S2E3: The Murder of Timothy Blyth

00:00:02
Speaker 1: There’s a moment in every confrontation when someone decides whether to walk away. On a piece of hunting land. Just outside Tallahassee, that moment came and went an argument over access, over rules, over who belonged, and then gunfire. When it was over, one man lay in the road while the other disappeared. Now the dead man’s friends and family are trying to pick up the pieces as they wonder how such an everyday argument turned so deadly, so quickly. That’s next on Blood Trails. This is a story about three hunting buddies. It didn’t make national headlines, dateline didn’t cover the investigation, and you won’t find trial footage in a Netflix documentary. But for hunters, what happened to Tim Blythe and his friends hits close to home. This could have happened on any slice of public land anywhere in the country, and the mystery of Tim’s death is all the more troubling for the familiarity of its circumstances. It all started on a balmy seventy eight degree day in December of twenty twenty one, when the Wakulla County Sheriff’s Office in Florida’s Panhandle received a nine to one to one call from a man who’d been walking his dog in the Saint Mark’s National Wildlife Refuge.

00:01:29
Speaker 2: I turned on to a Purified Bay Road and the cruise nod down there I had made. After we got off the blacktop and it turned to sand, there was two pickup trucks sitting on the right. One was pointing at me. It was a bright, shiny new Ford.

00:01:53
Speaker 1: This man’s name was Norman Grass. And as he drove past those trucks, he noticed several men standing around the front of that shiny red pickup.

00:02:01
Speaker 2: There was a dude that.

00:02:02
Speaker 3: Looked right at me.

00:02:04
Speaker 4: He was tall, and he had a baseball cap on.

00:02:07
Speaker 2: I kind of think it was camouflage, and I also think I just felt he was a hunter.

00:02:12
Speaker 5: M h, you know.

00:02:13
Speaker 2: He looked like it did we’ll color boy, you know. And nothing else stood out in my mind other than looking at him, and I figured that they were shooting shit about hunting.

00:02:25
Speaker 1: Norman didn’t think much about this at the time. In later interviews with law enforcement, he wasn’t able to remember any details about the other men or even recall exactly how many there were. But when he drove back down Purified Bay Road, about forty five minutes later, the scene he encountered was seared into his memory.

00:02:44
Speaker 5: Well.

00:02:44
Speaker 2: As I was coming back and I got close to where these gentlemen were, I seen something in the road.

00:02:50
Speaker 4: I instantly thought it was the sleeping.

00:02:53
Speaker 2: Bag, and then when I got up to it, I seen two feet. I looked at the head and there was a pool of blood.

00:03:00
Speaker 4: He was face down.

00:03:02
Speaker 2: I couldn’t see his eye, but I could see the pull of blood around him.

00:03:08
Speaker 1: The trucks and the other men were nowhere to be seen. Norman turned around and drove back to make sure his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him, but he had no desire to take a closer look. He drove around the corner, out of sight and called nine one one.

00:03:23
Speaker 2: I rolled up my windows, locked my doors, just sat in the car because I was the only one that witnessed those guys.

00:03:29
Speaker 3: I got that thinking about it.

00:03:30
Speaker 4: Right, He looked right at me.

00:03:32
Speaker 2: The truck is very distinguishable, Sure, and I got paranamid it so scary and soul shook up. I got my gun up and put it here on my councle.

00:03:41
Speaker 1: Sure, but Norman’s strange day was about to get even stranger, as you’ve.

00:03:47
Speaker 2: Probably found out or will fall up. There was two dogs, two groomed poodles poles were there and they were at right where.

00:03:58
Speaker 1: We were at Norman’s as. These dogs had tags and were clearly well taken care of, but they were skittish. They ran around like they didn’t know what to do, and when police arrived, they refused to be caught. Norman says. Animal control officers weren’t able to wrangle them either, but strangely, they stayed in the area. No one knew why two well groomed poodles would be running around a dead body, but Norman was right about one thing. The man lying in a pool.

00:04:26
Speaker 6: Of his own blood was a hunter.

00:04:28
Speaker 1: Investigators uncovered many more details about the when, how, and who of his death, but his friends and hunting buddies are still wondering about the why.

00:04:39
Speaker 7: It’s something that you would have never seen coming period. You know, nobody.

00:04:45
Speaker 5: Sees murder coming anyways.

00:04:48
Speaker 7: Why it was time for him to be called to the Lord or whatever. You know you’re gonna always have that why.

00:04:55
Speaker 1: The events that transpired in those fateful minutes are still shrouded in mystery. But it began with a scenario We’ve all experienced a random interaction between two strangers in the woods. How that interaction escalated to a murder investigation that included a missing gun, a would be fugitive, a pig carcass in a driveway, and a claim of self defense is the question that remains with us today. In the end, the answer might matter far less than the.

00:05:26
Speaker 6: Carnage it left behind.

00:05:28
Speaker 1: I’m Jordan Sillers and this is blood Trails, the murder of Timothy blythe Part one, Smudge and Smoky. Waculla County is located just south of Tallahassee, but the vast majority of the area is taken up by the Saint Mark’s National Wildlife Refuge and the Apalachic col National Forest. It looks like a great place to live for someone who loves the outdoors, but residents don’t see many murders. In twenty twenty one, this was the only homicide that occurred in the county. Needless to say, it was all hands on deck when Norman’s call came in, and Eddie Wester and Brett Sarachi were right in the thick of it.

00:06:20
Speaker 4: My name is Brett Sarachi.

00:06:21
Speaker 8: At the time of the homicide, I was a detective Captain and supervised the investigation.

00:06:27
Speaker 1: Along with Major Western Deputies responded to the scene around one twenty five pm on Sunday, December twelfth. They found the man Norman had seen and soon identified him as Timothy Blythe using the driver’s license found in his wallet. They learned that Blythe was fifty two years old and lived in the nearby town of Crawfordville. He was wearing a Camo US Marines hat, and deputies found a can of chewing tobacco, some lip balm, and a set of keys in one of his pockets. Those keys went to a silver Toyota Tacoma that was parked not far away. Investigators wouldn’t know the extent of Tim’s injuries until after the autopsy, but it was clear that he’d been shot multiple times. Blood soaked the shoulder and armpit areas of the mossy oak breakup Country Camo shirt he was wearing, and the crotch and thighs of his jeans were covered in the same substance. Deputies observed multiple tire and shoe tracks around the body, but no one else was in the area. No other people that is Here’s Captain Sarachi.

00:07:26
Speaker 8: When we first saw the dogs and the way they hung in that immediate vicinity, our first inkling, at least mine, was could they belong to the man that was actually down the deceiting on the ground. They were running in circles, but they never went more than thirty forty yards away in circle, which is and again couldn’t be corralled.

00:07:46
Speaker 1: You might expect hunting dogs to get loose in a big piece of public land, but these poodles didn’t look like any kind of hunting dogs the detectives had ever seen.

00:07:54
Speaker 8: Instead, they’re more like show dogs. They’ve been manicured, they have their puffy fur. I’m just right, and they were very out of place for where.

00:08:03
Speaker 4: They were at.

00:08:05
Speaker 1: Detectives called animal control because they were worried the dogs might contaminate the crime scene, but Laculla’s finest were unable to capture the large canines until a woman pulled up in a copper colored Hyundai SUV. She stopped where the deputies had blocked the road, rolled down her window, and identified herself as Sandra Williams. Here’s major Western.

00:08:25
Speaker 9: Sandra shows up old scene and the dogs go rot to her, so obviously she and we were able to determine they were the honors through veterinarian records.

00:08:36
Speaker 1: As she put the dogs in her vehicle, she told detectives that the gray dog was named Smokey and the black one was named Smudge. Her husband, a man named Stuart Money, had called her around one point thirty that afternoon while she was at work to report that the dogs had escaped from the backyard of their home. Stuart said he’d driven down Purified Bay Road, but not all the way, so he wanted her to drive farther down while he looked elsewhere. Sandra explained that they only lived about a mile and a half from the crime scene, and they walk their dogs down that road five to seven days a week.

00:09:09
Speaker 4: Well, it was kind of strange.

00:09:13
Speaker 9: She was actually working at the time, and Stuart Monny called her on her phone while he was at home. She’s at work and saying, Hey, the dogs got out. I think they’re on Purifive A Road. We don’t know the context of that entire conversation, but Sandra does come to the scene and the dogs are immediately getting her vehicle.

00:09:36
Speaker 1: She couldn’t see Tim’s body from where she parked her car, but she could see the large law enforcement presence, but her response to all those vehicles, flashing lights and crime scene tape was oddly nonchalant.

00:09:48
Speaker 9: I don’t really think she ever questioned why there’s so many deputy shares.

00:09:53
Speaker 4: I don’t think so. Her reaction, he’s right, was extremely odd.

00:09:57
Speaker 8: I mean, just immediately I had a change or trajectory of the investigation at that point to try to figure out where these dogs came from.

00:10:06
Speaker 1: If those dogs were somehow connected to the murder. Detectives knew they’d want to speak to Sandra again, but Smudge and Smokey were clearly her dogs, and they didn’t have any concrete reason to detain her. So Sandra drove home as investigators continued to process the scene. Just a few minutes later, the two technicians taking photos of the scene heard something strange, a sound they couldn’t quite identify, coming from the woods just across the road from the dead body.

