# The Jerry Springer show murder

An episode of [Outlore with Eleanor Neale](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1682504024), 11 Dec 2025, 57 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO8944298005.mp3

Florida, 2000: ‘Secret Mistress Confronted’ had been the name of the The Jerry Springer episode Ralf Panitz, his new wife Eleanor and ex wife Nancy Campbell-Panitz had been on. The whole episode was a car crash, full of lies, humiliation and manipulation. But the aftermath would be deadly. Behind the cameras of this love triangle, was a history riddled in domestic violence, abuse and threats to kill. And when the episode aired, one of them would follow through on that threat. Resources: Domestic Shelters https://www.domesticshelters.org/ https://linktr.ee/eleanornealeresources Watch OUTLORE Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@EleanorNeale Follow Me Here for Updates & Short Form Content: Instagram TikTok

## Transcript

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[0:29] On the set of The Jerry Springer Show in the year 2000, a fight
[0:33] has broken out that will end in murder.
[0:36] Not right there on the set, but weeks after the recording.
[0:39] On the day that the episode aired, 52 year old Nancy
[0:42] Campbell would be discovered brutally murdered inside her own
[0:46] home. Her killer would go on the run
[0:49] and try to get away with this, but when the lead up to such a
[0:52] horrific incident was quite literally televised, he wasn't
[0:56] going to get away with it for long.
[1:02] Outlaw. Hello and welcome to Outlaw
[1:04] Podcast. I'm Ellen O'Neill and in today's
[1:07] episode, we're in Florida in the year 2000, where the latest
[1:11] episode of Jerry Springer is airing on TV in a bar.
[1:14] And it's made one of the locals very angry.
[1:18] It's actually starring a local family.
[1:20] Well, I say family more like a local messy love triangle.
[1:24] And one of them is sat in this very bar, watching the downfall
[1:29] of his own romantic life broadcasted to everyone in the
[1:33] country. He was drunk and slurring his
[1:36] words, but everyone could tell just how angry he was and soon
[1:40] he was stumbling home with only one thing on his mind, revenge.
[1:45] Now, before we get into this case, I just want to give my
[1:47] usual disclaimer that I mean absolutely no disrespect to
[1:50] anyone that we talk about in this episode.
[1:53] We will, however, be covering a lot of sensitive topics
[1:56] including domestic violence, murder, alcoholism, and abuse.
[2:00] If that is not something that you want to hear about right
[2:02] now, please feel free to click out and hopefully I'll see you
[2:04] again with another episode soon. Now let's start from the very
[2:08] beginning of today's love triangle.
[2:10] Because it wasn't always a triangle, it used to be a pair.
[2:14] Made-up of Nancy and Ralph. Nancy Campbell was born in 1948
[2:19] in Michigan, but she was 52 years old at the time of this
[2:22] case in 2000. She was a very private person.
[2:26] She lived a very normal life and tried to avoid turbulence as
[2:30] best as she could. And I guess we all do, or most
[2:34] of us at least, because there is another type of person who loves
[2:38] the turbulence of life and relationship drama.
[2:41] That wasn't Nancy, but it certainly was her husband and
[2:44] Ralph. And that is how this.
[2:47] Meek, sweet, gentle. Little.
[2:49] Lady appeared on the Jerry Springer Show having to air out
[2:53] her dirty laundry in front of the whole country.
[2:56] She never would have taken her issues on ATV show of her own
[3:00] accord, but lately her and her husband Ralph had been having
[3:03] major issues. And we'll get to them more in a
[3:06] second. But what you need to know right
[3:08] now is that Nancy thought that going on this TV show could
[3:11] bring them back together, and tragically, it did the complete
[3:15] opposite and ended in horrendous violence.
[3:19] Nancy had already had quite a hard life before Ralph.
[3:22] Bless her, she became a widow quite early in life, literally
[3:26] right after having a baby with her partner.
[3:29] So not only was she struck with unimaginable grief, but she was
[3:33] left a single mother trying to care for her baby all alone.
[3:38] And she really dedicated her life to this little boy.
[3:41] She became the best mum that she possibly could.
[3:44] It was almost like she put her whole entire life on hold just
[3:48] to be this boy's mother. She stopped dating.
[3:51] She didn't put as much time or energy into herself.
[3:54] I mean, maybe there was the odd guy that came along every once
[3:57] in a while, but none of them really stuck around and nothing
[4:00] ever really came of it. That was until 1995.
[4:04] With her boy all grown up, Nancy decided now was the time to give
[4:09] love another chance. So a friend introduced her to an
[4:12] AOL chat room, which was like the very beginning of online
[4:17] dating. Before the apps, before the
[4:18] websites that were just like big chat rooms, kind of like a
[4:22] Discord vibe if you're familiar with that.
[4:25] And unlike today's dating apps, people didn't use real photos of
[4:29] themselves. It was just those like pixelated
[4:31] avatars or like some random photo of a cat that you found on
[4:34] the Internet. They would have fake usernames.
[4:36] Well, not fake, but like, you know, like nicknames like Rugby
[4:39] Boy 09 and bullshit like that. But it was in this chat room.
[4:43] When Nancy first met Ralph, she was in her late 40s at the time,
[4:48] so like 47 or 48. And Ralph was 12 years younger
[4:52] than her, making him in his mid 30s.
[4:55] But the two of them got on really damn well.
[4:57] Some reports even say that he was a single father too,
[5:01] although honestly we don't hear much about his kids in the
[5:03] research so I can't imagine if he is a father that he was
[5:07] anywhere near his hands on as Nancy was with her son.
[5:10] But still, it must have been nice to be able to bond of a
[5:13] parenthood if that is the case. But a huge downside for this
[5:18] budding connection was that it was very long distance.
[5:21] Ralph was based all the way over in Germany, while of course
[5:24] Nancy is in Michigan. But the two of them loved
[5:27] talking to each other. It made them so giddy.
[5:30] And for about a year, the pair chatted and flirted online.
[5:34] By now, of course, they had shared actual pictures of
[5:36] themselves. They'd shared a lot of
[5:38] information about their lives. Their relationship was certainly
[5:41] forming into something more serious, and then one day Ralph
[5:45] decided it was time to leave his life behind in Germany and run
[5:50] off to go and live with Nancy as his partner in Michigan.
[5:53] They finally saw each other in the flesh and very quickly
[5:57] married in what would have been like late 1997.
[6:00] It's kind of given 90 day Fiance, honestly.
[6:03] And just like many of the relationships in that show,
[6:06] Ralph and Nancy's marriage was a dumpster fire from day one.
[6:10] They argued like crazy. There was so much toxicity and
[6:14] jealousy and raised voices. They would just a nightmare
[6:18] together honestly. But Nancy would put on a front
[6:22] to everyone else around them. She didn't want everyone to know
[6:24] truly how messy their relationship was, especially
[6:28] since they've gone through all of this to make it work.
[6:30] A marriage, him moving across the world.
[6:33] It's kind of like sunk cost fallacy that she just didn't
[6:35] want to admit that it wasn't going to work, so she kept
[6:38] trying to power through and pretend like it was fine.
[6:40] Nancy as a person was very easygoing.
[6:43] She was very calm and gentle, so it wasn't too hard for her to
[6:47] have this brave face on for others.
[6:50] But what many people didn't see was that Miss Nancy seemingly
[6:54] had a fiery side to her. The neighbors would hear the
[6:58] couple screaming and arguing all the time and it sounded quite
[7:02] reciprocal. One of the neighbors who could
[7:04] hear everything through the paper thin walls said that they
[7:08] fed off each other and it was almost a fatal attraction, which
[7:12] is a haunting choice of of words because it wasn't almost fatal.
