EP. 19 GEORGIA - The Corpsewood Manor Murders: Sex, Drugs & Satan 52:49

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Deep in the woods in Georgia, there's an abandoned house. A house far off the beaten path that few dare to venture out to. This house is surrounded by barren, sparsely populated trees. Trees that almost look like they're dead, but they're not. This house was the scene of a grisly double murder and in the years after the crime has fallen into deep disrepair. The structures now sit in the dark.

Waiting, calling out to curious adventurers, begging them to step inside, to hear the voices of the dead. This story involves armed robbery, the Church of Satan, sex parties, drugs, and above all, murder. This is the story of Corpsewood Manor, and you're listening to Murder in America. ♪♪

Corpsewood Manor. What an eerie name. While you'd think that this name was given to the crumbling ruins of the once elegant mansion in the woods by adventurous teenagers who thought the place was creepy, it actually wasn't. In fact, Corpsewood Manor was the name given to the home by the people who originally built it, lived in it, and also died in it.

And I don't think that they ever could have predicted the dark legacy that the name would go on to be attached to later on. So how did this mansion and the property itself get such a grisly name?

Well, we need to go back in time to the 1970s in Chicago. The Vietnam War was coming to an end. The summer of love had long come and passed, and the city itself was growing rapidly. Skyscrapers were being built, housing developments were expanding outwards along the outskirts of the city. And at the prestigious Loyola University in Chicago's North Side, an associate professor of pharmacology was gearing up to make a big move.

This man's name was Charles Scudder, and this is where our story truly begins. Charles was born on October 6th, 1926. He came from a privileged background, and as a youth, Charles had always been interested in the arts. According to various accounts, Charles was extremely intelligent, and he flirted heavily with his artistic passions, studying music, drama, and yes, classical art.

Yet, when it came time to choose a career for himself, Charles decided to go with something more scientific and got himself degrees in chemistry, zoology, and languages, with his PhD being in pharmacology. But being educated in various sciences wasn't going to stop Charles from expressing his creativity. According to students and faculty at Loyola University, where Charles taught as a professor of pharmacology and served as the associate director for the university's Institute for Mind, Drugs, and Behavior, Charles was a colorful character

Different anecdotes have emerged over the years about Charles and, according to all of them, he exhibited his creativity frequently for the world to see. He was always changing the color of his hair, boasting about his pet monkey, and he lived in a mansion filled with baroque furniture that he had purchased from theaters in town that were shutting down. He also played the harp and at one point had even been invited out to play with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He was a well-liked professor and a cornerstone of the department that he worked in at Loyola University.

But trouble had been brewing inside of Charles for a while. He had already gone through two separate marriages, and he had four children. But he was unhappy. His youngest son, Ahab, died tragically at the early age of just 17 in 1970. Both of his marriages had ended in turmoil, and Charles was slowly beginning to become disenchanted with life in the city. Instead of telling you why Charles felt the way that he did, I'm going to allow him to explain it himself.

This is a direct quote from Charles from an article that he published in 1981, just a year before he was murdered, and it was titled A Castle in the Country. People often fantasize about trying out different, and usually, at least in the imagination, far better, lifestyles, but few actually change the way they live.

social commitments, habit systems, and inertia stop most such dreamers cold. They just don't know that all it takes to realize a fantasy is a small amount of money, a bit of luck, and a whole lot of courage. I was old when I came into a modest inheritance, which amounted to a monthly income of around $100. I was pretty much alone too, with my wife gone and all of my children grown up. For

Furthermore, my house was no castle in the country. I lived in an old mansion in a decaying residential area that was more like a mausoleum, a tomb requiring care, cleaning, and endless costly repairs. I was plagued with taxes, light bills, gas bills, water bills, heating bills, and the helpless feeling that resulted from watching my old neighborhood disintegrate.

There were other factors prodding me towards a life-changing decision too. I had a good job as an associate professor in a medical school, so I received a salary raise each year, but of course, it was always more than swallowed up by inflation. And as time passed, the medical students grew more unruly and less interested in learning.

The standards of the school steadily dropped and my department became a hotbed of office politics, backbiting, and resentment. As soon as I got home each evening, I'd change into my old and not-too-cleaner-mended jeans and muddle about in the garden, finding they're the only real moments of satisfaction left in my urban life. I was even pleased when the city's wildlife, the rats, drank from my garden pool at night. In such a melancholy environment, it was no wonder that I suffered, along no doubt with many others, from continual hankering, vexation, and apathy.

But then I inherited my little income and I thought, I want out. Oh man, do I ever want out. It was now the year 1976 and Charles was ready to make a move. But he wasn't going to move alone. Unbeknownst to almost everyone that knew him, Charles Lee Scudder was in fact gay.

