Late Edition: Crime Beat Chronicles

The latest episode of Late Edition: Crime Beat Chronicles is in partnership with the Tulsa World to introduce the story of the Osage Reign of Terror and the upcoming film Killers of the Flower Moon. In this episode, show producer Ambre Moton is joined by two writers from the Tulsa World, Randy Krehbiel and Jimmie Tramel, to explore the history of the Osages and what led to the crimes committed against them.

Read all of the coverage of the film Killers of the Flower Moon and related stories here.

Episode transcript

Note: The following transcript was created by Slack and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:

Welcome to Late Edition Crime Beat Chronicles, a Lee Enterprises podcast. I'm Ambre Moton, the producer and editor of the show, filling in for Nat Cardona, who is taking some well-deserved time off. 

Our next few episodes are going to take us back to the late 1800s through the 1920s to Osage County in Oklahoma. With the help of and in partnership with reporters from the Tulsa World, the daily newspaper for the City of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and primary paper for the northeastern and eastern parts of the state.

Before we dive into those conversations, a tiny bit of background over the next set of episodes we're going to cover the Osage reign of terror, a series of murders of members of the Osage tribe and those who supported them that took place in the 1920s. By all accounts, these crimes are committed by people attempting to gain control of the Osage as oil rights and the profits from it.

We'll cover some of the history of the tribe, the crimes themselves, the investigation by the be a lie, which later became the FBI, and later a look at the crimes place and pop culture captured in books, newspapers and the soon to be released Martin Scorsese film Killers of the Flower Moon, which was filmed in the same area that the events took place.

But back to the beginning, I spoke with Randy Krehbiel of the Tulsa World, someone we'll hear from several times as we tell this story about how the Osage tribe ended up in what is now Oklahoma.

My name is Randy Krehbiel. I've been at the Tulsa World since 1979. I came here as a sportswriter, did that for about 13 years, switched over to news. And over the years, I've written a lot of things. I've written about a lot of different subjects, but I've written a lot about history and the history of this area era.

I actually published the book several years ago on the 1921 race massacre, and I've written a book on the history of the Tulsa World and the city of Tulsa. And so all of these things are really interesting to me. And and some things, you know, you kind of know about for a while and some things you don't. My main job actually is covering state and federal government.

What kind of led you to writing about the Osage tribe, the the reign of terror and everything that goes into the story of killing of the flower moon?

You know, I had actually written a little bit about it probably 15 years ago or something like that. And there's nothing in-depth like, you know, the book or the David Green book or some of the other books that have been written about it. And I got into it and, it's just like a lot of other things. It's, you know, part of our our story.

It's part of how we we got here and, you know, I think I was probably somewhat fascinated, if that's the right word, by just just how terrible some of these people were. And also, you know, the people who were victimized by them, too, you know. So it's you know, it's part of who we are. And not only, you know, in Oklahoma, but really across the country.

And it's it's part of it's part of the history that, you know, we probably don't like to think about as much It does it doesn't make us feel as good as 4th of July.

Kind of, I guess, on that topic. I think people obviously in Oklahoma, but people of a certain age, I guess I should say, because I'm not sure that it's necessarily being taught as widely as it used to be, are aware of, you know, like the Trail of Tears and the establishment of, you know, Indian territory. But like people may not be familiar with the existence of the Osage people and everything they went through.

So can you just kind of talk a little bit about how they ended up in what is now Tulsa and kind of what what went into that?

Yes, ages originally were a very large tribe and they they're they're sort of their home grounds, at least at the time of, you know, European encounter was most of the state of Missouri and and some of Arkansas and then out onto the plains in Kansas and Oklahoma and then in the 1800s and they were kind of pushed by treaty into an area in Missouri and then that and then into Kansas and in 1872, they sold their reservation in Kansas and bought 1.7 million acres from the Cherokee Nation.

And for their what became their final reservation. And because they bought their reservation, they they owned it. They they had a title to it. It gave them a little different status going forward and and it allowed them to get some concessions. Then when the state of Oklahoma was created really in 1960 to accommodate and become a state until 1907, but by that time, they had been reduced to, you know, just a few thousand people.

They all all of that moving around and man squished together. And they'd undergone a lot of illness and so forth. So they they were down by statehood. They were down to fewer than 2500 people living on the reservation.

It's my understanding that the Osage land that they had, it wasn't, I guess, the most hospitable, especially when it comes to like agriculture. So how did they initially I'm assuming they didn't buy it and then strike oil immediately?

No, actually, yeah. So the story is, is that they actually chose that land because they thought it was the least attractive to white people and they would be left alone. And the story the chief Standing bear tells and there's a tell the story, too, is that they sent out these scouting parties and they told them to throw their spear into the ground.

And if the spear stuck, they were supposed to move on because it meant the soil was too thick and too rich and there'd be white people coming for it. But if they threw their spear into the ground and it fell over because it had hit rock, that's where they wanted wanted to be. And so the story is, again, that they actually chose pretty poor agricultural land.

Now, it almost immediately didn't work out that way because it wasn't very good for farming, but it was very good for for grazing. And they had, you know, the cattlemen from Texas driving cattle up into Kansas. So they wound up, you know, making a fairly good living off leasing their their land to the cattlemen for grazing.

That's a great visual, though. The story that you said that it was cheap standing there. Right, that he said that the steers. That's a great visual. We have to take a quick break, so don't go too far. An important thing to note is that in 1887, the Dawes Act divided up communally owned reservations into privately owned allotments as a way to force Native Americans to assimilate, to make each member of the tribe an owner of 160 acres and selling the quote unquote, surplus land to non-natives.

This made tribal members, private property owners and effectively ended their communal way of living since the Osage bought their land outright. They were exempt from the allotments under the Dawes Act. Instead, Chief James Big Heart insisted on what is known as the Osage Allotment Act in 1906, where the Osage allotted all of their land to their people, giving 657 acres each to the over 2200 registered Osage.

I also spoke with Jimmie Tramel, pop culture writer at the Tulsa World.

Hey, I'm Jimmie Tramel. I'm a pop culture writer at the Tulsa World, a newspaper in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and TulsaWorld.Com. I was a sportswriter for 25 years, but for the last ten years, I've been our pop culture person.

You know, I think everybody or most people of a certain age anyway, should be familiar with the Trail of Tears, everything with how Oklahoma was formed. But they may not have, you know, all of the insight into what happened with the Osage people.

