My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 287 - MFM Guest Host Picks #10 - Kate Winkler Dawson

Episode Date: August 12, 2021

This summer, Exactly Right family members will be guest hosting My Favorite Murder! Each week a guest host will pick their favorite stories from Karen and Georgia. Today's episode is hosted by Kate Winkler Dawson, host of Tenfold More Wicked and Wicked Words on Exactly Right. Kate covers the stories of The Murder of Irene Garza (Episode 99) and Fred and Rosemary West (Episode 130).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. I'm Kate Winkler-Dawson, and I'm honored to be the guest host this week.

I'm the host of two podcasts here on the Exactly Right Network, Tenfold More Wicked and Tenfold More Wicked Presents, Wicked Words. I love to listen to My Favorite Murder because it reminds me that it's okay to sometimes laugh at some pretty serious subjects on my own show. And Georgia and Karen are so good at weighing that balance between humor and respect. And it's good for me to remember that I can do that too. So I wanted to pick a few of the older episodes because I'm a new fan and I really just wanted an excuse to listen to some shows that they taped in the early years.

The first is episode 99, the story of Irene Garza told by Georgia. I've followed this case for years, one because I'm a Texan and I'm into Texas stories. And two, because I'm fascinated with stories where murder intersects with religion. So here's the story of Irene Garza and priest John Fight. This is a timely story because it's a cold case that finally, hopefully, this is the end came last week. But this is a story that I've been interested in, it's one of the 48 hours, you know, we've all watched it.

It's really interesting. Texas Monthly, I got a lot of this information from the Texas Monthly, which we love Texas Monthly. The best. Article called Unholy Act by Pamela Kalloff, C-O-L-L-O-F-F. This is the story of fucking priest John Fight and the murder of Irene Garza. Oh, I don't know this. Oh, honey.

Oh, shit. Fucking buckle the fuck up. Buckle down, baby. Settle in, buckle up, hit your foot on the coffee table. Kick the coffee table as hard as you can, like you have a crush on it. Okay, here we go. So Irene Garza is born in 1934. She's this dark-haired Hispanic beauty from McAllen, Texas.

It's an agricultural, agricultural, no, area, agricultural, agricultural, area south of Texas in the Rio Grande Valley, five miles from the US-Mexico border. In high school, Irene had been crowned Miss All South, Texas, Sweetheart, and McAllen High School, where, you know, everyone's fucking white back then. She had been the first Hispanic twirler and head drum majorette. Wow. So she was like fucking busting down borders. She's this beautiful beauty queen, but she's Hispanic, so it's, you know, a sense of pride

that it's, you know, she's busting down borders, as I said. She's not. Texas, that's like blonde, big teeth, blue-wise. That's like usually what you're going to get out of a Texas beauty queen. Right. And she is, you know, she's not that. And she's the first in her family to graduate from college, which is a super big deal. Huge accomplishment.

So at 25 years old, she worked as a teacher for disadvantaged children, which she took a great pride in. Some of her students were so poor and came from the neighborhood where she had come from and had been able to get out of that they came to school barefoot. And Irene spent her first paycheck on buying those children clothes and books. Yeah. So she's this very day. Right.

Even worse, I bet. Exactly. So she's this really big-hearted, kind person. She is gorgeous, which isn't a reason why she shouldn't be a victim, but there's just this warmth coming from her, and, you know, she had a huge future that she earned. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. Yeah.

Listen. Look. Look and listen. Stop it. At the center of her life, though, is her devout Catholic faith. That's like her fucking thing. On April 16th, 1960, the day before fucking Easter Sunday, is Saturday, Easter Saturday called a thing?

Yeah. It's like chill out Saturday. It doesn't sound like it. It is. I don't know. Chill the fuck out Saturday. The day before Easter. Well, go ahead.

Well, good Friday. Good Friday. Good Friday is when he went up on that cross. Okay. It might be the Ascension. I don't know. He chilled out on Saturday. He got rolled on up in that tomb.

Yeah. And then he was risen on Sunday. Yeah. But Saturday, he just hung out. Well, Saturday was all up in that tomb. Yeah. People thinking he's dead. It's over.

And he was like, you know what? I'm going to hide. Okay. I'm not going to get sacrilegious here. We already have. It's real mad at me. It's so sad because I've had this shit drummed into my head, but then, of course, it would be impressive.

I can't pull it out. But here's the thing. And today is the first night of Hanukkah. We rebelled against it because we hated it so much. So everything was drummed in our head. We're like, fuck you. I'm not remembering this. Yeah.

And now we don't. Now we just don't know things. Now just the guilt remains. The guilt and the ignorance. And the really good songs. Oh, yeah. I got a bunch of those. Pieces flowing like a river.

Anytime you want me to sing it to you, I will. Okay. Okay. Borahatah. Let's fucking do this. Name a prayer. Okay. Okay.

So, on April 16th, fucking Lazy Saturday, 1960, Irene borrows, she's 25. She borrows her family car to drive to their church Sacred Heart Church, where she plans to go to confession. She leaves around 6.30 that evening. She's like, mom, I'll be back. And a bunch of witnesses see her get to church. Everyone's in line for confession. She gets in line as well.

But no one sees her leave that church that day. She never came home that night. And the next morning, Easter Sunday, that's right, as you know, he is truly risen. He rises and her car is still parked down the street from Sacred Heart. The first clue comes two days later when one of Irene's high-heeled shoes is spotted by the side of the road and 300 yards from there was her purse. It looks as if someone had like thrown it out the window of a passing car. There's no fingerprints on it.

There's crazy huge search ensues, including they dragged irrigation canals, they go house to house through the town, board of patrol planes go fucking circling, 65 National Guardsments are called out to assist what became at the time the most extensive investigation in Valley history. Wow. But it's not until four days later after she disappeared that Irene's body is found floating in a nearby irrigation canal. She's fully dressed except for her shoes and underwear are missing.

The right side of her face is badly bruised. She had two black eyes and the autopsy reveals that she had been beaten with a hard object and suffocated. The state of decomposition suggests that she'd been dead for fewer than four days. So maybe she had been kept somewhere for a day or so. And she had been raped while unconscious. Yeah. The local newspapers go fucking nuts with rumors and speculation.

Everyone is like being fucking targeted or fingered, including this prominent local citizen who had died or heart attack days after she disappeared, you know, or that had been transients or someone that had crushed on her because she was so beautiful, but she was also, you know, not, she was dating, but not, you know, she was Catholic. You know what I mean? Sure. The first question, more than 500 people in the weeks following the murder, but behind the scenes detectives, they don't talk about this in public and the newspapers don't really

talk about this. They are focusing on a 27 year old priest named John fight. What? Yeah. A priest. Okay. Fight. It's FEIT had recently finished his seminary training in San Antonio and his name kept

turning up in their investigation. So he had recently come into town. He was a bright and well, he was bright and well mannered. He had dark hair and horned Britain glasses. He looked like he'd be in Weezer. You know what I'm saying? Yes. Yeah.

Um, he struck parishioners though as a loof and a bit of a loner and seemed ambivalent about his vocation. When he was asked why he had joined the priesthood, he said, I just want to give it a try. I'm sorry, but if God isn't in that sentence or Jesus or some fucking, you can't say that out loud. Was he new to Catholicism? You gotta, you gotta like be in it to win it. Like if anyone asked either of us why we wanted to do true crime podcasts, it'd be like a

passionate plea of how interested in fucking crime we are. That's right. And we're not. And talking. Talking to God. Right. Mostly talking. Like to not, it's almost that very glib, flippant thing of cocky.

