Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - “The Broomstick Murderer” Kenneth McDuff Pt. 1

Episode Date: July 19, 2021

Kenneth Allen McDuff led a charmed life. He was an angelic child. At least, that's what his doting mother thought. But in reality, Kenneth concealed a sadistic desire to hurt people, and his first murders left his hometown shaken. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Due to the graphic nature of this episode, listener discretion is advised. This episode contains discussion of murder and sexual assault that some listeners may find disturbing. Extreme caution is advised for listeners under 13. Not much ever happened in the town of Everman, Texas. It was just far away enough from Fort Worth to feel totally separated from the hustle and bustle of city life. With little else to do, the teenagers of Everman drank, drove around in their cars, and that was about. it. August 6th, 1966 was a Saturday, and it promised yet another evening of little consequence.

16-year-old Edna Sullivan was whiling away the hot summer night with her boyfriend, Robert Brand, and his cousin, Mark Dunham. The trio loitered around a baseball field near the local high school, listening to music and leaning against Robert's car of 55 Ford. They didn't really have a plan for the rest of the evening, but that was okay. This was all they needed. The teens eventually climbed into the car, chatting away without concern. Their voices mingled with the sounds of the Texas night.

Crickets wind through the grass, maybe even the distant laughs of other teens in the nearby streets. But suddenly, Edna heard the sound of footsteps approaching behind them. She turned around and saw a young man, a boy, maybe a few years older than her. It was as if he appeared out of nowhere. The boy was walking right towards her. and at first there was something intriguing about him. He was even kind of handsome, with the thick head of jet black hair,

sallow cheeks, and deep-set eyes. But the closer he got, the easier it was for Edna to notice that there was something not quite right with this guy. He was staring at her in this bizarre way, like he was hungry. It was creepy, but before Edna could make a move to alert her companions,

the man quickened his pace. He marched right up to the car, too close for a stranger, and that's when he pulled out a gun. Hi, I'm Greg Poulson. This is Serial Killers, a Spotify original from Parcast. Every episode, we dive into the minds and madness of serial killers. Today, we're gazing into the mind of Kenneth Allen McDuff, the so-called broomstick murderer.

I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Richardson. Hi, everyone. You can find episodes of serial killers and all other Spotify originals from podcast for free on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. Today we'll cover McDuff's upbringing, a period that was marked with an inflated sense of entitlement and a desperate need for control. We'll watch as these toxic qualities manifest in an obsession with sadistic games. Then we'll see those games turn deadly.

Next time, we'll follow the aftermath of McDuff's horrific first murders and the surprising second act of his twisted story. We've got all that and more coming up. Stay with us. This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. Whether you're hiring for a role or searching for a killer, the hunt can be exhausting. When detectives looked and searched to find any kind of evidence

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You in? Must be 21 to enter. Texas is full of small towns, the kinds of places people drive past on their way to much larger cities. In these sorts of communities, the population rarely breaks 5,000. Everyone knows each other's business, went to the same school, goes to the same church. Rosebud was one of these towns. In 1946, Rosebud was hardly a blip on the Texas map. The closest city with a population of over 100,000 residents, was Austin, more than an hour and a half drive away. At the time, many of the people in Rosebud lived below the poverty line, working

low-paying jobs in the service industry or in manual labor. The town wasn't the kind of place where someone could expect to make it big, so to speak, but such a small pond had its perks, too. A city like Austin could swallow someone whole. There you'd just be one of tens of thousands of other people, but in Rosebud, it was easy to be the biggest fish around. And that's exactly what Kenneth Allen McDuff was counting on. Kenneth was born in 1946, the second youngest of six children. In many ways, the McDuff family was like any other in this small town. His father was a concrete finisher, and his mother ran a laundromat across the street from the family home.

