501 - Live at Bass Concert Hall (Austin Night 1)

Live at Austin’s Bass Concert Hall, Georgia covers the Kiss and Kill Murder and Karen tells the story of Texana forgeries.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:40):
What's up?

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Boscard?

Speaker 3 (00:45):
Yay, Oh my god, you're loud and here it's so exciting.
You're running in place.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
Where are you going?

Speaker 3 (00:55):
What's that?

Speaker 2 (00:55):
You're running in place?

Speaker 1 (00:56):
A little bit. That's just so loud and exciting.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
And hot.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
Jesus, it's hot here.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
This is insane.

Speaker 3 (01:13):
Our second city of our twenty twenty five tour.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
Yeah, it would have been our first, but we were
waiting for it to kind of get a little cooler
here and we couldn't wait anymore, so we decided to come.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
We came, and we match somehow.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
This was a mistake, This was unplanned. This is what
starts happening to your brain after ten years of podcasting together.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
That's right, your purple sink.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Aesthetic sinking is what they call it in science.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
We'll tell them about your offits.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
So we're talking about it.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
Oh, I got this outfit. It's by a designer named
Kevin Holland has pockets.

Speaker 3 (01:56):
Thank you, gorgeous, so pretty, Thanks you.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
And how about you're out thank you.

Speaker 3 (02:02):
I have a velvet insane drunk ant at the Christmas
party outfit.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
That has thank you.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
Yes, it has.

Speaker 3 (02:13):
Questionable vintage stains on it. And yeah, because we're in Texas.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
That's right. Obviously we're playing the part here. I love
that aunt that she just fed some cows and came in.
She's like, God, damn this Christmas party.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
Where's my eggnog and my cigarette?

Speaker 3 (02:37):
I need to stain this dress.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
This is the true crime comedy podcast, My favorite murder.
If you didn't thank you?

Speaker 4 (02:47):
That's Karen Kilgarrett.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
That's Georgia Hartstark.

Speaker 3 (02:53):
Oh, I met a Texas raccoon last night. I met
a raccoon and I were just going for a walk
after dinner downtown.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
I don't know if it's downtown, but it felt like it.

Speaker 5 (03:06):
There were buildings still, lots of building Yeah, and just
like out of nowhere, a bucket raccoon jumps out of
a trash can holding food and climbs into a gutter
boom when I fucking lost my mind.

Speaker 3 (03:19):
A city like a city raccoon is the most exciting
thing to me.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
And I was like, wait, wait, wait.

Speaker 3 (03:24):
Come back, come back. I have a questioned I want
to interview you.

Speaker 1 (03:27):
Do you have an accent?

Speaker 3 (03:30):
It was so cute, So I'm clearly starved for animal
love at the very moment.

Speaker 1 (03:37):
Yeah, I mean, I guess the raccoons in Austin are
very well fed, because every bite of food I've had
since I've gotten here is the best thing I've ever eaten.
It's ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (03:49):
Have you had caeso yet?

Speaker 4 (03:50):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (03:51):
No, sadly That'll be my goal before I leave here.

Speaker 3 (03:54):
Bucket a caso race to caeso.

Speaker 1 (03:57):
The next forty eight hours. I got a hamburger at
a place called Eureka and they said these are the
best burgers ever. And we were like, we're from Los Angeles.
And then we ate and it was the best burger ever.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
Nice.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
Yeah, nice, had some and these I think homemade flower tortillas.
Like the tortillas were like someone cared about me as I.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
Ate it, which is how you.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
Should make food. I think.

Speaker 3 (04:31):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
Anyway, I want to sit down.

Speaker 3 (04:41):
Okay, guys, we're very new to this.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
It's been six years and years. It's a little crazy.
We didn't think anyone was gonna come this time.

Speaker 3 (04:51):
Yeah, and you guys haven't heard the first night of Denber.
We didn't remember our lines. We don't know what we're doing.
We don't know where we are most of the times.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
Yeah. So if there's like podcast authorities here tonight, we're
going to get a bad report card for sure.

Speaker 2 (05:08):
Absolutely, But do you want to tell them about the podcast?

Speaker 1 (05:13):
Yeah, this is the speech I have to remember. Literally
I had to print it out because I was like,
this is the kind of thing that you just when
you do it all the time, it's no big deal.
And then that first night in Denver, I was like, literally, like, line,
I don't know what, but we like to explain ourselves
because sometimes it shows. There are people we call them

(05:35):
drag alongs.

Speaker 3 (05:36):
Lovingly.

Speaker 1 (05:37):
They are people who don't want to listen to this
podcast but are forced to constantly, and we say hi
to you. We thank you for your patience and your
love of your partner that you would listen to these
two assholes blab around all through your road trip or
whatever it is you're doing. Some drag alongs come and

(05:57):
they don't listen to the podcast and they don't like it,
and they think to themselves, true crime and comedy those
two things don't go together. So we just want you
to know. You know, we're two people who grew up.
Our childhoods were the type where there was a lot
of coping with comedy types of things. So when we
approach difficult the difficult parts of life. We often do

(06:21):
that with humor. We don't think murder is funny. We
just think we're funny. So that said, if you don't
like it, you can get the fuck out.

Speaker 4 (06:34):
You got it.

Speaker 1 (06:36):
I not only did I remember it, I added to.

Speaker 3 (06:38):
You know, Yeah, that's how comfortable you are.

Speaker 1 (06:40):
Yes, we're right back on, like riding a bike, yeah,
an audio bike.

Speaker 3 (06:46):
An audio bike. Well, yeah, so we're going to tell
you some stories tonight. Should I should we do this?

Speaker 4 (06:53):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (06:53):
You go first, right first? I think, yes, okay, all right,
let's do.

Speaker 3 (07:00):
So we have done almost five hundred episodes and I
feel like a quarter of them and take have taken
place in Texas.

Speaker 1 (07:07):
I know you have many many many many do.

Speaker 3 (07:10):
Not fuck around, so it has been hard to find
new stories and cities we go to except for Texas.

Speaker 1 (07:16):
So right, job, And we'd like to say we'd like
to thank the Textless Monthly Publication. Yes, incredible, incredible publication.
Skip Hollandsworth particularly, we would like to have Mark has
an incredible writer who he lets us regurgitate his stuff

(07:37):
and then go eyd years. Skip Hollandsworth really researched this story.

Speaker 3 (07:41):
It's great. Well It's funny that you say that, because
this story that I'm always hell tonight. It was kind
of forgotten. It was a very high profile case here
in Texas. It was kind of forgotten except for in
the small town it took place in. But then a
journalist named Pamela Cooloff wrote a Textas Monthly story about, Hey,

(08:02):
you gonna.

Speaker 1 (08:02):
Believe that that's the yea psychic purple link.

Speaker 3 (08:05):
Yes, and not revived the case, but it's still not
as well known.

Speaker 2 (08:08):
Maybe you guys know it. This is the kiss and
kill murder from Odessa? Anyone from Odessa?

Speaker 3 (08:15):
Yes, So she wrote an article called a Kiss before Dying.
I remember the story from you know, Late Nights scrolling
and it's just wild and unexpected.

Speaker 2 (08:25):
So here we go.

Speaker 3 (08:26):
Do you know it? I do not, Okay, So the
main source is the Texas Monthly article that I just said,
and a memoir by the cousin of the victim, Shelton Williams,
called washed in Blood. Nope, called washed in the blood.
And so those are very different. Those are two very different.

Speaker 1 (08:44):
As a person raised as a Catholic, those are two different,
two different ideas.

Speaker 2 (08:49):
Is that a thing?

Speaker 3 (08:51):
What's that? Blood washing?

Speaker 1 (08:52):
And we love blood over in the Christian area. We
talk about it a lot. It's very holy.

Speaker 3 (08:59):
Sometimes, okay, And the rest of the sources can be
found in our show notes, but not right now, because
this is live in the future, in.

Speaker 2 (09:07):
The future of show notes.

Speaker 3 (09:09):
All right, So in nineteen sixty one, Betty Williams is
a seventeen year old high school senior at Odessa High School.

Speaker 2 (09:16):
It's about three hundred miles away from here.

Speaker 3 (09:18):
It's the real place of the fictional place where Saturday
Night Lights took place.

Speaker 1 (09:24):
Oh, Friday Night Lights.

Speaker 2 (09:26):
That's what I meant.

Speaker 1 (09:27):
Yeah, just a combination, this combination of the sketch sketch
football show, Saturday Night Lights.

Speaker 3 (09:37):
You can tell how well we grew up with sports.

Speaker 2 (09:39):
I did it.

Speaker 3 (09:40):
We don't Jewish people don't do sports, so we did it.

Speaker 1 (09:44):
I'm at the fifty yard line. It's a really really
good show though.

Speaker 3 (09:50):
Yes, it's incredible.

Speaker 2 (09:52):
Do you know I once saw her what's her name?

Speaker 3 (09:55):
She's so cute.

Speaker 2 (09:57):
No, not Connie Britten, you can call Mica.

Speaker 3 (10:00):
Kelly. Vince and I were in Germany on vacation and
we were at waiting at an elevator at her hotel,
and up comes Minca Kelly looking so gorgeous. I couldn't
believe it. And I was like, oh, she was with
a boyfriend and I was like, look at that that
like like you know, meathead she's with. I was like
he must be her trainer, Like good for her forgetting
to like hot piece or whatever. And we look it

(10:22):
up later and he's the singer of Imagine Dragons. No no, yeah,
I was like, good for her forgetting this honk whatever,
Like I hope he' like worships out her feet.

Speaker 2 (10:32):
He's like the singer of the biggest fan that's ever.
So what do I know?

Speaker 3 (10:36):
Not sports, not music, podcasting, not podcasting.

Speaker 1 (10:42):
We just know this exact thing we're doing right now.
Luckily it's working out.

Speaker 3 (10:47):
Right, thank god. Okay, So it's about three hundred miles
west of here, and it's a pretty big town at
this point, at booming population. There's local oil fields, so
that fulls the population, and there's money in the area
because of that oil. But the stereotype is that most
of the people with money live in nearby Midland.

Speaker 2 (11:06):
They don't stick.

Speaker 1 (11:07):
Yes here, are you really from Midland?

Speaker 3 (11:13):
Congratulations?

Speaker 1 (11:14):
Do you think for the rest of this show you
would be our audience ambassador, and whenever we pronounce something
wrong or do it wrong, everyone's going to yell all
at the same time, but we don't know what anyone's
saying Manca Kelly. Yeah, So you can be the one
that we're going to look at you and be like, hey, Midland,
what's going on? And you can be like they're saying,
Manca Kelly.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
She's agreeing to it.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
Okay, great, great.

