Speaker 1: Ricinus communis is an exotic perennial plant with oversized purplish leaves,
Speaker 1: bulbous seed pods, and blooms in various striking colors. It's
Speaker 1: a pretty plant, often grown in decorative gardens. The seeds,
Speaker 1: called castor beans, which are about the size of a peanut,
Speaker 1: can be pressed into castor oil, which has several uses
Speaker 1: as a preservative in food and an ingredient in cosmetic products.
Speaker 1: But the seeds are probably more famously known for their
Speaker 1: lethal nature, as they contain a toxin risin that can
Speaker 1: kill even in small amounts. As this poison can be
Speaker 1: manufactured at home, it's a popular choice for would be assassins.
Speaker 2: Cruise and hazmat suits are seen entering a male facility
Speaker 2: near washing after letters sent to President Barack Obama and
Speaker 2: a Mississippi senator test positive for risin.
Speaker 3: The FBI is also investigating letters sent to the Pentagon
Speaker 3: that tested positive for the deadly poison ricin.
Speaker 4: The details of an arrest at the Canada US border
Speaker 4: of a person suspected of sending a letter containing a
Speaker 4: deadly poison to Donald Trump's White House.
Speaker 1: Despite their potential for deadly use, you can legally buy
Speaker 1: Castban's online or in a gardening store, and if you
Speaker 1: happen upon them by accident, it's likely you wouldn't recognize
Speaker 1: the fatal power they contain.
Speaker 3: Investigator Elliot located a small firebox safe in one of
Speaker 3: the bedroom closets.
Speaker 5: Corey states she.
Speaker 3: Does not have a key for it and it hasn't
Speaker 3: been opened in probably ten years.
Speaker 1: Detective Weber noted that during one of the searches of
Speaker 1: Teleina and Corey's house, the investigator stumbled on a small safe.
Speaker 1: Corey insists that the safe can't be opened, but Weber
Speaker 1: is not so easily deterred.
Speaker 3: I located several sets of keys hanging in the closet
Speaker 3: by the front door. The first key I tried opened
Speaker 3: the safe. The findings inside the safe were extremely significant.
Speaker 3: Inside the safe, among other things, were three small packages
Speaker 3: of bubble wrap. Inside the packages were castor beans and
Speaker 3: seeds to grow castor beans, specifically Ricinus communists.
Speaker 1: The police can't take the beans, they aren't included in
Speaker 1: the search warrant, but they can take Corey's computers, and
Speaker 1: in one of them they find a Microsoft word file
Speaker 1: created in twenty twelve titled making Risin from iHeart podcasts.
Speaker 1: I'm Melissa Jelson, and this is what happened to Telenazar.
Speaker 6: And I slung open the door and me and Rachel
Speaker 6: standing there, and she goes, oh my god, this thing
Speaker 6: sounds like bath.
Speaker 3: Well, the only reason it has to do with anything
Speaker 3: is just because my understanding it was there one day
Speaker 3: and now it's not.
Speaker 6: She goes, well, Corey butchered that thing, and I'm like
Speaker 6: what she said. Yeah, she ket that horse up in
Speaker 6: tiny little pieces and dumped it out for the kayadt.
Speaker 2: He rope was fucking hell, what's going on here? We
Speaker 2: thought we thought we had her.
Speaker 7: My husband and I spent every penny we had to
Speaker 7: move to his confident and we went through a tough
Speaker 7: time where we didn't have much money.
Speaker 1: Episode seven, Safe Tell me when you first learned about
Speaker 1: what had happened in Wisconsin.
Speaker 2: She had been involved in a robbery. That's how she
Speaker 2: got her felony.
Speaker 1: Early on in Jess's investigation, she doesn't know much about
Speaker 1: Corey's past criminal conviction, just that she had one in
Speaker 1: Wisconsin in twenty fourteen, until a woman named Sherry Ziegler
Speaker 1: joins the Justice for Teleina Facebook group.
Speaker 2: And then Sherry told me the exact story of what
Speaker 2: had happened.
