The 'Wife Swap' Murders | The Stockdale Family

True Crime Society

True Crime, Society & Culture

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 17 July 2025

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Timestamps:

(7:58) - Stockdale Family

In 2008, the Stockdale family from Ohio appeared on the reality TV show ‘Wife Swap.’

Kathy and Timothy Stockdale were raising their four sons in a very strict, conservative manner. This is an excerpt from the family manual Kathy prepared for ‘Wife Swap.’

We moved to the country to get the boys away from the city. Our children are being raised away from violent language, sexual influences, drinking, smoking, drugs, rap music all the things we left behind in the city. Instead we are raising our children on a diet of wholesome activities and farm work; keeping their minds pure and their bodies healthy and keeping out the influences of modern society. That is why we home-school.

By 2017, two of the children remained in the family home - Jacob and James. One day that year, while Timothy was at work, Jacob fatally shot his brother James and his mother Kathy. He then attempted to take his own life by shooting himself in the head. He survived and was hospitalised for many months.

After he recovered, Jacob was charged with the murders of his mother and brother. No motive for the killings has ever been revealed.

In this episode of the True Crime Society Podcast, we discuss the murder/suicide involving the Stockdale family from ‘Wife Swap.’

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0:00.0	The True Crime Society podcast contains adult themes and violence and is not intended for all audiences.
0:05.5	Listener discretion is advised.
0:07.6	And if you'd like to skip the intro or move to any specific part of the podcast, please refer to the timestamps listed in the episode description.
0:14.5	Thank you.
1:27.6	Thank you. What's up, guys? Welcome back to another episode of True Crime Society podcast with Stephanie and Olivia. It is June 22nd right now here in New York. We're recording on a Sunday. The weather here is crazy. As always. No, I'm just kidding. It's actually, well, I guess it is kind of crazy. Not this moment, but the next few days we're in an extreme heat wave. We're like getting extreme heat warnings because the temperature's going to be over 100 degrees. And like with the humidity, it's going to be even worse. So I don't know. Maybe it's the end of the world with everything going on, as we always say. Because I literally feel like two weeks ago I was talking about how it's 60 degrees in rainy and cold every day, even though it's June, and now I'm getting over like 100 degree weather here. It's wild. Yeah, it's ridiculous. I'm lucky I got a new air conditioner. So we're really going to put it to the test right off the bat. Still cold here. It's sunny, though, at least.
1:31.3	I feel like winter is generally all right here as long as it's sunny because it's still warm in the sun.
1:32.2	Just looked at the weather.
1:33.1	It looks nice until a Friday and then it's going to rain.
1:36.0	So that's fun.
1:37.8	So we're recording on a Sunday today because we are trying to prepare for when I have this baby. So we're trying to do
1:47.3	some double recording weeks so that we can get a couple episodes backed up just in case of an
1:53.3	emergency or obviously, you know, and I'm like literally in labor, I can't record. So we're
1:58.5	going to try to backlog some. I'm still going to try to record as much
2:02.3	as possible just because one, I kind of enjoy doing it and kind of enjoy doing it. I do enjoy doing it.
2:09.1	And I don't know. I just people are like, no, take time off, take time off. But I don't know. I like
2:14.4	doing it. We'll do our best to keep up with it as much as we can live,
2:18.9	but obviously it'll be a little hard at first especially. So we're going to be doing some backup
2:25.0	recordings. So that's what we're going to be up to. I have a busy few weeks. I finally have
2:31.9	60, hold on my watch, 63 days until my due date, so.
2:38.3	Wow.
2:39.2	Coming around quick.
2:39.9	I know.
	...

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