Speaker 1: School of Humans.
Speaker 2: On January seventeenth, twenty twenty three, at eleven twenty two pm,
Speaker 2: the Johnson County Deputy Coroner arrived at nineteen fifty four
Speaker 2: County Road in Clarksville, Arkansas, and found the body of
Speaker 2: fifty three year old William Vick. Both of William's children,
Speaker 2: his daughter Ashley and his son will said that their
Speaker 2: dad had been in very good general health, but they
Speaker 2: had noticed that William had been choking on his food
Speaker 2: over the last year of his life. It was an
Speaker 2: issue that had been getting worse and worse, and this
Speaker 2: apparently led to him going in for a routine ton
Speaker 2: selectomy a week before his death. Tonsils surgery often happens
Speaker 2: in children. Sometimes it's an emergency, but it can also
Speaker 2: be an elective surgery for adults. It's sometimes recommended if
Speaker 2: a person's tonsils are enlarged, or if there are airway obstructions,
Speaker 2: or if the patient is experiencing frequent throat infections or
Speaker 2: chronic sore throat, and in some other situations. But after
Speaker 2: William was sent home to recover from his operation, he
Speaker 2: began to experience some strange complications. Ashley got a text
Speaker 2: from her father that was concerning. Her dad was texting
Speaker 2: her to say that he was throwing up blood. Then
Speaker 2: he texted her a picture of a sink full of blood.
Speaker 2: Ashley told us that she reached out to her stepmother, Laurinda,
Speaker 2: who had worked as an ear nurse. She said that
Speaker 2: she asked Laurinda to take her father to the hospital,
Speaker 2: but that Lorenda told her that William was stubborn and
Speaker 2: that there was no need for alarm. Later on social media,
Speaker 2: Lorenda posted that this was what she believed at the time,
Speaker 2: and that as a nurse, she knew that rest was
Speaker 2: the best medicine for patients in William's condition, but William
Speaker 2: didn't get better. A few days after that text message,
Speaker 2: William Vick was dead and his death was not an accident.
Speaker 2: The cause of death on William's autopsy was listed as
Speaker 2: a combined mixed prescription and illicit drug toxicity, basically a
Speaker 2: drug overdose. The manner of death was homicide. William's family
Speaker 2: was suspicious of Larenda, but the confession came from someone else.
Speaker 2: It was from Lrenda's mother, Martha MacLean. Martha was seventy
Speaker 2: two years old, apparently terminally ill with throw cancer. And
Speaker 2: lived in a separate structure on William and Lrenda's property,
Speaker 2: and she had written a letter confessing to the murder.
Speaker 2: So why would Lrenda's mother want to hurt William? And
Speaker 2: with her supposedly being frail and ill, would she even
Speaker 2: be physically capable of something like that. I'm Catherine Townsend.
Speaker 2: Over the past five years of making my true crime podcast,
Speaker 2: Helling Gone, I've learned that there's no such thing as
Speaker 2: a small town where murder never happens. I have received
Speaker 2: hundreds of messages from people all around the country asking
Speaker 2: for help with an unsolved murder that's affected them, their families,
Speaker 2: and their communities. If you have a case you'd like
Speaker 2: me and my team to look into, you can reach
Speaker 2: out to us at our Helen Gone Murder line on
Speaker 2: six seven eight seven four four six one four five.
Speaker 2: That's six seven eight seven four four six one four five,
Speaker 2: Or you can send us a message on Instagram at
Speaker 2: Helen gonepot This is Helen Gone Murder Line. According to
Speaker 2: the medical examiner's report, there was no sign of heart
Speaker 2: disease or any other obvious health concern that could have
Speaker 2: caused William's death. The coroner also noted there was no
Speaker 2: blood on the bedroom floor, which they had looked for
Speaker 2: because he had been vomiting up blood days earlier. They
Speaker 2: were looking for whatever could have caused his death, and
Speaker 2: after William's body was sent in for an autopsy and
Speaker 2: the toxicology report came back, they found it. Post mortem
Speaker 2: blood testing showed positive for tramadol, the prescription medication, but
Speaker 2: also lethal levels of laurazapam and massive quantities of morphine
Speaker 2: and codine. William's body was cremated and Lorenda and her
Speaker 2: sons read his ashes without William's daughter, Ashley and his
Speaker 2: son will will had been living with William and Lorenda.
