Larry and Connie Van Oosten

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Hello everyone and welcome to episode 477 of the True Crime All the Time podcast.

I'm Mike Ferguson and with me as always is my partner in True Crime.

Mike Gibson, give me how are you?

Hey, I'm doing pretty good about you.

I'm doing great.

That's good.

Having an amazing week to be honest with you.

Well, it has to be amazing because that's how I roll.

Yeah.

You know, you could say I'm a mediocre.

I work in superlatives.

Yeah, that's just how I am.

Throwing your big words out again.

All right, buddy, we're jumping right in.

We are.

We're talking about the abduction of Connie and Larry Van Uston.

And I found this to be just a fascinating case in February 2017.

Connie and Larry Van Uston were abducted from their home by a mask man

and held in a makeshift dungeon inside a basement.

Adorities were shot when they learned the suspect was someone from the Van

Uston's small, peaceful town.

And we're going to get into all the details, right, as we always do.

But, you know, I think in you and I have touched on this before, your home, kind of your

safe place, your sanctuary, right, when that is invaded, I don't know, for me, there's

like an extra element to it.

Now, it would be horrible to be snatched up on the street, but there's something

about a home invasion that I think really scares people.

Welcome because after that, if you survive, where would you ever feel safe again?

Right.

Because that home is the place where you are supposed to feel safe.

Connie and Larry Van Uston are married couple from Erie, Illinois, a small town in Whiteside

County.

They have two children, Amy and Jeff.

Connie and Larry were both in their early 60s and they were both retired.

Connie once owned a flooring store and Larry operated a pest control company.

Now their daughter, Amy, took over the flooring store after her daughter was born.

Jeff didn't want to take over the pest control company because he was already pursuing a

career in farming, okay, Larry sold that business and it was said that he made enough money

to invest, live off of that and retire.

There you go.

And I'm kind of viewing this as like the drain, right?

You have a couple of businesses.

You made money, you're able to pass one of them down, sell the other, but you're in your

kind of golden years, your retirement years and you have enough money to live on.

You can do those things, you've been wanting to do.

Yeah, absolutely.

And he and Connie did some traveling.

They also dedicated more time to their church and volunteering in the community.

They also loved being grandparents to Amy and Jeff's children.

My wife and I keep dropping subtle hints to our daughters, you know, especially our

oldest daughter, not our youngest yet, but my oldest who is getting married this year,

you know, we keep saying, we can't wait to be grandparents, you know, to have a true

time all the time grandchild.

Yeah, I will have onesies made up, I'll go, I'll do it all.

I think a pacifier that says T-cat.

What do I feel like you have the diaper stamp with Gibby on them?

May.

This one's full of Gibby.

This one's been used.

So I mean, that's good, right?

We work essentially our whole lives if you think about it.

Now we are living longer, right?

People are living longer than they ever have before, but you work, work, work, work to get

to the point where you can retire and then hopefully still be in good enough health

to do some of the things you want to do.

It's the plan, right?

I think the other thing that goes along with that is you have to have the money.

Yeah, you do.

So that means during all of that working time, you have to have saved enough to have

a nest egg that you can live off during retirement at 4.45 pm on February 8, 2017.

The White Side County Sheriff's Office received a call about a possible kidnapping at first

trust and savings bank in Albany, Illinois.

What happened was Connie Van Hooston entered the bank and she requested $350,000.

She passed a note to the teller indicating that she and her husband Larry were being

held against their will and they needed help.

I mean, that would be an interesting note to receive as a teller.

I mean, $350,000.

I don't know if most banks even have that type of cash on hand without a fair notice

ahead of time.

No, I think most banks do, but how many people actually walk in and say, you know, by

the way, I need $350,000 in cash, not many, and you're going to be questioned.

Oh, for sure.

I mean, you can't even get $30,000 out without them saying, what's this money used for?

Yeah.

And we know having worked and you still work in the financial industry, but you know,

anything over what, 10, then you're getting into the area of like a suspicious activity

report.

And there's protocols around that $350,000 is definitely going to make the alarm bells

go off.

