DISGRACELAND - Bruce Springsteen: Shootouts, Killing Sprees, and the Making of Nebraska

Episode Date: May 16, 2023

Unprovoked killing sprees. Nightclub gunfights. Mafia assassinations. True crime stories and modern folklore make up the backbone of many of the characters from Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, one of the Boss’s greatest albums. Which ones are real, and which ones are myth? This is the story of those stories: the story of the making of Nebraska. This episode contains themes that may be disturbing to some listeners, including graphic depictions of violence. To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at ⁠www.disgracelandpod.com⁠. This episode was originally released on May 16, 2023. Which songwriter best told a true crime story in song? Tell Jake at 617-906-6638, [e-mail], or on socials @disgracelandpod. To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.disgracelandpod.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠disgracelandpod.com/membership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠GET THE NEWSLETTER⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (formerly Twitter)  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook Fan Group⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠ To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners. Please check the show notes for more information. Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about the characters from Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska are insane. One went on an unprovoked killing spree with his 14-year-old girlfriend in 10, excuse me, 11 innocent people died. Another was classified by the FBI as the most violent member of the Philly Mob.

And those are just the real-life true-crime characters from the album. The fictionalized characters were at least as compelling. One shot up a nightclub, another barely restrained himself from murdering a state trooper, and a third contemplated work as a hired hitman. Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska characters, both the real and the imagined, drew from a deep well of 20th century American desperation. Characters who Springsteen found in conversation with Flannery O'Connor's The Misfit and Charles Lawton's Harry Powell played so forcefully by Robert Mitchum in Night of the Hunter.

In the hands of the boss, these inspired character studies made for great music. Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Jack, Johnny, and Jimmy, MK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to man-eater by Holland Oates. And why would I play you that specific slice of sheet cat tamed by a jaguar cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on December 17, 1981. And that's the day Bruce Springsteen sat down to write the title track for what would become one of his greatest albums, Nebraska.

On this episode, Charles Starkweather, The Chicken Man, Johnny 99, a meeting in Atlantic City in Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. In December of 1981, Bruce Springsteen was not yet the biggest. pop star in America, but he was one of them. Hungry Hart, the lead single from his previous album, The River, released in 1980, went to number five on the charts. It was Bruce's first top 10 hit and it changed everything. He'd come up from the streets of New Jersey and transformed himself into an American success story. He had, it seemed, everything. Women, the respect of his peers,

a new Chevy Camaro Z-28 and more money than he knew what to do with. What to do with the money was a new challenge for Bruce. Previously, he'd just haul whatever he'd made into the recording studio and lighted on fire. This was the approach taken with the river and his previous masterpieces born to run in darkness on the edge of town, released in 1975 and 1978, respectively. But the boss, as Bruce had affectionately come to be known from his role as band leader of the East Street band due to his early day's responsibility of doling out the night's earnings to the rest of the group.

The boss wasn't about to make the same financial mistake again. The studio wasn't a playground, a place where you showed up without a plan and let your creative ideas run wild. Doing so was a waste of time. You could quite literally drain your bank account running up a studio tab, blowing hours, days, weeks, trying to find the sound that was in your head. No, the studio was a place of work, a place where you showed up with not only a plan for what you wanted, but with a plan for how you were going to get what you wanted.

That's how the great ones did it anyway. Barry Gordy, the head of Motown Records, ran his studio like a factory, and you couldn't argue with the results. If the boss wanted his follow-up to the river to do what that album and his previous records hadn't done, make him money despite their success, then he needed to act like an actual. a boss and bring his employees, his band, an actual plan, and make his studio run tight like one of those refineries glowing off the New Jersey Turnpike. So the boss bought himself a little tape machine. He had only four tracks, but it was enough, enough to pre-produce his ideas for his next studio record. He rented a house in Colts Neck, New Jersey. It was modest, somewhat secluded,

no frills. He holed up and got down to work with... a big Gibson acoustic, a mandolin, a glockenspiel, a harmonica, an echolplex tape delay, and a Tascambe four track. And with a Z-28 in the driveway for long rides at night to Spur's imagination, Bruce Springsteen had it all. You know who didn't have it all? The guys in the new songs Bruce was demoing. Guys out in the margins, hand-to-mouth grinders, the refinery workers, the veterans and union humps. The guys the American dream left behind, the runoff. Guys, like these.

The rhythm from the wipers on the windshield lashed out a hypnotic beam. It did nothing to take his mind off his problems. His debts. Deats he owed across the river. His hands gripped the steering wheel at 10 and 2. The words love and hate tattooed across both sets of white knuckles. The way out was simple. Do the job.

Take the cash. Pay the man on the other side of the river. She'd understand. She'd ride with him. She'd take that long ride. What was there for the two of them here anymore anyway? You woke up early and punched in before the sun rose. The days inched by just the same as the winters.

You punched out into darkness, hit the bar on the arm, and paid off your tab on Friday. All weekend you blew steam hard like a work whistle. And Sunday came. You skip mass, watched the Giants lose, and started another time. tab and did the whole thing all over again on Monday. If you were lucky, the giants would cover, or your pick six would come in and negate their loss. But most times, neither thing happened in Udo. So you'd bet more, the Nets, the Devils, Seton Hall, anything to outrun the Vig and get you back in black. It wasn't a life. Not the kind they showed in the movies anyway, or the kind

they promised you in school. She knew this now as well as you did. She'd ride with you. She knew the score. Out west, there was gold. Here, you already had a foot in the grave and you weren't quite yet 40. Do the job. A little favor for the man. Take the cash, leave, don't look back, and start over. It was simple.

But what if you got caught? Getting caught wasn't so simple. Getting caught would be hard, hard time. Maybe the death penalty. New Jersey abolished the death penalty back in 1965, but What if the man you were going to do this little favor for decided it had to take place in Philly or on the other side of the river? And what if a cop got popped? What?

That was so hard to imagine? Cops got killed in the line of fire in Manhattan every year. What if the line of fire led straight back to your peace? What then? All he could think about was Starkweather in the electric chair. Charles Starkweather. He and his girlfriend, Carol Fugay. She was just 14.

Starkweather was 19. Back in 58, when the news broke, it was everywhere. He was a teenager just like Starkweather and Carol. Starkweather, he had to get out too. So that's what he did. And Carol rode with her man. The duo was 1958's biggest news sensation. Two teenagers on a murderous rampage who cut out from Nebraska.

In Lincoln, Nebraska in 1959, the executioner, didn't wear a hood. Instead, he stood anonymously behind a ragged curtain inside the death chamber a few feet from the electric chair. The executioner entered the penitentiary without fanfare. To him, it was simple. Do the job. Take the money. $200. It went a long way towards supplementing his electrician's paycheck. Outside the prison walls, about 15 teenagers had assembled with beer and soda pop. They blared their radios and listened in for the moment one of their own own, Charles Starkweather, was executed by the state. The warden sent some guards out to control the situation, but they mostly just fell into the festivities with the locals. Back inside,

Charlie's family said their last goodbyes. Charlie was self-confident to the end, though, cracking gallows humor jokes and flashing that James Dean's smile of his. The only thing that portrayed any sense of fear or guilt or remorse was the plastic cross Charlie held in his hand, given to him by the prison chaplain. Charlie occasionally milds a few words to himself from the Bible. 30 minutes before the big show at 11.30 p.m. With Charlie entertaining his parents and 35 newsmen and morbid-minded civilians setting in outside the death chamber to bear witness to the execution, something strange happened.

The doctor, on site to pronounce Charles Starkweather dead upon execution, dropped dead himself. Heart failure. Out of nowhere. Right there outside the warden's office. Lincoln, Nebraska, 1959, death was in the air. The clock waited for no one. Dead doctors weren't going to stop the inevitable.

At midnight, the murderous Charles Starkweather was going to die. The first murder, a fucking gas station attendant so smog about his job. He was a goddamn gas station attendant, not a doctor. Charlie reckoned he had it coming. Who the hell did he think he was? Charlie wanted that little stuffed bear for Carol on credit, and the gas station attendant wouldn't give it to him on account of the fact that Charlie had no job.

Well, the hell with him. Charlie was going to take the bear and then some. The cash from the till, and then the gas station attendant's life if he so much has looked at him sideways. So that's what he did. Two shotgun blasts. The first of his stomach put him on his knees,

and the second to the back of his head put him on. of his misery. Charlie Starkweather left the scene confident. Dead men don't talk. The next murders, Carol's family. They hated him, his juvenile delinquent looks, his long hair, his denim, and dirty t-shirt,

the cigarette permanently perched between his lips. But mostly, they hated the fact that he was 19 and didn't have a job. He hated that fact, too, but what was he going to do? After losing his job hauling garbage, the word was out around Lincoln. Don't hire the Starkweather kid. He's lazy.

He's a punk. He kills dogs in his spare time. It was a conspiracy as what it was. Charlie knew it. But that didn't make the reality any different. He loved Carol, and she loved him. And with that gas station attendant's dead body causing a real-life who'd done it on the pages of the Lincoln Journal,

it was only a matter of time before authorities came looking for Charlie. He and Carol needed to get out of Nebraska, and they would shoot their way out if that's what needed doing. Carol's parents wouldn't hear anything about marriage. They assumed Charlie had knocked Carol up. Charlie persisted. He wouldn't leave the subject alone, and he wouldn't leave their house until he got their approval.

It started with a slap. Then another. Both from Carol's mother, Marion. Then her father gave Charlie a humiliating kick in the ass on the way out the door. Charlie returned for Carol minutes later, enraged. He fought his way through the kitchen door past Carol's mother. Carol's father, Velda, tried to stop. Charlie, but Charlie broke past and made a beeline for Carol's room, where he knew his 22 shotgun was.

Carol's father knew it, too. He took off after Charlie with a claw hammer. Charlie got to his gun just before Velda attacked him. Charlie spun around and blasted a shell through the old man's head with Carol standing right there next to him. Carol's mother then rushed into her bedroom with a butcher's knife. Charlie reloaded and shot her in the face. On Carol's bed, her little two-year-old step-sister wailed away in fear, and Charlie wrapped her in the head with the butt of the gun, but that wouldn't shut her up. So he picked up the butcher's knife and flung it across the room straight into the little girl's abdomen, killing her. It was a massacre. It seemingly sprung from nowhere. But the truth was that there had been a deep reservoir of rage and insecurity

brewing in Charlie for some time. He had long been out of options. All he had was Carol, and her parents had tried to deny him even that. He had to kill. And now that he had to be had killed, he and Carol had to run. Four dead before they started their long ride, and the body started to pile up fast. Augie Meyer, one shotgun blast to the head, and another for his dog. Charlie hated dogs. See Laura Ward, a wealthy industrialist, his wife, Clara, and their maid. Charlie killed him all. He said Carol killed Clara, and Charlie also killed the Ward's dog. He snapped its neck with his bare hands. The killing spree brought national media attention to Lincoln, Nebraska.

No one knew where the two teenage killers would strike next. The salesman, Merle Collision, dead. The two kids, Robert Jensen and Carol King, dead, dead. All told, 11 innocent people. Dead. The white paint on the walls of the execution chamber was shipping away. A slow decay. The opposite of what awaited Charles Starkweather on the night.

at June 25, 1959. His head was shaved in preparation for the electrodes that would be attached to his skull. They led him into the chamber, and the executioner avoided eye contact. The 30 or so onlookers couldn't see him, but they could see Charlie, the rock star. The James Dean Kuhl went the way of the shaved hair, but that defiant Rebel Without a Cause attitude was still there in those final moments. When they strapped Charlie to the electric chair, he told them, to make him tighter.

The onlooker shifted uncomfortably on the other side of the glass. One electrode connected to his calf, another was fastened to his shaved head by a partial leather mask. Charlie closed his eyes and thought of Carol. She was going to avoid the chair. He knew it. He imagined her in her front yard, just like she'd been on that day he first saw her, twirling her baton.

It was love at first sight, too real to last. He wished she was right there with him now. sitting on his lap in the electric chair. Charlie opened his eyes. He gave a half-moon smile to the crowd, and the warden gave the executioner the nod. And the executioner gave Charlie Starkweather 2,200 volts. Charlie's head snapped back.

His body pressed out against the straps, and the executioner gave him another 2,000-plus volts. Charlie's inside sizzled at 210 degrees Fahrenheit. The backs of his eyeballs began to melt. from inside his skull, and the executioner threw the switch again. Another massive voltage, a third and final time. Charles Starkweather was pronounced dead at 12.04 a.m. The warden cried.

Some say it was because the warden lost his friend that night, the doctor who dropped dead earlier in the evening. Charlie had that effect on people. Natural charisma for a natural-born killer. That's what they said in the papers anyway. Back in the day, back before the love and the hate tattoos, he had that charisma when he was younger. That extra something that caused everyone at the bar to perk up when you walked in. Caused the foreman to give you some extra shit in that way that only working men bond.

Caused her to open her eyes a little wider when you came through the door too. But that was then. That charisma was gone now. Dead like Charles Starkweather. Now, all you had were dead snowed. honest man could pay. We'll be right back after this world, word, word.

As far as killers went, Charles Starkweather had no code. He killed indiscriminately. Sure, he'd tell you he had his reasons, but they were bunk. A man needs to know where the lines are, and he needs to do his best to stay within those lines. Otherwise, the world is just chaos. That's in part what Mass on Sunday provided. Not just a reason to believe, but a set of a world.

rules to keep you from spinning off the earth. Be it the Ten Commandments, the Apostles' Creed, or just living by Christ's example, it all added up to the same thing. A code. The Mafia had a code. It affected most everything its members did. There were rules. You didn't kill women or children, first of all.

Not like Starkweather did. Ever. And if you were going to kill, you needed a reason. Good reason. Then you needed permission. Charles Starkweather wouldn't have lasted 10 minutes in Atlantic City in March of 1980, which was about as much time as Philly mob boss Angelo Bruno had left. Except Angelo Bruno's killers didn't get permission.

Angelo's driver pulled up outside Angelo's home on March 20th, only to be greeted by an unsanctioned shotgun blasts through the window of his new Chevy four-door slay. Some wise guy with juice called in a favor with the Philly PD and made sure Angela's body was left untouched in his car for a couple hours. It wasn't much, just long enough for reporters to show up and snap pics. It was a truly gruesome picture. The aging mob boss, the so-called gentle dawn, sitting upright in the passenger seat, a bullet hole in his head, his mouth agape and a look of shock.

If the photo was meant to send a message, it was this. In Atlantic City, war had just been declared. Angelo Bruno was murdered for power, control of the rackets in Philadelphia, which meant control the gambling profits in Atlantic City. The man who ordered the hit on Angelo Bruno, his own underboss, Antonio Caponegro, was quickly ordered dead by the mafia's ruling commission for not seeking permission for the assassination of Bruno, for not adhering to the code. Caponegro was found naked, beaten, and crammed into the trunk of a car in the Bronx a couple

weeks later. Angelou's job as boss of the Philadelphia Mafia was filled by Phil Testa, a.k.a. The Chicken Man. During his rule, power in Atlantic City was still disputed. The Chicken Man was on borrowed time. March 15th, 1981, the Ides of March. Almost a year to the day from Angelo Bruno's unsanctioned hit. Another group of wise guys decided to color outside the lines with blood from the chicken man. 3 a.m. Sunday morning. 2117 West Porter Street, Philly. Phil Testa, aka the Chicken Man,

was returning from a night out at Virgilio's restaurant. Up the road apiece at St. John, the Evangelist Catholic Church, the local priest was up early preparing for that morning's early mass. The chicken man pulled up his black Chevy Caprice Classic outside his South Philly home. The priest readied his chalice and linen. Across the street from the chicken man's house, a man sat silently in an inconspicuous car. He had his hands on a remote.

At the church, the priest spread his hands across the linen, flattening out the square cloth, embroidered cross-side up. The chicken man walked up the steps to his porch. The man in the car watched and waited. The priest donned his vestment and said a prayer, Wash me clean, Lord, and cleanse me from my soul. sin, that I may rejoice and be glad unendingly with them that have washed their robes in the blood of the lamb. The chicken man opened his front door, and the man in the car flicked the switch on

the remote. The priest blessed himself in accordance with his faith in Jesus' unwavering forgiveness of sinners everywhere. And then, when they found the chicken man's body, it had been blasted through a 30-inch hole in his house's front wall, shredded through brick, mortar, and drywall. His lower torso was, as one cop who arrived on the scene, put it, completely mangled, looked like he had went through a paper shredder, yet somehow the chicken man was still alive. Unconscious, they rushed him to St. Agnes Hospital where he woke. He didn't ask for his son. He didn't ask for his priest. Instead, he spit out his final words to the attendant doctor, defiantly telling him, quote,

The nail bomb they used to destroy Phil Testa's house and to shred his body did the trick. Philadelphia's mob boss was dead. The headline the next day nailed it too, saying, They blew up the chicken man in Philly last night. 70 miles up the Jersey Turnpike from Philly in Colts Neck, New Jersey. Bruce Springsteen was holed up in his little ranch home writing those words. They blew up the chicken man in Philly last night, and they blew up his house too. The boss was documenting the death of another boss,

a documentation that would eventually end up on the UK and international album charts. The writing and homemade recording session in Coltsnack were intended to be demos, a roadmap for the East Street band to follow in the studio in an effort to get down on tape, a full-fledged rock and roll follow-up to the river, one that would document the desperate true crimes of Charles Starkweather and the Chicken Man's assassins, as well as other fictionalized characters, all of them on the ropes. But something funny happened along the way. The demos proved too powerful to top in the studio, so the demos became the album.

The album we know today as Nebraska. It was both a small production and a large statement. Bruce Springsteen didn't tour to promote the record. He simply released it to great critical acclaim, if not commercial success. And then he went straight back into the studio to record what would become the biggest selling album in his catalog, and one of the biggest selling albums by any artist of all time, born in the USA. The characters on Born in the USA are an extension of the characters Springsteen first sang about on Nebraska, characters both real and imagined, vivid characters that refused to be ignored.

Ralph held the gun to the night clerk's neck. He held him close, his hand gripped around his collar. It wasn't the money in the till he wanted. It's like Starkweather, 22 years before him. Ralph wanted respect. The night clerk had none. Just had that smirk. Ralph's head rang with a sharp sound of steel on steel. The auto plan had been closed a month now,

and Ralph could still hear the clanging from the line inside his head. A constant reminder of the job he'd lost. And here's this $3.35 an hour, Mahwa motherfuck smirking at him. The gin, the wine, it confused things. Ralph was tired. Ralph was tired of a lot of things. Of working too hard.

Of working too little. Of working too hard for too little. Ralph was tired of being drunk. Ralph was tired of being confused. Ralph was tired of that fucking smirk. So Ralph pulled the trigger. He tore out of the store, raced downtown, blew a red light, and when he entered the club tip-tip-top,

the jukebox cut, and the crowd, hushed. What does a man do in that situation? A smart one puts his head down and stares into his beer. Ralph was supposed to meet the man there because it was out of the way, inconspicuous, a meeting not only on the other side of the river, but in the part of town where no one will recognize them. Unless you came barreling through the door like Ralph, with that wild stare, the one that dared everyone in the damn place to ask him what his fucking problem was. because the way he looked, Ralph clearly had a problem. The man needed a driver.

Ralph needed money just like the man did. But Ralph had other ideas. It was immediately confronted once he entered the bar. It was what he wanted. He wanted the confrontation. Ralph pulled his piece. He waved his gun around, daring anyone in the joint to come for him. An off-duty cop got the drop on him from behind out in front of the club,

and that was that. Ralph pulled Judge Brown. and the judge gave Ralph 98 in a year and called it even Johnny 99. The man got in his car, hit the turnpike, and headed north. New Jersey Turnpike at night. Wet, relentless rain. In the rear view, a state trooper. Just what the man needed.

He played it cool. It was just a cop. He was just a guy on the road. He kept his car at the edge of the speed limit and prayed to the Lord above that the trooper didn't run his place. He just needed to get to the boardwalk. She was going to meet him there, and he was going to be early, but it didn't matter. His mind was made up.

He wasn't going to do it. He couldn't do it. The job. It didn't matter how much he owed. He didn't know Rocco, and sure as the sun shined down on the swamps of Jersey, he didn't know Chicky. The two men who blew up the chicken man, but still, he couldn't push their buttons. He couldn't do the favor for the man. He saw what had happened to Ralph.

worse than Starkweather, Ralph wasn't going to the electric chair. He was going to prison for the rest of his life with nothing but the thoughts in his head. That was torture, the guilt of it all. How do you come back from that? That sealed it. He was out. Forget his debts. Forget the fact that he'd already agreed to do the thing.

She would understand. She'd take that long ride. Out west. They'd go and never return. He had to. He had no other office. But you don't agree to do that kind of favor for that kind of man and then we neg. He'd be as dead as the chicken man, Bruno Starkweather, and all the rest.

So he drew what little he had from his account. It was enough for two Coast City bus tickets, enough to get out of town. He'd figure out the rest later. He stared at the state trooper in the rear view. To calm himself, he thought about the man's life. Maybe he had a kid. Maybe he had a wife. Maybe he had a code.

Rocco and Chickie didn't have a code. They were on the wrong side of that line. He had a code. He did. He couldn't kill, even if he'd already agreed to. What did that mean? What would his maker make of that? How would that go over in confession?

Forgive me, father, for I have sinned. I agreed to put a bullet in Rocco and another one in Shiki so as to make a brown paper bag full of cash to pay off my gambling debts, but, father, it's okay. I didn't do the damn thing. Thinking it and doing it, but thinking you could do it, Who was he? What exactly was he capable of?

What did he become? What if the trooper pulled him over? What would he do? His mind went hazy. He prayed, O Lord, deliver me. Mr. State Trooper, please don't stop me. And the Lord was in a listening mood,

the next off-ramp. Sign said, Atlantic City five miles from here. He drove on, but what had he done? What had he learned? He was going to do it. He was set. It wasn't any moral revelation that stopped him. It was fear of getting caught.

Fear of life alone behind bars with nothing but unbearable guilt. Total selfishness. He had no code. The code said, Thou shall not kill. And he didn't, but he wasn't absolved. He was guilty of the thoughts in his head. Maybe not in a court of law, but in the eyes of his maker. And there was no forgiveness without penance.

And there was no penance without sacrifice. He knew this. She knew this. He didn't deserve her. It was plain as day. He couldn't have her. Not now, at least. He needed to sort this out on his own.

That was the solution. He'd leave her behind, and if she deemed him worthy over time, she'd come for him. That's the only way it could work. A man needs a code. Otherwise, the thoughts in his head turned to chaos. Salvation is a last-minute business, and he wasn't going to let it come down to that. Redemption stayed open all night. He wheeled his stolen car off the highway and headed toward the boardwalk.

He parked across from a bus without estate plates near the promenade. He told her he'd be waiting in the Chevy with Nebraska plates. It was a necessary lie, one that could be easily forgiven. When she arrived, she'd get the message. One coast city bus ticket on the driver's seat, a Texaco roadmap, and a business card from the Sands Gold Motel out west. He was gone. And maybe she'd join him if he was worthy.

Either way, he'd saved himself from eternal disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan, Disgraceland. All right, I hope you dug this episode. Apple podcast listeners, make sure you have auto downloads turned on so you never miss an episode of disgrace. And this week's question of the week is which songwriter best told the story of true crime in song? Really working our side of the street here.

Was it the boss with Nebraska? Was it Johnny Cash, the killers, the cure, M&M, so many choices. Hit me up and let me know. 617-90666-6638. Leave me a voicemail or send me a text and be part of the show. We play and read some of your answers on the after-party bonus episode. It's coming up right after this in your feed. I can also be reached on Instagram, Facebook, X, and Disgraceland Pod at gmail.com. Leave a review for the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and you might win some free merch. All right, you've come some credits. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis.

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