MURDERED: The Feeney Family

26:27And I'm like, yeah, but just for Cheryl. Like, it wouldn't— It doesn't change anything about, like, the decomp for the kids. I mean, again— It's the timeline. If you're trying to confuse the scene, which everything in this house feels confusing, if you are trying to make it appear as though she died before the kids, I don't know what that would mean. Or again, I'm just spiraling. Or you just have the other option that it just got turned on. It means nothing. And it's just this additional weird thing in the crime scene. There are some other like small things that they find. So when they process the crime scene, they actually take samples of what looks like semen on the comforter of the couple's waterbed.

27:09Although reporting never mentions evidence that Cheryl was sexually assaulted. And we know that she was found in her nightgown. They also collect a hair from Cheryl's nightgown that they can tell was recently dyed reddish brown, as well as a couple of gray hairs from the garage, one of which was on the paintbrush used by the killer. And for what it's worth, John and Cheryl both have brown hair. Tyler was more of like a dark blonde. I haven't seen any pictures that showed Jennifer's hair color. Whatever it was, none of the family matched these hairs that are found. And as far as I can tell, there's never any mention of other biologics or hairs or anything being found in any of the kids' bedrooms.

27:53But that's not to say that there aren't other clues. One clue they find is just disguised a little. You see, A. Scharnhorst reports for the Kansas City Star that during Tyler's autopsy, the medical examiner finds that he had liver damage, which doesn't make sense in a healthy six-year-old kid. Like, the Emmy doesn't know what it means yet, won't know what it means for a while because he has to order some additional tests that are going to take time. But it's just like this thing that everyone's like, we've got to figure this out. This is another weird thing. Right. And while they wait, over the next few days, investigators interview John's friends, family, coworkers.

28:32And basically the consensus is like, there is no way that John did this. He would just never do something so heinous. John and Cheryl were happy. John's a good guy. Friends and colleagues from the conference say that he was his usual self all weekend long. Like, heck, the guy teed up for a casual round of golf within hours of the murders and not a hint of stress or distress or distraction or even a bad mood was anywhere to be found on him. Though, to investigators, that doesn't mean a whole lot. I mean, I've told you about the scene. You got to be a special kind of inhumane monster to do what this killer did.

29:10Whoever did this would probably act fine after. So if they're going to rule John out, it's got to be using cold, hard facts, not feelings about how he acted. Osage Beach Police Department confirms for investigators that John was there paying the ticket, getting his license back at 1030 Saturday night. So that part of his story checks out. But when they process John's car, they discover the first crack in his story. No incriminating forensics or anything like that. Like in his car, they don't find any traces of blood. There's no weapons. There's no bloody clothing. Any beige paint. There is no beige paint to be found.

29:48No shoes matching the prints from the scene either. Which actually, speaking of the shoes, investigators had determined that those were men's size 11. But at least one source reports that John wears a men's size 12 for what it's worth. And depending on the story in the cut, I'm like seven different pant sizes. I feel like he could probably have squeezed his feet into size 11 shoes. He also could have like not even been wearing shoes. Right. Right. We keep going back to this. May the Prince. Anyways, back to the car. So nothing tying him to the crime scene physically. But what they find is something interesting.

30:19So there is a receipt from a McDonald's near the resort time stamped at 6.59 a.m. on Sunday. But John's story was that he didn't even leave the hotel until late that morning to go golfing. Yeah, and McDonald's never played a leading role in his story. So when they bring him back in and question him about this, all he can say is like, oh my God, I totally forgot that I left to get breakfast that morning. Like, just slipped my mind. If this was like months, even weeks ago, I'd be like, okay, little mix up. But we're not asking about a month ago, John. We're literally talking like 24 hours ago. I know.

30:59I think about serial when like the way serial season one starts where it's like, where was the teenager six weeks ago? Like, it's John. Like, where were you this like yesterday morning? Yesterday, yeah. I know. So we've got this timeline now. And in this timeline, he is unaccounted for for eight, maybe eight and a half hours. Although unaccounted for maybe isn't the right phrase because, I mean, per his story, he's sleeping in his hotel room by himself like he should have been. But we know that the round trip home and back would have taken right around three hours, give or take. Like it's 90 minutes each way.

