Welcome back to the Path Went Chile for part two of our series on the
unexplained death of Karen coups in It. Robin, do you want to catch
everyone up on what we talked about in our previous episode. Well, this
case took place in November of nineteen sixty three and Karen coups in It was
a twenty two year old actress from an influential family in Chicago who was now
living in West Hollywood and it had gotten some bit parts on film and TV,
but she was in a bad place because she had a relationship with another
actor named Andrew Pride, who did not want to have an exclusive relationship.
And when she became pregnant with his child's her friends took her down to Mexico
to have an illegal abortion. And it seems like Karen's mental health was crashing
because she was on a lot of medication. She was acting very strangely on
the last night that her friends saw her alive at like a dinner party,
And all we know is that when Karen returned to her apartment, she had
watched TV with two of her friends, who claimed that she went into her
bedroom and appeared to fall asleep, So They walked out later that night,
and this was the last time she was confirmed to be alive. But after
not hearing from her for a couple of days, her friends went to her
apartment and discovered Karen's new, decomposing body lying on the couch. At first,
they figured her death might have been a suicide or an accidental drug overdose,
but the coroner discovered that her hioid bone was missing, so he pretty
much ruled that she had been strangled to death and was the victim of foul
play. They would go over a bunch of different angles. They looked at
her spouse, Andrew Pryne, who had spoken with her on the night that
she was last confirmed to be alive. They looked at another neighbor of hers
named David Lang, who had apparently joked about killing her and had a habit
of drunkenly wandering into other people's apartments in the middle of the night. But
they couldn't find any definitive evidence pointing to anyone. But the strangest angle occurred
a few years later, when Karen's death was somehow linked to the jfk assassination
because she died only a few days after the assassination took place, and there
was a report of an anonymous woman from California who called an operator and accurately
predicted that the president was going to be killed in a number of minutes.
And of course her prediction turned out to be true because JFKA was assassinated in
Dallas right around that time period, and years later, a conspiracy theories pushed
forward the idea that Karen cups in it was the anonymous choler and that her
father had because he had once been acquainted with Jack Ruby in Chicago many years
earlier. Had I learned about the assassination, told Karen about it, and
when she tried to earn the authorities, they had her murdered in order to
silence her. But of course her family completely denounced this idea and thought it
was a ridiculous conspiracy theory. But regardless of Karen's death has still remained unsolved
sixty years later, and regardless of whether or not it was connected to the
JFK assassination, we have no idea who was responsible for her death. So
anyway, even though Karen's death has attentative connection to the Kennedy assassination, the
assassination is not actually the main subject of this episode. If you go online
and delve into the conspiracy theories, you'll find many lists of so called mystery
deaths, as dozens of people connected to the assassination supposedly died under mysterious circumstances
in the ensuing years. You'll often see Karen Cups in its name at the
top of these lists because she died only six days after JFK was killed.
So, aside from Lee Harvey Oswald, you can infer that Karen was the
first loose end in this conspiracy which needed to be tied up. Well,
I have to say that the word thin does not even begin to describe the
connection between Karen and the Kennedy assassination. In fact, I'd say the word
emaciated would even be too generous. So let's try to sum up this whole
so called conspiracy. Earth cupson it and Jack Ruby had supposedly been acquaintances in
Chicago sometime during the nineteen forties. But even though Ruby moved to Dallas in
nineteen forty seven, and there's no indication that he stayed in touch with Cup
at all during the next sixteen years, Ruby decided to tell him about his
key role in one of the biggest conspiracies of all time. How exactly would
that conversation go? Hey, Cup, long time no see. By the
way, the President of the United States is going to be assassinated soon,
and I'm in charge of assassinating the assassin before he can talk. And then,
instead of telling the authorities about this, Kupp decides to tell his daughter
Karen, who becomes very perturbed. But instead of warning someone who actually has
the power to prevent the assassination from happening, Karen decides to travel over fifty
miles from her home in West Hollywood to Oxnard in order to call some random
switchboard operator about ten to twenty minutes before the fsassination is supposed to occur.
The person responsible somehow finds out about this and decides to murder Karen in order
to convince her father to stay quiet instead of, you know, killing Cup,
the guy who spilled the beans to begin with. Kind of odd that
these conspirators supposedly killed over one hundred people to cover their tracks but never went
after the guy, who was a highly respected calumnist and TV personality had had
the power to potentially blow the lid off the whole thing. That's the part
that doesn't make any sense. If you're going to go after someone, why
his daughter? How would you even know that she was aware of this information?
But no one close to her could tell you that she knew it.
I mean, after the President's killed, after Karen's killed, If I knew
something, don't you think I'd say like something, Yeah, I had heard
rumbling of that. I didn't really think anything was going to be true.
I didn't know he was going to get killed, but I knew that Ruby
didn't like him. Whatever. I mean, no one could link Karen to
this. No one can link her dad to this. And again, like
we said on the last episode, if I get word that all of a
sudden, someone of high power is going to be executed, the last person
I think I'm going to confide in is my daughter, much less my daughter
who's struggling, Like did he tell his wife? Like that's who? I
might tell my husband that information, or I might tell another high end business
associate who's also involved with the mafia or people in the circle, But I'm
not going to go to my daughter. It just seems like a really big
stretch. And like you said, Robin, how many people are we willing
to take out but not the individuals that supposedly had the most information the way
you just laid it out, Robin, it's like, well you put it
that way, it just seems that this is so incredibly unlikely, Like all
of these ridiculous things would have to be in alignment, like this loose connection
to Jack Ruby from fifteen years ago, and then somehow Ruby's going to tell
him all about it. Like it is just so far reaching that we would
think that all of these things would have to come into alignment for Karen to
be the person that did the calling. And we also have to consider Karen's
state of mind. Karen could barely get through a dinner properly without seeming really
off, But yet we're going to think that she's cognizant enough to plan ahead
to drive fifty miles away to Oxnard. The logistics don't make sense because she
seems to be getting real time updates from an individual that allows her to change
the time she was on Pacific time. So she originally said the President's going
to die at like ten ten, which would be twelve Central time in Dallas,
but then she changes it to ten thirty, which would have been twelve
thirty in Dallas, which is when Kennedy was actually killed. Yeah, so
I just have a hard time believing that somehow Karen's going to go all that
way and she doesn't have a cell phone, there is no internet, so
how would these real time updates be coming into her, Like who would be
feeding her that information? Just seems incredibly unlikely. Yeah, Like researching the
JFK assassination, you're going to find all these mystery death lists where they say,
oh, these hundred of people were killed because they knew something about the
Kennedy assassination. But they're the most tentative connections. Like I remember reading one
where the assistant prosecutor at Jack Ruby's trial died of a heart attack shortly after
the trial took place. So of course he had to be murdered because he
knew too much. But it turns out, oh, he was like a
fifty five year old man who was obese and a heavy smoker and a heavy
drinker, So of course he's going to die of a heart attack. There's
nothing mysterious about it. It's not a conspiracy, sort of like with King
