. Well, I told you like two weeks I got to read the book. How good is it? It's okay.

Well, I didn't. I haven't started, but everybody on the trip had a copy. Yeah. It's so fucking good. I will always do that to you because you always tell me to read things.

And I just don't. The audiobook is really good. Okay. Yeah. Oh, good.

Check it out. Yeah, I'm very excited. Love it. It's the book of the summer. Everybody's talking about Tradwife regret the whole thing of, like, why are there

“no grown Tradwives, because women of a certain age can't fucking handle that shit no more?”

I mean, the pure labor of being a wife and mother, mental labor, physical labor, emotional

And then basically volunteering to do it alone.

Yeah. Wow. Tough. No. Go do the trick I'm up there.

There is a trick I'm up there. But it's kind of a weird one. Okay.

“And it's around the murders of this for University of Idaho students.”

Yeah. Logan, Kaylee, Gonzalves, Ethan, Chapin, and Zaynna, Cronotal. Brian Coberger, who is convicted of all four murders last year, is now wants to rescind his guilty plea. What?

And get a new trial. I didn't hear that. He claims he's innocent and that he was misled into confessing, um, they don't know if that's actually going to take place, but that's something he's petitioning for right now.

I was so happy that that fucking monster was just going to go away and we didn't have to look at him anymore, right, but there we go. Yeah. That sucks. Yeah.

We'll see what actually happens because people have the right to put that out there if they want to. And then they'll see who picks it up and what it actually means totally. All right. Well, should we get into it?

Yes. Should we talk about our network? Yes. So we have a network. It's called exactly right media.

Go listen to all our podcasts on it. There's so many good ones. They're right out there for you. Please. Here's some highlights.

“Right over on Ghosted, what's very exciting is the host Rose Hernandez has a new audio”

book out called "Peeing in an empty bottle." It's about her life on the road as a stand-up comic. So you can go listen to an excerpt of that on her feed over on the ghosted feed. If you like it, you can get the full audio book available wherever you buy your audio books. Love it.

Our newest limited series, "Grile Swingle" episode four. Good cop, bad cop is out now detected Jim Frost closes in on Evelyn and Leyla as more of their past comes to light, but just when it looks like they're cornered, their loyal butler lars steps in. They're loyal butler lars.

This is the level of insanity this podcast gets to and we're only on episode four. Amazing. We're only halfway through ours. It's the craziest.

And Rosehundle's doing amazing on the charts.

Thank you guys so much for supporting and downloading and listening and all of that because it's going like gang busters. Also, if you've ever dreamed of solving crimes at sea, which we know you have, if you're a murderer, you know, buried bones and disgrace land are heading aboard Virgin Voyage's true crime voyage this coming March.

Bookings are open now at VirginVoyage's.com. How badly do you want to just go on a cruise and have a drink with Jake Brennan, Puck and Paul Holes, and Kate Winkler saw them and just chop it up about facts and evidence. Oh, that sounds like my dream. Yeah.

I really don't want to go. I want to get you to go. I want to go. And then in March Corner, we still have a handful of Proclensity items left. You have to check them out.

Go to exactly rightstore.com before they disappear for good.

“Haven't you ever wanted to wear a merch of your favorite psychiatric drug?”

Yeah. Well, now you can with Proclensity, which is a word, Georgia made out. It seems like something you'd run in a 5k, like, and then at the end of the 5k, like they'd hand out merch like some Proclensity. Yeah.

That's just what it makes you think of. We're also selling those silver blankets that you can wrap around your shoulders. Also, tomorrow, we've got a little treat for you because in partnership with cars.com, we're going to be releasing a bonus episode for you where we give the listeners advice. That was chaotic.

It was absolutely insane. So fun. And speaking of that, we cannot stress enough that we're in no way equipped or certified to be giving any one advice. So please take that advice at your own risk, watch the full video of us leading the public

astray exclusively on the fancult at fancult.supercast.com. Yeah. The end. And the end. And I'm first.

That's right. 170 hours means they're training's legit. It's the smart choice for smart folk and care for their steed. So trust the instant oil, change the starts with valolene. Now the lane instant oil change.

Change wisely. This one has a mystery element to it, which I know you hate. Cool. Okay. Say hate cold case.

I mean, I wouldn't call it that, although I guess technically it's not. Okay. So it's April 1964, right, right when this dress was made. And we're at Michael Reese Hospital on the near south side of Chicago. So we're at this maternity ward, 1964 April.

Dora Fronsack is happily feeding her two-day old baby, a boy, her first child named Paul.

Her husband Chester has to return to work at the factory where he's a machinist, but he's planning to come back to the hospital that evening. They're so thrilled at their first baby. And that day at work, he's proudly handing out cigars to all his colleagues.

And Dora and her roommate, both things a little odd, but all she does is lift the blue blanket

away from baby Paul's face and look at him for a long moment and then she walks out. But a half hour later, she's back and she tells Dora that the pediatrician would like to examine the baby and Dora hands over her brand new baby, Paul, and it's the last time she'll ever see her newborn. This is the story of the Paul Fronsack triple disappearance.

Oh, do you know this one? I mean, I've heard stories of the babies that have been taken or, you know, yeah, whatever, but no, I don't know what they're saying. Get ready. The main source for this book is the book, The Foundling by Paul Fronsack.

He worded about himself, but we'll get into it. So a student nurse sees this woman dressed as a nurse walking out with this brand new baby into the stairwell, she doesn't recognize the nurse and she knows that this is not usual protocol. So probably because she's a student and doesn't feel empowered to run up to a nurse who seems

more senior than her, she doesn't say anything to the nurse instead, she alerts her supervisor.

They rush to the nursery and realize that baby Paul is missing.

At that point, no one can locate this mysterious woman and the baby, even though they

“like acted immediately, there was no delay, you know?”

Yeah. People staff try and successfully for two hours to find Paul and the nurse and then they call Chester at work and tell him what had happened. He has to break the heartbreaking news to Dora, they are in her hospital bed while hundreds of police and FBI officers just sent upon the neighborhood.

Uh, hey, they should have had to go in and break the news. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, maybe not though. Maybe he wanted to because it's like coming from someone, you know what I mean?

Yes. Someone personal and it's not. Someone that's going to be weird and cold and right, clinical about it, right. But, God, God, all they figure out is this. The woman had hailed a cab on the street behind the hospital.

The driver said he had driven her west away from the lake front where the hospital is to 35th street and house dead Avenue about a 10 minute ride. Then she had gotten out and despite conducting hundreds of interviews and searching hundreds

of buildings and homes investigators never uncover any leads about where the woman took

Paul next. And here's a sketch of what she looked like based on the people who saw her. So it's just so vague woman wearing a nurse's uniform. Do you think that kind of looks like me? That's my haircut.

It's not your. I guess I agree.

“When I'm like a little stressed out, but wait a second, what?”

Wait, Karen. Wait, what are we going to do? Oh, my God. I'm sorry. I kind of long for the day.

It's first of all, when we used to have newspapers and journalism. But that idea where it's kind of like, hey, have you seen this person that imagine the kind of things that aren't getting out there and getting communicated and circulated because although I have to say, and the TikTok's going crazy for it, Nancy Grace is back in a big way.

Really? Yes, she is. She's taking up the Nolan Wells case like herself. I didn't see that. Yes.

I mean, I've seen the case and it's just awful, but I didn't know she was getting into it. People from like the local, you know, officials and getting them on the show and then just being way confrontational about, you know, that doesn't seem right to me. And her fucking eyebrows are as arched as I believe it's a real return to form in that

it's crazy. I'm great. I'm great for that. I mean, it's she's doing something. Yeah.

Okay, Nancy. We see you. Yeah.

“So at the time, when this in 1964, it had not yet been hospital policy to take fingerprints”

and footprints for new babies. So the only tangible information the police have on file is the one photo of Paul that was taken right after he was born. They took a snapshot and that's it. That photo is released to the press as well as those sketches of the woman who took

him. So here's his photo is a little baby. I know. Just tiny, just two days old. I mean, tiny, but all that hair.

