Latest / The Knife: A True Crime Podcast / Denton Family Murder

Transcript

Denton Family Murder · The Knife: A True Crime Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Can you tell us what happened that night in May
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: of nineteen seventy.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Not much that people knew about happened that night, although
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: a neighbor I think did report hearing a scream.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Knife. I'm Patia Eton, I'm Hannah Smith.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: This week we speak with Beth Denton, who in two
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: thousand and nine started to look into the circumstances surrounding
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: a murder of someone in her family.
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: We talk with Beth about her investigation of the crime
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: that took place in nineteen seventy. There are photos from
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: Beth of her family members that we posted on our
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: Instagram account at The Knife Podcast. If you want to
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: see pictures of the people we're talking about in story,
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: you can see them there.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: Let's get into it.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: My name is Beth Dunn. My pronouns are she, slash,
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: they awesome.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us. I'm really looking
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: forward to getting into this interview and hearing your story.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: It is different from a lot of the pitches that
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: we've received generally for the podcast because it has to
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: do with your whole family. But before we get into that.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: Can you give us just a little bit of information
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: about who you are and sort of where you grew up.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: I'm a special education teacher. I also have a background
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: in live action role playing that included a lot of writing,
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: which is sort of the context of this project. Sort
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: of happened because I had that writing background. I grew
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: up in the South suburbs of Chicago in Homewood. My
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: mom actually grew up like one town over. My dad
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: is actually from He was born in Little Rock. He
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: grew up in el Reno, Oklahoma, and came to the
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: South Suburbs as a teenage. Both my parents were teachers.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: They met sharing a classroom. It's kind of the ultimate
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: teacher meet cute. Yeah, you know, even now, my family's
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: really close knit. We all moved to Colorado at about
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: the same time. My parents live in a house about
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: twenty minutes away from me, and my sister actually lives
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: in the house right behind there, so they have a gate.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: So we're still a really tight family.
• 2:18
  Speaker 4: I love that.
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: Okay, I have to look up elren now, Okay, the
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: ultimate teacher meet cute. That's aspirational.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: I love that.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he was hired first and the first time he
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: met her, he said, that is the tallest girl I
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: have ever seen.
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: Well, he hasn't met us. We're both really tall.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: We are.
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean at the time she was six feet tall.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: So oh, yeah, that is tall. Yeah, that's how tall
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: my mom is too. Yeah, she used to claim to
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: be six feet, but I think technically she was like
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: five eleven and three quarters or something.
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: I'd claim six feet too.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: She was legit six feet and people would be like,
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: how tall are you and she would tell them five twelve.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: You got to lean into that tall humor.
• 2:56
  Speaker 4: You really do? You really do? Yeah?
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: Can you take us to Thanksgiving of twenty ten?
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: It might actually almost been two thousand and nine. It
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: was the year before I student taught, and I was
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: doing a second round of college to get my teaching degree.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: So I had come home from Thanksgiving. I was probably
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: in the middle of one of my teaching clinicals. So yeah,
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: we were just hanging out and I had a lot
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: of trouble sleeping and my dad had a lot of
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: trouble sleeping.
• 3:24
  Speaker 4: We both have depression.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: And we were watching TV and we were watching some
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: kind of documentary and I turned to him and I said,
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: what happened to the guy who killed cousin Patricia? And
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: he looked at me and he said, I don't actually know.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: After the Thanksgiving leftovers were put away and everyone else
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: went to bed, Beth and her dad stayed up and
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: turned on the TV. They started watching a true crime documentary.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: And this is the moment when that question popped into
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Beth's head, whatever happened to that guy who killed cousin Patricia?
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: Asking this question out loud made Beth real she had
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: a lot of questions about Patricia. She knew Patricia was
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: killed in nineteen seventy years before Beth was born, but
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: the who and why and what actually happened those were
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: question marks filed away in the back of Beth's mind
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: since childhood. But that moment watching TV with her dad
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: on a Thanksgiving night would launch Beth into her own
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: investigation of the life and untimely death of her cousin Patricia.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: I remember being a little kid and my grandma telling
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: me a story about my cousin Patricia not wearing a seatboat.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: She was trying to get me to wear my seatbolt.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: This must have been it was before I was ten
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: years old, because it was while they were still living
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: in Illinois because they retired back to Arkansas. And I
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: remember being like, I have a cousin, Patricia, because Patricia
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: was also my mom is also my mom's name, and
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: she was like, well, not anymore. My grandma sort of
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: had this distinct cross between a British Columbian accident and
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: a southern Arkansas accent, and she said, well she was.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: And that was sort of the end of that.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: When you had this conversation with your dad at Thanksgiving
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: and this question popped up about what happened to the
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: man who killed my cousin. What did that conversation prompt
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: you to do?
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: So we were sitting on the couch and he said
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: I don't know, and I to me, I was like, whoile.
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: We live in the information age, like it should be
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: possible to find out. And sort of as we tick
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: over into that semester, I started taking a creative writing
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: nonfiction class just as something to fill my schedule, and
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: you know, they wanted you to present a nonfiction project,
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: and I said, maybe this would make an interesting nonfiction project.
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: And I thought at that moment in time I would
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: be able to do like more research and maybe find
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: some newspaper articles or request court documents or something, and
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: that turned out.
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: To be really hard.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: What I discovered at that point was that newspapers seemed
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: to be starting as far back in their records and
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: digitizing forwards, so they just didn't have a lot of
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: digitized material from the seventies at that point. And it
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: made sense because you'd want to digitize like older things first,
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: but it didn't help with my project.
