332. The Deadly Rejection - The Murder of Corey Wieneke

Our sources for this episode are oxygen.com, nbc4i.com, dailymail.co.uk, wqad.com, radioiowa.com, cbs2iowa.com, thegazette.com, timesrepublican.com, iowacourts.com, nbcnews.com, timesdelphic.com, iowabar.org, caselaw.findlaw.com, desmoinesregister.com, and Oxygen Snapped.

Today, I wanna talk about an ugly little truth called rejection.

We can all agree that rejection is probably universally hated.

I mean, introduce me to one person that likes to hear the word "no." But if you're a silver lining kind of girly like me, then you can understand how rejection is character building.

It adds grit.

It toughens your skin.

It teaches you how to get back out there with your head held high and to try again.

There's no way to avoid it.

It happens in almost everything we do.

We can feel rejection in work, play, love, and the more feelings you have invested, the harder that rejection hits.

But for some people, that pain can be unbearable.

Picking their head up and getting back out there just doesn't seem like an option.

And when a rejection like that happens to the wrong person, it can be weaponized and become a death sentence.

So let's turn back the clock to the year 1992, to a little town with a population of only about 4,000 people called West Liberty, Iowa.

It's the kind of place where you grow up going to school with the same kids.

You probably marry your high school sweetheart.

You open up a small business with your childhood best friend.

The kind of town a lot of people live and then die in, and as was the case for 22-year-old Cory Wienke Now, Cory had a larger-than-life presence in the small town of West Liberty.

His family had been there for a few generations.

Everyone in town basically knew his last name.

Cory especially, though, because not only was he a star football player, he was the class clown and one of the most popular kids in high school.

With his welcoming and warm personality, he just wanted to bring everyone together.

He would invite all the neighborhood kids over to his family's house to play baseball in their giant grassy yard on a summer's night, teach them how to pitch and catch.

And when the sun went down, he was curling up on the couch with his mom, Susan, sharing their favorite shows together.

Now, Susan has said that the two of them, her and her son Cory, were extremely close, even when Cory began dating his high school sweetheart, a girl named Jodie Hotz.