Crime Junkie - INFAMOUS: Lizzie Borden

Episode Date: October 29, 2018

Lizzie Borden took an axGave her mother 40 whacksWhen she saw what she had doneShe gave her father 41But did she really? In this episode, we tell the story of Lizzie Borden and the other suspects in the case who you've probably never heard of. For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/. Sources for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/infamous-lizzie-borden/    

Lizzie Gordon took an axe gave her mother 40 wax when she saw what she had done. She gave her father 41. Or did she? This is one of the first true crime stories I ever heard as a young kid. One that I became obsessed with. In fact, I even gave my first presentation on it freshman year of high school in speech class. And actually, I'm really glad I went to a school of over 4,000 kids because any time I had to give an oral presentation, all four years, it was always about some kind of murder case. And if any of my teachers were talking, I think I would have spent a lot more time

with the counselor's office. But I didn't and I got a lot of practice for my future as a podcaster. Now this case was always so fascinating to me because of all the folklore that came out of it. The exaggerated jingle, the fact that Lizzie Gordon was considered to be guilty by an entire town, an entire country for generations, even though she was acquitted. Did you know there were other suspects, even other people arrested, but you never hear about those anymore? At least not until today. I want to tell you the full story of Lizzie Gordon and some other suspects that maybe should have been looked into. Now Lizzie was born to

Andrew and Sarah Gordon back in the 1800s. She was the last of three children. Her sister Emma was the oldest ten years older than Lizzie and there was a sister in between the two who actually passed away in her teens. Lizzie also lost her mother at a very young age, just around two and a half, so she never really knew her mom. But she did grow up with a stepmom. When Lizzie was just about five, her dad remarried to a woman named Abby. Abby was 30 at the time, never been married, so she was considered to be a spinster in town, which as someone who is about to be 30, I take total offense to. But I get it, those were

the times, blah blah blah. Either way, she wasn't like the prime pickens and Andrew really wasn't either. He had two girls to take care of, so a lot of people think that their marriage was more of a convenience rather than from love. Andrew made a good living as the president of a local bank. However, just because he had the money didn't mean he lived like he had money. All the people with money in their little Massachusetts town called Fall River lived on what they called the hill. They all had running water and gas lamps. Some people even had electricity, but not the Bordens. They still lived down on the numbered streets with no

running water and kerosene lamps. In fact, it's so strange as I was researching this case and looking at their house, there isn't even a bathroom in the house, which is such a bizarre concept to us now, but totally normal for them back then. The girls didn't feel like they fit in growing up. They weren't really permitted to engage with other kids their age socially. Girls Lizzie's age were getting fancy dresses and going to parties, and really she just got to go to school, go to church, and come home. By junior year, she even dropped out of school, and aside from a trip to Europe that her father permitted, she really just

stayed at home, so she had a very small circle. Lizzie was always known as a bit peculiar and she even had a habit of shoplifting. She was actually pretty known for this around town, but never gotten any real trouble, and I don't know if it's because her father was like a prominent figure in the area or because it was a small town and you just kind of handled it amongst your own, but basically the store owners would just be like, oh that Lizzie, and they would just write down whatever she took and build her dad for it. As Lizzie grew up, not a whole lot changed. She didn't really date, she didn't really socialize a ton any more

than she did as a young kid, and all of her activities were really based around the local church, which she was heavily involved with. In the summer of 1892, Lizzie was 32 years old, unwed, and still living at home with her father, stepmother, her sister Emma, and their housekeeper Bridget. Now in 2018, it might seem strange that they were all still living together under the same roof, but in the 1800s, it was super socially unacceptable for a young woman to move out of her parents' house unless she was getting married. So Lizzie, unmarried, stayed at home with her sister well into her 30s and her sister even into her 40s. So

again, it's the summer of 1892 and there were some strange happenings around the board and home and tensions were running high within the family. You see, there was a rift building between Lizzie and her stepmom, Abby. Recently, her father had actually gifted some real estate to people within Abby's family and both Lizzie and Emma got upset about this. They felt like they were entitled to all of Andrew's real estate and any like fortune he had and that he shouldn't be giving it to Abby's family because they weren't blood, even though he'd married her and they'd been together for so long. So to mend this, Andrew, their father,

