00:00:00
This is exactly right. pounds. It's time to get Brex AF. Learn more at brex.com slash AF.
00:00:36
You're locked into a lot of things you can't change. Weather, traffic. Hey, stay in your lane.
00:00:41
Your wireless carrier's latest price hike, but you can unlock a better way. Unlock the savings
00:00:46
at Boost Mobile and save up to $600 a year. Switch to the $25 a month unlimited wireless plan.
00:00:51
No contracts, no price hikes, and you keep your phone. Stop being locked into their games.
00:00:56
Unlock the savings at BoostMobile.com slash unlock. Based on average annual single line of payment of AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile customers,
00:01:02
compared to 12 months on the Boost Mobile Unlimited Wireless plan as of January 2026.
00:01:05
For full offer details, visit BoostMobile.com. Hello, beautiful. I'm Amy Eric, founder of Madison Reed, a hair color company I named after my daughter.
00:01:13
Forget everything you know about hair color. The mess, the smell, the hassle, the damage.
00:01:19
We're female-founded and female-led. we've transformed the hair color experience
00:01:23
with ingredients that care for your hair and award-winning color on your terms at home or at our hair color bars.
00:01:31
The future of hair color is here at Madison Reed. Thank you. What's up, girls? Wow.
00:02:33
Shit, I almost choked on my mint. Karen has this habit of putting a mint in as she walks out the green room,
00:02:41
and I was like, I'll do it too. No, it's a huge mistake because it's still in my mouth.
00:02:45
I forgot to tell you. I call it the mint challenge. The mint challenge? The mint challenge.
00:02:50
You have to finish your mint before you start talking. It's really hard because a lot of mints are very solid and they're very spicy.
00:02:58
It's kind of like life, you know? It's a metaphor. You know what's crazy? You guys.
00:03:05
Hi. Listen, when they said, where do you guys want to kick off your fall 2018 tour?
00:03:14
we said, we said, is there a place that's like hip and cool, but also has a lot of natural disasters?
00:03:25
That's right. We want a little over the radar, a little under the radar. We want there to be radars.
00:03:34
Yes. Surrounding. I actually, I can't ever bring myself to leave my hotel room when we're on tour.
00:03:41
but if I did, what I really wanted to do was go out and buy huge galoshes and wear them on stage.
00:03:48
Too soon? No way. Just right. Not for this podcast. Perhaps three minutes late. People are like, it didn't really affect us here.
00:03:58
This comedy doesn't matter to us at all. Don't group us in. It affected her. Yeah.
00:04:07
Scream if you barely made it here tonight. But not just because you were tired and didn't want to get out.
00:04:16
There we go. We should have both started screaming. Me too. Different reasons. Vince and I went for a walk and we got into town yesterday.
00:04:28
And I have never met so many murderinos in a three block radius. Yeah, represent.
00:04:36
Oh, lovely. That's cool. One gal was like, come to my restaurant tonight. and I was like, that's how you talk to me.
00:04:46
That's what I'm looking for. That's all I want in life is to be invited to restaurants.
00:04:51
That's funny. You know what I did is I saw the stores, the really cool stores that we passed as we drove into town,
00:04:57
and then I shopped at them online. Are you serious? Yes. There was one store, Georgia, like, we have to go there.
00:05:05
And then I was like, I'm not fucking going there. And I looked up, oh my god, what wonderful pieces they had.
00:05:11
Everything cost $500 fucking dollars. Is this a Richie Rich Town and we just don't realize it?
00:05:17
No. Okay, then how does Vert and Vertical stay in business? Because everything there was $500 to $700.
00:05:25
And I was going to buy it, too. I won't go into a store that has on the mannequins linen.
00:05:32
It's like linen-y and it looks not super form-fitted, which in my mind is like, well, not a lot of work went into this then.
00:05:39
Then it's like, no, this is the most expensive hand-dyed linen. It's like, we imported it from the other side of Durham.
00:05:47
And so there's a $400 linen tax on it. And you were going to get something new because you we thought it would be cold here Yes And we didn know See laugh at us On the news where I from on the news where Georgia and I live on the news
00:06:08
it seems to be very cold and wintry and stormy here. So I was like, see, we know earthquakes.
00:06:16
I know an earthquake. You know what I mean? But we don't know hurricanes. It's not, that's not our speciality.
00:06:23
No. So I was like, well. We see rain and we're like, that's cold. Fucking no, not kidding.
00:06:30
Not on the new earth. Earth version two point. It's fucking hot hurricane time, everybody.
00:06:38
Donate to Greenpeace. We're fucked. It's for real. That's no joke. No, it's not a joke, but it's so funny.
00:06:53
Anyway. Speaking of, this is my favorite murder of the podcast. Oh, yes. Hello. Thank you.
00:07:03
That's Karen Kilgara. This is Georgia Hartstark. Your hands are sticky. Your hands are a little clammy, I would say.
00:07:13
You know what I did? Along with the mint challenge, I like to do the throw on some nail polish two minutes before you walk challenge.
00:07:21
Right? and then you're like, then immediately I'm like, oh, I need something at the bottom of my purse.
00:07:27
You know what I did? I painted my nails a little sooner. I was like, I got this. I'm not going to
00:07:32
freak out. And then I put my hands through my hair. So now I have nail polish here. There's
00:07:38
nail polish on my story. That's not blood. And there's probably nail polish in my hair.
00:07:44
A little bit. You have a light ombre. It's cool. We're going to bring it back. That's right. Oh, my baby cousin is here. Oh, yeah. You're not her. Don't raise your hand.
00:07:57
Maybe she knows her. She's not a baby, though. Don't worry. She's 19. But what does she have on
00:08:01
the like baby headphones still? And her friend lifted her over his head. She's here. She's right
00:08:08
here. She loves your work. I love it when my my like my cousins will come out because like it's
00:08:16
in college here and everything. And so then she goes back and tells my family, like, Georgia's not
00:08:23
a loser. And she came back and she's like, people have your face on their shirts.
00:08:28
That's right. I don't think she's ever listened to the podcast. You're like, could you call my mom
00:08:33
and tell her, please? And I'm a success. Oh. Don't include the crying in the call.
00:08:41
Can I tell you, speaking of my parents, do you want to know what my dad did? and why he's just lost his house watching privileges.
00:08:50
Uh-oh. That was fast. We've been gone for a day. Yeah. Every time my dad, sometimes my dad will watch the house,
00:08:57
sometimes Stephen will. Stephen's actually taking over tomorrow. Thank fucking God.
00:09:00
Not because I'm kicking my dad out. Stephen! He's not here. He's not here. So he always like,
00:09:10
my dad will like break something always whenever he stays. Like that's the price you pay,
00:09:14
which is you don't pay a price because you don't pay him. You put all your good stuff way up high on the high shelves
00:09:19
so Marty can't get to it. Yeah, and he'll leave it out with a note that's like, sorry, I broke this.
00:09:26
I don't know how to use mugs, Marty. Put your fingers through that handle part and, well, forget it.
00:09:33
Just break it. Don't try to explain. Just break it. So Elvis gets these pill pockets with his heart meds in them
00:09:41
and they are like cute little pill pockets. But what's a pill pocket for all the people who don't know cat shit?
00:09:47
It's a cat treat with a hole in it that you pay a shit ton of money for just a fucking cat treat with a hole in it.
00:09:52
And then you put the pill because cat's like, Jesus, have you ever tried to pill a cat?
00:09:56
It's... Nothing has ever stressed you out more in your life than fucking opening the jaws of cats and dramming a pill in there.
00:10:06
Have you ever opened his jaw too wide? Like a boa constrictor just detaches and comes apart?
00:10:12
you're never watching the cat that's right so we make all his pills for the weekend and we're like okay give him one a day
00:10:24
dad like we put him in a drawer because Elvis I guess my dad doesn't know this is fucking insane
00:10:30
and he's knocked a sandwich out of someone's hand before to get to it no fucking joke
00:10:35
I love that guy he's out of his mind so you have to like hide the pill pockets or he'll eat them
00:10:40
He'll open the bag with his teeth and eat all the pill pockets. Guess what? Uh-oh.
00:10:46
My dad left the pill pockets on the counter. He ate them all. He's fine. Everything's fine.
00:10:50
How many days were them? Three. Oh, shit. He's fine. I've talked to the vet. I've yelled at my dad.
00:10:58
Everything's fine. It's all been settled. This might make you feel a little bit better.
00:11:02
When I was four years old. Uh-oh. Oh, shit. Yeah. It's the same exact story. But there were no.
00:11:10
It wasn't like there was a treat around my dad's heart medication. No. I just ate them because they were pink.
00:11:19
I can't blame you. And because no one watched me ever any time of the day, day or night.
00:11:26
Everyone had their own shit going on. I was like, fine, I'll go into the bathroom and eat some bathroom candy.
00:11:32
So many. Well, my mom wasn't sure because she came in and I was sitting on the counter with like one hanging out of my mouth.
00:11:39
And she immediately screamed and took me to the emergency room. And she was like, I was positive you were going to die.
00:11:45
It's fucking adult heart medication. Dude, 100%. But, uh-uh. That's right. Just fucking, I'm telling you.
00:11:54
And she has the strongest heart to this day of anyone My heart is that of a lion I actually do think though that is the thing about kids these days being like helicopter parented
00:12:08
is I think we're making them very weak internally. Oh, by not poisoning them on the regular?
00:12:14
You got to get a little poison in the kids, you know. Leave out a sip of detergent.
00:12:19
Yeah. No. Just a half a Tide Pod. What? Send your emails to myfavoritemargaragemail.com.
00:12:28
Complaints and concerns, too. Child welfare. Don't worry. We don't have children.
00:12:33
Ever. Ever. That's our guarantee to you. For you are our children. Don't worry. I actually ate.
00:12:44
Each one of you has to take care of us when we get old. When we are poor and confused later, it'll be for me.
00:12:52
Tonight. It'll be like 10 years. That's why I just eat all my birth control pills in one day.
00:12:58
Yep, you just power 30 down. That's right, like Elvis. Yeah. I mean, I'm kind of proud of him, but my dad, not my dad, my cat.
00:13:08
My dad is in big fucking trouble. Here's the thing. I'm going to devil's advocate for Elvis right now and be like, hey, guess what?
00:13:17
For the past three years, you've been tempting me with a cookie every fucking Thursday and Sunday.
00:13:22
and you set me up to love this shit. Oh, it's totally my fault. I was going to take part of that blame with you.
00:13:29
Oh, you can have it. Yeah, thank you. But in doing so, I was going to attack you verbally as a cat.
00:13:35
I'm sorry, it got confused by me. I don't know the difference. With my silver nails.
00:13:42
That's it. Oh, goodbye. Tell us about your dress. Guys, listen. I forgot to lose some weight.
00:13:55
I do it every time. I've done it several tours in a row now. It's hard to remember you've got a couple of months.
00:14:02
I lay around, and then I stand up, and I go to try and undress. I'm like, what's happening?
00:14:08
But here's the thing. I don't care anymore. I just, right? And I don't mean that insincerely.
00:14:19
I mean it like, it's time to have a good time. Yeah. It's really, this couldn't be a more ideal situation in every way.
00:14:28
And as I was pulling this fucking, essentially black tube sock of a dress on tonight,
00:14:33
because I didn't go shopping before I left, I was like, I'll just bring that black one.
00:14:38
And so I tried it out of my hotel room. And now I do, here's the thing about me, like the owners of Vert and Vertical,
00:14:47
I love a large shift. I love something that looks almost like a hospital gown. And so.
00:14:54
A muumuu of sorts. A muumuu with no pattern. Right. Yeah. Monochromatic muumas are my jam.
00:15:02
So when I pulled this on, I was like, this is rough stuff for me. That is the furthest from a muumuu I have ever seen.
00:15:09
It's pretty tight. But what I did was I took the dress and then I just stretched it over the back of a large chair in my hotel room.
00:15:16
You mean you like put it over the chair? I pulled it. Holy shit. This part was like all the way out like this.
00:15:26
Thank you. Thank you so much. And this is why you shouldn't spend $500 on a dress yet in your life.
00:15:33
I should only shop at Target for dresses. Yes. Right? Yeah, why wouldn't one? Essentially, they should be disposable.
00:15:42
But anyway, I'm feeling pretty good about it. Even though there's no pockets, I like it.
00:15:45
Take a walk. Thank you. Thank you. I'm here representing girls with huge tits and big butts.
00:15:53
Look, we're everywhere. We're everywhere. We're all around you. I don't know why I'm yelling at them about it.
