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True Crime

13 Year Old Realizes His Twin Brother Is A Killer In The Middle Of Interrogation

Rotten Mango · Stephanie Soo

📅 2026-07-19 ⏱ 36 min

Key takeaways

01Because identical twins share DNA, the case was made on physical evidence instead: Levi's watch under the body, a glove fragment matching a box in his closet, and bloody boots in his room.
02Levi's phone held searches for the Fairfax police department, Ted Bundy's kill kit, and police interview tactics, plus a deleted message saying he'd probably get caught.
03Hunter was cleared largely by absence: his phone was off during the crime, held no suspicious activity, and his reaction in the interview room read as genuine to investigators.
04The cat-scratch alibi for Levi's facial injuries collapsed when officers judged Marshmallow's claws too small to have caused them.
05Levi pleaded guilty on November 10, 2025 to aggravated murder, aggravated burglary, and strangulation, drawing the maximum juvenile sentence — detention until 21, release expected in 2033.

What this episode covers

This is the conclusion of a two-part case. Denise Tenpenny, 64, was assaulted and murdered in her bed in Fairfax, Ohio, and the DNA at the scene led investigators 50 feet across the street to identical twin 13-year-old brothers, Hunter and Levi Cart — whose DNA is indistinguishable. Since the genetics can't separate them, the case turns on everything else: Levi's watch found under Denise's body, a torn piece of green nitrile glove at the scene matching a box in his closet, bloody L.L. Bean boots in his room, and a journal whose pages include his name and 'I will kill you' in block letters.

The phones do the rest. Levi's device shows messages to strangers on TikTok about having very low empathy and killing animals, screenshots of serial killers' methods, searches for the Fairfax police department, Ted Bundy's kill kit, and 'ways cops mess with you in the interview' — plus a deleted message reading 'I'm probably going to get caught.' On the night of the murder his camera runs from 2:30 to 2:52 a.m. Hunter's phone, by contrast, is clean: it was off during the crime, and his searches look like a worried neighbor's. Even the family cat, Marshmallow, ends up as evidence — officers notice his claws are too small to have made the scratches on Levi's face, which the family believed came from the cat.

The episode's core is the two interrogations. Hunter spends his insisting his brother is incapable of this, working through every alternative — a planted watch, a lost watch, a meticulous framer — and visibly stopping himself each time the coincidences stack up, until investigators zoom out a crime-scene photo of the watch and he breaks down. Levi's interview is stranger: he oscillates between playing dumb (claiming not to know what geometry or urgent care are) and offering sophisticated theories about blood transfusions and familial DNA, sparring with a detective over whether murderers are 'monsters or people who make mistakes.'

Investigators never get a confession. On November 10, 2025, Levi Cart pleads guilty to aggravated murder, aggravated burglary, and strangulation, receiving the maximum juvenile sentence — detention until age 21, with release expected in 2033. The host speculates the plea may have spared prosecutors a trial over how the interrogations of two 13-year-olds without lawyers present would have held up.

Why listen: It's a rare interrogation-room study of both twins at once — one slowly talking himself out of his brother's innocence, the other trying to argue his way past his own DNA.

Chapters

“I don't think that murder is stupid though” Levi Cart · at 5:14 —
“I have no faith that my brother would be able to do something like that” Hunter Cart · at 11:39 —

Mentioned in this episode

Denise TenpennyHunter CartLevi CartFairfax, OhioTed BundyL.L. BeanTikTokFox 19Hamilton County youth centerConfessions of a Serial Killer (book)FOIA case file

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0:00 / 36:16 13 Year Old Realizes His Twin Brother Is A Killer In The Middle Of Interrogation