373 - Do Your Honk

This week, Karen tells the story of notorious Bay Area killer Iva Kroeger and Georgia covers the inspiration behind Nike's "Just Do It" slogan, murderer Gary Gilmore. 

For our sources and show notes, visit www.myfavoritemurder.com/episodes.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Hell, hello and welcome. It's my favorite murder. That's true
to herd start. That's Karen Kilgaris. You were doing your
your kind of conducting gesture. But what is really funny
to me is there's no Sometimes you'll do it and
then it ends here and then it starts over here,
and it's like you're just kind of trying to give

(00:37):
some indicator of like we could start now, or we
could start now.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Yeah, I'll do it, and then like, yeah, I still
don't know when to start.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
Like that's just how it's been for seven years. It's
not like you're starting on your one. Yeah, I'm kind
of looking at you some good options, and this moment
could be this moment right here's when we both start talking.
You'll just never know. You'll never know, I'll never know.
We can't know. You can't know.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
And that's the point right now, that's the joy of
this present moment. Yeah, are you in this season of
your life in a present moment of joy and terror?

Speaker 1 (01:15):
Or are you pretending not to be when actually you are?

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Either way, Yeah, you should know that you can go
through your entire day just screaming if you want.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
It's up to you. It's okay, but if you do
it on the bus, they're gonna get mad. Yeah, so
pick and choose.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
But I think a couple of people would scream along
with you, right, I mean, it's that kind of world
we're living in.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
I mean entirely, I had somebody I was going to
tell you a story of how I went to the
mall today, although there's there's no story that that's the
whole thing in one time you left that.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
I mean, that's a huge fucking update, right, it's pretty big.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
But on the way, you know in La they have
I don't. I'm sure they have these everywhere now. But
to get on the freeway, there's a little stoplight and
you pull up and it's red and then it pretty
much immediately turns green. Ye unless in La it's starting
to get trafficking, right, So I pulled up to one
and it turned It was red when I pulled up,
and it remained red for like ten seconds, and I'm

(02:13):
just staring at it, so it's not like I looked
away or y. Yeah, and then someone just rams on
their horn no, and then I was like, and then
I just went even though.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
It was still red, where I was like, that's to me.
That's the energy outside right now. Just a honk and
a reds honk.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
It a red Oh, I don't care.

Speaker 3 (02:30):
Oh it's gone. It's up to you, mister whoever you
are behind us. Robinson, mister Robinson, you know, do you
do your fucking you do your honk?

Speaker 1 (02:41):
Do it?

Speaker 2 (02:42):
Get it out through a horn, through your mouth. It
just seems like it's it's needed. There's it's a bill.
It's a real build.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
Yeah right now. Yeah, it's a crescendo. The mall's pretty chill.
Oh yeah, how was the mall? Yeah, nothing happened. It
was just like I went. I knew I couldn't start
actually like wander shopping, because then I'd be like, oh
my god, it's five thirty and I was supposed to
start recording. So I literally was like, you can go

(03:11):
to this store, this store and Sophora. Did you get
a snack? No, I didn't know what would you get? Like,
what's your go to small snack? If you could? I
think I just want a pretzel right now, is what
I'm saying. Literally, that's what I was going to say.
I walked by the Wetzels stand that's on the way
back to the where I was parked in the garage
from Sephora, and I was like looking at it and

(03:33):
looking at it, but I was just like, there cannot
be anything but like trans fats in Wetzel's pretzels, right,
because how good they.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
Are oils and you have to get cheese with it
or you're a monster.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
Yeah, So like what do you supposed to do? It
was one of those kind of things where I was like,
I wasn't hungry, and if I did it, it felt
like that's all I ever do. If I never changed,
nothing will ever change. It makes that kind of vibe.
But the smell is pretty good.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
Do you know there's now a dunkin Donuts in my
local mall? Oh that makes life hard? That place smells good. Yeah,
it does seems weird though, donuts in a mall, Like
it doesn't really translate, you know.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
I think in malls these days, they're just trying to
give people what they want. They're like, what we know,
we know it's not like a really a Sunglass hut anymore.
What do you want? You just like, we need a
place that's going to stay here.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
My jam is there's a McDonald's there too, So to
get a fucking vanilla cone and just wander them all.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
I've done that so long. Maybe I need to do that.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
That's a very summer you know. That's a summertime thing,
isn't And it's getting there. Enjoy some ac I saw
someone say the mall these days is Facebook. When you
were teen, it was a cool place to hang out,
and now you go back once in a while to
see old people yelling. Ye something like that.

Speaker 1 (04:55):
Yes, yeah, that makes sense. The mall no one, No
one yelled at them all. But I realized I was
listening to podcasts as I walked around, so I was like, Oh,
this is the way to do it. If you're out
in the world feeling aggression is around you, you just yeah,
what we're listening to? I was listening to. I said,

(05:15):
no gifts, Oh lovely. Timothy Simon's was on it. He's
so funny. It was really it's a really good episode. Okay,
it was great.

Speaker 2 (05:24):
I'm reading a book. Can I suggest a book please
that I've like fallen in love with. It's a during
and post apocalyptic e book, but not like End of
the World, more like COVID Times ten okay, and it
takes place in the not too. Just in future there's
another global pandemic, and each chapter is someone's story during

(05:46):
and it takes you through the whole like ten hundred years,
ten years, hundred years after. It's like, did you read
World War Ze? That was really good in that way too.
I watched the movie. I was a big fan of
the movie.

Speaker 1 (05:58):
I didn't read it. The book's great. I listened to
that too. So this book is really beautiful.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
It's like everything's falling apart, but it's just this beautiful
book about grief and individuals and how they deal with
it and what they've lost and that we're all kind
of It's just really really lovely. It's called How High
We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamastu n A
g A m as m A T s U Nagamatsu

(06:23):
mm hmm. And it's just it's just it's one of
those books I don't want to keep listening because I
don't want to finish it, you know. Yeah, Wow, I'm
just really in love with it. That's a good endorsement.

Speaker 1 (06:33):
Yeah, I guess my endorsement would be that the fourth
season of Successions started.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
I haven't watched the new episode yet, don't tell me anything.
I am so excited. I won't say word. It's just
like it was one of those feelings where it started
and I just like, thank.

Speaker 1 (06:48):
God it started.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
It's the same feeling I had and that I happened
upon the first episode of the new season of Perry Mason,
where I was like, wait, what is this real?

Speaker 1 (06:56):
Oh? Thank god? I need to do so excited this season.
Logan Roy is making me love so hard. I just
was gonna spoiler something. It's just his vibe. Logan Roy's
vibe is hilarious to me.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
Okay, I see, like, I don't give a fact. This
is the last season and I'm in a Logan Roy
the hell out of all of you.

Speaker 1 (07:14):
I'll generalize it so there's no spoiler risk, because that
is really irritating when someone's like, I'll just indicate a
theme and then they're fucking it up for your whole enjoyment.
But when you're older, you do not have to worry
about the same things you worry about when you're younger.
You were free. You're free to behave however you want,
and everyone's like, oh yeah, that's them. It's not a

(07:35):
drama point. It's just you get to Yeah, you're not
changing at this point. This is like what you've.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
Become and you don't give a shit. You're not taking
notes from people at this point in your life, not
in the least. Yeah, no notes, no notes, no notes please.
Oh uh, I have a corrections corner. That's I don't know, ironic.

Speaker 1 (07:58):
I was actually correct that I was mispronouncing how I
say the ku Klux Klan.

Speaker 2 (08:05):
Someone told me, and I was like, I didn't realize.

Speaker 1 (08:08):
Apparently, I it's ku klux Klan.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
What if we got canceled because you mispronounced the ku
Klux Klan.

Speaker 1 (08:17):
It's like, how about we just call them all Nazis?
Howbo we just group them all together and then not
really worry about it.

Speaker 2 (08:25):
Mispronounces the SS So let's just fucking go with that instead.

Speaker 1 (08:29):
That's easy to remember, simple, reductive.

Speaker 2 (08:33):
Yeah, exactly, I have a good corrections corner. Oh. Last week,
in episode three seventy two, when I covered the disappearance
of the indigenous girl Anthonett Kayadito, I also gave an
update on some Indigenous women who went missing, and one
of them, Keana klomp I covered her in episode two
ninety six, and in the update, I said she hadn't
been found, but she actually was found alive in twenty

(08:54):
twenty one.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
So that's great, amazing, great. Yeah, oh well, since we're
on this, we'll go into the mail bag because this
is really delightful. And this was because at this point
now I'm not sure how many weeks ago it was,
but I did the story about the fight for justice
for the murders of Henry d and Charles Moore. We
got this DM on Instagram.

Speaker 2 (09:15):
It's from let Will Underscore two and it says, listening
to the episode, now, my dad was childhood friends with
Charles and Henry. The place like the peace of Land
where the clan snatch them belongs to my grandmother. There's
a marker on it now in their memory. My dad
has told me that they were always together and my

(09:36):
aunt Charles and Henry took a few classes at Alcorn
State too. Had my dad not made a different decision
that day, he wouldn't be here today.

