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hey Prime members you can listen to morbid early and add free on Amazon music download the app today what if you
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were trafficked into the inner circle of a cult and signed a billion year contract at 13. what would you do this
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is actually happening is a weekly podcast from laundry that features extraordinary true stories of
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life-changing events told by the people who lived them follow this is actually happening on Amazon music or wherever
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you get your podcasts hey weirdos I'm Elena I'm Ash and this is morbid [Music] foreign
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[Music] Feast that we have laid before us we do we just decided to go like full-blown
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like yummy picky junk food to set off the week we were like you know what let's just go for it let's do it right
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let's [ __ ] veg without the veg I mean there's some jalapenos on the nacho so it works out
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yeah there you go there's some yeah there's some little peppers a little pepper a little red pepper green pepper
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did I pick them off yeah did I eat them no I ate them though that's okay so at least one of us did look at you just
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getting your Greens in that's right I'm all about getting the veggies oh yeah after I eat an entire Snickers bar
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you know you're not you when you're hungry that's very true actually that is true I get angry you get hangry yeah we
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we're angry as a unit okay angry we anger we do we hang great together but not today no not today today we are fed
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I hope you are fed me too I hope that you're enjoying the week so far exactly it's Monday so like let's hope it's
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going okay it'll be Monday when you listen to this I think you know what this is gonna be a great day for you
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make it a great day or not the choice is yours at a man at that guy yep so have a good week though just manifest it
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we weren't being good at that the last couple weeks so we're being good at it now no we're being a little bit negative
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nancy-ish but I did um cleanse the studio today with some Palo Santo don't worry we got it from an ethical place
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it's all good yeah and we cleansed the [ __ ] out of this [ __ ] exactly and I think you should too the cleanse your
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space you know because I feel like everybody everybody's there's a little bit of toxic yuckiness happen around
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everybody but not anymore but not here not here no no tomorrow I get to wear my hair like Pamela Anderson so well you'd
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be negative about that and I get to dress as someone I think you can say it because that's okay
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yeah because this isn't coming out today it'll come out next week yeah yeah so actually like two weeks from now the
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rest of the world will hear it yes you would definitely see how far ahead we are [ __ ] but yeah so I dress I
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dressed up in the future and in the past as Drusilla from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and I live to my best life I am
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sure of it oh yeah and Mikey made Elena's dress yes and made the necklace that went with it and it's literally
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like spot on the exact same I can't wait for you guys to see it slash I know you
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guys loved it when you saw it yeah and Mikey's gonna be there at the show John's brother-in-law Dave is gonna be
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there at the show we're all gonna be there yeah Dave's related to us somehow a little inside joke Insider because
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just putting it out there white is a very good I think Orion and Matt coming to the
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show I think they are from The Blacklist on the Black Veil maybe Joe will be there I think Joe's gonna be there who
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else is coming there's a lot of there's a couple John Drew's coming yeah it's this is a virtual show but like we're
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we're packing the pack in the place yeah we need like a full Good Vibes full of family and friends yeah you know it's
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gonna be fun slash it was fun it was so much fun so much fun uh it's fun to live
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in the future and the past all at once yeah it's not fun to live in the future if you have anxiety that's called future
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tripping that's true and I am not for that no but in a good way this is gonna be fun and you know what if you were
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like wow that's a cool costume you should go watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer and you should listen to The re-watcher
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Buffy the Vampire Slayer because it is just good clean not clean it's not good fun
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dirty fun it's good filthy fun over there like tomater tomater we've been watching Cars a lot my name is
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oh but you know what let's get into it let's just talk because we're really we're veering off yeah we are I don't
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know it's it's a manic Monday it is but today we're gonna head all the way over to New York City the Big Apple baby the
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Big Apple and I feel like we can all agree that like it's a city where it could be pretty hard for one single
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person to make their Mark yeah absolutely let alone a Mark that lasts for decades after you're gone well [ __ ]
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but that's exactly what happened to Roseanne Quinn who we're gonna talk about today she left her mark on the
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city on the night of January 2nd 1973. it was also the night that she was brutally brutally murdered in her
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Manhattan apartment oh God this is a really sad case and I think the biggest bummer about researching and kind of
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putting this case together for me was the fact that because Roseanne was like a single woman who like went out at
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night and met a man and brought him back home it was like oh well she asked for this yeah because that's what happened I
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hate that it was the 70s so you know yeah the 70s but it's like don't blame the murderer definitely don't do that
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yeah never do that yeah blame her so frustrating and at the time of her death Roseanne was young she was a single
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school teacher and she was working at St Joseph's School for the Deaf so she was
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like an incredible person and she was also pursuing at the same time a graduate degree that was going to help
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Advance her in her career good for her in the evening she would go out to like the neighborhood Bars by herself meet up
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with some friends she'd mingle with the single men at the bar she was just having a good time
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from time to time she would take one of them home sometimes for like a one night
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stand which is what single people do so I was gonna say which is well within her
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rights as a human being yeah something plenty of people have experienced in this day and age and definitely back
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then too yeah but no no what's a one-night stand for oh my God yeah oh God and that's the thing in an earlier
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decade Roseanne's death probably would have gone unnoticed by the public but because this was the early 1970s an
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American culture was kind of going through not even kind of we really were going through a huge period of
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transformation it was like Roseanne's lifestyle and murder was a political talking point for liberals conservatives
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and in everything in the middle yeah everybody just wanted to talk about it and to some people she was a modern
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woman who was unashamed of her interest in sex and just fully capable of taking care of herself without a man get it
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girl but then to others she represented this Reckless foolishness of the women's
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Liberation movement because that was huge at the time poo so those people saw her as a woman
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who was so caught up in her own empowerment that she failed to see the apparent danger in her deviant lifestyle
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I hate when I get so [ __ ] caught up in my own empowerment I love when I get caught up in my deviant lifestyle such a
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flaw of ours I'd like to live a deviant lifestyle like just have people like she
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was a deviant she was a deviant no one would ever say that about me though no I'm too
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um you too sweet too sweet oh you got that sweet face I was I couldn't come up with
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the adjective I don't do I have a sweet face oh 100 everyone listening right now
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agrees they all went yes you do Ash I also I need to work on my RBF a little bit you don't need to Mikey's working on
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his RPS [Laughter] that was good that was really good no you have a sweet face too you do it's
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very true him smiling all right well guys the murder of Roseanne Quinn it was actually it would go on to inspire two
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novels and actually a major Hollywood film that you've probably heard of but that film kind of easily slipped into
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the space between fact and fiction it's not really full-blown true but some just
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there's no there's some artistic license yes exactly all of the projects focusing
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on Roseanne definitely obscured the real life woman at the heart of the story though but people still tell this story
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because it's representative of a centuries-old story that all too often ends in murder of the murder of yet
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another innocent person at the hands of a man who wanted to punish her for her perceived sins we hate it so Roseanne
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was born on November 17 1944 in the Bronx in the Bronx kid and her parents were John and Roseanne Quinn ah we have
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another Lord I love a Lorelei moment now the queen were strict Irish Catholics and they passed their beliefs onto their
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children and their children carried on a lot of the Traditions into their adulthood John the father he was an
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executive with bell Laboratories and he ended up moving to Mine Hill Township in
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1955 to be closer to his company's headquarters um which were in New Jersey but so Roseanne's childhood was
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interrupted in 1957 though because she actually contracted polio whoa she had to have surgery and then obviously
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recover from that surgery so that meant she had to spend almost a year of her life on bed rest holy [ __ ] polio is no
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joke I've heard I've heard yeah her only time outside was when she was going back
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and forth to doctor's appointments and hospitals so like it was like a year of her life and the disease left her with a
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large Scar and a slight but noticeable limp that she was really self-conscious of for the rest of her life in reality
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the effects of the surgery and the scarring weren't very severe but Roseanne was never able to shake the
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feeling that her father couldn't stand the disfigurement that she'd gone through and she thought that was why he
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shunned her all throughout her job that makes me so sad it's really really sad ugh it's like reading not made me made
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my heart hurt yeah so after graduating from Morris Catholic High School in 1960 D2 Roseanne and Rule enrolled in the
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Newark State teachers college and there she majored in elementary education she wanted to be a teacher from the jump she
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was really excited about it and college offered her a path to an independent future and also the chance to get out of
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her parents house they were again very strict Catholics and she loved her parents very much but their strict
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Catholic home could really feel oppressive yeah like suffocating yeah the church doctrine dictated everything
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between what was and was an acceptable behavior especially when it came to sex oh boy and that was like not Roseanne
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didn't want to be told what she couldn't couldn't do not a recipe to make somebody listen so like a lot of us she
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went off to college she found a group of like-minded people and they had been drawn to a flourishing counterculture
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and feminism movements that were happening across the country hell yeah it was the 70s Peace Love Making Love
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Not War it was great and she found her people yeah and so she was an average student at Newark State but the school
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actually allowed her to explore her interests and it helped her develop a passion for teaching that would shape
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her personal and her professional life so after graduating in 1966 she moved into a small apartment in a relatively
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safe section of Manhattan's East Side she had two roommates who were also young ladies and she found work as a
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teacher in the Newark New Jersey public school system so she was really just like off to live in her own life being
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independent she's got a path finding her path but she got her first taste of kind
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of the real scary [ __ ] world one night when she stayed late after school she was just staying late to clean up
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her classroom literally and she was assaulted in her classroom oh my God by a student he threatened her with a knife
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and actually tried to rape her wow she was able to escape before he could hurt her but the attack by somebody so young
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a student and in a place where she felt safe left her very anxious and very paranoid for a period of time so she
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actually ended up leaving that school and she found a new job teaching in the Bronx yeah she was like I don't need to
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sit in this classroom every day and be reminded of what could potentially happen to me and what almost did happen
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to me I'm good no because I can never feel comfortable again no I don't I couldn't either yeah so at the new
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school the students and staff absolutely loved her and she loved them right back
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it was a great fit for her oh good she actually would bring in breakfast for the student she taught quote because she
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had so excuse me because she said so many had to ride buses to get to school and had to start out too early to eat
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breakfast so she would just bring she would bring them breakfast like what a [ __ ] awesome person
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now the religious values instilled in her by her parents were among the reasons actually and factors that drove
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her to to be a teacher but at the same time the religion seemed to have a large effect on her relationship with men she
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didn't seem to love or believe that women were meant to be subservient to men and then in the late 70s that was
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forward thinking that limited the dating pool for her that's so wild isn't that crazy that is really wild like she was
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like I don't think I like said beneath you I think we're equals yeah they were like oh get a load of this crazy girl
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yeah they were like swipe what is it swipe left is that the bad one yes okay actually I was like I don't know I've
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only heard swipe right it's been a while yeah I think you swipe right when you like someone cool so I said it right
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yeah it wasn't like a big tender girl at least no no I was a bumble girl but the
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same same emotion kind of deal anyways those days are long gone thank goodness but back to the 70s it limited her
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dating pool and what also complicated matters for her and her personal opinion were the scar and the limp that she had
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from when she had Polio it made her self-conscious and she felt like she was unattractive because of it she was not
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she breaks my heart so as a result though her relationships with men were really hindered by shame and they tended
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not to last very long or go too deep yeah really sad that's sad so instead she liked to spend nights at home she
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liked to read she would go out with her friends um she really loved the neighborhood
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bars WM Tweeds or the copper hatch and then again like I said she'd bring somebody home for back to her apartment
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for a little fun every now and again so by late 1972 things actually seemed to be going really well for her she'd found
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that new job that she loved she was teaching at St Joseph's School for the Deaf now she moved into a new apartment
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and this new apartment was in a newly converted high-rise it was in an even safer neighborhood on the upper west
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side and she had also just started classes at Hunter College where she was going after her graduate degree in deaf
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education damn I think she was a bad [ __ ] she had a lot to look forward to when the school went on vacation in the
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last week of December but unfortunately as 1972 flipped over to 1973 and Christmas break was winding down
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Roseanne Quinn would not live to see more than a couple days after the New Year oh man on the evening of January
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2nd 1973 she stopped at Tweeds which was a neighborhood bar it was right across the street from her apartment so close
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and all she just wanted to have a drink just wanted to wind down after a day she's on vacation whatever yeah so she's
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sitting alone at one of the tables in 20 she was like in one of the darker Corners having a little Johnny Walker
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hell yeah which I was like hell yeah get it girl and I guess the bartender noticed that she looked a little lonely
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looked a little depressed we went over to talk to him uh to talk to her excuse me and by that time she was kind of a
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regular at Tweed so the bartender knew her yeah made his way over and they just chatted her a little bit she seemed to
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be like a little cheered up by the conversation and she actually ended up getting up from the table when she
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realized that a group of her friends were in the bar now so she headed over them to chat with them
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and it was there that an acquaintance of hers introduced her to a man who she only met as John oh so John was in town
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he was from out of state and he was visiting a friend and Roseanne actually noticed him across the bar earlier that
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evening he was young he was tall and thin and she didn't think he was too bad looking we love it John yeah we do
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usually when she'd seen him earlier sad face when she saw him earlier he was with another man but now he was actually
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alone and it seemed like he'd had a couple of drinks that night okay but then again so had she so she was like
00:17:09
you know what let me make conversation [Music] oh a teen solo hiker is terrorized for Days
00:17:23
by unknown figures dressed in white two cops quit their jobs at a local theater because of encounters with an alleged
00:17:29
demon an isolated forest in Canada where people keep turning up headless these are just a few of the unbelievable
00:17:36
stories you'll hear on the Mr Ballin podcast on Amazon music each week you'll hear about inexplicable encounters
00:17:43
shocking disappearances and other strange dark and mysterious stories and they are all true like the case of Haley
00:17:50
zaga she disappeared on a hiking trail for 51 hours and when she was found again she said a friend helped her
00:17:57
survive and this friend of hers exactly matched the physical description of a little girl who had gone missing in that
00:18:04
exact spot 23 years earlier and who had never been found hey Prime members listen to the Amazon music exclusive
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00:18:21
foreign they chatted for a while he bought the next round of drinks as they kept
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chatting and to those around them they both looked like any other couple in the bar they were sharing a drink having a
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conversation just shooting the ship yeah so as the night went on the group actually got bored at Tweeds and
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somebody suggested that they move across the street to another bar called The Copper hatch so Roseanne and John or
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Roseanne kind of looked at John like hey you want to go and they decided to go the conversation continued at hatch so
00:18:53
did the drinks everybody was getting a little schwaisty it's okay and in the days that followed the bartender at the
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hatch Tom Keating would tell the police that he had seen the man with Roseanne that night but he had never seen him
00:19:05
before and he couldn't quite recall what he looked like once the police came and
00:19:10
knock him which he feels so bad because I'm like how often do you remember exactly what someone's looks like when
00:19:16
you have no reason to know what they look like you know like you're not like so many people throughout the night I
00:19:22
feel so because he must have been like [ __ ] oh yeah you know I used to work as
00:19:25
a bar back and if anybody ever came to me for information about the people at the bar I would have been [ __ ] yeah
00:19:30
you'd be like I don't know like there's so many of them yeah and at some point like they blur together they blur
00:19:34
together yeah yeah it's like that guy with the blue hat was wearing a plaid shirt
00:19:40
the other guy who's bald like it's just one of them yeah honestly but he did remember Roseanne the bartender because
00:19:48
he knew her yeah he said he only remembered heard that she seemed happy while she was talking to this guy okay
00:19:54
so as the hours were on that night customers kind of slowly started making their way out of the bar people were
00:20:00
calling it a night and they kind of Roseanne and John noticed the trend so they actually decided to go back to her
00:20:05
apartment just to continue their conversation and then get to know each other yeah they seem to like each other
00:20:09
yeah but by the next morning Roseanne Quinn would be dead and six months later her
00:20:15
killer would actually take his own life while in police custody wow I didn't know that so what truly happened after
00:20:21
they left the copper hatch is anyone's guess really as far as anybody can tell they were seen together casually talking
00:20:29
as they went into Roseanne's building at 253 West and 72nd Street John would later claim that they reached
00:20:37
her apartment and after some light conversation they engaged in consensual sex but then in another version of this
00:20:43
story that he told to his court appointed lawyer he claimed that he was unable to get an erection and the sex
00:20:49
actually never occurred okay so in one story they did and it was consensual and then another he couldn't make it happen
00:20:56
and it didn't happen yeah so early reports indicated that Roseanne had been raped by her a Salient however the
00:21:05
coroner's report indicated that she had had sex within 24 hours of her death quote but that there were none of the
00:21:12
external and internal signs of force or brutality that would indicate she had objected to sexual intercourse oh that's
00:21:18
so tough that's the thing that's tough it's really hard to say whether or not she was yeah because there's obviously
00:21:27
Hallmarks of it yeah in an examination right because when you unfortunately and like you know trigger warning because
00:21:34
we're just gonna get into it for a second if you are fighting someone off and you
00:21:38
do not want it to happen it is going to hurt you in some way they're going to have to force it that's the whole point
00:21:45
and there are going to be consequences biologically and physically right from that but then again we've seen cases
00:21:53
before where there wasn't like super clear physical evidence of it but it actually happened exactly so it's like
00:22:01
well I think there's a lot of factors you know like yeah we you know there's there's a lot of variables at stake that
00:22:08
we don't know because it's like did she pass out right she could have because then she wouldn't be fighting back and
00:22:14
it wouldn't be as you know evident exactly I would think exactly and she very well could have I mean yeah one
00:22:20
they had a lot to drink that night two he did get violent with her at some point that's a really good point she
00:22:25
could have passed out and he could have done what he wanted to do with her absolutely so according to John and his
00:22:30
story where they did engage in sexual in um consensual sex excuse me once they were done Roseanne quote and this is
00:22:37
insane like this didn't happen but he said she quote went nuts and started pushing me physically to hurry and get
00:22:42
dressed and leave which also even if you did have sex with her and then she said
00:22:47
okay like I'm all done like you need to leave now that's her house you're in her
00:22:51
[ __ ] apartment get out yeah it doesn't matter if she went nuts and if she did go nuts you would think that
00:22:56
you'd be like okay like I gotta get out well that's the thing you just leave and
00:22:59
be like wow okay I won't that's why I will not hang out with her again like that is that right you know so it's like
00:23:04
okay that doesn't excuse anything yeah his account of the events leading up to her murder are very questionable that
00:23:10
sounds it in one version she went nuts for no reason but then in another version of the events which he gave he
00:23:18
said that she mocked his inability to get an erection and that's when everything started
00:23:23
no matter what man if she made fun of your dick it's not a reason to kill her no so definitely not I don't care to be
00:23:32
honest like I don't care if you couldn't handle that leave exactly and don't talk
00:23:36
to her again right like that's what adults do exactly it's whatever happened in the moments before Roseanne was
00:23:43
attacked something switched and John and he just went into a full-blown rage I can't imagine what she saw before her oh
00:23:51
God when Roseanne tried to stand up and this was according to him he grabbed her
00:23:55
by the throat and began choking and hitting her claiming that he actually even used her own pants that he grabbed
00:24:01
from the floor to continue choking her until she lost Consciousness ah there you have it there you have it I didn't
00:24:09
want to say it too early so when she passed out John said he went to the kitchen and he grabbed a paring knife
00:24:14
and he proceeded to stab her 18 times Jesus 18 times this is a Stranger by the way God or potentially somebody that
00:24:24
he's just had sex with it's insane at least one of the stab wounds hit her jugular vein which then
00:24:31
released a torrent of blood that not only covered John's chest arms and pants but also splashed a [ __ ] ton of Blood on
00:24:39
the walls the floors the windowsill oh my God everywhere so when he was fairly certain that she
00:24:44
was dead he grabbed a lard this is very graphic by the way you might want to skip forward he grabbed a candle and he
00:24:52
quote stuffed it into her vagina until it broke off in his hand oh my God so it's like if that's the case how could
00:25:01
they say that she wasn't raped like in that that's right that's rape yep right and you're
00:25:08
so wait you're telling me that postmortem examination showed no physical effects of being forced well
00:25:16
that's the thing because it's like something was rammed in there early reports indicated that she had been
00:25:21
raped but then they switched up their story and said and this is quote none of the external or internal signs or force
00:25:28
of brutality that would indicate she had objected to sexual intercourse um what about the candle inside of her are you
00:25:35
kidding me yeah and it's like a candle is going to cause damage red candle yeah any foreign object is
00:25:44
going to cause damage that's the [ __ ] lie like what the hell is that about I'd be questioning the hell out of that
00:25:50
autopsy I'd be like um you tell me what you're looking for and what you didn't find I think that autopsy speaks to the
00:25:57
time and speaks to potential judgment 100 for inviting a stranger into our home you know that's wild isn't that
00:26:04
crazy that there was a foreign object inserted like yeah it doesn't seem like she was trying to probably post-mortem
00:26:10
and there was no signs of any brutality oh and it wasn't even probably postmortem it was post-mortem she waited
00:26:17
he said until he was sure she was dead and then he did that that guy needs to be locked away and the key thrown away
00:26:25
but unfortunately like we know he ended it himself which really really so frustrating yeah so it was nearly 3 30
00:26:35
in the morning by that point and he knew that he had to leave before the building
00:26:40
started coming alive in the early morning hours so before leaving he started traipsing around the apartment
00:26:45
rifling through drawers and cabinets stealing what cut what little money she had in the market look like I don't even
00:26:53
know if it was to make it look like she had been robbed I think he literally just wanted to rob her and damn maybe
00:26:58
like the the cover-up was the second part of the motive but I think the first part was that he needed money he's just
00:27:05
a dick because he's kind of like a transient like okay like goes around here and there everywhere yeah once he
00:27:11
grabbed everything of value he then went around the apartment a second time carefully wiping his fingerprints off
00:27:18
anything he thought he had touched wow anything he remembered touching and probably a few more things that he was
00:27:23
just like you know what let me wipe that down just in case so it's like you definitely can't claim that like I
00:27:28
snapped and I black like that kind of thing because like girl you clean that up you thought about it yeah like
00:27:32
exactly and so once he wiped everything away he went into the bathroom and showered wow yep rinsing away copious
00:27:41
amounts of blood from his body redressed himself and then slipped out in the apartment down the street
00:27:48
there was a very real possibility that he wasn't going to be caught when you find out why he was caught it really
00:27:54
depends on one person and thank God that person decided to be a good person oh damn because he could have gotten away
00:28:00
with this and wasn't really never 100 never would have seen him again or if we did see him again he would have killed
00:28:07
at least one other person oh yeah you don't end here no and I wonder if do you start in here yeah like this is pretty
00:28:14
insane so staff and administrators of course found it weird when Roseanne failed to show up for work on January
00:28:21
2nd it was the first day back to school after Christmas break she had been there
00:28:25
for like over two years at that point she'd always been on time or called if she needed a sick day so the fact that
00:28:32
she didn't show up on the first day back was definitely of some concern oh man so
00:28:37
they made phone calls to her apartment no one was answering when she failed to show up the following day A co-worker
00:28:43
was actually sent to her apartment explained the situation to the superintendent of the apartment oh no
00:28:48
and then they them and superintendent let that co-worker oh the apartment was a [ __ ] wreck there had been chairs
00:28:57
knocked over drawers were pulled and just thrown around the whole entire Place objects were strewn about the room
00:29:04
and Roseanne's absolutely brutalized nude body by the way she was completely nude was discovered on the pull-out
00:29:12
couch she was barely recognizable through all the blood the bruises the stab wounds everything that's horrific
00:29:19
and then like I said the walls the couch the floor the windows everything was color was covered in blood splatter
00:29:28
and this is so [ __ ] weird so for him to say he snapped I don't think it's true at all no her killer left quote a
00:29:36
hollow sculptured bust of a woman on on Roseanne's face like he was obscuring her Humanity yeah like don't like you
00:29:45
don't come at me and say you snap you took the time to go find a bust of a woman and put it over her face like how
00:29:51
[ __ ] bizarre the hell isn't that so weird so weird and this is so sad Roseanne had a cat named Missy and like
00:30:00
so everybody walked in and she started weaving through their legs when they came in oh for like comfort for Comfort
00:30:05
or to be fed like you know whatever just so sad that makes me sad so the police were called obviously they
00:30:13
arrived a short time later and they send officers floor to floor canvassing for any kind of lead but nobody in the
00:30:19
building had seen or heard anything suspicious that night at a quick glance Roseanne's death kind
00:30:24
of seemed motivated at least in part by rape and secondarily by robbery yeah but
00:30:30
the fact that it was so brutal led the investigators to think something more had happened yeah again I feel like I've
00:30:37
said this a lot with all my cases it wasn't a typical robbery yeah but still the apartment had clearly been tossed
00:30:43
around Roseanne's wallet was found on the floor empty so they were like I don't know yeah like is this is this a
00:30:50
robbery is it not so the discovery prompted actually surprisingly large investigation for a single murder in
00:30:57
Manhattan officers went through the building in search of leads and then a second team of 10 officers fanned out to
00:31:03
Sherman Square which was a large Plaza between Broadway and 72nd Street it was commonly referred to as needle Park
00:31:11
which is like really shitty there was a large number of people who were using drugs while in the park so it got its
00:31:17
nickname like that but despite Roseanne having moved to the neighborhood for its safety it really
00:31:23
wasn't as safe as she thought it was the area had experienced a relative increase in violent crime which included
00:31:30
the murder of a teacher two years earlier and that had occurred just around the corner from Roseanne's
00:31:36
apartment and then there was a drug-related murder that occurred in the building in her same building six months
00:31:42
earlier oh so yeah that's a little close it wasn't that safe so although the canvas of both the building and the
00:31:50
nearby park turned up no leads investigators learned that in 1969 the building where Roseanne had lived had
00:31:57
actually been redeveloped from a hotel into an apartment building and this remodel included a major overhaul to the
00:32:04
building's entrance ah now there were a ton of security protocols in place that provided on-site doorman and prevented a
00:32:12
majority of unwelcomed or unapproved visitors yeah so this fact provided the important Insight that whoever had
00:32:18
murdered Roseanne had likely been let into the building by Roseanne herself so the investigators scoured the
00:32:26
building scoured the surrounding area and while that was going on a third team of investigators started kind of digging
00:32:32
into Roseanne's personal life they were interviewing friends co-workers they figured they could find her killer quote
00:32:38
somewhere amid the numerous yet fragmented activities of an attractive single woman living in the interracial
00:32:44
world of the West Side whoa it's like the 70s was wild it was a very wild time they're like she was a she was a crazy
00:32:51
cat she was a crazy lady it's like she was just a teacher that lived in New York to the bar sometimes like they make
00:32:58
it seem like she was just like running rampant in the streets so the detectives were so sure that she had welcomed her
00:33:04
killer into her life that they very much limited their investigation to only her
00:33:09
personal life yeah which completely disregarded any possibility that her killer was from work or from a world
00:33:16
unknown to her entirely yeah because it's like yeah I understand you you look at it and you look at the evidence and
00:33:22
you say okay it seems like she let her attack her in because then the security has gone up but it's like you can't
00:33:28
limit your scope to that you just focus your scope on that exactly you have to still doing the side there looking at
00:33:35
all possibilities which like it's it happens so many times in different cases where they go in with a narrative in
00:33:40
mind and they just limit the scope well and that's exactly what happened here because like you were just saying it's
00:33:45
normal like we have to dig into the person's personal life to figure out what happened and when the evidence is
00:33:49
pointing that way of course you're gonna shift Focus there right standard practice for sure yeah but in this case
00:33:55
there was a very judgmental tone to the narrative yeah and it was taking shape of the entire investigation Captain John
00:34:02
McMahon told the Press quote the West Side world she belonged to was not the quiet peaceful one that some families
00:34:08
find here it was a friendly relaxed world of young artists teachers professionals swingers all of them all
00:34:15
of them every single one did you find a pineapple on the front door yeah every single one of them I can't just swinging
00:34:22
like you don't know these people what a generalized like what a blanket to throw
00:34:26
over an entire all artists teachers and young professionals are swingers all of them I don't think so yeah all right I
00:34:34
don't think so but just because I'm good at painting means I switch Partners what
00:34:37
yeah that doesn't mean anything I'm young so I switched Partners like John get a grip John get a grip get a [ __ ]
00:34:43
grip I don't like any of the Johnsons I was just gonna say I take it back I like
00:34:46
one John you give John a burner there you go okay so anyways in the early 1970s like I
00:34:56
said earlier the US was on the verge of major major social change the war in Vietnam was losing support among the
00:35:03
American public it was kind of shining a spotlight on the Stark divide between the young people in the country and the
00:35:09
older people in the country conservatives liberals everything in the middle like I said in the beginning and
00:35:15
at the same time groups that had been pretty quiet and Underground we're actually gaining social capital and
00:35:21
political power through the collective action like the black power the feminist movements so to conservative and older
00:35:29
Americans who were like pretty bewildered and frustrated with the rapidly shifting social change Roseanne
00:35:35
Quinn represented the irresponsibility of the supposedly sexual sexually liberated Modern Woman yeah they're like
00:35:43
we don't want this [ __ ] we want things to say the same they're like look what will happen to you if you're sexually
00:35:47
liberated let's go back to the 50s you'll be at home and you need to be subservient to all men and then you
00:35:53
won't get murdered because no one got murdered in the 50s never nope just this is new not by their husbands either
00:36:00
absolutely not never happened never ever never covered a case like that foreign [Music]
00:36:18
so McMahon he had to open his mouth again and he said that's the captain he said quote this city is dangerous if you
00:36:24
live on the west side like she did and your friendly affable mixed with all kinds of people and have a lot of
00:36:31
nightlife well A lot's open to you oh if you're friendly and mixed with all kinds
00:36:37
of people that's a that's a long-winded way of saying your fault yeah yeah his comments explained why detectives were
00:36:46
focused exclusively on her personal life yeah and how a large diverse Social Circle can present some kind of
00:36:52
complicated challenge when you're trying to identify a suspect like don't be friends but also if you read between the
00:36:58
lines a little more he was just trying to warn women that being sexually liberated was gonna have tragic
00:37:04
consequences oh yeah you don't even need to read between the lines no you're just
00:37:07
like he's like here it is I just said it in a long way he's just flipping the bird to any young woman who like doesn't
00:37:13
have a man and doesn't have one he's just like I said it yeah an artist too yeah artists and teachers oh yeah you
00:37:19
don't want that young people no way like I can't imagine I always say I wanted to
00:37:22
live during the 70s but this case made me realize I do not makes you think about it I mean being a woman now is
00:37:27
pretty tough but we won't get into that so even though there seemed to be a shaming tone and a judgmental spin on
00:37:33
the narrative surrounding Roseanne's murder the Deep dive into her personal life actually did prove to be valuable
00:37:40
because it produced the first viable lead investigators had discovered a report that Roseanne filed a year before she
00:37:46
had been killed and this report explained that a man she had taken home one evening had actually slapped her in
00:37:53
the face after they got into an argument and she was able to get him out of her apartment luckily and went right down to
00:37:59
the police to report this according to the investigator she had only filed the report quote to frighten
00:38:05
him off but the assault resulted in a conviction and the man ended up spending several months in prison oh which led
00:38:12
the detectives to wonder if he had held some kind of grudge against Roseanne and
00:38:16
killed her in retaliation yeah because consequences for your actions should definitely be held against the person
00:38:21
that you did it to yeah always for sure I mean I can understand why they thought
00:38:25
that oh I 100 understand that but that's it's just so infuriating that it's like
00:38:29
you did something terrible yeah you literally physically assaulted someone and you got a consequence for it so now
00:38:36
you like them well now I have to seek revenge on that person that I hurt right because it's not your fault for hurting
00:38:41
them yeah no definitely not ridiculous makes sense so while detectives were chasing down that kind of it was pretty
00:38:47
flimsy to be honest yeah flimsy Revenge killing motive a few of the people who had been at Tweeds and golden hatch they
00:38:54
started coming forward with descriptions of the man that they had last seen with
00:38:57
Roseanne most of the people who had been there that night could only describe the
00:39:02
sky in vague detail they couldn't even provide enough information to get a composite sketch oh wow but there was
00:39:07
another man who'd been seen with Roseanne's companion earlier that night oh yeah remember I said she had seen him
00:39:13
with a guy earlier but then when they started talking that guy wasn't really around yeah
00:39:18
but the detectives hoped that they would be able to I to come up with a composite
00:39:23
sketch for this guy so that they could track this guy down and start talking to him and they actually were able to
00:39:30
according to the police the witness they hoped could identify Roseanne's killer was a white man 28 to 32 years old six
00:39:38
feet tall weighing 165 pounds with a fair complexion and short cropped light brown hair with a wet look ew he was
00:39:47
doing the Kim K wet look I know that sounds so foul in other words wash your [ __ ] hair yeah I was gonna say grease
00:39:54
ball in other other words lay off the gel and other other words gross ew so the NYPD Blue I had to say it blue
00:40:04
set up a tip line urging anybody with information to call and leave an anonymous message they circulated the
00:40:11
composite drawing of the potential witness to the media and they insisted to everybody they were like this guy is
00:40:17
not a suspect he is going to lead us to our suspect so please know that there you go so nearly a week had passed since
00:40:24
the discovery of Roseanne's body but all the police had to work with were some vague descriptions of generic white men
00:40:31
in their early 30s that helps it doesn't I will narrow it down the forensics lots of lots of generic white men in
00:40:38
their early 30s really narrowing the focus yeah so the forensic team search of the apartment really didn't turn up
00:40:43
anything significant and the man who had assaulted her almost a year earlier that
00:40:47
I was talking about he had a quote-unquote Loctite Alibi for the night of her murder it basically ruled
00:40:53
him out as a suspect oh bummer so under the circumstances the sketch was their best and really their only chance at
00:41:00
catching Roseanne's killer and they were about to get a very lucky break oh damn
00:41:06
yes on the morning of January 7th Gary Geist no excuse me Gary guest actually walk
00:41:13
down to the newspaper box not like really guys no no different no way very different man very different this is
00:41:19
Gary guest hi Willie guest hi Willie I think he listens right I I don't know or no did he like your book uh no it wasn't
00:41:27
him it was um uh it was something else it was somebody else okay um anyways I was like wait who was it
00:41:33
we're not talking about Willie we're talking about Gary I was just saying hi to Willie you can always say I don't
00:41:37
care thank you I appreciate that to Gary there's not even a Gary there I don't know where we are anymore Where Do We Go
00:41:43
From Here back to the store I was just gonna say back to the case oh good job good job so Geary so Geary he walked
00:41:50
down to the newspaper box which like that was a thing on the corner and he bought the Morning Edition of the New
00:41:56
York Times oh I know somebody who's on the New York Times bestselling author list oh I'm sitting right in front of
00:42:01
her it was me it's crazy I'm gonna tattoo it on my arm you should I'm not going to but I would
00:42:07
if I did that if I did that [ __ ] if I did that if I was out there on the New York Times okay so this New York Times
00:42:15
written in large print eight columns across the headline read police if you issue a sketch of witness they hope will
00:42:22
identify a killer of teacher and it included a composite drawing of a potential witness that police hoped
00:42:29
would lead them back to the teacher's killer okay so to Gary the sketch looked incredibly generic and probably fit the
00:42:36
description of thousands of men in Manhattan alone I'd say so but regardless of whether anybody could
00:42:42
identify the sketch he knew the drawing was of him Gary Geary what is him a few nights earlier on
00:42:53
January 7th you see Gary had gone out drinking on the upper west side with his friend
00:42:58
John John Wayne Wilson wait is his name Gary or Geary it's Gary like gear okay like
00:43:06
g-e-j-r-y-r-y-g okay yeah um I wasn't saying I thought you were not saying it with awareness it's really
00:43:12
scary all right Gary but Geary when you keep saying it but he went drinking with
00:43:18
his friend John oh [ __ ] John Wayne Wilson at around 10 30 or 11 he said you know what he personally Gary Gary
00:43:26
decided he had had enough to drink and he suggested to John that they head back to his apartment where John was staying
00:43:32
while he was in town oh so he was even trying to get John out of there but John Wilson however had just started talking
00:43:39
with a young red-haired woman at the bar and he didn't want to leave oh no so he
00:43:43
was like no Gary go on without me and the next day John literally told Gary that he had gone home with the woman
00:43:51
they smoked some weed they started to have sex but then she began berating and mocking him when he was unable to get an
00:43:58
erection the cruelty he said caused something in him to snap and before he knew it he was on top of her with his
00:44:04
hands around her neck choking the life out of her so he made a full-blown confession Gary Gary what the [ __ ] so
00:44:11
from the moment he heard the story Gary wasn't sure what to make of it he had known John Wayne Wilson for years and he
00:44:18
felt like John wasn't the type of person who was capable of flying into a rage and murdering somebody but at the same
00:44:24
time he could never dismiss the story in its entirety it's like okay Geary so so
00:44:30
John isn't the kind of guy he's not the kind of fella that's gonna straight up murder someone is he the kind of fella
00:44:35
who normally comes home and says like oh what a crazy night I can't just totally
00:44:40
raped and murdered someone does he say that often and then he's like just kidding a joke funny jokes
00:44:48
I hate when people do that they're like I just couldn't reconcile it it's like but do they often tell you that they
00:44:53
murder people because that happens when the guy was sitting in his passenger seat and he came back with the
00:44:59
sock full of rocks it's like what did you think sir like I know it's hard to reconcile that it a human being you know
00:45:05
could take another person's life totally but if they're telling you who they are
00:45:09
believe them yeah I believe that in every sense of the word when people show you or tell you who they are believe
00:45:15
those [ __ ] because they're showing you first reason he told you what he did you should have gone to the
00:45:20
police and let them sort it out so he was like I don't think he's the kind of guy that could do that yeah but
00:45:28
then he started seeing the reports about the teachers be it the teacher who had been murdered and he said that he had
00:45:33
become quilt frightened all along about how this whole thing would turn out so he said at first he tried to ignore
00:45:39
the article in the composite drawing but as the day went on and on he just couldn't shake the urgency of the
00:45:44
request for information and the seriousness of the situation which like I'm glad he finally came to the
00:45:50
conclusion to do the right thing I don't think he should have struggled with it that hard but I've never gone through it
00:45:56
so I don't know because again it's like he's either the kind of person who would
00:45:59
do that or he's the kind of person who will pretend that he did that either way you should go tell someone about it yeah
00:46:06
because that's a dangerous person well and I think what really started to shift his decision making was that he was
00:46:12
wondering if he didn't go forward to the police could he be held as like implicated to murder yeah so that
00:46:19
afternoon he ended up calling his lawyer and he asked his lawyer to come over to
00:46:22
his apartment they sat in the living room and Gary explained the entire situation and his lawyer explained that
00:46:28
he could indeed be indicted for obstruction of justice destruction of evidence being an accessory after the
00:46:35
fact being an accomplice to the crime itself like he was he was facing a lot of [ __ ] here you got a big storm coming
00:46:41
honey you got a big storm coming Fury and that's what the lawyer said he said as far as I see it you have three
00:46:47
options you can go on the Run you could do nothing or you could go to the police and tell them what you know
00:46:53
yeah and he said as your lawyer I suggest the latter yeah I'm gonna go ahead and tell you to do that last one
00:46:59
yes so his lawyer placed Gary agreed he was like I think that's what I need to do yeah and he the lawyer called the
00:47:04
District Attorney's office and explained the situation careful not to mention any
00:47:08
names his client had information about the killer he said and he would only share that information in exchange for
00:47:16
immunity from prosecution so he played a bit of a game here that's a smart lawyer
00:47:19
but honestly I would play the same [ __ ] game absolutely hopefully I never find myself in the situation yeah
00:47:24
no I don't think I would because I don't really have that many friends so there you go especially not ones that pretend
00:47:29
to kill people or actually kill people I've never had a friend that pretended to kill someone or I've never killed
00:47:34
anyone I've never had a confession confessed to me that was like just kidding I just like to do that sometimes
00:47:39
like no no and if I did that person wouldn't remain in my life much longer it would be clip Clapton
00:47:49
peace and love to Duran peace and love to Dorinda so a few days later he sat down with the detectives Gary and Gary
00:47:56
it's hard to say and he told them everything he knew about the murder he said he exactly what he knew and the
00:48:02
level of detail included um his description from the early part of the evening at Tweeds to the extent
00:48:09
of uh extent of Roseanne's wounds and that convinced the investigators he was telling the truth he knew literally
00:48:15
everything now in the day since the murder John Wayne Wilson had returned home to Indiana huh so Manhattan
00:48:22
detectives had to get a warrant for his arrest and they booked the first flight they could to Springfield where they got
00:48:28
that [ __ ] extra don't man they would be actually joined there a short time later by nine other NYPD officers
00:48:35
oh damn and in the meantime Captain McMahon asshat McGee called the authorities in Springfield and brought
00:48:42
them up to speed on what was happening so back at home with two detectives Gary actually received a call from Wilson and
00:48:49
was able to confirm for the investigators that Wilson would be at his brother's house in Indiana and he
00:48:55
knew where that was so it's a setup it's a walk-off it's a walk-off now in the year that followed
00:49:02
Gary would actually struggle with a lot of guilt and a lot of Shame he felt like
00:49:05
he had betrayed his friend which I don't think he betrayed his friend in any stretch of the imagination but I can
00:49:13
understand why it might feel that way they had been best friends for a long time and now he did the right thing but
00:49:19
he feels like he made a mistake sure he didn't but I can understand why you would feel that way I can understand
00:49:24
that it sucks to be in that situation yeah but like you shouldn't feel guilt he literally brutally murdered a woman
00:49:30
exactly but his guilt got so bad that he was having nightmares he went to a psychiatrist on multiple occasions and
00:49:37
on New Year's Eve in 1973 he actually flew to San Francisco he got a large amount of sleeping pills and he took
00:49:44
them in a park that night fully intent on ending his own life oh wow it wasn't successful he lived but it marked a
00:49:52
full-blown transformation in him he decided to move forward in life confident that he had done the right
00:49:57
thing from that day forward good it's not amazing I mean I hate that it took that me too like jeez I hate that it
00:50:03
came to that but like I'm glad he could finally accept that like you did nothing
00:50:06
wrong like you did like the right thing like you should have told you should have told earlier to be quite honest but
00:50:12
I'm I'm one I think maybe that could I'm sure that mixed along with it but it's like you did the right thing you told
00:50:17
using forward and I'm happy that he was able to kind of get like a second chance
00:50:20
yeah I'm glad that he was able to move forward and be like I did the right thing with a clear contract because
00:50:25
someone [ __ ] this piece of [ __ ] John have your have guilt hell no like no he's not worth it so on January 9th
00:50:33
detective John Lafferty and Patrick Toomey arrived in uh Indianapolis and they arrived at the home of John Wayne
00:50:39
Wilson's brother a little after nine in the morning and they were able to arrest
00:50:43
John without incident good the investigator spent almost all day talking with him and they learned about
00:50:49
the 23 year old's history he was only 23. Jesus he had inconsistent employment he lived everywhere and he had a notable
00:51:01
criminal history in May of 1969 he was arrested in Florida for disorderly conduct he was convicted and served 10
00:51:08
days in jail on June 1st 1969 so like pretty much right when he was arrested or right when he got out he was arrested
00:51:16
and charged for larceny in Kansas City and he served two years in jail well and then in the spring of 1971 he was
00:51:23
actually arrested three separate times in the Miami and Fort Lauderdale areas for petty theft of alcohol small amounts
00:51:31
of cash that he had stolen from stores and houses and he was sentenced to a longer prison sentence but he actually
00:51:37
escaped from jail on July 6 which was six months before he murdered Roseanne Quinn oh wow so he was on the run when
00:51:45
he murdered her wow like should have been in jail that's even worse how [ __ ] is that
00:51:53
[Music] oh so Lafferty and to me those detectives they returned to New York with John
00:52:08
Wilson the following day a little after 3 30 and he was taken to the 20th Precinct where he was formally booked
00:52:14
for the first degree murder of Roseanne Quinn once he was booked and photographed he was taken before a judge
00:52:20
in Criminal Court he was indicted and he was ordered held without bail pending a
00:52:25
psychiatric evaluation so his arrest generated a ton of curiosity among the press and the public for one thing it
00:52:33
was significant for somebody so young that his criminal history consisted mostly of petty theft and non-violent
00:52:38
crime to suddenly escalate like this exactly yeah like that's wild family and friends described him as an
00:52:45
easy going and didn't care kind of guy but they said he was never violent like this was insane to them wow but that
00:52:52
being said his father told reporters that on two occasions he and his wife like so his parents had actually become
00:53:00
concerned enough about his mental health that they took him to the Madison State
00:53:04
Hospital for an evaluation two times oh okay but both times he said quote nothing was found wrong with the boy oh
00:53:11
boy isn't that interesting yeah so emotional difficulties and poor interpersonal skills continued for
00:53:16
Wilson into his late teens and early 20s in 1969 he actually got married to a woman named Kathy and he had two
00:53:24
children with her before divorcing oh this man's a father Yelp in 1971 but he abandoned his child of course he did he
00:53:31
left them and he married again in March of 1972 this time to a 17 year old named
00:53:36
candy who he was still married to at the time of his arrest oh yeah so the absence of a History of Violence
00:53:44
or aggression in his past actually only served to deepen the mystery and baffle the press in public as to what the [ __ ]
00:53:51
could have happened to transform him this seemingly mild-mannered man into a rage-fueled killer like they were like
00:53:58
what the [ __ ] like that can just happen now investigators and this is nuts they
00:54:05
actually developed kind of a fondness for him like they it reminded me of the case that you just covered the Clutter
00:54:11
family murders yeah they they like felt for him one detective later said I guess
00:54:16
we all felt a bit protective of him I told him he could put his coat up over his head and hide from the photographer
00:54:22
guys we gotta stop doing that like we gotta stop you and murdered a woman and that I
00:54:30
think it speaks so much to the time that they were in it was like yeah I know you
00:54:34
murdered that girl but it really sucks that you're going on trial for it why don't you hide your face but we'll
00:54:39
plaster her face in every newspaper and talk about what a crazy woman of the night she was and how she invited this
00:54:46
and how it wasn't this poor guy's fault it was hurtful exactly and letting him spin that story about how she sat there
00:54:52
and like berated him about not being able to get it up like I don't think she did I don't think she did and even if
00:54:57
she did and even if she made like some kind of joke I'm sure she wasn't berating you about it and also get up
00:55:02
and walk the [ __ ] out no you like being killed someone because they make fun of
00:55:05
you no and so yeah so he's like the the detective told him he could hide and Wilson insisted he was gonna take it
00:55:13
like a man he said oh yeah like this isn't like that kind of stuff you can't grow for your manliness you're here
00:55:20
cause you killed a woman take it like a man but still even the district attorney
00:55:24
Frank Hogan who never who excuse me who made a point of never developing any kind of opinion of the individuals that
00:55:31
he was Prosecuting he said Wilson was pleasant enough and very Cooperative but at the same time noted that he had no
00:55:38
feelings no remorse he didn't care he didn't care about anything so it's very easy to be pleasant and Cooperative when
00:55:45
you're a [ __ ] robot like exactly yeah of course he was he's remorseless and emotionless exactly easy it's on it's
00:55:53
just bananas I love how it's like highlighting his good points it's just crazy that they're like hide your face
00:55:58
sweet boy yeah we don't want people to be mean to you you don't deserve this you're on trial for murder of course you
00:56:05
do ask you kill the woman so stupid it's around 9 30 then I thought he was extradited all the interviews were done
00:56:10
and administrative requirements were all squared away he was taken to the or he was taken from the 20th Precinct to the
00:56:17
Manhattan House of detention for men which is otherwise referred to as the tombs oh and he would sit there while he
00:56:24
awaited his trial date damn so about one month after his arrest in Indiana his lawyers John lanuzzi and
00:56:31
Aaron heif I believe filed a motion with the Supreme Court Justice who at the time was Gerald P Culkin and they
00:56:39
indicated that their uh that they were intending to rely on Section 3005 of the New York Penal Code which quote provides
00:56:46
that evidence of a mental disease or defect excludes a person from Criminal responsibility in other words they were
00:56:53
going for the inside so the pre-trial hearing was set for February 15th and their client had
00:56:59
actually recently undergone a psychiatric evaluation and among other things the psychiatrist actually
00:57:04
diagnosed Wilson as schizophrenic homicidal and suicidal oh wow and their argument would also be supported by the
00:57:12
fact that Wilson was being held on the 10th floor of the tombs which was designated at the time as the
00:57:18
psychiatric ward okay so he definitely wasn't mentally well yeah his days were filled with a whole lot of nothing he
00:57:25
just kind of sat in his cell and didn't really talk to anybody he kept to himself sometimes he would get a call
00:57:30
from his mom or a letter from candy or sometimes old cell mates would write to him but he insisted that he didn't want
00:57:36
anybody to visit him he wouldn't take any visitors wow so on Friday May 4th he was released after a two-week stay at
00:57:43
Bellevue a hospital where he was being evaluated prior to his mental competency but rather than return him to his
00:57:51
individual cell on the 10th floor in the psychiatric ward administrators they would later claim that the 10th floor
00:57:57
was overcrowded so the guards returned him to a shared cell on the fourth floor which housed the general population
00:58:05
Wilson was given a tray of lunch which he did not eat and then he was sat down on one of the bunk beds and he wrote a
00:58:12
short letter to his wife candy he said this is only to let you know that I'm back at the tombs I don't know why I'm
00:58:17
here but I am love John Wayne the next day a little afternoon he actually ended up getting in an argument
00:58:24
with the guard on duty when he asked for fresh sheets the guard yelled at him for
00:58:29
several minutes and then went to get the sheets and threw them at him I guess through an opening in the cell and the
00:58:35
guard walked away Wilson started preparing the sheets in a way where he could use them to end his
00:58:40
life all around him the other inmates who could see what was going on in the shared cell yelled cut up cut up cut up
00:58:47
which is like yelling at the guards about what's happening and the two guards on duty they could hear the
00:58:53
inmates yelling but they took their sweet time to reach themselves I think they knew what was I think that happens
00:58:58
a lot Wilson was actually still alive when they got to the cell and they cut him down he had and he had hanged
00:59:04
himself but by the time he was able to be cut down and they laid him out on the floor he was dead wow so he had
00:59:11
successfully ended his life and in a room full of people in a room full of people like that's very [ __ ]
00:59:17
traumatic for the people that were there and back then they weren't gonna have any kind of help no of course not his
00:59:23
suicide actually was the sixth to occur in city jails that year so it sparked an
00:59:28
administrative Firestorm from the District Attorney's office and from his own lawyers they all accused the New
00:59:34
York Board of Corrections and its chairman who at the time was William Van Der hoovel they accused him of ignoring
00:59:40
the psychiatric and law enforce reports that warned of his suicidality suicidality and they said it allowed
00:59:47
Wilson to languish in his cell unattended and untreated even though it was known that he had mental issues yeah
00:59:53
so the board of Corrections though shot back in the form of a 47-page report damn accusing everyone from the district
01:00:01
attorney and even Wilson's own lawyers to admitting in his admitting Physicians and psychiatrists and the tombs
01:00:09
themselves they said they failed to properly identify the risk to the appropriate parties
01:00:15
whoa they didn't they did not he was at the 10th floor of the tombs for the reason that's the psychiatric floor
01:00:21
exactly but him ending his own life brought the Roseanne Quinn murder case to a very unsatisfying conclusion sucks
01:00:29
and it simultaneously robbed the Quinn family of Justice yeah absolutely his death and the administrative Fallout
01:00:35
kept the story in papers for a few more weeks but eventually the story just faded out of the spot yeah and it would
01:00:41
stay out of the spotlight for a few years but then it got revived in an unexpected way
01:00:46
in the mid-1970s a woman named Nora Ephron a columnist for Esquire magazine she was asked by the editors to curate
01:00:54
an upcoming Edition that was dedicated exclusively to women's issues so among those asked to contribute to the issue
01:01:00
were a novelist or excuse me was a novelist Judith Rosner and she wanted to contribute an article about Roseanne's
01:01:08
murder a few years earlier actually and she was given the green light to do so but when the time came to publish the
01:01:14
issue the editors at Esquire thought that the article was going to result in some kind of legal action being taken
01:01:21
against them by the family uh so they refused to to put it in there completely but Rosner she was really she really
01:01:29
wanted to get the story out there so she decided yes persistent so she decided to
01:01:34
actually develop her article into a fictional account of the story which she later published as the novel Looking for
01:01:41
Mr Goodbar oh that's what this is based on I've never seen that have you no I haven't seen it have you
01:01:48
none of us have seen it but like the investigation and press surrounding the case that inspired for it listed Looking
01:01:53
for Mr Goodbar presented the story where it's heavily implied that the main character's murder is her own fault
01:01:59
awesome yeah that's what we're looking for the result of her sexually liberated lifestyle and it could have been avoided
01:02:05
if she had used better judgment cool that uh message was carried into the 1977 film adaptation which actually
01:02:12
Stars Diane Keaton and Richard Gere I was just looking I'm like damn yeah in his positive review of the film Roger
01:02:18
Ebert points out that the main character Terry Dunn is quote looking for a combination of good times good sex and a
01:02:25
father figure but she isn't looking for danger mistreatment or death at the same time though he was quick to
01:02:32
point out that Dunn is at least partially responsible for her own death saying promiscuous young women who
01:02:38
frequent pickup bars and go home with strangers are likely to get into trouble isn't that just so funny that it's like
01:02:45
it's their fault but it's like we're definitely not going to look at or try to remedy the man problem there like
01:02:54
we're definitely not going to touch to that we're gonna say women who do this are in danger yeah that said it's like
01:03:01
okay so can we can we take a little like like side step over and start talking about like the root of that issue which
01:03:08
is yeah the Mayans you literally it's like you're walking me into my next step okay because it just it shocks me that
01:03:15
we're not like yeah maybe we need to start thinking about how we're raising these guys and like what's going on and
01:03:20
like how we're allowing them to it's wild to me yeah I know it's insane just like the press the investigators before
01:03:26
rosin or Ebert and everybody else with similar understandings of her story completely overlooked the fact that
01:03:33
Roseanne's murder could have been avoided had John Wayne Wilson not murdered her exactly like that's all it
01:03:40
comes down to that's what kills me like we don't look at that we look at what she did to get murdered and it's like no
01:03:45
no can we just talk about how like he probably shouldn't be a murderer yeah that that would be the thing that would
01:03:52
fix all of this exactly and the thing is it's easy to kind of like dismiss this and I actually am guilty of doing it
01:03:58
throughout this episode we're dismissing the victim blaming and the slut-shaming
01:04:01
comments as like old-fashioned and it's such a a product of its time it's not though but that conversation is still
01:04:08
happening to this day oh yeah stay we're still victim absolutely or not but people still are yeah people like it's
01:04:16
wild yeah it happens everywhere at all times it's a persistent narrative it's really just like so sad in 1973 just to
01:04:24
like end this Roseanne Quinn's life held such promise she had such a bright future ahead of her she found a way into
01:04:31
a career that she loved working with deaf children she found her way into a great group of friends who appreciated
01:04:37
her accepted her for who she was and she discovered that she could have an active
01:04:42
sex life without the traditional patriarchal structure yeah and she was willing to do so
01:04:48
but back then and even [ __ ] today people are still judging her and all of us good time gals like her all the all
01:04:56
of us good time yes good time gals it's a bunch of crap that's a bunch of is what it is Malaki it's a bunch of
01:05:04
[ __ ] and it really bums me out because she seemed like such a cool girl and just to have
01:05:09
this be like the mark that she left I don't think that's what she would have wanted no and it sucks like that sucks
01:05:16
that this is all that gets talked about and that that movie was made that kind of further pushed that narrative into it
01:05:23
I know and I love Diane Keaton she's like I do too but now I want to watch it just to kind of like see it for myself I
01:05:29
hate it I do too it's like really sad and it really it like breaks my heart that her family was never able yeah
01:05:36
first of all never able to get any kind of justice and then that movie ended up kind of furthering The Narrative that it
01:05:42
was her fault exactly and that sucks exactly it's a really sad case that's a really sad case yeah I feel like she was
01:05:49
just brutalized in life and in death yeah truly it's like they didn't let her rest so stop judging people is the moral
01:05:55
of the story yeah don't judge people let let good time gals be good time gals and
01:06:01
maybe just don't be a murderer yeah don't [ __ ] murder people that's a great way to avoid this stuff is don't
01:06:10
be a murderer because that's the thing that people are missing like you should be able to go out and have a good time
01:06:14
and do what you want to do as a liberated free woman yeah and go home and be able to share the story with your
01:06:20
girlfriends the next day that's the thing it's like it doesn't have to do with you being who you are it has to do
01:06:26
with you shouldn't have to worry about coming in contact with a murderer like that's not it shouldn't be like well I
01:06:32
can't do what I want to do because that man could murder me but sadly it's so true for all of us it is have you seen
01:06:38
my keys exactly I have like a pokey thingy that could stab somebody in the eyes are wild I have a personal alarm on
01:06:44
my keys based on my keys and I'm always walking around the Target parking lot holding that dagger like [ __ ] with me
01:06:51
yeah at one point I drove Ash's car somewhere oh my God and I had to take the key off the the big giant chain
01:06:59
because I was like I literally can't bring this inside because it's so loud and heavy because there's so many
01:07:04
different jangly large things you would have been so protected girl I was like this is very loud it is pretty uncommon
01:07:12
but it's protective it is it's very protective remember when we were driving and I accidentally set off the personal
01:07:16
alarm and I couldn't figure out I thought I was gonna fly through a window I was like what just happened I thought
01:07:21
the same yeah but necessary because unfortunately people be murdering people people are murderers unfortunately
01:07:28
unfortunately we are the people that are most often yeah like women are the victims of that crime yeah so rip
01:07:34
Roseanne I know and um guys we hope you keep listening and we hope you keep it weird but not so weird that you blame a
01:07:43
girl for her own death when really it was the motherfucker's fault who killed her yeah don't do that love you bye bye
01:07:51
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