Tut's tomb, right, Like so many of the different things that were like
linked to a curse, so many of the deaths, Like some of them
you might like stop him, pause and go, oh, that's kind of
weird, But a lot of them, it's like they died like twenty years
later, and it's like that, are we still connecting this to King Tut's
tomb. The person who first attempted to link the Cups in It family to
the Kennedy assassination was conspiracy theorist Penn Jones, even though the real link is
that Cup apparently knew Jack Ruby two decades before the assassination took place. I
mean, I'm sure Ruby knew a lot of people throughout his life, but
that doesn't mean he's going to tell all of them that he's involved in a
plot to kill the president. In his book Forgive My Grief, Jones wrote
that Karen made her anonymous phone call days before the assassination, when the records
clearly show the call happened the very same morning. So that's already a major
red flag about his research skills. Now, I will admit that I do
find the whole story about the anonymous female caller who predicted Kennedy's death to be
very intriguing. I'm pretty sure the incident did happen, and the switchboard operators
were telling the truth about what they heard. What it seems like everybody's initial
impression was that the caller was nothing more than a mentally disturbed woman who probably
had no actual knowledge of the assassination, and it was just a bizarre coincidence
that she made a wild prediction which somehow came true. But I just don't
see how any reasonable person could possibly believe the caller was Karen Cup's in it,
especially since both operators seemed certain it was a middle aged woman. Oxnard
is over fifty miles away from Karen's apartment in West Hollywood, and I just
don't see why she would travel that distance and wait until the last minute to
warn anybody about what was going to happen, not to mention that she would
have to travel fifty miles back to West Hollywood before making another two hour drive
to Palm Springs later that night with Andrew Prine and two other friends. Yes,
Prine said that Karen was pretty upset about the assassination, but so was
the majority of the country. There's a difference between being upset because the president
was murdered and being upset because you knew about it beforehand and were unable to
prevent it. So logically, I think we can completely close the book on
Karen's death being connected to the Kennedy assassination and explore the case from other an
well, I mean, I remember being a teenager and be enough that Heath
Leder died, you know, and it's like you know, and then you
have like Brittany Murphy and the like. I mean, like people feel like
they know these celebrities and John F. Kennedy was he was a celebrity and
the president. I mean, so, so that is not abnormal to me
that she was so sad, And that's one of those things just like for
us, it's where were you on nine to eleven? You ask our parents
where were you when JFK was killed? And that was a defining moment in
people's life, just like nine to eleven, two thousand and one, when
we wake up and we go like, oh my god, our world's forever
changed and our country's forever changed because of this, this devastating attack, and
the person who represents your country was killed that day on when JFK was assassinated.
He was a beloved human who was supposed to make these amazing promises come
true, and he brought with it this fresh attitude right that really probably would
have changed history. And he was murdered. So I don't think saying someone
was super upset would indicate anything other than she was super upset that JFK had
been killed. It's I don't know. This is just a very bizarre stretch
when you start talking about all of the elements that have to line up.
The only thing that I think is beyond crazy amazing is this call where the
girl, like you said, predicts the time he's going to die. He's
going to die at twelve ten when his motorcade passes a certain spot. Well,
then she's talking to someone on the phone or dialing someone on the phone
and says, wait a minute, there's been a delay. I'm actually going
to predict another time now. And both those times should have been accurate had
everything actually followed through. So unless those call operators are just making that up,
which that would be wild as well, someone knew something. Do we
know in the sixties did you keep these kinds of calls? Law Ondoor recorded,
How did we get this information just their word, I think, just
their word. Like I'm sure there was a phone record of that a call
actually took place, but they were able to determine that it was that it
originated from Oxnard, but I'm not sure they would have recorded calls back in
nineteen sixty three, So there really isn't a recording in existence of this woman's
voice. But I can tell you. I mentioned in our last episode that
I went to the True Crime Podcast Festival in Dallas and decided to pay a
visit to the JFK Museum. And while I was there, I actually bought
a book called Case Closed, written by a journalist named Gerald Posner, and
it pretty there's a very effective job at debunking all the conspiracies surrounding the JFK
assassination. So controversial opinion here. I now believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted
alone and there was no conspiracy. And that's why I do not believe at
all that Jack Ruby or Earth Cups and It or Karen Cups and IT were
had any involvement in JFK's assassination in this conspiracy, Robin, get ready for
hate mail. I'm sure I will, yes, Oh my gosh, no,
it is really interesting when you look at that case specifically. I mean,
anytime you start going down a rabbit hole. Like Man, I've watched
the History Channel so many times and watched on anything anything, I walk away
convinced every dime I ended show. I'm like, Holy held the World's end
In whoa Aliens Live among Us? I mean, these people can link some
pretty amazing things to to something you didn't really think about, to make it
quite believable. And I do think, like you guys were saying, there
are instances where scenarios occur and it happens to be this kind of random luck,
bad luck, whatever's going on, where items seem to be linked and
they just simply aren't. They're correlated with something, They're slightly related, but
we strapplate quite a bit from it. Karen's not related to the JFK murder.
I just there's there's no way, No, she definitely isn't. And
I don't know. I'm I'm lean like sixty percent towards there was no conspiracy.
I think that certain things become almost part of the public consciousness movies like
JFK. It becomes like this is the real thing. It's sort of how
Milton's Paradise Lost or Dante's Divine Comedy like the Infernal Part become like how we're
informed of Hell when really their works of fiction, But people believe that hell
is exactly how it was described in those books, if you're a believer in
such things. So I think that there are forms of art that can kind
of seep into the public consciousness and make us believe that this is absolutely true.
And you get really famous corners who are working on the case, lots
of really like didn't like doctor Henry Lee work on who else Zero Waxed worked
on it? Yeah, And so you get people like that, and we
trust these individuals. They are the very top of their game and they are
so highly respected, and so I think it is really easy for a lot
of us to go, well, if they're saying that that's the way that
happened, or have they believe that there was a conspiracy, then I'm going
to trust in what they're saying, because all of these other people have a
vested interest aka like you know, the government in saying that it didn't happen.
And I think there can be many government conspiracies, and the government can
act against politicians. But I just don't necessarily think that that is the case
with Jfki. Okay, I don't want to burst anyone's bubble, but have
you guys ever watched like, okay, so these let's say, a true
crime show, or when you see these really well respected people sitting around the
table talking about, quote who killed Brittany Murphy or whatever. When you see
these people, do you think there's any potential that, just like an expert
witness at a trial who's getting paid to testify on some behalf right, that
they'll say whatever scripted for them for celebrityism and things like that, because,
believe it or not, I've quote recorded a reality television thing and there's nothing
real about it. Like I'm reading facts from a script and going, I
hope this is true, you know, like I'll say it because you're going
to pay me for it. But I often wonder when I watch these amazingly
renowned people, I'm like, m at some point, have they gone to
a place where they get paid to say whatever the show wants them to say.