But then on top of that, right, you have this note.

It was said that Connie wrote the note on a church bulletin that she had in her purse.

So you know, you seen that before in movies, you know, passing out to the teller, hey,

we're being held up.

Bank employees tried to talk Connie into stay, but she said she was afraid her husband would

be killed if she didn't leave the bank tellers agreed to give her the check because they

didn't want anything to happen to her.

And you know, I thought, okay, a check seems strange.

If someone is holding you for ransom or holding you against your will for money, normally

they want cash because the check is fairly easy to trace.

So it's very traceable.

Yeah.

Even if it's made out to cash, right, you're going to at least know where at what bank it

was.

Cash that.

And what, well, who's going to, who's going to cash a $350,000 check?

And if you deposited it, obviously they're going to know where it was, you know, what

account it was deposited into.

But I also understand, okay, Connie's hesitant to stay on the one hand, she could be safe.

If she stays in the bank, but then she's leaving her, her husband and, okay, most spouses

wouldn't want to do that.

There's some spouses that might do that, but, well, yeah, my wife probably would.

Yeah, maybe.

She's like, I know I'm safe.

Hopefully everything goes okay with him, but if not, we'll make it through.

Connie left the building and the staff called the police.

Connie was captured on surveillance, leaving the bank, walking down the street and getting

into a vehicle that then drove out of the area.

The problem was the license plate wasn't visible in the video.

Jeff Van Ooston called his sister Amy around 5.30 p.m. to tell her that their parents had

been abducted, a friend in the police department told Jeff what had happened.

And that's a tough call to make to your sibling.

Oh, yeah.

You know, hey, mom and dad have been abducted.

I don't have all the details.

Let's say I don't know what's going on, but, hey, it's not good.

Amy then soon received a call from the police asking her to meet them.

Well, I'm sure the police want to try to gather as much information that maybe the kids

can help with, you know, maybe fill in some, some blanks or a lot of blanks, right?

Yeah.

In the process of what happened.

Well, and depending on what the police know, they have to rule the kids out, right?

Because the kids are most likely heirs to the money at 6.15 p.m.

deputies went to the Van Ooston's home and found Jeff already there.

Jeff said that he'd been away from home on a business trip in Washington and hadn't heard

from his parents.

Deputies searched the property and discovered that a basement window had broken or had been

broken from the outside.

Okay.

So point of entry, most likely.

Yeah.

I think, you know, if you're the authority, you kind of have to go that route.

Inside the house, they found taser confetti and a few drops of blood on the carpet.

Or maybe where the taser hit somebody.

Mm-hmm.

I don't know if there's, you know, stuff that comes out along with the probes.

Typically, I mean, you have not been taser to have you.

No.

Yeah.

No, that's something I try to stay away from.

It doesn't feel good, yeah.

It doesn't look like it on the body cam videos that I watch.

Now I did learn that there is a very distinct difference between when they press the taser

onto you, which does cause pain versus when they shoot you with the taser and the barbs

stick in.

Right.

That's where you really get the like involuntary muscular incapacitation.

The other one just hurts.

Yeah.

I did not know that.

Yeah.

That's when I wet myself that one time.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

It happens.

Yeah.

Stop doing.

Stop doing.

Yourself.

Stop doing questionable stuff and you won't have that problem.

So, you know, what we have is a bad situation, right?

From what we know so far, white side county authorities reached out to the FBI for assistance.

Both Jeff and Amy were questioned to rule out their involvement, which we talked about,

right?

They have to do that.

Protocol.

Jeff faced more scrutiny because he'd been out of town and was at the house before the

police arrived.

He was asked if he was having financial trouble or if he'd borrowed money from his parents.

Jeff was more than willing to answer all of their questions and he and Amy were cleared

of any involvement in their parents disappearance.

That's the best way to get cleared up front, honest about everything going on.

No surprises.

Yeah.

Be truthful.

Yeah.

Right?

Well, if you haven't done anything wrong, it's very easy to be truthful.

Well, that's true.

The FBI determined that the vehicle captured on surveillance was a Chevy Caprice from the

early 1990s.

