How Many More?

Hi, I'm Holly. And I'm Hailey. Welcome to Mountain Mysteries Tales from Appalachia. All right, welcome back.

Hello everyone. Hi. Have you missed us? We are still here.

We're always here. You know, it's something I was thinking about. We never take a break, actually, from this podcast. A friend of mine was saying that.

She was like, you guys give us an episode new every single week. Like, even if you pull from the Patreon files, you still give us a new episode every week. Yeah, I don't think... Did we take a week off when I was dying?

Or did we pull a Patreon that week? I feel like maybe we pulled a Patreon. Honestly, I don't. I think maybe one time.

If that was maybe... It would have been the only time. I think so. I think so.

Very, very ill and could not do anything. I mean, even when I had COVID, we had people fill in. Yeah, we did. So, yeah, we had fill ins for COVID and...

Yeah, it's been a journey. It has been quite the journey. And there's sometimes where I'm like, when will this ever end? Oh, in a bad way or...

No, just like a... I do wonder when this ends. Like, what will it be? Well, one of us have to die.

Oh my god. Why does it have to be that way? I don't know. I can't just be that...

Because someone's like, oh, thanks. I'm just not having fun anymore, but I don't anticipate us not enjoying this. Yeah, yeah. Exactly.

Maybe we'll have a major falling out. Ooh. And if you have an episode and then I find out you were kind of over for hire or that you were trying to edit me. Yeah.

It'll be like YouTube drama. I'll scratch your eyes out. Yeah. I can't see that.

I feel like we're too much over that. We're just too lazy for that. And yeah, that's a lot of work. We live kind of far away from it.

Yeah, maybe I'm a big struggle. Well, you know, a couple of months ago was my birthday. Yes, it was. I didn't tell you this.

But so I'm in a group text with my colleagues. We all have a group text. And so, one of my colleagues, shout out Angela. She said, you know, happy birthday Holly.

Thanks for all you do for the team. Most importantly, thanks for always bringing the appropriate amount of daily snark and pranks to the office. I would say that you light up every room you walk into, but as a true crime fan and the host of your own podcast I know that's damning. And she is correct.

I love that. Yeah, I don't know if anyone would ever describe me as lighting up a room. No, I don't see that. No, it's not in a bad way.

I know. Doorways. No, no, no, no. No, I think that it's like there's a crisis.

Oh, good hailies here. Yeah, that's kind of me. I think that is more you like, okay, wait, something that's going on. Where's Haley?

We need her here to help fix your like the fixer. Yeah, that's more you. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, God, I'm going to die, aren't I? I don't think so. I'm in the bright light. You're like, I mean, yeah, you kind of are.

I know you kind of are. I was not saying you're kind of like the person that like the mom in the room like you're the person that like if I need like an adult, you're my adult. When we're like in a situation where I can't even adult to handle this like the adult in the room is Holly. Oh, God.

Like she's just there to like, I will nurture you. Warmly nurture. I will nurture. Warm life.

Oh, God. I'm telling you, I know, right? And I think in general, I'm a pretty happy, sunny person. You are a sunny disposition.

Yes, my son is the exact same way. Yes. So I feel like we are damned. I don't know what's going to happen to us.

This terrifies me. But yes, I mean, just know in in my my episode, you know, prayers for Holly, hers or Holly, that, you know, you're gonna say things like, well, she always let up a room. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm more of like when there is a thunderstorm. That's me. Interesting. Chaos.

Yeah. I don't really bring chaos. No, no, but you're well chaos. Yeah, I'm a very in the storm.

I haven't told him a very calming presence in an emergency. You're studying the storm. And I get that from both my parents, but I think particularly my dad. Yeah, because I have never seen him excited.

And it's like in a crisis. Like, yes, he can get excited about things. But like, Oh, happy birthday. I've never seen him.

And I'm very much the same way. Like if there is an emergency or there's a crisis or something has happened, I instantly get 10 degrees calmer. Yeah, like I bring everything down. And I don't think that's a skill.

I think that's just something that I was predisposed to. Yeah, like I don't think you can train that. I think you just have that quality. I don't have that quality.

I do. Yeah, but I don't. Right. That makes sense.

