The Blue Moon Killer

October 27, 2025

After a family of three is found dead in their Florida home, investigators follow a trail of strange evidence that hints at witchcraft behind the tragic murders.

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AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

You're listening to an Oh No Media podcast.

Hey everybody, 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.
I'm the husband.

Welcome back. Another week, another episode. Thank you for supporting, thank you for listening, thank you for buying our merch, and thank you for being you.

Starting to get cold. Fall’s kicking in. Winter is coming.

Side note — I hope everyone has seen Game of Thrones. If you haven’t, go check it out.

Other side note — I was thinking about it… I love Cheesecake Factory. Love. If there’s anybody out there, anybody that happens to work for corporate or wants to just sponsor me, I’ll do it. Not maybe for free — but if I get free cheesecake, I’ll do it.

I just love Cheesecake Factory. They have so many options. I think I’ve realized that cheesecake is officially my favorite dessert.

Really?
Yeah, I think so. Not yours though. Yours is ice cream.
Yeah.

Anyways, I love Cheesecake Factory. I hope all you guys love Cheesecake Factory.

Little update on bagels real quick — we’re getting there. I’m supposed to be signing a lease and then the buildout will start, and I hope you guys all come to my grand opening.

It’s a few months away — still a lot to do.
What? Like, it’s a lot of months a bit.
Oh, things are going to start happening fast. It’s going to get crazy. Pay’s actually going to be one of the head bakers at the bagel place, so you guys can come say hi to her as well.
Yeah.
What do you have to say about that, babe?
I have a full-time job with my husband.
Yeah, but aren’t you going to bake bagels?
Oh, I’m not baking, but I’ll like help at the place.
No, I’m just kidding.
I don’t think anyone wants my bagels. I’m not good at baking.
Yeah, that’s okay.

That’s kind of what I’ve got for my ten seconds. Before we jump into it — side note — if you want some bonus content or ad-free content, you can join our Patreon, Apple subscriptions, or Spotify subscriptions.

Oh, real quick. So, Daisy swims a lot, and a couple weeks ago we took her swimming for like three days, and all she did for three days was swim. I think the chlorine fried her coat — like her hair. So, we’re getting her groomed again next week, huh babe? But it’s like fried.
Yeah. Which, our pool — I didn’t know how much was in it. And the pool she grew up swimming in didn’t have chlorine, so I wasn’t as worried about it. But now I’m like, how much water did she swallow? It had to have been a lot.
This has never happened before.
It’s more just like — it wrecked her coat.
How does she know we’re talking about her?
I don’t know, she just knows.

Anyways, all right. That’s enough about us. Let’s get into today’s case.

Our sources for this episode are courttv.com, wheretv.com, mirror.co.uk, wildhunt.org, myfox8.com, pnj.com, wh.com, wkrg.com, av.com, The Guardian, Oxygen, and The Ledger.

So, most of us follow a certain belief system — the idea that there’s some power out there bigger than ourselves that pulls the strings and controls certain outcomes. Whether that’s religion, God, karma, or even magic and witchcraft, these systems all have one thing in common: the idea of good versus evil.

Not always, but usually. For many, these ideologies can be a roadmap — a lens through which we see the world and find ways to navigate it.

But in some cases, these heavy beliefs can also lead people astray. They can cause us to see things that aren’t really there — to lean a certain way. Because life isn’t black and white. Life isn’t just good versus evil. It’s nuanced. It’s complicated.

And when you believe that someone else’s ideology is inferior to your own — more dangerous than your own — that’s when things can get twisted. Especially when you’re a police officer meant to solve a complicated triple murder.

So today I want to take you to an area in Florida known as Escambia County, in the westernmost part of the Florida Panhandle. It’s right next to the Gulf of Mexico, and for many, this area is a vacation destination — beautiful sand beaches, dolphin cruises, a vibrant shopping scene, museums, and a minor league baseball team.

But behind this coastal charm is a darker story. This is a county that has been jokingly nicknamed “The Twilight Zone Vortex” for its famous and very gruesome connection to true crime.

For example, this was where Byrd and Melanie Billings — the millionaire couple who had sixteen children — were murdered in their home in 2009.
Sixteen children.
It’s also where Ted Bundy was finally caught and arrested after a multi-state manhunt back in 1978.