Speaker 2: He had just moved out few days before his father's death.
Speaker 2: Both Ashley and will were left struggling to comprehend exactly
Speaker 2: what happened to their father and how he deteriorated so quickly. Then,
Speaker 2: on January twenty third, twenty twenty three, six days after
Speaker 2: William was found dead on the bedroom floor, their worlds
Speaker 2: got completely rocked again when they found out that Lorenda's mother,
Speaker 2: Martha MacLean, had apparently confessed to their father's murder. I
Speaker 2: need to back up for a minute, because there's kind
Speaker 2: of a strange series of events that led to this.
Speaker 2: We said last week that officers rushed to the home
Speaker 2: where William and Larnda lived. As I said, Martha lived
Speaker 2: in a separate structure on the property behind their house.
Speaker 2: William's family members said William and Martha had apparently never
Speaker 2: really gotten along, but they weren't sure why William built
Speaker 2: Martha's house behind where he and Lrenda lived, But apparently
Speaker 2: there was always tension between William and Martha. A police
Speaker 2: officer was doing a wellness check on Martha when they
Speaker 2: found her. She was in distress us She was struggling
Speaker 2: to breathe, with morphine and lauriazapam bottle scattered around her,
Speaker 2: and with a handwritten note next to the bed. But
Speaker 2: the strange series of events actually started earlier than that.
Speaker 2: What happened first was that earlier that same day, on
Speaker 2: January twenty third, Lrenda and a friend of hers named
Speaker 2: Linda went into the prosecuting attorney's office in Clarksville. They
Speaker 2: said they had been trying to contact Martha and that
Speaker 2: she wasn't answering. According to the charging documents, Special Agent
Speaker 2: Matthew Foster from the Arkansas State police was called in.
Speaker 2: This was apparently happening while the police officer was performing
Speaker 2: that welfare check on Martha. He went into her residence
Speaker 2: and found Martha unconscious, holding a pen in one hand,
Speaker 2: and apparently trying to write a note. According to the report,
Speaker 2: Linda Lorenda's friend quote provided a note that stated that
Speaker 2: Martha killed William Vick end quote. Agent Foster also wrote
Speaker 2: in his report that he spoke to Lareenda on that
Speaker 2: same day and that she she told him that her mother, Martha,
Speaker 2: had told Lorinda that she killed William by putting morphine
Speaker 2: and other drugs inside his liquid medicine. The officer's report
Speaker 2: read quote, she was unconscious and was struggling to breathe.
Speaker 2: Next to her was morphine and loizapam bottle. Her hand
Speaker 2: was holding a pen and a note was being written.
Speaker 2: The note stated that she didn't want to hurt anymore.
Speaker 2: End quote. After that, Martha was rushed to the hospital
Speaker 2: and then special Agent Foster executed a search warrant on
Speaker 2: that property. That's when he found another handwritten note. This
Speaker 2: note talked about how Martha had killed William. The note
Speaker 2: stated that Martha had tampered with William's medication, that she
Speaker 2: put morphine, louriza, PAM and other drugs inside of William's
Speaker 2: liquid medicine, and that after William took the medicine and
Speaker 2: while her daughter Lrenda wasn't home, Martha said she went
Speaker 2: inside William's residence and injected him with suxi methonium. The
Speaker 2: note stated that Martha had been planning this for a
Speaker 2: long time and that she originally planned to use a gun,
Speaker 2: but that another family member had taken her gun away
Speaker 2: from her. How did Martha get this drug? Because sex
Speaker 2: and methonium is a paralytic drug. It's a drug that's
Speaker 2: normally used for intubation, so when you're in the hospital
Speaker 2: having a procedure and they need to make sure that
Speaker 2: you don't choke on the tubes when they're put down
Speaker 2: your throat. It's not a drug that would ever normally
Speaker 2: be administered in a non medical setting because it paralyzes
Speaker 2: your muscles and unless you are getting air from another source,
Speaker 2: you literally will not be able to breathe. Now, it
Speaker 2: should be noted here that even though the confession letter
Speaker 2: claimed that Martha had injected William with this drug, according
Speaker 2: to the autopsy report, they did not find a measurable
Speaker 2: trace of sex and methonium, though the report did indicate
Speaker 2: that it would have passed from William's system in a
Speaker 2: short period of time. Even if she did give him
Speaker 2: an injection, it would have been very difficult to come
Speaker 2: because so much time had passed. So police were trying
Speaker 2: to understand more about William's relationships with his wife, Larinda
Speaker 2: and also with his mother in law Martha. As we
Speaker 2: said last week, William was married to his first wife,
Speaker 2: Jesinda for eighteen years. They had two children, Will and Ashley.