His lover was his housekeeper of 17 years, a man by the name of Joseph David Terrence Odom, otherwise known as Joey. Born on March 27, 1938, Joey had lived a much less privileged life than his partner Charles. Joey's father, Connie, had only stayed in school through the second grade and worked as a self-described hotel linen boy. Joey's mother, Mary, had stayed in school through the fourth grade

and took on housework for others as a part-time occupation when she wasn't raising her son. According to the author Amy Batula in her book, "The Corpsewood Manor Murders in North Georgia,"

Life was hard. Sadly, there isn't much known about Joey or his background. Those details seem to be lost in time. But the story of Joey and Charles and their untimely deaths is much more documented. In 1976, on his 50th birthday, Charles had had enough. He resigned from the university, sold almost all of his possessions, and made the move to another state with Joey to begin a new life.

The year before, in 1975, Charles had purchased land outside of his city in Tryon, Georgia for the sum of $10,500 and for the entire year after, had been plotting to build and perfect a home for he and his lover. But why Georgia? Why outside of a small town? Why give up your good job, your entire life, and just leave? I'm going to let Charles describe this for you himself.

This is, again, a quote from the article that Charles wrote, titled A Castle in the Country. After some soul-searching conversations with Joe, I decided that we really needed to find some place in hilly country with the glamour of four seasons, but without super cold winters, with a good supply of pure water and wood for heating and cooking, and, most important, with a measure of isolation.

After years of enduring the sensory overload of city life, I desperately wanted to be situated where I could neither see nor hear my neighbors. I studied geological survey maps of southern states and wrote to the presidents of local realty boards. One such person answered that he had 40 inexpensive acres of hardwood trees in the Appalachian foothills, completely surrounded by national forest land.

I figured that the cash from the sale of my city property plus my retirement fund and the money in escrow would allow me to make such a move. So I drove down to Georgia to take a look. There I found hummingbirds, whippoorwills, butterflies, bobcats, great oaks, fungi, and rolling mountain woodland. I was hooked. While still lecturing, I bought the land, had a well dug 160 foot deep, planned my house, and bought a little camper and a jeep.

Then, in 1976, on my 50th birthday, I resigned from the school, auctioned off all the furniture and possessions I didn't care about, gave away all my electrical appliances, sold my property, and arranged for a moving company to take charge of the things I wanted to keep. Then Joe and I, plus my two English Mastiffs, left for our kingdom. Tryon, the small town in Georgia that they were moving near at the time, was already somewhat of an odd place.

In her article titled, The Tragic Case of Dr. Charles Lee Scudder, Satanist,

Published on the official Church of Satan website, Magistra Peggy Nedramia describes the town of Tryon as a pretty boring place at the time. She states that the locals would, for fun, go riding, which entailed driving around in a beat-up car with no money in search of something that resembled a good time. With an extremely small population, no industry, and a lack of youth, Tryon seemed to be a pretty laid-back community.

that generally kept to itself. But that quality of the town would prove to be fatal for Charles and Joey, as when quote-unquote homosexual devil worshippers, as the locals called them, moved into town. It seemed to draw quite a lot of attention. And I just want to add in here that according to the author Amy Petula in her book about the murders,

Tryon had some strange residents of its own, including a man named Zeke who would hand out cards around town reading, Zeke Woodall, nudist, I sure do like running naked, and an artist named Howard Finster, who was nationally known for his folk art and his somewhat fanatical Christian preachings.

It's been said that the night that Charles and Joey arrived at the property that would become Corpsewood Manor, there was a massive blizzard. After hours of driving around the mountain that they would soon call home, the couple finally arrived at the road that would lead them to their land, but were shocked to discover the rotting corpse of a dead horse blocking the trail. This eventually prompted the two to nickname the drive up to their mansion Dead Horse Road. Jeez, everything in this story seems to be ominous, doesn't it?

After arriving at the property, according to Charles, the two waited a few days while the storm blew over. They melted ice for water and then set to work constructing their home. Yes, you heard it correctly. Constructing their home. By hand, brick by brick, they built their own castle.

The couple constructed the house all by themselves, which means that both Joe and Charles touched almost every piece of material that was used in the construction of the house, a fact that will play into the stories of the Manor's haunting later on in the podcast. Although neither of the two had any construction experience at all, over time, Corpsewood Manor began to take shape. Charles took on most of the construction work, as Joey had injured his leg in a car wreck.

wreck. And yet after only a few months of work, during the summer after the couple had arrived, the first floor of the building was complete and the two were able to move in and begin making it a home. A year later, construction on the second floor of the home was complete and they were finally able to fully inhabit the space and enjoy the fruits of their labor. The couple's goal had been to engineer and construct a completely self-sustaining property.

And for this reason, Charles and Joey had almost no need to head into town and make contact with the rest of society. Their property had a hand pump for the water. The couple used candles and lamps to light their home, as they had no electricity. And they had a chemical toilet outhouse to remove the need for plumbing. It was a utopia of sorts. After it was completed, the couple gave their mansion an ominous nickname.

A nickname that drew inspiration from the eerily bare autumn trees that dotted the forests that surround the property, and a name that would come to haunt the nation years later in the wake of the murders. Corpsewood Manor.

