November 16, 2023 • 44 mins
It was May 10, 2005 when police in the tiny town of Falmouth, Massachusetts, a sleepy picturesque little town on Cape Cod, got a horrifying phone call. Fifty-one-year-old Shirley Reine had been found, slumped on the garage floor, hanging out of her Nissan Maxima in a pool of blood.
Police rushed to the scene and later said that she had been shot twice, once in the chest, and then when she fell out of the car, police believed that the killer shot her a second time in the head. There was no sign of forced entry, and it seemed that the killer had been lying in wait for Shirley in that dark garage. But who would stalk and kill a fifty-something woman execution style in her garage? And why? It turns out that there were a lot of suspects.
If you have a case you’d like Catherine Townsend and her team to look into, you can reach out to the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
School of Humans. It was May tenth, two thousand and five,
when police in the tiny town of Ballymouth, Massachusetts, a sleepy,
picturesque little place on Cape Cod got this nine one
one calls record. Yeah, I think somebody down at six
fifty seventh Highways.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
I think somebody shot Shirley.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Oh my God, Girland, God man, let me tell you it. Cotnia,
here we are. A man named Michael Dominguez had been
doing some work for a woman who lived in the
house at six fifty seven East Falmouth Highway, fifty one
year old Shirley Rainey. Michael showed up a little after
five am. He had two cups of dunkin Donuts coffee
with him, one for himself and one for Shirley, but
(00:56):
Shirley didn't answer the door, so Michael started looking around
the house outside. He peeked through one of the glass
panels in the garage and that's when he saw Shirley
slumped on the garage floor, half hanging out of her
Nissan Maxima in a.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Pool of blood.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Michael kicked the door down and he's the one who
made the nine one one call.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Police rushed to the scene, and they later said that
Shirley had been dead for a while, around eight hours.
She had been shot twice, once in the chest, and
then when she fell out of the car. Police believed
the killer stepped closer to her and shot her a
second time in the head. Then they picked up the
(01:40):
shell casings and left the scene. There was no sign
of forced entry, so it seemed that the killer had
been lying in wait for Shirley in that dark garage.
Shirley was a pretty wealthy woman, but nothing was stolen
from the house. So who would stalk and kill a
fifty something woman execution style in her garage and why?
(02:03):
It turned out that there were actually a lot of suspects.
Shirley had been married to Melvin Rainey, a convicted arsonist
who was nicknamed the Falm of Fox. He was given
that nickname back in the day by a judge who
described him as being sly like a fox. Melvin Rainey
had a lot of local enemies, and so did Shirley.
(02:24):
They included alleged mob connections, people who owed her money,
former lovers who she allegedly made sex tapes with, and
who may have been being blackmailed, family members of Melvin's
first wife, and even Shirley's own step sons, Todd and
Melvin Junior. They were fighting Shirley for control of their
family business, and they were due to go back to
(02:45):
court in just ten days. Shirley Rainey was a mysterious woman,
and this small town shooting was about to lead to
a trail of dead bodies and a lot more dark secrets.
I'm Catherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. If
you have a case you'd like me and my team
to look into, you can reach out to us at
(03:07):
our Helen Gone Murder Line at six seven eight seven
four four six one four five. I first heard about
(04:00):
this case when I took a trip to Cape Cod
last spring. I was talking to a friend who has
a house, and they said, you know, why don't you
ever take a break from trying to cover cold cases
and maybe hang out somewhere like this, this quiet little
town for a couple of weeks. And I distinctly remember
what I said. I said, if I didn't travel around
the country and cover cold cases, I would probably find
(04:22):
one near me, because every town has at least one
cold case. I was kind of kidding, but later that day,
of course, I did, in fact start talking to someone
at a local coffee shop, and they told me about
the case of the Famath Fox and his wife.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
As I said.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Before, the Famath Fox was a local nickname for Shirley
Rainey's husband, Melvin Rainey. And that's when I found out
that I was sitting there in this sweet little town
that basically looked like the backdrop for murder, she wrote,
And yet I was on top of one of the
most notorious unsolved killings in New England. Shirley Rainey and
Melvin Rainey had been married for around twenty years, and
(05:01):
Shirley's home that she was living in at the time
of the shooting was in the middle of kind of
a compound owned by the Rainy family. Shirley and Melvin's
property was on hundreds of acres of land. Her brother
in law, John Rainey lived in the house next door.
Shirley's step son, Todd Rainey lived on a nearby property,
and so did his girlfriend, Joanne, who was the mother
(05:22):
of his two children. Melvin Senior ran a trash hauling business.
It was called Five Star Enterprises, and many of you
who have read anything about mob history and the history
of New England may know that especially during that era,
the phrase trash hauling was often shorthand for a business
that relied on mob connections and a lot of shady dealings,
(05:45):
and that was definitely the case with Five Star. For
a long time, Shirley's two step sons, Todd and Melvin Junior,
were in the family business, but Melvin Senior and his
sons had a falling out. Now why this started exactly
is a little bit of a mystery. It started sometime
in the mid nineties. Shirley told her lawyers that Melvin
(06:05):
got frustrated because his two sons just weren't working hard enough.
Now they would later allege that Shirley manipulated Melvin Senor,
but either way, the end result was that Melvin and
his two sons, Melvin Junior and Todd, were estranged. Melvin
Junior and Todd ended up going to work for another company,
a competitor. Over the years, Melvin was known as a
(06:28):
notorious criminal.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
There's just no other way to put it.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
He was also an arsonist, and a lot of people
who've commented on the case say that Melvin was a
psychopath and that he truly enjoyed and maybe even got
sexual pleasure out of setting fires. His family's trash hauling
business definitely had a monopoly on the area. But in
the late nineties, Melvin Senior's mental health started to decline.
(06:54):
He seemed to be developing dementia and eventually he went
to stay long term at a psychiatric hospital.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
So by the.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Time of Shirley's shooting, Shirley was running the family business
by herself. There is so much going on with this
case and so much history, and good investigative reporting really
can change the game in these cases because it's all
about reading between the lines. In this case, reporter Michelle
McPhee did a great story for Boston Magazine, and that
(07:25):
story had a lot of details that many shows like
the CNN Special left out, like the fact that Michael,
the guy who found Shirley, wasn't just a coworker of Shirley's.
He was married, but allegedly he was Shirley's lover, which
is why he showed up so early at that hour
of the morning, and how he knew how Shirley took
(07:46):
her coffee. This was something that Michael never admitted, by
the way, so at first it's hard to know if
it's just local rumor or something more. But it was
an early indication that in this case, nothing is what
it appears to be on the surface. It reminds me
a lot of some of the cases I've covered in
Arkansas and other places, small towns, where each person is
(08:09):
connected to multiple people in the case in various different ways.
For example, you'll have someone who is a witness and
also rented someone a house, and they're the cousin of
the prosecutor.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
This is just the way it is in small towns.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
But I have to say the entanglements in the Rainy
case are some of the most complicated I've ever seen.
Shirley was very close to one family member, her sister, Loretta.
Loretta told CNN that from the beginning she suspected that
someone in Shirley's husband's family had something to do with
the shooting. Now, remember, at this time, Shirley was running
(08:42):
her husband, Melvin Senior's business. Loretta did work for the
family business as well. Not only did Shirley and Loretta
work together, but they were together almost every night after
work too, including on May ninth. After work on May night,
Shirley drove to Loretta's house and had dinner with her.
Loretta told investigators that was at around six pm. Loretta
(09:04):
said Shirley left for her home sometime between eight thirty
and eight forty five pm. Police theorized that, based on
the crime scene, Shirley pulled into her garage, her killer
stepped out of the darkness with a nine millimeter handgun,
which was found to be the weapon used, shot Shirley twice,
and left the scene. Police suspected that this could have
(09:24):
been a professional hit, or at least it was done
by someone with insider knowledge, someone who was intimately familiar
with Shirley's schedule. Plus, there was no sign of forced entry,
so it might have been someone who had a key
or knew about another way to get inside that house,
someone who made a plan and targeted Shirley. So who
(09:46):
could that have been? Who would have wanted Shirley dead?
Police talked to Michael Dominguez, who remember was not only
Shirley's employee, but also potentially her alleged lover, and then
later it came out in the Cape Cod Times that
Michael Dominguez was also rumored to be mel Child, a
(10:07):
child that Melvin Senior had had out of wedlock from
another relationship. So technically he would be Shirley's illegitimate step
son as well. But Michael had an alibi for the
night before he was with his wife, Plus he and
Shirley were getting along, so there was really no reason
to suspect that he would have heard her. And then
there were Shirley's stepsons. Because it turned out not only
(10:31):
were Shirley's stepsons angry about the family business, they believed
that she had their dad locked away and that she
had been responsible for them being cut out of his will,
but they also believed that Shirley may have been partially
responsible for killing their mother. Cape Cod is known as
(10:52):
being a safe, sleepy, little area, but there were a
couple of very high profile murders in the years before
Shirley was shot. Both of them were women, but both
of these women could kind of be described as out
of ten people who were renting in the area for locals.
This case was different. Shirley Rainey was a local girl.
