In this episode, Payton and Garrett explore the eerie case of Sheila Trott, who claimed to dream about her friend’s murder—only for the details to match reality. Was it a premonition or a confession?
CBSNews.com - https://www.cbsnews.com/media/48-hours-sheila-trotts-letter-about-kelly-brennans-murder/
WESH.com - https://www.wesh.com/article/jury-finds-sheila-trott-guilty-of-first-degree-murder-in-slaying-of-kelly-brennan/4436576
WFTV.com - https://www.wftv.com/news/local/testimony-resumes-brevard-love-triangle-killing/107206266/
ABCNews.go.com - https://abcnews.go.com/US/mayors-wife-faces-trial-florida-love-triangle-slaying/story?id=25372739
MyNews13.com - https://mynews13.com/fl/orlando/news/2014/9/15/trott_murder_trial
Murderpedia.org - https://murderpedia.org/female.G/g/graham-trott-sheila.htm#google_vignette
FloridaToday.com - https://www.floridatoday.com/story/news/crime/2014/09/16/graham-trott-found-guilty-sentenced-to-life/15743869/
SA18.org - https://sa18.org/press/id/536
Legacy.com - https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/floridatoday/name/kelly-brennan-obituary?id=21925967
VeroNews.com - https://veronews.com/2018/10/18/love-triangle-convicted-killer-seeks-new-trial/
You're listening to an Oh No Media podcast.
Hey, everybody, welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Payton Moreland.
And I'm Garrett Moreland.
And he's the husband.
And I'm the husband.
I wasn't sure you would be able to be back this week, so I'm actually really happy. You guys should have seen what he looked like.
Now, for those who don't know—this will be my 10 seconds as well—I got a hair transplant. Got no problem saying it. I went and got one, and I'll be honest, it was rough. Not the procedure itself—that part was great, everything went smooth—but the next few days after that were rough.
I still haven't really been able to sleep at night. I'm on day nine or ten, and I still just have a lot of pain and stuff, but it's getting there. I've been taking some pain medication. My face—my face, my eyes—were swollen shut on, like, day three. It was crazy. I wasn't expecting that. Kind of glad no one told me, because I don’t know if I would have done it. But also, not everyone reacts the same way I did. That's just what happened to me.
If you're watching on YouTube, you can see a bunch of scabs in the front. So all right here is just pure scab. That's why it looks like a straight line.
Genuinely, people don’t understand how swollen your face was. He looked like he had just walked out of a UFC fight where he didn’t throw a single punch the entire time.
No, it was—I didn’t know a face could get that swollen. It looked like my head was, like, ploh—it was demented.
We'll tell people, "Oh, his eyes were swollen," and they'll be like, "Oh yeah." Then I'll pull up a picture, and they’ll be like, "Oh my gosh." I'm like, no, you don’t understand. His entire face was like a balloon.
Like, his head was swollen. It was bad.
It was pretty bad. Not swollen anymore. My head just hurts. But my hair grew back so fast.
I'm getting there. Here I am.
So that’s why I was gone.
I don’t know—I don’t got much to say, not going to lie. It’s been a pretty tough week. I am really tired. I haven't slept for a week, but you know, that’s okay. I’m making my way. I chose it. I did it to myself.
And Daisy's barking at me to go outside, so I'll pass it off to Payton.
All right, you guys, our sources for this episode are CBSNews.com, WFTV.com, ABCNews.go.com, MyNews13.com, Murderpedia, FloridaToday.com, and 8.org.
I think that most of us can relate to having a bad nightmare from time to time. You know that feeling of waking up in a cold sweat, remembering every vivid little detail—like maybe it was just a little too real? But a few minutes after returning to reality, most of us can shake it off.
Like, genuinely, when I have a nightmare, I actually shake it off. And then, at that point, a dream is just a dream. There’s nothing real or truthful about it—at least, not usually.
But every once in a while, those nightmares leave us with a lingering feeling. A what if. Maybe like an omen, a premonition.
The question is, do you act on it?
Well, if you asked Sheila Trot, she would say she didn’t have a choice. When she had a dream about one of her good friends dying, she had to tell someone.
And because her premonition was right, it actually put her at the center of a murder investigation.
I mean, imagine that. Imagine having a dream that one of your friends is dead, and then you go to the police and say, "Hey," and it turns out she was murdered. And the police are like, "Well, you know... how did you know that?"
