It's a brand new year and I would love to kick 2023 off with a good old-fashioned

murder for higher plot.

Welcome to true crime to go. I'm John. Here is always with my good buddy Jamie. How's life, ma'am?

Things are good. New year, new day. I'm not a big New Year's resolution guy, but

it's 2023 and hopefully it brings better times than 2022. I mean, a man, brother. Dude, we have a great

crime story here. We're going to try to do it in 10 minutes or less. We appreciate you guys

hanging along. Jamie, why don't you get the ball rolling? Dr. Stephanie Russell was a pediatrician

at Kid's Life Pediatrics in our state of Kentucky over in Louisville. I feel like Louisville might

not be part of Kentucky. It is so different where we live. It is very different. I will gladly

give that over to Indiana if they want them. Dr. Russell had a really messy divorce with her ex-husband

Rick Crabtree and unfortunately, as often happens, a nasty custody battle ensued. Again, that's not

an unusual occurrence, but it doesn't always lead to violence or illegal behavior. Now, this isn't

the first case we've covered that scene violence come from a custody battle. I'm thinking

specifically about the Linda Cooney case down in Florida and this doesn't necessarily end like

that one does. I think there's some similarities between Linda Cooney and Stephanie Russell.

As part of the custody battle, Russell accused her husband of abusing herself and the kids.

After an 18-month investigation, court documents show that not only was there no evidence found

to support the abuse, but the judge believed Russell to be unreliable. Here's a quote from

Crabtree's attorney. They finally did a warrant on her phone and found text messages or other

evidence that cooperated her first attempt to hire a hitman. They found all those videos in her

phone where she was having the kids practice making false allegations against them. Harrelson said,

if they didn't say it right, she'd start over again. So she turned these over to authorities.

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