Let's Go To Court! - 124: The Chicago Tylenol Murders and Corruption in Kansas City

Episode Date: June 3, 2020

TW: Police Brutality We don’t normally do trigger warnings, but we’re making an exception this week. In this episode, Brandi’s case very briefly mentions police brutality. The case is old timey and the alleged brutality wasn’t racially motivated, but in light of police officer Derek Chauvin’s recent murder of George Floyd and the protests that have followed, we figured some folks might like a heads up. Note: If it seems weird that we discuss police brutality without mentioning the current climate, that’s because we recorded this episode before the protests. It was happening all around Chicago. People felt a little ill. So they took a Tylenol. A short time later, they dropped dead. Doctors were initially puzzled. Why were young, seemingly healthy people dying so suddenly? They soon found the unsettling answer. Someone -- or maybe multiple someones -- had gone to multiple Chicago-area grocery stores and drugstores, took the Tylenol off the shelves, and filled the capsules with poison. They then returned the poisoned Tylenol to the store shelves, where unsuspecting buyers picked it up.  Then Brandi tells us about Kansas City socialite Florence Barton. On an October night in 1920, Florence and her fiance Howard Winter went for a drive. They drove Howard’s Dodge Coupe through Swope Park, and eventually headed down a country road. When they stopped for Howard to smoke his cigar, a car pulled up alongside them. A man jumped out. He asked Howard for directions. As Howard answered, he realized that the man had a gun, and it was aimed right at him. And now for a note about our process. For each episode, Kristin reads a bunch of articles, then spits them back out in her very limited vocabulary. Brandi copies and pastes from the best sources on the web. And sometimes Wikipedia. (No shade, Wikipedia. We love you.) We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the real experts who covered these cases. In this episode, Kristin pulled from: “The Tylenol Terrorist,” by Rachael Bell on Crime Library “Murder by Tylenol,” by Brian Anderson for Vice “Home of man linked to Tylenol deaths searched,” the Associated Press “James Lewis rape case reveals horrifying allegations,” by Laurel J. Sweet for the Boston Herald  In this episode, Brandi pulled from: “The 1920 murder of a socialite exposes a corrupt Kansas City” by Diane Euston, Martin City Telegraph “Roberts Aids Defense Pleas of an Alibi” The Kansas City Kansan, newspapers.com “Denzel Chester Freed of Murder” Sacramento Union, California Digital Newspaper Collection

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A proud member of Wayne's Auto Group. One semester of law school. One semester of criminal justice. Two experts. I'm Kristen Caruso. I'm Brandi Egan. Let's go to court. On this episode, I'll talk about the Chicago Tylenol murders.

And I'll be talking about an old timey Kansas City murder. Oh my God. Is this a gift to me? It is a gift to you. That's 100% a gift to you. Is it one that I've heard of? I don't know. I had never heard of it. So give me, give me a name. Give me a beat. Oh, so I called dibs on it too. Florence Barton. Oh no. Doesn't. Okay. Excellent. Oh yeah.

As soon as I read an article about it that I text you that day and I was like, um, dibs on this. I don't know if there's enough for an episode. I'm working on it. And then, yeah, I found enough, you know. Okay. Okay. Um, Hey Brandy.

Yeah. What are the chances that you have this baby on the podcast today? I don't think it's going to happen today, but. Brandy, I've got the kiddie pool set up right beneath you in case your water breaks. Some stuff is happening. Should I talk about it? Yes, yes. So this past weekend, I had a little fun trip to the hospital.

Wow, that's really sugarcoating it. No, so like late Saturday night, like midnight, had a little blood, got a little nervous. Obviously, you know, at this stage in the game, you shouldn't really be seeing that. Terrifying, yeah. And so then I was very worked up and I couldn't remember like if I had felt her move in a while. And so I ended up like just calling the after hours, you know, whatever. And the doctor called me back and he was like, ask me some questions. And he was like, yeah, I think we better have you come on down to the hospital.

And you were totally relaxed. You were like, oh, absolutely. I was a fucking mess. I was shaking so bad I couldn't hold my phone. Like poor David. Oh, he was amazing. He was like super calm. He was like rubbing my back and he's like, everything's gonna be fine. Yeah, it's fine. Yeah. So we like book it to the hospital. I get checked out. They hooked me up to like a fetal monitor. She's great. She's just fine. But what they did determine is that I've already started to dilate and that I had a couple contractions while I was being monitored, which was very alarming to me because I could not feel them.

Which means that birth will be absolutely painless. You won't even know. Yeah. Just all of a sudden, a baby will be out. So I got checked out there. Everything was good. And then I had my final ultrasound yesterday. And they said she is head down, in position, ready to go, blast off.

Yes. And you are like a month out from your due date. Yeah. Yep. So we'll see. She's currently measuring 5 pounds, 12 ounces. And she's practicing breathing, which they said is a sign that she's ready to come. So we'll see what happens.

I'm so excited. All day yesterday, I was like, oh, my God, what if she goes into labor while we're recording? So will Brandy give birth on this episode? No. Listen to find out. Brandy,? No. Listen to find out. Brandy, Brandy, listen to find out. You know what's almost as exciting as giving birth? Our Patreon?

Oh my God, yes. I didn't think you would know what I was saying. Brandy, tell them about our Patreon. Oh my gosh, guys. It's almost as fun as giving birth. No. If you listen to Kristen. No, join us on our Patreon.

We've got the $5 level, which gets you into the Discord, which is like a 90s style chat room. It's a great time. You get bonus episodes at that level as well. We do one bonus episode a month. It's just like a regular episode only bonus only better because it's bonus brandy um just like a regular seven dollars a month you get in at the and you get all of those uh other benefits that we already mentioned plus you get a bonus video every month kristen do you want to tell them what we did oh

my god okay it's really hard for me to not give away the whole shebang. But we ordered the fruitcake from the Collins Street Bakery that we talked about in the episode. Where Sandy Jenkins, you know, embezzled $16.6 million or whatever. Yeah. We sampled the fruitcake. We ate it. We also sampled another one of their cakes. That's right.

I'll give a little, little, little. Just a little bit. not all the whole thing. David, I gotta say not a fan. He hated it. Hated every minute of it. It was like we had forced him to eat it. Okay, I won't say more. That's it. That's it. If you want to know more, you have to pay me $7.

You also get a card and a sticker and you get inducted onto the podcast it's a whole you get our lovely autographs that's right someone in the discord today was like uh you know i'm keeping the envelope to retain its value that's right you got to do that yeah because 20 years from now when you resell that on ebay, you'll be glad you kept the envelope. That's exactly right. Brandy. Yeah. This old time Kansas City murder. I'm quite intrigued, quite ready to go. I'm super excited. I am also dilated. Sorry, I felt left out. You're so dilated. I was. Okay, so we've talked about how I was pretty nervous for this butt swab I got to get. Still haven't gotten it yet. Which seems impossible to me because you've been talking about it. I told you she gave me a two

visit warning. I know, but for some reason I was like, that means two weeks. And so like you came over today and I was like, how was that butthole swab? And somehow it still hasn't happened. I haven't had that yet, but I did get a cervix check this weekend and now I'm not the least bit concerned about the butt swab. I can't imagine it's... I've heard terrible things. a cervix check this weekend, and now I'm not the least bit concerned about the butt swab. I can't imagine it's... I've heard terrible things. The cervix check is a whole hand. Just right up there.

Right up your hoo-ha. Doing what? Shadow puppets? Yeah. I mean, what are they doing? They're, like, poking around. Oh, gee, rude. See how many fingers they can get.

I'm sorry. I'm just looking. Yeah. So I survived that. I'm for sure going to survive the swab. It's fine. Why? Okay.

You're going to give birth, which is going to be so much bigger than a buckle swab. Why do you keep talking about like if I survive the buckle swab. Why do you keep talking about, like, if I survived the buckle swab? No, I'm saying I now know I will 100% survive the swab because I survived someone being elbow deep in me this weekend. Brandy. Which some people might enjoy. Yeah, really, some people pay for that. And you're being ungrateful. You're, like, complaining.

Usually I think they get dinner first or something, though, right? But Brandy, serious question. Yeah. If you do die from the butthole swam, am I allowed to like put it in the obit? Yes, absolutely. I'd like it to be the heading of the obit. Dead from butt swab. Yeah.

Okay. Yep. No, you won't die from the butt swab. Do you? Okay. Have I told you about this client that I used to have? Why are you looking at me like that? Because it's related to the obituary.

So small tangent. Sorry. No, go for it. So I had this client. I did her hair for years. And she and her husband had a bit of a tumultuous relationship. Okay. She thought he was an alcoholic.

He disagreed. It was a big point of contention. Alcoholics often don't see themselves as alcoholics. I mean, she often told me about, and I didn't know her that well. Anyway, he passed away. Uh-huh. And she wrote in his obituary. Died due to alcoholism? Yes.

No, why? Right? To win the argument? I guess. Good lord, just divorce the guy if you hated him. I'm like, ooh. I don't like it. No, I didn't either. Yeah. I was like, ooh.

Really taking that argument all the way to the end huh guess who got the final word i will say when you read the obits you do want those details yeah because usually you gotta do a little detective work you figure out where the donations are going to you know thathuh. That kind of thing. Send donations to this dominatrix who stuffed her whole

hand up inside me. Are you going to tell us about Tylenol murders? Don't you go first? No! Oh my god, I'm sorry. I thought you were dragging your feet so bad. It's episode 124, Kristen. Is that even or odd?

It's even. Oh, geez. Okay. Well, I'm not even mentally prepared. Do we need to start this whole thing over? Let's do it. You need to go back home. Come back.

First of all, big shout out, really, to your mom and stepdad. all big shout out really to your mom and stepdad so steve suggested this case but it was your mom who mentioned it in the discord so excellent here we go big shout out to the tylenol terrorist by rachel bell for crime library yeah one of your faves oh one. One of your girls. Did you see what someone shared in Discord yesterday? What? A book about Charles Manson written by David Kradzic. Oh, my God. It's like it was written just for you. Just for me.

I was like, yeah. She was like, have you read this? It's all of your favorite things. I was like, I must have it now. Yeah, you gotta read that before London gets here. I know, I gotta get it. Yeah. It's available on Amazon. I already looked it up. And then, you know, when she's five and she's old enough to read that. No, it'll just be like a bedtime story. I'll read it to her. The race war was coming. Okay, Brandy, do you know all about this? I feel like you know all about this.

I know bits and pieces. I don't know all about this? I feel like you know all about this. I know bits and pieces. I don't know all about it. All right, all right. Here we go. It was September 29th, 1982, in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, which is a suburb of Chicago. Twelve-year-old Mary Kellerman woke up super early in the morning because she didn't feel well. She went into her parents' room and told them that she had a sore throat, runny nose.

So they gave her an extra strength Tylenol and sent her to bed. Yeah, that's so 80s. What? Those symptoms do not fit Tylenol at all. Yeah, not really. So much of this is so, like, it's funny because it's not that long ago, but, I mean, things have changed. Yeah. Then, at 7 a.m., they found Mary dead on the bathroom floor.

Oh, my gosh. Her death was stunning. I mean, it was tragic, completely unexpected. Stunning. I mean, it was tragic, completely unexpected. Initially, doctors thought she might have died from a stroke, which was, I mean, not something I thought could happen to a 12-year-old. But anyway, that was the initial thought. Meanwhile, in Arlington Heights, which is another suburb of Chicago, paramedics rushed to the home of 27-year-old Adam Janis. They rushed him to the hospital, but it was too late. Oh my gosh. Adam's family was devastated, obviously. They were not prepared for a 27-year-old to...

