Hey y’all, it’s Julie Mattson, your host on Pushing Up Lilies. This week, I’m diving into a tough but important topic—suicides at work. As a death investigator, I’ve responded to countless cases where people take their own lives while on the job, and the impact on coworkers and families is heartbreaking. We’ll talk about the signs, the struggles, and the aftermath of these tragic losses. I’m also covering a chilling case out of Denton, Texas, where Jeffrey McBride is accused of shooting and killing Eddie Joe Gonzales, a 51-year-old homeless man, at a grocery store locals have eerily nicknamed the Murder Kroger. What led to this senseless act of violence, and why does this location have such a dark reputation? Join me as I unpack the details, the investigation, and the unsettling realities of violent crime in everyday places. * Listener discretion is advised.
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00:06
Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies. I'm your host, Julie Mattson. 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.
00:24
Do I have some stories for you? Are you ready? Hey, so I hope everyone is having a great week so far. Mine's been hectic, let me tell you. School is wearing me out. I am in a pediatric assessment class and I am having to do assessments on kids and I have to have one between the ages of 7 and 17 and those suckers are not easy to come by.
00:59
I've had to put messages on my Facebook asking to borrow people's children. I feel like it's, I mean, a huge inconvenience to them and especially right now a lot of kids are on spring break here and I'm like, hey, can I borrow your kid to do my homework?
01:15
I mean, number one, they have to drive them to me and then number two, it takes about an hour to do the actual assessment and it has to be recorded and it's just, I don't know. I understand the concept.
01:31
I'm just, as you can tell, I guess a little bit aggravated. I've had to redo this assessment today will be my third time and I'm kind of over it because yeah, I've had to borrow kids this whole semester and I just hate to put the parents out.
01:50
So I'm dealing with that. Yesterday was definitely Monday. Got to work and realized that my work truck keys were and my coworkers purse because my med spa, we were given tickets by one of my clients to the Meyerson Symphony Orchestra.
02:10
So me and the two girls at work for me drove to Dallas and we had reservations to eat at this amazing Mexican restaurant called Mexican Sugar, if you haven't tried it, highly recommend it. I had the crab enchiladas and they were delicious, but I love crab.
02:27
Anyway, we got to the restaurant and I had a little cross body and my big wad of keys, which most of them I don't even use. Do y'all have like a key ring that has a million keys on it? You don't even know what they go to, but you keep carrying it around.
02:43
That's what I'm doing. So they wouldn't fit in my purse and my nurse that works for me, Lexi, she had a bigger purse. I said, hey, can I put my keys in your purse? Well, guess what? Monday morning rolls around and my work keys are in Lexi's purse.
02:59
Anyway, long story short, I keep my work truck parked at our office because we have a million cars parked in front of our house already and it's just easier. And then I have to run personal errands after work.
03:11
I've already got my car up there so I don't have to worry about coming back home and switching vehicles. So it just makes it easier. Long story short, I get to work. I don't have my key to my truck. So I get a call literally 10 after 7.
03:29
It's a suicide or a possible suicide and I realize, great, I don't have my truck keys. So all my equipment is in my work truck. Luckily we have a spare one. Thank God for that. In the end, I go to get my camera and the battery's missing.
03:46
Well, I thought I left it on the charger in the office and it wasn't there. I have a camera with no battery. So I borrowed one from the office that was ready to go, put the battery in it, put the SD card in it, headed out the door.
04:02
And of course it's got a strap on it where mine doesn't have a strap. So I'm at the crime scene. I'm trying to take photos and the strap keeps falling into my pictures. And so I'm like, holy crap, I couldn't figure out how to get it off.
04:16
I just put the strap around my neck. So at this point the camera's hanging around my neck, right? Everything's fine and good until about 10 minutes later I'm walking around and I literally can't find my camera.
04:30
Y'all, I'm like telling everybody, y'all, where's my camera? And they're all looking at me like I'm stupid because I am. It's hanging from my neck. It again was Monday. I got my thermometer out of my bag to check the body surface temperature on the decedent and the bottom wasn't screwed on.
04:51
It's a tiny, tiny screw. I don't know how it came out, but the bottom wasn't screwed on. So I pull my thermometer out of my bag. bag, the bottom flies open and all four batteries just fall to the floor.
05:05
At this point, I'm just like, looking at everybody like, what the heck can I just start over because this Monday is not going well. I don't know, weird stuff like that happens to me all the time. But later in the day, I go out to get my car and I'm trying to get in the wrong white SUV.
05:25
Like it's not even my vehicle. I don't know, y'all, maybe it was just a blonde day for me. I don't know what was going on, but I just did not have it together. The day, I'd like to say it got better, really didn't get any better.
