This week on Pushing Up Lilies, we’re diving into a shocking and deeply disturbing crime case out of Kentucky. Torilena Fields, indicted for the capital murder of her own mother, and if that wasn't horrific enough, she's also charged with abuse of her corpse. This story has so many twists that leave you questioning how family ties can unravel so tragically. How could someone go from being a daughter to the accused in such a heinous act? We’ll go through the timeline, the evidence, and what could have led to this gruesome turn of events. Grab a seat, y'all — it's going to be a heavy one. * 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, it's another great week here at Pushing Up Lilies.
0:35 I'm so happy that you joined me today.
0:38 I hope that everyone is doing well.
0:41 I know we're all trying to recover from some really bad weather, but I have to say here it hasn't been bad at all.
0:48 It's been super mild, not rainy a little bit cool in the mornings and at night it's been kind of perfect, but I know that not everyone's been that lucky.
0:59 I am praying for everyone who is struggling with the fires in California and the hurricanes and flooding in Georgia, North Carolina and Florida.
1:12 I can only imagine my stomach was just in a knot last week.
1:16 I just hate to see so many people suffering and I don't know, I just became obsessed with the hurricane, and I started watching it and I got to work, and I was like, y'all, let's put it on the TV.
1:29 I want to see what's going on and I don't really think I even know anybody who lives there.
1:36 But it doesn't matter.
1:37 I hate to see people struggle at all or suffer whether I know them or not.
1:43 It's horrifying to get on Facebook and watch all the reels that people recorded of their homes flooding and trying to save everything.
1:54 That would just be a nightmare to me.
1:56 My prayers go out to all of you.
1:59 Definitely.
2:0 1This week I wanted to talk about a couple of things.
2:03 Last week was super busy at our office and we kind of again see everything.
2:12 I had a gentleman fall out of a tree.
2:15 It's really hard when you see people who are experienced at what they do die at work from a work-related accident like that.
2:26 This guy had a lot of experience, things can happen.
2:30 And you know, sometimes in a case like this, it's a family that works together.
2:36 Unfortunately, there was a family member there that witnessed it all which makes it even more horrifying, even when all the safety measures are taken, things like that can happen.
2:50 I know back when I worked in Houston, I had a young guy 23 y'all.
2:55 First day at work, there was a 29-story high rise in Pasadena, and he swept himself out the window of the 29th floor.
3:07 He was sweeping with one of those push brooms and literally walking backwards and walked out the window and fell 29 stories.
3:17 It was horrifying.
3:18 He'd just gotten married.
3:19 He had a new baby, and it was his first day on the job.
3:23 We see a lot of on-the-job injuries.
3:26 I've seen someone drive a forklift into a giant hole which caused the forklift to flip over on top of him.
3:36 Lots of work-related injuries.
3:38 And I know when my dad was younger, he was run over by a forklift.
3:43 He worked at the General Motors plant in Arlington back when it was open, and he was run over by a forklift and just suffered from back injuries and back pain.
3:54 His entire life had several back surgeries.
3:58 And I can remember once he was in the hospital in Dallas and I went to see him and his roommate was Evel Knievel.
4:05 It was right after Evel Knievel had done some motorcycle stunt and had an accident.
4:11 And back then all the rooms were semiprivate.
4:14 You always shared with somebody which I don't think any of them are that way anymore.
4:20 Come to think of it.
4:21 I haven't seen any but maybe they are in some places.
4:24 But anyway, he shared a room with Evel Knievel.
4:26 And it was so funny because my dad's like, do you know who this is?
4:29 And I was like, no, I mean, I was like eight but poor guy, I'm sure he didn't expect me to know who he was.
4:37 But anyway, lots of on-the-job injuries and something else that I've noticed that I just kind of want to remind everybody and just struggles that we deal with is how the story changes.
4:52 Sometimes when it gets to our investigators, we might get a report from a nurse at a hospital and by the time it goes from family to EMS to the doctor to the nurse.
5:06 To me, it changes a little bit.
5:10 I feel like it's important just to remind everybody to stick to the facts because I know last week it was reported to me that someone was in an argument, and it turns out that that really wasn't what happened.
5:23 And when that gets back to family, they get very upset because then they start to feel like everyone's blaming them if that makes sense at all.
