# 37: Freakshow Lobster Boy Turned Cold-Blooded Killer

An episode of [Outlore with Eleanor Neale](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1682504024), 22 Aug 2023, 37 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/105f723ac/podcast/play/103880313/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2025-5-9%2F401851589-44100-2-9b2f1596ad4ef5f6.mp3

Today's episode is on the freak show lobster boy murder.... was Grady Stiles a killer or was he killed? Or something more sinister entirely? Trigger Warning: shooting Resources: https://linktr.ee/usualdisclaimer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

## Transcript

[0:05] Hello everyone, and welcome to Usual Disclaimer with Eleanor
[0:09] Neil. A true crime podcast where we
[0:11] crack open some of the most. Notorious cases in history.
[0:15] Given the topics that we'll be. Investigating It goes without
[0:18] saying that this show comes with a content warning.
[0:21] The details can get a bit heavy and you might find some of the
[0:24] themes we discuss triggering. Listener discretion is strongly
[0:28] advised and check the description for some resources
[0:31] and further information. So today's video is going to be
[0:40] another solved true crime case, the day we're going to be
[0:43] talking about the lobster boy murder.
[0:45] Before we get into this video, I would just like to give my usual
[0:47] disclaimer that I mean absolutely no disrespect to
[0:50] anyone that I talk about in this case.
[0:52] This case is for educational purposes and everything that I'm
[0:55] about to say is just information that I have found on the
[0:58] Internet and I'm compiling into one video South.
[1:01] This story starts out in the small town of Gibsonton in
[1:04] Tampa, FL in the 1900s. Gibsonton, especially in the
[1:09] winter at this point, was very popular with entertainers and
[1:15] performers, but not just any regular entertainers and
[1:19] performers, specifically freak show performers.
[1:22] I just want to say at the beginning of this video that I
[1:24] am going to be using the terms freak show and circus a lot.
[1:27] And I know they're quite offensive, but that's what these
[1:30] things were called back then. But yeah, the reason that
[1:32] Gibsonton was so popular with kind of freak show and circus
[1:36] performers is because it was very friendly and accepting and
[1:42] it had low judgement. Of course, back then people were
[1:45] judgmental of people that looked different.
[1:48] And still now people will judge people for having deformities,
[1:52] which is awful. But imagine how it was back
[1:54] then. Like we've progressed so much
[1:56] today and it's still bad. So imagine how bad it was in the
[2:00] 1900s. But Gibsonton was a fairly
[2:02] friendly area and that was down to two freak show performers in
[2:07] particular, an 8 foot four man named Al and his 2 1/2 foot tall
[2:12] wife Jeannie. So they moved to Gibsonton and
[2:16] they started up their own business like a fishing club.
[2:19] They retired from the circus, they married and they moved to
[2:22] Gibsonton in their retirement and they just wanted to live the
[2:25] rest of their life there. And because they came to the
[2:28] town and they were so friendly, that was how it became so
[2:32] accepting of, you know, unique, different looking people.
[2:36] Words got round to other freak show performers that were
[2:39] thinking of retiring from the circus that Gibsonton was a very
[2:42] accepting place and so whenever people would retire from
[2:46] traveling circuses, they would move to Gibsonton and quickly it
[2:50] became like a retirement town specifically for circus
[2:56] performers. Not only was it so accepting and
[2:58] friendly, but it also. Then as more performers came in
[3:03] and more unique types of people came in, Gibsonton started
[3:07] adjusting to their new population.
[3:09] So the post office installed a different desk lower down for
[3:13] people with dwarfism. They also passed a law in
[3:16] Gibsonton that allowed people to keep elephants and other animals
[3:20] and trailers out on the lawn in their garden.
[3:23] Residents in Gibsonton included Emmett Bajano, who was known as
[3:28] the Alligator man. He had a skin condition called
[3:32] itch diosis. I'm so sorry, but this skin
[3:35] condition meant that he had naturally very, very dry skin.
[3:39] Like his skin didn't remove the top layers as quickly as it
[3:43] should. And so skin, just like layers of
[3:46] skin just built up on top of each other, and it was really
[3:48] dry and it looked scaly and flaky, kind of like an
[3:52] alligator. There was a girl called
[3:54] Priscilla, the monkey girl. I don't know if this was a
[3:57] specific condition or if this was just her, but she grew lots
[4:01] of like thick, silky black hair all over her face and all over
[4:06] her body, and she would perform in the circus with a monkey that
[4:10] looked like her. Just a bit of a Side Story
[4:13] before we talk about the other residents of Gibsonton.
