When Nerds Attack - Ensnared: The Murder of Kelly Bullwinkle

True Crime Campfire

True Crime, Society & Culture, History

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 16 May 2025

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There’s a meme I’ve seen a few times. It says “You never know how toxic something is until you breathe fresher air.” I think it’s about how easy it is to get so completely wrapped up in a relationship, or a group dynamic, or a way of thinking that you stop seeing it for what it is. You become less and less tuned in to what’s normal. This happens a lot when you get two close friends together—two people who might not be likely to do any damage if left to themselves, but who become like fire and gunpowder together. Pushing each other further and further, with neither one willing to flinch. This can get even scarier when the two friends in question are teenagers with huge egos and a fascination with all things dark and edgy.

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Sources:
LA Weekly, "Two Against One," Christine Pelisek. January 8, 2004.
Redlands Daily Facts: https://www.redlandsdailyfacts.com/2023/07/19/high-profile-killer-of-redlands-teen-granted-release-from-prison/
CBS News: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/best-friends-held-in-teens-death/
Court transcripts
LA Times Archives: "Teen's Crush Was Fatal," Lance Pugmire, January 2005
LMN's "I Killed My BFF," S3, E5
Investigation Discovery's "Mean Girl Murders," episode "Goth Girl Gone"

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Transcript

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0:00.0	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.
0:19.6	There's a meme I've seen a few times. It says you never know how toxic something is until you breathe
0:25.5	fresher air. I think it's about how easy it is to get so completely wrapped up in a relationship or a group
0:32.8	dynamic or a way of thinking that you stop seeing it for what it is. You become less and less tuned in to what's normal.
0:40.5	This happens a lot when you get two close friends together,
0:43.7	two people who might not be likely to do any damage if left to themselves,
0:47.6	but who become like fire and gunpowder together,
0:51.0	pushing each other further and further, with neither one willing to flinch.
0:55.6	This can get even scarier when the two friends in question are teenagers with huge egos and a fascination
1:01.1	with all things dark and gloomy.
1:04.0	This is your latest when nerds attack, ensnared, the murder of Kelly Bullwinkle.
1:18.9	Music snared the murder of Kelly Bullwinkle. So, campers, for this one, were in Redlands, California, October 4th, 2003.
1:25.6	It was just afternoon when two men came bursting into the police station. They'd been
1:30.3	playing paintball over near the San Timoteo Creek, they said, and they were pretty sure they'd found a
1:35.2	body. They hadn't seen it up super close. It was down an embankment and partially covered by an old
1:41.7	abandoned couch. Now, police never really know about a thing like this
1:45.9	until they see it for themselves. People's imaginations can run away with them. It was possible the men had
1:51.9	just seen a weirdly shaped bundle of clothes or something. One time, a woman had called 911 in a panic
1:57.9	about a dying bear in her front yard, and it turned out to be a faux
2:01.7	bear-skin rug somebody had thrown out, and not even a very convincing one, apparently.
2:06.4	So until you get there and see for yourself, you can't really be sure what you're going to find.
2:11.9	But when investigators arrived at the foot of that embankment, they quickly realized this was
	...

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