# 56: Mensa 'Genius' Murderer Exposed His Own Crime

An episode of [Outlore with Eleanor Neale](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1682504024), 1 Nov 2023, 43 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO9766210416.mp3

Today, we are talking about the murder of Peggy Carr, and the attempted murder of the rest of her family. When disputes with her neighbour George Trepal and his wife had escalated, nobody could have anticipated what came next. As Peggy and her children fell mysteriously ill, undercover detectives rushed to find the cause in hopes of saving their lives - and realised they had uncovered supposed ‘genius’ George's plot to get rid of his noisy neighbours - once and for all. Trigger Warning: stalking, threats Resources: https://linktr.ee/usualdisclaimer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

## Transcript

[0:00] George Trepple was a certified genius, a scholar, a chemistry
[0:04] graduate, and real life Walter White literally running a meth
[0:08] lab with the knowledge that he learned in his studies.
[0:11] But he didn't stop there. George's next scheme was to
[0:14] carry out the perfect murder plot, or so he thought.
[0:18] As his victim was enduring a long, excruciating death, an
[0:22] undercover investigation was underway to see just how many
[0:26] dark secrets this man had. Today we're going to be talking
[0:29] about the genius Mensa murderer. One last thing before we get
[0:36] into the case, I just want to give my usual disclaimer that I
[0:39] mean absolutely no disrespect to anyone that I talk about in this
[0:42] video. This video is for educational
[0:44] purposes and everything I'm about to say is publicly
[0:47] available information that myself and my team have found
[0:50] online and compiled into this video.
[0:53] This video will cover especially sensitive topics, including but
[0:57] not limited to stalking and threats.
[1:00] We make every effort to Fact Check our sources and make sure
[1:03] all of the information in this video is correct.
[1:06] No action should be taken in reliance upon the information in
[1:09] this video. And I want to take this
[1:11] opportunity to remind you all that these are real people's
[1:14] lives that we're talking about. South.
[1:16] Please stay respectful and kind in the comments section.
[1:19] All opinions stated in this video are mine and mine alone.
[1:22] And so with that being said, let's get into the case.
[1:25] So today's case takes place in a small town in Central Florida in
[1:29] 19, 88. It was called Alturas.
[1:32] Alturas maybe. It was a very, very small, very
[1:37] rural town. Only about 4000 people lived
[1:40] there. It was very quiet.
[1:41] It was very peaceful, very beautiful.
[1:44] It was surrounded with like ranchers and lakes and citrus
[1:48] Groves. There were just.
[1:49] A few small independent businesses and stores there.
[1:53] Not much really went on in Alturas and I think that was the
[1:57] allure of it. People that wanted a peaceful,
[1:59] quiet life would move there. One of the families making the
[2:02] most of this kind of life in Alturas was the Carr family.
[2:06] They were a blended family made-up of mother Peggy and
[2:10] father Π and their children from their previous relationships.
[2:15] Peggy and π had gotten married in 1988 and π had lived in
[2:19] Alturas for quite a while and he had a big, big house there.
[2:23] He had a lot of land, so it just made sense when they got married
[2:26] for Peggy and her family to come and move in with him on on his
[2:30] property. Peggy was 40 years old and she
[2:32] had three children who were now teenagers to a previous marriage
[2:36] of hers. These kids were called Alan,
[2:38] Sissy and Dwayne. Alan was the oldest and he was
[2:41] actually away in the Navy at the time.
[2:43] So it was just Sissy and Dwayne that lived with her and with π
[2:47] Pi's kids were named Tammy and Travis.
[2:50] Tammy was the older one and she actually had a child of her own
[2:53] so and she lived with them as well.
[2:55] And then Travis, the younger one, was a teenager, very close
[2:59] in age to Dwayne. So them two became like best
[3:01] friends. Pi had actually converted a part
[3:04] of his house into an annex so that Tammy and her daughter
[3:09] could still, you know, like live on the property and live close
[3:12] by to the family. Because this plot that they
[3:14] lived on was so big. The house was big, the land was
[3:17] big. It was it was beautiful.
[3:19] And they really made the most of it.
[3:21] There was just land as far as the eye could see around them.
[3:24] They had one neighbor, 1. So yeah, the boys would always
[3:28] have their friends over and they would would all go quad biking,
[3:31] they had bikes to be able to get around their land and they would
[3:34] like blast their radios and enjoy the sun.
[3:36] Everything was perfect for the car family but not for their
[3:41] neighbors. That singular set of neighbors
[3:44] were pissed off because their peace and tranquility living in
[3:47] Alturas had been disturbed by this new noisy family next door.
[3:53] The people that lived in this one house nearby were a
[3:56] middle-aged couple. They didn't have children of
[3:58] their own and they really kept to themselves.
[4:01] They'd never even spoken to π and he'd lived there a while.
[4:04] But now that the family had doubled and π's son now had a
[4:08] friend and they would invite more friends over, it was really
[4:12] noisy and the neighbors started to take issue with pretty much
[4:16] everything the car family did. Their dogs barking, the boys
[4:20] being loud on their quad bikes, the them playing their radios
[4:24] too loud. Even when Π wanted to do some
[4:26] more building work on the House, because he was always like
[4:29] renovating and and doing different bits and pieces, he
[4:32] put in some planning permission to do this other bit.
[4:34] And his neighbors went out of their way to block that planning
[4:38] permission just because they were now beefing.
[4:41] For the most part, the disagreements were fairly tame.
[4:44] It was nothing ever too dramatic or too noteworthy.
[4:47] Everything was quite passive aggressive, though.
[4:49] They weren't like feuding, they were just.
[4:52] It was quite an unspoken we don't like each other.
