184: Husband Decapitates Newlywed Wife, Son Disembowels His Father, & 4-Month-Old Baby Force-Fed Gasoline 30:00

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Grammarly. Easier said, done. Hey, hey, hey, everybody. It's your girl, Annie. I wanted to remind you or announce to you, if you hadn't heard it yet, that Serialistly is hitting the road and coming to a city near you. That's right. The podcast is going on a live tour, my friends, and we are going to make this show something that you definitely will not want to miss. Exclusive cases,

q a's meet and greets some surprise guests which i can't say who but we are planning all of it for you guys and i can't wait to meet so many of you guys at these tours tickets are limited but they're on sale now you can get all of the details on our website annieelise.com then toggle over to the events page

There you will see the dates. You'll have direct links to buy tickets. It'll show all the cities. We're hitting Salt Lake City, Denver, Colorado. We're going to be in California. We're going to Phoenix. I mean, all the details are there. But like I said, it is going to be a show that you don't want to miss. So come check out a live recording of one of our podcast episodes. And I cannot wait to meet all of you. And I will see you on the stage. Hey, true crime besties. Welcome back to an all new episode of Serialistly.

Hey everybody, welcome back to an all new episode of Serialistly with me, Annie Elise, Headline Highlights Edition. I hope you guys are all having a good week so far. Yeah, so if you're new here, Headline Highlights is where instead of doing like a deep dive into a singular true crime case, we go through all of the headlines of different cases that are breaking throughout the world. We also will talk about updates in previous cases we've covered or just ongoing cases in general. And

And I don't know what is in the water this week, guys, but there are so many new cases, horrific cases. There are always new cases. I mean, unfortunately, we see one pop up every single day, right? But when I'm talking about like,

the brutality of all of the cases we're talking about today, it feels like something's in the water. I don't know what's going on. Now, before we get into everything, I did want to just send a quick reminder out to you guys that I have announced I'm officially going on live tour, which I'm really excited about. I'm excited to meet all of you guys in person, share so many of these cases with you in person to hear what you guys think and just talk

through it all together. So the first lay of the tour, we're going to be more West Coast driven. We're doing Phoenix, California, Salt Lake City, Denver, Colorado, a few other cities. It's all on the webpage at AnnieElise.com and then just go to the events tab. That's where you can see the dates, the cities. That's where you can get tickets, which I highly suggest getting tickets directly through there. It's the cheapest option. Don't go to StubHub. Don't go to Ticketmaster.

But yeah, I'm excited. We're going to have exclusive cases, Q&As, some surprise guests. It'll be a good time. And more than anything, I'm just really excited to meet you guys. But tickets are definitely limited. We have already gone through quite a few. So grab them now before they're gone. That's AnnieElise.com and go to the events page.

So let's start with today's first case. This is one that I was kind of debating if I wanted to actually do a deep dive on or not because so, so, so many of you have been requesting it. But I feel like there's still a lot of unknowns and so I want to wait on the deep dive yet I still feel like we need to talk about it.

And it takes us to Texas, guys. So that's where we're starting right now. So last week, 23-year-old Jared Dykus was sentenced to 40 years in prison. This was after he pleaded guilty to killing and decapitating his wife, who was just 21 years old, and her name is Angie Diaz.

Now, Jared and Angie were married in October of 2022, okay? They lived in Magnolia, Texas, which is about 45 miles northwest of Houston. I also think that's where, what's her name, the Gaines family. Is that right, Gaines? I think so. The HGTV people live, I think that's where they live because their company is named Magnolia. But anyway, Jared and Angie lived in a very small cottage that Jared's parents had right behind their home, almost like, not an ADU, but almost like a backhouse miniature cottage.

So, they got married in October of 2022. But then, fast forward just a couple of months, and on January 11th, 2023, Jared's parents called 911 after they found Angie dead.