[7:17] It would be fatal in the end. Soon after Nancy and Ralph were
[7:21] married, they moved to Bradenton in Florida and they were
[7:24] struggling financially, which is important to note because it
[7:28] does come into this case a lot more later.
[7:30] Those plane tickets just to get to Florida would have been like
[7:33] a saving up kind of deal. You know, they didn't just have
[7:36] spare income like that. But by July 1998, so literally
[7:41] one year into married life, things took a really dark turn.
[7:46] Nancy filed a domestic violence complaint after Ralph threw her
[7:50] onto the floor, causing her to hit her head hard.
[7:54] And when this filing went to court, she actually begged the
[7:57] judge to keep Ralph away from her, saying that he was always
[8:01] making threats, saying that he would kill her, that he should
[8:04] have killed her before now, and that she deserved to die.
[8:07] And her final words to the judge were actually, I do believe he
[8:11] will kill me. Which makes you wonder about how
[8:14] reciprocal those screaming matches actually were.
[8:18] Maybe they sounded that way to the neighbors, but maybe Nancy
[8:21] wasn't giving it anywhere near as bad as she was receiving it.
[8:25] Maybe all this time in their short married life she had just
[8:28] been fighting back and defending herself until she couldn't
[8:32] anymore and she needed someone, the courts, to step in and
[8:36] protect her from this man. A statement like I believe he
[8:39] will kill me is not an exaggeration.
[8:41] You take that seriously. That is a cry for help, and way
[8:45] too often those cries are not heard until it's far too late.
[8:50] In early 1999, after about 15 months of marriage, Nancy and
[8:55] Ralph divorced, and I wish I could say that that is where
[8:59] their story ended, but obviously that is not the case.
[9:01] Otherwise, we wouldn't be sitting here discussing it
[9:03] today. After divorcing, Nancy and Ralph
[9:06] actually continue to see each other and they were on and off
[9:09] again in their relationship. They even live together again at
[9:12] some points. And as this case unfolds, you
[9:15] will see just how much Ralph controls and manipulates Nancy,
[9:19] even though she is desperately trying to leave him.
[9:21] She's trying to get restraining orders.
[9:23] She's going to the court, but he is still managing to brainwash
[9:26] her and manipulate and worm his way back into her life.
[9:30] Every time when you're abused and conditioned to that kind of
[9:34] abuse, you come to accept it and almost expect that that will be
[9:38] a part of love. Love feels incomplete without
[9:41] fear and danger. And we know on average that it
[9:44] takes someone a victim of domestic abuse 7 attempts to
[9:49] leave an abusive relationship. And that is the exact cycle that
[9:53] Nancy Campbell found herself in. Her story actually really
[9:56] reminds me of a case that we covered last year of a woman
[9:59] called Zazel Preston. This is a case that has really
[10:02] really stuck with me and I actually it was the last episode
[10:05] that we created before I had to go on a few months long break.
[10:09] This case really fucking it really got me.
[10:13] Zazelle Preston was a young mum who was abused over and over
[10:18] again by her boyfriend, all whilst trying to become a
[10:21] qualified domestic violence therapist.
[10:24] She was going to school for this.
[10:26] She knew so much about the abuse that she was being subjected to.
[10:30] She was practically an expert by the end.
[10:32] And still her abuser was able to trap her back into his arms
[10:36] again and again through coercive control, intimidation, violence,
[10:41] love bombing. And you know what?
[10:43] I really urge you to give that episode a watch if you haven't
[10:46] already, because we actually used Zazel's own coursework on
[10:50] her studies to map out how abuse like this happens.
[10:54] It meant a lot to us that we could use Zazel's own knowledge
[10:58] and her own teachings in our episode and that it's able to
[11:01] live on. You know the work that she did
[11:04] will help other people as her life was lost before she ever
[11:08] got to put any of that training into practice.
[11:11] But to continue on with Nancy and Ralph?
[11:13] As if things weren't toxic enough, Ralph goes and makes
[11:16] things a hell of a lot worse. He decides that the best way to
[11:19] fix a broken marriage. Is to add another woman into the
[11:23] mix. This new woman on the scene was
[11:26] coincidentally called Eleanor and they shorten it to Ellie.
[11:30] So First off, before I say anything more I just want to say
[11:32] I do not claim. Any of that energy, please do
[11:35] not tarnish the good Eleanor name.
[11:37] But this Eleanor lady was quite the character.
[11:41] In fact, she was the total opposite of Nancy.
[11:44] She wasn't private, calm or quiet.
[11:46] She was loud and flashy and assertive.
[11:50] She was a belly dancer, a nature lover, a free spirit so full of
[11:54] life. And I truly think that all of
[11:56] that is what attracted Ralph. He saw her as the antithesis of
[12:01] his straight laced ex-wife, Nancy.
[12:04] By early 1999, Ralph and Eleanor were officially together.
[12:08] Meanwhile, he is still on and off with Nancy, who had
[12:12] absolutely no idea that there was a new woman on the scene.
[12:16] But despite all of this secrecy and lies, Ralph was getting in
[12:20] deep with Eleanor. He had met all of her family.
[12:23] He was so integrated into her life.
[12:26] And then, Oh my God, they get married.
[12:29] Secretly married in March of 2000.
[12:33] Nancy had no no idea that Ralph had a new wife.
[12:38] She was still toxically tied to him and in the throes of his
[12:42] back and forth love bombing and ignoring.
[12:45] She didn't know that they were married, but she did know that
[12:48] Ralph had found a new woman. And when she did, she was so
[12:53] heartbroken because, well, because he's still actively
[12:56] leading her on. But also.
[12:57] Because she is. Just in love with him and she is
[13:00] so toxically tied to him. Nancy just wanted him back.
[13:05] She was mad at him, sure, but she just wanted everything to go
[13:08] back to how it was. She would write him letters
[13:12] begging for him to leave Eleanor and come back to her for good.
[13:15] Which acting so desperately like this really shows how
[13:19] brainwashed and emotionally tortured she was by Ralph.
[13:24] She's consistently in a state of turmoil.
[13:27] Her anxiety is always shot through the roof, needing the
[13:30] person who hurts her the most back, likely believing that no
[13:35] one else would ever love her. Abusive relationships and
[13:38] coercive control take such a toll on someone's nervous system
[13:42] and their mental well-being. It's not just the physical
[13:45] attacks, it's ruining self esteem, self worth and and
[13:49] rationality. And of course, when Eleanor saw
[13:53] these letters from Nancy, let's be real, Ralph probably just
[13:56] straight up showed her the letter from Nancy because I'm
[13:59] sure he loved the fact that two women were fighting over him.
[14:03] So anyway, Eleanor sees this letter and she decides to
[14:06] respond to Nancy over e-mail telling her to back off, and she
[14:11] signed it off as Missus Ralph Panetz.
[14:15] Well, when Nancy read that e-mail, her fiery side surfaced
[14:19] again and she came back with a response that she also signed
[14:23] off with Missus Ralph Panetz, despite the fact that they were
[14:28] divorced and Nancy didn't know that Eleanor and Ralph were
[14:33] actually married and she was actually the new.
[14:36] Quick, choose a meal deal with Mcvalue.
[14:38] The $5 Mexican meal deal, the $5 Mcdouble meal deal, or the new
[14:42] $6 Daily Double meal deal. Each with its own small fries,
[14:45] drink and four piece Mcnuggets is actually no rush.
[14:47] I'm just excited for McDonald's for a limited time only.
