Speaker 1: Hello, It is Ryan and I was on a flight
Speaker 1: the other day playing one of my favorite social spin
Speaker 1: slot games on chumbacasino dot com. I looked over at
Speaker 1: the person sitting next to me, and you know what
Speaker 1: they were doing. They were also playing Chumpa Casino. Coincidence,
Speaker 1: I think not everybody's loving having fun with it. Chumpa
Speaker 1: Casino's home to hundreds at casino style games. You can
Speaker 1: play for free anytime anywhere, even at thirty thousand feet.
Speaker 1: So sign up now at Chumbuckcasino dot com to claim
Speaker 1: you're free. Welcome bonus. That's Chumbuck Casino dot com and
Speaker 1: live the Chumba Lane.
Speaker 2: Nopevers necessary dripo where every I lost the terms conditions
Speaker 2: eighteen plus.
Speaker 3: Lucky Land Casino.
Speaker 1: Asking people what's the weirdest place you've gotten lucky? Lucky
Speaker 1: in line at the Delhi I guess ah, in my
Speaker 1: dentist's office more than once. Actually do I have to say?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 2: You do?
Speaker 4: In the car before my kid's pta meeting.
Speaker 2: Really yes, excuse me, what's the weirdest place you've gotten lucky?
Speaker 2: I never win and tell well.
Speaker 3: There you have it.
Speaker 1: You could get lucky anywhere playing at Lucky Landslots dot
Speaker 1: Com play for free right now? Are you feeling lucky?
Speaker 2: No, We're just necessary Foid Wren My long eighteen plus
Speaker 2: terms and conditions plus you want.
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 Gaesy, Bundy, Dahmer, The Night Stalker, DTK.
Speaker 3: Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking
Speaker 3: and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with
Speaker 3: your host journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Speaker 5: Good evening. In Murder in a Sundown Town, author Alexandra
Speaker 5: Kitty looks at the shocking nineteen sixty eight homicide of
Speaker 5: Carol Jenkins, a sweet and resilient twenty one year old
Speaker 5: woman stabbed in the heart on her first day on
Speaker 5: the job selling encyclopedias in Martinsville. In what seemed to
Speaker 5: be an easily solved homicide turned into a four decade
Speaker 5: cold case and became a tragic story about racism, sexism, gossip,
Speaker 5: and walls of silence. It is a case of injustice
Speaker 5: and persistence that still leaves as many questions as answers.
Speaker 5: In an age of both true crime fascination, and modern
Speaker 5: social politics holding equal attention. This book looks at an
Speaker 5: old case in a contemporary light, from the clues to
Speaker 5: its racial and gender politics, investigation, resolution, and cultural impact.
Speaker 5: The book takes an in depth look at a young
Speaker 5: woman's frightening last hours and why Carol's case is as
Speaker 5: relevant today as it was in the sixties. The book
Speaker 5: that we're featuring this evening is Murder in a Sundown
Speaker 5: Town with my special guest, journalist and author Alexandra Kitty.
Speaker 5: Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for
Speaker 5: this interview. Alexandra Kitty, thank.
Speaker 4: You so much for having me Dan, it's great.
Speaker 5: To be Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 5: First off, you talk about in the introduction about your
Speaker 5: previous books that you've written and that this book is
Speaker 5: a significant departure for you. You usually write about journalism.
Speaker 5: But tell us about what happened in May twenty twenty
Speaker 5: two this opportunity that came to you.
Speaker 4: Well, I was looking for a teaching job at college
Speaker 4: or a university, because that's what that's my other passion
Speaker 4: is not just writing books, but teaching and researching. And
Speaker 4: I just came across this looking for a researcher for
Speaker 4: a true crime documentary program. Now, I grew up watching
Speaker 4: true crime, I read true crime books, and I thought, well, okay,
Speaker 4: I put my resume and they're not going to call
Speaker 4: me back for an interview, but I'm going to try.
Speaker 4: They called me back, they said sure, And I didn't
Speaker 4: have a true crime background. I did write a couple
Speaker 4: of true crime stories as a journalist, two or three,
Speaker 4: and I said, sure, I'd love to be a researcher.
Speaker 4: It's not on camera, and I love reading. I love researching.
Speaker 4: So I said okay. They said ten weeks, and I said, okay,
Speaker 4: I'll do ten weeks, and then they kept expanding my contract.
Speaker 4: So I went through the whole season of seven months,
Speaker 4: and I did eight stories that made it to air.
Speaker 4: And I really found this fascinating because when you watch
Speaker 4: it as a viewer, you don't see the tells, you
Speaker 4: don't see the fit, the process, how you go because
Speaker 4: it's a lot of work. You're putting out basically a
Speaker 4: huge book a week on television, although so little goes
Speaker 4: into it that you see. There's so much of the
Speaker 4: facts you have to dig out when they do re enactments,
Speaker 4: what the victim wore on the same the night they
Speaker 4: were killed. That's what the actor who's playing this person
Speaker 4: is going to weark the details you have to dig
Speaker 4: up as a researcher in worms, you have tons of
Speaker 4: things you have to find. They might be subtleties on
Speaker 4: the screen. And I said, this is absolutely a most
Speaker 4: This was one of the best jobs I ever had,
Speaker 4: and I still say it. It was such a learning
Speaker 4: experience for me and how true crime of television is
Speaker 4: put together and people don't give it enough credit. This
Speaker 4: is grueling one. You're constantly looking for information anywhere you
Speaker 4: can find it, from an inmate search online to what
Speaker 4: do's the inside of the house that was the victims
Speaker 4: killed look like? Everything? Obituaries, news articles, court transcripts, police files, interviews.
Speaker 4: You're putting so much into a single episode. I thought
Speaker 4: this is something that I want to explore more, but
Speaker 4: as an author, so once I did that, this is
Speaker 4: probably there's one of the most eye opening experiences of
Speaker 4: my life and one of the most best jobs I
Speaker 4: ever had, because I learned so much on this job
Speaker 4: that I kind of took on a lark.
Speaker 5: Now you talk about this book, It's about the short
Speaker 5: life and tragic death of Carol Jenkins tell us what
Speaker 5: it includes, and you talk about resolution and a term
Speaker 5: you call the echoes.
Speaker 4: It's an interesting and heartbreaking case. A young twenty one
Speaker 4: year old African American woman named Cheryl Marie Jenkins, and
Speaker 4: who was I would describe as in every woman. She
Speaker 4: was close to her family, she had a job, she
Speaker 4: was well lived in her community, she had a lot
Speaker 4: of friends, and she was resilient and she was as
Speaker 4: low risk of a victim as you could be. And
Speaker 4: yet she was killed in right in the middle of
Speaker 4: a street in a small town where you know, everybody
Speaker 4: knows everybody, and everybody's there. And yet what should have
Speaker 4: been an open and shutcase was left a cold case
Speaker 4: for decades, and nobody would forget about Carol. I mean,
Speaker 4: the echoes were here. What happened, the tragedy and the
Speaker 4: injustice that happened to kill this case would be you know,
Speaker 4: people would scream, it would be reopened every few years,
Speaker 4: nothing would come out of it. It would be called again,
Speaker 4: people would demand justice, it would get reopened. And so
Speaker 4: this was a dance for decades and it didn't seem
Speaker 4: like this would ever be a closed case. And you know,
Speaker 4: miraculously there was more of a resolution than what would
Speaker 4: have been because this was just one of those tragedies
Speaker 4: for people demanded answers and they weren't getting any, but
Speaker 4: people weren't going away, and people kept demanding and demanding.
Speaker 4: I mean, even you know, national Press more than once
Speaker 4: took up the mantle. So well, why don't we have
Speaker 4: a suspect in custody? I mean, this case was shocking
Speaker 4: in so many different ways. You know, here's a young
Speaker 4: woman walking down the street doing her job and literally
Speaker 4: died of a broken heart because that's how the killer
Speaker 4: got to them.
