Memory of Murder

On a warm September afternoon in 1969, 8-year-old Susan Nason vanished from her quiet suburban neighborhood. For two decades, her case remained cold, until a shocking bit of news broke the silence: a former playmate claimed she had witnessed Susan’s murder… and that it was committed by her own father.

Join us for Memory of Murder. Susan Nason’s story is not just a story about a shocking child murder; it’s a story of dysfunctional family relationships and repressed memories. Memories can fade and some say they can return with devastating clarity. Today we are unravelling a complicated case that challenges the boundaries of psychology, criminal justice, and the truth itself. Are repressed memories a defense mechanism to protect oneself from painful experiences, or, like one prominent psychologist has said, are they the worst catastrophe to befall the mental health field since the lobotomy?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
District attorney's officer speaking, Yeah, hello, my wife, to give
me some information that she's been living with. First month time,
when she was eight years old.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
She saw a murderer.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
I see. The murderer was.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
With somebody that she knows quite well.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
The murderer or the dick.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
Murderer and the victim.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
I see both.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
This was twenty years ago, so it's been a while.

Speaker 3 (00:45):
The Kings would never close. I know the name of
the suspect, Yes, I did. Could you give you that?

Speaker 4 (00:54):
Okay, his name is George Franklin.

Speaker 3 (00:57):
Okay, your father. Hey, glad, you can make it. Before
you head into.

Speaker 4 (01:11):
The bar for today's True Crime story, just a warning
that TCB might contain disturbing content, so it's not for kids.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
Enjoyed the episode, Welcome to True Crime Brewery.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
I'm Jill and I'm Dick.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
So on a warm September afternoon, back in nineteen sixty nine,
eight year old Susan Nason vanished from her quiet suburban neighborhood.
For two decades, her case remained cold until a shocking
bit of news broke the silence.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
A former playmate.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
Claimed she had witnessed Susan's murder and that it was
committed by her own father. So join us for memory
of murder. Susan Nason's story is not just a story
about a shocking child murder. It's a story of dysfunctional
family relationships and pressed memories. Memories can fade, and some

(02:03):
say they can return with devastating clarity. Today we're unraveling
a complicated case that challenges the boundaries of psychology, criminal justice,
and really the truth itself. Are repressed memories of defense
mechanism to protect oneself from painful experiences, or, like one
prominent psychologist has said, are they the worst catastrophe to

(02:27):
befall the mental health field since the lobotomy?

Speaker 3 (02:31):
Strong words there, Yeah, good question. Huh, Yeah, I guess
I know each side of the argument he's on. Yes, yeah,
but I got to tell you I'm more aligned with
the lobotomy guy, you are? Yeah, full disclosure?

Speaker 1 (02:45):
Okay, sure, So not really believing in this repressed memory stuff.

Speaker 3 (02:50):
They have a very difficult time.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
Well, yeah, there are a lot of difficulties with it,
which we will definitely talk about today.

Speaker 3 (02:57):
First, of a drink a beer, good idea. Yeah, so
I got one called Bravo from Firestone Walker Brewing company
in Paso Roblis, California. It's an American brown ale and
it's a bit supercharged. It's thirteen percent alcohol by value,
so wow, it's kind of a whopper.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
Kind of Yes, it's a dark.

Speaker 3 (03:18):
Brown color, a little red mixed in, so maybe reddish brown,
small tan head, nice aroma, caramel, vanilla, some fruit, a
little bit and booze. Of course, taste follows the nose
quite nicely. Caramel vanilla, darker fruit and bourbon. This is

(03:39):
a big beer. You're gonna take your time with it.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
It does sound large, but it sounds pretty good too.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
Huh.

Speaker 3 (03:46):
It's really good.

Speaker 5 (03:47):
All right, let's drink some open some up, will you.

Speaker 1 (04:02):
Okay, So come on down here. This is quite a story.
This is a case we've been talking about for a
few months now and finally decided that we would just
bite the bullet and cover it. So it certainly is
very interesting. All of a sudden, just out of nowhere,
Eileen Franklin Lipsker knew who had killed her childhood best friend,
eight year old Susan Nason, back in nineteen sixty nine.

(04:26):
She knew just how it had happened, who had done it,
and even why she'd been there. The killer was her father,
she said. So detectives and prosecutors were stunned to hear it,
but they very soon were accepting her story. It was
Eileen's memory that led to the nineteen ninety murder trial
of her father, George Franklin, a fifty one year old

(04:47):
retired firefighter, and at stake was not just George Franklin's freedom,
but also the validity of a recently recognized theory about
the dynamics of the mind. The repressed memory theory was
said by advocates to be a defense against trauma. So
the mind basically represses a memory that's too traumatic to

(05:08):
be dealt with when it happens. Then during therapy or hypnosis,
this memory can resurface. That's the theory anyway. So when
she took the stand as the government's star witness against
her dad, Eileen claimed that for decades she had forgotten
what had happened to Susan, her best friend, her neighbor,
and her third grade classmate at Foster City Elementary School.

(05:32):
It all came back to her, she said, as she
was playing with her own daughter. So now she recalled
being in her father's votswagon van when he picked up
Susan in their suburban neighborhood and drove to an isolated area.
She recalled her father molesting Susan, then lifting a rock
and crushing the girl's skull. She recalled a ring on

(05:54):
her friend's hand that was smashed as she tried to
defend herself from that blow. Had found a ring at
the crime scene, and San Mateo County prosecutors said that
this corroborated Eileen's story. How they asked, could she possibly
know about it if she hadn't been there? So good question.

Speaker 3 (06:13):
I got to figure that she knew about it beforehand.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
Okay, well that will be a subject of debate. Was
that public information or not. That's something we'll have to
get into. But the San Mateo Times and other newspapers
had covered the case back in sixty nine, as had
all of the local TV stations. Defense attorney Doug Horngrad
had put together a package of news clippings and video

(06:38):
proving that police had publicly discussed Susan's ring and some
other details years earlier. But Judge Thomas Smith, a former prosecutor,
refused to let the jury see that news coverage. He
knew that if he let those articles in it would
imperil the prosecution, and he didn't want to do that.

(06:58):
According to Horngrad, So, George Franklin, the defendant, a stone
faced and pretty rough looking guy, was difficult for anyone
to sympathize with, and he didn't have an alibi, and
testimony for Eileen and her sister would describe him as
a violent, sexual deviant and an abusive alcoholic. So Eileen

(07:19):
also testified that her father had sexually abused her and
her sister Janice during their childhood.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
Eileen's story also shifted and changed.

Speaker 1 (07:28):
In one account, her sister Janice had been in the van,
and in another she wasn't. The murder was in the morning,
and then it was in the late afternoon, but the
contradictions did not cause jurors to disbelieve her, so that's
kind of a surprising. The jury took that as evidence
of how damaged she was from having George Franklin as

(07:49):
a father, and it actually made her more sympathetic to them,
So that's pretty surprising, is so. It was November seventeenth,
nineteen eighty nine, when inspected Charles Etter of the San
Mateo County District Attorney's office received a call from Eileen's husband.
He said that his wife had just told him she

(08:09):
had witnessed a murder twenty years ago. She knew the murderer,
the husband said, and the victim had been her best friend,
but she'd been afraid to say anything because the murderer
had told her he would kill her if she ever
told anyone. So he wanted to know what would happen
if she came forward, and her testimony was all that
they had against him. So the man said his name

(08:32):
was Barry and that the killing had taken place in
San Mateo County. Barry was very clear about wanting the
perpetrator of this horrible crime dead. Only a year away
from retirement, Eder was a very solid investigator, but he
wasn't really a star. The receptionist has sent the call
to him because he was the only inspector in the

(08:53):
office when the call came in. But Eder turned out
to be the perfect person for this call. He was called,
he was reassuring and he was non threatening. So Barry
had called Etter back a few hours later that first day.
He wanted his wife to talk to Edter so that
he could assure her that she would be treated with respect.

