Let's Go To Court! - 215: Wrongfully Convicted People With The Last Name Brown

Episode Date: May 18, 2022

We’ve got a theme! …. A weird, totally accidental theme! This week, we’re talking about wrongfully convicted people who also happen to have the last name Brown.  Brandi starts us off with the story of Sabina Kulakowski, a social worker who was discovered dead near her home. Her home had been set on fire and Sabina had been stabbed, bitten and strangled. Investigators had another suspect in their sights, but eventually locked in on Roy Brown. Roy was a decent enough suspect – he’d been recently released from jail when Sabina was murdered. He also had a history of threatening social workers.  Then Kristin tells us about a robbery at a Dallas furrier. May 6, 1980, was supposed to be a typical day at Fine Furs by Rubin. Then two women walked in. One had a gun. The other held empty trash bags. One of the women shot and killed the store owner, Rubin Danziger, as the other filled the bags with valuable furs. The women fled, leaving behind Ala Danziger as an eyewitness to their crime. It didn’t take long for investigators to locate the women’s getaway car. It had been abandoned, with rental paperwork in the front seat. The paperwork indicated that it had been rented by a woman named Joyce Ann Brown. 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 “Joyce Ann Brown” episodes of Vindicated “Joyce Ann Brown, shackled by her name to another’s crime, dies at 68,” by Margalit Fox for the New York Times “Joyce Ann Brown,” entry on The National Registry of Exonerations “Joyce Ann Brown, exonerated after nearly a decade in prison, dies at 68,” by Emily Langer for the Washington Post “Joyce Ann Brown, exoneree who championed justice, dies at 68,” the Dallas Morning News “Wrongful conviction charges haunt Dallas prosecutors,” by Paul Weingarten for the Chicago Tribune “Joyce Ann Brown,” entry on Bluhm Legal Clinic’s Center on Wrongful Convictions In this episode, Brandi pulled from: “Freedom Fighter” episode Forensic Files “Quest for Freedom: The True Story of Roy Brown” by David Lohr, The Crime Library “With DNA From Exhumed Body, Man Finally Wins Freedom” by Fernanda Santos, The New York Times “Roy Brown, who spent 15 years in prison for murder he did not commit, dies at 58” by Sarah Moses Buckshot, syracuse.com “Roy Brown” innocenceproject.org YOU’RE STILL READING? My, my, my, you skeezy scunch! You must be hungry for more! We’d offer you some sausage brunch, but that gets messy. So how about you head over to our Patreon instead? (patreon.com/lgtcpodcast). At the $5 level, you’ll get 30+ full length bonus episodes, plus access to our 90’s style chat room!  

What? What? What? What? Save it for the pod! Okay. 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 be talking about a wrongful conviction. And I'll be talking about a wrongful conviction. Uh-huh. We have a theme. We do have a theme. Okay, I'm just now realizing that I never call dibs on my case. What if we're doing the same case? Fuck. You called dibs, though.

Yeah. Okay, so we're good. I think I did. You called dibs. You called dibs. You texted me. All right, Joyce Ann Brown. Okay, great.

No, not. What? My guy's last name is Brown. What? What? My guy's last name is Brown. What? What? So the theme this week for anyone keeping track is wrongfully convicted people with the last name Brown. All right. All right.

That's weird. That is weird. First off, before we even get into the weirdness, let's talk about the fact that a philanthropist came and gave us margaritas. Gave us free margaritas at lunch. And now we're really feeling it. So we were having a lovely lunch at this little Mexican restaurant we like to go to pretty regularly. And we were, like, finished. We were, like, about to leave.

Yeah, we paid the bill. And we'd had a drink each. We had. We'd each had a—I had a margarita, you had a cocktail. And, like, great, wonderful. We had. We'd each had a, I had a margarita, you had a cocktail, and like, great, wonderful. We were, you know, we're super professional, so like, that's where we draw the line. So only one. Well, then this wonderful woman came over, and she's like, hey, we were having lunch, and our girlfriend ordered another pitcher of margaritas, and we can't possibly finish these.

She had to leave, like, right after she did it. Do you guys want a margarita? We'd hate for these to go to waste. And so we were like, yes. Oh gosh, it sounds terrible. But if it's helping the world. It's helping the world. The less fortunate folks will do it.

So she gave us a real heavy pour. Oh my God. Of margarita. I'm really feeling it. I'm drinking coffee out of the best husband ever mug. Yes. Yeah. And I don't know who needs to hear this, but Kristen is not a husband.

Well, I do bring a real masculine energy to any room I enter. I've heard that before. Anyway, we had a wonderful lunch, a couple of margaritas, and that second margarita was really strong. So how good will this episode be? Also, just full disclosure, we recorded an episode a day and a half ago. Yeah, it's one of these. One of these, my friends. A day and a half ago.

I'm sorry. I'm still playing with this thing I broke. With your loop? You may recall from a couple episodes ago. Oh, yes. A little plastic piece broke off the band of my watch. And two days ago

when we recorded the bonus episode, was it you or was it Norman? It was Norman. Found that Kit was chewing on something. And he threw it on the table. Turns out it was the little band to my watch that was missing and I was so excited

that I started playing with it and I broke it. So anyway, that's a great story and you all needed to hear it. To listen to this. That's right. Yeah, you guys are here by choice. Yeah. You know, you don't live forever and yet you're listening to this.

And you know what you should do? You should sign up for our Patreon. Yeah, obviously. At our Patreon. What? That was terrible. Oh, my pitch was terrible?

I was doing a great job. They were like, what happened to her watch? Oh, my God. Oh, my gosh. We probably should sign up for our Patreon. Yeah, I feel so sorry for her. Oh, I hope it wasn't one of those really valuable, like, just plastic things. Yeah, no, it's just like a little tiny bit of her Fitbit band.

No. It's like a piece of... This is Prada. Rolex. Yeah, the plastic band broke off her Rolex watch. Now she has to start a GoFundMe to replace it. Anyway, you should sign up for our Patreon, and here is why. I wear a fit.

Do you feel sorry for us yet? We have 30. We just recorded the 34th bonus episode. Fifth, you dumb bitch. Was it the 35th? It was the 35th. Yeah, because I went first. We just recorded the 35th bonus episode.

Patty, cut out that part where I said it wrong. No. Patty, leave it in. Which means there's hours upon hours of bonus content to be found on our Patreon at the $5 level. What a bargain. It is a bargain. At that level, you also get into the Discord, where you can chitty chat the day away with other creatures who enjoy this podcast.

Creatures? Yeah. You know. All right. Well, at the $7 level, you get all that, plus you get our autographs. Oh, so valuable. Oh, my gosh.7 level, you get all that. Plus, you get our autographs. Oh, so valuable. Oh, my gosh. And a sticker.

Mm-hmm. You also get inducted into the Supreme Court. And you get a Zoom hangout every month. Oh, that's right. That's right. I always imagine move on. No, don't move on. There's no time to move on.

But that's it now, so now you can move on. The $10 level. That's the Bob Moss level. Oh, my God. You know what happens there? All that stuff we already talked about. Plus a full body orgasm. Do you get that just right when you sign up?

As soon as you click, just it takes over. Guaranteed. So don't sign up at work, people. Be really mindful about where you're signing up. But in addition to that, you also get ad-free episodes, and you get them... A day early. Woo! Plus 10% off merch. Or as Kristen likes to say, 10% off on merch.

There's nothing wrong with saying it that way. Tomato, tomato, I say. You're wrong. Tomato, tomato, I say. You're wrong. Anyway, that's patreon.com slash LGTC podcast. All right. You want to talk about a wrongful conviction of a person with the last name Brown? Well, that's what I came here to talk about.

That's also what I came here to talk about. This is so strange. That is so weird. I can't wait to hear your story. This is so strange. That is so weird. I can't wait to hear your story. Okay, shout outs to an article by David Lohr for the Crime Library. Been a minute since I used it.

It has. The Crime Library. And also to an episode of Forensic Files. Not Forensic Files 2? No, regular Forensic Files. The OG Forensic Files. Regular forensic files. Okay.

The OG forensic files. It was May 23, 1991, when a fire broke out in an old farmhouse in rural Cayuga County, New York. Is that how you pronounce it? I don't think. Probably not. Someone will tell us that I'm wrong. Yeah. This is in the Finger Lakes area of the state.

Yeah. That always reminds me of that SNL sketch. What? And I'm daddy. Okay. Anyway, because they're from the Finger Lakes. Yeah, yeah. No, I'm with you.

Barry Bench was a volunteer firefighter in the area, and he was roused from his slumber that night. Roused from his slumber? What is this, an old time story? By a ringing telephone. No, it's 1991. I know, but slumber. He was fast asleep. That's a Charles Dickens phrasing right there. Anyway, it was the fire chief alerting him of the fire. Not only did they need Barry there to help fight the blaze as the old farmhouse was fully engulfed at this point but the chief thought Barry would be particularly interested as the house was owned by the Bench family and was the home of his brother's former long-term girlfriend 49 year old Sabina Kolakowski. Barry do they call people into fires just because we think you might be

interested? No, he's a volunteer firefighter so, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah Barry got on his uniform, jumped in his pickup truck I actually believe his wife went with him, maybe only because it was a house

owned by the family I thought that was kind of odd, but she went along for the ride. And as they neared the house, Barry discovered that the chief was right. It was the family's farmhouse, and it was the house that Sabina lived in. Once they got there, Barry, you know, kind of joined the rest of the fire crews and got to work helping extinguish the fire. And once it got under control, the chief approached Barry and said that he was sending a crew inside to see if there was anyone inside. Sabina was nowhere to be found.

And so they feared that she might have been inside the home at the time the fire had ignited. inside the home at the time the fire had ignited. Barry opted to stay outside and kind of, you know, take a look around the grounds, see if he could find anything of note. I'm not sure if at this point they had already decided that this fire was arson, but at some point along the way they detected accelerants and this fire was determined to be an arson. So a crew was sent inside and they hadn't been inside long when they were kind of working through, you know, the rubble. What do you call that?

Yeah, that's it. That's the right word, right? Now I'm all nervous because I said slumber. And I don't think of Charles Dickens. I think of Aladdin. Why? Because when he goes to the Cave of Wonders. Oh, we got a Disney adult here. Yeah, what about it, Brandy? When he goes to the Cave of Wonders, the big tiger mouth opens.