Like it's, here's my funny joke and like really it's none of your business is what he's saying. Right. Which you're not supposed to say. Anyone who's asking you is like being earnest and being like, tell me, I want to connect to you. You're a priest. I'm looking for some fucking guidance and some wisdom. Can I get a fucking amen, please?

There you go. On the night of Irene's disappearance, father fight had heard confessions and taken part in a midnight mass. He'd also admitted to his superiors that he had met privately with Irene in the church rectory. And I wrote in parentheses the house because I didn't know what a rectory was. I thought it was an office, the church's office. I thought it was, you know, where he went and wrote out his, I thought it was an office.

Well, it's a house. Right. I didn't know that. But it's connected to the church, so it kind of is like an office. Do all the priests live there or just the one like head priest? It's kind of like case by case, like in my hometown, in St. Vincent's, they live at the rectory. And but you can also go there, like at my mom's funeral, we went to talk to the priest

in the rectory. Okay. Like in a downstairs office. Doesn't rectory sound like it should be like a side room office? Well, it sounds like factory. It's where they're just churning out Jesus statues all day. All night. But I mean, I think it's like, it's basically, you know, the church hall is where people

like have their, you know, Sunday coffee clutches or whatever. Directory is where you go and you're like, we need to plan a funeral, we need to plan a wedding. There's some serious shit happening here. This is the business. And then upstairs, the priests live. And then it's the busybodies next door. Yes.

Making fucking, I was going to say cougal, but they don't get cougal. No, they actually, they ban cougal. Yeah. Long ago. All right. I got it. So the rectory is okay. And that was viewed by other priests.

It was really inappropriate to take anyone, especially a fucking hot 25 year old lovely woman. All right. So, so yeah, cause unless she has called, like if it was a parish business, she would have called like the lady, the lady that runs the office and then like, I need to make an appointment. But this was for confession specifically. Oh yeah.

No, you do that in the confession booth. There's a, there's a booth that is titled for the thing she was doing. They had people build it right into the church. So people specifically, you can sit there and pray and then look at people getting confession. Uh-huh. That's the whole idea of confession. Well, he took her to the rectory. Gross.

Pass. Okay. Yeah. It's problematic. Yes, it is. Also several churchgoers who stood in his confession line, which had fucking stalled out because he fucking picked her out and took her to the rectory. He's a doc.

That night told detectives that he seemed to have been absent from the sanctuary for long periods of time. And another priest's father, John O'Brien, reported seeing scratches on his hands when they drank coffee together at midnight mass. Then detectives learned that on March 23rd, so that's three weeks before Irene, Irene disappeared and her body was found, that a woman had been attacked at a Catholic church 12 miles from that church, the one where Irene went to, 12 miles away. Twenty-year-old college student Maria America Guerrera had visited Sacred Heart Church in

Edinburgh and noticed a young man with dark hair and horn room glasses, a weasel, sitting alone in one of the back pews. In her mind, she was like that. I think she had an immediate reaction to him. He made me nervous, but she was like, calm down, Maria, you're in the church. You're in the fucking house of God. Nothing can go wrong. Right.

You know, she let her guard down, which is totally understandable. In a church, of course. In a church. Yeah. When she went to the altar and knelt at the communion rail, a man grabbed her from behind and tried to put a rag over her mouth. Holy shit. Yeah.

She fucking fought the shit out of him, and when he put his hand back over her mouth to silence her because she was screaming, she bit the shit out of his fingers until he drew blood. She drew blood. Yes. You know what I'm saying? Yep. She ran out the side door of the church.

She escaped, and in her sworn statement, she said that she thought her attacker was a priest. That was the first feeling she got. Wow. Which was very controversial. Yes. You know what I'm saying? I bet.

Because this was the 50s or the 60s. This is 1960. So we're technically still in the 50s. So I wrote about this. This is a long time before the sexual allegations against priests started to come out and people believed them. Yes. This wasn't until the 90s that these allegations came out against priests, sexually amassing

children, and it wasn't even until way later that people believed them. Well, and of course, horrible document. I mean, amazing documentary. I wrote this down. Is it the... It's a Deliver Us from Evil. And there's a guy in it that talks about when he got molested by a priest being driven in the priest's car because he didn't have a dad. And so he's like, I'll take him out to ice cream or whatever, gets molested in the priest's

car. The priest drops him off. He walks into the house, says to the mom what just happened. The mother slaps him across the face and says, how dare you ever say that. And then the priest continues visiting their house for years to come. It's the most upsetting. It's just children against adults, and there's no... Everyone's like, no fucking way. It's not even children against adults.

It's children against God's chosen people and these highly religious people, which I don't completely understand, which is why I was excited to talk to you about this because you were raised Catholic. They're infallible. Yes. They are infallible. And you talking badly against a priest is talking badly against Jesus fucking Christ. That's right.

Right. It's like pre-Vatican two-shit where it's like, it's old, like when the popes used to control everybody and they were the richest people and they'd fuck anything they wanted and it was just all about power and money and basically these... Yeah, this is why people who were pedophiles went into the priesthood because they went in with carte blanche. And we're not saying that Catholicism is bad religion, that priests are bad people, that any... I'm not talking shit on any of this, it's just this reality of a really bad period

that happened that we need to acknowledge. Well, yeah. And I mean, I think at this point it's so been acknowledged. Right. Most of the people that I know that are good Catholics and that are faith-based, they still believe in... They have a relationship with God and spirituality, but most of the adults that I know because of the stuff that's happened in the Catholic Church are incredible. And I don't just mean like people my age, I mean like people my parents age that are

just so... It's like you can't look at that power structure and go, this should continue, this is going great, they've handled stuff great and it should continue, there are very few people that feel that way because it's just so... What a horrible thing. It's not that you can't give people absolute power like that. No, no, not at all, especially that access to families. And I have to say this too, there are priests in St. Vincent's that are some of the best people I've ever met. Absolutely.

And it's just that kind of... It's almost like the bad ones steal the good will from the good ones. Definitely. Because those ones, it's like what a great effect they have on people's lives. Yes. That's how it all works. Definitely. So, yeah, so this is way before any of these things came to light.

So at Sunday Mass, after Irene's funeral, just to show you how protected the priests were, the priest told the congregation that he knew there were rumors that a priest was involved in Irene's murder and he said, quote, it is impossible that a priest would commit a crime like this, don't speak of it, don't even let yourself think it. He said that himself. Add to the congregation. Uh-huh. Yeah.

Right? So in late April detectives drained the irrigation canal where they had found Irene's body and on the bottom was a light green Eastman Kota Slide viewer with a long black cord. So like a slide viewer, like a picture viewer. Like one of these? Tching, tching, tching. Yeah. But like to the wall.

Oh, okay. Like a slide show thing. Yeah. We call those Kota Slide viewers at our house. You know. There's a photo of it online. If you look it up. I mean, like of the actual one.

So it's got a long cord on it. It's at the bottom of the irrigation canal where they think her body was thrown in. Really clustered for it. And they also find a candelabra that belonged to the church. John Fite is like, oh yeah, I bought that Kota Slide thing last summer. He like, is like, oh yeah, that was mine. And those candelabra, that candelabra belongs to the church. So what he probably strangled her with and what he probably harrowed a fucking head with

is at the bottom of the fucking canal and he raises his fucking hand and was like, that's mine. Wow. Yeah. Because kind of in the confidence of knowing no one can do anything about it. Who fucking, yeah, maybe who knows. So finally the priest sits down with the detectives in early May. He provides a, of course, meticulous account of his actions on Easter weekend.

