50 Shades of Evil: Montana - Michael Spell

0:16 Welcome back to Bloody and Go. I'm your host, Jim Chapman, and we are just trucking along with this fifty Shades of Evil series. Last week I closed out these series on Ted Bundy, So if you haven't listened to that, go back and check that out. But today I am bringing you to the state of Montana, and I'm going to tell you about a quiet January morning in twenty twelve that turned deadly when a forty three year old math teacher by the name of Sherry Arnold vanished during her regular job through the streets of Sydney, Montana. Now, what began as a missing person search ended in absolute horror.

0:59 Already's traced her disappearance to two out of state drifters high on cocaine, Michael Spell and an accomplice. Now, there's much more to this story that you're going to hear today, So let's get into it, and I want you to picture this. It's the early nineteen nineties, the small, tight knit community of Parachute and Battlement, Messa, Colorado. Now this is nestled along the western slope in what's known as Garfield County, Colorado, and these towns sit in the shadows of the Rockies, just really beautiful place. Now natural gas and oil development it was starting to reshape daily life in that area. It was a working class world. You have blue collar families, modest homes, pickup trucks lining the streets, and a pace that felt like it was a million miles away from big city hustle. And that's where Michael Keith Spell was born and raised. Now public records and later court documents give us a straightforward look at his childhood in that energy patch corner of Colorado. Life Embattlement Messa revolved really around the rhythms of the oil and gas industry. Parents heading out to rigs or processing plants, kids riding bikes through neighborhoods that were growing fast as this boom just rolled into that small town. Michael grew up in a modest household. It was the kind of place where people worked very hard, watched their budgets, looked

2:33 out for one another, a place where pretty much everyone knew everyone. And he lived for a time with his father, Harry Spell. Now, court records from years later show Harry's staying involved in his son's life, even co signing paperwork when things would get complicated down the road. It was the kind of blue collar upbringing that's common along that western slope of Colorado. Nothing glamorous, but rooted in day to day reality, that is, making ends meet in a small town. Now. As a kid, Michael went to the same schools and played in the same neighborhoods as other kids around him. It was clear that he struggled academically, and he would not learn to read until the age of five, but he did do all the other stuff that kids do in that area at that age. He played outside, He rode the school bus, He watched the rigs light up in the horizon at night. The energy boom would bring jobs in new faces to Parachute and Battlement Messa, Colorado, but it also brought the usual small town pressures you may expect, keeping up with bills, navigating family routines, trying to figure out where you fit as the world around you keeps changing. So by the mid two thousands, Battlement Messa and neighboring Parachute they were humming with activity. The natural gas boom had turned that western slope into one of the hottest energy places in the country.

4:05 Pickup trucks rolled down the streets at all hours. Company vans parked nose to tail with other vehicles along the curbs, and the horizon would glow with the orange flare stacks of drilling rigs popping up and working throughout the night. New housing would spring up everywhere, seemingly almost overnight, rows of modular homes apartment complexes that were thrown together to handle the flood of workers that poured in from all over the country. Restaurants would stay open late to feed hungry crews coming off of twelve hour shifts. Local high schools would just explode with kids whose families had chased the promise of good pay in the patch, as they called it, and Michael was right in the middle of it all. As a teenager, he navigated the same hallways and back roads as everyon someone else in Garfield County.

5:01 He rode the school bus past massive drilling pads that seemed to pop up every few months, and after school he'd hang out around the neighborhoods, shooting basketball, you name it, cruising two lane roads that wound between Parachute and Battlement Messa and that boom would bring a lot of money into pockets that had never seen that much of it before. When that happens, it also brings kind of a restless energy. Guys fresh off the rigs with money cash in the wallet, they filled parking lots of convenience stores and local bars. Music would thump through the lowered truck windows driving down the main drags, and the smell of diesel and barbecue smoke would hang in the air on warm summer evenings.

5:51 And it was the kind of place where a young man like Michael could find work almost as soon as he was old enough to swing a hammer or drive a fork left now, Michael, like so many of his peers, they jumped obviously into that energy economy very early in life. He would take on entry level jobs around the rigs and processing facilities, and this is the kind of labor that kept the operation running, moving equipment, cleaning sites, helping with basic maintenance. Nothing you would need like a master's degree to do, but you need a good work ethic, and he seemed to have that. Days would start before sunrise and they would often stretch long into the evening.