Yeah, I think that could happen a lot, you know what I’m saying? If it’s someone close to you—it’s your family, your friends—I feel like I’ve had dreams that friends and family are dead. The coincidence of it actually happening is pretty crazy, but I do feel like it’s plausible. Just saying.
So, it’s 2010, and we are in Indialantic, Florida, a tiny little town on the eastern coast with no more than 2,800 people at the time.
Okay, 2,800 people in 2010.
This is where 46-year-old Kelly Brennan lived. While I don’t know a whole lot about Kelly’s upbringing, I do know she was pretty popular around town.
Kelly worked as a registered recovery nurse at Holmes Regional Medical Center, just a few miles away in Melbourne, Florida. When she wasn’t tending to her patients, she was out in the world living life to the fullest.
Kelly and her husband of six years, a restaurant manager named Gino, didn’t have any kids, which meant Kelly had plenty of time for her personal passions—like kayaking, bike riding, and hiking. Anything outdoorsy.
She also spent her time volunteering overseas with organizations like ISMS Operation Kids, which even brought her to Morocco.
Kelly’s friends and family said she was always keeping busy, that there was never a dull moment with her. Her contagious laughter could turn anyone’s day around. People gravitated toward her and looked up to her when they needed a leader.
At the hospital where she worked, she was given the nickname "The Sarge" because she wasn’t afraid to take charge.
And shockingly, she managed to do all of these things through one of the toughest periods of her life.
A few years earlier, Kelly had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. But even with that diagnosis, it never slowed her down. Even when she had bad flare-ups, she would push through, refusing to give her condition any power over her.
And it only made the people who admired Kelly love her even more—including her good friend Sheila Trot.
Sheila was a transplant to the area. She actually grew up in Ontario, Canada, but over the years, she developed an obsession with the water. That passion ultimately drew her to Florida for college, where she also worked part-time as a dive instructor.
It was around that time, in the late ‘80s or early ‘90s, that Sheila and Kelly first met.
Kelly was a nursing student, and Sheila—fresh out of school herself—was working three different jobs to help pay for her fiancé, Daniel Trot’s, flight training.
Sheila, at this point, would have done anything for Dan, so it wasn’t surprising that she was working three jobs to get him through school.
And when they eventually tied the knot on August 26, 1989, it’s possible that Kelly was even invited to the wedding.
But over the years, Kelly and Sheila would sort of go their separate ways and live their own lives.
Sheila became a real estate agent and had two boys, Kraton and Graham, while her husband, Daniel, became a licensed pilot before going into politics in 2002.
But even then, there was no bad blood between Sheila and Kelly. In fact, they had the kind of friendship where, even if they didn’t speak for a few months—or even years—it felt like they could pick right back up where they left off when they started talking again.
At least, this is according to Sheila.
She even said the two leaned on each other when they were going through hard times in their marriages.
By the end of 2009, Kelly and her husband, Gino, were not in a great place. They had been growing apart, and it seemed as if Kelly wasn’t sure whether their marriage would continue.
So, she reached out to Sheila.
And Sheila could sympathize. By that point, she and Daniel were separated and on the road to divorce as well. She was eager to get the whole thing settled and put the past behind her.
Which is why she made an odd suggestion to Kelly when the two went out to dinner one night.
Sheila told Kelly, her friend, Hey, I actually think you and Dan would make a pretty nice couple.
Now, Dan is Sheila’s husband. The one she’s currently trying to divorce.
So she’s telling her friend Kelly, Go for it. Have my almost soon-to-be ex-husband. You have my permission. I think you guys would make a great couple.
According to Sheila, she thought this would actually help speed up the divorce process. If someone else was in the picture—like Daniel—then maybe it would even save thousands in legal fees.
And it seems like Kelly went along with the suggestion.
I’m not sure how long the two were seeing each other, but it was at least a couple of months.
And Sheila was obviously aware.
Apparently, Gino learned about this the hard way.
One night, he showed up at Dan Trot’s apartment while Kelly was there.
He kicked in the front door, and according to Daniel, he was carrying some sort of jack in his hand, which he used to hit Daniel in the hands and face.
Kelly ended up leaving with Gino that night—perhaps as an attempt to calm him down.
But that didn’t end the relationship between Dan and Kelly.
And I do need to preface this: although Dan’s ex-wife, Sheila, knew what was going on—I mean, she suggested it—Kelly and Gino were not yet divorced.