He says that he had counseled Irene in the Sacred Heart Rectory. He said, yeah, I totally did that because she had some information she wanted to give me that was private. That's why I brought her, that's why I brought her in there. Because of the confession booth, which is a muffled closet that no one can hear from the outside of, wasn't private enough. She could only scream her confession is the problem. Jesus, no.

He saw her leave though at whatever time and then he had these like dumb excuses for why he had cuts on his hand and he's like, and goodbye. Love tests implicate him in both Irene's murder and the attack on Maria Guerrera a couple weeks earlier and in August father fight is indicted for assault with intent to rape Maria Guerrera. Oh shit. Yeah. The jury though, motherfucking deadlocks and the proceedings end in a mistrial.

And so rather than face a second trial in 1962 father fight pleads no contest to reduce charges of aggravated assault gets fined $500 and that's it. Takes that right out of the, goodbye. He takes it right out of the church, the bucket, the what do they call it? The collection plate. No. I'm losing all of my terminology. There you go.

I mean, Jesus Christ. That's the guy. Jesus Christ. He's like, can't, Jesus can see and hear you if you're trying to rape people in church. Really? Yeah. So it's now alleged that the district attorney, that the district attorney at the time and church leaders cut a deal to stop the investigation into John fight to protect the reputation

of the church. Also most elected officials at the time in the, it's the Hildegow County were Catholic, mostly elected leaders. And it was at a time when none other than fucking Senator John F. Kennedy is running for the president, for president that year, who is a fucking Catholic. That's right. It's, he's the, he's, there's never been a Catholic president before. He's the, there's only one other Catholic that had ever been a nominee for president.

Oh. And one of the major parties he had lost. So an anti. Dewey. Was it Dewey? I don't remember. I didn't even write it down. That wasn't an honest question.

I wouldn't have known. An anti-Catholic prejudice is fucking big time, so they're like, we need Kennedy to win. We're all fucking Catholics and let's not give them a reason to hate Catholics. Oh, okay. So like, for political reasons. Yeah. Yeah.

Ligiting. Ligiting. JFK being fucking elected. Wow. And like, you know, it's Texas. It's a big fucking place. God, that's so funny to think. I just always, it's just my own weird bias.

Like I used to think everyone was Catholic. When I was a kid that I just assumed everyone was Catholic. That's so interesting. Was there a lot of Catholic? Well, you went to a Catholic school. I went to Catholic school, but also our town was just small and mostly Christian. Although then later on I learned that there was a big bunch of, Petaluma was like one of the biggest receivers of immigrants after World War II, of Jewish people who were running

from the war, refugees. Thank you. Where do they live now? They still live there. There's Jewish. There's a couple of temples in Petaluma. Yeah. Okay.

Because I think one or two of the families had like chicken farms, so they're like, everybody go out and work on, go work on the chicken ramps. Very cool. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. That could be a lie. No.

Nope. You said it? No. Believe it? I'm almost positive I read that somewhere. It's true. It feels so true. It feels really good in my heart.

Great. Okay. So basically that means no murder charges are ever filed against father fight and shortly after the killing, the church transfers him to a far away monastery. So in the 60s, he spent some time at a treatment center for troubled priests in New Mexico and at monasteries in multiple states. Hold the phone, please. I will not.

I want to go to a treatment center for troubled priests and kick them all in the dick. Right. The horror movie that needs to be written out of that. I mean like... The children come and attack and kill them all. Oh my God. Oh my God. It's like, they're the corn, but at a fucking monastery for troubled quote, troubled priests,

for it's revenge, the children come out of the fields. It's called... You're in trouble, priests. You're in trouble. You're in trouble. I heard what you did this past summer. Right. Yeah.

Said Jesus. Said Jesus to the Lord. Mm-hmm. That's fucked up. Mm-hmm. Who... Mm-hmm. Everyone in that neighborhood where that place was was just like move away.

Well, remember when we watched, what was the really great documentary on Netflix over the summer? The Keepers? Mm-hmm. And they... And he went and visited the house where all of the priests had gotten sent to. Yeah. And they lived in their own child molesters and shit.

Yeah. Keepers is still fucking great. Everyone should watch it. It's so good. Listen, if you want to have a binge weekend of terrible shit, you should watch Deliver Us from Evil, which will break your heart. You need to watch... It's historical information that you need to know about.

It's just fucking life lessons. And you just need to like calm your pessimism a little bit, optimism, I don't... It's gonna say. Well, also there's... It's that thing of... It feels like a very new cultural thing where it's like everybody's got to get real with the fact that true sociopaths and psychopaths move in this world in exactly these unexpected ways.

They are baseball coaches. They are priests. They move into their boy scout. They manipulate. Yes. And they're good at it. And you're not, and you need to get okay with that. Yes.

You got to... If you're a single parent, you got to keep your eye double peeled. You got to triple check all the people that want to be in your child's life, all that stuff, which we're saying that to people who know it by heart. I mean, like that's... Yeah, but you forget that shit, man. Like when it's you and your people and this, you know, a guy you're dating, of course it's fine.

You know what I mean? It's like... Of course. You don't think about it in terms of your own life. You think about it outside of you. Yes. I remember reading that Sports Illustrated thing about how many baseball coaches, like little league coaches, were pedophiles.

And it's just the most frightening and insane thing. I want to read that. You got to read it. What is it? It's insane. I'm pretty sure it was the cover Sports Illustrated like 10 years ago. Oh my God, I need to read that. It's so crazy.

Because it's then they're in the lives. They're right there with all the sports and everything's dude and sports and couldn't be safer. And games and we need to go to this and practices and shit. And then that's how they select the ones who don't have anybody that's going to come and beat the shit out of them if they do anything to the kid. They like... That's how they spot vulnerable children and people who are, I mean, it's just the most

fucked up thing. Very awful. Also, okay, also the movie Spotlight, which came out recently, amazing, is about that too. So have a nice binge weekend and then watch Bob's Burgers and Big Mouth to get yourself to feel better. This Big Mouth is amazing. Big Mouth is so good.

Okay. Ba-ba-ba. Da-da-da-da. New Mexico. Monasteries. Ba-ba-ba. Oh, here's fun. At one point...

Here's fun. Here's fun. Here's fun. Left turn. At one point he served as a supervisor charged with clearing priests for assignments to churches. So the priests who got sent to the fucking, you're a terrible person, get out of this town, they're going to fucking murder you. The attempted rapist priest.

They sent him to these places and his monasteries and our fucking friend, John Fyte, was on the fucking clearing house to let them go back into the goddamn world. Good. This motherfucker. Healthy. Yeah. Just good decisions all around being made, everybody, at every level. We have one open seat.

Who should we fill with John Fyte? Wait, is the devil not available? Okay, then. Right. So one of the men that he helped clear for parish was James Porter, who isn't the guy from Deliver Us From Evil, but could be, a child molester convicted of assaulting more than a hundred victims who was a priest. He was like, get him back in there.

Yeah. You're in the game. You fucking dick. Okay. John Fyte left the priesthood in 1972 and moved to Phoenix, worked as an insurance salesman, got married, had kids, and grandkids, lives a fucking normal goddamn life. Whoa. Well, Irene's parents, Nick and Josephina Garza, they both passed away in the nineties

without ever seeing anyone prosecuted for Irene's murder. But they were assured by people in the church that Father Fyte, who they always fucking suspected, would be punished by the church if they found out anything had been done. And they were assured that this was a bigger sentence handed than any court could hand down. They were like, okay, great, because they still fucking believe in the Catholic Church, because they were fucking Catholics. Well, yeah.

