00:00:00
This is exactly right. Isn't some far off concept? It's already here. Next starts now.
00:00:33
Hyundai, an official partner of FIFA. Goodbye. When a charming neurosurgeon rode into Frontier Town
00:00:39
selling a persona of confidence and care, patients trusted him. He wore cowboy boots in the operating room
00:00:45
and became sought after by patients. He promised to heal them. Instead, he left a trail of broken bodies.
00:00:51
This is a story of greed, betrayal, and a fight for justice. Listen to Dr. Death the Cowboy wherever you get your podcasts
00:00:58
or binge the entire series right now only with Audible. Goodbye. Where does summer take you?
00:01:05
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Find your summer escape today. Visit Pura.com to learn more. Goodbye. My favorite murder
00:01:35
Hello! Hello! And welcome. To My Favorite Murder. That's Georgia Hardstar. That's Karen Kilgariff.
00:01:50
You were doing your kind of conducting gesture, but what is really funny to me is there's no,
00:01:56
sometimes you'll do it and then it ends here and then it starts over here. And it's like,
00:02:01
you're just kind of trying to give some indicator of like, we could start now or we could start now.
00:02:07
Yeah. I'll do it. And then like, yeah, I still don't know when to fucking start. Like,
00:02:11
that's just how it's been for seven years. It's not like you're starting on your one. Yeah.
00:02:17
I'm kind of looking at you. I'm giving options. I'm giving. This moment could be this moment right here is when we both start talking.
00:02:24
you'll just never know. You'll never know. I'll never know. We can't know. We can't know.
00:02:30
And that's the point right now. That's the joy of this present moment. Yeah. Are you in this season of your life
00:02:37
in a present moment of joy and terror? Or are you pretending not to be when actually you are either way?
00:02:46
Yeah. You should know that you can go through your entire day just screaming if you want.
00:02:50
It's up to you. It's okay. But if you do it on the bus, they're going to get mad.
00:02:56
Yeah. So pick and choose. But I bet a couple people would scream along with you, right?
00:03:01
I mean, it's that kind of world we're living in. I mean, entirely. I had somebody...
00:03:07
I was going to tell you a story of how I went to the mall today. Although there's no story.
00:03:11
That's the whole thing in one sense. You left the house. I mean, that's a huge fucking update.
00:03:16
Right. It's pretty big. But on the way, you know, in LA, they have... I'm sure they have these everywhere now.
00:03:22
but to get on the freeway, there's a little stoplight and you pull up and it's red and then
00:03:27
it pretty much immediately turns green. Unless in LA, it's starting to get traffic-y.
00:03:32
Right. So I pulled up to one and it turned, it was red when I pulled up and it remained red for like 10
00:03:38
seconds and I'm just staring at it. So it was not like I looked away or anything.
00:03:42
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then someone just rams on their horn. No. And then I was like, and then I just went, even though it was still red, where I was like,
00:03:48
that's, to me, that's the energy outside right now. Just a honk and a red. Honk and a red.
00:03:54
Go! I don't care. Go. Go! It's up to you, Mr. Whoever you are behind us. Robinson?
00:04:03
Mr. Robinson, you know, you do your fucking, you do your honk. Do it. Get it out through a horn, through your mouth.
00:04:12
It just seems like it's needed. It's a real build. Yeah. Right now. Yeah, it's a crescendo.
00:04:20
The mall's pretty chill. Oh, yeah. How was the mall? Yeah, nothing happened. I was just like, I went, I knew I couldn't start actually like
00:04:28
wander shopping because then I'd be like, oh my God, it's 5.30 and I was supposed to
00:04:33
start recording. So I literally was like, you can go to this store, this store and Sephora.
00:04:39
Did you get a snack? No, I didn't. Oh, what would you get? Like, what's your go-to mall snack if you could? I think I just want
00:04:46
a pretzel right now is what I'm saying. Literally, that's what I was going to say.
00:04:50
I walked by the Wetzel stand that's on the way back to where I was parked in the garage from Sephora.
00:04:57
And I was like looking at it and looking at it. But I was just like, there cannot be anything but like trans fats in Wetzel's Pratzels, right?
00:05:07
Because how good they are. Oils and you have to get cheese with it or you're a monster.
00:05:11
Yeah. So like, what are you supposed to do? It was one of those kind of things where I was like, I wasn't hungry.
00:05:18
And if I did it, it felt like that's all I ever do. If I never change, nothing will ever change.
00:05:24
It's the smell. It was that kind of vibe. But the smell was pretty good. Do you know there's now a Dunkin' Donuts in my local mall?
00:05:31
Oh. That makes life hard. That place smells good. Yeah, it does. Seems weird though.
00:05:37
Donuts in a mall, like it doesn't really translate, you know? I think in malls these days, they're just trying to give people what they want.
00:05:44
They're like, we know it's not like really a sunglass hut anymore. What do you want?
00:05:49
Yeah. They're just like, we need a place that's going to stay here. My jam is there a McDonald there too So to get a fucking vanilla cone and just wander them all I haven done that in so long Maybe I need to do that That a very summer you know that a summertime thing isn it
00:06:05
And it's getting there. Enjoy some AC. I saw someone say the mall these days is Facebook.
00:06:13
When you were a teen, it was a cool place to hang out. And now you go back once in a while
00:06:17
to see old people yelling. Yeah. Something like that. Yes. Yeah. That makes sense.
00:06:23
at the mall. No one yelled at the mall, but I realized I was listening to podcasts as I walked
00:06:31
around. So I was like, oh, this is just the way to do it. If you're out in the world feeling
00:06:37
aggression is around you, you just, yeah. What were you listening to? I was listening to I Said
00:06:41
No Gifts. Oh, lovely. Timothy Simons was on it. He's so funny. It was really, it's a really good
00:06:48
episode. It was great. I'm reading a book. Can I suggest a book? Please. That I've like fallen
00:06:55
in love with. It's a during and post apocalyptic book, but not like end of the world, more like
00:07:01
COVID times 10. And it takes place in the not too distant future. There's another global pandemic
00:07:07
and each chapter is someone's story during, and it takes you through the whole like 10
00:07:14
10 years, 100 years after. It's like, did you read World War Z? That was really good in that way too.
00:07:22
I watched the movie. I was a big fan of the movie. I didn't read it. The book's great.
00:07:25
I listened to that too. So this book is really beautiful. It's like everything's falling apart,
00:07:29
but it's just this beautiful book about grief and individuals and how they deal with it
00:07:35
and what they've lost and that we're all kind of together. It's just really, really lovely.
00:07:39
It's called How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamastu. N-A-G-A-M-A-S-U, Nagamatsu.
00:07:49
And it's just, it's just like, it's one of those books I don't want to keep listening
00:07:54
because I don't want to finish it, you know? Yeah. Wow. I'm just really in love with it.
00:07:58
That's a good endorsement. Yeah. I guess my endorsement would be that the fourth season of Succession started.
00:08:04
I haven't watched the new episode yet. Don't tell me anything. I am so excited. I won't say a word.
00:08:09
It's just like, it was one of those feelings where it started and I just, It's like, thank God it started.
00:08:15
It's the same feeling I had. I happened upon the first episode of the new season of Perry Mason where I was like,
00:08:21
wait, what? Is this real? Oh, thank God. I needed you. So excited. This season, Logan Roy is making me laugh so hard.
00:08:29
I just was going to spoiler something. It's just his vibe, Logan Roy's vibe is hilarious to me.
00:08:35
Okay. Is he like, I don't give a fuck. This is the last season and I'm going to Logan Roy
00:08:38
the hell out of all of you. I'll generalize it so there's no spoiler risk. Okay.
00:08:43
Because that is really irritating when someone's like, I'll just indicate a theme.
00:08:46
And then they're fucking it up for your whole enjoyment. But when you're older, you do not have to worry about the same things
00:08:53
you worry about when you're younger. You are free. You're free to behave however you want.
00:08:58
And everyone's like, oh yeah, that's them. It's not a drama point. It's just you get to.
00:09:05
Yeah. You're not changing at this point. This is like what you've become. And you don't give a shit.
00:09:10
You're not taking notes from people at this point in your life. Not in the least.
00:09:15
Yeah. No notes. No notes. No notes, please. Oh, I have a corrections corner that's, I don't know, ironic.
00:09:24
I was actually corrected that I was mispronouncing how I say the Ku Klux Klan. Someone told me and I was like, I didn't realize.
00:09:34
Apparently, it's Ku Klux Klan. What if we got canceled because you mispronounced the Ku Klux Klan?
00:09:43
It's like, how about we just call them all Nazis? How about we just group them all together and then not really worry about it?
00:09:51
Mispronounce is the SS. So let's just fucking go with that instead. That's easy to remember.
00:09:57
Simple, reductive. Yeah, exactly. I have a good corrections corner. Oh. Last week in episode 372, when I covered the disappearance of the Indigenous girl,
00:10:07
Anthonette Cayedito, I also gave an update on some Indigenous women who went missing.
00:10:12
And one of them, Kiana Klomp, I covered her in episode 296. And in the update, I said she hadn't been found, but she actually was found alive in 2021.
00:10:21
So that's great. Amazing. Great. Oh, well, since we're on this, we'll go into the mailbag because this is really delightful.
