46. Aftermath

FORTY-SIX

Aftermath

This was what shook out after Richard Sandusky surrendered himself, Carrie Molnar and Ezra Corbin were killed, and the town of Misted Pines was left to face the fallout.

The Murder of Brittanie:

The DNA from the pubic hair was a match for Ezra. They didn’t need it, but they had it.

Further, for profiling purposes, considering a female assailant of this kind was out of the ordinary, agents made inquiries in an effort to develop a perpetrator summary. Through these inquiries, former sex partners of Carrie Molnar were interviewed by the Seattle division of the FBI.

They shared she was regularly too rough, ignored safe words and hard limits, and for a good number of them, she frightened them.

They expressed surprise she took it as far as murder, but she was known in the scene as very bad at what she did, which was likely why she needed to find her submissives by being assigned to them through a national website, mostly for scenes that would play out anonymously.

For obvious reasons, they talked to the FBI but did not talk to the press.

The website Molnar was contracted to, due to serious holes in their vetting procedures that led to the inevitable lawsuits filed against them, was forced to shut down.

A citizen came forwardto the Fret County Sheriff’s Office, gaunt, pale and heavy with guilt.

An associate of Ezra.

A lifetime Piner.

He’d been interviewed once by Deputies Wilkins and Stoll, and once by Moran and Rus.

He recalled telling Ezra about that cave, where he and his brother used to hang out as kids during the summer. He shared he “never in a million years” thought Ezra, who he described as, “not really an outdoors kind of guy, unless there was a bag of clubs involved,” would find the cave, much less go there to hide, or he would have reported it. He himself hadn’t been there in twenty years.

But that was how Ezra knew it was there.

Ezra did have a gun. He did because, according to an email from Molnar to Ezra, Molnar ordered him to purchase it prior to what they did to Brittanie.

At her orders, he’d brought it with him during her murder.

The suspicion for this was that she wanted it handy as a threat to Brittanie, and if things got out of control. Or if, in the end, Molnar didn’t have the stomach to commit the crime as she came there to do.

Unfortunately for Brittanie, Molnar proved capable of carrying out her plan.

Ezra did not purchase the gun legally. There was no record of it. They still had no idea who he bought it from. And this was likely because his wife, who paid the bills, would have wondered why he bought it.

He had it with him at the cave.

Also at the cave, he had the hammer and the gear used on Brittanie. They still had her body fluids, blood and hair on them. In another email from Molnar after the event, she had ordered Ezra to clean them and hide them and have them at the ready for their next scene.

It was suspected she did this so, if things didn’t go as she hoped, she would not be caught holding the evidence.

Why he didn’t clean them was likely for the same reason. Maybe he had an inkling his shit would soon be in a sling, and he thought he could use them as bargaining chips.

Why he didn’t actually use them was anyone’s guess.

But then again, the man was not right.

Why Molnar had deleted her search history but didn’t delete a variety of incriminating emails was also anyone’s guess.

Fortunately for the profilers, unfortunately for anyone who had to watch it, she also had quite a bit of video of her work, much of which it was clear she did not have consent to take. Though the video she had of Ezra appeared consensual, and it was filmed in ways it could easily be used for future coercion and blackmail. This consent did not include the video of them raping a man in a way he clearly did not want, nor did he want it filmed.

After Brittanie, for unknown reasons, Molnar didn’t delete any of that either.

But then again, Molnar was far more off than Ezra.

Or maybe Pastor Richard was right.

Maybe they were just stupid.

There were nowno doubts Carrie Molnar planned and carried out, and Ezra was an accessory to the murder of Brittanie Iverson.

For the Fret County Sheriff’s Office and the Federal Bureau of Investigations, the case was closed.

Melanie Iversonfinally managed to make money off her daughter by selling a sensational story of Brittanie’s life to a gossip magazine.

It was mostly lies.

Gary Iverson, with the backing of the attorney on retainer to Bonner Enterprises, sued Melanie and the magazine.

