Episode 27: Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies, I’m your host Julie Mattson. Today, I thought I’d ring in February by talking a little bit about deaths that occurred on Valentine’s day. First, let’s start off with the history of Valentine’s day, how it originated. And then let’s look into the interesting story of Curtis Lovelace, a former hometown football star and assistant state’s attorney who was arrested in August 2014, eight years after his wife Cory died on Valentine’s Day. Ready to get started? Here we go… CONNECT WITH JULIE MATTSON: • Website: https://pushinguplilies.com• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pushinguplilies EPISODE TRANSCRIPTS: 0:06 Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies. 0:08 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. 0:24 Do I have some stories for you? 0:26 Are you ready? 0:31 Hey, y’all? 0:31 It’s February. 0:32 Can’t believe it’s already the second month of the new year and we’ve had some crazy weather in Texas. 0:40 I don’t know about y’all and a lot of you are, I’m sure used to bad weather and snow and ice, but we are not. 0:47 And everyone here goes a little bit crazy when there’s ice or snow and we are having a really bad ice storm. 0:56 Now I’ve never heard it thunder and then sleet, but that’s what we’re experiencing. 1:01 But it seems like all the businesses are closed now. 1:06 It’s funny because when I was in North Dakota and it was snowing, the car washes were still open and of course here one little drizzle, they shut down because we don’t normally wash our cars because we don’t have a lot of mud because we don’t have snow all the time that melts and makes our cars nasty. 1:23 But I thought I’d ring in February by talking a little bit about deaths that occurred on Valentine’s day and I thought it would be interesting in the beginning to talk a little bit about the history of Valentine’s day. 1:37 So back in about the year to 70 A.D. 1:42 There was an emperor named Claudia. 1:44 Yes, he was actually Claudius the second, but he was also called Claudius the cruel and he could not get soldiers to join his military. 1:53 He believed that all the men were way too attached to their families and their spouses. 2:01 He could not pull them away from that to join his military. 2:05 So he banned all marriages and engagements in Rome at that time. 2:12 And then valentine was a holy priest in Rome. 2:17 He defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages behind Claudius back in secret. 2:26 When this was discovered, he was arrested and dragged and beaten to death with clubs and beheaded. 2:35 Now this was in, round or about 270 A.D., again on February 14th. While he was in jail, he left a farewell note for the jailer’s daughter and he actually signed it from your valentine. 2:51 The two of them had actually become friends and he knew that he was gonna die. 2:58 So he left her a nice little note. 3:00 Now, he was named a saint after his death and gradually February 14th became a date for exchanging love notes, poems and gifts. 3:12 So this is how ST. Valentine’s day came about and how it started. 3:18 So this was way back in to 70 A.D. 3:21 If you can only imagine how many love notes have been exchanged since then. 3:26 But we’re going to start the month of February talking about Curtis and Cory Lovelace. 3:33 Now, I don’t know if this is a story that any of y’all had heard, but this couple lived in Quincy, Illinois. Curtis Lovelace was a hardworking assistance state’s prosecutor and a former college football star for the university of Illinois. 3:51 He was also president of the school board. 3:56 He taught classes at the local college and also did some sports broadcasting for the sports at the high school in Quincy. 4:07 Now, Corey, his wife was from a very prominent family, She was a former cheerleader, she was an honor student and she raised their four kids, basically was a stay at home mom raising her kids and trying to take care of her family and I’m sure just juggling a lot, we all know that’s a super difficult job by the way. I always hate when people tell me I’m just to stay at home mom and I’m like, don’t say I’m just a stay at home mom because that is a huge job. 4:42 It’s hard for people to actually commit to that. 4:47 A lot of people want to work and they want to get away from their kids, but they’re not able to because of the cost of childcare or whatever. 4:53 But anyway, don’t ever say I’m just a stay at home mom because you are much more than that if that’s what you do. 4:59 So, February 14th , 2006, Curtis Lovelace found his wife Cory dead in their home. 5:07 He said that he walked her to bed at about 8:15 in the morning and he drove their three oldest children to school. 5:15 And then when he came home he found her dead in bed, that’s where he left her. 5:22 And I guess he was gone, they say for about 45 minutes now she had reportedly been sick. 5:29 She had flu like symptoms. 5:31 She was reportedly as they both were an alcoholic. 5:36 She also had bulimia which is an eating disorder and so initially he was not accused and not investigated. 5:46 It was believed that her death was caused by basically her body’s weakness and her immune system’s weakness, dealing with the alcoholism and the Bulimia at the