5:31 But I think it's very important just to report the facts.
5:35 And again, when we interview family, that's the reason is because we want to know what exactly happened.
5:43 We know that the story changes.
5:46 We know that things get misconstrued and turned around and sometimes dramatized and escalated a little bit.
5:55 We want to know the facts.
5:58 The facts are very important to us.
6:00 Again, I just noticed that occasionally people will seem to fabricate part of the story to make it something that it wasn't even when they know that it's not a fact, I hope that makes sense.
6:14 But I think y'all get the gist of it.
6:17 Also, we get to ask questions, which is part of my job that I love, I love being inquisitive.
6:24 That's the investigator in me.
6:26 But also, we don't just do that to be nosy.
6:30 We do that because we need the information.
6:33 We need the information for our report, and it can be very important information when that is withheld from us.
6:43 It is a big deal.
6:45 It's important that law enforcement share information, for example, about someone being under investigation for something when they just committed suicide that needs to be put in my report because if there's anything going on in that person's life that would cause them to not want to be here anymore.
7:08 It could have something to do with pending investigation and pending their arrest.
7:16 I mean, it's just, it's a big deal.
7:18 I feel like last week it was like pulling teeth to try to get information out of one of our police departments.
7:24 We had someone commit suicide and then the girlfriend told me that he was under investigation for something and was going to be arrested.
7:33 And I'm like, oh, that's funny, no one mentioned it to me.
7:36 When I mentioned it to the police, they were like, oh yeah, he might have gotten arrested for something.
7:42 And I was like, what?
7:44 And they're like, well, just something.
7:45 It's not a big deal and I was like, no, it is because whatever is going on in their life that is stressful, could have contributed to their decision to commit suicide that needs to be put in my report.
8:00 And I know that for some reason they feel like they don't have to share it with me, and they feel like I'm just being a nosy little blonde and want to know, but that's not the case.
8:14 I am an investigator, and I need the information.
8:18 I'm like, spill the tea.
8:20 I mean, I need to know I'm not just there to be nosy.
8:23 I'm not just a bystander asking stupid questions.
8:27 It's just important to share all that stuff to work as a team.
8:31 And I think sometimes people just need to be reminded that we need to be privy to all of that information.
8:39 We can get it.
8:40 It just makes it a lot easier if you just tell us instead of us having to dig deeper and deeper.
8:46 Many times family doesn't have that information.
8:48 If someone's under investigation, they may not know it.
8:52 Anything that causes a stressor in someone's life that could cause them to commit suicide is important.
8:58 It's a very important part of our investigation.
9:02 Just a little FYI, I had to get on my soapbox a little bit this morning because it's so aggravating when you can't get the information that you need from the people that should supply it to you again.
9:15 That is one part of my job that I love.
9:17 I get to be nosy and ask a lot of questions.
9:21 But then again, it's not always fun.
9:23 I mean, when you ask the family, it's sometimes going to be questions that upset them, you may be telling them things that they don't necessarily want to know or want to hear.
9:34 It's a challenging part of the job.
9:37 But our fellow law enforcement officers need to be cooper and give us the information that we ask for.
9:44 That is another struggle that we deal with.
9:48 I know I'll share it with y'all.
9:49 Some of the struggles that we deal with on the daily and it's not bad.
9:54 Most officers are very forthcoming.
9:56 It's just at that point when we're asking questions and doing an investigation, nothing is really a secret.
10:04 Like it's just, hey, dude, I need to know, spill the tea anyway, back to work this morning ahead of the little three-day weekend.
10:16 I'll have a short week here at the medical examiner's office and I'm hoping that the county is good to us today.
10:24 It's kind of funny because we get to work, and we start talking about what's for lunch at like eight in the morning.
10:30 I always find that funny.
10:31 It's like my coworker, Bob, I'm like, Bob, what's for lunch?
10:34 And it cracks him up anyway, I want to talk to y'all about a case out of Kentucky today and you may have heard about it.
10:45 This happened on October 9th of 2023. Torilena Fields, she was 32.
10:52 She was arrested for allegedly dismembering her mother's body and then she wouldn't leave her home when the police came, which we see sometimes.
11:02 They had to send a special response team and use tear gas to get her out of the house.