00:10:30
and this was because at this point now, I'm not sure how many weeks ago it was, but I did the story about the fight for justice
00:10:37
for the murders of Henry D. and Charles Moore. We got this DM on Instagram. It's from letwill underscore two.
00:10:44
And it says, listening to the episode now, my dad was childhood friends with Charles and Henry.
00:10:50
The place, like the piece of land where the clan snatched them belongs to my grandmother.
00:10:56
There's a marker on it now in their memory. My dad has told me that they were always together.
00:11:02
And my aunt, Charles and Henry took a few classes at Alcorn State too. Had my dad not made a different decision that day, he wouldn't be here today.
00:11:10
Oh my God. Yeah. What an incredible story. Mm-hmm. Wow. The personalization is so important.
00:11:21
Amazing. Yeah. All right. Should we do some exactly right updates? Let's do it. And get into it.
00:11:29
This week over on Adulting, comedian Marie Faustin is Michelle and Jordan's guest.
00:11:34
And Michelle and Jordan have live shows coming up in April and May at the Bell House in Brooklyn.
00:11:40
I believe it's Guaness, if you want to be specific about it. So check their Instagram to get some tickets
00:11:47
for Adulting Live. Ooh, that's a fun show. And on That's Messed Up and SVU podcast,
00:11:52
Kara and Lisa discuss episode 18 from season 17 and have a conversation with Robert John Burke He has played four different characters in the Law Order universe which is so freaking cool over the years
00:12:05
most notably Olivia Benson's longtime love interest, Ed Tucker. So that's going to be a rad conversation.
00:12:12
Check out. That's messed up. I have a picture in my mind of who that actor is because there is a guy that I personally have noticed
00:12:20
that's played multiple characters in different seasons on that show. I love it so much.
00:12:25
I do too. If you haven't joined the fan cult yet, or if you're thinking of renewing,
00:12:29
instead of like the gift we usually get, so sometimes it's a pin, sometimes it's like a hat or whatever.
00:12:35
This season, you're going to get a promo code that gives you $20 towards any purchase
00:12:40
in the merch store. And then you also, of course, get weekly videos. You get your own dedicated mini-mini access
00:12:47
to the fan cult forum and much more. So cool. Go to myfavoritemurder.com. And lastly, we're really excited to launch
00:12:53
new t-shirt design and sweatshirt created by Murderino Kelly Wills of Brain Flower Designs.
00:12:59
We found her online, loved her work. And so she's made us something really special.
00:13:04
Go to myfavoritemurder.com or our social media to check it out now. It's very goth.
00:13:09
It's very goth. Teenage Karen approved. Teenage Karen would love it. This is one thing
00:13:14
I just saw on Twitter really quick. On April 8th, Molly Shannon is hosting SNL. I saw, I love her.
00:13:20
And I swear, that's, I feel like a real nerd because that's not for me anymore. I don't even, you know what I mean?
00:13:26
It's not like I'm some SNL booster or whatever. Yeah, yeah. First of all, I absolutely adore Molly Shannon.
00:13:31
She's as cool in real life as she is, as you think she is. She's a lovely human being.
00:13:38
Imagining her hosting that thing, like makes me so happy. So special. So excited.
00:13:44
I heard her memoir is great. I've got it. I think I downloaded it. I got to listen to it.
00:13:49
Yeah. She's like a authentically, an authentically beautiful human being, like so kind and loving and like funny.
00:14:00
I don't know. I just, that made me happy. I was just like, what a satisfying thing.
00:14:05
Cause I don't think she's gone back. I don't think she's hosted it since she left.
00:14:10
That's very cool. That's very awesome. Yay. If you spend all day waiting to take your bra off,
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I thought I just hated bras, but I was wearing the wrong size. And with Third Love, like they're so comfortable that it doesn't even feel like I'm wearing a bra.
00:15:10
Use code MFM15 for $15 off your first purchase at thirdlove.com. Goodbye. While the world watches the stars at the FIFA World Cup this summer, Hyundai has its eyes on the next generation of talent.
00:15:23
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.
00:15:34
Because Next doesn't wait for an invitation, and Hyundai doesn't either. Hyundai has always moved the future within reach.
00:15:40
Hyundai did it by making advanced safety standard on every vehicle. Hyundai did it by engineering EVs with ultra-fast charging capability.
00:15:48
And Hyundai continues doing it every day. From robotics that change how people live to young athletes changing the game,
00:15:54
the future isn't some far-off concept. It's already here. Next starts now. Hyundai, an official partner of FIFA.
00:16:00
Goodbye. If you're always on the lookout for a great audiobook or just want help figuring out what to listen to next,
00:16:06
there's a podcast you should know about. It's called Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club, hosted by Cal Penn.
00:16:13
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-fi and literary fiction to rom-coms, thrillers, and comedy.
00:16:22
Cal is joined by guests who dig into what these stories are about, what makes them stand out as audiobooks, and why they're connecting with listeners right now.
00:16:29
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, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:16:39
Goodbye. Bye. Is Karen first? Karen goes first. She is. All right, today I'm going to tell you a story, Georgia,
00:16:48
that Dave Anthony sent me. Sometimes Dave Anthony of the Dollop podcast. If you like Weird History,
00:16:55
you might like the Dollop podcast. So go over there and try it out. Did you see Gareth got both his ears pierced
00:17:00
on the road as a dare? Or no, he lost a bet with Dave Anthony. And so Gareth, the other host of the Dollop,
00:17:06
got both his ears pierced, these huge blingy diamonds in his ear. I watched the video on Instagram and it was very funny.
00:17:14
That is truly genius. Oh, so funny. So sometimes Dave sends me articles when a story is too like
00:17:23
on the side of true crime because it's not that historical. But he's like, this would be good for
00:17:28
you guys. And I take it and I never tell you and it's mine and not yours. So this one was from Dave
00:17:34
And he was like, you're not going to believe this article. And the craziest thing is it takes place in San Francisco.
00:17:39
It also takes place in Santa Rosa, which is the town just north of Petaluma where the mall is.
00:17:45
And so this is a true hometown for me, even though I'd never heard of it before.
00:17:50
It a story about a woman who journalist Katie Dowd referred to as the most dangerous woman in San Francisco It NorCal own Iva Kroger All right Okay so the main sources used for this story are an SFGate article by writer Katie Dowd
00:18:08
called The Most Dangerous Woman in San Francisco. And that article is heavily cited throughout this story.
00:18:13
Katie Dowd is the journalist that did the majority of the research on this story.
00:18:19
Also, Maren polled the Supreme Court of California's 1964 opinion on the People vs. Kroger.
00:18:25
And also multiple articles from California newspapers that ran in the 60s that were covering this
00:18:31
as the story broke. Got it. And then if you want to look at any of those or the rest of the sources for this story,
00:18:36
they're in our show notes. So we'll take you back now to January 1962 to a little town I know very well
00:18:45
called Santa Rosa, California. It's 10 minutes up the 101 from Petaluma, again, where the mall is.
00:18:51
So it's a big deal. and in the beginning of 1962, a police officer is pulling into the parking lot
00:18:58
of the Rose City Motor Court on the 1300 block of Santa Rosa Boulevard, which is across the street
00:19:04
from where the boot barn is today and up the road from Applebee's. The boot barn.
00:19:10
The boot barn. So in Santa Rosa, there's like the center of town, but then like in most towns,
00:19:15
as you kind of go out of town, it's like it gets a little seedier and then there's like motels
00:19:20
as you, you know, that kind of vibe. It doesn't look like that anymore. Yeah. But it did then.
00:19:26
So you can vouch for that. I've seen it myself. That's what I'm trying to say. Got it.
00:19:32
I put my eyes on this. So this motel is owned by a 58-year-old Mildred Arneson and her 70-year-old husband, Jay.
00:19:40
Jay is suffering from advanced stage Parkinson's and the police have been called by Mildred's sister,
00:19:46
Beatrice Brunn. She lives in Washington State and she's asking them to do a welfare check on the couple
00:19:52
because she hasn't heard from her sister. The last correspondence Beatrice got from Mildred
00:19:58
was a letter from the month before where Mildred detailed an extravagant upcoming trip to Brazil
00:20:04
with a new friend. Beatrice and Mildred's mother, Odella, had also gotten a letter telling her the same news.
00:20:11
She said while she was away, her husband, Jay, would be well cared for and that this friend she was traveling with
00:20:17
had recently come into some money and was kindly fronting her the $10,000 to cover the trip's cost.
00:20:25
That's nearly $100,000 in today's money. No, vacations don't cost that. Mm-mm. Should they?
00:20:34
No. I mean. In a perfect world, sure. Are you taking a private jet in 1962? Like, what's happening?
00:20:41
Buying a private jet and fucking taking it there. lying around when you have to stay home and take care of the Rose City Motel.
00:20:50
So apparently all Mildred had to do to get fronted that money was sign over the motel as collateral.
00:20:57
Dude. So that specific detail sounds like a bad idea, but Beatrice trusts her sister's intuition.
00:21:04
And if anyone deserves a lavish vacation, it's her sister Mildred. But then after they get this letter, they don't hear anything else.
00:21:12
So Christmas comes and goes, not a word from Mildred, which of course is very odd.
00:21:17
So Beatrice decides to call her sister on New Year's Day. And when Jay, her husband, answers the phone, all he says is,
00:21:25
Hello, Bea, I don't think I'll ever see Mildred again. And then the woman caring for him takes the phone from him and hangs it up.