So all right, we're talking about 2017 here by 2017, how many early 1990s Chevy Caprices

are still operating?

Probably not very many.

Yeah, I would think it would narrow the number quite a bit.

We're not talking about a 2015 Ford F-150, where there'd be tons and tons of them.

But nothing showed up in the computer system.

So the surveillance video was just distributed to the media.

That's Caprice were huge to 1991s.

Yeah.

Were they the rounded ones?

Because in the old days, they were boxy.

Yeah, really boxy.

And then I thought today they went to more of a rounded look, but I don't know if that

was the early 90s or not.

I think that was like mid 90s.

Okay.

And they finally went to that look.

And they were shortened up to a little bit.

They were boats.

They were.

They were.

But, you know, to me, that's a smart thing, right?

You have surveillance video, get it out to the media, kind of reminds me of the Nancy

Guthrie case that is very current.

Dominating the media right now.

And you know, like that, the FBI received multiple tips in this case.

One witness saw the vehicle in Geneseo, Illinois, or as you like to say, Illinois.

And I would say, Geneseo C, Illinois.

Okay.

I'm not sure I said it correctly, but I know for a frickin' fact, you didn't say it correctly.

I wouldn't love it.

Geneseo C.

Somebody from Geneseo's.

Geneseo.

Geneseo.

And you've said it four different ways now, and none of them have the correct number

of consonants to support that.

That's true.

That's true.

But maybe somebody would say, hey, actually, that's how we say it here.

Yeah, maybe.

I'd love it.

People say that just because they want to be on your side, too.

So a witness saw a vehicle.

The car was heading northbound.

The FBI learned that Connie obtained the $350,000 in the form of a cashier's check that

was made out to a company called the Store Edge LLC.

Which I find very strange because you can search LLCs.

Oh, absolutely.

Find out who owns it.

Yeah.

All of that.

An older model Chevy Caprice was registered to an individual connected to the business,

a man named Chad Skipper.

And investigators, you know, what they had to do was establish some type of connection,

right, between the Van Oustins and Chad Skipper.

Jeff and Amy were completely shocked.

And they couldn't believe that Chad would be involved in abducting their parents.

They had both known Chad for many years.

He attended their church.

He was in their youth groups.

Chad was a year ahead of Jeff in school.

They didn't have the same friend group, but they were friendly with each other and said,

hello and passing.

Okay.

But somebody they knew.

Yeah.

Somebody they knew, but also back to some of the things that you've been talking about,

didn't take authorities very long to figure out who this was.

Right.

He had the kind of, I don't want to say odd, but not very plentiful car, the Chevy Caprice.

You've also asked for the check to be mailed out to a business that you actually have a

connection to.

Yeah.

You had the check made out to this LLC.

Doesn't seem like you're very smart about this.

So what does that mean?

Either the person is, like you said, not very smart or wasn't planned out well, was spur

of the moment and they just didn't know what to do.

Yeah.

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Chad was valedictorian of his class.

Jeff looked up to him because of his intelligence and this Chad guy seemed like he had it all

together.

So he's not somebody that's dumb.

No, no, he obviously must have been smart and I think he was popular as well.

Chad and Larry were both elders at their church.

A couple of years prior, Chad was starting out as a financial advisor and Larry decided

to seek him out and meet with him about potentially becoming a client.

When Larry reviewed Chad's proposal, he decided not to work with him because he didn't

think it would benefit his investments.

They discussed their investments with Chad during the meeting, which is important because

that means he was acutely aware, right?

Of just how much money they had that point.

He knew there was 350,000 sitting in a bank.

Well, and they could have had a lot more of that, but he knew that right at least they

had that.

Yeah, probably Jeff and Amy recalled their parents mentioning this meeting when it happened

in the early hours of February 9, 2017, the FBI linked Chad Skipper to two properties

in Genesia.

One of the addresses was a large rental home with a four car garage.

Agents went to the property, but they didn't find anything out of the ordinary and usual

from the outside, so they didn't have probable cause to conduct a search.