00:10:35
Speaker 10: While documenting the tire impressions on one side of the road, Miss Reagan and I kept hearing a sound in the woods. We weren’t sure exactly what it was.

00:10:46
Speaker 5: It was.

00:10:48
Speaker 10: Like a It would stop and then start again. We made a comment to this to the detectives as we were concerned, we didn’t know what it was and it needed to be identified.

00:11:00
Speaker 1: As Britney Owens, a crime scene investigator for the Wakulla County Sheriff’s Office, it’s unclear exactly what the sound sounded like, but it’s easy to understand their concern. Whoever had killed Tim was still out there. For all they knew, the murderer could be hiding in the woods waiting for a chance to ambush law enforcement. An investigator with the State Attorney’s office was standing nearby, and he ventured into the forest to figure out the source of the noise. He soon discovered a cell phone lying on the ground about twenty feet from the opposite edge of the road. That phone was fortunately not Tim’s killer, but it was nonetheless significant. As investigators poured through the data on that device, they found a photo that became the closest thing we have to explaining what happened to Tim and why. As Assistant State Attorney Andrew Denene said at trial four years later, taking that photo may have been the last thing Tim ever did, and it helped serve justice for what happened next.

00:11:58
Speaker 3: This was mister Blithe’s out from the Great and identifying the person he’s about to kill.

00:12:03
Speaker 1: Him Part two, Tim, Jimmy and Louis. If you read about this case online, you’ll find very little information on Tim blythe You might find that he was born in nineteen sixty nine and worked as a heavy machinery operator for a construction company in Tallahassee. You might find that he lived in the nearby town of Crawfordville, had served with the Marines in the Gulf War, and loved to hunt and fish. If you really dug deep, you might also find that he’d been married twice and had a son with whom he was not close. But you won’t find anything about what he was like, his personality and interests, how he interacted with others, or how he approached hunting and fishing.

00:12:48
Speaker 7: We’re like brothers, man, Yeah, the same family, but we’ve been around together for a long time.

00:12:56
Speaker 1: That’s Jimmy Huddo. Jimmy first met Tim in the early nineties, and they became close after Tim married Jimmy’s aunt. That marriage didn’t work out, but the two men remained close. Their relationship, Jimmy says, was built on their shared love of the outdoors.

00:13:11
Speaker 7: Literally my wife would have to ask us that we’d have to take a weekend off because we had plans with the kids, or she wanted a date night.

00:13:21
Speaker 11: Yeah, if that gives you.

00:13:23
Speaker 7: Any kind of idea.

00:13:25
Speaker 1: Jimmy and Tim weren’t alone in their pursuits. In the late nineties. They met another man named Louis Angelotti, who made up the third musketeer of their hunting and fishing trio.

00:13:34
Speaker 12: And we had a little group that we did a couple of archery.

00:13:38
Speaker 6: Quota hunts on me, Jimmy and Tim.

00:13:41
Speaker 12: We stayed together. I mean we’ve been together ever since since then. And if we weren’t hunting, Tim loved the bass fish.

00:13:50
Speaker 6: Hey loved the bass fish.

00:13:51
Speaker 1: Like most hunting buddies, Tim, Louie, and Jimmy loved to give each other a hard time. Jimmy said they’d make fun of Louis for not having steady legs and falling out of the boat. And he remembers messing with Tim about the size of the buckey shot.

00:14:04
Speaker 7: He said, Oh, I killed a big old buck. Can you come down and see if you can spot him?

00:14:08
Speaker 3: And everything?

00:14:09
Speaker 7: And I get over there and I said, I thought you said you killed a good buck, he said, I did. It’s got to be at least in eight points. I said, heck, no, it’s a spike. And he’s like, no, it ain’t. That ain’t mine.

00:14:22
Speaker 1: Tim’s death and Jimmy’s ongoing health problems have fractured their trio, and I can tell they missed the camaraderie that comes with hunting, fishing, and sharing the fruits of their labor.

00:14:32
Speaker 7: Whoever killed the first year of the season, if we was out about in the woods, we would take the backstrap of that first dear and we would do a cookout out there in the woods, and we would invite two of our good friends that didn’t hunt because they were too you know, they were older. They really wasn’t physically able.

00:14:54
Speaker 5: You know. That was what we enjoyed doing.

00:14:56
Speaker 7: That’s what he enjoyed doing.

00:14:58
Speaker 1: Louis says Tim was outgoing and talkative, but not the kind of guy to pick a fight. In fact, most of Louis’s memories of Tim revolve around his willingness to help others.

00:15:08
Speaker 12: He was the kind of guy that if you needed a penny, he’d give you a dollar.

00:15:12
Speaker 6: And he may only only had two, he’d give you one of them. That’s just who who he was.

00:15:17
Speaker 1: One day, the trio stopped by a grocery store to gather supplies for a hunt. Tim was wearing a hunting jacket that Louis had given him for Christmas, a jacket he almost never took off. As the men walked inside, Tim noticed a man sitting on the ground outside the doors.

00:15:32
Speaker 6: You could tell it was cold.

00:15:34
Speaker 12: It was cool, misty, cloudy, hayese. It’s one of them little duck cutting mortons. Basically, a fellow was sitting outside. He didn’t he wouldn’t ask him for nothing. Went to beg and I said, I said, budd you look cold. He nodded his head. I’ll walk in.

00:15:47
Speaker 6: Look look behind me. Tim stopton and just started talking to him.

00:15:50
Speaker 12: Next thing I know, he came and gave that man the jacket that I gave him, his favorite jacket, the one that he wanted the most. He gave it to that fell on the brown. I said, Tim, he gave him that jacket. He said, he’s army bed, he’s cold. He needs it more than I do.

00:16:08
Speaker 1: Louie recalled another time when Tim ran into a stranger while hunting the same unit where he was killed a few years later.

00:16:14
Speaker 12: This guy was not singing no deer, so he was talking to the speller and Tim said, I’m gonna bring this man over here by me. Maybe he can kill one seek one of these deer. And he end up killed killing a deer. It was a gun gun hunt.

00:16:26
Speaker 1: I don’t mean to make Tim sound like mother Teresa. I imagine his two ex wives would tell very different kinds of stories. And I’m sure like all of us, Tim had his rough edges. But you can tell a lot about the way a man is perceived by how people act at his funeral. To understand why that’s true in Tim’s case, you need to know a little backstory.

00:16:46
Speaker 12: They nickname him dig DG as a kid because you like the dig in.

00:16:51
Speaker 6: The dirt true to form.

00:16:53
Speaker 1: Once he was discharged from the military, Tim got a job as a heavy machinery operator for a construction company called m Inc. Where he worked for the next twenty years.

00:17:02
Speaker 12: Well, the owner of that company told him, and I was with them one day, he said, this man right here, there’s not a piece of machinery or color that’s that’s made.

00:17:13
Speaker 6: This man cannot operate.

00:17:15
Speaker 12: He could look at something and throw a grade and he didn’t have a big education, like an engineer, but he could run a grade.

00:17:20
Speaker 6: He was just a natural.

00:17:23
Speaker 1: Tim sudden violent death was a blow to that community, and they showed their appreciation for his life and his work at his funeral.

00:17:32
Speaker 12: There was a lot of excavating and in construction companies in Tallahassee. All of them shut down for that day and went to that funeral. All of the even the ones he didn’t work for, all of them shut down. They had a convoy of dump trucks excavators on behind Semis and all of them went by the Simsmitary and all of them laid laid the horns down.

00:17:55
Speaker 6: I said that, I told his dad. I said, they’re all right there for him.

00:18:00
Speaker 1: I could be wrong, but I don’t think Tim’s coworkers would honor him in that way.

00:18:04
Speaker 11: If he was a jerk.

00:18:05
Speaker 1: They didn’t just like him because he was good at his job. He likely treated his colleagues the same way he treated that guy at the grocery store or the stranger who couldn’t bag a deer. That willingness to help friends and strangers alike is part of what makes his loss so difficult for his family and friends to process. It’s also tragically part of the reason he was at the refuge by himself. The day he was murdered. Louis explained that the refuge is divided into two units, the Waculla Unit and the Panacea Unit. Tim, Jimmy, and Louis had all drawn a tag for the Panacea unit, while Louis had managed to draw tags in both. The day Tim was killed, the Waculla unit was holding its general gun hunt while the Panacea unit was holding the mobility impaired deer hunt. Tim decided to scout the Panacea unit that day in preparation for the following weekend. Meanwhile, Louis was hunting the Waculla unit.

00:19:00
Speaker 12: He said he was going up to scout on Sunday. I said, well, if you’ll wait till noon, I’ll come on down and you and I will go scout. He replied back, No, you sit on that straight and you killed that big buck. So I sat there on Sunday. Well, I’m sitting in that tree on Sunday, not coming down. The incident happened. Whether he got murdered.

00:19:26
Speaker 1: Louis isn’t surprised that his friend offered to scout on his own and let Louis hunt the whole day, but he still feels guilty, wondering if his presence might have saved his friend’s life.

00:19:37
Speaker 13: His dad, when I told him that I was supposed to be there with him, I should have went over there. I was going to And when his dad said, well, at least we only have one funeral, not too so when he said that, you know, that didn’t sit with me well at all, I mean, just emotionally.

00:19:53
Speaker 6: I was tough. That was tough. I don’t know. I still feel that if I was hm fair, that he would be with this rat.

