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Speaker 4: You are now listening to True Murder The most shocking
Speaker 4: Killers in True crime History and the authors that have
Speaker 4: written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every
Speaker 4: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 4: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 4: journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Speaker 3: Good evening, This is your host Dan Zupanski for the
Speaker 3: program True Murder, The most shocking Killers in true crime
Speaker 3: History and the authors that have written about them. Casper, Wyoming,
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy three. Eleven year old Amy Bridge rides with
Speaker 3: her eighteen year old sister Becky to the grocery store.
Speaker 3: When they finished their shopping, Becky's car gets a flat tire.
Speaker 3: Two men politely offer them a hand, but there were
Speaker 3: anything but good Samaritans. The girls would suffer unspeakable crimes
Speaker 3: at the hands of these men before being thrown from
Speaker 3: a bridge into the North Platte River. One miraculously survived,
Speaker 3: the other did not. Author and journalist Ron Francell, who
Speaker 3: lived in Casper at the time of the crime and
Speaker 3: was a friend to Amy and Becky, cannot forget Wyoming's
Speaker 3: most shocking story of abduction, rape, and murder. The two
Speaker 3: men who violated her and Amy were sentenced to life
Speaker 3: in prison, but the demons of her past kept haunting
Speaker 3: beck Becky until she met her fate years later at
Speaker 3: the same bridge where she had lost her sister. The
Speaker 3: book we're featuring this evening is The Darkest Night with
Speaker 3: my special guest, journalist and author, Ron Francell. Welcome back
Speaker 3: to the program, Ron Francell, and thank you for agreeing
Speaker 3: to this interview.
Speaker 5: Oh Dan, you know I always loved being on your show.
Speaker 3: Well, the feeling is mutual, Ron, and I'm sure the
Speaker 3: audience bearing out by the amount of people who listen
Speaker 3: to the programs, you're one of the show's favorites. Bar Nunn.
Speaker 3: Now let's start. This is a personal story for you,
Speaker 3: obviously we've alluded to that. Tell us a little bit
Speaker 3: about Casper, Wyoming set the stage for us. What was
Speaker 3: it like growing up in Casper, Wyoming for you? And
Speaker 3: in that you can tell us what your relationship specifically
Speaker 3: was to Amy. And Becky and tell us a little
Speaker 3: bit about what Casper, Wyoming was like in nineteen seventy
Speaker 3: three when this story began.
Speaker 5: Well, Casper was like many small high planes towns. It
Speaker 5: was sometimes barely clinging to the landscape in swept town,
Speaker 5: largely built on hard work in the oil fields and
Speaker 5: surrounding mines and cattle. It was just a hard working
Speaker 5: town and the people who lived there were hardworking people.
Speaker 5: But it was a small town and so we enjoyed
Speaker 5: this sort of idyllic existence. Well, you know, so many
Speaker 5: of your listeners will, you know, envision those places maybe
Speaker 5: like they've grown up, where you could ride your bike
Speaker 5: into the evening. You know, all the neighborhood kids would
Speaker 5: be out at night in the summers, and parents weren't
Speaker 5: much worried about what they were doing and what might
Speaker 5: happen to them. It was a fairly it felt innocent.
Speaker 5: No place is truly innocent, but for those of us
Speaker 5: who were growing up at that time, there there was
Speaker 5: there was no evil, there was there was no threat,
Speaker 5: There was no danger, and I think in retrospect our
Speaker 5: parents had grown complacent about that. So this was at
Speaker 5: least from the perspective of us kids an innocent place.
Speaker 5: We grew up in a neighborhood that was full of kids,
Speaker 5: and and we had spent a lot of years together
Speaker 5: growing up, and we had become a little more than friends,
Speaker 5: and maybe a little less than brothers and sisters, but
Speaker 5: in that kind of interesting relationship between and So next
Speaker 5: door were these this family that had had these girls.
Speaker 5: Eleven year old Amy, who was a tomboy and joined
Speaker 5: in all the ballgames and and really conducted herself in
Speaker 5: every way like one of the boys, and her older sister, Becky,
Speaker 5: who was the neighborhood beauty. And as we're growing up,
Speaker 5: we are seeing her blossom, and as we're getting to
Speaker 5: know our own maturity, I guess we're seeing her blossom
Speaker 5: and become this young woman. So in nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 5: when I'm sixteen, when Amy's eleven and Becky is eighteen,
Speaker 5: this horrible thing happens.
Speaker 3: Right now, tell us a little bit about Amy and
Speaker 3: Becky and their family, the Beerage family. Amy and Becky
Speaker 3: are not birth sisters, so they're stepsisters. So tell us
Speaker 3: a little bit about the family dynamic and what type
Speaker 3: of family up next door.
Speaker 5: Again, a hard working family, Their stepfather was a was
Speaker 5: an oil field worker. Mom was common at the time,
Speaker 5: stay at home mom. They were in some ways a
Speaker 5: blended family. Amy and Becky were half sisters, and uh did.
Speaker 5: But but they we didn't see that. You know, we're kids.
Speaker 5: We don't see that. We're not thinking about that. And
Speaker 5: it's in in in some ways it's irrelevant because they
Speaker 5: considered themselves sisters in much the same way that all
Speaker 5: of us in that neighborhood kind of considered ourselves related
Speaker 5: in some way. So it was a family that, like
Speaker 5: like many, you know, had its ups and downs, but
Speaker 5: but it was I think a basically good family.
Speaker 3: Right And uh no, these two you say, was the
Speaker 3: stepfather worked in the oil rigs? Was there was there
Speaker 3: any trauma in these young girls' lives up to that
Speaker 3: point you talk about that in nineteen seventy three in
Speaker 3: this small town. You didn't know evil from It was
Speaker 3: just a concept in a movie to you. But what
Speaker 3: was Amy and Becky's life? Like what you say, it
Speaker 3: was typical, But was there any trauma in their life?
Speaker 3: Had they what was their disposition Amy and Becky? What
Speaker 3: type of personalities were they and had they received had
Speaker 3: they had they encountered any sort of trauma in their
Speaker 3: life up to that point.
Speaker 5: Not that I know of, and nothing that in my
Speaker 5: research of the story that I could really see. I mean,
Speaker 5: their mother had been married a couple of times, and
Speaker 5: so they had that kind of unbalanced you know, working
Speaker 5: against them, But there was nothing that certainly showed itself
Speaker 5: to the rest of the world. Amy was absolutely the
Speaker 5: most vibrant little little girl in you can imagine. In fact,
Speaker 5: we didn't even see her as a girl. She was
Speaker 5: just part of the ball team. She was absolutely the
Speaker 5: most active and vibrant, dynamic little girl that you could imagine. Becky,
Speaker 5: on the other hand, was again beautiful with long dark
Speaker 5: hair and a woman really by the time the crime
Speaker 5: happens in nineteen seventy three. But there was no you know,
Speaker 5: we again, in much the same way we viewed the
Speaker 5: world through our rose colored glasses, we probably viewed each
Speaker 5: other through our rose colored glasses. But nothing that, nothing
Speaker 5: that really turned up in my later research suggested that
Speaker 5: they had a life that was you know, traumatic in
Speaker 5: any way.
Speaker 3: Right now, take us to the faithful Day in nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy three, where they met Ronald Leroy Kennedy and Jerry
Speaker 3: Lee Jenkins. Tell us what prompted Amy and Becky to
Speaker 3: be out at night, and tell us approximately what time
Speaker 3: did they venture off on their journey because of their
Speaker 3: mother wanted them to do something. Tell us what exactly
Speaker 3: what this chore was and what actually happened.
Speaker 5: Take you back a little bit to that idyllic town
Speaker 5: and remember that because it plays a role here. It's
Speaker 5: around nine o'clock at night when mom needs something from
Speaker 5: the grocery store. There's a neighborhood market, oh maybe a
Speaker 5: mile away, and so she asks Becky to go to
Speaker 5: the market and pick up these items for her. Becky
Speaker 5: takes her little sister Amy down to the store. They
Speaker 5: pull up at this little market and there's not a
Speaker 5: big supermarket now, it's really just kind of a neighborhood market,
Speaker 5: a small, small store. They pull into the parking lot
Speaker 5: and get out of the car and go into the store.
Speaker 5: Unknown to them, these two, these two criminals, Jenkins and Kennedy,
Speaker 5: were in their own car, just pulling into the lot.
Speaker 5: And remember I said, Becky's this beautiful young woman. They
Speaker 5: see her and immediately fixate on her, and Kennedy in
Speaker 5: particular decides he wants to meet her. Jakos as well. Listen,
Speaker 5: just just go up and talk to her, and Kenny says, no,
Speaker 5: I've got a better idea. So, while the girls are
Speaker 5: in the store, they pull up next to Becky's car.
Speaker 5: Kennedy pulls out a pocket knife and flattens one of
Speaker 5: Becky's tires. Then they retreat across the parking lot and wait.
Speaker 5: When the girls come out, they get in the car
Speaker 5: and they start to drive off, and Becky realizes she
Speaker 5: has a flat tire. She stops and lo and behold
Speaker 5: here these two guys drive up and say, hey, can
Speaker 5: we help you? And that's where it begins.
Speaker 3: Now the now they have a flat tire, and then
Speaker 3: these two people offer to help. What exactly did they
Speaker 3: say in terms of what was the help that they
Speaker 3: were going to offer?
Speaker 5: What it ends, well, they were at first they made
Speaker 5: a big show out of trying to change the tire,
Speaker 5: but the story becomes that they've lug wrench doesn't work,
Speaker 5: so they say we will we will give you a
Speaker 5: ride home and Becky. Becky's a little iffy about this,
Speaker 5: but she agrees and Amy. Then she she tells Amy
Speaker 5: to go call their mom and tell the mom don't worry.
Speaker 5: We had a flat tire, but a couple of nice
Speaker 5: fellows are going to bring us home. And and she
Speaker 5: does that. She goes to a payphone and calls mom
Speaker 5: and tells her that. When she returns, Kennedy's pulls out
Speaker 5: his knife and he forces them into the car, into
Speaker 5: his and Jenkins car, and they begin motoring around town,
Speaker 5: you know, in a very meandering way, beating the girls
Speaker 5: in frighting them and telling them just horrific stories about
Speaker 5: what's going to happen to them and why, and it's
Speaker 5: a it's a horror. They are terrorized through the night.
Speaker 5: And sometime after midnight they these two guys take them
Speaker 5: far far away from the city, out out into the
Speaker 5: prairie to to of a canyon. And over this canyon
Speaker 5: is a is a bridge twelve stories above the North
Speaker 5: Platte River, a very very narrow, almost sheer canyon. And uh,
Speaker 5: almost as soon as they arrive, Kennedy takes little Amy
Speaker 5: out into the darkness and and when he returns, she's
Speaker 5: not with him. He's thrown her off the bridge.
Speaker 3: What does what does Becky do? What does Becky believe
Speaker 3: that has happened? There was a ruse there that you know,
Speaker 3: it's a clumsy one, but they are telling these girls something.
Speaker 3: So what does at that moment, what does Becky believe
Speaker 3: has happened with Amy?
Speaker 5: They've been telling the girls that they had a friend
Speaker 5: who was killed or injured by a car that matched
Speaker 5: the girls car's description, and that they had to take
Speaker 5: the girls out to meet the leader of a motorcycle
Speaker 5: gang who would decide their fate. And Kennedy's story was
Speaker 5: that Amy would be the first one to go to
Speaker 5: meet the man. And you know, it's kind of a
Speaker 5: haunting turn of phrase, but in fact, when he comes
Speaker 5: back to the car without Amy, he said as she
Speaker 5: ran away. So he and Jenkins then turned to the
Speaker 5: rape of Becky and they when they've both taken their
Speaker 5: turn with her, they take her out to the bridge
Speaker 5: and on this very incredibly dark night, moonless night, and
Speaker 5: they throw her off the bridge too.
Speaker 3: Wow, Now what happens to Becky after she has thrown
Speaker 3: off this bridge?
Speaker 5: Imagine if you can a night so black that you
Speaker 5: can't see your hand in front of your face. And
Speaker 5: I know this because I spent a very dark night
Speaker 5: that matched the sky and weather conditions underneath that bridge
Speaker 5: and it was an unnerved, unnerving evening night, I believe me,
Speaker 5: and it seemed endless and I've covered wars.
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Speaker 5: Every else I've I've covered hurricanes from inside, but without
Speaker 5: a doubt, that was the most unsettling night of my life.
