Bittersweet Infamy - #45 - The Nicest Killer Around

Episode Date: May 29, 2022

Josie tells Taylor about ultra-affable mortician Bernie Tiede and the murder of Marge Nugent. Plus: the rise and fall of Blok P, Greenland's most infamous building.

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I'm Taylor Basso. I'm Josie McDonough. On this podcast, you tell the stories that live on in envy, shocking the unbelievable, and the unforgettable. Truth may be bitter, stories are always sweet. Josie. Yeah, Taylor. Hi. Hi.

Wow. One thing that you may not know about me, but will in no way be surprised to hear, is that I love Greenland. Everything checks out. Exactly. Didn't know that, but yeah. That squares. I just think that Greenland is really pretty.

It's icy. Yeah. If you've never had the pleasure of seeing like drone footage of Greenland, or like panoramic photography of Greenlandic cities and settlements, it's like this blanket of white that is dotted by these small brightly colored houses, like bright reds, bright yellows, gorgeous vibrant blues and stuff like that. Hmm. It's a mixture of like prettiness and also, I don't know,

its global profile relative to its physical fucking size. I'm not sure if it's larger than Australia, but I do know that it was described as the largest non-continental island. Fuck it. Why don't I look right now? I'm looking. Yeah. We have no worldwide red.

It's Greenland larger than Australia. First auto-complete. Oh, wow. Australia is nearly four times as large as Greenland. So no, but it's still really, it's still the largest non-continental island. So I'm building to an infamous Greenlandic story. But before that, why don't I give you a little bit of context about Greenland, where it is, Denmark owns it.

What's up with that? So let's get into these things. Yeah. Greenland is largely populated by Inuit folks who migrated from Alaska. Okay. Though over the years, colonists from a host of European nations have planted their flags there, including Norway, Portugal, and the current owners, big scare quotes on owners,

since the 19th century, Denmark. Okay. So Denmark, the country is tiny, but like the realm of Denmark is mahusive and it's entirely because of Greenland. This sounds dumb as I say it, but I'm going to say it. Greenland is not its own country. It's not entirely. Is it like a Scotland thing?

It's not entirely autonomous. So the deal is. We're like Canada. Canada is technically not entirely autonomous. It's that kind of thing. They're part of whatever Denmark's Commonwealth is. They're a part of that. They don't have their own seat in the UN, for example.

Okay. But its northeast corner is the world's largest national park, the entire northeast quadrant of Greenland. Whoa. Much of Greenland is uninhabited. Like the center mass of Greenland is largely uninhabited tundra with most of the population residing coastily and relying on traditional methods to obtain their food such as fishing.

Yeah. Okay. And if you've never seen how people in Greenland hunt for narwhals, it's a real treat. They take their kayak out into these icy waters and they do like a fucking full roll. So they are now submerged underwater for a bit, holding their breath and hunting narwhal and then they flip back up.

In the Arctic cold waters. We are Josie. You, you could hack it. I couldn't. No. I don't know, dude. There's like, that's a lot. It's a lot.

It's very Arctic. It's very cold. It's very chilly. Gnarly. Narwhal. Okay. Narwhal. So some fun facts about Greenland.

It's home to a city called Kanak Population 646. Gets visited by a dentist twice a year, which holds the distinction of being the world's most northerly palindrome. So it's spelled Q-A-A-N-A-A-Q. Kanak. Thank you. That's a fun fact. I said fun facts.

That's a very fun fact. What's more fun than that? Okay. In athletic terms, though the country is best known for Arctic sports, the national sport of Greenland is actually soccer, despite it being the only such country where grass isn't able to naturally grow. Huh. Interesting.

They have a team. Greenland has a soccer team, but like FIFA won't let them in. And part of it is because they don't have any natural grass pitches on the entire island because it's all fucking ice and rocks. Just ash or turf. That's not a problem. That's what I think, but you know how these European sporting conglomerate multinationals, how they do.

It's always fucking seven. And in a not so fun fact, the melting of a glacier in 2007 exposed a brand new island called Unartok Kekertok, which means warming island. Woo. Yeah. As you might expect due to its place in the Arctic Circle, ice and glaciers are key components of the environment.

So Greenland is one of many places facing a critical existential threat from climate change. Last August rain fell at the summit of Greenland's ice cap for the first time in recorded history. So not great. And let's all stop wasting our money going into space and start fixing some real problems. Thank you.

Is my take. The capital city of Greenland is Nuuk, N-U-U-K, which an article by Paul Daley has suggested that Nuuk may be the world's most indigenous city. Quote, Nuuk has probably the highest percentage of Aboriginal people of any city, almost 90% of Greenland's population of 58,000 is Inuit and at least eight in 10 live in urban settlements. Nuuk also celebrates Inuit culture and history to an extent

that is unprecedented in many cities with higher total Aboriginal populations. By proportion and by cultural authority and impact, it may well be tiny Nuuk that is the most indigenous city in the world. No. Unfortunately, as so often happens when colonial powers have jurisdiction over majority indigenous areas,

there have been attempts to bring to Nuuk a more European way of living. Such was the case with Block P that spelled B-L-O-K, space P, and it was Greenland's largest residential building. So. Oh, OK. Governmental housing kind of deal? Yeah, exactly.

OK. You remember how I described Greenland as this like beautiful, you know, white canvas with smaller colorful dots on it? Block P was a large, long, brutalist department complex. I knew you were going to say brutalist. I just knew it. You felt it in your arms. You're like, this thing is going to be concrete and it is

going to be ugly. It's going to be brutal. It had 320 units and it was like 64 units across so long. It was built starting in 1965 to house 1% of the entire country's population who were relocated from their scattered coastal settlements. The building was at the time the largest in the entire kingdom of Denmark, which includes the Faroe Islands, Greenland,

Denmark, et cetera. Yeah. And on its side was the world's largest Greenlandic flag and it was created from clothing fragments by Greenlandic artist Julie Adel-Hartenberg with the help of school children. Oh, that's kind of cute. It's one of the less objectionable things about the story. Yeah, yeah, OK.

The Greenlandic flag is red and white and it's got like a bisecting dot. It's a cool flag. In contrast with the lively, colorful nearby homes, Block P has variously been described as garish and unwelcoming a monstrosity in Isor and was described by locals to tourists as quote, so depressing that it's almost an attraction in itself.

Oh, and just the sheer size of it too. Yeah, I bet. Why so unwelcoming? Because as with most colonialism fails of this type, it did not take into account the actual lives and experiences of the people it was attempting to re-home. For example, fishermen couldn't fit their gear into these shitty, tiny European style closets, so they put it on the

very visible green balconies that overpowered the facade of this fucking behemoth apartment complex. So it was ugly. It was unsafe. It blocked key fire exits, so that's not good. The hallways were so narrow that people couldn't walk down them in the large fur coats that are essential to life in, I remind you, in the Arctic.

Perhaps most revoltingly, Mother Denmark and her architects had not provided for occupants a place to clean and gut their daily catch, so they would have to do it in the bathtub. Oh, no. Yeah, you need a mud room. Or, you know, you can just do it in the tub and that means that your drains are always backing up with coagulated blood and fish guts all the time.

Oh, that sucks. Design is so important. It's just so, you got it. Design is important and also like, don't be ignorant. In 2010, after almost 50 years of wide, intense unpopularity, the government cut its losses, started relocating residents again, and finally in 2013, Greenland's biggest, worst, and most infamous apartment complex, Block P, was demolished.

Yet another European attempt to improve the lives of indigenous people that ended up making them far, far worse. That is so sad. Yeah, it has like Cabrini Green vibes. I thought the same thing. Yeah, I mean, you know, public housing, poorly thought out and maintained public housing. Yeah, I always remind you of each other, but like, that sucks.

It's a sad story because like, you know how I am with like, I want to love Scary Lucy. I want to love the McBarge. I want to love whatever this poor, wretched thing is that everybody else hates and I can kind of almost squintingly get there with this ugly building. If you look at it the right way, but then like, it and what it represents is so ugly as well.

Like, the meaning of it is quite an ugly meaning and so like, I can't even like it for that. It really is the most unlovable thing. I think I've covered. Yeah, yeah, no, there's like all the redeeming qualities are just like, nope. No, thank you. No, I don't need to muster up ironic love for this building.