And he's like, who dares to disturb my slumber? Okay. Anyway, something like that. You know, I've only seen it like once or twice. Yeah, and that was a real sexual awakening for you. Look, we don't want to hear about it, okay? Anyway, there's a crew inside looking around, seeing if they can find Sabina or, you know, any evidence of whatever. And then they aren't in there long before they hear Barry yelling. He's about 100 yards from the house on

kind of an overgrown footpath. And when the crews came to him, they found that he was standing over a body on the footpath. As the crews got closer, it was clear that it was Sabina Kolakowski. She was naked and dead. They called in the sheriff's department to investigate. And by the next morning, the news of this fire and the fact that someone had perished at the scene had spread all across. Perished? You are using very old timey language. I hate to call you out. Oh my gosh.

Have you been freaky Friday'd with someone? Maybe. Charles Dickens is inside my body right now. Wow. Anyway. Do you have a little Dickens inside your... You can't say

Dickens inside. You gotta say you got a little Dickens in... Dickens. Oh, how... Is that how you say it? No.

Everyone, if you're upset, it's the complimentary margaritas. Don't blame us. Blame that woman at the restaurant. Yeah. And if you think that two – I mean, we both have memberships to Costco and Sam's Club.

That's right. So if you think that we're going to turn down bulk margaritas – You're wrong. Couldn't be more wrong. Now, who perished in their slumber or whatever? Sabina Kolakowski had died. But it was apparent pretty quickly that she hadn't died in the fire. Well, no, she was found outside the house.

She was found outside the house. And she had stab wounds and bite marks and ligature marks all over her body. It was apparent that she had been in the fire at some point because during an autopsy they discovered soot inside of her lungs. But at some point she had been pulled from the fire and then been murdered outside. Okay. Well, had she been murdered outside. Okay. Well, had she been tied up in the house? I mean, the ligature marks. Don't act like you don't know.

Everyone, she gave me the shrug. The shrug. Who's to say? As if she doesn't know this whole tale. Sabina also had defensive wounds on her hands. It was clear that she had struggled and fought her attacker. And it was obviously ruled a homicide. Detective Peter J. Pickney was assigned to investigate Sabina's homicide. He actually knew Sabina.

It was kind of small town, you know, that kind of deal. Upstate New York, you know. to investigate Sabina's homicide, he actually knew Sabina. It was kind of a small town, you know, that kind of deal. Upstate New York, you know, not a super small town, but he knew who she was. Right. And he actually knew that Sabina had been in a long-term relationship with Barry's brother, Ron. But that relationship, by all accounts, had ended amicably. And Sabina and Ron had remained friends so much so that like Ron's family owned the farmhouse and he had allowed Sabina to stay living in it. Wow. She'd lived there for like 17 years and he wasn't he didn't want to like kick her out.

So he'd moved out and let her stay in the home. And Ron had an alibi for the night of Sabina's murder. He was an hour away in Auburn, New York. He was like at a bar with friends for most of the night. Several people confirmed his alibi. And another suspect quickly showed up on the detective's radar. So Sabina had worked as a social worker in Cayuga County, specifically in the Children's Protection Division. And when the detective was kind of looking into, you know, who might have, you know, something against Sabina, he was told that she was really well-liked in the office. She didn't have any problems that they were aware of.

But there was someone who was very upset with the department as a whole. I thought you were going to make a joke there about a whole. So I paused. No, you didn't. You got lost in your script. I did. I lost myself. How dare you? How dare you, Charles Dickens?

Turns out that approximately eight months earlier, the department had removed a 17-year-old girl from the custody of her father. And her father, a man named Roy Brown, had been really upset by this. Roy Brown had been really upset by this. He'd started making angry phone calls, sending letters, leaving messages. In one such call, Roy Brown left a message that said, in part, I want her back. And I've been using the method and I've been using the system and I've been paying attorneys. But I think if I ever got a fucking gun in my hands, then you'd understand what the fuck I'm all about. If a crazy man comes in there and just starts taking those social services workers out just for the hell of it and then kills himself, you know, you can't put a dead man in jail,

can you? Uh-oh, Roy. Yeah. Jail Kenya. Uh-oh, Roy. Yeah. So when that message had been left, the supervisor in the Child Protection Division had called the sheriff's department. They'd done an investigation and Roy had been arrested.

Why? Yeah. Roy had been charged with threatening the social services workers and he served eight months in jail for his death threats. And he'd been released six days before Sabina's murder. Oh, shit. Mm hmm. Yep. Brown's past, they discovered that he had a prior conviction for some kind of assault and that there had once been a restraining order put out against him on behalf of like a previous girlfriend. Right. And according to his release papers from the jail, his last known address was in Syracuse, New York, about 30 miles from Sabina's house.

Well, that's kind of far. I think it's kind of far, too. Yeah. But they thought that this all painted a pretty good case against Roy Brown. Okay. misinformation, the detective secured a court order to get teeth impressions from Roy Brown to try and compare to the bite marks on Sabina's body. Don't they know that in the future this will be considered junk science? When they approached Roy Brown about this, he didn't put up a fight. He willingly gave his impressions. And according to Roy, after giving those impressions a day or so later, he got a phone call from the lead detective.

And they said, it's a match. Oh. We've secured a warrant for your arrest. And we'll be at your house at 10 o'clock tomorrow morning to take you into custody. Roy, again, didn't argue and he prepared himself to be arrested. He'd been arrested a few times in his life. Yeah, it sounds like it.

He knew what the deal was and so the following morning he waited on his porch at 10 a.m. and he was quite annoyed that they didn't show up until 10.15. What? What? I have been so excited to be incarcerated.

To be arrested. All right. When Roy was taken into custody, they told him that his bite marks were a match for the bite marks that were found on Sabina Kolakowski's body. Roy Brown said there was no way that was possible. He didn't know Sabina Kolakowski. He never met that person. But unfortunately, he did not have an alibi for the night of Sabina's murder. He, in fact, lied to the police initially. He said he'd been at home with his girlfriend all

night. And then they checked that out and it turns out his girlfriend had actually been arrested and was in jail that evening. Oh, well, shit. Well, yeah. This totally makes sense. So then he tried to tell

like a different story and be like, well, actually, I just told you that story because I didn't think you'd believe that I was just at home sleeping all night, which is the real story. Yeah.

Yeah. And so, yep. He was placed under arrest and charged with the murder of Sabina Kolakowski. Roy did not have much money and so he was appointed a public defender. He actually had two public defenders, which I think is pretty common. And the case went to trial. The prosecution had an odontologist on the stand who said the bite marks matched

and that Roy had a vendetta against the social services department where Sabina worked. And that was pretty much their whole case. This sucks because it's, I mean... Yeah, it sounds pretty good. It sounds like a compelling argument. Yeah, but I mean, it is really personal.

I mean, the biting. Yeah. Yeah. The defense did what they could to contest it. They put their own forensic odontologist on the stand, and he said that Roy was not a match to the bite marks. Roy was not a match to the bite marks. The bite marks on Sabina's body came from someone who had a full set of teeth. And Roy was missing several upper teeth.

Well, OK. See, this is why it's junk science. How do you not see the difference there? Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Like, literally, Roy was missing, like, four. Like, he had his two front teeth and he was missing, like, the two on either side of it. He had several missing teeth on the top.

If bite mark analysis was going to work on anybody, you would think it would work on him. But it didn't. It did not. The jury believed the odontologist that the prosecution put up. And Roy was found guilty of Sabina's murder. He was convicted on January 23rd, 1992, and he was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. And he maintained his innocence the entire time. When Roy was taken to prison, he was very upset.

He couldn't believe that he'd been convicted of a crime that he had nothing to do with. He didn't understand that that could be possible. We talk about this so much in these wrongful conviction things that a lot of times people don't even take it that seriously because like—'re like there's no way there's no way i can be this is a woman he'd never met yeah there's no way he could be convicted of her murder yeah but he was so he was really upset he was really angry but he decided pretty quickly that that wasn't going to serve him. And so he changed his focus. He knew he needed to work on his case. If anyone was going to be able to exonerate him, it was going to have to be himself. Wow. When Roy Brown was taken to his prison cell for the first time, he was like, you know, like, that's your bed. That's your, you know, there's your toilet, whatever.

You're acting like they get it too. I don't think they do. He turned to the guard and he said, I'm not sleeping in that bed. It's not mine. It belongs to a murderer. And instead, he slept on the floor. He turned his cell into an office. He turned the bed into a desk and he rolled up and secured the mattress into a chair.

And then he went to work trying to exonerate himself. He compiled all of the records in his case, all of the stuff from the investigation. He would keep a small portion of it for himself and then he'd send it to his parents house to store it and all he had like 570 different pieces of paper all in all involving the investigation and the trial and all different pieces of paper huh okay thank you pages was the word i was looking for but wasn't coming to me. Your friend is rude. Anyway, he went to work to try and exonerate himself. Did he ever sleep in that bed? I don't know.

God, I kind of hope he did. I do too because you imagine sleeping on the floor. No, it's like I get that that's something you say the first night, but I mean, come on. Yeah. night. But I mean, come on. Yeah. He started in 1995 by filing a motion to get the DNA swabbing that had been done on a shirt that was found near Sabina's body. It was determined to be like her night shirt. Okay. She'd been sleeping in it and it had the bite marks on it. They were present on the shirt, what is found like in the grass away from her body. Right. And so he petitioned to get those bite marks swabbed and test for DNA to see if there was

saliva that was left behind. And he learned that they actually had done this during the investigation. And in fact, they'd used the entire samples and the samples had come back inconclusive. And so there was nothing else they could do at that time with that evidence. This was a big setback for Roy, but he wouldn't be deterred by that. Instead, he spent the next seven years reading every textbook he could get his hands on in the prison library. He studied every aspect of his case. He watched episodes of forensic files and CSI, and he learned everything he could about forensics from inside prison. By 2002,

he felt confident that with all of the advances that science had made, that there was probably something that could be tested on that nightshirt. And so he worked again to see if there was further DNA testing that could be done on that. But that year he suffered a devastating setback. So as I mentioned, he had 570 pages of his case file. Different pages. He had portions of that at a time.

Most of it was stored at his parents' house. Did his parents' house catch on fire? His parents' house burned down. Shit. And all 570 pages of his case file were destroyed in the fire. Ugh. This was devastating to Roy. He'd spent all of those years making all these notes and stuff on his file.

And at first he was like, well, that's it. It's done. Yeah. Like, I'm done. This is all for nothing. What am I even doing? No one believes me. Yeah.

And then he discovered the Freedom of Information Act. As it turned out, he could request copies of all of that stuff. In fact, he actually had a right to a lot more information than he knew. He could request copies of all of the trial transcripts, and he had the right to any copies of any affidavits that had been given to the district attorney's office while they were investigating his case. And he had to pay for those, though. It was 15 cents a page. Oh, that adds up. OK.