Speaker 3: Interesting.
Speaker 5: Becky caroms off the the site of the canyon wall
Speaker 5: twelve stories now. She hits about a third of the
Speaker 5: way down off a rock ledge and it bounces into
Speaker 5: deeper water. When she hits that ledge, she breaks her
Speaker 5: pelvis in five places. She she breaks some ribs. She
Speaker 5: she has numerous other injuries. She's been beaten by these guys.
Speaker 5: She's been raped by them. She's wearing only a very
Speaker 5: thin blouse and otherwise naked on a thirty two degree night,
Speaker 5: and she plunges into a river in utter darkness. She's
Speaker 5: able to dog paddle her way to the shore and
Speaker 5: drag herself across these sharp rocks out of the water,
Speaker 5: and she finds a little place down there among the
Speaker 5: brush and the rocks and the rats to hide herself
Speaker 5: because she believes these guys are still up there. She
Speaker 5: believes they know she's lived through this horrific experience and
Speaker 5: that they are going to try to come and get her.
Speaker 5: She's also beginning to believe that maybe this is what
Speaker 5: happened to her sister too, and her sister is down
Speaker 5: there someplace and very likely dead. So you can imagine
Speaker 5: what's going through her mind as she hides down there
Speaker 5: in this utter blackness, hoping that they aren't going to
Speaker 5: come down after her, and freezing because it's it's right
Speaker 5: at the freezing mark in temperature. It The night that
Speaker 5: I spent down there was very similar. It was the
Speaker 5: same temperature, the same moonless night, and yet I was
Speaker 5: wearing a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt and I
Speaker 5: was freezing. Today, you can imagine this half naked woman
Speaker 5: who's been in the water and who's been raped, and
Speaker 5: who's who's in shock because of her injuries. This this
Speaker 5: just it makes it makes me shiver just to think
Speaker 5: of it.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, you know, you spent an incredible amount of
Speaker 3: time describing that, and it really does get an investment
Speaker 3: from the reader in her terror. And like you say,
Speaker 3: she survived this, but now she wants to go to sleep,
Speaker 3: She wants some relief. From all of this stress and
Speaker 3: pain and everything. But she says to herself, no, I
Speaker 3: can't go to sleep. She thinks that she hears these
Speaker 3: guys' voices still, and then she says, and she says
Speaker 3: to herself in your book that she just wants to
Speaker 3: wait till the dawn. And then you talk about and
Speaker 3: this is just sort of indicative of what happens in
Speaker 3: this story anyway, a false dawn. Explain what a false
Speaker 3: done is. You just talked about the darkest type of night.
Speaker 3: What is this false dawn?
Speaker 5: There are there is a period during every year when
Speaker 5: a very short period, as a matter of fact, when
Speaker 5: the sky conditions are such that in places away from
Speaker 5: city lights, like this canyon out in the middle of nowhere,
Speaker 5: where around three two thirty three o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 5: the sky begins to lighten because the atmosphere is reflecting
Speaker 5: light from the Milky Way. And again it only happens
Speaker 5: right at in this autumnal period, and it can only
Speaker 5: be seen in this kind of utter darkness. Had there
Speaker 5: been a moon that night, it wouldn't have been as
Speaker 5: accentuated as it was. But again, this is a night
Speaker 5: when there's no moon, and it is as black as
Speaker 5: you can imagine. So Becky who has determined that when
Speaker 5: dawn comes, she will try to get out of there somehow.
Speaker 5: She doesn't know how impossible that is. She can't see anything,
Speaker 5: She didn't see anything. She's not familiar with this area.
Speaker 5: She doesn't know exactly how daunting an escape from this
Speaker 5: canyon really is going to be. But she's determined that
Speaker 5: when dawn comes she will try to get out. Well, here,
Speaker 5: she begins to see this light and she's convinced that
Speaker 5: down is coming. She begins to feel that relief, but
Speaker 5: in fact it's just this false don and she's hours
Speaker 5: away from reel Don. And I found that to be
Speaker 5: heartbreaking because because of all the horrors that had been
Speaker 5: visited on her, because of the betrayal of her, because
Speaker 5: of her her being totally alone in this in this darkness,
Speaker 5: that seemed to be the ultimate last betrayal. As we
Speaker 5: learn in the book it isn't. But at that moment,
Speaker 5: I think that that that that that brief that's not
Speaker 5: even brief. It's for a couple of hours, it looks
Speaker 5: like dawn is coming, and you can imagine the hope
Speaker 5: in her heart that ultimately is dashed because she's she's
Speaker 5: literally six hours from dawn when she thinks it's at
Speaker 5: hand right now.
Speaker 3: The next morning, Carl and Dorothy Stratser were going to
Speaker 3: go They got up early, and they were going to
Speaker 3: go fishing. And tell us what happened in terms of
Speaker 3: Becky and the Strassers, Well.
Speaker 5: This elderly couple on their day off, decide they're going
Speaker 5: to go out to the lake fishing, and so they
Speaker 5: get up early. They want to be at the lakeside
Speaker 5: as early as possible. And as they cross this bridge,
Speaker 5: which is really thirty five thirty six miles from the
Speaker 5: nearest town, they notice this strange, almost otherworldly site at
Speaker 5: the end of the bridge. It looks like a girl
Speaker 5: and she's wearing this bright pink blouse but otherwise looks naked.
Speaker 5: And as they pull up they see it is exactly
Speaker 5: that it's Becky. Becky has dragged herself out of this canyon. Now,
Speaker 5: the photos in the book give some idea of what
Speaker 5: an accomplishment this was. It is a sheer canyon. Becky
Speaker 5: cannot walk, she can't use her in any way, she's
Speaker 5: broken her pelvis. She has dragged herself up literally with
Speaker 5: her back against the canyon wall, pushing herself inch by
Speaker 5: inch with her hands and occasionally sliding back down and
Speaker 5: having to start all over again, but almost It takes
Speaker 5: her about two hours to get you know, up this
Speaker 5: one hundred and thirty hundred and forty foot steep wa
Speaker 5: wash of near the bridge and come out on the top.
Speaker 5: She is cut by the stones. She's still bloody from
Speaker 5: the experience of the night before. And this this couple
Speaker 5: arrives like angels, and they find her and they wrap
Speaker 5: her up, and they take her to the nearest settlement died,
Speaker 5: the nearest gas station, and they call the sh sheriff,
Speaker 5: and the sheriff comes and Becky is taken to the hospital.
