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Grace Watts, or Gracie as her friends and many many followers knew her, was a proud young woman. She was particularly proud of the business she had created and developed from the ground up. Beneath the Surface had started as a vague idea during her senior year of college, when she was stressing about what she would do after graduation. As a psych major she had options, of course she had options, but she had developed a serious case of senioritis and the thought of going through more schooling had very nearly driven her to tears.

So instead she had bought a cheap microphone and put her experience doing research projects to good use, creating her first podcast episode. It had been a deep dive on David Berkowitz, and she hadn’t expected it to take off the way it had— after all the Son of Sam murders were infamous and podcast episodes discussing them were a dime a dozen online, but her cheerful demeanor and the random facts she pulled from her abnormal psychology textbook had caught peoples’ attention. One commentor had even called it a brilliant juxtaposition.

In the two years since that episode had dropped, Beneath the Surface had granted her a great deal in life. She had an apartment she loved, a cat that hated everyone but her, and a boyfriend she adored. She was happy with her life, she had a weekly routine— two or three days of research and script writing, a recording day, a day or so to edit, upload the next week— and at one point had a surplus of episodes recorded so she could take the occasional day off. Between  the income from ads on YouTube, listeners on Spotify, her Patreon, and the various sponors she’d managed to accumulate, she made more than enough to afford her life of modest luxury.

The problem was that she had to continuously find new cases to cover, and her audience had developed a taste for the more niche content. She had to shift from historical, well documented cases to more modern ones. And modern cases often had additional complications, like surviving family members who didn’t exactly see eye to eye with Grace or her bottom line.

It turns out that people didn’t like hearing that the “monster” that took their loved ones away was just another human being.

Which lead to her sitting in a coffee shop at 8 am on a Monday morning, typing away on her laptop in frustration as she tried to find a new case to research. She was treading on thin ice, balancing her career with her public image, and navigating some moral grey areas. Her phone pinged, a text from one of her closest friends.

Gracie hummed as she read through the short article. The story had promise, that’s for sure, but she needed more information. Who were these firefighters? Why had they been targeted? What happened to Derek? Was he still on life support, or had whoever had taken over his care after the arrests decide to let him go?

She typed back a quick thank you to her friend and packed up her laptop. She had work to do.

Nearly a week later, Gracie set up her camera. She made a few micro adjustments, moving back and forth between her couch and the camera to ensure the shot was perfect. The Sheets case had been fascinating, both in regard to the couple themselves and their last two victims. The episode was going to be long, and that was after cutting out significant portions of the script. She might even make it into a two parter, offering the second part immediately after the first on her Patreon before releasing it a week later on YouTube.

She settled down onto her pink couch, drawing her legs up under her and adjusting her mug of tea. Everything about her episodes was curated to give off the perfect image, she liked it when it felt like two friends gossiping and did her best to create that energy even before pressing record. She pulled her microphone a little closer, then hit the record button on her camera’s remote.

“Hello everyone,” She said softly, smiling at the camera, “Today we are exploring what happens when family tragedy meets toxic relationships and mental illness. This case has just recently been closed and, let me tell you, it’s a doozy,

“Our story begins in 2012, New Mexico. A freshly nineteen year old Derek Sheets decided to go for a ride on his motorcycle. Now he’s done this hundreds of times before, and was a good driver, but as we all know even the best drivers can be the victims of others. Not much is known about the crash itself, but what is known is that Derek was the victim of a hit and run. He wasn’t found for several hours and by the time help arrived… it was too late. Derek was declared brain dead, his body would recover with time but he would never wake up. This destroyed his parents, Bonnie and Earl Sheets,

“Unable to let their son go, Bonnie and Earl took Derek home on life support. From everything I’ve found, Earl was much more willing to accept his son’s loss than Bonnie was. There were reports of Bonnie claiming he was going to wake up at any moment, that he just needed time, while Earl wanted to grieve and move on. He didn’t want to forget Derek by any means, but he wanted to let him go. Bonnie was unwilling to take Derek off life support, and the stress that the accident, and the disagreement over what to do, took its toll on the marriage. They divorced, but oddly enough continued living together and caring for Derek,

“Six months after the divorce, a young man walked into the diner where Bonnie and Earl worked. This man was the spitting image of their son, curly blonde hair, blue eyes, a warm smile, it was as if Derek had finally woken up,” Gracie explained grimly, she frowned into her tea before looking up at the camera dramatically, “And this is where the story takes a dark turn. You see, most people would be able to recognize that this young man was not Derek, but Bonnie could not. Her mind could not accept that Derek was gone, so when she saw her first victim it triggered a delusion. He wasn’t just similar to Derek, in her mind he was Derek,”

“And so, with the help of her ex-husband, Bonnie ran him off the road and abducted him. They had, in essence, recreated the very accident that took their son away from them and, much like Derek’s accident, this one was a death sentence for this young man,

“Now the cause of death for Bonnie and Earl’s first victim isn’t clear. It’s possible that the injuries from being run off the road were severe enough that, without medical intervention, they killed him. Alternatively, the pair could have surfaced from the delusion and, upon realizing that the man in their son’s old room was not Derek, killed him to hide what they had done. The body was too badly decomposed to be certain, but what we do know is that he died shortly after they had kidnapped him and was buried on their property,

“For fourteen years this pattern would repeat,” Gracie sighed heavily, forcing a morose expression on her face, “Bonnie would identify a victim and convince Earl that it was their son. He would run their victims off the road and hold them hostage for days, or weeks, before the victims either died of their wounds or were killed,

“Now I know that if you’ve listened to this show before, you’ll be thinking what I was originally thinking when I heard about this case. However, this is not a case of shared delusion, or at least it wasn’t in the end. Earl may have shared his ex-wife’s delusion in the beginning, but when they were arrested it became clear that Earl was a reluctant participant in the murders and was well aware of that the men he had helped kill and bury were not his son. We’ll touch more on that later, but first let’s explore how Bonnie and Earl were caught,

“Now Bonnie and Earl were well known and well liked in their small town. They had worked at the same diner for twenty-eight years, Bonnie as a waitress and Earl as a chef, and everyone knew their story. The town largely admired them for their perceived strength following the death of their son, and regulars at the diner often requested to be waited on by Bonnie, as she was known for her cheerful disposition. The diner was used to seeing both regulars, and people just passing through, and one fateful March night two Los Angeles firefighters walked in,

“Edmundo ‘Eddie’ Diaz and Evan ‘Buck’ Buckley were driving home after their flight had been canceled. They’d just competed in the Firefighter Olympics in Tennessee and were eager to be home. Not much was known about the two Angelenos in connection to the case, but you know I never back down from a challenge,” Grace grinned at the camera conspiratorially, as if she was sharing an inside joke with an audience she could not see. She took another sip of her tea and settled back against the cushions again, “Buck’s internet presence is all over the place. He left home young, and spent two years travelling all over the country before he decided to become a firefighter. He joined LA’s infamous Station 118 in 2017, and achieved some level of fame before his probationary year had even come to an end. He made national news for a rescue he performed at the LA county fair, but unfortunately for Buck— and fortunately for us— that wasn’t the end of his fame,

“Buck made the news several times since his first TV interview, both for extraordinary rescues and gruesome injuries. He was crushed by a fire truck in 2018, and was struck by lightning a few years later, but after each injury he put in the work and effort to return to full active duty. The man is truly an excellent example of the indomitable human spirit, and the 118 has been with him every step of the way— including his best friend, Eddie,

“Eddie’s online presence is much more limited than Evan Buckley’s. He makes appearances in Buck’s Instagram, and has been featured in a handful of news articles, but his social media accounts of private and he seems to be a very private person. What I was able to dig up is as follows: He grew up in El Paso Texas and joined the army right out of high school. He worked as an army medic until he was injured in the line of duty and sent back to El Paso with a silver star, then moved with his son to LA a few years later. He met Buck after becoming a firefighter and joining the 118 in September of 2018, where they were partnered up and became fast friends,

“Much like Buck, Eddie has faced his fair share of adversity on the job, he survived a well collapse and was the first firefighter shot when Ethan Copeland, a former LAPD sniper, went on his spree, which I may do an episode about at a later date. Both Buck and Eddie are known for daring rescues, even being honored alongside the rest of their team after rescuing their former captain from a capsized cruise ship, so it should be no surprise that the duo were directly involved in revealing Bonnie and Earl’s crimes,

“For those of you tuning in to the videos, you’ll have seen Evan Buckley’s photos and note the resemblance to many of Bonnie and Earl’s victims, but for those of you tuning in to the audio only I’ll give a description,” Grace made a mental note to remember the photos when editing the video before continuing, “Evan Buckley is a blonde haired, blue eyed man in his early thirties. He has curly hair and a birthmark over one eye, and he’s over fix feet tall. In other words, when he walked into the diner back in March he was, unknowingly, the perfect replacement for Derek. He was the only victim of the Sheets’ to have been traveling with a friend, and that made all the difference,

“You see, Buck and Eddie had been driving for a long time, and were lost. Eddie was particularly agitated at the time, something that the locals in the diner noticed. Buck and Eddie argued like an old married couple, and not all of those living in this small New Mexico town were welcoming. A few of the locals reportedly tried to start something with Buck and Eddie, but were scared off when Earl discharged a shotgun into the ceiling,

“Taking it as their sign to leave, Buck and Eddie got back on the road. Less than half an hour later, a lifted truck with a rack of lights pulled in behind them, blinding them and forcing them off the road. The car flipped, and both passengers were knocked unconscious. Eddie was found alone in the car the next morning, suffering from cracked ribs, a broken arm, and a concussion. Buck was nowhere to be found, in fact the sheriff didn’t even know there was someone else in the car until Eddie woke up and asked for Buck,

“Now this is where things get messy,” Grace said with a heavy sigh, shaking her head, “Remembering the confrontation from the diner, Eddie told the sheriff about it. He believed they had been run off the road and that Buck had been the victim of a hate crime. However, the local sheriff’s department had a different theory. They believed that Eddie had killed Buck during a lover’s quarrel, and had hidden his body somewhere in the New Mexico desert. They refused to entertain any other ideas, going so far as to place Eddie under armed surveillance.

“Neither of them were correct. Fifteen miles away, Evan Buckley woke up in Derek Sheets’ bedroom. He was severely injured, even more so than Eddie, but it’s not clear if the injuries came from the accident itself or Bonnie and Earl pulling him from the wreckage. He had a concussion, three broken ribs, and internal bleeding from a nick on his spleen. When he woke up he was feverish and confused. Bonnie was there, offering food and medicine, but he knew he needed a hospital. She refused to take him,

“Much of what happened when he was with the Sheets is unknown,” Grace explained softly, she broke eye contact with the camera to stir her tea as she continued to talk. She knew the script by heart at this point, “Buck was severely injured, but during his testimony he recalled that he had been changed into Derek’s old clothes and that Bonnie insisted his name was Derek. When he didn’t comply she shocked him repeatedly with a cattle prod, but at some point he managed to lock her in Derek’s old bedroom and make a break for it, only to come face to face with Earl,

“At this point Eddie had gotten fed up with waiting around for Sheriff Woodson to do his job, and managed to escape the hospital. He made his way back to the diner, intending to track down the men who had threatened him and Buck the night before, and instead ended up heading towards the Sheets’ property. No one is really sure how he got their address, but he arrived right around the same time that Bonnie and Earl had moved Buck to a garage with plans to… dispose of him,

“Eddie found the truck used to run him off the road shortly after speaking to Bonnie, and she, in a last ditch attempt to avoid detection, threatened him with a gun. Fortunately, as mentioned earlier, Eddie was in the military and was able to disarm Bonnie, using her as a human shield when Earl came out to threaten him,

“And I just have to pause her,” Grace said with a big smile, clapping her hands together, “And discuss the devotion both of these men displayed. Eddie dragged himself all over Grant, New Mexico, to find Buck. I don’t know if you guys have ever broken any ribs, or an arm, but that hurts and Eddie put it all to the side. And Earl, Earl was willing to do whatever Bonnie wanted him to because he loved her so much. They had been divorced for over a decade at this point but he still loved her so much and I just… that’s what every girl wishes for, you know? That kind of devotion, but I digress,

“Buck, injured and bleeding, had begged for Bonnie and Earl to spare Eddie. He tried to leverage Eddie’s son against them, telling them that he needed Eddie and begging for them to let him go. When it became clear that that wasn’t going to happen, Buck crawled his way to where the stand off was happening and shocked Earl with the cattle prod to save Eddie. Cops arrived shortly after, and the duo were sent back to the hospital for treatment before driving back to California,

“Now, let’s talk psychology,” Grace clapped her hands together with a wide grin, “Obviously the first thought is shared delusion, but as discussed earlier that doesn’t quite fit. Bonnie was certainly caught in a delusion that these young men were actually her son, but interestingly her victims aged with Derek. The first victim was twenty, and the last was thirty-four, the same age Derek would’ve been. Since Derek wasn’t technically dead, I’m assuming that her brain was mixing the facts of the accident with what it was seeing in front of her, which was her son still aging but forever sleeping. She and Earl both recreated the accident itself, which could’ve been their brain’s attempt to process the immeasurable loss they suffered, much like children often use play to process difficult events in their life. As for Earl’s participation, I believe that he was simply a submissive accomplice in all of this. He loved Bonnie, and wanted her happy, so if she insisted that kidnapping these men would make her happen then… well he’d kidnap them,

“As always,” Gracie added seriously, “This is all just speculation, but I truly believe that Bonnie and Earl were both extremely mentally ill during the murders, and continue to be so, and that if they had gone to therapy instead of… murdering strangers, they never would’ve done the things they did. But now I turn it over to you, what do you think? Leave a comment and let me know. Until next time, this has been Beneath the Surface.”

She pressed the record button again, stopping the camera. She let out a satisfied sigh, this would be an excellent episode. Maybe one of the best she’d ever made. She might be able to treat herself after it went live.