on September 4th 2023 this North Dakota man was airlifted to hospital Steven Riley Jr had been suffering symptoms of a mysterious illness for 2 days and when he passed out and couldn't be woken up his girlfriend called 911 he died the following day Steve's sudden death was a shock to everyone around him but this wasn't an ordinary illness his partner Ena canoer said that he'd been drinking and that he was suffering from heat stroke but his friends had a different idea he's dead and he was poisoned the autopsy confirmed this it found that he died
of ethylene glycol poisoning antifreeze and further there was no alcohol in his blood at all contrary to what Ena told the police so who had poisoned him and why Steve's friends held their own suspicions we think she poisoned him she could only be Ena canoer Steve's loving partner his common-law wife his friends and family seemed to think their relationship had deteriorated enough that she'd killed them but with the question of an inheritance floating around who was telling the truth and what really happened to Steve Riley I was like is it cursed and people that go
after it are dying he's like I know maybe join us here on the dooder where we'll take you through exclusive interview and body cam footage to reveal the Twisted story of Ena canoer and Steven Riley [Music] Jr on September 5th 2023 the police showed up at the Riley property in Ward County North Dakota after a fierce battle for his life Steve Riley had died in hospital and now they had to find out why Steve was 51 and had no major health conditions that would have caused this sudden sickness and death the circumstance were already suspicious
so they arrived as a matter of routine to do some preliminary investigation into his death Steve Riley lived with his girlfriend 47-year-old Ena canoer they lived together for 13 years and she considered herself married to him by common law though this wasn't recognized legally in the state of North Dakota she'd seen him off to the hospital the day before believing he was suffering from heat stroke but the police arrived to tell her something much worse is it's true if he died in bmar still the same day I thought everybody knew I'm oh my God Ena
appeared devastated by this news only a few days ago Steve had been happy and healthy and now he was dead but she wasn't the only one on the property a friend of Steve's Billy had already heard the news and was waiting there for Steve's son Ryan to come home from out of state this wasn't just a compassionate gesture Billy didn't trust Ena if you just keep her from not selling all his stuff everything it be fine so what's your plan right now making sure nothing goes he seemed to think that Ena would want to make
a quick Buck out of her boyfriend's sudden death what is she going to take and S all my tools his tools I think I think it should go to his son everything by law everything goes to the Sun so because Ena wasn't married to Steve she didn't automatically inherit his property and Ryan Riley who was 21 was on his way from out of state after hearing of his dad's illness and had been intending to get there on September 5th anyway it seemed a cruel coincidence that this was the day his father had died Ryan didn't
have a relationship with Ena you know the son yeah I haven't seen him you what I haven't seen him five oh wow okay Steve had five sons from previous relationships all of whom were now adults Ena was a separate part of his life from his children which could lead to friction Ryan in particular was serving in the military in Texas and had booked emergency leave to come home to see his dad when he learned he was sick but fatally he arrived too late in the immediate aftermath of Steve's death a particular point of contention was
a truck kept in Steve's Garage didn't have any paperwork that proved who owned it though she said it was registered to Steve Steve had sent a photo to Ryan and it seemed destined to go to his son but everyone wanted a piece of it including Billy he keeps trying to take a steeve truck where's the truck at in the garage oh and he's the one that nailed it all shut who is Billy is this the paperwork on the thing or no no no this is uh property okay that Steve was buying oh after his inheritance
got here oh okay everyone in Steve's life was already fighting over his possessions only a day after his death but it was about more than just some tools and a Truck according to Billy a few days before Steve died he had an important meeting with his lawyer at the airport the other day she throw all the stuff out out the yard from his from his house yeah and he come out and he was holding his head down and then we're supposed to go up to the airport and meet this guy cuz he's suppos to get
quite a bit of money yeah so we went up there come back we had to help him out of the car had to help him in the house Billy said that as Steve had been getting sicker his relationship with Ena had been souring but their fortunes were apparently turning Steve learned that he was in line for a $30 million inheritance in the early hours of September 3rd only 2 days before Steve's death the police responded to a call near his house there had been a report that a local resident Chad was intoxicated and behaving aggressively
he had an encounter with Steve and apparently headbutted him the police came to talk to Steve about the incident this was at 4:00 a.m. the same day that he'd later grow mysteriously sick it was Ena who answered the door hey how you doing hi sorry you thought it was Chad yeah who was Chad trying to kick in everybody's door who was he here busted my light and look at the garbage cans who was here who was he fighting with out here uh my fiance you wa for a walk to cool down this incident didn't seem
