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Speaker 3: You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking
Speaker 3: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 3: written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every
Speaker 3: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 3: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 3: host journalist and author Dan Zufanski. Good Evening, Would You
Speaker 3: Kill for Love? True Crime master Ron Francis tells the
Speaker 3: grizzly story of Alice and Gerald Youden, a loving couple
Speaker 3: who murdered at least four people and lived happily after
Speaker 3: while cops try for decades to piece together a petrifying
Speaker 3: tale of murder and secrets. The appalling details are made
Speaker 3: even more vivid by the author's familiarity with the wyoming
Speaker 3: times and places that formed the backdrop of his national
Speaker 3: bestseller The Darkest Night. In nineteen seventy four, Alice, a
Speaker 3: desperate young mother in a gritty, Wyoming boomtown, kills her
Speaker 3: husband and dumps his body where it will never be found,
Speaker 3: then slips away and starts a new life. But when
Speaker 3: her new man's ex wife and two kids start demanding
Speaker 3: more of him, Alice delivers an ultimatum fix the problem.
Speaker 3: Or lose her forever. With Alice's help, Gerald fixes the
Speaker 3: problem in an extraordinarily ghastly way, and they live happily
Speaker 3: ever after. That is until two thousand and thirteen, almost
Speaker 3: forty years later, when somebody finds a dead man's scalp
Speaker 3: in a place where Alice thought he'd never be found.
Speaker 3: This page turner by best selling true crime author Ron Francell,
Speaker 3: revisits a shocking cold case that was finally solved just
Speaker 3: when the murderous murderers thought they'd never be caught. The
Speaker 3: book they were featuring this evening is Alice and Gerald,
Speaker 3: a homicidal love story with my special guest, journalist and
Speaker 3: author Ron Francell. Welcome back to the program, and thank
Speaker 3: you very much for agreenedness interview.
Speaker 6: Ron Francell, Well, thank you, thank you Dan for making
Speaker 6: time for me. It's a privilege to be back.
Speaker 7: Thank you very much. It's a privilege to have you on.
Speaker 7: This is one, as I mentioned, one fantastic exciting edge
Speaker 7: of your seat book. Let's get right to the central character,
Speaker 7: or one of them in this book, Gerald Youden, as
Speaker 7: you write in a book, give us a little bit
Speaker 7: of background. He was born in Harvard, Nebraska, a little
Speaker 7: small town. But tell us a little bit about his
Speaker 7: life and how it came that he landed in Lander, Wyoming.
Speaker 6: Well, Gerald was, as you said, Nebraska farm boy he
Speaker 6: and all that, and you know suggests really he grew
Speaker 6: up with family all around in a very small town,
Speaker 6: and ultimately he was just what you'd expect. He wasn't
Speaker 6: wasn't particularly street smart, he wasn't particularly book smart. And
Speaker 6: when the time came, he joined the Navy, did his
Speaker 6: time during during Vietnam, although he didn't go overseas, and
Speaker 6: when he got out he was still kind of lost.
Speaker 6: He wasn't really sure what he was going to do,
Speaker 6: and so he migrated west to Wyoming, where he'd were
Speaker 6: job in, you know, the nineteen seventies, and he settled
Speaker 6: into work as a basically a glorified janitor and mechanic
Speaker 6: at a big mine out near Land or Wyoming. And
Speaker 6: that's where this tale sort of picks up.
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Speaker 7: Now you talk about his numerous weddings, so numerous marriages,
Speaker 7: but you also talk about just how it comes to
Speaker 7: be that he's married, and what he's impressed with, and
Speaker 7: this whole courting process you include in this. So tell
Speaker 7: us about his first hasty marriage as you describe it
Speaker 7: to Wanda.
Speaker 6: Well, uh, he's simply all of his weddings are are
Speaker 6: quick to fall in love, quick to marry, and really
Speaker 6: quick to divorce too. All of his marriages, including his
Speaker 6: first UH scene to be about his need to build
Speaker 6: a family that he thinks he should have, and he
Speaker 6: falls deeply in love with these women who ultimately who
Speaker 6: ultimately just can't put up with his neediness, his occasional anger.
Speaker 6: There's no evidence he beat any of them, but I
Speaker 6: think he was just sort of a dufus who couldn't
Speaker 6: help but falling in love. Whether it was Wanda or
Speaker 6: any of the others, he became a three time loser.
Speaker 6: And simply by the time we see him meeting Alice,
Speaker 6: who herself is a three time loser, we see his
Speaker 6: personality of this obsession with a lover and a wife
Speaker 6: and a family. We see that pretty plainly.
Speaker 7: You write about nineteen seventy three, after Wanda takes off
Speaker 7: after six weeks, he has a landlady named Friend that
Speaker 7: likes him, and he tells her he's kind of lonely,
Speaker 7: and soon after he has a knock on his trailer
Speaker 7: door and it's Virginia. Tell us what Virginia tells Gerald
Speaker 7: about her situation and the premise upon meeting him and
Speaker 7: knocking on his door in the first place, the.
Speaker 6: Moment when she meets Gerald. She comes to his trailer
Speaker 6: and she's got an old gun, an old rifle, and
Speaker 6: it's a gun that has been in her family for
Speaker 6: some time, an older piece, and she who being chronically
Speaker 6: in and out of work, she wants to know the
Speaker 6: value of this gun, possibly to sell it and have
Speaker 6: a little bit more money to support herself and her
Speaker 6: two very young sons. Gerald, who fancies himself to be
Speaker 6: a little of a gun expert, takes a look at
Speaker 6: it and determines that some changes have been made that
Speaker 6: rendered it no more valuable than what it was purchased
Speaker 6: for decades and decades before, little more than thirty dollars.
Speaker 6: So the gun itself is a bust. But Gerald, of
Speaker 6: course falls in immediate love with Virginia, and because of that,
Speaker 6: as I mentioned before, he simply had that compulsion to
Speaker 6: have a woman, and here was one standing on his
Speaker 6: front porch. Not only that, but she appeared to like guns,
Speaker 6: which was very appealing to him. So it was, in
Speaker 6: many ways it's the beginning of the end for Gerald.
Speaker 7: Yeah, you write that it all starts off quite well.
Speaker 7: And her two sons take to Gerald and some of
Speaker 7: the things he does on their behalf and they're calling
Speaker 7: him Dad. But suddenly there's talk. Virginia says she wants
Speaker 7: to visit relatives for a little visit, but doesn't want
Speaker 7: him to go along. Tell us what happens during this
Speaker 7: visit to relatives in Philadelphia.
Speaker 6: Virginia was, of course, originally from Pennsylvania. She came out
Speaker 6: to Wyoming as a young girl with her mother. Her
Speaker 6: mother had recently divorced, but she was an independent spirit.
Speaker 6: She had been a Rosy the riveter type during World
Speaker 6: War Two. She liked to skull on the rivers and
Speaker 6: lakes out there, and she brought that passion out to Wyoming.
Speaker 6: At some point in their marriage, Virginia determines she is
Speaker 6: going to go out and visit relatives in Pennsylvania, and
Speaker 6: she's there for some time. But when she returns, Gerald
Speaker 6: senses that the things have changed. She's sort of distant.
Speaker 6: She doesn't seem to have the same passion for him
Speaker 6: or for anything else that she had before. What happened
Speaker 6: out there, we don't know. We can maybe surmise that
Speaker 6: she met someone that this person appealed more to her
Speaker 6: than Gerald did, but we don't know exactly what happened.
Speaker 6: All we know is that by the time she got
Speaker 6: back and moved, you know, back back in essentially to
Speaker 6: her home with her boys and with Gerald, she had changed,
Speaker 6: and that that leads to ultimately to a separation and
Speaker 6: then a divorce from Gerald.
Speaker 7: You're right that in that divorce though, he you know,
Speaker 7: he had to give her a child support before and
Speaker 7: he adopted these boys as while she had asked him
Speaker 7: to adopt these boys, so he did. It was one
Speaker 7: hundred and fifty a month child support. But he also
Speaker 7: put the boys on his US Steel health insurance. And
Speaker 7: you right that he just considered him himself a chump
Speaker 7: at that time and was depressed. You say that the
Speaker 7: sets up for yeah, you right though, that one morning
Speaker 7: he has a new neighbor and there's a knock on
Speaker 7: the door. Tell us who's at the door, and a
Speaker 7: little bit more about this meeting, and again how much
Speaker 7: is Gerald impressed with this woman and why, Well.
Speaker 6: We need to understand that that Gerald considers himself kind
Speaker 6: of a John Wayne. He thinks he's cunning, he thinks
Speaker 6: he's powerful, he thinks he's a protector, and that underlies
Speaker 6: this this need that he has to have a family
Speaker 6: to be the protector. So after the divorce from Virginia,
Speaker 6: she she goes back to back East again. Maybe there's
Speaker 6: somebody back there that she wants to connect with. And
Speaker 6: he's left, as you said, kind of feeling like a chump,
Speaker 6: kind of kind of feeling like he was bamboozled into
Speaker 6: adopting the boys and and marrying her and and and
Speaker 6: in the whole process give her something that she wanted
Speaker 6: from him that wasn't love, that that wasn't a relationship.
Speaker 6: And he's sort of licking his wounds when again there
Speaker 6: comes a knock on his trailer door in this little
Speaker 6: trailer park in land or Wyoming. Uh And this time
Speaker 6: it's his new next door neighbor in a slightly bigger
Speaker 6: trailer and her name is Alice Prunty, and almost on
Speaker 6: almost at first sight, he is smitten. Uh he he
Speaker 6: he tells me that that she is the most beautiful
Speaker 6: woman he'd ever seen. And and again we see Gerald
Speaker 6: in this sort of headlong, this headlong romance before before
Speaker 6: words are spoken in a sense and uh he he
Speaker 6: does a chore that that Alice needs, and uh invites
Speaker 6: her to lunch at a local truck stop and she
Speaker 6: begins to tell him this this sometimes sad, sometimes sortid
Speaker 6: the story about her life up to that point, with
Speaker 6: three marriages and five children, including two that were with
Speaker 6: her at the time, and he's taken by.
Speaker 5: The sadness of it, but he's he's.
Speaker 6: Also admiring her even.
Speaker 5: As she speaks.
Speaker 6: As he explains it, he's simply overcome with this obsession,
Speaker 6: this compulsion to be with Alice.
Speaker 5: The next day, they go fishing and.
Speaker 6: She tells them a little bit more of her story.
Speaker 5: That the.
Speaker 6: Urge to be the protector Kicksie in big time. He
Speaker 6: sees her as somebody who has kind of had a
Speaker 6: bad life and suffered, has suffered a lot up to
Speaker 6: that point, and he believes he can make her better,
Speaker 6: that she deserves better, and that she deserves him.
Speaker 1: Uh So.
Speaker 6: The the courtship, I should say that after that fishing trip,
Speaker 6: that evening, they make love for the first time, and
Speaker 6: Alice tells him as they as they lay there that
Speaker 6: she had killed a man and that that he was abusive,
Speaker 6: that he had taken after her child, the toddler, and
Speaker 6: was about to kill her when Alice got a gun
Speaker 6: and shot him to death. Gerald, again so obsessed, kind
Speaker 6: of brushes it off. He believes the guy probably deserved it.
Speaker 6: Was an abuser. And this was the time in Wyoming
Speaker 6: that was unrooted. People came and went with the oil fields,
Speaker 6: with the mining, with you know, gas production, with coal.
Speaker 6: It was a big boom time. So people from all
Speaker 6: over came for work and sometimes just left abruptly to
Speaker 6: go home, to go someplace else, to get another job,
Speaker 6: whatever it was. Today they're here, and tomorrow they're gone,
Speaker 6: and soon.
Speaker 5: People just.
Speaker 6: When Alice killed this husband, she although she didn't tell
Speaker 6: Gerald this at first, she disposed of him, as you noted,
Speaker 6: in a place where she expected that he would never
Speaker 6: be found, and then she moved away. In the process,
Speaker 6: nobody noticed it was this nice little couple that had
Speaker 6: moved into a trailer park in Cheyenne, Wyoming, were gone
Speaker 6: the next day, and nobody thought twice about that. And
Speaker 6: it's then when she goes to Lander and meets Gerald
Speaker 6: and then tells him the story, not only the story
Speaker 6: of her life, but the story of this shooting that
Speaker 6: she claimed to his self defense. And again he simply
Speaker 6: bought it. He simply wanted to believe it because he
Speaker 6: needed to protect her, He needed to protect their children.