It sucks. All right, this story takes place in the small East Texas town. Just a quick three hour drive for me actually close out on the Louisiana border tucked into the Piney Woods Carthage, Texas. I've heard of it, but I don't remember in what context. Okay, it's maybe because it's the gas capital of the world. It wouldn't have been that.

No, maybe according to the town website, it's known as the friendliest spot in the world. Duluth said the same thing. They all say the same God damn thing. So this conservative little like few block Main Street town of 6,000 people very small became the site of a lot of news coverage, a lot of media coverage because of a particularly noteworthy murder.

Okay. In 1996, a 39 year old man named Bernie Tita shot and killed 81 year old Marjorie Nugent. He shot her in the back four times with a 22 caliber rifle and then he cleaned her body and packed her in her own deep freeze where she laid in repose for nine months until it was discovered that she had been murdered. It's pretty sad.

It's pretty horrific, but it gets weirder and funnier. I do want to say the murder really isn't the focus. It kind of like the story kind of raffles out from there. So we follow the unraveling. Got you. And it's also one of those things where like, I'm sure I'm not telling you the list or anything you don't already know because I'm sure you listen to other shows more or less like this one

where they talk about very serious things with an eye toward the absurd. There is absurdity in everything. There is absurdity in birth. There is absurdity in death. At least for me, it's about coming in with sensitivity to the people who are harmed in the story and not like to establish people being murdered isn't funny.

Exactly. The end. Yeah, people being murdered isn't funny. The way it goes down. I don't know sometimes, but this story to the way that it comes out in the media, the way that it gets picked up in popular culture, it becomes this investigation of what is funny and what is what is okay?

What is forgivable? What is like pure evil if there is such a thing? Or what is like a lapse? I'm into that. I'm into just the interrogation of human morality just as an entire concept based on this one person who killed someone and put them in a freezer. Okay, let's do it.

Bernhardt, Tita the second. I don't know this story by the way. You don't. I think you might though. I think as we get as we go deeper, you might. Okay, but maybe not. We'll see. Okay, Bernhardt, Tita the second.

His father was a Ukrainian immigrant to Texas and he was a music professor at various small colleges throughout Texas. Bernie, he's known as Bernie, not Bernhardt as his original name, but Bernie. So Bernie's mother was also a music teacher and they grew up mainly in the small town of Tyler, Texas. He had a sister. His mother died in a car accident when Bernie was only two

years old who's pretty young. And his father later became pretty ill, had a long illness and died when Bernie was only 15. Even from a young age, Bernie knew that he wanted to help people in high school. He started working at a funeral partner in town. Okay. And it was kind of like side jobs.

He would like mow the lawn and like clean the sanctuary area and slowly but surely who would kind of start to do a little bit more and more around the funeral parlor. His sister, who now is a social worker in central Texas and doesn't really give her name for the story. Okay. His sister says of him, he wasn't a dour boy. He was popular in high school and for kicks, he'd sneak

the hearse out on Fridays out of the funeral home and drive a bunch of us around. That's sick. Herces are objectively cool. I'm sorry. I don't like, I hope not to end up in one, but they are cool vehicles. They are very cool vehicles.

Through that work, he recognized that he really liked taking care of people. That was something that he was focused on and that the funeral business appealed to him in the way that it was focused on taking care of people, right? Taking care of not only those who had passed, but the grieving families. Yes.

And so he attends McNeese State, which is in Louisiana, and he gets a degree in mortuary science. I don't even know what that degree is. So he gets licensed as a mortician and he applies to work at Hawthorne Funeral Home in Carthage, Texas as an assistant director in the funeral home. Okay. And Carthage, all these places are pretty close.

Tyler might be a little further away, but certainly where McNeese State is in Louisiana and then Carthage East Texas close to that border. Gotcha. The owner of Hawthorne Funeral Home says that he kind of hired Bernie. Seemed like he was a young guy. He just got his degree.

Seemed together enough. He hires him and it's very clear very quickly that Bernie is fucking brilliant at this work. He sings like an angel. He knows how to arrange the funeral hall to really make it feel like homey. This guy sounds too good to be true now. He sings like an angel.

He's not only that, he's spent at a fantastic embalmer. Okay. He's especially good at arranging hair to make it seem very natural. Okay. These are good. I mean, good for him. Okay.

And he's also very good in particular with comforting the little widows of Carthage. So, okay. It's not a very big town. Oh no. But there is an older population around and dudes die earlier than women. So there's a lot of widows.

He was known to strategically place himself next to the widows at their husbands internment in case they fainted. Bernie. He would be there to catch them. Bernie. That's very solicitous Bernie. What a guy. And he sings like an angel.

Like a fucking tenor angel. Okay. He was known to check in with widows long after the funeral. So long after any type of like work duties would be folded. Extended care plan. Yes. He'd bring them gifts, just check in, have a tea with them.

There was one widow whose husband was a mechanic and she often complained about her arthritis and one weekend he's like, come on, let's go. And they went to a hot springs Arkansas and she got to like laze in the warm waters and felt all good. We love a bubbly hot spring. Who doesn't? Those things work.

They do. They really do. So our boy Bernie, he did this with many Carthage widows. So multiple people because of that, he was favored by many of the sweet little old ladies in town. Some of them were so taken with him that they like clearly specified in their wills. Like I want Bernie Tita to sing at my funeral.

I am certain that he will carry me into heaven. Oh, that voice will carry me to heaven. What? I'm spellbound by this Bernie character. Oh my God. What a Lothario. He becomes super popular in town because he's just so extremely congenial.

He's very friendly, not just like the little women like anybody and everybody. But like conspicuously so right so very kind, you know, he was on the town's Chamber of Commerce and he was in charge of decorating the downtown for Christmas. Oh my God. I bet he fucking did a great job at that. Totally long hours, but the good work was done.

I bet that manger scene was something to behold not a two out of ten, like a ten and a half. Yes. He sang tenor soloist at the Carthage First United Methodist Church where he also taught Sunday school and and sometimes when the pastor was out of town or on vacation, Bernie would step in and deliver the sermon according to one elderly church goer.

Let me tell you he was doggone better than that paid preacher. I'm obsessed. Who is this man? What is this? What is this about? He loves singing so much. He became involved in the Panola College Theater and Music Departments.

Carthage is the county seat and so that's the county Panola and he became so friendly and well known over there and his understanding and knowledge of musicals was so in depth that they asked him to direct a few musicals, including showbo and guys and dolls. Huh? He was extremely giving even though I'm sure he was a lot of money.

Yeah. Well, he's who is this man? What is happening? He is earning about $18,000 a year as an assistant funeral director. When are we late 80s, early 90s, but even with that small income, he often bought multiples of things so that he could give them away.

See, I'm saying like he would buy like a nice pen. No, this is like more than I can just hand this is now weird. He is known to enjoy the finer things in life. He was always immaculately dressed a black funeral suit whenever he was at work, but if he wasn't at work, he would be in colorful kind of Tommy Bahama shirts and loafers. His hair always cut shaved very, very, very put together. Right.

It's interesting because this Carthage is a conservative East Texas town, small, not a lot of tolerance in this space, but even still the townsfolk kind of recognize that Bernie is in his 30s and getting older. He's not a bad looking guy and there are plenty of women in Carthage, his own age, elderly who would have been more than interested and made themselves clear to be interested. And yet he did not date anybody.

He was not married. He kept to himself besides all of this service like he kept himself so busy. Maybe that's right. So we're so so the implication here is that he's gay. Yes, the implication is that he's gay, but of course this is like small town. He's Texas.

So there's all these like yes, a little light in the loafers. Yes. Um, some people questioned his sexuality because he liked to wear open toed sandals, you know, like a lot of stuff with that. So then to take us backwards slightly, he then was he wasn't banging the widows. There's he was just being nice.

This is fucking stupid. What's happening? There is some speculation that that could have been happening, but I think the general the general consensus is that it wasn't okay. Bernie was so nice and so friendly. You know, if he was holding a little widows hand, it was probably because she was going to toddle over.

Right. So just like the most giving and involved and this high energy person in a small Texas town and it was clear that he loved living in Carthage and serving this town. Okay, okay. So 1990 comes and he is in charge of overseeing the funeral of Mrs. Marjorie Nugent's husband. Okay.