[14:49] Prices in participation may vary.
[14:50] Not Belgium delivery, But right at this point in time, Nancy's
[14:55] thinking no, I was his wife, you're just his girlfriend.
[14:59] And also, he'd been leading her on.
[15:01] Let's not forget about this, for years after the split, he was
[15:04] still in her life. He was still living in her home
[15:06] every now and then, like she. Thinks that this.
[15:09] Eleanor Girl is just a flash in the pan.
[15:11] She has no idea that her ex-husband has married her.
[15:17] This feud between Miss Nancy and Miss Eleanor made Ralph feel so
[15:22] alive. It sparked an idea for him.
[15:25] Actually. This toxic love triangle that
[15:28] they had found themselves in would make great TV
[15:31] entertainment. This could be brought to the
[15:34] Jerry Springer Show. I'm sure the majority of you
[15:37] will be familiar with the Jerry Springer Show.
[15:39] It's a talk show that began in 1991 and it would bring on
[15:43] mostly random members of the public to hash out their issues
[15:47] on the telly in front of the nation.
[15:49] If you're from the UK, think Jeremy Kyle obviously, which is
[15:53] not without its controversies over here as well.
[15:55] And you will see that Jerry Springer is exactly the fucking
[15:58] same over in America. But the guests that they would
[16:01] bring on this show are very vulnerable in some kind of way.
[16:04] They're always in a vulnerable position.
[16:06] They're there to talk about something very emotionally
[16:08] taxing, something very personal to them.
[16:11] But at the end of the day, it was for other people's
[16:14] entertainment to go on this show, which is dystopian enough
[16:18] as it is. I fucking hate the concept of
[16:20] shows like this. It's so exploitative.
[16:22] But what makes it even worse is that production staff knew that
[16:27] they could push the guests buttons to make.
[16:30] For good TV viewing, guests have alleged that they were.
[16:33] Provoked into having literal fistfights on stage, they were
[16:37] encouraged to strip naked people's trauma wasn't taken
[16:41] seriously at all. Like when the show would bring
[16:44] on a victim of incest and confront them with their abuser.
[16:48] Like why the fuck would anyone ever even.
[16:50] Want to watch? That, But what the Jerry
[16:52] Springer audience truly lived for were those drama storylines.
[16:56] Like, who's the father of the baby?
[16:58] Did he really cheat on her? Who's in the wrong?
[17:00] Who's the villain? So Ralph Nan see an Eleanor's
[17:03] situation was like peak viewing for the Jerry Springer show.
[17:07] They ate up stories of infidelity and love triangles.
[17:11] So in the spring of 2000, Ralph who was now 40 years old and
[17:16] with 0 common sense, thought it would be a great idea to write
[17:20] in and apply for the show. Which is also just incredibly
[17:23] narcissistic isn't it? Like he knows full well that he
[17:26] is putting both of these women through hell.
[17:29] Mostly. Nancy, let's be real.
[17:31] And the audacity. Of him taking it so public is
[17:36] frankly evil and probably even another abusive tactic just to
[17:40] humiliate Nancy. If you've ever watched The Jerry
[17:42] Springer Show, you know that it isn't about happy endings.
[17:45] They weren't bringing couples back together so that they could
[17:48] ride off into the sunset. It all thrived on drama and
[17:52] fights and chaos. Controversy was their bread and
[17:55] butter, and things were often taken way, way too far.
[17:59] The Jerry Springer Show had a reputation for manufacturing the
[18:03] chaos on screen. They faced a lot of accusations
[18:06] from guests. Producers would essentially
[18:08] coach people on how to act out there on the stage.
[18:12] They would wind them up in the green room and push them to
[18:15] their limit until things would explode on the set.
[18:18] One guest said that the producers wound her up so much
[18:21] that the whole time I was in the dressing room, I was just
[18:24] getting angrier and angrier by the 2nd, and I'm not an angry
[18:27] person. My heart was pounding.
[18:29] It felt like it was about to burst out of my chest.
[18:32] I was tired, crazy and ready to fuck it up.
[18:35] They weren't treating you sensitively.
[18:37] They weren't interested in what kind of impact all of this was
[18:41] going to have on you. It was all for the show.
[18:44] But probably the saddest thing was that the guests genuinely
[18:47] thought that they were there to get real help.
[18:51] One producer came out and said a lot of the guests were earnest.
[18:55] They literally did think that they were coming on to solve the
[18:57] problem. You wouldn't believe how many
[18:59] people said to me on the telephone, I can't wait to meet
[19:02] Jerry. I really, I really hope he can
[19:03] help me with this. Jerry didn't help anybody with
[19:07] any of it. He just stood there and did his
[19:10] thing. His thing being this nice guy
[19:13] performance, pretending to be a mediator while honestly just
[19:17] shit stirring and meddling with these very real problems that
[19:21] these people were struggling and suffering from.
[19:24] For most people it sounds like a genuine nightmare to be on a
[19:27] show like this, but not for Ralph, who loved the attention.
[19:31] He loved how he was was making Nancy suffer.
[19:35] I think there's a few different factors in why he applied for
[19:38] the show. Obviously the public humiliation
[19:40] of his ex being the main one, but also for 15 minutes of fame
[19:44] for a free plane ticket to Chicago to go and film the show.
[19:48] It was all rather appealing to him.
[19:50] So in May 2000, he called up Nancy and begged for her to come
[19:54] on the show with him. He said that he genuinely wanted
[19:57] to fix things. He tried to manipulate her in
[20:00] his usual way, but maybe that wasn't working.
[20:03] And maybe Nancy was unwilling to go on the show, so Ralph began
[20:07] to lie to her. He said that he was being
[20:09] threatened with deportation back to Germany.
[20:12] And if it did happen, he said that the show promised to buy
[20:16] him a plane ticket back to the States if he went and recorded
[20:19] this episode first. Obviously it doesn't make any
[20:22] sense. What power does ATV show or a
[20:24] network have to? Bring deported individuals back
[20:28] into the country like I don't know.
[20:30] But sadly, Nancy believed his bull.
[20:33] Bullshit. He wasn't going to get deported,
[20:35] he was just a liar and a manipulator.
[20:37] But now it wasn't just about her own feelings.
[20:39] And trust me, she did want him back.
[20:41] Or at least she thought that she did when she was so terribly
[20:44] brainwashed by his abuse. But now, Now that he'd said all
[20:47] this about deportation, it wasn't about her anymore.
[20:50] It was about him as well. And she wanted to help him.
[20:53] After all, she did love him. And so she agreed to air out
[20:58] their drama on the Jerry Springer show.
[21:00] Bear in mind, Nancy is going into this and she has no idea of
[21:04] the fact that Ralph and Eleanor got married.
[21:07] She thinks that they're just together and she is about to be
[21:10] confronted with this on the fucking Jerry Springer stage.
[21:13] Ralph had convinced Nancy. That the two of.
[21:16] Them would be getting back together properly by the end of
[21:19] the show that their appearance was just for them to be able to
[21:22] confront Eleanor and end that whole thing so so that they
[21:25] could ride off into the sunset and rebuild their marriage
[21:28] together. But he must have told Eleanor
[21:30] the exact opposite or kind of the same thing.
[21:33] I don't know. But this fuck ass man told her
[21:35] that they were going to go on the show and get rid of Nancy
[21:38] once and for all. He was playing these women
[21:40] against each other. The.
[21:41] Producers would hardly. Need to manipulate this one bit
[21:44] since Ralph was doing it all by himself.