Now, this scene was truly grisly. It wasn't like they just walked in and saw someone who was unresponsive and realized that they were deceased. That would, of course, be traumatizing itself, but this was way worse. She was inside her bedroom, inside that cottage that she shared with her newlywed husband, and her body was covered in stab wounds. And get this—

Her head was not on her body. It was missing. So obviously, the investigators who arrived on the scene were investigating everything, looking for answers, trying to figure out what the heck happened here. And they found Angie's head in the bathroom shower. It was a portion of a body dismembered and residents that was

They arrested her new husband, Jared, at the scene of the crime, and he later admitted to killing Angie. Now, I want to talk a little bit about Angie, because Angie was from Nicaragua, and her mother had cancer, which Angie was such an amazing person. She was working two jobs to send money back home, all to help pay for her mother's treatment.

Meanwhile, this new marriage and her relationship with Jared, they were constantly posting pictures on social media depicting, you know, this very loving, very happy relationship, this happy new marriage. But as we all know, and as many of these cases go, things can be very different behind closed doors. See, apparently, police had been at their home many times before, all due to domestic violence issues.

Jared was also charged with a DWI just a couple of months before killing Angie. And when he was arrested for this, he became so violent that he threatened multiple people who worked at the jail. He even punched a window and had to be placed in a restraint chair. Now, the relationship between Angie and Jared was apparently so volatile that many people were surprised they even got married.

Then, on the day of the murder, Jared supposedly walked into his parents' house, because remember, they lived in the front house, and he made some sort of comment that was apparently so concerning that his parents had to go and see if Angie was okay. And during the police investigation, detectives even found footage of Jared at a nearby convenience store where Angie had worked.

In that footage, Jared walks to the fridge, he grabs a beer, and then he immediately walks out of the store. And a lot of the headlines with that particular clip of footage is that he walked in here, he was kind of like still just zoned out, he stole a beer, then left. It was very, very odd. But investigators think that this happened right after Jared killed Angie.

So it hasn't been revealed yet what motivated Jared to kill Angie. At one point, the prosecutors did say, "...potential mental health issues were raised regarding the defendant's competency to stand trial."

However, Jared was later deemed competent enough to stand trial. Now, while that motive has not been revealed, I do think that it is interesting that they had this past with domestic violence calls and the police arriving on scene. He, by all accounts, had a drinking problem. He had that DWI just months before he killed her. Then he went and allegedly stole a beer from that convenience store right after murdering Angie. So at the surface, it would seem like, okay, maybe these domestic violence issues started escalating and then

It went too far and it was an accident, perhaps. But not when you look at the method of murder. I mean, it's overkill. Stab wounds all over her body. Her head literally decapitated and thrown in their bathroom shower. What the hell is going on here?

So like I said, a lot of you guys have been wanting a deep dive into this case. There isn't a ton of information. We're trying to source documents. We're trying to do all of that. So as soon as there is enough information, I certainly will give you a full deep dive on this case because there are so many questions still that we don't have answers to. Now let's shift gears a little bit. And this one is tough, but it's one that I feel like does need awareness. So

This case is about a dad who forced his 4-month-old son to drink gasoline. Disgusting, right? So 24-year-old Edgar Bridgman has been charged with attempted murder after forcing his 4-month-old son to consume gasoline.

The paramedics and the police were called to a home in Paris, Texas on August 10th, and when the police arrived, they were informed that Edgar put gasoline in this baby's bottle. It isn't clear who called the police and who called the emergency services, but when they did, Edgar had run away from the home.

He was quickly located, though, thank God, a block away from the home where the police, of course, arrested him. But then, later, Edgar admitted to the officers that he was, in fact, trying to kill the baby. So the case is currently under investigation, and the baby was taken to a hospital in Dallas to receive care and hopefully recover. And while the baby is currently alive, thank goodness, the condition of him is unknown.

I don't know what drinking gasoline would do to a four-month-old's intestines and organs and all of that. I can't even imagine the level of how much it would destroy it. Thank goodness he is alive, but we don't know the context in which. Is he hooked up to machines? Is he on a feeding tube? I mean, at four months, you're obviously not really having solids or barely having solids, but...