Yeah. I mean, good thing they had that photo. Yeah, for real. So the front's acts make a few desperate pleas to the press begging for their baby back. But heartbreakingly in those statements, they ask for him to be well cared for.

Dora tells a reporter quote, take good care of him and see that he gets enough to eat. He's everything we built our hopes on for the future just so he is taken care of. That's the main thing. So he's just hoping that whoever kidnapped him was doing so to have a baby. Yeah.

And so here's the photo of the two of them in the newspaper with the plea. She's an oil chair. She just looks devastated. I mean, look at their faces. It's just such a bizarre, kind of such a bizarre situation, not something you'd expect

in a hospital. You think you're totally safe there. Yeah. So similarly, Paul's doctors give detailed instructions to the press about how he should be cared for and how his formula should be prepared because they suspect he might have

So they're just hoping that it's someone who wants to take care of him.

“And over the next two years, the case goes completely cold.”

Then, in June of 1966, two years and two months after Paul's birth and disappearance, the fronzacks get the call they've been praying for every single day, a two-year-old boy has been found in New Jersey and authorities believe he might be Paul. So rewind, the boy had been left a year earlier in 1965 in a brand new stroller outside a department store in Newark.

He had been dressed in a clean, bright blue suit, and the stroller in the little boy had sat unattended in front of the store for two hours until people realized there was no parents with him. And at 5 p.m., an anonymous collar, phones, the Newark police, and tells him about the child. The child is designated a founding, a term for an abandoned baby whose origins are unknown,

which is like gives you chills toward the founding. It sounds like a horror movie. Yeah. It does. Not one movie with Angelina Jolie.

That's so good. The baby turns around and then just bangs. It has full set of teeth. What a mustache.

Think the movie you're thinking of is the changeling.

I did love that movie. I love the changeling. Thank you, Molly. Yes, yes. I love that movie.

It was so good.

“And it was based on a true story that I think you covered.”

I covered it. And it's so upsetting. And it is that movie is the worst nightmare of any parent we're going through this where it's like, oh, some absolute lunatic is keeping children in chicken coop. Yeah.

Out in the condiment. And then she's put in an insane asylum. Yes, because nobody wants to hear a lady be like you guys fuck this. Yeah, okay. You guys go watch the changeling.

Go watch it. My son. That's my favorite line. I don't remember that line from it. She screams my son about 19 times and says we could have added it this down a little bit.

I think. So he's a founding the police run ads and the local papers about the founding to be liked as anyone who's baby this is. And no one comes forward. So he's brought to live with a foster family in watching New Jersey.

And he's a playful, friendly little boy. He has a good appetite. He loves to swim in the family's pool and help with grown-up tasks like unloading the groceries. The only times he seems fearful or upset is when a young man suddenly enters the room

and this causes him to cow her in fear and sob, which makes the family who were watching him believe he's been abused by a young man. Here's a photo of the little boy with the nurse. He is so freaking cute. Oh my god.

He's so cute. I know. And he looks a lot like that baby. Yeah, I mean, that looks like my nephew Mike has so much to me too. Yeah.

It's a perfect two-year progression from that totally. Totally. Totally. Little boy's speech develops normally over the year. He spends in foster care.

Sometimes he playfully puts up his fists and says, "Wanna box?" But he is gentle with the little or babies in the home. When they cry, he comforts them saying, "Don't cry." When he himself falls or hurts himself in some minor way, he comforts himself with the same saying, "Don't cry."

So he remembers something from before. Mm-hmm. Claire Eckert is the foster mom who cares for the little toddler saying quote, "He is one of the most perfect boys I've ever known. He has charmed all of us with his dearness and kind little ways.

He has such a great love of life and he has made us aware of so many things. He was my special baby." And quote. Also, God bless the foster parents who are actually doing it totally. Totally.

Totally. For real.

It's such an incredible act.

Okay. Baby had been found that Detective and Newark had alerted the FBI. And for the year that he spends in foster care, the FBI are in and out checking on him. They take molds of his ears. They take blood samples.

They take hair samples to see if the baby is little Paul from Zach. They do the same thing to thousands of other little boys around the country hoping to find Paul. But they don't find anything. And we got an email from a murdererino, which I'll read and full at some point because

it's really interesting I'll read it on a hometown in the future. But it says this quote. My dad was born and adopted on April 24th, 1964 of my grandparents. On that same day, Paul Joseph Fronsack was stolen from Chicago Hospital by a woman dressed as a nurse.

So her dad is born the same day and adopted in Chicago.

“That's why she goes on to say the FBI tested and examined over 10,000 babies.”

One of which was my dad. They came back multiple times to examine my dad and took multiple hair and blood samples. The authorities were highly suspicious of my grandparents as they weren't my dad's biological parents and their lawyer was under suspicion of black market adoptions. And then she writes, "Uh, okay."

And that's just an excerpt. That's from Ali. The whole email's really great. I'll read it at some point. But like, what are the chances that I'm murdering a hallucin--one of those babies is

her dad? On the exact same day. Yeah. And adopted too. That's wild.

What did they collect from babies who were just born that they would be able to test it against back then? Yeah. Nothing. Okay.

So by March of 1966, when the baby is just about two years old, they conclude that they can't definitively say that the baby is Paul, this little baby, and foster care.

And of all the little boys who have been tested, this is the only time that they are kind of like it might be him. So in June of 1966, the FBI makes the call to the Frondacks. Authorities believe the baby looks like Dora and Chester Frondack. And when a couple arrive in New Jersey to meet him, they believe it's their son, Dora

cries out, "Oh my God, that's my baby." I know. It's a joist ending for everyone, though perhaps a little bittersweet for the Claire, Eckhart, the foster mother. She'd given a little boy the name Scotch.

And she writes a letter to Dora saying, quote, "For all the sadness you have both known, you are in for so much joy, for you will now see things through Scotch eyes and he can make them lovely." "Oh, I know, is that touching?" "Yeah."

So Scot becomes Paul, the baby that had been kidnapped that they had lost. And life goes on and Paul lives a normal life in a working-class neighborhood on the south side of Chicago.

He's never told about the first two years of his life.

"That's very VC, Andrews of those parents." Like, what?

“I mean, I guess mine is all the abuse and incest, right?”

"Yes." And creepy addicts and stuff. But I mean, it makes sense that these two young anyway at the time, but that was, you know, that feels like back in the time where it's like, "Oh, it's fine if he never knows about." "Right."

His real origin. And maybe, so he's still a kid at this point, so maybe they would have told him when he's older, or how he's a kid going to wrap their head around that. Sit down and just deal with it. Just like face it straight on your child, you're in a little adult, right?

"This is going to fuck up third grade for you, but just try to wrap your mind around." Imagine this. Okay. So Dora had been pregnant when authorities told the frauds acts that they thought they had found Paul.

Paul comes home and just six months later, his little brother, Dave, is born. So like, what a mind-fuck, yeah, for those parents, especially, right? In December of 1974, when Paul is 10, he starts snooping around the house like we all did, looking for his Christmas presents.

“In the basement, he pulls a couch away from the wall.”

He always got a pooped furniture.

Oh, yeah. That's right. And he exposes a little crawl space behind it, and he shimmies in and against the back wall, hidden behind some frame paintings, our three shoe boxes, and a hat box, to find those. To move something and be like these have been hidden here.

Totally. I found my grandma's and my grandpa's love letters to each other before they were married. Snooping. So, sorry grandma. Well, here's the thing.

All people should realize, little kids snoop right. If you're not there, they're going to go through your nightstands. Tours. Totally. That's just a way to pass the time.

It's just don't keep your growth stuff in obvious places. It's don't be such a pervert. So, Paul, of course, opens the boxes and realizes there are full of newspaper clippings and letters, and he pulls out a clipping and sees a picture of a newborn and a picture from his parents 10 years younger, that photo.

He recognizes them and they're devastated, and the letters are all from well-bushers and people who have been praying for the frontzacks. So, Paul realizes that he's this baby.

“He goes into the kitchen of the mom, like, what the hell?”

