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This is Exactly Right. of Family Secrets on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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You know the famous author Roald Dahl. He thought up Willy Wonka and the BFG. But did you know he was a spy?
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Neither did I. You can hear all about his wildlife story in the podcast The Secret World of Roald Dahl.
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All episodes are out now. Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been.
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What? Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you, I was a spy. Binge all 10 episodes of The Secret World of Roald Dahl
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now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Bailey Taylor, and this is It Girl.
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This podcast is all about going deeper with the women shaping culture right now.
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Yes, we will talk about the style and the success, but we are also talking about the pressure,
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the expectations, and the real work behind it all. As a woman in the industry, you're always underestimated.
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So you have to work extra hard in a way that doesn't compromise who you are and your integrity.
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You know, I like to say I was kind of like a silent ninja. Listen to It Girl with Bailey Taylor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Hello. And welcome to my favorite murder. That's Georgia Hartstark. That's Karen Kilgariff.
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And breathe. And breathe. And breathe. And sigh. And think about what you've done.
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I hope you feel bad. We're all disappointed in you. That's where we want you to be for the beginning of this podcast.
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And then you go down from here. Yeah, we start real, real low in the gutter. You know.
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And then dig a basement for that gutter. That's right. Because we're there with you.
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We're all there together. Hey, man. Yeah. We really are. Who doesn't like standing water, you know?
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Just fucking... Down in the basement that we dug? Yeah. Yeah. We're definitely getting gangrene out of this one.
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That's for sure. Okay. Speaking of down and deep in the basement, are you fucking watching
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or have you watched Baby Reindeer on Netflix? I have to say, I started it and I got to a certain point in the first episode
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and then I said, I can't do this with you right now. I will come back at a later date.
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That happened to me too. And my advice is to get to episode four. Okay. So it's about a guy and it's a true story. And the actor is the guy who wrote the fucking story.
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Yeah. The one man show, I believe. Yeah. His name is Richard Gad. So he wrote it and it's about him being stalked by this woman
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and so much more than that. It's an actress that I love so much. She was in the David Mitchell,
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Robert Webb show back. She's been in a million things. I knew she was familiar. Jessica Denning. Yeah, she's amazing. Nava Mao is amazing. I mean, it's really well acted, but it's triggering. Really, really triggering.
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Yeah. Yeah. It's apparently because I said that to somebody, I was like, I heard it's really good, but I had to dip. And then they were like, oh, it's just more tooth grinding after that. Like, that's the whole story.
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The thing for me that the reason I almost stopped was I was like, he's just like totally leading her on. And why won't he like, tell her, you know, like, he was bothering me about why he wasn't. Yeah, I don't know. So we're just like, okay, let's just finish this episode. But the fourth episode is about some trauma he went through. And it explains a little bit about why he's letting things be the way they are.
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And it's so fucked up and dark. Don't watch it if you're in a fucking dark place. But I mean,
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it's so well done. And it's like, it's like fleabag, but even hurtier. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. I heard that it was kind of like the fleabag rollout of started as an
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award winning one man show type of thing and then got developed into TV. So yeah,
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I'm definitely very interested. It's just not the best time for me. I think that's so, like, so thoughtful.
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What's the word? Like, self-reflective that you know that you shouldn't be doing that.
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Right. Yeah, yeah. My TV has to be, I'll just say it this way. I've gone into round nine of Arrested Development.
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So I'm now seeing things that I'm not sure were ever there in the first place. I'm just like, am I hallucinating new scenes in this show?
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Because I'm enjoying it just as much as I ever have. Oh, it's a beautiful place to be.
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That's a lovely little. It's true, as you once said, as the kids now say to Lulu, but we got to just get through.
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We just got to get through at this point. Do what you can. Don't watch Salt Burn.
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I watched that and it didn't do it for me at all. That's not the one. Well, it is.
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Salt Burn certainly isn't going to be doing any mending, internal mending. That's going to be ripping some things open.
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Yeah, for sure. Got anything? Speaking of ripping things open. Here's the one thing I do have to tell you about, Georgia.
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Yeah. So there a woman on TikTok who tells the story where during COVID lockdown she saw so many conspiracy theories on the internet that were just crazy that she started going on and like arguing with people almost like sarcastically of like you know she would say this is the example she gave that if somebody would say they believe the moon is hollow she go oh my God you believe in the moon And that was kind of her because she a research person She a historian I believe if I remembering correctly
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The name on that account is Kiki Shear Genius or at Shear, S-C-H-I-R-R, genius. But then she's like, I want to make up a really good conspiracy theory.
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So she remembers, because she's, I guess, an art historian, and she remembers that Edgar Degas hated women. He's the guy that painted all the ballerinas and did all the sculptures of, like, ballerina girls.
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Yeah. And she comes up with this theory, Edgar Degas is Jack the Ripper. But the more she looks into it, and the more she is investigating it, the more it seems like she's actually right.
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And so she's like, yes. And she's basically now that everyone is going crazy for this theory,
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she goes, I don't like true crime. I don't, this isn't something I'm interested in. It's just that
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once I started looking into it, I can't look away because things are lining up. Ooh, I love it.
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And the idea that he, it's, you have to see it. It's so good. Okay. So wait, so is there like a hashtag? Is it like the theory that Degas is the ripper?
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It's her personal theory. You're not really on TikTok anymore. I'll keep you updated as she keeps us updated on this theory.
00:07:18
Appreciate you. Should we talk about our network? Yeah. Let's do it. We have a podcast network. It's called Exactly Right Media. And you should listen to all the podcasts on it, please.
00:07:26
That's right. We picked the good ones. Yeah. And we'll talk about them now. For example, please join us in congratulating Bridger Weineger, who this week marks his 200th episode of I Said No Gifts, which is insane.
00:07:38
Yeah. Insane. Insane. So to celebrate, his guest is the iconic comedian, Maria Bamford.
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Oh my God, that is going to be incredible. Couldn't love her more. And then on Parent Footprint, Dr. Dan, my cousin Dr. Dan, is speaking with journalist and podcast
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host Elise Lunen. Elise is the author of New York Times bestseller, On Our Best Behavior, The Seven Deadly Sins
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and Price Women Pay to Be Good. So make sure you check that out. And make sure to be bad.
00:08:06
Also, on the next episode of The Butterfly King, which is out today, host Bucky Milligan realizes she has to revisit King Boris's autopsy,
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and new evidence brings her shockingly close to solving the mystery of the death of King Boris of Bulgaria.
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There's only one episode left in this series, so get in there if you haven't listened to it and binge it now.
00:08:27
It's such good podcasting. And this is a really exciting announcement. At long last, we are so thrilled to tell you that hot dog merch is now available.
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Oh, yay. It's in the Exactly Right store. Listener and artist Sammy Gorin designed it.
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And we have a t-shirt, a muscle tee, an enamel pin, and an apron for all your summer grilling
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needs. Go look at this design. It's freaking epic. It's so good. But everybody that works here at Exactly Right With Us, Alejandro produces the show is excited.
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Aaron Brown, who makes the merch is excited. Everybody's talking about this hot dog merch.
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It's so we're all ordering it. Like, I think there's people we get on meetings now to talk about other stuff.
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And people are like, oh, I ordered my hot dog shirt today. Like, oh, my God, it's a buzz.