[4:54] But then four months after moving in together, the car
[4:58] family received a very mysterious, threatening letter.
[5:03] It was written on a typewriter in all caps and it was addressed
[5:07] to π It said you and all your so-called family have two weeks
[5:11] to move out of Florida forever or else you will all die.
[5:15] This is no joke. Of course, getting this note
[5:18] really disturbed the car family, but they ultimately just put it
[5:21] down to a nasty prank from a local kid.
[5:25] They kept their wits about them. Obviously, this is very
[5:28] unnerving, but they carried on pretty much as normal.
[5:31] The bickering with their neighbors continued and then
[5:34] about a month after receiving that note, Peggy ended up having
[5:38] quite a verbal like fight with the woman from next door.
[5:42] The woman had come over to their house to complain about the boys
[5:45] playing music once again, but she had been like shouting at
[5:49] the boys. And so when Peggy saw this, she
[5:51] jumped in to defend her kids. The woman went off on her.
[5:54] Peggy went off on her right back.
[5:57] And then as the woman turned and walked away, she quickly looked
[6:00] back at Peggy and said, you won't get away with this.
[6:04] In the weeks following this interaction, things just kind of
[6:06] went back to normal. They weren't talking to each
[6:09] other but they at fighting. I mean it was the same as it
[6:12] always was. The neighbors were keeping to
[6:14] themselves other than to complain here and there.
[6:16] Everything was fine until October 23rd, 1988.
[6:21] It started off as a normal day for Peggy.
[6:23] She went to work. Her and her daughter Sissy
[6:26] worked as waitresses at the same restaurant and Peggy was on the
[6:29] morning shift that day so she went to work.
[6:31] But then when Sissy came in at lunchtime she noticed something
[6:35] was very wrong with her mother. She was very visibly unwell when
[6:39] she localized these concerns to her mother.
[6:42] Peggy said that yeah, no, she wasn't feeling well at all.
[6:45] She'd been having chest pains all day.
[6:47] Her legs were aching, and she had this really weird tingling
[6:50] sensation in her hands. None of it made sense to her.
[6:53] She couldn't understand why all of these sensations were
[6:56] happening. She hadn't done anything
[6:58] different. Like she just couldn't pinpoint
[7:00] why she felt so weird. But when Sissy heard all of
[7:03] these different symptoms, especially paired with chest
[7:07] pains, she really worried that her mother might be having a
[7:09] heart attack. Luckily, the restaurant had a
[7:12] medic who was able to check Peggy over, and he said it
[7:15] didn't seem like a heart attack. He thought she was fine.
[7:18] Like all of her vitals and her measurements, readings, I don't
[7:23] know, all the tests that he did seemed fine.
[7:26] He said she probably just needed some rest.
[7:28] She was probably just a bit exhausted and her body was
[7:31] trying to tell her that. So she took the rest of the day
[7:33] off work. Sissy took her back home and
[7:35] like laid her on the surface so that she could have a nap before
[7:38] she went back and did her shit. So Peggy's back at home, she
[7:42] tries to rest for a while, she has a nap, but when she wakes up
[7:45] she feels even worse than before.
[7:47] When Pai got home and saw his poor wife in so much pain, he
[7:52] panicked and he called his sister who was also a nurse.
[7:56] He wanted her to come down. She had all this like equipment
[7:59] at home. She had the whole kit and
[8:00] caboodle, so she brought it down to the house.
[8:03] She did all these tests on Peggy, and again she said that
[8:07] most of the tests seemed fine, she only had high blood pressure
[8:10] π's sister just suggested that Peggy rest.
[8:13] I mean, she didn't really know what else to do for her.
[8:16] And then at 9:00 PM that night, Sissy got home from her shift
[8:19] and when she looked at her mother, she knew they needed to
[8:22] do something. She looked 10 times worse than
[8:24] she had this morning. Her skin was completely
[8:27] colourless, she couldn't get out of bed, she could barely open
[8:31] her eyes. All she was doing was telling
[8:33] her daughter and her husband how much pain she was in.
[8:36] At this point they knew that resting wasn't fixing anything
[8:39] and she she was just getting worse.
[8:41] So they carried Peggy into the car and took her to the nearest
[8:44] hospital. When she got there, she told the
[8:46] doctors that she felt like she was on fire.
[8:48] It literally felt like she was on fire.
[8:51] Her hands and feet, her, well, her whole arms, her whole legs
[8:55] were burning and tingling and she said it was just unbearably
[8:59] painful. It wasn't like anything she'd
[9:02] ever felt before. So they did all these tests on
[9:04] her once again in the hospital, but again, they didn't show
[9:08] anything weird. The doctors were stumped.
[9:10] There was no obvious explanation as to why she was feeling all
[9:14] these weird and painful sensations.
[9:17] A couple of doctors actually suggested at one point when all
[9:20] these tests were bringing back nothing.
[9:22] They suggested it was probably all psychological.
[9:25] It was all in her head. Can you imagine being told that
[9:28] by medical professional? I'd go mental.
[9:31] I would go mental. They just couldn't for the life
[9:33] of them figure out what was going on with Peggy Carr.
[9:36] But luckily over the next three days, her symptoms seemed to
[9:39] alleviate and October 27th she was discharged from hospital.
[9:43] She was feeling mostly better, but she was under strict
[9:46] instructions by the doctors to rest and rehydrate at home.
[9:50] But the very next day, her son and π's son, Travis and Dwayne
[9:55] both started falling I'll with the same symptoms that Peggy
[9:59] had. They had that same numbness and
[10:02] tingling and burning in their hands and in their feet.
[10:06] They had just general stomach problems, flu like symptoms.
[10:10] Their symptoms weren't quite as intense as Peggy's seemed.
[10:14] And everyone kind of put this down to their age.
[10:16] You know, younger people tend to bounce back or handle illnesses
[10:21] and viruses and stuff a bit better.
[10:23] So everyone just kind of assumed that they would recover from
[10:25] these symptoms in the way that Peggy had.
[10:28] Maybe they didn't need hospitalizing, but it'd just
[10:30] take them a few days to recover. But two days after that, it
[10:35] became clear that Peggy hadn't actually recovered.
[10:38] Her symptoms came back with a vengeance, and three days after
[10:41] leaving hospital, she was sent right back.
[10:44] She was in excruciating pain once again, and her muscles were
[10:48] so weak that, like I say, she could barely open her eyes.
[10:51] She could barely speak. At this point, both of the boys
[10:54] were also admitted to hospital. And because they had the these
[10:57] same mysterious yet excruciating symptoms, doctors finally
[11:02] started to take this seriously. They believed that it wasn't all
[11:06] in Peggy's head. They brought in a neurologist
[11:08] and an infectious disease specialist to run a bunch of
[11:12] different tests on Peggy and to theorize what the hell could be
[11:15] going on here. After all of this studying and
[11:18] analyzing and comparing, they came to the conclusion that
[11:23] Peggy's as well as her son's symptoms were consistent with
[11:27] being poisoned. They couldn't explain these
[11:29] symptoms, this very specific set of symptoms, any other way,
[11:33] especially the burning and the tingling in the in the
[11:36] extremities. The neurologist knew of a poison
[11:39] that would cause those exact symptoms, thallium.
[11:43] It isn't commonly used now and it was incredibly restricted
[11:46] even back then in the 80s. So it's no wonder that their
[11:49] minds didn't go there immediately because no one
[11:52] really had access to thallium. In the 1800s.
[11:54] It used to be used to treat TB, but they very quickly stopped
[11:58] using it in like a medical context.
[12:00] And from that point on, it was used as rat poison.
[12:03] But then in the 70s, it was banned altogether because it was
[12:06] like accidentally poisoning people.
[12:10] People would be using it as rat poison and then like inhaling it
[12:13] or ingesting it somehow and it would hospitalise people.
[12:16] People would have these excruciating symptoms.
[12:19] Even the smallest amount of thallium in your system can be
[12:22] deadly. It causes nerves and muscles to
[12:25] shrivel up and die. And it actually takes a while
[12:28] for these symptoms to show after the initial poisoning.
[12:31] So you could be deteriorating from the inside out and you
[12:34] wouldn't know for like days. The first symptoms like the
[12:45] onset of thallium poisoning is very similar to like a flu.
[12:49] People get stomach issues, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, flu
[12:53] like symptoms as well. But then it gets progressively
[12:56] worse as we've seen in Peggy, you know, muscle pain and
[12:59] weakness, burning sensations. Some people even get seizures.
[13:03] Then if it's left untreated, it progresses to loss of motor
[13:07] skills. Patients can no longer speak
[13:10] like in Peggy's case. They're brain swells, they can
[13:13] fall into a coma, respiratory failure and even death.
[13:17] It it will end in death if not treated and.
[13:19] That is a. Slow process as well.
[13:21] It's a very prolonged, painful death.
[13:24] People can suffer for weeks or even months with thallium
[13:28] poisoning before it finally kills them.
[13:30] I genuinely think there is very few worse ways to die than
[13:34] thallium poisoning. So as soon as doctors made this
[13:37] link to potential thallium poisoning, they ordered for all
[13:40] three patients to give over a urine test so that they could
[13:44] test it. And they were right.
[13:46] It was confirmed to be thallium poisoning.
[13:49] The results showed that Peggy had more than 20,000 times the
[13:53] normal amount of thallium in her body, and her son's levels were
[13:56] through the roof too. When doctors told Peggy that
[13:59] they believed she'd been poisoned, of course she
[14:02] couldn't. She couldn't actually speak at
[14:04] this point. Her muscles were so deteriorated
[14:06] that she wasn't speaking. Luckily, she knew sign language
[14:10] and her sister also knew sign language.
[14:12] They were raised by deaf parents, and so they'd known it
[14:15] since children. So when her sister was there,
[14:18] Peggy would communicate through her.
[14:19] And when the doctors told her they believed she'd been
[14:22] poisoned, all she was signing over and over was why, why, why.
[14:27] No one in the Carr family could figure out why on earth they
[14:30] would have been intentionally targeted by someone wanting to
[14:34] maliciously poison them. Pai actually said to
[14:37] investigators. I don't think anyone dislikes us
[14:39] enough to do that. Everyone was so baffled they
[14:42] thought this must have been an accident.
[14:43] It had to have been an accident accident.
[14:45] But how? How do you accidentally get
[14:48] poisoned by thallium and have 20,000 times the normal amount
[14:52] in your system? That is not an accident.
[14:55] That is not natural. This time around, Peggy's
[14:58] symptoms were not alleviating. They weren't getting any easier.
[15:02] In fact, they were getting progressively worse.
[15:04] As I've been saying, she could barely open her eyes, she could
[15:07] barely speak, and within a few days of that, she was on
[15:10] complete life support. She couldn't even breathe on her
[15:14] own. She couldn't eat.
[15:15] She was hooked up to feeding tubes.
[15:17] Doctors had even restrained Peggy to the bed.
[15:19] They had like tied her hands down to prevent her from like
[15:23] pulling out the tubes herself and killing herself due to the
[15:28] amount of immense pain that she was in.
