Episode 340

Sword and scale contains adult themes and violence and is not intended for all audiences Listener discretion is advised Did it seem strange to you that you were taking human flesh inside into the tub? Yes Welcome to Sword and Scale a show that reveals that the worst monsters are real If you like true crime documentaries we make them Let's head on over to our YouTube channel or website swordscale.com For more info on Sword and Scale television These are our long documentaries Cinematic really beautiful Beautifully shot documentaries about uh, you know murder (Music) (Music) On October 4th 2021 Firefighters Rush to 386 Moon Valley Road in Dallas County, Missouri The name sounds like it should be printed on a postcard Moon Valley makes you think of a serene getaway with cozy cabins and campfires In reality Moon Valley Road is a boring strip of gravel that cuts through dense Ozark woods These trees are so thick that they almost block out the sky when you look up from the ground The nights are so dark you can't see your hand in front of you There are no street lights No neighbors inside Only the kind of isolation where bad things happen without anyone noticing By the time they get there the fire is already out of control Nothing on the property can be salvaged Flames shoot out of every building and don't stop burning until they've destroyed them all After the fires are finally out A Dallas County deputy steps onto the property The ground is soft and city with wet ash The black mud sticks to his boots and smoke is seeping from the rubble The cabin is a shell now with the roof collapsed and the windows blown out The outbuildings are mostly gone In the middle of the cabin's rubble stands a lone familiar piece of furniture A bathtub The deputy waits through the debris scanning with a flashlight Then his beam catches a wire stretched tight almost invisible Still attached to two scorched posts He freezes It's a tripwire He knows that if he moves the wrong way he could trigger it and blow them all the pieces His eyes follow it carefully And his focus is locked on the wire until it leads to a device buried in the rubble They call the bomb squad who detonates one device on site and removes two more These are homemade bombs The fire marshal will make the easy call This was arson Scares but solid details being released on what could have caused a late-night fire on Moon Valley Road Hours before Cassidy rainwater suspected kidnappers were doing cord A cabin where James Phelps and Timothy Norton had been living burned to the ground A report obtained by Ozark's first today shows the Springfield bomb squad discovered not one But two explosive devices among the ashes And while it doesn't say whether the fire was set intentionally It does list what equipment was taken by investigators The report calls them incendiary devices Made with mortar tubes, balloons, and coiled fuses with a tripwire attached As Springfield fire marshal says one of the explosives was detonated on site But what happened to the second device has not yet been released The Missouri Ozarks cover more than 40,000 square miles of rough isolated country Over half the state and twice the size of Switzerland The Ozarks aren't a true mountain range but a high ancient plateau of limestone carved over millions of years These limestone hills fold into deep valleys Caves run for miles underground and rivers disappear into sinkholes without a trace And a lot of the roads are narrow and surrounded by woods What goes on in the hollows is anyone's guess Tourists come here for the fishing cabins, float trips, and lake towns But the Ozarks have another side Civil war confederates use these woods to disappear and then to ambush their enemies Prohibition gangs built stills so far back in the timber that no one dared to go there Mathcooks and armed weed growers still guard their territory like they're at war And then there are the legends Weird lights moving through the trees with no source numerous bigfoot sightings and whispers of feral people living in the backcountry Out here it's easy to go missing and even easier to stay that way 33-year-old Cassidy rainwater didn't just disappear all at once It happened slowly and under the radar The kind of missing persons case that didn't start with a 911 call but With a gap in contact that kept getting longer Cassidy was a free spirited girl Loud If she walked in a room and everybody knew she was there but she uh She had a beautiful soul She was born on June 9th 1988 near Lebanon, Missouri Officially Cassidy's parrots were Clifford Welch and Tracy Wawisuck But she went by rainwater a native American name tied to someone in her past her grandfather who happened to own land on moon valley road near where she was last seen Cassidy had her first child with a high school boyfriend named Ben The couple tried to make it work for the sake of their baby but They chose to put him up for adoption at some point Regardless she and Ben remained on good terms Later she remarried and had other children with that partner Reports say that she was still legally married in 2021 but living apart By the summer of 2021 Cassidy's life was unsettled She'd been moving between places looking for stability Her first partner Ben remembered being worried about her She was in a bad way like at that time by i'm pretty sure she was homeless And she and I were talking and just like You know come you know come to Kansas City. We'll get things figured out Switching for a place to stay eventually let her do a small property on moon valley road A remote rental cabin occupied by 60-year-old Jim Phelps And owned by a man named John John new Cassidy's grandparents and suggested she talk with the guy living there Jim living in the cabin had a soft spot for taking in women and girls But none of them ever said anything negative about him Okay, Jim is a little friend once again um he let me stay with him from time to time But I was having a hard time I have a lot of health problems so it's hard for me to work Which is why i'm getting a job to work on my own time now She was in the car first but um Jim he was really kind He was sweet guy, but when i met him he was a really kind guy um his caring he was doing nice No sexual relations Talk about that out there. I mean i've met Jim's family. I've met Jim's family. They know me. I know them Amanda didn't just