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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 Gaesy, Bundy, Dahmer, The Night Stalker DTK.
Speaker 5: Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking
Speaker 5: and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with
Speaker 5: your host journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Speaker 4: Good Evening. On January twenty first, nineteen fifty eight, nineteen
Speaker 4: year old Charles Starkweather changed the course of crime in
Speaker 4: the United States when he murdered the parents and sister
Speaker 4: of his fourteen year old girlfriend and possible accomplice, Carol
Speaker 4: and Fugate, in a house on the edge of Lincoln, Nebraska.
Speaker 4: They then drove to the nearby town of Bennett, where
Speaker 4: a farmer was robbed and killed. When stark Weather's car
Speaker 4: broke down, the teenagers who stopped to help were murdered
Speaker 4: and jammed into a storm cellar. By the time the
Speaker 4: dust settled, ten innocent people were dead and the city
Speaker 4: of Lincoln was in a state of terror. Schools closed,
Speaker 4: men with rifles perched on the roofs of their houses
Speaker 4: the National Guard patrolled the street. If there is a
Speaker 4: cultural version of PTSD, the town suffered from it. Stark
Speaker 4: Weather and few Gates capture and arrest, and the resulting
Speaker 4: trials about the killing spree received worldwide coverage. The event
Speaker 4: would serve as the inspiration for the movie Natural Born
Speaker 4: Killers and Springsteen's iconic album Nebraska. Today, the story has
Speaker 4: dropped far from the national consciousness. With new material, news reporting,
Speaker 4: and new conclusions about the possible guilt or innocence of Fugate,
Speaker 4: the tale is ripe for an updated and definitive retelling.
Speaker 4: In stark Weather, best selling author Harry and McLean tells
Speaker 4: the story of this shocking event and its lasting impact,
Speaker 4: a crime spree that struck deep into the heart of
Speaker 4: the Heartland. The book they were featuring this evening is
Speaker 4: stark Weather, The Untold Story of the Killing Spree that
Speaker 4: Changed America, with my special guest author Harry and McLain.
Speaker 4: Good evening, and welcome to the program, Author Harry McLean.
Speaker 2: Good evening, Thanks for having me to your program.
Speaker 4: I appreciate it, Thank you very much. Let's talk about
Speaker 4: right away. In your extraordinary book, you talk about you
Speaker 4: were fifteen years old in January nineteen fifty eight, and
Speaker 4: Carol Fugate was thirteen years old, Charlie stark Weather was
Speaker 4: nineteen years old, and you all lived in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Speaker 4: Tell us your proximity to one of the houses and
Speaker 4: homes involved in one of the sets of murders, and
Speaker 4: tell us a little bit about how you became involved
Speaker 4: in writing this book in twenty and twenty one.
Speaker 2: Well, I lived on the other side of town from
Speaker 2: Carol Fugate and Charlie Starkweather. I was kind of the
Speaker 2: borderline country club set. Carroll's family was quite poor and
Speaker 2: they lived in an area called Belmont, which was North Lincoln.
Speaker 2: Charlie was doing a little bit better, but he's still
Speaker 2: in North Lincoln. So while we lived in the same town,
Speaker 2: and actually my brother was in junior high school with Charlie,
Speaker 2: we didn't run in the same circles. And it all
Speaker 2: the story begins in nineteen fifty eight January twentieth twenty first,
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty eight and ends eight days later, nine days
Speaker 2: later with the capture and in between that time period.
Speaker 2: In that time period, ten people die shot or stabbed
Speaker 2: to death, a variety of people, and Charlie clearly is
Speaker 2: involved in the killings. Carol's involvement is very debatable. It's
Speaker 2: very ambiguous. It's not clear. She claimed that she was
Speaker 2: the hostage. She went along with Charlie on each one
Speaker 2: of these murders. She was there and participated to some
Speaker 2: minimal extent, But what was her culpability criminal or morally
Speaker 2: since she was only fourteen years old at the time.
Speaker 2: So that's the main theme in the book. And basically
Speaker 2: Charlie and Carol were going out. He was nineteen, he
Speaker 2: had met her when he was seventeen. She had just
Speaker 2: turned thirteen, and Carol's parents had told Charlie to leave
Speaker 2: and to stay away and not come around anymore. And
Speaker 2: on the first on Monday, the twenty first, Charlie shot
Speaker 2: Carol's mother, stepfather, and little sister to death. Charlie ended
Speaker 2: up claiming that Carol was there when it happened. Carol
Speaker 2: said she was not there when it happened, that she
Speaker 2: came home later. They stay in the house for about
Speaker 2: six days, spending on how you counted, it could be seven.
Speaker 2: On the seventh day, they leave because Carol's grandmother they've
Speaker 2: been hiding in the house and Carol's grandmother said she's
Speaker 2: going to call the cops, so they hit the road.
Speaker 2: They head out for a town south of Lincoln called Bennett,
Speaker 2: and the cops come to her home. They don't see
Speaker 2: anything wrong. They miss pretty obvious sites that something terrible
Speaker 2: has happened there, and in fact, her parents and little
Speaker 2: sister in outbuildings frozen in the January Nebraska weather for
Speaker 2: that whole week when they were there, and they don't
Speaker 2: look out buildings, so they don't see the bodies. Carol
Speaker 2: and Charlie end up in a town called Bennett, which
Speaker 2: is about twenty miles south of Lincoln.
Speaker 4: There they murder.
Speaker 2: Charlie murders a good friend of his on whose property
Speaker 2: he used to hunt, and subsequent to that, they killed
Speaker 2: two teenagers, Carol King and Bobby Jensen, who pick them
Speaker 2: up while they're hitch hiking. They then hit back to
Speaker 2: Lincoln just about the time the cops have found the
Speaker 2: bodies in Lincoln of her family. They hit back to
Speaker 2: Lincoln and that night they're in Lincoln and the bodies
Speaker 2: are discovered in Bennett. The next day they're in Lincoln
Speaker 2: at a very wealthy family house. There they murder three people,
Speaker 2: mister Ward Clara Ward and the maid Lillian Fencil. They
Speaker 2: then head out for Wyoming, and the cops are always
Speaker 2: one step behind him. They're always at least one crime
Speaker 2: scene behind him. And they head out and they they're
Speaker 2: heading towards the state of Washington, and they get into
Speaker 2: the bad lands of Wyoming. Charlie Murders shoots to death
Speaker 2: a traveling salesman who is has pulled over for a nap.
Speaker 2: Charlie wants his car because the car he's to god
Speaker 2: is hot, so he shoots him to death. About that time,
Speaker 2: the sheriff pulls up. Eryl jumps to the sheriff's car.
Speaker 2: Charlie takes off. There's a big chase where the cops
Speaker 2: are shooting him, shooting at him, going one hundred and
Speaker 2: ten miles now across the bedlines. They eventually capture him
Speaker 2: their return to Lincoln on Friday. So all this happens
Speaker 2: from Monday through Friday. It seems like a long nightmare
Speaker 2: for the city of Lincoln because they were terrified. They
Speaker 2: knew Charlie was on the loose, they knew he was
Speaker 2: terrifying people. They knew that no one knew where he was.