What you just said is fascinating and said you should know. I think maybe the words you use, we should have known about this. But like the Tulsa race massacre of the 1920s, the Osage reign of terror occurred in the same era. And until recently, I think many people not I mean, Oklahomans and around the world, we're not familiar with these things.

Sometimes it takes pop culture to bring awareness to these things that the history books haven't told us. Like the movie HBO's Watchmen brought the Tulsa Race massacre into the consciousness. And I think this movie, Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon, is Bring is doing the same thing to bring the awareness to the Osage reign of terror.

Yes. And thank you for mentioning the film is called Killers of the Flower Moon.

Yes. Filmed in Oklahoma, we're on the same turf where the actual Osage reign of terror happened. At one point in history, the the Osage nation of It's a Tribe, one of many tribes in Oklahoma was prior to statehood. Oklahoma was known as Indian Territory because all the tribes had land here that were there. People could live, and maybe this would never be a state, but actually it became a state in 1907.

But the Osage land, I think a lot of people would say was not the best land in Oklahoma. But guess what? Oil was found under that land and the Osage people became like the wealthiest people on Earth overnight almost. And then what happens when moneys are involved is greed, betrayal, and in this case, even murder, where there were several murders of the Osage, because people wanted their oil money.

It's funny how money can motivate people to do such heinous things, right?

Yeah. I mean, brings out the worst in people and in many occasions. And and eventually you hope someone will step up and do right. But if you when you read the book Killers of the Flower Moon, you'll see that many people who should have known better were conspirators in this.

What kind of wealth? Do you know how that translates into terms to current day?

Well, this kind of wealth, when they would run out of gas in an automobile they had purchased rather than just fill up with a new tank of gas. They would be so like, here's a new car. So that kind of money.

That does incite less scrupulous people to do bad things, definitely.

And that's where we're going to leave the story for today. Thanks for listening to Late Edition Crime Beat Chronicles. Hit that subscribe button so you don't miss our next episode where we discuss the crimes that became known as the Osage Reign of Terror.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode continues the conversation with Dianne Berg, author of What's behind our enduring fascination with wives and mothers who kill. In this episode, Nat Cardona and Diane talk about what causes wives and mothers to commit murder and how the public, judicial system and medical fields contribute and/or react to these criminal events.

To listen to the first half of the interview with Dianne, click here. 

To learn more about Dianne Berg, click here. 

Episode transcript

Note: The following transcript was created by Slack and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:

Welcome to Lee Enterprise's Late Edition Crime Beat Chronicles. I'm your host Nat Cardona. In this episode, we're continuing the exploration of a niche area of true crime stories, the obsession that fans seem to have with killer wives and mothers. We're back with Diane Berg, a professor at Clark University and author of the article What's behind our enduring fascination with wives and mothers who kill? She is very much an expert on this complex topic. If you haven't listened to the first episode, go back and listen to the first half of my interview, please. Otherwise, we pick up the conversation back up by discussing some causes of what makes mothers and wives kill.

I'm a mother myself and I'm, I'm actually pregnant.

So I'm gonna have a baby in four weeks.

I'm actually pregnant, but I'm having a baby in four weeks. Thank you. So I'm kind of like, you know, going through all these things and, you know, very much in the, you know, what makes me different from these other women who have done this historically or in more recent history.

But the thing that comes to mind is there is just something so grabbing about when women do this, because you carry the child for so long and you birth the child and it's so much more intimate than the father who's removed and can kind of clean his hands in the sense of when there is a murder, you can go.

You know, and that's because he's not involved. So in the natural process of pregnancy and birth. So, yeah, when there are these women historically or modern day that do this, it's like, well, you know, you just sit there and go, how how could this happen? How could this happen? And you do. The next point I want to get at is the openness nowadays that we have about talking about postpartum depression, because there seems to be a link with that postpartum psychosis.

And you mentioned it's Lynsey Clancy who's kind of the most recent with that. So in your research and I is something you mentioned, I just want to clarify. Have you you've seen a difference between, let's say, 20, 30 years ago media coverage and nowadays media coverage of like like just jump into that.

Okay. I mean, I kind of want to take those in order, if I may. So, yeah. First, going back to what you were talking about, how okay, when a man does it. Yes, that's terrible and bad and they're they're bad people. But when a woman does it, when a mother does it, especially, there's all this kind of language of the unnatural and the monstrous.

And again, going back to, you know, right now, I've been rereading Euripides Medea all week to get ready for this class, because Medea is like the her murderous mother. Right. And a lot of times these these early modern mothers who kill their children, who, as you point out statistically are fewer than men who kill their children. It is then is now like men commit way more domestic violence than women do.

But women do it. It gets more attention. And it's because of this unnatural list. Right? Women mothers are supposed to be, as you say, it's the natural process whereby we actually think we incubate the child. And there's a lot of that kind of language of like, how could she like a bloody like a bloody tiger? A tiger wouldn't do a thing like this.

A snake wouldn't do a thing like this. The child that she nursed in her body for 40 weeks and fed with her breasts, and there's all this kind of language of like how unnatural this is that you would destroy your own creation in this way. And I think that's really deep. Obviously, that plays it. I think at a really macro level, it plays into fears about like God destroying the earth.

But I think on the more kind of social and cultural level, it just flies in the face of everything that women are supposed to be. We're supposed to be kind and gentle and nurturing and giving and selfless, and all of these things are intimately tied up with our concept of the mother, right? The mother just gives and gives and gives.

The mother is is a a you know, a vessel that never runs dry. Right. That's what it's supposed to be. And so if a mother not only fails to deliver on all those counts, but actually turns on her children and even destroys them, this like, taps into, I think, some really elemental fears. And I think that's why we're so interested in it.

And I think that's why we stay interested in it. And as a mother, I'm a mother as well. I think it's it strikes a particular chord because it's that on the one hand, yes, there's that schadenfreude or. Right, There's that. Well, I didn't do that. You didn't do that? Yeah. My, my, my kid cried all day, too, but I didn't, you know, throw him out a window.

There's that. But there's also the more interesting thing is that on some level, I think anyone who has ever had to care for a small child, an infant, especially if you have recently given birth and your own body and your own mind are still you know, you're not yourself yet. I think anyone who's been in that position has been that exhausted, that frustrated, felt that inadequate, felt how hard it is to live up to all those things.