11:08 And again, this was in Mount Olivet Kentucky.
11:12 Police found her mother's dismembered body cooking in a pot in the kitchen.
11:17 Kentucky State Police said that a man called them after he discovered a very gruesome scene.
11:24 The man said he and another person were hired by the homeowner Trudy fields to do work on a building that was on the property.
11:33 They came to do the work, and no one answered the door.
11:37 He started looking around and he found a pile of hair and a blood-stained mattress on the back porch.
11:46 This is alarming, especially for someone who just comes in to do a little construction on your home.
11:52 He also saw drag marks leading to the back of the house and then he found what he believed to be.
11:59 Trudy's dismembered body.
12:02 Police arrived and noted her arms, legs and head had been removed.
12:09 There was a blood-stained mattress folded in half next to the body that contained severed body parts and organs.
12:18 The man that was coming to do construction said that he hadn't heard from Trudy since the following Tuesday night and at that time, she had taken him out there, showed him what she needed done, walked him to the gate and appeared to have locked the gate.
12:36 The man said at that time, Trudy's daughter, Torilenawas casting spells on them.
12:43 And so she was very confrontational, just acting very strange and weird.
12:51 A search warrant found Torilena alone inside the home.
12:56 Again, multiple canisters of tear gas were used before police were able to get in and arrest her.
13:03 And I don't know if y'all ever been exposed to tear gas.
13:05 But let me tell you this.
13:07 I was at Mardi Gras in Galveston, Texas one year and curfew hit when they clear the streets there.
13:15 They are serious about it.
13:18 They set off tear gas and it is terrible.
13:21 Y'all our eyes started watering; we started itching that will definitely chase you out of your home.
13:28 When they saw Torilena she was covered in blood, there was blood on her clothing, her face, her hands, there was a warm pan with cooked human body parts found inside the oven.
13:41 Now I chose this episode because I know y'all love to hear the severed body part story.
13:47 Some of you, most of you but Torilena has been charged with obstructing operations, tampering with physical evidence and abuse of a corpse and was being held in the Bourbon County Detention Center.
14:02 Trudy had been stabbed multiple times, shot in the head and dismembered but a dog in the residence had also been tortured and killed and I know that many of you like animals better than people.
14:18 And so that was disturbing as well.
14:22 Family said that Torilena Fields moved to California a few years ago and she acted in some low-end movies, but apparently, she had been in a bad motorcycle accident just months before this happened and had sustained a head injury.
14:40 Now, family believes that the injury is somehow linked to her behavior, which we've seen this before, with like football players and people that are in sports who suffer multiple blows to the head.
14:55 Most of the family was even unaware that she had come back to Kentucky from California.
15:02 Now she's got a court date set for October 23rd at 830 in the morning because she was indicted on murder charges.
15:10 Her bond was set at 1.5 million and she will be assigned a public defender.
15:18Torilena graduated from Bracken County High School in 2011 and ran track and field and was voted the biggest flirt.
15:26 She had aspired to be a famous singer.
15:30 And in 2015, she enrolled at the University of Kentucky, but she never actually finished her degree.
15:37 She was described as energetic, funny and outgoing when she moved to California to be a model, an actress and a singer.
15:48 She began going by the name Naomi Navarre.
15:52 After the accident, she was reportedly found wandering around California.
15:58 After she wrecked her motorcycle, she's wandering around, injured, obviously didn't know her name, didn't know where she lived.
16:07 Just nothing.
16:09 No one knew she was back from California.
16:12 But they assumed Trudy, her 68-year-old mother was trying to help her family said when they saw the mug shot, that is not the same Torilena that they knew.
16:26 They said that she looked completely different, completely disheveled.
16:30 The family is speechless and shocked about the entire situation.
16:36 The arrest citation did note that she was under the influence of drugs at the time.
16:41 I mean, can you imagine just like coming across this gruesome scene, they were dispatched around 1226 on Wednesday to the 3500 block of Brierly Ridge Road.
16:56 When the two construction workers found this scene.
17:01 I'm sure they did not expect to stumble across a crime scene when they got there.
17:05 I mean, they had just seen Trudy the previous day.
17:08 Now the police saw the body and then a pile of hair and two mattresses and a stick on the porch.
