The Hitman Survivor - Susan Kuhnhausen

January 20, 2025

In this episode, Payton and Garrett explore the gripping case of Susan Kuhnhausen, a dedicated nurse who invested 17 years in her marriage, only to face a shocking betrayal.

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AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

You're listening to an Oh No Media podcast.

Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Payton Moreland.

And I’m Garrett Moreland.

He's the husband.

And I'm the husband.

If you're watching on YouTube, I look like I just got out of bed. I didn’t just get out of bed; I’ve just been in sweats all day. But here we are recording, because we love you guys.

I have some good news. I got an MRI because we were pretty sure something was wrong with me, and I’m okay.

Okay, what a way to just minimize that entire situation. It was a bigger deal than that. Garrett was showing signs of neurological symptoms, so we went and got an emergency MRI.

Good news—no tumor, just a cyst.

Yeah, non-cancerous cyst. That’s okay. We’ll see what my next steps are, but the good news is, it’s not a tumor. Not going to lie, I thought it was a tumor. I was having all the signs.

Kind of crazy, but the doctor was like, “Immediately go get your head scanned.” So it was kind of scary, but we avoided the worst, and we’re here. I’m as healthy as can be. That’s what’s been going on with us.

That’s about all I got. I also just ate a burrito that I made in the microwave—well, not the microwave. What’s it called?

Convection oven?

Toaster oven! Yeah, I just made a burrito in the toaster oven, and I burnt my mouth. That kind of sucks, but you know what? You can’t talk the whole episode.

I won’t be quiet the whole episode. How are you doing, babe?

Oh, you know, this weekend is College Dance Team Nationals, so I’ll be watching that all weekend. That’s basically like my Super Bowl. I’ll be glued to the screen watching that.

Super excited. Go UVU—that’s my dance team I danced with. Let’s go! Get pumped, babe, come on!

I’m going to do a hot take for anyone who watches and say Ohio’s taking it this year.

That’s a different division than me. I’m not bagging on Ohio, but I don’t know—it could be Minnesota. Those are normally the top two.

You know what? If you’re like, “I don’t even know what she’s talking about,” go Google it and watch. Okay? So good. So good.

We have a big announcement.

Huge announcement.

Ginormous announcement.

We have new merch, and it is unlike anything we’ve ever launched before.

You say that every time.

But it is!

It’s like we say it every time because we have to keep changing it. Is this not unlike anything we’ve ever launched?

Yeah, different types of sweaters. We’ve got some crewneck sweaters going on—embroidered ghosts, embroidered MWMH. Definitely a different kind of look for our merch. Again, just another merch drop—something fun, something different.

If you want to check it out, go ahead. Links are everywhere. It’s also one of those merch drops you can wear anywhere. It doesn’t have “murder” all over it. Nope. Like, you’ll have no idea. Super cute—go check it out. Links everywhere.

Only a certain amount—we’re only doing a limited number because it’s not drop-shipping. We ordered a certain amount of blanks and are embroidering a specific quantity of sweatshirts. We’re really excited.

Was that your ten seconds to talk about merch?

Yeah, I kind of did my ten seconds early.

I hope all you guys are doing amazing. I don’t know; I feel like I’m not on it today. Hopefully, I’ll get on it when the episode starts.

How about you?

Dang burrito.

Dang burrito just messed me up.

Let's get into today’s case.

Our sources for today’s episode include Adultfi.com, Blurbylines.com, KA TABC, NBCNews.com, The Associated Press, The Oregonian, True Crime Magazine, The Seattle Times, I Survived (Episode 502), and Nothing Personal: Murder For Hire (Episode 2011).

A common question from people who watch or listen to true crime, which might seem odd to non-true-crime fans, is: "How do you get away with murder?" What’s the perfect murder? How would you do it? How do you make sure you have an alibi?

Ask O.J. He did not commit the perfect murder.

Theoretically speaking, there’s no perfect murder, but there might be ways to get away with murder. After doing so many episodes, I have a piece of advice for you: if you’re going to kill someone—

That’s crazy.

I’m just saying, theoretically, if we’re discussing this question after doing so many episodes: do not hire a hitman.

It never works out well. It creates an evidence trail. It leaves witnesses—at least one besides you—and makes you a witness, or more accurately, a co-conspirator. It’s a bad plan. So many things go wrong, and usually, they do.

However, they rarely go as badly as they did for the hitmen in today’s case, who conspired to take a life but actually ended up losing their own.