Speaker 5: And it's at the hospital that she begins to describe
Speaker 5: her assailants. Cops. This is a small town, remember, yeah.
Speaker 5: They they know exactly who she's talking about from her description.
Speaker 5: Jenkins is this sort of short, fat, greasy looking guy
Speaker 5: with glasses, his good buddy and you know, partner in crime. Literally.
Speaker 5: Ron Kennedy is a tall, skinny, sort of bug eyed,
Speaker 5: crazy looking guy. The description probably had barely gotten out
Speaker 5: of her mouth before the cops knew exactly who she
Speaker 5: was talking about. So they went out and they found
Speaker 5: Kennedy and Jenkins. Kennedy is arrested literally at high noon
Speaker 5: on the main street in front of the courthouse by
Speaker 5: by a detective who draws his gun and pulls him
Speaker 5: out of his car steps away from the courthouse. So
Speaker 5: there's there's a lot of dramatic element to this too,
Speaker 5: that again, if I made it up, you wouldn't believe it.
Speaker 5: I present this as a fiction, it would be difficult
Speaker 5: to believe.
Speaker 3: Now, they first picked up Ronald Kennedy, and then they
Speaker 3: and they soon after picked up Jerry Jenkins, and and
Speaker 3: they wasn't it that Jenkins had the white Impala the car,
Speaker 3: The car itself tell us a little bit about the
Speaker 3: arrest of Jerry Jenkins and and the seizing of that vehicle.
Speaker 5: Jenkins actually is arrested while walking. They see him walk
Speaker 5: walking out in sort of the down part of town,
Speaker 5: and he's arrested there and taken in. Kennedy is driving
Speaker 5: his own pickup truck which is stopped there on the street,
Speaker 5: and he's arrested. They later, of course get the car
Speaker 5: that was involved, and there are bits of evidence in
Speaker 5: there that come into play during the trial. But Jenkins.
Speaker 5: Jenkins is questioned and he gives a story that is
Speaker 5: startlingly similar to the story that Becky tells in her
Speaker 5: hospital bed. Now we can assume they didn't collude, We
Speaker 5: can assume that they didn't come up and fabricate a
Speaker 5: story together. So we know that the story they tell
Speaker 5: is probably pretty close to what happened, because they're both
Speaker 5: telling it. Kennedy, on the other hand, is taken in
Speaker 5: for interrogation and and one of the detectives confronts him.
Speaker 5: Kennedy's not really sure why he's there, yea, and a
Speaker 5: detective kind of skirts around the issue and says, you know,
Speaker 5: well this girl that you know, where were you and
Speaker 5: Jenkins last night? And and you know were you with
Speaker 5: a girl? Did you did? Were you out at the canyon?
Speaker 5: And Kennedy's response is weird. He says, but you know,
Speaker 5: you know, you don't have any evidence, and then the
Speaker 5: cop says, well, I'm going to tell you, mister, son
Speaker 5: of a bitch, one of them lived, And at that moment,
Speaker 5: Kennedy shuts up and he does not talk about this
Speaker 5: case to his lawyer, to the police, to anybody except
Speaker 5: maybe some cell mates until I approach him thirty years later,
Speaker 5: or an interview.
Speaker 3: Right now, What what happens in the interview with Jerry
Speaker 3: Lee Jenkins with police interrogating him. What's what's the difference there?
Speaker 5: Well, Jenkins, you have to understand these two guys, they
Speaker 5: are very similar to the culprits and the in cold
Speaker 5: blood murders of Hickock and Smith. They Jenkins is the
Speaker 5: follower who needs a leader. Kennedy is the leader who
Speaker 5: needs a follower. And and when you they they spent
Speaker 5: that day before the crime drinking and doing drugs. When
Speaker 5: you introduce the chemicals with these two personalities, you get
Speaker 5: a third, completely different personality. And it's that third personality
Speaker 5: in the body of these two guys that that really
Speaker 5: commits that crime. It seems clear looking back at these
Speaker 5: guys that neither one of them on his own would
Speaker 5: do such a thing. I see together and then with
Speaker 5: the with the alcohol, it became something else entirely. And
Speaker 5: so Jenkins, when he's arrested, sort of immediately rolls over.
Speaker 5: He immediately spills the beans and and he ultimately tells
Speaker 5: a fairly complete story about what happened, and as I said,
Speaker 5: kind of matches Becky's account on all the key elements
Speaker 5: and a few of the details, so he he is
Speaker 5: probably telling the truth, of course. And and what he
Speaker 5: does is he talks about, you know, Kennedy being the
Speaker 5: gas in the engine of this whole crime. And and
Speaker 5: that's born out.
Speaker 3: Sure. Now we talked about this right in the very
Speaker 3: beginning of this the impact of this story, the particulars
Speaker 3: of this because it's a small town, because of the
Speaker 3: heinous nature of this crime, it's disgusting. What is what
Speaker 3: are the newspaper reaction, what's the town's reaction? What is
Speaker 3: you and your your chum's reaction? How does this impact
Speaker 3: this Casper Wyoming, this small, peaceful, innocent town. What happens
Speaker 3: as a result when the reports come out.
Speaker 5: Well, you can imagine the shock of it. One of
Speaker 5: the compelling reasons I wrote this book was because I
Speaker 5: had well, let me let me just say, I'd never
Speaker 5: really thought about writing this story. It was after nine
Speaker 5: to eleven. I was coming back from the Least, where
Speaker 5: I'd been sent for in the in the first several
Speaker 5: months after nine to eleven, to do some reporting for
Speaker 5: the Denver Post. And it was on a return trip
Speaker 5: that that I saw in a French news magazine a
Speaker 5: picture of two people who had leapt from the World
Speaker 5: Trade centers holding hands, and in my mind, I began
Speaker 5: to think of Becky and Amy. Now, of course they
Speaker 5: hadn't been thrown from the bridge together, and they couldn't
Speaker 5: have been holding hands, but that image caused this weird
Speaker 5: flashback for me. That that without minimizing, because you can't
Speaker 5: minimize what happened on nine to eleven, I had already
Speaker 5: had a kind of nine to eleven in my life.
Speaker 5: I had, I had had a moment when when that
Speaker 5: the night before the world was one way and the
Speaker 5: next day it was comple letely different, right, and and
Speaker 5: and that's that was the effect. It had, not just
Speaker 5: on the kids who surrounded Amy and Becky and the
Speaker 5: people who knew them, but the town itself. The media
Speaker 5: reaction was, as you might imagine, you know, swift and shocked.
Speaker 5: The town began to talk about lynchings. This is the West,
Speaker 5: the wild after all. There was there was a horror,
Speaker 5: there was a disgust. There was this sudden awakening to
Speaker 5: our naivete and our complacence, not not us kids, but
Speaker 5: but those parents. It's also nineteen seventy three, and we
Speaker 5: didn't have the same We didn't have the same infrastructure
Speaker 5: in place, emotional infrastructure or support infrastructure that we have now.
Speaker 5: Parents believed that children were best protected from this kind
Speaker 5: of thing. There certainly weren't grief counselors visiting schools right there.
Speaker 5: Certainly weren't even victims services that could help Becky deal
Speaker 5: with with all the horrors that she had that she
Speaker 5: had just endured. Children were kept away from the funerals,
Speaker 5: from from Amy's funeral. It was purposely planned at a
Speaker 5: time when kids would be in school and it could
Speaker 5: kind of be whitewashed.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 5: There were no Teddy Bear memorials. Nobody came and established
Speaker 5: scholarship funds. It was it was better if the kids
Speaker 5: didn't know. And what that results in is a kind
Speaker 5: of incomplete grieving. And I found that not only in myself,
Speaker 5: but particularly in the kids who were closest to Amy
Speaker 5: and Becky. As close as I was, there were others
Speaker 5: who were closer, and I found evidence that their mourning
Speaker 5: had been so twisted and so frustrated that even as
Speaker 5: forty year old people, they were dealing with this in
Speaker 5: a way that was very sad and very tragic. So
Speaker 5: that was part of the effect. I like to think
Speaker 5: we've evolved since then. Maybe we've evolved too far in
Speaker 5: the other direction, but that's better than hiding it, and
Speaker 5: that's better than not dealing with it. And we certainly
Speaker 5: saw that.
Speaker 3: Well, just for our audience to know the sort of
Speaker 3: the magnitude of this case, this trial, and its effect
Speaker 3: on this community and in this state there was available
Speaker 3: to death penalty, and shortly after tell us what the
Speaker 3: prosecutor was looking for and how he was describing what
Speaker 3: they were going to do with these two men.
Speaker 5: What's very interesting about this is that this happens in
Speaker 5: nineteen seventy three. What's important about that date. In nineteen
Speaker 5: seventy two, the United States Supreme Court had effectively outlawed
Speaker 5: the death penalty across the United States. They deemed that
Speaker 5: it was applied in an unconstitutional way, and everybody's death
Speaker 5: laws were thrown out. That sent all these states going
Speaker 5: back to the drawing board and trying to craft death
Speaker 5: laws that would meet the Supreme courts the strict standards.
Speaker 5: Wyoming was one of those, and Kennedy and Jenkins were
Speaker 5: the first accused killers to be tried under Wyoming's new
Speaker 5: death laws. The prosecutor a small town prosecutor who really
Speaker 5: has a very very good case, and in Wyoming, which
Speaker 5: has been described as a small town with exceptionally long streets,
Speaker 5: there's hardly a way to change venue, which they did
Speaker 5: and escape the notoriety of the case. They couldn't. They
Speaker 5: did move the case to the capital city of Cheyenne.
Speaker 5: The prosecutor put on a very good case. The defense
Speaker 5: put on a very good case at their own peril.
Speaker 5: One of the def was a publicly appointed and very
Speaker 5: well liked guy who'd never handled a criminal case before,
Speaker 5: and he had to suffer through a lot of the
Speaker 5: public backlash about defending a criminal that, of course, everybody
Speaker 5: was convinced was guilty as sin. In the end, of course,
Speaker 5: Kennedy and Jenkins are convicted and their sentenced to die,
Speaker 5: and they go off to death row at the Wyoming
Speaker 5: prison and their cells are literally about six or seven
Speaker 5: paces from the gas chamber. They wake up every morning
Speaker 5: and they see the gas chamber, they see where they're
Speaker 5: going to die. They are of course immediately on appeal,
Speaker 5: and in nineteen seventy seven, the Supreme Court rules that indeed,
Speaker 5: Wyoming had failed to satisfy the Supreme Court's wishes by
Speaker 5: crafting a constitutional death law, and once again Wyoming's death
Speaker 5: penalty was struck down and Kennedy and Jenkins were immediately
Speaker 5: commuted to life. The problem is, in Wyoming at the time,
Speaker 5: there was no provision for life without parole, and so
Speaker 5: on that day, literally ten days before Gary Gilmore became
Speaker 5: the first inmate to be executed in Utah since that
Speaker 5: Supreme Court decision in seventy two, Kennedy and Jenkins went
Speaker 5: back to the general population at the Wyoming prison and
Speaker 5: were again eligible for parole. Must imagine what that does
Speaker 5: to Becky, who has now endured several years here of
Speaker 5: dealing with her. She's convinced that now they'll get out
Speaker 5: and they'll come back for her, and that sets her
Speaker 5: even into into an even steeper tail spin.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, tell us before we get into it, because
Speaker 3: we don't want to spend too much time with basically
Speaker 3: these ne'er do wells. These I mean, it doesn't matter
Speaker 3: so much to me about the background of some of
Speaker 3: these guys, but we'll get to that because interestingly, you
Speaker 3: have a lot of that information at the end of
Speaker 3: the book when you interview Kennedy and Jenkins has already
Speaker 3: passed away by that time. But let's let's get to
Speaker 3: what happens. Like we skipped over the trial a little bit,
Speaker 3: but it's a foregone conclusion. These guys are as guilty
Speaker 3: as sin. Of course, Becky is strong enough to testify
Speaker 3: successfully against them, and there's over overwhelming information. What I
Speaker 3: thought was interesting just to to to secure. If you're
Speaker 3: the trial too, what the bit of information that really
Speaker 3: nailed them was one of Becky's contacts was found in
Speaker 3: the backseat of the car. But tell us a little
Speaker 3: bit about the her testifying at trial, like she was
Speaker 3: not out of the woods there either, because she thought
Speaker 3: her life was in danger. And what we have is
Speaker 3: one of the strongest characters in your book, too, is
Speaker 3: a officer named Dave Devola. So tell us how he
Speaker 3: if he's one of the people that arrest one of
Speaker 3: the killers. Tell us his role right up to the
Speaker 3: very end. Tell us about Dave Devola.
Speaker 5: Dave Deball was a was a homicide detective in this
Speaker 5: small town police force. At the moment this case breaks
Speaker 5: for them, of course, everybody is scrambled, and he's among
Speaker 5: several detectives who are out looking for these guys take
Speaker 5: a statement from Becky. He's there when Becky gives her statement.
Speaker 5: He's one of the guys who knows who these guys are.
Speaker 5: He knows them that well, he knows his town that well.
Speaker 5: He then goes out and he's the one who arrests
Speaker 5: Kennedy there at high noon in front of the courthouse.
Speaker 5: In this process, Devalla kind of becomes a father figure,
Speaker 5: another father figure for for Becky, and he becomes very
Speaker 5: protective of her. He watches over her. He's there during
Speaker 5: the trial. She's she's afraid of these guys. Of course,
Speaker 5: she's she's afraid to look at them. You know, all
Speaker 5: the things that you can just imagine go through the
Speaker 5: mind of a young woman who's been raped her They
Speaker 5: intended to kill her, of course, they killed her little sister.
Speaker 5: This is a horror for her, and this is a
Speaker 5: very difficult thing. But she becomes she is the star witness.
Speaker 5: And really there's even even Kennedy and Jenkins lawyers admit
Speaker 5: years later that they really only wanted to keep their
Speaker 5: clients from being executed. They even tried the insanity defense,
Speaker 5: which of course requires you to say, yeah, I did it,
Speaker 5: but I was crazy, right, So they had very little
Speaker 5: to go on, including two clients who didn't talk to them.
Speaker 5: Did marvelous work, they really did on behalf of these guys.
Speaker 5: But Becky, Becky is a real trooper and she she
Speaker 5: hangs in there. She gives amazing testimony, very difficult testimony,
Speaker 5: talking about the rape, talking about all the beatings and
Speaker 5: and and then what she went through that night. So
Speaker 5: you know that the trial is kind of the pulling
Speaker 5: together of all those loose ends. But then you know
Speaker 5: that that that all happens, and the really, the the
Speaker 5: great bulk of the story is still to be told.
Speaker 5: These guys and being convicted and being sent to death row,
Speaker 5: then being taken off of death row, and then Becky's
Speaker 5: you know, personal travails that erupt from all of this.
Speaker 5: That's really the second half of the story is really
Speaker 5: Becky's second life.
Speaker 3: Now you talk about that she had some difficulties obviously
Speaker 3: processing what had happened to her. Her sister is killed,
Speaker 3: she has traumatized, raped at it at a young age,
Speaker 3: at a formative age. You do put in the book
Speaker 3: to that that she was she was a virgin before that.
Speaker 3: So this is a hell of an initiation into anything,
Speaker 3: let alone, you know, sexual relations. Now, tell us about
Speaker 3: how this strong woman, what she did to try to
Speaker 3: rebuild her life. What what was some of the some
Speaker 3: of the things that happened in her life that seemed
Speaker 3: to make her life a little bit more normal. Tell
Speaker 3: us about her life after this trial.
Speaker 5: Well, she she begins to. She she wants to put
Speaker 5: her life back together. She she wants to be whole again.
Speaker 5: She she wants to be the girl that she always
Speaker 5: thought she would be. She she goes out and gets work.
Speaker 5: She she works a lot of jobs and and until
Speaker 5: she she at some point though, she finds that she
Speaker 5: she has a talent for talking to people and and
Speaker 5: selling people, and so she she begins to she gets
Speaker 5: she gets into the media scene of of Casper, and
Speaker 5: she's selling advertising for a local radio station, and occasionally
Speaker 5: she'd move over to different different places. But she she's
Speaker 5: she's actually putting on a very good front. She's she's
Speaker 5: got this sunny sort of life, a lively kind of personality,
Speaker 5: but behind that is something very dark, and she's hiding
Speaker 5: it from everyone else. She's she's she's getting more and
Speaker 5: more dependent on drugs and alcohol. She has never truly
Speaker 5: developed an ability to to be emotionally intimate with anybody,
Speaker 5: but especially men, so so there's a certain promiscuity that begins.
Speaker 5: She she's having a difficult time dealing with this and
Speaker 5: and is increasingly convinced that these guys are ultimately going
Speaker 5: to get out of prison and and then come after her.
Speaker 5: At one point, does the citizens of Wyoming take up
Speaker 5: a petition too uh for the parole board to to
Speaker 5: just not consider parolling these guys?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 5: And I there there were there are tens of thousands
Speaker 5: of signatures collected. At some point, Becky gets a copy
Speaker 5: of that, and she begins obsessively making copies of the
Speaker 5: copies of the copies and and hiding them away in
Speaker 5: her apartment. She at one point seeks psychological help, and
Speaker 5: she's at this particular moment she's a recovering drug addict.
Speaker 5: But the doctor gives her a truth serum drug and
Speaker 5: a gas that she completely blacks out. But during this
Speaker 5: blackout period, she's got this sort of dreamy impression that
Speaker 5: this doctor is having sex with her, and she just
Speaker 5: never talks about it until she hears one of her
Speaker 5: friends in her women's group, talking about how this man
Speaker 5: had taken advantage of her during a counseling session. And
Speaker 5: then somebody else pipes up, and then somebody else, and
Speaker 5: it turns out that Becky very likely had been raped
Speaker 5: a second time by a man that she had hired
Speaker 5: to help her. Again, we talk about the betrayal of
Speaker 5: this crime. We talk about the betrayal of the faults Dawn.
Speaker 5: We talk about a betrayal that Becky felt that God
Speaker 5: had abandoned her and her sister, and here now she's
Speaker 5: betrayed by somebody she wanted to trust. It's all part
Speaker 5: of this downward spiral in her life.
Speaker 3: Now, she really liked working at this small radio station.
Speaker 3: But by this time she has a daughter, and maybe
Speaker 3: you can tell us the turn of events. She has
Speaker 3: a daughter, she meets a guy named Ross or Ross,
Speaker 3: and she thinks she's actually fallen in love. She gets
Speaker 3: a chance to work at a big radio station that
Speaker 3: has a health plan and so her daughter can be
Speaker 3: taken care of and a lot more money. But again,
Speaker 3: it seems that one glimpse of light just reveals itself
Speaker 3: to be dark again. So tell us sort of up
Speaker 3: and down where it seems like, well, jeez, that would
Speaker 3: seem to be the solution to a lot of her problems,
Speaker 3: that should be moving forward. But she didn't.
Speaker 5: Well she didn't. And she met russ and and married
Speaker 5: and they had a daughter, and but but things just
Speaker 5: weren't good and they were ultimately divorced, and she finds
Speaker 5: herself a single mother again. Else she finds herself as
Speaker 5: a single mother. She does get the job at the
Speaker 5: bigger radio station. And again, remember she's trying to exude
Speaker 5: this sunny, bright, warm personality, and what that's doing is
Speaker 5: hiding that the real turmoil in her and so nobody,
Speaker 5: nobody who who's likely to help her really has an
Speaker 5: inkling that they should be helping her. She again goes
Speaker 5: through some relationships. She's got an increasing dependence on the
Speaker 5: drugs and alcohol, until one night she takes her daughter
Speaker 5: out to that same bridge with with her latest boyfriend,
Speaker 5: and and and she begins to lose it. She begins
Speaker 5: to tell the story of what had happened there about
Speaker 5: nineteen years before. She's now in her late thirties, and
Speaker 5: this this boyfriend decides that this is a little too
Speaker 5: too much for those this year and a half toddler
Speaker 5: to try to absorb, and he takes her back to
Speaker 5: the car. And while he's while he's walking her back
Speaker 5: to the car, here's a splash and Becky's gone. Was
Speaker 5: it a tragic accident? Did she slip and fall? Did
Speaker 5: she jump? I know what I want to believe, But
Speaker 5: who knows? There there's only one There was only one
Speaker 5: person who knew what happened.
Speaker 3: Do you think she took her Do you think she
Speaker 3: took her own life?
Speaker 5: I want to believe she did. I want to believe
Speaker 5: that for once, Becky decided that she was going to
Speaker 5: be in control of the next most important decision in
Speaker 5: her life. And while I disagree to my core with
Speaker 5: the choice she made, I'm glad that she was the
Speaker 5: one making it, because it's really too much for me
Speaker 5: to contemplate thinking that a gust of wind, or a
Speaker 5: slippery place on the bridge railing, or anything else, just
Speaker 5: one more tragedy, one more betrayal, was responsible for her end.
Speaker 5: I guess. I just want to believe that she was
Speaker 5: the one who decided, and even if I disagree with
Speaker 5: what she decided, I want to believe that it was
Speaker 5: her choice. Am I right?
Speaker 3: I don't know, it seemed to be a culmination of
Speaker 3: all her pain, and that's why it's sort of an unexpected,
Speaker 3: incredibly emotional conversation ensued on that bridge, and so it
Speaker 3: really seems to be that, you know, listen, these demons
Speaker 3: are still haunting me, and this is the place where
Speaker 3: it all started, and this is a place where it's
Speaker 3: going to end. What I found was very, very tragic.
Speaker 3: And even another interesting twist is the officer Dave Davola.
Speaker 3: He made the arrest of Kennedy. He confront he comforted
Speaker 3: the mother, Tony, Becky's mother. He was her bodyguard at
Speaker 3: trials and make her feel secure. He even stood up
Speaker 3: for her at her wedding because she saw him as
Speaker 3: a father figure. And then when she did jump off
Speaker 3: the bridge or fell off that bridge, when she went
Speaker 3: over that bridge, who did they call well?
Speaker 5: And he was at that time the sheriff of this county.
Speaker 5: He had risen through the ranks and had become the sheriff,
Speaker 5: had been elected sheriff, and so everybody knew about his
Speaker 5: fondness for her. It wasn't sexual, it wasn't romantic. It
Speaker 5: was more fatherly, and he was in every way her protector.
Speaker 5: And her guardian and to this day is protector and
Speaker 5: guardian of her memory. But yeah, I mean another again,
Speaker 5: you know, it seems kind of hardly possible, but this
Speaker 5: is a small town and those relationships are are are many,
Speaker 5: and they're lasting.
Speaker 3: Now, another really interesting aspect to the book, not that
Speaker 3: this wasn't enough, that is that at the sentencing phase
Speaker 3: of this trial, that's when we get, you know, the
Speaker 3: pleas for these people's lives and and real it's really pathetic.
Speaker 3: But we get another pathetic figure doing what she can
Speaker 3: for her pathetic, you know, pathetic, pathetic, murderous, raping son.
Speaker 3: But the mother goes to the court and tries to
Speaker 3: save the son's life, and of course he was sentenced
Speaker 3: to death, but then it was again it was commuted
Speaker 3: to a life sentence. Then you get this guy decides
Speaker 3: to pen his memoirs. So part of this memoir that
Speaker 3: he is given to you through his sister, his younger sister,
Speaker 3: is part his life and so you know, he talks about,
Speaker 3: you know, he did have a horrible life. The mother
Speaker 3: attested to that. It's it seems reasonable that this guy
Speaker 3: didn't have some of the breaks that other people was
Speaker 3: raised in abject poverty and neglect and abuse. But tell
Speaker 3: us about these memoirs, especially when it comes to what
Speaker 3: he had to say about the abduction and rape. What
Speaker 3: was his take on that.
Speaker 5: Well, these memoirs are of course a fantasy. There there
Speaker 5: are something between the Grim's fairy Tales and Kent House Forum.
Speaker 5: You know there there is just nonsense. It's the life
Speaker 5: that Ron Kennedy wished he could relate. The fact is, yeah,
Speaker 5: he had some things in his background that were bad,
Speaker 5: but not everybody who's beaten by his father, or or
Speaker 5: teased by his father, or grows up in a poor
Speaker 5: part of town turns into a rapist and a killer.
Speaker 5: He's trying to justify that that it's him, it's it's
Speaker 5: him against the world, and that's typical of his of
Speaker 5: the sociopath's makeup. But but I included some lot of
Speaker 5: his autobiography in the book because it offered this fascinating
Speaker 5: glimpse inside the sociopathic mind that we rarely get. We
Speaker 5: rarely get the actual words of these killers that we
Speaker 5: write about, and so this was for me a chance
Speaker 5: to give the reader a glimpse inside that twisted mind.
Speaker 5: Ron Kennedy is an unfinished soul and my time. I
Speaker 5: spent fourteen hours doing interviews with him. You know, he
Speaker 5: exudes this sort of country boy charm that's pretty seductive,
Speaker 5: but it's just part of his sociopathic makeup. I'm angry
Speaker 5: at some of the questions that I'd ask him, usually
Speaker 5: those that were about his treatment by the by society
Speaker 5: or the law, and he'd choke up at others, usually
Speaker 5: a about his mother. He talked about what he could
Speaker 5: see beyond the prison walls. He'd talk about his friends
Speaker 5: and family. He was very genial, and he joked freely,
Speaker 5: but he never stopped playing me. And really, this interview
Speaker 5: with him was the most important piece of this story
Speaker 5: to me. Not because he was the last survivor of
Speaker 5: the four people whose lives converged on that bridge that night,
Speaker 5: and not because he's likely to reveal anything new about
Speaker 5: the crime itself, much less except the blame, which he doesn't.
Speaker 5: And it's not because, you know, the jailhouse interview is
Speaker 5: an important part of true crime writing these days, but
Speaker 5: because he was my mirror. You know, I wanted to
Speaker 5: know something about me. You know, I believe deeply in
Speaker 5: the value of honest journalism. I think messengers have played
Speaker 5: a role in the human community since we first started
Speaker 5: gathering and tribes. But I wanted to know if my
Speaker 5: deep set feelings about this man, or at least what
Speaker 5: he represented, were stronger than my passion as a journalist.
Speaker 5: And I knew that if I couldn't take a step
Speaker 5: back from my feelings and allow him to tell his
Speaker 5: own story in his own voice, then I wasn't going
Speaker 5: to be the newspaper man that I thought I was.
Speaker 5: And in a sense, he would have raped me of
Speaker 5: that too. So this was a critical part of the story.
Speaker 3: For me, right what was interesting too? And you point
Speaker 3: this out and just to further show the inequity of
Speaker 3: not so much the system, it's just life itself. It's
Speaker 3: not so fair Becky's life. It just is that Ronald
Speaker 3: Kennedy found somebody to marry, an old childhood sweetheart. He
Speaker 3: had conjugal visits. He was a jail house lawyer. You
Speaker 3: did say he probably endured some you say, some sodomy
Speaker 3: or some jailhouse revenge. You know that he got his.
Speaker 3: But in general he lived a fairly comfortable life based
Speaker 3: on his background. He was comfortable with jail anyway, and
Speaker 3: he had the ability to make endless appeals. He got married,
Speaker 3: he had I don't know if he had a child.
Speaker 3: I mean, this guy's he's continued to live while the
Speaker 3: strong victim continued to slowly die. It's an interesting parallel
Speaker 3: in this book.
Speaker 5: And he enjoyed a marvelous life as far as prison goes.
Speaker 5: I mean, if you're going to be in prison, you'd
Speaker 5: want his life. He was allowed briefly to keep a
Speaker 5: pet in his cell, a little dog. He was allowed
Speaker 5: on at least two occasions to attend family parties back
Speaker 5: in Casper, Wyoming, not far from where Becky he was
Speaker 5: living at the time, and with only one guard who
Speaker 5: you know, pictures suggest this guard wasn't going to be
Speaker 5: able to do anything if Kennedy had decided to bolt, but.
Speaker 1: He had.
Speaker 5: He enjoyed some enormous privileges, including the conjugal visits for
Speaker 5: about ten years every month, got to sleep with his wife.
Speaker 5: So I think the book there's a picture even of
Speaker 5: him and a dance with his wife, a prison dance.
Speaker 5: We don't normally think of dances in prison. There he is,
Speaker 5: So you know, it's an incredible story. If I made
Speaker 5: it up, people would shoot me down and say impossible.
Speaker 5: These things couldn't happen. And that's the beauty of the truth.
Speaker 5: It's incredible, even though it's got to be totally credible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it really is. You know, sometimes there is
Speaker 3: a a little glimmer of somewhat of a happy ending.
Speaker 3: This is not a happy ending. It's just it's just
Speaker 3: not it's just it.
Speaker 5: Isn't in the sense that that we want justice to
Speaker 5: be done and that we want the victims to come
Speaker 5: out whole again in some way. But it is in
Speaker 5: the sense that she that Becky gave us a roadmap
Speaker 5: to how we deal with these traumas, not just these
Speaker 5: these horrific but but microcosmic events in our lives and
Speaker 5: our communities, but even the big ones like nine to eleven. Uh.
Speaker 5: She gave us a roadmap that that we need each other,
Speaker 5: we need to talk, we need to we need to
Speaker 5: build those relationships, we need to depend on one another.
Speaker 5: And I think that in that sense there is a
Speaker 5: silver lining. But it is an in terribly terribly dark story.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's a very interesting story. Run. I'm
Speaker 3: glad we had this chat this evening about it. It's
Speaker 3: just a wonderful book, and I'm sure audience appreciated again
Speaker 3: you coming on and speaking about so eloquently about this
Speaker 3: very very We've had you on and talked about more
Speaker 3: and more as we've come on, talked about personal stories,
Speaker 3: but this one really really will grip the reader because
Speaker 3: it's just has all those elements, just a fascinating story.
Speaker 3: And really Becky was a poster child or a poster
Speaker 3: woman for how you try to come back from something
Speaker 3: that most people just can't come back from at all.
Speaker 5: Yes, and you know, I was privileged to be able
Speaker 5: to keep her memory alive and to use their experience
Speaker 5: as an example for the rest of us. And that's
Speaker 5: what they gave us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's very good. Well, Ron, I want
Speaker 3: to thank you very much for coming on once again
Speaker 3: and pleasure and audience with this great description of this book.
Speaker 3: For those who have been listening to the program, we've
Speaker 3: been featuring the book The Darkest Night by a journalist
Speaker 3: and author Ron Francel. Two sisters, a brutal murder, and
Speaker 3: the loss of innocence in a small town, The Darkest Night.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much, Ron, have yourself a good evening
Speaker 3: and the best of luck in the near future, Thank
Speaker 3: you Dan, and to you two, thank you very much.
Speaker 4: Good Night,