Speaker 1 (09:44):
Oh my god. Yeah, what an incredible story. Mm hmm. Wow.
The personalization is so important. Amazing.

Speaker 2 (09:56):
Yeah, all right, should we do some exactly right now updates?
Let's do it and get into it.

Speaker 1 (10:02):
This week over on Adulting, comedian Marie Fouston is Michelle
and Jordan's guest, and Michelle and Jordan have live shows
coming up in April and May at the Bellhouse in Brooklyn.
I believe it's Gwanis if you want to be specific
about it, so check their instagram to get some tickets
for Adulting Live. Oh, that's a fun show.

Speaker 2 (10:24):
And on That's Messed Up, an SPU podcast, Kara and
Lisa discussed episode eighteen from season seventeen and have a
conversation with Robert John Burke.

Speaker 1 (10:33):
He has played four different.

Speaker 2 (10:35):
Characters in the Law and Order universe, which is so
freaking cool over the years, most notably Olivia Benson's longtime
love interest Ed Tuckers. That's going to be a rad conversation.
Check out That's Messed Up.

Speaker 1 (10:48):
I have a picture in my mind of who that
actor is, because there is a guy that I personally
have noticed that's played multiple characters in different seasons on
that show. I love it so much. I do too.
If you haven't joined the fan cold yet, or if
you're thinking of renewing instead of like the gift we
usually get, so sometimes it's a pin, sometimes it's like
a hat or whatever. This season you're gonna get a

(11:10):
promo code that gives you twenty dollars towards any purchase
in the March store. And then you also, of course
get weekly videos. You get your own dedicated mini mini,
access to the fan cult forum, and much more so cool.
Go to my favorite Murder dot com.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
And lastly, we're really excited to launch a new T
shirt design and sweatshirt created by a murder renow Kelly
Wills of brain Flower Designs. We found her online, loved
her work, and so she's made us something really special.
Go to my favorite Murder dot com or our social
media to check it out. Now. It's very goth, it's
very comm teenage Karen Approot TV Karen would love it.

Speaker 1 (11:47):
This is one thing I just on Twitter really quick.
On April eighth, Molly Shannon is hosting SnO and I
swear that's I feel like a real nerd because that's
not that's not for me anymore. I don't you know
what I mean. It's not like I'm some SML booster
or whatever. Yeah. First of all, I absolutely adore Molly Shannon.
She's as cool in real life as she is as

(12:08):
you think she is. She's a lovely human being. I've
imagining her hosting that thing like makes me so happy,
so special. I'm so excited.

Speaker 2 (12:18):
I heard her memoir is great. I've got to I
think I downloaded it. I gotta listen to it.

Speaker 1 (12:23):
Yeah, she's like a authentically an authentically beautiful human being,
like so kind and loving and like funny. I don't know,
I just that made me happy. I was just like,
what a satisfying thing. Because I don't think she's gone back.
I don't think she's hosted it since she left. That's

(12:44):
very cool, that's very awesome. Yeay, is Karen first? Karen
goes first. She is all right. Today, I'm going to
tell you a story Georgia that Dave Anthony sent me
sometimes Dave Anthony of the doll Up Podcast. If you
like a weird history, you might like the Dollup Podcast

(13:05):
to go over there and try it out.

Speaker 2 (13:06):
Did you see Gareth got both his ears pierced on
the road as a dare or you know he lost
a vet with Dave Anthony and so Garrett, the other
host of the doll Up got both his ears pierced,
these huge, blingy diamonds in his ear. I watched the
video on Instagram and it was very funny.

Speaker 1 (13:24):
That is truly genius, oh so funny. So sometimes Dave
sends me articles when a story is too like on
the side of true crime because it's not that historical.
But he's like, this would be good for you guys,
and I take it and I never tell you and
it's mine and not yours. So this one was from
Dave and he was like, you're not going to leave

(13:45):
this article. And the craziest thing is it takes place
in San Francisco. It also takes place in Santa Rosa,
which is the town just as Plumo, where the mall is.
And so this is a true hometown for me, even
though I'd never heard of it before. It's a story
about a woman who journalist Katie Dowd referred to as
the most dangerous woman in San Francisco. It's nor Cal's own.

(14:09):
I've a Kroger, all right, Okay. So the main sources
used for this story are an SFGate article by writer
Katie Dowd called the most Dangerous Woman in San Francisco,
and that article is heavily sighted throughout this story. She
Katie Dowd, is the journalist that did you know, the
majority of the research on this story. Also, Maren pulled

(14:29):
the Supreme Court of California's nineteen sixty four opinion on
the people versus Kroger, and also multiple articles from California
newspapers that ran in the sixties that were covering this
as the story broke got it. And then if you
want to look at any of those or the rest
of the sources for this story, they're in our show notes.
So we'll take you back now to January nineteen sixty

(14:51):
two to a little town I know very well called
Santa Rosa, California. It's ten minutes up the one oh
one from Petalumo again where the mall is, so it's
a big deal. And in the beginning of nineteen sixty two,
a police officer is pulling into the parking lot of
the Rose City Motor Court on the thirteen hundred block

(15:11):
of Santa Rosa Boulevard, which is across the street from
where the boot Barn is today and up the road
from Mappleby's Boot Bar the boot Barn. So in Santa Rosa,
there's like the center of town. But then like in
most towns, as you kind of go out of town,
it's like it gets a little seedier and then there's
like motels as you you know that kind of vibe. Yes,

(15:32):
it doesn't look like that anymore. Yeah, but it did then,
So you can vouch for that. I've seen it myself.
That's what I'm trying to sit at it. I put
my eyes on it. So this motel is owned by
a fifty eight year old Mildred Arnison and her seventy
year old husband, Jay. Jay is suffering from advanced stage
Parkinson's and the police have been called by Mildred's sister,

(15:55):
Beatrice Brunn. She lives in Washington State, and she's asking
them to do a welfare check on the couple because
she hasn't heard from her sister. The last correspondence Beatrice
got from Mildred was a letter from the month before,
where Mildred detailed an extravagant upcoming trip to Brazil with
a new friend. Beatrice and Mildred's mother, Odella, had also

(16:18):
gotten a letter telling her the same news. She said
while she was away, her husband Jay would be well
cared for, and that this friend she was traveling with
had recently come into some money and was kindly fronting
her that ten thousand dollars to cover the trip's cost.
That's nearly one hundred thousand dollars in today's money. No

(16:39):
vacations don't cost that, should they. I mean, in a
perfect world, sure are you taking a private jet in
nineteen sixty two? Like what's happening? Buying a private jet
and fucking taking it there lying around when you have
to stay home and take care of the Rose City motel.

(16:59):
So all Mildred had to do to get fronted that
money was sign over the motella's collateral. Dude, So that
specific detail sounds like a bad idea, but Beatrice trusts
her sister's intuition, and if anyone deserves a lavish vacation,
it's her sister Mildred. But then after they get this letter,

(17:19):
they don't hear anything else. So Christmas comes and goes
not a word from Mildred, which of course is very odd.
So Beatrice decides to call her sister on New Year's Day,
and when Jay, her husband, answers the phone, all he
says is, hello, b I don't think I'll ever see
Mildred again. And then the woman caring for him takes

(17:40):
the phone from him and hangs it up, so Beatrice
is not able to reach Jay again, so she calls
the police. So this is when the officer is pulling
in to the Row City Motor Court. He parks his
patrol car outside. He knows all this backstory, but he
isn't that concerned. Mildred made it clear that she did
go on vacation. Mm hmm, it's natural. It would make

(18:02):
sense that Jay is having a hard time contacting his
sister in law without assistance, so maybe someone working at
the motel, you know. He's like, yeah, there's probably easily
this is easily explained. M He opens the door to
the office and he's greeted by a friendly, middle aged
woman who's stationed behind the front desk. The officer introduces
himself and asks if anyone has heard from the motel

(18:23):
owners lately, because their family is worried and is calling
about them, and he's there to make sure that they're okay.
So the woman behind the counter explains that there's no
reason to worry about the arnescence. Jay's in good hands
and Mildred is off enjoying herself in Brazil, and there's
probably a simple explanation for the lack of correspondence, like

(18:45):
maybe she's so swept up in the excitement that she
just forgot to write home. And then this woman behind
the counter offers one correction to what the officer said.
She explains the motel has a new name now, it's
called the El Sombrero, and the Arnisons don't own it anymore.
She does, and then she shows him the deed with

(19:05):
her name on it. So the officer looks at the document,
checks it out. The woman's name is right there, and
he basically is like, maybe there may be theorizing that
Mildred basically escaped her life here working at this motel
with a husband who was sick, was getting too much
and she just bailed. It's just a theory, but there's

(19:28):
it's plausible. He still has Mildred's worried family to answer to.
So the officer gives Beatrice Brunn's name and phone number,
and he misspells her last name as Brown when it's
actually Brun Brunn, and he gives that information to the
woman behind the desk and asks her to give Beatrice
a call and basically says like, tell her what you

(19:50):
told me, and then he leaves. Okay, the officer has
no idea. He's just handed Beatrice Brun's phone number to
the woman who's stolen her sister's bi business and murdered her.
And that woman's name is I'va Kroger Okay born Lucille
Hooper in Kentucky nineteen twenty two to working class parents.