I don't know what else is happening here. So it's one that we definitely are going to keep a close eye on. So now let's talk about a case where social media is involved. And how many of these have we talked about recently, guys? I mean, unfortunately, I feel like it's all the rage now, especially with TikTok. It's like TikTok is just, I've seen that looped into so many of these cases lately. And there's no exception here because now a mother was shot while making a TikTok video.

So on Saturday, August 10th, a 25-year-old mother of three named Kaitlyn Lee was shot and killed while she was with her friend filming just a casual fun TikTok video. Kaitlyn and her friend were having a fun night at Kaitlyn's house in New Albany, Indiana. They were filming themselves...

making TikTok videos, dancing, lip-syncing to various songs. I mean, you know how it goes. There's like a trending sound. Everybody does the same dance. Everybody does the same like lip-syncing. So they were in the kitchen doing this when suddenly they started hearing a loud banging noise on the window. When they turned around, they saw Caitlyn's ex, Joshua Thompson. He was standing right there,

right outside the kitchen window, just watching them. So Caitlin yelled at him like, uh, hi, what are you doing? But then Joshua aimed a gun directly at her and he shot her through the window three times. Caitlin was transported to the hospital immediately, but unfortunately she was later pronounced dead.

Now, after he shot Caitlin, Joshua completely ran from the house, and he ended up calling his brother just hysterically crying. Joshua told his brother what he had done, and his brother convinced Joshua to call the police, turn himself in, tell them the truth, tell them what happened.

So he eventually called 911 and he admitted to what he did. Joshua ended up telling the officers that he drove to Caitlin's house and that he just kind of sat outside for a while. He wanted to see who else was in the home, kind of case the situation, case the house.

And he said that since he didn't see any men in the home, he ended up getting out of his car, approaching the window, banging on it, and then shooting Caitlyn. That friend who was with Caitlyn filming those TikTok videos and was in the kitchen with her told the police that the couple did have a very volatile relationship.

They had one child together, but they had been separated for quite some time. This past April, Joshua was apparently arrested for severely beating Caitlin, and then after that, a no-contact order was put in place to protect her from him. However, Joshua continued trying to contact Caitlin, so much so that she had to move three times in the past four

four months just to stay away from him. At one point, Caitlin even told her friend that if she was ever randomly killed, Joshua should be the number one suspect.

So Joshua has been officially charged with murder, also with invasion of privacy, criminal recklessness, and unlawful carrying of a handgun. His trial is currently set for next spring. Now the reason that I wanted to talk about this case particularly before we move on to the other ones is because how many cases have we talked about where there is a protection order in place, there is an ex stalking somebody, and...

I don't know what the right answer is, but even if you have that piece of paper, she had to move three times in four months just to be away from him and he relentlessly pursued her. I think arguably probably continued to increasingly get angrier and angrier over time to where then it resulted in him murdering her.

So what other protections can we put in place for people who are victims of stalking, domestic violence, domestic abuse because a piece of paper clearly is not going to cut it. He followed her. He cased her house. She had to move multiple times. It's so horrible and she was only 25 years old and a mother of three and now she's just senselessly shot and killed by her jealous abusive ex. It's

It's disgusting. So again, I don't have the answers. I'm not even going to pretend to have those answers, but if you guys do, please share them. I just feel like we have talked about a lot of these cases in the last six to nine months where it's too late. Once they finally get the guy or girl and arrest them for stalking, for abuse, all of these things, it's because they had killed somebody. But what about all of the other indicators and scary situations leading up to that, you know? Now...

I guess this is a good segue, but like talk about disgusting and trying to wrap your head around it. This is another case that came across my desk, made me want to completely freaking vomit, and a lot of you have requested it. It's truly disgusting. Okay, sorry. I'm just trying to work up my stomach here for a minute, guys, because every single time I talk about it, it makes me want to completely just like vomit.