stumble into the story. Her paths here started months earlier when she met 56-year-old Tim Norton Jim's best friend Amanda met Tim through a friend who was engaged to his nephew and living there At the time Amanda was between home. So she moved into Tim's trailer Which by all accounts was a disgusting pig pen Tim was a long haul trucker and Amanda sometimes went along for the ride Other times she acted like his personal dispatcher or help with his finances People assume they were a couple Amanda says that's ridiculous He was too old for her According to Amanda she was just helping him in exchange for a place to live I mean he was 56 and she was 19 Nothing to see here right Months later Amanda's living situation shifted again The chaos of everyone living in the trailer wore her down. Tim suggested she go and stay at his buddy Jim's cabin for a while, so she did. On paper, it sounded like a quiet escape, a rural place with a name that could pass for a weekend getaway, but this was no campground. The cabin sat isolated hidden from the road, with sheds of outbuildings scattered across the property. Amanda says her time there was temporary, but her connections with Jim and Tim were already cemented, and they were about to become a lot more than casual acquaintances. Let's circle back to Cassidy Rainwater. Amanda knew who she was because their time at Jim's cabin overlapped. Amanda remembered meeting her. I met her once. Me and Tim went over there because I had to melt a hook up because that's when my nail and nail and nail dresses right now. He and her didn't really talk. She was kind of quiet, which I get new folks in and quite people with his people, but she didn't really talk. She kind of stayed to herself and went whenever I went to go do something about core, and I came back and she told Jim that she wanted to leave, that she wasn't comfortable, those to me people. Jim didn't tell her that people were coming over, and she wasn't comfortable with this. It was just me, Jim, Tim and her. Okay, that's it though, that was to me people. Yeah. It wasn't exactly a warm welcome. Cassidy, like Amanda, wasn't looking for new friends. You could say both women had retreated to the cabin for the same reason, to escape drama and conflict and piece themselves back together. The problem was that the place was starting to feel less like an isolated hideout and more like the worst kind of Airbnb, the kind where the host keeps allowing more guests to book the place without telling you. Starting to Amanda, the two tried to stay out of each other's way. This was around mid-July of 2021. By the time Cassidy went missing in late August, Amanda had already moved out. I didn't really, I tried not to get involved in too much because I just, I can't take any things just. I looked at Jim and I said somehow it's Cassidy doing, because I was just kind of curious, because I know she's been struggling with some stuff and I was, and then he was like, I don't know, she left it in the middle of the night. I was like, oh, and then later I found out that she was missing, I was like, oh god, until I read the article and I was like, oh, what the fuck happened? And then like I said, this is the back of my mind, it was like that could have been me. In August, a friend noticed that it had been about six weeks since anyone had seen Cassidy. She was reported missing, the last person to admit seeing her was Jim. It wasn't the police who made the first big move in the case. It was the FBI, after someone sent them an email with photographs labeled Cassidy. The first one showed a topless woman in a cage, and whoever sent it made sure the FBI knew exactly where to find her, or at least what was left of her. In the summer of 2021, Jim Phelps was living in a small cabin on Moon Valley Road, a patch of rural Missouri surrounded by dense Ozark woods. He was a quiet, reclusive person who spent most of his time at the cabin. His closest friend Tim Norton was a long haul trucker, also with a habit of keeping to himself, and yet somehow women kept finding their way to that cabin. One was a 19 year old woman named Amanda. She also stayed at the cabin for a few weeks, after life became too crowded at Tim's place. Cassidy Rainwater, whose life was unraveling, had come to the cabin searching for solitude and some kind of sanctuary. Like Amanda, she was private, guarded, not quick to share her world. Their paths only crossed briefly before Amanda moved out. A few weeks later, Cassidy was gone too. But unlike Amanda, she didn't choose her next destination she simply disappeared. After six weeks with, though sign of her, she was reported missing by a family member. The last person to have seen her was Jim Phelps. One night, deputies drove out to Moon Valley Road. The cabin was lit only by a porch bulb and their headlights. Otherwise it was an opaque kind of darkness. They knocked, asking Jim where Cassidy was. "Honey, Sheriff's Office!" "Honey, howdy!" "Yeah, is that Cassidy here?" "No?" "No." "Am I seeing her in weeks?" "Really?" "Well, I'm trying to check on her." "You know her, you know Cassidy." "Yeah, I know her." "Well, I've been trying to check on her." Jim Phelps, over six feet tall, bald, with glasses and a white beard, came to the cabin door, wearing only jeans and a dog tag around his neck. She looked relatively harmless, at least for those Archaean Missouri. "Do you have a phone number for her?" "No?" "Okay." "Do you want to look at me?" "Oh, no, she's not here, she's not here, she's not in any trouble, they're just worried about her." "Do you know maybe where she's at?" "Last time I heard she was at a little Colorado." "Going to Colorado." "Yeah." "Oh." "Do you know what's over there?" "No." "Oh, she never told you?" "Oh, yeah." "How long?" "How long?" "How much she told me about it." "How long ago was that?" "Oh." "Oh." "Oh." "Oh!" "Oh, she must have got what you're with." "All right, well, if she comes back or if she comes and visit you, I'd appreciate if you'd call us so we can tell her family that she's okay." "All right, well, I guess I'll get out of here." "You mean to tell me that, in the whole time Cassidy was staying there under her his roof." "He didn't even have her phone number." "Come on." "Just a few weeks later on September 16th, 2021, an anonymous email lands in the FBI's tip-line inbox." "Attached are pictures." All labeled with the same name, Cassidy. The first picture stops the FBI agent cold. It's a woman in a cage, blonde hair, bare from the waist up, crouched in the cage with her knees pulled tightly against her chest. She has a vacant stare. In between the steel bars, he sees the room behind. This is a large animal cage, but it's inside a room. It's inside someone's house. He clicks to the next frame and the scenery is outside. Old, weathered sheds, piles of scrap, and a tall metal frame. To most people, it's nothing, but he's seen enough hunting setups to know what this is. A deer gantry. The details fall into place in his head. The wood grain on the walls, the layout of the yard, and all of its clutter. Whoever sent him this email wasn't trying to hide anything. They wanted him to know exactly where this was. And as he stares at the screen, one thought is very clear. Whatever's happening out there on Moon Valley Road, it's probably already too late to stop it. On the same day, Dallas County detectives get a warrant and show up in broad daylight. They want to compare the scenery to the photos. This time, the officer stops the car halfway up the gravel lane when he sees Jim's dog on a long leash. And then, spots Jim walking slowly across the yard. Now he's fully clothed, but still is not shallot as last time. Nope. Haven't seen her. Hello, how you doing? Well, I was just following up with you on Cassidy. It's been, what's it been a couple of weeks since we've been here? And we haven't heard of peep out of her, you know? So I'm just going to see if maybe you would have heard anything out of her. Nope. Anything extra, you can send us to do follow-ups on some work. We're coming up pretty. I haven't heard that yet. Oh gosh. Well, he doesn't like it, does he? Actually, he wants you to play with him. Oh, yeah? Yeah, the last time I was here I was walking by him and he grabbed a hold of me. I didn't know if he was trying to play or. He was the play. The dog looks well cared for, so does Jim, actually. But as unbothered as he seems, his posture says a lot. While his voice is easy, his words are compliant. He almost immediately folds his arms tightly across his chest. They call that a defensive posture. Jim, the last time I was here, let me get a piece of paper. I got to do a bigger port on it and stuff, and I have Jim felt that I don't have an order in. He's wondering if I get that from you. Okay. Jim felt. So is it Jim or James? He's leaving. James felt. What's your date of birth? January 13, 1963. If you pay close attention, Jim is getting increasingly anxious. Listen for his nervous laugh. I don't guess you know your socially. 13 years in military. Yeah, I know. You remember those things after that long? No. That was the first day or so. Yeah, you remember it. You remember it. You don't want to have to go back or dig it out. What's that number again? I'm going to go through maps. It was like, because I didn't know mine. It was like every time I turned around, I was digging it out. But even that day, I had it. By the end of the first day. Rattle it off without a problem. You still can today. Yeah. Oh, yeah. There was a picture that I had come across of Cassidy, and I was wondering if it was done here. Would you mind if I looked at your backyard? My backyard? Yeah. There's a picture taken ever with a stump in the background. Do you have anything like that in the back yard? I don't have a stump. No. You might have just taken a look for a quick. Jim tries to brush it off, saying the only thing back there is his hoist. But once they step into the yard, it's like walking right into the pictures themselves. 3D now. Not just images on a page. The hoist. The clutter. The leaning shits. Every detail of the image lines up. Get up against that truck right now. Get your hands on that truck. Do not fuck with me. Get up there on that truck. On the truck. Hands behind your back. What's going on? Okay. Mr. Phelps, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can't will be used against you in a port of law. You know how the rest of that goes. In fact, you probably have it memorized. You understand your rights? Yeah. Okay. Let's go. Right now you're under arrest for the homicide. Who's Cassidy Rainwater? What's that after my dog? I will talk about that in just a little bit. To understand who Jim Phelps was, you have to hear from John Warren. He's the man who actually owned the cabin on Moon Valley Road. He wasn't just a landlord. He was family. He was Jim Phelps' brother-in-law and rented property to Jim for a mere $200 a month plus utilities. Keep in mind, the place was no mansion. This guy also knew Cassidy because her grandfather, Bill Rainwater, used to be his neighbor. So that's when you met Cassidy when she was a kid. She was just I was a kid. I came out of Bill one day. I kind of find out about two years later her mother disappeared. Found out about 20 years later who it doesn't him when I thought it happened. What was that about? Her boyfriend, Peter Death, and put her in an office to grow up. It would be everything to celebrate all the intro. Found out 20 years later. "Where was that?" "I don't know. He'll get a devil told me about it." In other words, John Warren wasn't just Jim Phelps' landlord and brother-in-law. He was linked to all of them. He tied Jim to the property and he tied Cassidy to a family history already marked by violence. Her mother's murder hidden for 20 years had only come to light a few years before Cassidy herself would disappear. John said Cassidy was going through a hard time. Finding out her mother was murdered was probably part of that. And so he and his wife were trying to help her. "I'm sorry. She did a bunch of jewelry that Rodin had and I didn't tell her I need to make things right, Rodin. She made things right. Well, I lost Rodin. It was a day a lot longer. A two or three weeks later she needed to be able to get back to work. Cassidy? Yeah. And that's over for us to deal with. You don't have to screw it up because now you can't do anything right." It seemed like John Warren was kind of a grandfather to Cassidy. He tried to help her but she stole from his wife and he continued trying to help. A recovering addict, he told Jim Phelps that to use his property there was a zero tolerance policy for drugs. He told Cassidy the same thing before he allowed her to stay on the property with Jim. By the time