Yes. And I think people in, I think I would have been very well suited for like emergency medicine, because both my parents were going to emergency medicine. But that kind of calm, cool nature, almost to a fault sometimes. Yeah, in the version, I'm like, it's fine.

You're like, it's fine. It's fine. I have had many a client, you know, say things like, Oh, yes. So I decided to kill myself.

I went and bought rope from clothes and yeah, it's telling me these things internally. I'm going, Oh, my gosh, WG haven't like all the sensors in my body are going off. I am very calm. What comes out of my mouth is, you know, how long have you been thinking about this?

You know, how detailed is your plan? You know, what are my next steps? Very calm. Yeah, not to alert you or alarm you because you could just be looking for a reaction from me.

Yeah. So I get that too. But inside is like, holy shit. Yeah.

So it's such a dichotomy of what physically is manifesting for me. But externally is I'm trying to have a poker face. I feel it more in my body. I feel in my chest.

Almost when I'm in those situations, like I know my heart rates up, I know my adrenaline kicks in so fast in those situations that it I'm very clear thinking. I'm very solution oriented. I'm very like, we have to what is here now. Yeah.

When there is a crisis in my building and with teenagers, we deal with a lot of crisis. I'm usually a first call, because there's a few of us that when there's a problem, you want us in the room, because we can whether we know how to fix the problem or not, we're going to make sure it doesn't seem like it's a problem. Yeah, we know what to do. We can very quickly triage what's going on in our brains and get what needs to be done done.

Now afterwards, sometimes it's hard to come out of that in process. Because and it's also so physically exhausted. Oh, yeah, it's your drilling is going to be exhausted. Yeah, it is.

And I feel like that's where I come in. Yes. I'm the one who's going to be able to talk down. I'm the process that we can use some of that off.

Yes. And that's why Holly is usually one of my first calls after a dramatic event. We're drunk on a beach. Oh, we're drunk on a beach.

Exactly. Oh, gosh. Okay. Well, what is the story today?

We are going to talk about a serial killer. Geez. Oh, no, I love the room. So we're traveling to two different places.

Well, three, really, we're going to kind of touch South Carolina, West Virginia, and Ohio. Okay, we're touching a lot of places. So we're kind of touching a lot of places. I would like to think Wikipedia for you.

This story. I'd like to think Wikipedia and all the people who put on this stuff that may not be true. That may not be accurate. That you know, we are rolling with it.

I did fact check some of this on other articles. Okay. But my main source of information was the Wikipedia. Thank you for the good.

Thank you so much. Okay, here we go. William Dean Wickline Jr. was born on March 15th, 1952 in Reynoldsburg, Ohio.

He was one of several sons born to William Sr. and Irma Wickline. He grew up in what was described as a loving family. And during because youth, Wickline was regarded as a good student with a promising career in athletics.

Despite these expectations and him being on his high school wrestling team, Wickline's grades fell drastically. And he became known as a small time delinquent, whose most egregious events was egging his principal's car. Sounds just like a senior prank. It does.

And it's one of these like, this is not typically what we hear of murders. No, this is not the family. Not the layer. Social outcast didn't talk to anybody.

No, no, he had a loving family, had, you know, was good in school. A lot of trauma, a lot of trauma that we know of. Yeah, not a lot of issues. Biggest defense was egging his principal's car.

That's a good thing. I mean, we toilet paper my math teacher's car. Oh, there's a prank. I mean, she thought it was hilarious.

We had a principal's. What's in a piece word? You don't know. Like our, um, seeing my senior prank was we failed because the offices in our building, um, the walls to go all the ceiling, the partition walls could be so we got on ladders and filled all of them with balloons.

Oh, so it was really funny. Very sweet. Very easy to clean up. Yeah.

And they kind of just suspended. Yeah, no, we all got to walk in graduation. It was fine. Yeah.

So that's kind of what I've envisioned. This guy be like, yeah, this kind of, you know, easy going, you know, a little prankster. Yeah, camp. Well, it kind of turns.

Oh, God. So what client's first arrest was in 1971, he was 19. And until 1984, he would be arrested at least nine more times for charges ranging from burglary and dealing drugs to running a prostitution ring. What the heck?

Boy, this is gone way far from egg in a car. Yeah. And I know we don't love the word prostitution, but that's what his reference to in low charcoal. So during his times in prison, he would spend much of that time with past time such as looking weights and studying psychology and would integrate himself further within the prison system.