But in 2015, Escambia County experienced a crime unlike anything they had ever dealt with before.

That year, 2015, the Smiths were living a quiet little life in a suburban part of Pensacola.

Seventy-seven-year-old Voncile — also known to her nieces and nephews as Aunt Vonnie — didn’t really venture out of the house much anymore. At seventy-seven, her health had been on the decline for some years now.

She used to love vacationing with her husband and two sons — getting out, going on adventures, staying active. Her nieces and nephews idolized her, saying she was their favorite aunt.

With her big Southern drawl, she was always calling everyone “sugar,” “honey,” or “sweetie.” They said she had a way of making everyone feel special and loved. But ever since the death of her husband some years earlier, things just hadn’t really been the same.

Now, Aunt Vonnie mostly keeps to herself. She likes to spend her days on the couch ordering things off QVC — that’s kind of what brings her joy at this point in her later life. That, and her sons, of course.

Both of them actually still live at home for their own reasons. John, who is now forty-seven, has an intellectual disability. He’s worked at the local Walmart for the last twenty years. Everyone there loves him — he’s always smiling, with a childlike sense of wonder. His coworkers called him the “little brother” of the group. They remembered how every Christmas John would come to work with holiday pins that he’d give out to his friends. He just seemed to make people smile.

And Voncile — a.k.a. Aunt Vonnie — had dedicated her life to caring for John. Then her forty-nine-year-old son Richard was also living with them, and he had dedicated his life to caring for the two of them — his mother and his brother.

Richard was an IT specialist with the Department of Homeland Security, specifically in the crypto department — and not cryptocurrency. Oh, he was like a cryptologic technician, basically working on all the codes that they teach naval officers.

So it was clear Richard was kind of taking care of the house at this point. He had stepped into his dad’s role. He would wake up at 5 a.m. every morning, get his brother ready and off to work by 7 a.m., then come home and get himself ready.

Because of how dedicated Richard was to his family, he really didn’t have much of a personal life. He was never married, had no real romantic interests, and didn’t have big groups of friends. What free time he did have, he dedicated to his love for University of Alabama sports. His coworkers said his office walls were covered with posters and memorabilia.

That didn’t mean he didn’t want a life outside of his family — he once told a coworker that he dreamed of having a wife and kids of his own. But he always felt like it was impossible because he was the caretaker for his brother and now his mother.

Which is what makes the events of that July 2015 just that much more heartbreaking.

On Tuesday, July 28th, both Richard and John went to work as usual. No one reported any behavior out of the ordinary from either of them. Then, at 6:46 p.m. that night, Richard made an outgoing call — though it’s unclear to whom.

The following day, neither Richard nor John showed up to work. For forty-nine-year-old Richard, this was highly unusual, especially when two more days went by and he still didn’t come into the office.

So it’s now July 31st when one of Richard’s bosses really begins to worry. They call the sheriff’s department and say, “Hey, can you just go do a wellness check on my employee, but also his family? I know he lives with his brother and his mother.”

Police stop by their house that afternoon. They knock on the door — no answer. So they call another family member, who gives them permission to enter the home and check on them.

Police go inside and see the home is pretty cluttered. Remember, Voncile ordered a lot from QVC, so there are boxes and items everywhere. But they notice something else — a smell.

They also see what looks like a foot sticking out from under a pile of blankets and clothing. When they pull back the edges, they see a female hand underneath — and then the body of seventy-seven-year-old Voncile Smith.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t end there. Police look around the house for evidence — and for the sons. They find another body buried in the clutter: forty-seven-year-old John. And then eventually, forty-nine-year-old Richard, too.

It doesn’t take long for the medical examiner to determine that all three had been dead for a few days — likely killed the night they were last seen, about three days earlier.

He made that outgoing call — that would’ve been Tuesday, July 28th. Something happened that night.

Three days go by before police arrive. Vonnie and John had been beaten to death with a blunt object, and their throats had each been slashed. Richard had been shot in the head — his throat was also slashed.

What’s interesting is there was no sign of forced entry. Voncile appeared to have been attacked in the chair she always sat in in the family’s living room.

