True Crime Campfire - Episode 41: Stunning: A Very 80s Story of Love, Lies and Murder, Pt 1

Episode Date: February 28, 2020

Oil and water. Ammonia and bleach. Vinegar and baking soda. Mentos and Diet Coke. There are some substances which, though benign by themselves, can be toxic or explosive when they come together. People can be like that too. Relationship dynamics can be every bit as volatile as chemistry. And when the wrong two people come together, it can start them on a path that leads them—and everyone in their path—to a big BOOM. Sources:Vanity Fair, "The Murder Hustle" by Ann Bardach. October 1989.Timeline of the case from "Forensic Files Now:" https://forensicfilesnow.com/index.php/2017/06/29/just-sweats-fraud-murder/LA Times: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-10-14-me-56965-story.htmlAP News: https://apnews.com/6056d3bf876f8f4989241f55f32b3831Oxygen's "Snapped: Killer Couples," episode "John Hawkins and Gene Hanson"Columbus Dispatch: https://www.dispatch.com/article/20140521/NEWS/305219823Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail] a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. Oil and water, ammonia and bleach, vinegar and baking soda, mentos and Diet Coke. There are some substances which, though benign by themselves, can be toxic. or explosive when they come together. People can be like that, too. Relationship dynamics can be every bit as volatile as chemistry, and when the wrong two people come together, it can start them on a path that leads them and everyone else in their lives to a big boom. This is stunning, a very 80 story of love, lies, and murder. So, campers, we're in Glendale, California, April 16th, 1988, about 7 o'clock in the morning. A 911 call came in from a local doctor, Dr. Richard Boggs, a neurologist who also worked as a general practitioner.

Dr. Boggs said one of his patients, a guy named Gene Hanson, had a heart attack in his office and wasn't breathing. So the dispatcher sent paramedics, of course, and they arrived to find, 40-ish bearded man lying dead on the floor. And when they realized there was nothing they could do to revive the guy, the paramedics called in police, which I assume is standard procedure in a situation like this. And two officers arrived, Officer Tim Spruill and Officer Jim Lowry. So the doctor told him he'd gotten home late the night before to find a message from Gene Hanson on his answering machine. Gene had said he'd been drinking and now he was having really bad chest pains and shortness of breath and he wanted to see the doctor ASAP. Now, this

guy had been Dr. Boggs's patient for seven years. Hansen was a businessman who divided his time between Ohio and L.A., and he always saw Dr. Boggs when he was in town. And the doc knew he had a history of heart disease, so he said fine. And about 5 a.m., he had met Gene Hanson at his office. He gave him an EKG first thing, and then he left him alone in the exam room for just a few minutes while he went to his office to write down some notes. And while he was in there, he heard a big thunk. And when he ran back to the exam room, he found his patient basically collapsed in a heap on the floor. So he said he tried CPR, but it hadn't seemed to do anything. So at 6 a.m., he had called 911. But he said he got a busy signal. So he resumed CPR for another 45 minutes and then called back and finally got the dispatcher that time.

Dang, 45 minutes is so long. So I just got certified by the American Heart Association to perform CPR. Oh, cool. So they say that you're not supposed to administer CPR yourself for more than two minutes. You're supposed to like tap out because it gets so exhausting. Yeah, you're supposed to switch with a partner. Exactly. It's really tiring. So yeah, if you don't have a partner there, what are you going to do? Yeah, you just have to keep doing it. That's a long time. Extremely exhausting. Yeah. So y'all might be raising an eyebrow at the idea that Dr. Boggs would call 911 and get a busy signal. But remember, 911, which is the emerging.

emergency call system in the U.S. wasn't even a thing until the late 60s, and even then not all states had a statewide system. And in California, where our story is taking place, they launched their statewide system in 1972, but it wasn't fully complete until 1985, which is just a few years before this case. So, in my opinion, it's very plausible that they were still working out the bugs and that the line would get tied up sometimes. Now, to most cops, this would probably have seemed like a really straightforward scene. But it just so happened that the two officers who responded to the scene of Gene Hanson's death had some special knowledge.

