Sadistic Shanda Vander Ark’s cruel campaign of hell against teen son

Put your seatbelt on, we didn’t know some of these cases could get any wilder but apparently, they can. 

From doctors behaving badly to a tragic story of child abuse, we’re running down some cases you’ve probably heard of and some you haven’t. 

The worst medical malpractices cases in the state are piling up in North Florida and stretching to the Panhandle. 

Dr. Thomas Shaknovsky is accused of accidentally removing an Alabama man’s liver instead of his spleen at a hospital in Miramar Beach.

In Jacksonville, an orthopedic surgeon, the late Dr. David Heekin, is at the center of one of the largest mass-medical malpractice actions in Florida’s history with 522 lawsuits. 

Both incidents happened at Ascension hospitals and the executive in charge during Heekin’s tenure when he was accused of botching patient surgeries, Tom VanOsdol, has been promoted to the national leadership team where he oversees “the strategic integration of Ascension's mission and values…across all organizational policies, programs, and culture.”

From executives and doctors who patients trust to a mother of five who is expected to protect her children, sometimes alleged “bad actors” turn up when you least expect it.

Mom and former law clerk Shanda Vander Ark was an abuser who cruelly ended the life of her 15-year-old special needs son through cruel, atrocious, and systematic abuse.

On the surface Vander Ark appeared highly successful, a bit of a know-it-all, and a gruff, no-nonsense person.

She graduated from law school with honors, clerked for two judges, and aced the bar exam.

Then she ended up being tried for the murd3r of her son, Timothy Ferguson, in the same courtroom where she had previously worked, turning the trial into a circus with delays, motions, and shenanigans. 

But there was no distracting from the terrible facts that she starved, t0rtur3d, and ended her boy's life with the help of another son and his older brother. 

Join us for the latest episode of the Gulf Coast Confidential Podcast, “Sadistic Shanda Vander Ark’s cruel campaign of hell against teen son,” but it comes with a sensitivity warning.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

This episode is brought to you by Czarzar Law. I'm investigative journalist Molly Barrows. For years, I've covered the stories that made headlines in Northwest Florida and all along the Gulf Coast. Murder. Missing persons. And mysteries of all kinds. These cases are far from over for many victims. Because the full story has yet to surface. Join me for Gulf Coast Confidential, where I dive into the saltier side of the South and expose the lies, greed, and corruption that often weigh down the truth. It's time to turn the tide and get a shot at justice. Hey y'all, and welcome to the Gulf Coast Confidential Podcast. I'm Molly. Hi, I'm Pam. And if you haven't already, please hit that subscribe button if you will and like it. We'd love to hear from you too. Leave a comment or a suggestion about a case. Let us know what you think about these episodes. You know, we love these what the feezy cases, and we'd love to hear what what the fee's happening in your neck of the woods. So, not just here in beautiful Northwest Florida and well beyond the Gulf Coast. Well, today's episode is called Sadistic Shonda Vanderk's Cruel Campaign of Hell Against Teen Son. Four years ago this month, a 15-year-old special needs boy, Timothy Ferguson, died, y'all, just weighing 69 pounds. This wasn't due to a natural illness or an accident. It was the result of planned and systematic torture that went on for a year before the boy passed away, police said in July of 2022. The people who did it, his own mother and brother. We're talking about the sick and twisted case of Shanda Vander Arc. Police say under the guise of strict discipline and punishment, she tortured her son to death by denying him food, locking it away from him, and giving him ice baths for hours on end. And that's just a sampling of some of the stuff that she did.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

Oh, my goodness. I had to take a beta blocker before we do this show because it's upset me so much. But she would scold you right there. What'd you call her? Shonda. She's my name's Shonda. She correct all the people in the jail, and I'm like, gonna be a nice visit for you. I'm sure they're all lovely personality like a rattlesnake wrapped around a cactus.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

And they're gonna jump right on that too, mispronouncing the name as well. I I will certainly make a note. We don't want nothing happening to you. No, uh-uh, I agree. And we'll have more of that case in just a minute, but first we want to update you on some other cases that we're following. If you follow Gulf Close Confidential, then you know we've certainly been following Dr. Thomas Shiknowski. He's the surgeon in the Destin area who is accused of removing Mr. Bill Bryan's liver instead of his spleen and causing him to bleed out right there in the OR on the operating table. So, you know, one of the last times we talked about this, his he's charged with manslaughter, a criminal charge of manslaughter in the death of Mr. Bryan. And his defense team had filed a protective order, which essentially was asking the judge to issue a gag order in the case because they were concerned that all the pretrial publicity and and basically uh personal injury attorney Joe Czarzar, who is representing the widow, Miss Beverly Bryan, and is also a supporter of Gulf Coast Confidential, he was putting out regular updates like he does with all of his cases, but he was also putting out videos about Shiknowsky. And also, you know, it's made worldwide headlines. So it people in the media like ourselves continue to follow this. And the defense was essentially saying, hey, we don't want anybody talking about this for as much as possible, you know, what's already bad enough that everybody's talking about it and making pre-judgments about this guy, and we just and the judge basically said, denied, yeah, and that just happened. So that that will not, there won't be a gag order in that case. There was no explanation in the order that I could find the Walton County clerk's office. Um, their website was a little bit on the fritz this morning when I was trying to check on some of those sayings and nothing would open up, but at any rate, at least that was denied. I thought that was kind of interesting. Um, that was filed in June of 20, June 25th. He does still have several active medical malpractice cases against him, not just the one with Miss Bryan. Um, so we're gonna continue to follow that and see whenever his next court date is.

SPEAKER_00 4:15

No doubt. Well, and also he hadn't just been staying over here in Destin and this area. The we've got a Gulf Coast and uh lower Alabama stuff too that we're looking into, you know. And of course they don't want people to talk about it, but I'm of the school of heaven's sakes, if you don't want people talking about it, how about you don't damn do it in the first place?

SPEAKER_01 4:36

You cannot remove a man's organ on accident, on purpose, however it happened. He does plead not guilty, by the way. He said that this was not something that he meant to do and that it it tortures him every day. And I'm like, well, it certainly doesn't torture you like it tortures his family and his widow that he left behind. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:54

Can you imagine going in there? You're going and you on vacation, you go in there to have your surgery, he will never know, but his family knows. And that's what I get so upset about. How dare you to act like that tortures you or he he likens it to a sink overrunning and I can't reach in and find a fork. The day you compare my husband that is 70 years old, been a good, good man, to a fork in a sink, you need to shut the hell up, talking.

SPEAKER_01 5:22

Right. Well, and if it was that confusing, maybe that's the time you step away and put somebody in there who can't handle it.

SPEAKER_00 5:27

But see, here we are again with all the chaos that the the person that appoints themselves as the supreme deity, whether it's the hospital or the surgeon, this is a system that's enabled all this. This one I can't get over this stuff, and I will not get over this, and I won't stop talking about it. Because he's still got his passport, he's got dual citizenship, he can go anytime he wants to. I reckon uh w they better be watching what's happening at the airport, not a gag order.