On the property, Charles and Joey built the main house, an outhouse, a well room, a gazebo, and another structure that they referred to as the chicken house. This three-story chicken house contained three distinct floors. The first floor was for storage, and yes, they kept chickens there. The second floor contained the couple's adult film and photography collection. And the third floor was labeled by the two of them as the pink room, a notorious space painted pink from top to bottom.

We'll get into more details about that room in a bit. Charles had kept the secret that he was gay to himself and just a few people that were very close to him his entire life. But this wasn't the only secret that he felt he needed to keep from others. He was also a closeted member of the Church of Satan and a hardcore occultist.

While under tenure at Loyola University in Chicago, Charles had performed a number of experiments using the hallucinogenic drug LSD. When Charles left his job as a professor in Chicago and left for Corpsewood Manor, he reportedly brought with him a few odds and ends from his department, including two real human skulls and about 12,000 doses of LSD.

Charles and Joe kept two large dogs at Corpsewood Manor who they had taken with them from Chicago, Mastiffs to be specific. One was named Beelzebub and the other Arseneff, named after an H.P. Lovecraft character. There were a lot of rumors that swirled through the small town surrounding Corpsewood Manor while Charles and Joey lived there, with one such rumor claiming that the couple had summoned a real demon to guard their forest retreat.

And Corpsewood Manor was definitely a home fit for a demon. After moving in, Charles had decorated the manor with loads of gothic paraphernalia, including using the two real human skulls that he had brought from Chicago as decorations. He had placed bizarre paintings on the walls, broke antiques throughout the home, and even a neon pink gargoyle in front of the house, which welcomed visitors to the property.

One infamous piece of art from the home was a black and gold statue of Mephistopheles, a demonic spirit supposedly associated with, and sometimes interchanged with, Satan himself. Charles also installed a custom stained glass window in the home that bore a baphomet, which, if you don't know, is one of the classic symbols used to represent the occult, and to some, the devil.

But Charles and Joe didn't worship the devil. They were atheist hedonists who lived lives dedicated to excess and pleasure. They hosted wild parties with large groups of guests, during which the groups would get freaky in the pleasure room. The pleasure room itself, on the third floor of the chicken house, was painted totally pink.

But just like every good thing in life, there has to be some sort of a negative. Living a wild life outside of a pretty quiet community seemed to bring a lot of unwanted attention to Corpsewood Manor, and that sometimes, Charles and Joe seemed to welcome it.

They wouldn't shoo off curious locals. In fact, they would treat them with respect and would give them a solid answer to any and every question that they asked. The two were, in fact, pretty indiscriminate when it came to welcoming people into their home. It was said that when people approached Corpsewood Manor, instead of asking, who are you? Charles would yell out from his window, who am I?

And if the individual were to respond with the correct answer and identify Charles by name, that they were welcomed into the home with open arms. After all was said and done, and Charles and Joe had been living in their home for a few years, they had become extremely fond of the property. In fact, Charles is going to express his satisfaction with his new life to you guys himself. This is another direct quote from his article titled, A Castle in the Country.

Within two short years, we were living in an elegant mini castle. Our small country estate boasted a circular rose garden at the end of the drive, fruit trees and grapevines, a vegetable garden that produced fresh corn, cabbage, carrots, turnips, and other edibles, and a brick gazebo topped by a sun deck overlooking the garden, where we take tea. We use many homegrown and foraged food products, and our meals must certainly be among the best in the world.

After all, as Joe instinctively knew, nothing compares with wood stove cooking. In fact, we live in a grand style on little over $200 a month. Of course, we have no electricity, no phone, and no television set. But we don't miss those things. We also have no electric bill, no phone bill, no water bill, and no fuel bill. We owe no one. True, we spend a little on taxes, gasoline, kerosene, and insurance, but most of our meager income goes for food.

However, the garden, the fruit trees, and our flock of chickens reduce our grocery needs a bit further each year, and in time, we expect to produce almost everything we need to eat and more. This morning, for example, I picked fresh raspberries to go along with our whole wheat pancakes. We grind our own flour from wheat that we buy for $7 per 100 pounds, and honey from our beehives served as syrup. Then I weeded, pumped water, and went about my other chores. At 10 a.m., we had tea in the gazebo, and I designed a new chicken house that I plan to start building soon.

Tonight, I may practice my harp. Or perhaps I'll just sit in the courtyard and listen to the tree frogs and whippoorwills while bats fly and the clouds drift across the full moon. The world that's around me now is fresh, quiet, and very beautiful.

To give you a little insight as to what it looked like at Corpsewood Manor, you need to be reminded of the details of the property. The house had no running water, no phone lines, and no electricity. At night, Joe and Charles would use candles and lamps to light whichever room they were in. They also grew on the property most of the food that they ate, and they even made homemade wine for themselves and their guests to drink.