to have much to do with Ena or Steve but Ena was in a confessional mood excited by the prospect of receiving a fortune he gets his inheritance this afternoon that's why we're moving we're going to pay all our bills off that we need to pay off do you guys want to press any charges against Chad I'll ask him when he gets here you ask your fiance yeah okay he went to pull down cuz uh okay Chad really who started the fight who started the fight Chad or your fiance Chad he like I said he has
a really important appointment with his lawyer today at 2:00 Steve wasn't a wealthy guy originally from Stockton California he'd met Ena at an Easter buffet dinner at a homeless shelter in Washington which was ena's home state a little while later he moved to Wilston North Dakota I guess uh the guy that was running the shelter on the men's side told him about it and got him a ticket okay for like oil fields okay and he never got Dove and so he started working for KFC okay and then he sent me a ticket and pretty much
asked me to marry when the couple met they were both down on their luck they moved to North Dakota together in search of a better life but things went from bad to worse on his birthday we took him out for his birthday and I begged him to let someone else drive or to walk okay and uh he wasn't drunk or nothing yet but apparently he drank a lot more than I noticed okay cuz by the time he got to jail that's when the alcohol is really hidden and he got the max so he got a
de every time he goes to jail he got the max okay Steve had a criminal past which made it difficult to find and keep a job and he had trouble staying on the right side of the law it didn't help that they had a difficult relationship with their friends Billy and Lynn I mean Lynn would get Miss mad at him and and then turn him call and turn him in or whatever okay for something Billy did we've even gotten into fights to stay away from Lyn Billy and Lynn okay people like that I don't like
calling people nasty because you know you don't know what you look like people right and people assume the worse to me because I'm I'm poor right according to Ena Billy and Lynn were bad influences they said they were involved in felonies themselves and kept dragging Steve back into criminal Behavior it didn't help that during his latest stint in prison he got into hard drugs this fractured his relationship with Ena 6 months ago when uh he ran off with his crack [ __ ] and he ran off to devil lake with her but this affair ended
badly and the woman turned him into the cops again languishing in jail Ena visited him and she'd said she'd take him back but with some conditions Steve clearly showed some self-destructive behavior that could have been difficult to deal with but for some reason Ena stuck by him pretty much when I said well you know if you can write me out a contract I'll bail you out but no drugs no felonies you're going to get your ID and you're going to get a real job Steve agreed to these conditions it was the only way he could
get Ena to bail him out and she said that if he went back on his word he'd have to pay her back the $700 and he did start looking for a job he worked as a security guard at the state fair that summer and he did work mowing lawns and fixing trucks but this wasn't steady pay and he needed something more permanent to stabilize his finances meanwhile Eno worked in housekeeping at a local hotel this was the couple's situation when out of the blue they received some news that was almost too good to be true
so this lawyer reached out to him and said he's I guess I don't even know how he found out about it okay if you found out about it uh you know doing a background check on him seeing if anybody owes the money you know honestly I have no idea he just it just appeared you know and he showed it to me one day letter yeah about 3 or 4 months before Steve's death a lawyer from London reached out to him saying he represented one of Steve's distant relatives he said that this relative had died leaving
a $30 million fortune that would go directly to Steve he said he was flying into Min not Airport in North Dakota and that he'd arrange the transfer of the money when Steve met him there imagine struggling with unemployment and homelessness most of your life to be be told you're due for a windfall of $30 million it was a lifechanging almost unimaginable sum of money it would certainly change Steve's life but was it too good to be true and he wanted me to have a copy to make sure you know if something never happened to him
and he was reading that the money wasn't cursed or whatever he's like every single person that went for the the Riley money over there yeah uh even this 21-year-old I passed away Steve seemed superstitious about accepting the money but it seemed ridiculous to let the idea of a curse stand in the way of inheriting a fortune he made plans about what he'd do with it including buying up his neighbor's land opening his own auto shop and sharing it with his sons the one person who wasn't involved in his future plans his girlfriend Ena she believed
she was entitled to a share of his money including the inheritance as his common law wife legally this wasn't the case but there was a bigger problem each time they tried to arrange a meeting the lawyer had postponed it saying that someone was contesting the will and he needed more time they finally set the date for September 3rd this was what Ena was so excited about early that morning when the police came to talk to her but when Steve had gone with Billy to meet the lawyer at the airport the lawyer had never showed up