She grew up in the area and it seemed like
(11:15):
everyone knew her, or at least knew of her and
her husband's family.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Police asked Michael Dominguez who he thought did it.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
He immediately said Todd and Melvin Junior, Shirley step son's.
Shirley's lawyer, William Enright told Boston Magazine quote she was
afraid of her step son's end quote. There was also
the question of where Todd was on the night of
the shooting. His girlfriend, Joanne, said that he had been
(11:43):
at their house, which was right down from Shirley's house.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
She later testified that Todd had been at her house
on the night when Shirley was killed, but the timeline
seemed pretty vague. Joanne said that she went out to
run an errand and that when she came back, Todd
was gone. Shirley's sister, Loretta also so asked police why
no one heard anything, because remember, several family members lived nearby,
(12:13):
and yet no one had heard any gunshots. Police also
wondered why Todd and his girlfriend Joanne would not let
their two children talk to investigators. Jo Anne later told police,
according to the Cape Cod Times, that it was a
joint decision. So now that we know how Shirley's life
ended violently, we need to take a step back and
(12:35):
find out how her relationship with Melvin started, how she
got sucked into all this. Melvin Senior was born in
nineteen thirty nine, and he grew up in the area.
Very early on he started to get into the family
trashouling business. He started being involved in criminal activity at
a young age as well. Melvin's first wife, the mom
(12:55):
of Todd and Melvin Junior, was a local girl named
Wanda Maderos. Apparently, Wanda was a very serious, kind of
studious and shy young woman, and her family did not
like Melvin when they started going out.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
He was this kind of.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Squirrely older guy who was hanging around their teenage daughter.
And at this point Melvin was already in his mid twenties.
But Wanda was in love with him, even though he
had a reputation as a gangster, and so right after
she turned eighteen, they got married on October twenty sixth,
nineteen sixty four. They had two children, Melvin Junior and Todd.
(13:31):
As we said before, Melvin was already involved in the
family trash hauling business, he was also involved in a
lot of arson. Melvin was arrested for arson a few
years later. In nineteen sixty eight. He and a younger
guy he was working with, who was actually a teenager
at the time, set fire to a bunch of houses
and a hotel in Cape cod From reading through descriptions
(13:54):
of what happened, it looks like the police were able
to talk to Melvin's younger accomplice and kind of get
him to flip on Melvin. As a result, Melvin was
convicted of seven counts of arson. That same year, Melvin
was sentenced to five to eight years in state prison.
And while Melvin was in prison, he seemed to learn
a lesson from this. Unfortunately, the lesson wasn't that he
(14:16):
shouldn't commit crime and burn down houses. The lesson he
learned was that in future he was going to make
sure nobody ever flipped on him again. Melvin was released
after eighteen months. When he got back to town, everyone
said he was not rehabilitated. In fact, just the opposite.
He seemed to have no fear. He was bold both
(14:38):
in his criminal activities and in his private life because,
according to pretty much everyone who knew him, Melvin was
not an attractive man. He was five feet eight inches tall,
he weighed around one hundred and sixty pounds, so was
pretty skinny, and he had this kind of unkempt pompadour
slick back hairstyle. But The main thing that people found
disturbing about Melvin's appearance was his eyes. A lot of
(15:02):
people talked about how he had this weird, distant stare,
this really weird, unsettling smile that was kind of a
creepy leer, but that didn't stop him from being a
local player. According to rumors, he dated lots of young women,
and I do mean young women, as we've seen in
so many cases with narcissistic, controlling, sort of predatory type men,
(15:26):
they get older, but they continue to date teenage girls.
I find it really sad reading about Wanda, Melvin's first wife,
because it seems like after she married Melvin, she realized
pretty quickly she made a big mistake.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
She really loved him, but his.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
Job, combined with him staying out all hours, and her
hearing rumors about him pursuing other women, really seemed to
cause her to lose all of her confidence. Her mom, Mary,
who Wanda was very close to, made a comment to
a reporter years later. She said Wanda seemed depressed. She
was only twenty five years old, but she seemed older
(16:02):
than her years. Mary said Wanda's expected that her husband
was cheating on her, and Wanda was right, because Melvin
did have a wandering eye, and he already had that
wandering eyes set on someone else, a sixteen year old
named Shirley Susa who lived across the street, who would
later become his second wife. Melvin and Wanda actually hired
(16:23):
Shirley as a living babysitter, which is a little weird
because Wanda was a stay at home mom and she
didn't go out that much, so it's not clear why
they would need full time childcare help, especially a living
babysitter who was gorgeous. Back then, Shirley was tall, she
had long black hair, and this very bucksome figure. It
(16:44):
was obvious that Melvin was interested in her. So now
this brings us up to the early seventies. Wanda is
twenty five years old, She's depressed, she's sure that her
husband is cheating, and Melvin has his eye on the
babysitter from across the street. On March thirteenth, nineteen seventy one,
Wanda's mother, Mary called the house looking for her daughter.
(17:06):
She talked to one of her grandsons and they told
her that Wanda had gone to visit her grandma Mary.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
Well, Mary knew.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
This wasn't true. Finally she talked to Melvin. He said
that the kids had it wrong. What really happened was
that Wanda had gone to visit a cousin who lived
in a town called Whaream, which was nearby. He mentioned
that he and Wanda got into an argument before she
left the house, he said, over a small amount of money.
Melvin waited five days to report his wife and the
(17:35):
mother of his two children officially missing, and when people
asked Melvin what happened, apparently he told them Wanda might
have been having an affair and left him for a lover.
Her mother, Mary, said this was absolutely ridiculous. First of all,
she said, Wanda would never have had an affair. This
was a woman who was still devoted to her husband,
her confidence had been shattered, and also she loved her children.
(17:57):
She did everything for them. She would never leave her sons. Secondly,
the cousin whom Melvin had referred to no longer even
lived wear them, and once Melvin talked to police, it
turned out that the bus depot that he had supposedly
taken one to two to put her on a bus
to visit that cousin didn't even go to war them,
so none of the story made any sense. Mary and
(18:20):
a lot of other people who knew Wanda believed that
Melvin had done something to her, that he'd killed her
and gotten rid of her body. They pointed out that
it certainly would have been within his area of expertise.
Not only was he in the business of trash removal,
but apparently Melvin had a brother in law who was
a grave digger.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Police did search his home. They looked in a few areas,
including a garage where fresh cement had been poured, and
a septic tank, but you have to remember this is
a massive compound with a lot of potential hiding places.
In the end, police left without finding anything.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Over the years, Mary has had to hear a lot
of local rumors about how Melvin supposedly got rid of Wandah.
Some people believe that since part of his business involved
picking up animal fats from local butcher shops and then
taking them to a factory so they could be processed
into soap, that maybe that's what he did with Wanda.
Maybe he turned Wanda into hand soap. I cannot imagine
(19:26):
how painful it must have been for Mary to hear
all of these rumors and consider all of these horrific
possibilities and to never find her daughter. Wanda's family was
very suspicious, but the bottom line is with no body
and with Melvin not talking, they couldn't really do anything,
so the case went cold. After Wanda disappeared, Shirley, the
(19:47):
teenage babysitter, moved in permanently. But there was another problem
because Shirley already had a boyfriend, or at least a
local guy who liked her, a seventeen year old named
Charles Jeffrey Flanagan. In October of nineteen seventy two, Shirley
was one of the last last people seen hanging out
with Jeff and then he disappeared. He was last seen
(20:12):
going out to a movie with some friends, and then
those friends told police that Shirley and Melvin pulled up
in Melvin's Cadillac and offered Jeff a ride home, then
he disappeared. Later, the authorities found Jeff's body. He had
been shot in the face with a twenty gage shotgun.
The bullet went out his upper back, severing his spinal cord.
(20:34):
He was found in a Cranberry bog right across from
Melvin's house on East Falmouth Highway, the same house where
Shirley's body would be found years later. There were a
lot of suspicions, but again Melvin was never charged in
connection with his crime. John Busby, a police officer who
was shot in the face after he offended Melvin, said
(20:56):
in a book that he wrote about the case that
on the day that Jeff's body was found, Shirley was
seen scrubbing down Melvin's Cadillac, but Shirley always dined any
wrongdoing in connection with any crime. Over the years, Melvin
Senior was also linked to the disappearance and murder of
several more people. In nineteen seventy seven, Paul Alwert was
(21:18):
seventeen years old and he worked for Five Star Enterprises,
Melvin's trash business. He was the suspect in an arson
that supposedly was arranged and masterminded by Melvin. In a way,
it was a replay of the charges that Melvin had
faced a few years earlier when he committed arson with
a teenage accomplice. Police convinced Paul to testify against Melvin.
(21:41):
Paul said he was terrified. Police convinced him they could
protect him. They put him on a ferry to Martha's vineyard.
He was supposed to testify the next day. The police
watched him board the fairy, and then the fairy pulled
away and vanished. When it docked on the other side,
Paul was gone. No one has seen any trace of
(22:02):
him since. There is very little information about Paul online.
Just an old pixelated photo of a little boy with
shiny brown hair and two front teeth with a really
cute smile looking up at the camera. It's absolutely heartbreaking.
Some news reports have said that Paul had a troubled childhood,
that he was a ward of the Massachusetts Department of
(22:24):
Youth Services. So I don't know if he had any
family or friends to even report him missing or to
do public appeals. He was just gone. Police never identified
a suspect in that case. It is still unsolved. Just
another disappearance that Melvin Senior was suspected of being involved
in that was never proven. Over the years, Melvin Senior's
(22:46):
trash hauling company got more and more powerful. They developed
kind of a local monopoly, and Melvin continued to openly
threaten people, even police. In August of nineteen seventy nine,
John Busby, the Foulmouth Police officer we mentioned earlier found
out the hard way what happened when you cross Melvin Senior.
John Busby was on patrol when he gave a guy
(23:09):
a traffic ticket. The guy was with Melvin, and Melvin
said something like, don't you know who I am? John
Busby basically refused to be intimidated and just told Melvin
and his accomplice to pay the ticket. Well, apparently this
enraged Melvin. He said, I smell smoke, which was something
that he said to a lot of people to intimidate
(23:30):
them and threaten them, make them feel like he was
going to start a fire. John Busby said that Melvin
kind of puffed his chest out, but he just tried
to ignore him. On August thirty first of that year,
John Busby was on patrol. A car pulled up next
to him. Someone put a shotgun out of one of
the windows and shot him at point blank range in
(23:50):
the face. The bullets shattered his jaw and severed part
of his tongue, and somehow, with half of his face
hanging off, John Busby managed to get to a nearby
house to get help. He was very close to death,
but he survived. However, he did suffer permanent injuries. His
speech continues to be affected. He had to have eighteen
(24:12):
years of reconstructive surgeries. His life and his career as
he had known it were over. In his book, which
was actually written by John Busby and his daughter, called
The Year We Disappeared, they talked about how after he
got shot, the family had to go into hiding, they
had to lead their entire lives behind all because they
were terrorized by Melvin. No charges were ever filed in
(24:35):
connection with that shooting either, and John Busby was described
by everyone who knew him as a good, honest cop,
someone who did the right thing. And look what happened
to the guy who tried to do the right thing.
He ended up permanently disfigured, while the guy who masterminded
his shooting was allowed to go on unchallenged. Melvin's company
(24:57):
did get into some trouble over the years. In nineteen
eighty five, Five Star Enterprises actually had their contract terminated
by the town. Melvin was accused of fraud. He was
accused of collaborating with other companies so that the bid
for the trash hauling services would always go to him. Basically,
he was accused of rigging the system. But Melvin, like
(25:17):
a lot of underworld figures in small towns, had a
lot of friends in powerful positions. He was even friends
with several police officers. Melvin was acquitted of those charges,
which shocked a lot of people, but after that he
seemed to become more and more bold. He probably thought
he was untouchable, and at that point, the sad thing
(25:38):
is he was probably right. Meanwhile, on the home front,
Melvin's personal life had always been rather complicated. After Wanda disappeared,
Shirley moved in and they were together after that. Later
in nineteen ninety seven, Melvin filed for divorce from Wanda
on the grounds that she deserted him, which again must
(26:00):
have been so painful for her family and her children
to consider that possibility and to know it wasn't true.
Melvin and Shirley finally got married in nineteen ninety nine.
They never had children of their own, but according to
a lot of people, including people from the family, Shirley
and Melvin's sons got along really well in the beginning.
(26:21):
She treated them like they were her own. She was
living with them in the home from the time they
were very young. In the seventies, they grew up together
as this sort of strange, blended family. Of course, at first,
because the boys were young, they probably had no idea
what was going on. They probably believed whatever Melvin and
Shirley told them about their mother leaving and not coming back.
(26:45):
But over the years, it seems like the boys began
to get suspicious about what had really happened to their mother,
and that must have been a really strange household to
live in. To love your stepmother and your father, but
also to kind of suspect they might have had something
to do with killing your mother. Over the years, Melvin
(27:05):
Antics became more and more notorious, but law enforcement just
seemed to look the other way, even when Melvin once
set fire to a car that was sitting in the
police chief's driveway according to CNN, and all those years
Shirley worked for Melvin. Her sister Loretta did the bookkeeping,
and Shirley was the financial controller. Finally, in the mid nineties,
(27:30):
there was the rift between Melvin and his sons. Again,
what exactly went down really depends on who you ask.
Shirley's family and her lawyer blame the boys for their
bad work ethic. The boys have not really talked about
their reasons for disliking Shirley, but I'm sure they must
have been suspicious about what happened to their mother. After
(27:51):
Todd and Melvin Junior became estrange from their father and
started working for the rival company, Melvin started telling people
he missed his sons. Loretta, Shirley's sister, later described Melvin
as being like two different people. He was a psychopath
who loved to start fires and who terrorized a lot
(28:11):
of people in town. But on the other hand, he
could be a great neighbor. He loaned people money, and
he could be really sweet at home. Melvin's behavior started
to become more and more erratic, his mental health was declining.
In October of two thousand and one, things came to
a head when Melvin attacked a woman in public in
East Balmouth in a parking lot. He threatened to shoot her.
(28:35):
He was charged with attempted murder this time, and it
was something he couldn't talk his way out of.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
The court put.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
Melvin in a psychiatric hospital after that happened, Shirley was
in charge of the money and the business. And there's
something else that her stepson's thought was weird, they said.
Just before Melvin went away to that hospital, when presumably
his mental state was in question, Melvin made a new
will again.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
This was just two.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
Weeks before Melvin went into the mental hospital, and in
that will it specified that neither son would receive anything.
Todd and Melvin Junior were enraged. They believed that their
father was not in his right mind. They believed Shirley
had masterminded this turn of events and gotten their father
to change that will. Also, on a side note, when
(29:22):
Melvin Senior got admitted to the mental hospital right after
he got charged with a violent crime, I imagine it
could have been one of those things where people were thinking,
is he really mentally incapacitated, or is this like the
scene in Goodfellas and Casino and New Jack City and
every other mob movie where the mobsters pretend to be
super feeble, they're all in oxygen in wheelchairs, and then
(29:43):
they roll outside, get up and start walking around and
are actually fine. But time passed and Melvin did seem
to be having a break with reality. He was committed
to Taunton State Hospital. Later it was revealed he had
something called Pick's disease, which is kind of similar to
Alzheimer's but less common with Picks disease, the front and
(30:04):
temporal lobes of the are damaged, and those are the
parts of the brain that control behavior, personality, and speech.
So it's a form of dementia and it was not
going to get any better.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
Now.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Around this time, Melvin Junior and Todd's relationship with Shirley
completely broke down. They seemed to blame everything, including the estrangement,
on Shirley. In two thousand and two, Todd and Melvin
Junior seemed to hatch a plan. They went to the
police and they said Shirley had stolen some things from them.
They said Shirley had one of their guns at three
(30:38):
fifty seven magnum and a truck they had taken from her.
So the police went in and executed a search warrant
on Shirley's property. They found the truck and the gun,
and they arrested Shirley, but no charges were ever pressed
against her. Now, this is where the story gets a
little bit complicated because later it was alleged that Todd
had friends who were high up in the police department.
(31:00):
We know he had a relative who was a detective
and he was an informant for the foulm of police
at one point, and in court what came out was
that while the police were at Shirley's residence, they opened
up her safe. Inside were financial documents that were related
to Melvin Senior's will.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
Todd allegedly taught.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
To his buddies in the police department about what they
found in Shirley's safe. Now they completely denied that, But
according to a guy named John Rams, who was one
of Todd's associates who had worked with him in the past,
Todd approached him and asked him to break into Shirley's house.
John Rams had a criminal background, and some of it
(31:39):
was violent. In nineteen ninety two, when he was nineteen
years old, he got into a fight with a guy
and stabbed him. He ended up being convicted of manslaughter
and was sent to prison for seven years. Now his
dad told a newspaper that John was just defending himself
and that a group of guys were attacking him. But
John Rams had also been arrested for other crimes, at
(32:00):
one point for allegedly assaulting an ex girlfriend. Much later,
John Rams told CNN that he owed Todd Rainey a favor.
Todd told him he wanted Shirley and Melvin's will and
trust documents, the ones that were in that safe that
the police had seen. He also wanted some VHS tapes,
which he said were sex tapes. Todd believed some of
(32:22):
those videotapes showed Shirley having sexual encounters with prominent men
in town and believed he could use them to blackmail her.
John Rams said Todd also told him there was ten
thousand dollars in cash in a safe inside Shirley's house
that he could grab while he was there. So John
Rams told police he did what Todd wanted. He broke
(32:44):
into Shirley's house, he stole those documents, and he stole
the sex tapes. By the way, John Rams said there
was no cash in there, but it's pretty much impossible
to verify that. The next year, in two thousand and three,
Todd Rainey filed a lawsuit against Shirley in Barnstable Superior Court.
The lawsuit alleged that Melvin was not in his right
(33:06):
mind when he wrote that will, and that Shirley had
influenced him. And this is when Todd and his brother
did something that, in my opinion, was really brazen. And
just kind of shows how much confidence they had that
they were going to get away with anything they had.