Speaker 1: Sherry and her husband Michael lived still live in Middleton, Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: It's a suburb of Madison, a friendly place, according to
Speaker 1: its motto, the good neighbor City. Cherry said, for the
Speaker 1: first twenty years they lived there, they never really locked
Speaker 1: their doors, but that all starts to change when the
Speaker 1: Zieglers get back from a trip to Florida at the
Speaker 1: end of March twenty fourteen. It's then that they experience
Speaker 1: a series of strange and unexplained events. First, they come
Speaker 1: home to a mess, a bunch of unidentified debris spread
Speaker 1: inside their house. In the hallways and in their bedroom,
Speaker 1: they find what looks like small pebbles or crumbled sheet rock.
Speaker 1: It's also in their bed, under the covers, and inside
Speaker 1: Sherry's underwear and sock drawer.
Speaker 2: She said it looked like kitty litter on her bed,
Speaker 2: her pillow, all over her dresser. Yeah, she called it
Speaker 2: kitty litter.
Speaker 1: The couple are exhausted, and since nothing else appears disturbed,
Speaker 1: they've write it off as a weird prank. They unpack,
Speaker 1: return their travel money to their safe, sweep the weird
Speaker 1: pebbles out of their sheets go to bed. A month
Speaker 1: passes without incident, and then one night, Mike goes to
Speaker 1: get some items from the safe in their bedroom closet
Speaker 1: and finds the safe's not there. Shery tells Jess it
Speaker 1: was filled with the usual valuables.
Speaker 2: It was like a thousand dollars worth of cash. The
Speaker 2: deed to their house like a bunch of important stuff
Speaker 2: that you've keep in a safe.
Speaker 1: Right this time, the Zieglers call the police. A deputy
Speaker 1: comes by, makes a report, and begins an investigation, but
Speaker 1: without any leads or evidence, the case goes stale. And
Speaker 1: then a month after that, Cherry gets a credit card
Speaker 1: statement in the mail. It's from a card she never activated,
Speaker 1: and it's only now she realizes it's missing from where
Speaker 1: she left it in a dish on the kitchen counter.
Speaker 2: A credit card bill had come in the mail for
Speaker 2: a credit card she knew she had not opened yet,
Speaker 2: and that's what led her to check the statement find
Speaker 2: out where the money was spent.
Speaker 1: And Sherry calls the credit card company and they tell
Speaker 1: her that the card was activated a few weeks earlier
Speaker 1: from the landline inside her home. She knows she didn't
Speaker 1: activate it, so who did. Looking at the charges on
Speaker 1: her statement, she recognizes some of the businesses where the
Speaker 1: card was used. Among them is the gas station down
Speaker 1: the road. So much like Jess would, I imagine, Cherry
Speaker 1: heads over to the quick trip and demands to see
Speaker 1: the video footage of the transaction.
Speaker 2: Her and her little self, which I can attest to
Speaker 2: at this point is maybe one hundred and twenty pounds
Speaker 2: of older lady. She's a wonderful human. I really like Sherry,
Speaker 2: but she's anybody little thing going down there asking for
Speaker 2: receipts and videos. And I mean Biddleton and Verona is
Speaker 2: pretty small so and she's lived there a long time,
Speaker 2: so she had a couple relationships and wasn't afraid to
Speaker 2: go up and say, hey, I want to look at
Speaker 2: this video.
Speaker 1: And who does Sherry see using the card issued in
Speaker 1: her name? Her neighbor, Corey Shehry told Jess that Corey
Speaker 1: and her husband Alec had moved in next door a
Speaker 1: few months earlier, and from the beginning it had been
Speaker 1: a tense relationship.
Speaker 2: She said it was always just an uncomfortable dynamic, that
Speaker 2: her and Corey never really hit it off at all,
Speaker 2: but Mike and Corey seem to have some kind of
Speaker 2: like neighborly relationship.
Speaker 1: Sherry reports her discovery to the police, and later that
Speaker 1: day they arrest Corey.
Speaker 8: I began by asking Corey if she was aware that
Speaker 8: her neighbor to the direct north had been burglarized, to
Speaker 8: which she said yes.
Speaker 1: Well, Sherry wasn't able to listen in on the conversation
Speaker 1: between Corey and the arresting officers. I was able to
Speaker 1: obtain the police report, which goes into detail about this
Speaker 1: interaction as well as their full investigation. You're about to
Speaker 1: hear re enacted selections of the police report.