Officer Spruill's wife was a nurse, and Officer Lowry's dad was a cardiologist. So they had both had a lot of conversations about medical stuff, been around the dinner table for a lot of conversations about medical stuff, and you do when you spend a lot of time with doctors and nurses. I've worked with nurses for years, and I could probably get a decent score on the NCLEX by now. Like, I'd be a disaster as an actual nurse because I can't handle yuck. But I'm just saying I probably wouldn't do too terribly on the test by now. So you do pick that stuff up.

And it was immediately obvious to these two officers that something was wonky here. So for one thing, the body was in rigor mortis, which is when your body stiffens after death. Now, if Gene Hansen had died in the past two hours, as Dr. Boggs had said, that usually wouldn't be happening. Rigger usually sets in three to four hours after death. Also, Dr. Box had said he'd given Gene Hansen an EKG at around 5 a.m., but the EKG readout said that the last reading had happened at 12.02 a.m. Hmm, right? Can we say discrepancies?

Discrepancies. It was rhetorical, but thank you. But here's the deal. For one thing, this was Glendale. Now, Glendale was a smallish suburb of L.A., and in the 80s it was a really low crime area, and it might still be now, for all I know, I just don't know one way or another. It was an upscale place, a nice place. They tended to see just a handful of murders a year. Plus, what possible reason would Dr. Boggs have to lie? I mean, patients died on their doctors all the time. Doctors report patients' deaths all the time. That's nothing unusual.

So the police had kind of a hanky feeling, but then when they sent the body, to the medical examiner for an autopsy, the M.E said, yep, this guy died of natural causes. Specifically, he died of a heart issue, just like Dr. Boggs had said. And his blood alcohol was crazy high. 0.29. Yeah. The legal limit in California is 0.08, if that gives you an idea. So that's many times the legal limit. So yikes. So that is high. And it confirmed Dr. Boggs' account of Hanson telling him that the chest pains had started after a night of heavy drinking. So that appeared to track. No signs of foul play whatsoever. So good, right? So I guess we're done here, right, Wendy? Shortest episode ever. Yep. Hope you enjoyed this one, Campers. We'll have another

one for you next week. Yeah, right. Okay, so as with any death, the procedure now was to track down poor Jean Hanson's next of kin. You know, spouse, parents, whoever, and let them know that their loved one had died, which is always the least favorite part of the job for any detective, but it's got to be done, and in Jean Hanson's case, police quickly learned that the person to call was Jean's close friend and business partner John Hawkins. John was Gene's next-of-kin, the beneficiary of his entire estate, and his executor. Gene had lost touch with his family a decade or more ago. In fact, his will specifically stated that they weren't to be notified if he died.

So that's an estrangement right there. Now, John and Gene were partners in a retail business called Just Sweats. Their stores sold custom-painted sweat clothes, as they put it, which, ew. That word is just unpleasant. But it was the 80s, and we all loved us some sweats in the 80s. You're probably too young to remember that, Katie, but we loved us some sweats in the 80s. I had many a pair of sweats myself. I love sweats now.

Yeah, I mean, you know what's not to like, right? Olivia Newton-John style, let's get physical chic or something. So, anywho, just sweats had fun commercials featuring the devastating, handsome John Hawkins, showing off the clothes with beautiful blondes and, you know, in addition to being business partners, John and Jean were also close friends. And from the sources we found campers, it is not entirely clear what exactly the nature of their relationship was, whether they were romantically involved or sexually involved. Now, we know that Jean was gay. John may have been bisexual, as we will get to in a bit. Some people who knew them say they were definitely a couple.

others say they were just very close friends some say that jean was madly in love with john but he didn't reciprocate so who knows but he seemed devastated when he learned about jean's death and he was in ohio at the time so he made arrangements to fly out to la immediately and you know take care of what needed to be taken care of but let's put a pin in that for a while and get some background on jean hanson and john hawkins so jean this is our guy lying dead in dr boggs's office he was born in florida in 1941. His mom was deeply, deeply religious and his dad apparently cheated on her left and right. So screw him and the horse he rode in on, right? And when Jean was only two, she left him.

Good for her. And at that point, asshole daddy just pretty much completely disappeared from the kids' lives and never paid a dime in child support, so blech. But fortunately for Jean's mom, a few years later, she met and married a dude who was just as religious as she was. and who was willing to adopt her kids and everything. But he was really, really strict and, you know, very much a disciplinarian with the kids. As Jean grew up, that strictness, plus growing up in the deep south in the 40s and 50s, you know, being in the Bible Belt and everything, made Gene's growing realization that he was gay, extra, extra difficult for him, as I'm sure you can imagine.

But he was smart, and after a couple of years at Florida State University after high school, decided he was going to get the hell out of Dodge and I don't blame him right so he joined the army and he spent several years serving in Germany getting more and more removed from his family and in 1968 back in the states he found a job as a shoe buyer for a department store in Atlanta now this ended up being a pivotal moment for Jean you know we all have those moments in our lives where we can look back and say that was a major moment for me like when you met a certain person or you discovered something you were good at or whatever. And working at this department store was big for Gene, not only because he very

quickly realized he was really damn good at this job, like he had a knack for fashion, he had exquisite taste, he was good with people, but also because his boss, a guy named Cecil Tanner, who he would remain friends with for the rest of his life, was an out-gay guy. And this was the first out-gay man that Gene had ever met. And he was fascinated by how open Cecil was about a sexuality. Gene had been seeing a psychiatrist trying to, like, go straight, which just breaks my heart. I mean, that gay conversion stuff is just toxic nonsense. I make me so sad. So, Gene and his boss, Cecil Tanner, became good friends. And over the next 15 years or so, Gene climbed higher and higher at the department store. He was making really good money.

And he developed a reputation as one of the best buyers in the biz. In 1979, he got offered a job as a shoe buyer out in L.A., and he jumped at the chance for a change of scene. Specifically, he was interested to explore the Hollywood gay scene. He was pushing 40 by then, and he'd never really been in a long-term relationship. And then, in 1981, 40-year-old Jean met 18-year-old John Hawkins at a party, and it was another one of those moments, those life-changing moments that send you down a whole new path it's like that movie

that like Paltrow movie sliding doors or whatever it was called like you go left and your life takes this course and you go right and your life takes completely different course which is really kind of a fascinating line of thought you know if you think about who those people are in your life you know or what

those decisions were in your life that just completely changed everything and this was definitely the one for Jean it totally was now John Hawkins was a dreamboat. Oh, yeah. I feel kind of creepy saying that, given that we're talking about at this point an 18-year-old guy. I know, me too.

I feel creepier than you. I'm 42. Yeah, I'm a 28-year-old lady, but, you know, whatever. It's universally accepted that this young man was a dream boat. It's not my fault. Don't shoot the messenger, people. He was born in 1963 in St. Louis to parents who absolutely worshipped the ground he walked on. According to people who knew him as a kid, John's mom believed he could do no wrong.

Oh, my God. That is never good. Never good for kids. That my little angel could never put a toe wrong crap is just, you're just asking for trouble. You will ruin your kids with that shite. And you can trust me on that because I have no kids. So I definitely. know what I'm talking about, right? You know, Katie, we should start a drinking game and one of the rules should be that you have to take a drink anytime Katie gives unsolicited relationship advice or I give unsolicited parenting advice as someone with no kids and you as someone who is not currently in a relationship, except we shouldn't really do that because we'd all be like passed out by part two. Yeah. Because we can't seem to help ourselves. You know, campers, play that game at home except with water. Just go for the hydration. Drink water. Possibly because of his mother's zealous laser-beam-focused adoration for him, John grew up to be confident and charismatic.

It might also have had something to do with how gorgeous he was. Like, this guy had movie star looks. Mm-hmm. He looked a bit like a young Allen thick. Mm-hmm. I would say so for sure. Those, you know, kind of prominent eyebrows and, yeah. Great cheekbones.

Yeah, sharp features. One person told a Vanity Fair reporter that John had a magical way of making you feel like the only person in the world when he spoke to you. That stuff, Campers, is powerful. Oh, yeah. What was it, Maya Angelou said? People will forget what you say and people will forget what you do. But they'll never forget the way you made them feel. I love that line.

Yeah, it's so true And this is so weird Apparently, John once told a friend of his That he'd learned this skill from his mom He also said His mom had taught him everything he needed to know about sex Okay, Norman Bates Jesus Murphy

You know, I would not be going around bragging about that If I were you, my dude, because That's creepy Me, yeah, me neither Yikes, like how? How did she teach you? We don't want to know. Don't ask questions you don't want to know the answer to. I do that way too often.

You're right. We're not suggesting, by the way, that anything sexual went on between John and his mom. I sure as hell hope not. Not saying that, campers. No, we're not saying that. They did seem to have a close relationship. And possibly one without as many boundaries as kids and parents usually have. A boy's best friend is his mother, Katie.

Boy's best friend is his mother. Anyway, John Hawkins had a talent for making people feel like they were important to him. He was super into girls, but despite the fact that he was bumping butts all over town, he managed to make every girl he dated feel like the most important person in the world to him. And starting at a very young age, he parlayed these people skills. into entrepreneurship. He'd go around the neighborhood and mow lawns or do odd jobs. He sold everything from candy to newspapers to cleaning products, and he was damn good at it.

John also liked to tell wild stories about his family. According to him, his dad's dad was a gangster who had changed his Italian last name to fly under the radar. He talked about coming home one day to find his granddad's car shot up with bullets. He also said his uncle was a drug smuggler and burglar. Was any of it true? Did it matter? It was interesting to listen to. It gave John a mystique.

And at any rate, John seemed to buy into his own Hollywood narrative. He knew he was hot. He used to work out every day in front of a mirror. Oh, my God. Gross. Get over yourself. I'm reasonably attractive. I'm not constantly staring at myself in the mirror.

Geez, Louise, it's narcissistic and gross. Yeah. Yep. And when he was 17, John bought his mom's van and struck out for Hollywood. 17. Yeah. Geez. A baby.

Yeah. And he had dreams of making it big as an actor or a model. And he'd just seen the Richard Gear movie American Gigolo. God. So he figured if he didn't get famous, he could always try that instead. Mm-hmm. He seemed to like the idea of being financed by beautiful women. When he got out there, he certainly met lots of beautiful ladies.

But he didn't find a sugar mama. And nothing else he tried was paying the bills either. But before long, he became aware that there were plenty of folks willing to pay for his companionship. Most of them just weren't women. They were gay men. It wasn't what he had in mind. Everyone who knew him assumed he was straight, but it paid the bills, so John dived in. Starting in 1980, John was basically living two lives.

One, as a straight guy, trying out various business ventures and dating lots of beautiful women. The other, as, or at least according to the sources we found, what amounted to a gay escort. Yeah, though I'll add this, according to some folks who knew him during this time, he was a bit of a, quote, dry hustler, which is just charming phrasing, right? But this meant that John led on more dudes than he actually slept with, supposedly. And, I mean, who wouldn't really? I mean, if you can get somebody to take you out for fabulous dinners and buy you pretty presents and pay your bills without putting out, like, why wouldn't you do that? So, you know. But also, one of John's friends claims that John often made a big show.

of homophobia. Like, he would use gay slurs, like the F word to describe gay men, and he would make homophobic comments if men hit on him when he was out with people from his straight life. Now, whether this was genuine or just cover up to help maintain the double life, I don't know, but it

reminds me, if you remember from our bad romance episode, David Mesa, who was working as a gay escort, but also had a female fiancé and was expecting a baby and was kind of he had this, like, side hustle as an escort, and he was, you know, leading men on and saying he was in love with them and, you know, basically taking

gobs of money off of them. So. And to some of the men he met through that line of work, it was puzzling. One guy who knew him during this time told a Vanity Fair reporter that he didn't understand why this gorgeous guy would be so eager to earn 50 bucks or 100 bucks a night as an escort. His perception was that it wasn't so much the money John was into. It was the attention. That's really interesting. It really is. So, as we said, in 81, he met Jean Hansen at a party, and despite the fact that Gene was 22 years older than John, yish, sparks flew. Not necessarily romantic sparks for both of them, because, like we

said, we're not sure whether John reciprocated Jean's feelings for him. But they really enjoyed each other. They admired each other. Gene thought John was gorgeous and glitzy and fascinating. John saw Jean as an older, successful guy he could learn from. They started spending a lot of time together, and before long, they were living together in West Hollywood. John kept dating women. He was actually pretty heavily involved with a soap opera actress for a while, but according to the people who knew him at the time, Gene was in love with John.

Yeah, and for his part, John was in love with money and acquiring it through con games and scams. And just a few months after he met Gene Hansen, John moved to New York in search of not necessarily greener pastures, but more profitable ones at least. And he managed to get himself hired as a bartender at the famous, famous Studio 54.

Now, according to some people, he only wangled that gig because he had an almost limitless hookup for quailudes, which are, you know, tranquilizers. Like, basically they were kind of like ye oldy special K. I don't know if they make them anymore, but they were huge back in the 70s and 80s. So he was able to pass these things out to the Studio 54 folks,

like they were just candy mints. And his hookup also supplied lots of painkillers and uppers, and that was apparently enough to make John a hot commodity. That, and of course, in the fact that he was gorgeous and all. So, for a while, he was hobnobbing with Andy Warhol and Cher and Calvin Klein and David Geffen and Mick Jagger and all sorts of other glittery folks at the club. Now, Vanity Fair writer Ann Bardock, whose 1989 article on this case was one of our main sources for this episode, says Studio 54 was John Hawkins' finishing school, the place where he polished all the rough edges off his personality and honed his skills as a charmer. Charmer and manipulator? Well, despite the fact that he was making $3,000 a week at Studio 54,

which is just bananas money for the early 80s, especially for somebody who's that age, like we're talking 18, 19, 20 years old, people who knew him back then say he was still escorting and getting higher and higher prices for his services, like as much as $5,000 a night, according to one source, which is just nuts. Plus, he was always running some kind of scam on the side.

His main hustle was insurance scams. He'd partner up with a friend and a doctor. The friend would pretend to hit him with this car. The doctor would vouch for his injuries, quote, unquote, and they would all split the payouts from the insurance company. Now, the doctor they worked with, by the way, was also John took up for all the drugs. So clearly this guy was a champ, right?

Just the poster guy for the American Medical Association over here. And somewhere in here, John talked Gene Hanson into moving to New York, too, from L.A., and in 1984, John quit Studio 54, and he and Gene went into business together. In Campers, when I say business, what I mean is white-collar crime. And when I say white-collar crime, what I mean is they started up a fancy shoe company, because this was Gene's business, he was a shoe buyer. They stole samples from factories that made, like, fancy Italian shoes,

and then they just copied the samples with, like, cheaper materials and basically tried to pass off the counterfeit shoes and sell them. And this was not at all typical of Gene Hansen before he met John Hawkins. Gene had had a spotless reputation in his field until he hooked up with this much younger guy. Now all of a sudden he's involved in crime. Plus, when he left his job in L.A. to move to New York, he took off with 10 grand's worth of the company's shoe samples and stole a big chunk of cash. He'd never done anything like that before.

So clearly, little Johnny Hawk, not the best influence. on Gene Hansen, right? And their business enterprise fell flat on its face anyway because I guess they couldn't steal enough shoes or whatever. And at one point, Gene got stuck with a trunk full of shoe samples over in Europe at a fancy hotel with no money to get home. So John came to the rescue in true John style by engineering some insurance fraud to raise the money

for the ticket home and the hotel bill and everything. He bought a sports car that looked good but barely ran insured the car and then had somebody take it out and burn it for him while he went out to the bars and then collected the money just dang like who does this shit like we said with tracy richter you know when she was extorting those guys like who does this kind of stuff i would be terrified to try something like that oh my god right i guarantee you i get caught immediately too so the next venture was to have jean take out a homeowner's insurance policy on his condo and everything in it, most of which was very fancy,

came with the condo, and, you know, was not his because he was renting. And not long after that, John hired some movers to come haul everything out of this condo. And this is just unbelievable, y'all. When the truck was almost all loaded up with all this expensive stuff, he said to the movers, hey, you guys look tired, you look hungry.

Let's take a break. Let me take you to lunch. Really nice, right? Mr. Smooth, as always. and while they were at lunch, John had their truck stolen. Oh, my God. And then, of course, they submitted a claim to the insurance company and got a $109,000 payout, which was their seed money to start up their next grand idea, just sweats.

And this time it seemed to be working. Can I just say that this is the funniest possible name for this store? It's hysterical, I know. Like, outside of being like, sweats, we got them. just sweats is the platonic ideal for a store name like yes that is indeed what you sell correct and like i said campers people were into sweats in the 80s liby newton john and whatnot jane fonda too you know it was a thing leg warmers headbands and before long they had 22 stores some in ohio and some in kentucky and they made eight point five million dollars in sales in the first year that's

ain't bad and john and jean each made good use of their natural talents so jean took care of the work a day business stuff you know the boring stuff while john was kind of out in front taking care of advertising and marketing and merchandising and acting in some of their tv ads and stuff i mean they got featured in entrepreneur magazine it was an exciting time i'm sure for both of them and the employees all loved jean and john was a fun guy to be around when he was in a good mood and was not to like right So they enjoyed life for a while, John especially. He bar-hopped, he spent a lot of time in the gym, he dated a lot of women. And one of those women, whose name was Sally, fell for him really, really hard, despite being kind of skeved out by his relationship with his mom.

John's mom, I shit you not, told poor Sally, you know, you'll never meet a man who won't cheat on you. You should expect it from my son. Thanks for letting me know. And worse than that, just imagine the excruciating awkwardness of this shit. She gave her the safe sex talk. Now, I don't know if this was to protect Sally because she knew that her son was slamming ass all over these United States. Or if it was to protect her precious little baby lambkin from Sally or what, but it's creepy. It's creepy.

And even creepier, John had a couple of naked ladies statues in his house. And he told Sally that his mom had sent them to him, and he told her, they reminded him of her. The naked lady statues reminded him of his mom. I just can't. And brace yourselves for this one, because it's going to hurt to the depths of your soul. Just put yourself in Sally's shoes here, okay? everybody really get a good mental picture so one afternoon Sally

was like lying out in like a bathing suit and I got the impression it was like a revealing bathing suit like a bikini or something and she caught John staring kind of approvingly at her and when he saw that she caught him staring he said that's why I like you you remind me of my mother just

y'all it's like I'm hearing the apocalypse now music starting up in my head right now and just I've got the thousand yard stare. I need to go to my happy place for second. Not okay. Not okay.

This is just what every woman wants to hear from her boyfriend. Your body's banging. It looks just like the one I came out of. It's so gross. It's so bad. So gross, but so accurate. Oh, my God.

So why in the name of sweet fancy flip this was not the last conversation that sally ever had with him like why she just didn't leave like a sally shaped hole in his front door fleeing i cannot imagine but it wasn't i mean she was smitten with this freaking weirdo and he seemed enamored of her he bought her boob job and everything so i guess free boobs and creepy comments about his mom and like insurance fraud were john's love language don't all rush him at once ladies i mean you know cheese and crackers i know the guy was handsome but ain't nobody hot enough for this i'm sorry yeah i mean listen he talks about his mom way too much but he paid for my cosmetic surgery and he's got cheekbones

that could cut diamond so i'd say he's the one so yeah you're just going to overlook the fact that he seems to have edible complex feelings about his mom yeah so anywho moving on from that because it's painful. His sweats was doing great. But, you know, we said it earlier. John Hawkins was not just about money. He liked money, but he was also about risk. And I think he was hooked on the thrill of the con.

I think that's, it was almost as much about the adrenaline rush for him as it was about the money. So by the end of 1986, a situation was developing in which, A, John was spending way too much time partying and living it up and not enough time on the business. And B, he was getting bored. And campers, if you know what's good for you, when a guy like John Hawkins gets bored, you're going to run. Because if you don't, he's going to try his best to drag you kicking and screaming into some kind of jacked-up bullshit that's going to either end or upend your life. And he's probably going to be charismatic and pretty and charming enough to talk you into it. So you're going to go willingly.

And later you're going to be like, what the hell was I thinking if you survive it? Another thing that started developing around this time was that Gene started having health. problems. He was 46 at this point, but he looked 20 years older. He looked awful. He was hacking up a lung all the time, coughing. And he told friends and employees that he had been diagnosed with a heart condition, and it wasn't looking good. For a 46-year-old man, I mean, this had to come as a shock to everybody. But, you know, people knew for years, Gene had been a four-pack-a-day smoker. He subsisted on vast amounts of coffee. He didn't take care of himself. And it was catching up with him. So a few months after the initial diagnosis, Gene confided in his and John's friend Eric

that he didn't think he was going to live much longer. He looked awful, he felt awful, he wasn't optimistic about his chances, apparently neither were his doctors, just really sad. And at one point, Gene even invited Eric over and, like, gave him a bunch of his stuff, like some nice suits and the TV and stuff like that. And that's the kind of thing people do when either they're contemplating suicide or when they know that they're terminally ill, right? Yeah, and possibly because of his declining health that year, Jean had started taking a bigger role in the running of just sweats. It was like he wanted to make sure his house was in order, just in case.

As part of that, he and John took total control of the check signing privileges, cutting out their company accountant. And as a kind of peace offering to make up for it, Gene and John had sent their company accountant on a long, lavish vacation to Europe. Soon, John went off with his mom and a few of his friends to spend the holidays in Hawaii. Then, around Christmas, Jean had a huge holiday sale and let it run for several weeks instead of the one day it usually lasted. He also stopped ordering new merchandise, so the inventory was dwindling.

This was not good, and the employee started to worry. Was Gene losing his grip? were his heart problems affecting his mental health now? Yeah, and he was telling his employees, like, look, we just need to raise some quick cash. So that's why the three-week sale and all this kind of stuff. But people were really concerned. This was not, it didn't seem like it made any sense business-wise. And he just wasn't doing well.

And when the accountant got back from his holiday, holy shit. He discovered that not only had Gene failed to pay any of, Just Sweets bills or taxes while he was away, he'd also virtually bottomed out the company bank accounts. All told, there was $1.8 million missing from the company accounts. Dang. Just Sweets was in trouble with a capital, oh shit. Not only that, but Gene Hansen was nowhere to be found.

Oh, boy. An accountant guy was furious. He said to John Hawkins, you find him and you get that money back or I'm calling the FBI. So John said, don't do that. Come on. I'll find him. I'll sort it out. And lo and behold, John went all private investigator and soon tracked Gene down in L.A. He flew out there, spent some time with Gene, then flew back to Ohio with almost all of the missing money in the form of bearer bonds. Few. He said Gene was seriously sick. He might not live much longer. He said, Gene says he can't do it anymore. He wants out of the company. He sold me his steak. He's done.

All of this was bizarre behavior for Jean. But people do sometimes behave bizarrely when they might be dying. Sure, absolutely. That was in January. And of course, by April 16th, Gene laid dead on Dr. Box's office floor. And soon after those autopsy results came in with that clear-cut finding of natural causes, John Hawkins flew into L.A. to fulfill his role as the executor of Gene's estate. He had the body cremated and scattered the ashes into the ocean. And while John was in L.A., he agreed to sit down with detectives and answer some questions.

He told them, listen. Gene's been having heart trouble for months. In fact, he saw a specialist just a few weeks ago. He told them about Gene shocking everybody by selling his interest in just sweats. He said Jean had kept his illness under wraps as long as he could, but then the tipping point came, and, well, they knew the rest. It was a tragedy. John seemed cooperative, open, willing to talk, but at the same time, The detectives knew John stood to inherit a shit pile of money from Gene's death.

He was the beneficiary of Jean's life insurance policies, adding up to about $1.5 million. Whoa. And that's in 1980s money. That's a chunk of change, yeah. Certainly. The detectives wondered, could there be motive here for something fishy? And as any insurance agent will tell you, when insurance companies are facing a 1.1 $1.5 million payout, they're going to crawl right up your ass to make sure everything is

on the up and up. They will practically perform the autopsy themselves. I bet. Because if they can get out of paying, they will. So the companies who held Jean's life insurance policy started to do their due diligence. And it didn't take long for one of the claims adjusters to find, let's say, an irregularity with the file. Uh-oh. She noticed. that there was no post-mortem photo attached. Yeah, and side note, by the way, it never occurred to me that insurance claims adjusters

would have to, like, look at pictures of corpses. Just, yeah. Is that standard on every life insurance policy? Like, do these poor people have to sit at their desks all day, eating their lean cuisine, like microwave lunches and looking at pictures of dead people because of so? I'm pretty sure we ought to be paying them more.

And also possibly making sure that they're all on some kind of list, just to, you know, be safe, because that'll warp your mind after a while, I would imagine. Oh, definitely. So the claims adjuster discovered there was no creepy post-mortem picture in Gene's file. No fingerprints either. Hmm.

So she contacted the police and said, hey, just a routine question. Did you guys check the body against Gene Hanson's driver's license picture before you released it? And wouldn't you know, they hadn't. The body had a wallet on it with credit cards and a full. folded-up birth certificate for Gene Hanson. Plus, the body matched the description of Gene and Dr. Boggs' medical records. Between that and Dr. Boggs' assurance that Gene had been his patient for seven years,

they hadn't felt the need to look any further. Sure. But the two cops on the scene said they had taken the time to have the body photographed. So they did have a picture for comparison. So the cop said, Oh, crap, we're sorry. We'll get in touch with the state and get a hold of the copy of Gene Hansen's driver's license. And we'll get back to you. So they filed that request. This was, of course, the 80s. So it's going to take a little while to come through. And in the meantime, it didn't take long for John Hawkins and his lawyer to start bugging the shit out of the insurance company demanding the payout. Look, we have the death certificate. It was a natural death. We have. We have. the doctor's signature. We want our money. Yep. And while the police were still waiting for Jean's driver's license picture to come through the mail, the insurance company caved.

Jeez. They paid John Hawkins his money. One million dollars. He was still waiting on the other half a mill from the other policies. I'm amazed that they went ahead and paid it out while something like that was pending. But I guess it's just such a formality. Like, you know, well, by the way, did you check the picture. Like, it's probably seemed like a small detail, right? Yeah. The attorney, by the way, thought this money would go right into the still-suffering bank account of just sweats. Uh-huh. Yeah, right. Yeah. And just a couple of weeks after the insurance company set John that $1 million check, the police received a copy of jeans driver's license in the mail. They got a hold of a thumbprint of jeans. I'm not.

I'm not 100% sure where they got it, but they got it. Yeah, it was on file for some reason, obviously. And when they compared the driver's license photo with the photo of the body and compared Gene's thumbprint with a thumbprint taken from the body, it knocked everybody sideways. The picture of the body didn't even come close to matching the driver's license photo she had of Jean. campers this body was not jean hanson so who the hell was it and where the hell was jean so we'll leave it there for part one campers but because we release both halves of an episode on the

same day feel free to go right ahead and listen to part two now or save it for later whatever cottons your candy. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire. You can follow us on Twitter at TC Campfire, Instagram at True Crime Campfire, and be sure to like our Facebook page. If you want to support the show and get access to extras, please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com slash true crime campfire.