(09:14):
A soft spoken woman got on the line, and Etter
cautiously urged her to tell him her story.

Speaker 2 (09:20):
The woman seemed.

Speaker 1 (09:21):
Reassured, but she said she wanted to think it over
over the weekend and then she would talk to him again.
So her husband, Barry, called back on Monday, and he
lectured Etter about the failures of the criminal justice system.
Edter tried to assure him that the case would not
be mishandled. Barry began leaking details. The killer, whom he

(09:42):
wouldn't name, was a relative. The killer had even raped
his own children. He was concerned that a cocaine charge,
as well as a charge of prostitution against his wife
from Beck when she was about seventeen years old, would
affect her credibility. But finally, after stating that his w
his wife would provide facts about the murder that had

(10:02):
not been publicized, Barry began bargaining his wife would tell
everything about the crime if she had the final decision
on whether to file charges. So Etter declined immediately.

Speaker 3 (10:16):
I can see where that would come from.

Speaker 1 (10:18):
Yeah, you can't guarantee something like that, can you?

Speaker 3 (10:21):
Oh you can't.

Speaker 1 (10:22):
So Barry called back later with a new offer. His
wife would tell Etter where the killing had happened, when
it happened, and give the name of the victim, and
then the police could examine the evidence. If they found
any physical evidence to tie someone to the crime, then
she would.

Speaker 2 (10:38):
Give them the name of the killer.

Speaker 1 (10:40):
Edder accepted this offer immediately, so the wife got on
the phone and told Edter that it had happened in
Foster City and that the victim's name was Susan Nason.
She really had nothing more to say. Edda heard voices
in the background, and then the woman came back on
the phone and agreed that she would give a brief
account of the killing. Her voice was confident as she

(11:03):
recounted that she had been in the car with the
person who committed the crime, and that they had picked
Susan up across the street from her house. They'd driven
to a wooded area on the road to Half Moon Bay,
and there she had watched from the front seat as
the man had raped her friend in the back of
the van.

Speaker 2 (11:22):
Then the woman's.

Speaker 1 (11:23):
Voice dropped and softened, and after that we were all
out of the car, and Susan was sitting down and
I was standing by the car. So she said that
they were maybe fifteen to twenty feet from the car,
and Susan was sitting on a tiny little hill or
maybe just a large rock. She was sitting on something
that was slightly elevated, and he hit her, she said

(11:46):
now here. Her voice hesitated and caught in her throat.
She said he hit her on the head with the rock,
and she brought her hand up to her head, and
he hit her again, and she saw blood go everywhere.
She said Susan had had a ring on her hand,
and it crushed the ring on her hand. Then her
voice wavered. Eder asked her what happened next, and she

(12:07):
said she had half a memory of him making her
help him cover the body with a mattress. Then he
left the body there. She told Edter that she remembered
that she was screaming and that he pushed her on
the ground and held her down and told her that
he would kill her and that no one would ever
believe her anyway. And how old were you at the time,

(12:28):
asked Eta, I was eight, Eileen told him.

Speaker 3 (12:32):
Mary Jane Larkin, petite with dark red hair and blue eyes,
loved children and being a teacher, she always looked forward
to fall in the beginning of the school year. She
missed the kids over the summer and really looked forward
to learning the new names and faces. This was her
third year at Foster City Elementary and she liked the
school and the community. Everyone was new here and the

(12:55):
parents were enthusiastic and eager to volunteer for school activities.
By the third week of school in nineteen sixty nine,
her class of seventeen girls and twelve boys, while twenty
nine kids eight years old must be a zoo in
that room.

Speaker 2 (13:10):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (13:11):
Well. By the third week anyway, her classroom was settled
into a routine math, reading, and social science in the morning,
then science are in physical education in the afternoon. During recess,
the kids played on the jungle gym or bounce balls
off a high wooden wall playing handball. Girls had to
wear dresses to school, so if they wanted to play

(13:32):
on the bars, which most girls did, they had to
wear shorts underneath their dresses. Girls also wore good shoes
to school, buff and brown or black buckle shoes called
mary Jans, so in the days the class had physical education,
girls brought their tennis shoes to school with them. Usually
the girls kept them under their assigned hook on the
coatrack in the back of the classroom.

Speaker 1 (13:54):
Sure now, some of the children ran out of the
classroom the minute the three o'clock bell ray. Others would
take their time. Susan Nason, the girl with the freckles,
who seemed so little, almost frail, was one of the
last ones to leave on this Tuesday afternoon. On her
way out of the room, she saw a paper bag
with tennis shoes in it next to Celia Oakley's desk. Look,

(14:16):
Susan said excitedly to missus Larkin, Celia forgot her shoes.
Can I take them home to her? Well, okay, the
teacher said, but just be sure you go home first.

Speaker 2 (14:27):
I will. Susan assured her.

Speaker 1 (14:29):
I know where Celia lives and it's not far from
my house. So the little girl picked up the sack,
tucked her books under her other arm, and left the room.
Margaret Nason had come home from visiting a friend around
noon that day, and a few minutes later a neighbor
had dropped by to chat. When she left, Margaret began
working on a dress that she was sewing for Susie's

(14:51):
ninth birthday, which was that Saturday, the dress was almost
half finished, and when Susy walked in the door shortly
after three, Margaret was working on the dress. Susan was
so excited about her birthday that she wanted to start
decorating the house that day, even though the party was
still four days away. So the plans were to take
Susie and her friend's roller skating, which was super exciting

(15:14):
because Susie had never been to the rink before. So
Susie was carrying books under one arm and a paper
bag in the other. When she greeted her mother, she
showed her a scrape on her arm, then opened the
bag and explained that the tennis shoes belonged to a
classmate named Celia Oakley. She wanted to take the shoes
to Celia right away. So her daughter seemed to know

(15:36):
where her friend lived, so Margaret said yes. She thought
very little of it as Susie walked out the door
with the paper bag. Surely Nason was just arriving home
as her sister was leaving. She asked Susie where she
was going, and Susie told her Sureley had not reported
in with her mother yet, so she couldn't go along.

(15:56):
But the two girls agreed that Susie would come right
home and the two of them would play together. Shirley
went inside and waited. Susan walked up the block and
stopped at a house on the corner of Bell Kluthka
and met Sonia streets, and she knocked on the door.
So Suzanne Banks opened the door and greeted the little girl.
She held up the paper bag and explained that it

(16:18):
held her daughter, Celia's tennis shoes, which she'd forgotten at school.
But Missus Banks explained to her that she had the
wrong house. That was the Oakleys, who lived a few
houses away on met Sonia. So missus Banks helpfully walked
Susan down the street and pointed out the Oakley house
to her, and then she watched as Susan walked up
to the front door. When the door opened, Missus Banks

(16:40):
turned away and called for her nine year old daughter Linda,
who was playing in the vacant lot across the street,
to come home. Celia Oakley, a tall girl with straight
brown hair, answered the doorbell when Susan rang, but she
didn't invite her into play. She thanked her and she
took the shoes. She watched as Susan walked away, then
closed the door. Soon Celia left to play with her friends.

(17:04):
So Margaret was surprised when Susan did not come right
home after her errand her youngest daughter was always starving
after school, but she'd been in such a hurry earlier
that she'd forgotten her snack. But Margaret wasn't worried. She
figured her daughter had probably stayed at Celia's house to play.
She always asked permission before going to a friend's house

(17:24):
to play, but this time she would know that her
mother would already know where she was. So about four
or four thirty, Margaret felt some worry beginning to seep
into her thoughts, and she called the Oakley house. An
older sister answered, and when Margaret asked if Susan Nason
was there, the girl said she didn't know anyone named Susy.