The financial documents that had been stolen from Shirley's house
entered into evidence. So later police questioned Todd about this,
(33:28):
and it's a long and weird story, but Todd told
police that a random black man had given him those documents,
which of course was a lie because he had arranged
that break in at Shirley's house. So now police knew
Todd had been responsible for the break in at Shirley's place,
and they arrested him for it. Now, as a result
of this, Melvin Junior and Todd ended up talking to police.
(33:50):
They admitted that their dad, Melvin Sr. Had shot John Busby,
the police officer. He had been the one who disfigured him.
They also said their uncle, John Rainey, who lived next
door to their dad, Anne Shirley, were in the car
at the time when the policeman was shot. So the
police talked to John Rainey. He also confessed. He told police, yes,
he was driving the car the night John Busby was shot,
(34:13):
but he said Melvin Senior, his brother, was the one
who pulled the trigger. He also claimed that Shirley was
in the car with them, and just to show how
potentially corrupt this system was, it later came out that
Melvin Senior was friends with a local police officer and
he actually bought the getaway car from him. So now
the police had a confession. They knew who had shot
(34:35):
John Busby and permanently disfigured him. I really can't believe
what happened. Next, the statute of limitations had run out,
so no one was charged in the attempt on John
Busby's life. It became just one more crime that Melvin
Senior had masterminded and then walked away from totally unscathed.
So now a lot of people were wondering what did
(34:57):
Shirley know and when did she know it.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
One thing to.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
Point out here is that by all accounts, it really
does seem like Shirley loved Melvin, but not much as
known about her inner life. She did not have many
people to confide in except her sister, Loretta. Loretta, when
she talked to CNN, insisted that Shirley loved her husband,
but she said Shirley had zero knowledge of how bad
Melvin's criminal dealings were. But honestly, it's hard to believe
(35:23):
that Shirley could have lived there all those years and
not at least suspect that something was going on. A
lot of people think she was in deep on several
of the crimes. I don't want to sound like I'm
blaming the victim here. I'm just trying to understand the
dynamics of what was going on inside that house. We
know that Shirley was very young when she got involved
with Melvin. He was extremely manipulative and cruel, But at
(35:46):
the same time, she was involved in pretty much every
aspect of his business for years. It's very hard to
believe that she lived with him all those years, worked
with him, and knew nothing. Remember, Shirley was supposedly in
the car when Melvin Senior shot John Busby. Then of
course there's the fact she was one of the last
(36:08):
people seen with Jeff, her former boyfriend, who disappeared, and
then she was supposedly seen washing Melvin Senior's Cadillac on
the day Jeff's body was found in a field right
across from their home. Shirley's family said that she didn't
know anything. They said that Melvin's family and people connected
(36:30):
to them are just trying to blame the victim, to
blame Shirley because she can't defend herself.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
They say that Shirley was a.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Victim of Melvin and not an accomplice, but it's clear
that over the years, not only did Shirley witness a
lot of Melvin shady dealings, but that she also developed
some enemies of her own, including potentially Todd's girlfriend, Joanne.
Jo Anne had been living rent free on the family compound,
but according to the Cape Cod Times, after Melvin Senior
(37:01):
was sent to the hospital, Shirley had started asking joe
Anne to sign a rental agree, which apparently did not
go down well. Also, a lot of people wondered who
were the people allegedly on those sex tapes with Shirley.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
In twenty fourteen, police finally charged someone with Shirley Rainey's murder,
but to everyone in town's shock, it wasn't Todd or
anyone in Melvin's family. It was John Rams. When John
was arrested for Shirley's murder, he was given a polygraph.
And this really is one of those little side notes
(37:38):
just to show you how often there are like zero
degrees of separations between people in small towns. Because The
officer who gave John Rams a polygraph task was Lieutenant Dominguez,
the father of Michael Dominguez, Shirley's alleged lover, and the
guy who found her body.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
Everyone was related to everyone.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
Everyone was tied to multiple people in multiple ways, and
just understanding the relationships in this small town got really good, complicated,
really fast. John Rams completely denied having anything to do
with Shirley's murder. He said Todd told him after the
break in that he wanted to kill Shirley, that Todd
tried to get John Rams to do it, and that
(38:20):
Todd told him that he wanted it to look like
a mob hit. But John Rams insisted that he always
refused to do that. Not only that, John Rams later
told CNN that he warned federal and local authorities that
Shirley's life was in danger when they questioned him about
the break in years before she was killed.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
He said that he tried to.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
Warn them and they just ignored him. Now, the authorities
deny this, but when CNN was doing the story, they
also talked to John Ram's lawyer. He confirmed what John said.
The lawyer also said he told the authorities about the
alleged threats to Shirley's life, but at the time police
denied that John tipped off the authorities. They said that
(39:02):
any information he allegedly gave about danger to show Barley's
life is not included in any official report. In two
thousand and nine, Todd Rainey was arrested for the break
in at Shirley's house. He was convicted and given five
years in prison. It seems like authorities were trying to
build the case against Todd while he was in jail,
(39:24):
but apparently they didn't have enough to charge Todd in
connection with Shirley's murder. So Todd served his sentence and
was released, and in twenty ten, the lawsuit that Todd
and his brother Melvin had filed against Shirley was settled.
The business, Five Star Enterprises, was later sold, and that
was it. That was pretty much the end of the
(39:45):
Rainy Empire. In November of twenty thirteen, Melvin Rainey Senior
died at a hospital in Taunton. He was seventy four
years old. The Cape Cod Times called John Busby the
officer who was shot in the face by Melvin Senior
and then been forced along with his family to flee town.
He had this to say, quote I outlived the bastard.
(40:07):
Thank goodness. The devil has a playmate or maybe even
a boss or co conspirator. He was hell on earth
end quote. John Rams murder trial finally started in twenty fourteen,
and a lot of people really surprised that Todd Rainey
wasn't charged. The whole trial was actually really much more
about Todd Rainey than John Rams. The prosecutors were saying
(40:31):
that Todd had hired John Rams to kill Shirley. They
had no evidence, They had no physical evidence, None of
John rams DNA was inside the house. They'd only found
one fingerprint at the scene, and it wasn't a match
to John Rams or anyone else they had in the database.
In fact, they never successfully matched that fingerprint. Todd and
(40:55):
Melvin Junior were called to testify, but they took the
fifth and the defense pointed out Shirley Rainey had had
other enemies, like the people who allegedly appeared in those
sex tapes, people who may have been blackmailed. But that
didn't seem to make a lot of sense because the
sex tapes had already been stolen, and if that was true,
why would someone come back and kill Shirley. Afterwards, in court,
(41:19):
John Ram's attorney said Todd was the mastermind behind Shirley's murder,
and it seemed like everyone focused on Todd as the
alternative suspect. They tried to keep the focus on Todd,
and in the end that seemed to work, because in
April of twenty fourteen, John Rams was found not guilty.
Speaker 3 (41:36):
He walked out of court a freeman.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
Shirley's family was devastated and some of them have said
they still have suspicions about John Rams. There's no way
of knowing for sure if he's guilty or innocent. Obviously
he now can't be tried again because of double jeopardy.
But I will say over the years he has not
been shy about talking to the media. He did an
interview with CNN and he insists he's innocent. He says
(41:59):
he did not kill Shirley Rainey. Shirley's family have no answers,
no justice, and when the jury failed to convict John Rams,
they probably felt like they lost any hope of getting
any information on anyone else in the Rainy family. Since
he walked out of court, John Rams has had more
brushes with law in twenty fifteen, he allegedly struck a
(42:20):
woman in the face with his hand and pulled a
knife on her. He was back in jail for a
few months, then released again. A lot of people continue
to wonder why Todd Rainey was never charged. Even if
the prosecutors believed John Rams was the trigger man, it
seems like they would have filed charges against the person
they believed was the mastermind, but they never did so officially.
(42:43):
Shirley Rainey's murder is still unsolved. Wanda's body has never
been found. It was reported in local news stories that
over the years, Melvin Senior would make comments comments that
were kind of tawning. He would allegedly say things like, quote,
the police drive by Wanda every day, you just don't
see her.
Speaker 3 (43:03):
End quote.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
Maybe hiding in plain sight, buried somewhere on that family compound,
right across from where Jeff's body another victim connected to
Melvin Senior was found. So in the end, Melvin Junior
and Todd did get control of their family property. They
were able to move back into the house where their
dad lived and where they grew up. But Loretta, Shirley's sister,
(43:27):
told Boston Magazine back in two thousand and six that
she has zero interest in that house. She said, Basically,
she feels like it's cursed ground. She said, quote my
sister died for that property. It's evil land. My sister's
murder is showing people that Foulmouth is not the sweet
little town everyone thinks it is.
Speaker 3 (43:45):
End quote. I'm Catherine Townsend.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murder Line
is a production of School of Humans and I Heartpop.
It's written and hosted by me Catherine Townsend and produced
(44:09):
by Gabby Watts. Music contributed by Ben Sale and this
episode was scored and mixed by Miranda Hawkins. Executive producers
of Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Elsie Crowley.
