At about eight am on January tenth, two thousand and five, Lanesborough Police received an emergency call from a frantic woman.

My husband, I think he's dead, she cried out.

Police quickly arrived on the scene and found the man lying on the floor of their barn in a pool of his own blood.

Near him was his beloved horse, Hannah, and she had blood on her, specifically on her hoofs.

Lanesborough was a small town in northwestern Massachusetts, with only about three thousand residents.

It has a pretty low crime rate, and at the time the body was discovered, the last murder in Lanesborough had happened in nineteen eighty.

Because of that, when it was suggested that the victim had been trampled to death by the horse, authorities initially saw it as the most likely option.

It didn't take long, though, for detectives to realize there was much more to the story.

This is monsters.

Patricia Hall was born on October sixth, nineteen sixty three, and grew up in Bennington, Vermont.

She was the youngest of four sisters, and when one of her sisters graduated early through an accelerated program, Patricia asked her mother if she could do the same thing.

Her mother agreed, but on the condition that Patricia go to college once she had graduated from high school.

She was able to make that happen when she was sixteen years old, but did not keep her promise of enrolling in college.

She planned to take a year off, during which time she met a young man named James Robinson.

By the time she was eighteen, the couple were married and their first child, a son named Christopher, was born in nineteen eighty and then their daughter, Amanda, was born in nineteen eighty six.

Three years later, Patricia and James divorced.

Patricia would end up doing an interview for a show called Facing Evil with Candace DeLong, and every single word that came out of her mouth during that interview should be considered highly likely to be a lie.

That being sad, Patricia claimed her divorce was caused by her diagnosis of Crone's disease.

Crone's disease is a type of inflammatory bowel disease that causes swelling and irritation of the tissues and the digestive tract.

It can lead to belly pain, severe diarrhea, fatigue, weight loss, and malnutrition.

It can be both painful and debilitating, and may lead to serious or life threatening complications.

It can be hereditary, and two of her sisters also had it.

Patricia claimed that James had a difficult time dealing with someone who was sick.

After the divorce, the kids stayed with their father because he had a stable income and she didn't.

She also claimed that she was worried she wouldn't be able to care for the kids properly if she was sick.

To me, it seems to be common for people in her position to find little ways to make themselves look better.

She sacrificed custody of her children because of her illness, as if people with Crohn's disease never successfully raised children.

There are other sources that say James got custody of the children simply because she had no income After the divorce.

She made a living at a few low paying jobs before getting a job as a secretary slash bookkeeper in the offices of Lenco.

They were an armored truck company based in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, which was about forty five minutes south of Bennington.

It was while working there that she met Neil.

Neil Olsen was born in Pittsfield on August fifteenth, nineteen fifty six, to Harold and Ruth Olsen.

He had three brothers and a sister.

He grew up there, and after graduating from high school, he attended a program at Southern Massachusetts University.

He eventually transferred to Berkshire Community College, where he got a degree in business administration.

He ended up working for a number of different sign manufacturers before opening his own business, Olson Sign.

He made signs and painted lettering for a number of businesses, including the local fire department and len Coo.

Neil would letter the side of their armored trucks, and when the work was complete, he would go into the office of their bookkeeper to get paid.

He wasn't until March of nineteen ninety three that Neil finally worked up the nerve to ask Patricia out and invited her to his house in Lanesboro, just north of the Pittsfield city limits.

There, Neil had a home on two and a quarter acres or about ninety one hundred square meters of property.

He also had a barn in a workshop where he made the signs for his business.

While they were at his house in near Neil told Patricia that he was in love with her, and he asked her to move in with them.

He gave her what he called a get out of this relationship free card and said she could use it to leave in the event it didn't work out.

Patricia's friends thought she was crazy, but she thought it was charming, and she had also had a crush on him, so she moved in a few days later.

They were married on the property just over a year after that.

It was a decent sized house with a lot of property for just two people, but soon it would fill up.

The couple had two dogs, a bloodhound named Cletus and a lab named Bosco.

They eventually adopted an older horse named Hannah.

It said that Neil got Hannah from a friend because Patricia wanted a horse, but Patricia would eventually decide that the horse was, in her own words, a bitch.

Patricia's children also eventually made the property their home, but not until after some legal wrangling.

Neil helped Patricia take her ex husband to cord and win cut.

Study of Christopher and Amanda, who were sixteen and fourteen by then.

It probably won't come as a surprise that upending the lives of the teenagers after more than a decade didn't end up with positive results.