SPEAKER_01 5:54

Yeah, I agree. And one of the reasons that we're talking about Dr. Thomas Shiknowsky is uh, you know, we've been following this case for some time, and Joe Czarzar, in fact, if you want to check out some of the previous episodes that we've done on this, we have a playlist called Dr. Thomas Shiknowsky, where Joe Zarzar talks a lot about what he found when he was litigating the case. And that includes that there were other cases that showed, in his opinion, a pattern of hospital administrators basically looking the other way when there were egregious, obvious problems, patterns of behavior, doctors that were committing the same mistakes, making the same mistakes, and having the same bad outcomes, if you will, with patient after patient. And no case is a better example of that than the one of Dr. David Heakin. Now, you may have heard us talk about this before, but um David Heakin also worked for an Ascension hospital, just like Dr. Thomas Siknowsky, excuse me, Dr. Thomas Shiknowsky, he worked for Ascension Emerald Coast over there in Miramar Beach near the Destin area. Um, and so David Heakin worked for one in Jacksonville, which was essentially Ascension St. Vincent in Jacksonville, Florida. So he died, this doctor that's at the center of 522 lawsuits just past May, May 2nd of 2026, um, following a long multi-year battle with what's called progressive supranuclear palsy. Now, this is the same terminal neurodegenerative brain disorder that led to his forced medical retirement in 2020. And it's the basis, basically, for why there is this massive malpractice litigation against him. Now, will his death affect this litigation? According to the state of Florida, it's not. Basically, you know, even though he's deceased, the he's in and retired after all these cases started coming forward, you know, of medical malpractice and negligence that he botched hundreds of operations, including hip and knee replacement surgeries, because he was impaired because of this disease that ultimately took his life. But because he's already given uh depositions and statements and the litigation is well underway. They're in the discovery process right now. It hasn't gotten to trial yet. But um it it has literally grown into one of the largest medical malpractice mass tort actions in Florida's history. So they're in discovery, and what they found is um tons of documentation, email, text between staff and hospital administrators expressing concern about Dr. Heakin and these outcomes and his health and why it's affecting his outcomes and how it's impacting these patients and causing all these horrendous and terrible injuries according to these lawsuits. So um, ascension, what Joe Czarzar said was that they had this pattern of ignoring problems, and he related that to Shiknowsky's case as well, saying, hey, he's had other wrong site surgeries, not as egregious as this one, but there was a pattern of behavior that administrators should have known about. And that's what he talks with us about, and that a lot of this is geared towards making money, that there's more money to be made by passing the buck, if you will, allowing these problem doctors to continue practicing, even knowing there's a high risk that there may be a problem because they're still making more money off of them performing surgeries than they would have to pay out in a potential lawsuit. Right. Which to me just is horrendous. Oh, yeah, if that's true.

SPEAKER_00 9:13

It's unethical. It's just even unbelievable, but it happens. I mean, none of these people have practiced in a vacuum. None of these people are in there by themselves, but here's what has happened, and that's when we have to look above the incompetent surgeon or the surgeon that has a messiah complex rolling in there late and nobody says anything to him, because we got executives that have a messiah complex also. So, I mean, the thing is we've lost track. The patient, the most important person in the whole hospital at that moment, is the patient. They shouldn't have to worry about anything or anybody else. We got these folks in there practicing, and you know, it's not just medical care anymore, it's about the big old buck. Healthcare is a big old buck. But we got people sitting up there acting like they don't know what's going on. They want, when someone comes to them and goes, hey, this person is treating me with disrespect, they're treating the patients with disrespect, so let's just follow this for a minute. We got Heakin with 522 lawsuits, not adverse effects, but lawsuits, I say that every time, are adverse events. All right, then we've got Ben Brown, then we've got uh Shaknofsky, we've got all just we're gonna talk about a bunch today, but they're all operating in a petri dish that goes, This is great, we're having the best time, we got bigger profits than we ever had. You're effing it up on the front end, they bitching about it, getting a little lawyer, then you come back and it's a circular, it's their economic circle. They're coming back, we make more money taken care of and fixing that F-duptness you got right there. Nobody stops and goes, 522 is a whole lot. Five is a lot, twenty-two is a lot, one lawsuit's a lot. And so all this is going on, you can't tell me that those people are that stupid that they're gonna sit there and think they think we're that stupid. And I'm tired of that. That's why I'm such an ass about this stuff now. I'm not gonna sit around and think that you got 2,700 texts from people of different varieties telling you about it, and you're going, and you're gonna swear. This is what this one executive at that he can stuff, he swears in writing that I do not have any unique or personal information about this in writing. In writing. And he's trying to hide behind the apex doctrine, and that has made me so mad I can't even tell you how mad that's made me.

SPEAKER_01 11:35

Well, before we get into that, let's bring people up to speed. So Pam's talking about a man named Tom Van Osdahl. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that correctly, but basically, Tom Van Osdahl has been promoted by Ascension in the wake of the Heakin lawsuits to their national corporate headquarters in 2022, just as this litigation with Heakin was heating up. Now, he oversaw both Ascension hospitals in North and Northwest Florida during the years when Dr. Heakin was suffering from this neuro problem and causing these horrendous outcomes with these hundreds of surgeries. And this Van Osdoll basically claimed, well, no, I had no knowledge of this. I didn't know what was going on. But as this lawsuits continued and during the discovery process, what they're finding is that he very well knew that he there were not only, there's not only emails and documentation that was informing him of staff's repeated concerns that he wasn't safe to operate on patients, that they were seeing that he was mumbling, that he was soiling himself, that he just couldn't function. He was just degenerating to that point, which also makes you wonder why the doctor himself wanted to continue practicing. I I don't understand, but but it is bad enough that these lawsuits were, I mean, that these patients were allowed to be treated this way, and it resulted in all these claims. But now you have the man that was at the helm of the ship when it was crashing on the rocks when it came to the patients, and he just took their bodies and put them on the rungs of the company ladder and went straight to the top, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_00 13:02

Oh, yeah. Well, it's it it's it's he's responsible globally, you know. Unbelievable. So and and it's even says so. And even like it like we said, it's a faith-based uh organization, and that's part he's the one charged with setting part of the mission. So here and the thing just with Dr. Heakin, he may or may not have been a aware of, you know, sometimes when people have so much uh grandiosity, like they've been tapped that they're a surgeon or this, that, and the other, then they certainly deserve, you know, some status, but not to where you're a deity or something. But when something is wrong with us neurologically, we don't have as much uh you know, self-awareness about it. But you're gonna tell me a whole hospital full of grown men and women, doctors and nurses and uh people that make diagnoses, that tells me everybody in that hospital should have ran. You can't diagnose this extremely volatile man that went from being a very accomplished surgeon to screaming and acting a fool and doing all kinds of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 14:03

Putting in knee replacements backwards according to these lawsuits.