00:09:18
Way to go, Sammy Gorin. Yes. Thank you, Sammy. Yes. So visit exactlyrightmedia.com to check it out and get yours today.
00:09:27
Today. Today. Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was.
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Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Dani Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets.
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And just then, we felt the plane turn in the air. So much so that the bags that were under people's seats just kind of flew into the aisle.
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Each week, we dive headfirst into the complex power of secrecy, how it shapes our identities and relationships,
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and how it ultimately can reveal to us our truest selves. My daughter, she's pretending she doesn't know,
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but is trying to cook and feed me and keep me alive because I wasn't eating anything.
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And me pretending like everything was fine. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move.
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And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off, and that was the last time I saw him.
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Listen to Season 14 of Family Secrets on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:10:30
This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's Ministry of State Security,
00:10:41
one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world. The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS.
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and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app,
00:10:55
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Before NXIVM, Nancy Solzman wanted to help people.
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Being able to help somebody, it's probably the biggest motivator of my entire life.
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She trained in something called neurolinguistic programming. People loved our training.
00:11:13
Then, everything changed. Yeah, and they called it a cult. How does a method designed to improve lives end up in a cult?
00:11:21
A knife in the hands of a surgeon is an amazing tool. A knife in the hands of a murderer is a weapon.
00:11:28
Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:11:37
Okay, I'm going first today. This is a classic true crime case. Okay. And it's as heartbreaking as all of the murders that we talk about on this show.
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But then there's kind of, there's a beautiful upturn. So we start January of 2018 56 Jim Walker of Fort Worth Texas places a call to the Fort Worth Police Department cold case unit It is a phone number he has called many times before each time with the same mission
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to, after decades and decades, to try to do something to move the case forward of his sister
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Carla's murder. Carla Walker was murdered in 1974 when she was just 17 years old, and Jim Walker was
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only 12 years old when that happened. Right. He and his entire family have spent every year since
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1974 doing whatever they could to try and bring their sister's killer to justice. Now, both of his
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parents are dead. The burden of the hunt is falling squarely on Jim's shoulders. And each time he
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calls this cold case unit, he's either met with no updates, they just have nothing to tell him,
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or a department voicemail. And on this day in January of 2018, he gets the voicemail once again.
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But after he leaves one of his usual messages, they're used to him. They know his name.
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They know Carla Walker's brother will be checking in on this. This time he gets a call back from a
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new detective. Leah Wagner is a vet on the force. She's new to the cold case unit in Fort Worth.
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and so she's new to Carla's case. She takes an immediate interest in this cold case
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and unlike the detectives who have come before her, she seems genuinely up to the task of finding Carla's killer.
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Jim earnestly tells her, if the person who killed Carla is still alive, he's gotta be getting on in years,
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please, we're running out of daylight. This is the story of the murder of Carla Walker.
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Wow. So you'll be happy to hear that one of the people we're probably the biggest fans of, Skip Hollinsworth, who is a journalist
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out of Texas, who we, from the very beginning, have thoroughly relied on his journalism and the
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stories that he brings to the page to be able to talk about especially cold cases and the old cases.
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He mostly reports about the ones in Texas. He does it for a publication called Texas Monthly,
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which is a really amazing magazine from out of there. And so there's an article, I won't read you the title of it because it kind of gives things away,
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but it is from Texas Monthly that Skip Hollinsworth wrote. And then there's also an article from NBC5 Dallas-Fort Worth that we used.
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And the rest of the sources are in our show notes. So Carla Jan Walker is born January 31st, 1957 in Fort Worth, Texas.
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and her father, Leighton Walker, is a retired Air Force veteran who rose to the rank of
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Lieutenant Colonel fighting in both World War II and in the Korean War. Damn. Yeah. Do you think he had a buzz cut? I bet you he had a buzz cut.
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We could just see what he looks like right now. I bet you he liked things folded and neatly put away.
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Oh my God. Nurses' corners. The making of the bed every morning was so precise. Bouncing of the corner.
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Yeah. And so that's her father, Leighton. Her mother, Doris Walker, was born and raised in Texas, just like her father.
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Carlos, one of seven children, three boys, four girls. That's a big family. And they live in Benbrook, which is a suburb in the southwest corner of Fort Worth, which is quiet, safe.
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All the neighbors know each other. Nobody locks their door. We're setting up a classic 70s murder story.
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in school. Carla is known to be a very sweet girl. She's really nice. She's also very popular.
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She's on the pep squad at Western Hills High School. And one schoolmate describes her as,
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quote, the kind of girl who smiled and said hello to just about everyone she saw in the hallways,
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end quote. So truly a sweet person. And when she's a junior, she starts dating a boy from
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the football team named Rodney McCoy. They're in love. They plan to both go to Texas Tech
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University after they graduate and Carla hopes to marry him. It's true teenage love.
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So on the evening of Saturday, February 16th, 1974, Rodney arrives at the Walker house to pick
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up Carla and take her to the school's Valentine's Day dance. He gives her a corsage and they drive
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off in Rodney's mom's car. So classic, you know, high school. And she's 17? She is 17 years old.
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Just a baby. She's a junior. So they go to the dance. They have a great time. They stay until it ends at 1130.
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And then they get a couple friends to go cruise the main drag with them, which in Fort Worth
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is Camp Bowie Boulevard. They make a couple stops along the way. They go to Taco Bell.
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They also go to a place called Mr. Quick Hamburger. Not the catchiest name you've ever heard.
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So obviously they're just doing some teenage hanging out. Then Rodney drops the friends off.
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And then Rodney and Carla get to be alone. so sometime around between midnight and 12 30 rodney stops at the local bowling alley which is
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the brunswick ridgely a bowl so that carla can run in and use the bathroom so she comes back
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outside and then they start kissing and at one point carla leans back against the passenger door
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suddenly the passenger door flies open and there's a tall man with short brown hair wearing a vest and
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holding a gun. And he just starts beating Rodney over the back of the head with the butt of his
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pistol. Rodney is coming in and out of consciousness. The man drags Carla out of the car and says,
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you're coming with me, aren't you, sweetie? Oh, my God. Yeah. So before Rodney passes out entirely, he hears Carla say, go get my dad.
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So when Rodney finally comes to, it's one in the morning. He's sitting in the driver's seat.
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So he just races over to the walker house He jumps the curb He basically lands in the walker front yard runs up to the front door bangs on the door Layton and Doris are having family game night at the moment when they hear the knocking So Leighton goes to the door and he finds Rodney bloody and panicked Carla sibling Cindy
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who's 18, and of course, Jim on this day is 12. They're watching TV in the living room.
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They hear Rodney yell, Mr. Walker, they've got her. They're going to hurt her bad.
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So Leighton grabs his pistol, drives out to the bowling alley to look for Carla while Doris stays home and calls the police.
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Police show up soon after. They begin investigating the scene there in the bowling alley parking lot.
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They find Carlo's purse in a magazine clip that fell out of the attacker's gun, or they assume did when he was beating
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or pistol-whipping Rodney. Carlo's, of course, nowhere to be found. So the Walker family and the police search
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until dawn for Carlo. There's a ground search with people walking around, But there's also police searching by helicopter, which that kind of struck me in 1974.