Both kids began acting out, and their grades in school took a nosedive.

Not only were both of them defiant, but Christopher was carrying out some disturbing behavior.

Amanda would later describe a time that her brother put a mouse in a glass jar, sprayed lighter fluid into the jar, and then lit the mouse on fire.

She described another time when he and a friend made a list of teachers and students that they wanted to kill.

They called it a death list.

He was also known to go long periods of time without bathing and committing self mutilation.

Amanda was no angel, though, she was charged with assault in eighth grade for spiking a student's drink with tile and all.

The kid ended up being allergic to it and had a serious reaction.

As the kid's behavior got increasingly more troublesome, Patricia wasn't able to get them under control.

Some of that was because she was trying to make up for the time she had not had custody of them, so she had a difficult time saying no or being the bad guy.

They still needed discipline, though, so that eventually fell on Neil.

Though never physically abusive, some thought Neil's punishments were a little harsh.

A lot of it seemed like it was just manual labor, filling potholes in the gravel driveway, digging ditches, or cleaning out the stable.

Once, as a punishment for Chris, Neil made him spend all day digging a hole on the property.

The ground was full of big rocks and it was exhausting, but once he was done, Neil just had him turn around and fill it back in.

When he caught a man to smoking in her bedroom, he took the door off the hinges so she didn't have any privacy.

Though Patricia did describe participating in some of the punishments.

In her interview on Facing Evil, she described overhearing Amanda on the phone bullying a friend for not having nicer clothes.

The following day, Neil went to a farm store and purchased five pairs of overalls, five striped shirts, and a pair of work boots.

When Amanda got home from school that day, she was told that she would have to wear those clothed to school every day the following week.

Again not physically abusive, but research has shown that humiliation is not an effective form of punishment and will ultimately cause more problems in the long run.

That was proven by the fact that Amanda never stopped acting out, so Neil and Patricia grounded her permanently until she was eighteen.

She was only sixteen when that happened.

It still didn't keep her on the straight and narrow, though she began using drugs, including marijuana and then cocaine.

Christopher had failed so many classes at high school that he was going to have to do to addditional years in order to graduate.

When he found that out, he opted to just drop out.

Neil and Patricia told Christopher that he could keep living at the house as long as he got a job.

That was easier said than done, though Christopher couldn't hold a job to the point that his own mother ended up firing him.

After marrying Neil, Patricia eventually quit her job at len Co and became the bookkeeper for Olsen Sign.

Her dream, though, was to open a restaurant, and in the early two thousands, she was able to make that dream a reality.

She opened a seafood restaurant called missus O's, and locals said the food was pretty good At one point.

After Christopher left school, he started working at the restaurant, but it was only two weeks before Patricia had to let him go.

After that, Christopher was told to leave the house.

He wouldn't be the first of Patricia's children to be kicked out, though Amanda had been caught with cocaine by then and Neil had already kicked her out.

She was living in an apartment just over the state line to the west in upstate New York.

By the beginning of two thousand and five, it was just Neil, Patricia, and their pets at the property.

Chris floated around, sometimes sleeping in his car and occasionally being allowed to sleep in missus Oh's restaurant.

He was dating a young woman named Lindsay Turner, and she eventually got pregnant, but Chris didn't stick around to raise his daughter after that or even before.

According to Lindsay, Chris started dating a woman named Samantha Westwood.

By the time two thousand and five came around, Chris had also been living in Upstate New York.

On the morning of January tenth, two thousand and five, Patricia called nine to one one to report that she had found her husband unresponsive in the barn.

When police arrived on the scene, they found Neil laying on the floor of the barn with blood around him.

His face was completely crushed to the point he was not recognizable.

Hannah the horse was in the barn with Neil, and there was some blood on one of her hoofs, so it seemed possible that she may have kicked or trampled her owner to death.

That was the narrative that Patricia was also pushing.

When a detective questioned her about what had happened, she explained that she had not been feeling well the night before, suffering from symptoms of Crohn's disease, so she took three tile in all pm and went to bed.

When she woke up that morning, Neil wasn't in the bedroom.

He was known to be a bit of a workaholic, and she said she assumed he was in his workshop.

She called one of her employees at missus Zohe's and asked her to bring a breakfast sandwich to the house for Neil.

Patricia wasn't a breakfast person, and so most of morning she had her employee, Rosa Nicola, deliver some breakfast for her husband.

Since the restaurant was only a mile down the road.

Rosa had delivered the sandwich pretty quickly.

At just before eight am.