00:16:03
Let them know. Make it known. Have it known. I got really threatening. Now let's take a look at your dress.
00:16:07
Okay. This is a cute... I love that someone sent me this. You guys, sometimes you get shit for free when you're a podcaster.
00:16:14
Oh, shit, y'all. That's Beyonce stuff. Are labels asking Georgia to wear their clothes?
00:16:21
Yes. Fancy break. Yes. Oh, my back. Joanie Clothing. Joanie Clothing gave me this dress.
00:16:33
So cute. I am so cheap. This thing probably costs 50 bucks, and I'm like, I'll be your spokesperson forever.
00:16:38
But I don't care. I really love it. It's great. I also, for the first time in like two tours, put on my Spanx for the first time.
00:16:47
How do I feel? I feel good about it. I feel fine about it. You said I feel good about it, but you couldn't get the air out of your life. I feel pretty good. I like it. I like my girdle. This is how long it's been. It feels good to constrict my entire midsection. I'm lightheaded, yet skinny.
00:17:05
and that's all that matters. Remember that noise that you heard when I was in the bathroom
00:17:10
and you were putting on makeup? Yeah, it was this. It was Karen's getting ready and then it was a...
00:17:15
Yeah, and what that was was my knee hitting the wall as I was pulling on this weird bathing suit I have underneath this
00:17:24
to smooth out my shape and really make me look like a harbor seal. I was just like...
00:17:30
Did you hear in the bathroom? I went to the other bathroom to get ready, which shared a wall.
00:17:35
did you hear me scream? No. I wasn't sure if you did because when I was pulling mine on and doing an
00:17:41
elbow up thing, while I had wet nails by the way, I triggered the sensor for the paper towel dispenser
00:17:49
and it went at me and I went, ah! It just scared the ever loving shit out of me Guys we so excited to be on tour again I can tell you There all kinds of movements about it we feeling good gonna get so flexible
00:18:09
We're gonna get by the end of this tour. We're gonna be flexible and I feel like at the end of this tour
00:18:15
I haven't eaten any barbecue yet, but I really want to oh yeah, we got to do that
00:18:18
we've only gotten 15,000 recommendations where it's like listen I know other people have told you where to eat barbecue
00:18:25
eat barbecue where I say eat barbecue and you're right and we will I do love that I've looked at like three menus so far
00:18:33
different places and every single one of them has fried green tomatoes on them and pimento cheese
00:18:39
I didn't know both great movies from the 90s I mean Pimento cheese was a heart-breaking.
00:18:50
It's a series of movies where they just make a BLT. Yep. A really good BLT. A really good one.
00:18:59
Yeah. Delicious. Hear us out. Look. I'm trying to really quickly name. It got quiet for a second, so everyone's like, I'll yell now.
00:19:09
I was trying to really quickly name the third movie, which would have something to do with center-cut bacon.
00:19:14
Oh, yeah. But then my brain got tired. Let's do maple bacon. Maple bacon? Okay. All right.
00:19:19
See? Shouldn't have done it. Baby gem lettuce. Forgot it. The third movie, Baby Gem Lettuses.
00:19:28
Hold on, hold on. The third movie, Garlic Aoli. Oh. It's not a funny joke to begin with, so why would the third version of it be good at all?
00:19:37
And they just named salad. Sandwich toppings. I don't know where I am. Good. Great.
00:19:43
Oh, they shipped out our very special oriental rug. That's good. We have that. Yeah, we got it cleaned for the evening.
00:19:52
We demand a rug from Cost Plus at every show we go to. That's right. That's right.
00:19:57
Otherwise, Steven gets fired and has to sleep on it. I wonder... This is your new apartment, Steven.
00:20:03
I wonder if for this tour, we should get a different floor covering. A more irritating, bigger pain-in-the-ass floor covering.
00:20:12
It's a little, like a geometric shape. Let's give someone a seizure from just the shapes happening in the pattern.
00:20:19
Like a puzzle rug? Like a little kid's puzzle rug? This is the personal side where we are just essentially talking to each other.
00:20:28
We're working out the plans of this tour right now. Our tour manager's on speakerphone listening.
00:20:35
Hello? Any notes? Should we sit down? Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you. We love sitting down.
00:20:46
It's our favorite thing. Thank God it's a low high chair. We have our sweat towels.
00:20:51
Sometimes the high chairs are fucking high. Oh, look. And unstable. Surprise mint.
00:20:56
What? No, I wouldn't do that. It's for later. Oh, that's the mint you spit out earlier.
00:21:02
Yeah. I hope. I always bring my glasses in case something good happens out in the office.
00:21:09
I want to be able to see it. And our Evian, we won't drink anything else. Yeah, we have a deal with Evian.
00:21:16
Just kidding. We have a deal with the TV show that we just watched. What's it called?
00:21:21
Evian? Where she puts vodka in that Evian bottle. Dark, yes. Sharp objects. Thank you.
00:21:28
I got it. I got it. I didn't hear anybody say it. I got it by myself. You get no credit.
00:21:37
This is a true crime comedy podcast. Oh, that's right. That's right. We talk about horrible things.
00:21:46
Horrible. In all different ways. It's complex. It's all contextual. So sometimes we're laughing and sometimes we're very serious.
00:21:54
If you've never been here, if somebody has forced you to this show against your will, we apologize.
00:22:00
Like my cousin. Like Eliza. My cousin. Like Georgia's cousin. What if she walks out?
00:22:07
That'd be kind of amazing. I know. What if that was the goal of the 2018 fall tour is to infuriate family members?
00:22:15
I've got some people in Charlotte. She wore a white dress to my wedding, so she...
00:22:19
What? Oh, shit. It's okay. She's young. She'll know how horrible that was when she told her.
00:22:26
Generation Z don't give a fuck. They don't. They owe nothing to anyone. We've ruined the planet for them, and they're like, guess what?
00:22:35
I'm going to wear a white dress every day, motherfucker. Fuck you. You did this to me.
00:22:40
I can't get a job. There's no money left. Everyone's a douchebag. That's right. I'm going to wear a white dress.
00:22:46
Yeah. God, I didn't realize how much I love Generation Z. I'm going to marry into fucking Generation Z.
00:22:55
Do it. Get a nice fucking 24-year-old up in my house. Do it. That might be what I need.
00:23:04
Tell your friends. Spread the word. Next is our college tour, but it's just Karen's husband tour.
00:23:14
Karen's future husband tour. Then we go into high school tour. What? That's not allowed.
00:23:20
I want you to have a husband who's under 21, and he can't come into our shows that we do in clubs.
00:23:26
He has to wait outside. I make him wait in the hotel room every weekend. Mommy's going to go do a show.
00:23:35
Ew. I'm so weird. Okay, you're first. Okay. Oh, we were in the middle of apologizing
00:23:41
to people who've never heard this podcast, but I mean, at this point, at this point.
00:23:46
Pretty right on. Why not join us? Don't fight us. Oh, people were kind of talking about this.
00:23:52
There was a little excitement in there. I just want to disabuse anyone of the notion.
00:23:56
Do it. Phoebe Judge could not come tonight. We invited her. She was very excited, but she said in a message, not to me personally, but it was on social media,
00:24:08
she said, I have to fly out of town and interview a mobster. Interview a mobster.
00:24:16
That's the coolest excuse I've ever heard. I mean, it also could be so fake, but still, I love her so much.
00:24:22
Of course you do, Phoebe Judge. But because she's not here, I just want to say, I'm Phoebe Judge,
00:24:27
and that is criminal that she's not here to me. What the fuck? We came to your town.
00:24:33
Yeah. If your best finance people are doing expense reports, chasing receipts, or spending time on month-end clothes,
00:24:44
it's time to get Brex AF, a gentic finance that eliminates that work before it starts.
00:24:50
Learn more at brex.com slash AF. Hello, beautiful. I'm Amy Erick, founder of Madison Reed.
00:24:57
A hair color company I named after my daughter. Forget everything you know about hair color.
00:25:02
The mess, the smell, the hassle, the damage. We're female founded and female led.
00:25:08
We've transformed the hair color experience with ingredients that care for your hair and award winning color on your terms at home or at our hair color bars.
00:25:18
The future of hair color is here at Madison Reed. Nix, that's K-N-I-X, leak-proof underwear isn't just for one moment.
00:25:29
It's for all the everyday moments you didn't realize leak-proof underwear could make easier.
00:25:34
Maybe it's day one of your period. Maybe it's a long travel day. Maybe it's hot outside.
00:25:39
You're on the move and you just want to feel fresh. Their leak-proof underwear comes in a range of absorbencies, from light to ultra,
00:25:47
and helps protect against periods, light leaks, sweat, and everyday surprises. And because they look and feel like real underwear,
00:25:56
they're soft, invisible underclothes, and machine washable. No extra hassle. No complicated routine.
00:26:03
Just dependable protection you can wash and re-wear. See why millions have made the switch to leak-proof underwear.
00:26:11
Visit Nix.com. That's K-N-I-X.com and use code FLOW15 for 15% off. That's K-N-I-X.com.
00:26:20
Code FLOW15. The murder that I'm going to do tonight, I first heard on the podcast Criminal.
00:26:29
Which I know I've been doing a lot lately. I swear to God, Phoebe, I'm going to stop biting your style very soon.
00:26:35
but because we're here I'm doing the Lawson family murders now this is a North Carolina specialty
00:26:49
but it actually took place on the coast but I'm doing it here tonight because it's kind of one of your oldest
00:26:55
and most infamous murders I'm not doing that one no I don't know why it sounded familiar
00:27:03
and I was like I got this cold chill I asked Stephen if I could do this one, right?
00:27:08
No. Okay. No, Stephen's supposed to be in charge of that. Yeah. Making sure that we don't do the same ones at the same time.
00:27:14
He did. Although, at a certain point, it's just going to overlap, and who really gives a shit at
00:27:18
the end of the day? Generation Z! Okay. So, let's see. This starts out, Charles Lawson was born in 1886, so it's not the same, right?
00:27:30
No. Years, 1980s, right? Uh-huh. Okay. 1886 in Lawsonville, North Carolina. Now, this morning when I reread this document, I was like,
00:27:40
did I just write Lawsonville because his last name is Lawson? And there's no such place.
00:27:45
But I looked it up and Lawsonville does exist. It's north of here. So he was born in Lawsonville, North Carolina, into a family of 11 children.
00:27:53
Was the town named after him? Why am I even asking? I mean, I wish I knew that family history.
00:27:58
But it doesn't seem like he comes from the kind of family that they name a town after them.
00:28:03
And you'll see what I mean later. In 1911, at the age of 25, he marries a woman named Fanny Manning.
00:28:13
No. Right? Does he? He does. Yeah. Cool. Maybe all of this is fake. Maybe this is a dream.
00:28:22
They start a family. They eventually have eight children. This is what everybody did back then.
00:28:27
their kids were Arthur, Marie Carrie, Maybel, James, Raymond and Mary Lou was the baby
00:28:33
they had one son in 1914 he died shortly after birth which was not uncommon back then
00:28:40
because back then 67% of children died by age 5 holy shit so you don't want to know what all the haunted shit is about
00:28:50
it's probably numbers like that yeah where people are like If ghosts were real, why don't we have them all the time?
00:28:57
Because there used to be a 67% mortality rate. Jesus. Sorry to yell at you. In 1920, Charlie's brother Marion decides to move to Stokes County near Germantown.
00:29:12
Or Germantown. Germantown. Germantown, she said, the girl from the theater department.
00:29:20
The only one with the courage to correct us. Germantown. I can project two. So they move on down to Stokes County to work as tenant tobacco farmers.
00:29:39
So Charlie and Fannie, they decide that this is his brother, Marion. He does it first.
00:29:44
Charlie and Fannie are like, we want to go too. So in the next, they move down. And then in the next seven years, Charlie Lawson works hard.
00:29:52
by 1927 he saved enough money to buy his own tobacco farm out on Brook Cove Road and I think we have a picture of the house Oh we get to do it ourselves Yeah Love this Control
00:30:05
Now we got a lot. He's saying, look at that. That looks like it sucks to live in.
00:30:11
Look at this. Just. Chicken wire. Yeah. It looks, you know, someday fucking chicken wire is going to become like the hip, new,
00:30:19
cute trend. Yeah. And then I'm going to, then I'm done. And then they'll be like, I'm going to knock my house down and redo the Lawson family home.
00:30:28
In the style of, the shabby chic style of the Lawson family home. This was back before paint.
