00:00:00
This is exactly right. You think you're in control until you realize you're not.
00:00:10
As they're having this gun battle, thousands of feet up in the air, many of the bullets start to puncture the aircraft.
00:00:18
I thought we were going to die then. The Knife is a podcast about the moment ordinary lives take an unexpected turn.
00:00:25
Real people, real stories, and the split second that changes everything. New episodes drop every Thursday on the Exactly Right Network and the iHeart Podcast Network.
00:00:35
Listen to The Knife on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:00:40
Hey, it's us, the Jonas Brothers, and guess what? We have some big news. What's the news, Nick?
00:00:43
Huge news. We created our own podcast called Hey Jonas. How do we actually come up with the name Hey Jonas, guys?
00:00:50
I honestly don't remember. We were talking about a fit for the podcast where people could call in and say, Hey Jonas,
00:00:55
And then I wrote down on my little notepad, Hey Jonas, and offered it up as a potential title for the podcast.
00:01:01
But thanks for remembering that, guys. Listen to Hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:08
Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. You know the famous author Roald Dahl.
00:01:12
He thought up Willy Wonka and the BFG. But did you know he was a spy? Neither did I.
00:01:19
You can hear all about his wildlife story in the podcast The Secret World of Roald Dahl.
00:01:24
All episodes are out now. Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been.
00:01:28
What? Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you, the guy was a spy. Binge all 10 episodes of The Secret World of Roald Dahl, now on the iHeartRadio app,
00:01:38
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, and welcome to My Favorite Murder.
00:01:43
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, and I'm honored to be the guest host this week. I'm the host of two podcasts here on the Exactly Right Network,
00:01:50
Tenfold War Wicked and Tenfold War Wicked presents Wicked Words. I love to listen to
00:01:56
My Favorite Murder because it reminds me that it's okay to sometimes laugh at some pretty serious
00:02:01
subjects on my own show. And Georgia and Karen are so good at weighing that balance between humor
00:02:07
and respect. And it's good for me to remember that I can do that too. So I wanted to pick a
00:02:13
few of the older episodes because I'm a new fan and I really just wanted an excuse to listen to
00:02:18
some shows that they taped in the early years. The first is episode 99, the story of Irene Garza,
00:02:41
told by Georgia. I've followed this case for years, one, because I'm a Texan and I'm into
00:02:46
Texas stories. And two, because I'm fascinated with stories where murder intersects with religion.
00:02:53
So here's the story of Irene Garza and priest John Fite. This is a timely story because it's a cold case that finally, hopefully,
00:03:04
this is the end, came last week. But this is a story that I've been interested in. It's one of
00:03:12
The 48 hours, you know, we've all watched it. It's really interesting. Texas Monthly.
00:03:16
I got a lot of this information from the Texas Monthly, which we love Texas Monthly.
00:03:20
The best. The best article called Unholy Act by Pamela Colloff, C-O-L-L-O-F-F. This is the story of a fucking priest John fight.
00:03:34
Oh. And the murder of Irene Garza. Oh, I don't know this. Oh, honey. Oh, shit. Fucking buckle the fuck up.
00:03:41
Buckle down, baby. Settle in. Buckle up. Hit your foot on the coffee table. Kick the coffee table as hard as you can.
00:03:49
Kick the coffee table. Like you have a crush on it. Okay, here we go. Okay. So Irene Garza is born in 1934.
00:04:00
She's this dark-haired Hispanic beauty from McAllen, Texas. It's an agricultural area.
00:04:11
Agricultural. Agricultural. Thank you. Area south of Texas in the Rio Grande Valley, five miles from the U.S.-Mexico border. In high school, Irene had been crowned Miss All South Texas Sweetheart. Shit. And McAllen High School, where, you know, everyone's fucking white back then. She had been the first Hispanic twirler and head drum majorette. Wow.
00:04:36
So she was like fucking busting down borders. She's this beautiful beauty queen, but she's Hispanic.
00:04:41
So it's, you know, a sense of pride that it's, it's, you know, she's busting down borders.
00:04:49
Yeah. She's not, I mean, Texas, that's like blonde, big teeth, blue eyes. That's like usually what you're going to get out of a Texas beauty queen.
00:04:59
Right. And she is, you know, she's not that. and she's the first in her family to graduate from college which is a super big deal huge
00:05:08
accomplishment so at 25 years old she worked as a teacher for disadvantaged children which she took
00:05:14
a great pride in some of her students were so poor and came from the neighborhood where she
00:05:19
had come from and had been able to get out of that they came to school barefoot and irene spent her
00:05:26
first paycheck on buying those children clothes and books. Yeah. So happens to this
00:05:32
very day. Right. Even worse I bet. Exactly. So she's this really big hearted, kind person. She is
00:05:38
gorgeous, which isn't a reason why she shouldn't be a victim, but there's just this warmth coming from her
00:05:44
and, you know, she had a huge future that she earned. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. Listen.
00:05:52
Look Look and listen Stop it At the center of her life though is her devout Catholic faith That like her fucking thing On April 16th 1960 the day before fucking Easter Sunday
00:06:09
Oh, okay. Is Saturday, Easter Saturday called a thing? It's like chill out Saturday.
00:06:14
It doesn't sound like it. It is. Palm, I don't know. Chill the fuck out Saturday.
00:06:21
The day before Easter. well go ahead well good friday good friday good friday's when he went up on that cross
00:06:30
okay it might be the ascension i don't know he chilled out on saturday he got rolled on up in
00:06:36
that tomb yeah and then and then he was risen on sunday yeah but saturday he just hung out well
00:06:41
saturday was all up in that tomb yeah people thinking he's dead it's over and he was like
00:06:46
you know what i'm in a high okay i'm not gonna get sacrilegious here we already have real mad at me
00:06:51
it's so sad because I've had this shit drummed into my head but then of course when it would be impressive I can't pull it out
00:06:57
but here's the thing and today's the first night of Hanukkah we rebelled against it because we hated it so much
00:07:03
so everything was drummed into our head we're like fuck you I'm not remembering this and now we just
00:07:07
don't know things now just the guilt remains the guilt and the ignorance and the really good songs
00:07:16
oh yeah I got a bunch of those peace is flowing like a river anytime you want me to sing it to i will okay okay baruch i taught let's fucking do this
00:07:23
name a prayer okay okay so on april 16th fucking lazy saturday 1960 irene borrows she's 25 she borrows her family car to drive to their church sacred heart church
00:07:42
where she plans to go to confession um she leaves around 6 30 that evening she's like mom i'll be
00:07:47
back. A bunch of witnesses see her get to church. Everyone's in line for confession. She gets in line as well
00:07:53
but no one sees her leave that church that day. She never came home that night and the
00:07:59
next morning, Easter Sunday That's right, as you know. He is truly risen. He rises
00:08:05
and her car is still parked down the street from Sacred Heart. The first clue comes two days later
00:08:11
when one of Irene's high-heeled shoes is spotted by the side of the road and 300 yards
00:08:17
from there is her purse. It looks as if someone had thrown it out the window of a passing car. There's
00:08:21
no fingerprints on it. This crazy huge search ensues, including they dragged irrigation canals. They go
00:08:29
house to house through the town. Border patrol planes go fucking circling. 65 National Guardsmen
00:08:38
are called out to assist what became at the time the most extensive investigation in Valley history.
00:08:43
Wow. But it's not until four days later after she disappeared that Irene's body is found floating in a nearby irrigation canal.
00:08:54
She's fully dressed except for her shoes and underwear are missing. The right side of her face is badly bruised.
00:09:01
She had two black eyes and the autopsy reveals that she had been beaten with a hard object
00:09:07
and suffocated. The state of decomposition suggests that she'd been dead for fewer than four days.
00:09:13
So maybe she had been kept somewhere for a day or so. And she had been raped while unconscious.
00:09:20
Yeah. The local newspapers go fucking nuts with rumors and speculation. Everyone is like being fucking targeted or fingered, including this prominent local citizen who had died of a heart attack days after she disappeared, you know, or that had been transients or someone that had a crush on her because she was so beautiful.
00:09:40
But she was also, you know, not she was dating, but not, you know, she was Catholic.
00:09:45
you know what I mean sure detectives question more than 500 people in the weeks following the murder
00:09:52
but behind the scenes detectives they don't talk about this in public and the newspapers don't really talk about this
00:09:58
they are focusing on a 27 year old priest named John fight what yeah a priest okay fight
00:10:08
it's F-E-I-T had recently finished his seminary training in San Antonio and his name
00:10:14
kept turning up in their investigation. So he had recently come into town. He was bright and well-mannered.
00:10:22
He had dark hair and horn-britten glasses. He looked like he'd be in Weezer. You know what I'm saying?
00:10:26
Yes. He struck parishioners, though, as aloof and a bit of a loner and seemed ambivalent about his vocation.
00:10:36
When he was asked why he had joined the priesthood, he said, I just want to give it a try.
