Ep 54 | DARRELL ISAIAH Transcript
Ep 54 | Darrell Isaiah Transcript
Before we begin this podcast, please be advised that the following episode contains language that some listeners may find offensive and inappropriate. The opinions expressed by the host and guests are their own and do not reflect the views of the podcast producers. Listener discretion is advised.
I asked her, I said, "Well, why are you threaten me with the shotgun like you gonna kill me?" Right. What was her response? Oh, she didn't have nothing. And this is the same woman that you used to give flowers to and madly in love with? Yeah. I just ran over there and started shooting and then hopped in my car and left.
What did you do with the murder weapon? Well, I gave it back to the dude that it belonged to. I believe everybody should have a second chance.
You are now listening to the podcast Voices of a Killer. I'm bringing you the stories from the perspective of the people that have taken the life of another human, and their current situation thereafter in prison. You will see that, although these are the folks that we have been programmed to hate, they all have something in common.
They are all humans like us that admit that they made a mistake. Will you forgive them? Or will you condemn them? They are currently serving time for their murders. And they give us an inside glimpse of what took place when they killed and their feelings on the matter now. Here are the voices of those who have killed.
On this week's episode of voices of a killer, you're about to hear an ill-fated love story set in Kansas City, Missouri. To all outward appearances, darrell and Vanessa Isaiah were a match made in heaven, an ex football quarterback and a beautiful wife, both young and happily in love. That was until their relationship took a dark and grisly turn.
How did a passionate love affair go from flowers and summer dreams to heated arguments, spiteful acts, and ultimately, raw violence? From behind prison bars, Darrell Isaiah walks us through the volatile course of his marriage, right up until its destructive end. What was it that drove Darrell into such a rage that he hurt his wife?
How did the happy early days of the relationship sour with the police called in to intervene? As we'll soon hear, Darrell had a strong Christian upbringing, and the call to seek God's repentance has been a constant theme in his life. 34 years after his crime, has he been able to find forgiveness for his actions back in 1989?
Join us as Darrell himself answers these questions and more on this episode of Voices of a Killer. So Darrell, where are you from? Kansas City, Missouri. Did you grow up there all your life? Yes, sir. How would you describe your childhood? I had a decent childhood, a very religious childhood, so I mean, it wasn't, I had a normal childhood.
I'll put it like that. Would you say it was a strict Christian household? Yes. What made the household strict? Well, cause we had rules and we had things that we had to do. If we went out partying on the weekend, we had to go to church on Sunday. Because my mother and father's like, "If you go out and play with the devil, you better be at church on Sunday, give God, you know, his respect."
Yeah. Did you, you know, follow their lead as far as the religion? Or did you just kind of go through the motions? Well, I... No, I didn't go through the motions. I kind of, I've had roles in the church and stuff, and you know, and we've done all kind of, I was in the choir and done everything else that you're supposed to do growing up in that kind of household.
As a child growing up and into your, you know, becoming a teenager and things like that, did you ever have any kind of run-ins with the law? No. What about drugs and alcohol as a young adult, still with your parents? I just smoked weed. That's it. Did your parents know you did that? Not at first, but later on they did. I would never smoke around them or smoke in their house.
Did you have siblings? Yeah. Are you the youngest? Oldest? Where you sit? It's 12 of us and I'm in the second oldest. Yeah. Yeah. I'm the second oldest of the second set of six. Wow. That's a pretty big family. Do you have support from all your family right now? Yes. That's good. That's a pretty big family unit.
Whenever you, like high school and stuff like that, did you, what kind of person were you? Were you a good student or did you get into trouble? Were you quiet? I was kind of quiet and kind of stayed to myself. What was your direction out of high school? Well, I was on the football team and I played, I was into sports.
Okay. What kind of, what was your favorite sport? I played football. Was you any good? Yeah, I had a couple of scholarship offers until I got my knee tore up and, you know, and that just blew everything from there. What position did you play in high school? I played quarterback and free safety. Where did you get offers from?
I got, well, MU came and talked to me. KU because I had a partner that was going to KU, so he thought it'd be nice to go up there with him. I mean, it was just like they would just come to see us. And because of my partner, Ellie, he was going to KU, he is talking about, "Man, you wanna come up there and go." Did you have a high school sport injury that kind of ended it? Yeah. Was that pretty depressing for you? Yes it was. Did you feel like it pushed you into a direction of depression and maybe getting into stuff that wasn't healthy? No, it kind of gave me more strength and more stability in myself. How so? Because I never ran in the streets and hung out with other people.