It was extremely quiet, deep in the woods, and very isolated, which would make it the perfect place on December 12, 1982, for a couple of gruesome murders.

It was a cold night on December 12, 1982, and two local hunters who had befriended Dr. Charles and Joe at one point in time had decided to rob Corpsewood Manor. The hunters' names were Tony West and Avery Brock, and they held bad reputations in the small town of nearby Treon. Kenneth Avery Brock, known commonly throughout the town as Avery, was a man who had been

was 17 at the time of the murders. According to a letter that Avery wrote to author Amy Petula, which she published in her book, "The Corpsewood Manor Murders in North Georgia," Avery had never been to a prom, never held a job that made him much money,

never had a driver's license, and had never eaten in a restaurant. He also claims in the letter that he had never been loved by a woman. He had been badly abused by his father when he was young, kicked out of the house, and had been forced to begin stealing food to survive.

Avery had met Charles and Joe while he was hunting deer on their property in the fall of 1982. It is debated whether or not the following happened, but according to most accounts, it did. When Avery met Charles and Joe, apparently he was taken up to the

pleasure room, and he engaged in sexual acts with Charles after drinking homemade wine. An interesting fact about Georgia at the time, which should be noted, is the fact that this sexual encounter between Charles and Avery was illegal. But not because Avery was only 17 at the time. The age of consent in Georgia was, in 1982, in fact, only 14. The illegal aspect of this interaction was the fact that in Georgia, at the time, having sex was illegal unless you were married. This law extended to anyone and everyone inside of the state.

Yes, if two people were not married, legally, they could not have intercourse. Georgia law at the time also forbade all acts of sodomy, aka any forms of sex between same-gender partners. I personally didn't know this, but when I found out that these laws existed at the time, I was genuinely shocked.

Avery already knew Charles and Joe when he moved into the trailer belonging to a man named Tony West in the late fall of 1982. At the time of the murders, although Avery had been abused and had a rough upbringing, he didn't have any issues with violence or any prior convictions. However, his new roommate, Tony West, did. Tony, age 30 at the time of the murders, had led a life that left a trail of violence wherever he went.

At around the age of 13, Tony had shot and killed his two-year-old nephew. He claimed later on after his arrest that he was playing around with the gun, had pointed it directly at his nephew's head, and pulled the trigger in an attempt to show the nephew that there was nothing to fear as the gun was unloaded. However, tragically, the gun was indeed loaded, and he ended up shooting his young relative directly in the head, killing him instantly.

Tony's father had died in a tragic train accident when he was just a young boy. And after his arrest and time served for the shooting of his nephew, Tony was a changed man. Tony was convicted on a theft charge years before the Corkswood murders.

And while he was serving time, he had one point escaped jail and shot his brother-in-law before being recaptured. It's obvious that Tony had an affinity for firearms, and he wasn't afraid to use them. Being 30 years old in 1982 and unemployed with a rap sheet including violent felony charges, Tony needed money.

and decided to take in a roommate. This new roommate would be Avery Brock. And after moving in together, that was when Avery and Tony began to hatch their devious plan. Avery and Tony visited Corpsewood Manor together in the months before the murder.

Tony, enticed by the prospect of free intoxicants, had accompanied Avery to party with Charles and Joe on a chilly fall night. Tony would go on to state that while he was at Corpsewood, in the pleasure room, Charles began to engage in sex acts with Avery, and in the heat of the moment, Charles had reached over towards Tony and tried to get him to engage in sex acts with him as well. Tony refused and, according to his account of the night, immediately stood up and left the property.

This encounter seemed to plant the seeds of rage within Tony. He was angry that Charles had attempted to have sex with him, and it was this rage that would eventually turn a robbery attempt into some sort of pseudo-revenge. After visiting Corpsewood Manor, Avery and Tony mistakenly believed that they kept a lot of valuables and money inside of the home. After all, how can you live in a lavish castle in the woods and not have money? Well, they were mistaken.

Tragically, Charles and Joe kept almost nothing of real value at their home. They kept no cash, as it was all in the bank. When they did need to make a purchase in town, they wrote checks. But Avery and Tony had no idea that this was the case. You see, they had never actually been inside of Corpsewood Manor itself, only the chicken house and pleasure room. And they imagined that the interior of the main house was practically lined with gold.

But alas, it was not. Avery and Tony had made a devious plan to enter the manor and torture them for information about the whereabouts of the valuables. They allegedly were going to do this to Charles by raping him with a hot iron. This was another mistake in their plan, as the house had no electricity, and they would need electricity to heat the specific type of iron that they had in mind. Also, they didn't even have an iron.

They, for some reason, expected Charles and Joey to already have one inside of their manor. Before they put their robbery plan into action on December 12th, 1982, Tony West and Avery Brock met up with two other individuals, Joey Wells, Tony's 19-year-old nephew, and a girl that Joey had recently met and had taken out on a date named Teresa Hudgens.