00:10:40
i'm sorry but if god isn't in that sentence or jesus there's some fucking you can't say that out
00:10:50
loud no is was he new to catholicism you gotta you gotta like be in it to win it like if anyone
00:10:57
asked either of us why we wanted to do true crime podcasts it'd be like a passionate plea of how
00:11:01
interested in fucking crime we are that's right and we're not and talking talking to god right
00:11:06
mostly talking but also like to not it's almost that very glib flippant thing of cocky like it's
00:11:15
here's my funny joke and like really it's none of your business right is what he's saying right
00:11:19
which you're not supposed to say to anyone who's asking you is like being earnest and being like
00:11:24
tell me i want to connect to you you're a priest i'm looking for some fucking guidance and some
00:11:29
wisdom. Can I get a fucking... Amen, please. There you go. On the night of Irene's
00:11:38
disappearance, Father Fight had heard confessions and taken part in a midnight mass.
00:11:43
He'd also admitted to his superiors that he had met privately with Irene in the church rectory.
00:11:49
And I wrote, in parentheses, the house because I didn know what a rectory was I thought it was an office the church office I thought it was you know where he went and wrote out his i thought it was an office well it a house right i didn
00:12:03
know that it's the priest house that's but it's connected to the church so it kind of is like an
00:12:07
office do all the priests live there or just the one like head priest it's um it's kind of like
00:12:12
case by case like in my hometown at saint vincent's um they live at the rectory and but you can also
00:12:20
go there like at my mom's funeral we went to talk to the priest in the rectory like in a downstairs
00:12:26
office doesn't rectory sound like it should be like a side room office well it sounds like factory
00:12:31
it's where they're just turning out jesus statues all day and night but that but i mean i think it's
00:12:37
like it's basically um you know the church hall is where people like have their you know sunday
00:12:43
coffee clutches or whatever the rectory is where you go and you're like we need to plan a funeral
00:12:49
and we need to plan a wedding. There's some serious shit happening here. This is the business.
00:12:53
And then upstairs, the priests live. And then it's the busy bodies next door making fucking, I was going to say kugel,
00:13:00
but they don't need kugel. No, they actually, they banned kugel long ago. All right, I get it.
00:13:06
So the rectory is, okay. And that was viewed by other priests as really inappropriate to take anyone,
00:13:11
especially a fucking hot 25-year-old lovely woman. All right. So. so yeah because unless she has called like if it was a parish business she would have called like
00:13:24
the lady the lady that runs the office and been like i need to make an appointment this was for
00:13:28
confession specifically oh yeah no you do that in the confession booth there's a there's a booth
00:13:33
that is titled for the thing she was doing they had people build it right into the church so
00:13:40
people specifically you can sit there and pray and then look at people getting confession uh-huh
00:13:45
That's the whole idea of confession. Well, he took her to the rectory. Gross. Pass.
00:13:49
Okay. Yeah. It's problematic. Yes, it is. Also, several churchgoers who stood in his confession line, which had fucking stalled out because he fucking picked her out and took her to the rectory.
00:14:01
Oh. That night told detectives that he seemed to have been absent from the sanctuary for long periods of time.
00:14:07
And another priest, Father John O'Brien, reported seeing scratches on his hands when they drank coffee together at midnight mass.
00:14:16
Ooh. Uh-huh. Ooh. Uh-huh. Then detectives learned that on March 23rd, so that's three weeks before Irene disappeared and her body was found,
00:14:27
that a woman had been attacked at a Catholic church 12 miles from that church, the one where Irene went to.
00:14:34
Uh-huh. 12 miles away. 20 year old college student Maria America Guerrera had visited Sacred Heart Church in Edinburgh and noticed a young man with dark hair and horn room glasses.
00:14:45
We are sitting alone in one of the back pews. And in her mind, she was like that.
00:14:51
I think she had an immediate reaction to him. He made me nervous. But she was like, calm down, Maria.
00:14:57
You're in the church. You're in the fucking house of God. Nothing can go wrong. Right.
00:15:00
You know, she let her guard down. Yeah. Which is totally understandable. In a church.
00:15:04
Of course. In a church. Yeah. When she went to the altar and knelt at the communion rail, a man grabbed her from behind and tried to put a rag over her mouth.
00:15:13
Holy shit. Yeah. She fucking fought the shit out of him. And when he put his hand back over her mouth to silence her because she was screaming, she bit the shit out of his fingers until he drew blood.
00:15:24
She drew blood. Yes. That's, you know what I'm saying. Yeah. She ran out the side door of the church.
00:15:29
She escaped. And in her sworn statement, she said that she thought her attacker was a priest.
00:15:33
that was the first feeling she got. Wow. Which was very controversial. Yes. You know what I'm saying?
00:15:38
I bet. Because this is the 50s or the 60s? This is 1960. So we're technically still in the 50s.
00:15:44
So I wrote about this. This is a long time before the sexual allegations against priests started to come out and people
00:15:50
believed them. This wasn't until the 90s that these allegations came out against priests sexually amnesting
00:15:56
children. And it wasn't even until way later that people believed them. Well, and, and of course, horrible document.
00:16:04
I mean, amazing documentary. I wrote this down. There is, is it the, um, it's a deliver us from evil.
00:16:10
And there's a guy in it that talks about when he got molested by a priest being driven in the police, the priest's car because they, he didn't have a dad.
00:16:20
And so he's like, I'll take him out to ice cream or whatever. Gets molested in the priest's car.
00:16:24
The priest drops him off. He walks into the house, says to the mom, what just happened?
00:16:28
And the mother slaps him across the face and says, how dare you ever say that? And then the priest continues visiting their house for years to come.
00:16:36
It's the most upsetting. It's just children against adults. And there's no, everyone's like no fucking way.
00:16:43
It's not even children against adults. It's children against God's chosen people.
00:16:48
And these highly religious people, which I don't completely understand, which is why I was excited to talk to you about this because you were raised Catholic.
00:16:56
they're infallible they are infallible and you talking badly against a priest is talking badly
00:17:04
against Jesus fucking Christ that's right it's like pre-Vatican 2 shit where it's like it's old
00:17:12
like when the popes used to control everybody and they were the richest people and they fuck anything they wanted
00:17:17
it was just all about power and money and basically these yeah this is why people
00:17:25
who were pedophiles went into the priesthood because they went in with carte blanche and we're
00:17:30
not saying that catholicism is bad religion that priests are bad people that any you know we're not
00:17:35
i'm not talking shit on any of this it's just this reality of a of a really bad period that
00:17:41
happened that uh we need to acknowledge well yeah and i mean i think at this point it's so
00:17:46
been acknowledged most of the people that i know that are good catholics and that are faith-based
00:17:51
like they don they they still believe in they have a relationship with god and spirituality but most of the adults that I know because of the stuff that happened in the Catholic church are incredible And I don just mean like people my age
00:18:04
I mean like people, my parents age that are just so, uh, it's like you, you can't look
00:18:10
at that power structure and go, this should continue. This is, this is going great.
00:18:15
They've handled stuff great and it should continue. There's, there are very few people that feel that way.
00:18:21
Right. Because it's just so what a horrible thing. It's not that you can't give people absolute power like that.
00:18:26
No, no, not at all. Especially that access, that access to families. But but I have to say this, too.
00:18:34
Like there are priests in my in St. Vincent's that are some of the best people I've ever met.
00:18:39
Absolutely. And it's just that kind of like it's almost like the bad ones steal the good, the goodwill from the good ones.
00:18:46
Definitely. Because those ones, it's like what what a great effect they have on people's lives.
00:18:51
Yes, that's how it all works. Definitely. So, okay, so, yeah, so this is way before any of these things came to light. So at Sunday mass, after Irene's funeral, just to show you how protected the priests were, the priest told the congregation that he knew there were rumors that a priest was involved in Irene's murder. And he said, quote, it is impossible that a priest would commit a crime like this. Don't speak of it. Don't even let yourself think it.
00:19:21
He said that himself. To the congregation. Uh-huh. Yeah. Right. In late April, detectives drained the irrigation canal where they had found Irene's body.
00:19:34
And on the bottom was a light green Eastman Kodaslide viewer with a long black cord.
00:19:39
So like a slide viewer. Yeah. Like a picture viewer. Like one of these? Cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching.
00:19:46
Yeah, but like to the wall. Oh, okay. Like a slideshow. Yeah. Thing. Yeah. We call those CODA slide viewers at our house.
00:19:56
You know, there is a photo of it online if you look it up. I mean, like of the actual one.
00:20:01
So it's got a long cord on it. It's at the bottom of the irrigation canal where they think her body was thrown in.
00:20:06
And they also find a candelabra that belonged to the church. John Fite is like, oh, yeah, I bought that CODA slide thing last summer.
00:20:15
He like is like, oh, yeah, that was mine. And those candelabra, that candelabra belongs to the church.
00:20:20
so what he probably strangled her with and what he probably hit her with a fucking head with is at
00:20:25
the bottom of the fucking canal and he raises his fucking hand and is like that's mine wow yeah
00:20:31
because kind of in the confidence of knowing no one can do anything about it who fucking yeah
00:20:35
maybe who knows so finally the priest sits down with the detectives in early may he provides a
00:20:43
of course meticulous account of his actions on easter weekend he says that he had counseled
00:20:47
Irene in the Sacred Heart Rectory. He said, yeah, I totally did that because she had some information she wanted
00:20:51
to give me that was private. So I brought her, that's why I brought her in there.
00:20:55
Because the confession booth, which is a muffled closet that no one can hear from the outside of, wasn't
00:21:03
private enough. She could only scream her confession is the problem. Jesus. No. He saw her leave, though,
00:21:11
at whatever time, and then he had these, like, dumb excuses for why he had cuts on his hand.
00:21:15
And he's like, and goodbye. polygraph tests implicate him in both iran's murder and the attack on maria guerrera a couple
00:21:23
weeks earlier and in august father fight is indicted for assault with intent to rape maria
00:21:30
guerrera oh shit yeah the jury though motherfucking deadlocks and the proceedings end in a mistrial
00:21:37
and so rather than face a second trial uh in 1962 father fight pleads no contest to reduce charges
00:21:46
of aggravated assault, gets fined $500, and that's it. Takes that right out of the...
00:21:55
Goodbye. He takes it right out of the church, the bucket. What do they call it? The collection plate.
00:22:02
Oh. I'm losing all of my terminology. There you go. I mean, Jesus Christ. That's the guy.
00:22:08
Jesus Christ. He's like, Jesus can see and hear you if you're trying to rape people in church.
00:22:14
Clearly. Yeah. So it's now alleged that the district attorney at the time and church leaders cut a deal to stop the investigation into John Fite to protect the reputation of the church.
00:22:26
Also, most elected officials at the time in the Hildegault County were Catholic, mostly elected leaders.
00:22:35
And it was at a time when none other than fucking Senator John F. Kennedy is running for president that year, who is a fucking Catholic.
00:22:46
That's right. There's never been a Catholic president before. There's only one other Catholic that had ever been a nominee for president in one of the major parties he had lost.
00:23:00
Dewey? Was it Dewey? I don't remember. I didn't even write it down. That wasn't an honest question.
00:23:05
I wouldn't have known. And anti-Catholic prejudice is fucking big time. So they're like, we need Kennedy to win.
00:23:13
We're all fucking Catholics. Let's not give them a reason to hate Catholics. Oh, OK.
00:23:19
So like for political reasons. Yeah. Legit. Including JFK being fucking elected.
00:23:24
Wow. And like, you know, it's Texas. It's a big fucking place. God, that's so funny to think.
00:23:30
I just always, it's just my own weird bias. Like I used to think everyone was Catholic.
00:23:35
when I was a kid that I just assumed everyone was Catholic. That's so interesting.
00:23:40
Were there a lot of Catholic? Well, you went to a Catholic school. I went to Catholic school, but also our town was just small and mostly Christian.
00:23:47
Although then later on I learned that there was a big bunch of, Petaluma was like one of the biggest receivers of,
00:23:57
of immigrants after World War II of Jewish people who are running from the war. Refugees. Thank you.
00:24:11
Where do they live now? They still live there. There's Jewish, a lot of Jewish people?
00:24:15
There's a couple temples in Petaluma, yeah. Oh, okay. Because I think one or two of the families had like chicken farms,
00:24:21
so they're like, everybody go out and go work on the chicken ranch. Very cool. Yeah.
00:24:26
Yeah. Interesting. That could be a lie. No. Nope. You said it. No, I believe it.
00:24:32
I'm almost positive I read that somewhere. It's true. It feels so true. It feels really good in my heart.
00:24:38
Great. Okay. So basically, that means no murder charges are ever filed against Father Fight.
00:24:44
And shortly after the killing, the church transfers him to a faraway monastery. So in the 60s, he spent some time at a treatment center for troubled priests in New Mexico and
00:24:55
at monasteries in multiple states. Hold the phone, please. I will not. I want to go to a treatment center
00:25:04
for troubled priests. And kick them all in the dick. Right. The horror movie that needs to be written out of that.
00:25:09
I mean, like... But the children come and attack and kill them all. Oh, my God. It's like children of the corn,
00:25:15
but at a fucking monastery for troubled, quote, troubled priests. Troubled priests.
00:25:20
Where it's revenge. The children come out of the fields. It's called here and troubled priests.
00:25:25
priests you're in trouble you're in trouble i heard what you did this past summer right
00:25:30
said jesus said jesus to the lord that's fucked up who everyone in that neighborhood where that
00:25:39
place was was just like move away well remember when we watched um what was the really great documentary in on netflix over the summer the keepers yeah and they and he went and
00:25:51
Visited the house where all of the priests had gotten sent to. And they lived and they were all child molesters and shit.
00:25:57
Yeah. Keepers is still fucking great. Everyone should watch it. It's so good. Listen, if you want to have a binge weekend of terrible shit.
00:26:03
Yeah. You should watch Deliver Us From Evil, which you just need to. You need to watch.
00:26:08
It's historical information that you need to know about. It's just fucking life lessons.
00:26:13
And you just need to like calm your pessimism a little bit. Optimism. I was going to say.
00:26:20
Well, it also, there's, it's that thing of, it feels like a very new cultural thing where
00:26:25
it's like, everybody's got to get real with the fact that, that true sociopaths and psychopaths
00:26:31
move in this world in exactly these unexpected ways. They are baseball coaches. They are priests.
00:26:39
They move into their voice. They manipulate. Yes. And they're good at it. They're good at it.
00:26:44
You're not. And you need to get okay with that. Yes. You got, you got to, if you are a single parent, you got to keep your eye double peeled.
00:26:50
You've got to triple check all the people that want to be in your child's life, all that stuff, which we're saying that to people who know it by heart.
00:26:58
I mean, like that. Yeah, but you forget that shit, man. Like when it's you and your people and this, you know, a guy you're dating.
00:27:04
Yeah, of course, it's fine. You know what I mean? It's like, of course, you don't think about it in terms of your own life.
00:27:09
You think about it outside of you. Yes. it's just so it's I remember reading that sports illustrated thing about how many baseball coaches
00:27:18
like little league coaches were pedophiles and it's just the most frightening and insane thing
00:27:25
I want to read that you got to read it it's insane I'm pretty sure it was the cover sports
00:27:29
illustrated like 10 years ago oh my god I need to read that it's so crazy because it's then they're
00:27:34
they're in the lives they're right there with all the sports and everything's dude and sports and
00:27:38
couldn't be safer and games and we need to go to this and practices and then they then that's how
00:27:43
they select the ones who don't have anybody that's going to come and beat the shit out of them if they
00:27:48
do anything to the kid they like that's how they spot vulnerable children and people who are i mean
00:27:53
it's just the most fucked up thing very awful um also okay also the movie spotlight which came out
00:28:00
recently amazing is about that too so watch so have a nice binge weekend oh and then watch bob's
00:28:06
burgers and big mouth to get yourself to feel better. Yes. Big mouth is amazing.
00:28:12
Big mouth. So good. Okay. New Mexico monasteries. Oh, here's fun. At one point, here's fun.
00:28:21
Here's a, here's fun. Here's fun. At one point he served as a supervisor charged with clearing priests for
00:28:27
assignments to churches. So the priest who got sent to the fucking, you're, you're a terrible person.
00:28:32
Get out of this town. They're going to fucking murder you. Yeah. The attempted rapist priest.
00:28:36
They sent him to this, these places and his monasteries. And our fucking friend, John fight was on the fucking clearing house to let them go back into the goddamn world.
00:28:44
Good. This motherfucker. Healthy. Yeah. Just good decisions all around being made.
00:28:50
Absolutely. At every level. We have one open seat. Who should we fill with? John fight.
00:28:55
Wait, is the devil not available? Okay, then. Right. so one of the men that he held clear for parish was james porter who isn't the guy from deliver us
00:29:06
from evil but could be a child molester convicted of assaulting more than a hundred victims who was
00:29:11
a priest he was like get him back in there yeah you're in the game you fucking dick okay john fight
00:29:19
left the priesthood in 1972 and moved to phoenix worked as an insurance salesman got married had
00:29:25
kids and grandkids lives a fucking normal goddamn life whoa meanwhile irene's parents nick and
00:29:33
josephina garza they both passed away in the 90s without ever seeing anyone prosecuted for irene's
00:29:39
murder but they were assured by people in the church that father fight um who they always
00:29:46
fucking suspected would be punished by the church if they found out anything had been
00:29:51
had been done And they were assured that this was a bigger sentence handed than any court could hand down And so they like OK great because they still fucking believe in the Catholic Church They were fucking Catholics
00:30:02
Well, yeah. So April 2002. Let's jump ahead. OK. All right. Good. Forty two years after the murder of Irene Garza, a former monk named Dale Tashney,
00:30:13
who had left the priesthood more than 30 years earlier to marry. Suddenly he gets a fucking conscience.
00:30:18
he says that in the summer of 1963 he was asked to counsel John Fite while he while John stayed at the monastery where
00:30:29
this guy Dale was a fucking priest, monk during their six months of counseling, John
00:30:37
Fite told Tashiny of the night that Irene died this guy called the fucking investigator and was like, let me tell you something
00:30:45
he told him that Father Fite had asked her to come to the church rectory and had heard her confession.
00:30:52
And after the confession, he had restrained Irene, maybe bound and gagged her. He had fondled her breasts
00:31:00
and before he returned to the sanctuary to hear confessions, he had moved her to the rectory basement.
00:31:06
And later that evening, he moved her to another location. Then on Easter Sunday,
00:31:11
so she's still alive, then on Easter Sunday, he put Irene in a bathtub and placed a bag over her head.
00:31:19
And as he was leaving the bathroom, he heard her say, I can't breathe. I can't breathe.
00:31:25
And then Tashini said when he came back later on that day or early evening, he found her dead in the bathtub.
00:31:32
And then that night, he put her in a car and took her and dropped her off along a roadside where there was a canal.
00:31:42
Tashini had kept it to himself out of a sense of religious obligation for more than four decades
00:31:50
he didn't tell anyone it's like he confessed to him and you can't in terms of being a priest that hears
00:31:58
confession you're not allowed to repeat it I mean I feel so grateful that he came
00:32:04
forward and said stuff but at the same time it's like this man murdered this woman it doesn't that's then that's not a priest then that's not a priest anymore the
00:32:17
man who murdered someone is not doesn't get to have that no but everybody gets it it's not just
00:32:22
for priests it's that's the let that's like they're talking to god through you and you don't
00:32:27
get to intervene yeah because they're asking for forgiveness and so you have to be that no matter
00:32:32
what somebody says to you as a priest you have to say you're forgiven he was counseling him so it
00:32:37
wasn't confession i mean i don't know if technically yeah well i i bet you they'd say it was just for
00:32:43
the protection right but the other thing is wasn't she found brutally beaten yeah so that's bullshit
00:32:49
she was beaten and raped while unconscious so clearly he left some shit out or they just tell
00:32:54
you everything in this article yeah it's too much but i would bet you that like he's basically saying
00:32:59
well i i just did a couple of things away and she died and then she's i mean it's unfortunate like
00:33:06
He's basically telling the story to this other priest like, too bad that happened, as opposed to you finally fucking attack this woman.
00:33:13
Well, one of the things that Kashni said was he didn't show what I would consider to be compunction or sorrow or grief or anything like that.
00:33:23
So he had kept it to himself. And then at this point in 2002, he's in his 70s and he had a change of heart.
00:33:30
And he was like, I'll fucking testify. Like, let's do this. Wow. Which is incredible.
00:33:35
So Texas Rangers then begin to reinvestigate the case when he's contacted fight.
00:33:41
There's now 69 year olds says that man doesn't exist anymore and he won't say anything else.
00:33:47
Like the man who who raped and murdered a woman. Yeah, he does do. Yeah, he does.
00:33:52
Sorry. He's in you. So Rangers also interviewed Father O'Brien, who back then was like, I saw scratches on his hands.
00:34:00
And he tells the Rangers that a few months after the murder fight. fight uh he had confronted fight about whether he had killed irene and the priest had told him
00:34:08
everything so he too was like yep i know everything i'll fucking testify oh shit um and
00:34:15
yeah he'll tell everything so and i would say this too this was back i i think that people
00:34:21
very rarely broke that like if i'm telling you if i'm giving you confession you're like basically
00:34:27
you have to forgive me in the end you don't get to say anything that's in like you know police
00:34:31
TV shows all the time. Is that not true anymore? Well, no, I'm saying I think back then no one would ever break it
00:34:38
whereas nowadays I think it's like now everyone's seeing the reason that that rule is put into place
00:34:44
maybe not have been for the best reasons. Right. Or that there were many more people that would exploit it
00:34:50
than anyone would expect. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Am I getting Catholic defensive? Sorry.
00:34:57
That's okay. So then in July 2002, the Brownsville Harold ran a front page story on Irene's murder and the suspicion about John fight.
00:35:07
And so Hildegault County District Attorney, Renee Guerrera was asked if he planned to
00:35:12
pursue an indictment in the case because they were like, we have all this fucking evidence
00:35:15
now, including two people who he told murdered Irene and they're willing to testify.
00:35:22
And this guy, Renee, was like, can it be said, quote, can it be solved? Well, I guess if you believe that pigs comply, anything is possible.
00:35:28
And then he said, why would anyone be haunted by her death? she died her killer got away so he fucking flippantly who is this guy this
00:35:36
guy Renee Guerrera he's a fucking Hildigo no wait Hill Hidalgo thank you oh my god
00:35:45
I only say that because of the movie starring Viggo Mortensen about him and his horse Hildal Hidalgo Hidalgo yeah thank you Jesus yeah so at the time so then he got all this negative publicity and he like okay fine uh sorry he was the prosecutor though he was the district attorney
00:36:02
oh okay okay so at the so he got all this negative publicity because her fucking family's still alive
00:36:07
her parents aren't but the rest of her family's like we fucking care that she died yeah so he in
00:36:12
2004 he asked he has two of his prosecutors present the evidence to a grand jury to indict
00:36:17
John Fite, but they don't fucking call either of those priests to testify, the ones who he
00:36:22
told that he killed them. And so, of course, in 2004, the jury declined to indict him and no billed the case.
00:36:30
So that was the chance to fucking finally, before John Fite dies, to get him held responsible
00:36:36
for the murder of Irene. And those two priests had said that they would testify.
00:36:40
They wanted to. They were waiting by the fucking phone to be called up to testify.
00:36:44
And they just didn't do it. They didn't call them. And it turns out, of course, Renee Guerrera was Catholic.
00:36:51
Yeah. Right. Yeah. So 10 fucking years later in 2014, there's a district attorney's race in Hidalgo County.
00:37:01
And finally, Renee gets fucking beat by Ricardo Rodriguez. And in his race, he promised he would reexamine the case of elected.
00:37:10
Oh, shit. So fucking Ricardo is elected. Wow. Great. They spent a year and two months reexamining the case and all the evidence.
00:37:19
And more than 57 fucking years after the murder of Irene Garza, 83 year old John Fite is finally fucking arrested in Arizona for first degree murder.
00:37:30
Former monk Dale fucking Tashney, 88 years old, fucking testifies. Dang it. 88 years old.
00:37:37
Now, when you say monk, does it say anything else about that? Him being a monk? There's just a photo of him with that hair.
00:37:45
you know what i'm saying he's got the robes and the hair and you're like oh honey you must
00:37:50
have been dedicated because my god he looks like he's on space balls i'm just i'm just trying to
00:37:57
figure out what that is if he's like a christian brother or what like his specific deal was i'm
00:38:03
sure it's very involved but i don't understand okay i just knew that it was like a monk but he
00:38:08
was like but it was like priests were hanging out with him yeah i don't know he's just in a different
00:38:14
kind of like set up catholic thing yeah okay maybe he made wine the hair though yep my god
00:38:22
so dale what's up 88 year old dale testifies against him december 8th what's the date today
00:38:28
the 12th yes december fucking 8th 2017 fucking four days ago oh shit yeah after a six-day trial
00:38:38
in the Hidalgo County Courthouse in Edinburgh, a jury fucking convicted John Fite.
00:38:44
Whoa. Now 85-year-old ex-priest of murdering Irene Garza, and he received a life sentence in prison.
00:38:51
Oh, my God. Yeah, this just fucking came out. That's incredible. 1960 is when it happened, and fucking, what are we, 2017?
00:39:01
Yeah. Wow. She was still alive today. Irene would be 83 years old. in a letter written to a friend
00:39:07
right before she died. She stated that she's happier than she's ever been and said to her friend,
00:39:15
remember the last time we talked, I told you I was afraid of death. Well, I think I'm cured.
00:39:19
You see, I've been going to communion and mass daily and you can't imagine the courage
00:39:24
and faith and happiness it's given me. And that's the story of the murder of Irene Garza
00:39:32
by motherfucker John Fite. Wow. I can't believe that ended well. I know, right? It never happens in the Catholic Church.
00:39:43
Every time it's a Catholic Church story, it frustrates you. It disgusts you. Well, called cases too.
00:39:49
Goes crazy. Yeah. So he's like in one of those walkers in court that are also chairs that you see.
00:39:56
Yeah. Trying to look all old. And a couple of things he said when he got arrested were like,
00:40:01
I don't understand. This happened in 1960. Like he his excuse of I don't understand this was happening now.
00:40:06
This was so long ago. And this woman says to him, there's no statute of limitations on murder.
00:40:11
Like he's trying to play it off like this was so long ago. Yeah. Why are you guys making a big deal?
00:40:16
Yeah, exactly. He's acting like a confused old man. Yeah. And he's a fucking sexual predator and murderer.
00:40:22
Well, also, it doesn't matter how old he is. It doesn't matter how old he is. It doesn't matter what his opinion about it is.
00:40:28
Or that he's a grandpa or whatever. It sucks for them. His confusion is not relevant.
00:40:31
No. You, you already were confused. That's why you're like this. So you, your opinion about it and how
00:40:37
you see it is not valid because according to you, no one's life matters. And any woman is
00:40:43
an object you get to grab. Some woman who died in 1960, who cares? No. No. People, a lot of people
00:40:48
care. A lot of people care. And a lot of people are tired of people like that guy exploiting
00:40:55
positions of not just power, but automatic trust. Yeah. It's that thing. That's what's so gross.
00:41:02
Yeah. Can you imagine going into a church or like, I can't imagine going into a church
00:41:06
and getting a creepy vibe of like, Oh no, the guy that works here is scaring me. Yeah. That's the
00:41:13
exact opposite of how churches are supposed to work. Well, there should be no such thing as
00:41:17
automatic trust. I mean, it sucks, but even, you know, you're fucking pediatrician or you're
00:41:24
fucking you know your um what's it called anything there's just there's no such thing anymore right
00:41:32
and there never was we just let it happen right yeah it's it's okay to be just be aware be careful
00:41:39
and thank god for the internet and checky checky checky check everyone's fucking everything record
00:41:45
yeah wow that amazing yeah such a good story your husband is not who you think he is your body is not what you thought it was Your identity is formed by a secret history I Dani Shapiro and these are just a few of the stunning stories I be exploring
00:42:02
on the 14th season of Family Secrets. And just then, we felt the plane turn in the air.
00:42:10
So much so that the bags that were under people's seats just kind of flew into the aisle.
00:42:15
Each week, we dive headfirst into the complex power of secrecy. how it shapes our identities and relationships,
00:42:22
and how it ultimately can reveal to us our truest selves. My daughter, she's pretending she doesn't know,
00:42:28
but is trying to cook and feed me and keep me alive because I wasn't eating anything,
00:42:33
and me pretending like everything was fine. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move,
00:42:38
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.
00:42:43
Listen to Season 14 of Family Secrets on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:42:49
When you feel uncomfortable, what do you put on? Biggie. You put on Biggie when you feel uncomfortable?
00:42:56
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.
00:43:03
It's Mental Health Month. Let's figure out what actually works. I didn't care about my life circumstance when I listened to that stuff. It didn't matter to me.
00:43:10
This isn't just a podcast. It's unconventional therapy for you every day. Open your free iHeartRadio app, search DJ Hester Prynne's Music is Therapy, and start listening now.
00:43:20
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,
00:43:30
one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world. The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS
00:43:37
and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app,
00:43:45
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I still hear people talking about that story here in Texas,
00:43:54
even though John Fite died in prison in 2020. Okay, for Karen, I picked episode 130,
00:44:01
which covers the creepy, nasty case of Fred and Rosemary West in the UK. Again, this is a story I've read about for years.
00:44:11
I love that they covered this case because I'm not sure that everyone's heard it.
00:44:16
And it's just so terrible. So here's the story of Fred and Rosemary West in their House of Horrors in England.
00:44:23
So my story this week is one that we haven't done yet. It's super famous. People ask us to do it all the time and ask us why we haven't done it.
00:44:31
And it's another one of those ones where it's like, I'm going to save it for a live show.
00:44:35
No, no, I want to do it at a live show. And it's so depressing and I don't want to do it.
00:44:39
Yeah. Because it is the hideous. And I am telling you, if you have any, any issues or triggers around molestation, incest, sexual abuse at all, you do not want to listen to the story because it's fucking terrible.
00:44:56
It's the story of Fred and Rosemary West. Oh, yeah. It is. It's a good one. It's so like I have attempted to do this story, I think, like four different times.
00:45:05
And every time I'm just like, I don't. This is awful. I want to hear it. And I don't have those triggers because I'm a fucking monster who likes terrible things
00:45:13
all the time. Right. But I can imagine you doing this at the London show and it just going quiet.
00:45:18
Yes. But then you're like, why didn't you do it? I know it's such a weird balance, but it's also like, yeah, for live shows, we need to
00:45:26
be able to talk to each other and like at least have a semblance of a good time and
00:45:31
interaction. And this is just all this is some of the darkest shit of all time. Well, I must not know all the dark shit then.
00:45:37
So tell me. Yeah, it's crazy. And but the good thing that that I was happy about is early on, I I tried to do a recommendation and tried to reference this show called it was a I think originally it was like a TV show in England starring Emily Watson called Appropriate Adult.
00:45:59
And it stars Emily Watson. It's Dominic West, who is from The Wire, but he's a British, amazing British actor.
00:46:06
um and uh and then this incredible uh actress who i still can't get over her performance
00:46:16
she plays rosemary west and her name is monica dolan and she is so fucking good uh i don't have
00:46:25
a picture of her um she's so fucking good in this thing inappropriate adult so emily watson plays
00:46:30
essentially there's a thing in England. It's when you, they have a person that's essentially like
00:46:37
a citizen social worker that just is there as the witness to make sure that the person,
00:46:42
when they're being interviewed by police is being treated fairly. And advocate, what's that? It's
00:46:47
a victim. Oh, you mean, but it's a murderer advocate. Exactly. It's like basically, and it's
00:46:52
for, it's usually either for children who've been arrested or for people who are like somehow, um,
00:46:58
have maybe a learning disability or something wrong with them. But they, so they bring her, they bring, you know, this woman in, um, to, to be this, I
00:47:08
believe her name was Janet Leach and it's a true story. So when it gets that part, you can, I would 1000% recommend appropriate adults.
00:47:17
It's available on iTunes and it's in two parts. So but it basically goes into once he's arrested and it goes into the insanity of like how the whole case kind of unfolds.
00:47:32
So anyway, that that's part of where I got this whole story. But and then there was an article in The Independent written by Will Bennett in October of 1995 where I got a bunch of information.
00:47:43
So we'll start with Rosemary West, unlike anyone in any. I just can't. When you talk about this woman, you see a picture of her.
00:47:58
Stephen, would you pull up a picture? Oh, I know. She's like super motherly, right?
00:48:01
Yes. She looks like every mom from the 80s. Totally. Like the really big glasses and like just a short kind of reasonable hair.
00:48:08
Yeah. Little frump zone. She's in the frump zone for sure. She's had some kids. She's lived.
00:48:14
Like she just doesn't care. Eight kids. She's like, she just. Yeah. Holy fuck. Yeah.
00:48:20
So she's, she just looks like the average lady walking down the street with her gross
00:48:23
And no shame on the front zone. Like I have a front zone. I'm the mayor of the fucking front zone.
00:48:28
So don't worry about it. Great. Yeah. This photo of them is just classic. She took her glasses off for the photo.
00:48:36
It just looks like they're on a Sears couch with the best wallpaper I've ever seen in my
00:48:40
life in the background. It looks like the fucking canvas we have in the. Yes. And they use that inappropriate adult.
00:48:47
They have her sitting on a couch in front of that wallpaper. like so they they clearly tried to recreate the house as it was and this house is so fucking
00:48:56
creepy she looks cute she's got her little like dorothy hamill haircut he looks like um if uh
00:49:04
um jemaine not jemaine um yeah jemaine from fucking flight of the concords like really wanted to go all out and play like an ugly gross dude don't you think i think jemaine
00:49:16
clement is hot as fuck don't get me wrong no he is for sure like a leisure suit jemaine it's like
00:49:22
jemaine on halloween trying to be a monster right essentially right um because he does look a lot
00:49:27
like he looks like a muppets monster yes his teeth are crazy he has a unibrow um his but small eyes
00:49:35
and he just he looks like he's up to no good totally um and that's also why he's so fascinating
00:49:41
in an appropriate adult, you get that sense of what a true psychopath he is. I bet he had like a crazy laugh.
00:49:50
What? I bet he had like a crazy laugh. Oh, maybe. Like an unexpected. Something you wouldn't expect.
00:49:56
Like the kind of laugh that would make you leave a bar. Right. No matter how many vodka collins you had waiting for you.
00:50:01
Like kind of jar you. Yes. So, okay. So Rosemary was born Rosemary Letts in Devon, November 29th, 1953.
00:50:10
And of course, it's all of these, both of their backgrounds, tragedy from jump. So Rosemary's parents, he actually calls her Rose for most of the time.
00:50:22
Both of her parents suffer from mental illness. Her mother, when she's pregnant with Rose, falls into a deep depression and they give her electroshock therapy.
00:50:31
With a baby. With the baby. So there's lots of theorizing that there was prenatal injury to her, probably definitely in the brain.
00:50:41
So because when Rose is growing up, lots of aggression, lots of temper tantrums.
00:50:47
She's a terrible student. The parents have a terrible marriage. Her father, Bill, is a paranoid schizophrenic.
00:50:55
Oh, fuck. Yep. So he's super violent and he is terrifying. He is just this awful presence in the home to the point where the mother moves herself and Rosemary out of the house.
00:51:10
But in her adolescence, Rosemary moves back into the house. Oh, honey. And it's around the same time.
00:51:19
So she hits puberty and becomes obsessed with her body and her developing body. She has a brother that she walks around naked in front of all the time that she begins to engage in incestuous acts with.
00:51:32
And she essentially it's not happening out of the blue. It turns out her father has been molesting her since she was 13 years old.
00:51:42
Of course he has. Yeah. And so she Rosemary not only is obsessed with sex and and but she's also preoccupied with older men.
00:51:53
And that's how she ends up meeting Fred West because Rosemary is 15 when she meets the 27 year old Fred West.
00:52:02
Shut up. Yeah. Ew. Yeah. So she's she is a sophomore in high school and he's fucking 27.
00:52:11
Oh, my God. And Fred, one of the worst people ever to exist as a child, he was beaten and molested.
00:52:18
when he was 17. He got into a car accident that left him with a limp and a metal
00:52:23
plate in his head. Head injury. Right. Frontal cortex. After that car accident he was never the same. Can you imagine knowing
00:52:31
someone who got in a car accident or like living with them and being, they're acting really well. Like that
00:52:35
always scares me when people are like, he wasn't acting the same after that. Yeah. Like if
00:52:39
Vince got in a car accident and then started getting like these rage outbursts. Yeah.
00:52:43
What would I do? It happens all the time. It happens to people all the time. I couldn't. It's terrifying.
00:52:47
Yeah. It's really awful. also he's but i don't i think that he probably wasn't the greatest before the car a hundred
00:52:55
percent because he also sustained another head injury when a woman pushed him off a fire escape
00:53:00
because he stuck his hand up her skirt uh for her can you imagine i know she's like get the
00:53:06
fuck out of here holy shit at some point along the line he got his own sister pregnant
00:53:10
i was really trying to make georgia do a spit take with her can of wine not in my own house
00:53:18
gross not in my backyard only on stage um so then he moves to scotland after all that he moves to
00:53:24
scotland to become an ice cream truck driver oh uh-huh but he comes back to england after he runs
00:53:32
over a four-year-old child what the fuck so we're on strike 19 now with fred west can't just put him
00:53:38
to sleep not no good um so in the late 60s he comes back to england and he gets a job as of
00:53:45
course a builder because for some reason all of these serial killers somehow go into the contracting field that the weirdest fucking thing i guess it the independent work schedule hammers i don know burial easy burial
00:54:01
tool tools and cement so uh the only good thing anyone says about him is that he's known to be a
00:54:08
hard worker which is like good for him right so he's on coke probably exactly or he just loves
00:54:15
fucking nailed dig yeah um so it's around this time where he meets 15 year old hi rose hi i'm 15
00:54:23
hi i'm 27 yeah and but she's like well i've always had this paranoid schizophrenic molester father
00:54:29
so this is better um that horrible father objects strongly to rose's having her this relationship
00:54:37
with this old man essentially with the crazy crazy teeth um but she basically believes that
00:54:45
they believe that they are like psychically connected and there's this part in appropriate
00:54:49
adult like psychically right is really what it is yeah there's a part in appropriate adult where
00:54:56
he fred spoiler alert he ends up getting arrested he's in the police station and he goes
00:55:02
oh Rose is in the police station and they're like no no she's not here we haven't arrested her yet and he goes no
00:55:09
she's here and then they leave the interrogation room and she was there and no one in the room
00:55:15
knew she was there except for Fred so there is this they have a very odd creepy creepy creepy
00:55:21
connection and thing so their relationship starts he is abusive to her of course he's sexually
00:55:30
you know technically sexually assaulting her and raping her she's 15 right um uh but he's also
00:55:37
violent with her because he's a violent person so she's uh becomes pregnant relatively soon after
00:55:44
this affair starts um and she gives birth to their daughter in 1970 her daughter their daughter's
00:55:51
named heather uh when when she is when rosemary's 17 um fred west already has two children jesus
00:55:59
From a previous relationship. And at this, around the same. At his sister? No. No, he's, he, he's had a different relationship.
00:56:08
Okay. Um, uh, he's sent to prison for petty theft and for fine evasion around the same time.
00:56:14
So 17 year old, highly unstable Rose becomes mother to now three children all at once.
00:56:21
She has to take over those other two kids. Yeah. Jesus. Is that what they call it?
00:56:25
Takeover? It's a take, it is a full takeover. Um, so Fred's. So it's two daughters, unfortunately, Charmaine and Anna Marie are his daughters that he had from a previous relationship with a woman named Rena Costello.
00:56:40
And so at some point, while Fred is still in jail and Rosemary is taking care of those three kids, Charmaine, one of Fred's daughters, disappears.
00:56:49
uh-huh and when asked where she's gone rose tells people that she's gone to scotland to
00:56:57
to live with her biological mother um so when fred gets out of jail uh he comes back and they
00:57:06
move from the house that they did live in to the now infamous 20 house at 25 cromwell street in
00:57:13
Gloucester. And the neighbors know them as slightly eccentric, but nice. They, people say
00:57:21
that they're the kind of neighbors that would do anything for you. And that's because they have
00:57:24
no fucking idea what's going on in what is actually an, in truth, a complete hell house.
00:57:30
So it turns out Rosemary is a sex worker who was working out of her own home and they have set up
00:57:39
the house the bedrooms have are outfitted with cameras and listening devices she's still a
00:57:45
teenager at this point she is yeah basically you know 18 or 19 or something yeah she's in her late
00:57:51
teens early 20s when all this starts so fred can watch these sessions sessions she's having
00:57:58
sessions with her clients from afar and in the house um and if that's not dark enough for you
00:58:07
it's not dark enough for me okay then one of her clients is her own father bill uh-huh that then
00:58:14
fred knows that that's dark enough for me that well it gets darker because then rose eventually
00:58:20
encourages fred to begin to sexually abuse anna marie and rose would join in that i mean she is
00:58:29
what the fuck it actually reminds me of the ken and barbie killers uh carlo molca right and from
00:58:36
Canada giving you a kid he she gives him the gift of her sister kind of a thing exactly oh my insane
00:58:44
sexual assaults incest just psychopaths who have no emotional fucking understanding of human emotions
00:58:52
and it's the thing of when when women do that that when they're mothers and they do it to their
00:58:58
own children it truly it's this taboo that is truly mind-blowing you know it's not a taboo to
00:59:04
them because they were raped by their fathers too that's exactly not fucking weird exactly right
00:59:08
that's that was childhood yeah for both of these people yeah um yeah oh my god no good so uh they
00:59:16
then begin selling anna marie to pedophiles no yeah how old is she uh at the time i think that
00:59:24
started when she was eight around the age of eight oh my god one will go one darker okay the
00:59:31
grandfather was a client also so fucking rosemary's gross rapist molesty dad yeah
00:59:39
Jesus Christ just the worst this is so again for all the people who inquired this is why I would I would get to about this part and just be like yeah this is the worst story ever told So eventually Rose gets pregnant and has eight different children Five of them are Fred West
00:59:58
Holy shit. Three of them are fathered by clients. They're not sure exactly who they are, but, but.
01:00:05
Are any of them her dad? Oh, they don't. Nothing I read said that, but it could definitely be.
01:00:11
There were rumors that some of them were local authority figures. Yes. So I think that's why this went like on.
01:00:21
It was rumored, but it was never reported for a long time that things went on in this household for way, way, way too long because this was basically the sex worker of town.
01:00:32
Yeah. And so nobody was like. But it's also like if this authority figure comes in to, you know, have sex for money with Rosemary, it's not like he knows the other shit's going on in the house.
01:00:43
So it's not like he would have looked into it. he didn't look into, you know, you know what I mean?
01:00:49
Right. It's not like they were getting reports and then they were ignoring them.
01:00:52
Right. But they also were in no way trying to look at anything that was happening in that house.
01:00:56
Sure. Because they knew at least they were guilty of something. Right. And also there is a lot of kind of intense S&M bondage.
01:01:04
What? Yeah. Violence, sex. It's yeah. at one point when they live on Cromwell Street
01:01:11
Rena Costello shows up to get her daughters back from Fred and Rena disappears the mom of the two girls
01:01:20
one of whom is Ixnay not around anymore that mom disappears yes oh my god so okay so in 1972
01:01:28
and this is when basically it goes from the ultimate depravity within the household
01:01:36
and within their own family in their own home. And then they begin to branch out.
01:01:40
In 1972, they pick up a 17-year-old hitchhiker named Carolyn Owens, and they ask if she'll be their nanny because they have all these kids
01:01:49
and they need extra help. She says yes. She finds them nice, charming, whatever.
01:01:55
And she moves into the house on Cromwell Street. And after two weeks, she tries to leave because, of course,
01:02:03
It's fucking a living hell and insanity. But Fred and Rose go out and they find her hitchhiking and they pick her back up.
01:02:11
They get her back into the car. Rose begins to sexually assault her. And then Fred, as she's trying to fight Rose off, Fred pulls over, punches her in the face and she goes unconscious.
01:02:22
When she wakes up, she's back at 25 Cromwell Street, gagged, hands bound. She's molested all night by Rose.
01:02:30
and in the morning she convinces them if they let her go she's not going to say anything to anybody
01:02:35
but it's fine no big deal so they fucking let her go she goes straight to the cops tells them what
01:02:41
happened the west are arrested they're charged with assault quote assault occasioning actual
01:02:46
bodily harm and with indecent assault but caroline's too scared to actually testify
01:02:53
against them in court she can't handle going to court and so on january 12th 1973
01:02:58
the West plead guilty but they're fined a hundred pounds and released. Are you fucking kidding me?
01:03:05
They never serve any time for that assault. And then soon after that young girls around
01:03:12
Gloucester begin disappearing. Most of them come from broken homes or they're single women traveling
01:03:19
by themselves. So no one really hears much about it. Not until 1992. What? So 72
01:03:27
when they first kidnapped the girls to fucking 92 which I was alive then and it wasn't that long ago
01:03:35
20 years these people are kind of just doing whatever are you fucking kidding me but here's
01:03:42
what's happened so there's lots of rumors around town people know is it a small town it kind of is right I don't know
01:03:47
anything about Gloucester I didn't look anything up but I it's not big yeah it's no London
01:03:53
is what they say in my mind that I'm making up right now Your husband is not who you think he is.
01:04:01
Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history.
01:04:06
I'm Dani Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring
01:04:11
on the 14th season of Family Secrets. And just then, we felt the plane turn in the air.
01:04:18
So much so that the bags that were under people's seats just kind of flew into the aisle.
01:04:23
Each week, we dive headfirst into the complex power of secrecy. how it shapes our identities and relationships,
01:04:31
and how it ultimately can reveal to us our truest selves. My daughter, she's pretending she doesn't know,
01:04:37
but is trying to cook and feed me and keep me alive because I wasn't eating anything,
01:04:41
and me pretending like everything was fine. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move,
01:04:46
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.
01:04:51
Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:04:59
I'm Bailey Taylor, and this is It Girl. This podcast is all about going deeper with the women shaping culture right now.
01:05:05
Yes, we will talk about the style and the success, but we are also talking about the pressure,
01:05:10
the expectations, and the real work behind it all. As a woman in the industry, you're always underestimated.
01:05:16
So you have to work extra hard in a way that doesn't compromise who you are and your integrity.
01:05:21
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.
01:05:31
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.
01:05:40
Late one night, Bobby Gumpright became the victim of a random crime. The perpetrator was sentenced to 99 years until a confession changed everything I was a monster Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app
01:05:58
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So, finally, someone goes to the police
01:06:06
and says, Fred West is raping his 13-year-old daughter and someone needs to do something about it.
01:06:11
So, social services starts investigating the West family and this is when it all kicks off. Okay. Um, so authorities enter the home at 25 Cromwell street and they find tons
01:06:24
of insane, obscene paraphernalia everywhere. So it's not just like they have, you know, they have
01:06:29
those rooms that are outfitted with the cameras that where Rosemary has her clients, but they have
01:06:34
shit everywhere. Are there photos? Um, Oh, I don't know. I'm not the photo person. I'm going to go
01:06:40
look, do it, go down. I mean, I've definitely, there's definitely a horrible wallpaper. I'll
01:06:44
tell you that there's some there's like each room has a different color and scheme and everything
01:06:51
where you're like the person that built this house is crazy is a monster is it doesn't care
01:06:56
about aesthetics at all so they basically pull the children out of the house and they are interviewed
01:07:01
by police and social workers and they start hearing these insane stories of sexual abuse
01:07:08
Poor babies. And emotional abuse. And just, you know, these parents are crazy. So Fred West is arrested for raping his 13-year-old daughter.
01:07:17
And Rose is arrested for child cruelty. But the 13-year-old daughter refuses to testify against her parents.
01:07:25
And so in June of 1993, the case falls apart. Shut up. Yeah, once again. But authorities know this really bad shit is taking place.
01:07:34
and when they're interviewing all the children, they're trying to find... The first daughter?
01:07:40
Yes, who they said had gone back to live with her mother. Oh, okay, right, right, right.
01:07:45
So police are trying now to track down Heather Russ. Fred and Rose say that she left home in 1987
01:07:51
following a family disagreement, but now she works at a holiday village in Devonshire
01:07:56
and that they get phone calls from her every once in a while and they'd actually taken a phone call from Heather
01:08:04
in front of the children one time so that the children also said, oh yes, Heather called home that one time.
01:08:09
Mom and dad both talked to her. We didn't. They didn't let us talk to her. So then they start talking to Heather's friends
01:08:17
and that's when they find out that 1987 was around the time Heather started telling her friends
01:08:22
about the insane abuse that was going on in their home. So authorities are putting together
01:08:29
that she disappeared right around the time she started confiding to other people
01:08:33
what was actually happening so then all the younger west children are put into basically
01:08:38
the british version of foster care and which is called foster care they they call it care care put into care you have to whisper it so uh when they when the kids start
01:08:52
talking to their um the foster carers they start telling the story about if you misbehaved at home
01:09:00
they um fred and rosemary would tell the kids um if you don't behave you're going to go under the
01:09:06
patio where heather is yeah and so everyone's like ding ding ding can you imagine if you're
01:09:12
foster parenting or foster care you're a foster carer yeah and your kid's like oh i don't want to
01:09:17
go under the house like the like my sister like my sister who disappeared chills i mean horrifying
01:09:23
so so it's almost like everyone's just going like oh what what sorry what like say that again
01:09:28
It's all like unfolding. Like, oh, these people who look like the most average people.
01:09:34
Boring, even. Super boring. And it's like, oh, there's this insane seamy underside.
01:09:38
Yeah. So when they go, so they basically, they go in and they, they dig up the patio and they
01:09:48
find the bones of Heather West. And so, and this is where basically appropriate adult starts at Fred's arrest.
01:09:56
No way. where he had taken them to the house and he tells police, yeah, you can come
01:10:02
because she's buried in the backyard. Then he changes his story. Then he changes it again.
01:10:07
He's doing all this stuff and he's trying to manipulate Janet Leach, the appropriate adult.
01:10:11
So he's looking at her going, you should maybe check over there while he's denying that anyone's buried anywhere
01:10:17
to the police. It's almost like he's two different people. Yeah, or nine different people.
01:10:21
Like it's truly, truly either, it's super psychopathic manipulation like he's masterminding it
01:10:29
or he's really stupid and just kind of playing it moment to moment. It's very hard to tell. Or that thing where it's like
01:10:35
well if I'm going to get fucked for this I want all the credit so like here's some other shit you should go
01:10:39
look into. Yeah like you it's interesting it's like that thing where does he like the attention? Does he like this
01:10:45
weird relationship he's trying to build? He's clearly getting her interest because she's just supposed to be there
01:10:50
standing there like witnessing things and making sure the police don't abuse a person who would be right you know in custody that sure everybody
01:10:58
would want to punch in the face several times absolutely it might help his fucking stupid
01:11:02
looking face to knock some teeth back into place so basically because of his hints and these things
01:11:12
where he goes he ain't like maybe we should go down and look in the cellar and then when they
01:11:15
get down the cellar he's like no the spirits are telling me we we shouldn't be down here so then
01:11:20
And the investigators like dig up this entire cellar. And that's when they find six bodies of women buried in a circle chronologically from when they disappeared.
01:11:32
So Linda Goff is found in the cellar and she went missing on April 19th, 1973. Holy shit.
01:11:40
She was 19 years old and she was a seamstress. She, you know, her, she was close to their family.
01:11:47
her, she, when she disappears without a word, her mother starts out. asking around and the information she gets leads to the West's house on Cromwell Street.
01:11:58
And when she knocks on the door, Rosemary is like, oh, you know, we haven't seen her.
01:12:03
And then as Mrs. Goff is talking to her, she realizes that Rosemary is wearing Linda's
01:12:08
slippers and cardigan. And then she looks and sees that Linda's clothes are hanging on the clothesline.
01:12:16
So, yeah. Yeah. So she's like, what the fuck? Explain my face right now. just I guess horror horror horror horror horror um then there's carolyn cooper who was 15 years old
01:12:30
she disappeared in november of 1973 um on her way to visit her grandmother in worcester if it's
01:12:39
if it's the boston pronounced i bet you it's fucking not yeah i bet it's worse worse sauce
01:12:45
Nancy Parkington is 21 she was a student at Exeter in December of 1973 she went home for Christmas
01:12:53
and then she went out to visit her school friend at 1015 on the 27th of December
01:12:59
she was going to catch the last bus home never seen again do we think that this is all hitchhiking related
01:13:05
you know I'm not sure because it's some of these are these people who are traveling
01:13:12
so then you know I'm not victim blaming, but I think hitchhiking was a really normal thing.
01:13:17
And to get into a car of a couple, if you fucking watch Hounds of Love, that Australian murder I did that one time.
01:13:25
Or any of these stories. Yeah. It's like hitchhiking was very normal. Yeah. They probably had a baby in the car with them, one of their babies.
01:13:33
That's right. You know the story of the girl who was kept in a box under the bed?
01:13:38
The girl in the box. That's how they got hurt, too. Yeah. They also found the body of 21-year-old Swiss student Therese Seigenthaler.
01:13:48
She'd been studying sociology in London, and she had decided to hitchhike across England.
01:13:55
And somewhere, she disappeared somewhere on that trip. And also a 15-year-old named Shirley Hubbard, who was last seen in November of 1974.
01:14:06
She was from a broken home. There was a couple girls who were found in that basement who were, had been in either foster care or their parents were divorced and they had started going to the West's house or hanging out there and, and then disappeared.
