Episode Transcript
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1:01
This
1:01
episode contains disturbing accounts
1:04
of extreme violence and sexual assault. Listener
1:07
discretion is advised. Also,
1:09
just another note about this episode. We
1:12
interviewed Ellen over Skype, so in parts
1:14
of her story, the quality drops a little bit.
1:17
Well, I mean, there's been a lot of bizarre
1:19
cases since mine. I
1:21
mean, you know the ninja in the attic.
1:23
You don't hear that all the time.
1:26
In 1986, Ellen lived with her husband
1:28
and two teenage children in Austin, Texas.
1:31
I was in the real estate business. It
1:34
was a safe place where
1:36
I lived, and I was really pretty
1:39
amazed that it all happened. And it was
1:41
a long hill, but at the same time, it wasn't. Troy
1:44
Wigley was wandering through her safe neighborhood
1:46
and would change Ellen's life forever.
1:53
This is I Survived, the podcast
1:55
where we talk to women who've lived through the worst
1:57
things imaginable.
1:59
tragic, messy, and wonderful
2:02
things that can happen after survival.
2:05
I'm Caitlin VanMall. Well
2:08
now he had attacked his brother-in-law
2:12
and so he hitchhiked to Austin. Somehow
2:14
I ended over where I live. He took
2:16
his doubtful bag and went over the low water
2:18
bridge and that just kind of leads up
2:21
to where my house was in the hills. And
2:24
apparently he was across
2:26
the street and he saw everybody
2:29
leave in the morning. And he ended
2:31
up getting in the house and hiding
2:33
in my attic and he stayed there for a couple
2:35
of days until he thought everybody was gone and then
2:38
surprised me. On
2:40
August 29th he came down from the
2:42
attic. Ellen's husband was playing
2:44
golf that day and her son was at school so
2:47
she was all alone in the house. I
2:49
got up, had a very busy day. I sat
2:52
around, read the newspaper, drank
2:54
coffee for a little while and then I decided
2:56
I better get moving. So
2:59
I went upstairs to where my bedroom was and
3:01
took a shower. Stepped out of the shower,
3:04
grabbed a towel, and as I
3:06
was walking from my shower to
3:08
my closet to get a rope, I
3:11
spotted a
3:12
man hiding in the corner
3:15
of my bathroom.
3:16
I couldn't believe what I saw. I saw
3:19
a man dressed in a ninja
3:22
suit. He
3:24
had black things
3:26
tied around his head. He had
3:28
a black outfit on and even
3:30
had gloves on his
3:32
hands. The only
3:34
thing that I could see was
3:36
just the skin around his eyes
3:39
and his eyes.
3:41
He had his right hand held
3:44
high up in the air and in
3:46
that hand was a big knife.
3:51
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I don't know
6:00
why, but I remember kind of laughing. And
6:02
then I rolled into thinking, well, this
6:04
is a nightmare. And I was telling myself, wake up,
6:07
wake up, wake up. He began
6:09
screaming at me to get on the floor, to get on the
6:11
floor. And we actually tuffled
6:13
a little bit. He had that big
6:15
knife in the right hand, but with a left hand,
6:17
he was pushing on me. And we
6:20
moved out of the bathroom, back into my bedroom.
6:23
And at that point was when he
6:26
backhanded me with his left hand and
6:28
knocked me to the floor. But I got
6:31
up again, and he backhanded
6:33
me again and knocked me to the floor. But
6:36
I was not going to stay on that floor.
6:39
I got up
6:41
and I went over and sat on the edge,
6:43
the bottom edge of my bed.
6:46
I began pulling my knees
6:48
up to my chest, wrapping
6:51
my arms around my knees, somehow to
6:53
kind of hide myself. Ellen
6:56
had just gotten out of the shower when he attacked.
6:58
So all she had on was a bath towel.
7:01
My feet were hanging off the edge of the
7:03
bed. And he took the
7:06
big knife that he had on his right
7:08
hand, and he dragged
7:10
it across my feet. I
7:13
didn't know what he meant, but
7:16
he said, I just want you to know
7:18
that my knives are
7:21
a lot sharper than your knives.
7:26
He bound Ellen's feet together and her
7:28
hands behind her back. He said, I
7:30
want you to put your head down. I
7:33
want you to look at your knees and don't
7:35
you raise your eyes up. In fact, you close
7:37
your eyes and you leave your
7:39
head like that until I tell you that
7:42
you can move. So I did. He
7:45
took off his mask
7:47
and he tied his mask on my
7:49
face so I could not see him.