So he's a smart dude in prison. And by psychology, he's educating on himself and having manipulate others basically is what he's saying. And he's getting buffed so he could take somebody down. Yeah.

Okay. After spending several years in many different prisons around the state, Wicline would eventually be released again in November of 1979. After a temporary breakup with his girlfriend, he started displaying increasingly violent tendencies. During this period, he developed an affinity for knives and had numerous short term relationships with various women who he verbally threatened on a few occasions.

According to a friend of his, Wicline also allegedly participated in a group that conducted animal sacrifices and other violent activities. But this was never like conclusively driven. We've just really gone down. We've run the gamut here.

I've got to think about that for a minute, because there's got to be something that led him in this path. There's got to be something. I'm gonna go ahead and guess it was drugs. Ah, well, there we are.

I don't know if that's I don't that's not really ever brought up. But that kind of slide and behavior. Yeah, leads me to believe drugs. Or maybe a trauma of some sort.

Or just you know, so at 19, when he was accused of his first events and jailed, that's usually when mental illness begins to come out for individuals, especially men. And if he if this was exacerbated by any kind of drug use, obviously, you know, anything that happens now is heightened because he's coping with drugs and he's using that which makes it worse. So it could be a cocktail of both. Yeah, expression.

Yeah, could be. Okay. All right. So we're gonna kind of get into the murders now.

So we've got some confirmed murders. I'm gonna talk about some unconvering murders. Okay. All right.

On November 11 of 1979, the body of a 34 year old construction worker from Columbia South Carolina, Charles Morgan Marsh was found on his bed at a hotel room in Parkersburg, West Virginia. Marsh's head had been decapitated and placed on the nightstand beside the bed while his headless body and his hands handcuffed behind his back. Upon conducting the autopsy, coroner determined that the cause of death was strangulation with a telephone cord and that the murder has severed the head with one or two cuts indicating he was a skilled butcher. At least the cuts were postmortem.

So he was dead before it happened. So my mother blessings be some blessing in all of this. What the hell this guy is a sick puppy. Oh, it gets better.

Of worse or worse. So maybe most peculiarly about this incident was it was also determined that Marsha's killer had also taken his time to comb the hair of the victim's severed head. So we went to look really nice when somebody finds your head. So let me go ahead and just come here.

What the hell? I guess every killer has like their own specific calling cards to speak kind of. So this violent nature of the crime and the fact that marsh was known to be a drug dealer, led investigators to believe that this was a likely contract killing possibly by a rival dealer who wanted to prevent him from encroaching on his territory. But at the time, no suspects can be identified.

So pretty intense for a drug dealer. Yeah, I'll just cut your head off. Yeah. On August 14th, 1982, Wickline and his girlfriend at the time Theresa Kemp went to Columbus, Ohio to sell a $6,000 drug debt with Christopher and Peggy Lurch, a couple from blended in township in Ohio, who were involved in the drug trafficking business.

So business meeting to settle debts is occurring. Not good. Not great. So there's an argument, of course, don't know what was said.

But after the argument, Wickline asks at Christopher accompanying him to the upstairs bathroom to help him with a clogged drain. Just been fighting about drugs. Can you come here, Sarah? I got when the toilet can you come help?

It was actually in a bathtub. Maybe he should about the who's to say things are clogging hair in the bathtub. Maybe from the coma just ever had to say. Maybe you know, no, no.

So while Chris was looking in the bathtub, Wickline takes out a knife and lets his throat, deciding that he needed to get rid of Peggy as well, as she can, it could be a potential witness. Wickline threatened to hurt Kemp if she did not help him out by holding the sleeping woman's legs while he proceeded to strangle her to death with a rope. Jeez, so Nick, we're doing a lot of that killing. Yeah, there's a lot going on.

Yeah, after killing both of Lurch's Wickline transported their bodies to the bathtub where he decapitated and dismembered their remains. He then placed the remains in plastic garbage bags. And with Kim's help, the pair dumped them in various garbage containers across Franklin County. As a sort of souvenir, Wickline kept Peggy's wedding ring.