00:21:33
So Beatrice is not able to reach Jay again, so she calls the police. So this is when the officer is pulling in
00:21:40
to the Rose City Motor Court. He parks his patrol car outside. He knows all this backstory,
00:21:45
but he isn't that concerned. Mildred made it clear that she did go on vacation. It's natural.
00:21:52
It would make sense that Jay is having a hard time contacting his sister-in-law without assistance.
00:21:57
So maybe someone working at the motel, you know, he's like, there's probably easily,
00:22:02
this is easily explained. He opens the door to the office and he's greeted by a friendly middle-aged woman
00:22:08
who's stationed behind the front desk. The officer introduces himself and asks if anyone has heard from the motel owners lately
00:22:15
because their family is worried and is calling about them. And he's there to make sure that they're okay.
00:22:21
So the woman behind the counter explains that there's no reason to worry about the Arnesons.
00:22:27
Jay's in good hands and Mildred is off enjoying herself in Brazil. And there's probably a simple explanation
00:22:33
for the lack of correspondence. like maybe she's so swept up in the excitement that she just forgot to write home.
00:22:40
And then this woman behind the counter offers one correction to what the officer said.
00:22:45
She explains the motel has a new name now. It's called the El Sombrero. And the Arnesons don't own it anymore.
00:22:52
She does. And then she shows him the deed with her name on it. So the officer looks at the document, checks it out.
00:23:00
The woman's name is right there. And he basically is like, maybe theorizing that Mildred basically escaped her life here,
00:23:10
working at this motel with a husband who was sick, was getting too much, and she just bailed.
00:23:16
It's just a theory, but it's plausible. He still has Mildred's worried family to answer to.
00:23:23
So the officer gives Beatrice Brunn's name and phone number, and he misspells her last name as Brown
00:23:30
when it's actually Brun, B-R-U-N-N. And he gives that information to the woman behind the desk
00:23:36
and asks her to give Beatrice a call and basically says like, tell her what you told me.
00:23:42
And then he leaves. Okay. The officer has no idea. He's just handed Beatrice Brun's phone number
00:23:48
to the woman who's stolen her sister's business and murdered her. And that woman's name is Iva Kroger.
00:23:57
Okay, born Lucille Hooper in Kentucky, 1922 to working class parents. Iva Kroger is not her real name
00:24:04
and it isn't even close to her real name. And we don't know much about her childhood,
00:24:09
but by the early 40s, she has a husband and two sons in Louisville. But it seems like Lucille doesn't enjoy domestic life.
00:24:18
Within a couple of years, she leaves her family and sets out on her own. So it's unclear exactly where Lucille was planning to go
00:24:26
or what her plans are. All we know about this part of her life is everything that we can surmise
00:24:31
from the trouble she gets into with the law. So almost immediately, she's arrested in Chicago in 1945.
00:24:38
She's 23 years old and the charges for illegally wearing the uniform of a military nurse.
00:24:45
Yeah. More specifically, Lucille's telling people that she's a Navy nurse who survived a POW camp in Japan.
00:24:53
So it's just straight up stolen valor in like post-war America. She pleads guilty to this crime.
00:25:01
We can't tell whether or not she did any time for it, but what we do know is she is given probation
00:25:06
and she immediately skips town. So now Lucille heads west. She cycles through fake names and invented identities as she goes.
00:25:16
And by the early 50s, she settled in San Francisco with her new name, Iva. In 1954, she's 32 years old and she marries again,
00:25:24
and this time to a man named Ralph Kroger. He's a laborer who's 17 years her senior.
00:25:31
And they eventually move into a small home in the city's outer Mission neighborhood,
00:25:36
which is where my mom's from. Oh. So we don't really know that much about Iva and Ralph's relationship.
00:25:44
It does seem like they're happy together. But at some point, Iva is injured after being hit by a jitney
00:25:50
and she's left with a limp. What is a jitney? I looked it up because I didn't know either.
00:25:56
And it was like basically a smaller bus. They look like old Model Ts kind of with no top
00:26:02
where you could fit like what looked like maybe eight people onto it so that you wouldn't have to get on the bus
00:26:08
and do all the stops. If you were downtown, you could get over to Fisherman's Wharf.
00:26:13
It was like a one-stop kind of bus. So it's a bummer to get hit by one. Yes. And it leaves her with a limp
00:26:20
and she winds up suing the company that owns the Jitney for damages. It's unclear if she ever receives that money,
00:26:26
but it seems unlikely since it's also reported that the couple is struggling financially.
00:26:31
They're hounded by lenders who want payments and by insurance agents who monitor Iva during her recovery,
00:26:39
which implies that insurance fraud may have been suspected in that situation. And by the end of the story, you're going to be like,
00:26:47
yeah, it probably was insurance fraud, but we'll see. By November 1961, the Kroger's have had enough
00:26:53
with what they consider harassment. But other people would be like, it's just us asking you to pay your bills.
00:26:59
So they head north across the Golden Gate Bridge, up 50 miles, and they land at a budget motel
00:27:04
called the Blue Bonnet in Santa Rosa. And they check in under the fake names, Eva and Ralph Long.
00:27:11
And this is where Iva Kroger spots an opportunity. Across the street from the Blue Bonnet
00:27:15
is the Rose City Motor Court Motel. And for some reason, Iva comes to believe this motel will be her ticket to financial stability. She walks across the street into
00:27:26
the front office and asks if the property is for sale. It's unclear what her plan was since
00:27:32
we just said she didn't really have any money so badly that she had to skip town because of it.
00:27:37
But it's a moot point because Mildred Arneson tells Iva she's not interested in selling,
00:27:42
but it doesn't keep Iva away. Instead, she starts hanging around the motel and becomes
00:27:47
quote unquote, good friends with Mildred. And she even starts helping out with Jay's care.
00:27:53
We don't know exactly what Iva's personality was like or how she managed to ingratiate herself
00:27:57
with a stranger so quickly. But what we do know is within a few weeks, she has Mildred's full
00:28:03
trust. So it kind of seems like if Iva is like a true sociopath, then she probably saw a husband
00:28:13
and wife who own that motel and the husband is physically impaired, right? So there's kind of
00:28:20
like a weakness that she might be able to go in and exploit. Yeah. She sounds like a scammer.
00:28:24
Yeah. So then that December, Iva announces that she's just earned around $150,000 on an accident
00:28:32
claim, which would be over a million dollars in today's money. And given what we know about
00:28:37
Iva's financial state, this is very likely a lie, but Mildred believes her. So when Iva tells her
00:28:44
that she's going to use that money to go on the vacation of a lifetime in Brazil, she invites
00:28:48
Mildred to come along and Mildred is all in. So she immediately begins planning for this trip.
00:28:55
She takes out traveler's checks at the bank, organizes care for her husband, and then she
00:29:00
sends two letters, one to her mother and another to her sister Beatrice, telling them of her exciting
00:29:05
vacation plans. And that is the last anyone will hear of Mildred Arneson. So now we're back at the
00:29:13
start of the story. A police officer's just left the contact information for Mildred's sister,
00:29:18
Beatrice, with Iva at the rebranded Elsonboro Motel. And not long after that, Beatrice receives
00:29:25
a phone call from an unknown woman who introduces herself as Mrs. Long and claims to be running the
00:29:31
motel while Mildred is away. And Mrs. Long is insistent that Beatrice has no reason to worry.
00:29:37
Mildred's having the time of her life abroad. In fact, she's just sent a postcard to the motel
00:29:42
from Mexico suggesting that she's moved on from Brazil, which doesn't geographically make a ton
00:29:48
of sense Like she went South first in this coming up So Mrs Long also confirms that Jay is doing well And then she shares the news that the Rose City Motor Court has been sold which would have come as a shock to Beatrice And when she asks who bought it Mrs Long says she
00:30:06
doesn't know. But the phone call strikes Beatrice as very weird, because as much as she really wants
00:30:11
to believe that her sister's off enjoying herself somewhere while Jay is safe and sound in Santa
00:30:16
Rosa, she needs to hear it from Mildred directly. But then on February 12th, she does. Beatrice gets
00:30:24
a telegram that's supposedly from her sister, except there are two huge red flags. The telegram
00:30:30
is signed Mildred and not Mil, which is how her sister always signs her letters. But an even bigger
00:30:37
one, the telegram is addressed to Beatrice Brown, not Beatrice Brunn. Oh dear. Which means Mildred
00:30:44
got her sister's last name wrong. So now Beatrice knows for a fact there's no way this telegram
00:30:51
came from her sister. So she calls the police again and she explains what happened
00:30:55
and she tells them now that she and her family are even more worried that something very bad
00:31:01
has happened to Mildred. But still, unfortunately, the police are not too worried
00:31:06
about the Arnesons. And the reason that sucks so bad is because if they'd done the slightest amount of investigating,
00:31:13
they would have discovered all kinds of shady activity going on at the Rose City Motor Court.
00:31:19
Because not only had the Arnesons' belongings been removed from their room and burned. But Iva immediately starts taking out
00:31:27
loans in the Arneson's names. She even used Mildred's traveler's checks that she got for
00:31:34
her trip to Brazil to pay off debts at local department stores. Oh, dear. So she's kind of, she's making no secret about basically replacing this woman. It's so creepy.