I just enumerated that mothers are supposed to be can understand how it happens. And that's terrifying that there but for the grace of God go. I write that if I hadn't had my support network, if I hadn't had my level of education, if I hadn't known how to find help. Right. That the I might have done a thing like that.

And I think that's why we can't look away. I think that's a big part of it.

Yeah, that is actually one of the notes that I was just rereading here is that it's hard to make peace with that because, you know, whether it be it's like take guys who who commit murder, there's often the you find out that they had childhood trauma they were abused but then there's plenty of people say, well, so was I.

But I didn't it you know kill five people. It's kind of the same thing here. It's there's there's so many women who deal with postpartum depression and then it's very easy to say, well, I didn't do that and I would never think of doing that. But it's exactly what you say. It's when you stare in the face, it's like, well, it's a really thin line of what, you know, the possibility of it.

It's just it's a weird thing to kind of I just grapple with an iron out. Yeah.

And if there's actually, you know, things out of whack that would respond to medication, this isn't just even a this goes beyond just being exhaustion of being overwhelmed, feeling inadequate, all of which are incredibly legitimate things that, you know, I certainly experienced as a mother of three children. But then you actually add in some sort of, you know, chemical balance or mental illness or, you know, various factors.

Women have no resources. They have no help, they have no money, no one cares about them. We have a government that cares very much about fetuses or at least claims to care very much about fetuses. It doesn't care so much about babies or their mothers. You know, if they wind up needing extra help. So in answer to your question about the sort of coverage of these things, I do think and I hope I'm not being optimistic, I do think that I'm seeing a shift in the coverage.

It's not that there wasn't any mention when the when the Yates murders happened in 2001 or maybe it was. Yes, it was one. There was talk of the fact that this woman hadn't for one reason or another, she didn't get the care that she needed. And there were a lot of factors at play there. She and her husband were evangelical Christians.

They were part of this quiver full movement, which basically they want you to have as many children for Jesus as possible. It's God's will. You just keep having children as long as God sends them to you. She was homeschooling them all she had already had. I can't remember now if it was after her second or third child. She'd had a pretty serious case of postpartum depression to the point where her her gynecologist said she shouldn't have any more children.

This is going to happen again. It's going to get worse. But they had, I think, two more children after that. Anyway. She was being insufficiently monitored. I mean, there was a lot of talk about the fact that this woman was, in her own way, a victim. And there was a lot of finger pointing at the husband. His name was Rusty.

Rusty Yates for continuing to, you know, have children with her and allowing her to homeschool the children. She had five children under the age of seven and, you know, wasn't taking her medication. And there was a lot going on there. So it wasn't that the coverage of her was completely unsympathetic, but there was an awful lot of she's a monster.

She she couldn't have done it if she because the insanity defense, they're doing same thing with Lindsey Clancy. The prosecution is saying, well, no, no, she can't have been insane because she knew what she was doing. She was able to make a plan and carried out both Lindsey Clancy, Andrea Yates and Margaret Robinson, for that matter, wait until their husbands were away and they knew they had a window in order to commit the crimes.

And the prosecution in Clancy's case and in this case have argued that that's impossible, because if she was insane, she couldn't have made a plan, she couldn't have carried it out, etc., etc.. Of course, we know that's not true. People, people suffering from psychosis can commit, make plans and carry them out all time. And it was initially charged with first degree murder and found guilty.

And the jury didn't. They could have given her the death penalty. They they didn't, but they sent a sort of life in prison initially. And then they appealed several years later using an insanity defense, which which succeeded I don't actually think I don't have a crystal ball, but I think that the passage of 22 years is going to have made a difference in the Lindsey Clancy case.

She is, you know, remains in a psychiatric facility. I, I think that there would be a great outcry if she actually were brought to trial for murder charges. And I think that there's been so much more in the press about postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis in the wake of Lindsey Clancy's. I mean, it's a crime. I but I hesitate to use that word.

But in the wake of this very tragic incident, there's been so much more coverage of that and a lot more people coming forward, a lot of kind of op ed pieces, people saying, I have postpartum depression. This is what it's like. I you know, again, that could have been me. So I feel like there's a broader discussion about it.

And you know, it was just I think two weeks ago that the government approved this medication for women with postpartum depression to be more widely distributed, which I feel is like a huge step forward. And, you know, I mean, I can talk obviously, I can talk about this all day. At the root of this, the fact that it's 2023 and we're only now it seems like having a really serious conversation about this just speaks to the degree to which women's issues are always pushed down the list.

Right. Women's health, women's wellbeing, women's mental health. It's always bumped down the list. And of course, again, we're going back to mothers, right? Mothers aren't supposed to need anything. We're supposed to take care of everyone all the time and no one takes care of us. So I feel like, yes, progress. But wow, it's, you know, the 21st century.

I know. We need to take a quick break, so don't go too far. It's fascinating to me. And I wonder if it's repeatedly fascinating to you just if this small increment of time is where we're starting to see that little switch turn to, you know, more in favor of the other possibilities that could be at play here. But 2023 compared to, you know, 16, 16, we're not you know, how how in the media things are typecasting with these types of crimes.

Is it for it to be so not that much different? Is, oh, you know, how many how many things can you count, How many topics can you say are like that?

Yeah, I mean, that's a great money generator. So I mean, I mean. Margaret Vincent, you know, I mean, she said ultimately that she had been, you know, she had fallen under evil influences and basically the devil made her do it. And you know, there's this great woodcut on the cover of the pamphlet about her, which is called The Pity Lost Mother Goes on, but we'll just call it a pity loss.

Mother, for the sake of brevity that shows her with her children and she's strangling them and the devil is standing behind her. And he's got horns and claws and and he's he's basically making her do it. And after she had been in prison when she was apprehended, she said that she had been, you know, laboring under this terrible delusion.

And there had been, like Roman Catholic neighbors who were trying to persuade her to become a Catholic. And that's like a bad influence at this time. And once she had been spoken to at length by a proper, you know, Protestant minister, she repented and recanted. And obviously she had to be hanged for it, but she at least was able to repent and make her peace.

And so, like the the the end game of the pamphlet is that since she was truly repentant, you know, maybe she can be saved, right? Like, her body has to die, but maybe her soul can still be saved. But the important part is the repentance, right? Kind of say, yes, I did that. Yes, it was wrong in those days, you know, like, you know, I like to say yesterday's demonic possession might be today's postpartum psychosis or the other way around.