She gets angry at him for snooping, and he's like, okay, but what you did is worse. The hell's going on, and he asks if those articles are about him and she says, quote, "Yes, those are about you. You were kidnapped. We found you.

We love you, and that is all there is to know." And quote. Okay, Mom. Okay, Mom. Go watch TV.

Of course, that's not all. There is to know. And Paul pretty much lives the rest of his childhood, and much of his adult life, wondering if he really is his parents missing baby, or if he was, for the first two years of his life,

someone else, and while Paul does love his family, he says he always feels a bit distant

from them. And he had felt that even before discovering all these newspaper clippings and finding out the truth, he says he has always had this underlying suspicion that he's an outsider to his family, which I wish I felt that way, too. I thought that was not the fuckers are my blood, and I know that.

You say some Janet says, "Yeah, it's like, I see where I got all my problems." I mean, it's also interesting because I wonder if he would always feel that no matter if he was flesh and blood, because of this. Even it turned out to be true. It just...

Yeah, those kind of foundational years, he was in a different place than that in and of itself, right? Could just be creating that feeling. No, that makes total sense. If you're service, let's all trust the text with the train that's us.

I'm Nancy Glass, host of the burden of guild season 3 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous situation that destroyed two families.

who had just gotten engaged.

“These later, they walked into a scorched earth war they never saw coming.”

And to Cindy's surprise, her fiance Kenny was charged with abuse in one of her children.

I never once doubted Kenny, and I always doubted the accusation.

On season 3 of burden of guild, you'll hear a story about the length someone will go to in order to get what they want. This case has got to be one of the most despicable. Listen to season 3 of burden of guild, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

On boxing day 2018, Joy Morgan was last seen at her secretive church, six weeks later she's reported missing. I'm Charlie Brinkhouse Cough, and after years of investigating Joy's case, I need to know what really happened to Joy. This is the missing sister, the true story of a woman betrayed by those she trusted most.

Listen to the missing sister on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. He doesn't get a satisfactory answer and tell much later. In the interim, he grows up, he graduates high school moves to Arizona, gets married, gets

divorced, works a bunch of different jobs, and never quite seems to figure out what the

right thing for him is as a lot of us, what I'm going to do. But at age 40, in around 2005, he decides to give acting a try, and he actually makes a living at it. Side note, he's fucking super handsome. Let's take a look.

I want to tell you what it looks like before you see it.

“He looks like, I think Chris Hansen and a young Keith Morrison combined.”

He looks like the perfect, like, 20. He looks like a day-line, or 20, 20 hosts, like you're telling you about his own crime. So here he is. Okay. Hi.

Hi. So he's based in Las Vegas at this point. He gets a lot of commercial and print ad campaigns, and then he gets a nice gig as George clearly stand in on Oceans 11. Nice.

So, like, clearly, don't you see Chris Hansen and Keith Morrison? That was a square draw, so he made someone named Michelle, and they fall in love and get married, and then Michelle gets pregnant, and at this point, you know, Paul is forced to confront this question. It's an act him his whole life, because his doctor started asking him about his family's

medical history. I feel like a lot of people find out, those stories that they send us for the hometown stories. Yeah, like the ancestry.com type of curiosity that then unravels. Speaking of, hello. This is before the explosion of DNA genealogy kits, but at home, paternity tests are at this

point available at drug stores. So, more of it, so Paul buys one, and while his parents are in town visiting them, he asked them to take the test, and they do, but then they start to have regrets. They ask Paul not to send the swabs in for testing, like, just don't, we don't even want to know.

Paul agonizes over the decision for a week, but ultimately he sends the test in.

And a few weeks later, he gets to answer that. No one wants to hear, but it feels like everyone kind of already knows, Dora and Chester are not Paul's biological parents. I know. I mean, but it also has to be a little bit like, hey, at least I know, yeah, I can trust

my gut. Right. If I feel something, and I have this instinct, then I know there's a reason to follow it. Like, Limbo is not a place to live your whole life. Paul's parents are at first furious at him, first sending in the test, and their devastated

having their nightmare reopened, and the realization that they have no idea where their biological son has been for more than 40 years like they could trick themselves into thinking they had him, and now, the devastation that it's all coming back coming through again. Yeah. And this opens a rift between Paul and his family that lasts for the next several years,

as Paul begins to piece things together on his own. At this point, Paul conducts exhaustive research about his own life. He speaks to the woman named Mary Hendry, whose father, John T. Carton, had been a Chicago police lieutenant and had run the kidnapping investigation originally. She says, this woman says, quote, I remember my father standing in the kitchen of our

home shaking his head. He talked about what good people the fron's acts were, and how badly he felt for them and what a good job they would do raising the baby. But he also said that the child they took home was not their baby. He knew.

He was certain it wasn't the right boy. My father told us the FBI in the place, both agree the child was not the kidnap baby, but the fron's acts were such good people. They agreed to let it unfold the way it did and quote. So there's a two year old baby missing.

This two year old baby needs a family.

“That's all just what's cognitive dissonance, what's it called?”

Yeah, just like selective. Yeah. So everyone denial.

Yeah. Isn't that sad?

“And it reminds me of the changeling, that's the, it's that same thing of like, changeling”

version as much more sad because the mother immediately knew. Yeah. But yeah, when you're in that situation and someone's like, the dates line up, the time you did this, the that, then you just want to be out of your misery. I feel like you'd be a little psychotic if your fucking baby was kidnapped.

Because then it makes sense how mad they are at him when he opens it back up because they're like, we can't face the fact that then we gave up. Paul shares the story with the media and it attracts a lot of attention. So the FBI reopens the Paul Fraunzac case in 2013 he's contacted by ancestry and they tell him about their new DNA genealogy project.

And so Paul submits his DNA. There are a lot of false leads and then a group of genetic genealogists called the DNA detectives led by our girl, C.C. Moore, who's, of course, the head of paraponnal labs, genetic genealogy unit, she winds up taking on Paul's case and we know she can solve anything. Great.

2015 they finally figure out who Paul is.

He was born, the little baby who was found outside the store, the department store. He was born Jack Rosenthal and shockingly it turns out he was a twin. Ooh. So this is probably the saddest twist in the story. Paul learns that he had been born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, remember he was found

in Newark and that he and his twin sister Jill, so it was Jack and Jill, had disappeared in 1965. So he travels back to New Jersey, he meets relatives who said that they had seen him and Jill as babies and then suddenly his parents started making a big excuses as to why he and a sister were not around anymore.

What? I know. Like they just dropped them off in front of a store. Well, there are other relatives who say that they had seen Jack and Jill abused and neglected. Paul learns that his father had been a Korean war veteran and likely had PTSD.

“Remember he would get scared when a younger man will walk into the room?”

Yep.

He learns that his mother had been in alcoholic and both of Paul's biological parents had

died in the '90s of cancer. So Paul proceeds multiple avenues to try to find his twin sister, including digging up the lot where his biological parents' house had been. Wow. He never finds anything.

Oh, he was digging up the lot like his sister could be buried as well. Wow. Because after they were children, no one saw anything. He knows he survived and what happened to him but no one knows what happened to Jill. The working theory is that Jill may have died and their biological parents care due to abuse

or neglect and that Paul was then abandoned at the same time because they both kind of disappeared together. So Paul also has a biological older sister who's only about two years older than him. He meets her. She has no memory of him or Jill.

He also has a brother who he emails and he says he doesn't want to be in contact. Both of these siblings of course had extremely difficult childhoods. So for about five years, this is where the investigation is at a standstill.

Paul publishes his book, The Foundling in 2017, never having found the real little boy

who was stolen from his parents. That's like he solved this mystery of who he was but there's still this big question mark. And so in 2020, it comes out that the FBI had identified the real baby of Dora and Chester a year before in 2019. His name had been Kevin Ray baby but his existence is only reported on after his death

of cancer, so he had found out shortly after finding the test results out.

“So he didn't really want anyone to know is him I think or we don't really know what was”

going on there. Kevin's children had seen reports about Paul search for answers and for reasons that are still unclear had suspected that their father is the real Paul Fraunzac. Kevin had taken a DNA test and these suspicions were confirmed and then he passes away from cancer and then the FBI lets everyone know.