(20:12):
I'va Kroger is not her real name, and it isn't
even close to her real name, and we don't know
much about her childhood. But by the early forties she
has a husband and two sons in Louisville, but it
seems like Lucille doesn't enjoy domestic life. Within a couple
of years, she leaves her family and sets out on
her own. So it's unclear exactly where Lucille was planning

(20:35):
to go or you know, what her plans are. All
we know about this part of her life is everything
that we can surmise from the trouble she gets into
with the law. So almost immediately she's arrested in Chicago
in nineteen forty five. She's twenty three years old, and.

Speaker 2 (20:49):
The charges for illegally wearing the uniform of a military nurse.

Speaker 1 (20:55):
Yeah. More specifically, Lucille's telling people that She's a Navy
nurse who survived a pow camp in Japan, so it's
just straight up stolen valor in like post war America. Interesting.
She pleads guilty to this crime. We can't tell whether
or not she did any time for it, but what
we do know is she is given probation and she

(21:16):
immediately skips town. So now Lucille heads west. She cycles
through fake names and invented identities as she goes, and
by the early fifties she settled in San Francisco with
her new name Iva. In nineteen fifty four, she's thirty
two years old and she marries again, and this time
to a man named Ralph Kroger. He's a laborer who's

(21:38):
seventeen years her senior, and they eventually move into a
small home in the city's Outer Mission neighborhood, which is
where my mom's from. Oh so we don't really know
that much about Iva and Ralph's relationship. It does seem
like they're happy together, but at some point Iva is
injured after being hit by a jitney and she's left

(22:01):
with a limp. What is a jitney? I looked it
up because I didn't know either, and it was like
basically a smaller bus. They look like old model ts,
kind of with no top where you could fit like
what looked like maybe eight people onto it, so that
you wouldn't have to get on the bus and do
all the stops. If you were downtown, you could get

(22:21):
over to Fisherman's Wharf. It was like a one stop
kind of bus.

Speaker 2 (22:24):
So it's a bomber to get hit by one yes,
and it leaves her with a limp, and she winds
up suing the company that owns the jitney for damages.

Speaker 1 (22:33):
It's unclear if she ever receives that money, but it
seems unlikely since it's also reported that the couple is
struggling financially. They're hounded by lenders who want payments and
by insurance agents who monitor Iva during her recovery, which
implies that insurance fraud may have been suspected in that situation.

(22:54):
And by the end of the story, you're going to
be like, yeah, it probably was insurance fraud, but we'll
see no. November nineteen sixty one, the Krogers have had
enough with what they consider harassment, but other people would
be like, it's just us asking you to pay your bills.
So they head north across the Golden gate Bridge up
fifty miles and they land at a budget motel called
the Blue Bonnet in Santa Rosa, and they check in

(23:17):
under the fake names Eva and Ralph Long. And this
is where Iva Kroger's spots an opportunity. Across the street
from the Blue Bonnet is the Rose City Motor Court Motel,
and for some reason, Iva comes to believe this motel
will be her ticket to financial stability. She walks across
the street into the front office and asks if the
property is for sale. It's unclear what her plan was,

(23:41):
since we just said she didn't really have any money
so badly that she had to skip down because of it,
but it's a mood point because Mildred Arnisson tells Iva
she's not interested in selling, but it doesn't keep Ivo away. Instead,
she starts hanging around the motel and becomes quote unquote
good friends with Mildred and she and starts helping out
with Jay's care. We don't know exactly what Iva's personality

(24:04):
was like or how she managed to ingratiate herself with
a stranger so quickly, but what we do know is
within a few weeks, she has Mildred's full trust, so
it kind of seems like if Iva is like a
true sociopath, then she probably saw a husband and wife
who owned that motel, and the husband is physically impaired, right,

(24:28):
so there's kind of like a weakness that she might
be able to go in and exploit. Yeah, she sounds
like a scammer. Yeah. So then that December, i'va announces
that she's just earned around one hundred and fifty thousand
dollars on an accident claim, which would be over a
million dollars in today's money, and given what we know
about Iva's financial state, this is very likely a lie,

(24:50):
but Mildred believes her. So when Iva tells her that
she's going to use that money to go on the
vacation of a lifetime in Brazil, she invites Mildred to
come along, and Mildred is all in, so she immediately
begins planning for this trip. She takes out traveler checks
at the bank, organizes care for her husband, and then
she sends two letters, one to her mother and another

(25:12):
to her sister Beatrice, telling them of her exciting vacation plans.
And that is the last anyone will hear of Mildred Arnison.
So now we're back at the start of the story.
A police officers just left the contact information for Mildred's
sister Beatrice with Iva at the rebranded Elsinbero motel, and

(25:33):
not long after that, Beatrice receives a phone call from
an unknown woman who introduces herself as missus Long and
claims to be running the motel while Mildred is away,
and Missus Long's insistent that Beatrice has no reason to worry.
Mildred's having the time of her life abroad. In fact,
she's just sent a postcard to the motel from Mexico
suggesting that she's moved on from Brazil, which doesn't geographically

(25:57):
make a ton of sense, like she went south first,
and this is coming up. So Missus Long also confirms
Jay is doing well, and then she shares the news
that the Rose City motor Court has been sold, which
would have come as a shock to Beatrice, and when
she asks who bought it, Missus Long says she doesn't know.
But the phone call strikes Beatrice is very weird because

(26:19):
as much as she really wants to believe that her
sister's off enjoying herself somewhere while Jay is safe and
sound in Santa Rosa. She needs to hear it from
Mildred directly, but then on February twelfth, she does. Beatrice
gets a telegram that supposedly from her sister, except there
are two huge red flags. The telegram is signed Mildred

(26:41):
and not mill which is how her sister always signs
her letters, but an even bigger one the telegram is
addressed to Beatrice Brown, not Beatrice Brunn, oh Dear, which
means Mildred got her sister's last name wrong. So now
Beatrice knows for a fact that there's no way this
telegram came from her sister. So she calls the police

(27:03):
again and she explains what happened, and she tells them
now that she and her family are even more worried
that something very bad has happened to Mildred. But still, unfortunately,
the police are not too worried about the Arnissons. And
the reason that sucks so bad because is because if
they'd done the slightest amount of investigating, they would have
discovered all kinds of shady activity going on at the

(27:26):
Rose City Motor Court. Because not only had the Arnison's
belongings been removed from their room and burned, but Iva
immediately starts taking out loans in the Arnison's names. She
even used Mildred's traveler's checks that she got for her
trip to Brazil to pay off debts at local department stores.

(27:48):
Oh dear, so she's kind of She's making no secret
about basically replacing this woman. It's so creepy. So around
the same time Beatrice receives suspicious telegram, a Red crossworker
stops by the motel and asks Siva where mister Arnison is.
And it makes sense that this worker would ask IV

(28:09):
because I was been telling people that Mildred left Jay
in her care. But on this day, Iva decides to
play dumb. She tells the man that she doesn't know
where Jay is because Mildred had recently come to pick
him up. And she will repeat that story over and
over in the coming weeks, and as she does, adding
flourish to it every time, which to me is another

(28:30):
sign that you're dealing with the crazy person. Yeah. In
one version, she actually claims that Mildred came to the
motel one night at two in the morning in a
white Cadillac a companied by two sinister looking men, picked
up her husband Jay and drove off into the night
as one does. I mean.

Speaker 2 (28:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (28:48):
Now, it's the last week of February nineteen sixty two.
I've has only been in charge at the Rose City
Motor Court for two months, but the motel is already
falling behind on both utility and loan payment. Meanwhile, back
in San Francisco, the house that the Krogers had moved
out of very quickly and abandoned to move up to
San Rosa to basically get out of town. They've gone

(29:10):
back up there, and now they seem to be doing
construction work at the house. They've hired a contractor named
Walter Hughes, who they met over at the Blue Bonnet
Motel in Santa Rosa, and they've asked him to come
and dig out a section of their garage. Basically, it's
four feet long, four feet wide, four feet deep perfect.