00:18:55
Seemed kind of like Fort Worth kind of really fell into action there in a way I don't know if they do anymore overall.
00:19:03
That quickly, at least. Yeah. Right. Yes, exactly. Just like trusting that this is actually what's happening and then they need to take action right now.
00:19:10
So the following Monday at school, which is February 18th, 1974, the detectives go into Western Hills High.
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They start interviewing kids, asking if they have any information that could help this case.
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They also look through photos that were taken at the dance to see if they could find any clues.
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Neither of those avenues of investigation turn up any leads. Then about two days later, two police officers are searching for Carla on foot around Benbrook Lake,
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which is around five miles southwest of the bowling alley where she was taken. And they see a culvert, which is the concrete passageway under roads where water goes through.
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They decide to search that culvert. And inside they find 17-year-old Carla Walker's body.
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She's lying on her back. The dress that she had on for the dance is ripped open.
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She's soaked in blood. Her face and neck are covered with scratches and bruises.
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and to those police that found her, it looked like she'd been strangled to death by hand.
00:20:14
Oh, my God. I mean, it's a good thing that they had the forethought to go in there
00:20:18
because evidence, you know, that maybe would have degraded had they not found her right away.
00:20:24
Absolutely. Yeah. So when Carla's parents are called to identify the body, 12-year-old Jim goes with them,
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not into the room where her body is, But from down the hall, even he can hear his mother scream. And he will later recall, quote, I'd never heard anyone make a sound like that. It was like an animal sound. It'll stay with me for as long as I live. End quote.
00:20:51
So for the Fort Worth Police Department, you know, it's 1974. They can't find fingerprints anywhere. There's no security camera footage. There's no DNA technology that they can analyze anything with. Their best bet is what they do is they set up a tip line. Calls flood in. None of them produce any leads.
00:21:13
And the only solid clue that police do have to go on is that magazine clip that was in the parking lot.
00:21:20
And because it came from a newer gun model, which was an updated .22 Ruger handgun, the police are able to compile a short list of a few dozen people in the area who own that kind of gun.
00:21:32
And they just go through that list one by one and question every gun owner, hoping that they can find the killer.
00:21:37
And the closest they seem to get is a 31-year-old truck driver named Glenn McCurley. When police approached McCurley in early March of 1974, he admits that he did purchase a .22 Ruger, but he tells the police it was stolen out of his truck while he was fishing.
00:21:55
He takes a polygraph test. He passes it. Basically, he's released. They don't suspect him of anything.
00:22:03
And then after a few months, police get to the end of their list of 22 Ruger owners, and not a single suspect brings them any closer to a lead.
00:22:13
So, of course, Carla's murder turns Fort Worth upside down. It's front page news.
00:22:21
Every local publication. over 1200 people show up for Carla Walker's funeral. Kids stop going out at night. They
00:22:29
stop cruising along Camp Bowie Boulevard and the Western Hills High PTA arranges for two jujitsu
00:22:37
black belts to come to the school and teach self-defense and lots of people attend. So
00:22:43
everybody, it's one of those parts of the story where the town changed overnight. You know,
00:22:49
People started locking their doors. The innocence is gone. Well, what's so crazy too is like, you know,
00:22:54
she wasn't walking home alone and got snatched, you know, which is horrible enough.
00:22:58
But the brazenness, like she was with her partner, her boyfriend, and it didn't matter.
00:23:05
In like a, what would be a public place, right? Yeah. Yes, exactly. So of course the Walker family is devastated.
00:23:15
Carlos' brother, Jim, knows every morning that his mother basically steals away to the bathroom to cry in the shower.
00:23:23
Like, there's a lot of sad coping and difficulty, obviously. And this pain never subsides as the years go by.
00:23:32
And to make matters worse, the Fort Worth police investigating this crime have run into a brick wall, basically.
00:23:39
The few leads that they started with have dried up, and basically the case goes cold.
00:23:44
But Carlos' heartbroken father, Leighton, is conducting his own investigation. Any tips that he gets, either from people he knows or from the anonymous calls that he gets at the Walker house, he takes every single one of them seriously.
00:23:59
He writes all the information. information from them down. He stores it in a small metal box. He also marks the addresses of
00:24:06
any potential suspects on a map of the Fort Worth area. You know, he's a determined military man,
00:24:12
and he tells his family he's not going to rest until Carla's killer is behind bars.
00:24:17
And so young Jim sees his father's tenacity, and he adapts it as well. He starts running and weight
00:24:24
training. He takes boxing lessons, joins the high school wrestling and football teams,
00:24:28
And he'll later say, quote, I wanted to be ready in case I ever came across the killer.
00:24:34
So when Jim turned 16, he gets his driver's license, which is in 1978. And he takes the tips his dad has collected over those years.
00:24:43
And he just starts driving around trying to find any kind of leads or any information that would be helping this case.
00:24:51
and each year on the anniversary of Carla's death, he goes to the Brunswick Ridge Leobol
00:24:56
and he sits in the parking lot looking for suspicious people who also might be there.
00:25:02
Oh my God. So three years after Carla's murder, it's February 19th, 1977 and a 25-year-old vocational nurse named June Ward
00:25:13
is found murdered in South Fort Worth. She has been sexually assaulted. She's been strangled with her own bra
00:25:19
and she has been beaten over the head with a sharp, heavy object. Three years later, on July 9th, 1980,
00:25:26
19-year-old Denise Hugh is found strangled to death beneath a creek bridge. And then between 1977 and 1986,
00:25:35
10 different women are murdered in Fort Worth, Texas. Holy shit. A waitress named Christy Tower, found in February of 1983,
00:25:45
a 23-year-old aspiring model named Catherine Davis, who was murdered in September of 1984, a 29-year-old middle school teacher named Marilyn
00:25:54
Hartman, who was found on October 19th, 1984, a 23-year-old college graduate named Cindy Heller,
00:26:01
who was found in November of 1984, a middle school teacher named Catherine Jackson, who was found on
00:26:07
November 26th, 1984, a 21-year-old radio programmer named Angela Ewart, who was found in December of
00:26:15
1984, a 21-year-old named Regina Grover, who was found strangled and drowned in a creek.
00:26:22
And her boyfriend is also found beaten to death in his own bed. And finally, a Jane Doe, who was found wrapped in a blanket on a hillside on November 24th, 1986.
00:26:35
Oh my God. Promising young women. Jesus. Devastating. Devastating. And the worst part, I think, is, so of course the citizens of Fort Worth are in a panic.
00:26:44
over the prospect of that there's a serial killer in their city. But the police assure the public that these murders are not connected.
00:26:52
Oh my God. Are you fucking kidding me? What? Yeah. Which is also the kind of thing where it's like,
00:26:59
I don't understand the mentality where it's, of course, they don't want to panic people further.
00:27:06
But panicking might be okay in this situation. It seems like a panic-worthy situation.
00:27:11
I mean, panic makes you more cautious. So what's wrong with making people a little more aware of their, you know, what's going on?
00:27:18
It's like they're trying to ride the line, awareness and panic, right? So basically, it's a list of women who are young and they were all strangled, sexually assaulted.
00:27:31
There's a lot of connections to be made. Like, it's just not, it's clearly a pattern.
00:27:36
So the Fort Worth Police Department puts together a task force trying to find what they claim are multiple killers.