Patricia said that she went out to the barn to get Neil his breakfast and some coffee.

When she saw him lying on the floor, she ran back into the house and dialed nine one one.

At some point, Patricia called the restaurant back and informed Rosa that Neil was dead.

Rosa immediately raced back to the house, and once there, Patricia blurted out quote that horse killed him.

Neil went out to the barn every evening between eleven and eleven thirty to feed Hannah and make sure she was inside the barn for the night.

Patricia told investigators that Hannah was a problem and she wouldn't let anyone else near her.

She said that he was the one who had to go outside each night to feed her, and that obviously she had killed Neil.

Not only that, but Patricia had called someone to come and take the horse and put her down.

While the police were still on the scene in the barn, one detective was able to lead Hannah into an empty stable away from Neil's body.

In doing that, they realized that Hannah was quite old and likely wouldn't been able to kick high enough to hit Neil in the head.

Then they noticed that the pockets on Neil's jeans were turned out, which was definitely not done by a horse.

If a person had gone through Neil's pockets, then they were looking at foul play, and the Massachusetts State Police came on board and started investigating as well.

When they were able to start cataloging the evidence on the scene, one of the first things they noticed was a number of twenty two caliber shell casings scattered around on the floor.

Since investigators couldn't see any visible gunshot wounds on Neil's body, they thought it was possible the shell casings came from something else.

Maybe Neil had fired a gun in the barn, or maybe he loaded his own hammo.

It was a piece of the puzzle that didn't really quite have a spot yet.

It was January in New England, so the ground outside was covered with snow.

Investigators found shoe prints leading away from the barn, and when they followed them they found a metal pipe, laine and the snow covered and blood around the corner of the barn.

They also found a machete The investigators officially listed the crime as a homicide, and the medical examiner would eventually confirm that Neil had been shot in the face at least seven times with a twenty two caliber weapon and then beaten so badly with a blunt object that you couldn't tell he had been shot.

When authorities informed Patricia that Neil had been murdered and not by the horse, she wasn't ready to accept that.

She told them that she had already called someone to come and destroy the horse, so authorities called a local aquine rescue to quickly come and pick Hannah up and save her from an unjust death sentence.

When the focus moved away from Hannah, Patricia began complaining that she didn't know how she was going to pay for Neil's funeral.

Detectives thought it was odd for her to be concerned with that so soon after her husband had been killed, but everyone grieves in their own way.

They asked her if there was anyone who would want Neil dead, and the only person she could suggest was a friend of Neil's who had done some construction work on the restaurant, and they were planning to sue him for overcharging them.

Authorities didn't even have time to look into that lead before they got a call with another lead in the case.

One of the first people to make an official statement in the case was a young man named Stephen, who had gone to school with Christopher.

As soon as he heard the news about Neil's death, he knew he had to talk to the investigators.

He was in the evening on the same day Neil's body had been found that he explained that he had known Chris since the eighth grade and he knew him to always be a bit of a loaner.

In October or November of two thousand and four, after he had gotten kicked out of Neil in Patricia's house, he had come over to Stephen's house and they hung out for a while.

Eventually, Chris asked him to come outside, where he opened the trunk of his car and pulled out a twenty two caliber rifle.

Stephen said the gun made him nervous, so he told Chris that he was going to bed, and Chris left.

After that, he said he would see Chris occasionally, and at the end of December he got a call from him asking him to help with his car.

Chris drove a mid nineteen ninety saddurn and told Stephen that it was making a weird sound.

Stephen agreed to help him when he got off of his shift working at the Best Buy electronics store, but he didn't really want to, so after work he started ducking his calls.

He made it back to his house and was watching television with his fiance when Chris knocked on the door.

Stephen grabbed his tools, left his fiancee at the house, and went to help Chris with his car.

After that, Stephen let Chris stay at his house that evening so he could get cleaned up and have a warm place to sleep.

While his guest was getting ready to hop in the shower, Stephen said he was chatting with him when Chris suddenly said that his mother had asked him to kill Neil earlier that summer, and that was why he had the rifle.

He claimed that he hadn't had the nerve.

Stephen explained that Chris was a compulsive liar, so he didn't believe him, and the next morning they both left his house at the same time.

That story put Chris at the top of the suspect list, and I'm not sure what happened with the other suspect, but it seems that authorities determined he was not involved.

The day after the murder, investigators received the autopsy report, which confirmed that Neil had in fact been murdered.

They brought Patricia into the police station, where they conducted a detailed interview.

Patricia described the day before she found Neil, which was a Sunday.