Kevin had lived in a small town in Michigan called Manchin, friends and neighbors remember him as a very kind man. So here's a photo of the baby picture and an age progression drawing of what he would look like. Okay, now here's the baby and what he actually looks like.

So look at that guy. It looks just like him. Doesn't it? Yep. And then think of big George Clooney like that doesn't look anything like the baby.

Like I should catch it all. How would a baby is going to look like but isn't that crazy that so close would go back? Yeah, that's that's wild. Yeah. They should have taken.

So that's their real baby. I know. That's sad. Okay, before Kevin's death he had gotten to speak on the phone multiple times with Dora Fraunzac.

At this point, the case is still considered open and very few details about Kevin and what happened to him after he was kidnapped from the hospital had been reported but we do know this. Kevin had been raised by a woman named Lorraine Fountain. She died in 2004 and Lorraine had been dating a doctor from Chicago.

And then moved to Arkansas for about a year. And when she returned to Michigan where her family lived, she had a baby with her. But Paul, who now has a podcast called The Fraunzac files and he's actually investigating

Yeah, something.

He doesn't believe that Lorraine was the one who kidnapped the baby.

He believes that she had some kind of connection to organized crime in Chicago. And Paul believes that Lorraine was paid to forge a birth to the kid and raise Kevin as her own. Why, though? I don't know.

“It's almost like was there a black market for babies?”

Probably. Right? I don't know. Does the mafia trade in babies? That doesn't seem like their style.

I know. But maybe one of the mafia says girlfriends wanted a baby and so they kidnapped one and it didn't work out and then they couldn't just give it back, right? They had a leg. That's going so far around the bend.

Yeah, baby. Not easy to get a baby. Take it for me, Georgia. It's really easy. I get a baby.

Go ahead.

Did you watch that documentary about the woman who would just go take them out of

people's houses? No. It's even worse than that. What was that all about? A maternal instinct.

A maternal instinct. Is it good? It's so troubling. It's just you wouldn't. Because I saw something on TikTok talking about it, but the people were so freaked out

that we're telling it. I was like, should I not? You've covered a case very similar to it. It's so psychotic. You just couldn't.

You can't eat ladies that want to be pregnant and go after pregnant ladies. You just don't like those lines. Lying about pregnancy and then the extremes that they go through when they get caught and just won't let it go. Here's the thing.

We have a lot of shame about who we've been in our lives and the sessions that we've had. Absolutely. The mistakes we've made. So many.

But everyone's wrong. Maybe that's what this is all about. Looking at these extreme human beings are going.

At least I never stole someone else's baby because I was obsessed with having

a baby. Totally. And lied about being pregnant. Why? Why?

I can't even understand why you would buy to it, which makes me think I'm a good person. I mean, all I want to do is get drunk at the rustic in and eat grilled cheese sandwiches all day long. That sounds great. I don't want anything to do with anybody's baby.

No, same. No, thanks.

“Paul, are we allowed to say anything to your babies?”

We don't want anything to do with your bad baby stories. Yes. And this tells us how hard baby is. Paul is really put out a call for more information. He's hoping to hear from anyone who lived in Chicago from 1962 to 1964 who frequented

an establishment known as Durkin's Bar. And I looked it up and it was like he rustic dive bars. It was one of those bars where you want to clock and after noon, people were already drunk kind of a place. It's not like that anymore.

Unfortunately, it's a little more like college bros, but it still exists. So ask your dad, everyone. What's the theory? I don't know. I don't know.

I don't understand the podcast. Somebody in there. Yeah, I want to listen. That maybe that the dad, his actual dad used to go there, you know, the one who was had PTSD.

Yeah. And maybe talked about his children. Oh, yeah. Like in a drunken way, we're new him. But his mom was in alcoholic.

So maybe she fucking hung out there and just tear him out. Totally. Oh, that's interesting. Nice. Guys, ask your grandfather's piece at together, dude.

The official FBI investigation into who exactly took Kevin, aka little Paul. When he was just two days old, also remains open. And that is the story of the Paul Franzac triple disappearance. Good. I know.

We'd have an idea. Why don't they? How would you do it? Forward age, the illustration of the lady in the newspaper. Oh, yeah.

Or backwards age, something, do something with that information. Because that's a, that's a witness sighting. Yeah. But it's so vague. I can't imagine.

Yeah.

“It just looks like, I mean, it looks like a nurse, you know?”

Yeah. So bananas crazy. I know. You've done it again. I know.

I'm sorry. I told you. Here's the thing. I started a podcast. I think that's exactly where things like that belong.

Yeah. And then people who listen to these podcasts and similar podcasts can get involved. Yeah. God, solve it. Tell us.

We want to do a true crime update soon about this case, please. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the burden of guilt season three podcast. This is a story about a horrendous situation that destroyed two families. It started more than seven years ago when Cindy and Kenny were two 40 somethings who had just

Days later, they walked into a scorched earth war they never saw coming.

“Turn up and push your hands find your back.”

The cops gave it to my house and threw me the jail. And to Cindy's surprise, her fiance Kenny was charged with abuse in one of her children. I never once doubted Kenny, and I always doubted the accusation. On season three of burden of guilt, you'll hear a story about the length someone will go to in order to get what they want.

This case has got to be one of the most despicable. Listen to season three of burden of guilt on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On boxing day, 2018, Joy Morgan was last seen our secretive church. The next week's later, she's reported missing.

I'm Charlie Brent Coast Cough, and after years of investigating Joy's case, I need to know what really happened to Joy. This is the missing sister, the true story of a woman betrayed by those she trusted most. Listen to the missing sister on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Luckily, my story is all about evidence and facts. And hey, it's a little bit of a turn, I think you'll enjoy it. It begins in the mid-80s, which I know you like, in Southeastern, Michigan, which you also like, and around Flint, right, which is if you don't know not too far from Detroit, it's a difficult time.

The mid-80s is a difficult time for many communities in this part of Michigan. General Motors has begun closing local plants, costing thousands of people their livelihoods, and then the wave of crack cocaine hits the streets. Over the last two decades, drugs like heroin have taken a toll on many Michiganers, but crack spawns a uniquely devastating crisis in the state's violent crime rate, sores, and

peaks in 1986. So it is around that time. And so of course, when that happens, the anti-drug abuse act of 1986 becomes federal law, and that kicks off Ronald Reagan's war on drugs.

“That's what I grew up as a little kid, like, drilled in your fucking head.”

It made me want to do drugs so bad.

It was, you know, it's funny, it makes me think that the first time anyone ever offered

me pot, I was a freshman in high school, and I burst into tears. Wow. That's how intense Nancy Reagan's. She fucking bent little finger pointing at us. I mean, those people blight on humanity.

Don't upset the ghost of my mother, who will come and haunts us forever. You know, because she agrees with it, not because she's mad at us. She agrees with it. So it does a point where she will cross back over to lecture both of us about how Ronald Reagan ruined the school.

I was sick fucking, Chris Cross, Albalzaz, and listened to Nurse Pat, tell me everything. Dude, that is how I was raised. If you ever, like, why is she the way she is?

“Because dinner was either my dad being hilarious, or my mom literally predicting an ancient”

Greek oracle, the future, where it's like, who's going to take care of these people, these laws that they're passing, like, fear, fear so much fear and intense pattern recognition,

which I'm always very proud of.

She passed it down. All that is to say, Warren drugs kicks off in this country when it kicks into overdrive, introducing new laws like mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes. In recent years, public health experts have criticized these policies as being racist, punitive, and not particularly effective at addressing drug use in any way.

It's underlying issues or drug sales on the streets, just didn't help really anything at all. But it was the 80s, so when Nancy Reagan appears in a telecast from the White House wearing her little red sweater and begging young Americans to, quote, just say no, the idea of the war on drugs becomes a broadly popular.

It's like, oh, they're really doing something about these drug addicts and these people in this crime. Yeah, the messaging was inescapable. It was everywhere. So here she is, remember?

Hey, he's a fucking shampoo set and that Mr. T chain around her neck. Fuck me. Okay. That Mr. T, she was good friends with Mr. T. That's right.

It's just so weird because, like, the first lady passing down this, this is what we're all going to do about, it's just such a different time. It's like it was Victorian times, something, how we were all just in the monoculture going, yes, Nancy, you're right. Your husband's an actor, so that makes you what?

That makes you also an actor. That's right. Okay. So, by 1990, the war on drugs is in full swing, yet lots of people are still buying and selling drugs.

It turns out, enter a man named Lacey Brown. He is a big, rough and tumble, chain smoking 47-year-old North Carolina, living in Southeastern

He's got long hair, he's got a big beard, pierced ears, his nickname is Moon, which is a

double on Tondra, not only does he stay up all night drinking, he also gets a kick out of dropping his pants and showing his bare ass to people at parties. Which wasn't problematic back then. You know, it was a height of humor back then. Straking, moaning people, being a peeping Tom, the amount of grown man's asses we saw

as humor, yes, unsettling. It was non-stop. Yeah. So, and let's take a look at moons, just so we get the sense of the guy who likes moaning people so much that's his nickname.

The guy with the front, it's the front guy with the long hair and the beard and overalls. Essentially, based on that appearance, you would assume he's either a drug dealer or maybe a drug purchaser. Is he, he's actually an undercover, oh fuck. And he is in the area to bust drug rings.

This is the story of Lacey Moon Brown and the 1990 wedding sting. Oh my god. I don't, this is like a theme. I'm really fucking obsessed with that. We just don't hear enough of. Yes, Tom, full of the cops in the 80s. Yeah, undercover in a really dangerous situation.

“Yes, and like actually embedding yourself, your whole life is that role.”

Like in the mafia too, and they have, I just find that so fascinating. Yeah, like the movie Donnie Brasco, right? It's just like he's in and he can't get out and it is such a crazy life. So, this whole story that I'm about to tell you is based on a 2015 Atlantic article by a reporter named Jeff Mesh entitled The Wedding Sting.

The rest of the sources are in our show notes, but that article is the primary source. So, this man, Lacey Brown's personal journey that led him to law enforcement is unorthodox to say the least. This is according to him, this is his story. He starts drinking when he's six years old.

He joins the Marines in his 20s, but gets kicked out for violent conduct in the Marines. As a civilian, I like that, I know, is not the point. As a civilian, he racks up charges for everything from a legal possession of moonshine to assault. In 1972, when he's around 30 years old, he finds himself in a jail cell, following yet

another arrest for felony assault with a deadly weapon. This is rock bottom for him. He's going through severe alcohol withdrawal, and he begs for God's mercy. And then his felony is suddenly reduced to a misdemeanor, and he's released from custody. He takes it as a sign that God is listening to him and he vows to change his life.

So he course corrects by becoming a police officer. Jesus. A little bit of a laugh, bro. He's like, don't go fishing. Don't just like, take a sharp rate.

“How about, you could become a plasterer.”

Totally welder. This is something. He's welder. Help people. Postman.

That's perfect. I guess, right? Bring your beard around. You can moon people if you want at the end of your shift. In 1977 against all odds, moon graduates from the police academy, and he gets his

heart at a department just outside of Detroit. Wait, the violent guy? That guy? Yeah, the good. Two violent for the Marine.

Right. For the Marine Corps. Now, he's at your local police department, correct. But he's not your typical police officer.

Later on, one of his colleagues will say, quote, "If you saw him, you'd never believe

he was a cop. He had food stuck in his beard." I mean, I'd buy it. That's a way. Way to give a quote.

Yeah. Way to talk about what's important. Like I slept with his wife or something. He's just like, this guy's a pig, but another co-worker describes him as quote, "more believable as a bad guy than he was as a police officer," and quote.

So, moons unconventional look and wild disposition work for him, especially, of course, when he starts going undercover, and as he does, he is so effective that he basically becomes a free agent of sorts, doing contracted work for everyone from the DEA to the FBI to various drug units across Michigan. Wow.

So, I'm sure that not very many cops looked like him or had that kind of built in. There's no way you could be a cop energy. Right. And the, like, he had so many years to practice being a bad guy. Yeah.

If you're 21 in your cop, you'd never broken the law in your life, maybe.

Yeah. You're not. You don't know how they act. They act out with bad people. So he kind of knows that.

He knows. He's drawing from a rich, well, experience. And also, it's the thing I think of on TikTok all the time, which is, people don't understand what good acting is.

“They think that good acting is like the thing, and it's like, no, no, you have to go way”

under and make people think you're not doing anything. Yeah. I can't do that. Yeah. It's hard.

It's very hard. It's a true skill. But for somebody that's actually going undercover, it's like, I'm sure they saw this guy and we're like, holy shit, he's so believable, get him while you can. Yeah.

Because the other guys are like, I'll put my part on the other side, and then we'll get him Nancy. So it's dangerous work. Of course, Moon regularly works nights to ingratiate himself with the local criminals while

He gets shot at, he is robbed, he is beaten. But his legend grows with each new job, which usually ends in big, cinematic, sting operation and multiple arrests. So he goes in and he does his time, and he makes his friends, and he, then it all blows up. And I love these, though, because then he gets arrested on the scene, too, and taken away.

I always was like, how does he move onto the next thing when they all know that he's the

guy, forget it. You got it. I got it. I got it. A lot of Coca-Cola.

True to that. And power through it. No, exactly.

“And I think that keeping people's cover is so crucial.”

Yeah. But then again, you just, I just want to keep on putting it in the parameters of, this was the war on drugs, which was an illogical kind of, like, the rebirth of, like, that cop culture of, leave it to them. They know best.

It's like, the police state, that's what it, I mean, not that it's not now. We all know that. But like, well, that's kind of where it was. The source of it, where everyone jumped on board and said, no, this is the best way to handle our problem.

Yeah. If you're not doing anything wrong, then you shouldn't, you know, all that shit.

That now in 2026, it's like, people are just like, oh wait a second, did they not have

our best interest? Okay. As the robot dog with guns attached to it's head walks down and he only, the only good thing that came out of the war on drugs, I have it at my house, Marterino gave it to me. It's the fucking case that you open up and they show you every kind of drug that you could

get that they brought to an elementary school and showed all the kids what a doobie looked like and what fucking Quailers looked like. And some murder, you know, his dad was a cop, went in her fucking garage. Yes. Sent it to me.

A dare program in a bag of trasher, I have to, I'll bring it for a fan called video. That's a great idea. That's a, that was a true highlight of our early days. Well, every time I see it, I'm like, this, everything was worth it. All the downs worth it for this.

Like that. And those haunted dolls that we had for a while, that's, we really peaked. We'll get back there someday. Okay. So the thing about this guy is that he was really in it and he was really doing it.

So like for example, one of his most famous arrests was he goes to a local carnival. And he follows a suspect onto the zipper. My favorite ride at the carnival that I've talked about last time.

He actually does stuff like that and never has to go on pro.

Now he rest in the end over there. He's like spinning in the circle chasing him and the eternal like you'll always be behind him. Another time he posts a fake obituary for a living suspect that he's just apprehended and stages a fake funeral for him. And when that suspects criminal associates show up to warn him, pay his respects, moon arrest

the bus. So smart. So for background, officers in most cases are allowed to use deception to lure suspects to an arrest. But it becomes entrapment if the officers actions directly result in a suspect committing

a crime they otherwise would not have committed. Right. So there's a kind of a difference there where it's like that used to be the concern. That's the surpico world of like cricket cops versus the ones that are trying to do good. Planting.

You can't plant evidence, but no, blah, blah, blah.

“And I think this is where all of that starts to flip in that serious way of theirs.”

This weird kind of trust of like, you know, your local authorities are going to fight a war on drugs and we're all going to support them in it in that idea. Yeah. It's for the greater good. It's getting drugs out of children's hands when it's like, that's not what's happening.