and I don't know how to get a hold of the guy in London with his inheritance he should be here in town I don't understand so yeah why you never show up at the airport Steve had desperately needed this money when he was alive now he was dead Ena wanted a piece of it but what if there was no money perhaps this was the realization Steve came to driving back home that fateful September 3rd that he was still penniless and the lawyer's letter had been a scam to get his bank details and personal information but
in the immediate future he had other things to worry about he was getting mysteriously ill Billy dropped Steve back home from the airport thinking that Ena would look after him he's not happy she was supposed to call the amulance she never call amance she said he just had heat stroke and needed to rest it was only on September 4th that she finally called 91 one for her ailing boyfriend but this time he was unresponsive not responding he's on CRA the bed right there she tried to set him up and fell off the bed Steve's sudden
Decline and the question of the inheritance couldn't just be a coincidence in fact someone had suggested that one was the cause of the other implying that Steve had committed suicide because he'd given so many personal details to a scammer he just went through that with his dad his dad shot himself in the head with a shotgun okay and I don't think he would want his kids you know to go through what he went through but then I could be wrong you know he didn't want to face the fact that it was a scam Ena raised
the possibility that it had been suicide she also said it had been Steve who'd refused to seek medical attention at first and I kept him to let me call the ambulance and he's like no I'll be fine with some sleep so what do you think is wrong with Steve at this point like why why what do you think is wrong with Steve why is he sick I thought it I thought they were right it was heat stroke okay cuz it was uh cuz he wasn't puking yet and it was like fin finally kind of sleeping
in and out Ena o referenced a time about 6 months ago when he'd accidentally poisoned himself I actually call the ambulance last time he was this coherent um but he accidentally grabbed on to a cup and he kind of finally confessed he accidentally drink some kind of fluid she painted a picture of Steve as an accident prone clumsy person I don't know he injested it smoking a cigarette you know cuz he was always sping crap on of cigarettes and smoking it but in her interview she maintained she thought this time it was heat stroke it'll
mimic uh poisoning I read this time I read uh what do you mean this time cuz the doctor said it it looked like he drank antifreeze or had antifreeze in the system so I Googled it and it had the same symptoms as heat stroke okay when did you Google that uh the day he was in the hospital the risk of heat stroke could be worsened by alcohol consumption and according to Ena Steve had been drinking a lot before he went to see the lawyer maybe he was nervous or maybe he was preemptively celebrating how much
do you think you had to drink almost a whole case from what time to what time there was three beers left I looked in the case and when you say a case you mean a 24 pack yep so he drank almost a whole case of fear from what time to what time I have no clue you don't know when he started drinking pretty much when he got out of bed did you drink anything else uh just a glass of water that I brought him and his tea I made iced tea cuz he beg PR iy
as the police talked to Ena one thing was becoming clear that she was the person who'd had the most access to Steve specifically she'd made him multiple drinks that day that he'd Fallen ill but she was casting suspicion elsewhere I I don't I don't know I don't know how Billy thinks he's messed up in the head they're nasty people I'm telling you but that's the only I'm I'm not doubting that they're nasty just saying I'm just trying to wrap my head around who I don't see him really doing that I could see Lynn more and
she wasn't even there okay she's more of the all poison you type person you know okay than Billy Billy I'll just wait until you go to sleep and then steal from you right type person okay so as far as you and Steve that's why I'm thinking maybe Steve did it to himself in a dire situ because of the inheritance scam Steve's reasons for wanting to end his life made sense to the police but so did ena's possible motives for killing him herself if he hadn't been planning to give her any money were you expecting that
if something I mean you would get money no okay like I said I would have given it to his Ex-Wives cuz they deserve it way more than I did cuz they were actually married okay and I understand where they are coming from now you know cuz Cheryl stabbed him I guess is that one of his xwi yeah okay this his first xwi she L literally stabbed him Melissa won't talk to him at all put a restraining word against him Steve had a troubled relationship history and his relationship with Ena was the latest in a long
string of them the very day he'd gotten sick she'd been seen throwing his belongings out of the house and her story didn't quite match up now she'd said he'd stopped drinking when he got ill and she'd been giving him water and tea to try to rehydrate him but when the paramedics first came it was a different story you told the paramedics when they were there that morning or afternoon that he had been drinking till 5:00 in the morning she'd also told her neighbors that she'd taken Steve to the clinic to get checked out which was