So, April 2002, let's jump ahead. Okay. All right. Good. 42 years after the murder of Irene Garza, a former monk named Dale Tashny, who had left the priesthood more than 30 years earlier to marry, suddenly he gets a fucking conscience. He says that in the summer of 1963, he was asked to counsel John Fyte while John stayed at the monastery where this guy Dale was a fucking priest monk.

During their six months of counseling, John Fyte told Tashny of the night that Irene died. This guy called the fucking investigator and was like, let me tell you something. He told him that Father Fyte had asked her to come to the church rectory, had heard her confession, and had heard her confession. After the confession, he had restrained Irene, maybe bound and gagged her. He had fondled her breasts, and before he returned to the sanctuary to hear confessions, he had moved her to the rectory basement. Later that evening, he moved her to another location.

Then on Easter Sunday, so she's still alive. Then on Easter Sunday, he put Irene in a bathtub and placed a bag over her head. As he was leaving the bathroom, he heard her say, I can't breathe, I can't breathe. And then Tashny said, when he came back later on that day or early evening, he found her dead in the bathtub. And then that night, he put her in a car and took her and dropped her off along a roadside where there was a canal. Tashny had kept it to himself at a sense of religious obligation for more than four decades.

He didn't tell anyone. Well, it's like he confessed to him, and you can't... in terms of being a priest that hears confession, you're not allowed to repeat it. I mean, I feel so grateful that he came forward and said stuff, but at the same time, it's like this man murdered this woman. It doesn't... then that's not a priest. Then that's not a priest anymore. The man who murdered someone doesn't get to have that anymore.

No, but everybody gets it. It's not just for priests. That's like they're talking to God through you and you don't get to intervene because they're asking for forgiveness. And so you have to be... no matter what somebody says to you, as a priest, you have to say you're forgiven. Well, he was counseling him, so it wasn't confession. I mean, I don't know technically, oh yeah.

I bet you they'd say it was just for the protection. But the other thing is, wasn't she found brutally beaten? So that's bullshit, right? She was beaten and raped while unconscious, so clearly he left some shit out, or they just didn't tell you everything in this article. Yeah, yeah. This is too much. But I would bet you that... he's basically saying, well, I just did a couple things.

I walked away and she died. And then she's... I mean, it's unfortunate. He's basically telling the story to this other priest too bad that happened, as opposed to you violently fucking attacked this woman. Well, one of the things that Tashne said was he didn't show what I would consider to be compunction or sorrow or grief or anything like that. So he had kept it to himself, and then at this point in 2002, he's in his 70s, and he had a change of heart.

And he was like, I'll fucking testify, let's do this. Which is incredible. So, Texas Rangers then begin to reinvestigate the case. When he's contacted, fight, who's now 69-year-olds, says that man doesn't exist anymore, and he won't say anything else. Like... The man who raped and murdered a woman? Uh-huh.

Yeah, he does, dude. Yeah, he does. Sorry, he's in you. So, Rangers also interviewed Father O'Brien, who back then was like, I saw scratches on his hands. And he tells the Rangers that a few months after the murder, fight... he had confessed in frontage fight about whether he had killed Irene and the priest had told him everything. So, he too was like, yep, I know everything, I'll fucking testify.

Oh, shit. And yeah, he'll tell everything. And I would say this too, this was back... I think that people very rarely broke that. Like, if I'm telling you, if I'm giving you confession, basically you have to forgive me at the end, you don't get to say anything. That's in police TV shows all the time. Right. Is that not true anymore?

I'm saying, I think back then, no one would ever break it, whereas nowadays, I think it's like now everyone's seeing... the reason that that rule is put into place, maybe not have been for the best reasons. Or that there were many more people that would exploit it than anyone would expect. Yeah, yeah, that's true. Am I getting Catholic defensive? Sorry. That's okay.

So then in July 2002, the Brownsville Herald ran a front page story on Irene's murder. And the suspicion about John's fight. And so Hildigo County District Attorney Renee Guerrera was asked if he planned to pursue an indictment in the case, because they were like, we have all this fucking evidence now, including two people who he told murdered Irene and they're willing to testify. And this guy, Renee, was like, said, quote, can it be solved? Well, I guess if you believe that pigs can fly, anything is possible. And then he said, why would anyone be haunted by her death?

She died. Her killer got away. So he fucking flippantly. Who is this guy? This guy, Renee Guerrera. He's a fucking Hildigo, no, wait, Hild, hmm, Hidalgo. Thank you. Oh my God.

I only say that because of the movie starring Vigo Mortensen about him and his horse. Hidalgo. Hidalgo. Yeah. Thank you, Jesus. Yeah. So at the time. So then he got all this negative publicity and he's like, okay, fine.

Sorry, he was the prosecutor though. He was the district attorney. Oh, okay, okay. So he got all this negative publicity because her fucking family is still alive. Her parents aren't, but the rest of her family is like, we fucking care that she died. So he, in 2004, he asked, he has two of his prosecutors present the evidence to a grand jury to indict John Fite, but they don't fucking call either of those priests to testify, the ones who he told that he killed them.

And so of course, in 2004, the jury declined to indict him and no billed the case. So that was the chance to fucking finally before John Fite dies to get him held responsible for the murder of Irene. And those two priests had said that they would testify. They wanted to. They were waiting by the fucking phone to be called up to testify. And they just didn't do it. They didn't call them.

And it turns out, of course, Renee Guerrera was Catholic. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So 10 fucking years later, in 2014, there's a district attorney's race in Hidalgo. Yeah. County. And finally, Renee gets fucking beat by Ricardo Rodriguez.

And in his race, he promised he would reexamine the case of elected. Oh, shit. So fucking Ricardo is elected. Wow. Great. They spent a year and two months reexamining the case and all the evidence and more than 57 fucking years after the murder of Irene Garza, 83 year old John Fite is finally fucking arrested in Arizona for first degree murder, former monk, Dale fucking Tashny, 88 years

old fucking testifies 88 years old. Now when you say monk, does it say anything else about that him being a monk? There's just a photo of him with that hair. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. He's got the robes and the hair and you're like, oh honey, you must have been dedicated because my God, he looks like he's on spaceballs. I'm just trying to figure out what that is if he was like a Christian brother or what

like his specific deal was. I'm sure it's very involved, but I don't understand. Okay. I just knew that it was like a monk, but he was like, but it was like priests hanging out with him. Yeah. I don't know. He's just in a different kind of like set up Catholic thing.

Yeah. Okay. Maybe he made wine. The hair though. Yeah. My God. Dale, what's up, 88 year old Dale testifies against him. December 8th, what's the date today, the 12th?

Yes. December fucking 8th, 2017, fucking four days ago. Oh shit. Yeah. After a six day trial in the Hidalgo County Courthouse in Enberg, a jury fucking convicted John Fite. Whoa. Now 85 year old ex priest of murdering Irene Garza and he received a life sentence in prison.

Oh my God. Yeah. This just fucking came out. That's incredible. 1960 is when it happened and fucking, what are we, 2017? Yeah. Wow. She was still alive today.

Irene will be 83 years old in a letter written to a friend right before she died. She stated that she's happier than she's ever been and said to her friend, remember the last time we talked, I told you I was afraid of death. Well, I think I'm cured. You see, I've been going to communion and mass daily and you can't imagine the courage and faith and happiness it's given me. And that's the story of the murder of Irene Garza by motherfucker John Fite. Wow.