[15:30] Very quickly after being put on life support, Peggy Carr slipped
[15:34] into a coma. Literally all of this had
[15:35] happened within like a week. Such little time that Alan, her
[15:39] oldest son who was away in the Navy, didn't even get chance to
[15:43] come home before his mother was completely comatose.
[15:46] And in that same hospital, her sons Travis and Wayne were also
[15:50] still fighting for their lives as well.
[15:53] They had less thallium in their systems, but their symptoms were
[15:55] still horrendous, literally still life threatening.
[15:58] They were hospitalized for months, they lost like all of
[16:01] their muscle mass, and they even almost died a few times.
[16:06] But luckily they had really really good doctors on 24/7
[16:10] support for them. Travis and Wayne slowly but
[16:14] surely recovered from their thallium poisoning.
[16:17] It can be successfully treated if it's caught quick enough, and
[16:20] if the dose isn't too big then it can be treated.
[16:24] Don't get me wrong, wrong, they weren't completely fit and well
[16:27] afterwards. Of course, after losing that
[16:29] much muscle mass, it was going to take them a while to build it
[16:32] back up. They were in wheelchairs for a
[16:34] while. But like I said, they were very,
[16:36] very lucky to have recovered from such a brutal poisoning
[16:40] attack. Peggy Carr on the other hand,
[16:42] wouldn't be so lucky. Her dose was just way too high
[16:46] and doctors did everything that they could to save her.
[16:49] But it was too far gone, there was nothing that they could do.
[16:53] She remained on life support for four months, but eventually her
[16:57] family had to make the heartbreaking decision to turn
[17:00] it all off on March 3rd, 1989. She'd been struggling with these
[17:04] symptoms for almost 6 months now, six months in total, and
[17:09] they really were excruciating. Her family knew how much agony
[17:13] she was in, how much she wanted it all to end, and so at least
[17:17] now they could take some comfort in the fact that she wasn't
[17:20] suffering anymore. But they were now left knowing
[17:23] that their beloved Peggy had been poisoned by someone or
[17:28] something. I mean, there was way too much
[17:30] in her system for it to have been accidental.
[17:32] She must have been intentionally poisoned by someone, killed,
[17:36] murdered by by someone. A police investigation was
[17:39] already underway because at this point it was a probable murder
[17:43] case and police already had their main suspect and that was
[17:48] actually Peggy's own husband PIE.
[17:50] Police always look into the partner or the ex partner when
[17:53] someone dies. And especially because this was
[17:56] such a new relationship, they'd only been married, I don't even
[18:00] think a full year at this point. So police are thinking, well,
[18:03] it's a new relationship. Maybe things weren't quite
[18:05] working out. And so maybe he killed her.
[18:08] There were rumors circulating around the town.
[18:10] I mean, especially now that Peggy was dead, people were
[18:13] saying that they never actually got on.
[18:15] Maybe there was abuse behind closed doors that their kids
[18:18] didn't get on. And so that put a strain on the
[18:20] relationship. There was even a rumor about π
[18:23] having an affair and Peggy finding out.
[18:26] And so maybe he killed her. There is no proof behind any of
[18:30] those things. That was all just speculation.
[18:32] In a small town, you know, that shit happens.
[18:34] But Π was actually very quickly ruled out because police were
[18:37] aware that he was even a little bit thallium poisoned.
[18:41] His daughter was, his granddaughter was.
[18:44] So why on earth would he? And of course, his son, his son,
[18:47] Peggy's son, why would he poison all of these other people and
[18:51] put his own son in hospital if he was just trying to kill his
[18:54] wife? So Π was ruled out and now
[18:57] police don't have any suspects. So they go back to maybe the
[19:00] accidental poisoning theory and they think, well, what if there
[19:04] was just something that was poisoned in the household?
[19:07] I mean, that that makes sense why it was affecting only people
[19:10] in the car family. So they did a search of the home
[19:12] and they seized about 400 different things, different
[19:16] substances that they could take back to a forensics lab and test
[19:20] to try to narrow down where the thallium might have come from in
[19:24] that house. They took things like jars of
[19:27] Pickles, ice cubes, the rat poison that they used, food from
[19:31] their fridge, hair products, cleaning products, empty
[19:34] bottles, absolutely everything. And it was all analyzed by
[19:37] specialists and they actually found something.
[19:40] They actually found something that was contaminated with
[19:42] thallium. The lab had narrowed it down to
[19:44] a pack of eight glass Coke bottles that were found in their
[19:48] kitchen. Some of the bottles were empty
[19:51] and found in the trash. But when it they were tested,
[19:53] when the empty ones were tested, there was found to be thallium
[19:57] residue in the bottom. It seemed that four of these
[19:59] Coke bottles had been drunk. Could they have been drunk by?
[20:04] Peggy And then she got hospitalized.
[20:06] And then when she got out, maybe she drank another one.
[20:08] And then those two boys had one. So police fed back to Pie and
[20:12] they told him that they'd found this, you know, crate of
[20:15] Coca-Cola bottles. And they think this is where it
[20:17] was from. And when Pie heard this, he was
[20:19] honestly shocked because they didn't really drink Coca-Cola in
[20:23] their house. They were a Pepsi family.
[20:25] If they were going to choose between the two, they would
[20:27] always buy Pepsi from the shop. So now he's thinking that maybe
[20:31] someone else brought this Coca-Cola cola into their house.
[20:36] At first, detectives thought it might have been a problem on
[20:39] Coca Cola's end. Maybe they were looking at a
[20:42] potentially massive, maybe nationwide contamination of Coke
[20:46] bottles. So they got in touch with the
[20:47] Coca-Cola Company, who said that they hadn't had any other
[20:51] reports of Thalion poisoning whatsoever.