This is the story we are talking about today, and it begins in an emergency room at Providence Portland Medical Center in Portland, Oregon.

The year was 1988. An ER nurse named Susan Collins was going through her day, assessing patients’ conditions, administering meds, communicating with doctors—basically saving lives in this Portland hospital. She loved her job. She liked the fast pace, the thinking on her feet, and helping people.

But at age 33, Susan was starting to want more out of life. She wanted to go out more. She wanted to fall in love.

One day, after finishing her shift, Susan went home and decided to place a personal ad in the newspaper—essentially the 1988 version of Tinder. She wrote a little profile about herself:

Single white female, 33, overweight but not over life. If you’re interested in a bright, funny woman who wants to explore the Northwest, give me a call.

Then she sent it off and waited.

Susan had nerves of steel in the emergency room, but putting herself out there in the dating world made her nervous. She wasn’t sure what to expect. So, she was very pleasantly surprised when she got a response from a kind, soft-spoken man named Mike Kousen.

Now, Mike didn’t exactly look like Prince Charming. He was stocky, bearded, with long sandy hair and oversized glasses. But he shared many of Susan’s interests, including her love for adventure. He enjoyed getting out in nature and spending time at the beach. Susan had a great time with him—so much so that she overlooked his personal baggage.

Mike Kousen was divorced with two kids from a previous marriage. That wasn’t a problem for Susan. The sticky part was that he was bitter about it.

Mike equated divorce with failure. He resented his ex for what he perceived as making him fail, and he felt she had taken advantage of him financially.

These were maybe not red flags, but warning signs—things to keep an eye on. Susan saw them, but she remained undeterred.

Throughout her career in the ER, Susan had seen people make incredible recoveries, and she believed Mike was capable of anything he put his mind to. So, on December 11, 1988, they made it official. She gave Mike her hand in marriage, becoming Mrs. Susan Kousen.

For the first few years of matrimony, Susan and Mike got along great. They continued their adventures, going bird watching and butterfly spotting. They even took a lovely trip up the Oregon coast. However, every now and then, those warning signs Susan had noticed in the beginning would resurface.

Mike could become extremely negative and bitter, especially when things didn’t go his way. He often felt like the world was against him and was obsessed with money.

This obsession might have been the first real red flag for Susan. Money, in itself, had little value to her. She didn’t care much about possessions—she cared about people and experiences. That was how she preferred to spend her money, which she worked hard to earn through long hours at a strenuous job.

Mike, on the other hand, cared a lot about money—and about things. For instance, while he would criticize Susan for spending money to see a movie, he himself spent enormous sums on a collection of sports memorabilia. Old baseball cards, jerseys, autographed gloves—Mike considered it an investment, believing the collection was worth tens of thousands of dollars.

Susan wasn’t so sure, but it wasn’t his delusion or the expense that bothered her. What eventually began to worry her was how much time Mike spent in the basement, poring over his collection.

To Susan, it seemed like Mike was becoming obsessed. He was withdrawing from the world. This was the same man she had fallen in love with while exploring nature. It didn’t seem good for him—or their marriage—to spend so much time locked in the basement.

Susan tried talking to Mike about her concerns. She pointed out that she noticed him pulling back and asked what was wrong. She even suggested that if he didn’t feel comfortable talking with her, maybe he could see a therapist.

Unfortunately, Mike refused to admit there was anything wrong—at least with him. But he had no problem finding fault with others.

This was another concerning trait of Mike’s—maybe even another red flag. He had a tendency to blame other people for his own problems, which made him difficult to be around. If Mike was angry, it was because somebody made him angry. If Susan was unhappy, she was just being a nag.

Not wanting to fight with her husband, Susan decided to let the matter drop. Instead, she focused on what she could control. She accepted Mike’s new interest, tried to show that she loved and supported him, and encouraged him to get out into the world and spend time with her and her friends.

Susan believed that, with proper care, Mike would eventually heal from whatever was ailing him and go back to being the man she had originally fallen in love with.

She spent 17 years nurturing that hope. Oh my gosh. And although Mike did change during that time, sadly, it was for the worse.

"We’ve got to move on. We’ve got to cut cords, and we’ve got to move on."

She just believed in him. She loved him—17 years.

As time went on in their marriage, Mike started becoming suspicious of Susan. He developed this belief that Susan was going to leave him and take all of their money. Never mind that most of that money was Susan’s, from her job as a doctor.

