Episode 338

Sort and scale contains adult themes and violence and is not intended for all audiences Listener discretion is advised Come take a load off put your feet up and listen to some murder What a stupid thing to say. This is season 13 episode 338 of Sort and scale a show that reveals what the worst monsters are real If you're a fan of true crime, I invite you to check out our brand new YouTube channel where you could subscribe and the opposite way You can on our websites you on our website you can subscribe for 10 bucks for audio and then add video for another 10 bucks on top of that On YouTube you can start with video and add audio so Yeah, I'll take your pick. This is just gonna complicate things, isn't it? Oh, well, fuck my life You It's just after midnight in 2019 during the summer solstice The longest day of the year This isn't some Mumble jumbo new age crap. It's when the sun is furthest from the equator And it's a time when some say the veil between this dimension and the others is the thinnest Okay, so maybe there is a little quote-unquote new age wisdom The most important point though is that it's Ohio The state that's becoming quite popular around here for some reason So it's June 21st and East Cleveland Believe it or not there are posh areas in Cleveland so that some of you savages can pretend to be people This isn't one of them It's not a picturesque skyline by the lake or the downtown area lit up with nightlife It's calling the wood a working-class neighborhood that feels like it's part of a bygone era Part of the rust belt the houses are small and modest, but nice enough and the lawns are moat There's just enough space in the backyard for a barbecue Ah Americana a small white Cape Cod style home Maces a narrow street called Chickasaw Avenue. It's a mild, but humid evening No wind is blowing and it's dark Windows stay open in most homes and the people inside are asleep The fans humming in the background But on this street as June 21st turns to the 22nd Something bad is happening Believe it or not, one dispatch is rotating for the fire AMS Hello, we've got staff who are on chicken saw ass I'm sorry I said we've got staff Who just got staff They call almost serenade like a hoax The child calling in was so calm and said she lived on chicken saw Avenue, but this was no joke What's your address where you are? What's the address, the complete address? You don't know You're on what street? Chicken saw has been put out about to pass you out Are you a u-quit? No, please don't hire You may not have caught it, but the little girl said she was about to pass out She was trying her hardest to stay alert and get the street names right In this part of Cleveland, the streets seem to have native American names And you're on chicken saw? Yeah, do you know another street nearby? Oh no, I'm a little sight to fly Turkey eyes, and hope you're on turkey What turkey? What she was trying to say was Cherokee Note to parents, make sure that your kids know where they live and how to pronounce the street names That's a small safety tip that rivals all of the canned goods and toilet paper you hoard in your Cape Cots summer home Yeah, I know my audience Okay, who got stabbed, honey? I mean, am I cut this? By who? Don't be here, I'll cut this Okay, I'm going to get you over to EMS, okay? Yes, okay Don't hang up, how old are you? Okay, don't hang up, okay? The kids The dispatch operator told the EMS responder She had a 10-year-old who had a knife wound It was hard to tell if his response was disbelief or mere frustration I mean, this is Cleveland Sadly, it's probably not the first time a kid called in about being stabbed This place truly is a shithole Okay Are you still there, honey? Yes, I'm at the hospital Okay, okay He doesn't know where she is, she says she's on a streetcotch She's got a fever The corner what? It's not her, she just says she's on a streetcotch She's got a fever What is this? She said her and her cousin got stabbed Oh, okay Did the mother cousin hurt folded in her? Oh, I'm sorry, your cousin, you're having a good time By this time, the polite little girl who was stabbed and trying not to pass out was getting frustrated You can hear her in the background desperately pleading for help She was probably wondering when the questions would stop and an ambulance would arrive The victims were two 10-year-old cousins who managed to escape outside They were making their way to a neighbor's house, but all the time struggling just to stay alive Thank God some kind people in the next street over were still up and looking at their window when they heard crying She said she'd really bad, she said she'd come in in my house Imagine that, you're minding your own business and suddenly you hear little kids crying outside You're like, what's that? You get up to see two blood-soaked girls staggering towards your house These days would you even let them in? I mean, be honest, that's some of the shining bullshit right there Some of you would probably slam the door shut, no doubt She's not so mature to say that she stabbed her bleeding to death, all the clothes which were the blood Closed bleeding to death The two little girls Okay, and then the girl can barely talk, yes Okay, so I'm going to ask you two more questions so that I can tell you what to do These questions are going to help me help them, okay? How old are they? They look like they're about maybe 12, maybe about 12 years old Okay, see if that was a month or more And are they awake? Yeah, they're awake, but they're covered in blood Okay, they're not Listen carefully, I want to tell you how to stop the bleeding, listen carefully to make sure we do it correct, okay? Sounds like a plan, right? But what do you do if you can't tell where the blood's coming from? So I need you to get a clue, but we're going to have to have moved all over Okay Okay, is the brother still nearby the one that stabbed him? No, no, no Okay, and is there any serious bleeding? That's a serious bleeding Okay, are they completely alert? Are they going out of it unconscious? Yes, they'll just be declared, yes Okay, I'm giving this information to the dispatch, stand on line, don't hang up Okay, and you said there is more than one wound, correct? Yes, they'll settle over, they got good, and they're living in my house, in my corner, and you're bleeding Okay, help is on the way It always seems to take forever for an ambulance to arrive And the questions from 9-1-1 operators are never ending The truth is that the response time varies, obviously depending on where you live But in urban areas, the average time is only about 5-8 minutes But those few minutes can feel like forever Okay, you're all right, shut the door Is she okay? Lady, won't they do okay? They're living in the tour talking, how long is it going to take them to get here? They're coming right now, the fire department, and the paramedics And they're on their way "Yes, they're on the way." The excitement was almost too much for this lady. She started having her own issues. "I got asthma. I'm not breathing. It's really heavy. Okay. Do you have an inhaler that you can take?" "Yes. I'm going to get some bucket. Okay. I'll go turn here." Despite her own problems, this woman wasn't going to let two little girls slip into unconsciousness. I mean, if I needed somebody to bring me back, I'd want this lady. She goes hard. "Hey, wake up, baby. I'm just. Hey! Wake up, baby." As the woman in the house is on the phone with 911, her boyfriend comes back. He sees the kid's bleeding and cry. "You're wrong, baby. Who said you weren't happy? I didn't call you. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. Hello. Get down the call, honey. Oh. They work. Hello. Hello. Can we go have a look where you guys are? We are right here on Charity. One, nine, six, one, two, Charity. Oh no. But these kids have been stabbed up. Okay. Give me. Give me that address again. Who am I thinking to? This is the EMS. And please. I only have three. These kids. These girls have been stabbed back. Come back, baby. Come on. Okay. This is the guy's door. The little girls confirmed that it was a cousin who stabbed them. And she's afraid he'll find them. That one this guy's around. I mean, would you fuck with him? I wouldn't. Luckily, she tells him she can't get up. Open that door. This girl has been stabbed up there. Okay. Didn't that address where they're going to be? The one, nine, six, twelve? Yes. Yes. One, nine, six, one, two. Charity. Hurry up. Oh, my fucking goodness. Okay. These guys are fine and Katie. Yeah. You're welcome. But you all stay right here. This girl is stabbed up real bad. Yes, she know where the part going. We've got it. Say what? Faber. Faber. We went to Pazzo to stab. They said they're looking for them. Yeah. Let me do this. And no, please. Please. You can't believe that. The part going to be looking for them. We're going to have the part going to stab. They said they look in for them. Oh, boy. These gentlemen seem ready to carry out their own investigation. But police wanted a name. The little girls were scared and going in and out of awareness. It was hard to get the needed information and confusion was getting in the way. They don't know. They don't know. They don't know. They are like that. They don't know. Yeah, when you think about it for me, we've got people on the way. I'm trying to get information from you. So as long as they want. You can see it. They're trapped up there. They're two little girls. Oh, my fucking deal. Man, I find this dude. Who is this guy? He and that farmer talking to them. They don't need to be transferred. Okay. I got who is inside of Fabzo. I got two 10-year-old Fabzo. It was 18-year-old Jalen Plummer, their cousin who was supposed to be staying with an aunt in a different part of the neighborhood, but decided to go on a killing spree at his grandma's house instead. When the grandma was still back at the house. So much was going on. As the couple on the house learned more information, the panic escalated. Some people are good in crisis and some aren't. They called from Chickasaw Avenue, where their grandmother, Diane Madison lived. The two cousins escaped, but left their grandmother behind. Then there was the cousin Jalen, who caused the bloodbath. No one knew his whereabouts yet, but he'd better hope he didn't cross paths with his neighbor. In the immortal words of this Oh my fucking goodness. This was Cleveland. But even our seasoned veteran here hadn't seen anything like this before. You could tell. This was some fucked up shit that would stick with them. After talking with the two little girls and the couple taking care of them, officers realized they needed to go to the crime scene as soon as possible while the girls were on their way to the hospital. What they didn't know yet was that there was still another child in that house on Chickasaw. Justin Madison, a 12-year-old boy with autism. This was Jalen's brother, and Jalen was still in that house, too. Justin was terrified, and didn't completely understand what was going on. His sister had fled the scene with her cousin, while more like escaped. Justin was trapped in an upstairs bedroom and didn't even know he was injured. The police were about to wade into a blood-soaked house, but first needed to convince her grandson Justin to unlock the door and come outside. Justin was risking his life letting the officers in because the killer was still there. In the bathroom, the water was running. Jalen plumber was fully clothed, standing under the shower, a blood from his own knife wounds, and the blood from his own knife wounds. This was a madhouse. When asked for his mother's name, he was able to give it to the officer, but he couldn't spell it, saying that she never told him how. The discovery of the murder weapon was good news and bad news, good news that this unlikely and lucky victim found it, but possibly bad news that he cleaned it up. Justin naturally had a lot of questions about himself, his grandma Diane, and his brother, who had been let away in handcuffs. What Justin didn't know was that his grandmother died almost immediately after being stabbed by his brother. In her bedroom they found Dian Madison dead of multiple taboos, including one that completely severed her carotid artery. And the little dog he was referring to was sitting on the bed in the same spot where he'd been sleeping peacefully next to his owner. Now, with a look of bewilderment. The dog wasn't alone. Almost everyone who knew Jalen Plummer was bewildered. No one could yet explain why a college-bound teenager, quiet, smart, and planning to study pharmacology, had suddenly turned into a violent killer. But there were cracks long before that night. This wasn't just one terrible night. It was the unveiling of a legacy that had been building long before Jalen had ever picked up a knife. On June 22nd, 2019 in East Cleveland, South Colinwood neighborhood, police responded to a bloody scene on Chickasaw Avenue. Two 10-year-old girls escaped their home, reporting they'd been stabbed in their sleep. When officers got to the house, they found a third victim. A 12-year-old autistic boy who confirmed that his brother was the killer. 18-year-old Jalen Plummer was in the shower, rinsing off blood after stabbing the entire household. In a bedroom, his grandmother Diane Madison laid dead from multiple stab wounds, and her little dog also laid nearby. Jalen offered only a chilling explanation. The mental health care system failed me, so I tried to kill my family. Signs of mental illness seemed obvious when Jalen was taken to the hospital and questioned. Nurses bandaged the deep cuts on his hands, but it was as if his voice was bound just as tightly. His muffled words barely escaped. He spoke in vague, detached terms referring to his siblings as child number one and child number two. He claimed he didn't know the names of his mother and grandmother, and said he just called them mommy or grandma. His mother, Tenea Plummer, would later tell detectives that Jalen had no official diagnosis, but his behavior had drastically changed between the ages of 12 and 15. He'd been drinking, smoking, shutting down and fixating on dark things. She had just decided to get him in the therapy. But here's what Jalen's mother didn't want to say. She remembered that his behavior had started to change around the time of another arrest. Police already knew the name that would leave her lips. This was a man from the same city, a serial killer that had haunted Cleveland and was arrested and convicted during Jalen's crucial adolescent years. It seemed possible this disturbed Jalen so much that he became fascinated with killing and ultimately exploded in a murderous fit that night, leaving his grandmother dead. Jalen was a loving, kind person and I think sometimes that gets lost. Almost all of us who worked with her remained friends with her afterward. That's the kind of person she was. She was the kind of person others felt comfortable with because they knew she'd been through it. They knew she was the first to sympathize. She was always open to hearing about everybody's hard times because God knows she'd had enough of her own. And I just want them to remember her smile and remember how much laughter and joy she brought to people's lives. She was someone who was compassionate, who cared about her family, who cared about her grandkids, who cared about her kids even when they couldn't reciprocate maybe. Diane Madison wasn't just a grandmother. She was a mother of one of the most notorious killers in Cleveland's history. Her son, Michael Madison, grew up in that same house on Chickasaw Avenue. As an adult, he returned to raise a family there with his girlfriend, Tania Plummer. They had two children, including a disabled son. Eventually, Michael left them behind, not before Jalen witnessed it all though. The growing suspicion, the arrest, the conviction of a killer, someone who had once called that house home. Conversation recorded on July 19, 2013 at 8.54. We can't get this one to rock, so we can't even must get it right there. We can't get it as a rock, though open, but it's a snail. I know when the day the animal's smell, and I know it's garbage, a snail. The flies from an out of the wall from one side of the garage. I mean, they smell so freaking strong you could throw up. I mean, we just want to make sure anybody on the other side of something. I mean, it's so bad enough. Man, you would throw up. It's hard to even take the snail, so what's the other? 1995. Hey, what's your name? My name is Ray. I'm a child. I'm a social number. 218-089-550. Okay, I know that. We are here from out here now. We're waiting nobody come up here. We can't talk about it. We're dead. We're dead. We're crazy. Okay, I'm going to take a roll. I'll tell you. All right. That smell in the garage. If you've never had the pleasure, it's a mixture of rotting fish, dead animal, skunk, and raw sewage. How's that lunch treating you? You're welcome. This call came in six years before Diane's murder, and it wasn't just the first sign of something horrific. It was the past, catching up. It was a call to police from a cable company worker in this building that eventually led to the arrest of Michael Madison on murder charges. He lived there in an apartment, and one employee saw flies swarming in a nearby garage. So I went in there when I smelled the smell, I was like, oh my god, we need to call the police. East Cleveland Police found the decomposing body of a female victim on Friday. The ID Madison as a suspect arrested him at his mother's home and began questioning. The garage wasn't behind Diane's house. It was on Hayden Avenue, near a small upstairs apartment Michael had been renting just a few miles away. Because by 2013, he wasn't living under his mother's roof anymore, and he wasn't the same cute, cuddly little boy she'd raised. He had turned cold. Michael Madison, Diane's son, was no stranger to trouble. He was quiet and withdrawn. He's always been that way. He'd been drifting for years through dead end jobs, short tempers, and the kind of isolation that makes neighbors nervous. He had anger issues sometimes. I would see him upset, yelling, and I just told him to calm down, and he was okay. You know, he spoke to everybody. When the garage door finally opened and the truth finally came spilling out literally, it wasn't just the neighborhood that changed. It was the entire Madison household, especially his steps on Jalen. The man he had once called Stepdad would now be called something else entirely, a killer. Michael wasn't exactly a copycat, but his crimes bore chilling similarities to those of another Cleveland serial killer he reportedly admired. Anthony, Soel, and famously known as the Cleveland Strangler. Soel was convicted in 2011 after the remains of 11 women were found at his home. Years later, Jalen Plummer, who lived with a stepfather Michael in the same house, appeared to develop a disturbing interest in the same notorious figure. The corner in Cleveland, Ohio, says six bodies found in the home of a convicted rapist were female. All were homicide victims. Police arrested 50-year-old Anthony Soel Saturday. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Heavenly Father. I am so glad they got you! him because I wasn't gonna rest, you know, until they did. Before I had to put my friends against the door and lock myself in before I could even go to sleep. Just two years after the Cleveland Strangler was put away, Michael Madison emerged onto the crime scene. Michael was born in East Cleveland in 1977. Former classmates barely remembered him because he had no real friends. He was, I guess, what you would call, forgettable. He didn't graduate from high school, but he was far from stupid. He had a lot going on in his head, but no one ever bothered to ask what that was. And he never saw a therapist. But he needed one because he hated women, specifically black women. The women who fell into his nightmare weren't prostitutes or drugged out street women, not that they would deserve his fate. Instead, they were women with families, full lives and plans. And for a brief, fateful moment, each of them crossed paths with Michael Madison. The first body found was 18-year-old Sherelda Terry. She had just graduated from high school with plans for a good life. At summer, she worked at an elementary school in East Cleveland, helping run youth programs and earning respect from teachers and neighbors. She was last seen alive on July 10, 2013, leaving school after her shift, but she never made it home. They met somewhere in the previous weeks and started texting. Michael lied, saying he was 25 with no children. When they opened the garage door, thousands of flies swarmed in the putrid air. Officers moved the bags containing her remains and a trail of decomposition fluid left a mix of brown, gray, red and yellow, flowing like a dirty river on the concrete in front of it. It was one of the most gruesome crime scenes they'd ever laid their eyes on. She died from ligature, strangulation. An investigator also noted a severe vaginal laceration consistent with sexual assault while she was still alive. Sherelda was my angel. Well, everybody called her Sherelda. I called her heaven, let's call my kids a coordinate act and that's my heaven. So to me, he took mine. She's a praise dancer, she's a holy person, she's heavy into the church and she's my reader, my bookworm. It didn't take long for Michael to be arrested and brought in for questioning, but it came after a standoff at his mother's house. DNA and circumstantial evidence were strong. But during questioning, detectives hoped to get some answers as to why. Michael had the spotlight for once. He talked a lot, but not about what mattered. But he wasn't the loud bragging type, instead he gave metaphors quietly, parables, detached theories about the human condition. It was as if the man accused of stuffing women in trash bags thought he was there to give a philosophical lecture. And while detectives paused for timelines and names, Michael offered riddles and speculations. He noticed my first time, we realized it's just how different walks of life are. When I was younger, we stayed on the west side and we stayed included. So we got schooled on the west side, you know, so the west side school ran like a quarter a week and it was white. So that's pretty good. Most of it, you know, moved here and it's been pretty much just, you know, like I don't like it, but I'm working really hard in my life. I've always done, you know, I told myself, oh, I was like, you know, I was on the same three or four hours and a couple of hours, I see, you know, I'm saying, I'm around, I'm going to go, you're going to do it, I'm going to go, I was like, you know, I'll tell you where, I think that you have like the most test off the road and I'm going to, you know, the round thing we're going at in one time, like, we're at it. Yeah, he really did just say, I like the ram swagger. The conversation shifted for a minute to the day police picked him up. It was a sweltering day when police moved to arrest him on July 19, 2013. He happened to be at his mom's house on Chickasaw and barricaded himself inside for hours. Swat was called and the standoff ended only when officers used tear gas and broke the door down to force him out. They asked him what he was thinking at the time. If it sounds garbled, it's probably because of the cheeseburger he was eating. This guy's maybe the chillest killer they've ever interviewed. He went on to say that while police car sirens blared and lights flashed while voices boomed over the megaphone yelling for him to come out. He was listening to his mother's wind chimes, smoking cigarette butts from the ash tray and thinking about his childhood. I don't know, I'm not saying that, that's the reason that I didn't come out with. Like I said, my family and friends would be the worst and the known, I met a whole mother with, you know, particularly when I heard it got to a point where I was in a really pretty life. Didn't care to hear it again, but, you know, during a certain time, I was like he was there for me, you know what I'm saying, you know, I was in your dump for a second parentship. Before we were going to hold on to it, he was going to hold on to that, you know, talking about putting all of that behind me, but I have, I really. At several points throughout the more than eight hours of interrogation, Michael alluded to a loveless childhood of neglect, according to him, his mother prioritized appearance and money over him. As much as detectives wanted to make him comfortable and hear about his past, they still had a job to do, and it wasn't to be a therapist for a killer. I started the beginning, I started the beginning, whatever you want to start, this is, this is your opportunity to tell me, you know, this is what I came to gather for, yeah, well, I got to be honest, I'm going to play it some time, so I'm, hey, you, for the dog, you put it on, there for the same thing, you tell me, I'm going to be around here, sometimes, whenever you live that. Let's answer that, yes, that's it, that's where Michael lived. But all of a sudden, it was not really his place, as Baby Mama's name was on the lease, and people just sort of came and went, all helping pay the bills together somehow, and some sort of weird collective, you know, anybody could have been there. Anybody could have had access to that garage. Michael, I don't know what conversation with the commander about the last six hours I've been over in your spot with an organization called BCI, and you know, BCI has been, you ever watched any of the CSI shows, whenever something happens, you leave, intentionally or unintentionally you leave stuff behind, whether it be DNA evidence, fingerprints, blood, or giving you the opportunity to, you tell me, you said, it's Batman, okay, but please don't sit here and follow me, all right? That's been a let, set it out of practice in your apartment, I know the evidence in your apartment, I know the evidence in your garage, I mean, please, please, please, please, do me the courtesy of, oh, listen, I understand that people make mistakes that go to you before, I'm not here to judge you, but Michael, please do me the courtesy of being honest, man. He argued that he was in and out of the apartment and had a lot of evidence that he wasn't going the apartment and has a lot of work to do. been in the garage for weeks. The body was put in the garage less than a week before. All the detectives wanted was for him to fess up and tell them what he did. And they weren't getting anywhere. It was time to bring God into it. "Are you a doctor, amen?" Little did they know that they had just made a massive overreach. This was the perfect opportunity for the suspect to preach. A beacon like "You are not without sin." Like "You sin, you sin." Like "No one, whether it be police, after no one can tell me this without sin, no one can tell me that they have never committed a sin, never broken a law, whether it be Mr. Meener or facility." Somebody might, everybody had some type of skeleton they call a closet and whether it be pastor or chief of police, like, you know, throw a name on it. Skeletons can be as big as the name, like chief of police. The Skeletons can be just as big as saying it. Anthony so will all the way down to the little girls who believe in their care, like, "No, I'm like, yeah, I'm going to God, and I know, you know what I'm saying?" All I say, "No, I know it's good, and I know it's bad." They just let them keep talking. They let them draft through the vague philosophies and half-baked sermons in his little cabezza. According to him, no one wanted to hear his story, the real story, quote, unquote. Again, you'll never convince a retard they're not a genius. He was fine talking about literally everything except the murders. They were just like, "Bingo. We're here listening to Alan here, and we're the ones there." Or, "We're going to get some of the props here. That's going to be our job. That's going to be our job." "No, I'm like, they're all disagreeing with you." Like, man, I, you know, I hate to seem like I'm like someone telling me anything, but, you know, this is