Speaker 3 (44:21):
If you have a case.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
You'd like me and my team to look into, you
can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder Line.
It's six seven eight seven four four six one four five.
That's six seven eight seven four four six one four five.
Please subscribe and leave us a review wherever you listen
to your podcasts.
Speaker 3 (44:47):
School of Humans
School of Humans. It was May tenth, two thousand and five,
when police in the tiny town of Ballymouth, Massachusetts, a sleepy,
picturesque little place on Cape Cod got this nine one
one calls record. Yeah, I think somebody down at six
fifty seventh Highways.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
I think somebody shot Shirley.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Oh my God, Girland, God man, let me tell you it. Cotnia,
here we are. A man named Michael Dominguez had been
doing some work for a woman who lived in the
house at six fifty seven East Falmouth Highway, fifty one
year old Shirley Rainey. Michael showed up a little after
five am. He had two cups of dunkin Donuts coffee
with him, one for himself and one for Shirley, but
(00:56):
Shirley didn't answer the door, so Michael started looking around
the house outside. He peeked through one of the glass
panels in the garage and that's when he saw Shirley
slumped on the garage floor, half hanging out of her
Nissan Maxima in a.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Pool of blood.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Michael kicked the door down and he's the one who
made the nine one one call.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Police rushed to the scene, and they later said that
Shirley had been dead for a while, around eight hours.
She had been shot twice, once in the chest, and
then when she fell out of the car. Police believed
the killer stepped closer to her and shot her a
second time in the head. Then they picked up the
(01:40):
shell casings and left the scene. There was no sign
of forced entry, so it seemed that the killer had
been lying in wait for Shirley in that dark garage.
Shirley was a pretty wealthy woman, but nothing was stolen
from the house. So who would stalk and kill a
fifty something woman execution style in her garage and why?
(02:03):
It turned out that there were actually a lot of suspects.
Shirley had been married to Melvin Rainey, a convicted arsonist
who was nicknamed the Falm of Fox. He was given
that nickname back in the day by a judge who
described him as being sly like a fox. Melvin Rainey
had a lot of local enemies, and so did Shirley.
(02:24):
They included alleged mob connections, people who owed her money,
former lovers who she allegedly made sex tapes with, and
who may have been being blackmailed, family members of Melvin's
first wife, and even Shirley's own step sons, Todd and
Melvin Junior. They were fighting Shirley for control of their
family business, and they were due to go back to
(02:45):
court in just ten days. Shirley Rainey was a mysterious woman,
and this small town shooting was about to lead to
a trail of dead bodies and a lot more dark secrets.
I'm Catherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. If
you have a case you'd like me and my team
to look into, you can reach out to us at
(03:07):
our Helen Gone Murder Line at six seven eight seven
four four six one four five. I first heard about
(04:00):
this case when I took a trip to Cape Cod
last spring. I was talking to a friend who has
a house, and they said, you know, why don't you
ever take a break from trying to cover cold cases
and maybe hang out somewhere like this, this quiet little
town for a couple of weeks. And I distinctly remember
what I said. I said, if I didn't travel around
the country and cover cold cases, I would probably find
(04:22):
one near me, because every town has at least one
cold case. I was kind of kidding, but later that day,
of course, I did, in fact start talking to someone
at a local coffee shop, and they told me about
the case of the Famath Fox and his wife.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
As I said.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Before, the Famath Fox was a local nickname for Shirley
Rainey's husband, Melvin Rainey. And that's when I found out
that I was sitting there in this sweet little town
that basically looked like the backdrop for murder, she wrote,
And yet I was on top of one of the
most notorious unsolved killings in New England. Shirley Rainey and
Melvin Rainey had been married for around twenty years, and
(05:01):
Shirley's home that she was living in at the time
of the shooting was in the middle of kind of
a compound owned by the Rainy family. Shirley and Melvin's
property was on hundreds of acres of land. Her brother
in law, John Rainey lived in the house next door.
Shirley's step son, Todd Rainey lived on a nearby property,
and so did his girlfriend, Joanne, who was the mother
(05:22):
of his two children. Melvin Senior ran a trash hauling business.
It was called Five Star Enterprises, and many of you
who have read anything about mob history and the history
of New England may know that especially during that era,
the phrase trash hauling was often shorthand for a business
that relied on mob connections and a lot of shady dealings,
(05:45):
and that was definitely the case with Five Star. For
a long time, Shirley's two step sons, Todd and Melvin Junior,
were in the family business, but Melvin Senior and his
sons had a falling out. Now why this started exactly
is a little bit of a mystery. It started sometime
in the mid nineties. Shirley told her lawyers that Melvin
(06:05):
got frustrated because his two sons just weren't working hard enough.
Now they would later allege that Shirley manipulated Melvin Senor,
but either way, the end result was that Melvin and
his two sons, Melvin Junior and Todd, were estranged. Melvin
Junior and Todd ended up going to work for another company,
a competitor. Over the years, Melvin was known as a
(06:28):
notorious criminal.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
There's just no other way to put it.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
He was also an arsonist, and a lot of people
who've commented on the case say that Melvin was a
psychopath and that he truly enjoyed and maybe even got
sexual pleasure out of setting fires. His family's trash hauling
business definitely had a monopoly on the area. But in
the late nineties, Melvin Senior's mental health started to decline.
(06:54):
He seemed to be developing dementia and eventually he went
to stay long term at a psychiatric hospital.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
So by the.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Time of Shirley's shooting, Shirley was running the family business
by herself. There is so much going on with this
case and so much history, and good investigative reporting really
can change the game in these cases because it's all
about reading between the lines. In this case, reporter Michelle
McPhee did a great story for Boston Magazine, and that
(07:25):
story had a lot of details that many shows like
the CNN Special left out, like the fact that Michael,
the guy who found Shirley, wasn't just a coworker of Shirley's.
He was married, but allegedly he was Shirley's lover, which
is why he showed up so early at that hour
of the morning, and how he knew how Shirley took
(07:46):
her coffee. This was something that Michael never admitted, by
the way, so at first it's hard to know if
it's just local rumor or something more. But it was
an early indication that in this case, nothing is what
it appears to be on the surface. It reminds me
a lot of some of the cases I've covered in
Arkansas and other places, small towns, where each person is
(08:09):
connected to multiple people in the case in various different ways.
For example, you'll have someone who is a witness and
also rented someone a house, and they're the cousin of
the prosecutor.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
This is just the way it is in small towns.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
But I have to say the entanglements in the Rainy
case are some of the most complicated I've ever seen.
Shirley was very close to one family member, her sister, Loretta.
Loretta told CNN that from the beginning she suspected that
someone in Shirley's husband's family had something to do with
the shooting. Now, remember, at this time, Shirley was running
(08:42):
her husband, Melvin Senior's business. Loretta did work for the
family business as well. Not only did Shirley and Loretta
work together, but they were together almost every night after
work too, including on May ninth. After work on May night,
Shirley drove to Loretta's house and had dinner with her.
Loretta told investigators that was at around six pm. Loretta
(09:04):
said Shirley left for her home sometime between eight thirty
and eight forty five pm. Police theorized that, based on
the crime scene, Shirley pulled into her garage, her killer
stepped out of the darkness with a nine millimeter handgun,
which was found to be the weapon used, shot Shirley twice,
and left the scene. Police suspected that this could have
(09:24):
been a professional hit, or at least it was done
by someone with insider knowledge, someone who was intimately familiar
with Shirley's schedule. Plus, there was no sign of forced entry,
so it might have been someone who had a key
or knew about another way to get inside that house,
someone who made a plan and targeted Shirley. So who
(09:46):
could that have been? Who would have wanted Shirley dead?
Police talked to Michael Dominguez, who remember was not only
Shirley's employee, but also potentially her alleged lover, and then
later it came out in the Cape Cod Times that
Michael Dominguez was also rumored to be mel Child, a
(10:07):
child that Melvin Senior had had out of wedlock from
another relationship. So technically he would be Shirley's illegitimate step
son as well. But Michael had an alibi for the
night before he was with his wife, Plus he and
Shirley were getting along, so there was really no reason
to suspect that he would have heard her. And then
there were Shirley's stepsons. Because it turned out not only
(10:31):
were Shirley's stepsons angry about the family business, they believed
that she had their dad locked away and that she
had been responsible for them being cut out of his will,
but they also believed that Shirley may have been partially
responsible for killing their mother. Cape Cod is known as
(10:52):
being a safe, sleepy, little area, but there were a
couple of very high profile murders in the years before
Shirley was shot. Both of them were women, but both
of these women could kind of be described as out
of ten people who were renting in the area for locals.
This case was different. Shirley Rainey was a local girl.
She grew up in the area and it seemed like
(11:15):
everyone knew her, or at least knew of her and
her husband's family.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Police asked Michael Dominguez who he thought did it.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
He immediately said Todd and Melvin Junior, Shirley step son's.