decides, okay, I'm gonna give the two of you a house as well. And it's a very strange interaction because he gifts them this home and then they just sell it back to him for cash. But after this whole interaction, it still never really got resolved and a relationship that was never super loving to begin with between Abby and Lizzie got even colder and instead of referring to her as stepmother or mother, she would now only call her Mrs. Borden. Now in this summer, something else happened to the family. They had experienced a break-in in broad daylight. The only things that were taken were $50 and some jewelry from Mrs.

Borden. But absolutely nothing else was disturbed, almost as if the person who came in knew exactly where to look. And police were notified of this break-in, but just a few weeks after, Andrew called off the investigation. This to me is super strange because unless you know who broke into your house and you were gonna like handle it internally, why wouldn't you want police to continue to look for this person and try to get back your stuff? And he might have been doing that, handling it internally himself because after this incident, Andrew started locking all of the rooms in the home, every bedroom, every closet, the

sitting room, and he had this one master key that he would kind of carry around with him or leave on the dining table. So it's not like he thought someone was going to come in and take the key, it's almost like it was a message to someone within the family or someone within the home, like I know what you did and if you do it again, you're gonna have to come through me first. But as far as we know, there were no other incidents of theft in their home and again, he totally called off the investigation and never pushed forward to find out if there was a threat to their family or if there was somebody really after their

things. The murders which now live in infamy happened on the 4th of August. Before we go to that day, I need to tell you one more strange thing because it might play into one theory about what could have happened. In the first days of August, just days before Andrew and Abby would be murdered, the family got very sick. Abby told her friend that she thought maybe the baker's bread had been poisoned and Lizzie, this very night before her family was murdered, actually was talking to a friend and basically said, you know, I think my dad has these enemies and I think they're poisoning our milk and I'm even so afraid of

these enemies that I think they're gonna come burn our house down or do something bad and I've hardly been sleeping because I have to sleep with one eye open. During this time that the family was sick and just the day before the murder, the Bordens actually had a visitor. Lizzie's uncle John was in town and staying with them in their guest room. Now this was Andrew Borden's brother-in-law. It was by marriage, so it was from his first wife Sarah who had passed away. From everything I can tell, John didn't appear to be sick in any way like the rest of the Bordens, so we have to believe that whatever they had come down

with, whether it was a virus or a flu or actually being poisoned, was happening before John arrived. Now this takes us to the fateful day and I need to quickly explain the layout of the Borden house to you. In the front of the house near the living room, there's a staircase that takes you to the second floor. If you walk up the staircase to that second floor straight ahead of you, you would see the guest room and to the right of you would be a door leading to Lizzie's room. Those are the only two doors you can enter from this side of the hallway. Coming from this way, in order to get to Emma's room, you would actually have to

enter Lizzie's room and then there was a door on the left that would normally look like a closet but was actually Emma's room. There was another door in Lizzie's room to the right that actually led to her parents room, but her parents had their own access to the first floor through the back of the house. There was a stairwell from the kitchen that led directly to their room and a couple of interesting things I want to point out about this layout of the house. First is that Emma's room off of Lizzie's was like half the size. Like I said, it would be like a walk-in closet to Lizzie's really big room and I know

someone had to get the smaller room but as an older sister, I would have so called dibs and it's just something that stuck out to me that I thought was really bizarre. Like why did Lizzie get this? Did she demand it? Was there a reason or did Emma just not need the space? The second thing worth noting is that the door between Lizzie's room and her parents room was nailed shut and I haven't been able to find an explanation of this. Was this just something custom of the time because it would be super weird and inappropriate to have access to your parents room or were they wanting this extra layer of protection

between them and a daughter that they might have suspected of violence? To be clear, there were never any reports of Lizzie being a violent person or her family being fearful of her. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Everyone said they could never imagine her harming anyone. At least that's what people would say until the day that her parents were murdered. On that morning, breakfast was made for the family to eat together. Now Emma is away at a party so she did eat with the family and Lizzie just chose not to eat with them and this was kind of a usual thing. She never really ate with a family. Some speculate it was because of