SPEAKER_00 14:06

Right. But see, there the that there we go again. It's we can charge more to take the backward knee in and put it back in right on the next time. I would be ashamed before God to do that. To go, I put your knee in backward, give me another chance. Uh, you don't get another chance with me. You know, and part of this is this is here we are, we're with Shachnowsky. He's trying to walk around with fear and lying. I'm gonna call it what it is. You are lying when you don't tell the truth. That's where I'm from, that's what it's called. A damn lie, you know, in the middle of Alabama. So, you know, that those are lies. And I'm tired of us going in there and having to sit before judges and them go, Well, we're not sure if we're gonna let them lie or not, or we're gonna let them get a a fancy attorney and they gonna lie and they're gonna attack you. Quit this bullshit.

SPEAKER_01 14:53

Don't give them a platform necessarily. Yeah, nip it in the bud before it gets to that point. In some cases, you can see why some of these arguments may want to be heard, but in this one, I'm with you on that. And then in other cases, as we've talked about as well. Um, but yeah, Ascension really tried to block, I think that's partially why they the impression what they're you're we're we're learning is that that's why they moved him. You know, not only are they okay with what happened at that hospital in Jacksonville, but they promote the guy that was at the helm and make him in charge of this whole huge, one of the largest nonprofits in the entire country. So um after they basically uh promoted him, then they used his aggressive tactics to block him from being deposed. They didn't want, they wanted to shield him from all this, you know, trying to protect their main guy for I I I guess they just think he's such a moneymaker for them as well. I I don't know why you wouldn't want some accountability.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

And if the way you make money is to botch people's surgery and charge them two or three times or lie, sit up there and lie, you know, there's got to be something to be said for being honorable. I don't care. At a certain point, money, money, money. And they're proud of him. He's on all you can look him up on the internet. He's sitting up there like, you know.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

So Ascension fought this order for him to give a deposition by employing this specific corporate defense called what you mentioned, the apex defense. And I'm thankful to say, in my opinion, that the judge shot it down. They were he basically said, No, you're gonna have to go ahead and give your testimony. You were the man in charge, you were there. We have plenty of documentation that shows you were aware because they kept hiding behind what you called a lie, saying him didn't know, him was busy taking pictures for his new job or whatever. You know, but the thing is, he was there the exact years that He can was practicing and is accused of committing these egregious errors. So basically from 2015 to 2020 is when He can't accused. This guy came on it in 2016 and he didn't leave until 2022, basically. Right, you know, and and then He can step down to avoid a Department of Health investigation and surrendered his license and then basically ended up dying. So that's now deceased on his license. But yeah, this apex doctrine is something that corporate executives essentially use to say, well, he didn't have any knowledge of it. Um he swore in an affidavit that he was not personally involved in the administrative or clinical oversight regarding Dr. David Heakin, and the court was like, nah, you sure were. We've seen all the documentation. You will testify and you will be deposed.

SPEAKER_00 17:22

Right, right. And it made them look even harder, and they found like 2,700 texts with things, even even nurses and stuff going, uh, you know, this, that, and the other. And I want us to make this abundantly clear. We are not talking about the folks that clock in and clock out, that are the doctors and nurses, right. Respiratory text, everybody that works for the hospital, the hospital, this, that, and the other. I'm grateful for our hospitals, and I'm grateful. Uh there are faith-based hospitals that feel a need that other places want. But you are not going to do that. It is a lie in a faith-based hospital, or out in a only for profit hospital, or out in the middle of Davis and Olive Highway. It is a lie, and we're not gonna operate like that. We can only go so far till we've hit the bottom, and it looks like doing all this stuff here. I mean, where else can we go? I know.

SPEAKER_01 18:15

Well, it is concerning. And then you and I have certainly been following the Dr. Ben Brown case. Not much to update there. You know, we talked in our last episode a lot about how the court denied his motion for to exclude the testimony of the medical examiner when it came to her testifying that his wife died from complications due to lidocaine toxicity. And Ben Brown hired somebody else who, using your words, quote unquote, would take his own interpretation of the math and quote unquote lie in essence. And and and you know, I I think there's a lot about that that we're still unpacking, but it is pretty rich as a defense, and to your point a minute ago, to say, hey, we've hired this consultant who also works for corporations to help them with their data and make sure that people know that weed killer won't cause cancer or whatever, to to twist it to make sure that whoever that they're working for gets the best outcome. And that's what he did essentially did with these numbers that were provided by Dr. Ben Brown, you know, in in his own, which he didn't he didn't take down notes. He was, according to the Department of Health, taking these vials, had his staff popping them open with uh uh pliers and putting them in the guacamole bowl, if you will, that you got there.

SPEAKER_00 19:24

I got some I got some pretend like lidocaine in there that I've just popped in there and I've pulled them up with different syringes, all messy and gummy, just like it would be with him being under dress. I've got it pulled up like this, and let's just let me just take this off. We're just gonna shoot that in there, and we'll just shoot some other in there. That'll be another. I I didn't measure this, you know. It's just like right. That's what we're doing. Interface. Okay, so here's the thing. This is what's upset. You can have 500,000 calculators, you can do whatever you want to do. Let's just start with this. There's always a beginning, middle, and an end. In the beginning, Dr. Ben Brown doesn't know what tomescent solution, what what concentration it was or how much it was. Because Hillary made it. Hillary made that. Okay. He doesn't know that. So then there's the middle. He's like, I like took a handful of pills there. And we don't know what else she took there. Okay. Then at the end, we just did this ridiculous, stupid show that we're gonna be able to do it.

SPEAKER_01 20:21

Right, when he ran out of the tomescent solution, he had the girls pop open the vials and and they're not sure if it was 1%, 2% of you know, undiluted lidocaine.

SPEAKER_00 20:31

I mean, you know you're nervous you're gonna be doing that and out of a ball and just pulling it there, nasty ball, or even if it's not nasty, it's not sterile, sitting around. So we got uh beginning, middle, and end. Ben Brown does not know the amount of lidocaine in anything. I mean, nothing. So, because people are asking me, Pam, figure out I'm not doing a damn calculation on imaginary numbers of somebody pulling them out of their, you know what, in the thin air, and this, that, and the other, because we shouldn't even have had to listen to Borgart talking about our medical examiner's methodology when I just showed you the methodology that Ben Brown used. And the reason we know this is because he's like, Where's my aesthetoscope? What'd she take? And then here's the other thing, too. When you have the first whisper of lidocaine toxicity, you stop giving it. You don't keep giving it, especially in the face. You stop it. Then at the same time, you call either 911 or for help. And then you use a rescue if you need to on there. And we'll talk about that kind of stuff later. But I am sick and tired of us walking around acting like we had us a little hearing about a Borgert coming up in here and he's questioning her methodology. I just showed you what Ben Brown did, and he can't even find a stethoscope. If they were monitoring her vitals, they would have known when her blood pressure went sky high or down low, or when she what they don't even have an AED in there. Don't have any oxygen, no crashed cart, no anything. Isn't that rich? This is why I'm so damn mad. Isn't that rich that you're going to question someone? And this is the fragonacle that you've done. Plus, there's way more than that.