Speaker 8: I began to show Corey Adams the still photographs of
Speaker 8: the suspect inside the Quick Trip located on West Mineral
Speaker 8: Point Road. I asked Corey if she recognized the subject
Speaker 8: in the photograph, from which she said, it sure looks
Speaker 8: like me, It sure looks like me. I then showed
Speaker 8: Corey Adams the photograph of the vehicle buying gas at
Speaker 8: the Quick Trip on East Varona Avenue and asked her
Speaker 8: if that was the vehicle which was sitting in her driveway,
Speaker 8: which she said yes, yes. I again asked Corey Adams
Speaker 8: if she knew anything about the crimes committed against her
Speaker 8: direct next door neighbor Michael and Sharon Ziegler, and she
Speaker 8: again said no, no. As I continued to question Corey Adams,
Speaker 8: she said, I'm racking my brain trying to make sense
Speaker 8: of this.
Speaker 5: I'm racking my brain trying to make sense of this.
Speaker 8: I informed Corey Adams that the evidence against her at
Speaker 8: this point was very incriminating and that if she had
Speaker 8: any involvement with this crime, now is the time to
Speaker 8: tell me the truth.
Speaker 1: Corey continues to say she doesn't know anything about any
Speaker 1: crimes committed against her name. Corey is later charged with
Speaker 1: four counts of fraudulent use of a credit card. However,
Speaker 1: the police are never able to connect Corey to the
Speaker 1: missing safe or find proof that she entered the Ziegler's
Speaker 1: house illegally. Here's Jess again.
Speaker 2: Sherry insists that Corey was in her home, and she's
Speaker 2: convinced that she had to come in the house gotten
Speaker 2: a letter because it had to be done from her phone.
Speaker 1: In court, Corey ultimately takes a plea bargain, admitting to
Speaker 1: one count of fraudulently using a credit card. She denies
Speaker 1: stealing it, though instead she claims she simply found the
Speaker 1: activated credit card outside on the ground and decided to
Speaker 1: use it. Judge William E. Hanrahan is skeptical. Here's a
Speaker 1: reenactment of some of his comments in court.
Speaker 9: All right, so somebody else had access, got into the
Speaker 9: house and took the time to use that home phone
Speaker 9: to activate the credit card, and somehow had access to
Speaker 9: the last port digits of the victim's social Security number,
Speaker 9: and took all these affirmative steps, but didn't have the
Speaker 9: wherewithal to hang on to the card when they left
Speaker 9: the house. And your client just happened to pick up
Speaker 9: that exact, same, newly activated card and had the lapse
Speaker 9: of judgment enough to stick it in her pocket and
Speaker 9: go and use it on several occasions. Is that the story?
Speaker 1: The judge doesn't buy Corey's explanation, and neither do the Zieglers.
Speaker 1: Even though she pleads guilty, they still have so many questions.
Speaker 1: Here's the recreation of parts of Sherry's victim impact statement
Speaker 1: that was read in court.
Speaker 4: This defendant is being charged and convicted of the fraudulent
Speaker 4: use of my credit card, but the underlying concern is
Speaker 4: so much greater than that.
Speaker 5: It is this how did she get my credit card?
Speaker 1: Sherry explains that she spoke with the credit card company
Speaker 1: and they were able to pinpoint the exact time and
Speaker 1: date that the credit card was activated.
Speaker 4: We left our house at six point thirty that night
Speaker 4: and the card was activated at seven o'clock the same night.
Speaker 4: The credit card was activated from our home phone, and
Speaker 4: the credit card company reported that it was activated by
Speaker 4: a woman.
Speaker 5: That woman knew.
Speaker 4: The last four digits of my social security number.
Speaker 1: Cherry tells the judge she believes the woman is her
Speaker 1: next door neighbor, Corey.
Speaker 4: It seems so very obvious to us all that she
Speaker 4: was in our home while she knew we were gone.
Speaker 4: She found the new credit card sitting on the kitchen counter,
Speaker 4: She used our phone to activate it, and then she
Speaker 4: was seen using the credit card Shortly after that, she
Speaker 4: is seen on video using my credit card.
Speaker 5: She used it multiple times.
