What the hot dog headlines don’t tell you
The Olive Dell murders, and how the media went whole hog and turned a tragedy into tabloid bait
A tragedy happened at Olive Dell Ranch nudist resort last year. Two longtime residents, Stephanie and Daniel Menard—beloved community members—were murdered. Their dog, Cuddles, was killed too. The man accused of the crime was not an outsider, but their neighbor. It shattered the community, exposed longstanding fractures, and left residents grieving and afraid.
The media jumped on the story at the time, and not always with care. Yes, some outlets reported the basic facts. But many treated it as pure spectacle: a nudist resort, a hidden bunker, rumors of mutilation, and two dead seniors. Headlines leaned hard on the strangeness. Speculation ran wild. Some even suggested there might be more bodies under the suspect’s trailer—a claim police later dismissed outright. Even so, it didn’t take long for the coverage to shift from reporting to rubbernecking. Eventually, as the facts grew scarce, the media moved on.
But last week, the story came roaring back. Why? Because of a hot dog.
At a June 17 preliminary hearing at the San Bernardino Justice Center, Redlands Police Detective Thomas Williams testified that the accused killer, Michael Royce Sparks, confessed to another inmate. The catalyst, Sparks allegedly said, was a perceived insult: Daniel Menard had given him a hot dog. According to the detective’s testimony, Sparks interpreted the gesture as a demeaning jab—“making him feel like he was worth only a dollar hot dog”—and claimed that’s what set him off that day.1
“Chopped up my neighbors. Didn’t know I had it in me. SNAPPED,” read one widely circulated quote from Sparks’ alleged text message to a former coworker—also pulled from court testimony, also stripped of context, and also used for shock value.
The testimony, though deeply disturbing, was procedural—part of the process by which the court determines whether there’s enough evidence to proceed to trial. But for the media, it was catnip. Within 48 hours, dozens of headlines had repackaged the detail into something absurd, titillating, and viral: “Murder at a nudist resort sparked by hot dog insult.”
Dozens of outlets like The Blaze, Metro, and The Sun have now run versions of the same story, often with little more than cosmetic variation. Morning drivetime radio treated the story like open season for cheap laughs. 97.3 The Dawg in Lafayette, Louisiana, asked, “How Did a Wiener Cause a Murder at a Nudist Colony?” A human tragedy served up like a joke—nestled in the bun between pun and punchline, slathered with mustard.
To be perfectly clear, these outlets aren’t really reporting on a new development. At least not meaningfully. They’re doing what they always do—in this case, replicating the same pattern we saw last year, only with even less substance. A single statement from a secondhand source during a procedural hearing has spawned a media cycle with the same morbid tone as before, now distilled to its most grotesque shorthand: naked people, a hot dog, and a hammer.
Here’s what they don’t mention:
Stephanie Menard used a cane. Daniel Menard had dementia. They were part of a community that threw poker nights and karaoke parties. Stephanie loved teaching new players at bingo. Dan, a pastor, gave Easter sermons in the outdoor chapel. They were in the middle of a legal fight to protect their rights as mobile home residents. They were also deeply entwined in the social and spiritual fabric of Olive Dell—a nudist resort that, despite the headlines, is not a colony of fringe eccentrics, but a neighborhood of retirees, working-class families, queer folks, artists and activists.
And while the headlines frame this as a murder over a hot dog, this wasn’t an impulsive act triggered by an offhand snack—it was the culmination of years of simmering tension. A feud between Sparks and the Menards had been growing for a decade, reportedly sparked by a dispute over a tree and inflamed over time by proximity, resentment, and mutual distrust. The dynamic between them was complicated—tense, sometimes hostile, sometimes awkwardly neighborly. But it was real. It was human. And it helps explain the kind of atmosphere in which something like this could happen.
After their deaths, I spoke to residents at Olive Dell who were wrecked by the loss. One resident, Chris Hernandez, remembered Dan in a paternal way, riding around the Olive Dell grounds in his golf cart with Cuddles, their shih tzu: “He’d come down and tell all us kids to stay out of trouble.” Stephanie, he added, was always helping others learn poker and bingo. Nikki Storm recalled giving free pedicures with Stephanie and hosting karaoke nights in the clubhouse. They cooked together. They sang. They were fighting to preserve their home.
But you’d never know any of that from reading the news this week. Instead, what’s resurfaced is the familiar flattening of a real tragedy into something bizarre, clickable, and safely distant. “Nudism” is once again used as both novelty and narrative shorthand—an easy way to signal that this story isn’t quite real, that it belongs more to the world of Florida Man memes and morning zoo radio gags than to the real lives of real people.
It’s par for the course with our media, but it’s worth remarking that that kind of distancing isn’t harmless—it numbs empathy, erodes understanding, and makes it easier to forget that this was a real, devastating act of violence. Two vulnerable people were beaten to death—a dog was drowned in a sink—a community left broken and scared, watching their neighbors become punchlines in stories that barely bother to ask what’s true or what matters.
When media outlets ignore those dynamics and zero in on the surface weirdness, they don’t just trivialize the victims. They re-injure the community. And clearly, they trivialize nudism.
Yes, the hot dog detail is strange. It might even be true. But it’s not the story.
The story is two elders killed, a community unraveling, and the human cost of treating tragedies as viral novelties.
Stephanie and Dan weren’t characters. They were people.
Remember them that way. 🪐
Corbishley, S. (2025, June 21). Neighbour 'killed couple on nudist ranch after being humiliated with a hot dog'. Metro. https://metro.co.uk/2025/06/21/neighbour-killed-couple-nudist-ranch-humiliated-a-hot-dog-23471808/
Thank you for this thoughtful and respectful article. We live in a world of sound bites and anything that offers click-bait. It is about making money at anyone's expense. It is sad that two very generous people have been so maligned, and the nudist community as well.
Dan and Stephanie were among the first people we met at Olive Dell. They were genuinely kind, personable, helpful and welcoming to us as new members of Olive Dell.