But the family was a little off. The general consensus around Rosebud was that the McDuff's, especially the mother, duded on their children a little too much, Kenneth especially. Most early accounts of Kenneth's life make sure to point out that his mother treated him like the baby of the family, even though he had a younger sister. Kenneth was always the one who had cash in his pocket, who had new, clean clothes. In Mrs. McDuff's eyes, he was a little angel who deserved everything the world had to offer him. Vanessa's going to take over on the psychology here and throughout the episode. As a reminder, she is not a licensed psychologist or a psychiatrist, but we have done a lot of research.

for this show. Thanks, Greg. It's not clear why Mrs. McDuff chose to dote on her son in this way, but it clearly had lasting consequences. According to Dr. Brad Bushman, a professor of communication and psychology at the Ohio State University, parents can inadvertently foster narcissism in their children through preferential treatment. In previous episodes, we've discussed how parents may do this, believing that they're ensuring their child has robust self-esteem. But if encouragement turns into overvaluing a child's behavior, then this can inadvertently teach a child that they're more special than other people. Not only that, Bushman explains that a child in this kind of scenario might come to believe that they deserve something extra in life. And whether

she knew it or not, this was exactly what Mrs. McDuff was teaching her son. As Kenneth grew up, his belief in his own superiority became more and more of a problem. At least it did for the other boys at school. Kenneth took pleasure in bullying his classmates, always making sure to pick on the weakest pupils in the playground. He was also a master manipulator. Kenneth would often convince other boys to gamble with what little money they had one quarter at a time until they had lost all of their lunch money.

For many, the most chilling, enduring memory of young Kenneth was his laughter, a sharp, ragged squeal that the boy could turn on and off like a laugh. light switch. He would let out his peal of laughter usually at something no one else found amusing. Then, as quickly as it started, Kenneth would stop. His face transformed into a glare that could stop his classmates mid-sentence. Across the board, Kenneth was a terror at school, even to his teachers, but any time he ran into trouble, Mrs. McDuff came to his rescue. She even got a reputation among the teachers at school who called her pistol-packing Mama McDuff. Whether Mrs. McDuff actually brought a gun with her to school remains unclear,

but she was ferociously protective of Kenneth. To her, the school was to blame for any and every infraction her son was accused of. He was untouchable and nothing was ever his fault. Unfortunately, her attitude only emboldened Kenneth to continue terrorizing his classmates, with the reassurance that he would always get away with it. That is, until he picked a fight with the wrong boy. In eighth grade, Kenneth found his white whale and classmate Tommy Salmon. Tommy was popular, beloved by the rest of the students, exactly the opposite of Kenneth.

So the young bully sought Tommy out, trying to goad him into a fight. At first, Tommy wasn't so easily provoked, but when Kenneth bumped into him between classes and called him names in front of his friends, that was the final straw. Tommy agreed to meet Kenneth at a nearby drainage ditch to settle things, once and for all. By the time the boys met at the agreed-upon spot, a small audience of students had gathered to watch the fight. Before it even started, Tommy was the clear favorite.

If anything, Kenneth's classmates hoped that the tussle would put a stop to his endless bullying, and that finally someone could knock some sense into him. As fights go, this one was hardly a contest. While Tommy may not have been as big as Kenneth, he was stronger, and he easily overpowered his opponent. overpowered his opponent. It seems all those years of picking on smaller boys had done nothing to boost Kenneth's physical strength.

The fight hardly lasted more than a few minutes, and by the end, Tommy stood triumphant in the ditch, holding Kenneth in a chokehold. The larger boy furiously wriggled and bit at his opponent, trying to break free. But it was over. Tommy had finally put Kenneth in his place. After the fight, Kenneth's behavior changed completely,

He never bothered Tommy again, or anyone else in his class, for that matter, instead choosing to keep to himself and brood in bitter silence. And only a few months after the fight, Kenneth made a rash decision. He quit school altogether to go work for his father. Despite what it looks like, Kenneth didn't leave school out of shame. It was more likely anger. If anything, losing the fight only emphasized two powerful ideas in his mind. First, that he was entitled to anything he wanted,

and second, that if he didn't get what he wanted, he was being treated unfairly. The fight left Kenneth angry and resentful. In his mind, he was supposed to win. Any embarrassment over losing quickly crystallized into bitterness. He was only 14, but already Kenneth felt that the world owed him something. As his mother had taught him over the years, nothing was ever his fault,

So any form of punishment was seen as an attack on his very being, a threat to the life he was entitled to have. When Kenneth left school, he started working for his father in the construction business. And as he began his new life in the workforce, he struggled to come to terms with his powerful sense of cynicism. He couldn't understand a world that dared to defy his wishes. But the more he thought, the more his indignation solidified into a desire to act, He wanted to prove that he could have anything he wanted. All he had to do was take it, by force if necessary. Nothing was going to stand in his way.