00:31:47
So around the same time Beatrice receives the suspicious telegram, a Red Cross worker stops by the motel and asks Iva where Mr. Arneson is.
00:31:57
And it makes sense that this worker would ask Iva because Iva's been telling people that Mildred left Jay in her care.
00:32:04
But on this day, Iva decides to play dumb. She tells the man that she doesn't know where Jay is because Mildred had recently come to pick him up.
00:32:11
And she will repeat that story over and over in the coming weeks. And as she does, adding flourish to it every time,
00:32:20
which to me is another sign that you're dealing with a crazy person. Yeah. In one version, she actually claims
00:32:25
that Mildred came to the motel one night at two in the morning in a white Cadillac,
00:32:30
accompanied by two sinister looking men, picked up her husband, Jay, and drove off into the night.
00:32:36
Hmm. As one does. I mean, yeah. Now it's the last week of February 1962. Ive has only been in charge
00:32:43
at the Rose City Motor Court for two months, but the motel is already falling behind on both utility and loan payments.
00:32:51
Meanwhile, back in San Francisco, the house that the Kroger's had moved out of very quickly and abandoned
00:32:56
to move up to Santa Rosa to basically get out of town, they've gone back up there and now they seem to be doing construction work at the house.
00:33:05
They've hired a contractor named Walter Hughes, who they met over at the Blue Bonnet Motel in Santa Rosa,
00:33:11
and they've asked him to come and dig out a section of their garage. Basically, it's four feet long, four feet wide, four feet deep.
00:33:20
Perfect. I've explained that it's for some plumbing work that they need to get done.
00:33:25
But it's such a weird request that Walter actually ends up talking about the details of this job to people that he knows.
00:33:32
And then within a few days of him being done, like digging that hole, the Kroger's fill it with cement that's a stark white color.
00:33:41
And it completely clashes with the original garage floor, which is a greenish cement.
00:33:47
Then in April, the Kroger's start another home improvement project. This time they hire a contractor named Francis Kennison
00:33:53
to add another layer of cement to their garage floor. So when Francis comes to start the job,
00:33:59
the first step involves taking a sledgehammer to the awkwardly patched white sections of cement
00:34:05
and ripping it all up. So it's like he has to get rid of what's there first to like do the job and make the floor even.
00:34:11
But when Iva hears him busting up the floor, she rushes into the garage screaming about how that part is not to be messed with.
00:34:19
Francis insists the entire floor has to be pulled up so it can be correctly repaired before cement can be poured.
00:34:27
But Iva doesn't budge. So despite the uneven and patched flooring, Francis ends up begrudgingly pouring the next layer of cement and then laying additional wooden flooring on top of that.
00:34:40
So by the next month, which is May, Iva seems to have had enough with the Rose City Motor Court.
00:34:45
She's only been at the helm for about six months, and she puts it up for sale for $72,000,
00:34:51
which is $700,000 in today's money. And as she waits for an offer, those bills keep piling up.
00:34:58
And by the summertime, the motel hasn't sold. Lenders and utility companies still want their money.
00:35:03
When the water company sends out a worker to collect payment from Iva, she pulls a handgun on him and threatens to shoot him to death.
00:35:11
That's not how you do it. That's not how you do that. No, you just, you got to pay it.
00:35:16
Yeah. Even $5. Have you ever been like trying to work out bills when you don't have any money?
00:35:21
And they're like, even $5. Just give them $5 a month. They're like, we don't want to take you to court, please.
00:35:28
No, no. Just do something. The worker escapes unharmed, but immediately calls the police, of course.
00:35:34
so Iva, knowing she's in big trouble, skips town. We don't know if Ralph isn't on these plans.
00:35:40
I'm sure it was kind of last minute, sounds like. Either way, she leaves him in San Francisco.
00:35:45
So within hours, an arrest warrant is issued for Iva, but when police get to the motel to arrest her,
00:35:52
she's long gone, and months pass with no sign of her And then in August contractor Walter Hughes story about the big hole that he was hired to dig in the Kroger garage finally makes it back to the police and investigators
00:36:05
start connecting the dots. They get a search warrant for the Kroger home in San Francisco,
00:36:10
where Ralph is still living, but they don't find much until they get to the garage.
00:36:16
The investigators immediately notice the garage floor has unusual bumps and they decide to pull
00:36:20
it up. The wooden flooring goes. And then when they get through multiple layers of cement,
00:36:26
they make a horrifying discovery. The bodies of Mildred and Jay Arneson. They've both been
00:36:32
strangled to death. Mildred has been stuffed into a trunk. Jay still has the belt that was used to
00:36:38
strangle him wrapped around his neck. Oh my God. Ralph swears he has no idea that these bodies were
00:36:45
buried in his garage, but he's immediately arrested. And now the hunt for Iva is on.
00:36:51
After eight long months, the Arneson family finally hears about Mildred and Jay, and it's,
00:36:57
of course, horrible news. The story sweeps newspapers across the country, and Beatrice
00:37:03
Brunn and her friends and family are left to mourn Jay and Mildred, all while knowing their
00:37:07
suspected killer is on the loose. And they keep seeing her face and her name in the paper. And
00:37:14
while this onslaught of reporting leads to a huge number of tips from the public, most of them don't
00:37:19
lead anywhere. So with each day that passes without Iva Kroger being captured, fear continues to build
00:37:26
around the Bay Area. Altogether, Iva's been missing for three months, but just days after the actual
00:37:33
manth hunt for her begins, a very strange and disturbing development takes place. So now it's
00:37:40
late August were in Oakland, California, which if you don't know, is right across the bay from San
00:37:45
Francisco. And two very young boys, age three and four, are found wandering around alone in Oakland.
00:37:54
And when the police are called to the scene, they learn from the children that they're from Florida.
00:38:00
These boys tell the police that their estranged grandmother had randomly showed up at their house
00:38:06
and taken them away. So on a hunch, one of the officers talking to the boys pulls out a newspaper
00:38:12
and shows them a picture of Iva Kroger. And one of the boys says, that's grandma.
00:38:19
What a hunch. Jeez. I know, right? Seriously. But I think it's like that idea. It's like,
00:38:26
what grandmother would leave? And like, those are little kids that probably shouldn't be out of a stroller.
00:38:33
Tiny. Much less like walking around. Oh, it's horrifying. Yeah. So these boys are reunited with their very worried parents.
00:38:41
This is one of the more confusing chapters of the Iva Kroger saga. Investigators can only theorize that Iva kidnapped and then abandoned her grandsons to confuse detectives.
00:38:52
What? Or maybe distract them. But the boy's mother, Joyce, who's Iva's daughter-in-law, thinks it's more than that.
00:38:59
She believes it was a pointed attack on her husband, Iva's abandoned son, who had cut ties with his mother
00:39:06
after she left Louisville when he was a child. Oh my God. So she went all the way back to the family she abandoned.
00:39:13
Jesus. To kidnap her estranged grandsons and bring them to the Bay Area. It's so spiteful when it's like,
00:39:21
you're the problem lady. It's crazy. It's like, was she hiding out? Or was like, I would love to know what her,
00:39:30
what any kind of thinking was. It's just, it's so wild. This story prompts even more news coverage on the Ivor Kroger manhunt.
00:39:39
According to journalist Katie Dowd, the newspapers take the that's grandma line and run with it.
00:39:45
And they dub Ivor the ghostly grandma, the glib grandmother, and the ultimate insult, dumpy grandma.
00:39:53
Oof. Come on now. Come on. Now, of course, the more it's in the news, the more there's like tips.
00:40:01
She's being spotted everywhere. According to the Press Democrat, which is the Santa Rosa newspaper,
00:40:06
we subscribe. We're big supporters of the Press Democrat. People were spotting Iva
00:40:13
knocking on the door of a farmer near Healdsburg, which is up above Santa Rosa. Another time riding in a car on Petaluma Hill Road.
00:40:22
Oh, hey. And another time walking on the street in Eureka, which is like way the hell up north.
00:40:28
Got it. It's unclear how many of these sightings really are Iva Kroger, but each tip is treated seriously.
00:40:34
On September 9th, officers rush to the scene after Iva is seen at a church all the way down in San Diego.
00:40:40
Huh. But by the time they arrive, she's gone. And this sighting is particularly unsettling
00:40:46
because Jay Arneson's son live in that part of San Diego. Oh no. So the murderer of their father
00:40:54
has been spotted near their house, basically. So later that same day in San Diego,
00:40:58
a man named Joseph Bonomo sees an old woman crying on the street near his home. And he feels so sorry for her.
00:41:05
He invites her in and asks her to have dinner with him and his wife. But that feeling changes as Joseph and his wife, Christine,
00:41:12
sit across the dinner table from this old woman who refuses to take off her sunglasses.
00:41:18
Chill. What's that chill? Just so weird and great where it's like, we think you're sad,
00:41:25
but we kind of can't tell what's going on with you. Are you famous? So they basically finish dinner, send her on her way.
00:41:32
But the next afternoon, Christine's reading the newspaper and she sees a news story featuring a photo of that same woman.
00:41:40
She grabs a marker and draws sunglasses over the eyes of the photo and shows it to her husband.
00:41:46
And they realize that the woman they took in is Iva Kroger, a fugitive accused of murder.
00:41:53
Yikes. So Joseph calls the police and incredibly or maybe not so incredibly they tell him they wrapping up for the evening and he should call back tomorrow Oh my God
00:42:06
Oh my God. We're wrapping up policing for the night. This isn't 7-Eleven. You can't be expected to help you.