(29:30):
I've explained that it's for some plumbing work that they
need to get done, but it's such a weird request
that Walter actually ends up talking about the details of
this job to people that he knows, and then within
a few days of him being done like digging that hole.
The Krogers fill it with cement that's a stark white color,
and it completely clashes with the original garage floor, which

(29:53):
is a greenish cement. Then in April, the Krogers start
another home improvement project. This time they hire a contractor
named Francis Kennison to add another layer of cement to
their garage floor. So when Francis comes to start the job,
the first step involves taking a sledgehammer to the awkwardly
patched white sections of cement and ripping it all up,

(30:16):
so it's like he has to get rid of what's
there first to do the job and make the floor even.
But when Iva hears him busting up the floor, she
rushes into the garage screaming about how that part is
not to be messed with. Francis insists the entire floor
has to be pulled up so it can be correctly
repaired before cement can be poured, but Iva doesn't budge,

(30:38):
so despite the uneven and patched flooring, Francis ends up
begrudgingly pouring the next layer of cement and then laying
additional wooden flooring on top of that, so by the
next month, which is May. Iva seems to have had
enough with the Rose City Motor Court. She's only been
at the helm for about six months, and she puts
it up for sale for seventy two thousand, which is

(31:01):
seven hundred thousand dollars in today's money. And as she
waits for an offer, those bills keep piling up, and
by the summertime the motel hasn't sold. Lenders and utility
companies still want their money. When the water company sends
out a worker to collect payment from Iva, she pulls
a handgun on him and threatens to shoot him to death.
That's not how you do how you do that? No?

(31:24):
You you got to pay it? Yea, even five dollars?
Have ever been like? Trying to work out bills when
you don't have any money and they're like, even five dollars?
Just give them five dollars a month. They're like, we
don't want to take you. Yeah, it's a court please, no, no,
just do something. The worker escapes unharmed, but immediately calls
the police. Of course, so Iva, knowing she's in big trouble,

(31:47):
skips town. We don't know if Ralph is in on
these plans. I'm sure, it was kind of last minute,
sounds like either way. She leaves him in San Francisco,
so within hours an arrest warrant is issued for Iva,
but when police get to the motel to arrest her,
she's long gone and months pass with no sign of her.
And then in August, contractor Walter Hughes's story about the

(32:08):
big hole that he was hired to dig in the
Kroger's garage finally makes it back to the police and
investigators start connecting the dots. They get a search warrant
for the Kroger home in San Francisco, where Ralph is
still living, but they don't find much until they get
to the garage. The investigators immediately notice the garage floor
has unusual bumps, and they decide to pull it up.

(32:30):
The wooden flooring goes, and then when they get through
multiple layers of cement, they make a horrifying discovery the
bodies of Mildred and Jay Arnison. They've both been strangled
to death. Mildren has been stuffed into a trunk. Jay
still has the belt that was used to strangle him
wrapped around his neck. Oh my god. Ralph swears he

(32:51):
has no idea that these bodies were buried in his garage,
but he's immediately arrested and now the hunt for Iva
is on. After eight long months, the Arnison family finally
hears about Mildred and Jay, and it's of course horrible news.
The story sweeps newspapers across the country and Beatrice Brunn

(33:12):
and her friends and family are left to mourn Jay
and Mildred, all while knowing their suspected killer is on
the loose, and they keep seeing her face and her
name in the paper. And while this onslaught of reporting
leads to a huge number of tips from the public,
most of them don't lead anywhere. So with each day
that passes without Iva Kroger being captured, fear continues to

(33:35):
build around the Bay area. Altogether. Iv has been missing
for three months, but just days after the actual man
hunt for her begins, a very strange and disturbing development
takes place. So now it's late August. We're in Oakland, California, which,
if you don't know, is right across the Bay from
San Francisco, and two very young boys aged three and

(33:58):
four are found on wandering around alone in Oakland, and
when the police are called to the scene, they learn
from the children that they're from Florida. These boys tell
the police that their estrange grandmother had randomly showed up
at their house and taken them away. So on a hunch.

(34:19):
One of the officers talking to the boys pulls out
a newspaper and shows them a picture of Iva Kroger,
and one of the boys says, that's grandma. What a hunch, geez, I.

Speaker 2 (34:30):
Know, right, seriously, but I think it's like that idea.
It's like what grandmother would relieve, and like those are
little kids that shouldn't probably shouldn't be out of a
stroller much less like walking around.

Speaker 1 (34:44):
Oh it's horrifying. Yeah, So these boys are reunited with
their very worried parents. This is one of the more
confusing chapters of the Iva Kroger saga. Investigators can only
theorize that i've a kidnapped and then abandon her grandsons
to fused detectives or maybe distract them. But the boy's mother, Joyce,

(35:05):
who's I've's daughter in law, thinks it's more than that.
She believes it was appointed attack on her husband. I's
abandoned son, who had cut ties with his mother after
she left Louisville when he was a child. Oh my god,
so she went all the way back to the family.
She abandoned Jesus to kidnap her estranged grandsons and bring

(35:27):
them to the Bay Area. That's so spiteful, and it's like,
you're the problem lady. It's crazy. It's like, was she
hiding out or was like I would love to know
what her what any kind of thinking, what exactly. It's
just it's so wild. This story prompts even more news
coverage on the Ivor Kroger man hunt. According to journalist

(35:50):
Katie Dowd, the newspapers take the vat's grandma line and
run with it, and they dub Iva the ghostly grandma,
the glib grandmother, and the ultimate insult dumpy grandma. Oh
come on, now, come on now. Of course, the more
it's in the news, the more there's like tips, she's

(36:10):
being spotted everywhere. According to the Press Democrat, which is
the Santa Rosa newspaper we subscribe. We're big supporters of
the Press Democrat, people were spotting Iva knocking on the
door of a farmer near Healsburg, which is up above
Santa Rosa. Another time riding in a car on Pedaluma
Hill Road ay, and another time walking on the street

(36:34):
in Eureka, which is like, way the hell up North,
got it. It's unclear how many of these sightings really
are Iva Kroger, but each tip is treated seriously. On
September ninth, officers rush to the scene after Iva is
seen at a church all the way down in San Diego. Huh.
But by the time they arrive, she's gone. And this
sighting is particularly unsettling because Jay Arnison's son live in

(36:58):
that part of San Diego. Oh no, so the murderer
of their father has been spotted near their house. Basically so.
Later that same day, in San Diego, a man named
Joseph Bonomo sees an old woman crying on the street
near his home, and he feels so sorry for her.
He invites her in and asks her to have dinner
with him and his wife. But that feeling changes as

(37:20):
Joseph and his wife Christine, sit across the dinner table
from this old woman who refuses to take off her sunglasses. Chill,
that's that chill just so weird and where it's like
we think you're sad, but we kind of can't tell
what's going on with you? Are you famous? So they
basically finish dinner send her on her way. But the

(37:42):
next afternoon, Christine's reading the newspaper and she sees a
news story featuring a photo of that same woman. She
grabs a marker and draws sunglasses over the eyes of
the photo and shows it to her husband, and they
realize that the woman they took in is I have
a Kroger fugitive accused of murder. Yikes. So Joseph calls

(38:04):
the police and incredibly, or maybe not so incredibly, they
tell him they're wrapping up for the evening and he
should call back tomorrow.

Speaker 2 (38:15):
Oh my god, we're wrapping up policing for the night.
This isn't seven eleven, and I can't be expected to
help you. Even seven eleven's open all fucking night.

Speaker 1 (38:25):
Man, So Joseph calls the FBI. He doesn't drop it,
thank god, He like cares enough, and he's like, he
calls the FBI. The FBI is open all night, and
they immediately get on it, and they track Iva down
to an apartment not far from the Bonomo's house, and
she had been living there under the name Julia Schmidt

(38:46):
and She's arrested without incident. So Iva's capture comes, of
course as a huge relief to the public, much more
so to the Arnison family. Jay Arnison's son Jack, tells
reporters that quote, now I can take the shells out
of the thirty eight I've had in micas session for
two weeks, and I'm sure my brother will do the same.
When Iva speaks to the press, she maintains her innocence

(39:06):
and tells reporters that quote, I sleep good and I'm
just a happy person. Congratulations. How much more of a like?
How much more of a like a complete sociopath do
you have to be to be? Like, Oh, you're asking
me about I'm being arrested for murder. Yeah, but don't
worry about me. I sleep great, right. So the Kroger's

(39:27):
joint trial kicks off in January of nineteen sixty three.
So even though many people suspect Ralph did play a
role in this crime, everyone believes Iva is the mastermind
behind these murders, and the circumstantial evidence against her, which
includes her takeover of the motel, hiring the contractors, and
the fact that she was with both victims shortly before

(39:49):
their disappearances is all extremely damning, but Iva refuses to
go down without a fight. While both Krogers plead not
guilty to the murder charges, Iva decides to add not
guilty by reason of insanity to her plea. And then
she just goes all in on this insanity defense. No,
she sings songs in the courtroom, she claims she's the

(40:11):
mother of God. She pretends to forget why she's being tried.
During jury's selection, she reportedly glares at a prospective juror
so intensely that the woman is dismissed from jury duty.
Oh God. In another instance, Iva interrupts witness testimony by
removing her shoes and banging them on the table in
front of her. At one point, she even runs over

(40:32):
to the DA's table throws his papers in the air
while screaming. And she has to be forcibly removed from
the courtroom. And that's just a couple examples of what
she did. One legal filing says that she interrupts the
proceedings hundreds of times. She sounds exhausting, just the worst.

Speaker 2 (40:51):
Yeah, just like that's say, not how you prove that
you're mentally unstable for trial?