Okay, I have this term in here. I know it sounds insensitive, but I feel like it's accurate. They weren't prepared for him to drop dead because that is what was happening. People were just dropping dead. So they all gathered at the house to figure out what they were going to do. You know, they were stunned and in terrible grief. And at some point, Adam's younger brother, Stanley, and Stanley's wife, Teresa, both got headaches. So they went to Adam's medicine cabinet and they found a bottle of extra strength Tylenol. Great. So they both took some. Almost immediately, Stanley and Teresa collapsed to the floor.

The other family members were stunned. They called for an ambulance and for the second time that day, an ambulance showed up at the home. Paramedics rushed Stanley and Teresa to the hospital, but again, it was no use. Stanley died that day and Teresa died two days later. What happened to this poor family? Yeah. my God. It was unimaginable. It was so tragic. But, like, the tiniest silver lining is that it was really fucking weird. Yeah. Adam was 27.

Stanley was 25. Teresa was 19. And they'd all died these strange, sudden deaths. It was so weird that Dr. Thomas Kim at the Northwest Community Hospital was like, something's up here. Obviously. He thought maybe there had been poisonous gas in the home. That was my initial, like, that's what they're going to blame it on. Yeah. But he reached out to a poison expert and described what had happened. And the poison expert was like, hmm, that sounds more like cyanide to me. Dr. Thomas took some blood samples from Adam, Stanley and Teresa and sent them off to be tested.

Meanwhile, across town, some firefighters were sitting around and they were like, man, there's been four really weird deaths around here lately. They knew that Mary Kellerman had taken Tylenol before she died, but they didn't know anything about Adam Stanley or Teresa. Just out of curiosity, they thought they'd ask. So one of the firefighters called one of the paramedics who'd responded to Adam Stanley and Teresa. And the the guy was like um hey any chance they took tylenol before they all died and the dude was like yeah yeah why do you ask so by this point the firefighters were like holy shit we're on to something i cannot believe side note i cannot believe how quickly yeah they put that together assuming these were the first four deaths right this just seems amazingly fast yes okay so they called the

cops and the cops rushed out to get those bottles of tylenol the next day the cook county toxicologist examined the tylenol and he discovered that the bottles held 65 milligrams of cyanide, which is more than 10,000 times the amount you'd need to kill an average person. Oh, my gosh. Later that day, the blood samples came back and it confirmed what they'd already knew. All of these victims had been poisoned. already knew all of these victims had been poisoned so the pieces were starting to come together and they were coming together pretty quickly but not fast enough because brandy ear muffs ear muffs okay for real you're not going to want to hear this does a dog die no yeah they gave the dog a Tylenol. The Tylenol.

The dog was like, I have a headache, splitting headache. No. Okay, well, I'm just going to tell you. Okay. A 27-year-old woman named Mary Renner had just given birth to her son, and she was in pain, so she took an extra strength time. Yeah. Oh, no. Yeah, and she died.

Ugh. so she took an extra strength yeah and she died oh that same day a 35 year old woman named paula prince who was a flight attendant got back home to her apartment and she was later discovered dead she had taken tylenol oh my gosh then 35 year old mary mcfarland died suddenly. She'd taken Tylenol. Over a ridiculously short period of time, seven people in the Chicago area had all died from poisoned Tylenol. Officials didn't know who poisoned the Tylenol or why or how many bottles were poisoned, but they knew one thing.

They had to stop people from taking more Tylenol. Yeah. Okay. So, you know, this was all over the news, all across the nation, because there was no guarantee that this was just happening in Chicago. They didn't know how widespread this was. Exactly. There would be no way to know. But they knew for sure it was bad in Chicago.

Yeah. sure it was bad in chicago so police drove through chicago neighborhoods with loudspeakers ordering people to go get their tylenol and throw it away oh my god they were just like you know who knows how many houses are filled with this is one hell of an ad campaign to get people to buy new tylenol well or just stop buying it completely um we'll get to that yeah so it's like the people at excedrin behind this whole thing boy that really clears some things up huh you know they have the pepsi coke wars i mean this is excedrin versus tylenol. God, that's tacky. Not okay. You started it, so you should take all the hate. So people freaked the fuck out. Some retailers, just to be safe, they just pulled Tylenol from the shelves.

They were like, not worth it. Johnson & Johnson is the parent company of Tylenol, and they did a massive recall of 31 million bottles of Tylenol. Okay. They also offered, Rachel Bell's article says that they offered a $1,000 reward for information that would lead to the, yeah, that can't be. There's no way. That's right. I get that it's 82, but even if you adjust that for inflation, that's not going to be

worth it. Another article that was in Vice, which was a very good article, said it was $100,000. That makes more sense to me. It totally has to be $100,000. So they issued warnings to hospitals and distributors, and they completely stopped advertising Tylenol. Wow. Yeah. How they handled this is now studied in business schools for how you handle a crisis. Yeah. Because what they did with that massive recall, I didn't write down the number. I want to say it cost them like a hundred million dollars. I mean, it was a huge financial hit and they were just like, we'll do it. Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah. How many people have lost their lives already? Yeah. I think there are a lot of businesses, though, that would be like...

You're right. Yeah. Yes. By this point, it was October of 1982. People were terrified, and there were way more questions than answers. The FBI was desperately trying to figure out what the hell was going on. They inspected the factories where Tylenol is manufactured, out what the hell was going on. They inspected the factories where Tylenol is manufactured and pretty quickly determined that the poisoning probably wasn't happening in the manufacturing

process. Instead, it seemed much more likely that someone was taking bottles of Tylenol off of store shelves in Chicago, opening some of the capsules. See, this is what i mean by things have changed so much yeah opening the capsules dumping out the tylenol filling them with cyanide taking them back to the store and putting them back on the shelves yeah it seemed they'd only done it to six stores in the chicago area a few grocery stores a few drug stores i I hate to tell you, Brandy, but your favorite drug store was targeted. Walgreens. Yes. It's because Walgreens is huge in Chicago.

Oh, really? There's an intersection in Chicago. Yeah. So I worked for Walgreens. It's headquartered near Chicago. That's where it started. There was this intersection, and I don't know that this still exists like this today, but did when i worked there many moons ago where they had an old walgreens and they built a new walgreens like catty corner from it uh-huh and kept the original one open while they were building it

and then they opened the new one and they both had so much business that they kept them both open because it was easier to get in and out of one or the other based on what direction you were going. This sounds like Starbucks. Right. Get ready to experience an all-new Dawn Valley North Lexus. Dawn Valley North Lexus has temporarily relocated around the corner to 7200 Victoria Park Avenue while they build a brand-new dealership for you. The deals don't stop, though. Get loyalty rates as low as 1.9%. 7200 Victoria Park Avenue, while they build a brand new dealership for you.

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I loved working for Walgreens. Oh my God. I drink the Kool-Aid everywhere I work. You, yeah, you really do. I bet you think this podcast is pretty good too. I think it's pretty amazing. Little do you know,

I'm embezzling from it at this very minute. But who was doing this? Investigators knew that whoever did it, I mean, this seems obvious. I don't even know why I wrote it down. Okay, lay it on me. I'm so ready.

I'm so embarrassed I even wrote this down. I'm so ready. Brandy, Brandy, whoever did it. Okay, are you ready? Yeah. They either had easy access to potassium cyanide, or they'd somehow gotten access to it. What? What an amazing revelation.

So the person who poisoned everybody, somehow they had access to poison. Okay, are we keeping up? Did I go too fast for anyone? And they knew that as far as murderers go, ladies tend to enjoy the poison. We tend to be the poisoners. But they thought this crime, which was so anonymous and really more like terrorism,

seems like you got to have a dick for it. So they were like, we're probably looking for a dude. Probably looking for a dude. But they were kind of screwed. In the early 80s, most stores didn't have surveillance cameras. And it was way more common to just pay cash for everything. So like, I mean, okay, so they, I hate this. They had a picture of one of the victims.

Somehow they had a picture of one of the victims buying her Tylenol, or maybe even just being in the store where it was purchased. And there was, like, a man with a beard by her. But, like, that. Clearly the culprit. Yeah, like, that doesn't really tell you anything, right? Yeah. But pretty soon they had their man.

His name was Roger Arnold. Two first names. How do you feel about that? Sounds like a 90s heartthrob, right? Yeah. There were so many, you know. Yeah. Now I can't think of any.

Jonathan Taylor Thomas. Thank you. You're welcome. Oh, God. Loved him. Big fan. JTT if you're nasty. Roger was a dockhand.

He worked at one of the warehouse. Oh, my God. I did not process that phrase you just said. I was like, dockhand? What's a dockhand? Like, I processed it as one word. Uh-huh. I was like, what's that thing?

I've never heard of that. I think it is one word, actually. Why would it be one word? Well, I didn't make up the what's that thing? I've never heard of that. I think it is one word, actually. Why would it be one word? Well, I didn't make up the word dockhand. Hang on, let me make sure. It's one word? A guy that works at a dock is known as a dockhand, and it's one word? I'm sorry to tell you.

Looks like it. Okay. Boy, don't you feel silly. Brandy, this dockhand, he had access to the cyanide. Or, and follow along with me here okay what's the other or he somehow figured out how to get it yeah when you say it like that it makes sense but i would not have put that together on my own and that's why we have this podcast yeah so he was a dockhand which is a new profession to brandy and he worked at one of the warehouses that supplied tylenol to two of the stores that had been targeted

he also had a beard he also so one of the articles said he was like a diy chemist and he had once worked on a project. Potassium chloride. What is it? Potassium cyanide. Yeah. He had once worked on a project that used cyanide. When they searched his apartment, they found two one-way tickets to Thailand.

And a book that described how to kill people by stuffing poison into capsules. Stuffing poison? I didn't have time to put the G on there. There was no time. We're so pressed. You're going to have this baby any minute. And I don't want it to be a cliffhanger. I want to get out as much of my story as I can.

Okay, so here's my problem. I want to know the name of the fucking book. I bet you it's just some random thriller that everybody has in their house. And everyone is constantly poisoning people with these capsules. That's right, by stuffing poisons.

Stuffing poisons. You ever had a stuffed crust pizza? I have, that sounds delicious. It's so good. Also, Brandyy he had firearms no but i mean what's that there you get what welcome to america what does it have to do with the crime brandy this is all looking this is all really stacking up you got the book you got the firearms you got you know one time he played with cyanide what more do you need yeah you got two tickets to paradise pack your bags we'll leave tonight

so these firearms he did not have the legal right to possess them was he a felon so i'm i'm not sure but at any rate they locked him up for illegal possession of firearms and you know they for sure had their guy 100 no%, no doubt about it. So shut up and quit looking at me like that. But Roger Arnold wasn't the Tylenol killer. Yeah. For sure. He initially sounded like a good suspect, but there was nothing really linking him to the crimes.

I mean, yeah, he worked at that warehouse, but he wasn't the only employee at that warehouse. He was the only ducky in there. That's right. Two words or one word. It doesn't matter. You could mix it up into a bunch of words. It's still, he wasn't the only one. Nonetheless, his name got out there,

and he became known as a prime suspect in one of the most horrifying crimes of all time. Yeah. That we've all promptly forgotten about. I think it's so weird. Yeah. I mean, you talk to people like our parents' age. I told my mom I was doing this, and she was like, oh, my gosh.

