December 8, 2025 • 45 mins
In this powerful and emotionally charged episode, Rob McConnell speaks with bestselling true crime author Ron Franscell about the horrifying event that forever changed the quiet city of Casper, Wyoming. Drawing from his acclaimed book The Darkest Night, Franscell recounts the tragic 1973 abduction of two young sisters and the brutal crime that shook the community to its core. Through vivid storytelling and chilling detail, Franscell explores not just the crime itself, but the long shadows it cast over the victims, the survivors, and the town that struggled to heal. With compassion and journalistic depth, this interview confronts the darkest corners of human behavior and the resilience of those who endure the unimaginable. A must-listen for true crime fans seeking more than just the facts—a story of loss, justice, and the scars that never fade.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
The X Zone Radio and TV Show is largely an
opinion talk show. All opinions, comments, or statements of fact
expressed by Rob McConnell's guests are strictly their own and
are not to be construed as those of The X
Zone Radio and TV Show are in any manner. Endorsed
by Rob McConnell, Realmar McConnell Media Company, talk Star Radio Network,
It's affiliated stations or employees.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
All Welcome to the X Zone, a place where fact
is fiction and fiction is reality.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Now here's your host, Rob McConnell.
Speaker 4 (01:07):
These is black, the pageous way to get.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
The wheeler read way.
Speaker 5 (01:16):
The child is black, child is white.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
The world moves all the side.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
Of beautiful side.
Speaker 5 (01:31):
You know child, This.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Is a long black and welcome back to the excellent.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
Everyone I'd like to welcome are affiliates who are joining
us now at this time here on the Talk Star
Radio Network. Welcome everyone. I guess this hour is Ron Fransell.
When eighteen year old Becky Bourridge and her eleven year
old sister Amy drove to the grocery store in Quiet Casper, Wyoming,
they never could have predicted what would happen next. After
(02:09):
Becky's car got a flat tire on their trip home,
The sisters accepted a ride from two strangers that would
lead to abduction, rape, and murder and end in a
horrific tragedy that would haunt their own town forever. Ron
France France, as was with the girls, was the girl's
(02:29):
neighbors at the time. His account of the events that
rocked Casper, Wyoming that day in nineteen seventy three is
going to grip you ex own nation and is also
going to leave you shocked at the brutality of the
girl's subductors. He is a journalist who works regularly, whose
works regularly appear in The Washington Post, Chicago Sun Times,
(02:50):
San Francisco Chronicle, Denver Post, San Jose Mercury, New Saint
Louis Post Dispatch, and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. And he is
the author of The Darkest Night. Our special guest this
hour is Ron Friends Sell and Ron, how are you tonight?
Speaker 6 (03:06):
Hey, It's great to be here tonight.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
Nice talking with you.
Speaker 6 (03:09):
Ron.
Speaker 5 (03:09):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
When you were writing the story, what was it like
for you going back in time and knowing these kids
as as a neighborhood, Well, of.
Speaker 6 (03:23):
Course, as you pointed out we were friends in our childhood,
and it was a childhood that in a remote place
in a small town, we never saw this coming, and
the haunt of that was with me still. You know,
(03:46):
I don't think I thought much about this over the years.
I there were times when when when Amy and Becky
would float through my mind, but I didn't spend a
lot of time think thinking about it. But on those
moments when they did, I was it made me a
(04:07):
little melancholy. I mean I thought about them, and I
thought about what we'd missed. And of course the tragedy
of this is too pronged, and you have the horror
of what happened in nineteen seventy three, and then what
happens nineteen years later as a sort of dark echo
(04:31):
of that. Working on the story myself not only refreshed
my memory of the things I did remember, it shone
new light on things that I hadn't remembered or that
I had misremembered. And I think one of the interesting
(04:53):
things about all of this is that nobody had it right.
I mean, everybody had their own little view of how
this crime it happened, and maybe in the aftermath, what
had happened, but it was a soda straw view of things.
So my I became very aware, very quickly that I
(05:19):
was in charge of the putting this all together in
one sweeping story from beginning to end, and as the
book points out, it hasn't ended.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
All right, Ron, why didn't you take us back to
nineteen seventy three when we come back from this commercial break?
Speaker 6 (05:36):
All right?
Speaker 4 (05:37):
Ron Fransel's our very special guest. Www. Dot Ronfransel dot
com is his website. We're talking about his book The
Fall seven seven five two eight A two five five
is total free throw at the US, Canada, Alaska and Hawaii.
My name is Rob McConnell. And we'll be back on
the other side. And I'm sorry the name of his
book is The Darkest Night. I'll be back on the
(05:59):
other side it. As we continue live and around the
world on the Talk Star Radio Network, x On TV
and on Shortway from our studios in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada,
(06:50):
this feeling.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Yet I'm still fait.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
What starts fans?
Speaker 1 (07:04):
It's the most.
Speaker 7 (07:07):
Only share in.
Speaker 8 (07:09):
The straight level show.
Speaker 7 (07:14):
Myself, I said, reason format is that be a sa
SCU When we meet a.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
Game one France. All is our special guest here is
the author of The Darkest Night, published by Saint Martin's Press.
His website is www dot ron Fransil dot com. R
O N F R A N S C E L
L dot com. All right, Rona, can you take us
back to nineteen seventy three and give us an idea
(07:53):
what your book is about.
Speaker 6 (07:54):
Well, in nineteen seventy three, I was sixteen years old.
This the beginning of this book takes us back to
the late September in nineteen seventy three. As you described
to your listeners earlier, Amy and Becky had been sent
(08:15):
to the grocery store by their mother to pick up
a few items. They happened to get out of their
vehicle just as a couple of thugs are driving up.
You know, these guys are career criminals. They're in and
out of prison, both of them. At that point, they
(08:35):
were twenty six and twenty nine years old, but they'd
both spent more than half their lives in prison at
that time, but never for rape, never for murder. They
were opportunistic criminals. Unfortunately, this presented them an opportunity. They
(08:58):
saw the two girls get out of the car. Becky
was a tall, dark haired beauty. Her little sister is
eleven years old. She's tagging along. They decide that the
best way they can meet this pretty girl is to
flatten her tire and then offer her help. And that's
exactly what they did, and that's how they got the
(09:20):
two girls into their car, and that's how a night
of terror began for these girls. Through the next several hours,
they beat and tortured the girls, They told them wild stories,
They just scared the hell out and in time they
(09:43):
ended up at a very high bridge over a very
deep canyon out in the middle of nowhere. Now we're
talking about wyoming here. This is you know, this is
a terribly desolate place. I love it to death. It's
my heart land. But it's many many miles between people,
(10:04):
and the ruggedness of the terrain is frightening. At this bridge,
little Amy is taken from the car and just literally
tossed over the edge falls twelve stories to her death.
Then these two guys turned to what their real interest was.
(10:25):
They both rape Becky and then they take her to
the edge of the bridge and wrestle her over the side.
But what happens is she hits the side of the
canyon wall on her way down. This crash breaks her
pelvis in five places, but it also breaks her fall,
(10:48):
bounces her out into deeper water, and she survives. She
spends that night at the bottom of that canyon naked
coal It's about thirty degrees at that time. It's dark,
so dark, the darkest night from what the title comes from.
(11:09):
There is no moon, and down in that canyon there's
barely enough light from the stars to see your hand
in front of your face. I know that because I
spent the thirtieth anniversary of that crime under the bridge,
at the very spot where Becky spent that long night.
(11:30):
She drags herself up at daylight, literally inch by inch
up that canyon while dragging her deadened legs behind her,
and is found by passing fishermen. She is taken to
the hospital and within the next hour is able to
identify the two guys who abducted her and her sister.
(11:55):
They are arrested fairly quickly. One of them actually confesses
to the whole mess, the other never says a word.
They are ultimately tried and convicted and since to die.
But this is nineteen seventy four now, and America is
still in the throes of its ambivalence about the death penalty.
(12:21):
Wyoming has rewritten its law to try to please the
Supreme Court, which had just allowed the death penalty to
be constitutional again. But they did it wrong, and so
after three years on death row, these two guys were
commuted to life in prison. This frightened Becky to her core.
(12:45):
She assumed that a life in prison with the possibility
of parole, that one or both would soon get out
and they would come looking for her. She began to
obsessed about this. She began to have issues with drugs
(13:05):
and alcohol. Her relationships with men were understandably the crepit.
Her life was a series of jobs that didn't pay
very well, and she basically was in a downward spiral.
(13:26):
And at the heart of this spiral was her fear
about these two guys in prison. She did marry once,
but it didn't last very long, and she did have
a child from that marriage, but as I say, it
broke up, and she continued in this life only now
as a single mother with a little child that you
(13:48):
didn't know what was going on. Nineteen years after the crime,
Becky'd had enough. She went back to the bridge and
she jumped, and this time she died. So that's the
sweep of the story. The Darkest Night Talks tells that story,
(14:12):
but it also talks about how it affected those of
us who were the closest children to Becky and Amy.
I grew up, you know, next door to them. We
played in those stand lots together. Probably my first crush
was on Becky. But it was a shocking crime that
(14:37):
literally changed the fabric of a community that never saw
this coming.
Speaker 4 (14:41):
What was your inspiration for writing the book?
Speaker 6 (14:45):
You know, it's interesting that it asked that, because one
might think, well, it's just an interesting story. But as
I said earlier, the sort of didn't go around obsessing
about it. Yeah, it made me angry when I thought
about it. It did a lot of things, but I
soon moved on to whatever was at hand. Shortly after
(15:05):
nine to eleven, I was working for the Denver Post
at that time, and I was sent to the Middle
East to ask questions about the relationship between the Middle
East and the United States. Now we're talking the first
few weeks after nine to eleven, so these everybody was
(15:27):
asking these questions, what did we do? Why us? And
in many ways I don't think we've answered those questions.
But during all my time there, I was I guess
I was living the mystery. I was living out that mystery.
(15:47):
I wasn't afraid, per se, but I was always on guard.
And when you're on guard, all of your senses are alive,
and everything the food takes its richer, the hounds are
more melodic, the colors are brighter. It was on the
(16:10):
way home, and I am notorious for not being able
to sleep on airplanes, and I picked up a European
news magazine and for the very first time, I saw
a picture of people falling from the World Trade Center
on nine to eleven. I've never seen these photos. I
(16:31):
don't know if it was because I left the country
so quickly after the attacks, or whether they really hadn't
come out in the United States. But in one of
the photos, I saw a two people holding hands as
they plummeted from somewhere up up there in the top
(16:54):
of the World Trade Center, and I began to think
about Becky and it Amy. Of course, they didn't hold
hands on their fall from that bridge, but in a way,
they did, and I suddenly began to do what I'd
never done before I began to see their experience in
(17:19):
nineteen seventy three as being a mirror of our experience
in two thousand and one, that one night of terror
can change everything. You don't see it coming, you can't
fathom it, you can't imagine it, and then it happens,
(17:39):
and it changes who you are, it changes what you do,
And that's where it came from. I don't spend a
lot of time on that in the book. I make
reference to it, but in some ways I got a
preview of what we as a country have been feeling
(17:59):
for the last last you know, six six and a
half years back when I was sixteen years old.
Speaker 4 (18:08):
What hell of a preview.
Speaker 6 (18:11):
Well, it really was, and it was on a on
a scale that was so small that this crime. You know,
one of the difficulties we had in getting the book
published was that it never made the headlines. It happened
in a place that most New Yorkers think they still
(18:37):
have Indians and horse drawn buggies, and it happened, you know,
thirty years before. So that was one of the difficulties
of it.
Speaker 4 (18:46):
Ron standby you and I have to take our news
break at the bottom of the r Ronfrancils, our special
guest www dot ronfrancell dot com, R O N F
R A N S C E L L dot com.
What a story. We'll be back after the news XON
Nation as we continue live and around the world on
the Talk Star Radio Network, x on TV and on
(19:07):
Shortway from our studios in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Still to
come on tonight show. Linda Drake will be joining me
in the final hour. She is an author, she is
a psychic and we're going to be talking about everything
from psychic experiences to near death experiences. This is the
XON on the Talk Star Radio Network from our studios
in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
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Welcome to the X Zone, a place where fact is
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Now here's your host, Rob Kano, The greatest.
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And every day we.
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Said he never touched Adam, he was here.
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That is fable, tracing.
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Ouside to know though.
Speaker 4 (23:19):
Welcome back everyone. Our special guest this hour is Ron Francell.
He is the author of The Darkest Knight. His website
is www dot Ronfrancell dot com. That's r O N
F R N s C E L L and The
Darkest Night is published by Saint Martin's Press. Ron was
(23:41):
once quoted as saying that the worst punishment that ever
happened in his little town was if you were held
back a grade. And this is quote Ron Kennedy and
Jerry Jenkins took many things from me, my friends, my
sense of security, a certain amount of childhood innocence. And
(24:03):
he says, I have a night light in every room
of my house, and we'll go outside at night. Even
as an adult. Night makes her nervous. And this is
about his book, What did these crimes due to? That
peaceful little town of Casper where you grew up?
Speaker 6 (24:24):
Here was a place, as I said earlier, that couldn't
imagine this crime. And had anyone imagined it and said
this could happen, people would have dismissed it. It was
one of those places that you here described so often
(24:47):
that nobody locked their doors or their cars. You know,
it was like that. Although I was a kid, you know,
I didn't think about blocking doors anyway. What I thought
about was being able to ride my bike down the
street and how it comforted me to be able to
(25:11):
hear people in their homes or see through their windows.
And I don't mean peeping, I mean just riding down
the street. The people were living their lives and they
didn't they didn't close themselves off from the world. And
I think that once this crime happened, that all changed.
(25:37):
In traveling around with this book, I've had a lot
of people from that town and from that period present
themselves and say, I just remember I was eight years
old and my parents never let me ride my bike
after dark again, or they never let me go to
(25:57):
the store by myself again. Suddenly we lived in a
place that was a lot like the places we now
live in, and in again a strange forecast of what
was going to come thirty years later. Everything was going
(26:18):
to change, and we were going to close ourselves off
from the world. We were going to build little fortresses
around ourselves so that the next time we wouldn't be vulnerable.
But the fact is, you know, evil is like bad air.
It exists, and it will always exist, and it will
(26:40):
get through the cracks.
Speaker 4 (26:44):
What ever happened to the two suspects or the two offenders,
Why one.
Speaker 6 (26:50):
Of them died? A guy named Jerry Jenkins one of
the two. He died in prison in nineteen ninety eight
of a heart attack. The night he died, there was
a round of applause among the guards. He wasn't well liked.
The other still lives and is still serving his life
(27:16):
sentence at the Penitentiary of Wyoming, and of course I
spent time with him. I interviewed him for fourteen hours
for this book, and I think it was the most
difficult thing I've ever done as a writer. In almost
every other aspect of the research, I was protected by
(27:39):
that emotional distance that a newspaperman learns. But the interviews
with Ron Kennedy, the second killer, and really the gas
in the engine of this crime, was probably the biggest
challenge of my love of journalism that I've ever faced.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
Ron did he show any remorse, Did he talk about
anything that would show you, as a journalist that there
might be somewhere in his body a spark of decency left?
Speaker 6 (28:15):
None whatsoever? None whatsoever. In fact, he had never spoken
about this crime, even to his own lawyer. And I'm
sure he's shared things with cellmates along the years, but
he had never spoken. He'd never given an interview, he
had never spoken to his lawyer, he never made a
(28:36):
statement of any kind. And so before I interviewed him,
I didn't necessarily expect him to, you know, come clean
about the whole thing. But I was surprised, even after
years of covering police matters, and trials. I was surprised
(29:01):
at how completely distracted from this whole case he was.
He just simply would say I was there, but I
would have helped them if I could, but I couldn't.
I was drugged, I was drunk. I was I was
under the thumb of the other guy who happens to
(29:23):
be conveniently dead. He had no remorse. He made up
what I think were even more painful stories than the
real ones that I was telling. He is a classic sociopath.
He I engaged a forensic psychiatrist to act as a
(29:52):
kind of well to check me, you know, to make
sure that I wasn't going to stray off into pop psychology.
And this guy said, you know, if there were thirty
three check marks that you could put beside the symptoms
and the traits of a sociopath, this guy hit on
(30:14):
thirty two of them. Wow, he is just a classic sociopath.
And he played me through the whole interview. He denied anything,
as I say, made up even further stories which were
hair raising, and in the book reflects this. He even
(30:34):
gave me a five hundred page manuscript that he'd written
in prison that purports to be his autobiography. It is
a mixture of Penthouse Forum and you know, one hundred
popular movies loosely built around things that may or may
(30:59):
not have happened in his life. But it was a
fascinating glimpse into the mind of a sociopath, and we
were getting it in volumes. There just wasn't any truth
to it, and so I in some ways it was
a wasted fourteen hours. But but I think now looking
(31:25):
back on that time I spent with him, it wasn't
wasted at all. I've I came away with a new
perspective on justice, on criminality, on mercy. But most of all,
you know, he was he was my mirror. He You know,
(31:46):
I wanted I interviewed him because I wanted to know
something about me, you know. I wanted to know if
my deep set feelings about this guy or really what
he represented, not him, I didn't know him, but I
knew what he represented. I wanted to know if my
feelings were stronger than my passion to be a conscientious journalist,
(32:13):
if I couldn't step back from my feelings about him
or about his deeds and let him tell his story
in his voice, then frankly, I wouldn't be the newspaper
man that I thought I was. And in the end,
I guess that would mean that he robbed me of
that too, So I think it was worth it.
Speaker 4 (32:36):
Tell me why didn't this story get national media exposure.
Speaker 6 (32:44):
I think part of it is the remoteness of the place.
I think part of it is a certain geocentrism that
we have in this country. I live now in Texas.
I'm not a Texan, I just live here. But I
would be rich if someone would just give me a
nickel for every time someone crinkled their nose at the
(33:08):
mention of living in Texas. There's a certain geographic prejudice
that we have, and I think that when it comes
to Wyoming or a lot of the interior or West,
it's flyover country and we don't consider that life proceeds
(33:31):
and unfolds and ends there just as it does in
New York City or la or Seattle or anywhere else.
N If they think that was part of it.
Speaker 4 (33:43):
Ron if this crime had been committed in the year
two thousand and eight, do you think that the media
would have run with it compared to Yeah, I mean,
you look.
Speaker 6 (33:53):
At the biggest story today or at least the biggest
non story of the day. A man to knocks a
woman over in a boat and she dies is bordered
a border. I mean, you know, I'm sure it's from
Canada to Mexico. Yeah. I think the new media world,
(34:15):
it would not have disappeared or actually never arrived on
the scene the way it did. The story that got
the press, and which is interesting it says something about
the media today, or at least within the last twenty years,
(34:39):
was when Becky returned to that bridge nineteen years after
the crime. It's nineteen ninety two and she commits suicide
by jumping off the bridge at the same spot where
she'd been thrown and where her little sister had been
thrown nineteen years before. That did get attention. Uh, there
(35:03):
was talk of a movie there wash there were. There
were stories that went out over the wire services and
were published far and wide. The original story did not
I hate to say it, but in some ways it
was kind of a garden variety crime except for the bridge.
(35:24):
I think that had had these two girls been taken
back to a trailer someplace and raped and murdered and
then dumped in a ditch, this this story would still
have affected Casper, Casper, Wyoming, but probably not to the
(35:45):
extent it has. That bridge, that canyon, that night. They
all play a role in this. They all play a
role in the in in the memory of this, just
as you know any setting is going to enhance a story.
This setting, you know, was was part of why this
(36:08):
story lives on.
Speaker 4 (36:10):
Did did Amy leave or let's see which one jumped
Becky or Amy Becky? Did Becky leave a suicide note?
Speaker 6 (36:18):
She didn't. And and people would like to believe that
she went out that night, she took She she went
out that night with her then boyfriend, with whom she
was having a a can't let go relationship. She wanted
(36:39):
to let him go, but she she just couldn't. There
was some insecurity that kept her hanging on. And she
took with her her year and a half old little girl.
They sat on that bridge at sunset, and and she
pointed to the places that were important to this story.
(37:02):
The rock where she hit, the little the little crevice
where she spent that night, and then the wash where
she dragged her body up out of a canyon. And
it as she as she told him, she got more
and more agitated, until finally the baby was also getting agitated.
(37:22):
The boyfriend said, let me take Let me take the
little girl back to the car. You just compose yourself
and let's get out of here. When he turned around
at the car, he heard a splash. He turned around.
She wasn't there, So no suicide. Note she'd bought a
(37:42):
beautiful dress that afternoon. Possibility that she didn't jump, that
she just slipped and fell. Hangs out there.
Speaker 4 (37:53):
Run started by you and I have to take our
commercial break, Ron Francella, what a guy. Ron, thanks very
much for joining us and sharing this story with us
here on the xone www dot ronfrancell dot com. Ron
and I returned on the other side of this commercial
break as the xone continues live and around the world
from our studios in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, on the Talkstar
(38:15):
radio network, XON TV, and on shortwave. Don't go away,
We'll be back.
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x dot com or call nine oh one three three
six nine six six zero. And where will you be
in the year twenty twelve?
Speaker 3 (40:42):
Your bootsteps.
Speaker 5 (40:45):
Telling me that John, dear.
Speaker 4 (40:49):
You, Doc Jim Jim. Then read even Don Francell is
(41:15):
our special guest this hour. He's the author of The
Darkest Night. It's published by Saint Martin's Press. And first
of all, Ron, thanks very much for joining us tonight.
It's been a great pleasure talking to you and continued
success with your books.
Speaker 6 (41:29):
Well, thank you very much. I don't have any other choices.
I'm a writer, I'm a storyteller, and that this very
personal story came along to be told, you know, I'm
grateful for that. I don't know that I'll ever write
another true crime. I don't know that I'll ever write
(41:51):
another memoir, but in this particular one, I thought there
was a story for all of us.
Speaker 4 (41:58):
I can only imagine what it was like sitting in
front of of the gentleman and president who had committed
these heinous crimes, knowing that he took the lives of
the little girls that I grew up with.
Speaker 6 (42:15):
That's right, But like I said, I think it was
more important to me to make sure that I gave
him his voice. There were feelings. I mean, I'm a
human first, but I had feelings about that. But I
was there to hear what he had to say and
(42:39):
with the intention of passing it along, and I think
it's in the book. I made a promise to him,
and it was far more important to me to keep
the promise, to let him speak, to let him tell
his story. That he chose to tell. The story he
told is not my responsibility and I couldn't change that.
(43:07):
I wouldn't change that. But given the opportunity that he
chose the story, I fulfilled my promise to tell the story.
But here's a confession. I didn't hate this guy. I
hated what he represented and I still do. But when
all was said and done. I feel sorry for him.
(43:30):
He turned out to be a rather pathetic figure behind
this dark curtain, a story that had, you know, taken
on mythic proportions in my hometown. And he was not
as big as the story. He was not as frightening
as the mythology. And he was pathetic. He was a
(43:55):
pathetic little person. And I just didn't hate him.
Speaker 4 (44:03):
Yeah, but you were able to see him for what
he really was.
Speaker 6 (44:07):
Yeah, exactly he was. He was the opportunistic player. He
was a manipulator. He was throughout his history the guy
that was most likely to be the snitch or the
the you know, the sucker puncher or the you know,
(44:27):
the sniper. He's not the kind of guy who's going
to stand up to you face to face and and
deal whatever blows he deemed you worthy of. He doesn't
do that.
Speaker 4 (44:43):
Ron we've run out of time. Once again, thank you
very much for joining us, and look forward to talking
to you the next time you come up with another book.
Speaker 6 (44:51):
All right, well, i'll let you know when we do.
Speaker 4 (44:53):
Please do it and give my best to the people
at Saint Martin's Press for the helping making this interview possible.
Speaker 6 (44:58):
I'll certainly do it. Rob, Thank you. This has been
a delight.
Speaker 4 (45:00):
It's been a delight for me too, sir.
Speaker 3 (45:02):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (45:03):
Ron FRANCEL F R A N S C E L L.
His website is www dot Ronfransell dot com. The name
of the book is The Darkest Night. Linda Drake joins
me on the other side of the news as the
excellent continues right here on the Talkstar.
Speaker 3 (45:16):
Ready on
The X Zone Radio and TV Show is largely an
opinion talk show. All opinions, comments, or statements of fact
expressed by Rob McConnell's guests are strictly their own and
are not to be construed as those of The X
Zone Radio and TV Show are in any manner. Endorsed
by Rob McConnell, Realmar McConnell Media Company, talk Star Radio Network,
It's affiliated stations or employees.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
All Welcome to the X Zone, a place where fact
is fiction and fiction is reality.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Now here's your host, Rob McConnell.
Speaker 4 (01:07):
These is black, the pageous way to get.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
The wheeler read way.
Speaker 5 (01:16):
The child is black, child is white.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
The world moves all the side.
Speaker 4 (01:26):
Of beautiful side.
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You know child, This.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Is a long black and welcome back to the excellent.
Speaker 4 (01:48):
Everyone I'd like to welcome are affiliates who are joining
us now at this time here on the Talk Star
Radio Network. Welcome everyone. I guess this hour is Ron Fransell.
When eighteen year old Becky Bourridge and her eleven year
old sister Amy drove to the grocery store in Quiet Casper, Wyoming,
they never could have predicted what would happen next. After
(02:09):
Becky's car got a flat tire on their trip home,
The sisters accepted a ride from two strangers that would
lead to abduction, rape, and murder and end in a
horrific tragedy that would haunt their own town forever. Ron
France France, as was with the girls, was the girl's
(02:29):
neighbors at the time. His account of the events that
rocked Casper, Wyoming that day in nineteen seventy three is
going to grip you ex own nation and is also
going to leave you shocked at the brutality of the
girl's subductors. He is a journalist who works regularly, whose
works regularly appear in The Washington Post, Chicago Sun Times,
(02:50):
San Francisco Chronicle, Denver Post, San Jose Mercury, New Saint
Louis Post Dispatch, and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. And he is
the author of The Darkest Night. Our special guest this
hour is Ron Friends Sell and Ron, how are you tonight?
Speaker 6 (03:06):
Hey, It's great to be here tonight.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
Nice talking with you.
Speaker 6 (03:09):
Ron.
Speaker 5 (03:09):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
When you were writing the story, what was it like
for you going back in time and knowing these kids
as as a neighborhood, Well, of.
Speaker 6 (03:23):
Course, as you pointed out we were friends in our childhood,
and it was a childhood that in a remote place
in a small town, we never saw this coming, and
the haunt of that was with me still. You know,
(03:46):
I don't think I thought much about this over the years.
I there were times when when when Amy and Becky
would float through my mind, but I didn't spend a
lot of time think thinking about it. But on those
moments when they did, I was it made me a
(04:07):
little melancholy. I mean I thought about them, and I
thought about what we'd missed. And of course the tragedy
of this is too pronged, and you have the horror
of what happened in nineteen seventy three, and then what
happens nineteen years later as a sort of dark echo
(04:31):
of that. Working on the story myself not only refreshed
my memory of the things I did remember, it shone
new light on things that I hadn't remembered or that
I had misremembered. And I think one of the interesting
(04:53):
things about all of this is that nobody had it right.
I mean, everybody had their own little view of how
this crime it happened, and maybe in the aftermath, what
had happened, but it was a soda straw view of things.
So my I became very aware, very quickly that I
(05:19):
was in charge of the putting this all together in
one sweeping story from beginning to end, and as the
book points out, it hasn't ended.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
All right, Ron, why didn't you take us back to
nineteen seventy three when we come back from this commercial break?
Speaker 6 (05:36):
All right?
Speaker 4 (05:37):
Ron Fransel's our very special guest. Www. Dot Ronfransel dot
com is his website. We're talking about his book The
Fall seven seven five two eight A two five five
is total free throw at the US, Canada, Alaska and Hawaii.
My name is Rob McConnell. And we'll be back on
the other side. And I'm sorry the name of his
book is The Darkest Night. I'll be back on the
(05:59):
other side it. As we continue live and around the
world on the Talk Star Radio Network, x On TV
and on Shortway from our studios in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada,
(06:50):
this feeling.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Yet I'm still fait.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
What starts fans?
Speaker 1 (07:04):
It's the most.
Speaker 7 (07:07):
Only share in.
Speaker 8 (07:09):
The straight level show.
Speaker 7 (07:14):
Myself, I said, reason format is that be a sa
SCU When we meet a.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
Game one France. All is our special guest here is
the author of The Darkest Night, published by Saint Martin's Press.
His website is www dot ron Fransil dot com. R
O N F R A N S C E L
L dot com. All right, Rona, can you take us
back to nineteen seventy three and give us an idea
(07:53):
what your book is about.
Speaker 6 (07:54):
Well, in nineteen seventy three, I was sixteen years old.
This the beginning of this book takes us back to
the late September in nineteen seventy three. As you described
to your listeners earlier, Amy and Becky had been sent
(08:15):
to the grocery store by their mother to pick up
a few items. They happened to get out of their
vehicle just as a couple of thugs are driving up.
You know, these guys are career criminals. They're in and
out of prison, both of them. At that point, they
(08:35):
were twenty six and twenty nine years old, but they'd
both spent more than half their lives in prison at
that time, but never for rape, never for murder. They
were opportunistic criminals. Unfortunately, this presented them an opportunity. They
(08:58):
saw the two girls get out of the car. Becky
was a tall, dark haired beauty. Her little sister is
eleven years old. She's tagging along. They decide that the
best way they can meet this pretty girl is to
flatten her tire and then offer her help. And that's
exactly what they did, and that's how they got the
(09:20):
two girls into their car, and that's how a night
of terror began for these girls. Through the next several hours,
they beat and tortured the girls, They told them wild stories,
They just scared the hell out and in time they
(09:43):
ended up at a very high bridge over a very
deep canyon out in the middle of nowhere. Now we're
talking about wyoming here. This is you know, this is
a terribly desolate place. I love it to death. It's
my heart land. But it's many many miles between people,
(10:04):
and the ruggedness of the terrain is frightening. At this bridge,
little Amy is taken from the car and just literally
tossed over the edge falls twelve stories to her death.
Then these two guys turned to what their real interest was.
(10:25):
They both rape Becky and then they take her to
the edge of the bridge and wrestle her over the side.
But what happens is she hits the side of the
canyon wall on her way down. This crash breaks her
pelvis in five places, but it also breaks her fall,
(10:48):
bounces her out into deeper water, and she survives. She
spends that night at the bottom of that canyon naked
coal It's about thirty degrees at that time. It's dark,
so dark, the darkest night from what the title comes from.
(11:09):
There is no moon, and down in that canyon there's
barely enough light from the stars to see your hand
in front of your face. I know that because I
spent the thirtieth anniversary of that crime under the bridge,
at the very spot where Becky spent that long night.
(11:30):
She drags herself up at daylight, literally inch by inch
up that canyon while dragging her deadened legs behind her,
and is found by passing fishermen. She is taken to
the hospital and within the next hour is able to
identify the two guys who abducted her and her sister.
(11:55):
They are arrested fairly quickly. One of them actually confesses
to the whole mess, the other never says a word.
They are ultimately tried and convicted and since to die.
But this is nineteen seventy four now, and America is
still in the throes of its ambivalence about the death penalty.
(12:21):
Wyoming has rewritten its law to try to please the
Supreme Court, which had just allowed the death penalty to
be constitutional again. But they did it wrong, and so
after three years on death row, these two guys were
commuted to life in prison. This frightened Becky to her core.
(12:45):
She assumed that a life in prison with the possibility
of parole, that one or both would soon get out
and they would come looking for her. She began to
obsessed about this. She began to have issues with drugs
(13:05):
and alcohol. Her relationships with men were understandably the crepit.
Her life was a series of jobs that didn't pay
very well, and she basically was in a downward spiral.
(13:26):
And at the heart of this spiral was her fear
about these two guys in prison. She did marry once,
but it didn't last very long, and she did have
a child from that marriage, but as I say, it
broke up, and she continued in this life only now
as a single mother with a little child that you
(13:48):
didn't know what was going on. Nineteen years after the crime,
Becky'd had enough. She went back to the bridge and
she jumped, and this time she died. So that's the
sweep of the story. The Darkest Night Talks tells that story,
(14:12):
but it also talks about how it affected those of
us who were the closest children to Becky and Amy.
I grew up, you know, next door to them. We
played in those stand lots together. Probably my first crush
was on Becky. But it was a shocking crime that
(14:37):
literally changed the fabric of a community that never saw
this coming.
Speaker 4 (14:41):
What was your inspiration for writing the book?
Speaker 6 (14:45):
You know, it's interesting that it asked that, because one
might think, well, it's just an interesting story. But as
I said earlier, the sort of didn't go around obsessing
about it. Yeah, it made me angry when I thought
about it. It did a lot of things, but I
soon moved on to whatever was at hand. Shortly after
(15:05):
nine to eleven, I was working for the Denver Post
at that time, and I was sent to the Middle
East to ask questions about the relationship between the Middle
East and the United States. Now we're talking the first
few weeks after nine to eleven, so these everybody was
(15:27):
asking these questions, what did we do? Why us? And
in many ways I don't think we've answered those questions.
But during all my time there, I was I guess
I was living the mystery. I was living out that mystery.
(15:47):
I wasn't afraid, per se, but I was always on guard.
And when you're on guard, all of your senses are alive,
and everything the food takes its richer, the hounds are
more melodic, the colors are brighter. It was on the
(16:10):
way home, and I am notorious for not being able
to sleep on airplanes, and I picked up a European
news magazine and for the very first time, I saw
a picture of people falling from the World Trade Center
on nine to eleven. I've never seen these photos. I
(16:31):
don't know if it was because I left the country
so quickly after the attacks, or whether they really hadn't
come out in the United States. But in one of
the photos, I saw a two people holding hands as
they plummeted from somewhere up up there in the top
(16:54):
of the World Trade Center, and I began to think
about Becky and it Amy. Of course, they didn't hold
hands on their fall from that bridge, but in a way,
they did, and I suddenly began to do what I'd
never done before I began to see their experience in
(17:19):
nineteen seventy three as being a mirror of our experience
in two thousand and one, that one night of terror
can change everything. You don't see it coming, you can't
fathom it, you can't imagine it, and then it happens,
(17:39):
and it changes who you are, it changes what you do,
And that's where it came from. I don't spend a
lot of time on that in the book. I make
reference to it, but in some ways I got a
preview of what we as a country have been feeling
(17:59):
for the last last you know, six six and a
half years back when I was sixteen years old.
Speaker 4 (18:08):
What hell of a preview.
Speaker 6 (18:11):
Well, it really was, and it was on a on
a scale that was so small that this crime. You know,
one of the difficulties we had in getting the book
published was that it never made the headlines. It happened
in a place that most New Yorkers think they still
(18:37):
have Indians and horse drawn buggies, and it happened, you know,
thirty years before. So that was one of the difficulties
of it.
Speaker 4 (18:46):
Ron standby you and I have to take our news
break at the bottom of the r Ronfrancils, our special
guest www dot ronfrancell dot com, R O N F
R A N S C E L L dot com.
What a story. We'll be back after the news XON
Nation as we continue live and around the world on
the Talk Star Radio Network, x on TV and on
(19:07):
Shortway from our studios in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Still to
come on tonight show. Linda Drake will be joining me
in the final hour. She is an author, she is
a psychic and we're going to be talking about everything
from psychic experiences to near death experiences. This is the
XON on the Talk Star Radio Network from our studios
in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
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My name is Michael Coltar, Canada's leading mentalists from Toronto, Ontario.
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Hi, my name is Florida and you're listening to my dad,
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On the extend, This is Psychic Dorothy from Saint Catherine's
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The.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Welcome to the X Zone, a place where fact is
fiction and fiction is reality.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
Now here's your host, Rob Kano, The greatest.
Speaker 6 (22:36):
Man I never knew, lived just down home.
Speaker 5 (22:47):
And every day we.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
Said he never touched Adam, he was here.
Speaker 5 (23:00):
That is fable, tracing.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
Ouside to know though.
Speaker 4 (23:19):
Welcome back everyone. Our special guest this hour is Ron Francell.
He is the author of The Darkest Knight. His website
is www dot Ronfrancell dot com. That's r O N
F R N s C E L L and The
Darkest Night is published by Saint Martin's Press. Ron was
(23:41):
once quoted as saying that the worst punishment that ever
happened in his little town was if you were held
back a grade. And this is quote Ron Kennedy and
Jerry Jenkins took many things from me, my friends, my
sense of security, a certain amount of childhood innocence. And
(24:03):
he says, I have a night light in every room
of my house, and we'll go outside at night. Even
as an adult. Night makes her nervous. And this is
about his book, What did these crimes due to? That
peaceful little town of Casper where you grew up?
Speaker 6 (24:24):
Here was a place, as I said earlier, that couldn't
imagine this crime. And had anyone imagined it and said
this could happen, people would have dismissed it. It was
one of those places that you here described so often
(24:47):
that nobody locked their doors or their cars. You know,
it was like that. Although I was a kid, you know,
I didn't think about blocking doors anyway. What I thought
about was being able to ride my bike down the
street and how it comforted me to be able to
(25:11):
hear people in their homes or see through their windows.
And I don't mean peeping, I mean just riding down
the street. The people were living their lives and they
didn't they didn't close themselves off from the world. And
I think that once this crime happened, that all changed.
(25:37):
In traveling around with this book, I've had a lot
of people from that town and from that period present
themselves and say, I just remember I was eight years
old and my parents never let me ride my bike
after dark again, or they never let me go to
(25:57):
the store by myself again. Suddenly we lived in a
place that was a lot like the places we now
live in, and in again a strange forecast of what
was going to come thirty years later. Everything was going
(26:18):
to change, and we were going to close ourselves off
from the world. We were going to build little fortresses
around ourselves so that the next time we wouldn't be vulnerable.
But the fact is, you know, evil is like bad air.
It exists, and it will always exist, and it will
(26:40):
get through the cracks.
Speaker 4 (26:44):
What ever happened to the two suspects or the two offenders,
Why one.
Speaker 6 (26:50):
Of them died? A guy named Jerry Jenkins one of
the two. He died in prison in nineteen ninety eight
of a heart attack. The night he died, there was
a round of applause among the guards. He wasn't well liked.
The other still lives and is still serving his life
(27:16):
sentence at the Penitentiary of Wyoming, and of course I
spent time with him. I interviewed him for fourteen hours
for this book, and I think it was the most
difficult thing I've ever done as a writer. In almost
every other aspect of the research, I was protected by
(27:39):
that emotional distance that a newspaperman learns. But the interviews
with Ron Kennedy, the second killer, and really the gas
in the engine of this crime, was probably the biggest
challenge of my love of journalism that I've ever faced.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
Ron did he show any remorse, Did he talk about
anything that would show you, as a journalist that there
might be somewhere in his body a spark of decency left?
Speaker 6 (28:15):
None whatsoever? None whatsoever. In fact, he had never spoken
about this crime, even to his own lawyer. And I'm
sure he's shared things with cellmates along the years, but
he had never spoken. He'd never given an interview, he
had never spoken to his lawyer, he never made a
(28:36):
statement of any kind. And so before I interviewed him,
I didn't necessarily expect him to, you know, come clean
about the whole thing. But I was surprised, even after
years of covering police matters, and trials. I was surprised
(29:01):
at how completely distracted from this whole case he was.
He just simply would say I was there, but I
would have helped them if I could, but I couldn't.
I was drugged, I was drunk. I was I was
under the thumb of the other guy who happens to
(29:23):
be conveniently dead. He had no remorse. He made up
what I think were even more painful stories than the
real ones that I was telling. He is a classic sociopath.
He I engaged a forensic psychiatrist to act as a
(29:52):
kind of well to check me, you know, to make
sure that I wasn't going to stray off into pop psychology.
And this guy said, you know, if there were thirty
three check marks that you could put beside the symptoms
and the traits of a sociopath, this guy hit on
(30:14):
thirty two of them. Wow, he is just a classic sociopath.
And he played me through the whole interview. He denied anything,
as I say, made up even further stories which were
hair raising, and in the book reflects this. He even
(30:34):
gave me a five hundred page manuscript that he'd written
in prison that purports to be his autobiography. It is
a mixture of Penthouse Forum and you know, one hundred
popular movies loosely built around things that may or may
(30:59):
not have happened in his life. But it was a
fascinating glimpse into the mind of a sociopath, and we
were getting it in volumes. There just wasn't any truth
to it, and so I in some ways it was
a wasted fourteen hours. But but I think now looking
(31:25):
back on that time I spent with him, it wasn't
wasted at all. I've I came away with a new
perspective on justice, on criminality, on mercy. But most of all,
you know, he was he was my mirror. He You know,
(31:46):
I wanted I interviewed him because I wanted to know
something about me, you know. I wanted to know if
my deep set feelings about this guy or really what
he represented, not him, I didn't know him, but I
knew what he represented. I wanted to know if my
feelings were stronger than my passion to be a conscientious journalist,
(32:13):
if I couldn't step back from my feelings about him
or about his deeds and let him tell his story
in his voice, then frankly, I wouldn't be the newspaper
man that I thought I was. And in the end,
I guess that would mean that he robbed me of
that too, So I think it was worth it.
Speaker 4 (32:36):
Tell me why didn't this story get national media exposure.
Speaker 6 (32:44):
I think part of it is the remoteness of the place.
I think part of it is a certain geocentrism that
we have in this country. I live now in Texas.
I'm not a Texan, I just live here. But I
would be rich if someone would just give me a
nickel for every time someone crinkled their nose at the
(33:08):
mention of living in Texas. There's a certain geographic prejudice
that we have, and I think that when it comes
to Wyoming or a lot of the interior or West,
it's flyover country and we don't consider that life proceeds
(33:31):
and unfolds and ends there just as it does in
New York City or la or Seattle or anywhere else.
N If they think that was part of it.
Speaker 4 (33:43):
Ron if this crime had been committed in the year
two thousand and eight, do you think that the media
would have run with it compared to Yeah, I mean,
you look.
Speaker 6 (33:53):
At the biggest story today or at least the biggest
non story of the day. A man to knocks a
woman over in a boat and she dies is bordered
a border. I mean, you know, I'm sure it's from
Canada to Mexico. Yeah. I think the new media world,
(34:15):
it would not have disappeared or actually never arrived on
the scene the way it did. The story that got
the press, and which is interesting it says something about
the media today, or at least within the last twenty years,
(34:39):
was when Becky returned to that bridge nineteen years after
the crime. It's nineteen ninety two and she commits suicide
by jumping off the bridge at the same spot where
she'd been thrown and where her little sister had been
thrown nineteen years before. That did get attention. Uh, there
(35:03):
was talk of a movie there wash there were. There
were stories that went out over the wire services and
were published far and wide. The original story did not
I hate to say it, but in some ways it
was kind of a garden variety crime except for the bridge.
(35:24):
I think that had had these two girls been taken
back to a trailer someplace and raped and murdered and
then dumped in a ditch, this this story would still
have affected Casper, Casper, Wyoming, but probably not to the
(35:45):
extent it has. That bridge, that canyon, that night. They
all play a role in this. They all play a
role in the in in the memory of this, just
as you know any setting is going to enhance a story.
This setting, you know, was was part of why this
(36:08):
story lives on.
Speaker 4 (36:10):
Did did Amy leave or let's see which one jumped
Becky or Amy Becky? Did Becky leave a suicide note?
Speaker 6 (36:18):
She didn't. And and people would like to believe that
she went out that night, she took She she went
out that night with her then boyfriend, with whom she
was having a a can't let go relationship. She wanted
(36:39):
to let him go, but she she just couldn't. There
was some insecurity that kept her hanging on. And she
took with her her year and a half old little girl.
They sat on that bridge at sunset, and and she
pointed to the places that were important to this story.
(37:02):
The rock where she hit, the little the little crevice
where she spent that night, and then the wash where
she dragged her body up out of a canyon. And
it as she as she told him, she got more
and more agitated, until finally the baby was also getting agitated.
(37:22):
The boyfriend said, let me take Let me take the
little girl back to the car. You just compose yourself
and let's get out of here. When he turned around
at the car, he heard a splash. He turned around.
She wasn't there, So no suicide. Note she'd bought a
(37:42):
beautiful dress that afternoon. Possibility that she didn't jump, that
she just slipped and fell. Hangs out there.
Speaker 4 (37:53):
Run started by you and I have to take our
commercial break, Ron Francella, what a guy. Ron, thanks very
much for joining us and sharing this story with us
here on the xone www dot ronfrancell dot com. Ron
and I returned on the other side of this commercial
break as the xone continues live and around the world
from our studios in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, on the Talkstar
(38:15):
radio network, XON TV, and on shortwave. Don't go away,
We'll be back.
Speaker 8 (38:29):
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Speaker 4 (39:31):
Whether it's the arrival of Planet X in twenty twelve,
the Earth's crazy weather cycles, our deadly global warming, armageddon,
UFOs ets, terrorism, the critical mass two thousand and eight
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UFO et researcher and investigator, and best selling author of
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(40:15):
x dot com or call nine oh one three three
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Speaker 3 (40:42):
Your bootsteps.
Speaker 5 (40:45):
Telling me that John, dear.
Speaker 4 (40:49):
You, Doc Jim Jim. Then read even Don Francell is
(41:15):
our special guest this hour. He's the author of The
Darkest Night. It's published by Saint Martin's Press. And first
of all, Ron, thanks very much for joining us tonight.
It's been a great pleasure talking to you and continued
success with your books.
Speaker 6 (41:29):
Well, thank you very much. I don't have any other choices.
I'm a writer, I'm a storyteller, and that this very
personal story came along to be told, you know, I'm
grateful for that. I don't know that I'll ever write
another true crime. I don't know that I'll ever write
(41:51):
another memoir, but in this particular one, I thought there
was a story for all of us.
Speaker 4 (41:58):
I can only imagine what it was like sitting in
front of of the gentleman and president who had committed
these heinous crimes, knowing that he took the lives of
the little girls that I grew up with.
Speaker 6 (42:15):
That's right, But like I said, I think it was
more important to me to make sure that I gave
him his voice. There were feelings. I mean, I'm a
human first, but I had feelings about that. But I
was there to hear what he had to say and
(42:39):
with the intention of passing it along, and I think
it's in the book. I made a promise to him,
and it was far more important to me to keep
the promise, to let him speak, to let him tell
his story. That he chose to tell. The story he
told is not my responsibility and I couldn't change that.
(43:07):
I wouldn't change that. But given the opportunity that he
chose the story, I fulfilled my promise to tell the story.
But here's a confession. I didn't hate this guy. I
hated what he represented and I still do. But when
all was said and done. I feel sorry for him.
(43:30):
He turned out to be a rather pathetic figure behind
this dark curtain, a story that had, you know, taken
on mythic proportions in my hometown. And he was not
as big as the story. He was not as frightening
as the mythology. And he was pathetic. He was a
(43:55):
pathetic little person. And I just didn't hate him.
Speaker 4 (44:03):
Yeah, but you were able to see him for what
he really was.
Speaker 6 (44:07):
Yeah, exactly he was. He was the opportunistic player. He
was a manipulator. He was throughout his history the guy
that was most likely to be the snitch or the
the you know, the sucker puncher or the you know,
(44:27):
the sniper. He's not the kind of guy who's going
to stand up to you face to face and and
deal whatever blows he deemed you worthy of. He doesn't
do that.
Speaker 4 (44:43):
Ron we've run out of time. Once again, thank you
very much for joining us, and look forward to talking
to you the next time you come up with another book.
Speaker 6 (44:51):
All right, well, i'll let you know when we do.
Speaker 4 (44:53):
Please do it and give my best to the people
at Saint Martin's Press for the helping making this interview possible.
Speaker 6 (44:58):
I'll certainly do it. Rob, Thank you. This has been
a delight.
Speaker 4 (45:00):
It's been a delight for me too, sir.
Speaker 3 (45:02):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (45:03):
Ron FRANCEL F R A N S C E L L.
His website is www dot Ronfransell dot com. The name
of the book is The Darkest Night. Linda Drake joins
me on the other side of the news as the
excellent continues right here on the Talkstar.
Speaker 3 (45:16):
Ready on
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