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The Discarded Evidence of Alberta O. Jones · Crime Night

0:00
Speaker 1: Picture this. It's the tense, like incredibly sweltering, humid night
0:05
Speaker 1: of August fourth, nineteen sixty five.
0:07
Speaker 2: Right in Louisville, Kentucky, exactly.
0:10
Speaker 1: And you are looking through the window of a modest
0:13
Speaker 1: home at a thirty four year old woman, and she
0:17
Speaker 1: is cautious. I mean, honestly, she is bordering on paranoid
0:21
Speaker 1: at this point.
0:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, she actually just had a car alarm installed, which
0:24
Speaker 2: you know, for a private citizen back then, was incredibly
0:27
Speaker 2: rare technology.
0:28
Speaker 1: Super rare. And she had also just bought a firearm
0:30
Speaker 1: for personal protection. She really does not want to leave
0:33
Speaker 1: her house tonight. She has the blinds drawn, the door
0:35
Speaker 1: is locked, but then the phone.
0:37
Speaker 2: Rings, right and it's a friend on the line, basically
0:39
Speaker 2: begging her to come out into the.
0:40
Speaker 1: Dark, and reluctantly, going against the literally all of her instincts,
0:45
Speaker 1: she caves. She steps out into that heavy summer air,
0:48
Speaker 1: gets into her car, drives off into the night, and
0:50
Speaker 1: has never seen alive again.
0:51
Speaker 2: It honestly sounds exactly like the opening scene of some
0:54
Speaker 2: noir thriller. But this is a very real, very tragic,
0:58
Speaker 2: historical event. No woman we're talking about, she isn't just
1:02
Speaker 2: anybody this is Alberta O. Jones.
1:04
Speaker 1: Alberto Jones was an absolute powerhouse. I mean, we are
1:08
Speaker 1: talking about a woman whose entire life was defined by
1:12
Speaker 1: just shattering barriers left and right. Oh.
1:14
Speaker 2: Absolutely. She was the first black woman to pass the
1:17
Speaker 2: Kentucky bar She became Louisville's first black female prosecutor, which
1:21
Speaker 2: is huge, right.
1:22
Speaker 1: And she was a civil rights pioneer. She organized block
1:25
Speaker 1: by block to help register like six thousand black voters
1:30
Speaker 1: and that fundamentally shifted the political landscape. It was instrumental
1:34
Speaker 1: in ousting a mayor to establish new laws against racial discrimination.
1:38
Speaker 2: Yeah. And if all of that somehow wasn't enough, she
1:41
Speaker 2: was the brilliant attorney who actually negotiated Muhammad Ali's very
1:45
Speaker 2: first professional boxing contract.
1:47
Speaker 1: Just a completely incredible resume. She was this trailblazer moving
1:50
Speaker 1: at lightning speed during the absolute peak of the civil
1:54
Speaker 1: rights movement. But her murder abruptly cut all of that short.
1:57
Speaker 2: It did, And what makes this case so incredibly today
2:00
Speaker 2: is the sheer volume of physical evidence left behind, you know,
2:03
Speaker 2: contrasted against the staggering, almost incomprehensible lack of justice exactly.
2:09
Speaker 1: So what does this all mean for you? Jumping into
2:11
Speaker 1: this deep die with us today.
2:13
Speaker 2: Well, we are launching a full fledged criminal investigation into
2:18
Speaker 2: a sixty year old unsolved mystery.
2:20
Speaker 1: We are pulling out the declassified Louisville Police Department case files,
2:24
Speaker 1: combing through historical news archives, modern cold case summaries.
2:28
Speaker 2: All of it, right, and we're going to explore a
2:31
Speaker 2: story that is just riddled with baffling crime scenes, inexplicably
2:35
Speaker 2: destroyed evidence, and while a suspects list that ranges from
2:39
Speaker 2: local neighborhood teenagers all the way to the highest echelons
2:43
Speaker 2: of institutional power.
2:44
Speaker 1: To really understand how this happened, I mean, we have
2:47
Speaker 1: to look at the exact mechanics of that night, Like
2:49
Speaker 1: why did Alberta leave the safety of her home when
2:52
Speaker 1: she was clearly already on high alert.
2:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was around eleven zero zero pm when her
2:56
Speaker 2: friend Gladys called.
2:57
Speaker 1: Right, Gladys was a hairstylist and she practically begged Alberta
3:01
Speaker 1: to come over because a new custom wig Alberta had
3:04
Speaker 1: ordered was finally ready to be fitted.