Speaker 5: Let's get to this tragic story. You take us to Rushville, Indiana.
Speaker 5: You say population sixty two hundred and the proportion of
Speaker 5: black people is one point five eight percent. Take us
Speaker 5: back to nineteen sixty eight and Carol Jenkins a little
Speaker 5: bit about her background and how she found herself working
Speaker 5: for PF. Callier and Son on the streets trying to
Speaker 5: sell encyclopedias.
Speaker 4: So Carol was very, very attractive, a twenty one year
Speaker 4: old factory worker from Philcal Factors, and she was the eldest.
Speaker 4: Her mother had remarried and her half siblings all adored her.
Speaker 4: Her stepfather, a daughter or mother a daughter. She had many,
Speaker 4: many friends, but she found herself out of work like
Speaker 4: many people during a strike at Felco. So she didn't
Speaker 4: have you know, she needed to pay her bills just
Speaker 4: like everybody else. So her friend Paula Bradley, well, why
Speaker 4: don't we sell encyclopedias door to door? That was, you know,
Speaker 4: a job they could do. So the two of them
Speaker 4: signed up to do sell encyclopedias, which was something that
Speaker 4: was not in Carol's background. She wasn't a saleswoman. She
Speaker 4: was a factory worker, but that didn't need deter her.
Speaker 4: So she went with her friend and two other supervisors
Speaker 4: for them. The supervisors were white males, her friend Paula
Speaker 4: was black. She was black, and then they decided to
Speaker 4: so she was doing her training and then this was
Speaker 4: her first night on the job, so they were running late.
Speaker 4: They were supposed to go to another town a little
Speaker 4: further away where they were doing economically better than Martinsville,
Speaker 4: but since they were running out of time and there
Speaker 4: was a bad weather, they decided they would go to Martinsville,
Speaker 4: which was closer. They weren't as well healed choice number one,
Speaker 4: but this was good enough, so that's where they went
Speaker 4: that night. They went to Martinsville and they score them
Speaker 4: split up, so each sort of took a quadrant and
Speaker 4: they went door to door selling encyclopedias, and paul went
Speaker 4: one way and Carol went another way. Paula was rrass.
Speaker 4: Something happened to Carol and she ran for help and
Speaker 4: things just went squirl downhill from there.
Speaker 5: Let's go back because Carol talks to her stepfather earlier
Speaker 5: in the evening. There is when they split up and
Speaker 5: they go into the neighborhoods, it's not yet dark. You
Speaker 5: say that sundown was seven point fifty one. And before
Speaker 5: we go on, let's talk about just briefly, what the
Speaker 5: term for people that don't know what a sundown town is.
Speaker 4: A sund downtown is something that's unspoken but very well known.
Speaker 4: It is small towns which it's very dangerous for African
Speaker 4: Americans to go after sundown because there's racist elements. There's
Speaker 4: racist actors who have no qualms about inflicting harm or
Speaker 4: even killing somebody if there's somebody who's black that comes
Speaker 4: after the sun goes down. So that's where the term
Speaker 4: sundown town comes from.
Speaker 5: Now you say that she was proceeding in selling her encsychopedias,
Speaker 5: going door to door, and you mentioned that Martinsville, unlike Rushville,
Speaker 5: has a black percentage population of almost zero. Right, she
Speaker 5: was going door to door. And where we find the
Speaker 5: first record of anything happening in contact with police and
Speaker 5: Carol Jenkins was when she came to the home of
Speaker 5: the Neils, and that would be Don Neil and Norman Neil.
Speaker 5: And you say that don Neil was nineteen year old,
Speaker 5: nineteen year old man and with his wife Norma. What
Speaker 5: does Carol say to them in this first encounter with.
Speaker 4: Them, Well, she knocked on the door and she said
Speaker 4: there were a couple of people in a car haussling
Speaker 4: with her. So the Neils went to help. Now I'm
Speaker 4: going to just back chuck a little. She was already
Speaker 4: worried about going to Martinsville because her stepfather warned her
Speaker 4: that this was not a good time to be Her
Speaker 4: stepfather was very well high school basketball player who had
Speaker 4: problems in Martinsville. So she was already kind of on
Speaker 4: ed when she went to Martin's and then there were
Speaker 4: some a couple of young men in a car who
Speaker 4: were hassling her, and she felt threatened enough that she
Speaker 4: went to the Nails, knocked on their door and was
Speaker 4: looking for help. Basically that there were these people in
Speaker 4: a car and a dark car that were hastling her
Speaker 4: and she was looking for salvation. So the Nails took
Speaker 4: her in so they went to look. They called the
Speaker 4: police and they invited her to stay. They were also
Speaker 4: very worried about her well being that night.
Speaker 5: What did police have to say?
Speaker 3: You say that.
Speaker 5: There was a police officer that responded, what did he
Speaker 5: say to Carol and to the nails, Well.
Speaker 4: He said he investigated, he looked around. There was nothing
Speaker 4: to see here. It was the bottom line, and they
Speaker 4: took a patrol car. They looked around and didn't see anything,
Speaker 4: or said they didn't see anything, so they kind of
Speaker 4: brushed it off. They weren't that serious about Carol's inserts
Speaker 4: and the Nails were enough where they offered her to
Speaker 4: stay for supper, and she turned them down because she
Speaker 4: said she didn't want to be a bother. So she
Speaker 4: was a very polite young woman who said, who turned
Speaker 4: down this because usually when you're at that age, you
Speaker 4: don't want to be a bother to strangers who already
Speaker 4: went over and beyond. They called the police they went
Speaker 4: out looking and they made overtures. So they were very
Speaker 4: very nice young couple, and they tried to help her,
Speaker 4: and she felt like she was, you know, probably overstaying
Speaker 4: her welcome and that she should go and probably that
Speaker 4: was nothing. So she kind of grabbed their bearings and said, no,
Speaker 4: it's okay, I'll go in them.
Speaker 5: They had also drove her around trying to look for
Speaker 5: the rest of her group, or more importantly, one of
Speaker 5: her supervisors, didn't they.
Speaker 4: Yes, and they didn't find either, So don drove her around.
Speaker 4: They couldn't find anyone from her original group. They didn't
Speaker 4: see anybody that fit the description, and instead of getting
Speaker 4: police to kind of escort her, which they didn't do,
Speaker 4: she was left on her own.
Speaker 5: After that, there was a second to explain to our audience,
Speaker 5: there was a second time that an officer arrived and
Speaker 5: offered her a ride to meet her friends.
Speaker 4: And she turned it down.
Speaker 3: He turned it down. Yes, So she.
Speaker 5: Was about fifteen blocks away from the Neil residence and
Speaker 5: it's you right, maybe within thirty minutes there's a torrential
Speaker 5: downpour of rain. Tell us what the Neils, if I believe,
Speaker 5: if I'm correct, had given her to help her in
Speaker 5: this rain.
Speaker 4: Well, it wasn't the Nils. It was another woman who
Speaker 4: was in the neighborhood who was worried about Carol because
Speaker 4: it was raining, who gave her a scarf. So and
Speaker 4: she told the media, well, I gave her a scarf,
Speaker 4: So Carol did have something to kind of protect her
Speaker 4: hair by means of a scarf. So this is all
Speaker 4: that Carol had. There was rain coming down. I mean,
Speaker 4: this was probably, you know, one of the worst first
Speaker 4: days on the job. You're out new job, you're trying
Speaker 4: to go out, it's rating, you're already scared because somebody
Speaker 4: has made threats to you, and somebody saw her being
Speaker 4: very pleasant. Everybody who the police interviewed, who she went
Speaker 4: door to door said she was unbelievably outgoing, unbelievably pleasant.