So Gino was looking at this as an affair.
It wasn’t reported to the police or anything, though.
The attack?
No.
So, all of this—Gino coming over and beating up Dan—actually pushed Kelly further into Dan’s arms.
It seems Kelly moved in with her friend, Jane, after the altercation. And as she looked for a way out of her marriage, she and Dan kept seeing each other.
This continued well into February of 2010.
But on the night of the 15th, Kelly was supposed to meet with her personal trainer at her local gym for a 9 p.m. appointment.
And when she didn’t show, the trainer alerted Kelly’s roommate.
After two hours of trying to reach Kelly and checking with every police station, fire rescue, and hospital in the area, they decide it is time to file a missing persons report because no one can find her.
Now, I don’t think her friend Sheila was high up on Kelly’s list of emergency contacts, so it’s possible she hadn’t even heard about Kelly’s disappearance on the night of the 15th. But that evening, Sheila has her own set of strange experiences.
After coming home from a trip to Walmart, Sheila’s teenage sons notice she’s not doing well. She’s dizzy and shaky, almost having seizure-like symptoms. Her son’s girlfriend says, “Hey, we need to call 911.”
The paramedics show up to the house—keep in mind, Kelly is missing at this point. They run a bunch of routine checks on Sheila, and she seems to be fine. So they say, “If anything gets worse, call us, but we’re going to leave.”
Then, another hour later, the girlfriend calls 911 again and says, “Hey, she’s still acting out of sorts. She’s had another seizure. Can you come back?”
This time, they take Sheila to the hospital, but again, after a bunch of routine tests, they cannot find anything wrong with her. It’s bizarre, but they release her. They tell her to go home and get some rest, and she does.
Personally, if I were having unexplainable seizures and wasn’t in the hospital, I’d be like, “No, I’m not going home. You can try to discharge me, but I’m not going home.” That’s weird. But she does go home, falls asleep in her own bed for a few hours, and doesn’t wake up—until she suddenly does.
In the middle of the night, she calls for her youngest son, 16-year-old Graham. She tells him, “I just had a terrible dream.”
In it, she says, “I kept seeing snapshots of Kelly Brennan’s face.” Kelly—her friend, who’s now dating her ex-husband. She thinks Kelly is hurt, maybe even in danger. She tells her son, “We need to find her.”
That’s a little weird. That’s weird. That’s weird.
Sheila says, “I think she’s somewhere by the beach, over by a place called Mark’s Landing.”
Yeah… see, we’re getting a little too specific now.
Sheila’s sons say, “Okay, Mom’s insisting we go. Let’s take her out there, drive her around—no way she’s right—calm her fears, and show her everything’s okay.”
So they get there, get out of the car, and walk around the area. Just as the boys are about to say, “See, Mom? Everything’s fine. We can leave,” they spot something.
There are feet sticking out of the brush on the Florida beach. A shadow of a body in workout clothes can be seen.
They begin to panic. They get back in the car.
They’re like, “Mom just had a premonition, or a dream, that Kelly was going to be here and in trouble… and this is what we find.”
They say, “Mom, you were right.”
And she goes, “Okay, but we also need to go somewhere else. There’s a vacant lot nearby that we need to go to.”
So the boys drive her to that destination as well—where she finds a reusable grocery bag.
Inside of it is Kelly’s purse. And her wallet. And her ID.
Okay. Now her kids are probably thinking, Mom… what did you do?
Like… what have you got yourself into?
They are 16 and 18, so they figure, Okay, we’re just going to take her home. We’re not going to call the police, even though they just saw a dead body.
Oh, I wouldn’t—I don’t know.
I do. It’s their mom.
Yeah, I’d probably be like, Mom, you’ve got to figure something out. You’ve got to handle this. I’m not handling this. Do not tell anyone that you had a dream.
They’re teenagers, so they go home, and they’re like, I know exactly what we’re going to do. We’re going to take Mom home, we’re going to call Grandma, and we’re going to make Grandma the one who deals with this.
Luckily, Sheila’s mother, Grandma Margaret, lives close by, so she rushes over in the middle of the night to help the kids. When she gets there, she finds Sheila curled up on the floor in the fetal position.
That’s when her son looks at Grandma Margaret and says, “Grandma, I’m pretty sure Mom killed Kelly.”