00:27:44
But behind closed doors, they also believe they're looking for a serial killer. They just don't. You can't tell a city there's a serial killer and then just not find them or, you know.
00:27:56
But it's almost like, well, OK, so there are maybe eight or ten different killers then.
00:28:00
That's just as fucking terrifying as one serial killer, you know. And unrealistic.
00:28:05
Like it's like, it's just strange. And when they put together a free self-defense seminar to try and ease everyone's nerves, more than 3000 people sign up for it. So clearly that, you know, this is gone from a horrifying murder of a high school junior that goes unsolved to case after case and multiple in 1984, there's five, I believe it's just, it's wild.
00:28:33
So the task force never solved even one of the homicides on the list. All of them go cold, including Carla's.
00:28:41
And as the years pass by, those killings just seem to stop. And the killer or multiple killers just go free and live their lives freely.
00:28:52
Meanwhile, Carla Walker's little brother, Jim, is getting older. He goes to college at Sam Houston State University.
00:28:59
He studies psychology with a focus on abnormal psychology. and understanding of the criminal mind.
00:29:06
Yeah. When he graduates, he moves back home to Fort Worth because he's going to be a police officer.
00:29:11
Damn. Holy shit. Yeah, his plan is to enter the force and then basically move up the ranks to become a detective
00:29:20
so he can take over his sister's case. Oh, God, I have goosebumps. Yeah. But as he's in school for that, he goes into arms training,
00:29:28
and that's where he learns he has a congenital eye condition, so he cannot become a police officer.
00:29:35
And he has to leave the police academy. So he gets a job in security, but he has no less determined on his own plan to hunt for this killer.
00:29:45
He's just not going to have the inside advantage, which, you know, there doesn't seem to be an advantage at this point.
00:29:53
So in 1987 Leighton Walker passes away from a heart attack So Jim takes his father notes from that metal box where he was collecting them all those years And he begins to comb through them again and again trying to pick up where his dad left off to see if there any old clues that have been overlooked
00:30:12
Then in 2015, Carla's mother, Doris, passes away. She had Alzheimer's. But before she dies, Jim promises her that he will keep up the search to find Carla's killer.
00:30:25
So after his parents both die, Jim buys the family home and he moves into it with his wife, thinking it would be best that somebody from the Walker family stayed in that home, quote, in case somebody ever got a conscience at three in the morning and showed up to confess.
00:30:43
Oy vey. Very sad, yeah. Okay, now we're going to skip to 2018. And at this point, 56-year-old Jim Walker has been searching for a sister's killer for going on 44 years.
00:30:57
His resolve's never wavered. In addition to conducting his own search, he regularly checks in with the Fort Worth Police Department Cold Case Unit for any updates.
00:31:06
They don't ever have them, but he continues asking, continues pressing. And then in January of 2018, Jim meets Detective Leah Wagner, and it seems for the first time in decades, there's actually some good news.
00:31:19
Detective Wagner dives into Carla's case, but almost right as she starts, she gets assigned to a new active case and it derails her.
00:31:29
And she has to work on that. It actually takes her a year to get back to Carla's case, which I think is probably a huge problem.
00:31:36
If you don't have a dedicated cold case team, then cold cases are not the priority.
00:31:42
Right. So, but she gets back to the case in January of 2019. And when she does, she dives completely into it.
00:31:50
And she knows how hard cold cases are to solve. So she brings in a reserve officer to help her on this case named Jeff Bennett.
00:31:58
So Wagner and Bennett pour over the evidence. They have exhaustive late nights. And finally, Bennett comes up with a list of 80 past suspects and people of interest that he thinks might be worth taking a new look at.
00:32:13
80? 80. That's so many. Yeah. Which also is just like, why couldn't somebody have been going back over that in the interim?
00:32:22
The names were there. The information was sitting there. No, nothing's new. So one of the people on that list that Bennett comes up with is Rodney McCoy, Carla's then boyfriend.
00:32:32
Yeah. I'm like, why aren't they zeroing in on him? They always do that, right? Right.
00:32:37
They usually do at first, but I think probably because he was also a victim in the crime.
00:32:41
Right. You know, he was traumatized by that. And actually, soon after, he left Texas and went to work on an oil rig in Alaska.
00:32:50
So all the plans that he had, obviously, with Carla about going to college and the things they were going to do, everything kind of was like just ended.
00:32:59
So he had just recently returned to Texas right before Wagner and Bennett begin the new investigation.
00:33:05
So they're actually able to speak with Rodney immediately and they immediately roll him out as a suspect.
00:33:11
So these detectives know if they really want to catch this killer. They have one good shot at it, which is trying to find the DNA on Carla's dress that they still have and utilizing the now current DNA technology that has obviously progressed so far since when this case was new.
00:33:32
Luckily, Carla's dress has been kept in good condition. So when the crime lab analyzes the trace amount of body fluid that's left on it, they are able to extract it to use it.
00:33:43
But there are two concerns. First, so much time has passed that the DNA samples could be degraded beyond recognition. And the second is the cost. Testing these samples could run the Fort Worth Police Department as much as $20,000.
00:33:58
and that money is usually reserved for active cases, not cold cases. With that news, Wagner and Bennett basically hit what they believe will be an insurmountable
00:34:11
roadblock on this case. You can't, you know, who's going to come up with that money?
00:34:16
Well, what they don't know is that there's an old acquaintance of Carla Walker's from high school
00:34:20
and her name is Deanne Kirkendall and Deanne Kirkendall follows true crime. One day she's listening to the podcast Gone Cold Texas True Crime and she hears Carla's case being discussed. She remembers Carla very well from high school as being the kind-hearted popular girl that was nice to everybody. And Deanne decides she wants to do something to help Carla get some justice.
00:34:47
so that year which is 2019 she goes to crime con in nashville and she hands out pamphlets
00:34:56
about carla's case to everyone she can meet which is so smart yeah and so amazing that she's just
00:35:05
like well i'll just flyer that place and see what i can do and do you know who she runs into do you
00:35:10
know who she hands a flyer to? Paul Holes? Paul Holes. That's right. Really? Yeah. Oh my God.
00:35:17
And of course, Paul talks to her, you know, sees all the information about it and he's doing his
00:35:25
show on oxygen. Yeah. So he takes all this information to the producers. So he and the
00:35:30
producers of his TV show, which is called the DNA of murder with Paul Holes. They donate $18,000
00:35:37
to go toward paying for that DNA testing. Wow. So when they do that, they send it to a California lab
00:35:44
and they find a small amount of intact DNA on Carla's bra strap, which is very interesting
00:35:52
because the victim who was murdered, the murder after Carla three years later she was strangled with her bra strap if you remember Paul Holes features Carla Walker unsolved murder
00:36:07
on his TV show, and he connects Fort Worth detectives, Wagner and Bennett, with another lab outside of Houston
00:36:15
that use a special genome sequence processing in their DNA tests. So with their very last shred of testable DNA,
00:36:24
Wagner and Bennett try their luck with this third lab, and it pays off. The lab's able to make a connection with that DNA to a family with the last name of McCurley.
00:36:36
So Bennett goes back, scours through his files, searching for that name, and he finds it, Glenn McCurley, the truck driver who police spoke to in 1974,
00:36:46
the one who claimed his Ruger was stolen from him. They run a background check on McCurley.