Right. That, you know, these behaviors, there's got to be some kind of a just be an explanation as to be a reason. So, you know, if it's that, you know, I have a chemical imbalance and I need to, you know, take medication and be treated for it or like, oh, like I was actually possessed by it by a demon when this happened.

There has to be some kind of resolution and you have to be sorry.

Do you know off the top of your head with Lindsay Clancy if she said anything like in.

Yeah, she said at her arraignment or I guess her she didn't speak at her arraignment, but her her counsel said that she said that she heard a voice in her head when her husband was gone. She sent her husband out on an errand. He was working from home because she was that she was sick. He had been working from home and she was doing well, apparently seemed to be doing well and hadn't had a good day with the children playing outside in the snow.

And he was working from his home office and she texted him, recalled him and said, let's get takeout. And he said, Yeah. And so he sent him to a place that was about a half hour's drive away. And she said she heard a voice in her head telling her that she had to do it now, because if she didn't do it now, she wouldn't have another chance.

That sounds pretty psychotic to me right? Andrea Yates said something pretty similar that, you know, she she knew that she would have to do it. Now. This was the chance and she had to take it. And something would have prevented them from doing these things. If, you know, if they hadn't taken these these opportunities, created, you know, these opportunities and and taken them.

That's all we've really heard from her thus far. But apparently, she you know, she told her husband that you've done it. The husband has argued very movingly. I think that she deserves compassion and not condemnation, and that if he can forgive her, then, you know, then the people, the people on Facebook comment threads should probably, you know, dig deep and either find compassion or find the ability to get off that Facebook comment thread.

Right.

Oh, my gosh. Amen to that. I mean, and that that kind of brings me to my my parting thoughts here was how you ended your piece was there. It seems to be that there's two lanes of thought here when someone's digesting all of the true crime that they can, especially when it comes to wives of mothers. It seems it's the what did you call it, the shattered fruit.

I can't.

It just means that kind of it's a nasty word and there isn't a word in English that means this. Exactly. It basically means that the sort of pleasure, often a kind of guilty pleasure. We take in the misfortunes of others.

But yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, you know, when when the Lindsay Clancey situation occurred, I know my immediate thought was like, oh my goodness, like, you know, social media, like, that's going to be an absolute pit of despair. You know, if you do the things that people the people's hot takes. Right. But but I feel like that visceral reaction that people have where they feel like they have to get in there and say, look, she's a monster and she should go to hell.

Oh, those poor little angels, etc., etc.. That's very much part and parcel of that. Pushing it away. That can't be me. I'm not like that where you know, I'm not like that. I'm not a person who with my children, I'm not a person who would kill my husband. I'm not a person who, you know, would do X, Y, Z, terrible thing.

And so I have to jump in here and do this very kind of like performative public condemnation of this thing to kind of distance myself from it, but also kind of reassure myself that, you know, that's not me, I'm different than that. I'm better than that.

Right? That's actually the flip side of things. The other lane is what you had mentioned is that the appeal might lie in the fact that, oh, that light bulb thing, we might be capable of these things. It's kind of funny. And the thought that immediately came to me and this is always how I've felt about true crime, and especially on this topic, is like it's better to what is it the devil you know versus the devil you don't know, right?

Yeah, that's just right.

Well, I've been, you know, again, I've sort of been down this kind of classical tragedy rabbit hole this week. You know, I come back to what do we get out of this kind of stuff, Like, you know, here you are. You confess to being like you're constantly devouring this material, right? I do it. Lots of people I know do it.

True crime, you know, has been so massive in recent years. Right. People just devour this stuff. I mean, it's always been very popular. It does seem like it's really kind of having a moment culturally. There's what we get from this stuff is is catharsis, Right? I mean, it's the same thing as as classical tragedy, right? We we watched the terrible thing happen, but the terrible thing hasn't happened to us.

Now, if we're talking about a drama, if we're talking about Medea or Oedipus Rex or even Hamlet, yet the body, you know, the bodies are littering the stage and all these terrible things have happened. We have the the purging of pity and terror that comes. But no one has actually died. Nothing terrible has actually happened. We leave the theater feeling kind of scoured out and then we go and we we get a coffee and we chat about it.

Right. But with the true crime stuff, someone has died. Something a real tragedy has occurred. And yet I still feel like it's that catharsis that you know, we see it, we watch it. You know, people watch to watch these trials when they can. Right? They need to see how it ends. And then they can walk away from it and it hasn't happened to us.

Mhm. Right. We sort of had the, the, the purging of pity and terror but something terrible really has happened and still it's not like when a play is over and now the play is over. As you say, these stories happen over and over again.

It's so, so accessible. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, I mean yeah that, yeah, yeah. And then there's that other thing. Go ahead, Go ahead.

No, no, it's just kind of. I just feel like this. This appeal is kind of timeless, and it speaks to something in in like, the human condition. And I'm not sure it's a very nice thing in the human condition, but it certainly is. There.

That's my thinking. Exactly. Yeah. It really it all ties in together. It's just. Yeah, definitely something to chew on, to use. I mean, what's next for you in this grand scheme of things. And I think going forward, I mean that's kind of a really open ended question.

I, I mean, I'm excited for this, this course. I'm going to start teaching on Monday, which is again, we're going to start with with Medea and we're moving on to so then we're moving on to some everything inside of mothers and we're going to move on to some some women who kill, too. I don't know. We're moving on to petty tyrants after that.

So we'll have some texts about fathers who abuse their authority by killing their wives and or children. And we're going to end up with wives who who kill their their husbands sort of petty traitors. And I will be putting kind of early modern texts in conversation with more modern cases throughout the semester. So I think it's going to be really fun and interesting.

And I'm hoping my my I have I have every intention of writing a book, which is I have a title. It's going to be the same title as my seminar are actually Pulp Pulp nonfiction, Oh, True Crime and Fake News and Early Modern England. So that's that's my next big project. I'm currently working on a of what I think is going to be more public facing piece which is kind of different but kind of not.

It's actually about Barbie and Paradise Lost. Milton's Paradise Lost, which I think is kind of interesting, is sort of Barbie Land as a kind of Eden and Ken as a kind of Adam figure. But that's that's what I'm kind of working on right now on the side. We'll see what happens with that. But yeah, I think going forward, you know, it's going to kind of be more murder and mayhem for me.

I really safe to say that's the life, right.

I hasten to add, I'm actually a very nice person. And it's funny that I know. I mean, I have three children of my own. And I think they they think it's they're a little bemused that this is kind of like my my reputation. I was once at a conference and I was introduced to someone and he said, Oh, you're the infanticide woman.

