Hey Y'all, it's Julie Mattson, and today on Pushing Up Lilies, we're tackling one of the most shocking and heartbreaking cases in recent years—the brutal torture and murder of Missouri mother Cassidy Rainwater. In 2021, Cassidy was caged, tormented, and ultimately killed by two men, James Phelps and Timothy Norton, in a crime that sent shockwaves across the nation. This episode will explore the dark and twisted events leading up to Cassidy's tragic death, the disturbing details that came to light during the investigation, and the justice sought for her and her loved ones. It's a case that’s as haunting as it is tragic, and I’m here to guide you through it. * Listener discretion is advised.
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0:06 Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies.
0:08 I'm your host, Julie Mattson.
0:10 Pushing Up Lilies is a weekly True Crime podcast with spine tingling, unusual and terrifyingly true stories from my perspective as a forensic death investigator and a sexual assault nurse examiner.
0:24 Do I have some stories for you?
0:26 Are you ready?
0:31 Hey guys?
0:32 Happy Wednesday.
0:33 Boy, am I dragging this week has been exhausting to say the least.
0:39 We have our North Texas Fair and Rodeo going on.
0:44 It's a 10-day event here in Denton, Texas.
0:47 My med spa has a booth there.
0:49 We are doing a hat bar.
0:52 It's just been hot.
0:54 Nobody's coming out because it's 113 and there's some amazing bands that are playing and some are from the area.
1:03 Some are not, but they've got some great music out there.
1:07 If you're in the area, I encourage you to come by and take a listen.
1:10 There's some wonderful food, but man, it's hot and I think that's why people aren't really coming out.
1:17 I expect a pretty big crowd this weekend, but I don't know.
1:23 The heat of that, the amount of work we've had at the medical examiner's office, we've had a ton of suicides, a ton of heat related deaths and some of them, even though they may not be directly caused by the heat are actually influenced somewhat by it because of the fact that no one can run their air conditioner low enough to keep their house cool and still afford their dad gum electric bill.
1:53 It's just absolutely crazy.
1:55 We've got people here living in their vehicles who can't afford the gas to leave them running and leave the air conditioner on.
2:05 It's just so sad and the heat we deal with this every year.
2:12 We don't have a problem with cold weather here.
2:14 Like y'all do up north, but the heat is brutal this year and when you're on asphalt, it just, I don't know, it's like you're cooking.
2:25 We were talking at work today about how I've always wanted to try to put the cookie pan in the windshield and put the cookie dough in it just to see really with the doors and windows shut in my car.
2:37 How long does it takes the cookies to cook?
2:39 I'm going to try that in the morning.
2:40 Next week I'm going to let you, I'm going to let y'all know how that goes because I've always wanted to try it.
2:45 I don't think personally that it would take very long if I could just get the little premade cookie dough things and put those in a cookie sheet.
2:53 I'm stopping at the store in the morning and I'm going to buy some and that is my project of the day, I'm going to be working really hard making cookies while I'm working at the ME’s office.
3:05 But anyway, that’s all of that, in addition to the fact that school started on Monday school started back up as most of, you know, I'm going to the University of Texas at Arlington online through their nurse practitioner program.
3:19 And the class I'm taking now because they only allow one at a time is advanced pharmacology so far it seems ok.
3:28 But again, I'm only two days in, I've got my assignment that's due in a couple of days already done.
3:37 I'm trying to stay a step ahead just because it doesn't take long to get behind those of you who go to school online, know how much discipline it takes.
3:47 And it's more difficult, I think when you're trying to do it from home and work than it ever was when I actually went to a classroom, it's hard to stay focused because, you know, as an adult, which I didn't have in college or when I was running out of high school, going to school, I didn't have laundry and I didn't have bills and I didn't have two jobs and I definitely didn't have a podcast.
4:11 I mean, things have changed a lot and just the amount of intense discipline that it takes hats off to everyone else doing it because now I know how truly difficult it is.
4:25 Y'all are all rock stars.