7:52
And he said, you know what?
7:53
It's a shame you can't see me. I'm
7:56
half black and half white, and I
7:58
am a very handsome.
7:59
man.
8:01
After he tied his
8:04
mask on my face, he
8:06
just began walking, walking
8:08
and pacing. He began asking me
8:11
how much money I had,
8:13
how much money do you have in the bank, how
8:15
much money do you have at your office, you have
8:17
a beautiful house, you must have a lot
8:19
of money. I offered to drive him to
8:21
the bank and I could write
8:24
a check and he could get every single
8:26
penny out of the bank. I
8:28
said everything that I could think
8:31
of at the time to say, to
8:33
try and not
8:36
have him so angry with me and
8:38
he kept telling me, you're gonna have
8:41
a bad accident lady, a bad
8:43
accident. He
8:45
told me he'd been in my house for two days, he
8:48
told me about things that had gone on in my house
8:50
while he was there because he was in the attic and
8:52
he was listening to everything. He
8:55
knew my husband was going to play golf
8:58
and that he wouldn't be back until the middle of the afternoon.
9:00
He
9:02
knew my son was at school that day and
9:04
he wouldn't be home to the middle of the afternoon.
9:08
It was about that time that he told
9:10
me what he
9:11
was going to do to me next.
9:13
He was going to rape me. Those
9:15
weren't the words he used
9:18
but I remember begging him, I remember
9:20
crying and sobbing and begging
9:22
him, please don't do this. I'm
9:25
a Christian, please, please, please
9:27
don't do this. He told me
9:29
that no one would ever catch him.
9:33
It didn't matter what he did to me.
9:36
He cut the tape around my ankles and
9:39
he told me to get back on the bed.
9:41
I had a hard time
9:43
doing that. I didn't want to get back on the bed
9:46
but he kept yelling at me, get back on the bed, get
9:48
back on the bed
9:49
until my head was
9:51
near the top of the bed. I
9:54
was crying and then he raped
9:57
me.
11:12
the
12:00
one before her and he'd knock me over again.
12:03
The man was beating her in the head with a hammer
12:05
and stabbing her with the knife. And
12:08
then he stabbed me
12:09
two times in the back of my neck. Two
12:11
quick stabs in and out, in and out. The
12:14
next thing I knew he had taken
12:16
his knife and he was trying to stab
12:18
it through my skull, but
12:21
he couldn't. The knife wouldn't go
12:23
in. So he got his hammer
12:26
and he hammered his knife into my
12:28
skull. He may have hit
12:31
me in the head with a hammer again. I don't
12:33
know, but I will
12:35
never forget when
12:38
he wanted to get the knife out and he couldn't
12:40
get it out that he put his foot
12:42
on the top of my head and he shook
12:45
my head around like a rat doll as
12:48
he was trying to get that knife out of the top
12:50
of my head.
12:51
Ellen drifted in and
12:52
out of consciousness. There was some
12:54
time that passed after that. I didn't
12:57
know where he was. And I remember
12:59
that I turned my head to
13:02
look, but I could see back in my bedroom
13:05
and I saw him in there. He
13:07
was not in his outfit anymore. And
13:10
he screamed, put your head back down
13:12
again. And he came in and
13:15
he hit me in the head with that hammer
13:17
one more time.
13:20
Well, I knew he wanted me dead
13:22
and I didn't move after that.
13:24
He came over to me and pulled
13:27
my left hand up and he
13:29
was trying to get my wedding rings
13:31
off.
13:32
He couldn't get them off. And I remember
13:34
thinking, Oh my God, oh my God,
13:36
he's going to cut my fingers off. And I remember
13:38
thinking, God help me. And
13:41
God did her
13:43
wedding rings came off and he left
13:45
the room. I
13:46
was scared to move or even try
13:48
to move because I didn't know where he was, but
13:51
I was
13:51
so cold. I
13:55
had lost so much blood and
13:57
I knew I was going to die. I
14:00
knew I was going to die if I didn't get help. I
14:02
still didn't know if he was there. I
14:05
didn't know if he was going to pop out any minute
14:07
with his knives and hammer. I didn't
14:09
know. I just knew that my instinct
14:11
for survival was telling me
14:13
I had to get help.
14:16
Of course, I couldn't stand up.