Coming up, Kenneth gets a taste for crime and can't get enough. Hi, it's Vanessa from Parkast, and I'm here to tell you about my new 10-episode limited series, obituaries. They're some of the most iconic figures of all time, celebrated in death for their individual achievements and impact on society, but in life, the relationships they kept tell a different story, one of unexpected connections that yielded extraordinary change. Every Wednesday on obituaries, join my co-host Carter and me as we explore the shared legacies of prolific pairs from the past, from the mutual traumas of entertainers Marilyn Monroe and Ella Fitzgerald, to the unlikely admiration between visionaries Mark Twain and Nicola Tesla. Each episode,

episode of obituaries digs deep into the lasting impressions made between two legendary figures and how their entanglements changed the course of history. These meaningful duos may have passed on, but the profound effect they had on each other and us will live on forever. Follow the Spotify original from Parcast, Obituaries. Listen free only on Spotify. Now back to the story. By the early 1960s, Kenneth Allen McDuff had developed two unshakable beliefs about the world. The first was that he was better than everyone else. The second was that no one else understood the first belief, and he decided that it was his job to remind them.

After leaving school, the teenager started working with his father as a concrete pour. But the work clearly didn't line up with his grand vision for his life. So as the years passed, he grew more and more bitter. He hated his job. and it's possible he's still fixated on his former classmates. They chased him out of school, he felt, and were probably rooting for him to fail. And what's worse, Kenneth no longer had the baked-in social life that came with going to school. While other boys his age spent most of their time in class and hanging out with their friends,

Kenneth was alone. He left work every day, facing an evening without homework or studying, and no promise of seeing friends again in the morning. With nothing ruling his evening agenda, it was up to him to figure out how to waste time by himself. Unfortunately, Rosebud, Texas had very little entertainment to offer a teenager like Kenneth at the time. Rowdy teens looking for a thrill didn't have many options. There was no nightlife to speak of. The town was even small enough and remote enough that drugs weren't even really an option,

though alcohol was certainly a favorite activity among the local youngsters. Kenneth began drinking at 15, something that was relatively common for young people in Rosebud. Around the same time, he also developed a fascination with cars and motorcycles, and spent hours after work speeding through the darkened roads of the Texas Prairie. With alcohol in the mix, these drives were often dangerous and ended badly. Kenneth seemed to be as fascinated by wrecking cars as he was interested in driving them. In his teenage years, he destroyed multiple cars. apparently surviving each crash with few injuries.

Kenneth loved to brag about this to anyone who listened, smugly declaring how he had a touch with his cars that allowed him to survive his many accidents. And any time he totaled a vehicle, he somehow managed to get a new one, perhaps with the help of his mother. As ever, Mrs. McDuff's indulgence taught her son that his actions had no consequences. Driving recklessly quickly became a fixation for kids. a fixation for Kenneth. He could emerge from a wreck totally unscathed, and in his mind, that proved that he was better than everyone else. But soon, even this thrill wasn't enough.

He wanted something more exciting, another activity that would make him feel powerful, untouchable. In the spring of 1964, 18-year-old Kenneth started breaking into local stores and stealing whatever he could find. It didn't seem to matter what he grabbed, or what kind of business. he chose to rob. The point of burglary was just to take what he wanted, simply because he could. His first known target was a small store near Rosebud. Kenneth left with about $500 in cash and checks from the store's safe, disappearing into the night significantly richer, and leaving behind little for police to track him down. It didn't take long for Kenneth to steal again. The following month, he burglarized three more stores, stealing random items, such as shotgun ammunition

and ice cream bars. From there, the burglaries became even more common. He broke into a 7-Eleven, a machine shop, and several other businesses, all within a few months. And with each new break-in, Kenneth felt his sense of invulnerability grow. Kenneth's behavior during his teenage years showed a quick ramping up of dangerous and reckless behavior. And according to Michael Arndfield, associate professor of criminology at Western University, these kinds of actions come with threatening connotations. Arndfield explains that petty theft and robbery carry chilling connections to later, far more serious crimes.

This is surprisingly true of sexual crimes. A Canadian study titled Sexual Murderers, Sex Offender, Murderer, or Both, found that among 624 convicted sex offenders breaking and entering was the most common first offense in their criminal careers. Here, Kenneth's habit of burglarizing local businesses, could be seen as a trial run for future acts of violence. He was perhaps testing the idea that he could get away with any kind of dangerous behavior without the fear of punishment.

With each successful burglary, he only grew more confident in his abilities, more willing to take bigger risks. And for a brief period in 1964, it seemed like he would be able to continue his life of crime without interruptions. In April of that year, he was caught and briefly held police in Temple, a city near Rosebud. But it was little more than a blip. Whatever charges the police had against him didn't stick. And Kenneth seems to have gone free without facing punishment. Of course, no run-in with the cops was going to dissuade Kenneth from continuing his burglaries,

and he wasn't exactly subtle about his crimes. His robberies were messy, full of broken windows and broken locks. By the end of 1964, he had broken into over a dozen and local businesses, and he showed no sign of slowing down. But Kenneth's luck could only hold out for so long, and as the year wore on, things started looking grim for the 18-year-old. The more Kenneth burglarized different shops, the more authorities took notice and pieced things together. Finally, by early 1965, local police had gathered enough evidence to make their move.

The circumstances around Kenneth's arrest are vague. It isn't clear why it took the police so long to bring him in, but it seems that by the beginning of the new year, they were fed up. Eventually, the criminal justice system finally caught up to the young thief. Kenneth was reportedly tried in January and February of 1965, and the 18-year-old was convicted of 14 counts of theft or burglary across three counties. At the end of the proceedings, record suggests he was sentenced to nearly four years for each offense. It's easy to imagine that for small business owners in the city's surrounding Rosemary,

bud, this sentence was a massive relief. Kenneth had become a notorious figure in the local community, much in the same way that he had once been to his fellow students. And just like when he left school, many were likely glad to be seeing the back of him. It felt like a step in the right direction. Hopefully, Kenneth's prison sentence would finally put a stop to his violent rampage. But things weren't going to be that simple. On paper, Kenneth's sentence seemed massive. almost four years for each of his charges, totaling 52 years behind bars. At least that's what it may have seemed like to those unfamiliar with the legal system. But each of those individual sentences ran concurrently.

So instead of serving decades of prison time, he could be free in just under four years. And unfortunately, he didn't even come close to serving that long. We don't know much about Kenneth's time behind bars, but we do know one very important detail. Within a year of his sentence, he applied for parole and was somehow approved. On December 29, 1965, only nine months after he was taken to prison, Kenneth was released. The Kenneth, who emerged from prison, was a different man. Once skinny and somewhat lacking in strength, he now stood well over six feet tall, with broad shoulders that made him seem even larger. He was, in a word, intimidating, and that was about the extent of his transformation.

Unfortunately, his smug-intitled attitude hadn't changed at all. If anything, it had gotten worse. As Kenneth walked away from the prison, he felt more certain than he had ever felt before. He was untouchable, invulnerable. He had left chaos and destruction in his wake, and what punishment did he receive? Hardly a slap on the wrist. This moment burned into Kenneth's brain as proof that he could take whatever he wanted without any meaningful consequence. He could rob, steal, do anything without the fear of any actual repercussions. But there was one change in his thinking that became clear after his time behind bars. Kenneth was through with burglaries.

That was played out. The thought of simply stealing from others no longer gave him the thrill that it once had. And now that he was free, he was ready to find something. else to fill that void. Unfortunately, he emerged from prison with an appetite for something a little more dangerous. Coming up, Kenneth McDuff follows his desires down a horrific path. Paraday presents, in the red corner, the undisputed, undefeated weed whacker guys. Champion of hurling grass and pollen everywhere. And in the blue corner, the Challenger, strength, Hatterday.

Eye drops and work all day to prevent the release of histamines that cause itchy allergy eyes. And the winner by knockout is Hatterday. Paterday. Bring it on. I'm your host, Stasi Schroeder. Welcome to Tell Me Lies, the official podcast. What's the most unhinged thing of season three? Stephen, because he's so evil.

I do think he is misunderstood. You see everyone face consequences. It's intoxicating. The writers just know how to trick you. There's always a twist in this show. It's nothing you would expect. Tell Me Lies, the official podcast now streaming and stream the new season of Tell Me Lies on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus. Now back to the story.

In 1965, Kenneth McDuff made parole. Instead of four years behind bars, he was away for just over nine months. In no time at all, the young man was best. back on the streets and looking for a new thrill. At first, he spent most of his time doing what he had always done, driving recklessly through the winding streets of rural Texas. Like many 20-year-old men, he had sex on his mind a lot of the time, and used these drives to prowl for young women, who might be looking for some fun.

But for Kenneth, fun was very much a relative term. His dates would usually start normal enough. He picked up a girl, took her out, maybe to dinner, a movie, everything seemed fine. He was charming and handsome, but when the evening seemed like it was winding down, and Kenneth took his date home, that's when the nightmare began. One of the more grisly games that Kenneth allegedly enjoyed was to pin a girl to the ground and squeeze topical pain relief shell into her vagina, delighting in her screams of agony. He bragged about doing this to the few men who he hung out with, sharing the stories as if they

were badges of honor. Kenneth had an unusual ability to involve other men in his sadistic pursuits. Even when he was younger, he always enjoyed picking on weaker boys, bullying them in school, and in some cases beating them up. And it's easy to imagine that he carried this behavior over to his brief stint in prison, perhaps as a way of establishing himself as someone who shouldn't be messed with. But Kenneth soon realized that with the right kind of influence, he could turn a feeble-minded man, into a useful accomplice, and he quickly realized how useful that kind of person could be to have around. Kenneth sometimes enlisted another man to join him in his assaults, making them watch as he tortured an unsuspecting woman, and far from making himself conscious, the

addition of an audience seemed to add to his fun. One such flunky was Roy Dale Green, an 18-year-old who also worked for Kenneth's father. Roy was fascinated by Kenneth's scandalous stories about violence and destruction. He'd seen Kenneth's so-called game with the pain relief gel and had listened to stories that were far worse. Kenneth liked to brag that he had raped and strangled several women, though Roy never witnessed it himself. It isn't clear exactly how Roy felt when Kenneth included him in his sadistic games, but it clearly wasn't shocking enough to scare the young man away. It was exactly what Kenneth

had been banking on. According to former prison psychologist Dr. Al Carlyle, criminals such as serial killers are uniquely skilled at finding vulnerable people to rope into their schemes. And usually these relationships become codependent, where both parties rely on the other for a sense of security. The dominant personality relies on their followers' devotion as a source for their own confidence. And as Carlisle explains, the subservient follower needs the power and authority of the power. the dominant person, so he or she attempts to become that person's shadow and to mirror the dominant person's beliefs and ethics. Kenneth provided an air of thrill, danger, and excitement that Roy's life didn't otherwise have. And as a captive audience to Kenneth's smug tales of

sadistic amusements, Roy was a follower who fed the older boy's sense of superiority. In other words, they were perfect for each other. Soon, the two young men were becoming close friends, going out driving together to look for women. The closer they grew, the more graphic Kenneth's stories became. He continued to boast that he had raped and murdered multiple women, making the crude comment that killing a woman was as easy as killing a chicken. He explained to Roy, they both squawk. This would have alarmed most other people, but Roy didn't take it seriously. It seemed that to him Kenneth's stories were just tall tails, away for the older boy to make him seem cooler than he was. Sure, Kenneth was a rough

guy who was into some dark stuff, but murder, that didn't seem plausible. At least not at first. But on August 6th, 1966, everything changed. The night began like most others. The two men spent most of the morning pouring concrete at a site in Temple, and by the afternoon they were aching to blow off steam. Temple was close enough to Fort Worth, and Kenneth declared that the two of them were going to take a trip there to see if they could find some girls. Kenneth sped across the road, screeching the tires of his dodged charger, a gift from his mother after he left prison. They stopped to pick up a few packs of beer, opening them as they careen toward Fort Worth. When they got to the city, they drove around downtown for a while, just killing time. When Kenneth got bored, he's

said he knew some people in the nearby suburbs and headed away from the city. The two boys spent the next little while in the town of Everman, drinking and talking to the few girls that were around, one of whom Kenneth claimed to know from church. But soon he got bored again. It seemed like he was itching for another kind of action. He just wouldn't say what. Roy didn't know what his friend was looking for. Just hanging out trying to impress girls here was good enough for him, but Kenneth was clearly looking for something specific, maybe the right kind of girl, and Roy was happy to go along for the ride. But if he knew what was about to happen, he might not have been so willing.

Kenneth declared that he wanted to find more girls and decided the best place to look for some would be the local high school. Just like Rosebud, Everman didn't offer many options for teens to congregate in in the 1960s. And while the school wasn't the most exciting place, it had ample space to gather with no supervision from adults. Kenneth swung his dodge back onto the road, gunning the engine toward the school. It didn't take long for him to find what he was looking for in the parking lot of a baseball field. 16-year-old Edna Sullivan, 17-year-old Robert Brand, and 15-year-old Mark Dunham were inside a 1955-55 Ford. Kenneth hadn't planned for two teenage boys, but he was getting impatient.

He'd just have to improvise. Roy still didn't understand what his friend was planning, but things became clearer once Kenneth parked the car. He turned off the engine and reached over to open the center console. Inside was a small handgun. Kenneth shoved the weapon into the back of his jeans. Kenneth got out and started walking towards the other car. Roy followed close behind and watched as his friend pulled out the gun.

In a disturbingly calm voice, he told the teenagers to get out of the car. Robert Marconeta stepped out of the Ford, their legs shaking as they stared at the stranger before them. Kenneth forced the boys to hand over their wallets and then led the three terrified kids to the back of their own car. Then, gesturing with the gun, he instructed them to climb into the trunk. In a quick motion, he slammed the trunk closed and holstered the gun in his waistband. Kenneth turned to Roy and in a very wry tone told his friend, they got a good look at my face. I'll have to kill them. Not wasting another moment of the night.

Kenneth jumped into the driver's seat of Roberts Ford and ordered Roy to follow him in the Dodge. Roy dutifully complied with his demands. As he tailed his friend out onto the road, he stared blanked. ahead at the trunk of the Ford, thinking about what was inside. The two cars drove quietly through the night for a while until Kenneth finally pulled off into a field. He brought the car to a stop, got out, and opened the trunk. He pulled Edna roughly out of the car and shoved her away from the truck. Then he trained the gun on Robert and Mark.

The two boys were terrified and begged for their lives, but Kenneth was unmoved. Quietly, almost peacefully, Kenneth cocked the gun and shot both boys in the head. Roy recoiled from the sound of the gunshot echoing through the night air. When he looked back, Kenneth was staring at him with a look of smug enjoyment. He'd gotten a thrill from the murders, and he was ready for more. But first, Kenneth had to conceal what he'd done. He tried closing the trunk on the two bodies, but it was stuck on something. Frustrated, he jumped back into the Ford and backed the car up against a fence in a paltry attempt to hide the bodies.

By this point, the terrified Edna had been thrown into the trunk of Kenneth's Dodge. He ordered Roy back into the passenger seat and sped away. Kenneth drove for 11 miles, eventually stopping on the side of a dirt road. There he dragged Edna out of the trunk, threw her onto the back seat and raped her several times. He instructed Roy to rape her too. Kenneth then moved the car again, driving down a gravel road before coming to a stop. In this third and final location,

Kenneth forced Edna out of the car for the last time, throwing her down onto the ground. She sat there trembling, her knees bruised by the sharp rocks underneath. Kenneth quickly walked back to the car and grabbed a stick from inside. It was about three feet long and looked like the broken off end of a broom handle.

Then the final horror commenced. Kenneth ordered Roy to help him hold Edna still, then used the broomstick to choke Edna to death. In the silence that followed, the two boys threw Edna Sullivan's lifeless body over a fence. Then they climbed back into the Dodge and drove away. After the whole ordeal was through, Kenneth seemed totally unfazed.

even calm. In his mind, he'd just pulled off the perfect crime. There were no witnesses and no evidence. Kenneth made sure of it. He carefully disposed of any signs Edna had been in his car. He was pleased with himself. He'd thought of everything. But what Kenneth didn't account for was Roy. He was traumatized by what his friend had done, by what he'd helped him do, and he couldn't keep it to himself. By the next afternoon, the small town of Rosebud was buzzing with the shocking news of the murders. Though he thought to dispose of evidence from his car, Kenneth hadn't done much to hide his victims. The bodies of the two boys were found on August 7th, and local news quickly reported on the grizzly scene.

Roy was driving with other friends when he heard the broadcast, and that was all it took to set him off. He burst into tears and blurted out the whole story. Things moved rapidly after that. Roy's friends took the sobbing teenager to the closest justice of the peace, where he was placed under arrest. He eagerly described what had happened the night before and even helped the authorities to find Edna's body. And Roy was particularly clear about one thing.

Kenneth McDuff was the one responsible. The manhunt was on. However, for a wanted killer, Kenneth wasn't very hard to find. Roy knew that his friend was planning a date with the girl named Joanne that night. So two sheriffs waited outside Joanne's mother's house, anticipating Kenneth's return. He finally arrived a little before 11 p.m., his dodge rumbling over the gravel path. But when his headlights briefly illuminated the sheriffs, Kenneth panicked. He threw the car into reverse, the tires squealing as he gunned the engine.

The authorities tried to stop him by shooting his tires. and radiator, but the car disappeared into the night. Luckily, it didn't get far. The bullets had seriously damaged his car, and Kenneth knew that he had to find another way to escape. Suddenly, he saw Joanne's brother in a vehicle at a nearby cafe. He pulled over, leapt out of the Dodge, and ran. Kenneth didn't waste time explaining the situation. He just told Joanne's brother to drive, but switching cars took up valuable seconds. And by the the time the two men peeled onto the road, the cops had caught up. A deputy waiting nearby cornered the men and Kenneth had nowhere to go. The sheriffs ordered him out of the car and swiftly

took him into custody. He was escorted to jail while investigators assembled their case against him. In a matter of days, Kenneth McDuff was charged for the three brutal murders. And while he'd escaped serious punishment in the past, this time felt different. It would be hard. to find a way out of this one. But Kenneth's story was only just beginning. Thanks again for tuning into serial killers. We'll be back next time with part two of Kenneth Allen McDuff story. For more information on the broomstick murders, amongst the many sources we used,

we found Bad Boy from Rosebud, the murderous life of Kenneth Allen McDuff by Gary M. Laverne, extremely helpful to our research. You can find all episodes of serial killers. and all other Spotify originals from Parcast for free on Spotify. We'll see you next time. Have a Killer Week. Serial Killers is a Spotify original from Parcast. Executive producers include Max and Ron Cutler.

Sound designed by Scott Strannick, with production assistance by Ron Shapiro, Trent Williamson, Carly Madden, and Bruce Kitovich. This episode of Serial Killers was written by Georgia Hampton, with writing assistance by Joel Callan, fact-checking by Bennett Logan, and research by Brian Petrus and Chelsea Wood. Serial killers stars Greg Paulson and Vanessa Richardson. Hi, it's Vanessa from Parkast.

If you enjoy our in-depth profiles on historical figures and famous fates, you'll love my new limited series, Obituaries. Every Wednesday on Spotify, join me and my co-host Carter as we explore the unlikely bonds forged between two meaningful figures from the past and discover how those relationships impacted the future. Follow the Spotify original from Parkast obituaries. Listen weekly, free and only on Spotify. I want to hear something spooky. Some monster, it reminded me of Bigfoot. Monsters Among Us is a weekly podcast featuring true stories of the paranormal. One of the boys started to exhibit demonic possession. Stories straight from the witnesses' mouths.

themselves. Something very snake light lifted its head out of the water. Hosted by me, your guide. Derek Hayes. Somehow I lost eight whole hours. Listen now on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. A beloved 75-year-old man washing up, getting ready for bed, is brutally beaten and killed. Despite an exhaustive investigation, the killer avoids arrest and then strikes again.

I'm Global News crime reporter Nancy Hicks. You might listen to a lot of true crime podcasts this year, but they're not crime beat. Search for and follow the award-winning podcast Crime Beat on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you find your favorite podcasts.