And if you remember. Yes, but she ends up next to some frozen pizzas. Yes, Marjorie Nugent. She's born in 1950 just outside Carthage. So she's like hometown girl. Her father ran a grocery. Her maiden name is mid yet. She attends college at Louisiana Tech again, we're close

to that border where she meets RL Rod Nugent or he's just recently graduated from school there and an electrical engineering and he has a job with a little known company called Magnolia Oil, which booms into mobile. Now it's mobile Exxon. Yes. In this kind of high powered oil and gas job, they live all over Texas, Louisiana, New Mexico.

They spend most of their time actually in Midland, Texas, which is way out West, big oil boom. And that's where Rod Junior is born. They're only child right by the time that Marjorie who's also called Marge gets into her later life, her husband dies in 1990 and leaves her with somewhere between five to ten million dollars. Okay.

She's a very wealthy woman. She lives in this big huge estate that's like a few dozen acres on the edge of Carthage. It's this huge stone sprawling ranch house. It's very like fa fa and fancy. The other thing about Marge though, she is not well liked. That's tough. I really can't emphasize how unliked she was in town.

Oh, no Marge. What are you even doing? I know we are talking about a small town. So like rumors go and you know, if you don't smile at someone on Main Street, she left the garbage out a day early and that was that. Right. That could be it.

But it seems like there was a pretty sizable population within Carthage that like it wasn't just that. One town's person has been on record saying if she had held her nose any higher, she would have drowned in a rainstorm. That's cutting her stockbroker. His name is Lloyd tiller. He said of her to kind of parse things out, you know, bring things out of the hyperbole, the southern hyperbole.

So her stockbroker said if she liked you, she sent lovely birthday cards and thank you notes. But you had to cater to Marge and constantly flatter her. Strings attached, strings attached to kindness. She could throw a temper tantrum if everything didn't go her way, if everything didn't go her way. That is not an endearing quality, Marjorie. She had one sister who lived in Carthage and they did not

speak. There was some disagreement about an inheritance that was supposed to come down to them and they broke ties. She had another sister who lived in Ohio also didn't talk to her. She was estranged from her son, Rod, who was a retired doctor and Amarillo. He had a few children of his own and she didn't talk to any

of those grandchildren either. Oh, no, this lady doesn't have a lot of friends. She was known in town to be really cheap, even though she was probably one of the most wealthy women there. There's a story of the local vet who explained that a procedure for her dog would cost $45 and she haggled him down. Good for her, though.

That's how you stay rich kids. Not of heart though, not of heart, not of humor, not of community, not of persona, but rich of money. Yes. So, 1990, Mr. Nugent, may he rest in pace. Yes. Bernie oversees the funeral.

I love, by the way, the juxtaposition between these two is very funny that you have like. No, it's wild. You've got the best little boy in the world who does everything all the time for everyone and everybody loves him and then you've got this cantankerous old sped-thrift widow who can't tell you quick enough what to do. I think that's a funny pairing in this kind of Southern

Gothic tale that you're telling me. No, exactly. Exactly. I'm glad you caught the Southern Gothic. Listen, I know all your checks. I know all your checks, Eric. Well, my check. Bernie goes through his usual motions after a funeral and

he checks up on Mrs. Nugent. He brings her, you know, a little fruit basket just so I just want to see how you're doing and slowly but surely she starts to warm up to him. Okay. He comes by more often as friends and she starts spending more time with him and Joyce's company to go out for Mexican

food. They. Why does he like her? Does he just like everybody? That's a good question. He likes everybody, but remember he has this like this calling this pull to serve others. Basically, the meaner and old bat you are the more he

needs to fix you. Exactly. Got you. I think that's exactly it. Yeah, and then he justifies it as like, well, who else would who else would spend time with her? Which I think is that sweet. I mean, I mean, yeah, when you think about it in that case,

it's like she was a widow and she didn't talk to any of her family and nobody in town and she's like on this huge estate all by herself that she could not see people for days and days. Yeah, God forbid she falls or something or God like you did so check in. I get it. I get it.

So it becomes this. Yeah, this kind of check in thing and Bernie is so congenial and so kind that her contankerous attitudes. He's just like, oh, well, he she's just being Marge. That's fine. You know, and he works through it and he's very patient. And they start to become close friends. She gifts him a Mr.

Nugent's Rolex worth about $12,000 expensive watches. I don't get it. I never will expensive sunglasses. I only had to make that mistake once after a few years of this kind of, you know, it's slowly building like I'm just checking on you. Mrs. Now I'm not bothering you and then slowly it's like, well,

don't want to go for lunch. Here's a watch. Yeah. Bernie starts working part-time at the funeral home now so that he can be her personal assistant and business manager. Okay. Yes. I don't okay.

They go on trips all around the world. They go to Egypt and Italy and they spend time in Russia. They go on cruises because Mr. Nugent was never very interested in cruises. They go on a trip to Europe on the Queen Mary, the boat, and then they fly back on the Concorde. Very fancy. I love it.

They go to New York often to see Broadway shows. It's all first class because Mrs. Nugent, that's the way she travels. That's the way she lives in the world and she's willing to foot the bill for Bernie as well. So your initial reaction about like, are they banging? Are they banging? Are they banging?

They're banging. No, they're not. But the town thinks that they might be, right? Like, what is happening? They're going there. Oh, a man and a woman can't be friends. Oh, no, not in New York. Or like, she employs him also.

I know that's part of it too, right? There's, yeah, there's kind of this talk about it because pictures are coming back from the cruises and like rumors are spreading. It's a small town, right? The pictures are coming back from the cruises and somebody's got to pay the piper. Yeah, exactly.

But all in all, it's still just kind of excuse because she's a little lady and Bernie's so sweet and everyone thinks he's gay anyway. So they kind of make sense. Right. It gets to a point where Mrs. Nugent rewrites her will so that the sole inheritor of her fortune is Bernie.

She gives him access to her bank account. Yeah, their freezer, I'm sure. So he could write checks for her whenever he pleased. She was very clear with with anybody, including her, the people, the bank, the her stockholders, anybody who, you know, had, so other employees, I suppose, that he had control and they should respect whatever decisions he made. Bernie with his increase in salary and with an advance

from Mrs. Nugent is able to buy a two bedroom house a mile away from Mrs. Nugent. She felt strongly that her family did not care about her and they did not deserve any of her money. Okay. Eventually Bernie quits his job at the funeral home.

When he tells his boss, whose name Don Lipsy and that Hawthorne funeral home that he's going to do this, he said, and I quote, Bernie, you know what kind of woman Mrs. Nugent is. Whatever you think you're going to get out of her, you're going to have to earn every penny of it. All right. Ah, they could, you know what the Texans can turn a phrase.

I got to say, if this story teaches us nothing, there is some wonderful phraseology. I love it. I love it. I'll never, I'll never fault y'all on that ever. My mom has a few good ones too. They're like, what? Where?

Dude, what's, give me one. Give me one now. Oh, this is kind of a family one that has like, it's like a cleave meaning, a double meaning, a miss on my grave. Oh, I miss that concert. It's a miss on my grave. I love that. That's fucked.

Mm hmm. Yeah. Why do you have to bring up your own death? Cause you missed a concert. That's fucking hilarious. I love it. Right. So there's that, that reading that like, yeah, you're missing

out on something or my aunt was telling me there's this reading that at the time that this phrase maybe was made, you know, it's all kind of squishy, but if a woman had MISS miss on her grave, it meant that she was never married and that she may have been like missing out on something. Is that, is that where the word miss comes from? Cause you're missing out. Missing out on that.

That's hilarious. I'm just a hundred percent certain that this woman is going to torture this poor game audition. You are, you are not wrong. So when Bernie told his boss that he was quitting, his boss's wife actually, cause this town is so small. Everyone knows everybody. She pulls Bernie aside and she says, you know, Mrs.

Nusion is very possessive of you and she's already making you dried out to her estate every morning to fix her coffee and like this life is, are you sure you want this? Right. Which is like a, that's a good ask. That's a good check-in. Yeah. And Bernie replied, deep down inside, she's a sweet woman.

We will get along just fine. So that's his view. Okay. He's got endless patience and he's good friends with her and they work through any issues. Okay, Bernie, you do what you got to do. Um, you know what? You're a grownup.

I can't talk you out of anything. She is extremely possessive of his time. There becomes a point where he's no longer seeing his other friends. He's no longer attending to other widows. Of course, he's quit his full-time job at the funeral parlor. He's still living at his own home, but, uh, he spends the majority of his time at Marge's house.