00:30:36
Artisanal chicken wire. It also looks like it was before windows, too. It was just like, we need a house, but let's not go crazy with the extras.
00:30:45
We'll take a chimney, and that's fucking all. Looks like it was before happiness.
00:30:49
the architect is like i was thinking of unhappiness when i built this it's pre-joy
00:30:57
it's a pre-joy civilization okay a pre-joy home yeah with a short porch um the mortgage payment on this home was 500 a month which seems a bit steep when you look at
00:31:12
the fact that it looks like there's huge spaces between every board rats going yeah did the house come with spiders or did you have to bring your own was it a byos
00:31:25
situation okay so five hundred dollars of course back then uh was a shit ton of money um the
00:31:35
equivalent i don't know seven thousand dollars probably a lot so he barely makes the mortgage
00:31:41
every month. He's a tobacco farmer. So they live a very simple, no frills life. No extra
00:31:49
money for anything. Not even birthday presents or Christmas presents. And in fact, one time
00:31:55
a neighbor offered to give Charlie Lawson money so he could buy his children Christmas
00:31:59
presents. And he replied, my children don't need Christmas presents. They have everything
00:32:05
they need. Well, clearly, Charlie, we see the extreme luxury your children live in. The word
00:32:14
need and Christmas presents, I mean. No, they've got that board that I nailed up on the porch that
00:32:20
they can lean against, and that's plenty for my children. They have all the slivers they could
00:32:25
want at our house. So, still, friends and family would sneak candies and fruits to Fanny so that
00:32:35
the children could have a little something on Christmas morning, but it was a tough life.
00:32:39
And also, Charlie was a very strict father, and he, of course, back then, whipping children
00:32:45
was a very common practice, and he apparently enjoyed it. He liked to beat, especially his
00:32:51
oldest son, Arthur, and he beat Arthur until Arthur was a teenager. And then in the classic
00:32:56
story that we've all heard, once Arthur was taller than him, then he came at him with
00:33:00
the whip, and Arthur took the whip and broke it over his knee and said, that's the last
00:33:04
time you're going to beat me, dad. Shit. Right? Charles is like, okay, that's fine.
00:33:11
I'll just go over to the girls and beat them. So, um, right, boo. So, you know, he's a strict, old-timey, farming, North Carolina dad.
00:33:23
So, sometime around late November, early December of 1929, Charlie Lawson tells the
00:33:30
family they're going into town for a surprise. and once they're there he buys them all brand new store-bought clothes which was like unbelievable
00:33:39
and he also buys the younger children toys which of course they've never had um and it's a huge deal
00:33:48
they're all kind of freaking out but that wasn't it then he walks them over across the street to
00:33:53
the portrait studio and he has a family picture taken and this was back then you know photography
00:34:00
was incredibly expensive. It was basically for the rich. So, you know, everyone's like, portrait studio?
00:34:06
What are you doing? And here is the family photo. Wait, that's on me. Here's the family photo
00:34:12
that the Lawsons took late November, early December of 1929. Okay. That's Arthur
00:34:20
on the far left. That's Arthur. You won't be whipping me anymore, Dad. That's Marie.
00:34:28
she's Arthur's kind of hot right? No he's hot. I didn't know if we were all going to say it or not
00:34:34
or if that's real. No he's legit hot. It's exciting when a guy wears a three piece suit.
00:34:40
It seems like something's going to happen. But if you look closely at this picture
00:34:45
like when you go home tonight the way this picture turned out his eyes are white
00:34:50
so he also looks like he has laser beams for eyes. Even hotter. Maybe he did. Maybe he did.
00:34:58
And that's why his father stopped whipping him. That's Marie. She's 16. She's, oh.
00:35:03
She is now, they talk a lot on that episode of Criminal about how, like, she looks so pretty and she's so basically hip and, you know, beautiful.
00:35:13
And happy. Yes. More than anything. Happy compared to everybody else. That joy somehow seeped in through those boards.
00:35:19
That's right. In that cabin. She stole it from her friend's house and brought it in herself.
00:35:23
Jesus. That's Charlie Lawson, the father. He's 43 in this picture. And that's Fanny Lawson.
00:35:30
She's 37. Oh, my God. I'm 38, everyone. I'm 50. Actually, I'm 48. I just like saying 50.
00:35:41
It's easier. But, yeah, when I saw that picture, I was like, why do I have low self-esteem?
00:35:47
Look at fucking Fanny Lawson. We shouldn't tear each other down to build ourselves up.
00:35:54
This is not a race or a competition It not a competition but if it happened a hundred years ago then you allowed to do it okay then on the bottom that carrie and um the little boy there that is raymond
00:36:08
he's two years old look at how cute and that's maybelle she's seven love her haircut and i'm not
00:36:13
being sarcastic no that's a really good yeah that is a legit bowl cut that's a mod a little mod
00:36:19
page boy thing doing it that's when children held still because they were so scared yeah
00:36:24
And then that's James. He's four. So that's the Lawson family. And so this was a very big deal that they got this picture taken.
00:36:34
Jesus. I'm going to leave that picture up. A couple weeks later, on Christmas morning, 1929,
00:36:42
Fanny got up early and she was making everybody breakfast. It's Christmas morning.
00:36:46
Obviously, it's a big deal. Charlie and Arthur were out doing chores so they can get everything done for the day.
00:36:51
and Marie is rolling her hair by the fire. She has a date later that day with a young man
00:36:59
who was taking her to the Christmas celebration at church. So she was all excited.
00:37:04
Fanny then made a layer cake, which was a very, very big deal to this family because it was Christmas.
00:37:10
And she iced it and she tops it. She sprinkled raisins on top of it and she put it on the table.
00:37:15
Raisins on a cake. I know, I know. But, like, in 1929, raisins were like raisin mats.
00:37:25
Maybe if it was a carrot cake, I'm on board. Still, if you were to see it, if someone was like, I made you a cake, like, what raisins on it would make you go, oh.
00:37:34
You'd be like, why'd you let a mouse shit on my cake? It's the first thing I would say to someone giving me a cake.
00:37:40
Right out of my mouth. Okay. Yeah. So after the chores are done, the little kids are down playing by the fire with their new toys.
00:37:49
The chores are done. Charlie and Arthur decide they want to go rabbit hunting because the forest is right behind their house.
00:37:55
But then Arthur notices he's low on ammo. And so he says, do you have any? He asks the dad if he has any ammo.
00:38:04
Dad says no. He goes, okay, well, I'm going to walk into town. And I think he did a little target practice first, then realized he was running out of bullets.
00:38:12
And he said, okay, I'm going to walk into town. and get some more. So he heads into town,
00:38:19
and Charlie walks into their barn, the tobacco barn. Charlie is the dad. Charlie is the dad.
00:38:25
Arthur is the son, even though he has a dad name, he's the son. Okay, got it, got it, got it.
00:38:29
And Charlie has a boy name, but he's the bad dad. Okay. So Charlie's up in the tobacco barn,
00:38:37
where he also, just by the way, by chance, I'll tell you this now, is where he keeps his shotguns,
00:38:43
And so he's up in there. Now, the two middle girls, Carrie and Mabel, they're going to go over to their aunt and uncle's house for the Christmas visit.
00:38:53
So they leave the house, and they go walking down the road to their aunt and uncle's house,
00:39:00
and this is where Christmas Day takes a horrifying turn for the Lawsons. What the girls don't know is that as they walk past the tobacco barn,
00:39:09
that their father is lying in wait for them with his two shotguns. He shoots both girls.
00:39:16
Then he walks over to their bodies, laying in the snow, and bludgeoned them both with the butt of his shotgun
00:39:21
to make sure that they're dead. Then he pulls their bodies into the tobacco barn,
00:39:28
and he crosses their arms over their chests, and he places flat stones under their heads like pillows.
00:39:35
and he takes his shotguns and then he walks over to the house now because there was so much gunfire
00:39:42
that day and it's a normal thing on a farm especially back then um it wasn't alarming to
00:39:48
hear gunshots um so when charlie so fanny was out on the porch getting wood and she sees charlie
00:39:57
walking toward the house with his two shotguns and it isn't until she sees he's close enough that
00:40:02
she sees this wild look in his eyes that she realizes something terrible is happening.
00:40:07
And she turns to run into the house and he shoots her in the back and she falls dead in the doorway
00:40:12
of the house. So just by looking at him, she was like, something's fucking off. Well, I mean,
00:40:16
that's what this story said, but that's a first person experience that I'm not sure how the author
00:40:22
of the story would know. That is a good point. And everyone involved in that moment of the story is
00:40:29
dead, so it could be conjecture, but it sure is a fun picture to paint. Oh, even. Because
00:40:37
yeah, you just don't want that guy with a wild look in his face. You don't want that
00:40:43
coming at you. Okay. So it's easy to imagine. Alright. So, um, again, he steps into the doorway, and
00:40:53
he does this with all the family members. It's awful and really horrifying, but he
00:40:57
bludgeoned, after he shoots them, he bludgeons them with his gun. So he is like, it's overkill, like crazy. He's making sure they're all dead.
00:41:05
So he does that to Fanny in the doorway. Well, Marie is inside the house and she sees all of
00:41:10
this. She starts screaming. And he shoots her as well, does the same thing, bludgeons her.
00:41:17
The four-year-old and the two-year-old run and hide. One hides under the crib and one hides under
00:41:22
the stove. He shoots them both and bludgeons them both. And he also kills the baby. It is
00:41:30
fucking horrifying mayhem. And it's the beginning of every horror movie you've ever seen.
00:41:37
So he again drags the bodies over to the fireplace and he crosses their arms over their
00:41:45
chests and puts stones under their heads. What the fuck? Yeah. And then he, but he actually, Raymond's body stayed
00:41:54
behind the stove So when Charlie Lawson was walking back up to the house to kill his family what he didn realize was there was a little neighbor boy who had been there playing with the kids and he had
00:42:05
just walked out of the house. So as he's like walking up the road, he sees Charlie shoot Fanny,
00:42:13
and then he hears the screaming and everything, and so he just fucking takes off running.
00:42:17
And he gets to his house, and he tells his parents, Charlie Lawson is killing his family.
00:42:22
So immediately, like the neighborhood posse, everyone grabs their shotguns and everyone gets together.
00:42:28
Yeah. Thank God. Thank God. Can you imagine your little kid running in and be like, what's up, mom, dad?
00:42:36
Yes. This dude's fucking killing his family. But it's Christmas morning, so his mom's like, honey, why won't you put your jacket on?
00:42:42
And she's like, no, no, no, no. I'm busy with raisins on cakes. the first thing he says is mom dad they put raisin on a cake no no also wait
00:42:55
but there's something else okay so then all of this happens so fast and of course you as fast as you would imagine when the
00:43:08
when the gossip is not someone fucked somebody else but in fact uh charlie lawson just killed
00:43:13
his whole family. Everybody hears about it immediately. So Arthur in town buying his
00:43:18
bullets overhears people saying, oh my God, Charlie Lawson just murdered his whole family.
00:43:24
And Arthur Lawson says, it can't be. I just saw all of them. And so someone takes him and
00:43:31
they rush back out to the house. So Charlie's brother, who had also been out hunting, also
00:43:38
was told of this. So he rushes over to the house and he jumps up on the porch and, uh,
00:43:44
seen the porch. You've seen the porch. Um, he gets up on the porch and he actually has to keep
00:43:49
all these people from entering the house because everybody wants to go inside. And he stands on
00:43:54
the porch with his shotgun and, uh, and keeps basically everybody at bay until the police
00:44:00
arrive. Now, another neighbor who actually entered from a different direction where he passed the
00:44:06
tobacco barn first is walking. Now remember it's Christmas Day so there's snow. He's walking and
00:44:11
he sees a huge pool of blood in the snow that has drag marks and tracks all the way to the tobacco
00:44:18
barn. So this neighbor, this poor person, goes in, opens the barn door, and finds Carrie and
00:44:25
Maybel lying inside, dead, also with their arms crossed over their chest and stones under their
00:44:30
head. And this is about the same time that the sheriff finally arrives. So the sheriff's
00:44:37
and the deputies, I don't know how it broke down back then, the sheriff and a couple of
00:44:43
his good, good friends that he trusted. They show up and they enter the Lawson house. And
00:44:52
of course it is like a scene out of everyone's worst nightmare and incredibly bloody. There
00:44:58
is apparently blood everywhere. So Arthur finally gets back from town and as he's approaching, he can see
00:45:06
his mother's feet through the doorway. And he starts freaking out. He tries to fight through the crowd to get into the house
00:45:12
and all of the neighbors keep him from going inside so he doesn't see what's in there.