05:40
We ended up having four suicides yesterday, so it was an absolute crazy day. Luckily, one of my great coworkers was with me. So I was on my scene, which was a possible overdose. We don't know whether it was.
05:58
accidental or on purpose. And of course, that's one of the reasons we get involved as the medical examiner's office because we want to determine how much of the drugs are in someone's system and that helps the doctors determine if it was a purposeful overdose or if it was something that was just accidental.
06:16
Maybe taking too many different drugs at a time if someone's sick. So his is actually a possible homeless person who was found hanging in an electrical room behind a business by a shoestring. We don't even know how it held him up.
06:42
But anyway, he's on this. The guy's been there for a while. He's decomposed and so there's that. And then I'm leaving my scene and I get a text from my coworker asking if I need a case number for my next scene.
06:59
So I'm like, well, I don't even know I had a next scene. So then my boss texts me and says, hey, you've got another suicide in Carrollton. And so I was like, okay, so pull over on the side of the road, turn on my emergency flashers and call Carrollton PD.
07:17
And I get the information on this one is a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. So I'm working this scene. Everything's fine. I mean, I think for the most part, everything goes fine, except my camera battery dies.
07:37
So we have work issued phones. And so I took the photos with my work phone, which by the way, sometimes takes better pictures and can definitely get a more clear close up than my digital camera that I carry.
07:53
But then in those cases, I usually ask the officers or the crime scene text to say, send me their photos as well, just so that I have a good variety of pictures. So I'm helping carry the body down the stairs.
08:06
Everything's fine. I am like, Oh, I'm going to get lunch because it's like a little bit after new. And so I get my car, drive to Denton. Just about the time we sit down to eat, we get another call of another suicide of someone that jumped off of a bridge.
08:25
So literally, four suicides yesterday, before 1 p.m., we had an overdose, we had a gunshot wound to the head, we had a hanging, and then we had a jumper. And so later in the day, one of the sheriff's deputies came by and he said, Hey, someone got hit by a car out on the roadway recently, and they're being transported to the hospital.
08:51
So my first question is, well, did they jump in front of the car? Because that's the only thing we have not gotten today. is, you know, a pedestrian that's actually ran out into traffic on purpose. That's another kind of suicide.
09:03
So I'm like, you know, we've already been super busy today. Let's just top it off. So apparently that person survived. Not a problem. But yeah, it was an absolute crazy day and it was just it was a blonde day for me and it was a Monday.
09:21
And I was just over it. And then, you know, I got home and I found out that I had recorded a pediatric assessment for my class. And I have to rerecord it because I didn't show the parent in the room on camera.
09:38
I did very well on it, but now I have to repeat it. So I'm just aggravated that I have to ask a parent to bring their child to me for my assignment and inconvenience them when it's their spring break.
09:53
But hopefully they don't have anything to do because they're in town anyway and they're not traveling. But I am done with this week already and it's only Tuesday. I want to tell, it's kind of a weird story and it's a local story.
10:08
But you know how, I don't know if y'all have it in your area, but in our area, you know, we have Kroger, the grocery store, and I absolutely love Kroger. But we have a MILF Kroger where all the attractive people supposedly shop.
10:24
And then here we have a murder Kroger. I don't know if y'all have a murder Kroger. I know that there's other murder Kroger's in other cities and they're all murder Kroger's for different reasons. But ours right down the street from my house has actually been named murder Kroger and it's been that way for, I don't know, a long time.
10:46
And I started researching it and I'm like, okay, why do we call this murder Kroger? So I got to looking into it. And it's kind of an interesting story, because something recently came of it, and it was in addition to the story.
11:04
And so I thought that I would share it with y'all. Now this originally happened back in June of 2015. Apparently in the parking lot near Kroger, and this is in Denton, multiple gunshots rung out at about 3.49 a.m., and this is at the 800 block of West University here in Denton.
11:25
Now a man was found deceased in the parking lot. His name was Eddie Joe Gonzalez. He was a local homeless man, and he was 51 years old. And so apparently that was kind of his hangout. That was where he stayed most of the time.
11:43
The man was shot by Jeffrey McBride. Now Jeffrey was a 27-year-old lifelong Denton resident. He had deep roots in the city, lots of. relatives locally who owned very well-established businesses that had been here for years.
12:03
Now, the scuffle occurred and it was in that parking lot, you know, where Murder Kroger is, between Drug Emporium, which is like a drug store that used to be here that I miss greatly because I loved going in there.
12:18
They just hadn't ate things and good deals, and didn't athletics, which was, I mean, kind of like a academy or Dick's Sporting Goods that sold, like, workout shorts and all the things kids needed for sports at school.