4:28 I was thinking of something the other day too and I don't know why my microphone that I talk into has like a fuzzy cover on it because it kind of drowns out the background noise.
4:39 And when I came home from North Dakota, they pulled me aside and searched my bag because they thought that there was an animal in it, and it was actually my microphone.
4:50 I thought that was kind of funny, but it's super fuzzy.
4:54 It's cute.
4:55 It's a cute little fella but it is not an animal, and it is not breathing.
4:58 It is actually my microphone.
5:00 Anyway, that was different.
5:03 So school, work, podcast.
5:07 Here we go.
5:09 I have some great stories for y'all or a great story for you this week.
5:14 It's something we were talking about at work and it's in a Missouri man who was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the death of a woman who he kept in a cage and then eventually dismembered John Phelps entered an Alford plea to first degree murder, kidnapping and abandonment of a corpse in the death of 33-year-old Cassie Rainwater.
5:41 Now, an Alford plea is when you really don't admit guilt, but you do acknowledge that there's enough evidence to convict you.
5:51 So, that's the route he chose.
5:54 Now, Phelps and Timothy Norton were charged in September of 2021 after DNA tests identified the remains found at Phelps' home near Lebanon as Rainwater.
6:09 The men were initially arrested on kidnapping charge after the FBI received a tip that photos of Cassie Rainwater's partially nude body in a cage were found on Phelps’ phone.
6:25 Now other photos showed that Rainwater's body had been disemboweled and dismembered.
6:34 This is really typically very cruel.
6:38 I mean, disembowel means to cut open and remove the internal organs.
6:44 They did this to her and some of her remains were later found in a freezer while others were found scattered on a nearby property.
6:56 Now, Cassie Rainwater was reported missing in August of 2021 by a woman who said that she last saw her with Phelps.
7:07 Now this all happened in Missouri.
7:11 Cassidy Rainwater was again reported missing back in 2021.
7:17 Now, Phelps told investigators that Rainwater had been staying with him but that she had left for Colorado in the middle of the night, and he did not know where she was.
7:30 When he was questioned by the police, he agreed.
7:33 Yes, she was here.
7:34 She is my friend.
7:36 She was staying with me, but she left, didn't tell me where she was going.
7:41 She just mentioned Colorado.
7:44 The crazy thing is after all this happened; Phelps’ house burned on October 4th of 2021 in what was determined to be arson.
7:54 Now, Phelps was renting the home and they found when they did the investigation two explosive devices made with mortar tubes and balloon covers with trip wires attached.
8:09 Now on September 16th, the FBI provided Dallas County Sheriff's office again, this is in Missouri, not Texas with pics that they got from a cyber tip.
8:21 Other picks showed rainwater's body bound to a gantry crane device which is commonly used for processing wild game.
8:30 Now, thank goodness they listened because Phelps was arrested on that day.
8:38 A search of the property on Moon Valley Road found the gantry crane, blood and items from his freezer which had a date of July 24th written on them, which is when she was supposedly murdered.
8:59 DNA confirmed that the blood and the items in the freezer.
9:05 The tissue that was wrapped up was consistent with Rainwater's DNA.
9:11 Digital evidence proves that Phelps and Norton were planning to murder Rainwater on July 24th.
9:18 Now, Norton stated that Phelps asked him to go to the property while Rainwater was sleeping.
9:24 Yeah, he invited him over there just to help.
9:27 The two attacked her.
9:29 Norton held down her legs while Phelps strangled her by putting a bag on her head and they hung her body on the gantry crane.
9:42 And Norton helped Phelps dismember the body.
9:47 And again, we're talking dismember and disembowel, they remove the organs and cut her up.
9:54 Norton described how Phelps eviscerated and dismembered Rainwater's body before he helped place her in a bathtub.
10:04 Now, over 200 pieces of evidence were seized in Phelps’ home, and this includes skeletal remains and human flesh found inside, and child pornography and violent porn was also found in Norton's home when they searched his home.