31:32Which would leave him a minimum of five to five and a half hours to theoretically wipe out his family, do some careful staging, and then get breakfast. Was it all truly staging, though? I mean, the photos being turned around feel like a very real part of all. That part feels real. I know. And it would take time to do, but it more makes me think it was someone, like you said, who knew the family, who couldn't bear to look at all these photos. Like, it's the only real thing here. That feels super personal. And maybe it is the only real thing. And especially when you think about the fact that Cheryl and Tyler's faces were covered and, like, Jennifer is, like, curled up in a ball face down.

32:12All of this, to me, says that it's someone who was familiar with them. Someone who felt some sort of way after they did what they did. I mean, even during. Yeah, and like couldn't bear to look at the faces of the people that they killed. But the question is, was that someone John? Because even though the McDonald's receipt is definitely sketch, like the fact that he left it out and it looks really bad for him, there was something else in the car that actually plays in his favor. John was known to keep a written travel log in his car where he records all of his mileage. I don't know why. I don't know if the school district like reimburses for travel or what.

32:51Or like I've truly also my friend's dad does this for like no reason other than his own records. Just for fun. Cool. So he's got this like detailed log. And when investigators compare the mileage on the car to the travel log, it matches perfectly for him not making the extra drive home and back. Like there's no unaccounted for miles for an extra trip home to kill your family. Per the log, there were just enough miles for him to have gone on the trip, but not to have made another trip home and back. Listen, I am admittedly not a math girlie. But how hard would that be to fake, though? Especially if this was, like, planned well in advance.

33:32Just pad your mileage log here and there for days, weeks. So when it all comes down to it, those extra miles in your murder-your-family road trip are already, quote-unquote, accounted for. Totally possible. But, I mean, when you look at everything as a whole, we have no physical evidence. You have a matching mileage log, no matter how you got there. So police don't have a lot to work with if they think that John's their guy. Now, for the first week following the murders, John and Cheryl's family present a really united front. They even go to the funeral home to pick out caskets together for the funeral, which is held the following Friday.

34:07But then the united front becomes a little less so. And it's because of what happens when John sits for another interview, which will turn out to be his last interview. This is on Saturday, the day after the funeral and almost a week after the murders. By now, his family has caught on that investigators are looking at him closely, which like, yes, duh, we said he's the husband. So they hire him, this hotshot local defense lawyer, to represent him like mid-interview, quite literally. Which, life rule number nine, always get a lawyer. For sure. So this attorney hightails it to the station and is like, knock, knock, knock.

34:44You're talking to my client there. Like, I need to speak with him. But investigators are like, sorry, sir, I can't let you in on account of John hasn't personally invoked his rights. So the lawyer asked them to pass along a message to his client. Which I can truly only imagine is just do not talk. Shut the hell up. Shut up. Yeah, whatever it is, the investigators declined that request to. So the interview continues. At some point, they ask him to take a polygraph, but he says, no, thank you. And they don't have anything to hold him on. So after a couple of hours, John skedaddles. And from that point forward, he declines further interview requests at the advice of his new lawyer.

35:20So is the hiring a lawyer or not taking a polygraph what causes a rift between the families? The polygraph is what plants the first seeds of doubt with Cheryl's family. And I mean, investigators don't like it either. They tell the press that it'll be really hard to rule him out until he agrees to sit for one. John's lawyer points out that, like, listen, he's been super cooperative. He has turned over whatever financial documents they've asked for. He's given them samples of his blood, his hair. He let them hold on to his car. And he points out that, duh, polygraphs are BS. Also, investigators wanted him to take the test with their polygrapher, like not even like a third party or someone they pick.

36:00So, like, double no. Yeah. But in the end, like there's nothing investigators can do to like make him take it. Right. And so the show or the investigation must go on. Consistent with what John told them about Saturday night, which the Osage Beach PD mostly already confirmed anyway. Investigators are able to get footage from John's traffic stop. And this is what year exactly? 95. I was surprised. Yeah. And if we have footage of this traffic stop, do we have like other footage, hotels, businesses? I guess none that makes a difference. None that John ends up being on. Like there's footage from a few gas stations where they like there may or may not have been sightings of him, although like none that really pan out.