[20:53] This was a first. Tests and samples were taken
[20:56] from the factory where this specific lot of Coke bottles was
[20:59] made. And yeah, like nothing else.
[21:01] There were no other reports of any of these bottles being
[21:05] problematic. So detectives are looking at
[21:07] these 4 remaining cook bottles, the full ones that were taken
[21:11] from the car home, and they realized that they don't look
[21:15] quite right. They weren't quite sealed
[21:17] properly. I mean, they were sealed
[21:19] properly, but the lids looked funny.
[21:22] They looked crumpled. They looked weird.
[21:23] Something weird had happened. They seemed tampered with.
[21:27] It seemed as though someone had opened these Coke bottles and
[21:31] resealed them somehow. So someone had opened these
[21:34] bottles and intentionally poisoned them with thallium and
[21:37] then sealed them back up and graciously gifted them to the
[21:41] Carr family. But who would want to do that?
[21:44] Police started to interview everyone pretty much that knew
[21:48] the car family and nobody knew of anyone that might want to
[21:51] hurt them. They said that they were a very
[21:53] unproblematic family, a very kind family.
[21:55] They were interviewing colleagues, friends, family and
[21:59] and neighbors. Remember, they only had one
[22:01] neighbor. Well, one set of neighbors, a
[22:04] middle-aged couple named George and Diane or Diana.
[22:07] I don't, I don't actually know. She's referred to as both in a
[22:10] lot of sources. So Diane police asked them the
[22:14] same questions as everybody else.
[22:16] Like do you know of anyone that might want to do this to the
[22:19] Carr family? And everyone else had been like,
[22:21] Oh my God, no, I have no idea who would want to hurt them.
[22:24] George did not say that. George turned to the police and
[22:27] he was like, it was probably someone that wanted them to move
[22:29] out of the neighborhood, their neighborhood of two houses.
[22:33] Make that make sense? It's a very specific theory to
[22:36] have, isn't it? I don't know.
[22:38] Already red flags are red flagging π had actually told the
[22:41] police about that threatening letter that they'd received the
[22:44] year before saying, well, essentially, move out or you'll
[22:47] die. So now George was obviously
[22:50] their number one suspect. There had been threats made to
[22:53] their lives before to make them move out, and now George was
[22:56] sitting here saying whoever had killed them probably wanted them
[22:59] out, so they're suspect. His full name was George
[23:02] Trepple. He was 39 years old.
[23:04] He and his wife Diane or Diana had been together for almost a
[23:08] decade at this point. They were both incredibly
[23:11] intelligent human beings. They were both scholars.
[23:14] They were both members of a very exclusive group called Mensa.
[23:18] It's a society for extremely clever people with Iqs in the
[23:22] top 2%. And both of them were very proud
[23:26] of this. They were heavily involved with
[23:28] Mensa and all of the goings on. That's actually where they met
[23:32] all those years prior. So Mensa held a very special
[23:35] place in their hearts. When they moved to this area in
[23:38] Central Florida, they actually opened up their own Mensa branch
[23:41] because there wasn't one anywhere near.
[23:43] And they were like really big figureheads of the community.
[23:47] They would organize all the meetups, all the activities.
[23:50] They would recruit new members. They were the Mensa of Central
[23:56] Florida. I don't know.
[23:57] George was a very reclusive, anxious person for the most
[24:01] part, but Mensa was his way of coming out of his shell.
[24:04] He was a very logical and analytical person.
[24:07] In his professional life. He worked with computers, but
[24:10] Mensa allowed him to express his like, logical, analytical side
[24:15] in a more fun way. So he would create puzzles for
[24:19] their puzzle column in the newsletter.
[24:21] He would create plots for their mystery dinner night.
[24:25] To be fair, both him and his wife were like.
[24:27] That they were both the kind, the kind of people that didn't
[24:31] have a TV, they just have thousands of books and like a
[24:33] chess table, you know, That was how they lived.
[24:36] They really enjoyed their peaceful, quiet lives in our
[24:39] tourists. But it hadn't always been that
[24:42] way. George Trepple had quite a crazy
[24:45] past. In 1975, George was put away in
[24:49] prison for running one of the biggest meth labs in the whole
[24:53] state, one of the biggest meth production systems that had ever
[24:58] been found in the whole of Florida, and George was running
[25:01] that ship. Through his chemistry degree,
[25:03] George had supposedly learned how to make like the best
[25:07] methamphetamines that you could possibly make.
[25:10] I don't know. So he decided to use these
[25:13] powers for evil and start a meth lab.
[25:16] It's literally giving Breaking Bad.
[25:17] It is. It is giving Breaking Bad.
[25:19] George Trepple is Walter White. By the time the meth lab was
[25:22] found, they'd already produced $7,000,000 worth of meth that
[25:27] had already been distributed around Florida, and that shit
[25:30] was long gone. Of course, he was sentenced to
[25:32] some time in jail. I don't know what his original
[25:34] sentence was, but he only ended up serving three years, which is
[25:38] crazy to me for distributing that much meth into the country.
[25:42] Jesus. But since leaving jail, George
[25:45] seemed to be a changed man. He was very dedicated to his
[25:48] wife. He was very dedicated to Mensa.
[25:51] He was very dedicated to his peaceful, quiet, normal life.
[25:57] That was until he was suspected of poisoning Peggy Carr.
[26:01] When he was questioned by the police, George didn't say
[26:03] anything incriminating, which was frustrating.
[26:07] So instead they decided to put him on 24 hour surveillance.
[26:11] His main alibi as to why he couldn't have poisoned the cars
[26:14] was that he was just so busy with work.
[26:16] He was always at work during the day so he would have never had
[26:19] time to like sneak the bottles into the house or whatever.