Which I find strange, right?

I mean, you know that or the check was made out too.

You know about the Caprice, you have some other knowledge around it, but you know, obviously

the courts must need a lot more information than that before you can enter the home.

Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, it's one of our protection that we have.

And I get it.

I don't want police coming into my house for no reason.

Just because they think I might have done something or know something about something.

Well, you do.

I know some stuff about things you've done.

Well, I didn't want to say that.

I don't care.

Let's go ahead and throw it out there.

Agents split up and they conducted surveillance on the rental home and the van

Ooston home in Erie.

A deputy watching the van Ooston house saw a silver Caprice in the area.

And they attempted to pull the driver over.

The driver acted like they were going to stop, but then they sped off.

And I see this actually quite a bit on my body cam videos.

Well, that's tough.

I do love the videos, but people will pull over and it's like they wait for the police

officer to get out of the car and maybe get about three fours to the way to their car.

And then they take off because they know it's going to give them a little bit of lead

time.

The officers then got to race back to their car.

Get in.

I guess if you stole the car that might work for you, but if you didn't steal the car,

well, they see your license plate.

They have your license plate.

They know who you are, where you live.

Well, and also look at the technology today with helicopters, you know, you can't outrun

a radio, you know, so there's night vision.

There's just so much technology.

Also, if I'm being honest, I don't know that a early 1990s Caprice is the best vehicle

to choose to try to get away from police.

Yeah, probably not.

I'm sure it had a big V8 in it, probably, but still.

It also weighs a ton, you know, when I'm talking about a Hellcat or a Corvette, a Lamborghini

or something like this, you're basically driving a tank down the road.

Now if you want to ram into some people or you want to try to not get like pit maneuvered,

that might be a good car for it, but I just don't know, I don't think you're out running

anybody.

I don't think you're going to be able to get away.

It's kind of like Jason Bateman and Horrible Bosses when he's driving the Prius and they're

talking to the police and he says he drag races and he says I don't win a lot.

Yeah.

Of course not.

It's just the way he delivers the line that to me is so funny.

So obviously a high speed chase ensues and it ended on Illinois Route 84.

The drivers were into the opposite lane as another car was approaching.

They were going fast, obviously it's high speed and crashed into a guardrail.

Luckily, the other driver only had minor injuries and the driver of the Caprice was identified

as Chad Skipper.

So you talked about probable cause before, you know, I think the burdens high right to

enter someone's home, but pretty obvious what we're dealing with here.

Why does this guy not want to pull over, why does he not want to stop?

And then why are you trying to run away from police and he pretty readily admitted that

he was holding the vanoostons and he even gave the address that FBI agents were already

staking out.

He came sort of clean or he came clean.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, I'm always fascinated by interrogations, right?

They can go a couple of different ways, a few different ways.

You have the people who no matter what you say to them, no matter what mountain of evidence

you throw at them, they're never going to admit to what they've actually done.

You then you have the people who, you know, right out of the gate, they say, nah, you got

the wrong person.

It wasn't me, but they wear down.

Surely do.

And then they've kind of fold as time goes on.

And then you have some people who just like right off the bat or like, yeah, you got

me.

I just, I think Chad was going to have a hard time explaining some items that were in

his car when they did finally get a hold of them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No doubt about it because when they searched his car, they found a shovel.

They found plastic sheeting duct tape, a saw.

I mean, basically, this is some dexter type stuff, indications that he was planning on

burying a body or multiple bodies.

I mean, a saw, I mean, he was planning on cutting them up, yeah, potentially, yeah,

they're not about it.

But I mean, we all carry things inside our vehicle, but most people don't carry is essentially

a hit kit or an after a hit kit to bury a body.

Yeah.

You might take a shovel if you're going to do some work.

People might have duct tape just for general repair or whatever, but it's, it's all of

it together, right?

You know, before I leave here tonight, I need to leave something in your garage.

Yeah, I would prefer you didn't.

That's kind of a standing rule that we have, no leaving stuff in my house.

That's right.

Take my stuff with me.

You've tried multiple times.

It's a few.

But 3 a.m. agents kicked in the door of Skipper's property.

They cleared the entire house, but they couldn't find Larry or Connie during the second round

of searching.

They discovered a TV monitor on the floor of one of the rooms that showed a surveillance

video feed and they could see footage of two people lying on a mattress in a room with

no windows or doors.

Options had a feeling that, you know, Connie and Larry were inside the house.

They just weren't looking in the right spot.

They just couldn't find them.

This gives me a little bit of like saw vibes.

It does.

Yeah.

Right.

You have the surveillance video that, you know, the saw guys looking at or whoever is the

saw person at that point does movies get a little convoluted a little bit at times.

But how do you have a room with no windows or doors then that's an interesting concept.

It also makes it kind of hard to find people.

You don't think about searching that, right?

But during the search, the agents noticed that it looked like a wall had recently been

put up in the basement in an upstairs clause and an agent removed a piece of plywood

covering the floor, revealing a solid steel hatch.

Agents cut the lock and opened the hatch, which then led to a secret room in the basement.

Wow.

I mean, some of that planning.

Well, what does that tell us though?

This guy didn't abduct these two people and then all of a sudden install all this.

This was done ahead of time.

Definitely pre-planned.

Yeah.

There's no doubt about it.

Now, whether it was specifically for them, we'll have to talk about, but it's a little

bit.

I don't want to use the word ingenious because I don't want to give this guy credit.

But if you're searching, let's say my basement here, right, the studio is in my basement.

You look over and you see that wall, there's no door, there's no nothing, you just assume

there's nothing behind it.

Just a little too, they know there is.

There isn't because that's concrete, but is this when we go, it's concrete.

It's concrete, but it's a little bit of an ingenious plan, although I hate to give this

person credit.

Inside that room, Rukhani and Larry, who were lying on a mattress, Larry recalled that

it was a very joyful moment.

I bet it was.

When they were rescued.

Yeah.

I'm sure you thought things were going to be in over soon.

Yeah.

I could imagine any scenario like that, whether you're by yourself and in this case, husband

and wife are together, you are probably, I would think, Gibbs at the very least, making

right with the situation that you may not come out of this a lot.

So to all of a sudden, have law enforcement show up and save you, I can't even imagine

what that feeling would be like, because obviously I've never been in that position.

I think you would definitely be happy that you're adjective.

Happy.

Yeah.

I'll go with happy.

There were a lot that you could use, but yeah, happy.

So again, joyful, happy, whatever you want to call it, Larry said they told us it was

the FBI and they were here to rescue us in that we were safe.

And again, at that moment, it had to be one of the better feelings that they'd probably

experienced in their lives.

Music to my ears.

Chad Skipper had created basically a makeshift dungeon, right, inside the basement.

The walls of the room were reinforced with steel, okay, which they'd have to be, because

if you think about just putting drywall up, well, you can bust through drywall.

Kick your way out of that.

Yeah.

You just kick in between the studs, you just walk right through like the cool aid man.

So something's going to have to be reinforced.

And then the metal hatch could only be opened from the outside.

And we mentioned it, right?

He had installed cameras connected to monitor the room, I mean, he did put some planning

into this.

Yeah.

Quite a bit.

I would think there were stacks of ramen inside the room as well as a shower and a toilet.

On the other side was a locking mechanism for handcuffing.

So my assumption would be, you know, if he needed to come down, he would maybe handcuff

one and handcuff the other, there's got to be a system to where you're not putting yourself

in jeopardy that you're going to be overpowered.

Right.

He'd have him go to that wall, put their hands through, maybe chain him up, then go down

and do whatever, restock the ramen.

Yeah.

Something like that.

Because that's my very favorite.

I don't know.

If it's spicy and you're in a dungeon with only one toilet, you're right.

You might want to rethink that.

The room obviously had been designed to hold people against their will.

And it was clear, like you said, that Skipper had put significant effort into building

this room and also planing the abduction in his post arrest interview.

Chad admitted that he had been thinking about the abduction for a long time.

He said, I wanted to do it and I did do it.

Money was tied and I kept trying to find a way to push it and push it.

It was said that he was low on money due to some bad investments.

Okay.

So your fix is to kidnap this couple, take their money.

Well, sure.

And then because you can't have him remain alive, you're going to kill him most likely.

Yeah.

Also, he can't manage his own money, probably good that Larry didn't invest his money

with him.

That's what I was thinking.

The same thing.

And then I'm thinking, so you're going to get this money.

You suck at managing your own money.

Probably going to lose that too.

Yeah.

And then you're going to be back to square one where you got to, what, rob somebody else.

Yeah.

How many people are in this town that you can pull this off with?

But you know, this is what strikes me about a lot of these types of crimes.

You have somebody who will call it being in a pinch, right during a bad situation.

And I get it.

Nobody wants to be broke or nobody wants to.

And when you're kind of writing on top, let's say stumble, you make some bad investments,

you lose a bunch of money.

But there are ways to dig yourself out, of course there is of any of those situations.

But I think so often, people want to find the easy way out, the quick solution, even

if it involves stealing from or hurting other people.

I mean, I'm thinking this guy here, I mean, if you follow Bankruptcy, isn't that better

and you're out of it and, I don't know, four, five, six, seven years versus robbery?

Taking the chance on spending maybe the rest of your life in jail.

Yeah.

I would if you're going to have to kill the people.

I would think so.

It's just, you know, on the one hand, you have Larry and Connie who had essentially worked

their entire lives to support their family, raise their kids and put enough money away

to, you know, live well during retirement.

They did everything right.

They did everything they were supposed to do to get to the point that they could retire

and do the things I wanted.

Yes, absolutely.

And then you have their chapter who basically wants to skip all of that part and go straight

to the money.

And it just, could it work?

I guess you could get away with it, but, you know, you could also just put in the hard

work like the rest of us exactly to get what you want.

Chad told investigators, I asked Larry and Connie for money a few years back.

If they had helped me out then, things might have been different.

Probably not because you were not good at investing your own money.

But also, what kind of sense does that make?

You know, okay, they wouldn't give me any money or loan me money or whatever the situation

was.

So this is how it had to turn out.

No, it didn't have to turn out that way.

You know how rich people stay rich by not giving away their money.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Or not investing it with people who they don't have a good feeling about.

I mean, they work hard for that money.

They have their money.

Why would they give it to him?

I mean, does make any sense.

No, not at all.

Chad admitted that he knew the police could track him through the LLC, but said, I was only

thinking about the moment and getting the money.

There you go.

Back to what we were talking about earlier.

He had planned all of this out, but then he doesn't plan that part.

Just doesn't make sense.

I get it.

He was the top of his class, but he's also a financial guy.

Well, but we know he's not a very good financial guy.

That's true.

That's true.

He claimed he was disassociated during the commission of the crime saying, I looked at

it through as if I was someone else looking through what I was doing.

The demon inside me, the demon, huh?

Frog demon.

Frog demon, which we haven't actually talked about in a long time.

He's talking about his frog demon.

Yeah.

There was a different demon here.

Well, you have a couple of frog demons that people have sent in to you over the years.

That's the one I know mostly though.

But you know, you hear this from criminals from time to time.

It's like I was standing above myself, seeing myself do this.

It wasn't really me.

No.

It was you.

Yeah.

It was you for sure.

Larry and Connie recounted the adoption in an interview for the show, Fett.

Larry said it was about seven o'clock in the morning.

I was sound asleep.

I thought I was dreaming.

I felt a presence in the room and I saw this person standing next to the bed dressed

in black and with a gun.

Finally, I realized this is real and I yelled.

And the next thing I knew, he shot a taser at me.

Connie said, the first words that I spoke were, oh, Lord, please help us.

Please help us.

And his first words to me were, where's your God now?

Okay.

Pretty rough for a couple of very religious people, including him.

He attended the same.

Oh, that's true.

That is true.

I forgot about that.

And again, as I've said often, these home invasion type scenarios are very scary to me.