[4:15] Priscilla and Emmett actually met at the circus and fell in
[4:19] love. However, their circus owner, the
[4:22] people that they worked for at the time, didn't want them to
[4:25] get married or to even be in this relationship at all because
[4:29] it was quite a distraction from their duties as part of the
[4:33] circus. And so the two of them,
[4:35] Priscilla and Emmett, ran away and eloped and then moved to
[4:39] Gibsonton to kind of settle down, which is kind of cute.
[4:42] All the residents of Gibsonton included a man that played one
[4:46] of the Munchkins in Wizard of Oz.
[4:48] So he once he kind of gave up his acting career, he moved to
[4:52] Gibsonton. There was a woman named Grace
[4:54] McDaniels who was known as the mule faced woman but she had a
[4:58] severe facial deformity known as Sturge Weber Syndrome.
[5:03] But the main focus of this case was the Stiles family who moved
[5:08] to Gibsonton in the late 1900s and they were known as the
[5:13] Lobster family. Grady Franklin Stiles Junior was
[5:17] the 5th descendant of a long line of lobster boys.
[5:21] So his father had the same condition and his father did and
[5:27] his father did all the way up until the early 1800s is the
[5:31] earliest recorded lobster boy. Grady Stiles Junior was born on
[5:36] June 26th, 1937 with a genetic condition named ectrodactyly and
[5:43] this meant that he was born with deformed limbs.
[5:46] Now there's varying scales of ectrodactyly.
[5:50] Some people are born and it affects all four of their limbs,
[5:53] both feet, both hands. Some people people are born, it
[5:56] only affects their hands. Some people are born, it only
[5:58] affects their feet. Some people are born, it only
[6:00] effects one hand or one foot. And Grady was born with it
[6:05] affecting all four limbs. So on his hands, he was born
[6:09] where his thumb and his index finger were kind of conjoined.
[6:14] These two far fingers were conjoined and then he just
[6:17] didn't have a middle finger. So, so that was his hands,
[6:20] whereas his feet, I don't think they were in kind of claw
[6:23] formation. I think they just kind of
[6:25] channeled into one, which meant that he couldn't walk, He could
[6:29] never walk. He had to use a wheelchair.
[6:31] But eventually he learned to kind of maneuver around on his
[6:35] arms. Like I said, Grady's father also
[6:38] named Grady, which is this story is going to get so confusing
[6:42] because I don't know why this family wanted to call every
[6:44] single boy in the family Grady Styles, but there's about four
[6:48] of them. So Grady's father also had this
[6:51] condition. However, it only affected his
[6:53] hands, I believe. So he could walk fine.
[6:56] He could work fine as well. Like he could get a job because
[7:00] he was still quite mobile. But as soon as he gave birth to
[7:03] his son, the Grady that this case is based on, he was
[7:08] concerned because his son couldn't walk.
[7:11] He can pick things up, but he's not going to be an effective
[7:14] worker because he doesn't have a possible thumbs.
[7:18] Grady had two sisters. So the younger Grady that we're
[7:22] talking about had two sisters. One of them was born without
[7:26] ectrodactyly so it can skip generations.
[7:30] I don't know the exact ratio. I've read that it's 5050 but I
[7:33] don't think I think it's more common than 5050 chance of your
[7:38] child having it if you have it anyway.
[7:39] One of his sisters did not have ectrodactyly at all and his
[7:44] other sister had it but just in one foot.
[7:48] Now, when she was born, her parents made the decision to
[7:52] amputate that foot and get her prosthetic foot, which I know
[7:57] sounds rather dramatic, but she wouldn't have been able to walk
[8:01] properly with this foot, so it made more sense to just amputate
[8:05] the foot and get her a fake 1 so that she could learn to walk.
[8:08] Brady, on the other hand, was affected in all four of his
[8:12] limbs and he was bullied really badly for it.
[8:15] He already lived in quite a rough area.
[8:17] I believe they grew up in Pittsburgh, in Pennsylvania, in
[8:21] a rough area of Pittsburgh. And he was bullied quite badly
[8:24] for his condition, and not only for his condition and the fact
[8:27] that he couldn't walk and he had to use a wheelchair, but people
[8:30] would bully him about his father having it as well.
[8:33] And like I said, Grady's father was concerned about his son's
[8:37] quality of life as he was growing up.