Speaker 2: They split up in two thousand and nine, and then
Speaker 2: in early twenty eleven, William met Larinda. William's son Will
Speaker 2: said that his father and Laurinda had met on a
Speaker 2: dating site. Now Ted and Ashley said that they believed
Speaker 2: Larinda had been pressuring William to get will to move out,
Speaker 2: but will said that the weeks before his father passed
Speaker 2: away were for him fairly normal. He admitted he never
Speaker 2: had a particularly close relationship with Larnda, but he said
Speaker 2: that he hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary in
Speaker 2: those weeks. He did say he had seen Larinda's temper
Speaker 2: flare on numerous occasions, since he was young.
Speaker 3: Okay, what caused you to move about?
Speaker 1: But I was only there for the holidays. I stayed
Speaker 1: there a little bit longer, but he was about to
Speaker 1: have surgery, and I decided to come back come a
Speaker 1: week before him had surgery.
Speaker 3: Okay, so Larinda didn't kick you out. You decided to
Speaker 3: leave on your own.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay.
Speaker 3: Did you feel like Lrenda put any distance between you
Speaker 3: and your dad or did you feel like she encouraged
Speaker 3: the relationship between you and him, or.
Speaker 1: Or which she just kind of dad drul She sort
Speaker 1: of had a mean personality. Wouldn't say she was like
Speaker 1: abusive or anything when I would say that she was
Speaker 1: just kind of a mean person generally. But I don't
Speaker 1: think she's put any distance between us. I don't think it
Speaker 1: was really possible distance between me and my father, but
Speaker 1: from her perspectively.
Speaker 2: Will talked about what he described as Lorenda anger.
Speaker 1: I'll give you a story. Whenever I was younger, So
Speaker 1: me and Lorenda's Unjagger, So Jagger's my stepbrother. So me
Speaker 1: and Jagger when we were playing, I guess things got
Speaker 1: a little rough between us. I think I hit him
Speaker 1: or something, and then I realized I was probably get
Speaker 1: in trouble for us. So I ran into my room
Speaker 1: and lost it, but Lorenda got in and pushed me
Speaker 1: to the then like hit my stomach exactly where Jagger
Speaker 1: where I hit Jagger, which I think was probably not
Speaker 1: something adult to due to a kid. I mean there
Speaker 1: were other times where she was just very unsociable. I
Speaker 1: mean she didn't do that when I got older, obviously. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she would get really mad sometimes it was really randomly.
Speaker 2: Will also said that about a year before his father's death,
Speaker 2: something disturbing happened. He said that his father had said
Speaker 2: to will that he believed Lorenda inchecked him with something
Speaker 2: when he was sick, but William said he wasn't sure
Speaker 2: what it was.
Speaker 1: He doesn't know what it was because he was like
Speaker 1: thick and delirious at the time, but he wasn't even
Speaker 1: really sure. Yeah, if it happened, thought he was pretty
Speaker 1: sure it happened. So when he told me the story
Speaker 1: about her possibly injecting him with something, he told me
Speaker 1: that he's tied in a weird service as it was
Speaker 1: probably with Linda.