Speaker 3 (11:35):
So the quote is that Midlands is where you raise
your kids, Odessa is where you raise hell hey and
actually well murdering. A named Rachel I checked our emails
and she wrote it and said Odessa is consistently voted
as one of the most violent cities in Texas in
the US as a whole because of the rampant street races.

(11:56):
I don't know why I pointed at you. Oh, I
wasn't supposed to tell anyone about you and your street racing.

Speaker 1 (12:03):
I've been arrested for street racing and drag. What's the
things fading and dragging Midland?

Speaker 3 (12:09):
What is it? Furious pace and furious doughnuts donuts?

Speaker 1 (12:15):
Yeah, street racing. Sorry, what's your actual name?

Speaker 3 (12:20):
Christy Drifting?

Speaker 2 (12:22):
Her name is not Drifting drifting.

Speaker 1 (12:25):
Christy drifter. That's insane. What a coincidence it is drifting.
That was what I was thinking.

Speaker 2 (12:30):
That's true.

Speaker 3 (12:31):
She passed, she good, she is good test Midlands okay,
rampant street races, drunk driving. And then she wrote and
you know drugs. Oh, in the sixties it was similar.
So that's where we are. Thank you to Rachel the
Murderino for giving.

Speaker 2 (12:46):
Us a is that you no?

Speaker 4 (12:48):
Okay?

Speaker 3 (12:48):
I think this was in my twenty eighteen she wrote this,
so she might not be a listener anymore.

Speaker 1 (12:53):
Yeah, we're still kind of churning through that Gmail. There's
a lot of stuff in there, so right, please be patient.

Speaker 3 (13:00):
That said, all things relative, and for Betty Odessa is
is very square. She's kind of sounds like me growing
up in the suburbs, where it's like, oh no, I'm
stuck in this place that I don't fit in. I
want to get out, but it's the sixties, so you
kind of can't leave, right, They couldn't leave in the sixties.

Speaker 1 (13:18):
Go right, everyone has locked in.

Speaker 3 (13:20):
Betty probably would have done really well in like a
you know, in Austin or a bigger hipper town, but
unfortunately she's struggling in Odessa. She's a big fan of
the the writing of Jack Kerouac and Alan Ginsberg's she
loves Lenny Bruce's stand up and she frequently rails against

(13:40):
segregation and calls out the racism she sees all around her,
even though she's raised by a Baptist preacher. So she's
just like rebellious in a small town.

Speaker 1 (13:50):
So a good person.

Speaker 2 (13:53):
Yes, she likes to go against the grain.

Speaker 3 (13:56):
When she's bored, she goes to the local diner wearing
all black and white lipstick and not putting on a bra,
which I think even today is like.

Speaker 1 (14:07):
Right doing it.

Speaker 3 (14:08):
So Pamela Calliff describes Betty's appearance by saying she had
quote sandy blonde hair that brushed her shoulders and big
expressive blue eyes that could feign sincerity when talking to
authority figures. But we're alive with irreverence. So she was,
you know sharp. Odessa is ruled though, by football Chocking
Lee football team about thirty years later, as I said

(14:32):
in the book Friday Night Light Capital f Yes, and
you know, it is that culture there even then. And
so in the sixty the popular girls are known around
are known around town as the Kashmir Girls.

Speaker 2 (14:46):
That's their nickname.

Speaker 3 (14:50):
I don't know why, because that sounds really fucking hot
in Texas to be we're in Cashmere, maybe like a
Light Silk the Light Silk Gang.

Speaker 1 (14:58):
The Kashmere Girls aka this Weddy Bitches.

Speaker 2 (15:02):
That's right.

Speaker 3 (15:04):
And they even belong to little mini sororities within their
high school. And they're rich and of course, you know,
obedient when their parents are paying attention. They're conformists unlike Betty,
and her family does struggle financially, and her father is
deeply religious and he's constantly reminding Betty of all the
ways that she, in his eyes, fails to measure up

(15:24):
to his very rigid.

Speaker 2 (15:25):
Set of standards.

Speaker 3 (15:27):
So Betty does have friends and she writes notes to
them in classes, but she's just kind of over it
in her city.

Speaker 1 (15:39):
Yeah, it sounds like she's very alone or you know,
kind of alienated.

Speaker 3 (15:44):
Right, and so she's cool, but she's still a teenager,
and people know her say that well, she pretends to
be above it all, she also deeply wants to be accepted,
and she sees the world in that classic teenage way
where they think that things have to happen immediately.

Speaker 2 (15:59):
You know.

Speaker 3 (16:00):
All this is to say it's difficult for her. It
sounds like nowadays she maybe would have gotten some mental help,
as we all need, but back then and with religious parents,
it's not going to happen. So she does start having
sex around with the boys at school because she's bored.

Speaker 1 (16:19):
Did you just woohoo? Like you can't?

Speaker 3 (16:22):
You're right, it's fun, it's so fun. She's not wrong,
she's not incorrect, and so because of that, of course,
she gets talked about a lot by the popular girls.
She dreams of getting out of Odessa and becoming an actress,
but she also can't imagine that and picture a realistic

(16:42):
path forward. She's the oldest of her for her family's poor,
so she doesn't know where to get the money to
leave or go to college. And so during the summer
between Betty's junior and senior year, she winds up in
a relationship with a boy named mac Herring.

Speaker 2 (16:57):
And it's more not really a real relationship.

Speaker 3 (17:01):
It's more real than she's had in the past, but
it sounds like he just kind of isn't willing to
like make it public that he's dating her. They won't
go to he won't take her to parties and he
won't acknowledge that you know that she's his girlfriend. Give
him his letter jacket is a thing. I guess it
happens with sports.

Speaker 1 (17:19):
It does, Yeah, it does. So you're basically saying he's
an asshole.

Speaker 2 (17:22):
Right, Yeah, it's not ideal.

Speaker 3 (17:25):
Okay. And so Betty at the end of the summer,
maybe because she's feeling hurt, she hooks up with someone
else and Mac finds out and ends the relationship. And
so this is a huge blow for Betty. It only
gets worse when school starts. It's her senior year, and
for one reason or another, she doesn't get cast in
the school play. And like I said, she wanted to
be an actress. It's like a part of her personality.

(17:47):
It's a really big deal to her.

Speaker 1 (17:48):
Also, it's where the kids who dump along other places go.
A theater department is like, that's where it's at if
you're not a jock and you're not a cheerleader. Right, yeah,
I can't. I have rehearsal. That's how we cope.

Speaker 3 (18:02):
I wish I had known that I'm also not a
good actress, but I still have been there.

Speaker 2 (18:06):
Right, they would have accepted me.

Speaker 1 (18:08):
You would have done great in there.

Speaker 2 (18:10):
I could have built sets. You know, you love a.

Speaker 3 (18:13):
Black turtle neck.

Speaker 1 (18:14):
You would have been great.

Speaker 3 (18:17):
So it sounds like this kind of like just kind
of brings her down in a way that it sounds
like as someone with depression. She gets really depressed. Things
get worse at home and her friends. I'll say that
things have gotten pretty bad. Her father very religious devote Baptists.

Speaker 2 (18:36):
But he takes it to the next level.

Speaker 3 (18:38):
He goes into her room and reads her diary and
finds out about all the trace she's had, and it
sounds like her father is at least verbally abusive, and
her mother is passive about it, as that's the most
we kind of know about it.

Speaker 2 (18:52):
But by the winter, Betty.

Speaker 3 (18:54):
Is telling classmates that she wants to die today. Of course,
as I said, this would be taken seriously, you would
hope and she'd get some mental health help. But at
nineteen sixty one, everyone in the community just kind of
chalks it up to Betty being dramagmatic. Of course, right,
She spends the next several months telling multiple classmates that
she wants to end her life and asks them.

Speaker 2 (19:15):
To help her to do so, which is such a
cry for help. It's like yeah, not even.

Speaker 1 (19:21):
Yeah, it's like people need you need to be you
need the skills and the communication. So you're a teenager
and there's another teenager telling you a really scary thing
that like what do you do? You laugh it off,
you freak out, you don't know what to.

Speaker 3 (19:35):
Do, right, And so it sounds like no one actually
believes that she's going to go through with her plan.
And then on March twentieth, nineteen sixty one, Betty's at
school and she runs into that summer X and she
says to him, quote, it's been nice knowing you. And
when he asked her what she's talking about, she says,
she's going to talk Mac into killing her.

Speaker 2 (19:55):
What she says.

Speaker 3 (19:57):
Two days later, Betty gets a ride home from Immers
from rehearsals for the school play, but she's not in,
but it sounds like maybe she was a stage manager
or doing sets or something from a classmate named Ike,
and she suggests he comes back half an hour later
and she'll sneak back out to meet him, and she
tells him, she tells this guy Ike that Mac has
agreed to kill her. And Ike is like, there's no

(20:20):
way she's serious. Doesn't take it seriously. I think we
have a photo of Mac and Betty actually, oh, I know,
and she loves it.

Speaker 1 (20:27):
She's gorgeous. Also, like it's always that thing where it's
like when people tell you and it feels like everyone
that ever went to high school, it's just like, oh,
it's miserable. It sucked in this way. Here's why I
think I wasn't good. People didn't like me. And then
it's like it's like, why wouldn't anyone not like you?

Speaker 4 (20:46):
Right?

Speaker 1 (20:46):
Like that that kind of thing where we're just like, yes,
that's a teenage.

Speaker 3 (20:49):
Dream couple right there, right.

Speaker 2 (20:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:52):
Meanwhile, I had the most fucked up bangs and I
plucked this eyebrow back to here. I had a lot
going against me, but I did have the theater.

Speaker 2 (21:03):
She had the theater I did, so she uh.

Speaker 3 (21:08):
At ten point thirty that night, she sneaks out of
her house, meets Ike, and then Mac drives up to
where they are, and Ike is so sure that Betty
had been joking about Mac killing her that he doesn't
even stop her from getting out of the car and
going with him. He says that Betty turns over her
turns over her shoulder, as she's leaving and says, quote,

(21:29):
I've got to call his bluff even if he kills me.
So from Ike's perspective, it sounds like the scenario Betty
is imagining is from one of one which Mac doesn't
actually go through with it. Who knows what everyone what
was going through everyone's mind. But unfortunately, for the rest
of the story, the only perspective we have, and the

(21:51):
only version we have is Max and Betty's parents report. So,
Betty's parents report her missing the next morning. Excuse me, Wow,
it's really terrible on stage to do that look embarrassing.