But, like, I hadn't heard of this. You weren't alive then. And I'm very smart. Well, there were tons of, I mean, I knew all about the Lindbergh kidnapping. His name was eventually cleared, but the damage was done. He had been named in this horrible thing. He'd been accused of, like, the most terrible crime of all time. But Roger was pretty sure that the guy who'd caused all this trouble,

the guy who'd given his name to police, was a bar owner marty sinclair so one day he saw marty sinclair and he gave him a capsule stuffed with cyanide yeah he was like i didn't do the other ones but no so he became enraged marty had ruined his life and it was time to get even so he walked up to marty and he shot him at point blank range. What? Yeah. And Marty died instantly. I'm sorry. I could tell you were not prepared for this. Oh my gosh. Except it wasn't Marty. Roger had murdered a man named John Stanisza. And John Stanisza just sort of looked like Marty Sinclair. So, I know. So, Roger was convicted for second-degree murder

and given a 30-year sentence. Oh, my gosh. My jaw is on the floor right now, guys. Wow. But back to the Tylenol investigation. Seven people have died. The entire nation is freaking out, and investigators have so little to go on. And that's when the folks at Johnson & Johnson received a letter. Here's what it said.

Gentlemen, as you can see, it is easy to place cyanide, both potassium and sodium, into capsules sitting on store shelves. And since the cyanide is inside the gelatin, it is easy to get buyers to swallow the bitter pill. Another beauty is that cyanide operates quickly. It takes so very little, and there will be no time to take countermeasures. If you don't mind the publicity of these little capsules, then do nothing. So far, I have spent less than $50, and it takes me less than 10 minutes per bottle. If you want to stop the killing, then wire $1 million to bank account 8449597 at Continental Illinois Bank, Chicago, Illinois. Don't attempt to involve the FBI or local Chicago authorities with this letter. A couple of phone calls by me

will undo anything you can possibly do. Wow. Okay, is this one of those things where it's somebody just like trying to capitalize on the situation and get a million bucks out of it and they actually had nothing to do with planting the pills in the bottles? Excellent question. Let's find out, shall we? So Johnson and Johnson, they read this letter and they're like, how about no? And they immediately handed it over to the police. Then the White house received a letter in it the writer said that he would continue to kill people with tylenol unless the tax policies

changed what so this is just another person these are just we just got looney tunes all over the united states just trying to capitalize on this. This is how we got Reaganomics. No! From this letter. Also, if the tax policies didn't change, he would send a fleet of remote-controlled model airplanes to the White House. And, you know, they'd just be pelting that White House so hard that the Secret Service would be unable to communicate with each other. The whole system would be fried. That doesn't make any sense. Okay. In this dumb ass's defense, obviously I read to you directly from the Johnson

and Johnson letter. The White House letter has not been ever made public, but people have said, The White House letter has not been ever made public. But people have said, you know, certain things were in there. To me, a fleet of model airplanes pelting the White House so that the Secret Service can't. That doesn't even make. I'm sure if we could hear the guy out. I'm sure he could explain it much better than that. He'd be like, I'm so embarrassed.

That's what's gotten out about my beautifully written letter. I sounded like a real nut. With Roger cleared of wrongdoing, investigators started to make headway on these extortion letters. The one that had been sent to Johnson & Johnson appeared to have been sent from the air to Miller Brewing. Hmm. Like it's Miller time, baby? I believe so. Oh, okay.

Yeah. He evidently didn't have enough money, so he decided to cash in. Wonderful. At least that's who would have received the million dollars if they'd wired that money to the Chicago bank account. It's just a looney tune out there that has nothing to do with the case but why why i don't know i don't know about the bank account stuff doesn't jive with that so i'm not really sure yeah you'd have to have some disgruntled former employee oh not bad brandy not bad okay so the air to miller brewing was being framed uh-huh that letter

was covered in fingerprints and those fingerprints came from a kansas city con man local case local case this dipshit was an accountant slash con artist because you can be more than one thing. That's right. And his name was James W. Lewis. James was well known to Kansas City police. He had served two years of a 10-year sentence for tax fraud. And four years earlier, in 1978, he was charged with dismembering an elderly man who had hired him to do some accounting work. Police had found Raymond West's mummified remains in James's attic. Wow. But the charges against James were dismissed. Oh, why is that? This is infuriating. This is is infuriating.

This is completely infuriating. Ooh. Okay, let me tell you what happened. Let me tell you what happened. Okay, tell me what happened. You know, they find the dismembered remains in this guy's house. Yes. Following along so far, which means he had access to this guy's remains or somehow.

Or somehow got access to them brandy it can really go either way but it all ends with the remains in his attic so the charges were dismissed partly because raymond west's cause of death could not be determined. I wonder that. Which drives me crazy, but okay. But mostly because a judge decided that police never had the right to search James's home, which made Raymond West's body inadmissible in court. Everything they found was inadmissible. Also, they'd never read James's his miranda rights which i know was

a relatively new thing but god damn so yeah just a whole whole bunch of reasons there okay oh also james was also a suspect in a jewelry robbery which i've saved for last because it's clearly the most important. But why had James framed... James Frame. That's my brother-in-law's name. But why had James framed the heir to Miller Brewing? Why not take the money for himself? Turns out, Brandy, James and his lovely wife Leanne, who I don't know if she was lovely, but, you know, whatever.

They knew the Miller Brewing guy and didn't like him. Leanne used to work for him and was not a fan. OK, so there's this big, I think, boring story, convoluted story about some bounce checks and blah, blah, blah. And James and Leanne were pissed. checks and blah blah blah and James and Leanne were pissed so you know what better way to get even with the guy than to frame him for a terrible crime that was terrorizing the nation sure right that's how I get my revenge always so investigators started looking all over the place for James and Leanne but they were nowhere to be found. A few weeks passed. There were wanted posters everywhere.

It was all over the news. Then, in the last week of October, for some fucking reason, James Lewis reached out to the Chicago Tribune. He reached out under one of his known aliases and told them that he and his wife were not the Tylenol murderers and they did not have any weapons. Okay. Right? Like the Chicago Tribune gets in there like, oh, okay, hey, everybody call it off. Yes. FBI, you got the wrong guy according to him, so just leave it be. wrong guy according to him so just leave it be that letter came from new york city which is a small city located in new york state a week passed no james another week passed no james

a month passed finally on december 13th the fbi arrested James Lewis at the New York Public Library. I didn't write this down, but he was like in one of those little reading rooms where you're alone. Masturbating. No, although that happens all the fucking time. I know. It's an epidemic in libraries. Can you imagine cleaning a library? No.

No, it'd be terrible. Okay. What he was doing, he had out all these newspapers, and he was, like, writing down people's names and addresses. Yeah, sounds all very sketchball. Okay. Not masturbating to my knowledge, though. A week later, Leanne turned herself in. What?

What? That sounds like you said, like, masturbating to my to my knowledge like because i've got so much knowledge it's so exciting yes some of my knowledge is pretty hot brandy but to my knowledge he was not masturbating to it so investigators were thrilled john of course denied even writing the letters and he denied any involvement in the Tylenol murders, but that was obviously bullshit. His fingerprints matched the ones on the Johnson & Johnson letter

and the handwriting matched both letters. What are you looking at me like? I'm sorry, his name's John now? I thought his name was James. James, oh no! Yeah, you're right, James. I'm sorry. Classic Kristen.

Classic mix-up. Obviously, he'd done the whole thing. Except maybe he and Leanne hadn't done the Tylenol murders. Yeah. They were living in New York at the time. And they had strong alibis. Leanne had been at work every day. And James had joined her for lunch every day.

And he picked her up from work every day. So investigators tried like hell to find a bus schedule or a flight schedule that would show how James or Leanne could have possibly pulled off these crimes. But it didn't really fit. Eventually, James told investigators, Look, I'm not the Tylenol murderer. I'm just a guy who tried to capitalize on the Tylenol murderer, which is great. Yes.

James received a 20-year prison sentence. Yeah, they super hated him. Yeah. I agree. In the midst of this investigation, Johnson & Johnson re-released Tylenol back onto the market. And this time, Tylenol had a whole new look. I'm sorry, that was way too light for this story. I take it back.

It happens in one of those makeover montages. They get their revenge body. Oh my gosh. No, they had tamper-proof packaging, which was not a thing back then. Yeah, which is alarming. I know, I know. And they offered everyone a coupon to give Tylenol a try once again. So this is the thing that people talk about when they talk about a great way to handle a terrible thing in business.

They said that obviously everybody stopped buying Tylenol. Yeah. But once they jumped through all these hoops and did this huge recall and seemed very involved in trying to prevent this from ever happening again, people trusted Tylenol again. And let me tell you something, Brandy. I'm on Tylenol right now for my surgery. And boy, do I feel great. This episode brought to you by Tylenol. Buy your Tylenol. Buy your Tylenol at Walgreens. And when you get up to the cashier, tell them, let's go to court.

And when she gives you a weird look, you give her that weird look right back. That's exactly right. Fairly quickly. Oh, yeah. People bought Tylenol again. Okay. Yeah. Sorry. Skipping again. Okay, yeah. Sorry. Skipping ahead, skipping ahead.

So people could now either have access to Tylenol. They either could get the access. They could have the access. They could ingest the Tylenol. By the spring of 1983, the FBI had a ton of leads, and they'd all gone nowhere. I feel, I swear to you I have to sneeze. I swear I do. I thought you were like trying to, you know. I'm.

Dramatic pause and then like a segue. No. Just trying to sneeze. The dramatic pause was for the sneeze it's like okay so this is what i do when i have to sneeze you gotta pinch i pinch the bridge of my nose pinch the bridge of your nose yeah and pinch it home and then a sneeze will come out well that was bullshit i actually think that there's a reason that mine doesn't i think that's like what normal people you've got like a special nose? I broke my nose in high school. So yeah, I think it's like.

When did you break your nose in high school? I was a sophomore. Where was I? What happened? I was playing basketball in my driveway. Oh,

with your dad and Dan, right? Yeah. Yeah, okay. And my neighbors, my neighbor head butted me like when you're going

for a ball, he head butted me and he broke my nose. Yeah, and he hated you, so he just, yeah. Okay,

I'm with you now. My nose used to be perfectly straight. It's got this little crooked spot in it now. Oh, my gosh. Ended my modeling career. That was so tragic. You were on that runway, and they just yanked you right off. Only reason I didn't go into modeling is because I'm so smart, you know?

I did that. People masturbate to your knowledge. A lot of people don't know that so many people masturbate to my knowledge. You know, that's a big deal, Brandy. It'd be a shame to put this on the runway. So, the Tylenol murderer was still on the loose, which is no laughing matter. Sorry. But maybe it wasn't about catching the person or persons who did this.

Maybe it was about preventing something like this from happening it again. Mm-hmm. It again. Happening again. Sorry. See, I wasn't prepared to go first. These are the things that happen. You just threw me on stage like a show mom.

I'm over here like duplicating your routine. You're doing the choreography for me? I'm adding in extra words and moves. So Congress took action. They approved the Tylenol bill, which made it a federal crime to maliciously tamper with consumer products, which is awesome. Not doing that, but it should have been a crime for...

I think it's one of those things no one thought that it needed to be a crime. Yeah. Kind of like... What? When the governor of Missouri opened up Missouri, he was like, now's the time that we really just trust that people are going to make the right decisions and use common sense. what when the governor of missouri opened up missouri oh my god he was like oh my god the time that we really just you know trust that people are going to make the right decisions and use common sense and so they didn't say like hey you can't go to the lake of the ozarks for

memorial day weekend and attend a giant pool party brandy where you're literally on top of another person i'm i am you know this but I'm losing my fucking mind. You guys, out here in the magical Midwest, we have the Lake of the Ozarks, which is like where you go for, you know, memorial. Well, we went together. Oh, yeah. We've been many times together because it's like where you go to vacation. Yeah. Okay.