Speaker 4: Judge, I wish there was a way you could compel
Speaker 4: Corey to tell you and us how she got my
Speaker 4: credit card number. We just want her to admit that
Speaker 4: it was her who stole it. At least then we
Speaker 4: would know who was in our house that night.
Speaker 1: Sherry reminds the judge that this incident was not the
Speaker 1: first intrusion into their home.
Speaker 4: When we returned from a trip to Florida in March,
Speaker 4: we came home to stuff, kitty litter or broken sheet
Speaker 4: rock material scattered throughout our house, especially on my side
Speaker 4: of the bed and in my underwear drawer. This was
Speaker 4: very personal and I felt particularly scared.
Speaker 1: And then there's the issue of the stolen safe, the
Speaker 1: valuables that were never recovered, and no one was held
Speaker 1: accountable for all of it. Was taking a toll on
Speaker 1: Sherry and Mike. So much for the good neighbor city.
Speaker 5: Do we feel safe living next door to Corey? No?
Speaker 4: Do our neighbors feel safe after our house was broken into? No,
Speaker 4: none of us feel safe anymore. We are good, law
Speaker 4: abiding people, and we have to live being afraid of
Speaker 4: our nigh This is no way to live.
Speaker 1: The judge has some choice words for Corey before she leaves.
Speaker 9: Now, I've been told that you've been punished enough by
Speaker 9: a conviction for this crime. I'm not feeling it. Honestly.
Speaker 9: I find this to be an aggravated offense. I don't
Speaker 9: know why, at age fifty two that this seemed like
Speaker 9: a good thing to do in fact, I don't really
Speaker 9: know the depth of what you've done. The most troubling
Speaker 9: aspect of this whole string of events here is that
Speaker 9: it wasn't against a major corporation. It's not against a stranger.
Speaker 9: It's against your neighbor. This is of biblical proportions. These
Speaker 9: are people who should have been able to trust you.
Speaker 9: It strikes at the very heart of an individual's sense
Speaker 9: of security, their sense of well being, their sense of belonging.
Speaker 1: Corey is sentenced to two years probation in order to
Speaker 1: build a privacy fence between their two properties. The judge
Speaker 1: goes on to Warren Corey that her life is at
Speaker 1: a crossroads and it could easily be headed in the
Speaker 1: wrong direction.
Speaker 9: You've got to know that what you've done is extremely wrong.
Speaker 9: You've got to know that somehow, somewhere along the way
Speaker 9: you slip the tracks. You have to figure out what
Speaker 9: went wrong, and you have to fix it.
Speaker 1: Five years later, Corey is sitting in a small interview
Speaker 1: room in the Wagner County Sheriff's office answering questions about Tealina,
Speaker 1: and when Detective Weber asks about Corey's criminal history, she
Speaker 1: tells him a very different story. Than she told police
Speaker 1: in Wisconsin in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 3: Somebody brought up at some point that you were charged
Speaker 3: with something and I don't remember what state.
Speaker 7: Wisconsin or in Wisconsin, Wisconsin. Yes, So what happened in
Speaker 7: a nutshell my husband's.
Speaker 1: Version, she's the victim. She tells Weber that she had
Speaker 1: befriended Mike Ziegler and he had helped her out financially
Speaker 1: during a rough patch. Corey says Mike offered her his
Speaker 1: wife's credit card to use for essentials like gas and groceries,
Speaker 1: and he said she could pay him back whenever she
Speaker 1: got the chance.
Speaker 7: Well, the wife was jealous of him and I for
Speaker 7: no reason, and she had a canary and she pressed charges.
Speaker 1: Weber doesn't take Corey's story at face value. Instead, the
Speaker 1: Wagner County Sheriff's office reaches out to authorities in Wisconsin
Speaker 1: for context. I imagine Weber got the same police reports.
Speaker 1: I have, the ones detailing the missing safe, the multiple
Speaker 1: break ins, the strange debris scattered all around the house.
Speaker 1: Weber also gets a tip a legend that Corey had
Speaker 1: not only stolen the Ziegler's credit card, but had actually
Speaker 1: tried to poison them. It sounds a little far fetched,
Speaker 1: why would she poison her neighbors. But when Wagner police
Speaker 1: discover the castor beans and the word document outlining how
Speaker 1: to make ricin, they start to wonder, maybe that tip.