[26:22] But as police had him on surveillance, they were watching
[26:25] him and they realized he. Never went to work.
[26:28] They quickly found out that he was unemployed.
[26:30] He would just stay at home all day every day and just read or
[26:34] do whatever I don't know. So he had plenty of time and
[26:37] plenty of opportunity to be able to poison these bottles of
[26:40] Coca-Cola and sneak them into the car house.
[26:42] So this guy has a criminal past, no alibi, extensive knowledge of
[26:48] chemistry and a motive to want to kill the car family or want
[26:53] to hurt. He was the prime suspect, but
[26:55] police had no solid evidence at this point in time, not enough
[27:00] to make an arrest, so they had to get creative.
[27:03] Five weeks after Peggy's murder, George and his wife hosted their
[27:08] annual Murder Mystery weekend for Mensa members that felt like
[27:13] a tongue twister. And this time round, George had
[27:15] received an e-mail from a woman named Sherry saying that she was
[27:19] new to the area. She was a Mensa member wherever
[27:22] she lived before, but she was new to the area and she wanted
[27:25] to join the Mensas in Alturas. So George was like, oh nice,
[27:30] cool, come along to our murder mystery weekend.
[27:33] You can meet everyone. Little did George know, he had
[27:36] just invited an undercover detective to his murder mystery
[27:40] weekend. Sherry, who's real name was
[27:42] Susan, but we'll keep calling her Sherry so it doesn't get
[27:45] confusing. Sherry had been working on this
[27:48] case from the very beginning. She'd been a police officer for
[27:51] years and years and years. And she'd actually worked
[27:53] undercover on cases like this before.
[27:55] So she was quite confident she knew how to do this.
[27:57] Her plan was to befriend George Trepple and try to, you know,
[28:02] gain his trust and hopefully cooks some sort of confession
[28:06] out of him that way. So to do this, Sherry gave
[28:09] herself a believable back story. She said that she was new to the
[28:13] area because she was currently going through a divorce from her
[28:16] abusive husband. She was escaping a really bad
[28:18] situation and she was just looking to rebuild her life and
[28:22] to rebuild a sense of community through Mensa.
[28:25] The abusive ex-husband. Part of her law of Sherry's law
[28:30] was a very well thought out part.
[28:33] It was a tactic because they thought if she could make George
[28:36] feel really sorry for her and hate this fake abusive husband,
[28:41] then he might suggest best that they poison him.
[28:44] Luckily for Sherry, George really took a liking to her as
[28:47] soon as she arrived at the murder mystery weekend.
[28:49] They got along very well and so the plan was looking promising.
[28:53] So if you've never done like a murder mystery party or an event
[28:56] before, basically how it works is everyone gets given a
[28:59] character and kind of a back story and sometimes even a
[29:02] costume and participants all have to work together to solve
[29:06] this like fake murder case and the killer is going to be
[29:09] someone in the room. And as I said earlier, George
[29:11] would create the lots for these events on his own because he
[29:15] loved like, puzzles and logic and stuff.
[29:17] He would get really creative with it.
[29:20] So when Sherry gets to the event, she checks in and she's
[29:23] given like a welcome pack with her character in it and some
[29:26] interesting information about like, the murder case that
[29:30] they're going to be solving. And already as she was reading
[29:32] this welcome pack, shit was suspicious.
[29:35] Shit was crazy. In it, it said few voodooists
[29:38] believe they can be killed by psychic means, but no one doubts
[29:42] that he can can be poisoned. When a death threat appears on
[29:45] the doorstep, prudent people throw out all their food and
[29:48] watch what they eat. Hardly anyone dies from magic.
[29:51] Most items on the doorstep are just a neighbour's way of saying
[29:55] I don't like you move or else. Well, that's a bit fucking on
[29:59] the nose, isn't it? He has.
[30:00] He has written the plot of the exact murder that he is being
[30:04] accused of. You can't write it.
[30:06] Well, you can't. He did.
[30:07] Other than that, though, other than just the general story of
[30:10] the murder that they were solving, there was no nothing
[30:12] else really noteworthy that happened at that first murder
[30:15] mystery weekend. It was going to be a slow
[30:17] process, of course, to gain someone's trust and to make them
[30:20] want to give over their deepest, darkest secrets.
[30:23] You can't just go in straight away.
[30:32] So over the coming months, Sherry spends a lot of time with
[30:35] George. They start going on walks
[30:37] together, going for food and drinks.
[30:40] And obviously Sherry's really nervous this whole time because
[30:43] if he was to suspect her of being an undercover cop, he
[30:47] could just poison her too, just kill her.
[30:49] So whenever they would go out for food and drinks, she would
[30:51] never leave anything unattended. And if she did have to say she
[30:54] had to go to the bathroom or something when she got back, she
[30:57] would just like kind of push it away and be like, you know, I'm
[30:59] done. Throughout their fake
[31:00] friendship, George never explicitly admitted to poisoning
[31:05] the car family. But there were.
[31:07] A lot of red flags that Sherry noticed.
[31:10] For example, she spotted a book in their house called Pale
[31:13] Horse. It's an Agatha Christie novel
[31:15] and the storyline is literally about someone being poisoned to
[31:19] death with thallium. George also mentioned during
[31:23] their conversations and this is actually really fucked up.
[31:25] So warning spiking. George admitted to Sherry that
[31:30] he would sometimes spike people with LSD for fun and just like
[31:35] watch them trip out and get really scared.
