Episode 473: Hayward Bissell and the Murder of Patricia Booher

I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at a high school in upstate New York. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast. What's the answer, and what do you do if they tell you it's all in your head?

Hysterical, a new podcast from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios, binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free on Wondery. Plus. Hey weirdos, I'm ash.

And I'm Alayna, and this is morbid.

I did that thing where I almost said, Hi, I'm Alayna, Hi, I'm Alayna, just, Hey, I'm Alayna, that's it, that's, that's, that's.

Welcome, that's the, that's, that's, that's the whoa, that's the.

That on that, yeah, that's what I was going for. Holy shit, I figured. I figured that's what you were going for. Just trying to help you out there for a second, just taking a sip of her iced coffee.

So she's like, you keep talking, keep going, don't you let anyone hear me? Swallow that iced coffee? Oh God, I hate when I hate the thought of people like hearing me chew or swallow or anything. It's true.

Um, I don't like mouth noises, no, and most people don't, I don't think.

So I don't think anybody's like, ooh, yay, mouth noise. ooh, yay a mouth noise. my favorite ooh.

Um, I also just needed that coffee, cause, wow, I could not get a sentence out. It's true, but here we are. It's morbid.

Yeah, I have a pretty tough one today. It's it's a sad, sad story. Oh good, um.

But yeah, maybe before we start, I'll just quickly say there's a TikTok account that you guys should follow. Oh, she's good at that, listen to her. I haven't done it in a while, yeah.

You haven't TikTok recommendation? Corner with Alina, Who's who's up?

Oh, there's two, actually, there's two, so, uh, my first is like, for all, especially parents out there, oh, is it?

Annalee Yeah, Annalee, a-n-a-l-e-e, she's hilarious.

She's like the realist parent account she is, you will follow. I feel like, even if you don't have kids, but like you want kids, or like you're involved in kids lives in a big way. She's a great follow, yeah.

She's a great follow. I highly suggest it. very entertaining, very sweet, and every time I watch her videos, I'm like, Can we hang out though?

Like, Can we be mom friends? I would really like to be so Annalee, if you're listening, Can we be mom friends? Can you guys be mom friends? And then I can be like your non-mom friend for a little bit?

I want that. And Annalee and a bunch of other TikTok moms hung out in, like South Carolina, I know one of my other favorite mom TikToks was there. I can't think of her name and I'm so bad at that. I lost my mind when I saw it, cause they were all my favorites and I was like, I wanna come.

The mom with, like, the super curly hair who's pregnant right now? Oh my God, yes, cutest woman alive, funniest woman alive, and you know what?

We'll make sure to share. Let me see. Yeah, Ash is gonna look for it. Because you gotta follow these ladies cause they're just genuinely hilarious women. They're doing awesome things and I highly suggest supporting the shit out of them.

I agree. Who was the other person that you were gonna shout out? So the other one is if you're feeling you know, if you're feeling witchy, or if you're interested in witchiness, there's an account called Down the Witch's way. Oh, hell yeah, we literally just did one of their spells.

Yeah, and he has the most soothing voice. My goodness couple of books, he has a couple books that I have, I purchased them. Because he is that good. And he's just, you know, he's a delightful human to watch his TikToks, and I think he needs more followers.

So I agree, go take a peek at it. If you're feeling like you want some easy little you know spells. Or you just want to listen to a soothing man tell you wonderful things, this man is it. You can do that down the witch's way.

So good, I love his spells. And then the mom that I was just talking about is at the vondy fam. It's the v-o-n-d-y-f-a-m hilarious.

That page is so funny, she is hilarious, she makes up like songs and stuff, and it just cracks me up. Yeah, she's really funny. And again, like, even if you're not a mom, but like, you love kids or....

Just a very, very good accounts to follow that'll just make you smile, exactly, make you laugh. If you're looking for a laugh, or looking for a smile, or looking to learn some things, those are some good pages. I'm going to cast a fucking spell.

So, you know, so do it, just do it, just do it. I was thinking of the....

Does anybody remember the video where the little boy was like, So do, is it? just do is it? I can't find that video anywhere now. And we remember we used to say it all the time.

You showed me it, wow. But yeah, those are a little internet recommendations of the hour, and now that we've brought you up, we're going to bring you right back down. I don't know this one, so I am totally in the dark.

I also hadn't heard of this one. A couple people requested it, so I said, Sure beans, totally sure beans. And then me and Dave started working on it and we were like, Wow, this is so tragic and terrible, but an interesting story nonetheless.

Okay, and definitely, I just want to say at the beginning of this, I have a few like mental health things that I'm going to plug at the end. So definitely stay tuned for those outlets. Okay, so we're going to be talking about Hayward Bissell today and the murder of Patricia Booher.

It is a particularly gruesome one, so just please be warned. So, Hayward? William Bissell was born March 28th, 1962, in New London, Ohio. I think I had said, you did like an Ohio case recently, and I was like, Oh my god, my next one is Ohio. Oh yeah, but I ended up doing something before that.

So this is the Ohio one, Yeah, this is the one I was talking about. But Hayward was the second of three children born to Howard and Magdalena, better known as Maggie Bissell. Altogether, though, there were four children in the house. Actually, because Maggie had brought a son from her previous marriage, now Howard. He spent almost 20 years serving in the U.S. Army before finally getting discharged, and that's when the family settled down in Ohio.

Okay, now? Once they were kind of settled, he went to work at the Ford Plant in Sandusky. And from the sounds of it, Maggie stayed at home and raised the kids. And I'm sure she definitely had her hands full, and she definitely did, actually, because, by most accounts, Hayward was a pretty difficult child from an early age. A family member recalled his childhood and told reporters He was always griping. He griped as a child and he griped as an adult.

Fun, yeah. According to more family members, he also had a constant struggle with authority, whether it was an authority figure at home, at school, at work. He just did not want to deal with and would not deal with any kind of authority. That's not easy to deal with.

No, and it was probably for that very reason that it made it really difficult for him to hold down a job. The family later said. He abhors work and avoids working. Wow, and his attitude made it so that he was constantly involved in some kind of conflict, some kind of argument, always had an issue with somebody.

And that person, usually, for like the first half of his life, was his father. Their relationship, for probably that reason, and I'm sure many others, was very, very strained. There was a lot of different reports about Hayward's childhood, but a lot of them were kind of unreliable because they all said different things. But that speculation does make a bit of sense that there was issues with the father. And one relative wondered if Hayward's behavioral problems could have come from, or at the very least been exacerbated by quote, a couple of minor accidents as a child that might have resulted in concussions.

That's always a trigger. I feel, yeah, but I mean, he must have been growing up in what the late 60s, early 70s. So I don't think they had a great understanding of what that did or what that could do. I mean, up until very recently, they would tell you to wake the kid up every hour when they hit their head, right?

And now they tell you something totally different. Oh, I didn't even realize that. Yeah, that changed as well. Like, obviously, I'm sure there's different things, but like, they tell you to, like, just make sure that they rouse correctly. But you don't need to wake them up, especially not for, like, a minor head knock, you know, that makes sense.

