It was the summer of 1988 in Washington, North Carolina, a quiet southern town where people left

their doors unlocked and still trusted their neighbors. But inside one of those houses, something

dark was brewing. By the end of that summer, one man would be dead, another near death,

and the person behind it all would turn out to be someone no one expected. This is the story of Leith

and Bonnie von Stein and the murder that turned fantasy into fatal reality.

Hey guys and welcome to the Moms and Mysteries podcast, a true crime podcast featuring myself, Mandy and my dear dear friend Melissa. Hi, Melissa. Hi, Mandy. How are you? I am doing well. How are you? I'm good. Mandy, you are much more of a cook than I am. I've been trying to, like, make some freezer meals now that we're going into like cooler weather and stuff. And every day that

I've done this, I've sliced my finger. I'm on my third finger. I'm running out. Oh no. Took a chunk out on a

cheese grater. And I was like, this is why I don't cook. I'm also not good at it. As long as it doesn't

end up in the Wendy's chili, like our episode.

Our episode this week.

No, it was.

My husband was like looking through the cheese. I'm like, no, I can see it still here. It's just floppy. But he was like, I don't want this cheese. I'm like, I sacrificed my finger for it. You guys are eating this cheese. So no, but cutting your finger like that and like especially when it's like a small

slice, it is so painful forever. So I recently did the same, kind of a similar thing. I cut my

finger on a can or something that I was trying to open. And so it just like sliced. But the where

it is is like right on where my finger bends on my index finger. And so for like the last week, I can barely

even pick things up because like every time I bend my finger, I can feel it like it, it stings, it burns. And it didn't even look that serious. It was just a tiny little cut. So yeah, that's, that is the worst. Absolutely. One of them I got from just picking up the knife, like trying to clean. I'm like, Now I can't cook or clean. This is just, you know, this is God's way of telling me that I should just be, you know, a princess. Yeah. Just sit down. I'm not doing anything. All right, we'll get into the story for this week. There's a lot to get into with this one, and I'm excited to tell this story. So, Leith Peter von Stein was the kind of man who made life look easy.

He was the kind of guy that everyone else in town would point to and say, now there's someone who did it right.

He was born in 1946 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to Howard and Marie von Stein.

They were a hardworking couple who owned a

successful dry cleaning company. The family wasn't very flashy, but they lived a comfortable life,

and Leith grew up with a really good head on his shoulders and a very clear understanding of how

money and finances worked. After finishing school, Leith joined the Army in the late 1960s. He served during a time when the

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