36:47To me, it's like the hotel footage that I spiral on. I'm like, yeah, in this entire resort, there's nothing showing like was his car there? Did he leave? I would say even like an entrance exit camera showing like if he did or did not leave. But like nobody talks about that. The police said they looked for footage, got footage. But like I'm like dying to know specifically about the hotel and I've never seen anything about that. So the only relevant footage is from the traffic stop, which doesn't clear John by any means. But it puts him by the resort, just like he said. So maybe they've got this all wrong.

37:21Maybe Rita was reading too much into his interest in the other case and like it never crossed his mind since. So he's just a grieving husband. Except there's something in the one piece of footage they have that catches her eye. Rita swears that she has seen the belt that John is wearing in that footage before. Specifically, she thinks she's seen that belt at the crime scene. See, when the scene was processed, investigators had found a belt just like the one in the video rolled up on the counter in the house. Which is like weird, not a place for a belt, whatever. But again, what about the scene isn't weird.

37:59And at the time, they didn't know like what to make of that without context. Also, like I leave like my shoes on the counter. So like, yeah, whatever. But now seeing this, Rita starts to think, what if John came in undressed completely so that you wouldn't get blood on you, rolled up his belt for like some unknown reason, whatever, took out his family, and then like when he got redressed, left the belt behind. Which, like you said, might explain why there wasn't any blood on John's clothes or in his car or anywhere on him. Yeah, it might. And like what's extra interesting is that as far as like anything that's been reported, we've seen like no belt was found in John's room at the resort.

38:40But it's on the footage of his traffic stop. At 1030, where'd the belt go? Right. So Rita can't shake this feeling, right? Like just when you're about to say like, was it wrong? Like, am I reading into things? Like you get these like little things. And what really seals the deal for her is this next thing. So John is posted up in a hotel room near Springfield while his house is sealed off as a crime scene. And there's this time or this point in time when investigators, Rita included, show up with a search warrant. And she talks about this on the Ozarks podcast that, you know, when they show up, John's a good sport about this, like not that he has a choice.

39:15and while investigators are doing their thing, one of them is like, man, John, like, I really wish that you would talk to us some more. And Rita says at this point, this like smug smile takes over John's face and he looks her dead in the eye and says, quote, well, you know, I once had a very wise person tell me that the best way to stay out of prison is to never talk to the police. I can't say he's wrong. John, again, always get a lawyer. Mm-hmm. But woof. Yeah, in that moment, Rita says any doubt that she had about his guilt just evaporates. And she is hit with the realization that John may well have been plotting to kill his family even back when she was in his night class.

40:03And he had all those questions about the case that she was investigating. But you don't have to be a crime junkie to know that you can't arrest a guy based on a snarky comment. and whatever they were looking for when they issued that search warrant, it doesn't seem like they find it because John is still a free man who does something that, again, turns a lot of heads when they finally do end up releasing his house back to him. John just, like, moves back in. What? Yeah, and, like, so many people have issue with this because they're like, this is where your entire family, in all three bedrooms, like, your family was taken out.

40:38There's signs of this everywhere. And sure, it gets cleaned up or whatever. But like, you know, he said that that's just where he had the memories of his family. It's like where he remembers the good times and that's what he's choosing to remember. I don't think I could. I don't. I couldn't. I couldn't do it. Yeah. I couldn't sleep at night there. But like also, could you sleep at night if you were the one who did it? I mean, again, you have to be a true monster to have to. I don't know. It's just like it's something that everyone takes issue with. But he says like the other thing I'll say is like, again, they weren't like in debt or anything.

41:06But like, I don't know their financial situation. I don't know if he could afford to. Yeah, like just getting another house or like living in a hotel. Like that's not a financial option for like most of the world. Right. So there's that. But while he moves back in and everyone's looking at him, like investigators are losing it because they feel like the truth is right in front of them. They just can't prove it. Again, they still don't even have a motive. They can't go to a jury with no what and how and no why. But sometime in March, investigators received a bombshell report involving those additional tests that the medical examiner ordered on Tyler.

41:47And they think that this is the thing that is finally going to give them a why. The cause of Tyler's liver damage was hepatitis B. What? That is not at all what I was expecting. I know. Isn't hep B usually transmitted through like sexual activity or IV drug use? Like it's kind of rare to see it in a kid, right? It's very unusual to see in a kid, but it's not unheard of. So there are other ways for children to contract it. Like it can be passed from mother to child. It's also spread through bodily fluids, which means in theory he could have picked it up at school or something like that. But it is unlikely.

