Just Killing Time

🔑 A hospital electrician held the keys to the mortuary — and for 15 years, no one was watching the room.

In 1987, two young women — Wendy Knell, 25, and Caroline Pierce, 20 — were murdered five months apart in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England. The press called them the Bedsit Murders. The case went cold for 33 years, until a familial DNA breakthrough in 2020 finally gave the killer a name: David Fuller, a quiet hospital maintenance supervisor no detective had ever looked at twice.

But when police searched Fuller's home, they uncovered a second, hidden crime that would expose one of the most disturbing institutional failures in British history — and force an entire country to ask a question most of us never think about: 🕯️ who is actually responsible for protecting the dead?

In this episode I trace how the Bedsit Murders were solved, how Fuller used an all-access swipe card to enter hospital mortuaries as many as 444 times in a single year unquestioned, why there were no cameras in the room, and what the official public inquiry concluded about a system where safeguarding the dead was, on paper, nobody's job.

This is Part 1 of a two-part series, Who Guards the Dead. Part 2, The Bodies Nobody Buried, brings the story home to America.

⚠️ Content note: this episode discusses murder and the abuse of the deceased. Handled factually, without gratuitous detail.

📩 Got a case I should cover? Email me: [email protected]

▶️ Watch the video version on YouTube. New episodes of Just Killing Time with Elizabeth Stanton every week — true crime, conspiracies, and the stories that keep us up at night.

In this episode:

• Who were Wendy Knell and Caroline Pierce?
• How familial DNA cracked a 33-year-old cold case
• Who was David Fuller — and how he hid in plain sight
• The 444 mortuary visits nobody questioned
• What the David Fuller Inquiry found — and the reforms still pending in 2026

Sources:
Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) case statements • Independent Inquiry into the issues raised by the David Fuller case (GOV.UK) — Phase 1 report (Nov 2023) & Phase 2 report (July 2025) • GOV.UK government response updates (Dec 2025) • BBC News • Sky News • NBC News • The Guardian • Kent Police

🕰️ For four years, a stalker who called himself The Poet terrorized Wichita, Kansas — rhyming threats, a stabbing in a mall parking lot, a wreath set on fire on the front door — all during the height of the BTK murders. The city spent $370,000 and ran down more than 300 suspects. Then one weekend, the Chief of Police read the whole file and saw what no one else could.

This is the story of Ruth Finley 💛 — a soft-spoken phone-company secretary, a devoted husband, and a secret buried so deep that even Ruth didn't know she was keeping it. It's one of the strangest, saddest, and most human true-crime cases ever to come out of Kansas — and it happened just up the road from my front door in Derby.

🔎 What you'll hear:

• The 1946 Fort Scott attack at the root of it all
• How BTK-era fear made an entire city believe
• The Poet's siege — the red bandana, the threats, the cruelty and the patience
• Chief Richard LaMunyon and the clue that cracked it
• The confession — and the doubt that never fully went away
• The buried childhood trauma that explains everything
• 📍 A personal Derby aside: the "Glen Hills" case I still remember

📍 A Wichita / Sedgwick County true crime story, told Kansas-honest: documented facts and personal opinion kept clearly separate, no padding, no guessing.

✉️ The Time Killer Files: Send me the false-stalker case from your own town — the phantom attacker everyone feared who turned out never to exist. You might hear it on a future episode.

⚠️ Content note: This episode discusses childhood sexual abuse and suicidal thoughts. U.S. support: call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline); RAINN 1-800-656-4673.

📚 Sources: Corey Mead, The Pursued (2025); Gene Stone, Little Girl Fly Away (1991); Wichita Eagle archives; Wichita PD case history.

🎧 New here? Follow the show and join the Time Killers — new episodes every week.

#TrueCrime #PoetOfWichita #RuthFinley #WichitaKansas #BTK #KansasTrueCrime #DerbyKansas #justkillingtimepodcast #elizabethstanton #derbykansas

She hid a spy pen to catch her husband cheating. It recorded her own secret affair instead.

On Mother's Day weekend 2020, Suzanne Morphew went for a bike ride in the Colorado mountains and never came home. Three years later, her remains were found by accident in a remote field locals call "the boneyard" — with a wildlife tranquilizer in her bones and her body moved at least twice. Her husband Barry has pleaded not guilty to her murder. His trial begins October 13, 2026.

This is the whole story: a crying husband and a $200,000 reward, a "chipmunk alibi," a deleted "I'm done" text, a deer tranquilizer called BAM, a district attorney who got disbarred, unidentified DNA tied to unsolved sex crimes in two states, and a cremation order police stopped one day before it happened.

As one law professor put it: nothing is what it seems.

I tell you what's documented, what's prosecution theory, and what the defense disputes — and I keep them separate, so you decide for yourself.

ACTIVE CASE: Barry Morphew has pleaded not guilty and is presumed innocent unless proven guilty at trial. This episode is sourced entirely from court filings, the grand jury indictment, preliminary-hearing testimony, the autopsy, and established news reporting.

In this episode:
- Who Barry and Suzanne were, and a marriage quietly falling apart
- The spy pen, the affair, and the last 24 hours
- BAM, the needle cap in the dryer, and "the only private citizen"
- The unidentified male DNA in Suzanne's car
- The disbarred DA and the collapse of the first prosecution
- The boneyard, the autopsy, and the second arrest under an alias
- The cremation order — and where the case stands now

TIME KILLER FILES: Have a case from your own hometown? A cold case, a small-town mystery, a story nobody talks about? Send it to me — I read every one.
Email: [email protected]  (Subject: TIME KILLER FILES)

New episodes of Just Killing Time with Elizabeth Stanton on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, and YouTube. True crime, conspiracy, and the stories the official version leaves out.

Sources include court filings and the grand jury indictment in People v. Barry Morphew, the El Paso County Coroner's autopsy, preliminary-hearing testimony, CBS News and CBS 48 Hours, the Colorado Sun, 9News, the Mountain Mail, Fox News, and others. Full source list on the YouTube version of this episode.

🌊 It's one of the most beautiful lakes in America. It's also one of the deadliest. More than 700 people have died at Lake Lanier — and the reason why is hiding at the bottom.

💀 In this deep dive, I tell the documented, fully-sourced story of Lake Lanier, Georgia: the town that was flooded to create it, the graves the government admits it never moved, the woman in the blue dress who was seen for 30 years before anyone learned her name, and the 1912 racial cleansing of Forsyth County that was never punished.

If you've only heard the viral version of this story, this is the part it gets wrong — and the part that's far more disturbing than the myth.

🎙️ WHAT YOU'LL HEAR
🛶 Why one lake accounts for roughly HALF of all drowning deaths in Georgia
👻 The Lady of the Lake — the true story of Delia Young, Susie Roberts, and a 32-year mystery
🔥 Forsyth County, 1912: 1,098 Black residents driven out at gunpoint, and not one arrest
🪦 The unmarked graves the Army Corps of Engineers admits remain on the lakebed
🏁 The racetrack that rises out of the water during droughts
🏞️ Cherokee removal, eminent domain, and the land that was stolen twice
✊🏾 The 1987 Brotherhood March: 20,000 people, the Klan on the courthouse steps
🦠 The antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the mud — one more way the lake can hurt you

❓ QUESTIONS THIS EPISODE ANSWERS
• Why is Lake Lanier so dangerous? — A flooded valley full of submerged roads, buildings, standing trees, and sudden drop-offs, plus 11+ million visitors a year, makes it Georgia's deadliest lake.
• Is there a town under Lake Lanier? — Yes: Oscarville and parts of Forsyth and Hall counties were flooded in 1956, and not every structure or grave was moved.
• Who is the Lady of the Lake? — Delia Mae Parker Young, drowned in 1958, found in a blue dress with both hands missing, unidentified for 30+ years until her friend's car surfaced in 1990.
• How many people have died at Lake Lanier? — More than 700 since 1956, with roughly two dozen bodies still unrecovered.
• What happened in Forsyth County in 1912? — A racial cleansing that expelled all 1,098 Black residents in three months, with no one ever charged.

🎧 ABOUT THE SHOW
Just Killing Time with Elizabeth Stanton is a true crime and conspiracy podcast that pairs documented, deeply-researched history with one Kansas host's take on the stories the official version leaves out. Every fact is sourced. Every theory is labeled. You decide what it means. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and iHeartRadio.

📩 THE TIME KILLER FILES
Got a Lake Lanier story or a Forsyth County family history? A true crime or conspiracy from your own community?
Email 👉 [email protected] — Subject line: TIME KILLER FILES. I read every single one.

🔔 Follow the show so you never miss an episode.
Thanks for killing time with me. 🖤💛

🌼 In 1942, twenty million American families grew their own food, and let the dandelions grow because everyone's grandmother knew they were medicine. By 1955, the dandelion was a weed — a thing you paid a chemical company to kill. In thirteen years, self-sufficiency went from patriotic duty to a sign of a bad neighborhood.

What happened in between? It started at the 1939 New York World's Fair, where forty-five million people walked through a gorgeous, hopeful blueprint for the future — and never realized they were looking at a plan to turn free Americans into permanent customers.

🏛️ In the finale of the White City Series, Elizabeth Stanton follows the documents, names the names, and traces the most successful theft in American history: your great-grandparents' ability to feed and heal themselves, sold back to you one lawn treatment, one car payment, and one prescription at a time.

🧵 IN THIS EPISODE:

🚗 GM's Futurama — the most expensive exhibit at the fair — and the secret plan to tear out America's streetcars

🚎 National City Lines: how GM, Standard Oil, and Firestone dismantled the electric rail of 45 cities

🧪 DuPont's "loony gas" — the tetraethyl lead plant that drove workers insane — and "Better Living Through Chemistry"

☠️ Monsanto's 2,4-D: a herbicide built as a weapon to starve enemy nations, then sold to kill your dandelions

🪖 Operation Pink Rose, Agent Orange, and the dioxin Monsanto knew about

🥕 How the same government that begged you to plant Victory Gardens then outlawed them from the front yard

🏡 FHA Section 4.17: grow food in your front yard, lose your federally-backed mortgage

🌱 The dandelion: a thousand-year medicine (Taraxacum officinale — "official medicine") rebranded as a noxious weed

💊 JAMA, Dr. Morris Fishbein, and the campaign to scrub plant medicine from American medical schools

🛣️ Robert Moses, the 1956 Highway Act, and the deliberate engineering of car dependency

🧠 Edward Bernays again — the 400 campaigns, and the three clients at the center of it all: GM, DuPont, Monsanto

💸 The $180-to-kill-it, $120-to-replace-it household budget that exposes the entire scheme

They told us the future would set us free from the past. Instead it locked us into their marketplace. This is how. — Elizabeth

⏱️ CHAPTERS

00:00 🎬 Cold Open — From Victory Gardens to chemical lawns

00:00 🚗 The blueprint: Futurama and the war on the streetcar

00:00 🧪 The poison partnership: DuPont, Monsanto, chemistry as a weapon

00:00 🥕 The government betrayal: Victory Gardens to mandatory grass

00:00 🌱 The dandelion conspiracy: turning medicine into a weed

00:00 🧠 The playbook: a word about Edward Bernays

00:00 🏘️ The suburban prison: engineering car dependency

00:00 🧾 The perfect crime — and the bill we're still paying

00:00 📬 Time Killer Files

📩 Got a Victory Garden memory or a fight with your HOA over a front-yard garden? Send your Time Killer File to [email protected]

🔔 This is the finale of the White City Series. Subscribe and start from Episode 1 if you're new.

📚 Sources include: United States v. National City Lines (1949) • DuPont Company Archives (Hagley Museum) • Monsanto / Agent Orange litigation records • USDA Victory Garden publications • FHA Property Standards manuals • JAMA archives • Federal Highway Act of 1956 records • Robert Bogdan and contemporary reporting

#truecrime #conspiracy #history #1939worldsfair #monsanto #dandelion #victorygarden #suburbs #carculture #bigpharma #podcast #JustKillingTime

🔥 At 5:12 in the morning on April 18, 1906, the San Andreas Fault tore open and San Francisco came down in under a minute. Then the fires came. And before the smoke had even cleared, the most powerful men in the city had quietly agreed on a story — that it was the fire that did it. Not the earthquake. The fire. Because fire was insured. Earthquakes were not.

That was the first lie. Nine years later, the city threw the biggest party on Earth to celebrate two great American triumphs — rising from the ashes, and finishing the Panama Canal. Both were sitting on top of bodies and lies that powerful people spent a fortune making sure you would never count.

🏛️ This is the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition — a world's fair built on two enormous lies. In this episode of Just Killing Time, Elizabeth Stanton follows the documents, names the names, and introduces the man who took these grubby cover-ups and turned them into a science you are still living inside today: Edward Bernays.

🧵 IN THIS EPISODE:

🔥 The 80% the USGS later confirmed — how much of the destruction the earthquake actually caused, and why the city buried it

📨 The telegram sent just six hours after the quake that set the "fire" narrative in motion

🎩 Mayor Eugene Schmitz, political boss Abe Ruef, and the railroad's hired photographer

📄 The earthquake exclusion clause — and how Hartford paid investigators bonuses to reclassify claims as "earthquake" so they could deny them

🕵️ The Pacific Coast Adjustment Bureau: a written cartel agreement to pay the powerful and deny the poor

⚖️ Margaret Sullivan, the widow who beat Hartford in the California Supreme Court — and still died in poverty

💰 Bailey Willis, the geologist paid $25,000 (over $750k today) to say the ground was safe

✍️ The building-inspection reports physically rewritten in different ink to erase the earthquake

⚒️ "Gold roll" vs "silver roll": how the Panama Canal hid more than 19,000 deaths

🧨 The Culebra Cut explosion that killed 23 men — and was officially recorded as 6

🚬 Edward Bernays, Freud's nephew: "Torches of Freedom," the United Fruit coup in Guatemala, and the birth of manufactured consent

🌉 How the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake collected the bill — in the exact neighborhood they built on the lie.

They rewrote a disaster while a quarter of a million witnesses were still alive. This is the story of how they pulled it off — and who paid for it. — Elizabeth

 📬 Time Killer Files

⚠️ A note: this episode discusses mass death and the deliberate erasure of thousands of Caribbean canal workers. Told with care, but please listen accordingly.

📩 Got a family story or a modern cover-up that fits? Send your Time Killer File to [email protected]

🔔 Subscribe for the full White City Series and new true-crime-and-conspiracy episodes every week.

📚 Sources include: USGS Professional Paper 1515 • National Archives (Pacific Coast Adjustment Bureau; Panama Canal Zone records) • Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley • Stanford University Archives • Charles Evans Hughes, Report on Insurance Practices (1907) • Edward Bernays, "Propaganda" (1928) • Mary Comerio, "Disaster Hits Home" (1998)

#truecrime #conspiracy #history #1906earthquake #panamacanal #edwardbernays #worldsfair #sanfrancisco #propaganda #podcast #JustKillingTime

In 1904, the St. Louis World's Fair displayed over 1,200 human beings as living specimens in what became the largest "human zoo" in American history. Nineteen million visitors paid to see people from around the world exhibited as examples of "primitive" human development.

In this episode of Just Killing Time, Elizabeth Stanton exposes the systematic dehumanization that occurred at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition. This wasn't fringe entertainment—it was mainstream American science, supported by the Smithsonian Institution, major universities, and the U.S. government.

THE ANTHROPOLOGY DAYS: On August 12-13, 1904, the fair held athletic competitions between ethnic groups being displayed as specimens. These "Special Olympics" were designed to prove scientifically that white Americans were physically superior to what organizers called "primitive peoples." The same stadium hosted both the official Olympics and these racist competitions.

OTA BENGA'S TRAGIC STORY: One of the most heartbreaking cases involves Ota Benga, a Pygmy brought from the Congo. After the fair, he was literally displayed in the monkey house at the Bronx Zoo. When African-American ministers protested, it took weeks to secure his release. He eventually died by suicide in Virginia in 1916, age 32.

GERONIMO'S FINAL IMPRISONMENT: At 75 years old, Geronimo was still a prisoner of war, displayed in the Apache village selling photographs for 25 cents. This was his fourth World's Fair exhibition. He died in 1909 at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, never having seen his Arizona homeland again.

THE GOVERNMENT'S ROLE: The Bureau of Insular Affairs transported over 600 Filipinos to be displayed. The Bureau of Indian Affairs facilitated Native American participation. At least 11 Filipino workers died during the fair from diseases and inadequate living conditions—deaths that were recorded but not publicized.

SCIENTIFIC LEGITIMACY: The fair's Department of Anthropology, led by W.J. McGee from the U.S. Geological Survey, conducted extensive physical measurements and intelligence tests on the village residents. These "scientific" results were published in academic journals and cited in Congressional debates about immigration and colonial policy for decades.

LASTING IMPACT: The methodologies developed at the 1904 fair became standard practice in American anthropology and influenced everything from immigration restrictions to forced sterilization laws. The Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History opened in 1910 with exhibits based directly on the racial classification system developed at this fair.

SERIES CONNECTION: This episode builds on Elizabeth's previous coverage of the eugenics movement and shows how the same "scientific" approaches used to rank ethnic groups at World's Fairs were later applied to American families through Better Babies contests and forced sterilization programs.

Content Warning: This episode contains detailed discussion of scientific racism, human exhibitions, and historical trauma. The subject matter addresses systematic dehumanization and its lasting impact on communities and families.

WHAT MAKES THIS EPISODE ESSENTIAL: Elizabeth clearly distinguishes between documented historical facts and her analysis throughout. She honors the memory of the individuals who were exploited while exposing the systems that enabled their dehumanization. This isn't just history—it's a crucial examination of how "scientific education" can mask systematic oppression.

The 1904 St. Louis World's Fair was the largest and most influential international exposition in American history to that point. Understanding what happened there helps explain how American racial ideology was exported globally and how "science" was weaponized to justify empire and oppression.

Just Killing Time with Elizabeth Stanton explores true crime, conspiracy, and the stories that keep us up at night—with rigorous attention to documented evidence and the human impact of historical events.

end your Time Killer Files to: [email protected]

Nikola Tesla demonstrated wireless power to 27 million people at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. Then J.P. Morgan pulled his funding, Tesla died broke, and the FBI seized his papers within hours of his death.

In this episode of Just Killing Time, Elizabeth Stanton separates documented history from conspiracy theory in the Tesla story. What really happened at Wardenclyffe? Why was Tesla's work classified as "Most Secret"? And how does a Kansas farmhouse connect to the greatest suppressed technology in electrical history?

This isn't about free energy conspiracy theories—it's about documented suppression, the War of Currents that shaped our electrical grid, and the FBI raid that happened before Tesla was even buried. Elizabeth digs into declassified documents, patent records, and newspaper archives to tell the real story of what we lost when Tesla's wireless power system was abandoned.

THE KANSAS CONNECTION: Growing up in Derby, Kansas, Elizabeth explores how rural electrification timelines connect to Tesla's vision of wireless power distribution—and why the documented history is more compelling than any conspiracy theory.

KEY TOPICS:

• Tesla's 1893 World's Fair wireless power demonstration

• The documented War of Currents: Tesla vs. Edison

• Wardenclyffe Tower and J.P. Morgan's funding decision

• FBI seizure of Tesla's papers and the "Most Secret" classification

• Rural Kansas electrification and the "farmhouse question"

• Patent suppression and the electrical utility industry

• What Tesla's "World System" would actually have accomplished

This episode is part of The White City Series, exploring the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and the systematic suppression of technologies, ideas, and people that could have changed the trajectory of the 20th century.

HISTORICAL ACCURACY: Elizabeth clearly distinguishes between documented facts and speculation throughout, because the real story of Tesla's suppression is remarkable enough without embellishment.

Content Note: This episode discusses historical suppression of technology and includes discussion of FBI surveillance and patent control by industrial interests.

Just Killing Time with Elizabeth Stanton explores true crime, conspiracy, and the stories that keep us up at night—with a focus on documented evidence and Kansas connections to national mysteries.

Send your Time Killer Files to: [email protected]

👶 THE BABIES IN THE SIDESHOW: When Power Failed & Love Worked 💔

🏛️ Buffalo, September 6, 1901. President McKinley shot at 4:07 PM. 300 yards away: Martin Couney saving premature babies in glass incubators. The president dies. The babies live.

🔍 TONIGHT: 👶 Martin Couney: saved 6,500 babies over 40 years (may not have been a real doctor) 🔫 McKinley assassination complete story + the X-ray machine nobody used 🧬 Eugenics movement at the SAME fairs arguing "weakling" babies should die 🏆 First Fitter Families contest: Topeka, Kansas, 1920 (judging humans like livestock) ⚖️ Buck v. Bell: Supreme Court legalized forced sterilization (never overturned) 💕 Lucille Horn: 2 pounds at birth, lived to 96, five children

Part of White City Series exploring World's Fair dark secrets.

🏠 Kansas connection: First eugenics contest held at Kansas State Fair. Bronze medals for "genetic worth."

From presidential assassination to babies fighting for life—this is about who gets to live and who decides.

Perfect for fans of: True crime, medical history, presidential assassinations, hidden American history, disability rights

#JustKillingTime #MartinCouney #McKinleyAssassination #Eugenics #KansasHistory #IncubatorBabies #Buffalo1901 #ElizabethStanton

👶 Same fairground. Same day. Power failed. Love worked. 💔

🎧 Time Killer Files: [email protected]

🏰 THE MURDER CASTLE: H.H. Holmes - Myth vs. Reality 💀

🎪 Three miles from the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, Herman Mudgett built a hotel. The newspapers called it the Murder Castle. The legend says 200 victims. The truth: 9 confirmed deaths.

🔍 TONIGHT WE COVER: 💀 Holmes' real background vs. the mythology 🏨 What he actually built (acid vats were real, "100 rooms" weren't) 👥 The 9 confirmed victims by name—including the Pitezel children 🕵️ Detective Frank Geyer's 3-month hunt across North America ⚖️ Holmes' $7,500 confession to Hearst papers & gallows recantation 🏢 The post office that stands there now (employees won't go to basement)

Part of the White City Series exploring the dark side of the 1893 World's Fair.

🏠 Kansas connection: The Bloody Benders family killed travelers on the Kansas prairie 20 years before Holmes—they were never caught.

From medical school body-snatcher to America's first documented serial killer—this is Holmes' real story, told with respect for his actual victims.

Perfect for fans of: True crime, serial killer documentaries, Chicago history, The Devil in the White City, detective stories

#JustKillingTime #HHHolmes #MurderCastle #TrueCrime #SerialKiller #Chicago1893 #WorldsFair #ElizabethStanton #DetectiveFrankGeyer

💀 Alice. Nellie. Howard. Pearl. Julia. Emeline. Minnie. Nannie. Remember their names. 💀

🎧 Send Time Killer Files: [email protected]