Novela 12: The Sordid Tale of Michelle Lynne Kosilek w/ Rainbow Crimes

0:01 Dark Cast Network. Out of the shadows come the best of any podcasts. I'm sorry, and you're listening to Beyond the Rainbow True Crimes of the LGBTQ. Are you tired of hearing about the Ted Bundies and Jeffrey Amazon true crime podcasts? I thought so, who got something just for you. I'm Pat and I'm Darcy, and we are the hosts of Pod of Terror, a true crime podcast that dives into lesser known cases from around the world. Grab a glass of wine and join us every Thursday as we discuss the most vile, despicable human beings on the planet. It'll be a dark and twisted journey, so don't forget your drink. You're gonna need it. We're looking forward to say in your next Thursday.

0:48 Murder spoken of curse. Wertzer used a lot proceed with caution there. That was my first haiku since high school and my disclaimer. Hey they're Rainbow Warriors. Welcome to Beyond the Clouds. Ah, I'm just kidding. I wanted to see if you're actually paying attention, it's me, your glitter loving host, Trixie Mattel. Okay, not really, but I would love to see her in person, since she's one of my favorite drag queens, and that's what we should do. When we're in Denver for the True Crime Paranormal Festival July twelfth through the fourteenth, we should go see a drag show together. That would be so much fun. If you haven't got your tickets for the festival yet, they're still on sell and you can type in CJ at check out. That'll get you fifteen percent off your ticket price. There'll be a ton of great pod hosts and victim advocacy groups partaking.

1:46 Julie Murray and Sarah Turney will be there and they'll be presenters talking about their missing sisters, as well as Arlene Harbison, who lost her uncle Leon Laureles. I covered Leon's case in season thirteen Bits five. If you need a refresher, please consider joining my Patreon for ad free early release episodes in an extra episode at the end of every month. Oh yeah, and I'll appoint a unicorn just for you to ride when we take our unicorns and listen to an extra episode that's not been covered here on the regular show. I believe there's at least twenty two extra episodes, so if you join now you'll have access to future ones as well as the past ones.

2:31 I'll leave links for Patreon and for the True Crime Paranormal Festival in my show notes. Whether you love or hate the sound of your voice, I'm still collecting sound bites from listeners to say Startcast Network the best in indie podcast. I'm and then your name, and you're listening to be on the Rainbow True Crimes of the LGBTQ. I want to play them at the start of each episode, and I'd love to get a few more in for sure, and I'll be sure to put the SoundBite script and my email address as to where to send it in my show notes. Oh yeah, and you don't have to have fancy equipment to record it either. A voice recording from your phone should work just fine. And I have some news to share with everyone. There will not be a new episode out next week, and I know I sounded happy about that, but I'm not. At least I'm pretty sure there won't be a new episode, and you can DM me whether or not you'd like me to put an episode from another dark Cast show on, and if not, that's okay too. The reason there won't be an episode is because in the next few days, I'm going to be doing a little bit of traveling and this is courtesy of the Oxygen Network. I was asked by producers for a new true crime show to come and talk about the victim of one of my previous cases.

3:52 The case would be that of gay hairdresser Chris Voe. He was one of the victims in my Murder as a Hairy Business episode. The true crime show is called a Plan to Kill And when I get more details of when it's going to air, I'll let you know. But in the meantime, they're flying me to Orlando for a day and then back, so it's going to be a whirlwind trip. But I'm pretty nervous and excited about it. And that's the reason for my week off. Our Missing but Not Forgotten LGBTQ plus person this episode is an openly gay man named Sean Michael Spalding. Sean was thirty nine years old when he disappeared from his home March fifteenth, twenty twenty two. This was in Arlington County, Virginia. His roommate is the one who reported a missing to police. However, Sean was spotted by someone he knew with the Homewood Sweets Hotel in Washington, d C. This is only about seven miles from his home, and it was on March seventeenth, two days after his roommate reported a missing but Sewn has not been seen again after that sighting. Shawn's family knows that he would often use Grinder to meet dates, and they're worried he might have hooked up with the wrong guy, but it doesn't appear Sean vanished on his own accord. His phone and bank accounts have not been touched since March seventeen, twenty twenty two. Shawn also might