Speaker 6: After all that was part of his mindset.
Speaker 7: You're right too that not only is young Eliza with Alice,
Speaker 7: but also that another son, Michael, because she has five children.
Speaker 7: Michael moves in and through school. He's interested in pigs
Speaker 7: for this agricultural young Farmer's program. And Gerald, being this
Speaker 7: ready made, ready to be a father, built a big
Speaker 7: pig pen for this new son, didn't he.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And let me back up a little bit and
Speaker 6: say Alice had five children, three of them were school
Speaker 6: age or younger, and they bounced back and forth between
Speaker 6: her home in Wyoming and various relatives back east. Times
Speaker 6: just occasionally became tough for her, and when they did,
Speaker 6: she sent kids back east. When they got a little
Speaker 6: bit better, they'd come out or when something happened. So
Speaker 6: they're bouncing around in you know, different combinations. His son
Speaker 6: and daughter go, then son comes back, then goes back
Speaker 6: to Illin Noi, and daughter comes out to Wayne. Was
Speaker 6: It was a very confusing element of their family which
Speaker 6: was clearly in chaos, maybe dysfunctional. So yeah, here this
Speaker 6: one son in who is school age, decides he's going
Speaker 6: to be in the four h program at his Wyoming school.
Speaker 6: And he decides that he'll raise pigs. As you pointed out,
Speaker 6: Gerald builds him a pig pin on their remote little
Speaker 6: we'll call it a farm, although they didn't raise anything
Speaker 6: until the pigs came along. He builds the pig pen.
Speaker 6: And at that point life is good. The son is
Speaker 6: thriving more or less in school. They're raising their young daughter, Eliza.
Speaker 6: They're in a place that they had always in their
Speaker 6: short relationship, dreamed of being, you know, a remote farm
Speaker 6: like place that it was distant from other people, distant
Speaker 6: from towns, distant from all the kind of observation and observers,
Speaker 6: and that appealed to them. They just wanted to be
Speaker 6: left alone. And here they were in this place that
Speaker 6: suited that wish.
Speaker 7: Now Virginia, meanwhile, you say that she had moved east
Speaker 7: and with the boys and for a new start. But
Speaker 7: you talk about difficulties with the boys and with I
Speaker 7: guess this new Jersey and everything that they thought that
Speaker 7: was going to work out for them. So what does
Speaker 7: Virginia start to do and what does she start to
Speaker 7: have and what does she do involving Gerald.
Speaker 6: Well, Virginia, as you point out, moves east and has
Speaker 6: a series of jobs. If she had a relationship with
Speaker 6: somebody out there. It just fell apart because eventually things
Speaker 6: are just not working out, and she decides she's going
Speaker 6: to move back to Wyoming and live with her mother,
Speaker 6: who was a manager of a local laundromat in this
Speaker 6: small town of Riverton, Wyoming. It was a sort of
Speaker 6: sanctuary for her, in a free space where she was
Speaker 6: protected and as well, you know, could live cheaply. The
Speaker 6: little boys, although covered by Gerald's pretty good insurance policy,
Speaker 6: tended to get sick a lot.
Speaker 5: Pretty soon.
Speaker 6: Her resources were trained, and that's that's what inspires her
Speaker 6: to come back to Wyoming. Once she's back, she begins
Speaker 6: to talk in some you know, in a sort of
Speaker 6: hinting ways, that she needs a little more child support.
Speaker 6: It's not that much anyway. It's only seventy five dollars
Speaker 6: a month for both kids, so only one hundred and
Speaker 6: fifty dollars that Gerald had to pay. Gerald, for his part,
Speaker 6: was happy to entertain the idea of more child support.
Speaker 6: He was he was certainly making enough money to cover it.
Speaker 6: And once again, this protector, this urged to be the
Speaker 6: protector had had.
Speaker 5: Kicked in. Okay, he he.
Speaker 6: Was okay with who wasn't okay with it is Alice.
Speaker 6: Alice believed very strongly, almost perversely, that an ex wife
Speaker 6: should simply disappear. She certainly shouldn't pop up in her
Speaker 6: ex husband's life in any way. So Virginia asking for
Speaker 6: more money sent Alice up the wall, and pretty soon
Speaker 6: Alice is responding to Virginia in a series of sort
Speaker 6: of grotesque letters where she's very angry and very profane
Speaker 6: and abusive really and the whole relationship, as it were,
Speaker 6: just went south very quickly. And uh so there we
Speaker 6: have it. There, there, we've set up the conflict. Gerald
Speaker 6: is not not so concerned. Alice is, uh, sort of
Speaker 6: perversely concerned, and Virginia is out there angling for ways
Speaker 6: that you get more money and and actually even considers
Speaker 6: a legal remedy, which I think certainly enrages Alice even more.
Speaker 6: Although it's difficult when you read these letters, which which
Speaker 6: are in the book, When you read these letters, it's
Speaker 6: difficult to believe that that Alice could be more enraged.
Speaker 7: But she was. You write that, and in those letters
Speaker 7: that she belittles Virginia incredibly, and just to top it off,
Speaker 7: and the torment and those letters says listen, we're going
Speaker 7: to get those boys. They're going to treat me like
Speaker 7: their new mom. And then calls her things like worthless
Speaker 7: and all kinds of derogatory comments. So this was a
Speaker 7: psychological torment that Alice certainly knew that she was doing, didn't.
Speaker 6: She absolutely it was completely deliberate. She simply wanted not
Speaker 6: not to just make make Virginia feel bad. She wanted
Speaker 6: to hallow her out and reduce her to, you know,
Speaker 6: a pile of dust. The names she calls her, the
Speaker 6: suggestions that she makes as you point out to say,
Speaker 6: we will become the boy's family, they'll forget you, we
Speaker 6: will treat them better than you did, that sort of thing,
Speaker 6: And it was calculated simply to hurt. Beyond hurt, it
Speaker 6: was calculated to devastate. Can you imagine a mother being
Speaker 6: told by her arch nemesis that she's going to lose
Speaker 6: her two sons to this evil, profane woman who has
Speaker 6: every intention of winning them over to her affection. I
Speaker 6: can't imagine. I can't imagine how Virginia must have felt.