She said she wasn't feeling well, so she spent most of the day on the couch.

Neil went back and forth between working on their bathroom, which seemed to be under construction, and watching television with her.

Patricia described cleaning the house before Neil's parents, Harold and Ruth, arrived, which contradicted her later saying she didn't know they were coming because they never called first.

She could have just been cleaning the house because she needed to, but everyone who knew her said that she never cleaned.

After Neil's parents left, the couple played some video games, and Patricia said she talked to Amanda on the phone, but at some point she had to get off the phone because her boyfriend was calling.

Her boyfriend, Andrew Willcox was in prison at the time, and she had to take it.

Andy is a man's boyfriend.

Okay, he's in prison, right and that what's that for?

Tennsey has talked to.

I think it's possession.

But I've been told and I know this is the lie because I used to do him to cover work through I used to data state tapers.

They're trying to tell me that the reason why he's going to jail is because he wouldn't help them with a sting.

Okay, but I think I don't know for sure.

And who's saying that, I think means say she.

Doesn't want me to know that.

According to Patricia, she had done some undercover work, or she had just dated a state trooper.

It doesn't seem like she even knows.

She went on to say that she waited a little bit and then called Amanda back.

Patricia expressed concern that her daughter was spending time with the wrong crowd.

Amanda had spent much of her youth involved with drug users and criminals.

After that, Patricia called Lindsey and talked to her.

Christopher had abandoned his child and her mother, but Patricia and Neil had a good relationship with them.

She got off the phone in time to watch an episode of Desperate Housewives, and then she and Neil had sex.

She took three tile in all PM, which she washed down with some white wine.

The fact that she had been drinking all evening made her fall into a deep sleep, and she slept through anything that might have happened during the night.

While that interview was happening, other investigators had gone to the motel that Christopher would stay at from time time.

The Mountain View motel was less than a mile from the Ulson residence, between the house and the restaurant.

When they arrived, they asked him to also come down to the station for questioning.

As detectives led him out of the room, they could see small droplets of blood on his clothing.

As they looked around the room a little more, they found blood in the motel room as well.

The interview was fairly short.

He told them about his history with Neil and claimed that his mother was starting to have a nervous breakdown.

He said that her illness was starting to wear down.

He said that on the evening of the murder he was planning to hang out with Steven, but he never called, so he assumed he went to bed.

He went to the motel and watched cartoons until he fell asleep at about two thirty am the next morning.

He didn't wake up until about eleven am, and then went to missus O's to check in with his mother.

It was then that he learned that Neil had died, but at the time the employees still believed he had been tramped pulled by Hannah.

Investigators asked if he had anything to do with Neil's death, and he said no.

They needed to gather more information, so they let him go, but soon he was back in the interrogation room.

It was only a few hours later that Christopher was questioned again, and at that time he was confronted about the blood.

He finally admitted that he was the one who had killed Neil.

He had left the motel at about ten thirty pm on Sunday evening, parked near the house, and walked across the driving range next to their property.

He went into the barn and waited for Neil with his stepfather.

Entered the barn, he said he pulled the trigger but didn't remember anything else.

The next thing he knew he was headed down the hill away from the house.

He threw the rifle in a culvert near the road, walked to his car and returned to the motel.

He stayed up until four in the morning because he couldn't get the sound of the shot out of his head.

He said he felt dirty, so he showered twice and washed his hands even more times.

Despite cleaning his body.

The following day, he put the same clothes back on and acted surprised when he saw the employees from Missus Oh's.

He told the investigators that he had previously lied to them about going to the ATM.

He thought they might question why he had cash on him, and it was because he had taken the cash out of Neil's pockets.

It explained why his pockets had been turned out at the scene, but it contradicted Chris's claim that he had blacked out after pulling the trigger once to only regain his memory.

While walking away from the house, he told the detectives that Neil had one hundred and eighty six dollars in his pocket, which he used to pay for two additional nights at the motel.

He returned some money he had taken from the register at the restaurant Ada McDonald's.

Saw the movie White Noise starring Michael Keaton, and spent some time in an arcade.

He gave the authorities a very detailed account of exactly how he had murdered, and they knew it was the truth.

They eventually found the rifle in the culvert, and the blood on his clothes in the motel room, and more that was found in his car was Neil's.

The next question they had was why had he really had such a bad relationship with his stepfather that he wanted to murder him.

Chris explained that the reason he had killed Neil was because his mother had asked him to.