Speaker 3: Is true, considering the beans were hidden in a safe
Speaker 3: inside of bubble wrap in a closet, and because Corey
Speaker 3: lied about having a key to it, and this made
Speaker 3: the history in Wisconsin in which she reportedly trying to
Speaker 3: poison people much more likely to be true.
Speaker 1: And maybe that strange debris Sherry Ziegler found in her
Speaker 1: bed wasn't kitty litter after all. In July, the Wagner
Speaker 1: County Sheriff's office reaches out to Sherry, who later told
Speaker 1: all of.
Speaker 2: This to Jess. One of the sheriffs said, well, if
Speaker 2: you think you still have any of it in your house,
Speaker 2: she said, you know, I don't think I do, but
Speaker 2: I'll go and look. And it just so happens that
Speaker 2: behind her dresser in her room she still had parts
Speaker 2: of it. I was kind of shocked, because this happened
Speaker 2: in twenty fourteen, and we're talking twenty twenty at this point,
Speaker 2: that she still had pieces of it. I was like, Wow,
Speaker 2: I don't think i'd have any of that left in
Speaker 2: my house. She said she had kept some of the
Speaker 2: kitty litter stuff, like in a bag eat, just because
Speaker 2: she was always like confused as to what it was.
Speaker 2: And they had said, well, can you mail whatever it
Speaker 2: is you have down to the Sheriff's office and she
Speaker 2: said sure, why not.
Speaker 1: Wagner Investigators receive Sherry's package and hands it over to
Speaker 1: the FBI for testing. It comes back positive for risin.
Speaker 2: And I was like, wow, she. I'm a huge Breaking
Speaker 2: Bad fan, love Breaking Bad. I remember the episode when
Speaker 2: Walter made Bryce no to castor beans. So that's where
Speaker 2: my head went, like her in a lab somewhere creating
Speaker 2: this powder, and really she was doing it in the
Speaker 2: shed in the backyard. So that was my Oh shit,
Speaker 2: we're in a lot of trouble.
Speaker 1: Now Here's what Jess told me happened next, though I
Speaker 1: wasn't able to independently verify it.
Speaker 2: Every post office that her letter went through had to
Speaker 2: be shut down and inspected and tested because of what
Speaker 2: the poison ended up being. So I joke with Sherry
Speaker 2: all the time in regards to being, you know, one
Speaker 2: of those people that sends poison in the mail. I'm like, gosh,
Speaker 2: we you know you're a felon at this point, and
Speaker 2: we kind of giggle about it, and the poor sheriff,
Speaker 2: I'm sure, is beating his head against the wall, thinking
Speaker 2: what the heck did I have her do? I can't
Speaker 2: imagine any sheriff in the right mind to be like,
Speaker 2: go ahead and mail that to us if that's you
Speaker 2: know what he actually thought it was.
Speaker 1: The Wagner County Sheriff's office passes the information along to
Speaker 1: Wisconsin so they can open their own investigation. But back
Speaker 1: in Oklahoma, Toalina's case remains at a standstill. Corey's still
Speaker 1: free on bond, Toleina is still missing, and the online
Speaker 1: sleuth are suddenly in the dark.
Speaker 2: After Marty had died, we were kind of cut off
Speaker 2: from information in Oklahoma quite a bit. He was the
Speaker 2: one that police bar I was talking to, so then
Speaker 2: he'd feed it back to us, right.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, Corey goes about her business. In late August, she
Speaker 1: attempts to scrap to Lena's truck, a two thousand and
Speaker 1: seven Dodge Ram. She brings it to Budget Recycling along
Speaker 1: with the story that the truck had been given to
Speaker 1: her by a relative of a friend, and that it
Speaker 1: was kind of busted. The scrapyard says they can only
Speaker 1: give her about two hundred bucks, which is far less
Speaker 1: than the truck is worth, but she agrees and walks
Speaker 1: out with the cash. The scrapyard employees find this whole
Speaker 1: interaction strange, especially after they drive the car and it's
Speaker 1: running just fine. After doing a bit of googling amateur
Speaker 1: sleuths themselves, they work out who Corey is a suspect
Speaker 1: in her roommate's disappearance and report the incident to Corey
Speaker 1: is arrested once again, this time for felony, fraud, and embezzlement.