I wonder that with people like you know, Joe Rogan and stuff,
where he has an incredibly popular podcast, but he really pushes things, and
I often wonder does he actually believe this or does he just do this for
the money, for the listens, for the ads. And a lot of
the information is quite incendiary and very controversial, but you push that envelope.
You people like that, and like Alex Jones, and I think you can
have the same thing with expert witnesses because it's sort of like whatever's going to
get you the most attention, and so I think the people are fallible.
We can't always trust everybody just because they have the credentials. They are human
beings at the end of the day. I feel like it's so easy to
get kind of conned into that as a as a professional and someone who says
like whoa, I keep getting these big paychecks and I keep getting featured on
these shows, and if I'll do these more controversial cases and I'll say inflammatory
things or I'll kind of make these wild statements, I'll kind of become known
as that expert. And I don't know, It's always interesting to me because
I literally every show I watch, I will walk away going, WHOA,
they convinced me that that is a possibility. And then I'll watch a show
that does a one eighty on that idea and it completely slams it in the
face. And I believe that one until I rewatch the other one, do
you, So it's like, yeah, that certainly applies with JFK because you'll
find both pro and anti consery documentaries and books about it. So it all
depends on much you read, interpret and what I read last, Like,
just show me what I read last, because it's fascinating, you know,
And they do such a convicted testimony of what they believed happen, and they
show you such powerful correlations and related elements that make your mind go, well,
it is possible, and now it starts to become more probable the longer
I listened to it. It's just very interesting. That was my sorry that
it's my divergent conversation. It's a good point because I think that correlations and
tenuous connections, if we hear enough of them, we start to believe that,
of course these are related and of course there's something meaningful here, because
our human brains are always looking for that connection. So I think that is
really easy to be blindsided by individuals who may have invested interest in framing a
certain narrative we look at things like what was that documentary Robin on John Benet,
and it was like very slanted towards like her brother killed her yea,
And yes, people have been very critical of the way that they've framed everything,
especially looking back years later, the position that they took and how firm
they were in their belief. And there was a lawsuit over that too from
the Ramsey family, so a lot of people have thought, well, maybe
this conclusion wasn't as believable as they tried to paint it out to be.
So really, when you eliminate the JFKA conspiracy theories, this is a case
which showcases an awful lot of warning signs that the victim either died by suicide
or accidentally. On our last episode, we discussed the odd rambling handwritten notes
found in Karen's apartment, and I think this particular sentence is pretty telling.
Quote my figures fat and will never be the way my mother wants it.
Even though Karen's father was by all accounts a very well liked and well respected
man, and Karen seemed to have a good relationship with them, the same
could not be said about her mother, Essie Cups. In it, she
was known for being a loud, obnoxious, and foul mouthed woman, and
ever since Karen was a child, Essie gave off the impression of being a
stage mum who wanted her daughter to become a big star. Essie pushed Karen
to break into acting, but the problem is that she wasn't overly talented.
That's not to say Karen was a bad actress per se, but she had
a rather limited range and nothing about her really stood out. Because she came
for an influential family, Karen was able to get a lot of meetings with
prominent people both on Broadway and in Hollywood, but she rarely ever got substandard
roles. Even though she was getting some parts on television, her acting career
wasn't exactly setting the world on fire, and it was clear that she was
feeling immense pressure to live up to her mother's wishes. Like those notes described,
Essie was obsessed with her daughter's weight and introduced her to crash dieting and
diet pills at age thirteen. It was clear that Karen never thought her weight
or looks were good enough, and at her mother's encouragement, she even got
some plastic surgery on her chin, nose, ears, and eyes. When
you look at the circumstances, it's easy to see how Karen would end up
using diet pills and other prescription drugs. That is so heartbreaking. I think
about my baby girl and my bonus babies and thinking about if my world centered
around them needing to be something so I could feel like I'm something and pressuring
them to say I don't know, I'm just the exact opposite. Like Ray
comes to me and says like I feel embarrassed that I have a gap in
my teeth because of my braces, or I feel like I'm not pretty,
or I'm too skinny, or I'm too tall or these kinds of things.
I'm like the opposite where I'm like, You're perfect, You're so great,
right, Like I mean to know that so many people have family members who
are the reason they so questioned themselves, they so hate who they are.
And for Karen, I don't even know that she really had this quote desire
to chase this dream. It's like she is one of these child stars who's
being crafted into you will do this path. I need you to be something
in this realm so that we matter right and that we're important. And just
like many many people you'll see in the industry, you go, oh,
their fathers, who, Oh, they're uncles who okay, because they're not
the most talented. They're not someone who may you believe their character or cry
and laugh in these kinds of things. But there's somebody it's a privilege.
It's the name that gets thrown around where someone of immense talent who doesn't have
that foothold may never get an audition. So I feel sad for Karen and
her mother here because you can tell her mother wasn't in a happy space,
or she would be celebrating the woman and the little girl that Karen was and
is, and whoever she was would have been enough. And for Karen,
she needed that. You could tell she desperately needed that, and that means
something was lacking for her mom too, that her mom was likely struggling with
similar demons that Karen was dealing with. So man, just sad, just
very very sad for both women. I think Karen's mom is what we would
call today an almond mom, right because she's somebody that doesn't understand how damaging
her behavior can be on her daughter. And Karen will be what we would
call today a NEPO baby. And I don't mean that in like a derogatory
way, just that the fact that her parents, and you know, her
father's name, and the influence that they had opened a lot of doors for
Karen. But we also have to wonder how much of that did Karen really
truly want to do, and how much was her mother's influence or what her
mother believed that she should be doing, Because when you're constantly rustling with your
weight and you're trying to fit into a certain size, like, I know
what it's like. I remember in my late teens early twenties I did modeling.
It. I remember what it felt like walking into the agency, having
the modeling agent be like, you look fat, let me measure your hips,
and then measuring my hips and they're thirty three inches, not even close.
They're well within the normal realm of what models hips should be. But
yet you get a complex over time when somebody's constantly telling you that, like
you shouldn't eat, that you shouldn't do that. If you're a sensitive person,
you can internalize that, even more so when it's your mother. So
I think that at this point, what Karen's hopes and dreams are come conflated
with what her mother's hopes and dreams are, and what Karen's standard of beauty
is has become her mother's standard of beauty that she seems to pushed upon her.
And I think Ashley makes a great point that her mother is clearly dealing
with a lot and she seems to be projecting it onto her daughter. And
who knows what the relationship she had with her mother was like. And I
mean it, it's just really really sad, like you said, for both
women. Okay, so not okay, So Jules, you're talking about your
Yeah, I'm not laughing at your hips getting measured, but I'm laughing because
when you said that, I went, oh my god. I was in
college, walking across campus and I remember I had tried to do like modeling
before, tried to do like fun things for a fashion place by my home.