Speaker 2: The cops didn't know where he was, and in the
Speaker 2: middle of this bodies would turn out more dead people,
Speaker 2: so they were terrified. It's hard to believe it's only
Speaker 2: a five day period. They bring Charlie and Carroll back.
Speaker 2: Charlie confesses he's quite pleased with the course of events
Speaker 2: in my view, because he's going to go out as
Speaker 2: a legend. He is able to predict at that point
Speaker 2: that movies and books will be made of his adventure.
Speaker 2: So he confesses. There is a trial on sanity, he's convicted.
Speaker 2: He's executed within fifteen months of his conviction. Carol has
Speaker 2: tried on a felony murder Bobby Jensen, the Boy and Bennett,
Speaker 2: and she's convicted and she goes to prison for her life.
Speaker 2: She's given life, she could have been given the death
Speaker 2: sentence under the rascal a lot at the time, and
Speaker 2: she goes to prison women's reformatory in York. She's out
Speaker 2: seventeen years later, still proclaiming her innocence and lives a
Speaker 2: pretty normal life.
Speaker 4: Okay, Harry, now let's go back. We've you've abbreviated the
Speaker 4: entire story. But let's go back as you do. You
Speaker 4: said you knocked on every door, you turned over every stone,
Speaker 4: you spoke to everybody you possibly could. You looked at
Speaker 4: all of the documentation very very carefully, over and over again.
Speaker 4: Let's go back to Carol Fugates background, and then let's
Speaker 4: talk about Carl's Starkweather's background.
Speaker 2: Carol was from a poor family, as I said, poor
Speaker 2: part of town. Her dad, her biological dad, was violent.
Speaker 2: He was a pedophile, and he beat her mother pretty badly,
Speaker 2: and they moved every five or six months. She went
Speaker 2: to six schools in five years, so she had a
Speaker 2: rep pretty rough childhood.
Speaker 4: Put it mildly.
Speaker 2: She did alright in school. She had a couple of friends.
Speaker 2: She wasn't the star in any sense of the word,
Speaker 2: but she was mildly well adjusted for given her background.
Speaker 2: Charlie started off well. Charlie is five foot four, flaming thick,
Speaker 2: flaming red hair, and bow legged and pigeon toed and
Speaker 2: spoke with a lisp. So everybody can think back to
Speaker 2: their childhood, how cool kids could be in school. And
Speaker 2: they were terribly cruel to Charlie. I talked well, as
Speaker 2: I said, My brother was in school with him, but
Speaker 2: they taunted him and mocked him and chased him mercilessly
Speaker 2: through most of grade school, and finally, one day his
Speaker 2: dad sat him down and said, look, you don't have
Speaker 2: to put up with this anymore. Hit him, smack him.
Speaker 2: That was a pivot for Charlie. From that point on,
Speaker 2: he didn't run from anybody. He fought harder than most people.
Speaker 2: He fought dirtier than most people. He would a fight.
Speaker 2: He would see somebody across the street that didn't he
Speaker 2: didn't like his looks, you'd go over and say something
Speaker 2: dim smack him in them out. His reputation started to
Speaker 2: spread across Lincoln. By then, he was he became he
Speaker 2: became a known character. The way he kind of dealt
Speaker 2: with the way he was being dealt with treated by
Speaker 2: other kids was besides being a tough guy, he developed
Speaker 2: the fantasy world in which he was an outlaw, or
Speaker 2: he could be a sheriff, but his favorite fantasy was
Speaker 2: an outlaw and he got into shootouts with people, and
Speaker 2: he ran, and he advice with lawmen, and he had
Speaker 2: a gang and all that sort of stuff. And this
Speaker 2: this fantasy became really kind of took over his consciousness.
Speaker 2: It became, you know, it was the contents of his
Speaker 2: self perception, that he was this outlaw and he really
Speaker 2: wanted to go out. He he didn't foresee himself living
Speaker 2: a long life at all. He was happy to go
Speaker 2: out in a blaze of glory. So he reached the
Speaker 2: point where he wanted to see if this fantasy that
Speaker 2: he had in his head about being an outlaw on
Speaker 2: killing people and getting into shootouts was real. He could
Speaker 2: make it real. In November fifty seven, he tested out
Speaker 2: this theory and he shot to death a gas station
Speaker 2: attendant on the outside on a small road outside of Lincoln,
Speaker 2: on the edge of Lincoln, and he robbed him and
Speaker 2: shot him to death, and it worked. Charlie found it satisfying.
Speaker 2: It was a new life for him in the sense
Speaker 2: that now he was moving his fantasy into reality. All
Speaker 2: he needed now with the girl, and there comes Carol.
Speaker 2: Carol is now the last piece in Charlie's fantasy in
Speaker 2: his puzzle, and the two of them become a unit.
Speaker 4: Tell us about Carol's sister, Barbara, and how Carol meets
Speaker 4: Charles Starkweather in the first place.
Speaker 2: Barbara is going with a friend of Charlie von Bush
Speaker 2: and Charlie and Bob kind of the they run together
Speaker 2: they're kind of the tough guys in Lincoln, and I
Speaker 2: do remember that about him. There were kids that got
Speaker 2: in fights at all the schools, and van Bush and
Speaker 2: Stark Oather were two of the toughest gies. And Van
Speaker 2: Bush hooked up with Barbara, Carol's older sister who she
Speaker 2: was quite close, and brought Charlie with him one night
Speaker 2: over there and introduced him to Carol. And that was
Speaker 2: the point of the gathering was so they could meet
Speaker 2: and they became a couple almost that night, even though
Speaker 2: Carol was only fourteen and Charlie was seventeen at the time,
Speaker 2: and they were together. It was about a year and
Speaker 2: a half before the killing started. They went together for
Speaker 2: about a year and a half before the killing started.
Speaker 4: You're right that she really liked his stories about his
Speaker 4: outlog gang and liked that he could fix cars, and
Speaker 4: liked his red hair even and even that he was
Speaker 4: bow legged, and that he was much different. So for
Speaker 4: the first time he liked her, but someone liked him,
Speaker 4: and it was important to him.
Speaker 2: She liked the way he looked, She liked the idea
Speaker 2: that he was a tough She kind of liked the
Speaker 2: idea that the guys were scared of him. He ran
Speaker 2: hot rides out at the track outside of Lincoln on
Speaker 2: Sunday night. She kind of liked that. And the reverse
Speaker 2: of that is that, you know the way psychologists look
Speaker 2: at somebody like Carol as they call her a sitting duck,
Speaker 2: meaning that she came from such a traumatic background at
Speaker 2: that point that what she wanted was somebody in her
Speaker 2: life to stabilize her and to whom she would be
Speaker 2: the most important person. And Charlie, I think understood that
Speaker 2: and did. He didn't overtly manipulate her, but he filled
Speaker 2: that role very nicely for her. She was the most
Speaker 2: important thing in his life.
