Episode Transcript
Transcripts are displayed as originally observed. Some content, including advertisements may have changed.
Use Ctrl + F to search
0:00
Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to
0:02
48 hours ad free right now.
0:05
Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery
0:07
app. If I asked you how
0:09
many subscriptions you have, would you be able to list all
0:11
of them and how much you're paying? If
0:14
you would have asked me this question before I
0:16
started using Rocket Money, I would have said yes.
0:18
But let me tell you, I would have been
0:20
so wrong. I can't believe how
0:22
many I had and all the money I
0:24
was wasting. Rocket Money is
0:26
a personal finance app that finds
0:28
and cancels your unwanted subscriptions, monitors
0:31
your spending, and helps lower your
0:33
bills. Rocket Money has over 5
0:35
million users and has helped save its members an
0:37
average of $720 a year with over 500 million
0:39
in canceled subscriptions. Stop
0:45
wasting money on things you don't
0:47
use. Cancel your
0:49
unwanted subscriptions by
0:51
going to rocketmoney.com/Wondery.
0:54
That's rocketmoney.com/Wondery. rocketmoney.com
0:57
slash Wondery. The
1:25
13th of March 2010. Wanda
1:31
and Ernie, hey, quit
1:33
worrying about me. I am okay. Thanks
1:36
for your love and unconditional support and
1:38
love. It
1:41
should comfort you to learn I met with the prison
1:43
priest for an hour today. I
1:46
am trying to get my spiritual side right
1:48
with the man upstairs. A
1:52
65-year-old American millionaire is convicted of murder after the
1:55
death of his wife. I
1:58
accept full responsibility. I will pay for my actions.
2:04
Sorry. H's
2:07
story is a tale of two worlds. He
2:13
went from down to bayou, living with nothing,
2:19
to living in a fine British manor home.
2:23
He's a millionaire, I just don't know how many million. I'm
2:26
Pat Fanning and I'm a friend of Harold Landry, who
2:28
came to be known as H. H
2:32
was proud to be a Cajun from South
2:34
Louisiana. His
2:37
personality was big. He
2:40
just embraced everything.
2:45
He had met someone on the internet. She
2:47
lived in England and he was going to England
2:49
to visit her. She was young, nice
2:52
figure. H did pretty good. This
2:57
was a woman that he idolized. He
3:00
had the most beautiful daughter with
3:02
her, living a gentleman's life in
3:04
the UK countryside. Oh
3:08
my gosh, hang on, England.
3:12
You guys will never be the same. You
3:16
can take the Cajun out of the bayou, but you can't take the
3:18
bayou out of the Cajun. H
3:21
made a phone call to us and was
3:24
devastated. He just said, Lucy says
3:26
she's not happy, she wants a divorce. Uh
3:29
oh, that ain't good. Trouble in paradise.
3:33
His whole world was crumbling.
3:37
There's been a horrible tragedy. And
3:44
Lucy, she's dead. What
3:48
the hell happened with H? I
3:50
do know that she posted on her Facebook page, she'd
3:53
never hated anyone like she hated
3:55
at that moment. He
3:58
says, I did it. But
4:00
there is a story to be told. Murder
4:05
at the Manor. This
4:23
is a letter from H. in prison, sent on
4:25
the 8th of September 2010. This
4:28
is the way H, as Harold
4:30
Landry is known to his friends,
4:32
can communicate with most of them,
4:34
including Helen Nifton. I
4:37
am truly settled in. Keep so busy doing
4:39
so many things. He
4:41
left the majesty of his country
4:43
house for her majesty's prison system.
4:47
He had confessed. He
4:49
stabbed his wife Lucy. To
4:52
death. All I ever did
4:54
was love her. Still do. This
4:57
letter from behind bars reads like love letters
4:59
to the woman he killed. All
5:02
I ever did was give her everything she asked for.
5:05
For ten years she never ever worried about anything. Helen
5:08
is used to communicating with H in
5:10
writing from her home in the English
5:12
countryside. They met
5:14
online before H met Lucy. The
5:16
virtual world made it possible for
5:19
her to befriend someone from
5:22
a very different world. His
5:25
handle was Cajun H. H
5:29
grew up in a small town on
5:31
the bayou called Berwick, Louisiana, with a
5:33
dozen brothers and sisters. Pat
5:36
Fanning is a lawyer and H's friend in
5:38
New Orleans. He managed
5:40
to pull himself from that meager existence that he
5:42
lived there and made millions in the oil field.
5:46
Landry made his fortune designing
5:48
cranes for offshore oil platforms
5:51
and was a well-known employer
5:53
around Covington, Louisiana. When
5:56
he came to business he was a very tough guy, but
5:58
he was never that way with his family. He
6:00
had been divorced a couple of times, but he took care
6:02
of his kids and made sure they were educated and had
6:04
everything they needed. By 1999, he was healthy, wealthy and lonely.
6:10
And that's when he went looking for
6:12
love in that thoroughly modern way online.
6:15
Call me old fashioned, but I don't find that a
6:17
particularly romantic way to find a bride. But
6:20
H found the woman for him, Lucy
6:23
Davies. Her online name
6:25
was Misery. She
6:29
was a music student who lived in
6:31
England with her four-year-old son, James. H
6:34
was 53, Lucy was 28. At
6:38
first I was a little bit negative about it. What
6:40
are you doing? Look at the
6:42
age difference. Wanda and Ernie Richardson
6:44
are two of H's closest friends.
6:47
But I know H loves to
6:49
be around lively, beautiful things, and
6:52
Lucy was certainly that. There
6:55
was something about her. It was
6:57
kind of like what you see is what you get.
6:59
I liked her a lot. And
7:01
the Richardsons enjoyed seeing H so happy
7:03
with Lucy. He doted on her. Oh
7:06
my gosh, did he? Lucy
7:08
was being pampered and she was enjoying it.
7:10
He enjoyed beautiful clothes,
7:12
beautiful jewelry. And
7:14
H was willing to buy whatever Lucy wanted.
7:16
If you want to get the hoochie, you
7:18
got to buy the Gucci. He
7:21
knows that. Some of H's friends
7:23
soon began wondering if Lucy enjoyed the
7:25
clothes and the jewelry more
7:27
than she enjoyed H. H
7:30
at one point showed me a diamond ring that
7:32
he bought for Lucy that he wanted to give
7:34
to her as an engagement ring. Lucy wanted the
7:36
diamond, but she didn't want H as part of the
7:38
deal. It wasn't exactly a
7:40
hunk of burn and love looking kind of
7:42
guy. Fanning describes
7:44
the romance, such as it was, as
7:47
a little more like a business deal.
7:49
The love affair between H and Lucy
7:51
was that Lucy loved H's money and
7:53
H loved Lucy's appearance. But
8:00
H. and Lucy did get married shortly
8:02
after Lucy got pregnant. And
8:06
Harold Landry, Bayou born and
8:08
bred, tried
8:11
to become an English country gentleman.
8:14
Did his speech change? Yeah. He'd say, well let me
8:16
go get the lift. And I'd say, why don't you
8:18
take the elevator dummy? I'm going, come
8:20
on H, you're from South Louisiana.
8:22
Quit it. You know? But
8:24
he just dove right
8:26
into it. He bought that big
8:29
house in the country for his new
8:31
bride and settled into his new life
8:33
as a retiree and as
8:35
a new father when his daughter was
8:38
born. He was a very proud papa.
8:40
No doubt about it. What did he
8:42
tell you about her? Oh, just
8:44
everything about her. Every minor
8:47
detail. H is the happy guy. H has
8:49
got his young girl. He got what he
8:51
wanted. But
8:54
both H. and Lucy might have gotten
8:56
more than they could handle. There
8:58
were signs after a few years that
9:00
the marriage had become a volatile mixture
9:02
of anger and alcohol. H
9:05
would certainly start drinking early. Lucy's
9:08
son James, age 15. He'd
9:10
get a lot more aggressive when he did drink.
9:13
James saw the marriage deteriorate. My
9:15
mum would perhaps want something or
9:17
ask something and it would just
9:20
end up being shouting matches. It
9:22
sounds a little scary. Impossent,
9:24
pleasant. Lucy and H had known
9:26
each other for 10 years when
9:29
she finally asked for the
9:31
divorce. How was he in that
9:33
period? Oh, in a terrible state. The
9:35
most important thing to him was to leave him
9:38
and he didn't understand and he didn't know what
9:40
to do. Of course, H
9:42
had already been married twice and
9:44
divorced twice. This
9:46
time, things would be very
9:48
different. I heard
9:50
glass smashing. I heard
9:53
my mum screaming. James had seen
9:55
H and his mother fight many times
9:57
before February 1st, 2010. but
10:01
never like this. I
10:03
knew at that point that something had
10:05
happened, something major, something bad. I
10:09
was one of the first officers on the scene, and
10:12
I'd certainly never been to anything like it before. Police
10:15
officer Steve Elcox. The
10:17
paramedics were working on Lucy. There
10:21
was a great deal of blood. Lucy
10:24
had been stabbed more than 20
10:26
times. She had
10:28
a very, very large gash to her
10:30
left cheek. She also
10:32
had a very large butcher's knife that
10:35
was still in her. Elcox
10:38
had his hands full. One
10:40
of the first priorities was to find out if
10:43
the children were safe. James was
10:45
just 14. His sister was just 7. Police
10:49
found the children in the backyard. They
10:52
did not know their mother lay dying
10:54
in the front. I thought for most
10:56
of the night that my mom was
10:58
still alive. H
11:04
had fled, leaving the children alone
11:06
at the bloody crime scene. Police
11:09
immediately began searching for him
11:11
along dark, deserted country roads.
11:15
It was just before midnight. And
11:17
that's where Sergeant Ian Booth found
11:19
him. Flammed on the brakes,
11:21
and I knew it was him straight away. Sergeant
11:24
Booth arrested H and charged him
11:26
with murder. Mr. Laundrie was completely
11:28
compliant. There's nothing in his
11:30
demeanor that suggested that he'd done something.
11:32
But H didn't try to deny it.
11:34
He told police what he had done. I
11:38
couldn't believe it at all. It's
11:40
surreal that it had come to
11:43
this. How could either one of them let
11:45
this happen? But Pat Fanning
11:47
knew firsthand about the other
11:49
side of Harold Laundrie. I knew
11:52
H is a guy who got cross-way with
11:54
a guy before and shot him. As
12:07
a lawyer and a reporter, and
12:09
specifically as a crime reporter, I've
12:12
spent years researching crimes and speaking
12:14
with victims. While it's my passion, it
12:16
also reminds me that it's easy to
12:18
take safety for granted. That's why I
12:20
want to talk to you about the
12:23
award-winning Simply Safe system. It
12:25
was named Best Home Security of
12:27
2023 by U.S. News & World
12:29
Report and for good reasons. Simply
12:32
Safe protects your whole home
12:34
with advanced sensors that detect
12:36
break-ins, fires, floods and other
12:38
threats. Their 24-7 monitoring is
12:40
affordable and satisfaction is guaranteed. Try
12:43
Simply Safe for 60 days
12:45
risk-free. If you don't love it,
12:47
you can return your system for a full
12:49
refund. And as a listener, you
12:51
can save 20% with a fast
12:54
protect plan by visiting simplysafe.com slash
12:56
48 hours. Customize
12:58
your home security system
13:01
in minutes at simplysafe.com/48
13:03
hours. There's no
13:05
safe like Simply Safe. The
13:08
wait is over. So far you're
13:10
not losing. The only thing you're losing is
13:13
my patience. Quickly, I see that. The
13:16
queen of the courtroom is
13:18
back. I didn't do anything.
13:21
You wouldn't know the truth if it came up and slapped you
13:23
in the face. I see he's not
13:25
intimidated by anything. I can fix that.
13:28
Jesus. She wanted to
13:30
fight me? Leave her. Hey,
13:32
love. Okay. So, uh...
13:35
This is not a soul. This is a period.
13:37
Classic duty. Did you sleep with her? Yes,
13:39
Your Honor. You marry his cousin. Your
13:41
brother. That's not him. Yes, ma'am.
13:43
I would make a beeline for the door. The Emmy Award-winning series
13:45
returns. It's an all-news piece.
13:48
It's streaming. Judy
14:01
Justice, only on Freebie.
14:12
21 July 2010, Deb and John, hi. I
14:17
enrolled in Open University this week. I
14:20
am taking an advanced mathematics course to
14:22
help fill my time. Harold
14:24
Landry's letters from prison to his
14:27
friend John Blakeman are a curious
14:29
mixture of routine news... I
14:31
keep very busy. Time has gone in a flash. ...and
14:34
a convict's peculiar point of view.
14:38
They sometimes sound like someone else
14:40
murdered Lucy. Lucy died,
14:42
but I might as well have done so as well.
14:45
It really stinks and very difficult for me.
14:49
Send some pictures of emerald green water and
14:51
open seas. Love, H.
14:54
Of course, chances are H. Landry
14:56
will never again see emerald green
14:58
water or open seas. He
15:01
was front page news, but
15:03
while the American millionaire murderer
15:05
might be a big fish
15:07
here, his British neighbors didn't
15:09
know that in
15:12
his Louisiana hometown back in 1994,
15:17
he was the one that got away. When
15:21
I first arrived, it looked like total chaos. Captain
15:24
Barney Turney of the St. Tammany
15:27
Parish Sheriff's Office was a patrol
15:29
officer on February 6, 1994, when
15:32
he got a call about a shooting. I
15:35
had a blood-stained car. I had an
15:37
individual laying inside a pool of blood. The
15:40
victim had been shot once in the neck with a
15:42
.38, and this was not going to be
15:45
a very tough case at all. Just
15:48
as I got out of my car, I had an individual approach
15:50
me, and was making a statement, I shot him, I shot him,
15:52
I shot him, I'm the man you're looking for, I shot him,
15:54
I shot him. It
15:56
was Harold Landry, and he
15:58
couldn't stop confessing. Did
16:01
he say why he shot him? He
16:03
was basically dating this man's wife. Obviously
16:06
anytime someone's dating a female acquaintance or
16:08
someone else there's always red
16:10
flags that would be picked up there. The
16:13
victim was Chris Price, the
16:15
angry husband of H's girlfriend.
16:19
And he was very lucky. He
16:21
was shot right in front of
16:23
a hospital and survived. I ran
16:25
into the hospital. I
16:27
was hysterically crying. And
16:30
they said what happened, what's going on? And I was like,
16:32
there's a man and he's been shot. Kristin
16:34
Harton was just 15 at
16:37
the time. Her life has changed a
16:39
lot since then. She's now
16:41
a Muslim living in Jordan. Did
16:43
this event have anything to do with the changes
16:45
that you made in your life? I'm
16:47
sure it did. I try not to think about it too
16:50
much. Back in 1994,
16:52
Kristin was a babysitter. And
16:54
H was giving her a ride
16:57
home that afternoon after a date
16:59
with Price's wife. You
17:01
pulled out of the apartment house where
17:03
you were babysitting. Yeah. And
17:05
drove down the street. And drove down
17:07
the street. 48 hours brought her back
17:09
to Louisiana so she could describe that
17:12
wild ride home with H Landry. He
17:14
kept looking in the review mirror. He
17:17
said, oh, somebody's following us. And
17:19
I saw a car following
17:21
us backwards, driving
17:23
in reverse. Chris Price was driving the
17:26
other car. When we got to
17:28
the traffic light, Chris Price's car pulled up
17:30
alongside of us. Chris
17:32
got out of the car and he was screaming.
17:36
And Mr. Landry just grabbed the gun out and he
17:38
held it out the window. And
17:41
Mr. Landry said, I'm going to shoot you.
17:44
And he said, go ahead and shoot me. And
17:47
then he did. Chris
17:49
Price had fallen backwards onto his car and I
17:51
saw his hands on his face and there was
17:53
blood. And
17:56
then I jumped out of the car and I said, I can't believe you shot
17:58
him. seemed to
18:00
take it all in stride. He didn't try to
18:02
run away. He didn't
18:05
try to say stay away from me. No.
18:08
I guess he knew what he did so he
18:10
just kind of hung around and waited for
18:13
his fate I guess. He was
18:15
arrested for attempted murder. It was
18:17
hardly a surprise. So let me get
18:19
this straight. This was done in broad
18:21
daylight, in front of a hospital,
18:23
in front of witnesses who
18:25
saw him with the gun in the hand. Pat
18:28
Fanning was H's attorney. The defense
18:31
was self-defense. And Fanning got to
18:33
like H so much they became
18:35
good friends. But at the time
18:38
Fanning had a lot of work to do.
18:40
How tough a case was this? This was
18:43
a difficult case. He
18:46
had to convince a jury that H was
18:48
right to be afraid of Chris Price even
18:51
though H was the man pointing the
18:53
gun at Price. We had
18:55
to sell to the jury that Chris Price, who
18:57
was young enough and strong enough compared to H,
19:00
that he could have overpowered H and taken the
19:02
gun away. He
19:04
was Muhammad Ali by the time we got finished with
19:07
him. It was, to say
19:09
the least, a creative
19:11
defense. There was nothing to
19:13
indicate that Chris Price was all that close
19:15
to your client. Yeah
19:17
and I had a bigger obstacle than that. I also
19:20
had H. H was not
19:22
a guy that you could put on the stand to defend himself. H
19:25
was an angry guy, not a sympathetic
19:27
guy. Did he want to go on? Not
19:30
after I got finished talking to him. How'd you talk him out
19:32
of it? You'd be just an idiot
19:34
to get up there and do this. Landry
19:37
was smart enough to listen to his
19:39
lawyer and was found guilty of a
19:41
much lesser charge, aggravated
19:43
battery. After the verdict he fired
19:46
me. Was he not happy with
19:48
the verdict? No, he thought he should have been
19:50
acquitted. He thought he should have been not guilty.
19:52
He thought he was a hundred percent right. Thought
19:54
this was a no-brainer. Thought this was a travesty
19:56
of justice. He could have gotten five years in
19:58
prison, but Landry decided to... appeal and
20:00
in the end all he got
20:03
was probation, a
20:05
$500 fine and some community service
20:07
for shooting a man in front
20:09
of witnesses. Boy this guy H,
20:11
he doesn't quit man. He's
20:14
relentless in getting the outcome that
20:16
he's seeking. At the time it
20:18
all looked a little suspicious because
20:20
one of the judges involved in
20:22
H's case got a substantial campaign
20:25
contribution in the name of a
20:27
member of Landry's family. I
20:29
think Harold Landry may use a different
20:31
set of standards than we would about
20:33
what's appropriate and what's not. Within
20:38
about eight years H Landry had begun
20:40
a new life with a new wife
20:43
and a new country. H
20:45
says Lucy knew all about his past
20:48
and married him anyway. But
20:51
neither of them could know that
20:54
Landry's history would come back to
20:56
haunt him. People emailed me
20:58
to say do you know about
21:00
this guy? Do you know about
21:02
his past? When
21:10
we got the story it was just
21:12
a phone call and we knew somebody
21:14
had died. When Richard Vernals, a
21:16
reporter for the Worcester News in the British
21:18
Midlands got that call that someone had died
21:21
on February 1st, 2010 he knew this story
21:23
was going to be big. Whenever
21:28
we get a fatal we'll always go out to
21:30
the scene. The
21:32
fake he knew this story was going
21:35
to be big. Whenever we get
21:37
a fatal we'll always go out to the scene.
21:41
The fatality was in the middle
21:43
of a neighborhood with very rich
21:45
residents. Former company executives are
21:47
great in the good. And a very
21:50
rich history. It used to be a
21:52
Catholic seminary for training priests. It used
21:54
to be a seminary. Yeah. And
21:56
now it's a crime scene. And now it's a crime scene. But
22:01
it wasn't just what happened or where
22:03
it happened that made this crime so
22:06
unusual. The question, the key question
22:08
is always the why of it. Why
22:10
would you do that? So you have to find
22:13
out the backstory, you have to find out about
22:15
the character of that person. I
22:17
got a call from a reporter from
22:19
England. Pat Fanning was the right guy
22:22
to call. Asking if I
22:24
was the guy who had represented Harold
22:26
Landry in the past. Of course Fanning
22:28
wasn't just Landry's lawyer, he was also
22:31
his friend despite the
22:33
shooting. And you'd still hang out
22:35
with him? Sure. Why not? He didn't kill any friends
22:37
of mine. They even had
22:39
vacation homes in the same condo
22:41
in Mexico. And it was there
22:44
that Fanning met H's new bride
22:46
Lucy back in 2002. That
22:49
was sort of an eye opener. Fanning
22:52
quickly noticed the somewhat odd
22:54
nature of H and Lucy's
22:56
relationship. When they came to
22:59
Mexico, the newlyweds were
23:01
not alone. He came
23:03
with the new bride, her
23:05
son, the baby daddy, and himself on
23:08
vacation together. She seemed more interested in
23:10
spending time with the son's daddy than
23:12
she did with H. And so I
23:14
was like, this is just kind of
23:17
weird. But there they
23:19
all were, including the ex-lover, living
23:22
it up. And H was paying
23:24
for everything. This did not seem
23:27
to you to be the ideal marriage.
23:30
Well, I usually don't bring my wife's little boyfriends
23:32
on vacation with us. H didn't
23:34
seem to mind. And in fact, things
23:36
went pretty well for Mr. and Mrs.
23:39
Landry, at least at first, according to
23:41
Lucy's son, James. As a family, we
23:43
ate meals together quite happily. And every
23:45
now and then we have a day
23:48
out or something and, you know, be
23:50
quite happy together. They
23:54
lived in that house not far from
23:57
the village of Pershore, where time is
23:59
marked the bells of a
24:01
medieval abbey. But
24:04
time had started running out on
24:07
the marriage just seven years after
24:09
it began. Aitch's friend John
24:11
Blakeman visited only months before
24:13
Lucy was killed. They were
24:16
arguing at night as
24:18
they began drinking and the day wore
24:20
on they just began clashing. But
24:23
over time it wasn't just clashing
24:25
that hurt the marriage, it was
24:27
also cheating. Lucy found
24:29
a new lover. I'm
24:32
sure she knew I knew. Aitch's
24:34
friend Wanda Richardson says it was
24:36
hardly a secret. A big
24:38
part of this breakup was this other
24:40
man. He was very very
24:42
upset about it. Aitch confided
24:45
in his friend Helen Nifton. He
24:47
felt he'd failed in many ways. He
24:50
began to feel somewhat out of
24:52
control. He said we just won't
24:55
ever be the same. She had someone else
24:57
and that's the way it was going to be. His
25:00
name? Gareth Jenkins. Lucy
25:02
knew him from high school and
25:04
they reconnected on Facebook. But
25:07
before long Aitch began to suspect
25:09
that their relationship went well
25:12
beyond an innocent online poke.
25:15
He would go to bed and Lucy would
25:17
stay up hours past him online. He said you
25:19
know I should have seen it. I should
25:21
have seen something was going on. He
25:23
was in a bad place. Aitch
25:26
decided to leave England for a while and
25:28
go to his place in Mexico to let
25:30
things cool off. It might
25:33
not have been the best move. He
25:35
didn't know that she was going to move the boyfriend into
25:37
the big house. Aitch was
25:39
furious but his friend John Blakeman
25:41
says Aitch still tried to save
25:44
the marriage. He would
25:46
have done anything and everything including
25:48
forgiving what is hard
25:50
to forgive to keep the marriage together.
25:53
Lucy had made up her mind. She wanted
25:55
out. He was crying.
25:57
He was upset. Friends
26:00
may say Landry was devastated, but it
26:02
turned out once Lucy took a boyfriend,
26:05
H found a girlfriend. And
26:08
Pat Fanning thought H was prepared for
26:10
what would come next. He
26:12
said, you know, I got a grip on this. I'm
26:14
going to go back, we're going to get a divorce.
26:17
She's not living in the expensive house that we're in
26:19
now. She's going to downgrade to
26:21
something that is acceptable but not the style
26:23
we're in now. Lucy's
26:26
son James believes his mother was just trying to look out
26:28
for him and his younger sister. The
26:32
marriage was effectively over. The
26:35
fighting over the terms of the divorce was just
26:37
beginning. He seemed to
26:39
be encountering some difficulty with her with that notion that she was
26:41
going to have to step down. I
26:44
think she thought she was going to get the house
26:46
and the cars and everything and he was just going to
26:48
leave. She was going to keep the baby and all of
26:50
his things. She did what she thought she had to. She
26:53
was just trying to look out for him and his
26:55
younger sister. She wasn't with
26:57
H necessarily because she wanted the money.
27:00
She was with H because, you know, she
27:02
loved him until the end when she was trying to
27:04
get divorced, when she was trying to leave with us.
27:07
Lucy had prepared her son for leaving. She
27:10
had told James all about H's
27:12
past and what he had
27:15
done in Louisiana. My mum
27:17
had told me about his previous
27:19
conviction. She shot a man
27:21
and got away with it. And
27:24
if Lucy ever loved H, even
27:26
after everything she knew, her son
27:28
says by February 2010, she felt very
27:30
differently. She
27:34
hated him. She loathed him because she
27:36
knew what he was capable of. And
27:38
the divorce got even uglier. Lucy and
27:40
H kept arguing over money. She demanded
27:42
he pay for an apartment for her
27:45
and Landry agreed. She
27:47
took the money that he gave her for an apartment
27:49
and hired the best divorce lawyer she could get. And
27:51
she played him. It
27:53
all came to a head on February 1st, 2010. That's
27:57
when Lucy posted that last note
27:59
on... her Facebook page. I've
28:01
never hated someone as much as
28:04
I hate someone now. Lucy
28:07
was talking about H and
28:10
less than an hour after she wrote those
28:12
words, Lucy and Harold
28:14
Landry had their final fight
28:17
with the children in the house. His
28:19
face, it seemed blank. There
28:22
was no happiness, no anger,
28:25
no joy, no sadness, no
28:27
regrets, just blank. And
28:31
James is about to come face
28:33
to face with H once more
28:35
in a British court at Harold
28:37
Landry's trial for murder.
28:48
Academy is a new scripted podcast
28:50
that follows Ava Richards, played by
28:52
HBO's industries, Myhala Harold, a brilliant
28:55
scholarship student who has to quickly
28:57
adapt to her newfound eat-or-be-eaten
28:59
world. Ava's ambitions take hold
29:01
and her small-town values break in hopes
29:03
of becoming the first scholarship student to
29:06
make the list. Bishop Gray is all
29:08
coveted academic top ten, curated by the
29:10
headmaster himself. But after realizing she has
29:13
no chance at the list in her
29:15
own, she reluctantly accepts an invitation to
29:17
a secret underground society that pulls the
29:19
strings on campus life and academic success.
29:22
If she bends to their will, she'll have
29:25
everything she's ever dreamed of. But at what
29:27
cost? Academy takes you into the
29:29
world of a cutthroat private school where
29:31
power, money, and sex collide
29:34
in a game of life and death. Follow
29:36
Academy on the Wondery app or wherever
29:38
you get your podcasts. You can binge
29:41
all episodes of Academy early and ad-free
29:43
right now by joining Wondery+. The
29:48
wait is over. So far
29:50
you're not losing. The only thing you're losing
29:52
is my patience. Quickly, I see that. Bing!
29:55
The queen of the courtroom is
29:58
back. I didn't do. You
30:01
wouldn't know the truth if it came up and slapped you
30:03
in the face. I see he's not intimidated
30:05
by anything. I can fix that. She
30:09
wanted to fight me? Leave
30:11
her. Hey, Lo. Okay,
30:14
so, um... Not this little,
30:16
so this is a period. Classic
30:19
duty. Did you sleep with her? Yes,
30:21
Your Honor. You marry his cousin. His
30:24
brother. That's not him. Yes, ma'am. I
30:27
would make a beeline for the door. The
30:30
Emmy Award-winning series returns... How did I know
30:32
that I have crystal ball in my head?
30:35
It's an all-new season. It's
30:37
dreaming. You can say anything. Judy
30:40
Justice, only on freebie. The
30:42
Emmy Award-winning series returns... The
30:46
Emmy Award-winning series returns... How
30:49
did I know that I have crystal ball in my head? I
30:53
was told that I had crystal ball in my head. Kevin John,
30:55
hi. Six months
30:57
from now, I'm on trial
30:59
at Wolverhampton Crown Court. Wolverhampton,
31:02
England has seen plenty of
31:04
dank and cloudy days like
31:06
this one. But the
31:08
Crown Court in town has never seen
31:11
a case quite like this one. Harold
31:14
Landry has always said he has a story
31:17
to tell and this is it. He
31:19
says he was provoked by an angry
31:22
Lucy, that he had no choice but
31:24
to kill her. Andy Childs
31:26
is one of H's lawyers. The
31:28
level of provocation was such that
31:31
the normal guy walking
31:33
down the street may well have reacted in the
31:35
same fashion. Landry
31:38
has insisted he was provoked since
31:40
day one. Outside of court
31:42
hearings, Landry spoke publicly only to
31:44
48 hours. And
31:47
the only way we could interview
31:49
him was over the phone from
31:51
behind bars in England where he's being
31:53
held. Mr. Landry,
31:55
are you there? Yeah, I'm here, Richard.
31:57
Was Lucy a violent woman? Absolutely. When
32:00
she got mad, she went to punching and
32:02
slapping and kicking and biting. That was her
32:04
M.O. Had she injured you before? Yes, she
32:06
has. H
32:09
told that story to Pat Fanning, who
32:11
got him out of that tight spot
32:13
in Louisiana back in 1994. He
32:16
told me that his wife attacked him
32:18
and he was responding to her attack
32:20
when he killed her. It's a story
32:22
that's hard to believe. Both lawyers agree
32:24
in their own way. It's the
32:27
violence of the act which would make it
32:29
hard for the jury to be one round
32:31
with that argument. In my business, you know,
32:33
they say you can't make chicken salad out
32:35
of chicken. You know what? Droppings. It would
32:37
be a tough sell. It
32:41
might get a little easier. On
32:43
the eve of trial, H's team
32:45
scores a big win. The prosecution
32:47
is pushing for permission to tell
32:50
the jury about H shooting
32:53
Chris Price. But
32:55
the judge sides with the defense.
32:58
So the jury will never know
33:00
about Landry's violent past. It lifts
33:02
one great burden from the defense,
33:05
but just one. There
33:07
will still be powerful testimony
33:09
from, among other people, Lucy's
33:11
son, James. I needed
33:14
to tell someone what I'd seen. I needed
33:16
to make sure I gave the evidence that
33:18
I could. I had to go in there
33:20
and do my best for my mom. James
33:23
was just 15 at the time
33:25
of the trial, but he decided
33:27
he had to come to court to
33:29
tell his story. I just had to
33:32
say, you know, he's the enemy because
33:35
he was. James
33:38
tells the court what he saw
33:40
during the fight that ended with
33:42
his mother lying on the ground
33:44
dead. I remember on
33:47
February the 1st that she
33:50
just wanted some furniture. Landry and
33:52
Lucy had been arguing for
33:54
months over who would get
33:56
what in their increasingly acrimonious
33:58
divorce. He'd agree. to the
34:00
house but she couldn't move out if we
34:02
didn't have furniture. That's what started that fight.
34:05
That, yeah. The last fight.
34:07
Landry's lawyers argue in court
34:09
that fight was the latest
34:11
and last example of Lucy
34:13
goading Landry with never ending
34:15
financial demands and threats. I
34:18
think what happened to Lucy is yeah, I
34:20
think if the last bit of it she turned into a
34:22
pure little thing because all of the fights were
34:24
over the money. And then there
34:26
was the flashpoint that evening and
34:28
that's what set him off. It
34:31
wasn't just a instantaneous thing. I just all of
34:33
a sudden got pissed off. I had
34:35
been pushed and pushed and pushed by my wife
34:37
for six months and
34:40
I had been humiliated nonstop. He
34:42
says Lucy called him a sexual
34:44
pervert and flaunted her affair with
34:46
Gareth Jenkins. And you know
34:48
at some point you just had enough and
34:51
I reached that point where I just had enough. At
34:54
first, James thought the fight on
34:57
that evening of February 1st was
34:59
just another argument. I just
35:01
ignored it, stayed in my room, on my
35:03
computer, as I usually did. But
35:06
James testifies this time Landry and
35:08
Lucy were arguing all over the
35:10
house. They rustled for control
35:12
of Lucy's cell phone containing her
35:15
private text messages in her
35:17
bedroom. This is where things
35:19
went from bad to worse in their kitchen.
35:22
Landry says he came down here to get
35:24
away from Lucy but she chased after him
35:26
screaming I hate you and cursing at him.
35:29
And then things started happening very quickly. The
35:31
jury was given Landry's statement to police that
35:33
added frightening details. He said Lucy shoved him
35:36
in the kitchen. And I caught myself on
35:38
the baker's rack and I pulled myself up,
35:40
grabbed the first thing right next to my
35:42
hand which was a granite rolling pin. What
35:44
did you do with the rolling pin? I
35:47
grabbed the thing and I just swung it
35:49
and I hit her in the head with
35:51
it. She screamed, she grabbed
35:53
the head and she took off running. James
35:56
rushed to call the police and in that
35:58
call said quote I'd like
36:00
to report an urgent domestic incident.
36:03
That was an understatement. There
36:06
was blood on the walls. I would say
36:08
that it wasn't long before I got hysterical, certainly
36:10
while I was on the phone to the police.
36:13
James testified he saw blood pouring from
36:16
a wound on his mother's face. He
36:18
immediately went to protect his seven-year-old sister.
36:20
I just did what I could to
36:23
get her out of the house and
36:26
make sure she was safe. Where did you
36:28
take her? Outside we ran around into the
36:30
garden. James
36:32
didn't know that at the same time,
36:35
out there in the dark, H
36:38
was chasing down Lucy, who was desperately
36:40
trying to escape to the safety of
36:42
a neighbor's house. The neighbor
36:45
heard Lucy's screams coming from outside the
36:47
house. He raced out to help, but
36:50
it was too late. H
36:52
had caught Lucy and stabbed her
36:54
repeatedly. She collapsed and died in
36:56
the road. I
37:00
accept the fact that I've murdered my wife. I accept the
37:02
fact that I killed my wife. And
37:05
now, in court, Harold Landry
37:07
has to somehow convince the
37:09
jury that he's guilty only
37:11
of manslaughter, not murder, because
37:13
Lucy provoked him. For this
37:16
self-made millionaire, taking
37:18
the stand is the sales
37:20
job of a lifetime. H
37:22
is not a good communicator in
37:25
terms of presenting his case, arguing his
37:27
case. And I think he would not
37:29
come across well. Landry testifies
37:32
one day before his 65th
37:34
birthday. Were you
37:36
nervous? Not at all. Not at
37:38
this. Landry, since day one, has
37:40
been fairly blank-faced, fairly calm and
37:43
collected. Today, reporter Richard Vernals has
37:45
a very different story to write
37:47
about Landry. He cried three
37:49
or four times in the stand. He said
37:51
he loved his wife on at least three
37:53
occasions. Did he express remorse? Did he say
37:55
he was sorry for the attack? Did he
37:57
say, I wish I hadn't done it? a
38:00
scent belt. But Landry did
38:02
say on the stand that things
38:04
escalated when Lucy picked up the
38:06
knife first. Yeah, she grabbed
38:08
the knife off the kitchen counter. I was very
38:11
upset. What I was wanting was what the hell
38:13
was she doing? What was her intention with the knife? Landry's
38:15
lawyer says once Lucy got
38:17
the knife everything changed. Well
38:20
it clearly raised it to a different level.
38:22
This was a woman who had gone halfway
38:24
to saying, I hate you so
38:26
much, I could kill you in
38:28
this knife. On
38:31
the stand, Landry says he can't remember
38:33
key details of the attack. Do
38:35
you remember stabbing her? I
38:38
don't remember any penetration at all. None
38:40
whatsoever. But
38:42
this prosecution animation shows the
38:45
extraordinary level of violence. It
38:47
details the more than 20
38:50
knife wounds. James
38:53
witnessed age inflicting at least some of
38:55
those wounds on his mother and
38:58
it is his testimony that could now put
39:00
Landry away for the rest of his life
39:03
as the jury begins to consider
39:05
James's words and the rest
39:07
of the evidence. We understand now
39:10
that all that matters to him, all
39:12
he's interested in is money. All
39:14
he's interested in is himself. He's a
39:16
loathsome man. Many
39:26
put their hope in Dr. Serhat. His
39:28
company was worth half a billion dollars.
39:31
His research promised groundbreaking
39:33
treatments for HIV and
39:35
cancer. Scientists, doctors, renowned
39:37
experts were saying genius, genius,
39:40
genius. People that knew him were convinced that
39:42
he saved their life. But
39:44
the brilliant doctor was hiding a
39:46
secret. Do not cross
39:48
this line that was being messaged
39:51
to us. Do not cross this
39:53
line. A secret the doctor
39:55
was desperate to keep. This
39:57
was a person who was willing to hold heartedly
40:00
just lie to people's faces.
40:02
We're dealing with an
40:05
international fugitive. From
40:07
Wondery, the makers of Over My
40:09
Dead Body and The Shrink Next
40:11
Door comes a new season of
40:13
Dr. Death, Bad Magic. You
40:15
can listen to Dr. Death's Bad
40:17
Magic ad-free by subscribing to Wondery
40:20
Plus in the Wondery app or
40:22
on Apple Podcasts. Far,
40:31
far away from his old stomping
40:33
grounds in the bayou, where
40:36
Harold Landry once wriggled and wiggled
40:38
and danced his way out of
40:40
an attempted murder charge, he
40:43
now has to face the music in
40:45
a far less colorful place. Wolverhampton,
40:48
England, where he is awaiting the
40:50
verdict in his trial for murdering
40:52
his wife. Any American watching
40:55
a trial here in Britain will recognize
40:57
a lot of the procedures, but it
41:00
still feels very different. It's
41:02
also civil. There was
41:04
not one objection from either side
41:06
in the Landry case. The result?
41:09
A very tidy trial that lasted
41:11
just eight days. And the
41:13
jury was out just three hours
41:15
and 52 minutes. It
41:18
didn't take long for word of the
41:20
jury's verdict to reach the quiet streets
41:22
of Pershore, the closest town
41:24
to Landry's house. I heard about
41:26
it on the local radio. A
41:30
65-year-old American millionaire has been convicted of
41:33
murder after the death of his wife
41:35
at their home last February. Harold
41:39
Landry, guilty of
41:41
murder for stabbing his wife Lucy
41:43
more than 20 times. Things
41:46
like that don't happen in a little, Lucy
41:49
Sound, like Pershore. Landry
41:51
blames the verdict on his lawyers
41:53
whom he says were unprepared. Were
41:56
you surprised by the verdict? No, I wasn't, because it
41:58
was a pathetic dissent that we had. Well,
42:00
by pathetic, you don't mean not true, or do you? No,
42:03
no, no. It was an ill prepared defense.
42:07
Pat Fanning, who was once fired
42:09
by H. Landry, has a great
42:11
deal of sympathy for his British
42:13
lawyer. I think it would have
42:15
been impossible for almost
42:17
anybody to win that case for H.
42:19
And so he probably did the best
42:21
he could with what he had, and with
42:24
H as a client. Because you've got a little client
42:26
control problem there. Andy
42:28
Childs always knew the defense
42:30
that Lucy provoked H was
42:33
a long shot. I guess if
42:35
you stab another human
42:37
being, there must be something beyond just
42:39
what a simple act of provocation. By
42:44
American standards, this case raced through
42:46
the system, just over a year
42:49
from crime to conviction. But
42:51
for Lucy's family, it's been an
42:53
eternity. They are too overwhelmed
42:55
to speak. So outside
42:58
court, her father looks on
43:00
as a policewoman reads the
43:02
family's statement. We are relieved
43:04
with the verdict today. It has
43:06
been an extremely traumatic year for
43:08
everyone, but finally, just having done
43:10
some new things. Our
43:12
lives will never be the same. Of
43:15
course, neither will Landry's. Just one
43:17
day after his conviction, Landry learns
43:20
his sentence. At first,
43:22
the judge reads a blistering
43:24
statement. He calls the stabbing
43:27
unspeakable and unforgivable. Says
43:29
Landry dreamed up that story that
43:32
Lucy grabbed the knife first. And
43:35
he forcefully dismisses what he
43:37
calls Landry's crocodile tears on
43:40
the stand. Knowing H's I
43:42
do, I'm sure it was water off his back. I
43:44
think he could care less about what the judge said about him.
43:48
Even though that judge then sentenced Landry to
43:50
a minimum of 16 years,
43:52
a maximum of life. This
44:00
is just a different life. Landry
44:04
has had a lot of time to think about his
44:06
life and hopes people will
44:08
remember the good parts. I
44:11
have done a lot of good things, beneficial
44:13
things, donating my time
44:15
and various causes unselfishly and no one
44:17
remembers that. All they remember is I
44:20
murdered my wife. It is
44:22
kind of hard to get past the fact
44:25
that you stabbed your wife all
44:27
those times. I mean pardon me but it
44:29
is kind of hard to see past that isn't it? Well
44:31
I don't expect you to see past about it. I don't
44:33
expect you to see that I'm not a murderer. Looking
44:36
back, Landry says he's sorry for
44:38
what happened but surprisingly he says
44:40
if faced with the same situation
44:43
he'd do the same thing again. I
44:46
think I would have reacted the same way. Yes I would. Landry
44:50
knows he's hurt his family especially
44:52
the young daughter he had with
44:54
Lucy. She's now
44:56
living with a foster family
44:59
and James, Landry's stepson who
45:01
now lives with his biological
45:04
father has to safeguard his
45:06
murdered mother's legacy. I
45:09
want people to know that she
45:11
always did her best for me and
45:14
for my sister. Even
45:17
now that he's a convicted murderer, Landry
45:19
still has his friends whom he writes
45:21
to whenever he can and
45:23
many of them like Helen Nifton
45:26
are torn by what they now know. I
45:28
think some people might wonder how you can
45:30
consider him a friend if he's done this.
45:33
True friends stick by each other through thick
45:35
and thin and that's what I tend to
45:37
do. I can't condone what he's done but
45:40
he's still that human being that I knew. But
45:44
Landry is still as blunt
45:46
and plain spoken and self-confident
45:48
as the most ragin of
45:50
all Cajuns. Listen
45:52
to this final remarkable claim
45:54
from a self-made widower. Do
45:56
you still think of Lucy?
45:58
I love her. death.
46:02
If he's lucky Landry could get
46:04
out of prison in his early
46:06
80s and nobody would be shocked
46:08
if he walked free again around
46:11
the countryside of Great Britain or
46:14
the bayous of Louisiana. H
46:16
Landry is a very competitive guy he's a fighter
46:19
and he will fight to the end it would
46:21
not surprise me if we have not heard the
46:23
last of H Landry. If
46:38
you like 48 hours you can
46:40
listen early and ad-free right now
46:43
by joining Wondery Plus in the
46:45
Wondery app. Prime members can
46:47
listen ad-free on Amazon Music.
46:49
Before you go tell us
46:52
about yourself by filling out
46:54
a short survey at wondery.com/survey.
Podchaser is the ultimate destination for podcast data, search, and discovery. Learn More