And detectives thought she might have been asleep or just sitting in the chair and didn’t see the attacker coming. Though she did appear to have tried to fight back — she had some defensive wounds on her hands.

John, however, had no defensive wounds on him. Detectives thought he probably didn’t even have the chance to fight off the attacker. Someone likely just walked right up to him — probably while he was asleep — and beat him in the head before he could react.

So maybe he was killed first. It’s possible Richard saw it coming, which could explain why he was shot, unlike his other family members.

As detectives kept digging, they found a few other items of interest around the home — a bloody claw hammer, and in the trash outside, bloody paper towels and some cigarette butts.

Police also found it interesting that whoever had committed the murders then spent time wrapping and hiding the bodies under blankets in their own home.

It’s not like it was out in public.
Isn’t that usually a sign of, like, remorse?
Remorse — or typically that’s what they say.
Respect-ish, as weird as that sounds.
Yeah.
So it’s probably somebody the family knows. That’s usually the connection — maybe they knew their attacker.

So this person took the time to cover the bodies rather than just fleeing the scene. Because of that, investigators wondered if the crime was more personal than a simple robbery.

With the house already in complete disarray, it was hard to tell if anything was missing. But there were some things police had to consider — and a big one was Richard’s highly sensitive line of work.

This was a major reason why Richard’s coworkers were so worried about his absence. The information they worked with was top secret — the kind of thing a foreign adversary might want access to. So when someone like Richard turns up dead without explanation, it’s taken very seriously. It can even be considered a matter of national security.

That’s actually why the Department of Homeland Security sent some of their own agents to assist in the triple homicide investigation.

And these agents discovered something interesting: Richard’s keys were missing from the home. They also took a DNA sample from his front pants pocket and later found that the DNA didn’t belong to anyone in their databases.

However, after reviewing the projects Richard was working on, DHS determined there was nothing so sensitive under his purview that would have been worth killing for.

So everyone ultimately ruled out that theory.

Police then began speaking with others who knew the family, hoping to get more information. One of the first people they reached out to was a man named Donald Hartung.

Donald had last seen the family the night they were believed to have died — Tuesday evening. He said he’d been over at the house cooking dinner for them. But it’s important to note he wasn’t just a friendly neighbor; he was actually Voncile’s son from a previous relationship, making him Richard and John’s half brother.

Voncile had Donald when she was a teenager. Now fifty-nine, he lived just three miles away from the family and worked as a security guard at a local hospital. According to Donald, he had a pretty good relationship with his mother and half brothers — he said he always did.

When he was brought in for questioning on the night of July 31st, he told police, “Yeah, that night I went over to my mother’s house. I actually do it every Tuesday to cook for the family.” He said he would often help Voncile and Richard take care of John when they needed it.

But he also told police there were a few enemies the brothers had made over the years. He mentioned that Richard had been sleeping with a married woman, and that John had once exposed himself to a young person at the Walmart where he worked.

Now, whether or not any of this was true, there’s no confirmation. But the police didn’t think Donald was someone to doubt — at least at first.

He had no criminal record. He appeared to be cooperating with the investigation. He offered a DNA sample and admitted to seeing the family on the night they died. He even said, “I’ll take a polygraph. I really don’t mind.”

Interestingly, the officers denied the polygraph — they were afraid he might pass and that it could later be used to support his claims.

Kind of interesting.
I mean, there’s got to be money involved somewhere.
Yeah, it’s just one of those cases where there’s no way money’s not involved.

The police denying the polygraph might make sense, though, because there was something off about the way Donald behaved during the interview.

When police broke the news to him that his mother and half brothers had been murdered, he showed little to no emotion about it at all. He was very nonchalant when he asked, “Well, were they robbed?”

“Did they tell you how your family over there was killed?”

“Killed? How were they killed?”

“They looked like they were shot in the wrong…”

It’s kind of a strange thing to be thinking about when you’ve just been told your family has been murdered, but maybe he was just trying to piece it all together.

When police spoke with other members of Voncile’s family that day, they contradicted some of what Donald had said. They mentioned that he was kind of the black sheep of the family — mean and arrogant. He often picked on his half brothers and their differences. He was always reaching out to his mother for financial help, and at one point, she had actually disowned him.