Cassidy was staying there Amanda had already been in and out of the cabin. Their time overlaps and Amanda remembered Cassidy as quiet and uneasy, not comfortable with strangers coming around. Apparently John the property owner felt the same way. Yet another friend of Tim's was making herself at home without getting permission. "And this little yellow is not got anything on from the waste stuff. And I said you might want to put some on her for review and you told me we're on Tim's friend." Tim's friend, you need to use your ass down here and get your stuff back because you're leaving because he doesn't know how to deal. Where's Tim? He's at Tim's son's place. He's working there all week and she's staying there and doesn't cry. Turn it right down. The reason that they called me was because Jim was at the hospital and this person was in the cabin. I haven't been asked to get him right out of there and as soon as she brought him out to the park on the door, cut him to my house and he went to him and that was the other key. So Jim's at the hospital and you kicked Tim's friend out? Yeah I kicked him to his friend out and I was an amazing thing. Tim was able to come down and pick her up and he wasn't supposed to be there until two or three days. I think it was a week. And I actually was able to show up a little later. Boom. None of this was sitting well with John. He made it clear he doesn't like Tim hanging around the property. Tim always seemed to be lurking around the corner, quick to show up. Always in Jim's shadow. John said he never wanted him out there in the first place. Meanwhile on September 16th, Jim was already in custody. Deputies sit him down and ask about Cassidy. He doesn't give them much. He sticks to his story. She talked about going to Colorado. She left in the middle of the night, someone picked her up and he hadn't seen her since. When they press, he deflects even whining about his dog. And then he shuts up completely. He wants a lawyer, he says. Investigators still have an angle though. His friend, Tim Norton. It seems pretty clear he's a big player in whatever happened to Cassidy. And if he isn't an active participant, he at least knows stuff. A lot of stuff. Detectives bring him into another room. Compared to Jim, he is easier prey, where Jim had clammed up, Tim talked so much that he couldn't hold his story straight for more than five minutes. At first, he flat out to knives knowing anything about Cassidy's disappearance. He says he didn't see her, doesn't know what happened, and doesn't have a clue. But when asked about her relationship with Jim, he's got a lot to say. I didn't sleep with him and stuff before I know nothing ever happened, because he was always aggravated after she left, because she didn't knew what she said she was going to do. Okay, so it's your understanding that Jim thought that the two of them may, at some point, have a romantic or sexual relationship. Okay, but you don't think it ever happened, based on this. Okay, both Jim and Tim were annoyed with Cassidy for different reasons, but the property owner kept sticking up for her. I didn't like her. Okay, what about Jim? He, he tolerated her because of John. He tolerated her because of John, and John again being a person who owns the property. So Jim tried to keep her out of the property for a while, after she stole the rings. Okay, but she would go to John and get John to get him out there and stay at the cabin. Jim was answered. They believe John, when he said she had stolen jewelry from his wife, but John was willing to forgive her. But later, a collection of Tim's knives went missing from the cabin and Tim blamed Cassidy. Tim and Jim's plan escalated quickly. What started as talk of confronting her turned into restraining her and ended with killing her. By that point, Cassidy had already spent time locked inside a dog cage. How did that progress? I want to do believe progress with him saying he wanted her dead. Okay, I was about to tell you that she was accusing me and or Mr. Phones of kidnapping her or killing her or I'm not sure exactly what she was. Cassidy accused them outright of kidnapping her and planning to kill her. And that, according to Tim, pissed Jim off even more. And so during that planning process between you and Mr. Phones, was anyone else ever a part of that? Yes, there was one person one time, maybe two times. No, was there, her name was Amanda Colley. Don't let Amanda's small baby voice fool you in the thinking she was innocent. She insisted she wasn't his girlfriend. He was too old for her. She had her age limits. No sex. Nothing to see here. But she was much more involved than she said. Um, they talked about you know, like hunting stuff like that. Like, uh, do you and stuff, fish, um, fishing and stuff like that? But never eliminated one. They mean jokes. They're like, "Oh, she's pretty. I'll take her home." They can't stop. But you know, I never thought anything of it. Because like I said, when I met these two men, they were sweet men. They were really nice. They were caring. But their jokes may not have been jokes at all. I mean, who jokes about that? Detectives were already onto the fact that they weren't joking. They had text messages in Facebook dialogue between the two of them. If there was any doubt about how dark Jim and Tim's conversations got, the messages they sent each other erased it. Jim told Tim flat out, "You need to bring me a woman. I don't care where you get her." Tim didn't push back. He asked, "Where do you want me to get her?" Jim's answer was as casual as it was chilling. Parking lots are good. Big lots is a good place to people watch. I can watch women all day. And it didn't stop there. Jim bragged, "I've been watching the girls in town. One day, I'm going to have one tied up out here." Then came the line that made investigators stomachs turn. "I want fresh meat. You know what I mean." We here at Sorenscale did a little digging and found someone who almost got caught up in Tim Norton's web. This is Ren. So my name is Lauren. I, at the time, was in college in 2021, I believe. I can't remember what month he got arrested, but I do remember that it was about two weeks after I had met him, after I met Timothy. I was working at a Buffalo Wild Wings in like middle and nowhere, college town, South Georgia. But whenever I was there, I had the patio section in the