Stories and content in Weird Darkness can be disturbing for some listeners and is intended for mature audiences only. Parental discretion is strongly advised. Jeffrey MacDonald has always said that four intruders, three men and one woman, attacked the family in February 1970 while chanting, acid is groovy, kill the pigs. His two daughters were stabbed to death in their bedrooms while MacDonald and his wife were found in theirs. Pig was written in blood on the headboard. Collab had been stabbed nearly 40 times with an ice pick and a knife. MacDonald had been stabbed just once, which caused his lung to partially collapse. Despite his injuries, Army investigators didn't buy MacDonald's account and charged him for the murders in May 1970. After 70 witnesses testified at the six-week-long Article 32 hearing, the presiding colonel exonerated MacDonald and urged civilian authorities to pursue another suspect, a drug-addicted police informant named Helena Stockley, who matched MacDonald's description of the female intruder and her Army vet boyfriend, both of whom reportedly told witnesses they were involved. For the next few years, MacDonald went on with his life, but in 1974 his once-supportive stepfather-in-law, now convinced of his guilt, filed a citizen's criminal complaint that ultimately led to MacDonald being indicted for murder. Prosecutors argued that MacDonald had got the idea to stage the crime scene and blame a hippie gang from an article in Esquire about the Tate-LaBianca murders perpetrated by the Manson family. MacDonald took the stand in his own defense but withered under cross-examination. He was convicted and sentenced to three life terms. But did he really commit the murder? Or was he telling the truth about intruders invading his home and murdering his family? I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Welcome, Weirdos. I'm Darren Marlar and this is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre, unsolved and unexplained. If you're new here, welcome to the show and if you're already a member of this Weirdo family, please take a moment and invite someone else to listen. Recommending Weird Darkness to others helps make it possible for me to keep doing the show. Coming up in this episode, Jeffrey MacDonald was an Ivy League educated surgeon and a green beret. That sounds like an interesting story in and of itself, but he was also either a murderer or the victim of a murderous hippie cult and that's a story that you and I can really sink our teeth into.  We are going to solve some murders. Okay, we won't actually solve them, but to the best of our abilities, with the information available, we're going to make a guess. If you use a loose enough definition of the word solve, then I think that qualifies. Early on the morning of February 17, 1970, MacDonald called police and reported that a group of four or five hippies had entered his home, knocked him unconscious and brutally murdered his wife and two young daughters. Two competing theories emerged almost immediately. Those who knew MacDonald insisted that the hippie story was true. The police investigating the crime insisted that MacDonald had murdered his family and concocted the hippie story as a cover. Somebody's wrong and we're going to figure out who. There is more information available on this case than you and I could ever actually analyze. Most of it is garbage. That's the way it works in famous cases. The facts get diluted, distorted and misconstrued into a thousand competing theories until the sheer density of the nonsense is so overwhelming that the case becomes impenetrable. We aren't going to let that happen to us. We're going to get our information primarily from two sources, Fatal Vision by Joe McGinnis and A Wilderness of Error by Errol Morris. Both books are well researched, honest in citing sources and reasonable in their presentation of the facts, and of course, the books come to completely opposite conclusions, which is where we come in. For what it's worth, if you haven't read them, I recommend both books. I'll link to both of them in the show notes for you. Morris's book is a little more lively and readable, but McGinnis is more disciplined and journalistic in his approach. For me to accuse Morris of excessive editorialization would be the epitome of the pot coming to kettle black, so please don't infer that one of these books is better than the other. They are different in tone and substance, but I think that each of them is fair, honest, thorough and interesting. You're lucky to get two of those things in a true crime book, let alone all of them. Even though Morris and McGinnis do a fantastic job of describing the facts of the case, we're still going to use autopsy and police reports from thejeffreymcdonaldcase.com to help guide us as well. Let's start with a summary of the pertinent facts. On February 17, 1970, at about 3.45 am, military police from Fort Bragg were dispatched to 5.44 Castle Drive for what the initial responding officers described as a possible domestic disturbance. Fort Bragg is a large United States Army base adjacent to Fayetteville, North Carolina. 5.44 Castle Drive was a three-bedroom apartment, about a thousand square feet, where Captain Jepprey McDonald lived with his pregnant wife, Collette McDonald and their two young daughters. Between six and eight officers arrived at roughly the same time. Several officers knocked at the front door with no response, but Sergeant Richard Taver found the back door open. He entered, passed through a small utility room, and found two people on the floor of the master bedroom.   The word pig was written in blood on the headboard. Police checked the rest of the home and found six-year-old Kimberly dead in one bedroom and two-year-old Kristen dead in another. Both were in their respective beds with the lights off in both rooms. Jepprey McDonald regained consciousness, said that he couldn't breathe and asked the police to check on his children. The officers attempted mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, which caused Jepprey to choke and shake.  The woman was wearing a floppy hat and carrying a candle. All of the attackers were saying, acid is groovy and kill the pigs. Jepprey was taken to the emergency room for treatment, and the Army's Criminal Investigations Division, CID, was summoned to investigate the murders. The Army's CID takes a beating in every telling of this story for the job they did on the crime scene. I'm not going to suggest that they did a good job because they certainly did not, but I think the extent of their mistakes has been exaggerated. It's not that they did every single thing incorrectly, as some critics seem to suggest, it's just that the mistakes that they did make were devastating to the case. Most importantly, they let too many people into the crime scene, didn't supervise those people properly, allowed potential evidence to move or in some cases disappear before it can be documented, and did not preserve the integrity of potential trace evidence. Mistakes happen in every criminal investigation, but some mistakes are easier to overcome than others. These were not easy mistakes to overcome, especially in a case like this one turned out to be. After hearing Jepprey McDonald's story, Officer Kenneth McHugh told the lieutenant on scene that while McHugh was responding to the call, he had seen a woman standing on a street corner a couple of blocks from the McDonald home. She was wearing a large, floppy hat. Given the time of morning and the weather conditions, light rain, McHugh thought the situation was peculiar. He recommended that the woman be located immediately, but it does not appear that any attempt was actually made to do so. Add that one to the list of mistakes. The stacks part is going to be unpleasant, so let's get through it as quickly as possible. If you don't have the stomach for it, I understand. I'm going to describe the medical examiner's findings, but here's a short version if you want to skip over the specifics. Collette was brutally beaten with a blunt object and stabbed multiple times with at least two sharp objects. Kimberly was beaten with a blunt object and stabbed multiple times. And Kristen was stabbed multiple times. The autopsy reports are online, but I'll warn you that the ones I reviewed included the medical examiner's photos. Do not look at those photos. There is nothing that you or I