00:36:52
They don't find much. He stole a car when he was 18. But other than that, his record is clean.
00:36:59
He and his wife had settled in West Fort Worth in 1972. He's regarded by his friends and neighbors
00:37:05
as generally a good guy. He doesn't talk much. His wife is more outgoing, but he's a regular at
00:37:12
his Baptist church and he's a handyman who's always willing to help out when needed. So on
00:37:18
September 10th, 2020, the two detectives pay the now 77-year-old Glenn McCurley and his wife a visit
00:37:26
to talk about Carla's case. Glenn's wife remembers the case immediately. She calls it heartbreaking.
00:37:32
The detectives explain that they are re-interviewing people from the initial investigation
00:37:37
and that Glenn's name is on that list. They ask him for a DNA sample to rule him out as a suspect.
00:37:43
He hesitates at first, and then he consents. And after they collect that DNA swab,
00:37:50
McCurley's wife wishes the detectives well, saying, quote, I hope you find out who killed Carla.
00:37:56
That girl needs to be remembered as someone who mattered. End quote. Oh, my God.
00:38:01
So we know where this is going. Yeah. Glenn McCurley is a match to that DNA. On Tuesday, September 22nd, 2020,
00:38:10
he's arrested at his home for the 1974 murder of Carla Walker. And when detectives Wagner and Bennett sit him down for questioning,
00:38:19
McCurley says he has no idea who Carla Walker is. He denies any wrongdoing at all.
00:38:25
But the more he is interrogated, the more he starts opening up. He remembers drinking at a bar near the bowling alley the night of Carla's murder.
00:38:33
He remembers driving around. He remembers sitting in parking lots. but right when Bennett and Wagner think he's about to confess he tells some story about saving Carla
00:38:43
from a big guy who was quote jerking her around what and then he says after he saved her uh-huh
00:38:51
they had consensual sex okay dude like I mean disgusting so of course the detectives are not
00:38:59
buying any part of this story they press him on those other murders that took place around the
00:39:04
same time, trying to see if he knows anything about those. The more they talk to him, the more
00:39:11
he starts getting details mixed up, like he's blending memories of different attacks. They can't
00:39:17
get a clear story out of him. They think this is the man that killed Carla, but Glenn is not giving
00:39:23
them anything solid. Until the police raid McGurley's house and find almost literally the smoking gun,
00:39:31
the 22 Ruger handgun that Glenn McCurley claimed had been stolen was actually hidden in a secret
00:39:37
compartment above a door in his home so he's arrested for murder he initially enters a not
00:39:44
guilty plea during one of the pre-trial hearings on June 16th 2021 Jim Walker who now has his vision
00:39:53
has declined so badly that he actually has to use a guide dog he goes to the trial and he actually
00:40:00
goes up and introduces himself to McGurley's wife and son. His son nervously apologizes on his
00:40:08
father's behalf, but Jim assures the son this is not his fault. He tells him he is not responsible
00:40:14
for what his dad did. And he says, quote, your dad devastated your family just like he devastated
00:40:19
mine. Oh my God. Three days into this trial, the evidence is mounting against him and Glenn
00:40:27
McCurley changes his plea to guilty. He's sentenced to life in prison. And after the sentencing,
00:40:34
Jim and his sister Cindy each make witness impact statements in court expressing their grief over
00:40:40
losing their sister Carla and expressing their gratitude for Glenn McCurley's conviction.
00:40:46
They add that they believe he's murdered other women and they urge him to confess his other
00:40:51
crimes. Wow. Yeah. But we will never know for sure if Glenn McGurley was a Fort Worth serial
00:40:58
killer because he dies in prison on July 15th, 2023. So inspired by the conclusion of this case,
00:41:07
Detective Jeff Bennett forms a nonprofit organization called the Fort Worth Police
00:41:12
Department Cold Case Support Group, whose mission it is to raise money for DNA testing for cold cases.
00:41:19
Jim Walker joins the board of the foundation and he pledges to donate a portion of his profits from the sale of the Walker family home.
00:41:29
He says this quote, I don't need to be living here anymore. Thinking about my mom crying in her bathroom or my dad with his metal box.
00:41:37
He was talking to Skip Hollinsworth when he was talking about that. So this is all interviewing that Skip Hollinsworth did.
00:41:44
He says, I don't need to be reminded of Carla's murder every time I walk down the hallway.
00:41:49
It's time to let things go. Oh, my God. If it weren't for Jim Walker's decades of tireless commitment and determination to finding his sister killer Carla Walker murder case may have never been solved Now he got the closure that he always wanted and through his own foundation
00:42:05
he plans to bring closure to other families going through the same thing that his family suffered through.
00:42:12
And that's the story of the murder of Carla Walker. Oh, my God. I want the other DNA tested.
00:42:20
Those 10 other women? Right. I mean, what are police budgets for if not paying for the cases they didn't solve the first time around?
00:42:31
Right. Nobody should have to fucking fundraise to have the money when they're buying themselves tanks.
00:42:40
They're buying themselves military equipment. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That's insane. Yeah.
00:42:48
Crazy. Wow. And the surprise Paul Holes. That was unexpected. I'm surprised Paul Holes.
00:42:54
Yeah. I mean, it is, it's almost like a whole subset of criminal justice work, which is like cold
00:43:02
case cleanup, essentially. Yeah. Yeah. It's the thing of like how much we hate statute of limitations, you know, but, but cases that
00:43:11
go cold and, uh, you know, jurisdictions don't give a shit to solve them because they're
00:43:16
so old. It's the same thing. It's like, if you got away with it long enough, then guess what?
00:43:19
You're off the hook. Right. It shouldn't be that way. Or if the city is small enough or if the focus isn't right.
00:43:28
Like, yeah, it's just, yeah, it's wrong. Your husband is not who you think he is.
00:43:35
Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history.
00:43:40
I'm Dani Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets.
00:43:48
And just then, we felt the plane turn in the air, so much so that the bags that were under people's seats just kind of flew into the aisle.
00:43:58
Each week, we dive headfirst into the complex power of secrecy, how it shapes our identities and relationships,
00:44:05
and how it ultimately can reveal to us our truest selves. My daughter, she's pretending she doesn't know,
00:44:11
but is trying to cook and feed me and keep me alive because I wasn't eating anything.
00:44:15
and me pretending like everything was fine. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move.
00:44:20
And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off. And that was the last time I saw him.
00:44:25
Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:44:33
When you feel uncomfortable, what do you put on? Biggie. You put on Biggie when you feel uncomfortable?
00:44:38
Because I want to get confident. This is DJ Hester Prynne's Music is Therapy, a weekly podcast from me, a DJ and licensed therapist.
00:44:45
It's Mental Health Month. Let's figure out what actually works. I didn't care about my life circumstance
00:44:50
when I listened to that stuff. It didn't matter to me. This isn't just a podcast.