Speaker 1: But Corey bonds out once again, and this time she
Speaker 1: gets out of Wagner. She heads to Wisconsin to stay
Speaker 1: with her mom. Jess learns about this and realizes Corey
Speaker 1: is now only one stayed away.
Speaker 2: When she moved to Wisconsin to be with her mom,
Speaker 2: I got not scared, but more worried because she was closer.
Speaker 2: Middleton is four and a half hours for me, so
Speaker 2: easy trip if she wanted to make it.
Speaker 7: And there's one goall online that you know, between some
Speaker 7: misinformation and some fabrication.
Speaker 1: It's unfortunate with Corey in Wisconsin, all of Jess's spies
Speaker 1: on the ground and Wagner are useless.
Speaker 2: So there was nothing, no neighbors to eyeball, Corey, nobody
Speaker 2: like nobody.
Speaker 1: For all the frenzy of the early investigation, things now
Speaker 1: start to slow way down. Summer turns into fall, turns
Speaker 1: into winter with no update on Telena. COVID meanwhile continues
Speaker 1: to lay siege to the country. By the end of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, deaths from the virus are still climbing, and
Speaker 1: most public schools stay remote amid another COVID search. And
Speaker 1: while there's some hope that life will eventually go back
Speaker 1: to normal, the continued isolation, the high unemployment rates, the
Speaker 1: uncertainty of it all is taking a toll. It's bleak
Speaker 1: for Telena's family too. Here's Cheryl.
Speaker 6: Mom and I read were talking. Mom said, she's not
Speaker 6: coming back. I just know it. I just know what.
Speaker 6: They just have to find her body.
Speaker 10: When she said it, I admitted, that's exactly what I
Speaker 10: thought to him, that, you know, we didn't know what
Speaker 10: in the world had happened to her, but we just thought, No,
Speaker 10: it's bad, it's bad.
Speaker 1: The Wagner police have also lost hope that they'll find
Speaker 1: Teleina alive.
Speaker 6: They had been down all the various things and it
Speaker 6: was absolutely no trail over and admitted they were pretty
Speaker 6: sure they were searching for a body, and they came
Speaker 6: and they did collect some DNA.
Speaker 5: Swaps from mom.
Speaker 10: That was hard on her that she did it, of course,
Speaker 10: because then it was she wanted her found.
Speaker 5: She didn't want.
Speaker 10: Her laying out someplace. We're in a fallow grave somewhere,
Speaker 10: you know. She wanted her found. Good morning, I'm.
Speaker 11: A Sheriff Chris Elliott with a Wager County sheriff office.
Speaker 1: On January twenty second, twenty twenty one, more than nine
Speaker 1: months since Telena disappeared, Wagner authorities addressed the public with
Speaker 1: a big update.
Speaker 11: This press conference is regarding what originally started out as
Speaker 11: a missing person's investigation regarding Tolina Galloway.
Speaker 1: Sheriff Chris Elliott starts off with the story about a
Speaker 1: woman in a totally different state who observes something unusual
Speaker 1: back over the summer.
Speaker 11: On June eighth, the twenty twenty a witness in the
Speaker 11: area of Polk County, Arkansas, observed a pickup towing a
Speaker 11: small enclosed trailer.
Speaker 5: The truck and trailer.
Speaker 11: Will observed to be driving into a secluded area that
Speaker 11: is adjacent to the Quadchital National Force South Amna, Arkansas.
Speaker 1: From inside her house, the woman notices a truck and
Speaker 1: U haul trailer turned down Woody Lane, a dead end
Speaker 1: logging road next to her property.
Speaker 11: Now, this witness said that it was suspicious to her,
Speaker 11: so she went to investigate.
Speaker 1: Wondering why a truck with a U haul is creeping
Speaker 1: down a private road, the woman, yet another fearless amateur sleuth,
Speaker 1: decides to follow it. When she eventually reaches the parked
Speaker 1: truck and trailer, they're deserted, no one is around, but
Speaker 1: something else catches her nose.