6:35 He learned to show up on time where still two boots caked in red dust, and keep pace with crews that did not slow down for anybody, you better keep up. And the pay was decent for the area, enough to put gas in the tank, maybe help out at home, but that work was hard in the hour's one predictable. One week you might be on a remote well pad miles from town. The next week you'd be back in town in the yard loading trucks, all under the watchful eyes of supervisors who would rotate in and out with the projects. And even as Michael worked the patch, he was building kind of a personal life of his own.

7:18 He started a relationship with a young woman. Her name was Angel Cruz, and the two of them they settled into the familiar routines that most couples settle into, sharing a modest place in the battlement Messa area, figuring out how to stretch paychecks and dreaming of a future while dealing with day to day realities that is shift work. Their relationship would deepen, and before long they would welcome a son into the world, and by early twenty eleven, that little boy was just an infant, and Michael was stepping into the role of a father while still barely out of his teenage years, changing diapers after a long day on the rig, trying to make doctors appointments, carving out quiet moments in that household that sometimes felt like it was spinning as fast as that boom in that town itself. Fatherhood would add a new layer of responsibility, but it also gave him something solid to work toward, a reason to keep showing up for those early morning ship.

8:23 Yet that same energy that fuelled the boom, it also carried some hidden traps. The influx of cash, long hours, and out of town crews created an environment where things could escalate quickly. Drugs, especially meth and crack, would start showing up more frequently in the parking lots and main camps around those rigs. Late night parties and rented trailers turned routy. Young guys with money burning holes in their pockets sometimes would make choices that maybe they wouldn't have made back home. A lot of these guys were traveling from all over the country for this boom, and Michael he wasn't amen to that scene at all. Like others of age, he would find himself brushing up against the edges of it, and he kind of always had growing up.

9:13 As a matter of fact, I'm going to back up from twenty eleven to two thousand and seven, when Mike was still a juvenile, authorities actually arrested him in Garfield County on felony charges that would include drug distribution in contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Now, there was also a misdemeanor allegation of no consent sexual contact. That case would move through the juvenile system and the drug possession with intent charge would stay on the books of that court, and the matter involving the sexual contact was ultimately closed without prosecution. Now, a couple of years later, in two thousand and nine, he also faced another brush with the law police and said he approached a student at what was then Saint John Middle School. This is in Battlement Messa, and he asked the kid to text the other students to see if they wanted to buy marijuana.

10:13 Not very smart, right. That led to charges of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, attempted distribution and solicitation. But again the system handled it in the context of his age and everything just kind of went away. And I bring that up because that kind of marks a pattern of poor choices early on in life for Michael seemed to follow the faster pace of life in the area. The money flowed, the parties lasted longer, and the line between work hard play hard was something that would get blurred with Michael. He kept working, kept trying to hold down jobs, and kept showing up for that young family he had in two thousand eleven, but undercurrents of that boom town would pull at him, just like they pulled up many young men chasing opportunity at that time. So by the time he reaches his early twenties, Michael was still living in that same battlement mess of community where he grew up, and he and Angel were raising their newborn son in the shadows of those very same rigs that lit up his childhood. All those years, he continued picking up whatever oil field work he could find, sometimes steady, sometimes spotty, depending on the drilling schedule and the price of gas. In that boom that had once felt full

11:43 of promise, it was kind of showing signs of some rough edges. Things could be really good in that industry or they could be really bad. There was fluctuating job security, the constant new faces that would come up in town, and the easy of the mobility of drugs that promised a quick escape from long shifts. And it was in this environment that Michael would cross pass with a guide by the name of Lester Van Waters Junior. He was an older man from the same area, and he had his own history of bouncing between construction jobs in the oil patch. Now, Waters had also spent time in Florida working construction before he circled back to Colorado, and these two men, they shared kind of the same working class circles, the same search for steady pay in the energy fields, and increasingly the same late night party scenes where drugs were always a part of that mix. So as twenty eleven turned into early twenty twelve, the pool of some opportunity in North Dakota and eastern Montana started calling, if you will these guys. Stories would circulate through the industry in Colorado about big money to be made up north in those areas, higher wages, more rigs running around the clock, and opportunities that felt bigger than they were in Colorado