00:45:17
And it's around this time that everyone realizes that no one knows where Charlie is. And so
00:45:22
they gather up all their what I would imagine to be 65 shotguns and they start searching for Charlie Lawson.
00:45:31
So Charlie Lawson, once he finished laying out his family, went out the back door and walked into the woods
00:45:39
with his dogs. And he took his, one of his guns, he had beaten his family so terribly
00:45:47
with one of his shotguns that the barrel was bent. So he left that on the floor and he took the second good shotgun out into the
00:45:55
woods with him and wandered around for a while. And apparently he ended up landing at this tree
00:46:01
and he ended up walking in circles around the tree over and over. It said talking to himself,
00:46:07
but again, I believe that might be a bit of illustration, but it would make sense. You'd
00:46:13
just be like, holy fuck. I'm insane. His dogs, they could tell afterwards from when they found
00:46:22
the area that his dogs just laid in the snow watching him as he did that. And he actually
00:46:28
at one point tried to set up a contraption in the tree so that he could shoot himself
00:46:34
in the heart, but he ended up not using it. Then he tried to write two suicide notes on
00:46:39
the backs of receipts that he had in his pockets. And they were both just half written. One
00:46:46
had the phrase, troubles can cause on it. And the other had the phrase, no one to blame.
00:46:52
What? Those are so much more creepy than an actual sentence would be somehow. Well, and also, on that second one, Charlie, sorry, quick reminder, you're to blame.
00:47:05
This is all on you, 100%. So, he finally pulls the trigger and kills himself. and when the search party
00:47:17
the way the search party ends up finding him is they see these dogs coming running out of the forest
00:47:23
so they just track the dog's path back to the body of Charlie Lawson at the base of the tree. So at the
00:47:31
funeral the Lawson family is dressed in their brand new clothes that they had worn
00:47:35
in their family portrait. Is that why he bought them? What? Do you think that's why he bought them?
00:47:42
I mean I don't know. There's a lot of theories because they talk about that everyone
00:47:49
looks so unhappy and so uncomfortable in this picture. So you don't know if that's because it's lately
00:47:56
and we'll get into the theories of why it happened but One of the theories is Charlie Lawson, when he was working on a tobacco farm, fucking hit himself in the back of the head with a pickaxe and gave himself.
00:48:09
This was like a couple months before the murders and gave himself a head injury.
00:48:13
And of course, as we've heard 1000 times after that, his personality changed and he became really volatile and really violent.
00:48:22
And so that there's a possibility that like that from that moment, something, you know, it could have been that.
00:48:30
but there's just no way to know. Or if he spent the morning with his son doing target practice,
00:48:39
so that would really be such a split if he was able to just kind of hang for a little while
00:48:44
and then who knows. That's the mystery. They were laid out in a family plot that was 9 feet by 21 feet,
00:48:53
so it could hold everybody, in the Browder Cemetery. and Fanny was buried holding baby Mary Lou in her arms.
00:49:02
And they also exhumed the body of the son that had died in 1914 and they buried him with the family as well.
00:49:09
It's said that 5,000 people attended the Lawson family funeral. So, of course, it's somebody killing their whole family.
00:49:18
It was the most infamous thing that had happened in the area in a long time. and of course because of that people start showing up at the lawson family home
00:49:27
because murderinos have been around forever it's we didn't start this guys it's been uh it's a
00:49:36
long-held tradition of looky-loos and what the fuck i need to see that shit for myself and this
00:49:42
is kind of inappropriate but like don't tell me what you know is interesting right exactly
00:49:47
me. I'll go find out for myself. Don't feel weird. At first, Charlie's brothers stood on the old porch
00:49:55
and again guarded the house because people, of course, were trying to go in and take
00:50:00
memorabilia from the house. Chicken wire? Yeah. I want a sad board from this horrible house.
00:50:08
You know what would make my house look great? A sad board from this house. This horror
00:50:11
board. But then they realized that somebody has to keep paying this $500 a month
00:50:17
mortgage. So they end up putting a fence around the house and they put advertisements
00:50:23
in the statewide papers saying that it's a tourist attraction, you can come and look at the murder house. And they charge
00:50:33
people 25 cents a head. What, now you're against it? You fucking love this shit. Make that noise.
00:50:41
They charge 25 cents a head and let people walk through the murder house. Now here, to me, this is one of the creepiest stories I've ever heard.
00:50:50
This is one of the creepier aspects of it. When they went to clean up the house,
00:50:55
the brothers had to do the crime scene cleanup themselves. And there was so much blood, and because it was December,
00:51:02
it had frozen to the floor. So the brothers had to go in with a hammer and break up all the blood
00:51:08
and shovel it out, and then they buried it in the backyard. Oh, no. Like it's brittle or something.
00:51:15
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. And then a black rose bush grew. That's the horror movie. That's when we fictionalize.
00:51:24
Gee whiz. Everything inside the house, aside from that blood, everything inside the house was exactly as it was the day of the murder,
00:51:32
including the fucking cake no one had yet cut into. That's why I talked about the cake so much.
00:51:38
You knew that was foreshadowing. I didn't. You didn't know? No. You didn't see it coming?
00:51:48
And... I just thought it sounded gross. Okay. Here's what you're going to love. Okay.
00:51:52
People start stealing the raisins off the top of the cake. Yeah. They have to put that fucking cake under glass.
00:52:01
Because everybody wants a little horrible piece of memorabilia from this horror house.
00:52:06
Literally a raisin is horrible. It's bad enough that it's a raisin. From anywhere.
00:52:11
Why did I zero... Someone's hand, a pocket. A cake. Oh, my God. Isn't that insane?
00:52:20
The only O, I said that already. In 1930, the year after the murders. So this was, of course, huge.
00:52:27
A band called the Carolina Buddies, which I know is on your Spotify playlist right now.
00:52:34
They released a song called The Murder of the Lawson Family. And it was one of them.
00:52:42
She said, what was it about? Sorry. You really underplayed that. It was good. What was it about?
00:52:54
It was one of the most popular songs in the nation. And it was one of those old country songs.
00:53:01
It was like, they came here. They just tell the story. They literally just read off this paper.
00:53:09
They're fucking. He was born in Los Angeles. in 1908. What if this was just the lyrics of that? The story she's told from here.
00:53:16
I printed up the lyrics of the Carolina Buddies. They're one of my favorite bands.
00:53:22
I liked them before you did. But basically, that's how everyone got to know this story
00:53:29
and the people in the area. That's how they passed the story down from generation to generation.
00:53:35
They sang this song to the children. And in this... Oh, you want a lullaby? Oh, you can't sleep? You want mommy to sing you a song?
00:53:43
Is it nighttime? Okay. They came from here. Mommy, please stop singing. Okay mommy I go to sleep now I promise Oh my God So listen to this episode of Criminal It called The Portrait And they play the original song Do they
00:54:05
By the Carolina Buddies. Shit. The fucking Carolina Buddies. Someone needs to remix it.
00:54:11
Please. That's my... Stephen! Please. Okay. So basically, this story of the Lawson family murders
00:54:23
has lived on for a long time, at least in this area. So there's, of course, a lot of town gossip as to why it happened.
00:54:30
And one of the more insane rumors was that Charlie Lawson had gotten caught up with the mob.
00:54:38
Do they have the big mob, Batman, around here? In North Carolina, yes. Oh, okay.
00:54:44
It was the Gambini family ran that part of Gambono family. ran that people said that Charlie had seen
00:54:55
something that he wasn't supposed to see and so they staged the entire murder it's never the mob
00:54:59
they don't do it that way I don't think the mob is super that into bludgeoning unless they have to
00:55:07
right and like children but it's not their style yeah exactly I'm defending the mob
00:55:14
I'm like please don't hate me Could we please be nice to the mob for once? They do protect people.
00:55:27
The theory, I think people came up with that because it would explain how all of a sudden he had all this pocket money to be like toys for you and dresses for you.
00:55:34
But there's absolutely no proof of it. And it's really written off as town gossip.
00:55:40
The head injury, of course, is also a theory. But after, you know, after the after when the autopsy was performed is what I'm trying to say, the doctor removed Charlie's brain and inspected it to see if there was actual brain trauma from that accident that would explain the attack.
00:56:00
But there was nothing found. And so he preserved the brain and sent it to Johns Hopkins to see if they could fucking find what was wrong with his brain.
00:56:10
and the doctors there said it was inconclusive that there was nothing overt on Charlie Lawson's brain
00:56:15
that explained why he would suddenly snap and attack. I mean, aside from that giant pickaxe hole in the middle of it,
00:56:20
there was nothing. There was half an inch of pickaxe still in there, but they said inconclusive.
00:56:28
What about chemicals from the tobacco? Tobacco probably had chemicals in it then, right?
00:56:33
No, that was back when tobacco was really green and when it was just American spirit brand everywhere.
00:56:39
Fucking hippie style vegan. It was all vegan. It was gluten free. Now, this is fascinating.
00:56:52
There was a dark family secret that no one knew and didn't come out until 60 years later.
00:57:00
When Stokes County locals Trudy Smith and her father M. Bruce Jones, they had heard the story for so long and they knew people.
00:57:08
They knew people that had gone to the funeral. They knew people who had gone and taken a tour of the house.
00:57:13
And so they decided to collect up all the information, verify it, and write a book about the Lawson family murders.
00:57:19
And right before they were going to go to press, it was a member of the Lawson family.
00:57:25
It's anonymous as to who did it. Called them up and said, I know why it happened.
00:57:29
And this was in 1990. and she told them that 16-year-old Marie Lawson was pregnant
00:57:36
and the father was Charlie Lawson. I mean, the part I don't like about this is when they're like...
00:57:47
I mean, obviously, aside from... Look, we don't have to pick just one thing we don't like about this story.
00:57:53
What I'm saying, aside from that, is that they were about to go to press and their publicist was like, this is kind of boring, we need more information.
00:58:00
And they're like, well, we just happened to get a call last night from the Lawson family.
00:58:05
They were like, but here's the thing. Yes. I'm, are you calling bullshit on Trudy?
00:58:09
Because I will let her know. However, he looks like a fucking dick. Well, here's the thing, though.
00:58:19
That, because they were, they're consummate professionals, they had this corroborated.
00:58:25
Marie's best friend was a woman named Ella Mae Johnson. And she had a sleepover with Marie.
00:58:30
like two weeks before the murders took place. And Marie confessed to Ella Mae that not only was she pregnant by her father,
00:58:39
but that Charlie told her if she were to tell anyone about the baby, quote, there would be killing done.
00:58:47
Ella Mae's like, I wish you hadn't fucking just told me that. We're trying to have a sleepover,
00:58:52
smoke some butts out the window, curl our hair. Yeah. Shit, dude. So that is fact, fact.
00:58:59
Okay. I'm sorry I called the family a liar. You're sorry. Say, I'm sorry, Trudy.
00:59:05
I'm sorry, Trudy. Okay, so don't worry about Trudy because Trudy Smith and her father
00:59:12
self-published the book. They called it White Christmas, Bloody Christmas. Amazing.
00:59:17
Self-published it in 1990. They originally published 5,000 copies, immediately sold out of all 5,000.
00:59:24
So then they published, I think, 10,000 more, 10 or 15,000 more, also all sold out.
00:59:30
it was such a popular book, and it's a story that so many people are interested in,
00:59:35
and it's a part of the history of this area. The book is now out of print, but you can get it on Amazon for $165.
00:59:45
Holy shit! All you. I'm only talking to the rich people right now. You can get it.
00:59:52
Wow. Now these are just three more factoids that I find of interest Give it to me Okay Arthur the only remaining living original Lawson family member he got all that money from the house tours
01:00:07
Okay. So that's cool. But here's some sad things. He fell in love with a girl, asked her to marry him,
01:00:15
and the girl's family would not allow her to marry him because of the murders and because he was from the Lawson family.
01:00:22
But he later found someone else, fell in love, got married, had kids, and then tragically he died in a car crash in 1945.
01:00:30
Oh, man. He was really young. I think he was in his 40s. Okay, less sad, more interesting.
01:00:37
In the 70s, the Lawson house collapsed. Ooh. Took that long, huh? No, that architect did a pretty good job with that sadness.
01:00:47
Yeah. You just wouldn't believe how architecturally sound despair is. It'll just...