And I was like, Please don't call me that. But, you know, yeah, I have children, I have children, I have dogs and cats. I, you know, I, I'm, I'm a nice person. I swear to God, you know, I'm vegan. I've been begging for for a very long time. So, yeah, this is all purely intellectual, I assure you.

Yeah. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, Well, these are wrenching, all of that. And is there any way, if a listener is interested in following you and is not obviously at one of your classes at university, one of your son winners at university, is there a way that people can follow what you're doing or publishing.

A I'm not really very I I'm not on Twitter or whatever it's called this week, so I have to go. Yeah, right. Perhaps going forward at this at this point, mainly, you know, just through, through what I publish. Yeah. And up to Clark University. I, I teach English at Clark University in Massachusetts.

Okay. Okay. So Google search, people.

And that is that, my friends, special thanks to Diane Berg for joining the show and then giving us a look at what's mesmerized true crime fans for centuries. Thanks for listening to Late Edition Crime Beat Chronicles. Hit that subscribe button so you don't miss what's coming next. See you later on.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Pew Research Center found in 2022 that nearly 25% of top-ranked podcasts were true crime-related. In the next set of episodes, host Nat Cardona speaks with Dianne Berg, college professor and author of What's behind our enduring fascination with wives and mothers who kill, to explore why this niche of true crime fascinates so many. 

In this first episode, we discuss the history of the public's nearly-fanatical interest in mothers and wives who commit murder and why societies are particularly fascinated by these stories. 

To learn more about Dianne Berg, click here. 

Episode transcript

Note: The following transcript was created by Slack and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:

Hey there, as a listener of this podcast, you must be at least somewhat into the whole true crime genre.

But did you know that True Crime is the most common topic among top ranked podcasts?

To be specific?

The Pew Research Center reports that in 2022 almost a quarter of top podcasts are primarily about true crime.

Welcome to Lee Enterprise's Late Edition Crime Beat Chronicles.

I'm your host Nat Cardona.

In the next two episodes, we're going to explore a very niche area of true crime stories.

The obsession that fans seem to have with killer wives and mothers.

But how does one even begin to tackle such a complex topic?

Enter Dianne Berg.

She's a professor at Clark University and the author of the article, what's behind our enduring fascination with wives and mothers who kill her?

Research traces this phenomenon back to literature from the 15 hundreds and 16 hundreds with clearly printed details of the early fascination that people had with murderesses.

And here's my interview with Dianne just to kick things off.

Why don't you just tell me a little bit about yourself and your background and what you do?

Nowadays.

Ok.

I, that's kind of hard to answer.

I mean, where he, ok.

Well, once upon a time before I decided to become an academic, I, was, the education program manager at a Museum of Medieval and Renaissance Arms and Armor, in Worcester, Massachusetts, called the Higgins Armory Museum, which is now sadly defunct.

I left years before, it, it went out, sort of went out of business. But while I was there, I learned a great deal about, armor and, and weapons and warfare and medieval politics and things.

I was always very interested in medieval renaissance, history and literature. But not so much that side of it. But it kind of opened up, a different window in, into these things for me doing that work.

And when I left there, I realized that what I had enjoyed most about that job was researching and developing education programs.

So, essentially, you know, going down research rabbit holes and writing things up.

So I went and I got a master's degree and I did the master's degree basically to see if I wanted to get a phd.

And after I had finished that, then I decided that I did indeed want to get a phd.

So, my dissertation, my doctoral dissertation focused on kind of, literary representations of true crime between about 1550, 1650.

And it was very interesting because the thing that jumped out at me when the project first started, the sort of germ of the project came about by accident when I was researching something completely different.

And I came across this pamphlet about a woman named Margaret Vincent.

And in 1616, she strangled two of her Children.

She had 31 was away at the wet nurse and so was spared and she did so because she believed that she was saving them, she was saving them.

She was taking them out of a sinful world.

And her reason for this was that she wanted to convert to Roman Catholicism.

And she thought if they didn't do that, then they were going to be damned.

And her husband was not on board with that because basically being a Catholic was illegal was essentially illegal in early 17th century England.

So she did this bad thing for what she believed were good reasons and this just rang a bell in my head because back in 2001, this woman named Andrea Yates in Texas who was an evangelical Christian.

She strangled all five, she strangled and drowned all five of her Children.

And like Margaret Vincent laid them out neatly on a bed and said afterwards that she had done so in order to save them.

And so the, you know, this really kind of struck me and I wondered how many other cases where they're out there like this because we always hear about mothers who kill their Children as being, you know, evil monsters or, they want to get rid of the kids because they want to start a new relationship or, there's all these kinds of lurid stories that have been in the news just in the past 30 years or so.

I think someone like Casey, Anthony.

Right.

But what about good mothers?

Right.

What about good mothers who do this terrible thing for what they believe at the time are good reasons.

And then of course, we've just had this Lindsay Lacy case here in Massachusetts, which is unbelievably tragic and it is kind of still evolving in, in Andrea Yates case.

Postpartum psychosis was at play in Lindsay Clancy's case.

It certainly sounds as if postpartum psychosis was at play.

We can't know what was going on with Margaret Vincent in 16 16, but she did have a new baby at the time.

So, you know, I can't prove it.

But I have, but I have my theories.

So anyway, that particular story, stumbling upon that particular story was the kind of impetus for my doctoral work.

And for most of the things that I've published since, and I'm actually about to teach a class focused on these, these kinds of stories and that leads us here today, which is why I'm talking with you.

We had found that piece, the what's behind our enduring fascination with wives and mothers who kill because of all the things you said.

It's just the, the women as the monsters and it's such a, there's so few and far between that.

Yeah, it, people latch on to it and are fascinated by it.

So we'll just kind of jump into, the piece that you've written today.

Thank you for that all that back story leading us up to Margaret Vinson, Andrea Yates.

And we'll get more into the modern day examples and parallels that you drew even with that Utah mother, which is how you started your article.

But I kind of just want to jump into and maybe this is just me fan girling.

But the the tolstoy quote that you popped in there, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way was a really good way to kick off.

Why this could be a source of interest for a lot of people looking at, you know, other people and being like, oh, that's another family's problem and that, that can't happen here and we'll get into all of that.

The first thing I wanna jump into is you mentioned how true crime is.

Nothing new.

It's always been a tale as old as time that people are fascinated with it and devour it in different ways.

Nowadays, we've got the podcasts and the documentaries and novels and this and that.

But from your background and the you know, 15, 50 16 50 that, that time range, it was not, obviously those things you mentioned, ballads, domestic tragedies and these penny pamphlets.

Can you, like, explain what those are like?

Like, what the hell are those?

Yeah, it's really interesting.

So, you know, there's no, news reporting in this period, right?

Like what we would think of as, you know, news reporting. But news does get disseminated obviously.

So, you know, if there's a big scandal, there is going to be ways for people to find out about it.

So we're, it's very interesting because we're also kind of in the early days of print, right?

The printing press arise in England in 14 75 William Caxton is the first guy to use the printing press in London in 14 75.

And he starts printing, aside from obviously religious things, you know, we're gonna are gonna get kind of priority.

He printed the Canterbury Tales and he, he printed Thomas Mallory's more Arthur.

It sort of like gives us some sense of what people were interested in reading, right?

So think about like, what were the first websites, right?

Because you can really make the printing press analogous to the internet.

Like, so what were the first things that started appearing on the internet?

It tells us something about what people were interested back in those like embryonic.

It, you know, information superhighway days.

So by the middle of the 15 hundreds.

You're getting more kind of political tracks being printed And starting to see chronicles.

So basically, these are what pass for.

They're not really news, they're kind of somewhere between like the encyclopedia Bria or something.

There's several chronicles that are very famous and their names aren't, aren't really important for our conversation.

But Rafael Hole and, and John Stow several others and they print these sort of big chronicles that are gonna give you the history of England, everything important that ever happened.

And, and mostly they just talk about kings and queens and battles and the usual things you would expect.

But this murder that happened in 15 51 which I write about in the article Thomas Arden, he was murdered on Valentine's Day 15 51 by his wife Alice and she conspired with her lover, a guy named Mosby, and some of some of their servants and a couple of hired killers.

The whole thing is actually kind of slapstick when I teach this.

When I teach the, the text that's based on the play Arden and my students are always like, I've had these murders compared to the wet Bandits in home alone, they're kind of incompetent.

That was good.

But but I can't get it out of my head.

But anyway, so this is, these are just middle class bourgeois people living in a London suburb.

And there's nothing important or famous or particularly interesting about them except the woman conspires to murder her husband.

And this winds up in one of these chronicles, it winds up in Holland.

It's chronicle amidst like, you know, Julius Caesar invading Britain and things like that.

And the reason he included this seemingly ordinary and unimportant episode he says is because of the horribleness thereof because the idea of a wife killing her husband is so horrible, right?

It goes against nature.

It goes against the sort of political theology of the time it threatens order in the household.

And in this period, there's this kind of analog framing of the household as like a miniature state, a little commonwealth.

There's a long tract about it by Robert John Dodd and Robert Clever that comes out in the 15 hundreds.

And essentially, it's kind of just saying that the household is just like a miniature kingdom and of course, who's at the top of the kingdom, right?

The husband and the father, right?

Everybody is subordinate just like the king is the head of the nation and God is the head of the universe.

And this is the analogy.

So if a wife kills her husband, it's it's a political crime, it's treason, it's like killing the king, right?

So, whereas if a husband kills his wife, he's guilty of murder.

And depending on his social class, he'll, he'll be hanged or maybe beheaded.

If a wife kills her husband, she's gonna be burned because that's the penalty for treason.

So this case gets way more attention than you would think it should merit and winds up in this chronicle and inspires a play called Arden of Fabric, which comes circa 15 90.

We don't know the writer is unknown.

And it also inspired at least one battle ballad that we know of that came out way later like 16 30 or something.

Which Ventri likewise is Alan Alice Arden, just before she dies before she gets burned at the stake.

And basically, she goes on for, I think 90 19 verses about how terrible she is and how sorry she is and how, what she did was really, really wrong and you should never tell.

So there's all this kind of like rhetorical work that these kinds of cases serve beyond just saying, OK, this is a crime, this is what happened.

These are the details.

It's like, so what right.

Going back to what you were saying about Tolstoy, right?

It's like, how can this be used weaponized to kind of reinforce the status quo?

And what's the word I want?

Sissuade discourage people, other people from doing this kind of thing, right?

Show them what the consequences are.

Mhm Yeah.

It's the, the true life scary story to keep people in line.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yes, for sure.

Ca a cautionary tale the cautionary tale.

Yes.

Yeah, we need to take a quick break. So don't go too far.

Ok.

So we're gonna toggle a little bit between current day and going back and it's going off of the things that you just mentioned.

So this is probably pretty straightforward and most people especially like true crime junkies should know this.

But statistically crimes committed, you know, whether it be a murder, a rape, a burglary kidnapping.

it's typically by somebody, you know, and it's typically a man who does it and I mean, I devour these True Crime podcasts and you always hear whatever the case, it's like the husband always does it or the boyfriend and, and it's true and, and, and that's sad.

But then it's like, ok, move on because it's time a dozen.

So when you've done your right, it's just a Tuesday.

Right.

You know?

Right.

Right.

Right.

It's a 20, that's sad.

And then it's like, so like when you've done your research in, in, on all your historical, you know, literature and all, whatever have you, my guess would be that you haven't seen men as portrayed in these cautionary tales as much as, you know, Margaret Vincent or Alice Arden that you mentioned.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I think, and it, I didn't really answer your question about the pamphlets and this ties into that.

So, these pamphlets are basically cheap.

I make them kind of analogous to, tabloid newspapers, you know, the things that you see at the supermarket checkout or, or online now, you know, with the kind of like the, the, the red thing in the UK, they call them red tops because they always have like a red headline.

And, you know, it's like, oh, you know, demon mother murders, helpless angel Children, you know, that, that kind of stuff.

And they, they're grabby and they're cheap and they're really disposable, right?

You read that and then you line the cat box with it or something.

And that's, these pamphlets were cheap like that.

They were mass produced.

you could buy it.

They lured, they always featured these, like, really kind of, lurid woodcuts, showing, you know, somebody hacking someone's head off or strangling a baby or whatever.

And the funny thing is that they're really kind of like early modern clip art.

They reuse the images over and over again and just changed the headline, which I think is really funny.

They're sort of like memes.

Yeah.

I'm no kidding.

Yeah, they are.

They're like memes.

So anybody would look at this image even though it's been used like six different times for 66 different context.

