Israel’s Son /// Part 1 /// 663 | Forensic Files

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[Music] on the morning of Friday August 11 1995 in Grants Pass Oregon a young man walked
into the police station he was disheveled he appeared to be very tired and dirty he said to the attendant at
the force service desk that he needed to speak with a police officer he then took a seat and one of those
chairs near the little window that separates walk-ins from the nice lady at the desk on the other side
he waited briefly and then an officer appeared and asked the young man what is it that you would like to report
what the young man had to say was going to take much more work than just another
incident report he started to tell the officer about last night the officer quickly walked the young man
back into the office portion of the police station he took the young man to a small
interview room inside there was a small table three chairs and nothing else the officer gestured toward one of the
chairs and told the young man to have a seat then he asked him if he would like something to drink maybe a water or a
soda or perhaps something stronger like a coffee the young man replied soda followed by a simple thank you the
officer left the room and closed the door behind him the young man could hear the door click in a manner that
suggested that he would not be able to just stand up and walk out of the room this door would need to be opened from
the outside there were no windows to the outside world in this little room but instead
one small reinforced window that looked out into the small white hallway that the two had just passed through on
their way to the interview room the young man could see the officer talking with two men through the
shatterproof window the two men were not in uniform they were in suits both sporting big wide
ties the stretched the length from their necks down to their belt buckles at first the men in the suits looked
confused and then they both nodded their heads simultaneously the group of men then quickly broke from
their huddle the officer and one of the suits turned and moved in the direction that
the young man had just come from the other suit turned toward the door then the young man heard the click of the
door and it opened up a tall man in a suit introduced himself he's a detective and said that the
officer will be back in a minute with a soda followed by I hope Dr Pepper is okay
the detective closed the door he moved one of the chairs so now there is a chair on each of three sides of the
small table the detective sat down directly across from the young man and said so
I understand you are here to tell us about something that happened the young man agreed
the door clicked again and opened this time it was a woman entering the room the room seemed to shrink smaller every
time someone entered the woman was wearing a pants suit she was holding a clipboard and a can of
Dr Pepper she handed the soda can to the young man and sat down in the chair on the side of the table that separated
the young man from the already seated tall male Detective she said so tell us about last night
the young man was 17 year old Nicholas McDonald he repeated the statement that he had
made to the officer just minutes earlier that led him to where he was now seated and nervous in a tiny room with
two detectives he said that last night he witnessed and participated in a murder and everything
that he was going to tell them took place just a few hours before the 17 year old would go on to tell
detectives how he watched and participated in three murders three brutal murders that were committed
by he and his best friend and now Blood Brother Brian this is Israel's son the beset family
murders and this True Crime garage [Music] where we pick up our story Captain it's
Friday morning between the hours of 8 A.M and 9 A.M going into the afternoon the police at Grants Pass are going to
have their hands full here we have this young man who sits ready to open up one horrific can of worms
and the story that 17 year old Nicolaus McDonald had to tell went something like
this it all started late Thursday night with a plan for premeditated murder he implicated his 16 year old best friend
Brian Bessette as The Mastermind for this plan in fact he had not known that Brian would be even capable of such evil
Deeds he said his friend had been kicked out of his parents house for some time this was due to several reasons but for
now we will call it behavior problems he continued saying that he and Brian Bessette went to Brian's parents home
this was at approximately 12 30 in the morning the plan was to break into Brian's parents house
this is a two-story home McDonald said that they cut the phone lines to the house and this was planned
before they got there then he watched as Brian climbed a ladder up to the second
story where Brian would gain access to the house via a second floor bedroom window I believe this may be Brian's old
bedroom that he's climbing into this is meant to be a home that would be occupied by five people so we have
Brian's parents which are 42 year old Michael Bessette 40 year old Wendy Bessette and one of Brian's older
sisters 18 year old Stephanie and Brian's brother which is five-year-old Austin but on this night there would
only be three people occupying that house as we said Brian he had been kicked out
of the house and his sister Stephanie who's 18 she was away thankfully she was out of town for a softball tournament so
on this night there were three members of the Bessette family occupying the home and one member of the family
climbing up a ladder seeking revenge in its coldest of forms McDonald says that he waited anxiously
outside where he heard shouting then he heard gunshots in silence and then he heard more gunshots
than once again silence seconds later his friend Brian was outside in a voice that could only be described
as some kind of hushed shouting Brian explained that he needed McDonald to come inside saying I shot him
meaning his dad I shot him my dad but he is still alive I'm not sure about my mom but I need you
to go inside and finish them off Nicholas went into the home as he was walking through the home he
saw blood and he could smell the gunpowder Brian told him that after he entered the house his father Michael
confronted him they argued before Brian fired shots at his father Brian said he was able to hit his father
with several of these shots Michael the father staggered outside of the room and then fell the shots must
have alerted his mother because his mom Wendy came charging up the stairs with a
baseball bat in her hands without even one single second thought he then turned the gun on her and fired several times
now Brian and McDonald reach the room where Brian's parents lay die to their surprise Brian's brother Austin
was in the room he was kneeling with his hands pressed up against the bodies of his parents
he was attempting to shake them he must have thought that they were sleeping or something
of course Austin is crying and he's now covered in blood it's hard for me to decide here Captain if Brian had thought
this part through right I think that he and McDonald went there went to the home with the
intention of killing the parents and a general plan to carry that out but I wonder and could not find confirmation
of such did they know going to the house or did they know when they were creating this
plan that they were just going to kill whoever else was there it seems like the conflicts that he was having was just
with his parents and not his family and obviously his brother is very little so what kind of conflicts would you be
having with him anyway right and then you have to wonder too Stephanie's not there that night did right did he go
there on this night because he knew his sister was gone or because he had been kicked out of the house he's been out
for some time there's conflicting reports on how long he had been kicked out of the house
you have to then wondered would he have even known this Stephanie would not be home that night and again whoever
happens to be there is who could end up being a victim that night right because there are some
pre-offense behaviors that suggests that maybe the only intent was to kill mom and dad but
there are some post-defense behaviors and actions of the killers that I believe indicate otherwise and we can
get into that post defense Behavior after we get through the rest of McDonald's confession here
now one of the pre-offense behaviors is the attempt to muffle the sound of The Gunshot so this is an indicator to
me there there there's conflicting reports okay one thing I could not figure out
and even after going through the trial and some of the transcripts that were available for the actual trials that
that would take place much later some information states that they went there with the intention to kill the
parents and to steal belongings and one of those items may have been a gun possibly the gun that was used to kill
the parents to shoot the parents that night other sources state that they went there with the gun now one thing that is
not in question is the this little fact that they were going to use a soda bottle
as some type of silencer or suppressor so this would be to muffle the sounds of the gunshots yeah the fact that they're
gonna um use some man-made concoction to try to silence the gunfire and makes it
seem more likely to me that they would have done this elsewhere and then brought the gun to the crime scene the
way that this is typically done is you take a two liter plastic bottle or one of those 20 ounce
plastic soda bottles yeah a little sodi pop and you cut the bottom of it off and
you can fasten the bottle to your gun to the barrel at the end of the barrel of your gun and a lot of times what I saw
online pictures online where people had just duct taped the the bottle to the gun I mean this
sounds like something out of the Anarchist Cookbook here but from the videos that I viewed on YouTube
when people would do this because it's always been some kind of myth that this actually works as a silencer which you
know from our our episode when we talked about the the still unsolved murder up in in Michigan right the the killer
comes in with a suppressor we had suggested maybe that was linked to a case that took place about five or six
months prior where somebody stole suppressors and guns from a local sporting goods store right we learned
when we covered that case that in order to get a silencer or a suppressor you have to request one you have to buy what
it's it's a stamp right and you buy the stamp from the ATF so you get the stamp and
then it's it's you you have to purchase the silencer but you also have to purchase basically
a license to have that particular silencer meaning that at any time the ATF can knock on your door and say we want to
see your silencer produce it now because you're not allowed to just gift it to somebody or sell it to somebody
and we thought in that case maybe if you could find the gun or if if that killer
believed that a silencer was needed to carry that out because he goes into a business shoots the attendant they're
connected to other businesses they're sharing walls at this Plaza right so here you have people that are trying to
sidestep that right they don't want to be tied to a silencer they don't want the government knowing that they
purchased a suppressor and a lot of times you have to wait a long a lengthy period of time before you're granted
permission to buy the silencer so people have tried to figure out how can they build their own and I'm sure
there's other ways to create one but this is a seemed to be some kind of popular method probably amongst the
Dumber parts of our communities um because from what I could see Captain on YouTube it doesn't work at all it
does not suppress the sound of The Gunshot at all well yeah the the Dumber part of the community or just the naive
part of the community again we have to remember that it's a 16 and 17 year old that are planning to take out one of
their families and the and this is not even a tragedy aside this is not even really that great of a plan in in my
humble garage opinion here okay back to back to the scene as said upon entering the home with Brian McDonald found
bessette's parents lying there with their child Austin he's crying he's touching the parents in an apparent
effort to Rouse them Brian told the little boy his his little brother that because he was all dirty covered in
blood that he would need to take a bath so Brian convinced the boy to leave the room
but before he left Brian points to his father and said look he's still breathing so McDonald's says that he
could hear something something faint it sounded like air a breath in and a breath out but the noise was not coming
from where I guess McDonald would expect it to he then says the the the noise was coming from Michael's
chest yeah probably coming from a bullet hole so he's still alive he's still breathing
the air going in and out through a hole in his chest Nicholas McDonald says to the detectives that he shot Michael once
in the head with Brian bessette's gun but claiming that he did so only to end Michael's suffering
and he also states that Wendy was not breathing now how many times do we get a confession well we get multiple
confessions from McDonald so he he's going to confess in Grant's Pass he'll have to be shipped back to the state of
Washington for charges there you know this and and the listeners know this a lot of times
when somebody goes to confess they try to distance themselves from from the actual crime well and you know that's
one reason why when we review unsolved cases and it's clear to us that more than one
person was involved that's why I always go on that I stand up on the soapbox and
shout it from the Mountaintop and tell people out there listening if you're listening to this and you were involved
you were one of the people involved you should be be smart be the first one to pick up the phone or to walk into a
police station and tell them what happened because you know just like with our history
books you know when there's when there's a war guess who gets to write the history of that war
the winner the the Victor gets to write the history books and that's how it was and that's how it is
you get their perspective and they can sugarcoat things however they want well same in this scenario if you speak first
and law enforcement believes you and you can you can back up some of your statements
what you say becomes how it went down and that's why I always say if you're involved in something especially
nowadays we're talking about the the Golden Age of DNA and solving cases cold cases a lot of times if they got the
evidence what we're seeing today is that it's it's only a matter of time before they make the arrest and charge you be
the first one to to create The Narrative of how it went down and who's responsible for what right because this
is how it goes down the criminal then goes to detectives or law enforcement they strike up a deal or basically say
hey confess to us and then we'll work this out the detectives are the ones that feed the information to the
prosecution so then to feed that information to the prosecution they will tend to protect the person
that gave the confession obvi I mean obviously if there's more than one more than one perpetrator well
this is a very intriguing case and a very intriguing True Crime Story But as the listeners have already figured out
there's not a ton of mystery here and what we're going to see is when this does go to
trial we're going to have two guys committed these crimes together these murders together but one will be charged
differently than the other right we can get into some of the confession stuff and the the way that that's going to
work and play out as after we get through the confession here so we now have according to our Confessor where
we're at in our story is that that unfortunately Michael and Wendy have both been killed
McDonald implicating himself as being involved directly involved in Michael's death if you're sensitive you're
probably not listening to this show but if if you are you might want to skip ahead about 30 seconds or 40 seconds
well I'm very sensitive you pray because this is when this horrible horrible situation just gets even worse if you
can even imagine it getting worse it here here it goes um Nicholas McDonald said that when he left
the room uh he believed that both the parents were dead by this point and then he walked he went into the bathroom this
is where he finds Brian with his little brother Austin Brian according to McDonald had filled up the bathtub with
with water Austin had stripped off of his bloodied clothes and according to McDonald now Brian has
the gun and it was he McDonald that was going to have to kill the boy McDonald told the detectives that quote
he then went into the bathroom and that Bessette was waiting just outside the door and that he feared Bessette would
shoot him so he held the boy under the water face down until he drowned horrific stuff what do we think of this
confession so far here Captain like I was saying before normally when the person is confessing
they start and and you can see in his initial part of the story I well I didn't even enter
the house I entered the house after the crime and the murders already were taking
place and then he obviously shows his involvement with the killing of the father
but this is where I think you'd have to believe him more is because he then tells you well I I drowned the
little brother and um but I mean just it's unimagined terrific let's just be honest we we're all
teenagers at one point we are struggle maybe not all of us but I know me and you did
you struggle with authority figures a little bit and who's the number one authority figures in your life
your parents and there's a part of you that it's like just get off my back don't tell me what to do I don't I don't
need your advice I'm gonna live my life I want to hang out with my friends but and I've known friends of mine that it's
gone really intense and and and over the line as far as the relationship with their parents
gone I was lucky that that never took place never got to that level with my parents
where they kicked me out of the house or that I was basically like living on my own or living on the streets but you
could understand why somebody would be upset with their parents but to want to harm them to want to
murder them just it doesn't make a lot of sense no no sense at all it's incredibly difficult
to try to wrap your head around this situation and of course this confession that they've heard so far is going to
springboard several actions into play that will have a domino effect right first things first
there is one fast way you you need to confirm if this story is true because it's not everyday thank God that some
kid just walks into a police station and says hey me and my friend we just killed
three people so now you have to do two things that you need to sort out really quickly one
he's saying that he did not do this alone so you need to go find the other killer
two you need to locate the people that he is talking about to see one if either they are perfectly fine
and this kid is lying or or just out of his mind or locate their bodies and go through
the crime scene and build a case against the the Confessor McDonald tells the police that he drove off on
his own with the bodies of Michael and Austin and that he hid their bodies along a Logging
Road which was about three miles from the home from the murder house he also helped Brian hide Wendy's body
in the pump house that was adjoining their home I believe this was for a well and that both of them cleaned the house
after the murders to try to conceal evidence of the killings then they take Brian's parents van and
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zocdoc.com garage [Music] thank you all right we are back thanks for joining us here in the garage
thanks for sharing these cases on social media keeps the show going colonel cheers to you cheers to you captain and
cheers to all the people that have already bought their tickets for the brewdog live event coming up April 29th
my birthday bash yeah if you're going to be attending this is the captain's Birthday Bash we will be celebrating
together and the event includes your ticket includes a beer tasting with yours truly with the colonel and the
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Page wouldn't that be mean if we said hey come join us and then we go it's all sold out if it is my apologies later
that morning see this is what's strange to me there's a lot of a lot of strange parts of this case but thankfully this
Nicholas McDonald's seems to to grow a heart you know like the Grinch he's got a tiny little heart and then it grew
bigger it's a normal size and he he feels some remorse obviously because he walks into the police station confesses
to what just took place hours before and keep in mind the reason why the confession I think is is it's a complete
180 you know life turns on a dime sometimes without notice and what we have is just just hours earlier
he and his friend are going to Great Lengths and great efforts to conceal the triple homicide that they just
committed and now he's walking into the police station in Grants Pass Oregon and
implicated his 16 year old friend Brian Bessette in the shooting deaths of Brian bessette's parents
so Grant's past police they then notify Gray's Harbor County the the two killers are not from this
area where he's at confessing right so they notify Gray's Harbor County Sheriff's officers who then discovered
the bodies on Friday afternoon that afternoon his accomplice Brian Bessette police find Brian Bessette exactly where
McDonald tells them they will find him he leads police to Brian who is sleeping in the van in his parents van that they
stole after committing the murders at a gas station that is basically across the street from the the police
station I was hoping that you're going to say that he was sleeping in the van down by the river but like you said
they're confessing to this crime but not where the crime took place locally so they're going to have to call in the
local law enforcement to handle this case yeah that's right they are from some tiny city called McCleary which is
in Grays Harbor County or gray Harbor County excuse me Washington the population there in 1995 when our case
took place is roughly 1200 people and this is like a beautiful small wonderful community
law enforcement and now this professed and confessed killer are sitting in a room at Grants Pass police station about
370 miles south of McCleary in the great state of Oregon that's a six-hour drive from where they
committed these crimes McCleary is a small City not just in population but in size as well it's
described as a western Washington town just a few blocks long right from what I could find Captain it looks like
McCleary is just 2.05 square miles and to give you an idea of the location McCleary is about
80 miles Southwest of Seattle following I-5 Brian and McDonald were brought back from Oregon
to Washington on that Saturday so they commit the murders very early Friday morning
by 8 to 9 A.M McDonald's in the grand past police station confessing to the crimes they arrest Brian they find the
bodies and by Saturday the following day they are transporting the two suspects back to Washington
following this unfortunately we have the funeral for three members of the Bessette family
most people in the town of 1200 knew the bassettes and more than half of the city turned out for the funeral
again both murderers are young 16 and 17 so you have the 17 year old confessing then they bring in Brian the 16 year old
it's it was his family that they killed you'd think that there'd be it'd be pretty easy for them to get him to
confess as well well and that's why I think that we have multiple confessions from McDonald
because when they arrest Brian you know they're telling him like look your friend told us everything that you
guys did right and oh yeah we found the gun we found the bodies uh we found the the we've gone through the scene
and so I'm sure Brian told them some other version of the same story right and then you go back to McDonald and say
okay well you know a lot of what you're saying checks out but some of it does not uh let's go through this again and
so you go through it a few times with each of the suspects to try to sort out what in the end you believe ultimately
happened and how and what the prosecutors are going to attempt to charge and convict both of these people
with well and it gets more complicated too again because of their age for our victims here we have Austin who was
remembered as a bright and Charming little boy who helped his grandmother plant zucchini
in the summer leading up to the night in question and he was known to jump from lap to lap at ball games when he was in
attendance watching ball games because we have older siblings who participated in sports
after the funeral service 18 year old Stephanie Bessette who lived at the at the Bessette family home in
through the grace of God just happened not to be there that night she held a rose and a flag
at the after the service as she cried and smiled graciously accepting condolences and hugs from dozens and
dozens of family friends the only direct mention of Brian at the funeral or at the services came when someone read a
list of survivors I thought you're gonna say when somebody read a list of pieces
of [ __ ] so other than that he was not discussed at this service and rightfully
so the Bessette family they were buried in wooden caskets with Austin sharing a casket with his his mother
the victims as we said were Michael Allen Bessette born 1951 Wendy Gail lamb Bessette date of birth August 12 1954.
so she was killed by her son the day before her 41st birthday and we have the little boy Austin Edward
Bessette born in 1989 he was just five years old the besets had been together and experienced over 20 years of
marriage together and it sounds like they were still very much in love they wrote little love notes to each other
often Michael worked for the Simpson Timber Company in Shelton he was very active in Youth Sports he
coached t-ball in Little League over the years he refereed grade and high school
basketball games he played slow pitch softball he was a graduate of Alma High School this is where he met his future
wife Wendy Wendy was a former dental hygienist before being a homemaker she sold crafts and babysat for extra money
they had five kids three daughters we mentioned Stephanie 18 who was out of town for a softball tournament at the
time of the killings two older girls two older daughters who were grown women and
out of the house by 1995 and did not live with them little Austin loved berry picking and named his this is like
heartbreaking and sad and cute all at the same time he named his dogs and cats after friends of his uh from from school
yeah I mean in these cases it's it's when you have um whether it's a school shooter
or you have a teenager that harms a friend or harms his family the question always becomes nature
nurture and in this situation you have a family that had five children and it seems like all the
other children other than Brian were were good people yeah and what it looks like to me is you have this
kind of snake eating itself situation right the snake eating its tail where it looks to me like when Brian would get in
trouble for some like he was starting to go down the wrong path and when he would
get in trouble for something his his reaction was to push back against mom and dad for punishing him
and this creates this this scenario where he's always in trouble and elevating the consequences for his
actions because he's he's just constantly fighting back against The Authority right
so our perpetrators Brian Michael Bessette age 16 and Nikolaus James McDonald age 17 some
sources say that McDonald was 18 I believe that is because he was 18 by the time this thing went to trial
friends and family say Brian was a quiet and shy kid average student he went to Alma High School where his parents went
faculty there say that they saw no evidence of anger with this kid but he did drop out of of high school
so there would be a period of time that they The Faculty would not have known or
had interaction with with Brian the principal at Alma High said that he checked Brian's records and found no
disciplinary actions except truancy and he said he didn't seem to enjoy school and dropped out last April the
the homicides took place in August Michael Keating this was Brian's biology teacher said that Brian was a decent
student quote I was amazed he could keep up with his studies despite his truancy
problems end quote so he he didn't sounds like he didn't show up a lot but when he did he was able to do the work
get passing grades right about a year before the murders Brian started changing this is according to friends of
the family and according to Wendy's brother-in-law Brian's mother's brother-in-law Ed Olson
he said that Brian started hanging out with the wrong crowd and this wrong crowd included McDonald
Michelle Brown dated Brian for about a month this was about a year before the murders she's quoted in some newspaper
articles as talking about Brian one thing she said that she broke up with Brian when he started getting into
alcohol and she says that he got an alcohol real bad so bad that on one occasion Brian had to be hospitalized
for alcohol poisoning we also wonder what's going on with his mental state you know again chicken or the egg is he
having some mental issues that he started self-medicating or just oh I'm I'm a teenager I'm going to experiment
with uh drugs or alcohol and then that causes mental issues and so and sometimes it's both right and uh and the
person doesn't even know what they're doing right again this is this is interesting here I think because she
says that they broke up about a year before I don't know how much interaction or what their relationship was after the
breakup but she does state that he had a lot of anger towards his parents but she says she never knew why
never understood why so this is somebody that likely met his parents and does not
agree with whatever Brian you know the the the anger and we can even say the word hate toward his parents I think he
he was expressing to her and to others yeah I think hate would be the appropriate term Wendy's brother-in-law
Ed Olson said that Brian's Behavior had gotten so violent in the weeks leading up to the murders that Wendy started
sleeping with a baseball bat next to her bed well you know like you said when the
conflict was was happening the evidence of this evidence of his story being true
is she came after her son with a baseball bat yeah and Wendy's mom said that quote they tried to get help they
tried to get counseling and even ask the sheriff's department if they could put him meaning Brian in juvenile hall right
nothing was working so they kicked him out of the house now there are some conflicting reports here Captain some
say that the parents kicked Brian out of the house about a week before the murders because of his increasingly
violent Behavior but other reports state that he was kicked out weeks before and
one statement that was made this is according to several friends and family that Brian actually threatened to
kill his parents the week before the actual murders right not knowing the story first hand experiencing any of
this firsthand I think Brian likely was kicked out several weeks in advance and you know how these things work out I
think he was actually kicked out multiple times yeah I sometimes you're kicked out and then you're let back in
and then you're kicked out again um this is what we'd call uh escalation as uh Dave Chappelle would say a
habitual line stepper right because I I don't know if you've saw this in reports but it seemed like
Brian occasionally was like staying in their shed like when he couldn't figure out where
to go and not wanting to deal with his parents or not knowing how to deal with his parents he would just
just camp out in their shed well and I'm using air quotes here uh he would break into the house that's why I
think he might have been out for multiple weeks leading up to the murders because there's a report that the week
prior the week before the murders he broke into his parents home this was when so the family went on a vacation
that week that would make sense because there's no school at this time they go on vacation but his sister who's
18 stayed at the house I don't know if she had things to do with softball or with friends or what have you but she
stays at the house and that's how they know that he broke into the house because she's able to report that he
broke into the house the week before and so this method of using the ladder to climb up to the Second Story window I
think was something that he had done multiple times now when we talk about how long can he have been kicked out of
the house or Outdoors I'm wondering if part of this stemmed from a report that I found that said that he broke into his
grandmother's house and stole a gun and remember we're talking about the parents the the parents are telling
people like we kick him out because he's violent he's hostile we're afraid of him
are they afraid of him because they know that he stole a gun from one of their one of their parents homes yeah like you
said he was making threats I mean this is this would be a very difficult situation for any parent you want to
protect your kid but now you have to protect your wife you got to protect your younger son or you're going to try
to because your teenage son is threatening everybody but how very Joey Potter of him to have that ladder go up
to the second historian so he can climb into Dawson's window right and I mean you can kind of
take a look at this and see it from his perspective he probably thought that he was unjustly
kicked out of his parents home which I mean nobody wants violence in their home but you don't want to be looking over
your shoulder in your own house because you're afraid of your violent teenage son yeah you're
you're violent douche muffin Vienna Seymour this is a friend of the Bessette family she was asked about Brian's
increasingly out of control Behavior and she had this to say quote it was a known fact he was a little out of
control but there's out of control and then there's killing your parents end quote Nicolaus McDonald aged 17 moved to
the town of McCleary from Illinois I believe it was a year or two before the murders took place so I don't
think he was there a great deal of time but I could not confirm when he when he moved to
McCleary he too was a high school dropout Mark Keating biology teacher said of McDonald quote he was a good kid and I
liked him I saw him about a week ago and he had a job in a local restaurant and talked
about saving money to buy a car he seemed happy end quote he had gone to an alternative school after he dropped out
and earned his high school equivalency diploma Pat Bodine a Bessette family friend who used to work with McDonald's
said quote Nicholas was a strange kid with a bad reputation in town some Reports say that the two were friends
and some Reports say that they were boyfriends that there was something else going on with the relationship between
McDonald and Brian setz [Music] so much more to get to in this case please join us back here in the garage
same bat Time same bat Channel and until then be good be kind and don't litter [Music]
thank you [Music] foreign HBO Max presents Love and Death starring Elizabeth Olsen and Jesse plemons this
riveting drama tells the true story of two church-going couples enjoying their small town Texas life until an
extramarital affair leads somebody to pick up an Ax from the executive producers of big little eyes and the
undoing comes the new Max original limited series Love and Death premiering April 27th on HBO Max after the premiere
you can listen to the official Love and Death podcast wherever you get your podcasts

Israel’s Son /// Part 1 /// 663

Part 1 of 2

www.TrueCrimeGarage.com (http://www.truecrimegarage.com/)

On August 11th, 1995 a young man walked into the Grants Pass Police Station. He had a horrific story to tell to detectives. The man implicated himself and his best friend in three homicides. The police were instantly tasked with three missions. One, verify this young man’s story. Two, locate the other murderer. Three, find the bodies. Join us in the Garage for this strange tale about an evil young man.

Beer of the Week - Magic Hobo Monkey JuJu Juicy IPA by Meadowlark Brewing

Garage Grade - 4 and a half bottle caps out of 5

Brief Summary

Nicholas McDonald confesses to participating in the brutal Bessette family murders, implicating his friend Brian Bessette as the mastermind behind the crime.

Key points

Love and Death on HBO Max. A gripping drama about two couples in Texas whose lives spiral into chaos.
Nicholas McDonald's Confession. 17-year-old Nicholas McDonald confesses to witnessing and participating in three murders.
A Heart Grows. Nicholas McDonald confesses to a horrific crime, leading to a shocking turn of events.
The Bessette Family Tragedy. The community mourns the loss of the Bessette family after a tragic triple homicide.
Escalating Violence. Brian's behavior became increasingly violent leading up to the murders, causing fear in his family.
Conflicting Reports. There are conflicting accounts regarding when Brian was kicked out of the house.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I shot him my dad but he is still alive.

The young man recounts a chilling moment after the shooting.

11:38WatchApr 19, 2023

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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