But I've never been tiny. I've always had like, you know,
a little bit of a bigger frame. And I was on college campus and
his man called me over to one of his little tables at the green and
he said, you are so beautiful, and I said, oh, thank
you. You know, walking with my nerd backpack on, and he said,
I really want you to come try to model for me. He's like,
you would be the greatest plus size model. And I was like,
oh, oh okay, and I okay, plus size models are stunning,
first of all, it's like one of my favorite things. But I'm not
a big girl. I'm not a small girl, but I'm not a big
girl. And he said what we could do is we would pin the clothes
to you because you're a bigger person, but you're not quite the right size
to be a plus size model, but you'd make a great plus size model.
And I just remember, like I thought in that moment, I was
like do I cry or laugh, hate myself, or just like think this
guy's an absolute idiot. And thank god I was in a space where like
I was such a nerd that I just didn't care. So I started laughing
and I was like, I think I'm gonna pass and I walked up.
But man, I think about that still. I mean, at thirty nine
years old, I think about this time when someone's like, you'd be a
great plus size model, and here I am a size what ten, you
know, and I'm going, yeah, that's not okay. So the pressure
they put on us now much less back in the sixties, where they're showing
you what a beautiful woman looks like, you know, and I think we
get skinny. Actually the beauty gets SKINNI or the older we're getting. And
I'm grateful that now they're starting to show real women in ads. But for
Karen, Karen would have been in a situation where she's going, not only
are the is the industry abusing me. My mom is maybe subconsciously or not
consciously, but abusing me and telling me that I'm not enough. I don't
think she wanted anything to do with this industry. I really don't. I'm
so sorry that happened to you, Ash, that's awful. But honestly,
at the time, in the two tens, if you were above a size
six, you were considered to be plus sized, and they would be like,
oh, we'll just shoot it that way. Now plus size now it's
a lot more open and inclusive, Like thank you Rihanna from really opening things
up to everybody and making fashion reflective of the population, not just of a
size two. But I remember, like when I used to do it,
that was like, you know, mid two thousands, and it would be
like, if you're not a size two, if you're fitting a size four,
then you're doing life style modeling, so you couldn't do really runway.
Now it's a lot more flexible, but they would say if you're over size
six, you're plus size, which is insanity. Like we know that that
isn't true, but that was the toxic environment of the modeling agencies at the
time. And this guy just sounds like he just really was creeping on you.
You'd be a perfect plus size model, Like, and I always wonder
about dudes on a campus walking up, I just want to take your picture,
Like, oh, it was like Rodney alcohola but but no, that's
what I thought of the dating game. Yes, absolutely, now it's absolutely
wild. I mean, look at our cartoon of the three of us,
and look how skinny my neck is that our artist did. Clearly, I'm
not a plus size mom. You're a beautiful, beautiful woman. I would
love to be a I wouldn't care. I wouldn't care. I just I
teach people that my next two skinny on my picture. So shortly before her
death, we have an account of Karen showing up at a dinner party held
by her friends Mark and Marshaddard, who said she was clearly under the influence
of something. Karen also shared a story about finding an abandoned baby on her
doorstep, which turned out to be false. As odd as that story might
sound, it's not hard to imagine, like we talked about in Part one,
why Karen dreamed it up. Remember, just four months earlier, Karen
had traveled to Mexico to get an illegal abortion, and you can understand how
she might have felt guilt ridden over this and perhaps concocted a fantasy story or
dream about rescuing an abandoned baby as her way of dealing with the situation.
It makes twisted sense that she would tell the story to Andrew Pryne, the
father of her child, and the goddards who took her to Tijuana and paid
for her abortion. And of course, after Karen's death, there was a
shocking revelation that she'd constructed threatening notes and sent them both to Andrew and herself.
So she clearly couldn't deal with the fact that he wanted to date other
women and wouldn't have an exclusive relationship with her. It seems like she was
treated like a object by him, though that she he was his person who
really needed someone to want her, to love her, to value her,
and it doesn't sound like she was shy about expressing her feelings towards him.
She gets pregnant with his child, and honestly, that feeling would be like,
oh my god, he loves me. He thinks I'm beautiful, he
thinks I'm talented, and I'm safe with him, and now we're going to
start this family with a baby. And then he says, Hey, Karen,
I wanted nothing to do with this as a long term, serious relationship.
I do not want a family with you. I do not want to
be exclusive with you. I just cannot imagine what that would feel like,
and to be already dealing with other issues as well. So he just sounds
like he used her when she was convenient he was there. So it's almost
like Karen is caught up in this kind of constructed dream of hers that she
has already written what their story looks like. Andrew had a very different view
of what they were and who they were going to be, and that's really
hard to rectify. That is hard to mentally deal with for anyone, much
less again, Karen has many, many, many pokers in the fire.
Of her mental health right now. It's not just the relationship with Andrew,
but it is not helping that she has that kind of unhealthy, toxic dynamic
with him where she thinks it's genuine and she wants more and he doesn't,
and she's literally taking prescription meth anthetamine amongst other you know, anthetamines that she's
taking, and a myriad of other drugs. Therese were only three that we
listed. There was like thirteen. So somebody who already has fragile mental health,
I don't think taking meth is going to help the situation. So I
think Karen was dealing with a lot of different things, and I think it's
really easy to judge somebody if they're doing something that would be akin to stalking.
But I do think given the situation, I can completely understand if she
was having like almost a mental break or a psychotic episode, because having to
go and have this illegal abortion would be incredibly traumatic, crossing the border,
going with your friends. The man that made you pregnant in the first place
has basically abandoned you, and then when you come back, he wants to
see other people, and so you're left to grapple with the loss of this
baby that you may or may not have wanted. Either way, it's difficult.
And then this man has just left you. So I can see how
she's dealing with very complex emotions and it could cause very troubling behaviors when coupled
with methamphetamine and all these other drugs. Karen was definitely going through a lot
of personal turmoil at this time. But in the end, this case pretty
much wound up going against the norm for this type of investigation. We've covered
many cases on a respective podcast where the police were quick to write off a
victim's death as accidental or suicide, while their friends and family kept insisting it
was foul play. But here Karen's friends seemed ready to accept that she took
her own life or accidentally overdosed. Then the coroner discovered the broken highoid bone
in her throat and the whole thing turned into a murder investigation. I will
say that, in spite of Karen's many personal problems, I had my doubts
this was suicide because I'm not sure what the method might have been. Since
Karen had a lot of different drugs in her medicine cabinet, and some of
their bottles were empty, you can easily assume that she swallowed a bunch of
pills to take her own life. If that was the case, I have
a feeling that she would have vomited something up. But nothing was found at
the scene, and I'm not sure if any traces of drugs were found in
Karen's system. I mentioned this earlier, I think in episode one. But
the reality is is that if she were trying to complete suicide and that highoid
bone is going to be broken, if you had found something around her neck,
a ligature, which still could have been homicide, right, I would
see them quickly saying, oh, look, she tried to hang herself or
she you know, she was trying to succeed herself. But there wasn't There
was nothing there. And that bone, while it's fragile and it'll break,
you've got to have the right pressure and the right angle to have that break.