And so he figured out what was the most important and And in all, he requested $28.50 worth of documents. This was a heavy fee for someone who made $4.20 every two weeks. Oh. But boy, was it worth it. Because when he got those documents, he was shocked to discover that he was not the initial focus of the investigation. Who was? Barry Bench was the initial suspect in this case. He'd been one of the volunteer firefighters who had arrived at the fire that night.

He'd been the person to discover Sabina's body a hundred yards from the house. His family were the owners of the house that had caught on fire. He was essentially Sabina's former brother-in-law. Yeah. Sabina and Barry's brother had been together for like 17 years when they broke up. And that's one of the reasons she'd been allowed, like Ron had allowed her to stay in the house or whatever and initially the investigation had been focused on him but changed it i don't know okay i don't know what changed it but barry bench's own wife had given an affidavit that he'd acted weird the night of the fire. Shut up. So remember, he got the call about the fire and she rode along with him.

Well, they pulled up to the fire and they had stopped like 100 yards from the fire. And he'd been like, I'm going to look around here for a little bit if you want to get out and look around with me and then I'll go up to the fire. Turns out that area where they'd stopped the car initially had been about where Sabina's body had been found. Oh boy. It's believed that he was checking to make sure she was dead. Oh!

Okay. Mm-hmm. So he couldn't believe this. Roy couldn't believe this, that there was this other information about Barry Bench in this file. That Barry Bench's own wife had been like, yeah, he acted super weird that day. And so in December of 2003, Roy filed a motion to overturn his conviction based on this information. This was information that the defense had never seen. It was information Roy had never seen.

It was information that had never been brought up, that there had been an earlier suspect. But his motion was denied. It wasn't enough to get him a new trial. And so Roy did something pretty bold. He decided to write Barry Bench a letter. Really? Mm-hmm. He wrote him a letter accusing him of murder.

Oh, my God. Okay. And saying that with advances in DNA, it would only be a matter of time until they caught him. Oh, shit. And that'd be better just for him to come forward. This is what the letter read in part. Okay. Attention, Barry Bench. I will easily get a court order to obtain samples for your DNA for testing. After such a fucked up thing you did, killing that poor woman, Sabina Kolakowski, and my false imprisonment for

a dozen years i still pray for you wow i pray that you confess to killing sabina kolakowski and i pray that you confess to all of your sins mark my words they will eventually find out your guilt have a merry christmas but don't count on a happy new year oh shit that's good that is so good so well he's used to giving out threats yeah so roy was not 100 convinced of barry's guilt but i mean you gotta bluff a little exactly and he can't be like maybe you'll face justice he wasn't really sure what response if any he would he would get from Barry by sending this letter. But he hoped, at the very least, that Barry might send him a response and that he would lick the envelope unknowingly or unintentionally giving a DNA sample. Barry can't be that stupid.

That's not how it worked out for Roy. Five days later, Roy was watching the evening news when he learned that Barry Bench had died by suicide. Five days after Roy sent this letter, Barry Bench walked in front of an Amtrak train. Oh, wow. Okay. Yep. Witnesses at the scene said that Barry had thrown his body in front of the oncoming train. Roy was shocked by the news.

This was not the outcome he wanted. He didn't want Barry Bench to die by suicide. He just wanted his freedom. But it did make Roy think that he had identified the right person as Sabina's killer. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. But he didn't really know where to go from there. The chances of getting a DNA sample from him now

were nothing. He said that he considered asking his family to go. No. No. To Barry's funeral. And like see if they could get like a clump of his hair. What? Yeah. Okay. He said. That is a little different than what I was thinking. What were you thinking?

I don't know. Go to the Amtrak. No! No, I know, I know. It's bad either way. He said, at this point, when I had been in prison for a dozen years for a crime I didn't commit, I wasn't thinking straight. Right, right, right.

I was just like, have I lost it completely now? Am I just going to be here for the rest of my life now? Right. In 2005, Roy Brown was given another setback. He was diagnosed with advanced liver disease. He was suffering from late stage cirrhosis and his body was shutting down. He was battling with depression and he considered just giving up. Yeah.

But instead he fought against it and he became more determined than ever to gain his freedom. If he only had a short time of his life left, he wanted to live it outside of prison. And so he contacted the Innocence Project to see if they would consider taking on his case. So we've talked about the Innocence Project before. They're very selective about what cases they take on. But they're really well known in the prison system. You know, everybody knows about them and he'd heard about them and he thought, you know,

maybe they have the power to get this DNA tested. They can reach the people that I can't, that I don't have the money to do. And they looked over his case and they agreed to help him. That led to the Innocence Project taking on Roy's case was that they had learned that the prosecution had originally secured a forensic odontologist to testify at Roy's trial. But when he looked at the evidence, he didn't agree with it. He ruled Roy out as the possible provider of those bite marks. So they were like, we'd rather not have you as an expert. So instead of looking for another suspect, they just looked for another expert. Oh, I hate this shit.

Yes. It's infuriating. Yep. So the Innocence Project went to work to see if there was still DNA left on that shirt that could be tested. Yeah. still DNA left on that shirt that could be tested. And so they got an order to be able to examine it, and they were able to determine that there was microscopic saliva DNA still left on that shirt. It had not been all used up in the prior testing all those years before. So they were able to secure that, but then they had to have

some kind of sample to compare it to as well. So initially, they were able to compare it to Roy's and determine that it was not his DNA. But that's not enough, which is so infuriating. I know.

They had to prove that it was somebody else's. Barry Bench's family got word that the Innocence Project was working with Roy Brown. And his wife said, if we can help in any way, please let us know. Wow. Yeah. Really? They contacted the Innocence Project and said, if we can help in any way, let us know.

Because they all felt that their loved one was involved? I mean, his wife had provided that affidavit saying he'd acted weird that night. Wow. And so they were like, actually, you know, it would be a big help if Barry's daughter could give a DNA sample. Yeah, okay. And so she agreed to do it. And so they took the samples from that nightshirt. They tested them.

They tested them against Barry Bench's daughter, and it was a 50% match. Wow. Wow. But the district attorney argued that this was not significant evidence. It wasn't significant enough to free Roy Brown

because there was nothing proving that Barry Bench's daughter was actually Barry Bench's daughter. Oh, blow it out your ass. But the Innocence Project made this public at the time and they put a lot of pressure on the district attorney, James Vargasen. And ultimately he was like, OK, all right, all right. Well, you know, I guess the only way that we're going to prove this is if we exhume Barry Bench's body.

Wow. And so they had a judge order his exhumation. And so then they tested the DNA that was found on the nightshirt with the DNA sample that was taken from Barry Bench's exhumed body. And it was a 99.9 percent match. But there's no proof that the body in that coffin. Right? Exactly. And so finally they had no choice his conviction, Roy Brown walked out of prison a free man.

He was 46 years old. He had served 15 years for a crime he had not committed. That is unimaginable. By that point, his liver disease had taken a huge toll on his body. By that point, his liver disease had taken a huge toll on his body. He did a couple of quick interviews when he left, when he was released from prison, and he looked emaciated, his skin's really jaundiced. And he was mad. He was really angry.

He said, this isn't a miscarriage of justice. It's an abortion. Yeah. That's not allowed anymore. The district attorney, though, did extend a very heartfelt message to Roy Brown on this episode of the Forensic Files that I watched. He said,

get ready, do you need a tissue? Yeah. He said, I made it very clear to Roy Brown that I regretted very much the situation he found himself in. Oh! Go fuck yourself! He did not find himself in this situation! You put him there.

You put him in this situation! You were part of the team that put him there. Get your passive voice out of here. I'm sorry you feel that way about me. I made it very clear to Roy Brown that I regretted very much the situation he

found himself in. T'was regrettable. Mm-hmm. If t'only there was something I could have done. Mm-hmm. Is that not the most bullshit statement? It's typical. Ugh.

It is typical. When I heard him say that, I was like, are you fucking kidding me? Yeah, the guilt should eat you alive. Absolutely. I hate that shit. Makes me so angry. Roy Brown did sue the state for his wrongful conviction and eventually they settled for $2.6 million. Roy bought himself a house with a three-car garage and a Lamborghini.

He said he bought it used. I was going to say, you didn't get that much, Roy. He also bought himself a nice collection of exotic animal art. What? I read a description of this. He had lots of statues of exotic animals and some paintings. He said he got them on sale. Wait, why did he feel the need to be like,

he sounds like me? It was used. I got this at an estate sale. You'll never guess what I paid. Go ahead and guess. Go ahead and guess. He eventually got a liver transplant. Oh, wow.

And was cured of his cirrhosis. Following his release from prison, he reconnected with a girlfriend from his teenage years. They eventually married and relocated to Florida.

It's Facebook. It probably was. Where all the horny old people find each other. But in July of 2019, Roy Brown passed away at the age of 58. Ugh. I know. That's so sad. I couldn't find – no cause of death was reported.

I have noticed this about a lot of the people we cover who are wrongfully incarcerated. They die early. Early, yeah. Well, he probably spent – he spent 15 years in prison probably not getting the medical care that he needed. Probably not getting the nutrition he needed. The stress of being incarcerated takes a toll on you. Yeah.

Yeah. That's all going to add up. Yep. I don't think it's any accident that people die sooner than they should. Yeah. Yeah. No one really knows why Barry Bench murdered Sabina. There's speculation that he was upset that his brother was letting her live in the house and that he was having money problems.

And so that maybe he'd gone to the house that night to try and get her – like encourage her to move out and that things had escalated. An argument had started and that he had gotten physical with her. It got out of hand and that he killed her. OK. The Forensic Files episode makes it seem like he killed her by accident but she's got stab wounds and bite marks. No, that's not an accident.

So the way they posed it on this Forensic Files episode is that he did that. He pushed her. He knocked her out. He thought she was dead. And so he set fire to the house to cover it up. And then as he was leaving, she wasn't dead, and she got herself out of the house.

And then he realized he'd gone too far, and he had no choice at that point but to make sure she was dead. What do you think? I don't think that explains the bite marks and stuff. That seems way too personal. Right. Oh. Yeah.

That's a creepy one yeah and that's the story of a wrongful conviction boy I'm sorry I have to get coffee do it alright Missy

you ready for this? I am I'm ready for it what was am. I'm ready for it. What was that? I don't know. It was going to be like the y'all ready for this song, but it went into Mission Impossible. And so I just abandoned ship. Boy, terrible.