Mike had various odd jobs over the course of their marriage, but he rarely brought in as much as she did. That may have contributed to his insecurity. It might also have increased his bitterness about the world.

Mike came to feel that he’d been cheated out of a fair chance at life, and in a way, he might have had a point. He and Susan rarely talked about this, but Mike had served in Vietnam. He opened up about his experience only one time during their entire marriage.

On that occasion, Mike told Susan that he was on long-range patrols. There came a day when his team was ordered to attack a village. He was told the town was occupied by enemies, but upon executing his orders, Mike discovered the town was full of children.

He didn’t go into what happened next, but Susan could see it still affected him. Thinking he might have PTSD, she suggested he talk to someone at the vet center or Veterans Affairs. Once again, Mike refused. He told Susan he didn’t need therapy because he had devised his own way of dealing with those harmful memories. As he put it, he would "simply put them all in a room and lock the door."

Susan tried to argue, but once again, she backed down in the face of resistance. She couldn’t forget her concern, though. Mike might have believed he could manage his pain by just shoving it away, but as someone who’d spent her life saving victims of trauma, Susan knew those doors rarely stayed locked forever.

By 2005, Susan was reaching the end of her rope in her marriage. She had spent 16 years trying to make it work, but she felt like Mike wasn’t doing the same. He continued to withdraw and reject her efforts to help him.

What was more concerning was that he was also just getting angrier and becoming threatening. Mike had always had a tendency to lash out when he was angry, but now his outbursts came from nowhere, and they often targeted Susan.

As much as she didn’t want to give up on the marriage, Susan feared they were veering toward domestic violence. Sometime around the holidays, she finally told Mike, "You need to move out."

He did, and Susan was relieved. For the first time in years, she felt like she could finally relax.

Although she had asked him to move out, Susan still hadn’t completely given up on Mike. She didn’t necessarily want to get back together, but she didn’t want this to turn into an ugly divorce.

She thought they might remain friends. She showed that by continuing to communicate, inviting Mike to friendly get-togethers, and even trusting him with the code to her home security system.

The alarm code had always been their anniversary—12/11/88. When she asked Mike to leave, Susan didn’t change it. She believed that once they were apart, Mike would take the opportunity to heal.

Sadly, he did not.

He apparently put on enough of a front to convince Susan that he was fine and worthy of being trusted. But when he was alone, Mike just sat and simmered in his rage. He felt like he was failing at marriage a second time, and he blamed Susan, just as he had blamed his first wife.

He became more convinced than ever that she had kicked him out and was planning to screw him over in the divorce. Mike was determined to stop her. He wasn’t going to let this happen again.

How do you prevent someone from doing something that’s only happening in your head? Sadly, Mike made up his mind that the only way to avoid losing face, money, the house, and his sports memorabilia collection—despite the fact that Susan had been completely civil—was to murder Susan before she could divorce him.

It’s crazy what money can do to people. This is just a bad attitude. What Mike was about to do was driven more by financial concerns and his sports collection than anything else. It didn’t even seem like he cared if Susan moved on or was with someone else. It was all about money and control.

When you’re always the victim, you never feel responsible for your feelings, emotions, or actions. That mindset puts you on a slippery slope where you can start to justify terrible things, like murder. Living with bitterness for 17, 20, 30 years can lead to outlandish actions.

In the months following their separation, Mike started plotting how to kill Susan before she could divorce him. Having most likely killed people in combat before, Mike may not have hesitated at the thought of committing an act of violence. However, he knew that if Susan turned up dead, the police would obviously look at him first. They were in the middle of a divorce, and she made significantly more money than he did. He needed to be smart about this.

For a while, he seemed to consider making her death look like an accident. He invited Susan repeatedly to the beach, where she could easily fall off a cliff. But Susan always declined his invitations.

Mike needed a different plan.

Here’s where the story takes an absolutely crazy turn. For the past few years, Mike had been working for a chain of adult novelty stores called Fantasy Adult Video. He was the maintenance supervisor, and part of his job involved hiring and firing custodial staff.

At this particular moment, while Mike was looking for a way to murder his wife, a man who had recently been released from prison walked into Mike’s workplace to apply for a custodial position. During the interview, the man casually mentioned that he had been incarcerated for conspiracy to commit murder.

Oh, wow.

So Mike's like, "Oh my gosh, I've been trying to figure out how to kill my wife, and then this just falls into my lap." He must have been blown away. It probably seemed like divine intervention, even more so after he hired the guy and found out more details.