Speaker 1 (40:57):
No, be like, put your fucking shoes on, lady, get
the shoes off the table. And then, of course Iva's
attorney makes the questionable decision of putting his unruly client
on the stand, and of course it's a disaster. According
to Katie Dowd, Iva screamed for fifteen minutes straight while
the judge begged her to calm down, so she's just screaming,

(41:19):
Oh my god. But her diehard efforts to validate her
insanity plea ultimately come to not. Prosecutors eventually put multiple
psychiatrists on the stand and they all testify that Iva
seems to be faking insanity to secure a lighter punishment.
So this trial lasts about two months. It wraps up

(41:39):
in March of nineteen sixty three, and after five hours
of deliberating, the jurors come back with matching verdicts for
Iva and Ralph Kroger. They're both guilty of first degree murder.
According to Katie Dowd, quote neither made much of a fuss,
with Iva Pheeblee declaring that the jury was paid off,
and Ralph, ever, the sad sack of a man murmuring.

(42:01):
I didn't expect it.

Speaker 2 (42:05):
Horrible you sure about that when your wife is back
in losing it.

Speaker 1 (42:08):
I know, I mean yeah, for real, you do know
that you put those bodies in your own garage. I mean,
that's that kind of thing.

Speaker 2 (42:17):
Is so it's so cold, like they kept they kept
the bodies of their victims and put them in their garage.

Speaker 1 (42:23):
Oh no, it's so awful, it's horrifying. So, just a
few years after being sent to fulsome prison, Ralph Kroger
dies of cancer in nineteen sixty six at the age
of sixty three. Meanwhile, Iva continues serving out her sentence,
but her behavior is noticeably impeccable, and on top of that,
she's experiencing severe vision loss. It's left her almost completely blind.

(42:46):
This convinces officials that she's at low risk of reoffending,
so in nineteen seventy five, after serving about thirteen years
of a life sentence, Iva is released from prison on parole.
So from here her her trail gets a little spotty again.
It's reported that she moves to Riverside, where she starts
attending services at the local Church of Scientology. She works

(43:10):
in nursing homes. She expresses interest in taking nursing courses,
which is a nice callback to her first criminal charge
of impersonating a Navy nurse. She also, around this time
drops her alias and reverts to her legal name, Lucille.
But what doesn't seem to change is Iva's undeniably difficult personality.

(43:31):
Katie Dowd writes, quote, she apparently liked to ride the
bus around white cane in hand, and complains to strangers
about serving thirteen years for a crime she didn't commit.
Keep it to yourself, lady. It's like you did it
and you're gonna make everyone listen to you. Blab okay.
So then Iva drops off the map for a while.

(43:53):
In nineteen eighty seven, she resurfaces twenty five years after
her arrest for the murders of Mildred and Arnison. She's
now in her mid sixties, and the police in Cape Coral, Florida,
are trying to track her down for threatening a man's life. Apparently,
Lucille blamed him for the fatal drowning of her niece.
It's unclear why she came to believe this, or what,

(44:14):
if any role, this man played in the tragedy. All
we know is that the reports describe him simply as
a grosser. He was never charged criminally in relation to
the drowning, and he seemed genuinely terrified of Iva. In
any case, she had quote repeatedly made violent calls to
his home before showing up to kill him. Yikes. Yeah,

(44:35):
this man also escaped from her, Like the water company
employee years before, goes straight to police. Iva heads out
of town, and when investigators do a deeper dive into
her background, they're shocked to discover that this Lucille that
everyone knows her as in Florida is yet another alias
for the infamous Bay Area murderer Iva Kroger. Except for
this one important detail, Lucille, unlike Iva Kroger, has no

(44:59):
notice issues with her vision. Yeah, man, you can't.

Speaker 2 (45:03):
You can't let someone out of prison on a like suggestion.

Speaker 1 (45:06):
That they gave you the things. Only she can verify.

Speaker 2 (45:11):
This is a true scammer, liar, like a terrible person
with no moral ethical center.

Speaker 1 (45:18):
So it's like, oh, it's so sad she's going blind.
It's like, yeah, that's yeah, she picked a thing that
would make you think she would just be ineffectual out
in the right for crime, right, Katie Dawd writes, quote,
the police wondered if she'd faked blindness in order to
secure an early release, and having achieved her goal, could
then apply for state aid for the blind, So then

(45:41):
she's committing fraud is taking money. Iva remains at large
for the rest of her life. Because of her habit
of taking on fake names. We don't know where she
went or what she did. Every once in a while,
I have a story would pop up in newspapers or
magazines describing her as like a boogeyman that's laying low,
waiting to strike at any moment. But the reality is

(46:04):
that she likely died in Boston in the year two thousand,
at the age of seventy eight. She lived in public housing,
she was diagnosed with cancer, and she died alone, so
alone that the name on the next of kin on
her death certificate is a social worker that she was
not related to. Oh my god, here's the perfect button

(46:25):
for this story. That's from Katie Dowd. And if you
want to read that her article, it's in SF Gate.
It's really good and she says this, for nearly two
hundred years, San Francisco has been the last stop of
petty thieves, con artists, and killers. I have a Kroger
was all three damn. And that's the story of the
notorious Bay Area killer. I have a Kroger that gets.

Speaker 2 (46:47):
Something and just like like go off in fucking obscurity
and no one knows, Like there's someone's neighbor, there's someone's
fucking friend. If she's gotten a nerve, she's taking care
of people, you know, it's like vulnerable people, like old people.

Speaker 1 (47:05):
Yeah, it's crazy. She's the worst, and she is really
good at it. She clearly she has no shame. She doesn't.
She just is going to get what she wants and
like and she's gonna lie. She's gonna do whatever it
takes to do that. Like, and they're looking at her
as like, oh, she's just this old lady.

Speaker 2 (47:24):
She'd let the old lady. Yeah, Like she's not dangerous.
That's gonna be a real surprise to some gen z
or who does their fucking DNA, you know. Ancestry Tree, Oh,
who's my great great grandma.

Speaker 1 (47:37):
Whatever the fuck she's Oh she let my grandfather wander
free in a city streets. Right, Oh my god, A
good job. Thank you for my story today. This is
a really interesting story with a lot of little pop
culture bits and pieces in it.

Speaker 2 (48:00):
This is the story of murderer Gary Gilmore and Nike's
just do it slogan.

Speaker 1 (48:06):
Oh oh, do you know how they related? I mean,
I can guess, but don't do it. I wive Okay.

Speaker 2 (48:14):
The sources I use in today's episodes are an A
and E article by CM Frankie, an archived article from
The Guardian accredited to Christopher Reid, an NPR article by
Menuel Lopez Restrepo, a Washington Post article by Natalie Melman Petrezella,
and another Washington Post article by Timothy Bella. And the
rest can be found in our show notes. And we're

(48:34):
going to start with your favorite workout jazzer size.

Speaker 1 (48:37):
Oh yay, hold on, let me let me put my
leg warmers on, would you please? Okay, So all right,
we're gonna start.

Speaker 2 (48:43):
In nineteen eighty eight, Ronald fucking Reagan is in his
second term as president at the US cool Ranch Doritos
and pasta salad. That's say, are all the rage. I'm
a senior, you're a senior. I'm drinking a lot of
sun kissed orange soda probably, And people, especially women, are
obsessed with aerobics. This new way of working out with

(49:06):
its comfortable footwear and bright colored high cut leotards, is
easier on the body, widely available across the country, and
is created by women for women. It's a you know this,
it's a huge fucking.

Speaker 1 (49:19):
It was a true cultural phenomenon at the time.

Speaker 2 (49:21):
Definitely, there's that show now on Physical, the show Physical
on Apple with friend of the Family Roy Scovell.

Speaker 1 (49:29):
M h, he's great in that. He's so good. It's
a good show and it'll show you about that.

Speaker 2 (49:34):
And the eighties aerobics and jazuitizing all that becomes a
massive industry. There's VHS tapes, classes, and of course clothing
and footwear. Some companies jump on the aerobics trends sooner
than others, like Rebock. They hit the market with the
successful news sneaker design, especially for women who do aerobics,
and they're a huge success. But Nike has underestimated the power,

(49:57):
the lasting power of this new form of ac exercise,
and they initially dismiss the aerobics craze, and by the
late nineteen eighties, when aerobics is at its height of popularity,
the company is not doing well.

Speaker 1 (50:10):
Nike.

Speaker 2 (50:10):
Yeah, Nike is not doing well. That's crazy. Okay, So
Nike to do better hires an outside advertising firm called
Widen and Kennedy out of Portland, Oregon to help dig
them out of their hole. The firm is hired to
design a brand new campaign for television, for print, and
merchandise just to like totally overhaul the company's image and

(50:33):
put them back into competition with Reebok. They want to
widen their audience, and Nike doesn't want to just focus
on women in aerobics, but wants to appeal to all Americans,
regardless of age and gender and activity level all of that.

Speaker 1 (50:47):
Really, what I'm hearing there is, let's focus back on
the boys. They were like, they didn't want to do
it the first time, they're not going to do it
this time.

Speaker 2 (50:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (50:55):
Right.

