casefilepodcast.com/case-284-widden-hill-farm/
relatively unknown case + good writing + a few twists and turns? a classic solid casefile ep. thanks team!
Solved or unsolved?
Solved
The bit where Casey says “the caller threatened to blow Grahams ball off made me literally laugh out loud
Graham - "Don't threaten me with a good time"
I’ve heard “I’ll cut your balls off” before and “I’ll blow your brains out” plenty of times before, but this is the first time I ever heard “I’ll blow your balls off”
lol same
Lmao same
It's shocking to me how seemingly normal, ordinary people can just wake up one day and literally choose violence toward both people they supposedly love and complete strangers over something as minor as a bit of debt. This guy tried to kill his wife, frame his neighbor, and then killed his neighbor just for some insurance money. And supposedly he was perfectly normal until that happened? Wild.
I know, me too. Like... I fully realize some people don't like their spouses, or worse. But to literally end their whole life? Someone you've lived with and shared a life with for years? To put them through that much pain and also emotionally destroy everyone who loves them? And then to think how long it took to plan. They're sharing meals together, talking about their family, all while you've been literally building a bomb to take them out. I could barely even look at my very old, sick and suffering cat knowing we'd scheduled his euthanasia. It's just mind-boggling.
I think this is why it's a very small percentage of relationships which work out this way. Only a few people actually end up thinking it's worth all this and they tend to be very self-centered
And when they have children together! Having lost a parent, I can’t fathom taking a parent away from my (hypothetical) child.
I’m sorry about your cat :(
I think often these people are just going through the motions and others just see what they want to see until it's too late.
Most of us know a few friends/relatives who do questionable behaviour but people let it slide, or say they love their partners because... they must if they're married? But that isn't necessarily how it works - lots of people get married very young, or under duress, or because they think they're supposed to, and there isn't actually a genuinely caring relationship underneath it. People grow apart over time, too - relationships which were strong once can break down. Life is hard and often disappointing. Even strong relationships can struggle with things like family strife or massive debt. The partner can become a symbol of everything life has done wrong to that person.
Usually where relationships deteriorate like this it leads to divorce and/or domestic violence. Only a few people are stupid enough to actually murder their partner.
that poor woman. torn apart by a car bomb then died of cancer a few years later. and the poor kids left alone.
An affair with a 24yo which had been going on for nine years… yiiiikes
Wasn't the affair made up?
well yes of course, so I wonder whether he added the illegal age detail to try make that seem like a more promising lead
Yeah, because if it had started when she was 15, it would make more sense as to why he wasn’t so open about it, and also to why it could be a potential motive
This is giving me Jerry Lundegaard from Fargo vibes.
To the lovely folks who've already heard it: the content warning about animal cruelty, does it refer to remains found or animals in distress?
Remains found in a gruesome manner
Thank you
The animal cruelty content warning always gives me pause. Like, I have no problem with the most heinous and gruesome stuff imaginable toward humans, but once animals get involved, I’m out 😂
Same. Case 92 the Ukrainian Maniacs (omg 😱) ...it had no animal cruelty warning come up AND IT SHOULD HAVE. I freaked out at what I might have been about to hear, and fast forwarded. That was a shocking case all round.
For real! The immediate hesitation when I see that warning always makes me wonder why I'm not sensitive to the other horrendous shit that goes on in these cases (and I'm talking the really BAD stuff also) the same way I'm sensitive to the animal abuse/torture. I sometimes think it's a form of sociopathy. 💀
User deleted comment
15d
Forensic Files also covered this case
It's been on They Walk Among Us if you listen to that.
This like the last ep have been done on Casefile before. I’m positive of it.
Well if you are a paid subscriber, they release these early to us. Then later it is available to everyone.
So likely you have heard it. He explains it at the beginning.
I’m not stupid and I’ve heard every single episode but never been a patreon member for this one but I know this one and, actually not the last one the one before so 2 ago were covered on here before.
They have a list of every episode on their website so you can check if they’ve done it before. Which they haven’t.
Hell the pinned comment on every thread here has a list of every episode they’ve done include removed ones like Snowtown. So I don’t know how you can be “positive” this is a repeat when all episodes are accounted for.
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I want to listen to this episode but the animal cruelty warning makes my heart hurt. To those who already listened, does Casey give a warning before getting to that part, and is the cruelty mentioned throughout the episode or just briefly?
It's VERY brief at the beginning of the episode. I can't deal eith animal cruelty at all, and this wasn't too triggering. I can tell you exactly what it is if you'd like, but it's not an animal in distress or actively being abused, it's the finding of an animal's remains. But if you'd like to skip it altogether, you'd be safe after the first 4 minutes or so of the episode
Thank you so much! This helps. I'll skip the first 4 minutes and listen to the episode from there.
Thank you.
I made it about 3 minutes in, and I want to make a prediction on how this ends (assuming this case is solved) before I go further.
Cases that involve written threats/communications are something I find really fascinating, and I think I have a bit of a knack for.
3 predictions:
The “you” being threatened in the “you next” note is actually the person who wrote the note… Or someone very close to the person being threatened, like a spouse. They are trying to create an explanation for police that points away from them for the (presumably) much more serious crime they really want to commit. They could actually be trying to pin the crime on someone with a known grudge, or just a mysterious bad guy.
Not to sound sexist, but I’ve found women tend to much more cerebral in committing preplanned crimes, like I’m assuming this one is. What women often don’t possess in strength and aggression, they make up for in cunning. And sometimes they gravitate towards writing notes to do this. For example, poison pen letters are almost always written by women. But, women tend to be much more wordy. “You next” strikes me more like something a man would write because it’s so blunt and simplistic.
Motive: My guess is the person that wrote this note is trying to kill their spouse and this note is the first chess move in trying to get away with it.
Now let’s see how wrong I am..
——
Well that was way more on point than I expected. I don’t know why but I just understand cases like this -where a perpetrator is leaving written messages as part of staging- on a deeper level than other kind of cases.
One I wish I could prove is the Circleville Letters case. I guarantee a man did not write those letters. That has ‘female’ written all over it. And I’d bet money that the main target of the letters is actually the author. Mary Gillespie. She pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes.
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