13:15 at that time. So Michael and Waters, they start talking about making a drive, and they talked about landing some good jobs. They're going to send money back home maybe build something better for the families that they had back in Battlement Messa. But those conversations also happened against the backdrop of a drug culture that had quietly taken root in Michael's life. He was a full blown attic by this point. Crack cocaine had become a part of the weekend scene for some cruise and what started as an occasional use had its way of escalating when the money was there and the work was exhausting, And that was exactly where Michael was at. So Michael Spell was no longer that kid running his bike up and down those roads past the rigs, or a teenager clicking his first oil field hours. He was a young father. He was a working man mid twenties, carried the same hopes and the same pressures that defined life in that corner of Colorado.

14:20 The booman giving him opportunities, no doubt, but it had also exposed him to choices that would soon lead him far beyond those familiar roads. So it was in January of twenty twelve the two men they climb into waters green Ford Explore and they pointed north and out of Parachute, Colorado. Now the drive was supposed to be about work, but almost from the moment they left the western slopes of Colorado, it became something else entirely. The man had been using crack cocaine heavily throughout long hauls of this true up hours blurred together on the interstate, flat endless plains of Wyoming giving way to the snow dusted hills of eastern Montana.

15:11 They smoked pipe after pipe of crack, and the drug fuelled a relentless wired energy that kept them pushing forward through the night and into a very cold morning. According to statements Spell later gave investigators, Waters talked openly during those hours about how the crack was quote bringing the devil out in him. He spoke of dark fantasies, including kidnapping a woman, taking her against her will, and Spell listened he was caught up in the same drug fueled haze, and the miles would just slowly tick by as that explorer ate up the highway. By the morning of January seventh, twenty twelve, they had crossed into Montana and rolled into a small oil town of Sydney, Montana, the sun just beginning to come up over the horizon, and the streets were just snow covered in a pale winter light, and Sidney was alive with that same energy they had left behind in Colorado, tanker trucks rumbling through town, workers and hard hats grabbing that early morning coffee at gas stations in the constant hustle of big money. So let me tell you about Sherry Arnold. She was a forty three year old high school math teacher, and she was a mother of two, and she was doing what she did almost every morning, heading out for a daily job. She lived just blocks from the route that she ran that day, a familiar loop through her quiet neighborhood in a Titannit

16:44 community very similar to where Michael was from. Everyone knew each other, and it was still early, kind of cold January morning, where the breath hangs in the air and the world just feels hushed, right before a full day. Begause ends that Green Explorer crew slowly down the street. Waters was behind the wheel, Spell was riding shotgun, and they spotted her, a lone woman, moving at a steady pace along the sidewalk. Now, according to court documents and Spell's own later account to the FBI, Waters pulled the suv over very abruptly stopping directly in front of her path, and what happened next unfolded in a matter of seconds.

17:29 Spell steps out of the passenger side. He moved quickly. He grabbed Sherry and forced her toward the open door of that explorer. She fought back hard. She was a mother, a teacher, and a woman who had no intention of going anywhere quietly. There was a violent struggle right there on the street. And then inside of that vehicle. The two men overpowered her inside the cab of that explorer, and Sherry Arnold was choked to death. She died within moments. Now, the horror of that morning, it's pretty impossible to soften. It was a random act of brutality in a town that had never seen anything like it. This was a beloved teacher gone in the time it takes to drive past just a few houses. And once that struggle ended, the men didn't stop. They drove north. They crossed the state line into North Dakota, with Sherry's body still inside that explore. The drugs that they had taken carried them this far, and now it was mixed with raw panic.

18:40 Now somewhere along the way, they actually stop at a Walmart and they buy a shovel because they were going to do something unthinkable. Later that same day, they pull off into a remote rural area outside of Williston, a stretch of open land that was dotted with snow covered fields, and using that new shovel, they dug a shallow grave and buried Sherry Arnold's body. Then they just kept driving, fleeing farther east, trying to put distance between themselves in what they had done. And for the next several days, the two men continued on this erratic journey. The crack fueled road trip that had started as a search for oil field jobs had now become a desperate flight. But police they were already closing in tips from back in Colorado, including a conversation Spell had with his girlfriend, Angel Cruise.