I'm sorry. I have to adjust the mic. Okay. Why are you apologizing for it? I just, I feel like I should be ready on the ball. Oh, okay. On my game. You made coffee that fast? This is not should be ready on the ball. Oh, okay. On my game. You make coffee that fast? This is not coffee. This is

iced tea. Oh, okay. I lied to you. When I said I was going to go make coffee, I thought, why did I say that? I'm not going to. Did you walk downstairs? I just lied to Brandy. Is that what you thought while you were walking downstairs? It was all I could think about.

And I apologize. No, you don't care. Are you still feeling the effects of the second margarita? No, I'm feeling normal. Oh, cool. Me too. Me too. I'm not a lightweight at all.

I'm really cool. Totally cool. Yeah. No, I feel a little headachy. Oh, my cool. Yeah. Now I feel a little headachy. Oh my gosh. Anyway. I feel like I need like a good snuggle. Okay, I passed my bed on the way back up to do my very tough job.

I was like, oh sure, it'd be nice to take a little lie down in there. My bed looks so nice. It does look really nice. I love your throw pillows. Thank you. Looks very nice. Guess where I got them. On sale.

Yeah. See, I'm just like that guy. Yeah. With his exotic animal print. That's right. I really thought you were going to say he bought a bunch of exotic animals. No, no, no. Which I was like, oh, no.

And instead, art of exotic animals, which I also think. He bought a lion statue. Yeah. You have lion statues. You guys are. That's true. We're balling. Yeah.

Practically the same. Thank you. Also, you know, what is the difference between a Lamborghini and a Subaru? I asked you. Hardly any. Mm i actually get yeah you should tell us about another wrongfully convicted brown so weird that is so weird picture our brains were too in sync. Yeah. Next week, let's be Backstreet Boys. Okay. I'm sorry. I'm embarrassed for you right now.

I'm so sorry. If we were in sync, who would you be and who would I be? I'd be Joey Fatone. Why? Because he's the funny one. I am hilarious. How dare you? Okay, then who would I be?

You're Chris Kirkpatrick. What? He's the one everybody forgets. That's so mean. You're clearly the Justin Timberlake, Kristen. Okay, thank you. Everyone, I would like to announce now that I have my own podcast. It's called Kristen's Thugs.

God, could you imagine anything worse than just some stupid person's name and then ramblings? Kristen's Ramblings. Kristen's Ramblings. Ooh. And the description is just like, I just talk about whatever comes to mind. Hot topics. Oh, yeah. Hot topics with Kristen.

Hey, y'all, did you hear about this? You see about this? I promise I won't do that. I know that I'm the Chris Kirkpatrick. You are not the Chris Kirkpatrick. It was just a joke. Oh, that's the meanest thing. Okay, anyway, if we were Backstreet Boys, who would we be? I know that I'm the Chris Kirkpatrick. You are not the Chris Kirkpatrick. It was just a joke. Oh, that's the meanest thing.

Okay, anyway, if we were Backstreet Boys, who would we be? Oh, Brandi has a hot text. She's smiling. I was going to burn you. Go ahead and burn me. You can be Brian Luttrell. Didn't he die? No, nobody died. I think he's a Trumper.

He's a Trumper? He's a Trumper. He's a Trumper? He's a Trumper. How dare you? Is he really? I'm pretty sure. Brian Littrell, Trump. Okay, let's see. What do we got?

Whoa. Okay, the first thing that comes up is why are the Backstreet Boys tweeting about QAnon? Why are they tweeting about QAnon? Oh, no. Backstreet Boys' Kevin Richards has posted a cryptic tweet about losing a best friend to QAnon. I'm pretty sure it's Brian Luttrell. After Brian Luttrell joins Parler. Oh, no!

How dare you, Brandy? Hmm. He was the one that I always thought was hot. Well, yeah. Yeah. What about Nick? No, of course. Everybody knows Nick is hot.

You know I don't go for the... I know. You never go for, like, the number one hottie. You go for, like, the number one hottie. You go for like the number two hottie. But he did... Oh, gosh. Fucking QAnon.

Taking our... Taking our backstreet boys. So who would you be? I don't... Maybe I'd be Howie. He wears cool gloves sometimes. Why does he wear gloves? I think he wears like fingerless gloves.

I think it's like his thing. Oh, God. What a weird thing. Yeah. All right. Well, I've never seen you wear fingerless gloves. No, I've never worn fingerless gloves. You wear just the fingers.

Yeah. You wear just the fingers. Yeah. I put finger condoms on every finger because I like my fingers to be warm, but I don't want that on my hands. Right. Yeah. Obviously. Because your palms are notoriously sweaty. Sweaty.

Yeah. All right. Well, we've covered that pretty well. Anyway, picture it. There's vomit on my sweater already. Mom's spaghetti. You know, if we were 98 degrees, you'd be Nick Lachey. Of course I would be. Nick Lachey is kind of a douche. Yeah.

So you should be really offended right now. See, I burned you. Thank you. I couldn't just let you burn me. Can I be Drew Lachey? No, I am Drew. He's the nice Lachey. Yeah. But you know what? What? Nick Lachey, big Chiefs fan, so. Who gives a fuck? Why is he a Chiefs fan? He's not from here.

No, he's from Cincinnati. Then fuck off. Why is he a Chiefs fan? I don't know. Oh, shit. Oh, my gosh. I like that we've made it an hour into recording. Oh, oh, I'm Brandi, and I receive texts all the time because I'm very popular. I make fun of Kristen because she receives but three texts a day.

Brandy, you may think that you're my only friend, but I just got a text from another friend. Oh, I'm so jealous. Just think on that for a minute. You freaking Nick Lachey. Anyway, why is he a fan of the Chiefs? I don't know. He likes the Chiefs. Because he's like a fair weather fan?

No, he liked the Chiefs when they were bad. Oh, wow. Well, that's just weird. He liked the Chiefs growing up. Okay. Yeah. You know what Is growing up. Okay. Yeah. You know what I'm thinking right now? What?

I'm having this memory of when we were kids. And do you remember that magazine spread that Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey did together where she's like, oh, you do? You remember this perfectly? Okay. And there was like that photo shoot of like she's in a swing. She's on a swing. Yeah. Yeah.

A hundred percent. Yep. I remember you loving the interview they did. Yep. Because she was saving herself for marriage. And he talked about how difficult that was for him. Ew. You loved it.

I did? Yes. Ew, I hate that now. Teenage Brandy was into it. I remember an interview where her dad was like. Oh, my God. Her fucking dad. Her dad was like, yeah, I think it's really great.

I think it's really important that she's saving herself for marriage. And once they get married, she can do whatever she wants until she's blue in the face. Ew, what? I remember thinking that was so disgusting that her dad would say that. Also, why does he need to be so involved? In her virginity. Well, because she pledged her virginity to her dad. Yeah, dad would say that. Also, why does he need to be so involved in her virginity? Well, because she pledged her virginity to her dad. Yeah, nothing wrong with that.

Nothing weird about that. Good Lord. Anyway, should I tell a story here? Yeah, tell us a story. Or should we just talk about pop culture icons? Let's start a new podcast. I'm already starting it. It's called Kristen's Thoughts.

But is it spelled T-H-O-T-S? See, I've never really totally... That's like for hotties, right? Yeah. Yeah, okay, so that tracks. It's like for big booty hoes. I could come on there. Oh, shit. I can't have a podcast for big booty hoes and not be a big booty hoe myself.

You could just bring me on and I'll be the big booty hoe on the podcast. That seems disingenuous. They'd be like, shouldn't this be Brandi's podcast? Anyway, picture it. Dallas, Texas. Oh, should I give sources? Probably. All right.

New York Times, Dallas Post-Tribune, northwestern.edu. Also an episode of Vindicated. What is that? It's a program I just discovered this very week. Okay, great. Is it – do they use the Dashboard Confessionals theme song? Yeah, it's hosted by the Dashboard Confessionals guys. Chris Carraba?

How do you know? Oh, my – how do you know? Oh, my God. How do you know people's names? Yes. Okay. It's amazing. Great. All right.

Picture it. Dallas, Texas, 1 p.m., May 6, 1980. Husband and wife, Ruben and Ulla Danziger were working at their fur store fur store? yeah their fur store like Alaskan fur Alaskan fur Alaskan fur

everyone that's a local fur place Kansas City had a fur store well I mean it's no longer I think it's still there no one's buying fur anymore okay I looked this up a couple years ago because I was like how is that place still there. No one's buying fur anymore. Okay, I looked this up a couple years ago because I was like, how is that place still there?

And they have cold storage. Oh, for all the old ladies? Yeah, it's still around. It's been around since 1926. They still sell furs there. May I tell you something? Yeah. You are aware that my grandmother recently passed away.

I am. I received her fur coat. You were willed her furs. I was given a chest and all the contents that came in it, and in it was an ankle length fur coat. Oh. What do you do? Do you need to contact Alaskan First to get it in this cold story? Oh, yeah.

That's my top priority. What the fuck am I supposed to do with that? I don't know. They've got a pre-owned inventory. Maybe they'll buy it from you. I mean. Got any ankle links here? I'm looking.

I'm looking. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Seems like there might. I mean, I was going to say there might be a market for it. But who is buying this? No one. No one's buying those.

And you know what? Okay, I held back. There were two two furs yeah what am i supposed to do where are you gonna wear them i'm not but at the same time i like yeah i get it yeah right yeah okay anyway so that's that's my problem that's yet to be resolved what are you looking up now seeing how much the uh a fur is going for on Alaskan Fur's website. What? Well, this is just a bargain.

What? It's an ankle-length mink coat. Okay, yeah, that's what I have. Originally $14,000. On sale? $14,000. On sale for $3,995. Good God.

Times might be tough at Alaskan. Times might be tough. I never got furs. Like, I don't understand the appeal of fur. Well, no one from our generation. Yeah. Because we're so... Talking about my generation.

Anyway, do you want to tell us a story? Not really. Okay. So they're working at their fur store. Fine Furs by Ruben. Oh. That doesn't really roll off the tongue, but okay. But I mean it was the 80s, so were fine furs a thing?

Yeah. People loved furs in the 80s. When did it drop off? Watch – I mean haven't you seen Ghostbusters where the woman's fur comes to life? I do not recall. You don't recall that? No. I saw that when I was a young child and was traumatized.

That's probably the reason I don't like furs. So you will not be borrowing my ankle length fur coat. Ankle length. Ruben and Ala were both Holocaust survivors and they'd made a nice little life for themselves in Texas. And they were having a fairly typical day at the store. That is until two women walked in. One woman was wearing pink pants and sunglasses. I assume she was not topless.

I was going to say, what's with the shirt? They only mentioned the pink pants. Okay, great. Okay. She had a gun. The other woman wore a navy blue sweatsuit. The women had empty plastic bags. The woman in the pink pants followed Ruben to the back of the store. She shoved him against the wall and aimed the gun at him.