SPEAKER_01 22:13

Well, and that's why I did wonder why, you know, the judge had the option, similar in this case. Now, I don't know if there was a hearing in Chiknowski about the the motion basically to have a gag order on the case, but you can see where the judge said, deny, you know, stop it. Right. And so that was a done deal. I always thought it was surprising that the judge didn't just deny that motion instead of having a hearing on the dominant motion. Right. Why wouldn't you just deny it? You know, to your point, like we already know what the Department of Health said about it. We know what Santa Rosa Sheriff's investigators said about it. Borgert admitted during the administrative hearing that he used numbers from Ben Brown. The judge even stated when he issued his decision in favor of the medical examiner testifying that he said, listen, how can we even trust these numbers? They're coming from the defendant. And he has a he could very well potentially be giving accurate numbers, or he may very well be not giving accurate numbers because he's the one charged with manslaughter. And he has pleaded not guilty. But at any rate, to your point, that's one why we're grouping a lot of these medical cases together because there is some common patterns where it seems as though the powers that be will look the other way when a surgeon is making these egregious accusations or egregious outcomes because there's money to be made from allowing them to move forward. Now, when it comes to the court, I don't understand. And I do think a lot of times there's just this inherent deference that the average person and maybe even people within the court system give to doctors, you know, this sort of, gosh, well, you do have a degree, you you did take the Hippocratic Oath, first do no harm, you must be smart, you must be on the up and up. It's an uphill battle, especially in medical malpractice cases, to prove that they did something wrong because people walk in thinking, no, these doctors know what they're doing and they have everyone's best interest at heart. But I think what we're seeing with all of these cases that we're certainly talking about here is that you have good reason to wonder if they have your best interest at heart. Oh, yeah. I think for the most part, nurses, doctors, people in healthcare go into it because they do care about people and they do a fine job. And and we've seen in case after case where other health professionals were sounding the alarm. In Benz Brown case, other medical health professionals were sounding the alarm to our state agencies. Same with Dr. Heegan. Medical professionals were raising the alarm within the system as well as to the state. And over and over again, they were ignored in lieu of the big buck, it appears.

SPEAKER_00 24:32

Right, right. Or somebody the loudest gong there. Because people, I'll tell you what value all this should have. Two. How much lidocaine did Hillary get? Two. Too damn much, too damn crazy, too damn nobody knows. And this is uh the first whisper, like I said, that number one, the first whisper when she said, I I'm blurry vision, he should have stopped. He should have stopped. But he's too busy trying to micromanage the girls, too busy trying to put his slant on it and things like this. Hillary's body has already answered the question of how much lidocaine Ben Brown gave her. And Hillary's body and science triumphed over bullshit and math, you know. So we're not doing that. And as a pharmacist, I refuse to do it because I just told you there's a beginning, middle, and an end, and they all have a value. Now, if he would have known where his stethoscope was, he would have said these are the values, and I put them down in real time instead of making that shit up later, two weeks later, or whatever it was. You know, this is this insults me. This insults me. You know I've been so mad.

SPEAKER_01 25:39

I know. I've been so mad. I think you're right. It's it's worth mentioning too that you know, folks have asked me, well, where is he practicing? Well, he's not practicing anywhere right now because his medical license in Florida has been suspended for at least a year. The Florida Board of Medicine finalized his suspension back in March, so it will end in March of 2027. He'll also have to pay a $7,500 fine. And then once his suspension is concluded, if he does choose to stay and practice here in Florida and the fine is paid, he's got to be under direct supervision for an additional two years. So basically be on probation. It will be interesting to see if he decides to stay in Florida.

SPEAKER_00 26:12

Right, right. Well, we got his trial coming up too. Yeah, that's exactly right.

SPEAKER_01 26:16

In October, that's right, October 27th.

SPEAKER_00 26:18

Just FYI as petty as I am, petty crocker. Even my little Barbies and dolls got a stethoscope on them. They know to put that on there when they adopt it.

SPEAKER_01 26:26

Halloween costumes come with stethoscopes. You know?

SPEAKER_00 26:29

I just can't believe it. I can't believe that people are letting him do the Borgert boogie over here, you know, but because he just wants to. That is what's wrong with that is what's wrong with the court system, the legal system, is we'll let you you can make a defense, but we don't have to sit there like daggone fools and say, oh, that's the coolest, cutest thing ever, you know.

SPEAKER_01 26:50

Well, and give weight to something that's clearly meant and designed. To throw a wrench in the works, if you will.

SPEAKER_00 26:56

Well, how about appliers?

SPEAKER_01 26:58

Appliers in the works, yeah. So Ben Brown's next court date is October 27, 2026, in Santa Rosa County. We don't yet know if that will be the beginning of his trial. I think it's basically going to be a case update, but you know we've been following that one, and we'll certainly keep you posted. Now, here is another crazy story involving a Florida plastic surgeon. This guy, Dr. Thomas Kasowski, he's awaiting a capital murder trial for the death of attorney Stephen Causey, whose body has never been found. State prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for this first degree murder case. And essentially, um, Dr. Kasowski filed a lawsuit uh against his former employer regarding insurance billing practices, and Stephen Causey was hired by that other opposing party to represent them. And and the the doctor was ticked about it. He didn't like how it was going. It looked like he was gonna have to pay what, like a $15,000. $15,000. He's petty fine of some kind or something related to the case. Well, he was angry, according to prosecutors, and on March 21st, 2023, Causey vanished from his Largo law office. His wallet was still there, his keys were still there, his phone was all at his desk. Investigators found a lot of blood in the office restroom, and then they went and tapped into the surveillance video. And what did they see? Kasowski calling into a court conference from a truck outside of Causey's office, and then a masked man matching Kasowski's description entering the building with a large box, and he left two hours later, struggling, they say, to pull a heavy wagon covered by a blanket. And they think that he actually took him down to a dumpster in the Everglades that was later picked up. Oh, yeah. I mean, that just breaks my heart.

SPEAKER_00 28:33

Oh, oh, it's a series of events. It's crazy, and they can follow right by it and stuff, but this is a grown man that a whole man disappeared in his own law office, in his own bathroom at his law office. So this guy right here, you can watch him. He's a cross between like Ted Bundy. He's a nice looking guy. And he comes in there and he's so arrogant. He's arrogant. Defense attorneys can't stay with him. He gets rid of him. He's Sarah Boone, boy version, you know. And so they the judge asked him the last time said, Well, do you have an attorney yet? And he's like, No, you know, something like that. He said, Well, don't you think you should get one? He's like, Don't you think I should get the best one? I mean, he's a Nass, you know. So anyway, it's going back and forth. But we've had probably four or five people ask us about this case. It's coming up in September.

SPEAKER_01 29:24

Yeah, and here's some highlights just of some of the stuff that they found when they arrested him. $280,000 in cash, firearms, law enforcement patches, ballistic vests, masks, and duct tape. And the forensic evidence included a vial of a paralyzing drug, essentially, and some syringes. And then they also found Causey's DNA and blood inside of Kosowski's garage and vehicle. So anyway, it's gonna be an interesting trial. And I felt like you did. When I was reading up on it, looking at his pictures, I was like, boy, this guy thinks he is a star.