So it's taken us to Connecticut. Okay, now Ridgefield, Connecticut is considered one of the richest wealthiest cities in the state, and also one of the safest cities in the entire United States. A murder hasn't been committed here in over 20 years. That's how safe it is. That is until last week.

And this wasn't just like a typical murder or a robbery gone wrong. This was foul. So on August 3rd, police were called to the home of 83-year-old Mark Riccio. When police arrived at the home, a man was standing outside with his hands held up straight in the air.

This man who was standing out front was Stephen Euricchio, Mark's son. Stephen was wearing a blue t-shirt and he also had on some white boxer shorts and he continued to walk closer and closer to the police. And when he did, he appeared to have what looked like blood all over his hands. He was also dripping in sweat. I am talking sweating profusely. So one of the officers asked Stephen like, okay, what's going on? What happened? And he replied with this.

I murdered him really, really badly. So Stephen was put in handcuffs and then the police entered the home. They wanted to see what's going on. What does this crime scene look like? When they walked in, there was blood everywhere. I am talking every nook and cranny. The floor, the walls, going all the way up the stairs. It was a true definition of a bloodbath.

So officers then found a bloody fillet-style knife at the top of the staircase. And upstairs, they found Stevens' father Mark, 83 years old, dead on his bedroom floor. Mark had gruesome, barbaric injuries all over his body. His face, his torso, his groin, they were all mutilated. Completely just gutted. Some

Some of Mark's organs were even cut out of him and then placed on the floor beside him. I'm talking true barbaric behavior, disemboweling his own father.

So Stephen was, of course, taken into police custody. And then a few hours after his arrest, he was brought to the hospital because he was complaining of stomach pains. He told the officers that he had taken a quarter bottle of Advil. At the hospital, Stephen mentioned that he hadn't taken a medication that was prescribed to him for about two months, almost indicating to police this is a mental health issue. I have refused to take my medication. However, we don't know exactly what medication he was even talking about.

But then, Stephen was later taken back to the police headquarters, and he was put on suicide watch. His arraignment was on Monday, August 5th, and Stephen had to actually be carried into the courtroom because he refused to walk himself. At the defense table, Stephen just slumped over and kind of laid down, face down on the table. The judge asked him, hey, get up, you know, sit up multiple times, but he just refused. Mr. Eurekio?

I'd ask you to please stand up. However, despite this, the hearing moved forward because Stephen was conscious. Stephen's lawyer didn't even discuss a plea or a bond at this hearing. His sole focus was on getting Stephen the mental health help that he needed. His lawyer claimed that Stephen was behaving normally that morning when he first talked to him, so he wasn't really sure what changed between that morning and the time of the hearing. However, he did say that Stephen had a quote, significant mental health history, end quote.

The judge ordered a mental competency evaluation to see if Stephen could stand trial, but those results are pending and he has yet to enter a plea, but his next hearing is scheduled for September 4th. Now, I don't know what would cause or spark somebody to mutilate their own parent in such a disgusting graphic way. I would have to imagine that mental health was at play. You guys tell me what you think, but this just feels so grotesque

barbaric. I don't even know the words to use for this. It is so utterly horrific. And I don't know about you guys, but anytime that there's a murder where it's a parent and a child involved, whether it's the parent against the child or the child against the parent, even friends actually, even like best friends against each other,

my mind just inherently automatically goes to thinking, what was the father thinking in those moments? When his own son was charging at him, attacking him, about to murder him. Like when you're looking directly at the person you trust most in the world or you think loves you the most, whether it's a best friend, a partner, a child, a parent, and they are the ones coming at you to inflict that abuse, something in me just rots.

every time and I know I'm rambling a little bit I'm sorry but it's like just close your eyes not if you're driving close your eyes and just think about that for a moment then in your last final moments you're realizing that the person you trusted the most is the one who's trying to kill you and do horrific things to you it is the ultimate betrayal and

I can't imagine how scary it already is in those moments knowing you're about to die but then knowing that you're about to die at the hands of someone you love. It breaks my heart every single time because it just begs the question then you know who can you trust right? And sorry I know I rambled there a little bit and I know I think I've been rambling a lot this episode. I promise if you're a new listener it's not usually like this. I just a lot of these cases are getting me. I told you it's it's a week today. It has been a week.