Speaker 2 (50:56):
So Dan Widen is one of the namesakes of this firm.
He's a true out of the box thinker and reportedly
seeks inspiration wherever he can find it. When he's working
on this new Nike campaign, he feels like something is
missing from it.

Speaker 1 (51:08):
They have some good content, but there's.

Speaker 2 (51:10):
Nothing tying the advertisements like into one, you know, cohesive box.
But then Dan has an idea. It's a dark and
kind of morbid idea. But Dan wholeheartedly believes it's going
to be just what this campaign needs. So we got
to think of him as the nineteen eighties don Draper.
I feel like you know what I mean? Okay, all
kind of stuff. Yeah, okay. So Dan pitches a slogan

(51:31):
to the Nike people. It's a short but pointed phrase
to tie the advertising campaign together.

Speaker 1 (51:37):
Just do it. At first, everyone hates it.

Speaker 2 (51:41):
So just remember that when you're pitching stuff or where
you're doing things in life, sometimes everyone hates it at first.

Speaker 1 (51:46):
For real, Dan Soo says, trust me, Nike does. Obviously.

Speaker 2 (51:50):
The rest is history that just do It campaign is
wildly successful. It's like everyone knows what it is just
by the sound of it these days, right, It's like, yeah, well,
probably one of the most scessful campaigns in history. I'm
guessing I would say, yeah. But what isn't revealed until
decades later is that the inspiration for this slogan come

(52:11):
from the last words of a convicted murderer named Gary Gilmore.

Speaker 1 (52:16):
Oh wow.

Speaker 2 (52:18):
Not only that, but his execution in the late nineteen
seventies was at the heart of a nationwide political battle
over the death penalty. So we're going to rewind to
nineteen forty, which is the year Gary Gilmour is born.
He's raised in Portland, Oregon. He's a gifted artist and
a particularly bright kid, but he is the constant target

(52:39):
of his father's horrific abuse. According to his younger siblings,
this abuse just completely shapes who Gary becomes. Sadly, from
a young age, Gary begins to show dramatic signs of
being violent and impulsive, and by the time he's fifteen,
he's sent a reform school and, according to his brother,
becomes quote fully committed to living at criminals destiny. His

(53:01):
brother happens to be a guy named Michael Gilmore from Portland,
Oregon who's a writer and music journalist, and he had
written for Rolling Stone and that sort of thing, and
he actually wrote a memoir that included his story of
his brother in it. Oh wow, so we got a
lot of information from that. He spends his adult life
in and out of prison for armed robbery and assault,
and at some point a prison psychiatrist describes Gary as

(53:23):
having anti social personality disorder with psychotic features and prescribes
some massive doses of antipsychotic medications. To control his behavior
while conditionally on parole. In nineteen seventy six, he leaves
town and moves to Provo, Utah, which, by the way,
I look this story up in our Gmail to see
if anyone had written in about it and Provo Utah
could have a really good Murderino meetup, because so many

(53:45):
people were like my grandfather worked at the prison and
my dad was at the worked.

Speaker 1 (53:49):
At the shoe store that he tried to get a job.
That like, there's.

Speaker 2 (53:52):
Just so many emails. It's wild, that's amazing. I couldn't
include everything.

Speaker 1 (53:58):
Our Salt Lake show was amazing. Yes, that's so true.
So long ago we had a good one there. So Gary,
he's thirty six years old at this time. He falls
in love in Provo Utah with a nineteen year old
woman named Nicole, and Nicole has seemingly had it rough
already up until this point before meeting this fucking Gary.
She'd been married twice and had two kids and was

(54:21):
seemingly unlucky in love. Their relationship is rocky and dangerous.
He's drinking heavily, he's extremely violent, and eventually Nicole leaves
him due to the abuse, and this sends him into
a murderous rage. On the night of July nineteenth, nineteen
seventy six, Gary Gilmour walks into a gas station in
orm Utah. There's one gas station attendant, a young Mormon

(54:45):
and student at Brigham Young University named Max Jensen. He
wasn't supposed to be working that night, but he'd lost
a coin flip with a coworker and had to cover
the shift. Gary tells him to land on the floor,
and Max, who's terrified, he completely cooperates. He totally complies,
but without warning or motive, Gary shoots him in the

(55:06):
head at close range, killing him on the spot. The
next night, Gary walks into a motel in Provo, Utah,
just a few miles down the road from the gas station.
He demands the cash box from the motel manager, Benny Bushnell,
who also is a Mormon and student at Bringham Young University,
and the same fucking thing happens. Gary tells him to

(55:26):
get on the ground. Benny does exactly as he's told,
but Gary shoots him, killing him instantly. This time, there's
a witness, a motel guest had seen the whole thing.
Gary flees, and he tends to get rid of his
gun and accidentally shoots himself in the hand while doing so.
Oh so, because of this, he leaves a trail of
blood as he travels around town that night, and there's

(55:49):
a mechanic who'd been working on his car and he
also saw the blood on Gary's hand and had also
heard about the shooting that was really close by.

Speaker 2 (55:56):
So he was easily caught. Yeah, police catch him quickly.
He doesn't sister rest. It's not clear why he's surrendered
so easily to the authorities, but it's likely he knew
he'd eventually get caught. And later on, when he's asked
why he went on this murder's free, Gary responds, I
don't know. I don't have a reason. And then also
someone wrote in and said that Ted Bundy was at

(56:16):
the prison at the same time as him, the prison
he was taken to. Oh wow, after getting arrested. Just crazy.
So the trial of Gary Gilmore is relatively open and shut.
In the words of Gary's defense attorney Michael esplnd quote,
he was not a very good criminal. He shot himself
with his own gun and left a trail of blood,
and he did it in front of a star witness.

(56:36):
So Gary didn't even want a trial. He just wanted
to leave guilty and be done with it. He seems
like a real fucking ornery dick, you know, or he
just knows there's no point.

Speaker 1 (56:46):
Yeah, he's not going to like pretend.

Speaker 2 (56:48):
Yeah, it's almost like he went on this spree because
he wanted to go to prison or something like that,
it seems like. But once the trial starts, Gary seems
to like the attention. He thinks this will somehow win
back Nicole, his girlfriend. He blows or kisses in the courtroom.
He's not only unsympathetic in the eyes of the jury,
he's totally repulsive to them. He has killed two members

(57:10):
of a close knit faith community without motive or explanation,
and both victims Max and Benny left behind wives and
very young children. So it feels like everyone in Utah
hates Gary Gilmore. He's convicted on October seventh, nineteen seventy six.
What is unusual about this case. That's kind of an
obvious conviction, But what is unusual is that Gary Gilmore

(57:31):
is sentenced to death. This is the first time in
almost ten years that anyone of the United States has
faced the death penalty. See back In nineteen seventy two,
the Supreme Court rules that the death penalty falls into
the umbrella of cruel and unusual punishment and is unconstitutional.
So the death penalty had been taken off the table
completely in the entire United States, which I think is

(57:52):
a really rare thing to do for years, even though
sixty six percent of Americans supported the death penalty, and
a landmark decision in nineteen seventy six, the Supreme Court
overrides its previous ruling and the death penalty is now
legal again. So Gary Gilmore is going to be the
first person put to death since it had become unconstitutional.

Speaker 1 (58:13):
Got it.

Speaker 2 (58:14):
But Gary Gilmore doesn't seem to care. When given the
choice to die by hanging or fire squad, He's reportedly
unemotional when he replies quote, I'd rather be shot. So
his execution scheduled for November fifteenth, nineteen seventy six, and
eight am. But against his wishes, anti death penalty groups
from all over the country start to get involved, including
the ACLU the American Civil Liberties Union. Due to their

(58:36):
advocacy work, his execution gets pushed back again and again
until it's finally scheduled for two months later, on January seventeenth,
nineteen seventy seven. So Gary Gilmore becomes the center of
this death penalty discussion in America.

Speaker 1 (58:52):
Out for both sides.

Speaker 2 (58:53):
He seemed to want to die, which I think was
a weird little, you know, caveat in this argument. It's
not like he was hoping to get out of the
death penalty. He attempts to take his own life twice
while on death row and publicly ask the anti death
penalty advocates to quote butt out. Wow, It's like, it's
not about you, dude. Yeah, it's not for you.

Speaker 1 (59:13):
It's about what's right for humanity and involves evolved humanity. Exactly.

Speaker 2 (59:18):
Funny you mentioned ESSNL earlier during that Christmas season in
nineteen seventy seven. He's even parodied on Saturday Night Live.

Speaker 1 (59:26):
Oh shit.

Speaker 2 (59:27):
This show is only in its second season and that night,
the musical guest is Frank Zappa and the host is
Candas Bergen. Candas Bergen, along with some of the show's
biggest stars like Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi and Gilda Radner,
they sing a fake Christmas Carol as fake snow is
coming down the wrong like Christmaswaters and they sing a

(59:48):
song about like let's kill Gary Gilmore for Christmas. Let's
hang him from atop the Christmas tree, Let's give him
the only gift that money can't buy. Put poison in
his eggnog, let him drink it, watch him die. So
like this is like everyone is fucking talking about this.