Speaker 4: So she was keeping a game face, and she got
Speaker 4: a scarf. And that scarf would prove to be a
Speaker 4: central element of the case, but at the time, it
Speaker 4: was just something to help Carol not get totally soaking wet.
Speaker 5: On her way. On her walk, there's a service station
Speaker 5: owned by Keith Ford and just when she gets past that,
Speaker 5: witnesses hear a scream tell us about this.
Speaker 4: Well, they could account for all of her movements. They
Speaker 4: knew where she was going pretty much by interviewing everybody.
Speaker 4: And then at one point there's a scream and somebody
Speaker 4: had his window open even though it was raining, and
Speaker 4: he heard the screen and he looked out the window
Speaker 4: and he saw this girl staggering, and he ran out.
Speaker 4: He didn't have a telephone, but he went to a
Speaker 4: restaurant across the street to call police because this young woman.
Speaker 4: All of a sudden, there was a bleeding young woman
Speaker 4: in the middle of the sidewalk and that was Carol.
Speaker 4: So from being worried then and in the middle of
Speaker 4: the rain, yes, which you think, you know that it
Speaker 4: would be safe even there, who'd want to go out,
Speaker 4: But you know, she was obviously targeted. And they took
Speaker 4: advantage the torrential rain where there'd be less likely people
Speaker 4: to see, be able to see, or even be out,
Speaker 4: and they took that advantage and they killed her.
Speaker 5: Now there's witnesses, and so you say, by the time
Speaker 5: the paramedics arrived, her injuries are so severe she succumbs
Speaker 5: to her injuries.
Speaker 4: Her literally her heart was ripped. This is how severe
Speaker 4: the injury was. I mean she didn't have a prayer.
Speaker 4: This is somebody who just went with her with such overkill,
Speaker 4: such violence. By the time the paramedics came there, there
Speaker 4: was no helping. This was a very quick and brutal homicide.
Speaker 4: Somebody rabbed her and just thrust an instrument into her chest,
Speaker 4: ripped her heart, and she had an injury on her chin,
Speaker 4: and she had her chest injuries on her chest, so
Speaker 4: this was no defensive wounds. She didn't have time to
Speaker 4: fight back or do anything. She was completely completely incapacitated,
Speaker 4: and as I said before, she was worried and nervous
Speaker 4: that her and Paula wanted to buy some sort of
Speaker 4: self defense weapon that they never got a chance to
Speaker 4: because they didn't have time. If that would have helped
Speaker 4: her or not, it's timely doubtful because this everything happened
Speaker 4: so quickly.
Speaker 5: You're right that initially when police arrived, they realized that
Speaker 5: she has not been molested or robbed, and they surmised
Speaker 5: that her attacker laid in wait, they thought behind a
Speaker 5: couple of big evergreen bushes. But meanwhile, you tell us
Speaker 5: you write about how the police respond initially in terms
Speaker 5: of gathering evidence, and that it would be up to
Speaker 5: the Indiana State Police to begin the investigation, and much
Speaker 5: of the forensic evidence would no longer be available as
Speaker 5: it was heavily raining.
Speaker 4: It was heavily raining, and bystanders were picking up evidence.
Speaker 4: They found her notebook, They found a whole bunch of
Speaker 4: things and without gloves. You have to realize they all
Speaker 4: the evidence was kept compromise, not just because of the rain,
Speaker 4: because the police didn't courting off anything. People were coming
Speaker 4: up to the police. Here's her notebook, here's her briefcase,
Speaker 4: here's her fold I mean, when you think about this,
Speaker 4: even the killer could have come up and given it
Speaker 4: and then accounted for the frame of Prince. We don't know.
Speaker 4: This is how badly the scene was contaminating. So you
Speaker 4: have the rain working against you. There's no time nobody's
Speaker 4: trying to cover anything. You have people walking off the
Speaker 4: street and giving the things, and you have to take
Speaker 4: it for granted that that was something that Carol had
Speaker 4: or was it the killer. We don't know. Nothing was
Speaker 4: left where it was supposed to be. So the police
Speaker 4: had absolutely and this was a town they didn't have homicides.
Speaker 4: I have to add, they didn't have a big experience
Speaker 4: dealing with murder. So you have people are police who
Speaker 4: don't have the experience dealing with murder. You have the
Speaker 4: weather working against you, you have bystanders contaminating this crime scene.
Speaker 4: So right off the bats, we're now down to zero
Speaker 4: in this case. That should have been at least somehow preserved,
Speaker 4: but nobody preserved anything. And that's DNA that might have
Speaker 4: been there could have been lost and was lost. Everything
Speaker 4: was lost. This is how horrible a crimecy management was
Speaker 4: at the time.
Speaker 5: But police are hopeful because this Dawn Neil had the
Speaker 5: presence of mind to take down the license plate number.
Speaker 5: What happens with this license plate number.
Speaker 4: Well, she got something off on the my license plate number,
Speaker 4: so it wasn't easy fined. And so they did eventually
Speaker 4: find the car and a car without a similar license plate,
Speaker 4: and they said this guy didn't have anything to do
Speaker 4: with the crime. So what was a potentially promising lead
Speaker 4: did not end up being a laite. So this was
Speaker 4: one of those things where they didn't have as much
Speaker 4: as they should have had.
Speaker 5: You write about September eighteenth, nineteen sixty eight, a funeral
Speaker 5: service was held for Carol in Rushville and mourners and
Speaker 5: the curious and the disbelieving came all filing past the casket.
Speaker 5: But at that time, soon after police had no suspects
Speaker 5: tell us about the treatment from the Neils.
Speaker 4: Surprisingly, the Nils Doniel has passed on, but through the
Speaker 4: decades they maintained what they've maintained. It always been consistent.
Speaker 4: But they've also also been abused. They had they weren't
Speaker 4: hiding for a bit because of the threats that because
Speaker 4: they helped care. So here are two witnesses, the best
Speaker 4: witnesses the police have, who are being threatened and abused
Speaker 4: and told to keep wuyet. So there's now something that
Speaker 4: pops out. Your witnesses who are more than willing to help.
Speaker 4: They were trying to help her on the night she
Speaker 4: was killed. They were more than helpful to the police.
Speaker 4: And yet now all of a sudden they are being
Speaker 4: silenced because they're being threatened with their their lives are
Speaker 4: being threatened. This was this was a very serious turn
Speaker 4: of events that they didn't get protection. So this was
Speaker 4: something else. This was another avenue, you know, that could
Speaker 4: have been completely closed. They did their best, but they
Speaker 4: were threatened, and you don't expect witnesses to be threatened
Speaker 4: like this in the town, so you know, people told
Speaker 4: them to keep quiet.
Speaker 5: How did police respond in terms of the media, what
Speaker 5: did they order and why?
Speaker 4: Well, that was also sort of messy because the coroner
Speaker 4: gave an impromptu press conference telling people more than he
Speaker 4: should have, so there wasn't as much in terms of holdback,
Speaker 4: so they told him to be quiet. They were not.
Speaker 4: The police were very happy with outside media. So you're
Speaker 4: dealing with local media and you know the people and
Speaker 4: you can present information because those are people you know.
Speaker 4: But then you had people from larger newspapers coming in
Speaker 4: asking hard questions that the police didn't couldn't handle, and
Speaker 4: they didn't like. So there was also a media shut
Speaker 4: out through this case because a lot of the big
Speaker 4: pieces of information that came out of this came from
Speaker 4: the big city daily, so they were actually quite helpful
Speaker 4: in finding information. It didn't seem to go anywhere. So
Speaker 4: there were people who rightfully outraged by this case, such
Speaker 4: as people in the press outside of Martinsville who they
Speaker 4: kept getting shoot away the LOLd and stymy so eventually
Speaker 4: and they kind of fell silent. So this was very
Speaker 4: much one another out of you that you know, a
Speaker 4: lot of times you take things to the press. Somebody
Speaker 4: knows something and they come forward. But here big city
Speaker 4: papers tried to help and they were turned away.
Speaker 5: You talk about, of course, nineteen sixty eight and the
Speaker 5: lack of forensic evidence technology and techniques, but there is
Speaker 5: the nineteen sixty five Mercury comet and the idea that
Speaker 5: police would utilize polygraph testing. So tell us about the
Speaker 5: suspects that were reported harassing Carol Jenkins that night in
Speaker 5: the sixty five Mercury comment. How did police deal with
Speaker 5: those suspects.
Speaker 4: Well, everybody got a pretty much polygraph. And what was interesting,
Speaker 4: polygraphs cannot actually prove guilt or innocence, and yet the
Speaker 4: police were treating it as if this was well, okay,
Speaker 4: he passed the polygraph. So we don't know if the
Speaker 4: person was prepped for the polygraph, if they knew the
Speaker 4: questions ahead of time. Sometimes people who are psychopaths are
Speaker 4: very good at passing them because they don't have anxiety overlying,
Speaker 4: so they would say, okay, we give so and so
Speaker 4: a polygraph. He's clear, he's clear. We talked to them.
Speaker 4: They were clear. They were throwing the polygraph. They weren't
Speaker 4: saying Okay, we established an alibi, we talked to it.
Speaker 4: It was a very uncomfortable way of clearing people was okay,
Speaker 4: we have the polygraph and that's key passed, so we
Speaker 4: don't have to go back. And this would be a
Speaker 4: sticking point later on because when people were you know,
Speaker 4: and they would reopen the cases that that polygraph it
Speaker 4: wasn't what they were using to try to find more
Speaker 4: information from these people. So a lot of things were
Speaker 4: fought lost even through just over reliance on a polygraph.
Speaker 5: That Jesus as an opportunity to stop for these messages.
Speaker 1: Hello, it is Ryan and we could all use an
Speaker 1: extra bright spot in our day, couldn't we just to
Speaker 1: make up for things like sitting in traffic, doing the dishes, steps,
Speaker 1: you know, all the mundane stuff. That is why I'm
Speaker 1: such a big fan of Chumba Casino. Chumpback Casino has
Speaker 1: all your favorite social casino style games you can play
Speaker 1: for free anytime anywhere with daily bonuses. That's your brighten
Speaker 1: your day alone, actually a lot, so sign up now
Speaker 1: at Chumbuck casino dot com. That's Chumbuck Casino dot com.
Speaker 2: Nop were necessary daily void where everybody lost in terms
Speaker 2: of conditions eighteen plus.
Speaker 5: Now, also the reporting and also from the gathers from
Speaker 5: your writing from the police chief that the way this
Speaker 5: murder was being depicted was not as a racially motivated
Speaker 5: murder at all. How did they try to depict this murder.
Speaker 4: That's very interesting one I'm finding. But they always took
Speaker 4: that off the table. This was not a racist base murder.
Speaker 4: This was not a racist based murder. We're not a
Speaker 4: sundown town. Although even in their own media newspaper they
Speaker 4: were talking about Talah asking a group of African American
Speaker 4: book salespeople who were coming in town, well it's sundown,
Speaker 4: you shouldn't come. So obviously there was a lot there.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 4: But what they did then, well, it was probably what
Speaker 4: they was, and I'm using a quote here as sexteen.
Speaker 4: This was probably a sex based murder because Carol was beautiful,
Speaker 4: she was attractive, so obviously it had to be a
Speaker 4: gender based thomicide, as if that was somehow a less offense.
Speaker 4: So it was. They had a theory that was because
Speaker 4: Carol was pretty. Somebody I talked to her because she
Speaker 4: was pretty. Nobody became almost an affront when you were saying, well,
Speaker 4: maybe it was because she was black. Oh no, no, no,
Speaker 4: it was because she was speen and she was beautiful.
Speaker 4: So that's what it had to be. That was the
Speaker 4: narrative that you heard from decades from people who were
Speaker 4: in denial about that it could possibly be a eight
Speaker 4: base based on racism.
Speaker 5: For example, the investigation as well, you write about the
Speaker 5: two suspects in the sixty five comment opposed to Carol
Speaker 5: Jenkins' claims when she called police at the NILS. What
Speaker 5: did they say in response to those claims of Carol Jenkins.
Speaker 4: Well, they denied that they killed her. Obviously, they did
Speaker 4: say that they might have called or whistled, so it
Speaker 4: was well, yeah, we gave her undue attention, but it
Speaker 4: was sort of the well aren't you attractive kind of
Speaker 4: attention and a lot of you know, people were talking
Speaker 4: about gossiping and the town and then sometimes you don't
Speaker 4: you know, people said well I might have had something
Speaker 4: to do with it, or they said something, you know,
Speaker 4: they were taking credit for the crime. The police would come,
Speaker 4: they would do their investigation, and it was always inconclusive
Speaker 4: one way or another. So the suspects had good reason
Speaker 4: to be suspects. It just accept you didn't have any
Speaker 4: forensic evidence and establishing time. Whines at the beginning was
Speaker 4: not you know, it didn't seem to be a priority
Speaker 4: because I think the police decided write down and there
Speaker 4: that it was. They were going to say it was
Speaker 4: sexually a base assault that didn't go all the way
Speaker 4: and they just killed it. So there was there's a
Speaker 4: lot of markiness in this case because things were not
Speaker 4: That's why the state police were eventually brought in, because
Speaker 4: it was just any possible potential lead somehow got muddied
Speaker 4: within the investigation itself. As I go through my book,
Speaker 4: what should have been and what was two totally different things.
Speaker 5: How does James R. Smith come to the attention of
Speaker 5: police and why?
Speaker 4: Well, basically you have people who such as Sam, who
Speaker 4: were taking claim You would get drunk or they would
Speaker 4: say something and then people would tell the police. The
Speaker 4: police would come and they would deny it. And we're
Speaker 4: talking about a bunch of suspects. As I said, they
Speaker 4: had every reason to be suspects. They said things to
Speaker 4: other people. There were people in town who went to
Speaker 4: police thing so and so said this. There was one
Speaker 4: woman who says she knew things. They went to her
Speaker 4: and then she was just bragging. So this time, even
Speaker 4: the police, she finally said to people, please stop gossip,
Speaker 4: please stop telling stories, because this, you know, this is
Speaker 4: already a mess. So what we know about the case
Speaker 4: a lot of times, and even with our suspects such
Speaker 4: as Smith, it basically was gossip from people, people talking,
Speaker 4: people bribing, and it really was going in circles. This
Speaker 4: is to me what struck me was how much information
Speaker 4: came from just curious gossip. I mean, when I did
Speaker 4: true crime television, I noticed that there would be always
Speaker 4: a degree of people coming in with gossip. But I
Speaker 4: don't think I've ever seen any case where the amount
Speaker 4: of information that comes from gossip came the way from
Speaker 4: the Carol Jenkins case. I mean, it was almost you know,
Speaker 4: for one homicide to have that many people tell stories
Speaker 4: one way or another. It may or may not have
Speaker 4: been true or had elements of truth, but this was
Speaker 4: to me quite striking.
Speaker 5: Let's talk about another suspect, Keith Ford, and why he's
Speaker 5: a suspect. And also you mentioned about hold back evidence,
Speaker 5: which is a technique police will do to ferret out
Speaker 5: the truth later. With that hold back evidence, as if
Speaker 5: that suspect knows that evidence obviously they can conclude they
Speaker 5: are the perpetrator, tell us about the screwdriver and hold back,
Speaker 5: and Keith Ford as a suspect.
Speaker 4: What was supposed to be a holdback was the murder weapon,
Speaker 4: and she was corner pretty much figured out it had
Speaker 4: to be something like a screwdriver because it wasn't a nuts,
Speaker 4: and this was considered a holdback, except people were gossiping
Speaker 4: abound town and that within i think within a few months,
Speaker 4: was already well known, so that police's hold back, which
Speaker 4: would have been the murder weapon normally came out. So
Speaker 4: that ended up not being very helpful because you had,
Speaker 4: you know, she was near mechanics. She died near you know,
Speaker 4: an not a mechanic shop, so they figured, okay, the
Speaker 4: suspect works with tools and it had to might have
Speaker 4: been him. So that was one another thing that was
Speaker 4: because the corner and other people kind of talked about
Speaker 4: the case when they shouldn't have. That did not turn
Speaker 4: out to be a holdback. The only thing that was
Speaker 4: a partial holdback was the scarf she was wearing, although
Speaker 4: in the media they did mention it was a single
Speaker 4: reference about her getting a scarf. The only thing was
Speaker 4: that the color of the scarf was never mentioned anywhere.
Speaker 4: That was actually the only true holdback we had in
Speaker 4: this entire case, because everything kind of came out because
Speaker 4: people were constant somebody would find out something, they would
Speaker 4: tell everybody else in town. No longer became a holdback.
Speaker 4: So a screwdriver should have been the hole back didn't
Speaker 4: end up being a holdback. So you know, that became
Speaker 4: problematic too, because every time, as I said, the police
Speaker 4: said to people stop gossiping, but once things came out,
Speaker 4: they became muddy. Then you don't know if that's just
Speaker 4: because it was accidentally muddied or was that by design.
Speaker 4: Where if people know everything, then how do you investigate?
Speaker 5: You write about the sensational conjecture, but you also talk
Speaker 5: about that Joseph W. Summer, the treasurer of the NAACP
Speaker 5: in Indianapolis Chapter, he was calling for action. He sent
Speaker 5: a telegram to Ramsey Clark, then the Attorney General, imploring
Speaker 5: the DOJ to open an investigation into Carroll's murder and
Speaker 5: tell us also that they mentioned that KKK had been
Speaker 5: active in the area as well and part of the
Speaker 5: history of Morgan County.
Speaker 4: Kkking had a rally in Martinsville not long before the
Speaker 4: murder of Carroll. So the people who did not feel
Speaker 4: safe Black people in that area just did not feel
Speaker 4: safe in Martinsville because the KKK went there. Town denied
Speaker 4: that anything, but you still had a rally in there.
Speaker 4: There was no doubt about it that there was an attraction.
Speaker 4: So the NAACP was kind of getting fed up. They're saying,
Speaker 4: you know, this should have been an open and shut murder.
Speaker 4: We want action them, So they asked Ramsey Clark. They
Speaker 4: asked for it to be opened and didn't get open,
Speaker 4: which it should happen because after this this was bungled
Speaker 4: and bungled and bungled. And what was an interesting offshoot,
Speaker 4: there was no murders in Martinsville in that area at
Speaker 4: all before Carol's murder. After people saw that they could
Speaker 4: get away with it, there was a bunch of unsolved
Speaker 4: homicides as a result. So you have here the NAACP
Speaker 4: clamoring for a justice that's been denied and they're getting
Speaker 4: stille the walled. You're now starting to see an increase
Speaker 4: in homicides in this area because you know, people can
Speaker 4: figure okay, I can I can get away with this,
Speaker 4: So this speaking, Martinsville had a horrible reputation. They were
Speaker 4: they were deemed a sundowntown. So you did not have
Speaker 4: people coming to this town, not just you know, the
Speaker 4: black community, about other people who were for civil rights
Speaker 4: and civility saying well, we're not coming here. And Smartsho
Speaker 4: suffered economically, they suffered in terms of safety, and their
Speaker 4: reputation was basically ruined because this homicide was just left hanging.
Speaker 5: And you're write that no case in Martinville's history had
Speaker 5: used so much and so many resources. Let's use this
Speaker 5: as an opportunity to stop to hear from our sponsor.
Speaker 5: Have you ever been so bloated that you just had
Speaker 5: to cancel out on a party that you were invited to?
Speaker 5: You would have had to wear your sweatpants, it was
Speaker 5: so bad. Well, Ritual literally created their Symbiotic Plus with
Speaker 5: those kinds of stomach problems in mind. It contains clinically
Speaker 5: studied probiotics, probiotics and a post biotic to support a
Speaker 5: balanced gut microbiome. My wife Lisa and I had already
Speaker 5: been taking Ritual multi vitamins for years already, and then
Speaker 5: Ritual introduced Symbiotic Plus and we immediately added it to
Speaker 5: our daily regimen. We have always trusted the research conducted
Speaker 5: by Ritual to develop their multivitamin and now their Symbiotic
Speaker 5: Plus daily three to one probiotic probiotic and post biotic
Speaker 5: with two of the world's most clinically studied probiotic strains
Speaker 5: to support the relief of mild and occasional bloating, gas
Speaker 5: and diarrhea. Why include a post biotic It provides fuel
Speaker 5: to the cells that make up the gut lining and
Speaker 5: supports a healthy gut barrier win Win delayed release capsule
Speaker 5: designed to help survive the harsh conditions of the upper
Speaker 5: GI tract for delivery to the colon, an ideal place
Speaker 5: for probiotics to grow and thrive. Symbiotic Plus and Ritual
Speaker 5: are here to celebrate, not hide your insides. There's no
Speaker 5: more shame in your gut game. That's why Ritual is
Speaker 5: offering my listeners thirty percent off during your first month.
Speaker 5: Visit ritual dot com slash murder to start Ritual or
Speaker 5: add Symbolic Plus to your subscription today. Now you talk
Speaker 5: about throughout this book when we hadn't mentioned, is that
Speaker 5: you refer to the process of writing or movies and
Speaker 5: television and the difference when you're talking about a book
Speaker 5: and the research involved and just the differences between them.
Speaker 5: But you also talk and mention about the Injustice Files
Speaker 5: in twenty fourteen, tell us about the Injustice Files and
Speaker 5: what it revealed and what it didn't reveal about Carol's murder.
Speaker 4: Well, the Injustice Files. Carol was one of three cases
Speaker 4: in this episode. So this was the first time that
Speaker 4: we had a true crime show featuring Carol Jenkins. And
Speaker 4: they interviewed her family and they interviewed the Neils, and well,
Speaker 4: the Nils didn't realize why they were being interviewed. They
Speaker 4: thought they were giving an interview just about Carol, and
Speaker 4: it opened up at Carroll words for them. They were
Speaker 4: quite deterred by the interview how it was presented. You know,
Speaker 4: they were trying to find out who was the other
Speaker 4: person or who was the person that they killed Carol,
Speaker 4: and they interviewed somebody. They didn't give very much information,
Speaker 4: So there was not a lot of information in this.
Speaker 4: So you could tell when you work in true crime,
Speaker 4: on the other side of the camera, you see tells,
Speaker 4: So you saw that there wasn't a lot of pictures
Speaker 4: of Carol. There was no interviews with any lead detectives.
Speaker 4: You've seen that they were shut out, so you see
Speaker 4: that they didn't have a lot of information to go on.
Speaker 4: They had to use other means to tell the story.
Speaker 4: That's why it wasn't just about Carol. There was two
Speaker 4: other homicides that this episode was featured. Even then, when
Speaker 4: you're doing a true crimes episode, you need a lot
Speaker 4: more information than most people realize, and you just because
Speaker 4: of the way things were handled and investigated, you couldn't
Speaker 4: actually do a whole episode on Carol, though you technically could.
Speaker 4: But when you don't have a lot of information, when
Speaker 4: sources are not forthcoming the things you have to make
Speaker 4: up those deficits. And you could see that this was
Speaker 4: somebody who really wanted to talk about Carol, but didn't
Speaker 4: have a lot of cards to play about it. So
Speaker 4: this episode, the people who were, let's say, wanted Carol's
Speaker 4: murder avenged properly. I did not feel like that that's happened.
Speaker 4: The Neils were not happy with the outcome of that
Speaker 4: interview at all.
Speaker 5: You fast forward to the year two thousand and you
Speaker 5: say by two thousand the case would be reopened and
Speaker 5: the narrative would begin to shift, finally entertaining the possibility
Speaker 5: that race was the primary motive for the homicide.
Speaker 4: Tell Us about this shift, Well, when you were listening
Speaker 4: to the police, when you were listening to the local press,
Speaker 4: there it was never about race. This was like, oh,
Speaker 4: could not possibly be about race. And that's why that
Speaker 4: thing was moving because when you have a certain lens,
Speaker 4: you filter out everything else. So a lot of clues
Speaker 4: over the decades were ignored or lost because it wasn't
Speaker 4: it didn't fit the narrative. Well, this was a sex attempt,
Speaker 4: not a race attempt. So once it started entertaining the
Speaker 4: possibility that this was a racist or supremacist that was
Speaker 4: responsible for Carol's homicide, that's when things started to shift.
Speaker 4: So we moved away from well, this was a sex
Speaker 4: base to talk to, this was a hate crime based
Speaker 4: in race. But that's what actually we started to see
Speaker 4: progress in this case because now we've opened up the
Speaker 4: filter to allow for information that could have been previously
Speaker 4: ignored for that reason. So all of a sudden, Carol's
Speaker 4: case was open and it wasn't cold anymore. And within
Speaker 4: you know, a couple of years after that, we've seen
Speaker 4: it at the breakthrough. So it was once we started saying, yes,
Speaker 4: this was but even people in Martinsville, you know, we're
Speaker 4: digging their sills. No, it wasn't racism. It wasn't racism,
Speaker 4: But more and more people were clamoring. You had New
Speaker 4: Yorker do an article, a very very thorough article on
Speaker 4: the case. They said it had to be racism based
Speaker 4: on everything we know, and anybody who looks at this,
Speaker 4: you know, even half Garden and you will say this
Speaker 4: was a racist attack because the same night that Carrol
Speaker 4: was killed, Paula, who was in a different part of town,
Speaker 4: was being harassed. Now, the two people and that four
Speaker 4: sun that wasn't harassed were the two white males. So
Speaker 4: that told you, you know, we're talking about it wasn't
Speaker 4: safe for a black person to be in this town
Speaker 4: at Sanda right, you're.
Speaker 5: Right about Indiana State Police detectives am I all Chron
Speaker 5: and Alan McElroy, and they reinvestigated this murder for eleven months,
Speaker 5: you say, into the second year, and they created a
Speaker 5: cold case team to solve this unsolved murder. And you
Speaker 5: talk about the break that they eventually get right in
Speaker 5: the midst of this reopening of this over thirty eight
Speaker 5: year or thirty seven year cold case.
Speaker 4: So yes, they reinterviewed everybody they could who was still alive.
Speaker 4: They ever they had in terms of evidence. They actually
Speaker 4: sent for DNA testing hoping that something would come. But
Speaker 4: then they had somebody, a woman. I'll say, I know
Speaker 4: who did it because I witnessed it and it was
Speaker 4: my father. So all of a sudden from being cold
Speaker 4: case to somebody finally coming forward saying, yes, I witnessed
Speaker 4: that murder my father and somebody else I don't know who,
Speaker 4: because the girl was only seven years old at the time.
Speaker 4: Her name was McQueen, and she said, my father, Kenneth Richmond,
Speaker 4: was the killer. So all of a sudden from not
Speaker 4: having anything to having a witness and she was I
Speaker 4: remember because Carol was wearing a yellow scarf that night,
Speaker 4: so we knew that that was the color of the scarf.
Speaker 4: It wasn't even just the scarf, because there was a
Speaker 4: single reference. I went through every media outlet that covered
Speaker 4: it during the time, and only one person interview the
Speaker 4: woman who gave her the scarf, and she didn't say
Speaker 4: what color was it was raising or gave her a
Speaker 4: scarf and nobody knew was the one thing that only
Speaker 4: hold back they actually had was the color of the scarf.
Speaker 4: And this woman remembered the color of the scarf.
Speaker 5: Shirley McQueen. You right, though she did not just one
Speaker 5: day pick up the phone and call police. There was
Speaker 5: over the years, and she had told other people, so
Speaker 5: explain this process that eventually she was spoke to police.
Speaker 4: Well, she told her former sister in law. She did
Speaker 4: tell people over the years, and she was too scared
Speaker 4: of her father. Her father I had criminal record. He
Speaker 4: never seemed to be convicted of anything. So it was
Speaker 4: accused of homicide before, so let's not out. And he
Speaker 4: had roots to white supremacy, so he was not a
Speaker 4: safe fellow to disobey. We'll put it to you this
Speaker 4: and so she told people and she so eventually her
Speaker 4: sister in law said something, went to the press, to
Speaker 4: a television station. Eventually Carol's stepfather pied a private investigator
Speaker 4: who was a former state trooper. He managed to find her.
Speaker 4: So all of a sudden, from multiple angles, this sort
Speaker 4: of kind of broke open because I guess she told
Speaker 4: more than one person, and it started to come out
Speaker 4: to some people in the press. Got a hold of this.
Speaker 4: A private investigator bottle hold of this, so finally, after
Speaker 4: so many decades, it migrated to the police. So she
Speaker 4: was very reluctant to tell the police, but she told
Speaker 4: other people, and those other people started putting feelers to police,
Speaker 4: to the press. And that's how it finally when she
Speaker 4: got the courage to go to the police directly and say, yes,
Speaker 4: I'll testify, you say.
Speaker 5: By May two thousand and two, it's finally revealed the
Speaker 5: name Kenneth Clay Richmond. You write in this book about
Speaker 5: his psychiatric background. Tell us a little bit about Kenneth
Speaker 5: Clay Richmond.
Speaker 4: He, as I said, was a very dangerous fellow. He
Speaker 4: was accused of killing his friend. He castrated himself. He
Speaker 4: was not somebody who fooled around with had He wasn't
Speaker 4: a psychiatric hospital. So he was somebody who we would
Speaker 4: say was ultra violent. He was not stable, and but
Speaker 4: he seemed to beget He seemed also to be just
Speaker 4: as much charmed. Whenever he was up against something, he
Speaker 4: seemed to skirt the consequences of his actions. So Carol's
Speaker 4: murder was not the first one that would have he
Speaker 4: would have gotten away. There was always some sort of
Speaker 4: technicality or something, and he was never really held accountable
Speaker 4: for his previous violent actions.
Speaker 5: You say that he had other offenses even you say
Speaker 5: he was abusive to his wife and kids as Ruby
Speaker 5: Walsh even stabbed her, and he had an offensive stabbing
Speaker 5: a police officer as well. And it was well known
Speaker 5: that he hated blacks. That was something that everybody knew.
Speaker 5: It came from his mouth.
Speaker 4: Exactly, everybody knew. I mean, he was open. This wasn't
Speaker 4: some sort of secret double neither his violence nor his
Speaker 4: hatred of people who were not like him as a secret.
Speaker 4: He was very open and very proud. So this is,
Speaker 4: you know, somebody you would not want to have anything
Speaker 4: to do with. He was dangerous, but he was free
Speaker 4: to rome and there were a lot of casualties. I mean,
Speaker 4: he was abusive to his wife, he was abusive to
Speaker 4: his children, He was abusive to his whole circle. He
Speaker 4: was not somebody I mean, I mean, damnage she did
Speaker 4: to himself. So you know that what are you going
Speaker 4: to do to somebody like this who can do things
Speaker 4: to his own body without flinching.
Speaker 5: This has found out a little bit later. But you
Speaker 5: write that what his daughter claimed, surely claimed happened? You
Speaker 5: write in detail what she said her father did and.
Speaker 4: Said, well, he grabbed her, his companion grabbed her. He
Speaker 4: stabbed her, and he threatened his daughter. He gave her
Speaker 4: seven dollars to keep quired because she was seven years old,
Speaker 4: so give her a dollar for every year she was alive.
Speaker 4: So he said, keep this to yourself, don't tell anybody.
Speaker 4: So for years she was scared. She didn't tell anybody
Speaker 4: for years because she was scared out of her I mean,
Speaker 4: if your father can take a perfect stranger off the
Speaker 4: street and ran as screwdriver, and which he had, he
Speaker 4: was that was his profession. He had made perfect sense
Speaker 4: for him to have a screwdriver, so he was good
Speaker 4: for it. But she was too scared to say anything
Speaker 4: to anybody for years she was an adult when she's
Speaker 4: finally was able to say, yes, my father did it
Speaker 4: because she was scared of him, and she had very
Speaker 4: little recourse because he had no inhibitions. He was a
Speaker 4: psychopatht he did stuff that would horrify most people, and
Speaker 4: yet he could do it no problem. And here's a
Speaker 4: little girl who asked to carry this burden on her terrified, Well,
Speaker 4: what if her father changes his mind and gets rid
Speaker 4: of her just to keep a witness quiet.
Speaker 5: You're right about I say the seven dollars reward to
Speaker 5: keep her mouth shut, but also that the two perpetrators
Speaker 5: were laughing when they returned to the car and said
Speaker 5: that she had it coming to her. She got what
Speaker 5: she deserved.
Speaker 4: He was heartless. I mean, this was something I mean
Speaker 4: to laugh. You're killing that perfect stranger who's never done
Speaker 4: you any harm, was not doing anything, just working. She
Speaker 4: was working. Carol was working at a job and was
Speaker 4: just terrorized and then murdered in cold block, right on
Speaker 4: them outside, right in the open. I mean, you think, okay,
Speaker 4: you're in a small town, it's raining, you don't think
Speaker 4: anybody's going to bother you, and here are these people coming,
Speaker 4: and then they lack. I mean, your family is going
Speaker 4: to be destroyed for the rest of their lives. These
Speaker 4: people are laughing. And this young girl, this is what
Speaker 4: she was exposed to. She was exposed to somebody a
Speaker 4: very impressionable age. Well, it's funny to kill somebody. So,
Speaker 4: you know, kudos to her to her not losing her
Speaker 4: moral core over this horrific, horrific turn of events.
Speaker 5: That Jesus has an opportunity to hear these messages.
Speaker 1: Hey, Guysida is Ryan. I'm not sure if you know
Speaker 1: this about me, but I'm a bit of a fun
Speaker 1: fanatic when I can. I like to work, but I
Speaker 1: like fun too.
Speaker 3: It's a thing.
Speaker 1: And now the truth is out there, I can tell
Speaker 1: you about my favorite place to have fun, Chumba Casino.
Speaker 1: They have hundreds of social casino style games to choose from,
Speaker 1: with new games released each week. You can play for free, anytime, anywhere,
Speaker 1: and each day brings a new chance to collect daily bonuses.
Speaker 1: So join me and the fun. Sign up now at
Speaker 1: Chumba casino dot com.
Speaker 2: No, we just necessary d I lost in terms conditions
Speaker 2: eighteen plus.
Speaker 5: You also write that just to lay some credence to
Speaker 5: your notion, that assertion that Carol would be afraid of
Speaker 5: her father. In nineteen eighty five, years after Carol Jenkins's murder,
Speaker 5: he killed his friend Samuel Leverett. But he wasn't convicted
Speaker 5: of shooting as a friend. All he was convicted of
Speaker 5: was the illegal possession of firearms. And you say, really,
Speaker 5: what happened was in the court case they had difficulty
Speaker 5: convicting of a manslaughter and that that war, the manslaughter
Speaker 5: wasn't an option available to them, and so that's how
Speaker 5: he ended up with the legal possession of firearms and
Speaker 5: only a short four year sentence for murder.
Speaker 4: Well, she kept getting away with things. I mean, there
Speaker 4: was always some sort of dark charm with him. He
Speaker 4: would get away with things, so that you know, that
Speaker 4: right to play in Shirley McQueen's mind. My father gets
Speaker 4: away with the chilling people. So she's seen him with
Speaker 4: what he did to Carol, She's seen him wark so
Speaker 4: it was not an easy thing for her, a burden
Speaker 4: to carry, and so she carried it as she did
Speaker 4: confide in certain people. But eventually, something like this eventually
Speaker 4: is going to end up in the direction of the police.
Speaker 4: And that's when things started to change. In this case.
Speaker 5: You talk about his arrest and now, unlike in the
Speaker 5: beginning of nineteen sixty eight, it makes national headlines, but
Speaker 5: there still was no information as to his accomplice.
Speaker 4: Was there and still isn't. It's actually still an open case.
Speaker 4: The FBI still is looking for the second accomplice. Whether
Speaker 4: he's dead or life, we don't know, but most likely
Speaker 4: he's not. But it is that we only know half
Speaker 4: the story. We don't know who the accomplice was because
Speaker 4: Shirley was too young. You know, where they dropped off
Speaker 4: the accomplice, what was his name, who he was in
Speaker 4: relation to her fault. So we don't know everything about
Speaker 4: Carol's murder. We just have one half of this from
Speaker 4: the one who was the instigator. So he was the
Speaker 4: main instigator of the homicide. It was on his order
Speaker 4: and say so because he's the one that stabbed her.
Speaker 4: The other accomplice just held her down to be stat
Speaker 4: So we're still not entirely clear about who was the
Speaker 4: other killer. We just know there is another one.
Speaker 5: Now right away, there is a need to take this
Speaker 5: guy to trial. And so right away, you say, right
Speaker 5: from the very beginning of this trial, it's a battle.
Speaker 5: And so there are battles for such things as the
Speaker 5: psychiatric records of both people, Shirley and her father. And
Speaker 5: of course the defense lawyer named Litz is putting on
Speaker 5: a is a very aggressive and vigorous defense tell us
Speaker 5: in this battle.
Speaker 4: Before what happened was that this lets his lawyer, Richmond's lawyer,
Speaker 4: was very very good at being a defense lawyer. He
Speaker 4: wanted the daughter's Society chiatric file, which we could say
Speaker 4: it could have been in a form of intimidation. She
Speaker 4: would of course have psychological problems if she's witnessed a murder.
Speaker 4: She's going to have problems being with an abusive family
Speaker 4: and being scared out of your mind, espec. She if
Speaker 4: your father killed before and got away with it, and
Speaker 4: this were every way he went, He goes, well, I'm
Speaker 4: going to show what's really happening. He didn't do it.
Speaker 4: He was quite hockey. And what happened was his client
Speaker 4: eventually got very old, very sick, and passed away before
Speaker 4: he would go to trip, so he actually managed to
Speaker 4: keep him out of They couldn't even have a trial
Speaker 4: at the end because the prime suspect expired. It had cancer,
Speaker 4: he was sick, he was old, and so the family
Speaker 4: didn't even get to see what evidence they had. They
Speaker 4: didn't even manage to present the case in a court
Speaker 4: of law, so this was also something they not so
Speaker 4: we basically we never got to see the full case
Speaker 4: from the police over the decades, because they reopened this
Speaker 4: case quite a few times, probably once a decade at least,
Speaker 4: they tried to open this case and nothing happened, and
Speaker 4: then again, we don't even know who the second person
Speaker 4: could have been, so what would have been put in trial,
Speaker 4: what evidence, other evidence would have been very interesting to know.
Speaker 4: The national media, even international media, this caught the attention
Speaker 4: of a lot of different places. People wanted to know
Speaker 4: and they never got it. It was he just died,
Speaker 4: and he died never being convicted of the murder.
Speaker 5: You write about what happens after what this trial represented,
Speaker 5: but also the aftermath tell us about what is concluded
Speaker 5: after this, and certainly there was no conviction. What was
Speaker 5: concluded after this? What was said in the media tell us.
Speaker 4: Well, basically they said it's pretty much the people believe
Speaker 4: that it was Kenneth Clay, which meant there were circumstantial evidence.
Speaker 4: There was the testimony of his daughter, There was hold
Speaker 4: back of the scarf, his views. He went that way,
Speaker 4: this route was not unfamiliar to him. And there was
Speaker 4: a park erected in Carol's honor. There was a plaque
Speaker 4: in Martinsville, which the Neils really fought to fight Tuday
Speaker 4: Nail to get a plaque in her honor. Even the
Speaker 4: town the city hall did not want to give a
Speaker 4: ploque to Caro, so it was a battle, and at
Speaker 4: that point doan Neil was dying of cancer. Because I
Speaker 4: want to see this before I died, This young woman
Speaker 4: taunts me to this day. Well, we will never forget
Speaker 4: Carol Jenkins. So he and his wife Norma never forgot.
Speaker 4: At the ceremony, Paula, who was the young woman who
Speaker 4: talked Carol into going for this job, who was there
Speaker 4: on the night she was murdered, came to the ceremony
Speaker 4: and she was she never stepped for the Martinsville since
Speaker 4: the murder, so she was this took all her courage
Speaker 4: to come to this ceremony. So we know some of
Speaker 4: the case. It's not fully close case because we know
Speaker 4: that there's another person potentially and we know nothing about
Speaker 4: it and may never know. We may never know the
Speaker 4: full story of Carol, but she seemed to have been
Speaker 4: after the murder, she almost was forgotten. And yet this
Speaker 4: is still an open case. Yet we still have somebody
Speaker 4: else we could find and just kind of vanished after
Speaker 4: a while. And it's a shame because this is something
Speaker 4: that we should really remember. This is something you know,
Speaker 4: how many young people go on the first day at
Speaker 4: work and then get get killed. So viciously, which she
Speaker 4: she just was walking down the streets picking herself up
Speaker 4: after having being shut out from her previous job in
Speaker 4: a factory. So this was a very hard working young
Speaker 4: woman and her friends were always devastated. There was one
Speaker 4: young girl who wrote paid for a newspaper at a
Speaker 4: memorial for Carol a year after she died. And a
Speaker 4: lot of times this case would have even been never
Speaker 4: looked at, but her family go and put ads in
Speaker 4: the moral to Carol every year she got, hoping that
Speaker 4: that would regent force people to reopen the case, pressure
Speaker 4: the police to open the case. So in the spirit
Speaker 4: of that Carol we know as a victim of a
Speaker 4: hate part and that off it was one of the
Speaker 4: most important gate based homicides in the United States, and
Speaker 4: it doesn't get the attention it deserves.
Speaker 5: It's a shameful chapter that you write about in Martinsville
Speaker 5: and the area. But also that seems that the state
Speaker 5: police were the only people investigating, and it seemed like
Speaker 5: the local police chief and the local police had many
Speaker 5: reasons to not investigate as fully as they may have
Speaker 5: they There were, of.
Speaker 4: Course rumors why they did. Of course there were counter
Speaker 4: rumors and all sorts of things. But if it wasn't
Speaker 4: for the Indiana State Police, I don't think this would
Speaker 4: have ever been even resolved that much. They came They
Speaker 4: had two very good cold case detectives who came in
Speaker 4: and said, Okay, we're going to take another crack at this.
Speaker 4: They did other cold cases, so they were well trained
Speaker 4: and they were serious, and they didn't look through leads.
Speaker 4: They retested things, they reinterviewed people. And it wasn't until
Speaker 4: Shirley McQueen came forward and said I know who did
Speaker 4: it that, and they found her credible that I actually mentioned.
Speaker 4: They had other evidence and everything else, but she they
Speaker 4: believed her enough that they would charge her father. They
Speaker 4: didn't have to if they didn't believe her. So they
Speaker 4: must have been an awful lot that they had to debate,
Speaker 4: do we arrest this man or not? Do we do
Speaker 4: this or not? How strong is her testimony? She was
Speaker 4: willing to testify even though her father's lawyer was threatening
Speaker 4: to up demand that cherish psychiatric information being made public.
Speaker 4: He could look at it and make powers. So she
Speaker 4: was a very brave woman. This could not have been
Speaker 4: easy for.
Speaker 5: You write in the end that Carol's story is far
Speaker 5: from over. And I would agree with you and say that,
Speaker 5: especially with this book, her story and the lessons from
Speaker 5: her story very much will stay alive.
Speaker 4: She said, I said, a very important figure. She was
Speaker 4: a very modest young woman and you know, hardworking she was.
Speaker 4: You know, she would have been anybody's dream daughter. She
Speaker 4: would have been anybody's dream employee and our friend or
Speaker 4: a family member. And she was just taken. She was
Speaker 4: just swallowed up in the nut. And we have to
Speaker 4: remember care. She did everything right. She did everything right.
Speaker 4: You know a lot of times people go, what did
Speaker 4: the victim do well? She was artworking, self sufficient, resilience,
Speaker 4: and you know, that's who she was, and if we
Speaker 4: were too honor, that's how we should be treating other
Speaker 4: cold cases. Resilient, persistent, at not forget. So I really
Speaker 4: wanted to write this precisely because because I thought, we
Speaker 4: don't really discuss this case, and this is yet such
Speaker 4: a historically important case. And my experience writing true crime
Speaker 4: shows that this would have been absolutely perfect on one
Speaker 4: hand for her story to be told in this format,
Speaker 4: and you hat there were so many obstacles and did
Speaker 4: it defy those telling in this format because things were botched.
Speaker 4: There was a lot of rumor and gossip. Things were
Speaker 4: not clear. You had a talent and constant denial that
Speaker 4: they had a racism problem. They took offense to being
Speaker 4: called a sundown town, even though even in the press
Speaker 4: you had people, you know, please telling people who are blocked,
Speaker 4: don't come here at sundown and then say, well, hell,
Speaker 4: can you call us the sundown town? You know, basic
Speaker 4: research will tell me that. So that's not something you know.
Speaker 4: You should be feeling good and safe. It doesn't matter
Speaker 4: who you are going in any town, doing your job
Speaker 4: or just going for leisure and come back a lot
Speaker 4: and not have to worry about something. She was scared
Speaker 4: out of her mind going there. She was more scared
Speaker 4: when people started to harass her. And then her final
Speaker 4: knowleds work, you know, and all she did was be
Speaker 4: brave and do her job.
Speaker 5: It's also a story about the bravery of Don and
Speaker 5: Norman Neil and their incredible effort to try to protect
Speaker 5: Carol Jenkins that night, and also the hard work and
Speaker 5: persistence and diligence of Carol's family, Elizabeth, her mother, and
Speaker 5: the family to be able to fight for this case
Speaker 5: to be reopened. Andvolved.
Speaker 4: She had a lot of advocates and a lot of
Speaker 4: times people fall in the cracks because they don't, so
Speaker 4: you could imagine you have a whole bunch of kids,
Speaker 4: the deals or family. You had people fighting for her
Speaker 4: and it's NAACP, a lot of civil rights activists, and
Speaker 4: it took decades before her case was resolved.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, I want to thank you very much for coming
Speaker 5: on and talking about Murder in a Sundown Town. For
Speaker 5: those that may want to take a look at other
Speaker 5: information or your rather books. Do you have a website
Speaker 5: and do any social media tell us about that.
Speaker 4: I have Alexandra Kitty dot com. There's more information about
Speaker 4: the book, and I'm on Facebook and LinkedIn.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much, Alexandra Kitty Murder in a Sundown Town.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for this interview, and you have
Speaker 5: a great evening and good night.