That was because Donald had become involved with something she deeply disapproved of — witchcraft.

Detectives learned that Voncile, a devoutly Christian woman, was extremely upset when she found out her son Donald was a practicing Wiccan. She called it the devil’s work. Donald made little mention of this during his interview with police, but that same night — when the bodies were found and he was called in — he told them they were more than welcome to search his home.

So they did.

And what they found proved witchcraft was indeed a big part of Donald’s life — and a major point of tension in his relationship with his mother. He was serious about it. Police uncovered plenty of relics and books, even what they described as an entire “worship room.”

They found a Ouija board laid out and ready to go.

That doesn’t necessarily mean it was tied to the religion — this was just something they found.

Apparently, they also found the clothes Donald was believed to have been wearing the night of the murders. From there, detectives began piecing together the puzzle, realizing that around this same time, there had been a rare blue moon.

This only happens once every two or three years, and the blue moon is a culturally significant time for Wiccan practitioners. It’s considered a period of heightened energy, ideal for manifesting and performing powerful spells.

Wiccans are people who practice witchcraft.

So basically, the energy from the moon is thought to be ideal for manifestation and ritual work. But police theorized that Donald may have timed the killings around the blue moon as some sort of ritual sacrifice.

They were desperate to find a motive, and this is the one they landed on.

After searching Donald’s house that night, investigators went back to the station around 1:30 a.m. It was now August 1st, and they questioned him specifically about his ties to the Wiccan religion.

When asked who else he practiced with, Donald said, “No one. I’m not part of any coven or anything like that.”

When they accused him of possibly murdering his family as part of a ritual and suggested there might be a reason he covered the bodies, Donald replied that he had no idea what they were talking about and insisted there was no ritual that involved doing that.

He told them they didn’t understand paganism and were just throwing things at the wall to see if he’d confess. But he didn’t. He maintained his innocence and said he had nothing to do with it.

With no confession and no concrete evidence, Donald was released later that morning — but police were far from done with the theory.

Three days later, on August 4th, the county sheriff, David Morgan, held a press conference about the triple homicide. In front of cameras, he openly stated that police truly believed this was a ritualistic killing tied to the blue moon.

He then said with sheer confidence, “It is witchcraft. I’ll say that right now.”

It showed that investigators had their sights set — this wasn’t just a theory they were using to get a confession. They really believed Donald did this and that witchcraft was his motivation for killing his family.

The sheriff added that “the method of the murder — blunt force trauma, slit throats, positions of bodies — and then our person of interest has some ties to a faith or religion that is indicative of that.”

With this statement in 2015, the press went wild. Publications all over the country printed headlines like Witchcraft Suspected in Savage Murder of Family and Florida Triple Murder Tied to Witchcraft.

But Donald was not the only practicing Wiccan in Florida.

There were a lot of people who saw these statements and thought — okay, just because the son believes in this religion doesn’t make him a murderer.

One practitioner named Peg Aloi said, “I’m fairly certain there is nothing in any book on Wicca that has ever been published on planet Earth that describes body positions consistent with ritual murder.”

Dr. Wendelyn Reese, a specialist in contemporary paganism at American University, found the entire thing absurd. She said that if the police had done even the slightest bit of research, they would see this crime wasn’t connected to a religion at all — instead, it was outright prejudice against a subculture the police knew nothing about.

Others confirmed that ritual murder isn’t even a part of the religion. In fact, it goes against the ethical principles of Wicca.

So, basically, you had all these people who also practiced and were pushing back, saying, “How dare you blame a religion for such a horrific slaying? It has nothing to do with us.”

What made things worse was that this distraction completely pulled focus from the actual investigation.

But it’s important to clarify — none of this meant Donald was innocent. It just meant that police might have had the wrong motive for the wrong reasons. He was still the last person to have seen the three victims alive. The family confirmed that Voncile and her sons had ongoing issues with Donald over the years.

And there were witnesses who saw Donald driving away from the house that night with his headlights off, even though it was dark. So while police might have had the motive wrong, it didn’t necessarily mean they had the wrong guy. They just needed more concrete evidence to prove their case.

The issue was that Donald’s DNA was already all over the crime scene. He had dinner at that house every week; he was there often. What became concerning was when his DNA showed up in places it really shouldn’t have been — like the inside of Richard’s belt buckle and on Richard’s checkbook.

This was significant because detectives had asked Donald if he had ever touched any of Richard’s belongings, and he said no. But sure enough, Donald’s DNA was all over Richard’s checkbook.

His explanation was that he might have just picked it up and moved it while cleaning the kitchen table or something.

Fair enough — except there was another detail that didn’t look good for him.

Detectives had found bloody towels outside, likely used to clean up the crime scene, along with several cigarette butts. When they ran the DNA, it came back as Donald’s — which meant he was likely the one who cleaned up the scene and then smoked a cigarette afterward.

Yeah, there’s not really a good way to explain that one.

Of course, it took investigators some time to get all of this DNA evidence back. And ironically, it was just a few days before Halloween when Donald was finally arrested for the crime.

On October 27th, 2015, police put fifty-eight-year-old Donald in handcuffs and charged him with three counts of first-degree murder with a weapon.

Unfortunately, it would be another four years before the case went to trial.

The big question people following the case had was — would the prosecution go to trial using religion as the motive? Were they going to stick to the story police had believed, or would they take a completely different route?

It felt like they needed a different approach. If they stuck with the witchcraft theory, it would likely come across as disrespectful and wouldn’t hold up in court. Things were far more nuanced than that.

Still, those four years behind bars actually ended up helping the prosecution’s case against Donald. As the trial approached, investigators received a letter from one of Donald’s fellow inmates — someone named Marlon Purifoy — who claimed Donald had told him some things that might be useful.

Marlon said Donald had confessed to killing his family. He also said many of the other inmates were uneasy around him because he claimed to be a practicing witch. But, according to Marlon, that wasn’t the reason he killed his mother and siblings.

The truth, he said, was that Donald had been planning these deaths for years. Allegedly, Donald told him that one of his brothers had molested Donald’s son when the boy was just three years old. When his mother refused to take his side, Donald held a grudge against them.

But the tipping point came when Voncile left Donald out of her will — assets worth about $900,000.

I thought you were going to say like $900 million.

I was like, oh man, that would’ve been cool.

But the only way Donald would ever get any of that money was if both his mother and his half brothers all died — then it would go to him.

I just find it so weird because it doesn’t seem worth it to kill for a couple hundred thousand dollars, you know what I’m saying? I mean, nine hundred thousand — that’s if he even got all of it. And then taxes. It just seems crazy to me. Like, say you kill for two hundred thousand dollars — okay, you can go buy an apartment, and then it’s gone.

I definitely think if the stories are true and you add in the trauma, the betrayal, and then the money, we’ve seen worse motives. I mean, we’ve seen people kill for far less.

I think what I’m trying to say is… I’m not killing for less than a hundred million.

Okay, we’re not killing at all.

I’m just saying hypothetically — if there was a really bad person and I was a superhero or something. Anyways, what I’m trying to say is it all comes down to money.

Like I said earlier, it’s always money.

Law enforcement or government listening to this, I have no participation in these.

No, they didn’t understand — I meant hypotheticals.

No, they’re not listening. They didn’t know what I meant by killing — killing insects in the house.

Right. Right. For a hundred million. For a hundred million.

Then, in another surprising twist, Marlon also told investigators that Donald wasn’t sure whether to go through with the plan or not, so he had consulted a Ouija board — which, according to him, gave Donald the permission he was looking for to execute his plan.

Now, here’s the thing — Marlon was in prison for thirty years for attempted murder. He was obviously looking to strike a deal to get out early, so telling police this information benefitted him.

However, he knew details about the case that he really couldn’t have guessed. He said Donald told him he cut off his mother’s pinky finger to get her to tell him the code to their safe.

That’s diabolical — coming from a son, from a kid.

The inmate said this, and Voncile was missing her pinky finger when the bodies were found. Someone had to have told him that, so it backed up the inmate’s story.

Donald also told him he usually brought his dog when he went to visit, but that night he didn’t — which was true. And the mention of the Ouija board was interesting, because like we said, they did find one in Donald’s home.