00:44:54
It's unconventional therapy for you every day. Open your free iHeartRadio app, search DJ Hester Prince Music is Therapy
00:45:01
and start listening now. Joy is essential and it's also elusive. But now there's a new and exciting way
00:45:08
to start your journey toward a more joyful existence. joy 101 it's a new podcast hosted by me hoda kotby if you're craving inspiration to maximize
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your joy tune into these candid uplifting and moving on-air chats open your free iheart radio
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app search joy 101 and listen now joy 101 with hoda kotby is presented by cvs well we're gonna do a
00:45:35
180 great i think is which direction we're headed in if you had it the same kind of story i was about
00:45:41
to tell, we'd be doing a 360. So if we're just doing a 180, I think it's a turnaround.
00:45:45
We're just turning around and walking in the opposite direction. Listen, I took geometry twice, sophomore and junior year. So AMA.
00:45:54
That's more than I did. So we're making a U-turn. We're walking over to London, early 1800s.
00:46:03
What? Is it my birthday? It's during the Industrial Revolution. Today, I'm going to tell you about the London beer flood.
00:46:11
of 1814. Yeah, I am. Aren't I? Yes, I am. Yes, you are. I agree that you are. So almost as soon
00:46:21
as this accident happened, this beer flood, it was, of course, the butt of jokes. But like other
00:46:25
industrial disasters that we've covered on the show, like you covered the Boston molasses flood
00:46:30
in episode 144, people actually died. And it's a pretty tragic story. Yeah. So the main sources I
00:46:37
used for the story are several 1814 news articles from the London Morning Chronicle and the Morning
00:46:42
Post, a blog post by beer historian Martin Cornell, and an episode of the engineering comedy podcast
00:46:50
Everything's a Spring. And the rest of the sources are in the show notes. So here we are,
00:46:56
Karen. It's a late afternoon on October 17th, 1814, your favorite year. One of the greats.
00:47:02
We're in London's St. Giles Rookery. So the word rookery basically means slum, like slum neighborhood.
00:47:11
St. Giles is in what is now a charming touristy area, of course, because London's so fancy now.
00:47:17
It's right near Soho in the theater district. But in 1814, the rookery is London's most notorious slum.
00:47:25
Like this is bad, like a not good area. and it's home to some of London's poorest residents,
00:47:31
most of whom, I'm sorry to say, are Irish immigrants. Well, we're used to it. Yeah.
00:47:37
It's been happening for a while. Right. So St. Giles Rookery is also home to the Horseshoe Brewery,
00:47:43
which belongs to a brewing company called Mewks and Company. And they are one of several brewers in London
00:47:50
and has started using a steam engine to produce large quantities of beer, which I guess is a big deal.
00:47:55
and they are known as one of the city's largest producers of porter. So in this new cutthroat economy of beer, beer makers compete by installing giant vats as marketing spectacles.
00:48:09
Like a water, almost looks like a water tower that would be on top of a building in New York.
00:48:12
Sure. But just full of fucking beer. But full of Coors Light. Got it. Every time a brewer builds one of these giant vats, they invite the public to come see it and the press to write about it.
00:48:24
So it's kind of like a spectacle to get more people to drink their beer. the big brewers are all trying to outdo one another with who has the biggest beer vat
00:48:32
and the horseshoe brewery is in on this arms race the company has several vats the size of small
00:48:38
houses in their large storehouse the biggest vats are more than 20 feet tall and hold about 300 000
00:48:46
gallons of beer wow and it's needed yeah exactly yeah it's a drink and there are several of them
00:48:55
in the storehouse. So that's a fucking lot of liquid. For context, an Olympic-sized swimming
00:49:00
pool holds about 660,000 gallons of water. So there's probably more liquid than that in the
00:49:07
Horseshoe Brewery storehouse. Wow. I love a nice comparison because then we get to picture an
00:49:13
Olympic-sized swimming pool filled with like Guinness. And that's such a fun mind experiment.
00:49:20
Take a dive. Get in there. So the storehouse backs up against a pub called the Tavistock Arms,
00:49:27
and the pub's backyard is bound on one side by the storehouse's brick wall. The wall is about 20 feet high, 60 feet wide, and 22 inches thick.
00:49:36
And on the afternoon of October 17th, a 14-year-old servant at the pub named Eleanor Cooper
00:49:42
is standing under that wall scrubbing out pots. Oh. As you did back then. Yeah, this is, it's pretty sad.
00:49:49
Directly behind a different side of the storehouse is a very narrow street. It's more like an alley.
00:49:55
It's called New Street, and New Street is full of dilapidated tenement buildings.
00:50:01
One of New Street's residents is a young woman named Mary Banfield who lives in a first floor apartment.
00:50:06
That afternoon, she and two of her children are sitting in their apartment having their tea, which is like an early dinner.
00:50:13
Downstairs in that same building's basement floor, there's an Irish wake in progress.
00:50:18
Tragically, the wake is for a two-year-old boy, and it's unclear how he died, but it's a poor
00:50:23
neighborhood in London in 1814, so probably from some kind of illness. Among the mourners is the
00:50:28
boy's mother, a 40-year-old woman named Anne Saville. There's also a 30-year-old woman named
00:50:33
Mary Mulvey, and she's there with her son, a three-year-old named Thomas. There's also a woman
00:50:39
named Elizabeth Butler, who's in her 60s, and one named Elizabeth Smith, who's 27. So they're all
00:50:44
at the wake of this poor two-year-old boy. In another house nearby on New Street,
00:50:50
there's a three-year-old named Sarah Bates. Not much is known about what she's doing
00:50:54
in the afternoon of October 17th, but if history tells us anything, she's working, probably.
00:51:00
A three-year-old? Yeah. She's tending bar. Right. George Crick is the clerk at the Horseshoe Brewery.
00:51:07
He's worked there for 17 years, and he's the most senior person who was on site at the time.
00:51:13
At 4.30 in the afternoon, workers tell George that one of the beer vats is having an issue.
00:51:19
Here's the description from an article in London's Morning Chronicle about this particular vat.
00:51:24
Quote, the height of the vat was 22 feet. It was filled within four inches of the top and then contained 3,500 barrels of beer, which was 10 months brewed, end quote.
00:51:36
So if you think of the little barrels that they roll into the bar in like a keg, if you think of 3,550 of those barrels, all that liquid is in one of these vats.
00:51:47
Yeah. I cannot understate the amount of liquid we're talking about. There is a lot of beer held in this.
00:51:54
What is a two-story vat? Yeah. The vats are made of wood and are secured by iron hoops like giant barrels.
00:52:02
But instead of one hoop on each end, there are about 20 of them going up along the whole vat.
00:52:08
When George gets to the storehouse, he sees that one of the hoops on the vats has slipped off and fallen to the ground.
00:52:14
The hoop is huge. It weighs about 700 pounds. Oh, my God. I know. That, like, gives you an idea of how giant we're talking.
00:52:23
George isn't particularly concerned. is this actually happens a few times a year.
00:52:27
And usually the rest of the hoops are enough to keep the vat intact until the broken one can be repaired.
00:52:32
George gets about writing a letter to the brewing company's partners to tell them that any new hoop,
00:52:37
like it's not a big deal. It's not a cause for concern. Right. But, you know, as beer ferments,
00:52:43
it releases gases. And of course this puts pressure on the wood. So without that metal hoop,
00:52:50
I think it's just like the metal hoop happened to be in the exact place where it needed to be, you know, if it had been a different hoop on a different day,
00:52:59
it might not have mattered. And so at 530, George is standing about three yards away from the broken
00:53:06
vat. He's about to walk out the door to mail that letter to get the vat fixed. He hears a huge
00:53:11
explosion. In the span of a few seconds, the bottom of the vat has burst open and hundreds
00:53:19
of thousands of gallons of beer spill out The force of the beer and the debris from the vat knocks out the entire 25 back wall of the building It also knocks the stopper out of another giant vat causing
00:53:33
that beer to start spilling out of the vat. So we're talking even more beer here.
00:53:38
By the time George gets back inside of the storehouse, it's a scene of complete destruction
00:53:42
and chaos. He's immediately up to his waist in beer, and the whole side of the building is just
00:53:48
gone. And that's the wall, of course, that 14-year-old Eleanor Cooper had been standing on
00:53:53
the other side of in the backyard of the pub washing pots. The owner of that pub, where Eleanor
00:53:59
works, is inside the taproom at the time. He hears the explosion. A wall of his pub caves in, but he's
00:54:05
not injured, and the taproom immediately starts filling with beer. He looks out into the yard
00:54:10
where Eleanor had been scrubbing pots, and all he sees is a mountain of bricks. So out on New Street,
00:54:16
It's total chaos. The 15-foot wave of beer tears through the alley, smashing into these
00:54:24
dilapidated homes, you know, that are already kind of falling apart, knocking down several of them
00:54:29
and filling cellar apartments and first floors with beer. People climb onto the furniture to
00:54:34
keep from being swept away. One American who was in the area visiting at the time, he got caught in
00:54:39
the flood and later wrote about the experience in the Knickerbocker magazine. He writes about being
00:54:44
swept away in a wave of hot, dark beer saying, quote, all at once I found myself born onward with
00:54:52
great velocity by a torrent, which burst upon me so suddenly as almost to deprive me of breath.
00:54:59
A roar as of falling buildings at the distance and suffocating fumes were in my ears and nostrils,
00:55:06
end quote. So it's like being in a wave pool and just being fucking knocked off your feet on the
00:55:11
street. But in a wave pool, you know, waves are coming. This is like the last thing you'd expect.
00:55:18
Totally. Yeah. I was just thinking about that. Suddenly you're just being carried away by a wave
00:55:23
when you're like, where did a wave come from? I'm on the streets of London. What is happening?
00:55:29
And also I was thinking about the fumes too, because it's not like the finalized version
00:55:34
of a beer or whatever. It's that stink. It's fermenting beer. Yeah. That's been sitting in
00:55:39
there for months. It's probably warm and... Well, they do love to serve it warm over there.
00:55:45
That's... A lot of British people would be like, here, here, or whatever they say, chin, chin.
00:55:52
Oy, oy, oy. And some of the houses on New Street closest to the brewery, there's no time to react.
00:55:59
Beer floods into the Irish wake in the basement apartment and all five people, including little
00:56:04
three-year-old Thomas drown. Upstairs on the first floor, beer surges into the apartment where
00:56:10
four-year-old Hannah Banfield and her mother, Mary, and another child are having tea. Mary is
00:56:16
pulled out of a window by the wave of beer. She's like gone. And Hannah is knocked out of her chair
00:56:22
and against a partition in the room. Back at the brewery, employees are at first preoccupied with
00:56:28
locating their workers. They didn't realize the extent of the catastrophe and the brewery cellar
00:56:34
has been filled. So they don't actually realize that the 15 foot wave of beer has swept down New
00:56:40
Street until the body of Anne Seville, the 40 year old grieving mother from the Irish wake floats in.
00:56:46
Can you imagine the horror? Right. You wouldn't be anticipating these insane events. Like you
00:56:53
would just know there's an emergency here where we work. You wouldn't realize the extent. That's
00:56:57
horrible. Exactly. It's only then that the workers direct their attention outside of the brewery,
00:57:02
where residents of St. Giles have begun their own search and rescue operation. Rescuers first start
00:57:07
by trying to free Eleanor Cooper, the girl who was washing the pot, since they know exactly where
00:57:12
she is. But it takes them three hours to clear all of the brick wall that fell on her. And by the
00:57:18
time they reach her, she's dead. The 14-year-old's body is finally found at 8.30 p.m. that night,
00:57:25
still standing up. So just no time to react at all. Yeah. On New Street, multiple buildings have
00:57:31
been reduced to piles of rubble. People wade through knee deep beer and everyone tries to
00:57:36
be quiet so they can listen for people who have been trapped under debris. So just the eerie
00:57:41
fucking silence going on. Late that night, rescuers find the body of three-year-old Sarah Bates in the
00:57:47
wreckage of her house on New Street. In a neighboring house, they also find the bodies of
00:57:52
the four other mourners from the Irish wake, including three-year-old Thomas and his mother,
00:57:57
Mary. Upstairs, rescuers find the body of four-year-old Hannah Banfield. The other young
00:58:04
child, whose name and exact age are not mentioned, is found on a bed nearly suffocated, but alive.
00:58:11
Her mother, Mary, is also found alive outside on New Street, and both of them are brought to
00:58:15
Middlesex Hospital, along with several other injured people, and everyone who's brought to
00:58:20
the hospital survives. Wow. Yeah. So lots of accounts of the beer floods say that people
00:58:26
from the neighborhood rushed out into the streets, filling pots and cups and bowls,
00:58:31
with as much free beer as they could scoop up. So they made it into this spectacle. You know
00:58:37
what I mean? Some people say that others died because of alcohol poisoning from drinking so
00:58:42
much beer And they kind of just made it like a look at these poor people Look at these Irish people Yeah Look at these poor Irish people what a mess they are However there no mention of this in any of the newspaper accounts from the time And given that most of the victims in the story were Irish and the discriminatory British press
00:58:58
they would have been very likely to have reported that if that had actually happened.
00:59:03
And so most historians are sure that this isn't what happened at all. Right. Also, sorry, just for logic, it's like any liquid that washes down a street,
00:59:13
by the time it gets to your house, that's not going to be delicious or like not free of like
00:59:19
tan bark and weird random shit. Right. It's like, it's not Willy Wonka's chocolate factory.
00:59:26
Right. But it's a disgusting idea that when there's like a devastation and, you know,
00:59:30
immediately people were doing search and rescue missions. It's not like there were just these
00:59:34
drunks on the street trying to get beer and, you know, it's just. But we're so good at figuring out how to hate each other.
00:59:41
Like it just is all, what are you like? You love beer. That means you love beer until, and you don't care about anything else.
00:59:49
Those people do. And that's what they're like. Exactly. Two days after the accident, the coroner holds an inquest with a jury, which will determine
00:59:58
the cause of death for the eight people who died in the flood. And therefore the level of responsibility for the brewing company, which it's like, it
01:00:06
was an accident. However, you're still responsible for that having happened in my mind, right?
01:00:12
It's regulations. It's upkeep. You got it. You got to. If you're going to have a two-story vat of beer, you have to keep all the rings on it.
01:00:20
Totally. I've always said that. George Crick, who's the head of the beer place, is one of the witnesses, as is the owner of the Tavistock Arms Pub.
01:00:30
The other primary witness is the landlord who owned the building where Hannah, Thomas, and their mothers lived.
01:00:36
So it's a little bit like one-sided. And there are many living survivors who lost loved ones and have been injured by the flood of beer.
01:00:44
And none of these people, all of them who are very poor, are asked to give statements.
01:00:49
They ask the people who probably would be most likely to get sued in this occasion.
01:00:54
Right. And so the coroner's jury rules that the eight victims, quote, died by casualty accidentally and by misfortune.
01:01:02
And so it was basically an act of God kind of a thing. Or their fault is for like,
01:01:10
it was just their fault for standing in the street. Right. How dare you live where you lived.
01:01:16
This ruling means that it was an accident and an act of God and absolves the beer maker of any responsibility for the deaths.
01:01:23
And you know, like the landlord too, it's like maybe a house shouldn't fall down that easily.
01:01:27
Yeah. Possibly. I don't know. I'm not a fucking builder. Yeah. Maybe you should have,
01:01:31
there should be laws to prevent you from letting your house get to that degree. It should be able to, I don't know, maybe you could call it the three little pigs law
01:01:42
where you have to have them stand up against a wolf's exhaling. Right, exactly. Still, the damage to the building and loss of beer cost the beer company about 23,000 pounds,
01:01:55
which in today's money, it's 1.5 million pounds. I was going to say 1.3. Oh, wait.
01:02:01
Oh my God. So how many dollars is that? I don't know. We're not doing that. We're not doing that.
01:02:07
We're not pretending like we understand inflation and like currently. I can't do dollars to pounds when I'm in that country actively doing it.
01:02:16
Right. Okay. So 23,000 pounds back then is $2 million today. That's how much this accident cost the beer company.
01:02:26
Wow. This lost revenue without the ability to produce or sell any beer for a while would be enough to
01:02:31
permanently shutter mucs and company. Instead, Parliament votes to refund the taxes
01:02:38
the company has already paid on that lost beer, giving them a bailout of about 7,000 pounds,
01:02:44
which is about a third of what they lost. And so they're able to continue operating.
01:02:48
And it's like, oh, help the big guy. They love to help the big guy, those government types.
01:02:54
Oops, you made an accident. Let's fix it. Right. Yeah. In the wake of the accident,
01:03:00
brewers do change the way they store their beer, opting for concrete vats lined with metal instead
01:03:05
of wood. Yay. The Horseshoe Brewery is rebuilt and operates in that same area until 1921. And it's
01:03:13
actually the last brewery in central London when it finally closes. I think people realize that
01:03:18
having a brewery in the middle of fucking neighborhoods is a bad idea. So they started
01:03:23
moving them outside the big city. Yeah. The brewery far outlasts the St. Giles Rookery.
01:03:29
So that like tenement neighborhood, the poor neighborhood, which is broken up and ultimately demolished in the second half of the 1800s.
01:03:36
Right when? Jack the Ripper. Jack the Ripper was happening. Maybe. Maybe. The Mewkes Brewery Company stays in business producing Porter until the early 1960s.
01:03:47
Although the outcome and the deaths are clearly awful, historians agree that it could have been much worse because the flood happened around five o'clock, 530.
01:03:57
Had the flood happened later in the evening when the men and older children would have been home from work and school, far more people would have died if there had been people in those pubs as well after work.
01:04:08
And the wake in the cellar would have been more attended because people were you know it like an all day thing So they were going to come after work So like the death toll could have been so much higher It still obviously a tragedy
01:04:21
And that is the story of the London beer flood of 1814, which killed eight people.
01:04:29
Yeah, that is a really interesting point of like back then they were just kind of like,
01:04:33
yeah, just put that gigantic business wherever in a residential community and let's just see what happens.
01:04:39
Yeah, there's no standards and practices, but let's just see how big we can get this thing that's going to hold liquid, that ferments.
01:04:47
Let's just do it. Yeah, let's see. It's almost like a contest with ourselves. Yeah.
01:04:52
Things that cause huge waves in residential areas, we don't have them as much anymore, and perhaps it's for the best.
01:04:59
Yeah. Well, that was great. Yeah, thank you. Should we wrap up with our new recurring segment that we love so much?
01:05:07
Yeah, it's called hashtag what are we even doing right now? What are you even doing right now?
01:05:11
You guys tell us what you're even doing when you listen to this podcast. What are you even doing right now?
01:05:17
There it is. We needed it. And so I got it done. Hey, gang, the episode draws to a close and Georgia and Karen ask,
01:05:26
what are you doing while listening to stories of art heists and murders? Well, I am somewhere in Montana, buried deep among rows and rows of dinosaur fossils,
01:05:35
working through drawer by drawer, painstakingly identifying and cataloging toe bones and femurs
01:05:41
and loose teeth and countless other bony bits. I'm currently stuck on a sickle-shaped claw about
01:05:48
five inches long that belonged to a close relative of T-Rex called, and they wrote it out for me,
01:05:54
thank you, Daspletosaurus, trying to decide if it came from the left or right hand. In my ear,
01:05:59
Karen and Georgia discussed the lives and crimes of killers and victims, and around me lie hundreds
01:06:04
of thousands of fossils and bones. Hmm. I guess murderinos and paleontologists are alike in that
01:06:11
way, both scrutinizing the losses of the past and asking why did they die? What killed them?
01:06:16
How did they live? And what does it all mean? A little existential, but nevermind that. Just
01:06:22
stay sexy and don't lose interest in the past because, and then it says Smokey the Bear Voice,
01:06:27
only you can keep the stories of the dead alive best sophie the paleobiologist she they i have the
01:06:36
perfect follow-up to that one this is from i'm no pint okay is what it looks like okay and i believe
01:06:44
it's from instagram and it says listening to the pod while they eat leftover birthday cake for
01:06:48
breakfast like a goddamn champion we've done it again that's it i love it oh my god it's so good
01:06:56
those were great please tell us what are you even doing right now any way you want tell it anyway
01:07:01
long short yeah we love it all detailed yeah whatever not doesn't matter it doesn't matter
01:07:08
it doesn't we just appreciate that you're even listening right now that's right we love that you
01:07:13
spend time with this podcast and we appreciate you we really do you guys are doing it we got
01:07:19
to keep on doing it and until that time stay sexy and don't get murdered Elvis, do you want a cookie?
01:07:29
This has been an Exactly Right production. Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck.
01:07:39
Our managing producer is Hannah Kyle Creighton. Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo.
01:07:44
This episode was mixed by Liana Squalache. Our researchers are Maren McClashen and Allie Elkin.
01:07:49
Email your hometowns to myfavoritemurder at gmail.com. Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at My Favorite Murder
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01:08:07
Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Dani Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunning stories
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I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said,
01:08:20
move, and he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off, and that was the last time I saw him.
01:08:25
Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:08:32
Before NXIVM, Nancy Solzman wanted to help people. Being able to help somebody, it's probably the biggest motivator of my entire life.
01:08:41
She trained in something called neurolinguistic programming. People loved our training.
01:08:45
Then everything changed. Yeah, and they called it a cult. How does a method designed to improve lives
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end up in a cult? A knife in the hands of a surgeon is an amazing tool. A knife in the hands of a murderer is a weapon.
01:09:00
Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:09:08
I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families.
01:09:18
Late one night, Bobby Gumpright became the victim of a random crime. The perpetrator was sentenced to 99 years until a confession changed everything.
01:09:29
I was a monster. Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.