[8:38] He wouldn't be able to get a job or earn money or even care for
[8:43] himself, like wash himself and do housework and things like
[8:46] that. And so his father decided that
[8:48] he was going to help his son by teaching him ways to make money
[8:55] with his disadvantage. He decided that he and his son
[8:58] Grady would join a freak show because all they had to do was
[9:02] perform on an evening and they would get paid and they would
[9:05] get accommodation just to exist. It would also get Grady away
[9:10] from all the bullying. He would have a better kind of
[9:13] home life and a better community of other unique looking people
[9:18] that would understand him. So yeah, they moved from their
[9:21] original home in Pittsburgh, PA to Gibsonton in Florida, and
[9:25] they joined the travelling circus.
[9:27] Grady's father was known as the Lobster Man, and Grady himself,
[9:31] who was just seven years old when they began working for the
[9:35] circus, he was known as the Lobster Boy, and he began
[9:41] thriving in the circus. He was happier than he'd ever
[9:45] been. He became the celebrity of the
[9:48] circus. He was like the headliner of the
[9:52] circus. He got a lot of attention, like
[9:54] a lot of the attention from girls as well.
[9:56] He was a local celebrity in that area of Florida and his other
[10:02] kind of freak show friends became his family.
[10:06] Like he had one big family there.
[10:08] They would teach him to write because obviously with his
[10:11] deformity, it was going to be hard for him to learn to write.
[10:14] He learned to hold a pen. He taught himself to crawl using
[10:18] just his arms. And he got some insane upper
[10:22] body strength, like his upper body strength, phenomenal.
[10:26] The circus friends would help him play sports.
[10:29] And he really enjoyed basketball, which he could play
[10:32] from his wheelchair because it only really requires your hands.
[10:35] And they also taught him how to shoot a gun.
[10:38] And then one day when Grady was in his late teens, another
[10:43] worker joined the circus, 17 year old Mary Teresa, who would
[10:48] run away to join the circus to get away from her abusive
[10:51] stepfather. Mary wasn't a performer in the
[10:54] freak show, she didn't have anything physically unique about
[10:57] her, She was just doing odd jobs.
[10:59] She started off as a ticket sales girl and the more time she
[11:03] spent around Grady, the more she fell for him.
[11:06] At first, Grady wasn't that interested in Mary, like she
[11:10] wanted him, but he was this like celebrity.
[11:13] He could get any girl he wanted, so he didn't pay much mind to
[11:16] her. That was until I feel like she
[11:19] just wore him down and then eventually he noticed her and he
[11:23] began falling for her as well. The two of them began a
[11:26] relationship and Grady helped Mary kind of claw her way up in
[11:30] the industry. Like I said, she started as a
[11:32] ticket sales girl and then she became like a magician's
[11:36] assistant, part of the actual act and then she worked her way
[11:39] all the way up to an act called the electrified girl.
[11:43] So the they would strap her to an electric chair and pretend to
[11:47] electrocute her, although I think they did electrocute her a
[11:51] little bit, but obviously not fatal.
[11:54] And at points she would like lift her hand from the chair and
[11:57] there would be like sparks coming from her fingers.
[12:00] I don't know how true that is. The two of them married in 1958.
[12:04] All the happiness didn't last too long after that, because
[12:10] Grady began drinking and he eventually became an alcoholic.
[12:14] And when he was drunk, Grady was a completely different man.
[12:18] He was violent, he was aggressive.
[12:20] He was mean and angry. He was an aggressive man in
[12:24] general while he was sober. I think a lot of it was to do
[12:28] with his bullying and he felt like people underestimated him
[12:31] due to his disability and he was just an angry man in general.
[12:36] He always had anger management issues and then when he drank it
[12:40] was that but amplified. And like I said, he had this
[12:43] insane upper body strength. And so when he got violent, when
[12:48] he drank his kind of beatings to what Mary were 10 times worse
[12:53] than you might expect, and he would use his kind of lobster
[12:56] claw hands to his advantage. He would beat her with them.
[13:01] And obviously there's a bigger surface area.
[13:02] That's why people form a fist when they punch people because
[13:06] it's a bigger surface area, whereas his lobster claws were
[13:09] huge and they hurt so much more. He would also use them to
[13:13] strangle her. And although Grady was now
[13:16] becoming a man that Mary didn't like, she wanted to make this
[13:19] marriage work because she knew the kind of man she fell in love
[13:22] with. And so they kept at this
[13:25] marriage and eventually they had a child together, a little girl.
[13:29] However, she died of pneumonia not long after she was born.
[13:32] And not long after that, they tried again for another child, a
[13:35] son, who again died of pneumonia not long after they were born.