We were always like, so crazy. Like whenever the kids would like bump their head, we'd be like, we need to wake them up every 20 minutes. I don't blame you, though, because it's like, Yeah, it's scary. Yeah, you're nervous, exactly, especially a new parent. You're like Jesus.

Oh yeah, trailing off well, in general, like, if you think your kid whacked their head hard enough, that's really nerve wracking. And in fact, I'm about to say something about that. There you go.

There was one incident in particular where he had fallen so hard that afterwards, he told a family member he got down on his knees and saw a bright light. That's how hard he had fallen. So that's like, definitely concussion territory, it's pretty hard, at the very least.

Yeah, if that was one concussion of many. The mental illness that kind of plagued his life afterwards, and especially when he was an adult, I think could have started in early childhood. Yeah, there certainly could have been a correlation. Who's to say so? By the time he reached high school, Hayward had a reputation as a difficult and sort of hot and cold student.

And I think this was definitely during a time where people did not understand mental health struggles. Yeah, and it was it seemed very clear that he was struggling mentally. But it's just like he's lazy, he's lazy.

He doesn't like authority, he doesn't like this, and I think had he gotten help, I don't think this story would have played out the way that it did. That's sad. But the thing was, if he was interested in the subject, he would actually do pretty well in the class.

But if he didn't care or wasn't interested in the subject, he would just mess around. He would distract people in the class and he'd end up failing or just getting kicked out. Okay, so he ended up dropping out after his sophomore year, which probably had something to do with his increasingly heavy drug use and alcohol abuse around that same time.

And that's another thing that I think again exacerbated the issues that probably were already there, for sure now. In 1979, when he was 18, he enlisted in the army and at first he was stationed in Cleveland, Ohio, but he did eventually get transferred to Germany. Which is weird.

Oh yeah, Joe Matheny, you were just talking about that, and he probably didn't get stationed in Germany, yeah.

We don't think he did, at least Hayward did. Oh, that's wild. And Joe Matheny's childhood was very like. I'm not sure exactly what happened because there's different reports, too. It's interesting.

It's interesting, yeah, and they are both very. they end up both being very brutal people. Yeah, exactly. But it was there in Germany that he trained, as this is really cool in my opinion, a motor transport operator and a rifleman.

But strangely enough, Hayward, he didn't seem to struggle with authority as much when he was in the army. I don't know if I don't really know why that was, Yeah, that's strange, but who's to say?

Who's to say? I don't know if it was just one of those things where he was like, I have to do this, I don't really have a choice, I know.

I just got to get through it and I might as well do it. Or if it was because he was interested in what he was working on, that could have been it, maybe exactly.

I think it was probably all the structure involved, I think, if there's structure, that tends to help. But not only was he staying out of trouble at this point in his life, but he was actually succeeding in ways that he never had before. The more and more I'm talking about this, it is kind of reminding me of Joe Matheny, Yeah.

He ended up being honored two times with the Army Achievement Medal for excelling in specialties. Wow. And unfortunately, though, his positive experiences in the army would be short-lived. And really, the first and only time in his life where he wasn't involved in any kind of conflict or some kind of trouble. Oh, that sucks, but it's so sad because it's clear that obviously he could succeed in some areas.

That's why none of these things you can really not make sense, heads or tails of these kind of stories. Because it's like, would it have stopped you, would it not have? What would have taken? To put you on the right path? Is there a right path for you?

These kind of things are always just like, huh? I wonder? It's one of those things where you can argue nature, you can argue nurture. It's all speculation. They're both at play.

Yeah, it's all speculation, exactly, because who are we to say, who's to say?

I'm not an armchair expert like Dax Shepard, exactly neither am I, but I do love that show. Another great podcast recommendation.

True, same, but anyways. In 1985, Hayward was actually honorably discharged, and he went back home to Ohio, where he got a job. Working as a security guard at a factory in Toledo. Which is really fun to say, Toledo, Toledo.

He got another gig after that, working at the Fanny Farmer Candy Factory in Norwalk. And it wasn't long before he met a lady that struck his fancy. Her name was Sherry Brown. And they got married very quickly. And after they got married, they moved to Norwalk, Ohio, and a year later they had a child together, a daughter named Crystal.

Trigger warning coming up for domestic violence? Ooh, the newlywed period where you're just happy to be husband and wife and everything is beautiful. La-dee-da-doo. It did not last long for them. Just one year after Crystal was born, Hayward started verbally and physically abusing Sherry. That's fucked up.

Which, like, I can't imagine. You just have a baby with someone you think you're in love with, and then that's when they start being cruel to you, like, that's when the facade drops. That's awful. But things actually got so bad that she filed for and was awarded a restraining order against Hayward. But she ended up dropping the order just eight days after it was granted. And she did go back. I'm sure she was very scared.

Yeah, of course, you never know those situations, no? And according to her brother, Leonard, the abuse only got worse after the restraining order was lifted. He told a reporter from the Sandusky Register I know he was very dominating. Speaking about Hayward, he made my sister eat food from the floor like a dog.

Oh my God, he beat her. He used to do lots of weird stuff. And what's really sad is during this time, her own family was having a hard time believing her about everything that was happening. I think, because it was so extreme that they were like, what?

And was he putting on like a good front for them? I think he must have been. I'm sure he was able to. Exactly, Oh God, that's awful. So they weren't believing the details of the abuse necessarily.

And it was only after Hayward ended up being arrested that they realized Sherry was telling them the truth the entire time. Oh God, and that poor baby, that poor baby having to grow up in that environment. I didn't find anything to say that she was involved the baby, and I can only hope that she wasn't well. I feel so bad for both of them, for Sherry too, because it's like, I'm sure Sherry just wanted to protect that baby and it's like an impossible situation.

Exactly.

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So in January of 1989, she did file for another restraining order. After an argument. Got so bad that he slapped her across the face and ended up throwing her into the refrigerator. Not like inside of it, but like onto it. You have to be like, such a huge piece of shit to abuse your spouse 100 like, like.

Obviously you have to be a huge piece of shit to abuse anybody. But like someone you're married to, I'm like, What the fuck is wrong with you? Like, you took vows to accept them for who they are, to love them no matter what. And you can't handle your own, your own anger, like you, you're, you're that fucking. It's just like, grow up, no. Learn to manage your own emotions.

There, buddy, go get help if you're having a problem regulating your emotions, you know that, like, you realize that inside of yourself and you need to go get help. And you need to come up with like ways to, you know, handle, like, regulate it. Go take a walk outside, go do something. Count to 10, like, figure out ways that work for you to calm it down before you lose it on someone. Because that's not cool in any sense of the word.

That's why I personally feel like everybody should just go to therapy. Because you figure out ways to calm yourself down before you even know that you're pissed off about something truly, you know, it makes sense, but it's so sad.

She in the affidavit filed, Sherry wrote He slapped me and I started to scream, then he pushed me up against the wall and hit both sides of my head. I got in the shower and told him to leave me alone. He slapped me again on the side of the head and banged my head against the shower and knocked me down. Like, this is what he's doing to his wife.

Well, that's the thing. I'm just picturing her like this is the person that you love and a love enough to like, welcome a baby into the world.