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, as you set out to find more information,
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: only very limited articles or maybe one article available. Was
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: it discouraging or were you like, this makes me really
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: feel like I need to dig deeper here.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: It made me want to dig deeper. I have ADHD,
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: so I'm very like I get really into my projects.
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: And I sort of had some visions of maybe going
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: into Oklahoma and actually talking to him. But what I
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: ended up doing was I reached out to the Oklahoma Historical Society,
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: and the person who wrote me back, she said, I
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: have to tell you, like, this was a bit of
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: a shock to hear from you asking about this because
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: I lived across the street. My kids played with her kids,
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: Patricia's kids, Melanie and Joey.
• 6:51
  Speaker 4: Wow.
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And she sent me a couple photos of them
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: sitting on the front step.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: What were the chances that this person at the Oklahoma
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: Historic Society happened to know best family members who she'd
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: been researching, Patricia and Patricia's two children, Melanie and Joey.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: The coincidence felt like a good sign, So in early
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: twenty ten, Beth dove headfirst into her research, determined to
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: answer the question what really happened to Patricia Henderson? And
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: today we are telling that story. We're telling it with
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: the help of best research, including a paper she wrote
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: in college, along with a letter from her grandmother from
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy, conversations Beth has had with her dad, and
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: articles from the Dally, Oklahoma all published in the spring
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: and summer of nineteen seventy. But first, in order to
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: really understand this story, we have to talk about the
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: people who were closest with Patricia, like her mother, Maureen.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: So Maureen was my grandfather's sister. I met her when
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: I was about ten years old. Before that, I had
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: only maybe talked to her on the phone, like briefly,
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: once my grandparents had moved to Arkansas to live across
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: the street from her. She was a lot like a
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: female version of my grandpa, and so it's really hard
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: for me to sort of describe her. She was tough,
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: and she was a chainsmoker, and she had sort of
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: gray white, old lady curly hair, and I absolutely adored
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: her from the first time I met her. We'd go
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: to visit my grandparents and we'd go and spend about
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: a week, usually on a school break, and I tried
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: to spend almost as much time with Marine as I
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: did with my grandparents. She had a big organ in
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: her house. She could play the organ, and she let
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: me play the organ and didn't care that I had
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: no idea what I was doing. And when she'd get
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: tired of that, she'd come and she'd play something and
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: teach me to sing. And all through my adolescence, music
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: was really important. She was sort of that first music
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: teacher for me. And we'd go places, and we'd go
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: on trips to go see something and do some tourist thing,
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: and you'd have to go quite a ways because there
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: just wasn't much going on in the Ozarks at that point,
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: and I would always want to ride with them, her
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: and her husband Ray.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: That's great, and I love the fact that she could
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: play the organ, like that's such a cool sounding instrument. Yeah,
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: And I can just imagine her like chain smoking and
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: playing the organ and it's just like so badass.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: I don't know if she smoked near it. Probably not
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: because they have gas in them, but oh.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: Okay, probably not. Then I didn't realize that.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, someone once explained it to me that that's how
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: an organ works. It's got pressurized gas.
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: You may have just saved Hannah's life.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, I don't imagine that i'd Lea's smoking near
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: an organ anytime soon, but now I know that I should.
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: Not, at least now, you know.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah in the movie version, though cinematically she'd be
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: smoking playing the organ.
• 9:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: Beth refers to Marine as aunt Marine, although technically she
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: was her great aunt, her grandfather's sister. Marine passed away
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: in the late nineteen nineties, but Beth has so many
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: memories with her gardening, listening to Marine sing and play
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: the organ, sneaking out for ice cream treats in the
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: middle of the day, and also a few memories of
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: Marine mentioning that she'd once had a daughter, Patricia. Maureen
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: even gave Beth one of Patricia's belongings as a gift
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: a silk scarf. Even as a kid. It was pretty
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: clear to Beth that it was difficult for Marine to
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: talk about her daughter who had died. Beth describes Marine's
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: relationship with her daughter Patricia as deeply loving but also complicated,
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: like so many mother daughter relationships.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: Are one of the things that I distinctly remember learning
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: about Patricia, and I will try to find the video.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: It's actually eight milimeter film footage that my dad digitized
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: of her that Easter before everything happened. Is that she
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: was kind of a rebel. If you look at the photos,
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: everybody else is sort of dressed nicely and a little
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: conservatively but appropriately for springing in Oklahoma City, and she's
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: in the video and she's wearing all black, which you know,
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: it was nineteen seventy that wasn't quite as common. She
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: was the only child of my aunt, and my aunt
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: had mostly raised her by herself, so I guess, Maureene,
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: you know, she's a single parent trying to raise a kid,
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: and I think it was rough. I think the way
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: to describe sort of the Denton branch of my family
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: is just really stubborn. We're all kind of stubborn and
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: a little bit ornery, and especially that generation my grandpa
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: and his sister and brother. Yeah, I can't imagine that
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: it was an easy childhood for her. She tried to
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: run away once and they found her within the bus
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: station with a ticket to her stepsisters in Texas. And
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: there was a point where Ann Marine and my great
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: grandmother Amelia actually talked about her maybe moving in with
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: my dad and his family, but nothing ever came from it.