SPEAKER_00 29:56

He does, and he he does try to run the courtroom. He came in there, and you know how most of the time people wait for the uh bailiffs and stuff to open the door. This my father, he decided I'm gonna open the door. I'm gonna stand up in here and talk to this judge like I'm the coolest thing ever. I mean, it is on. It's gonna be something to work on.

SPEAKER_01 30:14

Yes, exactly. And it looks like it's tentatively scheduled to start his murder trial in September. So we'll find out and we'll keep you posted on what's coming about with that one. And then this is the last doctor case we're gonna talk about before we dive into our main episode. But this is a guy named Dr. Sanjeev Kumar. Now, just this past July, he's this Memphis gynecologist and gyneologic oncologist as well. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison, y'all, in federal prison, followed by two years of supervised release for essentially, you name it, he did it. He was nasty. He was using equipment and tools on these women and in these surgeries that should have only had one use. He was reusing the same tools over and over again. Um, and there were a ton of charges. The jury only convicted him on 40. I say only 40, but there had been a total of 46. So the charges included 18 counts of adulteration of medical devices, 16 counts of misbranding medical devices, and six counts of health care fraud. So this was a huge federal investigation, included the FBI, other basically medical investigators on a federal level, um, and they were looking into his practice. It was called Poplar Avenue Clinic, and they said between September of 2019 and April 2024, there were j that's basically the time period that covers when a lot of these allegations took place. They recorded also, um, aside from just the the medical-related complaints, apparently there were some allegations regarding illegal sex acts, and those were dismissed by the judge before the trial. But the jury had like five days of deliberations. They deadlocked on some of the health fraud charges and the device counts, um, but unanimously convicted him on the remaining 40 counts. So on July 8th, he was sentenced, and that's when he got the 20 years in prison. So it's gonna be, you know, I'm sure we'll see appeals from him, and he's gonna push back. He's another one. But, you know, again, not to drag Ben Brown back into this again, but those were some of the allegations that former employees and other witnesses stepped forward and said he was cutting corners also. He had cut the biohazard waste disposal, he was using the red bags, but sticking them in dumpsters as opposed to paying for the true biohazard waste disposal. That uh one of his surgical techs had been asked to clean tools in a bucket full of distilled water and had seen fat on the ground in his office with ants on it. So things weren't getting cleaned up properly. And, you know, it just goes to show if you are practicing that way in your professional life, just like this guy, you know, you're going to have these outcomes of infections and bad things happening to patients and potentially dying. Right.

SPEAKER_00 33:00

Bad outcome. Well, and you know, going back to the doctors and you know, our reverence for them and everything, they deserve it when they have practiced honorably and put the patient first and done no harm to anybody, they deserve it. And every people that are educated or or people that are skilled, you know, whatever, we respect each other. But this right here, asking people to walk around like they're dummies, and you are doing that in front if if you're cutting corners and stuff, you're doing that in front of those two young girls that are scared to death in Ben Brown. We're talking about that. You're teaching them that. You're basically she he basically should just told her to get a miclope, open it with her teeth, and pour it in there, you know because that's how trashy that was. And then you got these girls, and and just I want to speak up for them for a second. Those girls could have walked out. They stayed in there for Hillary. So people need to give them a little bit of a break, because they're like, Well, what do they do? They're girls. He never wanted competency around him. When it came around him, he would either belittle the person, make them make their life hell or get rid of them. Right. Or either uh even remember after Deborah Guy wrote him a daggone letter there and said, I'll even help you with this stuff. You can't keep doing this. If not, let this serve as my resignation. Peace out. But those two young girls, and people have given them hell. You know, they have about, well, what were they saying on the uh 911? At least they were saying something. It was way more than Ben Brown, which were just saying, What'd she take? Where's my stethoscope? And just cussing and carrying on, looking for certain kind of sutures and stuff. I've listened to that tape so many times. So, I mean, props to those girls for staying.

SPEAKER_01 34:47

Yes, I completely agree. You know, they they did finally call 911 and they were trying to perform CPR and and I think they were just as overwhelmed by everything that was happening as certainly Hillary's was, you know. So traumatized, true. Traumatized.

SPEAKER_00 35:01

Two people in the room caring about Hillary were the two girls.

SPEAKER_01 35:04

It seemed like that way. I I hear you on that. Um, so yeah, in this situation, basically evidence showed the same sort of thing that he wasn't properly sanitizing his reusable equipment according to manufacturer guidelines. He was storing reprocessed instruments unpackaged in liquid solutions and open on open countertops, uh, also accused of financial fraud. He submitted the prosecutor said over $41 million in fraudulent claims to insurance providers that netted him nearly five million dollars directly from Medicare and Medicaid. So you know that's when the government's gonna get involved when they're getting dinged money-wise. But at any rate, again, just you know, uh here's another crazy thing that he did. So some of these women basically said that it caused permanent damage, uh, chronic pain, as well as psychological trauma, including one woman who get this, was falsely prescribed chemotherapy for cancer she never even had. Can you imagine having to take chemotherapy? It's already destroying, it's already hard on your body when you actually do have cancer. Why in the world? It just seems like a that's just a sick me.

SPEAKER_00 36:07

Yeah, he's he he's a piece of work.

SPEAKER_01 36:09

All right. Well, Dr. Kumar's defense team has already filed an appeal on this 20-year sentence. So we'll see what happens there and we'll continue to follow this case. But that is it on some of these cases that we're watching. Um, before we get into our main episode, we want to take a minute to thank Joe Czarzar, personal injury attorney, who is a big supporter of Gulf Coast Confidential, and we really appreciate that. You know, when a catastrophic injury changes your life and it can happen unexpectedly to any of us, oftentimes insurance companies are not on your side, and you need a specialist because general practice attorneys just won't cut it. Well, Joe Czarzar with Czar Law is a board-certified civil trial specialist. He doesn't settle cases, he fights for his clients to win them in front of a jury. No upfront fees, no excuses, just aggressive representation, the kind of representation that clients deserve. So don't settle for less, demand the best. If you have a case or questions, call Czarzar Law at 855 Hire Joe, or you can visit czarzarlaw.com. Now back to our main episode, y'all. We're talking about the case of Shonda Vander Ark. This is a true crime case out of Michigan involving the horrific and systematic torture and starvation of her 15-year-old son, Timothy Ferguson, who had special needs, autism, among other issues, living his life perfectly fine, perfectly healthy until about a year before his death, according to prosecutors. She basically worked with his older brother to punish him under the guise of discipline. But essentially it was he's not behaving. She decided that he didn't need to be on his medications. And then as soon as she took him off, he started acting up, and she can't blame herself for taking him off the medications or put him back on there. So she decides he's just got an attitude problem, and she's going to quote unquote win at all costs to whip him into shape. And we're going to go over some of the terrible things that that happened in this case. But at the time of his death, which was in July of 2022, he weighed only 69 pounds. And an autopsy determined that his cause of death was malnourishment and hypothermia. So this is a lady who was smart. She knew what she was doing. She was a former law clerk. Um, and she basically, according to prosecutors, had a regimen of extreme abuse that she perpetrated with the help of her older son to torture this kid until he died. Right. I mean, I do wonder if that was ultimately her goal.