I figured maybe it would have sent you into depression. You go in the wrong direction, but you're saying it actually did something different? Yeah, yeah. It gave me more time to think about what I want to do with myself and how I want my life to be. And what was that thought? Well, if I couldn't play sports, I'd just, you know, try to find me a job and just live a life that was more convenient for me, you know.
You know, do the right thing. What kind of aspirations did you have as far as, you know, job and career? Well, I really didn't have none. It was just, you know, just give me a job and work it in and just go from there. We often hear from people who had troubled childhoods on this podcast, some who've been abused by their parents or exposed to drugs at an early age.
Darrell Isaiah, however, is not one of them. The upbringing he tells me about was safe and stable with two supportive parents who instilled strong family values in him. The Isaiah family was large, with Darrell the fifth youngest and a set of twelve kids. His parents were staunch Christians who expected their children to abide by their strict religious rules, to go to church, and to do the right thing by God.
Interestingly, Darrell's parents also taught him to seek out God if he sinned and atone for his actions, which Darrell sums up as, quote unquote, "If you play with the devil, you better pay God his respect." Darrell didn't know it at the time, but this lesson about seeking God's repentance would come back to haunt him in future years.
Right out of school, Darrell had lofty aspirations for playing football professionally. He was a raw talent, happiest when he was out on the field, and several college scholarships floated his way. For a while, it looked like Darrell was on track for a life as a quarterback football star until a bad knee injury shattered these dreams.
No longer able to play the game he loved on a serious level, Darrell's future shifted course. Now confronted by the real world, he was suddenly forced to find a proper paying job. He took to doing odd jobs here and there, working for a mattress company at one point, then later, a hotel. And paying the bills was even more imperative for Darrell at that stage of his life because, in 1982, he was newly wed to a young and beautiful wife, Vanessa.
So, who's the victim in your case? My wife. So you ended up getting married, huh? Yeah. Where'd you meet your wife? From a guy in the neighborhood. We all stayed in the same neighborhood. You met her locally, just in the same neighborhood? Yeah. How old were you when y'all met? Eighteen. Oh, so y'all met pretty young.
Yeah. What's her name? Vanessa. How old was she when y'all met? We was the same age. We was born in the same year. She was born in September and I was born in July. Y'all didn't go to high school together? Yeah, we went to high school and everything together. Okay, y'all just didn't date till eighteen? Yeah.
Well, how come y'all didn't date in high school? Well, because she was talking to some other guy. Okay. So how long after y'all, you know, started dating, until y'all got married? About three or four years. Okay. What did she do for work? Well, she was still going to school. She wanted to be a computer technician.
Okay. So she had dreams of basically finishing up school and working on computers. Did she ended up graduating from school? No, she ended up getting her GED. Did y'all have children together? No, no children. Okay. How would you describe your wife then whenever she was, you know, y'all met and were getting married and stuff like that, if you were to describe her?
Well, I mean, she was outgoing, just, you know, had a nice personality. She's somebody I really connected with because some of the same things that I was going through, she was going through. Yeah. Cause she was like the youngest child in her family, so she was going through things just like a normal child would, you know, being the youngest in the family, so.
If I were to ask Vanessa the same question, but asking about you, what would she say? She'd basically probably say the same thing because we both had a kind spirit about each other and we've kind of looked out for our family members more than we did for anybody else. Whenever y'all are in the stages of, you know, just getting to know each other and then going into marriage and things like that.
Did y'all have any kind of a rocky relationship or, you know, police called and things like that? Or was it a pretty solid relationship? It was pretty solid. Yeah, no big fights? No, no, because, you know, we were both young and we was trying to get to know each other. We used to go on dates and stuff to the movies and I would buy her flowers every day and bring them to her and carrying on. And her mother and them just be like, "Oh, he brings you flowers and taking you on a date?"
You're pretty in love with her, huh? Yeah. I notice that Darrell brightens up when he talks about his early days with Vanessa. Putting aside the tragic outcome of their story, it's clear that Darrell was truly in love with her when they first met. They were a pair of high school sweethearts, barely scraping 18, when they first got together.