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: So Marine bought this big old mansion sort of kind
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: of dilapidated, needed some work in Oklahoma City, and you know,
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: they worked on it a little bit at a time,
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: just so Patricia would have a place to grow up,
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: because she complained about not having a real home. So
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: her goal was that the servants' quarters behind would be
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: a rental so that she could rent them out to
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: people and that would help them pay for the expense
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: of the house.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: Childhood photo of Patricia shows a girl with wavy brown hair,
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: dark round eyes, and a sweet smile. She was raised
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties and sixties by her single mother, Maureen,
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: a woman as strong willed as Patricia would later become
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: as she grew older. Patricia carved her own path. She
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: was independent and headstrong, which at times led to friction
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: with her mother. Wanting to provide stability, Marine bought them
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: a house in Oklahoma, a place that would become the
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: backdrop for much of Patricia's life. In the grainy Super
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: eight footage, the house stands quietly behind this scene of
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: women in pastel dresses milling about the yard, and then
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: there's Patricia. She appears in stark contrast, dressed in all black,
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: kneeling beside her children, Melanie and Joey. It is the
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: same house where Patricia once played as a child, where
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: she came of age as a teenager, and it's the
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: same house where, just months after this Easter of nineteen
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: ten seventy, she would take her final breath. It's a
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: house layered with memories of Patricia's life.
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: My dad described it as a big, two story Georgian
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: that had seen better days. It had like a servant
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: spell system sort of the remains of it, and in
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: ground sprinklers that he and my dad came and got
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: worked for them. When she was young, Pittrica had a
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: lot of hobbies. She would sort of pick up on
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: one and do it.
• 13:21
  Speaker 4: For a while.
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: She loved to read, and she was the first person
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: who introduced my father to the Lord of the Rings,
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: and like, it's kind of a big thing in our family.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: He read it to my mom when she was pregnant
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: with me. He read it to me when I was five,
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: He read it to my sister again when I was five.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: All of their cats have Lord of the Rings names,
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: and she was sort of the person who started that.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: So she graduated from high school in nineteen sixty two,
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: and she was supposed to go to business college and
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: Marine paid for it all. And then Patricia went off
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: and got married to Jean Henderson. Was the early sixties,
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: and maybe the cultural message that you didn't have to
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: do that if you didn't want to haven't come through yet,
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: even for me as a sort of a child of
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: the eighties, like, I don't know that I would have
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: decided to get married and not to have kids if
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: I hadn't had like another family member who was a
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: role model for that. So I could sort of see
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: where she was like, Nope, I'm ready, I'm gonna get
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: married and we're going to have kids.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think in that time, right, it was like
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: even sometimes the goals of some women who went to
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: college was to find a husband. You know, not to
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: say that people weren't ambitious, but I do think you're
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: right that it was a very different cultural sort of outlook.
• 14:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: You know, Marine had this lived experience of having to
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: be on her own and wanted to make sure that
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: she was ready for that as a possibility. But Patricia
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: wasn't ready to do that. So they had two kids, Melanie,
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: who was the older of the two, and then kind
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: of as a try to save the marriage move, everybody thinks,
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: then she had Joey, which she was really unhappy, and
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: they ended up getting divorced and Patricia moved back in
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: with Marine.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: This was the mid nineteen sixties. Patricia was in her
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: early twenties, now divorce with two young children and living
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: back with her mother, Maureen. From speaking with Beth, it
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: sounds like Patricia was still trying to find herself, unsure
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: of what she wanted out of life, and she seemed
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: to struggle with depression, although Beth doesn't think she ever
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: got a diagnosis.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: She took classes at University Hospital to be at orderly,
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: but like she hung out kind of with you know,
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: motorcycle riders, and again was the mid sixties, so it's
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: still a little early for that, And she fought with
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: her mom about the kids a lot. Maureene felt like
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: Patricia did not do a great job of taking care
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: of those kids, that she didn't pay enough attention to them,
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: didn't make sure that they were well taken care of,
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: and the meanwhile, Marine was super devoted to them. Melanie
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: was really shy as a special education teacher. I've seen this.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: She probably had selective mutism. She just almost refused to
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: talk to anybody. So Marine paid for her to go
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: to the Montessori school. That was sort of where Melanie
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: really started to flourish.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, you mentioned that Patricia was unhappy. Who
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: did she confide in about that unhappiness? Did she talk
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: to anyone about it?
• 16:07
  Speaker 4: I think it was just obvious to everybody I see.
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: It wasn't something people were talking about with her. It
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: was more of just an observation.
• 16:15
  Speaker 4: I don't know.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: Sometimes I wish i'd started this project before my grandma
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: had passed away, because I think she would have had
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: more to say about it. But that was certainly how
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: my dad recalled it, that she was unhappy.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: What was the living situation, living set up like in
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: the house.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: They were all back in the big house together for
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: a while, and then at some point, and it's a
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: little hard to tell, there's some discrepancy between my dad's
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: version of the story and my grandma's in her letter,
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: at some point she decided just to make there to
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: be some kind of break so that she and Maureen
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: would not be at their throats, that the border could
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: move into the house, and that she would go and
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: live in the servants quarters, And she tore out a
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: wall to make it, you know, doable. So at that
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: point in the seventies when everything happened, they were living
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: in the servants quarters all back.
• 17:05
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so, which is sort of like a separate back house.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: Is that how you understand it?
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, once upon a time I had the address
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: and looked it up on Google Maps. They're still there.
• 17:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah. It was tidy, it was pretty small.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: Patricia's mother, Marine lived in the main house, along with
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: a man named Ray who was renting a room from her,
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: And then a little farther back on the property there
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: was a separate building, a small apartment. That's where Patricia
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: lived with her two children, Melanie and Joey Beth's father
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: remembers Patricia well. They were cousins and good friends for
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: a time. He recalls a trip he took in the
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: spring of nineteen seventy. He and his parents drove from
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: Chicago to Oklahoma City. It was the last time that
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: he saw Patricia alive.