SPEAKER_00 38:31

I think that uh, you know, she had five biological children and she had four stepchildren. So nine children in and out of her life, which she would never I don't know what her situation is. She's brilliant. They say she's so smart that she graduated Magna Cum Laudi and only missed a couple of questions on the law test, you know, or the boards and a bar type of thing, whatever. I don't know. That's they don't even know what it is, but they're like, she's way smart, you know. So and this particular what's gonna be part of the uh poeticness of this is the courtroom she's being tried in is the same courtroom she was a law clerk in. Oh, and so that's interesting. So she was married and she had some children, and then she was married again. The husband she was living with at the time when this was happening had had a stroke and was in a wheelchair. I don't know if he was in a wheelchair before or but he had had some disabilities. And there's another child living in the house too, named G, and he's eight years old.

SPEAKER_01 39:34

And he's since been removed from her.

SPEAKER_00 39:36

Yeah, oh definitely. She lost her parental rights. But so we've got Paul the older son, 1920, teenager, and we've got Timothy. Yeah. And he's 15.

SPEAKER_01 39:47

And they're both their last name is Ferguson for both of them. So you have Timothy Ferguson who died, Paul Ferguson, the older brother who participated with the mom, and his claim in the defense was basically, well, I wanted her approval so bad, it's uh essentially a Stockholm syndrome claimed.

SPEAKER_00 40:02

Right, and that I'm afraid of her, you know. So he uh he has Timothy there. Also, Timothy's five foot eight and in the zero percentile because he weighs sixty-nine pounds. And you know you would know the difference in that because a few months before he weighed about a hundred and four, and a little bit before that he weighed about a hundred and thirty. Still the 130 is about right, I guess, for a smaller 15-year-old guy, but he's five foot eight, so you know that's all very interesting to me. But so Timothy and Paul are brothers, they're full brothers. Timothy was uh a little bit, like you said, autistic. He took ADHD medicine, and now here's what Shonda Vander Arc's gonna do. Hey, ADHD medicine makes you not hungry. Uh Timothy went on a hunger strike. That's what she wants us all to believe. So she's saying all of that stuff there.

SPEAKER_01 40:58

Then why did she have to put a lock on the refrigerator and the padlocks on the pantry? You know, that's just a bullshit.

SPEAKER_00 41:05

Right, right, exactly. Well, so she's not none of this is making sense because here she is with Paul. And Paul is, look at an 18, 19-year-old boy, and he he's bigger than Sean. I mean he's a man, you know, at that point. But when you see him sitting in the house, he's sitting up on a stool like a bird, like perched, a little bit like small, and you know, my mind goes into if you could get more into a fetal position, the only way you could would be to lay on the floor. You know, so she has beat him down. And then their dad, uh their daddy is a man that she had trouble with, Mr. Ferguson. And he and her were supposed to go to parenting and counseling and stuff, and their daddy finished it. Shonda Vander Art refused to finish it.

SPEAKER_01 41:54

Well, she thought she had done nothing wrong.

SPEAKER_00 41:57

Nobody tells me what to do. We'll see as this goes on that she thinks she's like uh the best thing since sliced bread, but she did not want to be told what to do about parenting. So that is Paul, the uh their other two children too, there may be three, some more children that were with the daddy. But Paul ends up back with Shonda, and then the daddy brings Timothy to Shonda. Shonda's not supposed to have him, she didn't even finish the coursework that she was supposed to do. There's some phlim flam rimaram about some monies and foster care. There's a lot of foster care going on in here, and quite frankly, I couldn't keep up with all of it because it's so much people moving here, there, and everywhere, and you know So some of her children were in foster care or she owed some money back, or they owed some money back, I think, okay to this to the Oklahoma. They lived in Oklahoma at a certain point. Because I kept wondering, how did Timothy get back here? And then I also keep wondering, how come people don't check on people? How come people when they come in the house don't make sure G, Paul, Tim, even Shonda, everybody in her house, you know? Because that husband that was in the house at the time, he's like, I I can't do this. He went and lived with his parents. Wow. So we got an effed up situation here. And uh she's homeschooling G and Timothy, and Paul's working at a fast food place. But Paul is in charge of making sure that uh Timothy does whatever she decides. She texts all day long going, make him stand up, make him put his hands above his head, facing the wall, make him do this, make him do that. Put him in a cold ice bath and make sure he's at a I'm let me just give a tr like a sensitivity warning here. It's a lot. It's it is a lot. I I'll I'll get upset. I know I will. Put him in that ice cold bath, put him at an angle where he cannot be comfortable, and put him in there. For nine hours.

SPEAKER_01 44:02

That's what happened the day before he died. She'd left him in there for nine hours.

SPEAKER_00 44:06

And it happened many other days too. Then he had a bed, a representative bed, but they put him in what they called the little room, which is a closet underneath the stairs. There's only a tarp in there and an Amazon box for a pillow. There's no bed, there's no bedding, there's no anything. So she could terrorize him through Paul. She'd send Paul in there and go, do this, do that, or don't let him sleep. They they interrupted his sleep and everything like that. So she wouldn't give him food. If she did, it was a piece of toast or piece of bread, not even toast, with hot sauce on it. It could have been Sarah, it could have been South South Carolina, I think they called it some sort of reaper sauce.

SPEAKER_01 44:48

Yeah, according to some of the court documents that I was reading, they it was extremely hot. It was made with Carolina Reaper and Trinidad Scorpion peppers, and they also poured it down his throat.

SPEAKER_00 44:58

And we're gonna put it on his genitals. I don't know if they did or didn't. But I mean, you have to hate, you have to hate somebody to be doing this kind of stuff to somebody. And this little boy, what's he supposed to do? He can't go anywhere. They got leg shackles or zip ties on him on occasion. And then when they were asking Shonda about that during court, she said, Paul has access to my Amazon. I mean, she has an answer for everything. She self-diagnoses her own self and her children, and she is smart. She can read the Google, I guess, Dr. Google. And she even she even has access to training dogs, like service dogs and stuff. She said she even personally has a service dog that would alert on her diabetes when her blood sugar fail.

SPEAKER_01 45:46

She sounds like a control freak who just wants to feel smarter than everyone else.

SPEAKER_00 45:49

Oh, yeah. But none of this is documented with a doctor. This is her making all this stuff up just like she does when we go to court later. But so one of the uh one of the attorneys asked her, said, Would you give you dog hot sauce? You know, and she said, Dogs don't eat human food. I mean, everything's sort of like that. Well, would you put your dog in an ice bath? Mm my great dane's too big. I wouldn't do that. You can't do that. I mean, everything is so weird. It is, it it makes you so mad to even just listen to her. Right.