Ruben begged her not to kill him, not to kill his wife. But she shot him. Allah was distraught. The woman in blue had stayed with her. But Allah managed to push the silent alarm. In fact, she pushed the alarm so hard that she broke her fingernails. Oh my gosh! And now, with Ruben dying

on the floor, the woman in pink turned her attention to Allah. She ordered Allah to fill the black plastic bags with fur coats. Allah did as she was told, and the woman with the gun kicked her as she loaded the bags with valuable furs. As she worked, the woman fired the gun at Allah, but the bullet missed her.

The woman started to shoot again, but Allah pleaded with her. She said she had cancer. She only had a few weeks to live. And so the woman in the pink pants said, We'll just let you suffer. Then she told Allah to go to a back room. And the woman in the pink pants and the woman in the blue sweatsuit left the store with the bags of furs. The pair got into a brown Datsun and fled the scene. It is the 80s. I know, right? Datsun and fled the scene. It is the 80s. I know, right?

Datsun's not even around anymore. Believe me, I've looked. Been shopping for one for years. Been out in my fur coat looking for a Datsun. Ruben died as a result of the gunshot, and Ulla was distraught. She didn't really have cancer. That had just been very quick thinking on her part. This was a horrible, senseless crime.

The tiniest silver lining in this awful story was that she'd gotten a good look at the women who'd done this. So when investigators came to the store, she was able to describe the two black women who'd robbed her store and murdered her husband. And from there, this crime sort of solved itself. The next day, police found the getaway car. And incredibly, there was rental paperwork in the car's front seat. It said that the car had been rented by Joyce Ann Brown. So, you know, that was a lot to go on. When word got out that they were looking for a woman named Joyce Ann Brown, someone in the vice squad was like, oh, I know who that is.

I arrested Joyce Ann Brown a couple years ago. And that was true. Joyce Ann Brown had been arrested a few years earlier on prostitution charges. Okay, but that's kind of a common name, isn't it? No. Yeah. No, no one's ever had the last name Brown before. Yeah. As evidenced

by this episode we're telling right now. And Joyce, have you ever even heard that name before? So unusual. Yikes, I'm already real nervous. Least common middle name ever. So yeah, she'd been arrested a few years earlier on prostitution charges, so her photo was in the system.

But at the time of the robbery, Joyce was no longer involved in sex work. Instead, she worked as an assistant at a rival fur company, Coslo's Furs. That's a weird coincidence. Mm-hmm. How many fur companies were – I mean, it's the 80s, so people still like the furs. Koslow's was about three miles away from Fine Furs by Rubin. So investigators put a photo of Joyce Ann Brown into a photo lineup, and they gave the lineup to Alla, and Alla didn't hesitate. She identified Joyce Ann Brown as the woman who'd shown up in her store

wearing the navy blue sweatsuit. Tell me more about this photo lineup. What do you need to know? Was like Joyce Ann Brown's picture the only one in color and the rest were and it was like real big. Yeah, it was like circled. And the other ones were like real tiny.

I don't really know much more about it. Okay. Okay. That's fine. It seems like a pretty standard photo lineup. Okay. All right. Enough questions. You were the one who asked.

May I remind you? So they issued a warrant for Joyce Ann Brown. It didn't take long for Joyce to find out that investigators were looking for her. I think she read it in the paper that they were looking for her in connection with the murder. Maybe they called her like they did Roy Brown. I had never heard of that before. They called Roy and were like, hey, we're going to arrest you tomorrow. Be ready.

Lunch packed at 10. I don't know. I mean, maybe if it's someone who they've had in the system before and so there's an existing relationship there. I don't know. Okay. Anyway, so she reads about it in the paper. Yeah. And she was not super concerned.

Yeah. She hadn't been involved in the robbery. She'd been at work on the day of the robbery. Her time card showed she'd been there. Her coworkers could attest that she'd been there. So Joyce was like, no big deal. This is just a misunderstanding. So she went voluntarily to the police station to clear things up.

And her mom, who seems like a very wise woman, was like, careful, you might not come back. And she's like, uh-huh. Moms. With their wisdom. Joyce was led into an interrogation room and an

investigator asked her, why'd you do it? Not, did you do it? Why'd you do it? And she said, well, I didn't do it. And he called her a liar. Oh, shit. He placed her under arrest, and she was charged for her role in the murder and the burglary. And her bond was set at- A lot of syllables in burglary. Did I say burglary? Yeah.

You know what? You are the... Oh, shit. Oh, shit, I'm trying to insult you, but I can't remember who I'm trying to... What's the name of that creepy guy who managed the Backstreet Boys? I'm Lou Pearlman!

You're the Lou Perlman of this podcast. Oh no. You're always asking me to whip my shirt off and do push-ups. So rude. That's gross. You've not asked me to do that once, even though you've wanted to. Joyce's bond was set at $1 million.

Oh, my gosh. Investigators searched her home. Didn't find any furs. Didn't find anything, really. What about proof that she rented that car? Well, the paperwork was right there in the front seat. What more do you want? Well, proof that it's the – like we got somebody at the rental car company who's like, oh, yeah, that's the woman.

I know it's the 80s, so we don't have like video surveillance. Just fur coats everywhere. She paid for this rental car with a fur coat that's right does that seem suspicious to you that would seem brandy the questions you're asking are just rude okay okay because they didn't really find anything on her but who gives a shit am i right because they'd found one of the guilty parties. Now they needed to find the other woman. But then some kind of weird stuff happened. Like, for example, investigators realized that the Joyce Ann Brown they'd arrested wasn't the Joyce Ann Brown who'd rented the getaway car. Weird how I said that.

Everyone, Brandi hates to be right she hates it that joyce ann brown didn't live in dallas she lived in denver so they paid the denver joyce a visit and they asked her about the dotson and she said oh yeah i did rent that car and i lent it to my friend renee taylor and did she have a fur coat on while she was telling this? No, she didn't. Oh, okay. She was like, I haven't seen Renee or the car since. So investigators went out in search of Renee Taylor.

What? Your friend borrows your rental car. Right. And you're just like, toodaloo, bye. No concerns when it doesn't show back up. Maybe she was concerned. I don't know. Okay.

Surely she was concerned. I thought her name was Joyce. God. Everyone, she's rolled away from the mic, so you can't see, can't hear how hard she's laughing at her own stupid joke. So investigators went out in search of Renee Taylor. Fun fact, Renee actually had a history of robbing furriers.

Not to be confused with furries. Or couriers. Good. Yeah, I hope everyone's clear. Investigators couldn't find Renee, but they did search her home and when they did they found a whole mess of furs uh-huh and some business cards from fine furs by rubens weird yeah i why did i say rubens just it's just ruben ruben you were thinking of ruben's case rubens cambiano and bryant that's right the kansas City law firm. Are they still around?

I don't know. Should I Google that? I've already Googled Alaskan versus my computer. It's going to be like one fucking year. What year are you living in, ma'am? Sorry, I'm getting my seat

up higher. I need to be like Yertle the Turtle here. It is still around, but now it's Rubens, Case, Hager, Cambiano, and Bryant. No, no. What happened to the other Rubens? You dropped a Rubens. Those commercials were so good. I know. I loved them.

Those commercials were so good. I know. I loved them. Anyway, this is relevant to no one unless you lived in Kansas City and grew up watching daytime TV in the 90s. All right. We'll move on. That's fine. So they found a bunch of furs, a bunch of business cards from Fine Furs by Rubin, singular, and a pink sweatsuit and a.22 caliber revolver with two spent rounds.

Great. Let fucking Joyce go. No, they're going to say Joyce worked with this Renee woman. Well, yeah, she's the accomplice, Brandy. Try to keep up. Okay, but there were two women. I'm sorry. This woman has two friends named Joyce Ann Brown. It's a very common name, as you yourself suggested.

This is ridiculous. They dusted the rental car for fingerprints. They found some hangers in there. They couldn't put together that they have the wrong Joyce Ann Brown. What if you don't want to put it together? Did you ever think of that? You ever think, I'm going to feel silly if I admit to this. Yeah, I mean.

It's better to lock someone up. Yeah. They found one of Renee's prints, but none of Joyce's. Oh, well. So, Joyce Ann Brown's trial began in October of 1980. What the fuck? Did they ask this, what's her name? Renee something?

Renee Taylor. Did they ask Renee Taylor if she knew this Joyce Ann Brown? She was at large. Oh, that's right. They went to her house. She wasn't there. She and the Dotson missing on the run. No, no, no.

They found the Dotson. Oh, I'm sorry. They found the Dotson missing on the run. No, no, no. They found the Dotson. Oh, I'm sorry. They found the Dotson. Did not find Renee, but they found a bunch of furs. They found the business card. Got it, got it, got it. I'm following along now. Sorry.

Are you? Yeah. She even left her pink pants behind. I heard that. Did you? Mm-hmm. Do you have her own pink pants? No.

I'm sorry to personally offend you no you picture can you picture me wearing pink pants no but i feel like you would look really good in them so i just like i think you're kind of silly sometimes about your rules i used to own a pair of hot pink capri pants oh i was picturing you i was picturing you like in a hot pink velour tracksuit. Oh, if I'd had the money for a juicy sweatsuit in like 2005, oh, you bet your ass. Oh my. It would have said

juicy right there on the ass. And it would have been juicy. Yeah. Disgusting. So her trial began and are you ready for another fun fact? Yeah. One of the deputies who was assigned to the courtroom where Joyce was tried was also named Joyce Ann Brown. No. Yeah, it's true.

What? Yeah. They just, okay, great. It is a very common name. It's a common name. So that should have led them maybe to believe that they should make sure they had the right Joy Sandbrown. Oh, Brandy. But this one, this Joy Sandbrown, sex worker.

So, you know, probably better just get her off the streets. Right. Even if it's the wrong one. Yeah, who cares, right? Yeah. Fuck right off. The prosecution had their work cut out for them because their case sucked to major balls. Their case sucked and they're trying to convict the wrong person.

They were led by a guy named Norm Keene. And Norm was good at his job. Maybe not great at getting justice, but definitely great at winning cases. And that's all that matters. Winning was a big thing at the Dallas County DA's office in the 80s. Probably every DA's office ever continuing on. Anyway, in fact, they had a little saying at the time. Oh, yeah?

What was it? Anybody can convict a guilty man. It takes a real prosecutor to convict an innocent one. What the fuck? Yeah. Ha, ha, ha. Right? What a hilarious thing to be saying.