19:39 After this incident reached the FBI and investigators, they moved fast. Within a week of the murder, both men were arrested. Spell was taken into custody in Rapid City, South Dakota. Now, once in custody, Spell began to talk. In detailed interviews with the FBI. He lays out the entire sequence the drug binge on the drive north Waters, pulling over in Sydney, the abduction, the killing inside of the Explorer, and the purchase of the shovel, as well as the burial outside of Williston. He implicated Waters as the one who had done the choking, while Waters, in his own statements in this Always Appensall, he points the finger back at Spell.

20:25 The physical evidence fibers, DNA, the shovel, the disturbed ground where the body was later found. It would eventually corroborate the entire timeline. Sherry Arnold's body remained hidden, however, in that frozen north to cut a field for more than two months. It wasn't until March of twenty twelve that search teams, acting on both the confessions and tips, located a shallow grave and brought her home to Sydney. Now, the crime itself was as senseless as it was shocking. To two men high on crack, hundreds of miles from home. They act on impulses, starting with a drug fueled fantasy and a random encounter on a quiet morning street, and a life has taken in minutes, and that left the community reeling a place Sydney, Montana where people still left their doors unlocked and kids would ride their bikes until dark.

21:23 It would never feel the same again. And this was not a crime of passion or some long simmering grudge, not that that makes it any better, but it was a collision of bad decisions, powerful drugs in a moment of pure sick opportunity for two men who had let the road and drugs strip away every boundary they even had. The charges would hit hard homicide in attempt at kidnapping. Prosecutors led by Richland County Attorney Mike Weber, they made it clear from the start they intended to seek the death penalty. This was no ordinary case in the eyes of that town. A mother teacher neighbor snatched jogging in broad daylight. That kind of crime made people like doors they never needed to lock before, and that courthouse in Sydney became the center of a storm. Reporters would fill the gallery. Family members of Sherry Arnold would sit quietly in the front rows, and the legal machinery would grind into motion. But almost immediately, the path to the trial became anything but straightforward. From the very first hearing, Spell's defense team zerote in on what they considered a central issue, competency.

22:39 They argued that Michael Spell was not mentally fit to stand trial. That is, documented history of cognitive challenges meant he could not fully understand the proceedings or effectively assist in his own defense, and over the next two and a half years, the courtroom in Sidney became the stage for a series of intents competency hearings. Experts are flowing in medical records from Colorado were introduced. Psychiatrists and psychologists would take the stand, one after the other, offering competing portraits of a young man sitting at the defense table. His defense attorneys would paint a picture of a defendant who had struggled with intellectual limitations his entire life. They brought forward evaluations showing low IQ scores and functional difficulties that had already led Colorado courts to declare him incompetent in earlier juvenile and drug related cases. They argued that Spell simply did not have the capacity to navigate the complex legal world he now found himself in. If the court agreed, the charges could be dismissed and Spell could instead be committed to a state mental health facility, potentially opening the door to an eventual release rather than a lifetime behind bars, but the prosecution would push back. They called their own experts, including doctors from the Montana State Hospital in Warm Springs who had evaluated Spell during its time in custody, and those professionals testified that while Spell

24:12 had limitations, they believed he was exaggerating some symptoms and was in fact competent enough to understand the charges and participate in his defense. So the judge in this case, Richard Simonson, he would listen carefully through hours of testimony, and in May of twenty fourteen, after weighing all of the evidence, he makes his ruling Michael Spell was competent to stand trial and this case was going to move forward. So with competency settled, the pressure would mount a trial day would set, but behind the scenes, plea negotiations were underway. On October twenty first of twenty fourteen, a deal was filed.

24:55 The very next day, October twenty second, Michael Spell to it before Judge Simonson in the same Sydney court room and entered a guilty plea to the charge of deliberate homicide. Now, in exchange, the attempt to kidnapping count was dropped and prosecutors agreed to recommend a one hundred year prison sentence, no restrictions on parole eligibility. After the mandatory minimum period, and the plea hearing itself, it was tightly controlled. Spell was now twenty five years old. He appeared in court wearing a simple cardigan. He would speak quietly, confirmed that he understood the rights he was giving up, and that he was pleading guilty because he was in fact guilty.