00:42:14
Even 7-Eleven's open all fucking night, man. So Joseph calls the FBI. He doesn't drop it.
00:42:22
Thank God. He like cares enough. and he's like, he calls the FBI. The FBI is open all night
00:42:27
and they immediately get on it and they track Iva down to an apartment not far from the Bonomos' house.
00:42:33
And she had been living there under the name Julia Schmidt and she's arrested without incident.
00:42:38
So Iva's capture comes, of course, as a huge relief to the public, much more so to the Arneson family.
00:42:45
Jay Arneson's son, Jack, tells reporters that, quote, now I can take the shells out of the 38
00:42:50
I've had in my possession for two weeks and I'm sure my brother will do the same.
00:42:54
When Iva speaks to the press, she maintains her innocence and tells reporters that, quote,
00:42:59
I sleep good and I'm just a happy person. Congratulations. How much more of a, like, how much more of a, like, a complete sociopath do you have to be to be like,
00:43:10
oh, you're asking me about I'm being arrested for murder. Yeah. But don't worry about me.
00:43:15
I sleep great. Right. So the Kroger's joint trial kicks off in January of 1963. So even though many people suspect Ralph did play a role in this crime,
00:43:26
everyone believes Iva is the mastermind behind these murders. And the circumstantial evidence against her,
00:43:32
which includes her takeover of the motel, hiring the contractors, and the fact that she was with both victims shortly before their disappearances,
00:43:41
is all extremely damning. But Iva refuses to go down without a fight. While both Kroger's plead not guilty to the murder charges,
00:43:49
Iva decides to add not guilty by reason of insanity to her plea. And then she just goes all in on this insanity defense.
00:43:58
She sings songs in the courtroom. She claims she's the mother of God. She pretends to forget why she's being tried.
00:44:05
During jury selection, she reportedly glares at a prospective juror so intensely
00:44:09
that the woman is dismissed from jury duty. Oh, God. In another instance, Iva interrupts witness testimony
00:44:17
by removing her shoes and banging them on the table in front of her. At one point, she even runs over to the DA's table,
00:44:24
throws his papers in the air while screaming, and she has to be forcibly removed from the courtroom.
00:44:29
And that's just a couple examples of what she did. One legal filing says that she interrupts the proceedings hundreds of times.
00:44:38
She sounds exhausting. Just the worst. Yeah. Just like, that's A, not how you prove that you're mentally unstable for trial.
00:44:47
No. Be like, put your fucking shoes on, lady. Lady, get the shoes off the table.
00:44:53
And then, of course, Iva's attorney makes the questionable decision of putting his unruly client on the stand.
00:44:59
And of course, it's a disaster. According to Katie Dowd, Iva screamed for 15 minutes straight
00:45:05
while the judge begged her to calm down. Oh, my God. So she's just screaming. Oh, my God.
00:45:12
But her diehard efforts to validate her insanity plea ultimately come to naught, prosecutors eventually put multiple psychiatrists on the stand,
00:45:21
and they all testify that Iva seems to be faking insanity to secure a lighter punishment.
00:45:27
So this trial lasts about two months. It wraps up in March of 1963. And after five hours of
00:45:34
deliberating, the jurors come back with matching verdicts for Iva and Ralph Kroger.
00:45:38
They're both guilty of first-degree murder. According to Katie Dowd, quote, neither made much of a fuss
00:45:44
with Iva feebly declaring that the jury was paid off and Ralph, ever the sad sack of a man,
00:45:51
murmuring, I didn't expect it. Horrible. You sure about that? When your wife is fucking losing it?
00:45:59
I know. Next year? Yeah, for real. You do know that you put those bodies in your own garage.
00:46:05
I mean, that kind of thing is so, it's so cold. Like they kept the bodies of their victims
00:46:12
and put them in their garage. Oh no, it's so awful. It's horrifying. So just a few years after being sent to Folsom prison,
00:46:20
Ralph Kroger dies of cancer in 1966 at the age of 63. Meanwhile, Iva continues serving out her sentence,
00:46:28
but her behavior is noticeably impeccable. And on top of that, she's experiencing severe vision loss.
00:46:34
It's left her almost completely blind. This convinces officials that she's at low risk of reoffending.
00:46:40
So in 1975, after serving about 13 years of a life sentence, Iva is released from prison on parole.
00:46:49
So from here, her trail gets a little spotty again. It's reported that she moves to Riverside,
00:46:55
where she starts attending services at the local Church of Scientology. She works in nursing homes.
00:47:02
She expresses interest in taking nursing courses, which is a nice callback to her first criminal charge of impersonating a Navy nurse.
00:47:10
She also around this time drops her alias and reverts to her legal name, Lucille.
00:47:16
But what doesn't seem to change is Iva's undeniably difficult personality. Katie Dowd writes, quote,
00:47:24
She apparently liked to ride the bus around, white cane in hand, and complained to strangers about serving 13 years for a crime she didn't commit.
00:47:33
Keep it to yourself, lady. It's like you did it and you're going to make everyone listen to you blab.
00:47:40
Okay, so then Iva drops off the map for a while. In 1987, she resurfaces 25 years after her arrest
00:47:49
for the murders of Mildred and Jay Arneson. She's now in her mid-60s and the police in Cape Coral,
00:47:55
Florida are trying to track her down for threatening a man's life. Apparently, Lucille blamed
00:48:00
him for the fatal drowning of her niece. It's unclear why she came to believe this or what,
00:48:05
if any, role this man played in the tragedy. All we know is that the reports describe him simply
00:48:11
as a grocer. He was never charged criminally in relation to the drowning, and he seemed genuinely
00:48:16
terrified of Iva. In any case, she had, quote, repeatedly made violent calls to his home
00:48:22
before showing up to kill him. Yikes. Yeah. This man also escaped from her, like the water company employee years before,
00:48:30
goes straight to police, Iva heads out of town, and when investigators do a deeper dive into her background,
00:48:36
they're shocked to discover that this Lucille that everyone knows her as in Florida
00:48:41
is yet another alias for the infamous Bay Area murderer, Iva Kroger. Except for this one important detail.
00:48:47
Lucille, unlike Iva Kroger, has no noticeable issues with her vision. Yeah, man, you can't let someone out of prison
00:48:55
on a suggestion that they gave you. That only she can verify. Right. This is a true scammer, liar, like a terrible person with no moral ethical center.
00:49:09
So it's like, oh, it's so sad she's going blind. It's like, yeah, she picked a thing that would make you think
00:49:15
she would just be ineffectual out in the world for crime. Right. Katie Dowd writes, quote,
00:49:22
The police wondered if she'd faked blindness in order to secure an early release
00:49:27
and having achieved her goal, could then apply for state aid for the blind. So then she's committing fraud and taking money.
00:49:35
Ivo remains at large for the rest of her life. What? Because of her habit of taking on fake names,
00:49:41
we don't know where she went or what she did. Every once in a while, I have a story would pop up in newspapers or magazines
00:49:47
describing her as like a boogeyman that's laying low, waiting to strike at any moment.
00:49:52
But the reality is that she likely died in Boston in the year 2000 at the age of 78.
00:50:00
She lived in public housing. She was diagnosed with cancer and she died alone. So alone that the name on the next of kin on her death certificate is a social worker that she was not related to.
00:50:12
Oh my God. Here's the perfect button for this story that's from Katie Dowd. And if you want to read that, her article, it's in SFGate.
00:50:21
It's really good. And she says this, for nearly 200 years, San Francisco has been the last stop
00:50:27
of petty thieves, con artists, and killers. Iva Kroger was all three. Damn. And that's the story of the notorious
00:50:35
Bay Area killer, Iva Kroger. The fact that someone can just like, get, like go off in fucking obscurity
00:50:42
and no one knows, like there's someone's neighbor, there's someone's fucking friend.
00:50:49
If she got into nursing, She's taking care of people, you know, it's like... Vulnerable people.
00:50:55
Vulnerable old people. Yeah, it's crazy. She's the worst. And she is really good at it.
00:51:01
She clearly, she has no shame. She doesn't, she just is going to get what she wants.
00:51:07
And like, and she's going to lie. She's going to do whatever it takes to do that.
00:51:11
Like, and they're looking at her as like, oh, she's just this old lady. She let the old lady.
00:51:17
Yeah. Like, she's not dangerous. That's going to be a real surprise to some Gen Zer who does their fucking DNA, you know, ancestry tree.
00:51:26
Oh, who's my great-great-grandma? Whatever the fuck. She's, oh, she let my grandfather wander free in a city street.
00:51:34
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story with a lot of little pop culture bits and pieces in it. This is the story of murderer Gary
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Gilmore and Nike's Just Do It slogan. Uh-oh. Do you know how they're related? I mean, I can guess,
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but... Okay, don't do it. I won't, I won't. Okay. The sources I used in today's episodes are an A&E
00:53:50
article by CM Franke an archived article from The Guardian accredited to Christopher Reed An NPR article by Manuel Lopez Restrepo A Washington Post article by Natalie Melman Petruzella and another Washington Post article by Timothy Bella And the rest can be found in
00:54:06
our show notes. And we're going to start with your favorite workout, Jazzercise.