3:05
Speaker 2: At eleven o'clock at night. I mean that alone feels
3:08
Speaker 2: super strange to me. It totally does. And Alberta initially
3:11
Speaker 2: said no, She was like, it's late, I'm exhausted and
3:13
Speaker 2: I'm scared, but Gladys just pushed really hard.
3:17
Speaker 1: She laid on a guilt trip right, yeah, exactly.
3:18
Speaker 2: She said something along the lines of, oh, you've gotten
3:20
Speaker 2: snobby since getting that new prosecutor job, and Gladys also
3:24
Speaker 2: mentioned wanting some free legal advice about some personal trouble
3:28
Speaker 2: she was in, So the guilt trip works.
3:30
Speaker 1: It works. Alberta finally caves and rides at Gladys's house
3:34
Speaker 1: around eleven thirty pm. But this is where we hit
3:37
Speaker 1: what feels like a massive, fateful domino falling carswitch. Yes,
3:43
Speaker 1: the car switch. Alberta was known literally all over town
3:47
Speaker 1: for driving this very distinctive, impossible to miss pink thunderbird.
3:51
Speaker 1: It was her signature look.
3:53
Speaker 2: But that night, the Thunderbird was in the shop and
3:56
Speaker 2: that expensive car alarm she had just bought it was
3:58
Speaker 2: wired to the Thunderbird.
4:00
Speaker 1: So instead she was driving this completely generic white Ford
4:04
Speaker 1: Fairlane rental car.
4:05
Speaker 2: And that car swap is basically the foundational psychological question
4:08
Speaker 2: of the entire case, like was this a targeted assassination
4:12
Speaker 2: by enemies who knew her every single move or was
4:14
Speaker 2: it a tragic crime of opportunity right because.
4:17
Speaker 1: It's recognizable symbol of a powerful prosecutor. Would the attackers
4:25
Speaker 1: have been so brazen exactly.
4:27
Speaker 2: Or did they just see a lone, vulnerable woman in
4:30
Speaker 2: an anonymous white rental car and sees a horrible opportunity.
4:35
Speaker 1: It fundamentally shifts how you look at the timeline, because
4:38
Speaker 1: from here the window of time gets incredibly tight. Alberta
4:42
Speaker 1: and Gladys leave the house around twelve and teen am
4:45
Speaker 1: to grab food at a local seafood place called Kingfish.
4:48
Speaker 2: Right, and on the way back they pick up a
4:50
Speaker 2: local newspaper, The Louville Defender. They go back to Gladys's
4:53
Speaker 2: house do the final wig fitting, and then Gladys claims
4:56
Speaker 2: she watched Alberta walk out and get into her rental
4:58
Speaker 2: car somewhere between one two point am.
5:01
Speaker 1: And from there the geographic trail just gets incredibly ominous.
5:05
Speaker 1: At two am, Alberta makes a quick stop at a
5:07
Speaker 1: local convenience store for a soda.
5:09
Speaker 2: And the clerk later reports seeing her talking to three
5:11
Speaker 2: unidentified teenagers in the parking lot. He says, you know nothing,
5:15
Speaker 2: leoked avertly threatening. He looks down to do his work,
5:17
Speaker 2: looks back up a moment later, and the car and
5:20
Speaker 2: the teenagers are all just gone.
5:22
Speaker 1: Which makes the event at two point fifteen am utterly terrifying.
5:26
Speaker 1: Just one block away from that convenience store, a couple
5:29
Speaker 1: is jolted awake by the sound of a woman screaming
5:32
Speaker 1: in the humid night air.
5:33
Speaker 2: They rush to their front door and witness this violently
5:36
Speaker 2: chaotic scene. Two men are physically dragging a woman from
5:40
Speaker 2: the middle of the street toward a white or light
5:42
Speaker 2: colored ford.
5:43
Speaker 1: And a third man is waiting inside the running car.
5:45
Speaker 1: The men brutally shove her into the back seat, and
5:48
Speaker 1: then one of them reaches down and grabs something from
5:50
Speaker 1: the street. The witnesses thought it looked like a purse
5:53
Speaker 1: or maybe a brick before he jumps.
5:55
Speaker 2: In yeah, and then the car screeches off, heading west
5:57
Speaker 2: toward the viaduct and the massive dark expanse of the
6:01
Speaker 2: Ohio River.