morning, which was typically nobody was really out there. And so I was just trying to make conversations and see if I could get a tip. And he didn't really want anything from me, but he wanted to talk more than I think most people want to talk to their waitress. And when he had come through, he had said something about being a truck driver from Missouri. Ren described Tim as looking much older than his fifties and having what she described as a strangely flat face. The conversation started somewhat normally. He started off asking if I like my job. And I said not really, but it pays the bills. He had told me I should get a rich boyfriend, so I don't have to work this job anymore. And he wouldn't let, you know, woman work like that. And that's when it started getting kind of weird, but it got creepy when he started asking me if we had any cameras in the parking lots. And what time I got off work. The text messages alone suggested that Tim and Jim were a team, just as they'd always been. There's not a lot of information out there about who they were, but they described each other as brothers. Within the team, it seemed Tim was the scout or maybe more like a predatory lion, hunting during the day and bringing the kill back to share. He had ended up telling me that he was a truck driver from Missouri and he knew I-75 like the back of his hand. And like when I say that it sounded like a threat, sometimes people don't understand what I mean, but the way that he looked at me and the tone that he said it was like, "I know where I'm going. I don't need to leave a trail to tell you I was there." It was weird. And the way that he looked at me and also at a lot of the other girls that were working there just seemed very predatory. We haven't even scratched the surface here. Back at the investigation, detectives had a broad idea of what actually went on the day that Tim and Jim decided to make Cassidy go away. Still, they had no idea how many details Tim would give them and it all corroborated what Amanda was finally revealing. However, Minimus, she presented herself, "Do you want me to tell you that you killed Cassidy?" He didn't tell me he killed her now. But I know that's in my jokes, mate. Tell me about those jokes. That jokes that were made was that if they were to kill someone, they would cut them up in all pieces instead of in the woods. Good joke, right? "When you never told me he killed her, I swear he never told you that that's not on you, that's just. " "But as I can remember, he never told me." "It was a project you remember." "Yeah." "Because if he told you that it's okay, you mean to just have to remember that conversation, if we had that conversation, who was I mean?" I don't know about you, but if someone told me they wanted to get rid of somebody and then joked about how, if they did it, they'd cut them into little pieces. I'd kind of remember that. But oh wait, just kidding. She did remember. "Oh my god, I did tell me about it. She was talking about how she had stolen something from him and that he had, he had helped to strain her and that him and Jim, like, apparently Jim looked at her and Cassie looked at him and said why? He said, because you said that I wouldn't, that I've done it before. I didn't think anything of that. "It's okay." I thought he was joking. I seriously didn't hear. "Did he tell you that picture?" I guess it was all too easy for Amanda to play dumb when the story lined up exactly with what Tim admitted to telling her. Unlike Amanda, Tim didn't have the luxury of hiding behind just joking. And detectives pushed the thin wall denial cracked, first to slip, then a fragment, and then a flood. What he finally confessed piece by piece is the kind of thing you can't unhear. Okay, so eight o'clock in the morning in the mid and late July, so the sun is up. And the person who's legs that you grab, it was cast in the air, you're holding your legs, you are you described how you melt down and we're holding your knees, I think is what you said. I mean, right at the right of your knee area, okay, so it mobilized all of her leg. I mean, I've got enough training and stuff and I know how to do that. Sure. And then what did Jim do? Well, there you go, because I had my head down, but I really didn't see what he originally started doing. I did look up and he was trying to get the bag over her head, not this way, just this way. And she was the main issue of healing, but she was talking a little louder than normal. Okay. That's why, why, why, and that's when I looked at him to see what he was going to say. And I seen his eyes and at that point, you know, I could tell you at that point, I wasn't sure about my life. But first, Tim said he just held her legs, while Jim used a bag and then his hands. But as the questions kept coming, the details got darker. He finally admitted he joined in, his own hands tightening around her throat until she stopped struggling. All in all, it took 30 minutes to strangle the life out of her. Afterwards, they left her body lying there before dragging it outside toward the gantry. This was the same gantry that would later show up in those photographs. The gantry stood in the Ozark Woods, where it held captive, numerous corpses of deer, cattle, pork, and who knows what else as the blood drained from them. Only this time, that would be a human, it would be a mother. At least this is the only time the detectives knew about. That night, the two men worked methodically, knives, buckets, plastic wrap. Tim told the officers how they cut her legs apart piece by piece. He described it flatly as if they were reading instructions off a page. Tim acted like he had no vested interest in doing this. But he was lying. He thought she was a liar and a thief, and in his words, he didn't deal with people like that. And then he walked over to the crank, and he didn't regret that there was a rupee crank. He cranked it up, raising her up like a said beef, you know, referring her to a like dead, but there's no better way to put it to her head off first, full of washbasin. I don't know how country-made you are, but it's me, Tug, my younger sister, my younger sister, my older sister, which would be nothing unusual, it was processing a deer or whatever. He took over, he had put it in there, and then he started to cut and run down the center. Okay. Piece by piece, Cassidy's body, was carved