That’s when the story began to fall off the rails

This one was said on the show 20/20 by an investigator on the murder of Kelly Clayton. He was referring to a statement made by Michael Beard describing his involvement in the matter. This is a nice congruent conflation of “go off the rails” and “fall apart”, both meaning something starting to go wrong or going into disorder. Then again, maybe he was thinking “falling off the wagon” (return to drinking after a period of sobriety).

A big thanks to Mike Kovacs once again!