6:02
Speaker 1: The next morning, that geography, the river and the surrounding infrastructure,
6:06
Speaker 1: it becomes the absolute center of the investigation, and it
6:09
Speaker 1: presents a total forensic nightmare.
6:11
Speaker 2: It really does. Boys walking along the Ohio River find
6:15
Speaker 2: Alberta's body floating face down about fifteen feet from the shore.
6:19
Speaker 2: The corner determines she had been severely beaten.
6:22
Speaker 1: She had lacerations on her head and deep scrapes on
6:25
Speaker 1: her arms, which indicates a brutal struggle, but the physical
6:28
Speaker 1: beating isn't actually what killed her.
6:31
Speaker 2: No. Tragically, the autopsy revealed water in her lungs. She
6:35
Speaker 2: was put into the river alive, and she died from
6:37
Speaker 2: drowning somewhere between two thirty and four thirty in the morning.
6:40
Speaker 1: Just horrific. And when she was pulled from the water,
6:43
Speaker 1: she was missing several key items her shoes, her purse,
6:47
Speaker 1: her upper dentures, and that brand new custom wig.
6:51
Speaker 2: Right, and the fact that she was put in the
6:53
Speaker 2: water on the Kentucky side makes the location of those
6:56
Speaker 2: missing items completely illogical, especially the shoes.
7:00
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the shoes, because they weren't found in
7:02
Speaker 1: the river or on the river bank. They were found
7:04
Speaker 1: an hour before her body was even discovered, completely dry,
7:08
Speaker 1: scattered about ten feet apart, on the exit ramp of
7:11
Speaker 1: the Sherman Minton.
7:12
Speaker 2: Bridge, which is this massive double ducker bridge that connects Louisville, Kentucky,
7:16
Speaker 2: to southern Indiana. But they weren't just on the bridge.
7:20
Speaker 2: They were found on the lower level ramp coming back
7:22
Speaker 2: into Kentucky from Indiana.
7:24
Speaker 1: This is where understanding the environmental mechanics of the river
7:27
Speaker 1: is just crucial. Authorities consulted hydrology experts regarding the Ohio
7:32
Speaker 1: River's currents at that specific bend.
7:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the hydrology dictates that if someone threw Alberta
7:38
Speaker 2: from the top of that bridge or drove across and
7:41
Speaker 2: put her in the water on the Indiana shoreline, the
7:44
Speaker 2: currents would have pushed her body to wash up on
7:46
Speaker 2: the Indiana.
7:47
Speaker 1: Shore exactly because she washed up on the Kentucky side. Yeah,
7:51
Speaker 1: physics dictate she had to have been put in the
7:53
Speaker 1: water from the Kentucky.
7:54
Speaker 2: Shoreline, right, which makes the Indiana bridge drop completely baffling.
7:58
Speaker 2: I mean, if they dumped her for the Kentucky bank,
8:01
Speaker 2: why did they cross the bridge into another state at all?
8:04
Speaker 1: Why take her shoes off? And if you do take
8:06
Speaker 1: them off, why leave them scattered on an off ramp
8:08
Speaker 1: coming back into Louisville.
8:10
Speaker 2: It suggests a really frantic, chaotic aftermath, and the car
8:14
Speaker 2: itself tells an even more disturbing story.
8:16
Speaker 1: Oh the car, the white Fort fair Lane, is found
8:19
Speaker 1: abandoned on a quiet residential street just two miles from
8:22
Speaker 1: where her body was pulled out, and the scene inside
8:25
Speaker 1: is horrific.
8:26
Speaker 2: Blood covered more than half of the back seat. Her
8:29
Speaker 2: upper dentures were found discarded on the floorboard. There was
8:32
Speaker 2: a torn piece of that exact Louisville Defender newspaper she
8:36
Speaker 2: had bought earlier with Gladys, and it had been crumpled
8:38
Speaker 2: up and used white bloody hands.
8:40
Speaker 1: Investigators found fragments of a red brick, strands of hair,
8:44
Speaker 1: and latent fingerprints all over the interior and exterior. It's
8:48
Speaker 1: an absolute gold mine of physical evidence, it.
8:51
Speaker 2: Is, but it also presents a mathematical impossibility that proves
8:55
Speaker 2: they didn't just stay in that Kentucky neighborhood.
8:57
Speaker 1: Right the mileage when Alberta picked up that rental car
9:00
Speaker 1: at six point zero pm the previous evening, the rental
9:03
Speaker 1: agency log the exact mileage. When police process the abandoned car,
9:07
Speaker 1: there were fifty one new miles on the odometer and the.