[31:37] So he literally admitted to essentially poisoning people for
[31:42] entertainment. He said that he and his wife
[31:44] used to go and pick up hitchhikers and offer them a
[31:46] brownie. Little did they know it was list
[31:48] with LSD. And then they would start
[31:50] tripping and they would be laughing at them and then they
[31:53] would just drop them off in the middle of nowhere.
[31:56] How sick and twisted is that? And I feel like when you're
[31:59] doing stuff like that, it's it wouldn't be a stretch to think
[32:02] that you might one day become a murderer.
[32:05] But despite all of these red flags, like I said, George never
[32:08] actually explicitly said anything about the car family or
[32:11] poisoning them. He didn't even suggest poisoning
[32:14] her thick, abusive ex-husband like she hoped that he would.
[32:17] So they knew they needed to step shit up.
[32:19] They needed to step up this investigation.
[32:21] So they bring in a second undercover cop, a man to be her
[32:26] abusive of ex-husband. He and George are introduced.
[32:28] I don't know how, I don't know how all of this played out.
[32:31] But we do know that he was intentionally trying to piss
[32:35] George off in this meeting to make him personally dislike him,
[32:39] to have more of a reason to want to poison him or to suggest
[32:43] poisoning him. So the fake husband spent the
[32:45] whole thing like bitching about Sherry and trying to like put
[32:49] George down and make him feel stupid.
[32:51] But it wasn't really working. George was actually just really
[32:54] polite and cordial with him the whole time.
[32:57] In fact the only advice that George ever gave to Sherry in,
[33:01] you know, dealing with her ex-husband was that she should
[33:03] frame him for being a paedophile.
[33:06] Which is wild, but it's still not a poisoning admission.
[33:10] George was under surveillance at all times.
[33:12] His phone was tapped. Police would intercept his mail
[33:15] and read it and then like reclose it before it got sent to
[33:18] him. They would look through all of
[33:19] his trash. But still there was nothing.
[33:22] And at this point police are getting impatient.
[33:24] But Sherry was really confident that she could do this.
[33:28] She felt like she was close to getting what they needed.
[33:30] And then in December 1989, nine months after Peggy's death,
[33:36] Sherry finally does it. So for some back story, George
[33:39] and his wife were planning on moving away, about an hour away
[33:42] to a different town. But they were going to keep this
[33:45] house that they'd always had. They wanted to keep everything
[33:48] in it. And they were going to rent it
[33:49] out to another family just for a bit of extra money every month.
[33:53] And well, what an opportunity that would be for this
[33:55] investigation. If Sherry could convince George
[33:59] to let her rent the house, then there'd be no need for like a
[34:03] search warrant because it's her house.
[34:05] She can let police in. They'd be able to search the
[34:07] whole entire home and most of its contents because they, like
[34:12] I said, they were planning on leaving quite a lot of shit
[34:14] there. And it was easier than she
[34:15] thought it was going to be. All she did was drop into
[34:18] conversation with George that she was looking at moving.
[34:20] She needed a new house, and he just offered his.
[34:23] So once Sherry moved in, the house was filled with forensics,
[34:27] police, FBI, and they found a lot of interesting stuff in that
[34:32] house, including a dungeon. Well, pretty much a dungeon.
[34:37] It was like a little secret soundproof dark room and the
[34:41] only thing in there was a bed with shackles on it.
[34:45] Like what were they using that for?
[34:47] Who was this room for? They also found a crap ton of
[34:51] different chemicals and substances in Georgia's office,
[34:54] and they had to collect all all of it and test all of it just in
[34:58] case the labels weren't right. I mean, you'd be a bit stupid to
[35:02] murder someone through thallium poisoning and then leave your
[35:05] thallium just like out on the side with a big label that says
[35:08] this is my poison. So they take all these
[35:10] substances, send them off to the lab, and as they're testing
[35:13] everything, they find it a very nondescript.
[35:17] Little. Brown vial that tested positive
[35:21] for thallium nitrate. It was an exact match to those
[35:24] empty Coke bottles. This was their poison.
[35:26] George Trepple was their poisoner, their murderer.
[35:30] So before they move in and arrest him, Sherry meets up with
[35:33] George undercover one last time to try to coax a confession out
[35:37] of him. She's like, wiretapped,
[35:39] recording everything. She told him that police had
[35:42] been buzzing around their neighborhood lately, mainly
[35:44] around her house, his old house, Something about a murder, an old
[35:49] murder. She was acting like she didn't
[35:51] know anything about Peggy or the situation.
[35:54] This was just like rumors that she'd heard and and George said
[35:57] to her. Well, I hope I'm not a prime
[35:58] suspect. That could be messy.
[36:00] Which like I. Don't know.
[36:02] You don't live there anymore. And it's like, why would you
[36:05] just assume that you would be a suspect?
[36:07] I don't know. They never ended up getting,
[36:09] like, a proper confession out of him.
[36:10] But regardless, they found the vial of thallium nitrate in his
[36:14] house. So that was enough for them to
[36:16] move in and make an arrest. So in April 1990, police make
[36:20] their way to the couple's new house.
[36:21] And it was actually George's wife that answered the door to
[36:24] them. And she was immediately scared.
[36:26] She was actually trying to keep them out of her house.
[36:29] Like, she was standing in the way, blocking them.
[36:31] She wasn't going to let them walk in to the point where they
[36:33] actually had to restrain her. They had a warrant out for this
[36:37] murder arrests. A little woman isn't going to
[36:40] stop them. So police storm straight into
[36:42] the house and they're looking around for George and they
[36:45] eventually find him in his bedroom wearing nothing but
[36:48] women's underwear and he gets arrested for murder like that.
[36:52] What a day for George Trepple. I mean, he didn't resist arrest
[36:56] or anything, although he did ask if he could put some clothes on
[36:59] before they left, which understandable.
