One of my former singers who will remain nameless for this dropped a bomb on me a couple of weeks ago that just ended up with me thinking to myself, "You only hear about this stuff on television, or read about it in the papers."
He has been married for around 25 yrs. In that twenty five years his wife has been sick twice with cancer. She had only been cancer free for five yrs when she became ill again in 2015. So for the last 6 yrs he has been taking her to very experimental treatment, etc., at a VERY great expense. In that time, he complains to me that he is not feeling so good. He describes having bad muscle and joint aches, a foggy mind, weakness, random nausea and a whole host of other symptoms. At times when I talk to him it is like he's gotten hold of some very good weed which is COMPLETELY uncharacteristic of him as he is a retired police officer. So I am keeping contact with him just trying to keep his spirits up, etc., while they try and find out what is now wrong with him.
This goes on for almost the entire 6 yrs until a couple of weeks ago. He had been sounding a little better each time I had talked to him. But this time, he sounded like his old self. The difference? He tells me he has been going to a holistic healer to be detoxified and that he feel slike a new man. He then asks if I am sitting down for what he has to tell me next. So what does he say? It seems that after a whole lot of time has passed and there is no improvment in his health, his officer buddies take him to the hospital and have a test done for poisons. What they get back is chilling. He had very high amounts of ethylene glycol in his system (yep. car antifreeze). His wife's daughter, sister in law, and borther in law had been bringing over meals they had prepared to help "take off some of the burden of taking care of his wife". So he confronts his wife. It's even more chilling what she says. She tells him," Well yeah, I had them taint you food. I want my daughter (his stepdaughter) to have the house when I die. I want her to have it, not you. Besides, why would you want to live once I am gone?" Yeah. So the police officers go to the D.A. with this info. He tells them he has no idea who to prosecute since so many people are involved (Trust me on this one. The D.A. in Crossville, TN is as sorry as they come. So much so that my former singer and his friends, all officers, wrote me in on election day).
He is now in the proceedings of a divorce. Our former pedal steel player, an officer in a neighboring town has all of the test results, footage of them continuing to tamper with his food that he recorded, as well as footage of his step daughter pedaling his wife's pain pills out of her house, with a order to give it to the TBI should ANYTHING happen to him between now and the finalization of the divorce.
So after 25 yrs of marriage and taking care of her twice, the thanks he gets is that her and her immediate family try to kill him. You can't make this crap up. I know the only musical connection is that this is happening to my former singer, but I just thought, "never in a million years" and had to share it. I am still picking my jaw up from the floor. I just talked to him an hour ago. It gets even more bizarre. This is broad strokes.