I can't believe that ended well. I know, right? It never happens in the Catholic church. Every time it's a Catholic church story. Yeah. It frustrates you. It disgusts you. There are cases too.

It goes crazy. Yeah. So he's like in one of those walkers in court that are also chairs, you know, that you see. Yeah. Trying to look all old. And he, he, he, a couple of things he said when he got arrested were like, I don't understand. This happened in 1960.

Like he, his excuse of, I don't understand this was happening now. This was so long ago. And this woman says to him, there's no statute of limitations on murder. Like he's trying to play it off like this was so long ago. Yeah. Why are you guys making a big deal about this? Yeah. Exactly.

He's a confused old man. Yeah. I mean, he's a fucking sexual predator and murderer. Well, also, it doesn't matter how old he is. It doesn't matter how old he is. It doesn't matter what his opinion about it is or grandpa or whatever, his confusion is not relevant. No.

You, you already were confused. That's why you're like this. Yeah. So you, your opinion about it and how you see it is not valid because according to you, no one's life matters. Right. And any woman is an object. Some woman who died in 1960.

Who cares? No. No. A lot of people care. Yeah. A lot of people care and a lot of people are tired of people like that guy exploiting positions of not just power, but automatic trust. Yeah.

It's that thing. That's what's so gross. Yeah. Can you imagine going into a church or like, I can't imagine going into a church and getting a creepy vibe of like, oh no, the guy that works here is scaring me. Yeah. That's the exact opposite of how churches are supposed to work. Well, there should be no such thing as automatic trust.

Yeah. I mean, it sucks, but even, you know, you're fucking pediatrician or you're fucking, you know, you're, what's it called? Anything. There's just, there's no such thing anymore. Right. And there never was. We just let it happen.

Right. Yeah. It's, it's okay to be, just be aware. Be careful and thank God for the internet and checkie, checkie, checkie. Check. Everyone's fucking. Everything. Yeah.

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Hey, I'm Mike Corey, the host of Wondery's podcast against the odds. In our next season, three masked men hijack a school bus full of children in the sleepy farm town of Chowchilla, California. They bury the children and their bus driver deep underground, planning to hold them for ransom. Local police and the FBI marshal a search effort, but the trail quickly runs dry. As the air supply for the trapped children dwindles, a pair of unlikely heroes emerges. Follow against the odds wherever you get your podcasts.

You can listen ad free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. I still hear people talking about that story here in Texas, even though John Fight died in prison in 2020. Okay, for Karen, I picked episode 130, which covers the creepy, nasty case of Fred and Rosemary West in the UK. Again, this is a story I've read about for years. I love that they covered this case because I'm not sure that everyone's heard it. And it's just so terrible.

So here's the story of Fred and Rosemary West and their House of Horrors in England. So my story this week is one that we haven't done yet. It's super famous. People ask us to do it all the time and it asks us why we haven't done it. And it's another one of those ones where it's like, I'm going to save it for a live show. No, no, I want to do it at a live show and it's so depressing and I don't want to do it. Yeah.

Because it is the hideous. And I am telling you if you have any, any issues or triggers around molestation, incest, sexual abuse at all, you do not want to listen to the story because it's fucking terrible. It's the story of Fred and Rosemary West. Oh, yeah. It is a good one. It's so like, I have attempted to do this story, I think like four different times and every time just like, I don't, this is awful.

I want to hear it and I don't have those triggers because I'm a fucking monster who likes terrible things all the time. Right. But I can't imagine you doing this at the London show and it just going quiet. Yes. But then you're like, why didn't you do it? I know it's such a weird balance, but it's also like, yeah, it's for live shows, we need to be able to talk to each other and like at least have a semblance of a good time and

interaction. And this is just all, this is some of the darkest shit of all time. Well, I must not know all the dark shit then. So tell me. Yeah, it's crazy. And but the good thing that, that I was happy about is early on, I, I tried to do a recommendation and tried to reference this show called, it was a, I think originally it was like a TV show in England, starting Emily Watson called appropriate adult and it stars Emily Watson.

It's Dominic West, who is from the wire, but he's like British, amazing British actor. And and then this incredible actress who I still can't get over her performance. She plays Rosemary West and her name is Monica Dolan. And she is so fucking good, I don't have a picture of her. She's so fucking good in this thing, inappropriate adult. So Emily Watson plays, well, essentially there's a thing in England, it's when you, they have a person that's essentially like a citizen social worker that just is there as the witness to make sure that the person when they're being interviewed by police is being treated

fairly. And what's that? It's a victim. Oh, you mean, but it's a murderer advocate. Exactly. It's like basically, and it's for, it's usually either for children who've been arrested or for people who are like, somehow have maybe a learning disability or something along with them.

But they, so they bring her, they bring, you know, this woman in to to be this, I believe her name was Janet Leach. And it's a true story. So when it gets that part, you can, I would 1000% recommend appropriate adult and watching it. It's available on iTunes. Dude. And it's in two parts.

So, but it, it basically goes into once he's arrested and it goes into the insanity of like how the whole case kind of unfolds. So anyway, that, that's part of where I got this whole story, but and then there was an article in the independent written by Will Bennett in October of 1995 where I got a bunch of information. So we'll start with Rosemary West, unlike anyone in, in any, I just can't like, when you talk about this woman, you see a picture of her, Stephen, would you pull up a picture? Oh, I know.

She's like super motherly. Right. Yes. She looks like every mom from the 80s. Totally. Like the really big glasses and like just a short kind of reasonable hair. Yeah. Little front, little front zone.

She's had it. She's in the front zone for sure. She's had some kids. She's literally like, she just doesn't carry her eight kids. She's like eight. Just, yeah. Holy fuck. Yeah.

So she's, she just looks like the average lady walking down the street with her gross and no shame on the front zone. Like I have the front zone. I'm the mayor of the fucking front zone, so don't worry about it. Great. Yeah. This photo of them is just classic. She took her glasses off for the photo.

It just looks like they're on a Sears couch with the best wallpaper I've ever seen in my life in the background. It looks like the fucking canvas we have in the, Yes. And they use that in appropriate adult. They have her sitting on a couch in front of that wallpaper, like, so they, they clearly tried to recreate the house as it was. And this house is so fucking creepy.

She looks cute. She's got it. Her little like Dorothy Hamill haircut. He looks like, um, if, um, Jemaine, not Jemaine, um, yeah, Jemaine from fucking Flight of the Concord's like really wanted to go all out and play like an ugly gross dude. Don't you think? I think Jemaine Clement is hot as fuck. Don't get me wrong.

No, he is. He looks like a leisure suit. Jemaine. It's like if Jemaine on Halloween trying to be a monster, right? Essentially. Right. Um, cause he does look a lot like, he looks like a Muppets monster. Yes.

His teeth are crazy. He has a unibrow, um, his, but small eyes and he just, like, he looks like he's up to no good. Totally. Um, and that's also why he's so fascinating in, um, uh, appropriate adult. You get that sense of what a true psychopath he is. I bet he had like a crazy laugh. What?

I bet he had like a crazy laugh. Oh, maybe. Like an unexpected. Something he wouldn't expect. Like the kind of laugh that would make you leave a bar. Right. No matter how many vodka Collins you had waiting for you, like kind of jar you. Yes.

Okay, so Rosemary was born Rosemary Letts in Devon, November 29th, 1953. And of course it is, it's all of these, they're both of their backgrounds, tragedy from jump. So Rosemary's parents, he actually calls her Rose for the most of the time. Um, both of her parents suffer from mental illness. Her mother, when she's pregnant with Rose, falls into a deep depression and they give her electroshock therapy with a baby with the baby. So there's lots of theorizing that, uh, there was prenatal injury to her, probably definitely in the brain.