It's been debated over the years whether or not Joey Wells knew that his Uncle Tony's plan that night was to rob Corpsewood Manor. Joey has denied any prior knowledge, but Teresa's testimony in court that Joey did indeed steal some items from the home seems to say otherwise. Regardless, it's widely accepted that Teresa had no idea what she was getting into when she hopped in the car with those three men on that fateful night. On the drive up to the manor, everyone began to sniff a pony.

mix of glue, alcohol, and paint thinner that the group referred to as "toodaloo." Huffing this mixture was meant to give a person a quick but intense high. Once they arrived at Corpsewood Manor, the group was greeted with open arms by Charles, who led them up to the pleasure room. In the room, they began to drink wine and get to really know one another.

At one point, Tony West told the group that he was headed out to his car to grab more Toodaloo, but when he returned, he was holding a loaded .22 caliber rifle. Initially, Charles laughed, looked at Tony, and stated, before falling back onto the mattress.

This seemed to diffuse the situation, and Tony set the gun down, sat back down on one of the mattresses in the room, and continued to drink with the group and hang out. In only 20 short minutes, the night was about to take a dark and irreversible turn.

At one point, Charles stood up to fix a lamp that he had lit in the pleasure room to provide lighting. But immediately after he stood up, Avery Brock jolted up from his seat and pulled a knife out and held it to Charles' throat. Allegedly still treating the event as some sort of joke, Charles began to laugh and asked what kind of games they were going to play that night.

In response, Avery threw Charles down onto one of the mattresses and bound him tightly with strips of a sheet that he had cut himself. Avery and Tony demanded that Charles tell them where he kept the money.

But being honest, Charles told the two that he didn't keep any at Corpsewood Manor. This enraged Avery, and he proceeded to bind Charles even tighter with the strips of the sheet. At this point, Joey Wells and Teresa Hudgens, afraid, attempted to leave the property. But before they could escape, Tony threatened them with his gun, saying that he didn't want to hurt anyone, but he would if he had to.

And thus, Joey and Teresa headed back up to the third floor of the chicken house, while Joe remained blissfully unaware of what was happening outside while he sat in the manor cleaning the kitchen. It was then the point of no return. The two robbers needed to leave the property with something of value. So they tossed Avery the rifle, and Avery headed down into Corpsewood Manor to confront Joe in the kitchen. A short time had passed, and everyone in the pleasure room was silent.

Charles, bound and gagged, remained calm. Suddenly, a voice pierced through the night. It was Avery, yelling out to Joe, Get the dogs and come out of the house! Then silence. Then the sound of gunfire, followed by an even more penetrating silence. After a few minutes, Avery returned to the pleasure room, stating that he, quote,

This must have been absolutely world-shattering for the bound Charles to hear.

Avery and Tony then dragged Charles, who was screaming in protest, down the three stories of the chicken house and into Corpsewood Manor, where he was forced to bear witness to the brutality that had recently unfolded in his own home. There laid Joe, his lover, sprawled across the ground with four bullet holes in his head.

and one in his arm. Blood was spreading quickly across the floor, and it already covered the walls. Near Joe laid Arsene and Beelzebub, their dogs, dead, both with bullet wounds to their heads. It was a horrific scene. Seeing this, Charles screamed through his gag.

At this point, the robbers allowed Charles to stand, removed his gag, and forced him into the bedroom. They continued to ask him where the money was and for the iron that they planned to rape and torture him with. But Charles' answers remained the same. We have no electricity and no iron and above all, no money.

Charles began to shuffle over towards Joe in an attempt to provide aid to his dying companion. Tony, holding the rifle, warned Charles, sit back down or I'll shoot you. Charles paused for a moment, then murmured, I asked for this. A shot rang out.

Tony had fired a round directly into Charles' face. But Charles wasn't dead. Struggling to get up from his knees, Tony continued to unload the rifle into Charles, knocking him back onto the ground in front of a bookcase. When all was said and done, Charles had been shot four times. Avery and Tony then began to ransack the house in search of valuables, but for the most part, they came out empty-handed. There was no cash. There were no priceless gems.

They ended up stealing some wine, jewelry, a few odds and ends. And at the last second, they decided to steal Charles' Jeep. Because a lot of the furniture and other art in the house was too heavy to move or slightly scared the robbers due to its macabre occult nature, it was left there at Corpsewood Manor. One item that the two desperately wanted to steal but couldn't figure out how to was Charles' prized gold-plated harp. At one point, while they were loading the stolen goods into the car, Avery re-entered the room where Charles had been shot.

and shoved his body aside to search the drawers and bookshelves behind him. Upon moving Charles' body, Avery heard choking noises. And having had enough, Avery retrieved Charles' own pistol, which he had stolen, and fired a shot directly into the professor's forehead, finally ending his misery and ending his life.

A short while later, the robbers heard gurgling noises emanating from the kitchen area. It was Joe who had survived for the moment. The initial shots fired into his body and had dragged himself into another room adjacent to the kitchen. Avery, still wielding Charles' own pistol, walked slowly over to Joe and fired another round.