I'm glad I thought you're gonna say or ha ha, no, no, no. In 1984, while Wickline was serving in jail sentence unrelated to the murders, Kemp took handcuffs, jewelry and other items that belong to Christopher and Peggy Lurch and hid them in a safety deposit box. The items were later recovered by the police. The dead couple was last heard from on August 12th of 1982, and a missing persons report was filed on them in late August of that year.

And Lurch's remains have never been found. I guess because they were so scattered. Yeah, maybe it was trash day. Yeah, so they were just picked up and the lines all somewhere.

I actually wonder how many human remains are in Lantills. Probably a lot. A lot. I don't like that.

No, that's not good to the land. Well, that's why you always see, you know, birds swarming. I mean, not just like gross old food. But in the body parts.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so shortly after the Lurch's disappearance, Wickline was arrested for breaking into a drugstore in Nelsonville, for which he was given a year and a half sentence at the Pickaway Correctional Institute, Chun and Orient. Almost two years later, in December, 1984, he was indicted in the Lurch case after camp confessed the crime to the authorities.

Good. So she good. Was like, nope, got to tell somebody before he could even be officially charged with land was additionally linked to the marsh murder in West Virginia and was proposed as a suspect in several other violent crimes involving dismemberments. She's however, he was tried solely for the Lurch's murder, which began on July 30 of 1985.

A little more than a week later, he was found guilty on two counts of aggravated murder. On September 20, he was sentenced to death for Peggy's murder and to a life imprisonment for Christopher's, to which he showed no motion. There were charges filed in the marsh murder, but they were eventually dropped in the case closed due to a client's distance. So we've seen this before in other cases, and we never like it.

But kind of when they're already, you know, it's more descendants to death here, there's nothing else to think else. And I hate that for the family of that person, but also I kind of understand it of holding off because if something falls through, right? In those other cases, we have this other one to get a little bit of sentence. Right.

And that because you know, jeopardy, you can't try for the same right crime. So if they had tried this one without, you know, whatever evidence they needed, this gives them time to gather all that if they need it to build that case to build that case if something were to go well, I mean, rest assured for the family, then he will never get out of jail. Right. So you know, like we know it was him.

I do hate that justice wasn't served in that person's name. But I hope that that was some comfort to the family that you know, he was there. So, Wickline has Ted since denied killing the couple. And what?

Yeah, he's portrayed Kemp as a jealous scorned lover who invented a tale to keep custody of her then infant son after admitting drug use to the authorities. So she didn't just go and confess this on her own, you know, goodwill. There was something else going on there. Yeah.

Alright, so here's a quote from Wickline. That's the one comfort that I have. Wickline said before his sentencing is the hope and the belief that they will be found. And I hope that they are found alive.

But even if they're found dead and in one piece, will she be made to pay back what she has done to me? The judges in Appelate Court since then have rejected this argument. And Kemp has said she doesn't want to comment on any of this before the execution. So and during this, he's like, I didn't kill him.

I think they're still alive. They're still out there. She just made up the story to get me. So it's kind of takes a heat off of her because now she's a witness and just like this crazy sort of.

But it doesn't because she's implicating herself in murder. Right, that she was there in a somatophase, you know, whatever they decide. Exactly. However, Kimples never charged.

So she never really led them to any evidence per se. Right. So it couldn't be like you lead us the evidence we don't pursue this. That is interesting.

Yeah. So they say she was never charged because she didn't do much to help in the killing of piggy lurch. And prosecutors couldn't find evidence of intent to kill. So there really wasn't anything to charge her with.

Didn't she hold her legs? That's what they say. But with no bodies, the physical evidence was stamped. Yeah, but it matched her story.

There were bloody handcuffs, human blood and caulk from the tub and dried human tissue and blood on a folding saw. They said that Kim's candor and demeanor on the stand convinced course of her credibility. So and I'm sure any good defense attorney could have portrayed her as this, you know, as a victim in this as well. Yeah, she was there.

Yes, she was there under like drug pretenses, but kind of a drugs and murder are two very different things. She was scared of him. She had to do that or he would kill her to maybe threaten to kill her kid. That's very very well betrayed.

Like I'm not saying that she's a, I mean, I'm not think she's a good person. Right. But again, drugs and murder. Right.

Two very different things in a way. She arrests herself. So got it all figured out. Don't you sorry?