Obviously, right now, unless you're a dipshit, you know you shouldn't go to a pool party with like a hundred of your closest friends and like cough into somebody's open mouth. I don't know. Don't worry, Kristen. They tested everybody's temperature before they got in the pool and anybody with a temperature above 100.4 was denied access. That is so reassuring. 100.4. And each person was handed their very own bottle of hand sanitizer. Absolutely not. That did not happen. There's no way that happened. I promise you that didn't happen. There's no way that happened. People would be lined up for days

for hand sanitizer right now. Exactly. Anyway, guys, sorry. Went to that. So anyway, we should probably cut that part. We'll bleep it. Okay. We'll bleep it okay we'll bleep it all right but you guys should just know that uh the other day i was i was making fun of the people who went to the lake of the ozarks i was like who on earth would do it uh someone i know quite well true story not someone who's coming to my fucking house anytime soon i'll tell you that anyway anyway anyway back to the story so they made it a lot because up then, they didn't think they had to tell people they couldn't do that. Yes.

Are people in Missouri the biggest idiots or like, is this just a nationwide epidemic? I think the big part is that people who have been unaffected by the virus are like, I don't understand why we can't get back to life as normal. Yeah. the virus are like i don't understand why we can't get back to life as normal yeah and so there's more people like then it's probably healthy to have anyway anyway in 1989 the fda created federal guidelines that made it so that all pharmaceuticals had to be tamper proof very good Very good. Again, great guideline. Very good guideline. Applause to the guideline.

Plus, the pharmaceutical industry itself changed. They moved away from capsules, which are obviously easy to mess with, and moved over to tablets. But, Brandi, it's not all good news. Because the killer hadn't been caught, and to make things even worse, over the next few years, the Chicago Tylenol murders inspired hundreds of copycats.

Oh my gosh. Yes. This is terrible. This resulted in at least three known deaths. And although those crimes were solved, the Chicago Tylenol murders weren't. And seemed like they would never be solved. In 1995, after serving 13 years of his 20-year extortion sentence, James Lewis, the prime suspect in this case, was released. Years passed.

2007 was the 25th anniversary of the Tylenol murders. People started talking about the crime again. The tip line was still open. Johnson & Johnson still had their reward money up for grabs, $1,000 or $100,000. And tips came in. And apparently one or maybe more of those tips pointed back to a well-known dirtbag named James Lewis. Wow. Or John Lewis, depending on what you want to say. What had our old pal been up to since he'd gotten out of prison, Brandy?

Oh, not much. Unless you count the fact that in 2004, he was charged with raping and kidnapping a woman. Oh my gosh. Yep. He was 62, and he was teaching this 38-year-old woman how to build websites, when all of a sudden, he accused her of stealing website space, which is not a thing. No.

Not a thing. And then he sprayed her in the face with chemicals, tied her to a bed, and did horrible things to her for 24 hours. Oh, my gosh. The article I read went into so much detail. And I was like, pass, pass, pass. Nope.

So he sat in jail for three years awaiting trial. And on the day his trial was set to begin, the prosecutor dropped charges. Why? Why? set to begin the prosecutor dropped charges why the article said that the victim refused to testify but i i'm kind of like okay if the boston fucking herald had all that detail obviously the victim spoke at some point so couldn't you use some of that i'm i'm at any rate james was back out on the street i just hate how all the articles it makes it seem like the only reason this guy got out is because it's the victim's fault yeah no that's and i'm just wondering clearly she spoke

at some point exactly wouldn't there have been a way to move forward? These are the things I don't know because I only went to one semester of law school. A lot of the investigators thought they'd had the right guy all along. James Lewis was the Tylenol murderer. They just had never had enough evidence on him. But maybe now with the advances in technology, they could find enough to get him. So, you know, they had all those old Tylenol bottles. And I read an article that said that they had some partial prints. But again, you don't know if that's from somebody who did this thing, or if it's just, you know, random people. So in 2009, the FBI took James's computer and a bunch of other stuff from his condo in Boston.

Which I'm like, how the fuck does this guy afford a condo in Boston? But anyway. And James and Leanne, who I think are still married. Even after the rape thing? I hate it. I hate it all. But the more recent articles I've read said that they're still together, which... Okay.

So, according to a friend of theirs, they did submit DNA samples. But nothing seems to have come from that. In 2011, the FBI obtained DNA samples from the Unabomber, which seemed to make sense. The Unabomber's parents had a house in the Chicago area at the time of the crimes. Yeah. And the Unabomber's first targets were in Chicago. No match. But, I mean, it doesn't say no match, but surely if there was a match.

Yeah. That would have made some big fucking headlines to this day james and leanne seem to be living in boston or maybe cambridge and uh james maintains a website which is absolutely fucking nuts and would you like to go go to it? You bet your sweet ass I would. It's called cyberlewis.com. Cyber L-E-W-I-S dot com. It is like a time warp. Ooh. He's self-published a book

called Poison, The Doctor's Dilemma. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And he did not waste money hiring a graphic designer to do that cover. He sure did not. He did not.

A novel by James W.M. Lewis. What the fuck's his middle name? William. You don't abbreviate that W.M. Well, apparently he does, and he does it on the cover of his book. Wow. Wow. Yeah. We're probably being tracked.

And he's going to, like, come kill us now. And he'll get away with it because the police forget to, like, Mirandize him or something. Okay, I'm going to close this website. Yeah, me too. It's all black background, guys. There's, like, white text. It's like a website out of 2004 right

yeah i'm gonna accuse him of stealing website space and that brandy is the story of the infuriatingly unsolved chicago tylenol murders wow A ton of court stuff. No satisfaction. No kidding. I mean, obviously there's laws. There's I mean, just poor Roger, who was initially accused. Yeah. He got out. I want to say he got out halfway through his 30 year sentence and he died in 2008. OK, now I have to go take Tylenol. Yes, go tylenol and that's not a joke i hope you don't die okay are you ready to talk about an old-timey local murder i mean i was ready like an hour i know you wanted me to go first go for it um giant huge shout out to diane houston for the martin city telegraph oh that's a small paper yes this case comes almost entirely from her article i've pulled a couple of bits and pieces

from like newspaper wow newspapers newspapers.com she said eloquently but almost all of this is from her piece um sorry go ahead go what what do you got well we should probably start timing your contractions now you stop it so somebody shared this article on facebook a couple weeks ago. And I was like, ooh. On our Facebook page? No, just on Facebook in general. Just randomly. This article just recently came out. Okay.

And so I was like, it says something in the headline about, you know, a 1920s murder. And I was like, and so I bookmarked it immediately and text you immediately that I was calling dibs. So here we are. Okay. immediately that I was calling dibs. So here we are. Okay. At 24, Florence Barton was well known and a respected Kansas City socialite. Her father, Kimber Barton, was one half of Barton Brothers Boots and Shoe Company, which was located like at Fifth and Delaware in the West Bottoms. And in 1920, it was one of the biggest shoe and boot wholesalers in the area okay not familiar with it it i looked up the address it took up like two units down there and

it nothing comes up so okay i don't think the address still exists i think that building's been redone or whatever i need more information but florence was not satisfied just to rely on her father's notoriety, though she could have gotten by just fine on that alone. Instead, she decided she wanted an education. She'd graduated high school and then she'd gone off to college in Pennsylvania. And upon completing her education there, she moved back to Kansas City and began volunteering for the Junior League. Where'd she go to college? I don't know. I couldn't find that.

Okay. Junior League. That's where the fancy ladies? I don't know. I couldn't find that. Okay, Junior League. That's where the fancy ladies volunteer. That is where the fancy ladies volunteer. The Kansas City Junior League is around still today, and fancy. I know two people. Are they very fancy?

Yeah, okay. Here's how fancy they are. So I worked with them, and one of them bought a new like silk blouse, work blouse. And it's like, yeah, it's a nice blouse. But like it started raining. And so she had to get like, it was just a whole ordeal to protect the silk blouse. And I was like, okay, so like, she's different for me on two levels. Number one, she has a silk blouse. Number two, like, she obviously maintains her things at a higher level than I do. Yes. So you know, yeah, junior league, yeah, silk blouses,

you're bound. By October of 1920, Florence was engaged to a longtime family friend, Howard L. Winters. They hadn't actually announced their engagement yet, but they had planned a spring wedding. And she was living in the Ormond Hotel, which was off Linwood and Troost. Okay. That sounds familiar. Yeah, it sounded familiar to me too. So she was living there with her father and sister. Living in hotels was something that was very common at that time. Exactly. Lots of hotels had like apartment setups on their higher floors. Like it was was very common at that time. Exactly. Lots of hotels had like apartment setups on their higher floors. Like it was a very common thing. I mean, it'd be amazing. You get room

service, you get a maid. Exactly. Like it does not sound bad. Exactly. So it was something that her father had taken to after his wife, their mother had died like 10 years earlier. So they lived in a few different hotels in the Kansas City area. This particular time they were living at the Ormond. This hotel has long since been torn down, but by some reading that I did, it was quite the fancy establishment. It was like a Holiday Inn, not like a Holiday Inn Express. There was like a very fancy restaurant in it,

and then like a less fancy restaurant in it too. When you were feeling cash. Yes, exactly. It was the evening of October 2nd, 1920, and Florence was preparing to go on a night drive with her fiance Howard. Side note, 10 pounds fun fact. Okay. I got my journal out. October 2nd is my dad and Lisa's wedding anniversary. Very good. What a weird time. Like, so had women just gotten the right to vote? Yeah, 19. Yeah. 1920. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I'm in it. All right. So that particular night, she was going out with her fiance. She wore a black dress tied with a green sash. She kissed

her sister Hattie on the cheek before leaving. And she giggled like, don't wait up as she was like walking out the door with Howard. It was like a beautiful, crisp October night. It would be the last time that Hattie would see her sister alive. Around 930, Howard and Florence got in his Dodge Coupe, which was dark green if you're keeping track. Okay. And started taking a drive through the city. They went down the Paseo to Swope Park. They took a little drive around Swope Park. They drove past the Hillcrest Country Club and then headed east and ended up somewhere around 87th and Blue Ridge Boulevard, which at that time was like, they got pretty far out. They were pretty far out. And yeah, it was a very country area. Like this is a country road, not, they weren't

near anything. It's funny. I'm not super familiar with that area. And so I was asking David, I'm like, what's there now? And he's like, there's a McDonald's on one corner. And I was like, so I was like looking it up and he's absolutely right. There's a McDonald's on one corner. Couldn't you say that about anything? Is that where the Walmart is? Not far. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

So like one corner, there's like a McDonald's. There's an advanced auto parts on another corner. There's a payday loan place on one corner. Yeah. Anyway, so they stop on the side of the road somewhere around 87th and Blue Ridge Boulevard. Howard wanted to light a cigar. He didn't want to do that while he was driving, obviously. So he pulls over, starts to light up his cigar when another car

pulled up alongside of them. Super weird. It's dark out here. There's no lights. Like, I mean, they're in the middle of the country. But Howard was like, okay, whatever. They pulled up like right next to him. Sorry, did they go there to like make out or have sex? No, I think they were just like having like a little drive and he decided he wanted his cigar. Yeah, but it's really late at night and they're out in the country. I don't know. Maybe they did go out to have sex. Okay. I mean, it's possible. I'm not judging. I'm just wondering. I'm actually surprised that they weren't married yet. She was 24 years old. That's kind of old matey for 1920 standards.