And as as a suicide victim, as someone who takes their own life,
I just don't see how that would happen. I don't think you would
fall and hit it. I don't think that that would occur. It seemed
like she was entertaining someone that she was existing in a normal realm when she
was killed. Because there's coffee brood, it's sitting on the floor. There's
a bunch of cigarettes sitting there. She has a coffee pot on the floor
with her. There's specs of blood on the couch. She was an entertainer
and she needed like what Like I've said over and over again, she needed
people there. I just don't see her going away. She was craving someone
to save her and no one did. You want to know how this hide
bone could be broken? I'm the boat to tell you James Elroy's theory.
Well, let's do it. Come on, James. One person who seems
convinced that there was no foul play in Karen's case is noted author James Elroy,
who has written such popular crime fiction novels as La Confidential and The Black
Dahlia. In his book Crime Wave, Elroy devoted an entire chapter to the
Karen cups in a case and made some interesting discoveries in his research. Elroy
seemed intrigued by the fact that a book was found in Karen's apartment which was
open to a particular page which stated that one should dance in the nude in
order to free their inhibitions. Elroy theorized that perhaps the reason Karen's body was
found in the manner it was because she decided to perform some nude dancing in
the apartment that night, but possibly due to the fact that she was on
drugs at the time. She slipped, fell and hit her throat on something
before landing face first on the couch. If Karen wasn't strangled, then this
could explain the broken hyoid bone in her throat. I don't know, I
don't know. I don't know. I feel like if you feel that bone
like I mean, you can feel it, it's pretty flexible. It moves
around it's own was like someone has to hold pressure and press it down for
that to break. I just don't think that someone's gonna slip and fall and
break just that bone. Nothing else, not her arm, not her leg,
not her shoulder, not her you know, clavical nothing, just that
bone. I don't buy it. I think someone wanted Karen sexually and didn't
get it. They were frustrated with her erratic behavior, They were in a
fuss with her. They wanted to hurt someone, and she was vulnerable.
I could see Karen just being such a perfect target for someone so to sexually
abuse her or to emotionally abuse her and then get what they want out of
her. So I don't buy it. I think James L. Roy is
a wild man, crazy person. And don't you think that if she had
broken the bone and somehow she wasn't able to get oxygen, wouldn't she be
like clutching her throat or something. Yeah? And where's the blood coming from?
Like there respects of blood all over the count from what James Alroy is
a great fiction writer, But if you put this scene in one of his
novels, I don't think anyone would believe it. No, And James,
I'm sorry, I don't know you, so you're probably a fabulous human.
I just this theory. I don't agree with you. Ever seen a La
Confidential of the movie basically it was so good good Yeah, and Black Daddy
is fabulous. I think I've actually read your book. James, just disagree
with this one. So the biggest wild card in this case is the competency
of the coroner, doctor Harold Kate. Doctor Kade was known for being an
alcoholic with a history of ratic behavior, so there's been some speculation that he
either misdiagnosed the broken hioid bone and came to the incorrect conclusion of homicide,
or even worse, actually broke the hioid bone himself during the autopsy. Well.
Performing another autopsy shortly after Karen's death, Kate allegedly told a colleague quote,
at least I didn't break the hied bone on this one. To give
you an idea of Kate's credibility. In nineteen sixty six, there were no
less than three cases in which deceased victims were exhumed because the findings on Cade's
original autopsies were challenged. In fact, a couple of innocent people actually wound
up being wrongfully convicted of murder because of these errors. So Cade was ultimately
forced to resign and wound up facing charges of gross negligence. This means it's
not implausible that Cade was completely out to lunch on this case. I don't
think, yeah exactly. I think that we have this reality that the you
know you're you're talking about, even where he's saying there's a hand, a
certain hand being used, how do we know that. I mean, when
you talk about these medical examiners, specifically in the sixties, I just think
that there is a problem when you say, Okay, we're going to pin
everything on what the autopsies said, and so you know doctor Cade being an
alcoholic, so be it. I don't think that is what the crux of
saying he's not a great doctor would be. It's a stressful profession, Dennis
doctors. They all struggle with addictions. So not the biggest thing. But
this is just like, who's our malick? Doctor malick doctor? Yeah,
doctor Gay is better than thank you. I was just about to say,
at least he's a little bit better than that. However, there is a
problem when you start to say that these medical examiners, these coroners, that
they are making these conclusions, and then you start to see questions in their
future analysis of death, or you start to see a historical review of what
they said and they're wrong in certain cases. Now, all of a sudden,
everything they've said becomes a question mark. Doesn't mean they were wrong,
but it definitely means I struggle do we trust it a thousand percent? And
very rarely do I actually give one hundred percent confidence to any kind of medical
report. Because there's so much pressure. You don't know how many cases they're
dealing with at the time. You don't know what information they've been given at
the time, you don't know who has asked for the information, So they're
in a very precarious situation. You should just given their career much less.
Doctor Kage struggling with different kind of issues as well. There's an element of
subjectivity too, And when you've got somebody saying something like, oh, was
a left handed perpetrator, you can understand that with certain things like knife wounds,
when they'll talk about you know, there's a certain pressure how something could
be applied, or when somebody has sustained a bunch of different wounds that they
believed that the perpetrator was right handed or left handed, and that type of
a thing. But with the hihoid bone, there's no finger bruising on her
neck that we are aware of that would like lead this corner to leave this
medical examiner to believe this. So it just feels like he just pulled it
out of thin air and it doesn't feel very credible. And then when we
have him talking to a colleague, at least I didn't break the hioid bone
on this one. A month after Karen's autopsy, it's like, well,
are you referring to Karen's keys or is this another individual that you've exactly that
you broke their highoid bone. And then all those other exhimations, those are
just the cases where family members likely pursued this with law enforcement and then the
bodies were exhoomed. Who knows how many countless other cases that he messed up.
Yeah, it's always scared to be when we find out about wrongful condictions
just because some medical examiner misinterpreted the evidence and testified about it at an open
court. And then when you find out that they were wrong and that this
person was innocent, then, like Ashley said, you wind up questioning every
single case this person has worked on. And I can see why there would
be some question about whether his ruling in Karen's case was the correct one.
Now, in spite of James Elroy's theories, police still considered Karen's death to
be an unsolved murder. I do think that Elroy's explanation that Karen fell over
and crushed her throat on something while dancing in the nude is a bit of
a stretch. I mean, I do think it's possible that Karen did accidentally
fall over and maybe broke or highoid bone, but not because she was down.