I hope. Well, doesn't seem like she's committed on a crime change. And she confessed and she yeah, did all that stuff. So with line declined interview requests through prison officials and his attorney continued arguing his innocence though.

And various appeals and two failed requests for cleven scene. His last legal stand rests on a US Supreme Court decision last year saying defense attorneys and death penalty cases don't need their clients cooperation to seek information that could persuade judges to impose life imprisonment instead of death. His counsel did no such investigation for the penalty phase of this case. Absolutely none.

So what they're saying is they could his defense at the time could have pursued other like sentencing options like they could have argued for life imprisonment instead of the death penalty. And they would have do this through this course of investigation of probably like a determined motive and that kind of stuff. But they did do that. To be honest, he's been incarcerated for nearly 40 years.

He's probably going to die in jail before he will ever be executed. Well, he was executed. Oh, he was. We'll talk about this.

So, appeal at courts said that that sort of investigation that we're talking about wouldn't have mattered because backgrounds including child abuse and being forced into crime by parents haven't dissuaded judges from imposing the death penalty. And he didn't really have that history. So was history. That's like that we know.

Yeah, a three judge panel on the six US circuit court of appeals rejected Wickline's request for a stay in execution saying, you know, this is an old argument, the full court declined to rehere the appeal. A psychological evaluation from 1974 when Wickline was imprisoned for the second of a series of burglary conditions said he got along quote fairly well with his parents and two younger brothers but started using drugs age 16. There you go. There's the drug use.

In 1978, his supervisor at a prison slaughterhouse praised Wickline's butchering work as exceptional. You know, he was put in his talent to do. Yeah, you know, you use those skills. Yeah, he sure did.

And look at that, we say prison doesn't teach any questions. Wickline was moved from death row at the Mansfield Correctional Institution to, you know, where he would that's where he would be executed. Yep. So he's moved there.

He spent most of the day talking on the phone to his brother on the day of his execution. His brother David Wickline from Columbus, he chatted with members of the execution team. Hey, but that's the team. Hi, we're the execution team.

Nice to meet you. I'm the one who gives the drugs. Oh, what to be part of the execution team? I strapped you down.

Yeah, it's prison spokeswoman. Andry, a dean was there to kind of, you know, document report all of his class. What year was this? This is, this is in.

I don't know the answer to that. Sorry, I'll look up. Um, yep, don't know. Didn't write that down.

Okay, that would have been a thing I should have wrote down, but I didn't. Um, we'll continue on here. It's fine. You're going to do it.

So around 4pm, Wickline was served his special meal of an eight ounce filet mion, medium rare potato salad, six rolls of butter, fresh strawberries with shortcake and butter pecan ice cream. The state came from the prison kitchen. The other ingredients were bought at a local store for $11.66. He also received four packs of palm all cigarettes, four packs, yup, and six cans of pop, including three of Mountain Dew.

Well, this is March 30th, 2004. Oh, thank you so much. 20 years. Yep, done right that down.

Wickline met with a spiritual advisor, Reverend Gary Sims, a Baptist minister who was in the prison the prisons, departments, religious services. Said he was laughing as he visited later with his brothers David and Robert, who planned to witness the execution. After his brothers left, he continued to talk and laugh on the phone with family and friends. After entering the execution chamber, he gave two thumbs up to his brothers who were attending and calmly awaited the process to take place.

His supposed last words were quote, made tomorrow see the court shaped by more wisdom and less politics. Interesting statement. Yeah. It is.

Okay, so there's a couple other suspected murders that we'll talk about a little bit. So aside from those three known murders, Wickline was considered a strong suspect and several others that involved his memberment and were possibly drug related. He was publicly named as a suspect in these few murders. The 1978 disappearance of gambler, Tori Gaynor, who vanished from Fairfield County.

Informance alleged that Wickline had killed and then scattered his remains around various dumpsters. In January of 1983, the murder of an unidentified man in Miami, Florida, whose remains were found floating in a canal. The medical examiner determined that the cuts were professionally done akin to the way Wickline killed his victims. And it was supposed it might have been another contract killing.