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: It was Easter break.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: So yeah, they went that Easter and they spent time
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: with the kids, and that's when the eight millimeter film
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: footage was taken. And my dad is the sort of
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: person I don't love the whole love languagest thing because
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: that guy's not even a psychologist. But my dad's absolutely
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: an active service sort of person. So whenever he went
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: out there, he took care of something. And so this
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: particular trip, he was cleaning up in the yard and
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: I think sort of there was a key memory there
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: my dad has. He noticed that the windows, which were
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: not very high off the ground, he said maybe three feet,
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: were unlocked, and he talked to Patricia about and he said, Patricia,
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: you ought to lock that window, and she was like, well,
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: I can't because Melanie is little and forgets her key.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: Because they walked home from school and so Melanie would
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: climb into the window. I think she would get Joey too,
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: and they would get into the house that way.
• 18:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: Such a different time, right right, because Patricia was at
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: work or busy. So then her children, Melanie and Joey.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: Melanie was six or so and Joey was I don't
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: know how old Joey was.
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah, four or five at that point, I think.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: And they were going to school down close.
• 18:59
  Speaker 4: By, yeahighborhood, I think, and.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: They would just like walk home. Okay, that probably really
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: wasn't that uncommon at that time.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: I think the neighbors knew who they were. Obviously, the
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: people across the street did that I heard from later. Yeah,
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: so I think they people looked out for them, you know.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: Just to kind of give you an idea of where
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: Patricia was in her life at that point. She took
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: my dad when they were down there to run an errand,
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: and she blew a stoplight while they were on the errand,
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: and then it turned out that she didn't even have
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: a driver's license, and my dad was like, what can
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: you even do with someone who makes decisions like that.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: I think at that point my dad had started to
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: drift away from her a little because he was sort
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: of getting his life together and she, you know, just
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: seemed to be making sort of destructive choices. Oh, and
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: I guess the other thing that you sort of have
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: to know is she did have a second husband. His
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: name was Howard Riggs. It was a scam. He scammed her,
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: he like married her and took a whole bunch of
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: stuff from her and Maureen and ran away.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: And by the time this happened in the summer of
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy, like, how much time had passed between this
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: and when Howard Riggs ran away from them?
• 20:03
  Speaker 4: I don't know. I would guess a year or two,
• 20:06
  Speaker 4: but not many.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: Okay, So your dad during this visit at Easter, there's
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: like these two memories that you point out in your
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: papers that he mentions, Oh, you should really get this window,
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: you should really lock it, you know, that would be safer,
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: and she decides not to. And then he also has
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: this memory of Patricia running a red light and then mentioning, well,
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: I don't even have my driver's license. Yeah, and so
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: this was sort of his last visit. There was there
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: anything else that you recall him saying about that visit.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: My grandma or letter mentions that he went to the
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: store and bought the kid's candy Land and he played
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: it with them for hours. My dad is always super
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: good with little kids. Just every little kid who's even
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: mildly related to him just has always adored him. And
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: it's because he will, like he'll buy a game, and
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: he'll pay their attention to them, and he's not bothered
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: by doing the same thing over and over again with them.
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: And so I think that for him, that's kind of
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: a good part of that memory is getting to spend
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: that final time with them.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Can you tell us what happened that night in May
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: of nineteen seventy.
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: Not much that people knew about happened that night, although
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: a neighbor I think did report hearing a scream, but
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: it was kind of hard to say because Patricia and
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: Maureene argued so much and yelled at each other so
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: much that you know, that wasn't all that unusual. The
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: next morning, and I think this is what Maureen told
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: my father. Joey came into the house, into the big house,
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: and he, you know, said, Mom and Sissy are sleeping
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: on the floor and I can't get them to wake up.
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: And I don't know if Ray went with her, but
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: Maureen went with Joey and found their bodies. I can't
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: even imagine. Patricia really tried to fight her attacker off
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: with everything that she had in the case, and Melanie,
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: whose bed was right under that window, had been stabbed.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: You know, my dad comments even now, he's like, it's
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: just a remarkable amount of misogyny. He just ignored Joey,
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: and who stabs a little girl that many times? Yeah,
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: So there were clearly signs of a fight in the kitchen,
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: and at that point, I mean, Marine was distraught and
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: sort of the narrator who next speaks to someone in
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: my family is Ray, who was at that point her border.
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: They had met him very briefly, you know, when they
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: had been there for the visit. But he was the
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: one to call my grandparents in in par forest.
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: My dad answered the call and didn't think anything about
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: it and passed it off to my grandfather, and my grandfather,
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: you know, wandered back out and said, I don't know
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: that I've ever spoken to this person in my life,
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: but he's just said that, you know, Patricia and Melanie
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: are dead, and Marine is distraught, and we need to
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: get down there.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: The bodies of Patricia and her daughter Melanie were discovered
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: on May third, nineteen seventy. The very next day, the
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: Daily Oklahoma's front page read quote, young mother child die
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: of stab wounds in city apartment. The paper reported that
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: Patricia was just twenty six years old and her daughter,
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: Melanie was only seven. Both had been stabbed by an
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: unknown assailant who entered their apartment between the hours of
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: two am and four AM on Sunday, May third. Patricia's
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: five year old son, Joseph, was unharmed. Police suspected whoever
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: killed Patricia and Melanie had entered through a window, probably
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: the window right above Melanie's bed. Patricia's body was found
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: in her bedroom. Police also discovered a kitchen knife, which
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: they believed to be the murder weapon. Nothing was missing
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: from the apartment, so police ruled out robbery as a motive.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: The article also mentions that they interviewed one of Patricia's
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: ex husbands, but they don't name him in the article.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: Beth thinks that it was probably Patricia's first husband, the
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: father of her children.
