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Speaker 5: You are now listening to True Murder the most shocking
Speaker 5: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 5: written about them Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK every
Speaker 5: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 5: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 5: journalist and author Dan Zufanski, Good Evening.
Speaker 3: Two grisly murders, a brutal double parricide, a suicide, and
Speaker 3: the fourth death under suspicious circumstances. Drifting into Darkness is
Speaker 3: a tangled tale of family dysfunction, fatal attraction, and greed,
Speaker 3: a saga that wends its way from the elegant southern
Speaker 3: mansions of Montgomery, Alabama, to the New Age salons of Boulder, Colorado,
Speaker 3: to rural windswept Wyoming. On Thanksgiving weekend in two thousand
Speaker 3: and four, philanthroists Charlotte and Brent Springford Senior, a wealthy,
Speaker 3: socially prominent Montgomery couple, were brutally beaten to death with
Speaker 3: an axe handle echoing the infamous case of Lizzie Borden.
Speaker 3: Suspicion quickly fell on the Springford's gifted but troubled son,
Speaker 3: Brent Junior, who would be tried and sentenced to life
Speaker 3: without parole. But a mystery remained. Who was the mysterious,
Speaker 3: elusive woman who claimed to be a Native American shaman
Speaker 3: that investigators believe manipulated Brent into this murder. Journalists solving
Speaker 3: murders as a time tested trope in movies, mysteries, and
Speaker 3: on television, but cops and cop reporters know that rarely
Speaker 3: happens in real life, except when it does. Veteran crime
Speaker 3: reporter mark I Pinsky, who covered the sensational cases of
Speaker 3: serial killer Ted Bundy and Green Beret doctor Jeffrey MacDonald,
Speaker 3: broke the cardinal rule of journalism by involving himself in
Speaker 3: the story. Pinsky's extensive research prompted investigators to invite him
Speaker 3: to join their dogged pursuit of justice. His access to
Speaker 3: unique and heartbreaking behind the scenes material enables him to
Speaker 3: take readers with him into the troubled, tortured minds of
Speaker 3: the case's main players. The book that we're featuring this
Speaker 3: evening is drifting into darkness murders, madness, suicide, and a
Speaker 3: death under suspicious circumstances with my special guest, journalist and
Speaker 3: author mark I Pinsky. Welcome to the program, and thank
Speaker 3: you very much for this interview. Mark I Pinsky, Dan,
Speaker 3: thank you very much for inviting me. I'm glad to
Speaker 3: be here. Thank you so much. This is an incredible tale,
Speaker 3: and we talked about your incredible access makes this true
Speaker 3: crime essential reading. Let's get right to the Springfords in
Speaker 3: this garden district as you write of Montgomery, Alabama, and
Speaker 3: you take us immediately to Thanksgiving two thousand and four.
Speaker 3: November twenty sixth and a subcontractor, Michael Shelton and his
Speaker 3: workers pull up to this address, this affluent home. What
Speaker 3: to Sheldon and his crew discover they have had access
Speaker 3: to this home and they've been working and they know
Speaker 3: the family.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 3: Tell us what happens what they find.
Speaker 6: Well, when they pull up, they were getting ready to
Speaker 6: complete some of the renovations that were happening in the house.
Speaker 6: And first they were somewhat concerned because there were some
Speaker 6: unlocked doors and they the key that they had for
Speaker 6: the actual house was not working. It appeared that a
Speaker 6: bolt had been thrown from inside, so they went through
Speaker 6: the garage and found an entrance in there, and they
Speaker 6: walked into the kitchen area where they were doing some
Speaker 6: tiling work, and they shouted to let people know that
Speaker 6: they were there, let Brent and Charlotte know that they
Speaker 6: were there. They got no answer. They were able to
Speaker 6: reach through a window pane which was removable, un throw
Speaker 6: the bolt, and walk into the kitchen again. They shouted
Speaker 6: that they were here, just that people wouldn't be surprised.
Speaker 6: They weren't sure whether the Springsburghs would be at home
Speaker 6: or not, but as they walked through the first floor
Speaker 6: of the house, they noticed things were in disarray. They
Speaker 6: first noticed that when they went through the garage that
Speaker 6: Brent Senior's office appeared to be somewhat in disarray, and
Speaker 6: he was known as a very neat person, so they
Speaker 6: were somewhat concerned, but it was a holiday weekends, so
Speaker 6: they didn't get too concerned. They went into the kitchen,
Speaker 6: saw no one and walked through the first floor and
Speaker 6: saw papers strewn throughout the place. There was some foreboding
Speaker 6: because there were still no answer when they called upstairs
Speaker 6: to let them know they were there, and so with
Speaker 6: that sense of foreboding, the lead contractor walked up the
Speaker 6: backstairs and when he reached the landing, he stopped suddenly
Speaker 6: because the carpet at the top of the stairs was
Speaker 6: saturated with blood, and not just a little blood, a
Speaker 6: lot of blood, and he knew something very wrong had happened.
Speaker 6: He went back down the stairs and told his workers
Speaker 6: not to go upstairs. He then called Brent Senior on
Speaker 6: the cell phone he had his number because the contractor
Speaker 6: also worked for Brent Senior for a time at their
Speaker 6: soft drink bottling company. There was no answer, the more
Speaker 6: concern When there was no answer, the contractor then called
Speaker 6: the Montgomery Police Department and said they thought something very
Speaker 6: wrong had happened. At first they thought maybe it was
Speaker 6: a burglary, an armed robbery, a home invasion robbery that'd
Speaker 6: gone wrong, but there were nothing else that they could see,
Speaker 6: and so the police said, leave the premises, wait out front.
Speaker 6: We'll get there as soon as we can. And it
Speaker 6: was a holiday weekend, so there were some people who
Speaker 6: were actually officers detectives who were at home, and so
Speaker 6: they were called in and it took about thirty or
Speaker 6: forty minutes for the police to arrive, both uniforms and detectives.
Speaker 6: They went in. They went through through the kitchen door,
Speaker 6: they went upstairs, they saw the huge area of blood.
Speaker 6: They knew something terrible was wrong, and so they began
Speaker 6: They called back to the precinct and said, we need
Speaker 6: some homicide detectives. We think that there's a murder of
Speaker 6: some sort. Their first thought was it was a murder suicide.
Speaker 6: It might have been the simplest explanation for the physical
Speaker 6: evidence that they first saw. In the next hour or so,
Speaker 6: they then ventured along the hallway in the second floor,
Speaker 6: and the first thing they saw was the body of
Speaker 6: Brent Springford Senior. He had been beaten to death. They
Speaker 6: didn't know with what at the time. It later turned
Speaker 6: out to be a pickaxe handle, but also his throat
Speaker 6: was cut almost to the point of decapitation, and he
Speaker 6: was surrounded by blood in this area. They've ventured further
Speaker 6: down the hall to the master bedroom, where they found
Speaker 6: the body of Charlotte Sprinford would also have been beaten
Speaker 6: to death, who also was stabbed multiple times, including in
Speaker 6: the throat, and in this case, however, they were defensive
Speaker 6: wounds on her arms that they could recognize right away.
Speaker 6: Unlike Brent, there were no defensive wounds on him. He
Speaker 6: apparently was set upon in a furious attack. But this
Speaker 6: time Charlotte Springford either saw something happening or knew something
Speaker 6: was happening, and she tried to defend herself. There was
Speaker 6: physical evidence that after she was beaten to the ground
Speaker 6: and stabbed, she still tried to drag herself in the
Speaker 6: direction of the telephone, but she didn't make it.