Speaker 1 (01:00:03):
Do you think they were being ironic? I think everyone
hated Gary Gilmore.

Speaker 2 (01:00:08):
But yeah, I don't know if it was like let's
actually kill him or like this is what people are
just like talking.

Speaker 1 (01:00:12):
About a lot, right, But I think everyone.

Speaker 2 (01:00:15):
Hated him, and like maybe there was a lot of
people who were maybe not on the fence about the
death penalty to begin with, but then because of this
guy and what he had done, were pro in a
way like kind of divided the country.

Speaker 1 (01:00:27):
Right. That's intense. It's dark. I had no idea. That's
really dark. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:00:33):
The day comes, it's total chaos. The morning of January seventeenth,
nineteen seventy seven, at the Utah State Prison where Gary
Gilmore is scheduled to be executed, journalists, film crews, and
protesters both for and against the death penalty, and reportedly
a pro death penalty advocate throws an egg at the
head of a bishop who is holding a prayer circle
for Gary Gilmour outside the prison. Sir, Yeah, Jesus believe

(01:00:59):
the bishop of this. I mean, it's that's a whole
different argument.

Speaker 1 (01:01:03):
Yeah, leave the chickens out of this. So many layers,
good god, it's so oversimplified it Yes, yeah, that's crazy. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:01:12):
There's helicopters with cameramen flying around like it's just a
whole scene. It sounds similar to when Ted Bundy got
put to death too, you know, there was just this whole,
this crazy mob. Yea. Then Gary Gilmore is somehow given
permission to call a country Western radio station, a local
one and request his favorite songs that night. It's just
fucking plandemmonium. Yeah no, yeah, but that's not that's the seventies. Yes,

(01:01:39):
that's uh huh wow, that's fucked up, so fucked up.
So no one's really sure what's going to happen at
sunrise when Gary is scheduled to be executed, Like, is
it going to be postponed again? A Washington Post journalist writes, quote,
we at least found all of it profoundly distressing, having
been spared for a decade. The ordeal of reading about
how a civilized puts a convicted prisoner to death. We

(01:02:02):
had almost forgotten how awful it is. So it is
like a carnival scene when someone's life is on the lining.
Yeah it's a really bad person's life. But it's just
really crazy, right, but.

Speaker 1 (01:02:15):
The but kind of boiling it down to like he
did bad, so he dies, which we you know, we've
talked about this on this show. This is This is
one of those things where it's like you can read
a big, long story of some horrible, horrible crimes and
horrible things, and when you get to the end of it,
it's like, yes, I think that person should not be

(01:02:36):
on this planet anymore. But then you know, there's always
the turn of Gary Gilmour never had a chance because
his father beat the living shit out of him, and
he had mental illness and this and that. So like
obviously all of those discussions are so much more complex
than I pick this side.

Speaker 2 (01:02:56):
I pick that side totally. It's just fifty Shades of
Gray essentially. Why you're talking about your favorite book all
of a sudden, I mean, you know who put it
perfectly is fifty Shades of Gray. Okay, so a last
minute request to delay the execution goes into effect the
night of so a judge has to fly over five
hundred miles to Utah in the middle of the night

(01:03:17):
just to deny the request in person. So it's seven
forty five am, just a few minutes before sunrise, when
Gary Gilmour and the rest of the nation are told
that his execution is moving forward. Oh wow, He's set
up in front of a spiring squad and strapped into
an oak chair. The grandfather of the murderino who strapped

(01:03:37):
him into the chairs emailed us to let us know
about it. It's like, seriously, everyone is involved in this
fucking wow story.

Speaker 1 (01:03:45):
It's wild.

Speaker 2 (01:03:46):
There's five men hidden behind a curtain and they own
there's five small holes for their rifle butts to stick
out of the curtain, and their guns are aimed and
this is obviously so you know, they won't have to
see themselves shooting someone. And they say they put four
bullets in the five guns, so no one knows who
actually killed him. But like later, his brother says he's
saw five bullet holes, so they don't really know if

(01:04:08):
there actually was only four bullets.

Speaker 1 (01:04:10):
Sorry, I'm confused about the four bullets.

Speaker 2 (01:04:13):
I guess when there's five people in a firing squad,
let's say four, they only put bullets in four of
the guns, and they don't tell you which gun doesn't
have one, so that you can always feel like, well,
maybe I didn't shoot him. I think it's for the people,
oh killing you, got it?

Speaker 1 (01:04:26):
You know what I mean? Got you? Yes, completely, which
is like such.

Speaker 2 (01:04:29):
An argument where it's like it's so traumatic for people
whose job it is to kill someone that they don't
make it, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:04:35):
Right, Like what are the we're bending ourselves all around, right,
make this an okay thing?

Speaker 2 (01:04:40):
Exactly exactly when they ask for Gary's last words, he
simply replies, quote, let's do it. He doesn't flinch when
the guns are fired. And so pop culture just like
a little bit of a little tidbit. There's a punk
band called the Adverts and they're hit nineteen seventy seven
single it is called Gary Gilmore's Eyes because Gary Gilmore

(01:05:04):
requested that some of his organs be donated for transplant
purposes and two people received his corneas wow. Yeah, So
I think everyone was a little disturbed by that, and
so they wrote looking through Gary Gilmore's eyes by the
the adverts.

Speaker 1 (01:05:20):
Check it out. The eyes weren't connected to the brain
though anymore. So It's okay, they're just corneas.

Speaker 2 (01:05:26):
You can't tell a punk band anything, really, I mean.

Speaker 1 (01:05:29):
They're going to say the thing. You're like, you can't
say that. They're like, we don't care. We're Jodie Foster's army.
We don't care. We're jerks, and we're in a circle.
Punk's not dead. We're assures and weren't his circle. Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:05:44):
So it isn't until ten years later that Dan Wyden,
the mad Men guy, is working for Nike. He's trying
to figure out something to tie everything together, and he
remembers this mostly forgotten bit of American pop culture about
Gary Gilmore.

Speaker 1 (01:05:58):
Because Dan is from Portland, Organ and it's like Gary was.

Speaker 2 (01:06:01):
It's likely he followed the murders and trials and the
execution somewhat closely. He remembers reading about those last words
let's do it and being really impacted by them, and
in a twenty fifteen interview, Dan shares that quote. I
remember when I read that, I was like, this is amazing.
I mean, how in the face of that much uncertainty
do you push through that. So I didn't like the

(01:06:22):
let's thing, and so I just changed that because otherwise
I'd have to give him credit. So he totally made
it clear that that's where he got this huge marketing
campaign slogan Wow Yeah. According to American fitness culture scholar
Natalie Melman Petrozella, Dan then borrows from First Lady Nancy Reagan,

(01:06:44):
who had made her mission as first Lady in the
Reagan era to continue this fucked up war on drugs,
and this is when she comes up with her now
and famous just Say No campaign. Though I must say
it's later realize that this campaign does very little to
reduce drug use and might have actually definitely just increased
stigma against drug addiction and addicts. It is catchy, so

(01:07:07):
Dan basically mashes up Gary Gilmore's Let's Do It with
Nancy Reagan's just Say No wow and creates just do It.
The introduction of the slogan increases Nike brand sales by
one thousand percent over the next ten years. Jesus cry, yeah,
so it fucking works.

Speaker 1 (01:07:24):
Well. I remember when that commercial came out. It is
very kind of the vibe is very agro. Jim Brow
where it's like, don't be a lazy pig. Essentially, yeah, yeah,
but it was the first time anyone had seen anything
like that. It was like get up, yeah, from where
you are right this second, and just do it.

Speaker 2 (01:07:42):
It was like chills inducing, like, yeah, I gotta just
there's no.

Speaker 1 (01:07:45):
Excuses, just do it. Yeah, it's really good. I is
a what eight year old was like, yes, I must
just do it. Insane.

Speaker 2 (01:07:57):
So Nike doesn't really, of course, ever publicly acknowledge the
inspiration behind their best known slogan.

Speaker 1 (01:08:02):
They're like, good, yeah, I'm not smart, we're talking about it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:05):
According to company insiders, the origin story is generally not known,
or if it is, it's not really discussed within the company.

Speaker 1 (01:08:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:08:12):
For some it's just a bit of a grizzly inside joke.
But the lasting power of just do it is undeniable.
The slogan helped to open the door to Nike reaching
more diverse demographics to sell athleticware. The popularity and universality universality, universality, universality, versatility,
It's universality. The popularity and universality of just do It

(01:08:38):
leads Nike to create future ad campaigns in the nineties
and beyond you can leave me trying to pronounce that
in studen.

Speaker 1 (01:08:47):
And keeping in mind the.

Speaker 2 (01:08:48):
Company's recent experience of missing the mark when the aerobics
craze swept the industry, Nike starts putting new effort into
highlighting women in sports and encouraging girls to participate in
athletics from a young age so they do get the
fucking memo that women can make them money too.