[37:01] So George Trepple was charged with one count of first degree
[37:04] murder, 6 counts of attempted murder, 7 counts of poisoning,
[37:09] and one count of tampering with a consumer product.
[37:11] His wife wasn't charged with anything at all, and she
[37:15] insisted that George was innocent too.
[37:17] She said that he'd either been framed or police were just
[37:20] wrong. They just got the wrong guy.
[37:23] But I mean, they literally found the thallium in his office.
[37:26] As part of their investigation, police got a search warrant for
[37:29] his new house and they found another dungeon in there.
[37:33] This one was even scarier as well.
[37:35] All the windows were blacked out.
[37:36] They were sealed up, it was all soundproofed again.
[37:39] The only thing in there again was a bed with restraints on it,
[37:42] but this time there was no handle on the inside of the
[37:45] door. So I guess once you're in there,
[37:47] you can't get out again. There's no way to get out.
[37:50] That's so scary. You know what?
[37:52] I really hope these dungeons were just like a sex thing for
[37:54] them because that is fucking scary.
[37:56] If not, like, what are you actually using that for?
[37:59] Who is going in there? Police searched his office in
[38:01] his new house and they found what can only be described as a
[38:05] poisoning manual. It was all written out by George
[38:09] himself, like handwritten tons and tons and tons of information
[38:12] on just different poisons, different doses, the symptoms.
[38:16] There were tons of pages on just thallium alone.
[38:19] And there were there were like loads, loads of different
[38:22] poisons. He'd also done a bunch of
[38:24] research into like autopsies and how poisons can be detected in
[38:29] human bodies and in their organs.
[38:31] Police also found in his, like, lab, office kind of space, a
[38:35] machine specifically for sealing glass bottles.
[38:39] It's all adding up. It was clear to them now how he
[38:43] had managed to get the thallium inside those Coke bottles and
[38:47] seal them back up and make it look like they'd never been
[38:49] opened. So George was kept in police
[38:51] custody until his trial began in 1991.
[38:55] And of course, the prosecution had one hell of a case against
[38:58] him. They had so much evidence.
[38:59] He looked so guilty. So safe to say his defence team
[39:03] were bricking it a bit. They were nervous lawyer even
[39:06] suggested at one point because he thought they weren't going to
[39:09] get away with this. There was no way that they were
[39:10] going to get away with murder. So he said, why don't we just
[39:14] try and frame your wife for it? Because all of the evidence that
[39:18] they had against George could also be against her.
[39:22] That could have been her thallium, that could have been
[39:24] her bottle resealer. But George said no, absolutely
[39:28] not. That wasn't even an option for
[39:29] him. He he loved his wife.
[39:31] He wasn't going to send her to prison for him.
[39:34] But regardless, George felt like he was still going to get away
[39:37] with it, like he thought he was going to beat this case.
[39:39] And he was so confident that he even arranged to get a lift home
[39:43] from court on the final day of trial.
[39:46] He didn't think he was going to be transported by prison van to
[39:49] the local jail. In the end, as we all expected,
[39:52] George Trepple was found guilty of all of his charges, and he
[39:57] actually laughed as the verdict was read out.
[40:00] Now, when it came to his sentencing, the jury then went
[40:03] back and deliberated on whether he should be given.
[40:05] The death penalty for poisoning this whole family, including
[40:09] children, and murdering Peggy. And when they came back, they
[40:13] said, yeah, send him to the chair.
[40:15] When the judge told him he was going to be executed by electric
[40:18] chair, George had no reaction whatsoever.
[40:22] But actually, I think that's because he already had a plan.
[40:25] He has appealed his sentencing over and over and over over
[40:31] again. So still to this day, he is
[40:34] living in a jail cell. He is allowed to shower every
[40:37] other day. He's allowed to exercise for six
[40:40] hours a week. He does have a tiny little TV in
[40:42] his room, but he doesn't really watch it.
[40:43] He just spends his days reading books and wondering if he's
[40:48] going to die. His wife ended up divorcing him
[40:50] after he'd been on death row for six years, so she stuck by him.
[40:54] She always maintained that she thought he was innocent, but I
[40:57] guess having a husband on death row who is in prison for the
[41:01] rest of his life, I guess that's not fun.
[41:04] I don't blame her. The Carr family themselves were
[41:06] pretty split on the death penalty verdict.
[41:09] Some of Peggy's kids had since forgiven George, and they didn't
[41:13] want him to die for what he'd done.
[41:15] But for π Peggy's widow, the execution couldn't come quick
[41:19] enough. That man had murdered the love
[41:21] of his life and tried to murder their children.
[41:24] He wanted George to die. In fact, he wanted to be there
[41:28] when he was executed. He wanted to what?
[41:30] Obviously he's still waiting for that day to come.
[41:33] I wonder if it ever will come. He's currently 74 years old, so
[41:36] I imagine he will probably just die on death row anyway.
[41:40] But that is all I have for this case.
[41:42] Thank you so, so much for watching.
[41:43] What a crazy 1. So many crazy elements to this
[41:47] one, from the Breaking Bad meth lab to the underwear that he was
[41:51] arrested and it's just this was a roller coaster.
[41:57] Thank you so much for listening to Usual Disclaimer.
[42:00] At this point, I just want to say that if you've been affected
[42:02] by any of the topics we discussed today, please check
[42:05] the description where we've left some helpful resources.
[42:09] If you want to hear more cases like this one, make sure to
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[42:17] And if you really enjoyed, I'd love it if you could leave a
[42:20] rating and a review too. Usual Disclaimer with Eleanor
[42:23] Neil is an Audio Boom Studios production.
[42:26] See you next time.

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