9:10
Speaker 2: Car had been sitting abandoned since at least six or
9:12
Speaker 2: pre am, which gives it a strict twelve hour window.
9:15
Speaker 2: But if you map her known route from the rental
9:18
Speaker 2: agency to her home, to Gladys's house to the Kingfish
9:20
Speaker 2: Restaurant and back. It totals fifteen maybe twenty miles top.
9:24
Speaker 1: Exactly fifty one miles minus the twenty known miles leaves
9:27
Speaker 1: thirty one completely unaccounted.
9:29
Speaker 2: Miles, and that extra mileage perfectly aligns with a deliberate
9:33
Speaker 2: round trip drive across the Sherman Minton Bridge into Indiana
9:37
Speaker 2: and back. The geography of the car's movement confirms what
9:41
Speaker 2: the shoes suggested. They cross state lines.
9:44
Speaker 1: But why, Like, what were they doing in Indiana? This
9:47
Speaker 1: is where the narrative shifts from a brutal, chaotic abduction
9:51
Speaker 1: to a deeply unsettling mystery involving the very people supposed
9:54
Speaker 1: to be solving it.
9:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, because we have an explosive witness sighting regarding that
9:58
Speaker 2: bridge crossing. A bakery worker named Peter Baker was driving
10:02
Speaker 2: to his early morning shift at four point three five am, and.
10:05
Speaker 1: He and his coworker explicitly recalls seeing a white car
10:08
Speaker 1: stopped on the Sherman Minton Bridge and pulled up directly
10:11
Speaker 1: behind it a fully marked Louisville Police Department cruiser.
10:15
Speaker 2: A marked police car at four thirty five am, right
10:18
Speaker 2: in the exact time window when ALBERTA is either going
10:21
Speaker 2: into the water or is already drowning.
10:22
Speaker 1: And no police officer ever reported making a traffic stop
10:25
Speaker 1: on that bridge that night. Nobody called it into dispatch,
10:28
Speaker 1: nobody admitted it.
10:29
Speaker 2: Was them, No, none of them.
10:31
Speaker 1: I have to pause here because this isn't just a
10:32
Speaker 1: minor clerical error. I mean, we are looking at a
10:35
Speaker 1: marked cruiser pulled up behind the exact model of car
10:39
Speaker 1: used in a brutal abduction, hovering over the river where
10:43
Speaker 1: the victim drowned, right when she drowned.
10:46
Speaker 2: It's incredibly suspicious.
10:48
Speaker 1: Is it possible this was just you know, nineteen sixties
10:51
Speaker 1: procedural incompetence, because to me, it smells like a massive
10:55
Speaker 1: systemic cover up.
10:56
Speaker 2: Well, it gets worse. When Alberta's family of fishal filed
11:00
Speaker 2: the missing person's report, they didn't know the exact details
11:04
Speaker 2: of her night. They didn't mention Gladys or the timeline
11:07
Speaker 2: because they didn't know about them yet. Right yet, a
11:09
Speaker 2: senior Lousville police officer, somehow already knew intimate specific details
11:13
Speaker 2: about Alberta's movements with Gladys before Gladys or the family
11:17
Speaker 2: had ever been officially interviewed by detectives.
11:20
Speaker 1: How did he know her exact movements if he wasn't
11:23
Speaker 1: tracking her exactly? Okay, if you're listing and trying to
11:26
Speaker 1: give the authorities the benefit of the doubt, the events
11:29
Speaker 1: of August seventh are going to make that completely impossible.
11:31
Speaker 2: Oh the fingerprints.
11:33
Speaker 1: Yes, three days after the murder, the police have an
11:36
Speaker 1: evidence envelope full of pristine fingerprints meticulously lifted from the
11:41
Speaker 1: rental car.
11:41
Speaker 2: And we should clarify how vital these are. In nineteen
11:44
Speaker 2: sixty five, lifting a pristine print involved carefully dusting the surface,
11:49
Speaker 2: applying a specialized adhesive tape to lift the powder, and
11:52
Speaker 2: transferring it to a permanent card. It was a delicate process.
11:56
Speaker 1: These cards were the golden tickets to solving the case.
12:00
Speaker 1: So an officer named Elliot arrives for his night shift
12:02
Speaker 1: at the fingerprint lab. He goes to pull the print
12:05
Speaker 1: cards to begin comparing them against known local suspects. He
12:09
Speaker 1: opens the evidence envelope and it's completely empty.