The man who applied for this custodial job was named Ed Hay. He had done 10 years for hiring a hitman to torture and murder his ex-girlfriend. He also had previous convictions for robbery and assault, and he was addicted to crack cocaine. Clearly not the kind of guy you'd want working for your business, but exactly the type of person you would hire to do a dirty job.

Mike promptly struck up a friendship with Ed. He went out of his way to try to get close to him and found they had certain things in common. They had both served in the military. They both felt like the world was against them. They were both narcissists who blamed other people for their problems. With all this common ground, it didn't take long for Mike to open up and share what was on his mind with Ed.

These were two people whose negativity, bitterness, and resentment fed off each other to the point where they could openly discuss wanting to murder people. Mike told Ed his wife was planning to screw him over in a divorce. He said he was going to be the victim and wasn’t about to let that happen.

So he said, "Hey Ed, obviously I'm going to be the first suspect, but I'll pay you $50,000 to murder her."

I just feel like that's a lot more than some of the other cases we talk about. He said $10,000, maybe $5,000, but 50 grand? I wouldn't do 50 grand, obviously.

There's not a price, no. I'm just saying, if I were John Wick, okay, I would potentially think about it.

You'd kill someone's ex-wife or current...?

No, no, no, no, no. I'd kill like a bad guy. Yeah, a bad guy who's going to kill a bunch of other people.

Okay. Dexter.

Mike told Ed, "Half up front, half upon completion."

Ed, of course, had been down this road before and might have wondered where Mike was going to get the money. Well, as it turns out, the job of porn shop maintenance supervisor pays pretty well. In addition to salary and benefits, Mike got a bonus every year at the holidays—four or five thousand dollars.

Every year, when he took it home, he told Susan he'd only gotten $1,000. So, he contributed a grand to their joint account and basically hid away the rest. As a result, Mike had a pretty big nest egg set aside—a nut with lots of green in it. Enough to give Ed the upfront money.

He told Ed, "I'll give you $25,000 now and another $25,000 if you complete the job."

Ed agreed. Just like that, Mike's plan was finally in motion, with the porn shop custodial worker and the porn shop maintenance man.

On September 6, 2006, Mike drove Ed to his former home—the home where Susan now lived alone in southeast Portland. He let Ed into the house using the alarm code, which was his and Susan's anniversary.

That sucks, man.

Then he reset the alarm to bypass mode, allowing Ed to move around inside while the security system was still armed. Mike placed a note for Susan in the mudroom, and then he left.

He went to the beach, got a nice little motel room by the water, obviously setting up an alibi. There he waited for the hired hitman to call him and tell him it was done.

Meanwhile, Susan was hard at work at Providence Medical Center. She had a busy day in the ER. After a 9-hour shift, she headed home.

Dude, Susan is just the nicest person in the world. She had no idea. She trusted him so much, kept the alarm the same, and was just giving him the benefit of the doubt the entire time. It just sucks.

I just don't like how confusing and betraying it must feel when you learn that someone you loved was trying to kill you.

So she walks into the house and hears the telltale beep letting her know the security system was armed. She turns off the alarm and then finds Mike's note.

This wasn’t the first time they had communicated that day. Mike had also called her earlier to say he was going to go to the beach, so she was a little puzzled but not surprised when she read this note he left in the house. It said, "Sue, haven’t been sleeping. Had to get away. Went to the beach. Just losing it. Don’t know what to do. Love me."

Now, with a pang of sympathy for her ex, Susan set the note aside and went to the bedroom to change. On her way down the hallway—man, she notices something odd.

She's walking to her bedroom and notices the bedroom is dark. This is weird because Susan always opened the curtains in the morning to let in the light. She's thinking, Did I just forget this morning?

Shrugging off the air, she continued down the hallway and into the bedroom. As soon as she walked in, a man stepped out from behind the door. It was Ed, of course, but Susan didn’t know that.

All she knew was that a strange, scraggly-looking man, wearing yellow rubber gloves and holding a claw hammer, was standing in her bedroom. She reacted on impulse, blurting out, "Who are you? What are you doing here? What do you want?"

The man doesn’t respond. Instead, he swung the hammer at her head, hitting her on the side of the head, near the temple.

Susan, who was now 51, fought back. She started wrestling with the man, who she assumed was a burglar. She shoved him against the wall, trying to get the hammer away from him. All the while, Susan kept expecting this man to be like, "Where’s the jewelry? Give me the code to your safe."

