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Catching The Big Bad Wolf - The Murder of Doreen Erbert

October 20, 2025

On this episode, Payton and Garrett uncover a brutal Halloween night murder where the only witness claimed the killer was the Big Bad Wolf.

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AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

You're listening to an Oh No Media podcast.

Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder with My Husband. I'm Payton Moreland.

And I'm Garrett Moreland.

And he's the husband.

And I'm the husband. Welcome back to spooky season! Welcome back to the podcast. Thank you for being here. Thank you for supporting us. We love you all.

We had a lot of good feedback on last week’s episode—thank you for listening, thank you for enjoying, and thank you to Payton for doing such a good job.

That’s what we got. Also, I think before we jump into your ten seconds, we’ve added just another spooky-like sweater.

Oh yes!

Yeah, we added a spooky sweater to our merch.

Yeah, if you didn’t get one and want to check it out, it’s just a cute little sweater that has little ghosties, bats, all the things.

Yeah, I think merch will be up for another few days and then that’ll be it until the next drop.

Thanks for buying, thanks for supporting—we love you guys.

Also, I talked about how anyone who came up and said hi to us, I would say their names. Payton and I didn’t really leave the house last week, so we didn’t really see anybody.

I did.

Oh, you did? Who?

You don’t remember their name?

No, it was a long time ago—it was last week.

Where were you?

St. George. I was on my way to Garrett’s—

Oh, and Dutch Bros, right?

Yeah! I was on my way to Garrett’s pickup tournament. I’m so bad at names, I feel so bad.

Well, I think I would have remembered—it’s just been too long since I remembered to bring it up.

Okay.

But I remember what she looked like. She was such a cute girl. She was a worker—she was giving me my order in the drive-thru and she was walking to the car, and then it was just me and Daisy. Daisy was on my lap, and she stopped and recognized me and Daisy. She was so nice and kind and just had really great words.

Honestly, it just made my day to talk to her and feel her excitement and love. So yeah, thank you so much for saying hi again. I just can’t even believe, at the end of the day, that there are people who even want to say hi to us. It’s always just a super humbling, grateful experience.

You see us—come say hi. That’s all I got to say.

Don’t forget, we love when people say hi. So if you see us, come say hi. And if you want us to, we’ll shout your name out here.

That’s what we got.

Or your description.

Oh, my ten seconds!

Or your description.

My ten seconds—sorry, guys. I don’t have much. We went to Park City the other day and hung out there. Golf season’s coming to an end, it’s going to start snowing soon. It’s cold outside. My body is not ready for it—but I’m also kind of excited, because honestly, I love a hot drink in the winter. I don’t know how else to say it.

Let’s hop into today’s case.

Oh, also—for those of you watching on YouTube, I did notice in last week’s episode, Gar and I are looking off-screen a lot. It’s because with Mr. Skelly here, we can’t really see each other. So I noticed that last episode we keep looking at the screen to make eye contact, because we have a screen of the camera. So that’s what we’re looking at. I’m sorry—I’m going to try to be better at it this week. But I was watching last week and I was like, “Oh, we really were doing that a lot to talk to each other.”

Our sources for this episode are cinemaholic.com, newyorkdailynews.com, oxygen.com, supremecourt.gov, upi.com, crimescenecleanup.com, caseelaw.findlaw.com, and caseelaw.x.com.

Now, I do just want to give a warning before we begin. This episode does include descriptions of fetal homicide and the murder of a pregnant woman. Please listen with care.

Now, I think one of the best parts of Halloween is that for one night, you literally can be anyone you want to be. You can put on a costume, makeup, a mask—you can lose yourself in a different character. You can literally leave your house without judgment, without stares, which, for those people who typically don’t feel like they can do that, is sort of the best part.

It’s the one time of year where you can forget about your insecurities, your trauma, your pain, and just be someone or something else for a change—if that’s what you choose to do.

But some people can take this too far.