Shirley's lawyer, William Enright told Boston Magazine quote she was
afraid of her step son's end quote. There was also
the question of where Todd was on the night of
the shooting. His girlfriend, Joanne, said that he had been
(11:43):
at their house, which was right down from Shirley's house.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
She later testified that Todd had been at her house
on the night when Shirley was killed, but the timeline
seemed pretty vague. Joanne said that she went out to
run an errand and that when she came back, Todd
was gone. Shirley's sister, Loretta also so asked police why
no one heard anything, because remember, several family members lived nearby,
(12:13):
and yet no one had heard any gunshots. Police also
wondered why Todd and his girlfriend Joanne would not let
their two children talk to investigators. Jo Anne later told police,
according to the Cape Cod Times, that it was a
joint decision. So now that we know how Shirley's life
ended violently, we need to take a step back and
(12:35):
find out how her relationship with Melvin started, how she
got sucked into all this. Melvin Senior was born in
nineteen thirty nine, and he grew up in the area.
Very early on he started to get into the family
trashouling business. He started being involved in criminal activity at
a young age as well. Melvin's first wife, the mom
(12:55):
of Todd and Melvin Junior, was a local girl named
Wanda Maderos. Apparently, Wanda was a very serious, kind of
studious and shy young woman, and her family did not
like Melvin when they started going out.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
He was this kind of.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Squirrely older guy who was hanging around their teenage daughter.
And at this point Melvin was already in his mid twenties.
But Wanda was in love with him, even though he
had a reputation as a gangster, and so right after
she turned eighteen, they got married on October twenty sixth,
nineteen sixty four. They had two children, Melvin Junior and Todd.
(13:31):
As we said before, Melvin was already involved in the
family trash hauling business, he was also involved in a
lot of arson. Melvin was arrested for arson a few
years later. In nineteen sixty eight. He and a younger
guy he was working with, who was actually a teenager
at the time, set fire to a bunch of houses
and a hotel in Cape cod From reading through descriptions
(13:54):
of what happened, it looks like the police were able
to talk to Melvin's younger accomplice and kind of get
him to flip on Melvin. As a result, Melvin was
convicted of seven counts of arson. That same year, Melvin
was sentenced to five to eight years in state prison.
And while Melvin was in prison, he seemed to learn
a lesson from this. Unfortunately, the lesson wasn't that he
(14:16):
shouldn't commit crime and burn down houses. The lesson he
learned was that in future he was going to make
sure nobody ever flipped on him again. Melvin was released
after eighteen months. When he got back to town, everyone
said he was not rehabilitated. In fact, just the opposite.
He seemed to have no fear. He was bold both
(14:38):
in his criminal activities and in his private life because,
according to pretty much everyone who knew him, Melvin was
not an attractive man. He was five feet eight inches tall,
he weighed around one hundred and sixty pounds, so was
pretty skinny, and he had this kind of unkempt pompadour
slick back hairstyle. But The main thing that people found
disturbing about Melvin's appearance was his eyes. A lot of
(15:02):
people talked about how he had this weird, distant stare,
this really weird, unsettling smile that was kind of a
creepy leer, but that didn't stop him from being a
local player. According to rumors, he dated lots of young women,
and I do mean young women, as we've seen in
so many cases with narcissistic, controlling, sort of predatory type men,
(15:26):
they get older, but they continue to date teenage girls.
I find it really sad reading about Wanda, Melvin's first wife,
because it seems like after she married Melvin, she realized
pretty quickly she made a big mistake.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
She really loved him, but his.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
Job, combined with him staying out all hours, and her
hearing rumors about him pursuing other women, really seemed to
cause her to lose all of her confidence. Her mom, Mary,
who Wanda was very close to, made a comment to
a reporter years later. She said Wanda seemed depressed. She
was only twenty five years old, but she seemed older
(16:02):
than her years. Mary said Wanda's expected that her husband
was cheating on her, and Wanda was right, because Melvin
did have a wandering eye, and he already had that
wandering eyes set on someone else, a sixteen year old
named Shirley Susa who lived across the street, who would
later become his second wife. Melvin and Wanda actually hired
(16:23):
Shirley as a living babysitter, which is a little weird
because Wanda was a stay at home mom and she
didn't go out that much, so it's not clear why
they would need full time childcare help, especially a living
babysitter who was gorgeous. Back then, Shirley was tall, she
had long black hair, and this very bucksome figure. It
(16:44):
was obvious that Melvin was interested in her. So now
this brings us up to the early seventies. Wanda is
twenty five years old, She's depressed, she's sure that her
husband is cheating, and Melvin has his eye on the
babysitter from across the street. On March thirteenth, nineteen seventy one,
Wanda's mother, Mary called the house looking for her daughter.
(17:06):
She talked to one of her grandsons and they told
her that Wanda had gone to visit her grandma Mary.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
Well, Mary knew.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
This wasn't true. Finally she talked to Melvin. He said
that the kids had it wrong. What really happened was
that Wanda had gone to visit a cousin who lived
in a town called Whaream, which was nearby. He mentioned
that he and Wanda got into an argument before she
left the house, he said, over a small amount of money.
Melvin waited five days to report his wife and the
(17:35):
mother of his two children officially missing, and when people
asked Melvin what happened, apparently he told them Wanda might
have been having an affair and left him for a lover.
Her mother, Mary, said this was absolutely ridiculous. First of all,
she said, Wanda would never have had an affair. This
was a woman who was still devoted to her husband,
her confidence had been shattered, and also she loved her children.
(17:57):
She did everything for them. She would never leave her sons. Secondly,
the cousin whom Melvin had referred to no longer even
lived wear them, and once Melvin talked to police, it
turned out that the bus depot that he had supposedly
taken one to two to put her on a bus
to visit that cousin didn't even go to war them,
so none of the story made any sense. Mary and
(18:20):
a lot of other people who knew Wanda believed that
Melvin had done something to her, that he'd killed her
and gotten rid of her body. They pointed out that
it certainly would have been within his area of expertise.
Not only was he in the business of trash removal,
but apparently Melvin had a brother in law who was
a grave digger.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Police did search his home. They looked in a few areas,
including a garage where fresh cement had been poured, and
a septic tank, but you have to remember this is
a massive compound with a lot of potential hiding places.
In the end, police left without finding anything.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Over the years, Mary has had to hear a lot
of local rumors about how Melvin supposedly got rid of Wandah.
Some people believe that since part of his business involved
picking up animal fats from local butcher shops and then
taking them to a factory so they could be processed
into soap, that maybe that's what he did with Wanda.
Maybe he turned Wanda into hand soap. I cannot imagine
(19:26):
how painful it must have been for Mary to hear
all of these rumors and consider all of these horrific
possibilities and to never find her daughter. Wanda's family was
very suspicious, but the bottom line is with no body
and with Melvin not talking, they couldn't really do anything,
so the case went cold. After Wanda disappeared, Shirley, the
(19:47):
teenage babysitter, moved in permanently. But there was another problem
because Shirley already had a boyfriend, or at least a
local guy who liked her, a seventeen year old named
Charles Jeffrey Flanagan. In October of nineteen seventy two, Shirley
was one of the last last people seen hanging out
with Jeff and then he disappeared. He was last seen
(20:12):
going out to a movie with some friends, and then
those friends told police that Shirley and Melvin pulled up
in Melvin's Cadillac and offered Jeff a ride home, then
he disappeared. Later, the authorities found Jeff's body. He had
been shot in the face with a twenty gage shotgun.
The bullet went out his upper back, severing his spinal cord.
(20:34):
He was found in a Cranberry bog right across from
Melvin's house on East Falmouth Highway, the same house where
Shirley's body would be found years later. There were a
lot of suspicions, but again Melvin was never charged in
connection with his crime. John Busby, a police officer who
was shot in the face after he offended Melvin, said
(20:56):
in a book that he wrote about the case that
on the day that Jeff's body was found, Shirley was
seen scrubbing down Melvin's Cadillac, but Shirley always dined any
wrongdoing in connection with any crime. Over the years, Melvin
Senior was also linked to the disappearance and murder of
several more people. In nineteen seventy seven, Paul Alwert was
(21:18):
seventeen years old and he worked for Five Star Enterprises,
Melvin's trash business. He was the suspect in an arson
that supposedly was arranged and masterminded by Melvin. In a way,
it was a replay of the charges that Melvin had
faced a few years earlier when he committed arson with
a teenage accomplice. Police convinced Paul to testify against Melvin.
(21:41):
Paul said he was terrified. Police convinced him they could
protect him. They put him on a ferry to Martha's vineyard.
He was supposed to testify the next day. The police
watched him board the fairy, and then the fairy pulled
away and vanished. When it docked on the other side,
Paul was gone. No one has seen any trace of
(22:02):
him since. There is very little information about Paul online.
Just an old pixelated photo of a little boy with
shiny brown hair and two front teeth with a really
cute smile looking up at the camera. It's absolutely heartbreaking.