Why not move in? Okay. I think the kind of nominally he does, like he probably has his own room, you know, he has the purview of her financials. So he is in contact with her stockbroker and kind of says like, Oh, do this, do that, buy this, buy that. Um, there's one instance where he's on the phone with the stockbroker and the stockbroker is like, you don't know anything

Bernie and just hangs up on him. Okay. Mrs. Nugent calls her stockbroker back and it says, if you ever talk to Bernie like that again, I'm not a stockbroker. As much as she is very possessive and very intense, she's also very loyal too. Yeah, as, but in my experience, she's the type of person who

she has these very strings attached transactional relationships, but he's willing to indulge that. So of course she's loyal to him. Like he's, he's the only one who is taking her on her exact terms, right? And her exact terms are you do whatever I say and don't talk back. Yeah.

And he does that in a lot of different ways. I mean, all their, all their trips are fabulous and wonderful, but they're also, you know, he's hauling the luggage. He's tipping the bellhop who she just chewed out, you know, like there's a lot of exactly what you're saying. Like he's kind of compensating for all of this and it eventually gets to the point where on November 19th, 1996, he shows up to her house to take her to lunch at the local Chinese

food restaurant. They're going to run a few errands. He's like, Marge, I've got to take my clothes off at the cleaners. If you want to come with me, then please do. If you don't, I'll just do that real quick and come back and get you. And she's like, no, no, we're late already.

I'll come with you. And they are on the way to her car to get into her Cadillac and they're in some kind of conversation where she starts talking about one of Bernie's friends, right? Somebody else in town and she's of course lived there her whole life nearly and she knows them and starts kind of bad mouthing them. Right.

Just talking shit, which makes sense because she hates everyone and everyone hates her. Yeah. And Bernie shows interest in this person and she's possessive. So I need to remind you how bad this person is because they're not me. In the garage, there was the 22 caliber rifle that she had actually made Bernie purchase to take care of the armadillos

that were digging up her garden. That sounds dangerous. Yes. Don't armadillos don't armadillos have like hard shells that would could potentially ricochet a bullet. Am I crazy? I don't know if they could ricochet a bullet. I don't know.

I know very little about both armadillos and firearms. So please don't take my word for this. You are Canadian. Neither of those are much around here. West Coast nonetheless. It's so true. Picks up the 22 armadillo rifle and in accounts that come through later, he describes what psychologists and psychiatrists

call a dissociative state. He's like floating outside of his body. Yeah. He shoots Mrs. Nugent in the back four times. Like I said, when he reassociates, he sees her dead body and is horrified at what he has done. But he knows exactly how to take care of her.

He's a trained and excellent, brilliant mortician and a killer tenor soloist. So yeah, right. One can do it all. Singing Amazing Grace as he cleans her body. Yes. So he cleans her body and he puts her in that deep freeze. That's in the kitchen.

Right. He takes a garden hose and cleans the blood from the garage floor. It's mid-November. He heads out to see his sister for Thanksgiving. His sister even asked like, what about Mrs. Nugent? Why are you taking care of her? And he says, oh, she went to visit her sister in Ohio.

Okay. Which is strange because she hasn't talked to her sister in Ohio. Yeah, she hasn't talked to anybody. And then as time goes on, you know, Christmas comes and he claims to just be spending Christmas with Mrs. Nugent in her house. She doesn't want to see anybody anyway and nobody, you know, it's not really uncommon to not see Mrs.

Nugent, at least for a period of time. And then when that period of time closes, Bernie starts saying that, you know what? She's been really ill. So she's been at home and I've just been taking care of her and she's, thank you. I will send her your well wishes. He then claims that she has had a stroke and she's an assisted

living outside of town and she does not want to be bothered. So she's under a different name. There starts to be some people who, who are like, hmm, this feels odd. Yeah, yeah. I would expect him to be more perfect at this. I guess this is the one thing that doesn't come natural. But even these people who are kind of questioning are like,

well, you know, it's Bernie and Marge Nugent. So she's a contankerous old bitty and he's very kind and giving and lovely and so and trustworthy. Yeah. And there's even this situation too where one town's person says like, you know, I, I, I thought about saying something but I love Bernie and everybody else loves Bernie. Like I didn't want to back talk Bernie.

Right. So I wasn't, you know, wasn't gonna say anything. Right. The stockbroker, Lloyd Tiller, tries calling Bernie to say like, Hey, I haven't heard from Mrs. Nugent. Of course, Bernie has control over all the accounts and can sign any check he wants.

Right. And so he just reiterates she's sick. She does not want to talk to you. And that all kind of checks out for, for quite a while long enough that Bernie, who has complete control over the finances starts to use those finances and he starts to pretty much write blank checks for people of Carthage. He bought at least 10 cars for people who couldn't afford them.

Oh my God, Bernie. He said, just, just pay me back. He bought a house for a young couple who are struggling scholarships to the local college. He pledged $100,000 for a new prayer building for the first United Methodist Church of Carthage. Who the fuck is this guy? There's a local woman who she runs the, the trophy shop of

Carthage and she was saying, I'm just gonna go out of business. I don't know what I'm going to do. And he says, don't worry. And he buys the store. Holy shit. It has her run it. And that way all the youth teams of Carthage can still get their trophies.

He subsidizes the college theater productions and any choirs that are in town. There was a man who worked at the funeral home with him and he started talking to Bernie and was like, you know, I really want to bring a clothing store to Carthage and I think I could really do this. And Bernie kind of gets on it and he's like, you know, we need a Neiman Marcus here.

We need our own Neiman Marcus. But there was like some miscommunication because the guy opened up a store called Boot Scootin' Western Ware. That's a bit different. So Bernie is like shelling out. Yeah. Oh man, you like it. You see it.

You want it. He bought it. It's happening. You know, I, I describe people kind of coming to him and having these problems, but I think Bernie went out and sought them. I'm not really sure if a lot of people came to him. Yeah. He was just very like, make it rain.

Let's have a good time and take care of each other. Right. But how much of that is like self appeasement? Could be. Could be. Part of that too is he, I think even before Mrs. Nugent's death, he had started with his increased wages had started taking flying lessons when he had learned how to fly.

But once after her death, he bought a small plane like a little Cessna. And everybody knows what's happening here. Yes. More or less. Everyone's kind of figured out what's happening here. Well, it was common knowledge though that Bernie was getting all of these perks from, from his job.

So there wasn't like a huge, I wouldn't say there was a huge shift in him giving away money. It was more just became like further unhinged. I'm sure people were like, what is going on? This is a little suspicious, but it was common knowledge that Mrs. Nugent had given Bernie permission to all of this money and that he was going to inherit it all.

Right. You know what I mean? Right. So I think there was suspicion, but there wasn't enough suspicion that nine months didn't go by. Yes. Yes. Finally, an anonymous person who identifies as a friend of

Mrs. Nugent calls the sheriff and says, listen, we haven't seen her in a while and I think you need to do something. And there's totally a reason why it's anonymous because no one wants a bad mouth Bernie. Right. So finally her son in Amarillo is contacted and him and his daughter, so Mrs.

Nugent's granddaughter, they come out to Carthage and the sheriff opens the house. They, you know, unlock the lock, they break the lock and come into the house and they're noticing that the house is the upkeep has been going on. All the rooms have been housekeeping and the lawn is mowed. Everything is should be everything's in its little order.

Yeah, almost like a very neurotic neat mortician has been in there. Yes. And there's no, there's absolutely no sign of her and tell the apparently the granddaughter sees the freezer sees the deep freeze and notices that there's tape on the deep freeze. Uh-oh.

Oh, that's such an ominous detail. I hate that for her. I know. She is the one who goes to open it and you're totally right among the frozen peas. They see Mrs. Nugent's face. She may have been cranky, but nobody deserves to get put in

amongst the frozen peas. I do feel that way. That's not a very that's not a very dignified storage. The sheriff in order not to tamper with any evidence, he has the entire deep freeze removed from the house. Can you describe this deep freeze unit to me? Is it like a walk-in? Is it like a?

It's like a chest of drawer size. Okay, it's like a classic garage freezer. A garage freezer. Yeah. Okay, say no more. I got you really big hard to move, but they do move it. They put it on the back of a truck and send it to Dallas for a proper autopsy.