What? Just a little joke about locking up innocent people. You are forgetting to laugh. It's not funny. That's terrible. Yeah, it's the most fucked up thing. Yeah. So, you know, Norm had a tough job here, okay?

Because that stuff about the two women both named Joyce Ann Brown was weird. He needed to give the jury an explanation. So he did. What'd he make up? Okay, this is a little tough to follow because it's weird, but I'm going to need you to stick with me. Okay, I'm following. The prosecutor told the jury that Dallas Joyce's common-law husband, a guy named Lee Visor, had spent some time in a Denver jail. All right.

So now Dallas Joyce and Lee are tied to Denver. OK. And because they are tied to Denver, they can therefore be tied to Denver Joyce. All right. If you've ever been to Denver, you kind of know everyone. You know everybody in Denver. Pretty small town, Denver. And what Dallas Joyce and Lee did was they worked in cahoots with Denver Joyce along with an underworld guy named Selman Fletcher.

And they got the car. What's that name? Selman Fletcher. Selman? I didn't make this up. He did. Don't get mad at me. They got the car rented in Denver Joyce's name.

And then Dallas Joyce and her friend Renee Taylor had been the ones to commit the robbery and in the process kill Ruben. And there was no evidence to support this theory. But we're not looking for criticism. Compliments only, please. Is that not the dumbest thing you've ever heard? That's ridiculous. I know someone who has the exact same name as me. So you know what I'm going to do?

I'm going to involve them in a crime and leave their name, which is also my name, all over the place. This makes no sense. Another tough thing for the prosecution was figuring out how Joyce had done this. She'd been at work that day. Multiple coworkers would testify that they'd been with her that day. They'd also testify that she hadn't been wearing a navy blue sweatsuit. She'd been wearing a white skirt and a black blouse. I was going to say I don't think that's probably dress code at the fur store.

Right. So the prosecution found 36 minutes in Joyce's workday when none of her co-workers were in the same room as her. So they argued that in 36 minutes, Joyce changed clothes, drove the three miles to find furs by Ruben, watched Renee shoot Ruben, put the furs in the black bags, then drove the three miles back to work, changed clothes again, got back into work, all without anyone noticing that she'd left. Obviously. Dallas is a really small city, so it's super easy.

Just jut across town. With noontime traffic to just do whatever you need to do yeah no problem the prosecution called ala danziger to the stand she was absolutely distraught to the point that several times the judge asked her if she'd like to stop for a while oh my gosh but she was certain that Joyce Ann Brown was the woman who'd worn the blue sweatsuit that day. Toward the end of her testimony, she looked at Joyce and cried.

She said, Why did you do it? Why did you do it? And took my purse with everything else? You ruined my life. You took my life. My husband's life and my life. Oh.

So that was the state's case. Except then came their final witness. It was a woman named Martha Bruce. Martha was a jailhouse informant, and she'd been cellmates with Joyce Ann Brown. And she testified that Joyce had confessed the whole crime to her.

Yeah. And to be fair, Martha knew some details about the crime that could have only been known by the criminals themselves. Or the prosecuting attorneys. But, you know, whatever. Martha was, of course, asked if she'd been offered anything in exchange for her testimony.

And she said no. She's just doing the right thing. Yeah. You know how it is. Then it was the defense's turn. And their case, I must say, wasn't nearly as exciting because their case was basically, hey, this was a case of mistaken identity. Mrs. Danziger was mistaken. Joyce hadn't done this.

She had an alibi. She'd been at work all day. Her time card showed it. Her coworkers could attest to it. And they did. They testified that she'd been there. Joyce remained optimistic throughout her trial. She hadn't done this. She thought it was pretty clear she hadn't done it.

And yeah, she was a black woman on trial in front of a jury of 12 white people, but she didn't think she'd go to prison for something she didn't do. Which is, I guess, the theme of this episode. That sure is. Except she did, yeah. Yeah. The jury deliberated for a few hours before finding her guilty of aggravated robbery. Joyce Ann Brown was sentenced to life in prison.

Really? Yeah. Right? What? Capital murder, Brandi. She committed a felony. Felony while a murder was being— Holy shit.

This did irreparable harm to her family. So the thing I liked about – it was a two-part episode of Vindicated. And they didn't gloss over the effect that incarceration has on a person's family. So Joyce had a daughter and two stepsons. And I don't know what happened with her common-law husband. I wonder if maybe the situation was just too much for him. But the kids all seemed to go their separate ways to different family members. I mean, it just tore this family apart.

Joyce said that she was so bitter and angry about being incarcerated for something she didn't do. But her mother gave her really good advice and basically told her, hey, you are a guest here. You are a guest of the Texas Department of Corrections. Act like it. This is not a permanent thing for you. Joyce did the best she could to pass the time in prison. She passed a lot of it by sleeping. She slept and slept and slept.

She got a job in prison and earned an associate's degree and she slept. She said she could sleep for like 16 hours at a time. She did that, I would say, because of depression. She also says to fight boredom and so that she could dream about home. She said, I don't have to dream about a crime. I don't have to dream about seeing a man shot down like a dog because I wasn't there. Wow. But as Joyce struggled with her new surroundings, interesting things happened, Brandy. Yeah? Before the jailhouse informant Martha Bruce testified in Joyce's trial, she had been sentenced to five years for attempted murder.

Five years?! I know, doesn't that seem pretty low? What the hell, right? Okay. What the hell, right? Okay. One month after Joyce's trial, the district attorney wrote a letter to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and told them that Martha's sentence had been excessive. He recommended that they release her early.

So they did, and the governor agreed, and they released her right away. What the fuck? Who gives a shit about attempted murder, am I right? Wow. Then in May of 1981, about six months after Joyce's trial ended, Renee Taylor was finally caught. Okay, they arrested her while she was giving birth in Dallas. What? I know.

I know. I know. Damn. Okay, but she's a tough person to arrest because after she gave birth, Renee slipped out of the leg chain, left the baby behind, took the guard's purse, and was caught the next day trying to cash the guard's paycheck. Oh, my gosh. At a department store, which was that— It used to be a thing. It used to be a thing, huh? You could cash a. At a department store, which was that—

It used to be a thing. It used to be a thing, huh? You could cash a check at a department store, yeah. All right, well, she didn't get away with it. Yeah. At this point, Renee was in deep shit. She was facing the death penalty. But she was offered a plea deal, and she took it.

She pled guilty to the murder of Ruben Danziger. She was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. And it seems that maybe she felt a little guilty about what happened to Joyce. To make things super awkward, they ended up in the same prison in the same area. And of course, by that point, Joyce had friends who knew she was innocent. And they were like, Joyce, do you want us to like give her the look? Right.

Joyce told them, no, only Kristen can give the look. I was going to say, that's a Kristen move. Yeah, yeah. I give them the look and they're like, whoa, I should have never let an innocent person do the person. That's right.

Eventually, Renee signed an affidavit saying that neither the Joyce Ann Brown from Dallas nor the Joyce Ann Brown from Denver had been her accomplice. And people said, that's a double negative. But no one cared. And so Joyce's new attorneys were like, OK, you know, we have enough for an appeal. So they gathered all their evidence. They had Renee Taylor saying that Joyce Ann Brown was not her accomplice. They had the evidence that Martha Bruce had, in fact, received something in exchange for her testimony. But in December of 1984, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied Joyce Ann Brown a new trial.

Neat. Actually, it wasn't. Brandi was devastated. Yeah, so she was devastated, but she didn't give up hope. She learned about organizations that helped wrongfully convicted people, and she reached out to them. Specifically, she reached out to Centurion Ministries and asked them for help. So we've hit the two big ones. Yeah, we have. And they said no. But Joyce had nothing but time. So she kept writing. For three years, she kept writing to them. And in the meantime,

the Dallas County DA's office was in hot water. They'd gotten some bad publicity. There were a few high-profile cases where people who had been wrongfully convicted were set free. In those cases, defense attorneys had discovered that prosecutors had suppressed evidence, used perjured testimony, oops, just been lying douchebags you know yep and it was in this environment that jim mccloskey the executive director of centurion ministries agreed to meet with joyce and within like 30 minutes of meeting her he stopped her and said i I believe you. I'll take this case. Oh, my gosh. So, I mean, that was such a source of joy and hope for her. After she left the meeting, her friends were like, what happened, what happened, what happened?

And she just said, I don't know when, but I'm leaving. Oh, that gave me goosebumps. I know. She really needed to get out of prison. Her family needed her badly. While she was locked up, she missed the birth of her granddaughter. She missed so much of her daughter's childhood. And her daughter really struggled without her.

Her stepson died by suicide. His death devastated Joyce. She said, I don't know if me being in prison had anything to do with that, but I believe, and I have had to live with it, that had I been home, I don't think he would have been dead. Joyce tried to stay strong. She had the support of her family, and she had a legal team that was actively looking into her case and they were doing a pretty good job the investigators from centurion ministries made a big discovery and it all came down to martha bruce that jailhouse informant the one who'd been um promised leniency if she no that was a coincidence that was a coincidence. That was a coincidence. Oh, okay. Weird.

As it turned out, she'd been asked on the stand about her criminal record. And she'd never mentioned that she'd been convicted for making a false statement to a police officer. Oh, shit. The jury would have loved to hear about that. Yeah. So the jury should have heard about that. The defense should have been able to do that. Exactly.

Yes. The prosecution should have disclosed that to the defense. So Joyce's new defense team decided, OK, that's the basis for our appeal. But they weren't just focused on winning in court because they knew that in a case like this, it's really important to get the public's attention. So in addition to taking legal action, they also took this story to 60 Minutes. Ooh! And 60 Minutes did a special on Joyce Ann Brown, and it embarrassed the hell out of the Dallas County DA's office.

Good! And in October of 1989, two weeks after that 60-minute special aired, the Texas Court of Appeals reversed Joyce's conviction. They said that the prosecution had failed either negligently or inadvertently to disclose evidence that would have cast doubts on the jailhouse informant. I wrote in my notes here that it would have cast counts. Oh, yeah. One, two, three. You know what we did there? We mixed Count Chocula and the Tootsie Roll Owl, didn't we?

No, I thought we were doing the Count. Oh, the Count. Oh, that's the other one. Okay. My apologies. Joyce Ann Brown was released from prison that November. She'd been locked up for nine years, 25 weeks, and six days. Oh, my gosh.

The DA's office still had the right to put her through a new trial. But on Valentine's Day of 1990, they dropped all the charges against her. Talk about a sweet Valentine's Day. Talk about a sexy Valentine's Day. No. No. It's not sexy. Just sweet.

