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The circumstances surrounding the death of
the woman born Maureen ponderosa
captivated south Philadelphia.
She was discovered in an alley with a broken neck.
In 2013, Maureen had begun
her transition to a cat.
And in her cat form, she went by the name bastet
to honor the Egyptian god of cats.
The story quickly became fodder for local media.
So much for having nine lives.
This cat did not land on her feet.
She landed on her neck.
Authorities soon focused
on the suspicious nature of her death.
My name is Lance girard.
I've been with the Philadelphia police department for 24 years,
12 of which were with the homicide division.
I've seen a lot of things.
A man wants to turn himself into a woman?
Okay. Who am I to judge?
But, really, a cat?
What's next? A watermelon?
First thing we wanted to establish is
to whether the deceased was acting strange.
Not like "I'm turning myself into a cat" strange.
More like suicide strange.
We learned that she was excited about an upcoming surgery,
a, uh, reverse nipplectomy.
That's where they add more nipples.
I guess—
I don't know— she wanted more nipples.
The thought of that just makes me want to blow my lunch.
Now, apparently, the ex-husband was on the hook
for this surgery due to an alimony arrangement.
He wasn't happy about it.
That's when he became our primary suspect.
Was I irritated by this?
Yeah, of course I was.
I mean, it was the most expensive procedure yet.
You know, but I-I remained supportive
and, uh, kept my cool.
And I never threatened her in any way.
Now, due to the nature of this call,
we decided to bring him in for questioning.
And he cooperated.
Said he wanted to clear his name.
He answered every question.
Even offered DNA samples.
Although he did request to draw his own blood,
which is kind of strange.
Mr. Reynolds was forthright.
Charming, quite frankly.
It wasn't until I reviewed
the interrogation footage later that I saw it.
Something very unsettling.
24 years on the job,
I'd never seen anything like it.
Two hours.
Never moved.
Never blinked.
Gives me goose bumps just thinking about it.
He had all the right answers,
but my gut told me this guy was guilty.
Of something.
Did I kill Maureen? No.
Am I glad she's dead? Sure.
Maureen's family was convinced of Dennis's guilt.
Maureen?
Maureen died three years ago.
Dennis killed bastet, all right?
And let me tell you something. He did us all a favor.
You ever seen a grown woman take a dump in a sandbox?
Despite conjecture, the question still remained:
Was there anything in Dennis Reynolds' past
that would suggest him capable of murder?
Testing. Testing.
Syphilis. Syphilis.
That's... well, yeah...
Well, he kind of...
Snapped the neck, uh, off a crow one time a little bit.
But that... but that's not
not normal right, you know?
I mean, it was just like boys
being boys. Yeah. That...
Look, we had a totally normal childhood, and...
Look, Dennis wouldn't hurt a fly. No way.
Whatever Deandra says is bs.
She's probably just covering for him
because she's afraid he's gonna snap her neck like that crow.
He didn't just snap it.
He broke the thing's head clean off.
It was gruesome.
I still have nightmares about it.
And I'm old.
She told you what?
No, no, no, no. No, no.
Look... that crow was injured,
and I was simply putting it out of its misery,
while, yes, testing the tensile strength of a crow's neck.
Well, yes, there was another crow,
but that's because I simply couldn't believe
that a crow's neck could be that weak.
Well, yes, there was a third crow,
and a fourth, if you must know, but who likes crows?
Look, if you can kill a crow, you can kill a cat.
Cat, cat, cat...
That's why I started recording all our conversations.
I suspected frank was probably recording
all of our conversations, because of course he would.
But let me tell you something,
he was no fan of Maureen's, either.
He was just trying to deflect attention,
which is why I started recording
all of our conversations as well.
I could have worn a goddamn imax camera around my neck
and he wouldn't have noticed.
The old bitch.
And I caught him saying some pretty troubling stuff.
What are we watching here?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cats, cats.
Is that me?
Cats. I'll tell you what to do with cats.
Who shot this thing? Dennis?
Here's what you do with cats.
Back in the sweatshop in 'nam, we found a cat,
we tossed it right in the soup.
Those hungry bastards ate cat soup every day.
What's the worst thing that could happen?
Some little kid choke on a hairball and die.
So then you toss him in the soup.
I was making money hand over foot, literally.
Somebody lost a hand or a foot, I'd toss it in the soup.
Well, that's all a lie.
Uh, there was no soup.
Nope.
There's no sweatshop.
Excuse me. I got to go to the can.
Investigators wanted to verify the timeline
Dennis provided to authorities.
Like I told the police, uh,
Mac and I were watching a movie back at the apartment,
and then I went to the bar.
That's true. We were watching operation dumbo drop.
We were doing this amazing thing that I came up with,
where we watch an old movie,
and then I turn the volume down really low
and we make wiseacre remarks the entire time.
Yeah, he didn't come up with it.
It's just mystery science theater 3000.
It's a spin on that. It's exactly that.
Well, there's no robots. So it's worse.
Oh, come on, Dennis. It's funny.
It-it's not funny. It's not funny at all,
because you can never think of jokes on the fly.
H-he, like, pauses the movie
to try and think of something funny to say,
and then he never can think of anything funny,
so he ends up just saying a line from borat or Austin powers.
It's super annoying and played-out, and it's not funny.
Well, uh, like this. "Get in my belly."
But you're never referring to anything when you say it.
"Yeah, baby. Get in my belly."
Well, that's two different characters.
That's Mike Myers. It's not Mike Myers.
It's... it's multiple characters
that Mike Myers plays in-in the same movie.
Multiple characters in the same movie?
What is he, a wizard?
Look, it's funny, Dennis.
It's not funny.
Are we done with this? Can we be done?