Speaker 2: Will said at the time his father was very sick,
Speaker 2: so he thought he might have possibly been delirious. Afterwards,
Speaker 2: will said his father didn't mention it again.
Speaker 1: At first. He wasn't even sure himself did it really happened.
Speaker 1: He wasn't assure himself. You don't want to believe someone
Speaker 1: would do something like that, especially someone you're married with,
Speaker 1: and they put a bed list every night. He said
Speaker 1: that he was and he can get injected twice that night.
Speaker 1: Letter claim that my dad was having an allergic reaction
Speaker 1: to something, even though I've never noticed that that allergies
Speaker 1: to anything, and that she was giving him inject him
Speaker 1: with some sort of allergy list. I don't even know what.
Speaker 1: He didn't get in much detail.
Speaker 2: Then Tom went by and things to go back to normal.
Speaker 2: Will said that his father was in good health, but
Speaker 2: like his sister Ashley, he mentioned that William would choke
Speaker 2: when he was eating.
Speaker 1: Sometimes when he was eat it would choke him. It
Speaker 1: was chosing tome. He wouldn't be able to eat it,
Speaker 1: but he looked like basically peeked the food back up
Speaker 1: so they couldn't breathe, and it just got work and
Speaker 1: was over that year.
Speaker 2: Will lived with Lrenda and his father for most of
Speaker 2: the year. In twenty twenty two, he then left for
Speaker 2: a period of time, but he said that he came
Speaker 2: back for the Thanksgiving in Christmas holidays that year. He
Speaker 2: was still staying there into January of twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2: Will said that he left William and Larenda's home for
Speaker 2: good just a week before his father died. He said
Speaker 2: that he was shocked when he learned that his father
Speaker 2: passed away. His mother, Jacinda, had gotten the call from
Speaker 2: Will's sister, Ashley. Ashley told us last week that even
Speaker 2: though her parents had their issues over the years, and
Speaker 2: that breaking up their marriage was difficult, that they were
Speaker 2: married for a long time, they had children in history
Speaker 2: and still had a lot of love for each other.
Speaker 1: I love my mom. I live living in Missouri at
Speaker 1: the time. And my mom comes home and I go
Speaker 1: to Greeter and she's just like prus has passed me.
Speaker 1: She's crying, and she goes into the room that her
Speaker 1: and my stepfather there, and they come back out called
Speaker 1: me into the living room, and that's where she breaks
Speaker 1: the news to me. Disn't got breaks the moves that
Speaker 1: my father had passed away that night. He was sick
Speaker 1: before and he was like spitting out blood and stuff,
Speaker 1: and I had tried to convince him I love with
Speaker 1: my sister that he needed to go to the hospital
Speaker 1: because he just had a surgery. And then immediately after
Speaker 1: the surgery, him being a very stubborn person, he decided
Speaker 1: to do a bunch of yard works, which was not
Speaker 1: a good idea.
Speaker 4: You have done that, but a couple of days after
Speaker 4: he kept sitting up blood and stuff, and that's not good.
Speaker 4: That's not you know, it's not supposed to be doing that.
Speaker 4: So we try to convince them to go to the hospital,
Speaker 4: but Lorenda convinced him not to go, even though her
Speaker 4: being a nurse, she should have known better.
Speaker 1: And I told him directly in text and on a
Speaker 1: phone call that man, it's like she's trying to kill you.
Speaker 1: Like she's trying to kill you right now, stop listening
Speaker 1: to her, stopping stubborn, go go to the hospital. But
Speaker 1: he didn't, and he ended up dead.
Speaker 2: Even though will said he is suspicious of Lorenda, will
Speaker 2: did have quite a bit to say about the relationship
Speaker 2: between Martha and William. He said Martha hated his father.
Speaker 1: There were plenty of interactions where you could just tell Martha,
Speaker 1: you're not like my dad, and my dad felt equally
Speaker 1: the same towards her.
Speaker 3: Do you say in your opinion that it is talk
Speaker 3: that Martha's.