Not if you have money, right? I don't know. Yeah, these are the things I don't know. So maybe they did. Maybe they were hooking it. Maybe this was a post coitus cigar. Maybe. Okay.

So anyway, this car pulls up. It's like a big black Buick and And there's three people inside of it. But that's all that Howard can tell because it's so dark. But one of the men jumps out of the Buick and like jumps onto the running board of Howard's car and starts talking to him. And Howard's just kind of like trying to take stock of the situation. Like what's going on here. And this guy is like very polite he says uh can you tell me how to get to lee summit from here and so howard starts to tell

him directions and which way he needs to go and then something catches his eye kind of behind this guy that he's talking to and he looks into the Buick and he sees that the other two passengers in the Buick are paying very close attention to him and then also that they're kind of looking down at this man's hand and so Howard follows their glance oh god and looks down and he is holding a 38 caliber pistol and he has it pointed directly at Howard it was something that Howard hadn't noticed up to that point. Immediately, just like by instinct, Howard kind of like puts his hand up to shield himself. Yeah. And before anybody says anything, all of a sudden gunshots ring out. Howard is shot through his arm, like through the elbow. Oh, I don't know why I said elbow that way.

More shots are fired. There's glass shattering everywhere, screams, and Florence is screaming, and she says, my God, I'm hit. Within like seconds, the guy that was standing on the car jumps off, gets into the Buick, and that car just like tears off as fast as a 1920s Buick can go. 20 miles an hour. Howard does like take a mental note at that time to note that this guy has a dark brown suit on and he's wearing a hat. And then he, with his arm that has been shot, he's sorry, it's his left arm. He's been shot like through the elbow. He, Florence, who he knows has been shot because she has, you know, screamed and said, I'm hit. So Howard's biggest concern right now is getting Florence medical care.

They're in the middle of nowhere. Right. So he just drives like to the closest house. He sees a house with some kind of light on. It's like a quarter mile up the road. They go there. Turns out it's the house of this guy named Roy Garvey. He carries Florence out of the car

she has been hit in the chest oh no and like he's like got her cradled in his arms and he's walking up to the house and he's screaming for help yeah the owners were asleep it's you know at this point i don't know 10 o'clock at night but whatever and this roy garvey comes out and he's alarmed because there's now a young woman laying in his driveway essentially and there's blood pooling around her oh this guy did not have a phone at his house oh my god it's 1920 he lives in the country yeah and so he just grabs florence up puts her in his car and how Howard gets into and they drive to like this doctor that this guy knows. His name is Dr. Hobbs and he lived in Raytown. So not far away.

But still on these country roads. Yes. Because Raytown used to be like the little country vacation destination for people who lived in Kansas City. Yes, exactly. Oh. Yeah. vacation destination for people who lived in Kansas City. Yes, exactly. Oh, yeah. So they get to this doctor's house and this doctor looks over Florence and immediately he's like, we have to get her to the hospital. The nearest hospital is Independence. Oh, my God. Yeah. And so so that's another. I mean, even in today's time, that's 20 minutes. Yes. From Raytown to Independence. And then you factor in newly invented cars and old country roads.

So the doctor jumps in the car. We've got Florence and Howard in the backseat. By this time, Florence has, like, collapsed onto, like, the floorboards of the backseat. And she's just, like, got her head resting on Howard's lap. She, like, reaches up for his face and she just very weakly says it hurts. By the time they reached the hospital, Florence had died from her injuries. Yeah. They estimated her time of death to be about 1145 p.m. on October 2nd. Police were notified within a few hours you know that this shooting had taken place

and it was actually howard's dad that ended up alerting the police like i don't know why they weren't the i i don't know they weren't the first phone call for some reason they called florence's dad they called howard's dad everybody came to the hospital and then it was like oh we should probably get the police involved in this situation i can kind of understand that when someone is dead yes you know yeah so police get to the scene they come to the hospital they go to retrace the steps they go to howard's car and they find 238 caliber bullets like lodged in the seats of the car. And they find that Howard had a gun as well, but his gun had been unfired. Yeah. He hadn't.

He had not fired it. He had not fired it. So what that means, Kristen, is that he had a weapon with him. But for whatever reason, he did not discharge it that evening. Okay. Definition of unfired. At this point, all they really know is that these three men in a Buick had come along that night. That's so weird.

And they started calling them the three night raiders. Okay. And the search was on for them. Very quickly, Florence's father put out a $5,000 reward for her return. Or for her return. Jesus. Did they feel really bad for him? obviously he didn't you know what i was distracted by but i didn't look that up if an inflation yeah what's a hundred years worth of inflation on that bad boy

i did it for another figure in this case, but I didn't do it for... You know, I hate to say it, but you sometimes do this. You do half the adjustments. $68,000. Wow. Adjusted for inflation. Yeah. Not for her return, because they obviously knew where she was, but for the apprehension of the suspects in the case.

Howard could give a description of the man he spoke to. He couldn't give a description of the other two people in the case. Howard could give a description of the man he spoke to. He couldn't give a description of the other two people in the car. He described the person he spoke to as being somewhere around 30 years old, about 5 foot 11, 160 pounds, and he had a brown suit on and a hat. Wow, that is really not much. It's just the vaguest description. Yeah. The police went to work, you know, gathering up suspects. Several suspects were arrested in the following days, but Howard was brought in each time to try and ID them, and he couldn't. Yeah. Florence's father, Kimber, was getting just so irritated at this point that no progress was being made in this case. He needed justice for his daughter. He was concerned that there were people out there who had done this and who,

you know, this was big news now. Who knows if they'd come back for more members of the family? Who knows what their motives were? Right. You just don't know. It's the strangest thing. Yes. Because they didn't steal anything.

No. They appeared to have no motive. Yes. steal anything. No. They appeared to have no motive. Yes. So he hires a private investigating service called the Midwest Secret Service to take on the case. And within like a week, they had put together three pretty good suspects. They were three men who had long arrest records and rap sheets and whatever who were known like associates of each other but it was a weird it was a weird thing because they were known to be thieves and robbers not murderers so why not unless this was a hit right so the three men were denzel chester who went by denny lonnie affronti and

fred roberts they knew that denny had been with fred on the night of the murders he'd been seen by people and they were in a black buick that's kind of where this started i think is that the two had been seen together that night lonnie by accounts, I don't think had been seen with them that night, but they just like lumped him in because, you know, they'd done stuff together before. Got to have a third. All right. That's right. So initially they charged them all. So if Howard is eventually able to ID Denny Chester as the man he talked to that night.

But I don't know if he did that from a mugshot, like a previous mugshot, because at this time they don't have him in custody. But for whatever reason, he's able to identify or however they did it for him. They did like a photo lineup or whatever. He IDs Denny Chester as being the man who had been there that he had talked to that had fired the gun that night and so the search is on for all three of these men eventually they track them down this guy fred roberts was arrested he was known as big fred even though he weighed 127 pounds well yeah have you heard of irony brandy he was arrested pretty quickly and then so was lonnie but it was denny who was like for sure on the run they could not track him down big fred wasn't giving him up lonnie wasn't giving him up he already had

a murder charge against him from a different case. So this guy was just a total shithead. He was a total shithead, yes. Somehow, the Midwest Secret Service is able to track down Denny to Montana, which in 1920 just blows my mind. I know, like he really fled. Yes. They're able to track him down there. He was like carrying himself off to be some kind of like army

officer he was staying at a hotel in great falls they track him down there they bust down the door on november 8th so we're talking like a month and a in a week after the murders they find him laying in bed he's got a gun on him and they take him into custody they are bringing him by train back to kansas city okay from montana and they have to take like a series of trains for you know whatever so they get to nebraska and i don't know why this is so slow but now it's already november 15th the whole other week has gone by but they're leaving nebraska headed back to kansas city and denny is sitting on this train he's sitting next to a window and then there's an officer sitting next to him and an officer sitting across from him but he's not handcuffed and the officer that's sitting next to him at some point like feels a

draft and so he gets up to change seats no something. And something happens. Nobody's looking. All of a sudden, there's the sound of broken glass. And they look over. Denny has broken the glass window, and he has plunged headfirst out of the train. Holy, out of the moving train? Out of the moving train. Holy shit.

Yes. The officers fired at him, like times uh-huh one shot maybe hit him or maybe just knocked his hat off as he ran away oh my god it's unclear yeah i don't know that he was actually injured seriously by that but he somehow plunged out of the train was shot at by the police officers and managed to get away he was on the run for five days okay and in those five days he i don't know managed to make it about 22 miles where he was captured doesn't seem too bad no it's not terrible this time he was uh taken in by the local sheriffs in this part of Nebraska. And then Kansas City was alerted that he was in custody.

And while he was being held in the jail in Nebraska, waiting for the Kansas City authorities to come back and get him. What are you going to tell me? He climbed up to the top bunk of his cot in this jail, and he dove headfirst onto the cement floor in an attempt to end his life. Oh, what a terrible way to go. I think that sounds horrible. He was unconscious for several hours and suffered a severe concussion. Yeah. But otherwise was okay.

Put me in, coach. He was now ordered to be brought back to Kansas City. Yeah. To, you know, face his charges. But this time he was ordered to be shackled by his feet and his hands. Well, no shit. And to be seated as far away from a window as possible. Well, how, isn't that like 101?

Why isn't that just the regular protocol? I don't know. It's now December of 1920. Denny's back in Kansas City, but he's under the care of all of these doctors because of all of the injuries that he sustained

from jumping out of a train and jumping off of his cot. I mean, he's refusing to speak. Apparently, he's been inspected by a bunch of doctors who think that he may be mute due to the injuries that he sustained. Oh, come on. And that he would need further treatment and maybe one day he'd be able to regain his speech which spoiler alert he did miraculously okay but at this point he's facing trial he can't speak so they delay his trial delay his trial oh my god finally in may of 1921 uh-huh he officially goes on trial but he still is saying he can't speak so his lawyer puts in a plea of not guilty on his behalf he is he literate yes okay okay so that's a good question

and we will get to that okay this story has like blown up at this point and everybody wants to see who this denny guy is they are they are packing the courtroom they are lining the streets to see this guy as he comes to trial he hobbles into court on crutches just he's horribly injured yeah boohoo The prosecution has two major witnesses that they're going to call to testify and say that Denny was the one who fired the gun that night. First is Howard Winter, the fiance of Florence Barton, who has positively ID'd Denny to this point. The second is Denny's former roommate, a 22-year-old woman, which I thought that was very odd for that time period. Yeah, that is. This 22-year-old woman, Blanche Ryan, is testifying that in the days after the murder of Florence, that she went to Denny and she said, hey, this description in the newspaper this sounds like you and that he had said

you must never tell anyone that you have seen me wearing a brown suit or brown cap wow yeah so that is some pretty good evidence the prosecution is able to bring forward yeah the defense was really able to tear Blanche Ryan apart on the stand. What, by like calling her a loose woman or something? No, I don't. I don't know. Okay. But there were big credibility issues with her.

Okay. The defense was actually able to like lay out that she was involved in a bunch of cons and stuff at the time. Okay. And that perhaps she had been paid by the Midwest Secret Service. Oh. To give that testimony implicating her former roommate. Uh-huh. At the trial, it was kind of laid out that over this entire investigation, the Midwest Secret Service Agency was paid $9,500 by Florence's father for various services, including some kind of bribe.

Adjusted for inflation, $130,000. So not sure how much of that supposedly went to thousand dollars yeah so not sure how much of that supposedly went to blanche ryan but shortly after the trial she married the head of the midwest secret service agency really yes wow yeah somehow the other two guys kind of got away with no charges they actually ended up testifying at this case i think because there was no evidence linking them. Howard couldn't identify them, I think. So the prosecution tried to use them as witnesses. And again, the defense was able to really kind of contest that and point out places where the Midwest Secret Service agency had tried to influence their testimony.