I'm tired of saying the same things over and over again.
Well, wait. Wh— hold— Dennis, d-don't leave without me.
I mean, dude, look, are you mad at me?
Investigators could find no discrepancies
in the timeline.
But then...
A twist.
He totally could have done it.
Now, supposably, Dennis didn't see Maureen that night,
but remember that Maureen was once Dennis's...
"Wife. Very nice."
That was borat.
It was Friday, payday.
Maureen always came into paddy's
to pick up her alimony check, asap.
To avoid confusion, it should be pointed out
that in a bizarre twist,
Deandra Reynolds refused to be a part of this documentary
unless we allowed her to play Maureen
in the reenactment.
And Dennis always made a big show
of getting her with the spray bottle.
You know, because cats hate water.
So, you see, Dennis totally saw Maureen that night.
Charlie was there.
Why hasn't he spoken up?
Probably because Dennis...
Intimidated him.
Oh, I just thought it'd be more dramatic if I...
Oh, come on, come on. I didn't lie.
I just left out some facts that are insignificant.
And-and intimidate Charlie? Please. What am I gonna do?
Call him on the phone and threaten him?
No, I know. But, I mean, if Mac's gonna do it,
then, you know, I'm gonna do it.
At this point in the interrogation,
Christ, I was at a loss.
Further inspection of Dennis Reynolds' safe
revealed a cache of suspicious items.
Awesome.
So while Mr. Kelly's statements
were clearly unreliable and would need to be thrown out,
another breakthrough came:
Autopsy results came back from the lab.
Um...
Look, is getting groomed like a cat by your ex weird?
Yep.
Is it illegal?
I wish.
The investigation was at a crossroads.
Then another massive break.
Dennis has an answer for everything.
Well, answer me this:
Where's the collar?
Cats have collars.
Maureen's body
didn't have a collar on it.
Killers keep trophies.
Alls I'm saying,
find the collar, find the killer.
This is not the first time the collar came up.
Dee Reynolds had, oddly,
made the collar an issue during filming.
Hey. Stop!
Stop! Stop with the squirting! Stop! Cool it!
We said one spray and then my line.
I... it was in my contract that we talked...
I put one squirt in there for... on purpose.
And this collar! I... Th-there's something wrong
with the collar. It's driving me nuts.
It... is an actual flea collar?
You son of a bitch.
I-I really think the water activated
some kind of, like, chemical agent. My-my neck's burning.
Was the flea collar actually burning her,
as she claimed?
Are you serious?
Yes, asshole! It was burning my skin!
You want to zoom in on this?
Hard to say.
But maybe there was another reason she removed it.
Whatever Deandra says is bs.
She's probably just covering for him because she's afraid
he's gonna snap her neck like that crow.
Maybe Deandra didn't want to wear the collar
in order to cover for her brother
and to establish that Maureen never wore a collar at all.
We then discovered something in this piece of footage
that blew the doors wide open on this case.
Was I a person of interest?
Yeah.
I am an interesting person.
But at the end of the day, you know,
I'm just some guy with a crazy ex-wife
who fell off of a roof pretending to be a cat.
That's the end of it.
All my stories checked out.
I was cleared. Case closed.
Find the collar, find the killer.
'Cause a dog is who I am now!
Wrestling announcer: Hit the referee!
Find the collar...
"Very nice."
Find the collar, find the killer.
guys, this was an open-and-shut case that was shut months ago.
And Maureen never wore a collar. You guys put that there.
Well, yeah, we needed a big twist at the end
to show that you're guilty.
But I'm-I'm not guilty.
What about the security footage of Maureen's death?
I mean, it shows her prancing around on the roof
like an asshole, and then she just falls off.
People don't want to see that,
because it's hard evidence, you know what I mean? Yeah.
Like, it's better to actually sit on that footage
until, like, maybe episode ten, and then let people
decide then if you're guilty or not.
Ten episo... you're gonna do ten episodes of this?
Yeah, but then even then we would keep it vague.
I mean, 'cause that's entertainment, you know?
Someone gets murdered, and then you make a show.
But you never give any actual answers,
because that's what people love. No.
You drag it out. You rake it all over the victim's family.
It's sort of like eating a bag of chips, you know?
It's never gonna actually make you full,
and at the end you're sick,
but you want to go back for more.
You want more chips.
Murder is chips. Okay,
you know what, I don't know what you guys are talking about,
but I'm gonna find these tapes, and I'm gonna destroy them.
Well, we have backups, so it... oh, you know what? Yeah.
That could make a good episode, where he's destroying—
let's think about that, right? He's destroying the tapes...
You know what,
that would be
"Very nice."
Is that borat?
Yes! See?
He gets it. He's laughing.
Yeah, 'cause I know he was doing an impression. He's laughing.
Okay, wait, uh, let me... Let me think of another one.
"I'll be back."
Oh... Who is that? Who is that?
Captioned by media access group at wgbh
who do girls want to have sex with more than anybody?
Jugglers. Ju—
dudes who can, like, juggle things. I know what a juggler is.
Sunny. All new, wednesdays at 10:00.
Only on fxx.
I am a very dangerous man
to know.
Taboo. All new Tuesdays at 10:00 on fx.
Man seeking woman.
All new, wednesdays at 10:30.
Only on fxx.
I had a little, uh, kung pao chicken in my teeth.
Was it alive?
I look terrific now.
So, is he crazy?
Man #2: He believes he's mentally ill.
But at the same time, part of him knows...
The power's real.
Take an hour of his time.
Wow. Look at Stan's yard.
Someone's been busy.
Clearly not in ours. Maybe Henry can do some work today.
Yeah.
I forget your back is always bad this time of year.
Only when there are leaves—
when did you wash this last?