Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, campers, Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true
crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie and I'm Whitney,
and we're here to tell you a true story that
is way stranger than fiction or roasting murderers and marshmallows
around the true crime campfire. In part one of this story,
(00:22):
last week, we learned about Utah millionaire Franklin Bradshaw, who
over the years had gained both a stupendous fortune and
a strained relationship with some of his family, in particular
with his youngest and wildest daughter, Francis. Francis had four
years been pressuring and manipulating her mom Bernice, to steer
(00:42):
some of the family fortune her way, and whenever frank
got in the way of that, Francis would be furious.
At the end of last week's episode, we met Francis's
own young family, two boys, Mark and Larry, that she
was strangely insistent on keeping apart. Mark was the favored
son allowed to stay at home. Francis told him his
(01:04):
brother Larry had been sent to a mental institution, but
he was in fact just staying with relatives. This was
a family of strange pressures and manipulations that would ultimately
lead to Franklin Bradshaw being shot dead. This is part
two of the Price of Love, the Murder of Franklin Bradshaw.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
As a family, the Branshaws loved to try and psychoanalyze
each other. Mark thought the reason Francis turned against Larry
was because Bernice and Franklin and his grandparents doted on
Larry so much rather than Mark. Francis, though, would claim
she limited Larry's time at home because she was genuinely
scared that he would kill Mark. She said that throughout
(01:53):
their childhood, Larry had tried to kill his brothers several
times by drowning him, by dropping him from a window, ledge,
by shoving his head through a window, and by shoving
him in front of a subway train. Now, most of
this was pure invention. Francis lied and exaggerated so easily
and so often even she might not have been able
to untangle Fackt from fiction. Speaking in his early twenties,
(02:16):
Mark scoffed at the idea of Larry trying to kill
him bullshit. Half of what Mom says is exaggerations, and
the other half is a bunch of lies about when
Francis claimed Larry tried to drown him on a trip
to the beach, Mark said, pure horseplay. We were both
horseplaying in the ocean. I had no fear of drowning.
I couldn't imagine why Mom was so angry and so convinced.
(02:38):
She started to scream at us, get out of the water, Larry,
get out. Don't you touch Mark. But then Mark said
about Larry shoving his head through a pane of glass,
and that time he tried to throw me through the window.
That was because he was very angry. So we very
quickly go from of course, my brother never tried to
kill me to okay, maybe he tried to kill me once,
(02:59):
but he was real mad, so it doesn't count. Both
boys were troubled, and it's impossible to know exactly what
went on between them. But stick a mental pin in
this story of attempted fratricide, because future events is going
to show that Francis's concerns might have had some foundation
in reality. The way she addressed those concerns, though it
(03:22):
was ridiculous. Just exile Larry to boarding schools and various
family members and forget about him. Mark anyway liked Larry.
He liked hanging around with him and playing board games,
but they had to play in secret because Francis would
get furious if Mark spent too much time with his
quote sick in the head brother. Francis, remember, had told
(03:44):
Mark that Larry had to go away to a special
school for sick in the head boys, which was both
a lie and a way to keep Mark in line.
She used to scream and bellow at me, if you
don't behave I'm going to ship you to a mental
institution and never let you out, a place where you'll
be for the rest of your life. She's a peach,
ain't she. If you listen to part one of this story,
(04:07):
you can probably already guess that Frances was not cut
out for parenthood. She was dating a few different guys
and would frequently just leave the kids alone to look
after themselves overnight. One time, Marilyn couldn't get in touch
with her sister and went over to her apartment, a
nice place on the upper east side. The door was
standing wide open, the place was filthy, the fridge was empty,
(04:31):
and there was no sign of Francis or the kids.
Then the boys came back eating French fries and chocolate cake.
Francis had left them alone, and eventually they'd gone down
to the corner deli to beg for food. Marilyn anonymously
called the police to report Francis for child neglect, but
nothing seems to have resulted from that, so great job, NYPD.
(04:53):
After that call, the police left a note on the
door saying the boys were with Marilyn when she drove
them back. Marilyn tried to force some cash into Francis's pocket, saying, here,
take it for the boys. Francis blew up and screamed
right into Marilyn's face. You you never did anything for
the boys, lady. Your boys were literally just on the
(05:14):
street begging for food.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
And she's always asking her mom for money. But I guess, like, yeah,
if if Marilyn's giving her money, it's it's not okay.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Well I guess, yeah, I think you're right. But I
also think I think the reason for that is probably
because she was okay, like making herself and the boys
seem like impoverished and like they were on the streets
on her terms, but for her sister to like catch
her neglecting the kids and be like here take this
(05:48):
like that probably hurt her ego.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Yeah, yeah, God, Francis h saw a lot of psychiatrists.
What actually went down with these guys? They were always
guys We'll never know, but her guspy friend Richard Barons,
who we'll get to later, said Francis always slept with
(06:12):
her shrinks. When Marilyn and Bernice heard that, they basically
just nodded like yep, that sounds about right. That was
all they'd get out of the relationship because she never
paid them. It seems like what Francis got out of
therapy were new methods to keep members of her family
from getting too chummy. She didn't want Marketing close with
(06:34):
his grandmother, so she told him. Her therapist said that
granny has a neurotic need for babies to smother. Bernice's son, Robert,
France's older brother, remember, had died in a mental hospital
at the age of thirty eight, but France has told
Mark that while Robert was in there, Bernice would come
in and feed him and feed him until he got
(06:56):
huge and eventually died because he was so fat, which
is what niece intended.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Wow, just a.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Little bit of poison to put in Mark's brain for
whenever Granny tried to spoil him with treats.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Yeah, I've read that psychopaths can actually get worse in
therapy instead of better, because they just learn better ways
to manipulate and better terminology to use.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Oh yeah. At six years old, the boys were wild,
completely impossible to control, and with next to no knowledge
of how to look after themselves. The private school Mark
went to Larry was off staying with relatives, was run
by Episcopal nuns. And Mark wasn't the only first grader
they'd seen who showed up on fed on, washed and rumpled.
(07:40):
Francis was in the habit of shoving him into the
elevator still in his pajamas and carrying his school clothes.
They lived in a fancy building with an elevator intendant,
and this guy would have to help the kid get dressed,
then leave his folded pajamas in front of Francis's door.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
I think most parents would shrivel up with embarrassment the
first time they saw those pjs outside the door. But
the way Francis thought she'd just stumbled into a free service,
Oh my god, Like it's like a free change a
child changing room, you know, like shove them in the elevator.
He comes out changed.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Oh my lord, like Superman on the phone. Yeah, phone,
it's exactly really sad and heartbreaking.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Like potentially predatory, like you don't know this.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Guy, I know, write that too good gravy.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
But the nuns taught little Mark how to put milk
into cereal, how to brush his teeth, and some basics
of personal hygiene. He treated each lesson like an astonishing revelation.
No one had ever shown him this stuff before. Heart
In nineteen sixty eight, Francis had the one paying job
of her life as a clerk at a brokerage house,
(08:48):
and came home one evening to find the boys missing.
Bernice had worked herself up into a panic about the
boy's welfare, and she just came and took them back
home to Salt Lake City without telling Francis. While her
concerns were certainly valid, that is, uh, you know, kidnapping. Yeah,
don't do that. Francis flew out to Utah, rented a car,
(09:11):
went to her parents' home and went berserk. She screamed.
She trashed the kitchen, smashing every dish she could find,
then started slapping her own mother. Quote. Really pounding her
was how Mark remembered it with Bernice and tears, Frances
shoved the boys out the door and screamed that she'd
never see them again.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
God, those poor kids. Imagine watching your mom just beat
the shit out of your grandma. How do you get
over something like that? Like that's a core memory forever.
Back in New York, Francis indulged in her favorite hobby,
writing scathing letters to her parents. First, she sent one
to her dad, demanding he repay her for every dime
(09:50):
she'd spent on the trip to Utah, then went guns
blazon for her mom, calling her mentally ill, someone who
wanted to steal Francis's kids to make up for her
own failings as a mother. She said she was heartbroken
to discover that her own mother quote has chosen to deceive, lie, cheat,
and sneak around and commit the most horrible crime that
(10:11):
any mother could against her daughter. She and the boys
were going to disappear forever from Bernice's life. Letters she
sent would be torn up end quote, you will never
be able to discover where in the world we are, Yes,
because that would be so great for the kids. Frances
cut them off from yet another source of love and
support absolute O's bag.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
It's really interesting, like she's taking the tone of a
parent here, like the demanding her dad to pay her
back and then brating her mom like she's some kind
of teenager sneaking around having unprotected sex in the back
of the Quarterbacks Mustang.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
And you know, yeah, her tone niece absolutely audacious, Like
in those letters, it's bananas.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Yeah, I'm not saying Bernice should have kidnapped the kids.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
No, no, we're not.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
We're not on the side of kidnapping.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
We're not advocating for custodial abduction.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
But however, it was probably like a good situation for
the as good of a situation for the kids. She
amanded them to go to work. Right, But that's what
police are for on both situations, right, you call the
police for a welfare check.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
I mean, you know, like there's a system for this.
We don't just go grab them and yank them back
to Utah.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Yeah, yeah, the the Bernice should have called the police,
and Frankie should have called the police. But uh, yikes, yikes.
But yeah, her tone is so interesting because it's it's
like you said, I think she learned like the parenting
tone from therapy, and she was using it on her
(11:49):
parents and like, it's not like her parents weren't parents
to her, so what the what the fuck is she
doing well?
Speaker 2 (11:56):
And in therapy. It's interesting because one of the big
weaknesses of poor of Talk therapy is that it relies
on self reporting. So if you have somebody who's been
diagnosed with a psychopathic personality, I mean, as a therapist,
if you're sharp, you're going to catch You're going to
catch on to that eventually, but in the early days
it might be hard to tell, because we know psychopaths
(12:19):
are really good at working people and all you know
is what she tells you. So she might have even
said to Francis like that was absolutely you know, criminal
of your mother to do that, and she's a toxic
part you know, you don't know like what Francis told her.
Francis could have told the therapist, oh, the him, I
should say, because it was always a guy, right, Francis
(12:39):
could have told him that her mom had, you know,
locked her in a closet when she was a kid
or something. We don't know. I would not be at
all surprised. But as soon as the school semester finished,
Francis flew both boys out to Utah to spend the
summer with their grandparents, so grand and furious. Declarations were fun,
but free childcare was childcare. The boys were still unruly,
(13:03):
so Grandpa Franklin tried to take them in hand, and
it's clear he was much happier dealing with wild boys
than weird daughters. The disparity in how much care Francis
gave each brother was really apparent. By now, Larry had
strepp anemia of vitamin deficiency and five cavities in his teeth.
(13:23):
His grandparents took him to the doctor and the dentist.
Francis tried to run a scam on her parents, faking
a letter from a New York psychiatric clinic with an
attached school, which said Francis was behind on payments, believable enough,
and that for Larry's good his grandparents should send a check. Also,
the letter said Larry's mental health would be improved a
(13:46):
ton if they paid for a permanent housekeeper for Francis.
Bernice and frank took Larry to a child psychiatrist who
found no serious problems, which was questionable. He said Larry
had a high IQ. Both boys would excel academically, but
he had a surprisingly low level of literacy. Francis, of course,
(14:08):
had put barely any effort into teaching her kids how
to read or write. Frank took over that responsibility and
soon stumbled on how to manipulate these boys who were
growing up desperately vuying for their indifferent mom's attention. He
made spelling a competition. Just what these two needed, more
sibling rivalry. Right for that summer, the boys had something
(14:31):
that looked like in normal childhood. Although they secretly stole
a lot of stuff, they shoplifted, and whenever Frank took
them to his beloved auto parts warehouse, they snagged whatever
shiny things took their fancy. Francis's haphazard child rearing hadn't
included much on the difference between right or wrong, or
controlling your impulses, a completely alien concept to her. So
(14:55):
if the boys saw something they wanted, they just took it.
Why wouldn't they. When they got back to New York,
the boys met Francis's new boyfriend, Frederick Schreuter, a tall
Dutch national that Francis had described to her parents as
a member of the International Diplomatic Corps. In fact, he
had a mid level job at a management consultant company.
(15:16):
After just a few months, Frederick was out driving with
Mark and casually mentioned that he and Francis were getting
married that afternoon. Oh thanks for letting me know, right,
poor kid, it was a small wedding. Larry wasn't there.
He was going to school back in Utah and living
with his grandparents, although Francis was still insisting to Mark
(15:38):
that his brother was trapped in a state run quote
crazy school. The next year, nine year old Larry was
back in New York, although living with his aunt Marylyn,
and went to the same fancy school as Mark, one
grade ahead. Once Francis was called there because Larry had
both threatened to gouge out another boy's eye with a
pair of scissors and was asking girls in lower grades
(16:02):
to pull down their panties and flash him. As we
suggested earlier, Frances might have exaggerated Larry's mental instabilities, but
she didn't invent them.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
Soon, Francis and the boys moved with Frederick to the Netherlands.
Francis had fantasies of a glamorous European life, but Frederick
was initially unemployed, and what she got was an unheated
cottage on the North Sea coast with endless cold winds
and grace guies. Francis's second marriage followed the same pattern
(16:33):
as her first, lots of drinking and fighting and soon
became violent. Four years and one divorce later, plus a
new baby girl named Lavinia, Francis and her family were
back in New York. Well, not Larry. Francis just left
him in his Dutch boarding school, where he'd stay for
another year before they kicked him out over unpaid bills.
(16:54):
Mark was accepted to the hoity toity Alan Stevenson School
and remembered his acceptance as one of only three three
times in his whole life that his mother actually hugged
and kissed him.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
Oh my god, that's so sad. I want to throw up.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Oh yeah, that's pretty devastating. Francis had come to care
a great deal about her social standing, which was odd
because she was fundamentally antisocial. She didn't want fancy friends
or to get invited to glamorous events. She just wanted
to check off the signifiers of success like they were
(17:27):
boy scout, merit badges, kid in fancy school check. This
growing obsession with high society was shared by her one
real friend, Richard Barns. Dicky Barons was an odd duck,
bitchy and snobby, fascinated with the Nazi Party, and he
(17:48):
lived a kind of jeckyal and hide life. He was
an alcoholic who would go on months long drinking binges.
People would see him staggering out of bars in thrift
store clothes, muttering to a MLF, carrying a second change
of clothes and a paper bag. He'd eventually dry up,
make himself presentable, and go back to working as a
preppy substitute teacher until the next time he fell off
(18:09):
the wagon. A lot of people thought Baron's was gay.
Who knows. He did seem to take every opportunity to
clear his heterosexuality in a kind of exaggerated way, with
endless tales of casual sex. Did he ever sleep with
France's No, I mean maybe my memory's terrible. You know,
(18:31):
he can't remember if he had sex with his best
friend because he's just going to bed with so many ladies.
I never went for her, he said, You know why,
No tits.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Straight guys do be loving the tits.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
Well I'm convinced it's like women be shopping straight guys
love tits. After they met, he and France has bonded
over their mutual contempt for their families. Barnes's father had
a girlfriend who Dicky just referred to as the slut,
(19:05):
and he worried about losing his inheritance to her. Someone
should just get rid of them, He'd told his friends.
Once he started in about how it might be necessary
for his father to die before he could change his will,
it was hard to get him to stop.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Nobody took him seriously, except maybe Francis, who got a
huge kick out of these rants. Francis met him after
her first divorce, and he essentially became part of her family,
a frequent visitor and babysitter. The boys, for some reason,
called him Uncle George, even though that was obviously not
his name. So strange, with Frances newly divorced and Mark
(19:44):
winning her approval through his acceptance to his new schools,
she gave him a promotion. He was man of the
house now, she said. He was twelve years old and
emotionally a few years less than that, and at least
as far as his mother was concerned, docile and complying
This new responsibility fell on his fragile psyche like rain
(20:05):
on the desert. Approval from mother was his most valuable prize.
He and Larry had developed a weird ongoing game that
they called Stalingrad. Games would last for days, and the
more of Francis's attention either of them got, the more
of the world's territory, they claimed. Larry later said, once
I wound up with a small island in the Pacific,
(20:27):
and Mark had the whole world. Oh my god, you guys,
I hate this bitch so much, those four kids. Can
you imagine that desperate for your mom's approval, that like
you just turn it into a game between you and
your brother. Oh god, I hate her. Francis liked to
(20:49):
spend most of her days in bed. She wouldn't get
out until she'd carefully read two newspapers cover to cover,
chain smoking, and drinking endless cups of coffee. Mark brought
the coffee. Being the man of the house meant doing
whatever Francis wanted. He cooked, he cleaned, he fed and
cared for baby Lavigna. He answered the door, He obediently
(21:10):
scuttled down to the deli whenever Francis wanted something, their
fridge was usually empty. No forethought was given to dinners
until Frances got hungry and sent Mark out to fix it.
When Francis's latest psychiatrist ditched her over unpaid bills, Mark
got a fun new job in house shrank to his mom,
listening to her vast collection of complaints and concerns. This
(21:35):
quite often involved talking his mom out of killing herself again.
This is a twelve year old child. She'd made several
attempts via overdoses throughout her life. Although it's impossible to
say how sincere they were, they'd always occurred in situations
where she was certain to be quickly found. So sometimes,
(21:55):
you know, it's a cry for help. If we're being
generous about Frances, we would say sometimes that's a cry
for help. Mark and Francis also slept in the same bed. Now,
there's no suggestion of anything creepy going on there, but
I mean, he was twelve. That's a little weird if
you ask me. On top of all this, Mark was
(22:15):
expected to still excel at school, which he did, getting
into a ton of advanced placement courses. The only class
he consistently struggled with was theology and ethics, which just
seemed to baffle him completely. I wonder why he'd have
trouble understanding ethics, right, that's a thinker. Larry came home
(22:37):
from Europe and was immediately shipped off to a military
academy on Long Island. This weird, lonely kid started a
hobby coin collecting In summer. He'd spend his days going
to local banks and exchanging a ten dollars bill for
one thousand pennies. Then he'd sift through all the pennies
for rare wheat back pennies which were worth more than
(22:59):
their face value, and take the rest back to the bank.
Over three years, he amassed a collection of six thousand
wheat backed coins, which he kept in a jar at home.
The collection was worth hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars. One day, Francis,
who habitually carried thousands of dollars in her purse, decided
she needed a little more, so she just took the
(23:21):
jar down to the bank and exchanged the collection for
its face value sixty bucks.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Three years of meticulously oh this woman is the worst.
Most of Francis's time and attention went to the same
place it always had, trying to squeeze as much money
out of her parents as possible. She'd spill sob stories
to Bernice or just straight up bully her until the
cash started flowing. While Franklin, in his mostly clueless way,
(23:49):
tried to keep a tight hold on his finances. As
is true for many of the extremely wealthy, the family
finances were a complicated tangle of trusts. All of Frank's
daughters received a very comfortable income from these if they
kept their expenses to a reasonably sane level. Francis of
course did not, and to her her father increasingly seemed
(24:12):
to be a vicious miser. He was, also, of course
an old man. His will would give a comparatively small
amount to each daughter, you know, just the equivalent of
half a million dollars at all, with control, Yeah, with
control over his vast estate going to Bernice, who Francis
(24:32):
could play like a fiddle. All Francis had to do
to access essentially unlimited wealth was weight. So far has
she struck y'all as a patient person. By nineteen seventy five,
Francis was openly saying, this family can't keep going much longer,
not unless somebody kills my father. Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
She said it like a joke, of course, just crazy
mom saying crazy things. And we've seen a bunch of
murders that started just like this, with jokes that just
keep coming up again and again until they stopped being
jokes at all. Soon. Whenever Dicky Barons was around, he
and Francis would have a lot of fun talking about
(25:16):
the various ways her dad could be murdered. If the
boys happened to be there, they'd sometimes join in. It
was portrayed as a noble purpose. Grandpa Frank wanted them
to be destitute, which meant poor Lavinia, the golden daughter
that everyone adored, would have to live on the streets,
you know, while their mom was wearing like forty thousand
(25:38):
dollars earrings.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
And carrying around thousands in cash.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Yeah, it was like a fairy tale. They had to
rescue the princess from the wicked old man. Yeah. Did
Mark and Larry believe that? Probably not. They were weird,
but they were smart kids. Francis was still a mad
tyrant with the boys. They were in or they were
out out meant locked out, no matter if it was
(26:05):
freezing cold outside, no matter if they had nowhere else
to go. It was usually Larry who was out of course.
Sometimes he'd beg and call outside the door for hours
to let in, but Mark didn't dare, so Larry often
slept in the apartment building stairwell covered in cardboard boxes
to try and keep warm. Sometimes Mark would smuggle him
(26:27):
a blanket, but that was as far as he was
willing to go. Their little family was like a microcult,
with no reward for good behavior except the leader's approval
and terrible consequences for making her mad. It created an
environment where her sons would do almost anything to get
on her good side. So in nineteen seventy seven they
(26:49):
headed west to spend the summer working in Grandpa Frank's
warehouse for four bucks an hour, and also to kill him.
They workshopped various ideas, drop an electric appliance into his
morning bath, burned down the warehouse while he was inside.
Eventually Frances settled on a more subtle route. The boys
(27:10):
would put amphetamines into Frank's morning oatmeal every day until
he dropped out of a heart attack. Oh my god,
Francis already had a steady supplier for speed. She bought
some and she and Mark crushed up the drugs. They
cut open a little cloth toy mouse and pulled out
the stuffing, replaced it with the drugs, and stitch it
up again. Francis dictated a list of rules for Mark
(27:33):
to type up, which had much more to do with
alienating the boys from Bernice than killing Frank.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
Yeah, buckle up for this shit, okay. Number one. How
to deal with Granny and not become brainwashed by Granny.
I want to be the one brainwashing.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
Number two. How not to become infected by Granny's sick ways.
Number three. Don't ever let Granny follow you. Number four.
Be sure to get up in mourning and administer dosage.
Number five. Be polite to her, but also be able
to say no. Number six. Don't eat Granny's chocolate cakes.
(28:13):
Don't let her fatten you up like she's the witch
in the forest or something like she's gonna eat them
like Hansel and Gretel cut it. It is like a
fairy tale.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
Number seven. Don't let her domineer you. It's my job.
Number eight. Don't let her twist you around her little finger.
Number nine. Don't let her. Have you doing all the errands?
Number ten, do what you want, don't let her boss
you around Number eleven. Phone home daily, always from payphones,
(28:46):
and make progress. Report to mom. I mean, I don't
want to tell you your business, Francis, babe, but are you
sure you're arranging the murder of the right parent. Her
issues with Bernice border on obsession, But of course Frank
was the one with the money. Francis didn't send her
boys back to Utah with only murder on their minds.
(29:09):
As soon as they arrived, cash, blank checks, and securities
started vanishing, both from the warehouse and from frank and
Bernice's home, shipped back to New York in an endless stream.
When they phoned home to report to France's she was
never satisfied. The phone was about to be cut off
the power too. She and precious little Levinya were about
(29:29):
to be put out on the streets. They had to
steal more, always more. They were helped by the fact
(30:01):
that Franklin Bradshaw, who saw himself as the epitome of
sober sanity, was actually a weird weird dude. Instead of
transporting the day's cash takings to the bank at the
end of the day, he'd just hide it somewhere in
the vast warren of the warehouse.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
Unsurprising considering he was a businessman of the depression, Like
you couldn't trust the banks, especially when he was first
starting out, so he probably, yeah, he probably would have
buried his cash if he could.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
Yeah, but like, imagine if the warehouse caught fire, and
warehouses catch fire all the time, Like I couldn't sleep
at night.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
There's always cash in the banana stand. Remember that, there's
always money in the banana stand.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Sometimes, especially as he got older, he'd forget the hiding place.
Years after his death, employees still occasionally happened upond big
stashes of bills hidden away. Mark and Larry went through
the warehouse like hungry little rats, sniffing out as many
of these bundles they could. Frank kept a fortune in
stock securities hidden inside old copies of Life magazine. Larry
(31:07):
found one hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth, which he
sent winging back to mother. They found thirty thousand dollars
of stock certificates belonging to Francis's sister Elaine. When Francis
got them, she immediately set up a false identity in
Elaine's name so she could cash out the stock her sister.
So she's just screwing over everybody in the family. It's
(31:29):
not just even her parents. The boys were quickly found out,
but even before then, everyone at the warehouse hated them.
They were rowdy and rude, They stank, and they were gross.
One time, as a prank, they both went into the
ladies bathroom and PopEd in the sinks. Lovely. They skipped
work to go to adult movie theaters, then would come
(31:51):
back and tell everyone exactly what they'd just seen, where
they also poisoning their grandfather with speed. Mark would later
claim that they never even opened up the toy mouse.
But several times that summer Frank vomited for no obvious reason,
or was so jumpy at work that he couldn't sit still.
Frank's secretary showed him two checks, each for ten grand,
(32:13):
each made out to cash, each signed with a crude
forgery of his own signature on the back. The endorsement
was signed by Francis and they'd been deposited to her account.
It was obvious what had happened. Frank said, Oh my god,
and burst into tears. When he got himself together, Frank
called the bank and told them the checks were forged
(32:35):
and he didn't intend to honor them. He wanted the
funds to be replaced. The bank said sure, but he'd
have to sign an official complaint, and check forgery was
a federal crime. Frank said, no go and disclosed the
account so nothing more could be pilfered from it. Fired
the boys, then a week later gave them their jobs
(32:56):
back as quietly as he could, having them work just
on weekends when he was the only one at the warehouse.
When the boys got home to New York, Francis took
Mark with her to the Long Island mansion she was
renting for the summer with her ill gotten gains. She
chatted happily with him and fed him caviare and canalope balls.
He had done well. Larry, though, was out this time
(33:20):
for good, despite the fact that he'd sent home far
more money than Mark. No one involved has confirmed this,
but it seems likely that Francis was expecting Larry to
take care of the big picture stuff killing her father.
He hadn't, so he was out, no matter how much
he begged and scratched at the door. With the money
he'd actually earned working at the warehouse, Larry had bought
(33:41):
an old nineteen sixty two Impaula his first car, and
now he was living in.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
It, Mother of the century. At Bradshaw Auto Parts, Frank
had a secretary type up a document which he showed
to his manager and friend Doug Steele. Doug and Frank's
eldest daughter, Marilyn as co administrators of his estate. Frank's
typed initials were below that, and further down he himself
(34:08):
had typed one third of my estate to Bernice J. Bradshaw,
one third to Marilyn Reagan, and one third to Elaine Druckman.
And that was it. He'd completely written out Francis and
her whole family in a way that meant nothing at all.
It wasn't witnessed, it wasn't properly signed, It had no
legal force at all. Shortly after, xerox copies were scattered
(34:32):
around the warehouse, which was probably the whole reason Frank
had the thing typed up. He cared about the opinion
of the people who worked for him more than he
cared about the opinion of his family. This, yeah, this
was a message to them. Remember those two little thieving
assholes you all hate. This is me fucking them over God. Bernice,
(34:52):
who didn't often care to think through the consequences of
her actions, told frances about the note. Francis was he
certainly smart enough to know how useless this document was,
but the fact that her father's mind was turning in
this direction at all was worrying. She needed more of
a sure thing than sprinkling speed on oatmeal. She sent
(35:13):
Dicky Barons to try and buy a gun in Virginia.
He claimed he tried to do this but somehow failed,
despite there being no state or federal background check registration
or waiting period at the time. If you ask me,
he just wasted out and was scared to admit that
to Francis because he knew she'd go completely insane. So
(35:34):
Francis decided that the easiest place to buy a gun
would be Texas. I don't know why, probably just because
the hats made her think of old Westerns and I
think legally you have to wear a hat in Texas.
Oh yeah, Texan campers. Let me know if I'm right.
On July thirteenth, ten days before Franklin Bradshaw's murder, Mark
(35:55):
called up a school acquaintance who lived in Midland, Texas.
John Cap a definitely acquaintance rather than friend. Mark didn't
have any school friends. Mark said he was heading back
to Utah to visit his grandparents and maybe go hunting.
He thought he might stop in Texas on the way
to buy a gun. This made very little sense. Utah
(36:19):
was just about the easiest place in the country to
buy a gun. Mark could have walked out of Walmart
with one in five minutes after walking in. Still, Cavanaugh said,
sure market stopped by. He sounded so vague that Kavanaugh
didn't think he'd ever show up. On July nineteenth, Mark
bought a drownd trip ticket to Texas and Utah under
(36:41):
the name el Gentile, his brother's name at birth. It
looks like Mark was trying to set up his brother.
In fact, earlier that summer, Bernice had sent Larry a
seventy five dollars Trailways bus ticket which would take him
anywhere in the continental US.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
The invitation was clear, and with nowhere else to go,
he headed back to Salt Lake City. Everybody at the
warehouse hated him, so there was no chance of him
working there again. He managed to talk Bernice into paying
for him to have expensive flying lessons, and that was
pretty much all he did all summer. So Larry was
already in Utah, which could and would bring suspicion his way,
(37:20):
but he certainly wasn't in New York buy in plane tickets.
The next day, Mark showed up at John Kavanaugh's place
in Midland. John was at work at his summer welding job,
but his mom invited Mark in and started making him lunch.
This blew Mark's mind. His own mom would have just
shut the door in a school friend's face. Mark was
seventeen years old and had never once spent the night
(37:42):
at a friend's house, barely even been inside a friend's house.
He'd seen happy, normal families on TV, but they'd been
no more connected to his reality than Star Trek, just fantasies.
When John got back, Mark told him he wanted to
buy a gun. Mark was technically under but that was
no particular problem. John's old boss sold him a three
(38:04):
fifty seven magnum Smith and Wesson in a box of
ammunition for a little under two hundred bucks. That ought
to take care of anything you run into backpackin' in
the mountains. He said. Mark stayed with the Kavanaughs for
a couple of days, playing Monopoly and enjoying the family
dinners at home. They always ate in Francis's bedroom, usually
on her bed. He started fantasizing about just staying here
(38:29):
and never going on to Utah and, as he put it,
bumping off Gramps. But that would mean dealing with his
mother's anger and disappointment, and he had no capacity to
handle that at all. As soon as he'd collected his
bag at the Salt Lake Airport just before ten p m.
He walked out into the arid scrubland and test fired
(38:49):
the gun. He checked into a motel, then called Francis
and weepingly told her he couldn't go through with it. Okay, Mark,
if you're not going to do it, don't bother coming home.
Frances said, me and Levigna will live in a Harlem
tenement and collect welfare, and the doors will be locked forever.
Doors can be opened and doors can be closed. Early
(39:11):
the next morning, Mark took a cab to the warehouse
and waited across the street for Frank to arrive, then
followed him inside. Mark says they talked, but not what
about he says, he wrestled with what he had to do.
Maybe he could just come out here and live with
Granny and Grahams and forget all about his crazy mom,
but then she'd probably kill herself. Mark couldn't shoot Frank
(39:35):
while he was looking at him, but as soon as
Frank turned, Mark pulled out the heavy gun and shot
him once in the back. When Frank fell, Mark came
closer and shot him a second time in the back
of the head. He caught his nine a m flight
back to New York with the gun checked in his
suit case. When he got home, his mom, Dicky Barons,
(39:57):
and Levinya had just gotten back from swimming at the beach.
Did you do it, Frances said, where's the gun? Yes,
I did it? Mark said, Oh, thank god, Frances said,
and gave her son the third and final hog and
kiss he ever got from her. When Francis's sisters, Marilyn
and Elaine arrived in Salt Lake City, they both immediately
(40:19):
thought Frances was behind their father's murder, which only intensified
when they found out Larry was in town. Bernice was
unconvincing in her alibi for him, that she'd woken him
up around the same time Frank had been shot. She'd
later claim she never thought Francis or her son's had
anything to do with the murder, but it looks like
early on she worried Larry had done it and wanted
(40:40):
to get him off the hook.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
Larry passed a polygraph question about whether he shot Frank,
but failed one on whether he had more knowledge about
the crime, but that wasn't enough for an arrest. Larry
was released and drove his used Impaula back east, where
he started his freshman year at Lehigh University. There's no gun,
no fingerprints, no witnesses. Francis's financial shenanigans pointed the finger
(41:06):
at her, but initially there was no reason to think
that she or Mark had been anywhere other than New York.
The case soon went cold. Francis gave the gun, wrapped
in a brown paper bag to Dicky Barns to keep. Why.
Who knows. She had a wide streak of horder in
her and she hated to throw anything away. But come on,
(41:30):
she lived right next to the East River. Throw that
thing in there and forget about it. Dumbass.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
Right to the.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
Fury of Marylyn and Elaine. With Bernice in full control
of the family estate. The money spigot opened all the
way for Francis. Six months after Frank's murder, she had
Bernice by an enormous fourteen room apartment on Gracie Square.
It was in terrible shape and available for a bargain
price just half a million dollars, with the renovation expected
(42:00):
to cost the same again, Oh my lord, all Frances
spent years living there. The renovations were never finished because
she got paranoid that the contractors might be police spies. Well,
the walls were half finished, not painted or plastered, and
the living room had two huge couches still covered in plastic,
with rugs still tightly rolled up beside them. Beside the
(42:24):
couches were three big wooden crates, each holding an onyx
bathtub that would never be installed. Theoretically, Bernice was buying
this place for herself, but Francis made sure she got
the enormous main bedroom. She'd mostly lived there in a
huge canopied bed, and in just a few months the
(42:44):
floor was almost covered in piles of boxes, files, and
stacked newspapers. As the chaos of Francis's mind shaped or environment.
The only space in the house that wasn't insane was
Lavinia's little two room suite, which she kept in a
state of perfect magazine quality, neatness and order. And I
don't think you have to have a psych degree to
(43:05):
see that as a defense against the chaos surrounding her. Yeah, Lavinia,
a calm and popular kid, would be central to the
next obsession to take over Francis's life, becoming queen of
the New York City Ballet. One day, Lavinia found a
pair of her mom's old ballet shoes and was having
(43:26):
fun prancing around in them. Francis got maudlin. I was
meant to be a dancer, Lavinia, she said, but Dad
made me give up ballet and go to Bryne Mair.
As you may recall from last week, that was a
flat out lie. France had essentially tricked frank into sending
(43:49):
her to brynmar Still, whether or not it was based
on reality, Francis followed the same unhealthy path as thousands
of parents who felt they'd missed out on something in
their youths their kids would do it instead. Fortunately, Livina
enjoyed ballet and was good at it.
Speaker 2 (44:07):
Francis, meanwhile, had been talked into a two thousand dollars
donation to the New York City Ballet, and when she
didn't get a thank you note, she sent them a
snippy little letter. This resulted in an apology and another donation,
and another and another. Ultimately, Francis would give them a
round a million dollars and win a seat on the board. So,
(44:29):
of course, little Levinya got to dance for the New
York City Ballet. She was good enough, at least technically,
but obviously it didn't hurt that her crazy, terrifying mother
was on the board and bankrolling much of the ballet's
current work. As usual, the vallet was performing The Nutcracker
over the holiday season, and nine year old Levinya was
(44:50):
one of the dancers for the party scene in the
Saturday matinee performance. But Francis's timekeeping was about as good
as you'd expect, and she and Levinya were late. The
ballet had rules about this if a child wasn't there
by one pm. Her alternate was called Frances. Of course,
took the news well when she arrived I'm just kidding
(45:12):
in the lounge area, in front of all the other
girls and their moms, she collapsed onto a couch and
started bawling, then screaming, Lavina must dance this afternoon, she
has to. Everybody was hugely embarrassed, except for Lavina, who
just quietly stared at the floor with no emotion on
her face. This was not a new scene to her,
(45:36):
As people usually did when faced with Francis dialing it
up to eleven. The ballet master caved. This version of
the party scene would have eight little girls twirling around
instead of seven. During the scene, the dancers frequently switched
from on stage to backstage. Frances was back there, still
losing her shit. How dare you treat my daughter that way?
(45:58):
She shrieked. I will have that other child removed from
the school. In the chaotic gloom backstage, Lavinia's alternate wound
up standing right in front of Frances. Francis got right
down in the kid's face and said, I'm going to
kill you. Just absolute nightmare fuel. This is a child.
I'm going to kill you. You might think this is
(46:20):
the kind of behavior that would get somebody kicked off
the board. Plenty of people had warned them that Francis
was a nutjob, but as long as she kept writing
the checks, the board didn't care. The same applied now
she kept writing checks. So was it really such a
big deal that she threatened to murder a ten year
old girl? I mean, you know, And this attitude would
(46:42):
prevail even when the murder charges started dropping. Everything's fine, No,
it's fine as long as she keeps writing checks. Around
Christmas of nineteen seventy nine, everyone who'd suspected Larry of
the murder became convinced they'd been right. He was still
studying at Lehigh and he'd met a girl, Nancy. She
wasn't quite his girlfriend, but he thought she might have
(47:04):
been if the other thing hadn't happened. He asked her
to spend Christmas with him. Larry was planning to spend
Christmas driving his shitty Impaula all the way down to Texas,
then all the way back. This was one of his
favorite pastimes. When he made the trip alone, he didn't
sleep for the entire two day journey. For some reason,
this didn't appeal to Nancy, but Larry decided to make
(47:26):
the trip anyway. He fell asleep in his car so
he could make an early start, and then, according to Larry,
the next thing he remembered was smashing at the head
of his dorm roommate Faried's saloom with a hammer. He
hit him again and again in the skull and jaw
while other students banged on the door and yelled. Then
(47:48):
Larry jumped right through the window and landed in a
snow bank outside, where campus police were just arriving. He
told the police that Farried had been secretly bombarding him
with Alpha ways with the intention of turning Larry into
a woman. He'd gone out to sleep in the impala
to try and get away, but the waves had found
him there, so he'd come back and and his words
(48:10):
ruined for Red. So was this a psychotic break or
had Larry just wanted to kill his roommate and thought
this story would let him get away with it. He
was declared fit to stand trial anyway, but remained in
a mental hospital until it started. When he was convicted
of attempted murder. None of his family ever came to
(48:30):
see him. His mother had utterly excised him from her life,
and it wouldn't do at all for her new ballet
connections to hear about this sordid story. His aunts were
still convinced he'd murdered their father.
Speaker 1 (48:44):
He hadn't. Of course, the truth about that was about
to come out. Like a Shakespeare villain, Francis would be
undone by her own fatal flaw, her sickness about money.
A few months after Francis moved into her new apartment,
she and Dicky Barons opened a joint checking account, with
Barons putting in about four thousand dollars. The account was
(49:08):
a favor to him. He wrecked up six thousand dollars
in parking tickets, which Jesus Christ and wanted some cash
hidden where the city didn't know about it. Despite money
now flowing in a torrent from her mom, Francis cleaned
out the account within a couple of months, which Jesus Christ,
(49:31):
what is wrong with these people? Yeah, Dicky park, we
are allowed to Francis keep her hands off money that
doesn't belong to you. This is like kindergarten. This is
like kindergarten rules. Keep her hands to yourself, right, Okay.
By fall, Barons was out of work and nearly out
(49:53):
of money. He'd soon be on welfare. He kept trying
to get in touch with Francis to ask her to
repay the money she'd taken out of the account, but
she just hung up on him, and she told Bernice
and the kids to do the same. He started sending
your letters, polite at first, but was soon threatening to
take her to court. He even called Marilyn, who had
met him exactly once in her life, and spilled out
(50:16):
his sob story. Marilyn said she was not responsible for
her sister's debts and hung up. The next time he
called in time and again after that, Marilyn let him talk.
She knew how close he was to Francis, so if
her sister was behind their father's death, maybe Barons knew
about it. He did know all about it, of course,
(50:40):
and all it would have taken to keep his mouth
shut was for Francis to pay back that four thousand
dollars at a time when she had a million dollars
to give the ballet. She was brilliant in many ways,
but mostly oblivious to the interior lives of other people.
(51:00):
I'm sure if someone had asked her, is it a
good idea to stiff the guy who's hiding your murder weapon,
she'd have realized it was not. But the thought never
occurred to her.
Speaker 2 (51:13):
Again, dumb ass.
Speaker 1 (51:15):
After she'd learned about Larry's troubles at Lehigh. Marylyn told
Baron she still blamed him for Frank's death. It wasn't Larry,
it was Mark. Baron said, then I've got the gun.
Speaker 2 (51:29):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (51:31):
Marylyn called the Salt Lake detective handling the case, and
the next time she spoke to Baron's she reminded him
that there was a ten thousand dollars reward for helping
catch the killer. The next day, they met at Burger
King and Baron showed Marilyn a brown paper bag that
he said contained the gun without opening it or looking in.
(51:51):
Marylyn picked it up and walked to the nearest police station.
She said she believed she'd just been given the gun
used to kill her father in Utah. It took a
lot of police leg work, but detectives were able to
tie Mark to that l Genteel plane ticket and track
down the Texans who sold him the gun. Ballistics tests
(52:12):
showed that the weapon Barons handed over was the same
one used to kill Franklin Bradshaw. Mark was arrested in
New York in October of nineteen eighty one and extradited
to Utah, where he was convicted of second degree murder
second rather than first, because the judge determined there was
no direct financial motive for the crime, which seems like
(52:34):
a weird wrinkle in the lautomy if you're in your
right mind, I'm not sure motives should matter too much
when you execute someone with a three fifty seven magnum.
Speaker 2 (52:45):
Yeah, I completely agree. It's bizarre. The question now was
whether Mark would testify against Leather. Even just a year ago,
it would probably have been unthinkable. But when you raise
someone to be so desperate for your approval, well, things
can change quickly when that need for approval gets transferred elsewhere.
(53:05):
For the first time in his life, Mark had himself
a girlfriend. She was Mary lu Kaiser, the estranged wife
of Mark's first cellmate in Utah.
Speaker 1 (53:17):
I'm sorry, I know, it's what in the soap opera
is going on here?
Speaker 2 (53:23):
Yeah, I know. Right when Mark was bailed out, his
seally asked him to try and get married to sign
his bond, and she and Mark hit it off right away.
She was a cleaning woman from Mexico, and, perhaps inevitably
for Mark, the ultimate mamma's boy. She was thirty six
years old, sixteen years older than he was. She liked
the look of him, and the next time he came around,
(53:45):
she answered the door in her nightgown and said maybe
they could talk in her bedroom. I assume we don't
need to tell you what she was trying to accomplish here,
But Francis had basically lived her life in her bed,
and as far as Mark knew, that was normal, he
was completely clueless about women. So they went to the
bedroom and talked until he fell asleep. Eventually, and with
(54:07):
the help of some Mexican home cooking, Mark was devoted
to her. He was also devoted to Detective Mike George,
who set about winning his trust to try and get
him to testify against his mother. Mark was so starved
for affection that it didn't take much. Detective George talked
the prison warden into letting him take Mark out on
a few trips, the first time to McDonald's, where Mark
(54:30):
ate three orders of McNuggets and had a big coke.
Right then, he wasn't ready to testify against Francis. I can't.
She's my mother and I love her. I also hate her,
but I love her and I can't. Next, Detective George
took him out to the movies to see Return of
the Jedi, and when he got to the car, Mark
saw Mary in the back seat. They watched the movie
(54:53):
and scarf down some more McNuggets. He also arranged for
Mark to meet up in a motel room with the
father he barely knew, Vittorio. Dad and detective both had
the same message for Mark he wouldn't really be a
man until he stood up to Frances and testified against her.
Was the only way he could have his own life.
Pretty manipulative stuff, but hey, George was trying to get
(55:15):
a murderer convicted. Mark agreed to testify. Frances was arrested
in March of nineteen eighty two, and it was predictably messy.
Police had to break into the apartment, with Frances screaming,
ranting on the other side of the door. Once they
were in, she was immediately calm and asked for a
few minutes to get dressed and put together. A policewoman
(55:37):
stood outside the bedroom and suddenly heard Lavinia screaming, Mommy, don't.
The cops rushed in and found Frances most of the
way out of her seventh floor bathroom window, both arms
and one leg outside, with Lavinia pulling on her right leg.
And screaming. The cops yanked her back in, threw her
(55:57):
on the bed, and handcuffed her.
Speaker 1 (56:00):
Bradshaw family split in two. Elaine and Marilyn were determined
to see their sister punished for their father's murder. Bernice
insisted Frances was innocent and she and her check book
would stand by her, But on the first day of
the trial, Mark testified.
Speaker 2 (56:19):
Prosecutors often keep their strongest witnesses until last, but they
were worried about Mark losing his nerve. He didn't, and
along with the testimony of Dicky Barons, who'd been promised immunity,
Francis's goose was cooked. She was convicted of first degree murder.
Despite the differences in their convictions, Mark and Francis wound
(56:39):
up serving about the same sentences before being paroled twelve
years for Mark and thirteen for Francis at the age
of ninety three. Bernice died shortly before her daughter was
released from the halfway house. Her will split her wealth
between Frances on one side and Elaine's two sons on
the other. Elaine, herself and Marilyn got nothing. What the hell? I,
(57:07):
what the hell? Bernice had spent the years of Francis's incarceration,
dancing on luxury cruises and making hefty donations all over
Utah as an indication that these people don't live in
the same world as most of us. Marylyn said there
was hardly any of the family fortune left at the
time of Bernice's death, just a few million dollars. Just
(57:29):
a few million dollars go Elaine in poor health since
childhood died just two years after her mom at the
age of sixty six. How much of that Francis managed
to burn through we don't know. A chain smoker, she
died in two thousand and four at the age of
sixty five of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. When he was released,
(57:51):
Mark said prison saved him. Maybe it did. I think
it's natural to be skeptical when killers claim to have
seen the light in prison. But this was a mostly
brainwashed child when he murdered his grandfather, So I'd be
willing to give Mark just a skosch more benefit of
the doubt than I would with most killers. As of
Francis's death in two thousand and four, Mark was living
(58:13):
in Provo Larry in Los Angeles and Lavigna in San Diego.
San Diego was where Francis died, so she probably maintained
a relationship with her daughter, but she didn't stay in
touch with her sons. I guess mother felt that they'd
failed her. So that was a wild one, right, Campers,
you know we'll have another one for you next week,
(58:35):
but for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and
stay safe until we get together again around the True
Crime Campfire. And as always, we want to send a
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(58:56):
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