14:19
And I remember that I tried
14:21
to pull myself along the floor. I
14:24
actually slithered out of my bathroom,
14:27
through my bedroom, and I
14:29
slid down a flight of stairs to the floor
14:31
below. She managed to get to
14:34
a phone, but couldn't really see from all the blood
14:36
and severe beatings to the head. From
14:38
muscle memory, she dialed her parents' number.
14:41
They lived about three minutes away and ran over
14:44
to Ellen's
14:44
house. I don't remember anything
14:46
after I made that telephone call.
14:51
Until I heard my father scream, when
14:54
he saw me on the floor.
14:57
It's hard to imagine getting that distress call from
14:59
someone you love.
15:01
It's even harder to imagine finding them covered
15:03
in blood,
15:04
naked, and unconscious on the floor. Ellen's
15:08
dad called 911.
15:09
I remember hearing
15:11
the EMS personnel
15:15
talking, and they said
15:17
they didn't think I was going to make it. I
15:22
couldn't say anything. But
15:25
I remember thinking to myself,
15:28
oh, you bet I'm going to make it. That
15:30
was the first time I knew absolutely I
15:34
was going to make it. This man was not
15:36
going to take my life. Before being
15:38
rushed to the hospital,
15:40
Ellen managed to tell police the name of her
15:42
attacker. They caught him that afternoon,
15:44
and I was
15:45
out of it that whole time. They
15:47
caught him at a local bank trying to cash the
15:49
checks that I'd written him.
15:51
She had emergency surgery and received
15:54
more than 600 stitches for
15:56
the stab wounds.
15:57
Once she was released from the hospital,
15:59
She actually had no trouble living in
16:02
the same house where her attack happened.
16:04
You know, the house didn't do it to me. He
16:06
did. It was okay. And
16:08
once he was gone, I felt safe
16:11
there again.
16:12
I did learn how to use
16:13
the very sophisticated system.
16:16
What
16:16
do you call it? Lock up your house? Alarm
16:18
system.
16:19
Ellen's sense of safety in her own home wasn't
16:21
compromised. But
16:22
that's not to say she wasn't tremendously
16:25
affected by the attack. I felt
16:27
like a throwaway person. I didn't think
16:29
anybody would ever
16:30
love me again.
16:32
I mean, I was hideous. My face
16:34
was distorted. You
16:36
know, my head was shaved.
16:38
I cried a long time.
16:40
I remember when I was going
16:41
to see my sister in Houston and
16:44
I was driving in the car and I was just overwhelmed
16:46
with grief at what happened to me. I would
16:49
just burst into tears. I cried all the way there.
16:51
I couldn't even wait to be with her.
16:54
I had had great parents, by the
16:57
way, at the time, and
16:58
my sister. And they
17:00
gave me so much
17:01
support. You know, relevant
17:03
lotion and all the scars in my
17:05
head. I mean, so much support. My mother is actually
17:07
still alive and she's 98.
17:09
She also sought professional help through a counselor
17:12
and eventually through support groups at her local
17:14
rape crisis center. And listening to
17:16
those
17:16
other survivors really
17:19
helped me a whole lot. I knew I could do this.
17:21
You know, I needed to be. I needed
17:24
to do this for
17:25
my family, my mother and father. I mean,
17:27
my gosh, it affected
17:30
them terribly. Of
17:32
course, I think the thing that I would like to
17:34
tell everybody is that no matter what happened to you,
17:36
talk about it. And
17:38
if it's a terrible crime, sometimes
17:40
your parents don't want to hear it or your friends don't
17:42
want to hear it anymore. Find avenues
17:45
to tell your story. Every time
17:47
you tell it, no matter how many years, you
17:49
still heal a little bit.
17:51
And that's why I keep doing it.
17:53
And I probably, I mean,
17:55
I'm 75. So
17:57
I'll do it as long as I can. Her
18:02
attacker was brought to trial in just three
18:04
months. Ellen still hadn't fully
18:06
recovered from her injuries when she testified.
18:09
And I had had a lot of
18:11
work on my head, and my head was
18:13
shaped because of all the blows. They had to sew
18:15
them up.
18:17
I was real nervous because
18:19
it was the first
18:19
time I'd seen him, except in
18:22
my house. And I remember
18:24
he kept staring at me, and my
18:27
sister was alive then, and of
18:28
course the rest of my family.
18:29
And they kept saying, don't look at him.
18:32
Look at me. Look at me. And so I started
18:34
doing that.