25:41 The courtroom was packed. Sherry Arnold's family members sat just feet away. Their grief was still fresh more than two and a half years after her death, but this fight was far from over. Sentencing was scheduled for the following spring, and both sides prepared to argue what that sentence should should look like. April seventeenth, twenty fifteen, arrives. It was a crisp spring day in eastern Montana, and once again the Richland County Courthouse was filled with spectators, media, and the Arnold family. Defense attorneys made an impassioned plea. Rather than send Spell to prison, they asked Judge Simonton to committee them to the Montana Department of Public Health, a facility they said was equipped to handle individuals with intellectual disabilities.

26:31 They argued that prison was not the right place for someone with his limitations, that treatment and structure care would better serve both justice and public safety. But prosecutors would stand firm. They wanted Spell behind the walls of Montana State Prison the full one hundred years recommended in that plea agreement, and they reminded the court of the brutality of the crime, the randomness of the attack, and the day a stating impact on Sherry Arnold's husband, her two children, her students, and the entire Sydney community. And y'all that often gets forgotten. Now, this was not a case for leniency, they argue. This was a case that demanded accountability in the strongest possible terms. And then came the moment everyone had been waiting for. Michael Spell himself was given the chance to speak. He kept his hands in his pocket, his head slightly bowed, and he addressed the court in a quiet voice, saying, quote, I know that I heard a lot of people. I'm just hoping that someday they'll be able to forgive me. It was brief, but it was one of the first expressions of remorse from a man who had helped and Sherry Arnold's life on that cold January morning, if you believed that he was actually remorseful.

27:54 So Judge Simonton, he takes all that in. He reviews the evidence, the plea agreement, the argument from both sides, and the profound laws suffered by the Arnold family, and in the end he sided with the prosecution. Michael Key Spell was sentenced to one hundred years in the Montana State Prison. He would be eligible for parole after serving twenty five of those years, and of course Spell's legal team they immediately appeal, arguing once again that the competency rulings had been wrong and that his intellectual challenges should have kept him out of prison. The case would wind its way all the way up to the Montana Supreme Court, and in November of twenty seventeen, that court issues a unanimous decision They found no reversible error in Judge Simonson's handling of the competency issues or the sentencing. That conviction in the one hundred year sentence was affirmed in full.

28:54 So this long legal journey that started with two men in a Green four Explore on a drug fuel drive from Colorado had finally reached its conclusion. Michael Spell would service time in Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge, Lester Van Waters Junior. He had pleaded guilty earlier and cooperated with prosecutors, and he received his own one hundred year sentence as well. So on April seventeenth, twenty seventeen, Judge Simonton he hands down that sentence. Spell is shackle process transported west across Montana and into the Montana State Prison, which is a sprawling maximum security facility nestled in the Deer Lodge Valley and surrounded by the rugged mountains of the Continental Divide. Montana State Prison is a world of concrete walls, razor wire control, movement, constant surveillance. Inmates here follow a rigid daily schedule, early wake ups, head counts, meals in the chowhall, assignments, in very limited yard time.

30:02 And for Spell, who arrived at age twenty five with a history of intellectual challenges and a reputation already marked by a brutal crime, the adjustment was immediate and unforgiving. Almost from the time he got there. Prison records showed he struggled to stay out of trouble. Within his first few months behind bars, Spell racked up several major discipline violations. In May of twenty fifteen, he was written up for fighting with another inmate. A month later, in June, he flooded his cell and refused a direct order from staff. By April of twenty sixteen, he was cited yet again for assaulting another prisoner. Each incident would move him deeper into the prison's discipline system, from medium security housing into higher security areas, where the movement gets even more restricted and more privileges get stripped away. But the most serious trouble came in April of twenty sixteen. This is just a year into his sentence. Court documents later revealed that Spell in another inmate by the name of Thomas Crill Lanham, they planned and carried out a vicious attack on a fellow prisoner named James Marshall. Now, according to prosecutors, the assault stem from a disagreement the day before. On the morning of the attack, Laam enters Marshall's cell. Marshall turns his back. Spell then grabbed him from behind and locked