42:32So this is when investigators start to form a theory. What if John had been sexually abusing his son and Cheryl found out and threatened to turn him in? Maybe this would be enough to make him do something desperate. So the next step, obviously, is to test both John and Cheryl for the disease. And they're like fully expecting John's results to come back positive. But they don't. And neither do Cheryl's. Neither of them has ever had hepatitis B. Okay, so what does that even mean? Like, was someone else abusing Tyler? Maybe. Probably. I mean, they don't know. All they do know is that Tyler's infection didn't come from either of his parents.

43:19And listen, police were right. This would be a strong motive to kill the family, but it's a motive that now points to it being someone other than John. And as they get more test results from other stuff back, more and more continues to point away from John. So while the hairs found on Cheryl's nightgown and the garage and paintbrush don't yield a full DNA profile, the lab is able to confirm that they are not consistent with John or Cheryl's hair. More than just like color, like genetically. And when you say hair, like what are we talking about? Like strands, a clump? Like what are we dealing with here?

43:56You can count them on one hand. Like the reddish brown hair, there was like, I think there's one of them on the nightgown. There was like a few of the gray ones, so barely any. Okay. Now, they do end up getting a hit with the semen on the bedspread. That belongs to John. But like. It's his bed. His semen, his bed. Yeah, it certainly doesn't prove anything. Investigators, though, would tell you context is everything. Because investigators say that they end up learning Cheryl had a habit of washing the comforter on Saturdays. So, if she was killed Saturday night, they allege that this puts him in the house when he says he wasn't.

44:34Does it, though? If he was home Saturday, and all of this could have happened after she washed the comforter, but before he left. Like, that doesn't, it doesn't feel definitive to me. It's, well, them being, like, intimate or anything, like, that's never part of his story. And do we know for sure she even washed the comforter that week, though? Like, she's running errands. She has a sick kid. Her husband's going out of town for a conference. Like, I could see that being something that doesn't happen this week. No, I agree. We don't know. There's nobody that I've seen that's been able to confirm, like, she for sure washed it that day.

45:07No. And, like, another thing I'm having trouble wrapping my head around is the motive. Like, does one actually exist? I know. Murdering your wife and kids, like, doesn't feel like a sexually motivated crime. So, like, where does that play into, like, this theory? And it's strange. I mean, again, they've never said that she was sexually assaulted. I don't think she was. So it's more that, like, they're just saying, like, his semen is there. It shouldn't be there based on his story. So it puts him there. Case closed. Even though, like, again, if they want to say context is everything, like, okay, what's the context of it being there?

45:43Like, it does not make sense. But I think the details matter less because they think they've got their guy. And, you know, this gets, like, I think this feeling gets bolstered a little bit when investigators start realizing that John Feeney, the teacher, dad, husband, may be more of a mask than an identity. Because he is a man with a lot of needs surrounding sex and female attention. Almost, like, to a compulsive degree and not always within his marriage, it turns out. Here we go. Yes. Okay, I thought it was weird that he was driving around, going dinner with another woman solo while he's out of town and his wife and kids are back at home.

46:23Dude, I like— But I was like, I don't know, maybe it's me. I know. No, that's kind of weird, right? I thought so, too. And I was like, yes, I thought so, too. Actually, believe it or not, though, Pam tells investigators, like, that dinner thing wasn't a date. And, like, again, remember this whole time, John has been adamant to investigators that he was faithful to Cheryl. Which, of course, is a big fat lie because date or no date this time, like this night, it turns out Pam and John definitely had an affair. She eventually admits to that. But she said it was very brief, happened like three or four times.

46:56They ended things the prior November. And when they were doing this, like their rendezvous were always at, you guessed it, teachers' conferences. And interestingly, Pam makes sure to clarify that it hadn't even involved sex sex, just what she calls like intimate relations, which like, I don't know, it sounds the same to me. Like it sounds like when like super conservative people are like, well, it didn't go in there. And I'm like, my friends, like a hole is a hole. Like Jesus made our bodies. A hole is a hole. That's how I feel. Truly, truly. Anyways. So it's not just Pam that they find. Another one of the affairs that they find out about was with this woman who claims that John used, quote unquote, mind control on her, which is like, what?