Um, so because when, uh, Rose is growing up, lots of aggression, lots of temper tantrums. She's a terrible student. Um, the parents have a terrible marriage. Her father Bill is a paranoid schizophrenic. Oh, fuck. Yep. Um, so he's super violent and he is terrifying. He is, uh, there's just this awful presence in the home, um, to the point where the mother

moves herself and Rosemary out of the house. Um, but, uh, in their adolescence, Rosemary moves back into the house. Oh honey. Um, and it's, it's around the same time. So she hits puberty and becomes obsessed with her body and her developing body. She has a brother that she walks around naked in front of all the time that she begins to engage in incestuous acts with. Um, and, uh, she essentially, it's not happening out of the blue.

It turns out her father has been molesting her since she was 13 years old. Of course he has. Yeah. And so she, Rosemary not only is obsessed with sex and, and, uh, but she's also preoccupied with older men. Um, and that's how she ends up meeting Fred West. Because Rosemary is 15 when she meets the 27 year old Fred West. Shut up.

Yeah. Ew. Yeah. So she's, she is a sophomore in high school and he's fucking 27. Oh my God. And Fred, one of the worst people ever to exist as a child, he was beaten and molested. When he was 17, he got into a car accident that left him with a limp and a metal plate in his head.

Head injury. Right. Yeah. After, after that, uh, car accident, he was never the same. Can you imagine knowing someone had gotten a car accident or like living with them and being, they're acting really like that always scares me when people are like, he wasn't acting the same after that. Yeah.

Like events got in a car accident and then started getting like these rage outbursts. Yeah. What would I do? It happens all the time. It happens to people all the time. I couldn't, it's terrifying. Yeah. It's really awful.

Also he's, but I don't, I think that he probably wasn't the greatest before the car. A hundred percent. Because he also sustained another head injury when a woman pushed him off a fire escape because he stuck his hand up her skirt for her. Can you imagine? I know. She's like, get the fuck out of here. Holy shit.

Also at some point along the line, he got his own sister pregnant. I was really trying to make Georgia do a spit take with her can of wine. Not in my own house. It's gross. Not in my backyard, only on stage. So then he moves to Scotland after all that, he moves to Scotland to become an ice cream truck driver. Oh, but he comes back to England after he runs over a four year old child.

What the fuck? So we're on strike 19 now with Fred West. Can't just put him to sleep. No good. So in the late 60s, he comes back to England and he gets a job as, of course, a builder because for some reason, all of these serial killers somehow go into the contracting field. That is the weirdest fucking thing. I guess it's the independent work schedule, cameras, I don't know, burial, easy burial

tools, tools and some men's work. So the only good thing anyone says about him is that he's known to be a hard worker, which is like that for him. Right. So he's on coke. Exactly. And he just loves fucking nails. Dig.

Yeah. So it's around this time where he meets 15 year old Rose. Hi, I'm 15. I'm 27. Yeah. And but she's like, well, I've always had this paranoid schizophrenic molester father. So this is better. That horrible father objects strongly to Rose's having her this relationship with this old

man essentially with the crazy, crazy teeth. But she basically believes that they believe that they are like psychically connected. And there's this part in the appropriate adult like psychically, right? It's really what it is. There's a part in appropriate adult where he, Fred, spoiler alert, he ends up getting arrested. He's in the police station and he goes, oh, Rose is in the police station. And they're like, no, no, she's not here.

We haven't arrested her yet. And he goes, no, she's here. And then they leave the interrogation room and she was there. And no one, no one in the room knew she was there except for Fred. So there is this, they have a very odd, creepy, creepy, creepy connection and thing. So their relationship starts, he is abusive to her. Of course, he's sexually, you know, technically sexually assaulting her and raping her. She's 15.

Right. But he's also violent with her because he's a violent person. So she's becomes pregnant relatively soon after this affair starts. And she gives birth to their daughter in 1970, her daughter, their daughter's named Heather when, when she is, when Rosemary's 17. Fred West already has two children from a previous relationship. And at this, around the same sister, no, no, he's, he's had a different relationship. He's sent to prison for petty theft and for fine evasion.

Around the same time. So 17 year old, highly unstable Rose becomes mother to now three children all at once. She has to take over those other two kids. Yeah. Yeah. And they're, they call it takeover. It's a, it is a full takeover. So Fred, it's two daughters, unfortunately, Charmaine and Anna Marie are his daughters

that he had from a previous relationship with a woman named Rena Costello. And so at some point while Fred is still in jail and Rosemary is taking care of those three kids, Charmaine, one of Fred's daughters disappears. And when asked where she's gone, Rose tells people that she's gone to Scotland to, to live with her biological mother. So when Fred gets out of jail, he comes back and they move from the house that they did live in to the now infamous 20 house at 25 Cromwell Street in Gloucester. And the neighbors know them as slightly eccentric, but nice.

They, people say that they're the kind of neighbors that would do anything for you. And that's because they have no fucking idea what's going on in what is actually an in-truth a complete hell house. So it turns out Rosemary is a sex worker who was working out of her own home. And they have set up the house, the bedrooms have our outfitted with cameras and listening devices. She's still a teenager this way. She is.

Yeah. Basically, you know, or 19 or something. Yeah. She's in her late teens, early 20s, when all this starts. So Fred can watch these sections, sessions she's having, gross, sessions with her clients from afar and in the house. And if that's not dark enough for you, it's not dark enough for me. Okay.

Then one of her clients has her own father built that then Fred knows that that's dark enough for me that well, it gets darker because then Rose eventually encourages Fred to begin to sexually abuse Anna Marie. And Rose would join in that. I mean, she is. What the fuck? It actually reminds me of the Ken and Barbie Killers, Karlo Molka and from Canada. Like giving you a kid.

She gives him the gift of her sister kind of a thing. Exactly. Oh my. It's the insane sexual assault incest psychopaths who have no emotional fucking understanding of human emotions. And it's the thing of when women do that, when they're mothers and they do it to their own children. Yeah.

Truly it's this taboo that is truly mind blowing. Yeah. You know. But it's not a taboo to them because they were raped by their fathers too. That's exactly right. It's not fucking weird. Exactly right. It's that's that was childhood for them, for both of these people.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh my God. No good. So they then begin selling Anna Marie to pedophiles. Oh. Yeah. How old is she?

At the time, I think that started when she was eight around the age of eight. Oh my God. One will go one darker. The grandfather was a client also. So fucking Rosemary's grossed rapist molesty father. Dad. Yeah. Jesus Christ.

Just the worst. Yeah. This is so again for all the people who inquired. This is why I would I would get to about this part and just be like, yeah, this is the worst story ever told. So eventually Rose gets pregnant and has eight different children, five of them are Fred West. Holy shit.

Three of them are fathered by clients. They're not sure exactly who they are, but but are any of them her dad? They don't not nothing I read said that, but it could definitely be there were rumors that some of them were local authority figures. Yes. So I think that's why this went like on. It was rumored, but it was never reported for a long time that things went on in this household for way, way, way too long because this was basically the sex worker of of town.

Yeah. And so nobody was like, but it's also like if this authority figure comes in to, you know, have sex for money with Rosemary, it's not like he knows the other shits going on in the house. So it's not like he would have looked into it. He didn't look into, you know, you know what I mean? Right. It's not like they were getting reports and then they were ignoring them, right?

But they also were in no way trying to look at anything that was happening in that house. Sure. Because they knew at least they were guilty of something. And also there was a lot of kind of intense S and M bondage. Yeah. Yeah. Violent sex. It's yeah.

At one point when they live on Cromwell Street, Rena Costello shows up to get her daughter's back from Fred. Okay. And Rena disappears. Oh, the mom of the two girls, one of whom is ex-nate and not around anymore, that mom disappears. Yes. Oh my God.

So, okay. So in 1972, um, and this is when basically it goes from all the ultimate depravity within the household and within their own family in their own home. And then they begin to branch out in 1972. They pick up a 17 year old hitchhiker named Carolyn Owens and they ask if she'll be their nanny because they have all these kids and they need extra help. She says yes. She finds them nice charm, whatever.

And she moves into the house on Cromwell Street. And after two weeks, she tries to leave because of course it's fucking a living hell and insanity. But Fred and Rose go out and they find her hitchhiking and they pick her back up. They get her back into the car. Rose begins to sexually assault her. And then Fred pull, as she's trying to fight Rose off, Fred pulls over, punches her in the face and she goes unconscious. When she wakes up, she's back at 25 Cromwell Street, gagged, hands bound, being mol, she's

molested all night by Rose. And in the morning, she convinces them if they let her go, she's not going to say anything to anybody. It's fine. No big deal. So they fucking let her go. She goes straight to the cops, tells them what happened. The West are arrested.

They're charged with assault, quote, assault, occasioning actual bodily harm and with indecent assault. But Caroline's too scared to actually testify against them in court. She can't handle going to court. And so on January 12th, 1973, the West plead guilty, but they're fined a hundred pounds and released. Are you fucking kidding me? They never serve any time for that assault.

And then soon after that, young girls around Gloucester begin disappearing. Most of them come from broken homes or they're single women traveling by themselves. So no one really hears much about it. Not until 1992. What? Yeah. So 72 when they first kidnapped the girls to fucking 92, which I was alive then and wasn't that long ago, 20 years.

These people are kind of just doing whatever. Are you fucking kidding me? But here's what's happened. So there's lots of rumors around town. People know. Is it a small town? It kind of is. Right.

I don't know anything about Gloucester. I didn't look anything up, but I it's not big. Yeah. I mean, it's no London is what they say in my mind that I'm making up right now. So finally, someone goes to the police and says Fred West is raping his 13 year old daughter and someone needs to do something about it. So social services starts investigating the West family and this is one it all kicks off. So authorities enter the home at 25 Cromwell Street and they find tons of insane obscene

paraphernalia everywhere. So it's not just like they have, you know, they have those rooms that are outfitted with the cameras that it where Rosemary has her clients. But they have shit everywhere. Other photos. Oh, I don't know. I'm not the photo person. I'm going to go look.

Do it. Go down. I mean, I've definitely there's definitely horrible wallpaper. I'll tell you that there's some there's like each room has a different color and scheme and everything where you're like the person that built this house is crazy is a monster is it doesn't care about aesthetics at all. So they basically pull the children out of the house and they are interviewed by police and social workers and they start hearing these insane stories of sexual abuse or baby

and emotional abuse and just, you know, these parents are crazy. So Fred West is arrested for raping his 13 year old daughter and Rose is arrested for child cruelty. But the 13 year old daughter refuses to testify against her parents. And so in June of 1993, the case falls apart. Shut up. Yeah. Once again.

But authorities know. Yeah. This they're really bad shit is taking place. And when they're interviewing all the children, they're trying to find the daughter, the first daughter. Yes. Who they said had gone back to live with her mother. Oh, okay.

Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right.

Right. Right. So Fred West works at a holiday village in Devonshire and that they got up, they get phone calls from her every once in a while and they'd actually taken a phone call from Heather in front of the children one time so that the children also said, oh, yes, Heather called home that one time mom and dad both talked to her. We didn't. They didn't let us talk to her.

So then they start talking to Heather's friends and that's when they find out that 1987 was around the time Heather started telling her friends about the insane abuse that was going on in their home. So authorities are putting together that she disappeared right around the time she started confiding to other people what was actually happening. So then all the younger West children are put into basically for the British version of foster care and just got foster care. They call it care care put into care.

You have to whisper it. So when they when the kids start talking to their the foster carers, they start telling the story about if you misbehaved at home, they Fred and Rosemary would tell the kids if you don't behave, you're going to go under the patio where Heather is. Yeah. And so everyone's like, ding, ding, ding. Can you imagine if you're foster parenting or foster care, you're a foster care. And your kids like, oh, I don't want to go under the house like the like my sister.

My sister had disappeared. Chills. I mean, horrifying. So so it's almost like everyone's just going like, oh, what, what, sorry, what, like it's all like unfolding all these people who look like the most average people are boring, even super boring. And it's like, oh, there's this insane, seenie underside. So when they go, so they basically they go in and they, they dig up the patio and they

find the bones of Heather West. And so and this is where basically appropriate adult starts at Fred's arrest. No way. Where they he had taken them to the house and he tells police, yeah, you can you can come because she's buried in the backyard, then he changes a story, then he changes it again. He's doing all this stuff and he's trying to manipulate Janet Leach, the appropriate adult. So he's looking at her going, you should maybe check over there while he's denying that

anyone's buried anywhere to the police. It's almost like he's two different people. Yeah. Or nine different people. Like it's truly, truly either it's super psychopathic manipulation. Like he's mastermind or he's really stupid and just kind of playing it moment to moment. Yeah. It's very hard to tell.

Or that thing where it's like, well, if I'm going to get fucked for this, I want all the credit. So like, here's some other shit you should be looking to. Yeah. Like you it's interesting. It's like that thing where does he like the attention like this weird relationship he's trying to build. He's clearly getting her interest because she's just supposed to be there standing there

like witnessing. Yeah. Sure. The police don't abuse a person who would be right, you know, in custody that sure everybody would want to punch in the face several times. Apps of fucking Tivoli. It might help his fucking stupid looking face. Walk some teeth and back into place.

So basically because of his hints and these things where he goes like maybe we should go down and look in the cellar. And then when they get down the cellar, he's like, no, the spirits are telling me we shouldn't be down here. So then the investigators like dig up this entire cellar and that's when they find six bodies of women buried in a circle chronologically from when they disappeared. So Linda Goff is found in the cellar and she went missing on April 19th, 1973. Holy shit.

She was 19 years old and she was a seamstress. She you know, her she was close to their family. Her she when she disappears without a word, her mother starts asking around and the information she gets leads to the West House on Cromwell Street. And when she knocks on the door, Rosemary is like, oh, you know, we haven't seen her. And then as Mrs. Goff is talking to her, she realizes that Rosemary is wearing Linda's slippers and cardigan. And then she looks and sees that Linda's clothes are hanging on the clothesline.

So yeah. Yeah. So she's like, what the fuck explain my face right now. Just I guess horror horror horror horror horror. Then there's Carol Ann Cooper, who was 15 years old. She disappeared in November of 1973 on her way to visit her grandmother in Worcester. If it's if it's the Boston pronounced, I bet you it's fucking not. Yeah, I bet it's worse.

Worcestershire sauce. Nancy Parkington is 21. She was a student at Exeter in December of 1973. She went home for Christmas and then she went out to visit her school friend at 1015. On the 27th of December, she was going to catch the last bus home. Never seen again. Do we think that this is all hitchhiking related? You know, I'm not sure because it's it's some of these are these people who are traveling.

So then, you know, not just I'm not victim blaming because but I think hitchhiking was a really normal thing. And to get into the car of a couple, if you fucking watch Hounds of Love, that Australian murder I did that one time. Or any of these stories. Yeah, it's like hitchhiking was very normal. Yeah. And yeah, and you have a baby in the car with them when they're babies.

That's right. You know, the story of the girl who was kept in kept in a box or the bags, the girl in the box. That's how they got hurt. Yeah. They also found the body of 21 year old Swiss student, Therese Seigenthaler. She'd been studying sociology in London and she had decided to hitchhike across England and somewhere she disappeared somewhere on that trip.

And also a 15 year old named Shirley Hubbard, who was last seen in November of 1974. She was from a broken home. There was a couple of girls who were found in that basement who were had been in either foster care or their parents were divorced. And they had started going to the West's house or hanging out there and and then disappeared. One of those was 18 year old Juanita Mott, who that that was exactly her story. So that was, those were the bodies in the cellar. And then they had also dug up the garden, which is where near the patio where Heather

was buried. And they found Shirley Ann Robinson, an 18 year old who had moved into the West's house. She started having a fair with Fred and gotten pregnant by him in May of 1978. And that's when she disappeared. So she, her body was in the garden. So basically the police thinking that they're just looking for the missing daughter discovered that basically these two people had been like these monstrous serial killers and sex abusers. Most of the bodies had been decapitated and dismembered.

Thank you. Dismembered. Holy shit. Yeah. And just clearly they, there was evidence of torture. This wasn't just like a simple, you know, it was the, they were the worst of them. The worst they, and the problem is that they have no evidence that Rosemary's tied to any of these murders until they dig up the kitchen floor in the West's old house on Midland Avenue.

Can you imagine if you're there, you're living there and you're going to knock at the door and they're like, Hey, hi. Hi. Real quick. Sorry. We're the police. Yeah. You know, you got a deal on this house.

There's some, there's a reason that you'd feel cold spots around and bad vibes always. Um, because Fred's daughter, Charmaine's body was buried. So remember when Charmaine disappeared because Fred was in jail? Yeah. Yeah. Well, Rosemary killed her and then when Fred got out of jail, Rosemary was, she had hidden the body. Fred's the one that put the body under the kitchen floor.

Oh my God. Yeah. So he, they were in on it together from the beginning. Yeah. And they actually had a, there's, there's a documentary about this. There's a, there's lots of documentaries you can watch on the West, the West. There's two on YouTube and one of them is about the forensic dentistry and how much it took, played into this case.

Yeah. Yeah. Because that's how they pinpointed the time of Charmaine's death. And that's how they got it to say Rosemary is the one who was responsible, not Fred, because he was in jail. Oh, that's good. Otherwise they probably wouldn't have, they would have given her a plea to like testify against her.

Against? Shit. Like she wasn't necessarily involved or whatever. And this was like, no, no, no, she was, she had a hand in the killing and she had a hand in this torture and all, you know, all of that. Holy shit. So eventually, um, Rose is charged with 10 counts of murder and Fred is charged with 12 counts of murder.

When they go to trial, so they separate the two of them, when they go to trial, Rose will not look at or interact with Fred in any way and it basically makes him go crazy. And he freaks out, uh, and hangs himself in his cell. What? He basically doesn't, he never gets charged with anything because he commits suicide in his cell. God, I have never studied this murder, clearly. It's so...

Or these people, you know. They're so fucking crazy and the whole thing and his... What did they keep fucking hang themselves? Yeah. But if you watch, like especially an appropriate adult, his weird connection with her and his weird like, he defends her in the beginning, he says she has nothing to do with it in the beginning. And then it's just, it's a classic case of that.

Like, he's the herb user, but then I think over the years she became his. Before his suicide, there's an interview with the police where he's quoted as saying, you've the murders wrong, nobody went through hell, it was sexual encounters gone wrong. So he tried to intimate that it was some kind of like sex play where people were, it was voluntary up until the last minute. You know, that thing where people are getting, into getting decapitated during sex? Right. So that, that accident doesn't happen 12 times, you fucking asshole.

Here's the cool part, Carolyn Roberts, who is a hitchhiker who was afraid to testify for her own trial, came back and testified in this murder trial. And she's the reason that Rosemary West got convicted and is still in jail to this day. She's still alive. She's still in jail in last July. She was diagnosed with glaucoma and she's going blind. And she said in a quote to the newspaper, if I go blind, I'm going to commit suicide. And everyone's like, okay.

Yeah. Everyone's like, that's fine. Oh my God. The really weird thing is in 1996, they went to demolish 25 Cromwell Street. That's when the, the old house, the new house, the new house, that's where all the horrible things happen. Yeah. It took them five days to knock the house down.

Why? I don't, I'm not sure. I mean. It was made of cement. If he did so much building and burying and cementing and doing things inside the house, I mean, the whole thing was, you know, it was like this bizarre fortress that they had built and that these horrible things were happening. And of course they, the police were immediately like, get rid of that as an entity.

It just, but then it just took them forever. It's so weird. Like they couldn't knock it down. So that's the quickest, most lightest, like dipping into talking about the important things, but not living in the horror show. But you definitely can. I mean, you know, I'm gonna, yeah, there's, but there's really good, I mean, appropriate adult is such an incredible, it's such an incredible way to present the story because

Janet Leitch is as this person who is like the, you know, mandated witness is sitting there and you know, also it was her first case as an appropriate adult. Oh, I feel like never have a first case anywhere because it's always of anything. I know, but for something like this, you'd think it would be like, you know, just standard, standard physical child abuse where she gets used to it, cuts her teeth. And there's just this amazing scene where when he starts confessing, he's saying it like he goes, well, yeah, I did Barry, Barry Heather's body under the patio. Like he just starts talking about it like they're talking about the news.

And in the background, Emily Watson playing Janet Leitch is just sitting there with her face. It looks like her face is slowly dropping off of her skull because she's just like, what the fuck? And she's there as his guy. Yeah. You know, she's supposed to be his right hand man of like, you're, you're there if the police try to abuse me, you're there if the, and suddenly this is the monster that she has

to work with. And then it basically, the story comes out through their relationship where he keeps training her and going, you're the only one that, you know, you're the only friend I have in the world. She's like, I'm not your friend. Yeah. It's incredible. And she has her own whole life.

She has kids that like, she's not getting home too late because she has to work on this case that every word she hears is like, she can't unhear it. And then she goes home and looks at her beautiful children. They're all sitting around the dinner table. It's amazing that I think that is like the best way to tell the story through a person whose life is so horribly impacted. Then it goes into whole things of testifying and her selling her story because she didn't have a ton of money and all the judgments and all the therapy she's going to need afterwards

insanity. So crazy. Yeah. So watch appropriate adult parts one and two and again. Yeah. That was amazing. Oh, so now we got that done. We never have to talk about that fucking those monsters again, Karen.

Great job. Thank you. Thank you. Well, that bothered me that I haven't done it just because it is one of the worst of the worst. Yeah. And we talk about terrible stuff all the time. But for some reason it's just weird that we never did that.

It's just so much. It's just so specifically awful. Yeah. Really bad. I know this is a horrible story, but it brings up to me some really important themes like domestic violence. So I'm so glad that Karen and Georgia covered it. Thanks for listening.

Again, I'm Kate Winkler-Dawson, host of Tenfold More Wicked, and Tenfold More Wicked presents Wicked Words, where new episodes drop every Monday here on the Exactly Right Network. And if you liked your crime, check out my book, American Sherlock, Murder, Forensics, and the Birth of American CSI, and an important reminder, don't forget to stay sexy and don't get murdered. Elvis, do you want a cookie?