As they finished loading whatever they could find into their vehicles, nobody in the group realized that Charles was watching them. But it wasn't Charles himself.

It was a self-portrait that he had painted only a short time before the murders. Apparently, one night, Joe had awoken from a terrible nightmare, described it to Charles, and Charles had painted what Joe had described. The painting, which one can still search and view photos of online, is a self-portrait of Charles. And in the portrait, he sits with a gag in his mouth.

and five bullet holes to his head. This is exactly how Charles had gone on to die only a short while later. Bound, gagged, and shot five times in the head. A friend of Charles stated shortly after the murders that she had been told by the professor when he was questioned about the painting, that's how I'm going to die. After the murders, the group returned back to Tryon, and Joey Wells and Teresa Hudgens were threatened.

being told not to call the police by Tony and Avery. Joey Wells, they decided, could be trusted. But feeling that Teresa would rat on the group, she was held hostage for four days with no access to a phone. When she was finally able to place a call to her uncle, Tony and Avery were already gone.

Driving through Alabama and Mississippi in Charles' Jeep, which had pentacles, or pentagrams, painted on its sides, Tony and Avery didn't know where they were to go, what they were to do, so they pulled over at a gas station in Vicksburg, Mississippi to plan their next move and sleep. They awoke early the next morning to see a man sleeping in a Toyota next to them. The man was a young 26-year-old lieutenant named Kirby Phelps. Thinking quick, Tony grabbed Charles' revolver, and Avery grabbed a pair of handcuffs that they had stolen from Corpsewood. They

They awoke Kirby, who was fast asleep in his car, and he immediately blurted out, Take anything you want, just don't shoot me. Kirby was then handcuffed and led into the nearby woods by Tony, while Avery stayed at the cars and transferred the stolen belongings from Charles' Jeep into Kirby's Toyota. At one point, Tony decided that he was going to handcuff Kirby to a pine tree and removed one hand from the handcuffs.

Immediately, thinking fast, Kirby threw a punch at Tony in an attempt to escape. But Tony was thinking even faster, and he quickly unloaded three rounds from the revolver into Kirby's head, killing him immediately. Kirby's ID and wallet were then taken off of his dead body and stolen by Tony, and he and Avery fled the scene in the stolen car from the man Tony had just killed.

The morning after the murders at Corpsewood Manor, a friend of Charles and Joe arrived at the house to share with them that one of their good friends had died. Seeing that their jeep was gone, he assumed that the two were somewhere in town and decided to return the next day.

However, when he came back the next morning and the vehicle was still gone, he immediately began to think that something was wrong. As he approached the doors to the home, he noticed bullet holes and shattered glass and immediately hopped in his own car and sped to the police station to alert authorities. When the police finally arrived, they were met with a gruesome scene.

Many of the officers who responded to the call that day would go on to recall, decades later, the smell, the rotting scent of death that had seemed to permeate the castle.

The bodies had begun to decay and the scent was one that would stick with first responders forever. But apparently, according to accounts from those who were there, the stench of the home wasn't exclusively coming from the corpses. It was the whole of Corpsewood Manor itself, every room, every floor, that stank. There was also a massive amount of flies on the property.

more flies than usual when it came to a typical murder scene. The amount of flies was odd enough for it to be noted by those who worked the case. The scene at Corpsewood was one that would shock the nation.

and especially shocked the small town of Tryon. Charles and Joe were unfairly labeled as homosexual devil worshipers. Some Christians claimed that they deserved what was coming to them, having flirted with the darkness. Others in the community were strangely apathetic to the murders, claiming that the area felt safer without all the evil activity in the woods. Many others, though, were angry and sympathetic.

In the days after the murders, Corpsewood Manor became the site of a media circus. Many individuals that were very curious would come to Corpsewood Manor. Some wanted simply to see the scene of the crime, to bear witness to the mansion where the Satanist couple had been slaughtered. Others wanted more. Many people broke into the manor to steal objects from their estate. It was absolute chaos.

and the secrets that Charles and Joe had wanted to hide from the world had suddenly been broadcast to the entire nation. The manhunt for Avery and Tony was widespread and fierce. Everyone was looking for the killers, but it turns out they were looking in the wrong places, and in the end, they weren't going to have to look very hard. Avery broke down after being on the run for little over a week.

He and Tony had chosen to split up and he called his mother to come pick him up while at the same time confessing to having a part in the murders. Authorities swiftly swooped in and picked him up and Avery quickly confessed to having some sort of a role in the killings but he was still somewhat vague about exactly what he had done. The story of Tony's arrest is a little bit more bizarre.

A few days after Avery's arrest, Tony's car ran out of gas while he was fleeing, and he was forced to abandon the vehicle in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he had ended up and walked through the pouring rain to a nearby club, where, upon arrival, he noticed a police officer in the parking lot. He approached the police officer and confessed to his involvement in the murders in nearby Somerville, Georgia, but at first, the officer didn't believe Tony.