18:35
Then they brought somebody in dressed in a ninja
18:38
suit
18:38
just to see if I recognized it, because
18:41
he'd had it when they had arrested him. It was in his
18:43
backpack
18:44
or in his double bag.
18:46
It was a powerful position
18:49
to have the chance to testify
18:52
and tell your story. I'm going to tell you.
18:56
I'm Lola Blanc. And I'm Megan Elizabeth. And
18:58
we're the hosts of Trust Me. Are you prone to
19:00
mental shortcuts and errors in your judgment? Find
19:02
out on our recent episode with Amanda
19:05
Knox
19:05
and Christopher Robinson. Those are the most
19:07
closely examined three seconds of my life. In
19:11
order to show me as someone who didn't care
19:13
that her roommate had been murdered.
19:14
Prior to all that is the media selection
19:16
bias. Which little chunks of reality
19:19
get looped and handed to you?
19:20
Get new episodes of Trust Me every Wednesday on
19:22
Podcast One, or wherever you get your podcasts.
19:27
Though Ellen had already testified by the time Wiggly took
19:29
the stand, she wasn't allowed to
19:31
hear his testimony.
19:32
What bothered
19:34
me the most is the fact
19:37
that, and I didn't even realize this at all, that
19:41
this would happen, that when they have the trial
19:44
and they put the defendant on the stand, that I had to leave
19:46
the room. I had
19:48
to go sit in the hall. Of course,
19:51
you know, I had my whole family in there, and they were coming out
19:53
and telling
19:53
me what he was saying.
19:55
So it ended up working out, but I
19:57
just thought, why do that to the victim?
19:58
Troy Wiggly
20:01
was found guilty of aggravated robbery
20:03
and sentenced to life in prison on November 20,
20:05
1986, just seven days shy of his 20th birthday.
20:10
The defense attorney asked for moderate
20:12
sentencing, to which ADA
20:14
Paul Womack replied,
20:16
was Ellen treated moderately?
20:18
There wasn't a reason that he should get the death
20:20
penalty. And even though I've
20:22
been involved in the system a long time, I'm
20:25
not a big believer in the death penalty.
20:27
In fact, sometimes I think
20:29
that the inmates in there
20:31
that have been in there for so long would rather die
20:33
than spend the rest of their life in prison. So,
20:36
no, I never wanted that.
20:38
So I thought it was, yeah, life
20:40
was real good. I
20:42
didn't have to be afraid of them anymore.
20:45
That's what I
20:45
used to tell other people
20:47
who I talked to, really didn't want to
20:49
go to trial and all.
20:51
I didn't tell my
20:52
story. I just told them that
20:54
it's really powerful
20:55
sitting there, facing that accuser
20:57
and knowing that you're going to be part
20:59
of getting him
21:01
out of the public and going somewhere
21:03
where you can't hurt anybody else. It
21:06
was pretty amazing.
21:08
It's just I keep having to fight him
21:10
being
21:10
on parole.
21:12
But he's still in.
21:13
Wiggly was first eligible for parole in 2006. He
21:17
was last reviewed for parole in February
21:19
of 2018, and he was denied
21:21
due to the nature of his offense. His
21:23
next parole review is currently scheduled for 2021.
21:27
Ellen had a great support system in her family,
21:30
but she found that those in her community didn't
21:32
really know how to handle what happened to her.
21:35
Well,
21:35
to me,
21:36
avoid telling somebody that's been through
21:38
what I did. Everything happens for a reason.
21:41
I think that's a terrible thing to say.
21:43
When I finally got out,
21:45
I was having to wear a wig, but I
21:47
could go to a store or
21:49
a drug store
21:50
or anything people that I knew would avoid me
21:52
because they didn't know what to say.
21:54
I felt like I was walking around this big big R
21:56
on my forehead.
21:57
And all they needed to say is come in and hug
21:59
me. and say, I'm so sorry. That's all.
22:04
Ellen started speaking publicly about her attacks.
22:07
This led to volunteering and victim services,
22:09
which led to Ellen being appointed by Governor
22:12
Ann Richards to the Board of Criminal Justice.
22:15
I was the first victim of crime on that board,
22:18
and I was on it, I guess you'd call it, for six
22:20
years, a non-paid position,
22:23
part-time position, and I turned into a
22:26
non-paid full-time position. And
22:29
I went a lot of places. I went to
22:31
all prisons, I visited programs,
22:34
I was
22:34
able to start a program of
22:36
my own that I thought was important.
