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Episode 45: The Ouija Board Murder · Deadly Divas True Crime Podcast

0:11
SPEAKER_00: Hello, True Crime Divas and Dudes.
0:13
SPEAKER_00: I'm Tina, and welcome back to your favorite True Crime podcast, Deadly Divas.
0:19
SPEAKER_01: And I'm Sarah, and if you're new here, welcome.
0:21
SPEAKER_01: We break down a new true crime case for you every Friday.
0:26
SPEAKER_00: And today we are continuing our Halloween Spooktacular with a case that involves something I would personally prefer to leave firmly inside the box: a Ouija board.
0:37
SPEAKER_00: But this isn't just your typical, my dead grandma moved the slider and told me my boyfriend is cheating on me with Beyoncé story.
0:44
SPEAKER_01: I mean, honestly, if my husband was cheating with Beyoncé, I'd be pretty damn impressed.
0:50
SPEAKER_01: Valid point.
0:51
SPEAKER_00: But this Ouija board allegedly had something a little more sinister to say.
0:57
SPEAKER_00: In 1933, a family in rural Arizona became the center of a sensational murder case involving a former beauty queen, a shotgun-wielding teenage daughter, a young cowboy, and probably one of the most ridiculous explanations for murder ever.
1:13
SPEAKER_00: The Ouija board made me do it.
1:15
SPEAKER_00: I think I've seen this movie.
1:17
SPEAKER_00: Right?
1:17
SPEAKER_00: But was it really the Ouija board?
1:20
SPEAKER_00: Or was there a much darker motive?
1:22
SPEAKER_00: This is the story of Dorothea Turley and the Ouija board murder.
1:27
SPEAKER_00: Let's get into it.
1:29
SPEAKER_00: Long before Dorothea Turley became known for murder, she was actually known for her beauty.
1:34
SPEAKER_00: Dorothea Irene Kellenak was born in 1895 and grew up in New York.
1:39
SPEAKER_00: She described herself as a tomboy, spending much of her time outdoors climbing trees, roaming through the woods, swimming, and riding horses.
1:48
SPEAKER_00: As a young woman, she studied music and reportedly had ambitions of performing professionally.
1:53
SPEAKER_00: And for a little while, it looked like Dorothea might actually find fame, just not in the way she expected.
1:59
SPEAKER_00: In 1916, New York's Evening World Newspaper selected Dorothea as a modern Venus.
2:06
SPEAKER_00: Now, what is a modern Venus, you may ask?
2:09
SPEAKER_00: I had absolutely no idea, so I looked it up, and we are going down a short rabbit hole to explain it because it's worth the trip, I promise.
2:17
SPEAKER_00: Alright.
2:18
SPEAKER_00: So it was basically an early beauty contest, kind of like the pageants we're familiar with today, like Miss America and Miss Universe.
2:25
SPEAKER_00: Except instead of evening gowns and interview questions, there was a much bigger emphasis on a woman's actual physical proportions, like waist size, bus size, etc.
2:36
SPEAKER_00: The idea was to find a modern woman whose figure most closely matched what was considered the classical ideal of female beauty.
2:44
SPEAKER_00: And in those days, that equated to the proportions of the Venus de Milo.
2:49
SPEAKER_00: And what is the Venus de Milo?
2:51
SPEAKER_00: Another great question.
2:52
SPEAKER_00: It is an ancient Greek marble statue believed to depict the goddess Aphrodite, famous for its idealized female form, and of course for missing both of its arms.
3:02
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so it was the one I was thinking of.
3:04
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
3:04
SPEAKER_00: That's right, y'all.
3:06
SPEAKER_00: The ideal beauty standard for women was based on a six foot eight inanimate object with no arms.
3:12
SPEAKER_00: And when I say physical proportions, I mean they got extremely specific.
3:17
SPEAKER_00: They were not just looking for a woman with a certain dress size, because the actual Venus de Milo is around six foot eight.
3:24
SPEAKER_00: They scaled the statue's proportions down to the height of a real woman, and then compared individual body parts down to fractions of an inch.
3:33
SPEAKER_00: Dorothea was just under 5'4 and weighed 125 pounds, with a 25.9 inch waist, a 12.5 inch neck, a 34.2 inch chest, and an 8.2 inch ankle.
3:47
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
3:47
SPEAKER_00: Yes, her freaking ankle had to be proportionally beautiful.
3:51
SPEAKER_01: They didn't have a hip measurement in those requirements.
3:54
SPEAKER_00: Maybe they did, but yeah, apparently even ankles could disappoint society in 1916.
4:00
SPEAKER_00: And while that sounds completely ridiculous, and it is, we are still telling women exactly what size, shape, and weight their bodies are supposed to be today, more than a hundred years later.
4:10
SPEAKER_00: So have we really evolved?
4:13
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, Dorothea apparently fit their extremely scientific definition of perfection.
4:20
SPEAKER_00: Her photograph and measurements were published in newspapers, and she was celebrated as the real life modern Venus.
4:26
SPEAKER_00: The publicity spread, and suddenly Dorothea was receiving attention from people across the country.
4:33
SPEAKER_00: She reportedly received hundreds of letters from admirers, along with marriage proposals.
4:39
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
4:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I just gotta say, to propose marriage to a woman you've never met just because she has an 8.2 inch ankle is fucking crazy work.
4:47
SPEAKER_01: I have been worried about all the wrong proportions, apparently.
4:50
SPEAKER_00: Haven't we all?
4:51
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, for a young woman who dreamed of being on stage, it must have felt like the beginning of something big.
4:57
SPEAKER_00: Among all of the attention Dorothea was receiving, one admirer apparently stood out.
5:02
SPEAKER_00: A handsome young Navy man named Ernest Turley, who pursued her in what newspapers later described as a whirlwind courtship.
5:10
SPEAKER_01: You can't get much more whirlwind than marriage proposals out of the blue by mail.
5:15
SPEAKER_00: Right.
5:16
SPEAKER_00: So Ernest apparently won her over, and rather than continuing to chase the stage career she dreamed about, Dorothy eloped with him and the two were married around the beginning of 1918.
5:27
SPEAKER_01: Oh, we must have been a looker.
5:28
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
5:29
SPEAKER_00: Together, Dorothy and Ernest had two children.
5:32
SPEAKER_00: Their daughter Maddie was born around 1918, and their son David came shortly afterward.
5:38
SPEAKER_00: The family eventually settled in Southern California, where Ernest continued his duty with the Navy, and for years, the Turlies lived the kind of life that would never make the headlines.
5:48
SPEAKER_00: Ernest had his military career, Dorothea became a wife and a mother, and the former American Venus essentially disappeared into domestic life.
5:56
SPEAKER_00: Wonder if she lost those shapely ankles during pregnancy.
6:00
SPEAKER_00: Right.
6:01
SPEAKER_00: Right.
6:01
SPEAKER_00: But by the early 1930s, things were not going particularly well.
6:06
SPEAKER_00: Dorothea suffered from severe asthma, and doctors at the time often recommended dry climates for people with respiratory problems, so the family decided to relocate.
6:16
SPEAKER_00: In the summer of 1933, the Turley's left California for Apache County, Arizona.
6:22
SPEAKER_00: They settled at the Crossbar Ranch.
6:24
SPEAKER_00: And this was not glamorous, Arizona.
6:27
SPEAKER_00: Apache County sits in the northeastern part of the state near New Mexico.
6:32
SPEAKER_00: The area is mountainous, rural, and sparsely populated.
6:36
SPEAKER_00: The Turley family was essentially living in remote isolation here, a far cry from the life Dorothea had once pictured for herself as a stage performer with her name and lights.
6:46
SPEAKER_00: Now, the move did apparently help her asthma, but while Dorothea may have been physically healthier, she wasn't exactly happy.
6:53
SPEAKER_00: After once dreaming of the stage and briefly experiencing national attention as the American Venus, Dorothea now found herself restless, bored, and dissatisfied with life on this isolated Arizona ranch.
7:06
SPEAKER_00: So not long after arriving, she began spending a lot of time with her Ouija board.
7:12
SPEAKER_00: And this wasn't just something she pulled out occasionally for fun.
7:16
SPEAKER_00: Dorothea and her teenage daughter Maddie used the board regularly, asking it questions and putting at least some faith in the answers it gave them.
7:25
SPEAKER_00: And before the Ouija board allegedly started weighing in on Dorothea's marriage, it sent the Turley family looking for buried treasure.
7:33
SPEAKER_00: Right?
7:34
SPEAKER_00: At some point, Dorothea found strange markings carved into rocks near the ranch.
7:39
SPEAKER_00: She became convinced that those markings meant something.
7:43
SPEAKER_00: So she consulted the Ouija board about them, and the board informed her that there was gold and buried treasure hidden there.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: And Dorothea believed it.
7:51
SPEAKER_00: Or at least she convinced Ernest to believe it enough to go looking.
7:55
SPEAKER_00: Ernest went out with a pick and shovel and started digging where Dorothea told him the treasure was supposedly buried.
8:01
SPEAKER_00: But apparently digging wasn't getting the job done.
8:04
SPEAKER_00: So Ernest brought in the big guns.
8:07
SPEAKER_00: He got dynamite and actually started blasting apart the rocks looking for this Ouija board treasure.
8:13
SPEAKER_00: These people must have been really bored.
8:15
SPEAKER_00: Right?
8:16
SPEAKER_00: I just need us to appreciate this for a second.
8:19
SPEAKER_00: Like this man is out in the Arizona wilderness with a shovel and dynamite, blowing holes into the side of a cliff because his wife's Ouija board told her there was treasure underneath it.
8:31
SPEAKER_01: I'm waiting for when Wiley Coyote turns up with his acne bag.
8:35
SPEAKER_00: No, literally.
8:37
SPEAKER_00: And shockingly, he never found any gold or any treasure.
8:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, don't say.
8:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there was nothing.
8:43
SPEAKER_00: So Dorothea went back to the board only for it to essentially inform her that there had been some kind of mistake.
8:50
SPEAKER_00: Oops.
8:52
SPEAKER_00: Error.
8:53
SPEAKER_00: And Ernest was absolutely infuriated that he had just spent God knows how long blowing up the Arizona countryside over it.
9:01
SPEAKER_00: And I bet dynamite wasn't cheap.
9:02
SPEAKER_00: Definitely wasn't.
9:04
SPEAKER_00: And also dangerous.
9:05
SPEAKER_00: Hello?
9:06
SPEAKER_00: Hello.
9:07
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, definitely the start of some marital friction there.
9:10
SPEAKER_00: But there's another detail that makes this whole story considerably less funny.
9:14
SPEAKER_00: According to Maddie, while her father was out searching for treasure, Dorothea was spending a lot of time with a young cowboy the family had recently met.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: And very soon, the Ouija board would supposedly have something to say about him too.
9:29
SPEAKER_00: So not long after arriving in Arizona, the Turlies became friendly with a local family named the Pierces, and Dorothea became particularly friendly with their oldest son.
9:39
SPEAKER_00: His name was Kent Pierce.
9:42
SPEAKER_00: He was just 20 years old while Dorothea was around 40, about twice his age.
9:47
SPEAKER_01: But she had those venous ankles.
9:48
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm, those venous ankles.
9:50
SPEAKER_00: Kent was attractive, he was a cowboy, and according to the prosecution's eventual theory, Dorothea was completely infatuated with him.
10:00
SPEAKER_00: Dorothea and Kent began spending a lot of time together.
10:04
SPEAKER_00: They took frequent drives through the countryside, although they weren't usually alone.
10:09
SPEAKER_00: Maddie often came along, and Kent apparently brought a teenage friend of his named Pollard Wiltbank to keep her company.
10:16
SPEAKER_00: Other young people occasionally joined them as well.
10:18
SPEAKER_00: So on the surface, these could look like perfectly innocent group outings.
10:23
SPEAKER_00: But according to witnesses, Dorothy and Kent weren't exactly behaving like two people who just happened to be along for the same ride.
10:31
SPEAKER_00: One woman named Mrs.
10:33
SPEAKER_00: Walk testified that Dorothea had actually gushed to her about Kent.
10:37
SPEAKER_00: According to her, she even discussed the possibility of marrying him.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: Kent would later dispute the idea that he and Dorothea were planning some future together, but people around them clearly noticed otherwise.
10:50
SPEAKER_00: So anyway, while Dorothea was spending time with Kent, her marriage to Ernest was rapidly deteriorating.
10:57
SPEAKER_00: Evidence later presented in court suggested Dorothea complained about her husband to their daughter Maddie.
11:03
SPEAKER_00: There was a lot of friction in the marriage and lots of arguments.
11:07
SPEAKER_00: According to witnesses, Dorothea had even made disturbing comments about Ernest.
11:12
SPEAKER_00: On at least two occasions, she allegedly remarked, in Ernest's own presence, that she ought to kill him.
11:20
SPEAKER_00: And according to Maddie, Dorothea had begun talking about a future that did not include Ernest.
11:26
SPEAKER_00: But there was one pretty obvious problem.
11:28
SPEAKER_00: Ernest was still very much alive.
11:31
SPEAKER_00: And here's where that Ouija board starts to take a very dark turn.
11:35
SPEAKER_00: Now, Ouija boards weren't some obscure occult object in 1933.
11:40
SPEAKER_00: Commercial talking boards had been around since the late 19th century, and the Ouija name had been in use for decades.
11:47
SPEAKER_00: Spiritualism had also become enormously popular in America in the decades before this.
11:53
SPEAKER_00: People did all kinds of woo-woo stuff back in these days, like hold seances, visit mediums, and even automatic writing.
12:01
SPEAKER_00: And if you're curious like I was, automatic writing is where you basically write, but without consciously deciding what to put on the page, believing the words are being guided by some supernatural force.
12:13
SPEAKER_00: And after the massive loss of life during World War I and the 1918 influenza pandemic, millions of grieving people desperately wanted to believe communication with the dead was possible.
12:24
SPEAKER_00: So while today a Ouija board might make us think of horror movies and teenagers trying to summon something up in a basement, the cultural context back then was very different.
12:34
SPEAKER_00: Some people genuinely believed these boards could provide answers.
12:38
SPEAKER_00: And as we already know from the whole buried treasure fiasco, the turlies apparently weren't strangers to theirs.
12:44
SPEAKER_00: But according to Maddie, eventually Dorothea began asking the board questions that were a hell of a lot more consequential than where to find buried treasure.
12:54
SPEAKER_01: Kind of sounds like they were using it more like a magic eight ball.
12:57
SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
12:58
SPEAKER_01: Like whereas we think of Ouija boards as being more creepy, they seemed to be using it in those days more like it was like a fun magic eight ball.
13:06
SPEAKER_01: Hey, what should we do now?
13:07
SPEAKER_00: Right.
13:08
SPEAKER_00: Right, just out of pure boredom.
13:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
13:10
SPEAKER_00: So during one of their sessions, Dorothea asked the Ouija board which man she should choose.
13:16
SPEAKER_00: Ernest or Kent.
13:17
SPEAKER_00: The pointer began moving.
13:19
SPEAKER_00: And eventually it spelled out, Daddy Must Die.
13:23
SPEAKER_00: Oh damn.
13:24
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
13:25
SPEAKER_00: Then came another question.
13:26
SPEAKER_00: Who was supposed to kill him?
13:28
SPEAKER_00: The answer was MT for Maddie Turley.
13:31
SPEAKER_00: Maddie claimed she was terrified.
13:34
SPEAKER_00: She asked her mother whether she really had to obey what the board was telling them.
13:38
SPEAKER_00: And Dorothy had told her there was no escaping a command from the Ouija board.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
13:44
SPEAKER_00: But the questions continued, and so did the Ouija board's answers.
13:48
SPEAKER_00: What weapon should Maddie use?
13:50
SPEAKER_00: A shotgun.
13:51
SPEAKER_00: Would the plan work?
13:52
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
13:53
SPEAKER_00: Would Ernest die immediately?
13:55
SPEAKER_00: No.
13:55
SPEAKER_00: Would Maddie get into trouble afterward?
13:58
SPEAKER_00: According to her story, the board essentially reassured her that things would be okay.
14:02
SPEAKER_00: And then there was the money.
14:04
SPEAKER_00: They asked about Ernest's life insurance.
14:07
SPEAKER_00: The board indicated that Dorothea would receive thousands of dollars.
14:11
SPEAKER_00: And unlike the buried treasure, that money actually existed.
14:15
SPEAKER_00: Ernest had two life insurance policies, naming Dorothea as beneficiary.
14:20
SPEAKER_00: So if Maddie's version was true, Dorothea now had three possible motives: an unhappy marriage, can't pierce, and Ernest's life insurance money.
14:29
SPEAKER_00: But she wouldn't have to fire the gun herself.
14:32
SPEAKER_00: Her 15-year-old daughter would do it.
14:34
SPEAKER_00: And Maddie claims this wasn't just one weird conversation that everybody forgot about the next day.
14:40
SPEAKER_00: Her mother Dorothea very much wanted this plan to come to fruition.
14:45
SPEAKER_00: In fact, Maddie later claimed there was at least one earlier moment when she had an opportunity to shoot her father, but couldn't make herself do it.
14:53
SPEAKER_00: She pointed the gun and then lost her nerve.
14:57
SPEAKER_00: Now, if that happened, Dorothea must have known her daughter was struggling with what she'd been told to do, but that did not deter her mother's heinous plan one bit.
15:07
SPEAKER_00: Eventually, another opportunity came.
15:11
SPEAKER_00: And this time Maddie pulled the trigger.
15:13
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
15:14
SPEAKER_00: On November 18th, 1933, Ernest and Maddie went outside to milk the cows.
15:20
SPEAKER_00: Maddie was carrying a double-barreled shotgun.
15:23
SPEAKER_00: Ernest walked ahead of her.
15:25
SPEAKER_00: His back was turned.
15:26
SPEAKER_00: And then Maddie shot her father.
15:30
SPEAKER_00: Ernest collapsed.
15:32
SPEAKER_00: And get ready, y'all, because we're taking a sharp left turn.
15:35
SPEAKER_00: This is where a very unfortunate skunk enters the story.
15:39
SPEAKER_00: What?
15:40
SPEAKER_00: The night before the shooting, a skunk had crawled underneath the Turley's cabin and gotten into a fight with the family cat.
15:48
SPEAKER_00: The noise, and presumably the absolutely horrific smell, kept the family awake, and by the next day, they were still trying to get the damn thing out from underneath the house.
15:58
SPEAKER_00: So when Dorothy and David left that afternoon to pick up groceries for David's birthday dinner, Maddie stayed behind with her father, and she had a perfectly reasonable excuse for carrying a loaded shotgun.
16:10
SPEAKER_00: There was still a skunk on the loose.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: Maddie claimed she'd spotted the animal and tried to shoot it, but she stumbled and fell, accidentally firing the shotgun and hitting her father instead.
16:20
SPEAKER_00: At first, people apparently considered the possibility that this really had been a horrible accident.
16:26
SPEAKER_00: And Ernest was actually still alive at this point, which meant the immediate priority was saving his life.
16:32
SPEAKER_00: He received medical treatment and was eventually transferred to a naval hospital in San Diego.
16:37
SPEAKER_00: But authorities soon found a problem with Maddie's story.
16:40
SPEAKER_00: The trajectory of the shotgun blasts through Ernest's body did not match her claim that she had stumbled and accidentally fired.
16:48
SPEAKER_00: So the sheriff started asking more questions.
16:51
SPEAKER_00: And eventually, Maddie's story completely changed.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
16:59
SPEAKER_00: She admitted that shooting her father had not been an accident.
17:03
SPEAKER_00: She said that she'd done it deliberately.
17:05
SPEAKER_00: But according to her, she hadn't acted alone.
17:08
SPEAKER_00: She said her mother had told her to do it because the Ouija board had commanded it, and Dorothea had convinced her that she had to obey.
17:17
SPEAKER_00: Suddenly, investigators weren't looking at a bizarre hunting accident anymore.
17:22
SPEAKER_00: They had to consider whether this 15-year-old girl had been manipulated into becoming the weapon in a plot to kill her own father.
17:30
SPEAKER_00: Dorothea quickly became a suspect.
17:33
SPEAKER_00: Investigators had Maddie's accusation, and they began finding circumstances that appeared to support at least parts of her story.
17:40
SPEAKER_00: On November 29th, Sheriff Marion Hawes filed a criminal complaint against Dorothea, accusing her of assault with intent to kill.
17:49
SPEAKER_00: But Ernest was still alive, and that created one of the stranger circumstances in this case.
17:55
SPEAKER_00: The supposed victim of Dorothea's murder plot was able to participate in the proceedings against her.
18:01
SPEAKER_00: On December 12th, Ernest testified at Dorothea's preliminary hearing.
18:06
SPEAKER_00: So Ernest's testimony was not exactly helpful to his wife.
18:11
SPEAKER_00: He testified that there had been bad blood between him and Dorothea for quite some time.
18:16
SPEAKER_00: And according to Ernest himself, on at least two occasions, Dorothea had actually said that she ought to kill him.
18:24
SPEAKER_00: Now, think about how surreal that family situation must have been.
18:28
SPEAKER_00: Your 15-year-old daughter has admitted deliberately shooting you.
18:32
SPEAKER_00: She's now saying your wife, her own mother, convinced her to do it.
18:37
SPEAKER_00: Your wife is under arrest, and you're alive to watch the family essentially split into two competing versions of why you were almost killed.
18:47
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this poor man.
18:48
SPEAKER_00: And sadly, Ernest's survival did not last.
18:52
SPEAKER_00: His injuries were very serious.
18:54
SPEAKER_00: He had been shot twice and had spent weeks undergoing treatment.
18:58
SPEAKER_00: But on December 26, 1933, the day after Christmas, he tragically passed.
19:04
SPEAKER_00: The shooting was no longer an attempted killing, it was a murder.
19:08
SPEAKER_00: Maddie's father was dead, and she was the person who had unquestionably fired that gun.
19:14
SPEAKER_01: What a lot for her to deal with.
19:16
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
19:16
SPEAKER_00: So Maddie pleaded guilty to attempted murder and was committed to the State School for Girls in Randolph, Arizona.
19:23
SPEAKER_00: Her age became an important part of the way the case was understood.
19:27
SPEAKER_00: She was 15 years old, old enough to know that pointing a shotgun at someone and firing was wrong, but still very much a child.
19:34
SPEAKER_00: And if her story about Dorothea was true, that made her especially vulnerable to manipulation by a parent.
19:41
SPEAKER_00: Maddie reportedly expressed remorse for shooting Ernest, and she said that she wanted to be punished.
19:47
SPEAKER_00: But she did not back away from blaming her mother.
19:50
SPEAKER_00: She portrayed Dorothea as controlling and claimed that she finally felt free.
19:54
SPEAKER_00: Dorothea, on the other hand, told a completely different story.
19:58
SPEAKER_00: According to her, Maddie had problems with Ernest.
20:01
SPEAKER_00: Her father was strict, and Maddie resented his discipline, and she shot him because of her own anger and desire for freedom.
20:09
SPEAKER_00: That competing version of events would become the central issue in Dorothea's trial.
20:14
SPEAKER_00: The prosecution had to prove more than the fact that Dorothea wasn't happy in her marriage, but they did have circumstances that looked suspicious.
20:23
SPEAKER_00: First was Kent Pierce.
20:25
SPEAKER_00: Witnesses had seen Dorothea spending time with him and behaving affectionately.
20:30
SPEAKER_00: There was also the testimony that she talked about marrying him.
20:33
SPEAKER_00: Second was the state of her marriage.
20:35
SPEAKER_00: Dorothea allegedly complained about Ernest and had made disturbing statements about ending his life.
20:42
SPEAKER_00: And third was money.
20:44
SPEAKER_00: At trial, prosecutors introduced certified copies of two life insurance policies on Ernest.
20:50
SPEAKER_00: Dorothea was the beneficiary for both.
20:53
SPEAKER_00: None of those things alone proved she told Maddie to kill Ernest.
20:57
SPEAKER_00: Plenty of spouses have life insurance, plenty of unhappy married people flirt with somebody else, and plenty of people say horrible things during arguments without ever acting on them.
21:08
SPEAKER_00: But combine all of those circumstances with Maddie's accusation and prosecutors' belief they had a case.
21:14
SPEAKER_00: The defense, of course, saw something completely different.
21:18
SPEAKER_00: They saw a teenage girl who had already lied.
21:21
SPEAKER_00: Maddie's first explanation for the shooting had been the skunk story.
21:25
SPEAKER_00: Only after investigators stopped believing that did she admit she'd intentionally shot Ernest and implicated Dorothea.
21:32
SPEAKER_00: So if Maddie could lie once to protect herself, couldn't she lie again?
21:37
SPEAKER_00: Dorothea's trial began in 1934, and unsurprisingly, the story attracted enormous attention.
21:44
SPEAKER_00: The former American Venus, her younger cowboy lover, her dead husband, the teenage daughter who fired the gun, and a Ouija board supposedly giving instructions from the spirit world.
21:57
SPEAKER_00: Maddie was the prosecution's star witness.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Witness.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: She told the jury about the Ouija board sessions.
22:03
SPEAKER_00: She claimed Dorothea had convinced her the board's commands had to be obeyed, and she described the alleged plan to kill Ernest.
22:10
SPEAKER_00: Dorothea denied it.
22:12
SPEAKER_00: Her attorneys attacked Maddie's credibility, but the trial soon expanded far beyond the actual question of whether Dorothea had manipulated her daughter.
22:21
SPEAKER_00: The prosecution also introduced a lot of evidence about Dorothea's personal character that had very little to do with whether she actually orchestrated Ernest's shooting.
22:30
SPEAKER_00: Jurors heard allegations that she'd had another affair years earlier, failed to pay her debts, and even carried liquor in her car.
22:40
SPEAKER_00: So scandalous.
22:41
SPEAKER_00: They also heard accusations about her morals and claims that she'd made derogatory comments about members of the Mormon church.
22:48
SPEAKER_00: And that last one was particularly damaging because Dorothea was being tried in an area with a substantial Mormon population.
22:56
SPEAKER_01: So Dorothea was always the one on trial.
22:59
SPEAKER_00: Maddie never went on trial because she immediately admitted guilt.
23:04
SPEAKER_00: And because she was 15, she was sent to that school for girls.
23:07
SPEAKER_00: Right.
23:08
SPEAKER_00: So the jury wasn't simply hearing evidence about Ernest's shooting anymore.
23:12
SPEAKER_00: They were being given reasons to think that Dorothea was just a bad woman.
23:16
SPEAKER_00: And being a bad woman is not the same thing as being guilty of arranging your husband's murder.
23:21
SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, Dorothea's defense claimed they weren't being given the same freedom to challenge Maddie's character and credibility.
23:28
SPEAKER_00: One major issue involved Kent Pierce.
23:31
SPEAKER_00: After Dorothea's preliminary hearing, Maddie had signed a criminal complaint accusing Kent of statutory rape.
23:37
SPEAKER_00: The charge apparently went no further and was eventually dismissed.
23:40
SPEAKER_00: Dorothea's attorneys wanted to question Maddie about whether she'd made that accusation to intimidate Kent into giving false testimony against her mother.
23:49
SPEAKER_00: The judge wouldn't allow them to fully pursue that line of questioning, though, and that was a big problem because Dorothea's guilt depended heavily on whether the jury believed Maddie.
23:59
SPEAKER_00: And okay, we're taking another left turn.
24:01
SPEAKER_00: Are you ready?
24:02
SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness.
24:04
SPEAKER_00: Now comes the pork chops.
24:06
SPEAKER_00: Not the pork chops?
24:07
SPEAKER_00: I know.
24:08
SPEAKER_00: First the skunk and now pork chops, but I swear I am not making this up.
24:12
SPEAKER_00: A neighbor testified about a supposed message from Dorothea telling her to keep quiet.
24:18
SPEAKER_00: That sounds pretty incriminating, right?
24:20
SPEAKER_00: Until you hear how the message was delivered.
24:22
SPEAKER_00: Someone brought the neighbor pork chops.
24:25
SPEAKER_00: The pork chops allegedly came from Dorothea.
24:28
SPEAKER_00: And along with them came the message that she should keep her mouth shut.
24:33
SPEAKER_00: Except Dorothea had not personally delivered the pork chops, and the neighbor hadn't personally heard Dorothea make the statement.
24:41
SPEAKER_00: Kent Pierce had allegedly passed the message through someone else.
24:45
SPEAKER_00: So by the time this gets to the person testifying in court, we are several layers removed from Dorothea.
24:51
SPEAKER_00: It's basically someone told someone who told someone that Dorothea sent pork chops and said shut up.
24:57
SPEAKER_00: And somehow this became evidence at a murder trial.
25:00
SPEAKER_00: The jury ultimately found Dorothea guilty of assault with intent to commit murder.
25:06
SPEAKER_00: She was sentenced to between 10 and 25 years in prison.
25:09
SPEAKER_00: The jury had accepted enough of Maddie's story to hold Dorothea responsible.
25:14
SPEAKER_00: The former American Venus was now a convicted felon, but she continued insisting she had nothing to do with Ernest's shooting, and she appealed.
25:23
SPEAKER_00: The Arizona Supreme Court reviewed Dorothea's case, and the justices essentially said there was one major fact they could be certain about.
25:31
SPEAKER_00: Maddie shot Ernest Turley.
25:33
SPEAKER_00: Beyond that, they identified three possible explanations.
25:37
SPEAKER_00: The shooting could have been accidental and Maddie's later confession false.
25:42
SPEAKER_00: Maddie could have deliberately shot Ernest and falsely implicated her mother afterward, or Maddie could have been telling the truth.
25:48
SPEAKER_00: Dorothea wanted Ernest dead and persuaded her daughter to shoot him.
25:52
SPEAKER_00: But the Supreme Court wasn't deciding which of those stories was true.
25:56
SPEAKER_00: Its job was to determine whether Dorothea had received a fair trial.
26:01
SPEAKER_00: And because so much of the case depended on Maddie's credibility, the justices concluded that the jury hadn't been given a fair opportunity to evaluate it.
26:09
SPEAKER_00: The Supreme Court found serious problems with Dorothea's trial.
26:13
SPEAKER_00: The prosecution had been allowed to introduce highly prejudicial evidence about Dorothea that had little to do with the crime, the alleged affair, debts, and the possession of liquor, and yes, even the pork chop message was a problem because it was hearsay.
26:28
SPEAKER_00: At the same time, evidence that might have helped Dorothea's attorneys challenge Maddie's credibility had been restricted.
26:35
SPEAKER_00: That didn't mean the Supreme Court thought Dorothea was innocent.
26:38
SPEAKER_00: In fact, the justices found there was evidence beyond Maddie's testimony that could support the state's case.
26:45
SPEAKER_00: There was enough there for the jury to consider.
26:47
SPEAKER_00: The problem was that the jury had to decide the case fairly, and according to the Arizona Supreme Court, that had not happened.
26:55
SPEAKER_00: So in 1936, Dorothea's conviction was reversed and she was granted a new trial.
27:01
SPEAKER_00: But that second trial never happened.
27:04
SPEAKER_00: By September, the state concluded that there simply was not enough evidence to successfully prosecute Dorothea again.
27:11
SPEAKER_00: The charges were dismissed, and after spending more than two years behind bars, Dorothea walked free.
27:18
SPEAKER_00: So who, or what, do we ultimately blame for Ernest's death?
27:23
SPEAKER_00: Was it the Ouija board with its own vendetta?
27:25
SPEAKER_00: Was Dorothea responsible?
27:27
SPEAKER_00: Or did Maddie act on her own?
27:29
SPEAKER_00: Personally, I think the most interesting question isn't whether a Ouija board actually told Maddie to kill her father.
27:35
SPEAKER_00: We have a perfectly normal explanation for how Ouija boards work.
27:39
SPEAKER_00: A flesh and blood human being moves that slider, sometimes without even realizing they're doing it.
27:46
SPEAKER_00: No ghost required.
27:47
SPEAKER_00: The interesting question is, who was moving it?
27:51
SPEAKER_00: And I'm just gonna go ahead and give my opinion here.
27:53
SPEAKER_00: Like, it was Dorothea, obviously.
27:56
SPEAKER_00: And shame on her.
27:57
SPEAKER_00: Like, I 100% believe Maddie.
27:59
SPEAKER_00: Could she have lied?
28:01
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
28:01
SPEAKER_00: And the Arizona Supreme Court itself recognized the possibility that Maddie intentionally shot Ernest and later falsely accused her mother.
28:09
SPEAKER_00: We can't completely rule that out, but to me, that just doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
28:13
SPEAKER_00: Like, what was her motive?
28:15
SPEAKER_00: That she and her father had the same kind of normal friction fathers and teenage daughters have had since the beginning of time?
28:21
SPEAKER_00: She's like, oh no, my dad won't let me go on a date with Trevor on his motorcycle or wear lipstick, so now I'm gonna shoot him in the back with a shotgun.
28:29
SPEAKER_00: Like, give me a break.
28:31
SPEAKER_00: So, especially when there was so much more obvious motive sitting right there with Dorothea.
28:37
SPEAKER_00: Maddie was a teenage girl, and if her account was true, her own mother took something she genuinely believed had supernatural authority and used it to manipulate her into doing something horrible.
28:50
SPEAKER_00: Think about how powerful that could have been.
28:53
SPEAKER_00: Dorothea didn't have to sit her daughter down and say, kill your father so I can be with Kent.
28:59
SPEAKER_00: Instead, the board says daddy must die.
29:02
SPEAKER_00: The board says Maddie has to do it.
29:04
SPEAKER_00: The board says use a shotgun.
29:06
SPEAKER_00: And the board says you won't get in trouble.
29:08
SPEAKER_00: And according to Maddie, when she initially couldn't go through with it, Dorothea did not abandon the idea.
29:15
SPEAKER_00: She told her daughter that she would have another chance.
29:18
SPEAKER_00: And that's the part I have a very difficult time getting past, because Maddie's accusation didn't exist in a vacuum.
29:25
SPEAKER_00: There was evidence that Dorothea was extremely close with Kent Pierce.
29:30
SPEAKER_00: A neighbor testified that Dorothea had talked about wanting to marry him.
29:35
SPEAKER_00: There was testimony about problems between Dorothea and Ernest.
29:39
SPEAKER_00: There was Ernest's life insurance policies, and there were witnesses who claimed Dorothea had made disturbing comments about killing her husband.
29:47
SPEAKER_00: None of that proves Maddie was telling the truth, and Dorothea's conviction was ultimately overturned.
29:53
SPEAKER_00: But when you put all those pieces together, I have a very difficult time believing that a teenage girl independently decided to murder her father and then somehow constructed a story that happened to fit several very real things happening in her mother's life that made her look guilty as sin.
30:11
SPEAKER_00: I think Dorothea wanted Ernest gone.
30:13
SPEAKER_00: I think she knew her daughter believed in that Ouija board, and I think she used it.
30:18
SPEAKER_00: Not because the board had any supernatural power, but because she knew Maddie believed it did.
30:23
SPEAKER_00: Because if Maddie was telling the truth, there was never anything evil inside that box.
30:28
SPEAKER_00: The evil was sitting across the table from her.
30:31
SPEAKER_00: The evil gave birth to her.
30:33
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
30:34
SPEAKER_00: So what happened to everybody in the end?
30:37
SPEAKER_00: Well, as we discussed, Dorothy's conviction was overturned and she was released.
30:41
SPEAKER_00: But by then, her relationship with Maddie appears to have been completely destroyed.
30:46
SPEAKER_00: Maddie had been sent to the Arizona State School for Girls, and when that facility was later abandoned, she was transferred to the Convent of the Good Shepherd in Phoenix.
30:56
SPEAKER_00: In November 1936, at 18 years old, Maddie was finally paroled.
31:00
SPEAKER_00: Dorothea apparently tried twice to see her daughter after getting out of prison, but Maddie wanted no part of it.
31:07
SPEAKER_00: According to reports, she told her mother that she believed the two of them should never see each other again.
31:13
SPEAKER_00: Whatever relationship they once had was gone, and that is yet another tragedy in this case.
31:17
SPEAKER_00: Now, Dorothea apparently blamed the institution where Maddie had been living because of course it's their fault and not hers for manipulating her daughter into killing her own father.
31:29
SPEAKER_00: In 1938, Dorothea filed a$75,000 lawsuit against the former superintendent of the girls' school, accusing her of poisoning Maddie's mind against her.
31:42
SPEAKER_00: The lawsuit was eventually dismissed, but like the frickin' audacity.
31:48
SPEAKER_00: And then there was David, Dorothea's son and Maddie's younger brother.
31:53
SPEAKER_00: We didn't talk about him much, but he is yet another victim in this case.
31:57
SPEAKER_00: He had been only about 14 when all of this happened, and he had absolutely nothing to do with the shooting.
32:03
SPEAKER_00: While Dorothea and David were out getting groceries for his birthday dinner, Maddie stayed behind with Ernest.
32:09
SPEAKER_00: Dorothea chose her own son's birthday as the day this plan would finally happen.
32:14
SPEAKER_00: I mean, Jesus Christ, happy birthday, David.
32:22
SPEAKER_01: It was all about Dorothea.
32:24
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
32:24
SPEAKER_00: And this poor boy, I mean, in an incredibly short period of time, his sister shot his father, his father died, his sister was sent away, and his mother was convicted and imprisoned.
32:35
SPEAKER_00: He lost his whole family in one of the worst ways imaginable, pretty much overnight, and on his birthday.
32:42
SPEAKER_00: Like there's no way his birthday wouldn't be a painful reminder every time it comes around after that.
32:48
SPEAKER_00: So unfortunately, David largely disappears from the reliable historical record after that, although there are some reports that he moved to New York to live with Dorothy as mother, and I just hope he was able to live at least a somewhat normal, stable life after that.
33:03
SPEAKER_00: He got the fuck out of dogs.
33:05
SPEAKER_00: And to add insult to injury, literally, the great romance between the real life Venus and the dreamy cowboy that started this whole nightmare seemed to disintegrate.
33:15
SPEAKER_00: I have not found any reliable evidence that Dorothea and Kent Pierce ever married or even continued a relationship after all the fallout.
33:25
SPEAKER_00: So Ernest died, Maddie lost years of her adolescence in her relationship with her mother, David lost his whole family, Dorothea spent more than two years in prison, and she still didn't end up with the cowboy.
33:38
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely senseless.
33:40
SPEAKER_00: Now, as for Dorothea herself, genealogy records indicate she lived for decades after this case, apparently into the early 1970s, but that was pretty much all I could find.
33:51
SPEAKER_01: Did she get the insurance button?
33:52
SPEAKER_00: I have no idea.
33:54
SPEAKER_00: I hope not.
33:55
SPEAKER_00: Hopefully it went to the kids.
33:56
SPEAKER_00: After the late 1930s, the woman who had once been plastered across newspapers as both the American Venus and the villain of the Ouija board murder seems to have finally done something she had rarely managed before.
34:08
SPEAKER_00: She disappeared from the headlines.
34:11
SPEAKER_00: And that is the story of the Ouija board murder.
34:14
SPEAKER_00: Nearly a century later, it's easy to understand why the Ouija board is the detail that everybody remembers.
34:20
SPEAKER_00: It's creepy, it's bizarre, and Daddy Must Die makes one hell of a headline.
34:25
SPEAKER_00: But let's be real here, a Ouija board did not load that shotgun, aim it, or pull the trigger.
34:32
SPEAKER_00: People did.
34:33
SPEAKER_00: And if Maddie was telling the truth, the most frightening thing in this entire story wasn't that a 15-year-old girl believed Ouija board was telling her to kill her father.
34:42
SPEAKER_00: It was that her own mother may have known exactly how much she believed it and used that belief against her.
34:48
SPEAKER_00: No ghosts, no spirits, no curse.
34:51
SPEAKER_00: Just an evil person willing to do anything it took to get what she wanted, even if it meant sacrificing her own daughter.
34:59
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's a hell of a lot scarier, more evil, and more unbelievable than a Ouija board.
35:06
SPEAKER_00: Sarah, final thoughts?
35:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it definitely seems like the Ouija board was just a tool for her to accomplish what she'd set out to accomplish.
35:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I agree.
35:16
SPEAKER_00: I mean, she was never convicted.
35:18
SPEAKER_00: We cannot definitively say that, you know, she put Maddie up to it, but the dots are all there and very easy to connect.
35:27
SPEAKER_00: She wanted her 20-year-old cowboy.
35:29
SPEAKER_00: She was a bored middle-aged housewife, and she was willing to sacrifice her husband, her son, her daughter, her whole family to get it.
35:40
SPEAKER_00: Right.
35:40
SPEAKER_01: And she didn't want the shotgun in her own hands.
35:42
SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
35:43
SPEAKER_01: So she manipulated an impressionable child who believed in this Ouija board.
35:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and had her shoot her father.
35:50
SPEAKER_00: And like, obviously, she was traumatized by that up until the day that she died.
35:55
SPEAKER_00: You never get over something like that.
35:57
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure that she felt guilty every day of her life.
36:00
SPEAKER_01: Like Maddie's traumatized, David's traumatized.
36:03
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
36:03
SPEAKER_00: And I really hoped I did a really deep dive into this case because I really hoped that somehow at least the brother and sister had reunited, but I could not find anything about them.
36:15
SPEAKER_01: It happened on his birthday and his sister did it.
36:18
SPEAKER_01: I mean, she's probably living in guilt and he doesn't know who to believe.
36:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
36:23
SPEAKER_01: Do you believe your mom?
36:24
SPEAKER_01: Do you believe your sister?
36:26
SPEAKER_01: At the end of the day, they were both involved.
36:28
SPEAKER_01: Right, yeah.
36:29
SPEAKER_01: Because even if Dorothea did convince Maddie to do it because of the Ouija board, Maddie still went ahead and did it.
36:35
SPEAKER_01: She ultimately is the one who fired the gun and killed him.
36:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
36:39
SPEAKER_01: So I can see how he would never reconcile that in his head.
36:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
36:43
SPEAKER_00: And like you said, her with her guilt.
36:45
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that probably was a wound that she wouldn't even want to reopen for either of them.
36:50
SPEAKER_01: How do you go to your brother and say, I'm sorry that I shot our dad on your birthday?
36:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
36:54
SPEAKER_01: Like, here's some flowers.
36:57
SPEAKER_00: No, literally, here's a box of chocolate.
36:59
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, I killed our dad.
37:01
SPEAKER_00: But I mean, obviously she felt very guilty and she regretted it.
37:06
SPEAKER_00: Like she admitted that she did it.
37:08
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't justify it, but she was a 15-year-old girl and seems like her mother knew exactly the buttons to push.
37:15
SPEAKER_01: Exactly how to manipulate her and what she would believe.
37:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, just an evil, evil woman.
37:20
SPEAKER_00: And just the fact that, oh, she was the American Venus and everybody loved her.
37:25
SPEAKER_00: Like, notoriety and fame and beauty does not make you happy.
37:30
SPEAKER_00: It does not solve all of your problems.
37:33
SPEAKER_00: Okay, guys.
37:34
SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you so much for listening to this episode of our Spooktacular.
37:38
SPEAKER_00: I really hope that you enjoyed it.
37:40
SPEAKER_00: Next week, what have we got?
37:42
SPEAKER_00: The Devil on Trial?
37:44
SPEAKER_00: The Devil on Trial.
37:45
SPEAKER_00: Ooh, that one is scary, y'all.
37:48
SPEAKER_00: So come prepared.
37:49
SPEAKER_00: We will see you next week with another spooky episode.
37:52
SPEAKER_00: I hope that you are enjoying spooky season.
37:54
SPEAKER_00: And until next time, not deadly.
37:59
SPEAKER_00: Bye.
38:00
SPEAKER_00: Bye.