could learn from those photos that we couldn't understand better from the written report. Those photos would serve no purpose but to haunt you, and I don't want you to go through that. Collette McDonald suffered approximately 37 stab wounds. There were 21 small, round stab wounds scattered throughout her chest and upper left arm, and another 16 elliptical, gaping incisional wounds to her chest, neck, and abdomen. Her lungs, trachea, and pulmonary artery were all lacerated, causing massive internal bleeding. The two different types of stab wounds suggested two different weapons were used. The stab wounds alone would have been fatal, but Collette had also suffered three large lacerations and several smaller lacerations to the front, sides, and back of her head. The lacerations were caused by a blunt object and were accompanied by a skull fracture. Lastly, Collette suffered a compound fracture of her right wrist with the bone exposed, another compound fracture just below her left elbow, and a fracture of her left wrist. She had been approximately four months pregnant with what the medical examiner discovered was a boy. Six-year-old Kimberly was struck in the head an undetermined number of times with a blunt object. The medical examiner noted at least two blows to the right side of her head, causing multiple skull fractures, including one that penetrated through the thickness of the skull and dislocated a portion of it. Kimberly's nose was broken and displaced to the side as well. Kimberly was also stabbed approximately eight to ten times in the neck with incisional type stab wounds similar to those identified in her mother. Based on the bleeding of the wounds, the medical examiner believed that Kimberly was beaten before she was stabbed, though either attack would have been fatal on its own. Two-year-old Kristen suffered more than 20 wounds to the chest and neck and another dozen to her back. The wounds appeared to have been caused by two different weapons. Kristen also had cuts to the front and back of both hands along with bruising on her neck, shoulders, and buttocks. Several of the stab wounds penetrated her heart, causing death. Jeffrey McDonald was hospitalized for nine days but fared far better than the rest of his family. The examining physician noted a one-centimeter break in the skin on his chest, which in actuality was a stab wound that caused a partially collapsed lung. The doctor also noted swelling and a laceration in the middle of Jeffrey's forehead, a superficial laceration to his abdomen, and a one-and-a-half-centimeter laceration to the front of his upper left arm. I can tell that two things are really standing out to you already. Number one, how come Jeffrey McDonald had such comparatively minor injuries considering what happened to the rest of the family? And number two, who was the mysterious woman in the floppy hat? I like the way you think. You're good at this. We'll look further into the Jeffrey McDonald case when Weird Darkness returns. Are you a member of the Darkness Syndicate? The Darkness Syndicate is a private membership where you receive commercial-free episodes of the Weird Darkness podcast and radio show. Behind the scenes, video updates about future projects and events I'm working on. You can share your own opinions on ideas to help me decide upon Weird Darkness contests and events. You can hear audiobooks I'm narrating before even the publishers or authors get to hear them. You also receive bonus audio of other projects I'm working on outside of Weird Darkness. You get all of these benefits and more, starting at only $5 per month. Join the Weird Darkness Syndicate at WeirdDarkness.com The CID processed the scene, but not terribly well, so we aren't going to get nearly as much reliable evidence out of their analysis as we would expect from an indoor murder scene where police responded that quickly. Investigators observed that a coffee table in the living room was tipped over on its edge. They noted that the rest of the living room was undisturbed. They later learned that at least one potted plant had been tipped over when responding officers arrived, but an unknown person had tipped it back upright. That's definitely not ideal at a crime scene and it does raise a lot of questions about their other observations. The investigators put a lot of emphasis on the undisturbed living room and it was later the foundation on which they built their theory that Jeffrey McDonald murdered his family and staged the scene. They insisted that it was virtually impossible for the coffee table to end up on its side unless it was deliberately placed like that. They tipped the coffee table over hundreds of times and insisted that every single time it came to rest on the top, not its side. A mechanical engineer drafted a really official looking document with equations and diagrams to argue that the table would always come to rest on its top when it was tipped over, but a skeptical army judge who was presiding over a hearing on the murders wanted to see for himself. He went to the McDonald home, tipped over the table, and it landed on its side on the very first try. It's a nice lesson for us to keep in mind as we try to solve these murders. Always be humble about your evidence and conclusions because they are never as definite or convincing as they might seem to you. Collette was dressed in pink pajamas, but she also had a bath mat and a blue pajama top laying across her chest. Investigators later learned that Jeffrey McDonald had been wearing the blue pajama top and that it had 48 round puncture holes. If you recall, neither Collette nor Jeffrey had 48 round puncture wounds. An examiner at the FBI lab determined that all 48 of the holes could have come from the stab wounds suffered by Collette. The garment was found crumpled and folded in such a way that many of the stab wounds could have caused more than one hole in the fabric. There was also bedding on the floor near the doorway of the master bedroom, and the bedding was covered in blood. A small paring knife with a bent blade and a bloodstain near the tip was found on the floor between an armchair and a dresser. The word pig, written in blood on the headboard, had a smooth texture with no fingerprints, leading investigators to believe the culprit had worn a glove. Portions of a rubber glove were found in the master bedroom and surgical rubber gloves were found under the kitchen sink. For what it is worth, handwriting experts also concluded that the author used their right hand. If we trust that, then we can safely eliminate any suspects who don't have a right hand, which is helpful because I had a theory about pirates that I can now safely discard. Outside of the back door, investigators found a wooden club that appeared to have blood on it, another paring knife and an ice pick. McDonald denied that the family had an ice pick, but several witnesses who had been to the house contradicted him. The club had blue fibers on it that were consistent with McDonald's pajamas, but also had dark wool fibers that were not definitively matched to anything in the McDonald home. With three people dead and a fourth stabbed, there was a great deal of blood in the house. As luck would have it, each member of the family had a different blood type. In the master bedroom, investigators found blood matching Colette, Jeffrey, and Kimberly's blood types. In Kimberly's bedroom, investigators found blood matching Kimberly, Colette, and Kristen's blood types. In Kristen's bedroom, investigators found blood matching everybody's type. Blood matching Jeffrey's type was found at both the kitchen and bathroom sinks. Some of the blood was undoubtedly transferred by the killer or killers moving about the house, but the volume of blood showed that Colette was actively bleeding in both the master bedroom and Kristen's bedroom and that Kimberly was actively bleeding in the master bedroom and her own bedroom. Kristen appeared to have been attacked and killed entirely in her own room. There was also a bloody footprint leading out of Kristen's room. The blood was Colette's, but the foot appeared to be Jeffrey's. That couldn't be determined for certain, however, because the footprint was destroyed when CID attempted to cut out the floorboards to preserve it. A fingerprint that was never matched to anybody was found on a jewelry box in the McDonald's bedroom, and Jeffrey later claimed that two