Love Triangle Murder Plot, the Chilli Finger Lawsuit

(upbeat music) Hey, Antara Saravan, and you're listening to World's Domas criminals. If you're keen to hear about the most ridiculous bizarre and downright stupid criminals and crime stories in the world ever, you come to the right place. In today's episode, you'll be hearing about an English woman who tried to hire a hitman to bump off her work colleague so she could wing back the affections of her for landering boss. The story behind the gruesome Wendy's chili finger lawsuit and more. Alrighty, let's get cracking. You wouldn't expect sports direct in Milton Keynes England to be a hub of scandalous affairs, love triangles and murder plots, but here we are. Sports directs website states, it's your one stop sports shop for the biggest brands. Browse trainers for men, women and kids, plus sports fashion clothing and accessories. No where does it reference the staff boaning each other and trying to hire hitmen on the dark web to bump off their love rivals? That's a missed marketing opportunity right there. Sports directs resident pants man James Prest started work at the Milton Keynes branch in August 2014. He'd already been in a relationship for several years with the mother of his two kids and he continued to be as he sought out new and exciting places to temporarily park his boner. Future attempted procurer of hitmen, 19-year-old Whitney Franks started working at the Milton Keynes branch a year later. By 2016 James, who was general manager of the branch and thus her boss, was parking it in her boner garage. Nice abuse of power there James, your carny fuck boy. In 2017 a 22 year old woman named Root Root and had joined the saucy staff. By 2018 James and Root were, but want of a better word, Rooting. As is always the case in potentially deadly love triangles, the object of affection who's being fought over is frankly quite disappointing. You'd expect some kind of a donner's who's sweater diamonds, but instead the man in question looks like a pale-skinned Joe exotic. According to court statements, James liked to play his underling paramores off against each other to compete for his attention. Sexy. His relationship with both women was said to be episodic. It's a wonder any actual work at all got done at this sports direct store and less were counting hand jobs and blow jobs, which we are. Whitney was moved to the bletchley branch of the store in 2018, which made it harder for her to compete for pale tiger king's attention and gave Root the run of the roost. Unfortunately this didn't damp and Whitney's desire for the father of two. Over the next couple of years, James continued playing whack-a-mall with his cheating pole and Whitney continued to be desperate for his attention and increasingly jealous of Root. Apparently both of James' sidepieces knew he had a long-term partner and two young kids and had no desire to leave his baby mama. They were unfazed by this and only appeared to be concerned about each other. Jesus, maybe James really does sweat diamonds after all. In late 2018, James had stopped parking it in Whitney's garage. He was on and off with both his sidepieces, so he may have started parking there again later. Unfortunately the reports didn't specify. What they did mention is that on September 1, 2018, Whitney sent an email to James begging for him to take her back. Oh honey, no. This email spoke of their previous or bumpy, bumpy escapades and concluded with a plea for him to give her another chance. In the email she says, "I can give you the entire world, James. If you can give me a chance, I think you could be the happiest you've ever been in your life. I'll truly mean it. I hope you do and well inside and out. I have been trying to sort out my anxiety. I have found some things that could help, so I'm going to give them a go." I think the only thing that would help is ending things with hoaxotic for good, but she had other plans. "Niferious plans." She started following James at night to see what he was up to. Oh, who he was up to. While his partner and children were asleep in bed, James would regularly creep out on them and go to Root's house. What a catch he is. On August 17, 2020, Whitney showed up at the Milton Kean Sports Direct to confront James about his behaviour. It's not that she took issue with him creeping around in the dead of night to step out on his long-term partner. Oh no. It's that he was doing it with Root instead of her. Since Whitney and Root never spoke to each other, and James certainly didn't fill her in on his other activities, he deduced that the only way Whitney could know what he was up to was by following him. I'm not sure if he was appalled or turned on by that, but my guess is a bit from Colomé and a bit from Colomé B. For her part, Whitney came up with a cunning, foolproof plan to win back the wandering peen of James once and for all. Or, at least till someone new came along. She went on to the dark web and placed an ad seeking a hitman to kill Root on some kind of dodgy illegal job site. She should have just hit up our mate, Gweedo, at rentahitman.com. The ad Whitney placed said, "I'm looking for the murder of a woman. I have a thousand pounds and I'm willing to pay more. This woman has caused a lot of problems for myself and others. Please can you help sort this out?" She also posted a description of Root, her address, and her Facebook profile. Instead of the ad being responded to by a professional hitman scanning the dark web looking for freelance work, it was happened upon by an investigative journalist named Carl Miller. Carl, who worked for the BBC, had been investigating the dark web as part of a story he was working on. He alerted the police to the ad and they opened an investigation. As Whitney's ad had been posted anonymously, the police weren't sure who was behind it and were only able to identify that Root was the target. Police went to her place to check on her but she wasn't there. So the cops went to sexy, sexy sports direct and found a sign on the door that said, "Don't bother knocking if the store is rocking." No, they didn't. They spoke to Root and informed her about the clumsy ad to take out a hit on her life. She told them that she had a hunch she was behind it and named Whitney Franks. Out of concern for her life, she was taken to a safe house. The cops began an investigation into Whitney, which culminated in her arrest on September 10, 2020. In a police interview, she claimed she hadn't gone looking for a hit man at all. She'd innocently been surfing the web when a pop-up appeared which she clicked on and it took her to a site on the dark web. That doesn't ring true to me. I've been working in the True Crime genre for several years now. In this time, my Google searchers have included some really dark, wrong-sighted shit and yet I've never had a pop-up inviting me to the dark web. Maybe I should take that personally. Yeah, props. In court, Whitney denied the charge of soliciting murder, but admitted to the jury that she'd posted the messages about hiring a hit man, which is confusing. I mean, surely you can't have it both ways. Your honour, I'm innocent of the charges, though I will admit I did exactly what I'm accused of doing. She told the jury she was convinced the website in question was a scam and wanted to prove it out of her own curiosity. Sure, Whitney. Her defence stated, "Her curiosity got the better of her and it was offering drugs, weapons and murder. She couldn't believe such a website existed and that it must have been a scam. She wanted to examine if it was a scam." Despite this bulletproof defence, last month, Whitney, who's now 26, was found guilty of soliciting murder. Judge Paul Dougdale told Whitney, "You have been unanimously convicted of soliciting murder. It is a very serious offense. It is an offense for which I will have to pass a fairly lengthy sentence." She's due to receive that fairly lengthy sentence in September. There's no word on whether Root and Hoaxotic are still rooting or if his long-term baby mum are dumped is lying cheating us when word of his antics hit the news. But one thing I know for sure is that Whitney's going to feel like a right fool when the victimisation finally wears off. On March 22nd 2005 Anna Ayala was eating chili at a San Jose Wendy's when she claimed she bit into a severed human finger. 39 year old. Anna had dollar signs in her eyes and promptly sued the fast food chain. The gruesome severed finger story garnered a lot of media attention and probably prompted sleazy cannibal is a cigar to email Wendy's, asking if the finger chili would soon be available in Japan. Wendy's lost over $21 million in revenue because it seems most people prefer their chili not to be a finger food. The medical examiner's office in the police launched an investigation into the spicy cooked digit and determined that the finger did not come from Wendy's employee or from anyone who provided their ingredients. Early media reports stated that the finger was fully cooked with the chili but the coroner's office begged to differ. They concluded that it was not consistent with an object that had been cooked in chili at 170 degrees for three hours. Many theories arose around the case with some speculating that the finger belonged to Anna's recently deceased aunt. The cops were sussed on Anna to begin with as she had a history of filing frivolous lawsuits against a number of businesses and her parents regularly caught on fire, which we all know is something that only happens to liars. The New York Times reported that Anna had previously filed at least 13 civil actions, some of which involved out of court settlements. In 2004 she sued a San Jose car dealership, General Motors and Gaudier tires claiming that a wheel just plumb fell off her car. The suit was dismissed with prejudice after she fired her attorney and failed to attend court or submit paperwork. I guess she thought the magical court cobbler elves would handle the pesky paperwork for her while she slept, but they didn't. Also in 2004 Anna claimed that she'd won a suit against fast food chain El Polo Loco and was awarded $30,000 in damages. She said the money was to cover the medical expenses of her daughter who contracted Salmonella poisoning after eating at one of their restaurants. An El Polo Loco spokesperson shot that down, saying that the company looked into Anna's claim and found it baseless and so they paid her nothing. I just hope she didn't actually give her daughter Salmonella poisoning some other way to back up this lawsuit. In April 2005 Anna was arrested on charges of felony attempted grand lasteny for the Wendy's incident and grand theft. The grand theft charge was related to the fraudulent sale of a San Jose mobile home that Anna didn't actually own. Whoops, I really thought I'd bought that trailer but I guess I didn't. Just a bean of brain fart. In April 2005 San Jose Wendy's franchise holder Joseph Desmond held a press conference where he implored the audience to "please come back to Wendy's because we do serve wonderful hamburgers, shakes and everything else." Yes, we serve wonderful finger-free hamburgers and shakes and our chili has been fingerless since earlier this year. In May 2005 the police revealed that they'd identified the finger found in the chili as belonging to a man named Brian Rossiter. He was an associate of Anna's husband Jamie and had lost his finger in an industrial accident in December 2004. He'd subsequently sold the finger to Jamie in order to settle a $100 debt. I thought fingers would fetch more than a hundred bucks. May as well keep mine. Anna and her husband Jamie ended up leading guilty to conspiring to file a false claim and attempted grand theft. In January 2006 Anna was sentenced to nine years in state prison. She was also banned from all Wendy's restaurants for life, meaning that she'd have to get the chili to stick seven fingers in somewhere else. Her husband was sentenced to 12 years and 14 months in prison for acquiring the finger. San Jose does not play when it comes to sentencing people for procuring severed fingers. Anna was released from prison after serving four years of her nine-year sentence. In September 2018 she did an interview with CBS5 about the chili finger incident. She told them that she cooked the ring finger at her Las Vegas home and then drove it to San Jose where she dropped it into the chili. I have a lot of questions about this. Like I wonder what cooking finger smells like. I assume it would smell bad since burnt fingernail is an ungodly odor. But what if you were cooking it and you thought, "Yum, that smells delicious." And what do you carry your cooked finger in when you're on your way to try to scam a Wendy's? Do you go with a little Tupperware container or just pop it in a ziplock bag and hide it in your bra? An unrelated incident involving Anna occurred in October 2012 when her son, Junior Reyes, accidentally shot himself in the ankle. Junior had a previous burglary conviction and was not allowed to own a gun. So he told the cops he'd been minding his own business out the front of his folks house when he'd been attacked by a pair of men for no rhyme or reason. Hoping to test out the strength of her new fire retardant pants, Anna backed up her son's lies and claimed to have witnessed the attack herself. Ah, she just can't help herself, can she? She told the police one of the attackers wore a black Oakland A's cap and air Jordan sneakers while his accomplice was a big man with a goatee and, abnormally large ears, her voter black bicycle. County prosecutor Brett Walsley said, "I don't know if it was someone she knew who she described or how she came up with that description." Anna went so far as to give the police the name of one of the men she fingered. When the authorities looked into the alleged suspect, they were able to rule him out immediately. Chief, we tracked down Ronald McDonald's and Ronald's son and it turns out he was actually in Boca Raton on the day of the shooting. When the police further questioned Anna and Junior about the incident, she backed off from her statements and Junior changed his story into something unbelievable about him chasing after a dog. And you know I'm going to have to go with that because I want to know what it was and I don't know so I'm going to have to make something up. See, what happened was I was out the front of my folks house, feeling kind of sporty and like, yeah I saw a dog run past with a gun in its mouth. Yeah it was a brown Labradoodle and it was wearing a white fedora and well I thought it was my hat so I chased after it as you do. Long story short, turns out it wasn't my fedora and the dog shot me for implying that it was because he said that was like a really rude thing to have told him and that he wasn't a thief. And the dog was from Boston, I could tell by his accent. According to the Mercury News, San Jose detective Nathaniel Braxton told Junior that shooting yourself in the foot is not a crime, it's an accident but making a false report is a crime. This inspired Junior to admit that it actually shot himself. When Braxton asked Anna about her son shooting himself, she went all, 1920s New York gangster and told him, I don't know nothing. When he asked her where the gun was she replied, there's no gun no more, it's done, thrown away and went on to tell the cops that she'd given the gun back to an unidentified person or possibly a Labradoodle from Boston. Anna's statement not only confirmed her son had shot himself but she'd also admitted to getting rid of the evidence. Anna pleaded no contest to three felony charges and received a two year prison sentence as did her son Junior. And all the big men with goaties and abnormally large ears who rode black bicycles breathed a huge sigh of relief that the cops were no longer targeting them. To finish up, I have a few punchline crimes for you. These are cases with hardly any information available and they sound more like jokes than something that actually happened. Speaking of stupid lawsuits, in October 2007, 77-year-old German fuckboy and you have no wannabe, Rolf Eden, filed a lawsuit against a 19-year-old girl he was trying to bang. In it, he said the teenager had gone out with him and ended up going back to his place, but she refused to have sex with him, telling him that he was too old for her. This was even after he'd fly to his champagne and played the piano for her. Rolf told the media that was shattering. No woman has ever said that to me before. I was crushed. There are laws against discrimination. Not only did Rolf claim to have played hide the brat worse with 3,000 women, but he also made people's stomachs churn when he told a tabloid that he wanted to die while having sex. His exact words were "I would like to die as I have lived." a woman. I'm sure that would be fucking delightful for the woman, but I doubt empathizing with how a woman feels is something that he's ever thought of doing. Just how really RAM home what a hypocrite he is, he told the media. There are some women who are too old for me, but in that case, it just has to be more diplomatic and say, "Sorry, you're not my type." "I just want to know you're 111, Jill." "I just want to know you're 111, Jill." On the morning of March 3rd, 2020, the police executed a search warrant on a rural property on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. Senior Constable Allen said, "The police observed a cannabis plant in front of the dwelling, which was a approximately six foot in height." The court heard that the man admitted it was his plant and that there was another six foot tall one growing around the side of the house. The court also found three smaller plants on the property. When questioned about where the marijuana plants had come from, the man said it was nothing to do with him, and they had simply just popped up out of the ground. "Air 12 by the South, down Harbor, freeway at 6227 Tom, Zebra, Paul, Co. 37, vehicle 1 for 2 of them." The next story seriously messes with my interpretation of what judges sound like. A Florida judge was recently suspended after calling a man an arsehole and telling him to shut up in court. "Allow me to set the scene." In February this year, Judge Wayne Colve was sitting up high on his judgey podium, possibly regretting the life choices he made to end up a judge in Florida. A man and woman entered the courtroom and tried to find a seat, but there was blue tape on many of the benches due to COVID, which confused the pair. The man said something to the woman and Colve lost his shit. Let's take a listen. "Sir, I'm doing something. Can you shut up and sit down?" "I'm completely shut up. That's not shutting up." "You want to be held to contempt and go to jail?" "I asked you a fucking question asshole." "No, sir." "Then shut up." "I'm just glad I didn't play this out loud while I'm recording, as it would have definitely made Tilda Dog want to leave the room. She does not care for that kind of tone." The Florida Judicial Qualification Commission recommended that Judge Wayne, "I'm getting too old for this shit, Colve, step down from his position for 60 days without pay and take anger management sessions." See, this was a second time Wayne has got in trouble for this sort of thing. In January, he unlawfully sentenced a man to 537 days in jail for contempt of court. He apparently threatened to sentence him for so long that they'd have to have the jail renamed after him. This brings me to the end of the episode. Thanks for listening. Make sure you subscribe if you want to stay up to date with all future episodes. And if you dug what you heard, please leave a review. If you'd like to support this independent podcast, head on over to patreon.com/worldsdummerscriminals. All levels get access to monthly bonus episodes and add free episodes and higher levels also receive a variety of merchandise. I'd like to give a big thanks to Scars Rod Regas for coming on board as a patron recently. Thank you so much for your support. If you want more dumb criminals in your life, you could follow me on Twitter at WD Criminal's Pod and Instagram @worldsdummerscriminalspodcast. Or you could join our World's Dumbest Criminals podcast Facebook group. That's where you'll find me most of the time. And thank you to the wonderful Lorraine Leadwell for running the group with me. Stay tuned after the closing music to hear a promo for the True Crime podcast, The Golden Age of Murder. Till next time, look after yourself. Stay out of trouble. And what have you do? Don't commit a crime that makes you end up on this podcast. 1960s to the early 1990s, the United States saw an unprecedented surge in serub killing. We had not just in dynamic changes of the post-war period, but in the development of the human psyche going back many millennia to our ancient past, wonder why seruculars exist, why they emerged, and why they exploded in the post-war United States. Check out the Golden Age of Murder, a panoramic-looking serucular killing focusing on the United States in the post-war period. The podcast that goes beyond serucular profiles to dig into why serucular exist and to find out why the 1960s, the 1990s, is the "Apaging of Serum Murder." This is the Golden Age of Serum Murder with your host Toby Simmy.