Some news reports have said that Paul had a troubled childhood,
that he was a ward of the Massachusetts Department of
(22:24):
Youth Services. So I don't know if he had any
family or friends to even report him missing or to
do public appeals. He was just gone. Police never identified
a suspect in that case. It is still unsolved. Just
another disappearance that Melvin Senior was suspected of being involved
in that was never proven. Over the years, Melvin Senior's
(22:46):
trash hauling company got more and more powerful. They developed
kind of a local monopoly, and Melvin continued to openly
threaten people, even police. In August of nineteen seventy nine,
John Busby, the Foulmouth Police officer we mentioned earlier found
out the hard way what happened when you cross Melvin Senior.
John Busby was on patrol when he gave a guy
(23:09):
a traffic ticket. The guy was with Melvin, and Melvin
said something like, don't you know who I am? John
Busby basically refused to be intimidated and just told Melvin
and his accomplice to pay the ticket. Well, apparently this
enraged Melvin. He said, I smell smoke, which was something
that he said to a lot of people to intimidate
(23:30):
them and threaten them, make them feel like he was
going to start a fire. John Busby said that Melvin
kind of puffed his chest out, but he just tried
to ignore him. On August thirty first of that year,
John Busby was on patrol. A car pulled up next
to him. Someone put a shotgun out of one of
the windows and shot him at point blank range in
(23:50):
the face. The bullets shattered his jaw and severed part
of his tongue, and somehow, with half of his face
hanging off, John Busby managed to get to a nearby
house to get help. He was very close to death,
but he survived. However, he did suffer permanent injuries. His
speech continues to be affected. He had to have eighteen
(24:12):
years of reconstructive surgeries. His life and his career as
he had known it were over. In his book, which
was actually written by John Busby and his daughter, called
The Year We Disappeared, they talked about how after he
got shot, the family had to go into hiding, they
had to lead their entire lives behind all because they
were terrorized by Melvin. No charges were ever filed in
(24:35):
connection with that shooting either, and John Busby was described
by everyone who knew him as a good, honest cop,
someone who did the right thing. And look what happened
to the guy who tried to do the right thing.
He ended up permanently disfigured, while the guy who masterminded
his shooting was allowed to go on unchallenged. Melvin's company
(24:57):
did get into some trouble over the years. In nineteen
eighty five, Five Star Enterprises actually had their contract terminated
by the town. Melvin was accused of fraud. He was
accused of collaborating with other companies so that the bid
for the trash hauling services would always go to him. Basically,
he was accused of rigging the system. But Melvin, like
(25:17):
a lot of underworld figures in small towns, had a
lot of friends in powerful positions. He was even friends
with several police officers. Melvin was acquitted of those charges,
which shocked a lot of people, but after that he
seemed to become more and more bold. He probably thought
he was untouchable, and at that point, the sad thing
(25:38):
is he was probably right. Meanwhile, on the home front,
Melvin's personal life had always been rather complicated. After Wanda disappeared,
Shirley moved in and they were together after that. Later
in nineteen ninety seven, Melvin filed for divorce from Wanda
on the grounds that she deserted him, which again must
(26:00):
have been so painful for her family and her children
to consider that possibility and to know it wasn't true.
Melvin and Shirley finally got married in nineteen ninety nine.
They never had children of their own, but according to
a lot of people, including people from the family, Shirley
and Melvin's sons got along really well in the beginning.
(26:21):
She treated them like they were her own. She was
living with them in the home from the time they
were very young. In the seventies, they grew up together
as this sort of strange, blended family. Of course, at first,
because the boys were young, they probably had no idea
what was going on. They probably believed whatever Melvin and
Shirley told them about their mother leaving and not coming back.
(26:45):
But over the years, it seems like the boys began
to get suspicious about what had really happened to their mother,
and that must have been a really strange household to
live in. To love your stepmother and your father, but
also to kind of suspect they might have had something
to do with killing your mother. Over the years, Melvin
(27:05):
Antics became more and more notorious, but law enforcement just
seemed to look the other way, even when Melvin once
set fire to a car that was sitting in the
police chief's driveway according to CNN, and all those years
Shirley worked for Melvin. Her sister Loretta did the bookkeeping,
and Shirley was the financial controller. Finally, in the mid nineties,
(27:30):
there was the rift between Melvin and his sons. Again,
what exactly went down really depends on who you ask.
Shirley's family and her lawyer blame the boys for their
bad work ethic. The boys have not really talked about
their reasons for disliking Shirley, but I'm sure they must
have been suspicious about what happened to their mother. After
(27:51):
Todd and Melvin Junior became estrange from their father and
started working for the rival company, Melvin started telling people
he missed his sons. Loretta, Shirley's sister, later described Melvin
as being like two different people. He was a psychopath
who loved to start fires and who terrorized a lot
(28:11):
of people in town. But on the other hand, he
could be a great neighbor. He loaned people money, and
he could be really sweet at home. Melvin's behavior started
to become more and more erratic, his mental health was declining.
In October of two thousand and one, things came to
a head when Melvin attacked a woman in public in
East Balmouth in a parking lot. He threatened to shoot her.
(28:35):
He was charged with attempted murder this time, and it
was something he couldn't talk his way out of.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
The court put.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
Melvin in a psychiatric hospital after that happened, Shirley was
in charge of the money and the business. And there's
something else that her stepson's thought was weird, they said.
Just before Melvin went away to that hospital, when presumably
his mental state was in question, Melvin made a new
will again.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
This was just two.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
Weeks before Melvin went into the mental hospital, and in
that will it specified that neither son would receive anything.
Todd and Melvin Junior were enraged. They believed that their
father was not in his right mind. They believed Shirley
had masterminded this turn of events and gotten their father
to change that will. Also, on a side note, when
(29:22):
Melvin Senior got admitted to the mental hospital right after
he got charged with a violent crime, I imagine it
could have been one of those things where people were thinking,
is he really mentally incapacitated, or is this like the
scene in Goodfellas and Casino and New Jack City and
every other mob movie where the mobsters pretend to be
super feeble, they're all in oxygen in wheelchairs, and then
(29:43):
they roll outside, get up and start walking around and
are actually fine. But time passed and Melvin did seem
to be having a break with reality. He was committed
to Taunton State Hospital. Later it was revealed he had
something called Pick's disease, which is kind of similar to
Alzheimer's but less common with Picks disease, the front and
(30:04):
temporal lobes of the are damaged, and those are the
parts of the brain that control behavior, personality, and speech.
So it's a form of dementia and it was not
going to get any better.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
Now.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Around this time, Melvin Junior and Todd's relationship with Shirley
completely broke down. They seemed to blame everything, including the estrangement,
on Shirley. In two thousand and two, Todd and Melvin
Junior seemed to hatch a plan. They went to the
police and they said Shirley had stolen some things from them.
They said Shirley had one of their guns at three
(30:38):
fifty seven magnum and a truck they had taken from her.
So the police went in and executed a search warrant
on Shirley's property. They found the truck and the gun,
and they arrested Shirley, but no charges were ever pressed
against her. Now, this is where the story gets a
little bit complicated because later it was alleged that Todd
had friends who were high up in the police department.
(31:00):
We know he had a relative who was a detective
and he was an informant for the foulm of police
at one point, and in court what came out was
that while the police were at Shirley's residence, they opened
up her safe. Inside were financial documents that were related
to Melvin Senior's will.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
Todd allegedly taught.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
To his buddies in the police department about what they
found in Shirley's safe. Now they completely denied that, But
according to a guy named John Rams, who was one
of Todd's associates who had worked with him in the past,
Todd approached him and asked him to break into Shirley's house.
John Rams had a criminal background, and some of it
(31:39):
was violent. In nineteen ninety two, when he was nineteen
years old, he got into a fight with a guy
and stabbed him. He ended up being convicted of manslaughter
and was sent to prison for seven years. Now his
dad told a newspaper that John was just defending himself
and that a group of guys were attacking him. But
John Rams had also been arrested for other crimes, at
(32:00):
one point for allegedly assaulting an ex girlfriend. Much later,
John Rams told CNN that he owed Todd Rainey a favor.
Todd told him he wanted Shirley and Melvin's will and
trust documents, the ones that were in that safe that
the police had seen. He also wanted some VHS tapes,
which he said were sex tapes. Todd believed some of
(32:22):
those videotapes showed Shirley having sexual encounters with prominent men
in town and believed he could use them to blackmail her.
John Rams said Todd also told him there was ten
thousand dollars in cash in a safe inside Shirley's house
that he could grab while he was there. So John
Rams told police he did what Todd wanted. He broke
(32:44):
into Shirley's house, he stole those documents, and he stole
the sex tapes. By the way, John Rams said there
was no cash in there, but it's pretty much impossible
to verify that. The next year, in two thousand and three,
Todd Rainey filed a lawsuit against Shirley in Barnstable Superior Court.
The lawsuit alleged that Melvin was not in his right
(33:06):
mind when he wrote that will, and that Shirley had
influenced him. And this is when Todd and his brother
did something that, in my opinion, was really brazen. And
just kind of shows how much confidence they had that
they were going to get away with anything they had.
The financial documents that had been stolen from Shirley's house
entered into evidence. So later police questioned Todd about this,
(33:28):
and it's a long and weird story, but Todd told
police that a random black man had given him those documents,
which of course was a lie because he had arranged
that break in at Shirley's house. So now police knew
Todd had been responsible for the break in at Shirley's place,
and they arrested him for it. Now, as a result
of this, Melvin Junior and Todd ended up talking to police.
(33:50):
They admitted that their dad, Melvin Sr. Had shot John Busby,
the police officer. He had been the one who disfigured him.
They also said their uncle, John Rainey, who lived next
door to their dad, Anne Shirley, were in the car
at the time when the policeman was shot. So the
police talked to John Rainey. He also confessed. He told police, yes,
he was driving the car the night John Busby was shot,
(34:13):
but he said Melvin Senior, his brother, was the one
who pulled the trigger. He also claimed that Shirley was
in the car with them, and just to show how
potentially corrupt this system was, it later came out that
Melvin Senior was friends with a local police officer and
he actually bought the getaway car from him. So now
the police had a confession. They knew who had shot
(34:35):
John Busby and permanently disfigured him. I really can't believe
what happened. Next, the statute of limitations had run out,
so no one was charged in the attempt on John
Busby's life. It became just one more crime that Melvin
Senior had masterminded and then walked away from totally unscathed.
So now a lot of people were wondering what did
(34:57):
Shirley know and when did she know it.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
One thing to.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
Point out here is that by all accounts, it really
does seem like Shirley loved Melvin, but not much as
known about her inner life. She did not have many
people to confide in except her sister, Loretta. Loretta, when
she talked to CNN, insisted that Shirley loved her husband,
but she said Shirley had zero knowledge of how bad
Melvin's criminal dealings were. But honestly, it's hard to believe
(35:23):
that Shirley could have lived there all those years and
not at least suspect that something was going on. A
lot of people think she was in deep on several
of the crimes. I don't want to sound like I'm
blaming the victim here. I'm just trying to understand the
dynamics of what was going on inside that house. We
know that Shirley was very young when she got involved
with Melvin. He was extremely manipulative and cruel, But at
(35:46):
the same time, she was involved in pretty much every
aspect of his business for years. It's very hard to
believe that she lived with him all those years, worked
with him, and knew nothing. Remember, Shirley was supposedly in
the car when Melvin Senior shot John Busby. Then of
course there's the fact she was one of the last
(36:08):
people seen with Jeff, her former boyfriend, who disappeared, and
then she was supposedly seen washing Melvin Senior's Cadillac on
the day Jeff's body was found in a field right
across from their home. Shirley's family said that she didn't
know anything. They said that Melvin's family and people connected
(36:30):
to them are just trying to blame the victim, to
blame Shirley because she can't defend herself.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
They say that Shirley was a.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Victim of Melvin and not an accomplice, but it's clear
that over the years, not only did Shirley witness a
lot of Melvin shady dealings, but that she also developed
some enemies of her own, including potentially Todd's girlfriend, Joanne.
Jo Anne had been living rent free on the family compound,
but according to the Cape Cod Times, after Melvin Senior
(37:01):
was sent to the hospital, Shirley had started asking joe
Anne to sign a rental agree, which apparently did not
go down well. Also, a lot of people wondered who
were the people allegedly on those sex tapes with Shirley.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
In twenty fourteen, police finally charged someone with Shirley Rainey's murder,
but to everyone in town's shock, it wasn't Todd or
anyone in Melvin's family. It was John Rams. When John
was arrested for Shirley's murder, he was given a polygraph.
And this really is one of those little side notes
(37:38):
just to show you how often there are like zero
degrees of separations between people in small towns. Because The
officer who gave John Rams a polygraph task was Lieutenant Dominguez,
the father of Michael Dominguez, Shirley's alleged lover, and the
guy who found her body.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
Everyone was related to everyone.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
Everyone was tied to multiple people in multiple ways, and
just understanding the relationships in this small town got really good, complicated,
really fast. John Rams completely denied having anything to do
with Shirley's murder. He said Todd told him after the
break in that he wanted to kill Shirley, that Todd
tried to get John Rams to do it, and that
(38:20):
Todd told him that he wanted it to look like
a mob hit. But John Rams insisted that he always
refused to do that. Not only that, John Rams later
told CNN that he warned federal and local authorities that
Shirley's life was in danger when they questioned him about
the break in years before she was killed.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
He said that he tried to.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
Warn them and they just ignored him. Now, the authorities
deny this, but when CNN was doing the story, they
also talked to John Ram's lawyer. He confirmed what John said.
The lawyer also said he told the authorities about the
alleged threats to Shirley's life, but at the time police
denied that John tipped off the authorities. They said that
(39:02):
any information he allegedly gave about danger to show Barley's
life is not included in any official report. In two
thousand and nine, Todd Rainey was arrested for the break
in at Shirley's house. He was convicted and given five
years in prison. It seems like authorities were trying to
build the case against Todd while he was in jail,
(39:24):
but apparently they didn't have enough to charge Todd in
connection with Shirley's murder. So Todd served his sentence and
was released, and in twenty ten, the lawsuit that Todd
and his brother Melvin had filed against Shirley was settled.
The business, Five Star Enterprises, was later sold, and that
was it. That was pretty much the end of the
(39:45):
Rainy Empire. In November of twenty thirteen, Melvin Rainey Senior
died at a hospital in Taunton. He was seventy four
years old. The Cape Cod Times called John Busby the
officer who was shot in the face by Melvin Senior
and then been forced along with his family to flee town.
He had this to say, quote I outlived the bastard.
(40:07):
Thank goodness. The devil has a playmate or maybe even
a boss or co conspirator. He was hell on earth
end quote. John Rams murder trial finally started in twenty fourteen,
and a lot of people really surprised that Todd Rainey
wasn't charged. The whole trial was actually really much more
about Todd Rainey than John Rams. The prosecutors were saying
(40:31):
that Todd had hired John Rams to kill Shirley. They
had no evidence, They had no physical evidence, None of
John rams DNA was inside the house. They'd only found
one fingerprint at the scene, and it wasn't a match
to John Rams or anyone else they had in the database.
In fact, they never successfully matched that fingerprint. Todd and
(40:55):
Melvin Junior were called to testify, but they took the
fifth and the defense pointed out Shirley Rainey had had
other enemies, like the people who allegedly appeared in those
sex tapes, people who may have been blackmailed. But that
didn't seem to make a lot of sense because the
sex tapes had already been stolen, and if that was true,
why would someone come back and kill Shirley. Afterwards, in court,
(41:19):
John Ram's attorney said Todd was the mastermind behind Shirley's murder,
and it seemed like everyone focused on Todd as the
alternative suspect. They tried to keep the focus on Todd,
and in the end that seemed to work, because in
April of twenty fourteen, John Rams was found not guilty.
Speaker 3 (41:36):
He walked out of court a freeman.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
Shirley's family was devastated and some of them have said
they still have suspicions about John Rams. There's no way
of knowing for sure if he's guilty or innocent. Obviously
he now can't be tried again because of double jeopardy.
But I will say over the years he has not
been shy about talking to the media. He did an
interview with CNN and he insists he's innocent. He says
(41:59):
he did not kill Shirley Rainey. Shirley's family have no answers,
no justice, and when the jury failed to convict John Rams,
they probably felt like they lost any hope of getting
any information on anyone else in the Rainy family. Since
he walked out of court, John Rams has had more
brushes with law in twenty fifteen, he allegedly struck a
(42:20):
woman in the face with his hand and pulled a
knife on her. He was back in jail for a
few months, then released again. A lot of people continue
to wonder why Todd Rainey was never charged. Even if
the prosecutors believed John Rams was the trigger man, it
seems like they would have filed charges against the person
they believed was the mastermind, but they never did so officially.
(42:43):
Shirley Rainey's murder is still unsolved. Wanda's body has never
been found. It was reported in local news stories that
over the years, Melvin Senior would make comments comments that
were kind of tawning. He would allegedly say things like, quote,
the police drive by Wanda every day, you just don't
see her.
Speaker 3 (43:03):
End quote.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
Maybe hiding in plain sight, buried somewhere on that family compound,
right across from where Jeff's body another victim connected to
Melvin Senior was found. So in the end, Melvin Junior
and Todd did get control of their family property. They
were able to move back into the house where their
dad lived and where they grew up. But Loretta, Shirley's sister,
(43:27):
told Boston Magazine back in two thousand and six that
she has zero interest in that house. She said, Basically,
she feels like it's cursed ground. She said, quote my
sister died for that property. It's evil land. My sister's
murder is showing people that Foulmouth is not the sweet
little town everyone thinks it is.
Speaker 3 (43:45):
End quote. I'm Catherine Townsend.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murder Line
is a production of School of Humans and I Heartpop.
It's written and hosted by me Catherine Townsend and produced
(44:09):
by Gabby Watts. Music contributed by Ben Sale and this
episode was scored and mixed by Miranda Hawkins. Executive producers
of Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Elsie Crowley.
Speaker 3 (44:21):
If you have a case.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
You'd like me and my team to look into, you
can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder Line.
It's six seven eight seven four four six one four five.
That's six seven eight seven four four six one four five.
Please subscribe and leave us a review wherever you listen
to your podcasts.
Speaker 3 (44:47):
School of Humans
Hell and Gone News
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.