Vanessa charmed Darrell with her fun and lively personality, and Darrell won Vanessa over with romantic dates and bouquets of flowers. After graduating from high school, an instant spark was kindled between the two, especially as Vanessa began confiding in Darrell about several issues in her life, leaning on him for emotional support.
At just 21 years old, Darrell and Vanessa decided to marry. On paper, they were a young, happy couple who had a bright future stretched out ahead of them. But, as we know now, this marital happiness was not going to last long. Within the next seven years of their marriage, Darrell would go from doting on Vanessa to shooting his young wife dead.
Had the cracks started to show up in the early stages of their marriage? Were there any warning signs that predicated the violence that would come? As is true in many relationships, as the years wore on, the novelty of their love story started to fade. The fairytale Darrell and Vanessa had been living in was about to be broken.
So how far into your marriage were you when this happened, this crime? Seven years. So after you got married, you got into hanging out with the wrong crowd? Is that what you're saying? No, it just, you know, when we, after we got married, you know, things started going a little rocky. She wanted to argue and stuff and I would go, I would just leave the house and, and just, you know, go hang out with, sometimes I even go down to my mother's house or her mother's house and sit there and talk to them.
To get away from the argument? Yeah. Yeah. So, what happened between the time of you sending flowers and never fighting and being heavily in love to having to go and take a break from arguing? What happened? Well, it was an incident that happened within her family that caused the majority of the problem.
Because her brother killed one of her sister's husbands, so Her brother killed one of her sister's husbands? Yes. And how did that mess with your relationship? Because her brother told both of us, "Don't let her interfere with your relationship because it ain't gonna turn out right." Explain to me again how this killing that doesn't have anything to do with, I mean it's your family obviously, but how does that mess with your relationship?
Say that to me one more time. Because she started hanging out more with her sister that they didn't want her to hang with. Because for years I didn't even know that she had this other sister. Who's they? Who's they don't want her to hang with? Her brothers. Her brothers had already told her, "You don't need to be hanging around your sister Brenda." That's why she never was around in the family before.
I didn't meet Brenda until one day they had a party and she and her daughter Tina came over there talking about Curtis had done this and done that and we was at one of her sister's house having a party and I never knew that she had a sister named Brenda. So her brother didn't want her to be around her own sister and that's also his sister?
Yeah. Why didn't they like the sister? Because it was bad news. I guess, because of the things that she was going through and didn't nobody in the family really cared for her, even though that they were siblings. But they said every, they knew every time she'd come around, it'd be nothing but bad, bad news.
What stance were you in? You didn't want to hang around with this sister? Well, I mean, like I told her, I said, that's your sister. I can't stop you from doing what you want to do with your sister. But you didn't want her to? Well, no, not for real. Is that where the arguments started? For you not wanting her to hang out with her sister?
Well, the arguments started, well, because they would sit there and drink and do things. You know, I really wasn't into drinking. You know, once they get to drinking and carrying on, that's where most of the problems come in at. So you didn't really drink, your wife would hang out with her sister that nobody really cared for, she was drinking and the drinking kind of disrupted y'alls relationship, basically.
Yeah, yeah. Create kind of some little fights and things like that, some quarrels, and you would kind of take a break by either going and hanging out with whoever, parents? Yeah, well, yeah. I went a couple of times to stay down to her mother's house in her old room just to get away. Did your wife ever get drunk and get physical with you?
Yeah. What would she do? She'd slap me around a couple of times, hit me in the back of my head with a skillet and everything. And she even pulled a gun on me a couple of times. Was this always when she was drinking? Well, every time that, that she would get mad and get to arguing, I'd, you know.
Did you ever hit her? Sometimes it'd be that. Yeah. Yes, sir. Did you ever have the cops called on you? Yeah, I even had to go to a domestic violence class for six months. Did she have to go as well or just you? No, she didn't have to go. And whenever you were taking these domestic abuse classes, things never really got better?
No, they never did. And the day that this murder happened, how did that morning start off? Just tell me about the morning, that early morning. What were you doing? Well, before that happened, she had got arrested because we was out to her sister's house, and they was out here drinking. I told her it was time to go, and she didn't want to go home.
So her and her sister, they got to arguing, and I told them, I said, "I'm getting ready to go." So, and I told her, "I'm getting ready to go", and she told me, "Well, I'm staying here." I said, "Well, no, you're going to go home because you got to go to work." So, me and her sister's husband, Ben Briscoe, we was standing out in the yard talking, and she come out of the house with a shotgun, talking about this is what she gonna do, so I left and went and called the police and had her arrested, you know, just for that.