There was a towel found on the floor in Karen's bathroom, which seemed
to suggest she showered shortly before she died. Since her bathrobe was draped over
a chair, it's possible Karen exited the bathroom after showering, but something happened
before she had a chance to put the robe on. If Karen was high
on drugs, she simply might have tripped or passed out, which caused her
to land the wrong way and to damage her throat. The other explanation,
of course, is that Karen's death was an accidental overdose and that doctor Kade
accidentally broke her high oid bone himself during the autopsy. In order to cover
up his mistake, Kade ruled that Karen was strangled to death and never bothered
to explore other possible explanations which didn't involve murder. This might be the reason
we don't know specific details. Okay to play Devil's advocate, though, If
doctor Kade's the one who broke her highoid bone, he's the only one doing
the autopsy, so unless she gets exhumed later, like what does anyone else
know? So, I mean I've thought about that four two So like people
that I've cared about that an autopsy's been done, I'm like, well,
I mean, unless we asked for it to be done again, how do
I know that that's even true? Right? You trust that what they say
is accurate. So the fact that he would lie and say the highoid bone
is broken to cover his own rear end, what's the benefit of that.
I mean, I definitely think he couldn't. Don't don't doubt what I'm saying.
I think he definitely could have. But what does that benefit unless he's
concerned that there could be a second autopsy performed or she could be exhumed down
the road, I feel like we still haven't ever heard was a sexual assault
exam performed or was there any sign of any kind of damage to her body
as regard to an assault, because there isn't information. There's almost like all
we know is that highoid bone and that's it. There's nothing else detailed in
her autopsy, which is odd to me, and that they were left handed
right right right, Like we know that, yeah, since you imagine the
sexual assault that he is surprising that we don't really have any evidence either way,
Like, they've never said anything to indicate she was sexually assaulted, which
may be due to the decomposition, maybe they were unable to tell. But
you would think that there would be something definitive to point to if she had
even consensual sex or was assaulted prior to her death. So it is kind
of surprising that they never really came to a conclusion on that one. I
gotta say, when I first started delving into this case, my initial instinct
was that there was no foul play and this was nothing more than an overdose
or a tragic accident, which became a homicide investigation because of an incompetent coroner.
However, there are still some issues which bother me, specifically the fact
that when Edward Ruben and Robert Hathaway left Karen's apartment that night, they were
certain that they locked the door behind them, but when the Goddards showed up
three days later, the door was unlocked. Now, this might be a
simple case of Ruben and Halthaway misremembering things or not locking the door as thoroughly
as they thought, but if what they said is true, then this suggests
that someone else entered Karen's apartment after they left, and since there were no
signs of forest entry, Karen might have opened the door and let the person
inside herself. The lockdoor detail is one of the reasons I'm inclined to think
that either Reuben or Hathaway had nothing to do with Karen's death, because if
they just told the police that they left the door unlocked, then it's easier
to believe that another suspect could have entered the apartment and killed her. Now,
both men claimed that they left because Karen kept falling asleep on the couch
and went into her bedroom. This is why they decided to turn down the
volume on the television, and since the TV was still running at a low
volume when Karen's body was discovered three days later, it was probably never turned
off. I have a feeling that Karen was probably sleeping in the bedroom until
Andrew Prime woke her up when he called to check in on her at midnight.
Now that she was awake, Karen might have been compelled to go take
a shower, and was shortly after this when she unlocked the front door.
It seems unlikely that Karen would have answered the door in the nude, but
she may have been dressed her her bathrobe. Would she open the door and
let someone inside? Events could have transpired which led to Karen removing her robe
or having it forcibly removed by the person who ultimately strangled her to death.
Due to the state of decomposition our body, I don't think they were able
to determine if Karen was sexually assaulted, but that may have been a motive
for her murder. But who could the perpetrator have been. It's bizarre because
when you said that she had all these people into her house because she had
this great television, and yet she still might have been living in this kind
of uttered disarray because of her mental health. It is very interesting. Ruben
and Hathaway are there. If it had just been Reuben, if it had
just been Hathaway, it would be incredibly suspicious. But both men say,
yeah, she was our friend. We all knew each other, and she
kept falling asleep. We actually kept watching TV when she went to bed,
and then we slipped out. I mean, that's a very plausible story.
Andrew called and checks on her later, also a very probable story. And
then you go, now, who came by at such a late hour or
early in the morning. I'm still stuck on that coffee. There was a
cup of coffee brood, there was a pot of coffee on the floor.
It almost seems to me like she woke up the next morning and she's trying
to get around for the day, and then someone comes by. Then somebody
calls her. Then somebody knocks on the door, and like we keep saying,
I think she would have answered for anyone she knew because she was lonely.
She didn't feel like she was loved by her family, she didn't feel
like she was loved by the industry, she didn't feel like she was loved
by Andrew. And yet she was always around people, even when she was
sick, when she's struggling with her eating disorder, she's at a dinner party,
when she's overwhelmed by this phantom baby that's left. She's at a dinner
party with her friends. She's answering the phone, hoping Andrew will want a
relationship with her. So oh, I think anyone could have knocked on that
door, knowing she was vulnerable and taken advantage of her. Also important to
point out about doctor Kade. He's a coroner, and I think it's important
to remind everybody that coroners are elected officials, and in certain jurisdictions you can
have a coroner who has no experience whatsoever. They're just a reputable person that
gets appointed very little training. Medical examiners are typically the ones who have this
significant medical training. Now, you can be a doctor and not trained to
do thorough autopsies and still be so reputable you get elected as a coroner.
So that's also anytime I hear a coroner being personally a hair drestion. In
some places too, you don't have to be a doctor. You could be
a you could be a high school dropout. I have seen jurisdictions. I
remember working in case one time with a sheriff's department. You're right, Jewels,
and I literally reading about this man and it's like, okay, here's
the corner and I'm reading. I'm reading, and I'm like, corner medical
examiner. Remember the moment I sat there, I said, those are so
radically different, and I look this guy up. He literally never finished high
school, which doesn't mean anything, but he has no he was a fire
like a fire rescue volunteer, no medical training and legitimately had done like two
thousand autopsies, and I'm going with what training, Like, they didn't send
him to training, they elected him. And it's a very small town.
And I remember thinking, like, God, bless, like this man is
used in multiple areas to help with death investigations and he's not at all trained
for it. So that's also to doctor Cave's disadvantage when we look at the
evidence. We do know is that maybe he's an amazing doctor. But you
could be a pediatrician or a dermatologist, and you would yourself say, I
have no business looking at a death investigation, you know, but if you
were appointed and you got that role, you would prefer warm the job,
whether you have the training or not. I called Katee a medical examiner,
so I like confused and conflated the two job titles because he a doctor in
front of his name. That was just like an assumption on my part.