47:43Your guess is as good as mine. I don't know if she means literally, figuratively or what. There's no one else who's saying that John does witchcraft or anything wild like that. So I don't know. But she goes into detail about some of their encounters, including an especially racy one that took place on a boat involving John and her and two other men. And this was also at a teacher's conference? No, no, no, no. So it seems like teacher's conferences are his like hunting grounds. But what happens at teacher's conferences does not always stay at teacher's conferences. So he takes that stuff right on home with him and like continues to act in some pretty objectionable ways.

48:21See, it turns out that John, who was put on administrative leave after the murders, has always tried really, really hard to seem cool to his students. No, nope, no way. No, no, no, no, no, no. Some of it was in the category of like gross but seemingly innocuous. Chris Bentley and Robert Keyes report in the Springfield News Leader that I guess he had a thing for Cindy Crawford. And he like made a point to joke around about it in class, especially with like the other male students. Which like I know he said seemingly innocuous, but like this is not good. Red flag to anyone whose teachers is like having conversations with them like this.

48:59Like a teacher should never be talking about who they have a thing for. Like it is completely and totally inappropriate type of conversation for an adult and a minor to have, especially for an adult teacher and their minor students. Like these are the little things that you do have to watch out for, like the boundary testers. Like if you write off the little ones, it makes room for more and more. Like, oh, you're not just like teacher and student, you're friends. Like he gets you. So maybe it wasn't weird. It was just cool to the kids when there's this time when he buys them alcohol, which is a tip that does come in about him.

49:35Like, I guess he was at a bar and some students were there, like who he would clearly know were underage, like the students. Yeah. And he bought them some drinks. And when this came out, John actually tried to sue the investigators to get them to stop sharing further information to the press. But like all of it ends up getting dropped. And then there are other former students who had weird experiences with John that they, with the benefit of hindsight, feel like were John's attempts to put them in inappropriate situations, like to hang out socially, maybe even one on one, that kind of thing. Which takes me back to my point about, like, boundary testing, what you'd call grooming.

50:10John was for sure testing his boundaries there. But there are no reports of him coming on to or doing anything physical with a student, technically. So there is one super disturbing story from a former student, and she actually tells Ann Roderick-Jones about this in the podcast. So apparently there was this post-graduation camping trip that John went on with some recent grads. Like, ostensibly, I would assume he's there as a chaperone. Otherwise, I don't know why he would be there. But he apparently saw this as a prime opportunity to cozy up to one of the girls. And according to the former student, they eventually slept together.

50:50Now, to be clear, everyone involved was 18 at the time. Like, this is after graduation. But she was a former student. Barely former. Yeah. And it is wildly inappropriate and manipulative and abusive power dynamics, like all the things. So all of that to say, if there is a motive, police believe it's John's philandering. Did Cheryl know? Not know? We don't know. But whether she did or not, they think John just wanted to wipe the slate clean, start over minus the wife and kids and plus a cool quarter of a million. Because guess what? They find out that John took out an additional life insurance policy on Cheryl for$250 ,000 just months before the murders.

51:37Which like, well, of course he did. Like they always do. And though handwriting experts believe Cheryl filled out one part of the application, they're pretty sure that the final signature is not hers. They can't prove it's John's either, but probably not Cheryl's. So like that's not that's confusing. Like everything. Now, it's important to note there was some sort of promotion thing going on that the insurance company was doing for teachers in the area at the time when Cheryl's life insurance was up. And we know this because the podcaster, Ann Roderick Jones, she says her own aunt was a teacher in the area around this time and she remembers it.

52:19So maybe that's the reason that the coverage got up at that time. Like a lot of teachers were doing the same thing. But all of this just has me even more upside down on what to think about this one. There is like a lot of not great stuff here. But like nothing is flashing lights guilty to me. On the other hand, nothing is like totally innocent either. I truly don't know where I stand. It's all circumstantial, right? Which is why it is a huge deal when months into the investigation, investigators find a witness or maybe settle on a witness. It's this gas station worker from near Springfield who says that he remembers John stopping to get gas in the wee hours of that Sunday morning after the murders.

53:08And this guy's actually been on investigators' radar for a while, but his original stories to police weren't super helpful timing-wise because they placed John in Springfield at a time that he couldn't have been there, which investigators knew because of the McDonald's receipt that they found in his car. But then the workers' time changed by like a good three or four hours, and like presto change-o, we've got ourselves an eyewitness who's going to be like the star of the show. Cool, cool, cool. So he's kind of useless. A halfway decent defense attorney will rip his story to shreds. They're willing to take the chance because in January of 1996, they put this case before a grand jury, which John pleaded the fifth before, FYI.