Speaker 11: She went to the area to where she thought the
Speaker 11: truck was located the truck, walked up to the truck
Speaker 11: and denoted the tag number on the truck and then
Speaker 11: denoted that there was a foul odor came from the trailer,
Speaker 11: and then observed a foul smelling thick lake wood pooled
Speaker 11: in the floor of the trailer.
Speaker 1: The woman quickly memorizes the licensed plate number of the
Speaker 1: truck and runs back to her house where she jots
Speaker 1: it down. Then she calls local police to report what
Speaker 1: she saw. A little while later, she spots the truck
Speaker 1: and the trailer leave. Inside, she sees a driver and
Speaker 1: a passenger. She waits all day for the police to
Speaker 1: show up, but she never sees them. Six months pass
Speaker 1: it's the day before Christmas. The weather is nice, and
Speaker 1: the woman decides to stretch her legs. She goes walking
Speaker 1: in the same area down Woody Lane where she saw
Speaker 1: the suspicious truck and trailer. Back then, at the height
Speaker 1: of summer, the trees had been full and the forest
Speaker 1: thick with brush. But now in winter, the trees have
Speaker 1: shed their leaves and she can see much further into
Speaker 1: the bare forest. Peering into the distance, she spots a large, white,
Speaker 1: almost square object.
Speaker 2: She walks over to it.
Speaker 11: The same witness was walking in the woods and came
Speaker 11: upon a wide box top fraser with a lid type shit.
Speaker 1: The freezer is wrapped in duct tape. The woman doesn't
Speaker 1: open it. Instead, she goes home and tells her husband
Speaker 1: what she found, but it's Christmas Eve, so they wait
Speaker 1: to call the police until after the new year. Eventually,
Speaker 1: in the middle of January, a deputy comes out to
Speaker 1: take a look. The woman accompanies him down Woody Lane
Speaker 1: and into the forest. They approach the white freezer. The
Speaker 1: deputy throws back the lid. A face a human skull
Speaker 1: stares back at him.
Speaker 11: They discovered what they believed at that time to be
Speaker 11: human remains inside the fraser. The Arkansas State Medical Examiner
Speaker 11: accepted jurisdiction of the remains and took possession of the
Speaker 11: fraser and conducted an autopsy. On January nineteenth, twenty twenty one,
Speaker 11: Wider County Sheriff's Office received a tent over report of
Speaker 11: identification from the Arkansas State Medical Examiner, identifying there were
Speaker 11: human remains as Toulena Galloway and classified the manner of
Speaker 11: death as homicide.
Speaker 2: It was my son's birthday and we went out to
Speaker 2: dinner at Fish Jale. You're sitting at that round table
Speaker 2: in the center, and my phone kept going off off,
Speaker 2: and I was like, damn it bro out to dinner, LA.
Speaker 2: So I look at it and see this text and
Speaker 2: Nicole said they found her, and I was like, oh
Speaker 2: my god. So I kind of was like, I'm going
Speaker 2: to go outside quick, I'll be right back, and she
Speaker 2: was a master, was bawling, and then I started crying
Speaker 2: because I was like, how did they find her? And
Speaker 2: she said, we were right, She's in the freezer. She
Speaker 2: cut her up and I was like, no fucking way,
Speaker 2: and it was we just we we all just kind
Speaker 2: of cried. My ex husband and his wife were there,
Speaker 2: my husband, our kids, and I come back and crying
Speaker 2: and everybody's like, what happened, Like something happened to grandma,
Speaker 2: Like what's wrong? And I said, we found Teleina. It
Speaker 2: just rooin the whole night, ruin the whole week. And
Speaker 2: from there it was kind of a grieving I felt
Speaker 2: like I went through a little bit of a grieving
Speaker 2: process for Tulina.
Speaker 1: At the press conference, police explained that Teleina's body had
Speaker 1: been methodically cut into pieces before being placed in the freezer.
Speaker 1: For Teleina's friends and family, finding out that she was
Speaker 1: gone and discarded in such a horrific way was especially
Speaker 1: hard to bear. Here's Nicole.
Speaker 12: When I got the phone call telling me that they
Speaker 12: had found the body and how they found the body,
Speaker 12: that I really did have a meltdown. I was getting
Speaker 12: ready to go into a zoom call. At the time,
Speaker 12: I was working for a nonprofit and I called and
Speaker 12: I said, I can't do it. I can't do it.