10:24 A hearing was held for Phelps in November of 2021.
10:29 And Norton confessed that he and Phelps would search for potential victims online.
10:37 And at a nearby Walmart, another reason not to go to Walmart.
10:42 Y'all, my husband loves Walmart.
10:44 I am a Target girl.
10:47 I'm just saying I don't like going to Walmart.
10:49 There's another reason why I'm not going to Walmart.
10:53 They were searching for victims there again doing online searches, probably catfishing people probably pretending to be someone that they weren't trying to lure people to specific places so that they could kidnap them and hold them in a cage like they did Cassidy Rainwater.
11:14 Her mother and this is what's a weird story.
11:17 Her mother, Tracy Wu went missing in 2007 and her remains were found scattered in a field in Lebanon a year after she went missing.
11:29 It's not believed that these two cases have anything to do with one another.
11:34 But what a weird coincidence that her mother went missing when she was younger, and she had also been murdered and her remains had also been scattered in a field.
11:47 Cassidy was born on June 9th of 1988.
11:52 She lived in Lebanon, Missouri at that time, she attended Harrison Hill high school where she met a man named Ben and she had a son.
12:04 Cassidy took Ben to court in June for child support and he was ordered to pay $224 a month.
12:13 Boy who could live on that even back then, $224 a month is squat.
12:22 I mean, that's going to get you nothing that's not even going to buy half of the school lunches for a child that's going to school.
12:29 But again, it's not based on really anything other than his income.
12:35 Later, the baby was put up for adoption.
12:37 But Cassidy went on to have six Children in 07 when Cassidy's mom went missing, Cassidy was only 19.
12:49 So imagine what it would be like to be 19 years old.
12:53 Your mom kidnapped.
12:56 I don't really know where her dad was in the picture, but your mom kidnapped and then a year later a year not knowing where she is and then her remains being found in a field that is horrifying and that is a lot for somebody to have to go through at such a young age.
13:15 Tracy's boyfriend, the mom's boyfriend, Leonard called the police to report her missing whenever she went missing.
13:25 He was never held suspect.
13:27 I don't believe he was ever implicated.
13:31 It's pretty much a cold case.
13:32 They never found out who did it.
13:34 They didn't have any leads at the time.
13:36 And they still don't on May 8th of 2008 is when her remains were found again almost a year later.
13:44 But a man was spreading fertilizer in a field when he found her remains again.
13:51 Her disappearance is a mystery.
13:54 There was no cause of death released and no one was ever arrested.
13:59 And I know that to some people that's kind of hard to understand.
14:02 But the best way that I know to explain it is if she had, and I'm not saying that this is what happened at all.
14:11 But if she had wandered off and maybe been intoxicated or taken a drug, even for the first time, whatever, if she had wandered off into a field passed out, she could have just stopped breathing, who knows?
14:27 Her body could have been eaten by wild animals.
14:31 They could not when they did her autopsy or, I mean, you can't really do much of an autopsy when you just find scattered bones, but they do look at the bones to see there's any obvious damage to them that might indicate some sort of slicing or cutting wound or, you know, if they found parts of the skull, you know, was there a hole in it?
14:52 They can tell a lot just by looking at the bones.
14:55 And thank goodness for anthropologists because that's what we use them for.
14:59 They really couldn't determine if there was foul play involved.
15:03 I mean, of course, we assume it, but it's hard to prove at that point, you don't have tissue, you don't have skin, the injuries that maybe were once there are no longer visible and all you can tell is what you can see on the bones.
15:21 Although it may seem to the average person that this was obviously a homicide because her bones were scattered.
15:28 We do see people wander off; we do see them stop breathing.
15:33 And once that happens, if they're in a field like this, we do see animal activity.
15:39 And in that case, the bones do get scattered because they really couldn't prove that that did not happen.
15:46 Then the manner of death was undetermined again.
15:50 No one was ever arrested.
15:54 The boyfriend, Leonard was never implicated.
15:56 I don't think that anybody ever thought that he had done it.