It's like, oh, well, that's like, oh, that's like, you know, somebody strangling their wife or something, you know, and it's just like, you know what this is gonna be about.

So, yeah, I think, I wrote a lot about this.

The way men, male perpetrators and female perpetrators are portrayed in these kinds of texts.

So, yeah, the pamphlets for sure, because they've got this kind of, again, the rhetoric is so similar to what you see in these tabloids that it's funny, it's really kind of like overwrought really over the top, kind of hysterical.

Do you remember Nancy Grace?

She used to be on TV.

She used to always follow, she'd be like, if somebody murders their kid, she's the one on TV.

Like that kind of tone that like screaming outraged, but kind of like titillated.

It's like, yeah.

Oh, I'm, I'm like pointing the finger.

These people are monsters, but I love it, you know, the tone is very, very, very similar.

So when a man does this kind of stuff, he's definitely what he's done is wrong.

So a man like kills his family or something, the portrayal of him is definitely, you know, the disapproving.

But what he has done the, the sort of social crime he has committed is, is called petty tyranny because a man is supposed to be in charge, right?

He's supposed to have all the power.

But if he, it's, and it's ok for him to chastise his subordinates, right?

Like it's his job to chastise his subordinates, you know, he should beat his Children.

If they misbehave, he should chastise his wife if she's, if she's insubordinate, right?

But he shouldn't kill them, right.

He shouldn't beat them to the point of, you know, maiming them or seriously harming them and he certainly shouldn't kill them.

So, when a man does these kinds of things, he has abused his power and that is very much disapproved of.

But there's also kind of a whiff of, there's often kind of a whiff of, well, what made him do it, what drove him to it?

Right.

Does this sound at all familiar?

You know, and I, I, ok, so it's, it's just funny that you brought this up because one of my notes that I I had mentioned is like going beyond like a guy who kills his wife.

You know, Scott Peterson comes to mind with Lacey Peterson and then Chris Watts, the family annihilator, right?

With his pregnant wife, right?

And you see every time these, these stories hit the news, like, you know, I often, I often just sort of have news on when I'm cooking in my kitchen and these things come on and I'm just like, I've got like a wooden spoon in my hand and I'm like, he did it like I know he did it like, you know, he totally, he definitely did it.

And I'm always right.

Yeah.

And it's just, it is.

So, so those two names and everything that you just had mentioned, I had this inner dialogue yesterday when I was thinking about it because it goes back to the top, like, why are, why are you and I talking today the why do we care so much when it's a wife and, or mother as opposed to the, you know, we can be like, oh, you know, Chris Watson Scott Peterson, like those guys are terrible, nail rotten hell.

But again, it goes back to when it's a woman, it's that monster.

It's a evil.

And then I kind of had this own thought dialogue.

I'm a mother myself and I'm, I'm actually pregnant.

So I'm gonna have a baby in four weeks.

Thank you.

So I'm kind of like, you know, going through all of these things and, you know, very much in the, you know, what makes me different from these other women who have done this historically or in more recent history.

But the thing that comes to mind is there is just something so grabbing about when women do this because you carry the child for so long and you birth the child and it's so much more intimate than the father who's removed and can kind of clean his hands in the sense of when there is a murder, you can go, you know, and that's because he's not involved.

So in the, in the natural process of pregnancy and birth.

So, yeah, when there are these women historically or modern day that do this, it's like how, you know, you just sit there and go, how you know, how could this happen?

And that's where we'll wrap up this week.

Come back next week where Dianne and I discuss how society has evolved or remain the same as far as discussing women's wellness, postpartum ghost and how all of that contributes to violence committed by women.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In Late Edition: Crime Beat Chronicles, we introduce you to the Lincoln Journal Stars’ published Presumed Guilty series, an award-winning examination of the case from 2009. Later in 2019, the project was adapted for a podcast, Revisiting the Case hosted by Elizabeth Rembert. This is part two of an abridged rerelease of the Presumed Guilty podcast.

We pick up with six people behind bars for the 1985 murder and rape of Helen Wilson. Six innocent people set to serve a combined 70 years. In this episode, find out how things played out in the courtroom, with defendants turning on each other with their testimonies in 1989.

Thanks to DNA evidence, the six convicted of the crime in 1989 were exonerated in 2008, and in March of 2023, Gage County completed its payoff to the Beatrice Six (or their estates)-- a total payoff of around $30 million once attorneys' fees were added. 

Read more on the case here. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On Feb. 6, 1985, in Beatrice, Nebraska, 68-year-old Helen Wilson was raped and suffocated. Loose-ended leads pop up during the investigation, and six people would eventually be charged in her death and found guilty. However, years later, DNA would ultimately turn this case upside down. Those six convictions will be reversed. How could these people confess to a crime they didn't commit?

In Late Edition: Crime Beat Chronicles, we introduce you to the Lincoln Journal Stars’ published Presumed Guilty series, an award-winning examination of the case from 2009. Later in 2019, the project was adapted for a podcast, Revisiting the Case hosted by Elizabeth Rembert. This is part one of an abridged rerelease of the Presumed Guilty podcast.

Read more on the case here. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 1989 six people were falsely found guilty of the 1985 rape and murder of Beatrice, Nebraska resident, Helen Wilson. These individuals, dubbed The Beatrice Six, were exonerated in 2009 after new DNA evidence surfaced in 2008.

Up next, Late Edition Crime Beat Chronicles revisits the case. Read more here. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this set of episodes, we sift through many details of the 2012 disappearance and death of 6-year-old Isabel Celis and 2014 kidnapping and murder of 13-year-old Maribel Gonzalez.

You’ll be hearing from Arizona Daily Star reporter Caitlin Schmidt.

In this episode, host Natalie Cardona and Caitlin Schmidt examine the trials of the man accused of the killings for both girls.

Past episodes from this season:

Episode One

Episode Two

More on the case

Isabel was last seen by her parents at 11 p.m. on April 21 when she was put to bed. Her father discovered she was missing the next morning, police said. Police completed a search of the Celis home in the 5600 block of East 12th Street, near East Broadway and South Craycroft Road, at about 1:30 a.m. Tuesday but would not comment on what was found.

Thousands of fliers were passed out. Landfills were searched as well as lakes and basins. Isabel’s parents Sergio and Becky Celis had come under some criticism for not speaking to the media or the public in the effort to find their daughter. More money poured into the search effort, but no more leads for years.