53:50And by April, the grand jury has returned three indictments for first degree murder. So while there might be some holes to fill in their story, in their theory, in their case, clearly these grand jurors see what the police see. And the police are thinking that they're going to have time to like shore things up before the trial. They'll like, you know, just take their time, push it out, maybe even years. Problem is, we have this little thing called a right to a speedy trial. And John's lawyers take full advantage. You want to charge him? Let's go and let's go now. So all of a sudden, the prosecution finds itself scrambling.

54:26And it sure doesn't help that the one eyewitness they have doesn't just have a questionable story that's going to leave the jury wondering, you know, was it right the first time or the second time? The defense is not playing those games. They get their hands on the gas station attendance time cards. And guess who wasn't even working the night that this went down? So his story is completely useless. Yeah, it's not real. They cannot use him. So when they go to trial in September of 1996, it is without their key witness. Because they don't have one. Nope. And that's just the beginning of the unraveling.

55:03Over time, they had found a few friends of Cheryl's who were prepared to testify that she had confided in them about wanting a divorce. Even said maybe she was scared of John. But they end up being prohibited from testifying based on case law that, get this, actually stemmed from that case that Rita was investigating while she was in John's night class. So the husband in that case was convicted, but actually like big twist, not long before John's trial, his conviction was vacated based on hearsay violations. He later got retried and acquitted, by the way. But the judge in John's case decides that this decision, the one about the hearsay violations, prevents him from allowing Cheryl's friends from testifying to things that she said about their marriage.

55:48And Cheryl possibly wanting a divorce is a big deal. Remember, John's dad is a minister in the ultra-conservative Church of Christ, which at the time is like, oh, the shame about divorce. So if Cheryl divorced him, the thinking goes, it could have been super embarrassing to his family. And like, it sounds wild, but we have seen this play out before. Like, oh, divorce is awful, so let me just like go with the lesser crime of murder in the eyes of God. Right. Like, obviously sarcasm. But like, that's their argument. He wanted out. He wanted to be free. But like divorce was not an option. The thing is, this is what the defense argues, is like John was already free.

56:31He was out sowing his wild oats. He was living his best life. But this thing actually still goes to trial. And this did he didn't he thing plays out in court. Now, up to a point, I could see jurors leaning in either direction. But where the prosecution starts to lose them, I suspect, is when they bring up vampires. I'm sorry, Ashley, you have not brought up vampires. I know. Why would the prosecutors? What? So, okay. Investigators had apparently learned that John maybe sometimes plays a role-playing game called Vampires of the Masquerade. And I say maybe sometimes, by the way, because some of the reporting just says he knows about the game through his students.

57:14So it's like not even 100 % that he plays this game at all. Either way, think like we talked about Dungeons and Dragons before, right? Like it's that with vampires. Per the prosecution, when John, a man with no history of violence, set out with the unenviable task of decimating his entire family, he just pretended he was a vampire and was killing them in his game. And I would love to say that I'm oversimplifying this, but I'm really not. Like that's what they put forward. And I'm thinking all of this is happening while the U.S. is still like peak satanic panic era. Yeah. So they're like, I mean, I don't know.

57:52I don't know what they thought that they were going to gain by this or whatever. But like, I think that they're it's why we've seen the Dungeons and Dragons thing play out before. Right. Right. It's just like a game that's like a little weird. Like and like if people don't understand it, they're afraid of it. Sure. Yeah. So, again, he's acting as a vampire. This is the prosecution story. Cool. Meanwhile, the defense argues a much more believable theory than that one, that someone had been abusing Tyler, had suddenly decided that they didn't want to risk anyone finding out, and in support of this theory, they point to the hairs that don't belong to Cheryl or John found on Cheryl.

58:29And on a paintbrush used by, presumably, the killer. Yeah, and it's very freaking possible that there might have been more physical evidence pointing to an outside intruder that just wasn't collected. So come to find out, some super important crime scene surfaces, like, I mean, we're talking Tyler's headboard, Jennifer's crib, for instance, like, those were never dusted for prints. So, like, the lowest of the low-hanging fruit that investigators just totally dismissed, like, botched. And, again, let's go to how did he contract hep B? Ann Roderick Jones notes in her podcast that the official who tracks infectious disease cases for the county was given like a list of 155 names of people who had potential contact with Tyler.

