Snake Eyes: Murder in A Southern Town with Bitty Martin

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
When you're a kid, all the first are just embedded
in your mind forever, that first pet, your first bite,
your first kiss, and that first death, especially if that
death is a friend. When I was twelve years old,

(00:29):
we lost a classmate. I remember our teachers, all of
them coming in and talking to us, all at once,
a big group, and when they told us, I just
remember staring at her empty desk.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
I was sad, but oddly I was also a little scared.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
I didn't know why. I knew grandparents could die. I
knew it was rare, but even maybe a parent could die,
but it had never dawned on me that a kid
could die one that I knew. Everything seemed to be
just off balance. There are a lot of classmates from

(01:08):
that year that I don't remember at all, but I
remember Tracy. She will forever be twelve, and I will
forever remember the last time I saw her. We had
a stacked kickball team, and honey, she was our ringer.
Just the day before, we had had a fuel day
and all the games that were played, our team won everything.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
We sweep the whole thing.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
I remember she wore bright white knee socks with colored
stripes just at the top short shorts and an Electric
Light Orchestra T shirt.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
Ello Baby, she loved them.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
Tonight we have Betty Martin and let me tell you something.
She and I became fast friends. We met in Arkansas
at the True Crime Fest. Her sweet Southern charm, easy
smile was impossible not to be drawn in.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
Biddy is smart.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
She's got a degree in marketing and if that wasn't
impressive enough, and one in nursing. She is kind and
she is a dedicated daughter of Arkansas. She still lives
there in her hometown of Hot Springs, where she is
a board member of the Garland County Historical Society.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
Biddy, Welcome to Zone seven.

Speaker 3 (02:29):
Mac. Thank you so much. It is such an honor
to be here today with you on Z seven. I
count my lucky stars when I met you up in Fadebville, Arkansas,
the home of the Arkansas Racerbacks. Sue and met you
and learned about your podcasts and I didn't know well

(02:51):
when I saw that, Emmy, how many do you have? Three?

Speaker 2 (02:56):
I have one, but we were nominated three times.

Speaker 3 (02:59):
Yes, talk about credentials. Thank you so much for inviting
me here today. Mac.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
Listen, your story is one of a kind and I
think it's going to resonate so much with our audience.
So you had a childhood friend, Kathy Ward, tell us
how you came to know Kathy.

Speaker 3 (03:20):
Kathy, I want to just backtrack first. I can't believe
that your friend her name was Tracy. Well, if it
hadn't been for my friend and my neighbor across the street,
Leslie Tracy, I would have never written this story about
our friend Kathy, who died on June twenty fourth, nineteen

(03:41):
sixty six. Kathy was a year younger than me, and
I'm a twin. I'm an identical twin, and she's a
year younger than Mitsie and I. And she was the
same age as Leslie, who lived across the street from us.
She would come down to Leslie's. We knew Kathy. All
of Leslie's friends were our friends, and our friends were
less and we were just one big group at Jones

(04:04):
School in Hot Springs, Arkansas. A week before Kathy died
horseback riding out at Black Snake Branch, she went skateboarding
with Leslie at her house. We had a little hill
on our street that was perfect for skateboarding. She left
her skateboard that day at Leslie's house, and Leslie hid

(04:25):
it in some bushes and called her and said, look,
I'm going to church camp tomorrow with the twins and
I have your skateboard. Come get it and when I
get back this week we'll go skateboarding. Kathy had had
a chaotic and dysfunctional childhood. Her father was a doctor
in Murphysburo, Arkansas, which was an hour away from Hot Springs.

(04:50):
Six years earlier, her mother and daddy separated, and instead
of her mother going home to Elda, Arkansas, down by
the Louisiana border, where she had grown up, she came
to Hot Springs. The reason why it is on the
front cover.

Speaker 1 (05:07):
Of my book.

Speaker 2 (05:08):
Oh yes, I have the book.