Many police departments say that Halloween is actually one of the most difficult times of the year for them. The crime rate typically goes up—burglaries, vandalism, assaults—and a lot of it has to do with the element of anonymity that comes with October and costumes.

It’s easy to get lost in a crowd when it’s full of people who are also dressed up. And if you go somewhere publicly in October and someone’s wearing a costume, you don’t question it. You’re just like, “Oh, well, it’s October—maybe they’re doing something.”

But these people obviously can’t run forever. Eventually, Halloween comes to an end. The costume has to come off. And when the suspects are left with nothing to hide behind, that’s when the truth starts to surface—and the real monsters do get exposed.

So, we are jumping back in time to 1984 in San Jose, California.

Thirty-one-year-old Doreen Erbert is eight months pregnant, and she and her husband, Charles, could not be more excited. Doreen is ready to give their new baby the same kind of upbringing she had in Santa Rosa, California—peaceful, loving, and supportive. She’s already been doing a great job of that with their four-year-old, Deanna.

Doreen really is the kind of person who, when she sets her mind to something, she makes it happen. Once upon a time, that was becoming a physical therapist, which she had studied and done for a time out in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The one thing that didn’t quite work out for Doreen, though, was her first marriage to her ex-husband, Mike. However, in 1979, Doreen found a second chance at love with Charles Herbert, a carpet store owner. The two met, fell in love, and got married that same year. Doreen moved into Charles’s home, and they started their lives together, welcoming their daughter, Deanna, the following year.

By Halloween night of 1984, they were excited to take Deanna trick-or-treating, even though Doreen was eight months pregnant.

So Doreen was probably feeling a bit tired and sluggish. When she saw her family the week before, they commented on how pregnant she looked. At just under five feet tall, her sister joked, saying she was as far out as she was tall.

But she, Charles, and Deanna went door to door that night anyway as a family, collecting candy and soaking up the final moments as a family of three.

Eventually, it started to get late that Halloween night. The family returned home a little before 9:00 p.m., and Charles said he was going to run out to the liquor store to pick up something for a nightcap. He told Doreen to lock up the house and said he’d be back in fifteen minutes.

Then her husband got into his truck and drove down to the liquor store. Meanwhile, Doreen entertained a few more trick-or-treaters, offering candy to the last stragglers of the night. She closed the door, ready to follow what her husband said—lock up, get ready for bed—when there was another knock at the door.

Only, this knock was a little bit more aggressive than the neighborhood trick-or-treaters she had just been helping. Still, Doreen opened the door, because it was trick-or-treat. Obviously, she thought it was another child.

But when she opened the door, she didn’t see little kids in costumes ready for candy. She saw a full-grown adult standing on her porch in a pair of mechanic’s overalls and a wolf mask.

Okay.

Okay, so this next part is from four-year-old Deanna. At this point, she remembers her mother looking at her and telling her to run and hide. So Deanna ran upstairs and curled up behind a couch.

Then the next thing she heard was a scuffle—and then her mother’s screams.

Oh my gosh.

Now, back downstairs, wielding a sharp weapon, the “wolf” had barged into the house and started swinging it at Doreen, cutting her open as Deanna listened from her hiding spot behind the couch.

When she finally heard her mother’s screams stop, that’s when the man behind the mask went over to Deanna and said something. He told her that if she said a word, he was going to come back and kill her too.

So the attacker talked to the four-year-old.

This is insane.

Then the attacker left the same way—he just went right back out the front door, covered in blood.

And that’s it.

Just a few minutes later, around 9:15 p.m., Charles returned home. He noticed the front door was unlocked, which was already alarming. But when he walked in, he saw his home was a complete and total bloodbath.

Doreen, his eight-months-pregnant wife—oh my gosh—was lying on the floor, cut open. Her hand had been severed from her body.

Her hand had been cut off her arm.

Meanwhile, Deanna was still hiding behind the couch. Charles, in a complete daze, rushed to the phone to call 911. There was so much blood that he slipped in it on the way to make the call.

