The Molly Watson Case: Bride-to-Be Murdered Right Before Her Wedding

In European folklore, there's this idea that when someone lives dishonestly, they don't just lie, they split. A second version of them appears, a double. And this doppelganger moves through the world separately. It handles the things the original doesn't want to deal with, who says the things that they rather not say out loud. In some versions of a legend, seeing your double is an omen of death. In others, it's not supernatural at all. It's just the life you've hidden for so long that it starts acting on its own. But the stories all agree on one thing. The longer the two selves exist side by side, the more dangerous the collision becomes. Because in the end, only one version gets to survive. I'm Harvey G. N. and this is Killer Stories. Let's say it's around 2017, and you stumble across a woman's blog online. You don't know her, but you're drawn to the way she documents her everyday life. You might learn that she holds two degrees in psychology, or that she has a light and airy singing voice. That she's a bit of a Renaissance woman. Her hobby is designing and sewing elaborate costumes. Her videos are very slice of life, and she is so sincere and open and bubbly. But it's hard to look away because what she documents is proof that there is beauty in the details. This is Molly Watson. Hi, everyone. It's Molly, and I have today. Molly lives in the heart of America's farmlands, Northeastern Missouri. A few years earlier, she was working as a corrections officer at one of the area's top employers, the Mobilely Correctional Center. That's where she met her boyfriend, James Addy, Jim, one of her colleagues, and she falls for him hard. It's a delicate situation from the start. See, Molly already has a girlfriend. She's been dating Amber for five years. They first met back when there were frenemies in kindergarten, and when they reconnected as adults 20-something years later, they realized they were actually in love. Which is the romcom I wish I was presenting to you today. But alas, one day, Amber finds Molly at a motel with Jim. And it's pretty obvious, Molly chooses Jim. From then on, she always will. She'll do anything for him. And she's not the only one in a relationship. Jim is married and has two kids. This isn't some fling, Molly and Jim continue seeing each other year after year. Eventually, Jim tells her that plans are in motion for a divorce. From his wife, then they can be together, always. So in 2017, Molly and Jim get engaged. Molly immediately starts planning their wedding. She wants it to be Disney themed. So obviously, I'm interested. And Molly's no brightzilla. Everybody she works with to plan her special day says she's bursting with excitement. They have nothing but good things to say about the bright to be. As for the groom, well, not everybody is as impressed with Jim Addy as Molly seems to be. Their wedding coordinator describes him as "standoffish". This family finds him so quiet and off-putting that he reminds them of a ghost. And not like when Casper turns into Devon Sawa at the end of Casper because he was super friendly. Jim is kind of slight and noticeably older than Molly. When they get married, Molly will be 35 and Jim will be 51. And I think we've all been in this situation, right? Where you know your friend isn't a disaster waiting to happen, but it'll probably end up in a break-up. Everybody forgets about, so just keep your trap shut for now. Well, that's pretty much what happens here. Molly is undeniably giddy about marrying Jim, so her friends and family choose to be happy for her. Molly and Jim set the date for April 29, 2018. Four days before the wedding is supposed to take place, Molly shows up at the county recorder's office. She's there to apply for the marriage license. She jokes around with the staff as she kills time because in order to get that license, you need two people present. And Jim seems to be late. When he arrives, he kind of stalks in. He looks like he'd rather be any place else, especially when the official begins asking a bunch of probing questions, which is of course the recorder's job. It's all routine information to fill out the license, but Jim bristles when he's asked about his previous marriages, probably because he's already been married four times. Molly is to be his fifth wife. When prompted, Jim says his most recent divorce just went through last October. On the outside, it kind of looks like Jim's being an ass. But Molly knows something the official doesn't. Less than four months ago, around the holidays, Jim told her that his newly divorced wife, Melanie, was in a terrible car accident. She survived, but had to be put on life support, which meant Jim had to take on a lot more responsibility with the children. And now things aren't looking good for Melanie. It sounds like they might have to pull the plug. Molly knows Jim's been stressed, and she was worried that he was getting cold feet like maybe he wanted to back out of the wedding. She even texted him about it the day before, but he insisted he still wanted to marry her. So Molly likely thinks all this stress is about Melanie, and having to talk about divorcing a woman who's on her deathbed, Molly's able to con Jim's nerves by the end of the appointment, the two of them walk hand in hand out the door. Marriage license ready to go. Soon after that, Jim tells Molly that Melanie has passed away. On April 27, two days before the wedding, he texts her with more batonies. Things funeral has to be held tomorrow. The day before he's supposed to be getting married to Molly. So he's going to be really busy with family flying in and helping his kids take care of the arrangements. Even so, Jim finds time to swing by the wedding venue and drop off a bunch of centerpieces and a check to the tomb of $4,000. So it seems like he's all in, even though it's a tough time. And then things get much, much worse. Later that night, around 8.30 p.m., Molly throws her shoes on and drives away from her house. Her parents, who she lives with, don't know where she's going, but she's in her pajamas, so it seems like she'll be right back, but she never returns. That same night, another local man drives his daughter over to his mother's house. Glenn McSparron has made the short trip a million times before, and when he can, he takes his favorite shortcut. It's this gravel road through the woods. You actually have to cross a shallow creek, at one point, hardly anybody else takes this path. So Glenn's surprised to find not one, but two other cars along the shortcut. Glenn's facing away from him just past the water, and he thinks maybe he got stuck in the mud. The second car, in Old Maroon Sedan, drives towards him. As he approaches, Glenn rolls down his window to ask if somebody stuck. Maybe he can help. And a man's voice replies, "He doesn't know where the other driver is, so it might take a while." Glenn really can't see well, it's so dark, and the man's headlights are shining right in his eyes. But he takes the man at his word, he has no reason not to, and with no way through the overcrowded path, Glenn turns his truck around and takes a different route. He drops his daughter off at his mom's house and starts to head home, but he keeps thinking about what he just witnessed on that dark path. For whatever reason, something's not sitting right with him. So as Glenn drives back home alone, he decides to go through the shortcut again. This time, he sees only one car. The one he thought was stuck in the mud, but there's somebody new there he hadn't seen before. It's a woman. She's lying on the ground in front of the driver's side of the car. Glenn can't call 911 fast enough. He tells the operator he's worried that this person is badly hurt, and the operator asked him to go check on her while he waits for the authorities. And obviously, Glenn wants to help her. He does as he's asked, but let's step back a second. Glenn thinks he might be in the middle of a horror movie right now. The kind where the audience is yelling at him to get back in his truck and get out of there. He's in a pitch black middle of Noir Woods with what appears to be a dead body, and he doesn't know if whoever attacked her is watching him from the trees. So Kudos to Glenn McSperon, thanks to him, Sheriff Deputies arrive on the scene by 1022. But they can tell the woman on the ground is already dead. She suffered a gunshot wound to the head. There's blood in the car, and drag marks etched in the gravel. Just on personal belongings left at the scene, they're able to ID her quickly as Molly Watson. Less than 48 hours before she's scheduled to walk down the aisle, Molly is dead. In 2010, a family of four in California goes missing, and the clues left behind send investigators on a years-long search. Is this a family on the run, or is the truth far more sinister? From ABC Audio in 2020, this is what happens to the McStaves, coming August 11. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast at, or subscribe to 2020 True Crime Plus on Apple Podcasts to listen early and ad-free. Early morning on a Manhattan sidewalk, a shooting caught on surveillance video. It was an assassination style killing, and everybody saw it. Now, as Luigi Mangioni prepares to stand trial for the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, which he denies, a new podcast series from ABC Audio in 2020 goes inside this captivating case. I'm ABC News legal analyst Brian Buckmeyer. Listen to "Burn and Approve" Luigi Mangioni, wherever you get your podcasts. Molly's autopsy reveals she was killed by a single gunshot wound to the head. The firearm was held at an extremely close range. In fact, when the bullet is recovered, it's shattered and misshapen. It appears to be a small caliber, maybe from a 22 caliber rifle or pistol, but experts can be totally sure. They do find other evidence, not far from the crime scene, one deputy discovers a bloody white t-shirt discarded in the woods. It bears the name of a student organization and the outline of the state of Missouri. Oddly, it looks like it's been misprinted, the state outline overlaps a few times. They also find an empty box of 22 caliber ammo nearby. As close to Molly's cell phone, both were thrown along the side of the road, not far away, presumably by Molly's killer, as they fled the scene. The phone reveals that Molly was on a phone call shortly before she died. She'd also been using a map application to direct her to the very spot where she was murdered. But the biggest revelation in the case happens just a few hours after the murder. The reason investigators are able to identify Molly Watson so quickly is that her car is filled with some obvious clues, like her car's registration and her marriage license that she just picked up a couple days earlier, which lists her fiancee as Jim Atty. When the authorities find this license, they start prepping themselves for one of the hardest parts of the job. The moment when you have to tell somebody that their loved one is dead. So the sheriff and a member of the Highway Patrol agree to make the 25 mile drive to Jim's house together and deliver the news. By the time they get to his house, it's 2.45 am on the day before his wedding. And now that wedding is never going to happen. They don't know how Jim's going to react, but they can assume it's going to be heartbreaking news. But when they get there, the deputies are blindsided. Jim answers his door and he's not alone. Melanie Atty, his fourth wife, walks up behind him. This is the woman who supposedly got into a bad car accident and just died, whose funeral was scheduled for later that day, and Melanie's right there, very much alive. But that's not all. Melanie isn't Jim's ex-wife at all. She's his current wife of 23 years. And she has no idea who Molly Watson even is. It's not every day that the sheriff unexpectedly uncovers a secret family. So he steps inside to talk to Jim and Melanie. It's clear right away that Melanie generally didn't know her husband was having an affair. And she really wasn't aware he was engaged to be married. For that, he's spent months planning a wedding that he legally couldn't go through with. It looks pretty bad for Jim. I'm not going to lie. Jim, he looks pretty bad for you Jim, but he doesn't even try to lie about his and Molly's relationship at this point. He tells everyone, "I got myself involved in something I should have." But Jim is only admitting to the affair. He claims he has no idea who killed Molly and insists it wasn't him. In fact, he says it couldn't have been him. He was busy that night. He left his house around 7pm to pick up an avocado plant from a friend, as you do. Me, I'm always picking up avocado plants from friends. I make sense. He says he got home around 8.30pm. If he's telling the truth, that probably rules Jim out as a suspect. And Melanie, poor Melanie, who is taking in so much information right now, can't confirm or deny Jim's timeline. She got in bed around 7.30pm and was asleep when he came home. So he could be telling the truth. Jim also pulls out a purple cell phone and eagerly hands it over to the sheriff. Melanie's never seen it before. This is a burner phone that he used to talk to Molly. And it shows that he was texting Molly all night, mundane things, asking her what she ate for dinner and wishing her good night. The messages make it seem like he was unaware she was already dead. So maybe Jim's story checks out. There's nobody who can prove he's lying, at least nobody who's awake yet. As it turns out, there's another person present in Jim's house that night. His daughter, Emma, is upstairs sleeping through this whole thing like a true teenager. And she has some crucial details to add to her father's story. When investigators speak to Jim's daughter, Emma, they learn that she was still awake when her dad got home the night of the murder. He did a return around 8.30 as he claimed. He actually returned home around 10pm. She knows this because she was up late, trying to finish her homework in the living room. Once her dad walked in the door, his behavior was, I don't want to say, suspicious. It was like the most suspicious somebody could ever act. Right away, Jim's like, "What are you still doing up?" And she can tell he's strangely antsy. Then he proceeds to strip down and throw his clothes in the washing machine, along with the cup of bleach. She can smell the chemicals from the other room. At this point, Emma's trying to get ready for bed. She goes to their shared bathroom and starts brushing her teeth and her dad appears in the doorway in his undies just staring her down, waiting for her to give in the room. When she leaves the bathroom, she can hear her dad jump in the shower. She admits he usually did shower at night before bed, so she didn't think this was all that unusual. But here's the kicker, investigators show Emma a photo of the white t-shirt, you know, the one they found with blood splatter on it near the crime scene. The one that looked like it had been misprinted? Well, Emma says that's definitely her dad's shirt. She should know because she made it in her graphic design class. They were learning to screen print and had a contest to see who could do the best job. And Emma says she was the only one in the class who kept messing up the printing process. Exactly the kind of minor embarrassment that might get forever stamped into a teenager's brain. Emma brought a few of these misprinted shirts home, and sure enough, they do match the shirt found near the crime scene. Not only that, but her dad asked her if he could have one of the shirts which, at first, sounds like a cute dad thing to do, like, right? Like, aw, honey, your shirts turned out awesome. Anyway, I'd be proud to wear one. Like said, Jim said he wanted the shirt to use in his garage, like a shop towel. Emma's not the only one who helps authorities crack the case. They also speak to Glenn McSparon, the driver who discovered Molly's body. They're quite interested in what he remembers because if you recall, he saw a second vehicle there earlier in the night, which means the person he spoke to might be Molly's killer. Glenn remembers that this person was most likely an older man, but he can't be sure. That's just his best guess, based on how the person sounded. It was too dark to see clearly, and he had bright headlights in his eyes. So he also doesn't know the maker model of this person's car, but if he has to describe it, he says it was like a grandma car. And yes, that description is a bit subjective. At the time, Jim is driving a Mercury Sable, a type of car that was discontinued in 2009. It's your basic sedan, but it's not not a grandma car. Detectives also get an assist from Jim's wife, Melanie, who, by the way, is a delightful preschool teacher. When she has time to process the info dump, Melanie has to admit, Jim does seem like the kind of guy who would resort to murder. The more she thinks about it, the more it sounds exactly like the kind of selfish thing he would do. And she still has his real cell phone. So she hands it over to the authorities, looking at Jim's phones side by side, investigators find another bizarre clue. After Melanie hands over Jim's regular phone, detectives realize that shortly before Molly's murder, he sent some bizarre text messages to himself. Using his burner phone, Jim texted this to his regular phone. Have a meeting tonight at eight, normal place. You have to be there, bring those manuals, don't be a pus again. Let's go man. Yikes, so it sounds like he's giving himself a creepy pep talk, pumping himself up to murder his sweet and doting fiancee, who again, he cannot legally marry. And if I'm interpreting this correctly, it also sounds like he's considered killing her before, but didn't go through with it. And I don't know what kind of manual he could be referring to. Surely it's not a guy to pulling off the perfect crime because Jim has left so many clues behind that all point to him. So Jim is charged with first degree murder. Due to the COVID outbreak, it takes a while for his trial to come around in April of 2021. Now here's the thing, the prosecution actually doesn't have any forensic evidence, definitely tying Jim to Molly's murder. The bloody white t-shirt was tested and along with gunshot residue, it showed the presence of two individuals DNA. One was Molly's, but the other was inconclusive. It could not be proven that Jim was wearing that shirt. And detectives can be absolutely certain what the murder weapon was or if they found it. Jim owns several guns. One of them contains bullets, matching the empty box, found near the crime scene, but that could be a coincidence. And Melanie claims the gun Jim kept in his nightstand disappeared. But that could also be a coincidence. In the courtroom, Glenn McSparron can confirm without a doubt that Jim is the man he saw along his shortcut on that night of the murder. He's just not 100% certain. The closest thing the DA has to irrefutable evidence is a tire print, found near Molly's body. It appears to match a tire on Jim's car, then again, tire prints aren't always in exact science, so all the prosecutors really have is circumstantial evidence. Lucky for them, there is a mountain of it. Actually, I don't know if I have time to even list all of the circumstantial evidence. Can we just throw it up on the screen really quick? Yeah, the perfect there it is. See, you know what, guess I'll just take a little break while that scrolls on. Oh wow, okay, there you go, looking pretty guilty. I mean a gun and a jacket go missing on the night of the murder, okay Jim. And like why would you wear a distinctive t-shirt that your daughter recently made and gave to you as if nobody's gonna remember it? Are we, is this, are we still, we're still got, that is a lot. Okay, so prosecutors still have a strong case. As for Jim's motive, well, he was running out of time. He was supposed to marry Molly while he was still married to Melanie. And as far as Molly knew, Jim's family was attending their wedding. She'd even made plans for his daughter to get her hair done with her professionally. And it was only a matter of hours before Molly started asking questions because Emma was never going to show up. Neither was the rest of his family. They had no idea there was a wedding happening. The house of cards was about to crash down on him. And the DA argues there may have been another motive behind the murder. When they look into Molly's search history, they found some interesting data from April 26, 2018, the day before the murder. Molly had been fiercely googling looking for something. Melanie Addie's obituary. If Jim was telling the truth about his quote, unquote, ex-wife and the funeral was already scheduled, Molly believed she would be able to find proof of it online. She used a bunch of different search terms, but of course, it was nothing for her to find. It seems like Molly had finally grown suspicious about Jim's stories, especially after he claimed his ex-wife happened to die right before the wedding. As if he was hoping that Molly would call everything off. And when that didn't happen instead of coming clean, he killed her. In 2021, Jim is convicted of murdering Molly Watson. He sentenced to life in prison without parole. By this time, Melanie had long since done what Jim could never do. She filed for divorce. Earlier we talked about the idea of the doppelganger, the belief that when someone lives dishonestly, they split. That is second version of them steps into handle the things they don't want to face. In this story, that split wasn't supernatural. It looked like two phones, two timelines, two women who never met. But we're living inside the same life. Jim Addy believed he could keep those life separate. That one version of himself who could love, plan, promise while the other took care of the consequences. But the problem with doubles is that they don't stay contained, eventually they collide. And when they do, it's rarely the person who created the split who pays the highest price. Molly Watson believed she was building a future with someone she knew, where she couldn't see was the other version of him. The one that had already decided how this would end. In the old stories, the doppelganger disappears once the truth comes out. in real life, the death of the dead. And the people left behind are the ones who have to live with both versions. Thanks for tuning in to Killer Stories, the Spotify podcast. New episodes release on Mondays. If you liked today's story and want to learn more, we'd draw some of our favorite sources in the episode description. Until next time, I'm Harvey E.N., stay safe out there. [BLANK_AUDIO]