Okay, that was the night before? Nah, yeah, well nah, that wasn't the night, that was about a week before. Okay, did you bail her out? No, her mother and sister went down there and bailed her out. Where did she go whenever she got bailed out? Did she come directly back to you? No, she went and stayed with her mother.
Did she call you or anything and say, why'd you do that to me? Yeah, I asked her, I said, "Well, why are you threatening me with the shotgun like you gonna kill me?" Right? What was her response? Oh, she didn't have none. She told me, "Well, I should have done it." I'm like, I just looked at her. When a person say that, you know, you already know that they might have set up on something that it shouldn't be.
So how long did she stay at her mother's? Did y'all eventually get back together? No, we never got back together. So this happened when she got out and y'all had this discussion, this was about a week before the murder? Yeah. Seven years into their union, the Isaiah marriage had collapsed. By this point, the couple had been having marital problems for some time, and Darrell attributes this to the politics within his wife's family.
Family dynamics are always minefields, and it's difficult to tease out exactly what created tension in their marriage. But as Darrell recalls, it all began with Vanessa rekindling her relationship with the black sheep of her family, her sister Brenda. This was a relationship that Darrell sorely disapproved of.
To him, Brenda was a bad influence whose drinking was rubbing off on her sister. Vanessa's drinking became a major point of contention in their marriage, triggering explosive arguments. Sometimes things got so heated that the cops had to get involved. During their intense fights, Darrell says, Vanessa would get physical, once hitting him with a skillet and Darrell would fight back.
We can't ascertain the extent of the domestic abuse that happened behind their closed doors But one thing was clear, the marriage was in deep trouble. The breaking point happened one October evening in 1989 when the couple were visiting a family member. They got caught up in one of their fiery arguments and Vanessa behaved erratically, wielding a gun about and threatening to shoot.
What Darrell did next would put a nail in the coffin of his relationship with Vanessa. He called the police to have his wife arrested. Throwing Vanessa in jail irrevocably broke their marriage. When released on bail, Vanessa chose not to return to the home she shared with Darrell, but went to live with her mother instead.
The marriage was over, and Darrell had lost his wife. However, the worst was yet to come. So take me back to the day that this killing occurred. I was doing other things. I was out in the streets hanging out with guys I shouldn't have been hanging out with. And then the morning that this happened, what were you doing that very morning?
I was at home cleaning up and doing things that I normally do. Yeah. I just felt lonely and depressed. Yeah. Did you have a weapon in the house? Nah. Uh-uh. You're just around the house cleaning up the morning of the murder. What happens later on in the day? Well, I went over to the neighborhood where I grew up at and was talking to a couple of friends and he had told me a dude had stole his brother's car.
And we went over there to get the car and on the way back, well, the other guy, he got his car back. The one that was riding with me, he left his gun in the car. I never owned a gun. Where was the gun at? Up under the seat. Did you know it was there? No, I didn't. Until I hit the brakes and it slid out. And so, when I went down on her job to pick her up, her and her mother was down there.
Your wife? Yeah. You had to go pick up your wife? Is that what you're saying? Yeah, I went to go pick her up from her job, but her mother was down there. In your vehicle? Yeah, in mine. And he left that gun in there, the guy that you were with? Was that before you picked up your wife? Yeah. No, I didn't get a chance to pick her up.
Because her mother picked her up. Okay, so you went to get her, she was already gone, then where'd you go? Well, I was sitting there waiting, and then her mother came and she went back in and done something and came back. Talking about she wasn't called the police, talking about how I ain't supposed to be there and carrying on.
I said, "Well, why'd you call me to come and pick you up?" Did you have a protection order against you? Yes, yeah, that's what they told me afterwards. So you never got served papers for a protection order? No. So she had filed one against you and you just hadn't been served yet? Right. And that's where your mother-in-law was like, you're not supposed to be here, you got a protection order against you?
Yeah, I didn't know nothing about it. Did you say, I don't know anything about it? Yeah, I told them.Â
Did you have a decent relationship with your mother-in-law? Or is it your mother or your mother-in-law? Mother-in-law. And what was her demeanor when she told you that? "You shouldn't be here. Get the hell out of here." Or just informing you, or was she nice? Nah, she wasn't nice about it. Yeah. So what was your reaction when she wasn't nice and said you shouldn't be there? You tell her to eff off?