12:12
Speaker 2: It's almost comical in a very dark, twisted way. You
12:16
Speaker 2: literally couldn't write a more cliche, corrupt nineteen sixties cop
12:20
Speaker 2: movie script if you.
12:20
Speaker 1: Tried, literally, like, where's the prime murder evidence? Oh? I
12:24
Speaker 1: tossed it in the garbage bin between the desks. It
12:27
Speaker 1: defies belief.
12:28
Speaker 2: It really does. Officer Elliott starts frantically tearing the lab apart,
12:31
Speaker 2: and he finds the cards physically thrown into a trash can.
12:34
Speaker 1: Right in the trash and because they were tossed in
12:36
Speaker 1: the garbage among other debris, several of the delicate prints
12:39
Speaker 1: were completely ruined.
12:40
Speaker 2: It's the forensic equivalent of burning the only map out
12:43
Speaker 2: of a maze. The most crucial prints, the pristine ones
12:47
Speaker 2: pulled from the left window of the car, right where
12:49
Speaker 2: the abductors would grab the door, were entirely destroyed or missing.
12:53
Speaker 1: They were left with one single, heavily smeared print from
12:57
Speaker 1: that window. But hold on chain of custody in nineteen
13:01
Speaker 1: sixty five wasn't what it is today. But you don't
13:03
Speaker 1: just lose prime evidence in a trash can. Someone had
13:07
Speaker 1: to physically intercept that envelope before the lab technician processed it.
13:12
Speaker 1: Who had access well.
13:13
Speaker 2: Officer Elliott investigated that immediately. He found out that just
13:16
Speaker 2: before his shift, only two people had been alone in
13:19
Speaker 2: the room with the Prince, a lab technician and a
13:22
Speaker 2: sergeant miller. Okay, the technician stated on the record that
13:25
Speaker 2: he was about to process the cards, but Sergeant Miller
13:27
Speaker 2: explicitly ordered him to leave the Prince alone, saying he
13:30
Speaker 2: was going to look at them himself. Sergeant Miller was
13:33
Speaker 2: the last person to handle the envelope and the most
13:35
Speaker 2: shocking part of the case files. There is absolutely zero
13:39
Speaker 2: record of Sergeant Miller ever being formally interrogated about why
13:42
Speaker 2: he threw the prime evidence of a high profile murder
13:45
Speaker 2: investigation into the garbage. He was never disciplined, He just
13:48
Speaker 2: kept working the case.
13:49
Speaker 1: They effectively kneecapped their own investigation from the inside. Without
13:54
Speaker 1: those pristine window prints, they were essentially left groping in
13:58
Speaker 1: the dark, and because of that, the case goes cold.
14:01
Speaker 2: Decades pass the trail freezes completely.
14:04
Speaker 1: But then fast forward to two thousand and eight, the
14:06
Speaker 1: technological landscape has completely changed. The FBI now utilizes AFIS,
14:12
Speaker 1: the Automated Fingerprint Identification system.
14:14
Speaker 2: Right cold case investigators submit one of those surviving smeared
14:18
Speaker 2: fingerprint cards that Officer Elliott managed to rescue from the trash.
14:21
Speaker 1: And AFIIS works by digitally mapping the tiny ridges and
14:25
Speaker 1: bifurcations of a print, which allows it to piece together
14:28
Speaker 1: matches even from degraded forty year old samples, and by
14:31
Speaker 1: an absolute miracle, the system gets a hit.
14:33
Speaker 2: It does. The algorithm matches the print to a man
14:36
Speaker 2: named Arthur Porter the Third. Now, in two thousand and eight,
14:40
Speaker 2: he is living a quiet life in California, but back
14:43
Speaker 2: in August nineteen sixty five, he was a seventeen year
14:46
Speaker 2: old kid living in Louisville.
14:47
Speaker 1: And in a chilling, almost cinematic twist of fate, his
14:51
Speaker 1: father owned the prominent black owned funeral home where Alberta's
14:55
Speaker 1: body had been taken for autopsy after she was pulled
14:57
Speaker 1: from the river.
14:58
Speaker 2: A Louisville cold case case detective immediately flies out to
15:02
Speaker 2: Los Angeles for an interrogation, and reading the transcript is
15:05
Speaker 2: just a masterclass in psychological pressure.