22:39
In 1995, the Ellen Halbert Unit
22:42
was opened in Burnett, Texas. On
22:44
the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's website,
22:47
they call it a Substance Abuse Felony
22:49
Punishment Facility, which basically
22:52
means it's rehab in prison.
22:54
I got people to vote on it because there
22:56
wasn't anything in the area, any
22:58
kind of facility one way or the other, and
23:01
also because I knew it was going to be a women's
23:03
facility, and women really needed
23:05
another treatment facility.
23:07
Ellen still visits and tells the women their
23:09
story. And I tell
23:10
them my story, and I always tell
23:12
them that I wasn't anything special, that
23:15
women can do what they can do,
23:17
women can do anything I can do.
23:19
Because most of those women have
23:22
been victims of crimes,
23:24
sometimes as bad as mine, to
23:27
get in there. It's usually,
23:29
you know, something to do with
23:30
drugs and alcohol, of course, that
23:31
they have done. And then I'll sit
23:34
in a group with them, because then they break into groups,
23:37
and I'll sit in a group with them
23:38
every time I go, and they can ask me
23:40
a few more questions then, but most of the time I just
23:42
sit there to listen to them. The work
23:44
she was doing on the Board of Criminal Justice
23:46
was on a voluntary basis,
23:48
and her successes there led her to being offered
23:50
a job as the head of victim services in
23:53
Travis County.
23:54
I couldn't do anything about
23:55
crime, but I could do
23:57
something about working
23:59
with victims.
24:00
And so it just came when I went
24:02
off the board of criminal justice my last
24:04
year there. I was offered
24:06
this job as head of victim services.
24:09
It was hard work,
24:11
but to see, to make somebody
24:13
happy who'd been
24:14
through such hell or lost a child or lost
24:16
anybody,
24:17
it was very healing work for them and
24:19
for me too.
24:20
Even today, I still
24:22
go into prisons as part of a
24:24
Bridges to Life
24:25
program.
24:26
It's for offenders in prison and
24:28
it's where victims come in and tell their story. And
24:31
they always love my story. The men's prisons,
24:33
they just come up and shake my hand and hug
24:36
me. And
24:37
they ask a lot of questions in the end.
24:39
Like, what did it do to your family?
24:41
If I haven't covered that, what
24:43
happened with your marriage? And I said, well,
24:45
it didn't survive it. And I always tell
24:47
them, I can come back and spend the whole night
24:50
talking to you about that. And that marriage
24:52
and how my husband handled
24:54
it.
24:55
Well, we tried to go to counseling about it
24:57
and counselors
24:59
wouldn't work with us because he's
25:01
so unbending, it's kind of like
25:04
he was a pretty narcissistic guy. He
25:06
was funny and fun to be around, but pretty
25:08
narcissistic. And he'd say, you know, if you
25:10
just listened to me, you'd get over this. You
25:12
know, he just
25:14
didn't have a clue
25:16
how to support somebody who'd been through something
25:18
like that.
25:19
I ended up
25:20
leaving him and moving into another house,
25:23
but I couldn't have him still in my life.
25:26
I check on him now and then, but I've
25:28
been in this marriage 27 years. So
25:31
I married a really nice guy.
25:33
Ellen met her current husband through a group called
25:35
People Against Violent Crime.
25:37
My husband had a friend that he used to play in
25:39
a band with who was also in the group.
25:42
And he brought my husband to the group.
25:45
And he went around and
25:47
he looked at me and he said, this is an enjilade.
25:50
And we
25:51
kind of connected and then he asked me out
25:54
and
25:54
we dated for a year and then lived
25:56
together for a year. And then we
25:58
got married and.
25:59
And that's been 27 years.
26:01
And he's
26:04
easy
26:04
like I am. And I think that's so important.
26:07
He has kind of the same goals and
26:09
the same
26:10
ways of handling things. And
26:13
so he's been a treasure
26:15
to me. He's hearing me say
26:17
this, you know that.
26:19
Did you hear me, honey? Yeah,
26:22
I heard you, babe.
26:30
Part of the job was to mediate as part
26:32
of their Restorative
26:33
Justice Program. It brings
26:35
victims and offenders together, if they're both willing,
26:38
to help the victim get some answers and for
26:40
the offender to see the
26:41
impact of their actions.
26:43
I would have them in my
26:45
office. And we would just talk
26:47
to each other.
26:48
And the victim would ask questions
26:50
about the crime that they never get, never
26:52
able to ask on the stand, you know, much
26:55
more sensitive. Tell them how it made them feel.