Speaker 1 (01:09:03):
Yeah, smart capitalism.

Speaker 2 (01:09:05):
The origin, story and legacy of just Do It is
very complex. Obviously, this phrase has inspired millions of people
and has also likely sold millions of Nike products. Just
Do It seemingly helped Nike move away from a culture
of sexism towards un marketing strategy that is more inclusive
and political. But it's hard to ignore that the slogan
itself is rooted in the murders of two innocent people

(01:09:29):
and the death of their murderer, who died at the
hands of the state while the nation was at a
fever pitch regarding its attitudes towards the death penalty.

Speaker 1 (01:09:38):
And that is a complicated and.

Speaker 2 (01:09:39):
Bizarre story of the execution of Gary Gilmour and the
inspiration for Just Do It. The advertising campaign that helped
make Nike what it is today. Wild Oh and there
was a book by Norman Nayler about it called The
Executioner Song, which in nineteen eighty two was made into
a made for tea movie or a movie I don't know,

(01:10:02):
starring Tommy Lee Jones as Gary Gilmore. And he does
look like that. Here, I'm gonna have Alejandra send you
a pick on the chat. He looks like that. And
then if Tom Kenny up SpongeBob Squarepant's fame had a baby,
what so look.

Speaker 1 (01:10:16):
At him just like slightly, just like a little yeah,
a little bit. I see it. Yep. But Tommy Lee
Jones and Brasanna Arquetes in it as well. Early Tommy
Lee Jones man, man oh man oh.

Speaker 2 (01:10:30):
I think he won the Emmy or US he won
whatever this was the award for it for the Executioner Song.

Speaker 1 (01:10:36):
Yeah. Yeah, I was just little, and I'm so I'm
sure like the death penalty as a topic on the
news was definitely like in my consciousness, but this level
of it and this kind of like this rage about it, yeah, fervor,
But it also makes me think of like I remember
hearing my parents talk about it in very simplistic ways,

(01:10:58):
which it was almost like Bible based of like if
you kill a person, then that's it for you. Like
you don't get to live if you're going to kill
another person. That's what I was raised around. Yeah, and
I think like this is the kind of thing people
don't young people these days don't understand that it truly
was even you know, forty years ago, so much of

(01:11:20):
a simpler time in that way, where like if people
didn't want to know stuff, they didn't have to know it.
It's not like they had a phone in their hand
or the internet or anything totally. So if you saw
it on the news of like you know, death penalty
good or bad? Are you pro or con? You picked
aside the end, and if you had some sort of
like a religious background to say, here's how I make

(01:11:41):
my decisions or were you went to law school and
you saw some super fucked up like wrongful convictions where
you're like, no, no, no, this can't happen. Like but
that wasn't part of the conversation back then. Either.

Speaker 2 (01:11:52):
There were no wrong there, No one ever got wrongfully
convicted in their minds, you know what I mean. It
was like the bad guys are the bad guys and
they did bad things and that is the end of
the story. There's no nuance. There's no nuance to.

Speaker 1 (01:12:02):
It at all. There was never nuance. And it was
like when you heard stories of like Warden's at jails
who were like everyone wants to wear pink and it's
so humiliating to them or whatever, and you're like, haha,
good because you're bad because you went to jail. Yeah,
and then it's like slowly, over the years, stories start
to come out where it's just like I never did
anything and I was in jail for forty years and

(01:12:23):
all these kinds of things that like the complexity grows
as we all evolve. I just it blows me away.
I mean, it's like it's the same experience we've had
on the show. We're just like, here's the things I
think because I don't know any different until people tell
me different.

Speaker 2 (01:12:39):
Yeah, And then the conversation doesn't even start with people
being rehabilitated, Like that doesn't even come close to being
part of the conversation. It's like before we even get there,
it's like there's ten fucking opinions and thoughts about the
whole matter before rehabilitation ever comes into vine.

Speaker 1 (01:12:55):
Well, and like the idea that what if we took
some money out of the yearly police budget, which you know,
which basically is that line on the graph goes way
the fuck out off the page. There's too much. And
if you took that and put it into what kind
of programs are working are helpful? Is actually affecting people

(01:13:17):
who grew up and were constantly had the shit beaten
out of them by their father and also had mental
illness and this and that.

Speaker 2 (01:13:25):
Yeah, I didn't have the resources that we had of
education and safety and food and just the basics to
keep you, keep you safe and keep you, you know,
away from trouble, like you know, like you're doing petty
theft as a young kid. And it's like, let's look
into the reasons this person feels necessary to commit these

(01:13:47):
crimes rather than just punish them and say they're a
bad person and take them off the streets.

Speaker 1 (01:13:51):
There's a need, there's a need. It's like that, Yeah,
it's just it's wild. It's like that is such an
amazing That was amazing, by the way, and it's like
the comprehensiveness of like coming out coming out of like
here's what's going on aerobics, you know what I mean.
And then it's like, well, actually, here's what we got

(01:14:13):
it from ten years ago or five years ago. Here's
this crazy thing that was happening where it's just like, yeah, I'm.

Speaker 2 (01:14:20):
Blown out, and everything's interconnected, there's an interconnectedness, and it
all comes back to true crime.

Speaker 1 (01:14:25):
It all does come back to true crime. Everybody's reading
those books of like what what are human beings capable of?
And why? It's like why, what's the why is simplicity?

Speaker 2 (01:14:38):
Everyone wants to all these fucking all these fucking politicians
want it to be simple and there to be a
fucking let's ban drag and things and bad things won't
happen to children anymore. And let's you know, armed teachers
and everything will be fine. And it's just so fucking idiotic.

Speaker 1 (01:14:53):
One of my favorite things. And this is happening on
all social media that I'm on now, so Twitter and TikTok,
just story after a story every time someone gets arrested
for like child molestation, and it's a church pastor, and
people are keeping track where they're like, this is the
thirtieth church pastor that has been arrested for this, and

(01:15:15):
so far we have zero drag queens who have been
arrested like that whole thing.

Speaker 2 (01:15:21):
Guess how many children have been killed by drag queens
with fuck reading them a book?

Speaker 1 (01:15:25):
None? Zero?

Speaker 2 (01:15:27):
And guess how many fucking children have been killed by
the fact that we have zero fucking gun laws in
this country?

Speaker 1 (01:15:35):
A fucking shit.

Speaker 2 (01:15:36):
Time, and yet another another, and yet another, and yet another.

Speaker 1 (01:15:42):
Hey, let's don't it some money, shall we?

Speaker 2 (01:15:45):
Good idea, ACLU, Yeah, let's do it, ACLU American Civil
Liberties Union ten thousand dollars.

Speaker 1 (01:15:53):
Give what you can, support them how you can, whatever
that may be. And I don't know, hug someone.

Speaker 2 (01:16:01):
Yeah, how about just like educate yourself, you know what
I mean?

Speaker 1 (01:16:04):
If you don't have five bucks to spare.

Speaker 2 (01:16:06):
We understand there's sometimes the creditors want that five dollars
and it can't go anywhere.

Speaker 1 (01:16:10):
Else, we get it. Very true.

Speaker 2 (01:16:12):
Yeah, So just look and educate yourself. That's a really
great way to be a to be a fighter.

Speaker 1 (01:16:17):
Yeah, very true. You know, and don't forget to watch
important videos on TikTok. That's a great way to educate yourself.
It's just it is such an advantage that we just
having lived half of my life without it, it's so
much better with it. Which also is like that TikTok
ban is complete bullshit. It's complete bullshit. And there are
people on TikTok who are showing people what stocks those

(01:16:43):
senators who are at that hearing, what stocks their dumping
and what stocks their buying, So everyone else can do
exactly what those senators are doing, because that's why they're
doing it. They're not afraid of data being sold, because
if they were, they would have shut down Facebook after
Cambridge Analytic. Yeah, what they are afraid of is the
fact that people can talk directly to each other and
educate each other and tell the real news. And actually

(01:17:07):
that it's so effective for young people to have that
level of information in their hand. That's amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:17:13):
Tiktoks in this podcast before you get your news.

Speaker 1 (01:17:20):
No not from this one.

Speaker 2 (01:17:21):
No no, no, no. Thanks to car listening you guys.
Thanks for being with us and fucking fighting the good fight.

Speaker 1 (01:17:29):
Yeah, it's good that we all care so much. Yeah,
let's take that into the future. Stay sexy and don't
get murdered. Good Bye, Elvis.

Speaker 2 (01:17:39):
Do you want a cookie?

Speaker 1 (01:17:48):
This has been an exactly right production. Our producer is
Alejandra Keck. Our senior producer is Hannah Kyle Crichton.

Speaker 2 (01:17:54):
This episode was engineered and mixed by Stephen Ray Morris.

Speaker 1 (01:17:57):
Our researchers are Maren mcclashem and Sarah Blair Jenkins.

Speaker 2 (01:18:00):
Email your hometowns and fuckinghrays to My Favorite Murder at
gmail dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:18:05):
Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at my Favorite
Murder and Twitter at my favor Murder gyobye