15:07
Speaker 1: Oh for sure. The detective sits down with Arthur, a
15:10
Speaker 1: man who has lived forty three years, thinking he got
15:12
Speaker 1: away with whatever happened that night. Arthur tries to play
15:14
Speaker 1: it cool. He insists he was just a quote unquote
15:17
Speaker 1: good kid, a bookworm back then.
15:19
Speaker 2: He cleverly dances around the questions, carefully avoiding any admission
15:23
Speaker 2: that he ever physically touched a white Ford rental car.
15:26
Speaker 2: But the detective corners him, and Arthur eventually agrees to
15:29
Speaker 2: take a polygraph.
15:30
Speaker 1: Test, and he fails it spectacularly. Now it's important to
15:33
Speaker 1: understand how a polygraph works. It doesn't magically detect lies.
15:37
Speaker 1: It measures autonomic nervous system arousal things like spikes and
15:41
Speaker 1: heart rate, blood pressure, and galvanic skin response.
15:44
Speaker 2: Right, and when Arthur was asked directly about the car
15:47
Speaker 2: and the night of August fourth, his nervous system went
15:50
Speaker 2: into absolute overdrive. The official report noted he showed the
15:54
Speaker 2: highest level of deception possible.
15:56
Speaker 1: But despite the failed polygraph and the digital fingerprint match,
16:00
Speaker 1: the legal mechanism of reasonable doubt rears its head. The
16:03
Speaker 1: Commonwealth Attorney in Kentucky reviewed the two thousand and eight
16:06
Speaker 1: findings and refused to prosecute.
16:08
Speaker 2: Why because back in nineteen sixty five, the investigators who
16:12
Speaker 2: lifted the prints failed to document the exact specific location
16:16
Speaker 2: on the car where that particular surviving print.
16:18
Speaker 1: Was found exactly. Without documentation proving whether that print was
16:22
Speaker 1: lifted from the bloody interior back seat or just casually
16:25
Speaker 1: left on the exterior hood by a kid walking by,
16:27
Speaker 1: prosecutors felt they couldn't definitively place Arthur inside the vehicle
16:31
Speaker 1: during the murder. Arthur portered the third maintained his innocence
16:35
Speaker 1: until he died in twenty twenty four.
16:36
Speaker 2: But Arthur did drop one absolute bombshell during that interrogation
16:41
Speaker 2: in California, almost by accident, it really did. While he's
16:44
Speaker 2: sweating trying to explain away how his fingerprint might have
16:47
Speaker 2: innocently gotten on the outside of that car, he starts
16:50
Speaker 2: rambling about where he used to hang out that summer.
16:53
Speaker 2: He names a specific.
16:55
Speaker 1: Park, a park that is literally right in the middle
16:59
Speaker 1: of the production zone, like one block from the convenience
17:03
Speaker 1: store where Alberta talked to the three teenagers and one
17:06
Speaker 1: block from where the couple heard the screaming at two
17:08
Speaker 1: fifteen am.
17:10
Speaker 2: And he mentioned that he was always hanging out there
17:12
Speaker 2: with his two best friends.
17:13
Speaker 1: This is where the structural failures of the nineteen sixties
17:16
Speaker 1: justice system just come full circle. Yeah.
17:18
Speaker 2: When the detective asked who these two best friends were,
17:21
Speaker 2: Arthur casually revealed that their fathers were both high ranking
17:24
Speaker 2: officers in the Louisville Police Department. One friend's father was
17:27
Speaker 2: a major, the other's father was a sergeant.
17:30
Speaker 1: A sergeant Are you kidding me? So Arthur and his
17:33
Speaker 1: two police connected buddies are hanging out in the exact
17:35
Speaker 1: neighborhood at the exact time of the reduction. The mathematics
17:40
Speaker 1: of that coincidence are staggering.
17:42
Speaker 2: It raises a huge, unavoidable question. Were Arthur and his
17:46
Speaker 2: friends the three teenagers at the convenience store?
17:49
Speaker 1: And if one of those boys was a sergeant's son,
17:52
Speaker 1: does that explain exactly why Sergeant Miller threw the bloody
17:55
Speaker 1: fingerprints into the trash can three days later? Was he
17:58
Speaker 1: protecting his colleagues kid?
18:00
Speaker 2: It is a systemic connection that is impossible to ignore.
18:03
Speaker 2: But we also have to remember the strict facts of
18:06
Speaker 2: the declassified files. No one was ever officially charged, and
18:10
Speaker 2: the police records from that era are notoriously incomplete, missing
18:14
Speaker 2: or redacted, which.