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: And then, you know, one of the documents that you
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: have from your family is this letter that your grandmother
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: wrote which is dated me twelfth, nineteen seventy. And she's
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: writing to someone else in your family, is that right?
• 24:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: My grandma was one of eight children, so she's writing
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: to her sister Lorraine and her husband. Because she had
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: so many siblings to write too, she would write parts
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: of the letter on carbon paper. But I think this
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: one might be an original document.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: And she's chronicling in this letter what happened and that
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: they were on their way to Oklahoma. Yeah, it sounds
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: like they basically got the information over this phone call
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: and then we're like, okay, let's pack up the car
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: and drive.
• 24:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there was.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: It was the seventies, and so there was some stuff
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: that had to be done to the car before you
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: had to take a road trip. And so my dad
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: sat there. My dad and my grandpa went together to
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: wherever the dealership or the repair shop to get new
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: tires put on the car, and my dad finished up.
• 25:06
  Speaker 4: It was spraying, and he had.
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: To do progress reports, and in those days, I'm not
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: even sure he had a calculator, so I'm pretty sure
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: he had to hand do all the grades to put
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: on the progress reports and write, you know, a couple
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: days of subplans.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: The letter from Beth's grandmother starts by describing the shock
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: and sadness of learning that Patricia and Melanie were dead.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: It describes the state of chaos at Marine's household that day,
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: a phone ringing off the hook, police officers on the property.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: It goes on to say, in part, quote, a neighbor
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: in the night heard someone scream no, no, don't do it,
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: and the police figure that was Patricia. The neighbor had
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: looked out and noticed the door to Patricia's side of
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: the apartment was open and didn't see anything, so went
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: back to bed. The door was seen open at six
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: am with a lamp burning, but at eight am it
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: was closed. The letter goes on to say that Patricia
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: was small in stature, but quote put up a terrific struggle,
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: so they figure whoever it was wasn't too big, have
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: a man size seven and a half shoe print and
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: one fingerprint. We really feel the murderer got in through
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: the door and was someone Patricia knew, although Marine flatly
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: refused to believe this at first. The letter notes about
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: Patricia's daughter, Melanie, who was only seven years old, quote,
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: she had twelve stab wounds, in her body, nine of
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: them from the back. In fact, we also feel she
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: may have recognized someone and that person knew it best.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: Grandmother is writing this letter from Oklahoma City after she
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: and her family have arrived to support Marine through the
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: unthinkable loss of her daughter and granddaughter. The whole letter
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: is a snapshot of grief, confusion, and of a family
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: rallying together to support one another and heartache, while simultaneously
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: attempting to piece together how something so terrible could have happened.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: In the immediate aftermath of all of this, is there
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: a conversation happening about why her why her daughter? And
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: who could be angry with them or fixated on them?
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, one was sure, like it was kind of
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: a mystery. The police briefly interviewed Jean, her first husband,
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: and I think he had an alibi. And also I
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: think it was probably pretty clear from the scene that
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: somebody was going to have defensive wounds. So no, I
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: think they just spent a lot of time in just
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: sort of terrible shock. My dad said that until they
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: got to about Tulsa and you could start hearing it
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: reported on the news stations on the radio, it didn't
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: seem real.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's something that really stands out in
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: this story. You know, the time period, nineteen seventy, It's
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: like this terrible tragedy happens, and then you think, like
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: a tragedy is horrible at any time. If it happens now,
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: you can just quickly get on a plane. You have
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: your phone and access to the internet where you can
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: sort of quickly find out information and articles and like
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: what's the latest. And it was just not that way.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: It's like everything is moving in slow motion in a way,
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: like they have to take this long road trip to Oklahoma,
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: and that's a really powerful moment when they get close enough,
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: when they get to Tulsa, which is like an hour
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: and a half from Oklahoma City, they start to hear
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: it on the news. You talked a little bit about
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: the police investigation and them questioning both of Patricia's ex husbands.
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's only in the past year or so that
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: I've actually gone to the Oklahoma Historical Society's website and
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: looked at the articles.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: The Daily Oklahoma published an article on May sixth, nineteen seventy,
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: three days after the murders. It stated that the prime
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: sus was Patricia's estranged second husband, Howard Laverne Riggs. He'd
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: married Patricia only to steal money and other belongings from
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: both Patricia and Marine, and then he'd disappeared. A closer
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: look at Riggs revealed he also had a charge against
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: him from a robbery back in Fort Worth, Texas, but
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: he'd been quote committed for mental treatment before the case
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: went to trial. This all made detectives very suspicious of Riggs,
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: but Howard Riggs, who sometimes went by the name Howell Briggs,
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: was nowhere to be found. On May ninth, there was
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: another article, this time with a picture of Howard Riggs.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: The police wanted help finding him. An Oklahoma City homicide
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: detective had gone to Texas looking for Riggs, to no avail.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: They charged him anyway, not with murder, but with grand
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: larceny for the items he'd taken from Marine's home. The
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: police hoped this charge which would speed up his apprehension.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: The same article says police interviewed over forty witnesses as
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: part of their investigation, and while they still didn't have
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: a motive, they speculated that this could have been an
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: act of violence committed out of anger or revenge. Or
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: could have just been a quote very mentally disturbed person.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: The Daily Oklahoma published another article twenty eight days after
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: the murder May thirty first, nineteen seventy. It states that
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: while Howard Riggs remains a suspect, they've still not been
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: able to locate him and are closely scrutinizing at least
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: six other people. And then, finally, on June ninth, nineteen seventy,
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: a suspect was arrested, but it wasn't Howard Riggs. It
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: was a man named Ronald Litteral, a thirty two year
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: old man with no connection to the family other than
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: he lived just two blocks from Patricia's home. He was
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: apprehended in Gulfport, Mississippi.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so, I mean you can sort of see hints
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: of it, like that they've got a suspect. When you
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: read the news articles, you can sort of see them
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: talking about, Oh, there's this person who's had mental illness
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: in the neighborhood that we're questioning. I think the papers
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: reported for a while that, like the trail was going cold,
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: and then someone noticed like, oh, this guy's in the neighborhood,
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: lives in the neighborhood. No one's heard from him in
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: a while. Maybe we want to talk to him.