her bad relationship with Abby but the truth is we really don't know. So Andrew, Abby and John all eat breakfast together and then John leaves to visit some other relatives on the other side of town. He'll later say that he was going to visit actually someone that was sick and then Andrew leaves the house to go to the bank to tend to some work. Abby tells their housekeeper that she would like her to wash the windows while she makes up the guest room from John's stay. During this time Lizzie stayed home and was moving between the barn and the house doing random little tasks. Tasks that have changed depending on when

or whom she was telling the story to. The housekeeper is still at home also cleaning the windows and doing her chores like Mrs. Borden had instructed her. Andrew arrives back home at 10.45 in the morning and at first he tries to get in through the side door. The door that he always uses to get into the house but on this day it was locked. So he goes around to the front door and the front door is locked too. So he pulls out his key, puts it in and nothing. It's not turning, it's not working. It seems that other locks had been bolted shut and he cannot get into his own home. Now their housekeeper, Bridget, hears Andrew knocking, trying to

get in so she comes to open the door for him and she remembers hearing Lizzie laughing from the top of the staircase landing near where her room would have been and where the guest room would have been. When he comes in, Bridget and Andrew don't exchange any words but then Lizzie comes in and Andrew and Lizzie have a chat about the mail and when he asks her where Abby is she tells him that Abby received some kind of note about a sick friend and she wanted to go visit them and he asks what sick friend but Lizzie said she didn't know and she didn't know who had actually sent the note. Lizzie leaves the room and

Andrew takes off his coat and sits on the couch in the front room presumably for a nap. After Bridget hears this interaction she goes back to finishing the windows and then lays down for a nap herself. Shortly after she lays down just three or four minutes by her own account she hears the town bell and knows that it's 11 o'clock. Just then she hears a scream. Lizzie is yelling and saying Maggie come down here. Now I have to say they all called her Maggie and I don't know if this was some kind of like derogatory name or they just named all of their housekeepers Maggie but it wasn't her name it was some weird nickname

they give her but they always refer to her as Maggie. So she yells and says Maggie come down and Maggie goes to the staircase and said what's the matter and she says come quick father is dead somebody came in and killed him. When the housekeeper Bridget gets to the parlor the scene is gruesome. Andrew is laying on the living room couch slouched over on his right side with his face having been so badly chopped up with a hatchet that there were no facial features just a hole where his face had once been. Bridget ran across the street to get the neighbor who was also a doctor and I'm not sure what the point of getting a

doctor was if you would see pictures of Andrew Borden there was no question he was deceased but when she gets back Bridget was so confused she asked Lizzie like where were you when this happened I know I locked all the doors I latched all the screens how would someone have gotten in without breaking in or ripping a screen and Lizzie tells her that somehow she doesn't know she was outside but the screen had been unlatched and was wide open when she found her dad. Lizzie and Bridget go wait in the kitchen for Dr. Bowen to confirm that Andrew had in fact died. When he does Bridget says something to the effect of like gosh I

wish I knew where Mrs. Borden was so I could go find her and tell her what's happening and Lizzie says well I'm sure I heard something upstairs I think she's home now why don't you go look for her and in so many words she's like oh hell no I am not going up the stairs alone when some crazy axe murderer is roaming around and like fair I wouldn't go up either but this behavior from Lizzie stands out to me it seems like in a lot of the cases that we talk about the person involved doesn't want to be the one to actually find the crime scene they want it to be someone else but if that's the case if that's the

psychology going on here why was Lizzie okay being the one finding her father it really can cut both ways now there was another neighbor who had come over at this time Mrs. Churchill and she offered to go upstairs with Bridget now they first went to the Borden's room to get sheets to cover Mr. Borden's body and when they went there the room right above the kitchen were supposedly Lizzie heard something there was no Mrs. Borden so they decide to check the rest of the upstairs they want to go around to the front of the house ascend those stairs and see if anyone is in the guest room or in Lizzie's room or in Emma's room and

as soon as they ascend the stairs they see her Abby Borden laying face down in the guest room between the dresser and the bed she like Andrew had been bludgeoned to death with a hatchet now neither woman went in the room they immediately ran downstairs and waited for the police to arrive police were called at 1115 and arrived shortly after and what they find is somewhat surprising it didn't appear as if there was a mad intruder who went on a rampage in the home Abby appeared to have been killed an hour and a half to two hours before Andrew was killed meaning that the killer stayed in the home and laid in wait

for Andrew without going after Bridget without going after Lizzie and nothing in the home was taken this appeared to be a very personal attack because Abby had been struck 18 times and Andrew had been struck 10 to 11 despite the jingle that would surface later about them being hit 40 to 41 times it was actually 18 for Abby and 10 to 11 for Andrew now the first person to be arrested in this case wasn't Lizzie she wasn't even a suspect on day one in fact the first person they arrested was an immigrant man who lived in town and there was really nothing pointing to this man but I have to believe that they're thinking at the

time was surely something so gruesome had to have come from outside our community it was small-minded thinking that I'm sad to stay still persist centuries later it didn't take long though for this immigrant man to be released and for the police to be forced to look at other suspects suspects close to the Bordens because after all it seemed that it was very personal it would only be a few more days before Lizzie came into investigator sites a pharmacist came forward and said that just the day before the murders Lizzie tried to buy some poison from them but they wouldn't sell it to her this

combined with the fact that the entire family had been sick for days led investigators to wonder if maybe Lizzie had been poisoning the family all along and when she couldn't get access to more or when the poison just wasn't working fast enough she considered a swifter method of execution now when they confronted Lizzie with this she said that she was buying the acid to clean some of her capes nothing more but this wasn't the only suspicious behavior of hers in the days leading up to and after the murder Lizzie was seen burning a dress in the days following her parents murder and she admitted to

saying that it was a dress that had been stained with paint and her sister has always backed up this story but it's a very strange incident that I don't think anyone could really look past if this had taken place today I don't even think that this would be an issue because the dress that she was burning she probably would have never gotten a chance to burn because they would have found it during the initial search of the house and they would have known right away was it blood or was it paint maybe case closed we wouldn't be talking about it hundreds of years later but back in 1892 it was deemed improper to go through a woman's

things so when they did the initial search of the house after the murders they didn't go through Lizzie's room to find a dress covered in blood or paint and they didn't search her person to see if she maybe put a clean dress over one that was already bloodied to cover the stains now the case against Lizzie was only compounded when she did a pretty bad job accounting for her whereabouts that morning police said surely you would have heard two people being axed to death but I actually disagree with this Bridget the housekeeper was around the home too and she doesn't claim to hear anything now granted sometimes she was

outside but Lizzie says that sometimes she was in the barn neither one of them heard anything but even more even if they had been in the home I don't think there would have been screaming for anyone to hear Abby was hit first on the side of her face almost like she was turning around to see who was in the room and then she was surprised by that first blow and that first blow knocked her down and the rest were to the back of her head she didn't even have a chance to scream or to make a noise likewise Andrew was presumed napping when the first blow came to him killing him instantly there wouldn't have been much

to hear whether there was sound or not Lizzie's excuse for not hearing the thump of Abby's body or any kind of commotion was because she said she was outside in the barn up in the storage loft looking for fishing sinkers however even this story falls apart because when the police go and check that loft police say there were no footprints in the sawdust up there and it appeared as if the entire area had been undisturbed for some time all of this is what led to the mayor pulling Lizzie aside at her parents funeral and telling her that she was the prime suspect and they would be calling an

inquest to see if they could bring charges against her for the murder of her parents now Lizzie is officially arrested on the 11th just one week after the murders and she's transferred to another town to await trial since Fall River didn't have any kind of prison or housing for women and this is kind of a good social indicator to like set up her trial in those days women did not commit heinous crimes like this and surely not well-to-do churchgoing women they don't even have a place to house these people so it's like incomprehensible for them for someone like her to commit a crime like this now

she had to wait almost a year in prison before her trial began on June 5th 1893 when she did finally get there though she had the dream team before the dream team was even a thing one of her three lawyers was a former governor who had actually appointed the judge on her trial and her lawyers went to work and actually got a lot of stuff in her case deemed inadmissible but there were two key points that the prosecution was not allowed to bring in because of her lawyers work now the first remember how I told you that Lizzie said that she was in the barn looking for some kind of fishing stuff when the murders happened

well she also had told another person that she was doing something else in another part of the barn or the house and the prosecution wanted to use this to point to this as proof of her lying saying she's telling everyone different stories about her alibis but she had been given morphine as a sedative after everything had happened but before talking to police so her lawyers say you can't listen to anything she said and because she was on drugs at the time none of it can be taken as proof or as testimony so all of that gets thrown out the second important thing is they also got the entire testimony from that

pharmacist about Lizzie trying to buy poison the day before the murder thrown out because get this it was ruled that the means of killing were too different poison versus axing somebody and because they didn't occur on the same day they said it was totally irrelevant both of those points seem bananas to me because if you're gonna kill somebody just because you're trying a new method on the next day doesn't mean you didn't do it but her lawyers were earning their money and so that entire thing got thrown out so really what the DA had was all circumstantial stuff to go on they basically said she had motive she wanted

his money she was tired of living like a poor person when they had money to spend she wanted to spend the money and they said that she hated her stepmom they also said she had opportunity she was the only one in the house at the time now they're saying that Bridget was technically outside the house but they're saying that she was home she admits to being home when this happened it's unlikely that a random person would have come in and not taken anything and according to them there were no other obvious suspects but don't worry we'll get back to that later during the opening statements Lizzie ended up fainting

in the court now either she really did or she could have been putting on a little bit of a show because one of the things the prosecutor pointed to in his remarks was that Lizzie didn't even faint or become weary when she found her parents dead so surely he said this is a sign of her guilt because any woman would so was she really overwhelmed by the gravity of it all or was she giving them exactly what they wanted to see as the trial proceeded we learn more of what the DA has they also found a hatchet in the house missing its wooden handle and ashes had been thrown on it police believe in attempt to make it

look dirty old and unused in an unusual move for the time they actually exhumed the bodies of Andrew and Abby boiled off their skin and tried to make comparisons between the hatchet that they found and their wounds I mean the theatrics in this courtroom were seriously epic for the time and I think it's part of the reason why this case has lived on for so long and even though they kind of fit the wounds the wounds are really so large so gaping that you couldn't make any real conclusions now when they do all of these theatrics when they bring out the skulls of her parents with their flesh boiled off Lizzie

faints again and again she could be faking it but also your parents skulls with their flesh boiled off seems like kind of a legit reason to lose it now much of the trial transcripts are actually available online but there are a couple of things that I want to point out that I found really interesting when Bridget is on the stand there's a big deal made about what Lizzie was wearing the day of the murders and it's a little hard to follow because Lizzie's lawyers keep objecting like crazy but I think the point the prosecution tries to make is that Lizzie wasn't wearing her normal daydress remember this is the

1800s you had like three dresses your everyday dress maybe your backup dress and a fancy dress so I think what they were trying to point out is that for some reason on this day Lizzie isn't wearing the clothes she normally did day today the insinuation being that Lizzie couldn't wear her dress that she normally wore because it was likely covered in blood and then they think that that's the dress that she later burned another point that the prosecution brings up and honestly it's the point that probably sticks with me the most even though Lizzie's looking real shady at this point a lot of this

I can get past but this next thing this thing is a sticking point for me when Emma is on the stand Lizzie's sister who's still a hundred percent standing by her and saying there's no way she did this she is asked about the note Abby Borden supposedly got that morning we now know that Abby was likely killed around 9 or 9 30 if you remember from the beginning of the story when Andrew gets home Bridget over here is Andrew and Lizzie talking and when Andrew asked Lizzie where Abby was she tells him that she had gotten a note about a sick friend had gone to visit now Lizzie stuck by this story and asserts that this

note came but Abby must have been killed before she got the chance to go so when Emma is on the stand they grill her hard about this note asking her okay if Lizzie wasn't just flat out lying because she knew her stepmom was already dead in the bedroom upstairs where is this note who wrote this note who delivered the note give us anything and Emma has to admit that she doesn't know she said they put an ad out in the paper asking for the writer or the deliverer of the note to come forward but no one ever did even though Emma got grilled by the prosecution on this point she really was a defense witness they brought her up to

testify to Lizzie's character she said she didn't want her dad's money she wouldn't have killed him it's true that she didn't like her stepmom but not enough to kill her and if the reason for killing them was hating her stepmom why on earth would she kill her dad too and Emma wasn't the only one to say these things the defense had a long line of character witnesses for Lizzie all portraying her as a sweet Christian Sunday school teacher and you guys it worked it took just 90 minutes for the jury to deliberate and despite the prosecution's case and that note that note I just cannot stop thinking about

they found her not guilty upon hearing the verdict Lizzie laid her head on the railing in front of her and just wept now just because the court found her not guilty didn't mean her town did with the exception of a few close family members and friends she was basically ostracized but she refused to leave Fall River after inheriting her father's money she finally bought that nice house on the hill where her and her sister lived for a long time together until they eventually had a falling out and no one knows what it was about exactly but by the end of their lives Emma and Lizzie refused to speak and it seemed that

Emma was more the one mad at Lizzie saying she would never set foot into their house again until Lizzie left but even when she hated her even saying all this she still stood by her and said her sister was innocent of the murders like in all of the cases we see today if police and prosecution lose they don't go back and reinvestigate just because the jury said that they got the wrong person they say well we did our job the jurors got it wrong so we're calling it closed they never investigated any other suspect but over the next century many people would put forward suspects of their own the first being Uncle John now

he had told police that he was visiting a sick relative down the road from the Bordens at the time of the double murder now he also had mentioned once that he was with the town doctor but that's the same town doctor that was at the Borden home looking over the bodies so it doesn't totally add up Uncle John also had a failing business which apparently he and Andrew had argued about the night before I don't know if he was asking for money or if Andrew had some stake in his business but they had a big fight about the business in general there are two main authors who put this theory forward about Uncle John being the killer

Beverly Falstad and Rich Little they say it was likely an act of rage and they theorize that while Abby was cleaning up his guest room maybe she said something kind of snarky to him apparently that was kind of in her personality and then he attacked her then he left the house to create an alibi and came back with the intention of killing Andrew because in his mind he knew that if Andrew came home and found his wife dead he would know that John did it he wouldn't put place blame on any of his kids like Lizzie John had a couple of changing stories about his alibi when he returned home along with his changing alibi

this author has some kind of wild theories that go along with this he basically thinks that John and Bridget the housekeeper might have been having an affair and he thinks Bridget knew that he committed the crimes because she was wandering around the house she was cleaning the windows and this to them and people who believe this theory is why maybe Bridget stood by Lizzie for so long because there was a lot of circumstantial evidence against Lizzie she was burning the dress she may or may not have been there as far as Bridget knows Bridget locked all of the doors and Lizzie was the only one home but she

was adamant Lizzie didn't do it was she adamant that Lizzie didn't do it because she knew who really did but he was her lover and she didn't want to give him up these authors have written an entire book dedicated to this theory called cold case closed but they aren't the only ones with theories some people believe that Bridget herself committed the crimes because she was sick of her working conditions after all if Lizzie was a suspect just for being home wasn't Bridget in the same house with the two with all the same access to people and hatchets that Lizzie might have had along with that there's a

theory that Dr. Bowen himself the doctor from across the street committed the crimes apparently he was seen driving really fast and erratically in his carriage away from the scene earlier in the day before he was called there on official duty yet another person posed that Andrew had an illegitimate son named Billy now Billy according to these theories has some kind of mental issues and what they say is that he had come and killed Andrew because Andrew was talking about putting him out of his will and he wanted to get to him before or maybe just his mental issues played into this and in this theory Lizzie

supposedly knows that he killed them and was actually covering for him some people say Emma did it and she wasn't really at a house party some say that Emma and Lizzie planned it together and there are people who say no we do believe it was a stranger who came into the house maybe even the same one who stole money for them months earlier there's no evidence that any of these people did it or that any of these theories are true but then again there's no real evidence that Lizzie did it either and after all she was acquitted I'm not sure who the real killer is but I am sure that there wasn't enough

investigating into these other suspects or we might have more answers today and I always want you crime junkies to be asking questions about cases you think you know Lizzie ended up dying at age 67 and her sister Emma passed away just a couple of days following her when Lizzie died she left most of her father's fortune to an animal rescue because she was all about saving the prophet so I can get behind that no matter who she was in life I'm gonna post an entire laundry list of suspects and theories that I couldn't even get into in today's episode so make sure you go to our website crime

junkie podcast calm check out all of those theories and then please get with us on social media to tell us what you think happened and who you think the killer really is and make sure you're following us on social signed up for our newsletter or on our patreon because we're going to be announcing the reopening of our merch store very soon the first people to find out will be our patrons followed by our newsletter and social people and speaking of patreon if you haven't joined yet now is the time to check it out because this Halloween we are dropping a super special super spooky extra long episode for all of our

patrons as a thank you this is in addition to all of the other episodes we've posted this month and the months before so we hope to see you there for an extra true crime fix and we'll be back next week with another episode but if you need to pick me up and you want to stick around for an amazing adoption story we've got a brand new prepped of the month up next this week's episode of crime junkie was written and hosted by me all of our editing and sound production was done by David Flowers and all of our music including our theme comes from Justin Daniel crime junkie is an audio chuck

production so what do you think Chuck do you prove I know I couldn't be left alone with profit of the month I had to pull you out of retirement specifically for this segment yes and I'm so glad you did because I found the most adorable fluffy Ewok looking puppet I think we've ever featured I spoke to his mom Michelle earlier this week and got his whole story are you ready I am more than ready okay so his mom Michelle had gone through a lot in her life recently and that included seven major facial reconstruction surgeries right and she was really feeling down on herself struggling to accept that story what

happened to Michelle's face she didn't tell me and I felt rude asking I was asking about her dog first oh my god Michelle tweet us email us DM us like I I need some backstory here what happened to you I hope you're okay go on so she was really down on herself and was struggling to accept the way she looked after all these surgeries and she decided that she needed to put some good juju out there to try to turn herself around which like girl so proud of you like that is a huge decision and yeah I know it doesn't come easily yeah like way to not make it like I mean like to be feeling bad about yourself and like

wanting to just do something good is like I mean I can't like I just praise that mentality so much totally and a friend had mentioned that a local rescue was looking for fosters and she thought it was a perfect opportunity to shift her focus off her own tragedy and pour her time energy and love into a special needs I feel a foster feel coming so she got all set up and went over to pick up her first foster and that's when she met Bentley and he was this tiny shell of a white dog who was huddled up in the corner shaking with this tail between his legs and Michelle said even though she went into this just a foster dogs

at that moment she knew that they were meant for each other as soon as she saw him so Bentley had been surrendered to the shelter and had suffered severe neglect before he had gotten there he had infections in both his eyes and his ears and his fur was so matted that he had to be shaved and the rescue had said that he didn't really interact with any of the dogs or even any of the volunteers and mostly he just stood in the corner frozen he was not adjusting well to the environment and Ashley I chose this puppet specifically for you because you and Michelle have something in common I was gonna ask if it was our

birthday but then you would say we all three have something in common right so it's not our birthday but you both love changing the lyrics to songs just think about your dog oh my god she does it too yes and like immediately so Michelle said that on her drive home with Bentley she sang a song about that language changed a Benny at this point yeah to the tune of all about that bass which I'm not super familiar with so I'm gonna try to sing it oh my god I'm gonna love this so much and it's not like this the chorus either so like I'm really rusty so I apologize if I completely butchered this Megan trainer this is not like my thing

this is Ashley's I would also like to point out that it works perfectly with sexy back from Justin Timberlake which I know much better no no no no I love this I'm bringing Benny back oh yes yes ma'am so Michelle work with Bentley for about a month when a family came forward he was interested in adopting him and no was heartbroken but reminder herself that this is what she signed up for and then the adoption fell through well good I thought when you said she saw him and knew they were meant to be together that she just like filled out the adoption

paperwork I didn't know we were still like hanging on a thread here yeah so we were still planning on like this is short term but as soon as you know as soon as she started seeing Megan trainer to her dog it was over okay so as soon as she heard that the adoption fell through she signed the papers yes thank you thank you you should have signed it right after I'm bringing Benny back but here's the problem the name Bentley and Benny just wasn't working he wasn't responding to it at all yeah I don't blame him I'm not into it either what's his name now so Michelle tried a couple of other names and nothing stuck until one day on the

phone with a friend and shouted Leroy Jenkins which I feel super old because I had to Google this do you know the reference Ashley yeah it's like a video game right where this guy's like running around and he like just yells Leroy Jenkins like kills everybody after he or after they like get all the way to the end of this game kind of so again I did a Google and there's like a Wikipedia on it and basically yeah like a bunch of guys are like planning a campaign in like World of Warcraft and supposedly this other their friend who might be Leroy Jenkins I'm not really sure was away getting food while they were

planning like this attack and when he gets back he just like bursts in instead of following their attack plan and yells Leroy Jenkins and they're like taping it so you can watch it on YouTube or something again I'm super old and so it's like a meme and so she shouted this on the phone with her friend like just kind of randomly which she said she's wants to do and the puppet came running oh my god stop it oh my god he just ran in and so I asked he's like my name so I asked Michelle what Leroy absolutely loves and she said that she got him this lamy toy which is just a little cushy

lamy and she actually stockpiled them because she knew like dogs go through a lot of toys if this is his favorite I wouldn't have backups until he found this dash oh my god stop it yeah so I actually in the pictures that I sent you there's a picture of him holding lamy and it's like still on the cardboard that you buy like dog toys on wait let me go through these pictures because there's a lot of them and I oh my god he's got this like tiny round white fluffy head she found it found it yeah so he found the Lamy's dash and now he has five of them and every night oh my god there's a picture of him like sleeping in a pile

of Lamy's yes so every night he takes them one by one to Michelle's bed and buries them in the blankets and then every morning the great Lamy migration happens and he takes them all back to the couch oh my god I love this little guy and Michelle also said that she recently took him to the beach and it was the happiest she's ever seen another soul and Ashley describe the picture of Leroy on the beach for me oh my god so Leroy Jenkins is it's like this beautiful black and white picture of a beach and he's literally laying like in Savasana if anyone does yoga like he is flat on his stomach he's got turkey legs for

dog people with his legs spread out behind him and his face just like planted like in the sand and he looks like he's passed out and the happiest dog he's ever been like he's living I literally almost cried when I saw that picture best life in that picture oh and there's another picture of him in sand oh my god he lucked out so much finding the best home ever yeah so Michelle included some pictures of one time wait there's one of him tucked in his sheets are those Brooklyn and sheets I think they're Brooklyn and sheets because I have the window paint set are you a brook linen person you get it

girl so um Michelle includes a picture of him with his hair all matted and and like devastatingly like sad a picture a couple pictures of him when he was oh my god that's him yeah yeah I know you guys I'm posting I normally just pick like a couple of pictures I'm posting every single picture that Michelle put on the blog and this before and after picture is the craziest thing I've ever seen and it like it's blowing my mind what a little love and a comb can do truly truly I think Patrick Hines is known to say put a comb through run a come through air like that has happened for Leroy a million times oh I am so

happy for you Michelle you guys you literally found your soulmate I mean I think everyone when they get a dog that you find your soulmate in your dog oh definitely and Michelle said that she knows that she rescued Leroy and taught him how to beat a dog again but like all of our preppit owners say he rescued her right back and after all that she had been through he really showed her how much good there still was in the world oh you guys I need to go hug Charlie I'm I love this one thank you so much for submitting Michelle thank you Michelle we love you guys we love the preppits