SPEAKER_01 46:20

So she because there's no remorse. There's no, gosh, you caught me. It's always like you said, some twisted answer. I thought it was interesting that prosecutors basically felt like this was an obsessive desire for control on her part, framing her actions as quote unquote discipline for what she thought was like his behavioral defiance when he's just being a normal child. He's just being hungry, he just wants to eat, and he has ADHD and he has autism, and those are going to cause behavior problems that she's not gonna like, but she took it upon herself to diagnose him that he doesn't need his medication and then she doesn't want to deal with the results of that.

SPEAKER_00 46:54

Well, and like you're the mommy or you're the daddy or you're the big brother or whatever. He's in an adult diaper, he's 69 pounds, you know, and he's got a big old sweatshirt on. She claimed she didn't know he was like that, you know, frail and everything, skin and bones. His ligaments were even shredding and trying to detach from bone to bone, muscle to bone, all kinds of things going on with his just being after they've thrown him in the tub, too. And then you could see every single rib. So you know she's not even paying attention to anybody. Then the other little boy, G, he just stays in his room and plays on his tablet the all day long. He he knows to stay out of there because they ask him a few questions like, you know, what's going on here? And he said, Bad boys and mom. Bad boys and mommies don't mix.

SPEAKER_01 47:46

Mmm. She just warped both of them. I mean, all of them mentally.

SPEAKER_00 47:52

Every one of them. Yeah. And but she kept, she kept, every day, she said, put some pizza rolls, put a pizza roll on Tim's mouth there on his lips, and see if he'll eat it. What? You know, and she said, You don't even have to cook it. It can be fro it can be frozen.

SPEAKER_01 48:08

Well, and then speaking of that, I think she she accused him of stealing food, which we've heard in other cases I have anyway, of parents that are accused of abusing their children and putting locks on refrigerators and not feeding them. They're like, oh, well, they steal food. It's just it's a strange thing. Well, if they are, then there's a reason that they're doing it. At any rate, um, I thought that was interesting that that she said that he stole a big bag of like frozen chicken nuggets and ate them all. Right. And I'm like, well, if he did, it was because you're starving him. Right. Poor kid, how desperate do you have to be? And what breaks my heart is that he feels unloved. Yes. Like that's what hurts my heart. I mean, yes, what they did to him physically was horrible, but the the psychological and emotional uh cost and toll of what they were doing to him. This kid got up every morning just hoping to live and probably thinking, what have I done wrong? Right. What do I need to do to earn my mommy's left? Right. Why are my own brothers participating in this?

SPEAKER_00 48:58

Oh, yeah. Well, and I think at a certain point he just had to go numb. He couldn't think of anything because there are motion detectors in there, there are cameras in there, lights that she would turn on and off at certain times. It was just, it was torture. He probably, just to survive, probably had to just, like I said, go numb. Prisoners of war, this is that kind of thing to me. And he was at a certain point breathing through his mouth. And it made her so mad she put her hand over his mouth and told him, You breathe through your nose. I mean, trying to even control how he breathes. And he's just probably can't even lift his own diaphragm up and down because he's so frail and weak. And then anytime he he didn't ask for food after a while, he he knew not. You know, we can go what, like three minutes without air. We're not supposed to, but I guess we could. And we can go three days without water, three weeks without food, but you shouldn't have to do any of that, you know. So all this is happening to this little boy, and it's happening in the horrors of suburbia where their house looks like everybody else's.

SPEAKER_01 50:07

Yeah, that's terrifying. And his normal hunger pang, she looks at as deliberate rebellion and treats him like a criminal. That poor boy. Well, I am just so thankful that the jury saw through all of that because that is a cruel obsession, and she was never gonna stop. I mean, whether her goal was to kill him or not, you can't deny that at some point she had to be aware that that's what was going to happen to him. Oh, yeah. What was her plan? Just to bury him in the backyard and pretend he didn't exist?

SPEAKER_00 50:33

Who knows? Well, she always had an excuse for everything. And you know, you're gotta be something when you're gonna say your little child right there that if you see a picture of Timothy, and I think people need to look at a picture of Timothy because he is a cute little boy, but he does look about seven, and I'll tell you why, too. The judge was the one that came around at the end and said, You don't win. You don't win. Timothy. Because she wanted to win.

SPEAKER_01 51:01

It was all about they even treated his little survival instincts as a game, apparently. Like in some of those messages, they explicitly stated that they could not let him quote unquote win and treated his hunger and weakness like they were compliance metrics other than rather than a medical emergency, which is just evil.

SPEAKER_00 51:17

Right, right. And think about think about hypothermia, and it's right in the middle of the summer, so it's hot and it's cold, and you're here and you're in leg shackles. I can't think of I I it's just it it I don't even know the words for it, other than a horror house and stuff. But and I also think about like they have some older siblings and like they went to Oklahoma or stayed in Oklahoma. They they I think at some point they had been with her, but probably is like, I don't want to be here.

SPEAKER_01 51:48

I think a lot of them stood up too and said, We don't want anything to do with her, and what she did to our brother is horrendous.

SPEAKER_00 51:53

Oh yeah, oh yeah. Throw the book at her. Oh yeah, the victim impact statement, uh, they both the two that are older, uh, they both were just like, if I would have known that, I would have been there. And they were like, She didn't love him, but we did, you know, and and one of them was just I can't I can't hold him anymore. I have his ashes though. You know, so I mean this has just been so so we like I said, we started looking at this a year and a half ago and we had to stop because it was just so crazy. But the reason that we brought it back out is because we've got like the Ruby Frankie, the Jodie Hildebrandt, we've got the uh Sarah Boone type of behavior in here where you just lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, and then we got Bree Coon who, you know, I'm mad at you, I'm gonna just get rid of you or shoot you in front of my kids, and we've got like Tim Farretter, that's another case coming up that's a lot like this one, where the people just act like, why are you talking about what I did? instead of why why did I do what I did or I'm ashamed before God or whatever. So there's more and more cases like this, and that's why I thought, mm, we better put this one out here.

SPEAKER_01 53:01

Yeah, I agree. Well, and I'm happy to say that she was convicted in 2024 of first degree murder. Um, and then in subsequent hearings afterwards, she was basically trying to say that it was her mental health that had it, you know, just spiraled downhill beginning in January of 2022 after her husband had a stroke and had to move out. And her defense team argued that she had also ADHD, PTSD, and OCD, and that all these conditions caused her to become like hyper-focused on him with this rigid structure, and that she was detached from the reality of the damage that she was doing. And I I say that's crap. She knew exactly you can see in those messages she knew what was going on. They were deliberately cruel.