18:15
Speaker 1: Brings us to the broader motives, because if this wasn't
18:18
Speaker 1: just teenagers committing a robbery gone horribly wrong, we have
18:21
Speaker 1: to look at the other powerful enemies Alberta.
18:23
Speaker 2: Jones had made, and a key piece of physical evidence
18:26
Speaker 2: strongly points to premeditation rather than a random mugging. The
18:29
Speaker 2: missing wig right.
18:31
Speaker 1: The entire reason Gladys lured her out of her lock
18:34
Speaker 1: house was to fit this custom wig. Gladys claimed Alberta
18:38
Speaker 1: was wearing it when she finally laughed.
18:40
Speaker 2: Now we have to look at the mechanics of nineteen
18:42
Speaker 2: sixties fashion. A custom wig for a black woman in
18:44
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty five wasn't just tossed on like a baseball cap.
18:47
Speaker 2: It was an architectural feat.
18:49
Speaker 1: It would have been heavily secured, with dozens of bobby
18:52
Speaker 1: pins anchoring it to tightly braided hair underneath. It physically
18:57
Speaker 1: could not just slip off in a river current. Yet
19:00
Speaker 1: there was no sign of pins in her hair during
19:02
Speaker 1: the autopsy.
19:03
Speaker 2: Adding to the confusion. Gladys's story regarding that wig changed
19:07
Speaker 2: multiple times over the years. First, she told police she
19:10
Speaker 2: watched Alberta get into the car wearing it. Later she
19:13
Speaker 2: said she only watched her drive away.
19:16
Speaker 1: Originally, she stated Alberta came back inside the house after
19:19
Speaker 1: eating a kingfish to adjust the wig. Years later, she
19:22
Speaker 1: claimed Alberta never came back inside at all.
19:24
Speaker 2: It leaves investigators wondering if Alberta was ever actually wearing
19:28
Speaker 2: that wig when she left, or if the wig was
19:30
Speaker 2: a complete fabrication used to bait her out of the house, which.
19:33
Speaker 1: Opens the door to some of the alternative theories documented
19:35
Speaker 1: in the case files, like the hit man theory. There
19:38
Speaker 1: was a man sitting in a Chicago jail in nineteen
19:40
Speaker 1: sixty six who bragged his cellmates that he and his
19:43
Speaker 1: crew were hired to kill a prominent attorney in Louisville.
19:46
Speaker 2: He claimed they executed the hit and then sold her
19:49
Speaker 2: custom wig somewhere in Kentucky, but conveniently, before detectives could
19:54
Speaker 2: properly interview him and verify his claims, he was stabbed
19:57
Speaker 2: to death in the prison yard.
19:59
Speaker 1: Then there is the financial angle involving the Nation of Islam.
20:03
Speaker 1: As we mentioned, Alberta was managing Muhammad Ali's trust fund carefully,
20:07
Speaker 1: with holding fifteen percent of his massive earnings to protect
20:10
Speaker 1: his long term assets.
20:12
Speaker 2: The case files document that leadership within the Nation of
20:15
Speaker 2: Islam desperately wanted access to that money, but Alberta firmly
20:19
Speaker 2: refused to release it.
20:21
Speaker 1: In the nineteen eighties, a determined cold case detective who
20:24
Speaker 1: started pulling on this specific thread abruptly dropped the investigation
20:28
Speaker 1: because his wife received anonymous phone calls threatening that she
20:31
Speaker 1: would be put in the river if he didn't stop.
20:33
Speaker 2: Digging that is terrifying, and we also cannot ignore the
20:37
Speaker 2: civil rights angle. Remember those thirty one unaccounted miles on
20:40
Speaker 2: the rental car, Remember the shoes found near the Indiana
20:43
Speaker 2: side of the bridge. Southern Indiana was a major stronghold
20:46
Speaker 2: for the Ku Klux Klan in the nineteen sixties. Prior
20:49
Speaker 2: to her death, Alberta had reported being stalked by white
20:52
Speaker 2: men flashing fake police badges. She had found out her
20:56
Speaker 2: phone lines were being actively tapped.
20:58
Speaker 1: It is vital to state that we are looking at
21:00
Speaker 1: these groups, the local police, the Nation of Islam, political segregationists,
21:05
Speaker 1: strictly through the lens of the existing case files. We
21:08
Speaker 1: are simply presenting the intense reality of her daily life.