31:35 him in a choke hold, holding him in place while Lanam beat the victim repeatedly with a combination lock wrapped in a sock. Marshall suffered fractured bones in his face and broken ribs. In prison. Video captured parts of the chaotic scene in the day room area outside of that cell. Afterwards, investigators said Lanam was reportedly upset that Marshall had survived that beating. Now it took nearly two years for charges to be filed. In March of twenty eighteen, both Spell and Lantam were formally charged with attempted murder in Powell County District Court. The two men pleaded not guilty. The case would highlight how dangerous these high security prisons are, where old grudges, limited space, and the constant pressure of incarceration can just explode into violence. And Spell's rolling that attack would keep him in restrictive housing for extended periods and further cement his status as a high risk in May.

32:41 So for the next several years, Spell's life inside Montana State Prison would settle into a pretty grim routine. He served his time in the shadows of that one hundred year sentence, with parole eligibility still decades away. As a matter of fact, twenty forty would be his first chance, and like most long term inmates, he was assigned various jobs within the facility, but these were common prison labor jobs such as kitchen work, laundry detail, or maintenance crews, because through his discipline record, he would get limited access to better programs or lower security units. They're not going to reward you for acting like a freaking idiot. Visits were rare. They were heavily supervised. Letters and phone calls would provide only a slight connection to the outside world, including an occasional contact with family back in Colorado. Now the president itself, it's a self contained city, keep that in mind, roughly fifteen hundred men, its own medical unit, education classes, religious services, wreck areas. But for someone serving a virtual life sentence, every day carries the same gray weight as it should, the same corridors, same fences, same cycle of counts in lockdowns. In the twenty sixteen attack and its legal fallout added yet another layer of scrutiny to Spell's file, keeping him under closer watch by correction staff.

34:13 So you would think this guy from here forward would fly right. Well, not exactly. In the summer of twenty twenty four, Spell makes headlines yet again. On June eighth of that year, he and another inmate, Bradley Chrisman, they were involved in a brazen and disturbing attack on a female corrections officer right inside those prison walls. According to charging documents filed in Powell County, the two men grabbed the officer while she was conducting routine door checks. They force her into one of the cells, held the door shut, and attempted to sexually assault her. The incident was stopped, to thank Goodness, before it could escalate further, but the charges were severe as they should have been. An attempt at aggravated sexual intercourse without consent, both felonies that could add decades more to Spell's already lengthy sentence if he's convicted.

35:12 So Spell and Cressman they both pleaded not guilty, and as of this recording, that case is still working its way through the courts. The attack itself would send shockways through the Montana Department of Corrections and the prison system as a whole. It underscored the constant rests that are faced by corrections officers, men and women who walk into dangerous situations every single day, and it raised fresh questions about how high risk inmates like Spell are housed and monitored. So Today, Michael Spell remains at Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge. He's still serving that original one hundred year term for the murder of Sherry Arnold. He is now in his late thirties, and that boy who once rode his bike past oil riggs embattlement Messa has become a long term prisoner whose every single move is dictated by the state. The twenty sixteen attempted murder charge in twenty twenty four attack on that corrections officer have marked him as one of the most evil inmates in that system, limiting any chance of meaningful programming or eventual transfer to lower security facilities. So prison life for Spell is not the dramatic escape or redemption story we sometimes see in the movies. It is a slow grinding reality of concrete and steel, of lost years in daily survival. It's a

36:44 place where consequences of that cold January morning in Sydney have played out in full, not just for Spell, but for the officers who guard him, the inmates who share his cell blocks, and the families whose lie were shattered years earlier. And he is right where he deserves. And with that we come to another end of an episode of fifty Shades of Evil, and I hope this episode brought to the forefront of your mind that behind every prison number is a person whose choices ripple outward. They affect victims, families, communities, and the men and women who work the hardest job in the justice system, which is correctional officers that deal with these inmates on a daily basis.

37:37 Thank you so much for listening. Check out the Patreon for commercial, free early releases and more at patreon dot com, slash Bloody Andngola podcast and I'll be back next week with another fifty Shades of Evil. You'll have to stay tuned to find out where I'm going. And until next time for Bloody and Gola, I'm Jim Chapman, my child