apart, dropped into buckets like waste at a slaughterhouse. And so he handed you the camera and asked you to take a picture. Yep. And what did you take a picture of? He had me standing next to her. Okay. Somebody just just like a mirror clear. I think he'd be standing up right for a head and pulled it up, like posing with the body. Yeah. I mean, he was standing up almost straight. Jim even had Tim take a picture. He was posing with Cassidy's head like a trophy buck. Tim claims he was emotionless and just following Jim's orders. Hand me this. Take away that. Like a butcher's assistant. He started cutting them off and after he splittered down the middle, you know, just getting a bit sweating, and he went to the corner of the part there again, knowing what we did with the regular carcasses, he just began natural to do it. We know you love true crime, but if you ever find yourself saying it feels natural to cut a human into pieces, I'm sorry, but there's no help for you. You're fucked. Jim wasn't finished. What he did next crossed the line from killing to desecration. The kind of act that makes investigators question whether this was about murder at all or something far more primal. You cut off her boobs. Okay. Andrew, you don't tell you. Okay. You don't tell you. You put in the bowl. Okay. The boobs. He threw in the bucket. When you say the bucket, you're talking about the bucket. Um, in the scrub. In the washroom. In the washroom. Now we get in with all the guts and everything. Jim was all about trophies, apparently. They got rid of her like she was nothing more than a carcass. According to Tim, Jim had him dig a hole in barrier head. The visceral remains, the guts are carried off in buckets and dumped in the woods. Let the animals do their jobs in Tim's words. The rest was butchered, cordoned, and handled piece by piece. When investigators later served a warrant, they opened a freezer on the property. Inside they found packages of meat. Some were labeled deer, some coon, and every other form of wildlife you could imagine. But they also found neatly wrapped packs labeled simply 724. The day they murdered and processed, Cassidy. This raised a question darker than anything investigators were prepared for. Was this murder for murder's sake? Or had Cassidy rainwater been killed, butchered, and prepared for something else? Then then the biggest mystery of all. Why would anyone, whether it was Tim, Jim, or another accomplice, send those pictures straight to the FBI? It could only have been for some kind of sick bragging or proof that more people were involved. And there may have been more victims. Now there are more questions than answers in the disappearance of a 33-year-old Missouri woman. Cassidy rainwater hasn't been seen or heard from since at least July 25. With rainwater still missing, two men Timothy, Northern and James Phelps, are in custody in charge with kidnapping and connection to the case. Their cues of locking her up in a cage inside this small cabin near Lebanon, Missouri, adding to the mystery just hours before both men were scheduled to make their first appearance in court, that same cabin burned to the ground. The Dallas County Sheriff's Office has been tight-lipped about the case in a lengthy post online that Sheriff condemned rumors about the case adding, quote, "No, you are not entitled to a play-by-play of an ongoing investigation. If you want to be in the know, we are hiring along with every other law enforcement agency in the country." The property was burned to the ground just days before their first court appearance. To this day, by the way, no one has been charged. Officially investigators said it was a propane tank explosion. But for a community already buzzing with rumors of cages, body parts, and cannibalism, it only deepened the paranoia. The Sheriff's Department was frustrated and issued a harsh statement to the public. But here's the problem. The stories weren't all wrong. The cage was real. The pictures were real. The meat and the freezer was real. It wasn't hard to put two and two together. The Cassidy was packaged like a venison. Where exactly was this meat going to end up? [Music] The Ozarks are creepy, put it that way. You've seen the TV show, I hope, it's a great show, by the way. And the characters in it are pretty spot on. Those hill people are weird, man. There's no other way to put it. By late summer of 2021, Dallas County, Missouri, was giving the best example of what is dark and creepy about the Ozarks. Along the cabin, on moon valley roads surrounded by thick Ozark woods seemed like just another rundown property, hidden from view like so many others in the backcountry. Jim Phelps lived there, a reclusive man with interests in BDSM. His closest friend was Tim Norton, a truck driver who hovered around Jim's orbit, more follower than leader. At least, that's how he described their relationship. Both men had reputations for keeping to themselves, but also for letting strangers, especially young women, drift into their lives. Cassidy Rainwater was one of them. She was a 33-year-old mother trying to put her life back together after years of setbacks. By August, she was staying at the cabin because the property owner told her she could. Within weeks, she had disappeared. What happened next was no mystery of the woods. Jim and Tim got tired of her existence and strangled her to death. They quartered her body on a gantry, like game, and left them investigators with photographs that looked more like hunting trophies than evidence of a crime. They say she stayed willingly, that she climbed into a dog cage willingly, and stole from them freely. But these allegations weren't true. She had no idea what she was getting herself into, and before she knew it, she was a captive. If this could happen to her, who else could it, or did it happen to? Text messages between Tim and Jim suggested they were constantly on the prowl, looking for women, whereas yet probably underage girls. They even suggested that Tim may have been bringing women or girls back after being on the road, as a trucker. The messages were always cryptic and coded. "Ren, the young woman you heard from before, remembers her first-hand experience." "One of the first things that I thought after he left was there's no way that man doesn't have people in his basement, he's weird." What Ren didn't know was that Tim Norton