Speaker 1 (22:06):
You'll work it out by the end of this tour.
You'll never do it again.

Speaker 3 (22:10):
I wasn't in theater class. I don't know how to
silently burp.

Speaker 1 (22:13):
Dude, just push it down and silently fart. It's not true,
it's not true.

Speaker 2 (22:25):
Can you tell?

Speaker 1 (22:26):
Why is this so hard? It's so weird. We do
it all the time, and we like doing it hard.

Speaker 3 (22:31):
It's really intense, especially when you're going through perimenopause.

Speaker 1 (22:36):
Yeah, that's a different that's a difference. Six years later,
this time, menopause is upon us, ladies and gentlemen.

Speaker 3 (22:43):
Six years late ago, I was in my thirties. Still,
who is she? That feels so good?

Speaker 6 (22:48):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (22:48):
Was she?

Speaker 1 (22:49):
Do you want me to do that while you.

Speaker 3 (22:51):
Talk to me?

Speaker 2 (22:52):
I want some Oh my, I'm wearing like velvet gown?
What the fuck?

Speaker 1 (22:58):
Polyester? Like the hottest thing you could be wearing.

Speaker 2 (23:01):
Spank.

Speaker 3 (23:01):
Yes, it's happening. Yeah, thank you. You will appreciate you. Okay,
and we're back.

Speaker 1 (23:09):
So Betty, all of that would have been edited out
of the regular podcast. So just like now, we just
have to do it.

Speaker 2 (23:14):
In front it does it not? Oh she's a fan.

Speaker 1 (23:16):
Oh do you want that fan? Yeah, we'll take the fan.
Thanks so nice.

Speaker 2 (23:22):
You're an angel.

Speaker 1 (23:24):
It's a fan from Mulan Rouge.

Speaker 3 (23:26):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (23:27):
But now you're gonna be sweating.

Speaker 3 (23:28):
You don't have a fan, No, you're okay, she's a
sweater on, so I think she's okay. Thank you.

Speaker 2 (23:33):
Oh my god. That was just that's great, awesome.

Speaker 1 (23:37):
What a look too?

Speaker 3 (23:38):
Do I mean?

Speaker 1 (23:40):
This look is coming together? Snap it out, slay slay,
slay bitch, okay and death drop right in the front
of this.

Speaker 3 (23:55):
Come on, Okay. The drag a lungs are angry.

Speaker 1 (24:00):
They're like, what is this fucking thing?

Speaker 3 (24:02):
Happening.

Speaker 1 (24:03):
Don't get it.

Speaker 3 (24:04):
People over forty should not be on stage.

Speaker 2 (24:08):
Why is this happening.

Speaker 1 (24:11):
We're here to fight for the sweaty bitches that right,
you know, Texas Austin gets it.

Speaker 2 (24:19):
So okay, back into the shit.

Speaker 3 (24:23):
They report her missing, and the police quickly pull out
her classmates for questioning, including tell the some that tell
them that the last time they saw her, she was
getting into Ma's car and that you know, things were
not going well with her.

Speaker 2 (24:36):
And police questioned Mac.

Speaker 3 (24:38):
He claims that he picked Betty up like Ike said,
but that he dropped her back off at her house
at midnight without waiting to see if she got in,
which we know you guys don't fucking do in Texas,
right Like, It's very rude. This obviously is suspicious to
investigators for that very reason. And she was wearing she
had snuck out of her house, so she was wearing
like pajamas and like a duster robe and so, and

(25:02):
they're skeptical that he would leave a girl standing on
her porch and her pajamas. And they're also skeptical that
she would have gone back through the front door, because
when you.

Speaker 2 (25:10):
Sneak out, you have to sneak back in.

Speaker 1 (25:12):
Usually hopefully through a window.

Speaker 3 (25:14):
Hopefully as a window that's not too high. Yeah, I
the thought that the window I used to have to
sneak in and out of I think too like back
to now, I could have brokera a fucking neck.

Speaker 4 (25:24):
It's insane.

Speaker 1 (25:25):
How was it? Second story?

Speaker 2 (25:26):
Second story?

Speaker 3 (25:27):
And then you had a leap to a landing that
was like over the shed, so it probably wasn't very
sturdy to begin with. I could have fallen right through it,
and then you had to leap back into the door,
into the window.

Speaker 1 (25:40):
All that on drugs. Yeah, we all do a lot
of things, and we all have and it's fine, it's
really fun.

Speaker 2 (25:47):
And then you'd get a podcast.

Speaker 1 (25:49):
Yeah, that's right. If you do enough for those things,
you get a podcast.

Speaker 3 (25:55):
So so she had to sneak back in, so probably
didn't go to the front door. And after a forty
five minute interrogation, the whole story comes out. He says
that Betty had been begging him like others at school,
to kill her, and he said he finally agreed to it,
and that she this is his story, selected a twelve
gage shotgun and that he did it. He admits it

(26:18):
in nineteen sixty one, Like.

Speaker 2 (26:19):
What the fuck?

Speaker 1 (26:20):
What I mean?

Speaker 3 (26:22):
He brings police to the land that his father uses
for hunting, about twenty five miles out and there he
leads them to a pond and they please see that
there's blood on the ground, and they ask him to
retrieve her body. He takes off his leather jacket and
all his clothes, goes into the water and pulls her
body shore.

Speaker 1 (26:41):
I know, because the idea. We have to entertain this
idea too. The mac has been pulled into.

Speaker 2 (26:46):
This idea, so I want to Yeah.

Speaker 1 (26:50):
But there is a horrible consideration that this is a
person who is trying to just give a person what
they want because they are begging for it. Like that's yes,
it's a crazy consideration.

Speaker 3 (27:01):
What a horrible situation, right right, And like you'd hope
the first thing they do is like go get helped.

Speaker 1 (27:07):
Do something, tell one other person.

Speaker 3 (27:09):
Right, Yeah, he said that it's just awful.

Speaker 2 (27:14):
She she chose the spot, she was like into it.
She gave him a kiss and then he shot her.

Speaker 3 (27:24):
One of Betty's close friends said that it was always
abundantly clear that Betty truly didn't want to die, and
that Betty was bluffing, trying to get Mac to tell
her that she loved she was loved and wanted by him.
This friend says, quote, I always believed Max's script was
I'll teach her a lesson.

Speaker 2 (27:40):
She'll be so scared at how close we came to
doing this.

Speaker 3 (27:43):
She will grow up and stop the dramatic, the dramatics,
and that Betty's thought was, she thinks Betty's thought was
when Max he's how miserable I am and how much
I love him, he'll realize that we should be together.
So just teenage decisions. Horrifying redirection. Yeah, so something terribly

(28:04):
flawed led him to step over the line and shoot.
And so at that point, A highway patrolman who was
present at the scene says, quote, it didn't move him
when he pulled her body out of the water, or
when he said that he put a shotgun.

Speaker 2 (28:19):
Pete had put a shot under her head.

Speaker 3 (28:21):
It was as cold blooded and premeditated as it could be.

Speaker 1 (28:25):
So this so the authorities think that he did do
it like wanted to do it.

Speaker 3 (28:30):
It sounds like they didn't see any remorse and didn't
show any fear or regret, is what they think. Mac
is charged with Betty's murder, But it sounds like he
gets out on parole in the beginning because he goes
back to school and around town and he doesn't experience
any negative impacts to his social standing. He still goes
to parties. Remember he was, like, you know, football player, popular.

(28:54):
He goes to parties, he goes to he still dates girls,
still still him. And the attitude around town by everyone
except for Betty's close friends, is that she tricked Mac
into killing her, so they have sympathy for him, And
you know, her friends don't believe it at all, and

(29:14):
you know, maybe who knows, But in nineteen sixty one,
you know, the mentality was so different, of course, and
just as Betty was never offered any kind of resources
when she was asking classmates to kill her, no mental
health resources were offered to the students at Odessa High
School in the aftermath of her murder, Mac is charged
and his case goes to trial a year later, in

(29:36):
February of a senior year of high school. At the time,
this is without about the biggest crime story in Texas
in decades. The press gives it the name kiss and
Kill murder, and it's a huge pool of jury selection,
So there's like hundreds of teenagers showing up to the
trial to watch it and just people are obsessed with it.

(29:58):
Most people expect Mac to be convicted because he admitted
to shooting Betty, and what winds up happening is that
his lawyers mount a temporary insanity defense and he takes
the stand saying he deeply regrets his actions, but at
the moment he was convinced he was doing the right thing.
And in the end, after eleven hours of deliberation, the

(30:18):
jury finds Mac not guilty. The prosecutor tries to appeal
a decision, but the verdict is upheld and Mac goes
on to live a very normal life, remaining in Odessa,
and dies at the age of seventy five in twenty nineteen.

Speaker 1 (30:32):
I know like what I mean, Yeah, this is this
is an insane story. I've never heard this, and I mean, just.

Speaker 3 (30:43):
Like imagine being on that jury, Like how do you
how do you make a last decision?

Speaker 1 (30:50):
If you read this story in the news, Like if
I did, I would absolutely go to that courthouse because
I'd be like, what is going on? Like how are
they even arguing?

Speaker 2 (30:58):
Right?

Speaker 1 (30:59):
What are the detail this and how are they arguing? Right?

Speaker 3 (31:02):
Right? Yeah, So, as I said, Betty's cousin wrote, Shelton
wrote this, wrote the memoir.

Speaker 2 (31:10):
While he was writing.

Speaker 3 (31:11):
In two thousand and one, he visits Odessa High School
and by that point a lot of Betty's story had
been lost to time and the students don't really.

Speaker 2 (31:19):
Know the details.

Speaker 3 (31:20):
But Betty's ghost is like a big deal at Odessa
High School, Like there's tales of it everywhere. So some
believe that if you drive up to the side of
the school auditorium and blink your lights, she'll appear. And
they talk about her being in the auditorium where the
theater was. That's like where she remains because she wanted

(31:42):
to be so you can see her ghosts there. Others
think you can see her in the sports field, and
a teacher says, quote there's even a propriety dispute between
athletics and theater about whose ghosts she is.

Speaker 1 (31:57):
He says, I, okay, that's okay, that shouldn't be going on.
Let's settle that dispute and just say it's everybody's fucking ghost.
What are you doing?

Speaker 2 (32:07):
And I mean there could be more than one ghosts, right.

Speaker 1 (32:09):
I mean she belongs to everyone.

Speaker 3 (32:12):
Yeah, well this person said that I can settle that one.

Speaker 2 (32:16):
She belongs to the theater. Oh oh, it's kind of sweet.

Speaker 3 (32:19):
That they like claim her, you know, yeah maybe. And
Rachel the Murderino, who doesn't listen anymore, said quote, I
graduated from Odessa High School. Betty is a fixture in
the culture of the school, where kids go on Betty
Hunt's late at night in around campus, where they hope

(32:39):
to see her in the windows of the auditorium peering
out over the school. Theater productions tend to ask for
Betty's blessing so everything goes smoothly as.

Speaker 2 (32:48):
Well before their new play, so she's.

Speaker 3 (32:51):
Remembered and the your students say, sometimes doors closed mysteriously,
or furniture moves mysteriously, stage lights like.

Speaker 2 (32:59):
Blink on and off.

Speaker 3 (33:00):
If you say the name Betty, sometimes you hear unaccounted
for footsteps crossing the stage, and her presence is always
talked about fondly at Ardessa High School. Betty is now
beloved and that is the story of the Kiss and
Kill Murder.

Speaker 1 (33:17):
Wow, wow, so heavy, thank you, incredible, incredible, wild I'm
going to take a left turn now.

Speaker 3 (33:37):
Pleez, Why don't I just talked him to the fan
and not the microphone.

Speaker 1 (33:42):
You got to take those theater classes, I swear to God. Okay, well,
I'm going to tell you a story that's very different,
and it kind of is about I think the simplest
way to boil it down is like nerds for texts,
Texas nerds, right, Okay. So it starts in nineteen seventy

(34:06):
nine when a twenty seven year old rare books dealer
in Austin named Tom Taylor gets what he thinks is
this golden opportunity, a chance to buy a valuable document
at a very low price, a copy of the Texas
Declaration of Independence.

Speaker 3 (34:22):
Huh.

Speaker 2 (34:22):
You guys have your own.

Speaker 1 (34:23):
Yuh. These are a very independent group of people. Oh yeah,
and they liked things big.

Speaker 3 (34:30):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
So for anyone who isn't from the state or who
might need a refresher as to why Texas has its
own declaration of independence, that's me.

Speaker 3 (34:41):
Oh yeah, Karen the scholar, you're gonna tell us tell
us everything.

Speaker 1 (34:44):
Yeap, yes, what okay? That's because Texas used to be
a part of Mexico until it declared independence in eighteen
thirty six. You got it, which was the same year
that the Declaration of Independence was published, and it was

(35:05):
an independent The state was an independent republic for nearly
ten years after breaking away from Mexico before joining the
United States in good jo, Yes, Texas, fucking she knew,

(35:26):
she knew we were going to ask. That was incredible?

Speaker 3 (35:29):
Did it? Oh? Wait, it really is, Mulan Rouge, it is.
She was making it up like, oh, it's so, it's red.

Speaker 1 (35:37):
You just reading, just reading like I always do. And
then the next thing I wrote was history lesson over.
So the seller who approaches Tom to sell this is
asking for eleven thousand dollars for his copy of the
Texas Declaration of Independence, which would be around give it

(35:57):
a whirl.

Speaker 2 (35:58):
What sev seventy nine to eleven thousand is going.

Speaker 3 (36:01):
To be sixty eight thousand and fifty. Oh, by the way,
that we're retiring this this tour, which.

Speaker 1 (36:08):
Decided because Georgia keeps saying that I refuse.

Speaker 2 (36:13):
I just hate it.

Speaker 3 (36:14):
It's never We're never right, disappointing every time.

Speaker 1 (36:18):
That's kind of why I love it.

Speaker 2 (36:19):
That's fine, that sounds like the podcast.

Speaker 1 (36:21):
Yeah, it's like that's us.

Speaker 3 (36:22):
We're just disappointing, but we love it.

Speaker 1 (36:24):
Disappointing. We're never really right, but we love it. So
while Tom's specialty is actually English literature, he knows enough
about rare the rare items business that he's willing to
bet that he can resell this copy for a way
higher price. And so he buys it. And then he
gets win that there's a group of men who have
raised enough money to buy a copy of the United

(36:46):
States Declaration of Independence. You've heard of that the Nicholas
Cage one, because they want to display it in Dallas.
So Tom talks these men into buying his copy of
the Texas Declaration of Independence to like, get the same
frame and go right next to it.

Speaker 3 (37:04):
Twins twinsy's.

Speaker 1 (37:09):
They agree on the price of twenty thousand dollars. All right,
that's a profit and which in today's money might.

Speaker 3 (37:16):
Be sixty eight thousand dollars. Now you don't do the
same mode because it was okay, eighty two thousand dollars
ninety very close. Okay.

Speaker 1 (37:26):
But first, obviously these men want to check the Texas
Declaration of Independence's authenticity. Sure, so they compare Tom's version
of it. I say, Texas Declaration of Independence. In this story,
about one hundred times. Let's call it the td the
TDI TDI.

Speaker 3 (37:44):
There you go.

Speaker 1 (37:45):
That sounds like one of those technical colleges you go to.
There's commercials for it, and I went to TDI and
now I have a job. So they compare Tom's TDI
against the copies that are held right here in Austin
at the University of Texas.

Speaker 3 (38:02):
Okay, so like there's legit, So there's a legit one.
Then they could be like like pull them up next
to each other.

Speaker 1 (38:09):
Yes, exactly, there was the original and then they made copies.

Speaker 3 (38:13):
Got it.

Speaker 1 (38:13):
I'll go into that later. But if I guess the
amount of copies and the details, I'll be wrong. She'll
be right, but I'll be wrong.

Speaker 3 (38:22):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (38:22):
So the only difference that they can find when they
compare it is that the text on Palm's copy looks
a little bit blurry compared to the rest. But when
the original documents were printed back in now eighteen thirty six,
because when they were printed, it's when they were printed,

(38:43):
they printed one thousand total, the printers is she arguing,
She's like, that's actually incorrect, and I wish you wouldn't
continue with the story until you get it right. The
printers that made them had to issue a public apology
for inconsistencies and quality because the original printers they had
to print those amid actual battles with Mexican troops, so

(39:07):
sometimes they were in the dark, they were breaking, they
were like setting up and breaking down the printing presses.

Speaker 3 (39:12):
They can't take a break, No, like a couple months
off or something from war. No, they don't let it.

Speaker 1 (39:18):
They just won't let you. So they had to move
them from place to place. And so actually the blurry
text kind of makes it seem like they're legit. And
so they these men pay Tom twenty thousand dollars, and
not long after, Tom gets a chance to buy yet
another copy of the Texas Declaration of Independence, this time

(39:39):
for fifteen thousand dollars. And now this feels extremely lucky
because that first sale went so well. So Tom jumps
on this sale too, and he winds up reselling this
copy for thirty thousand.

Speaker 2 (39:52):
Dollars ninety nine.

Speaker 4 (39:57):
Five.

Speaker 2 (39:58):
See, just it's never set.

Speaker 1 (40:00):
It's not satisfying. So that was kind of just irritating.
Then lo and behold, Tom finds out about a third opportunity.

Speaker 3 (40:08):
No, I think we're all onto him.

Speaker 1 (40:10):
Yeah, so this one, it's for thirty he resells it
for thirty three. We don't have to worry about what
happens to in today's money. But this is when Tom
starts to question his luck. There were only a thousand
copies of the original printed before nineteen seventy. There were
only five known original copies left, okay, And so he's like,

(40:34):
I run across three of the five.

Speaker 3 (40:36):
That's insane.

Speaker 1 (40:37):
So he starts to worry if what he has bought
and sold are fake, and if so, who is making them?
And this is the story of Tom Taylor's investigation into
the Techsana artifacts.

Speaker 2 (40:48):
Wow, yes or no?

Speaker 3 (40:51):
He should have just walked away and you know it well,
enjoyed they bought it, not my problem, just never thinks
about it again.

Speaker 1 (41:01):
But that's the thing. He's a good guy, Okay. So
the sources for this story that we used are an
article from the Great Texas Monthly entitled Forgery Texas Style
by a writer named Gregory Curtis, and then an article
from The New York Times called Lone Star Fakes by
Lisa Belkin, and an article from the Antiques road Shows

(41:24):
subpage I Love their website called who faked the Texas
Independent Documents by Sarah Kay Elliott. You know when antiques
roadshows getting in on this ship, it is serious. The
rest are in our future show notes that don't exist
right now. So we're going to talk now about what
I said there, which is Texana the Texana Artifacts. So

(41:47):
Texana is I've never heard of it. It's basically anything
reminiscent of the culture of Texas. So like the delicious
text mex cuisine I've been eating, or Honky Tonts, or
your cowboy boots or chick bingo, chicken shit bingo in
the afternoon.

Speaker 3 (42:04):
You don't know how sad we were when we found
out it's Sunday's only.

Speaker 1 (42:08):
Oh I know, that was one of the best days
of our life being a chicken chick bingo. Yeah, it
was epic.

Speaker 2 (42:14):
I don't think anyone knows what we're talking about. We did, Yeah,
they do.

Speaker 3 (42:19):
You guys have chicken shit Bingo is fucking Austin so awesome.

Speaker 1 (42:23):
Jealous. One of the other one of these other things
that I wanted to name is Willie Nelson getting Stone,
but it's too late now because it's okay. We needed
to have a chicken ship bingo moment. Either way, this
is basically a catch all for historic artifacts or collectibles

(42:43):
like old maps, personal items owned by Texas's forefathers. So
for decades following the formation of modern Texas, there isn't
much interest in these kinds of items from collectors or
rare items dealers as a whole, so even very important
artifacts like the Texas Declaration of Independence are not considered

(43:05):
particularly valuable. The first notable Texana collector is a New
Jersey oil businessman and a history buff named Thomas Streeter.
So he takes a lot of business trips out to
Texas in the twenties and thirties, and he buys a
bunch of books and artifacts, and he is actually credited

(43:25):
with gathering the first significant collection of Texana in the world.
But in nineteen fifty seven, when Streeter offers to sell
his entire collection to the University of Texas, interest in
Texana is so low they don't want it. No thanks,
We're not interested in our own history or anything that's been.

Speaker 3 (43:45):
Going on here, oh man.

Speaker 1 (43:47):
So he winds up selling everything to Yale boo. Even
the Texas state government doesn't care much about the historical
documents in their possession land grants, meeting minutes, even the
original manuscript of the famous Texas Revolutionary era victory or
death letter that William B. Travis wrote, which is the

(44:10):
namesake of the county that we're in right now. Those
are all put on display without any security measures. And
in the sixties, countless historical artifacts are stolen from public institutions.

Speaker 3 (44:24):
It's like going into a diner and like taking the
solemn pepper shaker and like, eyoink, I'll take that, But it's.

Speaker 1 (44:29):
The Texas Declaration of motherfucking Independence. No one cares. They're
just gone. People are like, I thought we had that
thing up here, and actually, could we take a look
because we can see what it would have looked like. Yeah,
it's just like, who stole my big thing?

Speaker 3 (44:47):
I could have sworn this wasn't an empty frame yesterday.

Speaker 1 (44:51):
I guess you just replace it with any old other
newspaper front page or something. You're just like, unless you've
got your readers on, you have no idea. But then
Texas's economic boom and the growth of urban sprawl. I
don't know if you heard about this, but Texas got
zuper rich on oil a little after this, So these

(45:12):
old traditional rural ways of life start disappearing across the state, right,
and as they do, the older generations start to pass away,
and there's this new sense of nostalgia for the old
way of Texas living, and people get more interested in
finding and collecting Texana and the value of these items
start going up and up, and as they do, rare

(45:33):
items dealers in the state start prioritizing Texana. It becomes
more and more profitable.

Speaker 3 (45:38):
Heading into the seventies.

Speaker 1 (45:40):
Now there's security guards standing in front of that framed
piece of paper. So in nineteen eighty six, a few
years after Tom Taylor's first declaration score, his suspicions are confirmed.
And so let's take can we take a look at
Tom Taylor. This is him in twenty twenty one. Yeah,

(46:01):
he likes books, so honest history, he loves the past.

Speaker 3 (46:05):
And he's honest. He doesn't take the money and run.

Speaker 1 (46:07):
But he also based on that shirt party's party totally.
He's like, make no mistake, I will be at Chicken
Chip Bingo this Sunday, meet me there. Okay, but this
is nineteen eighty six, Okay, So this is the year
that Tom learns a friend and fellow printer was asked

(46:29):
to authenticate yet another original copy of the TDI, and
it had recently come up on the rare items market,
and so his friend started comparing the copy against one
housed at the University of Texas, and at first glanced
they seemed identical, but then he spotted a crucial difference.

(46:50):
The text on his copy seemed much narrower than the original.
So Tom's friend, like any good printer, knows that ink
doesn't rink over time, especially when it has led in it,
which is what they used in the back then in
the eighteen thirties. So the only explanation was that this
document he was authenticating was printed way after and it

(47:15):
was a fake. So now Tom decides he's going to
devote his time to becoming the go to guy when
it comes to authenticating the Texas Declaration of the Independence,
which is quite a pastime.

Speaker 3 (47:27):
I mean, you're at a party and you ask someone
what they do and they say that, how do you respond?
It's like.

Speaker 1 (47:34):
You have you watched Real Housewives?

Speaker 3 (47:37):
It's also good.

Speaker 1 (47:41):
So he hunts down the twenty ish known copies, the
ones that are on display and also in private collections,
and he forensically analyzes them, and he discovers there are
actually ten, not five. Has previously thought that our genuine
copies of the TDI, which means about half of them
are fakes, so including two copies that Tom bought and

(48:05):
sold himself. So he's a part of it. Oh shit, Yeah,
but he didn't like that.

Speaker 2 (48:10):
No, don't make me a criminal.

Speaker 1 (48:12):
No, no, no, for sure, but they're really good fakes.
So the people in the institutions that have been duped
by these fakes include several universities here in Texas and beyond,
the Dallas Public Library, and even the private collection of
former Governor Bill Clements. But got some Clements heads in

(48:35):
the house tonight. Yeah. So Tom starts finding very subtle
tells in these fakes, like inaccuracies and text dimensions stay
with me, use of inks and fonts that don't exist back.

Speaker 3 (48:50):
Then, someone did copy paste and like shrunk the fond Yeah,
come on.

Speaker 1 (48:54):
Guys, come on, it just says Yahoo at the bottom.
And there's even small typos in the face.

Speaker 2 (49:02):
No.

Speaker 1 (49:03):
So, by looking through sales records, Tom's able to trace
these face fakes back to these three dealers who are
very active in the seventies. They I'm going to introduce
you now to these three rare like antake through these
Texana dealers, starting with a man named John Jenkins. So

(49:24):
we take a look at John Jenkins.

Speaker 3 (49:26):
Oh oh, we got a lot of chips in front
of him. Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, that's a fucking time
and place. That's like you that cigarette and those nails. Yep.
Over that lady over there. Fuck yeah, she's.

Speaker 1 (49:42):
Like she's raised raise you got it, you got a
good hand.

Speaker 3 (49:46):
Raise you should raise a stay stay.

Speaker 1 (49:53):
He's winning this chips. Yeah, okay. John Jenkins grew up
in Beaumont, Texas, and it's great, right, It's so awesome,
all the chips and hats. He takes an early interest
in rare objects. He like as a kid, makes money
selling rare coins, and then when he graduates from UT

(50:14):
he starts his own business selling rare coins and books
and historical documents. But he's also a big Texas personality.
He's fond of Stetson's as we saw alert calligator skinned
cowboy boots like you like, and even mink coats like
I like what he wears mink coats.

Speaker 3 (50:36):
Oh shit, yeah, I didn't put that together.

Speaker 1 (50:38):
Put that whole look together. The alligator boots and a
mink coat, nice stets on, probably in nice one of
those brown cigarettes. It's real long yeah, and some barbecue.

Speaker 3 (50:50):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (50:51):
He sits behind a massive desk in an equally massive
mahogany chair decorated with snake and dragon carvings, and he
spends his off hours, as we saw in the photo,
gambling in Vegas under the fake name Austin Squatty.

Speaker 2 (51:08):
Does that mean something we don't know?

Speaker 1 (51:10):
Perhaps? No, they say no Squatty, Austin Squatty. I'm gonna
check into hotels with that name from now on. You'll
never find me. He's a high roller, regularly winning and
losing enormous amounts of money at the tables. So another

(51:31):
dealer is named William Simpson. He's far less eccentric, but
equally successful at selling his collectibles. He opens his shop
in Houston in nineteen sixty four, and he's selling cusa.
He sells.

Speaker 3 (51:45):
What that's it?

Speaker 1 (51:46):
Am I wrong? Or did that sound like a boo
and a yea at the same time?

Speaker 7 (51:51):
So?

Speaker 1 (51:51):
Whose side are we on?

Speaker 2 (51:54):
We're neutral? We're neutral.

Speaker 1 (51:55):
Yeah, we love everybody equally. He sells things like crystals,
linens and furniture. But as Texana becomes more popular, he
jumps on that bandwagon and he starts holding auctions that
are packed and profitable. Half the time people are buying
from rarit these dealers like Jenkins and Simpson, but they
aren't collectors or enthusiasts. They're usually other rarities dealers who

(52:20):
want to get something for less and then turn it
around and sell it for a bigger profit. That's how
popular it has become. And that's what Tom Taylor was doing.
And this makes very highly competitive industry full of gossip
and clickiness and enemies and frenemies, just like the Real Housewives.
Having a good eye and good taste is one thing,

(52:41):
but without the right people's skills, a dealer could be
dismissed as kind of a joke. And that's exactly how
both Jenkins and Simpson come to view the man linked
to all the dupes Tom Taylor keeps finding. And that
man's name is ce Dorman David, and I think we
have a picture of Hill.

Speaker 2 (53:01):
Got He looks like your new stepdad.

Speaker 3 (53:03):
You know what I mean? Kids, I met a man.
I don't want you to meet your new stepdad. Yeah,
you know.

Speaker 1 (53:12):
Yeah, there's a bit of a He's like, I'm going
to stop dying my hair, but I'm not going to
stop dying my eyebrows.

Speaker 3 (53:21):
That vibe, it's a look.

Speaker 1 (53:24):
There's an amazing picture of him that I think Molly
didn't clear for like we couldn't clear it. But it's
black and white. He's kind of like this. It looks
like he wrote a book about Carl Jung or something.
So he's kind of like this, and he's got a
turtleneck and a blazer on and he's like over to
the side. And that's the last picture I saw. So
I forgot this is the picture. This has a true

(53:45):
AI quality where it's yeah, but anyway, where he is So.
He was born in nineteen thirty seven in Houston to
very very wealthy parents. He grows up. He's a tall,
imposing man. He has a reputation as a both a womanizer.
He ends up having applot for the woman absolutely because

(54:07):
you know why he has seven wives over the span
of his life.

Speaker 3 (54:11):
Seriously, Yes, I wasn't wrong, step Dad, stepdad, Stepdad's yes. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (54:18):
They just keep having to go here's your new stuff, Dad,
roll it through.

Speaker 3 (54:23):
He keeps taking me to the tracks when he tells Bom,
we're actually going to the mall.

Speaker 2 (54:27):
It takes me to the tracks to bet on horses.

Speaker 1 (54:30):
You know, he keeps asking me to pluck his eyebrows
for him.

Speaker 3 (54:34):
It's cheap and wrong.

Speaker 1 (54:37):
Obviously, he's an incredibly you know, charismatic and charming man
because he marries and divorces women.

Speaker 3 (54:43):
So yeah, you gotta do it for at least a minute.

Speaker 1 (54:45):
Yeah, high five, Okay. But he also has a reputation
of being a real wild card. There's a story that
everyone tells about David wanting to go buy cigarettes and
he drives his car through the front of the store,
Like what the fuck. Yeah, He's just like, I can't
bother to park. I gotta get in there.

Speaker 2 (55:07):
Just go all the way.

Speaker 3 (55:08):
I guess. Yeah, do you want those cigarettes?

Speaker 1 (55:10):
Make those people clean it up. So he's also known
for his rich knowledge of Texas history and his great
eye for artifacts. When he's in his twenties, he starts
traveling through Texas through the South then into Mexico, aggressively
collecting texana and other rare items, and by the mid
sixties he opens a shop in Houston called the Bookman.

(55:32):
No liar, You're lying. It's a beautiful store filled with
an impressive collection, but it actually looks so ostentatious that
it intimidates customers and people don't go there. What it's
like too fancy.

Speaker 3 (55:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (55:46):
Yeah, So the store doesn't make much money, but David's rich.
He's a rich Nepo baby, so he doesn't care, and
he just keeps running that business.

Speaker 2 (55:57):
And marrying those women.

Speaker 1 (55:58):
Yep. He's like, well, if no one comes in and
buys something today, I'm going to have to get a
divorce and remarry someone else. That's it, Yeah, I have to.
It does bother him though, that his fellow dealers, John
Jenkins and William Simpson keep besting him in the deals
that they're making, especially Jenkins. They trade with each other often,

(56:20):
and because David has the better eye, he actually finds
and gets the most valuable items first in his collection.
But then Jenkins is such a masterful negotiator he always
seems to successfully lowball David, who is a little bit gullible.
So David's all about the like, this is the real
deal and the legit thing, and I paid this much
money for it, and then Jenkins is like, waits until

(56:42):
no one else makes an offer and he's like, fine,
I'll give you half, and that keeps happening. So what
starts out as a strong, you know, working friendship sours
and these men become enemies. But even beyond Jenkins, it's
really the dealing community at large that David has a
problem with. He has a well known habit of overspending.
This is what I just said. So it's like he

(57:04):
basically outprices himself.

Speaker 3 (57:06):
You can't do that.

Speaker 1 (57:07):
Because he's like, I'll pay any price for that old
pair of Willie Nelson boots or whatever. People are like, no, sir.
So all the while, David's wild card reputation remains, and
rumors begin to swirl that he's hawking stolen goods at auction.
People suspect he's behind the bulk of the Texana artifacts
that are going missing from Texas libraries.

Speaker 2 (57:28):
And he's just he's the one guy just swooping in and.

Speaker 1 (57:33):
He's like, I got a library card, But you know
what I'm gonna do with it? Not looking at micro
fiesch motherfuckers. I'm doing something else. Of course, David denies this,
but in a kind of wink wink way to people,
he titles one of his so they guess. The sellers
make catalogs of the stuff that they have that people
can buy, and he titles one of his catalogs quote

(57:55):
the bookman offers for sale Texas books from a recent robbery.

Speaker 5 (58:00):
Bro.

Speaker 1 (58:01):
It's just like he's funny, he's charming. He's divorced, he's married,
he's divorced.

Speaker 3 (58:06):
He's doing it all.

Speaker 2 (58:08):
He's got to play it cool though, Like.

Speaker 1 (58:11):
No, because on the next catalog he puts a mocked
up wanted poster with his own face on it.

Speaker 3 (58:17):
He's like, don't do the hard work for the authorities,
you know what I mean, like make them find you.

Speaker 1 (58:22):
I think he's like so rich, he's just bored where
He's just like come on everybody. So around the same time,
he's honing his forgery skills. There's really no one more
suited to create fakes than him, because he deals with
old artifacts for a living. He has all this raw
material and the money to buy it and to like
cut it up. So he like cuts end papers out

(58:45):
of his own antique books to use as the base
for his dupes. He perfects his calligraphy. He's so rich
he can perfect his calligraphy. He even hires a trusted
lithographer lithographer lithographer to enlarge negatives of genuine documents so
he can study every detail, and then he prints versions
of him of them himself using ink he makes out

(59:09):
of candle smoke and linseed oil.

Speaker 3 (59:12):
Fucking impressive as shit. But do something good, right, you know.

Speaker 1 (59:16):
Take those skills, Richie rich and do something good with them. Yeah, no,
he says no. But in May in nineteen seventy one,
on his way to a show around three thousand, oh
no sorry, On his way to show around three thousand
documents to a potential buyer in Waco, David gets stopped
by a Texas ranger and a Texas State archivist.

Speaker 3 (59:36):
What yeah, they have a they can woo, they can
pull you over down here.

Speaker 1 (59:42):
There's a set up a program where archivists drive around
with Texas rangers. Uh huh. Yeah, they've been doing it for.

Speaker 3 (59:51):
Years that I'm baffled.

Speaker 1 (59:53):
Uh huh. So these guys go after him. They accuse
him of stealing the documents he has from the state archives.
The archivist is like, hey, I saw you leave mine.
We saw him leave the back room, and he went
and got himself a ranger and then they pulled him over.
When they look through the documents that he's carrying, they
find a few that are that they believe are stolen,

(01:00:14):
and without any proof, they confiscate the documents. So word
gets around about this, and David's already kind of rocky reputation.
Driving into the cigarette store takes everybody Jesus. He's like,
my wife made me do it. As David's mental as
David's mental health. So he falls into a deep depression

(01:00:37):
and he's already what Maren quoted quoted as he's already
a lover of drugs?

Speaker 3 (01:00:44):
Is that what they call it? Yeah, lover of I
have a different name for that.

Speaker 1 (01:00:47):
A lover of drugs? Is that what you called yourself
when you were doing the drugs.

Speaker 2 (01:00:52):
I'm not an addict. I'm a lover of drugs.

Speaker 1 (01:00:56):
It's more of a passion of mine, you know. So
when he's in this very low state, he decides the
thing that I've told all of you time and again
not to do. He decides to try heroin. What the
fuck true? It's true, never heroin, whatever else you want.

(01:01:16):
I don't care. Fall into a k hole over and
over again. We don't do heroin. We never do Heroin. Okay,
that's the rule. Thank you and thanks for the support.
Thanks for the Heroin support. There's one angry Heroin dealer
in the back, like, thanks a lot. What about my business?

(01:01:38):
I'll find my place and then you'll be sorry. So
in the summer of nineteen seventy one, two men are
arrested in connection with the library and museum thefts that
have been targeting Texana goods, and they waste no time
in implicating David is the mastermind. He really does look
like a mastermind. Totally his mastermind eyebrows. This pretty much

(01:01:59):
confirms those rumors that he was selling stolen items at auctions.
But more than a year passes, he isn't charged with anything.
It's weird that happens to rich people all the time. Anyways. Meanwhile,
his life is unraveling. He is entirely caught up in
this horrible addiction. He is doubling down on his forgeries.

(01:02:19):
On the few occasions where he manages to show up
for business meetings, he is basically very overt about the
fact that he makes fakes. He loses all credibility, his
customers abandoned him, and he ultimately sells the entirety of
his rare Texana goods to none other than his enemy,
John Jenkins, sorry enemy is John Jenkins and William Simpson.

(01:02:41):
And then he unceremoniously retires. And then the year after,
in June of nineteen seventy two, he gets arrested on
drug charges. He's not in custody for long, though, because
he is rich. So oh but no, that actually isn't true.
It's because he jumps bond and he lives on the
lamb for seven fucking years.

Speaker 3 (01:03:01):
Seven years or.

Speaker 1 (01:03:02):
Seven years damn. Yeah, maybe that was on the lamb picture.

Speaker 3 (01:03:07):
Yeah, I feel like you could do that back.

Speaker 2 (01:03:09):
Then a lot easier, Yeah, in these days than today.
Let's try it.

Speaker 1 (01:03:13):
Let's go here, we go goodbye. Eventually, exhausted by life
on the run, he turns himself into police. He just
he hadn't been married in so long that he was like,
come on, you got to get that hit in Texas
in nineteen eighty. He serves a year in prison, he
gets out, and then he cleans his life up. Okay,

(01:03:34):
that's nice. Yeah, and let's here for cleaning your fucking like.

Speaker 3 (01:03:38):
Oh, I mean.

Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
It's a good thing.

Speaker 1 (01:03:41):
It's tough to do. In nineteen eighty, the same year
he turns himself in on those drug charges. That's when
Tom Taylor sells his first Texas Declaration of Independence. So
that's kind of how that storylines kind of meld together.
We now back to that, so Tom begins. So a
few years later, Tom begins his deep investigation into the

(01:04:02):
Texana Dupes, and amid his ongoing investigative work, the two men,
he and David, finally cross paths. Tom sets up a
meeting at David's house and by this point Tom's honearthed
thirteen different fake historical Texas documents that have been forged
over fifty times since nineteen seventy and they're all traceable

(01:04:26):
to Jenkins, Williams and David and poor Tom and his
Hawaiian shirts. Just like I've got a fight for the
justice of documents, good documents, not these goddamn dirty documents.
This is beyond the Texas Declaration of Independence. For example,
Tom digs up a document that David had sold as

(01:04:48):
the authentic announcement of the Founding of Houston, ostensibly from
eighteen thirty six, but it uses a typeface that did.

Speaker 2 (01:04:56):
Not exist at that time.

Speaker 1 (01:04:58):
Sam Sarah I don't fucking think so. But according to Tom,
when he confronts David about these fakes, David just seems
kind of confused. My biggest pet peeve when you're like, hey,
you lied, and the person's like, I'm not sure, you don't.

Speaker 3 (01:05:17):
Know, like when you have to yeah, They just pretend
that they don't even understand the accusation. It's weird. I
don't what are these words mean? You want someone to
be like yeah, motherfucker, like yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:05:30):
Ione in and then he pulls out the catalog with
the want his wanted face. I told you yes, he's
so he doesn't admit to any wrongdoing, but at this
point Tom doesn't need an admission from him. He can
prove these items are fake with irrefutable evidence, and so
he goes public with those findings, and then that story
gets picked up by a New York Times reporter named

(01:05:52):
Lisa Belkin in nineteen eighty nine. So she writes an
article entitled Lone Star Fakes, and it dives into Tom's
crusade to weed out forged documents. And it's especially significant
because it's the first time ce Dorman David publicly admits
to forgery. So in an interview with Belkan, the now
fifty one year old David admits he's directly responsible for

(01:06:15):
the two fake declarations that Tom Taylor sold, and he
even explains how Tom's one genuine copy served as the
template for his later dupes.

Speaker 3 (01:06:25):
You think that makes that one copy more even more valuable.

Speaker 1 (01:06:29):
Yeah, eventually it does. Oh I just no, no, no,
I mean, but in that way, Well, I'll just read
it off this fucking page that I'm on forever. This
is the kind of thing where you know, you really
do wish you had your lines memorized, You're like, and
then Tom went down to the library that that's never
going to happen. So what he would do is, he explains,

(01:06:53):
he photographed the one genuine, he made a negative, he
repaired any visible damage on the magnified copy, created a
zinc plate from the negative, He printed fakes. And then
the way he made that ink that I was saying before,
He collected smoke in a paper bag and mixed the
carbon that attached to the bag with various oils like

(01:07:13):
the linseed oil. That and then the blank paper came
from his edges from his old books.

Speaker 3 (01:07:19):
I mean, that's already ten times smarter. Than I am like,
use that for something good?

Speaker 1 (01:07:24):
He says no, No, he says, sorry, I have to
go get some cigarettes. I'll be right back.

Speaker 2 (01:07:31):
And another wife.

Speaker 1 (01:07:32):
What's your point yet, that's how he met his fifth.

Speaker 2 (01:07:36):
Wife, right. I couldn't do one of those steps. Asked
me to do one of these steps. I'm gonna go
take a nap.

Speaker 1 (01:07:40):
I'd literally be like, sorry, I was looking at my phone.
What do you want me to do again? But in
this interview, David keeps going. He also fesses up to
Belkan about forging dozens of other documents, but he claims
he meant to sell them as known fakes, not pass
them off as genuine an.

Speaker 2 (01:08:01):
I've got to stamp it with fake.

Speaker 1 (01:08:03):
Yeah. Uh. The problem with that is that, of course
David didn't let the buyers know that they were countershit.
So it wasn't like ooops, get that, get that real money,
but you have counterfeit in your heart. So two of
the biggest customers were Jenkins and Simpsons at Simpson's orry,
not the TV show, And of course because he did

(01:08:25):
not like them, it's easy to believe that he targeted
them for revenge. That's why he kind of pulled them
in and made them believe that he had something on
his hands.

Speaker 3 (01:08:34):
Revenge, because if you were that smart, bet he could
just forge money.

Speaker 2 (01:08:38):
I mean right, why not get that?

Speaker 1 (01:08:40):
Yeah, get your little tin type plate or whatever the
thing I was that, just get something going in your
basement to people over.

Speaker 3 (01:08:47):
Yeah, got it?

Speaker 1 (01:08:48):
Because I think it's like he loves the antiques. And
then he wanted to be like the big fish in
this world, and the other two were like, sit down, dummy,
and then he was like, I'll get you right. Then
he's dupe. He's duping them when they think they're duping him.

Speaker 3 (01:09:02):
And they act confused about it and kisses Karen off
Real Housewives.

Speaker 1 (01:09:06):
I mean, I just keep saying it.

Speaker 3 (01:09:09):
We're done with that paragraph.

Speaker 1 (01:09:10):
In all the years since Tom Taylor's investigation first exposed
these Texano forgeries, not one person has been prosecuted for them,
because there's just enough plausible deniability and not enough proof
of criminal intent to bring charges. So the same year
that New York Times article comes out, which is nineteen
eighty nine, forty nine year old John Jenkins is found

(01:09:31):
shot in the head near Bastrup.

Speaker 7 (01:09:34):
What Yes, someone tried to cheer for Bastrup, while others
were upset about a terrible It's very confusing to drag
along this is this whole thing is confusing, and we apologize.

Speaker 1 (01:09:49):
It always has been. It was officially ruled a suicide,
but at the time, Jenkins was being investigated for arson
related to an Ensure Burns fraud scheme, and he'd also
reportedly racked up around a million dollars in gambling debts.
I'm not even going to make you ask, but it
was a million in.

Speaker 3 (01:10:09):
Nineteen eighty nine, one point seven to two.

Speaker 1 (01:10:13):
I don't have it, then yes, by default, then you're right,
you finally win.

Speaker 2 (01:10:19):
Yeah, Yeah, she did it.

Speaker 4 (01:10:21):
She did it.

Speaker 3 (01:10:24):
I love that our research will just give up packway
through that can keep putting this in the calculator.

Speaker 1 (01:10:28):
If you're not going to say it, I'm not going
to put it in. So to this day, some people
do believe that John Jenkins was murdered, either because of
those debts that he had or because his big personality
earned him so many sure. William Simpson, on the other hand,
dies in two thousand and one. The details are very
fuzzy on his cause of death. He remained very low

(01:10:51):
profile compared to everybody else in the story, and then
in twenty thirteen see Dorman. David dies in Houston at
the age of seventy five after spent this is kind
of an incredible like later life story. He spends the
latter part of his life running a business that makes
benches shaped like alligators. Wow, yeah, you.

Speaker 3 (01:11:16):
Don't have a picture now, fuck, couldn't clear it.

Speaker 2 (01:11:20):
You know you probably even want it. I want to know.

Speaker 1 (01:11:22):
I want to see what's here, because you know what
what's I'll describe mine. Okay, my bench looks like Lyle
the crocodile. It's not the same animal. Do not lecture
me on that.

Speaker 3 (01:11:34):
What yours look like? Oh my god, I don't know.
It's not comfortable at all. Whatever, Like you can't take
a nap on it, so it's useless to me.

Speaker 1 (01:11:43):
A load of the ground. Yeah yeah, spiky, spiky, it's
real spiky?

Speaker 3 (01:11:48):
Do do do?

Speaker 1 (01:11:49):
Why did I take my finger off this fucking page? Meanwhile,
Tom Taylor, who is now in his seventies, remains a
devoted bookseller and a master printer in Texas, and after
his investiga into these fakes, he goes back and he
finds the two clients who bought the dupes from him
and he reimburses them.

Speaker 3 (01:12:11):
Are you right?

Speaker 1 (01:12:12):
Not really? Oh my god, that was acting. That was acting,
ladies and shumen.

Speaker 3 (01:12:19):
Wow, that's very honorable.

Speaker 1 (01:12:22):
Yeah, he's the good guy.

Speaker 3 (01:12:23):
What if the guy there, like, I didn't want you
to tell me it was fake. It's fine living the
rest of my life telling all my guests that this
is what real. And I don't want my eleven thousand
dollars in nineteen eighties money.

Speaker 2 (01:12:35):
Back, right.

Speaker 1 (01:12:36):
You know that happened to me right when I got
my house, when I moved into my house. Yeah, my
cousin is my real estate agent, Pete Castro in Los Angeles.
You need if you ever need any help, I did it, guarantee.

Speaker 3 (01:12:48):
Fuck.

Speaker 1 (01:12:49):
I have a new weird nervous tick where I pinched
the end of my nose like that, very weird. Georgia
pointed it out to me the other day, and I
was like, Wow, talk about not wanting to know something
like I'm doing. What Hey, you're just.

Speaker 3 (01:13:05):
Gonna like because also you're gonna wipe all your makeup
off the end of your nose.

Speaker 2 (01:13:08):
Only like that's why.

Speaker 3 (01:13:09):
Really, what I wanted to warry you about is it's
gonna look fucking weird. We just go red nose.

Speaker 1 (01:13:13):
I'm gonna look like that Lady Elaine from Mister Rogers Neighborhood. Yeah,
that's my goal in life. I was just gonna tell
you guys the story. And I may have said this
on the podcast, but we do that all the time,
so go with it. When I moved in my house,
my cousin Pete, they went down they had to get
some official records, and they pulled some records and saw

(01:13:35):
that one of the previous owners of the house was
Charles Chaplin. And so when I had my house warming party,
he gave me a framed like this certificate that said
that was a previous owner. So that was on my
wall where I'm like, fucking take a look at this
Hollywood legend, Like you kind of can understand why people
get into this shit. Sure where it's just like, here's

(01:13:56):
the certificate of authentication, and then this was this was
right before COVID. Then we go into COVID, and then
somewhere near the end of COVID, I finally meet my
next door neighbor and I'm talking to him about Hi,
how are you in the neighborhood and stuff, then I go, oh,
by the way, did you ever meet like the family,
the Chaplain family that lived here? And he goes, oho, Chuck, No, no,

(01:14:17):
they're not related. They're not related. Chuck Chaplain, Chuck Chaplin.
I just had to go into my house and just
like take this little frame thing down and just put
it under the thing.

Speaker 3 (01:14:29):
Oh, I think you should leave it. Still, it's an
even better story now.

Speaker 1 (01:14:33):
I fucking brought every person that walked through my front
door over to that certificate. It was what is it
about that we were just like, I don't know, oh, man,
Charlie Chaplin living in the same house.

Speaker 2 (01:14:49):
When will learn?

Speaker 3 (01:14:50):
You get it? So you get this story and like
how it can just this witch you this?

Speaker 1 (01:14:55):
I will marry and divorce the story seven times.

Speaker 3 (01:14:57):
I love it so much.

Speaker 2 (01:14:59):
I will drive my car through this window of the story.

Speaker 1 (01:15:02):
We'll smoke a cigarette out of the debris of this story.
I love it so much. Ummmm. Tom also publishes a
book called text Fake We Should All Buy It, which
is said to be the most thorough account of this
entire forgery saga.

Speaker 2 (01:15:19):
You'd hope so this.

Speaker 1 (01:15:21):
Version is not, so please read it if you're interested.
It is unclear how Many of c dorm and David's
fakes are still out there today, but when they were
exposed back in the nineties, it was reported that many
institutions didn't take them off their walls and instead put
a little label underneath that said something like this is
a facsimile, which.

Speaker 3 (01:15:41):
I bet at least one person's grandma on this audience
had a fake on accent didn't know it.

Speaker 2 (01:15:47):
Yeah, at least one.

Speaker 1 (01:15:48):
Yeah, honey, look at the Texas Declaration of Independence and
please don't touch it. Honey. Uh, maybe that's what I
should have done. I leave Charliechapple up. This is a festivity.

Speaker 2 (01:16:01):
That's right up, Charlie Chaplin.

Speaker 1 (01:16:06):
Just a little tiny sign that says Karen's a big liar.
She can't stop. According to PBS's Antiques Roadshow, David's fake
Texas Declarations of Independence are so notorious that they can
be worth up to one thousand dollars today from buyers.
So that's what I meant before, where it's like they
got their own little renown kind of what's up with

(01:16:28):
my notes? I don't know, but if you can find
yourself a genuine copy of the Texas Declaration of Independence,
it could net you as much as one million dollars.
And that is the story of Tom Taylor's investigation into
Techsana fates.

Speaker 2 (01:16:45):
We did it, good job. Do we have home hometown time?

Speaker 1 (01:16:57):
I think it's time to do a hometown there's Vince av.

Speaker 3 (01:17:06):
Thank you. We got to give it up for this
crowd tonight.

Speaker 1 (01:17:10):
Yeah, because there was, in fact, my favorite murder themed cocktail.

Speaker 3 (01:17:18):
Oh and it was tequila based. Oh and I didn't
get any reports of any vomit in the.

Speaker 4 (01:17:24):
House to do.

Speaker 1 (01:17:25):
Good job of you guys.

Speaker 2 (01:17:27):
Guy, that's classy.

Speaker 1 (01:17:29):
Not the case. You know, it does lead a vomit,
but Austin can drink. This is ours our route, So
I'm going to be right here, lucidity of whoever.

Speaker 3 (01:17:40):
You Thanks Vince.

Speaker 2 (01:17:42):
Oh and we have a present.

Speaker 3 (01:17:44):
Oh yeah, these were pitched to us by Merch and
we love them.

Speaker 1 (01:17:50):
Nicole and Merch. Did you see her at the merch table?

Speaker 2 (01:17:53):
Oh, it's her first time in Texas? Did you know that?

Speaker 1 (01:17:56):
Are you serious? Say?

Speaker 2 (01:17:57):
Give her a big old Texas hello when you see her.

Speaker 3 (01:18:01):
We have stress stress dogs.

Speaker 1 (01:18:06):
They really work.

Speaker 2 (01:18:07):
Yeah, let's say my favorite murder on them.

Speaker 1 (01:18:09):
Yeah. Okay, so we talked really quickly. We know you
know this, but we actually forgot the first couple of
shows we did, so we'll just run it down where
right now, George is gonna randomly pick someone from the
audience to tell their hometown story. And a hometown story
drag along is the basically either a crime that happened
in your town that got you into true crime, or

(01:18:31):
that you just would like to tell everybody that everybody
might like to know. There's a couple rules. One of
them is it should be a Texas story, hopefully an
Austin story. Whatever you can do, but please don't do
what poor poor Katie did the other night and say
I'm from Broward, Florida, and yet the entire fucking place
bowed her and she walked off stage. It was yeap,

(01:18:52):
very painful, very hilarious. She was a great sport. We
got to talk to her about it later because I
thought she thought she was just supposed to come up
and proclaim her hometown and leave, which I loved. But
she was like, no, I had a story. I just
got nervous and left. And we're like, oh no, baby,

(01:19:13):
at least now we talked about you, okay, so try
to make it. You should be local that's what people like.
Don't be so drunk that you can't tell your own story.
Don't read off paper. Nobody wants that. It just should
be casual.

Speaker 3 (01:19:26):
And fun beginning, middle, end, Yeah, yeah, yeah, tell it
like a good story.

Speaker 1 (01:19:29):
You know how to tell a good story. Texas.

Speaker 2 (01:19:31):
You guys are theater people.

Speaker 1 (01:19:32):
Yeah, so does anybody have a hometown?

Speaker 2 (01:19:34):
Is anyone of them?

Speaker 1 (01:19:34):
Do you think would be good?

Speaker 3 (01:19:37):
Do you know her?

Speaker 2 (01:19:39):
Or you're just pointing at her?

Speaker 3 (01:19:40):
You know her?

Speaker 2 (01:19:41):
Okay, come on up?

Speaker 1 (01:19:43):
Do you do you know her? Like ause?

Speaker 3 (01:19:47):
A lot of times people will point at something like
the person next to them raises their hand.

Speaker 2 (01:19:53):
What's wrong? They're right in the middle.

Speaker 3 (01:19:54):
Of the well. No.

Speaker 1 (01:19:55):
I just was like, oh, this is very unsafe in
terms of fire. You have to go all the way down.

Speaker 3 (01:20:00):
I'm like that.

Speaker 1 (01:20:01):
I don't like that. I'll talk to the theater later.
She had to slide all the way down. Thanks Ben.

Speaker 4 (01:20:10):
Hi Laura, my name is Laura.

Speaker 3 (01:20:16):
Laura if my this is Laura, Hi, Where are you from?

Speaker 2 (01:20:21):
Laura?

Speaker 6 (01:20:22):
I have waited nine years to tell you that I
helped the Texas Rangers take down the polygamous sex cults
at the White Sea Range in Aldorado, Texas.

Speaker 1 (01:20:37):
Holy shit, and then she walks off stage. Yes, oh
my god, what do you do for a living?

Speaker 4 (01:20:47):
Oh, I'm in publishing.

Speaker 1 (01:20:49):
Okay, yeah, okay, okay.

Speaker 7 (01:20:52):
So.

Speaker 4 (01:20:54):
I actually practiced just in case.

Speaker 3 (01:20:56):
I'm on the road.

Speaker 1 (01:20:56):
Okay, okay, we won't interrupt you anymore.

Speaker 3 (01:20:58):
So media a couple of times.

Speaker 6 (01:21:00):
So I grew up profoundly Mormon, but I got better.
My great great great grandfather was one of the first
converts and was called polygamy when he came to Salt
Lake City, and a lot of my family is still polygamist.

Speaker 4 (01:21:18):
So I know these people. You did a.

Speaker 6 (01:21:21):
Story episode episode three point forty.

Speaker 4 (01:21:27):
You did arv a le baron. I used to work
with his daughter. She escaped and she grew up chained
around the neck in a goat.

Speaker 3 (01:21:36):
They're not good people, Nokay.

Speaker 6 (01:21:38):
So when I was in my twenties, I was living
in Utah. I come back to Texas, I promise I'm here.
But I was married and my husband got a job
working with Meryl Jessop, who is Warren Jeff's right hand man,
and we got divorced shortly after a divorce for very

(01:22:01):
good reasons.

Speaker 1 (01:22:02):
Good job, Thank you, I'm care.

Speaker 6 (01:22:05):
And he skidaddled and I couldn't get child support.

Speaker 4 (01:22:09):
So I came back to Texas. I'm doing it.

Speaker 6 (01:22:11):
I learned how to This is in the nineties, so
there's no like real proper Internet.

Speaker 4 (01:22:18):
But I find a chat room that.

Speaker 6 (01:22:20):
All of those guys were talking about stuff, and I
was hoping to find my ex and I just started
collecting all of the data, but I didn't know what
to do with it, so I'm just hanging on to it.

Speaker 4 (01:22:36):
Then, in the early two thousands, of show called Big.

Speaker 6 (01:22:38):
Love Starts Yeah, and I started to write reviews of
it on live journal.

Speaker 2 (01:22:45):
I'll take that one.

Speaker 6 (01:22:46):
I'll play on live journal where I'm saying, this is
who this is really about? Oh my gosh, and these
are the real people and this is the real story.
And I had this person that was constantly like asking
me questions. It turns out that that was a person
who worked for the Del Rio Texas Rangers.

Speaker 4 (01:23:04):
And I said, hey.

Speaker 2 (01:23:05):
I user name like XX.

Speaker 4 (01:23:07):
Well, I'll tell you about the VP.

Speaker 6 (01:23:10):
But long story short, I said, hey, do you want
this information?

Speaker 4 (01:23:15):
They said, absolutely, we do.

Speaker 6 (01:23:17):
Meanwhile, one of the things that I had tracked and
kept contact of, somebody had asked on a chat board,
does anybody have a blueprint for a potato burning shed
that gets hot enough to destroy DNA evidence?

Speaker 3 (01:23:35):
On a chat room and a chat this is the nineties.

Speaker 1 (01:23:38):
People were that didn't know, And then I said.

Speaker 6 (01:23:40):
Yeah, right, so that was code. Potato was code. So
they found they ended up finding things. But that's the
next story.

Speaker 4 (01:23:53):
Then they it's the same thing.

Speaker 6 (01:23:55):
It's the same thing to so they I got another
message from the person at the Texas Rangers when they
were going in. They had tanks that were lined up
outside of this place and in Eldedo, which is just
by Midland. It's south of Story and asked me if
I'd ever been inside the temple and do I do
I know the floor plane that I said, No, I didn't,

(01:24:17):
but I do know that Mormon temples always have a
special room at the very.

Speaker 4 (01:24:22):
Top on the east most side, called the Celestial Room.

Speaker 6 (01:24:25):
But most importantly there's going to be an altar, so
you know that that's the room, and there is a
hidden panel on a wall because there's somebody that sits
in it and records everything because Mormon's track and record
all of the data.

Speaker 1 (01:24:36):
Oh, can I ask a question? Yes, you can't was
this a phone call or like this was still typing.

Speaker 4 (01:24:40):
We're live, We're like live deal, live.

Speaker 1 (01:24:43):
Journaling, and is your heart racing? Are you just like
dry mouth and going yeah, I'm.

Speaker 4 (01:24:48):
Like finally all of this geekery of the recording shit
is working. So I'm excited. So they ended up they
didn't find the altar. There was a bed. They're really
bad people.

Speaker 6 (01:25:01):
And they did find the panel and there was a
guy in there trying to destroy the evidence off the computers.
The particular ranger, his nickname was Marathon Man. Yes, and
he was also the canine guy, so he was just like, huh, go.

Speaker 4 (01:25:16):
For it and drop the leash. So they got that guy.
So multiple people are multiple life sentences these guys. I
will say.

Speaker 6 (01:25:28):
A month after all of this happened, I got an
email from.

Speaker 4 (01:25:31):
That dispatch with a list of all.

Speaker 6 (01:25:35):
Known aliases every time a license had been run, the
license plate had gone through anything for my act, I
got my child support yea.

Speaker 1 (01:25:48):
With interest, my.

Speaker 4 (01:25:55):
Chillsredible, thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:26:01):
And for all that work you get a pot dog. Amazing, Wow, Laura,
let's give or whatever.

Speaker 3 (01:26:18):
Yeah, be careful.

Speaker 1 (01:26:18):
We get together as a group and make sure she
does save Laura. Oh my god, wow, perfection, amazing.

Speaker 3 (01:26:30):
That was it.

Speaker 1 (01:26:30):
That was it, and then shut it down. There's nothing
else to do.

Speaker 3 (01:26:34):
After this except eat barbecue. Oh yeah, and marry seven women.
Oh wait no, she says, no, don't do that.

Speaker 1 (01:26:42):
No, no, don't do that. The lesson we learned just
don't do that. Thank you, Thank you so much, Autin.
This has been unbelievable.

Speaker 3 (01:26:53):
I can't believe her back on the road, and you
guys have been so supportive and incredible and fun and
we really have appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:27:00):
Thank you so much for being with us for all
these crazy fucking years with this stupid podcast.

Speaker 3 (01:27:06):
We love you so much.

Speaker 1 (01:27:08):
To stay sexy.

Speaker 2 (01:27:12):
Thank you, Elvis.

Speaker 3 (01:27:16):
Do you want to cookie?

Speaker 8 (01:27:25):
This has been an exactly right production.

Speaker 2 (01:27:27):
Our senior producers are Alejandra Keck and Molly Smith.

Speaker 8 (01:27:30):
Our editor is Aristotle os Veto.

Speaker 3 (01:27:32):
This episode was mixed by Leona Squalacci.

Speaker 8 (01:27:34):
Our researchers are Maaron McGlashan and Ali Elkin.

Speaker 3 (01:27:37):
Email your homecounts to My Favorite Murder at gmail dot com.

Speaker 8 (01:27:40):
Follow the show on Instagram at My Favorite Murder.

Speaker 3 (01:27:42):
Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple
Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 8 (01:27:47):
And now you can watch us on Exactly Wright's YouTube page.
While you're there, please like and subscribe.

Speaker 3 (01:27:52):
Goodbyebye,