00:54:10
Oh, yay. Hold on. Let me put my leg warmers on. Would you please? Okay. So, all right. We're going to start in 1988. Ronald fucking Reagan
00:54:19
is in his second term as president at the US. Cool Ranch Doritos and pasta salad, let's say,
00:54:25
are all the rage. I'm a senior. You're a senior. I'm drinking a lot of sun-kissed orange soda,
00:54:32
probably. Nice. And people, especially women, are obsessed with aerobics. This new way of working
00:54:39
out with its comfortable footwear and bright colored high cut leotards is easier on the body,
00:54:45
widely available across the country and is created by women for women. It's a, you know this, it's a huge fucking.
00:54:52
It was a true cultural phenomenon at the time. Definitely. There's that show now on.
00:54:57
Physical. The show Physical on Apple with friend of the family, Rory Scovel. He's great in that.
00:55:04
He's so good. It's a good show. And it'll show you about that. And the 80s aerobics and jazzercise
00:55:10
and all that becomes a massive industry. There's VHS tapes, classes, and of course, clothing and footwear.
00:55:17
Some companies jump on the aerobics trend sooner than others, like Reebok. They hit the market with the successful new sneaker designed especially for women who do aerobics.
00:55:26
And they're a huge success. But Nike has underestimated the power, the lasting power of this new form of exercise.
00:55:33
And they initially dismiss the aerobics craze. And by the late 1980s, when aerobics is at its height of popularity, the company is not doing well.
00:55:43
Nike? Yeah. Nike was not doing well. That's crazy. Okay. So Nike, to do better, hires an outside advertising firm called Wyden & Kennedy out of Portland, Oregon, to help dig them out of their hole.
00:55:59
The firm is hired to design a brand new campaign for television, for print and merchandise,
00:56:04
just to like totally overhaul the company's image and put them back into competition with Reebok.
00:56:10
They want to widen their audience and Nike doesn't want to just focus on women and aerobics,
00:56:14
but wants to appeal to all Americans, regardless of age and gender and activity level,
00:56:19
all of that. Really, what I'm hearing there is, let's focus back on the boys. They were like, they didn't want to do it the first time.
00:56:27
They're not going to do it this time. Yeah, right. So Dan Wyden is one of the namesakes of this firm. He's a true out-of-the-box thinker
00:56:34
and reportedly seeks inspiration wherever he can find it. When he's working on this new Nike
00:56:39
campaign, he feels like something is missing from it. They have some good content, but there's
00:56:44
nothing tying the advertisements into one cohesive box. But then Dan has an idea. It's a dark and
00:56:53
kind of morbid idea, but Dan wholeheartedly believes it's going to be just what this campaign
00:56:57
needs. So we got to think of him as a 1980s Don Draper, I feel like, you know what I mean?
00:57:01
Okay. Sure. All that stuff. Yeah. Okay. So Dan pitches a slogan to the Nike people. It's a short but pointed phrase to tie the
00:57:08
advertising campaign together. Just do it. At first, everyone hates it. So just remember that
00:57:15
when you're pitching stuff or when you're doing things in life. Sometimes everyone hates it at
00:57:19
first. For real. Dan, though, says, trust me, Nike does. Obviously, the rest is history. The just do it campaign is
00:57:26
wildly successful. It's like everyone knows what it is just by the sound of it these days,
00:57:31
right? It's like probably one of the most successful campaigns in history, I'm guessing.
00:57:37
I would say. Yeah. But what isn't revealed until decades later is that the inspiration for this slogan
00:57:44
come from the last words of a convicted murderer named Gary Gilmore. Oh, wow. Not only that, but his execution in the late 1970s was at the heart of a nationwide political battle over the death penalty.
00:58:00
So we're going to rewind to 1940, which is the year Gary Gilmore is born. He's raised in Portland, Oregon.
00:58:07
He's a gifted artist and a particularly bright kid, but he is the constant target of his father's horrific abuse.
00:58:15
According to his younger siblings, this abuse just completely shapes who Gary becomes, sadly.
00:58:21
From a young age, Gary begins to show dramatic signs of being violent and impulsive.
00:58:26
And by the time he's 15, he's sent to reform school. And according to his brother, becomes, quote,
00:58:31
fully committed to living a criminal's destiny. His brother happens to be a guy named Michael Gilmore from Portland, Oregon,
00:58:38
who's a writer and music journalist. And he had written for Rolling Stone and that sort of thing.
00:58:42
And he actually wrote a memoir that included his story of his brother in it as well.
00:58:47
So we got a lot of information from that. He spends his adult life in and out of prison for armed robbery and assault.
00:58:53
And at some point, a prison psychiatrist describes Gary as having antisocial personality disorder with psychotic features
00:58:59
and prescribes him massive doses of antipsychotic medications to control his behavior.
00:59:05
While conditionally on parole in 1976, he leaves town and moves to Provo, Utah. Which, by the way, I looked this story up in our Gmail to see if anyone had written in about it.
00:59:15
And Provo, Utah could have a really good murderino meetup because so many people were like,
00:59:19
my grandfather worked at the prison and my dad worked at the shoe store that he tried to get a job at.
00:59:25
Like there's just so many emails. It's wild. That's amazing. Yeah, I couldn't include everything.
00:59:32
Our Salt Lake show was amazing. Yes, that's so true. So long ago. We had a good one there.
00:59:37
So Gary, he's 36 years old at this time. He falls in love in Provo, Utah with a 19-year-old woman named Nicole.
00:59:45
And Nicole has seemingly had it rough already. up until this point before meeting this fucking Gary.
00:59:51
She'd been married twice and had two kids and was seemingly unlucky in love Their relationship is rocky and dangerous He drinking heavily He extremely violent And eventually Nicole leaves him due to the abuse And this sends him
01:00:06
into a murderous rage. On the night of July 19th, 1976, Gary Gilmore walks into a gas station
01:00:14
in Orem, Utah. There's one gas station attendant, a young Mormon and student at Brigham Young
01:00:20
University named Max Jensen. He wasn't supposed to be working that night, but he'd lost a coin flip
01:00:26
with a coworker and had to cover the shift. Gary tells him to lay on the floor and Max,
01:00:32
who's terrified, he completely cooperates. He totally complies, but without warning or motive,
01:00:38
Gary shoots him in the head at close range, killing him on the spot. The next night,
01:00:44
Gary walks into a motel in Provo, Utah, just a few miles down the road from the gas station.
01:00:49
He demands the cash box from the motel manager, Benny Bushnell, who also is a Mormon and student at Brigham Young University.
01:00:56
And the same fucking thing happens. Gary tells him to get on the ground. Benny does exactly as he's told.
01:01:03
But Gary shoots him, killing him instantly. This time there's a witness, a motel guest that's seen the whole thing.
01:01:09
Gary flees and he attempts to get rid of his gun and accidentally shoots himself in the hand while doing so.
01:01:17
Oh. So because of this, he leaves a trail of blood as he travels around town that night.
01:01:22
And there's a mechanic who had been working on his car. And he also saw blood on Gary's hand and had also heard about the shooting that was really close by.
01:01:29
So he was easily caught. Yeah. Police catch him quickly. He doesn't resist arrest.
01:01:34
It's not clear why he surrendered so easily to the authorities. But it's likely he knew he'd eventually get caught.
01:01:39
And later on, when he's asked why he went on this murder spree, Gary responds, I don't know.
01:01:44
I don't have a reason. And then also someone wrote in and said that Ted Bundy was at the prison at the same time as him,
01:01:51
the prison he was taken to. Oh, wow. After getting arrested, which is crazy. So the trial of Gary Gilmore is relatively open and shut.
01:01:59
In the words of Gary's defense attorney, Michael Esplin, quote, he was not a very good criminal.
01:02:04
He shot himself with his own gun and left a trail of blood. And he did it in front of a star witness.
01:02:09
So Gary didn't even want a trial. He just wanted to plead guilty and be done with it.
01:02:14
He seems like a real fucking owner-y dick, you know? Or he just knows there's no point.
01:02:20
He's not going to like pretend. Yeah. It's almost like he went on this spree because he wanted to go to prison
01:02:26
or something like that, it seems like. But once the trial starts, Gary seems to like the attention.
01:02:30
He thinks this will somehow win back Nicole, his girlfriend. He blows her kisses in the courtroom.
01:02:36
He's not only unsympathetic in the eyes of the jury, he's totally repulsive to them.
01:02:41
He has killed two members of a close-knit faith community without motive or explanation,
01:02:47
and both victims, Max and Benny, left behind wives and very young children. So it feels like everyone in Utah hates Gary Gilmore.
01:02:56
Yeah. He's convicted on October 7th, 1976. What is unusual about this case, that's kind of an obvious conviction,
01:03:02
but what is unusual is that Gary Gilmore is sentenced to death. This is the first time in almost 10 years
01:03:08
that anyone in the United States has faced the death penalty. See, back in 1972,
01:03:14
the Supreme Court rules that the death penalty falls under the umbrella of cruel and unusual punishment
01:03:19
and is unconstitutional. So the death penalty had been taken off the table completely in the entire United States,
01:03:25
which I think is a really rare thing to do for years, even though 66% of Americans
01:03:30
supported the death penalty. And so in a landmark decision in 1976, the Supreme Court overrides
01:03:37
its previous ruling and the death penalty is now legal again. So Gary Gilmore is going to be the first person put to death
01:03:43
since it had become unconstitutional. Got it. But Gary Gilmore doesn't seem to care.