Well, you know, I got mad. Like, why would you tell me to come and pick you up if this is going on? Probably to set a trap. Yeah. Maybe. I don't know. So, did you end up leaving? Yep Where'd you go? I ended up following them and, you know, until... So, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa whoa. You said them.
So is the wife with her when she said this? Yeah. Okay, well, we missed that part. So she was actually sitting in the seat with her? Uh-huh. Okay. That's kind of important to know. So they leave. Are you basically chasing them? Nah, I was just following them. Just following behind? Okay. So, you're following them.
Are they trying to speed away or are they just driving? Just driving normal. Where are they headed to? I guess they was headed home. And at this point, you had already noticed that the gun slid forward? No, not at that point. Okay. You follow behind them. You go all the way to their house with them? No, they never made it to the house.
We got down to Truman Road and it was down on 15th Street. It might be Truman Road and Gillam. That's fine. So you pull up beside them? Yeah, and started talking to them. And she got to yelling and cussing. Whenever you pulled up beside them, did you have your ex-wife right there on your side? Yeah. So it's their passenger door to your driver's door.
Did they have the window down? Yeah, she rode the window down, and we was talking, and then she get to cussing and carrying on, and you know, and everything just went crazy from there. What were they cussing about? Well, she was cussing at me, talking about I shouldn't have done this and done that, and this is gonna happen and that's gonna happen.
You know, more like threatening accusations and carrying on. And this is the same woman that you used to give flowers to and madly in love with? Yeah. That's a big turn. And you noticed the gun in your car by then? Yeah, that's when I just picked it up and started shooting. Were you sitting in your driver's seat when you did that?
Yeah. So, how many shots do you think you fired just sitting there in the car? I think two. And the mom is driving, whenever those shots went off, did she not think about trying to drive off, or she couldn't? Well, she did take off, and drove off, and we went down to Truman Road and Troost and made a left. And they stopped the car right there and then I got out and fired some more shots and took off.
Did you hit them the first time? I don't know. When they drove off, how far did they go before they pulled back over again? About like three blocks. Okay. Whenever you pull back up at the vehicle, you chase them down. Why did they pull over? Do you know? Well, because her mother couldn't drive no more. I guess one of the bullets accidentally hit her mother.
Where did it hit her? I guess on the side. And whenever you pulled up and chased him down and you got out, did you run over to your ex-wife or your wife's side of the car? Yeah. And did it look like she had been hit? I really didn't even pay attention. I just ran over there and started shooting and then hopped in my car and left.
Whenever you ran over there and shot, did she look up at you or did she kind of like defend and, you know, curl away from you? No, I, no, she never, never looked up at me, so. What was she doing whenever you shot? I guess she was trying to put the car in park and cut the engine off. How many bullets do you think you shot at her?
Maybe about four. Did you unload the clip? Till it stopped working? No, it was a .357 Magnum. So it's like only six shots in it. Oh, was it a revolver? Yeah. Okay. What was her mother doing as you shot into the car like that? Was she screaming? Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty deep, man. Yeah, I understand. Darrell Isaiah gunned his estranged wife down in broad daylight in the streets of Kansas City, Missouri.
It was a bloody and violent end to a tumultuous 10-year relationship. At times, Darrell's recollection of that day is a little hard to follow. With the help of available court documents, we can fill in some of the gaps in the story and retrace the events of that day, blow by blow. The 23rd of October was a Monday. At 5:00 PM Vanessa finished up her day of work and stood in the doorway of the building, waiting for her ride home to arrive.
Darrell had parked nearby in his gray Oldsmobile and approached his wife, but on seeing her husband, Vanessa turned back inside and called the police. Darrell hadn't been notified of it yet, but Vanessa had just secured an order of protection from the Jackson County Circuit Court, and Darrell's presence here was a violation of this order.
Confused, Darrell went back to his car, then watched Vanessa step into her mother's car. You can imagine Darryl's frustration. His wife had asked for a ride home, but now refused to talk to him. He was overcome by a fit of rage. Darrell tailed the car closely as they drove two blocks down East Truman Road at a stoplight.
He pulled up alongside them and shouted through the window. Then he raised the .357 Magnum a friend had left behind in the passenger seat earlier that day and shot twice. One of the bullets hit Vanessa's mother in the upper right back and left her temporarily paralyzed on one side and unable to drive. In a panic, vanessa from the passenger side of the car, put her foot down hard on the gas. As her mother tried to steer, the car swerved wildly out of control before coming to a sudden stop. Darrell, fuming, parked in the shoulder of the road, approached the car and shot directly at his wife four times as her mother watched, helpless and horrified.
Later, recounting that day, Vanessa's mother would recall that her daughter's final words were begging Darrell to, quote unquote, "Let my mama go." So Darrell, that day that this happened, were you drinking or doing any kind of drugs? Nah. Completely sober? Yep. Wow. I guess just mad as heck. Yeah, very, very mad. Well, here's the thing.
You fired the two shots, and when they drove off, the fact that you got and chased them down is really, really big. Yeah. I mean Yeah, I understand. Yeah. Did they give you life without? Yeah. Yeah. Had you just shot twice, you may have got just life, but man, that chasing them down. That's really, really big. And what I want to know is, after you shot those two shots and they, you know, drove away to get away from you, what was going through your mind?
Was there any thoughts of, you know, this is probably going to have it to where I go to prison for sure. I may kill several people by firing at them and you're, the moment that you do that and you get in the car and you chase them, is any of those thoughts going through your head? No, I just, nope. I just felt like it was something that I just had to do.
You wanted her dead? Yeah. Do you still want her dead? No. That was a kind of a hesitant no. Well, no. I mean, not, not, not after all these years, you know, after I'd sit back and reflect on it. No. I-I-I should have done something entirely different. Relationships are very difficult. They're, you know, people get divorced like crazy.
There's a lot of domestic violence out there. People get mad at each other. So did you think that after you did it, after you finished shooting and all that, how long did it take for you to say that that was not a good idea or, you know, like where you were, because obviously you wanted her dead. How long were you okay with wanting her dead?
Did you go to prison and spend years in there thinking, you know, I'm glad this happened or was there any turning point? How long did that last? Probably about two months while I was sitting in the county jail. Did you finally break down and cry about it or what? Yeah. You know, it's really a crazy deal, Darrell, because, you know, you had a good family bring, you know, growing up, big family, going to church, didn't really get into drugs too much.
You know, good husband, flowers and, showed that you loved her and to gun her down, that's, that's quite the, quite the big difference. You know what I mean? Yeah, I understand. How do you feel looking back at your life, you know, knowing that you had a good childhood and you know, decent upbringing and you know, a good marriage at the start, how does that feel to be flipped over to where now you're going to die in prison?
Well, it's awful. Because, you know, like I said, I done change everything. My whole chain of thought. I improved my self-esteem and done things to help other people. Yeah. Do you think you should be out of prison? Yes. You do? Yeah, because I believe everybody should have a second chance. It's striking that Vanessa's murder was up close and personal.
If Darrell's account is true, this was a textbook crime of passion that brought to an end a long, turbulent, and fiery marriage. Over their years together, Vanessa and Darrell had argued bitterly, threatened one another, called the cops several times, and lashed out violently. Despite the promising start to the relationship, Darrell had felt manipulated by Vanessa that October day, unable to contact or reason with her, and he had been driven by a sudden uncontained rage to kill her, losing control of his senses. The volatile marriage reached its logical, violent conclusion was six bullets shot through a car door on a Kansas City Street.
Growing up, Darrell's parents had taught him the necessity of finding God's repentance. Did Darrell heed their advice and face the consequences of his actions upfront? We'll hear more about that after the break.
And you ran back to your vehicle and you got in your vehicle. Where'd you go? I just went back to the neighborhood where I was and went and talked to my mother. And you can honestly say that that gun that you had in the car, you didn't even know that until the time was there for that you wanted to use it?
Right. That's even, that's really crazy too. When you went to your mother's, were you real amped up? Could she tell that there was something wrong or did you open up and say, "Hey, this is what I just did?" Nah, I didn't tell her nothing. Could tell your demeanor was different? Well, she just asked me what was going on and I told her, I said, I can't talk about it and I just left.
Did that worry her? Did she say, what do you...? You know, try to chase you down or what? Yeah, yeah, she, she was worried. Where did you go then? Well, after I left my mother's house, I went out to my brother's house. And I was telling him what was going on. You told your brother what you did? . Yeah. What was his reaction?