So Marlon’s story seemed unusually strong for a jailhouse confession — which meant the prosecution now had their star witness. And the motive was no longer about religion.

Shockingly though, by the time the case actually reached the courtroom, there was no mention of Wicca or paganism as a contributing factor. That had been purely what police announced early on, but when it got to trial, the state said it had nothing to do with the murders.

Which is kind of embarrassing.

Yeah — I just don’t know why you’d confidently say something like that before trial. How does anyone ever really know a motive until then? Out of all things — witchcraft? “We found a Ouija board, it was definitely witchcraft.”

Right.

So, when Donald’s trial finally kicked off in January 2020, he didn’t take the stand. The defense held firm that there actually wasn’t much evidence implicating Donald in the crime beyond his DNA at the home — which he had already admitted would be there since he had dinner there regularly.

They argued that none of his blood was found at the house, no gun or murder weapon was ever recovered, and that police hadn’t seriously investigated other suspects before arresting him. They also pointed out that police had refused to give him a polygraph because they were afraid he would pass it.

And there were no real eyewitnesses — just the neighbors who said they saw him drive away that night with his headlights off, which he’d already admitted to. That was the only unusual thing.

But that eyewitness account became a major point of contention. The bodies were discovered on Friday, July 31st, and investigators believed the murders happened three days earlier on July 28th — the same day Donald was seen leaving the neighborhood.

The defense hired a medical expert who said this timeline wasn’t accurate. Based on body temperature and the level of decomposition recorded when the family was found, it was more likely they were killed the following day — after Donald had already left.

He testified that the murders likely occurred on Wednesday, July 29th.

This expert was a big deal — even the prosecution was worried about him because he’d been doing this work for a long time and really knew what he was talking about. The evidence, at least in that regard, supported his conclusion that the murders happened the next day.

But this part is hard — Richard was found dead in the same clothes he’d been seen wearing at work on the 28th. So what did he do? Wake up, put on the exact same outfit, and then get murdered in it?

There was video footage of him wearing those clothes. Unless he was being held hostage, it just doesn’t make sense.

But there were other problems with the prosecution’s case. The state medical examiner who’d first looked at the case had since resigned after being accused of misusing state money — not exactly a good look at trial. The crime scene technician who collected DNA at the scene had also been fired after being prosecuted for stealing drugs.

What is going on?

So yeah, it just wasn’t looking good.

Even though it did kind of point to him — I mean, circumstantial evidence really did — the state’s case was falling apart.

Still, there were some details that were undeniable. Like we said, Marlon’s statements really did hold up in court because he knew things he shouldn’t have known, details that had never been publicized. The DNA on Richard’s checkbook and Donald’s used cigarette butts on top of bloody towels — this all appeared to be enough for the jury.

After three weeks of testimony, they returned a verdict. Sixty-three-year-old Donald was found guilty of three counts of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to three consecutive life terms in prison but spared the death penalty.

And ultimately, it was proven that witchcraft never played a role at all.

Which is why this story shows how easy it is to point fingers at something we don’t understand — to blame the strange and the unfamiliar. But belief itself isn’t dangerous. People are.

It’s not what someone believes that defines them; it’s what they do with those beliefs — and how others choose to perceive them.

And that is the case of John, Richard, and Voncile Smith.

Interesting, because I don’t know — I mean, I guess there’s enough evidence, but who else could it have been? And the inmate knowing about the pinky, the cigarette butts, the bloody towels… how did those get there? There was nobody else there. He was the last one to see them.

Yeah. Them wearing the same clothes, too. I mean, if I were on the jury, I probably would’ve come to the same conclusion.

Yeah — the cigarette butts on top of the bloody towels, how could that just happen?

Yep.

All right. Wow. That’s insane.

Yeah, I think so. I think I’m convinced enough.

I chose this particular case because it had that Wiccan element — it fit for Halloween. Witches are such a big part of the season. But I also wanted to show that just because a religion has a spooky or unfamiliar outlook doesn’t mean we should immediately assume guilt because of it.

Sometimes things are just spooky.

True.

All right, you guys — that’s our episode, and we’ll see you next time with another one.

I love it.

I hate it.

Goodbye.

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