[13:39] It's believed that the conditions in the circus and the
[13:43] kind of, you know, accommodation that they would put them in, it
[13:46] was cold and it just wasn't very good, especially for a newborn
[13:50] baby. It would be the third child,
[13:52] Donna, who was the 1st to survive infancy.
[13:57] Now, she didn't have any kind of, you know, deformances.
[14:00] She didn't have ectrodactyly. And then Grady and Mary had
[14:03] another child named Kathy and she did have ectrodactyly.
[14:07] And a lot of people say that it was obvious which girl he
[14:11] favored. He favored Kathy because she was
[14:13] like him. She had the lobster claws.
[14:16] He felt like he related to her more and this showed in the
[14:21] beatings. Whenever he was angry and
[14:23] whenever he was drunk. All three of them, all three
[14:25] girls, his two daughters and his wife would all get beatings.
[14:28] However, Donna's and her mother Mary's was always worse than
[14:32] Kathy's. Almost 15 years into the
[14:35] marriage, Mary finally found the courage to leave her abusive
[14:39] husband. She, she took the children with
[14:41] her and unfortunately she didn't really know how court hearings
[14:45] went. And so when they had the court
[14:48] hearing to see who would get custody of the children, Mary
[14:52] didn't go. And of course that's automatic.
[14:55] Father turns up so he gets custody of the children.
[14:58] So the children were taken from her, Donna and Kathy and given
[15:02] to Brady Styles. Mary then went on to meet and
[15:06] marry another man, another circus act named Harry Newman.
[15:10] He was known as the world's smallest man.
[15:13] And the two of them went on to have a child, which they named
[15:17] Harry Newman. I hate that this family keep
[15:20] naming people after each other because it makes it so hard.
[15:23] And this guy that she married, Harry Newman, he, like I said,
[15:27] was a freak show performer. He was a very small man.
[15:30] But not only that, he was also named the human blockhead
[15:34] because he would do things like hammer nails into his nose.
[15:37] The two of them got a divorce shortly after having their first
[15:41] son together. It just didn't workout and Mary
[15:44] decided to stay in Gibsonton. Meanwhile, Grady had also
[15:48] remarried. He met a woman named Barbara and
[15:50] the two of them had a son together, also named Grady
[15:54] Styles and Grady's son. Grady also had extradactyly and
[16:01] it also affected his hands and his feet.
[16:04] And now Grady Styles, the adult saw an opportunity here.
[16:10] Not only did he have ectrodactyly and he was a freak
[16:13] show performance, but two of his children did and they could be
[16:17] the lobster family. So he brought his daughter Kathy
[16:21] and his son Grady who had ectrodactyly and made them part
[16:25] of his act. They were the lobster family and
[16:27] whenever they weren't performing he would force his children to
[16:30] wear gloves because if they were out in public and stuff, he
[16:34] didn't want people seeing their hands for free.
[16:36] If they wanted to see them, they had to come to the show and they
[16:39] had to pay for a ticket. When Grady was in his late 30s,
[16:48] early 40s, he decided to retire from performing in the freak
[16:53] show. His children still did and he
[16:56] still travelled with the freak show because of course his teen
[16:58] children were still a part of it.
[17:00] But he was no longer performing. And it was around this time that
[17:04] his daughter, the one without the deformity, Donna, had run
[17:09] away from home. She ran away when she was 15
[17:12] because, like I say, her father was abusive and she met an older
[17:16] man. I say, man, he was an 18 year
[17:18] old boy and and they fell in love and they wanted to be
[17:21] together. And she knew that her father was
[17:23] violent and unaccepting and just constantly angry.
[17:27] And she just knew that her father wouldn't accept this boy.
[17:30] And so she ran away to be with her boyfriend.
[17:33] She'd been gone for about two years at this point.
[17:35] There are some rumors that her father constantly tried to find
[17:38] her, that Grady hired a private investigator and stuff, but I
[17:42] don't know how true that is. But eventually, when Donna was
[17:45] 17 years old, she and her boyfriend were set to marry.
[17:49] Some sources said that she was also pregnant at this time.
[17:52] And other sources said that she was lying about being pregnant
[17:56] at this time because she was set to marry her boyfriend and she
[18:00] was underage. She was 17.
[18:02] And if you're under the age of 18, you need parents permission
[18:05] to marry. And of course, her dad was her
[18:08] legal guardian, so she had to let him know that she wanted to
[18:11] get married and she wanted his approval.
[18:13] So she told her dad that she was set to marry.
[18:15] And some sources say that she lied about being pregnant
[18:18] because she thought, well, if she was pregnant, then her dad
[18:21] would have to let her marry this man.
[18:23] Otherwise he would be too ashamed to let his daughter have
[18:26] a child out of wedlock. So I don't know whether she was
[18:28] actually pregnant or not, but she got in touch with her
[18:32] father, Grady Styles, and said, look, I'm getting married.
[18:36] I want you to meet the man. I want you to, you know, give us
[18:40] your approval. Can we come and see you?
[18:42] And he said, yeah. Now this part of the story is
[18:46] told in about 7 different ways. Something about Donna went to go
[18:50] and buy a wedding dress or something.
[18:52] But I believe at this point, the day before the wedding, she was
[18:54] probably going to have the wedding dress already.
[18:57] So I don't really know what happened but some one point
[19:01] Donna and her sister Kathy and her brother and her stepmother
[19:07] Barbara were all separate in one room and Grady and Donnas
[19:12] boyfriend ended up away from the group.
[19:15] I think Grady was having a talk with him, you know, being the
[19:18] stern father of the bride. And then all of a sudden, Donna
[19:23] heard loud bangs from where Grady and her boyfriend were.
[19:28] She immediately panicked, knowing that her boyfriend was
[19:31] alone with her violent father. And so she ran to where the
[19:35] bangs came from. And immediately she saw her
[19:38] boyfriend lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood.
[19:42] And as she got closer to her boyfriend, she noticed that he
[19:45] had shot wounds in his chest. And he was.
[19:49] And then she looked and saw her father standing just a few feet
[19:53] away from her boyfriend with a gun in his hand.
[19:56] Those loud bangs had been gunshots.
[19:59] Grady Styles had murdered his daughters boyfriend, shot him
[20:03] twice in the chest, killing him all.
[20:06] Almost instantly, he was dead within minutes.
[20:08] And he looked up at his daughter Donna, who was watching her
[20:12] boyfriend, her fiance, die in front of her.
[20:16] And Grady said to his daughter, better him than me.
[20:19] And Grady didn't try to cover up the fact that he killed him.
[20:23] He admitted that he killed the boyfriend, but he said that he
[20:26] did it in self-defense. He said that he and the
[20:29] boyfriend began arguing because he didn't approve of this boy.
[20:33] And this boy was like, I don't care, still going to marry your
[20:37] daughter. So they began arguing and all of
[20:40] a sudden, Grady felt very overpowered.
[20:43] This was an 18 year old physically able boy, and Grady
[20:47] had his disability. That meant that he wouldn't be
[20:51] able to put up a fight if this boy wanted to hurt him.
[20:56] He really played up his disability in his court
[20:58] hearings, which is something he never normally did.
[21:01] He was one of those people that didn't let his disability be an
[21:05] excuse use for him at any point. He never blamed anything on it,
[21:10] he always just got on with everything.
[21:12] But suddenly in this court case he blamed it all on his
[21:16] disability. Which I understand in that
[21:18] situation you would, but he wasn't the type to ever let it
[21:23] affect him. Like I say, he had this really
[21:25] mad upper body strength so if he wanted to take on, you know, a
[21:29] physically able 18 year old boy, he probably could.
[21:33] Grady Styles was found guilty of third degree murder, much due to
[21:38] his disability and his story of self-defense.
[21:42] He wasn't given like second or first degree because they didn't
[21:45] believe it was premeditated. Although I think it was
[21:49] premeditated, I think he always planned on on killing Donna's
[21:53] boyfriend when he came over that day.
[21:55] And although he was found guilty of this murder and he was set to
[21:59] serve a long, long prison sentence, Grady never spent one
[22:04] day in jail, partly due to his disability and a couple of other
[22:08] illnesses he had. He had something wrong with his
[22:10] lungs and something wrong with his liver.
[22:12] The prisons just couldn't facilitate all of those medical
[22:16] problems with one inmate. It would cost way too much money
[22:19] just to keep that one man in prison.
[22:22] And so instead they sentenced him to house arrest for 15 years
[22:27] and probation house arrest for someone that had just committed
[22:30] murder. So now he was pretty much a
[22:32] freeman. And not only had he just gotten
[22:35] away with murder, now he was 10 times cockier, 10 times more
[22:38] aggressive, 10 times more confident because he'd gotten
[22:43] away with murder. He felt invincible.