5:23 go by the names of Conrad or Michael. He takes medication and he didn't have it with him, but he needs it for his mental well being. Shawn is described as being five seven, one hundred and forty five to one hundred and fifty pounds. He has brown hair and brown eyes. I'll post a photo of him on my website. There is a monetary reward for information in this case, so if you have any please call the Arlington County Police tip line at area codes seven oh three, two two eight four one eight zero, or the d C Police tip line at area code two O two seven, two seven, nine zero nine nine the main case. This episode kind of disappoints me on several levels, but mostly because there wasn't a whole lot of information on the victim in the case. Nearly all the information is about the killer. But it happened sometimes, and I still feel it's a case worth telling because it's been a pretty controversial case in the state of Massachusetts. Robert Koslik was born in Chicago, Illinois, in nineteen forty nine. He and his older sister pretty much had crappy childhoods. Their father was incarcerated for mail fraud, and they had an alcoholic mother who abandoned them defend for themselves. In nineteen fifty two, their mother ended up giving both kids up to a

6:55 Catholic orphanage for a while. By the age of three, upon entering the orphanage, Robert knew he was different. He felt different, he felt like a girl, but he was in the wrong body for me. I really have no recollection of being three years old. I think my earliest memories are from kindergarten in the first day of school. Have you warriors ever thought about your earliest memories? That's damn cool if you can remember things from when you were a toddler. I'd say. Later in life, he learned that what he had was gender dysphoria. Robert also remembers being punished by the clergy at the orphanage every time he was caught dressing and clothes that were deemed for girls only. Basically, he was cross dressing. And this was back in the nineteen fifties. By the age of ten, Robert and his sister's mother refused to take them back into her life, but she did bill him out of the orphanage and she had him go live with her father, eternal grandfather, who reportedly would rape Robert. This is also when Robert discovered alcohol. The drinking numbed his pain. In puberty, Robert had a condition called gynocomastia, which is the technical term for what I've always just called man boobs. It's when a boy gets too much estrogen from their mother and his breast are enlarged. A few years later, Robert

8:27 went back to live with his mother and his new stepfather. Robert's ginochomastia was flaring up and he showed his mother his enlarged breasts. His new stepfather became extremely angry when Robert showed his mother his breasts, so he broke a window. He then picked up a shard of glass and he stabbed Robert with it while his mother was swinging a frying pan at Robert. And not long after that incident, Robert would run away from his family. He took to the streets and he dropped out of high school. He began burglarizing homes and shoplifting as a means of survival. He also turned to selling his underage body for sex.

9:10 It was during this time Robert got hooked on heroin. As Robert became an adult, he worked as a dishwasher, a truck driver, a garbage collector, a construction worker. He restored furniture. He was a warehouse manager, a packer at a condiment factory, and a school bus driver. Finally, he enrolled in the United States Army, serving as a private until he was discharged for being caught wearing women's clothing. It was around this time Robert saw a picture of Christine Jorgensen. She's the first documented American to successfully undergo gender affirming surgery. At the age of eighteen, Robert went to see a doctor about hormone therapy. The doctor said he would gladly see what he could do for Robert, but in return, Robert would need to engage in sex with him, which Robert did for about a year or two.

10:07 At the end of the nineteen sixties, Robert said, well, he was taking estrogen. It was the first time in his life he felt normal, But then he stopped. He started again in nineteen seventy two after being incarcerated briefly for a drug and burglary charge. While he was in jail, Robert claimed to be gang raped when he got out of jail, is when he started the hormone therapy again. Robert was never consistent with his hormone therapy treatments for one reason or another. Another time he started and then stopped because he claimed he was assaulted at a gay bar by two gay men, and it was because these two gay men didn't think he should transition. If you haven't already noticed, there's a definite pattern with this guy. First, he's always a victim. Nothing is his fault. Second, he makes a lot of excuses, and again he blames others while he's doing so. Third, it seems everyone wants em for sex. These are three traits that make me go hum, which is a single one, but three that's definitely a cause to pause for me. By nineteen eighty three, Robert's drug and alcohol abuse were so prevalent he admitted himself into a drug rehab facility, and this is where he met a volunteer counselor named Cheryl mc call. He was introduced to Cheryl by his therapist. Cheryl, a divorced mother

11:41 of two, told Robert this she thought all he needed was a good woman to feel like a man, and then she seduced them again. This is all coming from Robert, the guy everyone wants to have sex with. What Robert is saying sounds extremely good'ringy, and it's very much like what many lesbians have heard throughout their lives. You just need to ride a good, hard dick and you wouldn't be a lesbian. It's crazy to me how this guy finds someone else he states wants them for sex, and I kind of don't think that's the way it went with their relationship. But oddly enough, he and Cheryl married the following year in nineteen eighty four, and lo and behold, it did not cure Robert's gender dysphoria. Their marriage lasted for six years. The couple even had a child together, but Robert still felt like a woman. And then, one day in early May of nineteen ninety, thirty six year old Cheryl had just come home to their condo in Mansfield, Massachusetts.

12:51 Apparently Robert was not expecting her at all because he was wearing her clothing, and she was beyond piss for him doing so. According to Robert, Cheryl lost her temper and she threw some scalding hot tea at Robert's face. He reacted by pushing Cheryl down. While Cheryl struggled to stand up, She was able to grab a butcher's knife off the counter, and she chased Robert into another room, threatening him. Robert picked up a piece of wire that was sitting on a table as he ran to another room. After that, Robert claims he doesn't remember anything, only waking up in a psychiatric hospital days later. He says he probably blocked out because of the trauma of it all.

13:41 Cheryl's body was found in the backseat of her car at a mall's parking lot. It was found the same day she was murdered, but only at night after the mall had closed. Cheryl was nude, and she'd been strangled with a ligature, most likely the wire. Robert picked up our conflicting reports as to whether the wire was a clothes hanger or perhaps the wire for a piano. But this wire, whatever it was, had been pulled so tightly it nearly severed Cheryl's head off her body. Robert called police to report his wife missing that same night. He asked if they could see if there were any traffic accidents that it occurred. He was afraid that his wife might have been involved in one. That's when police told him about his wife's car being found in the mall parking lot with her naked body in it. And since we know his spouse is always the first suspect on a detective's list, Robert was pulled in for questioning twice about his wife's murder. A little after midnight on May twenty second, nineteen ninety, Robert, who was wearing women's clothing, was out driving. He crashed into a stop sign in some bushes. Police who showed up at the scene determined that Robert was not intoxicated, and they put him in a taxi home. Two days later, Robert was out again driving, but this time. He was in New York and he

15:14 was pulled over for speeding. He asked the police to send him to a psychiatric hospital, and they took him to one. Meanwhile, Massachusetts State Police were looking for Robert. They were gathering evidence and they thought he was looking good for his wife's murder. They found Robert in a psychiatric hospital in New York and they had him extradited back to Massachusetts. On May thirtieth, nineteen ninety, Robert was indicted for the murder of his wife, Cheryl. It was believed Robert removed her clothing to make her murder look like a sex crime. Robert pleaded not guilty of the murder, but later said, apparently I killed Cheryl. It was probably in self defense. Robert was held without bail until his trial. Okay, so now is where we start to no longer call Robert Robert. Robert is her dead name. Her new legal name is actually Michelle Lynn Cosselect. Her pronouns are she and her. Michelle's trial for the murder of her wife, Cheryl didn't start until the beginning of nineteen ninety three.

16:28 She was being held in a man's jail for nearly two years before entering the courtroom for her due process. However, she was anything but quiet. While in jail, she began the process of unsuccessfully suing the sheriff of her county for not making sure she had the medication she needed to help her with her gender dysphoria and her mental well being as a whole. She did get her hands on some female birth control pills, and she took those instead, hoping that they would act in place of the proper female hormone treatments. While in jail, Michelle tried to self castrate herself once, and she tried to take her own life twice. She was not successful with either action. The jury's selection and finalization had taken place in January of nineteen ninety three. The judge started the trial with the following cautionary statement to his jury. The defendant is physically a male, but may emotionally and psychologically be a female, and will be wearing what may be described as female clothing, and may exhibit mannerisms and behavior considered to be female, or that he may be referred to by female pronouns.

17:47 Not one juror claimed to have a problem with Michelle's gender identity. Michelle's stepson, who was around fifteen at the time of his mother Cheryl's murder, would have been about seventeen at the time time of the trial. He testified that Michelle had shaved her beard for the first time in almost a year the day Michelle murdered his mother, and after a long trial, the jury found Michelle guilty of the first degree murder of her wife, Cheryl, and she was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, which I believed mean that the jury wasn't buying Michelle's bullshit excuse that she blacked out for four days.

18:28 The jury felt she premeditated the whole death of Cheryl. Personally, I'm inclined to side with the jury. But now Michele wasn't even concerned about the death of Cheryl. She wasn't concerned about serving time for Cheryl's murder. She wasn't concerned about the child they co parented, or Cheryl's other two children. Michelle was only concerned with one thing herself and how she was going to get the surgery she's so desperately on it and needed. She would now spend the rest of her existence incarcerated, fighting the prison system to get her hormone therapy and reassignment surgery. She even had twenty seven thousand dollars in her prison bank account, and she'd spoken to a doctor who would come to the prison and perform the surgery for her. But the prison system in Massachusetts wouldn't allow the surgery. They wouldn't allow hormone therapy or electrolysis for Michelle, and I personally think that might have been a bad move by the prison system.

19:37 This bitch wants to pay for her own surgery. Let her do it, because one of these days it might come back and bite you in the ass. Michelle was not going to let the state dictate any of this to her without a fight. She argued her surgery and the hormones were a medical necessity and that all of these agencies, especially the Department of Corrections, were violent her constitutional right by denying her. But now Michelle was not willing to pay for it herself. She wanted the state to pay for the whole shebang. Michelle would find herself time and time again in court proceedings, tirelessly arguing her need for the surgery, only to have her request denied over and over again. Now on a federal court level.

20:27 Nearly twenty years later, Michelle was approved for her sex affirming surgery, paid for by taxpayers. And this was around twenty twelve, twenty fourteen. And once she won that court case, she wrote a book. In her book, she doesn't recall murdering Cheryl, but she seems to remember every other fucking detail prior to that and after vividly, because of course she does. And you see, if the state of Massachusetts would have just let her have her damn surgery and let her pay for it, they would have saved so much money in all those court fees and the surgery, which would have saved taxpayers money. Rest and power, Cheryl.

21:15 Our true crime quickie comes to us from Marenhalseno, Brazil. Twenty one year old Anna Caroline Susa Campello, who went by simply Carols, the victim of this story. She was murdered on December tenth, twenty twenty three. Carol, who was openly gay, had moved to the city a few months prior to December to live with her girlfriend. On the night of December tenth, Carol had just left work. It was nearly two am, and she was riding her bicycle home when a video surveillance picked up a man on a motorcycle who appeared to be following Carol. The man wasn't wearing a helmet, but you could see in the video he was wearing a white T shirt and what looked to be Denham shortz. Carol made a right turn and so did the man on the motorcycle, and by now both were out of view of the surveillance camera, about three hundred meters or a thousand feet from where Carol would have taken her last turn to get home.

22:19 Her bicycle was found by family members, and then those same family members found the grisly discovery of Carol's mutilated body. Carol had been strangled with the strap of her purse. She had been scalped, skinned from her face removed, her eyes were gouged out, and her ears were severed off. Weeks had went by with the police not able to find Carol's killer. Finally, with the help of the surveillance video, they were able to identify and arrest the man on the motorcycle who seemed to be following Carol. He is thirty two year old Elizu di Castro. He's still in police custody and he's still awaiting his trial. Rest in power, Carol.

23:08 Remember I probably won't have a new episode out next week, but I will put in a dirt cast filler. If you have a suggestion of a show you'd like to hear, let me know, Or if you'd rather not hear another show, let me know that too via DM. But I love your Rainbow Warriors. You matter, and remember it's not a crime to be gay, nless you're a murderer.