My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 268 - All-Stars of 7th Grade

Episode Date: April 1, 2021

On this week’s episode, Karen and Georgia cover The Poet of Wichita and the true story of the ‘Cocaine Bear.’See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is exactly right. We at Wondery live, breathe, and downright obsess over true crime. And now we're launching the ultimate true crime fan experience, Exhibit C. Join now by following Wondery, Exhibit C, on Facebook and listen to true crime on Wondery and Amazon Music. Exhibit C, it's truly criminal. Hello and welcome to my favorite murder, a podcast. It's a true crime podcast.

That's right. And I'm Georgia Hardstark. And I'm Karen Kogara. How do you do? Very well. And you? Fine. Thank you.

Good. Do you ever get mad at people? Trady N. Do you ever get mad at people when they say to you, how are you? And I said, good, thanks. And then I say, how are you? And they say, I'm well, because they're like pointing out that you just said good. And so you immediately feel bad about yourself.

Is that what, is that grammar passive aggression? It is. And it's like, well, I swear it drives me crazy. I'm well. I would assume that someone who is posing as a, as some sort of therapist is what that sounds like to me or some, that sounds like someone who's like, I'm well. I was just at the farmer's market buying fresh broccoli to steam into my pores. Do you eat organic?

Do you eat organic yet? Do you eat organic? Do you? Well, no, because I'm unwell. Well, I'm fine without, with not having organic. So yeah. How about I'm just fine, barely getting by. Do you see these circles under my eye?

Do they look like a well person's under my baggage? I'm well. Thank you. I'm well. I'm well. I'm a stepford wife. I'm well. I'm well.

Well, that, that just makes me think of banana boy, Scotty Landis, where he and I were talking about some people that were like very successful and also had kids and both of the husband and wife are famous in some way and they're both rich or something like that. And I go, wow, they really have it all. And Scotty goes, ew, who wants it all? It's this thing where it's like, that's what I always feel like, and especially in Los Angeles is like, I always want to tell those people with the tall new buck boots and the white sweater and the big weird hat and the bleach blonde hair.

I know them. I don't, I'm not competing with you. I'm not interested in your life. I don't want what you have. I understand that you believe yourself to be the pinnacle of, you know, your yoga class and congrats. An avocado toast. Yes.

You're doing all the things. You're checking all the boxes from the weird subscription box company that you signed up for. God fucking bless. Get away from me. Have you seen the movie Ingrid Goes West with, it is, there is a character in that and it's what she is striving for. What's her name?

She's so great. Steven, she pays April. Aubrey Plaza. Aubrey Plaza. And she's trying to reach that character's lifestyle goals, hashtag lifestyle goals, but she's just like us. So she can't and just screws it all up and all these like charming, not charming ways like dark ways, but that like the character they had play and all of it is so exactly.

But lives in a bungalow in Venice Beach with her hot bearded husband and their puppy and they have a lot of boho, you know, Joshua Tree style life and everything they eat is perfect and cute and it's, and so she steals her dog to become friends with her. It's like, it's very that so I highly recommend. That sounds really good and relatable. I really love that movie. It's a, this town is, and I think maybe it's not even this town. I think a lot of pop culture has become so drastically homogenized in a way that is like,

and I know this is because I've never on Instagram. And so when I see little bits of pop through, it is, it's shocking to me how strange it, everyone is starting to look exactly the same and, and a little bit like sex dolls where it's like sex dolls. Everyone has equal sized top and bottom lips and they're, they're both giant and they're the exact same size. Everyone has not a line or wrinkle or a mark on their face. Every single person has like half inch long eyelashes and gigantic eyebrows and not,

not even like a wrinkle, not even an expression. And everyone's kind of to the side and, and has a lot of contour and there's a window and every, on every wall in every room, letting in the most dappled, lovely sunshine. God bless it all. God bless it all. It's a, yeah. It's a fucking rat race to get somewhere that we don't even know what the point of it is.

Yeah. Cause it's not real ultimately. Yeah. I mean, I don't, look, I, I'm not saying beauty is bad. Obviously everybody wants to feel good and look good and that's good. Yeah. Good. And broccoli.

Make yourself happy. Sure. Good. Good. Good. But it's, don't assume it's interesting just cause it's what, what you think people want. Here, let me brag real quick about how real I am.

It reels cat food in this room I'm in right now. That's how real. And you can't, you can't put that, there's no Instagram filter for that baby. That's all just like, it's all for me. You know what I mean? Is it hardy seafood platter or is it more of a chicken dinner supreme? It is like Fisherman's Wharf on a hot day trash. Yes.

Yes. It is. That's what it is. We hashtag, what? Hashtag. Fisherman's Wharf. You see a seagull picking at an empty bread bowl that's got like the clam chowder residue on it.

And then a tourist right behind it, taking a picture of it, then making the seagulls waste smaller and the seagull's boobs bigger. And then there's no lines around the seagull's eyes. Oh, where did he get those boots? Oh my God, did he have a rib removed? That seagull is so skinny. No, he's on a paleo diet. I was going to say you lived in San Francisco in the 90s.

No. Correct me if I'm wrong. 2000s. Oh, 2000s. Yeah. Shit. Then there's no way you remember this. What is it?

It's on Fisherman's Wharf, Pier 39. I used to go with my dad, so maybe I remember it. To Pier 39? To Fisherman's Wharf. Okay. Same. Same diff. Yeah.

Same area. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But basically Pier 39 was like the weird marionette doll store that my parents would be like, we're never buying you anything from that store so don't look at it. Those are precious art pieces. There's no fucking way. Yeah. For there, like you can pick one thing and I'm like, I absolutely want the $400 marionette.

My mother's like, how do you do it every time? But they used to have on Pier 39, I guess I'm thinking of this because of the seagull weird thing. Yeah, sure. A bag of bone seagull. I was just thinking they had a thing there in the 80s. You could go in and sing along to your favorite Whitney Houston hit and make a cassette tape of yourself singing a hit.

So it was like individualized karaoke, one person karaoke to no one, but then you had a tape you could like. Was it a video? Car. No. Okay. Okay. It was that long ago.

That's something. Only a cassette. Yeah, that would have cost $5,000 at the time. Yes. Exactly. That is awesome. But I feel like they had those around in malls all over the country and then eventually it became like, because these videos pop up of kids doing that, like that must have become

the video you could get. And then like, remember how they would have like teen magazine and you and your sister had to sit in and they take a photo of it and show you on the cover of teen magazine. Yes. It was like the young girls version of the time person of the year thing. Yes. Instead it's like, I made it on cover 17. I feel like you getting that and those things are the rich girl equivalent, not to say we're

rich, no offense, the rich girl equivalent of having to get a caricature drawn of you on Fisherman's Wharf, which was just like the bottom of the barrel. Are you ready for your low self-esteem beginning? Yes. Here's how big your teeth are, Georgia. Yes. Here's how like your head is like for mine, you know, they give you a tiny body. Yes.

Like if you're like, I like to ride horses. That's a tiny body, a tiny body on a tiny horse, but then you're accentuated whatever you hate about yourself. Yeah. So I already had a big face. So it's like they couldn't figure out what to do with me because it was like there was our, the caricature itself is a gigantic head. That's the joke.

I don't know what to do with this girl. It looks exactly. We're going to make her eyes bluer like that's not going to hurt her feelings. How do we, how do we make this child hate herself for the rest of her life that just made you feel better about yourself? Cause you're like, wow, my eyes are like pools. And then just like, so you're saying that's my real sized face. Yep.

Yep. So that's not a caricature. That was for a long time. Like what you wanted is that big head, lollipop head, skinny body, you know, and it was your above lollipop head, skinny body, tiny horse, golden gate bridge in the back little cowboy hat. Like what hashtag this is. That was the original Instagram characters from zero thirty nine.

Can everyone please post their caricature drawings or their. Cover of teen magazine, um, photos from when they were kids. I have one. I have one. Oh my God. I was a cowgirl. I have one as me as a fucking cowgirl. I swear to God.

Nice. It's from Knott's Berry Farm. Oh my God. Do you have one? Yes. I have one at the group of friends who all decided one day we were going to go to peer thirty nine and you know, who's in it legendary Holly Gardner, tampon suitcase story who's who have to say suffered greatly in the retelling of the tampon suitcase story was my best friend

from sixth grade through high school. So like, yeah, you wouldn't have told it and said her full name if you had really hated her. Yes, exactly. No, no, no. That was just a bad moment in our relationship, but, um, but she's in that, you know, the all stars of like seventh grade, essentially, and what it is, is one of those old fashioned cowboy pictures that's supposed to be like a tin type, right, when we're all dressed

up in costumes. Right. So what are you going to do, Steven? There's no way you don't have a caricature of yourself from as your kid as a dinosaur. Yes, you at Jurassic Park. You're riding a dinosaur. I do have that. Yes, I do.

So here's what we're going to do. The three of us are going to post it on our Instagram. Can I just retell? Hold on. Yeah. Steven, as George is saying, we know you have one. Steven's looking. Hmm.

It's almost like he was in like a pantomime of a confused guy. And the second I said Jurassic Park, he snapped right into it, but just like, oh yeah, I have it. Yeah, because my sister and I have one of us doing it and then we recreated it as adults like a few years ago. Nice. Yeah. Is it a character or is it like a post?

It's like, you know, a green screen being like chased by a dinosaur. So we recreated that moment. Because he's younger than us. Children and adults. Got it. Yeah. Like we have the middle beginning and hopefully end of what they put, what we were able to do as children.

Yes. Yes. We span three generations. This is our family. I think I was too scared to get a real caricature though. You were too scared to find out what your one major feature is on your face. Yeah. I think I was too scared.

So like at Knott's Berry Farm, Georgia, I never, I never did that. Yeah. He was easy on me because I think I was like four. And then please tag, let's do MFM caricature hashtag because we have the whole thing pointed at this is to get our own hashtag, right? That's what you wanted, Karen. Now you're speaking a language like on Twitter hashtags are straight up for nerds that never use Twitter.

Not Instagram. I know. Instagram is a completely different language. So you have to call this. Just tag us. Just tag us. MFM caricature is good. Okay.

I mean, those are the ones we want big head, little, but I want big head, little body. You're looking for a potentially fake magazine cover. No, I don't care. Which is so funny. I'd love to see that. But remember the like the play area are we took too much time on this, just post it and tag us. Disagree.

I think we could dig deeper on this. Okay. Also, it makes me think of this too, because it's like, just to not to argue with you first that we were definitely middle, middle class, but my mother would always do this thing. We're like, if we walk by the character person, she go, you don't want that. It's not worth it. Pick something. Pick something.

That's a good trick. Like out of sight of her mouth, basically be like, you know, you know, trash talk. You're gonna like it. You like it now. You won't like it by the time you get home. Smart lady. And she knows how to work with people, I feel like, to like make them think that they're making their own decision.

Yeah. You mean manipulate children? Yes. I do. Darenting 101. Give them two options. Make one of them shitty. Make the other one the one you want them to do.

Yes. And then you get whatever you want. Do you want an app or do you want to help mommy with laundry? It's also head writing. If anybody wants to take my class, let's, that's the first one. Wow. That's good stuff. Yeah.

What the fuck were we talking about? How did we get on? What did, we were talking about how things are superficial and social media. Oh yeah. Speaking of social media, I have a correction because social media told us. Perfect. It's a, you know, another clarification because last week I talked about the book I'm reading, the Icelandic.

We, we, we guessed Norwegian. It's called. I remember you by Irsa Sirgedor, daughter, remember? Yes. And we guessed all sorts of places where this book must be from. None of them were right because Deborah Taylor 1654 on Instagram said, Irsa is from Iceland. You can tell if someone is Scandinavian slash Nordic, if their last name has something at the end that resembles son or daughter, like daughter.

Oh my God. Got it. Good to know. Scandinavia is, then she goes on to give us a report. Scandinavia is geographically considered Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Culturally, Finland and Iceland are included. Generally, all five and their territories like Greenland and the Faroe Islands are considered Nordic countries.

Maybe you can hit Reykjavik on your next tour and invite her to the show. Love you both. So, so your author lives in Reykjavik? Yes. In Iceland. Reykjavik, by the way, is the capital of Iceland. Well, I should have known that then. Now we all know.

Well, here's, here's why I know. In sixth grade, we had to do reports on countries of the world. I'll tell this story again, even though it's not really a story. And I got picked second to last and the only, so if you, your name got picked out of a jar and you got to go up and hit, there goes Matt Brocco. He picks Italy. Italy is gone. Everyone, all the people with Italian grandparents in two more swipes, Ireland's gone.

What? Then it goes all the way down through the 40 or 60 kids in my class, I can't remember however many. Then it's me. I pick Iceland. Last guess who was last? Holly Gardner. No.

And she got Malta. Wow. Literally, this was pre-internet, pre-everything. This is encyclopedia, there's two lines about Malta. I fucking hate it. Literally. The librarian couldn't help us. She was like, nobody knows these countries.

Nobody wants to hear about them. What was your teacher? What the fuck? What's Mr. Gilarney doing over there? So I end up digging up as much as I can find out and become quite interested in Iceland because I was like, wait a second, Greenland's the one that's covered in ice and Iceland actually. We moved to Iceland.

I did a full report. I became a true fan of Iceland and then 25 years later, Iceland is all the rage and I'm just like, I will tell you about Reykjavik and not vice versa. Okay. I remember you as a good Icelandic book. It's part of it. It takes place in Reykjavik. It's fucking creepy as shit.

I highly recommend it. I'm going to look up, because that sounds familiar. I feel like there might be a movie. I bet there's a movie. Yes. Because it's very like, as I'm reading it, I'm like, I can picture the movie. Yeah. In my head.

Doctor. There's a little boy, ghost boy. Gustafson. Gustafsdottor. Your, your stutter. Your stutter. It's good to be there one day for tour. Hell yes.

What do you have? What are you doing? I have the following. Oh. Oh, shit, dude. And I repeat and I declare, uh, I have started the podcast, which now this is weird and maybe you can explain this to me, Georgia and, okay, um, the podcast is called West Cork. Oh, right.

It's a true crime, legendary true crime podcast that I've heard about for so long only recently became available on iTunes podcast because it was audible original that I recommended three years ago, easily, easily, that it is so, I can't believe you haven't, it's one of those ones that everyone's like, but Karen, you'll really like it and you're like, but no, then no, no, no, no, no, and then two years later you go, do you know what I found? I found. You know what I've, you know what you need to hear about, um, I knew it's excellent. Uh, it's one of those angering ones because it's a cold case still, I don't know if anything's

come out of it since it came out, but it takes place in Ireland, West Cork, Ireland. Yep. Beautifully done podcast. It is. It's just a classic, wonderful true crime podcast. I didn't know you couldn't listen unless you had audible, so that's awesome. It just came, it just became, we just went wide and then I was like, God, I know this though.

How do I know this? And I'm listening to it and obviously what, what's the one place I would go to if I'm like, how would, who would have told me, who would have told me about the podcast and truly I was just like, for some reason, well, it's because it was three years ago, which means it was 100 years ago in my brain, but also we get tagged in a lot of them, like you have to listen to this and you're like, okay, I know, and friends tell us at this point it's like, it's, it's going to be from one or either us to each other or a bunch of other people.

So or literally thousands of other people who know our tastes very well, but I will say this, what a listen, even separate from if you're interested, not interested in true crime or just a basic story. This almost goes beyond a lot of that. There's like a kind of like small town psychology element to it and it is a true, like just a quilt of all the different Irish accents. Yeah. There's a guy in there.

There's an Irish detective who I kept thinking was from France because his accent would go into this, like she's, but she's French. She's French. So the detective is from, I believe they said he was from Galway or something. I can't remember. But his accent was unlike anything I've ever heard, Irish style, but it like would go into these other places and come back around and you're just like, this is how this brogue turns into all these things in all different areas.

This isn't narrative. This is like real people because it's true crime. So yeah, that's good. I'm excited for you. That's a great one. It's, I'm just almost done. I'm on the last, like last half of the last episode, but I do that thing where I can't, I can't stop.

I know. Tell you what. If there's been any updates since it came out, because I haven't. Oh, okay. I will. Nice. But I did want to read you one quote, which you may or may not remember. But there's a witness who was old, who testified to seeing something or, you know, whatever

some, some story and, but he was old. So they were trying to act like he shouldn't have testified because telling me, I need to be in a home for the bewildered, you know, that's his way of saying that they didn't trust his testimony. And he was like mad about it, telling me, I need to be at a home for the bewildered. Oh my God. Do they have those? Just if you're generally bewildered, you get to go stay in a hospital for a while.

See someone stupid doing a dumb thing and you're like, I don't even understand why you would try that. And he was like, let's go home. Let's go to your bewilder. Yeah. You're too bewildered to be out in the world. Yeah. Yeah.

Be in a home for the bewildered. Can we call this episode a home for the bewildered, Stephen? So that's my most prominent. I just love when there's a good podcast that I get up and like do the dishes, get my stuff done. And finally have someone supporting you and the things you want to do and the bullshit shit you want to do, not the work. It's like, yes.

Finally, someone wants me to do the dishes and fold my laundry and like go for a walk. Yeah. Just go kind of sit and stare. Yeah. Well, if that's what you want from me, Westcourt, you know best because you love me the most. Right. And I trust you. Can I plug, can I plug something about me?

Oh, wish you would. Okay. Great. And I'm really, I was really nervous about it and I'm really happy with the way it turned out and proud of myself for it because it was like kind of some hard topics that I hadn't really shared before. So it's this podcast called Turned Out a Punk that I'm a big fan of. And it's this guy, Damien, who was in this band fucked up and he interviews people who

were in, were in and are in and have been in the punk scene and how they got into it. And there's been all kinds of great, you know, Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, a lot of comedians and then a lot of like, you know, musicians like the Go-Go's and old punks and it's just really cool. And I wanted to be on it because I love punk and so I was on it and I'm, I'm really happy with it. So check out my episode of Turned Out a Punk. It's episode 321.

Turned out punk. Turned out a punk. Turned out a punk. Yeah. Awesome. Congratulations. Thank you. Oh, Nora went back to school.

Nora's back. She's back in class. What grade is she on now? Eighth. Ah! Eighth grade. Eighth grade. Growing up.

But also like just in time, it just makes me happy because it was really, for someone who loves school so much and well, so I just can't imagine that in eighth grade, like right when things are starting to get interesting and kind of fun or whatever, you're getting your footing. Yeah. And you just have to go sit home, sit on the computer for a year. Gone crazy. I wonder if it's like, if it's kind of got them out of some trouble they would have been

in or means that now they're going to get in more trouble to make up for the past trouble they would have gotten into. I say probably more trouble. Yeah. Although did I tell you when Laura told me she was going back, I texted Nora and said, I hope you're still popular. Do you think you're going to be pop? What if you're not popular anymore?

Did I tell you that already? No. You didn't tell me that. That's so funny. She sent all the laughing, like crying emojis going, I hope so. Do you think it's like, you know how you measure how much you've grown on the wall? Do you think when they all left school before, right when COVID hit, they all measured their popularity on the wall and they have to go back and stand up against the wall again and

be like, oh shit, Nora, you're still at the same popularity level, but at least over two L's over here is popularer than she used to. She skyrocketed. So over the past year, Nora, give her your crown. You have to give her your crown. It's so confusing at this age, but yeah, I guess people just don't like you in real life. Like you're great on Zoom.

It's your worst nightmare is you're only good on Zoom. Imagine if you adjusted so well to the pandemic that then you really, as opposed to all the people that are just hate being on Zoom and the timing so off and shitty, you're just like, I've come alive on Zoom. People finally care about me. Don't make me go back to standing on two legs and having to wear pants in front of people and not being surrounded by the stench of cat food. I can't.

I am at my best when I'm surrounded by the stench of cat food and no one knows it. That's when I'm at my best. I just need two snoring dogs near me to really podcast. What if I started? I know I love your dogs. They're out. You can see it. What if I started wearing like a cardboard piece of cardboard behind me that has this

wallpaper on it just so I always have because I need this background now. Like a backpack with a big, pink, floral, while papered cardboard background. Just so everyone knows how good I look with this. I'm going to start carrying around books like I'm in the eighth grade and these are my books from my bookshelf from my Zoom. Remember how they have like a belt, a leather belt around the books? Lollipop, lollipop. You don't know when they went to school like that.

What was that all about? Oh, did you hear the great author Beverly Cleary died? Yeah. Man. IP. What a legend. What a legend. She really, she wrote amazing books.

She wrote a ton of great books. Boys like those books. Girls like those books. Yes. Young, old, everybody. Yeah. Read them to your kids. Get them into it.

Got it. So good. Ramona Quimby. There's one that starts out Ramona is so upset because her and Beezus went to the playground and some kid kept saying Jesus Beezus to Beezus and Ramona was out of her mind angry. And I was like, I just remember reading it and being like, let's get into this Ramona. What happened to you? Tell me your story.

Yes. I mean, like, it's such good writing for kids. It's saying what happens to you matters and like is a story worthy and a big deal. Yeah. Yeah. So good. It's like a wardrobe to get your story written, everyone. You don't need a big, weird Christian lion telling your story.

No. You don't need a giant peach. You don't need insects to be your friend, although it's very helpful. I also, I loved the idea of being on a giant peach that you could like lay on and then just take a bite of if you want. Oh my God. That was my favorite. I read that book so many times when I was a kid.

We read that book. Also, did you have the copy of James and the Giant Peach that had the original illustrations and when they first show James, he is so scary looking like his little eyes are so dark and he's all like, you know, because his parents were, his parents were killed by escaped animals from the zoo. Yeah. A hippopotamus. And so we had to go live with Aunt Spiker and Aunt Fung.

It was the saddest book ever. So tragic. It's so tragic and horrible. They're so mean to him. I know. Jesus. We were, no wonder we're the way we are. I know.

For real. It's all real, dolls fault. Should we do exactly right news? Yeah. I don't think there's much exactly right news this week, right? Just some highlights of good stuff that's happening on shows. That's right. Well, really exciting.

I'm sure you heard the trailer that tenfold more Wicked's season three kicks off this week. It's called Murder in the Court and it covers a historical true crime story about a fractured family in Texas. So check that out. It's so good. It's so great. Such a good series.

Such a good podcast. We love it. We're so proud of Kate Winkler-Dawson and all her amazing writing talent and her amazing podcasting talent. She really is making just a hit. Yeah. I mean, people really love this show. Such good feedback on it.

She's just, she's amazing. We're thrilled to work with her. There's more COVID-19 information on this podcast. We'll kill you this week. So go check out what Erin and Erin have to tell you. There's just, it's a bonus episode. So much good stuff. When I saw what you did, Millie and Danielle watch and discuss the amazing films with the

incredible Pam Greer, including Jackie Brown and Coffee. I mean, those are fricking classics. This woman is a legend and Millie and Danielle are the people to tell you about it. They break it down. Yeah. All right. Should we get into this? Oh yeah.

Also, Popsockets in the merch, in the merch store, my favorite merch.com store, Popsockets. We have lots of them. Goodbye. Let's get into it. Get into it. Pop it. Pop it and lock it. Looking for a better cooking routine?

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So the story I'm doing this week was recommended by a listener whose Twitter handle is, or her Twitter name is Sweetly Sarcastic. She's at Sweetly Sarcast. She sent me a tweet that said, it said, read this on medium.com immediately thought of you, twists, turns, psychological drama, highly recommend and a damn good, my favorite murder story too. XO. And she put the link and then she put no offense, hashtag, true crime.

Which made me laugh. I think it's being Sweetly Sarcastic. So that attached was a link to this article on medium.com written by Corey Mead called The Poet. And it tells a tale of this story out of Wichita in the late 70s that I have never heard even an inkling of. So the majority of what I'm about to tell you is a retelling of Corey Mead's article from medium.com called The Poet.

So I highly recommend. Is Wichita spooky or is it just me? Well, you know what you're thinking, you're about to find out why you think that. Okay. Or do you want me to just say it right now? No. Go. Okay.

No spoilers. Well, it's about to happen. There's other information we got was from medium.com article by a writer named K.M. Brown called Trauma Stole These Women's Lives as well as a 1988 People Magazine article by a writer named Jean Stone. So an article from the Wichita Eagle by Jason Tid and legacy.com information from legacy.com and also facts from a book called Nightmare in Wichita The Hunt for the BTK Killer. That's what you're thinking of.

Of course. Yes. So we go, I take you now to Wichita, Kansas November 21, 1978. So 48-year-old Ruth Finley, who's a secretary for the head of the security at Southwestern Bell Telephone Company, she's out running errands on her lunch break in downtown Wichita. And she's leaving a greeting card shop on North Market Street when a blue-green 1964 Chevy Bel Air pulls up, cuts off her path, and a man jumps out. He's wearing black frame glasses and a jean jacket over his sweater.

No, he's not a hipster. It's 1978. He doesn't, isn't about to ask her about animal, seeing animal collective life. Or if she has an extra cigarette, yeah. Ruth immediately panics because she's seen this man before. This is actually the third time this stranger has approached her. Each encounter being a little bit scarier than the last. So at this moment, he jumps out of the car, Ruth looks around, all she can see is an old

lady like way up the street, so she knows she's alone. So before she can do anything, she's kind of in shock. He kicks her in the shin really hard, then yells, have you got my money? She doubles over in pain, and as she does, the man shoves her into the backseat of the car, slides in next to her, and then a man who her attacker calls Buddy, who's sitting behind the wheel drinking from a paper bag wrapped bottle. He basically takes off when the attacker shuts the door. So Ruth immediately slides over and tries to get out the other backseat door, but it's

the handles gone. She looks around, she notices the upholstery in this car is torn up, the floorboards littered with junk, there's chains, there's rags, there's an old gas can, there's pieces of concrete, and she also sees the dashboard is held together with masking tape. So the man, her attacker starts going through her purse. He pulls out a $350 paycheck, $100 savings bond, and her safety deposit key. He says we've struck it rich, but then he finds the business card of a police officer, and he starts screaming, you damn stupid bitch at her, and he picks up one of the pieces

of concrete on the floor, hits her in the head with it and knocks her out. So she's fading in and out of consciousness, but she later remembers snippets of the men conversation at one point there at the Twin Lakes Shopping Center. She hears the driver complain about the shoddy job that Sears did on fixing his car, and another point she hears them say, we'll get rid of her, but not here. It's then that she remembers she's got a can of mace in her purse, because the other two times she ran into this guy, it scared her so badly that she has mace in her purse, but she's too afraid to move or do anything at the moment.

And they end up driving around for hours, and so finally Ruth says, you have to let me out. I have to go to the bathroom. They both laugh at her. And then she basically says, I'm going to throw up if I don't go to the restroom. And she starts gagging. So they say, okay, hold on a second. And they pull into a park.

So at this point now it's cold and dark out because it's November. So they make Ruth take off her sweater and her shoes so that she won't run anywhere or try to get away. And her abductor, you know, the guy who jumped out at her on the street, he walks her into the park and he's saying stuff like, oh, this is going to be fun. I'll watch you and you watch me. And then he unzips his pants to start peeing. He says, I'll go first.

And she grabs her can of mace and sprays him with it because they let her take her purse. Yes. So then she runs. She runs up. She sees a bush. She kind of runs away, hides in the bush. The guy's walking around going, you can't get away. You'll freeze out here.

Just come out. Will be nice to you, you know, whatever. But she stays hidden. Her feet start going numb from how cold it is. She waits. She waits until it all goes quiet. And then she runs up to a higher vantage point. And when she doesn't see the car, the Bel Air, she sees that basically they've left.

So she goes, she runs out of the park and she runs across the street to a liquor store and has the store owner call the police and then call her husband. Amazing. So now her husband, Ed, hasn't heard from her all evening. So he's already filed a missing persons report with the police. So the liquor store store owner calls Ed, says who he is, says Ruth is safe. He rushes to the store, but by the time he gets there, his wife's already been taken to the police station.

So Ed, when he finally sees Ruth, she's shaken, but she's grateful to be alive. Amazing. Unfortunately, this isn't the first time she's experienced a brutal attack and it wouldn't be the last. What? So Ruth Finley, her maiden name is Ruth Smock. She's born on February 1, 1930 in rural Missouri. She's one of three children.

Her father's a farmer. Her mother's a homemaker. She has a normal upbringing by depression-era standards. So they had enough money to live, but they didn't have any extra, like most families. Her parents are pretty strict and they were very stoic. None of the kids are really, they were all encouraged to keep their emotions to themselves. So when Ruth is 15, she moves out on her own to a boarding house in nearby Fort Scott, Missouri, to take sewing and typing classes.

And a year later, she gets a job working for the local phone company. And then on the night of October 14, 1946, when Ruth is 16 years old, she comes home from the grocery store and is startled by the sound of the screen door opening behind her, and she turns to look and sees a roughly 50-year-old white male intruder who grabs her, starts pulling at her clothes. She fights back against him. She presses her thumbs into his eyes, but the man overpowers her. He has a chloroform on a rag that he holds over her mouth.

And as she's passing out, she sees him heating a flat iron over the stove. She wakes up later with scratches on her face, arms, and legs, and both of her thighs branded with first and second degree burns. Oh my God. But her clothes are intact and investigators find no evidence of sexual assault. And it's unclear if that assailant was ever caught. But so she goes on to marry when she's 20 years old, June 1, 1950. And she marries her husband, Ed Finley, who's an accountant for a construction firm.

They settle into a one-story house in a quiet neighborhood in Wichita, Kansas. Ruth gets a job as the secretary for the head of security at the Southwestern Bell Telephone Company. And in their free time, Ed likes to paint landscapes, and Ruth makes ceramics. They have two sons, and they basically live a quiet, fairly normal life. He's described as soft, spoken, sober, and they're just an average middle class couple. So basically all of this starts on a day in June in 1977. So basically, at this point, Ed is 50 years old.

He's working in the backyard when he suddenly collapses. So he's rushed to the hospital. Everybody thinks it's a heart attack, but he has to spend the night in the hospital to get his diagnosis of what's actually going on. So with both of their sons grown and out of the house, Ruth, now 48 years old, is left to spend the night alone in her house for the first time in 30 years. And this is after the attack, right? No, no, no.

This is before. This is how everything started. Oh, OK. Got it, got it. Is this night, June in 1977. OK. So she turns on the radio to distract herself, but all of the news on the radio is about Wichita's first serial killer, the BTK killer, and the seven victims he had so far murdered.

Oh, no. So yeah, he had been, you know, obviously going undetected. There's basically had a serial killer loose in Wichita, and no one knew who he was, and it was just he had killed seven people at that point. So that's her first night home alone. So she has to turn it to a different station to distract herself. And then a little later that night, the phone rings. So Ruth is afraid it might be the hospital saying something bad about Ed.

When she answers, instead, she hears the voice of a strange man who says, is this Ruth's smock from Fort Scott, Kansas, and she is surprised to hear her maiden name and to hear her old hometown. She says, yes. And he says, I know all about that night. And he then reads the article from an October 1946 issue of the Kansas newspaper, the Fort Scott Tribune, all about Ruth's horrifying attack. Oh, my God.

So the man on the other end, he reads the whole article to her. Then he asks if Ruth still got her brand. She says, I don't know what you're talking about. But he says that he was a construction worker who found this article about Ruth in the wall of a house. He was demolishing. He says he's going to blackmail her and threaten to revive the story until everyone she knows unless she pays him.

She hangs up the phone. She gets a terrible headache. She goes to sleep and then she sleeps for 10 hours. What the fuck? She wakes up the next morning. She gets the call from the hospital to say Ed didn't have a heart attack. The collapse was from a car accident and injury that had happened a year before. He has to stay in the hospital another week for observation, which means that Ruth is

alone in the house for another week. And she's fearing another ominous phone call from this man, but none come. When Ed's released and back at home, Ruth decides not to bother him with the story of that call and just decides to put the whole thing behind her. But then later that summer, she's at work when an envelope appears on her desk with her name on it. She opens it up to find that same newspaper article that the man had read on the phone to her.

So she rips it up and throws it in the trash. And then the calls start again. Ruth keeps them a secret from Ed. So when she answers the phone and hears the man's voice, she immediately hangs up and sometimes Ed will answer, but he basically the caller just hangs up on it. So then in August of 1977, she's window shopping in downtown Wichita, and she notices a man that's there on a crowded sidewalk, but suddenly there's a man walking alongside her. And then he says, you've done such a good job working this week.

You can take the weekend off. And she's kind of freaked out, but she stays calm. She looks at him, estimates he's in his late 40s. He's five, nine. He's skinny. He's wearing a plaid sports shirt and jeans, white canvas shoes, and he has black hair graying at the temples. So she kind of takes a picture of him with her mind, but she ignores him basically.

And she just, she just keeps walking, but he keeps talking to her and he says, you work for the phone company, don't you? What do you do there? Are you an operator? Then he tells her that he wanted big, big, one big at gambling and asked, do you want to go to Vegas sometimes? So she's just keep, she's still ignoring him. And finally she says, I'm waiting for my husband and his tone changes.

And he says, are you still married? I like your face. I'm going to see you again. You can count on that. What? Some people's fantasies are other people's nightmares. So he disappears and then like into the crowd and then Ed finally arrives. And so she tells him everything that's going on or that's just gone on.

And he says, oh, he's just trying to flirt with you. It's fine. Ed. Ed. So a year goes by, she still gets the occasional phone call, but she just hangs up and she doesn't see the man in person again until a year later in June of 1978. When she's walking by an alleyway in downtown Wichita, when a hand reaches out and grabs her wrist and she hears a man yell, Ruth, get back here, you stupid bitch and talk to

me, but she manages to get away from him and she runs into the Macy's across the street. She finally gets to the fifth floor of the Macy's. She realizes where she is and she's that she's basically like blacked out from fear. So she calls Ed, he comes and meets her at the Macy's and she tells him about that incident and about the man that talked to her the year before and finally tells him about all the threatening phone calls and all the stuff that happened. So they fought Ed actually files a police report, but nothing comes of it. So then four months later, in October of 1978, Ruth gets another mysterious letter and this

one is sent to her home and it's written in the same messy scroll that the other ones are written in and this one reads, fuck you, fuck the police, fuck the telephone company. Oh shit. Right? Which is, I mean, that's how we all feel. So a month later, the telephone company, remember the telephone company? Yeah, Mabel. I remember Mabel.

Mabel. Oh, it used to be, these rates, oh, these rates. Okay. Basically a month later, Ed and Ruth go to the police and they talk to a Lieutenant Bernie Drowatzke, who's a 34 year veteran criminal investigator and he's, all his time is being taken up by this BTK case. I'm sure. Right?

Yeah. So he's listening to this nice couple and in his mind, he's like, yeah, I just don't have time for this bullshit, basically. But now the Ruth's got another letter where the man is now demanding $100 and he ends the letter, like this very threatening letter with a poem and it says, wherever you go on water or land, you still got to pay or I tell about your brand. I am smart and know things to do. You talk to people I despise, like police, Lieutenant, and tell us spies, like filled

with misspellings and weird spellings and stuff like that. And this is the beginning of this onslaught of letters. She just keeps getting them, each one stranger than the next. They're all, they all have spelling errors. He uses really big like uncommon or like, you know, fancy vocabulary words. And then sometimes he makes upwards like Sanctus or psychostenia. He's always, he always refers to Ruth's branding scars. So the Lieutenant takes these letters to the lab for fingerprint testing.

They don't find anything. We're still getting the phone calls at home. So it doesn't really seem like the calls stop. Ruth and Ed hope that the stalker's finally letting up. But then later that month is when Ruth is abducted by the two men in the Bel Air. So that brings us up to November of that first thing that happened. So, okay, so now that Ruth has been abducted, yeah, suddenly Lieutenant Drowatzky, it's taking this case seriously because it's starting to match up with the BTK MO, the weird letters

and then the actual physical violence. Like they're very worried that this is some, that it could be, it could be BTK and some other weird form. They don't know or a copycat or they don't know what it is. So the day after her abduction, Drowatzky's colleague, Detective Richard Zortman goes back to the park where Ruth escaped and finds her sweater, shoes, and footprints leading from the parking lot to that hiding spot in the bushes, but he doesn't find anything else. So they also run a check on all 1964 Chevy Bel Air owners in the area.

None of them turn out to be suitable suspects for this abduction. So for five weeks, several officers are assigned to keep watch over Ruth as she takes her lunch breaks downtown, but nothing happens in that time. Another detective named Detective George Anderson takes Ruth and Ed to Fort Scott to dive back in to her attack from when she was 16 to see if he can find any leads connecting that to her, this current stalker. They end up spending two days reexamining the old case and she actually reviews a number of mugshots and the Fort Scott police have on file, but nothing comes of it.

Even Anderson even goes back for a second two-day trip on his own to look into it more, but he doesn't find anything. Meanwhile, Ruth can't sleep. She has bad headaches. She's getting stomach cramps on a daily basis and Ed is spending his nights hidden in the bushes of their backyard armed with a 12 gauge shotgun hoping to catch this stalker approaching the house. Which I'm sure makes her feel extra safe that her husband's like, that's terrifying.

I know. I know. But they're freaking out and this is their own mini personal family freak out on top of the wider city. Jesus. Freak out. Sure. Then on December 13th, 1978, Lieutenant Drowatzky receives a letter of his own.

Ruth's stalker is accusing him of, quote, protecting a whore from death. The Lieutenant's furious. He now knows Ruth and Ed from this case. He believes Ruth to be a kind, good woman and now he wants to catch the stalker even now more than ever. So the letters keep coming, each one with its own dark threatening error riddled poem. Ed starts referring to the stalker as the poet and the name actually ends up sticking. Then on January 25th, 1979, the poet calls Ruth at work.

He tells her that he has a quote, unquote, surprise for her in the lobby down in a telephone company building. So she cautiously walks downstairs and there in the lobby phone booth, she finds a knife wrapped in a red bandana. She calls the police. They start questioning everyone that's been in the lobby and in the building. A few witnesses come forward and say that they saw a man resembling Ruth's description of the poet.

They saw him near the phone booth, but no one really has any information of who he is or where he went. So no leads are taken from it. A month later, the poet starts sending letters to local businesses. He sends a local florist a letter with $5 enclosed and their request to send Ruth one black rose. The note reads, quote, if this is not enough ENUF for a delivered one, then call and then it has Ed and Ruth's phone number and tell her to come and get it.

So as things get warmer, the letters in the calls start to slow down. So Ed and Ruth decide to take advantage and plan a vacation to Colorado in July of 1979. So to get ready for that, Ruth tells Ed she's going to go to the mall by herself to get a pair of jeans. Now, Ed doesn't like that she's going alone, but she says, it's just going to be fine. I'm just running in really quickly. Also on August 13th, Ruth leaves work. She goes to Dillard's department store at the Town East Mall in downtown Wichita, gets

some jeans. By the time she's done, she goes outside to find herself walking through a practically empty parking lot alone at dusk. No, has anything good ever happened in a mall parking lot? Not at all, especially toward the end of the day. And it's worse than worse just as the sun goes down. That's right. Because, you know, it's 79.

So malls were new for people. True. So before she gets to her car, she hears a familiar voice yell, hey, Ruth, I didn't think you're going to make it this easy. She spins around, sees the poet lunging toward her. She tries unlocking her car door, but she can't get it in time. He grabs her. He shoves her against the car.

He tells her to get in as he tosses a bag filled with rope, white tape, a red bandana, and half a drunken bottle of wine into the backseat. He tells her he's going to take her to a remote bridge near August Airport Road. But right when that happens, she breaks away from his grasp. She manages to get into the car through the passenger side door and close up behind her. The window is slightly cracked. The poet tries to reach in after her, but she rolls it up. She forces him to pull his hand away and pinches a brown glove into the window as she peels

out of the parking lot. Ruth, this woman is a frickin' hero. She gets away again at the next red light. She looks down and realizes she feels a little lightheaded. She looks down. She's been stabbed. An eight-inch boning knife is sticking out of her left side of the left side of her torso. Holy shit.

Right? So she'll later learn at the hospital this is actually the third stab wound. Oh. That she got. There's two more in her back that she didn't even feel. Oh my God. So she drives herself to a gas station phone booth. And there she dials the number that she's memorized, 268-4181, which is Lieutenant Drowatsky's

boss, Captain Al Fimich. This is his direct line. And before Ruth can finish introducing herself, he picks up. She's like, hi, my name is Ruth. But whatever. We know who you are, what's going on. And then she explains it to him. So he sends an officer to where she is, but she's so worried that the poet's gonna find

her there that she drives home, which is only five minutes away. Captain Fimich is already called Ed and basically said what's going on. So by the time she gets home, Ed's waiting for her on the porch. As soon as she gets there, he gets in, drives her to the hospital. The police meet the couple at the hospital. So Ruth, all of her wounds are treated, the doctors say that the third stab wound in her left side was so deep, had it gone in any further, she would have died. She stays in the hospital for nine days.

Her story makes the news once again. And the reporter covering the story for the Wichita Eagle Beacon newspaper is named Fred Mann. He reports the incident. And then in a follow-up article, he includes the police sketch of the poet. And for that, he begins to get threatening letters from the poet. So the day after Ruth gets out of the hospital, one of the nurses tells the police that a man who resembles the police sketch of the poet visited the nurses station several times

while Ruth was in their care. So as a precaution, Lieutenant Drowoutsky stays at Ruth and Ed's house for two days just to make sure they're okay. Nothing happens while he's there. So by September of 1979, the police have no leads and Ed is growing desperate to protect his wife. His employer puts up a $3,000 reward on the Finley's behalf for information leading to the poet's capture.

But Ed also tries contacting the poet himself. He actually puts an ad out in the Wichita Eagle Beacon that says, poet, tell me what I owe you, RSF. And the poet responds to RSF, the price of my service to stay alive can now be settled at five. But this isn't enough information for Ed to know how much that is or what it's supposed to mean. They go back and forth several times, but none of it leads anywhere.

And it doesn't, nothing happens. So in October of 1979, the newspaper puts out a statement saying that they've been receiving letters from the poet directly to them. In one, he writes, quote, make sure that you don't confuse the executioners again, referencing the rumors that the poet and BTK are the same person. So the public, of course, is following this story like word for word. And there's rumors all around town, calls to the police constantly roll in with alleged poet sightings, none of them bring any leads or evidence.

So Lieutenant Drowacki assigns eight officers to go undercover around downtown and they have Ruth wear a wire whenever she goes out, just in case he approaches her downtown again. There's no sign of him. But more letters with poems in them turn up on the Finley's porch and in their mailbox. And at night, they can hear strange noises from their garage, but when they go out there, they don't catch anybody. On Christmas Eve, 1979, the Finley's phone lines are cut. And that's the second time that's happened.

So they're running out of options. Ruth agrees to undergo hypnosis to see if she can recall any other details from her attacks. A psychologist named Dr. Donald Shrag works with Ruth for two sessions until they reach the matter of her kidnapping and her demeanor shifts from calm to distraught as she cries out, I want out of the car, I want out of the car. Dr. Shrag, after these sessions, he concludes that whoever the poet is, quote, it's likely he's had psychological treatment and possibly has been an estate institution, end quote.

But he also believes that the man's highly intelligent. So in January of 1980, Lieutenant Drowacki is promoted to vice and organized crime. So a man named Captain Mike Hill takes over Ruth's case. Soon after Captain Hill receives a letter of his own from the poet, a line of which reads, there was once a captain who had an asshole for a heart. She has a poet. Wow. I mean, it's really, it's so visual.

So Drowacki had forged this strong friendship with the Finley's. In fact, they went to the same church, they did basically the same political views. And so Drowacki and his wife went out with Ed and Ruth on like double dates sometimes, like they socialized together. But Captain Hill has no personal relationship with them at all. So it gives him the advantage of an objective point of view. His first move after taking over the case is to install a surveillance camera in the Finley's backyard.

He has officers posted in the Finley's dining room on a round the clock watch, checking the camera's monitors for any suspicious activity. Ruth feels guilty that all of these officers have to endure such a boring job. So she's constantly making them baked goods. And sometimes she even reads some of the poet's letters allowed to them for entertainment. So a month later on Valentine's Day, Ruth gets a menacing Valentine themed message and a second letter containing a strip of red bandana. And there are also letters being sent to local businesses.

The utility companies get letters instructing them to shut off Finley's gas and power. The health department gets a letter claiming that Ruth Finley is spreading STDs around town. The local mortuary gets a letter threatening that Ruth quote would be requiring them soon. And quote yikes. So now Ed is driving Ruth to and from work so she's never by herself. And at this point, it's been three years. So the police have looked into more than 300 people of interest.

All of them are dead ends. They install another security camera at the Finley's home, this time hidden in a bird house in the backyard. Nothing happens. So in the spring of 1980, they decide to use Ruth as bait. They have her wear a bulletproof vest and walk around in downtown Wichita, while several undercover cops are patrolling the area. But nothing comes of it.

Then on June 3rd, 1980, Ruth gets a letter from the poet that's postmarked from Oklahoma City. So the Wichita police contact Oklahoma City police. They discover that an anonymous woman called in to report a recent poet sighting. So the police close in on a man who's recently been fired from his job in Wichita. And they're certain that this must be the poet. But when they bring him in for a lineup, Ruth says that although he does look similar, it's just not him.

So by July 4th, 1980, this story is national news. The rumors that the poet is BTK continue to spread and police actually have a psycholinguistic expert named Dr. Murray S. Myron examine the handwriting in his, in the letters. I think I know. So he determines that while it's the handwriting is actually similar to BTK's, it's highly unlikely that they're the same person. But the public can't let go of that idea. So the next few months, stranger and stranger items start showing up on the Finley's front

porch. An ice pick, broken glass, Molotov cocktails, firecrackers, cigarettes, even hair. And at Christmas time, the Finley's are watching TV when they're jolted by the sound of their window breaking. Ed runs out onto the porch to find a burning wreath has been hung from their front window. And the heat from that caused the window to explode. In a rage, Ed runs out into the street with a pair of garden shears screaming that he's going to kill the poet.

So things continue like this into 1981. The Wichita police are widely criticized by the public who can't believe they haven't been able to catch the poet. And they also simultaneously aren't catching BTK either. So now chief of police Richard Lamonion, or Lamonion, but I'm going to say Lamonion, is he's left fending off questions from the press about his department's ineptitude. But Lamonion's annoyance turns personal on Friday, September 4th, 1981, when the poet sends a letter to his wife.

Oh, sure. Fed up Lamonion, who has had no personal involvement in the case as of yet, takes it over himself. So he, on September 5th, he takes all the poet case files home and pours over them. It takes him several days, but at the end of his research, he believes he knows who the poet is. He calls a private meeting for select officers on September 11th, 1981, and he begins to explain his very secret theory. He says he finds it strange that all of Ruth's attacks have been in public places, yet there

are zero witnesses to any of these attacks. It's also strange that despite all the hours of round-the-clock surveillance, no officers and no neighbors have ever seen a trace of a trespasser, not even footprints, on the Finley's property, and they live on a dead-end street. When the surveillance camera is installed in the Finley's backyard, all the action moves to the front porch. And then after Ruth's abduction, the only footprints the investigating officer find at the park are Ruth's, and when Ruth is stabbed instead of calling 911 at the phone booth,

like a regular person would, she calls the direct line for central investigations. The officers in the room, basically what he's saying is he thinks that the poet is Ruth Finley. And as you said, he's able to look at it with the new chief, is able to look at it without any personal, you know, because he's not friends with her, I was like, oh, he doesn't have bias. He knows it's her. Yes?

And then he hit me and I was like, don't say anything, shut up, shut up, oh my God. This is exactly the way writer Corey Mead laid this article out. So the entire time you think you're just reading this, a case that you've never heard of before, and then by the time it gets to that exactly thing, yeah, where you're just like this woman is being hideously victimized. Why have I never heard this story before? So but here's the thing, all of these police officers, the Wichita PD, think this guy is nuts.

They think the chief is totally lost it. Well, there's no like the Munchausen syndrome back then, right? Like why would anyone do that to themselves? Right, exactly. It's the kind of thing that, yes, no one had ever talked about anything like that detailed before. But also they know Ruth. They've come to know her over the past four years.

They cannot believe she'd be the kind of person who would put her husband through that, who would do that to the police or do it to herself. That's not what she's like, like she's a kind, quiet, very upstanding lady. And what would her motive be? It didn't make sense to them. It didn't add up. But since Lamunyan is the boss, they have to follow his theory. So beginning Monday, September 14th, 1981, Lamunyan sets up a 24-hour surveillance on

the Finleys with officers trading off 12-hour shifts in a van two blocks away from the Finleys house at the Eastgate Mall, this time without the Finleys knowing. So, three days later at 8.30 in the morning on September 17th, the Surveiling Police capture photos of Ed driving Ruth up to the mailbox at the Eastgate Mall and depositing several pieces of mail. So they run over and basically it takes them until 1.30 to get a postal officer, sorry, the postal inspector to open that mailbox and inside they find two letters from the poet.

But too much time has passed between when Ruth dropped the mail off and when they were finally able to get it open. So technically someone else could have mailed those letters. Like they don't know for a fact those are the letters she put in. So basically nine days later, they get another opportunity. Once more, Ed drives their car up to the same mailbox, Ruth leans out the passenger side to drop the mail in, but this time an undercover cop pulls up right after them, blocks the mailbox and pretending to have car trouble so no one else can use this mailbox until

they get the postal inspector down there to open it up. So this time they're mixed in with the Finleys regular mail is another letter from the poet. Once this is confirmed, they reseal the envelope and they let the mail carrier deliver that letter to the Finleys home. Sneaky, sneaky. So the next day, which is Sunday, September 27th, Ed brings the poet letter to the police as he does with all of the poet letters they receive. But then the police launch a search for more of the Finleys mail everywhere, businesses

they sent payments to, you know, like mail at her work and they basically inspect all the envelopes and they're able to match the edges of the stamps because stamps used to get pulled out of the stamps and you would tear, there'd be perforated little holes where you pull the stamps apart. They match the tear, the tear aways and they see that all of these stamps are from the same book. They can, they can put them all back in. So police gave permission to search Ruth's office at work and there they find a book

of poetry, paper with the poet's handwriting on it and a red bandana concealed in a tissue and Ruth's desk. All of this is enough to warrant a search of the Finleys house. So on September 28th, while the Finleys are away, they search the house, but they actually find no hard evidence inside the house. Come on. Two days later on Wednesday, September 30th, Chief Lamunyan and his wife Sharon get another letter from the poet and at the bottom of the page, the page is torn off.

So through microscopic fracture analysis, they are able to determine that the torn off piece from Ruth's trash can at work matches the piece at the bottom of the letter that Lamunyan received. Yeah. Got it. Yeah. Got it. Yeah.

So that clarifies the case. So the next day on October 1st, 1981, the police ask Ed to come into the station to pick up the latest batch of poet letters, which is what usually happens. But when he gets there, Captain Hill and Detective Jack Leon take Ed into an interrogation room and they start asking him questions. Now Ed's confused, but he cooperates. That basically the officer spent two hours asking Ed about his life, his upbringing, all the way up until the beginning of the harassment in 1977.

And to get the idea of basically, is Ed complicit in his wife's plan? Is he? Oh my God. Finally, Captain Hill tells Ed that he knows who the poet is and Ed says, well, I hope the hell you do. Let's go get him. But then Hill shows Ed pictures of his wife dropping letters in the mailbox at the mall and explains that they can confirm that Ruth is in fact the letter writer.

Ed is in utter shock. Hill asks if he'll agree to a polygraph test so he can be eliminated as a suspect. Ed agrees. He passes the test. He was never involved. It was all Ruth by herself. Eddie, I got bad news for you. I know.

So at five o'clock that same afternoon, Hill calls Ruth and has her come down to the station to look at mug shots to see if she can identify the poet, which is a common practice for her at this point. She agrees, Hill walks her through the same interrogation procedure that he walked Ed through. And he finally asks Ruth if she wrote any of the poet's letters. She says no. But when he shows her the surveillance photos of herself mailing the letters and says that

he can prove she did, she finally admits. She says she has a vague memory of sitting in her basement writing letters. But when she thinks back, she can't tell what's a dream and what's reality. Oh dear. I was hoping you were going to say they'd show her a mug shot line up and hers was in it. And then she's like, there he is right there. Oh no.

Yep. Basically, he then asks, he switches his tone and gets mean and asks her if the attack went from when she was 16 years old, if that even really happened. She swears it did. But she starts to get really upset. He switches back to a gentle tone and basically says, quote, Ruthie, why it's time. It's time to tell me why I'm not mad at you, Ruth. I want to know why you're doing this.

So after some prodding, Ruth eventually admits to everything, the letters, the calls, the odd objects left at her house, even her own stabbing. But she says it wasn't a deliberate plan as much as it was kind of this fuzzy memory that she can barely recall. Actually, she's really ashamed and she's confused, but she's really ashamed. And when Hill says to her, there's no hard feelings between you and me, Ruth says, quote, there should be. I wish I was dead.

Oh my God. So she confirms that Ed was not involved at all. But she makes it clear she needs medical help. She says she thinks she's crazy. And then she says, quote, I tried to figure out what was wrong, but I couldn't stop it. So that night she's taken to the psychiatric ward of St. Joseph's Hospital for treatment. After much debate, the Wichita police make the controversial decision not to press charges against Ruth, citing that she was suffering from severe mental distress and had no malicious

intent. She did, however, cost the department almost $400,000 for all their investigative efforts over the past four years. And Chief Le Mignon does not agree with this decision not to press charges. He considers her a dangerous criminal. Wow. Basically, Ruth goes into therapy with a doctor, Andrew Pickens. And this goes on for the next seven years.

And she's finally able to uncover the source of her issues, which takes her a while to get to and then takes her years to process afterwards. But in a sense, what's interesting and kind of fascinating about it is she does it using the same technique that the poet does. She begins writing poetry about it, and she finally unwinds like all of those things that she was writing in the poet's poems. They all kind of pulled into her reality and what she basically had faced a long-buried childhood trauma of sexual abuse by a neighbor when she was only four years old.

What the fuck? And it was a man who had used red bandanas to tie her up. Oh, my God, so like there was actual symbolism in her, wow. So she basically says that when that happened to her and it went on for a couple of months that she would remember, quote unquote, floating off to heaven, which is a common dissociative tactic that the brain uses in times of severe trauma. So it's a defense tactic, her doctor's theorize, that allowed her to develop this kind of separate identity as the poet.

And then in 1977, when Ed has his heart attack and she is alone for the first time in her life while the BTK is like gone, basically killing people around town and no one knows who he is, basically her brain switches back into this dissociative mode and the stress she basically, it's like this cry for help. Wait, so did the teenage attack happen? Yeah. Okay. So that probably, that's like, yeah, as far as we know.

As far as we know. And yeah. So basically, it seems like the police in that town, believe, I feel like that attack alone as a teenager would have triggered that reaction from BTK to because that's a similar thing. He was breaking into women's houses and murder, telling her, it's like either of those could have. All of it.

Yes. It's all, it's all horrible parallels to her life. And if she was repressing it, and then that attack, you know, she was kind of able to come back and then she has this marriage that's really solid for her and, you know, it's this really strong, great marriage relationship family she builds for 30 years, everything is like going great. And then this thing happens that's like shock after shock, you know. So the only person who doesn't believe this theory is Chief La Mignon, who would later

say, quote, I think she's lying, she knew everything she was doing, unquote. But no one in Ruth's family or friendship circle believes that at all. In fact, Ed stands by her, their marriage lasts through this horrible experience. And she was quoted as saying, it's been hard on Ed, but he's the kindest person I know and he's been very supportive. But also her friends and neighbors rallied by her side. Her neighbor Emma Dillinger is quoted in that People magazine article saying, Ruth told me her story and gave me the option of cutting off our friendship.

But all I wanted to do was comfort her. Oh my God. And all of Ruth's loved ones like basically had that same reaction. And after five years in treatment, she feels strong enough to talk about her story on a local like news station. And after she basically tells her side of the story, there's they start getting that stations get starts getting calls and 98% of them were compassionate and loving and completely supportive for like an overwhelming majority were just like, this is unbelievable.

So it turns out that the poet of Wichita was not a violent madman, but a woman who didn't even know herself how much she needed to be heard. On May 30th, 2019, Ruth Finley passed away at the age of 89. And that is the fascinating story of Ruth Finley, also known as the poet of Wichita. What the fuck? What the fuck? Give the credit to the person who suggested it to you again, because brilliant sweetly sarcastic read that article by Corey Mead first on medium.com and sent it along to me.

I mean, I also think that part of me hesitated. And I think I felt like I may have begun to read this story one time when we are on the road. But but I hate the idea of talking about a going this far into a story where a female victim is lying because it does not. It doesn't happen that often. And that kind of thing of like these false reports, it's it's it's I think it's one of the reasons that it's not a very well known story because it's this is it's as crazy

as a serial killer. It's as unlikely. It's as you know, it's very common for women to be stalked. It's very common for women to be raped. It's very common for women to be attacked and abused. So this is a true anomaly that then kind of grew into a whole other crazy. I mean, which top it almost it's I don't know. It's fascinating.

There's so many layers. There's so many layers to it. It's a really good point, but that doesn't mean the story shouldn't be told. And we tell a huge amount of different types of stories on this podcast. And this is one of those examples, but it's not it's not a rule. So I think it deserves a place in this podcast. And that was incredible job telling the story. The medium writer did an incredible job.

So yeah, it happened. It happened. Here's the thing. It happened and it didn't end in a in a pitchforks and torches mob. You know what I mean? It ended with people going what why would someone do this? This is baffling. Because there weren't she was the only victim and Ed.

And then the wasted time. But it's like what was she doing? It doesn't make sense. It doesn't add up. And then it's like, but everybody has their reasons. And you know, fucking crazy, great job. Thank you. It's crazy.

All right, I had an epiphany this week that although it feels like this story is part of the folklore that is my favorite murder, it's a tale as old as time in our lives. We actually don't know the full story of the cocaine bear. Oh, we don't. We know a snippet from the minisode minisode 101. Thank you, Stephen. But who? Why?

What? Where? Let's find out today. I thought you did this story. I asked even did I do it when we were in Kentucky? It's been to Kentucky. Yeah, we have. And it wasn't.

I thought. Okay. Well, great. Let's hear it. So too. When I was halfway through and that's why I stuck Stephen and he said no, so not don't tell me I don't care. Doing it today.

Yeah, if you if you figure out otherwise, you can go ahead and let Stephen know at personal Stephen email at earthlink dot gov's. Right. All right. So I got info from a Rolling Stone article by E.J. Dixon, a slate article by Matthew Decim, the Kentucky for Kentucky website by Coleman Larkin and the IFL science article by James Felton. So here we go, Karen, I'm going to tell you the tale.

I want to know the truth about the cocaine there before I before I see the movie. It's true. It's legend. It's truly a legend. Okay. On the morning of September 11th, 1985, Mr. Fred M. Myers of Knoxville, Tennessee, woke up, walked out of his home on Island Home Pike in South Knoxville and found a dead man in his backyard.

Yep. So Mr. Myers recalled hearing a crash around midnight night the night before and it turned out the crash he had heard had been that of the dead man falling from the sky and landing in his backyard. Oh my God. Yeah. Horrible. It is a horrible start.

So the body of the man was dressed in khaki and it was sprawled out on his back over an unopened parachute. There was no obvious injuries aside from a trickle of dried blood from each of his nostrils. But other than that, he looked fine. Authorities arrived and found that the dead man was wearing a bulletproof vest and night vision goggles and was carrying two different pistols, ammunition, a stiletto knife, freeze dried food and six kugarans, which are gold coins. Yes, I love kugarans.

That's my favorite reference. $4,500 cash, IDs and multiple names, a membership card to the Miami Jockey Club, and several inspirational epigrams, which I know you love, epigrams? Epigrams. Yeah. Like you mean like keep sore high like a mighty bird? That's right. Keep on trucking those pens.

Are those epigrams? I don't know. I don't either. Let me read you one. That's definitely an epigram because this was one of the ones he had on him. Wait a second. An epigram, the same thing forward and backwards because then mine wouldn't work. No.

Fly high like a mighty eagle won't work. Wait, let me spell that backwards and try it. No, you're right. Okay. This was one. This one read, there is only one tactical principle not subject to change. It is to inflict the maximum amount of wounds, death and destruction on the enemy in the minimum amount of time.

It sounds like a Chuck Norris type of like thing that they live by, you know, like a... There's what I live by. It sounds like the kind of shirt that you'd be right up against in line at 7-Eleven and then once you read that epigram or whatever the fuck you're claiming it to be, then you back way up and you're just like, uh-oh, I didn't realize you're here to do the most damage in the shortest time. And you're like, hey, mister, can I touch your nunchucks and then... Hey.

Are those nunchucks in your pocket? That's right. He had that on him, poetry, and he had a duffel bag with about 75 pounds of cocaine that was 95% pure. And I wanted to like... Jesus. I wanted to like in my head, picture 75 pounds of cocaine, which is hard to do with powder, right?

So then I looked up like, how many pounds of chocolate bars would that be? But then I thought, okay, well, how much... What kid weighs 75 pounds? And so I looked it up and an average 10-year-old female weighs 75 pounds. So that's how much cocaine, if you held an average 10-year-old female in one hand and cocaine in the other that weighed the same. You could also do it basically if you're doing five pound bags of sugar. But cocaine, there would be about 14 bags of sugar.

Oh, that's a lot. No wonder his parachute didn't open. And if it's 95% pure, you can get some baby laxative and cut it in there. And then you can have like... Then you have like 35 pounds of cocaine. And you just get all the kids at the junior college to buy it and you're in Cabo, baby. 90s Karen just snuck up on this podcast and was like, hey, I have an idea. Hey, man.

Look, man. Be cool. All right. So police came and were like, what is this scene? It was like baffling to everyone, of course. Narcotics agents, K and DEA customs were very baffled by this innocent looking backyard scene. I guess it wasn't innocent looking.

Anyways. Not innocent with the Krugerrands. No, that's not. I'm telling you, anytime Krugerrands are involved, this is an international issue that we have. Or it's a spy movie starring Brad Pitt. Either way. Either way. You're fucked.

You're fucked. So police by afternoon are able to identify the body and even then they still have few theories as to what the hell happened. But they do identify him as Andrew Carter Thornton, the second of Kentucky. So let me tell you about Andrew Carter Thornton, the second. As you can tell by his name, yes, he came from a wealthy family. He's royalty. That's right.

He was born on October 30th, 1944 to Carter and Peggy Thornton in Southern Bourbon County, Kentucky. Carter and Peggy had a grand old time being wealthy and breeding horses at their stud farm. Lucky. So Andrew grew up living a privileged life in Lexington, Kentucky. He attended prestigious private schools along with other Lexington blue bloods. He went to the military academy, Sawani military academy and then joined the army as a paratrooper. Then he became an Air Force officer.

He earns a purple heart, you know, he's on his way up and next in his lustrous career, he becomes a police officer in the Lexington, Kentucky police force narcotics division. So here he is. But then in 1977, he resigns because he now wants to practice law. So he goes to the University of Kentucky Law School and apparently the law applied to everyone but himself because as a 1980 federal indictment alleges, he was part of a drug and weapons smuggling ring called the company. Oh, yeah.

And it also reportedly involved other former Kentucky police officers as well. So maybe he went to law school to be like, I'm going to keep this business going and like not for good reasons. So in 1981, he's arrested along with 25 other men. They were attempting to steal guns from a naval base in Fresno, California, risky. And for attempting to traffic a thousand pounds of marijuana into the county. Into San Diego? Fresno.

Oh, yeah. I thought drugs lived in Fresno. Why do they have to smuggle them in? Yeah, especially from like Kentucky. No one in, no one in Cali wants that K.Y. weed. No thanks. Keep it for yourselves and your on your stud horses. We're good over here.

So DEA agent Robert Brightwell, who says he worked with Thornton on narcotics investigations in the early seventies, described him as a quote, an 007 paramilitary type personality, an adventurer driven by adrenaline rushes who became bored with being a cop. So we got this guy who thinks he's James Bond or Chuck Norris. It seems like a cross between the two and he's bored with even being a narcotics cop, which sounds pretty entertaining and fun. If you ask me and stressful and stressful, like what more do you need and legal? So not enough for some people.

Never enough. Never. Initially, Andrew was given two felony charges of conspiracy to import and distribute a controlled substance to which he pled not guilty. But he fled the state and then it was found heavily armed in North Carolina and brought back to California to face reduced misdemeanor drug charges. So he got his charges super duper reduced. Let's go back and talk about how he was wealthy.

That's how it probably happened. And hoit. Hoititoyte. He pleaded no contest to the charges was sentenced to six months in prison and fined $500. And he also had his law license revoked. So Karen, this last brush with the law was all it took for Andrew to see the error of his ways, straighten up, find Jesus and not cause the death of a black bear, right? Lies.

No. Turns out no. Find Jesus is how I know. So a woman named Betty Zarring was his former wife and she said about him, quote, he was a, uh, he was a son of a bitch, son of a bitch. And then she shot two pristles in there. This son of a bitch had shitty Kentucky weed always trying to give me that weed. No, she said he was a philosophical, incredibly disciplined, extremely spiritual and loyal

warrior with his own code of ethics who thrived on excitement. And then she lit a candle on his, on her under his headshot. Okay. Yeah. She was into that guy. Yeah. I think she still liked him. Just show it.

She likes that guy. I think so. Did your dog just belch? No, she growled at me because I just realized I didn't feed her dinner, but I did give her two cheese sticks. Does she, do you want to go feed her dinner? No, no, no. She could make it.

It sounded like that song. Bow, bow. Bow. Bow. Bow. Yeah. She went wow. Wow.

So just give me a half an hour. You got it. Okay. On September 9th, 1985, Andrew is now 40. He enlists the help of his, don't be too surprised by this, karate instructor, turn bodyguard, a man named Bill Leonard. So the pair, along with a third man who was a Colombian man that Bill had apparently never met, they get on a Cessna 404 airplane.

So Bill alleges that he just got on the plane, he didn't know what they were doing and, but while en route, according to Bill in a 1990 interview with former Knoxville news Sentinel managing editor, Tom Chester, Leonard said that while he knew of Andrew's shady drug fueled, you know, past and rep and reputation, he had not known that this flight was to involve drugs. He didn't know, wasn't me officer and insisted that Andrew had sprung the plot on him mid flight as the plane flew over the Bahamas. It was raining and dark and I guess he hadn't asked, Hey, who's this Colombian stranger on

board with us too? He hadn't asked that when they were getting on the plane. It was like, whatever. Yeah. Just a bunch of strangers on a Cessna, it'll be fine. Yeah. I'm sure nothing will happen. Yeah.

Andrew. No. Andrew told Leonard the plan that they would pick up 400 kilograms of cocaine in Colombia and smuggle it into the US. Although I can see the logic of being like, don't fucking tell Andrew on the tarmac. We have to be in the air. He's going to have one of his classic free coats. Yeah.

He'll just do it. He always goes along with any plan. Andrew is the, Andrew is, is the, what's his name? Andrew is the main guy. Bill is the foil, whatever, it doesn't matter. Who's got the Cougarans? Andrew. Andrew.

Andrew's got the Cougarans. Karate. Bill is the Karate guy. This whole thing sounds like Danny McBride and James Franco got stoned together and wrote this up. This doesn't seem real. Does it now not surprise you that Elizabeth Banks is part of it? Everyone's like, how are you going to make this music?

I think you just cast it essentially. Yeah. There it is. Okay. Bill said, if he had told me, hey Bill, we're going to Colombia to smuggle 400 kilos of cocaine to America, I would have gone, yeah, right. That would have been the end of it right there. He tricked me.

There is no way in hell, I mean, anybody that knows me in Lexington knows there's no way I would do anything like this. I was a nobody. And then he winked at the reporter, nudge, nudge, nudge, gave him a bag of cocaine and walked away. And they tightened up his brown belt and Karate chopped him to the face and then stole the bag of cocaine and ran in the opposite direction to his Jojo and all was well. Then he said about Andrew, when he told him about this plan, he said the look on his face

was hard to explain. He was smiling, but he had a very intense look in his eyes and he was watching me very closely. In my heart, okay. In my heart, I would love if Bill actually was just a spoil who had no clue about it at all. He was like this local Lexington dude that he really liked, he just thought Andrew was the coolest.

And I was like, come along, even though he knew Bill would fuck it up somehow. And he did. Yep. Okay. But Bill hating to be someone who cancels plans, apparently, they move on with their mission and picked up the freight that was in Columbia and were somewhere over Florida when Bill claimed that they heard federal agents talking over the radio about following their plane.

So Bill had been vomiting over an open door out the plane because that's how inexperienced he was on planes. Poor Bill. He had like a Hawaiian shirt on because he thought they were going to the Bahamas and now it's just flattered with barf. No, but you still can't tell that's the Tommy Bahama promise. You can puke on yourself and no one will know. So he hears this, he freaks out, he stops vomiting and he opened a door and kicked three

bags of cocaine out. No, let's get rid of this cocaine. Then we're being followed. Andrew, of course, being a businessman freaks out and is like, he hates a party foul. So he was like, what the fuck are you doing? And the two of them start to argue. Okay. And Bill says, quote, right at that time, when it looks like we're going to rip each

other's throats out, he just starts laughing. I don't know what happened. I started laughing. The next thing I know, we're both rolling around in the plane laughing. That's probably the safety hazard, right? Tears coming out of our eyes. He turned around and said, I'm really sorry for getting you involved in this. I can see this is not your thing. You're a family man.

Just do what I tell you and I'll get you out. That's a quote. I didn't just fucking make that up. This is, I'm sorry, but this is also, if you've ever seen the fucking Peter Falk movie and Ellen Markin movie, the in-laws, this is the very similar plot to the in-laws. This is like, we thought the cocaine bear aspect of this story was the best part of the story. So we never bothered looking it up.

I completely in my mind connected it to a totally different story you did the full version of. Yeah. And just in my mind was like, oh yeah, that must be connected to that thing. I know. How did we not know of story when they ended with a bear dying on cocaine was going to be even better? I think it got, it was like, it surmised perfectly in that email, the original email

where they were just like, this thing happened, but what's important is this. Yeah. You know, we're going to boil it down. I meant to give credit to the first person, the person who was hometown we read because they like really brought it into our lives and deserve full credit, but I forgot to do that and I'm sure it's impossible to find at this point. It's impossible. It's impossible.

All right. I have it. It's even impossible, that's your name. It's from Sam. So there's no other details, but it's just Sam and Lexington, I know you were screaming your name out there and we heard it. So thank you. Sam.

Well, because it was about my mother's ex-boyfriend, the cocaine cowboy. So I think she dated one of the people. Wow. Okay. She dated Andrew probably. Yeah. I'll look up the original email. Yeah.

Okay. She dated Bill. She threw three huge bags out. He's cowboy adjacent. Here's the thing. She is a cowboy entrapment A and B. If there's a plane following you, don't throw anything out of your plane. No.

They can see you. They're going to go after it. Essentially, is he, yes or no, a cowboy caricature? Yes. Andrew's a real thing. He's got a little tiny horse. He's got a tiny hat. He's got a tiny hat.

Tiny horse. A tiny horse. Big head. Tiny hat. Tiny hat. Tiny horse. So, that's correct. Yes.

So, Sam's mother dated Andrew Carter-Thorton the second time. Holy shit, Sam. Shit, Sam. Is he your dad's secret? Like your secret? If only we knew. Yeah. That's it, okay.

That was really good. Sam, how big is your head? How small is your hat? Sam. All right. So Andrew tells Bill to cut loose three dothel bags of cocaine from their parachute and dump them from the plane. Okay.

So then Thornton is like, I'm going to help you out, man. I'm going to get you out of this. I'm sorry. I even got you into it. You're not really good at this anyways. So he gives, uh, he gives Bill a four minute lesson in skydiving. He essentially is like, here's how you do this, here's how you do this. Put this on, clip that. Um, and he can I just really quickly with great rage?

Yeah. Say that's not fucking cool as someone as someone who is taught to snorkel. Yeah. By being in, in a bay in Hawaii with my stuff on and my ex being like, no, no, you have to like suction it to your face and just being like, you, you don't mention any of this at any time before. Like you don't, you're now waiting until we're, I'm treading in 30 foot water before you start to tell me the things I need to know.

Yeah. Like you're already scared because you're in the shark tank, essentially. I hate, here's the thing. I really resent people who are bad teachers because they, if they already know it, then in their mind, you know, exactly. Are you sure you can't take it? Like they don't even understand that you won't understand the words that are connected to it, that are like, you know, part of it.

I get what you mean. Fuck everyone. Yeah. It's like, it, Bill, who didn't want to be involved in a drug trafficking situation in the first place now has to learn how to fucking skydive under pressure. He's like, first of all, what is a cougar ant? And I, first of all, what is an epigram? Let's start at the very beginning.

Is it a poster? Is it just, is it on a hat at the truck stop? Oh, we've got to get, we've got to get an old school, like inspirational photo of a skydiver and get that quote. A murdering is already making it as we're talking. Get that terrible epictat and put it over. Epigram, whatever you want. All right, is it like a hologram, but just two-sided?

Get a hologram, get a hologram. Let Bill tell the story himself, a hologram of Bill, but the next of my favorite murder life show, we got Bill on stage. Okay, stop it. And then Robert Kardashian to close. Okay. Okay. So basically, Andrew ties the remaining duffel bag of cocaine to his body

with a nylon bag containing two, his whole kit that he later found dead with with spoiler alert, so they, so they prepared a jump as the plane on autopilot now flies over Knoxville. So poor Bill jumps first. He landed and the word hard is always in there. He lands hard near Knoxville downtown Island home airport, about three miles from downtown Thornton had told him to walk to a grocery store, call a cab and then gave him the address where he was going to meet Thornton's girlfriend at

the Hyatt Hotel. I wonder if it's Sam's fucking mom. Yeah, perhaps. So they go to the Hyatt Hotel with his girlfriend to wait for Andrew to show up, but he never shows up. So let's go back to the morning where the guy finds the dead body in his backyard that is identified as Andrew. In Andrew's pocket is a key and they were able to match the key, the tail

number on the key to the wreckage of a plane, which had crashed into a mountain in Clay County, Carolina. They had found it on autopilot and it had landed about 60 miles away from where they jumped. That's dangerous. So dangerous. Just to let the plane go off by itself. Totally irresponsible, especially if they're over at Knoxville.

That's like human, humans live there. So when the cops or the investigators have found Andrew's body, of course, they found all that cocaine on him and they were like, there's got to be more cocaine that wouldn't like in the plane and they searched the surrounding areas and found 220 pounds of marijuana, of cocaine hanging from a parachute in a tree in Fannin County, Georgia. They found maps, clothes, food and all that stuff a couple of days later. More deathel bags of cocaine were found months later in Northern Georgia.

So cocaine everywhere. It's a fucking everywhere. It's like a confetti cocaine plane. Cocaine Easter egg hunt, but all through the mountains. So they were they were found months later, but before that, a black bear stumbled upon the cocaine and turned our friend cocaine bear. Spotlight hat can. OK, now it's the solo.

Hello, my baby. Lights go down, spotlight on cocaine bear. I'm just a little cocaine bear. Wandering around the forest, not high or wired. What will my day bring? Oh, what's this? What's this? A pile of powdered sugar.

No. Well, a local hunter who sadly has never been identified because a hero had found the dead bear and told his friends about it. But none of them reported it to authorities because they're hunters in Georgia and they don't, I think, mingle with authorities. They're like, mind your business. Exactly. So it took three weeks for the story to finally trickle down to a game

and fish agent who then told the agents at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and they discovered the bear's body on December 20th. So that bear, you know, as much as it's lived in our hearts and minds, it essentially snorted up a bunch of coke and died kind of on the spot. Sounds like it just immediately OD'd. So no, listen, let's keep in our hearts and minds and in Nick Terry's incredible animation that he did of this. That's fucking classic.

One of everyone's favorites that they had a grand old time. It was so much fun. It was so much fun. All the all the woodland creatures came together and got why a medical examiner conducted an autopsy on the bear and found every telltale sign of a massive overdose. Let's all sing it together. Cerebral hemorrhaging, respiratory failure, hypothermia, renal failure, stroke and heart failure.

Oh, no. Yeah, like it died died. And then I wrote, it's unclear if the detailed plans to open a restaurant card called Bear Essentials were ever located because, of course, I did. Because you had to. Because I had to get it in there. George quiet. George's tonight. The part of the bear is being played by George Kilgariff by George,

who hasn't eaten yet. I say it. I get that. All right. So but that medical examiner was so impressed with the bear and its state that and that despite everything, the bear's body was actually in good shape. So he was like, you know, it'd be a pity just to throw this in the cremator

and calls up a buddy, a hunting buddy who was a taxidermist taxidermist. And so the bears tax taxidermia taxidermized that's a word and put on display at the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area in Georgia. But it doesn't have like a plaque saying what it is. It's just like a fucking taxidermy bear. So it doesn't it doesn't get its full glory just yet. But so there's an approaching wildfire that forces the employees of that place to load up some of their artifacts into a storage unit.