It's not what happened. It's being fucking lied to. And how did those drugs get out of the street in the first place? Okay. So back to this undercover cop, Moon, who is very dedicated.

He actually meets his wife while working undercover, he arrests her brother for making a bomb. Does he trick her? I hate that part. They do get married and stuff.

And like the wife doesn't know. Oh, no, no. She does. Oh, she does. Okay.

Yes. Okay. So her brother is making a bomb. He has to go undercover to meet the brother to arrest him for bomb making. And then he's like, well, once that is over.

So now we're in 1990, Moon is working undercover in the Flint, Michigan area, investigating the local drug trade. And based on reporting, it seems that this drug trade was much more pot-focused than it was crack cocaine, focus. He is working alongside a 38-year-old Flint police officer named Debbie Williams.

And Jeff Mesh, the author from that Atlantic article, describes Debbie as one of only a few women who, quote, crawled, shot, and boxed her way through the male-dominated police academy in Flint. Oh, yeah. And Dr. Clarice Starling over here. Right?

She had to jump over that thing, gray sweatshirt, and we crawl. So Moon and Debbie work undercover together, posing as boyfriend and girlfriend drug addicts. Okay.

“Debbie, well, later, say quote, I had to tell Moon, you have to remember to pretend you're”

in love with me. He was kind of embarrassed by it all. So he wasn't a great actor, I'm sure he would be just like him as himself. Yeah. But then Debbie comes along and they have to kind of set up these things, it's one of his

characters. Yeah. It was in a relationship. And so he had to pretend like he was in a relationship, and that's when his acting

Straightened a little bit. Weird. Right? But to the people that they are regularly buying drugs from, the couple is believable. Debbie has bright blonde hair and a stoner persona, and it seems like a natural fit with

Moon's bearded, chain-smoking kind of tough guy persona. Coming out, this team is Sergeant Vic Wassolition of the Shia Wassey County Sheriff's Department.

“Vic's in his mid-40s, he's essential to this operation because basically, Moon and Debbie”

go and they hang out and make their drug deals and they buy and they talk to people. And then they meet covertly with Vic, they get into a car, usually in a remote parking lot.

They do basically an info dump, tell him everything they've just seen and heard and the names

and the dates and everything into a recorder he has. And then that will later be kind of processed and used as evidence. Vic knows the undercover world himself. In the 80s he worked as a, when undercover is a biker named animal to infiltrate the local cocaine trade.

That was very dangerous. He found himself walking a tight line between not blowing his cover and not breaking the law. Do they have to do drugs? Well, it's interesting.

That's illegal that they do drugs, but then, of course, testing people and making them due drugs to prove they're not cops is very common. So there are times where to keep cover, they do have to do it. So for example, once a man shoved a gun in Vic's face, demanding he smoked a joint to prove he wasn't a cop, obviously he smoked the joint.

“But he usually found ways they got very creative about how to stay clean in those situations.”

He actually carried around a modified coke straw that had a special blockage kind of compartment inside.

He could snort coke and it would catch the coke in the straw, but never go into his nose.

Wow. Bummer. Totally. What a waste. I mean, yeah, so because then they would have to get drug tested.

I mean, they could not lose people to become drug addicts. Right. Yeah, because drugs are bad for you. So ultimately, Moon, Debbie, and Vic spend months building relationships with these local dealers and then criminal cases against them.

But Moon has spent more than a decade in law enforcement at this point. And this high risk work isn't paying that much. He and his wife Beth now have small children. And she will later say, quote, there were times we couldn't afford to eat and I felt bitter.

Wow. Yeah.

“I'll ever wanted was a roof over our head and quote.”

So together, they dream of a quieter, easier life, maybe back in Moon's native North Carolina where they could buy land and settle down. So that's kind of the plan that they come up with. But of course, Moon wants to do one last big job.

You can never do one last big job.

They always have to these men spend the longer the beard, the more they have to do one last big. So in September of 1990, Moon pulls Vic aside and says, well, I'd kind of like to go out with a bang. Do you got any ideas?

So Vic says, yes, I do, buddy, because Vic has come up with the ultimate drug sting. One that enables them to arrest all the suspects they've been investigating over the last several months in one big fell swoop while saving the local cash strapped police departments big money, a wedding, a wedding. I love it.

A fucking wedding. Oh, they're going to throw fake wedding. What's crazy to me is reading the phrase, the local cash strapped police departments, which here in 2026 just doesn't exist anymore, because they figured out politically, you take the war on drugs, energy, you keep building that of, we've got to fight every

crime, you know, fear fear fear fear. And now we have police budget lines that are 100 times longer than any other budget. And the teachers make minus $500 a day. Seriously. It's fucking insanity.

Oh, okay. So I have to say that every time. So the same afternoon that Vic and Moon are having this discussion, Moon calls his partner Debbie and asks her to fake marry him. She says, sure.

And now the Shia Wassey County Sheriff's Department allows a very tight budget for this team to pull off this wedding sting. So they shift into planning mode, writer Jeff Mesh reports quote, in the weeks leading up to the wedding, cops put aside crime reports and fingerprints to work on seeding plans and floral arrangements.

But if one of them was like, secretly, like, this is all I've heard, I'm so good at this. And then like quit to become a wedding planner. Yeah. But they're the guy that's like standing there with the short cigar like the, you know, the comb over.

Never know. And he just like taps into something beautiful. He has a true vision. Well, that didn't happen in this wedding because it's so hilariously bad and funny to me.

So in the weeks leading up to the wedding, the operations room began to sound like a wedding planner's office as Grizzled Laman interrogated caterers during briefings. They discussed whether the bride should wear her hair up or down, how much they would

Oh, my God. There he is. He's a little.

The beard got trimmed from that first picture you saw.

Yeah, he looks like a trucker or like a bike or yeah, for sure. He's really tired. I like that tile in the bathroom. That's neither here nor there. That looks like every live show we've ever done, we're just like, totally.

I come out. Hey, can you pull these banks up? Help me pull my spikes. I don't know how I'm going to zip this. Okay.

So the wedding day to set, it's September 21st. This wedding's going to be held at a discreet, modestly sized and importantly, inexpensive community hall near Owaso, Michigan. The like buffet tables. Oh, yeah.

I can just see them. Those fold out. Yeah, great. Long numbers. And they put a nice paper tablecloth over the top.

Oh, my God. Debbie and Moon continue buying drugs and collecting evidence.

Only now, when they do it, they share the happy news with all of their drug friends.

And they start handing out wedding invitations to these people, aka the dozens of suspects that they're trying to entrap in this ring. Pretty smart. Oh, sorry. They're trying to invite to participate in this interesting and this kind of mean sting because

also I was thinking about it where it's like, so they're there buying pot. It sounds like buying co-care and there maybe who knows and just kind of hanging out with people.

“And then these people, they're like, hey, do you want to come and celebrate our love?”

Oh, my God, I'm so touched that you didn't invite me, like I didn't know we were that close, but like that really means a lot to me. Yeah. And I'm just selling this pot because I'm trying to get by and yeah, in 40 years, HBO or showtime is going to make a series about how it's cool if this mom is just selling some

pot. But for right now, we have live in a society that believes we should go to jail for 50 years. And as of it, let me get you a wedding gift. That's the most fucked up thing is they all arrive with a fucking blender.

I mean, just I want my blender back is what I fucking say. I think I think you notes I will see because who knows the level of dirt back that this wedding truly goes to it would be kind of fun to be able to see. But spoiler alert, it has been optioned to be made into a movie because, of course, this

is that kind of like only America and 1990 could this thing happen amazing.

So now it's the night of September 21st and guests begin to show up to the venue just before 6 p.m. Vic is posted in one of the cars out the parking lot, clocking each suspect as they enter. Outside the venue, guests are greeted by a big sign telling them to check their weapons before entering.

So smart. And most people comply leaving their guns knives and I added brass knuckles in their corners. They go back to the car unload everything hammer, a size like they have like, but take your wedding gift and it's just a little baggy of coke.