She had first asked him to murder Neil the previous summer, but he couldn't ever bring himself to do it.

Over the following months, Patricia continued to encourage Christopher to kill Neil, claiming that he was abusing her.

She promised him that after Neil was gone, he and Amanda could move back in and they could all live happily ever after.

Not only that, but his daughter could stay there as well, and he could finally have a proper relationship with her.

He said he had tried to kill Neil a few times before, once with the machete that they found on the scene, but he always backed out and his mother would be angry with him.

He told the investigators that Patricia had given him the money to purchase the rifle.

He went to a Walmart in New York and purchased the weapon, and the receipt was taped to the box, which was still in the trunk of his car.

In January, Patricia told him to carry out the plan on Friday the seventh, and Chris said he would think about it by Sunday.

He finally made up his mind to kill Neel, and he told the detectives that he thought he was protecting his mother.

He said.

The following day, he called his mother from the restaurant and she told him that she thought he should get out of the area.

He said that she knew it was him who had killed Neil.

Christopher was placed under arrest and charged with the murder of Neil Olson, but investigators needed to gather more information about Patricia.

They couldn't arrest her just because of what her son had said.

They needed to corroborate his claim.

The next person they interviewed was Amanda, who had been in New York at the time of the murder.

Amanda told the investigators a little about her situation, mainly that her boyfriend Andy was in prison and she was living with his father.

She explained the phone calls she had with her mother on Sunday, and her story matched Patricia's with the exception of an additional call at about ten thirty pm.

She told the detectives that she never heard anything about Neil being abusive to Patricia, and she had never heard her mother say she didn't want Neil around.

Her first interview backed up Patricia's innocence, but it would later be revealed that most of that statement were lies.

The most complicated part of this case is that it seems like everybody involved are compulsive liars.

For the time being, the investigation turned toward the Olson's finances.

It had been mentioned a few times during their interviews that Neil had recently been pulled over because the registration on his truck was expired.

In most US states, you have to renew your vehicle registration annually, and the Department of License saying we'll give you a sticker to put on your license plate that shows your current They usually change color each year, so the patrol officers can easily identify if a vehicle has an expired registration.

On January seventh, two thousand and five, Neil was pulled over for having an expired registration, and he was not aware that they hadn't been renewed.

On top of that, it turned out that his car insurance policy was not valid.

Patricia was the family bookkeeper, and she normally took care of that stuff.

It was possible that it had just slipped through the cracks.

It happens, but when investigators looked into it, they realized so much more was going on.

The Olsen's finances were in the toilet.

Multiple vehicle registrations were expired, car insurance had lapsed, utility bills were past due, and their house was about to be foreclosed on.

Patricia had secretly borrowed forty five thousand dollars from one of Neil's brother in order to keep the bank from taking the house.

That made Neil worth more to Patricia dead than alive.

With Neil dead, not only would Patricia not have to answer to him for that debt, but she would get a seventy seven thousand dollars life insurance policy, his one hundred and forty four thousand dollars in retirement savings as well as the equity and their property that didn't seem to include any value that might have been in either of their businesses.

It was believed that Patricia would use the life insurance and retirement savings to pay off the bills and continue living on the property.

Investigators also started thinking about the fact that Amanda's boyfriend was in prison, and they were sure that they would have spoken on the phone frequently, so they had the facility send over the recordings of those calls, and they turned out to be a gold mine.

Amanda can be heard talking about a plan to murder Neil in the calls.

And grand A Massachusetts cope with m murdered.

Well Mel's dead?

Any really?

Oh my god?

Yeah?

My sohone was.

Ringing off the hook this morning and I'm like, what's talk?

So I m talk looking at the high ideas cause I'm much I los Andy Collons.

Well, so I looked in helping.

My mom, and I'm and I kept going back to sleeping and saw May I woke up and it was Rosa, the woman's in the rest shop, and she told me that my mom went up to Hannah Saw this morning because she woke up and you know, I wasn't there and she found in dead and it was murdered.

Oh god, I uh he murdered.

Yeah, I and I I I.

So you know everything I'm thinking so and I can't really discuss it, but you know everything that I'm thinking.

I'm not okay with knowing.

You know, I'm not okay with knowing for Cristmas, you know, or what's matic that's you say, okay.

Yeah, they lay can't live the many.

Things to look at.

You never hate the man, know he helping hate us?

I know it's and I'm not okay with marrying.

Then he got murdered.

Well, yeah I got and you know it out.

Did the police know a day?

No, not yet.

They haven't done any investigation yet.