But he doesn’t say anything at all. In fact, he doesn’t speak. As they struggled, Susan began to feel... "Is this man a burglar? Like, I’m fighting with this man."

She had this out-of-body thought loop: "What does he want? Who is he? Was he in wrestling in high school? What was he here for?"

No, she’s fighting for her life. But she’s putting up a good fight. Eventually, she managed to use her weight to pin him against the wall.

At that point, the man said the only words he uttered during this entire attempt to kill Susan. He looks her in the eyes and says, "You’re strong."

Oh, that's so creepy.

No, what the guy says that to Susan?

Yes.

As in, like, she’s strong, like she’s fighting back. I think that’s creepy. You’re trying to kill me, and you’re just surprised by my strength?

It’s creepy, but in Susan’s case, it’s good for her. She’s going to win this. She could tell he was surprised by her resistance, but he was also excited.

Again, that’s creepy.

Susan's stomach turned as she realized the man was probably there to kill her. The thought came to her mind: You are not going to kill me in my own home.

Suddenly, all of the anger she had been tamping down throughout her marriage—all the patience and waiting for her husband to change—came roaring up to serve her in this moment when she needed it the most.

Susan wrapped her hands around the hitman's throat, who was still holding the hammer, and squeezed. Ed began to struggle in her grasp, but she held strong, using her weight to pin him against the wall. His face started to turn blue. He couldn’t breathe.

Finally, he releases his grip on the hammer. Susan lets go of his neck and grabs the hammer. She remembered something her father used to say.

Susan's dad was a carpenter. In the days before home alarm systems, he told her that if anyone broke into their home, she could defend herself with a hammer. And in the event that she was unfortunately forced to do so, she should use the claw end of the hammer because that would work best to defend herself.

So, Susan flips the hammer and starts hitting Ed with the claw end. Her dad was right—it was a highly effective weapon. Unfortunately, however, after a few strikes—she’s nervous, this is scary—the hammer slips from Susan's hand.

Instead of picking it up and continuing, she decides, I'm going to escape. She turns and runs, screaming for her neighbors, hoping to get them to call 911.

Now, Ed, who has been hit with the hammer, is right behind her. Obviously, he’s going to prison for attempted murder if she gets away. So he chases her into the hall and grabs her from behind. He spins her around and starts punching her in the face.

By this time, there’s no hammer involved. This struggle—this fight—has lasted longer than a UFC match.

Susan is tired. She’s dizzy. They're both exhausted. She falls to the floor.

She has no strength left. She can see the phone in her home, only a few feet away from her. She said, There’s no way I can reach it.

Hearing footsteps behind her on the hardwood floor, Susan looked back and saw her attacker standing over her. He still had those rubber gloves on, and he had retrieved the hammer.

He was holding it in his hand, and as he raised the hammer to deliver the final blow, Susan feels a surge of rage and adrenaline.

Again, she thought, He's not going to kill me.

She lunged for his legs, standing over her, and grabbed his calves. She yanked his feet out from underneath him.

He falls to the floor. They wrestle, both trying to get the hammer.

Susan screamed until she was hoarse, but no one came.

Where are the neighbors?

In the middle of this struggle, she decides to start fighting her attacker. Thinking that if he killed her, at least her teeth marks and saliva would identify him, she bit Ed several times as hard as she could—in the arm, the thighs, even in areas that really hurt a guy to bite. She starts biting everywhere she can.

He still won't let go of this hammer. At last, when Susan was coming to terms with the thought that she would probably never get this hammer back, she had another idea. She thought, maybe I can just become this weapon.

So, with one last surge of strength, Susan manages to get Ed onto his stomach. She climbs onto him, wraps her arms around his neck again in a choke hold. This worked for her last time, so Ed began thrashing for his life. Susan managed to hold on, and as she's choking him from behind, she says, "Tell me who you are, and I will call you an ambulance."

But her attacker never responded. After a few minutes, he slumped down, motionless. Susan staggers to her feet. She grabs the hammer and ran with all her remaining strength through her neighbor's house. Fourteen minutes had passed since this attack had begun.

That is a very long struggle, and somehow this 51-year-old woman had survived a man—a grown man with a hammer—who was trying to kill her. She waited with her neighbor on his porch as police and paramedics arrived.

The adrenaline, which she calls a gift, was still obviously coursing through her veins, so she was highly alert despite her exhaustion.

When a police officer came over from her house, she asked the officer if the man who had attacked her was dead, and the officer said yes. Susan took this in. Suddenly, she was flooded with emotion—not relief, like you might expect. Susan was struck with grief.

She didn’t wake up that day planning to kill someone, even though she was fighting for her life. She had this immediate thought that this guy probably had a family. Throughout her life and work, Susan had come to believe that everyone has somebody in the world who loves them. She was sure this man was no different. Someone out there would be mourning for him soon. Still, she had no idea who he was or what he wanted, but she had a pretty good idea who'd sent him.

Okay, so at this point, as she's away from the attack, she's thinking, this man was in my house, and my system was armed. There's only one person who can—there's only one person who can unarm the system and then rearm it to get this man in her home: someone she loved, by the way.

So, Mike had been on vacation, whatever you want to call it. Well, basically, he’d waited for hours, hoping to hear from Ed how the kill had gone. Still at the motel by the beach, he eventually turned on the TV and saw something that must have come as a shock. His house was on the news.

Mike still called it his house, even though he didn’t live there anymore.

Yeah, what a loser.

It was clear something had happened, but the reporters weren’t giving out enough details. So, he's like, is the house there because she was found dead? What happened? Mike couldn’t exactly tell if Ed had accomplished his mission or not.

So he called Providence, the hospital where Susan worked, and asked the staff, "Hey, is my wife Susan there?" They said, "We don’t know." The truth was, Susan was there as a patient in the same emergency room where she worked.

Wow.

But fearing that Mike might come for her again, as she was taken to the hospital, she had told everyone, "Do not tell anyone I'm here. Don’t tell anyone I'm here."

So, Mike, of course, still has no idea what is happening, so he tries calling Susan's friends, and eventually, he gets a hold of a woman named Helen. Helen had known Susan for many years and she harbored serious concerns about Mike, so much so that when Mike had tried to take Susan to the beach, Helen was actually the one who had warned her that she shouldn't be alone with him because they were separated and she didn’t know his intentions.

Now, getting this call from Mike at almost 2:00 in the morning, Helen felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up. She listened wearily as Mike babbled, sounding almost manic. He told her over and over, "I was at the beach. I’ve been at the beach. I was in a motel at the beach and I saw the house on the news. I can't reach Susan. Do you know what's going on?" Helen told Mike she didn’t know what was going on, and she hung up. But from that moment on, she was convinced Mike knew what was happening. She thought, "This is weird. If you're at the beach, why not just drive to your house and see what's going on?"

So the next day, Helen accompanied Susan back to her house. Okay, she’s out of the hospital. It was still a crime scene, but police were letting her in to pick up a few things. While they were there, the friends noticed something out of place. Something Susan hadn't noticed when she'd come home from work that day: Mike's sports memorabilia collection was boxed up by the door.

My gosh.

Okay, apparently, the hitman was supposed to take it and then give it to Mike, thereby making it look like a burglary gone wrong. So, he was just like, "Oh, I’ll just find a way to steal my memorabilia and then also make this look like a burglary while he’s killing my wife."

All he could think about was his sports memorabilia.

Yes, dang sports memorabilia.

Helen then spotted a backpack that seemed out of place, and Susan confirmed it wasn't hers. So, police officers opened it up. Inside the backpack, they found a day planner that belonged to Ed.

So, this is how they figure out who the now-dead hitman is. Okay, he had left his backpack. Obviously, he was supposed to take it when he left, but he never left. They find his backpack, and on September 4th, two days before the attack, the hitman’s day planner had written in it, "Call Mike."

Okay, so they open this up and they’re like, so this hitman was supposed to call Mike two days before he happened to be in Mike’s wife’s house trying to kill her. They also found Mike’s cell phone number scrawled inside one of the folders. So, this must have been a punch in the gut for Susan. She had already expected that Mike was involved, but when going back to get some things from her house, she basically found proof. Yeah, the man she had invested 17 years of her life in wanted her dead.

Police were convinced, and they prepared to arrest Mike and charge him with conspiracy to commit murder. The problem? Nobody knew where he was at this point. But Susan had a pretty good idea. The beach had always been a refuge for Mike, a place where he could go to clear his head.

But now, as the hours ticked past and the truth that his plan had failed became unavoidable, Mike, who was at the beach, realized, "Uh, I probably can't go home. It's probably not safe for me anymore. I mean, if my plan failed and he's dead and she killed him, this isn’t good."

He'd made a mistake—not him, of course—Ed, the hitman, had made a mistake and screwed things up. As a result of Ed's failure, Mike was now exposed, having left a note that told police exactly where to find him.

So, he went on the run for several days, trying to make a plan. Luckily for Susan, Mike was spotted before he made his next move. On September 15th, 2006, 11 days after the attempted murder, Mike was arrested. He insists he's innocent and tells the police he's suicidal. Mike's daughter from the first marriage claims to the police that he had left a suicide note.

Was it real? Was it just like the note he'd left at Susan’s?

Either way, the claim didn’t help his case. Mike was charged with conspiracy to commit aggravated murder, just like his friend Ed had been more than 10 years before.

That's so ironic.

He was held on a $1 million bail. In January of 2007, his daughter raised the money to get him released on house arrest, but the landlord of the place where Mike was supposed to be staying refused to let him lodge there.

So, back to jail Mike went, much to Susan's relief. She was now living with what she called two life sentences: the pain of knowing that Mike had tried to kill her and might do so again if he gets the chance, and the pain of having taken someone’s life. She expressed this to Mike during his September 2007 sentencing hearing, in which she was given permission to address him in court.

Her ex-husband, Susan looked into his eyes—this man she had once loved, the man she thought was kind—and she said, "As long as you live, I will never have a measure of peace, but I will not be destroyed."

Susan has remained true to her word. While Mike was sentenced to 10 years in prison, Susan dedicated herself to using that time to help people. She became an outspoken victim's advocate.

She started several organizations to assist victims of violent crime. She even helped create a website where people in her county can look up the status of their cases and the locations of their offenders.

Only 10 years, which is so scary when someone hires someone to kill you because how do you know they’re not going to do it again? And a restraining order? I mean, come on, if someone wants to kill you, a restraining order isn’t going to stop them. Right? I mean, this is especially given she still needed to watch her back.

She created this website because it’s also going to help her. Mike was behind bars, but he could still get out. He could hire someone else to hunt her again. So, Susan combated that unnerving thought by suing him. She was awarded over $1 million in damages, an amount Mike could never pay, which was exactly her intention. She didn’t want the money; she just wanted to be sure that wherever he was, Mike would never be able to pay someone to kill her again. She wanted to drain his savings so he couldn’t do it again.

But that wasn’t enough. In 2015, Susan learned Mike was getting out on early release. Gosh, she had moved. She had changed her name, so as a victim who almost died, she now also had to change her identity, which is devastating just to be safe. And now, she took additional precautions.

She put in gravel outside of her house so she could hear if someone pulled up or was approaching. She installed cameras and started taking lessons at a shooting range. All these years later, Susan was still devastated by the fact that she had been forced to take a life, but she wasn’t ashamed. She knew that if the time came again, she would be ready.

Fortunately, the need never arose because Mike died of prostate cancer a few months prior to his early release. Susan expressed mixed feelings when she learned of her ex-husband's death. She said, "I don’t mourn his passing. Instead, I mourn the life he could have had if only he could have opened his heart for those of us who cared about him." So, despite everything she’d been through, Susan still hadn’t let it change her. She remained true to herself. She no longer loved her ex-husband when he died, but she would always wish that she had been able to save him. And that is the story of Susan Kousen.

It’d be crazy to have someone that you think you love and loves you try to kill you. I know what happens a lot with husbands and wives, but not many times does someone survive. So, I think that’s why it’s a little different.

Just heard about a case where a man had hidden cameras in the bathroom at his house and had been basically collecting child pornography on his own children and his wife’s children because they were married and she had had children with another previous marriage. He gets caught, and really, the nail in his coffin is going to be that his stepson, who he had been molesting but also recording images of, was going to testify against him. So, he tried to hire someone to kill his son.

Gosh, I mean, he obviously doesn’t care about him, but that’s like he’s abusing him. Like, that’s actually insane. It’s insane. It’s horrible. And to find out, “Oh, my dad tried to kill me”—it’s so horrible. It makes me sad after ruining my life, basically.

Yeah, you know what though? Susan’s case just goes to show, like, she’s a fighter, man. She is a fighter. She wants to do good. She immediately felt bad about having to kill someone in self-defense. You know what I mean?

Alright, you guys, that is our episode for today, and we will see you next time with another one. I love it.

And I hate it.

Goodbye.

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