You know, you're, you're supposed to be all bundled up, safe in your home or sleeping.

We've talked about how vulnerable people are when they're sleeping.

You wake up to see a man all in black with a gun.

Very scared.

It would be scary.

Connie was forced to handcuff Larry and the masked man handcuffed her.

He put tape on their eyes and mouths and they were ordered to keep quiet.

They were forced into the trunk of the Chevy Capri and we're in the car for about half

an hour.

Now those cars did have a big trunk.

They did kind of probably kind of roomy.

I mean, if you're going to be put into a trunk, that's not a bad car to, yeah, for it to

be stretch your legs out a little bit.

Connie said that once they arrived at the house, he took me out first and led me to what

I thought was going to be a small room, but it turned out to be a closet.

And then I had to climb down a ladder.

Connie asked Chad, why are you doing this?

He said he would keep them until he got all their money and then he would have to kill

them.

He's being upfront about it.

Yeah, which I guess to me is kind of a strange way to go about it.

Maybe you might want to give the person some hope.

I'm not telling abductors how to do their business, obviously, but, uh, you know, when

you tell someone that you're going to kill them ahead of time, what do they have to

lose?

That was there incentive to help you get what you need and be cooperative and, and all

that.

Connie knew that writing the note at the bank was their last chance to be rescued.

They believed that God helped them through their ordeal.

They recalled the fear he felt when Connie was taken to the bank.

He said, when he took her through the bank, I kept going through different scenarios.

What should I have done?

What could I have done?

What can I do?

How do I help her?

And just being tied up there and knowing there was nothing I could do to help her.

I'll never forget that.

And that must have been a sense of helplessness that, you know, would just drive you, drive

you crazy.

It would.

Connie said Larry never thought that he protected me, but he did.

He stood by me the whole time and he was there and did everything in his power to protect

me and he's continued to do that.

And let's face it, what else could the guy do?

You have a guy with a gun, right?

You're tied up.

You don't have a lot of options.

Not just tied up your handcuffed.

Very limited.

Yeah, you're limited in what you can do.

At least, you know, he's letting her know I'm here with you, we're in this together.

Yeah.

And Larry called his wife a hero saying she didn't have to come back.

She could have stayed right there at the bank and sent the police, but she didn't do it.

She came back on her own free will just so they could find me.

She came back to save me.

Yeah, she really did.

Yeah.

And that says a lot.

So, I mean, you really have to give her credit for that because I'm sure that must have

been a scary thing to do, but I think it also shows you, you know, how much she loved

her husband.

Yeah.

I mean, she wasn't going to leave him alone.

Some wife's or partners would have stayed.

Some might not have even went to the bank to get the check.

Just take it off.

Yeah.

On February 9, 2017, Chad Skipper was charged with home invasion, kidnapping and two counts

of aggravated kidnapping.

Chad's parents Marlin and Linda Skipper sued him and July 2017.

They found evidence that Chad lied about several investments he made on their behalf.

According to the suit, in September, 2010, while Chad was working as a financial advisor,

his parents invested $160,000 from their 401k into a principal annuity account.

Chad closed that account without telling his parents.

It was worth about $221,000 by that time.

His parents claim Chad took the money for himself, just a thief.

Yeah.

Not only is he bad at investing, he just takes the investments as well.

They also alleged that between February 2013 and February 2017, Chad led them to believe

he had invested $10,000 in annuity in $77,000 into a CD.

He took that money in $600 a month he received as part of the CD.

He is just not going to get the son of the year award.

No, I mean, bad enough to do this to other people, but to do it to your own parents,

and steal their harder money, their retirement savings, I mean, that's pretty low.

He also allegedly cashed a check on one of their credit cards and charged over $13,000

to a card he opened in their name.

Between September 2012 and March 2013, Chad allegedly rolled money from his parents 401k

into a company called Skipper Financial Services.

He allegedly stole around $97,000 during that period.

In total Gibbs, his parents accused him of stealing around $444,000 from that.

Almost a half a million dollars.

How do you do that to anybody, let alone your parents?

Well, it's a ton of money, but let's look at what the money represents, right?