[21:47] The Situation already had all of the key ingredients for a
[21:51] classic Jerry Springer episode. Sex, humiliation, betrayal,
[21:56] spectacle all. Building to 1 crazy dramatic
[22:00] confrontation and. Poor Nancy had no idea what she
[22:05] was walking into. The show was filmed in Chicago,
[22:08] which is an 18 hour drive from Florida.
[22:11] So fuck that. The show was going to pay for
[22:14] plane tickets for all three of them.
[22:16] And today the average return plane ticket for that journey
[22:19] cost journey that came out really Yorkshire.
[22:22] It cost well over $250 and there was no way that Nancy or Ralph
[22:26] could afford that on such little notice.
[22:29] And this is the case for a lot of the show's guests.
[22:32] Being so reliant on production financially to get them there
[22:36] and back kind of traps them into doing whatever the producers
[22:39] want them to do while they're there.
[22:41] Or the show can threaten to rescind that return flight home,
[22:45] which they had done to people multiple times, which is so
[22:48] fucked up. But in May 2000, Nancy boarded
[22:52] that 2 1/2 hour flight to Chicago and headed to the hotel
[22:56] that the show's production had put her up in for a few days.
[22:58] They do this for all of their guests.
[23:00] And actually, that's part of the appeal for some people.
[23:03] Guests could treat it like a city break and all expenses paid
[23:06] trip. Only it wasn't really all
[23:09] expenses paid. The price to pay was public
[23:12] humiliation, but of course, every guest is told by the
[23:16] producers that their story will be different.
[23:18] Producers were smart and they knew how to draw people in and
[23:22] talk to them as if they're the stars of the show.
[23:25] Like they're in on it all, but they're not.
[23:27] They never are. When the three of them arrived,
[23:30] they were all split up. In fact, I think they'd probably
[23:32] arrived on different flights too to make this easier.
[23:34] But the point is, they weren't supposed to see or speak to each
[23:37] other before the show in order to.
[23:39] Save all of their real reactions and conversations for when the
[23:42] cameras are rolling. But for some reason the show had
[23:46] put Ralph and Nancy in the same hotel and Eleanor in a
[23:50] completely separate 1. So maybe they did indeed have
[23:53] intentions for Ralph and Nancys paths to cross before filming.
[23:57] But why? Maybe if they were alone for the
[24:01] night, with Eleanor out of the way after not seeing each other
[24:04] for a while, then some last minute scandalous activity might
[24:07] spark the night before the show recording.
[24:10] And you know what? That that is exactly what
[24:12] happened. Ralph figured out which room
[24:14] Nancy was in and he went and knocked on her door and when she
[24:17] opened it, she was so happy to see him standing there.
[24:22] Remember, this is what she wants and what she believes is going
[24:25] to happen. He wants her back, right?
[24:27] At least that's what he's saying.
[24:29] So she lets him in and they spend the night together before
[24:32] the show. The next day they had sex the
[24:35] night before he was about to confront her on national TV with
[24:38] his other fucking wife. I mean, Nancy didn't know at
[24:42] this point that he was married, but fuck this guy.
[24:45] Genuinely fuck this guy. Poor Nancy has no idea what this
[24:48] man is truly doing to her. She thinks that everything is
[24:51] falling into place and fixing itself finally.
[24:53] And the show is going to. Be a big factor in that she
[24:56] thinks that Ralph wants her and he will say that on the show
[24:59] tomorrow morning. Right.
[25:01] Well, when Nancy arrived at the studio, she was totally
[25:04] oblivious to the fact that she was about to have the rug pulled
[25:07] from under her. I don't know what the producers
[25:10] had been saying to her before the cameras started rolling, but
[25:12] it must have been a lot of sweet talk and false reassurance.
[25:17] And then it was time for the show to begin.
[25:19] Jerry Springer bounded out onto the stage and the audience began
[25:23] chanting his name like he was some prophet.
[25:26] And then he reads the promo for today's drama.
[25:28] Eleanor says her husbands ex-wife Nancy won't take no for
[25:32] an answer. Nancy has stalked them so
[25:36] severely that they had to go into hiding.
[25:38] Today, Nancy will learn that her ex-husband is actually married
[25:43] to Eleanor. Nancy couldn't hear any of this,
[25:46] mind you. She was being kept in the green
[25:48] room and the first person welcomed up onto the stage was
[25:51] Miss Eleanor. She was there to tell everyone
[25:54] just how fucked up and weird Nancy Campbell was.
[25:58] She said that Nancy was batshit insane.
[26:00] She was a stalker that won't let Ralph go.
[26:03] She can't accept that he has moved on and Eleanor claimed
[26:06] that it was making her and Ralph's married life a living
[26:09] hell. The audience are eating this up.
[26:13] Jerry's hyping up Eleanor to dish more dirt on Nancy and then
[26:17] Nancy herself is brought out into the chaos and my God does
[26:22] she look like a deer in headlights.
[26:24] This was a total ambush. As she steps foot on the stage,
[26:29] the audience are already booing her.
[26:32] For the the audio listeners, both the women are actually very
[26:35] similar looking. They're dark haired women of
[26:38] similar sizes, similar heights. They look similar in age, but
[26:42] their demeanors couldn't be more different.
[26:45] Eleanor is bold and confident and frankly aggressive.
[26:50] Nancy is meek, timid and awkward.
[26:54] I mean, of course you would be. It's her first second on the
[26:57] stage and the audience are already making it very clear
[27:00] that she is the villain. Somehow she must have been so
[27:03] confused. I mean, she's there thinking
[27:05] that she's going to fix things and ride off into the sunset
[27:07] with Ralph. Why would the audience dislike
[27:10] her? Why are they booing her?
[27:11] Eleanor rises from her seat and confronts Nancy head on, leaning
[27:15] right into her face, hands on her hips, practically yelling.
[27:19] Ralph loves me. Ralph wants to be with me and
[27:22] you, red headed bitch from hell, you need to leave us alone.
[27:26] You need to get a life. First of all, Jesus Christ
[27:30] Eleanor, that's a bit much. But second of all, I am
[27:32] absolutely using redheaded bit from hell from now on that's
[27:35] going in my Instagram buyer that's going to be like on my
[27:37] date in apps That's brilliant. The women have a bit of a back
[27:40] and forth, heavily encouraged by Jerry Springer.
[27:43] But Nancy doesn't engage much. Her body language and the stuff
[27:47] that she's saying is very short. She's kind of turned away and
[27:51] the worst that she really gives it back to Eleanor was calling
[27:54] her trailer trash. But.
[27:55] Then of course. In comes Ralph Panets, The Dirty
[28:00] dog of the hour who is the whole reason why everyone is there.
[28:04] He strolls out, arm spread, thinking he's some kind of
[28:08] fucking God. Well, he firmly believes that he
[28:10] is God's gift to women. He confidently strides over to
[28:14] Eleanor and gives her a kiss on the lips.
[28:16] And then he walks over to Nancy and.
[28:18] Gives her just a kiss on the cheek.
[28:20] It's clear to see which side he is already taking, and it's
[28:23] truly heartbreaking to see Nancy realize this in real time.
[28:29] Her eyes lit up as he walked towards her.
[28:32] She smiles. Her face softens because she
[28:34] thinks that this is the final step to getting him back, and
[28:38] despite watching him kiss Eleanor more intimately than he
[28:41] did her, it seems that she still believes it might end the way
[28:46] that he had promised her once Ralph had joined the party.
[28:49] The two women begin arguing again, and this is where Nancy
[28:53] reveals that she and Ralph had sex in the hotel last night, and
[28:57] it's kind of unclear if this is news to Eleanor or not.