It's just sweet. All right. Yeah. Oh, I'll settle for that so joyce was free and she did a lot with her freedom she wrote did she fucking sue wait for it all right she wrote a memoir titled joyce ann brown justice denied she famously refused to apply for a pardon because she said the state should be asking me for a pardon. Don't you love that?

I love that. But the thing was, in order for a wrongfully convicted person in Texas to apply for compensation, they have to be pardoned by the state. That's stupid. So Joyce began campaigning for the idea that a person shouldn't have to seek a pardon in order to receive compensation. It should be enough that you're wrongfully convicted. Yeah. So she never sought a pardon, but in 1993, she did get her record expunged. And what?

That's deeply unsatisfying. I know. I agree. And what? That's deeply unsatisfying. I know. I agree. I read something somewhere that she discovered that she really wouldn't be getting that much money from the state and she was like, it is not worth it to me to ask them for anything. That's a ridiculous law.

You have to be pardoned? What am I being pardoned for? You wrongfully convicted me. That's dumb. I hate that. We don't like to be wrong, do we? Oh, my gosh. Okay.

When she was released, she did a lot of public speaking. But it's really hard to transition back into like normal life after you've been locked up for nine years. She got tired of all these people coming up to her and saying they would help her, but never really following through. One of those speaking events when John Price, the first elected black Dallas County commissioner, asked her if she was looking for a job and she said yes. And he told her to call him. She didn't really have a lot of faith in him. Three days passed. She didn't bother calling. Yeah.

And so he called her and told her to come to the office. And she did. And as soon as she did, he just started explaining her job to her. Oh, my gosh. It was so cool to see her talk about this. She said it was so rewarding to be in a position to say, you know, this is Joyce Ann Brown. I'm calling on behalf of, you know, this kind of commission. People respected her.

She had some power. behalf of this kind of commission. People respected her. She had some power and she found it so rewarding to be doing important work that it got her thinking about what else she could do. So she started an organization called Mothers for the Advancement of Social Systems. It was designed to help wrongfully convicted prisoners and recently released people who were trying to reenter society. And she really helped a lot of people, including Renee Taylor. Yeah, so Renee Taylor wrote to Joyce asking for help. Renee wanted to get off the unit she was on. I guess she'd been on this one unit for like a really long time and she was just getting older and she wanted something a little less intense.

And Joyce was like, oh, wow. She said, I couldn't believe that she was asking me to assist and help her. My life was destroyed. My children's life was destroyed but she remembered that in 1986 she'd made this promise to God that not if but when she got out of prison she would help the less fortunate in the criminal justice system and Renee was less fortunate

oh my gosh and so she did help and she helped so many others. I have this tendency to want, like, here's the good people and here's the bad people. I wanted, like, a cool quote to end on, so I found this opinion piece that she wrote for D Magazine, and it ended up being super homophobic. It was so upsetting. I was like, oh, no, Joyce. Yeah. Well, you know, it was 1990 when she wrote it, and, you know, Pobity's nerfed.

But she did her best to help others until her death in 2015 when she was 68, which I think ties in with that thing of, you know, it takes a toll on people to be incarcerated. Yeah. And so it's not just that they're robbed of the years that they're locked up. Yeah, their lives are shortened by it as well. Yeah. Did they ever find the actual accomplice? Oh, my gosh. I almost stopped my story.

I'm sorry. I've got more here. So Renee never confirmed who her accomplice had been in that robbery. Like, I say never confirmed. Never officially, officially confirmed. But she did hint at it with the Centurion Ministries team. She didn't say the woman's name, but she said if they could find her accomplice in the Albuquerque furrier robbery, then they'd found her accomplice in the Dallas furrier robbery. So they did some digging.

I mean, it doesn't really sound like it was that much digging because she'd been indicted for that crime and so had her accomplice. She'd been indicted along with a woman named Lorraine Germany. And Lorraine Germany, everyone says, looks a lot like Joyce Ann Brown. Really? So it's funny. They have very similar facial structure. They had very similar hair.

Lorraine is much darker skinned. But I can, I mean, they always say eyewitness testimony is so faulty. Yes. And, well, and the other factor is they say if you're doing eyewitness testimony on someone who's not of your same race, it's even faultier. So yeah. Mrs. Danziger, I believe the most recent article I read on her said that she maintained that she had ID'd the right person, that she had ID'd the right person, which, I mean, it'd be really hard to wrap your head around the idea. Absolutely it would, that you would identify the wrong person. Yeah.

Yeah. And that led to somebody serving nearly 10 years in prison for a crime they didn't commit. The other thing is that Albuquerque robbery had been very similar to the Dallas one. Two women went into a fur store. They had black plastic bags. They had black plastic bags. I just say blastic. It's just so much faster.

Yeah. Who has time to say black plastic? You say blastic. Not me. Yeah. Yeah. They filled them with furs, those blastic

bags. The woman with the gun was in charge. Can we make this happen? What? Can we make this happen? Make people's hearts any blaster.

But how often do you have to say black plastic? I said it all over the bonus episode. Everyone, if you could see her fucking face. She's so proud of herself. Because she covered a case where some, you know, well, you can guess.

This time it wasn't fur and plastic bags. No, there was not fur in the plastic bags. We wish. Well, no, Brandy doesn't wish. She loves this gross shit. Also, in that other robbery, the woman wore the blue sweatsuit again, which is like, was that your favorite thing? It's her Robin uniform. Right?

You can't mix it up? No. It's what I wear when I'm robbing. Also, can we talk about how weird it is to wear pink pants to a robbery? Yeah, I don't think that you're not blending in in pink pants. Right, right. Yeah. Anyway, when we rob somebody, we're going to do it right.

Look out Alaskan furs. Albuquerque ended up dropping the charges against Renee because by the time she'd been caught, she was wanted for the Dallas robbery and murder. So investigators tracked Lorraine down. She was in prison for robbery at the time. She, of course, denied involvement in the Dallas case. And when the investigators went to Renee Taylor and they were like, OK, we found Lorraine. We found your real accomplice. Renee was like, I'm recanting everything now.

Mm-hmm. Renee was like, I'm recanting everything now. It's just so frustrating because it's like if they'd done the least bit of investigating at the time. Yeah. This was really easy to solve. Yeah. But they didn't want to. No.

Nope. And that's the story of Joyce Ann Brown. Ooh. Right? Yeah. Should we take some questions from the Discord? I believe we shall. How do you get in the Discord, though, Kristen?

You have to kill a man. That's ridiculous. No, you just have to join our Patreon at the $5 level or higher. Ooh, High Priestess of Costco asks, have you been watching Candy on Hulu? No, I haven't. Have you watched it yet? I haven't watched it yet either. Can't wait to watch it. Very excited to watch it.

Loved your coverage of the case. Oh, thank you. Candy Montgomery. My friend. Are we in a weird mood right now? We are in a weird mood. You know what? It's that thing.

It's that thing. We did the bonus episode. That's right. Now we're done with this episode. We're just coasting. That's right. Ooh, the only Sam ever asked, what do you think of the Casey and Vicky White situation? Oh, shit.

Immediately, we both thought of Toby Toby who we interviewed on the podcast. Yeah. I think that it came to a very horribly sad end. Yeah. Yeah. I hate that she died by suicide. Yeah. Yeah.

I think there's always redemption for somebody. Absolutely. There's always more life to live. Yeah. I think that's – I find it really, really sad that she thought that was how it had to end. Yeah. Yeah. So there's that thought.

There's also the thought of like, dude, you're 6'9". Did you really think you could – You didn't think you were going to blend in, did you? Have you seen any of the footage of him being taken into custody? No. I saw some footage on a news like a news clip of him being pulled out of the car and being taken into custody. And like, you really don't know how large six foot nine is until you like see it in contrast to like, you know, six foot tall guy. Well, right.

I mean, I feel like there are just certain people who you're going to have some kind of reaction or you're going to remember them. Yeah. Oh, anyway. Oh, Nancy Drew says, not a question, but my fellow LGTC loving bestie had her baby on her birthday last week. Can baby Annabelle get a shout out? She's adorable. Happy birthday, baby Annabelle.

Welcome to the world. And I wanted to have London on my birthday so bad. I'm so jealous. I think that's really cute that they share a birthday. Who is surprised that Brandy loves that? No one. Ooh, Wilder31 asks, Brandy, we know why Kristen didn't finish law school. Have you told the story of why you only did one semester of criminal justice?

I have no idea if I've told the story. But the reason is that I never wanted to go to school for that. I liked criminal justice, but I always wanted to go to school for that. I liked criminal justice, but I always wanted to go to cosmetology school. Yeah. And I kind of made a deal with my dad that I would go to college first and then I hated it. So after a semester, I stopped and I went to cosmetology school. And the rest is history. That's right.

Loved my criminal justice classes. Hated everything else. Mm's right. Loved my criminal justice classes. Hated everything else. Mm-hmm. Yeah. What? Okay, you can decide if we can keep this in. What? Miss Sia 93 says, in the story Brandy told about a boy calling his ex-girlfriend in her bathroom, was the ex-girlfriend Kristen?

It sure was. Yes. It sure was. Everyone, just imagine how devastated you would be if I broke up with you. You would come a little unglued. What? What? What? Oopsies, fudge, stripes, ass.

Am I the monster for my special pasta recipe? Oh, no. Cook spaghetti until it's very soft. Then add butter, Parmesan cheese, and ketchup. Ew. Stir until it's orange and eat it right out of the pot. Yes. Yes, you are.

You're a monster. Oh, my God. Stop it right now. Yep. Mm-hmm. Blair. This is rude because Blair only wants this question asked one way. Stupidest thing Kristen has done, according to Brandy.

Note that Blair is not asking for me to tell the stupidest thing you've done. All right, what's the dumbest thing I've done, Brandy? I don't fucking know. Is it because I'm a genius? Yeah. And you can't possibly. I couldn't possibly. You're my best friend.

What am I going to think about stupid shit you've done? We've both done stupid shit. No, only you. Suck on it, Blair. Redheads fuck more fun. Oh, my. Ask Brandy, how do you think you're going to feel about sex education in school for London? And when do you think you'll start talking to her about it?

Hmm. I have no idea. I talked to her about it? Hmm. I have no idea. I talked to her about it the other day. You stop it. No, I think it's really important to be super open about those conversations and make sure it's not like a weird taboo thing. And so I will be very comfortable having those conversations with her. And I think just when it kind of naturally comes up. Yeah, like when she's 25.

No. Like at the purity ball. Oh, no. Skepany says, not a question, but I listened to an episode last night before bed. And then I had a dream that Kristen had to leave during an episode recording. So I had to step in bravely and record with Brandy. It was an honor. And I'm always here for you both.