17:16 But all of them were covered in blood and the arms, legs and head had reportedly been removed from the body and the torso was severed.
17:28 She literally removed organs and put them in this mattress that was folded up the pot in there though, that would have been horrifying to find a severed head, hands, feet and arms in a charred pot inside the oven.
17:48 She must have absolutely lost her mind and just the idea that she intentionally tortured and killed her mom, and this poor dog is just, it outrages me and I'm sure the family is completely outraged.
18:03 Now, they do believe again that this motorcycle accident could have caused some sort of brain injury that triggered this behavior.
18:14 And so I'm sure Trudy as a mom, especially if she was going through some mental issues, it sounds like was more than willing to help her.
18:23 She had been back in Kentucky for a couple of months since the motorcycle accident.
18:28 Mom was just trying to take care of her.
18:31 The family is attending her court appearances just trying to find answers as to why she did this.
18:39 I mean, she had done some acting when she was in California and looking back at her photos, I mean, she does look like a completely different person than she did in her mug shot, which I mean, obviously wasn't her best day, but her mug shot is terrible, and you can tell that she's on some sort of drugs.
19:01 It's just kind of disturbing to look at that picture and then look back at her photos from when she was acting.
19:07 The motorcycle accident probably did contribute, especially if it was out of character for her, which is kind of what the family is saying.
19:16 Apparently the damage to the brain, particularly the frontal lobes control aggression and impulsiveness.
19:26 That's the reason why it is very likely that this damage could have caused her to commit this crime.
19:34 Very similar to that of Robert Card.
19:37 And he was the army reservist who killed 18 people in a shooting in Maine in 2023 he had signs of traumatic brain injury and that was consistent with exposure to weapon blasts.
19:50 And so they analyzed his brain after his death and it's so great that they can do that because it would just be interesting.
19:58 I would love to sit in on one of those exams to see what it looks like.
20:04 Card who was 40.
20:05 He's the one that opened fire at the bowling alley in Lewiston and was later found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
20:13 But you know, his family said that he had kind of grown erratic and paranoid and they feel like even in that case, that his brain injury played a role, it can make someone's behavior change drastically.
20:28 I don't know if Torilena, I mean, I'm going to assume she was hospitalized.
20:33 I don't know, someone found her wandering around, didn't know who she was and I'm sure there was some blood on her because motorcycle accidents aren't always the cleanest.
20:43 I'm sure that she was admitted to a hospital somewhere, but they do postmortem studies of the brain, and they can find that kind of thing.
20:52 And in his case, there was according to his autopsy report, significant degeneration, axonal and myelin loss inflammation and small blood vessel injury.
21:04 You know, his damage was consistent with previous studies where someone had been exposed to blasts like in the military because he was in the Army Reserve, he was an instructor at a hand grenade training range.
21:17 He was exposed to a lot of low-level blasts, and they feel like that that could have caused some form of brain injury and the parts of the brain that are affected by blasts like that usually regulate again, the emotions, the impulses and the behaviors and people really are unable to control their actions.
21:39 They become aggressive, violent and very compulsive.
21:44 This was definitely an aggressive act that Torilena took out on her mom.
21:50 And so there is a very good chance that that traumatic brain injury caused that that's kind of scary.
21:58 I mean, if you know anybody who has had an injury like that, I don't know, that would scare me to think that they could be compulsive and get aggressive like that.
22:09 And I don't know if it becomes constant after the injury or if it's just like gradually over time or if they just have mood swings or what.
22:18 But it's scary to think about, you know, the wrestler that had the brain injury that killed his family.
22:27 It's scary to think that an injury like that can change who you are and cause you to commit murder and it didn't happen that long ago.
22:39 This was just back in October of last year and I had never even heard about this case.
22:43 Actually, my husband brought it to my attention.
22:46 He's really good.
22:47 He calls himself my content manager because he loves to find content for me.
22:54 Anyway, it's funny and he knows that y'all love stories about dismembered bodies.
23:00 I feel like he looks for those.
23:01 Sometimes he's my little helper.
23:05 But anyway, you know, this week, hopefully it's a good one for everybody.
23:10 Hopefully everyone's recovering from these storms and things can somewhat get back to normal.
23:18 I know that I was nervous because I had heard there was another hurricane behind Milton.