00:20:02
Speaker 1: Man Part three Sandra it was possible smudge and smoke he had escaped, just like Sandra said. But if those dogs had already run more than a mile from their home, and Sandra admitted they’d never run away before, why would they hang out around Tim’s body. Something didn’t add up, and investigators knew they had to speak with the other owner of those poodles, Stuart Money.

00:20:32
Speaker 6: From what I.

00:20:33
Speaker 1: Understand, you know, obviously you want to talk to him, but he didn’t seem like he was very interested in.

00:20:39
Speaker 6: Talking with you guys.

00:20:40
Speaker 1: Is that is that fair to say?

00:20:44
Speaker 4: That’s fair to say? And almost absolutely not.

00:20:48
Speaker 1: Sandra had given Detective Stuart’s phone number, but when detectives called it just a few hours later, Sandra answered. Officer Jonathan Owens, writes in an incident report quote upon handing the telephone to Stuart, he was completely irate and refused to speak with law enforcement. When asked if he was willing to meet law enforcement in reference to speaking with them, he stated no and ended the telephone call. Detectives called Sandra again and asked if she would be willing to come back down to Purify Bay Road and answer a few more questions.

00:21:18
Speaker 14: Yeah, and my husband is a horse’s ass.

00:21:21
Speaker 15: Yeah.

00:21:22
Speaker 14: And it’s not like he does not like police officers, all.

00:21:25
Speaker 15: Right, because I just I just wanted to ask him some questions.

00:21:30
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, I told him that.

00:21:31
Speaker 14: I said, you’re gonna look guilty if you don’t talk to him. I’m not talking to no police. Okay, that’s just him.

00:21:38
Speaker 1: So the other voice you hear is Major Chuck Whaley, who interviewed Sandra outside her vehicle not far from where Tim was shot. Sandra explained that just a few years ago, her husband had been attacked by some neighbor dogs while riding a bike. He had called the sheriff to report the incident, but according to Sandra, the officers had talked to the neighbor but not to Stuart. Stuart felt like the call the county Sheriff’s deputies had mishandled the situation, which is why he had no interest in talking when they called.

00:22:06
Speaker 15: Did your husband discuss with you at all today? Why he thought we might be giving him a call?

00:22:14
Speaker 16: Just that?

00:22:16
Speaker 14: Yeah, he says, I’m just not going to talk to any police.

00:22:20
Speaker 3: Okay, that’s it.

00:22:21
Speaker 14: And you know, he says that the way that they treated me before that I just don’t want to do it, he says. And besides, he says, there’s nothing to hide. I mean, our dogs were down here, has nothing to do with either of us.

00:22:36
Speaker 15: And you don’t feel like he’d be willing to call the NAT or anything.

00:22:40
Speaker 17: I doubt it.

00:22:41
Speaker 4: Really.

00:22:42
Speaker 15: Most had a pretty negative experience.

00:22:43
Speaker 14: Oh yeah, he was not happy anyway, Yeah, kind of.

00:22:50
Speaker 1: Sandra told Wyley that she and Stuart had been married for forty years and we’re planning to leave the next day to celebrate their anniversary in the Florida Keys. Stuart had a doctor’s appointment that morning in Tallahassee to look at a broken bone in his hand, but he’d spent the rest of the day looking for the dogs and packing for the trip.

00:23:08
Speaker 15: Did he say whether or not he had been down here at all today?

00:23:11
Speaker 6: No, he said.

00:23:12
Speaker 14: I asked him that after I talked, I said, did you walk the dogs today? And he said no, I didn’t. I just went right up there to Tallahassee not too long after you left.

00:23:21
Speaker 15: Okay.

00:23:22
Speaker 1: At this point, detectives still weren’t sure what to make of Money’s claims. Like Sandra said, just because their dogs were down there doesn’t mean they were involved in a murder. Sandra pointed out that those poodles had tracked deer through the woods, and she wondered if they smelled Tim’s body and were attracted to the scent. But then, almost as an aside, Major Whaley asks what kind of car Stewart drives?

00:23:44
Speaker 7: He had?

00:23:45
Speaker 15: He has a red for okay, and so this vehicle, what kind of vehicle is this?

00:23:52
Speaker 5: It’s a HUNDI.

00:23:54
Speaker 15: So are the only two vehicles the two of y’all have is this vehicle and his red pickup?

00:23:59
Speaker 9: Yeah?

00:23:59
Speaker 18: All right?

00:24:00
Speaker 1: Remember Norman Grass the nine to one one collar made a point to say that one of the vehicles parked in that area was a shiny red Ford F one fifty, much like the dogs. The presence of that truck indicated that Sandra or Stuart might have been close by. There are a lot of red pickups in Florida, But what are the odds that it was someone other than the owner of those dogs. Major Whaley had established that Stuart drove the same kind of pickups seen by a witness, and earlier in the interview, Sandra had mentioned that the couple kept a pistol in the nightstand by the bed. Major Whaley was keen to learn more about this weapon and its whereabouts.

00:24:38
Speaker 15: So described the pistol that you that you said in the night stand? What kind of piston?

00:24:45
Speaker 14: He hasn’t seen it for so long. I couldn’t even describe it other than it’s black.

00:24:49
Speaker 15: It’s black in collar. Well, I’ll ask you this. Do you know the difference between a revolver and a semi automatic pistol? M A revolver has a cylinder, that track. He has a number of bullets. It’s the cylinder.

00:25:05
Speaker 5: This has a clip, it has a magazine.

00:25:07
Speaker 15: Okay, all right, so it’d be a semi automatic. Christ do you know what caliber it would be?

00:25:13
Speaker 3: Anything?

00:25:14
Speaker 15: Well, is it primarily your farm or is it primary’s a farm or both the all’s farms.

00:25:19
Speaker 14: We never use it, so, I mean we just bought it for, you know, to have in the house and we don’t use it.

00:25:27
Speaker 1: Sandra said she hadn’t seen the handgun in about six months, and as far as she knows, Stuart doesn’t carry a firearm with him in his vehicle. But despite Sandra’s claims, things were starting to fall into place for Major Whaley.

00:25:40
Speaker 15: Well, ago when you said that he was a hothead, Yeah, tell me what you mean by that. My wife would know me inside out as well.

00:25:54
Speaker 5: Like if he has to wait, he just gets real impatient.

00:25:59
Speaker 1: Major Whale keeps his tone easy going and non threatening. But Sandra isn’t an idiot. She can tell what the detective is driving at and she repeats three or four times that there’s no way her husband could have been involved in the death of a stranger.

00:26:13
Speaker 14: I mean, I know you don’t believe me, and you’re trained not to, but you know, I just don’t think that there’s any connection between stew and I mean, there certainly is not me because I wasn’t I was at work.

00:26:25
Speaker 15: If something has happened and later on he’s wanting to discuss it. You got my phone on I callity from my cell phone.

00:26:35
Speaker 14: Well, I.

00:26:38
Speaker 15: Highly recommend, I highly recommend.

00:26:41
Speaker 14: That that if I had any indication that he was involved, I mean for sure I would, but he would not. He is not one who can cover his emotions. That’s why I say I don’t think he was absolutely not involved in this, because if he had done something serious like that, he had been any more wreck and he’s not. He just wants to go on vacation.

00:27:03
Speaker 15: Yeah, let me ask you this. What did he say when you said you were coming up.

00:27:08
Speaker 11: Here to talk to me?

00:27:09
Speaker 14: He says, well, don’t let them bamboozle you.

00:27:15
Speaker 1: It was becoming increasingly clear that Stuart Money was one of the men Norman had seen talking on the side of the road, but Norman had reported seeing three, possibly as many as four individuals. If Tim was one and Stuart was another, there was at least one other person who either witnessed a murderer or was a murderer himself.

00:27:37
Speaker 6: That’s next after the break.

00:27:41
Speaker 1: Part four, Eddie all Day. Sometimes investigators track a killer for years without catching a break. Other times it only takes a few hours.

00:27:53
Speaker 5: Eddie all day alday.

00:27:56
Speaker 1: Eddie had been in that section of the refuge earlier that morning, taking part in a mobility impaired deer hunt. These hunts allowed those with disabilities to chase game under special rules that permit vehicles and areas they would normally be prohibited. But when Eddie tried to return that afternoon to hunt the same section, he saw that the roads were blocked by law enforcement.

00:28:16
Speaker 16: Detective Eddie Wester walked up to my truck and he told me. He said, sir, we have the road closed down right now. We had an incident here. And I asked him and did it involve a man with two poodles?

00:28:30
Speaker 5: And he looked at me and said I needed to talk to you.

00:28:33
Speaker 1: Eddie explained that he’d shot a deer the day before and he’d been up late processing it. He didn’t arrive at the refuge until later the next morning, so he decided to just hang out at the check station.

00:28:44
Speaker 16: And while I was waiting, someone pulled up and it was Timothy Blacke, and he introduced his shelf and told me that he was wanting to go in a scout because he had the general gun hunt coming up to come weekend, and we got to talking, and you know, I found out he was a marine, and you know, me being army, you know, we told army stories and marine stories and talked about hunting and stuff.

00:29:13
Speaker 1: Eddie says their conversation was friendly and Tim didn’t seem agitated or upset. The two men parted ways after a few more minutes, and Eddie made his way to his stand and hunted until around noon, when he got down and headed home in his truck.

