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EXCLUSIVE: Dorothy Marcic has always been determined to find out why her uncle was killed.
On March 1, 1970, LaVerne Stordock was shot in his home just after 2 a.m. His second wife, Suzanne Brandon, immediately confessed to shooting the career policeman and combat veteran with his own military-style Mauser rifle.
According to the podcast, Brandon pleaded guilty by reason of temporary insanity and spent less than one year in a psychiatric hospital. When released, Brandon reportedly inherited all of her late husband’s assets and disappeared.
Decades later, Marcic would take on the role of amateur detective to find out what exactly happened that cold Wisconsin night.
LaVerne Stordock died on March 1, 1970. (Courtesy of Dorothy Marcic)
The seemingly forgotten case is the subject of a new true-crime podcast on Wondery titled "MANslaughter," which is based on Marcic’s 2018 book, "With One Shot." The story explores how Stordock’s violent death tore a family apart.
"My uncle was a very ambitious, hardworking man who came from a scrappy background," Marcic told Fox News. "He worked his way up to police chief, to one of the top investigators in the state of Wisconsin. He was married to his childhood sweetheart, a June Cleaver or Tami from ‘Friday Night Lights.’"
"Then he had this torrid affair with someone who was like Sharon Stone from ‘Basic Instinct,’" she claimed. "He changed and became very unhappy. We all believed he was going to go back to his first wife. They fought constantly. It was just clear he was going to leave. There were even rumors around town that he told friends he was leaving. And then he was murdered."
At the time of the killing, Marcic claimed Brandon was diagnosed with chronic paranoid schizophrenia. The widow also alleged Stordock was abusive, prompting her to defend herself that night.
LaVerne Stordock's death is the subject of a new true-crime podcast on Wondery titled "MANslaughter." (Wondery)
However, Marcic wasn’t convinced.
"I’ve shared the medical records with two psychiatrists and three psych nurses," Marcic said. "They all said there’s no proof at all that she was psychotic. She never showed any symptoms of it and nobody ever suspected of it. And if you look at her version of what happened that night, they were arguing, he was abusive and she went into a psychotic state and pulled the trigger. The problem is that they were upstairs and his guns were downstairs. He had a number of weapons because he was a former police officer."
"The gun she picked up was the highest one on the rack," said Marcic. "She couldn’t reach it without moving furniture. And the police reported there was no evidence of anybody moving furniture."
Marcic pointed out that the weapon used in her uncle’s killing also raised eyebrows.
Dorothy Marcic has written a book about her experience titled "With One Shot." (Photo courtesy of Dorothy Marcic)
"It’s a really complicated weapon, which is often called the sniper’s rifle," she explained. "Suzanne, by her own admission and everybody else’s, had never picked up a gun before. So somebody who’s never picked up a weapon goes into a psychotic state, goes downstairs, reaches for the highest weapon, goes all the way upstairs and uses one bullet that hits exactly in my uncle’s left temple and blows half his brains onto the bedroom wallpaper. It just didn’t make sense."
According to the podcast, Brandon was released from the hospital after 11 months.
In 2014, Marcic and her cousin Shannon Stordock Hecht, Stordock’s daughter from his first marriage, discovered that Brandon and her family were living in Tennessee, The Wisconsin State Journal reported. According to the outlet, Marcic spent the next two and a half years tracking every legal document, newspaper clipping and person associated with the case in hopes of putting her doubts at ease.
Listeners of the podcast will learn how Marcic eventually found Brandon and spoke to her for hours.
Dorothy Marcic said she simply wanted to know what happened to her uncle on the night he died. (Courtesy of Dorothy Marcic)
"She looked almost the same," Marcic recalled. "Even though she was in her 80s, she was just the same 40ish woman that I knew with a few more wrinkles. She was very smart. She was very charming and witty. She easily told jokes. And I found myself getting drawn in… She told me many things, although she wouldn’t answer some questions… But she remembered everything about the past."
At first, Marcic said, Brandon was welcoming. However, when Brandon learned that Marcic was writing a book about her uncle’s death, that’s when things allegedly took a turn.
"She really warmed up to me in between the second and third time I was there," said Marcic. "When I decided to write the book, she was Chatty Cathy and so charming. And then, she started to figure out that I wasn’t going to be her biographer. It wasn’t a book about her and how wonderful she was. And by the fourth time, she just wasn’t nice to me at all."
"In the beginning, I didn’t think I was going to do a book," Marcic continued. "I just wanted to know who shot my uncle. Because there were some questions about whether Suzanne had actually pulled the trigger or maybe it was David, her son. Initially, that’s all my cousin Sharon and I wanted to know. But as I got deeper into it, I wanted to learn more. And it became deeper than I thought. And after my second visit, I decided to write about my experience. That turned into a book."
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LaVerne Stordock's death still raises questions today. (Courtesy of Dorothy Marcic)
Marcic’s questions about what happened may never fully be answered. Brandon died in 2017 at age 88. Her son David Briggs died in 2014 while Marcic was researching. And Brandon’s youngest son, Daniel, died by suicide in 1992 when he was 32 years old.
Brandon’s daughter Donna was interviewed for the podcast.
"You know, I never thought that I cared about court justice," said Marcic. "I just wanted the truth to come up. I couldn’t find any evidence of my uncle being abusive. He and Suzanne certainly argued a lot… But I just needed to know the truth. And I felt that was justice. My uncle was a decent man, but he had an Achilles' heel. He lost his life and he’s not here to defend himself."
"The murder of a family member is not easily resolved emotionally," she shared. "I’ve had other people in my family die and it’s painful, but it’s different when somebody loses their life suddenly and you don’t believe there was something that feels like justice… It’s just heartbreaking."
"MANslaughter" is available for streaming on Wondery.
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