And then of course they have like a gasoline powered electricity system to keep it. Yeah, that's what I was just thinking. You need a generator or something. Yeah, they have that all set up. That same day, Bernie is called into the sheriff's office. They actually find him giving a little speech to the little league players fucking course.

They did and he comes down to the station and very quickly he confesses. Yeah. Okay. He says that initially it had been a very, very kind and wonderful friendship and then it became very hateful. He says she became very possessive over my life. She became evil and wicked.

Oh, you should have listened to your coworker, man. Right? I know that coworker is his boss's wife. Yeah. Oh, it was the boss's wife. She was having her fucking Raven Simone moment. She was like, listen, I've seen how this ends and it's not good. And he was like, oh, don't you worry nothing about me sugar.

I'll do just fine. She's sweet deep down. He signs a confession the same day in this confession. He admits to have been so kind of overwhelmed and just felt like he was so cruelly treated by Mrs. Nugent that he had fantasized about hurting her in other ways. Oh, wow. This is somebody who does not have a mechanism for that kind of

feeling, huh? Very well put. Yes. Yes. But he does, he does state in this written written testimony and confession that, you know, he fantasized about hitting her with a bat and that kind of thing. And when asked actually why he put her in a freezer because

there were a lot of questions around this, like he's a mortician. Yeah. He has the knowledge, the skills to, you know, if you really wanted to to get rid of her body, one town's person was like, you have that tiny Cessna you can just fly out over the Gulf Coast and that's an even less dignified way to dispose of a body. In response, Bernie said, I wanted to give Mrs. Nugent a proper burial.

You know, everyone needs a proper burial. Okay. Green giant. But I guess he was thinking like, well, that's not the burial. I will give her one when the time comes. I see, but then how long it's been nine months. Yeah. If you're emotionally distraught enough to murder somebody

because they're shit talking your friend or whatever. I think the other thing too kind of even pulls back from that. If you're not aware of yourself enough to remove yourself from a situation where you're employer, right? You know, I know it was complicated and I know that there was a lot of other things going on, but at the end of the day, it was kind of like, why don't you go, you know, my armchair psychology that is worth absolutely nothing.

That's mine too. Because it's a we're just dumb idiot podcasters. But I think that my read on the situation take it for whatever it's worth is this guy who if he was in fact gay and felt the need to hide it, he seemed to compensate in other areas by making himself kind of like indispensable to community, making himself beloved and I do think he probably had a genuine kindness in him.

Like you say, he chose service as his path or whatever. I don't want to speculate on what his mindset might have been, but if it was in fact his secret, he kept it a secret all that time for a reason, right? Yeah, and he was good. He was good at it and he made himself good at everything. He made himself somebody that you couldn't turn away from because he was so charming and nice and civically involved

and intelligent and he was a snazzy dresser and you know, whatever it is. Yeah, so I get that and then this person whom he has decided to like full devote himself to and that relationship going badly, but him not having a way to vent that feeling in any way because God forbid he ever be anything less than solicitous and perfect to everybody. Of course, if you're that kind of person, if you're a fixer

that might just make you dig your heels and harder and be like, I need to stay around even more. You know, it's it's complicated. This is why I need to be full time. This is why I need to. Yeah, but like the answer isn't murder. So the answer I feel like might be therapy. Yeah, the answer.

Yeah, typically the answer is there. I feel like those two could both. Yeah. Yeah, have used a couples therapy retreat to sort their stuff. Yes, that is my final judgment here is this should have been solved in couples therapy with this confession. The trial gets set up relatively quickly. Carthage is the county seat so they can hold the the trial

there, but district attorney Danny Buck Davidson, who has lived in Carthage all of his 50 years. He knows every knows Bernie knows everybody. He looks around and sees how this town is responding to the news, the news of an 81 year old woman who was shot in the back and put in a freezer. And all these towns people are like, well, Bernie's so sweet though.

Got the trophy industry a float. Yes, I get it. So, oh man, human beings, the DA of Carthage titions that the trial be moved to two counties over to say Augustine, where he felt that the trial be more fair because there wouldn't be because they wouldn't convince huge population. Yeah, but like two counties over and so it does get moved to St. Augustine.

DA Danny Buck Davidson. He begins to paint a picture for this jury. It's a jury trial that Bernie likes the finer things in life, which is not untrue. What I thought when you said that he was being extra solicitous told widows like we have this archetype of the smarmy kind of jiggaloo type who pulls the rings off dying old ladies fingers as they go, you know, exactly.

Yes. So he plays that up the town of Carthage comes out in full force, they pack the courthouse and they roll through the trial. Bernie has assigned confession. Yeah, that's pretty Danny. Yes. It's pretty fucking damning and DA Davidson is right.

He needed to be in a different town to try this. Yeah, the jury comes back with a guilty verdict and he is sentenced to prison for life. Okay, even after the conviction, Carthage is still pretty behind Bernie. They just love Bernie. He's there Bernie. They don't want him to go.

I think at one point actually they had tried to raise enough money for his initial bond, which is 1.6 million and Danny but Davidson adds some extra charges of theft to Bernie's sentence. And so the bond gets lifted to 2.5 so they can't raise the money. Right. But it's like that that type like 1.5 million dollars being

raised for this man Jesus by a small by a small town granted an oil town. So there is a lot of money in Carthage. It's small, but it's right. It's mighty. Here's where the story goes in another direction. I don't even know if you can say left because I feel like we already went left and we go left again was just be right.

So it goes like curly Q everywhere. Inter true crime reporter Skip Hollinsworth love him. One of the greats. Have you read a whole bunch of stuff really? Yeah, but I'm so surprised you don't know. No, it sounded it sounded like Skip Hollinsworth story that didn't like consciously come into my thought but now that you're explaining it and like fucking of course it is.

So I want to I want to spend a little time with Skip because so much of this reporting comes from him and what he he has done. He wakes up one morning in Dallas where he lives. He shakes out the Dallas Morningstar and he sees this story about this murder and he's like, what the fuck is this? I'm getting over to Carthage and it's only like an hour's drive worth written all over it.

Hollinsworth, he's born in Carolina and he grew up in Kentucky, but when he was like 11, he moved to Texas. Right. He moved Wichita Falls comes from a long line of Presbyterian ministers, his father, his grandfather, his sister is a minister as well. Everyone thought that he was just going to be another minister, but he is a self described.

Skaamp and I like that and he got pulled into reporting and journalism. He's the executive editor now of the magazine Texas Monthly. Yep. That's what I typically read his stuff and see as a lot in there and has had a lot. He's been around with the Texas Monthly for a long time, though he also has a true crime history called the midnight

assassin about a series of murders attributed to the servant girl annihilator that took place in Austin, Texas in 1885. I have heard of the servant girl annihilator. So our boy Hollinsworth finds the story in the newspaper and gets his butt over to Carthage. Right. Bernie has been found out the trial date has been set, but

Skip is there before the trial date and he goes to talk to people and get a sense of what this all looks like and he publishes an article called Midnight in the Garden of East Texas. Okay. It's published 1988 and it's published in Texas Monthly and he goes on to publish a few about this case in Texas Monthly and I'm actually going to read the first little chunk of the

article. Okay. But I feel like it captures the tone so well and it feeds into where this story goes next. You're being very menacing about where this story goes. I don't know why because it's not menacing, but I just I'm so to be honest, I'm so surprised you don't know. No, I don't know this story.

I don't know this story. I'm just I still think you. Okay. Okay. So this is from Midnight in the Garden of East Texas by Skip Hollinsworth sitting at his regular table at Daddy Sam's barbecue and catfish. Sorry, BBQ and catfish.

You kill it all grill it in the East Texas town of Carthage District Attorney Danny Buck Davidson begins to realize that he might have some problem prosecuting Bernie Tita for murder. Bernie's a sweet man. Danny Buck Waitress said he's done a lot of good for this town. He's getting poor kids money to go to college and everything.

You've got to admit nobody could sing Amazing Grace like Bernie could someone else said the bull face Danny Buck took a bite of slaw and sipped his iced tea. Now y'all know that Bernie confessed. Don't you? He said trying to keep his voice calm. He came right out and told the Texas Ranger that he shot Mrs. Nugent four times in the back and then stuffed her in

her own deep freeze in her kitchen. There was a long silence. Danny Buck one man finally said it's just hard for me to believe that old Bernie could fire a gun straight. He acts. Well, you know, the feminine oh no, you can tell he's never been deer hunting in his whole life. He's too gay to be a murderer genius.