Also, the October 1983 murder of a 15 year old named John A Muncie, whose just number of remains were found in Delaware County. At the time, investigators suspected Muncie might have been a victim of chance as he had gotten in the way of a drug transaction. For a time, he was also proposed as an alternate alternative suspect to the 1984 murders of Annette Cooper and Todd Schultz, for which Cooper's stepfather, Bill Johnson was convicted and sentenced to death, but whose guilt was questioned. In 2008, two other men confessed and were convicted of the crime and Johnson was exonerated.

So that's super interesting. And I know itself. Yeah, so crazy. In 2020, authorities identified Muncie's killer as Daniel Allen Anderson, who was a violent sex offender with past convictions for abusing young boys who had died in 2013.

So he to me though, I mean, the one with the the first one, Tori Gaynor. Yeah, that one sounds reasonable. The one of them, Miami, Florida, that one, and I don't it's really far out of his realm. It is kind of stayed within a circle.

Right. And this one's found in a canal. Yeah, he's dumping in trash cans. Right.

Like, okay, he was just a member of their weirdos out there, he was never right. I don't necessarily believe that one. And then clearly the Muncie one was not connected. Yeah.

So I mean, I could see the Miami one maybe. If there was more to link him, if they could prove like he was there at the time or that. I don't know. I just feel like that's really far off the beaten path where he's kind of kept.

Yeah. I don't think that one's yeah, I might be wrong. Yeah. And the other two, I don't believe the 15 year old.

And then the and that Cooper and Todd should I mean, yeah, I don't believe that one either. But maybe who knows? Well, and there could be others that we don't even know right? Yeah.

But he has even a serial killer. And that is the story. Well, thank goodness. He has been taken care of.

Yeah, almost 20 years ago. Yeah. He's out of here. Good.

But that's them. Well, that's tough. Very tough one. Oh, yeah.

So that was um, journey that we had on together. That was a journey to keep your heads great. Oh, no. That was for.

Oh, gosh. Yeah. I mean, I would hope that and I'm sure they won't but like one day they might find the remains of I hope as other two because that's kind of I mean, it's interesting. It's always interesting to me the cases they try without a body.

Yeah, because a lot of it circumstantial, right? We don't have a body but we don't have a weapon. We don't have all these things. To me, it almost would have made more sense for them to use Marsha's murder because they had a body.

It's true. But I maybe the evidence I guess the evidence is more concrete. And because I got a witness, right? And a lot of the details that she provided match some of the things that they've got on the phone.

Yeah, yeah, makes sense. Oh, that's not what I tell. All right. Well, Hayley, let them know how the heck do they get on the list?

You can send us an email at mountain mysteries. Appalachian at dmail.com. You can find us on our Facebook at Mount mysteries at tales from Appalachia. Find us on our Instagram, Mount mysteries dot Appalachia and check us on patreon for some bonus content.

Patreon, some folding episodes, episodes early, get some mini episodes. Holly and Hayley After Dark. Holly and Hayley After Dark. You get our our blooper reel.

We don't have any of those big joke ever mistakes. But you can find all of that at patreon.com slash not mysteries. Yeah, if you have a few extra dollars to throw our way. Yeah, it's really fun.

It is really fun. Enjoy that one. We are definitely very much. I mean, we're not really filtered on this one.

We're a lot less. We're a lot less than on Patreon. Because it's, you know, this is free content. So we try to keep it as you know, as Pg is possible.

We do. We say some naughty words sometimes, but we never say the F word. No, we're one of those. We don't say.

And I love that word. Yeah, I've heard her say it. She does. I do.

I love that word. I like the hard consonants at the end. So my favorite one of them. Actually, I have one that I like the best and I use on here occasionally.

But yeah, anyway, yeah. So let me give a shout out to man, Cato, Minnesota. Thank you for listening to this. Yeah.

And you know, reach out to us. Let us know your favorite cuss words. Yeah, tell Hayley. She'd love to hear it.

I'd love to hear them. Just actually just cuss her out. Yeah, just a string of X, what would be great. And just right.

You're Hayley love the personalized. Yeah, just send it my way. You know, it's probably nothing I haven't been called before. I work with teens.

I've worked in really hostile environments with hostile people. So, you know, and we love them all. But you know, sometimes they just need to cuss somebody out and if you're the one, I hear that, you know, we'll take it personally. So good.

So send it on. Hey, yeah, it's fine. All right, we will catch you next week. Bye.