Speaker 4: You say they did all kinds of things, They had
Speaker 4: a sexual relationship. And again, what happens after a year
Speaker 4: and a half is that you talk and you write
Speaker 4: about the altercation that happens at the home with the
Speaker 4: stepfather Mary and Bartlett and the mother slapping his face,
Speaker 4: and then the issue of whether Carol was involved in
Speaker 4: was present at all in the murder of her family.
Speaker 4: It's important that you look at that and delve into
Speaker 4: that issue completely and then have a conclusion as to
Speaker 4: that possibility. Tell us about what happens in your mind,
Speaker 4: and according to Carol, that faithful day.
Speaker 2: You put your finger right on the critical issue in
Speaker 2: the story as far as it relates to Carol's guilt innocence.
Speaker 2: If she was there when Charlie murdered her mother, her stepfather,
Speaker 2: and her little sister and continued with him, it makes
Speaker 2: sure whether she should be complicit at for it makes
Speaker 2: her complicit in the ongoing murders in the sense that
Speaker 2: she knew what was going to happen, she could run
Speaker 2: away from him. There are plenty of opportunities for run
Speaker 2: if she wasn't there. If the first thing she saw
Speaker 2: was when she got home from school at four o'clock,
Speaker 2: was Charlie inside with a shotgun saying that he had
Speaker 2: her parents' hostage and would kill them if she tried
Speaker 2: to leave, that sends a story in a whole different direction.
Speaker 2: And Carol always claimed that she was a hostage, that
Speaker 2: she believed that Charlie was going to kill her, her parents,
Speaker 2: and her little sister and probably her if she tried
Speaker 2: to run. And if that's the case, then the first
Speaker 2: time she saw Charlie kill somebody was when he killed
Speaker 2: the farmer outside of Bennett and that would have been
Speaker 2: the traumatic situation that would have impacted her if she
Speaker 2: was there. Of course, she's a completely different story. So
Speaker 2: the big issue was was she there? And I resolved
Speaker 2: it through detailed analysis of the facts and some inferences
Speaker 2: that are drawn that she wasn't there, that she came
Speaker 2: home and Charlie had already cleaned up the house and
Speaker 2: buried the bodies and some outbuildings not too far away,
Speaker 2: and that she went with Charlie out of fear for
Speaker 2: her parents' lives.
Speaker 4: At the same time, once these two were captured, they
Speaker 4: are placed in separate vehicles with law enforcement. And also
Speaker 4: this major issue again nineteen fifty eight, but then advances
Speaker 4: in the legal system where she was fourteen and she
Speaker 4: was questioned when she was accused of murder without an attorney,
Speaker 4: without a parent present, So not only the age of fourteen,
Speaker 4: but also that adult right to counsel wasn't given to
Speaker 4: her as a obvious juvenile.
Speaker 2: And I mean the fact is she was sedated when
Speaker 2: she was interrogated initially two when they got her, she
Speaker 2: was hysterical, claming Charlie was going to kill her, and
Speaker 2: she wasn't involved in anything, which is what Charlie said
Speaker 2: in the beginning. For a month, Charlie denied that she
Speaker 2: was involved in any of the criminal activity or that
Speaker 2: she had been at home. What he killed her parents.
Speaker 2: So he comes in jesuhysterical. They sedate her for two days,
Speaker 2: that day and that night and the next day on
Speaker 2: drive back to Lincoln, and she now believes that her
Speaker 2: parents are dead. She asked enough people. She finally asked
Speaker 2: her sister, and she's placed in the mental hospital because
Speaker 2: they don't have a facility for juvenile girls. And she's
Speaker 2: ends the next She's not treated at all, not interviewed,
Speaker 2: not evaluated ever. She sits out there and while her
Speaker 2: trial is delayed for six or seven months because they're
Speaker 2: resolving this issue where she's going to be tried. They
Speaker 2: interrogate her on Saturday. She's back on Friday, back and
Speaker 2: they interrogate her for several hours on Saturday, Sunday and Monday.
Speaker 2: And it kind of depends what you call interrogation how
Speaker 2: many hours you can add in there, but it's it's
Speaker 2: the minimum of ten hours. And she does ask she
Speaker 2: does ask for it. She's asked her she wants an attorney.
Speaker 2: She says, yes, I do. She doesn't really know what's
Speaker 2: going on. I mean, it's hard to imagine what state
Speaker 2: she was really in that point at the age and
Speaker 2: the trauma, and the DA and the police chief are
Speaker 2: all sitting in this room with her, and she's there
Speaker 2: all by herself, no parent, no adult, no lawyer or nothing,
Speaker 2: and she's getting interrogated. She makes a statement, then sixty
Speaker 2: six page statement, which is what ends convicting her at
Speaker 2: the trial. It would never ever, ever be admitted into
Speaker 2: evidence today.
Speaker 4: You said, no attorney would advise it, but also explain
Speaker 4: for our audience the felony murder rule, so that while
Speaker 4: she's confessing, she, as you write, she's tightening the noose
Speaker 4: for the prosecution.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pelony murderer is quite controversial, and it always has been.
Speaker 2: And it's if you're involved in the crime in which
Speaker 2: a murder happens, you can in fact be convicted of
Speaker 2: the first gream murder itself. So if you're in a car,
Speaker 2: if you're sitting in the backseat of the car and
Speaker 2: you're part of it and you know what's happening, and
Speaker 2: the guy goes in and kills the owner of the
Speaker 2: seven to eleven, you're guilty of murder. Firs su gream
Speaker 2: murder just as much as he is, and you could
Speaker 2: be sentenced to death. So what happened was, when they
Speaker 2: were driving around with the two Bennett teenagers, Charlie told
Speaker 2: Carol to take some money from Bobby Jones's wallet and
Speaker 2: put it in his What she did, she admitted it.
Speaker 2: She took his wallet, took four or five bucks out,
Speaker 2: put it Charlie's walk. So that's the felony. And so
Speaker 2: based on that, they charged her with first degree murder
Speaker 2: under the felling murder rule, and she could have been
Speaker 2: executed because of that. Since then, the Supreme Court has
Speaker 2: held that you cannot be sentenced to death under the
Speaker 2: fellony murdered rule unless you were involved in the murder itself.
Speaker 2: You can be convicted it's ending light in prison, but
Speaker 2: you can't be sentenced to death for felling murder unless
Speaker 2: you were part of the crime of murder.
Speaker 4: Let's also talk about the other crimes that Charlie eventually
Speaker 4: says that Carol is responsible for or involved with in
Speaker 4: terms of murder, but also when you talk about this
Speaker 4: crucial moment and the reason why Charlie changes his mind
Speaker 4: so dramatically in his confession and blaming Carrol.
Speaker 2: When he was picked up up in the bad Lands,
Speaker 2: he said, leave the girl alone. She had nothing to
Speaker 2: do with it. He gave a written statement, in an
Speaker 2: oral statement that night he said the same thing. He
Speaker 2: drove to Lincoln the next day and he said the
Speaker 2: same thing, though he did scratch on a jailhouse wall
Speaker 2: in Gearring, Nebraska, that Carol had killed some people. When
Speaker 2: he then gave formal statements under oath and recorded, he
Speaker 2: swore that she was not at home, that she had
Speaker 2: nothing to do with any of the killings, and that's
Speaker 2: where he testifies to in his trial. As she's coming
Speaker 2: to trial, he starts to ship and say that at
Speaker 2: one point or another he says that she was home
Speaker 2: and had in fact murdered her little sister. He says
Speaker 2: that she murdered Carol King, one of the teenagers outside
Speaker 2: of Bennett, and he also by implication, accuses her of
Speaker 2: murdering the maid in the warhouse. So he's just kind
Speaker 2: of wrapping everything up, and he gets the real harm
Speaker 2: to Carol from all that was that these accusations made
Speaker 2: headlines in the Lincoln paper. And she's sitting there waiting
Speaker 2: for six months and then rolling all these headlines through
Speaker 2: Charlie's trial about her. You know, they completely paint the
Speaker 2: picture that she is complicit in the curent so she
Speaker 2: doesn't really have a chance for a fair trial, however
Speaker 2: you look at it. But Charlie changed his mind about it,
Speaker 2: I think because my view is that Carol was supposed
Speaker 2: to go with him, and that became a theme that
Speaker 2: was picked up. He said to one of his lawyers,
Speaker 2: I'm happy to be electrocuted, go to the chair, as
Speaker 2: long as Carol's sitting on my lap. And I think
Speaker 2: that's why he started, why he turned on hers. It
Speaker 2: occurred to him that she might not get the death penalty, and.
Speaker 4: That was his idea, part of his fantasy of blazes
Speaker 4: of glory. But when he was captured by police, she
Speaker 4: ran to other people in the truck and screaming, and
Speaker 4: he ran out of ammunition, so there was no blaze
Speaker 4: of glory. So this was his next option, wasn't it.
Speaker 2: Actually? I think it's somewhat He hinted that it is
Speaker 2: a memoir. The electrocution the chair actually made a better
Speaker 2: story for him than if he'd been shot to.
Speaker 6: Death up in the bed line, because he gets all
Speaker 6: the press, he has the trial, there's the books, there's
Speaker 6: Bruce Springsteen talking about it, there's bad Lands, the movie,
Speaker 6: and a lot of I mean, it's what a great
Speaker 6: way to go to, you know, to be put to chair,
Speaker 6: put to death after this string of murders.
Speaker 2: I think absolutely worked for him. The way it ended up.
Speaker 4: You write extensively about the situation with the press, reporters
Speaker 4: and people with cameras in the jail. Tell us a
Speaker 4: little bit about that.
Speaker 2: When you look at the criminal justice system back in
Speaker 2: those days, and particularly in the Midwest and a town
Speaker 2: like Lincoln, which was a big small town, essentially, it's
Speaker 2: stunning how crude and primitive the criminal justice system was.
Speaker 2: There were no tapes at crime scenes. Onlookers were allowed
Speaker 2: into the house where the murders of their parents had
Speaker 2: taken place. The teenagers that were murdered were stuffed, and
Speaker 2: a storm seller on a farmer's property, and a really bad, bad,
Speaker 2: I mean unfortunate picture of Carol King that one of
Speaker 2: the teenagers was taken. She had been mutilated and shot
Speaker 2: to death, and she was naked and they took a picture.
Speaker 2: And that picture was taken by a farmer. He walked
Speaker 2: down the steps into the storm cellar and took a
Speaker 2: picture of the crime scene and Carol's state of being
Speaker 2: at the time. And the reporter for the Lincoln Journal
Speaker 2: walked into the crime scene house of Carol's family. The
Speaker 2: knight of the murder found a picture of Carol and
Speaker 2: Charlie together, which is the famous picture which you see
Speaker 2: the two of them sitting on a love seat. He
Speaker 2: took it out, got it copied back at the offices,
Speaker 2: took it back out to the crime scene and put
Speaker 2: it back on the desk. And they haven't even investigated
Speaker 2: the crime scene yet. And this guy's walking all over everywhere,
Speaker 2: and the sheriff they allowed. You can see pictures of
Speaker 2: the photographers taking a picture of Charlie in the jail.
Speaker 2: They went in and they talked to him, They shot
Speaker 2: photographs of him, they chatted with them. There's a reporter
Speaker 2: that I know in and gave him a pack of
Speaker 2: cigarettes and sat down and talked to him. He was
Speaker 2: invited by the share So do you want to go
Speaker 2: talk to Charlie. Yeah, I'd like to talk to Charlie. Well,
Speaker 2: taking a pack of cigarettes that don't make them happy.
Speaker 2: So it was and Carol was never, never in cuffs
Speaker 2: or leg irons for this whole time period, Q woke free.
Speaker 2: Basically now, they would kind of hold her arm as
Speaker 2: they were walking into court or down the courthouse, but
Speaker 2: she was There was no restraints on Carol, and she
Speaker 2: was very small. She was barely five feet in, about
Speaker 2: one hundred and five pounds, so she wasn't a real threat.
Speaker 2: But when you look at it today, they're not going
Speaker 2: to look at whether she's a threat or not. They're
Speaker 2: gonna restrain her every way they can.
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Speaker 4: You write that in nineteen sixty four the Continuing Attorneys
Speaker 4: for Carol fugate John MacArthur. You write that his son,
Speaker 4: at fifteen years old, assisted him, and then his son
Speaker 4: went on to go to law school and become a lawyer,
Speaker 4: and you talk about an exciting development that happened. In
Speaker 4: nineteen sixty four, the US Supreme Court issued what you
Speaker 4: call Escabido. A suspect has a right to have an
Speaker 4: attorney as soon as the investigation turns accused. So tell
Speaker 4: us what MacArthur does as a result, and what happens
Speaker 4: before we talk about how Harold's life changes when she
Speaker 4: meets a person involved in the correctional center.
Speaker 2: Jackie Crawford, the only restrictions on confessions obtaining confessions when
Speaker 2: Carol was arrested was the confession voluntary or not? And
Speaker 2: that comes out of the Fifth Amendment. Right clearly was
Speaker 2: not voluntary in the sense that she was sedated and
Speaker 2: all that. But this Supreme Court of Nebraska and the
Speaker 2: US Spamport said no, it was voluntary. A couple in
Speaker 2: sixty four, as you mentioned, they came down with Escabido case,
Speaker 2: which said that the minute that you were in custody,
Speaker 2: basically they had to be advised of their right to
Speaker 2: a lawyer, and a lawyer could be present from that
Speaker 2: point on through the interrogation. Well, under that standard, clearly
Speaker 2: Carrol's confession would I don't think it really was a confession,
Speaker 2: but her statement, which nailed her in front of the jury,
Speaker 2: would have been thrown out. And with that being thrown out,
Speaker 2: all you had left was Charlie's testimony. Well, he changed
Speaker 2: his story so many times you could never convict somebody
Speaker 2: beyond a reasonable doubt just on her testimony. So they
Speaker 2: all got tremendously excited about Escobedo when it came down.
Speaker 2: And the question then was was it going to be
Speaker 2: applied retroactively to people that had been convicted without a
Speaker 2: lawyer or the opportunity to have a lawyer prior to
Speaker 2: it coming down. And the first inkling was that it
Speaker 2: was going to be retroactive, which means she would be well,
Speaker 2: her conviction would be thrown out. And I don't think, well,
Speaker 2: I don't know. They were so determined to convict Carol
Speaker 2: of something. They might have tried her on another one
Speaker 2: of the crimes that didn't involve the confession, but she
Speaker 2: certainly certainly would have been out from under this one,
Speaker 2: I think. And when you think about it, it's hard
Speaker 2: to you kind of see why the sub Paine Court
Speaker 2: didn't do it. There were estimates of like fifteen to
Speaker 2: twenty thousand first degree murderers were going to be released
Speaker 2: if escabedo was retroactive. So they eventually decided that it
Speaker 2: was not retroactive, and she was stuck. She was stuck
Speaker 2: in the reformatory, and it was too bad because it
Speaker 2: looked possible, and I think her hopes really got up.
Speaker 2: I know Jim MacArthur got really he was convinced that
Speaker 2: they had a good shot at ESCAPEDO.
Speaker 4: Let's talk about Jackie Crawford and the relationship with Carol
Speaker 4: and her life behind bars.
Speaker 2: She went to the York Reformatory. She had turned fifteen
Speaker 2: by that time. She was fifteen by the time of
Speaker 2: her trial actually, and that was in November. She was
Speaker 2: sentenced in December, and went there and it was a
Speaker 2: very crude, not surprisingly in those days, very primitive kind
Speaker 2: of crude setting, where there was a lot of elaborate
Speaker 2: punishment systems withholding food, withholding the ability for the people
Speaker 2: there to talk to each other. There was no therapy,
Speaker 2: there was no counseling, there was no work programs, it
Speaker 2: was no education programs. And she had the good fortune
Speaker 2: to have a woman who had moved to York to
Speaker 2: be with her husband, who was a school teacher, and
Speaker 2: she got a job out there as a propressional officer.
Speaker 2: Over two or three years, she ended up first deputy
Speaker 2: warden and then the warden itself, and she took a
Speaker 2: real interest in Carol. She was very progressive in that sense.
Speaker 2: She brought in well, she did away with the punishment
Speaker 2: system pretty much altogether and used the kind of reward
Speaker 2: system in its place. She brought in vocational systems. Carol
Speaker 2: got her high school degree, she ended up getting her
Speaker 2: a certificate as a medical assistant in nursing homes. She
Speaker 2: took all the classes, all the courses. She ended up eventually,
Speaker 2: at Jackie Crawford's insistence, becoming the the babysitter at church
Speaker 2: for a local church every Sunday morning. And she was
Speaker 2: looking out for these kids and becoming a part of
Speaker 2: the church and a part of the community, which was
Speaker 2: stunning when you think where she was about five years
Speaker 2: six years earlier, which is a complete outcast. But she
Speaker 2: ended up traveling around Nebraska giving talks at the schools
Speaker 2: and various fraternal organizations about how not how to make
Speaker 2: the right choice. And it was really someone said to
Speaker 2: me the other day that Carol's story is a tragedy
Speaker 2: upon a tragedy, upon a tragedy. This was the first
Speaker 2: thing that broke her way in her whole life that
Speaker 2: I could see. She ended up with this woman that
Speaker 2: she bonded with, but it wasn't they weren't really friends.
Speaker 2: Jackie Crawford was convinced that Carol could come around and
Speaker 2: become a full blown person and be free and achieve
Speaker 2: some sort of happiness. So she did everything she did
Speaker 2: for Carol, but she did for everybody there. Carol is
Speaker 2: just kind of the most notorious person that she helped.
Speaker 2: And by the time Carol left after seventeen years, she
Speaker 2: was in pretty decent shape, as far as you can
Speaker 2: be in decent shape after what she'd gone through.
Speaker 4: You write about Nannette Beaver, and she had interviewed Carol
Speaker 4: back in nineteen fifty eight as a reporter, and then
Speaker 4: Nannette Beaver enters the story again tell us about that.
Speaker 2: Well, it begins with the fact that, as I've kind
Speaker 2: of mentioned, everybody in Lincoln, whether it was the cops,
Speaker 2: the sheriff, the press, the schools, the average citizen were
Speaker 2: convinced that Carol was guilty, just absolutely convinced. And the
Speaker 2: prosecutors believed it, probably more than anybody, and they were
Speaker 2: going to try Carol murder after murder after murder, and
Speaker 2: tell they got her. I've seen the memo. I know
Speaker 2: how committed they were. They weren't going to kill her,
Speaker 2: but they were going to get her convinced.
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Speaker 2: See website for details. Dict and set away. One of
Speaker 2: the reasons for this attitude, this almost universal attitude which
Speaker 2: is still there today of Carol's guilt knowing participation in it,
Speaker 2: was her appearance. She had a very cold attitude when
Speaker 2: she spoke, It was very clipped. She had a harsh,
Speaker 2: kind of stonelike figure on this fourteen year old girl.
Speaker 2: It was really kind of unsettling to look at her.
Speaker 2: So she showed no remorse anywhere. So they decided to
Speaker 2: have a right before her trial to have a press
Speaker 2: conference where she could be a human being, where she
Speaker 2: could talk and laugh for it, at least relax a
Speaker 2: little bit and show some warmth, some humanity there, some
Speaker 2: remorse for what had happened. So she finally talked the
Speaker 2: lawyers into it and they said, okay, but we're just
Speaker 2: going to have one person to ask her questions, which
Speaker 2: was a mistake, and they picked Thennette Beaver and the
Speaker 2: rest of the press was very unhappy about this because
Speaker 2: it was kind of like a stage scene. Well, if
Speaker 2: you watch a there's a film on stark Weather and
Speaker 2: Carol and it's called Growing Up in Prison, and it's
Speaker 2: on YouTube, you can see Carol testify at this press conference,
Speaker 2: and it's worse than you could imagine. She's stiff, she's cold,
Speaker 2: she's unfeeling, and it really cemented everybody's view of her.
Speaker 2: It's this kind of unfeeling, uncaring. I see person who
Speaker 2: could therefore commit those crimes and not feel bad. So
Speaker 2: then Mannette Beaver ended up writing a book about her
Speaker 2: and Carol, and she was one of the few there's
Speaker 2: like two to three people in a press, in the
Speaker 2: whole press, and there were sixty seventy eighty press people
Speaker 2: in Lincoln covering this thing from not only this country,
Speaker 2: but from Japan and London and France. You'd become an
Speaker 2: international event by the time her trial came around, and
Speaker 2: there were two to three people of the press who
Speaker 2: thought she might be in a set. Everybody else was
Speaker 2: absolutely commenced. And you can see it in the writing,
Speaker 2: or you can see it in note you can talk
Speaker 2: to their kids. There's actually all up in Fort Collins
Speaker 2: who covered it for Lincoln the Star. He's still alive,
Speaker 2: he's ninety two, and he remembers it, and he said
Speaker 2: she's absolutely convinced that Carol was evil, that she did
Speaker 2: it on purpose, that she probably put Charlie up to it.
Speaker 2: And so you have you have two people who thought
Speaker 2: she might be innocent, and then at Beaver was one
Speaker 2: of them.
Speaker 4: You're right about the defense attorney and the Supreme Court's
Speaker 4: denial of the petition that he files for a writ
Speaker 4: of sordio. You should pronounce this and which you say
Speaker 4: cleared the decks for parole. Explain this to us.
Speaker 2: It's Nebraska had a very complicated system of the way
Speaker 2: you were sentenced and when you're available for parole. To
Speaker 2: actually explain that, I probably have to get my book out.
Speaker 2: But since she had been sentenced to life, let's put
Speaker 2: it this way, right, there was no specific date at
Speaker 2: which she was eligible for parole. Right, so the lawyer
Speaker 2: got her re sentenced by the parole board to a
Speaker 2: specific time of year, a specific number of years, and
Speaker 2: I think it was like forty, which allowed her then
Speaker 2: to be have a date for which she could be
Speaker 2: eligible for parole, and she went in and the people
Speaker 2: there was a tremendous controversy over it. The press covered it.
Speaker 2: There were people from Bennett, there were other victims, families
Speaker 2: of victims that came and testified against it. Jackie Crawford
Speaker 2: was there testifying in favor of it, and it was
Speaker 2: turned down, but they did set a number of years.
Speaker 2: Then they said in three years she'll be eligible for
Speaker 2: a parole. So at the end of that three year period,
Speaker 2: she did get parole, and by that time the people
Speaker 2: against it had kind of had kind of given up
Speaker 2: that kind of come to accept it. So it happened
Speaker 2: without a lot of controversy. When she finally got out
Speaker 2: in seventy six.
Speaker 4: What happens when she does get out.
Speaker 2: She's well, when the pro process is going on, there
Speaker 2: are all sorts of people around the country writing her
Speaker 2: saying we believe you're innocent, and nobody from Nebraska as
Speaker 2: far as I know, wrote in and we would like
Speaker 2: to give you a home and find you a job
Speaker 2: and give you a new start in life. And a
Speaker 2: couple from Michigan that she ended up going with and
Speaker 2: she lived with them for a couple of years, and
Speaker 2: she had her care certificate then, and she went to
Speaker 2: work in a hospital, and she also babysat every night
Speaker 2: for three families. She worked a full day and then
Speaker 2: she babysat for four hours. Still a couple got home
Speaker 2: from work five days a week, and she lived a
Speaker 2: pretty normal life. I looked for the records of any
Speaker 2: sort of activity, any sort of bankruptcy, or anything that
Speaker 2: might indicate that there was somebody there still there, and
Speaker 2: I found nothing. She went to Mexico with their girlfriend's break.
Speaker 2: She marched in parade, She read a lot of books,
Speaker 2: and she eventually got married, and then she got in
Speaker 2: twenty thirteen, she got in a bad car accident and
Speaker 2: it left her pretty damaged, and then she had a
Speaker 2: mile stroke and her husband died in a car accident.
Speaker 2: But her life kind of led a not unusual trajectory
Speaker 2: after she was out of prison. So if you really
Speaker 2: you didn't ask this question, but if you really think
Speaker 2: that she was there when Charlie murdered her parents and
Speaker 2: participated in these crimes, you have to accept the possibility.
Speaker 2: Here's this girl for fourteen years, no criminal activity, no
Speaker 2: no indication of any sort of pathology at all, who
Speaker 2: for eight days turns into a monster and after that
Speaker 2: lives a completely and she's in prison. She does great
Speaker 2: in prison. She went never never a blemish on her
Speaker 2: record for seventeen years, never heard of. So there's an
Speaker 2: eight day period she's a monster, and the rest of
Speaker 2: the time she's a pretty normal, decent human being, which
Speaker 2: is real hard to accept that theory of.
Speaker 4: Who she is. Let's use this as an opportunity to
Speaker 4: hear these messages. Now you write, and we've skipped over
Speaker 4: it a little bit that when she's afforded these privileges
Speaker 4: from the Correctional Center at York via this Crawford, her attorney,
Speaker 4: the son of John MacArthur, Jim MacArthur, which is crucial
Speaker 4: to this story and this book. It would stay with
Speaker 4: his family, She would stay with his family. He trusted
Speaker 4: her enough and the correctional Center and trusted her to
Speaker 4: go out on this pass into the community. But the
Speaker 4: attorney is very powerful that they trusted her enough to
Speaker 4: let her stay at their family home all those times.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean they basically after a period of year,
Speaker 2: she was allowed to kind of weekend visitations. And the
Speaker 2: interesting story about that was that Jim MacArthur and a
Speaker 2: couple other fellows in Lincoln owned an apartment building and
Speaker 2: was one of the weekends that Carol came to stay
Speaker 2: with them, and they had young they had young kids
Speaker 2: at the time. She would baby sit their kids. But
Speaker 2: on this day in particular, she went swimming along with
Speaker 2: some others in a swimming pool at the apartment building
Speaker 2: that Jim MacArthur owned, and she was spotted by it
Speaker 2: was never clear who, and a complaint was made and
Speaker 2: Jim MacArthur got a call from somebody high up in
Speaker 2: the corrections correctional system saying Carol was never to be
Speaker 2: allowed in Lincoln again. And she never did come back
Speaker 2: after that until she was paroled. And that's just the
Speaker 2: sign of how of how much Jim MacArthur believed in her,
Speaker 2: and his wife did, the whole family did, and his
Speaker 2: father John, and how much Lincoln did not believe her.
Speaker 4: He also is very strong when you write about the
Speaker 4: members of the Church of Nazarene being witnesses for the
Speaker 4: parole hearing as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were very articulate. I mean they were a
Speaker 2: little hesitant in the beginning, and then she became part
Speaker 2: of the part of the family went on for years,
Speaker 2: and they hired a lawyer to come in and represent him.
Speaker 2: But they testified that she was a decent human being
Speaker 2: who deserved to be given another chance. And they couldn't
Speaker 2: believe that she had done some of this stuff, but
Speaker 2: if she had, for this was a part of it,
Speaker 2: and she had demonstrated that she was a good, responsible,
Speaker 2: kind carrying person. They had something like forty or fifty
Speaker 2: people from the congregation in Bennett, I forget the name
Speaker 2: of the church, the denomination, and they got up and
Speaker 2: gave quite quite moving testimonies. It's part of the record,
Speaker 2: actually you can read it, and it's also written up
Speaker 2: in a lot of the press, and very very powerful,
Speaker 2: very very people committed to her salvation.
Speaker 4: Really very very interesting the press in a condemnation of
Speaker 4: Carol over the years, and especially at the very beginning,
Speaker 4: but also how things change somewhat through various programs and
Speaker 4: through various people like Ninette Beaver, but also that Carol
Speaker 4: was committed to try to get some kind of exoneration,
Speaker 4: some validation that she was innocent, and she you write
Speaker 4: that she underwent a polygraph test on f Lee Bailey's
Speaker 4: of all people's lie detector television program.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she did, you know, every now and she would
Speaker 2: make an effort to convince people that she was innocent,
Speaker 2: and they none of them ever really worked. I watched
Speaker 2: the thing with f Lee Bailey and it's you know,
Speaker 2: it's television, and it wasn't convinced. I mean, if first
Speaker 2: of all, light detectors are are not you know, convincing,
Speaker 2: they're not allowed in court, and for a good reason
Speaker 2: there they're not very reliable. But supposedly she passed it,
Speaker 2: and I watched it and it was not convincing. I mean,
Speaker 2: it just didn't convince me of anything. And then she
Speaker 2: went under hypnosis with a psychologist who wrote a report
Speaker 2: up and that report was just read leg junk. And
Speaker 2: then she took she took some documents. It was Charlie's
Speaker 2: initial interrogation where he said that she was not guilty
Speaker 2: and sent that out to like eighty five homes chosen
Speaker 2: at random to try and convince people in Lincoln that
Speaker 2: she was innocent. It was all kind of it was
Speaker 2: all ineffective. I mean, I understand why she did it,
Speaker 2: but it was never going to change the heart of
Speaker 2: the peace in Nebraska.
Speaker 4: You read about the effect on Lincoln, Nebraska at that
Speaker 4: time and then over the year subsequent years, but also
Speaker 4: how much they were criticized for their ineptitude during the
Speaker 4: initial investigation, such as when they searched a home but
Speaker 4: didn't search the outbuildings whatsoever, and days and days had
Speaker 4: gone by, and then very vivid scene where they're at
Speaker 4: another suspected place where they believe that Charles and Carol
Speaker 4: would be, but meanwhile they're in Wyoming being arrested.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, they just never they never got a handle
Speaker 2: on it. And you know, Lincoln at that time, like
Speaker 2: I say, it was a big small town. They had
Speaker 2: two cop cars out at night to patrol the whole city.
Speaker 2: And you became a cop by in Lincoln by walking
Speaker 2: with another policeman on his beat for two weeks. You
Speaker 2: did that, and you were then a policeman yourself. I
Speaker 2: don't think it's that unusual, at least in the Midwest
Speaker 2: to have that level of policing. Mine was not a
Speaker 2: big thing. Murders were very very rare, and usually if
Speaker 2: there were murders, it was some dispute between neighbors or
Speaker 2: husband and wife, or a robbery or gain action of
Speaker 2: some sort. It wasn't this random sort of thing. So
Speaker 2: they weren't. They weren't prepared for it when you look
Speaker 2: at it. Even so, when you look at it in retrospect,
Speaker 2: you realize that a series of errors and misjudgments and
Speaker 2: inaptitude was what allowed this last ten murders to occur.
Speaker 2: There were chances to stop it, and Charlie should have
Speaker 2: floated to the surface. I could go into that, but
Speaker 2: it's complicated and didn't. I get criticized by current day
Speaker 2: policemen and some of the piece of police and Lincoln
Speaker 2: subsequent to Charlie who've talked to me and said, no,
Speaker 2: you're being too hard on them. They were good cops,
Speaker 2: they were good detectives. But there was one of the
Speaker 2: lead investigators went on a TV show it came well,
Speaker 2: I think it was something like Dayline or something, and
Speaker 2: made a statement that he was convinced, you know, Carol
Speaker 2: was guilty and he thought she should be executed along
Speaker 2: with Charlie sitting on his lap. The bias toward her
Speaker 2: was incredible and consistent and persistent, and it's something I've
Speaker 2: never been able to really understand. What I grew up
Speaker 2: in Lincoln, I know those people they're decent human beings.
Speaker 2: Is decent as you'll find anywhere, and somehow they got
Speaker 2: locked into this notion that Carol was. I actually think
Speaker 2: in the end they hated her more than they hated
Speaker 2: Charlie for some reason.
Speaker 4: I found when I was reading this and then preparing
Speaker 4: for this, that I've seen this phenomena before, where you
Speaker 4: have this much older boyfriend who commits these heinous crimes,
Speaker 4: even involved in the family, and yet there is so
Speaker 4: much criticism heaped on the girlfriend, especially when there is
Speaker 4: some revelation that they had sex sometime after the murders.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that was part of it, And that's something
Speaker 2: that's hard to grasp today. Carol is always She admitted
Speaker 2: in her testimony and in her statements that she had
Speaker 2: had sex with Charlie. Later on she denied it, but
Speaker 2: I don't think her denial is very convincing. But a
Speaker 2: fourteen year old girl having sex with a nineteen year
Speaker 2: old boy at that time who comes from a poor
Speaker 2: part of town and is kind of tack yourself and
Speaker 2: rough looking. That is part of the picture that Lincoln
Speaker 2: had of her and didn't help her situation at all.
Speaker 2: To have this kind of slutty thing about her. That
Speaker 2: was part of her image, part of her presentation in town.
Speaker 2: I think that just made it a little bit easier
Speaker 2: to see her as a criminal. It doesn't quite make
Speaker 2: logical sense, but I know it was a part of
Speaker 2: the image and the way she was presented.
Speaker 4: You write in your book that part of the research
Speaker 4: for your book, obviously you went back to Lincoln, Nebraska,
Speaker 4: your hometown, and you went back and you've visited some
Speaker 4: of the scenes, including the home of where the Wards
Speaker 4: lived and so and after that you said that there
Speaker 4: was one very important visit you would like to make,
Speaker 4: one very important person you'd like to speak to for
Speaker 4: this book.
Speaker 2: Well, back to the pardon hearing for a second, or
Speaker 2: maybe we haven't talked about it, but she applied for
Speaker 2: a partner in pardon in twenty nineteen. She was denied
Speaker 2: in January February twenty twenty one, and that's what got
Speaker 2: me interested in it. She did not and it was denied.
Speaker 2: And I had looked at the case earlier and stayed
Speaker 2: away from it because I was concerned. I knew it
Speaker 2: was going to be difficult for me to do. But
Speaker 2: when the guilt or innocence thing when I looked at
Speaker 2: it that way as a lawyer, I was able to say, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm going to go in and write this as a lawyer.
Speaker 2: As the case went on, Carol was not anywhere to
Speaker 2: be found. Her lawyer didn't know where she was, her
Speaker 2: friends didn't know where she was. Purposely or not, she
Speaker 2: was hidden. I called the sons of her husband, not
Speaker 2: by her, from another woman, and they either didn't either
Speaker 2: didn't know, or wouldn't tell me. And it was a
Speaker 2: severe hole in the book. And by this time I
Speaker 2: spent two years researching. I probably knew more about her
Speaker 2: family and her life when she was that age and
Speaker 2: fourteen than she did, and yet I had not set
Speaker 2: eyes on her.
Speaker 4: And it had to happen tell us about this meeting.
Speaker 2: So I get a phone call one day, trying to
Speaker 2: say to myself, it's okay, Harriet, it's okay. You know
Speaker 2: you don't have this person, you haven't set eyes on her,
Speaker 2: you don't have any sort of personal reaction to her.
Speaker 2: But every time I talk to somebody, particularly reporters, if
Speaker 2: you talk to Carol, we talk to Carol. He talked
Speaker 2: to Carol. And I'm sitting there trying of buffaloed and
Speaker 2: I get a call one day where the person tells
Speaker 2: me where she is and she's in a nursing home
Speaker 2: and the name of the nursing home, of the city,
Speaker 2: all that stuff. And a couple of days later I
Speaker 2: had my wife call up the nursing home and ask
Speaker 2: for Carol by her married name was what she went
Speaker 2: by then, and they said, oh, yeah, she's here. We
Speaker 2: can put you through. She can't talk very well, but
Speaker 2: you know she can. We'll put you through on her phone. Well,
Speaker 2: that phone call didn't go through, but it signaled to
Speaker 2: me that at least they didn't have a blockade around her.
Speaker 2: At least they didn't have a fence around her. Sure
Speaker 2: that it was worth the time to go up and
Speaker 2: try and see her. So I jumped on a plane
Speaker 2: and flew there, and about five o'clock one six o'clock
Speaker 2: one evening, I walked into the nursing home asked directions
Speaker 2: to where she was. They told me, like she could
Speaker 2: have been anybody Betty Smith. And I went down halfway down.
Speaker 2: He said, turn right here, go down there, and there's
Speaker 2: this little so the the person, the nurse, walks me
Speaker 2: down to her room and says this is where she
Speaker 2: kind of stands there and right in the doorway. It says, tiny, tiny, tiny,
Speaker 2: little gray haired woman in a in a wheelchair, and
Speaker 2: I kind of go, I see in her eyes that
Speaker 2: it's Carol, But I can't nothing else. She's barely there.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know how to say. It's like
Speaker 2: a waif, it's like a It's like some sort of
Speaker 2: reflection of somebody. It's so tiny. And so then I
Speaker 2: spent the next I went in and talked to her.
Speaker 2: Did they sense she could talk? Which was not very
Speaker 2: much because of the stroke, but her roommate could explain
Speaker 2: a lot of things for her and to her. And
Speaker 2: I've seen that happen before with someone who has a stroke.
Speaker 2: So we did have a We had a meeting. We
Speaker 2: had a conversation for about an hour, and I showed
Speaker 2: her some pictures of her family that Jim had her
Speaker 2: lawyer had had given me and said, go ahead and
Speaker 2: give them to her, and so I did. It's kind
Speaker 2: of a way of kind of a peace offering, because
Speaker 2: I was scared she was going to shut me out
Speaker 2: like she shut everybody else out from the press. And
Speaker 2: so I had a meeting with her and They're about
Speaker 2: an hour into it, somebody you know, comes in the
Speaker 2: door and they said who are you? Who are you?
Speaker 2: And I said, well, I'm a friend of her lawyer.
Speaker 2: And they said, well, all right, stay right there. And
Speaker 2: they're gone for about five minutes, and I knew I
Speaker 2: was sunk. And they came back and they said, you're
Speaker 2: Harry McLean, right, And I said, yeah, well we got
Speaker 2: to re guardian. He wants you to go, so you
Speaker 2: got to leave. So so I left. But I had
Speaker 2: my encounter with her, for which I'm extremely grateful. Somebody
Speaker 2: was really looking out for me and making that happen.
Speaker 2: I got to say, what was.
Speaker 4: The one thing he wanted to say to her? And
Speaker 4: that you did? And what do you write? Was her response.
Speaker 2: Well, when they first came in there, I realized that
Speaker 2: I had probably about three minutes. I knew I could
Speaker 2: tell from their attitude they were just going to affirm
Speaker 2: what they wanted to do, which was to toss me out.
Speaker 2: I looked at her and I thought, well, by this
Speaker 2: time I had made and I'd written probably almost ninety
Speaker 2: percent of the book by this point, and I was
Speaker 2: I had reached the conclusion that she was not there
Speaker 2: when her parents were murdered. She did not know they
Speaker 2: were dead when she got in the house, when she
Speaker 2: went into the house and went on the Bennett and
Speaker 2: so forth, And that was that was the most important
Speaker 2: thing for her, not that she was innocent of felony murder,
Speaker 2: not that she was in it. She wanted insisted that
Speaker 2: she people had to believe that she was not there
Speaker 2: when her family was murdered, and put up with it
Speaker 2: and stayed with Charlie. And I had reached that conclusion
Speaker 2: through detailed analysis. And I told and I thought, I'm
Speaker 2: just I'm gonna tell her that. And I said, I'm
Speaker 2: a writer. I'm writing a book. And I thought she
Speaker 2: was very bad reaction. She smiled, and I said, there's
Speaker 2: something I want to tell you, and and I told
Speaker 2: her that the book was going to reach the conclusion.
Speaker 2: And she was not at home when her parents were murdered,
Speaker 2: and her face kind of lit her eyes lit up.
Speaker 2: She as much as she was she was missing a
Speaker 2: couple of teeth too, but as much as she was
Speaker 2: capable of lighting up and showing pleasure and maybe maybe
Speaker 2: an inkling of some sort of satisfaction of the possibility
Speaker 2: of little Piece coming her way. You could see it.
Speaker 2: I saw it on her on her face. And right
Speaker 2: then was when the two nurses came in, and it.
Speaker 3: Was like.
Speaker 2: If they had been a minute earlier, it wouldn't have happened,
Speaker 2: and so they Yeah, so I left, But there was
Speaker 2: that sense of having given her some indication that there
Speaker 2: would be a strong voice that believed her when she
Speaker 2: said she wasn't there when her family was killed.
Speaker 4: That was a very very dramatic and to this book.
Speaker 4: I want to thank you very much for coming on
Speaker 4: and talking about your book, Stark Weather. For those that
Speaker 4: might want to take a further look, do you have
Speaker 4: a website they might take a look at, and you
Speaker 4: do any social media? Tell us about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's Harry McLean and it's m A C L
Speaker 2: e a n dot com. And it's a good website.
Speaker 2: I've gotten very favorable reviews which are either replicated or
Speaker 2: you've got a link to them on there. And I do. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm on Instagram. What else do I do?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: I do blog and Facebook. I'm not very particularly good
Speaker 2: at it, but but I do it. And uh, you know,
Speaker 2: I enjoy talking to people about the case and finding
Speaker 2: out about other cases that are that are going on
Speaker 2: that are some interest so that I appreciate your having
Speaker 2: me on the show very much. It's been it's been
Speaker 2: interesting and to talk with you, I really appreciate it.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much, Harry McLain for coming on and
Speaker 4: talking about your brilliant book, Stark Weather. Thank you so
Speaker 4: much for this interview and you have a great night
Speaker 4: and good night.
Speaker 2: Thanks you too, Thank you, Bye bye. Blae