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: The Daily Oklahoma reported that Detective Jim Blair happened to
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: connect Ronald Litterell to this case based on a routine
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: missing person's report. Literal had been reported missing about the
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: same time as the murders. That and the fact that
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: he lived two blocks away from Patricia peaked detective Blair's interest,
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: and he wondered if there was a potential connection. Literal said,
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: Dan was then found abandoned in the area and it
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: appeared to have bloodstains inside of it. Detectives took specimens
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: from his car and said them to the FBI for analysis.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: It was also noted that Literal was previously a patient
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: at Central State Hospital in Norman, Oklahoma, a mental health hospital.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: On June seventeenth, it was reported that Ronald Literal had
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: confessed to murdering both Patricia and Melanie Henderson.
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: Do you know if Marine or Patricia had had any
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: contact with Ronald prior to him murdering Patricia and Melanie?
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: Were they friendly or did they know who he was?
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: I don't think they did. It's certainly not part of
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: the narrative that came to me. My guess is that
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: the most he was someone you saw around town.
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: And so what was the best explanation that you heard
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: for why he did what he did.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: He later on wrote to Mariene on the advice of
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: his psychiatrist, and said that God had told him to
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: kill them. I don't think that's true. I think I
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: think he wanted an excuse.
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: What doesn't that makes you think that?
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: I mean, personally, I find it super offensive the idea
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: that God would tell anybody. Yeah, that may be my
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: own issues with religion and faith in general.
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: But there wasn't something that you learned about the case
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: that you were like, no way, was this a hallucination
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: he was having? This was something else?
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean they found him confident to stand trial
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: at the standards of the day.
• 33:33
  Speaker 4: Okay, Yeah.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: Was there anything that came out that indicated if he
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: had been watching Patricia for a while. Was this this
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: sort of spur of the moment thing or was it
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: a planned thing? Was he stalking her? Did anything like
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: that come out?
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: Nothing like that came out, Although it seems like there's
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: a certain amount of reasonable assumption and that you would
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: almost have to know that the windows weren't locked, although
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: it was midspring and Oklaho, it was probably a hot
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: night and windows might have been open anyway. Yeah, just
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: breaking into someone's house and killing them like that, it
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: doesn't seem like something you just do randomly. He wasn't
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: there to rob them, you know.
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know you mentioned earlier when you said
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: he left Joey alone. It's horrible that he entered their
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: house at all. It's horrible for Joey to wake up
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: and realize that his mother and sister have been murdered
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: while he was asleep. Maybe some of the questioning that
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: I'm asking now, it's like, there's no way to know
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: you were not inside his head. We don't know for sure,
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: but yeah, was your dad's assumption that Ron literal knew
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: that there were two kids, you know, Melanie and Joey,
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: and that he went in and just targeted Patricia and
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: Melanie and left Joey alone.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: I don't know he didn't. Actually, I don't think I
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: ever asked him that specifically. It's likely Joey vaguely remembered
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: waking up in the night and seeing a man there
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: arguing with his mother, and then he fell back asleep
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: because he was so small, so we don't think he
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: was unaware of there being another child in the house.
• 35:04
  Speaker 4: He just ignored it.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: Wow. I mean, it's just such an awful thing to
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: have happened. And what happened next, like what happened with Maureen.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: You know, how did she sort of move forward after this,
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: having her only daughter and one of her grandchildren murdered.
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think she did the best she could.
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: It was really hard for her. You know, Joey was
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: around after that. He went to live with his dad,
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: but it was close enough by that Joey came over
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: and visited pretty frequently until he was sixteen when he
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: ran away and joined the Merchant Marines. Or at least
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: that's again the family story about it. But so she
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: did still have Joey. She ended up marrying Ray. That's
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: my uncle Ray, who was the border at the time.
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: I guess sort of there was some trauma bonding. I
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: think that happened there for him, because you know, he
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: was living in the house. He was part of their lives,
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: and I don't know how he felt about Patricia, but
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: he certainly cared about Melanie and Joey. It was really
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: hard for her and she went down on every path
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: she could to try and make some meaning out of it.
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: She did sort of crystal power and there were some
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: seancey things, and you know she missed them desperately.
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: This all happened before you were born.
• 36:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah, about eight years before I was born.
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: You're learning about all of this much later. And then
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: in two thousand and nine ish, at Thanksgiving with your dad,
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: you know, you had this question about whatever happened to
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: the man who killed Patricia and Melanie, And from looking
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: it up, it looks like Ron Litterrell was convicted September
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: of nineteen seventy. He was convicted of the murders and
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: received two life sentences. What did you find out when
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: you looked back into it, you know, around twenty nine,
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: twenty ten, did you find out any information about his
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: status or what had gone on with him since he'd
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: been convicted.
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Oklahoma has a really detailed offender look up. So
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: I looked him up and I was it was really
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: shocking because there's fixture was and he just looked like
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: somebody's grandpa. I wasn't quite quite being prepared, you know,
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: just looking up for the information to get the photo too.
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: So he was denied every attempt at parole he ever,
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: you know, he ever made. I got one last notification
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: from the offender registry in twenty twenty two, and it
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: was a little cryptic, and I went to school and
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: I asked the school safety officer and he was like, yeah,
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: that means he died in prison. So I mean, that's
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: that's ultimately what happened to him. I know that he
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: did get some kind of therapy because the therapist had
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: him write letters to Marine. I asked my therapist about that,
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: and he was like, well, that might have been good
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: therapy for him, but like, nobody should have ever given
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: those letters to Marine.
• 37:39
  Speaker 4: Like that was a no.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: Seriously, that's pretty shocking.
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: Actually, Yeah, Like it might have been therapeutic for him
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: to write it, but it should have never been delivered.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah. How has sort of looking deeper into this tragedy
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: that happened in your family, how has that affected you
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: and how is that affected sort of relationship with your
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: dad or Yeah, what has been sort of the result.
• 38:04
  Speaker 4: Of that for you?
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: I mean it's certainly made my dad's overprotectiveness of his
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: daughters really clear and absolutely understandable, almost in the sense
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: that it doesn't seem like overprotectiveness at all. You know,
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: when we moved out and we moved to places where
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: we lived in ground floor apartments, there were suddenly, you know,
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: security alarms, and he was like, nope, no, you know,
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: like there were some clear guidance we were given about
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: our personal safety, like, you know, no butcher knive blocks.
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: Knives should be kept hidden away in our kitchens, not
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: not out for someone to grab and kill you with,
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: which is still a thing I struggle with. Like sometimes
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: I'll have a loaf of bread out and I'll be like,
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: I should put this bread knife away because someone might
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: break into my house. So those kinds of things that
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: seemed like a little overprotective and paranoid when we were
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: growing up, Like, they don't seem that way anymore at all. Yeah,
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: when I was a kid, we would sometimes camp out
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: in the backyard. You know, it was a corner a lot,
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: just like Maureen's lot, and he had had fences installed
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: and when we camped out back there, he pad locked
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: the gates. He was, you know, just a little extra causis.
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm curious if you have anything. I don't know
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: what the exact question would be, but you had mentioned
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: dealing with depression yourself and your dad as well as
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: you know, going to family therapy. It's interesting maybe to
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: think back about Patricia's mental health, even though that wasn't
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: something that perhaps was talked about or dealt with, you know,
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: openly at that time. How do you think about all
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: of that or do you want to talk about how
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: that sort of plays a role in this story.
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: Well, So, when I was nineteen, I did a three
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: day stay for suicidal ideation in the local hospital where
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: I was in college, and it was miserable. And that was,
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: you know, the late nineties. So I can sort of
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: imagine and I haven't seen one flu over the Kugoo's nests,
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: but I've heard about it what a mental hospital in
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: the you know, late sixties was like. So I can
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: imagine that it wasn't very helpful for him, and that
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: he just wanted to check the boxes and leave, and
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: that he didn't really get the help he needed.
• 40:01
  Speaker 4: Does that excuse what he did to Melanie and Patricia?
• 40:04
  Speaker 4: Absolutely not.
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: My mental health struggle is clearly comforta both sides of
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: the family, but my dad's side of the family, Like
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: you can sort of see the pattern, you know, my
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: dad has depression. My grandpa was diagnosed with depression. His
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: sister probably had it. They all were serious chainsmokers, and
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: then if you go far enough back, there are people
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: who struggled with alcohol and again with smoking. I think
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: that's kind of how they all coped with that.
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: So you have tried to connect with Joey over to
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: locate him over the years, and that's been unsuccessful.
• 40:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: So we saw him at Marine's funeral, and then we
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: saw him shortly after in the next year or so,
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: because he drove through. He was delivering a piece of
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: Marine's furniture to another relative, and he had a locksmith company,
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: so he had a little locksmith truck and he could
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: haul this piece of furniture and he stopped and visited us.
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: And that must have been nineteen ninety nine, and that's
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: the last time I ever saw him. So when I
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: wanted to write this story, I would have liked to
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: hear from him, but at the very least I sort
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: of wanted his blessing to do it. Like I found
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: him on Facebook, but his Facebook account had clearly like
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: been a one and done sort of thing, like he
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: never really used it, and he never responded and at
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: one point, I reached out to my dad's sister, who
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: we don't talk to, and I had my cousin ask,
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: and she hadn't heard from him. I think I might
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: have even looked him up on like Spoko and like again,
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: the last sort of records and it's not an uncommon name,
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: the last sort of records I could trace directly to
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: him were running the locksmith business in Seattle, but not
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: for some time.
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: So if you were able to read Jim, you would
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: mostly have wanted his blessing. And having done all of
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: this research, is there anything you would say to him
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: now if you were to connect with him.
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: I mean, not just that I'm sorry that it happened
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: to him, but I'm sorry that it happened to him,
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: and he was around people who were maybe not very
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: prepared to help a kid cope, and in a time
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: when you know, we think mental health support for kids
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: in crisis now, but what it must have been like
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy. You know, I'm sorry that maybe he
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: didn't get what he needed.
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so I'm curious why you're interested in telling this
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: story now. Obviously it's different than if you were to
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: write a whole book, But why do you think it's
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: important to tell this story?
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: You know, as my dad gets older, there aren't very
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: many people left who remember them and they were real,
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: they mattered, and Maureen was real and she was important
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: to me, And that's why.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: That makes sense. Yeah, there's so many stories, you know
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: that just kind of get lost the time.
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the general response in your family to looking into this,
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: what did it mean for them to have you sort
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: of try to put some of the pieces together all
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: those years later.
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: My dad was super helpful. When I say I wrote
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: the paper, He wrote a lot of it. Actually, I
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: would ask him questions and he would write me these
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: really long responses, and in some places you can see
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: that I quote him sort of word for I don't
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: think he wanted to tell it himself. There have been
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: other stories in his life that he has written down
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: and told at least the family. But I think he
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: was content enough and supportive enough for me to do it,
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: and he was the one who was there was still left.
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: And the joey piece of all of this is really troubling,
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: because you don't stop hurting from something like that, no
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: matter how little you were, and like, that's just huge
• 43:27
  Speaker 3: and probably there was this other piece of his family
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: that maybe wanted to support him through that and either
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: couldn't or didn't know how. And yeah, it's a difficult thing.
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: And I probably would have done something similar in your
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: shoes if I had learned there was this family tragedy,
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: but not a lot done to being as far as
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: like understanding it or keeping some sort of record of it.
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: And you know, I think it's really cool that you
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: and your dad were able to work on it together.
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think one of the things that I
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: was worried about in twenty ten was that without Joey's voice,
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: her dad's voice, or anybody's voice, that they would give
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: him parole. So that was sort of the other thing
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: in the back of my head when I wrote this.
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: You know, and my dad consent it, and he doesn't
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: have to go and he doesn't have to talk to anybody.
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: You know that it's available.
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: It's a valid concern. I mean, Hannah and I looked
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: at a case a couple of weeks ago where someone
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: had confused to a murder and he was out after
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: like twelve years, and you never know.
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, having the victim impact statements I think can
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: be hugely influential when parlled words. Consider things like that,
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: what an episode from Beth Denton. Yeah, so many stories
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: almost lost to time. Yeah, someone like Beth comes along.
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: I really like that. I am so appreciative of her
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: treasuring her family enough and wanting to keep these memories
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: alive and tell those stories. It makes me think about
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: how many stories are truly out there and there's no
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: one to tell them anymore. And I a good time
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: going to newspapers dot com and searching for these articles
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: and was delighted to find that there were so many
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: articles about what happened. Obviously, it wasn't delightful that people
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: were murdered, but it was a great resource and piecing
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: together the investigation since there was no one to talk
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: to about the murder investigation.
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I mean it's so great that that exists.
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: I have like memories of being an associate producer years ago,
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: being on the newspaper archive and thinking, just like this
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: is so cool, this like window back in time. And yeah,
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: I mean those sort of facts around the case would
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: have probably been lost otherwise.
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, we we didn't talk a lot
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: with Beth about it in the episode, but we do
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: kind of we run through the investigation. But looking at
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: the articles, you could tell that the police had this
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: other suspect. It was their main suspect for so long.
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: They even published a picture of him in the paper
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: and it wasn't him from him. But it made me
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: wish that I could find out more about that guy,
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: Howard Riggs, because he had the signs of a con man,
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: Like there is a story in and of itself there,
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: Like what was he up to? Yeah, he married Patricia
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: then to just steal money from her and like rob
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: Marine and Patricia stuff from their home and then disappear.
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: He robbed a place in Fort Worth, Texas. He was
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: using multiple names, Like something's going on with him.
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Like he may not have killed her, but he
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: was up.
• 46:29
  Speaker 4: To no good.
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, But I couldn't find anything else about him.
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: Maybe that's by design, Mael Briggs.
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: Howel Briggs. Yeah, you know, it really made me think,
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: like what else is out there? Like what other family
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: stories might exist? Have you ever gone down the ancestry
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: rabbit hole or looked for any sort of crimes in
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: your family history?
• 46:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah?
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: So I had a conversation with my mom recently, who
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: has done a little bit of that, and I mean,
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: it's nothing too exciting. But my mom's maternal grandfather's great grandfather.
• 47:07
  Speaker 3: That's like, you're great great great great great great great
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: many really great, Okay, great guys. He bought up a
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: bunch of land in LaSalle County in Illinois and became
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: very wealthy. There's an obituary that says when he passed
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: away in eighteen twenty seven, he had a fortune of
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: over five hundred thousand dollars and so that w'ud be
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: the equivalent of like twenty million today.
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: Wow, I know.
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: And I'm finding this out and I'm like, okay, So
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: through the years, those people, they weren't thinking about generational wealth,
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: like somebody was spending Yeah that's what now I would
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: like to learn more about. Oh okay, like what the
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: heck happened?
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: Where did the money go?
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: Where did the money go? Like what could you even
• 47:51
  Speaker 3: buy back then that you could spend that much money on?
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: Like are you just decking out your like horse and buggy?
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: Like what would you do? I don't know, you're buying spices. Yeah,
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: I'm abroad. I have no idea, So.
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: I'm curious about that. But no murders or anything like
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: that thankfully.
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well it's interesting. You know, if anyone is listening
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: and you have some crime in your family history that
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: you know about or want to look more into, reach
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: out to us. We would be interested in hearing about it.
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: If you have a story for us, we would love
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: to hear it. Our email is The Knife at exactly
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: rightmedia dot com, or you can follow us on Instagram
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: at the Knife Podcast or Blue Sky at the Knife Podcast.
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: This has been an Exactly Right production hosted and produced
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: by me Hannah Smith and me Paytia Ety. Our producers
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: are Tom Bryfogel and Alexis Amorosi. This episode was mixed
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: by Tom Bryfogel. Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain. Our
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: theme music is by Birds in the Airport Artwork five
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: vansa Lilac executive produced by Karen Kilgareff, Georgia Hardstark and
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: Danielle Kramer.