It's like not entrapment or planting it if you took it and put it in your pocket. Yeah, that's right. They take their coke and they put it in a beautiful wedding card with some Jordan Alvin's. Yeah. God damn Jordan Alvin's used to bum me out as a kid.

Such bummer.

“First of all, I was like, are we allowed to open this netting?”

Why are we digging into nettings disgusting and then just for a shitty old almond? Okay. Not even salted. Not salted. Not chocolateed.

Once the guests get inside, there's an open bar, there's music and there's dancing and they're having a raffle. Okay. For about $100, which would be how much in today's money? $600.

$250. Well, it's only $19. You can enter to win a chance to win an entire brick of marijuana. Okay. A raffle at a wedding is like, fuck yes.

It's hilarious. I love it. In a brick of marijuana. This is not a school. Which is stacked nearby.

That's so funny. I would like to think. Is it cush? If I walked. Then it was an indica.

What are we talking? Then if I walked in, I'd be like, open bar raffle for weed in a brick. Yeah. This feels wrong. This is all too good.

Totally. Yeah. But I do think we should start doing raffles at weddings. How old are you listening listener? Are you listening brides, you selfish brides?

Invite us.

“And also raffle off like, what would be good to get it a wedding?”

One of the gifts. We're like, oh my god, we got a new air fryer. You can't open it. We should pick a gift off the fucking. That's a really good idea.

Or like, your raffle wins you. You get to do the money dance. Besides, bride, I didn't know about money graces until- Is it Greek? I think it's Italian.

I think a lot of cultures do it. I think so too. That's fucking cool. Not Irish Catholic. We just get raised in a chair, which is pretty fucking awesome.

I don't know. For a bit. Irish Catholics would be like, we don't need your money. But I mean, these bricks weigh about a pound each. The weed in the raffle would be worth on the street today in 2026.

How much money a brick? $100 per talking? You said? Yes. So if you only paid $100 for this brick, then how much?

I don't have much of bricks for us to be. Yes, you do. We all know you went to rehab. Not for fucking weed. Not for selling bricks of weed.

Street worth $1,000 today. In today's money. That's a lot.

Good for $100,000. $100,000. Okay.

“And back to the entrapment point from earlier.”

Right.

Because they are not placing these pot bricks into Suspect's hands directly, it's fine.

They're simply creating an opportunity for the Suspects to bid on them on their own volition. Therefore, it's not entrap. That is tricky, tricky, tricky. Whoever, whatever fucking police officer came up with that idea, got to raise or whatever.

I mean, I think so. They got a brick of weed. But all of it is a little bit like people really enjoying the school play energy too much. Yeah. Because I'm like, I would have been there like, sorry, they don't have raffles or tables full

of gifts. Right. That you're raffling at a wedding. No. Boys gone wild.

100%. It's a movie. It's a movie. It's a movie of too many boys. And there's Debbie running around.

She can't fix everything. You're like, that's not real. Realistic. It's fine. Right.

It's like, Margot Robbie for like Nancy.

What was her name? Not Nancy. Tonya Harding. Yes. Margot.

Just like a little bit trashy. A little trashy, a little bad per me.

“Because actually, well, this is them from the day.”

So we have Debbie. Oh, my God. In her wedding dress, that she that that actually Beth moons wife found for her at the salvation arm. Hell yeah.

Oh. That is so 80s, but I know it's 90s. Is that him in the background? Is that him? No.

I mean, he sweats too. Okay. Yeah. That's it. Wow.

It looks so happy. And because she loves tricking people. So okay. Yeah. That's Margot Robbie with a fucking right.

Yes. Yeah. The wedding is convincing to the suspects that are slash guests that are there, especially considering the room is crawling with law enforcement, who unlike the unwitting guests, are carrying fire alarms under their suit jackets and dresses.

And there's at least one local reporter that moon tipped off promising a big exciting drug bust, you know, because he wants this to go down. Right. So the wedding photographer is actually a photo journalist. Amazing.

Right. Meanwhile, the wedding cake is just cardboard covered with frosty. You can't. Okay. You can.

Okay. All right. It's a cost saving measure that the police have taken, but the frosting has been professionally decorated with little bees because it's the inside joke of this is a staying operation. Ah.

You guys. So they're too much fun. They're having fun. Go to work. They really are just like, that's fine.

Let's ruin some lives and have a great time doing it. The music provided for this wedding, the live wedding band is a bunch of dudes. And the band is called S.P.O.C. And it's short for somebody protect our crops. Is it a real band?

But they are. No. The crops being marijuana. Yeah. All of the members of the bands are wearing matching pot leaf t-shirts.

Oh. That's heavy. Yeah. Very, very corny corn. Yeah.

They didn't care about the corn. No. Also, it's an inside joke because Spock spoke backwards as cops and the band or cops from different departments in the area who they finally get to play their instruments. And apparently they're fucking terrible.

Everybody says so. Good. Yes. Here's a picture of that band. Oh.

I need that. That's got to be our merch. I mean. But it's like... I'm at home.

It's so sorry, but it's just like, hey, we're not cops. We love weed. It says cops. It says fucking cops on it.

“Like a no stone or would they go to the trouble to make band shirts?”

No. No.

And no band has never made band shirts that they then all wear.

One in Debbie invited about 40 people in their drug dealing and doing life. Only a dozen or so show up to those dozen that did. That's such a pothead thing. You can't have... Yeah, it's exactly.

It just like, oh, it's all right. I meant to tell you. The ones that are there are like, man, this is great. So everyone takes their seats. The ceremony begins.

Oh my God. Debbie is walked down the aisle by her father who is actually an undercover cop. She's wearing a dress, as I said, that Beth found at the Salvation Army for $17. Nice. How much in today's money?

$49. $45. So close. Yes. Nice one.

You knew that because it was a thread about tripping. Sure. I know how much she necessarily is. Also, Debbie's wearing a gardener on her thigh that holds a small gun. If she cries, then she gets bonus points of research and such a good actress.

Yeah. Just the one single tear. You get to the altar, the minister, who is actually Flint's police sergeant, come on. They'd recognize him. He's also in costume.

So fake vows are exchanged and Debbie and Moon say I do. And once they do that, the band kicks off with one undercover guest later describing their performance as quote, absolutely horrible.

Come on. Come on.

“It's like you can just feel the lack of rhythm.”

Okay. Thanks a bit. They can only do poker. So the booze is flowing. Everyone's having a good time.

Now the food is served and while everyone eats undercover officers pretending to be friends and family of the bride and groom, start to stand up and give fake speeches and toast to the happy couple. The wedding party even poses for photos. They do the whole thing.

Yeah. They're already there. Just don't. Just do it. Just get it over with.

Yeah.

After in the school play and slash, right, their first time improvising and they're having fun

with it. Yeah. So now it's around 9 o'clock. The began begins to play the song. I fought the law and the law one.

Right. So heavy ended. That's the cue. It's so empty. No way.

Yes. A guy jumps on stage. He's about to give a toast. But instead, he says, let's have some fun. And then he asks that all the undercover officers stand and make themselves known.

And then the other guests start getting placed under arrest. Wow. At first, there's disbelief among the guests. One person starts laughing as he's getting handcuffed with an officer insisting that, quote, we're not kidding, we have a warrant for your arrest and quote.

In all 15 people are taken into custody that day and dozens of others that boon Debbie and Vic have been investigating will be arrested elsewhere in the coming day. So it's all part of the same thing.

It doesn't have to do the fucking wedding in the first wedding place.

“Clearly, it was you guys blowing off some themes, right?”

As you can imagine, once news of this sting hits the papers, it's viral, 90s version of viral, stories run with flourish, like there's an associated press article with the subhead that reads, quote, here came the bride all decked in white and a snubbed nose for, where's the editor, can I talk to the editor? Please.

And a snub nose revolver. Let me give a short and that up. There rhythms off. There is no internal anything. OK, so moon for his part becomes the subject of a Detroit free press profile the next

year in 1999 when he finally retires the reporter writes quote, his spirit and his health exhausted by two decades of undercover work, a legendary knock heads for the hills. No, it's better. That's way better. And quote.