They settled out of court.

The magazine was forced to print an apology and a retraction and write a very large check.

Melanie was forced to sell her house, which wasn’t worth much, and the land around it, which was.

Gary bought himself his own cabin in the woods and made his son go to the home improvement store and apologize to the manager.

At this point, Gary had enough money he didn’t have to work for a good while, but he was offered and took a job at the store.

Dakota worked for Lucinda as a busboy and lived with his dad.

Melanie left town and no one knew where she went.

No one cared either.

For several monthsafter it was over, once a week, Brad and Gentry from the Better Times Motel met at the Double D with Harry Moran and Karen Wilkins.

They didn’t talk about the murder.

They just talked.

Several months after they stopped meeting regularly, Gentry moved in with Brad.

Several months after that, they were married.

Around that time, they managed to get a loan and bought the Better Times Motel.

The first thing they did was replace the chain link with an attractive fence down either side, which went from the road to the mountain at the rear of the property.

The next thing they did was gut the rooms and tear down the sign.

They had help from townsfolk, free services and even some materials were offered.

And six months later, they reopened the newly christened Blue Mountain Motel.

They had Wi-Fi, and great cable with premium subscriptions, and set cute chairs outside the rooms to sit in and watch the cars go by or stare at the stars overhead.

They’d built a deck and bar by the pool and got their liquor license.

They’d taken out the pamphlet stands and had a giftshop in the lobby with local wares for sale.

With Gentry’s flair, the rooms were trendy and comfortable, and even though Gentry and Brad were up to their necks in debt, that didn’t last for long, because the place became a mecca for Millennials and Generation Z to have affordable Instagrammable adventures, and it was booked every season.

In the midst of renovations, a local artist known for his work on the Aromacobana building showed out of the blue and started painting a mural on the side of the building.

The mural was a river rushing through pine trees.

And if you looked close enough, in the spray of the water, you could see the name Brittanie streaming over the rocks into infinity.

The Women:

It would take some time before Shannon visibly reentered life in Misted Pines.

She did this getting a job at Aromacabana, which helped her pay for her online classes.

She was studying to be a teacher.

The transformation was slow, but it happened, and the hoodies, mousy hair and chipped nail polish gradually disappeared, and the woman Shannon was meant to be before that journey was interrupted emerged.

Rus would run into her later, and at first, he didn’t recognize her.

Part of that was because she was smiling.

Rus would also often runinto Lana and Dean, who was an extremely good-looking man and younger than her. He was all about affability and warmth, and he openly doted on Lana and her two boys from her previous marriage.

To Rus’s way of thinking, they were the perfect couple.

Lucinda agreed, and on occasion, the four of them would have dinner together at Rus and Lucinda’s table at the club.

Thea’s clientelekept growing so much, she was able to quit her job at the Joy of Joy and do it full time.

This didn’t last long because it stopped being fun and started to become a grind.

She then limited her clients to the ones she liked working with and got a job working for Kimmy at the holiday shop on Main Street.

Ellen Macklemore soldher house and moved out of town, her whereabouts also unknown.

Sherri Corbin reclaimed her maiden name, Nagle, and moved into a home in that neighborhood.

The exact number of members of that crew was eighteen by the time of Corbin’s death, with Sherri being number nineteen.

By the time things settled down, there were only two families in that subdivision of twenty-five homes who weren’t members of the group, and their houses were for sale, both in escrow, because they’d accepted offers of women moving in from out of town.

They didn’t cause any trouble.

The sheriff’s police kept an eye on them anyway.

The Men:

Michael Mitchell, Dylan Rogers and Austin Brooks all eventually moved away.

It was rumored that Michael was having grave issues dealing with his assault.

It was also rumored that Austin had tried to take his own life, twice.

Dylan Rogers left to accept a job in Las Vegas, but it was rumored he was fired from it shortly after. Even so, he didn’t return to Misted Pines.

Tyler Cook’s folks still lived in MP, but if they ever wanted to see their son, they went to Spokane to visit him.