Speaker 1: Did they have killed your fathers and not alone. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that she was a part of it Bomtal,
Speaker 1: but she didn't wall unless she worked do it.
Speaker 3: What was her gerald stay of health at the time
Speaker 3: that you went.
Speaker 1: When she was an old woman and she had been
Speaker 1: smoking since forever, I suppose apparently she had a broke
Speaker 1: cancer as well, which I didn't even fell about.
Speaker 2: So why would Martha Lrenda's mother want to hurt William?
Speaker 2: Larenda and William married on December third, twenty eleven, after
Speaker 2: dating for just a few months. Lrenda's children lived in
Speaker 2: Ocean Springs, Mississippi, and Lareinda was an only child, so
Speaker 2: at her home it was just her, William and Martha.
Speaker 2: Will William's son said he observed that Martha was not
Speaker 2: in good health, but what exactly was Martha's medical condition?
Speaker 2: Martha had told family members that she went in for testing.
Speaker 2: Was she actually terminally ill? She seemed to have told
Speaker 2: some people that she was, but she also apparently told
Speaker 2: some family members that the doctors weren't able to finish
Speaker 2: the test because she had blood in her throat. The
Speaker 2: family had a talk with the prosecutor, Jeff Phillips, in
Speaker 2: which he indicated that he believed Lrenda played a role
Speaker 2: in William's death, but he said he planned to only
Speaker 2: charge Martha with murder. According to the family, this was
Speaker 2: because the prosecutor apparently believed that if he charged Martha
Speaker 2: before she died, Lrenda would be under suspicion as well,
Speaker 2: and that that would kind of hang over her and
Speaker 2: possibly affect Larenda's ability to collect on life insurance. Remember
Speaker 2: we said last week that before he died, William had
Speaker 2: two life insurance policies out on him for a total
Speaker 2: of eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and his family
Speaker 2: was asking questions about those policies. During the talk that
Speaker 2: Ted and Ashley and some other family members had with
Speaker 2: the prosecutor, Ted said that Jeff Phillips, the prosecutor, had
Speaker 2: referred to Lrenda as the black widow. Let's take a
Speaker 2: closer look at this confession letter, because if Martha's story
Speaker 2: is true, that she was the one who murdered William
Speaker 2: and that she acted alone, how did she get access
Speaker 2: to William's medicines in the first place. Lrenda told investigators
Speaker 2: after she got home while William was recovering, she tried
Speaker 2: to give William his steroids and that he refused to
Speaker 2: take them. After that, Larenda claimed she gave William's drugs
Speaker 2: to her mother. Then Martha claimed in her confession that,
Speaker 2: unbeknownst to Larnda or anyone else, she swapped William's steroid
Speaker 2: medication out with morphine, and that she administered that morphine
Speaker 2: in order to kill William. We're also unclear, by the way,
Speaker 2: exactly where the morphine came from. As we said last week,
Speaker 2: we don't have access to William's prescriptions. But even if
Speaker 2: he wasn't prescribed these drugs rugs, they may have been
Speaker 2: drugs that were kept in the home. The issue is
Speaker 2: also complicated because Martha was supposedly terminally ill. Apparently she
Speaker 2: was on hospice care, so the drugs could have been
Speaker 2: drugs she was prescribed. We just don't know. And there's
Speaker 2: still the question of motive again, why would Martha want
Speaker 2: to hurt William. William's family believes that Lrenda may have
Speaker 2: convinced Martha that William was abusive. We talked about that
Speaker 2: last week that Ashley said her father had zero history
Speaker 2: of being physically or emotionally abusive, But she said that Lrenda,
Speaker 2: in her opinion, was creating a narrative where her father
Speaker 2: was being described as abusive. Now again, I have to say,
Speaker 2: Lorenda has not been arrested or charged in connection with
Speaker 2: William's death. She's declined to comment and referred all calls
Speaker 2: to her attorney. Her mother, Martha, is the one who
Speaker 2: confessed to William's murder, So in their discussions with the prosecutor,
Speaker 2: William's family claimed that they discussed that scenario if it
Speaker 2: was Martha, What if Lorenda had played a role. What
