Carl Spencer was so soft-spoken and polite, he whispered the words “Suck my dick” during his last tell-all interview with police. As if the cops might not be used to profanity. As if he didn’t normally say words like that.
As if his mom was in the next room. Which she was.
The interview was a condition of his plea deal. He’d get 11 years in exchange for singing like a (very quiet) canary about the murder of Nicholas Stein at the hands of Bryan Gentry.
Going back over early stories about the murder, it’s fascinating how wrong they all were.
The press immediately fingered Spencer as the murderer, stating that he lived with Gentry and was involved in a love triangle that revolved around 28-year-old Kristen Lain.
He didn’t, and he wasn’t. The third side of the triangle was in fact the victim, Nicholas Stein, who lived with Lain and Gentry in Massillon, Ohio.
The press initially said that Spencer killed Stein by pushing him down the basement stairs, then shoving his body in a plastic container and burying it in concrete in the backyard.
Yes, there were a lot of drugs involved, but the real problem with criminals tends to be a matter of IQ.
Carl Spencer and Bryan Gentry were just two guys who got together sometimes to work on cars and smoke meth, staying up all night to enjoy their mutual hobby of automobile mechanics and hard drug use.
Gentry actually joined the military, went away for a while, came back, and started smoking meth again with his buddy Carl.
During the interview, Spencer told detectives that he had only met Nicholas Stein once or twice.
“And that was the second time that I had met him, the night that I decided to go over to Bryan's to use and we ended up killing him.”
As if everything was going fine, until we killed him.
Although, if Spencer is to be believed, it wasn’t a “we” that killed Nicholas Stein, it was a “he”, Bryan Gentry, who became so enraged that Stein had asked Kristen Lain to “suck his dick” (because of course Lain promptly told Gentry, the man she found more attractive, about the comment) that he first duct-taped Stein’s wrists and ankles, ripped him off the couch where he was in an Ambien-induced stupor (which is how one comes down from meth, apparently—yeah, three Ambien ought to do it), and proceeded to punch him in the throat and face for 10 to 15 minutes, including bouncing his head off the floor for good measure.
The cops interjected: “You saw him struggle? But you said he was completely out of it.”
Spencer: “He was completely out of it while he got tied, but he woke up after he got punched square in the throat.”
Carl “told [Gentry] that he needed to stop, but he wouldn’t stop.” Gentry threatened to kill Spencer and burn down his mom’s house if he didn’t help dispose of the body. And so, technically, yes, Carl pushed Stein down the basement stairs.
Why Gentry couldn’t do this himself, I don’t know, but unfortunately, Stein still wasn’t dead.
So while Carl went out on the back deck to puke over the railing, Gentry strangled Stein. They shoved the body into a “tote” of some kind, covered it in concrete, and then rented an excavator the next day to bury the whole thing behind the house.
As if this is not the FIRST place the police would look.
The two men went back to smoking meth while the concrete hardened, but in all honestly, I probably would too.
Kristen Lain took no part in the killing, but she also didn’t notify law enforcement in a timely manner, thereby treating herself to four years in prison for gross abuse of a corpse, obstruction of justice, and tampering with evidence.
Spencer was sentenced to 11 years for involuntary manslaughter, abduction, tampering with evidence, and gross abuse of a corpse.
Bryan Gentry is serving 15 to life for murder (reduced from a charge of aggravated murder), abduction, tampering with evidence, and gross abuse of a corpse.
Would any of this have happened if all involved weren’t high on meth? Maybe, maybe not. There was definitely friction between Gentry and Stein over Kristen Lain, but these things often work themselves out without anybody ending up encased in concrete.
It’s enough to make you long for the days of pistols at 20 paces.
It's disappointing to realize how much crime comes down to drugs/alcohol and stupidity. I'm somewhat heartened to hear the female also want to prison, for doing nothing to report any of it.
You don't just do comedy-you're versatile. Those are the kind of writers I really like.