It was a different crime. It could be here. It comes the bribe. Oh, it's not that though. It's here comes the raffle.

That's right. Bricks a pot, anybody? No big deal. It's like your cousin's wedding when they ruffled off the weed. You remember.

I fucking weird. OK. OK. Part of this to me feels a lot like when I was in college and I was a theater major. So being a theater major, it was all about like hanging out in a theater department and like

do you need me to do anything? And what's up here actually and creative? Yes. Just wanted to be, you wanted to be identified as amongst these people. That's what I wanted.

When you're new and improm that like UCB, right? Yeah. And you're like, I guess I got to sit in a cafe and write up my suggestions or whatever. Nurse. But it seems to me that the energy with which they went into that it was because they

liked hanging out and doing it. They like working on it.

“I think that is going to prove out to be true later.”

OK. Please hold while I read you this part instead. And I told you this, in 2015, Jeff Mase's article from the Atlantic gets optioned for film rights, going to the chapel when you're going to get arrested. There it is.

I got to stop thinking about it a little bit. And just keep on pitching when they come to you, you say them.

It's been stuck in turn around, but that idea, like the second the article came out.

They're like, we got to make a movie this. Vince Vaughn, whether this thing was successful by any measure, though, is tough to say. Game people? Yeah. Yeah.

Fifteen people who were basically pot smokers, there was not nice ones, seems, because they came to a wedding. I know. The nice carrying ones that were like friendships, not at the time, Flint doesn't have digitized court records there on the paper system still, it's 1990.

The week that many of the cases from the arrests from this thing go to court, a tornado hits the area, and the important documents are scattered to the wind. That's God. That's God. Thank.

Fuck Nancy Reagan. Yeah. Fuck you, fuck you. You're cool. Same God that got moon out of his initial thing and got his thing made to a misdemeanor.

That same God was here. It's just like, enough of this. You had your fun. Yeah. You should have made a real kick.

Decades later, Jeff Mesh attempts to suss out the number of convictions and details on what happened to those involved, but it's so murky because they don't have that actual paperwork. And they throw off the overall and have everyone who showed up at the, I mean, well, what's clear from the day reporting is that around 30 people are handed drug charges in connection

with this investigation and this staying.

Most probably resolved them through plea deals and basically got to go back to their regular

lives. Pick will later say that some of the people they arrested took it all in stride claiming quote, there were no bad feelings. Everyone thought it was funny. You got me.

And that's such a cop attitude of like, they loved it. Here's a guy getting arrested and you can tell you can look at his face and see it doesn't seem like he thinks it's all that. No, he looks shell-shocked. That's Debbie and Moon.

You know why? Cause he wore a fucking acid. What are those jeans called? Yeah, acid washed. Oh, wedding.

First jeans and a Freddy Cougar sweater and look at the bride with the gun in her hand. That is a.

She pulled that right out of her thigh guarder and said, "How dare you smoke pot?"

And he's got a joint in as well. He's good. Moon's got a joint in as well. Moon's already lit up.

“That guy totally looks like he's like, "Uh, that's what I get for trying to be nice”

to people." I basically wrote here. I'd love to hear her 20, 26 interview with the arrestees to see how true that statement is. That's the podcast we need to hear.

Any one listenings, "Dad or mom" was in that sting. Please email us immediately, put it in the subject line. My favorite murder at Gmail read it on a home town. It's going to get like a five alarm fire straight to the microphone. If you want to tell us your side of the story.

Atlantic writer Jeff Mesh notes though that more importantly, quote, "For all the drama

and creativity involved, the operation ultimately didn't do much to improve the grim

outlook of the city and its surrounding areas." And quote. So obviously, the idea that we're going to clean up the streets, this all just kind of turned it into fun times and cooking is, and it's like, and you just arrested a bunch of people that were able to plea out afterwards.

In the years that follow, and in spite of the war on drugs, policing culture, looming larger and larger, the scourge of drugs continues as the broader region of this part of Michigan is left to grapple with severe economic hardship. So basically all of this is for not. For his part in the sting, Moon gets a $5,000 bonus, which would be worth about how much

in today's money. 830. It's a $5,000 bonus. Not 100, 8300, it's 12,000, it's 12,000, it's 12,000. It's just went down to 800, it's with an hour.

“Anyway, this bonus enables Moon to retire, get his family, right?”

Retired, get his family together, and go move back to North Carolina like he planned. In 2006, Lacey Moon Brown passes away at just 63 years old with his obituary reading quote. The Moon shines no more in North Carolina. That's dramatic.

The his cause of death is unclear, but he was a heavy smoker, and who knows. There is one sweet weird side note that I was talking about before, which is that during the fake wedding, when Sergeant Vic Wassellition watches Officer Debbie Williams coming down the aisle in her dress in her Salvation Army dress, he realizes that night he has feelings for her, and he says, quote, "I couldn't let her go."

They end up falling in love and eventually marrying, and as best as Marin can tell from her research, they're still together to this day. So my thing is, I think that this idea where it was like, it was for Moon to get one last kind of like, hooray for you and the papers, and then all the other stuff was like, when you like hanging out with people, so you're like, "Yeah, we better get together and figure

out that raffle tomorrow." Oh, right. Like, it has that feeling. I wanted it to go on as long as possible kind of a thing. Oh, they have a fucking cop band playing, like you can't just have a DJ like normal weddings.

They had cops fucking, I fought the law rehearsal. When did you know you were in love with Mom? Well, when she pulled out that little pistol from the thigh guarder and fucking up against the wall, and that's the story of the 1990 wedding staying. That was fun.

Hey, we're not opposed to having fun on this podcast. If you have any ideas of how we could have more fun, please write it in my favorite

“murder at chmail.com or just comment on the Instagram, it's the only way I'll ever see”

like comments, as if it's on Instagram, and the fan called yes. We can't go looking for it anymore, people. Now we've been through so much. My brain is like, you know, I've like my eyeballs like a cartoon are filling up with. I just have those ones from like 2017 that I looked at one time and it's burned into my

memory forever. But the comments. Yeah, never, never. Why is it them? We don't know.

We don't even know. Sorry about your freezing, you're like it. Go to get another freeze. You come out. You're freezing.

You know how many free things there are for you to like. Oh, pine elsewhere. Where's a positive political? You're fucking know that. Stay sexy.

Hey, don't get murdered.

Elvis, do you want to cookie?

[MUSIC PLAYING]

“This has been an exactly right production.”

Our managing producer is Molly Smith. Our consulting producer is Kate Shelmbach. Our creative lead is Allison Gosty. Our associate producer is Tessa Hughes and our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.

This episode was mixed by Leonis Volacci.

Our researchers are Marin McLashin and Ali Elkin. Email your hometowns to my favorite murder at gmail.com and follow the show on Instagram at my favorite murder.

“Listen to my favorite murder on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get”

your podcasts. Or watch new episodes every week on Netflix.

Search for my favorite murder, out of cheer, list, and hit the double thumbs up button.

Goodbye. [MUSIC PLAYING] I'm Nancy Glass, host of the burden of guilt season three podcast. This is a story about a horrendous situation that destroyed two families. It's a scorched earth war that shows just how far someone will go to get what they want.

Cindy said, I had to choose between the truth and my family, and I had to choose the truth. Listen to season three, a burden of guilt, and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The trail weekly is back with brand new stories. From threatening text messages disturbing a small Midwestern town,

it was from an unknown number. Who else is getting these messages?

“Why did it start with us to long cons and stolen identities?”

Who lies about being this sick? This was the last time I ever believed to learn she said. Listen to betrayal weekly on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's Chelsea Handler from Dear Chelsea.

This season, we've got some awesome guests ready to throw out advice. Guests like Tiffany Haddish, kind of sliding to people's DMs. I like Bumble, also grow farmers only.com. That's states, sales, funerals, options. Are usually good, there's a lot of good-made grocery stores near gems.

Darcy Cardin, Sherry O'Terry, Ana Ferris, Dave Franco, Madeleine Klein, Adam Scott, T.S. Madison, and more. Listen to Dear Chelsea on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.