But it is very likely you could be any type of doctor. We don't
even know if he was a medical doctor. Yeah, I could be a
dentist. I mean, like you know, and I could see a dentist
me like, I'm damn good with teeth. But God only knows if it's
not an odontologist. JUNI like, it's not done. You don't want to
go there? Yeah, I'm not back. I always chease, Like when
someone comes in the shop, they're like, oh my god, run,
are you a doctor in art? And I'm like murder and they go oh,
And I'm like, not that kind of doctor, you know, Like
I always chase PhD not m D. Like. Well, for years,
there was a lot of suspicion about Andrew Prine, with the potential motive being
that he snapped and killed Karen once he found out she'd been sending him the
threatening notes. However, we know Andrew was at his apartment at midnight when
he phoned Karen, and doctor Kade believe she was killed at a round twelve
thirty am, though given his serious credibility issues, I can't even be sure
if that time of death is even close to accurate. But if Karen was
killed at twelve thirty, then this means Andrew would have had to rush over
to her apartment and murder her within a half hour before returning to his place
and spending the next few hours hanging out with Reuben and Hathaway. That only
makes logical sense if Karen said something to Andrew during that phone call which gave
him the sudden impulse to kill her. One thing I'm not entirely clear on
is if Andrew even ever knew that Karen was pregnant with his child and had
gone down to Mexico for an abortion. Given that Andrew wasn't interested in a
serious exclusive relationship at this point, I don't think he would have been interested
in being a father to Karen's child, So if she told him about the
abortion over the phone, I'm not sure that would have been enough to compel
him to murder her, unless she told him she was planning to blackmail him
or something. I don't know. It's obvious that Karen was much more obsessive
about Andrew than he was of her. Given her mental health status, it
makes a lot of sense, and even though they weren't in an exclusive relationship,
Andrew seemed to think highly enough of Karen to keep spending time with her,
given that they had went on an outing to Palm Springs together only one
week earlier. I certainly don't think it's one hundred percent impossible that Andrew could
have been the killer, but there's just no real motive or any physical evidence
such as fingerprints which places him at the scene. I do think it's very
telling that after Karen's parents spent years essentially trying to curtail Andrew's life by publicly
branding him as a murderer, Cup finally admitted in his autobiography that he believed
Andrew was innocent. It's not often you'll see a murder victim's family change their
tune like that, so they must have had a good reason to believe that
Andrew had nothing to do with her death exactly. So Andrew, for me,
Andrew was not a stand up boyfriend. Andrew was not somebody who was
a helpful figure in Karen's life. But I also feel like Andrew's smart enough,
Like he was getting these threatening notes, he was very well aware that
she was. Well, maybe he wasn't very well aware, but he had
gotten her pregnant. It's like we've seen dumb murders where someone goes, Okay,
I'm gonna just take this person out, and it's so obvious it would
be me. I don't know that Andrew was that dumb. Andrew's checking on
her, Andrew's concerned about her. Andrew is very upfront about the issues they
were facing, what his stance was with the relationship. He seems very transparent,
like I'll tell you I was not a great boyfriend. I will tell
you I'm not husband material. I will tell you that I was still talking
to Karen, and I was the last person to talk to her. It's
very it'd be very dumb if it was Andrew. Andrew had motive to keep
her quiet and get rid of her because she was obsessed with him. But
that also makes him a huge obvious target. And I just don't know that
he was that dumb. He had a lot going on for him, and
Karen seemed to be struggling so bad. Was she really a risk to him?
Do I mean? Or was she just so? And he almost felt
sorry for and responsible for in certain ways that he kept that relationship too,
But he cared about her. But I just don't want to be your husband,
you know now. On the other hand, Karen's family felt much differently
about David Lange, and on the surface, he seems to be the most
likely suspect. Lang lived in the apartment right below Karen and claimed he returned
it around twelve thirty am. The approximate time of Karen's death. By his
own admission, Lang was pretty drunk, and he had a notorious habit of
walking into other people's apartments uninvited when he was intoxicated, and he flat out
told someone he killed Karen, even though he later recanted and said he was
just kidding. So I can definitely picture a scenario where a drunken Lang decides
to knock on Karen's door late night, and because he's her neighbor, she
unlocks the door and lets him inside. Given Lang's innebriated state, any number
of scenarios could have occurred which escalated out of control and led to him strangling
Karen to death. But in spite of Lang's odd behavior, there are no
fingerprints or any other piece of physical evidence which places him inside the apartment.
Lang died in two thousand and six, so if he was responsible for Karen's
death, he took that secret to his grave. Overall, I'd say it
maybe about fifty fifty between Karen's death being some sort of accident or overdose or
foul play being involved. I'm not sure who the perpetrator might have been,
but remember there were a few unknown sets of prints found in the apartment,
so the killer could have been some unidentified person we don't even know about who
happened to stop by Karen's door that night. But when you consider that the
homicide ruling was made by a corner so incompetent that his autopsies wound up getting
multiple innocent people convicted of murders which never happened, I'm willing to believe there
may have been no murder in this particular case. The only thing I one
percent sure about is that Karen's death had nothing to do with the Kennedy assassination,
and I think that all those conspiracy theories have really muddied the case and
provided an unnecessary distraction. When you look at Karen Cups in its life as
a whole, you can see that the source of a lot of her issues
was the enormous pressure she faced from her mother to become a star, which
caused her to lead a self destructive lifestyle. So regardless of whether or not
Karen was murdered, this is still a really sad story. As far as
I know, this is technically an open case with the LAPD, So even
though nearly sixty years have passed, if you happen to have any information on
the unexplained death of Karen Cupsonant, please contact the Perfect Authorities. Jules Ashley
any final thoughts on this case, Yeah, absolutely. I mean Karen was
this young woman who had so much potential, but it's almost like the issue
here is way bigger than her murder. It's the pressure that's put on her.
It's the family dynamic of saying, listen, as my child, you're
going to be someone. You're going to live up to this expectation and all
of the expectations that were put on Karen, almost expectations that she didn't want
and she didn't feel like she could live up to. And I think that
made her a huge target for people to say, you are needing something,
you're not happy, you are craving attention, right, And so people like
Andrew come into her life where he's fun, he is wild, he wants
a fun relationship, and Karen needs something more. She needs somebody who says
you're valuable, You're worthy just the way you are. And instead of getting
that with a healthy relationship with her parents, with her boyfriend, she's seeking
it out in a media realm and an entertainment realm and she just wasn't ever
going to get it there. And you start to see this young woman break
down and start running into issues that seemed bigger than her spirit can handle.
So getting pregnant and having to get rid of the baby and have an abortion
right and saying that I can't have that baby right now. What I think
truly was a psychotic break and thinking I gave up this baby, and then
a baby arrives on my doorstep and then it's taken away from me too.
I don't think there was really a baby. I think Karen is so sad
in that moment, and then you read her notes where she's saying, my
life is so dark, I don't want to do this anymore. I think
that was in regards to her career. I think she just wanted someone to
say, Karen, step away from it all. You are perfect the way
you are. You are amazing, and yet she was looking so hard for
someone to say that. I think she opened that door to the wrong person.
And then her family was left going, please help us figure out what
happened to our baby, And thank goodness, her father had the kind of
presence and confidence and strength to say, you guys, need to get off
this conspiracy theory. My baby was killed, my baby died. I had
to bury her. I don't need this kind of mess following us. And
you do see that family go on to live quite a long life, quite
a successful life, which is not always the case in these stories we share.
I'm sad. I wish Karen had had that one person, that one
friend and said I see you hurting, I'm here and like, let's step
away from all this, and she didn't. It is sixty years that have
passed since this. I'm not incredibly encouraged that Something's going to be solved in
Karen's case. But Karen mattered, and I think the fact they were sharing
this story makes me really proud. That's to say that she mattered, and
her problems then are not that different than problems that myself, that jewels that
every woman listening and other families that are listening have experienced before. So might
have been sixty years ago, the reality of what she went through is still
real. And if anyone does no information, my god, how powerful would
it be to solve what happened to Karen. Karen's words that she wrote in
her journal make me really sad. And the fact that she seemed to be
embarking on this career that I question if she really wanted to do or if
she thought that it was somebody else's dream, like her mother's dream. There
just seemed to be this immense loneliness. And I can tell you from personal
experience with disordered eating, there is a lot of loneliness that goes along with
that. There's things that other people aren't thinking of and you're thinking about it,
like going and sitting down for a meal with people when you're in your
disorder can be very upsetting. Andy can feel traumatic because you feel like you're
going to be picked apart. There's a lot of emotional complexity that goes along
with that. And then when you factor in losing the baby, I agree
with ashe. I believe it was a psychotic break when she believes she saw
the baby on the porch and called the police, And then you're dealing with
somebody who had made her pregnant but then didn't want an exclusive relationship. But
I don't know if this whole Palm Springs thing was just friends or if he
was still seeing her and continuing to see other people and maybe making those notes
was just her attempt to get him to maybe comfort her, and it was
something that they could commiserate over receiving these awful notes in the mail. And
I just feel so sad for her because it seemed like her mental health was
at a very low point. Do I believe it was suicide? No?
Do I think it was connected to the jfk assassination. No. Could it
have been accidental? And doctor Kaye the coroner, screwed it up absolutely,
because we just don't know any other details about blood alcohol level, any drugs
that could have been in her system, if she was sexually assaulted. These
are big holes in the autopsy that we were just unaware of the information that
should be there. So we're having to speculate on what we do know.
And we do know that there was that land guy that was from a wealthy
family and he liked to walk into people's apartments without their none, which is
super creepy. And I think, like Ashu pointed out the coffee pot on
the floor, I don't necessarily think it means it was morning. I just
think that she could have invited somebody in because of the open door, and
then that person did her harm. I think the possibility for falling and injuring
her high bone to break it. I think that's pretty difficult to do.
You'd have to fall at a very specific angle, but of course it is
possible. Yes. I first became familiar with this case nearly ten years ago
when I wrote an article for crack dot com, because that's where I found
out about this weird story about the anonymous woman who supposedly made phone calls to
an operator and accurately predicted the exact time of the JFK assassination. And then
I found out they suspected it was an actress named Karen Copsonant So I kind
of went down the rabbit hole and decided to do a podcast episode on the
trail went cold a few years later, And of course then I realized that
this was the most absurd aspect of this story, that there's probably like no
connection at all with the JFK assassination, and it's just a coincidence that Karen
happened to die only a few days after this event took place. And I
do think they have moneyed the case. But even if you cut the entire
JFK angle away, then you find out that it's really sad but intriguing story
where we can't be one percent certain if Karen was the victim of foul play,
but if she was, there are a number of promising potential suspects,
and I do agree that out of all of them, David Lange definitely seems
like the most likely because he lived at the same apartment complex, allegedly bragged
about it, and had a habit of walking into other people's apartments. But
they just never found any conclusive evidence. But I also don't rule out the
possibility that her death was not a homicide and that the corner just screwed up
at the high bone, and that her death was the result of something else,
like an accidental overdose. I would be curious to know, though,
like if they did a fresh investigation, if they would find any DNA on
her body, because obviously they were not thinking about stuff like DNA back in
nineteen sixty three, and we don't know if she might have been sexually assaulted,
and a lot of stuff missing here did make a complete determination of what
happened. But like I said, we are about to reach the sixty year
anniversary of the JFK assassination, which also happened to take place on the same
week as Karen's death, So who knows, maybe us covering it on the
podcast or the sixty and anniversary will help bring rejuvenated interest into this case,
because even though so much time has passed and most of her family members are
dead, we still deserve to find out conclusive answers about what happened to Karen,
And even if she was not the victim of foul play, her story
still deserves to be heard because it's pretty much a very sad case studio what
happens when someone is pushed into a lifestyle that they don't really want and wind
up becoming very unhappy and self destructive. And I just feel that if mental
health was in a different place in the nineteen sixties and Karen had someone to
turn to that she could share a problems were, then maybe her story would
have turned out a lot differently. Robin, do you want to tell us
a little bit about the Trail Went Cold Patreon? Yes, The Trail Cold
Patreon has been around for three years now, and we offer the standard bonus
features like early ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers and sign
thank you cards to anyone who signs up with us on Patreon if you join
our five dollar tier Tier two. We also offer monthly bonus episodes in which
I talk about cases which are not featured on The Trail Went Cold's original feed,
so they're exclusive to Patreon, and if you join our highest tier tier
three, the ten dollar tier. One of the features we offer is a
audio commentary track over classic episodes of UNSAWD Mysteries, where you can download an
audio file and then boot up the original UNSAWD Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or
YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in the background, where I
just provide trivia and factoids about the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally,
the very first episode that I did a commentary track over was the episode
featuring this case. So if you want to download a commentary track in which
I make more smartass remarks about Jewel Kaylor than be sure to join Tier three.
So I want to let you know a little bit about the Jewels and
Ashley. Patreon, so there's early ad free episodes of The Path Went Chili.
We've got our Path Went Chili vinis, which are always over an hour,
so they're not very many, but they're just too short to turn into
a series, and we're really enjoying doing those, so we hope you'll check
out those patreons will link them in the show notes. So I want to
thank you all for listening, and any chance you have to share us on
social media with a friend or to rate and review is greatly appreciate it.
You can email us at the path Went Chili at gmail dot com. You
can reach us on Twitter at the path Went So until next time, be
sure to bundle up because cold trails and chili pass call for warm clothing.
Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy