My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 425 - A Fun Mind Experiment
Episode Date: April 25, 2024On today’s episode, Karen covers the murder of Carla Walker and Georgia tells the story of the London Beer Flood of 1814. For our sources and show notes, visit www.myfavoritemurder.com/episodes. Lea...rn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Hello!
And welcome to my favorite murder.
That's Georgia Hartstark.
That's Karen Kilgareff.
And breathe.
And breathe.
And breathe.
And sigh and think about what you've done.
I hope you feel bad.
I were all disappointed in you.
That's where we want you to be for the beginning of this podcast. And then you go down from
here.
Yeah, we start real, real low in the gutter, you know.
And then dig a basement for that gutter.
That's right. Because we're there with you. We're all there together. Hey man. Yeah. We really are. Who doesn't like standing water, you know, just fucking. Down in
the basement that we dug. Yeah. Yeah. We're definitely getting gangrene out of this one.
That's for sure. Okay. Speaking of down and deep in the basement, are you fucking watching or have
you watched baby reindeer on Netflix? I have to, I started it and I got to a certain point
in the first episode and then I said,
I can't do this with you right now.
I will come back at a later date.
That happened to me too.
And my advice is to get to episode four.
Okay.
So it's about a guy and it's a true story
and the actor is the guy who wrote the fucking story.
Yeah, the one- man show, I believe.
Yeah, his name is Richard Gad.
So he wrote it and it's about him being stalked
by this woman and so much more than that.
It's an actress that I love so much.
She was in the David Mitchell Robert Webb show back.
She's been in a million things.
I knew she was familiar.
Jessica Gunning, yeah, she's amazing.
Nava Mao is amazing.
I mean, it's really well acted, but it's triggering.
Really, really triggering.
Yeah, yeah.
Apparently, because I said that to somebody,
I was like, I heard it's really good, but I had to dip.
And then they were like, oh, it's just more tooth grinding
after that.
That's the whole story. The thing for me that the reason I almost stopped was I was like, he's just more tooth grinding after that. Like, that's the whole story.
The thing for me that the reason I almost stopped was I was like,
he's just like totally leading her on.
And why won't he like tell her, you know,
like he was bothering me about why he wasn't.
Yeah. I don't know.
So we're just like, okay, let's just finish this episode.
But the fourth episode is about some trauma he went through.
And it explains a little bit about why he's letting things
be the way they are.
Okay.
And it's so fucked up and dark.
Don't watch it if you're in a fucking dark place.
But, I mean, it's so well done.
And it's like fleabag, but even hurtier.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
Yeah, I heard that it was kind of like the fleabag rollout of started as an award winning one man show type of thing,
and then got developed into TV.
So I'm definitely very interested.
It's just not the best time for me.
I think that's so like so thoughtful.
What's the word like self reflective that you know that you shouldn't be doing that?
Right.
Yeah, yeah.
My TV has to be, I'll just say it this way, I've gone into round nine of Arrested Development.
So I'm now seeing things that I'm not sure were ever there in the first place.
I'm just like, am I hallucinating new scenes in this show?
Because I'm enjoying it just as much as I ever have.
Oh, it's a beautiful place to be.
That's a lovely little...
It's true as you once said, as the kids now say to Lulu,
but we gotta just get through.
We just gotta get through at this point.
Do what you can.
Don't watch Saltburn.
I watched that and it didn't do it for me at all.
That's not the one.
Well, it is.
Saltburn certainly isn't gonna be doing any mending,
internal mending.
That's gonna be ripping some things open.
Yeah, for sure.
Got anything speaking of ripping things open?
Here's the one thing I do have to tell you about, Georgia.
So there's a woman on TikTok who tells the story
where during COVID lockdown,
she saw so many conspiracy theories on the internet
that were just crazy that she started going on
and like arguing with people almost like
sarcastically of like, you know, she would say, this is the example she gave,
that if somebody would say they believe the moon is hollow, she'd go, Oh my God,
you believe in the moon? And that was kind of her, because she's a research
person. She's a historian, I believe, if I'm remembering correctly. The name on that account is Kiki Sheer Genius or at sheer s-c-h-i-r-r genius. But then she's like, I want to make up a really good conspiracy
theory. So she remembers because she's I guess an art historian. And she remembers that Edgar
Degas hated women. He's the guy that painted all the ballerinas and did all the sculptures
of like ballerina girls. And she comes up with this theory, Edward Degas is Jack the
Ripper. But the more she looks into it and the more she is investigating it, the more
it seems like she's actually right. And so she's like, yes. And she's basically now that
everyone is going crazy for this theory,
she goes, I don't like true crime. I don't, this isn't something I'm interested in. It's just that
once I started looking into it, I can't look away because things are lining up.
I love it. And the idea that he, it's, you have to see it. It's so good.
Okay. So is there like a hashtag? Is it like the theory that Degas is
the ripper? It's her personal theory. You're not really on TikTok anymore. I'll keep you updated as she keeps us updated on this theory. Appreciate you. Should we talk about our network?
Yeah. Let's do it. We have a podcast network. It's called Exactly Right Media. And you should
listen to all the podcasts on it, please. That's right. We picked the good ones. Yeah. And we'll
talk about them now. For example, please
join us in congratulating Bridger Weineger, who this week marks his 200th episode of I
Said No Gifts, which is insane. So to celebrate, his guest is the iconic comedian, Maria Bamford.
Oh my God, that is going to be incredible.
Epic.
Couldn't love her more.
And then on Parent Footprint, Dr. Dan, my cousin Dr. Dan, is speaking with journalist
and podcast host Elise Lunen.
Elise is the author of New York Times bestseller On Our Best Behavior, The Seven Deadly Sins
and Price Women Pay to Be Good.
So make sure you check that out.
And make sure to be bad.
Also, on the next episode of The Butterfly King, which is out today, the host Bucky Milligan realizes
she has to revisit King Boris' autopsy
and new evidence brings her shockingly close
to solving the mystery of the death
of King Boris of Bulgaria.
There's only one episode left in this series,
so get in there if you haven't listened to it
and binge it now, it's such good podcasting.
And this is a really exciting announcement. At long last, we are so thrilled to tell you
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It's so good. Everybody that works here at Exactly Right with us, Alejandro produces
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about this hot dog merch. It's so, we're all ordering it. Like I think there's people,
we get on meetings now to talk about other stuff
and people are like,
oh, I ordered my hot dog shirt today.
Like it's a buzz.
A way to go, Sammy Gorin.
Yes, thank you, Sammy.
Yes, so visit exactlyrightmedia.com to check it out
and get yours today.
Today.
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Yes, I have a hard time sleeping no matter where I am.
For example, anytime I'm in a hotel room,
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Yes, and I can hear every little cough
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Goodbye. Goodbye.
Okay, I'm going first today. This is a classic true crime case. Okay, I'm going first today.
This is a classic true crime case.
Okay.
And it's as heartbreaking as all of the murders that we talk about on this show.
But then there's kind of, there's a beautiful upturn.
So we'll start January of 2018.
56 year old Jim Walker of Fort Worth, Texas places a call to the Fort Worth Police Department's
cold case unit.
It is a phone number he has called many times before,
each time with the same mission to,
after decades and decades to try to do something
to move the case forward of his sister Carla's murder.
Carla Walker was murdered in 1974
when she was just 17 years old. And Jim Walker
was only 12 years old when that happened. Right. He and his entire family have spent
every year since 1974 doing whatever they could to try and bring their sister's killer
to justice. Now, both of his parents are dead. The burden of the hunt is falling
squarely on Jim's shoulders. And each time he calls this cold case unit, he's
either met with no updates, they just have nothing to tell him, or a department
voicemail. And on this day, in January of 2018, he gets the voicemail once again.
But after he leaves one of his usual messages, they're used to him, they know his name,
they know Carla Walker's brother will be checking in on this.
This time he gets a call back from a new detective.
Leah Wagner is a vet on the force.
She's new to the cold case unit in Fort Worth,
and so she's new to Carla's case.
She takes an immediate interest in this cold case,
and unlike the detectives who have come before her,
she seems genuinely up to the task
of finding Carla's killer.
Jim earnestly tells her,
if the person who killed Carla is still alive,
he's got to be getting on in years,
please, we're running out of daylight.
This is the story of the murder of Carla Walker.
Wow.
So you'll be happy to hear that one of the people
we're probably the biggest fans of,
Skip Hollinsworth, who is a journalist out of Texas,
who we, from the very beginning,
have thoroughly relied on his journalism
and the stories that he brings to the page
to be able to talk about especially cold cases
and the old cases he mostly reports
about the ones in Texas.
He does it for a publication called Texas Monthly, which is a really amazing magazine
from out of there.
And so there's an article, I won't read you the title of it because it kind of gives things
away, but it is from Texas Monthly that Skip Hollinsworth wrote.
And then there's also an article from NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth
that we used.
And the rest of the sources are in our show notes.
So Carla Jan Walker is born January 31, 1957,
in Fort Worth, Texas.
And her father, Leighton Walker, is a retired Air Force veteran
who rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel,
fighting in both World War II and in the Korean War.
Damn. Damn.
Yeah.
Do you think he had a buzz cut?
I bet you he had a buzz cut.
We could just see what he looks like right now.
I bet you he liked things folded and neatly put away.
Oh my God.
Nurses' corners.
The making of the bed every morning was so precise.
Bouncing of the corner.
And so that's her father, Layton. Her mother, Doris Walker,
was born and raised in Texas, just like her father. Karlo's one of seven children, three boys,
four girls. That's a big family. And they live in Ben Brook, which is a suburb in the southwest
corner of Fort Worth, which is quiet, safe. All the neighbors know each other.
Nobody locks their door.
We're setting up a classic 70s murder story.
In school, Carla is known to be a very sweet girl.
She's really nice.
She's also very popular.
She's on the pep squad at Western Hills High School.
And one schoolmate describes her as, quote,
the kind of girl who smiled and said hello
to just about everyone she saw in the hallways, end quote.
So truly a sweet person.
And when she's a junior,
she starts dating a boy from the football team
named Rodney McCoy.
They're in love.
They plan to both go to Texas Tech University
after they graduate.
And Carla hopes to marry him.
It's true teenage love.
So on the evening of Saturday, February 16th, 1974,
Rodney arrives at the Walker House to pick up Carla
and take her to the school's Valentine's Day dance.
He gives her a corsage and they drive off in Rodney's mom's car.
So classic, you know, high school.
And she's 17? She is 17 years old. Just a, you know, high school. And she's 17.
She is 17 years old.
Oh, just a baby.
She's a junior. So they go to the dance, they have a great time. They stay until it ends
at 1130. And then they get a couple friends to go cruise the main drag with them, which
in Fort Worth is Camp Bowie Boulevard. They make a couple stops along the way. They go
to Taco Bell. They also go to a place called Mr. Quick Hamburger, not the catchiest name you've ever heard.
So obviously they're just doing some teenage hanging out.
Then Rodney drops the friends off and then Rodney and Carla get to be alone.
So sometime around between midnight and 1230, Rodney stops at the local bowling alley, which
is the Brunswick Ridgelea Bowl, so
that Carla can run in and use the bathroom.
So she comes back outside and then they start kissing.
And at one point, Carla leans back against the passenger door.
Suddenly, the passenger door flies open and there's a tall man with short brown hair wearing
a vest and holding a gun.
And he just starts beating Rodney over the back of the head with the butt of his pistol.
Rodney is coming in and out of consciousness.
The man drags Carla out of the car and says, you're coming with me, aren't you, sweetie?
Oh my God.
Yeah.
So before Rodney passes out entirely, he hears Carla say, go get my dad.
So when Rodney finally comes to, it's one in the morning, he's sitting in the driver's
seat.
So he just races over to the walker's house.
He jumps the curb.
He basically lands in the walker's front yard, runs up to the front door, bangs on the door.
Leighton and Doris are having family game night at the moment
when they hear the knocking. So Leighton goes to the door and he finds Rodney bloody and
panicked. Carla's sibling Cindy, who's 18 and of course Jim on this day is 12. They're
watching TV in the living room. They hear Rodney yell, Mr. Walker, they've got her.
They're going to hurt her bad. So Leighton grabs his pistol, drives out to the bowling alley to look for Carla while Doris stays home and calls the police. Police show
up soon after. They begin investigating the scene there in the bowling alley parking lot.
They find Carlos purse and a magazine clip that fell out of the attacker's gun or they
assume did when he was beating or pistol whipping Rodney. Carla's of course
nowhere to be found. So the Walker family and the police search until dawn for Carla.
There's a ground search with people walking around, but there's also police searching
by helicopter, which that kind of struck me in 1974. Seemed kind of like Fort Worth kind
of really fell into action there.
In a way, I don't know if they do anymore overall.
That quickly at least, yeah.
Right.
Yes, exactly.
Just like trusting that this is actually what's happening and then they need to take action
right now.
So the following Monday at school, which is February 18th, 1974, the detectives go into
Western Hills High.
They start interviewing kids, asking if they have any information that could help this
case.
They also look through photos that were taken at the dance to see if they could find any
clues.
Neither of those avenues of investigation turn up any leads.
Then about two days later, two police officers are searching for Carla on foot around Benbrook Lake, which
is around five miles southwest of the bowling alley where she was taken. And they see a
culvert, which is the concrete passageway under roads where water goes through. They
decide to search that culvert and inside they find 17 year old Carla Walker's body.
She's lying in her back.
The dress that she had on for the dance is ripped open.
She's soaked in blood.
Her face and neck are covered with scratches and bruises.
And to those police that found her,
it looked like she'd been strangled to death by hand.
Oh my God.
I mean, it's a good thing that they had the forethought
to go in there because evidence, you because evidence that maybe would have degraded
had they not found her right away.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
So when Carla's parents are called to identify the body,
12-year-old Jim goes with them, not into the room
where her body is, but from down the hall even,
he can hear his mother scream.
And he will later recall, quote,
"'I'd never heard anyone make a sound like that.
"'It was like an animal sound.
"'It'll stay with me for as long as I live,' end quote."
So for the Fort Worth Police Department, you know,
it's 1974, they can't find fingerprints anywhere. There's no security
camera footage. There's no DNA technology that they can analyze anything with. Their
best bet is what they do is they set up a tip line. Calls flood in, none of them produce
any leads. And the only solid clue that police do have to go on is that magazine clip that was in the parking lot.
And because it came from a newer gun model, which was an updated.22 Ruger handgun,
the police were able to compile a short list of a few dozen people in the area who own that kind of gun.
And they just go through that list one by one and question every gun owner hoping that they can find the killer. And the closest they seem to get is a 31 year old truck driver named Glenn McCurley.
When police approach McCurley in early March of 1974, he admits that he did purchase a
22 Ruger, but he tells the police it was stolen out of his truck while he was fishing.
He takes a polygraph test, he passes it. Basically he's released, they don't suspect him of anything.
And then after a few months,
police get to the end of their list of 22 Ruger owners
and not a single suspect brings them any closer to a lead.
So of course, Carla's murder turns Fort Worth upside down.
It's front page news, every local publication.
Over 1,200 people show up for Carla Walker's funeral.
Kids stop going out at night.
They stop cruising along Camp Bowie Boulevard.
And the Western Hills High PTA arranges for two jujitsu black belts
to come to the school and teach self-defense.
And lots of people attend.
So everybody, it's one of those parts of the story
where the town changed overnight.
People started locking their doors.
The innocence is gone.
Well, what's so crazy too is like,
she wasn't walking home alone and got snatched,
which is horrible enough, but the brazenness, like she was with her partner,
her boyfriend, and it didn't matter.
In like a, what would be a public place, right?
Yeah. Yes. Exactly.
So of course the Walker family is devastated.
Carlos' brother, Jim, knows every morning
that his mother basically steals away
to the bathroom to cry in the shower. Like there's a lot of sad coping and difficulty,
obviously. And this pain never subsides as the years go by. And to make matters worse,
the Fort Worth police investigating this crime have run into a brick wall basically.
The few leads that they started with have dried up and basically the case goes cold.
But Carlos' heartbroken father, Leighton, is conducting his own investigation.
Any tips that he gets, either from people he knows or from the anonymous calls that
he gets at the Walker House, he takes every single one of them seriously. He writes
all the information from them down. He stores it in a small metal box. He also marks the
addresses of any potential suspects on a map of the Fort Worth area. You know, he's a determined
military man and he tells his family he's not going to rest until Carla's killer is
behind bars. And so young Jim sees his father's tenacity
and he adapts it as well.
He starts running and weight training.
He takes boxing lessons,
joins the high school wrestling and football teams.
And he'll later say, quote,
"'I wanted to be ready in case I ever came across the killer.'"
So when Jim turned 16, he gets his driver's license,
which is in 1978, and he takes the
tips his dad has collected over those years, and he just starts driving around trying to
find any kind of leads or any information that would be helping this case.
And each year on the anniversary of Carla's death, he goes to the Brunswick Ridge Lea
Bowl, and he sits in the parking lot looking for
suspicious people who also might be there.
Oh my God.
So three years after Carla's murder, it's February 19th, 1977, and a 25-year-old vocational
nurse named June Ward is found murdered in South Fort Worth.
She has been sexually assaulted, she's been strangled with her own bra, and she has been beaten over the head with a sharp heavy object. Three
years later on July 9th, 1980, 19-year-old Denise Hugh is found strangled to death beneath
a creek bridge. And then between 1977 and 1986, 10 different women are murdered in Fort Worth, Texas.
Holy shit.
A waitress named Christy Tower found in February of 1983.
A 23-year-old aspiring model named Catherine Davis who was murdered in September of 1984.
A 29-year-old middle school teacher named Marilyn Hartman who was found on October 19th, 1984.
A 23-year-old college graduate named Cindy
Heller, who was found in November of 1984, a middle school teacher named Catherine Jackson,
who was found on November 26th, 1984, a 21-year-old radio programmer named Angela Uert, who was
found in December of 1984, a 21-year-old named Regina Grover, who was found strangled and
drowned in a creek, and her boyfriend is also found beaten to death in his own bed.
And finally, a Jane Doe, who was found wrapped in a blanket on a hillside on November 24th,
1986.
Oh my God, promising young women.
Jesus.
Devastating. Devastating.
Devastating.
And the worst part, I think, is so of course the citizens of Fort Worth are in a panic
over the prospect of that there's a serial killer in their city, but the police assure
the public that these murders are not connected.
Oh my God, are you fucking kidding me?
What?
Yeah.
Which is also the kind of thing where it's like,
I don't understand the mentality where it's,
of course they don't wanna make,
they don't wanna panic people further.
Right, but panicking might be okay in this situation.
It seems like a panic-worthy situation.
I mean, panic makes you more cautious.
So what's wrong with making people a little more aware
of their, you know, what's going on?
It's like they're trying to ride the line, awareness and panic.
So basically, it's a list of women who are young, and they were all strangled, sexually
assaulted.
There's a lot of connections to be made.
Like it's just not, it's clearly a pattern.
So the Fort Worth Police Department puts together
a task force trying to find what they claim
are multiple killers, but behind closed doors,
they also believe they're looking for a serial killer.
They just don't, you can't tell a city
there's a serial killer and then just not find them or,
you know.
But it's almost like, well, okay, so there are maybe
eight or 10 different killers then
that's just as fucking terrifying as one serial killer,
you know?
And unrealistic.
Like it's like, it's just strange.
And when they put together a free self-defense seminar
to try and ease everyone's nerves,
more than 3000 people sign up for it.
So clearly that, you know, this has gone from a horrifying murder of a high
school junior that goes unsolved to case after case and multiple in 1984, there's five, I
believe. It's just, it's wild. So the task force never solved even one of the homicides on the list.
All of them go cold, including Carla's.
And as the years pass by, those killings just seem to stop.
And the killer or multiple killers just go free and live their lives freely.
Meanwhile, Carla Walker's little brother Jim is getting older.
He goes to college at Sam Houston State University.
He studies psychology with a focus on abnormal psychology and understanding of the criminal
mind.
Yeah.
When he graduates, he moves back home to Fort Worth because he's going to be a police officer.
Damn.
Holy shit.
Yeah.
His plan is to enter the force and then basically move up the ranks to become a detective
so he can take over his sister's case.
Oh my God, I have goosebumps.
Yeah.
But as he's in school for that, he goes into arms training and that's where he learns he
has a congenital eye condition so he cannot become a police officer and he has to leave
the police academy. So he gets a job in security, but
he has no less determined on his own plan to hunt for this killer. He's just not going
to have the inside advantage, which, you know, there doesn't seem to be an advantage at this
point. So in 1987, Leighton Walker passes away from a heart attack. So, Jim takes his father's notes from that metal box where he was collecting them all those years,
and he begins to comb through them again and again, trying to pick up where his dad left off
to see if there's any old clues that have been overlooked.
Then in 2015, Carla's mother Doris passes away. She had Alzheimer's, but before she dies,
Jim promises her that he will keep up the search to find Carla's killer.
So after his parents both die, Jim buys the family home and he moves into it with his wife,
thinking it would be best that somebody from the Walker family stayed in that home,
quote, in case somebody
ever got a conscience at three in the morning and showed up to confess.
Oh, very sad.
Very sad, yeah.
Okay, now we're going to skip to 2018.
And at this point, 56-year-old Jim Walker has been searching for a sister's killer for
going on 44 years.
His resolve's never wavered. In addition to conducting his
own search, he regularly checks in with the Fort Worth Police Department cold case unit
for any updates. They don't ever have them, but he continues asking, continues pressing.
And then in January of 2018, Jim meets Detective Leah Wagner, and it seems for the first time
in decades, there's actually some good news.
Detective Wagner dives into Carla's case, but almost right as she starts, she gets assigned
to a new active case and it derails her.
And she has to work on that.
It actually takes her a year to get back to Carla's case, which I think is probably a
huge problem.
If you don't have a dedicated cold case team,
then cold cases are not the priority. But she gets back to the case in January of 2019 and when
she dives completely into it and she knows how hard cold cases are to solve. So she brings in
a reserve officer to help her on this case named Jeff Bennett. So Wagner and Bennett pour over the evidence. They have exhaustive late nights.
And finally Bennett comes up with a list of 80 past suspects and people of interest
that he thinks might be worth taking a new look at.
80?
80.
That's so many.
Yeah.
Which also is just like why couldn't somebody have been going back over that in the interim?
The names were there, the information was sitting there.
No, nothing's new.
So one of the people on that list that Bennett comes up with is Rodney McCoy, Carla's then
boyfriend.
Yeah, I'm like, why aren't they zeroing in on him?
They always do that, right?
Right.
They usually do it first, but I think probably because he was also a victim in the
crime, you know, he was traumatized by that. And actually, soon after he left Texas and
went to work on an oil rig in Alaska. So all the plans that he had, obviously with Carla
about going to college and the things they were gonna do, everything kind of was like just ended.
So he had just recently returned to Texas
right before Wagner and Bennett begin the new investigation.
So they're actually able to speak with Rodney immediately
and they immediately roll him out as a suspect.
So these detectives know
if they really wanna catch this killer,
they have one good shot at it,
which is trying to find the DNA on
Carla's dress that they still have and utilizing the now current DNA technology that has obviously
progressed so far since when this case was new.
Luckily, Carla's dress has been kept in good condition.
So when the crime lab analyzes the trace amount of body fluid that's left on it, they are
able to extract it, to use it.
But there are two concerns.
First, so much time has passed that the DNA samples could be degraded beyond recognition.
And the second is the cost.
Testing these samples could run the Fort Worth Police Department as much as $20,000. Wow.
And that money is usually reserved for active cases, not cold cases.
Without news, Wagner and Bennett basically hit what they believe will be an insurmountable
roadblock on this case. You can't, you know, who's going to come up with that money?
Well, what they don't know is that there's an old acquaintance of Carla Walker's from
high school, and her name is Deanne Kirkendall.
And Deanne Kirkendall follows true crime.
One day she's listening to the podcast Gone Cold, Texas True Crime, and she hears Carla's
case being discussed.
She remembers Carla very well from high school as being the kind hearted popular girl that
was nice to everybody.
And Deanne decides she wants to do something to help Carla get some justice.
So that year, which is 2019, she goes to Crime Con in Nashville and she hands out pamphlets about Carla's case to everyone she can meet, which is so
smart and so amazing that she's just like, well, I'll just fly her that place and see
what I can do.
And do you know who she runs into?
Do you know who she hands a flyer to?
Paul Holes?
Paul Holes.
That's right.
Really?
Yeah.
Oh my God. And of course, Paul talks to her, you know, sees all the information about it, and he's
doing his show on oxygen.
Yeah.
So he takes all this information to the producers.
So he and the producers of his TV show, which is called the DNA of Murder with Paul Holes,
they donate $18,000 to go toward paying for that DNA testing.
So when they do that, they send it to a California lab and they find a small amount of intact
DNA on Carla's bra strap, which is very interesting because the victim who was murdered, the murder
after Carla's three years later, she was strangled
with her bra strap, if you remember.
Paul Holes features Carla Walker's unsolved murder on his TV show, and he connects Fort Worth
detectives Wagner and Bennett with another lab outside of Houston that use a special genome sequence processing in their DNA tests. So with
their very last shred of testable DNA, Wagner and Bennett try their luck with this third lab,
and it pays off. The lab's able to make a connection with that DNA to a family with the last name of
McCurley. So Bennett goes back, scours through his files, searching for that name,
and he finds it, Glenn McCurley, the truck driver who police spoke to in 1974, the one who claimed
his Ruger was stolen from him. They run a background check on McCurley. They don't find much. He stole
a car when he was 18, but other than that, his record is clean. He and his
wife had settled in West Fort Worth in 1972. He's regarded by his friends and neighbors
as generally a good guy. He doesn't talk much. His wife is more outgoing, but he's a regular
at his Baptist church and he's a handyman who's always willing to help out when needed. So on September 10th, 2020, the two detectives pay the now 77-year-old Glenn McCurley and
his wife a visit to talk about Carla's case.
Glenn's wife remembers the case immediately.
She calls it heartbreaking.
The detectives explain that they are re-interviewing people from the initial investigation and
that Glenn's name is on that list. They ask him for a DNA sample to rule him out as a suspect. He hesitates
at first and then he consents. And after they collect that DNA swab, McCurley's wife wishes
the detective's well saying, quote, I hope you find out who killed Carla. That girl needs
to be remembered as someone who mattered. End quote.
Oh my God.
So we know where this is going.
Yeah.
Glenn McCurley is a match to that DNA. On Tuesday, September 22nd, 2020, he's arrested
at his home for the 1974 murder of Carla Walker. And when detectives Wagner and Bennett sit
him down for questioning, McCurley says he has no idea
who Carla Walker is.
He denies any wrongdoing at all.
But the more he is interrogated,
the more he starts opening up.
He remembers drinking at a bar near the bowling alley
the night of Carla's murder.
He remembers driving around.
He remembers sitting in parking lots.
But right when Bennett and Wagner think he's about to confess, he tells some story about
saving Carla from a big guy who was, quote, jerking her around.
And then he says after he saved her, they had consensual sex.
Okay, dude.
I mean, disgusting.
So of course the detectives are not buying any part of the story.
They press him on those other murders that took place around the same time, trying to
see if he knows anything about those.
The more they talk to him, the more he starts getting details mixed up, like he's blending
memories of different attacks.
They can't get a clear story out of him. They think this is the man that killed Carla,
but Glenn is not giving them anything solid.
Until the police raid McCurley's house
and find almost literally the smoking gun,
the 22 Ruger handgun that Glenn McCurley claimed
had been stolen was actually hidden
in a secret compartment above a door
in his home.
So he's arrested for murder.
He initially enters a not guilty plea during one of the pre-trial hearings on June 16th,
2021.
Jim Walker, who now has, his vision has declined so badly that he actually has to use a guide
dog. He goes to the trial and he actually goes up
and introduces himself to McGurley's wife and son.
His son nervously apologizes on his father's behalf,
but Jim assures the son this is not his fault.
He tells him he is not responsible for what his dad did.
And he says, quote,
"'Your dad devastated your family,
just like he devastated mine.'" Oh my God. And he says, quote, your dad devastated your family, just like he devastated mine.
Oh my God.
Three days into this trial,
the evidence is mounting against him
and Glenn McCurley changes his plea to guilty.
He's sentenced to life in prison.
And after the sentencing,
Jim and his sister, Cindy,
each make witness impact statements in court,
expressing their grief over losing their sister Carla and expressing their
gratitude for Glenn McCurley's conviction.
They add that they believe he's murdered other women and they urge him to confess
his other crimes. Yeah.
But we will never know for sure if Glenn McCurley was a Fort Worth serial killer
because he dies in prison on July 15th, 2023.
So, inspired by the conclusion of this case, Detective Jeff Bennett forms a nonprofit organization
called the Fort Worth Police Department Cold Case Support Group,
whose mission it is to raise money for DNA testing for cold cases.
Jim Walker joins the board of the foundation and he pledges to donate a portion of his
profits from the sale of the Walker family home.
He says this, quote, I don't need to be living here anymore.
Thinking about my mom crying in her bathroom or my dad with his metal box.
He was talking to skip Hollinsworth when he was talking about that.
So this is all interviewing that Skip Hollinsworth did.
He says, I don't need to be reminded of Carla's murder every time I walk down the hallway.
It's time to let things go.
Oh my God.
If it weren't for Jim Walker's decades of tireless commitment and determination to finding
his sister's killer, Carla Walker's
murder case may have never been solved. Now he's got the closure that he's always wanted
and through his own foundation, he plans to bring closure to other families going through
the same thing that his family suffered through. And that's the story of the murder of Carla
Walker. Oh my God. I want the other DNA tested.
Those 10 other women?
Right.
What are police budgets for if not paying for the cases
they didn't solve the first time around?
Right.
Nobody should have to fucking fundraise
to have the money when they're buying themselves tanks, they're buying themselves
military equipment.
Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That's insane.
Yeah. Crazy.
Wow. And the surprise Paul Holes, that was unexpected.
A surprise Paul Holes.
Yeah.
I mean, it's almost like a whole subset of criminal justice
work, which is like cold case cleanup, essentially.
Yeah.
It's the thing of how much we hate statute of limitations.
But cases that go cold and jurisdictions
don't give a shit to solve them because they're so old,
it's the same thing.
It's like, if you got away with it long enough, then guess what, you're off the hook.
Right. It shouldn't be that way.
Or if the city is small enough,
or if the focus isn't right.
Like, yeah, it's just, yeah, it's wrong.
Yeah.
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Great.
I think is which direction we're headed in.
If you had it the same kind of story I was about to tell, we'd be doing a 360.
So if we're just doing a 180, I think it's a turnaround.
We're just turning around and walking in the opposite direction.
Listen, I took geometry twice, sophomore and junior year. So, AMA. That's
more than I did. So we're making a U-turn. We're walking over to London, early 1800s. What is it?
My birthday? It's during the Industrial Revolution. Today I'm going to tell you about the London beer flood of 1814.
Oh yeah.
Yeah, I am.
Aren't I?
Yes, I am.
Yes, you are.
I agree that you are.
So almost as soon as this accident happened, this beer flood, it was of course the butt
of jokes, but like other industrial disasters that we've covered on the show, like you covered
the Boston molasses flood in episode 144, people actually died
and it's a pretty tragic story.
Yeah.
So the main sources I use for the story are several 1814 news articles from the London
Morning Chronicle and the Morning Post, a blog post by beer historian, Martin Cornell,
and an episode of the engineering comedy podcast, Everything's a Spring.
And the rest of the sources are in the show notes. So here we are, Karen. It's a late afternoon on October 17th, 1814,
your favorite year. One of the greats. We're in London, St. Giles, Rookery.
So the word rookery basically means slum, like slum neighborhood.
St. Giles is in what is now a charming touristy area,
of course, because London's so fancy now.
It's right near Soho and the theater district.
But in 1814, the Rookery is London's most notorious slum.
Like this is bad, like a not good area.
And it's home to some of London's poorest residents,
most of whom, I'm sorry
to say, are Irish immigrants.
Well, we're used to it. It's been happening for a while.
So St. Giles Rookery is also home to the Horseshoe Brewery, which belongs to a brewing company
called Mewks & Company. And they are one of several brewers in London and has started
using a steam engine to produce large quantities of beer,
which I guess is a big deal.
And they are known as one of the city's
largest producers of porter.
So in this new cutthroat economy of beer,
beer makers compete by installing giant vats
as marketing spectacles.
Like a water, almost looks like a water tower
that would be on top of a building in New York.
Sure.
But just full of fucking beer.
But full of Coors Light.
Got it.
Every time a brewer builds one of these giant vats,
they invite the public to come see it
and the press to write about it.
So it's kind of like a spectacle to get more people
to drink their beer.
The big brewers are all trying to outdo one another
with who has the biggest beer vat.
And the horseshoe brewery is in on this arms race. The company has several vats the size of small
houses in their large storehouse. The biggest vats are more than 20 feet tall and hold about
300,000 gallons of beer. Wow. And it's needed. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
It's a drink.
And there are several of them in this storehouse.
So that's a fucking lot of liquid.
For context, an Olympic-sized swimming pool holds about 660,000 gallons of water.
So there's probably more liquid than that in the horseshoe brewery storehouse.
Wow.
I love a nice comparison.
Because then we get to picture an Olympic-sized swimming
pool filled with Guinness.
And it's such a fun mind experiment.
Take a dive.
Get in there.
So the storehouse backs up against a pub
called the Tavistock Arms.
And the pub's backyard is bound on one side
by the storehouse's brick wall.
The wall is about 20 feet high, 60 feet wide, and 22 inches thick.
And on the afternoon of October 17th, a 14-year-old servant at the pub named Eleanor Cooper is
standing under that wall, scrubbing out pots.
Oh, as you did back then.
Yeah, this is pretty sad.
Directly behind a different side of the storehouse is a very narrow street. It's more like an alley. It's called New Street and New Street
is full of dilapidated tenement buildings. One of New Street's residents is a young woman
named Mary Banfield who lives in a first floor apartment. That afternoon, she and her two
of her children are sitting in their apartment having their tea which is like an early dinner. Downstairs in that same building's basement floor, there's
an Irish wake in progress. Tragically, the wake is for a two-year-old boy and it's unclear
how he died, but it's a poor neighborhood in London in 1814, so probably from some kind
of illness. Among the mourners is the boy's mother, a 40-year-old woman named Anne Savo.
There's also a 30-year-old woman named Mary Mulvey, and she's there with her son,
a three-year-old named Thomas. There's also a woman named Elizabeth Butler, who's in her 60s,
and one named Elizabeth Smith, who's 27. So they're all at the wake of this poor two-year-old boy.
In another house nearby on New Street, there's a three-year-old named Sarah Bates.
Not much is known about what she's doing in the afternoon of October 17th, but if history
tells us anything, she's working, probably.
A three-year-old?
Yeah.
She's tending bar.
Right.
George Crick is the clerk at the Horseshoe Brewery.
He's worked there for 17 years, and he's the most senior person who was on site at the time.
At 4.30 in the afternoon, workers tell George that one of the beer vats is having an issue.
Here's the description from an article in London's Morning Chronicle about this particular vat.
Quote, the height of the vat was 22 feet. It was filled within four inches of the top,
and then contained 3,500 barrels of beer,
which was 10 months brewed, end quote.
So if you think of the little barrels
that they roll into the bar and like a keg,
if you think of 3,550 of those barrels,
all that liquid is in one of these vats.
I cannot understate the amount of liquid
we're talking about.
There is a lot of beer held in this.
What is a two-story vat?
Yeah.
The vats are made of wood and are secured by iron hoops,
like giant barrels.
But instead of one hoop on each end,
there are about 20 of them going up along the whole vat.
When George gets to the storehouse,
he sees that one of the hoops on the vats
has slipped off and fallen to the ground.
The hoop is huge.
It weighs about 700 pounds.
Oh my God.
I know.
That like gives you an idea of how giant we're talking.
But George isn't particularly concerned,
is this actually happens a few times a year.
And usually the rest of the hoops are enough
to keep the bat intact until the broken one can be repaired.
George gets about writing a letter to the brewing company's enough to keep the vat intact until the broken one can be repaired.
George gets about writing a letter to the brewing company's partners to tell them about
any new hoop.
Like it's not a big deal.
It's not a cause for concern.
But as beer ferments, it releases gases.
And of course this puts pressure on the wood.
So without that metal hoop, I think it's just like the metal hoop happened to be
in the exact place where it needed to be, you know,
if it had been a different hoop on a different day,
it might not have mattered.
And so at 5.30, George is standing about three yards away
from the broken vat.
He's about to walk out the door to mail that letter
to get the vat fixed.
He hears a huge explosion. In the
span of a few seconds, the bottom of the vat has burst open and hundreds of thousands of
gallons of beer spill out. The force of the beer and the debris from the vat knocks out
the entire 25 foot back wall of the building. It also knocks the stopper out of another
giant vat causing that beer to start spilling out of the vat It also knocks the stopper out of another giant vat,
causing that beer to start smelling out of the vat.
So we're talking even more beer here.
By the time George gets back inside of the storehouse,
it's a scene of complete destruction and chaos.
He's immediately up to his waist in beer
and the whole side of the building is just gone.
And that's the wall, of course,
that 14 year old Eleanor Cooper
had been standing on the other side of in the backyard of the pub washing pots. The
owner of that pub, where Eleanor works, is inside the tap room at the time. He hears
the explosion, a wall in his pub caves in, but he's not injured. And the tap room immediately
starts filling with beer. He looks out into the yard where Eleanor had been scrubbing pots and all
he sees is a mountain of bricks. So out on New Street, it's total chaos. The 15-foot wave of beer
tears through the alley, smashing into these dilapidated homes, you know, that are already
kind of falling apart, knocking down several of them and filling cellar apartments and first
floors with beer.
People climb under the furniture to keep from being swept away. One American who was in the area of visiting at the time, he got caught in the flood and later wrote about the experience in the
Knickerbocker magazine. He writes about being swept away in a wave of hot dark beer saying,
quote, all at once I found myself born onward with great velocity by a torrent which burst upon me
so suddenly as almost to deprive me of breath.
A roar as a falling buildings at the distance
and suffocating fumes were in my ears and nostrils, end quote.
So it's like being in a wave pool and just being
like a knocked off your feet on the street.
But in a wave pool, you know waves are coming. This is like the last thing you'd expect.
Totally. Yeah, I was just thinking about that. Oh,
suddenly you're just being carried away by a wave when you're like, where did a wave come from?
I'm on the streets of London. What is happening?
And also I was thinking about the fumes too, because it's not like the finalized version of a beer
or whatever, it's that stink.
It's fermenting beer, yeah.
That's been sitting in there for months.
It's probably warm and ugh.
Well, they do love to serve it warm over there.
That's a lot of British people would be like,
here, here, or whatever they say, chin, chin.
Oh, oh, oh. And say, chin, chin. Right, I've got it.
Oy, oy, oy.
And some of the houses on New Street
closest to the brewery, there's no time to react.
Beer floods into the Irish wake in the basement apartment
and all five people,
including little three-year-old Thomas, drown.
Upstairs on the first floor,
beer surges into the apartment
where four-year-old Hannah Banfield and her mother Mary and another child are having tea.
Mary is pulled out of a window by the wave of beer, she's just like gone, and Hannah
is knocked out of her chair and against a partition in the room.
Back at the brewery, employees are at first preoccupied with locating their workers.
They didn't realize the extent of the catastrophe.
And the brewery cellar has been filled.
So they don't actually realize that the 15-foot wave of beer
has swept down New Street until the body of Anne Seville,
the 40-year-old grieving mother from the Irish wake, floats in.
Can you imagine the horror?
Right, you wouldn't be anticipating
these insane events like you would just know there's an
emergency here where we work.
You wouldn't realize the extent.
That's horrible.
Exactly.
It's only then that the workers direct their attention outside of the brewery where residents
of St. Giles have begun their own search and rescue operation.
Rescuers first start by trying to free Eleanor Cooper, the girl who was washing the pot since
they know exactly where she is.
But it takes them three hours to clear all of the brick wall
that fell on her.
And by the time they reach her, she's dead.
The 14 year old's body is finally found
at 8.30 PM that night, still standing up.
So just no time to react at all.
Yeah.
On New Street, multiple buildings have been reduced
to piles of rubble.
People wade through knee deep beer
and everyone tries to be quiet
so they can listen for people
who have been trapped under debris.
So just the eerie fucking silence going on.
Late that night, rescuers find the body
of three-year-old Sarah Bates
in the wreckage of her house on New Street.
In a neighboring house, they also find the bodies of
the four other mourners from the Irish wake, including three-year-old Thomas and his mother,
Mary. Upstairs, rescuers find the body of four-year-old Hannah Banfield. The other
young child whose name and exact age are not mentioned is found on a bed nearly suffocated,
but alive. Her mother, Mary, is also found alive outside on New Street,
and both of them are brought to Middlesex Hospital,
along with several other injured people,
and everyone is brought to the hospital survives.
Wow.
Yeah.
So lots of accounts of the beer floods
say that people from the neighborhood
rushed out into the streets, filling pots and cups and bowls,
with as much free beer as they could scoop up.
So they made it into this, like, spectacle.
You know what I mean?
Some people say that others died because of alcohol poisoning
from drinking so much beer.
And they kind of just made it like a look at these,
you know, poor people and...
Look at these Irish people. Yeah.
Look at these poor Irish people, what a mess they are.
Yeah.
However, there's no mention of this in any of the newspaper
accounts from the time. And given that most of the victims in the story were Irish
and the discriminatory British press, they would have been very likely to have reported that if
that had actually happened. And so most historians are sure that this isn't what happened at all.
Right. Also, sorry, just for logic, it's like any liquid that washes down a street, by the time it
gets to your house, that's not going to be delicious or not free of tan bark and weird
random shit.
Right.
It's like, it's not Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory.
Right.
But it's a disgusting idea that when there's a devastation, and immediately people were
doing search and rescue missions. It's not like there were just these drunks on the street
trying to get beer. You know, it's just, but we're so good at figuring out how to hate
each other. Like it just is all, what are you like? You love beer. That means you love
beer until you don't care about anything else. Like those people do. And that's what they're
like. Exactly.
Two days after the accident, the coroner
holds an inquest with a jury, which
will determine the cause of death for the eight people who
died in the flood, and therefore the level of responsibility
for the brewing company.
Which it's like, it was an accident,
however you're still responsible for that having happened,
in my mind, right?
It's regulations, it's upkeep. You got it. You got to. If you're going to have a two story
vat of beer, you have to keep all the rings on it.
Totally.
I've always said that.
George Crick, who's the head of the beer place, is one of the witnesses,
as is the owner of the Tavistock Arms Pub. The other primary witness is the landlord
who owned the building where Hannah, Thomas,
and their mothers lived.
So it's a little bit like one-sided.
And there are many living survivors who lost loved ones
and have been injured by the flood of beer.
And none of these people, all of them who are very poor,
are asked to give statements.
They ask the people who probably would be most likely
to get sued in this occasion.
Right.
And so the coroner's jury rules that the eight victims,
quote, died by casualty, accidentally and by misfortune.
So it was basically an act of God kind of a thing.
Or their fault is for like,
it was just their fault for standing in the street
Right. How dare you live where you lived?
This ruling means that it was an accident and an act of God and absolves the beer maker of any
Responsibility for the deaths and you know, like the landlord too. It's like maybe a house shouldn't fall down that easily
Yeah, possibly. I don't know. I'm not a fucking builder
Yeah, maybe you should have there should be laws to prevent you from letting your house get to that Yeah. Possibly. I don't know. I'm not a fucking builder. Yeah.
Maybe you should have, there should be laws to prevent you from letting your house get
to that.
Right.
It should be able to, I don't know, maybe you could call it the three little pigs law
where you have to have them stand up against a wolf's exhaling.
Right.
Exactly.
Still, the damage to the building and loss of beer cost the beer company about
23,000 pounds, which in today's money, it's 1.5 million pounds.
I was going to say 1.3. Oh, wait.
Oh my God. So how many dollars is that?
I don't know.
We're not doing that.
We're not doing that.
We're not pretending like we understand inflation and like currently.
I can't do dollars to pounds when I'm in that country actively doing it.
Right.
Okay.
So 23,000 pounds back then is $2 million today.
That's how much this accident cost the beer company.
Wow.
This lost revenue without the ability to produce or sell any beer for a while would be enough
to permanently shutter mucs and company.
Instead, Parliament votes to refund the taxes
the company has already paid on that lost beer,
giving them a bailout of about 7,000 pounds,
which is about a third of what they lost,
and so they're able to continue operating.
And it's like, oh, help the big guy.
They love to help the big guy. Those government types.
Oops. You made an accident. Let's fix it. Right. Yeah.
In the wake of the accident,
brewers do change the way they store their beer opting for concrete that's
lined with metal instead of wood. Yay.
The Horseshoe Brewery is rebuilt and operates in that same area until 1921.
And it's actually the last brewery in central London when it finally closes. I think people realize that having a
brewery in the middle of fucking neighborhoods is a bad idea. So they started moving them outside
the big city. Yeah. The brewery far outlasts the St. Giles' rookery. So that like tenement
neighborhood, the poor neighborhood, which is broken up and ultimately demolished in the second half of the 1800s. Right when?
Jack the Ripper.
Jack the Ripper was happening.
Maybe.
Maybe. The Mewks Brewery Company stays in business, producing porter until the early 1960s. Although
the outcome and the deaths are clearly awful, historians agree that it could have been much worse
because the flood happened around 5 o'clock, 5.30,
had the flood happened later in the evening,
when the men and older children would have been home
from work and school, far more people would have died
if there had been people in those pubs as well after work.
And the wake and the cellar would have been more attended
because people were, you know, it's like an all-day thing, so they were going to come after work. And the wake and the cellar would have been more attended because people were, you know, it's like an all day thing.
So they were going to come after work.
So like the death toll could have been so much higher.
It's still obviously a tragedy.
And that is the story of the London beer flood of 1814,
which killed eight people.
Wow.
Yeah, that is a really interesting point of like back then they were just kind of like,
yeah, just put that gigantic business wherever in a residential community and let's just see
what happens. Yeah, there's no standards and practices, but let's just see how big we can get
this thing that's going to hold liquid, that ferments. Let's just do it. Yeah, let's see.
It's almost like a contest with ourselves. Yeah.
Things that cause huge waves in residential areas don't, we don't have them as much anymore
and perhaps it's for the best.
Yeah.
Well, that was great.
Yeah, thank you.
Should we wrap up with our new recurring segment
that we love so much?
Yeah, it's called hashtag what are you even doing right now?
What are you even doing right now?
You guys tell us what you're even doing
when you listen to this podcast.
What are you even doing right now?
There it is.
We needed it, and so I got it done.
Hey gang, the episode draws to a close,
and Georgia and Karen ask, what are you
doing while listening to stories of art heists and murders?
Well, I am somewhere in Montana,
buried deep among rows and rows of dinosaur fossils,
working through drawer by drawer,
painstakingly identifying and cataloging toe bones
and femurs and loose teeth and countless other bony bits.
I'm currently stuck on a sickle shaped claw
about five inches long that belonged to a close relative
of T-Rex called, and they
wrote it out for me, thank you, Dospletosaurus, trying to decide if it came from the left
or right hand. In my ear, Karen and Georgia discuss the lives and crimes of killers and
victims and around me lie hundreds of thousands of fossils and bones. Hmm, I guess murderinos
and paleontologists are alike in that way, both scrutinizing the losses of the past and asking, why did they die?
What killed them?
How did they live?
And what does it all mean?
A little existential, but never mind that.
Just stay sexy and don't lose interest in the past because, and then it says Smokey
the Bear voice, only you can keep the stories of the dead alive.
Best, Sophie, the paleobiologist, she, they.
I have the perfect follow up to that one.
This is from, I'm no pint okay, is what it looks like.
And I believe it's from Instagram and it says,
listening to the pod while I eat leftover birthday cake
for breakfast like a goddamn champion.
We've done it again.
That's it, I love it.
Oh my God, that's so good.
Those were great.
Please tell us what are you even doing right now
any way you want.
Tell it any way, long, short.
Yeah.
We love it all.
Detailed.
Yeah.
Whatever, not, doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't.
We just appreciate that you're even listening right now.
That's right. We love that you spend even listening right now. That's right.
We love that you spend time with this podcast
and we appreciate you.
We really do.
You guys are doing it.
We got to keep on doing it.
And until that time, stay sexy.
And don't get murdered.
Good bye.
Elvis, do you want a cookie?
["Sweet Home Alone"] This has been an Exactly Right production. Ah! are Maren McClashen and Ali Elkin. Email your hometowns to MyFavorItMurder at gmail.com.
Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at MyFavorItMurder
and Twitter at MyFaveMurder.
Goodbye.