California Couple Scammed By Tom Selleck Impersonator Found Dead With “Traumatic Injuries”
Rogue Energy
iHeartPodcasts
3.0 • 4.4K Ratings
🗓️ 24 May 2026
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Police found both 79-year-old Karen Whitaker and 80-year-old Donald Whitaker dead in their California home in a suspected murder-suicide. Friends of the couple say Karen had been defrauded by a person posing as Tom Selleck who had scammed her out of at least $30,000 over the past year. Detectives say there is no evidence the unknown scammer was involved in the couples’ deaths, but the stress of the fraud may have been the tipping point for the couple.
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.6 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:06.0 | Hey, that folks. |
| 0:07.0 | It is Sunday, May 24th, and police in California are investigating a bizarre murder-suicide |
| 0:14.3 | involving an elderly couple and somehow, some way Tom Selleck plays into this story. And with that, welcome to this |
| 0:23.9 | episode of Amy and T.J. The Tom Selleck part of that, of course, iconic actor, you could argue, |
| 0:30.3 | and we'll try to explain how he plays into this robe, but it all has to do with a possible elderly scam. And now the woman |
| 0:41.2 | who is being scammed is dead along with her husband. That's where we are. And robes, |
| 0:48.0 | the story just gets bizarre. And like you say, before we start, this is sad. It's incredibly sad. |
| 0:54.0 | Just to think karen |
| 0:55.0 | wittaker 79 years old her husband donald whittaker 80 years old there was a welfare check |
| 1:01.9 | because karen didn't show up for a card game and so they asked police to check on this couple |
| 1:07.5 | and they found them dead in their own home, and they called it from |
| 1:12.6 | traumatic injuries. They didn't get into specifics as to how they died, but they did call it |
| 1:19.0 | a suspected murder suicide. They also didn't designate who may have killed whom and how they |
| 1:25.8 | died, but we learned about what was happening in the year |
| 1:29.6 | leading up to their deaths. And it is bizarre, and it's a cautionary tale. |
| 1:35.9 | Yeah, and this is not, I mean, initially when this, I guess it didn't get on everybody's |
| 1:41.9 | radar immediately robed. You hear about certainly an elderly couple dead. You wonder what happened and who was after these folks and who would have killed these folks and so on and so forth. So the initial statement from the police only said that these are the details they gave. So this was May 15th. They said at 1159 a.m. They were called to this home again in Bermuda Dunes for this welfare check, as Roeb just mentioned. |
| 2:03.8 | They were both pronounced dead at the scene. This is an ongoing investigation. No further information will be released. |
| 2:09.8 | No arrests have been made, and investigators are working to identify anyone involved in this incident. |
| 2:14.3 | And then, Robes, a few days later, we got the update that this is the one that |
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