01:00:53
It's cement-like at times. But we can chip away. It collapsed. I just like the idea that people are standing in that
01:01:04
farm yard and just... In one fell swoop. Like this Paula Abdul video where the whole pyramid
01:01:09
goes down at once. I'm 50! Woo! Okay, so they haul off all the wood that goes with the house and they took down the barn as well
01:01:24
because they were like, that's about to collapse. They take all that wood. They build a bridge
01:01:29
on a place called Payne Road. The internet argues is also called Edwards Road. Or maybe now it's called Edwards Road.
01:01:38
Now, it collapses. No. But the bridge is haunted. Of course it is. So claims the locals who drive across it and say
01:01:48
that if you drive across, or if you did drive across this bridge and turned her car off and whistled Dixie. The car would not turn back on.
01:01:57
And sometimes you would hear either a woman screaming, children laughing. Nope. Nope. How
01:02:04
about this? No. Condensation on the windows and then little child's handprints. No. Showing up in
01:02:11
the fucking moisture. If you had to pick one of those, what would you pick? What of those are
01:02:16
going to happen to you, what would you pick? Oh, handprints 100%? Really? Yes! Because it's the scariest?
01:02:22
Yes. Oh. Why do it if you're not going to fucking I have a question. What the fuck
01:02:30
is Whistling Dixie? I thought it was just a saying. What is it? It's like a long
01:02:38
wheat boot. I'll do it for you later but we can't do it in a theater that's bad luck.
01:02:45
That's right. I am from the theater. Um, okay. The bridge has since been torn down.
01:02:53
Okay. I know, because you guys are going to drive out there, huh? That's where the meet-up afterwards is.
01:03:00
Rave on the haunted bridge. Also, Payne Road, I think some people were cheering,
01:03:06
because Payne Road, there's other stories around that area. There's some other murdery family shit that happened around there.
01:03:14
Change the name of that fucking road. They changed it. You mean from pain? Yeah.
01:03:20
To pleasure road. Here's my favorite. That infamous Christmas cake that was on display inside the house under glass
01:03:31
was eventually auctioned off when people stopped going to the murder house. And a woman named Myrtle Brown bought it.
01:03:40
Myrtle. And she reportedly took it and threw it into the woods. she'd had it with that cake
01:03:48
I fucking hate families getting murdered what if when she got home after that the cake was sitting on the fucking table
01:04:00
and all the raisins had come back every last raisin in a fucking satanic thing on it
01:04:08
a pentagram a pentagram of raisins appeared, this is now my new ending to the story, and a pentagram of raisins appeared
01:04:19
on Myrtle Brown's cake. So she took it and threw it into the woods. That's not a solution, Myrtle.
01:04:28
It's just going to lay like 15 feet away from you in the woods. And some poor animal is going to
01:04:33
come eat it and it's been sitting out for so long you're going to, it's going to get cautious. And
01:04:36
And that's when the satanic raccoon was born. I'll kill you. I'll kill your garbage cans.
01:04:43
And that's the legendary story of the Lawson family martyrs. Great job. Thank you.
01:04:54
Goodbye. I'm scared to... Sorry, I left that up the whole time. That was kind of heavy.
01:05:01
Great job. Great job. If your best finance people are doing expense reports, chasing receipts, or spending time on month-end close, it's time to get Brex AF, a gentic finance that eliminates that work before it starts.
01:05:17
Learn more at brex.com slash AF. Hello, beautiful. I'm Amy Erick, founder of Madison Reed, a hair color company I named after my daughter.
01:05:26
Forget everything you know about hair color. The mess, the smell, the hassle, the damage.
01:05:31
We're female founded and female led. We've transformed the hair color experience with ingredients that care for your hair and award winning color on your terms at home or at our hair color bars.
01:05:44
The future of hair color is here at Madison Reed. Knicks that KNIX leak proof underwear isn just for one moment It for all the everyday moments you didn realize leak proof underwear could make easier maybe it day one of your period Maybe it a long travel day Maybe it hot outside
01:06:05
You're on the move and you just want to feel fresh. Their leak-proof underwear comes in a range of absorbencies, from light to ultra,
01:06:13
and helps protect against periods, light leaks, sweat, and everyday surprises. And because they look and feel like real underwear, they're soft, invisible underclothes and machine washable.
01:06:26
No extra hassle. No complicated routine. Just dependable protection you can wash and re-wear.
01:06:33
See why millions have made the switch to leak-proof underwear. Visit Nix.com. That's K-N-I-X dot com and use code FLOW15 for 15% off.
01:06:44
That's K-N-I-X dot com. Code FLOW15. Okay, I actually wanted to, this is like on my very long list of murders I've wanted to do on the show before.
01:06:54
So when Stephen sent us the email where he just has to list murders for us, because we just can't.
01:06:59
We make him. Please. This was on it, and I was like, well, I'm going to do this one.
01:07:04
I just hit myself in the face with the mic. I've done it like three times on my phone.
01:07:08
It's really fun. Microphones are fun. This is the Bitter Blood Murders. I have never heard of this.
01:07:17
It's known as America's Most Bizarre Story of Crime, and the book that a lot of this information is from
01:07:22
is called Bitter Blood by Jerry Bloodso, and he's the one who coined the name of it.
01:07:29
This is like the Bitter Blood, but he made that up. Oh, and I also got a lot of information
01:07:33
as I did my makeup tonight and listened to a podcast on Double Speed because I was running late.
01:07:40
It's a podcast called Once Upon a Crime by Esther Ludlow. Nice. I've listened to that one.
01:07:46
That's good. And she had all this info in it. Like, where'd she get this? She's a really good researcher, and I respect that, but I don't do it.
01:07:56
So this is a crazy story of a crime spree that involved wealth, power, mental illness,
01:08:01
and Karen's favorite, incest. Yes. That's my jam. It's nuts. And it ends in the violent death of four generations of people,
01:08:14
and it took place over 30 years ago. So let's start with Susie Newsome. So she's this smart, beautiful girl.
01:08:22
She's born in Reidsville. And she's... That's an amazing place. And so she's from this super prominent family.
01:08:32
Her dad was a tobacco executive. Yes. Tonight's theme is tobacco. So they're rich as fuck.
01:08:39
They're like this prominent family, like, you know, stuff that we just don't understand in California.
01:08:45
Richness. What? No, like, you know, like family wealth? Oh, yeah. Shit that you just find in the South, I guess.
01:08:52
It's just like... Right, like generations and generations of rich people. Did you know she's from the Kilgaris family?
01:08:58
Like, we don't have that there. No way. They're like, we hear the Kilgaris are here.
01:09:03
Lock up the beer. Is usually what happens around my last name. So everyone's like, you know, her aunt, for example,
01:09:11
is, and it's also her namesake, Judge Susan M. Sharp, who had become the first woman in the country
01:09:17
to be elected the head of the state Supreme Court. Hell yeah! Susan Sharp? Yeah, Auntie Judge
01:09:25
Susan Sharp. She's widely recognized as one of the most respected women in America.
01:09:31
So Susie's named after her, but Susie, little Susie, is just spoiled as fuck. When she was born,
01:09:38
she had a little heart murmur, so the doctor was like, don't let her cry or her heart will go crazy.
01:09:42
so they just like gave her whatever she wanted so she wouldn't cry which has to be fun for the parents that's second only to eating a pentagram cake is making someone evil
01:09:54
that's exactly right that's bad okay um during her childhood she grew up in winston-salem
01:10:01
uh you know she would have these fucking insane temper tantrums probably because she's used to
01:10:09
getting whatever the hell she wanted to. So her heart was fine, really? I think so.
01:10:14
Okay. Like, we all have a heart murmur. Yeah. Right? Yep. So her mother, this could not have been good for her heart.
01:10:23
So her mother, when she'd have these, like, fucking crazy temper tantrums, her mother, to get her to calm down, to not upset her heart,
01:10:30
would just douse her with cold water. Dude. What? Just, I think, douse her with cold water in the face.
01:10:38
I don't know where, but let's say the face. Well, you know, my sister always said that her trick with Nora when Nora was a baby,
01:10:45
she said, when you have a crab, put them in water. So anytime that Nora was crying, she just put her in the bathtub.
01:10:52
And she said it worked. I doubt it was ice cold water. No, I bet it wasn't. She's not like that.
01:10:57
And she's not rich. Okay, so but Susie is beautiful and smart. She goes to wake.
01:11:04
And cold. And freezing all the time. But she's very demanding. she becomes obsessed with the royal family
01:11:10
and had these fantasies of being royalty. And it says that in this stuff, it's a bad thing,
01:11:15
but all of us did that, pretty much. So it's not that crazy. You had no choice in the 80s.
01:11:19
Right. But I think she became obsessed. This isn't the 80s. Yeah, this is the 70s.
01:11:24
So it's crazy. She was an early adapter to the royal family? That's amazing! So Susie goes to Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem.
01:11:34
There she meets... The fighting? Wake Borders. Yes. God, they're such a good team.
01:11:47
That's exactly right. She meets a dude. She marries him. His name is Tom Lynch. Tom's two years younger than her, but she sees him in his basketball uniform, and she's like, gotta have that.
01:11:57
That's right. Because, you know, they have those tiny shorts. And like knee-high socks.
01:12:03
That's going to be mine. She's like, I want that silky motherfucker for my own. And she's into younger dudes like you.
01:12:09
Yes. That's mine. But he also came from a prosperous family near Louisville, Kentucky.
01:12:18
So Dolores was Tom's mom, and she didn't like... Okay, there's a made-for-TV movie called In the Best of Families.
01:12:27
Marriage, pride, and madness. And in it, I don't want to talk ill because I don't really know this is a made-for-TV movie,
01:12:34
which means some of it might not be true. What? But Tom's mom comes off as a major cunt and hates Susie right away.
01:12:42
But I don't know. I can't speak for that. Do you know any of the actresses or who played who?
01:12:46
Well, as a matter of fact, it turns out I know you well and know what you like. You know what I want to know.
01:12:51
So Susie's played by Kelly McGillis. Yes, of Top Gun fame. You know her. and Tom is played by Keith Carradine,
01:13:02
a nice young, a young Keith Carradine. So hot. So, yeah. But whatever the point is,
01:13:09
whoever was a cunt and not, Dolores and Susie did not like each other from the fucking get-go.
01:13:15
And they showed open disdain for each other. And after they married, though, they married anyways,
01:13:21
because they were like, but we're in love, you know. And they get married, they move to Kentucky
01:13:25
so Tom could attend dental school. and Susie soon becomes pregnant with the first child, James, who's born in 1974.
01:13:32
And Susie tells her mother-in-law, Dolores, who comes into town to see her grandchild,
01:13:38
that she needs to make an appointment with her if she wants to see her grandchild
01:13:40
and go stay in a hotel room. Goodbye. Closes the door. Oh, okay. They don't like each other.
01:13:47
And Dolores did not throw a cup of cold water on Susie after she said that? She didn't know the cold water trick?
01:13:53
She didn't know it yet, unfortunately. and a year later they have their second child
01:13:57
John and actually I think I have a photo, let's see what this first photo is okay, so that's
01:14:03
Susie and those are the sweet boys look at her haircut and then oh and look at this fucking rattan chair
01:14:13
they're sitting in. Yeah, that's kind of amazing truly is it the 70s or not? The 70s we were all on Fantasy Island
01:14:21
it was fucking nutso So they have the kids, and then Tom decides to move the family to Albuquerque, New Mexico,
01:14:29
to start his dental practice. But they move there, and Susie's like, fuck this place.
01:14:35
Don't they know who I think I am? I think I'm royalty. Hates it there, because she's not used to being like, I'm a Newsome, and people know and care what it is.
01:14:46
So she hates it there. and at one point she starts to lose her shit and she lashes out at one of her sons
01:14:53
who requires hospitalization for two days after that. But we don't know exactly what she did
01:14:59
and it's kind of conjecture that she did something to him. Well, you don't get hospitalized for yelling.
01:15:05
We know that. Like, did he just fall? She said that the other kid knocked the food chair.
01:15:12
Futon? No. With that big rattan chair? No, high chair. Thank you. Over. But we don't know.
01:15:20
What if a high chair was a big rattan chair? Just picture it in your mind. Real high, small, but with a big round back.
01:15:28
And flammable. Okay. It's the 70s after all. But no charges are ever filed. In 1979, Susie's like, you know what?
01:15:38
I'm going to BRB back to North Carolina for a minute to visit my family. I'm taking the kids.
01:15:42
I'll be right back. gets there and is like, JK, Tom, I want a fucking divorce. We're not coming back.