Speaker 12: I just I just found out, and it really did
Speaker 12: hit me differently, especially because I knew in my heart
Speaker 12: that she was gone. I knew for a long time,
Speaker 12: but then after that it was really hard to know
Speaker 12: how she went and what she went through. And then
Speaker 12: what gets me through it is just to know that
Speaker 12: I'm so lucky to have been loved by her for
Speaker 12: the little time that I was, to be her friend,
Speaker 12: and to have her in my life.
Speaker 1: Here's Cheryl Tolina's sister.
Speaker 6: We all kind of knew in our gut something bad
Speaker 6: had happened, and.
Speaker 5: Deep down.
Speaker 10: We thought it'll be a body.
Speaker 12: But where the.
Speaker 5: How it was agonizing.
Speaker 6: They did call us first, notified the family and went
Speaker 6: through every grouply detail and told us everything they found,
Speaker 6: what they saw on stuff. And the reason, of course,
Speaker 6: was because the following day it was going to be
Speaker 6: made public and they did not want us to be
Speaker 6: at all surprised or you know, shocked or traumatized by
Speaker 6: what came out publicly. They wanted to make sure we
Speaker 6: knew it first so that we were prepared. Now, I
Speaker 6: will give you this one part.
Speaker 5: That we got that wasn't necessarily public.
Speaker 13: The coroner who did the autopsy and all he had
Speaker 13: given a note specifically to the family that she had
Speaker 13: died by blunt force trauma to the skull or to
Speaker 13: the head.
Speaker 6: There was so much dammage to the skull. He was
Speaker 6: very certain she had died instantly, and he believed that
Speaker 6: she was laying down when she was struck and probably sleeping.
Speaker 1: Knowing Telena likely died instantly while she was sleeping was
Speaker 1: a relief of sorts, but it didn't take away the
Speaker 1: pain of knowing what someone did to her body.
Speaker 10: The circumstances were far more gruesome than we could have
Speaker 10: ever imagined.
Speaker 6: And I didn't expect it to be easy at all
Speaker 6: under any other circumstances that I did not expect something
Speaker 6: like that.
Speaker 5: And I think it was just, oh my god.
Speaker 10: This just certainly can't possibly be what happened, and it was.
Speaker 6: It haunted me.
Speaker 10: It haunted me.
Speaker 12: What was she'll haunt me.
Speaker 10: It is painful, horrifically painful, and I will cry, but
Speaker 10: I want she to know I am okay.
Speaker 6: Even if I cry, I am okay.
Speaker 1: Next time. On what happened to Tolenazar Corey is arrested
Speaker 1: for not one but two crimes in two states.
Speaker 11: Corey Bondeley was arrested yesterday afternoon in Dane County, Wisconsin,
Speaker 11: and is currently in the Dane County Jail waiting transport
Speaker 11: back to Wager County, where she will face charges of
Speaker 11: murder in the first degree desecration of a human.
Speaker 1: Course and Jess and the Internet sleuths can finally hang
Speaker 1: up their hats if they're willing to.
Speaker 2: I don't think this is ever going to be over
Speaker 2: for me. It's so you're not going to put it down.
Speaker 2: I don't think I can.
Speaker 1: What Happened to Tealinazar is a production of iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 1: It's written, reported, and hosted by me Melissa Jelson, with
Speaker 1: writing and story editing by Lauren Hansen. Our executive producer
Speaker 1: is Ryan Murdoch. For iHeart Podcasts, executive producers are Jason
Speaker 1: English and Carl Catele. Fact checking by Maya Shukri. Zoe
Speaker 1: Denkla is our associate producer. Jeremy Thal is our editor.
Speaker 1: Original music by Aaron Kaufman, with additional music by Jeremy
Speaker 1: Thal and Gideon Crevishe additional sound design by Marita speH.
Speaker 1: Episodes are mixed and mastered by Karl Catle. Voice acting
Speaker 1: by Lizzie Gore, Chris Ferry, Stephanie Frame, Pete Monica and
Speaker 1: Molly Maslin. Our logo is designed by Edo Moore. Thanks
Speaker 1: so much for listening.