I love that. Thank you for your bravery. I don't understand this question. Okay. This is a family podcast. Ask Kristen, what kind of cottage cheese do you prefer? I only eat friendship brand California style. What do you mean?

What? What's not to understand? Are there different kinds of cottage cheese? Yeah. So my mom has a very specific kind of cottage cheese she buys. I don't buy cottage cheese often enough because I don't like to admit that I like it. Okay. But I do know. You know it's weird. Yeah, because I know it's weird. In the ways

you eat it. Cottage cheese is weird in any way. It is weird. I agree that cottage cheese is weird. So I can't remember the brand name, but I just know that it comes in a pink container. Okay. I get that one. That's, I believe, a Belfonte low-fat.

Oh, yeah. Okay. There you go. Low-fat cottage cheese. I didn't know that there were. I don't know what fucking California style means. Yeah, I don't either. I'm happy for you.

This is a family podcast. She doesn't sound happy at all. Don't let her be disingenuous with you. Oh, nerd burger wants to know what kind of rejuvenation surgery are you getting during this break you getting that butthole tightened up this time my butthole is plenty tight try to stick your pinky in i dare you No! What? Is Lez or asks if you could have your mind wiped temporarily and watch any movie, TV show again like it's the first time. What would you watch? Is there something that really struck you?

I know what mine would be. What would it be? It's super nerdy. Harry Potter? No. What is it? Game of Thrones. I was so resistant to watching Game of Thrones.

My sister tried to get me to watch it for like three years. And I was like, okay, have fun with your Dungeons and Dragons, you big nerd. And then I watched it and I fucking loved it. I'd love to have like that experience again where I was like, I'm watching this against my will and then like having my mind blown by it. And you've been open minded about everything ever since.

Right? Absolutely. All kinds of new experiences. You're wearing pink pants today. It's amazing. Is there a show that really impacted you or that you would like... No. Oh, you know what?

If I could... I mean, it's not like... I feel like it's not like a, oh my gosh, this meant so much to me. Well, it's not either. Okay. I think you should leave on Netflix. Yeah. I know it's your favorite show.

I mean, I, like, every first time I have watched one of those episodes, I have felt like I was going to die from laughter. And you can't replicate that. So, you know, yeah, I would wipe that from my mind and start again. Norm's creeping up the stairs. Norm, creep on in here. Norm. Everyone, Norm has not been here today. Unless it's not Norm, unless it's a murderer.

Yeah. Yeah, come on in. Norm got tattooed today, everyone. We heard you creeping. We heard you. Oh, it's amazing. Everyone, he's going in for multiple sessions on his. Am I allowed to talk about your tattoo?

Okay, yeah, he's getting a sleeve. He's getting his full sleeve. Oh, my gosh. I love it. How was your sesh today? Did your arm hurt? Yeah. Outlining's the worst. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. Oh, gosh. How was your sesh today? Did your arm hurt? Yeah. Outlining is the worst.

Oh yeah. Oh my god. Oh yeah. That 20 bird looks amazing. He's adding Daffy Duck. That's gonna look great. Love you. No relation to Mrs. Potts and Chip says,

Brandy, do you ever think about that corgi you kicked a couple years ago? How do you think he or she is doing? Do you lose sleep over it? I do. Oh, no. Poor Winston. I do. I think of Winston often.

You know, I've heard he hasn't recovered. Stop it. He recovered immediately and he forgave me immediately. They did a GoFundMe on him. You stop it. Didn't raise enough. No. Ooh. Nappaholic

asked, if being a Karen was a misdemeanor, what do you think would be the best punishment? And they said, I think six months of food service. I completely agree. Having to spend some amount of time working in the service industry. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it would have to be something where your privilege is really stripped away.

Yeah, I think serving people is the slice of humble pie that the Karens need. Absolutely. You know what I watched the other day? I've watched it an embarrassing amount of times. What? Do you remember Permit Patty? Okay, here's what she did. It's this white lady. A little girl was selling bottles of water for her trip to Disney World. Okay. So this white lady called the cops on this little girl because she didn't have a permit to be selling water. And so the little girl's mom, who was with her, starts filming her. And she's like, really?

Like, you're going to call the cops on an eight-year-old girl who's selling water on this hot day? Yeah. On an eight-year-old girl who's selling water on this hot day. So the lady is walking away because she doesn't want to be filmed because, hmm, weird. It's embarrassing to be caught calling the cops on an eight-year-old. So she goes over behind this little partition and she tries to hide. And, of course, the lady just comes around. and is like, yeah, you can try to hide. Oh, it was delicious.

Oh, my gosh. I watched a lot because I really wanted there to be court stuff so I could tell that story. No court stuff. There's no court stuff. Just a douche bag. Yeah. Ooh, that's exactly right. Wants to know, how are you handling the Supreme Court leak? Gosh, it makes me angry.

It makes me really anxious at someone who is currently raising a daughter. Yeah. In this country. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't – I just don't understand why the government would think they have any right to make laws to control bodies or overturn laws that protect bodily autonomy. Yeah. Norman and I were talking about this this week a lot and I feel really weird about this one. Yeah? Yeah. Norman and I were talking about this this week a lot.

And I feel really weird about this one. Yeah. Yeah. So I remember when I used to have my corporate job, there was this woman I worked with who I just loved. But like, you know, our job was PR. So we were always watching the news, always kind of keeping informed. And so, of course, we always knew right away when there was a new mass shooting.

And, you know, it happened a lot because we're living in America. Yeah. And every time, you know, we would all be like, oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. Did you hear, you know, this shooting? And she would say, of course. Yeah, of course. Of course there's another mass shooting.

Of course they're trying to overturn Roe v. Wade. Right. And I just – it's funny because I remember her saying that and I remember being horrified. But I mean she was right and she said, you know, why would we think anything would change when we've not done anything about the gun laws in this country? Like we don't care. Yeah. So of course don't care. Yeah. So, of course, there's another mass shooting. Mm-hmm.

And again, I found that horrifying. Yeah. But I think there's something that's, like, happened to me in the past several years. Like, I never thought Trump would be elected. Yeah. George Floyd being murdered and really, like, nothing really happened with policing in the aftermath of that. I mean obviously there were mass protests but like I feel like we didn't see the big systemic change that that deserved. And I'm just kind of more like coming to that weird feeling of, well, maybe I'm just living in a country that doesn't align

with my values not maybe definitely yeah and yeah maybe i'm just living in kind of a shitty country like not not super shitty obviously there are shittier ones out there but i think it's funny because especially in america i feel like we really grow up drinking the Kool-Aid. Oh, absolutely. Like we're the best country on the planet. Yeah. But then you do any kind of traveling and you do any kind of reading, you're like, oh,

well, there are a lot of countries that do a lot of good social services for their citizens. Yep. And don't try to control their bodies. Yeah. So disappointed, feeling weird. Yeah. As the owner of a uterus myself and the parent of an owner of a uterus, yeah, it makes me angry.

Yeah. Yeah. Norm wondered if I just was having these feelings because I'm getting older and I said I'm getting younger and hotter every day. And don't you forget it! Well, should we end it on that depressing note? Yeah, let's do some Supreme Court inductions. Very good.

What episode is this? It's 2.15. That sounds like a made-up song for Saved by the Bell. That sounds like a made-up song for Saved by the Bell. Oh, there's your little pink Kristen. We are continuing to read your names and favorite cookies. Tracy Keegan. Hurt Zoggies. They're Afrikaans apricot jam-filled biscuits.

Wait, question mark on the end. Why is there a question mark? But they have to be made by an old lady selling them at a church bazaar to raise money for some kind of charity. Okay. All right. All right. I got it. Jackie Stocker. Brandy's chocolate chip cookies.

Oh, yeah, they really are quite good. Okay. All right. That's your favorite. Amy Graham. Snickerdoodles. Erin. Shortbread with a teeny tiny layer of chocolate.

I do like those too. Just on the bottom, just a very thin coating. Felicia. Chocolate chip. Allie. Soft high school underbaked chocolate chip cookies. Yeah. Amber. The now discontinued Too Much Good Stuff cookies from AMPM convenience store.

Well, sounds like we missed out on that. We missed those ones. I don't even, I know like four of the words in that. Aiken Bailey. Pumpkin chocolate chip. Ew. Why? I know a lot of people who like this cookie and make this cookie every fall. I've never tried it, and I don't understand it.

We're going to have to make it, but it sounds terrible. Rebecca. Cream cheese cookie with a maraschino cherry on top. What's a cream cheese cookie? That sounds delicious. You love cheesecake? Is that what it is? You think it's like cheesecake?

It's cheesecake-y. Don't you think? I don't know. I bet you'd love it. I'm not sure. Probably not. You that what it is? You think it's like cheesecake? It's cheesecake-y. Don't you think? I don't know. I bet you'd love it. Probably not. You know what? Probably not. Angel Yannick. Heath Bar cookies. Now that I would love. Like a Heath Bar. Taylor Barwick. Frosted

sugar cookie. Extra frosting. Jenny Hanna. Florentine cookies. Janet Smith. Any Girl Scout cookies, especially Carmel Delights. Kenny Clifford. Macadamia nut.

Caitlin Moran. No bake. Suzanne. Oatmeal chocolate chip. Hannah Smith. A sleeve of Oreos. No, there's no such thing as a sleeve. Yeah, you've never seen the whole sleeve?

No, I only see like the box. Yeah, well, it's not a box, first of all. There's no box. Okay, well, there's a plastic. Wrapped in wire stick. There's a tray. How about that? You sleeve eekums.

Those are no words. Sleeve eekums. Did you switch to another language? I'm not sure what happened there. We used to sell this at Walgreens. Oh, boy. Yeah. It's like two bucks.

Did you ever steal one? You get a whole... No. I can't believe you didn't even ask me that. No, you didn't steal anything. Yeah, but you get like a whole row of Oreos. Okay. Anyway. Maria Function.

Dark chocolate peanut butter chip from Levon Bakery. Is this the same bakery someone mentioned last episode? I don't know. Okay, great. You should try it out. Welcome to the Supreme Court! Woo! Wrapping this shit up.

Thank you, everyone, 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 Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Patreon. Please remember to subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen and then head on over to Apple Podcasts. Leave us a five-star rating and 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. I got my info from the TV show Vindicated for their episode, Joyce Ann Brown, along with reporting from The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Dallas Observer, The Dallas News, The Dallas Post Tribune, and Newspapers.com. Oh, and also Northwestern.edu. I got my info from an episode of Forensic Files titled Freedom Fighter, an article for the Crime Library by David Lohr, the New York Times, Syracuse.com, and the Innocence Project.

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.