That stuff always really stresses me out to hear, because it's just like, I can't. Like the fear that must come with that and the loneliness, like, I can't imagine the fear, the loneliness. The lack of trust that you would have in your next relationship if you even trusted somebody enough to get into one a second time?

I just feel bad that anybody goes through that, it's just fucked up. But so she ended up filing for another restraining order, like I said, and this time, once it was granted. She had no fucking intention of dropping it or going back. Good for her.

And she was going to up the ante this time because she filed for divorce. Good now. At first, when he was served the divorce papers, Hayward was in shock. Yeah, I'm like, you were really, you were really shocked by this news.

He told Sherry's brother, Leonard I can't understand, after so many years of loving her, why she wants to divorce me. Like, you have been married three years and it sounds like you made a majority of those years a living hell for her. Like you did not love her. Love is not hitting somebody repeatedly in the face.

And also he was trying to kind of like, fuck with her name. And he was constantly accusing her of having an affair with one of her friends, and she was like, I'm not having an affair. And another report made to the Norwalk police. Leonard, her brother there, claimed Hayward is telling people in front of me and to me that Sherry is gay. And she left him for another woman, a woman which I can say she's not what the fuck like.

Why are you just making random stuff up about her, like, just go your separate ways, man, that's the thing. But either way, regardless of all his protests and claims of Sherry being stepping out on him and everything. The divorce was granted on March 29th, 1989, and luckily, Sherry was awarded full custody of Crystal.

I was going to say, I'm very glad that she was able to get out of there. Because sometimes that is the most dangerous, most of the time, that is the most dangerous part of the whole thing absolutely is when you file exactly.

Or when you plan to. Well, what makes me sad is so she did get full custody of Crystal. But a few weeks after everything was finalized, the agreement was modified. And Hayward actually ended up getting granted custody on alternate weekends and holidays, which she must have been terrified to send her daughter over there. How do you let a child be with any person who is violent, especially toward women?

That's the thing, and it's his daughter, and it's a daughter, it's like, no matter what, of which way it goes. If that other person is violent and has been proven to be violent, they should not be able to be around that child. Unless it's supervised. And like, they're in a program, getting help.

Exactly so. The divorce seemed to settle the conflict between Sherry and Hayward. I think they must have just gone their separate ways and kind of let the court handle it from the sounds of it, which I think, in that situation, was the best way to go. But at the same time, it definitely marked a downward spiral for Hayward into more violence, more bizarre behavior that hinted at bigger mental health problems to come. In 1990, his parents moved from Ohio to Florida. And their relationship for like the past couple years with him had gotten increasingly strained, especially leading up to their move.

But at the same time, they were also the only people he had to lean on when it came to managing his symptoms, and his symptoms were getting worse and worse. So once they were gone, the changes in him were completely undeniable. And his life it just became like a series of bizarre events, threatening events. He was having violent exchanges with people, acquaintances, friends, doctors, strangers, sometimes oof.

And he didn't really have anybody around him at this point to, like, get him into a program. I was going to say, because it sounds like it's really tanking here, it's getting worse now. It was during this time that he was like, I'm saying, right now, showing decline.

And in late 1991, his landlord at the Dreamland motel, where he ended up living, called the police and reported that Hayward made multiple strange and frightening threats. According to the landlord, Hayward stole the landlord's mail and cut it up into little pieces. And he said he did this because he was convinced that his landlord was returning his mail, like Hayward's mail to the Post Office. And the landlord was like, No, I'm not doing that at all, like I haven't touched his mail.

See, and it's these kind of things, these like strange behaviors, that are always the things that it's like you wish someone's radar would go up. But again, and especially in this country, mental health is not where it needs to be like, to be remedied. You know what I mean, like, it's not easy to get resources.

It's stigmatized, it's like it still sucks, people don't want to admit sometimes what they're going through because of the stigmas. And not everyone has access to the help they need, or the help that would stop somebody from going down these kind of paths. And sadly, right now, especially like in America, we're in such a mental health crisis right now.

Oh yeah, after the pandemic, beds aren't available, psychiatrists aren't available. It's fucked, it's sad.

Yeah, it really is. I really hope that some of the sources that I ended up putting in the bottom. If anybody is going through something, I hope that they can find help there. Because I feel like therapists are probably overrun right now. Oh yeah, you know what I mean?

I can't imagine how their mental health is going like with their caseloads. You know, exactly my therapist that I used to see said that she had a therapist herself. Oh, I'm sure. And like, I can't imagine having to take on all of those problems and then be like, and like, not internalize them, you know?

But during this incident, where the cutting up of the mail was going on, the landlord called his wife into the room to be a witness of the exchange. And at that point, Hayward told the couple, And this is like, racist, so trigger warning, he said. I don't like people from foreign countries. I'm going to kill one of them, when it gets dark, I'm going to hurt somebody.

I'm going to hurt them or their children. So that's when the landlord called the police. Oh, thank goodness, they took that step, yeah. But shortly before this incident with his landlord, Hayward's second wife, Teresa, she started noticing a dramatic shift in his behavior because he got married a second time.

They got married in 1991, and just after the wedding, like he had with his first wife, he started abusing her, getting argumentative, picking fights, and then started making weird threats, or just being generally menacing. Now, weirdly, the abusive behavior was not the main cause for the end of their relationship. What really ended the relationship was Hayward's slow shift toward isolation. And he was becoming, like, very obsessive about his environment. He wanted to control everything in the environment, according to Teresa Hayward quote. Got to where he never wanted to go out, and he was very particular about putting things where they belonged.

He wanted everything done in his way. So they went their separate ways because of this, but they actually never formally divorced. Oh, wow, isn't that interesting? yeah.

They were technically still married, but very much separated when Hayward started dating Patricia Bewer years later, so in the years that followed the breakdown of Hayward's second marriage. And kind of, like the incidents where he was living, he was hospitalized for mental health treatment several times. And quote, with the diagnosis usually listed as paranoid schizophrenia, which is really sad. His symptoms almost always included acute paranoia, and he believed that people were either watching him, following him or bugging his apartment. That's so scary it is.

In one of the instances, he told doctors quote he had been given truth serum and a shot, and in candy. And then in another, he told his doctors he believed that quote. His alarm clock and his mind were being controlled by satellites and said that certain people in town were trying to bite off his penis. Wow, so he was really, really going through it. But the thing was more often than not, the periods where he was hospitalized, they were him volunteering to get help and going into these programs.

The first move was initiated by Hayward himself, and it was amazing that he was willing to get help. But because of the state of his mental health, he didn't always want to stay. Once he got there, and while the doctors maybe wanted him to stay longer, there wasn't a lot they could do back then, because all of this was a voluntary basis. And what only exacerbated things further was that he was prescribed medicine to manage his symptoms. But he didn't always take it consistently. Because he doesn't have, like an aide that lives with him, he doesn't have a doctor that's coming out to check on him routinely, it's just him.

Or just anyone that's like around him, taking care of that. Yeah, he doesn't have anybody. So that was obviously going to lead to a lot of bigger issues. This whole story is really sad for everybody involved. Yeah, truly.

Now, in the late 90s, he was living in Greenwich, Ohio, and he was having a lot of run-ins with the police. I think it's Greenwich, it might be Greenwich, but I said, Greenwich, yeah, because we have Greenwich here.

We do, yeah. So he was having frequent run-ins with the police during this time. There was a lot of sudden outbursts, there was a lot of inappropriate behavior going on.

And he actually got to know the police chief, Randall Kilgore, pretty well, and because of this, Randall actually recognized Hayward's symptoms of mental illness. And I think he kind of, like, would keep tabs on him a little more because he knew that he was by himself now. On one occasion, Hayward walked into this officer's office and reported that something evil had taken hold of him. He said he couldn't tell the chief what it was because it was quote unquote, confidential.

And that was actually his second run-in with Hayward that same day. The first run-in was when Hayward was discovered sitting in the front seat of the mayor's car in the City Hall parking lot. Oh my, so clearly this was escalating, yeah.

And the thing was, for the most part, aside from the struggles within the marriage and the domestic abuse afterwards. His behavior was strange and it was off-putting for residents in the small town, but it was usually just minor disturbances that were going on. But in December of 1998, that all changed when police in Newark, Ohio, received a call about a man with a gun causing problems at a place called Nick's Saloon. Oh boy, now. When the officers arrived at the bar, they were approached by a man who said somebody else in the parking lot had been following his car closely for miles and he didn't know why.

Now, when they approached the driver of the other vehicle, it turned out to be Hayward Bissell. And he told the officers he couldn't tell them why he was following this man, he said again, it's confidential. Oh boy, so in his mind, he was on these like missions, basically.

But obviously, it was due to the schizophrenia that he was suffering from, so in the spring of 1999, he was hospitalized again after a small fire on the stove of his apartment set off the fire alarms in that apartment in Greenwich. And he told the investigators he had been smoking pot and that interacted with his already prescribed medication. And the fire started because he fell asleep with a pot still on the stove. Now, when he woke up, whatever was in the pot had caught fire and he ended up with a burn on his arm.

So he got treated for the burn, and while he was being treated, he definitely seemed to be kind of out of it. And the doctors were very concerned about his behavior, so he got admitted for a psychiatric evaluation and treatment now, during this inpatient stay, Hayward told his doctors that it was actually federal agents that had set fire in his apartment.

And he said that the government was taking away his special powers. He's starting to really go through it. But sadly, that was another short stay in the hospital that didn't really do much to alleviate his symptoms. And in no time, he was out again and left to his own devices. Now, later that spring, one of his former girlfriends actually introduced him to a woman named Patricia, better known as Patti Buer.

Like Hayward, she had a pretty difficult life in her case, though, it was for very different reasons. She grew up in Olena, Ohio, and she spent a lot of her early years surrounded by family, but she did not come from the best family. One of her family members was sexually abusing her until the abuse was discovered and they went to prison for it.

But at school and in the community, she was very well liked. She did struggle with cognitive impairments, and at school she was identified as a student with special needs. So she had people at school and in the community that looked out for her a little bit more. But because of what she felt like were impairments, she was self-conscious and kind of shy around other people. Now, as she got older, she became a lot more scared of men, in particular, I think because of what she had gone through.

Her diaries from the mid to late 90s suggest that she'd gone through a lot of traumatic events. That caused her to form these negative associations with men and intimacy and all that kind of stuff. Now, those negative experiences were probably triggered again in 1994, when her father, Vernon, was arrested for sexually abusing two girls that lived nearby. He was a terrible, terrible man, he literally had bad to the bone tattooed on his forehead. And when he got arrested, it was almost like he was proud to admit what he had done.

Oh, that's fucking disgusting, fucking horrible. Throw him in a dank cave. And it's unclear whether or not he had sexually abused Patti as well. But either way, his behavior had to have made her fears and her trauma even worse. Um, when he was evaluated for a sex offender treatment program, this is how much of a monster he was.

He failed to meet the criteria quote because he did not have the mental capacity to meaningfully engage in it. What, like they couldn't, they were like he cannot be helped, like he needs to be in prison.

Wow, he cannot be reformed. Wow, that's how fucked up this is. That's horrifying.

Now at the same time. So Patti had all these diary entries where there was a clear, clear signs that she was like, very afraid of men and nervous about intimacy and stuff like that. Yeah, but at the same time, there were other ones where she was longing for affection and attention from a partner. Like, of course, because she probably just wanted it to feel like, like, feel right.

Yeah, like, exactly feel right. She was like, I want this, but I but not like this, and this is all she's ever really known is people taking advantage of her.

But unfortunately, and I mean, most likely because of the trauma that she'd experienced. She kind of struggled when it came to distinguishing positive attention from negative. And she had a tendency to put this, had a tendency to put her in the company of abusive or manipulative men. That's sad. It is her aunt Betty.

But people took advantage of that. Of course, absolutely. It's fucked up, yeah.

Her aunt, Betty would later say she was never a very good judge of character when it came to boyfriends. And it's like, I just wish that she had more people to help her out, you know, more people for backup being like, Hey, I don't know about that one, yeah. But by December 1999, Patty had been dating Hayward for a few months and she was feeling very optimistic about their future.

She wrote in one diary entry There is a man in my life that I love with all my heart and soul. But then she goes on in other entries to say things about them. Hadn't been going so well lately, around this December 1999 period. And she was wondering at this point if it was time for them to split up. Oh, geez. But she, almost always, she almost seemed like empowered.

In later entries, when she wanted to get away from Hayward, it was like she wanted more for herself. And she was. It almost seemed like she was realizing that she could get more for herself and convincing herself that she was worth it. Yeah, she said. I can't go on depressed anymore.

I feel like I have received a wonderful blessing, I'm in touch with myself now. Aw, so it seemed like she was kind of getting there, yeah.

Now, by the winter, she was still unsure about her relationship with Hayward. On one hand, she was very determined to build a positive future for herself. That didn't involve volatile or abusive men or people taking advantage of her. Yeah, but then, on the other hand, she still wanted a partner, she still wanted somebody to love her.

And she also really wanted to start a family, which is awful. And the latter feeling, I think, definitely explains why she was hesitant to break things off with Hayward. Yeah, but still, the fact that the relationship was having struggles was clear, especially to her family. One of her cousins, Rebecca, later pointed out Usually when she had a boyfriend, she would bring him over here.

She never brought him over here talking about Hayward, Yeah. In the six months that Patti and Hayward Bissell dated. Multiple, multiple of her friends and acquaintances warned her that he did have a history of erratic, threatening and violent behavior. And they were like, We're worried about you, yeah.

But she was either unable to or didn't want to see these issues. She was very committed to making things work, and by January 2000, she was even more determined to make things work. Because she had achieved her dream of starting a family. She was pregnant now, on January 22nd, she called a ton of her friends to let them know that she was pregnant, that she and Hayward were expecting.

They were more than likely confused and very concerned about this because things weren't going well at this point. Patti had actually told him told her friends on numerous occasions right before this that she was planning on breaking things off with him. Yeah, he was controlling, he was critical.

He was abusive to her at times, and she was usually afraid of him. Oh, that's awful. So her friends were really worried. But every time she tried to break things off, he would do something, say something that convinced her to stay.

And now there was another person involved in all of this, so she wanted to make this work now. This is where the story kind of gets a little bit confusing. It's kind of unclear what happened here because they go on a road trip. So what we can assume is that Hayward must have wanted to tell his parents the news in person.

And he told them that he and his girlfriend, Patti were going to take a trip down to Florida to see them. They actually hadn't seen Hayward in like five years at this point. Oh, wow. And they didn't know why he was coming to see them. They just all of a sudden heard that he was coming and they were excited to see him.

OK, Hayward, excuse me, Howard. The father later told the Sandusky Register We expected him to visit, but he never showed. Hmm. So later, while he was being held at the county jail, Hayward would tell investigators that Patti didn't know where they were going. She just knew they were going for a drive.

Oh, geez, so she wasn't prepared. Remember, they're in Ohio and they're driving to Florida. She wasn't prepared for this and she's pregnant.

So they left Ohio on the afternoon of January 22nd, and that day they made it as far as Chattanooga, Tennessee. And that night, they stopped for the night at a motel. But they didn't have any money to pay for a room, so they slept in their car in the parking lot, OK?

Now, the next morning, they woke up to some pretty gnarly weather. There was an ice storm the night before that had passed through, so everything was covered in a thin sheet of ice. Which was going to make the drive more dangerous to finish, and because of that, Hayward was very on edge.

Yeah, because he was, like, irritated about the weather conditions, and to make things worse, he was already irritated before this with Patti. He was mad because she hadn't brought any money along for the trip. I'm sorry, dude.

What the fuck are you doing? And also, you didn't tell her that you were going on a trip, She had no idea where you were going. He thought you were going on a drive. She probably thought you were going to get fucking ice cream or something.

Like?

What the hell she was not prepared for this? No, of course not, but I think he must have been in a mental state where that was not computing.

Like, this was all just a disaster, truly a traumatic disaster. But again, she didn't even know they were going to be gone overnight. So he's mad that she doesn't have money.

He's mad about the weather conditions and he just starts driving kind of aimlessly. He was looking for a Western union so that he could ask his parents to send money so that they could finish their drive.

She struck him with her motor vehicle, she had been under the influence, and then she left him there. In January 2022, local woman Karen Reed was implicated in the mysterious death of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe. It was alleged that after an innocent night out for drinks with friends, Karen and John got into a lover's quarrel en route to the next location. What happens next depends on who you ask.

Was it a crime of passion? If you believe the prosecution, it's because the evidence was so compelling. This was clearly an intentional act. And his cause of death was blunt force trauma with hypothermia or a corrupt police cover-up?

If you believe the defense theory, however, this was all a cover-up to prevent one of their own from going down. Everyone had an opinion and after the 10-week trial, the jury could not come to a unanimous decision to end in a mistrial. It's just a confirmation of just how complicated this case is. Law and Crime presents the most in-depth analysis to date of the sensational case in Karen.

You can listen to Karen exclusively with Wondery Plus. join Wondery Plus in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York. I was like, at my locker and she came up to me and she was like, stuttering, super bad.

I'm like, stop around, she's like, I can't. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast, it's like doubling and tripling, and it's all these girls with a diagnosis.

The state tried to keep on the down-low. Everybody thought I was holding something back. well, you were holding something back intentionally. Yeah, yeah, well, yeah.

No, it's hysteria, it's all in your head, it's not physical. Oh my gosh, you're exaggerating. Is this the largest mass hysteria since the Witches of Salem?

Or is it something else entirely? Something's wrong here, something's not right. Leroy was the new dateline, and everyone was trying to solve the murder. A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios. Hysterical.

Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app, or wherever you get your podcasts. you can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.

Now, eventually, they reach Somerville, Georgia. It's a small town not too far from the Alabama border, and it was there that they stopped for coffee at a burger king around 7.30 in the morning. And when Hayward pulled up to the drive-thru window, he asked the lady at the register whether there was a flea market in town where he could buy. Quote weapons, guns, knives and stuff. Oh.

And she told him that there was a flea market, but that they didn't sell weapons at the market. And she said, you could probably kind of find something of that sort at the local pawn shop, like one of the pawn shops. What a strange interaction. Yeah, I can't imagine at 7.30 in the morning being asked that question. I can't imagine being asked that question really, ever.

No, and especially not at a burger king. No, definitely not fucking love burger King. But he told her a pawn shop would take too long to deal with.

So she was like, Okay, I would try maybe one of the markets just over the border, yeah, Alabama. I don't know what to tell you guys exactly. She's like, I'm just here to give you coffee.

So she was like, Yeah, like, cross the border. In Alabama, find one of the markets. Here's some kind of rough directions now. After that, Hayward drove around for a while until he spotted a woman who was driving a green Nissan Maxima. And for some reason, he started following her as she drove. And then she pulled into her driveway at her house, and he pulled in closely behind her and just sat there with the car idling in the driveway.

So the woman kind of called out to them and was like, Hey, like, do you need help? Like, what's going on? But he just sat in the car, just staring at her, not saying anything, and she was like, What do you guys want? And finally, Hayward said that they were lost.

But just as he was about to say something else, the woman's cat tried to get out of her house, so she reached down to grab the cat. And she just went back inside and, like, locked the door and didn't come back out. I think she was, and that's why she was like that. I almost think she was like, Okay, I think this happened for a reason. Let me go inside.

Yeah, let me go inside. It's something between us here, something about this interaction. Didn't feel right, it wouldn't feel right to me, wouldn't feel right to me.

So Hayward and Patty sat in the stranger's driveway for a couple more minutes, and then Hayward just randomly pulled back out and started heading back. The same way that they had come. So now they're backtracking. He never said why he followed this woman or what his plan was, but I guess it's possible that he just needed directions. I also think it's possible that he was going to hurt her. I could see either thing happening.

This is just scary in all ways. Yeah, it's scary. I don't like it. I thought you were saying, It's scary in all ways. Oh, I was waiting.

In all ways, it's scary, it's fucking terrifying. So the woman at the Burger King, like I said, she kind of just gave him general directions to find the market. But now, at this point, he's probably forgotten what she even said. He has no idea where he's going and he's only getting more and more pissed off being lost. I was going to say, he's getting more angry.

Exactly so. Eventually, they made their way back to Somerville, Georgia, where Hayward stopped the car in the middle of an intersection and just sat there again with the engine idling. So two women, who happened to be out for a walk, went up to the car and said, like, Oh, like, do you need any help? like you're idling in an intersection?

Yeah, exactly. And he said, No, I don't need any help. I'm letting the transmission cool down in the middle of an intersection. And they were like, Okie, Dokie, we're going to go about our way.

Yeah, but later, those women would tell investigators that during this exchange, Patty looked very upset. They said that she was huddled up in the passenger seat and she looked like she'd been crying. Oh, that breaks my heart, it breaks my heart.

The story I told you is gut-wrenching. Multiple other people that same day would report having strange interactions with Hayward that afternoon. And it was especially while he was driving around the Somerville area. He was just stopping at various points to get coffee and asking bizarre questions, or doing bizarre things, stopping to use the bathroom and doing the same thing. And then around 3 p...m. He became very suspicious of Patty and he demanded to know, he said to her, Are you 007 or the devil? Oh, no.

Yeah, this is a huge break in reality, it's a very, very big break in reality. And by that point, it was clear he had come to believe that Patty was either a double agent. This is a quote quote, a double agent, or a black witch like, meaning dabbling in, like the Black arts. And at this point, he was determined to quote unquote. Get rid of her, Oh, no.

So shortly after accusing her of being a witch, he claimed that he asked Patty if she knew where they were, and she answered, telling him that they were in Georgia. And at that point, he absolutely lost it on her. He went full break from reality. It's going to get really intense here if you want to tap out of this, I understand.

Here we go. At that point, all of a sudden, he just reached into the back seat, grabbed a knife from the floor and cut Patty's throat. Oh, just that abruptly, out of absolutely nowhere.

And he would later tell his cellmate I was just following orders, I was her supervisor, She was lying, so I terminated her. Oh boy, like he did not have any understanding.

Oh my god, this is awful, it's horrible. But the murder set Hayward Bissell off on what he described to his cellmate as a rampage. Like, we're not even done yet. The autopsy findings would later note that Patty's lower right leg was severed at the knee. Her left hand was severed at the wrist.

Oh my God. And quote. Portions of her left, lung, liver and stomach were removed, removed, removed. The cause of death was the sharp force injury to her neck, meaning the first attack is what killed her, and everything else happened after she'd been killed.

So she didn't have to experience it, experience that, luckily, but her body did now. The autopsy also noted more than 30 stab wounds to her eyes, her eyes, the bridge of her nose and several sharp force injuries to her chest.

He was gone at this point, like, on another level, yeah, that's wow. And later, when the crime scene technicians processed this vehicle, they found blood on nearly every surface of the interior. I believe that, and there were even spots on the exterior of the car.

Now, they think the murder most likely took place in the parking lot of the discount food mart Food Mart. Excuse me, in Fort Payne, Alabama, which is a small town that is just across the border from Georgia. That afternoon, two men were leaving the store parking lot and they saw Hayward outside of the car with his doors open. And they said he stared at them menacingly as they drove past. And just as they were by the side of Bissell's car, he grabbed Patty's head up by the hair, held it up. And they said as though he were proud to display what he had done. What the fuck, yeah, are you kidding me?

No.

Oh, this is really bad. This sounds like a horror movie. I was gonna say, This literally sounds like a horror movie. This is awful. It's just so sad.

Now, obviously they were shocked and terrified and sped the fuck out of there, so obviously Patty's murder was completely senseless, insanely brutal. And both of those factors suggest that Hayward Bissell had become dangerously paranoid at this point. Like we've said this whole time, it reached a breaking point on this day now. Even what he did in the aftermath shows that he was not operating under a sane mind. He believed that he needed to report what he had done to Patty, to his supervisors. So he strapped Patty back into the passenger seat and left that food mart parking lot and headed in the direction of Georgia.

He drove about 12 miles until he got to the small town of Mentone, Alabama, and there he pulled into a stranger's driveway and just got out of the car. Oh God, now. It was January 23rd, it was one day after he had left, and James and Sue Pumphrey were at their home in Mentone. Multiple people in their neighborhood, actually, that day, had lost power and water from the ice storms that I had talked about.

They lost power, actually, the night before. So James and Sue had spent their afternoon cleaning, collecting and distributing plastic jugs of water to their neighbors that afternoon. And they got all the water from a nearby natural spring. Like, just went out and did that for their community, that's so sweet. So when Hayward, a total stranger to them, pulled into the driveway, their two dogs started losing it. And James looked out the window to see what was going on. And he said, That's when he saw this large man coming up the driveway toward the house. Now, he would have never opened the door if he actually had a very clear view of Hayward, who was completely blood-soaked. But he didn't see that.

And again, he also especially wouldn't have opened the door to somebody who had rammed open the gate at the end of the driveway. Oh, is that what he did? That's what he did. But from where he was standing, James didn't see either of those things. So being the kind and helpful person he was, he stepped out onto the porch to offer this stranger help. Just thinking like, Oh, maybe this is someone in my neighborhood that needs something. Maybe they heard we're handing out water and they need some, you know?

So the first thing that struck James and his wife, Sue as unusual was how aggravated the dogs were by this man's presence. There were two chocolate labs and they always liked people, They never showed aggression to strangers. Labs will always tell you, they will always tell you.

They will always tell you if it's a bad person, and they sure did. James was shocked when Hayward got close and one of the labs actually snapped at him. Oh, see, they don't fuck around.

Like, the dogs had never done that before. And he was like, Oh, this makes me nervous. That's why I love my little girls, because they will always tell you who's a bad person. Exactly. I love them so much. But from what James could see from the porch, it just looked like. Or it looked like Hayward had struck back hard at the dog and sent her running back in the direction of the house.

So he spun around to see what had happened and called out to Hayward, Did my dog bite you? Like? He was like, What the fuck is going on? When he turned back around, Hayward was standing right in front of him and just punched him in the stomach. Oh my God, just out of nowhere.

He later, James later told reporters Because just know he survives this attack, which is insane. He said His hands were so big, I didn't even see the knife. He stabbed him, so he had stabbed him, he'd stabbed him.

Holy shit, everything happened so fast. He didn't even realize that he'd been stabbed until he looked down and saw that blood was pouring out of his stomach. My God. So he backed up toward the front door and Hayward continued walking towards him, but just then the wife, Sue, called out, and it actually distracted Hayward for a second.

So he James screams to his wife to stay where she is. Oh my God. But just as he was doing that, the dogs ran out to the porch and they started attacking Hayward, protecting their owners. Of course, because he hurt his person, I do want to give you a trigger warning for animal abuse.

So James and Sue, they were able to close their door and they were able to protect themselves. But now Hayward was left outside with their two dogs. Oh no. While he fought off the dogs, James managed to get a rifle and actually fired a warning shot before aiming the gun at Hayward. So he gave him a warning.

But now Hayward had opened up the front door and was standing in front of the couple at this point. So James later said, I fired once, then I pointed it at him and it jammed, Oh my God. Because I was like, Honestly, I'm so glad he's armed right now, he said. You come any closer and I'll kill you.

And then he said that Hayward started hollering, Don't shoot me and ran off, Okay, you just stabbed him, you just pulled, you broke through his, you drove your car through his front gate.

You stabbed him, you hurt one of his dogs, you started fighting his dogs, and now you're standing in his living room and he has no fucking idea who you are. But once Hayward left, the couple was able to survey the damage of what had gone on. James had a large knife wound to his stomach and was still bleeding heavily.

And their dogs, Reese and Coco, had been killed, Hayward killed these two dogs. Are you fucking kidding me? James actually had to be hospitalized twice due to this attack, and he ended up being out of work for months afterwards.

And on top of that, they were incredibly traumatized. I can't even imagine this just happened randomly, out of the blue. Sue later said. I'll never forget his face and I'll never forget his eyes. That's what caught my attention.

With everything going on so quickly, his eyes were just unreal. It was like he didn't have a soul. Oh my god, that's so terrifying. But they credit their survival entirely to Reese and Coco.

I was literally just going to say, What an awful end to this. But it would have been much worse if those dogs weren't there. Absolutely, those dogs, like, protected their lives, saved their lives.

Like, they saved them and stopped him briefly, like, Yeah, it's insane. I wish that they had, like, not been killed, I wish they'd survived. But Sue said, If it weren't for our dogs, we wouldn't be here.

They saved our lives, they were our angels. That's going to make me cry. I know I hated that I had to include that, especially when you have two labs.

But Hayward Bissell left the Pumphrey's driveway and headed out to Alabama Highway 117, heading towards Georgia. So he is in this state of mind. Still, he has killed his girlfriend, who is still in the car, who's still in the car. He has killed two dogs, attacked a man, and is back out on the road.

So it was late afternoon when he drove up behind Rhea and Donald Perch, They were a couple driving through Menton on their way home. Rhea Perch barely even noticed the Lincoln Town car that was riding their bumper until she felt their car get bumped from behind. Oh, Jesus. So she figured the other driver must have just hit a patch of black ice.

Because, remember Ice Storm? Yeah? And she figured, Oh, it was just an accident. So she pulled off to the side of the road and started getting out of the car. When her husband stopped her and said he would get out to exchange information with the other driver. So she rummaged through the glove compartment as Donald walked around to the driver's side window.

And then, inside of the car, she felt another jolt and heard quote a sickening crunch as Don began to shout. When she looked up, she saw her husband holding on to the hood of the lincoln that had bumped them and the driver was speeding off. Oh my god. It turned out that the bumper of Hayward's car had struck Donald in the legs, which made it so that he couldn't fall beneath the car.

Luckily, luckily, he was able to grab the hood and pull himself up onto it. Oh my God, so he's literally holding on to this man's car.

He said I was two feet from his face, yelling, Stop, stop, what are you doing? why are you doing this? all while he drove me about 200 feet down the road, What the fuck?

He is holding on to this man's car for dear life. He was just driving with his wife a minute ago. Just my God, normal day.

So, in response to Donald's yelling, apparently this is what Donald said. Hayward only stared at him and gave him an obscene hand gesture. What the fuck like, he is not here right now. Then he jerked the steering wheel, which sent Donald flying off the hood of the car to land in a ditch. Months later, he recounted Donald recounted the story for a local paper and told them At first I thought he was just mad.

But when I looked into his eyes, I saw that he was a madman. Wow, now, wildly. Donald never even noticed Patty's mutilated body in the passenger seat. Because he probably, I mean, he's hanging on to the hood of the car. But he told reporters, Excuse me, all I saw was his eyes.

I never saw the cut up girl next to him because he was probably focused directly on the driver. Just being like, what the fuck? And holding on, yeah, just trying to hold on to the car. So Rhea ran to her husband, who was now lying in the ditch with a broken leg, two broken wrists and a shattered knee.

But he waved her off. He was like, you need to get off the highway and flag, or you need to go down the highway and flag somebody down for help. Oh my God, so she's running down Highway 117. And luckily, she locates a man named Walter Pullen, who was working on his field on his tractor that day.

He called Lookout Mountain Fire and Rescue, and they then returned to the ditch where Donald was laying. And in the meantime, another couple, James McRae and his wife, were passing Rhea in Donald's car, and they saw Donald. So they pull over to stop and help.

Now, James McRae sees the state that Donald is in, and he's like, Okay, like, you need to call 911 to his wife now. That was like the one of many calls that the now Dekalb County 911 dispatchers were getting about. This hit and run now, like their phones are ringing off the hook.

So as Rhea, Walter Pullen and the McRae's gathered around Donald waiting for the ambulance to arrive, Rhea notices the Lincoln Town car come back into view. Hayward Bissell's car, Oh my God. It was hurling toward them like speeding toward them, and before anybody knew what was happening, Hayward rammed his car into Walter Pullen's tractor.

Oh my God. And then slammed the car in reverse and aimed it instead at the group. What that now had jumped into the ditch all together to protect Don and to get away from the car. Oh my God.

And it's all these like strangers just trying to protect this guy, like people working together. Exactly so he paused for, like, several. What they said were very long seconds. Yeah, I can imagine.

And then put the car in drive and started speeding toward them. These five strangers just laying in a ditch together, they were all sure, How is this real? That's the thing. It sounds like a horrible, horrible movie.

But they were like, Okay, we're going to die, like in that moment. But he swerved at the last minute and took off down Highway 117. So he was doing that just to terrorize them, he's terrorizing them.

Wow, exactly so. Now, police and emergency responders are making their way to this accident. At the scene of the accident scene on the side Jesus of Highway 117 and Mentone's police chief, Ken Busby. He was at a nearby gas station, filling up his car for the day.

He was actually off duty, oh my god, this was his day off. But he went out to survey the damage from the ice storm and wanted to see what he could help to do. Around town, there's just a bunch of helpful people around here.

I know, like community. So while he was paying for his gas, he heard the Bolo alert about the silver Lincoln Town car that had fled the scene of a hit and run and was now making its way towards Georgia. And he's like, Okay, I think I should get to it. So he hops in his car, thinking that he might be able to help now at the scene.

And he heads out on the road in the direction of 117.

Now, he only made it about a quarter of a mile down the road when he spotted the Lincoln Town car. Hayward Bissell barreling down the road, now in his direction, so Hayward speeds past Busby, and Busby managed to spot his license plate number and called it in to the dispatch. Nice, So before he knew it, Hayward found himself at a crossroads in the road.

At this point now, he is blocked in all directions by patrol cars. Because they come running out and their drivers are all standing around him with their guns drawn and aimed at him. Like, this is a standoff. So he revs the engine as this is happening, and tries to drive the car directly in front of them. But he only went a few feet and one of the officers was shouting, Don't do it, don't do it.

And he revved the engine again, but then stopped the car. The fuck. So. Officers approached the vehicle and they yank the driver's door open. They were fully intending to yank him from behind the wheel, but they struggled to get him. He's a very big guy.

Yeah, now, while several officers are struggling to subdue this guy, they're realizing he's covered in blood. Yeah, and other people are, like, the other officers are realizing that there's a ton of damage to this vehicle. And so one of them went inside to put the gear shift into park.

And that's when he saw the bloody knife for the first time and realized that there was another person in this car and this person, this officer said. It actually took a few seconds for him to fully process what he was looking at, until his brain started to register that. It was Patty's brutalized body and human remains. He said I thought it was a mannequin at first, it was such an unreal thing to see. You know, it's so wild that everybody always says that.

I thought it was a mannequin, I thought it was a doll, and it's like, So, and I'm always like, it's never a mannequin, it's never a doll. But I'm like, your first thought would never be.

That's a real person, like, that's a real thing, you know what I mean? Like, my first instinct is always like, it's never, it's not a mannequin, ever like it never is.

But I'm like, I would think the same thing, why would I ever think that that's a brutalized human body?

Excuse me, I was taking a sip of water. Especially in the state that Patty was in. I mean, she had literally been decapitated and he's holding up her head at one point, like, that's awful, it's insane.

It's this story is so scary. So once he was removed from the car, Hayward was actually mostly compliant with the officers. Wow. They began to search him, and he was letting them. And sheriff's deputy Lamar Hackworth later said his arms were totally covered with blood, as well as his shirt and pants.

And this officer also noted that Hayward seemed to be covering his shirt pocket. Like he was hiding something in there, so the officer reached for the pocket to check what he was hiding. This is gruesome. And one of the other officers told him to leave it and let them finish searching him at the station. But if Lamar Hackworth had searched Bissell's pocket at that point, what he would have discovered was a large portion of Patty's esophagus.

What her esophagus? Part of it was in his shirt pocket. I don't know what I thought was in there, but that is not on the list. No, what the fuck?

This is, I think the most brutal case that I have ever heard of. Like, at least one of them in terms of, yeah, this is....

Doing this one was really difficult. Yeah, this is horrifying, so yeah. As the police began the booking process, investigators started putting together the pieces of what they discovered. And realized. This wasn't just a hit and run, but that they were actually now dealing with three separate crimes, and this one person was behind all of them, so the county district attorney, Mike O'Dell, told reporters that WHO had assembled for a press brief at this point quote The whole set of circumstances is bizarre. We're having a difficult time sorting it out.

We're not sure where the homicide occurred. Like, they were, like, we actually have no fucking idea what is going on. Wow. So. Once they determined that Patty's murder had occurred in Georgia, the DeKalb County investigators called in the Alabama Secret Service agents to interview Hayward. Now, unfortunately, while he may have been relatively docile during the arrest, he became very, very agitated when they put him in a cell. And the agents from Alabama were doing their best to get information out of him regarding the murder. But really, all they could get out of him was that he was on a mission.

That's what he kept telling them Wow. And, to make matters worse, his unmanageable behavior was becoming kind of a safety concern. Yeah, since his arrest, he was destructive.

He was banging his head on the cell on the concrete wall. He actually broke the shower head off the wall in his cell, and that caused water to spray everywhere. He also tried to flush his pants down the toilet at one point, so the toilet started overflowing. So they were just dealing with, like everything that you could possibly imagine, all at once, pure chaos.

Now, the next day, Hayward's bond hearing was held and it had to be held in the jail after he was determined to be too dangerous to transport. Like it should have took place somewhere else. But they couldn't move him, they said. For his safety and the safety of others, we could not take him into court, but bond was luckily refused by the judge. I think they saw what they were dealing with.

And Hayward was luckily finally going to be transferred to a secure mental health facility. This time, it wasn't voluntary or involuntary. Yeah, like, you can't sign yourself out and you're not coming out. But the sheriff's office would have to wait for a bed to become available.

There it is like we were just talking about, like the fact that they had to wait for a bed to be available for this guy. Like, come on.

So they were again trying to piece together what had happened to cause Patty's death and the other attempted murders of the Pumphreys and Donald Perch. But Hayward was not giving them any information, He was talking in circles, He was telling them different conspiracy theories that he had. He told them how Patty was a double agent.

All this kind of stuff. So he was given a public defender, and his public defender, Hoyt Baugh, I believe, is how you say. The name, told the press. He is definitely paranoid and definitely hearing voices, which was true. Remember, he's diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.

But by the evening of Wednesday, the 26th now it had been three days since his arrest, he had mostly calmed down. He was still slightly agitated. And a few days later, he was able to be transferred to the Bryce Hospital in Tuscaloosa, where he would stay until he was deemed stable enough to go through the trial. Now, in April, a grand jury indicted him for the attempted robbery and the attempted murder of James Pumphrey and the attempted murder of Donald Perch. And at that point, he pleaded not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect.

And afterwards, he returned to the hospital, and there he would await word of a grand jury hearing for Patty's murder. But meanwhile, the investigators traced his movements from Alabama back to Georgia. And based on Patty's DNA profile, they connected Patty to the small pool of blood in the discount Food Mart parking lot. Wow, so that's how they officially found their murder scene.

Wow, now. After months staying at Bryce Hospital, Hayward was deemed competent enough to leave the hospital and he was sent to a jail cell in Fort Payne, Alabama, that June. Wow, I don't know what had to happen there.

Maybe he was put on proper medication at that point because, remember, he had been taking medication off and on, yeah. But in the time since his arrest, he did become much more manageable and way less destructive, but he was still largely uncooperative. This is crazy, though.

By the time he returned to his jail cell, he had lost over 170 pounds wow, and he refused to leave his cell. He spent nearly two years bouncing back and forth between hospitals and county jails, while doctors were trying to stabilize him. And while investigators and prosecutors were trying to figure out how to go forward in this case. But finally, it took two years.

In February 2002, two years after Patty's murder, Hayward Bissell did go before a judge in Somerville, Georgia, where he pled guilty, but mentally ill to the murder. Now Superior Court Judge Christina Cook Connelly, she accepted the plea and she sentenced Hayward Bissell to life in prison. Now, the plea of guilty, but mentally ill meant that he would spend the rest of his life in a prison suitable for his psychiatric care. Which, thank goodness, like that, he could finally get some medication so that nobody else has to go through something like this again.

Rest of his life stay okay with me, need to be in jail, yeah, 100. And the Georgia Department of Corrections is actually required to monitor his mental health and behavior while also managing his medications.

Wow, so I have to say it seems like this court system did everything that they needed to. It seems like it worked out in this situation, like the sentencing and punishment. Exactly. So, hopefully, with them managing his meds and treatment, he's in a better headspace and is not terrorizing those around him.

Yeah, it's really tragic that it took what it did for him to get this kind of help. It's horrifying, and it's absolutely tragic that so many people's lives were affected by this. When he could have gotten help earlier, yeah.

You know, like some of these people were just like, like the couple in James and Sue, just in their house, just going about their day. Yeah, helping people too, like everybody, obviously.

But it's like he just, he like, sought out people to destroy their lives, he did. But like I said, I got a lot of sources for you guys. So if you or anybody you know is struggling mentally or is in a relationship, experiencing domestic violence. We're going to put all these sources in the show notes, but I'll read them out for you now.

We have the Schizophrenia and Psychosis Action Alliance, their website is sczaction..org, and they have a bunch of like, education materials and support groups, which is awesome. And then we have the National Alliance on Mental Illness, which is also known as NAMI, or NAMI. It's N-a-m-i..org.

And they have general resources there for mental health, and then we have the Domestic Violence U.S. hotline number that's 1-800-799-7233. We also have the Battered Woman's Justice project. We actually donated to them and we've met with them a few times and they are like an amazing resource.

Their website is Bw.jp.

Org, and they offer free legal help if you're going through any kind of domestic violence situation. And finally, we have the Center for Domestic Peace. their website is centerfordomesticpeace..org, and they offer support groups. Amazing. So again, I'm going to put all of those in the show. Notes for anybody struggling, anybody that knows, anybody struggling and just like, take care of each other. Because this one made me really sad.

This is a really sad story all around. And the thing is like, we were saying in the beginning like, you want to think that we treat mental health differently now? But it's still tough, still really tough, yeah.

Long way to go. Yeah, a long, long way to go. So guys, I love you. We hope you keep listening and we hope you keep it weird.

But not so weird. yeah, just not so weird. Bye.

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