Most likely, their life savings and what they're going to be relying on to live the rest

of their lives after retirement.

Yeah, no, no, because you did that, what do they have besides maybe social, social, social

security?

What is it?

Easy for you to say.

Yeah, obviously.

Yeah.

I mean, this pry forced them to keep working longer than what they wanted to and it's just

terrible.

We discovered the theft shortly after law enforcement searched the desk in his home after he was

arrested in September, 2017.

First trust and savings bank filed for foreclosure on a house in Erie owned by Chad.

The bank attempted to recover $44,000 on the line of credit.

Chad took out against the house in 2013 and it's kind of ironic, right?

This is the same bank where Chad attempted to cash the $350,000 cashier's check.

On November 15, 2018, Chad Skipper pleaded guilty to three charges, two counts of aggravated

kidnapping and concealing identity, home invasion with a dangerous weapon.

So aggravated kidnapping, brutal, concealing identity, maybe not at the top of the list,

but home invasion with a dangerous weapon that's up there as well.

He was previously charged with harassment and witness tampering, but those charges

were dismissed with his guilty.

I'm just trying to figure out what the heck did he do with all this money that he stole

from his parents?

Like, did he have a, I don't believe the research ever said, did he have like a drug habit

or gambling problem or, yeah, it didn't say that what it did talk about was bad investments.

So is it possible that, you know, he made some bad investments and then he was, because

this is a vicious cycle, right?

It's like gambling.

You lose a bunch of money at the track, so you go get a bunch of money from somewhere

else and try to make it up gambling on something else and you just keep getting deeper and

deeper in debt.

What do you do?

Did he invest it with, what's that Leo DiCaprio's Wolf of Wall Street penny stocks just

didn't pay out?

Maybe we don't know.

On April 3rd, 2019, Chad was sentenced to 60 years in prison without the possibility

of parole.

He was 40 years old at the time of his arrest.

According to the Illinois DOC website, Chad's projected discharge date is 2071.

He would be in his 80s by that time.

I don't feel bad for the guy.

His, I don't need him.

His parents are got to be struggling because what he did with them and then obviously

what he did to his other family, but and who knows who else he stole money from.

Right.

There could have been other people as well.

If you can still money from your mom and dad, you can still money from anybody.

Oh, I would say that's absolutely correct, but you and I just got done dropping a Patreon

episode on Saturday night, this past Saturday night.

And in that episode, now granted, we were in Australia, right?

But somebody got like six years or so for doing some really bad things.

Now, I'm not saying this is not bad, but what it does show is the difference between

countries.

Look about that quite a bit as far as it comes, as far as it goes, was sentencing and things

like that.

Big difference.

Yeah.

I'm, I'm happy with 60 years.

Oh, I am too.

He would have probably killed these two individuals.

Here's a good chance.

If he didn't have the accent that he had and they, you know, were able to locate the mysterious

dungeon.

Yeah.

You're probably right.

But that's it for our episode on the abduction of the Van Ustens and anything else?

No, at one point I was going to be Rex Van West, because like Van West, you know, like

Van Helsing.

Yes.

Exactly.

Go around and chase vampires and stuff.

So we didn't, I don't know if everybody noticed, but I got a couple of new signs here.

Yeah, yours, yours has your alter ego on it.

But if anybody likes the signs and you, you know, you can get these little things made

up.

They're not very, they're not very expensive at all.

But if you'd like to go out to our website, we have our mailing address on there.

Do.

Send us a couple as long as they're not too vulgar, you know, we'll put them up for sure.

Yes, you will, especially if they have something funny about me.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Or if they're funny about me, I can, I can take it as well.

All right, buddy, that is it for another episode of True Crime all the time.

So we'll talk to you all next week and for Mike and Gibby and Gibby, I messed that completely

up.

Do you do that now then and for Mike and Gibby stay safe and keep your own time ticking.

I think it's weird because we don't do the music and we don't do all of that.

So I get out of my natural rhythm.

Intro and outro?

Yeah.

All right.

We love y'all and we'll see you next episode.