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Patsy Wright Pt. One · The Path Went Chilly

0:30
Speaker 1: Welcome back to our next series of episodes from The
0:32
Speaker 1: Pathwent Chile. I'm Robin and as I mentioned in our
0:35
Speaker 1: last few episodes, Ashley, Yeah, for personal reasons, has had
0:38
Speaker 1: to take some time off, but hopefully she will be
0:41
Speaker 1: back very soon. So for the moment, I will be
0:43
Speaker 1: sharing the details about a case with jewels and she
0:46
Speaker 1: will give off her reaction. So, Jeules, have you ever
0:49
Speaker 1: heard of the murder of Patsy Wright?
0:52
Speaker 2: I don't think so. I mean, Patsy Wright sounds like
0:55
Speaker 2: one of those names that I've heard before, but the
0:58
Speaker 2: details aren't coming to me. Maybe I've heard it, maybe
1:01
Speaker 2: I heard it on the Trail and Cold, but either way,
1:04
Speaker 2: it's not ringing any bells right now, so I'm excited
1:06
Speaker 2: for you to tell me about the case.
1:09
Speaker 1: Well, of course, this is another case which I did
1:11
Speaker 1: cover on The Trail Went Cold, which was also featured
1:13
Speaker 1: on Unsolved Mysteries. And what's interesting about it is the
1:17
Speaker 1: method of murder because Patsy Wright was a victim of
1:20
Speaker 1: strychnine poisoning, which is very rare these days. This is
1:23
Speaker 1: something that you would often find in old Agatha Christie
1:26
Speaker 1: mysteries and was a common poisoning method during the eighteen
1:30
Speaker 1: hundreds or the early twentieth century, but this case took
1:34
Speaker 1: place in Texas in nineteen eighty seven, and on the
1:38
Speaker 1: Unsolved Mystery segment, Robert Stack even said that at the
1:41
Speaker 1: time of this episode, there was only one other confirmed
1:44
Speaker 1: case of strychnine poisoning by a homicide since nineteen fifty
1:49
Speaker 1: because at that particular point, strychnine was very hard to
1:52
Speaker 1: obtain and sales of it were strictly regulated, so it
1:55
Speaker 1: would be very difficult to obtain strychnine and use it
1:58
Speaker 1: to commit a murder and get away with it. But
2:00
Speaker 1: this is one of the rare cases of it because
2:03
Speaker 1: someone managed to slip strychnine into a Patsy Writes Nike will,
2:07
Speaker 1: which she always took before she went to bed every night,
2:10
Speaker 1: and it wound up killing her. And here we are,
2:12
Speaker 1: nearly forty years later, and we still don't know who
2:15
Speaker 1: did it or what their motive was.
2:17
Speaker 2: So this is interesting for multiple different reasons. We've been
2:21
Speaker 2: covering old timey Hollywood mysteries and this one isn't an
2:24
Speaker 2: old timy mystery. I mean, it's from the eighties, so
2:27
Speaker 2: it is somewhat old. But there's elements of yesteryear kind
2:32
Speaker 2: of peppered in when we have the method of murder
2:35
Speaker 2: being that which was common in like the eighteen hundreds
2:38
Speaker 2: with strychnine, and I would think that someone would have
2:42
Speaker 2: to have like a commercial license to be able to
2:45
Speaker 2: procure large amounts of strychnine, that it would be rather
2:48
Speaker 2: controlled and regulated. But refresh my memory. Is strych nine
2:52
Speaker 2: one of the main components in rat poison.
2:55
Speaker 1: It is, yes, like it's mostly used as a pesticide
2:58
Speaker 1: to kill birds and rodents, and of course during the
3:01
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds this was a popular method for serial killers
3:05
Speaker 1: because if you put strych nine into someone's drink or
3:07
Speaker 1: food and then you weren't at the scene when they died,
3:10
Speaker 1: it would be easier to get away with it. And
3:12
Speaker 1: there's a very famous unsolved case involving strick nine. One
3:15
Speaker 1: of the co founders of Stanford University, Jane Stanford, actually
3:19
Speaker 1: died from strychnine poisoning all the way back in nineteen
3:22
Speaker 1: oh five. But of course by nineteen eighty seven this
3:25
Speaker 1: was just very very uncommon because you would either have
3:28
Speaker 1: to have a license to sell it. So it's been
3:30
Speaker 1: speculated because they never figured out where this stryck nine
3:33
Speaker 1: came from. That whoever killed Patsy either stole it from
3:36
Speaker 1: a lab or something or obtained it on the black market.
3:39
Speaker 2: That's really interesting. This is a total side thing and
3:43
Speaker 2: like not really all that relevant, but I'm just curious
3:46
Speaker 2: if you know the answer, because it has to do
3:48
Speaker 2: with poisoning. Are you aware of And I don't really
3:52
Speaker 2: know if these claims were ever fully substantiated or corroborated,
3:56
Speaker 2: but the Borgias were rumored to, like Rodrigo and Lucrezia
4:01
Speaker 2: and Cesaret were rumored to have guests over for dinner
4:04
Speaker 2: parties and then poison them and throw their bodies in
4:08
Speaker 2: the Tyber River. Do you think that they would have
4:10
Speaker 2: used something similar to strychnine.
4:12
Speaker 1: Possibly. I'm not really familiar with the Borges case, but
4:16
Speaker 1: I do know that there are some documented serial killers
4:18
Speaker 1: who used it back several centuries ago, So it not
4:22
Speaker 1: surprised me if they did that because back then, obviously
4:24
Speaker 1: strychnine was not highly regulated and you could probably just
4:28
Speaker 1: go into a shop and purchase it, so that's why
4:31
Speaker 1: it was used as an effective method to kill people.
4:34
Speaker 2: You should do an episode on the trail when cold
4:36
Speaker 2: of the crimes of the Borges. That would be so interesting.
4:39
Speaker 2: There's so much more associated with it, and it would
4:42
Speaker 2: be like obviously impossible to corroborate a lot of the details,
4:46
Speaker 2: but it would be really fascinating.
4:48
Speaker 1: How long ago was it? What century do you remember?
4:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not sure.
4:54
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna look it up out of my curiosity. Yeah,
4:57
Speaker 1: the Borgia family took place in the oh waitter is
5:01
Speaker 1: it in like the fifteenth and sixteenth century, So that
5:04
Speaker 1: would definitely be a story where the trail went really
5:06
Speaker 1: really cold.
5:08
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, But there's so much with that family, Like,
5:11
Speaker 2: there's so many layers. It's like Game of Thrones type stuff.
5:15
Speaker 1: Interesting. But this one takes place in Arlington, Texas, in
5:19
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty seven, and the victim is forty three year
5:22
Speaker 1: old Patsy Bolton Wright, who is a very successful business woman.
5:26
Speaker 1: She has been divorced twice. She had two children with
5:29
Speaker 1: her first husband, Bill Wright, a son named Wayne and
5:32
Speaker 1: a daughter named Leslie, who are both in their early twenties.
5:36
Speaker 1: And she got married a second time and this marriage
5:39
Speaker 1: did not go well. But I'll talk more about that
5:41
Speaker 1: a bit later. But at this particular point, Patsy has
5:44
Speaker 1: been dating quite a few people. She's involved in a
5:46
Speaker 1: relationship with a man named Larry Todd, but she isn't
5:50
Speaker 1: really in any hurry to get married again. And she's
5:53
Speaker 1: also living in a temporary rental house because she is
5:56
Speaker 1: planning to purchase a ranch because she is really into
5:59
Speaker 1: horses and is hoping to raise and train three horses
6:02
Speaker 1: on her new property. But what's interesting is that Patsy
6:06
Speaker 1: and her sister Sally are both millionaires because they wound
6:10
Speaker 1: up collecting a sizable inheritance from their late father because
6:13
Speaker 1: he was a creator of two very popular wax museums.
6:17
Speaker 1: And this is interesting because this wax museums are going
6:20
Speaker 1: to be a major part of this story, as they
6:22
Speaker 1: were apparently insanely popular in Texas back during the nineteen eighties.
6:27
Speaker 1: So Patsy and her sister have a combined net worth
6:29
Speaker 1: of six million dollars because.
6:31
Speaker 2: Of it, and in the eighties six million dollars, So
6:36
Speaker 2: say Patsy's worth three million, that would be more like
6:39
Speaker 2: six million in today's money roughly, So that would be
6:43
Speaker 2: a sizeable amount and enough that it would give her
6:46
Speaker 2: the freedom to be able to date and to be
6:49
Speaker 2: able to choose a partner based on not necessarily She's
6:54
Speaker 2: not necessarily needing to look for somebody who would be
6:56
Speaker 2: a good provider for her children. She would be able
7:00
Speaker 2: to choose somebody based on love alone and hopefully that
7:03
Speaker 2: they would be a good and supportive parent to her children,
7:06
Speaker 2: but being a supportive provider in a monetary sense would
7:10
Speaker 2: take a back seat. So I think that her having
7:14
Speaker 2: this money it can be a bit of a double
7:16
Speaker 2: edged sword. It can be a real benefit because it
7:18
Speaker 2: does give her that freedom, but it might attract the
7:20
Speaker 2: wrong type of individuals. But it also would allow her
7:24
Speaker 2: to do things like be able to get into the
7:26
Speaker 2: horse business that is not an inexpensive business to be in.
7:31
Speaker 2: And I've known many a horse girl in my life,
7:33
Speaker 2: and I have a special spot in my heart for
7:35
Speaker 2: horse girls.
7:36
Speaker 1: Yes, it sounds like Patsy was living her best life
7:39
Speaker 1: at this point because she had two marriages which did
7:41
Speaker 1: not end well. So she's just saying, I'm not going
7:43
Speaker 1: to get married again until I find the right guy,
7:46
Speaker 1: and in the meantime try to pursue my passions and
7:48
Speaker 1: interests such as horses. And at this particular point, she
7:51
Speaker 1: was even thinking about opening up Ripley's believe it or
7:55
Speaker 1: not museum in San Antonio, so she wants to expand
7:58
Speaker 1: this whole wax museum bit business. Before she died, Patsy
8:02
Speaker 1: went on a two week camping trip with her daughter, Leslie,
8:05
Speaker 1: and the day she got back, she went horseback riding,
8:08
Speaker 1: met up with a realtor to talk more about purchasing
8:11
Speaker 1: the ranch, and then she attended a Halloween party at
8:14
Speaker 1: one of her museums because they had a big Halloween
8:16
Speaker 1: show scheduled a week later, because this took place on
8:19
Speaker 1: October the twenty second, and they were having a whole
8:22
Speaker 1: dress rehearsal for the show, and as far as anyone
8:25
Speaker 1: can tell, after the show ended at nine pm, she
8:28
Speaker 1: went to a bar with a friend and then went home.
8:31
Speaker 1: But at around three am on October the twenty third, Sally,
8:35
Speaker 1: her sister, was woken up by a phone call from Patsy.
8:38
Speaker 1: Sally was living with her husband, Steve Horning, and Patsy
8:42
Speaker 1: on the phone said that she had just taken some
8:44
Speaker 1: night quill to help her sleep, but she was now
8:46
Speaker 1: feeling very nauseous and having trouble breathing and just suddenly
8:50
Speaker 1: collapsed where it seemed like she was unconscious so Steve
8:54
Speaker 1: and Sally started panicking. And this is an interesting detail
8:58
Speaker 1: because Steve and Sally are going to be look dat
9:00
Speaker 1: has potential suspects. And they would claim that they tried
9:04
Speaker 1: to call nine one one to get an ambulance to
9:06
Speaker 1: Patsy's residence, but they just could not remember the address
9:10
Speaker 1: because this was a rental home where she hadn't been
9:13
Speaker 1: there all that long. So they were just blanking when
9:15
Speaker 1: they tried to tell the ambulance where to go, and
9:17
Speaker 1: then just decided, well, we can't really do much from here,
9:20
Speaker 1: so let's drive over to our house. Because they said,
9:23
Speaker 1: we know the route to the house, we know which
9:25
Speaker 1: turns to make, which streets to go, we just don't
9:27
Speaker 1: know the exact address. And so I wanted to ask
9:30
Speaker 1: if you found that unusual, because I can tell you
9:32
Speaker 1: from experience that I'm someone where I will know where
9:36
Speaker 1: like a close friend or family members live, where I
9:38
Speaker 1: will know the route to drive how to get there.
9:40
Speaker 1: But if you ask me their exact address, I might
9:43
Speaker 1: draw a blank.
9:44
Speaker 2: Oh I don't think it's strange at all to remember
9:47
Speaker 2: somebody's exact address. Yeah, I'm the exact same as you.
9:50
Speaker 2: I know how to get there. What turns to take,
9:53
Speaker 2: but knowing the address, Like I'm just trying to think,
9:56
Speaker 2: like I'm going to my parents' house or something. Do
9:58
Speaker 2: I know their actual address? No, but I know exactly
10:01
Speaker 2: where they live, and especially if it's somewhere that I
10:04
Speaker 2: could tell you the street, but like the address that
10:06
Speaker 2: would elude me. So in that moment of panic, if
10:10
Speaker 2: she's been if she hasn't been living there that long,
10:13
Speaker 2: and it's a rental home, I don't find it odd
10:16
Speaker 2: that they don't know. And this would have been before
10:18
Speaker 2: the time that they would have been able to trace
10:20
Speaker 2: the call very accurately and then send an ambulance there.
10:25
Speaker 2: So I can only imagine that feeling of panic, And
10:28
Speaker 2: it's easy to judge if you're somebody who just remembers
10:32
Speaker 2: addresses or files that away in something that's necessary. It's
10:36
Speaker 2: just not in ever filed into my brain is something
10:39
Speaker 2: that I'm going to need to know at a later date.
10:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, That's what I'm thinking myself, because I've seen online
10:44
Speaker 1: discussions about this case where some people get suspicious of
10:47
Speaker 1: Steve and Sally for this reason, thinking that they were
10:50
Speaker 1: using this as an excuse to go to the house
10:52
Speaker 1: baby commit the poisoning and dispose of evidence before they
10:55
Speaker 1: called the ambulance from Patsy's bedroom. But I can tell you,
10:59
Speaker 1: like I use to visit my grandparents' house all the time.
11:01
Speaker 1: They're like several hours away from me, and I could
11:04
Speaker 1: probably do the route like it's been in my head
11:06
Speaker 1: from driving there so many times that I could do
11:08
Speaker 1: it by heart. But if you ask me the address
11:10
Speaker 1: of where my grandparents used to live, I drawing a
11:12
Speaker 1: complete blank because that's just information I never needed to know.
11:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, it becomes irrelevant if you know how to get there.
11:19
Speaker 2: The address is something that you need to file away
11:22
Speaker 2: as important if you don't know how to get to
11:24
Speaker 2: a location, and like these days we'd put it into
11:28
Speaker 2: you know, ways or Google maps or something like that.
11:31
Speaker 2: But back then you might look at a map and
11:34
Speaker 2: then figure your way to the location. But if you
11:38
Speaker 2: know how to get there, then why would you need
11:40
Speaker 2: to remember the address unless you're sending like a Christmas
11:43
Speaker 2: card or something. And that's really the only time that
11:45
Speaker 2: I'm ever like, oh, what's this person's address? Is when
11:48
Speaker 2: I need to send a Christmas card or a Birthday card.
11:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, that totally makes sense to me. So when Steve
11:55
Speaker 1: and Sally arrived. They discovered that the front door for
11:57
Speaker 1: Patsy's residence was locked, so they couldn't get in, but
12:00
Speaker 1: when they went to Patsy's bedroom window, they discovered that
12:03
Speaker 1: she had left it partially open, so they were able
12:06
Speaker 1: to enter through there. So they found Patsy on her
12:09
Speaker 1: bed and it looked like she was unconscious at that point,
12:11
Speaker 1: but she was still alive and they were trying to
12:14
Speaker 1: revive her but cannot wake her up. So while Sally
12:17
Speaker 1: was phoning for the paramedics for help, Steve attempted to
12:20
Speaker 1: perform to mouth resuscitation on Patsy but was surprised when
12:24
Speaker 1: green liquid kept entering his mouth, which he subsequently spit out,
12:28
Speaker 1: and in retrospect, it turned out that was the cough
12:30
Speaker 1: syrup that she had taken right before she went to bed,
12:33
Speaker 1: because I'm guessing she was unable to digest it properly
12:36
Speaker 1: because it had traces of strychnine in it. So the
12:39
Speaker 1: paramedics soon arrived and even though they made an attempt
12:42
Speaker 1: to revive Patsy, they were unsuccessful, and while in the
12:45
Speaker 1: midst of taking her to the hospital, that's when she died.
12:49
Speaker 1: And at first they had no idea what happened here,
12:51
Speaker 1: because obviously strychnine poisoning is not something that's going to
12:55
Speaker 1: immediately come into your head when while a loved one
12:58
Speaker 1: dies of very strange causes. So since she was only
13:01
Speaker 1: forty three years old and she appeared to be in
13:03
Speaker 1: good health, they could not figure out what happened at
13:06
Speaker 1: first because she seemed like a very healthy person and
13:10
Speaker 1: it just seemed to be like an undetermined medical issue.
13:13
Speaker 1: But it was not until over a week later, after
13:15
Speaker 1: Patsy's funeral and memorial service had happened, that they decided
13:19
Speaker 1: to form a routine autopsy where they used a mass
13:23
Speaker 1: spectrometer to check for fifty six thousand different foreign substances
13:27
Speaker 1: in her blood samples, and suddenly the machine gave off
13:30
Speaker 1: a violent reaction, and when the lab technician asked for identification,
13:34
Speaker 1: he discovered that it was strychnine in her bloodstream and
13:37
Speaker 1: this was the cause of her death.
13:39
Speaker 2: This just feels like an I get a Christian novel.
13:42
Speaker 2: At this point, you think that there is this undetermined
13:45
Speaker 2: medical cause and that she died and that it's tragic.
13:49
Speaker 2: There doesn't seem to be any major underlying health issues
13:52
Speaker 2: and she's got her whole life out of her, so
13:56
Speaker 2: it's tragic. But then when you layer that on with
13:59
Speaker 2: this last autopsy, whatever made them choose to do this
14:02
Speaker 2: at the very last moment, It makes me wonder who
14:05
Speaker 2: pushed for this and why with somebody acting strangely, was
14:09
Speaker 2: there a reason to believe that it could have been
14:11
Speaker 2: something other than natural causes. I'm not sure, but I
14:15
Speaker 2: would love to know the answer. And then to find
14:18
Speaker 2: out that it's strick nine and everything flips it used
14:22
Speaker 2: to be. It was once looked at as this accidental
14:26
Speaker 2: death and this overwhelming tragedy where two children no longer
14:30
Speaker 2: have their mother and everybody is bereft, but now it's
14:35
Speaker 2: murder and the police have to look at it through
14:38
Speaker 2: a completely different lens. And unfortunately, what could have been
14:42
Speaker 2: looked at as the quote unquote scene of the crime
14:45
Speaker 2: was disturbed and they wouldn't have taken any proper evidence
14:49
Speaker 2: because they just assumed it was a medical emergency. And
14:51
Speaker 2: I can completely understand why. But I guess there's the
14:57
Speaker 2: possibility that whoever had access and who ever spiked that
15:01
Speaker 2: night quill, she might not have taken niquill on a
15:04
Speaker 2: regular basis. They might have just put it in that
15:06
Speaker 2: night quill and bided their time and thought, eventually she's
15:09
Speaker 2: going to use it, and maybe it will have been
15:12
Speaker 2: months since I've been here, so it will be impossible
15:15
Speaker 2: to point the finger at me exactly.
15:17
Speaker 1: And that's why they originally thought that whoever killed Patsy
15:21
Speaker 1: was someone who knew her well and had intimate knowledge
15:23
Speaker 1: of her routine, because it was common practice for her
15:26
Speaker 1: to take niightquill before she went to bed because she
15:29
Speaker 1: would sometimes have trouble sleeping. And you're right, they did
15:32
Speaker 1: not secure the scene as a potential homicide at first,
15:35
Speaker 1: because they just thought she may have died of natural
15:38
Speaker 1: causes or some random medical issue. But thankfully, they still
15:41
Speaker 1: had the bottle of niquill inside her bathroom and they
15:45
Speaker 1: decided to check it, and sure enough, they found traces
15:48
Speaker 1: of strychnine in it, and even though a few grams
15:51
Speaker 1: of it are enough to be fatal, there was enough
15:53
Speaker 1: strychnine in the cough syrup to kill eight or nine people.
15:56
Speaker 1: So whoever did it like really wanted to cover their
15:58
Speaker 1: bases and make sure that once she ingested it, she
16:01
Speaker 1: would die. And it's a very cruel way to kill someone.
16:05
Speaker 1: Because strick nine does not work quickly, like once you
16:07
Speaker 1: ingest it, you have breathing problems, you have paralysis, you
16:11
Speaker 1: start coughing. And I know that Steven Sally kind of
16:15
Speaker 1: witnessed it firsthand when Patsy phoned them in the middle
16:17
Speaker 1: of the night and said that she was having trouble breathing,
16:20
Speaker 1: and it sounded like she was really suffering at that time.
16:22
Speaker 1: And she did not actually die until maybe like thirty
16:25
Speaker 1: forty minutes after she ingested it. So they figured that
16:28
Speaker 1: whoever did it not only had a potential motive to
16:31
Speaker 1: want or debt, but wanted to see or suffer first,
16:34
Speaker 1: because you have to obviously go to a lot of
16:36
Speaker 1: trouble in order to obtain strick nine in the first place.
16:39
Speaker 1: But it seemed like someone wanted to ensure that Patsy
16:42
Speaker 1: had the most miserable death possible.
16:44
Speaker 2: And I'm wondering if it comes down to did they
16:48
Speaker 2: want her to suffer or is this the easiest method
16:52
Speaker 2: by which to kill Patsy that they could be physically
16:56
Speaker 2: at a great distance away, like poison serves that purpose.
17:00
Speaker 2: And I mean, I don't know how many different substances
17:03
Speaker 2: one would have access to that you could end somebody's
17:07
Speaker 2: life that would be more comfortable than that. I really
17:10
Speaker 2: have no idea, and I don't know if that would
17:12
Speaker 2: have been a factor or if it was just sort
17:14
Speaker 2: of like, I've got access to Strict nine. I don't
17:17
Speaker 2: have to physically be there like you would to strangle
17:20
Speaker 2: or use a gun or to stab. So to be
17:23
Speaker 2: able to give yourself that physical distance gives you some
17:26
Speaker 2: kind of plausible deniability unless somebody knows that you were
17:30
Speaker 2: there and somehow had access to that bottle of niquil.
17:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, and makes me wonder if the perpetrator was literally
17:37
Speaker 1: reading old Agatha Christie mysteries and thinking that, ooh, this
17:40
Speaker 1: is a good way to kill someone, because Patsy can
17:43
Speaker 1: ingest it when I'm far away from the scene, and
17:45
Speaker 1: I can potentially get away with it. But of course,
17:47
Speaker 1: by this point it was not so easy to obtain
17:50
Speaker 1: Strict nine, so it was still a big mystery about
17:52
Speaker 1: how they got it in the first place. Of course,
17:54
Speaker 1: they checked the official government records all the sales that
17:57
Speaker 1: had taken place during that time period, but it didn't
17:59
Speaker 1: lead anywhere, so it seemed obvious that whoever did this
18:02
Speaker 1: either stole it from someplace like a lab or somehow
18:05
Speaker 1: was able to obtain it on the black market.
18:09
Speaker 2: Just a quick question. So you said that she routinely
18:12
Speaker 2: took night quill at night to help her sleep. Was
18:15
Speaker 2: this Do you know if this was like a once
18:16
Speaker 2: a week thing or if this was a daily thing, almost.
18:19
Speaker 1: A daily thing like apparently she did it a lot.
18:22
Speaker 1: So I think whoever did this knew that we're not
18:24
Speaker 1: going to have to wait a couple of weeks or
18:26
Speaker 1: a month, because she, like I mentioned, she was on
18:28
Speaker 1: a camping trip, so they probably figured the first night
18:30
Speaker 1: she gets home, she's going to take this, and sure enough,
18:32
Speaker 1: that's what happened.
18:34
Speaker 2: So whommever did this likely had access to her home
18:38
Speaker 2: while she was away on this camping trip and spiked
18:40
Speaker 2: the bottle of Nike will then correct?
18:42
Speaker 1: I think so yeah, Because as we're going to talk about,
18:44
Speaker 1: Patsy kept a spare key to her house, which she
18:47
Speaker 1: thought had gone missing. So it's very possible that they
18:50
Speaker 1: entered the locked house while she was away, put the
18:53
Speaker 1: stryct night in the ni quill, then locked the door
18:55
Speaker 1: when they left, and no one was none the wiser.
18:58
Speaker 1: So investigators did look into the possibility of suicide. But
19:02
Speaker 1: of course Patsy was very wealthy and successful. She had
19:05
Speaker 1: a great relationship with her children, seemed to be living
19:07
Speaker 1: a good life, and of course, even if they're having
19:09
Speaker 1: like a great life and seem happy, you can never
19:12
Speaker 1: rule out the idea of suicide. But it just seemed
19:14
Speaker 1: ridiculous an idea in this particular case, because she had
19:17
Speaker 1: set her alarm clock for later that morning, so all
19:20
Speaker 1: the signs indicated that she was planning to get up
19:22
Speaker 1: after she went to bed, and of course she called
19:26
Speaker 1: Sally when she was having breathing problems, so it was
19:28
Speaker 1: a strong indicator that she was wanting to be helped.
19:31
Speaker 1: She wanted to be saved. And of course, poisoning yourself
19:34
Speaker 1: with strychnine is such an odd method of suicide, which
19:37
Speaker 1: means you're going to suffer a long, protracted death before
19:40
Speaker 1: you pass away. So if she wanted to end her
19:42
Speaker 1: own life, she could have just taken sleeping pills or
19:45
Speaker 1: something like that. So, needless to say, thankfully, the police
19:48
Speaker 1: did not push forward the suicide narrative and ruled it
19:50
Speaker 1: out relatively quickly.
19:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, suicide isn't really lining up for me, because it
19:56
Speaker 2: seems like a really odd message choose because it would
19:59
Speaker 2: be extreme me painful, and when most people are choosing
20:03
Speaker 2: the method by which to exit this world, especially women,
20:07
Speaker 2: it wouldn't be typical to choose something like strick nine.
20:10
Speaker 2: That just seems like who would want to invite more
20:14
Speaker 2: pain onto an already painful situation. It seems extremely odd
20:18
Speaker 2: and the alarm set like I could go either way
20:21
Speaker 2: on that, but I'm not seeing anything here to lead
20:24
Speaker 2: me to believe that that was the objective, especially calling
20:27
Speaker 2: Sally and Stephen. If that was your objective, it would
20:31
Speaker 2: be like I made a mistake. I did this, I'm
20:33
Speaker 2: not ready to die, and this is what I took,
20:36
Speaker 2: But we don't see that. So I think if she
20:38
Speaker 2: did indeed intend to end her own life, then she
20:42
Speaker 2: wouldn't have called it all. And if she changed her
20:45
Speaker 2: mind on ending her own life and had ingested it
20:48
Speaker 2: of her own free will, then I think that she
20:51
Speaker 2: would have told them this is what I took in
20:53
Speaker 2: hopes that they could save her.
20:54
Speaker 1: Oh definitely, yeah, Like I can't rule out the possibility
20:57
Speaker 1: of her changing her mind and regretting what she did,
20:59
Speaker 1: but I think she would have been transparent and said
21:01
Speaker 1: I ingested strychnine so that steven Sally could tell the
21:05
Speaker 1: paramedics what she took and tried to save her. I mean,
21:07
Speaker 1: the only way a suicide scenario really works is if
21:10
Speaker 1: she wanted to frame someone for murder, because obviously to
21:13
Speaker 1: put strychnine in something that's usually a method used to
21:16
Speaker 1: kill people. But there's nothing to indicate she was trying
21:18
Speaker 1: to do that. So police did check the possibility that
21:22
Speaker 1: she could have been a victim of product tampering, because
21:25
Speaker 1: this was only a couple of years after the Chicago
21:27
Speaker 1: Tile in All murders, which is still unsolved to this
21:30
Speaker 1: day and involved an unidentified perpetrator going into stores and
21:34
Speaker 1: opening up random bottles of Pilo and All and injecting
21:37
Speaker 1: the pills with potassium cyanide. So seven people wound up
21:40
Speaker 1: buying it, ingesting the tile and All and dying, And
21:43
Speaker 1: of course they were selected completely at random, because the
21:46
Speaker 1: perpetrator couldn't have known ahead of time who exactly was
21:49
Speaker 1: going to purchase these and die. But police pretty much
21:53
Speaker 1: ruled out that possibility because after the Tail and All murders,
21:55
Speaker 1: they put a lot of safety measures in place where
21:58
Speaker 1: they would put childproof caps and seal up the bottles
22:01
Speaker 1: when you put them out in stores. So I'm guessing
22:03
Speaker 1: that they checked the passage for this particular cold medicine
22:07
Speaker 1: bottle and determine that it was sealed when that Patsy
22:10
Speaker 1: originally bought it. So they pretty much ruled out the
22:12
Speaker 1: possibility that she was a random victim and figured that
22:15
Speaker 1: whoever did this was intending to kill her and made
22:18
Speaker 1: a calculated effort to break into her house and put
22:20
Speaker 1: the strychnine inside her bottle.
22:23
Speaker 2: See, if somebody was going to end their own life
22:25
Speaker 2: and they had access to chemicals, I would think that
22:28
Speaker 2: like potassium sinide would be further up the list than
22:30
Speaker 2: strychnine because that is almost an immediate death, is it not?
22:34
Speaker 1: It is, yes, and it's a lot easier to obtain,
22:38
Speaker 1: Like I don't know like what the rules are for
22:42
Speaker 1: like purchasing it, but I'm guessing that potassium cinid back
22:45
Speaker 1: then was a lot more common than strychnine.
22:47
Speaker 2: Is potassium sinid the same thing that Russian spies would carry,
22:51
Speaker 2: like in a little pill or whatever that they would
22:53
Speaker 2: take if they were captured back in the day, I.
22:55
Speaker 1: Think so, Yeah, Like I don't know if they've been
22:58
Speaker 1: used too much in murders, but I do know that's
23:00
Speaker 1: like a common practice in spy stories, where they keep
23:02
Speaker 1: them under their tongue or in a false tooth, and
23:05
Speaker 1: after they're capture to being tortured, they'll just decide to
23:07
Speaker 1: ingest it to end their own life. So, like I mentioned,
23:11
Speaker 1: Patsy had just gone out camping and on the same
23:14
Speaker 1: day that she got back, she told her sister that
23:17
Speaker 1: she had a spare key to her home but noticed
23:19
Speaker 1: that it had gone missing. The spare key was never found,
23:22
Speaker 1: so theoretically anyone could have stolen it and used it
23:25
Speaker 1: to access her house while she was gone, and if
23:28
Speaker 1: this person locked the door behind them, then no one
23:31
Speaker 1: would have even known that they were there. They checked
23:33
Speaker 1: the house, there were no signs of any forced entry.
23:36
Speaker 1: There's no signs that a burglary had taken place or
23:38
Speaker 1: that anything was stolen, And like I mentioned, the only
23:41
Speaker 1: reason that Steve and Sally were even able to get
23:43
Speaker 1: in there is because Patsy had left the window partially
23:46
Speaker 1: open when she went to bed. But the whole problem
23:49
Speaker 1: with the spare key thing is that even if certain
23:52
Speaker 1: suspects had alibis, that doesn't necessarily clear them because someone
23:56
Speaker 1: could have entered the house at any time during the
23:59
Speaker 1: two week window that Patsy was gone. Just as an example,
24:02
Speaker 1: there's our current boyfriend Larry Todd. He was in Austin
24:06
Speaker 1: three hours away on the night of Patsy's death, and
24:09
Speaker 1: he actually showed some phone records to indicate that he
24:11
Speaker 1: and Patsy made a couple of calls which could establish
24:14
Speaker 1: his whereabouts. And while I don't personally believe that Larry
24:17
Speaker 1: Todd did this, the problem is, even though he seems
24:20
Speaker 1: to have an airtight alibi, it doesn't really clear him
24:23
Speaker 1: since he could have entered the residence any time during
24:25
Speaker 1: the two week window before Patsy got back and put
24:28
Speaker 1: the put the Strycht nine in her niquill.
24:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really difficult because we can't really solidify any
24:35
Speaker 2: timeline because there could be any number of things could
24:39
Speaker 2: have happened, Like we don't know if this is the
24:41
Speaker 2: same bottle of niquill that she would have taken potentially
24:46
Speaker 2: on this camping trip. What if Patsy had taken this
24:51
Speaker 2: bottle of niquill and whomever decided to kill her had
24:54
Speaker 2: to have accessed her home within a very small window
24:57
Speaker 2: of the day that she was killed, assuming that she
25:00
Speaker 2: left this bottle behind and then that's when the person
25:03
Speaker 2: dosed it. But if she's somebody that has an issue
25:05
Speaker 2: with sleep, I would think that she would be taking
25:07
Speaker 2: this night quill with her while she's going camping. So
25:11
Speaker 2: we just don't know the answer to the when this
25:14
Speaker 2: person broke in and drugged the ni quill.
25:17
Speaker 1: That's a good point, like, it's never been established that
25:19
Speaker 1: Patsy took this particular bottle of niquill with her on
25:22
Speaker 1: the camping trip, and even if her daughter said that
25:25
Speaker 1: she saw her taking it, how do you know it's
25:27
Speaker 1: the same one from the house. How can you be
25:29
Speaker 1: certain that she didn't just buy another bottle of niquill
25:31
Speaker 1: at a store on her way there. And of course, Leslie,
25:34
Speaker 1: the daughter is not going to be thinking about that
25:36
Speaker 1: stuff on the trip because it just seems like routine,
25:39
Speaker 1: ordinary things. But in retrospect, I'm sure she was wondering, hmm,
25:42
Speaker 1: was that the same ni quill bottle that she had
25:44
Speaker 1: on the trip that was later found in a house
25:46
Speaker 1: with the poison in it. So another detail which caused
25:50
Speaker 1: some complications is that when they went into Patsy's bedroom,
25:54
Speaker 1: they found that she had a dinner tray on there
25:56
Speaker 1: with two plates, and so that made people wonder if
26:00
Speaker 1: Patsy had invited someone over to her house that night
26:03
Speaker 1: for some sort of late night intimate dinner. It was
26:06
Speaker 1: established that after the dress rehearsal at the museum for
26:09
Speaker 1: the Halloween party, she went to a bar with a
26:11
Speaker 1: friend and then headed home at around nine. But could
26:14
Speaker 1: she have picked up someone and invited them into her
26:17
Speaker 1: home and that's when they took the opportunity to put
26:20
Speaker 1: strychnine inside the Nike wall. So the issue was at
26:24
Speaker 1: her current boyfriend at the time, Larry Todd, because he
26:27
Speaker 1: was in Austin three hours away. It couldn't have been him,
26:30
Speaker 1: but it did lead to speculation. Could have Patsy had
26:33
Speaker 1: some sort of secret lover that people didn't know about.
26:35
Speaker 1: Was she having an affair with someone who was invited
26:38
Speaker 1: into her home on that particular night because Larry was
26:41
Speaker 1: out of town and they had an intimate encounter and
26:44
Speaker 1: then he used this opportunity to poison her. And another
26:47
Speaker 1: detail which seemed to point towards that is the fact
26:50
Speaker 1: that the burglar alarm was not set, which she ordinarily
26:52
Speaker 1: did every single night before she went to bed, So
26:55
Speaker 1: the thinking of themselves. Hm, if she had someone else
26:57
Speaker 1: with her who was planning to spend the night, that
26:59
Speaker 1: could have explain why she forgot to set the alarm.
27:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, these are really great points. And I think that
27:05
Speaker 2: it's possible if her boyfriend was out of town and
27:09
Speaker 2: she called over her called over a man she was
27:12
Speaker 2: potentially having an affair with, and she wouldn't set the
27:16
Speaker 2: burglar alarm. And who knows what the dynamics of this
27:19
Speaker 2: relationship could be, and if there was indeed a relationship
27:23
Speaker 2: at all. But let's just say that things are getting
27:26
Speaker 2: more serious with Larry, and so Patsy is like, we're
27:31
Speaker 2: going to have to end this. This is going to
27:33
Speaker 2: be the last time that I'm going to see you
27:35
Speaker 2: type of a thing, and maybe she'd let that be known.
27:39
Speaker 2: And then he came over and you know, I can't
27:42
Speaker 2: have you. Nobody can type of a thing, and was like,
27:44
Speaker 2: I'm going to poison her. If she doesn't want to
27:46
Speaker 2: be with me, I'll teach her a lesson type of
27:49
Speaker 2: a thing, because I just don't see a random perpetrator
27:52
Speaker 2: at a bar that she'd pick up having strict nine
27:54
Speaker 2: on their person.
27:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I'm thinking myself that if it was
27:58
Speaker 1: someone she brought home, it wasn't a complete random stranger.
28:00
Speaker 1: It was someone who wanted to kill her and figured
28:03
Speaker 1: that I'm going to use this at the first opportunity
28:06
Speaker 1: that I'm invited into her home. And I know there's
28:08
Speaker 1: always been debate about the two dinner plates. In online
28:11
Speaker 1: discussions about this case, there are some people who don't
28:13
Speaker 1: think it's unusual, saying, as strange as it sounds, if
28:16
Speaker 1: they have like weird quirks like OCD where they think
28:19
Speaker 1: of themselves, I have to have food on one plate
28:21
Speaker 1: and the rest of the food on another plate just
28:23
Speaker 1: to keep them separate, or maybe they just have like
28:26
Speaker 1: two different sides or something like that. And unfortunately, because
28:29
Speaker 1: this wasn't considered to be homicide at first, I don't
28:32
Speaker 1: think they took the dinner plates into evidence in order
28:35
Speaker 1: to check for fingerprints or anything like that. So it's
28:38
Speaker 1: really hard to tell if these two dinner plates indicate
28:40
Speaker 1: that another person was there, or if it's just a
28:43
Speaker 1: red herring and that maybe Patsy, for whatever reason, wanted
28:46
Speaker 1: to have two separate pieces of food on separate plates
28:49
Speaker 1: and then take them into bed to eat them. On
28:50
Speaker 1: that particular night.
28:52
Speaker 2: So we're sure that they're dinner plates and they're not
28:55
Speaker 2: like medium sized tapas plates or side plates.
28:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, they've been to described as dinner plates, like not
29:01
Speaker 1: one large plate or one small plate. It sounds like
29:03
Speaker 1: it was two plates of the same size that would
29:06
Speaker 1: ordinarily have full meals on them.
29:08
Speaker 2: I mean, we would have to know what her plate
29:10
Speaker 2: inventory was, like, did she have lots of side plates,
29:13
Speaker 2: medium plates, small plates? Like I'm not sure. Maybe if
29:18
Speaker 2: the only size you have is like teeny tiny and
29:21
Speaker 2: then large. But you want to have like maybe some
29:24
Speaker 2: fruit and a dessert on one and then your meal
29:27
Speaker 2: of like dinner type foods on the other, maybe meat, vegetables,
29:32
Speaker 2: some kind of carb, whatever, and you don't want them
29:35
Speaker 2: to be on the same plate and touching. I get that.
29:37
Speaker 2: I wouldn't want my steak touching my cheesecake either.
29:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that could be like all it really was.
29:44
Speaker 1: I mean, it doesn't really specify what food was on
29:47
Speaker 1: the plates. And I don't know what kind of habit
29:48
Speaker 1: Patsy had. Was she someone who would come home after
29:51
Speaker 1: nine o'clock and then just decide I want to have
29:53
Speaker 1: a late night dinner and I want to have it
29:55
Speaker 1: in my bedroom while I'm in my pajamas and stuff,
29:58
Speaker 1: just to save me the trouble, and then I'll the
30:00
Speaker 1: dishes in the morning. So you could just interpret this
30:02
Speaker 1: clue in so many different ways. But as we're going
30:05
Speaker 1: to talk about, there were rumors at that time apparently
30:08
Speaker 1: that Patsy might have some sort of secret lover, and
30:11
Speaker 1: if she did, that would have been the perfect time
30:13
Speaker 1: for her to invite him over.
30:15
Speaker 2: And the plates were found on the bed.
30:17
Speaker 1: I think they were on a tray, like right next
30:19
Speaker 1: to the bed.
30:20
Speaker 2: But was it tray on the bed?
30:23
Speaker 1: Yes, I think it was because they know that steven
30:25
Speaker 1: Sally said that they had to move the tray off
30:27
Speaker 1: the bed when they arrived in order to give her CPR.
30:30
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess it's a highly individual thing. People
30:33
Speaker 2: are going to live their lives in different ways, and
30:36
Speaker 2: they're going to deal with dishes that are potentially dirty.
30:40
Speaker 2: I don't know what was on them. If you had
30:43
Speaker 2: something like a cast role or something that was like gooey,
30:47
Speaker 2: then it could create a smell. But if you had
30:50
Speaker 2: something like a sandwich, well that's not going to create
30:52
Speaker 2: a smell, so you might not need to remove the
30:55
Speaker 2: dishes with the same type of haste that you would
30:58
Speaker 2: if it was something that would be gross come morning time.
31:03
Speaker 2: All I can think of is if I had a tray,
31:05
Speaker 2: and if I was going to eat in bed and
31:06
Speaker 2: I had a tray with dishes, I wouldn't go to
31:08
Speaker 2: sleep with those dishes on a tray. Beside me. That
31:11
Speaker 2: just feels odd, Like what if I roll over onto
31:13
Speaker 2: these dishes. It just doesn't feel comfortable and it doesn't
31:17
Speaker 2: feel sanitary.
31:18
Speaker 1: It doesn't. Yeah, so who knows what she was thinking.
31:21
Speaker 1: Maybe she was just tired and just didn't want to
31:23
Speaker 1: bother moving the dishes. But I do know that she
31:26
Speaker 1: was found wearing her pajamas. She wasn't naked, And if
31:29
Speaker 1: they had thought this was a homicide from the beginning,
31:31
Speaker 1: they might have done an autopsy to see if she
31:33
Speaker 1: had sex shortly before that. But unfortunately, because they didn't
31:36
Speaker 1: detect the strych nine until a week later, she was
31:39
Speaker 1: already buried in the ground and had had her funerals,
31:42
Speaker 1: so they were never able to determine if she had
31:44
Speaker 1: been intimate with someone before she died.
31:47
Speaker 2: And you mentioned that she was at a bar right before,
31:50
Speaker 2: so there's a possibility that she could have had a
31:52
Speaker 2: good buzz on and making the extra effort to do
31:56
Speaker 2: certain things like get up and move dishes. It might
31:59
Speaker 2: seem seem like more laborious when you're buzzed or when
32:03
Speaker 2: you've had a few drinks than if you're completely sober,
32:05
Speaker 2: So that definitely would factor in for me.
32:08
Speaker 1: I think so yeah, And if she had already taken
32:10
Speaker 1: the Nike will she's probably like getting woozy and tired anyway,
32:13
Speaker 1: and she just came back from a camping trip, has
32:15
Speaker 1: done a million things, so she might be thinking to herself,
32:17
Speaker 1: I just want to go to sleep and I'll worry
32:19
Speaker 1: about this in the morning. So, of course, investigators started
32:23
Speaker 1: looking into potential suspects in the murderer, and because her
32:26
Speaker 1: two children, Wane and Leslie, stood to inherit a sizable
32:30
Speaker 1: amount of money from her, they were the first people
32:32
Speaker 1: that they looked at. But they were described as being
32:34
Speaker 1: very cooperative and they both passed polygraph tests and we're
32:38
Speaker 1: known for having a great relationship with their mother, so
32:41
Speaker 1: neither of them were considered to be suspects. But interestingly enough,
32:45
Speaker 1: the day after Patsy died, Leslie claimed that she received
32:48
Speaker 1: a phone call from an anonymous woman who kept asking
32:51
Speaker 1: for Patsy, and even though Leslie said she's not available
32:55
Speaker 1: right now because I don't think she was in the
32:56
Speaker 1: mood to tell this strange caller that her mother had died,
33:00
Speaker 1: but the caller was still insistent to talking for so
33:03
Speaker 1: Leslie finally said, I'm sorry to inform you that Patsy
33:06
Speaker 1: has just passed away, and the woman replied, good, I
33:09
Speaker 1: wanted her dead before abruptly hanging up, and the caller
33:13
Speaker 1: was never identified. And what's unique here is that this
33:15
Speaker 1: call took place like at a time period when they
33:18
Speaker 1: just assumed that she died of natural causes. They hadn't
33:21
Speaker 1: yet to determine that her death was a homicide, so
33:23
Speaker 1: it's not like it was all over the news or anything,
33:26
Speaker 1: and very few people knew about it. So in retrospect,
33:30
Speaker 1: Leslie was wondering if maybe this woman was involved in
33:33
Speaker 1: what happened, and that the only reason she made this
33:35
Speaker 1: call and kept pushing to talk to Patsy is because
33:38
Speaker 1: she wanted to confirm that Patsy was dead after taking
33:42
Speaker 1: the poison cold medicine, because obviously it's not going to
33:45
Speaker 1: make the news or anything until it's reclassified as a homicide.
33:48
Speaker 1: So this was her kind of subtle way of trying
33:50
Speaker 1: to figure out if the job was successful.
33:53
Speaker 2: Oh, that just throws a whole nother wrench into it.
33:56
Speaker 2: Who knows if Patsy did have a secret lover. Maybe
34:00
Speaker 2: this was the girlfriend of the secret lover, or maybe
34:03
Speaker 2: she had an obsession with Larry, or maybe she was
34:05
Speaker 2: having an affair with Larry. There's so many possibilities that
34:10
Speaker 2: we don't have more information about this woman except for
34:13
Speaker 2: the fact that she wanted Patsy dead and seemed to
34:17
Speaker 2: be pushing on information that she wouldn't have known unless
34:20
Speaker 2: she was close either in doing this herself or being
34:24
Speaker 2: connected to somebody who did it.
34:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, as we're going to talk about, they would look
34:28
Speaker 1: at a potential suspect later on a couple, a married
34:30
Speaker 1: couple where there were apparently rumors that the husband may
34:34
Speaker 1: have been involved in Patsy and that the woman became jealous.
34:37
Speaker 1: So it could be a thing where even if this
34:39
Speaker 1: particular couple wasn't involved in the murders, maybe the woman
34:42
Speaker 1: had her own reasons for disliking Patsy and then just
34:44
Speaker 1: decided to say this very cruel thing to her daughter,
34:47
Speaker 1: saying I'm glad that she is dead, but I do
34:50
Speaker 1: know that when like cold cases homicide cases took place,
34:53
Speaker 1: sometimes like just cruel people will decide to give prank
34:56
Speaker 1: phone calls to the family just to say mean things
34:59
Speaker 1: to the for their own amusement. But this one, it
35:02
Speaker 1: just seems like it was someone with intimate knowledge of
35:04
Speaker 1: the family because she made this phone call before it
35:06
Speaker 1: was reclassified as a homicide and before it made the news.
35:11
Speaker 2: But there also is that possibility, Like as soon as
35:13
Speaker 2: you said it, in what she said, it just struck
35:16
Speaker 2: me as like this is a woman who's a romantic
35:18
Speaker 2: rival in some capacity, and so in pushing to talk
35:22
Speaker 2: to Patsy, it doesn't mean necessarily that she knew she
35:25
Speaker 2: was dead. It could have been that she just found
35:27
Speaker 2: out that her husband or boyfriend was having an affair
35:30
Speaker 2: with her or something to that effect, and really wanted
35:34
Speaker 2: to talk to her to let her know like I
35:36
Speaker 2: see what you're doing and I don't approve of it,
35:39
Speaker 2: or to get angry at her and yell do whatever.
35:43
Speaker 2: But then when she found out Patsy was deceased, it's like,
35:46
Speaker 2: oh good, I wanted her dead anyway type of an energy,
35:49
Speaker 2: And like now she can't screw up my relationships, so
35:52
Speaker 2: it is highly suspicious. But I could see two different
35:56
Speaker 2: potential avenues for why that woman was calling and why
36:00
Speaker 2: she had the energy that she did.
36:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's unfortunate that because this was a homicide
36:05
Speaker 1: investigation at first, that Leslie never asked the police to
36:07
Speaker 1: trace this call. And I don't know if they even
36:09
Speaker 1: had the technology, but if they had been able to
36:11
Speaker 1: figure out who made the call to begin with, they
36:13
Speaker 1: might have been able to identify the woman and find
36:16
Speaker 1: out what her motivation was. So they started looking at
36:20
Speaker 1: Patsy's two ex husbands. Her first marriage was to a
36:23
Speaker 1: guy named Bill Wright, who was the father of her
36:25
Speaker 1: two children, and they had divorced back in nineteen eighty.
36:28
Speaker 1: But by all accounts, the divorce was pretty amicable, and
36:31
Speaker 1: Patsy even retained like her ex husband's last name, which
36:34
Speaker 1: is very unusual. After divorce, she was still going by
36:37
Speaker 1: Patsy Bolton Wright. So he was fully cooperative with the
36:41
Speaker 1: investigation and passed a polygraph and was not considered to
36:44
Speaker 1: be a suspect. We'll talk more about her second ex
36:47
Speaker 1: husband later on, but another person who was ruled out
36:51
Speaker 1: was her boyfriend Larry Todd, who was away in Austin
36:54
Speaker 1: three hours away on the night of the murder. And
36:57
Speaker 1: even though I said that this doesn't really clear him
36:59
Speaker 1: because the poisoning of the cough medicine could have taken
37:02
Speaker 1: place days earlier. He had a great relationship with Patsy,
37:06
Speaker 1: did not have any known motive, and they weren't at
37:08
Speaker 1: the position where he was going to inherit anything from
37:11
Speaker 1: her death, so he was also ruled out as a
37:13
Speaker 1: suspect as well. But they started looking into her sister,
37:17
Speaker 1: Sally and her brother in law, Steve Horning, because they
37:20
Speaker 1: now stood to inherit the multimillion dollar Wax Museums that
37:25
Speaker 1: Patsy had control over. Prior to this, Sally and Patsy
37:29
Speaker 1: had entered a buy sell agreement and had on five
37:32
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars life insurance policies on each other, which
37:35
Speaker 1: meant that if either of them died, the surviving sister
37:38
Speaker 1: would use the life insurance money to buy out the
37:40
Speaker 1: other share of stock and become the sole owners of
37:43
Speaker 1: the wax museums. Now, Patsy and Sally had always been
37:46
Speaker 1: on good terms, but the problem was that Patsy did
37:49
Speaker 1: not really like Steve Ball that much, who was not
37:51
Speaker 1: known for being financially responsible because only a few years
37:55
Speaker 1: after Sally and Steve got married, Steve had already spent
37:58
Speaker 1: most of Sally's inherent hints that she received from her
38:01
Speaker 1: father and got them both into debt. And a complication
38:05
Speaker 1: arose in nineteen eighty five because Sally was diagnosed with
38:08
Speaker 1: cancer and it turned out that if Sally died, Steve
38:12
Speaker 1: would receive the five hundred thousand dollars life insurance policy
38:15
Speaker 1: and could then wind up owning the controlling share of
38:18
Speaker 1: the stock in the museums if something ever happened to Patsy.
38:22
Speaker 1: So by this particular point, Sally's cancer had gone into remission,
38:25
Speaker 1: but Patsy was still thinking to hisself, I don't want
38:28
Speaker 1: to risk Steve having control of the museums if my
38:31
Speaker 1: sister died, so give it because of his less than
38:33
Speaker 1: great financial history. So both sisters agreed that their bi
38:37
Speaker 1: sell agreement needed to be changed, and they scheduled a
38:40
Speaker 1: meeting for this in early November, which just happened to
38:43
Speaker 1: be two weeks after Patsy's death took place. But of course,
38:47
Speaker 1: because Patsy died, Sally wound up getting full control of
38:50
Speaker 1: the museums. And while police didn't necessarily believe that Sally
38:54
Speaker 1: may have played a role in her death, they started
38:56
Speaker 1: looking at Steve because he stood to collect and he
38:59
Speaker 1: was a who was in debt, who was broke and
39:01
Speaker 1: could definitely have used this money.
39:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, we've got two sisters, one who is very financially
39:08
Speaker 2: solvent and the other one who was attached to this
39:11
Speaker 2: guy who sounds like a bit of an energy vampire
39:15
Speaker 2: in the sense that he's sucking away all of her money.
39:18
Speaker 2: And so if he's in dire straits and he needs
39:21
Speaker 2: a quick fix and he sees on the horizon that
39:24
Speaker 2: this whole by cell agreement is going to be potentially
39:27
Speaker 2: changed within two weeks, he might see a very narrow
39:31
Speaker 2: window for when he can act that will give him
39:34
Speaker 2: control and a financial windfall in the event of Patsy dying.
39:40
Speaker 2: So I can definitely see why Steve was looked at
39:42
Speaker 2: as a suspect, because who would have a better motive
39:46
Speaker 2: than Steve exactly.
39:48
Speaker 1: And you add in the fact that they didn't tell
39:50
Speaker 1: the ambulance Patsy's address because they supposedly forgot about it
39:54
Speaker 1: and then just drove there and you're thinking to yourself,
39:56
Speaker 1: did they have alterearr motives? Did maybe Steve want to
39:59
Speaker 1: go Patsy's body in order to dispose a potential evidence
40:03
Speaker 1: or something. But they thoroughly questioned both of them, and
40:06
Speaker 1: they agreed to take polygraphs. Sally passed, and while the
40:09
Speaker 1: results of Steve's first polygraph tests were inconclusive, he did
40:12
Speaker 1: wind up passing the second one, and investigators felt that
40:16
Speaker 1: the big piece of evidence which seemed to point towards
40:18
Speaker 1: Steve's innocence was the fact that he was willing to
40:21
Speaker 1: perform mouth to mouth resuscitation on Patsy and wound up
40:24
Speaker 1: ingesting some of the cost syrup, which he subsequently spit out.
40:28
Speaker 1: But at the same time, if he knows that there's
40:30
Speaker 1: strychnine in this liquid, he obviously would think that there's
40:33
Speaker 1: a chance that he could ingest it himself and wind
40:36
Speaker 1: up dying. So they're thinking to themselves, would Steve have
40:38
Speaker 1: really done this if he was the perpetrator? And they
40:42
Speaker 1: were able to verify that this happened, because when Sally
40:45
Speaker 1: was calling nine to one one, the operator on the
40:47
Speaker 1: line said that she could hear saying you have to
40:49
Speaker 1: blow into her mouth. Which meant that Steve was performing
40:52
Speaker 1: CPR on her. So they're thinking to himself, even though
40:56
Speaker 1: he was kind of an amateur and didn't really know
40:58
Speaker 1: what he was doing, there was still a huge risk
41:00
Speaker 1: of him ingesting the Strick nine. So that's why they
41:02
Speaker 1: were thinking, hmm, maybe he had no knowledge that she
41:05
Speaker 1: had been poisoned, and that means he wasn't involved in
41:07
Speaker 1: her death.
41:09
Speaker 2: I could see that going either way, because we have
41:12
Speaker 2: a situation where we have Sally saying to Steve, you've
41:15
Speaker 2: got to blow in her mouth. Well, they could have
41:17
Speaker 2: discussed this beforehand. Basically, we need to make it appear
41:21
Speaker 2: like you're giving her mouth to mouth and that you
41:23
Speaker 2: aren't aware that she's been poisoned, because that will point
41:26
Speaker 2: towards your innocence. So we need to basically make it
41:29
Speaker 2: sound to the nine one one operator that this is
41:31
Speaker 2: what is happening, even though it's not what's happening and
41:34
Speaker 2: I'm doing absolutely nothing. It's not necessarily true that Steve
41:38
Speaker 2: ingested some of his coughs are up and the Strick
41:41
Speaker 2: nine because he said that he did. We don't have
41:43
Speaker 2: any corroborating independent witnesses aside from Sally and I just
41:48
Speaker 2: don't think that the wife of the man who has
41:52
Speaker 2: the best motive to murder Patsy is necessarily the best
41:56
Speaker 2: eyewitness here.
41:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, you've used this term in the past rends of countermeasures,
42:01
Speaker 1: where it's thinking, we're going to put up this scenario
42:03
Speaker 1: to make it look like we couldn't have done this
42:05
Speaker 1: because we're risking our own life, And that could mean
42:07
Speaker 1: that they staged this whole thing where he claimed he
42:10
Speaker 1: was giving her CPR. And I do know that the
42:12
Speaker 1: paramedics said that they did not see a lot of
42:15
Speaker 1: like the green liquid on the bed next to Patsy,
42:17
Speaker 1: but that could also be attributed to the fact that
42:19
Speaker 1: maybe Steve wasn't doing it properly because he's not a
42:22
Speaker 1: trained paramedic and maybe was not giving her CPR as
42:25
Speaker 1: well as he could have. But another thing that seemed
42:28
Speaker 1: to lean towards them is the fact that the Strych
42:30
Speaker 1: nine lace niquill bottle was left on Patsy's bathroom counter
42:34
Speaker 1: for the police to collect. And I'm thinking that if
42:36
Speaker 1: Steve and Sally were involved, they had ample time to
42:39
Speaker 1: dispose of the evidence, and if that niquill bottle had
42:42
Speaker 1: never been found, they may never have figured out how
42:44
Speaker 1: exactly Patsy died. So the fact that they took the
42:47
Speaker 1: trouble to go to the house and left the key
42:49
Speaker 1: piece of evidence lying out in the open could point
42:52
Speaker 1: towards them not being the perpetrators.
42:55
Speaker 2: Or it could just be that they didn't think about
42:57
Speaker 2: that element of if it was Steeve who did it,
43:00
Speaker 2: maybe he thought I wore gloves while I did this,
43:03
Speaker 2: so there's no fingerprints on it. It can't be traced
43:05
Speaker 2: back to me. Who knows what thought process somebody could
43:09
Speaker 2: go through. And I would just think that like knowledge
43:11
Speaker 2: of friends and countermeasures at the time, not what they
43:13
Speaker 2: are today as far as like common knowledge goes. So
43:17
Speaker 2: removing that bottle might have just been something that didn't
43:21
Speaker 2: cross his mind, which seems to fly in the face
43:25
Speaker 2: of a strategy that would be to have this whole
43:28
Speaker 2: subterfuge element pretending to do CPR so that you look innocent.
43:33
Speaker 2: But anything as possible. We've seen all things when it
43:36
Speaker 2: comes to criminal cases.
43:38
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, We've done so many cases where we say, well,
43:41
Speaker 1: if a potential suspect, if they were the perpetrator, why
43:43
Speaker 1: did they just do this obvious action in order to
43:46
Speaker 1: cover things up? And The obvious answer to that is
43:48
Speaker 1: criminals are sometimes stupid and they don't do the obvious
43:51
Speaker 1: things because they haven't thought things through. So that could
43:54
Speaker 1: just be simple and competence here where they just realize, oh,
43:57
Speaker 1: we should have taken the key piece of evidence that
43:59
Speaker 1: got rid of it, but we didn't because we're not
44:01
Speaker 1: professionals and that just didn't cross our minds. So that
44:05
Speaker 1: about brings an end to part one of our series
44:07
Speaker 1: about the murder of Patsy Wright. Join us next week
44:10
Speaker 1: for part two.
44:11
Speaker 2: Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit
44:13
Speaker 2: about the Trail Went Cold Patreon?
44:15
Speaker 1: Yes, The Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three
44:17
Speaker 1: years now, and we offer these standard bonus features like
44:21
Speaker 1: early ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers
44:25
Speaker 1: and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs up
44:28
Speaker 1: with us on Patreon. If you join our five dollars
44:30
Speaker 1: tier tier two, we also offer monthly bonus episodes in
44:34
Speaker 1: which I talk about cases which are not featured on
44:37
Speaker 1: the Trail Went Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to Patreon.
44:41
Speaker 1: And if you join our highest tier tier three, the
44:44
Speaker 1: ten dollars tier, one of the features we offer is
44:47
Speaker 1: a audio commentary track over classic episodes of Unsolved Mysteries,
44:51
Speaker 1: where you can download an audio file and then moot
44:54
Speaker 1: up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or
44:57
Speaker 1: YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in
45:01
Speaker 1: the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about
45:04
Speaker 1: the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally, the very
45:07
Speaker 1: first episode that I did a commentary track over was
45:10
Speaker 1: the episode featuring this case. So if you want to
45:13
Speaker 1: download a commentary track in which I make more smart
45:16
Speaker 1: ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be sure to join
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45:20
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45:21
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Speaker 3: our Pathwent Chili mini's, which are always over an hour,
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Speaker 3: to turn into a series, and we're really enjoying doing those.
45:36
Speaker 2: So we hope you'll check out those patreons. We'll link
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Speaker 2: them in the show notes.
45:40
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45:42
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45:47
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45:51
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45:53
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45:59
Speaker 2: Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy