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00:02:27
What's up, Austin? Yay! Oh, my God. What? You're loud in here. Yay. It's so exciting.
00:02:43
Are you running in place? Where are you going? What's that? Are you running in place?
00:02:46
A little bit. It's just so loud and exciting. And hot. Jesus. It's hot here. This is insane.
00:03:03
Our second city of our 2025 tour. Yeah. It would have been our first, but we were waiting for it to kind of get a little cooler here.
00:03:15
And then we couldn't wait anymore. So we decided to come. We came and we match somehow.
00:03:21
This was a mistake. This was unplanned. This is what starts happening to your brain after 10 years of podcasting together.
00:03:29
That's right. Your purple sink. Aesthetic sinking is what they call it in science.
00:03:35
Well, tell them about your outfit since we're talking about it. Oh, I got this outfit.
00:03:40
It's by a designer named Kevin Holland. It has pockets. Thank you. Gorgeous. So pretty.
00:03:49
Thank you. And how about your outfit, Georgia? Thank you. I have a velvet, insane, drunk aunt at the Christmas party outfit that has, thank you.
00:04:00
Yes. It has questionable vintage stains on it. And cowboy boots. Yeah. Because we're in Texas.
00:04:13
That's right. Obviously. We're playing the part here. I love that aunt. The drunk aunt?
00:04:19
She just fed some cows and came in. She's like, God damn this Christmas party. Where's my eggnog and my cigarette?
00:04:26
Give it. I need to stain this dress. This is the true crime comedy podcast, My Favorite Murder, if you didn't.
00:04:35
Thank you. That's Karen Kilgariff. That's Georgia Hartstark. Oh, I met a Texas raccoon last night.
00:04:46
What's this? I met a raccoon. Vince and I were just going for a walk after dinner downtown.
00:04:53
I don't know if it's downtown, but it felt like it. There were buildings and stuff.
00:04:57
There were lots of buildings. And just like out of nowhere, a fucking raccoon jumps out of a trash can holding food and climbs into a gutter.
00:05:06
Boom. And I fucking lost my mind. A city raccoon is the most exciting thing to me.
00:05:13
And I was like, wait, wait, wait, come back. Come back, I have questions. I want to interview you.
00:05:18
Do you have an accent? That was so cute. So I'm clearly starved for animal love at this very moment.
00:05:26
Yeah. I mean, I guess the raccoons in Austin are very well fed because every bite of food I've had since I've gotten here
00:05:34
is the best thing I've ever eaten. It's ridiculous. Ridiculous. Have you had queso yet?
00:05:41
No, sadly. That'll be my goal before I leave here. Bucket of queso. Race to queso.
00:05:47
The next 48 hours. I got a hamburger at a place called Eureka, and they said these are the best burgers ever and we were like we from Los Angeles And then we ate it and it was the best burger ever Nice Yeah
00:06:05
Nice. Had some fajitas. Fajitas. And these, I think, homemade flour tortillas. Like, the tortillas were like someone cared about me as I ate it,
00:06:18
which is how you should make food, I think. Yes, yes. Anyway. Can we sit down? You want to sit down?
00:06:27
Yeah. Okay. Guys. Thank you. We're very new to this. It's been six years. Six fucking years.
00:06:37
It's a little crazy. We didn't think anyone was going to come this time. And you guys haven't heard the first night of Denver?
00:06:45
We didn't remember our lines. We don't know what we're doing. We don't know where we are most of the time.
00:06:51
Yeah. So if there's like podcast authorities here tonight, we're going to get a bad report card for sure.
00:06:58
Absolutely. Do you want to tell them about the podcast? Yeah. This is the speech I had to remember.
00:07:07
Literally, I had it printed out because I was like, this is the kind of thing that you just when you do it all the time, it's no big deal.
00:07:13
And then that first night in Denver, I was like, literally like, line. I don't get what.
00:07:18
But we like to explain ourselves because sometimes it shows there are people, we call them drag-alongs lovingly.
00:07:27
There are people who don't want to listen to this podcast but are forced to constantly.
00:07:31
And we say hi to you. We thank you for your patience and your love of your partner that you would listen to these two assholes blab around all through your road trip or whatever it is you're doing.
00:07:45
some drag alongs come and they don't listen to the podcast and they don't like it and they think
00:07:51
to themselves true crime and comedy those two things don't go together so we just want you to
00:07:56
know you know we're two people who grew up uh our childhoods were the type where there was a lot of
00:08:02
uh coping with comedy types of things so when we approach difficult the difficult parts of life
00:08:09
We often do that with humor. We don't think murder is funny. We just think we're funny.
00:08:16
So that said, if you don't like it, you can get the fuck out. Right? You got it.
00:08:26
Not only did I remember it, I added to it. I know. Yeah. That's how comfortable you are.
00:08:30
Yes. We're right back on. Like riding a bike. Yeah. An audio bike. An audio bike.
00:08:37
well yeah so we're gonna tell you some stories tonight should I should we do this yeah you go
00:08:44
first right I'm first I think yes okay all right let's do it so we have done almost 500 episodes
00:08:54
and I feel like a quarter of them have taken place in Texas I know many many many many do not
00:09:00
fuck around so it has been hard to find new stories in cities we go to except for Texas so
00:09:06
Great job. And we'd like to thank the Textless Monthly publication. Yes. Incredible, incredible publication.
00:09:17
Skip Hollinsworth, particularly, we would like to thank. He's an incredible writer who lets us regurgitate his stuff
00:09:27
and then go, hey, did you hear Skip Hollinsworth really research this story? It's great.
00:09:32
Well, it's funny that you say that because this story that I'm going to tell tonight.
00:09:36
It was kind of forgotten. It was a very high profile case here in Texas. It was kind of forgotten
00:09:42
except for in the small town it took place in. But then a journalist named Pamela Koloff
00:09:49
wrote a Texas Monthly story about it. You're not going to fucking believe that. That's the, yeah, our psychic purple link tonight.
00:09:55
And that revived the case, but it's still not as well known. Maybe you guys know it.
00:09:59
This is the kiss and kill murder from Odessa. Anyone from Odessa? Yes. So she wrote an article called A Kiss Before Dying. I remember the story from, you know,
00:10:11
late nights scrolling and it's just wild and unexpected. So here we go. Do you know it?
00:10:17
I do not. Okay. So the main source is the Texas Monthly article that I just said,
00:10:21
and a memoir by the cousin of the victim, Shelton Williams, called Washed in Blood.
00:10:27
Nope. Called Washed in the Blood. And so... Oh, those are very different. Those are two very different things.
00:10:34
As a person raised as a Catholic, those are two different ideas. Is that a thing?
00:10:41
What's that? Blood washing and blood washing. We love blood over in the Christian area.
00:10:46
We talk about it a lot. It's very holy. Gross. Sometimes. Okay. And the rest of the sources can be found in our show notes, but not right now because this is live.
00:10:56
In the future. In the future of show notes. All right, so in 1961, Betty Williams is a 17-year-old high school senior at Odessa High School.
00:11:05
It's about 300 miles away from here. It's the real place of the fictional place where Saturday Night Lights took place.
00:11:14
Oh, Friday Night Lights. That's what I meant. Yeah. Just a combination. Combination.
00:11:21
You know, the sketch football show, Saturday Night Lights. you can tell how well he grew up in sports i didn't we don't jewish people don't do sports
00:11:32
so we didn't i'm at the 50 yard line um it's a really really good show though yes it's incredible
00:11:41
do you know i once saw her what's her name she's so cute no not connie britain mika and kelly mika kelly vince and i were in germany on vacation we were at waiting at an elevator at her hotel and up comes Minka Kelly looking so gorgeous I couldn believe it And I was like oh she was with a boyfriend and I was like look at that that like um like you know
00:12:06
meathead she's with I was like he must be her trainer like good for her for getting a like
00:12:10
hot piece or whatever and we look it up later and he's the singer of Imagine Dragons no no yeah
00:12:16
I was like good for her for getting this honk whatever like I hope he like worships at her
00:12:22
feet. And he's like the singer of the biggest band that's ever. So what do I know? Not sports,
00:12:27
not music, podcasting, not podcasting. We just know this exact thing we're doing right now.
00:12:36
Luckily it's working out. Right. Okay. So it's about 300 miles west of here and it's a pretty
00:12:42
big town at this point, a booming population. There's local oil fields. So that falls the
00:12:48
population and there's money in the area because of that oil but the stereotype is that most of the
00:12:53
people with money live in nearby midland they don't stick in yeah rich over here um are you
00:13:02
really from midland congratulations do you think for the rest of this show you would be our audience
00:13:08
ambassador and whenever we pronounce something wrong or do it wrong everyone's going to yell
00:13:12
all at the same time but we don't know what anyone's saying minka kelly yeah so you can be
00:13:17
the one that we're going to look at you and be like, hey, Midland, what's going on? And you can
00:13:20
be like, they're saying Minka Kelly. She's agreeing to it. Okay, great. Great. So the quote is that Midlands is where you raise your kids. Odessa is where you raise hell.
00:13:31
Hey. And actually, a murderina named Rachel, I checked our emails and she wrote it and said,
00:13:37
Odessa has consistently voted as one of the most violent cities in Texas in the US as a whole
00:13:43
because of the rampant street races. I don't know why I pointed at you. Oh, shit, I wasn't supposed to tell anyone about you and your street racing.
00:13:53
I've been arrested for street racing and drag... What's the thing? Fading and dragging.
00:13:59
Midland, what is it? Furious. Fast and furious. Donuts. Donuts. Yeah. Street racing...
00:14:07
Sorry, what's your actual name? Christy? Drifting. Her name's not drifting. drifting christy drifter that's insane what a coincidence it is drifting that was what i was
00:14:20
thinking that's true she she passed the test good she is good that was a test midland okay rampant
00:14:26
street races drunk driving and then she wrote and you know drugs oh in the 60s it was similar so
00:14:32
that's where we are thank you to rachel the murderino for giving us a is that you no okay
00:14:38
I think this was in like 2018 that she wrote this, so she might not be a listener anymore.
00:14:43
Yeah. We're still kind of churning through that Gmail. There's a lot of stuff in there.
00:14:47
Right. Please be patient. That said, all things relative. And for Betty, Odessa is very square.
00:14:56
She's kind of, it sounds like me growing up in the suburbs where it's like, oh no, I'm
00:15:00
stuck in this place that I don't fit in. I want to get out, but it's the 60s, so you kind of can't leave, right?
00:15:06
They couldn't leave in the 60s, could they? Right. Everyone is locked in. Betty probably would have done really well in Austin or a bigger, hipper town.
00:15:17
But unfortunately, she's struggling in Odessa. She's a big fan of the writing of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg.
00:15:24
She loves Lenny Bruce's stand-up. And she frequently rails against segregation and calls out the racism she sees all around her,
00:15:33
even though she's raised by a Baptist preacher. So she's just like rebellious in a small town.
00:15:40
And also a good person. Yes. She likes to go against the grain. When she's bored, she goes to the local diner
00:15:48
wearing all black and white lipstick and not putting on a bra, which I think even today is like...
00:15:53
Oh my God! Right. Doing it. So Pamela Colliff describes Betty's appearance by saying she had, quote, sandy blonde hair that brushed her shoulders
00:16:04
and big expressive blue eyes that could feign sincerity when talking to authority figures but were alive with irreverence.
00:16:12
So she was, you know, sharp. Odessa is ruled, though, by football, shockingly, football team.
00:16:19
About 30 years later, as I said in the book, Friday Night Lights. Capital F. Yes.
00:16:28
And, you know, it is that culture there even then. And so in the 60s, the popular girls are known around town as the Kashmir Girls.
00:16:36
That's their nickname. I don't know why, because that sounds really fucking hot in Texas to be wearing cashmere everywhere.
00:16:44
Maybe like a light silk. Yeah. The light silk gang. The Kashmir Girls, a.k.a. the sweaty bitches.
00:16:50
That's right. That's right. And they even belong to little mini sororities within their high school.
00:16:58
and they're rich and, of course, obedient when their parents are paying attention.
00:17:03
They're conformists, unlike Betty. And her family does struggle financially, and her father is deeply religious,
00:17:09
and he's constantly reminding Betty of all the ways that she, in his eyes, fails to measure up to his very rigid set of standards.
00:17:17
So Betty does have friends, and she writes notes to them in classes, and um but she's just kind of over it in her city i yeah it sounds like she's very alone
00:17:32
or you know kind of alienated right and so she's cool but she's still a teenager and people know
00:17:37
her say that well she pretends to be above it all she also deeply wants to be accepted
00:17:41
and she sees the world in that classic teenage way where they think that things have to happen
00:17:47
immediately, you know, all this is to say it's difficult for her. It sounds like nowadays she maybe would have gotten some mental health help as we all need But back then and with religious parents it not going to happen So she does start having sex around with the boys at school because she bored
00:18:09
Did you just woohoo? I love you. You can't. You're right. It's fun. It's so fun. She's not wrong.
00:18:17
She's not incorrect. And so because of that, of course, she gets talked about a lot by the
00:18:23
popular girls. She dreams of getting out of Odessa and becoming an actress, but she also can't
00:18:29
imagine that and picture a realistic path forward. She's the oldest of her four. Her family's poor,
00:18:36
so she doesn't know where she'd get the money to leave or go to college. And so during the summer
00:18:41
between Betty's junior and senior year, she winds up in a relationship with a boy named Mac Herring.
00:18:47
And it's more like, not really a real relationship. It's more real than she's had in the past.
00:18:53
but it sounds like he just kind of isn't willing to like make it public that he's dating her they
00:18:59
won't go to he won't take her to parties and he won't acknowledge that you know that she's his
00:19:03
girlfriend give her give him his letter jacket as a thing i guess yeah it happens with sports it does
00:19:09
yeah it does so you're basically saying he's an asshole right yeah it's not ideal okay um and so
00:19:17
betty at the end of the summer maybe because she's feeling hurt she hooks up with someone else
00:19:21
and Mac finds out and ends the relationship. And so this is a huge blow for Betty.
00:19:27
It only gets worse when school starts. It's her senior year. And for one reason or another,
00:19:32
she doesn't get cast in the school play. And like I said, she wanted to be an actress.
00:19:35
It's like part of her personality. It's a really big deal to her. Also, it's where the kids who dump along other places go.
00:19:42
Theater department is like, that's where it's at. If you're not a jock and you're not a cheerleader, right?
00:19:48
Yeah, I can't. I have rehearsal. That's how we cope. I wish I had known that. I'm also not a good actress, but I could still have been there, right?
00:19:57
They would have accepted me. You would have done great in there. I could have built sets.
00:20:01
I don't know. Is that a thing? You love a black turtleneck. You would have been great.
00:20:07
So it sounds like this kind of, like, just kind of brings her down in a way that it sounds
00:20:13
like as someone with depression, she gets really depressed. Things get worse at home, and her friends all say that things have gotten pretty bad.
00:20:22
Her father, very religious, devote Baptists, but he takes it to the next level. He goes into her room and reads her diary and finds out about all the trice she's had,
00:20:33
and it sounds like her father is at least verbally abusive, and her mother is passive about it.
00:20:39
That's the most we kind of know about it. But by the winter, Betty is telling classmates that she wants to die.
00:20:47
Today, of course, as I said, this would be taken seriously, you would hope, and she'd get some mental health help.
00:20:54
But in 1961, everyone in the community just kind of chalks it up to Betty being dramatic.
00:20:58
Dramatic, of course. She spends the next several months telling multiple classmates that she wants to end her life
00:21:04
and asks them to help her to do so, which is such a cry for help. It's like, yeah, not even. Yeah. It's like people need you need to be you need the skills and the communication.
00:21:17
So you're a teenager and there's another teenager telling you a really scary thing that like, what do you do?
00:21:22
You laugh it off. You freak out. You don't know what to do. Right. And so it sounds like no one actually believes that she's going to go through with her plan.
00:21:31
and then on March 20th, 1961, Betty's at school and she runs into that summer ex and she says to
00:21:39
him, quote, it's been nice knowing you and when he asked her what she's talking about, she says
00:21:43
she's going to talk Mac into killing her, what she says. Two days later, Betty gets a ride home from
00:21:49
rehearsals for the school play but she's not in but it sounds like maybe she was a stage manager
00:21:54
or doing sets or something from a classmate named Ike and she suggests he comes back a half an hour
00:22:00
later and she'll sneak back out to meet him and she tells him she tells this guy Ike that Mac has
00:22:05
agreed to kill her and um Ike is like there's no way she's serious doesn't take it seriously I think
00:22:12
we have a photo of Mac and Betty actually I know isn't she lovely she's gorgeous I know
00:22:19
also like it's always that thing where it's like when people tell you and it feels like everyone
00:22:25
that ever went to high school. It's just like, oh, I was miserable. It sucked in this way.
00:22:30
Here's why I think I wasn't good. People didn't like me. And then it's like, why wouldn't anyone not like you?
00:22:36
That kind of thing where you're just like, yes, that's a teenage dream couple right there.
00:22:41
Right. Yeah. Meanwhile, I had the most fucked up bangs, and I plucked this eyebrow back to here.
00:22:48
I had a lot going against me. But I did have the theater. You had the theater. I did.
00:22:55
Um, so she, uh, at 1030 that night, she sneaks out of her house, meets Ike, and then Mac drives up to where they are.
00:23:05
And Ike is so sure that Betty had been joking about Mac killing her that he doesn't even stop her from getting out of the car and going with him.
00:23:14
He says that Betty turns over her, turns over her shoulder as she's leaving and says, quote, I've got to call his bluff even if he kills me.
00:23:22
so from Ike's perspective it sounds like the scenario Betty is imagining is from one of
00:23:29
one which Mac doesn't actually go through with it who knows what everyone what was going through
00:23:34
everyone's mind but um unfortunately for the rest of the story the only perspective we have
00:23:41
and the only version we have is Max and Betty's parents report so Betty's parents report her
00:23:46
missing the next morning. I'm burping, excuse me. Wow, it's really terrible on stage to do that.
00:23:55
Look, you'll work it out by the end of this tour. You'll never do it again. I wasn't in theater class. I don't know how to silently burp.
00:24:03
You just push it down and silently fart. It's not true. I don't know how to do that either.
00:24:10
It's not true. I'm having a heat splash. I know. Can you tell? Why is this so hard?
00:24:17
It's so weird. We do it all the time and we like doing it. It's just hard. It's really intense.
00:24:22
Especially when you're going through perimenopause. Yeah, that's the difference.
00:24:27
That's the difference. Six years later, this time menopause is upon us, ladies and gentlemen.
00:24:33
Six years ago, I was in my 30s still. Who is she? This feels so good. Who was she?
00:24:39
Do you want me to do that while you talk? Yes, please. I want some... Thank you.
00:24:44
I'm wearing velvet gown. Yeah, you're wearing that polyester, like the hottest thing you could be wearing.
00:24:51
Spanx. Yeah. What is happening? Yeah. Thank you. You're welcome. I appreciate you.
00:24:56
Okay. And we're back. So Betty's... All of that would have been edited out of the regular podcast.
00:25:02
That's right. So just like, now we just have to do it in front of you. That doesn't not...
00:25:05
Oh, she's a fan. Oh, do you want that fan? Oh, my God. Yeah, we'll take the fan.
00:25:09
Thank you. So nice. You're an angel. It's the fan from Moulin Rouge. Thank you so much.
00:25:17
But now you're going to be sweating. Yeah, you don't have a fan. No, you're okay.
00:25:20
She has a sweater on, so I think she's okay. Thank you. Oh, my God. That was just...
00:25:26
That's great. What a look, too. Do I? I mean... Is it working? This look is coming together.
00:25:33
Snap it out. Slay. Slay, girl. Slay. Slay, bitch. You good? Okay. Woo! And death drop right in front of this.
00:25:44
Come on! Okay, the drag-alongs are angry. They're like, what is this fucking thing?
00:25:53
What is happening? We don't get it. People over 40 should not be on stage. why is this happening we're here to fight for the sweaty bitches that's right
00:26:04
you know texas austin gets it so okay back into the shit they report her missing and the police
00:26:15
quickly pull out her classmates for questioning including tell the son that tell them that the
00:26:21
last time they saw her she was getting into um mac's car and that you know things were not going
00:26:26
well with her and police question Mac. He claims that he picked Betty up, like Ike said, but that
00:26:31
he dropped her back off at her house at midnight without waiting to see if she got in, which we
00:26:34
know you guys don't fucking do in Texas, right? Like very rude. Right. This obviously is suspicious
00:26:41
to investigators for that very reason. And she was wearing, she had snuck out of her house. So
00:26:46
she was wearing like pajamas and like a duster robe. And so, um, and they're skeptical that he
00:26:53
would leave a girl standing on her porch in her pajamas. And they're also skeptical that she would have gone back through the front door.
00:27:00
Because when you sneak out, you have to sneak back in, usually. Hopefully through a window.
00:27:04
Hopefully there's a window that's not too high. The window I used to have to sneak in and out of, I think, back to now, I could have
00:27:12
broken my fucking neck. It's insane. Was it second story? Second story. And then you had a leap to a landing.
00:27:19
What? that was like over the shed so probably wasn't very sturdy to begin with i could have fallen
00:27:25
right through it and then you had to leap back into the door into the window all that on drugs
00:27:31
and yeah we all do a lot of things and we all have and it's fine it's really fun and then you
00:27:38
get a podcast yeah that's right if you do enough for those things you get a podcast
00:27:43
so um so she had to sneak back in so probably didn't go to the front door and after a 45
00:27:51
minute interrogation the whole story comes out he's he says that betty had been begging him
00:27:56
like others at school to kill her and he said he finally agreed to it and that she this is his
00:28:03
story selected a 12-gauge shotgun and that he did it he admits it in 1961 like what the fuck what
00:28:10
I mean, he brings police to the land that his father uses for hunting about 25 miles out.
00:28:17
And there he leads them to a pond and they see that there's blood on the ground and they ask him to retrieve her body.
00:28:24
He takes off his leather jacket and all his clothes goes into the water and pulls her body to shore.
00:28:31
I know. Because the idea we have to entertain this idea, too. The Mac has been pulled into this idea.
00:28:37
So we don't want to. Yeah. But there is a horrible consideration that this is a person who is trying to just give a person what they want because they are begging for it.
00:28:48
Like, that's, it's a crazy consideration, but what a horrible situation that would be.
00:28:53
Right. And, like, you'd hope the first thing they do is, like, go get help. Do something.
00:28:58
Tell one other person. Yeah. He said that, it's just awful, she chose the spot. she was like into it she gave him a kiss and then he shot her one of betty's close friends said that
00:29:16
it was always abundantly clear that betty truly didn't want to die and that betty was bluffing
00:29:21
trying to get mac to tell her that she loved she was loved and wanted by him um this friend says
00:29:27
quote i always believed mac's script was i'll teach her a lesson she'll be so scared at how
00:29:32
close we came to doing this she will grow up and stop the dramatic the dramatics um and that
00:29:38
betty's thought was she thinks betty's thought was when max sees how miserable i am and how much i
00:29:43
love him he'll realize that we should be together so just teenage decisions horrifying every direction
00:29:50
yeah so um something terribly flawed led him to step over the line and and shoot and um So at that point a highway patrolman who was present at the scene says quote it didn move him when he pulled her body out of the water
00:30:07
or when he said that he had put a shotgun to her head. It was as cold-blooded and premeditated as it could be.
00:30:15
So the authorities think that he did do it, like wanted to do it. It sounds like they didn't see any remorse and didn't show any fear or regret is what they think.
00:30:27
Mac is charged with Betty's murder, but it sounds like he gets out on parole in the beginning
00:30:33
because he goes back to school and around town and he doesn't experience any negative impacts to his social standing.
00:30:39
He still goes to parties. Remember, he was like, you know, football player, popular.
00:30:44
He goes to parties. He goes to he still dates girls. they'll still date him and the attitude around town by everyone except for Betty's close friends
00:30:53
is that she tricked Mac into killing her so they have sympathy for him and um and you know her
00:31:01
friends don't believe it at all and you know maybe who knows but in 1961 you know the mentality was
00:31:11
so different of course and just as Betty was never offered any kind of resources when she was asking
00:31:15
classmates to kill her. No mental health resources were offered to the students at Odessa High School
00:31:20
in the aftermath of her murder. Mack is charged and his case goes to trial a year later in February
00:31:26
of his senior year of high school. At the time, this is without the biggest crime story in Texas
00:31:33
in decades, the press gives it the name kiss and kill murder. And it's a huge pool of jury selection.
00:31:41
So there's like hundreds of teenagers showing up to the trial to watch it, and just people are obsessed with it.
00:31:48
Most people expect Mac to be convicted because he admitted to shooting Betty, and what winds up happening is that his lawyers mount a temporary insanity defense,
00:31:58
and he takes the stand saying he deeply regrets his actions, but at the moment he was convinced he was doing the right thing.
00:32:05
And in the end, after 11 hours of deliberation, the jury finds Mac not guilty. The prosecutor tries to appeal a decision, but the verdict is upheld, and Mack goes on to live a very normal life, remaining in Odessa, and dies at the age of 75 in 2019.
00:32:22
I know. Like, what? I mean, yeah, this is an insane story. I've never heard this, and I mean, yeah.
00:32:33
Just, like, imagine being on that jury. Like, how do you make any decision? If you read this story in the news, like if I did, I would absolutely go to that courthouse because I'd be like, what is going on?
00:32:46
Like, how are they even arguing? Right. What are the details of this and how are they arguing it?
00:32:51
Right, right. Yeah. So as I said, Betty's cousin, Shelton, wrote the memoir while he was writing in 2001.
00:33:02
He visits Odessa High School. And by that point, a lot of Betty's story had been lost to time.
00:33:07
And the students don't really know the details. But Betty's ghost is like a big deal at Odessa High School.
00:33:15
Like there's tales of it everywhere. So some believe that if you drive up to the side of the school auditorium and blink your lights, she'll appear.
00:33:25
And they talk about her being in the auditorium where the theater was. That's like where she remains because she wanted to be so you can see her ghost there.
00:33:34
Um, others, others think you can see her, um, in the sports field and a teacher says, quote,
00:33:41
there's even a propriety dispute between athletics and theater about whose ghost she is.
00:33:47
He says, I know that's okay. That shouldn't be going on. Let's settle that dispute and just say
00:33:54
it's everybody's fucking ghost. What are you doing? And I mean, there could be more than one
00:33:58
ghosts, right? I mean, she belongs to everyone. Yeah. Well, this person said that I can settle that one.
00:34:06
She belongs to the theater. Oh, okay. Just kind of sweet that they, like, claimed her, you know?
00:34:11
Yeah, you're right. Yeah. Maybe. And Rachel, the murderino who doesn't listen anymore,
00:34:16
said, quote, I graduated from Odessa High School. Betty is a fixture in the culture of the school where
00:34:24
kids go on Betty hunts late at night in or around campus where they hope to see her in the windows of the auditorium
00:34:31
peering out over the school theater productions tend to ask for Betty's blessing so everything
00:34:37
goes smoothly as well before their new play so she's remembered um and theater students say
00:34:43
sometimes doors close mysteriously or furniture moves mysteriously stage lights like blink on and
00:34:49
if you say the name Betty. Sometimes you hear unaccounted for footsteps crossing the stage,
00:34:58
and her presence is always talked about fondly. At Odessa High School, Betty is now beloved,
00:35:04
and that is the story of the kiss-and-kill murder. Wow, wow. Wow. So heavy. Thank you.
00:35:19
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Bye. I'm going to take a left turn now. Please. Why don't I just talked into the fan and not the microphone.
00:39:45
You got to take those theater classes. I swear to God. Okay. Well, I'm going to tell you a story that's very different.
00:39:55
And it kind of is about, I think the simplest way to boil it down is like, nerds for Texas, Texas nerds.
00:40:05
Right? Okay, so it starts in 1979 when a 27-year-old rare books dealer in Austin named Tom Taylor
00:40:14
gets what he thinks is this golden opportunity, a chance to buy a valuable document at a very low
00:40:20
price, a copy of the Texas Declaration of Independence. Huh, you guys have your own? Yeah.
00:40:27
These are a very independent group of people. Oh. Yeah, and they like things big. Okay.
00:40:33
Yeah. So for anyone who isn't from the state or who might need a refresher as to why Texas has its own Declaration of Independence, that's me.
00:40:43
Oh, yeah. Karen, the scholar. You're going to tell us. Tell us everything. Yeah. Guess what?
00:40:48
OK. That's because Texas used to be a part of Mexico until it declared independence in 1836.
00:41:00
You got it. which was the same year that the Declaration of Independence was published.
00:41:07
And it was an independent, the state was an independent republic for nearly 10 years
00:41:12
after breaking away from Mexico before joining the United States in... Good job, nerd!
00:41:22
Yes, Texas nerds represent. She's been waiting her whole fucking life for that. She knew.
00:41:28
She knew we were going to ask. That was incredible. You did it. Oh, wait, it really is Moulin Rouge.
00:41:34
It is. I thought she was making it up. Like, oh, it's red. It's Moulin Rouge. No, just reading, just reading like I always do.
00:41:45
And then the next thing I wrote was history lesson over. So the seller who approaches Tom to sell this is asking for for his copy of the Texas Declaration of Independence which would be around give it a whirl what airway 70 79 79 11 000 is going to be 68 000 50 oh by the way we
00:42:08
retiring this this tour we decided because we just georgia keeps saying that i refuse
00:42:14
i just hate it it's never we're never right disappointing every time i kind that's kind of
00:42:21
why I love it. Okay, that's fine. That sounds like the podcast. Oh yeah, that's us. Which is
00:42:25
disappointing, but we love it. Disappointing. We're never really right, but we love it.
00:42:31
So while Tom's specialty is actually English literature, he knows enough about the rare
00:42:37
items business that he's willing to bet that he can resell this copy for a way higher price,
00:42:42
and so he buys it. And then he gets wind that there's a group of men who have raised enough
00:42:46
money to buy a copy of the United States Declaration of Independence. You've heard of that, the
00:42:52
Nicolas Cage one, because they want to display it in Dallas. So Tom talks these men into buying
00:42:59
his copy of the Texas Declaration of Independence to get the same frame and go right next to it.
00:43:06
Yeah, twins. Twinsies. They agree on the price of $20,000. All right, that's a profit.
00:43:16
which in today's money might be $68,000. You don't do the same one. Okay, $82,000.
00:43:25
$90,000. Damn it. Very close. Okay, but first, obviously, these men want to check
00:43:30
the Texas Declaration of Independence's authenticity. Sure. So they compare Tom's version of it.
00:43:38
I say Texas Declaration of Independence in this story about 100 times. Let's call it the TDI.
00:43:44
The TDI. TDI. There you go. That sounds like one of those technical colleges you go to. There's commercials
00:43:51
for them. I went to TDI and now I have a job. So they compare Tom's TDI against the copies that are
00:44:00
held right here in Austin at the University of Texas. Okay. So like there's legit. Hey.
00:44:07
Oh my God. So there's a legit one and they could be like, like hold them up next to each other.
00:44:12
Yes, exactly. There was the original and then they made copies. Got it. I'll go into that later. But
00:44:17
if I guess the amount of copies and the details, I'll be wrong. She'll be right, but I'll be wrong.
00:44:24
Okay, so the only difference that they can find when they compare it is that the text on Tom's
00:44:31
copy looks a little bit blurry compared to the rest. But when the original documents were printed
00:44:37
back in 1836. It's when they were printed. It's when they were printed. They printed 1,000 total. The printers, is she arguing? She's like, that's actually incorrect,
00:44:52
and I wish you wouldn't continue with the story until you get it right. The printers that made
00:44:58
them had to issue a public apology for inconsistencies in quality because the original
00:45:03
printers they had to print those amid actual battles with Mexican troops so that sometimes
00:45:10
they were in the dark they were breaking they were like setting up and breaking down the printing
00:45:14
presses you can't take a break no like a couple months off or something from war no they don't
00:45:20
let you they just won't let you um so they had to move them from place to place and so actually
00:45:26
the blurry text kind of makes it seem like they're legit. Yeah. And so these men pay Tom $20,000.
00:45:35
Great. And not long after, Tom gets a chance to buy yet another copy of the Texas Declaration of Independence, this time for $15,000.
00:45:44
And now this feels extremely lucky because that first sale went so well. So Tom jumps on this sale too, and he winds up reselling this copy for $30,000.
00:45:55
Hmm. $99,000. $135,000. See, it's never satisfying. It's not satisfying. It's never satisfying.
00:46:03
It's kind of just irritating. Then lo and behold, Tom finds out about a third opportunity.
00:46:11
No, no. I think we're all on to him. Yeah. So this one, it's for $30,000. He resells it for $33,000.
00:46:20
We don't have to worry about what happens in today's money. But this is when Tom starts to question his luck.
00:46:26
there were only a thousand copies of the original printed and before 1970 there were only five known
00:46:33
original copies left okay and so he's like i run across three of the five that's insane
00:46:39
so he starts to worry if what he has bought and sold are fake and if so who is making them and
00:46:46
this is the story of tom taylor's investigation into the texana artifacts wow yes yes or no he
00:46:54
He should have just walked away and, you know, wiped his hands of it and enjoyed the...
00:47:00
Well, they bought it. Not my problem. He just never thinks about it again. But that's the thing.
00:47:05
He's a good guy. Okay, so the sources for this story that we used are an article from the great Texas Monthly entitled Forgery, Texas Style, by a writer named Gregory Curtis.
00:47:18
And then an article from the New York Times called Lone Star Fakes by Lisa Belkin.
00:47:23
and an article from the Antiques Roadshow sub-page on their website called Who Faked the Texas Independent Documents by Sarah K. Elliott.
00:47:34
You know when Antiques Roadshow's getting in on this shit. It is serious. The rest are in our future show notes that don't exist right now.
00:47:42
So we're going to talk now about what I said there, which is Texana. It's Texana artifacts.
00:47:50
So Texana is, I've never heard of it. It's basically anything reminiscent of the culture of Texas.
00:47:56
So like the delicious Tex-Mex cuisine I've been eating or Tonky tonks or your cowboy boots or chicken shit bingo, chicken shit bingo in the afternoon.
00:48:06
You don't know how sad we were when he found out it's Sundays only. Oh, I know that was one of the best days of our life.
00:48:14
Being a chicken chick bingo. Yeah, it was epic. I don't think anyone knows what we're talking about.
00:48:20
Yeah, they do. You guys have chicken shit bingo in fucking Austin. So awesome. Jealous.
00:48:26
Yes. One of the other, one of these other things that I wanted to name is Willie Nelson getting
00:48:34
stoned, but it's too late now. Sorry. It's okay. We needed to have a chicken ship bingo moment.
00:48:40
Either way, this is basically a catch-all for historic artifacts or collectibles like old maps,
00:48:47
personal items owned by Texas's forefathers. So for decades following the formation of modern Texas,
00:48:53
there isn't much interest in these kinds of items from collectors or rare items dealers as a whole.
00:49:02
So even very important artifacts like the Texas Declaration of Independence are not considered particularly valuable.
00:49:09
The first notable Texana collector is a New Jersey oil businessman and a history buff named Thomas Streeter.
00:49:19
so he takes a lot of business trips out to Texas in the 20s and 30s and he buys a bunch of books
00:49:25
and artifacts and he is actually credited with gathering the first significant collection of
00:49:31
Texana in the world but in 1957 when Streeter offers to sell his entire collection to the
00:49:38
University of Texas interest in Texana is so low they don't want it no thanks we're not interested
00:49:46
in our own history or anything that's been going on here. Oh, man. So he winds up selling everything to Yale.
00:49:54
Boo. Even the Texas state government doesn't care much about the historical documents in their possession,
00:50:02
land grants, meeting minutes, even the original manuscript of the famous Texas Revolutionary Era victory or death letter
00:50:09
that William B. Travis wrote, which is the namesake of the county that we're in right now.
00:50:16
Those are all put on display without any security measures. And in the 60s, countless historical artifacts are stolen from public institutions.
00:50:27
It's like going into a diner and taking the salt and pepper shaker. And like, yoink, I'll take that.
00:50:32
But it's the Texas Declaration of Motherfucking Independence. No one cares. They're just gone.
00:50:39
People are like, I thought we had that thing up here. And actually, could we take a look?
00:50:43
Because we can see what it would have looked like. Yep. It's like, who stole my big thing?
00:50:49
I could have sworn this wasn't an empty frame yesterday. But I guess. You just replace it with any old other newspaper front page or something.
00:50:58
You're just like, unless you've got your readers on, you have no idea. So, but then Texas's economic boom and the growth of urban sprawl.
00:51:10
I don't know if you heard about this, but Texas got super rich on oil a little after this.
00:51:14
So these old traditional rural ways of life start disappearing across the state, right?
00:51:20
And as they do, the older generations start to pass away, and there's this new sense of nostalgia for the old way of Texas living.
00:51:28
And people get more interested in finding and collecting Texana, and the value of these items start going up and up.
00:51:35
And as they do, rare items dealers in the state start prioritizing Texana. It becomes more and more profitable heading into the 70s.
00:51:42
Now there's a security guard standing in front of that framed piece of paper. So in 1986, a few years after Tom Taylor's first declaration score, his suspicions are confirmed.
00:51:56
So let's take a look at Tom Taylor. This is him in 2021. There he is. Yeah? He likes books.
00:52:05
So honest. He loves the past. And he's honest. He doesn't take the money and run.
00:52:10
But he also, based on that shirt, parties hardy. Totally. He's like, make no mistake.
00:52:17
I will be at Chicken Ship Bingo this Sunday. Meet me there. Okay. But this is 1986.
00:52:26
Okay. So this is the year that Tom learns a friend and fellow printer was asked to authenticate yet another original copy of the TDI.
00:52:36
and it had recently come up on the rare items market. And so his friend started comparing the copy
00:52:45
against one housed at the University of Texas. And at first glance, they seemed identical,
00:52:50
but then he spotted a crucial difference. The text on his copy seemed much narrower than the original.
00:52:58
So Tom's friend, like any good printer, knows that ink doesn't shrink over time,
00:53:03
especially when it has lead in it. which is what they used back then in the 1830s.
00:53:10
So the only explanation was that this document he was authenticating was printed way after, and it was a fake.
00:53:18
So now Tom decides he's going to devote his time to becoming the go-to guy when it comes to authenticating
00:53:25
the Texas Declaration of Independence, which is quite a pastime. I mean, you're at a party, and you ask someone what they do,
00:53:32
and they say that. How do you respond? And it's like, um, have you watched Real Housewives?
00:53:40
It's also good. So he hunts down the 20-ish known copies, the ones that are on display and also in private collections,
00:53:51
and he forensically analyzes them, and he discovers there are actually 10 not five as previously thought that are genuine copies of the TDI which means about half of them are fakes So including two copies that Tom bought and sold himself
00:54:09
So he's a part of it. Oh, shit. Yeah. But he didn't like that. No. Not our boy Tom.
00:54:14
Don't make me a criminal. No, no, no, no. For sure. But they're really good fakes.
00:54:18
So the people in the institutions that have been duped by these fakes include several universities here in Texas and beyond, the Dallas Public Library, and even the private collection of former Governor Bill Clements.
00:54:35
What? Got some Clements heads in the house tonight. Yeah! Yeah. So Tom starts finding very subtle tells in these fakes,
00:54:47
like inaccuracies in text dimensions. Stay with me. Use of inks and fonts that don't exist back then.
00:54:53
Someone did copy paste and like shrunk the font. Come on, guys. Come on. It just says Yahoo at the bottom.
00:55:02
And there's even small typos in the fakes. No. So by looking through sales records,
00:55:08
Tom's able to trace these fakes back to these three dealers who were very active in the 70s.
00:55:16
I'm going to introduce you now to these three rare antiquities Texana dealers, starting with a man named John Jenkins.
00:55:27
So we take a look at John Jenkins. Oh! Oh, he got a lot of chips in front of him.
00:55:33
Yeah. That's amazing. That's a fucking time and place. That's like... You know that cigarette and those nails?
00:55:41
Yep. Over that lady over there? Oh, yeah. Fuck yeah. That's me. She's like, raise, raise.
00:55:47
You got it. You got a good hand. Raise. You got a raise. You should raise. All right.
00:55:53
Stay. Stay. Who's winning? That's chips. Yeah. Okay. John Jacobs grew up in Beaumont, Texas.
00:56:02
And it's great, right? So awesome. All the chips. and cats. He takes an early interest in rare objects. He, like, as a kid makes money selling
00:56:14
rare coins. And then when he graduates from UT, he starts his own business selling rare coins and
00:56:20
books and historical documents. But he's also a big Texas personality. He is fond of Stetsons,
00:56:26
as we saw, alligator skin cowboy boots, like you like, and even mink coats, like I like.
00:56:34
What? He wears mink coats. Oh, shit, yeah. I didn't put that together. Put that whole look together.
00:56:42
The alligator boots and a mink coat, nice Stetson. Oh, my God. Probably a nice, one of those brown cigarettes.
00:56:49
It's real long. Yeah. And some barbecue. He sits behind a massive desk in an equally massive mahogany chair
00:56:59
decorated with snake and dragon carvings. And he spends his off hours, as we saw in the photo, gambling in Vegas
00:57:06
under the fake name Austin Squatty. Does that mean something? We don't know. Perhaps.
00:57:14
No, no. They say no. Squatty, okay. Austin Squatty. I'm going to check into hotels with that name from now on.
00:57:22
You'll never find me. He's a high roller, regularly winning and losing enormous amounts of money at the tables.
00:57:31
so another dealer is named William Simpson he's far less eccentric but equally successful at
00:57:38
selling his collectibles he opens his shop in Houston in 1964 and he sells things Houston he
00:57:45
sells what that's it am I wrong or did that sound like a boo and a yay at the same time
00:57:52
so whose side are we on Houston nobody we're neutral we're neutral we're yeah we love everybody
00:58:00
equally. He sells things like crystals, linens, and furniture, but as Texana becomes more popular,
00:58:08
he jumps on that bandwagon, and he starts holding auctions that are packed and profitable.
00:58:14
Half the time, people are buying from rarities dealers like Jenkins and Simpson,
00:58:18
but they aren't collectors or enthusiasts. They're usually other rarities dealers who want to get
00:58:23
something for less and then turn it around and sell it for a bigger profit. That's how popular
00:58:28
has become. And that's what Tom Taylor was doing. And this makes for a highly competitive industry
00:58:34
full of gossip and clickiness and enemies and frenemies, just like the real housewives.
00:58:42
Having a good eye and good taste is one thing, but without the right people skills,
00:58:46
a dealer could be dismissed as kind of a joke. And that's exactly how both Jenkins and Simpson
00:58:52
come to view the man linked to all the dupes Tom Taylor keeps finding. And that man's name
00:58:57
is C. Dorman David. And I think we have a picture of him. God, he looks like your new stepdad.
00:59:06
You know what I mean? Kids, I met a man and I want you to meet your new stepdad.
00:59:13
Yeah. You know? Yeah. There's a bit of a... He's like, I'm going to stop dyeing my hair
00:59:20
but I'm not going to stop dyeing my eyebrows. That vibe? It's a look. there's an amazing picture of him that I think
00:59:29
Molly didn't clear for like we couldn't clear it but it's black and white he's kind of like
00:59:33
this it looks like he wrote a book about Carl Jung or something so he's kind of like this and he's got
00:59:39
a turtleneck and a blazer on and he's like over to the side and that's the last picture I saw so I forgot
00:59:45
this is the picture this has a true AI quality where it's like yeah but anyway so he was born in 1937 in Houston to very very wealthy parents He grows up he a tall imposing man He has a reputation as both a womanizer
01:00:05
He ends up having, yes, applaud for the womanizer. Absolutely, because you know why?
01:00:11
He has seven wives over the span of his life. Wait, seriously? Yes. I wasn't wrong.
01:00:17
Stepdad, stepdad, stepdad. Yes. Yeah. They just keep having to go, here's your new stepdad.
01:00:24
Yeah. Oh, God. Roll it through. He keeps taking me to the tracks when he tells Mom we're actually going to the mall.
01:00:29
He takes me to the tracks to bet on horses or something. He keeps asking me to pluck his eyebrows for him.
01:00:37
It's cheap and wrong. Obviously, he's an incredibly charismatic and charming man because he marries and divorces seven women.
01:00:46
Yeah, you've got to do it for at least a minute. Yeah. High five. Okay. But he also has a reputation of being a real wild card.
01:00:55
There's a story that everyone tells about David wanting to go buy cigarettes, and he drives his car through the front of the store.
01:01:03
What the fuck? Yeah. He's just like, I can't bother to park. I got to get in there.
01:01:09
Just go all the way, I guess. Yeah. If you want those cigarettes. Make those people clean it up.
01:01:14
So he's also known for his rich knowledge of Texas history and his great eye for artifacts.
01:01:22
When he's in his 20s, he starts traveling through Texas, through the South, then into Mexico, aggressively collecting Texana and other rare items.
01:01:30
And by the mid-60s, he opens a shop in Houston called The Bookman. No. Liar. You're lying.
01:01:37
it's a beautiful store filled with an impressive collection but it actually looks so awesome
01:01:43
ostentatious that it intimidates customers and people don't go there what it's like too fancy
01:01:48
yeah yeah so uh the store doesn't make much money but david's rich he's a rich nepo baby so he
01:01:57
doesn't care and he just keeps running that business and marrying those women yeah he's like
01:02:03
Well, if no one comes in and buys something today, I'm going to have to get a divorce and remarry someone else.
01:02:08
That's it. Yeah, I have to. It does bother him, though, that his fellow dealers, John Jenkins and William Simpson, keep besting him in the deals that they're making, especially Jenkins.
01:02:20
They trade with each other often. And because David has the better eye, he actually finds and gets the most valuable items first in his collection.
01:02:29
but then Jenkins is such a masterful negotiator he always seems to successfully lowball David
01:02:35
who is a little bit gullible so David's all about the like this is the real deal and the legit thing
01:02:41
and I paid this much money for it and then Jenkins is like waits until no one else makes an offer and
01:02:46
he's like fine I'll give you half and that keeps happening so what starts out as a strong you know
01:02:52
a working friendship sours, and these men become enemies. But even beyond Jenkins, it's really the dealing community at large that David has a problem with.
01:03:02
He has a well-known habit of overspending. This is what I just said. So it's like he basically outprices himself.
01:03:09
Yeah, you can't do that. Because he's like, I'll pay any price for that old pair of Willie Nelson boots or whatever.
01:03:15
People are like, no, sir. so all the while David's wild card reputation remains and rumors begin to swirl that he's
01:03:23
hawking stolen goods at auction people suspect he's behind the bulk of the Texana artifacts that
01:03:29
are going missing from Texas libraries and museums oh he's just he's the one guy just swooping in and
01:03:35
yeah he's like I got a library card but you know what I'm gonna do with it not looking at microfiche motherfuckers. I'm doing something else. Of course, David denies this,
01:03:46
but in a kind of wink, wink away to people, um, he titles one of his, so they guess the sellers
01:03:52
make catalogs of the stuff that they have that people can buy. And he titles one of his catalogs,
01:03:57
quote, the bookman offers for sale, Texas books from a recent robbery. bro he's just like he's funny he's charming he's divorced he's married he's divorced
01:04:08
he's doing it all he's got to play it cool though like no because on the next catalog he puts a
01:04:16
mocked up wanted poster with his own face on it it's like don't do the hard work for the
01:04:22
authorities you know what i mean like make them find you i think he's like so rich he's just bored
01:04:27
where he's just like, come on, everybody. So around the same time, he's honing his forgery skills.
01:04:34
There's really no one more suited to create fakes than him because he deals with old artifacts for a living.
01:04:41
He has all this raw material and the money to buy it and to cut it up. So he cuts endpapers out of his own antique books
01:04:49
to use as the base for his dupes. He perfects his calligraphy. He's so rich, he can perfect his calligraphy.
01:04:55
he even hires a trusted lithographer lithographer lithographer to enlarge negatives of genuine
01:05:03
documents so he can study every detail and then he prints versions of him of of them himself
01:05:09
using um ink he makes out of candle smoke and linseed oil it's fucking impressive as shit but
01:05:16
do something good right you know take those skills richie rich and do something good with
01:05:21
them. Yeah. No, he says no. But in May in 1971, on his way to a show around 3,000, oh no, sorry,
01:05:30
on his way to show around 3,000 documents to a potential buyer in Waco, David gets stopped by a
01:05:35
Texas Ranger and a Texas State Archivist. What? Yeah. They have a, they can woo woo, they can pull
01:05:42
you over? Down here, there's a, they've set up a program where archivists drive around with Texas
01:05:49
strangers Uh Yeah They been doing it for years I baffled Uh So these guys go after him They accuse him of stealing the documents he has from the state archives So that the archivist is like hey I saw you leave my we saw you leave the back room
01:06:07
And he went and got himself a ranger and then they pulled him over. Okay. When they look through the documents that he's carrying, they find a few that are, that they believe are stolen.
01:06:16
And without any proof, they confiscate the documents. So word gets around about this and David's already kind of rocky reputation.
01:06:25
driving into the cigarette store, takes a no-stay. Marrying everybody. Fucking Jesus.
01:06:31
He's like, my wife made me do it. As does David's mental health. So he falls into a deep depression
01:06:39
and he's already what Maren quoted as, he's already a lover of drugs. Is that what they call it?
01:06:48
Yeah. A lover of, I have a different name for that. A lover of drugs. Is that what you called yourself
01:06:53
when you were doing the drugs? Yeah, I'm not an addict. I'm a lover of drugs. It's more of a passion of mine, you know.
01:07:04
So when he's in this very low state, he decides the thing that I've told all of you time and again not to do.
01:07:11
He decides to try heroin. What the fuck? No. It's true. Never heroin. Whatever else you want.
01:07:19
I don't care. Fall into a K-hole over and over again. We don't do heroin. we never do heroin. Okay, that's the rule. Thank you. Thanks for the support. Thanks for the
01:07:30
heroin support. There's one angry heroin dealer in the back like, thanks a lot. What about my business?
01:07:41
I'll find my place and then you'll be sorry. So in the summer of 1971, two men are arrested in
01:07:47
connection with the library and museum thefts that have been targeting Texana goods and they waste no
01:07:53
time in implicating David as the mastermind. He really does look like a mastermind. He totally
01:07:58
looks like a mastermind. He has mastermind eyebrows. This pretty much confirms those rumors that he was
01:08:03
selling stolen items at auctions, but more than a year passes, he isn't charged with anything.
01:08:09
It's weird. That happens to rich people all the time. Anyways, meanwhile, his life is unraveling.
01:08:16
He is entirely caught up in this horrible addiction. He's doubling down on his forgeries
01:08:21
On the few occasions where he manages to show up for business meetings, he is basically very overt about the fact that he makes fakes.
01:08:29
He loses all credibility. His customers abandon him. And he ultimately sells the entirety of his rare Texana goods to none other than his enemy John Jenkins.
01:08:40
Sorry, enemies, John Jenkins and William Simpson. And then he unceremoniously retires.
01:08:46
and then the year after in June of 1972, he gets arrested on drug charges. He's not in custody for long though
01:08:54
because he is rich. Oh, but no, that actually isn't true. It's because he jumps Bond
01:09:01
and he lives on the lam for seven fucking years. Seven years. For seven years. Damn.
01:09:08
Yeah. Maybe that was an on the lam picture. Yeah. I feel like he could do that back then
01:09:12
a lot easier than these days. Than today. Let's try it. Let's go. Here we go. Goodbye.
01:09:19
Eventually, exhausted by life on the run, he turns himself into police. He hadn't been married in so long that he was like, come on.
01:09:28
Gotta get that hit. In Texas in 1980, he serves a year in prison. He gets out, and then he cleans his life up.
01:09:36
Okay. That's nice. Yeah. And let's hear it for cleaning your fucking life up. I mean...
01:09:42
It's a good thing. It's tough to do. In 1980, the same year he turns himself in on those drug charges,
01:09:49
that's when Tom Taylor sells his first Texas Declaration of Independence. So that's kind of
01:09:54
how that storylines kind of meld together. We're now back to that. So Tom begins, so a few years
01:10:01
later, Tom begins his deep investigation into the Texana dupes. And amid his ongoing investigative
01:10:09
of work, the two men, he and David finally cross paths. Tom sets up a meeting at David's house.
01:10:18
And by this point, Tom's unearthed 13 different fake historical Texas documents that have been
01:10:24
forged over 50 times since 1970. And they're all traceable to Jenkins, Williams, and David.
01:10:32
And poor Tom and his Hawaiian shirts, just like, I've got to fight for the justice of
01:10:37
documents good documents not these goddamn dirty documents um this is beyond the texas
01:10:45
declaration of independence for example tom digs up a document that david had sold as authentic
01:10:50
as the authentic announcement of the founding of houston ostensibly from 1836 but it uses a
01:10:58
typeface that did not exist at that time sans serif i don't fucking think so But according to Tom, when he confronts David about these fakes,
01:11:11
David just seems kind of confused. My biggest pet peeve when you're like, hey, you lied,
01:11:17
and the person's like, I'm not sure what you're talking about. Oh, no. Like when you have to, yeah, they just pretend that they don't even understand the accusation.
01:11:26
That's weird. I don't know what these words mean. You want someone to be like, yeah, motherfucker.
01:11:32
Yeah, I did. Own it. And then he pulls out the catalog with his wanted face. It's me!
01:11:37
I told you! Yes. So he doesn't admit to any wrongdoing. But at this point, Tom doesn't need an admission from him.
01:11:45
He can prove these items are fake with irrefutable evidence. And so he goes public with those findings.
01:11:52
And then that story gets picked up by a New York Times reporter named Lisa Belkin in 1989.
01:11:58
So she writes an article. entitled Lone Star Fakes. And it dives into Tom's crusade to weed out forged documents.
01:12:05
And it's especially significant because it's the first time C. Dorman David publicly admits to forgery.
01:12:12
So in an interview with Belkin, the now 51-year-old David admits he's directly responsible
01:12:17
for the two fake declarations that Tom Taylor sold. And he even explains how Tom's one genuine copy served as the template for his later dupes.
01:12:28
Do you think that makes that one copy even more valuable? Yeah, eventually it does.
01:12:33
Oh, I'm sorry. Did I just? No, no, no. I mean, but in that way, well, I'll just read it off this fucking page that I'm on forever.
01:12:41
This is the kind of thing where, you know, you really do wish you had your lines memorized.
01:12:44
You're like, and then Tom went down to the library. But that's never going to happen.
01:12:51
So what he would do is he explains. He photographed the one genuine. He made a negative.
01:12:58
He repaired any visible damage on the magnified copy, created a zinc plate from the negative.
01:13:05
He printed fakes. And then the way he made that ink that I was saying before, he collected smoke in a paper bag and mixed the carbon that attached to the bag with various oils like the linseed oil.
01:13:18
And then the blank paper came from his edges from his old books. I mean, that's already 10 times smarter than I am.
01:13:25
Like, use that for something good. He says no. No. He says, sorry, I have to go get some cigarettes. I'll be right back.
01:13:33
And another wife. What's your point? Yeah. That's how he met his fifth wife. Right. I couldn't do one of those steps. Ask me to do one of those steps. I'm going to go take a nap.
01:13:43
I'd literally be like, sorry, I was looking at my phone. What do you want me to do again?
01:13:48
But in this interview, David keeps going. He also fesses up to Belkin about forging dozens of other documents.
01:13:55
but he claims he meant to sell them as known fakes not pass them off as genuine uh-huh sure jan i forgot to stamp it with fake yeah uh the problem with that is that of course
01:14:10
david didn't let the buyers know that they were counterfeit so it wasn't like oops get that get
01:14:15
that real money but you have counterfeit in your heart so two of the biggest customers were jenkins
01:14:21
and Simpsons. It's Simpsons, sorry, not the TV show. And of course, because he did not like them,
01:14:28
it's easy to believe that he targeted them for revenge. That's why he kind of pulled them in
01:14:33
and made them believe that he had something on his hands. Revenge. Because if he were that smart,
01:14:39
I bet he could just forge money. I mean, why not get... At that point. Yeah, get your little tin-type plate
01:14:45
or whatever the thing I was that just... Yeah. Get something going in your basement.
01:14:48
Nope, wants to fuck people over. Yeah. Got it. Because I think it's like he loves the antiques,
01:14:53
and then he wanted to be like the big fish in this world. Sure. And the other two were like, sit down, dummy.
01:14:58
And then he was like, I'll get you. Right. Then he's duping them when they think they're duping him.
01:15:05
And they act confused about it and pisses Karen off. Real housewives. I mean, I just keep saying it.
01:15:11
We're done with that paragraph. In all the years since Tom Taylor's investigation
01:15:15
first exposed these Texana forgeries, not one person has been prosecuted for them.
01:15:20
because there's just enough plausible deniability and not enough proof of criminal intent to bring charges.
01:15:27
So the same year that that New York Times article comes out, which is 1989, 49-year-old John Jenkins
01:15:33
is found shot in the head near Bastrop. What? Yeah, someone tried to cheer for Bastrop
01:15:42
while others were upset about a terrible... It's very confusing to drag along. This whole thing is confusing, and we apologize.
01:15:52
It always has been. It was officially ruled a suicide, but at the time, Jenkins was being investigated
01:16:00
for arson related to an insurance fraud scheme, and he'd also reportedly racked up around a million dollars in gambling debts.
01:16:09
Shit. I'm not even going to make you ask, but it was a million in 1989. 1.72. I don't have it.
01:16:17
Oh, fuck. Then yes. Then by default? Then you're right. You finally win. Fuck yeah.
01:16:22
She did it. She did it. I love that our researchers just give up halfway through.
01:16:29
I can't keep putting this in the calculator. Forget it. If you're not going to say it, I'm not going to put it in.
01:16:34
So to this day, some people do believe that John Jenkins was murdered, either because of those deaths that he had or because his big personality earned him some enemies.
01:16:45
William Simpson, on the other hand, dies in 2001. The details are very fuzzy on his cause of death.
01:16:52
He remained very low profile compared to everybody else in the story. And then in 2013, C. Dorman David dies in Houston at the age of 75.
01:17:03
After spent, this is kind of an incredible like later life story. He spends the latter part of his life running a business that makes benches shaped like alligators.
01:17:12
wow yeah you don't have a picture? no couldn't clear it I want to know I want to see what's here
01:17:26
because you know what I'll describe mine my bench looks like Lyle the crocodile it's not the same animal
01:17:34
do not lecture me on that what's yours look like? oh my god I don't know it's not comfortable
01:17:41
at all Whatever like you can't take a nap on it. So it's useless to me kind of low to the ground. Yeah. Yeah. Spiky
01:17:48
Spiky it's real spiky Do do do why did I take my finger off this fucking page Meanwhile Tom Taylor who is now in his 70s Remains a devoted bookseller and a master printer in Texas And after his investigation into these fakes he goes back and he finds the two clients who bought the dupes from him and he reimburses them
01:18:13
Are you crying? Not really. Oh my God. That was acting. That was acting, ladies and gentlemen.
01:18:21
Wow. That's very honorable. Yeah, he's the good guy. What if the guy, they're like, I didn't want you to tell me it was fake.
01:18:29
I was fine living the rest of my life telling all my guests that this is what's real.
01:18:34
And I don't want my $11,000 in 1980s money back. Right. You know that happened to me right when I got my house, when I moved into my house.
01:18:43
Oh, yeah. My cousin is my real estate agent. Pete Castro in Los Angeles. Hey. So if you ever need any help, I did it again.
01:18:50
You're doing it. Fuck. I have a new weird nervous tick where I pinch the end of my nose like that
01:18:55
very weird Georgia pointed it out to me the other day and I was like wow talk about not not wanting to know something
01:19:02
I'm doing what hey you're just gonna like because also you're gonna wipe all your makeup off
01:19:10
the end of your nose only like that's what really what I wanted to warn you about is it's gonna look fucking weird with just a red nose I'm gonna look
01:19:16
like that um lady Elaine from Mr. Rogers neighborhood yeah that's my goal in life I was just going to tell you guys the story and I may have said this
01:19:27
on the podcast but we do that all the time so go with it when I moved in my house my cousin Pete
01:19:33
they went down they had to get some official records and they pulled some records and saw
01:19:37
that one of the previous owners of the house was Charles Chaplin and so when we I had my house
01:19:44
warming party he gave me a framed um like this certificate that said that was the previous owner
01:19:49
So that was on my wall where I'm like, fucking take a look at this Hollywood legend.
01:19:54
Like you kind of can understand why people get into this shit where it's just like, here's the certificate of authentication.
01:20:01
And then this was, this was right before COVID. Then we go into COVID and then somewhere near the end of COVID, I finally meet my next door neighbor and I'm talking to him about, hi, how are you in the neighborhood and stuff?
01:20:13
And I go, oh, by the way, did you ever meet like the family, the chaplain family that lived here?
01:20:18
And he goes, who, Chuck? No, no, they're not related. They're not related. Chuck Chaplin?
01:20:25
Chuck Chaplin. I just had to go into my house and just, like, take this little frame thing down and just put it under the thing.
01:20:32
No, I think you should leave it still. It's an even better story. I fucking brought every person that walked through my front door over to that certificate.
01:20:42
It was, what is it about that? We were just like, I don't know, me and Charlie Chaplin living in the same house.
01:20:51
When will I learn? So you get it. So you get this story and how it can just bewitch you.
01:20:57
I will marry and divorce this story seven times. I love it so much. I will drive my car through this fucking front window of this story.
01:21:05
I will smoke a cigarette out of the debris of this story. I love it so much. um tom also publishes a book called tech's fake we should all buy it which is said to be the most
01:21:19
thorough account of this entire forgery saga you'd hope so because this version is not so
01:21:25
please read it if you're interested it is unclear how many of c dormant david's fakes are still out
01:21:30
there today but when they were exposed back in the 90s it was reported that many institutions
01:21:34
didn't take them off their walls and instead put a little label underneath that said something like,
01:21:41
this is a facsimile. I bet at least one person's grandma in this audience had a fake on accident,
01:21:49
didn't know it, right? At least one. Yeah. Honey, look at the Texas Declaration of Independence,
01:21:55
and please. Don't touch it. Honey. Maybe that's what I should have done. I leave Charlie Chaplin up,
01:22:03
this is a facsimile. That's right. Of Charlie Chaplin. Just a little tiny sign that says,
01:22:10
Karen's a big liar. She can't stop. According to PBS's Antiques Roadshow, David's fake Texas declarations of independence
01:22:19
are so notorious that they can be worth up to $1,000 today from buyers. Look at that.
01:22:25
So that's what I meant before where it's like they got their own little renown kind of...
01:22:29
What's up with my nose? I don't know. But if you can find yourself a genuine copy of the Texas Declaration of Independence, it could net you as much as $1 million.
01:22:43
And that is the story of Tom Taylor's investigation into Texana fates. We did it.
01:22:50
Good job. Thank you. Way to go. While the world watches the stars at the FIFA World Cup this summer, Hyundai has its eyes on the next generation of talent.
01:23:01
The future soccer stars who are already turning heads at age 14. Making plays that end up on everyone's feed, scoring from angles that don't make sense, rewriting record books that barely had time to gather dust.
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It's already here. Next starts now. Hyundai, an official partner of FIFA. Goodbye.
01:23:39
If you're always on the lookout for a great audiobook or just want help figuring out what to listen to next, there's a podcast you should know about.
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It's called Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club, hosted by Cal Penn. Each episode takes a closer look at some of the most talked about new audiobooks on Audible spanning a wide range of genres from sci and literary fiction to rom thrillers and comedy Cal is joined by guests who dig into what these stories are about what makes them stand out as audiobooks and why they connecting with listeners right now
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If you're looking for your next listen, this is a great place to start. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club, on the iHeartRadio app,
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Terms and conditions apply. See pandora.net for more details. Goodbye. Do we have hometown time?
01:25:43
I think it's time to do a hometown. There's Vince Averill, everyone. Vince Averill.
01:25:50
This time, this time. Hey. Thank you. We got to give it up for this crowd tonight.
01:25:56
Yeah. Because there was, in fact, a My Favorite Murder-themed cocktail. Oh. And it was tequila-based.
01:26:07
Uh-oh. And I didn't get any reports of any vomit in the house tonight. Good job, you guys.
01:26:13
That's classy. You didn't see it. Historically, not the case. No. you know it does lead to vomit but austin can drink this is our this is our route so i'm gonna
01:26:23
be right here really the lucidity of whoever you choose thanks mints oh and we have a present
01:26:30
oh yeah uh we were so these were pitched to us by merch and we love them nicole and merch did
01:26:37
you see her at the merch table oh it's her first time in texas did you know that are you serious
01:26:42
Give her a big old Texas hello when you see her. We have stress hot dogs. They really work.
01:26:54
Let's say my favorite murder on them. Okay, so we've talked really quickly. We know you know this, but we actually forgot the first couple shows we did,
01:27:01
so we'll just run it down. Right now, George is going to randomly pick someone from the audience
01:27:05
to tell their hometown story. And a hometown story drag along is basically either a crime that happened in your town that got you into true crime or that you just would like to tell everybody that everybody might like to know.
01:27:20
There's a couple rules. One of them is it should be a Texas story, hopefully an Austin story, whatever you can do.
01:27:27
But please don't do what poor, poor Katie did the other night and say, I'm from Broward, Florida.
01:27:33
And yet the entire fucking place booed her and she walked off stage. it was yep very painful first night back very hilarious yes um she was a great sport we got
01:27:44
to talk to her about it later because i thought she thought she was just supposed to come up and
01:27:49
proclaim her hometown and leave which i loved but she was like no i had a story i just got nervous
01:27:55
and left and we're like oh no poor baby at least now we talk about you um okay so try to make it
01:28:03
You should be local. That's what people like. Don't be so drunk that you can't tell your own story.
01:28:09
Don't read off paper. Nobody wants that. It just should be casual and fun. Beginning, middle, end.
01:28:13
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell it like a good story. You know how to tell a good story, Texas.
01:28:17
You guys are theater people. Yeah. So does anybody have a hometown? Does anyone have a hometown?
01:28:21
That we think would be good? Let's see. Do you know her? Or are you just pointing at her?
01:28:27
Do you know her? Okay, come on up. Do you know her? because a lot of times people will point at something like the person next to them raises
01:28:38
their hand what's wrong they're right in the middle of the well no i just was like oh this
01:28:43
is very unsafe in terms of fire you have to go all the way down like that i don't like that
01:28:48
i'll talk to the theater later she had to slide all the way down thanks bence Hi.
01:28:56
Laura? My name is Laura. Laura, everyone. Hi, this is Laura. Hi. Where are you from, Laura?
01:29:02
I have waited nine years to tell you that I helped the Texas Rangers take down the polygamous
01:29:16
sex cult at the YFZ Ranch in El Dorado, Texas. Holy shit. Holy shit. And then she walks off stage.
01:29:29
The end. Oh, my God. What do you do for a living? Oh, I'm in publishing. Oh, okay.
01:29:36
Yeah, just random. Okay. Okay, so I actually practice just in case I'm a little nervous.
01:29:43
Okay, okay. We won't interrupt you anymore. Well, maybe a couple times, but. So I grew up profoundly Mormon, but I got better.
01:29:51
Thank you. My great was one of the first converts and was called polygamy when he came to Salt Lake City And a lot of my family is still polygamists so I know these people
01:30:06
You did a story. Oh. Episode 340. You did Irva LeBaron. Yeah, yeah. I used to work with his daughter.
01:30:18
She escaped and she grew up chained around the neck in a goat. They're not good people.
01:30:23
No. So when I was in my 20s, I was living in Utah. I come back to Texas, I promise.
01:30:30
I'm here. But I was married, and my husband got a job working with Meryl Jessup,
01:30:39
who is Warren Jeff's right-hand man. And we got divorced shortly after. I divorced for very good reasons.
01:30:48
Good job, good job. Thank you, thank you, thank you. and he skedaddled and I couldn't get child support so I came back to Texas I'm doing IT I
01:30:58
learn how to this is in the 90s so there's no like real proper internet but I find a chat room
01:31:05
that all of those guys were talking about stuff and I was hoping to find my ex and I just started
01:31:14
collecting all of the data. But I didn't know what to do with it. So I'm just hanging on to it.
01:31:22
Then in the early 2000s, a show called Big Love Starts. And I started to write reviews of it
01:31:29
on LiveJournal. I'll take that one. I'll take that one. On LiveJournal where I'm saying,
01:31:35
this is who this is really about. Oh my God. And these are the real people. And this is the real
01:31:40
story. And I had this person that was constantly like asking me questions. It turns out that that
01:31:45
was a person who worked for the Del Rio Texas Rangers. And I said, Hey, what's our username?
01:31:52
Like XX? Well, I'll tell you what the VIP, but, um, uh, long story short, I said, Hey,
01:32:00
do you want this information? They said, absolutely we do. Meanwhile, one of the things that I had
01:32:05
tracked and kept contact of somebody had asked on a chat board does anybody have a blueprint
01:32:13
for a potato burning shed that gets hot enough to destroy DNA evidence oh on a chat room and a chat
01:32:23
this is the 90s people were that didn't know and then it said lol yeah right so um that was code potato was code so they found they ended up finding things but that's the
01:32:38
next story then they messaged how many stories you're telling it's the same thing it's the same
01:32:42
thing so they um i got another message from the person at the texas rangers when they were going
01:32:50
in they had tanks that were lined up outside of this place and in el dorado which is just by
01:32:55
midland it's south of your story and um asked me if i'd ever been inside the temple and do i
01:33:01
do i know the floor plan i said no i didn't but i do know that mormon temples always have a special
01:33:07
room at the very top on the eastmost side called the celestial room but most importantly there's
01:33:12
going to be an altar so you know that that's the room and there is a hidden panel on a wall because
01:33:18
there's somebody that sits in it and records everything because mormons track and record
01:33:21
all of the data. Can I ask a question? Yes, you can. Was this a phone call or like this was still
01:33:26
typing? We're live. We're like live DMing. Live journaling. And is your heart racing? Are you just
01:33:32
like dry mouth and going? Yeah. I'm like, finally, all of this geekery of the recording shit is
01:33:38
working. I'm so excited. So they ended up, they didn't find the altar. There was a bed
01:33:45
because they're really bad people. And they did find the panel and there was a guy in there trying
01:33:51
to destroy the evidence off the computers. The particular ranger, his nickname was Marathon Man.
01:33:57
Yes. And he was also the canine guy. So he was just like, go for it and drop the leash.
01:34:04
So they got that guy. So multiple people are in multiple life sentences, these guys.
01:34:13
I will say a month after all of this happened, I got an email from that dispatch with a list of
01:34:21
all known aliases. Every time a license had been run, the license plate had gone through anything
01:34:27
for my ex. I got my child support. Yeah! With interest. Yeah! Oh my God! Yes! My chills!
01:34:44
Incredible! Thank you. And for all that work, you get a hot dog. Yes! Amazing. Wow. Laura.
01:34:57
Let's give it up to Laura. Thank you. Sure, yeah. Or whatever. Yeah, be careful, though. Can we get together as a group and make sure she does...
01:35:07
Save Laura. Oh, my God. Wow. Perfection. That was great. Amazing. That was it. That was so good.
01:35:17
That was it. Shut it down. There's nothing else to do after this. except eat barbecue oh yeah and um marry seven women oh wait no she says no don't do that no
01:35:28
no don't do that you won't do the lesson we learned is don't do that thank you we love you thank you so much austin this has been unbelievable
01:35:37
we can't believe we're back on the road and you guys have been so supportive and incredible and
01:35:44
and fun and we really appreciate it thank you so much for being with us for all these
01:35:49
crazy fucking years with this stupid podcast. We love you so much. Stay sexy. And go get her hair!
01:35:59
Thank you. Elvis, do you want a cookie? Ah! on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:36:34
And now you can watch us on Exactly Right's YouTube page. While you're there, please like and subscribe.
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Goodbye!