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Talking about trust, this actually is a great segue. We talk about, okay, who can we trust? Can we trust the police? Can we trust people in, you know, firefighters, paramedics, first responders? Well, this case is about a paramedic who kills his wife with poisoned eye drops.

So in September of 2018, 32-year-old Stacey Hunsucker died due to heart complications. And just days after her death, her husband, Josh Hunsucker, tried to cash in on her $250,000 life insurance policy. The greed will get you every time, right?

However, an autopsy had revealed that Stacey had very high levels of the active ingredient that is found in Visine eye drops. You know, the clear ones that you drop in your eyes if they're bloodshot. Also the ones that I think were squeezed in the movie Wedding Crashers to make somebody incredibly sick. Bradley Cooper was the guy, I think. So anyways, this chemical is fatal to humans if it's ingested, and it can also cause heart failure.

So in December of 2019, her husband Josh was arrested and he was charged in connection with Stacey's death. Police believed that Josh initially poisoned Stacey because he wanted the money from that life insurance policy, a quarter million dollars. Stacey did have a history of heart problems though, so it seemed like Josh didn't think that he would get caught for her death. Maybe he thought that he was smarter since he was a paramedic and he thought that it would go undetected. His bond was set at 1.5 million dollars, but Josh was able to post that

bond, so he was eventually released the very same month that he was arrested. And get this, while he was awaiting trial, in March of 2021, Josh was charged with setting fire to a hospital helicopter in 2019. Josh had worked as a paramedic, like I said, and according to this police report, he intentionally set a helicopter on fire while it was in flight. It was so bad that the helicopter had to emergency land in the middle of the night.

In February of 2023, Josh pled not guilty in this case, though. But now, Josh is facing even more charges, and also a motion to revoke his bond has been filed. Because just last week, Josh was once again arrested, and he was charged with intimidating a witness and also with obstruction of justice. Court documents state...

that Josh repeatedly intimidated his ex-in-laws and also tried to poison his 11-year-old daughter. The document also states that Josh filed a false report for kidnapping back in February of 2023. In this report, Josh claimed that he was driving along the road and got a flat tire, he pulled over, began changing this tire, but was suddenly pistol-whipped numerous times, which, that's where you take a gun and, like, whip him across the head.

He then claimed that his hands were bound and he was injected with a quote, unknown substance. Now what happened after that, we don't exactly know. But Josh claimed that his ex-father-in-law, Stacey's dad, John Robinson, was the one who attacked him in this. However, after an investigation, it was determined that Josh staged this entire kidnapping and he made the entire thing up all in an attempt to shift suspicion for Stacey's death to her parents, John and Susie Robinson.

I mean, talk about a psychopath, right? So investigators couldn't find any evidence to support Josh's claim that he was kidnapped. However, they did search Josh's car, and in it, they found antidepressant pills in the trunk. Then, just weeks after this hoax, after this elaborate staged kidnapping, Josh's then 10-year-old daughter was rushed to the hospital. She was suffering from extreme exhaustion, low blood pressure, and also a low heart rate.

Testing showed that she had extremely high levels of the chemical that is found in Visine in her system, that same chemical that killed her mother. She also had high levels of that same antidepressant that was found in Josh's trunk. So it seems like his daughter was being cared for by his in-laws, and that Josh somehow poisoned her to then, quote, remove the in-laws from the life of his daughter. Again, all in this elaborate attempt to pin the murder of his wife on his in-laws.

It is so deranged and twisted. Now, in the motion filed last week, John and Susie, Stacey's parents, they state that Josh had been trying to intimidate all of them ever since his initial arrest back in 2019. He would record them at his daughter's lacrosse practices. He would send them packages in the mail asking them to drop the case. He would constantly drive by their home. He would sit in the parking lot, wait for them while they were at church. I mean, just a truly dangerous individual.

So as you can imagine, John and Susie are worried that Josh's actions will continue to escalate. Josh has yet to enter a plea for these new charges, and he is currently in jail, but he likely will have a hearing in the next few days where his bond could be officially revoked, which I hope that is the case, because clearly this guy is proving to be a danger. A danger to others, his daughter. If he feels like the walls are closing in, what else will he do? What will he do, fearing that...

There's no way out, and there's no scapegoat for him. Now this next case is taking us back to Indiana, and on July 4th of this year in Evansville, Indiana, Alice Bredhold was found dead in her bedroom, and Alice was just 12 years old.

But now, her parents are being held responsible for her death. On August 7th, Ashley and Brent Bredhold were arrested and charged with neglect of a dependent causing a death. Because an investigation into Alice's death revealed that she was a type 1 diabetic and her parents failed to treat her condition. After talking to school officials, investigators also found that Alice repeatedly came to school with extremely high blood sugar levels.

This happened 34 different times, and her parents were told repeatedly that they needed to administer Alice's medication that the doctors prescribed to her. And just to give you a little bit of an idea, normal blood sugar levels are between 80 and 120, but for a week straight...

Alice came to school with levels over 500. On the day of Alice's death, her mom had told her son to go check on Alice and see if she was awake. The son found Alice on the floor of the bedroom, unconscious. However, even after this, and after being alerted from her son that her daughter was unconscious,

her 12-year-old daughter that was laying on the floor unconscious, her mom didn't go check on her for over two hours. When she finally did go check on Alice, she found that Alice's blood sugar levels were extremely high, obviously. So Alice was still unconscious at this point, and she was also barely breathing. However, her mom, Ashley, gave Alice her medication, hoping that maybe that would like ricochet her back into being healthy. I don't know.

but whatever her reason was, she still waited more than two hours before calling 911. So it was ruled that Alice had died from diabetic ketosis, and her liver was two times the size of an adult woman's liver. Alice's siblings were eventually removed from home, which, thank goodness, these parents clearly don't know how to care for children, but also the home itself. It was extremely dirty, it was covered in trash, covered in bugs, just completely filthy.

Currently, the parents, Ashley and Brent, are in police custody, and they're each being held on a $100,000 bond. Like I said, this week has been jam, jam packed with new cases. Also, I don't know if you guys listened to it already, but if you missed the Monday deep dive, you definitely need to go back and listen. We talked all about Wade Wilson, you know, the tattooed face serial killer, and he now is claiming he's innocent. You hear directly from him,

why he is innocent, and who he says is responsible. There's been a ton of jail phone calls released as well because like a moron apparently he didn't know that those were recorded. I don't know but we go through all of those. It's a wild episode so go take a listen. That released just a couple of days ago on Monday.

Also, if you feel like you still need a little bit of a true crime fix going into your weekend because you have nothing left to binge on the podcast, we do have our ad-free bonus episodes every Friday, which you can get access to either through Apple Podcasts, through the app, or through Patreon. I will link it in the show notes. But just to give you a little bit of a breakdown of the case we're talking about tomorrow, it involves a hurricane, a high school cheerleader on homecoming weekend, and a serial killer in training. ♪

So that's what we got for this week, guys. Other than that, go buy the tickets for the live tour. If you're going to come and see one of these cases, one of the deep dive cases with me live, again, coming to a city near you, all of the details are at AnnieElise.com. Then go to the events page. I will also link that in the show notes of this episode. And thank you guys for tuning in to another segment of Headline Highlights. All right, I'll be back on the mic with you first thing Monday morning or Friday if you want that bonus episode. All right, talk to you guys soon. Bye.