12:34
It happened in the parking lot between those two stores and police later found Gonzalez with a gunshot wound to the back in the parking lot between those two stores. Multiple witnesses and surveillance footage revealed McBride as the driver of a red pickup that approached Gonzalez at about 3.30 a.m., so similar on June 6.
13:01
McBride claimed to have gone behind the building, so this happened kind of more behind the building, I guess, than in the parking lot, but he claimed to have gone behind the building to urinate, which is, you know, not abnormal, right?
13:15
I mean, guys do that. Y'all are lucky. Y'all can go anywhere. Girls have to try to find a bathroom, but y'all have that advantage, so he was going to go behind the building to urinate. At least he was trying to get out of sight where no one would see him, right, instead of just urinating in the middle of the parking lot, so you got to give him that, but he went behind the building.
13:36
He saw Gonzalez who, you know, quote-unquote stayed there and Gonzalez exchanged words with McBride before McBride got out of his truck, and so a witness says Gonzalez approached McBride and punched him three to four times in the face.
13:56
then McBride fell backwards. Now McBride had testified that he was pinned down in his truck and then he grabbed his gun and fired two shots into Gonzalez's direction. McBride testified that he thought Gonzalez was going to kill him.
14:15
So I mean it's hard to look into the story but yeah you pull behind the building to go to the bathroom. There's a homeless man there. You probably startled him. He is aggressive which they can be. A lot of them have mental issues and are not on medications.
14:33
Punched him in the face three to four times. McBride falls backwards into his truck when he grabbed the gun and fired them at Gonzalez. But again he did testify that he thought Gonzalez was going to kill him.
14:47
Now McBride fled the scene after the shooting. and then his brother drove him to Mobile, Alabama for whatever reason. I don't know what the ties are there, but he turned himself in when he got there.
14:59
Now, he was booked into the Denton County Jail later in the month, so I'm guessing there was a transfer of some sort that took place there, and then he was indicted on a murder charge in September of 2015.
15:14
Now, during the trial, prosecutors and defense attorneys focused on details of the fight, and they used a rubber mannequin to illustrate where Gonzalez punched McBride and the severity of the blows, which is a great idea, I mean, to have a mannequin just to be able to show that to the jury really helps.
15:35
Sometimes they need to visualize things. So, Gonzalez, again, he was a known homeless man in the city. Defense attorneys said he was violent and methed out, and this is McBride's attorneys, although Gonzalez's wife, Daisy, disputed that.
15:55
She said he was not, he was a very kind man, he was not violent, he was not on drugs, and so she spoke up on his behalf. Daisy said her husband had lived in the city for eight years and was not a criminal.
16:10
Now, in June 2017, a judge declared a mistrial, and the jury, comprised of eight men and four women, remained hung. It was seven to five after nearly five hours of deliberation. Now, with seven jurors voting not guilty, McBride's attorney believed that this was a self-defense case and that Jeffrey was attacked by a complete stranger, and so McBride was convicted of criminally negligent homicide.
16:46
Now, fast forward to April 25th, convicted of guilty, and McBride's attorney said that McBride was not guilty, and McBride was not guilty, McBride was convicted, McBride was convicted, McBride was convicted, McBride was convicted, and McBride was convicted, McBride was convicted, McBride was convicted, McBride was convicted, McBride was convicted, 22, so not that long ago.
16:53
McBride's wife of four days, Amber Rosellis, who was 30 years old, claimed that a man murdered Jeffrey, who was only 31 at the time, and then threw the gun into their truck. So this is the same Jeffrey that killed Gonzalez.
17:12
He's out of jail. He's a newlywed. He's dead. Now officers responded to a shooting in the 1100 block of East Sherman Drive, again that's here in Denton, at 958 p.m. on April 25th of 2022. The 911 caller told dispatchers that her husband, who was Jeffrey McBride, had been shot.
17:35
Another caller reported a pickup truck had crashed into the yard of a residence. Now when officers arrived to a crashed truck, It was occupied by an unconscious man in the driver's seat and a female in the passenger seat.
17:53
Menex took the man to the hospital, the man was Jeffrey McBride, where he died from a gunshot wound to the abdomen. Now, originally the passenger, Amber Rosales, told officers that she and Jeffrey stopped the vehicle on East Sherman Drive to speak with a male.
18:11
And the male shot at Jeffrey from the passenger side door and then tossed the gun into the truck before he ran away. Now after being shot, Jeffrey crashed the truck into a nearby yard. Now detectives executed search warrants, spoke to witnesses, family members, and also reviewed surveillance footage.
18:35
Rosales's statements were extremely inconsistent. Police believed that she was the only person there when McBride was shot. And they believed her to be the killer. So an arrest warrant was issued for murder and police arrested her at her singer home.
18:54
And she went to the jail in the city of Denton on $500,000 bond. Now, Amber Jean Marie Rosales and Jeffrey Michael McBride had been married on April 2nd. And so they'd only been married for four days when this happened.
19:15
Now Rosales had been arrested ten times since 2011. The majority of the cases were for public intoxication, driving while intoxicated. But there was also a case in 2011 for failure to appear in, I think, a 2016 case for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
19:36
And also criminal mischief between $100 and $750. Now Rosales was a former star of the M.T. TV reality series Big Tips, Texas. I don't know that show. I'll have to look into it. I do not know that show, but apparently she had been on it at one time.
19:57
She pled guilty to manslaughter. She entered the guilty plea on August 16th to avoid a murder charge. 32-year-old Rosales was facing five to 99 years or life in prison if convicted of the murder charge.
20:14
So as a result of the plea deal, she was sentenced to five years in state prison with 815 days credit for time served. So that's a little bit under 15 months credit she got for time served. Amber was also arrested back in July 2021 on charges of disorderly conduct and false report of sexual battery against a law enforcement officer.
20:42
So this girl y'all, what is up? So two officers had responded to a call for service and they transported an intoxicated Rosales back to her home. She later claimed that one of the officers raped her while she was in the front seat of the police vehicle.
21:00
Now come on, there are cameras and there's another officer. Anyway, another officer reviewed the body cameras and the car camera and found the claims to be false. And he stated that there was no physical contact observed between her and the deputies, so she was placed on two years probation.
21:20
So an affidavit for violation of probation was filed in Florida soon after Rosales was arrested for murder in Texas. Kind of interesting that that's the story of our little murder, Kroger. And it didn't really happen in front of Kroger.
21:38
Actually, it was about a block from Kroger, but I guess because it was in or near the same parking lot, that's kind of how it deemed its name. Yeah, so what's your Kroger called? Mine is Murder Kroger.
21:53
I don't know if I'm proud of that or not, but it is not too far from us. We go there frequently, it does not stop people from shopping there. And it should not stop people from shopping there, but it's kind of funny because there's always people making comments on Facebook about murder Kroger.
22:13
And I always laugh because it's like, what are they talking about? I actually worked here in 2015 when this happened, but I don't remember it. And probably because it wasn't in front of Kroger. It was behind drug emporium by the dumpster.
22:30
And when I think back, I do remember a dumpster incident, which when you do this for so many years, there are certain cases that stick out in your mind and certain cases that are just like any other.
22:42
And so you don't really pay them any. attention, but yeah. So yesterday's a day for the book. I will not forget that. I don't know what happened. Our chief investigator Jennifer said that she thought it was because people didn't like the time change, which completely makes sense to me because I actually like it a little bit better, but it still kind of throws everybody's rhythms off.
23:06
So I'm hoping that they were not busy last night. I'll find out when I get to the office this morning, but I'm crossing my fingers because that means I'll have a pretty busy day. All I've had this morning so far is one hospice.
23:20
So I can handle that. I'm hoping that that is all that goes down because I really don't need any more excitement. I'm over the excitement. Yesterday was more excitement than I wanted. There was someone who saw the man jump off the bridge and say that he did turn around and try to grab a hold of the lip of the railroad tracks.
23:45
before he jumped so I guess maybe he changed his mind but at that point it was too late. If he had just fallen they said the first time because of the distance he might have actually just fractured his legs or something and been okay but the way he fell when he tried to turn around and grabbed it and to me that's frightening.
24:06
I had a guy fall and I don't know if I told y'all this story or not but they were building a high rise in where was it Pasadena when I worked in Houston and this poor kid 23 years old just got married had a brand new baby he swept himself right out of a window that was covered with duct tape so of course OSHA got involved after that but he swept himself out the window and fell 29 stories and hit a few things on the way down and he also did try to grab the ledge because you could see the fingerprint so that's always frightening to me when I go to scenes and I see something like that but a witness actually reported that he saw this guy try to change his mind.
24:49
Sorry I had to vent and share my day how it went yesterday with y'all. I also wanted to just kind of give a little input on murder Kroger and why it's called murder Kroger. I am headed to work this morning and I hope y'all have an amazing day.
25:06
Thank you again for the emails for people that are interested in the subscription box. I looked it up online and they are actually in transit so I should be getting them soon and then we'll be getting the website ready so that y'all can place your orders so that's kind of exciting but I look forward to talking till next week have an amazing week and behave.
25:27
Bye y'all. Thank you so much for joining me today on Pushing Up Lilies. 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. This helps to make the podcast more visible to the public.
25:44
Thanks again for spending your time with me and be sure to visit me at PushingUpLilies.com for merchandise and past episodes.