a half years and though the relationship had its issues, who knows? she may have married him and then she had that hard to heart with doctor ryan. he said, you are too young to be settling down and somebody telling you what to do. and how did that strike it when he said that? i agreed with him. like why if i ve been with that guy all these years? yeah. he made me see that i would be better without it. it hadn t been a good relationship for a while. i had a reason to move on and let go and that. and she was going to tell tom. as soon as she got up the nerve but then, oh boy, dr. ryan left a message on her answering machine at the apartment she shared with tom. who, of course, heard the message he called me up and ask me what the hell is going on well a boyfriend would want to know what the hell is going on right? yeah. and when she told him? he started crying. and said, i can t believe that
an outdoorsman s paradise really. which absolutely suited brian. he took full advantage of what montana had to offer. and often. so in 1995, a year before the events in our story. doctor ryan set up shop in a speck on the map called geraldine. population, 300. it s always a struggle starting a new business. and starting a vet clinic is very expensive. but it was doing very well. when doctor ryan hired marlene to help run the office. and moved into the unused bug house. marlene and the husband built on the property miles out of town. so she was both and employee. brian had a heart of gold. he was part of the family. brian no a good-looking young vet, in a tiny place. there was interest lots of it. i remember asking, is there anyone they re your dating? and he said well there are some girls, but they re just not the
don chesky s defense team attempted to flip the playing field. not only did they challenge the prosecution theory that dr. brian murder occurred on a friday night they also pointed their suspicion at a man who had no alibi for saturday. larry hagan bush. that friend of dr. ryan s whose wife was leaving him, who had used medication he prolonged from doctor brian to trying to commit suicide a month before the murder. you took this combination of pills so that you could check out. you wanted to kill yourself. it was time. i mean, i was done with all to me. it is very possible larry goes to mr. winds trailer, he is upset, he has been drinking, he
investigation, agent can thompson was called in. and by the time it got to the doctors bunk house, the locals had been gone. a scene left unguarded. for more than 48 hours. montana is a remote state. sometimes you have over eight hours to get to the crime scene. so it s not like a big city where you can roll in and everything is pristine. no, not even close. in fact, the deputies had spent just a few hours trumping around the kitchen. and taking about a dozen photos. and in the process, had done things that could be undone. like cleaning up blood on the floor under the victims upper body and tossing it into the garbage a telephone handset found under doctor ryan s head without swapping for dna, or dusting for fingerprints. those discarded materials were beyond recovery. by the time investigator thompson arrived the local deputies did tell him that they found a water shoe on the bunk house doorstep it appeared to have been knocked off in the
of course all this when and how did nothing to shine a light on who killed dr. ryan. the question that was consuming everyone who knew him. my mind was just, spinning. trying to think, who? any little league at all? there was, she knew, this friend of dr. ryan s. larry who had recently erratic behavior. and she also knew some people in town that said larry was brad mouthing brian at a local bar. but he denied it. but investigators, almost immediately had a different league. that they were pursuing. and it was related to that broken window at the vet clinic. and the hang-up phone calls that doctor ryan had asked his sisters that they were making. so he had no idea who did it? after he eliminated me, he had an idea. oh he knew, or thought he knew who the hang-up caller was. but he didn t seem very worried