[22:45] He felt like if he could do that and avoid prison time, he could
[22:48] do anything. If you think in your head there
[22:51] is no way I'm going to get sent to prison because they just
[22:53] can't accommodate me, then that means that all crimes are free
[22:58] game to this man because there's not there's never going to be
[23:01] any consequences, just house arrest.
[23:03] Many years passed and Grady's wife Barbara divorced him and he
[23:09] at some point tried to start his own freak show with like him and
[23:13] his children and a few other people but that failed.
[23:16] So then when that failed he moved back to Gibsonton and when
[23:19] he did he re met his ex-wife, his first wife Mary the father
[23:25] of his first couple of children and they reignited their
[23:29] relationship. Because of his house arrest and
[23:31] his probation, Grady had actually stopped drinking.
[23:34] And so when Mary met Grady again, this was the man she fell
[23:38] in love with years ago when she was 17.
[23:40] She had that man back, and so she fell for him all over again.
[23:45] And she thought that things would be different this time.
[23:47] So they remarried. But shortly after the marriage,
[23:51] things were even worse than they were before.
[23:54] He would beat Mary. He would beat his children.
[23:56] He would beat his grandchildren. He actually had grandchildren at
[23:59] this point. And he would say things to Mary
[24:01] like, I've killed once, I can kill again.
[24:04] And one night was especially bad when he was beating his wife.
[24:08] Mary and their daughter Kathy got in between them.
[24:11] Now, at this point, Kathy was like in her early 20s, I want to
[24:14] say, and she was heavily pregnant.
[24:17] She was seven months pregnant, and she was still trying to
[24:20] protect her mom. But Grady didn't care about
[24:22] this. And instead of beating Mary, he
[24:24] began beating Kathy instead. Seven months pregnant, Kathy and
[24:29] the trauma from this beating actually brought on an early
[24:33] labor. Luckily, Kathy and the child
[24:35] were absolutely fine. Both of them survived, and they
[24:39] were very lucky to because this man was brutal.
[24:43] And then in November of 1992, something else happened that
[24:48] made Mary think, enough is enough.
[24:50] We've got to put an end to this. One night, Mary was in bed.
[24:54] She was about to fall asleep when the door to the bedroom
[24:57] opened and Grady crawled in, got on top of the bed, straddled
[25:02] Mary and put a knife to her throat and said one day he was
[25:07] going to kill her. Mary was speechless in that
[25:10] moment, and Grady just looked at her.
[25:12] He didn't say anything more and then he turned and left the room
[25:16] again. And Mary knew that this wasn't
[25:19] an empty threat. She knew what her husband was
[25:22] like and for some reason, this time more than any, it really
[25:27] sunk in with her that he was telling the truth.
[25:29] He was going to kill her one day.
[25:31] Over the next week or two, Mary expressed her concerns to her
[25:35] son Harry, so her son to the other man that she was scared
[25:40] that her new husband was going to kill her and Harry felt like
[25:44] he had a solution. On November 30th, 1992, in the
[25:48] early hours of the morning, police were called to the Styles
[25:51] family mobile home on the circus after family members had called
[25:56] the police and when police entered the mobile home straight
[26:01] away they knew what they were dealing with.
[26:03] They looked into the living room and there they saw a man covered
[26:07] in blood murdered. It was 55 year old Grady Styles.
[26:12] He was sat in his armchair, just in his underwear with three
[26:16] obvious gunshot wounds to the head.
[26:19] Grady didn't seem to have put up a fight.
[26:21] He probably didn't even know he was going to be killed.
[26:25] He was sat there in his underwear.
[26:26] It's not like there was a struggle or anything like that.
[26:29] He was literally sat in the same place that he was when he was
[26:33] just watching TV. So it seemed as though someone
[26:35] had surprised him. Police's initial theory was that
[26:39] this could have been a robbery gone wrong, but as they began
[26:42] looking around the mobile home, nothing seemed stolen.
[26:45] There was money just out on the side.
[26:47] And if you're trying to rob somewhere, if you see money out
[26:49] on the side, you're going to take it.
[26:51] So it didn't seem, you know, robbed or ransacked.
[26:56] One thing that police did note, however, was that Grady's family
[27:00] didn't seem overly distraught about his death.
[27:04] You know, in the way that you would expect a family to be sad
[27:08] of someone dying. They just, they didn't seem to
[27:11] be reacting the same as the normal family would.
[27:14] His death was timed back to around 11:00 PM the night
[27:17] before. So it had been a good couple of
[27:19] hours before police got there that he died.
[27:22] They could tell that from like the stage of rigor mortis that
[27:25] he was in. So after speaking with neighbors
[27:28] and the family themselves, police were able to put together
[27:31] a timeline of events of that night.
[27:34] So it seemed that Grady was home alone. neighbors said that they
[27:38] heard banging at around 11:00 PM, which will of course been
[27:41] the gunshots that killed Grady. However, no one was home with
[27:45] him. His wife Mary and her son Harry
[27:49] were away at a family's house. They were at their family's
[27:52] house and then when they returned to the mobile home,
[27:55] they walked in and found Grady's lifeless body.
[27:59] And so they just called police straight away.
[28:01] Police were suspicious about this right from the off.
[28:04] It just seemed very convenient that they were out in the middle
[28:07] of the night in the early hours of the morning seeing family
[28:10] when this happened. And now they didn't seem that
[28:13] sad. It seemed kind of staged.
[28:15] So Mary and Harry were both re questioned and nothing really
[28:19] came of it. So police asked Harry to take a
[28:23] polygraph test, a lie detector test and it came back that he
[28:27] failed the test. So police knew that he knew more
[28:32] than he was letting on and so they re questioned him once
[28:35] again and they said look we know you're lying.
[28:38] And at that point Harry just broke and told them everything.
[28:42] He said that his mother had come to him and confided in him that
[28:45] she was concerned for her life over her abusive husband.
[28:49] And Harry knew that the only way to save his mother from being
[28:53] murdered was to kill Grady first.
[28:56] But of course, no one wants to be a murderer, no one wants to
[29:00] kill another person. And Harry didn't.
[29:03] So he thought, well who are we gonna get to do this for us?
[29:06] And he knew exactly the guy, Another circus worker that lived
[29:10] in the general area of Gibsonton, 17 year old Chris
[29:14] Wyant. He was a runaway and he needed
[29:18] the money. He was doing all the odd little
[29:19] jobs in the circus and he was literally just making enough
[29:22] money to get by. And he was quite a rough guy as
[29:25] it was. He was involved in a lot of
[29:27] crime and he bragged about taking part in drive by
[29:31] shootings and things. So Harry knew that this man
[29:34] would be likely to take the money for such a task.
[29:38] So Mary and Harry got together $1500 and approached Chris with
[29:44] the task and said look are you willing to kill for this amount
[29:48] of money And he said yes. And so they put together a plan.
[29:52] On November 29th Chris approached the mobile home of
[29:56] the Styles family and he tapped on the window.
[29:59] Now this was Mary and Harry's cue to leave, that Chris was
[30:04] there and they were going to leave, make up some sort of
[30:07] excuse, go to a family's house so that Chris could break in and
[30:11] shoot Grady. So yeah, Mary and Harry told
[30:14] Grady that they were going to this family member's house.
[30:16] They left, and then shortly after that, Chris broke in and
[30:20] shot Grady three times in the head from behind.
[30:24] He had no idea that it was even happening.
[30:26] Chris admitted to his part in the murder.
[30:28] He didn't try to cover it up once he was caught of because he
[30:31] didn't give himself up to police.
[30:32] But when police came to him and said, look, were you involved in
[30:35] this? He was like, yeah, I needed the
[30:37] money, so I did it. He was sentenced to 27 years in
[30:41] prison for second degree murder. Whereas Mary, in her trial, she
[30:47] really pushed the self-defense thing, which I believe, I
[30:50] believe that this was a killing out of self-defense.
[30:53] She believed that her husband was going to kill her if she
[30:56] didn't kill him first. She felt that that was her only
[30:59] way to survive. However, the only problem in
[31:02] this case was that her life wasn't in danger at that exact
[31:07] moment. Grady was obviously just
[31:09] watching TV in his underwear in his living room.
[31:12] Like he wasn't a threat to her life in that moment.
[31:15] Yes, he was in general and probably one day would kill her,
[31:19] but the fact that she'd killed him unprovoked in that moment
[31:24] meant that she had more of a sentence than she would.
[31:29] If Grady was coming at her with a knife or something and then
[31:32] she'd had him shot, she probably wouldn't have got as much time,
[31:35] but because he was just sat there minding his own business
[31:38] and then she had him killed, you know what I mean?
[31:40] All the kids testified to say that their mother was in danger
[31:44] and that have their father would have probably killed her one day
[31:47] had she not killed him first. All the kids told the court
[31:50] about how they were abused all their life.
[31:52] Kathy told them about the story about when she was pregnant and
[31:55] he beat her so hard that she went into an early labor.
[31:58] Donna told the court about how he'd murdered her boyfriend in
[32:02] the past. He'd killed once unprovoked, so
[32:05] he was capable of killing again, killing his own wife.
[32:09] So the court said, well, why did you have to kill him?
[32:12] Like, why couldn't Mary have just divorced him and just left
[32:16] him like she did all those years ago?
[32:18] Because it worked once. Why not do it again?
[32:20] And Mary said that she was too scared to run away because he
[32:24] would come after her. He would find if she took all of
[32:28] the children with her, her children had unique deformities.
[32:32] They were going to be easy to find because the only way that
[32:35] they could really make money was through these deformities.
[32:38] But if she left her kids with him, then they'd be in danger
[32:41] one day. This was, you know, a man that
[32:44] was probably going to kill again.
[32:46] It didn't matter who it was. So she didn't want to run away
[32:48] because she would be found and killed, but she didn't want to
[32:51] stay because she would be killed anyway.
[32:53] She had no choice other than to kill her him according to her.
[32:58] Taking all of this into account, the jury found Mary Teresa
[33:01] guilty of manslaughter and sentenced her to 12 years.
[33:05] As for her son Harry, the court saw him as the mastermind behind
[33:11] this whole thing. He was the one that came up with
[33:13] the idea, the one that found the boy to do it, the one that came
[33:17] up with the money, and the one that approached Chris and said,
[33:21] you know, will you be a hitman for us?
[33:23] So Harry was sentenced to life in prison for first degree
[33:28] murder, and he actually passed away in prison in 2014.
[33:32] Chris the hitman was let out of prison in 2009.
[33:36] And Mary was let out of prison in the year 2000.
[33:40] And she moved back to Gibsonton again, the place where this
[33:43] whole ordeal had taken place, although she wasn't welcomed
[33:47] back with open arms, surprisingly.
[33:49] Because Gibsonton, like I said, was an area densely populated
[33:54] with freak show performers and Grady was a celebrity to them.
[33:58] They didn't care what went on in his personal life.
[34:01] All they knew was that she was the one that murdered the
[34:05] headline act, the star, and they didn't like Mary for it.
[34:08] Some of them didn't believe that Mary was abused.
[34:11] Some of them knew that Mary was abused but chose to turn a blind
[34:15] eye because they loved Grady so much.
[34:17] In recent years, in 2014 to be exact, Grady's son Grady has
[34:24] come out in defence of his stepmother Mary and his
[34:27] stepbrother Harry. He says that he believes Mary
[34:31] and Harry were innocent and they didn't orchestrate this killing,
[34:35] They didn't hire a hitman. He believes that Mary and Grady
[34:38] were arguing and Grady beat her one day, as he often did.
[34:43] And then after that, Mary went to her son Harry and vented
[34:47] everything to him and said something needs to be done about
[34:50] him. And then after that, Harry went
[34:53] to Chris Wyatt and, you know, vented what his mother had just
[34:57] vented to him. He was saying to Chris Wyant, my
[35:00] dad is right. Well, my stepdad is violent to
[35:02] my mother. And then Grady the son, Grady of
[35:06] the murdered Grady, he believes that Chris Wyant took it upon
[35:10] himself to murder his father, to murder Grady Styles because he
[35:17] felt bad for Harry and his mother.
[35:19] So Grady the son believes that Chris Wyant did it off his own
[35:24] back just to be nice to Mary and just to help Mary.
[35:28] But Mary didn't pay or ask him to.
[35:30] But I mean, it's official that Mary and Harry had hired a
[35:35] hitman. Like that's what the court
[35:36] decided. So I'm not here to debate that.
[35:39] I'm just telling you what other people in the case believe.
[35:42] Just a little fact to close off this case about Grady's funeral.
[35:48] It was pathetic to say the least.
[35:51] No one wanted to carry his coffin.
[35:53] Of course, no one wants to carry an abuser's coffin.
[35:56] And so he was buried with barely anyone at his funeral and just
[36:00] one bunch of flowers on his coffin.
[36:07] Thank you so much for listening to usual disclaimer.
[36:09] At this point, I just want to say that if you've been affected
[36:12] by any of. The topics we discussed.
[36:14] Today, please check the description where we've left
[36:16] some helpful. Resources if you want to hear
[36:19] more. Cases like this one make.
[36:21] Sure to follow usual disclaimer. On your podcast app so that you
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[36:27] And if you really enjoyed, I'd love it if you could leave a
[36:30] rating and a review too. Usual disclaimer with Eleanor
[36:33] Neil is an Audio Boom Studios production.
[36:36] See you next. Time.

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