26:58
And the offender would say, I'm
27:00
so sorry I did that to you. And sometimes it
27:02
would make them cry knowing what they had done
27:04
to somebody and just never even realized
27:06
it. Because the court system, sometimes
27:09
they plead these cases. So
27:11
the victim sometimes doesn't ever have a
27:13
chance to even say anything. So we just
27:15
talk about the crime. We go around and talk about
27:17
the crime. And we'd
27:18
ask the offender questions.
27:21
And he'd tell the truth. And I'll
27:23
tell you, some of those victims were
27:26
ready to take that offender home with them because
27:28
they were so sweet. It brings healing
27:30
in a way that the courtroom never did.
27:33
Ellen really believes in
27:35
Restorative Justice. But both the
27:37
victim and the offender have to be willing
27:39
to talk and make it a positive
27:41
experience.
27:42
To make sure the meetings don't do more harm than
27:45
good, a mediator will talk to both
27:47
victim and offender beforehand. Ellen
27:49
started down this road but hasn't met
27:51
with her attacker. He wanted
27:53
me to. He wrote a letter once. And they
27:55
had it over at
27:57
Victim Services at the state.
27:59
And I went over.
27:59
there and they read it to me.
28:02
And it was kind of like, I'm so
28:04
sorry I did that to
28:05
you because it sure caused
28:06
me a lot of problems. But
28:08
I thought, well,
28:10
maybe that's not what he should say, but
28:12
I wouldn't mind having the chance to talk
28:14
to him.
28:15
But I sent somebody to prison to talk
28:17
to him first, the mediator
28:19
that would be using and there he
28:21
never said anything.
28:23
Like they said, why did you try and kill her?
28:25
And he said, because she's on my face. And they
28:28
said, well, why did you rape her? And he said, because I
28:30
wanted to.
28:31
Now, what am I going to learn going to talk to
28:33
him? So I decided I wasn't going
28:35
to put myself through that.
28:37
Ellen is now retired and takes care
28:39
of her 98 year old mother. She's
28:41
still speaking about her attack and says she's
28:44
doing great.
28:45
I found out how strong I am. I
28:47
found out that I can conquer anything.
28:50
And I think telling my story to
28:53
men and women,
28:55
they just can't believe that I came out of it. And
28:57
I'm talking to them about it. So yes,
28:59
good things did come out. But I wouldn't want to go through
29:01
it again for that. But
29:04
very good things did come out of it.
29:06
An update since this episode first aired. Troy
29:09
Wigley was denied parole in May of 2021.
29:12
His parole will be reviewed again in 2024.
29:16
And
29:18
I just think that which does not
29:20
kill you will make you stronger. I am
29:23
so much stronger than I was even before. And
29:25
I've really enjoyed feeling that way. To
29:35
speak to someone at the National Sexual
29:37
Assault Hotline, 1-800-656-6680.
29:38
You can also live chat with someone
29:41
at rain.org.
29:49
The
29:52
link is right at the top of the page. I'm
29:55
Caitlin VanMalle, host and senior producer.
29:58
Our audio engineer is Kelly Cremick.
30:00
Our producer is Scott Brody and
30:02
our executive producer is Ted Butler. I
30:05
Survived was originally produced by NHNZ.
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To hear more I Survived,
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please subscribe, rate, and
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review us wherever you listen to podcasts.
30:15
To hear more, please subscribe, rate, and review us wherever you listen to podcasts.
30:25
Two sisters, one a respected
30:27
TV producer Jill Blackstone and
30:29
the other Wendy. She was disabled,
30:32
nearly blind and deaf, and Jill had devoted
30:34
herself to taking care of Wendy. Jill
30:36
was her best friend, her sister,
30:39
her everything. But the sister bond was
30:41
shattered when Wendy and some of
30:43
the sisters'
30:43
rescue dogs were found dead
30:46
in a garage next to a top-level
30:48
barbecue grill. Jill says accidental
30:50
carbon monoxide poisoning killed everyone.
30:53
Police do not believe her.
30:54
Police arrested Jill Blackstone for
30:57
the murder of her sister. Investigators think it
30:59
was staged to look like an accident. Who
31:01
will
31:01
you believe, especially now that a
31:03
secret
31:04
source has come forward with evidence never
31:06
made public before? Jill was a good producer.
31:09
There's no doubt about that, but would she
31:11
produce murder is the question.
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Season 2 of Bad Bad Thing, The Blackstone
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Sisters, available now wherever you
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