16:00 He's the one that called the police to report her missing back to Cassidy though.
16:06 I mean, what a tragedy, but then she had been homeless frequently and I don't know that much about her family life, but you can imagine how hard it must have been to lose her mom at such a young age.
16:19 And then she had all these Children.
16:21 She put that first one up for adoption and then had all these Children.
16:24 And so she didn't have a place to stay.
16:27 I don't believe she was working.
16:30 She was the perfect victim for them.
16:34 Her mom was deceased.
16:36 She had friends, but everybody just thought she was staying with Phelps and didn't know the difference.
16:43 And then when he lied and said that she had taken off to Colorado, it probably took a while for everybody to figure out that she hadn't.
16:52 And then when these pictures showed up, that's when everything was uncovered, she had stayed with Phelps to try to get on her feet.
17:05 You know, he may have been nice and tried to be a nice guy to get her to come over there and stay with him.
17:10 But then he kept her in a cage, and I'm sure didn't feed her because otherwise, why would he cage her and then hold her feet and put a bag over her head, strangle her and then dismember her and disembowel her.
17:28 This guy deserved to go to prison for life.
17:31 Both of these guys deserve to go to prison for life.
17:35 These videos of her in the cage partially nude were on the dark web.
17:41 And so that's how the FBI received this tip.
17:45 I found this really interesting.
17:46 The FBI can use software that uses pixels and matches skin tones.
17:52 They contacted the Dallas County sheriff's office after finding this match and matching it to Cassidy's missing person’s report.
18:02 And of course Phelps when he was initially interviewed was, you know, quote unquote, acting weird.
18:09 And then the investigators walked to the back of the cabin and saw meat hooks in the bathroom through a window.
18:16 And that's when they asked a judge for a search warrant.
18:21 Now, when they kicked in Phelps’ door the following morning, they allegedly found him eating a sandwich with human remains and supposedly, supposedly, we don't know if this is true.
18:33 He laughed and told investigators that he had served human ribs to an unsuspecting neighbor.
18:39 Just a few days prior.
18:41 During the search of Phelps’ house, cops found vacuum sealed body parts with detailed labels in the freezer and there were seven photos of Cassidy in a cage on Phelps' phone.
18:55 Again, the police will look through your phone.
18:58 All criminals should be aware of that.
19:01 Apparently, there were a lot of other murders in that area over a period of years.
19:07 There's speculation that there were more bones, and more body parts found on Phelps property.
19:15 Just a super sad story, a sad story that she was tortured and killed again.
19:23 I feel like they focused on somebody that they knew didn't have any immediate family and that they thought would not be missed.
19:34 Apparently, you know, she had known them and been friendly with both of these men and probably trusted them.
19:42 Probably felt like Phelps was truly just giving her a place to stay and trying to help her and she was taken advantage of after that, I didn't know if y'all had heard about this story, but I hate to think that anybody treats anybody this way.
20:00 There were a lot of questions as to whether or not Phelps and Norton had anything to do with the disappearance of Angela Hammond.
20:08 This happened in Clinton, Missouri on April 4th of 1991 a woman by the name of Angela Hammond went missing and of course, this rattled the community as well.
20:20 Hammond had just graduated from Montrose high school, and she was popular and very well-known at the time of her disappearance.
20:29 She was also four months pregnant and engaged.
20:33 Now she disappeared in 91.
20:36 But in 2010, there was an episode of unsolved mysteries where they had shared new evidence, including a strange letter sent the day of the abduction.
20:48 Clinton is really a small quiet town.
20:52 It's a peaceful area and it was always kind of considered fairly safe.
20:58 But the feeling of safety was pretty much shattered when this popular young woman went missing.
21:04 She and her boyfriend, Rob Schafer got engaged after they found out she was pregnant, and he promised to always take care of her.
21:12 But on that day, April 4th, 1991, Hammond dropped Schafer off at his parents' house so that he could watch his little brother.
21:21 The two had plans to meet up again later that evening.
21:25 About an hour later, Hammond called Shafer from a pay phone about seven blocks away from his house.
21:32 And she mentioned to him that she saw a vehicle that made her suspicious, it didn't look right.
21:38 She talked to him on the phone, she talked to him about this truck.
21:42 She told him it was a green Ford pickup around 1970’s with a picture of a fish or a fish decal on the back window.
21:53 This man apparently had what she described as a filthy beard, and he used the phone next to Hammond and then went back to his truck and used a flashlight to look at something.
22:09 Schafer told Hammond to ask the man if he needed to call someone.
22:15 He thought maybe the other pay phone was broken.
22:19 Schaeffer heard the man reply.
22:21 No, after Angela asked him that and he continued to talk to Angela over the phone and then over the phone, he heard her screaming.
22:32 Could you imagine?
22:34 He dropped his phone and ran out of the house.
22:37 He drove to try to help her and passed his girlfriend in a green Ford truck as she was being driven away.
22:45 He said that she called his name from the truck.
22:49 Schafer's car broke down when he made a U turn to try to chase the truck.
22:53 So, he just watched the truck drive away with her in it.
22:58 She was taken from a pay phone at the corner of Second and Jefferson street and has not been seen or heard from since there have been some disappearances in the area and some other incidences that you know, the police may still be investigating.
23:15 It's really scary to think that things like this go on in people's homes that we may drive by and walk past every day and have no idea what goes on behind closed doors.
23:28 And that's really scary for me to think that people who have been missing for years were tortured and killed and we may never know what happened.
23:40 A lot of these people who committed these crimes have died.
23:44 And so finding out what happened is going to be next to impossible.
23:49 Again, the longer the case goes unsolved, the longer it will remain difficult to solve.
23:56 Super sad cases though and all around the same area all close to the same time and so very suspicious that these two guys might be involved in more than just one murder.
24:10 I am so exhausted.
24:14 I hope again that y'all have an amazing week.
24:17 I hope that the weather is being good to you, drink plenty of water, try to stay hydrated.
24:23 The nurse in me still has to take care of everybody.
24:26 I am excited that I have been getting so many emails from people who want to be on the podcast.
24:35 I have links that I will be sending to everyone so that they can schedule appointments so that we can get on stream yard and do the interviews.
24:45 Most likely the videos will air on my YouTube channel.
24:50 And again, be sure to go on and subscribe to my YouTube channel Brains, Body Bags and Bedside Manner.
24:58 We're going to get some fun giveaways.
24:59 I want to make it kind of fun.
25:01 I want to make it very informative and different, but we're going to have some giveaways that I really know that y'all will love the Patreon memberships.
25:10 I know I explained those and went through those last week, but those are definitely going to pay off, especially the membership where you get a gift every month.
25:21 You will love it.
25:23 Super exciting.
25:25 Be sure to shoot me an email again if you want to be on the podcast or if you would like me to cover a story Julie at PushingUpLilies.com.
25:37 Be sure and check out our website with murder Merch PushingUpLilies.com.
25:43 We are on Instagram, we are on TikTok, we are on Facebook and if you like those pages, it still does not subscribe you to the podcast.
25:57 To be a subscriber of the YouTube channel, you do have to go to YouTube and to subscribe to the podcast.
26:06 You do have to go to your favorite platform.
26:09 That would be Google, Spotify, Apple Pandora, iHeart, all the platforms that you can go to.
26:16 So you have to subscribe on those.
26:18 Again, have an amazing week.
26:20 Please take care of yourself.
26:22 Please be nice to everybody, and I look forward to talking to you next week.
26:26 Bye y'all.
26:28 Thank you so much for joining me today on Pushing Up Lilies.
26:31 If you like this podcast and would like to share with others, please do me a quick favor and leave a review on Apple podcast.
26:39 This helps to make the podcast more visible to the public.
26:42 Thanks again for spending your time with me and be sure to visit me at PushingUpLilies.com for merchandise and past episodes.