Speaker 3 (05:10):
And you know what that is. It's the Southern Grill.
It's the Southern Club. And on the on the the
neon sign it's this can can girl kicking. You noticed
that above above their sign where they have who's appearing
that evening? All the movie stars, well all won't say
movie stars, but singers and entertainers would come to Hot

(05:32):
Springs and entertain at two different nightclubs. Back in the sixties,
we had illegal gambling. It was rampant and people from Gambler,
from Chicago and all over the Midwest came to Hot Springs,
and it attracted entertainers like, Oh, I don't know, Tody Fields.
This is later Liberachi. I think Phyllis Dillner came. But anyway,

(05:57):
I think that's what attracted Kathy's mother to Springs as
a young, single, separated mother. She was thirty eight years
old when she came to Hot Springs. She had three
children and Kathy was the middle child. And I know
I'm going really in depth in the story, but I

(06:18):
will tell you this. Kathy had a very chaotic and
dysfunctional lie because her mother was an alcoholic. Her father
married his nurse in Murphysbur, Arkansas, hour away, and her
mother was still trying to put on pretenses of being
a doctor's wife.

Speaker 1 (06:34):
Right, And that's the reason this horseback riding came about.

Speaker 3 (06:37):
She had begged her mother to let her go out
there with her friends to ride. Her mother kept saying no,
and for some reason, the week of June twenty fourth,
she acquiesced and took her out and bought her fancy
riding well riding pants they were red riding pants, and
jobbed her boots. Kathy went out to the ram and

(07:01):
she never went back home.

Speaker 1 (07:02):
Well, you know, when you think about horseback riding, it
was always the girls.

Speaker 2 (07:06):
That came from money. Guess to know in this case,
right know, in this case.

Speaker 1 (07:11):
But I'm saying, when you think back of the young
girls that did the horseback riding every week, typically they
came from money. So to your point, if her mama
is trying to keep up those pretenses.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
You're right, You're right, Mac.

Speaker 3 (07:25):
I never thought about that.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
So you wrote a book called Snake Eyes, and let
me tell you, the cover caught my attention, but so
did the back when you're talking about al Capone and
other gangsters that frequented.

Speaker 2 (07:38):
That area as well.

Speaker 1 (07:40):
Right out of the gate, you describe her mama getting
a phone call, and I'm quoting here.

Speaker 2 (07:47):
These are your words.

Speaker 1 (07:48):
Kathy was lost somewhere on the trails, but said they
knew she'd be all right when they found her. Now, that,
to me, as a mama is one of those hearts
stopping phone calls you don't need. I had to finish
that sentence. If you say Kathy's loss, that's all I'm on.

Speaker 3 (08:03):
Here, Because supposedly this was the first time she'd ever
been on a horse.

Speaker 2 (08:09):
She wanted to go riding.

Speaker 1 (08:10):
Mama said no, you can't go, no, no, no, And
then all of a sudden, yes you can go. Let's
go get you some clothes, and she's out riding and
before her mom can pick her up, they're calling her,
telling her Kathy's loss somewhere out on the trail. Kathy
had a boyfriend at this time. They might it had
given her a piece of jewelry.

Speaker 3 (08:31):
Yes, he was the quarterback of the opposing junior high school,
which was very daring and unconventional back then to date
across school lines back in the sixties, you dated somebody
from your school. She was a beautiful girl. They met
at our wide teen dances on Friday nights and that's
how they met and started dancing. And yes, he had

(08:53):
given her a necklace the Wednesday before she went riding
on Friday.

Speaker 1 (08:58):
Now, this ranch owner, you paint a sinister picture of
him right off the bat. And again I quote at
three forty eight pm on Friday June twenty fourth, nineteen
sixty six, Frank Davis, the forty two year old lack
Snake ranch owner, called the Sheriff's department to report an accident.

(09:27):
What did Frank Davis tell law enforcement about Kathy Ward.