00:29:27
Speaker 16: And as I was leaving, coming out of the road, I encountered an individual walking in that had two poodles with him and just got a common courtesy. I stopped and I said, sir, I said, you may want to go walk your dog somewhere else. I said, they have a mobility impaired hunt going on in there right now, I said, And this guy sitting on the roads there were guns. And he said, well, this is the refuge.

00:29:57
Speaker 5: I can come in here anytime I want.

00:29:59
Speaker 16: This is but lamb, And I told him, I said, well, I understand that, I said, but but for your safety and your dog safety, you could at least put on an orange vest. Then his response was who the hell are you to tell me what to do? So then I said I want and I see you’re not going to be understanding of what I’m trying to say, so I said, okay, buddy, fine, So I drove off.

00:30:21
Speaker 1: As Eddie drove past the check station, he saw that Tim was still there, he pulled over to keep chatting with his fellow veteran, when just a few minutes later, the guy with the poodles drove up in his red Ford pickup.

00:30:33
Speaker 16: Stuart Mouney pulled up behind my truck and Gilleida and walked around us and made a wide berth and there’s a sign right there that says Saint Mark’s Refuge And said, did you see that sign right there that gave you listened to refuge and it’s open to everybody, blah blah. And Tim told him, he says, we understand that. He said, but you could at least put on an orange vest. And he told Tim, he’s you’re a fucking idiot too. And I told him, I said, well, if you’ll go over to the kiosks there, there’s information on that board to explain everything to you about this hunt going on out here. And he went over there, and looked at that and then came back to his truck.

00:31:19
Speaker 1: I asked Eddie if the guy with the poodles, who he later identified to law enforcement as Stuart Money, seemed defensive or aggressive.

00:31:27
Speaker 16: Oh, that’s being nice about it. I mean just the animosity and his body language. You know, he was blating. If you understand what I’m saying. There, you know, facing me sideways like I you thought I was going to attack him.

00:31:42
Speaker 5: It’s a defensive posture.

00:31:44
Speaker 16: And the whole time, my mild red flags in my head are going off.

00:31:48
Speaker 5: You know, this guy’s got issues.

00:31:50
Speaker 1: And if you’ve ever taken a self defense class, you know that the first course of action in a situation like this is to remove yourself from the area, which is exactly what Eddie did.

00:32:01
Speaker 16: And I told Tim, I said, look, man, I’ve got to go. I said, I got some stuff I got to take care at home, and I’ll see you want to come back if you’re still out here. And this was approximately twelve forty five maybe.

00:32:16
Speaker 1: But Eddie didn’t drive away as Tim and Stuart continued arguing. From his perspective, it looked like Stuart was putting his dogs back in his truck and driving away.

00:32:25
Speaker 16: He had the passenger door open, and I just figured he was putting his dogs back in there.

00:32:29
Speaker 5: I don’t know exactly what he was doing.

00:32:32
Speaker 1: They weren’t like taught when you left. They weren’t like arguing like you didn’t leave guys there like yelling at each other like it seemed like it was over the interaction.

00:32:41
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:32:43
Speaker 16: I wouldn’t have pulled away if they’d have been shouting a hill and at each other. You know, I’d try to de escalate the situation. But yeah, there was no nothing to really warrant it that.

00:32:54
Speaker 1: How that situation ended with one man dead and the other man fleeing the scene was still a mystery. But after hearing Eddie’s testimony, detectives had hurt enough it was time to pay Stuart money a visit part five the raid. Rather than knocking on his door and hoping he cooperate, what Kula County detective decided not to take any chances. If Stu Monni was their guy, they didn’t want to give him an opportunity to hide evidence, so that afternoon they applied for a search warrant for Mony’s residence on Jack Crumb Road. Their first move when they arrived at the gate to Moni’s driveway. Was to make sure Sandra didn’t get caught in what could be a violent interaction.

00:33:38
Speaker 9: We actually called her own scene and requested her to come out because we were the potential for violence or from Stu Moni was obvious based off of what she had told us about him, you know, being hot headed.

00:33:53
Speaker 19: We were prepared that if we needed to force entry or breach the door, we were prepared to do so.

00:33:58
Speaker 1: That’s Patrick Fleming who parted disipated in the search of Money’s home with the Wakullak County Sheriff’s Office.

00:34:04
Speaker 19: As we approached the house, someone on the team got eyes on mister Monny. When he saw law enforcement, he turned and fled further into the house.

00:34:15
Speaker 1: Detective Fleming was the first to enter the house, opening the unlocked front door and chasing Money back into a bedroom.

00:34:22
Speaker 19: So as soon as I came through the door, somebody had called that he went to the right, to our right, there was a hallway. I went down it. I didn’t see anybody. The first door I came to was also on the right. It was an open door. I came across the corner and mister Monnie was standing there. He was given verbal commands which he did not comply with. Okay, so what did you do at that point? I closed the distance with him and I part of my kit was I had a rifle, so I only had one hand available. I’m right handed as my left hand, so I grabbed him with my left arm and he was taken to the ground.

00:34:58
Speaker 1: Stuart was handcuffed and de tanged, and even though he’d been taken down with a significant amount of force, he declined to be checked by e MS. Whatever injuries he may or may not have sustained, they didn’t keep him from arguing with the deputies.

00:35:12
Speaker 20: Why did you come in and.

00:35:12
Speaker 21: Take me to the ground.

00:35:13
Speaker 9: When we get inside somebody’s house, we don’t know what may or may not happen here.

00:35:18
Speaker 5: Okay, we don’t know what we call to you.

00:35:22
Speaker 4: And instead of coming to the door, he ran, I went to get my cell phone. You don’t need a cell phone.

00:35:29
Speaker 7: Come to the door.

00:35:30
Speaker 4: When the police said come to the door.

00:35:32
Speaker 17: I want to get my cell phone to come to the door, right.

00:35:35
Speaker 4: Well, I didn’t say. You didn’t say please go get yourself phone, come to the door.

00:35:39
Speaker 21: I don’t have to when you do when it’s search, okay, and we announced that, well, we’ll see.

00:35:47
Speaker 1: Despite Stuart’s protestations, deputies were authorized to seize anything that might be relevant to Tim’s death, but they were mostly interested in the black semi automatic pistol Sandra had mentioned.

00:35:58
Speaker 9: But uh, the funniest thing was when we executed the search for that evening.

00:36:04
Speaker 4: In our minds.

00:36:04
Speaker 9: You know, Sandra, you’ve told us this pistol is in this night stand and it never moves. Well, when the detectives went in the bedroom and opened the drawer, she couldn’t explain where that pistol could have fell.

00:36:18
Speaker 1: They searched the rest of the house, as well as Stuart’s truck, but that pistol was nowhere to be found. This, detective, Sarace told me, was almost as damning as finding the firearm hidden away in a sock drawer.

00:36:30
Speaker 8: The absence of evidence is as important as the evidence that we’re able to recover. And the fact that Stu’s wife was telling us that, yes, we do have a handgun. It’s always here. It’s always in the bedstand between our two beds. Matter of fact, I had her go into the room with me to point out exactly where it was going to be.

00:36:50
Speaker 4: And the look on her face was classic, because when we opened.

00:36:55
Speaker 8: The drawer and it wasn’t there, she just had an absolute shot look.

00:37:00
Speaker 5: On her face.

00:37:01
Speaker 8: It’s almost as when she recognized just the whole totality of this and that maybe Stu was involved more than whatever he was telling her.

00:37:11
Speaker 1: They also noticed that, despite walking his dogs during a public land hunt and arguing about wearing Hunter’s orange, Stewart appeared to be quite a hunter in his own right.

00:37:21
Speaker 8: This man is an avid, avid hunter. And when I say avid hunter, he also had a very expensive rifle which just was not there at the time it was being worked on because he went all over the world to do exotic hunts.

00:37:35
Speaker 4: So his house looked like a tax at Derby Zoo.

00:37:38
Speaker 8: I mean full size moon mounts, I mean a red stag, I mean just everything you can think of through this house blocks.

00:37:47
Speaker 4: I bet you thirty or forty minimum mounts, some full mounts.

00:37:52
Speaker 1: You can see photos of some of these mounts over at the meat eater dot com slash Blood Trails. Detective Sarachi isn’t exaggerating. The walls are covered in taxidermy, everything from a zebra hide stretched on a wall to a five by six elk in the garage, to a shoulder mounted black wilderbeast in the living room.

00:38:10
Speaker 4: The big mule deer was shot by my wife and karns. I saw dam wilderbees out. Excuse me, a Wilderby’s. I’ve never seen a wilderbece in my life. But you know what, for somebody that’s never seen it, it’s impressive. You know those two bears. That’s really impressive. That thing you got in uzbekistan kis so like I say, when you’re and stuff that’s sold.

00:38:31
Speaker 21: In year fifty four and you get diagnosed with crosstate cancer, you tend to make some.

00:38:34
Speaker 4: Once in a lifetimes.

00:38:36
Speaker 21: I got you before.

00:38:38
Speaker 4: What is that right there?

00:38:39
Speaker 21: That’s a virtual zebra from Zimbabwe. I shot that one. And that’s a Hartman’s Mountain zebra from the nib of all my wife.

00:38:47
Speaker 1: Would you mind if I just You can hear the detectives trying to ingratiate themselves to their suspect by complementing as taxidermy, which if you’re talking to a hunter, is usually a pretty good strategy, but Stuart still refused to tell thetives anything about what happened earlier.

00:39:02
Speaker 4: That day.

00:39:03
Speaker 1: Before leaving, Detective Sarachi made one final plea, we.

00:39:07
Speaker 8: Have come up with a lot of physical evidence on about a different fronts, and there’s going to come a time nobody is going to push you, but we would like to talk to you about what.

00:39:17
Speaker 4: May what information you may or may not have about that.

00:39:21
Speaker 8: The reason that being important is to con mitigate your involvement to whatever has happened.

00:39:28
Speaker 4: I would like that opportunity.

00:39:30
Speaker 8: I cannot force you to, nor will I try or encourage anybody to port you.

00:39:35
Speaker 1: But Stuart didn’t budge. He refused to speak to detectives that night, and he never agreed to sit down for an interview during the subsequent years long investigation without a confession or the murder weapon. Detectives left the Money home that night without making any arrests. Stuart and Sandra had planned on leaving the next day to celebrate their fortieth wedding anniversary in the Florida Keys. Detectives were apparently not worried that their pri suspect would flee the country because they allowed the couple to go on their vacation, but while they were away, investigators began digging into Stuart’s movements the day of the murder and his history with the legal system, and it’s safe to say they didn’t like what they found. Part six the neighbors. The disappearing handgun, which Stuart refused to explain, wasn’t the only indication that the sixty six year old had taken steps to hide his involvement in Tim’s death. When detectives began canvassing the neighborhood, they found several who said mister Money had grown suddenly very friendly on the afternoon of the incident.

00:40:44
Speaker 4: None of the neighbors got along with him except for one. There was one neighbor that I think they stepped with.

00:40:49
Speaker 8: That he was talked with, and all of a sudden, he’s riding this bike, wanting to be seen waving to people stopping in the houses that he never did.

00:40:57
Speaker 1: One of those neighbors was a man named Ryan Taylor, who lived less than a mile down the road from the Money home.

00:41:03
Speaker 22: I got a knock on the door, and I went and answered the door, and I looked out the because I got these windows on my door, so I look out and there’s a guy standing there in like a bicyclist outfit. Was helmet home but seeing what’s going on, make sure everything’s okay. Opened the door. So I was going on, buddy, he said, So I’m looking for my dogs. He’s like, have you seen two dogs running around? And said, no, I haven’t seen any I’ll keep an eye out for him. I’ll let you know. He told me he live down the road and then he got on bike and lift.

00:41:32
Speaker 5: That was it.

00:41:33
Speaker 1: Eddie reported, leaving Tim and the poodle walking man between twelve forty five and one pm. If Ryan Taylor’s recollection is correct, it means Stuart hopped on his bike to look for his dogs over an hour after his conversation with Tim.

00:41:47
Speaker 8: Because initially his only alibi was he was out on a bike ride. So when he came back from the National Forest, obviously he changed his clothes, got into biking clothes and went up and down and talked to neighbors, waved the neighbors that he never would before.

00:42:02
Speaker 1: This was obviously incredibly suspicious behavior, made more so by the fact that Stuart had apparently left his dogs in the refuge only to ask his neighbors about their whereabouts an hour later. This was even more out of character because, as you heard Detective Sarachi mentioned Stuart did not get along with his neighbors.

00:42:21
Speaker 9: You know, he had had multiple interactions with the public. This came known later on, and it was the same thing. He was always looking for a confrontation, always trying to bait somebody into a physical confrontation, probably looking.

00:42:40
Speaker 4: For a lawsuit of some kind.

00:42:42
Speaker 8: In the letter years with him being retired, he basically spent most of his time from what we.

00:42:49
Speaker 4: What we saw at home or walking with his dogs.

00:42:54
Speaker 8: The few times that he had interactions with people, it was very negative and there were many police reports kind of build that background in the state of Georgia and down here in Florida.

00:43:06
Speaker 1: I reviewed the incident reports on these cases. Stuart was an avid bike rider and jogger, but he always seemed to be getting attacked by a neighbor dog. It’s hard to fault a guy for being chased by dogs, but I gotta say it’s weird how often this happened, and as you might expect, not all the allegations paint Stuart as the victim. In May of twenty eighteen, Wakulla County deputies were dispatched to the money’s former neighborhood where a woman said that someone had shot her above ground pool with an arrow, more specifically a headhunter crossbow bolt, which had traveled through the pool and embedded itself in the fence on the opposite side. The woman pointed the finger at Stuart. She said she’d been feuding with Mony because he opposed a new homeowners association rule that would allow above ground pools in the subdivision. She also suspected that Stuart was responsible for two instances in which she found the remains of a wild pig dumped on her driveway. Both had occurred about six months before her pool was shot, and the gruesome lawn decorations had frightened the woman’s son so badly that he refused to be left alone. In the second of these incidents, she found a pig’s head and spinal column wrapped in a blue plastic bag labeled soiled linen. Detectives determined that the hospital where Stuart used to work had exactly the same bags, but they were never able to find enough evidence to charge Stuart for either the pool shooting or the pig dumping. Major Wester was part of that investigation, and he wasn’t shy about voicing his opinion.

00:44:40
Speaker 9: Yes, sir, that’s one of those. That’s not what I know is what I can prove. I’m positive it was him, but I just couldn’t prove it at the time.

00:44:50
Speaker 1: By now, Major Wester, Detective Sarachi and the other Waculla County investigators had amassed a bulging folder of evidence that pointed to Stuart Money as Tim’s killer. He fled the scene, lied to his wife about how his dogs escaped, refused to explain what happened to his handgun, and tried to construct an alibi by letting himself be seen in his neighborhood. Stuart Money was still a free man, but detectives were zeroing in on their number one suspect, Part seven the arrest. On February sixteenth, twenty twenty two, the Tampa Regional Lab for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement concluded its analysis of the tire and shoe tread patterns found at the crime scene.

00:45:36
Speaker 8: It was some of the rarest results that they ever get where they actually had a one hundred percent match on multiple It.

00:45:43
Speaker 4: Was all.

00:45:46
Speaker 9: One tire and the left.

00:45:47
Speaker 8: Sheet, which is many many times they ruled a very very very high probability.

00:45:53
Speaker 4: But to say one hundred percent is somewhat rare.

00:45:56
Speaker 1: There was little doubt that Stuart Money had walked around Tim’s body, and his subsequent deceptions made him look as the saying goes, guilty as sin. Two days after the shoe and tire analyzes came back, a judge signed an arrest warrant charging Money with second degree murder. Now deputies had to actually put him in handcuffs and take him to jail, which turned out to be easier said than done.

00:46:21
Speaker 9: We had set surveillance to take him off and arrest him. On the active war had a couple of detectives in an unmarked vehicle watching the residents.

00:46:32
Speaker 1: The detective in the unmarked vehicle had driven past Stuart’s home and noticed that the couple appeared to be packing for some kind of trip. The hatchback of the Hundai was open, and the officer spied a blue and white cooler, along with other items that suggested they might be leaving the area. As the officer sat in his car and waited for backup to arrive, the couple backed out of their driveway and drove away. Here’s where things start to get a little wild. The detective followed them as they drove north, found on Jack Crumb Road. Then the couple pulled into another driveway, turned around, and started driving south.

00:47:06
Speaker 9: The funny thing is, as he’s passing those detectives, they’re coming in to head on jack Crow Road. They described it as Stu MONI provocatively waving it.

00:47:15
Speaker 1: No one told me exactly which appendage Stuart used to wave, but I think we can all imagine. The deputy turned his vehicle around and saw that the couple had returned to their driveway, But as he passed them again, Stuart pulled out and drove off in the opposite direction, at quote a rate of speed that made it impossible for me to catch up. The detective turned around as quickly as he could, but the Hyundai was nowhere in sight. Subsequent efforts to find the vehicle proved fruitless. Stuart and Sandra were gone. The detectives didn’t say this exactly, but you got to think they were worried. They had a Bonnie and Clyde situation on their hands. Stuart knew he was being followed by law enforcement, but he drove off anyway. Officials spent several anxious hours wondering whether their simple arrest was about to turn into a multi state man hunt. Then, around three point thirty that afternoon, the detective who’d originally lost track of the couple observed Sandra drive back into the driveway.

00:48:15
Speaker 9: We take the vehicle down, do the traffic stop. Sandra is in the driver’s seat. Stu is not in sight in the vehicle at the time.

00:48:23
Speaker 1: The incident report doesn’t describe what Sandra said when they asked her where her husband was, but they didn’t really have to.

00:48:30
Speaker 9: And he’s in the back, laying down in the cargo area with the two fools, hiding from us. And we got him in custody then. But that was kind of the weird funny part of it was he’s towering down with his dogs.

00:48:45
Speaker 1: In Stuart’s original deception, he’d tried to use his dogs to hide his true whereabouts by pretending that they’d escaped from his yard. Instead, Smudge and Smokey had led detectives to his doorstep. This new plan was a variation on that same theme, and it had exactly the same result. I asked Major Wester what he thought Stuart’s plan was here.

00:49:07
Speaker 9: I think he still thought that he was smarter than everybody else. And surely to take him look in the back of the car for it.

00:49:14
Speaker 1: I don’t know, it’s all his mind, whatever he was thinking. His short stint on the lamb was over. But the next chapter of this story was just about to begin. Detectives had done their job. They’ve gathered enough evidence to make an arrest. Now it was up to the prosecutors to put it together and tell a story that would convince a jury. But they had a problem. Even though they could place Stuart with Tim, at that time, no one knew what had happened after Eddie all Day drove away. That gave Stuart and his legal team the room they needed to sow doubt, which is exactly what they did when the trial began over three years later. That’s next after the Break, Part eight the trial. Stuart Mooney made bail after he was arrested, and he and Sandra continued living in the Crawfordville area as he awaited trial. Louis and Jimmy weren’t happy about this development, even more so because they continued to see Stuart and his wife walking their dogs in the refuge. They tried to steer clear of him, but his presence was nonetheless uncomfortable. The same was true for Eddie all day. Remember Eddie was the prosecution’s star witness. He picked Stuart out of a lineup and he was the only one who witnessed Stuart and Tim arguing. He told me the three years between Stuart’s arrest and the trial were incredibly nerve wracking.

00:50:44
Speaker 16: My sensual wife Chile awareness was extremely heightened. If my dog’s barred and I didn’t go to the front door, I went out at the back door with a flashlight in my hand and a long gun on my back and my handgun in my hand.

00:50:57
Speaker 5: And knocked on my door after dark. I want to come around and see who you was.

00:51:02
Speaker 1: But after three years of waiting and wondering, Stuart’s trial finally began on May nineteenth, twenty twenty five.

00:51:08
Speaker 17: Good morning to you. I’m Judge Lane Smith, the circuit judge assigned to Walcolla County, Florida. It’s my privilege to serve here. This is the case of State of Florida versus Stuart Mony, Case number twenty twenty two cf. Sixty six.

00:51:22
Speaker 1: I was told that Stuart went through several lawyers over the years, but he finally settled on a Tallahassee attorney named Ryan Davis. The prosecutor was Assistant State Attorney Andrew Denen, who told me he expected the defense to take one of two positions.

00:51:36
Speaker 3: So in this case, there was really kind of two routes that the defense needed to choose between. It’s either the state can’t prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt based off of the circumstantial evidence and the lack of direct evidence, or you claim self defense. We knew that they were going to raise self defense a few months ahead of trial because of things that the defense did. They disclosed a use of force expert that they are intending to call, and that’s someone that you usually call when you’re claiming self defense. But we never heard Moni’s story until he ended up taking the stand at trial.

00:52:16
Speaker 1: That’s because Stuart flatly refused to give a statement to law enforcement. He never explained why he shot Tim, so his testimony became the focal point of the entire trial. Everyone Andrew, Jimmy, Louis, Eddie, and maybe even Sandra was curious to hear his version of events.

00:52:33
Speaker 18: I’m going to try to speak a little louder, Okay, thank anybody think I’m shouting, but just want to make sure you can’t hear me.

00:52:38
Speaker 11: Can you introduce yourself to the jury.

00:52:40
Speaker 21: My name is Stuart Money.

00:52:42
Speaker 1: Stuart’s story followed the same sequence as Eddie’s, but the tone of the conversation was exactly reversed. In Eddie’s account, he calmly warned Stuart about the dangers of walking his dogs during an active hunt, and Stuart responded with aggression. In Stuart’s account, Eddie was the one who yelled at him while well he was wrangling his dogs.

00:53:02
Speaker 21: When I collected them. The gentleman known as mister al Day drove up and called me over to his vehicle and in a loud voice, said, Hey, you shouldn’t be out here. Me and other guys are hunting on the refuge roads. You shouldn’t be out here.

00:53:19
Speaker 11: And how did you respond to that?

00:53:21
Speaker 21: I just commented or reminded him that other forms of outdoor recreation or permitted three hundred and sixty five days of the year.

00:53:30
Speaker 18: Was there any aggression or animosity between the two of you during that conversation.

00:53:34
Speaker 21: Not from me, There was from him. As soon as I stated that other forms of recreation are permitted, he got mad and called me a dumb ass.

00:53:44
Speaker 11: How does the conversation or how do you leave the company? Mister all Day?

00:53:48
Speaker 21: At that point I mentioned to him twice you know, that he needed to go read the brown and white sign, and he became further enraged and said, you need to go put a fucking orange vest on. And I told him again, you need to go read the brown and white sign. He told me I was a dumb ass, and he drove.

00:54:06
Speaker 1: Off, just like in Eddie’s account. The next interaction in Stuart’s story takes place at the information kiosk near the parking lot, but while Eddie says Stuart stopped to continue the argument about his presence on the refuge, Stuart says he just wanted to look at the harvest data posted on the bulletin board.

00:54:25
Speaker 21: Mister Alday was sitting in his vehicle and there was an individual standing nearby his vehicle, and when I pulled up, mister Alday shouted and pointed, there’s the guy right there.

00:54:39
Speaker 1: The other individual was Tim, and according to Stuart, he joined Eddie and telling the dog walker that he shouldn’t be in the refuge during a hunt. Stuart didn’t mention Tim yelling or being angry at this point, just that he seemed to think that only hunters were allowed in the refuge. Eddie drove off as Stuart approached the kiosk. These are the critical moments, and Stuart is the only person alive who was there, so I’m going to give him the space to lay out his side of the story.

00:55:06
Speaker 21: I got up there and spent a few minutes looking at everything there, see what had been harvested. And I turned around and as soon as I turned around from the kiosk, there was profanity. Can I state that? And the tone of voice and everything.

00:55:23
Speaker 17: Else, You’re already hey, go ahead again.

00:55:25
Speaker 11: Yes, I’m gonna kick your ass.

00:55:29
Speaker 21: Eyes ablaze, like Charles.

00:55:31
Speaker 11: Manson, It’s like this, and here said that to you.

00:55:35
Speaker 21: Ultimately it was blithe, but I didn’t know who he was.

00:55:38
Speaker 1: I just need to pause here and paint the picture. If you’re not watching this episode on YouTube. When Stuart reenacts what Tim said to him, he stands up in the witness box, faces the jury and yells at the top of his voice. He’s only about five feet from the closest jurist, and his hand motions near his face indicate he’s doing his best Charles Manson impression. It’s clear preparing for this moment as he should. But I would love to know how this landed with the jury and.

00:56:05
Speaker 11: What happened at that point.

00:56:07
Speaker 21: I was scared out of my wits. I walked back to my truck, scared because I knew I was in danger of imminent bodily harm. I obtained my firearm from my vehicle, backed away from the door so he couldn’t get me inside the truck, and then just stood there in shock and disbelief.

00:56:27
Speaker 11: And did you have your firearm out at that point?

00:56:30
Speaker 5: Yes?

00:56:31
Speaker 11: And was it visible in my hand?

00:56:33
Speaker 5: Like this?

00:56:34
Speaker 1: Here Stuart stands up in the witness box again and appears to indicate that he had the gun at his side, pointed towards the ground.

00:56:42
Speaker 11: And you’re in shock from the yelling that you’ve perceived.

00:56:44
Speaker 21: Well, I’m in shock because I knew he was gonna do exactly what he told me he was going to do, kick my ass.

00:56:50
Speaker 18: And what happened after he said that, after you were staying there with your gun, what happens next?

00:56:55
Speaker 21: He kept walking at me and he said, and I’m gonna tell Wayne, and I kicked your ass as if I was some kind of piece of trophy deer meat.

00:57:06
Speaker 11: And as he continued to approach you, what happened?

00:57:09
Speaker 21: He assaulted me and hit me in the left side of my face at the jaw so forceful that I temporarily lost the vision in my left eye and the hearing in my left ear, and I had to do this just to restore it. And that’s when I discharged my firearm.

00:57:30
Speaker 11: And what did you do? Immediately after you discharged your.

00:57:33
Speaker 21: Firearm, tried to collect my thoughts. I was still scared and shocked and what amounted to I had a concussive event. Took me a little while to gather my thoughts, and then I looked for my dogs. Smoky and Smudge were no longer there. I called for them, looked for him a little bit, and they were not around.

00:57:55
Speaker 1: Stuart looked for his dogs for about five minutes before getting back into his truck and driving way. He explains to the jury that Smokey doesn’t like loud noises, and so he thought both dogs may have run home at the sound of gunfire, But the dogs weren’t there when Stuart returned home, so he donned his biking attire and rode out to ask the neighbors if they’d seen his poodles. He called Sandra a while later to come home and directed her to search Purify Bay Road. He didn’t tell her about the shooting at that point because, according to him, he didn’t want to ruin their fortieth anniversary vacation. He said he’d been planning the trip for eight or nine months and didn’t want to spoil it for her. He testified later that when he told her about killing Tim on their way home from the Keys, she cried unconsolably for hours. If Stuart’s self defense argument seems a little weak, there are definitely stronger ones, but it’s not totally unreasonable. As Andrew explained to me, you don’t have to be attacked with a gun or any other kind of weapon to respond with deadly force. These are the instructions that were given to the jury.

00:58:58
Speaker 3: Stuart money he was justified in using deadly forced if he reasonably believed that such force was necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself, or the imminent commission of a battery on a person over sixty five years of age against himself.

00:59:16
Speaker 1: Tim blythe was younger and bigger than Stuart. Though the vast majority of murders in the US involve some kind of weapon, about six hundred people every year are killed with fists and feet. What’s more, as you heard Andrew explain, Stuart would have been justified in using deadly force if he feared great bodily harm, not just death, if he really thought Tim was about to kick his ass, and he had good reason for believing, so he had the right to use his firearm. Tim wasn’t there to give his side of the story, So Stuart’s account is all the jury had, and the defense had one key piece of evidence they hoped would be enough to persuade them.

00:59:52
Speaker 18: When you were down there, I guess in Homestead you had your wife take a.

00:59:57
Speaker 11: Picture of you.

00:59:58
Speaker 21: That’s correct.

00:59:59
Speaker 11: And what does she take a picture.

01:00:00
Speaker 5: Of my left jaw? Face?

01:00:03
Speaker 11: Why did you.

01:00:03
Speaker 18: Want her to take a picture of your left jaw? Was it to document some bruising?

01:00:08
Speaker 5: Obviously?

01:00:09
Speaker 18: Yes, And this is the bruising that you’re saying happened when mister Blythe struck you in your left jaw.

01:00:17
Speaker 9: He beat me.

01:00:18
Speaker 21: That’s blunt forced trauma.

01:00:20
Speaker 18: That’s and would you expect there to be bruising as we see in those photographs a few hours directly after being punched by mister Blythe.

01:00:34
Speaker 21: No, Sir, bruising and echamosis can happen a day or two later, depends on the severity of the blow and the whatever.

01:00:45
Speaker 1: Stuart was a registered nurse, so he actually had the expertise to speak to that question. But there’s a reason his attorney wants to call the jury’s attention to the timing of his bruising. When the Wakulla County deputies took the stand, none of them recalled seeing a bruise on Stuart’s face approximately six hours after Tim allegedly threw that punch. Andrew doesn’t question the veracity of the photo. Stuart did indeed have a bruise on the left side of his jaw, but he argues that Stuart sustained that bruise from law enforcement on the night of the raid, not from Tim blythe earlier that day.

01:01:21
Speaker 19: With how much force was he taken to the ground, it was enough to get him under control as quickly as possible.

01:01:27
Speaker 3: Is it possible that he could have hit his head or hit his chin on the ground.

01:01:30
Speaker 19: Absolutely, A constant is gravity. He went from a standing position to a prone position. So absolutely did he.

01:01:39
Speaker 3: Brace himself before impact in any way?

01:01:42
Speaker 19: I couldn’t answer that.

01:01:42
Speaker 5: I don’t I don’t know.

01:01:45
Speaker 1: The punch and the bruise are at the heart of this case, and we have no way of knowing exactly what the jury thought of the evidence on both sides. But there were other reasons to think that Stuart may not have been acting in self defense.

01:01:58
Speaker 3: Mister monie, where’s the gun.

01:02:01
Speaker 21: In my backyard?

01:02:02
Speaker 5: Where in the back halfway to.

01:02:04
Speaker 21: The back of the property line?

01:02:08
Speaker 3: Is it in something? Is it underground in a box? When did you place it there? December the twelfth, immediately after this?

01:02:17
Speaker 21: Not immediately, no, sir?

01:02:19
Speaker 5: Okay?

01:02:19
Speaker 3: So how long after.

01:02:21
Speaker 5: Hour or two? Maybe? Okay?

01:02:24
Speaker 3: Why did you put it there?

01:02:25
Speaker 21: Because of what the Wacola County Sheriff’s Office had previously done to me, I did not trust them at all.

01:02:32
Speaker 1: This is the reason Stuart gives throughout his testimony for why he didn’t contact law enforcement after the shooting. But as Andrew points out and is questioning, there are other law enforcement agencies that would have also had jurisdiction in this incident. Stuart didn’t call the Florida Department of law enforcement, the state level agency, or the law Enforcement Division of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, which could have investigated an incident on federal public land. He also seems to have lied about what he did with the gun. Law enforcement hadn’t been able to find it, and after the trial they went back to Stuart’s home with metal detectors but still didn’t have any success. Stuart fled the scene and got rid of the gun, but he also failed to render aid.

01:03:12
Speaker 3: I mentioned earlier that he was a registered nurse. He didn’t render any aid. The medical examiner’s testimony was not that Timothy Blythe was necessarily saveable, but he didn’t die immediately, and he fell down and didn’t moved a little bit, but didn’t really move after he was killed, So no aid was rendered by mister Monni.

01:03:34
Speaker 1: Stuart’s actions after the shooting don’t really align with someone who acted in self defense, but once Andrew pressed him on cross examination, he had trouble explaining the sequence of events in a way that really made sense.

01:03:46
Speaker 3: You get hit, did you go to the ground? I did not took the punch like a standing man.

01:03:52
Speaker 4: No, I did not. My testimony, you weren’t listening to my testimony.

01:03:55
Speaker 3: Okay, what did I say?

01:03:57
Speaker 21: I said, when he brutally assaulted me, temporarily lost what the vision in my left eye and the hearing in my left ear.

01:04:06
Speaker 3: He then shot him in the body four times without vision in your left eye and hearing in your left ear? Right not say that, sir? Did you not shoot him four times?

01:04:17
Speaker 4: I thought it was only three?

01:04:19
Speaker 21: And if you’d have paid attention to my testimony, I said I had to shake my head just to restore the vision in my left eye and left ear or hearing, and that’s when the shooting happened.

01:04:31
Speaker 3: How long did that take for you to shake yourself?

01:04:35
Speaker 5: Aware?

01:04:36
Speaker 4: Matter of seconds?

01:04:38
Speaker 5: Maybe?

01:04:39
Speaker 9: I mean.

01:04:40
Speaker 21: It was a concussive event, and you’re asking me for a time.

01:04:46
Speaker 1: You can see both sides of this. If you’ve ever been punched in the face, you know it’s tough to estimate time down to the second. At the same time, it’s weird that Tim would punch Stewart squarely in the jaw and then stand back and let himself be shot. It’s even more weird that a sixty six year old man would be able to take a punch in the jaw without falling down or according to Stuart stumbling back at all.

01:05:09
Speaker 3: The evidence was consistent with Timothy Blythe being a few feet away from Stuart Money getting shot in the abdomen, kind of putting up a defensive posture, raising his hands and turning to his side, and some of the other entry and exit wounds are consistent with that. But the most important part was that it was consistent with mister Blythe already being on the ground, face forward on the ground. So when you’re talking about a self defense case, there’s only so far you can get with the idea that well, I just started pulling the trigger and kept pulling the trigger even when he was on the ground. You know, that feels intentional because he’s his body has moved significantly and you’re following it. And not only is are you following it, but you’re following someone that’s falling down to the ground.

01:05:58
Speaker 1: Right right, So the first three were kind of from the front, and then the last one seemed to be he was shot in the back.

01:06:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that that was consistent with the evidence.

01:06:13
Speaker 1: Stuart’s claims of self defense were weakened by the holes in his own testimony, as well as the strength of the prosecution’s witnesses, but perhaps the most pivotal piece of evidence came from Tim himself. Remember that cell phone investigators had found lying in the woods across the road from Tim’s body. That phone was Tim’s, and when technicians pulled the data from his device, they found something that offered a clue into what happened in the moments right before Tim died.

01:06:41
Speaker 20: It was a photograph that was taken at one oh six pm when the victim was alive. And that photograph was of mister Monni’s pickup truck tag number a red Ford F one fifty.

01:06:55
Speaker 3: So you took a look at this photograph and it matched the same license plate number that you knew to belong to Stuart Money.

01:07:03
Speaker 1: That is correct, Tim had taken a photo of Stuart’s license plate. In his closing argument, Andrew offered a theory about how that phone ended up across the street.

01:07:13
Speaker 3: Mister Monty didn’t like that he was standing behind his truck taking a picture of that. He walked over him. He snatched that phone out of Timothy Blyth’s hands, that he threw it into the woods.

01:07:24
Speaker 1: This is important, Andrew continues, because it undermines Stuart’s self defense claims. Even if Tim punched Stuart.

01:07:31
Speaker 3: First, if you disagree with me about accepting or not accepting some of the evidence, If you think that those photographs that the defense put in the bruising was not caused by the law enforcement officers when they came in that night and tackled him threw him to the ground. If you think that there was a punch, there’s a scenario in this factual pattern that you could still find the defendant guilty because it would not be a justified use of force. Again, I go back to that cell phone. It’s bound off the distance into the woods. Mister Monney’s grabbed it, snatch it out of his hands, thrown it into the woods. He’s the aggressor in that situation. Maybe Tim Blathe did throw a punch. I don’t think it’s supported by the evidence. But if you determine that it is, is he not justified in throwing that punch after the robbery of his phone and maybe the destruction of his own property. It’s thrown off into the woods, Maybe there’s a punch. Say that there isn’t, but that’s when the gunshots happen. Is that justifiable use of force in that scenario?

01:08:39
Speaker 1: A key component of self defense law is that you can’t be the aggressor and then claim to be defending yourself. You can’t commit a crime against someone and then when they attack, you use deadly force against them. No one knows exactly how Tim’s phone ended up in the woods, but if Andrew is right, Stuart had no right to shoot him, even if Tim punched him in the face. Jury doesn’t have to explain why they decide on one verdict or another, so we don’t know whether they accepted Andrew’s closing argument. But whatever went on in those deliberations, they only took forty minutes to reach a unanimous decision.

01:09:15
Speaker 17: We the jury find as follows as to second degree murder. As to the defendant. In this case, the defendant Stuart Money is guilty of second degree murder. Did the defendant Stuart Money actually possess a firearm? Yes? Did the definditant Stuart Money discharge the firearm?

01:09:31
Speaker 5: Yes?

01:09:32
Speaker 17: Did the definitive Stewart Money discharge a farm causing the death of Timothy blythe yes.

01:09:41
Speaker 1: Stuart doesn’t seem to react as the judge reads the verdict. He just sits in his seat, hands on his knees, staring passively at the bench. When the trial concludes, he gets up and puts his hands in his pockets as the judge decides to take him into custody until his sentencing. Second degree murder in Florida is what’s called a depraved mind murder.

01:10:00
Speaker 3: It means that he made a conscious decision to do something that was outside of the safety and considerations of his fellow man, and it ultimately led to the death.

01:10:13
Speaker 1: It normally carries a mandatory minimum sentence of about seventeen years in prison, but since Stuart used a gun, that minimum jumps up to twenty five. At his sentencing two months later, the judge gave Stuart life. Part nine stories. Stuart is in the process of appealing his conviction. I reached out to Sandra to ask if she’d be willing to talk to me, but she declined on the advice of her lawyer. If she’d spoken to me, I would have asked her what to me is one of the big unanswered questions about this case. How much did Sandra know and when did she know it.

01:10:53
Speaker 3: It’s we’ll never understand the dynamic of that relationship and what they actually talked about. For the years, because he was out of custody leading up the trial for years. I have no idea what the story was in the money House. I just know what the story was when they came to trial.

01:11:11
Speaker 1: Detective Seraci doesn’t seem to think Sandra was any kind of co conspirator. If anything, he paints her as another victim of Stuart’s explosive personality.

01:11:20
Speaker 8: I also think you have to take into account her personality versus his.

01:11:26
Speaker 4: Okay, she is an extremely.

01:11:29
Speaker 8: Submissive wife and he is an overreaching, overbearing, very angry individual, and personally I almost saw at the end of this entire arrest that it almost was a bit of a release or relief on her with this.

01:11:48
Speaker 4: I mean, obviously you don’t want to lose your husband everything else there, but I mean the pressure, the anger, to blame everything else.

01:11:55
Speaker 1: The other big unanswered question is what exactly drove Stuart to take Tim’s life. Maybe you think he just snapped, that his anger reached a breaking point when Tim took a photo of his license plate, or that he’s just mentally unstable. Maybe you think Tim really did punch him and he escalated the fight from there, justifiably or not. I asked everyone I interviewed what they think happened, including the Wakulla County detectives. Here’s major western.

01:12:21
Speaker 9: I don’t have a professional response to that other than Stu MONI was an evil asshole and I’m glad he’s locked up.

01:12:31
Speaker 4: He was always trying to.

01:12:33
Speaker 9: Bate somebody into a physical confrontation, probably looking for a lawsuit of some kind.

01:12:39
Speaker 4: That’s all I know him.

01:12:40
Speaker 9: Maybe he’s just accustomed to pushing around Miss Sandra around the house.

01:12:46
Speaker 1: Louis was a little more diplomatic, but he also suggested that Stuart’s history of confrontations meant it was just a matter of time before something like this happened.

01:12:55
Speaker 12: I mean, I really don’t know. The only two people know would be Odd and Stuart Money they one that shotting. I mean, I don’t know what’s sparred this fella. I mean, this is not the first time that he’s had confrontation with people.

01:13:13
Speaker 1: What Jimmy and Louis do know is that they haven’t been the same since their friend was murdered. Like Eddie, they both feel a keener sense of anxiety when they’re out in the woods. Louis told me he carries a handgun for protection and he even worries, ironically enough, about wearing an orange vest I.

01:13:30
Speaker 12: Was at another quota hunt and the game wardens said he saw me coming out of the trail to the highway legally and he said, I saw you.

01:13:39
Speaker 6: I thought that was you over there. I said, yes, sir.

01:13:41
Speaker 12: He said, you didn’t have your orange rest on and the tree. I said, no, sure, I’m not going to have an orange vest on. He says, by law you have to. I said, I’m an orange pumpkin sitting up there now, Amy with PTSD’s want to shuit me.

01:13:52
Speaker 6: Out of the tree.

01:13:54
Speaker 7: We never carried an additional weapon while we was in the woods. You know, I growed up hunting refuse. Never once did I fear somebody would shoot me down. Now we don’t go to the woods with a hout a daggum pistol, and every truck that comes by usquaere worried. If you want what the effect was, that is the effect.

01:14:16
Speaker 17: It It took.

01:14:19
Speaker 7: Simple life away from us, That’s what it did.

01:14:24
Speaker 1: Hunting has looked a lot different for the Trio since Tim passed away, but they’ve done their best to keep his memory alive. After Tim passed, Tim’s father gave Louis Tim’s favorite hunting rifle, a thirty odd six bolt.

01:14:37
Speaker 12: Action Savage one ten wood frame Leopolskot, and he basically gave it to me and Jimmy. And I told him, I said, well, I said, you give me that. I said, that means a lot. I said, I guarantee you any time me or Jimmy go out on the hunt, this gun is coming with us. I said, Tim will always be with us. Tim always be with us.

01:15:01
Speaker 1: Louis recently took a man hunting who had borrowed his son’s rifle. It malfunctioned and he thought his hunt was over. Fortunately, true to his word, Louis had Tim’s rifle with him and he brought it to the man who was sitting in a blind.

01:15:14
Speaker 6: And then I get the ticks. He says, killed the buck, killed a buck.

01:15:18
Speaker 12: I drive all the way back around get over there, and I told him the story about that rifle, the reason why I take it to every management hunt. I told him there, and once I told him, he just broke down and cried. He broke down, got on his knees and he just he cried like a baby.

01:15:34
Speaker 1: The man thanked Louis for taking him on a successful hunt and letting him use Tim’s rifle.

01:15:39
Speaker 6: I said, no, you and Tim gotta do it. It wouldn’t me. It was you and Tim.

01:15:43
Speaker 12: You and Tim gotta do it. And and I call the riffle Tim, it’s Tim. This is Tim, I said. He said, where are you going to send me?

01:15:48
Speaker 5: And me?

01:15:48
Speaker 6: And Tim’s going here? And if I tell his dad, he knews. I got that riffle there.

01:15:52
Speaker 7: We take turns, take turns.

01:15:55
Speaker 5: Or if somebody’s hunting with us.

01:15:57
Speaker 7: And he’s in like they shoot miss and we can’t determine if this gun is all.

01:16:03
Speaker 6: We use Tim’s gun.

01:16:05
Speaker 7: But every hunt, like this hunt that men Tim’s got, our men and Louis got. At the end of the month, Tim’s gonna be there, which means a lot to us.

01:16:16
Speaker 1: Tim’s rifle is keeping his memory alive. But Jimmy told me that Tim himself made sure he’d never be forgotten.

01:16:23
Speaker 7: Tim was one of those that if it was a major memory to him, like if it was something that we’d done that was funny or out of whack, he would tell you that story time and time again, and you would know the story from minute to minute. Everything he’s going to say every time he would come over to the house, he would sit down, we’d sit around the bar, and he’ll start telling these stories. And my wife would say, Tim, he done already told me this story, and then he’d still keep going like you never heard what she said.

01:17:01
Speaker 5: He just would not stop.

01:17:02
Speaker 7: It was awesome to hear. And since he’s passed away, we find ourselves sitting around the table talking about the same stuff.

01:17:11
Speaker 5: That is probably the biggest memory that keeps him going on.

01:17:16
Speaker 7: And I kept telling my wife the reason he’s doing that is because I’m losing my mind, and as I’m losing my mind, He’s pounding in the stuff so I will never forget. And you could just see the smile and glow in his face, you know, same with any hunter. You can tell when stories are so important to them that it just eases the whole group.

01:17:42
Speaker 5: To be able to hear these stories.

01:17:44
Speaker 7: We used to hear them from our grandpa’s, we used to hear them from our daddy’s, you know, and just to continue that on. And that’s what I think out of the whole ordeal, Tim was doing was continuing that process. Because my kids can most repeat every story he had, and then they know Dad stories too.

01:18:06
Speaker 1: If you’re a hunter from a family of hunters, I’m willing to bet that Tim’s antics sound familiar. These stories that get passed down from generation to generation are more important than the antlers, rugs, and rifles that do the same. Despite the sudden and terrible nature of Tim’s death, his friends know that his legacy will continue for as long as there’s someone around to tell the stories that really matter. Thanks for listening to this episode of Blood Trails. If you’d like to see images related to this case, including photos of Tim, the crime scene, Stuart Money, and his taxidermy, head on over to the meeater dot com slash blood Trails and click on the case file for this episode. Huge thanks to Andrew Denen, Jimmy Huddo, Louis Angelotti, Eddie Major, Eddie Wester, and Captain Brett Sarachi for their time and willingness to speak with me. As always, send me an email at blood Trails at themeeater dot com with any questions, comments, or suggestions for future episodes.

01:19:14
Speaker 6: I rely on.

01:19:15
Speaker 1: Tips from you to learn about potential cases, so keep them coming.

01:19:20
Speaker 6: See you next time. Stay safe out there,