Then on June 3, 2014 — two years after Isabel Celis first went missing — another young girl, Maribel Gonzalez, 13, told her mother she was going to a friend’s house. Three days later her body was found near West Avra Valley Road by a Pima County sheriff’s deputy responding to a call about suspicious activity. A few days after her body was discovered, a Pima County medical examiner ruled the death a homicide by unspecified means.

In March 2017, Isabel’s body was in a rural area of Pima County nearly five years after she disappeared. Police Chief Chris Magnus said it wasn’t happenstance. An autopsy later that year confirmed it was a homicide. The bones that were recovered were redacted from the report, but an included chart of a human skeleton show part of a pelvis and several skull bones that are a darker color than the rest of the body.

Christopher Clements was charged with both crimes and in September of 2022 the first of his two trials began on the charges of kidnapping and murdering Maribel Gonzalez. 

Then, in February of 2023, Clements' trial for Isabel Celis began.

If you like what we do here at Late Edition: Crime Beat Chronicles, please be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this set of episodes, we sift through many details of the 2012 disappearance and death of 6-year-old Isabel Celis and 2014 kidnapping and murder of 13-year-old Maribel Gonzalez.

You’ll be hearing from Arizona Daily Star reporter Caitlin Schmidt. But first, we travel back to April 25, 2012, shortly after Isabel first went missing.

In this episode, host Schmidt discusses how police made the connection between the two cases.

Past episodes from this season:

Episode One

More on the case

Isabel was last seen by her parents at 11 p.m. on April 21 when she was put to bed. Her father discovered she was missing the next morning, police said. Police completed a search of the Celis home in the 5600 block of East 12th Street, near East Broadway and South Craycroft Road, at about 1:30 a.m. Tuesday but would not comment on what was found.

Thousands of fliers were passed out. Landfills were searched as well as lakes and basins. Isabel’s parents Sergio and Becky Celis had come under some criticism for not speaking to the media or the public in the effort to find their daughter. More money poured into the search effort, but no more leads for years.

Then on June 3, 2014 — two years after Isabel Celis first went missing — another young girl, Maribel Gonzalez, 13, told her mother she was going to a friend’s house. Three days later her body was found near West Avra Valley Road by a Pima County sheriff’s deputy responding to a call about suspicious activity. A few days after her body was discovered, a Pima County medical examiner ruled the death a homicide by unspecified means.

In March 2017, Isabel’s body was in a rural area of Pima County nearly five years after she disappeared. Police Chief Chris Magnus said it wasn’t happenstance. An autopsy later that year confirmed it was a homicide. The bones that were recovered were redacted from the report, but an included chart of a human skeleton show part of a pelvis and several skull bones that are a darker color than the rest of the body.

Next time on Late Edition Crime Beat Chronicles, we go deeper into the connection between these two young girls’ cases and the man on trial for their murders. If you like what we do here at Late Edition: Crime Beat Chronicles, please be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this set of episodes, we sift through many details of the 2012 disappearance and death of 6-year-old Isabel Celis and 2014 kidnapping and murder of 13-year-old Maribel Gonzalez.

You’ll be hearing from Arizona Daily Star reporter Caitlin Schmidt. But first, we travel back to April 25, 2012, shortly after Isabel first went missing.

Isabel was last seen by her parents at 11 p.m. on April 21 when she was put to bed. Her father discovered she was missing the next morning, police said. Police completed a search of the Celis home in the 5600 block of East 12th Street, near East Broadway and South Craycroft Road, at about 1:30 a.m. Tuesday but would not comment on what was found.

Thousands of fliers were passed out. Landfills were searched as well as lakes and basins. Isabel’s parents Sergio and Becky Celis had come under some criticism for not speaking to the media or the public in the effort to find their daughter. More money poured into the search effort, but no more leads for years.

Then on June 3, 2014 — two years after Isabel Celis first went missing — another young girl, Maribel Gonzalez, 13, told her mother she was going to a friend’s house. Three days later her body was found near West Avra Valley Road by a Pima County sheriff’s deputy responding to a call about suspicious activity. A few days after her body was discovered, a Pima County medical examiner ruled the death a homicide by unspecified means.

In March 2017, Isabel’s body was in a rural area of Pima County nearly five years after she disappeared. Police Chief Chris Magnus said it wasn’t happenstance. An autopsy later that year confirmed it was a homicide. The bones that were recovered were redacted from the report, but an included chart of a human skeleton show part of a pelvis and several skull bones that are a darker color than the rest of the body.

Next time on Late Edition Crime Beat Chronicles, we go deeper into the connection between these two young girls’ cases and the man on trial for their murders. If you like what we do here at Late Edition: Crime Beat Chronicles, please be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome back to Late Edition Crime Beat Chronicles, a Lee Enterprises podcast with host Nat Cardona. On this podcast, you’ll hear true crime stories as told by journalists from regional newspapers across the country.

For the next series of episodes, we will be diving into the 1990 cold case murder of Susan Negersmith in Wildwood, New Jersey. You’ll hear from reporters, past and present, who covered the case as it has unfolded throughout the years and the many twists and turns along the way.

Susan Negersmith was a 20 year-old woman from Carmel, New York. She was visiting Wildwood, New Jersey, on Memorial Day Weekend with friends in 1990.  She said goodbye to her friends in the evening of Saturday, May 26, and by the early hours of Sunday morning, Susan’s partially clothed body was found behind a dumpster near a Wildwood restaurant. Her death was originally ruled accidental, although there were signs of a struggle.

An important thing to note about Susan Negersmith’s weekend trip with friends to Wildwood: this area is a destination for a debaucherously good time. Tourists flock there in the warm weather months to party hard. There’s a boardwalk packed with restaurants and bars packed with people from all over. Drinking heavily is a main activity. The reputation of the area for all of these things quickly comes into play in the early days of the investigation ... at the expense of solving Susan’s case in a timely fashion.

For this final episode of the series, we speak with Eric Conklin, a breaking news reporter for the Press of Atlantic City, who has written about some of the recent developments in the case tied charges involving Jerry Rosado, a Millville, New Jersey, man accused of sexually assaulting Negersmith.

A motion for dismissal was made on Rosado’s behalf on the grounds that his sexual assault charge exceeded the statute of limitations governing crimes in 1990, when Negersmith’s body was found.

Rosado was released from the Cape May County jail March 30, a day after the appellate panel published their opinion siding with the defense. We'll have more details on that in the fourth episode.

Read more about the case

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.