True Crime Campfire - The Price of Love: The Murder of Franklin Bradshaw Pt 2 (Final)

Episode Date: October 10, 2025

In part one of this story last week, we learned about Utah millionaire Franklin Bradshaw, who over the years had gained both a stupendous fortune and a strained relationship with some of his family—in particular with his youngest and wildest daughter, Frances. Frances had for years been pressuring and manipulating her mom, Berenice, to steer some of the family fortune her way, and whenever Frank got in the way of that, Frances would be furious. At the end of last week’s episode, we met Frances’s own young family, two boys, Marc and Larry, that she was strangely insistent on keeping apart. Marc was the favored son, allowed to stay at home. Frances told him his brother Larry had been sent to a mental institution, but he was in fact just staying with relatives. This was a family of strange pressures and manipulations that would ultimately lead to Franklin Bradshaw being shot dead. This is part two of “The Price of Love: The Murder of Franklin Bradshaw.”Sources:Shana Alexander, “Nutcracker. Money, Madness, Murder: A Family Album”Investigation Discovery's A Crime to Remember, S5E8, “Mother’s Little Helper”Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfirehttps://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/Facebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/truecrimecampfire/?hl=enTwitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.comBecome 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. In part one of the story last week, we learned about Utah millionaire Franklin Bradshaw, who over the years had gained both a stupendous fortune and a shrew. strained relationship with some of his family, in particular with his youngest and wildest daughter, Francis. Francis had, for years, been pressuring and manipulating her mom, Bernice,

to steer some of the family fortune her way. And whenever Frank got in the way of that, Francis would be furious. At the end of last week's episode, we met Francis's own young family, two boys, Mark and Larry, that she was strangely insistent on keeping apart. Mark was the favored son, allowed to stay at home. Francis told him his brother Larry had been sent to a mental institution, but he was, in fact, just staying with relatives. This was a family of strange pressures and manipulations that would ultimately lead to Franklin Bradshaw being shot dead.

This is part two of the Price of Love, the murder of Franklin Bradshaw. As a family, the Bradshaw's love to try and psychoanalyze each other. Mark thought the reason Francis turned against Larry was because Bernice and Franklin, his grandparents, doaded on Larry so much rather than Mark. Francis, though, would claim she limited Larry's time at home because she was genuinely scared that he would kill Mark. She said that throughout their childhood, Larry had tried to kill his brother several times,

by drowning him, by dropping him from a window ledge, by shoving his head through a window, and by shoving him in front of a subway train. Now, most of this was pure invention. Francis lied and exaggerated so easily and so often, even she might not have been able to untangle fact from fiction. Speaking in his early 20s, Mark scoffed at the idea of Larry trying to kill him. Bullshit. Half of what Mom says is exaggerations and the other half is a bunch of lies. About when Francis claimed Larry tried to drown him on a trip to the beach, Mark said, Pure horseplay. We were both horse playing in the ocean. I had no fear of drowning. I couldn't

imagine why mom was so angry and so convinced. She started to scream at us. Get out of the water. Larry, get out. Don't you touch Mark. But then Mark said about Larry shoving his head through a pane of glass, and that time he tried to throw me through the window, that was because he was very angry. So we very quickly go from, of course my brother never tried to kill me, to, okay, maybe he tried to kill me once, but he was real mad, so it doesn't count. Both boys were troubled, and it's impossible to know exactly what went on between them, but stick a mental pin in this story of attempted fratricide because future events is going to show that Francis's concerns might have had some foundation in reality. The way she addressed those concerns, though, was ridiculous. Just exile Larry to boarding schools and various family members and forget about him. Mark, anyway, liked Larry.

He liked hanging around with him and playing board games, but they had to play in secret because Francis would get furious if Mark spent too much time with his, quote, Sick in the Head brother. Francis, remember, had told Mark that Larry had to go away to a special school for Sickin the Head Boys, which was both a lie and a way to keep Mark in line. She used to scream and bellow at me. If you don't behave, I'm going to ship you to a mental institution

and never let you out, a place where you'll be for the rest of your life. She's a peach, ain't she? If you listen to part one of this story, you can probably already guess that Francis was not cut out for parenthood. She was dating a few different guys and would frequently just leave the kids alone to look after themselves overnight. One time, Marilyn couldn't get in touch with her sister and went over to her apartment, a nice place on the Upper East Side.

The door was standing wide open. The place was filthy. The fridge was empty, and there was no sign of Francis or the kids. Then the boys came back, eating French fries and chocolate cake. Francis had left them alone, and eventually they'd gone down to the corner deli to beg for food. Marilyn anonymously called the police to report Francis for child neglect. but nothing seems to have resulted from that. So, great job, NYPD.

After that call, the police left a note on the door, saying the boys were with Marilyn. When she drove them back, Marilyn tried to force some cash into Francis's pocket, saying, here, take it for the boys. Francis blew up and screamed right into Marilyn's face. You! You never did anything for the boys. Lady, your boys were literally just on the street begging for food. And she's always asking her mom for money, but I guess, like, if Marilyn's giving her money, it's not okay.

It's all about perceptions, I guess. Yeah, I think you're right. But I also think I think the reason for that is probably because she was okay, like, making herself and the boys seem, like, impoverished and like they were on the streets on her terms. But for her sister to, like, catch her neglecting the kids. and be like, here, take this. Like, that probably hurt her ego. Yeah. Yeah.

God. Francis saw a lot of psychiatrists. What actually went down with these guys? They were always guys. We'll never know. But her gossipy friend, Richard Barron's, who we'll get to later, said, Francis always slept with her shrinks. When Marilyn and Bernice heard that,

they basically just nodded. Like, yep, that sounds about right. That was all they'd get out of the relationship because she never paid them. It seems like what Francis got out of therapy were new methods to keep members of her family from getting too chummy. She didn't want marketing close with his grandmother, so she told him her therapist said that Granny has a neurotic need for babies to smother. Bernice's son, Robert, Francis's older brother, remember.

had died in a mental hospital at the age of 38. But Francis told Mark that while Robert was in there, Bernice would come in and feed him and feed him until he got huge and eventually died because he was so fat, which is what Bernice intended. Wow. Just a little bit of poison to put in Mark's brain for whenever Granny tried to spoil him with treats.

Yeah, I've read that psychopaths can actually get worse in therapy instead of better because they just learn better ways to manipulate and better terminology to use. Oh, yeah. At six years old, the boys were wild, completely impossible to control, and with next to no knowledge of how to look after themselves. The private school Mark went to, Larry was off staying with relatives, was run by Episcopal nuns,

and Mark wasn't the only first grader they'd seen who showed up unfed, unwashed, and rumpled. Francis was in the habit of shoving him into the elevator, still in his pajamas, and carrying his school. clothes. They lived in a fancy building with an elevator intendant, and this guy would have to help the kid get dressed, then leave his folded pajamas in front of Francis's door. Oh, my God. I think most parents would shrivel up with embarrassment the first time they saw those PJs outside the door, but the way Francis thought, she'd just stumbled into a free service. Oh, my God. Like, it's like a free change, a child changing room, you know, like shove him in the elevator,

he comes out changed. Oh, my Lord. Like super. man in the phone with, except it's really, really sad and heartbreaking. Like potentially predatory? Like you don't know this guy. I know, right? That too. Good gravy. But the nuns taught Little Mark how to put milk into cereal, how to brush his teeth, and some basics of personal hygiene. He treated each lesson like an astonishing revelation. No one had ever shown him this stuff before. Bless his heart. In 1968, Francis had the one paying. job of her life as a clerk at a brokerage house and came home one evening to find the boys missing. Bernice had worked herself up into a panic about the boys' welfare, and she just came and took

them back home to Salt Lake City without telling Francis. And while her concerns were certainly valid, that is, uh, you know, kidnapping. Yeah, don't do that. Francis flew out to Utah, rented a car, went to her parents home, and went berserk. She screamed, She trashed the kitchen, smashing every dish she could find, then started slapping her own mother. Quote, really pounding her was how Mark remembered it. With Bernice and tears, Francis shoved the boys out the door and screamed that she'd never see them again. God, those poor kids. Imagine watching your mom just beat the shit out of your grandma. How do you get over something like that?

Like, that's a core memory forever. Back in New York, Francis indulged in her favorite hobby, writing scathing letters. to her parents. First, she sent one to her dad, demanding he repay her for every dime she'd spent on the trip to Utah, then went guns blazoned for her mom, calling her mentally ill, someone who wanted to steal Frances's kids to make up for her own failings as a mother. She said she was heartbroken to discover that her own mother, quote, has chosen to deceive, lie, cheat, and sneak around and commit the most horrible crime that any mother could against her daughter. She and the boys were going to disappear forever from Bernice's life.

Letters she sent would be torn up and, quote, you will never be able to discover where in the world we are. Yes, because that would be so great for the kids, Francis. Cut them off from yet another source of love and support. You absolute hosebag. It's really interesting. Like, she's taking the tone of a parent here. Like the demanding her dad to pay her back and then berating her mom like she's some kind of teenager

sneaking around having unprotected sex in the back of the quarterback's Mustang. Yeah, her tone is absolutely audacious, like in those letters, it's bananas. Yeah, I'm not saying Bernice should have kidnapped the kids. No, no. We're not on the side of kidnapping here. We're not advocating for custodial abduction.

But, however, there was probably like a good situation for the, as good of a situation for the kids as it could have been. I mean, she abandoned them to go to work, right? But that's what police are for. In both situations, right? And that's what family court is for. I mean, you know, like, there's a system for this.

We don't just go grab them and yank them back to Utah. Yeah. Yeah. The, the, the, the, the, the, the, she, Bernie should have called the police and Frankie should have called the police. But, uh, yikes, yikes. But yeah, her tone is so interesting because, It's, like you said, I think she learned, like, the parenting tone from therapy, and she was using it on her parents.

And, like, it's not like her parents weren't parents to her. So what the fuck is she doing? Well, and in therapy, it's interesting because one of the big weaknesses, of course, of talk therapy is that it relies on self-reporting. So if you have somebody who's been diagnosed with a psychopathic personality, I mean, as a therapist, if you're sharp, you're going to catch. You're going to catch on to that eventually. But in the early days, it might be hard to tell because we know psychopaths are really good at work in people. And all you know is what she tells you. So she might have even said to Francis, like, that was absolutely, you know, criminal of your mother to do that.

And she's a toxic. You know, you don't know, like what Francis told her. Francis could have told the therapist, oh, him, I should say, because it was always a guy, right? Francis could have told him that her mom had, you know, locked her in a closet when she was a kid or something. We don't know. I would not be at all surprised. But as soon as the school semester finished, Francis flew both boys out to Utah to spend the summer with their grandparents. So grand and furious declarations were fun, but free child care was free child care. The boys were still unruly, so Grandpa Franklin tried to take them in hand, and it's clear he was much happier dealing with wow.

boys than we're daughters. The disparity in how much care Francis gave each brother was really apparent by now. Larry had strep, anemia of vitamin deficiency, and five cavities in his teeth. His grandparents took him to the doctor and the dentist. Francis tried to run a scam on her parents, faking a letter from a New York psychiatric clinic with an attached school, which said Francis was behind on payments, believable enough, and that for Larry, good his grandparents should send a check. Also, the letter said, Larry's mental health would be improved a ton if they paid for a permanent housekeeper for Francis. Bernice and Frank took Larry to a child psychiatrist who found no serious problems, which was questionable. He said

Larry had a high IQ. Both boys would excel academically, but he had a surprisingly low level of literacy. Francis, of course, had put barely any effort into teaching her kids how to read a right. Frank took over that responsibility and soon stumbled on how to manipulate these boys who were growing up desperately vying for their indifferent mom's attention. He made spelling a competition. Just what these two needed. More sibling rivalry, right? For that summer, the boys had something that looked like in normal childhood, although they secretly stole a lot of stuff. They shoplifted, and whenever Frank took them to his beloved auto parts warehouse, they snagged whatever shiny things took their fancy. Francis's haphazard child-rearing hadn't included much on the difference between right or wrong, or controlling your impulses, a completely alien concept to her.

So if the boys saw something they wanted, they just took it. Why wouldn't they? When they got back to New York, the boys met Francis's new boyfriend, Frederick Schroeder, a tall Dutchman. national that Francis had described to her parents as a member of the International Diplomatic Corps. In fact, he had a mid-level job at a management consultant company. After just a few months, Frederick was out driving with Mark and casually mentioned that he and Francis were getting married that afternoon. Oh, thanks for letting me know, right? Poor kid. It was a small wedding. Larry wasn't there. He was going to school back in Utah and living with his grandparents, although

Francis was still insisting to Mark that his brother was trapped in a state-run, quote, crazy school. The next year, nine-year-old Larry was back in New York, although living with his Aunt Marilyn and went to the same fancy school as Mark, one grade ahead. Once, Francis was called there because Larry had both threatened to gouge out another boy's eye with a pair of scissors and was asking girls in lower graves to pull down their panties and flash him. As we suggested earlier, Frances might have exaggerated Larry's mental instabilities, but she didn't invent them.

Soon, Francis and the boys moved with Frederick to the Netherlands. Francis had fantasies of a glamorous European life, but Frederick was initially unemployed. And what she got was an unheated cottage on the North Sea coast with endless cold winds and gray skies. Francis' second marriage followed the same pattern as her first. Lots of drinking and fighting and soon became violent. Four years and one divorce later, plus a new baby girl named Lavinia, Francis and her family were back in New York. Well, not Larry.

Francis just left him in his Dutch boarding school where he'd stay for another year before they kicked him out over unpaid bills. Mark was accepted to the hoity-to-to-y Alan Stevens in school and remembered his acceptance as one of only three times in his whole life that his mother actually hugged and kissed him. Oh, my God, that's so sad I want to throw up. Yeah, that's pretty devastating. Francis had come to care a great deal about her social standing, which was odd because she was fundamentally anti-social.

She didn't want fancy friends or to get invited to glamorous events. She just wanted to check off the signifiers of success, like they were Boy Scout merit badges. Kid and fancy school, check. This growing obsession with high society was shared by her one real friend, Richard Barron's. Dickie Barron's was an odd duck. Bitchy and snobby fascinated with the Nazi party, and he lived a kind of Jekyll and Hyde life. He was an alcoholic who would go on months-long drinking binges. People would see him staggering out of bars and thrift store clothes muttering to himself,

carrying a second change of clothes and a paper bag. he'd eventually dry up, make himself presentable, and go back to working as a preppy substitute teacher until the next time he fell off the wagon. A lot of people thought Barron's was gay. Who knows? He did seem to take every opportunity to declare his heterosexuality in a kind of exaggerated way with endless tales of casual sex. Did he ever sleep with Francis?

No. I mean, maybe. My memory is terrible. You know, he can't remember if he had some. sex with his best friend because he's just going to bed with so many ladies. I never went for her, he said. You know why? No tits. Well, straight guys do be loving the tits. Well, I'm convinced. It's like women be shopping. Straight guys love tits.

After they met, he and Francis bonded over their mutual contempt for their families. Barons' father had a girlfriend who Dickie just referred to as the slut, and he worried about losing his inheritance to her. Someone should just get rid of them, he told his friends. Once he started in about how it might be necessary for his father to die before he could change his will, it was hard to get him to stop. Nobody took him seriously except maybe Francis who got a huge kick out of these rants. Francis met him after her first divorce, and he essentially became part of her family, a frequent visitor and babysitter. The boys, for some reason, called him Uncle George, even though that was obviously not his name. So strange. With Francis

newly divorced and Mark winning her approval through his acceptance to his new school, she gave him a promotion. He was man of the house now, she said. He was 12 years old, and emotionally a few years less than that, and at least as far as his mother was concerned, docile and compliant. This new responsibility fell on his fragile psyche like rain on the desert. Approval from mother was his most valuable prize. He and Larry had developed a weird ongoing game that they called Stalingrad. Games would last for days, and the more of Francis's attention either of them got, the more of the world's territory they claimed. Larry later said, Once I wound up with a small island in the Pacific and Mark had the whole world.

Oh, my God. You guys, I hate this bitch so much. Those poor kids, can you imagine? Uh-uh. That desperate for your mom's approval that, like, you just turn it into a game between you and your brother. Oh, God. I hate her. Francis liked to spend most of her days in bed.

She wouldn't get out until she'd carefully read two newspapers cover to cover, chain smoking and drinking endless cups of coffee. Mark brought the coffee. Being the man of the house meant doing whatever Francis wanted. He cooked, he cleaned, he fed and cared for baby Lavinia. He answered the door. He obediently scuttled down to the deli whenever Francis wanted something. Their fridge was usually empty. No forethought was given to dinners until Francis got hungry and sent Mark out to fix it. When Francis's latest psychiatrist ditched her over unpaid bills, Mark got a fun new job, in-house shrank to his mom, listening to her vast collection of complaints and concerns. This quite often involved talking his mom out of killing herself.

Again, this is a 12-year-old child. She'd made several attempts via overdoses throughout her life, although it's impossible to say how sincere they were. They'd always occurred in situations. where she was certain to be quickly found. So sometimes, you know, it's a cry for help. If we're being generous about Francis, we would say sometimes that's a cry for help. Mark and Francis also slept in the same bed.

Now, there's no suggestion of anything creepy going on there, but, I mean, he was 12. That's a little weird, if you ask me. On top of all this, Mark was expected to still excel at school, which he did, getting into a ton of advanced placement course. The only class he consistently struggled with was theology and ethics, which just seemed to baffle him completely. I wonder why he'd have trouble understanding ethics, right? That's a thinker. Larry came home from Europe and was immediately shipped off to a military academy on Long Island. This weird, lonely kids started a hobby, coin collecting.

In summer, he'd spend his days going to local banks and exchanging a $10. bill for a thousand pennies. Then he'd sift through all the pennies for rare wheatback pennies, which were worth more than their face value, and take the rest back to the bank. Over three years, he amassed a collection of 6,000 wheat-backed coins, which he kept in a jar at home. The collection was worth hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars. One day, Francis, who habitually carried thousands of dollars in her purse, decided she needed a little more, so she just took the jar down to the bank and exchanged the

collection for its face value, $60. Oh my God. Three years of meticulously... Oh, this woman is the worst. Most of Frances's time and attention went to the same place it always had, trying to squeeze as much money out of her parents as possible.

She'd spill sob stories to Bernice or just straight up bully her until the cash started flowing, while Franklin, in his mostly clueless way, tried to keep a tight hold on his finances. As is true for many of the extremely wealthy, the family finances were a complicated tangle of trusts. All of Frank's daughters received a very comfortable income from these, if they kept their expenses to a reasonably sane level. Francis, of course, did not, and to her, her father increasingly seemed to be a vicious miser.

He was also, of course, an old man. His will would give a comparatively small amount to each daughter, you know, just the equivalent of half a million dollars. Oh, is that all? With control over his vast estate going to Bernice, who Francis could play like a fiddle. All Francis had to do to access essentially unlimited wealth was weight. So far, has she struck y'all as a patient person?

by 1975 Francis was openly saying this family can't keep going much longer not unless somebody kills my father she said it like a joke of course just crazy mom saying crazy things and we've seen a bunch of murders that started just like this with jokes that just keep coming up again and again until they stop being jokes at all

soon whenever Dickie Barron's was around he and Francis would have a lot of fun talking about the various ways her dad could be murdered. If the boys happen to be there, they'd sometimes join in. It was portrayed as a noble purpose. Grandpa Frank wanted them to be

destitute, which meant poor Lavinia, the golden daughter that everyone adored, would have to live on the streets. You know, while their mom was wearing like $40,000 earrings. Yep. And carrying around thousands in cash.

Yeah. It was like a fairy tale. They had to rescue the princess from the wicked old man. Yeah. Did Mark and Larry believe that? Probably not. They were weird, but they were smart kids. Francis was still a mad tyrant with the boys.

They were in or they were out. Out meant locked out, no matter if it was freezing cold outside, no matter if they had nowhere else to go. It was usually Larry, who was out, of course. Sometimes he'd beg and call outside the door for hours to be let in, but Mark didn't dare. So Larry often slept in the apartment building stairwell, covered in cardboard boxes to try and keep warm. Sometimes Mark would smuggle him a blanket, but that was as far as he was willing to go. Their little family was like a microcult with no reward for good behavior except the leader's approval and terrible consequences for making her mad.

It created an environment where her sons would do almost anything to get on her good side. So in 1977, they headed west to spend the summer working in Grandpa Frank's warehouse for four bucks an hour, and also to kill him. They workshoped various ideas. Drop an electric appliance into his morning bath, burn down the warehouse while he was inside. Eventually, Francis settled on a more subtle route. the boys would put amphetamines and took Frank's morning oatmeal every day until he dropped out of a heart attack.

Oh my God. Francis already had a steady supplier for speed. She bought some, and she and Mark crushed up the drugs. They cut open a little cloth toy mouse and pulled out the stuffing, replaced it with the drugs, and stitched it up again. Francis dictated a list of rules for Mark to type up, which had much more to do with alienating the boys from Bernice than killing Frank. buckle up for this shit, okay?

Number one, how to deal with Granny and not become brainwashed by Granny. I want to be the one brainwashing you, you know. Yeah. Number two, how not to become infected by Granny's sick ways. Number three, don't ever let Granny follow you. Number four, be sure to get up in morning and administer dosage. Number five, be polite to her, but also be able to say no. number six don't eat granny's chocolate cakes don't let her fatten you up like she's the witch in the forest or something like she's going to eat them it's like Hansel and Gretel it is like a fairy tale oh my god number seven don't let her domineer you it's my job number eight don't let her twist you around her little finger number nine don't let her have you doing all the errands number ten do what you want don't

let her boss you around. Number 11. Phone home daily, always from pay phones, and make progress report to mom. I mean, I don't want to tell you your business, Frances, babe, but are you sure you're arranging the murder of the right parent? Her issues with Bernice bordered on obsession. But of course, Frank was the one with the money. Francis didn't send her boys back to Utah with only murder on their minds. As soon as they arrived, cash, blank checks, and securities started vanishing, both from the warehouse and from Frank and Bernice's home, shipped back to New York in an endless stream. When they phoned home to report to Francis, she was never satisfied.

The phone was about to be cut off, the power too. She and precious little Lavinia were about to be put out on the streets. They had to steal more, always more. They were helped by the fact that they were helped by the fact that Franklin Bradshaw, who saw himself as the epitome of sober sanity was actually a weird weird dude. Instead of transporting the day's cash takings to the bank at the end of the day, he'd just hide it somewhere in the vast Warren of the warehouse. Unsurprising, considering he was a

businessman of the Depression. Like, you couldn't trust the banks, especially when he was first starting out, so he probably, he probably would have buried his cash if he could. Yeah, but like imagine if the warehouse caught fire and warehouses catch fire all the time. Like, I couldn't sleep at night. there's always cash in the banana stand remember that there's always money in the banana stand sometimes especially as he got older he'd forget the hiding place years after his death employees still occasionally happened to bond big stashes of bills hidden away mark and larry went through the warehouse like hungry little rats sniffing out as many of these bundles as they could Frank kept a fortune in stock securities hidden inside old copies of Life magazine.

Larry found $150,000 worth, which he sent winging back to mother. They found $30,000 of stock certificates belonging to Frances's sister, Elaine. When Francis got them, she immediately set up a false identity in Elaine's name so she could cash out the stock, her sister. So she's just screwing over everybody in the family. It's not just even her parent. The boys were quickly found out, but even before then, everyone at the warehouse hated them. They were rowdy and rude, they stank, and they were gross. One time as a prank, they both went into the ladies' bathroom and pooped in the sinks.

Lovely. They skipped work to go to adult movie theaters, then would come back and tell everyone exactly what they'd just seen. Were they also poisoning their grandfather with speed? Mark would later claim that they never even opened up the toy mouse, but several times that summer, Frank vomited for no obvious reason, or was so jumpy at work that he couldn't sit still. Frank's secretary showed him two checks, each for ten grand, each made out to cash, each signed with a crude forgery of his own signature. On the back, the endorsement was signed by Francis, and they'd been deposited to her account. It was obvious what had happened. Frank said,

Oh my God, and burst into tears. When he got himself together, Frank called the bank and told them the checks were forged, and he didn't intend to honor them. He wanted the funds to be replaced. The bank said, sure, but he'd have to sign an official complaint, and check forgery was a federal crime. Frank said, no go, and disclosed the account

so nothing more could be pilfered from it. fired the boys then a week later gave them their jobs back as quietly as he could having them worked just on weekends when he was the only one at the warehouse when the boys got home to new york francis took mark with her to the long island mansion she was renting for the summer with her ill-gotten gains she chatted happily with him and fed him caviar and canelope balls he had done well larry though was out this time for good despite the fact that he'd sent him sent home far more money than Mark. No one involved has confirmed this, but it seems likely that Francis was expecting Larry to take care of the big-picture stuff, killing her father. He hadn't, so he was out,

no matter how much he begged and scratched at the door. With the money he'd actually earned working at the warehouse, Larry had bought an old 1962 Impala, his first car, and now he was living in it. Mother of the Century At Bradshaw Auto Parts, Frank had a secretary type up a document, which he showed to his manager and friend Doug Steele. It named Doug and Frank's eldest daughter, Marilyn, as co-administrators of his estate. Frank's typed initials were below that, and further down, he himself had typed one-third of my estate to Bernice J. Bradshaw, one-third to Marilyn Reagan, and one-third to Elaine Druckman.

And that was it. He'd completely written out Francis and his own. her whole family in a way that meant nothing at all. It wasn't witnessed, it wasn't properly signed, it had no legal force at all. Shortly after, Xeroxed copies were scattered around the warehouse, which was probably the whole reason Frank had the thing typed up. He cared about the opinion of the people who worked for him more than he cared about the opinion of his family. Wow. This, yeah, this was a message to them. Remember those two little thieving assholes you all hate? This is me fucking the most.

Oh, my God. Bernice, who didn't often care to think through the consequences of her actions, told Francis about the note. Francis was certainly smart enough to know how useless this document was, but the fact that her father's mind was turning in this direction at all was worrying. She needed more of a sure thing than sprinkling speed on oatmeal. She sent Dickie Barron's to try and buy a gun in Virginia. He claimed he tried to do this, but somehow. how failed, despite there being no state or federal background check, registration, or waiting period at the time? If you ask me, he just wussed out and was scared to admit that to Francis

because he knew she'd go completely insane. So Francis decided that the easiest place to buy a gun would be Texas. I don't know why. Probably just because the hats made her think of old Westerns. And I think legally you have to wear a hat in Texas. Yeah, oh yeah. Texan campers, let me know if I'm right. On July 13th, 10 days before Franklin Bradshaw's murder, Mark called up a school acquaintance who lived in Midland, Texas, John Kavanaugh. Definitely acquaintance rather than friend. Mark didn't have any school friends. Mark said he was heading back to Utah to visit his grandparents and maybe go hunting. He thought he might stop in Texas on the way to buy a gun.

This made very little sense. Utah was just about the easiest place in the country to buy a gun. Mark could have walked out of Walmart with one in five minutes after walking in. Still, Kavanaugh said, sure, Mark could stop by. He sounded so vague that Kavanaugh didn't think he'd ever show up. On July 19th, Mark bought a round-trip ticket to Texas and Utah under the name L. Gentile, his brother's name at birth. It looks like Mark was trying to set up his brother. In fact, earlier that summer, Bernice had sent Larry a $75 trailways bus ticket,

which would take him anywhere in the continental U.S. The invitation was clear, and with nowhere else to go, he headed back to Salt Lake City. Everybody at the warehouse hated him, so there was no chance of him working there again. He managed to talk Bernice into paying for him to have expensive flying lessons, and that was pretty much all he did all summer. So Larry was already in Utah, which could and would bring suspicion his way, but he certainly wasn't in New York buying plane tickets. The next day, Mark showed up at John Kavanaugh's place in Midland. John was at work at his summer welding job, but his mom invited Mark in and started

making him lunch. This blew Mark's mind. His own mom would have just shut the door in a school friend's face. Mark was 17 years old and had never once spent the night at a friend's house, barely even been inside a friend's house. He'd seen happy normal families on TV, but they'd been no more connected to his reality than Star Trek, just fantasies. When John got back, Mark told him he wanted to buy a gun. Mark was technically underage, but that was no particular problem. John's old boss sold him a 357 magnum Smith & Wesson in a box of ammunition for a little under 200 bucks. That ought to take care of anything you run into backpacking in the mountains, he said. Mark stayed with the Kavanaugh's for a couple of days, playing Monopoly and enjoying the family dinners. At home, they always ate in

Francis's bedroom, usually on her bed. He started fantasizing about just staying here and never going on to Utah, and as he put it, bumping off Gramps. But that would mean dealing with his mother's anger and disappointment, and he had no capacity to handle that at all. As soon as he'd collected his bag at the Salt Lake Airport, just before 10 p.m., he walked out into the arid scrubland and test-fired the gun. He checked into a motel, then called Francis, and weepingly told her he couldn't go through with it. Okay, Mark, if you're not going to do it, don't bother coming home, Francis said. Me and Lavinia will live in a Harlem tenement and collect welfare, and the doors will be locked forever. Doors can be opened and doors can be closed.

Early the next morning, Mark took a cab to the warehouse and waited across the street for Frank to arrive, then followed him inside. Mark says they talked, but not what about. He says he wrestled with what he had to do. Maybe he could just come out here and live with Granny and Gramps and forget all about his crazy mom. But then she'd probably kill herself. Mark couldn't shoot Frank while he was looking at him. But as soon as Frank turned, Mark pulled out the heavy gun, and shot him once in the back. When Frank fell, Mark came closer and shot him a second time in the back of the head.

He caught his 9 a.m. flight back to New York with the gun checked in his suitcase. When he got home, his mom, Dickie Barons, and Lavinia had just gotten back from swimming at the beach. Did you do it? Francis said. Where's the gun? Yes, I did it, Mark said. Oh, thank God, Francis said,

and gave her son the third and final. hug and kiss he ever got from her. When Francis's sisters, Marilyn and Elaine, arrived in Salt Lake City, they both immediately thought Francis was behind their father's murder, which only intensified when they found out Larry was in town. Bernice was unconvincing in her alibi for him that she'd woken him up around the same time Frank had been shot. She'd later claim she never thought Francis or her sons

had anything to do with the murder, but it looks like early on she worried Larry had done it and wanted to get him off the hook. Larry passed a polygraph question about whether he'd shot Frank, but failed one on whether he had more knowledge about the crime. But that wasn't enough for an arrest. Larry was released and drove his used Impala back east, where he started his freshman year at Lehigh University.

There was no gun, no fingerprints, no witnesses. Francis's financial shenanigans pointed the finger at her, but initially there was no reason to think that she or Mark had been anywhere other than New York. The case soon went cold. Francis gave the gun wrapped in a brown paper bag to Dickie Barron's to keep. Why? Who knows?

She had a wide streak of hoarder in her, and she hated to throw anything away. But come on. She lived right next to the East River. Throw that thing in there and forget about it, dumbass. Right. To the fury of Marilyn and Elaine, with Brayette. Bernice in full control of the family estate, the money spigot opened all the way for Frances. Six months after Frank's murder, she had Bernice buy an enormous 14-room apartment on Gracie Square.

It was in terrible shape and available for a bargain price, just half a million dollars, with the renovations expected to cost the same again. Oh, my Lord. Although Francis spent years living there, the renovations were never finished because she got paranoid that the contractors might be police spies. Oh, wow. The walls were half-finished, not painted or plastered, and the living room had two huge couches still covered in plastic,

with rugs still tightly rolled up beside them. Beside the couches were three big wooden crates, each holding an onyx bathtub that would never be installed. Theoretically, Bernice was buying this place for herself, but Frances made sure she got the enormous main bedroom. She'd mostly live there in a huge canopy bed, and in just a few months, the floor was almost covered in piles of boxes, files, and stacked newspapers as the chaos of Francis's mind shaped her environment.

The only space in the house that wasn't insane was Lavinia's little two-room suite, which she kept in a state of perfect magazine-quality neatness in order, and I don't think you have to have a psych degree to see that as a defense against the chaos surrounding her. her. Levinia, a calm and popular kid, would be central to the next obsession to take over Francis's life, becoming queen of the New York City ballet. One day, Lavinia found a pair of her mom's old ballet shoes and was having fun prancing around in them. Francis got modeling. I was meant to be a dancer, Lavinia, she said. But dad made me give up ballet and go to Brinidad. As you may recall from last week, that was a flat-out lie.

Francis had essentially tricked Frank into sending her to Brinmar. Still, whether or not it was based on reality, Francis followed the same unhealthy path as thousands of parents who felt they'd missed out on something in their youths. Their kids would do it instead. Fortunately, Livinia enjoyed ballet and was good at it. Francis, meanwhile, had been talked into a $2,000 donation to the New York City Ballet, and when she didn't get a thank-you note, she sent them a snippy little letter. This resulted in an apology, and another donation, and another, and another. Ultimately, Francis would give them around a million dollars, and win a seat on the board. So, of course, little Lavinia got to dance for the New York

City Ballet. She was good enough, at least technically, but obviously it didn't hurt that her crazy, terrifying mother was on the board and bankrolling much of the ballet's current work. As usual, the ballet was performing the nutcracker over the holiday season, and nine-year-old Lavinia was one of the dancers for the party scene in the Saturday matinee performance. But Francis's timekeeping was about as good as you'd expect, and she and Lavinia were late. The ballet had rules about this. If a child wasn't there by 1 p.m. her alternate was called. Francis, of course, took the news well when she arrived. I'm just kidding. In the lounge area, in front of all the other girls and their moms, she collapsed

onto a couch and started bawling, then screaming. Levinia must dance this afternoon. She has to. Everybody was hugely embarrassed, except for Levinia, who just quietly stared at the floor with no emotion on her face. This was not a new scene to her. As people usually did when faced with Francis dialing it up to 11, the ballet master caved. This version of the party scene would have eight little girls twirling around instead of seven. During the scene, the dancers frequently switch from onstage to backstage. Francis was back there, still losing her shit. How dare you treat my daughter that way, she shrieked.

I will have that other child removed from the school. In the chaotic gloom backstage, Lavinia's alternate wound up standing right in front of Francis. Francis got right down in the kid's face and said, I'm going to kill you. Just absolute nightmare fuel. This is a child. I'm going to kill you. You might think this is the kind of behavior that would get somebody kicked off the board. Plenty if people had warned them that Francis was a nut job, but as long as she kept writing the checks, the board didn't care. The same applied now. She kept writing checks, so was it really such a big deal that she threatened to murder a 10-year-old girl?

I mean, you know. And this attitude would prevail, even when the murder charges started dropping, everything's fine. No, it's fine as long as she keeps writing checks. Around Christmas of 1979, everyone who'd suspected Larry of the murder became convinced they'd been right. He was still studying at Lehigh, and he'd met a girl. Nancy. She wasn't quite his girlfriend, but he thought she might have been, if the other thing hadn't happened. He asked her to spend Christmas with him. Larry was planning to spend Christmas driving his shitty Impala all the way down to Texas, then all the way back. This was one of his

favorite pastimes. When he made the trip alone, he didn't sleep for the entire two-day journey. For some reason, this didn't appeal to Nancy, but Larry decided to make the trip anyway. He fell asleep in his car so he could make an early start. And then, according to Larry, the next thing he remembered was smashing at the head of his dorm roommate, Farid Salum, with a hammer. He hit him again and again in the skull and jaw, while other students banged on the door and yelled. Then Larry jumped right through the window and landed in a snowbank outside where campus police were just arriving. He told the police that Farid had been secretly bombarding him with alpha waves, with the intention of turning Larry into a woman. He'd gone out to sleep in the Impala to try and get away, but the waves had found him

there. So he'd come back and, in his words, ruined Farid. So was this a psychotic break? Or had Larry just wanted to kill his roommate and thought this story would let him get away with it? He was declared fit to stand trial anyway, but remained in a mental hospital until it's started when he was convicted of attempted murder. None of his family ever came to see him. His mother had utterly excised him from her life, and it wouldn't do at all for her new ballet connections to hear about this sordid story. His aunts were still convinced he'd murdered their father.

He hadn't, of course. The truth about that was about to come out. Like a Shakespeare villain, Francis would be undone by her own fatal flaw. her sickness about money. A few months after Frances moved into her new apartment, she and Dickie Barron's opened a joint checking account with Barron's putting in about $4,000. The account was a favor to him.

He racked up $6,000 in parking tickets, which Jesus Christ and wanted some cash hidden where the city didn't know about it. Despite money now flowing in a torrent, corrent from her mom, Francis cleaned out the account within a couple of months, which, Jesus Christ, what is wrong with these people? Yeah.

Dickie, park where you're allowed to. Francis, keep your hands off money that doesn't belong to you. This is like kindergarten. This is like kindergarten rules. Keep your hands to yourself. Right. Okay? By fall, Barron's was out of work and nearly out of money.

he'd soon be on welfare. He kept trying to get in touch with Francis to ask her to repay the money she'd taken out of the account, but she just hung up on him, and she told Bernice and the kids to do the same. He started sending her letters, polite at first, but was soon threatening to take her to court. He even called Marilyn, who had met him exactly once in her life and spilled out his sob story. Marilyn said she was not responsible for her sister's debts and hung up. The next time he called, and time and again after that, Marilyn let him talk. She knew how close he was to Francis, so if her sister was behind their father's death, maybe Barron's knew about it.

He did know, all about it, of course. And all it would have taken to keep his mouth shut was for Francis to pay back that $4,000 at a time when she had a million dollars to give the back. She was brilliant in many ways, but mostly oblivious to the interior lives of other people. I'm sure if someone had asked her, is it a good idea to stiff the guy who's hiding your murder weapon? She'd have realized it was not, but the thought never occurred to her. Again, dumbass.

After she'd learned about Larry's troubles at Lehigh, Marilyn told Barron she still blamed him for Frank's death. It wasn't Larry, it was Mark, Barron said. Then, I've got the gun. Wow. Marilyn called the Salt Lake Detective handling the case, and the next time she spoke to Barron's, she reminded him there was a $10,000 reward for helping catch the killer. The next day, they met at Burger King, and Barron showed Marilyn a brown paper bag that he said contained the gun.

Without opening it or looking in, Marilyn picked it up and walked to the nearest police station. She said she believed she'd just been given the gun used to kill her father in Utah. It took a lot of police-like work, but detectives were able to tie mark to that L. Gentile plane ticket and tracked down the Texans who'd sold him the gun. Ballistics tests showed the weapon barons handed over was the same one used to kill Franklin Bradshaw. Mark was arrested in New York in October of 1981 and extradited to Utah, where he was convicted of second-degree murder. Second, rather than first, because the judge determined there was no direct financial motive for the crime, which seems like a weird wrinkle in the law to me. If you're in your right mind, I'm not sure motive should matter too much when you execute someone with a 357 magnum.

Yeah, I completely agree. It's bizarre. the question now was whether Mark would testify against mother even just a year ago it would probably have been unthinkable but when you raise someone to be so desperate for your approval things can change quickly when that need for approval gets transferred elsewhere for the first time in his life Mark had himself a girlfriend she was Mary Lou Kaiser the estranged wife of Mark's first cellmate in Utah I'm sorry. I know. What in the soap opera is going on here? Yeah, I know, right. When Mark was bailed out, his celly asked him to try and get married to sign his bond,

and she and Mark hit it off right away. She was a cleaning woman from Mexico, and perhaps inevitably for Mark, the ultimate mama's boy, she was 36 years old, 16 years older than he was. She liked the look of him, and the next time he came around, she answered the door in her nightgown and said maybe they could talk in her bedroom. I assume we don't need to tell you what she was trying to accomplish here, but Francis had basically lived her life in her bed, and as far as Mark knew, that was normal.

He was completely clueless about women. So they went to the bedroom and talked until he fell asleep. Eventually, and with the help of some Mexican home cooking, Mark was devoted to her. He was also devoted to Detective Mike George, who said about, winning his trust to try and get him to testify against his mother. Mark was so starved for affection that it didn't take much. Detective George talked the prison warden to letting him take Mark out on a few trips, the first time to McDonald's, where Mark ate three orders of McNuggets and had a big Coke. Right then, he wasn't ready to testify against Francis. I can't. She's my mother, and I love her.

I also hate her, but I love her and I can't. Next, Detective George took him out to the movies to see Return of the Jedi, and when he got to the car, Mark saw Mary in the back seat. They watched the movie and scarf down some more McNuggets. He also arranged for Mark to meet up in a motel room with the father he barely knew, Vittorio. Dad and Detective both had the same message for Mark. He wouldn't really be a man until he stood up to Francis and testified against her. It was the only way he could have his own life. Pretty manipulative stuff, but hey, George was trying to get a murderer convicted. Mark agreed to testify.

Francis was arrested in March of 1982, and it was predictably messy. Police had to break into the apartment, with Francis screaming, ranting on the other side of the door. Once they were in, she was immediately calm and asked for a few minutes to get dressed and put together. A policewoman stood outside the bedroom and suddenly heard Lavinia screaming, Mommy, don't! The cops rushed in and found Frances most of the way out of her seventh floor bathroom window, both arms and one leg outside with Lavinia pulling on her right leg and screaming. The cops yanked her back in, threw her on the bed and handcuffed her.

The Bradshaw family split in two. Elaine and Marilyn were determined to see their sister punished for their father's murder. Bernice insisted Francis was innocent, and she, and her checkbook, would stand by her. But on the first day of the trial, Mark testified. Prosecutors often keep their strongest witnesses until last, but they were worried about Mark losing his nerve. He didn't. And along with the testimony of Dickie Barron's who'd been promised immunity, Francis's goose was cooked. She was convicted of first-degree murder.

Despite the differences in the... their convictions, Mark and Francis wound up serving about the same sentences before being paroled, 12 years for Mark and 13 for Francis. At the age of 93, Bernice died shortly before her daughter was released from the halfway house. Her will split her wealth between Frances on one side and Elaine's two sons on the other. Elaine herself and Marilyn got nothing. What the hell? what the hell Bernice had spent the years of Francis's incarceration dancing on luxury cruises and making hefty donations all over Utah

as an indication that these people don't live in the same world as most of us Maryland said there was hardly any of the family fortune left at the time of Bernice's death just a few million dollars just a few million dollars Elaine in poor health since childhood died just two years after her mom at the age of 66. How much of that Francis managed to burn through? We don't know. A chain smoker, she died in 2004 at the age of 65, of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. When he was released, Mark said prison saved him. Maybe it did. I think it's natural to be

skeptical when killers claim to have seen the light in prison, but this was a mostly brainwashed child when he murdered his grandfather, so I'd be willing to give Mark just a scosh more benefit of the doubt than I would with most killers. As of Francis's death in 2004, Mark was living in Provo, Larry in Los Angeles, and Lavinia in San Diego. San Diego was where Francis died, so she probably maintained a relationship with her daughter, but she didn't stay in touch with her sons. I guess mother felt that they'd failed her. So that was a wild one, right, campers? You know, we'll have another one for you next week.

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