rings were missing from the jewelry box. Jeffrey McDonald's wallet was definitely stolen, but by an EMT who eventually confessed to taking it. CID failed to preserve and photograph most of the fingerprint evidence correctly, and the fingerprints they were able to identify came back to either the McDonald's or the investigators on scene. There were wax drippings on Kimberly's bedroom floor and on the coffee table that did not match any of the candles found in the McDonald's home. A magazine found in the living room had a feature story on the Manson murders, which had appeared in California six months prior. A witness who'd been at the house several days earlier claimed that he and McDonald had discussed the magazine story, and that like everybody else in the United States at that time, Jeffrey was aware of the Manson murders. Another family lived in an apartment above the McDonald's. The day of the murder, each member of the family said they had not heard anything out of the ordinary. The family's dog had not barked until the police arrived. During a subsequent interview, however, the wife of the family claimed that she had woken up at an unknown time by the sound of Collette speaking loudly and angrily, although the woman could not hear what was said. The woman's teenage daughter, whose bedroom was directly above McDonald's living room, claimed that she also heard an adult male either sobbing loudly or laughing hysterically. Investigators didn't do a formal interview with Jeffrey right away, but spoke to him as he recovered. He relayed the following story as presented in McGinnis' book. Jeffrey McDonald had worked a 24-hour shift at the emergency room from 6 a.m. on February 15th to 6 a.m. on February 16th, although he did manage to catch a little sleep in a hospital cot during slow stretches. He then worked his regular shift for the Army on February 16th. That evening, he came home and took Kimberly and Kristen to go feed the horse he had gotten them as a Christmas present. Collette was taking evening classes at a local college, so Jeffrey tended to the kids that evening while she attended a psychology class. He put Kristen in bed at 7 p.m., then fell asleep on the floor for an hour. Kimberly woke him up at 8 p.m. to watch television, then Jeffrey put her in bed at 9 p.m. At about 9.40 p.m., Collette returned home from class. Jeffrey and Collette had a drink and watched television, then Collette went to bed. Jeffrey stayed up for a while longer and read a book. At a little after 2 a.m., Jeffrey prepared to go to bed. He found that Kristen was in bed with Collette, though, and that Kristen had wet the bed. He carried Kristen to her own bed, then slept on the couch so he would not have to wake Collette or change the sheets. Once upon a time, Neanderthal men were pretending not to see toddler poop on cave floors. In a thousand years, a future dad will be tiptoeing around his rocket ship, feigning obliviousness to the space baby's spit-up. Jeffrey McDonald may indeed be a monster, but not because he let his wife sleep beside a puddle of urine instead of cleaning it up.  Jeffrey McDonald said that he did not know how long he was asleep on the couch, but that he was woke by the sound of his wife shouting, Jeff, Jeff, help! And Kimberly screaming, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy! He opened his eyes and saw four people standing over him. One was a black man wearing an army fatigue jacket. Two were white men, one of which had a mustache and a red sweatshirt. One of the men was wearing gloves.  All of them were wet, as though they'd been out in the rain.  McDonald tried to get up, but was struck in the head with what he thought was a baseball bat.  He felt a sharp pain in his chest and looked down to see that he'd been stabbed with an ice pick. He then passed out, face down on the floor. When Jeffery regained consciousness, the house was silent. He went to each of the bedrooms and found that his wife and daughters were dead. He tried to resuscitate them, but it didn't work. He also removed a small knife from his wife's chest and covered her with his pajama top. Jeffery went into the bathroom to check on his stab wound and then made two attempts to call the police, once with a phone in the bedroom and once with a phone in the kitchen. He then waited with his wife until police arrived. While investigators on scene immediately suspected Jeffery in the murders, a Fayetteville Narconics detective noticed that the description of the woman in the floppy hat sounded an awful lot like an informant he knew by the name of Helena Stokely. The detective tracked her down on the day after the murders and found her with a group of the types of drug addicts and hippies she was known to consort with. He detained the group for questioning, but CID never responded to do the actual questioning and they were all released without charges. Stokely's neighbor claimed to have seen Stokely arrive home in a blue car sometime between 3 am and 4 30 am on the morning of the murders. The neighbor claimed that in numerous discussions over the subsequent days and months, Stokely made several statements indicating that she was present for the McDonald murders or that she was so high on drugs that she could not remember if she was present. Stokely frequently claimed to be so high on mesoline and LSD that she could not remember anything that happened that night. Stokely's roommate corroborated the neighbor's account and said that Stokely returned home with her boyfriend Greg Mitchell at around 4 am. At least six different people have come forward to claim that Stokely had admitted involvement in the murders to them, but she has denied any involvement to law enforcement and in court testimony. Private investigators have also found several witnesses who claim that Mitchell has made nonspecific statements over the years that they took as proof of his involvement in the murders. I won't bore you with the details of the Mitchell accusations because they are second and third hand accounts of vague statements made a long time before the investigators spoke to the witnesses. Stokely made statements to several people about a rocking horse with a broken spring that was in the McDonald home. A picture in the local paper showed the rocking horse, but Stokely was a serious drug addict at the time so who knows how diligent she was in following the Fayette bill observer, and the picture didn't show that the spring was broken anyway. Stokely was known to own a blonde wig, a floppy hat, and boots. She got rid of all of them sometime after the murders. A blonde synthetic fiber was found in a hair brush in the McDonald home. Investigators insisted that it could not have come from a wig, but Morris made a pretty convincing case that it definitely could have. During an autopsy, medical examiners routinely collect scrapings from under the fingernails of victims. Trace evidence tends to accumulate there when a victim is clawing at and fighting an attacker. A small hair was found amongst the scrapings from under Colette's fingernails. DNA testing done decades after the murder concluded that the hair did not come from any of the McDonald's. There was debate amongst the investigators whether the hair was actually under Colette's fingernails or if it was merely contamination from sloppy evidence handling. At any rate, the source of the hair has never been identified. FBI Special Agent Paul Stombow was reviewing photographs of the case when he noticed that there was a suitcase near the closet. There was blood spatter all around the suitcase but none on it. Stombow surmised that the suitcase was placed there after the murders, and I can't find fault in that logic. Whether it was done by the killer or by the officers on scene though is something we'll probably never know. Officer Kenneth McHugh told Morris, while Morris was writing his book, that McHugh was aware of Stokely in 1970 and knew what she looked like. He told Morris he was certain that the woman he saw in the floppy hat was not Stokely. Morris was skeptical that McHugh would have been able to tell under the circumstances, but McHugh was adamant. I believe him. He was the passenger in a two officer car and the woman was standing on a street corner when they came to a stop. He got a good look. And officers on the beat know the regular customers. It could be at night from a block away and I could still spot the regular customers when I was working a beat. It's a relatively small number of people you deal with over and over again in law enforcement and you get to know them pretty well. A polygraph examination got thrown around liberally in this investigation as it tended to in investigations of this type during that era. Let's not get bogged down with polygraph results though. For what it's worth, Stokely passed a polygraph in which she claimed to have been present for the murders and Jeffrey failed a polygraph in which he claimed he didn't kill his family. A polygraph can be a useful tool if used with restraint by a skilled polygrapher. It can be the worst kind of garbage evidence when it's not. I don't know anything about the polygraph operators in this case and there were a lot of them, so I'm choosing to ignore all of the contradictory results and move on as if the tests never happened. You can do otherwise if you choose. And speaking of contradictory gibberish, we're also going to ignore all of the evidence provided by the parade of forensic psychologists employed in this case. I'll summarize it for you so you can quickly toss it aside. Jeffrey McDonald's personality type was such that he was incapable of committing the murders and also Jeffrey McDonald's personality type was such that he was a narcissistic psychopath capable of murder at any time. If you've read my book and at this point there's no reason for you not to, we're friends now, buy four copies and give them to your favorite bobsled team, then you know how I feel about experts. They are critically important to understanding a lot of things, but they'll also say whatever they are paid to say. Be skeptical of anything that sounds too good to be true. Jeffrey tried to portray his marriage as ideal, but investigators uncovered a series of facts that painted Jeffrey in a different light. He had multiple affairs during the marriage. He worked extremely long hours and took on extra jobs. And for reasons that were highly suspicious and never made clear, Jeffrey was lying to his wife about a month-long trip he was supposedly going to take to Russia. Jeffrey was the team doctor for the Fort Bragg boxing team and told Colette that he was going with the team to Russia. In actuality, there was no trip and Jeffrey wasn't going anywhere with the team. After the murders, Jeffrey went on a media campaign in which he exaggerated the extent of his injuries and ranted about the incompetence of army investigators. He also told an outlandish story to his former mother-in-law and father-in-law in which he claimed to have found one of the murderers, tortured them and killed them. This came at a time when his father-in-law was pressing him for information about the murders and the investigation. McGinnis uncovered some evidence that Jeffrey McDonald had been using amphetamines in the weeks leading up to the murder. They were not illegal at the time and were commonly used for weight loss. McDonald acknowledged using the pills but not in the quantities alleged by McGinnis. McGinnis makes some pretty far-fetched claims about how McDonald's amphetamine use could have caused psychosis and hallucinations which I don't think are worth considering. Colleagues tend to notice when an emergency room doctor is hallucinating. But amphetamine use could definitely cause irritability and exacerbate other sources of stress. The Army held what was called an Article 32 hearing in July of 1970. It was a hearing to determine if there was sufficient evidence to charge Jeffrey McDonald with the murders of his family. Not only did the hearing examiner determine that there was insufficient evidence to charge Jeffrey McDonald, he also made the rather extraordinary proclamation that Jeffrey was innocent of the crime. There's a reason we use the term not guilty instead of innocent in trials. It is exceedingly difficult to prove innocence, which is why we don't ever require somebody to do it. In 1979, Jeffrey was charged with and convicted of the murders in United States District Court. Obviously, the jury did not agree with the Army examiner's assessment. When Weird Darkness returns, we'll review what we've learned and see who committed these murders, or at least we'll try.  The lights are out and you're listening to Weird Darkness. But suddenly, you get that feeling you're not alone. You don't know what might be under the bed or in the closet or in the attic or in the room with you. You don't dare try to sleep now. You're too scared to.  That's just one more reason to have Weird Dark Roast Coffee in the cupboard, because you just never know when you might need it. Weird Dark Roast Coffee contains deep notes of cocoa, caramel, and a touch of sinister sweetness. Each bag is fresh roasted to order by Evansville Coffee. You can find a link to it at WeirdDarkness.com. Grab a bag before something else grabs you from the dark. The facts that point to Jeffrey McDonald. Jeffrey's family was brutally murdered while he sustained relatively minor injuries. Why would intruders leave a witness alive when he was unconscious and completely at their mercy? It's even more confounding in light of how excessive the violence was toward his wife and daughters. Jeffrey was a green beret who regularly trained with the Fort Bragg Boxing Team. I'm not insisting that he could overcome three adult men in a fight, but we would certainly expect a man like Jeffrey fighting for his family's lives to sustain more than a bump on the noggin and a single non-incapacitating stab wound.  He claimed that he used it to fight off his attackers while it was tangled around his wrists, but what are the odds that a pajama top wrapped around his wrists would get stabbed 40 times in a fight without McDonald's wrists, hands, or forearms getting stabbed at all? McDonald claimed that he woke up to the sound of his wife and Kimberly both screaming for help and he woke up to four people standing over him. So how many people was he suggesting were in there? If his wife was being attacked in one room, his daughter in another, and four people were standing over him, then that was a crowded little house and yet the neighbors living above them heard none of those people and the neighbor's dog didn't bark until police arrived. Jeffrey McDonald's blood was found in front of the kitchen sink where he kept surgical gloves.  The murder weapons were abandoned just outside the back door and even though Jeffrey claimed otherwise, they all seemed to come from the McDonald household. Why would intruders not bring any weapons to a murder and why would they risk leaving behind fingerprints? Domestic violence homicides are the most common type of homicide for women and children. Jeffrey was a documented philanderer. Despite the many character witnesses who insisted that he would never hurt his family, he did admit to multiple extramarital affairs. Cheating on your wife hurts your family and to insist otherwise is disingenuous. Jeffrey went on television and provided interviews to the media in which he exaggerated the extent of his injuries. On a late night talk show, he claimed to have been stabbed more than 20 times even though the physicians who examined him found no such thing.  The stories he told his wife about going to Russia and the stories he told his in-laws about killing one of the murderers were absolute whoppers.   I doubt the police exercised much restraint in the pursuit of any suspect who loosely fit the description but none was ever identified. So now a few facts that might point to intruders as the murderers. McDonald may have cheated on and lied to his wife but there was never any suggestion of physical abuse until he was accused of their murder. McDonald gave a very specific description of the female intruder and Officer McHugh saw a woman who matched that description within two blocks of the murder scene. It was almost 4 a.m. and raining at the time so it was a really unusual place for a person to be, let alone somebody matching the description of a nearby crime. Helena Stokely owned a blonde wig, floppy hat and boots that were consistent with the description McDonald gave of the intruder. She confessed to at least a half dozen people that she was present for the murders and told many others that she was so high on Messaline and LSD that she did not know if she was involved with the murders. Stokely seemed to know about the broken rocking horse in the McDonald house, a detail that was not public knowledge. Dark wool fibers were found on the club that was used in the murders but the fibers could not be matched to anything else in the McDonald home. At least two unrelated witnesses claim that Stokely's ex-boyfriend who was with her on the night the McDonald's were murdered made incriminating statements about the murders over the years. A blonde synthetic fiber was found in Colette's hairbrush that couldn't be matched to any wigs owned by Colette. Prosecutors argued that it came from one of the girl's dolls but a doll expert pointed out to Morris that the length of the fiber made it extremely unlikely. Wax strippings were found in two rooms that couldn't be matched to any candles in the McDonald's home. There were fingerprints from an unknown person on Colette's jewelry box and Jeffrey McDonald claimed that two rings were stolen. Jeffrey was a free man for nine years between the Army hearing and his conviction in federal court. He was never accused of another violent crime that entire time. And finally a short hair from an unknown source that definitely did not come from any of the McDonald's was found in evidence obtained from under Colette McDonald's fingernails. The conclusion. I have to admit I am a lot more conflicted about this than I thought I was going to be. When I first read Jeffrey's version of advance I assumed it was an open and shut case. That seems like a completely fabricated story. In February of 2001 I was certain that planes were going to be flying into skyscrapers all the time from that point forward. Thankfully that wasn't the case. I am sure that in February of 1970 it seemed like random attacks from murderous hippie cults were going to be normal. Thankfully they never were. Jeffrey McDonald's story feels like a fictional account that seemed believable at a very specific moment in history but that did not withstand the scrutiny of time. After reviewing all of the evidence though I am much less certain. The case against Jeffrey McDonald has serious problems that can't all be explained away. So who do we think killed Colette, Kimberly and Kristen McDonald? Well we might disagree on this one but I still think Jeffrey McDonald murdered his family. Let me speculate recklessly about what happened and then you can tell me why I am wrong. I think that Jeffrey McDonald was under a great deal of stress in February of 1970. He worked three jobs, army doctor, emergency room doctor and a physician for a boxing team. He got very little sleep and had a pregnant wife, two young daughters and a horse to take care of. In McGinnis' book, Jeffrey devotes an uncomfortable amount of time describing his various romantic conquests before and after Colette. Seemed really important to him that he always had a beautiful woman on his arm. Colette was a beautiful woman but she was also pregnant with their third child. Despite his protestations to the contrary, Jeffrey McDonald cheated on Colette more than once and that is not something a happily married man does. Jeffrey married Colette when they were 19 and I think by 1970 he was starting to feel trapped. It is pretty common for people to feel trapped in a marriage at some point. Sometimes the feeling passes and they stay happily married. Sometimes it doesn't and they get divorced. But sometimes the suppressed frustration of a situation like that boils over into anger or violence. I think that happened with Jeffrey. I have no idea what the specific impetus was but I think Jeffrey was sleep deprived, stressed and agitated the night of the murders. I think that after the girls went to bed, Jeffrey and Colette had an argument. Because they didn't want to wake the girls, they kept it quiet which explains why the neighbors didn't hear any fighting but may have heard Colette speaking angrily. At some point it became violent. Colette struck Jeffrey with the club either out of anger or fear causing the bump on his head. He snapped, took the club and brutally attacked her. She tried to protect herself with a knife, nicking Jeffrey on the abdomen and arm but he overpowered her and took the knife as well. He broke her arms with the club as she tried to protect herself. Then he stabbed her repeatedly with the knife after she stopped resisting. The attack either started in Kristen's room and moved to the master bedroom or started in the master bedroom, moved to Kristen's room and then moved back to the master bedroom to account for the large amount of Colette's blood in both rooms. Kristen was only two years old and was thus able to sleep through the fight but Kimberly woke up at some point and went to the master bedroom. Jeffrey had already killed or was in the process of killing Colette. Jeffrey did not yet know what he was going to do after the murder but he understood that his old life was definitely over and he was never going to be able to be a father for Kimberly after what she had seen.  He then carried her to her bed where he stabbed her several times to ensure that she was dead. I think he then decided that he couldn't leave Kristen alive after what he had done, so he went into the room and stabbed her to death. She awoke during the attack and raised her hands in defense causing cuts to both hands. I like Paul Stomba's theory about this suitcase. I think Jeffrey McDonald's initial impulse was to pack a suitcase and head out on the run. He was going to leave the country, change his name, change his appearance and try to disappear but he was a proud man who couldn't bear to live with that stain on his reputation. I think that at some point while he was weighing his options, he glanced out the window and saw a woman in a floppy hat. He recognized how weird it was that she was out there in the rain at that time of night. He assumed she was a hippie from town since there were a lot of them and an idea formed. Could he convince everybody that his family was murdered by hippies? He staged the scene as best as he could to fool the cops. He stabbed his family's dead bodies with an ice pick and a second knife to give the appearance of multiple attackers. He wrote a message in blood just like the Manson family had done and then he gave himself a precise stab wound that would cause a serious sounding injury but collapsed along that ultimately would not be life-threatening. He then called the cops and did his best to sell the lie. Helena Stokely was not the woman in the floppy hat but she did fit the description. She was also a serious drug addict and could not account for her whereabouts during the murders. She was young and dramatic and kind of enjoyed the attention she was getting about her possible involvement in the case. She stoked that attention by making all kinds of incriminating statements to people in her life but ultimately she knew she wasn't there and was in no actual danger of being charged with the crime. She got plenty of details wrong about the murder but the bit about the broken rocking horse she either guessed correctly or overheard from all of the investigators who questioned her in the case. There you have it, a perfect solution. It accounts for almost a quarter of the evidence and only ignores the things that contradict it. The hair under Colette's fingernail, you ask? Why did Helena Stokely get rid of her wig and boots, you question? The wax drippings in the McDonald home, the unidentified fingerprint on the jewelry box and the blonde synthetic fiber in Colette's brush, you demand? Not to be rude, but I asked when we started that you grant me a very loose definition of the word solve and with that in mind I'm calling this solved. Thanks for listening. If you like the show, please share it with somebody you know who loves the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters or unsolved mysteries like you do. You can email me anytime with your questions or comments at darren at WeirdDarkness.com. Darren is D-A-R-R-E-N. Do you have a dark tale to tell of your own? Click on Tell Your Story on the website and I might use it in a future episode. All stories in Weird Darkness are purported to be true unless stated otherwise and you can find source links or links to the authors in the show notes. The murder conviction of Jeffrey McDonald was written by Barney Doyle for Crime Traveller. Now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light. Philippians 4 verse 6, Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And a final thought. The more man meditates upon good thoughts, the better will be his world and the world at large. Confucius. I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness. Read the darkness by sharing this video with someone you know who loves all things strange and macabre. If you want to listen to the podcast, you can find it at WeirdDarkness.com.


Welcome to Sheboygan County government working for you. My name is Adam Payne, Sheboygan County Administrator and co-host of this program with Chairman Mike Van der Steen. And today we're very pleased to have one of our 22 department heads with us, Mr. Jim Groff, our Child Support Director. Jim, it's good to have you with us. Thank you, it's nice to be here. I'm glad I could attend. Jim has been the Child Support Director, I think for 19 years, over 20 years with Sheboygan County, very experienced, very knowledgeable, and it has the important task of overseeing a department that is providing financial support for children and families. And so we're pleased to have Jim here to talk a little bit about the roles and responsibilities of the Child Support Department. Jim, please set the stage by sharing with our viewers a little bit about yourself and how you came to work for Sheboygan County and if you're from the area. Well, I'm from Kiel originally, which is 20 miles west of here, I believe it is. And I grew up in Kiel and attended schools in Appleton as well as in, I went to Lakeland and finished my degree there. And I've been in Child Support as you said for 19 years and two additional years in Health and Human Services as their accounting manager. I've been running the agency and I'm happy to say we've been doing very well as far as meeting the goals that we've set and working with all our customers as we like to call them because we try not to use any negative sayings about people that do pay child support and those that collect it also. What is the mission of the Child Support Department? The mission of our agency is, I have to read it, I'm sorry, but it's too long, I should shorten it, but to ensure adequate financial and medical support for families through an aggressive approach in locating obligors, establishing and enforcing court order, child support and medical coverage, and in obtaining child support orders as well as establishing paternity and help families reduce their reliance on public assistance and achieve financial independence. You are absolutely right. Thank you. We need to reduce the length of that mission statement. That is too much of a mouthful. A lot of information contained just in that statement itself. Please share a little bit about the roles and responsibilities of your department. What is it that your staff are doing? Okay, number one, their main goal, I have two people working on this establishing paternity for our non-marital children, it's called. We also establish other court orders for all our other cases. We establish orders for those people that do not have children, but have separated and no longer want to live together. We make sure that all the children are covered by some type of insurance. If the couples or the non-custodial parent or the custodial parent cannot afford it or have it at their place of work, we make sure that the children are eligible to go on badger care or one of the other state programs that do cover them within insurance. We place children in foster care as well as kinship care, and we enforce all the family support orders and monitor those orders to make sure that payments are coming in as they're supposed to. Is that all? No, there's a few other things we do, but they come along as things happen. If people do not pay and so forth, we have other processes that we have to follow up on. We do have an administrative process that we use to take away people's driver's license as well as their hunting license and business license in some cases. We also have the authority to intercept taxes or tax refunds. We work with banks to freeze bank accounts when necessary, and we do. A lot of different things. And of course, when I said is that all, I was kidding, because there's a tremendous amount going on in your department. Very complex, and as you said earlier, you're not always giving the most pleasant information or necessarily working with the most pleasant people. People, often that contact to your department are hurting or concerned about their finances or concerned about getting financial support for their children, so your staff certainly have a difficult, challenging job. How many staff do you have in the department and what is their average case load? We have 16 full-time equivalents as far as staff goes, and then we also have one limited term employee that really works 37 and a half hours a week, so she is also almost full-time. Their present case load, the two paternity specialists that I have have a case load of about 250 to 300 cases where they're constantly working on and moving them through the system. And then the non-support workers where the other child support workers have about 600 cases each, and there's seven of them. So we have a total of about 5,000 cases that we operate. Sheboygan County is about the 12th largest child support agency in the state. In addition to those, we also have what is known as private cases, private child support cases where the couples that are separating or have children usually have their own attorneys, and all we do is make sure that the money is collected and redistributed to the proper people in those cases. One of the, as you know, one of the unique things about your department is that you don't rely on property tax levy as much as 20 of the 22. The Register of Deeds, as you know, is another department that doesn't rely on any property tax levy. You utilize very little. If it isn't property tax levy that's funding your department operations and your staff, please share or explain where are you getting revenue to be able to do the work that you do? As part of the Child Support Act that is passed by the government, we're funded by both the federal and the state government. 66% of every dollar we spend, or I should say every dollar the county spends on the Child Support Program, is reimbursed through the federal government. And then we also earn incentives and are eligible for various grants that we can obtain through both the state and federal government. And all in all, they supply us about 91% of our revenue. The other 9% comes from the tax levy. And for 2009, that's about $55,000. Which is where we'd like to keep it. We're working on that also. So your total budget is? About a million, two. About a million, two. And I know I'm hitting a cold with this question. So if you don't have it in the memory, I understand. But a million dollars or so to support your department, how much is actually flowing through your department that you're helping get into the hands of families to support children? We do about seven, I would say $7 million a quarter goes through, well, we don't actually accept the money in white. Years ago, we used to, Shlory and County used to pay and collect child support. Now, there's a centralized system, which is located in Milwaukee, called the Wisconsin Collection Trust Fund. And they collect and distribute all of the child support. We still have maybe a couple hundred thousand that comes through the county. But there again, it comes into our office and the next day it's sent out to Milwaukee to the trust fund. So most of it you're facilitating getting through through that. And you said $7 million roughly a quarter? About every quarter, yeah. So almost $28 million, $30 million a year is going through the pipeline because of the work that you and your staff do. Correct. Very good, thank you, Jim. Jim, let's talk about a few examples of the important work that's done in your department so our viewers can better understand the functions there. With regard to a divorce, when there's children present, what level of involvement do you have in your department with that divorce? Once the divorce is final, that's when we come into play. The judges will automatically refer people to our department and they have to fill out an application. One of them has to fill out the application and supply a $25 fee unless they are indigent and at that particular time the fee is waived and then they fill out the questionnaire and what we do is we go through the process and we get all the information from both the parents to find out who makes what and what it all is and we calculate, we still use a percentage order calculation but all our orders are a straight dollar amount either bi-weekly or weekly or semi-monthly or sometimes monthly that is paid and we calculate that all out, prepare a work list for each of the parties to look at and in some cases we ask them to stipulate if they're in agreement to what we came up with, if there's just no way that they're going to agree to what we've developed as far as payments and insurance coverage and so forth, then we send it to court and the court process is probably very slow we are trying to work on more administrative processes to help speed things up because right now we're scheduling court hearings into July so even though we have five branches that we utilize in Sheboygan County there's still a waiting list to get into the various branches. And now if someone has issues on custody or visitation how does your department get involved in helping them with those items? The issue of visitation and custody is something that we do not handle but we refer them to the Clicker Courts Office who in turn will refer them to the Family Court Commissioner so that they're handled down there and our Family Court Commissioner has office hours set up that they will go through and explain the process that needs to be done for custody and visitation rights. Okay now if someone would come into your department who was pregnant and not sure who the father was how do you get involved to help them out? There are two ways. Normally they come in when they are pregnant yet and they're looking so we do a preliminary interview and the preliminary interviewers ask them in-depth questions as to who they possibly have slept with or who could possibly be the father. Their activity during the last six, eight months and so forth and then we load that all in and we try to locate who may be the father of the child or in some cases if the child's already born and the father comes in and says I'm looking for the mother of this child. You'd expect them to know it but we've had two cases this past year where we needed to find the mother because she was no longer living in Wisconsin or in the States as a matter of fact. So we just went back and looked and looked and looked and we did find one but I don't think we found the other yet. But in the case of a pregnancy we wait until the child is born and then if by then the father still hasn't shown up the hospital will give its voluntary paternity registration form. It's where the mother signs the form and says this is who I believe the father is and so forth. And if the father happens to be there he can sign also and declare himself the father. And at that point in time all we have to do is process paperwork to get his name on the birth certificate and so forth. But if he isn't there and we're looking for him then like I said we get the information that she'd given us previously and we go through it again if there's any new information that she has or maybe she ran into him or one of his relatives or friends or something and found out where he's living then we will contact him serving with papers so that he does come to a preliminary court hearing and we set things up that way. And it's a process that hopefully will be done within three to six weeks but sometimes it's three to four months. Okay. Now if most of our viewers I think have the view that the child support agency is mostly working with fathers to collect the support payments for the children when they're divorced. Could you really mention this Wisconsin support collections trust? How does this work in conjunction with that program? That's where all the funds are collected and sent to on a daily basis as soon as we get them or any of the other 71 counties. And now three of the tribes I believe in Wisconsin have also been sending their funds through the Wisconsin Collection Trust Fund. So there's about 75 different units that are sending in this money. And the money is distributed based on coupons that are filled out by the absent parent. And he fills in there where the money is supposed to go. And the money goes that way unless there's somebody that keys something wrong or something like that. And then we get an air listing on a daily basis that says, okay, if something was not done with this money where is it supposed to go? And it hangs out there until we find out what it's supposed to be or where it's supposed to go and then we have to make adjustments to the count to get it to the right place. So once we put it to the right place then hopefully everybody is happy but most of the time payers aren't happy. Now do you get calls from some of the mothers asking where their check is sometimes? A lot of times because there's so many things that can happen to payments because of the fact if they're used to getting it for, let's say a two month period or something like that every other week on a Wednesday, let's say. If that check isn't there they're gonna be on the phone calling us. And then we have to explain to them what may have happened.  We're trying to work around that by encouraging them to take out debit cards so that the funds are transferred immediately into Chase Bank which is the overseeing bank of our debit card process. And then that way it's there within 24 hours. A lot of people want to do that and still don't want to. So then we ask if they have a checking account, many do, many don't. And if they have a checking account we'll try and convince them that should be put in there and not only saves us time and the trust fund time but it saves the state funds because for every check they cut they have to pay an amount to the trust funds. Sure, now if there's a court order you get involved in the enforcement when individuals don't comply. Yes we do, if a court order isn't adhered to we'll get a call more than likely from the custodial parent and she or he will tell us that they didn't receive their money and we have to wait at least 30 days when there's been no contact and so forth. And then at that time what we can do is we can find out what the problem seems to be. If it is necessary we can have the person served and have them come into a court hearing and if that doesn't do any good and it goes on and continues to be an issue what we can do is turn it over to our attorney and have them issue a contempt order so that they are arrested and either put in jail until they can have their court hearing or they go to jail immediately and sit there and wait depending upon how their court order was written because some court orders are written that if they fail to pay they will be arrested and placed in jail. The other thing is that if it gets down to it where we just can't find people or we're not doing anything we can always turn it over to the district attorney's office and he can issue a criminal warrant to have them picked up criminally. And then Jim what would happen if one or the other parties move out of state? Is that something where your department still stays involved with this or does it eventually get handed off to another entity like yours in another state? We stay involved as long as there is at least the child living in Wisconsin. If the whole family would move to a different state then at that particular time if the one or the other parent wishes they can have their order, their venue change to another state. Most of the time it doesn't happen because Wisconsin probably follows up more on their cases than many other states do. We are close to being number one in collections and establishing support orders. So it's good to be from Wisconsin when you have or are in need of child support agency. And then is there a time limit on child support orders from the court either in age or other time that they place on these? Child support payments are, you need to make child support payments until the child is of age and has graduated from high school. So here in Wisconsin it would be 18 and a graduate of high school. So he or she could still collect child support until the age of 19. But that would be as long as they can. And you can always collect on arrears if you do fall into or if they fell into an arreared situation where they didn't pay and they had money coming from one parent or the other. We can continue to collect that for them up until the youngest child is 39. Okay, all right, Adam, back to you. I'm wondering if you should explain arrears a little bit. Probably, arrears is what we call when someone does not pay or when somebody doesn't pay what has been ordered to pay, if he only pays let's say $300 of a $500 order, then $200 is what is known as a rearage. So that goes into a separate account and stays there because whenever child support is paid the current child support is always paid first. And the other child support is held in this account until an additional payment is made. And that amount is also subject to right now it's a 1% interest per month. Soon they will be changing that to a half a percent rather than a 1% because of the economy. Speaking of the economy in earlier, you mentioned that you receive most of your funding through the federal and state government and our viewers don't need to hear because they're seeing it and they're feeling it that the economy is in rough shape. And when you talk about budgets, though Sheboygan County's got a pretty good track record, we rely a lot on the state. And as you well know, Jim, the state's track record, their budget deficits, the federal's track record and the budget deficit at the national level, it's terrible, it's absolutely terrible. Most of our departments, other than registered deeds and to a certain extent your department aren't relying on the state as much as they are tax levy but based on what's all happening at the state and federal level to get to the point, to get to the question, how do you see it impacting your department? Is the federal stimulus funds gonna help or hinder? Is the state budget deficit, again the 15th year that we've been dealing with a state budget deficit, is that gonna negatively impact your department? I'm happy to say it should not at least for the next two years. What happened is back three years ago in 2006, there was a deficit reduction act that was signed into law and at that particular time, child support agencies throughout Wisconsin lost about five and a half million dollars. Well at that particular time the state looked at it and they said, well, we should be able to cover some of that and our money is matchable so for every dollar that they put in, they could collect two from the feds at that particular time. So once they put in some funding that was subject to match from the feds, we were kept whole as much as possible by the state. Now this year the state said, we can't do that anymore because of their situation but what happened is President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reduction Act, I think it's called and with that, he has given some additional funds or allocated some additional funds to all child support agencies throughout the United States. Sure, you're not sure. The state of Wisconsin has received a grant or a stimulus package of about eight and a half million dollars for federal fiscal year 2009 as well as for 2010 that will run out until, that will run out in September of 2010 and with that we've spent a lot of meetings with the Wisconsin Child Support Association as to what we're gonna do with that and what's gonna happen is that we're hoping that we're gonna be allowed to expand that through at least December of 2010 to cover us as far as our year goes which would be beneficial and because we're starting on the back side basically of federal fiscal year 2009, we missed the opportunity to use some of these funds from October of 2008 through this month now of 2009. So what we're hoping to do is that we'll be able to use at the back end of 2010. Now we requested that information but right now it looks as though Sheboygan County will be getting the majority of that funding. It could be as much as $130,000 but there again the state is looking at some of that for some of the projects they would like to do or they wouldn't like to use some of those funds for a statewide project. One of them had been a statewide call center but that was voted down and they will not have a statewide call center because presently there are three individual call centers that various county agencies can ask to join. So the good news is even though we're doing deficit spending at the federal level and at the state level Sheboygan County child support should be okay through 2010. Correct. At least that's our hope. That's our hope and the big thing is the funds are there but it has to be used for the child support program and at all possible it has to be used to increase employment. Now I don't believe we need additional employees at the present time because we've got enough work to keep everybody busy and the only way I could have a need for additional employees is if we're gonna do some additional work on things then I don't wanna hire somebody for 18 months and then have to let them go because I know it's gonna be tough to do but I think with the staff that I have we can do things that might be a little slow up but one of our biggest things right now because of the economy here in Sheboygan County is we do what we call a review and adjust and that's part of the process that we have to do. It's usually something that's done every three years for most orders but you can do it every year upon request of either party. So this review and adjust means that we look at all the financial information of both parties and we put it together and we work on coming up with what is a fair amount to pay. Again, based on the 17% or 25% that we used to use but coming up with a straight dollar amount and right now we're getting about between 20 and 25 of these requests in a week whereas before the economy turned we were getting maybe three to five. Remarkable, three to five to 25 a week. That's remarkable and another indication that a lot of people are hurting. Yeah, definitely. Jim, we only have a couple of minutes left. Is there anything else you'd like to say about the department or your staff? Is there ever? Well, I just wanna thank my staff because they do a tremendous job and I know we do take a lot of calls and I know some can't even come over to your respective offices and most of those are complaint calls but we do what we can and the staff does an excellent job. We do and they do, we get crabby every once in a while. It may come across that they're being rude. They really don't mean that. They are just trying to do their job and one thing I guess that upsets them most is that when they give, when our receptionist answers the phone and gives them the information where they'll just continue keep calling and they'll get the same information from the next level and the next level and then if the supervisor answers the call they'll get that same information and if they finally come to me they'll get the same information that they got way back in the beginning. It's just a process that we have to go through and we have certain guidelines that we have to follow and it's what we do and we've all been doing it. I think I've only got, well my receptionist is only there a year but the rest of my staff have been there over 10 years that have been working for Sheboygan counties. Well, in the minute left, a lot of information, good information today. I know how hard your staff work and the very challenging job that they have and the important job they have. If folks have questions, if any of our viewers have questions or wanna make an adjustment because of the economy and they just got laid off, who should they call? What number should they call? They have to do requests in writing for the review and adjust. That's one of the process. Otherwise, if they just have questions, our number is<PHONE_NUMBER>. We do have a fax number if they wanna fax a request for a review and adjust and that number is 920-4590-399 or we are on the county's website, which is www.co.sheboygan.wi.us and last of all, our email address is childsupport at co.sheboygan.wi.us. If they go to the website, are the numbers and the email addresses right there? Very pleased. Very good, very good. Well, Jim, thank you so much for joining us today. A lot of information, covered a lot of ground. Thank you for the work you and your staff do. And next week, or next month rather, we'll have another department that also doesn't rely on a lot of property tax levy. So we'll be two for two and that's our register of deeds, Ellen Schleicher. So until then, thanks for joining us.