21:12
Speaker 2: She existed at the incredibly dangerous intersection of immense political power,
21:17
Speaker 2: massive financial stakes, and intense cultural friction.
21:20
Speaker 1: It makes me think of Alberta as a chess grand master,
21:23
Speaker 1: playing multiple high stakes games simultaneously against incredibly powerful opponents,
21:28
Speaker 1: while blindfolded, with so many different factions wanting her off
21:31
Speaker 1: the board. Do you think one specific group orchestrated a
21:35
Speaker 1: highly coordinated hit or was it a tragic random crime
21:38
Speaker 1: of opportunity by reckless teenagers that powerful people simply took
21:42
Speaker 1: advantage of after the fact, using their influence to cover
21:45
Speaker 1: up their own kids' involvement.
21:46
Speaker 2: That is the ultimate tragedy of destroyed evidence. When you
21:49
Speaker 2: physically throw away the pristine fingerprints, when you fail to
21:53
Speaker 2: investigate a marked police cruiser sitting on the bridge during
21:56
Speaker 2: the murder, you create a vacuum of truth, and in
22:00
Speaker 2: that vacuum, every theory becomes structurally possible. We don't know
22:04
Speaker 2: if she was lured to her death by a vast
22:06
Speaker 2: conspiracy or if an accidental encounter with violent teenagers was
22:10
Speaker 2: covered up by a corrupt local system. Both scenarios require
22:14
Speaker 2: a level of institutional failure that is staggering to comprehend.
22:17
Speaker 1: It really is staggering, And despite all of this darkness
22:20
Speaker 1: and frustration, we have to bring this story back to
22:23
Speaker 1: Alberta O Jones as a person. She made a massive
22:27
Speaker 1: historical impact in just thirty four years of life.
22:29
Speaker 2: She really did.
22:30
Speaker 1: She didn't let fear stop her from fighting to change
22:32
Speaker 1: a deeply broken system, and her community has not forgotten her. Today.
22:36
Speaker 1: There is a prominent hometown hero banner with her face
22:39
Speaker 1: on it, hanging in downtown Lovo.
22:41
Speaker 2: There is a beautiful park named after her, and there
22:44
Speaker 2: is a dedicated researcher, Professor Lee Rummington, who is writing
22:47
Speaker 2: a comprehensive book that aims to trace the financial trails
22:50
Speaker 2: and structural failures that might finally point definitively to her killers.
22:54
Speaker 1: Her legacy is undeniably cemented in history, but legally, her
22:59
Speaker 1: case remains open. The Louisville Metro Police Department's Cold Case
23:03
Speaker 1: Squad is still actively accepting tips. The truth of what
23:07
Speaker 1: happened that humid August night is out there, hidden somewhere
23:10
Speaker 1: in the complex geography of that river, that bridge, and
23:13
Speaker 1: those thirty one missing miles.
23:15
Speaker 2: If you are listening and you have any information, no
23:17
Speaker 2: matter how small or insignificant it might seem. After six decades,
23:21
Speaker 2: the tip line for the Cold Case Squad is five
23:23
Speaker 2: oh two five seven four seven zero five five.
23:27
Speaker 1: I'll say that one more time for anyone taking notes.
23:29
Speaker 1: It's five oh two five seven four seven zero five five.
23:32
Speaker 2: Sixty years is a very long time, but as technology
23:35
Speaker 2: continues to evolve, it is never too late for the
23:37
Speaker 2: truth to surface.
23:38
Speaker 1: So as we close the file for today's deep dive,
23:40
Speaker 1: I want to leave you with this thought. We've spent
23:42
Speaker 1: a lot of time talking about how the analog nature
23:44
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty five allowed evidence to literally be thrown
23:47
Speaker 1: into a garbage can. But we live in a digital
23:49
Speaker 1: age now, we do. In two thousand and eight, it
23:51
Speaker 1: was a digitized fingerprint algorithm that finally caught Arthur Port
23:55
Speaker 1: of the third. As more and more dusty forgotten basements
23:58
Speaker 1: full of civil rights ra case files get scanned, digitized
24:01
Speaker 1: and run through modern algorithms, burying secrets and filing cabinets
24:06
Speaker 1: is becoming mathematically impossible exactly. It leaves you wondering how
24:10
Speaker 1: many other perfect cold case cover ups from the nineteen
24:12
Speaker 1: sixties are sitting out there right now, just one digitized
24:15
Speaker 1: file away from finally seeing the light of day.