The Crystal Killer:

The media was frothing at the mouth after the FBI Seattle Division Chief held a press conference where he made the announcement that the Crystal Killer had turned himself in to an FBI agent after murdering Ezra Corbin and Carrie Molnar because they copied his crimes.

The fact this happened in the sleepy town in rural Washington state that had another high-profile case alongside a salacious scandal just a year before sent them into a frenzy.

The townsfolk of MP were experienced hands with this and weren’t fond of the reputation they were getting.

Outside of Melanie Iverson selling her daughter’s faked story, the only one who would talk to them was Kimmy Milford. And she didn’t have a lot she wanted to say about Richard Sandusky, Ezra Corbin, Carrie Molnar or Ray Andrews.

But she had some ideas about what happened to Jimmy Hoffa, and she claimed to have evidence that aliens visited the area on a frequent basis.

The Misted Pinesmonthly town council meetings were sheer bedlam for two months.

And then Megan Nichols felt they should have it out of their system, and she cracked the gavel with an iron hand.

But by that time, the press had lost interest and the town had gone back to the sleepy oasis it pretended to be.

It was discoveredthat Richard Sandusky had no knowledge of bomb-making and had never been to the state of Maine.

The investigation into the bomb that exploded in Alabama was therefore reopened. It took some time, but evidence led to a retired veteran who was having trouble with his neighbor who had a dog he didn’t clean up after when that dog used his lawn to see to business.

This vet also was suffering from PTSD.

He decided to do something about the situation, and he accomplished that, living some time with his lawn free of droppings.

It would take him going to prison to get the therapy the government should have given him for serving his country.

As for the call that came in from a vacant house in Maine, that remained a mystery.

Richard Sandusky’svictims came out of the woodwork. Members of the cult he still headed were either confused, lost or enraged. Wives left husbands. Additional charges of assault, rape, unlawful imprisonment, and a dozen other offenses were lodged against Sandusky.

His wife, Elaine, was sued by several ex-members.

She had a great deal of money, very powerful attorneys, and they lost.

Many members didn’t leave the church, and for reasons unfathomable, the notoriety of the case brought in more.

Elaine Sandusky took over her husband’s pulpit, with the support of two elders—their sons.

This was until evidence came to light that she, and they, were aware of Sandusky’s “work” with his victims, including the killings, and the entire family had a hand in assisting him in conducting his crimes.

The sons’ involvement, particularly, explained why a sixty-something man could lure women a fraction of his age to hotels, no matter how fit and attractive he was.

Elaine, an ex-hairdresser, was a dab hand with makeup, hairstyling and wigs.

They were all indicted as accessories.

The sons copped pleas.

Elaine, righteously indignant for herself and her husband, maintaining their work was holy, sat before a judge and jury. Regardless of her assertions, she was deemed fit to stand trial and was later convicted and sentenced to life, eligible for parole in twenty-five years, which, if she made it, would mean she would be out at age ninety-three.

An ex-elder stepped into the breach.

The church’s tax-exempt status was stripped through all of these activities, and they were currently in a battle with the IRS to have it reinstated.

They felt positive they would win.

Richard Sandusky pledguilty to multiple charges of abduction, false imprisonment, sexual assault and homicide.

He was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

As an ex-cop, he didn’t find it as easy to cultivate a following in the penitentiary as he thought it would be. And his beliefs that the human race were all stupid didn’t hold up well in a place filled with hardened criminals who established their own hierarchy.

His hubris was so overwhelming, he had no idea he entered a situation where he did not have a captive audience of potential disciples, but instead, there was no way out.

He was not the apex predator.

He was prey, a trophy to be won and proudly held in infamy.

Until eleven months into his sentence, when he lost his life during a brutal beating in the cafeteria during chowtime that had no witnesses, he wrote letters to Rus every week and sent them to the FBI office in Virginia.

Rus never received those letters.

Not only because he no longer worked for the Federal Bureau of Investigations.