a lie there was no record of him seeking any medical attention anywhere in the area until the paramedics were called on September 4th in her interview on September 13th the police presented Ena with these contradictions her response I want a lawyer okay you asked for a lawyer Ena so we're just going to end this now okay we're not going to talk anymore all right you guys are so [Music] unbelievable the facts of the case were these Steve and by extension Ena had been duped into thinking he'd been receiving a Fortune of $30 million they'd been
living in fraught circumstances together for a while and he had a history of running off with other women and cutting her out he hadn't included her in his plans for the money and when he got mysteriously ill she didn't rush to seek medical care in fact she lied about caring for him she just served him ice tea the Sweet Taste of which can apparently mask the taste and smell of antifreeze if you think this adds up to a suspicious picture you're not alone The Ward County Police police thought so too when Ryan Riley arrived in
the state he told them that his father and Ena hadn't been happy in a while and his father had wanted to leave her he said she was leeching off Steve and he kind of just wanted to leave her cuz she didn't really have a job and was like leing off of them okay just laed around all day so he wanted to leave you now mhm Steve's friends told the same story they said he'd talked about leaving Ena when the money from The Inheritance came through did Steve ever talk about leaving Hina all the time okay
every day okay every day do you think she knew about that she did okay and the paperwork and the paperwork he needed the sign yeah okay and uh you know I said well will Ena have to and he said no we're not married he says that's she also kept tabs on on his online presence particularly his interactions with the lawyer going into Steve's email to get these emails she transferred the information to her her phone correct yep and then Steve's phones would always go missing because we'd say well Steve have you heard from well my
phone's gone again you know well then we'd he'd get another phone well then we'd give him you know give him some money for some food and and to get some more minutes on his phone now it's either link or Billy told me that uh when this first realized that she might be doing something his phone disappeared okay and Steve did lose things occasionally she'd also apparently made comments about using antifreeze to kill him in the past this matched up with her social media presence in May 20121 she went on a spree of re-sharing her old
photo posts of Steve of an account where she'd named herself Ena Riley with derogatory comments she wrote I wish I was worried about this man watch out for this man he'll bleed you dry and spit you out and from day one he has put his own in front of mine and made me feel like people who go out to destroy his life on purpose because it's a game to them are better people than me so he can have them her most forboding post read I hope you get what you deserve you f they stayed together
another 2 years following this rageful spiral but it was a fateful indicator of things to come and a sign of where her anger could lead the police conducted a search of the property looking for physical evidence to corroborate the evidence of her motive and they found it in the living room they discovered a capless Windex bottle containing a bright green liquid suspected to be antifreeze in the garage they found a glass cup and a mug filled with the same liquid this was enough on October 30th they arrested her never been arrested before like this I've
never done anything I haven't done anything fre lost the love of my life for me this is how I'm Tre if I was going to kill him I would have killed him the day he lied to me and I found out he was doing drugs this going gra you honestly don't fall right and I would have done it physically not as they arrested her for her boyfriend's murder Ena continued to deny it but the evidence had mounted and in May 2024 she pleaded guilty she admitted to adding Annie freeze to Steve's Sweet Tea to disguise
The Taste and she did it because she believed he was in line to receive a $30 million inheritance one that she wouldn't see a sent of because he was cutting her out due to her faulty understanding of common law marriage she thought if Steve was dead she could receive the inheritance herself but there wasn't any money at all and even if there had been she wouldn't have been entitled to it a fraught relationship a selfish misunderstanding and a poorly timed scam added up to a recipe for murder and she tried to blame the death on
anyone but herself casting suspicion on Steve's friends Billy and Lynn or even Steve himself in October 2024 Ena canoyer was sentenced to a life sentence of 25 years in prison with the other 25 suspended followed by 10 years of probation she was also ordered to pay $3,455 in restitution to the victim's family including his five Sons whom she tried to cheat out of an inheritance as large or small as it ended up being at the sentencing hearing Steve's sister made a victim impact statement as so many other families of victims often fill the punishment to
fysic crime and lucky for you the partly cres doesn't Ser kind a freeze your eyes tea my opinion of you is what you did my brother is that you ironically are an exact reflection of the home that you kept and lived in vital filthy disgusting embarrassing gross full of fees and pure trash what do you think about this Twisted story let us know your thoughts in the comments below until next time stay safe keep up with our Channel and we'll see you very soon on the decoder [Music]