So Big Fred was one of these people. Fred Roberts, he was the guy that was actually seen with Denny in that Buick that day. Yeah. So they brought him forward. The prosecution was like, yeah, tell us about how you guys were in that Buick together on the night of the murders, blah, blah, blah, blah. And Fred's like, yeah, we were in a black Buick together. And I dropped Denny off at 12th and Grand at midnight, which is supposedly somewhere right around the time of the shooting.

If she died at 1145, it'd be shortly after the shooting. Not enough time for him to get back to town. Yeah. What do you think about that? I mean, that doesn't make any sense. Why would you admit to that well so he's saying what what what fred roberts is saying is we couldn't have possibly pulled off the murder because she died at 11 45 there's no way we could have been back to 12th and grand by midnight when i dropped him off and

but she died at 11 45 i agree like she they had to take her to raytown i agree independence that sounds like plenty of time i i agree yeah that doesn't i don't think it's a good point but what the defense was able to point out while uh fred roberts was on the stand was that the midwest secret service agency had offered fred who was a mechanic by trade a job at his very own mechanic shop in St. Joe if he would testify that he for sure... Yes, if he would change the timeline of his testimony to say that they were for sure together with enough time to have committed the murder. I'm totally confused by this whole thing.

Yeah. Because, I mean, presumably the dad wanted justice for his daughter, right? I mean, so, okay, sure, you hire this detective agency. Right. But you don't hire them to lie and frame somebody. Exactly. What the fuck are you trying to tell me, Brandy? Framed somebody.

Exactly. What the fuck are you trying to tell me, Brandy? This case ended up being one of the first signs that there was all kinds of corruption going on in Kansas City in the 1920s. So Florence's father really thought that he was hiring someone who would solve his daughter's murder. And instead, what he did was hire a service who did everything they could to just pin it on someone. Wow. Yeah. And he didn't realize until it was basically, he probably didn't realize until the trial.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And even then, that would be hard to acknowledge. Oh, I got duped. Yeah. And even then, that would be hard to acknowledge. Oh, I got duped. Exactly. I got swindled out of $100,000, which... Yes.

Yeah. The Midwest Secret Service Agency, this like, he thought he was going to the best private detective agency available to him they totally completely botched this case and did illegal things to try and pin it on someone yeah so fred testified that he had been offered this bribe by the midwest secret service agency and that they said you know when they came to him you know you gotta think about your wife think about your daughter, think about your future. And he testified that he told them, well, what about Denny's future and Denny's wife and Denny's children? Yeah. You're asking me to lie and that will likely cost this man his life.

Wow. And so he couldn't do it. He didn't take the bribe. Wow. Yeah. Good for him. Yeah. The only person who positively ID'd Denny as being present that night was Howard Winter.

The defense, again, tried to discredit that by putting Denny on the stand himself. So they also brought forward another witness who had seen Denny several times that night down in the area of 12th and Grand, which now is like where the Sprint Center is. Yeah. A close friend of his, he'd been friends with him for years, saw him as he was like walking into a restaurant and they like chatted that night. And so Howard's description of Denny was so vague. I bet there's many people that would probably match that description. Yes. And you're talking about a dark country road.

Yeah. And so the defense did, I think, a great job of trying to discredit like that one eyewitness account. Yeah. Denny Chester took the stand in his own defense but remember he's mute and injured so he hobbled up there okay on his crutches and they had a whole setup arranged with the court stenographer so a question would be asked to Denny. He would write his answer down. He'd then hand his answer to the court stenographer. She would enter it into the record and then she'd read it aloud. This sounds torturous.

Horrible. And he had a very different story to tell about how he had sustained all of his injuries than what had been released to the public by that point. So what had been released was that he had broken that window and dove headfirst out of that train in a way to escape. And he had climbed to that top bunk and dove headfirst onto that concrete floor to try and end his life. It's not at all what happened to him.

Okay. See, the police had thrown him from that train and the doctors who were then caring for him after he was brought back to kansas city well they had tortured him they had knocked out his teeth and they'd lit fire to his legs they'd lit his legs on that's right they'd. They'd stuck him with needles. They'd put acid under his toenails and they'd put turpentine into his food. It was all of those things that left him in this state of being unable to speak on his own behalf. Let's see those toenails. somehow the public's view of this case became what no one expected and people were behind denny chester wow yes they thought that he had gotten the worst mistreatment ever they believed his stories of torture and mistreatment by the police. And that was, again, one of the first signs that there was corruption going on

under the surfaces of everything. So we've talked about this a little bit before. So in the 1920s, 1930s, the mob scene was huge in Kansas City. But at this time, that was still kind of like on the cusp of it. And so people were kind of turning like a blind eye to it or pretending it wasn't there or weren't quite aware that it was happening yet. And so again, this was like one of the first cases

where people took the side of the criminal. This guy is a known criminal. And somehow he gets the compassion and he gets the public behind him, like championing his release people lined up outside the courtroom every day lined the streets they were like chanting for his release it was a crazy time what do you think about that you're making the craziest face i know i know um okay this is gonna make you even crazier what well when you told the story of him bursting through a window yeah and falling out of a moving train

and then when you told the story of him trying to commit suicide by like sliding off a top bunk and hitting his head on a concrete floor yeah i thought that sounded kind of nuts do you believe his story i kind of do so that's i kind of do the public believed it they thought yeah oh my gosh look at what is going on Look at how the police are treating this man. Even though he was a known criminal, they felt sorry for him. He was facing another, he had a whole other murder case pending. Especially that suicide attempt where he's been, I almost said beaten across the head. So that shows what I'm thinking.

Yeah. That's, I would believe, police brutality. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So obviously, I think this guy's a shithead. is what i'm thinking yeah that's i would believe police brutality yeah yeah yeah yeah so obviously i think this guy's a shithead i think he probably was the guy who did this he probably was but police don't get to beat the shit out of exactly and i think that's yeah i think it's a whole lot more believable that he would be brutalized by police, then that they would be totally negligent.

Initially, who's controlling the release of the information? The police. Yeah. So, of course, that's the information that comes out. Well, and maybe it's the truth. And maybe it is the truth. But I'm telling you, when you were telling me that, I was like, that sounds crazy. He burst through a closed window and fell out of a moving train.

Well, and how likely do we really think it is that he was being transported just completely unguarded like that like one police officer it doesn't make any sense you know anything could happen yeah but yeah yeah yeah so this the this gained the public's attention like crazy. And like everybody's ears started to perk up basically. I'm like, maybe you can't just trust the authorities. And maybe you can't just trust the Secret Service agency that you hired. Well, now, hold on, hold on, hold on. But you don't believe the guy's story, right? You believe.

No. No, no, no. Really? I don't necessarily not believe a story. I think either are possible. Okay. I was presenting it as this is how it was released to the public. Okay.

Okay. This is the story that they were told. Okay. No, I don't know what the truth is. Okay. I got the vibe when you were telling it that you thought it was crazy that the public sided with him. No, no, no.

I do think it's crazy that the, that in this day and age that we were in here in 1920 that the public just took his word as the truth rather than what the police were telling them okay it was really kind of the first instance where that had happened and where people were like there might be more going on here than we're being told. Hmm. Hmm. But even if it is police brutality, the thing of throwing somebody from a train,

that's just stupid, right? I mean, you have to go find him again. I know. He was on the run for five days after that. I don't know. Well, okay. Continue. During closing arguments,

the defense really honed in on the Midwest Secret Service agency. What they had done, basically, they painted it as a frame job. Like, look what these people did. They bribed this guy. They tried to bribe this guy. Yeah. They didn't do their jobs. They just paid a bunch of people off. Exactly.

And that made a big impact on the jury. The jury deliberated for 20 minutes. Oh, wow. And they found Denny Chester not guilty. Yeah. The people in the streets went crazy. They started cheering for Denny. All of the jurors came over and shook his hand.

Oh, I don't know about that. Following their verdict. This is a case that had just had like gripped the public for like eight months now. Florence's father was heartbroken. He couldn't believe that this was the turn of events. He really thought that he had hired the right people and done the right thing. Yeah. I mean, he lost in every possible way. Yeah. The hits just kept on coming for him after this happened, because then the star witness, the Blanche, the roommate,

marries the guy from the Midwest Secret Service. When Denny is freed and let to go home, he's like taken with his lawyer to a chauffeured car. And it's one of the other men that was implicated in the case that's like chauffeuring the car, the Lonnie Affronti guy. It was just like it was all being just thrown in his face about how mishandled this case had been. And he made a statement about how clearly this case would never be solved because the person who did it had just gotten away with murder. I think he's probably right. Yeah.

So the jury was asked how they came to a not guilty verdict so fast. And they said the prosecution couldn't show us any motive. What was the motive here? They never tried to explain that at all. Which is frustrating to me because I don't know that there always is a motive. Yeah. But they always say that juries buy a story and you have to tell a story. Yeah.

And no motive doesn't make sense. That's not a good story. It's not a good story. But yeah, it really seems like the prosecution just didn't have enough on these guys. Yeah. I think that that yeah they they rushed to a case with the help of the a terrible agency terrible agency and all of the bad dealings came to light at the trial bit him in the ass as they say it absolutely did so denny chester was

free this day but he still had to answer for that other murder charge he had pending on him. He went back to jail several times over the rest of life. Weird got his voice back pretty quickly after the trial. Yeah. He eventually moved to California and he died there in 1964. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.

The charges against Fred Roberts, they were dropped. A year after this trial, he was shot and killed by police officers as he was resisting arrest near 15th and Lydia. Really? Yes. For what? Do you know? I don't know. Okay. I believe it was a robbery. Okay. But that just like was like another thing to back up the public's view of this case. Yeah. Lonnie Affronti, he went on to be a notorious Kansas City gangster. Mm-hmm.

In 1932, he was tried for a murder of a woman in Richmond, Missouri, some gang-related thing. And he died in prison in 1960. Wow. You know, I keep thinking about Denny and his whole can't speak thing. Uh-huh. What a great way to buy yourself some time when you're being asked tough questions by an attorney. And don't you think to like make you buy a little sympathy from the jury? Sure.

Look what this man has been through. Yeah, absolutely. He can't even speak on his own behalf because of what they did to him. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think there's a chance that they had the right person. I do too. And I also think that there's a huge chance that the police beat the shit out of him uh-huh

i guess this is a weird thing to want to know but part of me wants to know like how common is it in a suicide case for someone to perch this themselves up i know that i have read about it and at least one other case and i tried to figure out which case it was because i was like oh i've read about that before then maybe no okay maybe it's more common than i think it is yeah and you know maybe in that jail cell that's that was the way to do it yeah i don't know um so i mentioned that blanche married the head of the private investigation service um the midwest secret service um so they got married and a couple months after this trial ended that guy the leader of the service um his name was john hagan he was questioned in the

murder of somebody like that's how. Jeez. Yes. Oh, no. That's the agency, obviously, like quickly folded after that. And this really brought out like how not on the up and up it was. You want to find a murderer? Well, get somebody who thinks like one. Yeah.

Wow. In the end, what this case really did was show people how corrupt Kansas City really was at this time. Yeah. Wow. In the end, what this case really did was show people how corrupt Kansas City really was at this time. Yeah. What was going on here? How could there be things on both sides that led this case to basically end with no justice for Florence Barton? Yeah. Her murder is technically unsolved. Yeah, yeah. And will never be solved a hundred years later. Yeah. What just, what a weird, terrible story. Yeah.

Yeah, I really, her dad only lived, like, till, like, 1927. This, I think, really had a big effect on him. Yeah, yeah. And he never really recovered. Yeah, to think that you've, you've poured all of this money into solving you know your daughter's murder and then to find out

that you just did it in the worst way possible to the worst you've lost your daughter yeah and you've given a huge sum of money to criminals and who knows if the right people are on trial but either way they're they're gonna get away with it without the dealings of this agency they likely never would have been able to try denny chester there just was not enough evidence so you had to manufacture well that's what they did they manufactured evidence that's exactly what they did huh but is that better no no no i mean for him for the father obviously he didn't know that's what they were doing but but is that outcome better for him sure in the short term yeah don't you think it's so much more reassuring to feel like they caught the guys and I played a role in it because I made sure I got justice for my daughter. Yeah. Yeah. I think short term, it feels better to feel like. Until you

go to trial. Yeah. Until you go to the trial and you hear all this stuff. But let me tell you, I've been watching a lot of 90 Day Fiance, Brandy. And sometimes when they tell the truth to these people, they don't want to hear it. So who knows? That was a good story. I've never heard that one. I was not familiar with it either. Don't you wish we could go back in time to some of these old timey trials? I would love to go to that one. Yes.

Can you imagine the theatrics of him like hobbling up there on his crutches? But then you have to stay there for seven hours without a smartphone as he answers the questions and hands them to the stenographer like is there any way we could have sped that process up like have someone else come and read and then the stenographer takes it down my question in this case too is how much did the prosecution know about the midwest secret service agency probably a lot i bet they did right how could they not yeah i bet they there's no way the defense could bring forward all that proof of bribes and the prosecution didn't know about it i bet you

the prosecution was like i want to get this case you know taken care of they're they're handing me this information i'm not going to question where it's coming from. Well, don't you think the prosecution was probably like, people trust the police? Yeah. Yeah. The police say this is what happened. Howard is this, you know, great upstanding citizen. People will believe him.

And I think that Howard completely believed that Denny Chester was the person who shot him and Florence that night. Yeah. I don't believe there was any corruption involved in his. Yeah. Unless he was. Involved in some shady shit. I don't know.

I don't know involved in some shady shit, but I think he have been um coached by the investigators to id the right person yeah and then made like to be like was easily convinced that it was the right person sure sure i i can't imagine seeing somebody on a dark country road and then being able to id them later yeah that would be that would so difficult, and the pressure would be immense. And Denny did not match the age that he guessed, but I don't know that that matters. Denny was like 24, and he guessed he was 30 when he gave his initial. Oh, close enough.

Close enough. Come on, Brandy. Come on. I mean, I'm 34, and I look like I'm 22. Absolutely, you do. Yeah, you tell me, right? Come on. I mean, I'm 34 and I look like I'm 22. Absolutely. Yeah. You tell me. Right.

I don't know. I think that was I just think that's interesting that it was like the first time that people are like, what? People don't just always tell us the truth. The public is not aware of everything that's going on in the city. Maybe it was shocking to white people. I bet black people know. I'm sure. Maybe it was shocking to white people.

I bet black people know about it. Oh, I'm sure. It shocked the prosecution that people lined the streets and were like, they're like. Yeah. Well, then that would be shocking. Yes. That were there in support of. Yeah. I mean, it's one.

It's one thing for the public to be like, I don't know about this story, but to actually actually show up. Yeah. And be rallying for a known criminal that's really something yeah turns out everybody in this case on both sides was involved in some criminal activity bad people on both sides brandy that's right good people on both Both sides, as the president would say. So eloquently. Oh, Lord. I was excited to find an old-timey Kansas City case.

Yeah. I enjoy those. Well, you know, sometimes I'm like, have we found all the old-timey Kansas City cases? The answer is no. No, we have not. It's just like I made that claim that I had done all of the family annihilators. Like, what a ridiculous claim to make. People have sent us lots of suggestions.

I love them all. Don't say that. What is wrong with you? You know, it's hard to pick a favorite family annihilator. Stop. That's not what I meant. Uh-huh. You know what we should do now as a little bit of a palate cleanser?

I think we should answer some questions from our Discord. Oh, should we? I think we should do now as a little bit of a palate cleanser? I think we should answer some questions from our Discord. Oh, should we? I think we should. What's a Discord? Well, a Discord is a thing for very cool people. And if you want to get into ours, you can join us on Patreon at the $7 or $5 level. You get in. We have, oh my God, there's so many fun sections.

There's a case suggestion area where you can suggest cases. That was self-explanatory, but let me. I'm glad that you see. Yeah. Yeah. Guys, in the case suggestion part, here's, here's what you do. Everybody get out your pen and paper, suggest a case. Then we've got the animals section where we all post fun photos of our pets.

Photos of pets. what i i wasn't prepared to speak today and now we have asked people for questions so here we go oh carly 0224 says what did you my wow what did you miss most about recording together i like being able to see each other while we're recording like facial expressions and yeah all of that there were so many times just in this episode where like you were saying something and i felt like i had to see your face to know that you were feeling weird about it or whatever right also getting lunch together beforehand like you know you just sit around and talk for like an hour and a half or whatever because there's not enough

talking in this podcast. Not nearly enough. So we've got to do some beforehand. That's exactly right. Got to do some after. Oh, Old Timey Disclaimer wants to know, Brandy, are you going to get little London into bowling? Oh, she'll absolutely. I mean, my dad put me in bowling when I was young.

So, yeah, we'll at least, you know, let her try it out. See if she likes it. If she hates it, I won't make her do it. What if she loves the shoes? She might love the shoes. No one loves the shoes, Brandy. Well, see if she likes it. If she hates it, I won't make her do it. What if she loves the shoes? She might love the shoes. No one loves the shoes, Brandi. Well, you get your own shoes. You don't use the rentals.

Well, I mean, come on. How long have you always... Well, I get that you have bowling shoes now, but have you had them since you were a kid? Yeah. You know what I'm suddenly remembering? In sixth grade, we took a field trip. Like it was like our fun little class trip to bowling.

To Incredible. And you brought your own ball. Yeah. And your own shoes. Yes, I did. I got the second lowest score of the entire sixth grade. My ball was blue and had an orange Scooby-Doo on it. Okay, you don't have to look so cocky about it.

Yeah, I've gotten David into bowling. He's joined my bowling team. So you think London's not going to be exposed to that? Psh. Psh. Gay Scorpio asks, are we going to see any pictures of London when she's born? Three question marks. It's totally up to you to share.

But okay, some of us would like to see how cute she is of course i've shared all the stuff about my pregnancy in the discord so i mean it's true yeah if you're if you're looking for some pics yeah i mean not of me but of brandy head on over to the discord yeah yeah we'll share we'll do an announcement that yeah i announced my pregnancy in the discord yeah yeah yeah yeah so we'll definitely i We'll do an announcement. Yeah, I announced my pregnancy in the Discord. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so we'll definitely share pictures of her. I was going to see how many times you were going to say yeah.

Well, and obviously, I mean, we've got some time left on this episode for you to go into labor. It's not happening. There's nothing. Nothing's happening here. You didn't even know you were having contractions. You're right. I didn't know that scares the shit out of me. Surely you're going to feel them.

I will, obviously. But like, what if I don't feel them until she's like halfway out yeah what if that keeps me from getting to get the epidural you'll feel them what if i they just pop me a tylenol oh my god i'm pushing a human a cyanide tylenol no you'll feel them i'm sure i'll feel them. But yeah, I mean, I know they're, this is probably controversial to say. There are a lot of ladies who are anti-epidural. It would not be me. Yes, more power to them. Here's the deal.

Whether you do it drug-free or you get all the drugs are available to you. It's going to suck either way. It's going to suck either way. And you get the same result at the end. You get a baby. No one gives you an award. You don't get a cookie. Like, so you do you. Listen to your body. Brandy, I'll make you cookies if you push out a baby. I think it's the least I can do. My body is going to choose to take the epidural if at all possible. But you do have to have it at a certain time right yeah that's what yeah so i need to feel the contractions early enough that i can still get that epidural how about you just camp over

at the hospital sure thing but yes back to the question yes i'll be sharing pictures of london okay oh are we looking at the same is it maggie's question yes if brandy's water broke during recording would kristin be capable of delivering baby london okay here's the deal maggie yes yesterday what you and norm would both pass out on the fucking ground if i like had to try and push her out here. No, Brandy, here's the deal. You can't say blood without getting queasy. Here's the deal, Brandy. If you were freaking out, I would get calm. Yeah. Okay. Now it would be a mess. It would be terrible. No. So here's, here's the deal. Yesterday I became convinced that like, well, you told me how the appointment went. I was like, man, she is going to deliver this baby any minute. And I was like, what if it happens tomorrow when we record? And I was just and I thought about it enough that I kind of had a game plan.

I was like, OK, so here's the deal. We'll just, you know, Norm will drive us to the hospital. While that's happening, I'll call David. You know, I'll make all the phone calls. We'll get you where you need to be. You know, blah, blah us to the hospital. While that's happening, I'll call David. You know, I'll make all the phone calls. We'll get you where you need to be. You know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, we'll go let the dogs out or whatever needs to happen. So, you know, Brandy, what I'm saying is I was totally prepared.

And here you are not giving birth, which is very rude. No, no, no. I think you would be totally prepared to take me to the hospital. Absolutely. Well, yeah. You could 100% handle that. What if I went into labor and it was like, we do not have time to get to the hospital absolutely well yeah you could 100 handle that what if i went into labor and it was like we do not have time to get to the hospital so truly like maggie's question yes

i would have to i would there would be no other way i would have to i just can't imagine you you hate blood like and hate it so much yeah and then norm just the idea of a baby freaks him out i feel like you two would just be passed out on the floor and I'd be having to try and catch my own baby. That is possible. It would be terrible. No, you know what would really happen? I'd call my mom. Yeah. You'd call your mom. You'd call Kyla. Yeah. Yeah. No, it would be absolutely terrible. You know what? We've got a very active email group for the neighborhood. So I'd be like, okay, do we have any nurses or doctors? Okay. Lester D88 has a very good question, I think. Has someone hidden Norm in an attic? And if not, why has the 50% owner of the podcast been MIA on episodes? This is a question that embarrasses me greatly. I know. I'm ready for the conspiracy

theories to start up that like the marriage is on the rocks or that he's dead. You know, either way. We actually we confronted him about both of these things today at lunch. The man is in work mode. He is. He's in total work mode. But, you know, we're trying to lure him back onto the podcast. But for some reason, it's a tough sell to sit around with us for two hours. I know. Very hurtful. Oh, Brandy. Amy Trauber.

Amy Trauber wants to know, what's something your parents did when you were kids that you hated, but now you will definitely do when you are parents. Oh, she's shaking. I know what it is. What is it? What is it? Off limits food. Special treats just for the parents.

Oh man. I remember Steve did this and my dad was so intrigued because he was like, why haven't I thought of this? Yeah. I remember there was this time when Steve had this flavor of ice cream that he loved that was like why haven't i thought of this yes yeah i remember there was this time when steve had this flavor of ice cream that he loved that was like just his we could have the other stuff in the freezer but the tin roof sundae that was just for steve i'm totally behind that now we i have a six-year-old that lives in my house i hid powdered donuts last week okay honest question did you ever sneak food oh yeah doesn't every kid do that oh yeah i snuck it

all the time kyla didn't do it kyla didn't sneak food and as a result they always knew it was me they always knew yeah so i bought powdered donuts i wanted Yeah. Didn't want to share them with a child. Did not. So I hid them in the pantry. I'll share lots of things. I didn't want to share the powdered donuts. It's a very small bag. Couldn't you have bought two bags?

I could have. I didn't do it. No, I remember you told us about this while we were camping one time. You said that, like, Steve had, I remember it was cereal. Oh, yeah, well, I mean, I don't actually know that those were off limits, but it was kind of like an unspoken rule. Yeah, he had a bunch of oats. That was his favorite cereal. And so.

It's a good cereal. It's a good, it's a great cereal. And my dad was like, oh, my God, what an amazing concept. But by that point, Kyla and I were in late elementary school, and you can't enforce it that late in life. It has to be, like, started as a child. You know what I would do that would be terrible? What?

I would probably do the Daryl Pitts-style lectures. Oh, yeah. Ugh. Terrible. People think when I say that we weren't like spanked as kids, like, oh, you got off easy, blah, blah, blah.

No. No. Anyone who thinks that you have not gotten a lecture from Daryl Pitts, they last forever and you just wish that he'd hit you. Just wish that he'd hit you.

Ha, ha, ha. Cameroni11 wants to know, Brandy, if Kristen gave you the green light to do whatever you wanted with her hair, color, cut, et cetera, what would you do?

I really like the cut that you've got going on. Well, I mean, you need a cut, but. Yeah, desperately. But I like the cut that you have going on. Like, that was a big change. We cut off a lot of length to do that. I got going on. Well, I mean, you need a cut, but. Yeah, desperately. But I like the cut that you have going on. Like that was a big change. We cut off a lot of length to do that. I really like that. I might go a little darker with your color. Yeah. I mean, the thing is, I kind of tell you. Yeah, I know. I really get to do what I want anyway. It's not like you sit

down and give me like crazy instructions. No. Except for that time I wanted cornrows and manicured toes. Don't you think it i wanted cornrows and manicured toes don't you think it's gross that he said manicured toes yes i don't like it at all did he not know about pedicures like that's what they're called oh she persisted says brandy what made you and david choose the name london have you visited there i live in london no i'd love to go to london actually the name london so london's name be London Lyric Pond. It literally came to me in the shower one day before we knew what we were having. We didn't know if it was a girl or a boy. And I texted to David and I was like, this is the girl name. And he's like, that's the girl name.

Like it just, yeah, it was just like came to me one day. I don't know. shampooing while shampooing conditioning I think I was shampooing okay okay I can't be certain TC Laura 82 wants to know did you guys ever cover for each other as kids slash teenagers what did you cover no we're such good kids we were so lame so lame I mean I think back we were really just kind of happy doing our thing there was i mean when brandy said she was spending the night at my house oh kristen this is definitely for you bentley bear wants to know if you're gonna cover theranos. Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. I read the book. I've watched every available documentary.

Elizabeth Holmes just really fascinates me. And her deep, deep fake voice. Yes, I will absolutely cover Theranos. If so, what are you looking forward to covering about the trial? Oh, my God. Oh, please let her take the stand. Please let her take the stand. First of all, I want to hear the voice.

Have we had any changes? You know? Yeah. I'm... But she's for sure going to take a deal. There's no way it's going to trial. I've been burned by Lori Laughlin. Can't get my hopes up.ela how dare you can we bring back the great skirt suit debate no

yeah brandy doesn't like that she lost that debate i did not lose that debate oh k burn says boxers are briefs i only wear boxers sorry just spat. Kay Burns, what are you asking here? Is this where you're asking if we have a preference on our menfolk? Yeah, that's what she's asking. Oh. David does a boxer brief situation.

Situation? Yeah. You know, they're cut like a boxer, you know. I know what boxer briefs are. You seemed confused. No, I think it was the addition of the word situation. Oh, okay. I don't know if Norm wants me talking about his underwear, but it's thongs.

All the way. You know, panty lines are so offensive. They're very offensive. Oh, Ames. What type of posters did you have on your wall as teenagers? I had so many posters.

You were a poster gal. Oh my gosh. Okay. Let me walk you through. My fucking bedroom walls looked like a shenanigans. Which is not a real place, but it looked like

a bar and grill where they have all the ridiculous walls i had christmas lights around the top of my room i had a whole like collage of band t-shirts right above the head of my bed um above my desk i had a collage of cd leaflets and mark mcgrath pictures you were you were obsessed with mark mcgrath those fucking highlights he had frosted tips the tattoos oh oh and then then on one wall blink 182 i had like three all blink 182 of them, they were standing there in their boxers. So hot. And then on the other wall, James Dean.

I had a big James Dean poster. I did my junior research project on James Dean. This is the second time you've mentioned it on the podcast. I didn't mention it on the podcast. I mentioned it at Trivia, Kristen. There was a James Dean-centered question. I swear. I swear you've mentioned it on the podcast. I mentioned it at trivia, Kristen. There was a James Dean centered question. I swear. I swear you've mentioned it on the podcast before.

Yes, it was. It was during like a spree killer episode. I'm pretty sure. You know what? You know, I'm right. You know, I'm right. You're probably right. Yeah.

Okay, gang. My room. First of all, you should know and you didn't ask, but it's okay. I had an inflatable couch i had an inflatable chair yeah okay that's one of those weird things i saw something the other day that was like a nostalgia thing and i had totally forgotten that we all had inflatable furniture in our rooms but it was like a thing so i had an inflatable couch okay so that was pretty cool my poster heath ledger oh yeah a knight's tale oh god what i hated his hair there i said it

held it back all these years well you know what i hate it okay hold on hold on let's do the time test okay you're picturing heath led Ledger's hair from that time period. Okay, so it's kind of longish. It's greasy as hell. Kind of crunchy and greasy at the same time. Hold on. Now let's compare it to Mark McGrath's disgusting hair from that time. So hot.

No. Fade on the sides, spiked up on top. Ooh, frosted tips. Can you imagine touching that stuff? What, you want to touch Heath Ledger's greasy, crunchy hair? She just creamed because she's thought about touching that hair

so many times. Gross, don't say that! Don't do it, Brandy, is what I'm saying. Oh, God! Heather says, if quarantine wasn't an issue, who, if anyone, would you or will you have in the delivery room i only want david in there that's it which unfortunately can't happen because i'm gonna have a tlc film crew no i don't want a whole bunch of people and i mean there's gonna be plenty of

doctors and nurses like that's enough sounds terrible yeah i just want david yeah that's it um which right now is the policy so so if it's just so we've been teasing norm for a long time so you guys norman is kind of like me he doesn't want anything to do with blood he doesn't really love the medical stuff and so we've asked norman to film the birth video no we have not yes we have david and i have asked and norm has accepted there will be no birth video brandy you won't even notice this just said we're going to add a new level to patreon for you to get access to the birth video. But for real, Brandi, Norm's going to crawl in. No. And he's going to stay just at waist height that whole time.

No, absolutely not. He'll be right up there with the camera. No. And then he'll pass out, and then it'll just be a video of the tile floor. I don't want to see any of it. No, no one wants to see any of it. You know, they talk about, like, people, like, women bringing in mirrors and sticking them down there so they can watch the whole thing.

Who has the. Well, I guess you've got the time. But I mean, like you're focusing on pushing it out. I don't know. I don't want to see it. You know, I can see maybe like not wanting. Well, I don't know. Maybe I wouldn't want to sheet up.

But I can't imagine like trying to push and all that and then also hold a mirror. I wouldn't. Yeah, no. I would just pass out if I saw it. You know what a lot of women do? What? They do like a self-catch situation where once the baby's about out, they pull it the rest of the way. I don't even think I want to do that. I can see the value in doing that.

I can also see being very freaked out and being like, that baby's going to be slippery. Yeah. I did find out that they, like, the immediate thing, and I love this, the immediate thing, she comes out and they just immediately, like. Yeah, skin to skin contact. Yeah, put her on my chest. I love that. They do that now even before they bathe them, whatever.

Yeah. I'm very excited for that. I don't think I need to be involved in the actually, like, pulling her from. Yeah. The bed. You can't even say, oh, you were gonna censor yourself huh from the region oh you look like you're about to pass out i don't want to do it okay i want to do it and then don't do it don't do it yeah david will do it with his gopro oh and then there's this new trend that people are doing where they have, they do like a photo thing where you've got

the baby on you, cords still attached, and then they put the placenta like on your stomach and you do like a photo with it. Whew.

I don't want to see the placenta. What's it look like? It's scary. Horrifying. Hang on. It's a whole organ that your body

has grown to create this human. It looks disgusting. Okay, I'll be the judge of that. Oh, God. Oh, my. Oh, wow. Yeah, that's...

I certainly don't want a picture of it. I don't want it like resting on my body. Oh, geez, it looks like I want it to go straight in that biohazard bag right into the tree. You don't want to eat it? No. It looks like a very low quality steak. Oh, God. You know, like you go to a restaurant.

They're like, we got them for $8.99. And that's what comes out. Oh, oh, man. On that note. Yeah, I think that's enough of that. You're the one who brought it up. I think we should move on to Supreme Court inductions. Oh, yeah.

Let's do that. I mean, Supreme Court inductions. Oh, typical, typical. Brandi is unprepared. You guys, this week we're doing names. For 37 minutes today, you didn't know you went first. It was a long time. It was a very long time.

You guys, we are doing names and your favorite book. Eventually. I think I could do names. Alright, do them. Emily Erickson. Anything by Haruki. Did you do this on purpose? No, but it's

working out perfectly. Anything by Haruki... Did you do this on purpose? No, but it's working out perfectly. Anything by Haruki Murakami. Smila. A Little Life by Han... Christian, is this for real? What is the matter

with you? This is hilarious. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. You asshole. Nicole Peckendorf.

I think I can handle the names this time. And you know what? I'm right. The Stupidest Angel by Christopher Moore. Trisha Flowers. Harry Potter. Oh, God. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Christina Biley. I read mostly chiclet, so it's literally all exactly the same no matter what the title is Laura Monroe The Murder House Abby Carrier Know My Name by Chanel Miller Priscilla McClamrock

The Bell Jar She says she doesn't read enough but she loves The Bell Jar That's an uplifting book. Taylor Johnson. Ready Player One. Ashley Brown. Anything by Stephen King.

Charlie Rogers. Flawed by Cecilia Ahern. Denise Callahan. Chase Darkness with me. Oh, I've read that. Welcome to the Supreme Court. Oh my gosh, guys. We're so excited to have you in our Supreme Court. Oh my gosh, guys. We're so excited to have you in our Supreme Court. We'll be sending your duties over shortly.

Thank you guys so much for all of your support. We appreciate it so much. If you're looking for other ways to support us, please find us on social media. We're on, did I say social media? You said social media. Please join us on social media. We're on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, Patreon.

Find us all those places. Please remember to subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen. And then head on over to Apple Podcasts. Leave us a rating. Leave us a review. And then be sure to join us next week. When we'll be experts on two whole new topics. Podcast adjourned.

And now for a note about our process. I read a bunch of stuff, then regurgitate it all back up in my very limited vocabulary. And I copy and paste from the best sources on the web and sometimes Wikipedia. So we owe a huge thank you to the real experts. For this episode, I got my info from the article, The Tylenol Terrorist by Rachel Bell on Crime Library, Wikipedia, The Boston Herald, Vice.com, and NBC News. And I got my info from an article by Diane Houston for the Martin City Telegraph, the Sacramento Union, and Newspapers.com. For a full list of our sources,

visit lgtcpodcast.com. Any errors are of course ours, but please don't take our word for it. Go read their stuff.