Speaker 2: if Lrenda, for example, convinced her mother that she was
Speaker 2: in some type of imminent danger from William. Would that
Speaker 2: be enough to convince Martha to kill Could Martha, who
Speaker 2: was very ill and only had a little bit of
Speaker 2: time left, have taken the fall for her daughter. That
Speaker 2: was another possibility they say they discussed. William's family said
Speaker 2: they also discussed with the prosecutor the issue of having
Speaker 2: two suspects. That's a scenario in complication We've talked about
Speaker 2: many times in reporting this podcast, But they say the
Speaker 2: prosecutor assured them that filing charges against one suspect would
Speaker 2: not hinder their office's ability to file charges against someone
Speaker 2: else at a later date. I want to go back
Speaker 2: to Martha's confession letter for a minute. Martha confessed to
Speaker 2: doctoring William's pills, but that confession letter also stated that
Speaker 2: she gave William an injection. So if the injection was fatal,
Speaker 2: how likely a scenario was it that William would have
Speaker 2: allowed Lorenda's mother and not Lorenda, the one with the
Speaker 2: nursing license, to administer him an injection. Remember, everyone said
Speaker 2: they didn't like each other. Why in this scenario would
Speaker 2: William allow Lorenda's mother to come in with a syringe
Speaker 2: of something and inject him. How likely is that scenario? Also,
Speaker 2: if Martha was terminally ill and frail, could Martha even
Speaker 2: make it upstairs by herself? William's bedroom was upstairs. It
Speaker 2: turns out that how frail Martha was kind of depends
Speaker 2: on who you ask. Remember, William's family claimed that Martha
Speaker 2: was infirmed that she needed assistance getting around, and she
Speaker 2: apparently claimed to be terminally ill with throat cancer. But
Speaker 2: according to Jeff Phillips, the prosecutor, the coroner's investigators told
Speaker 2: him they witnessed Martha walk upstairs twice while they were there.
Speaker 2: Another issue that came up was when the prosecutor claimed
Speaker 2: there was a problem with jurisdiction. The jurisdiction for the
Speaker 2: case turns out to be a little bit complicated because
Speaker 2: William lived in Johnson County and that's where his body
Speaker 2: was found. But Jeff Phillips stated that because William had
Speaker 2: once worked as a sheriff's deputy for Johnson County, even
Speaker 2: though it was years earlier, that if Johnson County handled
Speaker 2: the case there would be a conflict of interest. Because
Speaker 2: of that, the case was turned over to the Arkansas
Speaker 2: State Police. That's another thing that William's family has questions about.
Speaker 2: While all this was going on, Martha was recovering, she
Speaker 2: was getting ready to get discharged from the hospital. The
Speaker 2: prosecutor was getting ready to file capital murder charges against
Speaker 2: Martha MacLean. But the prosecutor had an issue because, apparently,
Speaker 2: according to William's family, the county doesn't have hospice care
Speaker 2: in jail, so they had to find a responsible party
Speaker 2: to take care of Martha once she was released from
Speaker 2: the hospital. Lorenda was her only child, so even though
Speaker 2: murder charges were being filed against Martha and she was
Speaker 2: at that time a prime suspect and William's murder, she
Speaker 2: was sent home to recover, which meant that she was
Speaker 2: sent home to Lrenda's care. Just a few hours later,
Speaker 2: Martha McLean died of a drug overdose. I'm Katherine Townsend.
Speaker 2: This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murderline is
Speaker 2: a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It's
Speaker 2: written and narrated by me Catherine Townsend and produced by
Speaker 2: Gabby Watts and Miranda Hawkins. Special thanks to Amy Tubbs
Speaker 2: for her research assistance. Noah camer mixed and scored this episode.
Speaker 2: Our theme song is by Ben Sale, Executive producers of
Speaker 2: Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Else Crowley. Listen to Helen
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Speaker 2: Plus channel on Apple Podcasts. If you were interested in
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Speaker 2: a case you'd like me and my team to look into,
Speaker 2: you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone
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