23:23 I don't know where it went or if it dissipated or what happened.
23:26 But thank God it did not hit the same area.
23:29 I always feel so bad when people are trying to get out, trying to get away and gas stations run out of gas, and you can't get gas to them.
23:37 And I remember we lived in Houston, and I worked for the medical examiner's office in Harris County.
23:44 When hurricane Ike hit, literally, we were boarded up in the office and we were considered essential personnel.
23:52 We can go anywhere.
23:54 And my daughter was very young, and I was trying to get her shipped off to Dallas to her dad's house.
23:59 The flight stopped running and I definitely couldn't drive her, and I wasn't allowed to leave.
24:04 And so she basically got stuck with me in the morgue.
24:07 Talk about a traumatizing childhood.
24:10 My poor kids are exposed to way more than most.
24:13 But I have a lot of friends who grew up because their dads were morticians, and they practically grew up and were raised inside a funeral home.
24:22 I guess we were all exposed to something in our childhood that could affect the way we turned out again.
24:29 I am so thankful for all the current subscribers, and I love that.
24:34 I have the opportunity almost daily to tell people about the podcast and get new subscribers on the 26th of October pushing up lilies will be competing in the day of the Dead Coffin races at Denton's Day of the Dead Festival.
24:50 And it's a very popular event that happens here every year.
24:54 Last year, it poured down rain the day of the event, so I didn't go.
24:58 But this year I will be racing a coffin on the day of the dead races, and I believe those will be recorded and you can view them on their website.
25:08 Wish me luck.
25:09 I'm going this coming weekend to try out my car and do a couple of trial runs.
25:14 I think I better get a helmet.
25:16 You can't have anything to propel your vehicle.
25:19 You can't have pedals or anything like that.
25:22 It's strictly like a downhill race, but your car can have brakes.
25:26 Thank God, and steering.
25:28 It basically ends in a hay bale at the bottom of an inclined heel.
25:35 We'll see how that turns out.
25:36 My husband is going to be my pusher.
25:39 There's a push bar on the back of the car.
25:41 The car can't be more than 12 ft long, including the push bar.
25:44 And if he disqualifies me by stepping over that starting line, y'all, I'm going to be angry.
25:52 I have told him he better not disqualify me, but that takes place on the 26th.
25:57 I think the race starts at noon.
25:59 We'll be out there, and Pushing Up Lilies also has a booth where we'll be selling crime scene stickers and lanyards, chalk and really cute serial killer doormats and all kinds of cool stuff that people just love again.
26:15 Denton's Day of the Dead Festival.
26:18 Saturday, October 26th going to be all kinds of fun.
26:22 And if you don't live in the area, like I said, they will have cameras, and I think the videos will be available online after the races.
26:30 I think they're going to have live videos too, but I'm not sure if they'll be accessible on the internet or not, but for sure afterwards.
26:38 Wish me luck.
26:39 We'll be competing in that.
26:41 Don't forget to get online and subscribe to my YouTube channel brains, body bags and bedside manner.
26:47 I'm really excited about getting that up and running.
26:50 Hopefully, life will slow down here.
26:52 I am still on I think week eight of my advanced pharmacology class, which is not as hard.
27:00 Thank God as advanced pathophysiology.
27:03 I'm surviving.
27:04 Have a B in the class I normally am not happy unless I have an a but at this point, these classes are difficult.
27:11 I just want to pass, but I'm sticking in there.
27:14 Next class starts October 4th.
27:16 And it's weird to think.
27:18 It's like a two-year program.
27:20 I told my husband yesterday and my daughter, I was like, I'm already six months in.
27:24 It's just strange to think these two classes, advanced pharmacology and advanced pathophysiology are the two longest classes besides the clinical.
27:33 They're each 11 weeks long.
27:36 Yeah, good times.
27:38 Anyway, I hope y'all have an amazing week and that everyone stays safe and that the weather is your friend.
27:47 I will talk to y'all soon and I'll see you next week.
27:50 Thanks.
27:50 Bye.
27:52 Thank you so much for joining me today on Pushing Up Lilies.
27:55 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.
28:03 This helps to make the podcast more visible to the public.
28:06 Thanks again for spending your time with me and be sure to visit me at PushingUpLilies.com for merchandise and past episodes.