59:17And when they compared that to the people being tracked, like none of those names were on the list. But does that mean it's someone they didn't know had contact with him or someone who wasn't being tracked? Like there's still like a hole potentially in that. Either. It's very likely that it's the second because Hep B isn't something routinely tested for without a specific reason. But this is what's wild to me. Like, they do this like comparison with the list. And as far as I can tell, that's about where the efforts to figure out how he got Hep B like stopped. So it's not like they went back and started testing people who had contact with Tyler.

59:55It's like the second they found out it wasn't John, they're just like, oh, well, that doesn't fit our theory. So let's not investigate. We don't need to find out how he got it like no longer relevant. So when the jury goes to deliberate on October 5th, 1996, they are sent to do so with no forensics, no witnesses, no murder weapon, no nothing other than vampires and a bad husband with an arguably predatory past and like this bad investigation to look at. So everyone is on pins and needles until the jurors come back less than five hours later with their verdict. Not guilty, not guilty, not guilty.

1:00:37Which, to be clear, is not a vote of confidence in the innocence of John Feeney. Most of the town jurors included very much think he is guilty AF. No one is more disappointed in the verdict than Rita, who told Ann Roderick Jones that there was evidence that the prosecution just didn't introduce. Like, example would be the belt thing. So it's like doubly frustrating when jurors explain in interviews that they just weren't given the evidence to prove the case. Like, there was reasonable doubt. And when Ann interviews the judge who presided over the case, even he says that he wasn't surprised by the verdict.

1:01:16In the weeks following John's acquittal, Cheryl's family sues to prevent him from collecting on her insurance policies, although the suit doesn't really go anywhere and it is eventually dropped. John gets the proceeds, but he pledges to dedicate$50 ,000 to funding a private investigation into who really did kill his family. If he did, though, I couldn't find any evidence for it. Now, he sticks around in Springfield for a while, but at some point he moves away, eventually landing in Ecuador, where he resumes his career. He even remarries and builds a new family. And that's pretty much the end of the story until Anne released that season of her podcast on this case in 2022, which by the way, I'm gonna plug it again, Ozark's True Crime.

1:02:02It is a really great podcast by a team of like really great folks. I'll link to it in the show notes. Anyway, after it comes out, Anne hears from a kid who was a neighbor of John's at the time of the murders. and it turns out that this kid could have been the witness that the prosecution needed, was just overlooked. Someone who placed John at his house in the wee hours of the morning, the night of the murders. So this neighbor, I think she said she was like 9 or 10 at the time, tells Anne that she was up that night with a stomachache. She woke up her parents sometime between 2 and 4 a.m. and they told her just like, go take some Pepto.

1:02:42and on her way back to bed, she looked out her window and saw John's bright red Mustang sitting in the freaking driveway. She even thought to herself like, oh weird, Mr. Feeney never parks his bright red Mustang in his driveway. And then she went back to bed. Now, as soon as she heard about the murders, a few days later, she told her dad what she'd seen and her dad, who could corroborate that she'd been awake that night at that time, made sure she repeated the whole story to investigators. But somehow her sighting got like misplaced or overlooked or whatever, because when Anne interviews the prosecutor, he says that that's the first time he's hearing anything of this.

1:03:24Same goes for Rita. And because of double jeopardy laws, John can't be tried again with this information or not. No. And I mean, this is the part of the episode where I would normally say, like, if you have any tips or know anything, please call X, Y and Z agency at whatever number. But like this officially, at least, is a closed case. But in my opinion, it's a closed case with way too many unanswered questions. Like, have those hairs from the crime scene ever been analyzed with more advanced technology? Like, how did Tyler contract hep be? If I were law enforcement in Springfield, I don't know.

1:03:58I'd want to be sure. No, you can't try John Feeney again. But what if? What if it wasn't him? Police might not be listening anymore. But I guess I am. So if you're in Springfield and you know anything, the line's open. Send me an email.

1:04:28You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, CrimeJunkiePodcast.com. And you can follow us on Instagram at Crime Junkie Podcast. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode.

1:05:14Crime Junkie is an Audio Chuck production. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?