Someone breaks into the storage unit, steals a bunch of artifacts and cocaine bear. Twisted fucking turns, man. So sorry, a forest fires coming and they're like, grab the important stuff. Dan, you, Jerry, Rick and TJ, grab that fucking gigantic taxidermy bear that died five ways. Uh-huh. And Percy's like, oh, well, go get the arrowheads. And like, we'll get the precious, precious arrowheads. We'll get the precious feathers in the arrowheads while you guys lug the

fucking cocaine bear, the coat, the fully taxidermied and stuffed with sawdust. Yeah, hurry up, guys. Okay, then some creeper creeps into some college students. Do you find out that the cocaine bear is at the at the storage unit? Uh-huh. At the George, Georgia storage unit on I five. And where I five meets the two, ten, the two, ten, that's Glendale. Okay. Nearly three decker.

Okay, so it's stolen. Goodbye, gone forever. So we think, no, almost 30 years later after the bear's death, the eccentric, they're described as an eccentric retailer, Kentucky for Kentucky, which you can go online and find their website. They seem like a lot of real fun people because they do some digging and investigating. They contact local pawn shops where the storage unit had been and are like, Hey, do you remember 30 some odd years ago getting a bear,

a taxidermied bear when the shop owners like, yeah, that came in at the same time. That's some like, some like feathers and there was an arrowheads that came in. And we found out they were stolen. So we returned those, but the bear was never claimed. So we sold it. Kentucky for Kentucky. We're like, well, where did that bear go? And they're like, let us look up our records. They find the records. And it turns out that the bear had somehow through some changes fallen in the

hands of country legend, Waylon Jennings. What the fuck? No. No. Waylon Jennings. Here on this fucking line, we have Waylon fucking Jennings. There you go. So it turns out that Waylon Jennings has a huge private collection of preserved animals. He's like a big animal head head.

He's a big dead animal head head. Exactly. So he actually, Waylon Jennings, Kentucky for Kentucky found out, has relationships with pawn shop owners throughout the South to let him know whenever they get like a really good taxidermy or preserved bear and me too. So they had contacted him and had gone with Waylon Jennings to Nevada to live with Waylon Jennings in Las Vegas. Yeah. This bear, this bear is living now more than ever. This bear has had a more exciting life than any of us.

Oh, shit. Except for Karen in the 90s. Okay. That's true. 90s Karen can compete with cocaine bear. Absolutely. So they trace it further in its illustrious journey and they find that its current owner and its current resting place was a traditional Chinese medicine shop in Reno. And it's owned by the now deceased man named Su Tseng and it had been used there as decoration.

So Kentucky for Kentucky contacts this man's widow, Mr. Tang's widow, and she tells them that her husband, quote, was always wringing home junk from auctions and estate sales and things like that. The bear was one of his favorite things. He just loved it for some reason. At first he had great fucking days. At first he wanted to keep it in our living room, but I wouldn't have it. It scared me. I made him take it to the store.

You knew there was going to be an irritated wife somewhere along the line, whether it was Mrs. Jennings or Mrs. Tang here, where it's somebody going, are you fucking kidding me? You're not keeping that near the children. No, full-size bears in the TV room. I talked about this. I come home from an estate sale with a pair of matching vintage lamps. Mr. Tang comes home with a fucking full-size cocaine bear. The full-on cocaine bear.

White powder underneath its nose. So Kentucky for Kentucky in their fucking infinite glory tells her the whole story. And she's like, they said she almost didn't believe us, but she said that if you've gone through that much trouble, we could just have, quote, the damn thing. Just to get it out of her sight. Do you know what they, do you know what she charged them? Shipping? Yes.

Shipping hand handling? Yes. For real? She didn't charge him a penny. She said, get it out of my fucking sight. It was $200 to ship it home to Kentucky, and they fucking did it. No, sorry. Can I just ask a clarifying question? Yeah.

Kentucky for Kentucky is like a basically a cool store. Is that correct? They have them all now. Let me see. Hold on. Let me look up, Stephen. Hold on. Is like an artist collective type of thing? That's a great question. Let's find out. Okay. I just want details on these, like, obviously, cool, fun people. Because they're clearly our new best friends.

Like preservation society or something. Oh, yeah. Oh, that makes sense. So there's, we're talking, there's a lot of, like, calf tattoos. We're talking about a lot of interesting glasses. Okay. I'm seeing. Their website is KY for KY.

Oh, and they have the Fun Mall. Okay. You know, there's a, there's a commercial online. It looks like just like a, like a cool shop of like Kentucky gear. It says a kick-ass Commonwealth since 19. Oh, a kick-ass Commonwealth since 1792. That's about the actual state of Kentucky they're talking about. Got it. Okay. Got it.

Okay. Yeah, they look like a wacky bunch. I'm looking at their about site. There's a lot of, there's a Kentucky fried chicken bucket hat. Let's see. Did you see the shirt? It looks like a, like a Yale sweatshirt, but it says y'all. Oh, that's amazing. Okay. I want one of those real bad.

Here's their mission. Our mission is to engage and inform the world by promoting Kentucky people, places and products, and to kick-ass for the Commonwealth. All right. Nice. I love them. Okay. So they'll be invited to our next show and invited to give me a Kentucky fried chicken

hat, please. KY for KY presents the never-ending pandemic warehouse sale. They also have a commercial for their fund mall that like is super kitschy and funny. So look them up online. Yeah. These shirts, oh my God, you know how the chakitas or cicadas, however you pronounce it, there's a thing where they're coming back this year after 28 years and they're all going to, there's like, they have a picture on the KY for KY.

It's KY for KY.com. And it's a teach, a cicadas t-shirt and it says, let me hear y'all make some noise. So they're a fun bunch. They're funny. They're funny and fun. And love to have fun and buy bears. So they bought it. That's makes it even better.

They bought, they tracked down single-handedly and bought the cocaine bear because they thought it was, I bet they were drinking one night and were like, you know, it'd be so funny and what we need here, the cocaine. And they're like, what happened to it? And then they found it. Really quick. They have a t-shirt that says, I'm not a cat. I'm here live.

I'm not a cat from when that guy was in court and the cat face. They have a t-shirt. I'm here live. I'm not a cat. Yeah. These guys are on the ball. Kentucky style. On trend.

Okay. And there's a cocaine bear. They have their own cocaine bear t-shirt. Don't say it. Don't say it. Don't say it. Sorry. Sorry.

Sorry. Let me read this. Let me know what the problem is. Let me read this. So the bear is now on display at the Kentucky for Kentucky fund mall in Lexington. They sell a line of merchandise based on the bear, including t-shirts, which you've seen me wearing before. Someone at our Kentucky show gave me one.

Cats, hoodies, mugs, stickers and snow globes that they call blow globes. Sense of humor. Yep. Okay. As we all read in Variety recently, Elizabeth Banks has signed on to direct the cocaine bear film produced by the dudes who made the Lego movies. And they haven't released a lot of details, but the movie has been described as a quote character driven thriller inspired by truth events that took place in Kentucky in 1985.

So I hope. Period piece. Period piece. Great. Thriller. It could be great. It's going to be great. And then I wrote, hopefully they'll include the quote that was included in Thornton's obituary.

Andrew Thornton's obituary, one line read, quote, I'm glad his parachute didn't open. What? Someone ate it. You make some enemies when you're like, Jesus, it reminds me of I curse you with my dying breath. That's for real. I'm glad his parachute didn't open. Wait, that can't have been in his obituary.

It was in his obituary. I swear to God. That doesn't make sense. Stephen, will you look it up and put it on the Instagram? They usually don't let shit like that through. Was it in the guest book? No, it says obituary. I swear.

Wow. That's intense. The last line I'll tell you is that according to his friends, Andrew Carter Thornton II died a millionaire. And according to us, the cocaine bear died happy. That's the real story of cocaine bear. There's also a book which has the entire story of Thornton's smuggling operation as far as anyone's aware of it.

It's called The Bluegrass Conspiracy by Sally Denton from 1990. So check that out if you're into fucking crazy ass stories. I mean, it's so much cocaine. That's a crazy fucking story. It is nuts. Also, like, it's the idea that someone drops from the sky and dies in your backyard. I bet he was dead before he hit the ground low. Absolutely.

He had a heart attack. First of all, because you know, he was probably on some cocaine and then he jumps out in a parachute and that parachute doesn't open. At least unconscious. You got to hope. Please. Because that just means he's falling straight down. So that's going to just this whole, it's so extreme.

It's like, it's the most like fucking Red Bull story of all time. It's just nuts. It's like the 80s, 1980s, Red Bull story. I bet the movie is going to be sponsored by Red Bull. And you can get really shit. You should be required to like chug three Red Bulls before you watch that. Or what about a Jolt Cola? Can we bring those back for this movie?

The OG. Or just cocaine. Or just some plain old cocaine in a nice popcorn bucket. I mean, that was great. Should we let that story be our fucking hooray? Maybe? Yes. I think that was a fucking hooray.

Great. Hold on. Epigram. A pithy saying or remark expressing an idea in a clever and amusing way. Okay. What that guy read, that's not an epigram. You're thinking of a picture. An epigram is like, no, I'm saying, the epigram was the word used.

Got it. And then it's like, the point of battle is to inflict as much pain in the shortest amount of time. That's not an epigram is like, don't let the screen door hit you in the ass on the way out. I believe. You mean don't let the screen door hit you where the good Lord splits you like that. Or any number of epigrams.

Stephen, did you find the obituary? Yes. In the Rolling Stone article, it says the district attorney who prosecuted Andrew said, I'm glad his parachute didn't open. I hope he got a hell of a high out of it. Out of that. What a dick. I mean, unless what he was saying is I love him so much.

He's such my good friend that he got the big final high. I bet he didn't even want the parachute to open is what he was saying. It just sounds different when you say I'm glad his parachute. It does. It didn't. It does. Very bad. Yeah.

Maybe he was like, he got the ultimate high. I'm glad. I'm glad. Oh, I loved him. I'm glad his parachute didn't open. It's what he would have wanted. That makes that sounds way better. No one wants their parachute not to open.

Sorry. Here's the here's the first example of an epigram in Google. Okay. It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness. Eleanor Roosevelt. And then she said, kill all your enemies. With a swift kick and let God sort them out. Eleanor Roosevelt.

Eleanor Roosevelt. I love him. I love him. Seriously. Wow. All right. Well, this story is full of misinformation. Let us know if you know any other.

Love stories that we should cover a full of misinformation. I think that's our specialty. Yeah. Thanks for listening. You guys are a treat and a treasure, and we appreciate all of your hard work and not so hard work. Yeah. We appreciate it.

When you relax, we appreciate you at all times resting in motion. whatever. Stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye! Elvis, do you want a cookie?