01:14:20
One of those was 18 year old Juanita Mott, who that, that was exactly her story.
01:14:26
So that was, those were the bodies in the cellar. And then they had also dug up the garden, which is where near the patio where Heather was buried.
01:14:35
And they found Shirley Ann Robinson, an 18 year old who had moved into the West's house.
01:14:41
She started having an affair with Fred and gotten pregnant by him in May of 1978.
01:14:47
And that's when she disappeared. So she her body was in the garden. So basically the police thinking that they just looking for the missing daughter discovered that basically these two people had been like these monstrous serial killers and sex abusers Most of the bodies had been decapitated and dismembered
01:15:08
Thank you. Dismembered. Holy shit. Yeah. And just clearly they, there was evidence of torture.
01:15:16
This wasn't just like a simple, you know, it was the, they were the worst of the worst.
01:15:21
they and the problem is that they have no evidence that rosemary's tied to any of these murders
01:15:28
until they dig up the kitchen floor in the west's old house on midland avenue can you imagine if
01:15:36
you're there you're living there and you gotta knock at the door and they're like hey hi hi
01:15:40
real quick sorry we're the police yeah and you know you gotta deal on this house there's some
01:15:44
there's a reason that you'd feel cold spots alone and bad vibes always oh no um because Fred's daughter Charmaine's body was buried so remember when Charmaine disappeared
01:15:56
because Fred was in jail yeah well Rosemary killed her and then when Fred got out of jail
01:16:02
Rosemary was she had hidden the body Fred's the one that put the body under the kitchen floor
01:16:07
oh my god yeah so he they were in on it together from the beginning yeah and they actually had a
01:16:13
for there's there's a documentary about this there's a there's lots of documentaries you can
01:16:17
watch on the West, the West. There's two on YouTube and one of them is about the forensic
01:16:24
dentistry and how much it took, played into this case. Yeah, yeah. Because that's how they
01:16:29
pinpointed the time of Charmaine's death and that's how they got it to say Rosemary is the one who was
01:16:35
responsible, not Fred because he was in jail. Oh, that's good. Otherwise they probably
01:16:39
wouldn't have, they would have given her a plea to like testify against her or some shit.
01:16:44
Like she wasn't necessarily involved or whatever and this was like, no, no, no, she was
01:16:47
she had a hand in the killing and she had a hand in this torture and all you know all of that
01:16:52
so eventually um rose is charged with 10 counts of murder and fred is charged with 12 counts of
01:17:00
murder when they go to trial so they separate the two of them when they go to trial rose will not
01:17:06
look at or interact with fred in any way and it basically makes him go crazy and he freaks out uh
01:17:15
and hangs himself in his cell what he basically doesn't he never gets charged with anything
01:17:21
because i have never studied this murder clearly so are these people you know they're so fucking
01:17:27
crazy and the whole thing and his what a dick he fucking hanged himself yeah but if you watch like
01:17:33
especially an appropriate adult his weird connection with her and his weird like he
01:17:37
defends her in the beginning he says she has nothing to do with it in the beginning and then
01:17:41
it's just it's a classic case of that like he's the her abuser but then i think over the years
01:17:48
she became his yeah before a suicide there's an interview with the police where he's quoted as
01:17:53
saying you've the murders wrong nobody went through hell it was sexual encounters gone wrong
01:17:58
so he tried to intimate that it was some kind of like sex play where people were it was voluntary
01:18:05
up until the last minute you know that thing where people are getting into getting decapitated during sex right and also that that accident doesn happen 12 times you fucking asshole no here
01:18:15
the cool part carolyn roberts who is the hitchhiker who was afraid to testify for her own trial the
01:18:21
nanny came back and testified in this murder trial and she's the reason that rosemary west
01:18:27
got convicted and is still in jail to this day she's still alive she's still in jail in last july
01:18:34
she was diagnosed with glaucoma and she's going blind and she said in a quote to the newspaper
01:18:41
if i go blind i'm going to commit suicide and everyone's like okay yeah everyone's like that's
01:18:48
fine um oh my god the really weird thing is in 1996 they went to demolish 25 cromwell street
01:18:54
it took when the the old house the new house the new house that's where all the horrible things
01:18:59
happened it took them five days to knock the house down i don't i i'm not sure i mean it was made of
01:19:06
cement if he did so much building and burying and cementing and doing things inside the house i mean
01:19:13
the whole thing was um you know it was like this bizarre fortress that they had built and that the
01:19:22
these horrible things were happening and of course they the police were immediately like get rid of
01:19:26
that as it as an entity yeah it just but then it just took them forever so like they couldn't
01:19:32
knock it down yeah so that's the quickest most lightest like dipping into talking about the
01:19:39
important things but not living in the horror show but you definitely can i mean you know i'm gonna
01:19:45
yeah there's but there's really good i mean appropriate adult is such an incredible um
01:19:52
It's such an incredible way to present the story because Janet Leach is as this person who is like the, you know, mandated witness is sitting there and, you know, also it was her first case as an appropriate adult.
01:20:06
I feel like never have a first case anywhere because it's always anything. I know.
01:20:10
But for something like this, you'd think it would be like, you know, yeah, just standard, standard physical child abuse where she gets used to it.
01:20:19
cuts her teeth and there's just this amazing scene where when he starts confessing he's saying it
01:20:24
like he goes well yeah i did bury heather's body under the patio like he just starts talking about
01:20:30
it like they're talking about the news and in the background emily watson playing janet leach is
01:20:35
just sitting there with her face and it looks like her face is slowly dropping off of her skull because
01:20:40
she's just like what the fuck and she's there as his guy yeah you know she's supposed to be his
01:20:44
right-hand man of like you're you're there if the police try to abuse me you're there if the
01:20:49
And suddenly this is the monster that she has to work with. Wow. And then it basically,
01:20:53
the story comes out through their relationship where he keeps turning to her and going,
01:20:57
you're the only one that, you know, you're the only friend I have in the world. She's like,
01:21:01
I'm not your friend. Yeah. It's incredible. And she has her own whole life. She has kids that like,
01:21:07
she's not getting home till late because she has to work on this case that every word she hears is like,
01:21:12
she can't unhear it. And then she goes home and looks at her beautiful children They all sitting around the dinner table It amazing I think that is like the best way to tell the story is through a person whose life is so horribly impacted Then it goes into whole things of testifying and her selling her
01:21:30
story because she didn't have a ton of money and all the judgments and it's not the therapy she's
01:21:35
going to need afterwards. Insanity. So crazy. Yeah. So watch Appropriate Adult parts one and two.
01:21:41
I'm gonna. Yeah. That was amazing. So now we got that done. We never have to talk about that fucking those monsters again. Karen, great job. Thank you. Thank you. That was very. It has bothered me that I haven't done it just because it is one of the worst of the worst. Yeah. And we talk about terrible stuff all the time. But for some reason, it's just weird that we never did that. It's just so much. It's just so specifically awful. Yeah. Really bad.
01:22:07
I know this is a horrible story, but it brings up to me some really important themes like domestic violence.
01:22:14
So I'm so glad that Karen and Georgia covered it. Thanks for listening. Again, I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, host of Tenfold More Wicked.
01:22:22
And Tenfold More Wicked presents Wicked Words, where new episodes drop every Monday here on the Exactly Right Network.
01:22:28
And if you like true crime, check out my book, American Sherlock, Murder, Forensics and the Birth of American CSI.
01:22:36
And an important reminder, don't forget to stay sexy and don't get murdered. Elvis, do you want a cookie?
01:22:43
I'm Bailey Taylor, and this is It Girl. This podcast is all about going deeper with the women shaping culture right now.
01:22:50
Yes, we will talk about the style and the success, but we are also talking about the pressure, the expectations, and the real work behind it all.
01:22:57
As a woman in the industry, you're always underestimated. So you have to work extra hard in a way that doesn't compromise who you are and your integrity.
01:23:06
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.
01:23:15
Will Ferrell's Big Money Players and iHeart Podcast presents Soccer Moms. So I'm Leanne.
01:23:21
Yeah. This is my best friend, Janet. Hey. And we have been joined at the hip since high school.
01:23:25
Absolutely. A redacted amount of years later, we're still joined at the hip. Just a little bit bigger hips.
01:23:30
This is a podcast. We're recording it as we tailgate our youth soccer games in the back of my Honda Odyssey.
01:23:35
With all the snacks and drinks. Why did you get hard seltzer instead of beer? Oh, they had a BOGO.
01:23:41
Well, then you got it. Listen to Soccer Moms on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:23:48
I'm Anna Navarro, and on my new podcast, Bleep with Anna Navarro, I'm talking to the people closest to the biggest issues happening in your community and around the world.
01:23:57
Because I know deep down inside right now, we are all cursing and asking what the bleep is going on.
01:24:05
Every week, I'm breaking down the biggest issues happening in our communities and around the world.
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I'm talking to people like Julie K. Brown, who broke the explosive story on Jeffrey Epstein in 2018.
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The Justice Department, through we counted four presidential administrations, failed these victims.
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Listen to Bleep with Ana Navarro on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.