01:03:49
When given the choice to die by hanging or fire squad, he's reportedly unemotional when he replies, quote,
01:03:54
I'd rather be shot. So his execution is scheduled for November 15th, 1976 at 8 a.m.
01:04:00
But against his wishes, anti-death penalty groups from all over the country start to get involved,
01:04:06
including the ACLU, the American Civil Liberties Union. Due to their advocacy work, his execution gets pushed back again and again until it's finally scheduled for two months later on January 17th, 1977.
01:04:19
So Gary Gilmore becomes the center of this death penalty discussion in America for both sides.
01:04:27
He seemed to want to die, which I think was a weird little, you know, caveat in this argument.
01:04:32
It's not like he was hoping to get out of the death penalty. He attempts to take his own life twice while on death row
01:04:37
and publicly asked the anti-death penalty advocates to quote, butt out. Wow. It's like, it's not about you, dude.
01:04:45
Yeah, it's not for you. It's about what's right for humanity and evolved humanity.
01:04:51
Exactly. Funny, you mentioned SNL earlier. During that Christmas season in 1977,
01:04:56
he's even parodied on Saturday Night Live. Oh, shit. This show is only in its second season.
01:05:03
And that night, the musical guest is Frank Zappa and the host is Candice Bergen.
01:05:07
Candice Bergen, along with some of the show's biggest stars like Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi and Gilda Radner,
01:05:14
they sing a fake Christmas carol as snow, fake snow is coming down. They're all in like Christmas sweaters.
01:05:20
And they sing a song about like, let's kill Gary Gilmore for Christmas. Let's hang him from atop the Christmas tree.
01:05:27
Let's give him the only gift that money can't buy. Put poison in his eggnog. Let him drink it.
01:05:31
Watch him die. So like, this is like, everyone is fucking talking about this. Do you think they were being ironic?
01:05:39
I think everyone hated Gary Gilmore. But yeah, I don't know if it was like, let's actually kill him
01:05:43
or like, this is what people are just like talking about a lot. Right. But I think everyone hated him.
01:05:49
And like, maybe there was a lot of people who were maybe not on the fence about the death penalty to begin with,
01:05:54
but then because of this guy and what he had done were pro in a way like kind of divided the country Right that intense It dark I had no idea That really dark
01:06:05
Yeah. The day comes, it's total chaos, the morning of January 17th, 1977, at the Utah State Prison,
01:06:13
where Gary Gilmore is scheduled to be executed. Journalists, film crews, and protesters,
01:06:18
both for and against the death penalty, and reportedly a pro-death penalty advocate,
01:06:22
throws an egg at the head of a bishop who is holding a prayer circle for Gary Gilmore outside the prison.
01:06:29
Sir. Yeah. Jesus Christ. Leave the bishop out of this. I mean, that's a whole different argument.
01:06:37
Yeah, leave the chickens out of this. So many layers. Good God. It's so oversimplified.
01:06:43
It just, yeah, it's crazy. Yeah. There's helicopters with cameramen flying around.
01:06:48
Like, it's just a whole scene. It sounds similar to when Ted Bundy got put to death too.
01:06:52
You know, there was just this whole, this crazy mob. Then Gary Gilmore is somehow given permission
01:06:58
to call a country Western radio station, a local one, and request his favorite songs that night.
01:07:05
It's just fucking pandemonium. Yeah. No. That's not... That's the 70s. That's...
01:07:13
Uh-huh. Wow. That's fucked up. So fucked up. So no one's really sure what's going to happen at sunrise
01:07:20
when Gary is scheduled to be executed. like, is it going to be postponed again? A Washington Post journalist writes,
01:07:25
quote, we at least found all of it profoundly distressing. Having been spared for a decade,
01:07:31
the ordeal of reading about how a civilized nation puts a convicted prisoner to death,
01:07:35
we had almost forgotten how awful it is. So it is like a carnival scene when someone's life is on the line.
01:07:42
And yeah, it's a really bad person's life, but it's just really crazy. Right, but kind of boiling it down to like,
01:07:51
he did bad so he dies, which we, you know, we've talked about this on this show. This is,
01:07:57
this is one of those things where it's like, you can read a big long story of some horrible,
01:08:02
horrible crimes and horrible things. And when you get to the end of it, it's like, yes,
01:08:08
I think that person should not be on this planet anymore. But then, you know, there's always the
01:08:14
turn of Gary Gilmore never had a chance because his father beat the living shit out of him.
01:08:19
and he had mental illness and this and that. So like, obviously, all of those discussions
01:08:26
are so much more complex than I pick this side, I pick that side. Totally. It's just 50 Shades of Grey, essentially.
01:08:34
Why are you talking about your favorite book all of a sudden? I mean, you know who put it perfectly
01:08:38
is 50 Shades of Grey. Okay, so a last minute request to delay the execution goes into effect the night of.
01:08:45
So a judge has to fly over 500 miles to Utah in the middle of the night just to deny the request in person.
01:08:53
So it's 7.45 a.m., just a few minutes before sunrise, when Gary Gilmore and the rest of the nation
01:08:58
are told that his execution is moving forward. Oh, wow. He's set up in front of a firing squad
01:09:04
and strapped into an oak chair. Fuck. The grandfather of the murderino who strapped him into the chair
01:09:12
emailed us to let us know about it. It's like, seriously, everyone is involved in this fucking story.
01:09:18
It's wild. There's five men hidden behind a curtain and there's five small holes for their rifle butts to stick out of the curtain.
01:09:27
And their guns are aimed. And this is obviously so, you know, they won't have to see themselves shooting someone.
01:09:32
And they say they put four bullets in the five guns so no one knows who actually killed them.
01:09:37
But like later, his brother says he saw five bullet holes. So they don't really know if there actually was only four bullets.
01:09:43
Sorry, I'm confused about the four bullets. I guess when there's five people in a firing squad, let's say,
01:09:50
they only put bullets in four of the guns and they don't tell you which gun doesn't have one
01:09:55
so that you can always feel like, well, maybe I didn't shoot him. I think it's for the people killing him.
01:09:59
Oh, got it. You know what I mean? Got you. Yes, completely. Which is like such an argument where it's like,
01:10:03
it's so traumatic for people whose job it is to kill someone that they don't make it, you know.
01:10:09
Right. Like what are the, we're bending ourselves all around to make this an okay thing.
01:10:14
Exactly, exactly. When they ask for Gary's last words, he simply replies, quote, let's do it.
01:10:22
He doesn't flinch when the guns are fired. And so pop culture, just like a little tidbit,
01:10:28
there's a punk band called The Adverts and their hit 1977 single is called Gary Gilmore's Eyes
01:10:35
because Gary Gilmore requested that some of his organs be donated for transplant purposes.
01:10:41
And two people received his corneas. Wow. Yeah. So I think everyone was a little disturbed by that.
01:10:49
And so they wrote, looking through Gary Gilmore's eyes by the adverts, check it out.
01:10:54
The eyes weren't connected to the brain though anymore. So it's okay. They're just corneas.
01:10:59
You can't tell a punk band anything really. I mean, they're going to say the thing.
01:11:04
You're like, you can't say that. They're like, we don't care. We're Jodie Foster's army.
01:11:09
We don't care. We're jerks and we're in a circle. Punk's not dead. Okay, so it isn't until 10 years later
01:11:19
that Dan Wyden, the Mad Men guy, is working for Nike. He's trying to figure out something
01:11:25
to tie everything together. And he remembers this mostly forgotten bit of American pop culture about Gary Gilmore.
01:11:31
Because Dan is from Portland, Oregon, it's like Gary was, it's likely he followed the murders and the trials
01:11:36
and the execution somewhat closely. He remembers reading about those last words,
01:11:41
let's do it, and being really impacted by them. And in a 2015 interview, Dan shares that quote. I remember when
01:11:48
I read that, I was like, this is amazing. I mean, how in the face of that much uncertainty do you push
01:11:53
through that? So I didn't like the let's thing. And so I just changed that because otherwise I'd have
01:12:00
give him credit. So he totally made it clear that that's where he got this huge marketing
01:12:06
campaign slogan. Wow. Yeah. According to American fitness culture scholar, Natalie Melman Petruzella, Dan then borrows from first lady Nancy Reagan, who had made her mission
01:12:18
as first lady in the Reagan era to continue this fucked up war on drugs. And this is when she comes
01:12:25
up with her now infamous Just Say No campaign. Though I must say it's later realized that this
01:12:30
campaign does very little to reduce drug use and might have actually, definitely, just increased
01:12:35
stigma against drug addiction and addicts. It is catchy. So Dan basically mashes up Gary Gilmore's
01:12:43
Let's Do It with Nancy Reagan's Just Say No. Wow. And creates Just Do It. The introduction of the
01:12:50
slogan increases Nike brand sales by a thousand percent over the next 10 years. Jesus Christ.
01:12:56
Yeah. So it fucking worked. Well, I remember when that commercial came out, it is very kind of,
01:13:02
the vibe is very aggro Jim bro. It's like, don't be a lazy pig essentially. Yeah. Yeah. But it was
01:13:09
the first time anyone had seen anything like that. It was like, get up from where you are right this
01:13:14
second and just do it. It was like chills inducing, like, yeah, I got to just, there's no excuses.