Speaker 3: Investigators find out that there's a daughter, Robin, and a son,
Speaker 3: Brent Junior, and also that the Jaguarar is missing. So
Speaker 3: how do investigators proceed with this investigation.
Speaker 6: Well, they first tried to reach Robin and also Charlotte's
Speaker 6: half sister, Lois Trust who lived in Birmingham where they
Speaker 6: had spent the Thanksgiving dinner. And at the same time
Speaker 6: they were making these calls, neighbors seeing the police vehicles
Speaker 6: and then the yellow tape that went up, began congregating
Speaker 6: on the lawn and on the front in the street
Speaker 6: in front of them, and so other detectives began to
Speaker 6: chat with the neighbors to see if they had any leads,
Speaker 6: and among them were some close friends of the Springfords
Speaker 6: who said, take a close look at their son, Brent Junior.
Speaker 6: He's been estranged from the family living out in Colorado.
Speaker 6: So that went into the factors of the initial discussions,
Speaker 6: and they, as the investigators called family members. The family
Speaker 6: members also pointed toward Brent Junior. But the problem for
Speaker 6: the police is that as far as they knew, Brent
Speaker 6: was two thousand miles away in the area of Boulder, Colorado,
Speaker 6: so they began making phone calls. They were also concerned.
Speaker 6: The family was concerned that Brent Junior not only had
Speaker 6: killed those his parents, but he might have in mind
Speaker 6: to kill his sister and other family members. So the
Speaker 6: family members on their own went into hiding in case
Speaker 6: that Brent Junior was still around and might be after them.
Speaker 6: So the police immediately to protect live They sent squad
Speaker 6: cars to protect Lois Trust's house and other places in
Speaker 6: thought that maybe he would come there, that it was
Speaker 6: Brent Junior and that he would come there. The family
Speaker 6: owned the Lake House. They went out to the Lake House,
Speaker 6: but at the same time they were making calls out
Speaker 6: to Colorado, where they knew that Brent had a home,
Speaker 6: and they were asking local sheriff's deputies to go out
Speaker 6: and see if he was there, and so all this
Speaker 6: was happening, there was a lot of I won't say confusion,
Speaker 6: but these were the victims were really wealthy, prominent people,
Speaker 6: so a lot was at stake for the police department
Speaker 6: to This is a horrible thing, you know, people in
Speaker 6: a neighborhood like the Garden District being murdered in their
Speaker 6: homes at a very high screw up.
Speaker 3: So police speak to Robin and what did they find
Speaker 3: out from Robin concerning the brother Brent Jr. And just
Speaker 3: the dynamics of the family, especially at Thanksgiving.
Speaker 6: Well, they found out that Robin and her husband Greg,
Speaker 6: Charlotte and Brent Senior had had a Thanksgiving dinner at
Speaker 6: the home of Charlotte's half sister, Lois Trusts in Birmingham,
Speaker 6: and the family was happy to gather together because Lois
Speaker 6: Trust's daughter had just gotten married, so there were two
Speaker 6: newly read couples and was very happy. But there was
Speaker 6: in a sense an empty chair at the Thanksgiving table,
Speaker 6: and that chair would have been for Brent Junior, but
Speaker 6: he was estranged from the family. So the estrangement really
Speaker 6: when speaking to the people who are around the table.
Speaker 6: That estrangement at least sort of hung over the whole event.
Speaker 6: So Robin again was convinced that only one person could
Speaker 6: have done this. It wasn't a random act, it wasn't
Speaker 6: a home invasion, it was it was her. It was
Speaker 6: her brother who did it. She'd know how it happened
Speaker 6: or where it happened, but she was convinced that it
Speaker 6: was her brother who was responsible, and also Robin was
Speaker 6: also concerned, to concern she gave to the police that
Speaker 6: initially Robin and Greg were supposed to come back to
Speaker 6: the Springford's home in Montgomery with her parents to go
Speaker 6: off together, but at the last minute, Robin and her
Speaker 6: husband decided not to go with him, and Robin was
Speaker 6: very much concerned that if she had, if she and
Speaker 6: her husband had gone back with her parents, that she
Speaker 6: and her husband would have been murdered as well.
Speaker 3: So what do investigators do to be able to speak
Speaker 3: to Caroline Scout.
Speaker 6: Well, they called Brent Junior's partner, caregiver and as it
Speaker 6: turns out wife in Colorado who's living in the house
Speaker 6: that the Springfords had given them, and wanted to know
Speaker 6: where Brent Junior was and at first, this woman's name
Speaker 6: is Caroline Scout, she said, oh, he's around here, somewhere,
Speaker 6: and they asked how long she had seen him.
Speaker 1: Was she sure?
Speaker 6: She said, oh, yes, he's been here all week. He
Speaker 6: called in sick at work on Wednesday night, the Wednesday
Speaker 6: before the Thursday of Thanksgiving, and he's been around here
Speaker 6: all week. So the police, you know, are used to
Speaker 6: people telling the truth or not telling the truth, and
Speaker 6: they asked the local sheriff's department in Colorado to go
Speaker 6: out and check out the place, the house, to see
Speaker 6: if he was actually there. Two deputies went out there,
Speaker 6: they looked around, they saw a car that was registered
Speaker 6: to Brent, but they couldn't find Brent. And they questioned
Speaker 6: Caroline Scouts two three adult children, two adults in one
Speaker 6: adolescent who were living in the house, and they all
Speaker 6: reaffirmed that, in fact, Brent had been there all week.
Speaker 6: So the police were first puzzled. And then another young
Speaker 6: man who was living at the house a border actually
Speaker 6: took one of the police aside and said, you should
Speaker 6: call me at my work. I'll be able to speak
Speaker 6: more freely. And when they did that, he said, I
Speaker 6: haven't seen Brent for a week, and so police became concerned.
Speaker 6: They still weren't ready to make a move. The Montgomery
Speaker 6: police were not ready to get on a plane quite
Speaker 6: yet until the jaguar was discovered in outside of Tulsa, Oklahoma,
Speaker 6: which kind of began to connect the docks for the
Speaker 6: investigators in Montgomery. There was the missing jaguar that had
Speaker 6: been in the garage in Montgomery, and after the murder,
Speaker 6: it shows up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which is pretty much
Speaker 6: two thirds the way back to Colorado. They thought they
Speaker 6: were kind of closing in.
Speaker 1: On their suspect.
Speaker 3: Now, what do investigators find about the dynamics of Brent Junior,
Speaker 3: his family life, Brent Senior, this wealthy businessman, and mother Charlotte,
Speaker 3: What was their personalities and how they contributed to this dynamic.
Speaker 6: Well, the Springfords, Brent Senior and Charlotte were really well
Speaker 6: beloved in Montgomery. They were philanthropists. They had made lot
Speaker 6: of money, but they weren't, you know, gravy, selfish people.
Speaker 6: They tried to share their wealth in many ways, even
Speaker 6: when they traveled. They were very progressive. Now this is
Speaker 6: two thousand and four, but earlier Montgomery can be a
Speaker 6: very conservative place and was a very conservative place between
Speaker 6: regarding racial equality, but both Brent Senior and Charlotte were
Speaker 6: known as being very progressive people on race, very open
Speaker 6: to various people in town. When the Southern Poverty Law
Speaker 6: Center located in Montgomery, a lot of the establishment people
Speaker 6: kind of shunned them, but Brent and Charlotte did not.
Speaker 6: They made them welcome, and so they were beloved for
Speaker 6: their gifts. They were beloved for their civic involvement. And
Speaker 6: the great tragedy, as their close friends knew, was a
Speaker 6: long term estrangement from their oldest son, Brent Junior, and
Speaker 6: they had done everything their friends knew to support him
Speaker 6: as he was growing up. He was not a spoiled kid.
Speaker 6: He was an outruistic kid. He took in strays in
Speaker 6: terms of newcomers to his school, He invited people to
Speaker 6: they had parties at the home. But when he went
Speaker 6: away to school, he went to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.
Speaker 6: Very good school, but in those first couple of years
Speaker 6: he became gradually alienated from his parents. And his parents
Speaker 6: didn't cut him off. They didn't. He was what's known
Speaker 6: in this country, and it was tough love. They tried
Speaker 6: to understand what was happening to him. They were very sympathetic.
Speaker 6: They offered counseling. He was always welcome back home, even
Speaker 6: when he became more and more alienated to them. When
Speaker 6: he decided to drop out of Vanderbilt after his second year,
Speaker 6: where he was a very good student, he went on
Speaker 6: projects in Latin America to help people. His professors loved him,
Speaker 6: but he became interested in New Age beliefs, but also
Speaker 6: a serious study of Eastern religions, Buddhism and Hinduism, and
Speaker 6: his parents weren't sure what the source of this alienation was. Sociologically,
Speaker 6: at least in North America, when young men reached their
Speaker 6: early twenties, they're sometimes vulnerable to incipient mental illness, particularly bipolar,
Speaker 6: and Brent Junior's parents weren't sure if that's what it was,
Speaker 6: because there was a family history of bipolar disorder in
Speaker 6: Charlotte's family, and they were petrified that that's what was
Speaker 6: happening to them. But they did everything they could to
Speaker 6: support him. He wanted to drop out of Vanderbilt for
Speaker 6: the second year. They didn't like it, but they accepted it.
Speaker 6: He wanted to study Buddhism and Hinduism in retreats around
Speaker 6: the country and in Mexico, and they supported him in
Speaker 6: that so they basically did everything they could. But as
Speaker 6: time passed, he began, as the title of the book says,
Speaker 6: he began to drift into darkness, and the alienation was
Speaker 6: greater and greater when he would come back for family visits,
Speaker 6: sometimes sometimes for big family occasions. The spring Shirt had
Speaker 6: a black tie dinner at Christmas every year for more
Speaker 6: than one hundred people at their home, and he showed
Speaker 6: up one year in a monk's row with his head shaves,
Speaker 6: and his parents were, of course mortified, but they were
Speaker 6: saying their explanation was Brent's just trying to find himself.
Speaker 3: When did Brent meet Caroline Scout and under what circumstances?
Speaker 6: Well, Brent spent about two years with a serious study
Speaker 6: of Buddhism and Hinduism, going from a retreat to retreat
Speaker 6: in Mexico and across the US. He ended up in Boulder, Colorado,
Speaker 6: where he decided he would study Buddhism formally at Naropa
Speaker 6: University in Boulder. His parents were not so thrilled with
Speaker 6: the idea, but they thought, well, he'll be back in school.
Speaker 6: That'll be good for us, and so they supported that.
Speaker 6: But you know, all for all of Brent's adult life
Speaker 6: he was searching for enlightenment through New Age seeking, through
Speaker 6: Buddhism and Hinduism, but in the end it just got
Speaker 6: darker and darker. He really wanted to find a guru,
Speaker 6: a spiritual god, and he went to visit the home
Speaker 6: of his roommate. His roommate at Nouopa's parents lived in Boulder.
Speaker 6: They had a kind of an intellectual salon, a New
Speaker 6: Age salon, at their home, and he went there one
Speaker 6: day and he crossed paths with a woman named Caroline
Speaker 6: Scouts who claimed to be a Native American shaman, and
Speaker 6: the instant he saw her, he was struck. And he
Speaker 6: got down on his knees and touched his head to
Speaker 6: the floor three times and said, I've found my spiritual guide.
Speaker 6: And that was a faithful meeting for Brent. He thought
Speaker 6: this search that he'd been on for several years was
Speaker 6: finally satisfied. He found someone who he could follow and
Speaker 6: learn about and study. He was still at Naropa, so
Speaker 6: as he was getting to know her, taking some breathing.
Speaker 1: Classes with her.
Speaker 6: That she gave in Boulder. He wrote a paper about
Speaker 6: her for Naropa and her history, based of course, only
Speaker 6: on what she told him, and he became closer and
Speaker 6: closer to her. Her and I think at that time
Speaker 6: she sensed in him what we call a mark, a
Speaker 6: vulnerable person from whom she could extract money.
Speaker 3: Now they have a relationship, and he wants to tell
Speaker 3: us parents about this person. Their parents are interested in
Speaker 3: meeting this person that they believe can be a caretaker.
Speaker 3: Maybe you can explain to us that meeting and what
Speaker 3: they get from the meeting this woman, and what they
Speaker 3: think her interest is regarding their son.
Speaker 6: At first, they were relieved that he had found someone
Speaker 6: who could look after him, someone whose advice he was
Speaker 6: likely to take, because, as they were concerned with his
Speaker 6: mental health as well, they thought if he was with
Speaker 6: a person who would be a caretaker who he would
Speaker 6: listen to, they could have sense use her to steer
Speaker 6: him towards psychiatric care. They weren't sure, and also Charlotte
Speaker 6: handedly admitted if he had a caretaker in Bolder, he
Speaker 6: was less likely to come home to Montgomery and embarrass
Speaker 6: them again with his state of mind. So they felt
Speaker 6: this was a good idea. But they again, they were
Speaker 6: very caring parents, very careful parents, and so they flew
Speaker 6: out to Boulder to meet this woman, and they were
Speaker 6: initially impressed with her. They felt she was a very
Speaker 6: spiritual person. Many people who met her felt she was
Speaker 6: a very spiritual person. And they left fairly confident that
Speaker 6: this was going to be a good arrangement. And so
Speaker 6: to cement that, they began sending Caroline Scout money, ostensibly
Speaker 6: to take care of Brent, but it was really more
Speaker 6: money than she would have needed, and so that relationship
Speaker 6: was sort of christened and approved of by Brent's parents.
Speaker 6: They were hopeful, they weren't sure, but they were hopeful
Speaker 6: that this might bring him back to them in some
Speaker 6: way through her, And in fact, she did begin to
Speaker 6: get him to see a series of psychiatrists. He was
Speaker 6: uncertain of it himself, but because she said he should
Speaker 6: do it, he began to do it.
Speaker 3: Now, you talk about this and what is the diagnosis
Speaker 3: from these various psychiatrists.
Speaker 6: Very early on, the psychiatrist's diagnoses were sort of reinforced
Speaker 6: from one to another for the most part, which is
Speaker 6: early stages of bipolar disorder. This was troubling to Brent
Speaker 6: Junior's mother, because she knew that her family, for three
Speaker 6: generations at least, had been plagued with bipolar disorder. They
Speaker 6: were in her family suicides, institutionalizing alcoholism, various things which
Speaker 6: she had decided not to tell her son about for
Speaker 6: fear that he would see that as something that couldn't
Speaker 6: be avoided for him, and so she didn't want it
Speaker 6: to be an inevitable problem that he should worry about,
Speaker 6: among the other things that he had in his life
Speaker 6: to worry about. So she recognized that that was probably
Speaker 6: the case, and she did what psychiatrists don't really like
Speaker 6: to do. She began corresponding with his psychiatrists. Most of them,
Speaker 6: because of the ethics, would not respond to her because
Speaker 6: he was not a minor, so she had no standing
Speaker 6: to his psychiatric care. But she was pretty clear that
Speaker 6: the psychiatrists were onto something, and they prescribed medication, and,
Speaker 6: as often happens with bipolar disorder, the medication, once they
Speaker 6: get the sort of mix or the cocktail right, results
Speaker 6: in improvement. But sometimes the improvement the patient says, well,
Speaker 6: I'm feeling fine, I don't need the drugs anymore. So
Speaker 6: then they stopped taking the drugs, and the psychle repeats.
Speaker 3: Now you talk about that there was a secret that
Speaker 3: these two, Brent Junior and Caroline had that they kept
Speaker 3: from the parents, and the parents, being supportive and wealthy,
Speaker 3: decided to buy a home and keep it in their
Speaker 3: own name, but buy a home so that he could
Speaker 3: have somewhere to live and support this caregiver. But in reality,
Speaker 3: what was the living arrangements at that time.
Speaker 6: It was very strange. Before they bought the house. While
Speaker 6: while Brent Junior was still in Boulder, when there was
Speaker 6: a summer break at Naroka, he told his parents he
Speaker 6: wanted to go up to Wyoming where Caroline Scout had
Speaker 6: a small ranch and work on her ranch, be a
Speaker 6: caretaker and learning learn about Native American culture, which they
Speaker 6: agreed to, and that took place through the summer, and
Speaker 6: then he decided he was going to stay there, that
Speaker 6: he wouldn't go back to school. He began working at
Speaker 6: various jobs now up there, he did see a psychiatrist,
Speaker 6: but his mother felt that a psychiatrist in South Dakota
Speaker 6: was not the kind of psychiatrist that she he needed,
Speaker 6: so she wanted to get them back to Boulder. But
Speaker 6: what she didn't know is that that summer, Caroline Scout
Speaker 6: drove Brent Junior across the border into South Dakota to
Speaker 6: a town historic count called Deadwood, and they were secretly married.
Speaker 6: Brent later said he didn't know why she wanted to
Speaker 6: get married. It was her idea, not his. He didn't
Speaker 6: realize it, but he was twenty What he knew he
Speaker 6: was twenty four. But what he didn't realize is that
Speaker 6: she was forty eight, twice his age. And she said,
Speaker 6: we want to keep this a secret, and so it
Speaker 6: was a secret. And by that time is that this
Speaker 6: was not a traditional marriage. They say there was no
Speaker 6: sexual relationship between Caroline and Brent Junior, and he was
Speaker 6: apparently quite content with that. When he moved finally from
Speaker 6: Caroline's ranch in Wyoming to the house that his parents
Speaker 6: had purchased in Greeley, Colorado, he wasn't even allowed to sleep,
Speaker 6: not only in her bedroom, he was not allowed to
Speaker 6: sleep in the house. He built a little living area
Speaker 6: in the garage, the adjoining garage, and he was not
Speaker 6: allowed to come into the house without permission from Caroline,
Speaker 6: and he needed to call her on her cell phone
Speaker 6: first to get permission to come into the house, which
Speaker 6: happened but very rarely, and to her children, Caroline denigrated
Speaker 6: him that he was basically a screw up, that he
Speaker 6: was crazy, and that her caretaking was just basically a
Speaker 6: paid indulgence for her.
Speaker 3: This continues for quite a while where the parents are supportive,
Speaker 3: hoping for the very best, thinking that she has his
Speaker 3: best interest in mind. But eventually, through a bunch of
Speaker 3: different circumstances, Charlotte, but especially Brent Senior, believe that there's
Speaker 3: something amiss and there eventually is a complaint because these
Speaker 3: numbers don't add up. The money that they're giving has
Speaker 3: not got any return on an investment, so they think
Speaker 3: that Caroline has They're suspicious of her as a result.
Speaker 3: There is talk of withholding money as a result. What
Speaker 3: happens with the living arrangement at the house in Colorado
Speaker 3: And how is it that he has this kind of
Speaker 3: information that really paints his parents in a negative light
Speaker 3: despite their support of him.
Speaker 6: Well, there's an increasing flow over several years of money
Speaker 6: from the Springfields in Montgomery to Caroline as caretaker in Greeley,
Speaker 6: and the figures began to really mount uf And it
Speaker 6: begins with well, the house which is not in their name,
Speaker 6: but they bought the house. They did buy with titled
Speaker 6: cars for Caroline and her adult children. They bought clothes,
Speaker 6: they paid community college tuition, a whole series of benefits
Speaker 6: that when the paper trail was finally tracked, it was
Speaker 6: somewhere between a million and a million and a half dollars.
Speaker 6: There are various improvements on the property, and Brent Junior,
Speaker 6: who was not a gravvy spoiled kid growing up, began
Speaker 6: to make increasing demands on his parents, never in voice,
Speaker 6: usually in texts or facts, and the tone of his request,
Speaker 6: which soon shifted in demands, was very uncharacteristic of Brent Jr.
Speaker 6: He was basically beginning to treat his parents as an atm,
Speaker 6: as a cash machine, and they became suspicious naturally over time.
Speaker 6: And they had talked amongst themselves as well as with
Speaker 6: their friends and neighbors and some psychiatrists about when to
Speaker 6: exercise what's called, as I mentioned before, tough love, when
Speaker 6: to say you need to do this, if you want
Speaker 6: me to do this, And the estrangement when they did
Speaker 6: that became really intense, until finally they decided they were
Speaker 6: going to cut both Caroline and Brent Junior off around
Speaker 6: the same time, Robin was supposed to get married in
Speaker 6: the big fancy wedding in Alabama, and they decided that
Speaker 6: Brent had become too unstable to attend. So the Robin
Speaker 6: had personally invited her brother, her parents got her to
Speaker 6: disinvite him right around the time that they decided to
Speaker 6: cut off the money, and they did. He did not
Speaker 6: attend the wedding. They did cut off the money, and
Speaker 6: six weeks after the money was cut off, Brent got
Speaker 6: on a Brent Junior got on a bus from Boulder
Speaker 6: headed toward Montgomery.
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Speaker 3: they need, have the background to explain how this all occurred,
Speaker 3: and they have their likely suspect. Tell us about the
Speaker 3: arrest and what happens afterwards.
Speaker 6: In this investigation, well, two detectives from Montgomery went out
Speaker 6: and joined the Sheriff's deputies out in the Greeley area.
Speaker 6: And as they pursued their initial investigation, it became clear
Speaker 6: and clear that Brent Junior's alibi for being in Colorado
Speaker 6: at the time of the murder was falling apart, and
Speaker 6: they could see that. And as they kept making visits
Speaker 6: to Caroline Scouts House, which is obviously the oldest Springfield's house,
Speaker 6: to interrogate members of the family and Brent. Things were
Speaker 6: getting shakier and shakier. At that point, they were almost
Speaker 6: ready to make an arrest, but Brent Junior preempted them
Speaker 6: by checking himself into a local psychiatric institute, from which
Speaker 6: they could not get him. While they were waiting to
Speaker 6: find a way to get him from the institution, Surveillis
Speaker 6: takes was coming in from across from bus stations across
Speaker 6: the country. They were placing Brent Junior on the way
Speaker 6: to Montgomery and from Oklahoma where the jaguar was discovered,
Speaker 6: back to Boulder. So they were building a case, but
Speaker 6: they were under great deal of pressure because the only
Speaker 6: physical evidence they found at the Springford's home in Montgomery
Speaker 6: where the murders took place, was one fingerprint from Brent
Speaker 6: on a banister, but it was not in blood, and
Speaker 6: there's no way to date the fingerprint in the house
Speaker 6: that he grew up in, So basically they had no
Speaker 6: physical evidence to connect Brent Junior to the killing. So
Speaker 6: they were under great pressure back in Montgomery because the
Speaker 6: parents were such socially prominent people to come up with
Speaker 6: a solution quickly, and the only way they.
Speaker 1: Could do that was.
Speaker 6: They thought anyway was to go through Brent himself to
Speaker 6: get some sort of a confession. So they waited. They
Speaker 6: got a warrant for his arrest from Montgomery, a request
Speaker 6: for extradition from Alabama, and they went to the psychiatric institute.
Speaker 6: It was midnight. The people the psychiatacilly said they wouldn't
Speaker 6: release him unless the police showed up with a warrant
Speaker 6: for his arrest, which they did. It was about midnight.
Speaker 6: Brent had been sleepless, we don't know for how long.
Speaker 6: He was also taking psychotropic drugs, some very powerful. Yet
Speaker 6: the institute released him to these police officers, and then
Speaker 6: something a little strange happened, or maybe more than a
Speaker 6: little strange happened. Instead of taking Brent right to the
Speaker 6: Boulder County jail he would have been booked, they took
Speaker 6: him to a small police station in Lewisville, Colorado, which
Speaker 6: was where the psychiatric institute was, and the two homicide
Speaker 6: detectives and two local sheriff deputies sat him down and
Speaker 6: interrogated them. Now here's a young man, normally troubled psychiatric history,
Speaker 6: under the influence of psychotropic drugs, drugs pless and they
Speaker 6: begin to interrogate them. They read him as Miranda rights.
Speaker 6: But the question later emerged, you know, what was his
Speaker 6: frame of mind? Did he know what he was being asked?
Speaker 6: Did he know that he was entitled to a lawyer? Notwithstanding,
Speaker 6: the two Montgomery police officers who I spoke with later said, well,
Speaker 6: we knew we were on a little shaky ground, but
Speaker 6: this was all we had. So he thought we'd go
Speaker 6: do this. That there's a problem with a confession. Later,
Speaker 6: we let the prosecutor deal with that. And so they
Speaker 6: interrogated him for four hours on tape, at which time
Speaker 6: he gave an account and admission of how and why
Speaker 6: he bludgeoned his parents, how and why he beat his
Speaker 6: parents to death, and so with that, they then took
Speaker 6: him to the Boulder County Jail and booked him into jail.
Speaker 6: But the Boulder jail officials, one of the things they
Speaker 6: had to sign up a certification that he was not
Speaker 6: that he was mentally capable of the time, and they
Speaker 6: said he was. But it became obvious to the jail
Speaker 6: officials that he wasn't, because they called in some of
Speaker 6: their psychologists to talk to him, gave him several tests,
Speaker 6: including a Rorschach test, and then they had the presence
Speaker 6: of mind to bring in a local public defender to
Speaker 6: look out for his rights. But at that time, by
Speaker 6: that point, you know, the horse was out of the
Speaker 6: barn as far as the confession goes, and then things
Speaker 6: were compounded. Brent, while in the jail, well before when
Speaker 6: he was in the psychiatric institute, he was calling TV
Speaker 6: stations around Montgomery, denying that he was involved, but calling
Speaker 6: sort of everybody he thought of, and making disparaging remarks
Speaker 6: about both the police in Montgomery and the governor of Alabama,
Speaker 6: which would later do him no good. Later, when he
Speaker 6: was in the in the Boulder County jail, he wrote
Speaker 6: something else which amounted to a confession, which he gave
Speaker 6: to a jailer. He said, to give to his attorney,
Speaker 6: to his public defender, the jail person. Those things are privilege,
Speaker 6: you can't use them. But the jail attendant nonetheless made
Speaker 6: a copy of it and shared that with the police authorities.
Speaker 6: In that written document, he also Brent Junior also confessed
Speaker 6: to the murder. Although he gave there were certain details
Speaker 6: about who said, what, what happened, The order of things,
Speaker 6: and what motivated him were somewhat different, but that later
Speaker 6: went to the police and that strengthened their hands in
Speaker 6: their accusations of Brent Junior's involvement in the murders.
Speaker 3: Through all of this, they do hear and they do
Speaker 3: assume that maybe this Caroline Scout does not have the
Speaker 3: best interests at heart with Brent Junior, but also that
Speaker 3: she may have had some involvement one way or another,
Speaker 3: either prompting him to do this or being more directly involved.
Speaker 3: And yet Brent, despite anything, is very very protective of
Speaker 3: Caroline in this regard. And in fact, another thing that
Speaker 3: you point out was very, very very interesting and would
Speaker 3: lead police to be very suspicious is that because they
Speaker 3: were married, she was not would not be forced whatsoever
Speaker 3: to testify against her husband. And yet she gave crucial information,
Speaker 3: in incriminating information to police voluntarily, didn't she.
Speaker 6: She did, which was very curious and became curiouser and curiusers.
Speaker 6: Alice in Wonderland once said as to whose interest she
Speaker 6: had at the foremost she visited him, but she shared
Speaker 6: much of what he told her with investigators, which was
Speaker 6: very strange, and they weren't sure why. A part of
Speaker 6: his protection of her, one he would never implicate in
Speaker 6: any way in the killing itself. But when when Caroline
Speaker 6: Scout gave you know, she basically lied to investigators initially
Speaker 6: about where he was, so that would leave her vulnerable
Speaker 6: to accessory after the fact, if not accessory as an accessory,
Speaker 6: and they let her come back with a lawyer and
Speaker 6: retract the lies that she had told investigators previously. And
Speaker 6: Brent Junior seemed fixated with the idea that she should
Speaker 6: not be in any way vulnerable to any kind of prosecution.
Speaker 6: He was adamant about that, and he would remain adamant
Speaker 6: about that for years that followed.
Speaker 3: Now, this was a capital case, and so this was
Speaker 3: a different dynamic in terms of what their intention was
Speaker 3: as defense team, and their goal was to save his life, obviously,
Speaker 3: and so they only had a couple options. And so
Speaker 3: what they decide to do in terms of defense and
Speaker 3: how did that work out and lead us to this trial.
Speaker 6: Their first line of defense was to prove that he
Speaker 6: was mentally incompetent either to stand trial or to have
Speaker 6: committed what the crime was. And in the US judicial system,
Speaker 6: in a case like this, the question of mental competence
Speaker 6: gets down to an issue of dueling shrinks, as we say,
Speaker 6: So the defense would hire psychiatrists to evaluate, knowing the
Speaker 6: history of these psychiatrists that they were amenable to finding
Speaker 6: someone incompetent, whereas the prosecutor would would go and recruit
Speaker 6: psychiatrists who were known to have a bias against finding incompetence.
Speaker 6: So that was the first line of defense. That took
Speaker 6: several years, and they went back and forth and back
Speaker 6: and forth, and finally the defense lost that it became
Speaker 6: clear that although they knew that Brent Jr. Was crazy
Speaker 6: or getting crazier from their own dealings with him, and
Speaker 6: more difficult to defend, the ruling was that he was
Speaker 6: not incompetent to stand trial. And so there were then
Speaker 6: two lines of defense that were secondary. One was to
Speaker 6: get a change of venue from Montgomery, where the case
Speaker 6: was huge news day after day. And the second line
Speaker 6: of that defense was to have the three now this
Speaker 6: time three confessions by Brent thrown out because he was
Speaker 6: not properly protected when he gave those gave those confessions.
Speaker 6: So the first two motions took a long time to adjudicate.
Speaker 6: The first one was the defense won a change of
Speaker 6: venue from Montgomery to Birmingham, which was about an hour away.
Speaker 6: Now it was a great victory, not so much because
Speaker 6: he would have a better shot at a trial in Birmingham,
Speaker 6: But in order to move the trial from Montgomery to Birmingham,
Speaker 6: it would be an added expense to Montgomery, Montgomery County.
Speaker 6: It would cost an extra quarter of a million dollars
Speaker 6: that was not budgeted, and so pressure then was on
Speaker 6: the prosecutor, do you want to have to go to
Speaker 6: the county commission asked for another quarter of a million dollars.
Speaker 6: Now that's not a yes or no proposition, but it
Speaker 6: factored into the decision of where the prosecutor wanted to
Speaker 6: deal away the death penalty. Once the death penalty went
Speaker 6: off the table, then the trial would probably remain in
Speaker 6: Montgomery with a pleading. The issue of the confessions, which
Speaker 6: was also critical, was not adjudicated, so they were sort
Speaker 6: of hanging out there. But the prosecution knew that if
Speaker 6: the judge threw out the three confessions, all they had
Speaker 6: left was bus station surveillance tape. They had no physical connection,
Speaker 6: could put Brent in Montgomery in that house, and no
Speaker 6: other way to prove that Brent Junior committed these murders
Speaker 6: other than the fact that they could prove that he
Speaker 6: went from Boulder to Montgomery and then went from on
Speaker 6: the way back from Tulsa to Bolder, so that those
Speaker 6: are different factors that the prosecutor had to weigh in
Speaker 6: whether to accept a plea. Another issue was the Springford family. Robin,
Speaker 6: the surviving daughter, and her husband Greg were thought to
Speaker 6: be really pressing hard for the death penalty. Now the
Speaker 6: prosecutor didn't need to get their permission, but by practice
Speaker 6: they consult. So these were all the factors that the prosecutor,
Speaker 6: Ellen Brooks, was weighing as to whether she would be
Speaker 6: amenable to a deal they would take the death penalty
Speaker 6: off the table, but would result in a guilty play.
Speaker 6: In Alabama, the prosecutor is an elected position, so she
Speaker 6: always has to be careful about, you know, what this
Speaker 6: might mean to her politically, because she had asked for
Speaker 6: the death penalty before in other cases where the accused
Speaker 6: were people of color and poor, and it might not
Speaker 6: look good for her to take the death penalty off
Speaker 6: the table for a young man who was white and
Speaker 6: from a wealthy background.
Speaker 3: So tell us what happens at trial, What is the outcome?
Speaker 6: At trial, they had finally, they thought, convinced Brent Junior
Speaker 6: to accept the plea of life in prison without the
Speaker 6: possibility of parole, with the understanding that he would be
Speaker 6: housed in a secure psychiatric prison unit. But up until
Speaker 6: the time in the courtroom, which was required that the
Speaker 6: judge accepted the plea, there was really uncertain deal on
Speaker 6: both the prosecutor and the defense team as the weather Brent,
Speaker 6: who was getting very very shaky mentally, would be able
Speaker 6: to accept the deal in a way that the judge
Speaker 6: could accept, because if he was too, if he was unstable,
Speaker 6: he would be too unstable to accept the deal and
Speaker 6: the whole deal would go down the drain. So on
Speaker 6: the day of the pleading, everybody was on tenterhooks, the judge,
Speaker 6: the prosecutor, the defense attorneys, and everybody was hoping that
Speaker 6: they could get through this. And when they first went
Speaker 6: through the procedure that they needed to, Brent seemed to
Speaker 6: watch little bit, and so they asked him to sit down.
Speaker 6: There was a conference at the judge's bench with both
Speaker 6: sides and they tried to work out nearly at hoc
Speaker 6: a quick wording and strategy that Brent Junior would agree to.
Speaker 6: They finally did that. The plea was accepted, Brent leaded guilty.
Speaker 6: He was sent to life in prison without parole, and
Speaker 6: the judge advise, which is all he could do. The
Speaker 6: State Department of Corrections to How's Brent in a secure
Speaker 6: psychiatric prison unit.
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Speaker 3: Now you talk that people feared that under the condition
Speaker 3: that he was in that this might be in fact
Speaker 3: a death sentence regardless, So what happens?
Speaker 6: Well, at first, Brent seems well adjusted when he's in
Speaker 6: the Montgomery County jail. He was not convicted until he
Speaker 6: pleaded guilty, so the conditions were fairly relaxed. He could
Speaker 6: come and go from his cell. He get access to
Speaker 6: books and writing materials, he had access to radio, and
Speaker 6: because he had become so involved in his spiritual quest
Speaker 6: that as a Buddhist and a Hindu from both traditions,
Speaker 6: he felt, well, this is just I'm going to view
Speaker 6: this as a monk's cell, and I'll just pretend that
Speaker 6: I'm in a monastery, so it can't be that bit.
Speaker 6: But after he pleaded guilty, he was sent to the
Speaker 6: state prison system, where things were a lot more difficult
Speaker 6: and a lot more stringent, and he had to give
Speaker 6: up many of his books, he had to give up
Speaker 6: his radio, and he did not adjust well. He wanted
Speaker 6: to sell by himself, which they agreed to. He began
Speaker 6: seeing a prison a psychiatrist, but the prison psychiatrists communicated
Speaker 6: with a member of Brent's defense team to say Brent's
Speaker 6: long term prognosis was not good, that his mental condition
Speaker 6: was likely to deteriorate, and there's no telling how it
Speaker 6: would all end. And although Brent Junior's friends and family
Speaker 6: rallied around him, and they, you know, they ordered him books,
Speaker 6: They sent money to his commissary account to buy oiltries
Speaker 6: and candy, et cetera, and they wrote to him. He
Speaker 6: continued his mental dissent and he finally he was transferred
Speaker 6: for various reasons, some his requests, some of the prison's requests,
Speaker 6: and he wasn't doing well at all, and there was
Speaker 6: they there was another transfer that he was ordered to do,
Speaker 6: and he said, if you transfer me again, I'll kill myself. Well,
Speaker 6: in prisons, you know, people do say those things and
Speaker 6: they don't always do it. But in Brent's case, he
Speaker 6: wasn't posturing. He had a script or a prescription for
Speaker 6: taylanol for his various ailments, among others, and he simply
Speaker 6: stored them up and he took them all at once,
Speaker 6: and he had liver failure in his jail cell and
Speaker 6: he died.
Speaker 3: In this trial, there was a person that's a crucial
Speaker 3: character in here, and her name was Susan Wardell and
Speaker 3: her specialty well, she was a mitigation specialist. So tell us,
Speaker 3: now that he is dead, how you become involved and
Speaker 3: who is Susan Wardell and her involvement going forward.
Speaker 6: Susan Wardell is my wife's sister, my wife's older sister.
Speaker 6: Both my wife, her sister, and I were at Duke
Speaker 6: University together in the late nineteen sixties. I didn't know
Speaker 6: either of them at the time, but Susan was there.
Speaker 6: Susan graduated from Duke. She had been married and then
Speaker 6: she was divorced, and she later in life she went
Speaker 6: back to school the university, first to get a degree
Speaker 6: in clinical social work and then to get a degree
Speaker 6: in law. So she was both an attorney and a
Speaker 6: clinical social worker. And she gravitated to a specialty called
Speaker 6: death penalty mitigation, which meant that the federal courts have decided,
Speaker 6: as they've narrowed the window for the death penalty, that
Speaker 6: if you have a client as a defense attorney who
Speaker 6: you think is likely to face the prospect of the
Speaker 6: death penalty at the end of a trial, at the
Speaker 6: beginning of the trial, you need to hire someone a
Speaker 6: mitigation specialist, and that specialist job was to create a
Speaker 6: profile of the defendant apart from their guilt or innocence
Speaker 6: that wasn't a factor, but a psychological profile sympathetic that
Speaker 6: could be presented at the end of the trial to
Speaker 6: either the prosecutor the judge or a jury if they
Speaker 6: go to a penalty phase, to say you shouldn't kill
Speaker 6: this person. They never did anything wrong before they were abused,
Speaker 6: there was a drug addiction in the family, or they
Speaker 6: had all these troubles. So that was Susan Wardell's job.
Speaker 6: She did it although she's in Atlanta made a she
Speaker 6: did it mostly in Alabama because there were so many
Speaker 6: death penalty cases in Alabama and she got very good
Speaker 6: at it. So when Brent Junior was extradited back to
Speaker 6: Montgomery and assigned two very capable criminal defense attorneys, they
Speaker 6: employed Susan Wardell to handle this case. Now, most of
Speaker 6: the defendants that she worked with, because of the demography
Speaker 6: of the death penalty in America, were people of color
Speaker 6: and indigen in some way. Brent Junior was quite different.
Speaker 6: He was college educated, he was white, he was upper
Speaker 6: middle class, if not more, and she developed an affinity
Speaker 6: for him, and she a real sympathy for him, so
Speaker 6: she went way beyond what she would normally do for
Speaker 6: a client because she felt so personally close to him.
Speaker 6: He was about the age of Wardell's own two children,
Speaker 6: and as Wordell did more investigation. The sinister presence of
Speaker 6: Caroline Scout began to insinuate itself in her theory of
Speaker 6: the case, but she couldn't get Brent Jr. To cop
Speaker 6: to that to roll on her. He would not hear
Speaker 6: of anything negative about Caroline Scalp, which was very frustrating
Speaker 6: to Susan Wardell. And then when Brent killed himself in prison,
Speaker 6: Susan Wardell was just incensed. She felt that the person
Speaker 6: who was really responsible for these murders, Caroline Scalp, had
Speaker 6: gotten away scott free. There was no evidence now to
Speaker 6: connect her, and that she had escaped justice, and that
Speaker 6: infuriated Wardell.
Speaker 3: Now you write about fate and another person that ends
Speaker 3: up dead, and Caroline Scout involved this. Sandy Campbell tell
Speaker 3: us about this event.
Speaker 6: Well, Susan Wardell convinced me. My previous true crime book
Speaker 6: had come out in twenty thirteen. Susan Wardell convinced me
Speaker 6: that I had to write a book that would bring
Speaker 6: Caroline Scalp to justice, and she sent me all this
Speaker 6: wonderful for journalist material email letters, personal journals, interviews, etc.
Speaker 6: Which she sent to me as an inducement to write
Speaker 6: the book. I went through that material, I was convinced.
Speaker 6: I was persuaded, and I agreed to research the book.
Speaker 6: When I finished her files, I began doing my own
Speaker 6: research in Montgomery, and I thought I was finished with
Speaker 6: this case. I was ready to write the book, but
Speaker 6: I thought, well, I better go to Boulder just in case.
Speaker 6: I went out to Boulder, did some more research and reporting.
Speaker 6: I worked at a private investigator would work at the
Speaker 6: defense team, and then I thought, okay, I did my
Speaker 6: due diligence. I'm coming back to at that time, Florida,
Speaker 6: and it couldn't have been more than a few days
Speaker 6: later when I heard from a private investigator. He said,
Speaker 6: we'll never believe what happened. They found another body up
Speaker 6: on Caroline Scout's ranch in Wyoming, and it's an apparent suicide.
Speaker 6: I thought, WHOA. So I began to investigate that. He
Speaker 6: began to investigate that, and I convinced the Wyoming Sheriff's
Speaker 6: people to begin to investigate that. It turned out that
Speaker 6: this new victim, Sandy Campbell, had known Brent was from
Speaker 6: Boulder before he went up there. He had known Brent Junior.
Speaker 6: They were friends. He was also psychologically fragile, and then
Speaker 6: in a more sinister development, two insurance policies popped up
Speaker 6: on Sandy Campbell's life which named Caroline Scout as the
Speaker 6: sole beneficiary, even though Campbell had a daughter that he
Speaker 6: was close to. So the police, at my urging, would
Speaker 6: not sign a death certificate putting the cause of death
Speaker 6: at suicide because that would trigger payment of the insurance
Speaker 6: company on those claims. So that's when the plock thickened
Speaker 6: and I got to be friendly for some reason. I
Speaker 6: still don't know why. With a deputy sheriff out there
Speaker 6: who listened to me and paid attention to me, which,
Speaker 6: you know, police homicide people don't like civilians getting themselves involved,
Speaker 6: particularly they don't like journalists getting involved. But this person,
Speaker 6: Detective Sergeant Patrick Watsabaw, listened to me and he said, oh, hey,
Speaker 6: we won't sign the certificate. And then later he said, well,
Speaker 6: Caroline keeps calling and calling. I want to know why
Speaker 6: we won't sign it death certificate. Well, one reason was
Speaker 6: it was the suicide was a shooting in it. The
Speaker 6: closer they looked at it, the more hinky it looked.
Speaker 6: The physical evidence did not really line up with the
Speaker 6: story that Caroline was telling about what happened, and so
Speaker 6: Detective Watsa Ball told me. He said, Mark, if you
Speaker 6: fly out here, you can help us and I'll get
Speaker 6: you an interview with Caroline Scout. I said, Patrick, how
Speaker 6: can you do that? He said, I'll take care of it.
Speaker 6: So I said okay. I went out to Blunt South Dakota,
Speaker 6: then drove over into Wyoming, and in fact, through a
Speaker 6: series of events, Watsa Ball was able to get me
Speaker 6: face to face with the Caroline Scalt. She wasn't sure
Speaker 6: the capacity that I was there for, which worked in
Speaker 6: my favor at least for most of the interview. But
Speaker 6: I was able to sit face to face with her
Speaker 6: for two hours and do an interview. She didn't admit
Speaker 6: anything that I never thought she would, but at least
Speaker 6: I had the opportunity to speak with her. When we
Speaker 6: left the interview, wats the Ball said, we're going to
Speaker 6: convene on Monday a task force to look into this
Speaker 6: case and the previous case. Would you be willing to
Speaker 6: come and join us? And I thought, okay, I mean
Speaker 6: this never happens. Cops never asked a journalist to sit
Speaker 6: in and help. So I thought, okay, let's do it.
Speaker 6: And so that Monday morning, there was assembled in the
Speaker 6: Sheriff's department in Western County, Wyoming, two coroners, a cornersan investigator,
Speaker 6: and Sergeant Watsaball, and we all convened. Everybody brought the
Speaker 6: documents that they had generated by looking into the case,
Speaker 6: and I was asked to be the first speaker. And
Speaker 6: the first thing they asked me about was the Springford
Speaker 6: merch and how they may be similar, how they might
Speaker 6: have been similar for the dynamic between Scouts and Brent Junior,
Speaker 6: how that might replicate or be similar to the dynamic
Speaker 6: between Caroline Scout Sandy Campbell, the most recent body found
Speaker 6: on her property. And so I basically became a central
Speaker 6: part of this task force looking into this case.
Speaker 3: This task force had a end goal and everybody involved
Speaker 3: in wanting to that was involved in the Springfield case
Speaker 3: but also now in the Campbell case, wanted to bring
Speaker 3: this Caroline to justice and have her testify. So what
Speaker 3: is the strategy leading up to this coroner's inquest? What
Speaker 3: do they ultimately want to do and compel her to do,
Speaker 3: and what would they like to have the prosecution ultimately
Speaker 3: have happened?
Speaker 6: The two coroners who worked together wanted the local criminal
Speaker 6: prosecutor in Western County to bring charges against Caroline associated
Speaker 6: with the death of Sandy Campbell on her property, also
Speaker 6: with some related scams that they turned up in their investigation.
Speaker 6: But despite all the legwork that they did in giving
Speaker 6: information to the local prosecutor, he just thought the case
Speaker 6: was too complicated for him to get into and he
Speaker 6: wouldn't do anything about it. So the next route that
Speaker 6: the Corners took they contracted the Wyoming State Year of Investigation,
Speaker 6: who had the jurisdiction if they wanted to if they
Speaker 6: want to assert it, to come in and look into
Speaker 6: the case. They agreed to look into the case, but
Speaker 6: they weren't sure how long that would take. So the
Speaker 6: coroner's decided, if the prosecutor won't bring a criminal proceeding,
Speaker 6: we'll bring what's known as a partner's inquest, which is
Speaker 6: by statute to determine the cause and circumstances of the death.
Speaker 6: And they decided they would make a corner's inquest basically
Speaker 6: a trial of Caroline Campbell, and put forth to a
Speaker 6: partner's jury all the information that they were able to
Speaker 6: turn up and all the information that I was able
Speaker 6: to turn off and all the information that the private
Speaker 6: investigator in Denver and Boulder was able to turn off
Speaker 6: in hopes of using a partner's inquest verdict. The further
Speaker 6: pressure either the local prosecutor or the state Department of
Speaker 6: Investigation to bring criminal charges in a criminal court against
Speaker 6: Caroline Scalp. And even if they couldn't, they wanted to
Speaker 6: put Caroline Scalp on trial because there was no other
Speaker 6: way they thought to bring her to justice.
Speaker 3: They thought that putting her on the stand, or compelling
Speaker 3: her to be on the stand, they were confident that
Speaker 3: would happen, but they might get something, derive something from that.
Speaker 3: She does go to this inquest, what happens.
Speaker 6: A good lawyer and he did everything he could because
Speaker 6: she had never to our knowledge, Caroline Scout has never
Speaker 6: been in a courtroom where she was placed under oath.
Speaker 6: And the jeopardy is if she did testify at the
Speaker 6: Carnialian quest and she lied, if not for her involvement
Speaker 6: in the in either of the killings, she would be subject.
Speaker 1: To a perjury charge.
Speaker 6: So her lawyer went back and forth and back and
Speaker 6: forth until he finally said, if you call her, we
Speaker 6: will assert her fifth Amendment rights and say to the
Speaker 6: corner's jury, she is asserting her Fifth Amendment rights of
Speaker 6: not incriminating herself. But she would not physically be on
Speaker 6: the stand because under Wyoming law, if your client is
Speaker 6: likely to take our Fifth Amendment against self incrimination, you
Speaker 6: couldn't keep asking her the same question. If you knew
Speaker 6: that that person was going to assert the Fifth Amendment rights,
Speaker 6: you couldn't actually put them on the stand. It would
Speaker 6: be considered prejudicial because the jurors might take the implication
Speaker 6: that she had something to hide. So she in the
Speaker 6: final analysis, she showed up in the court room with
Speaker 6: her attorney, but she was in the back of the room.
Speaker 6: Her attorney asserted her right, and she escaped being able
Speaker 6: being compelled to testify in the corners in question.
Speaker 3: With this pursuit, as you call it, yourself and everyone
Speaker 3: else trying to get criminal charges to take this further,
Speaker 3: what is the result of that pursuit and what happens
Speaker 3: to Caroline scout Well.
Speaker 6: The corner's jury came back with a verdict of homicide,
Speaker 6: which is the same murder in the case of Sandy Campbell. Afterward,
Speaker 6: they did not name the person in their ruling. They
Speaker 6: did not name the person, but after the ruling was announced,
Speaker 6: they said that they believed the Caroline Scout was responsible
Speaker 6: for the death of Sandy Campbell for profit. That induced
Speaker 6: the state's investigators to continue their investigation. But while that
Speaker 6: was dragging on, Caroline Scout moved to Indiana and died
Speaker 6: of natural causes. So there was no reason for there
Speaker 6: to be a report from the state police. And so
Speaker 6: the only record we have, the only decision we had,
Speaker 6: was from the corner's inquest.
Speaker 3: To wrap up this incredible story, you reflect what did
Speaker 3: you learn from this? And as you write in reflections,
Speaker 3: what is your conclusion, if any, from this incredible journey
Speaker 3: into this the facts of this case.
Speaker 6: I take a layered view of how and why the
Speaker 6: story of four tragic deaths unfolded so inexorably. I view
Speaker 6: the spread's responsibility for the tragedy in Montgomery and what
Speaker 6: took place afterward in Boulder and Wyoming. As a parent,
Speaker 6: I can't fault Charlotte Springford for trying to involve herself
Speaker 6: in her son's life and psychiatric treatment. To one doctor,
Speaker 6: she wrote, quote, we love him so much and we
Speaker 6: are so frightened for him. The larger question seems to me,
Speaker 6: is how my friend's parents have distinguished between his neediness
Speaker 6: and entitlement, his sincere spiritual quest an incipient, possibly hereditary
Speaker 6: mental illness. Then how soon should they have recognized the
Speaker 6: venal malign influence of Caroline Scalp, for whom they place
Speaker 6: so much faith and hope For that I have no answer.
Speaker 6: When Susan Wardell first brought the Springford case to my
Speaker 6: attention in two thousand and nine, they were two dead
Speaker 6: people Charlotte and Brent Springford Senior, Brent Junior, and Richard
Speaker 6: Campbell Sandy were still alive. By the time I left
Speaker 6: Wyoming in twenty sixteen, they were four dead. I wish
Speaker 6: the outcome could have been otherwise, the Caroline Scalp would
Speaker 6: have faced the jury for her role in the Springford
Speaker 6: and Camal deaths. But nothing more Wordale or various law
Speaker 6: enforcement officials, and certainly not me could do, was able
Speaker 6: to change that. However, when I first approached the members
Speaker 6: of the Springford and Campbell families, as well as defense
Speaker 6: and law enforcement officials in Alabama, Colorado, and Wyoming, I
Speaker 6: told them that, regardless of how the judicial process played out,
Speaker 6: this book would be the murder trial the Caroline Scalp
Speaker 6: never had.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. I want to thank you very much, Mark Ignsky
Speaker 3: for talking about your incredible book, Drifting into Darkness Murders, Madness,
Speaker 3: suicide and a Death under Suspicious Circumstances for those that
Speaker 3: might want to take a look at more information and
Speaker 3: other books that you've written. Is there an Amazon page
Speaker 3: and is there a website please?
Speaker 6: There's a website which is www dot mark Kinski one
Speaker 6: word M A r K B I N s k
Speaker 6: Y dot com. I'm also on Facebook. There's a lot
Speaker 6: of material on Facebook as well, and I have a
Speaker 6: presence on other social platforms as well, TikTok and Twitter,
Speaker 6: et cetera. So you should be able to find me
Speaker 6: in the book, or you could just go to New
Speaker 6: South one word Books, New Southbooks dot com and you'll
Speaker 6: find as much as you would need to know about
Speaker 6: the book right there.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much, Mark Ipinske Drifting into Darkness, Murders, Madness,
Speaker 3: suicide and a Death under Suspicious Circumstances. It has been incredible.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much. You have a great evening, good night,
Speaker 3: good night.
Speaker 6: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3: Thank you