And Margaret’s like, Okay. Holy sht. We are calling 911.*
She tells the operator on the 911 call, “I think there’s been some sort of murder. My daughter has had a nervous breakdown, and she’s killed somebody.”
Oh. Okay.
The police rush over to Sheila’s condo, and at this point, she’s saying over and over, not just that she had a bad dream, but that she thinks maybe she hurt Kelly.
Sheila is having a nervous breakdown, and in this breakdown, she’s saying, “Did I hurt her? I think I hurt Kelly. How else would I have known? How else would I have had this dream?”
No, she’s going—she’s, I mean, sadly, she’s losing it.
They get the name out of Sheila, and they realize it matches the missing persons report they had just received the night before—for Kelly Brennan.
Within the hour, police are putting two and two together and flooding the area of Mark’s Landing. But for some reason, they don’t immediately locate Kelly’s body, even though the boys had seen it. Just searching on foot, they don’t seem to find her.
I’m assuming they didn’t bring Sheila’s sons back to the scene to point out exactly where the body was. Instead, they deploy a police helicopter to do an overhead search of the area. That’s when they spot it—just along a footpath, in a patch of brush. Kelly’s feet and running shorts are seen sticking out.
They land the helicopter, thinking, Maybe… is Kelly alive?
But when they get there and see the injuries to her head, they realize quickly that Kelly did not survive the attack.
It appears she was hit repeatedly in the head with a flat, roundish object of some sort. They’re thinking—a hammer.
There’s a trail of blood leading through the brush, but Kelly doesn’t have any sand on her shoes or legs, which suggests she probably wasn’t walking through the sand to get to that spot. She was likely killed off-site and then either carried or dragged there, her feet scraping off the walkway.
That theory is confirmed when they finally locate Kelly’s car on a street called Cat Court, about half a mile away from her home. Inside the vehicle, they find plenty of Kelly’s blood. It was clearly used to transport her.
The autopsy later shows there were no signs of a struggle. Whatever happened between Kelly and her attacker—these blows to her head—Kelly did not see them coming.
She was blindsided. She didn’t even have a chance to fight back.
It was swift and vicious. They likely snuck up behind her, and with a few quick blows, knocked her unconscious before she could even understand what was happening.
Oh, I’m trying to figure out—was it her or not?
I mean, it has to be, right?
You’d think so. The obvious answer is that it was her. Something happened—she broke, had a breakdown, lost control, whatever you want to call it—and she killed Kelly.
But… maybe she could see the future.
Or—not the future, I guess. Maybe she just had a premonition?
I don’t know. A gift, maybe?
At this point, the police are thinking, Okay, who attacked Kelly? Was it Sheila? Or is there something even stranger happening here?
They’re confused—wasn’t Sheila just in the hospital earlier that night? But then they realize—no, wait. This happened the night before.
Oh.
Naturally, one of the first people the police are going to investigate in any case is the spouse. So, yes, they have Sheila, but they still have to check out Kelly’s husband, Gino.
And let’s face it—it wasn’t looking good for him.
Daniel Trot tells the police about the time Gino came banging on his door and attacked him, all because he was seeing Kelly.
“My wife, Sheila, knows,” Daniel explains.
I can’t even imagine.
It’s already strange enough for the police to be dealing with Sheila had a dream, found her friend’s body, and now they’re learning: Oh, and she also offered up her ex-husband to date Kelly, who was cheating on Gino.
It’s just a mess.
And Daniel’s telling them, Oh yeah, Gino’s definitely violent. He came after me.
But here’s the problem—Gino has an alibi.
And it’s a solid one.
There’s surveillance footage of him at a Walgreens during the time of Kelly’s death.
That’s enough for police to rule him out—for now.
So what do they do?
They immediately circle back to the woman who basically confessed to the murder—Sheila Trot.
Because it’s not just the dreams that make Sheila suspicious to the police. Once they dig a little deeper, there’s more.
It’s not even the odd seizure-like symptoms she was experiencing earlier that night.
It’s what she did before that.
Remember how her son said she started having those episodes right after she got back from a trip to Walmart?
She had gone to Walmart… and then came home acting strange.
But here’s the thing: That Walmart trip took her four hours.
Now, I know you can get held up in a place like Walmart, but four hours? That’s a long time.
And interestingly enough, when police ask her kids, they say, Oh, actually… she came home empty-handed. No groceries. Nothing.
She went to Walmart but didn’t bring anything back.
Still, the police feel pretty confident at this point that Sheila’s “dream” about Kelly’s murder wasn’t a dream at all.
Sheila isn’t some psychic.
The odds are far more likely that Sheila did something to her longtime friend, Kelly Brennan.
According to those who knew Sheila, the divorce between her and Daniel was a lot uglier than she had made it seem to Kelly, and honestly, was making it seem to everyone. Apparently, while Sheila and Dan were married, Dan had been having affairs with other women long before the two decided to separate in 2009, around the same time that Kelly and Gino were trying to figure things out. So after Sheila caught Dan without his ring on one too many times, she finally confronted him about it and eventually told him she wanted a divorce.
And that story about her setting Kelly and Dan up to speed up the process? Well, that may have been Sheila's version of events, but Daniel claimed that he and Kelly had connected when he joined this new cycling group after the separation—one which Kelly Brennan was already a part of. Once the two started hooking up, they kept it a secret from everyone, including Kelly's husband Gino and Sheila.
Okay, so Dan is like, "No, Sheila didn’t tell Kelly to date me. Me and Kelly just started dating on our own." So if you asked Dan, there was no setup. In fact, several people who knew the couple were like, "No, that’s weird. Sheila never would have told Kelly to date Dan because, according to people, she—Sheila—is obsessed with Daniel. Maybe some part of her was hoping the time apart would be good, and they would finally make their way back to each other. Only Kelly Brennan threw a pretty big wrench in those plans."
It also didn’t seem like a coincidence that Daniel and Sheila were supposed to start mediation on February 17th, 2010, two days after Kelly was killed.
Here’s the thing though: as far as concrete evidence against Sheila Trot, there just isn’t any. That reusable grocery bag with Kelly’s purse and wallet—the one that Sheila’s sons said their mom led them to? The police can’t find it anywhere.
What is she saying? What did—like, what is she saying about this? Is she saying, "I did it"? Is she saying, "I didn’t do it"? Is she saying, "It was just a dream"? Like, what is she saying about this? She’s saying, "No, I think it’s just a dream." But when she was having her nervous breakdown, she was throwing out possibilities.
Besides that point, like, have they brought her in to question her? Does she have an attorney? So they do bring her in, and actually, this is going to speed up really fast, so let me just keep going. They can’t find that bag that the sons claim they found in the parking lot. It just no longer exists. So there’s no DNA connecting Sheila to the crime. No witnesses. No fingerprints. No murder weapon. No bruising, cuts— not so much as a broken nail on Sheila Trot. So, say Sheila is an expert at leaving an immaculate crime scene. Why would she then go the distance just to rat herself out an hour later?
The whole thing is incredibly bizarre because there was—I mean, police wouldn’t even have suspected her. There was nothing pointing to her, but right now, police figure she’s the best they’ve got. So, just three days after Kelly’s body is found, they arrest 44-year-old Sheila on February 18th, 2010.
I’m surprised they made an arrest because, well, they’re going to say that she confessed, essentially. Yeah, I just don’t think I personally believe that confession. Could get thrown out. I was going to say, that’s not going to hold up in court, right? She was having a nervous breakdown.
It’s not going to good luck, but then also, you tell a jury, "Well, she led us right to the body." Yeah, that’s a little suspicious as well. So not only is she facing first-degree murder charges for killing her soon-to-be ex-husband’s girlfriend, who was also her friend, she’s also denied bail. So Sheila Trot sits behind bars for 4 and a half years awaiting her trial, and the entire time, she insists she’s innocent. She’s like, "I was just freaking out. I really did just have a dream. I did not do this."
How did she sit that long? She can’t. She’s denied bail, so you can’t get out while you’re prepping for trial. Interesting, and it’s just kind of up to the case about who gets denied bail and who doesn’t. It’s so interesting because, say she’s... I don’t know what’s going to happen, but say someone’s denied bail and they’re proven not guilty—can you then sue?
I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure no, because that is just the way the justice system works. And like, even though you were found not guilty, it still took the proper channels of you building a defense, I guess. I would understand the proper channels if it’s been, like, 6 months, but also, it’s been 4 and a half years.
Okay, but you have a right to a speedy trial.
Yeah, so I mean, that’s not exactly... I think technically her defense could have said, "No need to go to trial now," even if the state wasn’t ready.
Correct, but they must not have—something happened. They just... they must have been trying to build a defense as well, with legalities behind it.
Wow, it’s wild. So she’s like, "I’m innocent" the whole time. As soon as she gets arrested, she says, "I’m innocent." And because of this, she doesn’t take a plea deal. If she had taken a deal, it probably wouldn’t have taken four years. She waits until September of 2014 for her day in court.
Now, the defense feels pretty confident, at the very least, that they have a good case for at least some reasonable doubt. As I mentioned, there’s practically nothing in the way of physical evidence against Sheila, but the prosecution paints a convincing narrative for the jury of what they believed happened that night at trial.
And this is what they say: on the evening of February 15th, back in 2010, Sheila left her house sometime between 6:00 and 7:00 p.m., telling her sons she was making a trip to Walmart, but that was a total lie. Instead, Sheila went to Kelly Brennan’s house, waited in her yard, and as Kelly was leaving, she snuck up behind her, ambushed her, and attacked her from behind, likely with a hammer. (For the autopsy, even though no weapon was ever found and Kelly never saw it coming.)
They suggested that Sheila then put Kelly in her own car and drove the 13 miles to Mark’s Landing, where she left her body, and then drove back to Catt Court, parked Kelly’s car there, before making the half-mile walk back to her own car that was still parked at Kelly’s house.
Now, part of this narrative is based on two things that they found in Kelly Brennan’s yard: a drag mark and blood, seemingly leading to Kelly’s vehicle. So this is where they believe the initial attack happened—at Kelly’s home. But the defense has a lot of problems with this version of the story. For starters, they’re like, "There’s no way 115-pound Sheila Trot was able to attack and then transport the 146-pound Kelly Brennan on her own."
They’re like, how do you drag a dead body to multiple places at 115 lbs when that body weighs 146 lbs? Much less lift her up inside an SUV. And even if Sheila did sneak up behind Kelly on her front lawn and ambush her, and manage to get her in the car despite her size, how the heck did Sheila do that without a single witness or neighbor seeing it happen in real time? This was in the front yard.
Not to mention the blood found in Kelly's yard that police believe was the evidence showing that it happened there. Only one sample of that blood was collected and sent to a lab during the investigation, and when they ran it against Kelly's blood, it came back negative.
"I don’t think you can find her guilty. I don’t think there’s enough evidence." So this is wild. What police didn’t test was the blood found near Kelly’s body at Mark’s Landing, which the defense is like, "This is just shoddy police work because that could have been blood from an attacker, and you guys never tested it. So you can’t prove if it wasn’t my client."
Aside from that, there’s not a single piece of DNA, blood, hair—anything—that puts Sheila Trot at the scene of the crime. But the prosecution comes back with an explanation for that too, based on one neighbor who said they did see a blonde woman at Kelly's house earlier that night. She was wearing a light-colored outfit, one that detectives deduced might have been Sheila in a yellow hazmat suit.
So the neighbor said, "Oh, she was in a light-colored outfit, she was blonde," and the prosecution was like, "That was Sheila wearing a hazmat suit, which is why we found no DNA."
This is getting thrown out. This is 100% getting thrown out. Also, I’ve come to realize after doing so many of these cases how many neighbors—how many people—just start saying they saw stuff that they didn’t even see.
Well, they could have actually seen a woman, true, but I’m just saying, in general, people just start saying stuff, and it’s like, wait, no... I think this is more on the prosecution because how do you take that testimony of a light-colored outfit and turn it into a hazmat suit, which is why there’s no DNA? Gotta reach, you know?
But also, from what I can tell, police didn’t do much to collect samples from either Kelly's house or where her body was found. And before you scream at me through your phone right now, I am not defending Sheila, okay? I’m not in the "Pro Sheila" camp right now. What I’m saying is, I feel like there was more investigation that could have been done as far as physical evidence in this investigation that would have just helped overall in any trial, whether that was against or for Sheila or not.
Like I said, they really didn’t collect samples from Kelly’s house or where the body was found. There was blood where the body was found, and they didn’t collect it, which is why the defense thinks there’s another, more likely suspect in this—and they believe it’s Gino. He had already threatened Daniel at his home after he first learned about the affair. Remember how he showed up with that car jack and caused injuries? According to Dan, Gino brought Kelly home that night and began choking her in the garage, meaning he was violent with her too.
And then, two months later, Kelly's dead. But once Gino took the stand, he placed the focus back on Sheila. Not only did Gino have a solid alibi during the time they think Kelly died, which was caught on that security footage, he said that Sheila would call and email him all the time, trying to provoke him into doing something about the affair.
But Gino said that Sheila—the woman being accused of killing Kelly—would call and email him all the time, trying to provoke him into doing something about their spouses' affair. In fact, she was the one who told him it was happening. But Sheila denies all of this, saying, "No, I never sent messages hoping to trigger Gino or turn him violent. I really wasn’t upset about the affair itself." Obviously, she has to say that for her defense, just as much as she says how much money Dan was spending now on his new girlfriend.
But the prosecution still had one final trick up their sleeve: two witnesses willing to take the stand to describe their experiences from that night, and it was Sheila's sons, Graham and Kraton Trot.
Graham tells the jury exactly how strange his mother was acting that evening once she came home empty-handed from her four-hour Walmart trip, while she was banging her head against the wall, which was why he thought she was having a seizure. But he also describes what happened after the hospital visit that night—how she woke up from a dream saying she had seen Kelly's face on a beach and how she thought Kelly was hurt.
But Graham's testimony now is a little different from what he told police back in February of 2010. Now he's saying he never heard his mother that night, later on claiming she hurt Kelly, only that she was hurt. So he changes and says, "No, my mom never actually confessed that night," which is not on those police transcripts from four years ago. In those, he tells police that later on, his mother was repeating over and over that maybe she was the one that hurt Kelly. But when that's brought up in court, it doesn't look great for Sheila Trot. Neither does the rest of her son's stories about her taking them to the exact spot where Kelly was found and the fact that they drove her to the lot where she discovered Kelly's purse and wallet.
But before the trial wraps, there's one last twist: a final piece of evidence presented to the jury, and it comes from Sheila Trot herself. It is a 22-page letter that was written while Sheila was behind bars. It is her personal account of what really happened on the night of February 15th, 2010, and in it, Sheila makes a confession. Just not the kind that you'd think. In it, she writes that the dream she had that evening, she now knows it wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t a premonition; it was a memory of what she witnessed earlier that evening.
So this is her story now at trial.
Oh, gosh, okay.
She claims she stopped by Kelly's house on the way to Walmart that evening when she noticed another car she didn’t recognize in her driveway. She had to park on the street because there was no room. But when she got out and approached the house, she saw a man standing before Kelly's front door, and the two were arguing. Sheila couldn’t make out who the guy was because she said it was too dark outside, but she figured this had to just be another one of Kelly's lovers—maybe one she wasn’t familiar with.
Instead of intruding on their conversation, Sheila said she went back to her car and watched from there because she was being nosy. Sheila said the argument got nasty after she heard Kelly tell the man that she was done with him and needed to leave because she had plans that night. That’s when Sheila said the mystery man turned violent. She watched from her car as he began hitting Kelly, pursued her to the front lawn, and continued beating her until eventually placing her in her own vehicle. But rather than race off or call the police, Sheila said something came over her, like she was possessed to follow the car as it drove away from the house. She said she tailed it all the way to Mark’s Landing, where she saw the stranger pull Kelly’s body from the passenger side and drag it to the trail. That’s when she raced home, eventually had her panic attack, got her sons involved, went to the hospital in a crisis, and then played it off as a dream later that night.
Now, there’s a lot that doesn’t really make sense in this version, like why Sheila wouldn’t have just gone to the police after witnessing Kelly being murdered—done something, said something. Yeah, there’s the question of why she would have lied about it being a dream and how she managed to stumble upon the bag of Kelly’s belongings later on. Plus, her version does not match what the autopsy said, that this was a swift attack from behind.
Now, it’s very likely that a lot of these plot holes came up during the trial, but Sheila never took the stand, meaning many of these questions went unanswered. Though really, it seems the jury didn’t need to hear any of it. She had already said enough. Less than three hours after deliberation, the jury of six returned with a verdict: Sheila Trot was guilty of first-degree murder.
No way she was.
She was sentenced to life in prison. To this day, Sheila Trot maintains her innocence. She says Kelly’s real-life killer is out there walking free. Sheila believes her crime was not stopping the attack when she saw it happen in real time or going to the police. While she’s filed appeal after appeal, Sheila has not been granted any sort of retrial. Both of her sons have told the press that they actually believe their mother is innocent, that what she says in that 22-page letter matches up most accurately with what they saw that night, as does Sheila’s mother, Margaret, who called 911 and said, “My daughter killed somebody.” Whether or not that’s true, Margaret has told the press that she blames herself for her daughter’s prison sentence. It eats her life, thinking if on that 911 call she had not said, “I think my daughter killed somebody,” and had just said, “Someone’s in trouble,” would it have made a difference?
Probably not, no.
But if that had been the case, then Kelly Brennan’s friends and family might still have a lot of unanswered questions today. As well, I would think they still do, too, because, to be honest...
I... Okay, you're gonna look just...
Speaking from a justice system perspective and the evidence that was presented in court, I don’t think there was enough evidence to say that it’s life in prison.
Okay, but do you think there is enough evidence? It’s insane some of the crimes we’ve covered, and people get off not guilty with way more evidence than this. Can I say what I was going to say? Not having enough evidence to convict is different than you thinking she’s innocent, correct?
So, I don’t know whether she’s innocent or guilty. I just don’t think... you just think she deserves a retrial? I think there’s not enough evidence to convict because there was no physical evidence. There’s no way... they tested the blood. There’s no way there’s enough evidence to convict. Who was on that damn jury? Who’s on that jury?
Okay, don’t blame the jury. They can be persuaded to do anything. Very rarely is it... Whoever... If you were on that jury and you’re listening to this, you did a crappy job. Oh my gosh, listen, there’s no way there’s enough evidence to convict. This is all I’m saying—bull crap, man. I feel like she probably deserves a retrial just based on the fact that the investigation wasn’t done very well.
I don’t know, though. At the retrial, there’s nothing to retest. They didn’t collect the blood. I just think there’s not enough evidence to convict. But what are the chances she didn’t do it? I mean, crazier things have happened.
I understand, but like... Like I too would have a nervous breakdown if I murdered my friend. I too would also have a nervous breakdown if I saw someone murder my friend.
No, you wouldn’t. You would call the cops.
But you don’t know that.
I know, I know, everyone’s different. I know. It’s completely possible she watched someone do it and had a nervous breakdown. The amount of people... I mean, it’s no different than when people talk about, “Well, if you were getting raped, why don’t you just say no?” or something like that. It’s like, you don’t know what you would do in that situation. Right? You have no idea. You never know what the human brain’s gonna say. Most people probably wouldn’t fight back in a situation like that because of the fight or flight instinct.
I think if most people saw someone they knew getting killed, they would freeze up.
Yes, but I think nine times out of ten, they would call the police.
Maybe. We don’t know. We don’t know. But then why did she? She had all the time in the world in the car. Gosh, give me the dang Bart test. I’m going to become an attorney.
I just... I understand that she could have been in a haze following there, right? But then, where does this bag... I’m just still very confused. All the sources weren’t very clear about this bag that contained the belongings because then all of a sudden it just went missing. I don’t know. It just feels to me like the investigation... But it’s almost like... I can’t... Okay, I’m going in circles, but it’s almost like I can’t blame the police because if you get a call from someone whose ex-husband—who, according to everyone else, she’s still in love with—is dating this girl who’s now dead, and she said, “I might have done it,” what else are the police going to do?
Listen, remember that case we covered where the guy had a dream and it was real? And it was real, yes, he acted so... I just feel like you’re riding a little hard right now.
Okay, I’m not riding hard for the fact that I don’t know if she did it. I’m riding hard for the fact that I’m kind of sick of people being convicted when we don’t have enough evidence.
And I would agree with that. We are 100% on the same page in that regard. In order for... if someone does something, and she did kill someone, I don’t want to talk to them ever again. Put them in prison. Kill them. I don’t care. I’m pretty harsh about that stuff.
In order for our justice system to work correctly, it has to be black and white, and if there is not enough, if there is reasonable doubt, someone should not be convicted, even if it feels like they did it. There is so much reasonable doubt in that, and they were just like, “Ah, nah, let’s just put her in prison.”
But there’s also reasonable guilt.
It’s just hard. The jury... Yeah, it’s just hard. Justice system and the circumstantial evidence is just really heavy-hitting in this one.
Yes. I don’t know. All of her family thinks she’s innocent.
Yeah, that’s a doozy of a case.
That’s a crazy case.
All right, you guys, that was our episode and we will see you next time with another one.
I love it.
And I hate it.
Goodbye.