I'm using that. And you know what a woman told Danny back later at the convenience store. I don't care if Mrs. Nugent was the richest lady in town. She was so mean that even if Bernie did kill her, you won't be able to find anyone town who's going to convict him for murder. So Skip Hollinsworth packs in this like very rich language

and tableau of small town, Texas, East Texas nonetheless. And he tells this this story in this article. The article is mainly investigating this drenchedness of so many people who are willing to kind of just let like oh, Bernie did wrong, but you know, it's okay. Even actually the minister at the first United Methodist was giving sermons after Bernie had about the nine commandments. Yeah, like we need to pray for Bernie.

We forgiveness is very important and it got to the point where Danny, but Davidson stopped going to church. He talked to the mister and was like, what do you do? And you get he confessed. It's the same thing. He confessed. He shot this deep breath. Let there be a lesson.

If you start working really hard right now to establish a whole bunch of social capital, you do get one murder. You're allowed one and it's got to be somebody nobody likes. Yeah, you have to choose wisely. Okay, but gotcha. Yeah, so the article kind of unpacks the strangeness of this juxtaposition, you know, because there's also this small town conservative like murderers get death row, you know, like

there's there's that but then this town is going in a whole different direction. So it's the power of Bernie. I think Holland's worth it in here too. You know what I mean? Like not not in terms of like a guiltiness or or morality, but like there's a way that you shape this story. And I'm you know that.

I know that you're doing it even as you tell it to me now. Can't not be done. Yeah. I mean, it's certainly in a storytelling context, right? Like there is a way to give just the facts of this in a very dry person a shoots person being back puts them in freezer, but that actually captures none of what's interesting about this.

It captures none of the human aspect, but in making the choice to tell the story, inevitably you favor somebody or you disfavor somebody or you omit a small detail. That's not of interest to you, but might be of interest to somebody else in some ways. That's I think at the heart of the story. Yeah. And I think it's worth talking to about Texas Monthly.

It's a publication. It's a magazine publication and they do like long form writing. They publish fiction. They mainly publish nonfiction. It's investigatory like this, but it's also kind of celebrating Texas, examining Texas as a culture. It's a really great magazine actually. You don't gotta be from Texas to read some interesting in

Texas Monthly. So I think that also kind of speaks to what you're talking about. Like you can tell the story really dry, but like the genre where this article gets published is not straight news. It's long form literary nonfiction. Inter filmmaker, Rich Linklater. Okay.

He reads this Texas Monthly article and a few days go by and he calls up Skip Holland's worth and he says, Hey, I want to make a movie and I want you to help me write it. And apparently Skip replied, is this a prank call? That's hilarious. Linklater goes on to say that. No, I've always more. I've been really fascinated by like the Gothic Southern Gothic

East Texas Gothic in particular and I want to tell that story and I think this is the way to do it. So for those of you who don't know, Richard Linklater is a Texas filmmaker. He's made slackers, dazed and confused boyhead school of rock. Like he has a long, long list and some of them are very avant garde. Some of them are a little bit more commercial, but all of them are are kind of unexpected hits.

Right. He was born in Houston, Texas. Shop local. He was a star baseball player. Okay, sure. But I bet his version of Amazing Grace suck. Maybe, but he was also the quarterback of the football team.

So he's like this quintessential Texas jock. Right, right. He is very popular. He always still does wears his hair kind of long over his forehead. In my head. He's the football player. Yes, that was a documentary more or less.

Yes. Dazed and confused. That's the vehicle for Michael McConaughey. That's where we get. All right. All right. All right. Not his name.

Oh my God. I, I, I don't know the man personally. I'm sure he's lovely. I can't stand watching Matthew McConaughey. So I love that you did that to him. What did I say though? I don't even know. Oh my God.

That's so weird. Michael McConaughey from now on. Mike, I'm only calling him Mike from now on. Maybe I'll just say McConaughey from now on. That's where it works better. So it's around this time after before sunset has come out that Rick Linklater calls up Skip Holland's word and says, I want to write this script with you.

They work on the script and together they pull this script a lot. I think from the article. Holland's worth is very humble and says that he'd really didn't do much and he had a lot of these scenes that were really dark comedy macabre that got cut because they were too much and like over the top. But that passage that I just read from the article, like a

lot of those like funny quotes and that whole scenario of being in a diner and that is a full on scene in the movie. What's the name of this movie? Josie Bernie. I have never heard of it. Have you never seen Bernie? No, I've never heard of it. Came out in 2011.

Okay. Starting Jack Black, Shirley MacLean, Michael McConaughey. No, this didn't happen. Okay, okay. I need to watch this clearly. Yeah, no, get down that criteria to watch this. Yeah. Yes, I fucking please speak to me like that more.

Okay. So, Linklater though brings this idea of having what is essentially kind of a Greek chorus in the script where he will hire actors from Carthage to play themselves more or less. Love it. I mean, they're given scripts and they're given lines but Linklater kind of lets actors do their thing and there's a

lot of improvisation. So he kind of lets them do that too and it becomes this weird like gossip chorus is not the official term but like Linklater refers to them a lot as gossips. Right. And the movie has this like, it is a mockumentary but it's an interesting mix of mockumentary because it's like Jack Black who's playing Bernie Tita and Shirley MacLean.

They're like heavy hitter actors and then kind of spliced in between is straight at the camera shots of real life Carthage people being like, is she held her nose up any higher? She drowned in a rainstorm. Right. That's interesting. You get to the credits of the movie and Shirley MacLean, Jack Black, Matthew McCoy and then it's like, sorry Michael

and then it's just pictures of the town's folk, the gossip chorus and it's just one name. That's all you see. They're not like playing someone else. Yeah. Interesting. I watched the movie and I was like, are they real? Are they real people?

Are they not? Because they feel real. You can tell when someone isn't a trained actor. Put it that way. Yeah. And I don't say that in judgemental terms. I think it's really cool to work with people who aren't trained actors in acting roles.

So the script includes the gossip chorus but according to Link later, the script was kind of flat because the chorus was going to add so much through these faces, these accents, these like improvisations. Yeah. And so the script sits on a shelf for 10 years. Okay. In fact, Holland's worth thinks that it's going to be totally

it's done. He got paid to write it and now it's done. And it's in development Hal and that's how these things go. Yeah. And Hollywood, Schmollywood, you know. I'm just a scamp. Yes. I'm a non-minister scamp.

Yeah. When the movie finally does get picked up, it has a pretty small budget for where he is in his career, which is five million dollars and he gets some pretty big names. Like you could probably pay Shirley McClain five mil just to do a movie. So scheduled extremely tightly. They have 22 days of filming to get this thing in the can.

They film it in Bastrop, Texas, which is outside of Austin. Bastrop, Texas. No. They should do that more often. I agree. It's a pretty small town. I don't know what their EDM scene is, but you know, why not? They're outside Austin.

They could pull a lot this way that way. The branding's already there. So they film mainly there. They do some shots that are in Carthage itself and then of course in Austin as well. Link later is a very, he hates working in Hollywood or even living in Hollywood. He lives in Austin and works as much as he can in Texas.

Right. In order to cast the gossip chorus, they do hold auditions for people from Carthage and the surrounding area. You don't have to be from Carthage. They get about 300 people to come out and they have to be in Bastrop to do the audition and it's just a straight up producers just holding a camera and you're meant to just tell, tell a story on camera and it'll be recorded and Rick

Linklater will watch and determine if you get through. Right. So there's no, no line reading it like that. There is a citizen of Carthage whose name is Kay Baby and she is very excited for this audition. She has a wonderful little story where she gets into a car wreck on the way to Bastrop. Oh, no.

And so she calls up her husband and he calls his sister and and she drives Kay Baby to, to the audition in Bastrop and they're trying to get there, but they can't quite find where this Community Center Israel auditions are. So Kay Baby calls 911 to get direction. It's not what 911 is for, but okay. She's a, she's a chain smoker. She loves her kents.

Yeah. So she gets there. She lights up and she just starts gabbing away. She has a beautician's degree from the Barrow Beauty School in Tyler. And so she's very familiar with like, oh, you chat up a client. You keep this going. She sounds like exactly what they're looking for.

She's barely taking a breath through her audition telling all these stories. She talks about meeting Elvis Presley and how she apparently cut his hair anytime he was coming through Texas. Love that. During one visit to Graceland, she, and this is from an article written by Hollensworth. She plucked a crystal from the chandelier in Elvis's shampoo

room and made it into a pendant. Yeah. I mean, that only works if one person does it because pretty soon this chandelier is looking a little bit bald lately. Yeah. But I like it. K-Baby. It's K-Baby.

As soon as Link later sees the tape and she probably doesn't even finish the story and he's just like, oh, she's her. Yeah, that's done. She apparently is so excited. She drives to Houston and buys a $5,000 mink coat. Yeah, holy shit. She's like, this'll look good in one of the funeral home scenes. I'll be able to wear this in the movie.

Oh my God. I love it. Just be yourself. Okay. Immediately buys a $5,000 for a coat. Exactly. Even McConaughey, Mike, his own mother is in the movie as well as I spoke.

Her name is Kay, but everyone knows her as K-Mac. They get McConaughey himself to play the district attorney Danny Buck Davidson. Link later McConaughey worked on, you know, a lot of different things. They're both Texas boys. When Link later shared this script, McConaughey went on to read it and he was, he called up Rick and he's like, I'm so

excited. I cannot wait to show my feminine side on screen. This is my time. Thank you, Rick. I'm so thrilled about this script. And then Richard Link later had to come back and say, I'm sorry, you're not, I don't want you to play Bernie. I, you're going to play the district attorney.

You're not the main character. That's tough. Beep. Shirley MacLean is cast as Marjorie Nugent. She's an Oscar award winner, a French Legion and Kennedy Center honoree. Okay. She's worked with Alfred Hitchcock.

She's known for postcards from the Edge, guarding tests where she also plays a contankerous old lady. And also she plays Weezer in Steel Magnolias. This part was like fit for her. I did not know this. Shirley MacLean has like this very intense background in metaphysics. She's a strong believer in alien contact and past lives. Okay.

Oh, good. Oh, sure. She lived a past life in the mythic city of Atlantis. Surely. She has a long memory. Surely, surely not. I'm sorry. She actually has multiple books published about this.

She, apparently she talked to Jimmy Carter about aliens coming and he stopped her and said, now, Mrs. MacLean, I can't talk. I'm a Christian. I can't to be talking about this. What a response. But as a result, Shirley MacLean has been the butt of many a joke, including David Letterman, who when she was interviewed would not let up on this like new age subject.

And she replied to him, responded to this, you know, poking by saying, maybe Cher was right. Maybe you are an asshole. What for sure? I think I'm going to use, I think I'm going to use like just like anybody else who's like pissing me off. So I think Cher was right. Imagine how cutting that is.

The story has completely different characters now and is about something entirely different, by the way. Totally exactly totally different. So apparently she never did talk to Mrs. Nugent. That did not happen in her preparations, but it was reported that on her nephew was on set, not Shirley MacLean's, but Mrs. Nugent's nephew and he came up to her and said, I feel like my aunt's

present here. Crazy. That must be very spooky. Shirley MacLean, like when she was getting into character would not have anybody touch her because she just felt like, no, Mrs. Nugent would not have people touch her. And apparently her nephew was like, aunt Marge was never letting people touch her.

Yeah. She didn't sound like she was dealing with hugs. No, no. Well, apparently too, she, this nephew of hers came to visit and she locked him in the guest room for two days. I'm so sorry. That's not funny. Yeah.

You can't do that, Marge. No, uh-uh. No. That's confinement. That's like a cry. That's a serious crime. That's kidnapping now. And apparently Shirley MacLean, as she was getting into the role and into

costume, like on set every day, she, her mood would kind of change and she would kind of snap at people. Somebody took too long to do her makeup or, or you're in my way. Get out of, get out of here. She apparently was craving peanut butter crackers. Love that. Entire time of filming. And this nephew says that Mrs.

Nugent's father, according to family lore, invented peanut butter crackers. He had this idea for, for like, she is the first one to think about peanut butter and crackers together. Okay. That's like, there's family lore in my family that I had a great aunt who invented the margarita in Laredo text. I'm, but that's true. That's obviously true.

Jack Black is chosen, not McConaughey, but Jack Black is chosen to play Bernie Tida, which is kind of a genius choice. When you think about it, Jack Black can sing. He's in the band Tenacious D. He sings in School of Rock. So he's worked with Link later before. Not my favorite, Jack Black. I prefer him to Mike McConaughey.

Okay. That's, that's great. Jack Black plays this character really interestingly. He is funny. He's very funny, but he like, I don't know. He like says the joke and then kind of like reserves it in some way too. It's an interesting performance that he gives. He actually had the chance to go and meet Bernie Tida in prison.

Right. They worked it out so that they chatted and not for very long, but gets to kind of hear his voice and see his movements and apparently even within that first meeting, Jack Black can like start to imitate him pretty well. And I think I was talking earlier about how I think you might enjoy Jack Black's performance. He seems to understand this character in a really interesting way. So Jack Black says of Bernie, it seems as though he's obsessed with being

loved and I can relate to that. I don't like to have anyone think badly of me and I understand that sort of obsession with making sure that everything is all good with everyone. His one character flaw is that he never had a release valve. He never got angry at anyone, even if he was mistreated. And over time that built up and led to him snapping. Yep. I just thought that was a fascinating thing to play.

So he came to the same conclusions I did. Yeah, pretty much. Exactly. Pretty much. So much goodness was kind of covering this compartmentalized. It's Ned Flanders situation. You can only be the nicest fucking, um, diddly dandy guy in the world for so long before the fact that you're like a real human with emotional

wants and needs and fears and secrets, whatever enters the picture. Apparently Jack Black, Andrew McClain played these roles so well that any of the shared scenes with the townsfolk, with the gossip course who were really from Carthage, any of those shared scenes that actors would kind of start to like be fascinated by Bernie and they would come up and be like, Oh, Oh, Bernie, one, one woman shared that she would not call him Jack. He was Bernie to her and she knew Bernie and she knew. Yeah, she really knew it's so fucked and she even like, she would look

at Shirley McClain and be like, I don't care for her. And I think Link later kind of like added something extra to the mix in terms of bringing in real people and, and following so closely to the Skip Hollinsworth article too. You know, the article was really fascinated with how this town could love somebody who did something so horrific and examining that kind of juxtaposition or how that, how that of all things could intersect in a small conservative Christian town.

It reminds me a bit of something that we discussed back in the Betty Broderick episode, which was this like the murderers people love, you know what I mean? Genuinely, the murderers people don't think are bad people. The murderers people think we're justified in doing what they did, whatever, even if it's not like consistent, I don't know. It's, it's an, it's an interesting tension. The beloved murderer. It's very similar to the Betty Broderick thing, but I think it is a little different

because I think people kind of loved Betty because she killed her husband in some weird way. And I think in Bernie's case, they just loved Bernie so much that they wanted the murder to just go away. There wasn't a lot of sadness on the loss of Mrs. Nugent because she was so unliked that there was nothing to butt up against this idea of like, well, if the murder just goes away, then then we get our Bernie back and that's great.

So the movie is released. It premieres in LA, but link later also brings it to Austin to have a special viewing for the people of Carthage. It kind of has mixed reviews. There are a lot of people who say, you know, murder isn't funny. Yeah. Why are you trying to make this funny? Which is hard because I think objectively, there are a lot of funny

things about the story too. Yes. No, I get it. But I mean, link later did walk into the project wanting to do a dark comedy. He wanted to do a Southern Gothic comedy. Right. It's still somebody who's alive, who was alive and who is now dead. You know, it's still.

Of course. So there were some people who fell pretty strongly that they had got the story wrong because tonally it was wrong. There were a lot of concerns that Hollywood was going to come in and depict them as really like hit in the way that West Coast depictions of small town America sometimes go. But overwhelmingly, the citizens felt like that was not the case. They felt they had been respected.

And what they said was listen to and link later is a local boy too. Right. He's yeah, as is Matthew McConaughey, Michael McConaughey, etc. The people who were depicted in St. Augustine where the trial happened, they got the Hick vibes because that became the story is that like they don't know Bernie. So they're the bad city. We're the good city.

That's hilarious. I love it. Yeah. Yeah, it's Shelbyville. Yes, exactly. But there is somebody who saw the film and did even more than just comment on it, lawyer Jody Cole, criminal defense attorney out of Austin. She watched the film and got really interested and she requested the

court documents and went through everything with a fine tooth comb and she thought, you know what, Bernie never had a record. He never had any other. Oh my God. I want to appeal this. And he has the voice of an angel. Well, and my God. So Bernie, who actually at that time had never seen the movie, Linklater

tried to get a viewing of it in prison for him, but it didn't happen. But Jody Cole reaches out to Linklater who's of course in contact with with Bernie and Linklater says, Hey, Bernie, if you want to repeal, like there's a heavy duty lawyer over here. She really thought there must have been some explanation for Bernie's snap. Bernie Tita says, All right, yeah, let's, let's give it a go. And she has all of the evidence requested. She kind of goes through everything.

When they arrested Bernie, they took a lot of things and cataloged a lot of things from his house. So she was looking through all of all of those files and documents and evidence and she noticed that he had several books about surviving childhood sexual abuse. Oh, no. And Jody Cole goes to the prison and interviews Bernie multiple times and it's not until like the third time that she talks to him that

he finally does admit that he was sexually assaulted as a young teen by his uncle and repeatedly as well. Like it was a pretty severe situation. And Cole says, you know what? I think this might be something. If you're willing to talk to a psychiatrist, we can get kind of a purview of, of that abuse and how it might have contributed to this. Right.

And he does meet with a psychiatrist and it's, it's pretty clear at least to that psychiatrist that Bernie has exactly what you were saying compartmentalized all this pain and anger into this tiny little bubble that could never be pierced and he always had to hide it and to do so, you know, be kind to everybody. He met to the point of his own destruction and it just got to a point where that bubble did burst and this in a dissociative state. He committed this act of murder.

Yeah. It gets brought to another juried court again. It doesn't take place in, in the county where Carthage is again. It has to happen somewhere else because everyone loves Bernie still. Everyone loves Bernie. He bought me a jet ski. I didn't even ask for it. Yeah.

There were some jet skis. It's true. He did buy some jet skis for people. You're right. You did. I did not include that detail and you knew that. Holy shit. You knew that you're like Shirley MacLaney.

Oh, no, my peanut butter and crackers. When that piece of information comes out, Danny Butts, who has recused himself from this trial, gives us a written and signed testimony stating that if he had known that, he would not have charged Bernie with life in prison. Oh, okay. It would have been, according to Texas state law, it would have been probably more like a 20 year sentence, which at this point, the movie

comes out in 2011, Bernie went in in 98. So it's been over 10 years and, you know, he's been a model prisoner as well as you can imagine. I bet the prison musicals kick ass. He's like crocheting these little memoriams for the grieving families of Carthage and they're get sent through the funeral home. Like he's just, of course, over the fucking top, you know what I mean? Of course, of course.

So Danny Buck Davidson writes this testimony, signs it. Mrs. Nugent's family, the ones that she has disowned are livid that this case would be appealed at all. Okay. And they bring their own top notch lawyers to the table. So they are the prosecution in this trial. For this particular trial, though, that Jody Cole is overseeing, Bernie is released from prison.

He is out on bond. Does he go back to Carthage? He does not go back to Carthage. He's released on the stipulation that he will live in Austin in the garage apartment owned by Richard Linklater. Okay. He's out in preparation for this trial for two years. Living above Richard Linklater's garage as you do.

He worked for a lot of nonprofits about like inmate rights and well-being. He was a model citizen. He attended church. I'm sure he did. Linklater himself said I had absolutely no hesitation about living with Bernie. Bernie babysat my two daughters all the time. It didn't work out so great for the last person he lived with. I know, but I guess he's also but she was a particular lady.

She was a particular lady and maybe he's learned his lesson. I mean, because that's the other thing about this trial is that it is not a trial of Bernie's guilt. It has been confirmed and there's absolutely no way shape or form. He's already confessed that he has not killed her. It's for a lessened sentence. That's what they're looking for and what is, you know, with this new psychiatric valuation and we have, you know,

Danny Buck Davidson's statement saying like, I would have done a lesser sentence in the first place if I had known this. But the Nugent family is bringing these heavy hitting lawyers and they make the case that Bernie snapped and killed Mrs. Nugent because he had been stealing her money. Okay. And she found out and bing bang boom. Yeah, or she was about to find out because, you know, some of the taxes were going to become back wonky and blah blah blah.

And so he snapped, killed her, stuffed her in a freezer and the case goes fully to trial. The Nugent's lawyer also bring a psychiatric doctor who has interviewed and analyzed Bernie and he says to the contrary of Bernie's psychiatric doctor that it seems to him that Bernie is over this childhood abuse and that this is, this is something else. He's, he's over it. Jesus. He's just over it.

How could this be part of it? Yeah. I mean, of course the movie is involved in this because people know the story because the movie and the movie is very closely based on this examination of Bernie is a really good person. Right. It's, that's what it's dealing with. It's again, the way that you tell the story is in some ways more

important than what actually even happened. There's the story of Bernie who's this wonderful guy who suffered this really horrible abuse as a child and never had a way to deal with it and this is just how it happened. And then there's the story of the very elaborate con man who was taking all this money and from, you know, little old lady and then when he was going to get found out, he shot her. The trial goes through, jury decides their verdict and they

sentence Bernie Tita to 99 years in prison. So life. It's essentially life. At that point, he's 50 years old. So yeah. Is there a possibility for parole? He will be eligible for parole in 2029. And that is the story of Bernie Tita, this gothic East Texas

tale. Wow. I am so surprised you have not seen the movie. No, I've never heard of the movie. When you said the cast to me, I thought, did she randomly generate that? I guess no one really is that nice and I don't mean that in a cynical way.

I just mean it in a like when you're so over poweringly, just the nicest, best, greatest person at everything. I don't even like sit there being like, oh, he had an ulterior motive, which is something that I thought going in when you were describing him. I'm like, this guy sounds totally true. He's doing something like this is crazy and I'm willing to buy on that he is basically at heart a nice giving person, but

there's also a real desperation there to be loved that makes me feel sad for him. Obviously the stuff that you mentioned about the sexual abuse doesn't make me any happier. No, I don't think any of the trials can really like figure out the morality of it all because it's even it's more complex than 99 years in prison. You know what I mean?

Like there's just he doesn't seem like somebody who's at any danger of reoffending. He doesn't seem like he's somebody who's going to be like a blight on society if he gets out. In fact, he saved the trophy store like he's he is he is demonstrably like a suspiciously good member of community. So it's a tough one to square away. It sounds like yeah, he just snapped.

Yeah, sounds like he just snapped. It's not a very nice thought to end on. Is it the idea that even like the absolute fucking nicest to a false person is yeah, that is a that is a possible thing that can happen. Not a very settling idea. Don't don't start distrust in your neighbors because of bittersweet. No, no, bring bring him a cup of sugar.

Exactly. You know, but but it's got to be bittersweet. So maybe like sprinkle some some like cyanide stay sweet everyone rush. Yeah. Thanks for tuning in. If you want more infamy, go to bittersweetinfamy.com or search for us wherever you find podcasts.

We usually release new episodes every other Sunday. You can also follow us on Instagram at bittersweet.com. If you liked the show, consider subscribing, leaving a review or just telling a friend. Stay sweet. The sources Taylor used for his Memphis were an Atlas obscure article on Block P by Josh published April 10th 2013, which is the world's most indigenous city by Paul Daly in the

Guardian and various Wikipedia articles. The sources that I used for this story were a series of articles by Skip Hollinsworth published in Texas Monthly, the first one being Midnight in the Garden of East Texas published January 1998, the second lights camera Carthage published May 2012 and lastly, Bernie in Hell published June 2016. I looked at Shirley McClain.com. I watched 48 hours episode called The Mortician, the murder,

the movie by Peter Van Sant aired October 1st 2016. I read in the Longview News Journal, Carthage folks react to Bernie movie published April 2021. I watched an interview conducted by Melanie Torre jailhouse interview with Bernie Tita that aired November 2021. I watched a video from Hit Fix Bernie interview with Shirley McClain and Jack Black that aired April 2012. I looked at the Wikipedia articles for Bernie Tita Skip

Hollinsworth, Richard Linklater and Carthage, Texas. And of course, I watched and studied Richard Linklater's 2011 film Bernie starring Jack Black, Shirley McClain and Matthew McConaughey. The interstitial music that you heard earlier is by Mitchell Collins and the song that you are listening to right now is T Street by Brian Steele. .