Hello, campers, grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire.

We've covered some real nasty pieces of work on our show over the years.

Dive into true crime for any length of time,

and you're bound to come across plenty of people you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley,

or a lit one, even.

But even among the rogues gallery of devil's rejects out there,

there are some in a league of their own.

People so devoid of morals and human empathy that they should really just be shoved in some

dank little spider-infested ubleette somewhere and forgotten about, just to protect the rest of us.

Today, we're going to tell you about two of them.

This is our special place in hell grab bag.

Case 1. Hell's Bell, the crimes of Melissa Patterson.

So, campers, for this one, we're in New Bronfels, Texas, January 28, 2015.

It was around 9 o'clock in the morning when Mark Nell's cell phone rang.

It was his 96-year-old father, Martin's neighbor.

Mark, I don't know what's going on, but there's a fire truck and an ambulance

in front of your dad's house, she said. That's a call nobody ever wants to get, especially not

Mark, who had lost his mom, Penny, just a few months earlier. His heart racing, Mark ran to his car

and headed toward his dad's house in McGowan, several hours drive away.

The neighbor was doing her best to explain the situation, but she didn't really know anything

specific, so Mark quickly hung up with her and reached out to his dad's caretaker, Melissa

Patterson.

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