Speaker 6: And frankly, I can't even conjure up how abusive and
Speaker 6: how evil Alice could be to say the things she
Speaker 6: said in these letters, and again they're in the book.
Speaker 6: You get to read Alice's letters, you get to see
Speaker 6: brute vi Ginya's responses.
Speaker 5: It's startling, it really is.
Speaker 7: Let's fast forward to September nineteen eighty. There is contact
Speaker 7: and visitation with Gerald, but of course Alice doesn't like it.
Speaker 7: Alice doesn't want to meet Virginia. Virginia is not allowed
Speaker 7: on their property, so it's not good conditions. But in
Speaker 7: September nineteen eighty, Virginia is looking to get some of
Speaker 7: her belongings back from New Jersey and mentions it to Gerald.
Speaker 7: Tell us what happens with this mentioning of her need
Speaker 7: for a trailer? What does Gerald come up with?
Speaker 6: Well, I say, she has moved back, of course, from
Speaker 6: New Jersey is where she had ended up out there.
Speaker 6: She has moved back to Wyoming, but left a lot
Speaker 6: of her personal belongings, some of the the boys belongings
Speaker 6: back in New Jersey and storage. In order to go
Speaker 6: back and get these things. She couldn't use her dilapidated
Speaker 6: little car. She needed she needed something bigger, a trailer,
Speaker 6: and she mentions that to Gerald, and I should point
Speaker 6: out to your listeners that she and Gerald continued to
Speaker 6: have a friendly relationship. There was there was. They would
Speaker 6: see each other on the street and talk. Gerald would
Speaker 6: have the boys over for you know, visits, even weekends.
Speaker 6: His relationship with Virginia was still what we'd say was
Speaker 6: was amicable. It was Alice who was having a problem.
Speaker 6: But Gerald. Gerald has been given an ultimatum by Alice,
Speaker 6: and it is essentially, you take care of this or
Speaker 6: I'm out of here. Let's go back to Gerald's psychopathy.
Speaker 6: Here he thinks he's John Wayne. He thinks he has
Speaker 6: a job to protect. He also is obsessed with having
Speaker 6: a family, with having a lover, with having a wife,
Speaker 6: and here he has one who he thinks is the
Speaker 6: most beautiful woman in the world, and he doesn't want
Speaker 6: to lose her. It's pretty clear what she's suggesting to him.
Speaker 6: So when Virginia talks about borrowing a trailer in order
Speaker 6: to get her goods from New Jersey, Gerald sees an opening.
Speaker 6: He claims that he has a friend who delivers hay
Speaker 6: to him on his little farm who has a trailer,
Speaker 6: and he'll ask if this guy lend her the trailer. Eventually,
Speaker 6: he calls Virginia and says yes, he'll loan you this trailer.
Speaker 6: Just meet me at this remote site on a country
Speaker 6: road and i'll fix you up. I'll have the trailer
Speaker 6: and we can take care of it. And so the
Speaker 6: arrangement is made.
Speaker 7: Part of the arrangement is too, he says, let's double
Speaker 7: up this trip with helping you get this trailer. But
Speaker 7: also that the boys like hunting, so could you bring
Speaker 7: your mom's twenty two rifle? And of course she discusses
Speaker 7: this with her mom, Claire about this twenty two rifle.
Speaker 7: Tell us what Claire thinks about the twenty two rifle
Speaker 7: for hunting. But what does Claire do?
Speaker 6: You're right, he tells, Virginia. But the boys like to
Speaker 6: go out and shoot at cans or you know, birds whatever.
Speaker 6: So when you come out here into this remote place there,
Speaker 6: we're gonna be where we can do that. So bring
Speaker 6: bring that old gun. Remember the gun. It's the same
Speaker 6: gun that she brought to his trailer for a kind
Speaker 6: of evaluation of its value. He said, bring that along,
Speaker 6: and while you're out here, we'll take the boys to
Speaker 6: shoot some cans. When we'll we'll shoot some birds. That
Speaker 6: was another element of it. What causes Claire to question that,
Speaker 6: and Claire Martin, being Virginia's mother, is that she never
Speaker 6: heard of anybody shooting at birds with a twenty two.
Speaker 6: That if they really wanted to kill birds for food,
Speaker 6: they needed something else. Maybe a shotgun, certainly at twenty
Speaker 6: two wasn't the right weapon for that. Nonetheless, she's glad
Speaker 6: that they get the two boys whom Gerald had adopted,
Speaker 6: and as you pointed out, they called him daddy, and
Speaker 6: they had a good relationship with him. They even loved him.
Speaker 6: They certainly were always glad to see him. So the
Speaker 6: arrangement is made to go on this little outing and Claire,
Speaker 6: although she gens the use of that gun to shoot
Speaker 6: at birds, she buys some ammunition and sends them off
Speaker 6: to get this trailer and to have a day out,
Speaker 6: assuming they're going to come back.
Speaker 7: You talk about September twelfth, nineteen eighty. The virgin in
Speaker 7: the boys arrived a few minutes early at the location
Speaker 7: and Gerald was there, just him, no truck, and Jerald
Speaker 7: greets the boys, but Virginia asks about the trailer because
Speaker 7: it's supposed to be there. What does Gerald say about
Speaker 7: the trailer and why it's not there.
Speaker 6: Well, the man who had intended to loan them. He says,
Speaker 6: didn't have it or was using it, whatever it was,
Speaker 6: it just hadn't worked out, so he didn't have the trailer.
Speaker 6: But as long as you're here, he said, let let's
Speaker 6: go out and do this outing anyway. So Gerald gets
Speaker 6: into Virginia's station wagon, actually Claire's station wagon that Virginia
Speaker 6: had borrowed. The boys are in the back. Virginia is driving,
Speaker 6: and he points the way to a place five or
Speaker 6: six miles up the road, literally in the middle of nowhere,
Speaker 6: where they can shoot and nobody's going to complain. They
Speaker 6: certainly weren't going to hit anybody or anything any home
Speaker 6: out there. So Virginia drives out and he points out
Speaker 6: a place on the side of the road where she
Speaker 6: should stop, and she does.
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Speaker 7: fab fit Fun box. Ron Now they are Virginia, and
Speaker 7: the boys are in a remote spot, and they have
Speaker 7: this twenty two rifle, and Claire Martin knows that they're
Speaker 7: going for this meeting. Tell us what happens next. In
Speaker 7: terms of Claire Martin and her contact with Virginia that afternoon.
Speaker 6: I think before they leave, she expresses some reservations to Virginia,
Speaker 6: but they're certainly not enough to cause Virginia to think
Speaker 6: twice about going out there. Claire herself likes Gerald, She
Speaker 6: isn't suspicious of him in any way, She just hopes
Speaker 6: that that Virginia can get what Gerald says he can
Speaker 6: provide the trailer and questions a little bit the weapon,
Speaker 6: of course, but but they Ultimately Virginia is intent on
Speaker 6: going out there and taking the boys because she she
Speaker 6: likes Gerald's so or they like Gerald and.
Speaker 5: So.
Speaker 6: As they leave, Claire stands at the door of the
Speaker 6: laundromat where she's the manager and waves goodbye.
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Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 7: It's after nine o'clock now, and Claire Martin starts to worry,
Speaker 7: so she calls Gerald. What does Gerald say?
Speaker 6: Gerald claims that that Virginia and the boys actually never arrived.
Speaker 6: That he went out and waited for them for a
Speaker 6: long time in this remote spot that they had arranged
Speaker 6: to meet, but Virginia never showed up. He just figured
Speaker 6: that she changed her mind or went someplace else. He
Speaker 6: but he'd.
Speaker 5: Never seen her.
Speaker 6: So Claire is is a little worried and things maybe
Speaker 6: Virginia has taken the boys to the movies or taken
Speaker 6: them out for a hamburger or something.
Speaker 7: And she.
Speaker 6: First goes out with a friend to visit all the
Speaker 6: places where Virginia might be. And then soon enough Gerald
Speaker 6: arrives and he goes with them to search. Now, this
Speaker 6: is a small town. There weren't you know, that many
Speaker 6: paces that that they needed to stop and see. But
Speaker 6: but and they hit them, pretty much all of them,
Speaker 6: and there was no sign of Virginia. Nobody had seen
Speaker 6: her and the boys they hadn't even seen her the
Speaker 6: station wagon she was driving, which of course was Claire's.
Speaker 6: So Claire's concern is heightened as as she can't find it,
Speaker 6: and Gerald, you know.
Speaker 5: Is helping.
Speaker 6: Apparently the best he can to find them, but again
Speaker 6: no sign of Virginia. So at some point Gerald decides
Speaker 6: he the search is over for him, and he goes home.
Speaker 6: Claire continues their search until a point that the sidewalks
Speaker 6: have rolled up in this little town and she can
Speaker 6: she can go nowhere else, and she returns home and
Speaker 6: goes to bed, hoping to restart her search the next morning.
Speaker 7: Now when does she go to the sheriff And what
Speaker 7: is the sheriff's response to this grandmother, this elderly woman
Speaker 7: looking for her daughter and the two boys.
Speaker 6: Well, fairly quickly as you might imagine. And the response
Speaker 6: like like we so often see on television and in movies,
Speaker 6: The police say, well, she she could have just wandered off.
Speaker 6: She could have she could have gone someplace and simply
Speaker 6: lost touch. Maybe she does nowhere near a phone. Maybe
Speaker 6: she took the boys to another town and and just
Speaker 6: didn't feel like she needed to check in. So they
Speaker 6: they didn't treat it as seriously as they might have.
Speaker 6: They treated it as a missing at first. They didn't
Speaker 6: even treat it as a missing person's case. They said,
Speaker 6: you know, just just wait she she might show up.
Speaker 6: And then if she doesn't show up, you know, fairly soon.
Speaker 6: Then come back and we'll, you know, put out a
Speaker 6: be on the lookout to other departments and we'll we'll
Speaker 6: take a look. But give it time, Claire does. Claire
Speaker 6: continues her search. She even makes more suggestions to the
Speaker 6: local sheriff about where they might search. And there again
Speaker 6: just they've got other work to do.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 6: And they know from experience that sometimes people just go
Speaker 6: away to think or to be alone, and they don't
Speaker 6: check in and then but they turn up. And then
Speaker 6: in most cases like this, there no shout play happened.
Speaker 6: They have just lost themselves in their thoughts or gone
Speaker 6: to a different town for a while. They're not concerned.
Speaker 7: To add to that the theory that the police already
Speaker 7: have that notion that they have four days after Virginia
Speaker 7: to boys go missing. A deputy added a note to
Speaker 7: the missing person report at the Fremont County Sheriff's office.
Speaker 7: Supposedly a missus Hart had called what did missus Hart
Speaker 7: call to say? And which prompted the deputy to make
Speaker 7: an amendment in addition to that missing person's report.
Speaker 6: Around that time, just a few days after Virginia went missing,
Speaker 6: Claire starts to get a series of phone calls and
Speaker 6: letters from people saying, you know, Virginia was just here
Speaker 6: in Illinois or Iowa or a lot of places out
Speaker 6: of state, and she was just here and she got
Speaker 6: some money from you know, the wire, the telegram. She's fine.
Speaker 6: She wanted me to call and tell you she was fine.
Speaker 6: A series of male grams came and other letters purportedly
Speaker 6: from people along the way to say that that Virginia
Speaker 6: was okay.
Speaker 5: She was just.
Speaker 6: Getting some alone time and she she simply.
Speaker 5: Was out out and about.
Speaker 6: So this this series of good Samaritans were just calling
Speaker 6: Claire or writing to Claire to say everything is okay,
Speaker 6: don't worry about it.
Speaker 7: She is suspicious, Claire and takes all this information and
Speaker 7: all these all this correspondence that she's suspect about and
Speaker 7: goes to this captain Larry Matthews. So she thinks something's compelling.
Speaker 7: But she goes to him, and what does he say
Speaker 7: to her?
Speaker 6: Well, again, the authorities or are just feel that these
Speaker 6: kind of missing person's case usually resolved themselves, and in
Speaker 6: this case they felt no different. Although among the letters
Speaker 6: that Claire receives is one that purports to come from
Speaker 6: Virginia herself saying, don't worry, we're you know, we're fine,
Speaker 6: We're we're just traveling. We just needed to get away,
Speaker 6: that sort of thing. But Claire, the language doesn't sound right,
Speaker 6: the signature doesn't look right, and Claire, Claire has questions
Speaker 6: about that, and that's what she takes to the to
Speaker 6: the to Matthews at the Sheriff's department. Matthews sees it differently.
Speaker 6: He sees it as a letter that has come from
Speaker 6: Virginia to her mother, and that essentially this case has resolved,
Speaker 6: that Virginia is fine. She has just gone and walk
Speaker 6: about and and she's out there case case not closed
Speaker 6: because I'm not sure it was ever open, And and
Speaker 6: he's satisfied that Virginia is fine, even though Claire has
Speaker 6: serious questions about it.
Speaker 7: She keeps pushing and she even gets, uh the Illinois address,
Speaker 7: So he gets the owner's name and address. And what
Speaker 7: do they find at this address that this correspondence was
Speaker 7: sent from in Illinois? Well, and who in Illinois?
Speaker 6: He gets exactly, And she while she doesn't do that,
Speaker 6: she gets the authorities to at least make that make
Speaker 6: that visit and see right where it is and what
Speaker 6: it is and maybe talk.
Speaker 5: To the person.
Speaker 6: Who who supposedly had sent the letter or mail Graham
Speaker 6: from this place. Illinois authorities are asked to do that
Speaker 6: on behalf of the Sheriff's department, and when they do,
Speaker 6: they find a place I believe it was vacant at
Speaker 6: that time, but it's immediate past owner just happened to
Speaker 6: be the daughter of Alice Uton. Uh So, now we
Speaker 6: have the plot dickens uh the the source of at
Speaker 6: least one of the letters happens to be related to
Speaker 6: someone that that certainly could have a connection to Virginia.
Speaker 6: I wouldn't say that at that point they were persons
Speaker 6: of interest, but Alice and Gerald certainly had a connection. Certainly,
Speaker 6: you know, in without much brain power, they the authorities
Speaker 6: could see that there might be a motive in some
Speaker 6: foul play there. Uh So they're they're curious about about
Speaker 6: this and uh and they they continue to look into it.
Speaker 6: But but really, as as intriguing is a lot of
Speaker 6: these clues that they find might be, they're never really
Speaker 6: able to connect the dots.
Speaker 5: And so.
Speaker 6: Ultimately we see Matthews as the first of a succession
Speaker 6: of detectives investigators who who pursue these ghosts for nearly
Speaker 6: forty years, never able to connect these dots. I've described
Speaker 6: this story before as boy meets girl, boy marries girl,
Speaker 6: Boy and girl kill some people, and then boy and
Speaker 6: girl live happily ever after. And that's that's because this
Speaker 6: series of detectives simply can't connect the dots. Even when
Speaker 6: Alice and Gerald become clear person's interest. There's no body.
Speaker 5: There there, there's.
Speaker 6: No weapon, there's no confession, the the the presumption is
Speaker 6: that Alison Gerald were involved. But without some of that
Speaker 6: hard evidence, investigators and prosecutors saw the likelihood that, you know,
Speaker 6: any first year law student could probably win an acquittal
Speaker 6: in a court of law based on reasonable doubt. If
Speaker 6: that happened, then they lose their chance to get justice
Speaker 6: for Virginia and for the boys who who they now
Speaker 6: assume are probably dead, but they don't even know that.
Speaker 6: They keep that case open for that reason. And then,
Speaker 6: you know, for a variety of reasons. One one detective
Speaker 6: you know, has to has to put it on the
Speaker 6: back burner, uh, and some you know there then another
Speaker 6: one comes along and for a while it puts it
Speaker 6: on the front burner, and then ultimately must put it
Speaker 6: on the back burner too. This happens five or six
Speaker 6: times over that forty years. Meanwhile, Alis and Gerald have
Speaker 6: moved to Missouri. They're they're living the life they always imagined.
Speaker 6: They would occasionally cops pop in and ask them some questions,
Speaker 6: but Dave Dy've they have a story, and and they're
Speaker 6: consistent in the story, and the cops go away without
Speaker 6: much more knowledge of of what might have happened to
Speaker 6: uh Virginia and her boys. Then they started with I
Speaker 6: think we see that part of it that we see
Speaker 6: the investigation going on, this passionate kind of uh a
Speaker 6: search for justice by the cops. But we also see
Speaker 6: Claire Martin, who who I believe is the moral center
Speaker 6: of this story, this activist grandma who keeps the memories
Speaker 6: of those of the Virginia and her boys who are
Speaker 6: her only daughter and grandsons. She keeps it alive for
Speaker 6: literally for decades. Her persistence, I think, is the kind
Speaker 6: of persistence that we hope somebody will show if something
Speaker 6: happened to us or to our loved ones. Altogether, all
Speaker 6: of these people are real life symbols of the bad
Speaker 6: in people, of the good in people in the devotion
Speaker 6: that in some people.
Speaker 5: And so I saw a.
Speaker 6: Bigger story here than just a simple murder investigation. Saw
Speaker 6: I saw a very complex story that really challenged my
Speaker 6: way of thinking, my way of looking at these kinds
Speaker 6: of cases.
Speaker 7: You write about, Well, we skipped over a little bit,
Speaker 7: but it's not so important. But it's continuing with the
Speaker 7: narrative here of the police not seeing things right in
Speaker 7: front of their eyes. Is the car was discovered soon
Speaker 7: after because they couldn't really be hidden, and there wasn't
Speaker 7: much discovered in that car. But you show Claire Martin
Speaker 7: at that crime scene, showing those police how to search
Speaker 7: for evidence in that car, it's remarkable.
Speaker 6: Well, yeah, they find the car way up in the
Speaker 6: wilderness in the mountains where it has been clearly stashed.
Speaker 6: They see no evidence of any kind of a struggle
Speaker 6: or certainly not a murder, and so they take the
Speaker 6: car and they literally drop it the toe. Druft drops
Speaker 6: it in Claire Martin's driveway, where you know she was
Speaker 6: the owner and they had no reason to keep it.
Speaker 6: As you might imagine, she's she keeps looking at it,
Speaker 6: she keeps wondering if there's anything there. She's she's no
Speaker 6: more an investigator really than they are. But at some
Speaker 6: point she finds a hidden stain that looks her like blood,
Speaker 6: and she immediately calls the authorities and they send a
Speaker 6: couple detectives out, including Larry Matthews, to look at what
Speaker 6: she has found, and immediately they understand the significance of
Speaker 6: this stain and some other material that they found. At
Speaker 6: that point, the car becomes a crime scene, and.
Speaker 5: Suddenly I think the.
Speaker 6: Authorities are much more attuned to the idea that this
Speaker 6: might be something more than just a missing person's case.
Speaker 6: And again that's to the credit of Claire Martin, who
Speaker 6: just doesn't give up. But we see again one of
Speaker 6: those slips that is going to be important to would
Speaker 6: be important in any prosecution, and that is that the
Speaker 6: police had lost the chain of custody by simply dropping
Speaker 6: this vehicle back in Claire Martin's driveway, even though they
Speaker 6: later find something in it, Any defense lawyer is going
Speaker 6: to say, who who isn't who can can attest that
Speaker 6: it wasn't planted there. The other thing to understand is
Speaker 6: that this is before we have DNA, This is before
Speaker 6: we have computer databases that now helped the cops all
Speaker 6: they had was some shoe leather investigation.
Speaker 5: They had.
Speaker 6: Fingerprinting, of course, and they had rudimentary blood typing. So
Speaker 6: even even if they could, even if they typed the
Speaker 6: blood in there, it would be.
Speaker 5: It would be.
Speaker 6: Not not really reliable, because again it was rudimentary. And
Speaker 6: in this particular case, we have three related people whose
Speaker 6: blood type might not even be known to begin with.
Speaker 7: The cracks in this case, or the breaks in this case,
Speaker 7: come courtesy of Alice's children, primarily Eliza and Michael. I believe,
Speaker 7: maybe incorrect, you introduce a again, another heroic character in
Speaker 7: this a real a cold case detective. They won't let
Speaker 7: this go, and that's Lonnie to beast or the best
Speaker 7: in his relationship with Claire Martin as well, contacting her Easter, Christmas,
Speaker 7: her birthday, trying to keep her updated and really a
Speaker 7: touching part of the story. How much this guy really
Speaker 7: cares being criticized by his own police force and this
Speaker 7: he won't let this thing go. So tell us about
Speaker 7: how this break comes about in terms of what kind
Speaker 7: of information do the children of Alice give to police.
Speaker 6: Well, let's talk about Alice a little bit. Alice ultimately
Speaker 6: has shown in this book to be a narcissistic sociopath.
Speaker 6: And one of the things we know about people like
Speaker 6: that is that they need to tell their story to
Speaker 6: somebody because they're narcissists. They want people to know what
Speaker 6: they've done and to sort of celebrate it. Let's go
Speaker 6: way back. Alice has killed a husband and she has disappeared.
Speaker 6: She's living for a time in a small town in
Speaker 6: Wyoming in between mean and working as a barmaid in
Speaker 6: a roadhouse that's thirty miles out in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 6: She has among her kids this twelve year old son.
Speaker 6: He's you know, seventh grader. He his job is to
Speaker 6: drive her out to this roadhouse every night, wait in
Speaker 6: the parking lot until her shift ended, when she would
Speaker 6: usually bring a six pack of beer out and probably
Speaker 6: at two three in the morning, and then his job
Speaker 6: was to drive her home while she drank and while
Speaker 6: she shared her beers with him twelve years old. Let
Speaker 6: me remind your listeners. At some point this this twelve
Speaker 6: year old criticizes Alice's parenting skills and probably does it
Speaker 6: in a twelve year old.
Speaker 5: Sort of way.
Speaker 6: Alice then tells him the story about this man, this
Speaker 6: abusive man.
Speaker 5: That she killed.
Speaker 6: So we don't have a mother here unburdening herself of
Speaker 6: a haunting memory to a loved one. We might have
Speaker 6: here that narcissistic sociopath firing a shot across the bow
Speaker 6: of this twelve year old kid, basically saying, don't mess
Speaker 6: with me, don't.
Speaker 5: Tell me I'm wrong. I can do to you what
Speaker 5: I did to him.
Speaker 6: At least that's the way the kid takes it. Fast forward,
Speaker 6: then we have the kid, not without a lot of detail,
Speaker 6: just remembering that his mother told him a long, long
Speaker 6: time ago that she had killed somebody, and that begins
Speaker 6: to put police on a different track. While they had
Speaker 6: looked at Gerald very hard, now they could look at
Speaker 6: Alice for a possible second crime. But this again is
Speaker 6: thirty some years into this case. We have moved through
Speaker 6: five or six different investigators, ending up with Lonnie to
Speaker 6: Beast at this point. And he has built this relationship
Speaker 6: with Claire simply because she didn't trust any of the
Speaker 6: people who came before him. The people who came before
Speaker 6: him were just fine, They were doing good work, they
Speaker 6: were very passionate. Claire didn't connect with them, but she
Speaker 6: did connect with to Beast.
Speaker 7: They get Sharon Mack. They track her down in Alaska,
Speaker 7: and that's ron Holtz's daughter if she never even met
Speaker 7: her father, but they get her DNA. You talk about
Speaker 7: the determination perseverance of Lonnie to Beast, and finally other
Speaker 7: people take up the mantle, take up the I guess
Speaker 7: the cause because you talk about another an agent, a
Speaker 7: DCI agent named Tina Trimble, who happens to know the
Speaker 7: kind of work that and the work that Lonnie the
Speaker 7: Beast has been doing on this case. Anyway, we fast
Speaker 7: forward to August twenty six, twenty thirteen, to an idea
Speaker 7: that Lonnie to Beast had to search where the children
Speaker 7: had said they heard that Ronnie Holtz's body was buried.
Speaker 6: Well, and the children really had no information like that.
Speaker 6: They were just they were just presuming. They were seeing
Speaker 6: that this place might be where Alice had disposed of
Speaker 6: her third husband's body. Without without spoiling this for your
Speaker 6: readers or for your listeners.
Speaker 5: Rather, this cold case warms up.
Speaker 6: When a new director of this particular state agency takes
Speaker 6: takes the office and puts more emphasis on it than
Speaker 6: the than the administrators before him, and that releases the
Speaker 6: the investigators, like Lonnie to Beast and Tina Tremble too
Speaker 6: to take a closer look and and to spend as
Speaker 6: much money as they needed to to to solve this case.
Speaker 6: And that that really is a break. And all they
Speaker 6: have to go on are these vague planting memories of
Speaker 6: these kids who'd heard this story maybe thirty thirty five
Speaker 6: years before, without much detail anyway, And you know what
Speaker 6: happens to memories over that period of time is just vague,
Speaker 6: and so people are making not only the kids, but
Speaker 6: the police are kind of making presumptions, and again, being
Speaker 6: obsessed with this part of the story, they.
Speaker 5: Begin to look, and they begin.
Speaker 6: Look in places that maybe they had never imagined looking before.
Speaker 6: And in preparation for that again, you bring up the
Speaker 6: daughter that had never met her father, who has never
Speaker 6: turned up in any way since nineteen seventy three. No
Speaker 6: social security records, no jobs, no, he doesn't exist in
Speaker 6: the traditional ways. So they're presuming the worst, and they
Speaker 6: get DNA from his daughter should they find anything, because
Speaker 6: now we have DNA, This investigation has gone on so
Speaker 6: long that we've gone from a fairly spare kind of
Speaker 6: forensics situation to something where we now have the powerful
Speaker 6: computers DNA and a variety of other forensic sciences that
Speaker 6: we can employ. And they do that. They bring the
Speaker 6: whole force of that science and of sophisticated kind of
Speaker 6: investigation to this case. And again I don't want to
Speaker 6: spoil it for your listeners, so I suffice it to
Speaker 6: say that we now have a much bigger force and
Speaker 6: a much more trained force out looking to break this case.
Speaker 7: It's very exciting to where they finally do this search
Speaker 7: in this hole, this this hole that they know that
Speaker 7: people have stuck animals for years and and like you say,
Speaker 7: they have to bring all of these experts into this,
Speaker 7: they have to really brainstorm to be able to find
Speaker 7: out who might be able to do this uh and
Speaker 7: this dangerous complex. And of course you're you're digging up
Speaker 7: a crime scene, and you take us right, the listener,
Speaker 7: the reader right, you take the reader right into that hole,
Speaker 7: right into that where Lonnie is again instrumental in this.
Speaker 7: So I won't give this away. I won't We don't
Speaker 7: have the time to do this, but I won't give
Speaker 7: this away. But needless to say that with all these
Speaker 7: bad breaks and lack of break in this case for
Speaker 7: all of these years, that when finally they get to
Speaker 7: speak with Alice and they have a strategy to apply pressure.
Speaker 7: What you've been talking about all along is this John
Speaker 7: Wayne character Gerald. He really does try to come to
Speaker 7: his wife's rescue, and that is his undoing, isn't it.
Speaker 6: It's his undoing. Again, we have a very complex case
Speaker 6: where two sets of murders might have happened by two
Speaker 6: separate people whose paths ultimately cross. So the possibility that
Speaker 6: he did something and that she did something is a
Speaker 6: tangled web, and that ultimately plays a role in all
Speaker 6: of this. Again, Ian spoilers, but the I think it
Speaker 6: shows something that my old football coach used to say
Speaker 6: that the harder you work, the luckier you get. And
Speaker 6: what we see here is a stroke of luck that
Speaker 6: caps forty years of very hard work by five or
Speaker 6: six investigators. And that's that's who we hope. Think about
Speaker 6: it this way. A loved one is dead, It murdered.
Speaker 6: The killer was smart enough to hide the corpse a
Speaker 6: far distance from their home, in a dark, secret place
Speaker 6: where it probably will never be Your loved ones. Friends
Speaker 6: and family. You wonder what happened, and you want to believe,
Speaker 6: want to hope against all hope that they just went
Speaker 6: off and started a new life, but without a body,
Speaker 6: without a gun, without any shred of evidence, These detectives
Speaker 6: have to move on to other cases, things that they
Speaker 6: could solve today. This is justice now, So they push
Speaker 6: your loved one's file to the to the back corner
Speaker 6: of the desk. Your loved one just became a cold case. Now,
Speaker 6: all of us wants to feel that our existence mattered.
Speaker 6: We want to feel that we're going to be missed
Speaker 6: when we're gone, and we all hope there will be
Speaker 6: somebody who won't forget, somebody who needs to write that
Speaker 6: missing ending to our story. We want justice to be done.
Speaker 6: We don't want our lives to be forgotten. So if
Speaker 6: you're lucky, there will be the passionate, even obsessed detectives
Speaker 6: who will pursue this investigation when long after others would
Speaker 6: have been as their sheriffs, their spouses, their colleagues are
Speaker 6: all telling them to drop it. So we want somebody
Speaker 6: like that who believes in justice, even if it's delayed,
Speaker 6: And really we want someone who believes in us. So
Speaker 6: I think that's what we see in this story.
Speaker 7: I mentioned before that you don't really get any good
Speaker 7: stories here. Happy stories, but in this there are some
Speaker 7: vestige of that moment of elation I won't say elation,
Speaker 7: but at least satisfaction for something that is frustrated and
Speaker 7: consume these people's lives for decades. I want to thank
Speaker 7: you very much for coming on and talking about Alice
Speaker 7: and Gerald, a homicidal love Story. For those people that
Speaker 7: might want to take a look at this. I know
Speaker 7: this is a book published by Prometheus Publishing, and do
Speaker 7: you have a website or Facebook page that they might
Speaker 7: take a look at. Wrong.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, I'm on Facebook, We're on francel. My website is www.
Speaker 6: Ronfrancell dot com and that's fre n s c E
Speaker 6: l L. And the book is available anywhere you buy books,
Speaker 6: from online to real life bookstores, so it should be
Speaker 6: available anywhere you look.
Speaker 7: I want to thank you very much for coming on
Speaker 7: and talking about Alison Gerald the Homicidal Love Story. It
Speaker 7: is truly a remarkable book, and thank you very much
Speaker 7: for this interview. Ron. You have a great evening. Hope
Speaker 7: to talk to you again real soon.
Speaker 5: Thank you, indeed, Dan, thank you. Good night,