was worse than weird. He was, in fact, a predator of young women. I thought that he was, like, a little too old to be doing all this, and especially too old to be hitting on women who were, I think God, I was probably 22 at the time. Like he was the conversation that I had with him. I have never had anybody speak to me that way, so I remembered him. But when that mugshot came up, I remember being in my college apartment, and it had come across, like, CNN, or some big, it was a mainstream thing, and I saw it, and immediately I texted my friend that I worked with, and I said, "Do you remember that creepy guy that I was telling you about? Like, I swear to God, this is him." And then I read kind of more about who he was and what he did, and when I saw trucker from Missouri, I was like, "Oh my God, that's him." Fortunately Ren had enough life experience and confidence to keep Tim at a distance, and she immediately reported what had happened. I had talked to my general manager, and I said, "This guy is weird, and he's asking me all these weird questions. I need you to, like, let the other girls know that they need to have somebody walk them to their cars tonight. I don't know how long he's going to be here, but he doesn't seem like he has a lot going on, and he kind of blew me off, and then, you know, one or two-ish weeks later, I came back in with the mugshot pulled up, and I said, "You know, this is the guy, but I was telling you about, like, I'm serious, we need more cameras." Right before Tim left the restaurant, after staying way too long without ordering food, Ren remembered the feeling she got from him. I noticed that he looked sort of, um, satisfied that I was uncomfortable. Like he really enjoyed that what he was saying was kind of making me squirm. Like, I really obviously didn't want to speak to him. And he knew that, and I think that that was kind of part of the game for him. Ren's experience offered a glimpse of how Tim would operate in public, unsettling in appropriate, and just weird. But in his own words, he gave investigators an even darker view of what was happening back at the cabin where he and Jim hung out. During his interview, Tim admitted that both he and Jim were into BDSM, but Jim took it even further. He interacted online with all kinds of women, including minors in his sick fantasy world. Between to Tim, Jim was more to blame. He maintained he had only stumbled across the content on Jim's hard drive. He described it almost casually, like it was just another hobby. "We're talking to you about those charrers, they even mentioned what they were balanced up, and like what's the kind of charrers?" "Someone were more the darker of the BDSM, and that type of lifestyle was on my lifestyle, so now I know the way about it, and most of them are from Jim. I don't know what we got into it, and I mean he talked to me a few minutes back, you know. Like what was some of the weirdest stuff that he would talk about in there?" "I don't know what I could do when he talks out of the tent, but he told you about something, something to you. I mean, he mentioned this person from Sweden, or this person from this country, or some other country, or something to do about it, and about it." But that wasn't all of it. Tim downplayed everything, what they thought about, what they talked about, and what they actually did. But investigators compared his story against the phone records and Facebook messages, and the reality looked far worse than what Tim admitted. Jim's collection of bondage pictures and messages all contained in labeled folders included women hanging on crosses and women in cages. There was even a folder named "Milking." This contained sick images of women tied up with their breasts connected to cow-milking devices. There were other folders labeled "Kids in cages" and "Newed Babies." The description needed "He didn't ever mention that she might be into it, but, you know, he'd be willing to try it. I mean, I know he has some media, some stuff, but what? He had a hard list of kids, and came to us, a little shackles, and he had too much full stuff with it. To each his own, right? Live and let live, right? All that shit. But there's a big difference between consensual role play and being a predator, an older man waiting for vulnerable women to be delivered to him, or to stumble into his trap like a fly in the grips of a Venus flytrap. Like Cassidy did, for example. And it's an entirely different matter for someone to end up the way Cassidy did in a freezer. You've heard the phrase, "Where there's smoke, there's fire." Well, where there's a freezer full of human meat, fill in the blank. Jim had even written a macabre story on the topic. Not only that, it's clear he did some intense research on the subject of cannibalism. It's like, "No, I do not want to know why he's doing this." Hard to hear, but that was Tim. telling the detectives that they might want to analyze his blood for human DNA like someone else's if that's possible because if he had partaken in Jim's sick cannibal fantasy he didn't know about it yeah sure he's been to a few barbecues at Jim since the murder but who was to say do you know if his intention was to consume to eat some of that flesh at the time honestly no the scissor maybe okay why maybe because he cut the jinselian out and he kept it and did you know what he did with the jinselian no i did not okay as far as i know think it away i don't know if you told someone else something different no i think several people and it's a running joke in the pods that i was a cannibal and that he used it to make a sandwich with and some of things like that when he said it's a running joke you know i've done my personal reform everybody i didn't eat it and i had no idea what you're talking about i mean yeah they still make a joke out of it sometimes i make jokes you're one of the people you're just trying along with the the cannibal situation but i didn't eat it even i didn't touch it i don't know what he did with it you know i know what i've heard i know what i've been touching on the news me on that i don't know anything else here's a good example of the way Tim would minimize he pretended that he only went along with the jokes about cannibalism in jail because he didn't want any trouble but he later admitted to signing autographs for money under the name Hannibal the cannibal while Jim stayed silent through the days following Cassidy's murder all of Tim's minimizing and Amanda's beliefs that it was all a joke couldn't change the overwhelming evidence that both Jim and Tim had viciously murdered Cassidy and Amanda knew about it eventually the courtroom knew about it too appearing in person for the first time since being charged in mid-September James Phelps was escorted into a Dallas county courtroom and asked if his defense was aware of the new first degree murder charge filed against him the judge quickly took up his attorney's motion to set a bond with Phelps public defender arguing Phelps is not a flight risk having spent most of his life in the area Mr. Phelps does have significant ties to the community he is in my phone residence of the area with the exception of brief sentence in the military and he didn't live in St. Louis for about three years attorney Sam Gehrhardt says Phelps had only faced charges of writing bad checks and illegal hunting in the past but prosecutors argue Phelps poses a danger to the community especially those that are caring for Cassidy rainwaters children prosecuting attorney Jonathan Barker tells the court Phelps co-defendant Timothy Norton confessed to deputies he and Phelps would search for potential victims online and at a local raw mart and prosecutors also said tonight they are weighing all options in Phelps case including possibly seeking the death penalty by 2023 the courts had delivered their verdict in April Jim Phelps centered an Alfred plea to first degree murder meaning he knew that prosecutors had enough evidence to convict him but he still maintained his innocence the judge sensed him to life in prison with the possibility of parole in June Timothy Norton pleaded guilty to the same charge and received an identical sentence life without parole as part of his plea agreement charges of kidnapping and abandonment of a corpse were dropped Cassidy Sun Aiden has spoken about his mother saying that even though his parents gave him up for adoption at the age of four he loves her and no she did her best he admits that adoption was probably the best thing for him he's had a good life Aiden has grown up to be a very intelligent and talented young man who plays 35 different instruments and loves theater this is what he said at his mom's funeral she was the hardest working mom I've ever known and I'm so proud of her and I wish she could know that Cassidy Rainwater died in the most horrible of circumstances and what they did to her body after was beyond despicable she may have fallen through the cracks at the time she landed on Jim's doorstep but she was a mother a daughter and a friend she just happened to be a woman who trusted the wrong people but the question that lingers is bigger than Cassidy Jim and Tim weren't just two isolated monsters who snapped one day they were predators and like all predators they hunted where they knew the vulnerable lived for them it was mostly women on the margins alone struggling sometimes with no place to go but this was changing they started stalking and parking lots and restaurants that's where Ren's insight becomes so important it could have been her she crossed paths with Tim before he was caught and put away and her story shows how monsters like Jim and Tim operated not just with violence but with patience with manipulation they looked for weakness tested boundaries and moved in slowly until it was too late fortunately for Ren she knew what to look for she works as an EMT I don't think I've ever ran into another murderer but I have you know worked cases where people are being trafficked and like on the side of the road we're getting people out of cars who are being taken against their will and it's a lot of the same behavior it's a lot of that like I'm out to make you uncomfortable and I'm betting that you're not going to say anything about it they look for people who kind of don't hold themselves high who kind of you shrink your shoulders you make yourself small you stay out of the way and a lot of people think that like being out of sight in a way makes them a little safer and it just makes it easier for the people who don't want to do horrible things you to not notice you to not see you when you need help and like a lot of I've read a lot of studies about serial killers and you know the way that they pick their victims is who's the smallest person in the room that doesn't look very sure of themselves Cassidy may have been vulnerable but she was strong willed and stubborn according to everyone who knew her that is but see Jim and Tim didn't seek her out she landed there and she became a problem for them because she didn't want to give in to their demands she didn't want a sexual relationship with Jim even Tim acknowledged that and she paid for it with her life another thing that I wanted to touch on is like the packaged meat of it all the cannibalism was the craziest part of it for me to read because it was one of those things especially like again as the information is coming out you see it and it's so out there and weird and wrong that you kind of don't want to believe it but then again like and especially getting in the line of work that I'm in now there are definitely people that like beyond your worst imagination we'll do things like that or kind of surround themselves with people that are cool with stuff like that I don't know I don't know if society is a whole just wants to push all the ugly stuff under the rug and don't think about it and that happens far away and you know it'll never be my problem and a lot of this stuff is happening like in these tiny middle of nowhere unincorporated towns and like counties that have just woods forever it's hiding kind of in plain sight. Dallas County police didn't find evidence that the human meat in Jim's freezer was ever shared or sold. But absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. Bon appétit. That's going to do it for another one. If you're new here, head on over to Sword and Scale.com for more. Until next week, stay safe. Mike, you are so funny. You crack me up, dude. Keep doing what you're doing. You're making so many people laugh. But we don't speak out. You know what I mean? So all you hear is the negative. From the negative, you know. Negative. Negative. Negative. Take care, Mike, and thank you. Don't believe in hate us. [MUSIC PLAYING]