He also called his neighbor, Jenny, to come over and take Deanna—the four-year-old—out of the home. Meanwhile, he was calling 911, and he noticed that his wife, Doreen, still had a pulse, but her wounds were so horrific.

Charles knew she didn’t have long, so he tried to stop the bleeding as best he could.

Just minutes later, the paramedics arrived. Charles was doing what he could to help his wife. They loaded her into the ambulance, but when he asked to go with them, he was stopped by the police. They could obviously smell alcohol on his breath. He was covered in his wife’s blood—it was not a good look for Charles.

Not to mention, he seemed completely belligerent with shock and grief. He was just struggling to talk.

So they told him, “Hey, instead of riding down to the hospital with Doreen, you’re going to come down to the station to be questioned.”

Police handcuffed him.

I think he did it.

Yeah, they handcuff him. They throw him in the back of the patrol car and make him sit there for the next hour as they continue looking at the crime scene.

I just can’t imagine.

I would assume that’s not—anyways, keep going.

Well, the issue is, if he did it, it’s even more dangerous for him to go to the hospital with her, which I get.

It is kind of complicated.

Yeah, it is a complicated situation. If he didn’t do it, he’s sitting handcuffed in the back of a police car for an hour, wondering if his wife made it to the hospital and if she’s alive or dead, which is very—

Oh, and his baby.

Yes. Meanwhile, Doreen doesn’t even make it to the hospital. She dies in the ambulance on the way there, which means they are officially dealing with a homicide case.

When police step inside the home, they quickly realize this is one of the most horrific attacks that they’ve ever had to deal with. There’s blood on the floor—in some places, about an inch thick. There’s also blood on the walls, the ceiling. There are cut marks on the ceiling from the weapon being swung overhead and back down.

And this is an eight-foot ceiling.

So, pretty quickly, police figure that whatever weapon was used had to be long—a sword, an axe. There are also velocity bloodstains that show how fast and how violently this person attacked Doreen.

Then they notice what looks like a doll lying on the floor in the house.

So skip ahead fifteen seconds if you don’t want to hear this next part.

No, I don’t want to hear it. Should we skip it, or I’m going to close my ears. I already know what you’re going to say—I don’t want to hear it. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t do this, guys. Are you with me on this one, or do you want to hear it?

With the “doll” was also the severed hand.

This is now a double homicide. They don’t find a murder weapon or any real evidence of the attacker inside the home—but do understand what I just said. The baby is not with her in the ambulance.

Then police notice something on the porch. Next to the jack-o’-lanterns is a wolf mask, just sitting there.

Again, police don’t know the story yet. So, they’re not sure if this is just decoration. It looks a little out of place, but when they speak with four-year-old Deanna, they learn a bit more.

That night, a female patrol officer goes over to the neighbor’s house—the one who took Deanna in as everything was unfolding—and she asks her some questions as gently as she can.

Deanna tells her she doesn’t remember seeing anything happen to her mother, but what she does remember is seeing the wolf. Actually, this is how she tells the officer:

“There was a big bad wolf in our house.”

And when the female officer relays this information to the cops back at the crime scene, they start to realize things make a bit more sense. The wolf mask on the porch was probably the murderer’s.

As they talk to more witnesses, they get more confirmation that someone wearing that costume had actually been lurking around the area.

A neighbor said they had stopped by Doreen and Charles’s house around 7:00 p.m. that night before going to a party at their son’s school for Halloween. When they left, they noticed a man in a wolf mask standing across the street, watching Doreen’s home.

Now, again, any other time, this would be weird enough to say something—but on Halloween, this was about two hours before the murders.

Then there was another dad who was out trick-or-treating with his kids around 9:00 p.m. that night who claimed to see a man in a goofy wolf mask walking around the neighborhood in coveralls. He said the “wolf” was carrying a large grocery bag that obviously had something heavy in it.

Plus, there were more people that night who said they saw the big bad wolf out on the streets among the trick-or-treaters.

Soon, detectives find other evidence to corroborate these eyewitness reports. Back at the crime scene, they find what appear to be bloody footprints leading away from the house and down the sidewalk.

While the footprints eventually stop, there are still drops of blood along the trail—drops of blood they follow over a bridge and a pedestrian overpass.

Okay.

Indicating the killer not only likely hurt himself in the attack—because the blood trail continues—but that he had escaped the crime scene on foot, maybe even living or retreating to a place close by.

But obviously, the question is: how close, and who was he?

Now, of course, this also calls Charles, the husband, into question. Later that night, he’s down at the police station under interrogation, which isn’t surprising. He was found covered in Doreen’s blood, and the spouse is usually one of the main suspects. Not to mention, he was highly intoxicated when they found him at the crime scene.

But then you have those footprints leading away from the home. That wouldn’t make sense if Charles killed Doreen all alone and then called 911.

Like, he would have had to leave the property and then come back—unless he walked over the bridge and came back. It just doesn’t make sense.

So police wonder, did Charles work with an accomplice? Someone who could have killed his wife for him while he was at the liquor store?

And so they’re on Charles.

Yes. They start to go through motive. Is the baby not his?

But all of these theories seem less likely when police learn of another potential suspect—someone who actually seemed to have a lot more motive than Charles.

And that was Doreen’s ex-husband, Michael Dennis.

Okay.

Now, back when Doreen was working as a physical therapist—before she even met and married Charles—one of her clients was a Lockheed Missiles and Space factory worker named Michael Dennis.

Supposedly, Michael had quite a few challenges when he met Doreen: hearing loss from childhood that caused him to stutter, medical issues that kept him from socializing and dating, as well as an eating disorder and depression.

But Doreen accepted all of this. The two fell in love and got married in 1975. The following year, they welcomed a little boy together, who they named Paul.

But it seems like the relationship was doomed from the beginning. They started having a lot of problems. There was definitely infidelity. So by 1977—just two years later—the marriage was over.

The two got a divorce, and while Doreen got primary custody of Paul, Michael was able to see him on the weekends. Doreen then met Charles, moved in with him, got married, and had Deanna. Meanwhile, Michael moved just a few blocks away from them so he could be close by and still see his son, Paul.

At first, Michael didn’t seem to mind this shared custody agreement. He knew Doreen was a good mother to Paul. But as time passed, there were things that supposedly made him question that.

For example, Michael said he learned Doreen was smoking marijuana while watching their son. There was also an issue with the swimming pool in Doreen and Charles’s backyard. At one point, the family dog had actually fallen in and drowned, and Michael told Doreen he really wanted her to put up a fence because he was afraid the same thing could happen to their boy. According to Michael, he even offered to help pay for it.

Doreen did put up that fence—but it wasn’t enough to stop a tragedy.

In February 1980, Michael dropped four-year-old Paul off at Doreen’s house, even though he said Paul wanted to stay with him that day. According to Michael, he also had a bad feeling that something was going to happen, but he ignored it.

After he left, Paul climbed the fence and jumped into the pool, even though he didn’t know how to swim.

Ah, I see. Okay.

Now, allegedly, instead of jumping in after him, Doreen ran to a neighbor’s house to get help. Unfortunately, we don’t know—this may or may not have cost Paul his life.

Doreen rushed Paul to the hospital after he was pulled out of the water. He was on life support for three days before he was finally pronounced dead.

Is that confirmed—that she went to the neighbor’s house first?

Yeah. Yes. Multiple sources say it.

Okay. I mean, I guess I—I mean, I—I can’t—okay.

Now, obviously, Michael was never the same afterward. He blamed his ex-wife, Doreen, for his son’s death. They argued over funeral expenses and the last of the child support payments, and eventually things got so ugly that Michael brought her to court.

He filed a wrongful death and personal injury lawsuit against Doreen and Charles. Unfortunately for Michael, the jury didn’t side with him during that trial in 1982, so he didn’t get anything.

After that, Charles asked Michael to stay away from his family and his home now that his son was no longer with them. Michael stopped talking to Doreen altogether, and it seems like things began to fester.

Michael—alone and dealing with all of this—stewed in his emotions for the next two years. But by October of 1984, he had reached a breaking point.

That month, he was laid off from his position at Lockheed and was forced to accept a lower-paying job there instead. It was clear to his co-workers that he was not happy with this. In many ways, it felt like the last straw for Michael, whose mental health was now in sharp decline.

So after learning these details about Michael and Doreen’s past—and knowing that Michael lived just six blocks away from them, in the direction of those blood drops, mind you—police had a very good reason to visit him at his home a little after midnight on November 1st, 1984.

All of this happens very quickly. It’s Halloween night, and now it’s midnight the next morning, and they’re already at the ex-husband’s house.

Around 12:23 that morning, officers approach Michael’s house and notice there’s a light on in his bedroom. They ring the doorbell a few times—he doesn’t answer.

So one of the officers back at the station calls Michael’s home, and when he answers, says, “Uh, yeah, there’s police at your front door.”

It’s then that the bedroom light finally turns off, and they hear water running from the sink in his upstairs bathroom.

Oh, okay.

They’re like, “What is he doing? Why won’t he answer the door?”

I know what he’s doing.

Eventually, Michael opens the front door and lets the officers into the home. When they tell him his ex-wife has been murdered, he says, “Oh, gee, really?”

He also has a bandaged hand that’s bleeding through the gauze—a very recent wound. When they ask him about it, he says, “Oh, I just had a kitchen mishap earlier.” He explains that he was carving a pumpkin, flipped the knife into the air, tried to catch it, but caught the blade instead and sliced his hand open.

What’s even weirder, Michael consents to letting them search his home when they ask.

I mean, I think that if you say no, you look suspicious—so he probably says yes.

He seems 100% cooperative, even signing the consent forms. Then one of the officers asks if he has his ID, and Michael says, “Yeah, it’s upstairs. I can go get it.” The officer replies, “Yeah, I’ll come with you.”

So he follows Michael, and the officer says that’s when Michael turns around and gives him this lifeless look—what the officer later describes as almost a demonic stare that sent chills down his spine.

Okay.

The officer’s like, “Okay…” He follows Michael into the bedroom, and Michael starts heading toward his bed frame. The officer thinks, “Something’s wrong. I have a bad feeling.” So the officer pulls out his pistol and says, “Michael, stop. Put your hands above your head.”

When the officer looks behind the bed where Michael was walking, he finds a loaded gun.

Okay.

He’s thinking Michael was either about to pull it on him—or on himself. So he leads Michael back downstairs.

Meanwhile, the other officers have noticed blood drops all around the house, particularly leading to the washer in the garage. They also find blood on the handle of Michael’s truck, the steering wheel, and the ignition. They find a pair of bloodstained jeans. That’s when they tell Michael, “Hey, you’re under arrest. You’re coming to the station with us.”

As they’re leading him outside to the police cruiser, they notice something else—the crime scene unit coming around the corner.

They claim they had just followed the blood drops from the crime scene over that catwalk, just like police had done—but they kept following them, because they’re crime scene workers. And the trail led directly to Michael’s house.

That’s pretty crazy.

So now police have two suspects in custody—Charles and Michael—but it’s looking less and less likely that Charles was involved. His story is lining up. Charles says he got home, saw his wife on the ground, tried to give her CPR, and slipped in her blood. He also insists he was at the liquor store when the crime took place.

So the following morning, when the store reopens, police go to confirm his alibi. The cashier who was working the night before says, “Yeah, Charles was here buying cigarettes and beer between 9:00 and 9:30 last night.”

Okay.

They also have a receipt and video surveillance footage confirming he was there. With that, Charles is obviously cleared and sent home to be with his daughter.

That same day, on November 1st, Doreen’s body is sent for an autopsy. It’s determined she died from wounds inflicted with a heavy, sharp, swordlike instrument with a long blade. Aside from the cuts to her hand and abdomen, there were also strikes to her head that penetrated her skull and brain.

That day, police get an official search warrant for Michael’s house, meaning they can now send the CSI team—who, obviously, do a more thorough job. They collect blood samples and begin DNA analysis.

But the blood isn’t the only thing they find. In an outhouse on Michael’s property, police discover two homemade coffins with weights attached to them. It looks like these coffins were designed to sink if thrown into a body of water. One was slightly smaller than the other, suggesting it might have been meant for a male and a female.

And then, in the garage, they find something even more telling: a cardboard sheath for a machete.

Oh my gosh.

The sheath is eighteen inches long.

I thought you were going to say something else.

There’s even a receipt and price label still on it from a home improvement store just three blocks away.

While the machete itself is nowhere to be found, this allows detectives to go and purchase an identical model. When they take it back to the crime scene, they find it fits perfectly into the grooves that had been left on the ceiling.

I mean, it seems pretty open and shut.

Black and white. I mean, he had a motive—the motive was that he thought she was responsible for the death of their son, so he went and killed her. It seems open and shut, right?

Yeah.

So, police present all this evidence to the district attorney, hoping they can officially bring charges against Michael for murder.

Back then, a suspect had to be charged within forty-eight hours of being arrested, or you had to let him go—so the clock was ticking.

But the DA comes back and says, “I don’t think you have enough evidence yet.”

What?

They wanted to wait for the blood analysis to come back before making any moves, which, I mean, I get—but if you let him out, he’s either going to run or kill himself.

So, after two days, Michael Dennis is released. He’s under constant surveillance by police until that blood work comes back. In the meantime, police continue looking for evidence to build a stronger case against him.

Luckily, they find a little black book with several of Michael’s contacts. One of the bigger mysteries they’re trying to solve is whether Michael owned or wore a wolf mask like the one found on the porch.

They want to tie this wolf mask to him somehow—because the DA believes that if they can prove it was his, it will really sway the jury. It’s such a sensational part of the story—it was left at the crime scene.

So, detectives start going through his contacts, calling people to ask if they’d ever seen Michael wear that kind of mask.

They land on one friend who says, actually, she was at a Halloween party with Michael the year before, and he came dressed as the Big Bad Wolf.

Okay.

So they ask if she has any pictures. She says she does. Police make the drive up to Livermore, California—about thirty miles from San Jose—to retrieve the photos.

And in them, a man is wearing the exact same wolf mask that was found on the porch.

However, when police show Michael the picture, he says, “That’s not me.”

And he’s smart about it, because it’s really difficult to prove that the man in the mask at the party is him.

I mean, they have eyewitness testimony—but at this point, he can keep denying it, though the blood is going to come back as his.

So, because he denies it, detectives decide to try and find the jacket. It’s a gold or tan jacket in the photo. They think, maybe we can find it in Michael’s closet.

So they raid his closet—and they find the exact outfit he was wearing in that picture.

The question now is, why would Michael just leave the mask at the crime scene? It seems a little weird.

Turns out, Michael wore glasses—and he most likely had them on underneath the mask. Once he got blood all over his face, he probably couldn’t see well through the tiny eye holes of the mask, since there was likely blood on his glasses.

So he probably ripped the mask off to see better as he made his way home—probably in a panic.

Finally, four days after the murder, the DNA results from the blood evidence come back.

It turns out Michael’s blood was found at the crime scene, and Doreen’s blood was found inside Michael’s home.

So on November 5th, 1984, Michael is arrested a second time—now charged with first- and second-degree murder for killing both Doreen and her unborn child.

That night, Michael waives his rights and even agrees to have his interview taped, though he still denies killing Doreen.

It would take another four years for this case to go to court.

So annoying.

It’s just annoying—wasting time, money, all of it.

When trial finally comes, there’s a bit of a surprise—Michael pleads not guilty, but only to first-degree murder. He’s not denying the crimes altogether—he’s trying to get a lesser degree, like second-degree or voluntary manslaughter.

He claims he was mentally ill.

So here’s the story: the defense says that on Halloween night in 1984, Michael saw kids trick-or-treating and remembered how heartbroken he was over the loss of his son, Paul. That’s when, according to the defense, something “took over” him.

Michael decided to carry out an attack on Doreen. He figured Halloween was the best night to do it because he could wear a mask and it wouldn’t stand out.

He said that when he got to Doreen’s house and confronted her, he had no idea she was pregnant—even though she was eight months along and clearly showing. The defense tried to use this to show it wasn’t a calculated, premeditated murder.

They called several eyewitnesses who said he was a good-natured, quiet person who didn’t seem obsessive.

Now, one of the most heartbreaking moments at trial is when they call Deanna—now eight years old—to the stand to testify about what she went through.

She says that not only does she remember the man in the Big Bad Wolf costume entering the house that night, she also remembers her mother calling out the name Michael during the entire fight.

Deanna also recalled how he told her that if she said anything, he would come back and hurt her, too.

By the way, while Deanna was testifying, the judge actually ordered Michael to put his head down on the table so that he couldn’t look at her while she was talking.

Wow.

Okay, which honestly should be implemented for children who are testifying—or like, blindfold them or something—because it’s scary for children to get up there when they kind of understand what’s going on.

Now, between Deanna’s story, the images of the horrific crime scene, and the gruesome manner in which Doreen and her unborn child died—I mean, to take a child out and just leave them on the floor—that’s… that’s a different level of cruelty. That is very, very intense.

The jury was not going to let Michael off easy. Despite wanting to get away with voluntary manslaughter, the jury found him guilty of the original charges of murder in the first and second degree for Doreen and her baby.

Rot in prison, my man.

Michael was sentenced to death the following month. However, when the state of California later put a pause on the death penalty, Michael’s sentence was changed to life in prison without parole.

Forty-one Halloweens later, the seventy-three-year-old Michael is still behind bars.

Good.

Deanna, now in her mid-forties, says that her dad, Charles, was really shattered after the loss of her mother. He blamed himself for leaving her alone that night. But Deanna always reminds him, “Hey, if you were home, you might have died too.” She tells him, “I might have lost you, too.”

Deanna escaped a real-life monster that Halloween.

Yeah.

But she also helped catch one. It’s because of her testimony and her bravery that Michael Dennis is trapped behind bars. And while he’s taken a lot from Deanna, she doesn’t want him to take anything else.

And that is the story of Doreen Herbert’s murder.

Crazy.

That’s insane. Glad he’s still rotting in prison.

These next two things I’m going to say are just observations I made, not things that were listed. But for him to come in and say this wasn’t first-degree murder—what were the coffins about? Because coffins with weights on them definitely feel like some other kind of plan or scheme he had been making up in his mind at home.

And then the fact that multiple eyewitnesses saw him loitering around the home the entire night—two hours before the murder. Is that not premeditated? Is that not enough time to count as first-degree murder? He could have walked away at any point.

So I do feel like it’s just a little silly that he tried to come in with that.

And also, something I want to reiterate—using mental illness or grief or tragedy as a reason to kill someone can be a reason, a motive. It doesn’t justify murder.

Also, it gets frustrating when a lot of people use it and they aren’t even remotely… like, they would never have otherwise claimed to have mental illness, but when they know it might be an escape goat, they use it. That’s also frustrating.

Well, to me, mental illness doesn’t mean you’re going to commit murder. There are plenty of people who struggle with mental illnesses who still know right from wrong.

So even if you’re depressed or whatever it is, it’s a very far line to the level of, like, Ed Gein—that we were talking about last episode.

Yeah.

All right, you guys. That is our episode—our Halloween episode for this week. And we will see you next time with another one.

I love it.

I hate it.

Goodbye.

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