01:15:50
And then she also says she wants full custody of the kids. And Tom is all the way in Albuquerque.
01:15:58
It sounds like he was a good dad, but he agreed to sign over custody of the kids. They're now four and three
01:16:03
wanting to not fight with her about it. Okay. Then, alright, so Susie's also obsessed with China for some reason.
01:16:14
Not for some reason. China's lovely, I'm sure, but we don't know why she's obsessed with China.
01:16:19
The place? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The dishes? The place. Great question. So she decides
01:16:25
I want to move to China and teach English out of nowhere. And some speculate that maybe
01:16:31
she was in a manic episode and was just like later date because she fucking just took the
01:16:35
kids and moved to China. Wow. And then after six months, realized she hates it there too.
01:16:41
This is like me in my first five apartments in Los Angeles. Oh, me too. I don't like it here.
01:16:52
It's not my fault. So she comes home after six months, but when she gets home, her water-flinging mom is freaked out because she's dirty, malnourished,
01:17:04
and something ain't right. You know what I mean? So she's like, you need to see a doctor.
01:17:10
Something's wrong with you. Well, it just so happens that they have a doctor in the family.
01:17:15
Okay, dun, dun, dun. That's how rich people do it. Yeah. So Dr. Fred Klenner is a well-known and widely respected doctor in town.
01:17:25
Again, fucking family people in town. Townies. Townies, as we like to call him. Depending on who you ask, though, he's either a fucking lunatic quack or a total genius.
01:17:38
And it was one of those things where he, in the 70s, or really early on, helped birth triplets,
01:17:46
and then the mom didn't die and the babies didn't die, which was like a feat back then.
01:17:50
So everyone was like, he's amazing. And in the 40s Which is a thing that been happening for 2 years Right But okay So in the 40s he experiments with absorbic acid which is vitamin C
01:18:06
becomes obsessed with it as a treatment for a ton of illnesses, including, and he starts to use it on every patient,
01:18:13
including patients with polio, multiple sclerosis, even a toothache. He was like, everyone gets vitamin C.
01:18:19
Vitamin C. And it sounds like he was a little bit like vitamin C and wouldn't give them any other medications.
01:18:24
Oh. So he was, like, obsessed with it. Did it work? I don't know, because he became world-renowned for his treatments.
01:18:32
Yeah, but he didn't cure polio with fucking vitamin C. No, he absolutely didn't.
01:18:35
No, he did not. Okay. And his over-reliance on vitamin C also made other doctors be like,
01:18:41
this fucking dude, you know? They, like, didn't like him. They called him a fraud all the time behind his back.
01:18:47
Oh. At the doctor's club? Yeah. And then he had some real problematic practices, including he would use a needle sterilizer instead of using new needles every time he used them.
01:19:03
So he'd just throw them in the old, like, you know, I don't know. Like the combs and the blue liquid at the barbershop?
01:19:10
No, sir. He's like, I'm just going to dip these in vitamin C. They'll be fine. So he would use a needle, like, for up to 12 patients.
01:19:18
No. Oh, me and all the heroin addicts agree that you shouldn't do that. And he was a doctor.
01:19:26
And then you're like, well, maybe it was this old-timey thing. He also had a segregated waiting room.
01:19:31
And you're like, well, that's what it was like during that time. Nope, into the 80s.
01:19:35
No. Both of these things he did. No. No. No. So this was the uncle that Susie was like, I'm not doing well.
01:19:43
Let me see this fucking dude. Oh, it's him. Okay. It's him that she goes to. Her mom's like, go see this guy.
01:19:48
I let them straighten you out. And he's cutting up oranges. Susie, welcome. Wine.
01:19:52
That's the perfect solution. He's crushing and snorting vitamin C pellets, tablets.
01:19:59
Lining up Flintstones all across the thing. I've got a whole treatment system for you.
01:20:05
10 million strong and growing. And growing. You guys remember. Yeah. We're not above it.
01:20:13
We're not above making commercial references. That's absolutely right. Okay, so she goes to this doctor.
01:20:20
He starts treating her. And while she's there, she starts to get reacquainted with her cousin, who's the doctor's son.
01:20:30
And he's Frederick, but his name is Fritz. And he's known as a young Dr. Klenner.
01:20:38
They call him that because he's like his dad's sidekick. He's going to fucking medical school.
01:20:42
He wants to be doctor too. And like everyone loves him. I have a photo of him. There he is.
01:20:47
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Steven said, he looks just like Henry Zebrowski. He does! If Henry Zebrowski was a Greek fisherman, that's what, that's...
01:21:00
Look at that amount of arm hair. Hand hair, I mean. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but...
01:21:06
Are we sure he's not a gorilla? I love you, Dr. Zayas. Oh. You know how he got all that hair?
01:21:16
Vitamin C. All right. Now, was he wearing the doctor's jacket before he actually became a doctor?
01:21:25
Well, let's talk about that. Or did he work for Lancome? Shit, I mean clinic. Shit.
01:21:31
You know this one. Okay, my slip is slipping the wrong way, and I feel like I'm dangerously close to...
01:21:36
We just readjust it. Thank you. Thank you so much. All right. Well, so yeah, he fucking essentially walks around the clinic with his dad.
01:21:47
in his lab coat, like being his assistant, taking blood and shit because he wants to do blood studies.
01:21:53
Turns out he's a fucking lying liar. Lies. What? About everything. So Fritz, like his dad, Uncle Doctor.
01:22:04
It gets really confusing, so I think it's helpful to Uncle Doctor. Uncle Doctor.
01:22:09
Fritz is a little... Fritz and Uncle Doctor believe that the apocalypse is nigh and, like, they're totally survivalists.
01:22:17
Hold on, hold on. Hold on. I was just getting okay with the vitamin C bullshit. These are fucking crazy.
01:22:28
Unless they're right. Their timing is off a little bit. Yes, they're right. Okay, sorry.
01:22:35
Uncle Doctor even had a date that he thought the end of the fucking world was coming.
01:22:39
And they were like survivalist preppers. And they had a visceral hatred of communism.
01:22:45
and they had a fixation with Hitler, especially Fritz. A fixation plus or minus?
01:22:51
Yeah, that's a good question. Fixation like that damn Hitler. I don't know if they're just like, I need to know everything.
01:22:58
I feel like a fixation, I feel like if you hate Hitler, great. But you wouldn't brag about that.
01:23:03
So if you have a fixation with Hitler, it might be positive. It's going to be positive.
01:23:06
Right. It's a great question, though. A lot of problems here. Lots. But now we know how they decorate the bunker.
01:23:15
So Fritz did go to the University of Mississippi, but he never graduated. And his dad was like, what the fuck?
01:23:20
And he was like, well, the German club I was in turned against me. And like did this whole thing about like the communists.
01:23:29
And his dad was like, okay, I believe you. We hate, you know, ah. That's what I told my dad when I dropped out of Sac State.
01:23:36
Fucking Germans. But then he was like, but don't worry, dad. I am going to go to Duke University for my medical degree.
01:23:45
A very prestigious university. Duke University. You know the screaming, their mascot, the screaming.
01:23:52
Oh, the screaming. This is hard I so sorry because I was about to say hillbillies and I didn I really I don want to
01:24:06
That's just fucking rude. I come from the poorest of the poor. I don't... And it's also, like, one of the best colleges.
01:24:17
It's very, very prestigious. Not only could I have never gotten into it, No, they wouldn't have let me touch the entrance application.
01:24:27
Yes. Well, maybe it's very fitting that I call them the screaming hillbillies. That's fine.
01:24:32
They're like, you're double not allowed to come here now. Shit. Just causing problems wherever we go.
01:24:40
International incident. Why don't I stick to animals? It just... You got to stick to animals.
01:24:46
Improv panic. Improv panic. It's hard, right? Yeah. It's scary. I'm sweating. Okay.
01:24:53
You did good with the wakeboarders. Thank you. But that's because wake was in the name of this college.
01:25:00
I disagree. I swear that it was in the name of the college. I swear. Sidebar. Okay.
01:25:09
Okay, so Fritz was like, don't worry, dad. You went to Duke. I'm going to go to Duke and get my medical degree.
01:25:14
And it's fine. And I'm going to school to be a doctor. So I'm going to wear this lab coat around your office and get blood from you.
01:25:21
he got kicked out of the fucking University of Mississippi and now he's absolutely not going to Duke
01:25:27
I feel like you should have to get a license for a doctor's coat in the same way you have to get them for any other
01:25:33
thing that could trick people into trusting you like a pet an anxiety pet thing that they get
01:25:40
you can't just bring your dog in here and have to have a doctor's coat on no I meant like
01:25:49
I like a dog in a doctor's coat better I mean that would relax you if you saw a dog
01:25:57
if you're on a plane and you're fucking shitting a brick and you look over and there's a corgi
01:26:02
with a little doctor's coat on you're fine you're done huge beard large watch oh okay so fritz well when he's saying he's going to duke university what he's really doing is
01:26:23
hanging out all day at everyone's favorite place to hang out gun stores oh wow and i was just
01:26:31
thinking about the guys who work in the gun store who were like like that fritz is the crazy one in
01:26:37
this like you don't even like the you have to be sick of working in a gun store like i just want to
01:26:41
work here and there's like the crazy dude who hangs out there all day yeah in a doctor's coat
01:26:45
In a fucking doctor's coat? Doctor's coat. With the thickest beard you've ever seen.
01:26:51
So everyone at the gun store hears these crazy stories from Fritz, including him telling him that he was a Green Beret in Vietnam
01:26:59
and that he's also working for the CIA. Guess what? Spoiler alert. Those things aren't true.
01:27:06
Yeah. I feel like the second someone starts talking about working for the CIA in a gun store,
01:27:12
they should be like, oh, and we close right now, actually. So we're going to go ahead and pull down these metal window coverings,
01:27:19
and you can go ahead and get the fuck out, Dr. Vitamin C. There's a panic button, and there's a, I just said I work in the CIA button.
01:27:26
CIA button? That actually contacts us, the real CIA? That's right. Come get your boy, CIA.
01:27:32
It's a gun store. It's very dangerous. So he totally leaves an apocalypse. He stockpiles weapons and other items for the end days.
01:27:42
And then, so, okay, so Susie, cousin Susie, starts hanging out with her cousin Fritzie all the time.
01:27:52
And they, like, they become friends again. Like, they had known each other when they were kids but didn't really have much in common because she wasn't into fucking guns and ammo, maybe.
01:28:01
And she starts spending a lot of time with him. She starts bringing him around. The kids have spent a lot of time with him.
01:28:06
They kind of admire him because they think they believe his stories about being in the CIA and being a Green Beret and being a doctor.
01:28:14
She believes all of it. They take the kids camping, all this crazy shit. And then Judge Susan Sharp is like, I'm going to look this guy up and finds out that he's bullshitting all of it.
01:28:28
And then the family's like, you know, why is he spending so much time with his cousin?
01:28:33
and why is he spending the night all the time? That's right. They fucking. So they're like,
01:28:44
the family's like, and also like, they're already like. Are you sure this isn't a creepypasta?
01:28:52
This is fucking out of control. I know. I know. Yes. Okay. I'm positive. Okay. So.
01:29:02
I'm positive. She says with her doctor's coat on. I assure you, this is a real true crime.
01:29:07
And I'm in the CIA. The family is already like, that's like, out of a family of fucking famous people,
01:29:14
like those are the crazy ones. Like we all know them. Eliza. No, she's like, she knows I'm the crazy one.
01:29:23
Beep, boop, bop. The family is like, Susie, you got to stop hanging out with him.
01:29:26
And she's like, fuck you, I'll do what I want. Moves into her own. That's Susie.
01:29:30
That's Susie. And she like doesn't believe them. She thinks they're all lying, and Fritz is making her really paranoid about stuff,
01:29:37
because he's like, I'm in the CIA. I know things, and tells her things. I don't know what.
01:29:43
He's like, underground is better, stuff like that. Yeah. Oh, he's played by Harry Hamlin.
01:29:49
Yeah. Who's that? Oh, did you watch Mad Men? Yeah. You know later on when the guy with the big glasses came and he kind of good and had a dimple in his chin what did he play it lisa rinna husband oh next door neighbors no real nope real housewife nope he he a real
01:30:09
housewife he's like most interesting house husband um that's who plays him so kelly mcgillis and
01:30:18
harry hamlin are fucking and then i want i wish i had my phone if i showed you a picture of harry
01:30:24
and you know exactly who it is. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Sorry, can one person just say the TV show
01:30:30
that he's known best for? LA Law. LA Law. Shit. Thanks. You guys actually were very organized with that.