Him and his wife, they just looked at me like they couldn't believe it. Did they look like they might have been a little scared of you? No, they wasn't scared, they was just more concerned about how I felt and everything else that was going on around me. So after they, you told your family what happened, your brother and them, what did they do?
They just consoled me and told me I need to turn myself in and do this and do the right thing. Did you follow that direction? Yep. How long after you told them did you turn yourself in? It was about like four or five hours later. It was like at 10:30 at night. Did you stay there the entire time? Yeah. It was probably a pretty intense moment, those hours of them consoling you and telling you you need to turn yourself in. Is that a pretty big deal? Yeah. And all of them went down there with me. Yeah. You knew that once you walked in there, you weren't going to leave. Right. Right. Wow. That's pretty deep, man. How many people went with you to turn yourself in?
It was like nine of us. My mother and sisters and brothers. Yeah. Wow. That's a, that's a deep moment, man. It's like you're just turning over your life to the state. What did you say when you turn yourself in? I told them I heard that y'all was looking for me, so I'm here down here. Alright, so yeah, so, did they, you know, question you and stuff like that?
Pretty, pretty hard? Yes. Well, not too hard. Did they pretty much say they knew that you did it? Well, they said they had a witness that said that I'd done it. And I was like, "Okay." What did you do with the murder weapon? Well, I gave it back to the dude that it belonged to. Ah. Did they ever try to prosecute him?
No. It took just hours after killing Vanessa for Darrell to turn himself in to the police. Consider what Darrell must have been feeling at that moment as he handed his life over to the state. It's not an easy thing to do, but Darrell did so with the full support of his family. He arrived at the police station with eight of his family members, all encouraging him to confess to the murder and confront the consequences like a man.
It's as if his family occupied a symbolic role, a reminder of the moral compass Darrell had been raised to follow, to always make the right choice. In the interrogation room, it took a while for Darrell to come clean about killing his wife. First, Darrell flat out denied visiting Vanessa's work, let alone shooting her.
He instead told police that he had come to prove his innocence in the crime, and he concocted an alibi about playing basketball at the time of her murder. The evidence, however, was stacked overwhelmingly against him. Most damning of all was the testimony of Vanessa's mother, who had survived the ordeal and identified Darrell to the police as her daughter's killer.
Several eyewitnesses corroborated her story and the net around Darrell began to close in. But it wasn't just the police investigators to whom Darrell had to confess his guilt. In the weeks and years following the crime, Darrell would also have to face the rest of Vanessa's family who were grieving the loss of their sister and daughter.
But you knew that there would be no getting away with that. They would have tracked you down. Well, it was either... Right. It was either, either I turned myself in or her brothers would find me and try to kill me themself because I know they had done it before and got away with it. Do you think her brothers would have tried to kill you?
Yeah. Have you had any of her family been locked up in there with you? Yeah. Have they tried to kill you? Nah, they, nah. It was a nephew that came when I was in Crossroads. He came up there. He was talking about, he was in the hole and he was telling the guys in the hole about me and what he was going to do to me.
And a couple of them got out of the hole and they told me, "Hey, man. A dude down there said he gonna do this and do that to you. But we already told him, man, you come out on the hill, you a dead man." Are you patched up in there? What you mean patched up? You in a gang? No, no, no, no, uh uh. No, I've never been in a gang or nothing like that.
Yeah. It's just, you know, just my character and I would always helping people out. And the guys that was down there, they would be like, " Hey Isaiah, we got him. You ain't got to worry about him." And I told them, I said, "Man, we not going to do nothing like that. I'm going to talk to him and we going to get this done and ain't nothing going to happen."
Did you ever talk to him? Yeah, I talked to him. Everything changed whenever he was around you? Yeah, I talked to him and I talked to his father, and you know, and they said, his father told me, he said, "Man, I understand. I forgive you, you know, it's no hard feelings about nothing." You know, cause, at the end of my trial, before I got sentenced, I wrote a letter to the judge, apologizing for everything that happened.
Really? Yeah. You made it out to the judge? Yeah, I sent it to the judge. And the prosecuting attorney got up and read it in front of the court, and the judge was like, "Well, the man apologized, and he said he's sorry about everything that happened." So, well, you know, she was trying to make it like I was trying to influence him to do something else, and he said the man is just apologizing for the crime that he committed.