01:13:20
Just do it. Yeah. It's really good. I, as a what, eight-year-old was like, yes, I must just do it.
01:13:29
Insane. So Nike doesn't really, of course, ever publicly acknowledge the inspiration
01:13:34
behind their best-known slogan. They're like, yeah, I'm not talking about it. According to company insiders,
01:13:40
the origin story is generally not known, or if it is, it's not really discussed within the company.
01:13:46
For some, it's just a bit of a grisly inside joke. But the lasting power of Just Do It is undeniable.
01:13:52
The slogan helped to open the door to Nike reaching more diverse demographics to sell athletic wear.
01:13:58
The popularity and universality... Universality? Universality? Universality? Universatility.
01:14:05
It's universality. The popularity and universality of Just Do It leads Nike to create future ad campaigns in the 90s and beyond.
01:14:16
You can leave me trying to pronounce that in, Stephen. And keeping in mind the company's recent experience
01:14:22
of missing the mark when the aerobics craze swept the industry, Nike starts putting new effort into highlighting women in sports
01:14:30
and encouraging girls to participate in athletics from a young age. So they do get the fucking memo that women can make them money too.
01:14:37
Yeah, smart. Capitalism. The origin story and legacy of Just Do It is very complex, obviously.
01:14:43
this phrase has inspired millions of people and has also likely sold millions of Nike products.
01:14:49
Just Do It seemingly helped Nike move away from a culture of sexism towards a marketing strategy
01:14:54
that is more inclusive and political. But it's hard to ignore that the slogan itself
01:14:59
is rooted in the murders of two innocent people and the death of their murderer who died at the hands of the state
01:15:05
while the nation was at a fever pitch regarding its attitudes towards the death penalty.
01:15:10
And that is a complicated and bizarre story of the execution of Gary Gilmore and the inspiration
01:15:17
for Just Do It, the advertising campaign that helped make Nike what it is today.
01:15:23
Wild. Oh and there was a book by Norman Mailer about it called The Executioner Song which in 1982 was made into a made movie or movie I don know starring Tommy Lee Jones as Gary Gilmore And he does look like that
01:15:39
Here, I'm going to have Alejandra send you a pic on the chat. He looks like that. And then if Tom
01:15:44
Kenny of SpongeBob SquarePants fame had a baby. What? So look at him. Just like slightly, just
01:15:52
like a little, yeah, little bit. I see it. Yeah. But Tommy Lee Jones and Rosanna Arquette's
01:15:58
in it as well. Ooh, early Tommy Lee Jones, man, man, oh man. Oh, I think he won the Emmy
01:16:05
or us. He won whatever this was, the award for it. For the Executioner song. Yeah.
01:16:10
Yeah. I was just little and I'm so, I'm sure like the death penalty as a topic on the news
01:16:16
was definitely like in my consciousness. But this level of it and this kind of like
01:16:21
this rage about it. Yeah. Fervor. But it also makes me think of like, I remember hearing my
01:16:28
parents talk about it in very simplistic ways, which it was almost like Bible based of like,
01:16:35
if you kill a person, then that's it for you. Like you don't get to live if you're going to
01:16:39
kill another person. That's what I was raised around. Yeah. And I think like, this is the kind
01:16:45
of thing people don't, young people these days don't understand that it truly was even, you know,
01:16:50
40 years ago, so much of a simpler time in that way where like, if people didn't want to know
01:16:57
stuff, they didn't have to know it. It's not like they had a phone in their hand or the internet or
01:17:01
anything. Totally. So if you saw it on the news of like, you know, death penalty, good or bad,
01:17:07
are you pro or con? You picked aside the end. And if you had some sort of like a religious
01:17:12
background to say, here's how I make my decisions, or you went to law school and you saw some
01:17:18
super fucked up, like wrongful convictions where you're like, no, no, no, this can't happen.
01:17:23
But that wasn't part of the conversation back then either. There were no wrong, no one ever got wrongfully convicted in their minds.
01:17:29
You know what I mean? It was like the bad guys are the bad guys and they did bad things.
01:17:33
And that is the end of the story. There's no nuance. There's no nuance to it at all.
01:17:36
There was never nuance. And it was like when you heard stories of like wardens at jails who were like,
01:17:42
everyone has to wear pink and it's so humiliating to them or whatever. And you're like, ha ha, good.
01:17:46
Cause you're bad. Cause you went to jail. And then it's like slowly over the years, stories start to come out where it's just like,
01:17:53
I never did anything and I was in jail for 40 years. And all these kinds of things that like the complexity grows as we all evolve.
01:18:03
I just, it blows me away. I mean, it's like, it's the same experience we've had on the show.
01:18:07
We're just like, here's the things I think because I don't know any different until people tell me different.
01:18:13
Yeah. And then the conversation doesn't even start with people being rehabilitated.
01:18:17
Like that doesn't even come close to being part of the conversation. It's like, before we even get there,
01:18:22
it's like there's 10 fucking opinions and thoughts about the whole matter before rehabilitation ever comes into mind.
01:18:29
Well, and like the idea that what if we took some money out of the yearly police budget, which, you know,
01:18:36
which basically is that line on the graph goes way the fuck out off the page. There's too much.
01:18:43
And if you took that and put it into what kind of programs are working, are helpful, is actually affecting people who grew up and
01:18:52
were constantly had the shit beaten out of them by their father and also had mental illness
01:18:57
and this and that Yeah Didn have the resources that we had of education and safety and food and just the basics to keep you safe and keep you you know away from trouble
01:19:13
Like, you know, like you're doing petty theft as a young kid. And it's like, let's look into the reasons this person feels necessary to commit these crimes rather than just punish them and say they're a bad person and take them off the streets.
01:19:25
There's a need. There's a need. It's like that. Yeah. It's just, it's wild. It's like, that is such a, that was amazing, by the way.
01:19:34
And it's like the comprehensiveness of like coming out of like, here's what's going on,
01:19:42
aerobics, you know what I mean? And then it's like, well, actually, here's what we got it from 10 years ago or five years
01:19:48
ago. Here's this crazy thing that was happening where it's just like, yeah, I'm blown out.
01:19:54
I'm truly blown out. There's an interconnectedness and it all comes back to true crime.
01:19:59
It all does come back to true crime. Everybody's reading those books of like, what are human beings capable of and why?
01:20:07
It's like, why? What's the why? Simplicity. Everyone wants to, all these fucking politicians
01:20:14
want it to be simple and there to be a fucking, let's ban drag and bad things won't happen to children anymore.
01:20:21
And let's, you know, arm teachers and everything will be fine. and it's just so fucking idiotic.
01:20:27
One of my favorite things, and this is happening on all social media that I'm on now,
01:20:31
so Twitter and TikTok, just story after story, every time someone gets arrested for like child molestation
01:20:39
and it's a church pastor and people are keeping track where they're like, this is the 30th church pastor
01:20:46
that has been arrested for this. And so far we have zero drag queens who have been arrested.
01:20:52
Like that whole thing. guess how many children have been killed by drag queens with reading them a book?
01:20:59
None. Zero. And guess how many fucking children have been killed by the fact that we have zero fucking gun laws in this country?
01:21:08
A fucking shit ton. And yet another. Another. And yet another. And yet another. Hey, let's donate some money, shall we?
01:21:18
Good idea. ACLU? Yeah, let's do it. But ACLU, American Civil Liberties Union, $10,000.
01:21:26
Give what you can, support them how you can, whatever that may be. And I don't know, hug someone that needs a hug.
01:21:34
Yeah. How about just like educate yourself? You know what I mean? If you don't have five bucks to spare, we understand.
01:21:40
There's sometimes the creditors want that $5 and it can't go anywhere else. We get it.
01:21:45
Very true. Yeah. So just look and educate yourself. That's a really great way to be a fighter.
01:21:51
Yeah, very true. And don't forget to watch important videos on TikTok. That's a great way to educate yourself.
01:21:57
It is such an advantage that we just, having lived half of my life without it, it's so much better with it,
01:22:05
which also is like that TikTok ban is complete bullshit. It's complete bullshit.
01:22:10
And there are people on TikTok who are showing people what stocks those senators who are at that hearing,
01:22:18
what stocks they're dumping and what stocks they're buying so everyone else can do exactly
01:22:23
what those senators are doing because that's why they're doing it. They're not afraid of
01:22:27
data being sold because if they were they would have shut down Facebook after Cambridge Analytica What they afraid of is the fact that people can talk directly to each other and educate each other and tell the real news And actually that it so effective for young
01:22:42
people to have that level of information in their hand. That's amazing. TikTok's in this podcast.
01:22:49
That's where you get your news. No, not from this podcast. No, no, no, no, no. Thanks for listening, you guys.
01:22:58
Thanks for being with us and fucking fighting the good fight. Yeah. It's good that we all care so much.
01:23:05
Yeah. Let's take that into the future. Stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye.
01:23:12
Elvis, do you want a cookie? Ah. This has been an Exactly Right production. Our producer is Alejandra Keck.
01:23:25
Our senior producer is Hannah Kyle Creighton. This episode was engineered and mixed by Stephen Ray Morris.
01:23:30
Our researchers are Maren McClashen and Sarah Blair Jenkins. Email your hometowns and fucking hoorays to myfavoritemurder at gmail.com.
01:23:38
Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at My Favorite Murder and Twitter at My Fave Murder.
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