Speaker 2 (17:44):
Celia wasn't home, so.

Speaker 1 (17:46):
Margaret asked the girl to have Celia send Susan home.
When the two of them returned, Margaret called a little later,
and another sister answered the phone and said that Celia
wasn't due home until six or six thirty, So Margaret
decided it was past time to begin looking for her
youngest daughter. She called her husband Don at work and
told him Susan hadn't come home. Then went to the

(18:08):
garage and got out her bike, noting that both Shirley
and Susan's bikes were in their usual spots, so she
rode to the places that Susy usually played, and then
to areas where she didn't play, even up north to
Flying Cloud Isle.

Speaker 2 (18:22):
In the middle of the lagoon, she stopped by the Oakley.

Speaker 1 (18:25):
House and found one of Celia's sisters, who hopped on
her bicycle and joined her in the search. The two
of them rode around to all the places that Celia
played looking for the two girls, but no luck. When
they returned to the Oakley house, Celia was there alone.
Have you seen Susan? Asked Margaret, now with a bad
feeling beginning to creep over her Susan, who Celia responded, Well,

(18:49):
didn't Susan Nason bring you some shoes this afternoon? Yes,
she said, and she didn't stay in play with you. No,
So Margaret's heart sank something was very wrong. Susie would

(19:21):
never stay out this late, so she rode home quickly.
Don was there, but still no Susie, so she sent
Sureley to a neighbor's house and the two parents renewed
their search. Don searched the streets in the car, and
Margaret covered the neighborhood on her bike. She stopped people
on the street and asked if they had seen Susie,
and she retraced her daughter's route, knocking on doors. Eventually

(19:45):
she found missus Banks on the corner, who told her
that she had given Susie directions to the Oakley house.
But by then it was getting dark and Margaret, now frantic,
decided to return home and call the police. The Foster
the City police and fire department were combined into a
single department of Public Safety with sixteen officers. Most of

(20:07):
the calls involved vandalism, shoplifting, or a home burglary. In
the fall of sixty nine, there had been no serious
crimes in Foster City, no murders, and not even a robbery.
Lieutenant William Hensel was the supervisor in charge of law enforcement.
When the dispatcher told him about the call about a
missing child, he drove to the Nason home. He knew

(20:30):
Donald Nason pretty well. Don did have a serious drinking
problem and had had run ins with the law, including
one duy. Hencel first had to rule out the possibility
that harm had come to the girl in her own home,
or that maybe she was hiding in or around the house,
so he and another officer searched inside and out, including

(20:52):
the attic and the yard, and found nothing. Margaret's story
made sense, and she said that Don had not been
home when Susy left the home house to return the shoes.
They asked Don to come in the next day for
a polygraph test, and he agreed. Henzel drove to the
Oakley house and confirmed that Susan had dropped off the
shoes and left around three point fifteen pm. He immediately

(21:14):
notified police Chief Bordon Penfold and put on an all
points bulletin for a missing girl four feet three inches
tall with a slight build, blue eyes and brown hair,
freckles across the bridge of her nose, wearing a blueprint dress,
brown shoes, and a turquoise ring with a silver band.
Henzel called in off duty officers and they went door

(21:37):
to door on the block, retracing Susan's steps. They lost
track of her somewhere on Belclutha, not too far from
her home. So Lieutenant Hensel soon rejected the possibility that
Susan had run away from home. Margaret told him about
the upcoming birthday party and said that Susy was also
due to begin ballet lessons the next day, and that's

(22:00):
something she'd wanted to do for a very long time.
She was happy clean through, Margaret assured him, and over
time Hencel would develop a slightly different picture of the
missing child. Away from home, Susan was kind of a loner,
with only one or two friends. She was self conscious
about her freckles, and other kids at school and in

(22:21):
the neighborhood teased her, sometimes pretty viciously. She was an
average student and she was well behaved. She was not
a problem child. She did as she was told, and
her parents had told her many times not to talk
to strangers, so Margaret was adamant that Susy would never
have gotten in a stranger's car.

Speaker 2 (22:41):
After a few hours.

Speaker 1 (22:42):
When he turned up nothing on the block, Hencel returned
to the station and, along with another officer, began to
organize a major search. He called in the reserve officers
and notified the San Mateo County Sheriff's office. He focused
primarily on Susan's neighborhood and divided it into grits. They
began going door to door, searching yards and garages and

(23:04):
empty fields. Of particular importance were the many construction sites.
A half finished house, a partial foundation, or a stack
of lumber would be a really easy place to stash
a small body. The edges of all of the lagoons
would have to be walked, also, inch by inch, So

(23:25):
as the police went door to door, they asked people
to help in the search, and soon more than one
hundred people had volunteered. Many searchers worried that the girl
might have drowned across the streets from the Oakleys. There
was a lagoon, and maybe she had stopped there to play.
Neighbors walked the shore with flashlights. Others formed long lines

(23:45):
and walked through the fields. Some deputy sheriffs rolled in
a huge three hundred and sixty degree platform light and
drove through the fields, illuminating the night. Neighbors organized to
comb the parks and the school grounds. Don continued drinking. Margaret,
revealing some real inner strength, held it together and helped

(24:06):
in whatever way she could. Some of the volunteers were
just convinced that Susan would be found quickly, a call
would come that she had been found asleep in the
bedroom of a friend's house.

Speaker 2 (24:17):
But then by.

Speaker 1 (24:18):
Early the next morning, hopes were beginning to dim.

Speaker 3 (24:21):
I'm impressed by the turnout for this search.

Speaker 2 (24:24):
Yeah, me too.

Speaker 1 (24:26):
People were taking it seriously, which was the correct thing
to do. So news of the disappearance spread really fast
in the tight little community, and by morning Foster City
was really bustling with efforts to find little Susan.

Speaker 2 (24:40):
More than one hundred.

Speaker 1 (24:41):
People gathered early at the Public Safety Department to resume
the search. The Sheriff's office sent bloodhounds and their handlers,
after holding pieces of Susan's clothing to the dog's noses,
set them loose in the vacant lots and the parks.
A team of divers from Hamilton Air Force Base arrived

(25:01):
and began diving the lagoons close to the Nasson home.
A Coastguard helicopter skimmed the waters and hovered over vacant fields,
looking for any recently disturbed dirt that might indicate digging. Also,
there were small boats patrolling the waters of the lagoons,
and by mid morning More than two hundred people had
joined in. Neighbors converged on the Nason house with baskets

(25:25):
of food and offers of help. Rumors swirled that Susan
had been found in Central Park Lake and that she
had been seen riding on the back of a motorcycle
with a tall, blond man. Also, workers at the nearby
race track were suggested as possible kidnappers. Calls flooded the
police department, several of them from angry wives who were

(25:47):
pointing fingers at their suspicious acting husbands. The police found
several people who they said had seen Susan after she
went out on her errand Sharon Fulls, a blond fourth
grader who lived up the street from the Nassons, and
a friend had been riding their bikes up Bellclutha to
Sharon's house when they saw Susan walking in the same

(26:09):
direction on the sidewalk, carrying some sort of paper in
her hand. So the two girls used to tease Susan,
probably because she was so tiny and shy and had
so many freckles, and as they rode their bikes by,
they yelled something at her like Nana nan nan Na.
Then they rode to Sharon's home, put away their bikes,

(26:30):
and then they roller skated on the sidewalk in front
of her house. Sharon's mother was standing in front of
her house a short time later when she saw Susan
walking on the other side of the street. She called
over to the child and invited her in for a
cold drink. Susan said no, she had to return some
tennis shoes to Celia Oakley and then go right home.

(26:51):
A few minutes after Sharon and her girlfriend began roller skating,
missus Fules was overcome by a really strange feeling that
something very bad was happening close by. So she called
the girls and told them to play in the backyard.
Then she went into the kitchen where she could keep
an eye on them from the window.

Speaker 3 (27:09):
So this is just a feeling.

Speaker 1 (27:10):
This was a feeling she had. Yeah, and she might
be saying that in retrospect, Who knows.

Speaker 3 (27:16):
I think so.

Speaker 1 (27:16):
But I do believe parents get that feeling. You can
get that feeling for sure, Okay, I think so.

Speaker 3 (27:23):
Yeah, I think it was to me it was more
of a comment that underscored the severity of the search,
just to heighten the suspense.

Speaker 1 (27:31):
Well, who knows you could be right, so tell me
about the next school day.

Speaker 3 (27:35):
Well, when Susan was not at her desk in the morning,
teacher Mary Jane Larkin decided to treat it as a
simple absence and wrote an a by her name. The
detectives came and talked to Mary Jane after school, and
she explained to them about the shoes. It unsettled Mary
Jane when they asked her for a sample of her handwriting.

(27:55):
Susan's disappearance seemed to frighten some parents more than their children,
and many homes the next morning, moms and dads set
their kids down and lectured them about not getting into
strangers cars. From now on, the youngsters were never to
walk anywhere without a buddy, there would be no more
playing in the vacant fields, and they should always stay

(28:16):
in view of a friendly neighbor's door. Other parents didn't
want to alarm their kids by painting a picture of
death for them at such a young age, at least
until they knew what had happened to Susan, so they
warned their children to be careful and assured them that
she would probably be found.

Speaker 2 (28:33):
Okay, well, what else are you going to do so.

Speaker 1 (28:36):
Residents did form prayer groups to ask for Susan Nason's
safe return. The Safeway store kept platters of food on
tables at the firehouse for the searchers. The FBI was
called in for consultation. The Nason sent their other daughter,
Surely to San Francisco to stay with her grandparents. So
imagine how tough that would be for the sister. You're

(28:58):
sent to stay with your grandparents, not knowing what's going
on with your little sister.

Speaker 3 (29:02):
Yeah, it's a tough situation.

Speaker 2 (29:04):
Really tough.

Speaker 1 (29:05):
So the police interviewed and re interviewed the neighbors, but
Lieutenant Hensel decided against questioning the children. Then he was
worried that policemen in uniforms might scare them, so instead
he asked the school to have the teachers talk to
the children to see if they knew anything. The case
hit the media that afternoon, and TV stations showed a

(29:26):
color picture of Susan on the evening news, and the
San Mateo Times carried the disappearances their top story. Beneath
it ran a picture of Susan, her hair neatly parted,
her bangs curling over her forehead, and a slight gap
between her two front teeth. The founder of Foster City
offered a reward of one thousand dollars for the safe

(29:47):
return of Susan, and Donald Nason's employer pitched in with
ten thousand dollars for information leading to her safe return.
Within a few days, employees were calling radio and television
stay up and down the peninsula, trying to keep the
story alive, and Susan's picture on the evening news. Margaret

(30:08):
and Don Nason began to cling to the theory that
a childless couple had kidnapped their daughter, and that she
was safe in that couple's home, possibly in another state.
One sighting had Susan in New Jersey. Police reported they
had run down more than two hundred leads but had
not come.

Speaker 2 (30:25):
Up with a damn thing.

Speaker 1 (30:28):
Margaret Nason kept insisting that Susy would have obeyed her
instructions not to go with strangers, but she finally had
to admit to one reporter that her daughter did love
dolls and animals, and someone with a kiddy and a
good story could probably entice her into a car. So
Anne Hobbs, a classmate of Susan's, told the police a

(30:50):
very startling story. The previous Friday, she had been approached
by a man in a blue station wagon in front
of the school. This middle aged driver was wearing a
suit and had a large nose that was pushed in
on the side and turned up in the front. He
had ears that stuck out beyond his head and brown
hair with white showing in the edges. The man had

(31:12):
gotten out of his car and said he knew her
parents and he'd offered to give her a ride home.
Anne could see mud on the floor and a pistol
lying next to the pedals. When he opened the rear door,
Anne saw several dolls on the seat. One or two
were new, and a few had scratches on their faces,
and one had a broken arm. Also on the rear

(31:35):
seat lay a white sweater, and some cardboard boxes were
piled up in the windows. So Anne Hobbs was frightened
and ran home. On Wednesday, the San Mateo Times ran
a story on this lead, and don Nason's employer printed
a flyer with the now familiar picture of Susan, her description,

(31:55):
and a notation about that blue station wagon. Lieutenant Henzel
began runing blue station wagons throughout the Department of Motor Vehicles,
and by the end of the week the police abandoned
the search and concentrated on the possibility of an abduction.
Henzel kept six men on the case and began checking
the register of convicted sex offenders, calling them one by

(32:18):
one and making them account for their whereabouts that previous
Tuesday afternoon. Then hopes were raised a bit the following week,
two girls in Belmont, a nearby community, were accosted by
a man in a blue station wagon, and they had
managed to get his license number. He was Aaron Patterson,
an illustrator from San Jose, and he matched the description

(32:41):
of the man given by Ann Hobbs. Anne identified him
from a photograph and Patterson was arrested and his house
was searched in a lineup. A day or so later,
the two Belmont girls picked him out, but Anne didn't.
The cops tried fervently to tie him to the Susan
Nason case, but he passed two polygraph tests and they

(33:04):
just couldn't place him in Foster City at all.

Speaker 3 (33:07):
That's interesting, though, wouldn't she be suspicious about it? Sand
car being seen a week or two apart?

Speaker 1 (33:13):
Well, they were sure that's why they brought him in.
So a five or six psychics called the police, and
they offered their assistance in finding Susan. Each one came
over to the Nason house and handled a piece of
Susan's clothing or a toy. One lady held a blouse
of Susan's to her forehead and closed her eyes, and
then pointed on a map to a dump just north

(33:34):
of half Moon Bay Road in the mountains. Another used
a darning needle and a piece of yarn to pinpoint
the girl's location at a lake south of Foster City.
Hencel and Morgan took them all seriously, and the police
went charging off to whatever place the psychics indicated, but
there were no results. For a moment, the horrible ordeal

(33:56):
looked like it may never end. So in September thirtieth,
the Nasons received a letter demanding thirty thousand dollars for
the safe return of their daughter. In words cut from
a newspaper, the sender threatened to cut off Susan's fingers
one by one and mail them to the parents if
the ransom wasn't paid. Kidnapping for money had always been

(34:18):
considered an unlikely possibility, since the Nasons were not wealthy,
but Margaret and Don believed they were going to get
their daughter back safely. Don Nason was instructed to put
the cash, which his employer had provided, in a sack
and drop it off in the doorway of a tavern
in San Francisco. So on the appointed day, Don drove

(34:39):
to the spot with an agent hiding under a blanket
in the rear seat. The police had staked out the
tavern with police dressed.

Speaker 2 (34:46):
As garbage men and bums.

Speaker 1 (34:49):
Don put the money in the doorway and left the
sack lay there untouched for hours. Then finally a police
officer instructed Don to return and pick up the money,
but somebody forgot to tell the officers in disguise what
was going on. So, in a scene which has been
described as something like from the Keystone Cops, Don picked

(35:09):
up the sack, returned to the car, and a garbage
man in wingtipped shoes rushed him and slabbed a gun
up against the side of his head. The agent under
the blanket, thinking that either the kidnapper had shown up
or Don was being robed, popped up, jacked a shell
into the chamber of his shotgun and stuck it in
the face of the agent slash garbage man. Then numerous

(35:33):
other cops sprang from their hiding places with their guns drawn,
and only at the last instant did someone realize that
all of them were the good guys. Poor Donald Nason
was severely shaken. The alleged kidnapper sent a second note
saying he had spotted the disguised cops and gave instructions for.

Speaker 2 (35:52):
A new drop.

Speaker 1 (35:53):
This time, Don, wearing a wire, went alone. As he
was walking away from the drop, he saw a man
approach and pick up the sap He's spoken to the mic,
and the cops converged and arrested the man. So, although
he was the note sender, the police soon determined that
all he knew about Susan's case was what he had
read in the newspaper.

Speaker 3 (36:36):
In the weeks after Susan's disappearance, people in the community
tried to get on with life. People still talked about
the missing girl, but with less frequency. Susan wasn't discussed
in the classroom. The kids seemed to go about their lives,
and Mary Jane Markin continued to write an a by
Susan's name every morning. Parents' patrols were still watching children

(36:57):
walking to and from school. Officer Bill came to the
school and talked about cars and candy and strangers so
often that some kids began calling all policeman Officer Bill.
One day, Donald Mason decided to look first for his
daughter himself. He and his friend followed half Moon Bay Road,
through the foothills and up to the lakes in the Watershed,

(37:18):
thinking that uncivilized country might be a likely spot. The
two men parked not far from a pull off overlooking
the lakes and hiked around in the hills for several
hours looking for signs of Susan. Margaret ran into Kate Franklin,
a neighbor's daughter who lived around the corner on Harvester Drive,
and mentioned to her that no one had come over

(37:39):
played with Shirley since Susan had been missing and she
was lonely. Kate gathered her sisters, Janis and Eileen and
went over and played with Shirley.

Speaker 1 (37:47):
Right, so, these are the daughters of George Franklin.

Speaker 2 (37:51):
Right so.

Speaker 1 (37:52):
In Pacifica, a small town north of Foster City, a
small boy who had a habit of wandering away from
home disappeared again and the papers started covering the cases
in the same article no Clues to missing Youngsters. As
the weeks and then months went by, Lieutenant Hensels stayed
on the case full time, still expecting to find Susan alive.

(38:15):
The peninsula widens gradually as it descends from San Francisco
to San Jose, and the temperature warms just as gradually.
San Jose can bake in dry heat, while San Francisco
shivers in the chili fog. In the middle of the thumb,
around San Mateo and Foster City, the weather is bone
dry in the summer, with occasional rain from October through May.

(38:38):
So during the summer months, the cool air rolls in
from the Pacific and collides with the warm air from
the valley to create a dark fog that blankets the
coastline and sometimes slides over the mountain range and down
to the edges of the basities. The high ridge of
mountains running down the peninsula forms the western edge of
the San Andreas Valley, which was condemned in the early

(39:01):
nineteen hundreds for use as a catchment basin for the peninsula.
So dams and reservoirs were constructed, and the valley was flooded,
creating a fifteen mile long, twenty three thousand acre watershed.
The watershed was turned into a game refuge and placed
off limits to the general public. The lakes, which sit

(39:22):
on top of the San Andreas Fault, shine like elongated
sapphires in the Rolling Green Hills. Few people knew the
watershed like Effie Ray Bottomore. At six feet five inches
tall and two hundred and eight pounds, the soft spoken
Bottomore had thick arms and large hands, and he walked with.

Speaker 2 (39:43):
A lumbering gate.

Speaker 1 (39:44):
Bottimore grew up in a house on the north end
of the preserve, and he went to work there himself
shortly after World War Two and raised his family in
a house on the edge of the South Lake. Bottimore's job,
along with the other nine keepers, was to patrol the
water watershed and make sure everything was okay. He checked
the level of the reservoir every morning, then got in

(40:06):
his pick up and drove the back roads, checking fences
and spillways and running off hunters and fishermen. He loved
to park his truck and roam the wilderness for hours.
Some of the other keepers called him the snoop because
he was so curious. Bottimore had read about the disappearance
of the Nacin Girl and watched it on TV, and

(40:27):
the cops had been out looking around the watershed several
times in the past two months, once or twice tromping
along behind psychics who claimed they knew where the body was,
but they had not found anything. Bottimore wasn't exactly looking
for the little girl, but he did have his suspicions
and he was keeping an eye out for her. Maybe

(40:48):
he was suspicious because he had found seven or eight
corpses in the watershed over the years. So once after
he spotted a car unattended by a gate for several days,
he started snooping around and eventually noticed a purse hanging
on a snag by the water's edge. He called the
sheriff and the divers came out and pulled the body
of a little girl from the shallow water. Her mother

(41:11):
later floated to the surface in the North Lake. He
learned that the woman and her husband had been fighting
over the custody of the little girl, and the cops
figured the mother and her daughter had driven to the
lakes and parked and walked down the hill right into
the water. The morning of December second, nineteen sixty nine
was very clear and bright, and Bottomore was up early

(41:34):
policing his preserve as usual, so around ten o'clock he
was heading down from the ridge on half Moon Bay
Road toward the lakes when he decided to turn into
a pull off on the south side of the road.
This pull off, about a mile and a quarter up
the hill from the lakes, was large enough for two
or three vehicles, so standing on the edge, he looked

(41:54):
down the hillside and over the south lake, which had
dark green cypress groves. A narrow trail led down from
the lip of the pull off, through the shrub and
the poison oak that was always littered with beer cans,
milk cartons, and paper bags. Over the years, people had
pushed a variety of appliances and furniture over the edge.

(42:15):
Two cars had even made the journey. The trail ended
in a small clearing which was obscured from the road
by the brush, and just as he had done on
countless other occasions, Bottimore decided to walk down the trail
and have a look around. The leaves of the poison
oak bushes had fallen off, making it easier to see
the ground. He stopped and glanced over at a box

(42:38):
spring not too far from an old stove. He'd seen
the spring before. It was a simple wooden frame enclosing
rusty coils, so Bottimore had never paid the box springs
much mind before, but this day he walked over to
take a closer look. He leaned over the frame and
through the coils and the brush, and he saw a
small brown skull with a hole in the A chill

(43:01):
shot through him. Then he could tell the skull was human,
and he guessed it was a child's, probably Susan Nason.
There wasn't much left of her. But he looked closer
and he noticed bones and pieces of multicolored material that
looked like a dress, and then he figured it had
to be Susan Nason for sure. But without touching a thing,

(43:24):
not even the brush, Bottimore walked back up the trail
and radioed his office, and he told them to call
the sheriff's department. A sheriff's deputy was on patrol in
the area when he received the call to go to
the pull off. When he arrived, Bottimore led him down
the hill and pointed to the box spring beneath the brush.
The deputy could see the badly decomposed skeleton of a

(43:46):
young girl.

Speaker 2 (43:47):
She was lying on her.

Speaker 1 (43:48):
Left side, with her left leg drawn up under her
and her right foot outstretched. A white bobby sock was
on her left foot, and a brown shoe lay nearby.
Beneath the multi colored material covering her torso was a
pair of Denham cutoffs. Her head was devoid of flesh
and hair, exposing a black hole on the right side

(44:10):
of her skull and behind.

Speaker 2 (44:12):
Her right ear so.

Speaker 1 (44:13):
What little flesh remained on the bones was discolored and mummified.
A small dental retainer was lying in the dirt, and
not far from the skull set a large rock. Soon
other officers arrived and their cars crowded on to the
pull off. Criminalists began servying the crime scene and collecting evidence.

(44:35):
A photographer took pictures. Then the body was uncovered and
put in a canvas bag and carried up the hill.
Bottimore watched the bag being loaded into the ambulance for
transportation to the morgue. The chill that had taken hold
of him earlier had dissipated, and now he just felt
very sad. Well, at least the Naissans would finally know

(44:56):
what had happened to their little girl, which he hoped
would be so small relief. Doctor Peter Benson had graduated
from Yale Medical School in nineteen fifty eight and completed
his residency in pathology at the University of California in
San Francisco in nineteen sixty two.

Speaker 2 (45:16):
He went to work.

Speaker 1 (45:17):
Immediately for the San Mateo County Coroner's Office and was
still employed there as a forensic pathologist on the afternoon
of December second, nineteen sixty nine, when he was called
to the hospital to perform an autopsy on the remains
of a white female child. So Benson performed his task
carefully describing in detail her items of clothing, the multi

(45:40):
colored dress, which had stains consistent with blood or body fluids,
the Denham cutoffs, the white underpants, the white sock, and
the brown buckle shoe. While removing the a line dress,
he found hidden in the folds of the material a
small rock with blood and hair on it, and a
finger nail attached to a clump of hair. The body

(46:03):
was skeletonized, but a small amount of dried and hard
tissue remained on the arms and legs. And the right
hip area, which showed signs of bruising. He estimated the
time of death as some three to six months earlier.
He noted the injury to the skull a dumbbell shaped
defect above and beyond the right ear, measuring approximately two

(46:24):
by five inches, with fracture lines radiating away from the edges.
In his opinion, either the small rock or the large
rock found close by could have produced the injury. The
body's right hand was severely distorted. The convex contour of
the hand had been flattened, leaving it almost concave. The

(46:44):
back of the hand also showed tissue damage, and several
of the long metacarpal bones, as well as one wristbone,
were missing. The tips of all four fingers were gone,
and some of the bones of the index, middle, and
ring fingers were missing. Benson had two possible explanations for
this damage. Either insects and animals had been attracted to

(47:07):
the hand because of the damage, and the animals had
carried off the bones, or the animals had simply done
the initial damage themselves and then taken the bones. The
fact that the left hand was intact and showed no
signs of damage suggested the former, so the condition of
the white metal ring on the middle finger of the

(47:28):
right hand supported the conclusion that the hand had suffered injury.
The petal like oval setting in the center was empty
and distorted, and the under side of the band was flattened,
as if it had been resting against something hard when
the setting was smashed. A small, undamaged ring with four
blue stones was on the left hand. The location of

(47:50):
the injury on the right rear of the skull and
the damage to the right hand and the ring suggested
the possibility that the hand had been injured while being
used in a defensive or a protective manner. The location
of the skull injury also suggested that the girl's head
was bent downward when the blow was struck. So a

(48:11):
detective from the Sheriff's office was present for the autopsy,
as was a photographer who took color pictures of the remains.
The detective noted that the stitching on the dress appeared
to be homemade. Then Susan's dentist arrived around five thirty
PM with X rays and a plaster mold he had
made of Susan's mouth for the retainer. He examined the

(48:33):
skull on the table and found marked similarities between the
teeth and the X rays.

Speaker 2 (48:38):
And the mold.

Speaker 1 (48:40):
A second dentist was called in and after examination and consultation,
these two dentists made a positive identification of the corpse
as the body of Susan Nason. Gordon Penfold, the Foster
City Chief of Police, had been called out to the autopsy.
He drove to the Nason home on Bulk Club in

(49:00):
Foster City. Margaret Nason immediately recognized the material and her
stitching on the hemline. She'd bought the fabric in Lake
Tahoe and she'd made the dress herself, and the panties
looked like Susan's too. The crushed silver ring with the
missing stone had been a gift from Susan's grandmother. Shirley

(49:21):
had received an identical ring, which she was still wearing.
There was no question in anyone's mind how the body
found up in the hills overlooking the lakes was that
of Susan Nason. On the front page of the San
Mateo Times, they ran the familiar gap tooth photo of
Susan and a picture of a deputy at the pull

(49:41):
off on half Moon Bay Road. The paper also had
pictures of Susan's family. Donald told the media that he
had always hoped that his daughter had been kidnapped by
someone who wanted a little girl. Then he broke into tears.
It seems like you warned them so many times, he said,
but it's just not enough. It seems to go in
one ear and out the other. They probably think parents

(50:03):
should warn them about important things, not trivial ones. So
Margaret also accepted responsibility for her daughter's death. I guess
all mothers warned their daughters because they were once little girls,
and just about every girl is approached by some kook
at some time, she told the reporters. I guess I
just didn't warn Susan enough. So both parents really blaming themselves,

(50:27):
which is really heartbreaking to hear.

Speaker 3 (50:30):
It's a difficult time for these poor people.

Speaker 2 (50:32):
It's unimaginable. Yeah, it really is. So.

Speaker 1 (50:36):
At a press conference on Wednesday morning, December three, the
day after Susan's body was found, the police revealed that
Susan had been found lying at the bottom of a
thirty five foot embankment under a partially overturned mattress, and
that she had died from a skull fracture, possibly from
a three pound rock that had been found nearby. The

(50:57):
papers noted that a ring and a brown buckle shoe
and white sock had been found close to the body,
so the sheriff appinned that the body must have been
carried or thrown to the spot where it was found.

Speaker 3 (51:10):
Susan's father, Donald Nason, a once contractor, offered a twenty
thousand dollars award with the help of his employer, for
any information leading to the arrest and conviction of her killer.
A few tips came up, but investigators hit a wall
and the case went cold until November nineteen.

Speaker 1 (51:30):
Eighty nine, So we can say that casually. But that's
like twenty years. Twenty years, yeah, long time now.

Speaker 3 (51:38):
November of eighty nine is when Susan's childhood friend, neighbor
and classmate, Eileen Franklin Lipsker, came forward to say that
she had just remembered that she had witnessed her father abduct, rape,
and kill the eight year old Susan near the reservoir
in nineteen sixty nine. Twenty years go by, right, and

(52:00):
actually her husband called first. But this woman has this
kind of revelation she knows what happened to her friend.

Speaker 1 (52:07):
Yeah, yeah, it's pretty amazing, very amazing.

Speaker 2 (52:10):
I'm hard to believe. Sure. Well.

Speaker 1 (52:13):
Eileen said that the memory came back to her while
she was watching her own daughter playing, and she added
that it could be because her daughter was nearing the
same age as Susan was when Susan had been killed.
Then she told her husband about the situation first, and
he helped her share the details with the police. According
to Eileen, her father and retired firefighter George Franklin, had

(52:36):
picked Susan up on that day, drove them to the woods,
and then she had seen him rape her friend in
the back of the vehicle before he used a rock
to hit her over the head twice. And she even
did mention that ring.

Speaker 3 (52:50):
Right, So when do they think that Franklin abducted her,
because we have people that saw her that afternoon, that.

Speaker 1 (52:58):
Same afternoon, Yeah, when she was walking through the neighborhood.

Speaker 2 (53:02):
It was her friend.

Speaker 1 (53:03):
So to think that her father might pick up her
friend is not hard to believe. Certainly Susan would have
gone with him because she knew him.

Speaker 3 (53:10):
Yes, that's true.

Speaker 1 (53:11):
Yeah, so George Franklin was divorced from his wife, Leah Franklin,

(53:38):
before he was arrested in nineteen eighty nine. While the
exact date of the divorce isn't publicly documented, it is
known that Leah filed for divorce after confronting George about
his possible involvement in Susan Nason's murder, and in the
divorce filings she accused him of physical and verbal abuse.

(53:59):
So when he would arrested on November twenty ninth, nineteen
eighty nine, he was living in Sacramento, California. Police searched
his apartment at the time of his arrest and reportedly
they found pornographic magazines and pictures, including some with children
and some that were pretty much promoting incest. So one

(54:21):
of his books, Forbidden Sexual Fantasies, contains chapters on incest, bestiality,
and rape. One drawing shows a fish swimming toward a
woman with her legs open. They found a large collection
of pornography and paraphernalia, also books entitled The g Spot,
Lusty Dusty, and The Altar of Venus. They also found

(54:44):
more than twenty three dildos, many of them were later
described by the prosecution as child sized which is just
horrifying to think that that would even exist.

Speaker 3 (54:56):
Yes, I'm shutting it out of my mind.

Speaker 1 (54:58):
Yeah, good idea. But one of the biggest finds for
detectives was the names and phone numbers of George's girlfriends,
because in talking to them, they unmasked the personality of
a man who was obsessed with sex with young girls
and animals. In the mid nineteen eighties, George Franklin had
answered a Lonely Heart's advertisement that described a Christian woman

(55:20):
with an eight year old daughter. According to the woman,
Franklin insisted that when they were making love, she should
call him Daddy and he would refer to her as
his naughty little girl. When she revealed to him that
she had been molested by her father, Franklin had asked
her all about the details of what her father had
done to her, and then he had insisted that she

(55:42):
talk about the specifics while they were having sex. So
this was the kind of thing that turned him on. So,
whether you believe his daughter witnessing him murdering Susan Nason
or not, definitely a sick man.

Speaker 3 (55:55):
Yeah, there's no question he had some issues right.

Speaker 1 (55:59):
Well, according to this woman, he questioned her about her
daughter's breasts and pubic hair, and even asked her to
take photos of her daughter asleep with her legs spread.

Speaker 2 (56:08):
He explained that.

Speaker 1 (56:09):
He belonged to the Renee Goyan Society, which advocated children
having sex at a young age and.

Speaker 2 (56:15):
Had as its motto sex.

Speaker 1 (56:17):
Before eight or else it's too late. So should we
take a break here for vomiting purposes? Yeah, it's really disgusting.
It's revolting. And whatever you think of Eileen, or if
she actually knew anything about Susan's death.

Speaker 2 (56:32):
She did go through something as his daughter.

Speaker 3 (56:34):
I'm certain, Yes, it has to be the case.

Speaker 1 (56:36):
Yes, So George had told this woman that a young
girl's first sexual experience should be loving and caring, and
that she was depriving her daughter of a beneficial experience
if she didn't let him have sex with her before
her eighth birthday.

Speaker 2 (56:51):
Look, he even.

Speaker 1 (56:52):
Explained that girls between the age of seven and ten
often came on to him by sitting on his lap
and rubbing against his groin. So she was able to
tell the detectives that he had asked her to procure
little girls for him for sex. So really clear that
George Franklin was a sick man and a pedophile. But
Eileen was the only eyewitness to this murder of Susan Nason,

(57:16):
and no physical evidence was ever found tying George to
that crime. So this was especially controversial because the prosecution's
case relied almost entirely on Eileen's recovered memory in nineteen
eighty nine. The idea of recovering repressed memories has been
largely discredited since then. She described details of the crime scene,

(57:38):
including the smashed ring on Susan's hands, which did match
police findings. But also we know that that was publicized
at least in some places years ago.

Speaker 3 (57:49):
That's correct. In fact, I think everything that Eileen remembered
had been published where the intro was available to the public.

Speaker 1 (58:00):
That kind of turns out that way when they look
more into it. But in the meantime, George Franklin went
on trial in October nineteen ninety and he would be convicted.
He was convicted in January of ninety one. He was
found guilty of first degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.
The trial was the first in US history to rely
solely on recovered memory as a basis for a murder conviction,

(58:23):
and of course, experts on this were very divided. The
prosecution argued that traumatic memories can be repressed and later
accurately recalled. The defense claimed such memories are unreliable and
susceptible to contamination by external information. So surprisingly, the judge
barred the defense from presenting newspaper articles that contained crime

(58:47):
scene details Eileen may have read, which could have influenced
her memory.

Speaker 3 (58:52):
Certainly could have. In nineteen ninety five, federal judge overturned
George Franklin's conviction due to improper use of his silence
as an implied confession, the trial court's refusal to allow
the defense to present media coverage it could have influenced
Aileen's memory, and concerns over the reliability of repressed memories,

(59:13):
especially those recovered through hypnosis, which Aileen later admitted had occurred.
She stated that there was no hypnosis in her original statements.

Speaker 1 (59:24):
Yeah, and she likely knew that it would not be
acceptable because things that come about by hypnosis are not
presentable in court as evidence, So we think that she
was covering that up. So Eileen later claimed to remember
two additional murders committed by her father and that kind
of backfired on her as well, because DNA evidence ruled

(59:47):
him out as the perpetrator in those cases. So after
his release, George Franklin sued his daughter, law enforcement officials,
and expert witnesses for conspiracy and presenting false testimony. His
lawsuit was all timately dismissed by the courts, though the
case does remain a landmark in legal and psychological circles,
really sparking some ongoing debate about the validity of repressed

(01:00:10):
and recovered memories in criminal trials, so it is frequently
cited in discussions about false memory syndrome, hypnosis in legal settings,
and constitutional rights in court proceedings. The case was based
on Franklin's daughter, Eileen, suddenly remembering twenty years later that
she saw him commit a murder. This kind of memory

(01:00:33):
is called a repressed memory, where someone forgets a traumatic
event and then later recalls it. But the big issue
is whether such memories can be trusted. Experts disagree. Some
say they can be accurate, but others say they are
easily influenced and often false.

Speaker 3 (01:00:50):
Yeah, take it as an example. You can put a
patient under hypnosis and suggest all sorts of things.

Speaker 1 (01:00:59):
Right, We never did find out who killed Susan, and
he did not have an alibi for that, so it's
not one hundred percent that.

Speaker 2 (01:01:06):
He didn't do it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:07):
No, the credibility of Eileen's testimony about her repressed memory
of the events of September twenty second, nineteen sixty nine, was,
of course the primary issue at trial. The focus of
the defense was to challenge the credibility of that testimony,
and that included the possibility that Eileen intentionally or maybe

(01:01:27):
unintentionally fabricated her story, or maybe her memory was a
byproduct of hypnosis or otherwise an example of memory contamination.
So what does that mean memory contamination?

Speaker 3 (01:01:40):
Well, again, this is the where you can suggest things
to the patient and awakening. We'll put that into the
whole fabric of what they were testifying to. Right.

Speaker 1 (01:01:51):
Well, based on the expert testimony, Eileen's account of the
murder might be a conscious or an unconscious fantasy because
she knew su and Nason had been murdered, and of
course she knew her father was violent and abusive, So
why should she not then ask herself did Dad do
this too? Did Dad take away my friend? I mean,
it's not unreasonable to make that John, especially someone who

(01:02:15):
grew up in such a dysfunctional household with an abusive
man like that. In other words, it's not that far
fetched that he could.

Speaker 3 (01:02:22):
Have done it, right, but they don't have enough evidence.

Speaker 1 (01:02:25):
No, no, I understand that, But this also raised the
possibility that Eileen's husband may have affected her memory right.
Barry Barry was a controlling person and had an intense
dislike for George Franklin. There was a history of animosity
between Barry and George, and Barry was the one who

(01:02:45):
initially encouraged Eileen to come forward with her accusations against
her father. In fact, he was the first person who
contacted the police about her memory, and this was without
her knowledge. Initially, Barry kept a file of articles about
the name and murder in the couple's home, so this
was interesting. He'd actually made a videotape of a pre

(01:03:06):
trial Today's Show episode in which Eileen was interviewed about
the case, and he had articles that had the information
that she was claiming. She couldn't have known unless she
was there.