Oh, the prosecutors are trying to make it out to be like a, just a way for you to get off the hook? Well, she thought I was trying to harass somebody. That's what she was trying to put it down by. Why are you harassing the family? Cause I wrote her mother a letter, the same letter I wrote to the judge, I had a copy and I sent to her mother.
Was it basically, it's just a sorry letter? Yeah. Explaining everything and apologizing. Had you ever got any kind of hate mail from her mother? Anybody? No. Did they come to the courtroom? Yeah, they came to the courtroom. The letter Darrell was talking about was read out at the sentencing stage of his court case.
This followed a long jury trial, during which prosecutors painted Darrell as an over-controlling, possessive husband. Darrell was driven mad by his wife's disobedience, prosecutors argued, and so he hunted her down in cold blood. Several of Vanessa's friends testified on behalf of the prosecution that, in the weeks leading up to her death, Vanessa was deeply afraid of her husband and what he was capable of.
In response, Darrell's defense team sought a lesser charge than first degree murder. They counter-argued that there was no deliberation in Vanessa's killing, but that Darrell killed her in the heat of the moment after a sudden strong flash of anger. Unfortunately for Darrell, the jury's consensus was decisive.
He was guilty. He was given the maximum sentence, life imprisonment, without the possibility of parole. Many times since then, Darrell has appealed his conviction, but has been repeatedly unable to overturn it. With all his appeals denied, Darrell will now remain behind prison bars for the remainder of his life.
Shortly after her death, Vanessa's body was buried at the Forest Hills Cemetery in South Kansas City. Her gravestone is etched with a sleeping angel, along with the words, "Now I lay me down to sleep." It's a verse from a Christian bedtime prayer that was intended to comfort young children. Now it's been repurposed as a prayer that Vanessa's soul will find peace in the afterlife.
Despite the violent way Vanessa died, perhaps her family has been able to find a resolution to this story for themselves. After receiving his guilty verdict, I wondered, has Darrell also been able to find his own sense of peace surrounding this crime? Did you take a plea deal? You pled guilty? No, I didn't.
Like I said, I went, I had a jury trial and they found me guilty during a jury trial. So you tried to, you turned yourself in but you pled not guilty? Yeah. So, you pled not guilty and the jurors, I guess you had a jury trial? Yes, sir. And they found you guilty. What was that feeling like whenever you were found guilty?
Well, it was a sickening feeling. And then you had to wait months to get sentenced? Yeah, well, we had the trial in November. I got sentenced in January. January 11th. And did you think that you were probably going to get life without, or did you think maybe you'd get the death penalty? Well, I knew I was just going to get life without.
Yeah. Whenever he read that sentence to you, life without, what did you do? What was your reaction? Well, I just, you know, took it as a man, as part of my life. And moved on forward. And what has prison been like for you? Pretty, pretty tough? Nah, it's been pretty easy. It's been a real learning experience. Yeah.
I-I turned... I took some classes. I facilitated some classes. I've done restorative justice stuff. I was the president of restorative justice. I took breaking barriers. I took thinking for a change. Positive mental attitude. You know, I just changed my whole life and to be a better person. Well, that was quite the story.
I appreciate you reaching out to me. It's a shame that it seemed like such a good marriage for it to flip like that. I mean, it's just unfortunate. You know what I mean? But I appreciate you telling me your story and I hope everything works out for you. Okay? Okay. All right. All right, man. Take it easy. Okay.
All right. You take it easy too. Thank you. All right. Bye bye.
On the next episode of Voices of a Killer. When you do meth, you actually hear voices. Voices that tell you to commit heinous crimes. I do remember not long after I got on the highway thinking, "I killed somebody. I'm going to hell." Would it be safe to say that m***has kind of like ruled your life? Yeah, from the time I got on it, yeah.
Everything you told me so far is literally 100 percent just made up in your own head from the drug-induced psychosis. People are still going to say, "Man, you killed an innocent man. Who cares if you're on drugs? You shouldn't have done the f***ing drugs." Well, after this, I wouldn't do it. I just wouldn't do it.
That's a wrap on this episode of Voices of a Killer. I want to thank Darrell for sharing his story with us today. His ability to be open and honest is what makes this podcast so special. If you want to listen to these episodes weeks in advance, you can now do so by joining our Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/VoicesofaKiller.
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Your feedback helps us improve and reach new listeners. Thank you for your support and we can't wait to share more stories with you in the future. Thank you for tuning in. I'm your host, Toby, and we'll see you next time on Voices of a Killer.