Speaker 3 (09:31):
He told them that she fell off the horse and
was dragged to death, and that he couldn't catch the
horse in time to save her. But he was a
skilled horseman. In fact, he was a trick rider. He
could have caught her. Now, there are rumors. I don't
know if you want to go over the rumors, but
there are rumors about what actually happened.

Speaker 2 (09:50):
Now, Sugary, you know, good and well, I want to
hit them rumors.

Speaker 3 (09:53):
Okay, several different rumors, one of which is that we
heard at school that she had been raped and murdered.
Of course, none of our teachers nor our parents would
talk about it, but those rumors were everywhere. And supposedly
he had raped her and then murdered her. He supposedly
hit her with a rock over the head and then

(10:15):
he realized, oops, I killed her. So he attached her
foot and one of her feet to the stirrups, tied
it in there, and hit the horse's back and let
it take off and drag her. But then that doesn't
make sense when you go to the back of the
book and you read about a girl that was there
when it happened, and she claimed that she went with

(10:37):
him to search for Kathy, and she's the one that
found her. So I don't know, there were a lot
of rumors.

Speaker 1 (10:44):
Well, now that's one thing I want to touch on.
He actually got one of her friends to go with
him to search for her. Now he knew where she was.
So not only was that young girl fixing to realize
her friend is dead, but she's going to be the
one to find her.

Speaker 3 (11:02):
He was setting her up, oh absolutely, because then if
you remember, later on, he set her up again, this
little girl, thirteen year old little girl, He set her
up again in another instance with his second what turned
in evolved into his second murder.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
Yeah, I mean, he knew he was going to add
trauma to her life, and he did it anyway.

Speaker 1 (11:23):
And he made her such a critical witness, even though
she didn't know exactly what she was seeing.

Speaker 2 (11:30):
She thought it was just a horrible accident at first.

Speaker 1 (11:33):
Right.

Speaker 3 (11:34):
She was so traumatized that when I tried to interview
her for the book, she wouldn't talk to me. I
went downtown. Her daughter worked at a store downtown, and
I went down there several times to ask her if
her mother would give me an interview, and she said,
we'll come back and I'll talk to her. And each
time she said no, Mother just can't, just won't talk

(11:55):
to you. Well, come to find out last March, I
was speaking at an event and her daughter was there
and she came through and want me to sign her book,
and she says, mother wishes she would have talked to
you years later, but it was traumatic for both her
and another little girl that was there with them.

Speaker 1 (12:17):
It was traumatic for the whole town. Like when you
mentioned parents and teachers wouldn't talk. I think that comes
from just this overwhelming it's almost too horrible to talk about.

Speaker 3 (12:28):
Even her mother, her family wouldn't talk about it. Her
little sister was ten years old when Cathy died, but
she was eighteen when she learned it was actually a murder.
And she told me that she said, we never talked
about it, and she explained how she learned that her
sister was actually murdered.

Speaker 2 (12:49):
Again.

Speaker 1 (12:50):
In the book, there's a part where you're talking about
her lifeless body being taken to gross mortuary on Central Avenue,
and you say, just three weeks earlier, she had gotten
her report card and was looking so forward to the summer,
and you know that's every kid, that's every one of
us we remember. Just give me that report card and
I'm going to run out this door, I don't even.

Speaker 3 (13:11):
Care what's on it, and have the best summer ever. Yes,
And she had a new boyfriend and the big quarterback
and everything was going great in her life.

Speaker 1 (13:20):
Tell us a little bit about Mary Sue Tracy and
her daughter, Leslie.

Speaker 3 (13:24):
They were my neighbors, Leslie. Mary Sue was Leslie's mother.
They lived right across the street from us. Miss Tracy
I didn't really call her Mary c I called her
Miss Tracy. She was a fifth grade substitute teacher in
Kathy's room. Her teacher was sick and went out on
sickly and Miss Tracy replaced her. And the first thing

(13:44):
she did was ask the kids to please write something
about themselves. And she's wanting to get to know each
of the children. When she read Kathy's paper, it just
tugged at her heart and it was so emotional. She
couldn't understand. She couldn't believe that a fifth grader could
write like Kathy wrote. She took Miss Tracy took that

(14:06):
paper home and stuck it in her probably in her
nights stand or somewhere in her bedroom, and it stayed
there until the day she died. Maybe she had taken
it home because she was going to share it with
Kathy's mother to possibly get Kathy some help, because she said,
Kathy wrote on her paper, my father is a doctor,

(14:28):
but my parents are divorced and I miss him. I
like it here now that I'm making friends, but I
don't like being here. That just tugged at Miss Tracy's heart,
and for some reason, she took it home with her
and they were close. And when Kathy would I guess
that's how they became really close. Miss Tracy and Kathy did.

(14:48):
And then when Kathy would come down to Leslie's, Miss
Tracy introduced Kathy to her daughter, Leslie. They weren't in
the same class, but they were in the same year.
They became good frien because we only lived two blocks
away from Kathy. And every time she would come down
to Leslie's house, Kathy would stop and first visit with

(15:09):
missus Tracy and Leslie would just sit in her room
because she knew that Kathy would talk to her mother
because she couldn't. She was a substitute as a mother too,
because Kathy's mother was home with her bottle.

Speaker 1 (15:24):
And you know, when you're working a cold case, and
I tell people this all the time, there are so
many roadblocks that people don't even realize has happened. So
you've already talked about one. Somebody that just wouldn't talk
to you. They had information, they knew the story, they
knew Kathy. They were there, literally, they were there who
wouldn't talk to you. But gross mortuary burned down and

(15:50):
all the files with it, and then the coroner, the
corner didn't keep any files.

Speaker 3 (15:55):
You're right, you're right, Keep going, keep.

Speaker 2 (15:58):
Going to that other of it.

Speaker 1 (16:00):
And this is my favorite part when you say other
officials quote had bad memories.

Speaker 3 (16:06):
That is that was the sheriff.

Speaker 1 (16:09):
Oh yeah, he don't know nothing, don't remember nothing, didn't
say nothing, didn't hear nothing. YEP.

Speaker 2 (16:13):
I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (16:15):
But and this is also critical for people that you
didn't give up and you kind of went old old
school on this, and some of our folks may not
even know, but you went Dewey decimal system.

Speaker 2 (16:28):
Oh yeah, I did Dewey.

Speaker 3 (16:30):
And microfilm and everything.

Speaker 2 (16:33):
You're right, that library reference desk, honey.

Speaker 3 (16:36):
I am grateful to them here at the Garland County
Library indeed, and also though I must have been the courthouse,
the Circuit court clerk Christy Womble was so good to me.
She dug up old files and I mean she had
to go outside the courthouse to where they kept all

(16:56):
their old files and search for that year and pull
them and brought them back to the courthouse for me
to dig through. And I will say she's also done
that on my next book. It's so great to have
a good contact like that.

Speaker 1 (17:11):
I'm telling you, it's a team effort, all of it.
The Garland Historical Society obviously is a gift. But then
you've got the old newspapers in the reference desk and
you just you know, again, being a child, you might
not have remembered the date that she died. So that's

(17:32):
the first thing you had to find right.

Speaker 3 (17:34):
Right, And that took forever. We couldn't remember when it was.
I thought it was in the summertime. Leslie thought it
was in September, and for the life of me, I
could not find it. I went through so many reels
of microfilm looking for the story because I knew it
would be on the front page of the newspaper.

Speaker 2 (17:56):
Now, she died June twenty fourth, nineteen sixty six, but
the June twenty fifth issue she wasn't mentioned right.

Speaker 3 (18:04):
And what it was is that in our town we
had two newspapers, a morning edition called the Sentinel Record
and the evening edition was the New Era. Well, the
library only had the morning edition. The weekend edition was
only in the New Era, which was the evening so
they didn't have that. That's why I wasn't able to

(18:25):
find it. Because, if you remember, one of her boyfriends
searched also and he came to the same conclusion as
me that that day was missing, and the microfilm will
it was because they didn't have the correct newspaper, and
I had to go to Little Rock to the Arkansas
History Commission to find that newspaper.

Speaker 1 (18:47):
Now, see that's something too for people that are investigating anything.
We had the Atlanta Journal Atlanta Constitution, same type thing,
but if you don't realize, you're only looking at the
morning edition and there's an even edition somewhere. So that's
good to remind people to look for those different things.

Speaker 2 (19:07):
Now, in your research.

Speaker 1 (19:08):
You talked to sixty people, so you are getting the
whole victimology, the whole suspectology. You're getting as much of
this story as you possibly can because you're talking about
a small town. So if you're talking to sixty people,
that's a pretty good sample.

Speaker 2 (19:24):
Now we're not that small. Well you're not that small,
but we all say there.

Speaker 3 (19:29):
To Atlanta, and we are.

Speaker 1 (19:31):
But I'm saying sixty people associated with any case would
be a good sample.

Speaker 3 (19:36):
I did talk to as many people as I knew
knew about Kathy's death and might have some spin off
from it. And after I signed a contract with my
publisher and I had three months to get the book
ready to submit to them, I was still adding. I

(19:56):
was still catching little interviews here and there of people
that I would hear would say something like online I'd
read something was calling them up and say, hey, you
said this about the murder and Frank Davis and I
would interview him and I'd stick him in. And I
kept doing that until the submission date, which was March
of twenty twenty one.

Speaker 1 (20:17):
Now, you and your group of childhood friends and your sister,
y'all have traveled. Y'all have made an annual event to
go research this case. Tell us about that a little
bit because in my mind, I just see y'all like
loading up the convertible and going out film and Louise style,
trying to you know, avenge.

Speaker 2 (20:39):
This wrong, that this happened to your friend.

Speaker 3 (20:42):
Well, the one thing that we do do is that
every June twenty fourth, we know where we will be,
and that is in Murphysboro, Arkansas, at their cemetery right
around the corner of their town square where Kathy is buried.
And you're right, it is an adventure, and especially we

(21:03):
had something very strange happened the first year that we went.
But we go every year, and if we couldn't go,
it'd be very dramatic to us because it's become like
a holiday to us. We know where we'll be on
June twenty fourth.

Speaker 1 (21:16):
You're right, and you know we talk a lot about
loyalty on this show. I'm big on loyalty. And you know,
just the idea as a mama that a group of
friends would continue to think about a child decades and
decades and decades later.

Speaker 2 (21:34):
It's moving and it's extraordinary to me. Well, thank you.

Speaker 3 (21:38):
So.

Speaker 1 (21:39):
Now you took something very significant to the grave site
that first year you went back.

Speaker 2 (21:45):
Tell us about that.

Speaker 3 (21:46):
You're right. The first year that we went to Kathy's grave,
we of course took flowers that We also took her
childhood skateboard that she had left at Leslie's Haase house
the week that she died. Leslie's had that all these years,
and at one point around y two, k Leslie thought

(22:10):
she had lost the skateboard, Kathy's skateboard, or else it
had been stolen by her n'ar dowell son in law.
She was bummed out about that. I never knew that
she had Kathy's skateboard until one day in twenty fourteen,
I was working up in New York. I was a
travel nurse, working and operating up in New Rochelle, and

(22:33):
I called up Lessing and I said, Hey, I'm coming
home in two weeks, and I want to start. I
want to go to the library and try to find
Kathy's obituary or story whatever we can find. That's when
Leslie told me, hey, I've had Kathy's skateboard all these years.
She never told me in Midsei that story, and she
told me how she she had vanished. But then one

(22:57):
day that year in two thousand fourteen, she had a
handyman over at her house and he came walking in
her living room. He said, hey, look when I found
upstairs in the attic. She looked at it. He was
holding Kathy's vintage skateboard. Leslie ran over to him and
grabbed it and hugged it, and she told me that story,

(23:20):
and I asked her, I said, well, what day when
did he find it? You know the date, because for
some reason I knew the date would be important. And
she said, well, I don't know. I'll write him a
check and i'll text you the date. Well, by that time,
two weeks later, I was back in I was home
in Hot Springs for my two weeks off down here,

(23:42):
and that's when we went to the library and we
were searching for Kathy's information. Leslie told me that the
skateboard had appeared on June twenty fourth, twenty fourteen, and
it didn't click until after we finally found her death
date at the Historical Society, and I put two and

(24:05):
two together that her skateboard reappeared on the forty eighth
anniversary of her death.

Speaker 2 (24:12):
That is unbelievable.

Speaker 3 (24:13):
I would have never written the book if that hadn't happened.
I'll be honest with you.

Speaker 2 (24:17):
And that's something.

Speaker 1 (24:18):
So let's circle back to Frank, because at this point,
if I just hit some highlights for people, it's going
to sound like I'm lying that I'm just making this up.
But he goes on to murder again. He murders his wife,
shoots his mother in law, goes to prison, marries a

(24:38):
fifth time, escapes somehow gets paroled after all of this,
and flees to Oregon. Now what in the world, Now, this,
to me is the reason the book needs to be written.
You're like the only one calling Frank out.

Speaker 3 (24:59):
There was some of the Christs stories with him even
before all of that, but we did call him out.
And I was lucky enough to meet his son by
his fourth wife, who was a baby the night he
murdered his mother in cold blood, and he told me
he gave me Frank's prison records. Frank had made this

(25:20):
old He'd made a briefcase out of leather there in
the prison. You could tell it was tooled. You can
tell that it was made in a prison or at
a summer camp. You remember making all those leather little well,
that's what it looked like, and it was full of
all of his paperwork and all this stuff and the research,

(25:41):
and he was going to free himself, and he finally
did it. But anyway, his son told me, he said,
I won't call him father or dad. Of course Frank's did,
but he said, I will not call him my father.
And he said, in fact, I drove down to Texas
and spit on his grave.

Speaker 2 (25:59):
And he was raised has grandmama, the one that Frank shot.

Speaker 3 (26:02):
He was raised by his maternal grandmother.

Speaker 2 (26:05):
Yes, well, I'm going to quote you again.

Speaker 1 (26:08):
I can still picture Kathy the last time I saw her,
three of us girls watching her, determined to get home.
We had no idea what was to follow. Many times
I've wished I could go back and change the past.
What I can do now is share this story so

(26:29):
that all these years later, Frank Davis will not get
away with murder.

Speaker 2 (26:35):
That's pretty powerful, honey.

Speaker 3 (26:37):
Well, thank you. It's coming from the heart.

Speaker 1 (26:41):
I mean, I'm telling you, there's nothing like childhood friends.
There is nothing like that bond. I don't think there's
hardly anything deeper except when you have children. But I
just think you know every single thing when you're thinking
about those summers and your adventures and going to camp
and skateboard and going to school and buying new clothes,

(27:02):
and you know all the secrets that are told in
the clubhouse type stuff. There's just no comparing that to
anything else in your life.

Speaker 2 (27:11):
You're right.

Speaker 3 (27:11):
She died thirteen years old. She had her whole life
ahead of her. She'll now live on in my book.

Speaker 2 (27:18):
Amen. Right on, y'all. I'm going to end Zone seven
the way I always do with a quote.

Speaker 1 (27:24):
And when I saw this quote, I thought of Biddy immediately,
and Kathy. Time doesn't take away from friendship nor just separation.

Speaker 2 (27:35):
Tennessee Williams.

Speaker 1 (27:37):
I'm Cheryl McCollum, and this is Zone seven,

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