Speaker 3 (01:03:19):
You got it.

Speaker 1 (01:03:20):
So Eileen testified she never looked at any of the
articles that Barry kept in their home. But I mean,
how can you really believe that?

Speaker 2 (01:03:27):
For sure?

Speaker 1 (01:03:28):
She even admitted that Barry tried to read her articles
about the case as many as fifty times. So was
Barry encouraging this because maybe he did think George was responsible?

Speaker 3 (01:03:40):
Well, yeah, haven't. But you've already said that Barry had
a strained relationship Barry George.

Speaker 1 (01:03:46):
Well how could you not when it's your father in
law who's you know, it's pretty clear that he did
abuse his daughters. George did, So why would Eileen's husband
not have a hatred for George based on that alone?

Speaker 3 (01:03:59):
Yeah, and he sees this is a way of getting
back at him.

Speaker 1 (01:04:03):
And then the materials they found in George's apartment and
the things his girlfriends said, some really horrific stuff. But
of course, the defense saw it as Eileen's fault. They
suggested that Eileen may have been motivated to accuse her
father for financial benefits, because she did have a book
in a movie deal concerning the case, and she did

(01:04:24):
sign that in late June or early July of nineteen
ninety so could she have been doing it for the money?
That's also possible. The defense further raised the possibility that
Eileen's testimony was based on a false memory that was
triggered under hypnosis. George Franklin Junior, his son, testified that
Eileen had told him in August of nineteen eighty nine

(01:04:47):
that she had remembered their father committing a murder and
that the memory had surfaced under hypnotherapy. So in November
of nineteen eighty nine, Eileen retracted her statement about the hypnotherapy.
She admitted that she had bad statements about being hypnotized
to her brother and her mother, but she said she'd
lie to her brother and mother when she made these statements,

(01:05:09):
so it's really hard to say. The defense also pointed
to inconsistencies between Eileen's testimony at trial and her first
report of the crime to the police in November of
eighty nine, because at trials she testified that she thought
she remembered that her sister Janice was in a nearby
field when she and her father picked up Susan Nason.

(01:05:32):
Prior to the trial, she had told the police in
others that her sister Janice was in the van with
them and that her father had told Janie to get
out of the vehicle when they picked up Susan Nason.
Janice did testify at trial too, and she said she
remembered the day that Susan Nason disappeared, but didn't recall
seeing her sister, Eileen, Susan Nason, or her father at

(01:05:55):
all that day.

Speaker 3 (01:05:56):
Eileen originally told the police in November nineteen eighty nine
that her father drove his van into the woods before
stopping to rape and murder Susan. At the trial, she
described the assault as occurring at a turnout off Highway
ninety two. Aileen testified that the changes in her testimony

(01:06:16):
were due to an improvement in her memory over time.
While the defense claimed that she may have consulted media.

Speaker 1 (01:06:23):
Reports, which honestly does seem.

Speaker 3 (01:06:25):
Likely, she denied that she consulted any media reports on
the murder, with the exception of a couple of seconds
of the Today Show broadcast. So the defense claimed that
absolutely everything to which Eileen testified was contained in publicly
available newspaper articles. Defense council maintained that the newspaper articles

(01:06:46):
were the heart of the defense.

Speaker 1 (01:06:48):
Yeah, I think that's true. George Franklin Senior has always
proclaimed his innocence, but he was convicted in ninety one
in San Mateo's superior court and a district court judge
later reviewed the case and overturned it in ninety five,
and that was based on several errors in the trial.
Among the biggest came when Janis Franklin revealed that her

(01:07:11):
sister's repressed memory had been recalled through hypnosis. Because the
state Supreme Court had ruled that testimony based on memories
recovered by hypnosis were unreliable, Eileen could have been barred
from taking the stand. Eventually, prosecutors decided not to retry
the case and George Franklin was released. Eileen also claimed

(01:07:34):
her father killed eighteen year old Veronica Caskio and seventeen
year old Paula Baxter. Both of these women were found
stabbed to death in nineteen seventy six, seven years after
Susan Nasson's death, in a case that was called the
Gypsy Hill killings. But in twenty eighteen, the DNA evidence

(01:07:54):
linked someone else, Rodney Lynn Helbauer, to these murders. She
was convicted of both murders and sentenced to life in prison.
So just a really checkered pass for Eileen, but also
makes me feel sad for her because she obviously did
have a dysfunctional upbringing with some abuse, and that seems

(01:08:15):
obvious from what we've read, doesn't it.

Speaker 3 (01:08:17):
Yeah, No, I I don't think there's any question that
she had a tough time growing up.

Speaker 1 (01:08:22):
She did, but then it seems like the public really
turned on her when she was found to not be
one hundred percent honest. She did co author a book
titled Sins of the Father, which detail her experiences and
the trial. She appeared on talk shows and became an
advocate for survivors of abuse and repressed memory. However, by

(01:08:42):
the mid nineteen nineties, she stepped away from public life
and stopped making media appearances. So Eileen moved to a
different state and has a new name. She does have children,
so I hope she was able to get the help
she needed and give them a more stable life. But
it's interesting she's been widowed twice and wishes to remain anonymous,

(01:09:05):
so she's.

Speaker 2 (01:09:05):
Totally out of the public eye now, yes she is.
So what did you think?

Speaker 1 (01:09:10):
Initially we saw this documentary about this whole murder and
the whole case.

Speaker 2 (01:09:16):
It's on Showtime.

Speaker 1 (01:09:17):
It's titled Buried and when it starts out, I found
her so believable.

Speaker 3 (01:09:22):
Well, yeah, and I'm sure she believes what she says,
you think, So I don't think she's trying to pull
a scam on anybody.

Speaker 1 (01:09:29):
Oh Okay, I kind of thought she might have been.
I mean, initially it's some of the editing with the documentary,
I'm sure, But initially she seems like this very stable,
middle class mom who just wants the truth to come out.
But then you find out she's had some rough roads.
She's had drug addiction, she's been a sex worker, she's
had a lot of problems with her sister and her

(01:09:52):
mother as well.

Speaker 3 (01:09:53):
Yeah, they're all not speaking with each other.

Speaker 2 (01:09:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:09:57):
Yeah, there's a lot of troubles in that family.

Speaker 3 (01:10:00):
But I think when she first talked about her recovered memory,
I think she believed that it was a true, correct memory, okay,
And then as things started going the way they went
to me, she kind of doubled down. She's not going
to say, well, I just made that up.

Speaker 1 (01:10:19):
Well now, and then she brought up those two victims
of the Gypsy Hill killings, yeah, which were proved not to.

Speaker 2 (01:10:25):
Have been crimes of her father.

Speaker 1 (01:10:27):
So that certainly did some damage to her credibility, rightly,
So yep.

Speaker 3 (01:10:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:10:33):
Okay, well it really is a fascinating story. I'm glad
we finally did decide to talk about it. Okay, well,
we're not going to do feedback today because we have
a lot going on this week and this has just
been a heavy, heavy case. It's weighed heavily on me.

Speaker 3 (01:10:47):
So we'll do it next time.

Speaker 1 (01:10:48):
I think we'll wrap things up for today and we'll
see you next time.

Speaker 2 (01:10:52):
You bet at the quiet.

Speaker 4 (01:10:53):
End, plenty of room, come on down, all right, Bye bye,
Thanks everybody, guys, and a

Speaker 5 (01:11:26):
Diclytu a