[29:00] Maybe she already knew because she doesn't react with that much
[29:03] shock. She just says stuff along the
[29:05] lines of like, Oh well, I hope you made the most of X.
[29:07] It's never going to happen again.
[29:09] Seconds later Ralph says yes I had sex with my ex-wife
[29:12] yesterday but the matter of the fact a month ago I married Ellie
[29:17] and I do love Eleanor. This is the first that Nancy has
[29:21] heard of the marriage and she is visibly devastated.
[29:25] And it gets even worse. Ralph turns to her and suddenly
[29:29] everything he'd been saying to her for weeks was turned on its
[29:31] head. He practically begs Nancy to
[29:34] leave him alone forever and let him get on with his new life
[29:38] with his new wife Eleanor. The audience are thoroughly
[29:42] entertained watching Nancys whole world fall apart live.
[29:47] But Nancy Campbell was a very strong woman.
[29:49] She hardly reacted and she kept her cool the whole time.
[29:53] Even though she was dying inside.
[29:55] She didn't give them anything. No tears, no outbursts, no
[29:58] spectacle for the show. She was just trying to maintain
[30:01] her dignity and composure. Remember, she wasn't the Jerry
[30:05] Springer guest type in the slightest.
[30:07] But that's not what the producers wanted, obviously.
[30:10] They wanted a scene. They wanted a humiliated woman
[30:13] breaking down, lashing out at her rival.
[30:16] And when they? They didn't get that things
[30:19] needed to heat up, so in comes Jerry Springer himself, trying
[30:23] to provoke a reaction out of Nancy.
[30:25] He tells Eleanor to give it her best shot at humiliating her and
[30:29] even he. Himself says to Nancy, he's
[30:31] telling you he doesn't want to be with you.
[30:34] To which Nancy just stands up smooth as hell and says that's
[30:37] fine, bye. And she walks off stage
[30:40] unbothered. Queen, I really rate it.
[30:42] I mean because obviously she wasn't unbothered at all, but
[30:45] what a power move to make it look like.
[30:47] She wasn't. When Nancy goes backstage, the
[30:49] producers are fuming. They confronted her and they
[30:52] gave her an ultimatum. If she didn't get back out there
[30:54] on stage and finish the show, they weren't going to pay for
[30:57] her plane ticket home to Florida, which, as I said, is a
[31:00] typical Springer threat. These shows preyed on people who
[31:04] didn't have the financial freedom to book their own
[31:07] flights. It was exploitative and classist
[31:10] as TV could get. They could essentially hold
[31:13] people hostage until they did what the producers wanted.
[31:17] But the threat didn't work. Nancy, humiliated and betrayed,
[31:21] refused to return to the show. They had lied to her, and she
[31:25] was done. So she left the studio, and she
[31:28] just walked through the streets of Chicago in floods of tears,
[31:32] all alone, and somehow found her way to the bus station.
[31:36] Remember, this was 2000. There were no iPhones, no Uber,
[31:40] no Google Maps to help her in a city where she knew nobody.
[31:44] And after a while, a Good Samaritan sees Nancy crying at
[31:47] the bus station and offers to help.
[31:50] This sweet Angel of a stranger bought her a bus ticket back to
[31:54] Florida, an 18 hour drive where all she did was ruin it and sob
[32:00] her eyes out over what had just happened to her.
[32:03] Not only had she been deceived, betrayed, rejected, but it was
[32:08] all so public. Everyone had seen her be
[32:12] humiliated. And God, even more people.
[32:14] We're going to see it. When that episode went live on
[32:16] the television in front of the whole nation, millions of people
[32:20] would see the worst moment of her life.
[32:24] Once Nancy was back in Florida, not one of the producers checked
[32:28] in on her or called her to make sure that she was OK.
[32:31] They just did not care. As far as they were concerned,
[32:34] she'd fucked them over by not causing a scene, so why should
[32:37] they care about her now? The guy running the show,
[32:40] Richard Dominic, literally said on this topic.
[32:43] We weren't problem solvers. We're going to give you a chance
[32:47] to come on, tell your story, get it all out, but we're not going
[32:50] to help you. So then what's the fucking point
[32:54] in the show? Wasn't the aim for guests to go
[32:57] on with issues that the show could help to solve?
[33:00] Or was that just just a front for exploiting these people?
[33:04] But whatever, as awful as that is, Nancy was just ready to move
[33:08] on with her life. Now she would finally put Ralph
[33:10] in her past and stop thinking that he's going to come back to
[33:13] her and be nice to her. But but by June 2000, literally
[33:18] just a month after the recording of that show, Ralph and Eleanor
[33:22] are already on the rocks. Are we shocked?
[33:25] As Taylor Swift once said, nothing good starts in a getaway
[33:27] car. You know, when they started to
[33:29] have their problems. Of course, Ralph came crawling
[33:32] back to Nancy, begging her to take him back, saying that he
[33:36] was filing for divorce from Eleanor, he had made a huge
[33:39] mistake choosing her over Nancy, and it truly was Nancy that he
[33:43] wanted. And sadly, this worked.
[33:47] I remind the years of abuse and mental torment and coercive
[33:52] control that Nancy had been subjected to by this man.
[33:55] She felt weak and worn down by his turbulence, and maybe it
[33:59] just felt easier and more familiar to just take him back
[34:04] and hope for the best. So Nancy and Ralph were
[34:07] officially back together a month after the recording, and the
[34:10] episode would be airing in a month after that.
[34:14] So they actually haven't seen the edit or anything like that
[34:17] yet, obviously. But during this time between the
[34:20] recording and the episode going out, Nancy had actually put
[34:23] money down on a house for both her and Ralph to live in
[34:27] together in Sarasota, FL. She was hoping that this was
[34:31] finally going to be their fresh start.
[34:34] But almost as soon as she put that money down on this house,
[34:37] Ralph went straight back to his old ways.
[34:40] He was threatening her. He was getting violent.
[34:42] He was throwing her out of her own house, the house that she
[34:47] fucking put the money down on the cheek of this man.
[34:51] And so on the 10th of July, 2 weeks before their Springer
[34:54] episode was about to go live, Nancy filed a domestic violence
[34:58] injunction against Ralph, which is essentially A restraining
[35:01] order. It's a court order telling him
[35:03] to stay away from her. No contact, no showing up at her
[35:07] house, nothing. Otherwise he will be arrested.
[35:10] But to get this approved they all had to go to court and there
[35:15] had been several instances building up to this.
[35:17] But obviously Nancys final straw had been when he physically
[35:21] kicked her out of her own house. He'd even begun, Oh my God he'd
[35:25] even begun emailing Eleanor at this point in time asking for
[35:29] her back. He had flip-flopped that fucking
[35:31] quickly and she agreed. And when she agreed to get back
[35:36] with Ralph, he moved her in to Nancy's house that he was living
[35:41] in. Like what the fuck?
[35:44] What the fuck. The audacity of some of the men
[35:46] we talk about on this podcast is unmatched.
[35:48] I can't believe people exist out there that make these kind of
[35:52] decisions because also, not only did he move in Eleanor, his
[35:56] fucking mistress, but wait, are they still married?
[35:59] Yeah, they won't have had a divorce yet.
[36:01] But anyway, not only does he move her in, he also moves in
[36:04] his nephew, his like adult nephew for some reason.
[36:08] I'm not sure. I guess that's less important,
[36:10] but it just shows you how much Ralph does not give a fuck about
[36:13] Nancy's home and her boundaries and her comfort.
[36:17] For a short time all four of them lived together, Nancy,
[36:21] Eleanor, Ralph and his random ass nephew.
[36:24] This was once again a breaking point for Nancy and she ended
[36:28] things with Ralph once again. Two weeks before their episode
[36:32] is set to air. So fucking much has happened in
[36:34] such a short time. In this case, it's truly hard to
[36:36] keep up. Obviously with every Tom, Dick
[36:39] and Harry living in her house. Nancy left with just a few bags
[36:43] and slept in her car for a couple of weeks until she can
[36:47] figure something out while Ralph and his.
[36:50] Wife are sleeping I guess in her bed probably.
[36:54] Then on July 24th, 2000, Nancy and Ralph would appear in court
[36:58] to finalize the injunction that she'd taken out against him.
[37:01] Nancy showed up super nervous knowing that if this.
[37:04] Hearing didn't go in her favor. She would have nothing.
[37:08] She needed her house back. Ralph had taken all of Nancy's
[37:12] savings. He had threatened her, assaulted
[37:15] her. There was huge call logs that
[37:17] she'd made to the police with domestic violence complaints.
[37:20] It was very, very clear that this man was dangerous and
[37:24] relentless. Nancy needed him legally kept
[37:27] away from her for her safety. She told the court how he's
[37:31] frequently violent and earlier that month had chased me with a
[37:35] knife and made threats about taking my life.
[37:38] The way he was going to torture me.
[37:40] He spent a couple of hours telling me how he would kill me
[37:44] and my whole family and he was trying to think of a way to do
[37:48] it. And thank God the judge sided in
[37:51] Nancy's favour. He rightfully granted her sole
[37:54] ownership of the house and a restraining order against Ralph
[37:57] Panets. For the first time in ages,
[37:59] Nancy could actually breathe. Everyone would have to vacate
[38:04] her house that same day and her life could actually start to
[38:07] look normal again. She could begin her healing if
[38:10] he was out of her house and out of her life.
[38:14] Ralph walked out of court weirdly calm.
[38:17] There was no yelling, no tantrum, no swearing.
[38:20] But that was far from how he actually felt.
[38:23] When he next saw Eleanor he turned to her and said.
[38:26] I'm going back to the house to kill Nancy.
[38:29] At first Eleanor just kind of thought this was like an insane
[38:32] like emotional comment, putting it down to the fact that he was
[38:35] just pissed off and saying crazy shit.
[38:38] But as the day went on, she grew more and more worried about it.
[38:43] Eleanor and the random nephew were escorted back to the house
[38:47] to go and get their shit out, but obviously because Ralph had
[38:50] a restraining order now against him, he wasn't allowed to get.
[38:53] Go and get his own stuff. In fact, he just headed to a
[38:56] local bar for a drink as Eleanor and the nephew were packing up.
[39:01] It wasn't even late in the day, by the way.
[39:03] Reports say it was like 10/30, 11:00 AM, which to be turned
[39:07] into the bottle first thing in the morning.
[39:08] Gives you some indication of where Ralph is at mentally.
[39:12] So now day drinking alone in the bar, on the TV in the corner,
[39:17] guess what starts to play the Jerry Springer episode.
[39:20] So Ralph sits, drink in hand, watching the entire show,
[39:25] getting more and more drunk and more and more agitated.
[39:29] He was staggering around the pub and people were really noticing
[39:33] him. And then at one point he turned
[39:35] to another guy sitting in the bar, pointed at Nancy on the TV
[39:38] and said, I'm going to kill her. And then he leaves.
[39:42] He's drunk as a skunk by this point.
[39:44] As he walks to Nancy's house. He's staggering into the road
[39:49] without a care, almost like he genuinely wants to be knocked
[39:52] down. When he arrives at the house
[39:55] that he's certainly not allowed to be at, by the way, Eleanor
[39:59] and the nephew are still packing up their shit, and instead of
[40:02] shooing him away like they probably should have done, they
[40:04] instead invite him into the house to take a nap and sleep
[40:09] off the alcohol. But soon after, a police car
[40:12] pulled up with Nancy in it. Time was up.
[40:16] They had to be out. This was Nancy's home now, like
[40:19] it always should have been, honestly.
[40:21] And knowing Ralph would already be in serious trouble for being
[40:25] at that house, Eleanor and the nephew tried to sneak him out of
[40:29] the back window so that he can make a run for it.
[40:32] The plan was for him to go and wait at a nearby 711 down the
[40:36] road and they would pack up their stuff and come and pick
[40:38] him up in the car. But while Eleanor loaded up the
[40:41] car with all their stuff, she starts to get a gut feeling that
[40:45] something awful is going to happen.
[40:48] Ralph wasn't going to stay away from the house, she just knew
[40:50] it. And she couldn't shake off what
[40:52] Ralph had said earlier when he was leaving court, that he was
[40:56] going to kill Nancy. So they drove a little bit, but
[41:00] Eleanor just couldn't get this out of her head.
[41:01] She couldn't get it out of her head.
[41:02] So she turned the car around to head back to the house to make
[41:05] sure that Ralph wasn't getting himself into trouble.
[41:08] But it was too late. Ralph was already at Nancy's
[41:12] house, knowing for a fact that she would be there alone.
[41:15] Now somehow, he had forced his way in and ambushed her.
[41:20] He. Attacked her in the kitchen and
[41:22] dragged her down to the floor where he began to beat her and
[41:25] strangle her. Nancy tried to put up a fight.
[41:29] She tried to fight back, scratching at his face, trying
[41:32] everything that she could. To wiggle free from his grasp.
[41:35] But then he stood up. He was too far away to reach as
[41:39] he repeatedly stomped on her face, on her head, on her neck.
[41:44] 18 individual times. Nancy's skull was crushed.
[41:50] She was weak, she was beaten, she was bleeding.
[41:54] And with that, Ralph Panets left her for dead and made a run from
[41:58] it from the house for the final time.
[42:01] Within moments of him leaving, Eleanor and the nephew had
[42:04] arrived there at the house, hoping that he hadn't acted on
[42:07] his anger. It was actually the nephew that
[42:10] ran up to the door and knocked on it, but no one came.
[42:13] He was very concerned immediately because.
[42:16] Well, they just seen Nancy arrive at the house.
[42:18] She'd just been brought back less than an hour ago, so she
[42:22] should be answering the door, right?
[42:23] Well, if everything was OK, she should be answering the door.
[42:26] So the nephew starts trying to like push the door open but it
[42:29] felt like it was barricaded. And he too had a really bad
[42:33] feeling about this. So he ran back out to where
[42:36] Eleanor would have been waiting in the car, but she was gone.
[42:40] So I mean, he was confused, but again, he had a really bad
[42:44] feeling about this. And so he didn't think about
[42:46] Eleanor right now. He just ran to one of the
[42:48] neighbors houses to call 99911. Sorry 999, I'm too British for
[42:53] this. He called 9/9.
[42:55] No, he didn't. He called 911.
[42:57] OK, the nephew called 911 and by 6:30 police had arrived.
[43:02] They kicked in the front door and ran in to discover that they
[43:05] were too late. 52 year old Nancy Campbell had been murdered in
[43:11] her own home. Her body lay in a pool of her
[43:14] own blood on the kitchen floor. She was hardly recognizable as
[43:19] Nancy anymore. Her face was crushed in so
[43:22] badly, 18 shoe prints stamped across her face and her neck.
[43:28] Responding officers who had been in the force for a long time
[43:31] said that this was one of the worst scenes they had ever
[43:34] encountered. It was just so brutal, so
[43:37] savage, so sudden. Where the fuck was Ralph Panets?
[43:43] It was clear that he was the main suspect, and police feared
[43:45] that he could be a danger to more people if he wasn't
[43:48] captured quickly. Well, it turns out that when
[43:51] Eleanor had driven away, leaving the nephew at the house looking
[43:54] for Nancy, she had actually been looking for Ralph around the
[43:57] block, and she found him just wandering the streets.
[44:00] She beckoned him into the car. And I mean, he was probably
[44:04] still covered in Nancy's blood. And together the two of them
[44:07] made a run for it. But before we get any further.
[44:10] Them I'd just like to take a minute just to honor Nancy and
[44:13] spotlight an incredible organization that helps women in
[44:17] situations like hers. When Nancy was eventually buried
[44:20] back in her home state of Michigan her family asked that
[44:24] instead of buying flowers for her could people please donate
[44:27] to local domestic violence shelters in her memory instead.
[44:31] And today's charity provides a direct catalog of all domestic
[44:35] violence shelters in the US and Canada on domesticshelters.org.
[44:39] You simply. Type in your city or your zip
[44:42] code into their search engine and a list of potential shelters
[44:45] will be provided. You can access all of their
[44:47] details, their contact information, and they can even.
[44:50] Tailor results to suit your language needs.
[44:53] So if you're living in the US or Canada and you ever need the
[44:57] safety of a shelter, or you know someone that might one day need
[45:01] one, please keep this website saved.
[45:03] I think it's so useful, it's so informative and it's so
[45:06] important. Now with all that being said,
[45:09] let's continue because right now, Nancy's murderer was on the
[45:13] run. Of course, police were only
[45:15] looking for one guy, well, and Eleanor, but when it came to
[45:18] capturing Nancy's killer, it had to be the man that had made her
[45:22] life hell for years. The man that she'd continually
[45:25] reported for violence and abuse towards her.
[45:29] Police had spoken with the neighbors as well at this point,
[45:31] and one of them reported seeing, well, more like hearing
[45:35] something suspicious just 30 minutes before the police.
[45:38] Would arrive and find Nancy dead.
[45:41] This neighbor had seen Eleanor and Ralph arguing outside,
[45:44] presumably when she'd, you know, found him on the side of the
[45:47] street. And while a lot of what was
[45:49] being said was quite hard to make out, this neighbor did hear
[45:52] Eleanor say, Ralph, please don't do this.
[45:56] The two of them ended up hopping in the car and driving away,
[45:58] where Ralph apparently told Eleanor that yes, he had been
[46:02] back to Nancy's house, but they had had just a verbal argument
[46:06] and nothing more. He said that Nancy had
[46:08] threatened to get him deported and he was panicking.
[46:12] I'm not sure how much of this Eleanor actually believed, but
[46:15] she wanted to help him if that was the case.
[46:18] So they decided to drive off to Maine, which if you know your US
[46:23] state geography, you already know that.
[46:25] That's fucking insane. It's literally the total
[46:27] opposite end of the country. They would just be driving north
[46:30] and north and north for like 24 hours straight.
[46:33] But Maine was their choice for whatever reason.
[46:36] Oh, in fact. Think I know the reason and that
[46:39] where Canada is they plan to flee to Maine and lay low for a
[46:42] while until it all hopefully blew over.
[46:45] Did Eleanor know at this point that Ralph was a murderer?
[46:48] I'm not sure. She says not, but surely he had
[46:52] blood all over his shoes from stomping Nancy's head in 18
[46:56] fucking times. I find it.
[46:57] Very hard to believe that there weren't physical signs or even
[47:01] signs in the way that Ralph was acting.
[47:04] But during their drive to Maine, Eleanor and Ralph came come up
[47:07] with a plan to make a break for the Canadian border.
[47:10] Of course, Ralph, being German, intended to seek refuge at the
[47:14] German embassy, while Eleanor, a Native American, could attempt
[47:18] to reach a Canadian reservation. Basically, both of them were
[47:21] plotting separate escape plans. But if Eleanor thought that this
[47:25] was just a verbal agreement and it was about deportation, then
[47:28] why was she agreeing to do such drastic fucking measures to get
[47:32] them both out of the country and somewhere else?
[47:35] I don't know, it's almost like she.
[47:37] Knew it was way more serious than what Ralph had told her.
[47:41] Meanwhile, police are trying their best to track down the two
[47:44] of them who had clearly gone on the run.
[47:46] They were uncontactable and not in any of the places that they
[47:50] were known to go. So police put out an alert
[47:53] across the country naming both of them as the two wanted people
[47:57] in connection with the murder of Nancy Campbell Panets.
[48:00] So now they're pretty much fucked.
[48:02] The story blew up everywhere. Headlines were calling it the
[48:06] Jerry Springer killing. Eleanor and Ralph were labeled
[48:08] fugitives. Their faces were everywhere.
[48:11] Every headline, every TV channel plastered all over the news.
[48:15] It was a Total Media circus. And after four days, Eleanor and
[48:20] Ralph actually turned themselves into authorities on the 28th of
[48:24] July where they would be held with.
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[48:56] eventually released on bond and never charged with anything in
[49:00] relation to Nancy's death. It became clear quite quickly to
[49:03] the police that Ralph was solely responsible for the actual
[49:07] physical attack on Nancy. So instead Eleanor would now
[49:10] serve the police as a material witness.
[49:13] Which is low key crazy to me because she was helping him try
[49:18] to flee the entire fucking country.
[49:21] But since she maintained that she had no idea about the murder
[49:24] and she thought that he. Was just fleeing from
[49:26] deportation. Then she managed to get off
[49:29] lightly and I think get off lightly is an understatement for
[49:32] that. She was going to help him get
[49:33] away with murder is in my opinion.
[49:36] But Ralph was of course charged with Nancy's murder.
[49:39] He was. Still wearing the trainers that
[49:42] he had stomped all over her head in and crushed her skull with.
[49:46] They had her DNA all over them. He was.
[49:49] He was done. Further to that, the soles of
[49:51] his shoes matched the prints found on the floor at the scene,
[49:54] and his DNA was found under Nancy's fingernails.
[49:57] And now that the killer had been caught and the announcement had
[50:00] been made, everyone was desperate to see what kind of
[50:03] reaction Jerry Springer and the show as a whole would have to
[50:07] invite this turbulent couple. Onto the show, rile them up and
[50:11] then send them off back again with no protection.
[50:14] Something like this was bound to happen at some point with
[50:19] something that happened on the show, and Jerry Springer himself
[50:22] stayed rather quiet on the matter, even though there were
[50:25] paparazzi literally camping outside of his house to get his
[50:28] take on it. And.
[50:30] He. Did briefly answer a couple of
[50:32] questions but it was mainly along the lines of like, well
[50:35] what does this have to do with me?
[50:37] When he was asked by reporters if he even remembered the
[50:40] guests, he straight up just said no.
[50:42] Do you remember those people at all?
[50:44] No, and like I'm calling bullshit on that.
[50:47] Because it was only. 2 fucking months ago.
[50:48] What are you, a goldfish? If he really you know what if?
[50:52] If he really truly did not remember Nancy or Ralph, then
[50:56] that just shows how little Jerry Springer and the rest of the
[50:59] production do not give a single fuck about the people that they
[51:03] exploit for ratings, for money, for views.
[51:07] This woman had lost her life in such a horrific way and this
[51:11] show was very much a contributing factor and he
[51:14] couldn't even just fucking lie, like make something up, say
[51:18] something nice about her. He really didn't give a shit and
[51:21] it's disgusting. And this didn't go down well at
[51:24] all. In fact, things with the show
[51:26] had gotten really messy and it was actually about to get
[51:29] subpoenaed, meaning that they were going to be called to give
[51:31] evidence or interviews, basically anything the police
[51:34] and the courts required they would need to give, which they
[51:37] did. Not want to do because that
[51:39] could land them in lawsuits and all sorts of fucking issues.
[51:43] I don't know if the prosecution decided to pull them in and put
[51:45] the blame on them for the murder.
[51:47] Like, I mean, obviously that's bad.
[51:49] I don't know why. I was going to try and explain
[51:51] to you why that's bad. So what does the show do in
[51:54] response? Well, the entire crew that had
[51:57] worked on Nancy's episode were carted off to Jamaica to go and
[52:01] film a new show about a swingers resort.
[52:04] They were basically removed from the reach of police and the
[52:08] courts. I just think it's, it's wild
[52:11] what a coincidence that every single person that investigators
[52:15] might want to question just happened to be out of the
[52:17] country in Jamaica all at the same time, even Jerry Springer
[52:22] himself. What the fuck are you doing over
[52:23] there? Your studios in Chicago?
[52:25] It's almost as if they knew that they had a part to play in this
[52:28] devastating case and they wanted no risk of the courts proving
[52:31] that they wanted to wash their hands of this.
[52:34] Ralph's trial took place two years later in March 2002.
[52:38] And obviously, obviously, it goes without saying, the case
[52:40] against him was so strong, but you're not going to believe the
[52:44] argument that Ralph's lawyers tried to spin.
[52:46] It's actually fucking egregious. They tried to say that Nancy had
[52:50] died of a heart attack. During a fight with some random
[52:55] person that had broken into her house.
[52:57] So let me get this straight. Someone else came into her house
[53:01] to beat her until she was unrecognizable?
[53:04] But that's not what killed her. It was a heart attack, right?
[53:08] Right. So how are we going to explain
[53:10] Ralph's DNA at the scene and Nancy's DNA all over his fucking
[53:14] shoes? Honestly, his defence was so
[53:16] shit. And it's it's funny because
[53:18] Ralph had gone and hired a pretty famous celebrity lawyer
[53:23] called Jeffrey Figer Figer. And he even used forensic
[53:26] scientists that had been called in for the OJ Simpson case.
[53:30] This was supposed to be a solid team.
[53:32] So what the fuck are they doing? Like, it's actually laughable.
[53:36] Eleanor actually took the stand in floods of tears and she
[53:40] acknowledged how there was a lot of hatred between Ralph and
[53:42] Nancy, but she swore that he never murdered her.
[53:47] Luckily, the jury didn't believe a single word of it, and after
[53:51] 18 hours of deliberation split across two days, on the 26th of
[53:55] March 2002, Ralph Panetz was found guilty of the second
[54:00] degree murder of Nancy Campbell Panetz.
[54:03] He was also convicted of violating the domestic violence
[54:06] injunction issued the same day that Nancy was killed.
[54:09] And for all of this, he was sentenced to life in prison with
[54:13] no chance of parole. And then the judge extended her
[54:16] wrath to the Jerry Springer Show as well, saying that they had
[54:20] brought out all three of these guests just to manipulate and
[54:23] humiliate them. She went in on the producers
[54:27] asking if ratings were really more important than the dignity
[54:30] of human life, ending her speech with shame on you.
[54:35] The executive producer for Jerry Springer was actually asked in
[54:38] an interview where he draws the line when it comes to using
[54:42] people for TV, and he replied, oh, I would not.
[54:46] There's no line to draw. If I could kill someone on
[54:49] television, if I could execute them on television, I would
[54:53] execute them on television. What a barbaric thing to say.
[54:57] And so fucking dystopian as well.
[54:59] And I worry that he is genuinely serious about that.
[55:02] Like if he could do it and he wouldn't get into trouble for
[55:04] it, the views that that would pull in would be worth way more
[55:07] than a human life to these big books execs.
[55:11] On the 10th of July in 2002, Nancy's son filed A wrongful
[55:15] death lawsuit against Jerry Springer, the producers and the
[55:18] show's distributor, claiming that the episode set the stage
[55:23] for Nancy's murder. The lawsuit claims that
[55:26] producers tricked Nancy into going onto the show and even
[55:29] encouraged Ralph to. Lie to her so that they could.
[55:33] To ambush her on air with the revelation that he'd secretly
[55:36] married Eleanor. You know, all for ratings.
[55:38] It also says that producers green lit Nancy's appearance on
[55:42] the show despite knowing that there was a whole pile of
[55:46] domestic violence accusations between her and Ralph.
[55:49] They saw the red flags and ignored them because they wanted
[55:53] a good storyline. Springer's team clapped back
[55:56] saying that the murder had happened almost three months
[55:58] after the taping, making it completely unrelated to them.
[56:02] But come on now. Heartless and senseless it
[56:05] seems. But now here's the problem with
[56:08] this lawsuit. To win this case, they would
[56:10] have to convince a jury that if Springer never aired that
[56:14] episode, then Nancy would still be alive.
[56:17] Well, unfortunately, this case did seem like a ticking time
[56:21] bomb. Regardless of the Jerry Springer
[56:23] show. I think we can all agree that
[56:25] the way things panned out, it very much was a big contributing
[56:28] factor in the murder. But who's to say that if the
[56:31] show never happened, Ralph wouldn't have lost it and killed
[56:34] Nancy one day anyway? In 2003, Nancy's son dropped
[56:39] this lawsuit and received nothing, not even recognition
[56:43] for his mother's wrongful death. The murder didn't hurt Jerry
[56:47] Springer or the show. The rating stayed pretty much
[56:49] the same. The show never accepted
[56:51] responsibility for Nancy's death.
[56:54] They never even apologized. They just carried on like it
[56:57] wasn't their mess. They really.
[56:59] Had gotten away with contributing to murder in my
[57:02] eyes, in my opinion. Allegedly, you know?
[57:05] The show was eventually cancelled in 2018 after low
[57:08] ratings and stricter rules. Kind of.
[57:10] Stripped away the scandal of the show God, all these all these
[57:14] measures to to protect people and their mental health is.
[57:17] Just ruining the fun isn't? It Jerry Springer himself
[57:20] actually passed away in 2023, age 79, by which time it was
[57:24] estimated he was worth around $60 million.
[57:29] Crazy. As for Ralph and Eleanor, well,
[57:31] they're actually still together to this day.
[57:34] Eleanor visits Ralph in prison often, and I guess she finally
[57:38] got her way. Ralph is hers, but only because
[57:42] Nancy's life was taken in the most horrific, brutal way.
[57:48] She had been put through so much abuse, so much humiliation and
[57:52] violence by these two. But despite this, Nancy carried
[57:56] herself well on that show, and she walked off with her dignity
[58:00] intact while everyone else's was left shattered all over the
[58:03] floor. Though she may have been the
[58:05] villain in Springer's story. She truly was the hero in her
[58:11] own. Thank you so much for tuning in
[58:13] to this episode of Outlaw Podcast.
[58:15] If you're watching on YouTube, please leave us a thumbs up and
[58:18] leave us a comment down below so that we can continue the
[58:20] conversation. Me and the team love reading you
[58:22] guys comments. If you're listening on a podcast
[58:25] platform, also leave us a comment.
[58:26] I know they have those on the podcast platforms these these
[58:29] days. And leave us a five star rating
[58:31] please. But hey, I hope you enjoyed this
[58:33] episode and I will see you in the next one.
[58:36] Bye.

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