like, I don't, like, I told you earlier, I'm about to begin a line of something that you don't want to go to. You don't want to go to, and probably you're probably going with something that I'm just starting lined up. It's not like, it's not like, "We give you what it is, you won't want to make this any easier for us." You know what I want to do? I want to do the hardest thing that a police officer ever has to do. Do you know what that is? Go to work. No. That's easy. Going out there when people are going bad things and catching up, facing them, playing with them, whatever it takes. That's easy. I want to do the hardest job when I have to go to somebody and say, "I'm sorry to tell you this, but if your loved one is no longer with us, they're dead." This didn't phase Michael. He just kept talking until everyone in the room was "No." It's a cool parlor trick if you can do it. Politicians are great at it. It's a shame though he didn't talk until he was numb, because he would have already been there a long time ago. Whenever the worst he is, like, "I'm going to steal life," he's not like, "I'm going to go to work. I want to do soup and no soup. Going to work, I'm going to be in front of a gym, around other criminals." That's what I'm saying is, man. Like, I don't know. I feel, I feel nothing. I feel not a damn thing. Like, I'm sorry to hear that. It's like I said, man. It's just like this world that we live in, like, from generals in the army to tennis commanders, like, "How do you think somebody is worse than one of them?" And he just says, "Somebody y'all are on the front line. No one I think you do think I'll come back. Ain't even supposed to even come back." For the record, Michael was never in the military. He was just pulling out all the stops to make his case, even by stealing valor. Even though he hadn't admitted to anything yet, he knew they had him. So, he would just hint at the motive. Which was, I was neglected. Nobody ever listened to me. My baby mama nagged me all the time, because I don't have a job. Why? She makes me feel less than a man. Women all want one thing. Why? Why? Why? Holy shit, what an insufferable asshole. You know, stop trying to f*ck guys over. You know what I mean? Did that work out? What's going to make f*ck do you want to do? Oh, I mean, other than the regular, I'm not unnecessary. But it's going to serve at some point. It's going to take time. It's going to be some type of say-cut. It's going to be over. That was just a little while. I don't know. I just don't know what this is about. I don't know what this is about. I don't know. I don't know. We have a good percentage of us. We've been wise. We're under the cell for real. Then, out of the blue, probably because they were so numb from the talking, the cops flipped the switch and asked him to point blank. But that was a lie. In an obscured part of the interview, that's barely audible, unfortunately. He admits to strangling one of the women. He was annoyed that she wouldn't leave and felt like she was trying to take advantage of him in some way. He was drunk and all he remembered was putting his hands around her neck. He never said she died, but he never said her name. Later, he claimed he found a body and a garbage bag and carried it down to the garage. But he never put it in there. It was a mirage of pieces, but the pieces corroborated the evidence. It didn't take a genius to fill in the missing pieces. I don't know, you're not really being clear with it. You know what we found yesterday, right? I think about what I found today, Mike. What were you talking about yesterday? He said, "They're going to learn. We're going to teach. They deserve it." I just talked about the side of my face, the various. And I was sitting there trying to put it all together, and after we took you back downstairs yesterday, so I didn't move tonight. I started guarding it. We sat down in my office when we talked for a long time, and we just were trying to figure out what you were trying to tell us. And I inserted, "No, no, what's exactly what you were saying, bro?" Mike, I know now. We jumped right in. We found it. I found out. You're a man. You are a bullsh*t. That was young, right? He was telling me what he was saying. I got another body. I thought you were kind of blown, smoked up my ass yesterday. Me and Governor and Bruce were talking about it. I thought you were blown, smoked up my ass yesterday. I said, "I don't know." I said, "Well, yeah, I think you're telling me just by the body language, just by the demeanor, because some of the things you were saying, you said you were talking about the side of your mouth." I think that was what you wanted to tell your story, and I'm giving you an opportunity now to do it. And I'm telling you, I believe you now. I got half-ass believed you yesterday. And I'm believing you 100% now. So even we don't even know this one body, we tell 'em about something totally different around. Michael barely flinched. He had admitted to having dates to his apartment and getting so shit-faced that he didn't remember them leaving. He confessed to putting his hands around one of the women's necks and awakening to find a body in the garbage pack. That's bad. But even now, when confronted with more evidence and yet another body, he deflected. The detectives were running out of patience, and now they didn't just want to know why he killed. They wanted to know how many more dead women would be found and where they were located. When they found the first body in East Cleveland in 2013, it was a trash bag in a garage. The neighbors had smelled something. By the time the police arrived the case was already strange. The suspect Michael Madison was calm. He denied everything and admitted only enough to seem helpful. One woman he said was dead, but he hadn't killed her. He found her in a bag. He just moved her. That's all he claimed. But the evidence was there. They still didn't have a clear motive though, only a suspect who talked in metaphors and acted like a victim all the time. This victim was also a father of two and a stepfather to one quiet teenager named Jalen, who years later would erupt into his own kind of violence in the same house on Chickasaw Avenue. The violence from both men was directed only at women. The women who raised Michael and her grandson Jalen and three other innocent women who just happened across the wrong path. In this tiny blue interrogation room that resembled the prison cell, detectives and Michael sat for hours on end, eating cheeseburgers from McDonald's as the questions came one after another. While the barred window raised, Michael smoked black and mild cigars. The smoke mixing with the scent of sweat and making its way out the window to the sweltering streets of Cleveland, they were finally coming to understand this killer. It was a simple but disturbing statement. In that one sentence, Michael revealed a cracked mirror of identity, pride and resentment against women. In 2025, especially, it's not unusual to hear the voices of frustration from men who feel diminished in relationships and society at large. Still, his words, though wrapped in philosophical language, revealed a specific grievance. This was a man whose sense of self had been shaped and maybe shattered by the women around him. Still, nothing could justify the brutality that followed. He never offered a formal confession, not in so many words, but he did give what experts call a functional confession. That's when a suspect doesn't technically admit guilt, but their behavior shows it. They lead police to evidence only the killer would know. They describe crime scenes in detail. They help close the loop. Think of Ted Bundy, who helped investigators find remains even years after denying some of his murders. Or Israel Keys, who mapped out the burial site of one of his victims despite refusing to name all of his crimes. It's not in what they say, it's in what they do. Michael finally took detectives to the bodies. The first was Sherelda Terry, the body found in the garage. The young girl just starting her life. Next was 28-year-old Shatisha Sheely, who had a daughter. Her body was discovered in a brush pile near the garage behind Michael's apartment. It was found in layers of heavy trash bags, the same method used for the other victims. Forensic examination was limited due to the composition. But there were signs of trauma and possible strangulation. Shatisha had bruises on her face and her clothing had ligature marks. Last to be found was 38-year-old Angela Deskins. She was discovered days after the first body in a musty basement of an abandoned house near Michael's apartment. Angela was a quiet woman with a soft voice trying to piece her life back together. She had once worked as a hairdresser, someone who brought beauty to others. But she struggled to get by and pull her own life together. Someone introduced her to Michael. He seemed somewhat safe enough and had a calm personality. That was all it took. June 7th, they tell us that's when they last the saw Angela and since then they say they have been friendically searching for her. But this week police confirmed their worst fear that cops had found her body, that 38-year-old's body. Investigators right now aren't saying how she died, cops discovered her remains in a backyard Saturday near Shaw Avenue. Now knew this morning, a statement from the family, quote, Angela Deskins was a beautiful, sweet, kindhearted woman. She was raised in novelty Ohio by her father Robert Deskins and her stepmother, Mother Linda Deskins. Everyone who knew her loved her, she was a wonderful daughter, sister and and who truly cared about her family and friends. She is loved so much and will be missed by everyone who knew her. On the days after Michael's arrest, neighbors were quick to share their memories, not about him but about his mother Diane Madison and what she'd been through. Everyone spoke highly of her. I wanted to be remembered as someone who cared deeply for her children, someone who cared passionately about her community. She was just a fine person. I am a better person for her to have known her. He loved his mother. He admitted this openly. But he also alluded to neglect. What he didn't do when the interrogation was to throw her under the bus. But the defense did that for him at the trial. The trial formally started in April of 2016. By early May, Madison had been convicted on all counts. Three counts of aggravated murder, three counts of kidnapping, three counts of gross abuse of a corpse, three counts of rape and one count of possession of criminal tools. The following week, a court turned to mitigation evidence, opening the door for a glimpse into Michael's upbringing. Underneath the calm exterior of the woman next door, the community activist and loving mother and grandmother, the defense painted an entirely different portrait. They described Diane as cruel, neglectful and violently abusive. Michael's attorneys revealed years of torment that started in childhood documented by an expert clinical psychologist who evaluated Michael and examined his records. They said Diane beat him regularly, locked him in closets and even forced him to eat feces. It didn't stop there. The defense told the court he was also sexually abused and emotionally abandoned. They argued that Diane's abuse left scars so deep that they helped shape the monster he would later become. During the victim impact statement given by Sherilda's father, chaos broke out in the courtroom when for some reason he stopped mid-sentence and lunched across tables towards Michael. He started attacking him and had to be pulled off. His sister later clarified what happened at that moment. During the sentencing, you have the families there and they're pouring out their hearts and saying how they're going to miss their families and what their families meant to him. And he sent over their smiling, which caused my brother to launch at him. To him, he heard, "Excuse me, the life of my daughter, the life of my niece, the life of our baby, who we called heaven." Okay, so it was horrible. to be that close to have to breathe his air to be in the same room with a person that is so horrible. And don't even care. He don't care. He was, he was laughing when she gave him the death penalty. You heard it. At the end of the trial, no mitigating circumstances were going to stand in the way of justice. Michael Madison has now spent nearly a decade on Ohio's death row. He was sentenced on June 2, 2016 and was scheduled to die by lethal injection on May 20th, 2021. But an unofficial moratorium on executions has stalled all lethal injections in Ohio since 2020. Want to know why? Well, they're waiting for an alternative execution method in place of lethal injection. You see, they can't get their hands on the right drugs to make the deadly cocktail. They can put dogs and cats to sleep all day long. All the strays put them all to sleep in a humane way were told. But they can't get the cocktail right for humans. Isn't that strange? It's almost as if they don't want to. They're just hiding behind some bullshit regulation in order to not do it, despite what the populace might have voted for already. Doesn't sound very democratic, does it? Anyway, for now, this asshole is still alive. As the system that condemned him sits frozen in time, almost by design. I am struck by the sheer inhumanity of what one human being could do to that one, but three human beings. It is incomprehensible. You could jolt, lord, and deceased, Shatisha Shealy, Angela Deskins, and Sherelda Terry to your apartment for your depraved purposes. You went on to abuse the corpses of these three victims. You stripped them from the waist down. You folded them in half, finding them so that their feet were up by their ears. You wrapped them in multiple layers of trash bags, and you discarded them. This killer didn't just kill out of nowhere. His crimes were monstrous, but they happened after unresolved, festering thoughts from a long, entangled legacy of suffering. Then you add the alcohol and possibly drugs and poof! You get a certain scale episode. Lucky you. Decades later in a cramped Cleveland apartment, a young Michael was beaten, locked in closets humiliated, and allegedly forced to eat feces by the very person who was supposed to protect him. His mother, Diane Madison, a woman the public celebrated after her death. Later, he was allegedly sexually abused by one of her boyfriends. Michael felt emotionally discarded and shut through the cracks of a system that barely noticed he was falling. Then came to near plumber, the mother of his child who, according to Michael, belittled him and called him less than a man. A man's manhood, he said, should never be compromised by a female who has never been a man. That quote may sound absurd on the surface, but beneath it lies a cold bit of truth. On that point, a deeper identity crisis, especially among men, raised in trauma by women who are in trauma themselves. It's a warp belief, born in pain and shaped by powerlessness. It's an endless loop I don't know how the fuck we get out of. Do you have any ideas? And then came Jalen, Diane's grandson, the quiet boy who watched all of this unfold, who once lived under the same roof as Michael. In 2019, Jalen, just 18 years old, would creep into Diane Madison's home and stab her to death in her own bed. He didn't just kill her, he nearly decapitated her. He pleaded guilty in 2021 and is serving a life sentence with eligibility for parole in 30 years. His brother, sister, cousin, and sad little dog all survived the incident and remained in the care of their mother, Tania Plummer. So here is the question. Did Jalen inherit the same demons that haunted Michael? Was this demonic possession some sort of poltergeist in this house of horror? Or do we accept a more rational explanation? Did Jalen learn violence by watching his uncle in and out of his life bringing stories of abuse and death with him? Did Diane really change into the person neighbors claimed or did the darkness inside that house simply go unnoticed until it exploded again? Did the systems America has in place fail both of these men? Or did society simply stop asking the hard questions and stop doing the hard things once the bodies were found? In the end, does it all really matter anyway? It should. We all have this feeling in the back of our mind that it should. We should do better at raising all of our children. We should have a safer and happier and more mentally sound civilization. It started with the allegations of abuse at the hands of one woman. Two men carried it forward and three innocent women in addition to Diane herself paid the ultimate price. Not one of them deserved to die. That's going to do it this week. Thank you for joining us. I invite you to go check out our latest episode of Swordscale Television entitled Home. Easily one of the most fucked up things you'll ever see. I promise. [Music]