SPEAKER_00 53:40

No doubt. Well, we gotta talk about the fake vomiting. You know, we got crocodile tears, we got crocodile vomiting, you know. So she got put up on the stand. Her attorney told her, Hey, don't testify, you dumb dumb. You know, we got all these texts and stuff, and Paul testified against her. I gotta tell you about that in a minute. But she's up there and she's talking about my son and this, that, trying to be all this wonderful mom. He goes, Did he look like that? There's a picture of him the night that he died, because they got all kind of camera things. She thought she was so smart, but an SD card was still left in one of them, so that's what caught her on a lot of things. So she pretends, she does this vomit thing. I hate saying that word, even that's a pharmacist. She does this vomit thing, because there's a difference, and and she's up on the stand and they show her, and she literally, because she would make Tim vomit all the time. She she literally put her head down, and I personally think she put her finger down her throat. Yeah, and so she's throwing up there, and they're asking if there's a trash can there, but she's got her tissues, you know how tissues come through, all these things that we do. Um, but she's doing that pretend like throwing up there. But I was like, that thing right there, everybody knew. No, you're not even as you and Amber Heard can't even act good no more. Y'all terrible, you know, both of them. Yeah. So she was doing that. But Paul testified against his mom, and he was supposed to maybe get the guidelines were like nine to fifteen years, and even the pundits, who are usually the hard ass people, they were like, I feel sorry for Paul. It seems like he is coming around. And they were saying, eh, he might get five years up there. Now, the jud and a plea deal, you you don't get an appeal, right? You you take what you take. Yeah. Can't throw fit, get what you get, can't throw fit. So all right, the judge, after he's told Shonda how terrible a person she is, and goes, I want to remember this boy like this. Okay, so he he's thank God he's a sweet, sweet judge. The only one seems to be caring about Timmy. I agree. And then so Paul, when Paul was sentenced, he's sitting there and he always keeps his head down, way down, and looking through his eyebrows and stuff, you know, I don't know what all I don't she she messed him up too. You know, she's cruel to him too. We're sitting in there by his lawyer, and so the judge goes, he starts getting up like judges do sometime and go, You're as bad as your mother. You're one step away from a psychopath, and da da. You worked at a fast food place. You could have brought your brother something. And it that particular day, that's why I have that smokers there. That day, that day before Timothy died, they gave him, well, Paul did, gave him some eggs and a smokers, or or like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. So he said, You knew to do that. You you you're his brother. So he said, I sentence you to anywhere from 30 to 100 years.

SPEAKER_01 56:35

Wow. So has he been sentenced yet?

SPEAKER_00 56:37

Yeah, that was his sentence. Oh, that was his sentence. Yeah, his head went down. He literally doing all that, you know, coquettish, almost like a girl stuff. He snapped up real fast, you know, and looked all around. Like that was reality for him right there. So now there are some lawyers that are like, uh, you know, it's a bit way over there, and y'all did kind of tell him, you know, also they told him, you know, you don't get a do-over either. So anyway, Shonda, she messed up. Timothy's took Timothy's life, messed up Paul's Angie's and her other children, and probably some ex-husbands or husbands, uh uh just a lot of people. But also when she was in jail being processed, she thought she was gonna run that place too. So I was telling you earlier, those lady uh correctional officers were like, no, baby, you're not doing that, not up in here, we don't care. She even corrected them when they said her name wrong. And then she asked for a tissue, and one of them was like, later, you know, it's like you you're in a new place now. But she even came in talking about all her self-diagnosis and doctor notes, and they said, You doctor note ain't good here. We got our own doctors, you know. So life just got real for her.

SPEAKER_01 57:45

Yeah, and it's gonna be real for a long time because she's just sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. And I thought it was interesting too that, like, in addition to that life um sentence for first-degree murder, he imposed a consecutive sentence of 50 to 100 years for first degree child abuse. And I think that's important because it's recognizing what she did to him too for a prolonged period of time.

SPEAKER_00 58:05

Exactly. And she she's trying to get another uh she's trying to get another hearing too or another trial. Of course. Right, because she kept walking in and out of the courtroom going, I can't, I can't stay, I can't help my attorney. But every time you see her, she's propped up there. This old gal thought she's gonna prop up there, and she's sitting like this, like she's like co-counsel. Oh you know, and I'm like, You did real good, you you gone forever, basically, girl. But she would come in and out, and she I don't even think she was there when the jury gave their verdict. So she's basically like, I couldn't help my attorney. You weren't in the courtroom. That was after you did the pretend like vomit thing, you know, the judge took a little break for everybody. So I mean, she's she's sneaky too. So she thought she was gonna get that, but I think that just happened recently. They said, Nope. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 58:55

Yeah, and I I said she was convicted in 2024. It was actually 2023, and I love it that the jury only like deliberated uh deliberated for an hour before they found her guilty.

SPEAKER_00 59:05

Oh, yeah, they were like, we are so over this because it was just so ridiculous.

SPEAKER_01 59:09

But I mean She was just malicious.

SPEAKER_00 59:11

Yeah, I mean, and their house was filthy, she didn't do anything. A mommy comes home, and at least you know how many kids in the house. Right, I know.

SPEAKER_01 59:19

And then to torture him through another son, too. That's just it the layers of psychological warfare on all of them are so nasty.

SPEAKER_00 59:28

Oh, yeah. And little G also him saying bad boys and and mommies don't mix. He also said, I don't want to talk about those two. Talking about Paul and Shonda.

SPEAKER_01 59:39

Wow, because he knew.

SPEAKER_00 59:41

Oh he probably thought he was next.

SPEAKER_01 59:43

Yeah, well, he probably was. Like that's just it's so interesting to me, is like, why did she target him? And I guess because of his special needs, and it was getting on his on her nerves. But I mean, and he wouldn't live he hadn't been living with her, right? Until the dad brought her back.

SPEAKER_00 59:56

Yeah, the dad brought him. And a lot of people are throwing that back in there, going, What about the dad? You know, he's the one that had custody and this, that, and the other. But right, wrong, or indifferent, you don't hurt people, and you sure don't hurt children, and you don't make it where they can't eat and sleep and breathe. I mean, you're just basic horrible.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:15

Yeah, I agree. Well, thankfully she is in prison where she belongs, and I hope she stays there.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:20

I she will. Anything else you want to add? N no, I I just am like it's just like I don't even know what to say.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:27

I know, I know. Well, we have an another case here locally where a couple of parents were arrested and basically a similar situation where they were accused of starving their son, putting locks on the pantry and the refrigerator, the other kids were making similar comments, they would force him to exercise in the room and put a camera in there to watch. And it just seems like there's some kind of psychological control issues going on with some of these parents and and and to do it to one child and not the others, and then you're basically asking the others to be complicit in this.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:56

Co-sign on that horrible behavior and make them almost like we've talked about before with the weird folly ado, you know, but you're doing it to kids. But also I think I do think about this is that, you know, if you don't have any family coming in, any neighbors coming in, any teachers coming in, you're still uh doing homeschooling and stuff, you know, that is the there's behind certain doors there are things we don't even want to know about. Yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:23

Thank you, Pam, and thank you so much for listening. That's it for Sadistic Shonda Vander Arc's cruel campaign of hell against Teen Sun. I'm your host, writer, and producer Molly Barrows, with co-host and researcher Pam Hill. And a big thanks as always to our director, editor, and production engineer, James Roy. Remember, you can check out more episodes of Gulf Coast Confidential wherever you listen to your favorite podcast or right here on our YouTube channel. Don't forget to like and subscribe, and we'll see you next time, y'all.