01:30:38
You were. And I really appreciate it. It was like the eight strongest people in the front
01:30:41
were like, I'll take it. LA Law. Nailed it. Fucking nailed it. They did it. And too bad for them, I don't know what the fuck.
01:30:50
No. I remember my mom watching it as a kid and being like, this is the most boring show.
01:30:55
And it had the word law in it, and it was in a courtroom, and I was like, I don't want to, I want to watch Pee Wee's Playhouse.
01:31:00
Yeah, it was very like, this is what adults do while you're at school. Like, who gives a shit?
01:31:05
But Harry Hamlin is, you would recognize him because he's insanely beautiful, almost like a woman,
01:31:10
but his eyes are very small. Sounds great. Okay. Those tiny eyes. Tiny, tiny eyes.
01:31:20
That's what Karen loves a guy. Love a guy with a great head of hair and teeny tiny beady little eyes.
01:31:24
Just little, the smallest possible eyes on a man. Does he look like our doctor? Um, not really.
01:31:32
Okay. Doesn't matter in made-for-TV movieville. Okay. Okay, so Fritz's paranoia starts to spread to his cousin lover Susie.
01:31:41
She becomes convinced that her ex-husband Tom Lynch is going to take her sons away from her,
01:31:48
which isn't wrong because he's trying to get visitation rights for them and to see them more.
01:31:52
I would hope he was doing something. I don't think anyone kind of realized what was going on yet because he was keeping
01:31:58
she was keeping her kids from Tom all the way over in Albuquerque and so she even
01:32:04
further limited contact with the boys than there already had been. Phone calls are super brief. Any letters and packages
01:32:10
that Tom or Tom's mother, remember who hates Lars who hates her, were thrown right into the trash and they would say to the kids
01:32:18
It's like if the grandma sent cookies, she'd be like, they might be poison. And would throw them away.
01:32:24
Yeah, real shitty. Really shitty. And Susie then made all these legal hurdles so that Tom couldn't see the kids.
01:32:30
It's rumored that Aunt Judge Susan put some of those into place. Oh, no. It was just a little bit like...
01:32:38
I thought she was the voice of reason in this story. There really isn't one. Okay, shit.
01:32:43
If there's a voice of reason, I think it's Tom's family. Because Dolores wasn't wrong, it turns out, in hating Susie.
01:32:55
That's right. You know what I mean? So Tom, the court made it so that when the boys would fly to Albuquerque to stay with their dad,
01:33:07
that they wouldn't travel alone and made him buy Susie a plane ticket there to drop them off,
01:33:12
there to come back, there to pick him up again. And he was paying alimony and child support as well
01:33:17
and starting his dental practice. So it was really hard to see them. But he wanted to see them more.
01:33:24
But under the agreement that he had already signed way back when, before shit went cuckoo,
01:33:28
he could only see them on holidays and several weeks each summer, which is hard on a kid.
01:33:34
That's what we did, and it's not fun, you guys. That sucks. And we didn't have to fly anywhere.
01:33:38
Like, Dad lived across the street. And it sucked. okay all right you'll read all about it in our book um good plug good plug thank you
01:33:53
it's real depressing no it's not it's fun okay so so by the time tom is able to actually spend
01:34:00
time with the boys he has a new wife named kathy and they see the kid i think kids after i think
01:34:04
like two years of not seeing them and they're like holy shit like these kids look fucking
01:34:09
and underweight, dirty hair. They're all unkempt nails. Kempt? Unkempt. Thank you.
01:34:16
And then when they get to Albuquerque to spend time with them, they're like, these are the vitamins that Fritz makes us take,
01:34:24
and we have to take them or we get in trouble. So they have to take vitamins, but Mone makes them take a shower.
01:34:29
Yeah, yeah. Because Fritz is fucking obsessed with vitamins, too, and he would carry them around in his doctor's bag,
01:34:35
and any time someone's like, I have a sprained ankle, he'd be like, take these vitamins.
01:34:39
which I think nowadays is okay. I have a good friend whenever I'm like, what's wrong with me?
01:34:44
I should take these vitamins. And she's right. Does she wear doctor's coat? She doesn't.
01:34:49
And I also go to the doctor, the real doctor. So, where am I? Kids. Then, then. Okay.
01:34:59
So Tom's like, okay, fuck this shit. I need to work harder to get these kids in my custody.
01:35:05
Yes, you do, Tom. Things have gone on long enough. He finds out about this cousin Fritz and that they're spending a lot of time together and all this shit.
01:35:12
Meanwhile, okay, so meanwhile, the real Dr. Klenner, Fritz's dad, dies, which sends Fritz fucking even further off the edge of Lunaticville.
01:35:25
So June 1984, here we are. The bodies of Tom's mom, Dolores, remember her? Yes, I do.
01:35:32
And Tom's sister, Janie, are discovered by a friend in their home in Prospect, Kentucky.
01:35:40
So Dolores is found. That was sad. Also, anyone who's new to this, she's not applauding because the bodies are found dead.
01:35:50
She's applauding for Prospect. She loves Prospect, Kentucky so much. Yes. So Dolores is found in the driveway, shot in the back.
01:35:59
Okay. And then in the head at close range, almost like someone was laying in wait for her
01:36:03
because when she got home from, I think, church. And then her body had been there for at least a day,
01:36:12
and then the cops followed a trail of blood inside and found Janie, Dolores' 39-year-old daughter,
01:36:19
who by the blood trail could see where she was running and hiding, like she was being fucking chased.
01:36:25
It's bananas. But finally she had been shot in the neck and killed. And there had been, it made to look like a robbery, as they do.
01:36:36
But one of the detectives took a look at the scene and said that this was a hit.
01:36:40
A pro took these people out. But it looked like a robbery. But months went by, and the detectives couldn't figure out who had killed the women.
01:36:50
And during one of the visits to the house, investigators found several palm leaves arranged in crosses spread around across the floor.
01:36:58
So someone's fucking crazy. Okay, so Tom, of course, is fucking devastated by the murder of his mother and his sister.
01:37:08
And Susie's mother, Florence, the cold water lady, she feels awful about it, too.
01:37:13
So she gets in touch with her former son-in-law and sends her condolences. And they kind of start exchanging notes on the shit that they've been separately dealing with with Susie.
01:37:23
Because Susie's been crazy to her family, too. And they start exchanging notes. and Tom's just like, I just want to get,
01:37:29
I just want to see my children. I know that, you know, with divorce, a really important thing is for the parents to get along
01:37:34
and for the kids to have, you know, the mother and father. And Florence, Susie's mom's like, fucking absolutely.
01:37:40
So they start to team up together a little bit. And Florence Newsome and her husband Bob,
01:37:47
Susie's mom and dad, then agree to testify in court on Tom's behalf. Oh, shit. Which Susie fucking isn't okay with.
01:37:55
It's temper tantrum time. Exactly. Okay. There's not enough cold water in the fucking world.
01:38:01
Suddenly, suddenly after 40 years, that heart murmur is back with a vengeance. That's right.
01:38:06
Okay. So, ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. Okay. But Susie insists that she needs to keep sole custody of the boys because, as the cop said,
01:38:17
she thinks that Tom's family is involved with the mob. The cop said it was a hit.
01:38:21
And she was like, so Tom's family was involved with the mob. Tom can't have the kids.
01:38:25
And she also, Fritz convinces her that Tom over in Albuquerque is doing drug running shit and the kids can't be with him.
01:38:37
She's just paranoid as fuck and believing all this crazy stuff. And she knew all of that because Fritz told her about it.
01:38:44
So the hearing is scheduled for the week of May 26, 1985. But about a week before, on May 19, three more bodies are discovered in northwestern Winston-Salem.
01:38:56
So the first two bodies were Bob and his mother, Hattie, who had been shot. So Bob is Susie's dad and his mother.
01:39:03
They had been shot. And then the third victim, who the killer had shown far much more hatred and killing,
01:39:10
was Florence, cold water Florence. Right, the mother. Yes. So she had been shot and stabbed, and her neck had been slit.
01:39:19
God. So, yeah, someone was fucking pissed at her. so she was discovered she had been posed in a praying position too yeah creepy so creepy so
01:39:29
fucking little bit of trivia next the next door neighbor was just like how could this happen to
01:39:35
the newsomes the next door neighbor was Maya Angelou what don't worry she didn't do it
01:39:41
this fucking story yeah is left turn central I have never in my life taken so many left turns
01:39:52
What in the living fuck is going on? Totally. And still I rise. That's when she wrote and still I rise.
01:40:00
Right? Because out of tragedy comes art. Okay, so the cops are investigating. They find out about these other parents in the same family area
01:40:14
who had died the year before. They were like, this is fucking weird. and they find a friend of Fritzy's
01:40:21
who also lived in the area named Ian Perkins. So he's questioned by the Winston-Stalin detectives
01:40:25
and he was like, okay, I have something to tell you and this is weird. He goes...
01:40:29
Everybody said it in that voice too. Okay, look, I have something to tell you. Listen, I'm going to level with you.
01:40:34
Fritz turns out, he says, Fritz is in the CIA and I helped him with a hit he had to do.
01:40:41
Oh no, he fell for the CIA bullshit? Yeah, and he also immediately cracked when local cops questioned him too.
01:40:47
And he wanted to be in the CIA so badly, which is why he helped Fritz. But I think he immediately lost his membership.
01:40:53
I was going to say, I hope he knows you don't get into the CIA from your hometown.
01:40:59
It usually doesn't work that way. Snitches? The saying isn't snitches get into the CIA.
01:41:04
That's right. It's something else I can't remember. Yes, I can. So, da-da-da-da-da.
01:41:09
Okay, so Fritz had confided with Ian that he worked for the CIA and that he needed Ian to help him.
01:41:15
He had been given an assignment to wipe out a communist cell. So basically what he told Ian is that he needed to get him to drop him off at a location
01:41:24
and come back and pick him up an hour later, and he was going to make the kill. And if he did it, he would put in a good word for him at the CIA.
01:41:34
Because it's mostly, it's a merit-based system, but they do take strong recommendations at the CIA.
01:41:41
So basically, Ian drives Brits to the Old Town neighborhood of Winston-Salem, drops him off a half a mile from where Bob, Florence, and Hattie lived.
01:41:51
And an hour later picked him up and said that the mission was a success And that was the night that that finished he killed Got it Got it Yeah Okay So Ian was like fucking flabbergasted when he found out that Fritz is in a doctor or in the CIA
01:42:08
And so he agrees to wear a wire talking to Fritz. So he does it a couple times. And Fritz doesn't admit it, but he essentially is like, everything's fine.
01:42:16
Don't worry. And then he met with him on June 3rd, the final time. And he told Ian that he would write out a statement for him saying he had nothing to do with the murders,
01:42:27
which essentially was the only real confession he gave. And then he said, Fritz said before he left, I've got things to do.
01:42:35
I won't see you again. And he fucking drives off in his blazer. And then he pulled his doctor's coat over his head and just stood there pretending he was gone.
01:42:46
Because this motherfucker is insane. Okay, now... I don't see... I'm gone now. Did it work?
01:42:58
Now she gets fucking bananas. Okay. Now? Yeah. Is Maya Angelou coming back? Please, God.
01:43:09
Okay. Fritz drives off in his blazer. You all right? And of course, a bunch of unmarked police cars follow him.
01:43:17
They've been following him. They've been fucking eyeing Susie's house, Susie's apartment.
01:43:21
It's in Greensboro. Wonderful area. Friendly Avenue. Best Street. Tell them your address.
01:43:32
What? Just for you. Best Street in Greensboro. Yes, everyone knows that. So detectives have staked the place out,
01:43:40
and when fucking Fritz gets home, they see Fritz and Susie running back and forth
01:43:44
in their apartment, loading up supplies into the blazer. And then detectives see
01:43:49
little John and Jim, who are 9 and 11 years old, taken into the blazer. They're wearing camo.
01:43:56
Scary. And fashionable. I have to say, in the 80s, every 9 and 11 year old boy I had ever met in my life
01:44:05
wore camo all the time. There's a CIA element to it that we don't like. It's problematic.
01:44:14
So the blazer takes off with the family in it, and the fucking law officers are like, pursue him.
01:44:19
And finally, when they try to get the car to stop when they're at an intersection, Fritz spins the blazer around fucking later days in the other direction.
01:44:28
Before they know it, he's pulling a fucking nine millimeter Uzi submachine gun from the window and firing it at them.