And you know, my mother not having Cus my brother around is really.

Weird and sucked up.

So I'm not around either.

It doesn't look he set out.

They're not around either.

It looks fine.

No, it doesn't.

What do you mean though, with others?

Because like he said, everyone knows.

Lord, I never got along.

That's good, So I'd rather be out even sucking fighty going.

Wow, I don't believe the fucking happened.

The water with the whole fucking man, love New York.

You can't be framed for it.

Okay, then you have no right you there's no way to get out there now, okay o, So.

Why does that people?

I'm gonna get consperienced on me again?

Stop won't We don't ask you to fussing her.

Those calls happened on the evening of January tenth, but Amanda didn't just know there was some kind of plan to kill Neil.

She knew that it was happening the night before.

He just smacked my mom.

Up the other day.

Huh yeah, uh he because he's really poor.

And ah, that's the thing.

And there's no registration or inshot on the top.

He knew over out of the driveway and got hold over us.

Oh sure he got a good court and him home And this said out of my mom.

Ma, Sure I don't yet.

Why don't you just reel?

Well, that's what I say.

Is every time, honestly, everything where I got my mom, I'm like, so when's coming to me?

Ye?

And she's always like yeah, I wish at the time she goes, and then I think I'm gonna here, and well, because that was going to happen to it so that it didn't happen.

He was gone.

That call happened an hour before Neil was murdered.

Fortunately for Amanda, it proved that she wasn't there during the murder, as the call was made from where she lived in New York.

But it also proved that she had a lot more information than what she had previously stated.

Then they found one more recording that proved Amanda knew more than she said.

Originally, they suspected that it was Hannah had put them in the head, and they did the autopsy and come to find out he was shot in the head ten times in the space seting and so bad that they needed dentle records.

I can't he was shot in the.

Head ten times.

He was shot in the head ten times, and.

The SS is beaten so bad that they needed dental records.

Oh my god, I don't want to talk about it.

Amanda had told her boyfriend that Neil had been shot ten times and then beaten with a pipe, but that information had not been released at the time of that recording.

That was when investigators went to New York and sat down with Amanda one more time.

They confronted her with the recordings and Amanda broke down and admitted that there had been a plan to kill Neil and that it had been orchestrated by Patricia.

She said her mother had initially asked her if she knew anyone who would kill Neil, but she didn't want to be involved.

That's when she moved on to Chris, who Amanda claimed was easy to manipulate.

She said that Patricia's claims that Neil had hit her were lies because that would push Chris to kill Neil.

She was able to answer a lot of questions as to why Patricia would want Neil dead, Well, why.

Would your mother want to get rid of Neil?

Because if she told me?

At one point, I said, why don't you just leave him?

She said, why would I do that?

I'm sitting on a money pit, or not a money pit, a gold mine.

I'm sorry, why didn't you just divorce him?

That's what I said?

And she said that they had a prenup or something and everything was his, so the only way.

She'd get anything is it Chris went ahead with her plans.

Did she tell you that Sunday night when you were talking to her?

She always said it.

She was always sucking drunk and talking about Sunday night.

Yes, what she said.

She said that, She said exactly what I courted her saying, if this because like I said, I alway said to her, come to New York.

And she said, well, if this thing doesn't happen tonight, then I probably will.

Okay, surprise, surprise.

It was about money.

She wanted to be able to pay off her debts and live free on the property that Neil had spent his life working for.

Amanda then explained that Patricia had been the one to pay for the gun.

Who gave the money for the gun?

My mother?

How do you know this because I know these things because these are a people.

This is what I've been told by your mom.

Yes, but my mom and my brother, my brother got the money for the gun from my mom, by you that MUCHETI bowl who paid for that.

They went to Walmart together, little family thing.

Her and your brother went to Walmart together.

If they didn't go together, she gave him the money to go there, and he came back and was like, Okay, what I got I heard these fucking stories from these people, from Christmah, from.

Your mother both.

Okay, So why did they get the machete?

Because they couldn't get a gun because they didn't know how to go about getting a gun.

The fucking woman asked me to buy a gun over here in New York for to do this.

Yes, and I'm no, of course, no, no she didn't for this, or no, you wouldn't do it.

No, I wouldn't do that, okay, Okay, So she she tried to get you involved in this.

Yes, because I'm having financial problems, I'm gonna jump on in and all your problems could be solved if you just.

Helped me out with this one thing.

No, mom, I'll deal with it myself, you know.

I I'm And it's one thing is to get the gun or to kill me.

D both either or whichever one I decided I wanted.

Okay.

She gave him the money for the machete.

Okay, she gave them.

Money for the gun, the gun, and she was giving him money for other shit all the time too.

She told you that she gave him money for the gun.

Yes, how much money?

It was like two hundred dollars or some shit.

So she paid for the whole gun.

I'm sure I would assume.

So my brother didn't have any money.

Well, that's another thing.

Because you were telling us that he couldn't even pay your phone bills exactly, and he buys a two hundred and seven dollar gun.

Yeah, where do you get the money, mommy dear, she doesn't work, so where to get the money from you?

No?

Okay, did your mother tell you she gave him the money for the gun?

We're trying to be so sick, I know, I know.

That's why I'm trying to think if I can remember an exact conversation where she's the one that told me, because I know my brother told me.

Yeah yeah, my mom definitely did tell me, because she told me, yeah, yeah, No, she definitely did tell me that she gave him the money for it.

Okay, and this was before she told you, this before Neil's killed.

Oh yeah, wait, before it.

Her story is credible because Amanda had no other reason to know about the machete.

If Patricia and or Chris hadn't told her about the machete, how would she have known about it.

She was never informed by police before that that they found a machete on the property.

She went on to explain that Patricia had told her that Sunday night, Chris ran into her bedroom and said quote, I did it.

I did it.

I did it.

Amanda asked if he was scared, but Patricia claimed that he was happy and proud.

She told Amanda that the gun was still in the house and asked her for ideas on where to hide it, but Amanda said she refused to participate.

Apparently the gun was later thrown into the colvert.

Amanda also admitted that it was Patricia who told her quote, if they do an autopsy, they're going to find out he was shot.

That was why she said Neil had been shot ten times.

Chris had fired the gun ten times, but only seven bullets hit Neil, so Patricia assumed the autopsy would reveal that Neil had been shot ten times.

That backed up the idea that Amanda had gotten her information from her mother or brother, not the police.

Amanda was able to give the detective's names of a handful of people who she had mentioned her mother's plan to in the months prior to the murder.

That was important to show that she wasn't just making the story upright.

Then, more information was recovered that contradicted Patricia's story of the evening of January ninth, She had claimed that she had gone to sleep at about ten pm, and that she had taken three tailean all PM with alcohol, so she was out completely.

But her cell phone records showed that she retrieved two voicemail messages after that point.

She listened to the first one at eleven fifty six pm and then the second at eleven fifty eight pm, which would be hard to do if she was sound asleep.

It wasn't clear who the messages were from, but authorities suspected they were from Christopher.

Patricia was brought in for another inner, where she was confronted by the claim Christopher had made about her.

Of course, she denied everything.

According to Patricia, he was mad at her and had made up a story about her being involved as a way to get back at her.

She claimed that she didn't know anything about the voicemails on her phone, and she shrugged off the financial issues they were having.

She claimed they had some financial problems from opening the restaurant and that she had borrowed money from Neil's brother.

That was true, but it didn't explain why Neil had no idea that those financial problems were happening.

Then the detective played some recordings of Amanda talking to Andy about the plan to kill Neil.

She just told Andy that she'd been talking to you, she said, as she clearly described the incident where Neil got pulled over on Friday, which is well documented.

We know about that.

Then she proceeds to tell Andy that Neil hit you.

I don't know, I swear about going at me.

Then the next thing, she says, they're talking about you coming to visit to stay in New York because it sounds like because of the relationship that you have with Niels is bad.

M So Andy saying, well, why doesn't she ya?

Amanda says.

That you said that if that thing happens tonight that my brother's supposed to do, then she will then she won't have to or something.

It's I'm paraphrasing.

What is she talking about?

We have a lot of tapes, alright, I don't I don't hear anymore.

Well, you don't wanna hear anymore?

What do you wanna do you want to talk to me?

Oh?

I supported god, I did not want.

After hearing Amanda also claim that she had been the one who wanted Neil dead, Patricia told the detective she didn't want to hear anymore.

Which I think is weird.

If someone was making claims about me that weren't true, I'd want to know what they were so I could counter them.

Patricia sounds more like she wants to live in denial about the fact that her kids were telling the truth about her.

It was soon after that that she asked for an attorney.

She told the detectives that she had tried to cooperate but didn't seem to have any other option.

Patricia was arrested and charged with the first degree murder of Neil.

She pleaded not guilty and maintained that both of her children had lied about her involvement.

The prosecution laid out the evidence of the murder, which was clearly carried out by Christopher.

He had even confessed, but he claimed that his mother had been the one who convinced him to do it.

He took the stand and testified to that fact, at describing everything that had happened that night.

He had shot the rifle ten times, hitting Neil seven times, then beat him with a metal pipe so severely that it was impossible to tell that he had been shot.

He described that the plan was to blame the death on Hannah, the horse.

He described then going into the house to tell his mother that the murder was done, and together they hid the rifle in the back of a closet and a spare bedroom.

He had told the police that he didn't remember what had happened after squeezing the trigger during his confession because he initially didn't want Patricia to get caught.

A man also testified about the conversations that she had had with her mother about her plan to kill Neil.

During her testimony, she described Patricia talking about finding someone to kill Neil so much that she eventually wished she could just have a normal conversation with her mother.

He wasn't only her children who testified against Patricia, though Amanda and her boyfriend Andy lived with his father, Chuck.

Chuck testified that he spoke on the phone with Patricia few times and she was always flirty with him.

He claimed that she had once said that Neil was abusive to her, and when he asked her why she didn't leave him, she responded that she couldn't because of their businesses.

The trooper who had pulled Neil over for having an expired registration also testified that Neil was completely shocked that his registration and insurance were not valid.

It seemed as though their financial difficulties were a surprise to him, which backed up the prosecutors suggested motive for the murder.

When it was time for the defense to present their case, they put Patricia on the stand, where she denied the claims of her children and professed her love for her husband.

On cross the prosecutor asked her about the debt she had hidden from Neil.

She denied having hidden it, saying that they were just too busy and the subject of their finances rarely came up.

I'm sorry, but if our house was about to be foreclosed on, I think I would make time to talk to my spouse about it.

The prosecutor made it clear that after Neil was pulled over and found out about the lack of registration and insurance, he was on the path to find out about all of the debt, which would cause him to divorce Patricia and leave her with nothing.

It was no coincidence that Patricia started pushing Chris to kill Neil immediately after that traffic stop.

It happened Neil was pulled over on the same Friday that Christopher said his mother had brought up killing him again.

The timeline is just too exact for it to have been a coincidence.

The jury agreed, and Patricia Olson was found guilty of first agree murder.

She was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The following year, Christopher Robinson pleaded guilty to second degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison with parole eligibility after fifteen years.

Some saw the sentence as being light, but others saw Christopher as only the tool Patricia used to kill Neil.

She manipulated him into believing he needed to kill his stepfather in order to protect his mother.

On June fifteenth, twenty twenty, the Parole Board granted him parole after he completed eighteen months in a low security facility.

Details about his life after release or unknown.

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In two thousand and eight, Patricia pealed her conviction and lost.

That same year, Neil's family filed a wrongful death suit against her and won.

They were awarded just over one million dollars, and though they will never be able to collect the full amount, they were given Neil's life insurance, retirement savings, and the assets from the sale of his property.

To this day, she continues to claim her innocence, even going on an episode of Facing Evil with Candace DeLong where she again downplayed the financial trouble they had been in.

She claimed that she believed that Christopher lied about her involvement in order to lessen his own sentence.

But the things that were said about her involvement were proven to have been said long before Chris would have thought he could make a deal.

They were said before the murder even happened.

It doesn't make sense.

The host, who is supposed to be an experienced FBI agent, claimed that she thinks Patricia might be telling the truth, and she cites two reasons.

The first was that Patricia's still wearing her wedding ring.

Candace poses the question why would she still wear her wedding ring if she had him killed, and the answer is simple, because she wants people to think she's innocent.

Apparently it worked on at least one person.

The other reason is because Patricia was offered a deal to plead guilty and only served ten years, but she turned it down.

Now that happens all the time with guilty people.

There are some people who will sacrifice everything because they're unwilling to admit their guilt.

Someone is pretty much guaranteed to be denied parole if they continue to claim their innocence, and many convicts have sacrificed multiple chances at parole because they're unwilling to admit their guilt.

A notable example is Diane Downs.

It's a part of their person.

They aren't able to admit guilt and they never will.

They would rather be in prison and be a victim than to tell the truth and be free.

It's about perception, not about freedom.

I feel like an FBI agent would know that.

But whatever Patricia's behavior in the episode, to me, reads like a manipulative narcissist constantly painting herself as a victim and doing anything she can to garner sympathy.

She's another person in a long line of people I've covered who will go to their grave never admitting to what they've done, because well, they're monsters.

Thanks for listening to this as Monsters.

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