The officer got Tony into his patrol car, assured him that there were no warrants out for his arrest. There were, in fact, but word hadn't reached the specific local police department yet. And the officer actually offered to give Tony a ride from Tennessee, where he was at, across state lines into neighboring Georgia. It was only after the local Georgian police department in Rossville, where the officer and Tony ended up, confirmed the existence of these warrants that officers agreed Tony should be arrested.

But not wanting to screw up their case and fearing repercussions for the officer having driven Tony across state lines to be arrested, the officer was then instructed to drive Tony back across state lines into Tennessee. And he was told to have Tony walk himself across the Georgia state line into the arms of the Rossville Police Department, where he was then finally arrested.

Both Avery and Tony were convicted for their roles in the murders of Charles Scudder, Joe Odom, and Kirby Phelps. Avery was sentenced to three consecutive life terms, while Tony was sentenced to death in the electric chair. But his death sentence was eventually overturned, and he was then sentenced to life in prison.

And this is the end of the story. If you're somebody that wants to end the story without mention of paranormal activity, as some people have stated that they wish in our podcast reviews, sometimes being very rude and negative, that's fine. Turn this episode off now.

But we simply cannot end this story without mentioning the curse of Corpsewood Manor. Regardless of your thoughts on the paranormal, to many of those who were involved in this case or have visited the property, this curse is a very real thing. After the murders, property from Charles and Joe's estate was gifted or auctioned off.

Bobby Lee Cook, a famed Georgian attorney who represented Scudder's sons in their claim for a portion of their father's estate, was granted possession of the statue of Mephistopheles, the demon, the most valuable part of the estate, and Charles' golden harp. On the first day that Bobby brought the statue of Mephistopheles home, his wife, June, broke her leg, and she told him that she believed her injury was the fault of the demonic statue, and that she didn't want it in their house.

Bobby then brought the statue with him to his law office, where it remained for a while, but it was eventually disposed of by Bobby for reasons unknown. The self-portrait that Charles painted was passed through a number of hands in the wake of the estate sale and negotiations, and almost everyone who had held on to the piece of art described it as being a bit too dark and eerie for their tastes.

Multiple attorneys and professionals allegedly stated that they believed it was cursed. It eventually found its way into the hands of a private collector, who also purchased the pink gargoyle, the statue, the harp, and the skull paintings.

Other portions of the estate were auctioned off and met their own strange sorts of ends. The baphomet stained glass, Charles and Jo's bed frame, and other pieces of the estate were purchased by a weapons dealer. The dealer had recently gotten married to one of his employees, and she reportedly never liked his purchase of the Corpsewood items.

Only a short time after they came to own the stained glass and other objects, the ATF swooped in on the couple and busted them for dealing weapons to international gun dealers and criminals. The couple soon divorced, and the wife, believing in the Corpsewood curse, reportedly took the Baphomet stained glass outside of the couple's home and blew it to pieces with a machine gun. She then rounded up the other items from Corpsewood Manor and had a bonfire in the front yard, reducing them to ashes.

It's said that if somebody removes a brick from the grounds of Corpsewood Manor, that they are doomed to be cursed. Many people have reported visiting the abandoned home, returning to their car at the end of Dead Horse Road, and realizing that for some reason, their car will not start.

A man named Charlie Moss, who was a member of the crime lab assigned to analyze the grounds of Corpsewood Manor, told fellow members of the crime lab that he was extremely opposed to staying on the property after dark. But due to the circumstances of the crime and the necessity to gather information as quickly as possible, he was forced to work there into the night.

When he went to leave the scene the next day, the transmission fell out of his car. Even I, in the process of writing this episode, seemed to fall a victim to the curse of Corpsewood Manor. Multiple times, while writing this script, I hurt myself. Just recently, while penning this portion of the episode about the curse itself, I got up from my desk to fetch myself a glass of water and slipped on the stone floor of my apartment, tumbling over, bruising my legs and knees, and injuring my foot. It really is bizarre.

When I visited Corpsewood Manor myself, I wanted to keep a part of Charles and Joe with me, to keep their story alive myself. So I took with me a small piece of a brick that was laying around the property, discarded and tossed away into the darkness of the forest overgrowth. But upon getting to the airport to fly home from Georgia back to Austin, my bag was flagged by the TSA.

I'm not kidding. And as I watched the officer dig through my property, I was sure that I had left some shampoo in my suitcase or that he was going to question me about my ghost hunting equipment. But no, I watched in absolute shock as the officer reached into my bag and pulled out the piece of brick that I had taken from the manor. He told me, this could be considered a weapon and you can't bring it with you. Since we were already at security and I had previously checked my bags in for my flight, there was nothing I could do.

I watched as the officer threw my brick into the TSA garbage can, and I boarded my flight home, remarking to myself the whole way there that the curse of Corpsewood Manor is real.

Even the corpses themselves of Charles Scudder and Joe Odom seemed to carry with them some sort of darkness. The crematorium that Charles was cremated at ended up becoming the center of a national scandal 20 years after the bodies were brought in there from Corpsewood. It was there, on the grounds of the Tri-State Crematory in 2002, where investigators discovered over 350 bodies that had been brought to the facility for cremation but had never been cremated.

The bodies had been thrown together into storage sheds, left out in the open air and left to rot, to the horror of family members and authorities alike.

It's theorized by some that Charles' remains being brought here for disposal had something to do with the negativity that would hover over the facility for years to come. And this is interesting, considering that officials themselves had felt something ominous from the bodies of the murder victims on the day that they were brought to the funeral home. The story goes like this. The day that Charles and Joe's bodies were discovered, they were taken away in the back of a pickup truck and brought to a local funeral home for an autopsy. But authorities who were stationed in the area felt almost off,

while the bodies were still at Corpsewood Manor. Not as though the bodies were giving off evil, but almost as if the property itself contained some sort of darkness that seemed to swirl around the corpses, watching, an evil that was almost attached to them. In fact, one state trooper, a man named Billy Pledger, remarked that once Charles and Joe's bodies had been removed from the property, that the area felt lighter, more welcoming, and that while the bodies had been there, he, quote, felt like something was watching us, end quote.

Other officers who responded to the call that day would go on to tell the media that they also felt like there was an evil on the grounds of Corpsewood Manor. But once again, not an evil coming from Charles and Joe themselves, but some sort of malevolent force that seemed to surround the property and the woods around the house. An evil that departed as soon as the bodies were taken away.

It's been said that Charles' cremated remains were taken back to Wisconsin to be buried in a family plot. But I, along with others who have studied this case, couldn't find any proof that he was actually interred in Wisconsin. The only thing that gives proof of this burial is a memorial plaque. And then there's Joe.

There's been a lot of debate over the years about where Joe ended up, but it's commonly accepted that his body was cremated and those who were close to him gathered at Corpsewood Manor and spread his remains around the Rose Garden there on the property. But in an odd twist, authorities conducted a dig on the grounds of Corpsewood Manor after the bodies were found, and the story disseminated to the public and the media was that the police suspected that there was an underground lab somewhere on the grounds. But that doesn't really make sense. They had no reason to believe that.

Some have stated that, since Joe in the past had allegedly expressed his desire to be buried at Corpsewood, that this dig was performed in order to carve out a spot to inter Joe on the grounds of the mansion, and that this secret grave was kept just that, a secret.

I guess we'll never know if Joe's body was buried out there or not, but cremated or buried, his remains were laid out to rest at Corpsewood either way. In the decades after the murders, Corpsewood Manor was abandoned and fell into deep disrepair. It's now only a shell of what it once was. An abandoned house, deep in the woods, crumbling ruins covered with plants and graffiti. Just a shell of the magnificent home that existed there at one point in the past.

But the fact is, Corpsewood Manor is still there. And if you're brave enough, you can head out there and pay Charles and Joe a visit one night. Locals have been claiming that Corpsewood Manor is either cursed or haunted for years. Some visitors to the property have claimed to hear dogs barking in the darkness near the old abandoned house while exploring late at night. Others have seen lights and shadows or heard phantom harps playing, echoing throughout the forest close to the manor.

Other locals who have visited the ruins have claimed to encounter full-on apparitions. Elderly men walking throughout the crumbling ruins, saying hi, greeting people who disappear before their very eyes. It's been claimed that after the murders, a dark stain appeared over one of the boarded windows of the home near the library. And some locals believe that this stain was a sign that Charles was still there, watching over his beloved home.

At the end of the day, the story of Corpsewood Manor really is a classic ghost story, if you want to call it that.

It's almost stranger than fiction. A couple heads out to the woods to live alone, building their own gothic mansion by hand, engaging in occult activities and living a lavish life with no restraints. Until the day that the two lovers are brutally murdered right next to each other in their own paradise. If Charles and Joe are still out there, I can only imagine that at least they'd still be happy.

For even though the house has been destroyed and the two lost their lives in such painful ways so long ago, they're still deep out in the woods. They're alone in their house. And above all, they're still together.

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Hey everybody, it's Colin here. Thank you again for listening to this new episode of Murder in America. And I want to remind you guys, I actually just went to Corpsewood Manor itself, deep in the woods in Georgia, about two months ago. And if you want to see video from that location, my paranormal investigation that I did there, please head to my YouTube channel, The Paranormal Files, and watch the latest video.

I gotta tell you, Corpsewood Manor is a beautiful, beautiful place. It is abandoned. It's decayed. It's just so eerie to be out there. And we wanted to go with the utmost respect. And this really is a story that lines up perfectly with the theme of our show and my career and everything that I consider every single day when I investigate and want to tell these stories. It always, at the end of the day, makes me wonder the same old question again.

The dead don't talk, or do they? See you on the next one, everybody. Thanks for listening.