01:44:35
One officer gets shot in the shoulder and the chest, but his wife, I'm sure at one point he was like, my wife's such a nag.
01:44:41
She makes me wear a fucking bulletproof vest all the time. And then later he was like, I love you.
01:44:46
I'm sorry. I'll do everything you say from now on. Yeah. That's amazing. So he's shooting at the fucking
01:44:52
everyone in pursuit of him. There's civilians all over the place. One lady fucking apparently dives off her
01:44:59
lawnmower. My Angela. It was my Angela. Please. Just for the sake of the movie we're writing together.
01:45:13
What poem does she write when she's hiding? Never mind. Me and my lawnmower. I don't know.
01:45:21
Yeah, that wasn't a good one. I wasn't going to bring hillbillies back up, though.
01:45:26
Okay. Chase continues, and they head toward the farm that his family had near Eden.
01:45:33
And he kept that place stocked with weapons and explosives. Like, that was their fucking end-of-days bunker that they were headed towards.
01:45:41
The officers remain in close pursuit. and so later what's said is that they see some commotion
01:45:49
or struggling in the cab of the vehicle and then two shots went off, followed quickly by the entire fucking blazer
01:45:57
blowing the fuck up. Oh my God. The blast is so powerful that the blazer was lifted off the ground
01:46:04
as high as the telephone poles. Oh shit. Before slamming back down. So Susie had been sitting on top of this bomb
01:46:12
And it's hard to tell if they detonated themselves or if the shots that were fired was what maybe, I don't know, does anyone know bombs?
01:46:20
It blew it up, triggered a thing. I bet it was number two. Yeah, and I bet he sucks.
01:46:25
He can't make great bombs probably. That was the one thing he was good at doing.
01:46:32
So she was sitting on the bomb, so her lower body is gone. She's fucking dead. um we'll play it by obviously do you want to this isn't gory but do you want to see the
01:46:44
well i mean oh this is when i'm scrolling late at night going what murder should i do this week i
01:46:51
don't know what murder like looking at photos and i see this and i'm like what the fuck i have to do
01:46:56
that murder how bananas is that it's insane and that's like a like a street that people that's
01:47:01
like, it's a street. Yeah. There's the record crate. Okay. Um, it's awful. The, uh, Fritz
01:47:10
is thrown, Dan Davidson, who's the lead detective from Kentucky runs him and he tries to get
01:47:15
a confession from him, but he can't give him anything before he dies. Fritz lived? He
01:47:19
got, no, he dies, but he was alive. Oh, when he, oh, like on the scene. Yeah. Yeah. Like
01:47:26
Shit. It's crazy. So he dies too. Jim and John are found dead. They each had a shot in the head.
01:47:37
Those two shots that were fired. But even before that, it was determined that they had been given cyanide.
01:47:43
And Susie, before this, had said to her friends, I don't know what I'll do without Fritz.
01:47:48
I have cyanide. So if anything ever happens to him for me and the kids, she was so obsessed with him And he had other girlfriends one of whom she dumped him when he tried to get her to do a suicide pact with him So he was fucking nuts and so was she
01:48:07
She was obsessed with him. So it was discovered that their mother, Susie, was the one who shot them, but that seems debated and hard to tell.
01:48:16
Detectives later found evidence that Susie had participated in the murders of Dolores and Jane Lynch, her ex-mother-in-law.
01:48:25
Um, there's lots of people who criticize any and all of the four jurisdictions that were of law enforcement who are working the case for not stopping for it sooner, like when they saw the kids walking to the car.
01:48:35
But when they, uh, look, when they looked in Susie's house, I mean, there were guns everywhere.
01:48:40
So this could have ended up this way no matter what. Right. That's the worst case scenario, actually.
01:48:45
Yeah. Yeah. Right. So, uh, and Judge Susan is also criticized because she made it harder for Tom to intervene with the boys.
01:48:53
Well, fair. That's just conjecture. I don't know if that's true. And to her death, she denied that her niece had anything to do with it
01:48:59
and was just a victim of Fritz. But even with the evidence to the contrary, she wouldn't listen to it.
01:49:05
Finally, Tom Lynch, the dad, refused to let John and Jim be buried in North Carolina.
01:49:10
So they were laid to rest in New Mexico, where he said was the last place they were truly happy.
01:49:16
And that's the bitter blood murders. Unbelievable. Oh, my God. It's so much more fun when the doomsday preppers just keep on prepping and everything's just kind of okay.
01:49:34
It's so much better. There's got to be a large percentage of them that that just happens with, right?
01:49:39
Right. They just prep forever. They just keep on prepping. Yeah. Hey, do we have time for our hometown?
01:49:47
It has to be fast. Vince, I looked at... Is it the fast signal? Vince went, eh, we kind of have time.
01:49:52
Let's say hi to Vince really quick. Hi, Vince. There he is. Our tour manager Okay
01:50:00
We have a We have a let's keep it tight He is managing this tour Thank you And us
01:50:09
Keep it tight Alright so who's the least drunk person here Who has a hometown I guess the person who's swinging her sweater around
01:50:18
Probably isn't it That's her shirt should we put should we how are we gonna do this you guys know the rules just do it oh yeah you
01:50:28
know the rules um you can't be too drunk you it needs to be a good story um worth listening to
01:50:34
it needs to be short tonight it has to be really quick okay so if you have some long thing zip it
01:50:39
it has to be a quickie it's her yeah okay you're you are i said is it quick and she was i promise
01:50:47
and double finger cross. So you're in fucking trouble if it's not. It's her fucking fault.
01:50:53
Okay. Uh-oh. Oh, she's drunk. No, she's not. Here, let's sign this. I am not even drunk.
01:51:01
Yeah, right. Okay. Still. Hi. Hi. Hug me. What's her name? Hi, Anna. Anna, oh my God.
01:51:12
So amazing to meet you guys. Hi, Anna. Amazing. Nice to meet you. Turn your phone off.
01:51:16
I'm a mom. You're not allowed to read. Do you need that? No. Well, maybe a little note.
01:51:22
She brings her wallet. Do you not trust those guys? You don't know. You've got to carry everything.
01:51:27
Okay. All right. Where are you from? I'm from Scotland, North Carolina. Okay. Tiny town.
01:51:34
What's it? Scotland Neck. They're all from the neck. Scotland Neck up in the balcony.
01:51:40
Okay, quickly. Yeah, this is fucking terrifying. Isn't it nuts? Yeah. So crazy. Sorry.
01:51:45
Heart's being fast. No, mine too. So, long story short, my mother's first cousin, Elizabeth, known as Libby House in Scotland-Eck,
01:52:01
well, she got hitched, and she moved down to Georgia. And this was kind of like a debutante lady, very southern, very sweet lady.
01:52:11
She moved on down, and husband, you know, I don't know, their relationship was weird.
01:52:19
There was some sort of rumors going around saying they had a very open marriage.
01:52:24
That was kind of very odd. Not done in this area at all. And so that was going on.
01:52:33
And then he had a business, and she was part of the bookkeeping. And so she started embezzling money.
01:52:49
Okay. Two million dollars. Without him knowing? A lot of money. A lot of money. Two million dollars.
01:52:55
So she's embezzling money, and he goes missing. so everyone's like where is he and they're asking her and she's going
01:53:06
oh you know he's in the hospital and he's taking some time or he's coming back sometime
01:53:12
they don't know when he's coming back and so that's kind of where she screwed up there
01:53:16
so she didn't have her story straight turns out during 4th of July during the fireworks
01:53:23
she went and shot him in the head a couple of times like during the fireworks to like hide the noise
01:53:30
Yes. I'm telling you guys, this is from a really small town. This is a place where this kind of thing doesn't happen.
01:53:39
So she definitely, I mean, I don't know if it was planned. It couldn't have been planned.
01:53:46
How could anyone do this? Well, the $2 million had to be planned. Yeah, that probably had something to do with it.
01:53:52
But anyways so three shots in the head And so everyone wondering who this guy is and the police are absolutely asking her now at this point
01:54:05
His family's wondering, everyone's wondering, where is this guy? And it turns out he is buried in the backyard.
01:54:13
This woman was 5'5". She was 115 pounds. Her husband, 6'5", something like that, 240,
01:54:22
took her, this is a terrible, terrible thing. It's all terrible. That's why we're here.
01:54:31
It's all fucking terrible. It is. But it took her two days and two trips to Home Depot to get him in the car.
01:54:39
She dug it herself? Okay, so how did she get caught? So she got caught because her story, her story wasn't straight.
01:54:48
The police realized that, yes, he's not around. He's not coming back. There's $2 million missing.
01:54:56
What's happening? And so they zeroed in on her, basically, because her story was a story.
01:55:02
People were asking where he was. And she was sitting in the car. And the worst part about it was when they went to ask her, why did you kill him?
01:55:11
What happened? she said um i wanted to save him from the embarrassment of me embezzling the money
01:55:19
so i just killed him and then buried him so it's fine now oh in a way is she in jail
01:55:31
she's in jail for life uh yeah well i don't know what her sentence is looking like but
01:55:36
I called my mom. And it's your mom's sister? Yeah, well, my my mom, but my actual mom
01:55:46
who I call my mom today. This is my mom who has passed away that is related to her. Anyways, I called her
01:55:52
my mom who I call my mom now, who's the town gossip. She knows what's up. I was like,
01:55:58
hey, I was like, give me some more on Libby because I'm going to this cool podcast show
01:56:02
tonight and I got to know the deets. And she was like, she was like, yeah, don't make her sound bad.
01:56:14
And I was like, I won't make her sound any worse than a murderer. Oh my God, that's amazing.
01:56:22
Great job. You guys are awesome. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you, Victoria, for getting me a seat to this show. You're the
01:56:30
best. And thanks to my husband for watching my baby tonight. Oh my God. Oh my God. Thank you, Dingle. We're giving you a poster.
01:56:36
These posters, look, you get a present. Thank you so much for doing such a good job.
01:56:47
Bye. I think that should be the new thing in the rules. What? Jesus, Wallet. Sorry.
01:57:02
You guys were scaring the shit out of me. I honestly thought you were yelling walrus.
01:57:07
I swear to God. Wallet. Does she have her phone? Yeah. All right. You guys, the first night of our fucking ball community tour.
01:57:17
This has been amazing. Thank you so much. You have been a truly, a truly perfect crowd.
01:57:27
Honestly, Durham, you nailed this shit. what a great kickoff for us yeah and we know you've had a rough week
01:57:36
so we appreciate you coming out and supporting us yes thank you so much for making it
01:57:40
thank you so much for being here and honestly we were just saying in the dressing room before you got ready
01:57:45
we know we have to hurry up but we really love this job we're so fucking grateful that you guys
01:57:52
like this podcast so much we're so grateful for your constant support and we're grateful
01:57:57
how much you guys love each other It means so much to us to watch these murdering our communities grow up and that you're all meeting each other and hang.
01:58:05
It's just the fucking coolest thing in the world. Oh, and there is a there's a hangout tonight after the show at the layers of dignity is they're holding a fundraiser at the full stream brewery.
01:58:16
So let's go there after and raise some money for a great cause. And also stay sexy.
01:58:22
And don't get murdered. Bye, you guys. Thank you. Running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project.
01:58:33
One app for accounting, another for inventory, another for sales. And somehow, none of them talk to each other.
01:58:40
That's where Odoo comes in. An all-in-one business management software that brings every part of your business together.
01:58:46
From sales and accounting to inventory and marketing. All in one powerful platform.
01:58:51
No messy integrations. No bouncing between tabs. And best of all, no spreadsheets.
01:58:58
Stop managing software and start managing your business with one unified system.
01:59:03
Try for free today at odoo.com slash iHeartRadio. That's odoo.com slash iHeartRadio.
01:59:11
Here's the truth. You could literally be adored by everyone and then come home and still get completely ignored by your own cat.
01:59:17
It's classic cat behavior. But new Shiba Premium Puree is a lickable treat that changes all that.
01:59:23
They're protein-rich, made with bone broth, and have the smooth, creamy texture cats go crazy for,
01:59:29
especially when it's hand-fed. Yeah, it's more than a treat. It's a fast pass to favorite human status.
01:59:35
So feed your cat Sheba and go from totally ignored to truly adored in just 12 days, guaranteed,
01:59:41
or your money back. Learn more at Sheba.com. If your best finance people are doing expense reports, chasing receipts,
01:59:49
or spending time on month-end clothes, it's time to get Brex AF. agentic finance that eliminates that work before it starts.
01:59:58
Learn more at brex.com slash. AF