Case 357: Wayne & Sharmon Stock

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Do you really know the person sleeping next to you? Tonya Bales thought she did. She thought she'd married her soulmate. She was wrong. But just how wrong was shocking? You may know John Meehan from the Dirty John Podcast, but there's one story you haven't heard. Now it's being told from the woman who knew him first. Tonya was John's wife for ten years. She's the mother of his two daughters. In the podcast The First Wife, she recounts the abuse she suffered from a man who was coercive and dangerous. This podcast has exclusive archival materials, interviews with the people who knew them best, and long-held secrets that finally surface. What do you do when the person you trusted most was never real? Listen to The First Wife wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge all episodes early and add free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple podcasts or on Spotify.

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Easter Sunday of 2006 was a happy one for Wayne and Sharmon Stock. Like every year, the married couple attended the morning service at their local church in the small village of Murdock, Nebraska, followed by a long brunch with their extended family. But their favourite part of the day was what came next when their adult children and grandkids gathered at their thousand acre farm for the annual Stock family Easter egg hunt. Family was everything to Wayne and Sharmon, and watching their grandkids race around trying to find the eggs always filled them with joy. Afterwards, everyone sat down for a big family dinner before going their separate ways. Wayne and Sharmon cleaned up before retiring to bed.

At around 9 o'clock the next morning of Monday, April 17, the couple's son, Andy Stock, pulled into his parents' driveway ready to start work. He and his father ran the family farm, and that morning they were due to begin planting a new crop. Andy expected to find his dad up and about like usual, doing paperwork or out fixing something on the farm. But Wayne's pickup truck was still parked in its usual spot, and the kitchen, which was typically filled with the smell of freshly brewing coffee, was empty. As Andy looked around, he increasingly got the feeling that something wasn't right. The back door was wide open, the daily newspaper was still in the letterbox, and his mother's Buick hadn't moved from the garage. The whole place felt uncharacteristically quiet.

Rather than searching the whole farm, Andy headed back inside to call Wayne's cell phone. But when he lifted the handset of the line, he felt a prickle of fear. The line was dead.